Sectarian attack: Bus attack in Kohistan leaves 18 dead

Outlawed terrorist group Jundallah has claimed responsibility for an attack a bus on Karakoram Highway in the Kohistan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which killed 18 people on Tuesday.

18 victims, most of them Shia pilgrims, were returning home when attack took place

Jundallah’s commander Ahmed Marwat, who contacted media persons soon after the attack, claimed responsibility for the assault.

The attack took place when gunmen opened fire on the bus which was en route to Gilgit from Rawalpindi with 39 passengers on board. The bus was owned by Mashaburum private bus service.

Seven armed men stopped two buses and a coaster. The armed men were reported to be in Army uniform. They asked the passengers to get off the bus and shot them after checking their CNICs.

Most of the victims were pilgrims who were going back to their native areas after visiting holy shrines in Iran.

A source in the district administration in Dassu told The Express Tribune that residents of Tangir’s Darkai valley, Commander Abdul Qayyum, Saddar Shariat and Burhan Shariat, sons of Gul Shahzada: Abdul Karim and Abdul Qadeem, sons of Abdul Ghafoor are suspected to be involved in the massacre.

Driver Muhammad Younus of Nagar valley, Najibullah, Suhail Ahmed are among the deceased.

“All the people on board were Shia, and at the moment it looks like they were targeted by armed men from the local Sunni community,” a senior police official had earlier told Reuters.

“Armed men hiding on both sides of the road attacked the bus,” local police chief Mohammad Ilyas said.

“Initial reports said 18 people have died and eight wounded,” he added.

Police officials said the bus came under attack in an area inhabited by two Sunni tribes about 165 km (102 miles) north of Islamabad.

The ambush happened near the town of Harban Nullah. DCO Chilas confirmed the incident.

The bodies of the deceased have been kept at Shatial hospital.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik has sought an investigative report from the Inspector-General of Gilgit-Baltistan.

Section 144 has been imposed throughout Gilgit after the attack.

The Biased State Terrorism in India

By: Irfan Ahmad

According to the Indian government and media, many Muslim groups have recently been involved in terrorism. Of these, three stand out: Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), formed in 1976 and banned soon after 9/11 for fomenting “communal disharmony” and “sedition”; Deccan Mujahideen (DM), an outfit which shot to prominence by claiming responsibility for the 2008 Mumbai terror attack; and Indian Mujahideen (IM), a group believed to have been formed after 2001. These groups have been charged with killing hundreds of people. The latest attack came on July 13, when 20 people were killed in a series of bombings in Mumbai.

India’s media often rushes to blame Muslims for acts of terrorism, sometimes without serious evidence

Shortly after the attack, the police said that IM and SIMI were behind the blasts. A nationwide hunt followed. According to Rakesh Maria, Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) Chief, expert teams fanned out to seven states. Officers from the National Intelligence Agency, formed after the 2008 Mumbai attacks to fight terrorism, raided the houses of two IM suspects in Ranchi, capital of Jharkhand state.

In Indian political discourse, outfits like SIMI, DM and IM appear as a threat to India’s stability and its global rise. While some depict them as domestic groups, others portray them as working in alliance with outfits from Pakistan. It is thus believed that IM was floated by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a militant group formed in 1990 in Afghanistan and active in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. Most accounts of these outfits are, however, inconsistent and even contradictory.

By analysing the Mumbai attack and the alleged involvement of IM and SIMI, I make three arguments. First, since the media and the security agencies have a close and uncritical relationship, we should have a healthy doubt about the accuracy of their information, and refrain from immediately pointing fingers at one Muslim group or another. Despite the fact that barely anyone adequately knows what IM is and how it came about, after the July attack several Muslims were arrested as terrorists.

Second, because Muslims are blamed, arrested, tortured, and killed (by the police) after each terror attack, with little or no evidence, such measures might end up creating the danger the Indian state claims to fight.

Third, I contend that the Indian media’s role in “reporting” terrorism is prejudiced.

What is Indian Mujahideen?

After the blast, the police arrested many people from Mumbai’s “sensitive” (read Muslim) neighbourhoods, a practice the residents of such neighbourhoods have grown accustomed to in the last decade. One suspect, Faiz Usmani, died in police custody. The police claimed that his death was caused by “hypertension”; his family believes that he was tortured. Usmani was the brother of Afzal Usmani, in jail for his alleged involvement in the 2008 Ahmadabad blast. Both brothers are reported to be IM members.

Riaz Bhatkal, described as India’s “most wanted terrorist”, is regarded as IM’s founder. He became close with SIMI in the early 1990s when it began to radicalise. Born in 1976, Bhatkal went to an English-medium school and later studied engineering at a Mumbai college. But beyond that, much of IM’s history remains unclear. It’s not even known whether Bhatkal is alive or dead. After the July 13 blast, the ATS attempted to nab him. This is surprising, because early this year the media reported that Bhatkal was killed in Karachi by Chhota Rajan, Mumbai’s underworld don.

The media provides differing accounts of IM’s formation and, in fact, is sometimes inconsistent even within a single version. For example, Animesh Roul, the director of the Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict in Delhi, claimed that IM was “conceived at a terrorist conclave attended by top leaders of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami (HuJI) in Pakistani-administered Kashmir in May 2008″. He did not find it contradictory when in the next paragraph he wrote, “IM came into the open for the first time in November 2007″. In Asian Policy, Christine Fair indicated two dates of its formation: 2001 and an ambiguous date of “much later”. According to The Times of India, IM was formed in 2005. To Namrata Goswami of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis in Delhi, “key SIMI members …started supporting the idea of the formation of the IM as early as December 2007″.

IM first hit the headlines after a series of explosions in November 2007. In an email to the media and police, IM claimed responsibility for the blasts. As the email explained, the aim of those attacks was to protest against “the pathetic conditions of Muslims in India that idol worshippers can kill our brothers, sisters, children and outrage dignity of our sisters at any place and at any time and we can’t resist them”. Then, in 2008, minutes before the blasts in Ahmadabad, IM sent an email (entitled “The Rise of Jihad, Revenge of Gujarat”) to the media saying: “We hereby declare an ultimatum to all the state governments of India … to stop harassing the Muslims and keep a check on their killing, expulsion, and encounters.”

The messages are a sign that IM’s aim is to protest against and avenge the killings and humiliation of Muslims at the hands of Hindu nationalists and the state administration. The destruction of the Babri mosque by Hindu nationalists in 1992 is important to IM’s ideological repertoire – hence its description by the media and the terrorism experts as a “home-grown”, “domestic” terror outfit. Since the media regard the Babri mosque as a domestic issue (unlike Kashmir, which is international) and the IM invokes the Babri mosque to rationalise its attacks, the IM is thus considered a domestic outfit.

However, many Indian security experts hold that IM is a tool of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) used to destabilise India. In these accounts, IM is a means to advance ISI’s agenda of destabilising India and at the same time to exonerate Pakistan of any allegations made by India and the West of promoting terrorism. The logic of the security experts is that the word “Indian” in IM points to India’s domestic groups, rather than Pakistani groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, through which the ISI has been operating in Kashmir. On the other hand, experts like B Raman allege that IM and SIMI’s reach extends beyond South Asia, characterising the groups as a part of a global network of Islamic radicals without furnishing adequate evidence.

India’s Guantanamo Bays

The media invariably base their stories on the sources of the state. An apt example is Praveen Swami, a terrorism expert cited by everyone writing about the IM. Swami is to print media what Arnab Goswami (of Times Now) is to Indian TV: Their views are rabidly nationalist, some might even say Islamophobic. Swami reproduces the police version (e.g. see his writings in CTC Sentinel, May 2010; The Hindu, Edit-Page, March 22, 2010; and Frontline, June 2-15, 2007) without giving the other side of the story, namely: the viewpoints of the alleged terrorists, their family members, or the Muslim community. It is well-known that the Indian police are biased against Muslims and have been complicit in killing them, as was evident in the state-mediated 2002 Gujarat violence, in which 1,000 Muslims were killed.

Given that the Indian media is uninterested in reporting “facts” and multiple views, can an anthropologist like me make sense of the mediatised world of terrorism? Thomas Eriksen holds that a concept like globalisation has “no meaning to an anthropologist unless it can be studied through actual persons, their relationship to each other and to a larger surrounding world”. I thus agree with Peter Van der Veer that “behind the growing visibility [of media] is a growing invisibility”.

What is rarely visible in the Indian media, however, are the brutal, illegal methods used against suspected terrorists: torture cells, illegal detention, unlawful killings in “police encounters”; elimination of evidence against the illegal actions of the law-enforcing agencies; and rampant harassment of Muslims. In July 2009, The Week reported on the existence of at least 15 secret torture chambers meant to extract information from the detainees. The methods to extract information include attaching electrodes to a detainee’s genitals as well as the use of pethidine injections. To quote The Week, these chambers are “our own little Guantanamo Bays or Gitmos”, which a top policeman called “precious assets”.

In May 2008, a Muslim boy aged 14 was abducted by the Gujarat police. He was dragged to the police car at gunpoint and taken to a detention centre where he was tortured. He returned home ten days later when the court ordered his release following his mother’s petition. The police subsequently threatened the boy’s family with dire consequences if they pursued the case in court. The police harassment becomes even more acute in light of the fact that most lawyers often hesitate to take up the cases of “terrorists”. As a disempowered community – as the government-appointed Sachar Committee report (of 2006) minutely demonstrates – Muslims themselves don’t have adequate and qualified lawyers to pursue such cases. Muslims’ marginalisation thus renders their voice invisible in the media too.

It is believed that after SIMI was banned, soon after 9/11, its radical members formed IM. During my fieldwork (2001-2004) on Jamaat-e-Islami and SIMI I did not hear anything about IM. SIMI activists and other Muslims I met felt terrorised themselves. It is worth noting that since 2001 far more people have been arrested as “SIMI terrorists” than the actual number of SIMI members, which in 1996 was 413 (when founded in 1976, SIMI’s members numbered 132). Until today, the Indian government has still not legally proved its rationale for banning SIMI.

The story untold

In the fight against terrorism, evidence and the rule of law are subservient to prejudice. As of this writing, the Indian government has not yet tracked the perpetrators of the July 13 attack. However, only two days after the attack, Subramanian Swamy, a prominent politician and former minister (with a doctorate from Harvard University) wrote an article called “How to Wipe Out Islamic Terror”. Without any evidence, he blamed Muslims for the attack, in the same way that The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Sun suspected Muslim involvement in the Norway shooting nine days later.

What Swamy did is standard practice in Indian media. In September 2006, a blast killed 35 people at a Muslim graveyard in Malegaon (in the state of Karnataka). The media blamed Muslims. Likewise, in 2007, after a blast killed 10 Muslims praying in Hyderabad’s Mecca mosque, Praveen Swami freely wrote about the Muslim terrorists he believed caused it and about what he perceived to be the “Islamist threat to India’s cities”. However, investigations later showed that Hindu nationalists carried out the Malegaon and Mecca mosque terror attacks.

Returning to Subramanian Swamy, Swamy wrote: “We need a collective mindset as Hindus to stand against the Islamic terrorist. The Muslims of India can join us if they genuinely feel for the Hindus. That they do I will not believe unless they acknowledge with pride that though they may be Muslims, their ancestors were Hindus”. Those refusing to acknowledge this, Swamy advocated, “should not have voting rights”. He proposed declaring India “a Hindu Rashtra [state]“.

Stories of Muslim terrorists abound in both the Indian and Western media. Since the July 13, 2011 Mumbai bombings, vitriolic pieces like Subramanian Swamy’s have appeared frequently in the media. These pieces subtly influence the analyses of many liberal intellectuals.

Texas on fire

WHEN Monday morning brought a cool breeze to central Texas, the dominant mood was relief. Most of the state is in a severe drought, with heavy repercussions for agriculture, and it’s been one of the hottest and driest summers on record, a phrase that doesn’t fully convey the discomfort of the situation. But that breeze was an ominous portent. It came from the Tropical Storm Lee, to the east, and it whipped up winds that triggered more than 60 wildfires around the state, many of them major. Four people have been killed, more than 1,000 homes destroyed, and thousands of people evacuated, including around the capital city of Austin. Governor Rick Perry, who is running for president, cut short his campaign trip to South Carolina and came back to deal with the situation here, and even suggested that he might be too busy in Texas to turn up at tonight’s debate, although now it appears that he will take the stage in California as planned.

Covering natural disasters can be difficult logistically, for obvious reasons, and offering analysis on the subject can be problematic. In some sense there is no culprit other than nature, and attempts to inquire about any man-made activity or policy decisions that exacerbated the consequences can be seen as overly political, given that such analyses arise in a context of widespread human distress. But ignoring the human factors is also irresponsible, because it undermines our ability to pursue better stewardship in the future.

To some extent, then, it should be noted that there may be an anthropogenic dimension to the wildfires, insofar as humans contribute to climate change patterns that foster the hot and dry conditions, and some of the damage is due to settlement patterns that can hardly be avoided. Audubon magazine offers an in-depth look at some of the factors:

U.S. policy has pitted a deeply ingrained institutional belief that some wildfires can and should be “fought” against a scientific consensus that they are ecologically indispensable. Global warming has kindled the debate further because it has created both hotter and drier conditions in many places. In addition, a legacy of all-too-successful suppression means that many forests now contain huge “fuel stores” of woody debris that periodic fires used to eliminate. Add the fact that droves of people have moved into fire-prone areas, and you have an increasingly combustible mix of policy and ecology. “Megafires are signaling a new era in fire and land-use management,” says Williams.

At the risk of seeming callow, it has to be said that the fires in Texas do bring up some political issues. Obviously Mr Perry didn’t cause the fires. But over the past year, the hallmarks of his response to the drought have been calls for prayer and for federal emergency assistance. The first measure doesn’t hurt, I suppose, but I’m not aware of any data that supports its efficacy, and prayer is not a good substitute for, say, a more prudent policy about water management, which has long been known to be a looming challenge in Texas and the southwest. Similarly, as Marie Diamond notes at Think Progress, the state is planning deep cuts to the Texas Forest Service’s budget over the next two years. These are not really out of line with other budget-cutting measures in the state, and they were planned in response to the state’s budget shortfall, but as Mr Perry is taking credit for fiscal discipline, he should take responsibility for the corollary, that fiscal stewardship comes at a cost.

The second point, the calls for federal emergency assistance, raises a broader question that Republicans concerned with states’ rights should address. I think it’s consistent for a 10th-amendment advocate to maintain that the federal government has an obligation to provide extra resources to states that are faced with unanticipated challenges. And to be sure, Texas has in some respects exceeded the national standards on its ability to respond to crises. After Hurricane Katrina, for example, the state-and particularly the city of Houston-quietly and capably absorbed several hundred thousand people displaced from neighbouring Louisiana, many of whom have since permanently relocated. But some crises are not unforeseeable, which complicates the question of responsibility. This may not be highly relevant to the current situation-Texas didn’t cause its drought-but it is something to consider, and not solely on environmental issues. If there are areas where the states should have the authority to set their own course, as Mr Perry and others argue, to what extent are they responsible for the consequences thereof?

Originators of Sectarian Violence

Sajjad Shaukat

Although various sorts of violence-related terrorist acts continue in Pakistan and these have intensified in Karachi, yet sectarian violence which is part of the same game also needs our focus.

In this regard, on August 20 this year, more than 50 people, belonging to the Shia community were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a mosque in Jamrud. In another violent attack, on July 30, 12 persons were shot dead in Quetta when unidentified armed men opened fire at Suzuki van. During the months of June and July, in four separate incidents, around 40 Shia Muslims were gunned down in Quetta. However, after the August 20 incident, the enraged people went on a rampage and set tyres on fire to block the road. They also opened fire and one man was killed. In these terms, the originators of sectarian violence need particular analysis.

It is of particular attention that faced with an unending resistance in Iraq, the US had planned to spark a civil war between the Sunnis and Shias. In this context, a study of the Rand Corporation, titled ‘US Strategy in the Muslim World After 9/11′ was conducted on behalf of the then US Deputy Chief of Staff for Air Force.

The report of the Rand Corporation-a leading think tank, released on December 27, 2004 advocated that Sunni-Shia sectarian division should be exploited to promote the US objectives in the Muslim World. The study indicated that a majority of the world’s Muslims are Sunni, but a significant minority, about 15 percent of the global population is Shias.

The report of the Rand Corporation was first implemented in Iraq. In this context, American CIA also got the services of Israeli secret agency Mossad and Indian RAW in order to fuel sectarian violence in Iraq. In 2004, major terror-attacks were conducted against the Shias in Karbala and Baghdad, while US-led some countries accused Iran and Al-Qaeda for the incidents to divert the attention from the said secret agencies.

Arab leaders said that they feared the bombings were meant to sow discord between Iraqi Shias and Sunni Muslims. Likewise both the Sunni and Shia leaders of Iraq have found it difficult to believe that Al-Qeada were behind the bombings. In that respect, the prayer leader, Syed Ahmed Bukhari at the Jama Masjid of India stated, “America is fully involved in sectarian violence” in Iraq.

Nevertheless, afterwards, a chain of Shia-Sunni clashes started between Iraqi Shias and Sunnis, targeting each other’s mosques through bomb blasts, suicide attacks, and killings of their religious leaders. The general masses of both the sects, which could not grasp the reality, began to blame each other’s group for the subversive activities.

After experiment in Iraq, more deadly pattern of sectarian violence and clashes was conducted in Pakistan.

In this connection, the year of 2011 witnessed a number of sectarian events. For instance, on January 25, a suicide bomber struck in the Urdu Bazaar area of Lahore, killing 10 people including a woman and three Policemen. On February 22, a prominent leader of the Shia community was shot dead by the unidentified attackers in the vicinity of Peshawar. On April 3, 51 persons were killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the shrine of Sufi saint Ahmed Sultan in Dera Ghazi Khan. On July 16, the militants ambushed a bus carrying Sunni Muslims and massacred 10 passengers in Parachinar. On July 28, a prayer leader of Jamia Albadar mosque, Abdul Karim Mengal, was shot dead by unknown activists in Quetta.

In 2010, terror-related sectarian incidents continued. For example, on September 2, triple blasts killed more than 35 persons in Lahore when miscreants targeted the procession of Shias who were celebrating Hazrat Ali’s day of martyrdom. On the same day, seven people including a police constable were injured in Karachi when terrorists opened fire at the Youm-e-Ali rally. Next day, a deadly suicide attack in Quetta killed more than 55 people who participated in the rally of the Al-Quds Day. On May 28, armed assaults on two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore killed more than 70 people. On July 1, in Lahore, more than 45 persons were killed by the two suicide bombers at the Data Darbar.

Besides these subversive acts, similar pattern of attacks have kept on going in 2009. On December 4, suicide assaulters stormed a mosque in Rawalpindi, killing 40 people. On December 28, a blast in the middle of the Muharram procession killed more than 25 persons in Karachi as the Shias across the country were celebrating the key holy day of Ashoura. On June 12, a suicide bomber killed five people including anti-Taliban cleric Dr. Sarfraz Naeemi in Lahore.

Notably, in some cases, hand grenades were also used by the culprits and exchange of firing took place between the insurgents and security forces.
It is mentionable that some banned religious organisations have claimed responsibility for various sectarian attacks, but it is the game of RAW and CIA which arrange a message for media from an unidentified place in order to divert the attention of people towards these groups, and sometimes towards the Taliban. Otherwise, particularly RAW is well-known for carrying out sectarian terror attacks against minority Shias, Ahmadis, Sufis, Christians and Sikhs in Pakistan.

Especially, RAW has hired the services of the Indian Muslims who are on its payroll, and these agents have joined the ranks and files of the Taliban and other sectarian groups of Pakistan. Posing themselves as staunch believers, these agents target religious leaders and places of worship in Pakistan with a view to inciting the sentiments of the people of the opponent sect. The main aim behind is to continue sectarian disturbance in Pakistan.

In this respect, sinister role of Indian RAW could also be judged from some other events of sectarian violence. In 2008, in Khyber Agency, intermittent fighting between Lashkar-e-Islam and Ansar-ul-Islam had claimed as many as 1500 lives. Lashkar Islami is led by fanatic cleric Mangal Bagh who follows the puritanical Deobandi form of Sunni Islam and has close connections with the extremist Taliban of Afghanistan. Besides other areas of Pakistan, more than 2000 people died in sectarian riots in Kurram Agency, bordering Afghanistan. Its areas have been hit by fierce clashes, pitching Sunni Muslims against the minority Shias. A number of ceasefires was concluded between the warring sects with the help of government officials and the tribal Maliks, but the same proved fruitless owing to the support from Afghanistan where more than hundred training centers covertly established by RAW are supervising anti-Pakistan activities with the tactical help CIA and Mossad.

Although the whole Islamic world is target of Indo-Israeli plot, yet the same has intensified in case of Pakistan and Iran. It is due to the fact that Pakistan is a declared atomic country, while Iran is determined to continue its nuclear programme. In this regard, US-led some countries, especially India have been sabotaging Pak-Iranian ties covertly, while sectarian unrest is also part of their game. Notably, Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and a Sunni militant group Jundollah (God’s soldiers) which get arms from RAW and CIA are responsible for many sectarian assaults on Sunnis and Shias. In the past few years, their militants with the cooperation of foreign agents also kidnapped and killed Iranian nationals in Pakistan. In this respect, on October 18, 2009, a suicide attack had killed several officers in the Iranian Sistan-Baluchistan. On December 15, 2010, two suicide bombers blew themselves up near a mosque in Iran, killing 39 people. Jundullah claimed responsibility for these incidents. Regarding all these attacks, Tehran had directly accused CIA for funding of that type of terrorist attacks, while diverting the attention of Iran towards Islamabad through secret propaganda.

In this context, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei disclosed, “The bloody actions being committed in Iraq, Pakistan and Iran are aimed at creating a division between the Shias and Sunnis…those who carry out these terrorist actions are directly or indirectly foreign agents.”

No doubt, CIA, RAW and Mossad are the real originators of sectarian violence in Iraq and now in Pakistan as part of other subversive acts which keep on going.

Former US Intelligence Chief Trashes the Rationale of War on Terror

Former US Intelligence Chief Dennis Blair makes the same points that the critics of the so-called war on terror have made for nearly a decade:

1. “We’re alienating the countries concerned because we are treating the countries just as places where we go attack groups that threaten us. We are threatening the prospects of long-term reform.”
2. “In the past decade terrorists have killed fewer than 20 Americans inside U.S. borders, most of them in a single attack at Fort Hood Texas in late 2009.”
3. ” Unmanned CIA drone program, in which terrorists are targeted by missiles in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, was counterproductive.”
4. “I don’t think that we can kill al Qaeda members and end this threat from Jihadist terrorism.”
Former intelligence chief Dennis Blair said in an interview last Thursday that the terror threat from al Qaeda is a “narrow problem” and questioned the amount of money spent to capture or kill a small number of people.

Blair’s critical comments on Obama administration policy were the harshest yet from the former Director of National Intelligence, who was pushed out of his post by President Obama in May 2010 after just 16 months on the job.

Blair, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, estimated there were 4,000 al Qaeda members around the globe, with much of a yearly intelligence budget of $80 billion devoted to catching them. That’s $20 million for every one of these 4,000 people,” said Blair. “The objective is to disrupt and destroy al Qaeda. … You think, wow, $20 million is a lot, is that proportionate?”

Blair noted that in the past decade terrorists have killed fewer than 20 Americans inside U.S. borders, most of them in a single attack at Fort Hood Texas in late 2009. He contrasted the terror body count with deaths from car accidents and street crime, which killed more than one million Americans in the same time frame.

“What is it that justifies this amount of money on this narrow problem versus the other ways we have to protect American lives?” asked Blair. “I think that’s sort of the question we have to think ourselves through here at the 10th year anniversary.”

Said Blair, “I think we need to reexamine what our fundamental goals are. I think by concentrating only on al Qaeda itself we get ourselves in this numbers game … and I don’t think that we can kill al Qaeda members and end this threat from Jihadist terrorism.”

Blair also said he felt the unmanned CIA drone program, in which terrorists are targeted by missiles in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, was counterproductive. The former Navy admiral said that the drone strikes are more of a nuisance to al Qaeda than a threat, and that they harm the relationship between Pakistan and the United States.

“We’re alienating the countries concerned because we are treating the countries just as places where we go attack groups that threaten us,” said Blair. “We are threatening the prospects of long-term reform.”

He suggested giving Pakistan more say in picking targets. “We should offer the Pakistanis to put two hands on the trigger,” said Blair. “That would make our job in Afghanistan more difficult for a while but it would make it a lot easier over the long term.”

Pakistan has come under serious criticism since the successful Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden for allegedly sheltering terrorists and tipping off militants to upcoming U.S. attacks. Bin Laden was able to live in Abbottabad, Pakistan for years without interference by Pakistani officials, and when the U.S. forces raided his compound and killed him, the raid was conducted without Pakistani cooperation.

After the raid, CIA director Leon Panetta confronted Pakistani officials with photographic evidence that they had allegedly tipped off Islamic militants in advance of other U.S. raids.

The Director of National Intelligence is designated as the principal intelligence to the White House and the chief of 16 different federal intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the National Security Agency.

Blair, who was forced to resign from his post and was replaced by James Clapper, said in Aspen that the White House had chosen to side with the CIA over him in an internal power struggle.

“They sided with the CIA in ways that were public enough that it undercut my position,” said Blair.

On Friday, when asked about Blair’s contention that drone attacks may do more harm than good, White House press secretary Jay Carney told Jake Tapper of ABC News, “Without addressing specific methods, I would say simply that we believe our relationship with Pakistan is essential to fighting terrorism and terrorists, fighting al Qaeda, and that’s why we work hard on that relationship, even though it is complicated and difficult at times.”

“We also make no apologies for the need to go after terrorists, members of al Qaeda, wherever they are,” added Carney, “and that is certainly true about the mission to eliminate Osama bin Laden.”

Rangers killing: Youth laid to rest, condemnations pour in

KARACHI: Funeral prayers of the youth shot dead in a public park by Rangers were held in Karachi on Thursday.

Scores of people attend funeral prayers of 19-year-old matric student who was shot dead by Rangers in Karachi.

Scores of people attended the funeral prayers of 19-year-old student Sarfaraz Shah, who was shot at point blank range in a public park in an incident filmed live and broadcast on television on Wednesday. Shah’s body has been taken by relatives for burial.

Earlier, Shah’s relatives took his body and protested outside the house of the Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah demanding that the soldiers be arrested. The CM ordered an inquiry and suspended a senior police official for charging the youth with robbery after his death. Police subsequently arrested the five Rangers involved in the incident, and a case has been registered against Afzal and Shahid Zafar.

The Rangers claim that Shah had tried to rob a policeman’s family. A police official later told AFP on condition of anonymity that only a toy gun had been recovered.

Town Police Officer (TPO) Tarik Dharajo said that five Rangers personnel had been arrested following this incident. He added, however, that legal action cannot be initiate against them till they are court-martialled, as they are paramilitary security officials.

Dharejo said that they will be charged under the Pakistan Penal Code.

Condemnations aplenty

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani took notice of the killing on Thursday, and ordered an inquiry into the matter. The prime minister promised to personally handle the incident.

Senator Raza Rabbani compared the extra-judicial killing to the Kharotabad killing in which five foreigners were shot dead by security officials.

President of the Supreme Court Bar Association and prominent human rights activist, Asma Jahangir also condemned the killing.

“Seeing this, anyone can guess how brutalised our society has become,” Jahangir told AFP.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik ordered the arrest of the soldiers involved and a departmental inquiry.

“This act is extremely unlawful, even if the youth was a robber it did not merit to kill him like this,” Malik told TV channels.

“The suspects in the incident have been arrested. I have ordered for a thorough inquiry.”

Footage of the incident, filmed by an unidentified cameraman, was broadcast repeatedly on local television stations.

In it, a soldier can be seen dragging the man, then throwing him towards half a dozen armed comrades, one of whom then shot the 19-year-old twice at point-blank range as he begged for his life.

The park where the incident took place is named after assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, whose family home is in Clifton.

Six Killed in Pakistan as Drone Strikes Continue

A US double drone strike has killed 12 suspected militants in South Waziristan on the Afghan-Pakistan border.

The attacks targeted a compound and a seminary near Wana, the main town in the tribal district, officials said.

It came days after al-Qaeda operative Ilyas Kashmiri was reported to have been killed in a US strike in the area.

Militants in Pakistan have vowed to avenge his reported killing, as well as the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden last month.

On Sunday, at least 18 people died in a bomb blast at a bakery in the garrison town of Nowshera in northwest Pakistan.

Earlier, another bomb explosion at a bus stop on the outskirts of Peshawar killed six people. Both attacks are being blamed on the Pakistani Taliban.

Monday’s drone attacks targeted a compound and a religious seminary in the mountains near Wana, according to reports.

There were “foreigners” among those killed, say reports, though their identities were not immediately known.

United States officials do not routinely confirm that they have carried out drone attacks, but analysts say that only US forces have the capacity to carry out such strikes in the region.

More than 100 raids were reported last year in the troubled tribal areas along the Afghan border.

Many militants, some of them senior, have been killed in the drone strikes, but hundreds of civilians have also died.

Correspondents say that in the past the drone strikes have had the tacit approval of the Pakistani authorities, although Pakistani leaders always denied secretly supporting them.

In recent months, senior Pakistani security officials have reportedly been pressing for a limit to such operations.

A Paranoid Nuclear Nation

By Fatima Rizvi
ZoneAsia-Pk

Pakistan should be one, not both; and its people should choose between paranoia and power before it’s too late

For Pakistan, the writing on the wall is clear: Since 2001, we sided with the US in its War on Terror, which was actually a War OF Terror. After 2004, Pakistan became a frontline state in this war, instead of being the passive participant it had been in the three years before. It was not long before Pakistan became embroiled in a multi-front war: one with the US because of divergent goals in the region and mutual mistrust, one with regional adversaries like India and Karzai-led Afghanistan, one with terror proxies like Al-Qaeda, the TTP, Jundullah, HuJI, JeM, SSP, LeT, BLA, BLUF, BRA, IMU and other groups. This last battlespace is an unconventional war where non-state actors are being trained, financed, motivated and deployed by powerful external powers to undermine the military and intelligence organizations from within for the final external assault; this has become possible after softening up civil targets and demoralizing as well as scaring the Pakistani public over the last few years. But our civil and military leadership continues to be oblivious to these increasingly overt signals. Such insensitivity only contributes to the paranoia of the Pakistani people, who are wondering which of their assets are going to be used against them now.

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After America kills Osama, Taliban strike Pakistan in revenge

Bloody revenge

The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for a pair of suicide bombings on a Frontier Constabulary training center in Charsadda that left at least 80 dead in what the militant group said was in revenge for the “Abbottabad incident,” referring to the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (Reuters, AFP, AP, Dawn, NYT, Guardian, WSJ, Post). Pakistani police officials, however, were skeptical that the attack, the deadliest in Pakistan since November, was the work of the TTP, and suggested it may have been orchestrated by Omar Khalid’s group, which is currently fighting the Pakistani Army in Mohmand. At least 140 were wounded (BBC, CNN). Yesterday in Karachi, Pakistani police said they arrested four TTP militants who were also affiliated with a Punjabi Taliban group (DT, AFP). And a suspected U.S. drone strike in North Waziristan has just killed at least three (AP, AFP).

Pakistani Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani is briefing the Pakistani parliament later today on bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad and the May 2 U.S. raid that killed him, and some who have met with Kayani recently say he is unlikely to respond to U.S. demands to go after other militant leaders in Pakistan (Dawn, NYT, Reuters). Pakistan said it is launching an inter-agency review to “clearly define the parameters of our cooperation with the U.S. in counterterrorism,” as Pakistani prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani suggested, for the first time in public, that he is open to the possibility of U.S. drone strikes in the tribal areas, given more Pakistani control of the program (AFP, AFP, Time). Declan Walsh has today’s must-read, asking, “Whose side is Pakistan’s ISI [intelligence service] really on?” (Guardian).

Details continue to trickle out about the Abbottabad raid and bin Laden’s life in the compound: U.S. officials say there is no indication bin Laden had a ready escape plan, suggesting he may have become “complacent” (CNN); each of the 25 Navy SEALs who carried out the raid recorded it with a tiny helmet cam (CBS); Frontier Corps officials tell Geo that two U.S. helicopters landed in Swat before heading to Abbottabad, which the government of Khyber-Puktunkhwa said it knew nothing about (Geo); and intelligence analysts continue to dig through the more than 200 million pages recovered from the compound (Tel, Times, Independent). U.S. intelligence has reportedly been able to interview the three bin Laden widows, who were said to be “hostile,” and one of whom may be the daughter of an Afghan Taliban commander (CNN, AP). There have been conflicting reports about the nationalities and identities of the women living in bin Laden’s compound.

The AP recounts bin Laden’s trail from September 11, 2001 to early 2003, revising several Western conventional wisdoms about bin Laden’s movements, and Reuters investigates U.S. attempts to hunt the al-Qaeda leader over the years (AP, Reuters). And the NYT assesses that jihadi reactions to bin Laden’s death indicate a void in the group’s leadership (NYT).

Deepening partnerships

As expected, yesterday Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh pledged an additional $500 million in aid to Afghanistan, bringing India’s total investment in the country to some $2 billion, in a move that “is likely to fuel Pakistani suspicions of Indian meddling in what Islamabad sees as its own backyard” (NYT, Tolo, WSJ, AJE). Singh also said India is “not like the U.S.” when asked by a reporter if India would launch a raid similar to the U.S.’s in Abbottabad (ET).

Five people were reportedly killed in a cross-border clash between Pakistani tribesmen and Afghan security forces yesterday (Dawn). NATO has apologized for the death of a 12 year old Afghan girl, who was killed along with her uncle in a night raid outside of the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad (NYT). A man wearing an Afghan police uniform has killed an American soldier in Helmand (Pajhwok).

Virtual battleground

Video game developers have already released several games in which users can reenact bin Laden’s last stand, and in one version, players can choose whether to defend bin Laden or play as the Navy SEALs who carried out the raid (AFP, Kokatu, Toronto Star, NYDN, Wired). One of the games has already been downloaded at least 9,000 times (BBC).

Pakistan’s top leadership condemn unilateral US raid to kill Osama

Islamabad, — Pakistan’s top political and military leadership, in their first ever strong reaction to the US May 2nd strike in Abbotabad to kill Osama bin Laden, on Thursday condemned the US unilateral action in violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.

The Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC) decided to institute an inter-agency process to clearly define the parameters of Pakistan cooperation with the US in counter-terrorism, in accordance with Pakistan’s national interests and the aspirations of the people.

The Committee strongly rejected unilateralism and emphasized the paramount importance of respect for Pakistan’s sovereignty, the need for adopting a partnership approach that is based on mutual respect and mutual trust, a statement said.

The DCC comprehensively discussed the situation arising from the US Forces’ covert operation of 2nd May 2011 in the surroundings of Abbottabad and the killing of Osama bin Laden.

The DCC meeting, presided over Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani, resolutely reaffirmed the determination of the Government to safeguard national honour and interests at all costs.

The meeting was attended by Gen. Khalid Shamim Wynne, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Chief of Army Staff, Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman, Ch. Pervez Ellahi, Senior Minister for Defence Production, Dr. Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, Minister for Finance, Senator A. Rehman Malik, Minister for Interior, and Secretary Foreign Affairs, Salman Bashir.

Prime Minister in his opening remarks said the 2nd May covert operation by the US Forces in Abbottabad has raised several serious questions which are being debated internationally and more specifically in the US and Pakistan.

‘The Questions relating to our defence preparedness, he added, and the capability of our intelligence agencies; our possible response to a repeat of such action, as well as legal and moral issues pertaining to sovereignty and propriety, are not only being asked but are also a cause of anxiety and concern to the people of Pakistan’.

Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani said it is imperative that all arms of the Government, that is both Civil and Military, with the full support of the Parliament and the people of Pakistan, work together to the best of their ability to safeguard Pakistan’s sovereignty, security and promoting Pakistan’s national interests.