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Video Report - حکومتِ سندھ نے نوجوانوں کے مستقبل کو بہتر بنانے کیلئے ۲۰۱۸ میں ایک جامع یوتھ پالیسی کا اعلان کیا۔

#India - #Pakistan Rangers seeks ceasefire along border - Tells BSF incessant firing is causing damage to civilians.

The Pakistan Rangers called up its counterpart, Border Security Force (BSF), to seek a halt to the firing and shelling along the International Border in Jammu.

A commander of Pakistan Rangers phoned a BSF officer on Saturday night and urged that Pakistan’s forward posts not be targeted as the incessant firing was causing damage to civilians.

The BSF released a 19-second thermal-imaging footage that showed the destruction of a Pakistani post across the border. A BSF officer refused to reveal the location, but said it was destroyed in the past few days. “Our officer told Pakistan Rangers that we were only responding to the unprovoked firing from across the border. We did not fire first,” he said.

Two BSF soldiers were killed in the latest round of unprovoked firing in Jammu last week. The BSF said the current spell of cross-border firing was expected as the harvest season was over. A senior official said this was the “third spell” of heavy firing from across the border this year; the first two occurred in January. The firing also coincided with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the State on Saturday.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/pakistan-rangers-dial-up-bsf-plead-for-ceasefire/article23943415.ece?homepage=true

Ex-Pakistani Prime Minister Puts Pakistani Military And China On The Spot – Analysis

By James M. Dorsey

Ousted Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif kicked up a storm when he earlier this month seemingly admitted that Pakistan had supported militants who attacked multiple targets in Mumbai in 2008, killing 166 people.

Mr. Sharif’s admission, which he has since tried to walk back, put a finger on Pakistan’s controversial policy of selective support of militant groups at a sensitive time. Pakistan is gearing up for elections that would secure its third consecutive handover of civilian political power.

Mr. Sharif’s remarks, moreover, stirred up a hornet’s nest because Pakistan is likely to next month be put on a watch list by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global financial watchdog that monitors the funding of political violence and money laundering worldwide.

The remarks also put China in a difficult position. China has been pressuring Pakistan to crack down on militants, particularly in the troubled province of Balochistan, the crown jewel in its Belt and Road-related $50 billion plus infrastructure investment in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Yet, at the same time, China has at Pakistan’s behest prevented the United Nations Security Council from declaring Masood Azhar, believed to have been responsible for an attack in 2016 on India’s Pathankot Air Force Station, as a globally designated terrorist.

The militants, dressed in Indian military uniforms fought a 14-hour battle against Indian security forces that only ended when the last attacker was killed. Mr. Azhar was briefly detained after the attack and has since gone underground.

Mr. Sharif’s made his remarks as China was building up its military infrastructure in Pakistan. The build-up is occurring against the backdrop of Pakistan risking being involuntarily sucked into potential attempts to destabilize Iran if Saudi Arabia/and or the United States were to use Balochistan as a staging ground.

In line with a standard practice in Pakistan that has repeatedly seen groups that are outlawed resurrecting themselves under new names, Lashkar-e-Taibe (LeT), the banned group believed to be responsible for the Mumbai attacks, and Jamaat-ud-Dawa, widely believed to be an LeT front, are rebranding under a new name and as a political party, Milli Muslim League, that would compete in the forthcoming election.

The League is headed by Hafez Saaed, a former LeT leader, who was last year released from house arrest despite having been declared a designated global terrorist by the Security Council and the US Treasury, which put a $10 billion bounty on his head. China vetoed Mr. Saeed’s designation by the UN prior to the Mumbai attacks.

Activists, even though the party was last month designated by the US Treasury, are likely to run as independents in the election if the government maintains its rejection of the party’s registration.

So are operatives of Ahl-e-Sunnat-Wal-Jamaat, a front for Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, a banned, virulently anti-Shiite group that long enjoyed support from Saudi Arabia and operates multiple militant madrassas or religious seminaries in Balochistan that have witnessed an injection of funds from the kingdom in the last two years.

“Militant organisations are active. Call them non-state actors, should we allow them to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai? Explain it to me. Why can’t we complete the trial? It’s absolutely unacceptable. This is exactly what we are struggling for. President Putin has said it. President Xi has said it. We could have already been at seven per cent growth (in GDP), but we are not,” Mr. Sharif said, referring to stalled Mumbai attacks-related trials in a Rawalpindi anti-terrorism court.

Taking Mr. Sharif’s comments a step further, prominent journalist and author Ahmed Rashid asserted that “the deep state of Pakistan is supporting the banned outfits as it has done in the past. This game should be stopped, and the government should show its commitment and sincerity in disarming these groups and not to allow them to enter into politics.”

Former Pakistani strongman General Pervez Musharraf, in an apparent manifestation of links between the circles close to the military and hardliners, said prior to the designation by the US announced that he was discussing an alliance with Mr. Saeed’s league.

Speaking on Pakistani television, Mr. Musharraf pronounced himself “the greatest supporter of LeT… Because I have always been in favour of action in Kashmir and I have always been in favour of pressuring the Indian army in Kashmir,” Mr. Musharraf said.

Pakistan’s military and intelligence service are believed to favour integration of militants into the political process as a way of reducing violence and militancy in a country in which religious ultra-conservatism and intolerance has been woven into the fabric of branches of the state and significant segments of society.

Critics charge that integration is likely to fail in Pakistan. “Incorporating radical Islamist movements into formal political systems may have some benefits in theory… But the structural limitations in some Muslim countries with prominent radical groups make it unlikely that these groups will adopt such reforms, at least not anytime soon… While Islamabad wants to combat jihadist insurgents in Pakistan, it also wants to maintain influence over groups that are engaged in India and Afghanistan,” said Kamran Bokhari, a well-known scholar of violent extremism.

Citing the example of a militant Egyptian group that formed a political party to participate in elections, Mr. Bokhari argued that “though such groups remain opposed to democracy in theory, they are willing to participate in electoral politics to enhance their influence over the state. Extremist groups thus become incorporated into existing institutions and try to push radical changes from within the system.”

Chinese ambiguity about Pakistani policy goes beyond shielding Mr. Azhar from being designated. A Chinese-Pakistani draft plan last year identified as risks to CPEC “Pakistani politics, such as competing parties, religion, tribes, terrorists, and Western intervention” as well as security. “The security situation is the worst in recent years,” the plan said.

Security has since improved substantially in significant parts of Pakistan. The question, however, is whether integration of militants into the political process would stabilize Pakistani politics in the absence of a concerted effort to counter mounting ultra-conservative religious fervour in the country. It may be too early to judge, but so far the answer has to be no.

Is Pakistani Agriculture Ready for CPEC?

By Andrew McCormick

A lack of government planning could leave Pakistan’s farmers on the losing end of a far-reaching deal with China.

The basmati rice grown in Pakistan’s Punjab province is long and slender-grained. It is aromatic, fluffy when cooked and, in classic Pakistani dishes, pairs well with lentil and gravies made from chickpea flour and spices. At market, it draws double the price, if not more, of non-basmati, long-grain rice varieties.

In recent years, however, basmati revenues have slumped in Pakistan amid low-yield harvests and uneven quality. At the Sino-Pakistan Hybrid Rice Research Center in Karachi, Chinese and Pakistani scientists are working to reverse this trend. Using state-of-the-art genetic technologies, they are developing high-yield, high-quality, and pest-resistant rice varieties, for both domestic sale and export.

The $1.3 million research facility is a harbinger of many changes soon to come to Pakistan’s agriculture sector under the ambitious development scheme known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC. A crown jewel in China’s continent-bridging Belt and Road Initiative, CPEC encompasses some $62 billion in investments and infrastructure projects in Pakistan, including ports, power plants, roads, and railways. For agriculture, CPEC promises technology transfers, infrastructure upgrades, and extensive cooperation between Chinese and Pakistani farming enterprises.

Pakistani officials have struck a cheerful note, pledging all good things for the country’s landowners and farmers. But economists say similar rhetoric preceded ongoing CPEC projects in other sectors, which in fact became plagued by exploding budgets and bureaucratic delays when the time came for implementation.

Farmers in Pakistan, for their part, complain that a lack of detailed publicly available information has left them in the dark as to what to expect from CPEC-related agriculture projects, as well as unable to verify what measures the government has taken to protect their interests vis-à-vis China. At a time when Pakistan has wagered future decades of prosperity on CPEC’s success, this lack of transparency — and possibly an overall lack of government preparedness — threatens to place the country on the losing end of an otherwise promising economic partnership.

“CPEC could work for Pakistani agriculture or it could be a disaster,” said Nazish Afraz, a professor of economics and public policy researcher at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. “None of the potential gains under CPEC are automatic, though, and there is a sense that China has done much more to prepare than Pakistan.”

A June 2017 report in the Pakistani news outlet Dawn outlined the potential breadth of China’s plans for CPEC. According to the author’s review of a lengthy but confidential government planning document, it is possible Chinese enterprises will be allowed access to large tracts of Pakistani farmland, either by lease or purchase. On that land, they will allegedly be permitted to operate their own farms and processing facilities, backed by robust capital grants and loans from Beijing and the Chinese Development Bank.

Thanks to low tariffs and increased transportation links between the countries, Chinese produce is already prevalent in Pakistani markets and competing with locally grown produce. But in the future, Chinese produce grown in Pakistan could potentially be exported to Chinese markets, with little benefit whatsoever to Pakistan’s economy.

“Our approach to China has been, ‘Take whatever you want,’” said Kaiser Bengali, a senior economist and former advisor to the Pakistani government. “There has been little financial analysis, and no feasibility studies have been carried out of [CPEC’s] costs and benefits.”

Agriculture currently accounts for 20 percent of Pakistan’s GDP but employs 43 percent of its labor force, more than any other economic sector. Despite the industry’s size, it has long been hindered by water scarcity, energy shortages, and poor post-harvest infrastructure, which results in about one-third of the country’s produce going to waste before it reaches market.

That Chinese investment might remedy some of these issues is a sure benefit of CPEC for Pakistan, Bengali said. But he worries his country is prepared to give up too much in return.

Timely government regulation could help promote greater equity in in Pakistan’s arrangement with China. Syed Asim Ali Shah, a landowner and farmer who has grown rice and wheat for two decades in Punjab’s Jhang district, said he would like to see performance metrics imposed on Chinese enterprises entering Pakistan under CPEC. In exchange for land rights, he suggested, Chinese outfits could be asked to demonstrate quantifiable reductions in soil erosion, for example, or significant water collection in arid regions of the country.

No public debates have been held on CPEC in his area, though, Shah said, and he knows very little about what might actually come to pass. He worries CPEC will result in many farmers, particularly poor day laborers and subsistence farmers, being displaced.

According to Fazal Abbas Mekan, federal secretary of the Pakistani Ministry of National Food Security and Research, additional measures the government might consider include: guaranteed value chain participation for Pakistani growers, meaning raw produce would be processed into higher-value products — by canning, pureeing or pickling, for example — before export to China; quotas for Pakistani labor on Chinese-owned or operated farms; and requirements that specific infrastructure projects be completed, such as post-harvest storage facilities, before Chinese enterprises are allowed to access Pakistani land.

“Employment must be generated,” he said. “We should not just become a market for Chinese goods completely.” Mekan added, however, that the government was “late” in setting advantageous conditions for the country’s farmers and businesses.

Experts agree that agriculturalists might not want to hold their breath for swift protection from lawmakers. A disconnect between Pakistani government entities, they say, has broadly stymied efforts to adopt a consolidated approach to CPEC. With respect to agriculture, specifically, a 2010 constitutional amendment that established agriculture as the exclusive responsibility of provincial governments has resulted in frequent misalignment between provincial leaders and the federal officials who carry out CPEC negotiations with China.

Complicating matters further, nobody in the government has any way of ensuring consistency in leaders’ approaches to CPEC before and after elections. With Pakistani voters headed to the polls this July, the potential exists that shifting ideologies and constituencies could scuttle some of the preparatory work for CPEC that has already been completed.

If some worry these bureaucratic hitches will be exploited, however, Jue Wang, a fellow with Chatham House’s Asia-Pacific Program, said they have in fact proven equally problematic for the Chinese, across CPEC development sectors.

“Chinese project leaders are used to a strong, central administrative voice in their own country,” she explained. “They struggle to simply navigate this sort of disorganization.”

Wang added that China should not be mistaken for a particularly unified actor on this front, either. Though many teams of Chinese experts and workers have been dispatched to Pakistan to survey land and evaluate opportunities, she said these groups often represent a variety of competing Chinese private companies and state-owned enterprises, who are themselves arguing over who gets to benefit from CPEC.

With such a diversity of actors at play on both sides, Chinese enterprises will likely choose to approach future CPEC endeavors with caution and the flexibility to adapt to market fluctuations, according to Angela Stanzel, a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“This is a very fluid project,” Stanzel said. “China doesn’t want to overplay its hand. They’re testing things out and seeing what works.”

At the end of the day, Stanzel said, China seeks to tout CPEC as a positive example of what it might achieve in other Belt and Road-associated countries. While she said fears of a Chinese “takeover” in Pakistan are well-founded, based on Chinese ventures in other parts of the world in recent decades, Stanzel anticipates China will want to avoid the negative blowback it faced in some African countries for its heavy-handed approach to partnership.

Which scenario will ultimately characterize Pakistan under CPEC — that of an “iron brother,” in the rhetoric of Chinese development assistance, or a subjugated dependent — remains to be seen, but Hasaan Khawar, a prominent public policy columnist in Islamabad, expects the end result will have much to do with how well the country’s leaders prepare. For now, Khawar regrets that Pakistani landowners and farmers remain caught between optimistic government “fairy tales” and paranoia-inducing speculation, with little reliable information and fewer opportunities for comment.

“A lot of the initial excitement for CPEC is fading,” Khawar said. “We are starting to realize in Pakistan that, even under CPEC and Belt and Road, there is no never-ending stream of money from China.”

Long hours load-shedding make life miserable in Badin

Prolonged load-shedding continues in different parts of the city in day & night due to which people from different walks of life including going to office, business community, domestic residents and people who fasting & praying are facing difficulties.

Unannounced load-shedding continues not just during the day, but also at long hours in night in the different areas of city including ward no: 05, Press Club area, Shah Latif road, Kazia mori (bridge), Gharibabad, Seerani road, Village Haji Hashim Khaskheli, water supply areas and others main different areas of city are also worried about the recurrent power outages..

In different parts of the city, residents of the city were being deprived of the electricity from long a week because of no maintenance or change of the burnt or out of order electricity transformers when others main areas of city are facing up to seven hours of announced load-shedding in addition to several hours of unannounced load-shedding.

Not only were the citizens deprived of water, but those who have to go to office, business and others in the morning were also disturbed badly. According to sources more than ten electricity transformers were either burnt or out of order or requires maintenance from long a week were not reshuffled or changed irked the citizens.

Despite the order of Federal Govt for no load shedding in holy month of Ramzan, at least at time of prayers and specially Sehre and Iftar, people of Badin were hurdles of a whole long previous week even two days of holy months but higher authorities were turned off their eyes despite to heed for immediate resolve the people faced matters.

People of Badin by holding many stern protest demonstrations at different parts of the city demanded for immediate power supply and no load shedding in the holy month of Ramzan.