KAMRA – Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has made it clear that the United States will have to take Pakistan into confidence over new Afghan policy.

The COAS said this while informally talking to a group of senior journalists shortly after the rollout ceremony of Pakistan’s first JF-17 aircraft here Monday. Gen Kayani said Americans knew that the Pakistan’s role was very much essential for stability in Afghanistan. “We know how to protect our national interests,” he added.

When his attention was drawn towards US efforts to review its Afghan policy, General Kayani said the US would have to take Pakistan on board about its future Afghan policy. “The US leadership realises the importance of Pakistan and its key role in the war against terror. Therefore, it is out of question that US can sideline Pakistan on such an important issue”, General Kayani maintained. He defended the timing of operation Rah-e-Nijat launched to target the terror networks of late Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan Agency, saying security forces had the requisite element of surprise. “We launched the offensive and took the terrorists by surprise,” he added.

General Kayani added that the operation was launched precisely one and a half hour after the high level briefing at the Prime Minister House, Islamabad on October 17.

The COAS also dismissed the notion that hardcore TTP leaders and commanders had escaped to Afghanistan, adding that terrorists had failed to resist the operation and were on the run. “We are trying to hunt them in effort, and they are left with no space to regroup,” the COAS said.

He explained that the security forces had made very important gains in Operation Rah-e-Nijat and vowed to hunt down the terrorists come what may.

Besides securing key areas from terrorists and destruction of their bases, the security forces in South Waziristan have killed at least 550 terrorists and apprehended 15 others, whereas 60 security forces personnel have been martyred and 150 injured since the launch of Operation Rah-e-Nijat on October 17. (Source: The Nation)

PARACHINAR, Pakistan — Pakistan’s army killed 18 Islamist militants in a northwestern region Monday, part of an escalating campaign against insurgents intent on toppling the U.S.-allied government.
It was the second day of fighting in Shahukhel in Hangu district close to the Afghan border.

Like other parts of the lawless frontier zone, Hangu is home to al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents that launch attacks in Pakistan, as well as in Afghanistan.

Pakistan is under pressure to crack down on militants and has won praise from its Western allies for an ongoing, major operation in the South Waziristan border region. But critics say the army should do more against insurgent groups who use the northwest as a safe haven to attack Western troops in Afghanistan.

Hangu is around 150 kilometers (93 miles) north of South Waziristan.

In Shahukhel, troops backed by artillery and helicopters killed 18 militants on Monday, intelligence officials said on customary condition of anonymity. There was no word on any military casualties. On Sunday, 12 militants were killed in the same area.

Journalists are banned from visiting the border region, making it impossible to verify casualty figures.

Taliban militants have carried out, or been blamed for, hundreds of bloody bombings in Pakistan against Western, military and government targets in recent years, including a spike over the last seven weeks that has killed more than 300 people. (News sourced from: Associated Press)

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. 

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.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has offered to talk on all issues to rival Pakistan provided it cracks down on terror groups based in the country. The Indian leader, who is visiting Indian Kashmir, also called on separatist groups in the region to join a dialogue with his government.

Inaugurating a rail link in Indian Kashmir’s Anantnag district, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India and Pakistan can talk on a range of issues such as trade, and easing of travel procedures for families living across the Himalayan region’s divided border.

But Mr. Singh says for a productive dialogue, it is vital for Pakistan to destroy militant groups, their camps and infrastructure on its soil.

The Indian Prime Minister says if Pakistan takes action on this, New Delhi will not be found wanting in its response.

The offer of talks comes nearly a year after New Delhi virtually put on hold a peace dialogue between the two countries following last year’s terror attacks in Mumbai, which India blamed on terrorists based in Pakistan.

Mr. Singh said the five-year-old peace process has been repeatedly setback by terror attacks in India.

The peace dialogue had lowered tensions between the rivals, but has flagged amid repeated Indian accusations that Pakistan is not doing enough to clamp down on terror groups operating from the country.

Kashmir is split between the two countries, which have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region.

Speaking amid tight security, the Indian leader said an era of violence in Kashmir has come to an end, and called on separatist leaders in Kashmir to engage in a dialogue with his government.

Mr. Singh says his government is willing to talk to all people and groups who support the return of peace and development in the state.

Indian Kashmir has been wracked by a two-decade-long separatist insurgency, although levels of violence have sharply dropped in the lpast five years.

A dialogue held in 2006 with separatist leaders opposed to Indian rule failed to produce a breakthrough. But earlier this month, the Indian government said it will launch a new round of “quiet diplomacy” with Kashmiri separatists.

Moderate separatist leaders have welcomed the initiative, but hardline Kashmiri leaders are unlikely to join the dialogue. This was clear on Wednesday - hardline separatists called a general strike to protest the Indian leader’s two day visit to the region.

{Source: VOA}

After summer’s paralysing heat, most Pakistanis look forward to autumn’s balmy weather as a traditional time for picnics, leisurely meals and going out.

But the recent wave of suicide attacks and terror alerts is making families and shopkeepers nervous that their next visit to a restaurant or market in Pakistan’s capital could end in carnage.

‘We don’t go anywhere, this is not a situation for moving around or going to markets and other public places,’ said Bushra Tayyeb, a housewife in Islamabad.

‘We can’t go out to eat, to the cinema or for a picnic. My kids are getting bored at home, we’re thinking of moving abroad,’ she said.

While her 12-year-old son Danish is attending classes again after schools closed for almost a week following the suicide attack on an Islamabad university, he has been upset by the disruption. Meanwhile, thousands of children at private schools are still at home.

‘I can’t study well. I can’t go watch a movie or play in the park, I don’t know what is happening with me and this country,’ Danish said.

‘I want to enjoy my life like before. I want to move freely. I can’t sit at home,’ he said, urging the government to provide protection.

Most Pakistanis mock Islamabad as an entertainment desert compared with Karachi, which never sleeps, and Lahore, feted for its cultural sophistication, and the fear has hit restaurant and shop staff with a new malaise.

‘We were busy working until 1:00 am a few weeks back, but now we hardly make our bread and butter because people are not going out these days,’ said Haseeb Abbasi, a waiter at a roadside burger stand.

The shopping complex over the road was once a crowded hangout for youngsters but, Abbasi says, few linger there now.

Western fast-food outlets in particular fear that their US connections make them more susceptible to attack by militants.

The military’s 12-day ground and air offensive against sanctuaries of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, which has claimed responsibility for most of the recent attacks, has only compounded fears.

‘We have lost 50 to 60 per cent of our customers in the last few days. It is all because of suicide attacks and the South Wazirstan operation,’ said Muhammad Shabbir, manager of Islamabad’s KFC.

Attacks are nothing new in Islamabad. The most spectacular — a truck bomb killed at least 60 people at the Marriott Hotel in September 2008 — led to an exodus of many foreigners.

Pakistanis have steered clear of fast-food chains for months and the metal scanners manned by guards at restaurant doors fail to reassure them.

‘We’re going to deploy more security guards and install hidden cameras but this doesn’t guarantee that nothing will happen. If a suicide bomber decides to strike here, nothing can stop him,’ Shabbir said.

Frightened shopkeepers say they feel like sitting ducks.

‘Not only are customers staying away due to security fears but we face the same threat. Anybody looking like a customer can come and explode inside our shop,’ said Mansoor Nazir, a salesman at a clothing store.

Anger is rising against the government and the security services who fail to provide adequate protection.

‘Their duty is to protect us but they can’t even place barriers and security pickets in the right places,’ said Nazir.

Policemen, who are poorly paid and lack training, liken their task to trying to find a needle in a haystack.

‘We’re here to search for terrorists and suicide bombers but it is hard to check thousands of passengers and their cars,’ said Muhammad Hamraz, a police constable in charge of a checkpoint on a major thoroughfare.

‘A suicide bomber can strike the middle of this queue, but we come to work fully prepared for death because there is no alternative,’ he said.

{Source: Dawn}

Educational institutions governed by armed forces will be shut down in Pakistan due to security issues.

The schools will be closed for one week after Taliban telephone calls were overheard by security forces.

During a conversation, two terrorists discussed the planning for the hijack of a school student bus.

It is believed the discussion centred around a renowned military educational institution.

Army and navy schools and colleges have unanimously decided on the closure which will take place immediately.

The security establishment has been concerned about attacks on schools in the wake of ongoing army operations in troubled south Waziristan.

A number of private and government schools were also considering a temporary closure on Sunday following the military schools’ announcement, Pakistani security officials said.

Aamir Ghauri, editor of the Asian Journal, told Al Jazeera that the recent escalation in violence had made Pakistan “a country of fear”.

“People actually don’t want to go to work,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Islamabad, said government officials feared that schools could be targeted by suicide bombers, or that pupils could be taken hostage by those threatening to blow the school up.

“We have no way of confirming whether or not the threats were made by the Taliban, but the threat was enough for the Pakistani government to take this action,” he said.

Gen David Petraeus, head of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), leaves for Islamabad on Monday for talks with Pakistani commanders who are conducting a major operation against the extremists in South Waziristan.

The decision to send Gen Petraeus, who was treated for prostrate cancer last week, shows the importance Washington attaches to this operation in an area it describes as an Al Qaeda safe haven.

Pentagon officials also said that Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had spoken to Pakistan Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to emphasise continued US support.

At the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recent military offensives had forced her to change her views about Pakistan’s ability to confront the militants.

Commenting on the Waziristan operation, she said the Pakistani military was ‘very much focused on also going into the heartland of where the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda are located and where these plots and these attacks are planned and directed.’

The army on Saturday launched a three-pronged attack against Taliban stronghold in South Waziristan with housands of troops, backed by jet fighters and helicopter gunships, and started advancing on the Mehsud tribe’s heartland at Makin from three points at first light.

The operation, code-named Rah-i-Nijat (path to deliverance), seems to be almost a replay of the one last year against Baitullah Mehsud.

The action was called off all of a sudden, perplexing some observers as they felt the forces were close to achieving the objective.

This had drawn criticism from independent observers and contributed to fresh allegations that the militants were the military’s surrogates and it would never take decisive action against them.

Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a drone attack on Aug 5. The operation, believed to be the most difficult of all against militants in a treacherous terrain in the tribal regions, followed a spate of terrorist attacks, including the one at the General Headquarters, that have left over 150 people dead.

Military and intelligence officials blame militants based in the Mehsud redoubt of South Waziristan for eighty per cent of terrorist attacks in the country.

Army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani briefed the political leadership on Friday on the ‘imperative’ of a military operation against the Mehsuds.

The military has been bracing for an operation for the past three months, putting in place 30,000 troops and enforcing a crippling blockade that forced thousands of people to flee their homes for safety.

Military officials said they had undertaken extensive studies to make the operation a success.

The three previous operations in South Waziristan, — in 2004, 2005 and early last year — all ended up with the government suing for peace.

Security forces pounded Taliban bases from the air and bore down on their leader’s hometown on Sunday, intensifying a major offensive against the militants which it said had killed 60 militants.

More than 100,000 people have fled South Waziristan, part of the tribal belt on the Afghan border that US officials call the most dangerous place on earth, staying with relatives or renting accommodation to escape the fighting.

Thousands of al-Qaeda-linked fighters are holed up in the tribal belt, where the army says the offensive is concentrated on strongholds of the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) movement.

On the second day of the offensive, Taliban armed with rockets and heavy weapons put up strong resistance at Sharwangi, an area of impenetrable forest high in the mountains as fighter jets bombed positions, officials said.

The military said 60 Taliban followers had been killed, although the region is cut off from the outside world and information on militant casualties is impossible to independently verify.

‘In last 24 hours, reportedly 60 terrorists have been killed in operation Rah-e-Nijat,’ the military said in a statement.

‘Casualties of security forces are five soldiers (dead) and 11 are injured.’

Ground forces launched the three-pronged push on Saturday, starting a much-anticipated assault in a bid to crush networks blamed for some of the worst attacks that have killed more than 2,250 people over the past two years.

‘The resistance is not as stiff as we were expecting, maybe because we are still moving and not yet reached the strongholds of the Taliban like Kotkai, Makin, Ladha and Kanigurram,’ one military official told AFP.

About 20,000 to 25,000 troops headed into action after Pakistan vowed to act after attacks left more than 170 people dead in less than two weeks.

Jets carried out fresh air strikes on Sunday at Ladha and Makeen in the north, backing up troops who encountered resistance on the ground, a military official told AFP in the northwest on condition of anonymity.

He said five Taliban hideouts were destroyed. Another official said the army captured militant-held village Spinkai Raghzai, erecting a checkpoint en route to Kotkai, the home town of Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud.

Numerous offensives against militants in the tribal belt have met with limited success, costing the lives of 2,000 troops and ending generally with peace agreements that critics say simply gave the enemy a chance to re-arm.

‘The operation will continue until the objectives are achieved. The army has blocked all entry and exit points of Waziristan,’ said army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas.

Commanders have outlined an offensive lasting six to eight weeks, with the goal of finishing before the onset of harsh winter snows.

There are an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 TTP fighters in South Waziristan and up to 25,000 across Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt, which has a history of fierce independence and a powerful culture of revenge.

Its tribesmen famously resisted the British in the 19th century and its mountain terrain is pockmarked with goat tracks, caves and thick forest.

‘War in Waziristan will not be a simple one. Waziristan is like a black hole,’ Rahimullah Yusufzai, a tribal affairs expert, told AFP.

US officials say al-Qaeda fled into the tribal areas after US-led operations toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and is now using the area as a base for plotting attacks on the west and the region.

The offensive by security forces was accompanied by an indefinite curfew slapped on parts of South Waziristan, officials said.

Since August, more than 100,000 civilians have been registered by local authorities after fleeing South Waziristan, normally home to 600,000 people, said a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), Ariane Rummery.

‘Over the last five days, 3,065 families (around 21,000 people) registered… before this latest influx there had been about 80,500 people or 11,000 families,’ she told AFP.

Pakistani officials say the number of displaced could rise to 200,000 people, who are staying mostly with relatives or renting rooms in the neighbouring districts of Tank and Dera Ismail Khan.

{Source: AFP}

The army in Pakistan has ordered an investigation into a video, posted on the internet, which appears to show soldiers abusing suspected militants.

The video begins with a man apparently being questioned by Pakistani troops.

When he says he does not know the whereabouts of a family member, the accused being part of the Taliban, the signal is given to begin the beating.

Soldiers surround the man, kicking him and beating him with sticks.

Through the 10-minute film, four men are shown being physically and verbally abused in this way.

They are threatened that if they do not cooperate, they will be cut into pieces.

In a statement, Pakistan’s army said it is now investigating the matter.

Anyone found to have done wrong, it says, will face strict disciplinary action.

{Source: BBC}

Special episode with Mushahid Hussain Syed (Secy Gen PML-Q) on what consists of the establishment, how permanent it is, its past role, present and future role in the country, etc. A must watch!

By Ayaz Amir

The army and air force have taken on the Taleban and loosened the grip of the Taleban on our collective psyche. The threat of terrorism may not have vanished but it has definitely receded. But who will take on the great baronies of industry, commerce and banking against whose clubs, or cartels, the government in all its power and glory 
is helpless?

The sugar crisis represents only one aspect of the power of this multi-layered mafia. What the people of Pakistan are paying for sugar is a price determined not by the market but by the manipulation of this powerful lobby.

When the government, employing some foresight—admittedly, a hard commodity to come by in our climate—should have imported some sugar to stabilise domestic prices, it did nothing of the kind. Whose pressure was it which forestalled this move?

In General Ziaul Haq’s heyday, a sign of power was to own a sugar mill. So anyone who was anyone sought a licence to set up the same. Today sugar mill ownership cuts across the political spectrum, the who’s who of the sugar industry reading like a who’s who of politics. The cement cartel is one of the most powerful clubs in the country. Between themselves cement producers set the price of cement and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

The original sin was committed in the early 1990s when the State Cement Corporation was denationalised. From that fateful moment on the price of cement went up and up. And there is no better museum displaying the power of the cement industry than my district 
of Chakwal.

When DG Khan Cement and a company owned by one of Queen Elizabeth’s knights—I joke not—wanted to set up cement plants in Tehsil Choa Saidan Shah of district Chakwal, they were backed by the whole might of the Musharraf regime—from Musharraf himself to Shaukat Aziz, to Punjab chief minister Pervaiz Ellahi, down to the district administration. DG Khan Cement played ducks and drakes while acquiring the land for its project but not as much as the company owned by the Queen’s knight which, with the help of the powers that be, misused the Punjab Land Acquisition Act — one of the most iniquitous pieces of legislation on our statute books — to forcibly acquire land around Village Tatral, next to the Hindu monuments of Katas Raj.

Because of the unholy incentives given to the cement industry Pakistan now produces more cement than it needs. Which means we are exporting cement at the cost of our natural environment, cement production being one of the biggest degraders of the soil and the environment known to man.

There has been a hue and cry about the damage done to the Margalla Hills by limestone quarrying and by a cement plant with a 1300 acre lease over a part of the Margalla range (this a gift from General Zia). But the devastation to the fauna, flora, soil, landscape and air of Choa Saidan Shah is on a scale much greater than anything happening to 
the Margallas.

Khalid Mirza, Chairman of the Competition Commission of Pakistan, is to be commended for the hefty fine he has recently levied on the barons of the cement industry. More power to his efforts and may there be more like him in the arid wastes of the Islamic Republic.

Banking is another cartel playing snakes-and-ladders with the country’s plight, its gaming skills again totally unchecked. Its patron saint during the Musharraf era was a smart banker himself, Shaukat Aziz (why does his name occur again and again in the roll call of our economic misfortunes?). What this sector received from his hands was not velvet but platinum treatment. While banking profits soared, the people as usual found themselves ripped off.

This sleight of hand was achieved through a simple mechanism. I’ve just called my bank to get my facts straight. The rate of return on deposits is 5 per cent while the interest rate on loans is almost 19 per cent. During the Musharraf years the return on deposits went as low as 2 percent. This is less sleight of hand than daylight robbery.

The high and mighty of course follow a well-trod route around this conundrum. Whatever the interest rate on loans, they are scarcely bothered because, if sufficiently high and mighty, they manage to avoid the entire inconvenience of having to return their loans. The loans written off every year by our leading banks would be a scandal anywhere else. Here it is normal practice which doesn’t even elicit much comment any more.

In Musharraf’s early days, after I had once commented on the business skills of Chaudry Shujaat Hussain and Pervaiz Ellahi, I was invited to lunch by them so that they could explain their side of the story. With a solemn face Chaudry Shujaat assured me that all their affairs with banks were properly regularised. I said that I did not doubt that for a moment. All their loan write-offs were done by the book.

These two Chaudries have always been famed for their hospitality. I had written that if I had only a hundredth of the loans they took and never had to pay back, my table would spread from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea.

The benign practice of doing things by the book remains alive and well. Prime Minister Gilani’s respected wife, Madam Fouzia Gilani, along with some business partners of hers took two loans from the Agricultural Bank — 71 million and 100 million—way back in the 1980s.

As, quite correctly and entirely in keeping with the prevailing norm, they paid back not a penny of those loans, they had cases for recovery filed against them. Now, Allah be praised, we stand informed that matters have been settled between Madam Gilani and the Agri Bank and the cases have been withdrawn. Prime Minister Gilani is all for transparent government. Things can hardly get more transparent than this.

The only high-flying banker friend I have is Ali Raza of the National Bank whose smartness and banking prowess can be judged from the fact that so far the only thing I have received from him are compliments, nothing that looks like a loan I would not have to return, the only true status symbol in Pakistan.

Leona Helmsley, the New York billionaire and hotel investor famously said, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes…” In Pakistan, as the example of First Lady Gilani freshly illustrates, only the little people return their loans.

Politicians in Pakistan live under a great illusion. They think they run the country when actually they do nothing of the kind. More than even the red-stripe wearers in General Headquarters, it is the captains of industry, commerce, banking and real estate who run things from behind the scenes and wield real power. Politicians represent the face of things. The string-pullers are different.

Malik Riaz of Bahria Town has been in with every government. Retired military high-rankers are on his payroll. He was thick with Musharraf, thick with the Chaudries, and now very thick with President Zardari. And he is only one instance of a phenomenon much greater than him.

(Ayaz Amir is a distinguished Pakistani commentator and member of parliament)

{Source: Khaleej Times Online}