Monday, November 18, 2019
#Pakistan - Paedophile patronised - Sohail Ayaz - Why did the KP government employ him?
That Sohail Ayaz was deported to Pakistan from the UK without anyone telling the Pakistani authorities of why he was deported is bad enough, but what seems beyond belief is that he was able to land a job with the KP government as a consultant on governance and that too at a fat salary. That he got the job indicates that he had a network, of relatives, friends or even fellow pedophiles, behind him. That he was left free to assault 30 minors, is evidence that the UK did not share the information of why he was deported, which was because of a conviction for pedophilia.
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/11/17/paedophile-patronised/
There is now splendid talk of creating a Sex Offenders Register, on which Mr. Ayaz would have been placed if had existed, but that would not solve the problem of why there was no background check by the KP government before giving him a job. There should have been some exploration of the circumstances of his return from the UK. There are two main reasons for deportation, overstay and litigation. Litigation is very often shorthand for deportation after having served a jail sentence post-conviction for a criminal offense. Even if someone has been convicted of an offense, Pakistan should know, even if the convict is not a sex offender. Why should Pakistan not know of pickpockets, cat burglars or bank robbers?
Another aspect of the affair is that of child pornography. Mr. Ayaz was described by the judge who presided at his trial as ‘driven by powerful paedophiliac interests’, but was also thought to peddle paedophiliac videos. With scandals striking Pakistan (starting with the Kasur scandal of 2017), the country could develop an unfortunate reputation. No one wants Pakistan to replace the image of Terrorism Central with that of Kiddie Porn Capital; that is not quite the ‘soft image’ that anyone wants to be projected. Ayaz Sohail should serve as that example. The KP government should make sure there are no flaws in the investigation, and that the mentally sick find KP too hot to hold.
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/11/17/paedophile-patronised/
No, Pakistan’s Gwadar Port Is Not a Chinese Naval Base (Just Yet)
The Pakistani navy is entrenching itself in Gwadar but there is no evidence of the Chinese forces’ presence yet.
With growing U.S.-China tensions and with the rise of the simplifying “Thucydides Trap” narrative, we are often tempted to perceive many of Beijing actions as done deals, and as initiatives of far-reaching, strategic implications. The truth, as always, is that reality is complex and only time will tell. One of the stories that often flows on this hype is that Pakistan’s civilian port of Gwadar – which is now being developed with the help of Beijing – will become a Chinese naval base.
To be sure, I do think it would be natural, from a strategic perspective, for Beijing to start running a base for its navy in Pakistan at some point in the future. But just because I believe so does not mean I can twist and cherry-pick evidence to prove it is already happening.
Has Gwadar port become a base for the Chinese navy? There is no open source evidence for this and the current level of the port’s development would make this rather impossible. There is also no public inter-government agreement or a statement of each of the governments available to prove that Islamabad has handed over Gwadar – or is going to do so – for the use of the PLAN (the People’s Liberation Army Navy, i.e. the Chinese navy). Many things may be kept secret of course, though in the case of Djibouti, we did learn of the agreement between the governments before the base was officially set up.
And can we find evidence that Gwadar is becoming a Chinese naval base? A sincere reply should once again be: no. In the last years, a few articles on this subject caused a wave of alarmist headlines across the global media (such as a South China Morning Post story published in January 2018). What they had in common, however, is that they referred to unnamed sources (such as people “close to the PLA”), to the opinions of experts, and to unverifiable stories (such as secret meetings between Pakistani and Chinese officers). That does not have to mean these accounts are untrue – it just makes them impossible to corroborate. Most importantly, these texts talked of plans to establish such a base, not of evidence that the Gwadar port is becoming one now.
What can be said for sure is that presence of the Pakistani navy at the (still formally civilian) port of Gwadar is indeed growing. Pakistani navy ships were already found to be docking at Gwadar, both spotted by satellites and simply reported by the country’s press. In December 2016, the Pakistani navy created Task Force-88 to protect the sea lanes coming to and from Gwadar. Navy vessels have thus been arriving at Gwadar escorting transport ships (which does not mean they could not appear there for other reasons as well). In March 2018, for instance, Gwadar welcomed its first container vessel (MS Tiger), in the company of two navy ships, PNS Dehshat and PNS Karar. There are also Pakistani soldiers stationed at Gwadar and one of their responsibilities is to protect the Chinese citizens who are working on the port’s development.
Very importantly, a November 2018 brave investigative piece by Maqbool Ahmed published in a Pakistan journal, the Herald, presents evidence for a broad land acquisition drive by the Pakistani navy around Gwadar. The story should have gained global publicity at the scale of the South China Morning Post piece — it deserved recognition much more than the latter — but it has not. The Herald has been closed since then. It a yet another instance of how local journalism often finds it hard to compete with reputed international papers, even in the cases when the former is based on risky, ground-level investigation and the latter on secure conversations with easily accessible sources. Maqbool Ahmed claimed that the navy is acquiring property (and establishing checkpoints) not only close to Gwadar (in its lagoon) but even much further inland. The scope of this process would suggest that the country’s naval forces are preparing to entrench themselves in Gwadar.
All of this relates to the presence of the Pakistani navy, not the Chinese one, however. A visit by the Chinese navy elsewhere in Pakistan would hardly be surprising by now given the countries’ relations – as in the case of a July 2018 story of two PLAN submarines in Karachi – but open source material does not prove that Chinese vessels have been using Gwadar. The only Chinese armed vessels that have certainly come to Gwadar were the two patrol ships (PMSS Basol and PMSS Hingol) that Pakistan actually purchased from Beijing, received in 2017, and tasked with protecting Gwadar and its vicinity.
Is there any verifiable evidence of the Chinese at least planning to use Gwadar as a naval base? Not really. It could be pointed out, however, that while China provided loans for a number of projects in and around Gwadar (and throughout Pakistan), in 2015 Beijing changed the loans into interest-free grants in two cases: the construction of the Gwadar airport and the Eastbay Expressway Project. The expressway will connect the city to the airport and the regional highway. The “soft” explanation would be that the PRC added these grants as a freebie, a sweetener, as Pakistan borrowed heavily from China for the sake of Gwadar’s development anyway. The “hard” interpretation would be that Gwadar’s infrastructure is so important for China that it is willing to partially finance it. The counterpoint to the latter interpretation is that the sum of these two grants is only $370 million and the Eastbay Expressway is to be only 19 kilometers long. These projects and their financial conditions can hardly be considered strategic game-changers by themselves.
To be sure, by “evidence,” I do not mean the broad strategic considerations. I am aware of the wide discussion on how much, given its location, Gwadar could be useful for PLAN, and there is no need to refer to these debates here. A base the size of Gwadar, remote and unsafe as its area is now, would be a natural choice for both China and Pakistan. It is one of the farthest bays on the Pakistan’s coast toward the west, as distant from the rival state of India as possible. It would also help to secure the vital sea shipping routes. But these are speculations based on why could Gwadar work as a naval base and not evidence that such a base is under construction. The evidence, so far, is to the contrary – it seems that what is being constructed at Gwadar’s port are facilities that could be primarily used for economic and civilian purposes, and not the machinery needed for maintenance of large naval vessels.
Under the impressive carpet of words, the tall talk of the Belt and Road Initiative, the String of Pearls, and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Gwadar still remains a remote, provincial city with its port currently under development. It is very poorly connected to the rest of the country, it is not an economic hub by any standard, and so far faces very mundane problems, such as a shortage of water and power (not to speak of the threat for Baloch armed groups, which in May 2019 have shown the capacity to strike targets even within Gwadar city). It not only does not serve a strategic military role now but also its significance as a future transportation hub remains to be verified. Maybe the PLAN does have a plan for Pakistan, but it is not being unveiled just yet.
The War That Made India a 'Great Power' (And Hurt Pakistan to This Day)
The 1971 India-Pakistan War.
Before December 3, 1971, Pakistan was a country suffering from a split personality disorder. When British India became independent in 1947, the country was divided into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The problem was that East Pakistan and West Pakistan were almost a thousand miles apart, and wedged in between them was archenemy India. Imagine if the United States only consisted of the East Coast and West Coast, and Russia controlled all of North America in between.
Thirteen days later, Pakistan had been amputated. Indian troops had conquered East Pakistan, which became the new nation of Bangladesh. More than ninety thousand Pakistani soldiers were taken prisoner, half the Pakistani Navy had been sunk and the Indian Air Force came out on top. It was total humiliation, and not just for Pakistan. The United States and Britain sent aircraft carriers in a futile attempt to intimidate India, and ended up facing off against Soviet warships. Pakistan’s defeat also spurred its rulers to begin the development of nuclear weapons.
The 1971 India-Pakistan War, the third major conflict between the two nations in twenty-five years, was sparked by unrest in East Pakistan. The Bengalis of East Pakistan, who constituted 54 percent of Pakistan’s population at the time, chafed under the rule of West Pakistan. The two Pakistans belonged to different ethnic groups and spoke different languages.
Bengali demands for autonomy were rebuffed. By mid-1971, an East Pakistan guerrilla movement had emerged, supported by India. Pakistan’s military-controlled government cracked down hard, killing up to three million Bengalis in what has been described as a genocide. By November, both India and Pakistan were preparing for war.
On December 3, Pakistan launched a preemptive air strike against Indian airfields, ironically trying to emulate how the Israeli Air Force had destroyed Egyptian airpower in 1967. The difference was that the Israelis committed two hundred aircraft and wiped out nearly five hundred Egyptian aircraft in a few hours; Pakistan committed fifty aircraft and inflicted little damage. The air war featured the full panoply of Cold War jets, pitting Pakistani F-104 Starfighters, F-86 Sabres, MiG-19s and B-57 Canberras against Indian MiG-21s, Sukhoi-7s, Hawker Hunters and Folland Gnats, as well as Hawker Sea Hawks flying from the Indian carrier Vikrant.
Both sides claimed victory in the air war. Chuck Yeager, who was in Pakistan advising their air force, claimed the Pakistanis “whipped their asses.” The Indians claim Yeager was crazy. However, it does appear that India had the upper hand in the air, controlling the skies over East Pakistan and losing about forty-five aircraft to Pakistan’s seventy-five. The maneuverable little Indian Gnat, a British-made lightweight fighter (its predecessor was called the Midge), proved so successful against Pakistani F-86s that the Indians dubbed it the “Sabre Slayer.”
At sea, there is no question that India won. The Indian Navy dispatched missile boats, armed with Soviet-made Styx missiles, to strike the western port of Karachi, sinking or badly damaging two Pakistani destroyers and three merchant ships, as well as fuel tanks. Indian ships blockaded East Pakistan from reinforcements and supplies. Notable was India’s use of the carrier Vikrant to conduct air strikes on coastal targets, as well as conducting an amphibious landing on Pakistani territory.
Pakistan retaliated by dispatching the submarine Ghazi to mine Indian ports. While stalked by an Indian destroyer, the Ghazi mysteriously blew up. However, the submarine Hangor did sink the Indian frigate Khukri.
As for the ground war, the best that can be said is that if Napoleon himself had faced Pakistan’s strategic dilemma, he would have sulked off to St. Helena. Isolated by land and blockaded by sea, no army could have defended East Pakistan against even a moderately competent foe, let alone the nine Indian divisions that quickly captured the East Pakistan capital of Dhaka. East Pakistani forces surrendered on December 16.
To add insult to the defeat of Pakistan and its proudly Muslim rulers, the Indian campaign was planned by Maj. Gen. J. F. R. Jacob—an Indian Jew descended from a family that fled Baghdad in the eighteenth century.
One issue that hampered Pakistan’s war effort would soon become familiar in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other ethnically divided nations. In 1971, Bengalis comprised a significant part of the Pakistani military, especially in technical jobs.
Meanwhile, the superpowers were flexing their muscles. Despite its cruelty toward the Bengalis, and the opposition of U.S. diplomats, President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger backed Pakistan against pro-Soviet India (see the Nixon-Kissinger transcripts here). Task Force 74, centered on the aircraft carrier Enterprise, steamed into the Bay of Bengal, as did the British carrier Eagle. Why India would have been intimidated into a cease-fire, even as its tanks were rolling into Dhaka, is a mystery. America’s attempt to deter India from defeating Pakistan became a case study of the limitations of relying on the threat of force to compel other nations to change their behavior.
In fact, what the U.S. Navy accomplished was to chill U.S.-Indian relations for years. Even more disturbing were the Soviet cruisers, destroyers and submarines shadowing Task Force 74. A war between two Southwest Asian nations could have triggered a superpower showdown at sea, and perhaps World War III.
In the end, India had demonstrated its military superiority. Pakistan lost half its territory and population. Perhaps more important, Pakistani illusions that an Islamic army could rout the “weak” Hindus had been disproved. Following the 1947 and 1965 wars, the 1971 war was the third major conflict between India and Pakistan. It was also the last. Despite some hostilities in Kargil and other spots on the border, India and Pakistan have not fought a major war in forty-five years.
Unfortunately, Pakistan’s humiliation in 1971 spurred it into developing an atomic bomb. With India also armed with atomic weapons, South Asia now lives under the shadow of nuclear war. The next major India-Pakistan clash could be the last.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/war-made-india-great-power-and-hurt-pakistan-day-96451
Bilawal Bhutto responds to PM Imran's sarcastic statement
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto responded to Prime Minister Imran Khan’s statement sarcastically mocking him by stating his ‘rain’ statement.
PM Imran, while addressing groundbreaking of the Hazara Motorway Phase II in Havelian, said that PPP chairman shocked the remarkable scientists like Einstein with his theory. He was quoted as saying, “When it rains, water pours down. When it rains more, more water pours down.” He asserted that Bilawal Bhutto claims to be a liberal but he is liberally corrupt.
Bilawal Bhutto took to Twitter and expressed that he is neither liberal nor corrupt and hypocrite. “I am a visionary and progressionist who has been in politics for more than year”, he said, adding that PM Imran is 70-year-old elder who has been exercising ‘selected’ politics for more than 20 years.
Na liberal hoon, Na corrupt hoon aur Na hi munafiq. Main taraki-pasand aur nazriyati hoon. Aik saal say siyasat main hoon. Tum 70 saal kay burhay ho, 20 saal say selected siyasat kartay aa rahay ho. Agar Imran ki koi pehchaan hai - tau woh U-turn hai, munafiqat hai, katputli hai.
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He concluded saying that Imran Khan is only recognized by U-turn, hypocrisy and being a puppet.