PESHAWAR:  Chief Minister NWFP Ameer Haider Hoti said the government is yet to confirm the reports regarding the presence of Maulana Fazlullah in Afghanistan.

He questioned the safety of Fazlullah in Afghanistan saying the matter of his presence in Afghanistan will be taken with those involved in giving him protection.

He was talking to the media after offering funeral prayers for three police officials killed in Thursday night’s attack on a police van in Peshawar.

The Chief Minister said that foreign hands were involved in financing and planning the terrorist activities in Peshawar and were using the people of this region for such activities.

The chief minister also called upon the federal government to send all those 1,000 FC personnel back to NWFP who were performing duties in Islamabad and Sindh province.

The chief minister announced that the compensation amount for families of all police officials killed in explosions will be doubled from Rs1.5 to Rs3 million.

He said that the federal government will provide additional funds amounting to Rs 24billion for law and order and strengthening of police in Peshawar and southern districts.

(News sourced from: DawnNews)

A suspected US missile strike has killed at least eight militants in north-western Pakistan, officials said, the second attack this week in an area believed to hold many insurgents who fled from an army offensive elsewhere in the Afghan border region.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told visiting CIA director Leon Panetta that any new US strategy for Afghanistan must take into account Pakistan’s concerns, especially fears that more troops could push militants across the border into Pakistan, according to a statement by Gilani.

The CIA is believed to be behind the more than 40 missile strikes to have hit suspected al-Qaida and Taliban targets over the last year close to the border region.

American officials do not generally acknowledge the attacks, which are unpopular among many in the region.

A US drone fired two missiles at a compound being used by suspected Taliban militants in a village near Mir Ali in North Waziristan, according to two intelligence officials.

The compound was destroyed and eight bodies were pulled from the rubble, the officials said, adding that two other suspected militants were wounded.

The targeted compound in the village of Shakhwadi was owned by two brothers, and Taliban militants were frequently seen visiting the building, which was cordoned off after the missile strike, the officials said.

Ahmed Nawaz Dawar, a local tribesman, said Taliban militants buried those killed and took the wounded to a hospital. Another suspected US missile strike killed three militants and wounded four just after midnight on Thursday in Shana Khuwara village in North Waziristan, officials said.

Anti-American sentiment is pervasive throughout Pakistan. The Pakistani government publicly condemns the US strikes as violations of its sovereignty, but many analysts believe the two countries have a secret deal allowing them.

The US Embassy declined to comment on the CIA director’s visit to the country. American security and government leaders have frequently visited Pakistan in recent weeks to discuss its role in stabilizing Afghanistan as President Barack Obama prepares to announce his decision on strategy and troop levels in the country.

ISLAMABAD, Nov 20  - As the United States ponders its Afghan strategy, Pakistan is waiting nervously, worried that a U.S. troops surge would widen the war but also keen to see a robust U.S. commitment that would convince the Taliban to talk.

U.S. President Barack Obama pledged on Wednesday to end the Afghan war before he leaves office.

He said he would announce the results of his long-awaited review soon and it would include an exit strategy to avoid “a multi-year occupation that won’t serve the interests of the United States”.

There are nearly 110,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, including 68,000 Americans, more than half of whom have arrived since Obama took office. He is now deciding whether to fulfil his commander’s request for tens of thousands more.

That has raised worry in Pakistan of a spike of Afghan violence spilling over the ill-defined border into Pakistan where its army is battling its own version of the Taliban.

Those fears were raised recently in talks in Islamabad with visiting U.S. national security adviser General James Jones, a senior Pakistani government official said.

“We have concerns that Taliban may try to cross into Pakistan if violence increased after the new deployment,” said the official who is involved in Afghan policy.

“Such a situation will definitely complicate issues for us particularly at a time when we’re involved in the offensive in Waziristan,” he said, referring to a month-long offensive in South Waziristan on the Afghan border.

The army has seized most main Pakistani Taliban bases in the region of barren mountains and patchy scrub. The militants have retaliated with a barrage of bombs in towns and cities.

Responding to Pakistani concerns of a spill-over, U.S. officials said reinforcements would not open new fronts but would focus on securing populated areas, the official said.

While worried about the arrival of more U.S soldiers, Pakistan is probably more vexed about the possibility of their hasty departure.

Memories of the United States walking away from Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and leaving the country in chaos are still raw in Pakistan.

“They have always felt that the United States would run away and they would be left with the mess — just like they were in the 1990s,” said former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel.

“It is very hard to dispel that image,” said Riedel, who was in charge of Obama’s review of policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan last March. He is now with the Brookings Institution.

STAGGERED EXIT

Obama’s talk of an exit before he leaves office is likely to compound fears of a U.S. rush to the door. The U.S. president comes to the end of his first term in just over three years. A second and final term would end in seven years.

“An exit strategy should be staggered over six to seven years .. They shouldn’t repeat the mistake made after the Soviet withdrawal,” said the Pakistani official, who declined to be identified.

Pakistan wants to see an orderly U.S. withdrawal after a negotiated settlement including elements of the Taliban.

The Taliban will seize on any sign of U.S. vacillating as weakness and will only be dragged into talks if they are convinced of U.S. commitment backed by troops, an analyst said.

“It’s very important that they should increase their numerical strength and give an impression to the Taliban that they aren’t going away. Tilt the balance in their favour to a point at least that some decent negotiations can go on,” said retired Pakistani general and analyst Talat Masood.

But any show of force to convince the Taliban of U.S. commitment must be accompanied by political reform to win over ethnic Pashtuns, another Pakistani official said.

The Taliban draw most of their support and recruits from Afghanistan’s biggest ethnic group, many of whom feel alienated by a Kabul government seen as dominated by ethnic Tajiks even though President Hamid Karzai is Pashtun.

“Military strategy alone can’t correct policy-level errors,” said a senior Pakistani security official. “They have to help create a system of governance that has broader acceptability and legitimacy by getting the larger Pashtun population on board.”

The United States also wanted Pakistan to be a conduit for talks with the Taliban, the official said. Pakistan officially cut contacts with their former allies after the Sept. 11 attacks.

(News sourced from: Reuters)

WASHINGTON: The United States believes that Pakistan has the capability of dealing with the militants operating within its border and also with those who may come from Afghanistan.

At a briefing at the US State Department, spokesman Ian Kelly, however, acknowledged that the fight against the militants could not be won by military means alone.

The United States, he said, was willing to provide Pakistan with the resources Islamabad needed to wean away the affected populations from the militants. That’s why, he said, the United States was providing economic assistance to Pakistan and was also helping reconstruction projects in the NWFP.

Asked if the United States believed Pakistan had the capability to deal with the militants inside its borders and with those coming from Afghanistan, spokesman Kelly said: ‘I think we do. I think that we certainly have more confidence now than we did even a few months ago, before they did take some decisive action to deal with this problem within their own borders.

(News sourced from: Regional Times)

Kabul, Nov. 18 : A minister in Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet has been accused of accepting roughly 30-million-dollar bribe to award the country’s largest development project to a Chinese mining firm, a US official has claimed.

The Washington Post quoted the US official as saying that there is a “high degree of certainty” that the minister of mines, Mohammad Ibrahim Adel, received the alleged payment in Dubai within a month of December 2007, when the state-run China Metallurgical Group Corp. received the contract for a 2.9 billion dollar project to extract copper from the Aynak deposit in Logar province.

Adel has denied receiving bribes or illicit payments during his three-year-old tenure as minister and said that MCC won the contract after a fair review process.

“I am responsible for the revenue and benefit of our people. All the time I”m following the law and the legislation for the benefit of the people,” he said.

The allegation, if proved true, would only add to Karzai’s worries who is already under intense international pressure to clear his cabinet of ministers who have reaped huge profits through bribery and kickback schemes.

Although he announced a new anti-corruption unit this week, the president has been reluctant to fire scandal-tainted ministers in the past, and it is unclear whether he is ready to do so now.

Meanwhile, Afghans perceptions that they are ruled by a thieving class have weakened support for the government and bolstered sympathy for the Taliban insurgency. (ANI)

The Pakistan Army has claimed massive success in the offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan, establishing control over Sararogha, the town which the militants referred to as their capital, but both US and Pakistani experts have  questioned the army’s efforts and fear the extremists would bounce back.

Many are surprised by the unexpectedly light resistance that the troops have faced in the region, which is considered as the Taliban’s stronghold.

US officials believe that the insurgents have shifted to the rough terrains along the Afghan border, while the military penetrates deeper into the region.

“That’s what bothers me. Where are they?” questioned an American intelligence officer.

“They are fleeing in all directions. The Uzbeks are fleeing to Afghanistan and the north, and the Mehsuds are fleeing to any possible place they can think of,” The New York Times quoted a Pakistani security official, on conditions of anonymity, as saying.

Success in this region could have a direct bearing on how many more American troops are ultimately sent to Afghanistan, and how long they must stay, the newspaper said.

For the Pakistan Army, the bigger question is for how long it would be able to hold on to the region.

Experts see the militants coming back once again as the security forces lack have failed to win people’s confidence in the region.

“Are they really winning the people - this is the big question. They have weakened the Taliban tactically, but have they really won the area if the people are not with them?” said Talat Masood, a military analyst.

Citing American abandonment after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan in 1989, a Pakistani intelligence official pointed that the terrorist would definitely return to wreack havoc once the military retreats.

“If they leave in haste, like they left in the past, we will be back to the bad old days.Our jihadis would head back to Afghanistan, reopen training camps, and it will be business as usual,” he said. 

Wednesday, November 18 PESHAWAR: Swat Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah on Tuesday claimed that he had safely crossed over to Afghanistan.

The BBC Urdu Service said the Maulana phoned its Peshawar reporter Abdul Hai Kakar to claim that he was in Afghanistan and that his fighters would soon start guerrilla attacks against security forces in Swat.

The report said Fazlullah read a written statement while speaking from a mobile phone having Afghanistan code. The signal wasn’t clear, probably due to the fact the he was in some remote mountainous area.

Fazlullah threatened that NWFP Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain, who is in the forefront in condemning the Taliban, would meet the same fate as late Afghan president Dr Najibullah. It may be recalled that Dr Najibullah was shot dead and then hanged, along with his younger brother Ahmadzai, in Kabul’s Aryana Square by the Afghan Taliban on September 27, 1996 on the day they captured the city.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain on his part said the provincial government would probe the circumstances in which Fazlullah escaped from Swat.

The ANP-PPP government and the federal government functionaries as well as military authorities have been claiming that Fazlullah had been cornered in a small area in Swat after being injured in an Army action.

“It’s next to impossible to take a crippled man, if we are to believe the government version, from Swat to Afghanistan. Even if he hasn’t lost any of his limbs, crossing over to Afghanistan for a person like Fazlullah is difficult because he would have to go through Dir and Bajaur’s Momand area to enter the neighbouring country. He can be spotted, particularly when escorted by a group of people,” former ambassador to Afghanistan Rustam Shah Mohmand told The News.

Rustam Shah said it would be considered a defeat for both the Taliban and security forces. “Actually, the massive military operation that resulted in huge displacement was launched to kill or capture this man. If he covers such a long distance in a hard area to escape, it’s the failure of security forces,” he argued.

On the other hand, Rustam Shah said it was an utter defeat for the Taliban as their movement in the area was no more and the leadership fled because it was convinced they could not survive in the valley. He believed it was difficult for Fazlullah to cross over to Afghanistan but he might have gone there. “It could also be a tactic to distract security forcesí attention from him and make them believe to stop a search for him,” he added.

Former secretary security Fata Brig (retd) Mahmood Shah said his escape to Afghanistan was the failure of security forces. “It would be a great embarrassment for Pakistani and Afghan security forces if Fazlullah has crossed over,” he said.

However, he doubted that whether he had gone to the neighbouring country. “Some mobile SIMs of Afghanistan work in border areas of Pakistan so it doesn’t prove he is on other side of the border,” he said. He also questioned as to whether the person who talked to the BBC was really Fazlullah. Mahmood Shah said he didn’t think Fazlullah had gone to Afghanistan and argued he might have orchestrated this drama to find an excuse for their failure to continue their activities in Swat.

“Neither Fazlullah could run an organisation from Afghanistan nor the Afghan Taliban will allow him to do so,” Rustam Shah said and hastened to add that Fazlullah might be asked to either fight against the Nato forces or peacefully live in the southern part of that country.

SARAROGHA, Pakistan, Nov 17  - Pakistani forces have captured most main Taliban bases in their offensive in South Waziristan and will soon fan out into the rugged countryside to hunt for militants there, commanders said on Tuesday.

Soldiers have advanced faster than expected in their month-long offensive, seizing main roads and Taliban bases but militant leaders have apparently melted away while their bombers have unleashed carnage in towns.

The United States, weighing options for how to turn an intensifying insurgency in Afghanistan, has welcomed the offensive but is keen to see Pakistan tackle Afghan Taliban factions based in lawless enclaves along the border.

Chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told reporters on a trip to South Waziristan with the army that some militants might have slipped out the region but many were hiding.

“We still believe many are still here. They have gone to the countryside, the forested areas, to villages and into the caves,” Abbas said.

“After taking complete control of the roads and the tracks, we are going to chase them in the forested areas, wherever they are hiding in the countryside,” he said.

More than 500 militants had been killed in the offensive since Oct. 17 while 70 soldiers had been killed, he said.

There has been no independent verification of casualties as reporters and other independent observers are not allowed into the conflict zone except on an occasional trip with the military.

Highlighting fears that the militants have melted away to fight another day, the leader of the Taliban in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad, telephoned the BBC to say he had escaped to Afghanistan and would soon launch raids against the army.

The army, which has largely cleared Swat of militants, said in July the valley’s Taliban leader, self-styled cleric Fazlullah, was believed to have been wounded. The government said in September he had been surrounded.

The army on Tuesday took reporters to the captured Taliban bastion of Sararogha in South Waziristan where former Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud was killed by a missile-firing U.S. drone aircraft on Aug. 5.

Surrounded by barren, rocky ridges and cut through by dried-up streams, the settlement of mud-walled compounds was deserted of civilians. A security force fort that the militants captured was almost completely destroyed in the fighting.

HIDING IN CAVES

Soldiers displayed militant pamphlets including one on making bombs, captured ammunition and weapons, and pouched vests that suicide bombers pack with explosives and strap on.

Brigadier Mohammad Shafiq said his men had battled hard to capture the base: “Their defences were well-constructed and we faced extremely tough resistance.”

In the captured militant stronghold of Ladha, Brigadier Farrukh Jamal said his men had surrounded 35 militants hiding in forest-covered mountains nearby.

“They are hiding in caves and we will capture them soon or kill them,” Jamal said.

Several rifle shots rang out and smoke rose over the slopes where the militants were hiding.

Jamal said his men had cut militant supply lines and would soon be advancing into deep forest to the west.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, visiting people displaced by the fighting, said he hoped the South Waziristan offensive would be over earlier than expected and civilians could go home.

U.S. President Barack Obama is hoping the Pakistani army will soon direct its attention to the Afghan Taliban factions and has stepped up pressure on Pakistan to go after them, the New York Times reported on Monday.

Abbas said the expected defeat of the Taliban in South Waziristan would create new conditions and opportunities.

“It creates voids all around and will open more options for the state and military,” Abbas said.

“Maybe you don’t have to conduct more operations. By those effects you can achieve those objectives,” he said.

(News sourced from: Reuters)

President Barack Obama is expected to make a long-awaited announcement on his Afghan war strategy in the next few days in an attempt to bring an end to a prolonged period of uncertainty surrounding US intentions, officials said today.

Gordon Brown today attempted to shore up British public support for the war prior to Obama’s declaration, arguing that Nato’s resolve in Afghanistan would “never succumb to appeasement”, while offering to host a conference in January to agree a phased handover of the military effort to Kabul.

Nato allies are awaiting Obama’s declaration on strategy and reinforcements before deciding on their own contributions. However, impatient British defence chiefs have warned that the deployment of 500 extra British troops pledged by the prime minister was urgently required and should not be dependent on Washington’s decision, or on the political conditions laid down by the prime minister. “It’s nothing to do with politics. We need them now,” a defence official said.

Obama’s announcement is provisionally planned before the American Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday next week. If it is left until after that it could coincide jarringly with the ceremony bestowing the Nobel peace prize on the US president in Oslo on 10 December.

However, before finally deciding on how many more troops to send into the battle with the Taliban, the US is seeking specific commitments from the Afghan and Pakistani governments on what they are prepared to contribute to the fight.

The US and its allies are demanding fundamental reforms from President Hamid Karzai aimed at curbing the corruption rampant in his government and increasing the flow of recruits to a new Afghan national army.

Western officials are demanding that Karzai signal a decisive break with the past in his inauguration speech on Thursday and in his subsequent government appointments. There has been speculation in Washington that Obama, currently on a tour of Asia, might fly to Kabul to deliver that message himself.

Meanwhile, Obama’s national security adviser, James Jones, has been dispatched to Islamabad to ask the government there to extend its current offensive against Pakistani insurgents to fight Afghan Taliban groups sheltering on Pakistani territory. According to the New York Times, Jones told the Islamabad government that the US strategy would only work if Pakistan broadened its military offensive in the tribal areas along its borders with Afghanistan. The appeal was contained in a letter from Obama delivered by Jones to Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president.

Pakistan has raised concerns that a US military surge in Afghanistan would push more Taliban across the border and undermine Pakistani stability, at a time when its forces have been making gains against the insurgents responsible for a recent string of bomb attacks across the country.

Obama’s military advisers, on the other hand, are worried that the collapse of the Karzai government, leading either to anarchy or a Taliban government, would represent a far more powerful threat to Pakistan’s long-term stability. They argue that the future of Pakistan, a volatile state with nuclear weapons, is ultimately of more strategic importance to the US than Afghanistan.

They also believe the fall of Kabul would provide al-Qaida once more with an expanse of territory from which to plot new attacks on the west on the scale of September 11.

Brown echoed those arguments in his Mansion House speech tonight. “We are in Afghanistan because we judge that if the Taliban regained power, al-Qaida and other terrorist groups would once more have an environment in which they could operate,” he said, according to an early text of his remarks. “We are there because action in Afghanistan is not an alternative to action in Pakistan, but an inseparable support to it.”

The White House’s decision-making over Afghanistan policy has been complicated by widespread fraud involved in Karzai’s re-election, and by leaks from assessments by the US commander in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, suggesting he needed 40,000 more soldiers. The Obama administration was furious at what it saw as the general’s attempt to pre-empt the president’s decision.

“I’m sceptical of having such a large increase in foreign forces at this time,” said Malcolm Chalmers, a former British government adviser now at the Royal United Services Institute. “Part of the problem with the current debate is that it’s a sort of double or quits mentality: either you’ve got to get out or you’ve got to have some massive increase, which is predicated on the assumption that with one last push you’ll succeed. It’s an illusion to think that the Taliban are going to be defeated. There’s not going to be an outright military victory, that’s not the nature of the conflict … what the military can do is contribute to creating a sustainable form of government in Afghanistan.”

Meanwhile, British army chiefs warned that the Afghan war was not an “aberration” but rather the shape of conflicts to come in which Britain would be involved. They published two documents which built on the lessons learned in Afghanistan and Iraq: one on the role of the military in providing security, notably in failing states, and the other on counter-insurgency doctrine, the first such document in eight years.

“Counter-insurgency requires some sort of political accommodation,” the counter-insurgency chapter of the new army field manual states. It adds, echoing the approach British commanders want to see in Afghanistan: “Reconciliation is a two-way process, best undertaken from a position of strength.”

British commanders have been pressing for greater contact with reconcilable Taliban elements as well as with provincial and district officials and tribal elders.

(News sourced from: guardian.co.uk)

Karachi, Nov.17 : Pakistan ranks 42nd in the global list of most corrupt countries, the Transparency International’s (TI) latest report has revealed.

The TI’s report said Pakistan has gained few positions from last year and now stands at 42nd place in the list of most corrupt countries in which Somalia, Afghanistan are seen as the most corrupt among 180 nations.

New Zealand and Denmark are the two least corrupt countries in the world, The News reports.

New Zealand was the top-ranked country with a score of 9.4, followed by Denmark at 9.3, and Singapore and Sweden, both on 9.2, the report said.

Releasing the annual report, the TI chief in Pakistan, Adeel Gilani, said anti-corruption efforts in the country had taken a 180-degree turn after the then President General Pervez Musharraf issued the National Reconciliation Ordinance in October 2007.

Countries that improved their position on the list included the United States, whose points rose to 7.5 from 7.3.

TI cited Washington’s swift response to the financial crisis, including reforms demanding greater transparency and accountability as one of the prime reasons of such a change. (ANI)

PKonweb Monitor

Pakistan army is one to two weeks away from winning control of all major roads in its assault on Taliban fighters in the tribal region of South Waziristan, and will then move to take on the militants in their mountain strongholds, says a report.

In the first stage of the month-old South Waziristan operation, 28,000 troops have captured key highways and all the significant towns in the region, Major General Athar Abbas said in an interview at army headquarters yesterday. “In the second phase, we go and chase and eliminate them from the pockets and their hideouts,” he said after militants attacked a spy agency office in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing 20 people.

The army started the campaign, the biggest yet against militant insurgents, on Oct. 17. The U.S. is pressuring Pakistan to clear the area of Taliban guerrillas, who it says are using bases there for attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The Taliban “keep calling it a tactical retreat, but in fact it was a rout,” Abbas told Bloomberg in Rawalpindi, the military headquarters city adjacent to the capital, Islamabad. “You don’t leave behind your personal weapons and ammunition” in an organized withdrawal, he said, as the army has found the guerrillas doing in Waziristan.

More than 500 militants have been killed in the offensive, while 55 soldiers have died, he said.

The offensive has provoked suicide bombings and commando raids by militants that have killed about 400 people in towns and cities, including the capital, over the last six weeks. Terrorist attacks had already increased after former Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a missile strike by a drone aircraft in the Waziristan area in August.

The army operation in South Waziristan is targeting the Tehreek-e-Taliban, the group now led by Hakimullah Mehsud that Pakistan blames for 80 percent of terrorist attacks on its soil.

Army Chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani while talking to his top commanders three days ago said attacks by militants were acts of “cowardice and frustration,” as they were unable to face the military.

Today, he visited Ladha and Sararogha in South Waziristan to meet the field commanders and troops engaged in Operation Rah-e-Nijat.

RAWALPINDI: Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani on Friday again demanded from US to stop drone attacks and provide drone technology to Pakistan.

Sources said that the Chief of the Army Staff expressed these views during his meeting with the US advisor on National Security, James Jones on Friday at the GHQ.

A host of issues came under discussion like Pak-US Defense ties, the war against terrorism, situation in Afghanistan, internal and regional security and others.

During the meeting, the COAS briefed James Jones about the ongoing operation in South Waziristan. He expressed his concern on eliminating check posts at the Afghan side on the Pakistani border.

Pakistan, he said, has paid a heavy price in the war against terrorism, adding that the drone attacks must be halted immediately.

The issues relating to the new Afghan government and others were discussed with James Jones.

James Jones said that US will keep on cooperating with Pakistan thick and thin, urging that the ongoing SWA Operation is of utmost importance, adding that the National Security is most vital.

(News Sourced from: Regional Times)