Price for Surrendering in India

Claims, Counter-Claims

• Syed Liaqat Shah was arrested from the Sanauli checkpost on the India-Nepal border on March 20 by the Delhi police
• They say he was a Hizbul Mujahideen man, on his way to Delhi as part of a ‘Holi terror plot’
• The Jammu and Kashmir police refutes this. They say Liaqat was a former militant on his way to his Kashmir home from PoK. According to them, he was a beneficiary of the state’s rehabilitaion policy for former militants.
• The Centre has asked the National Investigation Agency to probe and resolve the dispute
• It has now been decided to deploy J&K police, along with the Sashastra Seema Bal, on the Indo-Nepal border to streamline the surrender of ex-militants

Withering words. “I won’t think twice if the government allows us to return to Pakistan,” says Akhtar-un-Nisa, the second wife of Syed Liaqat Shah who was arrested by the Delhi police as a “conspirator of a terror plot” to launch fidayeen attacks in the capital on Holi.

Akhtar, 47, is the best person to hear the story from: “We were among the 10 people returning from Pakistan to India via Nepal. Seven people were received by their relatives, no one came to receive us. They (special cell of the Delhi police) arrested us near the Indo-Nepal border and took us to Gorakhpur. They didn’t recover any objectionable item from us. We pleaded that we were going to Kash­mir under the rehabilitation policy ann­ounced by the Jammu and Kashmir government for militants who want to surrender, but they didn’t listen to us. I was later released in New Delhi.”

It’s become a full-blown controversy  that ref­uses to die down. Even in the face of criticism, the Delhi police is sticking to its claim that Liaqat is a Hizbul Muj­ah­ideen operative. The Jammu and Kash­mir police is firm in its position that he was a PoK-based ex-militant on his way to Kas­hmir for state-sponsored rehabilitation. At the very least, the affair exposes the lack of com­munication between the police of the two states, especially on the issue of sur­render and rehabilitation.

The J&K government has reason to be upset. It says its rehabilitation policy—which has the overt backing of the Union home ministry—has attracted over 1,000 applications, and has enabled 241 former militants to return to J&K from Pakistan in the past two years. One source of this  row is the route of return. Ex-militants are officially all­owed to return through four entry poi­nts—Poonch-Rawalakote, Uri-Muz­affarabad, Wagah (Punjab) and the igi airport, Delhi. However, none of the former militants, including Liaqat, chose to travel through these designated routes. They preferred the Nepal route—ostensibly because Pakistan (for obvious reasons) created hurdles in the policy’s implementation. The J&K government reluctantly allowed this for the sake of its pet policy. Of the men who have returned to start on a clean slate, including 113 who have brought their families along, several arrived in India via Kathmandu, after flying there on Pakistani passports.

Akhtar says she had travelled to Pak­istan on a valid passport in 2001 after her first husband died in an encounter with the army in 1995. Her physically chall­enged teenage daughter, Jabeena, who accompanied her to Pakistan and back, was from her first marriage. “In 2006, I married Liaqat, who ran a grocery shop at Muzaffarabad (capital of PoK)…he had abandoned militancy long back. We wanted to return to our roots to lead a happy life, but the Delhi police has played spoilsport. Now I won’t think again if they allow us to return,” a visibly shaken and disappointed Akhtar says.

The J&K government and the state police have confirmed that Liaqat was slated for the rehabilitation policy meant for ex-militants in Pakistan who had ren­ounced violence and wanted to ret­urn home. Liaquat’s first wife, Ameena Bano, submitted the required documents on Feb­ruary 5, 2011, in the deputy commissioner’s office in Kupwara, the town nea­­rest to Liaqat’s village, Dardpora, in north Kashmir. As the Kupwara police had no criminal case against Liaqat, it approved the application and forwarded it to the CID and other departments. Lia­­qat’s family duly informed the police about his probable date of return after he left Pakistan with his family.

“When the state government announ­ced that militants who had crossed the LoC will be allowed to return, we urged him to return along with his second wife and step-daughter,” says Ameena, who lives with her two sons. “My brother never participated in any militant activity in Kashmir,” says Liaqat’s brother, Syed Kar­amat Shah. “He was coming here to sur­render, and we were jubilant that he was returning after 18 years.”

The J&K government fears that Liaqat’s arrest might be a “big setback” to its sho­wpiece rehabilitation policy. “Other Kashmiris who want to come back to their homes under it will be discouraged,” says chief minister Omar Abd­ullah. Already there are reports that 15 former militants, all of them from Dar­d­pora, have second thoughts about ret­urning to the Valley after seeing what  Lia­qat is going through. “This includes two of Liaqat’s relatives. They have decided to reconsider their decision,” says local MLA Abdul Haq Khan.

Meanwhile, the Delhi police has bec­ome a figure of ridicule in the milita­ncy-hardened Kashmir valley—its credibility barely there after taking Liaqat (who is in his early 50s) for a ‘dreaded fidayeen’. Among those who picked holes in the Delhi police story is CM Omar Abd­ullah himself. “I have yet to see a fidayeen who returned holding the hands of his wife and daughter. Had he been a fidayeen, he would have grenades and guns in his hands,” Omar told the assembly in one of his rare broadsides against New Delhi.

Expectedly, the media in the Valley too has been rather scathing in its censure. A Kashmir Times editorial titled Fiction of Holi-terror plot had this to say, “The incident again highlights the misuse of authority and abuse of power by men in uniform, an obvious bid to win promotions and gallantry awa­rds or for someone’s political convenience.” A journalist wrote on Facebook: “My 12-year-old cousin on Liaqat’s arr­est: ‘This old man can’t handle a pis­tol, how would he have carried out a fidayeen attack?’”  Alluding to the Delhi police linking Liaqat to the recovery of arms and ammunition from a city guest house, he added: “Certainly, when India wants to implicate Kash­miris, guns grow even on trees”.

Mehbooba Mufti, president of the PDP, agrees. “Liaqat Shah’s arrest in Delhi indicates that the old industry of falsely implicating Kashmiri youth for sake of rewards and medals is thriving. Kashmiri youth have become a fodder for Con­gress-BJP electoral politics.”

In the past, around twelve Kashmiris, all arrested by the Delhi police on terror charges, had been declared innocent by the courts. Tragically, for the accused the clean chit came late; they had had to spend the prime of their life in prison.

No wonder everyone’s hoping for caution, maturity and restraint from New Delhi. A storm of protests in Kashmir—on the street and in the assembly—has forced the Union home ministry to ask the National Inve­stigation Agency to get to the bottom of the Liaqat affair, and check the circumstances of his arrest and the veracity  of the Delhi and J&K police’s opposing claims. Greater crises have blown over Kashmir. But they often have their origins in smaller bunglings.

Was Osama Dead Before the Attack?

By Raqib  Shah

In August  2010 after Pakistani authorities shared intelligence with US about the  compound in Abbottabad, US  after its own intelligence gathering ascertains that the compound is  occupied by Osama’s children. Compound surveillance continues through the next year in anticipation of capturing Osama bin Laden.

In January 2011 the young CIA contractor who is given the charge of Pakistan Station Chief works “extra hard” to gather clandestine information related to ISI and Al Qaeda relationship.

The  contractor, now  infamous as Raymond Davis the “American Rambo” receives a call from one of  his assets, early morning on January 27 about a high value target. But the  asset refuses to lay out details on phone or to leave the Lahore city,  where he had gone underground. Raymond Davis hires a rent a car and drives to Lahore, while his embassy’s security detail follows him in a  bullet proof Land Cruiser.

Raymond  Davis is able to loose his Islamabad’s ISI “detail”  by leaving in an unmarked  rented car.  The ISI agents falling for his trap follows the embassy’s Land Cruiser. Raymond Davis arrives at Lahore one hour earlier than his detail and meets with the asset. The asset gives him some pictures of an intelligence building at Tarbela and recording of a phone call. Listening to the phone call, Raymond  Davis realizes the gold mine he had struck, and  immediately calls his security detail which had also reached Lahore,  knowing if ISI reaches him first, he would not leave Lahore alive.

Next hour when the security car catches up with Raymond Davis, the ISI bosses realize that Raymond Davis had given them a slip earlier in the morning and in couple of hours he may have done in Lahore, he might have got some important information.  Resultantly, they put two contractors on his tail. Raymond Davis seeing a tail fears the worst and shoots them both in the back, at a traffic stop, without logically realizing that there was no way ISI could have known what he was holding.

His security detail which was close behind rushed to his “rescue”. However, by this time police had chased and  arrested Raymond Davis, while the security Land Cruiser running over  pedestrians escapes towards US consulate compound  in Lahore. ISI officers quickly reach the scene and confiscating the memory sticks realize Raymond Davis has unearthed a deep secret which even their immediate bosses didn’t know about.

The sensitivity of information rattles the entire echelons of the ISI and even its own officers are sent under house arrest while the relevant cell steps forward. At that time even some of the top intelligence officers of ISI outside the relevant cell did not know that Osama bin Laden had died and  his body was kept frozen at Tarbela. Young Raymond Davis had  unearthed the biggest secret of the century, somehow. But now the  Pandora’s Box had been opened. Pak top brass knew it had only a few days or weeks at best to capitalize Raymond Davis’ arrest before US get the intelligence.

In the next six weeks Pakistan plugs all leaks related to Osama’s death and makes sure that maximum gains are made for Raymond’s release. However, when  Raymond Davis is released on March 16, his debriefing results in a tsunami  of US policy, personal agendas and fueling of political rivalries. Everyone in the US chain of command now wanted to use the information to  further personal goals from General Petreaus  to President Obama. On March 17, knowing that Pakistan had lost its trump card General Kayani releases a press statement in which he criticizes drone attacks, first from him. From then on Pak Military raised its stance against drone attacks, fearing that US now might target its nuclear assets.

While in USA, politics was at its full swing. General Petreaus wanted to get the buckle for Osama bin Laden’s death on his belt for his future political ambitions, while President Obama wanted the credit to help his sliding popularity. While the tussle continued, the other issue still pending was how to confirm Osama’s death.

In the  next one month, nearly every week a top US official visited Pakistan,  everyone meeting with General Kayani trying to convince him to hand over  Osama’s body. While the stance from Pakistan remained, “Osama, Who?” It  was a first in the history that so many US top officials had visited and  met with a military chief of a foreign country in such a short time.  Seeing nothing getting through the top military brass of Pakistan, US  started a political and media campaign on the sides to put extra pressure  on Pak Military.

Politics within Obama Administration was also at its full swing. Petraeus was pulling all the strings to take the credit, while trying to lay out a plan to get Osama bin Laden’s body out of Pakistan. President Obama on the  other hand in one smooth move decided to “promote” Petraeus to the head of  the CIA. The news got out in the first week of April that Petraeus was  being transferred to the CIA. While at the main front, Obama continued to pressurize General Kayani and General Pasha and on April 5, Obama Administration submitted a report to the Congress that Pakistan government  had no clear strategy to triumph over militants. Alongside the report the media campaign against Pak Military and the ISI continued.

The second week of April began with a bang for top Pak Military brass. On  April 7, Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer and White House advisor wrote a  report arguing that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are not only a deterrent to  India but also to USA. The obvious had now become clear that Obama Administration has indirectly sent a clear threat to Pakistan’s nuclear assets. The timing of the report was perfect with Centcom Chief Gen James  Mattis meeting with General Kayani next day. In the meeting General Mattis asked about Pakistan’s cooperation in capturing Osama bin  Laden.

This was ironically one of typical Hollywood thriller scene. Pakistan knew that US knew that Pakistan knows  that US knows that Osama is dead. But Pakistan continued the naive game of “Osama Who?” while US continued to play the game that “Osama must be captured”. General Mattis leaves with veiled threats and stresses that Pakistan must do more to against the Al Qaeda and Taliban, or indirectly saying that Osama bin Laden must be handed over.

For the  next ten days US waits and sees how Pakistan responds to the threats, but  Pakistan acts by burying its head in the sand – see no evil, hear no evil.  Obama Administration ups the ante and on April 18 on Pakistan’s Geo TV, Adm. Mike Mullen said ISI “has a  longstanding relationship with the Haqqani Network. That doesn’t mean  everybody in the ISI, but it’s there.” Again, international media had its field day against ISI and its links with Taliban.

After putting pressure on General Kayani, Adm. Mike Mullen meets with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Khalid Shameem Wyne and General Kayani on April 20. Admiral Mullen again demands indirectly that Pakistan needs to help USA in locating Osama bin Laden. Pakistan’s response was again, “Osama, Who?”  Admiral Mullen however, left with another threat that if they came to know about Osama bin Laden’s location they would go ahead and take unilateral action. This is the same message which President Obama repeated in his announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death, when he said, “We will take actions in Pakistan, if we knew where he was.”

In response to continued threats from USA, Pakistan starts taking back its air bases from US in an attempt to avoid launching of any operation from its own soil. As a result on April 22 the news appears that Pakistan had taken back Shamsi Airbase from CIA/US  forces. While Obama Administration was piling pressure on Pakistan,  General Petraeus visited Pakistan on April 26 and met with General Kayani  openly asking him to hand over Osama bin Laden, otherwise get ready to  face the consequences. Same day Washington also critically attacked Pakistan Army’s counter-terrorism efforts. General Petraeus left with a clear message that unless Pakistan hands over Osama, US forces would be forced to  take action over Pakistani soil. Pakistani Military knowing that US knew that Osama bin Laden was dead couldn’t understand Obama Administration’s continued stance on capturing Osama bin Laden. General Petraeus left with the ultimatum that either Pakistan handed over Osama or US would get him.

Same day meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (JCSC) is held at Rawalpindi, one week ahead of schedule at the Joint Staff Headquarters. The top brass discussed the Osama issue and decision is reached to work out the Obama’s strategy leading to continuous threats for capturing Osama bin Laden alive, even after knowing that he was dead. While in Pakistan intelligence community starts using all of its sources to reach to the bottom of US’ demand of capturing Osama bin Laden. On April 28 President Obama signs General Petraeus’ transfer to CIA and next day signs the orders to attack the Abbottabad compounds. Thus Osama bin Laden’s credit is assured to President Obama.

On 29 April after President Obama signed the orders to “bring back” Osama bin Laden, Pakistani security agencies get a report that another order had been signed which had authorized US forces to neutralize Pakistan’s nuclear assets, if needed. The report was nothing short of seeing a death angel for the top Pak Military brass. Seeing the imminent threat, General Kayani tried his last shot when on 30 April 2011 he clearly stated in his Youm-e-Shuhada address: “Pakistan is a  peace-loving country and wants friendly relations with other countries and  our every step should move towards prosperity of the people. But we will not compromise our dignity and honour for it”. However, it didn’t stop what was about to come 24 hours later.

As night fell on Sunday, 1st May four choppers from a US Afghan base at a low altitude towards its destination in Abbottabad, to the same compound where Osama’s children  were in the hiding. Without any detection courtesy of their latest stealth technology and Pakistan’s outdated technology the choppers continued over the Pakistani territory. Ironically, ten years ago a Pak Air force air commodore had raised concern about the  outdated radar technology citing that US or worse India could fly  helicopters into the country and take out nuclear installations and in  reply he was shown the boot while no upgrades to the systems were  made.

Anyway, the four choppers made it to the compound in Abbottabad. It is then that Pak Army was notified that they have a choice. Either face an entire barrage of US choppers attacking Pak nuclear assets or hand over Osama’s body. In the meanwhile the small gun battle at the Abbottabad compound continued and to give the drama some authenticity the US forces torched one of their own choppers. Pressed for time a Pakistani helicopter flew from Tarbela carrying dead  body of Osama bin Laden which was stored in a cold storage there. While at Abbottabad Pak Army soldiers encircled the entire area around the compound within five minutes of the start of fire fight. The firefight continued  for 35 more minutes, waiting for the Pakistani helicopter. Once the  Pakistani helicopter reached the compound the three US choppers and the  Pakistani helicopter flew towards the Afghan border, this time without the need to fly below the radar detection altitude.

Next day, the world woke up to the news that Osama bin Laden was dead and President Obama had delivered what President Bush and Dick Cheney couldn’t. But the Pak Military brass did not wake up, because they never slept the night before. Last night they had woken to the realization that US could fly under the radar and take out Pakistan’s nuclear assets at any time.

 

American Drone Strikes Declining But Who Will Now Handle the Pakistani Terrorists

There are signs that the Obama administration be running out of high-level targets.

After a sharp rise in Mr. Obama’s first two years, the total number of drone strikes is now in sharp decline.

In Pakistan, strikes peaked in 2010 at 117; the number fell to 64 in 2011, 46 in 2012, with 11 in 2013, according to The Long War Journal, which covers the covert wars.

In Yemen, while strikes shot up to 42 in 2012, no strikes have been reported since a flurry of drone hits in January.

Mr Obama has pledged more transparency for the drone program, and he and his aides have hinted that change are coming. It remains unclear what the administration has in mind, but the president has spoken of the treacherous allure of the drone.

Decisions on targeted killing are “something that you have to struggle with. If you don’t, then it’s easy to slip into a situation in which you end up bending rules thinking that the ends always justify the means,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not who we are as a country.”

Taliban: Enemy of Our Enemy is Our Friend

Tribal elders pressurised to sign peace deals with Taliban

by Kahar Zalmay

Yet another policy change by the army indicates that the Taliban are now an asset in the new develop of the region

As the time of the withdrawal of the USA and the allied forces is coming closer the Pakistan army has suddenly changed its stance against the Taliban.

The army has developed its new policy from “Crush the terrorists” to “Our enemy’s enemy is our friend” and included the Taliban as its partner for the coming changes in the region. Since 2001 Pakistan has received huge amounts of foreign aid against Al-Qaida and the Taliban and internally a policy was adopted against terrorists which were generally bracketed as ‘Taliban’. The government and the army have divided the Taliban into the Pakistani and Afghanistan Taliban and showed a strong inclination towards declaring the Pakistani Taliban as enemies of the country. They are mainly operating from the tribal areas into the major cities of Pakistan.

In their latest policy statement the army has declared the terrorists as the major threat to the security of Pakistan. This is a policy shift as the main ‘threat’ to the country was previously India.

It is claimed by the Pakistani army that almost 40,000 armed forces personnel have been killed by terrorists, mainly by the Taliban. However, once again, a policy shift has been observed where the military is now forcing the tribal leaders of the FATA to make friends with the Taliban and sign peace deals with them. FATA is a semi-autonomous tribal region in north-western Pakistan, bordering Pakistan’s provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan to the east and south, and Afghanistan’s provinces of Kunar, Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Paktika to the west and north. It comprises of seven tribal agencies (districts) and six frontier regions, and is directly governed by Pakistan’s federal government through a special set of laws called the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR).

Malaks are the tribal elders of different tribes and the Khan is the leader of the Malaks. The Malaks in Bajaur Agency are under tremendous pressure from the military to sign peace deals with the Taliban who fled to Kunar province in Afghanistan. Bajaur is one of the seven tribal agencies bordering Afghanistan. To the South of Bajaur is the Mohmand Agency while to the North it is connected with District Dir.

During the war with the Taliban the Pakistan army provided arms, ammunition and training to the tribal leaders and elders to fight against Terrorists. For that initiative the Aman Committees (Peace Committees) were formed and they fought valiantly, sacrificing their lives and property to save the country from attacks from the northern areas.

According to the details available from the scribe of this article in the interviews conducted with the Malaks, they were invited for a Jarga three months ago at the Political Agent’s office in the agency headquarter, Khaar. In that meeting the Malaks were asked to sign a peace deal with Taliban from Bajaur Agency and also to send a delegation to Kunar in order to bring them back.

The Jargas in the tribal areas are the official meetings conducted under the political agent of the FATA and grand Jargas are conducted by the provincial governor of Khyber Pakhtoonkha.

When the Malaks resisted this initiative, another Jarga was called on February 8, 2013 which was addressed by Brigadier Ghulam Haider who is the commander of the military in the agency. In this Jarga, Brigadier Haider pressed the elders to agree to a peace deal with the Taliban.

The ‘demand’ from the military was not merely limited to a peace deal with the Taliban. Each Malak was also asked to host 30 Talibani until the political agent built houses for them.

“We were shocked and could not believe what we were told by the Brigadier. We thought the military came to uproot  the terrorists from our area but now it is asking us to sign a deal with the murderers of our sons, brothers and children”, a shaken and incensed Malak shared with this scribe in Bajaur.

The resilience to this proposal-cum-dictate came from the elders of Salarzai tribe which was the first tribe to launch a tribal Lakhkar (a collective tribal force) under the leadership of its Khan, the Khan of Pashat, Shahabuddin Khan to fight Taliban in 2007-08. This was before the military entered Bajaur. Instead of appreciating the struggle of the Salarzai tribe and its elders, it has now become a casualty of the State policy.

“We are accused of taking money from the USA, Afghanistan, Europe and India for launching our Lakhkar. And when we refused to succumb to the pressure of the military to have peace with Taliban, a 1000-strong Taliban outfit attacked our area from the Baatwar side, a mountainous village on the Pak-Afghan border. Our valiant tribesmen deterred their attack and pushed them back to the Afghan side”, a Malak told me on the condition of anonymity. We were sitting in the shadow of those tall snowy mountains from where Taliban entered some four months back.

“We do not know what the military and the government want from us. We sacrificed so much in this war. There is not a single family that did not lose a member in this fight. But we are befuddled that why after so much sufferings, the military wants us to welcome those murderers. If this was going to be the conclusion of our fight, we would not have wanted the sacrifices of our children, fathers and brothers”, an elderly man belonging to the Salarzai tribe voiced, the sorrow and subjection was clearly printed on his wrinkled face.

“The military should tell us in clear terms what it wants from us? If it wants us to leave this place, so we shall. If it wants us to attack Afghanistan, we will do it. My kids are out of school for five years; they can’t go to school even in Peshawar or roam there unreservedly. They cannot go out of this compound and I myself cannot sit here”, (he was referring to his Hujra where the guests were sitting), another Malak told the scribe in Khaar, the headquarters of Bajaur Agency.

The scribe then asked, “But will you be able to handle Taliban if the military left Bajaur. He replied, “We want the military out as we are sick of its double game and we have arrived at this conclusion that military and Taliban are the same. And as far as the Taliban are concerned, we will slice them into small pieces and throw them to this dog”. He signalled to the dog lying near the kut (the traditional bed) enjoying a sound sleep and not the least concerned with the Malak’s anguish and my curiosity.

“The military is forcing Malaks to agree to a peace deal with the Taliban and for that it exploits different tactics”, divulged a local journalist on the condition of anonymity. “If you are a Malak and you resist negotiations with the Taliban, a stranger would use some IEDs in your area and stay there until the military sniping dogs spot him there. This gives the military an opportunity to confront the Malak and accuse him of harbouring the Taliban himself. He is left with no option but to accept peace deal”. He laughed, probably noticing the expression of surprise on the face of this scribe. “This is FATA my dear, away from human civilization”, he added.

The recent appointment of the governor of KPK, Shaukatullah Khan could be linked to this new strategy of the Pakistan army to bring back their assets from Afghanistan, rest them and get them ready for a new battle in Afghanistan after the US forces withdraw. Shaukatullah Khan was an elected member of the National Assembly from Bajaur Agency.

When the scribe contacted the Military Commander in Bajaur, Brigadier Ghulam Haider, to get his view on the allegations levelled against the military by the Malaks he said, “I might have been misquoted by some Malaks as the purpose of the military in Bajaur is to clear the area of all sorts of militants. We are strictly concentrating on our job and as for negotiations with the Taliban are concerned it’s a political decision that needs to be taken by the political forces in the country”.

The entire tribal area is now in a state of confusion, not knowing whether to side with the Taliban or the army. Regardless of which way to go, there is no doubt in their minds that they will be at the mercy of both the Taliban and the army. This is not the first time in recent history that there has been a policy change regarding the Taliban and it appears that this is more a matter of convenience rather than being in the interest of the security of the country.

If, in fact, the peace deals are signed with the Taliban this will be a licence for them to kill the innocent citizens in the name of their version of Islam.

Drone Attacks Started with the Army’s Consent

On a hot day in June 2004, the Pashtun tribesman was lounging inside a mud compound in South Waziristan, speaking by satellite phone to one of the many reporters who regularly interviewed him on how he had fought and humbled Pakistan’s army in the country’s western mountains. He asked one of his followers about the strange, metallic bird hovering above him.

Less than 24 hours later, a missile tore through the compound, severing Mr. Muhammad’s left leg and killing him and several others, including two boys, ages 10 and 16. A Pakistani military spokesman was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, saying that Pakistani forces had fired at the compound.

That was a lie.

Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the CIA, the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing.” The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state.

In a secret deal, the CIA had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.

That back-room bargain is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the CIA’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the CIA to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization.

The CIA has since conducted hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed thousands of people, Pakistanis and Arabs, militants and civilians alike. While it was not the first country where the United States used drones, it became the laboratory for the targeted killing operations that have come to define a new American way of fighting, blurring the line between soldiers and spies and short-circuiting the normal mechanisms by which the United States as a nation goes to war.

Neither American nor Pakistani officials have ever publicly acknowledged what really happened to Mr. Muhammad — details of the strike that killed him, along with those of other secret strikes, are still hidden in classified government databases.

CIA Chief Mr. Brennan, who began his career at the CIA and over the past four years oversaw an escalation of drone strikes from his office at the White House, has signaled that he hopes to return the agency to its traditional role of intelligence collection and analysis. But with a generation of CIA officers now fully engaged in a new mission, it is an effort that could take years.

Today, even some of the people who were present at the creation of the drone program think the agency should have long given up targeted killings.

Ross Newland, who was a senior official at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia., when the agency was given the authority to kill Qaeda operatives, says he thinks that the agency had grown too comfortable with remote-control killing, and that drones have turned the CIA into the villain in countries like Pakistan, where it should be nurturing relationships in order to gather intelligence.

From Car Thief to Militant

By 2004, Mr. Muhammad had become the undisputed star of the tribal areas, the fierce mountain lands populated by the Wazirs, Mehsuds and other Pashtun tribes who for decades had lived independent of the writ of the central government in Islamabad. A brash member of the Wazir tribe, Mr. Muhammad had raised an army to fight government troops and had forced the government into negotiations. He saw no cause for loyalty to the ISI that had given an earlier generation of Pashtuns support during the war against the Soviets.

Many Pakistanis in the tribal areas viewed with disdain the alliance that President Musharraf had forged with the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They regarded the Pakistani military that had entered the tribal areas as no different from the Americans — who they believed had begun a war of aggression in Afghanistan, just as the Soviets had years earlier.

Born near Wana, the bustling market hub of South Waziristan, Mr. Muhammad spent his adolescent years as a petty car thief and shopkeeper in the city’s bazaar. He found his calling in 1993, around the age of 18, when he was recruited to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and rose quickly through the group’s military hierarchy. He cut a striking figure on the battlefield with his long face and flowing jet black hair.

When the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001, he seized an opportunity to host the Arab and Chechen fighters from Al Qaeda who crossed into Pakistan to escape the American bombing.

For Mr. Muhammad, it was partly a way to make money, but he also saw another use for the arriving fighters. With their help, over the next two years he launched a string of attacks on Pakistani military installations and on American firebases in Afghanistan.

CIA officers in Islamabad urged Pakistani spies to lean on the Waziri tribesman to hand over the foreign fighters, but under Pashtun tribal customs that would be treachery. Reluctantly, Mr. Musharraf ordered his troops into the forbidding mountains to deliver rough justice to Mr. Muhammad and his fighters, hoping the operation might put a stop to the attacks on Pakistani soil, including two attempts on his life in December 2003.

But it was only the beginning. In March 2004, Pakistani helicopter gunships and artillery pounded Wana and its surrounding villages. Government troops shelled pickup trucks that were carrying civilians away from the fighting and destroyed the compounds of tribesmen suspected of harboring foreign fighters. The Pakistani commander declared the operation an unqualified success, but for Islamabad, it had not been worth the cost in casualties.

A cease-fire was negotiated in April during a hastily arranged meeting in South Waziristan, during which a senior Pakistani commander hung a garland of bright flowers around Mr. Muhammad’s neck. The two men sat together and sipped tea as photographers and television cameras recorded the event.

Both sides spoke of peace, but there was little doubt who was negotiating from strength. Mr. Muhammad would later brag that the government had agreed to meet inside a religious madrasa rather than in a public location where tribal meetings are traditionally held. “I did not go to them; they came to my place,” he said. “That should make it clear who surrendered to whom.”

The peace arrangement propelled Mr. Muhammad to new fame, and the truce was soon exposed as a sham. He resumed attacks against Pakistani troops, and Mr. Musharraf ordered his army back on the offensive in South Waziristan.

Pakistani officials had, for several years, balked at the idea of allowing armed CIA Predators to roam their skies. They considered drone flights a violation of sovereignty, and worried that they would invite further criticism of Mr. Musharraf as being Washington’s lackey. But Mr. Muhammad’s rise to power forced them to reconsider.

The CIA had been monitoring the rise of Mr. Muhammad, but officials considered him to be more Pakistan’s problem than America’s. In Washington, officials were watching with growing alarm the gathering of Qaeda operatives in the tribal areas, and George J. Tenet, the CIA director, authorized officers in the agency’s Islamabad station to push Pakistani officials to allow armed drones. Negotiations were handled primarily by the Islamabad station.

As the battles raged in South Waziristan, the station chief in Islamabad paid a visit to Gen. Ehsan ul Haq, the ISI chief, and made an offer: If the CIA killed Mr. Muhammad, would the ISI allow regular armed drone flights over the tribal areas?

In secret negotiations, the terms of the bargain were set. Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that they be allowed to approve each drone strike, giving them tight control over the list of targets. And they insisted that drones fly only in narrow parts of the tribal areas — ensuring that they would not venture where Islamabad did not want the Americans going: Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, and the mountain camps where Kashmiri militants were trained for attacks in India.

The ISI and the CIA agreed that all drone flights in Pakistan would operate under the CIA’s covert action authority — meaning that the United States would never acknowledge the missile strikes and that Pakistan would either take credit for the individual killings or remain silent.

A New Direction

As the negotiations were taking place, the CIA’s inspector general, John L. Helgerson, had just finished a searing report about the abuse of detainees in the CIA’s secret prisons. The report kicked out the foundation upon which the CIA detention and interrogation program had rested. It was perhaps the single most important reason for the CIA’s shift from capturing to killing terrorism suspects.

The greatest impact of Mr. Helgerson’s report was felt at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, or CTC, which was at the vanguard of the agency’s global antiterrorism operation. The center had focused on capturing Qaeda operatives; questioning them in CIA jails or outsourcing interrogations to the spy services of Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt and other nations; and then using the information to hunt more terrorism suspects.

Mr. Helgerson raised questions about whether CIA officers might face criminal prosecution for the interrogations carried out in the secret prisons, and he suggested that interrogation methods like water boarding, sleep deprivation and the exploiting of the phobias of prisoners — like confining them in a small box with live bugs — violated the UN Convention Against Torture.

The ground had shifted, and counterterrorism officials began to rethink the strategy for the secret war. Armed drones, and targeted killings in general, offered a new direction. Killing by remote control was the antithesis of the dirty, intimate work of interrogation. Targeted killings were cheered by Republicans and Democrats alike, and using drones flown by pilots who were stationed thousands of miles away made the whole strategy seem risk-free.

The Predator had been considered a blunt and unsophisticated killing tool, and many at the CIA were glad that the agency had gotten out of the assassination business long ago. Three years before Mr. Muhammad’s death, and one year before the CIA carried out its first targeted killing outside a war zone — in Yemen in 2002 — a debate raged over the legality and morality of using drones to kill suspected terrorists.

A new generation of CIA officers had ascended to leadership positions, having joined the agency after the 1975 Congressional committee led by Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho, which revealed extensive CIA plots to kill foreign leaders, and President Gerald Ford’s subsequent ban on assassinations. The rise to power of this post-Church generation had a direct impact on the type of clandestine operations the CIA chose to conduct.

After Mr. Muhammad was killed, his dirt grave in South Waziristan became a site of pilgrimage.

A Pakistani journalist, Zahid Hussain, visited it days after the drone strike and saw a makeshift sign displayed on the grave: “He lived and died like a true Pashtun.”

Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan’s top military spokesman, told reporters at the time that “Al Qaeda facilitator” Nek Muhammad and four other “militants” had been killed in a rocket attack by Pakistani troops.

Any suggestion that Mr. Muhammad was killed by the Americans, or with American assistance, he said, was “absolutely absurd.”

Asian Human Rights’ Baseer Naveed Criticizes Gen Kayani’s Speech

Why is General Kiyani dictating Islamic ideology as the basis of the country?

by Baseer Naveed

Just twenty days before the general elections the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, has come out with a policy statement which gives the political views of the Army.

The statement was delivered with the express intention of getting elections results in favour of the fundamentalists, Jihadis and their supporting parties. While addressing the assembled troops at the passing out parade of 127th PMA Long Course, 46th Integrated Course and the first Mujahid Course at the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul, he said that since Islam was the basis of Pakistan’s creation, it can never be separated from the body politic. He categorically emphasised this point when he said:

“Let me remind you that Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and Islam can never be taken out of Pakistan. However, Islam should always remain a unifying force. I assure you that regardless of the odds, the Pakistan Army will keep on doing its best towards our common dream for a truly Islamic Republic of Pakistan”.

Kiyani also made an about face when he changed the ‘new doctrine about operational priorities’, (the Green Book), which was issued on January 2, 2013. In it the Army described the Taliban and other terrorists as the biggest threat to the country.  For decades the Army has always considered India as its No 1 enemy but growing extremism in the country compelled the military authorities to review its strategy. A new chapter, ‘Sub-conventional warfare’ has been included in the Green Book for the first time.

Kiyani’s statement is alarming in that the strongest institution of the country is once again revealing its intentions to enforce the non-secular and extremist forces in the elections. The majority of the political parties, who have always won the confidence of the people through free and fair votes, are secular in their politics and they have different opinions about the ‘Ideology of Pakistan’. In fact, most of them do not consider that Pakistan was created for any particular ideology but was rather created to be a homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent. The Islamic religious parties have started saying that Pakistan was created on the basis of Islam 24 years after the creation of the country in 1970 which resulted in the division of the nation.

This is not the first time that whenever general elections are held, the Army comes out with the enforcement of the ‘Ideology of Pakistan’, which they relate with Islamic ideology. In 1969 when General Yahya Khan took over the country after a people’s uprising against the previous dictator he invented the Ideology of Pakistan based on Islamic ideology to patronise the anti-democratic and religious forces who were very much against Pakistan and its founder, Mr. Jinnah, whom they then called an infidel. Interestingly, the General was known to be a lover of strong drink and a rampant womanizer. At that time the country had never seen such a ‘pious’ man and he was very dear to the religious parties. However, all his efforts failed. The secular political parties won with a thumping majority and the religious parties were only able to get 15 out of more than 300 seats.

Another General, Zia-ul-Haq, came into power after throwing out and imprisoning Prime Minister Bhutto in the name of Islam, who he later hung. In the 1985 elections General Zia introduced articles 62 and 63 in the hopes of getting pious and hard line Muslim candidates. In the end all he got were the most corrupt members of his Islamic assemblies. During 1991, the then Chief of Army Staff, General Nawaz Janjua, repeated the same words of Islamic ideology as the basis for the Ideology of Pakistan. The engineered elections were held in which the notorious intelligence agency, the ISI, distributed huge amounts of money and obtained the required election results after expending a huge amount of public funds.

In Kiyani’s speech to the troops he again came out with the threatening call that: “Let it suffice to say that Pakistan is fully capable of responding effectively to any threat, the army chief said, without naming India or any other country. Despite our current focus on internal security, we remain fully prepared to defeat an external direct threat”. (As reported by the Daily Dawn). This was seen as a provocation to the neighbouring countries and nothing less than warmongering particularly at the time of the elections.

It was a clear indication that what Kiyani says for the Ideology of Islam as the basis of Pakistan means that religious minority groups do not have any space in the country as the country was created only for the Muslims. Therefore in the opinion of the military there is nothing available for the different religions.

Another alarming thing for the people of Pakistan was the inclusion of the ‘first Mujahid (holy warriors or Jihadis) course’ at the Pakistan Military Academy. The handouts by the military did not clarify or define the purpose behind the course. Does this now mean that the Army wants to create Mujahideen so that Jihad can be introduced through the soldiers as its old policy of the Cold War era? With whom will these Mujahideen fight? Prior to 2001 the army and military government made it a policy to combat the terrorist who were fighting to enforce Islam through violence to achieve their results. Thousands of people were killed, including 40 thousand soldiers from the forces and allied organizations.

With Islamic ideology as the basis of the country the military must have a hidden agenda for the time when the American forces leave Afghanistan in 2014. Is the intention to have a pro-Pakistan government, like the Taliban of 1994, and is this possible through the creation of the Jihadis? For this reason the military has started a campaign on the Ideology of Pakistan to re-enforce the extremist and fundamentalists and their friends who are contesting the coming elections so that a government can be formed which can always remain under the dictates of the army in the name of the protection of the Ideology of Pakistan?

If the religious-based parties do not win the next elections and do not form the government the only conclusion to be drawn is that the Army will not accept the election results. Either that or the Army would force the caretaker government to run the country until the parties inclined towards the Ideology of Pakistan come to power.

The other aspect of declaring Islamic ideology as the basis of Pakistan is to strangle the freedom of expression. For the last five to six years society has enjoyed freedom of expression to a great extent which, of course, would not be a good omen for those institutions who have always enjoyed unfettered power and who might now have to be accountable to a secular parliament.

It is not the function of the Pakistan Army or its commanding officer to dictate to the country as to what the basis of Pakistan is and who has the right to remind the people of it. It is better for democracy and a democratic set up that the politicians should decide the Ideology of Pakistan rather than the military. It is only the people of Pakistan that have the right to choose any person or political group which may or may not follow the Ideology of Pakistan. General Kiyani should concentrate on his sworn duty of defending the country rather than poking his nose into political issues.

NGO Offices Being Raided in Gilgit

On April 10, 2013, police officials in the company of a magistrate raided the project office of AGHE in Skardu, the district of the highest peak of the country, K2, Gilgit-Baltistan, and took over control of office. The officials ordered the staff to vacate the office immediately and when they enquired as to the reason the officials presented the order of the SP to seal the office. They also threatened and harassed the staff which included female members.

However, the actions of the administrations did not stop at closing down the offices and stopping the activities but also extended to threatening the female staff to provide information about the funding.

They were called on different occasions by various government agencies, particularly an intelligence agency and were asked questions about USAID and its program and future interventions etc. They were also pressurized to disclose the passwords of their official and private emails. The intelligence officials have also revealed the content of conversations of telephone calls made to their staff, their friends and relatives.

This is a clear indication that in GB the agencies are tapping the telephones and intercepting the emails of ordinary citizens.

The AGHE has challenged the orders of the government of GB in the High Court which awarded a stay order and stopped the government from taking further action against the organization.

However, despite this stay order from the High Court the police officials have sealed the office at Skardu.

Please see the attached link to a newspaper article on the matter:

http://pamirtimes.net/2013/03/26/ngo-aghe-decides-to-challenge-cancellation-of-registration-in-court/.

This is not the first time that police and special branch officials have forcibly entered the project office, tried to stop the work and harass the employees and other visitors. This was, in fact, the third time the police have raided the office. Please see documents showing newspaper articles and official notices.

Before this latest raid the authorities also raided the office of AGHE in another city, Gilgit, when a 3-day capacity building program for the community networks was being carried out under the Citizens’ Voice Project during the 2nd week of March, 2013. This raid was also conducted in the same fashion in that a magistrate with police officials arrived at the training hall and ordered a halt to the activities. However, at the protest of the participants and intervention of some media persons the magistrate left the place after giving them a warning.

On March 25, the Assistant Commissioner (AC) Gilgit, who is also the Registration Authority of NGOs issued two orders against the AGHE. The first one was a Show Cause Notice which was issued before noon and instructed the organization to suspend their activities. However, within two hours and before the organisation had the opportunity to respond another order was delivered to cease all activities. In fact, the authorities back-dated the orders and delivered them by hand on the 29th March.

It is said generally in the Gilgit Baltistan that the administration is particularly targeting the USAID funded project titled Citizens’ Voice for Effective Legislative Governance in Gilgit-Baltistan. The reason is suspected to be that the project avoided the normal red tape and did provide kick-backs to the officials. It is worth mentioning here that the project from USAID was given to AGHE after the organisation took part in a funding proposal that was open to other NGOs.

Another suspected reason to stop the activities of the AGHE is the Muslim fundamentalists, who have a number of training camps in the GB and are involved in sectarian killings of persons from Shia sect. The fundamentalists are provoking anti-west sentiments and pressurizing the authorities to take action against USAID funded activities.

 

Pakistan Cannot Afford to Compete with India Whose Economy is 9 Times Bigger

An Aesopian nuclear competition is under way between Pakistan and India.

Pakistan, whose economy and domestic cohesion are steadily worsening, is the hare, racing to devote scarce resources to compete with a country whose economy is nine times as great. India is the tortoise: Its nuclear program is moving steadily forward without great exertion.

The tortoise will win this race, and could quicken its pace. But the hare continues to run fast, because nuclear weapons are a sign of strength amid domestic weaknesses and because it can’t keep up with the growth of India’s conventional military programs.

At present, there is rough nuclear parity between India and Pakistan, with Pakistan having a larger arsenal and India having more advanced air- and sea-based capabilities. Both countries are expanding their capacity to produce bomb-making material, adding cruise missiles to their arsenals and planning to send nuclear weapons to sea. Pakistan’s arsenal now exceeds 100 warheads. India is not too far behind.

India, like China, has adopted a relaxed approach to nuclear deterrence. In both countries, national security is equated with strong economies and domestic cohesion. Indian and Chinese leaders value nuclear weapons as expressions of national will and power, rather than as military instruments.

As befitting the home of Mahatma Gandhi, Indian political leaders have great ambivalence about nuclear weapons. They seek the moral high ground while attending to national security imperatives. No other country has waited 24 years between testing its first and second nuclear devices.

In Pakistan, the situation is starkly different. Economic growth is hobbled, foreign reserves are dwindling and the country is plagued by bloodletting. Decisions about nuclear requirements are made by a few generals who view these weapons as a military necessity as well as a political instrument. In Pakistan, political leaders take their guidance from generals. In India, the requests of military leaders often land on deaf ears.

Pakistan’s nuclear requirements were set high initially, and grew higher still after the George W. Bush administration agreed to cooperate with India to build nuclear power plants. This civil-nuclear agreement has languished, while Pakistan’s military-nuclear programs have ramped up.

After testing nuclear weapons in 1998, Indian and Pakistani authorities embraced a doctrine of minimal, credible deterrence. Now the word “minimal” applies less and less, as their stockpiles have doubled over the past decade. There is little chance that Pakistan and India will end fissile material production for bombs anytime soon.

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons can be used to warn India not to advance on Pakistani territory. Its military doctrine has recently embraced short-range, tactical nuclear weapons to counter India’s conventional military advantages. At the high end of the targeting spectrum, Pakistan’s military appears intent to deny India victory in warfare and to destroy it as a functioning society in the event of a complete breakdown in deterrence.

Slowing this trajectory will be difficult. Nuclear weapons are widely perceived in Pakistan as the nation’s crown jewels. Most Pakistanis begrudge governmental corruption and incompetence, but not money spent on The Bomb, which has been imbued with great powers, including the power to keep India at bay and to lift Pakistan onto the world’s stage.

Finding stability in this competition will be difficult, in part because China weighs heavily in Indian calculations and because civil-military relations in Pakistan are so unbalanced. Fifteen years and two major crises have passed since India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998 — and they still haven’t engaged in serious, sustained nuclear risk-reduction talks.

What might change Pakistan’s calculation that more nuclear weapons equates to more security? One way is for New Delhi to take dramatic steps to improve relations and to “take away the enemy image,” similar to what Mikhail Gorbachev accomplished when he was leader of the Soviet Union in his dealings with the United States.

There is, however, little appetite within India for bold steps to reinforce the obvious need of the Pakistani Army to focus on internal security threats. Another potential game changer is severe perturbations in Pakistan’s economy. Economic upheavals would, however, create even more domestic instability without changing the Pakistan military’s dependency on The Bomb.

The safest route to reduce nuclear dangers on the subcontinent is through concerted efforts to improve relations between Pakistan and India. The surest way to do so is by greatly increasing cross-border trade. Leaders in both countries have endorsed this course of action, but underlings are moving slowly ahead of national elections. Even modest progress can be stopped short by another mass-casualty attack on Indian soil designed to disrupt improved ties.

A nuclear arsenal built on very weak economic foundations is inherently unstable, which is reason enough for India to pursue sustained and accelerated trade and investment opportunities with Pakistan. These methods, which have dampened tensions between China and Taiwan, could also serve a similar purpose on the subcontinent.

Michael Krepon is co-founder of the Stimson Center, a think tank, and director of its South Asia and Space Security Programs.

 

Indian Police at its Best

The Delhi police crime branch claims to have foiled a plan of ISI to settle its spies in India.

The police said they recently arrested two fresh recruits of the spy agency, including a woman, from the New Delhi railway station. This announcement came on December 12, 2011 but in the same announcement police said that the couple was arrested on December 5, when they arrived at New Delhi railway station with a plan to kill the chief minister of Gujrat.

The Indian media was so biased that it has not enquired from the police as to when were they arrested and why the police took one week time to produce them before the court? This act of police is against the Indian law according to the section 57 of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPc). The police is bound to produce an accused person within 24 hours of arrest.

The Indian media has still not contacted the couple to get their side of the story but in its so called nationalism scandalized the couple as Pakistani agents.

According to the details received through the victims and legal documents Mr. Imran Yousaf Chippa, son of Mohammad Yousaf and Sofia Kanwal were married in October 2011 in Karachi. They went to Nepal for their honey moon on November 17, 2011 with the return ticket of November 24. On the departure day as the couple were going to Katmandu air port in a taxi, a Suzuki gypsy jeep cut them off and four persons from the jeep asked their identity. As the police saw the Pakistani passports they were taken to a nearby police station. They were forcefully pushed into the jeep and their hands were chained and their eyes were blindfolded with the dopatta.

After 30 hours of the drive they were locked in a room and later on after several days of detention they came to know that it was a farm hours near the New Delhi airport. The officers sitting in the jeep were taking the names of each other in numbers like one two, three and whenever they were contacted to their center through the wireless they told that a Pakistani couple has been arrested from Nepal. The couple was kept there up to December 12, 2011 and were severely tortured to confess that they were working for the ISI and had planned to kill the chief minister of Gujrat state.

Imran, the victim, was tortured continuously for all the days of his illegal captivity, his legs were tortured to the point where he cannot walk or sit properly. His right leg was injured with a knife and it is almost paralysed. His back still bears visible signs of electric shocks. His genitalia also has signs of cigarette burning. When he was hung upside down alcohol was poured into his anus. The nerves of the legs were damaged during the interrogation which was taken by many intelligence agencies including RAW.

During the interrogation, it was said that the couple were arrested from Nepal by the agents of RAW.

Sofia, the wife, was beaten with fists and kicked to confess. At many times she was threatened with rape if she did not confess.

On December 12 morning, the couple was told that they are going to release them as the agencies did not find any evidence of them being agents of the ISI. They were taken in a jeep to an unknown place and after a one hour long drive at 4 PM the couple found themselves before the Tis Hazari court at New Delhi. When they were taken out from the jeep a heavy contingent of media people arrived and was estimated to be not less than 200 persons. For further information, please read the report published in the Hindustan Times and an audiovisual report broadcast in News24 TV regarding this case.

The couple was produced before the court of Mr. Vinod Yadev, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) who immediately sent them for judicial remand and couple was lodged in Tihar Jail.

After court proceedings the police addressed the media and claimed that the couple was arrested from Delhi railway station and had the plan to assassinate the chief minister of Gujrat. The media have not asked to interview the couple. The media and journalists ran many concocted stories against the couple without listening to their side of the story when they were produced in the court.

During the court proceeding through the evidences it was proved that they were arrested from Nepal but the media have never covered this fact and totally ignored it in an effort to spread sensationalism and hatred against Pakistan.

In March 2012, Imran took off his clothes before the judge and revealed the torture marks on his body and asked the judge to listen to the actual facts from them. The judge finally agreed to do so. He took his statement in his chamber and for the next six days he continuously asked the couple to come and record statements with all evidence. On March 20, 2012, the judge granted interim bail to the couple for two days and it continued every two days for some time.

Finally on April 13 the couple received bail and was released.

The couple lives in Gujrat as it was Imran’s place of birth place but his relatives and friends do not want to associate with him as he has been declared by the media as an agent of Pakistan.

 

Mohsin Hamid Blames the ISI for the Current Mess

To Fight India, We Fought Ourselves

By Mohsin Hamid

On Feb 18, 2013, my mother’s and sister’s eye doctor was assassinated. He was a Shiite. He was shot six times while driving to drop his son off at school. His son, age 12, was executed with a single shot to the head.

Next day, I attended a protest in front of the Governor’s House in Lahore demanding that more be done to protect Pakistan’s Shiites from sectarian extremists. These extremists are responsible for increasingly frequent attacks, including bombings this year that killed more than 200 people, most of them Hazara Shiites, in the city of Quetta.

As I stood in the anguished crowd in Lahore, similar protests were being held throughout Pakistan. Roads were shut. Demonstrators blocked access to airports. My father was trapped in one for the evening, yet he said most of his fellow travelers bore the delay without anger. They sympathized with the protesters’ objectives.

Minority persecution is a common notion around the world, bringing to mind the treatment of African-Americans in the United States, for example, or Arab immigrants in Europe. In Pakistan, though, the situation is more unusual: those persecuted as minorities collectively constitute a vast majority.

A filmmaker I know who has relatives in the Ahmadi sect told me that her family’s graves in Lahore had been defaced, because Ahmadis are regarded as apostates. A Baluch friend said it was difficult to take Punjabi visitors with him to Baluchistan, because there is so much local anger there at violence toward the Baluch. An acquaintance of mine, a Pakistani Hindu, once got angry when I answered the question “how are things?” with the word “fine” — because things so obviously aren’t. And Pakistani Christians have borne the brunt of arrests under the country’s blasphemy law; a governor of my province was assassinated for trying to repeal it.

What then is the status of the country’s majority? In Pakistan, there is no such thing. Punjab is the most populous province, but its roughly 100 million people are divided by language, religious sect, outlook and gender. Sunni Muslims represent Pakistan’s most populous faith, but it’s dangerous to be the wrong kind of Sunni. Sunnis are regularly killed for being open to the new ways of the West, or for adhering to the old traditions of the Indian subcontinent, for being liberal, for being mystical, for being in politics, the army or the police, or for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At the heart of Pakistan’s troubles is the celebration of the militant. Whether fighting in Afghanistan, or Kashmir, or at home, this deadly figure has been elevated to heroic status: willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, able to win the ultimate victory, selfless, noble. Yet as tens of thousands of Pakistanis die at the hands of such heroes, as tens of millions of Pakistanis go about their lives in daily fear of them, a recalibration is being demanded. The need of the hour, of the year, of the generation, is peace.

Pakistan is in the grips of militancy because of its fraught relationship with India, with which it has fought three wars and innumerable skirmishes since the countries separated in 1947. Militants were cultivated as an equalizer, to make Pakistan safer against a much larger foe. But they have done the opposite, killing Pakistanis at home and increasing the likelihood of catastrophic conflicts abroad.

Normalizing relations with India could help starve Pakistani militancy of oxygen. So it is significant that the prospects for peace between the two nuclear-armed countries look better than they have in some time.

India and Pakistan share a lengthy land border, but they might as well be on separate continents, so limited is their trade with each other and the commingling of their people. Visas, traditionally hard to get, restricted to specific cities and burdened with onerous requirements to report to the local police, are becoming more flexible for business travelers and older citizens. Trade is also picking up. A pulp manufacturer in Pakistani Punjab, for example, told me he had identified a paper mill in Indian Punjab that could purchase his factory’s entire output.

These openings could be the first cracks in a dam that holds back a flood of interaction. Whenever I go to New Delhi, many I meet are eager to visit Lahore. Home to roughly a combined 25 million people, the cities are not much more than half an hour apart by plane, and yet they are linked by only two flights a week.

Cultural connections are increasing, too. Indian films dominate at Pakistani cinemas, and Indian songs play at Pakistani weddings. Now Pakistanis are making inroads in the opposite direction. Pakistani actors have appeared as Bollywood leads and on Indian reality TV. Pakistani contemporary art is being snapped up by Indian buyers. And New Delhi is the publishing center for the current crop of Pakistani English-language fiction.

A major constraint the two countries have faced in normalizing relations has been the power of security hawks on both sides, and especially in Pakistan. But even in this domain we might be seeing an improvement. The new official doctrine of the Pakistani Army for the first time identifies internal militants, rather than India, as the country’s No. 1 threat. And Pakistan has just completed an unprecedented five years under a single elected government. This year, it will be holding elections in which the largest parties all agree that peace with India is essential.

Peace with India or, rather, increasingly normal neighborly relations, offers the best chance for Pakistan to succeed in dismantling its cult of militancy. Pakistan’s extremists, of course, understand this, and so we can expect to see, as we have in the past, attempts to scupper progress through cross-border violence. They will try to goad India into retaliating and thereby giving them what serves them best: a state of frozen, impermeable hostility.

They may well succeed. For there is a disturbing rise of hyperbolic nationalism among India’s prickly emerging middle class, and the Indian media is quick to stoke the fires. The explosion of popular rage in India after a recent military exchange, in which soldiers on both sides of the border were killed, is an indicator of the danger.

So it is important now to prepare the public in both countries for an extremist outrage, which may well originate in Pakistan, and for the self-defeating calls for an extreme response, which are likely to be heard in India. Such confrontations have always derailed peace in the past. They must not be allowed to do so again. In the tricky months ahead, as India and Pakistan reconnect after decades of virtual embargo, those of us who believe in peace should regard extremist provocations not as barriers to our success but, perversely, as signs that we are succeeding.