Dishonourable Conduct: A Summary of the Infamous Aamir Liaquat Video

On August 14, 2011, Pakistan’s independence was not the only topic of discussion across the nation. A sensational nine-minute video of Aamir Liaquat, the managing director of Islamic channel QTV, surfaced online and threatened to destroy the reputation of one of the country’s self-appointed ‘religious experts.’ Liaquat has claimed that the video footage has been tampered with and his voice impersonated as part of a smear campaign.

For those of you who couldn’t see the video before GEO TV began its campaign to remove it from the Internet, haven’t seen one of the innumerable copies or simply can’t be bothered to subject yourselves to nine minutes of Aamir Liaquat, Newsline has assembled and summarised some unbecoming moments from the infamous video – enough for anyone to understand what all the fuss is about.

Here we have a preening Aamir Liaquat swearing in truly un-Islamic fashion, mocking a fellow expert for his “Rishi Kapoor-style topi” and trying to recall the name of a “zabardast kalakar” with a charming penchant for appearing in Bollywood rape scenes with numerous women we feel much sympathy for. This portion of the video seems the most natural, as if Liaquat’s letting his rather greasy hair down. If this is what it’s like to have him as a chum, we think we’ll pass. Still, the speed at which he transforms from lecherous Liaquat to attentive Aalim does impress us.

For reasons known only to him, a typically decked-out Liaquat is unable to contain his laughter as he is presented with a question concerning the serious issue of suicide in Islam. Despite the female caller’s evident concern, Liaquat and his guest seem to have found time for a chuckle. Or six. Looks like we missed out on the joke.

And it sings! Liaquat isn’t averse to doling out entertainment, as his rendition of ‘Hum to teher pardesi’ shows. Rather sadly, he is the only one clapping. Perhaps he can use some of the free time he might soon have to take singing lessons. Still, we’ve got to hand it to him for his cinematic knowledge: “Ghalib film dekhi hai aapne?” he asks his companions at one point. Well, guys, have you? We hope so – the scholar who hasn’t looks much the worse for it.

Clearly there’s a Jekyll-and-Hyde case going on here. When he’s on camera with that sickly sweet smile, it’s as if sugar wouldn’t melt in Liaquat’s mouth. But take away the spotlight and a shallow, abusive co-worker is revealed. One wonders how he could have missed Islam’s injunction to never be two-faced, particularly not for personal gain. It could be that he’s lost in his own reflection.

Whilst in the presence of two seemingly mute fellow scholars, Liaquat berates a member of the crew for talking constantly. Somewhat ironically, Liaquat’s complaining voice is the only thing that can be heard. That, as one might expect, is something of a trend in this video.

The Glaring Inconsistencies in Al Qaeda Coverage by Asia Times and Saleem Shahzad

A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don’t bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines. If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting.

Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.

Future historians are likely to identify the Bush administration’s rash invasion of Iraq in that year as the start of America’s downfall. However, instead of the bloodshed that marked the end of so many past empires, with cities burning and civilians slaughtered, this twenty-first century imperial collapse could come relatively quietly through the invisible tendrils of economic collapse or cyberwarfare.

But have no doubt: when Washington’s global dominion finally ends, there will be painful daily reminders of what such a loss of power means for Americans in every walk of life. As a half-dozen European nations have discovered, imperial decline tends to have a remarkably demoralizing impact on a society, regularly bringing at least a generation of economic privation. As the economy cools, political temperatures rise, often sparking serious domestic unrest.

Available economic, educational, and military data indicate that, when it comes to U.S. global power, negative trends will aggregate rapidly by 2020 and are likely to reach a critical mass no later than 2030. The American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of World War II, will be tattered and fading by 2025, its eighth decade, and could be history by 2030.

Significantly, in 2008, the U.S. National Intelligence Council admitted for the first time that America’s global power was indeed on a declining trajectory. In one of its periodic futuristic reports, Global Trends 2025, the Council cited “the transfer of global wealth and economic power now under way, roughly from West to East” and “without precedent in modern history,” as the primary factor in the decline of the “United States’ relative strength — even in the military realm.” Like many in Washington, however, the Council’s analysts anticipated a very long, very soft landing for American global preeminence, and harbored the hope that somehow the U.S. would long “retain unique military capabilities… to project military power globally” for decades to come.

No such luck. Under current projections, the United States will find itself in second place behind China (already the world’s second largest economy) in economic output around 2026, and behind India by 2050. Similarly, Chinese innovation is on a trajectory toward world leadership in applied science and military technology sometime between 2020 and 2030, just as America’s current supply of brilliant scientists and engineers retires, without adequate replacement by an ill-educated younger generation.

By 2020, according to current plans, the Pentagon will throw a military Hail Mary pass for a dying empire. It will launch a lethal triple canopy of advanced aerospace robotics that represents Washington’s last best hope of retaining global power despite its waning economic influence. By that year, however, China’s global network of communications satellites, backed by the world’s most powerful supercomputers, will also be fully operational, providing Beijing with an independent platform for the weaponization of space and a powerful communications system for missile- or cyber-strikes into every quadrant of the globe.

Wrapped in imperial hubris, like Whitehall or Quai d’Orsay before it, the White House still seems to imagine that American decline will be gradual, gentle, and partial. In his State of the Union address last January, President Obama offered the reassurance that “I do not accept second place for the United States of America.” A few days later, Vice President Biden ridiculed the very idea that “we are destined to fulfill [historian Paul] Kennedy’s prophecy that we are going to be a great nation that has failed because we lost control of our economy and overextended.” Similarly, writing in the November issue of the establishment journal Foreign Affairs, neo-liberal foreign policy guru Joseph Nye waved away talk of China’s economic and military rise, dismissing “misleading metaphors of organic decline” and denying that any deterioration in U.S. global power was underway.

Ordinary Americans, watching their jobs head overseas, have a more realistic view than their cosseted leaders. An opinion poll in August 2010 found that 65 percent of Americans believed the country was now “in a state of decline.” Already, Australia and Turkey, traditional U.S. military allies, are using their American-manufactured weapons for joint air and naval maneuvers with China. Already, America’s closest economic partners are backing away from Washington’s opposition to China’s rigged currency rates. As the president flew back from his Asian tour last month, a gloomy New York Times headline summed the moment up this way: “Obama’s Economic View Is Rejected on World Stage, China, Britain and Germany Challenge U.S., Trade Talks With Seoul Fail, Too.”

Viewed historically, the question is not whether the United States will lose its unchallenged global power, but just how precipitous and wrenching the decline will be. In place of Washington’s wishful thinking, let’s use the National Intelligence Council’s own futuristic methodology to suggest four realistic scenarios for how, whether with a bang or a whimper, U.S. global power could reach its end in the 2020s (along with four accompanying assessments of just where we are today). The future scenarios include: economic decline, oil shock, military misadventure, and World War III. While these are hardly the only possibilities when it comes to American decline or even collapse, they offer a window into an onrushing future.

Economic Decline: Present Situation

Today, three main threats exist to America’s dominant position in the global economy: loss of economic clout thanks to a shrinking share of world trade, the decline of American technological innovation, and the end of the dollar’s privileged status as the global reserve currency.

By 2008, the United States had already fallen to number three in global merchandise exports, with just 11 percent of them compared to 12 percent for China and 16 percent for the European Union. There is no reason to believe that this trend will reverse itself.

Similarly, American leadership in technological innovation is on the wane. In 2008, the U.S. was still number two behind Japan in worldwide patent applications with 232,000, but China was closing fast at 195,000, thanks to a blistering 400 percent increase since 2000. A harbinger of further decline: in 2009 the U.S. hit rock bottom in ranking among the 40 nations surveyed by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation when it came to “change” in “global innovation-based competitiveness” during the previous decade. Adding substance to these statistics, in October China’s Defense Ministry unveiled the world’s fastest supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A, so powerful, said one U.S. expert, that it “blows away the existing No. 1 machine” in America.

Add to this clear evidence that the U.S. education system, that source of future scientists and innovators, has been falling behind its competitors. After leading the world for decades in 25- to 34-year-olds with university degrees, the country sank to 12th place in 2010. The World Economic Forum ranked the United States at a mediocre 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010. Nearly half of all graduate students in the sciences in the U.S. are now foreigners, most of whom will be heading home, not staying here as once would have happened. By 2025, in other words, the United States is likely to face a critical shortage of talented scientists.

Such negative trends are encouraging increasingly sharp criticism of the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency. “Other countries are no longer willing to buy into the idea that the U.S. knows best on economic policy,” observed Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. In mid-2009, with the world’s central banks holding an astronomical $4 trillion in U.S. Treasury notes, Russian president Dimitri Medvedev insisted that it was time to end “the artificially maintained unipolar system” based on “one formerly strong reserve currency.”

Simultaneously, China’s central bank governor suggested that the future might lie with a global reserve currency “disconnected from individual nations” (that is, the U.S. dollar). Take these as signposts of a world to come, and of a possible attempt, as economist Michael Hudson has argued, “to hasten the bankruptcy of the U.S. financial-military world order.”

Economic Decline: Scenario 2020

After years of swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant lands, in 2020, as long expected, the U.S. dollar finally loses its special status as the world’s reserve currency. Suddenly, the cost of imports soars. Unable to pay for swelling deficits by selling now-devalued Treasury notes abroad, Washington is finally forced to slash its bloated military budget. Under pressure at home and abroad, Washington slowly pulls U.S. forces back from hundreds of overseas bases to a continental perimeter. By now, however, it is far too late.

Faced with a fading superpower incapable of paying the bills, China, India, Iran, Russia, and other powers, great and regional, provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace. Meanwhile, amid soaring prices, ever-rising unemployment, and a continuing decline in real wages, domestic divisions widen into violent clashes and divisive debates, often over remarkably irrelevant issues. Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal. The world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.

Oil Shock: Present Situation

One casualty of America’s waning economic power has been its lock on global oil supplies. Speeding by America’s gas-guzzling economy in the passing lane, China became the world’s number one energy consumer this summer, a position the U.S. had held for over a century. Energy specialist Michael Klare has argued that this change means China will “set the pace in shaping our global future.”

By 2025, Iran and Russia will control almost half of the world’s natural gas supply, which will potentially give them enormous leverage over energy-starved Europe. Add petroleum reserves to the mix and, as the National Intelligence Council has warned, in just 15 years two countries, Russia and Iran, could “emerge as energy kingpins.”

Despite remarkable ingenuity, the major oil powers are now draining the big basins of petroleum reserves that are amenable to easy, cheap extraction. The real lesson of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was not BP’s sloppy safety standards, but the simple fact everyone saw on “spillcam”: one of the corporate energy giants had little choice but to search for what Klare calls “tough oil” miles beneath the surface of the ocean to keep its profits up.

Compounding the problem, the Chinese and Indians have suddenly become far heavier energy consumers. Even if fossil fuel supplies were to remain constant (which they won’t), demand, and so costs, are almost certain to rise — and sharply at that. Other developed nations are meeting this threat aggressively by plunging into experimental programs to develop alternative energy sources. The United States has taken a different path, doing far too little to develop alternative sources while, in the last three decades, doubling its dependence on foreign oil imports. Between 1973 and 2007, oil imports have risen from 36 percent of energy consumed in the U.S. to 66 percent.

Oil Shock: Scenario 2025

The United States remains so dependent upon foreign oil that a few adverse developments in the global energy market in 2025 spark an oil shock. By comparison, it makes the 1973 oil shock (when prices quadrupled in just months) look like the proverbial molehill. Angered at the dollar’s plummeting value, OPEC oil ministers, meeting in Riyadh, demand future energy payments in a “basket” of Yen, Yuan, and Euros. That only hikes the cost of U.S. oil imports further. At the same moment, while signing a new series of long-term delivery contracts with China, the Saudis stabilize their own foreign exchange reserves by switching to the Yuan. Meanwhile, China pours countless billions into building a massive trans-Asia pipeline and funding Iran’s exploitation of the world largest percent natural gas field at South Pars in the Persian Gulf.

Concerned that the U.S. Navy might no longer be able to protect the oil tankers traveling from the Persian Gulf to fuel East Asia, a coalition of Tehran, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi form an unexpected new Gulf alliance and affirm that China’s new fleet of swift aircraft carriers will henceforth patrol the Persian Gulf from a base on the Gulf of Oman. Under heavy economic pressure, London agrees to cancel the U.S. lease on its Indian Ocean island base of Diego Garcia, while Canberra, pressured by the Chinese, informs Washington that the Seventh Fleet is no longer welcome to use Fremantle as a homeport, effectively evicting the U.S. Navy from the Indian Ocean.

With just a few strokes of the pen and some terse announcements, the “Carter Doctrine,” by which U.S. military power was to eternally protect the Persian Gulf, is laid to rest in 2025. All the elements that long assured the United States limitless supplies of low-cost oil from that region — logistics, exchange rates, and naval power — evaporate. At this point, the U.S. can still cover only an insignificant 12 percent of its energy needs from its nascent alternative energy industry, and remains dependent on imported oil for half of its energy consumption.

The oil shock that follows hits the country like a hurricane, sending prices to startling heights, making travel a staggeringly expensive proposition, putting real wages (which had long been declining) into freefall, and rendering non-competitive whatever American exports remained. With thermostats dropping, gas prices climbing through the roof, and dollars flowing overseas in return for costly oil, the American economy is paralyzed. With long-fraying alliances at an end and fiscal pressures mounting, U.S. military forces finally begin a staged withdrawal from their overseas bases.

Within a few years, the U.S. is functionally bankrupt and the clock is ticking toward midnight on the American Century.

Military Misadventure: Present Situation

Counterintuitively, as their power wanes, empires often plunge into ill-advised military misadventures. This phenomenon is known among historians of empire as “micro-militarism” and seems to involve psychologically compensatory efforts to salve the sting of retreat or defeat by occupying new territories, however briefly and catastrophically. These operations, irrational even from an imperial point of view, often yield hemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the loss of power.

Embattled empires through the ages suffer an arrogance that drives them to plunge ever deeper into military misadventures until defeat becomes debacle. In 413 BCE, a weakened Athens sent 200 ships to be slaughtered in Sicily. In 1921, a dying imperial Spain dispatched 20,000 soldiers to be massacred by Berber guerrillas in Morocco. In 1956, a fading British Empire destroyed its prestige by attacking Suez. And in 2001 and 2003, the U.S. occupied Afghanistan and invaded Iraq. With the hubris that marks empires over the millennia, Washington has increased its troops in Afghanistan to 100,000, expanded the war into Pakistan, and extended its commitment to 2014 and beyond, courting disasters large and small in this guerilla-infested, nuclear-armed graveyard of empires.

Military Misadventure: Scenario 2014

So irrational, so unpredictable is “micro-militarism” that seemingly fanciful scenarios are soon outdone by actual events. With the U.S. military stretched thin from Somalia to the Philippines and tensions rising in Israel, Iran, and Korea, possible combinations for a disastrous military crisis abroad are multifold.

It’s mid-summer 2014 and a drawn-down U.S. garrison in embattled Kandahar in southern Afghanistan is suddenly, unexpectedly overrun by Taliban guerrillas, while U.S. aircraft are grounded by a blinding sandstorm. Heavy loses are taken and in retaliation, an embarrassed American war commander looses B-1 bombers and F-16 fighters to demolish whole neighborhoods of the city that are believed to be under Taliban control, while AC-130U “Spooky” gunships rake the rubble with devastating cannon fire.

Soon, mullahs are preaching jihad from mosques throughout the region, and Afghan Army units, long trained by American forces to turn the tide of the war, begin to desert en masse. Taliban fighters then launch a series of remarkably sophisticated strikes aimed at U.S. garrisons across the country, sending American casualties soaring. In scenes reminiscent of Saigon in 1975, U.S. helicopters rescue American soldiers and civilians from rooftops in Kabul and Kandahar.

Meanwhile, angry at the endless, decades-long stalemate over Palestine, OPEC’s leaders impose a new oil embargo on the U.S. to protest its backing of Israel as well as the killing of untold numbers of Muslim civilians in its ongoing wars across the Greater Middle East. With gas prices soaring and refineries running dry, Washington makes its move, sending in Special Operations forces to seize oil ports in the Persian Gulf. This, in turn, sparks a rash of suicide attacks and the sabotage of pipelines and oil wells. As black clouds billow skyward and diplomats rise at the U.N. to bitterly denounce American actions, commentators worldwide reach back into history to brand this “America’s Suez,” a telling reference to the 1956 debacle that marked the end of the British Empire.

World War III: Present Situation

In the summer of 2010, military tensions between the U.S. and China began to rise in the western Pacific, once considered an American “lake.” Even a year earlier no one would have predicted such a development. As Washington played upon its alliance with London to appropriate much of Britain’s global power after World War II, so China is now using the profits from its export trade with the U.S. to fund what is likely to become a military challenge to American dominion over the waterways of Asia and the Pacific.

With its growing resources, Beijing is claiming a vast maritime arc from Korea to Indonesia long dominated by the U.S. Navy. In August, after Washington expressed a “national interest” in the South China Sea and conducted naval exercises there to reinforce that claim, Beijing’s official Global Times responded angrily, saying, “The U.S.-China wrestling match over the South China Sea issue has raised the stakes in deciding who the real future ruler of the planet will be.”

Amid growing tensions, the Pentagon reported that Beijing now holds “the capability to attack… [U.S.] aircraft carriers in the western Pacific Ocean” and target “nuclear forces throughout… the continental United States.” By developing “offensive nuclear, space, and cyber warfare capabilities,” China seems determined to vie for dominance of what the Pentagon calls “the information spectrum in all dimensions of the modern battlespace.” With ongoing development of the powerful Long March V booster rocket, as well as the launch of two satellites in January 2010 and another in July, for a total of five, Beijing signaled that the country was making rapid strides toward an “independent” network of 35 satellites for global positioning, communications, and reconnaissance capabilities by 2020.

To check China and extend its military position globally, Washington is intent on building a new digital network of air and space robotics, advanced cyberwarfare capabilities, and electronic surveillance. Military planners expect this integrated system to envelop the Earth in a cyber-grid capable of blinding entire armies on the battlefield or taking out a single terrorist in field or favela. By 2020, if all goes according to plan, the Pentagon will launch a three-tiered shield of space drones — reaching from stratosphere to exosphere, armed with agile missiles, linked by a resilient modular satellite system, and operated through total telescopic surveillance.

Last April, the Pentagon made history. It extended drone operations into the exosphere by quietly launching the X-37B unmanned space shuttle into a low orbit 255 miles above the planet. The X-37B is the first in a new generation of unmanned vehicles that will mark the full weaponization of space, creating an arena for future warfare unlike anything that has gone before.

World War III: Scenario 2025

The technology of space and cyberwarfare is so new and untested that even the most outlandish scenarios may soon be superseded by a reality still hard to conceive. If we simply employ the sort of scenarios that the Air Force itself used in its 2009 Future Capabilities Game, however, we can gain “a better understanding of how air, space and cyberspace overlap in warfare,” and so begin to imagine how the next world war might actually be fought.

It’s 11:59 p.m. on Thanksgiving Thursday in 2025. While cyber-shoppers pound the portals of Best Buy for deep discounts on the latest home electronics from China, U.S. Air Force technicians at the Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) on Maui choke on their coffee as their panoramic screens suddenly blip to black. Thousands of miles away at the U.S. CyberCommand’s operations center in Texas, cyberwarriors soon detect malicious binaries that, though fired anonymously, show the distinctive digital fingerprints of China’s People’s Liberation Army.

The first overt strike is one nobody predicted. Chinese “malware” seizes control of the robotics aboard an unmanned solar-powered U.S. “Vulture” drone as it flies at 70,000 feet over the Tsushima Strait between Korea and Japan. It suddenly fires all the rocket pods beneath its enormous 400-foot wingspan, sending dozens of lethal missiles plunging harmlessly into the Yellow Sea, effectively disarming this formidable weapon.

Determined to fight fire with fire, the White House authorizes a retaliatory strike. Confident that its F-6 “Fractionated, Free-Flying” satellite system is impenetrable, Air Force commanders in California transmit robotic codes to the flotilla of X-37B space drones orbiting 250 miles above the Earth, ordering them to launch their “Triple Terminator” missiles at China’s 35 satellites. Zero response. In near panic, the Air Force launches its Falcon Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle into an arc 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean and then, just 20 minutes later, sends the computer codes to fire missiles at seven Chinese satellites in nearby orbits. The launch codes are suddenly inoperative.

As the Chinese virus spreads uncontrollably through the F-6 satellite architecture, while those second-rate U.S. supercomputers fail to crack the malware’s devilishly complex code, GPS signals crucial to the navigation of U.S. ships and aircraft worldwide are compromised. Carrier fleets begin steaming in circles in the mid-Pacific. Fighter squadrons are grounded. Reaper drones fly aimlessly toward the horizon, crashing when their fuel is exhausted. Suddenly, the United States loses what the U.S. Air Force has long called “the ultimate high ground”: space. Within hours, the military power that had dominated the globe for nearly a century has been defeated in World War III without a single human casualty.

A New World Order?

Even if future events prove duller than these four scenarios suggest, every significant trend points toward a far more striking decline in American global power by 2025 than anything Washington now seems to be envisioning.

As allies worldwide begin to realign their policies to take cognizance of rising Asian powers, the cost of maintaining 800 or more overseas military bases will simply become unsustainable, finally forcing a staged withdrawal on a still-unwilling Washington. With both the U.S. and China in a race to weaponize space and cyberspace, tensions between the two powers are bound to rise, making military conflict by 2025 at least feasible, if hardly guaranteed.

Complicating matters even more, the economic, military, and technological trends outlined above will not operate in tidy isolation. As happened to European empires after World War II, such negative forces will undoubtedly prove synergistic. They will combine in thoroughly unexpected ways, create crises for which Americans are remarkably unprepared, and threaten to spin the economy into a sudden downward spiral, consigning this country to a generation or more of economic misery.

As U.S. power recedes, the past offers a spectrum of possibilities for a future world order. At one end of this spectrum, the rise of a new global superpower, however unlikely, cannot be ruled out. Yet both China and Russia evince self-referential cultures, recondite non-roman scripts, regional defense strategies, and underdeveloped legal systems, denying them key instruments for global dominion. At the moment then, no single superpower seems to be on the horizon likely to succeed the U.S.

In a dark, dystopian version of our global future, a coalition of transnational corporations, multilateral forces like NATO, and an international financial elite could conceivably forge a single, possibly unstable, supra-national nexus that would make it no longer meaningful to speak of national empires at all. While denationalized corporations and multinational elites would assumedly rule such a world from secure urban enclaves, the multitudes would be relegated to urban and rural wastelands.

In “Planet of Slums,” Mike Davis offers at least a partial vision of such a world from the bottom up. He argues that the billion people already packed into fetid favela-style slums worldwide (rising to two billion by 2030) will make “the ‘feral, failed cities’ of the Third World… the distinctive battlespace of the twenty-first century.” As darkness settles over some future super-favela, “the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression” as “hornet-like helicopter gun-ships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts… Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions.”

At a midpoint on the spectrum of possible futures, a new global oligopoly might emerge between 2020 and 2040, with rising powers China, Russia, India, and Brazil collaborating with receding powers like Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States to enforce an ad hoc global dominion, akin to the loose alliance of European empires that ruled half of humanity circa 1900.

Another possibility: the rise of regional hegemons in a return to something reminiscent of the international system that operated before modern empires took shape. In this neo-Westphalian world order, with its endless vistas of micro-violence and unchecked exploitation, each hegemon would dominate its immediate region — Brasilia in South America, Washington in North America, Pretoria in southern Africa, and so on. Space, cyberspace, and the maritime deeps, removed from the control of the former planetary “policeman,” the United States, might even become a new global commons, controlled through an expanded U.N. Security Council or some ad hoc body.

All of these scenarios extrapolate existing trends into the future on the assumption that Americans, blinded by the arrogance of decades of historically unparalleled power, cannot or will not take steps to manage the unchecked erosion of their global position.

If America’s decline is in fact on a 22-year trajectory from 2003 to 2025, then we have already frittered away most of the first decade of that decline with wars that distracted us from long-term problems and, like water tossed onto desert sands, wasted trillions of desperately needed dollars.

If only 15 years remain, the odds of frittering them all away still remain high. Congress and the president are now in gridlock; the American system is flooded with corporate money meant to jam up the works; and there is little suggestion that any issues of significance, including our wars, our bloated national security state, our starved education system, and our antiquated energy supplies, will be addressed with sufficient seriousness to assure the sort of soft landing that might maximize our country’s role and prosperity in a changing world.

Europe’s empires are gone and America’s imperium is going. It seems increasingly doubtful that the United States will have anything like Britain’s success in shaping a succeeding world order that protects its interests, preserves its prosperity, and bears the imprint of its best values.

Hamid Mir’s Latest Source Admits Making Whole Thing Up

Pakistan Media Watch

On Wednesday’s Capital Talk, Hamid Mir showed an interview with an unnamed source who claimed to have first-hand knowledge of infiltrators who helped militants attacks PNS Mehran last month. You can see the clip below starting at the 6-minute mark.

The source, speaking through his tears, makes wild claims about not only infiltrators in the military but plans to attack an American airline also. His claims don’t make any sense, but rather than ask questions that might help determine if he is telling the truth, Hamid Mir suggests how the source might change his story to make it more believable. He actually helps his source invent his story while he’s speaking!

When the show cuts back, Hamid Mir pleads for protection for the young man implying that as thin as his sources story is, we should believe it.

Actually, we shouldn’t believe it. In less than two days, the source appeared on Waqt TV saying he made the whole thing up to get revenge over a love dispute.

The man who made sensational claims about the PNS Mehran base attack has turned out to be a disparate lover who fabricated the story just to revenge his failure in marrying a sister of an army man. Muhammad Junaid in an interview with Waqt News confessed that he had nothing to do with the Karachi naval base attack. “I am not a witness to it and totally unaware of the facts about it,” he said.

This is a classic example of unprofessionalism and poor reporting. Rather than investigate and ask tough questions to get to the bottom of the story, Hamid Mir appears to help the young man with his lies. Despite the fact that the man presented no evidence, Hamid Mir accepts his story without question and broadcasts the interview on television even requesting security for the man.

Muhammad Junaid claims that he made the whole thing up to get revenge in a love dispute. What is Hamid Mir’s excuse?

Taliban attacks Afghan defence ministry ahead of French visit

By Praveen Swami

The would-be suicide bomber successfully evaded multiple security checks before opening fire near the Kabul offices of Abdul Rahim Wardark, the country’s defence minister.

French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet

At least seven people, including members of Mr Wardark’s staff, were injured.

General Zahir Azimi, the spokesman for Afghanistan’s defence ministry, said the attacker was unable to set off the explosives packed into his suicide vest before he was shot dead.

In a statement published on the Taliban’s website, a spokesman for the organisation said the attack had been planned to take place as “US generals, [the] French defence minister and the defence minster of [the] Afghan stooge regime were in the middle of a meeting”.

Afghan government sources, however, that while Gerald Longuet and Mr Wardak were scheduled to meet on Monday, the French defence minister was not in the building when the attack took place.

The Taliban claimed the attacker had been working in the defence ministry for six months, but there was no independent confirmation of the claim. Military uniforms are easily available in Afghanistan, despite an official ban, and have often been used to stage similar attacks.

Monday’s attack is the latest of incidents involving serving Afghan National Army or police personnel – underlining fears that the country’s rapidly-expanding security services have been heavily infiltrated by jihadists.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan on Monday, six police officers were killed by a roadside bomb in Ghazni province, central Afghanistan, the provincial police chief said. That attack was also claimed by the Taliban.

Ten Iranian engineers were kidnapped in the remote western Farah province, while three people died north of Kabul in a protest against the detention of an alleged insurgent by foreign and Afghan forces.

The renewed wave of violence has raised concerns over the fate of British-backed efforts to negotiate with the Taliban leadership ahead of the planned Nato withdrawal of troops starting in July.

Ibrahim Kalin, the chief adviser to Turkey’s prime minister, said last week that that the country was “negotiating right now on a plan to open a political office for the Taliban in Istanbul”.

Burhanuddin Rabbani, an Afghan politician who leads a national reconciliation council set up by Mr Karzai to negotiate with the Taliban, had told Turkey the office would help facilitate negotiations.

The move had, however, been criticised by Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s most important opposition leader, who said it would “legalise a terrorist organisation”.

In a recent talk at the Asia Society in New York, Mr Abdullah said he had “no difficulty with the logic of the proposition that in every war you need to leave the door open for talks”, but warned that talking to the Taliban at this juncture could “lead to sacrificing and compromising the gains of the past few years”.

Benazir assassination: Cell phones of suspects recovered

ISLAMABAD: In the latest development in the Benazir Bhutto assassination case, the joint investigation team conducting the inquiry has managed to recover the cell phones of two leading suspects.

Prior to this, the suspects in the case SP Rawal Town, Superintendent Police Khurram Shehzad and former CPO Saud Aziz both refused to provide the cell phones they had used on the day of Bhutto’s assassination. Both suspects initially claimed that they had lost their sets, and later also reportedly provided the investigation team with fake phones.

In an earlier report in The Express Tribune, Public prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar had revealed that the police officers had not given the mobile phones which they had used on the day of the assassination.

“Saud Aziz gave mobiles phones of 2008 and 2009 models. After forensic laboratory tests it was proven that this phone was not used by the police officials and in fact was in the use of Ramzan, a resident of Karachi,” the prosecutor maintained.

The unique International Mobile Equipment Identity number on the suspect’s cell phones has now opened new leads for the investigation team. The most important lead is the numbers of several government officials with whom the former suspects had been keeping in touch on the day of the assassination.

1,014 arms licences issued on MPs’ fake signatures cancelled

By Ijaz Kakakhel

* Interior secretary tells PAC ministry has imposed complete ban on issuing new licences

ISLAMABAD: The Public Accounts Committee on Monday directed the Interior Ministry to submit a report of cancellation of arms licences, which were issued on fake signatures of parliamentarians, to the committee within three months.

Interior Secretary Qamar Zaman Chaudhry informed the committee that the ministry had dug out 1,014 arms licences applications on fake signatures of parliamentarians. After this case, he said the ministry imposed a complete ban on issuing new licences. All licences, which might be issued in the future, would be sent to NADRA for proper verification to make the system more secure. A summary of new arms policy has been sent to the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, under which new licences will be issued from the secretariat.

The cancellation of licences issued on fake signatures of parliamentarians was in progress and it will take some time, he said, to which the PAC directed the Interior Ministry to submit the report of the cancellation of the licences within three months.

The PAC was informed that the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Police had collected Rs 32.533 million under different heads (11 in number) during 2007-08, but the receipts were not deposited in the national exchequer.

The management was utilising such receipts to meet departmental expenses over and above the government budgeted fund without the approval of the Finance Ministry. PAC Chairman Chaudhry Nisar Ali questioned why the Finance Ministry was not improving the system. He said the ministry was always the main cause of financial irregularities. “If the Finance Ministry improves its system, about 70 percent of problems related to financial irregularities/mismanagement would be automatically finished. It is always the auditor general of Pakistan that highlights such issues, while the ministry never does its job,” he said. The interior secretary informed the committee that after being given instructions by the PAC, the collection of fees under different heads was stopped, but the Finance Ministry never provided adequate funds. He claimed that these funds were utilised for public welfare and the general people would suffer. Nisar formed a committee, including the finance secretary, interior secretary, auditor general of Pakistan, IG Islamabad, and himself. The committee will hold informal discussion over the issue so as to resolve it permanently. Nisar said that wrongdoers would not be protected, adding that no person from any government service should be allowed to go away if he/she commits isappropriation/irregularities.

About the Pakistan Rangers, he said the former rangers DG was very controversial and claimed that the unit was mainly used for political purposes. He said the role of the rangers was always under emphasised and said that due credit should be given to the unit. About misappropriation by the rangers, he said the PAC wanted financial rules in every government department. “Millions of rupees were deposited by different forces and ministries in the national exchequer,” he said.

Occupied Kashmir under literary spotlight

By Beatrice Le Bohec

JAIPUR, India – Asia’s biggest literary festival, in India’s “pink city” Jaipur, has given pride of place to troubled Indian Kashmir, whose literature has been marked by more than two decades of rebel violence.

In recent years, the Jaipur festival has become the literary event not to be missed in India

Muslim-majority Kashmir has a rich literary tradition dating back to the 14th century, but few outside readers are familiar with its beauty because little has been translated.

But now a growing number of Kashmiri works are appearing in English as reader interest in a region beset by a separatist insurgency since 1989 is growing, festival organisers said.

Invited to appear at the five-day Jaipur Literary Festival, which began on Friday and is billed by organisers as the biggest in Asia, poet Naseem Shafaie read her work to a mainly English-speaking audience at a seminar.

Her translator Neerja Mattoo then took the floor to render the rhythm and words of Shafaie’s verse in English.

Shafaie’s haunting poetry evokes the pain she felt when her husband, a journalist, was the victim of an attack, and the distress of dispatching her son to New Delhi to keep him safe from the unrest in Kashmir.

Shafaie is the first woman to have published a book of poems in Kashmiri, entitled “Open Windows”.

“I see a growing interest in Kashmir because of the political situation. People want to read to learn,” Shafaie said through her translator.

The insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir has claimed more than 47,000 lives, and the presence of hundreds of thousands of security forces in one of the most militarised regions in the world has fuelled the anger of residents, especially among jobless youth.

Last summer more than 100 people were shot dead by security forces during a wave of demonstrations triggered when a teenager was killed by a police tear gas bullet.

The Himalayan region is held in part by nuclear-armed India and Pakistan but claimed in full by both.

“In Kashmir, politics is inseparable from everyday life. No family was spared by the violence,” said Indian journalist Rahul Pandita, who originally hailed from the area and has reported in conflict zones such as Iraq.

“But it takes time for problems to find a place in the local literature, and it takes even more time for them to be translated into English.”

Kashmiri literature translated into English will develop in the next five years, he predicted, especially as “poetic expression grows in certain forms of misfortune.”

Mattoo, who has translated three books of Kashmiri short stories and poetry into English, said there were limits on the number of English versions that can can appear because of a simple lack of translators.

In recent years, the Jaipur festival, which began in 2006 with a handful of authors and participants, has become the literary event not to be missed in India.

More than 200 authors were invited this year and organisers expect more than 50,000 people to attend the event, which offers discussions, readings and concerts in the scenic setting of a 19th-century hotel in Jaipur known as the “Pink City” because of its rose-coloured buildings.

Police yet to install digital surveillance system worth Rs1.2 billion

By: Irfan Aligi

KARACHI: Provincial and city governments have failed to install a digital surveillance system in time to monitor sensitive areas during Muharram.

Traffic police’s security system failed to record three major acts of terrorism

After the Ashura bomb blast and arson attacks last year, DIG Ghulam Nabi Memon had claimed that the police was acquiring the latest digital surveillance and monitoring system worth Rs1.2 billion so that it can start working before Muharram starts this year. The project has, however, not succeeded beyond tender invitations.

Tenders have been received as many as three times but cancelled later. The last tender was invited three months ago and is still in the evaluation process.

The City District Government Karachi (CDGK) had installed the digital surveillance and monitoring system at Civic Centre and it is being monitored by the law enforcement authorities.

The first phase of this project, worth Rs130 million, was completed in May 2008 with 130 close-circuit television (CCTV) cameras. These cameras were installed along with the required technical support, such as monitoring screens, navigation of CCTVs and recording equipment.

The second phase, worth Rs260 million, was expected to start before Eidul Azha this year so that the entire city could be converted into a digitally protected area especially during Muharram. However, the CDGK lacks the funds to install an additional 165 CCTV cameras.

The digital loop for the second phase will start from Jinnah International Airport and will cover the entire Sharae Faisal up till Hotel Metropole, II Chundrigar Road and the Merewether Tower. Another loop will start from Safoora Goth towards NIPA Chowrangi, Jail Chowrangi and Preedy Street.

The Capital City Traffic Police has also acquired a similar system, worth Rs150 million, but it is mainly for traffic management. This system was managed by the Sindh Information Technology ministry but the machines were of poor quality and were unable to record the video of three main acts of terrorism in the city, mainly Chehlum blast in Nursery, twin blasts at the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi and the blast on the CID Building.

A CDGK official told The Express Tribune that the city government lacks enough funds to pay for routine repair and maintenance works. There is no chance that the second phase of the command and control system will be completed, he added.

Meanwhile, Capital City Police Officer Fayyaz Leghari said that he was unaware of the details of such a system. It concerns the Sindh Home department and the Sindh IG office, he said.

According to a well-placed officer in Sindh Home Department, who spoke to The Express Tribune on the condition of anonymity, the system was due to be completed this year but it kept getting delayed due to different problems. It might take another year to get the system installed, the official said.

It may be mentioned that former Sindh IG Niaz Siddiqui had initiated the system for its e-policing project. With Muharram around the corner, Shia organisations have also expressed their reservations with the security arrangements. A request has been made to provide enhanced security in Shia dominated neighbourhoods of the city, such as Jaffer-e-Tayyar Cooperative Housing Society, Abbas Town and Rizvia Colony.

$260 billion gold mines going for a song, behind closed doors

GTAP!

Quietly, and below the media radar, some 20 top corporate bosses and lobbyists of two of the world’s largest gold mining groups have been meeting President Asif Zardari, Prime Minister Gilani, Governor State Bank and others in Islamabad throughout last week, pressing them to quickly hand over one of the world’s biggest gold and copper treasures found in Balochistan at Reko Diq, worth over $260 billion, to their companies, and for peanuts.

Before these highly enticing visits of the mining tycoons to clinch the deals, which followed intense behind-the-scene negotiations and bargaining through middle men, some highly bizarre developments have been taking place, leaving experts and the rest of the mining world stunned, amazed and confused.

These companies want that the mining licences should be issued by Pakistan immediately after their exploration licences expire soon. But there are legal hitches and pressure is now being put through the backdoor to get the target.

In recent years, so many games have been played to keep Pakistan’s share in the enormous treasure to a bare minimum, thanks to some greedy politicians and bureaucrats who sold their country’s natural wealth.

A deep study of numerous documents, statements of major players, stakeholders and competitors, interviews with key Pakistani officials, including Chief Minister of Balochistan Nawab Aslam Raisani, the picture that emerges is so murky and mind boggling that any ordinary soul just cannot fathom what is going on. Only a thorough and detailed judicial probe can untangle this mystery.

There is a plethora of documents, which prove that almost everybody involved is trying to deceive everybody else, the real picture is never presented, misleading statements and even contradictory claims have been made in the media, the issue has been kept confused as the real mega deal is maturing fast behind closed doors.

“Because there is no effective investigating agency like NAB operating in the country, it is just the right case for the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice of Pakistan to pick up the issue, put a hold on whatever is going on before any binding contracts and deals are signed, which may cause losses of billions of dollars, yes billions of dollars to Pakistan,” according to a corporate executive involved in the mining industry, based in New York. His company chairman is a reputed former three-term Congressman.

“The Reko Diq scandal is equal to 260 steel mills valued at one billion dollar each or 570 steel mills at $350 million each, the price at which PSM was being sold by PM Shaukat Aziz before it was stopped by the Supreme Court,” shows a calculation.

And according to one Washington mining industry expert, if Pakistan gets its fair share from the gold and copper mines, Balochistan and Pakistan would become richer than any of the present oil producing Gulf countries, many times over. “They have the goods, they need the will,” he said.

The massive mine deposits at Reko Diq in Chagai Balochistan are part of the same geological belt discovered in Afghanistan, which the Pentagon recently claimed was worth one trillion dollars, though President Hamid Karzai claimed it was worth more than 3 trillion dollars.

According to a report in the New York Times on June 13, 2010 by James Risen: “The previously unknown deposits – including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium – are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe. An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the Saudi Arabia of lithium, a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Black Berrys.”

Pakistan, it is estimated in mining circles, has more deposits than Afghanistan, so the enormity of the riches and the cost of the backdoor deals can easily be guessed. “It would be the mother of all the deals and grandfather of all the corruption cases in Pakistan, put together,” according to one expert.

Reading the piles of documents, statements, interviews and legal papers available with The News, the picture that emerges is one of a grand deception, loot and plunder that never happened before on such a scale and the facts, untruths, half-truths, attempts to sabotage, frauds and backdoor bribes, are all documented.

It all started in the Musharraf era but once the massive scale of the stakes involved became apparent to the PPP government, the Raisani/Zardari camp quickly jumped into the fray to renegotiate the deal, behind closed doors.

An Australian mineral exploration firm originally started the exploration and invested some $30 million but in 2006 sold the company to a Canadian and Chilean joint venture for $230 million. The old company was an Australian public company Tethyan Copper Prosperity Limited and the new company was named Tethyan Copper Company (TCC) of Pakistan. A trick game is being played in these cosmetic changes. The Canadians and Chileans, according to publicly declared information to their shareholders and regulators, took 37.5 per cent share each, while Pakistan only had the remaining 25 per cent.

Seeing the vast potential, the TCC soon raised its investment to half a billion dollars. The Pakistani shares belong to the Government of Balochistan and the federal government has no share. Due monies have not been paid to Pakistan or Balochistan treasuries.

Two licences (EL-6 and EL-8) for exploration were also given on a 100 per cent ownership basis to these foreign firms, with Pakistan (or Balochistan) having no share at all.

All this was done during the Musharraf regime and bureaucrats played havoc with Pakistani interests. They were trying to emulate President Hamid Karzai’s mining minister, who was caught with $30 million in his Dubai bank and later removed. According to a Washington Post report on Nov 18, 2009: “The Afghan minister of mines accepted a roughly $30 million bribe to award the country’s largest development project to a Chinese mining firm.”

Quoting a US official, the Washington Post said: “The alleged payment to Mohammad Ibrahim Adel was made in Dubai within a month of December 2007, when a big Chinese metallurgical group received the contract for a $2.9 billion project to extract copper from the Aynak deposit in Logar province. Aynak is considered one of the largest unexploited copper deposits in the world.”

The Pakistanis were never told the exact size of the gold and copper deposits that were found by these foreigners. Even until July this year, when a top level delegation of the Canadian company led by Aaron Regent met Prime Minister Gilani in Islamabad, the PM was told that development of this mega project shall generate a revenue of only about $3.5 billion for Government of Pakistan and $4.5 billion for Government of Balochistan over 40 years.

But the Canadian company has to report the real value to its own Canadian government agencies every year and on December 31, 2008 it informed these agencies, and its shareholders, that its 37.5 per cent share in Reko Diq would yield 17 million ounces of gold and 20 billion pounds of copper in measured, indicated and inferred resources. And these deposits have to be mined in 25 years, not as PM of Pakistan was told in 40 years.

At current prices of these two minerals, the total asset of the Canadian, Chilean and Pakistan government would be over $260 billion and according to former Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, as the prices of gold and copper go up, the total yield could be even $500 billion or may be a trillion.

In 2008 the PPP leaders entered the equation and on Dec 25, 2009 the Government of Balochistan announced the cancellation of the Reko Diq agreement. The decision was taken unanimously by the provincial cabinet, which also means the entire Balochistan Assembly. The cabinet also decided not to extend exploration licence of Reko Diq to the Canadian company and not to issue any mining licence for further work. Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani said on the occasion: “Cancellation of the Reko Diq copper and gold project agreement is a step towards getting control over provincial resources in accordance with the wishes of the people.”

The key statement he made was that he had held consultations with the coalition partners (read PPP and President Zardari) on the matter.

Before Raisani’s decisions in 2008 and 2009, the former chief minister during the Musharraf regime, Jam Yusuf had visited Canada and Chile in early 2007, why no one knows as it can only be guessed what a CM could do in the corporate HQ of a company.

Early this year, Raisani handed over affairs of the project to the Department of Mines and Mineral Development of Balochistan and acquired the services of eminent nuclear scientist Dr Samar Mubarakmand, who was made head of its Board of Governors.

After the July 2010 visit of the Canadian company head to Islamabad, Chief Minister Raisani and Federal Minister of Petroleum and Natural Resources started pressurising the federal and provincial government officials to make an early decision about Reko Diq. Lots of officials were transferred from their posts. In October, in an unprecedented letter, the CM asked President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to convene a high-level meeting to take the final decision. It seems double games were already underway.

But in Dubai, before the Canadians visited Islamabad to see President Zardari, the CEO of the company announced on October 25, 2010 that Reko Diq project would go ahead as planned despite plans by the provincial government to cancel it. “The project is going ahead and will not be cancelled, we are now in talks with the government and we expect production to start by the end of 2015,” Gerhard Von Borries, Chief Executive of TCC, said on the sidelines of an industry event in Dubai.

One month before the October visit to Islamabad, the company submitted a 100,000 pages feasibility study and gave the cost as $3.3 billion. Experts say this $3.3 billion will be the construction cost to build the mining infrastructure to extract the gold and copper. It took three years to write this report and the Samar Mubarakmand Board was expected to study and give its finding, quickly, may be in just a few days.

But before the Board of Governors headed by Dr Samar could open the report, a new committee was formed on October 1, 2010, excluding most of the board members and perhaps the new committee would now decide everything, in undue haste shortly.

The Canadian company, Barrick Gold, with 29 mines all over the world, is already being accused on the web of some strange activities. These include spills of cyanide, mercury and other heavy metals, police and legalistic repression of critics, threats to water resources on four continents and even food poisoning, as well as rape.

In 2008, under oath in the Balochistan High Court, Barrick Gold stated it had nothing to do with building an airport in the heart of Balochistan for its mining operations. It turned out the airport was actually built but on someone else’s property, a neighbouring exploration company from the US.

However, in its quarterly filings of March 2007, Barrick reported to the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in Washington DC that they had spent $30 million to build the airport in Pakistan and other activities. It was the same strip built on the neighbour’s property. The company made a false statement, to either the Balochistan High Court or the SEC. It was potential perjury any way. The US company, Benway Corporation, which is also exploring in the same area, has gone to Balochistan High Court against the intrusion on its land besides reporting the case to the SEC, which is looking whether violations of the US laws on corrupt practices have been violated.

While these confusing details may not make any sense for an ordinary reader, some 1,050 documents filed in the Balochistan High Court show that the TCC has been given unlawfully 508 sq km land on 30-year leases, a fact which CM Raisani has no clue about.

On Oct 28, when TCC executives were meeting the top PPP bosses in Islamabad, Chief Minister Balochistan was also around and he told Ahmad Noorani of The News: “This is impossible. As so far issues have not been finalised, so in no way TCC could be leased such a big land and that too for 30 years”.

He was asked: “Do you know that Reko Diq Exploration Licence No 5 gives TCC 240,000 acres of land and it expires in 2011. That TCC has had this licence from the Department of Mineral and Mining Development and on December 24 2009 you declared by a unanimous cabinet decision not to renew EL 5. But actually TCC had carefully bought and leased all that land from Board of Revenue of Balochistan in 2008 for 10 million dollars for 30 years. Your December 24 decision really had no teeth. TCC owns the land for 30 years. What has changed since December 24, 2009 that you are ready to sign a new agreement within a week or by November 24, 2010?”

The chief minister, who had no idea that a 30-year lease had been granted, responded: “It is not possible that such a big chunk of land is leased to TCC for a period of 30 years.” He asked his personal secretary to recheck and confirm the exact situation of the land lease to the TCC.

He was then asked about the cheques of millions of rupees he had received from the Canadian company. “How many total cheques you received from TCC or their related companies since you were sworn in as the CM. Why he thought they were giving him checks when their case was in the process of a major decision.”

Raisani admitted that a total of two cheques were given to him for Rs 10 million and Rs 8.5 million. “Both cheques were for the chief minister’s relief fund and were deposited in the Government of Balochistan account,” he maintained.

A spokesman of the TCC in Islamabad told The News that a cheque of Rs 8.5 million was given to Chief Minister Balochistan on Aug 25, 2010 for CM’s flood relief fund only and this cheque was for chief minister. But Press Secretary to the Chief Minister, Kamran, claimed that the cheque of Rs8.5 million was given by the TCC in the name of the Government of Balochistan and was deposited in the CM’s account for flood relief. He said this cheque had nothing to do with the files of the TCC in CM’s office.

CM Raisani told The News after the Dec 24, 2009 decision that the TCC had submitted a fresh feasibility study, which was being analysed and so far no final decision had been taken. Despite the statement of his press secretary, the CM asserted that no date could be given when the decision to award this project would be taken.

Asked about the licences, which were totally foreign owned without any share of Pakistan, the CM answered that for exploration licences there was no question of any share of Government of Balochistan. “For exploration, Balochistan will have to pay the TCC,” he argued.

In answer to the most pertinent question asked about the size of the deposits and what Pakistan would get out of the deal, CM Raisani was evasive.

He was asked: “Do you know that the value of Reko Diq is $260 billion as per records of the Canadian company (at today’s gold/copper international market rates), the government and former Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin said its value was $500 billion but in July the President of Barrick Gold came to PM Gilani and said the value was only $50 billion. Why is the government in such a hurry to decide this matter in favour of TCC on the fast track?”

In a surprising statement, Raisani just said the total cost was Rs 8.9 billion, not dollars. He ignored the rest of the question. Asked whether any international consultant was being hired to study the 100,000 pages feasibility studies as this was the first project of its kind in Pakistan, the CM said: “No, we don’t. We don’t need any. We have so many experts in different fields.”

“Is it correct that CM Balochistan is being pressurised by President Zardari to sign a deal with TCC,” he was asked.
His response: “I met President Zardari on this issue on Wednesday (last week).” Asked what the president told him to do, he said it was between President Zardari and him and he would not disclose what Zardari asked him on awarding of the project to the TCC.

But then, as an after thought, he added: “The federal government is not pressurising me on this issue. We are dealing with this ourselves.”

The bottomline is that Pakistan now has to issue mining licences to extract gold and cooper, which is worth billions of dollars and the current mood in Islamabad is to give the foreign companies a huge share. In fact, Pakistan should retain 70 to 80 per cent of these treasures.

In many countries, where agreements had already been signed giving a much bigger share to foreigners, these agreements were revised in the interest of the host country. Ireland, South Africa, Venezuela renegotiated their mining and oil exploration contracts to their benefit.

Anyone interested in making a few million dollars, like the Afghan minister of the Karzai government, which could cost the country billions, must not be allowed to do so. This is the role the Supreme Court, parliament and the media have to play at this crucial time.

Held Kashmir “assembly” has no authority to decide State’s future: Pakistan

UNITED NATIONS, Pakistan reminded the international community Monday that the Constituent Assembly of Indian-occupied Kashmir has no authority to decide the future of the disputed State, saying it’s final disposition must be made by the will of Kashmiri people. Reacting to statement made by a representative of India in the General Assembly’s Decolonization Committee, Pakistani delegate Tahir Andarabi, also said that Jammu and Kashmir is not an integral part of India, nor has it ever been.

He said the UN Security Council had recognized that region as a disputed territory. Earlier, speaking in the committee’s debate on decolonization matters, Indian representative Charan Das Mahant cliamed that Kashmir was an integral part of India, and that its people have regularly exercised their franchise in free and fair elections.
The Pakistan delegate challenged the Indian statement, citing several UN Security Council resolutions. “No electoral exercise conducted by Indian authorities in Jammu and Kashmir can substitute a free and impartial plebiscite mandated by these Security Council resolutions.”
“I would like to remind him (the Indian representative) that the Security Council in its resolution 91, denied the authority of the Constituent Assembly formed by India in occupied Kashmir, to decide the future of the State of Jammu and Kashmir and reminded the parties that final disposition of the State is to be made in accordance with the will of the people of Kashmir,” Andarabi said.
“Security Council resolution 122 of 24 January 1957 further reaffirmed that action taken by that Consituent Assembly would not constitute disposition of the State in accordance with will of the people expressed through free and impartial plebiscite conducted under the UN auspices.”