Caning in Malaysia has "hit epidemic proportions" with thousands of people subjected every year to beatings which leave permanent physical and mental scars, Amnesty International said Monday.
The London-based rights group called on the Malaysian government to immediately end the practice of judicial caning, which is meted out for immigration offences as well as more serious crimes like murder and rape.
"Caning in Malaysia has hit epidemic proportions," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International?s Asia-Pacific director.
"In every case that we examined, the punishment amounted to torture, which is absolutely prohibited under any circumstances."
Amnesty said in a report that since 2002, when parliament made immigration violations subject to caning, thousands of migrant workers and foreigners seeking asylum had undergone the punishment.
"According to our figures, more than 10,000 people are caned by authorities in Malaysia annually and this number is actually a conservative estimate," said report author Lance Lattig.
"At the very least, we would say the government should issue a moratorium on the caning of anyone who is seeking asylum because they are at risk of persecution in another country," he told a press conference.
Lattig said caning was introduced by British colonial authorities prior to Malaysia's independence in 1957 but that most former colonies had abandoned the practice.
"It exists as a residue of an extremely brutal form of Victorian punishment that exists in very few other places," he said.
The report detailed how in Malaysian prisons "specially trained caning officers tear into victims? bodies with a metre-long cane swung with both hands at high speed."
"The cane rips into the victim?s naked skin, pulps the fatty tissue below, and leaves scars that extend to muscle fibre. The pain is so severe that victims often lose consciousness."
Amnesty said that prison officers were paid a bonus for each stroke, enabling them to double their income by administering the punishment.
"Others take bribes to intentionally miss, sparing their victims," it said.
Malaysian home ministry and prison officials declined to comment on the report when contacted by AFP on Monday.
Corporal punishment has become a hot topic in Malaysia, particularly after a a Muslim mother-of-two was sentenced to six strokes and a fine last year for drinking alcohol.
However, caning for religious offences -- ordered by Islamic courts which run in parallel with civil courts in the Muslim-majority country -- is much lighter than in the civil justice system.
Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno's sentence for drinking alcohol was eventually reduced to community service but three other women then received between four and six strokes of the cane after being convicted of sex outside marriage.
The penalties triggered uproar among women's activists and human rights advocates
M WAQAR..... "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary.Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --Albert Einstein !!! NEWS,ARTICLES,EDITORIALS,MUSIC... Ze chi pe mayeen yum da agha pukhtunistan de.....(Liberal,Progressive,Secular World.)''Secularism is not against religion; it is the message of humanity.'' تل ده وی پثتونستآن
Monday, December 6, 2010
Amnesty demands action on Malaysian caning 'epidemic'
Caning in Malaysia has "hit epidemic proportions" with thousands of people subjected every year to beatings which leave permanent physical and mental scars, Amnesty International said Monday.
The London-based rights group called on the Malaysian government to immediately end the practice of judicial caning, which is meted out for immigration offences as well as more serious crimes like murder and rape.
"Caning in Malaysia has hit epidemic proportions," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International?s Asia-Pacific director.
"In every case that we examined, the punishment amounted to torture, which is absolutely prohibited under any circumstances."
Amnesty said in a report that since 2002, when parliament made immigration violations subject to caning, thousands of migrant workers and foreigners seeking asylum had undergone the punishment.
"According to our figures, more than 10,000 people are caned by authorities in Malaysia annually and this number is actually a conservative estimate," said report author Lance Lattig.
"At the very least, we would say the government should issue a moratorium on the caning of anyone who is seeking asylum because they are at risk of persecution in another country," he told a press conference.
Lattig said caning was introduced by British colonial authorities prior to Malaysia's independence in 1957 but that most former colonies had abandoned the practice.
"It exists as a residue of an extremely brutal form of Victorian punishment that exists in very few other places," he said.
The report detailed how in Malaysian prisons "specially trained caning officers tear into victims? bodies with a metre-long cane swung with both hands at high speed."
"The cane rips into the victim?s naked skin, pulps the fatty tissue below, and leaves scars that extend to muscle fibre. The pain is so severe that victims often lose consciousness."
Amnesty said that prison officers were paid a bonus for each stroke, enabling them to double their income by administering the punishment.
"Others take bribes to intentionally miss, sparing their victims," it said.
Malaysian home ministry and prison officials declined to comment on the report when contacted by AFP on Monday.
Corporal punishment has become a hot topic in Malaysia, particularly after a a Muslim mother-of-two was sentenced to six strokes and a fine last year for drinking alcohol.
However, caning for religious offences -- ordered by Islamic courts which run in parallel with civil courts in the Muslim-majority country -- is much lighter than in the civil justice system.
Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno's sentence for drinking alcohol was eventually reduced to community service but three other women then received between four and six strokes of the cane after being convicted of sex outside marriage.
The penalties triggered uproar among women's activists and human rights advocates
The London-based rights group called on the Malaysian government to immediately end the practice of judicial caning, which is meted out for immigration offences as well as more serious crimes like murder and rape.
"Caning in Malaysia has hit epidemic proportions," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International?s Asia-Pacific director.
"In every case that we examined, the punishment amounted to torture, which is absolutely prohibited under any circumstances."
Amnesty said in a report that since 2002, when parliament made immigration violations subject to caning, thousands of migrant workers and foreigners seeking asylum had undergone the punishment.
"According to our figures, more than 10,000 people are caned by authorities in Malaysia annually and this number is actually a conservative estimate," said report author Lance Lattig.
"At the very least, we would say the government should issue a moratorium on the caning of anyone who is seeking asylum because they are at risk of persecution in another country," he told a press conference.
Lattig said caning was introduced by British colonial authorities prior to Malaysia's independence in 1957 but that most former colonies had abandoned the practice.
"It exists as a residue of an extremely brutal form of Victorian punishment that exists in very few other places," he said.
The report detailed how in Malaysian prisons "specially trained caning officers tear into victims? bodies with a metre-long cane swung with both hands at high speed."
"The cane rips into the victim?s naked skin, pulps the fatty tissue below, and leaves scars that extend to muscle fibre. The pain is so severe that victims often lose consciousness."
Amnesty said that prison officers were paid a bonus for each stroke, enabling them to double their income by administering the punishment.
"Others take bribes to intentionally miss, sparing their victims," it said.
Malaysian home ministry and prison officials declined to comment on the report when contacted by AFP on Monday.
Corporal punishment has become a hot topic in Malaysia, particularly after a a Muslim mother-of-two was sentenced to six strokes and a fine last year for drinking alcohol.
However, caning for religious offences -- ordered by Islamic courts which run in parallel with civil courts in the Muslim-majority country -- is much lighter than in the civil justice system.
Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno's sentence for drinking alcohol was eventually reduced to community service but three other women then received between four and six strokes of the cane after being convicted of sex outside marriage.
The penalties triggered uproar among women's activists and human rights advocates
Pakistan woman recounts ordeal under Taliban
(AP) ASHAR BAND, Pakistan (AP) — Girls now go to school in this mountain town and the military patrols keep security. But Saira Bibi's eyes still flash with pain and anger through the small gap in her veil as she recounts how the Taliban who once ruled here dragged her from home and flogged her in front of her neighbors.
It didn't matter that she always wore a body-covering burqa, nor that she rarely left her mud-brick home. It didn't matter that her conservative in-laws scoffed at the accusation she was an adulterer. To the Islamist extremists who had taken over her tiny town above Pakistan's Swat Valley, a rumor was enough.
"They came and took me to the school, where 150 or 200 people had been gathered. They pushed me to the ground and hit me 15 times," says Bibi, 30, holding her 1-year-old son as he reaches for the safety pin keeping her veil in place. Her right hand fidgets under the fabric as she recalls her humiliation nearly two years ago.
Bibi is one of the first women to openly speak about being publicly punished during the Pakistani Taliban's rule over this resort area. Her tale is a painful reminder of how Swat's conservative, ethnic Pashtun culture descended into harsh theocratic rule that banned girls from school, women from markets and executed anyone who resisted.
An iconic video of a flogging much like Bibi describes helped galvanize Pakistani public support for last year's army offensive that finally drove the Taliban out of the Swat Valley, following several failed peace deals with the militants. The footage of the beating was shown repeatedly on national television, stirring outrage among many who were getting their first up-close glimpse of the Taliban's brutality.
More than a year since the offensive, life is starting to resemble normal in Swat. Schoolgirls again flock giggling on the streets of the main city, Mingora. Veiled women shop for food and clothes. Most of the 2 million who fled Taliban oppression and the fighting to oust them have returned.
"Our enrollment is increasing all the time," says Anwar Sultan, principal of the state-run Saidu Sharif girls' high school in Mingora. A loudspeaker recites Quranic verses as some 1,500 teenagers pour into the courtyard, some wearing high heels with their traditional tunics and bright shawls.
But not everything is as it was. Soldiers now stand on street corners and at checkpoints. The jagged mountain trail leading to Bibi's village of Ashar Band is strewn with the rubble of damaged buildings. Some 300 schools the Taliban burned in the region have not yet been rebuilt. Occasional attacks — a raid on a checkpoint last month wounded one soldier — remind residents that militancy is still a threat.
The Taliban takeover of Swat, which was near-total by 2008, came as a shock to many Pakistanis accustomed to thinking of the militants as far away, a mostly Afghan movement fighting American troops across the border. No one expected the homegrown version to start beheading people in a middle-class honeymoon destination only 175 miles (280 kilometers) away from Islamabad, the capital.
Many in the area were initially supportive when Swat Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah began preaching hard-line Islam over local radio. Some women even donated their jewelry to the cause, according to Sultan, the school principal. But over the months, armed men started roaming through the area, meting out harsh punishment for anyone who opposed them and driving out local authorities.
Bibi was one of dozens of women who fell victim to the militants' zeal. On the porch of the couple's tiny dirt-floor home, Bibi and her husband, Fazal-e-Azim, say a vindictive cousin spread the false rumor she was unfaithful while Azim was working in another city. Punishment was swift, even though Azim's own family argued her innocence.
"I only wish the same punishment for the people who unjustly punished my wife," Azim says.
Villager Sharif Khan, 70, recalls being forced at gunpoint to watch Bibi being beaten repeatedly with a stick, along with other villagers rounded up to the area.
"I felt sorry for her," Khan says. "But we were all helpless."
With the military now in control, the army has made efforts to improve lives of women in Swat. Among the initiatives outside Mingora is a vocational training center, where women study embroidery, glass-painting, hairstyling and other work they can do at home.
"According to our culture, women may make clothes or crafts to sell, but they do all this inside their homes, not outside," explains Uzma Nawaz, the center's 27-year-old director.
As for Bibi and Azim, they are moving on with their lives. Sitting by a cradle hanging from the rough-log roof beams, Bibi eyes soften as she nods to confirm she is pregnant again. She doesn't know if it's a boy or a girl, or what the family will do if the militants return, as some still fear in the valley.
Her husband, however, answers firmly.
"If the Taliban return," he says. "We will leave."
It didn't matter that she always wore a body-covering burqa, nor that she rarely left her mud-brick home. It didn't matter that her conservative in-laws scoffed at the accusation she was an adulterer. To the Islamist extremists who had taken over her tiny town above Pakistan's Swat Valley, a rumor was enough.
"They came and took me to the school, where 150 or 200 people had been gathered. They pushed me to the ground and hit me 15 times," says Bibi, 30, holding her 1-year-old son as he reaches for the safety pin keeping her veil in place. Her right hand fidgets under the fabric as she recalls her humiliation nearly two years ago.
Bibi is one of the first women to openly speak about being publicly punished during the Pakistani Taliban's rule over this resort area. Her tale is a painful reminder of how Swat's conservative, ethnic Pashtun culture descended into harsh theocratic rule that banned girls from school, women from markets and executed anyone who resisted.
An iconic video of a flogging much like Bibi describes helped galvanize Pakistani public support for last year's army offensive that finally drove the Taliban out of the Swat Valley, following several failed peace deals with the militants. The footage of the beating was shown repeatedly on national television, stirring outrage among many who were getting their first up-close glimpse of the Taliban's brutality.
More than a year since the offensive, life is starting to resemble normal in Swat. Schoolgirls again flock giggling on the streets of the main city, Mingora. Veiled women shop for food and clothes. Most of the 2 million who fled Taliban oppression and the fighting to oust them have returned.
"Our enrollment is increasing all the time," says Anwar Sultan, principal of the state-run Saidu Sharif girls' high school in Mingora. A loudspeaker recites Quranic verses as some 1,500 teenagers pour into the courtyard, some wearing high heels with their traditional tunics and bright shawls.
But not everything is as it was. Soldiers now stand on street corners and at checkpoints. The jagged mountain trail leading to Bibi's village of Ashar Band is strewn with the rubble of damaged buildings. Some 300 schools the Taliban burned in the region have not yet been rebuilt. Occasional attacks — a raid on a checkpoint last month wounded one soldier — remind residents that militancy is still a threat.
The Taliban takeover of Swat, which was near-total by 2008, came as a shock to many Pakistanis accustomed to thinking of the militants as far away, a mostly Afghan movement fighting American troops across the border. No one expected the homegrown version to start beheading people in a middle-class honeymoon destination only 175 miles (280 kilometers) away from Islamabad, the capital.
Many in the area were initially supportive when Swat Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah began preaching hard-line Islam over local radio. Some women even donated their jewelry to the cause, according to Sultan, the school principal. But over the months, armed men started roaming through the area, meting out harsh punishment for anyone who opposed them and driving out local authorities.
Bibi was one of dozens of women who fell victim to the militants' zeal. On the porch of the couple's tiny dirt-floor home, Bibi and her husband, Fazal-e-Azim, say a vindictive cousin spread the false rumor she was unfaithful while Azim was working in another city. Punishment was swift, even though Azim's own family argued her innocence.
"I only wish the same punishment for the people who unjustly punished my wife," Azim says.
Villager Sharif Khan, 70, recalls being forced at gunpoint to watch Bibi being beaten repeatedly with a stick, along with other villagers rounded up to the area.
"I felt sorry for her," Khan says. "But we were all helpless."
With the military now in control, the army has made efforts to improve lives of women in Swat. Among the initiatives outside Mingora is a vocational training center, where women study embroidery, glass-painting, hairstyling and other work they can do at home.
"According to our culture, women may make clothes or crafts to sell, but they do all this inside their homes, not outside," explains Uzma Nawaz, the center's 27-year-old director.
As for Bibi and Azim, they are moving on with their lives. Sitting by a cradle hanging from the rough-log roof beams, Bibi eyes soften as she nods to confirm she is pregnant again. She doesn't know if it's a boy or a girl, or what the family will do if the militants return, as some still fear in the valley.
Her husband, however, answers firmly.
"If the Taliban return," he says. "We will leave."
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Pakistan, Christianity Earns a Death Sentence
It all began a year and a half ago, with a quarrel over a bowl of water. A group of women farm workers were suffering in the heat near a village in Pakistans Punjab province. Aasia Noreen, an illiterate 45-year-old mother five, offered them water, but was rebuffed. Noreen was a Christian, they said, and therefore her water was unclean - sadly, a common taunt hurled at Pakistan's beleaguered Christians. But rather than swallowing the indignity, she mounted a stout defense of her faith.
Word of the exchange swiftly filtered through the village of Ittan Wali, in Sheikhupura district. The local mullah took to his mosque's loudspeakers, exhorting his followers to take action against Noreen. In a depressingly familiar pattern, her defense of her faith was twisted into an accusation of blasphemy, according to her family and legal observers familiar with the case. As a frenzied mob pursued her, the police intervened, taking her into custody. But far from protecting her, they arrested and charged Noreen with insulting Islam and its prophet. And on Nov. 8, after enduring 18 months in prison, she was sentenced to death by a district court, making her the first woman to suffer that fate. (See how WikiLeaks' disclosure fueled anti-U.S. anger in Pakistan.)
In the ensuing weeks, the case of Noreen, popularly known as Aasia Bibi, has sparked a national furor. Human rights campaigners and lawyers have denounced the sentence. Religious fundamentalist groups, usually at odds with one another, have suddenly coalesced around a campaign to defend the blasphemy law and attack its critics. One politician who called for Noreen to be pardoned now faces a fatwa for alleged apostasy. Another politician, who is trying to have the blasphemy laws amended, has been warned that she will be besieged. On television, religious scholars have disagreed among themselves over the law's merits. Divisions are also being seen within the government, with powerful figures taking opposing sides. And there has even been global outrage, with Pope Benedict XVI last week calling for Noreen's freedom.
Noreen's case has spurred the first genuine debate over some of Pakistans most controversial laws. The original blasphemy law was drawn up by the British, in the Indian Penal Code of 1860, aimed at keeping the peace among the subcontinent's sometimes fractious diversity of faiths. Not only did Pakistan inherit the laws after partition, but it added to them. In the 1980s, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's military dictatorship introduced a slew of elastically worded clauses, including a death sentence for those deemed to have defiled the sacred name of the Prophet.
Before Zia, there were only two reported cases of blasphemy. Since the death sentence was inserted in 1986, the number has soared to 962 - including 340 members of the Ahmadi Muslim sect, 119 Christians, and 14 Hindus. Close examination of the cases reveals the laws often being invoked to settle personal vendettas, or used by Islamist extremists as cover to persecute religious minorities. (See how WikiLeaks exposed insecurity over Pakistan nukes.)
Vague wording allows the blasphemy laws to be used an instrument of political and social coercion, says Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. And they give the state a sectarian character.
No conclusive evidence has been presented against Noreen, say people familiar with the case. The district judge relied on the testimonies of three other women, all of whom bore animus toward her. Noreen had long been under pressure by fellow farmworkers to convert to Islam, her family says. And the district judge ruled out any possibility of her innocence or mitigating circumstances.
Christians are subject to vicious prejudice in Pakistan, where there beliefs are said to make them "unclean." Municipalities routinely advertise jobs for cleaners with a note saying they would prefer Christian applicants. And defending their rights is not popular. When Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, visited Noreen in prison and urged her release, he was branded an apostate by fundamentalist groups. And in the fundamentalist view, apostasy, like blasphemy, is punishable by death.
Liberal lawmaker Sherry Rehman who has called for amendment of the blasphemy laws and removal of the death sentence clause was warned this week that she would be "besieged." It is a measure of the state's impotence in the face of extremist groups that such high-profile public figures can be openly threatened for merely advocating human rights, says Hasan, of Human Rights Watch.
Rehman insists that she won't be cowed by the threats. "I really can't be coerced into silencing myself like this," she tells TIME. "It's my freedom as a legislator to do as I do. If they want to talk, there's no issue. But to use coercion is unacceptable." Taseer, a notably outspoken politician, is phlegmatic. "It doesnt bother me," he tells TIME. "Who the hell are these illiterare maulvis to decide to whether I'm a Muslim or not?" (See pictures of Pakistan's waiting place.)
Rehman's reform effort is unlikely to succeed, because few politicians have dared to support it. Indeed, Babar Awan, the Law Minister has vowed to oppose any move against the blasphemy laws. What's more, the Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who had last year suggested the laws should be reviewed after the killing of nine Christians in Punjab, now seems to be distancing himself. "It is not our party policy," he told a news channel this week, when asked about Rehman's bill. But Rehman, who spent years fighting laws that discriminate against women, says its mere submission is an important first step: "The first stone has been cast. It's not a taboo subject anymore to be taken up by legislators."
More worrying is the fate of Noreen. The Lahore High Court has taken the controversial step of saying that it won't allow President Asif Ali Zardari to issue a pardon, a move that legal experts have said is unconstitutional. Her family is now hoping that the higher courts will strike down the death sentence, or that she will eventually secure a pardon. And the fear doesn't end there. While no one has been executed for blasphemy yet, 32 people - including two judges - have been slain by vigilantes. At Friday prayers this week, Yousef Qureshi, a hardline cleric from the Mohabat Khan mosque in Peshawar, offered a reward of 500,000 rupees ($5,800) to "those who kill Aasia Bibi."
Even if pardoned, Rehman notes grimply, Noreen will no longer be able to to live in her community. For her own safety, she will have to be moved - simply for defending her right to choose her own faith.
Word of the exchange swiftly filtered through the village of Ittan Wali, in Sheikhupura district. The local mullah took to his mosque's loudspeakers, exhorting his followers to take action against Noreen. In a depressingly familiar pattern, her defense of her faith was twisted into an accusation of blasphemy, according to her family and legal observers familiar with the case. As a frenzied mob pursued her, the police intervened, taking her into custody. But far from protecting her, they arrested and charged Noreen with insulting Islam and its prophet. And on Nov. 8, after enduring 18 months in prison, she was sentenced to death by a district court, making her the first woman to suffer that fate. (See how WikiLeaks' disclosure fueled anti-U.S. anger in Pakistan.)
In the ensuing weeks, the case of Noreen, popularly known as Aasia Bibi, has sparked a national furor. Human rights campaigners and lawyers have denounced the sentence. Religious fundamentalist groups, usually at odds with one another, have suddenly coalesced around a campaign to defend the blasphemy law and attack its critics. One politician who called for Noreen to be pardoned now faces a fatwa for alleged apostasy. Another politician, who is trying to have the blasphemy laws amended, has been warned that she will be besieged. On television, religious scholars have disagreed among themselves over the law's merits. Divisions are also being seen within the government, with powerful figures taking opposing sides. And there has even been global outrage, with Pope Benedict XVI last week calling for Noreen's freedom.
Noreen's case has spurred the first genuine debate over some of Pakistans most controversial laws. The original blasphemy law was drawn up by the British, in the Indian Penal Code of 1860, aimed at keeping the peace among the subcontinent's sometimes fractious diversity of faiths. Not only did Pakistan inherit the laws after partition, but it added to them. In the 1980s, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's military dictatorship introduced a slew of elastically worded clauses, including a death sentence for those deemed to have defiled the sacred name of the Prophet.
Before Zia, there were only two reported cases of blasphemy. Since the death sentence was inserted in 1986, the number has soared to 962 - including 340 members of the Ahmadi Muslim sect, 119 Christians, and 14 Hindus. Close examination of the cases reveals the laws often being invoked to settle personal vendettas, or used by Islamist extremists as cover to persecute religious minorities. (See how WikiLeaks exposed insecurity over Pakistan nukes.)
Vague wording allows the blasphemy laws to be used an instrument of political and social coercion, says Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. And they give the state a sectarian character.
No conclusive evidence has been presented against Noreen, say people familiar with the case. The district judge relied on the testimonies of three other women, all of whom bore animus toward her. Noreen had long been under pressure by fellow farmworkers to convert to Islam, her family says. And the district judge ruled out any possibility of her innocence or mitigating circumstances.
Christians are subject to vicious prejudice in Pakistan, where there beliefs are said to make them "unclean." Municipalities routinely advertise jobs for cleaners with a note saying they would prefer Christian applicants. And defending their rights is not popular. When Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, visited Noreen in prison and urged her release, he was branded an apostate by fundamentalist groups. And in the fundamentalist view, apostasy, like blasphemy, is punishable by death.
Liberal lawmaker Sherry Rehman who has called for amendment of the blasphemy laws and removal of the death sentence clause was warned this week that she would be "besieged." It is a measure of the state's impotence in the face of extremist groups that such high-profile public figures can be openly threatened for merely advocating human rights, says Hasan, of Human Rights Watch.
Rehman insists that she won't be cowed by the threats. "I really can't be coerced into silencing myself like this," she tells TIME. "It's my freedom as a legislator to do as I do. If they want to talk, there's no issue. But to use coercion is unacceptable." Taseer, a notably outspoken politician, is phlegmatic. "It doesnt bother me," he tells TIME. "Who the hell are these illiterare maulvis to decide to whether I'm a Muslim or not?" (See pictures of Pakistan's waiting place.)
Rehman's reform effort is unlikely to succeed, because few politicians have dared to support it. Indeed, Babar Awan, the Law Minister has vowed to oppose any move against the blasphemy laws. What's more, the Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who had last year suggested the laws should be reviewed after the killing of nine Christians in Punjab, now seems to be distancing himself. "It is not our party policy," he told a news channel this week, when asked about Rehman's bill. But Rehman, who spent years fighting laws that discriminate against women, says its mere submission is an important first step: "The first stone has been cast. It's not a taboo subject anymore to be taken up by legislators."
More worrying is the fate of Noreen. The Lahore High Court has taken the controversial step of saying that it won't allow President Asif Ali Zardari to issue a pardon, a move that legal experts have said is unconstitutional. Her family is now hoping that the higher courts will strike down the death sentence, or that she will eventually secure a pardon. And the fear doesn't end there. While no one has been executed for blasphemy yet, 32 people - including two judges - have been slain by vigilantes. At Friday prayers this week, Yousef Qureshi, a hardline cleric from the Mohabat Khan mosque in Peshawar, offered a reward of 500,000 rupees ($5,800) to "those who kill Aasia Bibi."
Even if pardoned, Rehman notes grimply, Noreen will no longer be able to to live in her community. For her own safety, she will have to be moved - simply for defending her right to choose her own faith.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Obama Makes Surprise Trip to Afghanistan
The Associated Press
President Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Friday as casualties mount since the U.S. escalated the war last year.
Under intense security, Obama landed in night's darkness after a clandestine departure from the White House on Thursday, where plans of his trip into the war zone were tightly guarded.
Obama was to personally thank U.S. troops for their service during the holidays.
The White House said rough weather forced the president to abruptly scrap his plans to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai in the capital of Kabul. The White House determined the wind, dust and cloud cover made it unsafe for the president to fly by helicopter from the huge military complex in Bagram Air Field to the presidential palace.
In a rapidly changing sequence of events, the White House then said they would speak by secure videoconference -- but later said that, too, was dropped. Instead, the two leaders were expected to speak by phone.In total, Obama was to spend three hours on the ground in Afghanistan, about half the time he had scheduled.
Casualties have been on the rise since Obama deployed 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, with all of them in place by this summer. The higher casualty numbers reflect heavier fighting, especially in the south and east, as NATO forces push deep into insurgent strongholds in a bid to help Karzai's government gain control of more areas of the country and reverse the Taliban's momentum in the nine-year war.
The secret trip has been in the works for more than a month. National Security aide Ben Rhodes said Obama wanted to go to Afghanistan between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
"It's always tough to serve in harm's way but when you're away from loved ones in the holiday season it's particularly hard, and the president wanted the ability to come out and have some time with them," Rhodes said.
Rhodes said the scrapping of the personal visit with Karzai would not have consequences because the two just met at a NATO summit in Lisbon two weeks ago.
Obama's visit to Afghanistan is his latest trip abroad since his party took a beating in the midterm elections last month. After Republicans captured the House and increased their ranks in the Senate on Nov. 2, Obama took a 10-day, four-country trip to Asia that produced setbacks -- he failed to secure a highly sought-after free trade agreement with South Korea and couldn't rally wide-ranging international support for action against China's currency manipulation.
Then he traveled to a NATO summit in Portugal where he was seen as playing a pivotal role in the alliance securing agreements on the Afghanistan war and missile defense.
Before the election, Obama spent just three days abroad this year, having traveled to the Czech Republican and Afghanistan in April. The recent burst of activity on the foreign policy front threatens to overshadow the president's promise to shift focus to the economy.
The government reported on Friday that the economy produced a lackluster 39,000 jobs in November, pushing the unemployment rate up to 9.8 percent, a seven-month high. Economists had forecast a gain of 145,000 jobs.
Obama's visit also comes at a particularly awkward moment in already strained U.S. relations with Afghanistan. Leaked U.S. cables show American diplomats portraying Afghanistan as rife with graft to the highest levels of government, with tens of millions of dollars flowing out of the country and a cash transfer network that facilitates bribes for corrupt Afghan officials, drug traffickers and insurgents.
A main concern in the cables appears to be Karzai himself, who emerges as a mercurial figure. In a July 7, 2009, dispatch, U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry describes "two contrasting portraits" of the Afghan president.
"The first is of a paranoid and weak individual unfamiliar with the basics of nation building and overly self-conscious that his time in the spotlight of glowing reviews from the international community has passed," the cable says. "The other is that of an ever-shrewd politician who sees himself as a nationalist hero. ... In order to recalibrate our relationship with Karzai, we must deal with and challenge both of these personalities."
President Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Friday as casualties mount since the U.S. escalated the war last year.
Under intense security, Obama landed in night's darkness after a clandestine departure from the White House on Thursday, where plans of his trip into the war zone were tightly guarded.
Obama was to personally thank U.S. troops for their service during the holidays.
The White House said rough weather forced the president to abruptly scrap his plans to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai in the capital of Kabul. The White House determined the wind, dust and cloud cover made it unsafe for the president to fly by helicopter from the huge military complex in Bagram Air Field to the presidential palace.
In a rapidly changing sequence of events, the White House then said they would speak by secure videoconference -- but later said that, too, was dropped. Instead, the two leaders were expected to speak by phone.In total, Obama was to spend three hours on the ground in Afghanistan, about half the time he had scheduled.
Casualties have been on the rise since Obama deployed 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, with all of them in place by this summer. The higher casualty numbers reflect heavier fighting, especially in the south and east, as NATO forces push deep into insurgent strongholds in a bid to help Karzai's government gain control of more areas of the country and reverse the Taliban's momentum in the nine-year war.
The secret trip has been in the works for more than a month. National Security aide Ben Rhodes said Obama wanted to go to Afghanistan between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
"It's always tough to serve in harm's way but when you're away from loved ones in the holiday season it's particularly hard, and the president wanted the ability to come out and have some time with them," Rhodes said.
Rhodes said the scrapping of the personal visit with Karzai would not have consequences because the two just met at a NATO summit in Lisbon two weeks ago.
Obama's visit to Afghanistan is his latest trip abroad since his party took a beating in the midterm elections last month. After Republicans captured the House and increased their ranks in the Senate on Nov. 2, Obama took a 10-day, four-country trip to Asia that produced setbacks -- he failed to secure a highly sought-after free trade agreement with South Korea and couldn't rally wide-ranging international support for action against China's currency manipulation.
Then he traveled to a NATO summit in Portugal where he was seen as playing a pivotal role in the alliance securing agreements on the Afghanistan war and missile defense.
Before the election, Obama spent just three days abroad this year, having traveled to the Czech Republican and Afghanistan in April. The recent burst of activity on the foreign policy front threatens to overshadow the president's promise to shift focus to the economy.
The government reported on Friday that the economy produced a lackluster 39,000 jobs in November, pushing the unemployment rate up to 9.8 percent, a seven-month high. Economists had forecast a gain of 145,000 jobs.
Obama's visit also comes at a particularly awkward moment in already strained U.S. relations with Afghanistan. Leaked U.S. cables show American diplomats portraying Afghanistan as rife with graft to the highest levels of government, with tens of millions of dollars flowing out of the country and a cash transfer network that facilitates bribes for corrupt Afghan officials, drug traffickers and insurgents.
A main concern in the cables appears to be Karzai himself, who emerges as a mercurial figure. In a July 7, 2009, dispatch, U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry describes "two contrasting portraits" of the Afghan president.
"The first is of a paranoid and weak individual unfamiliar with the basics of nation building and overly self-conscious that his time in the spotlight of glowing reviews from the international community has passed," the cable says. "The other is that of an ever-shrewd politician who sees himself as a nationalist hero. ... In order to recalibrate our relationship with Karzai, we must deal with and challenge both of these personalities."
Minority Shiites make gains in Afghan poll
A minority Shiite group made gains in the Afghan Parliament after Pashtuns stayed away from the polls, election results indicate.
Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission announced Wednesday it certified the results of the September election for the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of Parliament.
The minority Hazara community took 59, or about 24 percent, of the 249 seats up for grabs in the September vote, U.S. diplomats told CNN International. The CIA World Factbook indicates the community makes up only 9 percent of the population in Afghanistan.
Pashtuns, the Sunni majority in Afghanistan, didn't turn out in large numbers at the polls because of intimidation or violence in their provincial districts.
Western and Afghan officials told the news agency the disparity could lead to sectarian tensions in the country as it struggles to gain a democratic foothold in the war environment.
More than 2,500 candidates competed for the 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga. The IEC in October threw out around 1.3 million ballots -- about 25 percent of the total cast -- because of irregularities, fraud and tampering.
U.N. officials, while recognizing fraud in the election, praised Afghan authorities for investigating the irregularities.
Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission announced Wednesday it certified the results of the September election for the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of Parliament.
The minority Hazara community took 59, or about 24 percent, of the 249 seats up for grabs in the September vote, U.S. diplomats told CNN International. The CIA World Factbook indicates the community makes up only 9 percent of the population in Afghanistan.
Pashtuns, the Sunni majority in Afghanistan, didn't turn out in large numbers at the polls because of intimidation or violence in their provincial districts.
Western and Afghan officials told the news agency the disparity could lead to sectarian tensions in the country as it struggles to gain a democratic foothold in the war environment.
More than 2,500 candidates competed for the 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga. The IEC in October threw out around 1.3 million ballots -- about 25 percent of the total cast -- because of irregularities, fraud and tampering.
U.N. officials, while recognizing fraud in the election, praised Afghan authorities for investigating the irregularities.
Bhutto: For Pakistan's Heroine, A Hagiography
A new documentary about Benazir Bhutto lets a full hour go by before entertaining the mildest doubts about its subject, the hugely popular prime minister of Pakistan who was assassinated on her triumphant return to Karachi from exile in 2007.
Bhutto is smart and thorough on the inflamed history of Pakistan. But as a portrait of the first woman elected head of state in an Islamic nation, it comes closer to hero-worship than to considered biography. Front-loaded with glowing testimonials from family and FOB's East and West, the movie gives a startling degree of face time to its own co-producer, Mark Siegel, a political consultant and close friend of Bhutto who co-authored a book with her.
The director, Duane Baughman, also a political consultant, helped get Michael Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton elected, so he knows how to brand a public figure, dead or alive.
Not that this particular public figure needs much enlarging. Bhutto’s sense of mission and her personal courage, as she returned again and again to try and democratize a nation whose military leaders blithely murdered their opposition, are beyond dispute. Like her adored father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first democratically elected head of state (and the creator of its nuclear program), she struggled to bring basic services to a country mired in poverty, illiteracy and chronic conflict across its volatile borders with India, Afghanistan and Iran — to say nothing of its ambivalent dependency on a United States worried to death by the Taliban, al-Qaida and the enriched uranium in Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals.
About Bhutto’s failings and mistakes, however, the film is discreet to the point of squeamishness. Luckily, this magnificently complicated woman’s contradictions tumble out anyway. Almost despite itself, the movie offers a riveting melodrama about a daddy’s girl born into a close but feuding Western-educated dynasty known both for its populist politics and its champagne tastes. (The Bhuttos were thought of — admiringly, Baughman implies, though given the straits in which most Pakistanis live, one wonders — as the Kennedys of Pakistan.)
From grieving family and friends (inevitably, Arianna Huffington was a pal at Oxford), we learn of a serious-minded young woman freed from her burqa by Dad while still in her teens. At Harvard, where she roomed with Kathleen Kennedy, she absorbed feminism and leftist politics.
Yet later she willingly submitted to an arranged marriage with a Karachi playboy-entrepreneur, Asif Ali Zardari, who has been Pakistan’s president since the fall of Pervez Musharraf in 2008. She prayed to Allah in public, yet worked hard to bring schooling to girls in an Islamic state vehemently opposed to rights for women.
Bhutto inherited her father’s charm, charisma and elegant tailoring, as well as his preference for backroom wheeler-dealing. Remarkably, her father chose Benazir over her two brothers as his successor, and her political career eerily echoed his, zigzagging between triumph, prison, exile and return to repeated rapturous welcomes from adoring masses.
Bookended by footage of the sniper fire and suicide bombing that killed her, Bhutto faithfully follows the hectic arcs of her life and death. Yet the movie glides smoothly past the corruption charges — never proved or disproved — that led to Bhutto's exile and her husband's imprisonment, effectively dismissing them as trumped up by her enemies. Much time is spent, meanwhile, on the moving but sentimental memories of her tearful family, topped up with new but unedifying audiotapes of Bhutto herself outlining her ideals, the harshness of her incarceration in a Pakistani prison and the loneliness of exile in Dubai.
Bhutto could stand a less adulatory tone — and more reliable skeptics than her clearly disgruntled niece, for instance, when it comes to topics such as Bhutto's role in the mysterious plane crash that killed the military dictator responsible for her father's murder. Despite herself, and for all her efforts toward reconciliation, Bhutto proved an enormously polarizing figure.
Perhaps she had no choice, in a country so riven by internal strife and external threat. At its best, Bhutto is a fascinating study in the difficulties of bringing democracy to a radically unstable nation plagued by its colonial legacy, by the cowboy politics of a dictatorial military, by daily terrorism and the sporadic interventions of world powers arguably less interested in rural voting rights than in pushing their own interests on the global stage.
Bhutto’s untimely death at 54 years old was a private tragedy and a tremendous loss for a country desperate for moderate leadership. But she was a heroine, not a saint. Eliding this distinction, Bhutto unwittingly diminishes her.
Bhutto is smart and thorough on the inflamed history of Pakistan. But as a portrait of the first woman elected head of state in an Islamic nation, it comes closer to hero-worship than to considered biography. Front-loaded with glowing testimonials from family and FOB's East and West, the movie gives a startling degree of face time to its own co-producer, Mark Siegel, a political consultant and close friend of Bhutto who co-authored a book with her.
The director, Duane Baughman, also a political consultant, helped get Michael Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton elected, so he knows how to brand a public figure, dead or alive.
Not that this particular public figure needs much enlarging. Bhutto’s sense of mission and her personal courage, as she returned again and again to try and democratize a nation whose military leaders blithely murdered their opposition, are beyond dispute. Like her adored father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first democratically elected head of state (and the creator of its nuclear program), she struggled to bring basic services to a country mired in poverty, illiteracy and chronic conflict across its volatile borders with India, Afghanistan and Iran — to say nothing of its ambivalent dependency on a United States worried to death by the Taliban, al-Qaida and the enriched uranium in Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals.
About Bhutto’s failings and mistakes, however, the film is discreet to the point of squeamishness. Luckily, this magnificently complicated woman’s contradictions tumble out anyway. Almost despite itself, the movie offers a riveting melodrama about a daddy’s girl born into a close but feuding Western-educated dynasty known both for its populist politics and its champagne tastes. (The Bhuttos were thought of — admiringly, Baughman implies, though given the straits in which most Pakistanis live, one wonders — as the Kennedys of Pakistan.)
From grieving family and friends (inevitably, Arianna Huffington was a pal at Oxford), we learn of a serious-minded young woman freed from her burqa by Dad while still in her teens. At Harvard, where she roomed with Kathleen Kennedy, she absorbed feminism and leftist politics.
Yet later she willingly submitted to an arranged marriage with a Karachi playboy-entrepreneur, Asif Ali Zardari, who has been Pakistan’s president since the fall of Pervez Musharraf in 2008. She prayed to Allah in public, yet worked hard to bring schooling to girls in an Islamic state vehemently opposed to rights for women.
Bhutto inherited her father’s charm, charisma and elegant tailoring, as well as his preference for backroom wheeler-dealing. Remarkably, her father chose Benazir over her two brothers as his successor, and her political career eerily echoed his, zigzagging between triumph, prison, exile and return to repeated rapturous welcomes from adoring masses.
Bookended by footage of the sniper fire and suicide bombing that killed her, Bhutto faithfully follows the hectic arcs of her life and death. Yet the movie glides smoothly past the corruption charges — never proved or disproved — that led to Bhutto's exile and her husband's imprisonment, effectively dismissing them as trumped up by her enemies. Much time is spent, meanwhile, on the moving but sentimental memories of her tearful family, topped up with new but unedifying audiotapes of Bhutto herself outlining her ideals, the harshness of her incarceration in a Pakistani prison and the loneliness of exile in Dubai.
Bhutto could stand a less adulatory tone — and more reliable skeptics than her clearly disgruntled niece, for instance, when it comes to topics such as Bhutto's role in the mysterious plane crash that killed the military dictator responsible for her father's murder. Despite herself, and for all her efforts toward reconciliation, Bhutto proved an enormously polarizing figure.
Perhaps she had no choice, in a country so riven by internal strife and external threat. At its best, Bhutto is a fascinating study in the difficulties of bringing democracy to a radically unstable nation plagued by its colonial legacy, by the cowboy politics of a dictatorial military, by daily terrorism and the sporadic interventions of world powers arguably less interested in rural voting rights than in pushing their own interests on the global stage.
Bhutto’s untimely death at 54 years old was a private tragedy and a tremendous loss for a country desperate for moderate leadership. But she was a heroine, not a saint. Eliding this distinction, Bhutto unwittingly diminishes her.
'Bhutto': For Pakistan's Heroine, A Hagiography
www.npr.org
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/02/131698909/-bhutto-for-pakistan-s-heroine-a-hagiography
A new documentary about Benazir Bhutto lets a full hour go by before entertaining the mildest doubts about its subject, the hugely popular prime minister of Pakistan who was assassinated on her triumphant return to Karachi from exile in 2007.
Bhutto is smart and thorough on the inflamed history of Pakistan. But as a portrait of the first woman elected head of state in an Islamic nation, it comes closer to hero-worship than to considered biography. Front-loaded with glowing testimonials from family and FOB's East and West, the movie gives a startling degree of face time to its own co-producer, Mark Siegel, a political consultant and close friend of Bhutto who co-authored a book with her.
The director, Duane Baughman, also a political consultant, helped get Michael Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton elected, so he knows how to brand a public figure, dead or alive.
Not that this particular public figure needs much enlarging. Bhutto’s sense of mission and her personal courage, as she returned again and again to try and democratize a nation whose military leaders blithely murdered their opposition, are beyond dispute. Like her adored father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first democratically elected head of state (and the creator of its nuclear program), she struggled to bring basic services to a country mired in poverty, illiteracy and chronic conflict across its volatile borders with India, Afghanistan and Iran — to say nothing of its ambivalent dependency on a United States worried to death by the Taliban, al-Qaida and the enriched uranium in Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals.
About Bhutto’s failings and mistakes, however, the film is discreet to the point of squeamishness. Luckily, this magnificently complicated woman’s contradictions tumble out anyway. Almost despite itself, the movie offers a riveting melodrama about a daddy’s girl born into a close but feuding Western-educated dynasty known both for its populist politics and its champagne tastes. (The Bhuttos were thought of — admiringly, Baughman implies, though given the straits in which most Pakistanis live, one wonders — as the Kennedys of Pakistan.)
From grieving family and friends (inevitably, Arianna Huffington was a pal at Oxford), we learn of a serious-minded young woman freed from her burqa by Dad while still in her teens. At Harvard, where she roomed with Kathleen Kennedy, she absorbed feminism and leftist politics.
Yet later she willingly submitted to an arranged marriage with a Karachi playboy-entrepreneur, Asif Ali Zardari, who has been Pakistan’s president since the fall of Pervez Musharraf in 2008. She prayed to Allah in public, yet worked hard to bring schooling to girls in an Islamic state vehemently opposed to rights for women.
Bhutto inherited her father’s charm, charisma and elegant tailoring, as well as his preference for backroom wheeler-dealing. Remarkably, her father chose Benazir over her two brothers as his successor, and her political career eerily echoed his, zigzagging between triumph, prison, exile and return to repeated rapturous welcomes from adoring masses.
Bookended by footage of the sniper fire and suicide bombing that killed her, Bhutto faithfully follows the hectic arcs of her life and death. Yet the movie glides smoothly past the corruption charges — never proved or disproved — that led to Bhutto's exile and her husband's imprisonment, effectively dismissing them as trumped up by her enemies. Much time is spent, meanwhile, on the moving but sentimental memories of her tearful family, topped up with new but unedifying audiotapes of Bhutto herself outlining her ideals, the harshness of her incarceration in a Pakistani prison and the loneliness of exile in Dubai.
Bhutto could stand a less adulatory tone — and more reliable skeptics than her clearly disgruntled niece, for instance, when it comes to topics such as Bhutto's role in the mysterious plane crash that killed the military dictator responsible for her father's murder. Despite herself, and for all her efforts toward reconciliation, Bhutto proved an enormously polarizing figure.
Perhaps she had no choice, in a country so riven by internal strife and external threat. At its best, Bhutto is a fascinating study in the difficulties of bringing democracy to a radically unstable nation plagued by its colonial legacy, by the cowboy politics of a dictatorial military, by daily terrorism and the sporadic interventions of world powers arguably less interested in rural voting rights than in pushing their own interests on the global stage.
Bhutto’s untimely death at 54 years old was a private tragedy and a tremendous loss for a country desperate for moderate leadership. But she was a heroine, not a saint. Eliding this distinction, Bhutto unwittingly diminishes her.
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/02/131698909/-bhutto-for-pakistan-s-heroine-a-hagiography
A new documentary about Benazir Bhutto lets a full hour go by before entertaining the mildest doubts about its subject, the hugely popular prime minister of Pakistan who was assassinated on her triumphant return to Karachi from exile in 2007.
Bhutto is smart and thorough on the inflamed history of Pakistan. But as a portrait of the first woman elected head of state in an Islamic nation, it comes closer to hero-worship than to considered biography. Front-loaded with glowing testimonials from family and FOB's East and West, the movie gives a startling degree of face time to its own co-producer, Mark Siegel, a political consultant and close friend of Bhutto who co-authored a book with her.
The director, Duane Baughman, also a political consultant, helped get Michael Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton elected, so he knows how to brand a public figure, dead or alive.
Not that this particular public figure needs much enlarging. Bhutto’s sense of mission and her personal courage, as she returned again and again to try and democratize a nation whose military leaders blithely murdered their opposition, are beyond dispute. Like her adored father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first democratically elected head of state (and the creator of its nuclear program), she struggled to bring basic services to a country mired in poverty, illiteracy and chronic conflict across its volatile borders with India, Afghanistan and Iran — to say nothing of its ambivalent dependency on a United States worried to death by the Taliban, al-Qaida and the enriched uranium in Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals.
About Bhutto’s failings and mistakes, however, the film is discreet to the point of squeamishness. Luckily, this magnificently complicated woman’s contradictions tumble out anyway. Almost despite itself, the movie offers a riveting melodrama about a daddy’s girl born into a close but feuding Western-educated dynasty known both for its populist politics and its champagne tastes. (The Bhuttos were thought of — admiringly, Baughman implies, though given the straits in which most Pakistanis live, one wonders — as the Kennedys of Pakistan.)
From grieving family and friends (inevitably, Arianna Huffington was a pal at Oxford), we learn of a serious-minded young woman freed from her burqa by Dad while still in her teens. At Harvard, where she roomed with Kathleen Kennedy, she absorbed feminism and leftist politics.
Yet later she willingly submitted to an arranged marriage with a Karachi playboy-entrepreneur, Asif Ali Zardari, who has been Pakistan’s president since the fall of Pervez Musharraf in 2008. She prayed to Allah in public, yet worked hard to bring schooling to girls in an Islamic state vehemently opposed to rights for women.
Bhutto inherited her father’s charm, charisma and elegant tailoring, as well as his preference for backroom wheeler-dealing. Remarkably, her father chose Benazir over her two brothers as his successor, and her political career eerily echoed his, zigzagging between triumph, prison, exile and return to repeated rapturous welcomes from adoring masses.
Bookended by footage of the sniper fire and suicide bombing that killed her, Bhutto faithfully follows the hectic arcs of her life and death. Yet the movie glides smoothly past the corruption charges — never proved or disproved — that led to Bhutto's exile and her husband's imprisonment, effectively dismissing them as trumped up by her enemies. Much time is spent, meanwhile, on the moving but sentimental memories of her tearful family, topped up with new but unedifying audiotapes of Bhutto herself outlining her ideals, the harshness of her incarceration in a Pakistani prison and the loneliness of exile in Dubai.
Bhutto could stand a less adulatory tone — and more reliable skeptics than her clearly disgruntled niece, for instance, when it comes to topics such as Bhutto's role in the mysterious plane crash that killed the military dictator responsible for her father's murder. Despite herself, and for all her efforts toward reconciliation, Bhutto proved an enormously polarizing figure.
Perhaps she had no choice, in a country so riven by internal strife and external threat. At its best, Bhutto is a fascinating study in the difficulties of bringing democracy to a radically unstable nation plagued by its colonial legacy, by the cowboy politics of a dictatorial military, by daily terrorism and the sporadic interventions of world powers arguably less interested in rural voting rights than in pushing their own interests on the global stage.
Bhutto’s untimely death at 54 years old was a private tragedy and a tremendous loss for a country desperate for moderate leadership. But she was a heroine, not a saint. Eliding this distinction, Bhutto unwittingly diminishes her.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Shahbaz Sharif tipped off LeT post 26/11: WikiLeaks
Pakistan opposition leader Nawaz Sharif's brother and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif "tipped-off" the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) about impending UN sanctions after the terror group attacked Mumbai in November 2008, reveals a US cable exposed by WikiLeaks. The tip-off helped the outfit to clean out its bank accounts before they could be raided.
The Guardian reported that six weeks after LeT gunmen killed 166 people in the Mumbai carnage, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari told the US of his "frustration" that Shahbaz Sharif's government in Punjab province helped the terror group evade UN sanctions.
A month earlier, Shahbaz Sharif "tipped off" the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), LeT's charity wing, "resulting in almost empty bank accounts", Zardari told the US ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson.
US diplomats weren't able to confirm the allegation, but they admitted that JuD did appear to have received a warning from somewhere.
The cable in January 2009 said: "Information from the ministry of the interior does indicate that bank accounts contained surprisingly small amounts."
Senator Pervaiz Rashid, an adviser to Shahbaz Sharif, however, said: "There's nothing true in it."
"Zardari is our political opponent and he wants to topple our government."
He said Shahbaz Sharif couldn't have known about the UN sanctions as the UN coordinated its action with the federal government and not the provincial one.
The embassy cables have for the first time revealed the drama that unfolded behind the scenes after the Mumbai attacks in which 10 gunmen from Pakistan sneaked into India's financial capital and unleashed mayhem for over three days.
The media report said that US diplomats found themselves playing the role of harried intermediaries to prevent a war between Pakistan and India.
A week after the 2008 terror attack an Indian official said his government was distinguishing between Pakistan's civilian government, "which India believed was not involved in the attacks", and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).
"We are not yet ready to give ISI a clean chit," the official said.
The US embassy became alarmed four weeks later by Indian plans to release a "sanitised" intelligence dossier that, they feared, could scuttle intelligence sharing or thwart efforts to prevent a second attack.
The note read: "There are still Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) sleeper and other cells in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, as well as many law enforcement leads which need to be pursued."
The cables show that Pakistan's generals who are normally antagonistic towards India appeared to be conciliatory, the daily reported.
Almost six weeks after the attack in Mumbai, Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, said he was "determined to exercise restraint in his actions with India".
"If there is any clue about another attack," he told General David Petraeus at his Rawalpindi headquarters, "please share it with us."
General Shuja Pasha, the intelligence chief, in late 2009 travelled to Oman and Iran to "follow up on reports he received in Washington about a terrorist attack on India".
He sent warnings to Israel "about information about attacks against Israeli targets in India".
Earlier in the year, he told Patterson, information about a second attack on India had "come his way", which he conveyed to Delhi via the CIA.
US diplomats noted that the secretive trial of Lashkar leader Zakhi ur Rehman Lakhvi and six other suspects "is proceeding, though at a slow pace".
American officials observed that there is "no smoking gun tying the Mumbai LeT operation to ISI" but are less sure if the spy agency has, as promised, cut all its ties.
"Despite arrests of key LeT/JuD leaders and closure of some of their camps, it is unclear if the ISI has finally abandoned its policy of using these proxy forces as a foreign policy tool," notes a briefing to the US special envoy Richard Holbrooke in February 2009.
The Guardian reported that six weeks after LeT gunmen killed 166 people in the Mumbai carnage, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari told the US of his "frustration" that Shahbaz Sharif's government in Punjab province helped the terror group evade UN sanctions.
A month earlier, Shahbaz Sharif "tipped off" the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), LeT's charity wing, "resulting in almost empty bank accounts", Zardari told the US ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson.
US diplomats weren't able to confirm the allegation, but they admitted that JuD did appear to have received a warning from somewhere.
The cable in January 2009 said: "Information from the ministry of the interior does indicate that bank accounts contained surprisingly small amounts."
Senator Pervaiz Rashid, an adviser to Shahbaz Sharif, however, said: "There's nothing true in it."
"Zardari is our political opponent and he wants to topple our government."
He said Shahbaz Sharif couldn't have known about the UN sanctions as the UN coordinated its action with the federal government and not the provincial one.
The embassy cables have for the first time revealed the drama that unfolded behind the scenes after the Mumbai attacks in which 10 gunmen from Pakistan sneaked into India's financial capital and unleashed mayhem for over three days.
The media report said that US diplomats found themselves playing the role of harried intermediaries to prevent a war between Pakistan and India.
A week after the 2008 terror attack an Indian official said his government was distinguishing between Pakistan's civilian government, "which India believed was not involved in the attacks", and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).
"We are not yet ready to give ISI a clean chit," the official said.
The US embassy became alarmed four weeks later by Indian plans to release a "sanitised" intelligence dossier that, they feared, could scuttle intelligence sharing or thwart efforts to prevent a second attack.
The note read: "There are still Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) sleeper and other cells in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, as well as many law enforcement leads which need to be pursued."
The cables show that Pakistan's generals who are normally antagonistic towards India appeared to be conciliatory, the daily reported.
Almost six weeks after the attack in Mumbai, Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, said he was "determined to exercise restraint in his actions with India".
"If there is any clue about another attack," he told General David Petraeus at his Rawalpindi headquarters, "please share it with us."
General Shuja Pasha, the intelligence chief, in late 2009 travelled to Oman and Iran to "follow up on reports he received in Washington about a terrorist attack on India".
He sent warnings to Israel "about information about attacks against Israeli targets in India".
Earlier in the year, he told Patterson, information about a second attack on India had "come his way", which he conveyed to Delhi via the CIA.
US diplomats noted that the secretive trial of Lashkar leader Zakhi ur Rehman Lakhvi and six other suspects "is proceeding, though at a slow pace".
American officials observed that there is "no smoking gun tying the Mumbai LeT operation to ISI" but are less sure if the spy agency has, as promised, cut all its ties.
"Despite arrests of key LeT/JuD leaders and closure of some of their camps, it is unclear if the ISI has finally abandoned its policy of using these proxy forces as a foreign policy tool," notes a briefing to the US special envoy Richard Holbrooke in February 2009.
WikiLeaks bombs rock Islamabad
Dawn.com
There has always been widespread dismay in Pakistan about unabashed US interference in the country’s internal matters. But the latest cache of American embassy cables leaked by WikiLeaks has laid bare the extent of the interference and involvement.
But more shocking are revelations about how much leverage the Americans were being given by the country’s civilian and military leadership to micro-manage domestic politics.
The global concern about the safety of the country’s nuclear arsenal, the presence of US special forces and elite counter-terrorism teams (courtesy Bob Woodward) were all old stuff for many here, but what definitely interests all are the views that various leaders espoused about each other and never shied away from sharing them with American diplomats.
The power wielded by the US is at its full display in the leaked cables that used less than diplomatic language to describe what was taking place in Islamabad’s echelons of power.
“We should help the Zardari/Gilani government complete its full five-year term in office” as it best served US interests, says one of the leaked communiques.
The political fallout from these leaks is imminent.
The presidency and the army’s general headquarters both clearly knew that they were not getting along well, but certainly they didn’t expect each other to wash the dirty linen before foreign diplomats.
At one point, a cable sent by the embassy talks about Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani forewarning then ambassador Anne Patterson about the likelihood of him removing President Asif Ali Zardari, if such a situation arose during PML-N-supported lawyers’ long march in March last year, and installing ANP leader Asfandyar Wali in his place.
“During ambassador’s fourth meeting in a week with Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Kayani on March 10, he again hinted that he might, however reluctantly, have to persuade President Zardari to resign if the situation sharply deteriorates. He mentioned Asfandyar Wali Khan as a possible replacement,” one of the cables reads.
The implied message in Gen Kayani’s contingency planning was immediately read by the ambassador as a plea to intervene and compel both parties to back down or else the army would play its role.
The general, at a later stage, told the American envoy that he was least interested in taking over and had he been, there was a good opportunity during the long march.
The general, whom the cables describe as a person difficult to understand and who tends to mumble, looked quite articulate when it came to expressing his opinions about political leaders.
“Kayani made it clear that regardless of how much he disliked Zardari, he distrusted Nawaz even more,” one of the cables says.
But, Gen Kayani was not alone in voicing his disenchantment with President Zardari who by virtue of his office is also the supreme commander of the armed forces.The president, in turn, could be seen complaining to the Americans that his army chief could oust him.
He is said to have confided in American Vice-President Joe Biden that “Kayani will take me out”.
President Zardari, in a meeting with the US ambassador, is said to have detailed out his plans if he were to be assassinated.
The president reportedly told Ms Patterson his sister Faryal Talpur would then be named president and that he had requested the United Arab Emirates government to take in his family in the event of his death.
Cables show Ms Talpur as one person about whom everyone had positive feelings. If President Zardari considered her the most suitable person to succeed him, embassy officers were very impressed with her and saw her as extremely energetic and well respected. More importantly, Kayani once told the ambassador that she would be a better president than her brother.
In a separate conversation, the president appears to be telling the then British foreign secretary David Miliband how the military and the ISI kept him in dark about critical information.
In a discussion on the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, he said ‘my people’ had not brought specific information to him about the individuals named in the information passed to the ISI.
It was not only the civilian president and army chief pitted against each other. A reading of the leaked cables shows how President Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani worked at cross purposes.
President’s media coordinator Farah Naz Ispahani had confided to an American diplomat: “We are very unhappy with the way Gilani has gone off the reservation” while Mr Zardari was in China. She was referring to talks between Mr Gilani and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif without President Zardari’s blessings in the lead up to the long march.
But another cable noted that reports of Zardari-Gilani tensions were probably exaggerated and credited the prime minister for peaceful resolution of the judicial crisis.
Away from the political bickering, leaked cables show differences over critical foreign policy and security issues.
Gen Kayani in his conversations with American diplomats, the cables suggest, tried to pass the blame for an impasse on different issues like military action in Waziristan and start of back-channel talks with India to the president.
While Gen Kayani and ISI chief Gen Shuja Pasha informed the Americans about the resentment in the army ranks about alleged corruption and mis-governance by the president, one of the leaked documents expresses doubts if the army chief ever conveyed those concerns with the same seriousness to Mr Zardari.
The American ambassador opined that Gen Kayani shared the disquiet with her with the belief that the US had the most influence over President Zardari. This perception is confirmed in another diplomatic communication: “Zardari is our best ally in Pakistan right now.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Gilani and US Ambassador Cameron Munter tried to give an impression that the leaks wouldn’t hurt their relations much.
Ambassador Munter, who called on the prime minister, said: “Malicious WikiLeaks will not have any affect on the strong, strategic partnership between Pakistan and the USA, as both sides are resolute to address the misperceptions in the interest of long-term, cordial bilateral relations.”
Prime Minister Gilani said: “The government will ensure that Pakistan’s national interests are not compromised by such mischief in any manner.”
At a ceremony earlier in the day, Mr Munter said: “Working together, we will get past the WikiLeaks problems.”
There has always been widespread dismay in Pakistan about unabashed US interference in the country’s internal matters. But the latest cache of American embassy cables leaked by WikiLeaks has laid bare the extent of the interference and involvement.
But more shocking are revelations about how much leverage the Americans were being given by the country’s civilian and military leadership to micro-manage domestic politics.
The global concern about the safety of the country’s nuclear arsenal, the presence of US special forces and elite counter-terrorism teams (courtesy Bob Woodward) were all old stuff for many here, but what definitely interests all are the views that various leaders espoused about each other and never shied away from sharing them with American diplomats.
The power wielded by the US is at its full display in the leaked cables that used less than diplomatic language to describe what was taking place in Islamabad’s echelons of power.
“We should help the Zardari/Gilani government complete its full five-year term in office” as it best served US interests, says one of the leaked communiques.
The political fallout from these leaks is imminent.
The presidency and the army’s general headquarters both clearly knew that they were not getting along well, but certainly they didn’t expect each other to wash the dirty linen before foreign diplomats.
At one point, a cable sent by the embassy talks about Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani forewarning then ambassador Anne Patterson about the likelihood of him removing President Asif Ali Zardari, if such a situation arose during PML-N-supported lawyers’ long march in March last year, and installing ANP leader Asfandyar Wali in his place.
“During ambassador’s fourth meeting in a week with Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Kayani on March 10, he again hinted that he might, however reluctantly, have to persuade President Zardari to resign if the situation sharply deteriorates. He mentioned Asfandyar Wali Khan as a possible replacement,” one of the cables reads.
The implied message in Gen Kayani’s contingency planning was immediately read by the ambassador as a plea to intervene and compel both parties to back down or else the army would play its role.
The general, at a later stage, told the American envoy that he was least interested in taking over and had he been, there was a good opportunity during the long march.
The general, whom the cables describe as a person difficult to understand and who tends to mumble, looked quite articulate when it came to expressing his opinions about political leaders.
“Kayani made it clear that regardless of how much he disliked Zardari, he distrusted Nawaz even more,” one of the cables says.
But, Gen Kayani was not alone in voicing his disenchantment with President Zardari who by virtue of his office is also the supreme commander of the armed forces.The president, in turn, could be seen complaining to the Americans that his army chief could oust him.
He is said to have confided in American Vice-President Joe Biden that “Kayani will take me out”.
President Zardari, in a meeting with the US ambassador, is said to have detailed out his plans if he were to be assassinated.
The president reportedly told Ms Patterson his sister Faryal Talpur would then be named president and that he had requested the United Arab Emirates government to take in his family in the event of his death.
Cables show Ms Talpur as one person about whom everyone had positive feelings. If President Zardari considered her the most suitable person to succeed him, embassy officers were very impressed with her and saw her as extremely energetic and well respected. More importantly, Kayani once told the ambassador that she would be a better president than her brother.
In a separate conversation, the president appears to be telling the then British foreign secretary David Miliband how the military and the ISI kept him in dark about critical information.
In a discussion on the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, he said ‘my people’ had not brought specific information to him about the individuals named in the information passed to the ISI.
It was not only the civilian president and army chief pitted against each other. A reading of the leaked cables shows how President Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani worked at cross purposes.
President’s media coordinator Farah Naz Ispahani had confided to an American diplomat: “We are very unhappy with the way Gilani has gone off the reservation” while Mr Zardari was in China. She was referring to talks between Mr Gilani and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif without President Zardari’s blessings in the lead up to the long march.
But another cable noted that reports of Zardari-Gilani tensions were probably exaggerated and credited the prime minister for peaceful resolution of the judicial crisis.
Away from the political bickering, leaked cables show differences over critical foreign policy and security issues.
Gen Kayani in his conversations with American diplomats, the cables suggest, tried to pass the blame for an impasse on different issues like military action in Waziristan and start of back-channel talks with India to the president.
While Gen Kayani and ISI chief Gen Shuja Pasha informed the Americans about the resentment in the army ranks about alleged corruption and mis-governance by the president, one of the leaked documents expresses doubts if the army chief ever conveyed those concerns with the same seriousness to Mr Zardari.
The American ambassador opined that Gen Kayani shared the disquiet with her with the belief that the US had the most influence over President Zardari. This perception is confirmed in another diplomatic communication: “Zardari is our best ally in Pakistan right now.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Gilani and US Ambassador Cameron Munter tried to give an impression that the leaks wouldn’t hurt their relations much.
Ambassador Munter, who called on the prime minister, said: “Malicious WikiLeaks will not have any affect on the strong, strategic partnership between Pakistan and the USA, as both sides are resolute to address the misperceptions in the interest of long-term, cordial bilateral relations.”
Prime Minister Gilani said: “The government will ensure that Pakistan’s national interests are not compromised by such mischief in any manner.”
At a ceremony earlier in the day, Mr Munter said: “Working together, we will get past the WikiLeaks problems.”
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Afghanistan announces last set of election results
Afghanistan announced Wednesday the final batch of results from a September 18 parliamentary election, with poll organizers aiming to wrap up a vote marred by widespread fraud and pave the way for a new parliament.
The Independent Election Commission said preliminary winners would hold all seats in southeastern Ghazni province. The results had been held up because all the victors were from the Hazara ethnic group even though nearly half the population is Pashtun.
Pashtun areas were plagued by the worst violence on the day of the vote, and in one Ghazni district just three people voted. There were concerns Pashtuns might react badly if all seats went to the Hazaras rather than reflecting the province's ethnic mix.
"The president might have concerns but we have done our job professionally," IEC chairman Fazl Ahmad Manawi told reporters.
The Independent Election Commission said preliminary winners would hold all seats in southeastern Ghazni province. The results had been held up because all the victors were from the Hazara ethnic group even though nearly half the population is Pashtun.
Pashtun areas were plagued by the worst violence on the day of the vote, and in one Ghazni district just three people voted. There were concerns Pashtuns might react badly if all seats went to the Hazaras rather than reflecting the province's ethnic mix.
"The president might have concerns but we have done our job professionally," IEC chairman Fazl Ahmad Manawi told reporters.
Nuclear Fuel Memos Expose Wary Dance With Pakistan
New York Times:
by Jane Perlez, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Less than a month after President Obama testily assured reporters in 2009 that Pakistan’s nuclear materials “will remain out of militant hands,” his ambassador here sent a secret message to Washington suggesting that she remained deeply worried.
The ambassador’s concern was a stockpile of highly enriched uranium, sitting for years near an aging research nuclear reactor in Pakistan. There was enough to build several “dirty bombs” or, in skilled hands, possibly enough for an actual nuclear bomb.
In the cable, dated May 27, 2009, the ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, reported that the Pakistani government was yet again dragging its feet on an agreement reached two years earlier to have the United States remove the material.
She wrote to senior American officials that the Pakistani government had concluded that “the ‘sensational’ international and local media coverage of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons made it impossible to proceed at this time.” A senior Pakistani official, she said, warned that if word leaked out that Americans were helping remove the fuel, the local press would certainly “portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.”
The fuel is still there.
It may be the most unnerving evidence of the complex relationship — sometimes cooperative, often confrontational, always wary — between America and Pakistan nearly 10 years into the American-led war in Afghanistan. The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of news organizations, make it clear that underneath public reassurances lie deep clashes over strategic goals on issues like Pakistan’s support for the Afghan Taliban and tolerance of Al Qaeda, and Washington’s warmer relations with India, Pakistan’s archenemy.
Written from the American Embassy in Islamabad, the cables reveal American maneuvering as diplomats try to support an unpopular elected government that is more sympathetic to American aims than is the real power in Pakistan, the army and intelligence agency so crucial to the fight against militants. The cables show just how weak the civilian government is: President Asif Ali Zardari told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that he worried that the military might “take me out.”
Frustration at American inability to persuade the Pakistani Army and intelligence agency to stop supporting the Afghan Taliban and other militants runs through the reports of meetings between American and Pakistani officials.
That frustration preoccupied the Bush administration and became an issue for the incoming Obama administration, the cables document, during a trip in January 2009 that Mr. Biden made to Pakistan 11 days before he was sworn in. In a meeting with Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief of staff, Mr. Biden asked several times whether Pakistan and the United States “had the same enemy as we move forward.”
“The United States needs to be able to make an objective assessment of Pakistan’s part of the bargain,” Mr. Biden said, according to a Feb. 6, 2009, cable.
General Kayani tried to reassure him, saying, “We are on the same page in Afghanistan, but there might be different tactics.” Mr. Biden replied that “results” would test that.
The cables reveal at least one example of increased cooperation, previously undisclosed, under the Obama administration. Last fall, the Pakistani Army secretly allowed 12 American Special Operations soldiers to deploy with Pakistani troops in the violent tribal areas near the Afghan border.
The Americans were forbidden to conduct combat missions. Even though their numbers were small, their presence at army headquarters in Bajaur, South Waziristan and North Waziristan was a “sea change in thinking,” the embassy reported.
The embassy added its usual caution: The deployments must be kept secret or the “Pakistani military will likely stop making requests for such assistance.”
Within the past year, however, Pakistan and the United States have gingerly started to publicly acknowledge the role of American field advisers. Lt. Col. Michael Shavers, an American military spokesman in Islamabad, said in a statement that “at the request of the Pakistanis,” small teams of Special Operations forces “move to various locations with their Pakistani military counterparts throughout Pakistan.”
Moreover, last week in a report to Congress on operations in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said that the Pakistani Army had also accepted American and coalition advisers in Quetta.
The cables do not deal with the sharp increase under Mr. Obama in drone attacks against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the tribal areas with Pakistan’s tacit approval. That is because the cables are not classified at the highest levels.
A Deep Skepticism
Over all, though, the cables portray deep skepticism that Pakistan will ever cooperate fully in fighting the full panoply of extremist groups. This is partly because Pakistan sees some of the strongest militant groups as insurance for the inevitable day that the United States military withdraws from Afghanistan — and Pakistan wants to exert maximum influence inside Afghanistan and against Indian intervention.
Indeed, the consul general in Peshawar wrote in 2008 that she believed that some members of the Haqqani network — one of the most lethal groups attacking American and Afghan soldiers — had left North Waziristan to escape drone strikes. Some family members, she wrote, relocated south of Peshawar; others lived in Rawalpindi, where senior Pakistani military officials also live.
In one cable, Ms. Patterson, a veteran diplomat who left Islamabad in October after a three-year stint as ambassador, said more money and military assistance would not be persuasive. “There is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance levels in any field as sufficient compensation for abandoning support for these groups, which it sees as an important part of its national security apparatus against India.”
In a rare tone of dissent with Washington, she said Pakistan would only dig in deeper if America continued to improve ties with India, which she said “feeds Pakistani establishment paranoia and pushes them closer to both Afghan and Kashmir focused terrorist groups.”
The groups Ms. Patterson referred to were almost certainly the Haqqani network of the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group financed by Pakistan in the 1990s to fight India in Kashmir that is accused of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.
The highly enriched uranium that Ms. Patterson wanted removed from the research reactor came from the United States in the mid-1960s. In those days, under the Atoms for Peace program, little thought was given to proliferation, and Pakistan seemed too poor and backward to join the nuclear race.
But by May 2009, all that had changed, and her terse cable to the State and Defense Departments, among others, touched every nerve in the fraught relationship: mutual mistrust, the safety of the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, broken promises and a pervasive fear that any talk about Pakistan’s vulnerability would end whatever cooperation existed.
The reactor had been converted to use low-enriched uranium, well below bomb grade, in 1990, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, or I.A.E.A. But the bomb-grade uranium had never been returned to the United States and remains in storage nearby. Ms. Patterson’s cable noted that Pakistan had “agreed in principle to the fuel removal in 2007.”
But time and again the Pakistanis balked, and she reported that an interagency group within the Pakistani government had decided to cancel a visit by American technical experts to get the fuel out of the country. She concluded that “it is clear that the negative media attention has begun to hamper U.S. efforts to improve Pakistan’s nuclear security and nonproliferation practices.”
Any progress, she suggested, would have to await a “more conducive” political climate.
On Monday, Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement confirming that “the US suggestion to have the fuel transferred was plainly refused by Pakistan.” It said that the United States had provided the fuel but did not mention that, under the terms of such transfers, the United States retained the right to have the spent fuel returned.
The ambassador’s comments help explain why Mr. Obama and his aides have expressed confidence in Pakistan’s nuclear security when asked in public. But at the beginning of the administration’s review of its Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy, a highly classified intelligence report delivered to Mr. Obama said that while Pakistan’s weapons were well secured, there was deep, continuing concern about “insider access,” meaning elements in the military or intelligence services.
In fact, Ms. Patterson, in a Feb. 4, 2009, cable, wrote that “our major concern is not having an Islamic militant steal an entire weapon but rather the chance someone working in GOP [government of Pakistan] facilities could gradually smuggle enough material out to eventually make a weapon.”
Mr. Obama’s review concluded by determining that there were two “vital” American interests in the region. One was defeating Al Qaeda. The second, not previously reported, was making sure terrorists could never gain access to Pakistan’s nuclear program. That goal was classified, to keep from angering Islamabad.
Asked about the status of the fuel at the research reactor, Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the Energy Department, said, “The United States supplied Pakistan with fuel for a research reactor decades ago for the purpose of producing medical isotopes and scientific research.” Implicitly acknowledging that the material remains there, Mr. LaVera said “the fuel is under I.A.E.A. safeguards and has not been part of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.”
One secret cable offers another glimpse into another element of the nuclear gamesmanship between the United States and its Pakistani allies: Even while American officials were trying to persuade Pakistani officials to give up nuclear material, they were quietly seeking to block Pakistan from trying to buy material that would help it produce tritium, the crucial ingredient needed to increase the power of nuclear weapons.
After providing specific details of the proposed sale, a Dec. 12, 2008, secret cable to the American Embassy in Singapore, seeking help to stop a transaction that was about to take place, concluded, “We would have great concern over Pakistan’s potential use of tritium to advance its nuclear weapons program.”
Reports of Army Abuses
The cables also reveal that the American Embassy had received credible reports of extrajudicial killings of prisoners by the Pakistani Army more than a year before the Obama administration publicly acknowledged the problem and before a video that is said to show such killings surfaced on the Internet.
The killings are another source of tension, complicated by American pressure on Pakistan to be more aggressive in confronting militants on its own soil.
In a Sept. 10, 2009, cable labeled “secret/noforn,” meaning that it was too delicate to be shared with foreign governments, the embassy confronted allegations of human rights abuses in the Swat Valley and the tribal areas since the Pakistani Army had begun fighting the Taliban a few months earlier.
While carefully worded, the cable left little doubt about what was going on. It spoke of a “growing body of evidence” that gave credence to the allegations.
“The crux of the problem appears to center on the treatment of terrorists detained in battlefield operations and have focused on the extrajudicial killing of some detainees,” the cable said. “The detainees involved were in the custody of Frontier Corps or Pakistan army units.” The Frontier Corps is a paramilitary force partly financed by the United States to fight the insurgents.
The Pakistani Army was holding as many as 5,000 “terrorist detainees,” the cable said, about twice as many as the army had acknowledged.
Concerned that the United States should not offend the Pakistani Army, the cable stressed that any talk of the killings must be kept out of the press.
“Post advises that we avoid comment on these incidents to the extent possible and that efforts remain focused on dialogue and the assistance strategy,” the ambassador wrote. This September, however, the issue exploded into public view when a video emerged showing Pakistani soldiers executing six unarmed young men in civilian clothes. In October, the Obama administration suspended financing to half a dozen Pakistani Army units believed to have killed civilians or unarmed prisoners.
The cables verge on gossipy, as diplomats strained to understand the personalities behind the fractious Pakistani government, and particularly two men: General Kayani and President Zardari.
Often, the United States finds that Mr. Zardari, the accidental leader after the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, is sympathetic to American goals — stiff sanctions on terrorist financing, the closing down of terrorist training camps — but lacks the power to fulfill his promises against resistance from the military and intelligence agencies.
Mr. Zardari’s chief antagonist, General Kayani, emerges as a stubborn guarantor of what he sees as Pakistan’s national interest, an army chief who meddles in civilian politics but stops short of overturning the elected order.
Early in the Obama administration, General Kayani made clear a condition for improved relations. As the director general of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, from 2004 to 2007, he did not want a “reckoning with the past,” said a cable in 2009 introducing him to the new administration.
“Kayani will want to hear that the United States has turned the page on past ISI operations,” it said. General Kayani was probably referring to the peace accords with the Taliban from 2004 to 2007 that resulted in the strengthening of the militants.
If the general seems confidently in charge, the cables portray Mr. Zardari as a man not fully aware of his weakness.
At one point he said he would not object if Abdul Qadeer Khan, revered in Pakistan as the father of its nuclear weapons program, were interviewed by the International Atomic Energy Agency but tacitly acknowledged that he was powerless to make that happen.
Mr. Zardari, who spent 11 years in prison on ultimately unproved corruption charges, feared for his position and possibly — the wording is ambiguous — his life: the cables reveal that Vice President Biden told Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain in March 2009 that Mr. Zardari had told him that the “ISI director and Kayani will take me out.”
His suspicions were not groundless. In March 2009, a period of political turmoil, General Kayani told the ambassador that he “might, however reluctantly,” pressure Mr. Zardari to resign and, the cable added, presumably leave Pakistan. He mentioned the leader of a third political party, Asfandyar Wali Khan, as a possible replacement.
“Kayani made it clear regardless how much he disliked Zardari he distrusted Nawaz even more,” the ambassador wrote, a reference to Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister.
By 2010, after many sessions with Mr. Zardari, Ms. Patterson had revised the guarded optimism that characterized her early cables about Mr. Zardari.
“Pakistan’s civilian government remains weak, ineffectual and corrupt,” she wrote on Feb. 22, 2010, the eve of a visit by the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III. “Domestic politics is dominated by uncertainty about the fate of President Zardari.”
That assessment holds more than eight months later, even as Mr. Obama in October extended an invitation to the Mr. Zardari leader to visit the White House next year, as the leader of a nation that holds a key to peace in Afghanistan but appears too divided and mistrustful to turn it for the Americans.
Jane Perlez reported from Islamabad, and David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt from Washington. William J. Broad and Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting from New York.
by Jane Perlez, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Less than a month after President Obama testily assured reporters in 2009 that Pakistan’s nuclear materials “will remain out of militant hands,” his ambassador here sent a secret message to Washington suggesting that she remained deeply worried.
The ambassador’s concern was a stockpile of highly enriched uranium, sitting for years near an aging research nuclear reactor in Pakistan. There was enough to build several “dirty bombs” or, in skilled hands, possibly enough for an actual nuclear bomb.
In the cable, dated May 27, 2009, the ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, reported that the Pakistani government was yet again dragging its feet on an agreement reached two years earlier to have the United States remove the material.
She wrote to senior American officials that the Pakistani government had concluded that “the ‘sensational’ international and local media coverage of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons made it impossible to proceed at this time.” A senior Pakistani official, she said, warned that if word leaked out that Americans were helping remove the fuel, the local press would certainly “portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.”
The fuel is still there.
It may be the most unnerving evidence of the complex relationship — sometimes cooperative, often confrontational, always wary — between America and Pakistan nearly 10 years into the American-led war in Afghanistan. The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of news organizations, make it clear that underneath public reassurances lie deep clashes over strategic goals on issues like Pakistan’s support for the Afghan Taliban and tolerance of Al Qaeda, and Washington’s warmer relations with India, Pakistan’s archenemy.
Written from the American Embassy in Islamabad, the cables reveal American maneuvering as diplomats try to support an unpopular elected government that is more sympathetic to American aims than is the real power in Pakistan, the army and intelligence agency so crucial to the fight against militants. The cables show just how weak the civilian government is: President Asif Ali Zardari told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that he worried that the military might “take me out.”
Frustration at American inability to persuade the Pakistani Army and intelligence agency to stop supporting the Afghan Taliban and other militants runs through the reports of meetings between American and Pakistani officials.
That frustration preoccupied the Bush administration and became an issue for the incoming Obama administration, the cables document, during a trip in January 2009 that Mr. Biden made to Pakistan 11 days before he was sworn in. In a meeting with Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief of staff, Mr. Biden asked several times whether Pakistan and the United States “had the same enemy as we move forward.”
“The United States needs to be able to make an objective assessment of Pakistan’s part of the bargain,” Mr. Biden said, according to a Feb. 6, 2009, cable.
General Kayani tried to reassure him, saying, “We are on the same page in Afghanistan, but there might be different tactics.” Mr. Biden replied that “results” would test that.
The cables reveal at least one example of increased cooperation, previously undisclosed, under the Obama administration. Last fall, the Pakistani Army secretly allowed 12 American Special Operations soldiers to deploy with Pakistani troops in the violent tribal areas near the Afghan border.
The Americans were forbidden to conduct combat missions. Even though their numbers were small, their presence at army headquarters in Bajaur, South Waziristan and North Waziristan was a “sea change in thinking,” the embassy reported.
The embassy added its usual caution: The deployments must be kept secret or the “Pakistani military will likely stop making requests for such assistance.”
Within the past year, however, Pakistan and the United States have gingerly started to publicly acknowledge the role of American field advisers. Lt. Col. Michael Shavers, an American military spokesman in Islamabad, said in a statement that “at the request of the Pakistanis,” small teams of Special Operations forces “move to various locations with their Pakistani military counterparts throughout Pakistan.”
Moreover, last week in a report to Congress on operations in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said that the Pakistani Army had also accepted American and coalition advisers in Quetta.
The cables do not deal with the sharp increase under Mr. Obama in drone attacks against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the tribal areas with Pakistan’s tacit approval. That is because the cables are not classified at the highest levels.
A Deep Skepticism
Over all, though, the cables portray deep skepticism that Pakistan will ever cooperate fully in fighting the full panoply of extremist groups. This is partly because Pakistan sees some of the strongest militant groups as insurance for the inevitable day that the United States military withdraws from Afghanistan — and Pakistan wants to exert maximum influence inside Afghanistan and against Indian intervention.
Indeed, the consul general in Peshawar wrote in 2008 that she believed that some members of the Haqqani network — one of the most lethal groups attacking American and Afghan soldiers — had left North Waziristan to escape drone strikes. Some family members, she wrote, relocated south of Peshawar; others lived in Rawalpindi, where senior Pakistani military officials also live.
In one cable, Ms. Patterson, a veteran diplomat who left Islamabad in October after a three-year stint as ambassador, said more money and military assistance would not be persuasive. “There is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance levels in any field as sufficient compensation for abandoning support for these groups, which it sees as an important part of its national security apparatus against India.”
In a rare tone of dissent with Washington, she said Pakistan would only dig in deeper if America continued to improve ties with India, which she said “feeds Pakistani establishment paranoia and pushes them closer to both Afghan and Kashmir focused terrorist groups.”
The groups Ms. Patterson referred to were almost certainly the Haqqani network of the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group financed by Pakistan in the 1990s to fight India in Kashmir that is accused of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.
The highly enriched uranium that Ms. Patterson wanted removed from the research reactor came from the United States in the mid-1960s. In those days, under the Atoms for Peace program, little thought was given to proliferation, and Pakistan seemed too poor and backward to join the nuclear race.
But by May 2009, all that had changed, and her terse cable to the State and Defense Departments, among others, touched every nerve in the fraught relationship: mutual mistrust, the safety of the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, broken promises and a pervasive fear that any talk about Pakistan’s vulnerability would end whatever cooperation existed.
The reactor had been converted to use low-enriched uranium, well below bomb grade, in 1990, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, or I.A.E.A. But the bomb-grade uranium had never been returned to the United States and remains in storage nearby. Ms. Patterson’s cable noted that Pakistan had “agreed in principle to the fuel removal in 2007.”
But time and again the Pakistanis balked, and she reported that an interagency group within the Pakistani government had decided to cancel a visit by American technical experts to get the fuel out of the country. She concluded that “it is clear that the negative media attention has begun to hamper U.S. efforts to improve Pakistan’s nuclear security and nonproliferation practices.”
Any progress, she suggested, would have to await a “more conducive” political climate.
On Monday, Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement confirming that “the US suggestion to have the fuel transferred was plainly refused by Pakistan.” It said that the United States had provided the fuel but did not mention that, under the terms of such transfers, the United States retained the right to have the spent fuel returned.
The ambassador’s comments help explain why Mr. Obama and his aides have expressed confidence in Pakistan’s nuclear security when asked in public. But at the beginning of the administration’s review of its Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy, a highly classified intelligence report delivered to Mr. Obama said that while Pakistan’s weapons were well secured, there was deep, continuing concern about “insider access,” meaning elements in the military or intelligence services.
In fact, Ms. Patterson, in a Feb. 4, 2009, cable, wrote that “our major concern is not having an Islamic militant steal an entire weapon but rather the chance someone working in GOP [government of Pakistan] facilities could gradually smuggle enough material out to eventually make a weapon.”
Mr. Obama’s review concluded by determining that there were two “vital” American interests in the region. One was defeating Al Qaeda. The second, not previously reported, was making sure terrorists could never gain access to Pakistan’s nuclear program. That goal was classified, to keep from angering Islamabad.
Asked about the status of the fuel at the research reactor, Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the Energy Department, said, “The United States supplied Pakistan with fuel for a research reactor decades ago for the purpose of producing medical isotopes and scientific research.” Implicitly acknowledging that the material remains there, Mr. LaVera said “the fuel is under I.A.E.A. safeguards and has not been part of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.”
One secret cable offers another glimpse into another element of the nuclear gamesmanship between the United States and its Pakistani allies: Even while American officials were trying to persuade Pakistani officials to give up nuclear material, they were quietly seeking to block Pakistan from trying to buy material that would help it produce tritium, the crucial ingredient needed to increase the power of nuclear weapons.
After providing specific details of the proposed sale, a Dec. 12, 2008, secret cable to the American Embassy in Singapore, seeking help to stop a transaction that was about to take place, concluded, “We would have great concern over Pakistan’s potential use of tritium to advance its nuclear weapons program.”
Reports of Army Abuses
The cables also reveal that the American Embassy had received credible reports of extrajudicial killings of prisoners by the Pakistani Army more than a year before the Obama administration publicly acknowledged the problem and before a video that is said to show such killings surfaced on the Internet.
The killings are another source of tension, complicated by American pressure on Pakistan to be more aggressive in confronting militants on its own soil.
In a Sept. 10, 2009, cable labeled “secret/noforn,” meaning that it was too delicate to be shared with foreign governments, the embassy confronted allegations of human rights abuses in the Swat Valley and the tribal areas since the Pakistani Army had begun fighting the Taliban a few months earlier.
While carefully worded, the cable left little doubt about what was going on. It spoke of a “growing body of evidence” that gave credence to the allegations.
“The crux of the problem appears to center on the treatment of terrorists detained in battlefield operations and have focused on the extrajudicial killing of some detainees,” the cable said. “The detainees involved were in the custody of Frontier Corps or Pakistan army units.” The Frontier Corps is a paramilitary force partly financed by the United States to fight the insurgents.
The Pakistani Army was holding as many as 5,000 “terrorist detainees,” the cable said, about twice as many as the army had acknowledged.
Concerned that the United States should not offend the Pakistani Army, the cable stressed that any talk of the killings must be kept out of the press.
“Post advises that we avoid comment on these incidents to the extent possible and that efforts remain focused on dialogue and the assistance strategy,” the ambassador wrote. This September, however, the issue exploded into public view when a video emerged showing Pakistani soldiers executing six unarmed young men in civilian clothes. In October, the Obama administration suspended financing to half a dozen Pakistani Army units believed to have killed civilians or unarmed prisoners.
The cables verge on gossipy, as diplomats strained to understand the personalities behind the fractious Pakistani government, and particularly two men: General Kayani and President Zardari.
Often, the United States finds that Mr. Zardari, the accidental leader after the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, is sympathetic to American goals — stiff sanctions on terrorist financing, the closing down of terrorist training camps — but lacks the power to fulfill his promises against resistance from the military and intelligence agencies.
Mr. Zardari’s chief antagonist, General Kayani, emerges as a stubborn guarantor of what he sees as Pakistan’s national interest, an army chief who meddles in civilian politics but stops short of overturning the elected order.
Early in the Obama administration, General Kayani made clear a condition for improved relations. As the director general of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, from 2004 to 2007, he did not want a “reckoning with the past,” said a cable in 2009 introducing him to the new administration.
“Kayani will want to hear that the United States has turned the page on past ISI operations,” it said. General Kayani was probably referring to the peace accords with the Taliban from 2004 to 2007 that resulted in the strengthening of the militants.
If the general seems confidently in charge, the cables portray Mr. Zardari as a man not fully aware of his weakness.
At one point he said he would not object if Abdul Qadeer Khan, revered in Pakistan as the father of its nuclear weapons program, were interviewed by the International Atomic Energy Agency but tacitly acknowledged that he was powerless to make that happen.
Mr. Zardari, who spent 11 years in prison on ultimately unproved corruption charges, feared for his position and possibly — the wording is ambiguous — his life: the cables reveal that Vice President Biden told Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain in March 2009 that Mr. Zardari had told him that the “ISI director and Kayani will take me out.”
His suspicions were not groundless. In March 2009, a period of political turmoil, General Kayani told the ambassador that he “might, however reluctantly,” pressure Mr. Zardari to resign and, the cable added, presumably leave Pakistan. He mentioned the leader of a third political party, Asfandyar Wali Khan, as a possible replacement.
“Kayani made it clear regardless how much he disliked Zardari he distrusted Nawaz even more,” the ambassador wrote, a reference to Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister.
By 2010, after many sessions with Mr. Zardari, Ms. Patterson had revised the guarded optimism that characterized her early cables about Mr. Zardari.
“Pakistan’s civilian government remains weak, ineffectual and corrupt,” she wrote on Feb. 22, 2010, the eve of a visit by the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III. “Domestic politics is dominated by uncertainty about the fate of President Zardari.”
That assessment holds more than eight months later, even as Mr. Obama in October extended an invitation to the Mr. Zardari leader to visit the White House next year, as the leader of a nation that holds a key to peace in Afghanistan but appears too divided and mistrustful to turn it for the Americans.
Jane Perlez reported from Islamabad, and David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt from Washington. William J. Broad and Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting from New York.
Losing glory
EDITORIAL:Daily Times
In politics, perception is critical. It is the people’s perceptions of how a particular party has served its term that brings them out in droves to elect who they think can fairly lead them towards progress and the attainment of dignity and their rights. On its 44th founding anniversary, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is suffering from a bad case of negative perception. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Monday addressed a party workers’ convention where he categorically ruled out any “misadventure” to destabilise the government and that “change can only come through the people”. In the run-up to the 2013 elections, the PPP needs to ensure that no complacency sets in when it comes to satisfying the aspirations of the people. For that a certain amount of introspection and reflection is needed by the party.
At present, the PPP leads a government that is alleged to be rife with corruption, nepotism and cronyism. Nawaz Sharif on the same day displayed his usual rhetoric at a party workers’ convention where he accused the centre of “bad governance”, amongst other things. Although this is not unusual for the opposition, the fact remains that in the minds of the people this rhetoric is beginning to acquire a ring of truth. The masses are being overburdened by skyrocketing inflation, political intrigues where allegations of corruption and partisan politics are reported every day and where the problems of the country, including the war against terror, are leaving people out in the cold, sometimes as cadavers. Maybe it is the very weight of these problems that has left the PPP seemingly somewhat indifferent in managing the affairs of the state for the people’s welfare. Even its repetition of measures taken in this regard sound increasingly hollow. Pakistan today is the proverbial bed of thorns, beset with so many problems that there are hardly any contenders eager to come forward and urgently tackle its woes. Criticism by itself or for its own sake is no solution, something one wishes the opposition would come to terms with. The PPP needs to get its act together on a war footing.
Gilani also stated that it “respects” criticism from the opposition, media and coalition members. Why then, does it not respect criticism from within? The recent suspension of senior PPP stalwart Naheed Khan’s party membership has raised many eyebrows. Even though she is a dissenting voice within the party, her thoughts too must be respected and tolerated. The fact that inner-party dissent has been dealt with similarly in the PPP’s past further compounds the fact that, after Benazir’s murder, the party is risking fragmentation due to its intolerance of internal criticism. This must change.
The PPP was founded to give the masses a voice through the adoption of a socialist agenda. The PPP came to alter the power structure, to give the people a sense of self-worth and a platform to challenge the status quo. That manifesto remains, to a large extent, unfulfilled. Deserting its leftist principles and ideology to embrace the liberal free-market paradigm, the PPP has wandered far from its original goals. The past 43 years have delivered a rather chequered and tragic history for the PPP, the loss of Zulfikar Ali and Benazir Bhutto being the two lowest points. Despite the many twists and turns the party has faced and the accusations that are being hurled against its key members, it is still not too late for the present incumbents to improve their performance. It is time that public perceptions are altered. Too many perceive a drift in policy matters, both in the party’s own ranks and in the links that keep the leaders attuned with their people. The PPP has always gained victory when there has been a good turnout at the polls. It should remember that a disillusioned constituency and public may refrain from casting their vote come election time. *
In politics, perception is critical. It is the people’s perceptions of how a particular party has served its term that brings them out in droves to elect who they think can fairly lead them towards progress and the attainment of dignity and their rights. On its 44th founding anniversary, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is suffering from a bad case of negative perception. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Monday addressed a party workers’ convention where he categorically ruled out any “misadventure” to destabilise the government and that “change can only come through the people”. In the run-up to the 2013 elections, the PPP needs to ensure that no complacency sets in when it comes to satisfying the aspirations of the people. For that a certain amount of introspection and reflection is needed by the party.
At present, the PPP leads a government that is alleged to be rife with corruption, nepotism and cronyism. Nawaz Sharif on the same day displayed his usual rhetoric at a party workers’ convention where he accused the centre of “bad governance”, amongst other things. Although this is not unusual for the opposition, the fact remains that in the minds of the people this rhetoric is beginning to acquire a ring of truth. The masses are being overburdened by skyrocketing inflation, political intrigues where allegations of corruption and partisan politics are reported every day and where the problems of the country, including the war against terror, are leaving people out in the cold, sometimes as cadavers. Maybe it is the very weight of these problems that has left the PPP seemingly somewhat indifferent in managing the affairs of the state for the people’s welfare. Even its repetition of measures taken in this regard sound increasingly hollow. Pakistan today is the proverbial bed of thorns, beset with so many problems that there are hardly any contenders eager to come forward and urgently tackle its woes. Criticism by itself or for its own sake is no solution, something one wishes the opposition would come to terms with. The PPP needs to get its act together on a war footing.
Gilani also stated that it “respects” criticism from the opposition, media and coalition members. Why then, does it not respect criticism from within? The recent suspension of senior PPP stalwart Naheed Khan’s party membership has raised many eyebrows. Even though she is a dissenting voice within the party, her thoughts too must be respected and tolerated. The fact that inner-party dissent has been dealt with similarly in the PPP’s past further compounds the fact that, after Benazir’s murder, the party is risking fragmentation due to its intolerance of internal criticism. This must change.
The PPP was founded to give the masses a voice through the adoption of a socialist agenda. The PPP came to alter the power structure, to give the people a sense of self-worth and a platform to challenge the status quo. That manifesto remains, to a large extent, unfulfilled. Deserting its leftist principles and ideology to embrace the liberal free-market paradigm, the PPP has wandered far from its original goals. The past 43 years have delivered a rather chequered and tragic history for the PPP, the loss of Zulfikar Ali and Benazir Bhutto being the two lowest points. Despite the many twists and turns the party has faced and the accusations that are being hurled against its key members, it is still not too late for the present incumbents to improve their performance. It is time that public perceptions are altered. Too many perceive a drift in policy matters, both in the party’s own ranks and in the links that keep the leaders attuned with their people. The PPP has always gained victory when there has been a good turnout at the polls. It should remember that a disillusioned constituency and public may refrain from casting their vote come election time. *
Saudi Arabia wants military rule in Pakistan...WikiLeaks cables
King Abdullah and ruling princes distrust Asif Ali Zardari, the country's Shia president, and would prefer 'another Musharraf'
America is often portrayed as the big dog in Pakistan's yard: a swaggering power that makes rules, barks orders and throws its weight around. But the WikiLeaks cables highlight the understated yet insistent influence of another country with ideas about Pakistan's future: Saudi Arabia.
In recent years Saudi rulers have played favourites with Pakistani politicians, wielded their massive financial clout to political effect and even advocated a return to military rule.
"We in Saudi Arabia are not observers in Pakistan, we are participants," the Saudi ambassador to the US, Adel al-Jubeir, boasted in 2007. A senior US official later bemoaned as "negative" the Saudi influence.
As home to Islam's holiest sites, Saudi Arabia has longstanding ties with Pakistan. In the 1980s Saudi intelligence, along with the CIA, funded the anti-Soviet "jihad" in Afghanistan; since then the Saudis have given billions in financial aid and cut-price oil.
But the close relationship has grown "increasingly strained" in the past two years, with King Abdullah and the ruling princes displaying a clear preference for the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, over the president, Asif Ali Zardari, who is viewed with thinly veiled contempt.
In January 2009 Abdullah told James Jones, then the US national security adviser, that Zardari was incapable of countering terrorism, describing him as the "'rotten head' that was infecting the whole body". Abdullah added that Pakistan's army was "staying out of Pakistani politics in deference to US wishes, rather than doing what it 'should'".
Abdullah's preference for military rule was recorded by the Saudis' American guests: "They appear to be looking for 'another Musharraf': a strong, forceful leader they know they can trust." His views were echoed by the interior minister, who said Saudi Arabia viewed the army as its "winning horse" in Pakistan.
The anti-Zardari bias appears to have a sectarian tinge. Pakistan's ambassador to Riyadh, Umar Khan Alisherzai, says the Saudis, who are Sunni, distrust Zardari, a Shia. Last year the United Arab Emirates' foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, told Hillary Clinton that Saudi suspicions of Zardari's Shia background were "creating Saudi concern of a Shia triangle in the region between Iran, the Maliki government in Iraq, and Pakistan under Zardari".
The Saudis betray a strong preference for Sharif, who fled into exile in Jeddah in 2000 to avoid prosecution under General Pervez Musharraf. The cables contain details of Sharif's secret exile deal – he was to remain out of politics for 10 years – as well as hints of Saudi anger when he returned to Pakistan in 2007.
Since then, however, Saudi displeasure has abated, and the Saudis clearly view him as "their man" in the Pakistani power game. In early 2008 the Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, described Sharif as a "force for stability" and "a man who can speak across party lines even to religious extremists". American officials noted that Sharif had obtained preferential business deals during his time in Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile the Saudis have pressured Zardari with oil and money. In late 2008 Pakistani officials complained that "not a drop" of Saudi oil promised at concessionary rates had been delivered, while the annual aid cheque of $300m was well below the regular rate. "Muslim brotherhood is not what it used to be," fretted an economic counsellor at the Pakistani embassy.Pakistani officials echo the American fears about the radicalizing influence of Saudi money, some of it from the government. In April 2008 Pakistani interior advisor Rehman Malik said he was "particularly concerned about the role of the Saudi ambassador in funding religious schools and mosques" in Pakistan.
"Malik said that [President] Musharraf had come close to "throwing him (the Saudi ambassador) out of the country" but Malik said he knew the Saudi royal family well and would work with them."
Zardari has asserted his independence from the Saudis. The king was unhappy that he made his first official visit to China and skipped the opening of a new university in favour of meetings in Europe and the US.
US officials noted that the go-slow was part of a broader Saudi policy of "withholding assistance" – slowing the flow of cash and oil – when it suited policy in Lebanon, Palestine and Pakistan. Such economic tactics may be familiar to US officials, who used them against Pakistan for much of the 1990s.
US diplomats see the Saudis as allies but also competitors for influence in Pakistan. In 2009 special envoy Richard Holbrooke warned Prince Mohammed bin Nayef of "unimaginable" consequences for Saudi Arabia if Pakistan fell apart, especially if its nuclear weapons fell into unfriendly hands.
"God forbid!" responded the prince.
But in Islamabad, American diplomats have sought to diminish Saudi influence by allying with another Muslim country, Turkey. After a meeting with the Turkish ambassador in May 2009, ambassador Anne Patterson noted that moderate, progressive Turkey presented a "positive role model" for Pakistan.
It was well positioned, she said, to "neutralise somewhat the more negative influence on Pakistan politics and society exercised by Saudi Arabia".
America is often portrayed as the big dog in Pakistan's yard: a swaggering power that makes rules, barks orders and throws its weight around. But the WikiLeaks cables highlight the understated yet insistent influence of another country with ideas about Pakistan's future: Saudi Arabia.
In recent years Saudi rulers have played favourites with Pakistani politicians, wielded their massive financial clout to political effect and even advocated a return to military rule.
"We in Saudi Arabia are not observers in Pakistan, we are participants," the Saudi ambassador to the US, Adel al-Jubeir, boasted in 2007. A senior US official later bemoaned as "negative" the Saudi influence.
As home to Islam's holiest sites, Saudi Arabia has longstanding ties with Pakistan. In the 1980s Saudi intelligence, along with the CIA, funded the anti-Soviet "jihad" in Afghanistan; since then the Saudis have given billions in financial aid and cut-price oil.
But the close relationship has grown "increasingly strained" in the past two years, with King Abdullah and the ruling princes displaying a clear preference for the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, over the president, Asif Ali Zardari, who is viewed with thinly veiled contempt.
In January 2009 Abdullah told James Jones, then the US national security adviser, that Zardari was incapable of countering terrorism, describing him as the "'rotten head' that was infecting the whole body". Abdullah added that Pakistan's army was "staying out of Pakistani politics in deference to US wishes, rather than doing what it 'should'".
Abdullah's preference for military rule was recorded by the Saudis' American guests: "They appear to be looking for 'another Musharraf': a strong, forceful leader they know they can trust." His views were echoed by the interior minister, who said Saudi Arabia viewed the army as its "winning horse" in Pakistan.
The anti-Zardari bias appears to have a sectarian tinge. Pakistan's ambassador to Riyadh, Umar Khan Alisherzai, says the Saudis, who are Sunni, distrust Zardari, a Shia. Last year the United Arab Emirates' foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, told Hillary Clinton that Saudi suspicions of Zardari's Shia background were "creating Saudi concern of a Shia triangle in the region between Iran, the Maliki government in Iraq, and Pakistan under Zardari".
The Saudis betray a strong preference for Sharif, who fled into exile in Jeddah in 2000 to avoid prosecution under General Pervez Musharraf. The cables contain details of Sharif's secret exile deal – he was to remain out of politics for 10 years – as well as hints of Saudi anger when he returned to Pakistan in 2007.
Since then, however, Saudi displeasure has abated, and the Saudis clearly view him as "their man" in the Pakistani power game. In early 2008 the Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, described Sharif as a "force for stability" and "a man who can speak across party lines even to religious extremists". American officials noted that Sharif had obtained preferential business deals during his time in Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile the Saudis have pressured Zardari with oil and money. In late 2008 Pakistani officials complained that "not a drop" of Saudi oil promised at concessionary rates had been delivered, while the annual aid cheque of $300m was well below the regular rate. "Muslim brotherhood is not what it used to be," fretted an economic counsellor at the Pakistani embassy.Pakistani officials echo the American fears about the radicalizing influence of Saudi money, some of it from the government. In April 2008 Pakistani interior advisor Rehman Malik said he was "particularly concerned about the role of the Saudi ambassador in funding religious schools and mosques" in Pakistan.
"Malik said that [President] Musharraf had come close to "throwing him (the Saudi ambassador) out of the country" but Malik said he knew the Saudi royal family well and would work with them."
Zardari has asserted his independence from the Saudis. The king was unhappy that he made his first official visit to China and skipped the opening of a new university in favour of meetings in Europe and the US.
US officials noted that the go-slow was part of a broader Saudi policy of "withholding assistance" – slowing the flow of cash and oil – when it suited policy in Lebanon, Palestine and Pakistan. Such economic tactics may be familiar to US officials, who used them against Pakistan for much of the 1990s.
US diplomats see the Saudis as allies but also competitors for influence in Pakistan. In 2009 special envoy Richard Holbrooke warned Prince Mohammed bin Nayef of "unimaginable" consequences for Saudi Arabia if Pakistan fell apart, especially if its nuclear weapons fell into unfriendly hands.
"God forbid!" responded the prince.
But in Islamabad, American diplomats have sought to diminish Saudi influence by allying with another Muslim country, Turkey. After a meeting with the Turkish ambassador in May 2009, ambassador Anne Patterson noted that moderate, progressive Turkey presented a "positive role model" for Pakistan.
It was well positioned, she said, to "neutralise somewhat the more negative influence on Pakistan politics and society exercised by Saudi Arabia".
China says nothing should be done to "inflame" Korean Peninsula situation
China said Wednesday that the most pressing task now is to prevent any escalation of the tension on the Korean Peninsula and nothing should be done to "inflame the situation".
"The parties concerned should keep calm and exercise restraint, and work to bring the situation back onto the track of dialogue and negotiation," said Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi while addressing a forum in Beijing.
"China decides its position based on the merits of each case and does not seek to protect any side," Yang said.
Yang's remarks came as the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the United States on Sunday launched a four-day joint naval drill in waters west of the divided Korean Peninsula, following the exchange of artillery fire last Tuesday between the ROK and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
"Showing power and confrontation is not a solution to problems and not in the interests of related parties," Yang said.
"The stability on the Korean Peninsula is conducive to all; the chaos there is detrimental to all," Yang said.
China on Sunday proposed to hold emergency consultations among the heads of delegation to the six-party talks in Beijing in early December.
The talks group China, the DPRK, the United States, the ROK, Russia and Japan.
Yang said the emergency talks "will help ease the current tension and create conditions for the resumption of the six-party talks".
"We will make continued efforts to encourage all parties to work together to maintain peace and stability on the Peninsula and in Northeast Asia," Yang said.
"The parties concerned should keep calm and exercise restraint, and work to bring the situation back onto the track of dialogue and negotiation," said Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi while addressing a forum in Beijing.
"China decides its position based on the merits of each case and does not seek to protect any side," Yang said.
Yang's remarks came as the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the United States on Sunday launched a four-day joint naval drill in waters west of the divided Korean Peninsula, following the exchange of artillery fire last Tuesday between the ROK and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
"Showing power and confrontation is not a solution to problems and not in the interests of related parties," Yang said.
"The stability on the Korean Peninsula is conducive to all; the chaos there is detrimental to all," Yang said.
China on Sunday proposed to hold emergency consultations among the heads of delegation to the six-party talks in Beijing in early December.
The talks group China, the DPRK, the United States, the ROK, Russia and Japan.
Yang said the emergency talks "will help ease the current tension and create conditions for the resumption of the six-party talks".
"We will make continued efforts to encourage all parties to work together to maintain peace and stability on the Peninsula and in Northeast Asia," Yang said.
Zardari fears of being deprived of power: Wikileaks
According to the latest cache of US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks, President Asif Ali Zardari once told the US vice President, Joe Biden, that he feared the military “might take me out”.
According to wikileaks latest document President Zardari has made preparations in case of being killed like his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated.
General Ashfaq Kayani, chief of military, told the US ambassador during a March 2009 meeting that he “might, however reluctantly,” pressure Zardari to resign, according to a cable cited by the Times.
Kayani was quoted as saying that he might support Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the Awami National League Party, as the new president.
Zardari told him that Kayani and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency “will take me out,” according to the cable.
According to wikileaks latest document President Zardari has made preparations in case of being killed like his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated.
General Ashfaq Kayani, chief of military, told the US ambassador during a March 2009 meeting that he “might, however reluctantly,” pressure Zardari to resign, according to a cable cited by the Times.
Kayani was quoted as saying that he might support Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the Awami National League Party, as the new president.
Zardari told him that Kayani and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency “will take me out,” according to the cable.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Saudi Arabia urged the United States to attack Iran
The King of Saudi Arabia privately urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear weapons programme, according to diplomatic cables leaked by the whistle-blowing website, WikiLeaks.The first tranche of more than 250,000 classified cables released by the WikiLeaks site says American officials were also told to spy on the United Nations’ leadership and get biometric information on its secretary general Ban Ki-moon.
The cables detail claims of inappropriate behaviour by a member of the Royal family and criticism of Britain’s military operations in Afghanistan and David Cameron.
The cables include requests for “specific intelligence” about British MPs. The communiques last night threatened a global diplomatic crisis and put America’s relations with Europe and the Middle East under a cloud. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel was depicted as “risk aversive”, while the Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin was an “alpha dog”. Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai was “driven by paranoia”. The unguarded comments were contained in the classified cables from US embassies, details of which were published by several newspapers on the internet last night. Some of the cables were sent as recently as last February.
The first package of memos published by The Guardian, the New York Times and Germany’s Der Spiegel failed to name the British Royal or the behaviour. The cables are being released over the coming fortnight, rather than all at once, putting America’s foreign relations under unprecedented pressure.
One of the most damaging allegations was that Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah repeatedly urged America to attack Iran.
The Saudi leader was recorded as having “frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme”.
The leak said he told the Americans to “cut off the head of the snake” at a meeting in 2008. The leaks also disclose how leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt referred to Iran as “evil” and a power that “is going to take us to war”.
The papers also claimed that the US Government was running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at Mr Ban and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK. They alleged that the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, called for biometric information on the UN secretary general.
A classified directive was issued to US diplomats under the name of the secretary of state in July last year, asking for forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.
American diplomats were also asked to compile a profile of Alan Duncan, the homosexual former oil trader who is now the international development minister.
The Americans particularly asked for information on the relationship between Mr Duncan and William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, with whom he used to share a flat, and also Mr Cameron.
The US administration also wanted information “on key UN officials, to include under-secretaries, heads of specialised agencies and their chief advisers” as well as intelligence on Mr Ban’s “management and decision-making style”.
Washington asked for credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and even frequent-flyer account numbers for UN figures and “biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives”. The secret “national human intelligence collection directive” was sent to US missions at the UN in New York, Vienna and Rome as well as 33 embassies and consulates, including those in London, Paris and Moscow.
Some of the cables offered personal and highly embarrassing descriptions of other world leaders. Kim Jong-il, of North Korea, was said to suffer from epileptic fits, while President Medvedev of Russia was “hesitant”.
The documents also claimed that Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was known for his “wild parties” while Libya’s president Muammar Gaddafi had a “sumptuous blonde as a nursing sister”.
Barack Obama was reported to want to “look East rather than West” while feeling no emotional connection towards Europe.
Washington tended to view the world in terms of two super powers with the European Union playing a secondary role, the cables said.
According to a review of the WikiLeaks documents published in the New York Times, Saudi donors were chief financiers of militant groups such as al-Qaeda and Chinese government operatives had waged a campaign of computer sabotage targeting the United States and its allies.
The WikiLeaks website suffered its own “cyber attack” hours before the release of the documents, with unknown hackers trying to stop the publication.
The White House last night condemned the “reckless and dangerous action” in releasing the classified US diplomatic cables, saying it could endanger lives and risk relations with friendly countries.
Robert Gibbs, a White House spokesman, said: “When the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only US foreign policy interests, but those of our allies around the world.”
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We condemn any unauthorised release of this classified information, just as we condemn leaks of classified material in the UK.
“We have a very strong relationship with the US government. That will continue”.
Buckingham Palace said it had no information about any allegations of inappropriate behaviour by a member of the Royal family.
It is not known who was the source of the leak, however there has been speculation that it could have come from Bradley Manning, a US Army soldier, who has been accused of leaking and transmitting national security information.
He was charged in July.
It also emerged that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, had been rebuffed by the US government after he sought information “regarding individuals who may be 'at significant risk of harm’ because of” his planned release of classified documents.
His unusual move to open an 11th-hour dialogue about the documents came after a Swedish appeals court last week upheld an arrest warrant on rape charges for Mr Assange, validating an international warrant.
Mr Assange, who denies he has committed any crime, was believed to have recently spent time in London but his whereabouts yesterday were unknown. He had been under investigation in Sweden since August over rape.
One report said that Wikileaks had 251,287 cables from 270 US embassies and consulates from a single computer server.
The leaked documents went on to make further allegations. They claimed that Iran had obtained missiles from North Korea to give it the capacity to launch strikes on capitals in Western Europe for the first time.
According to a cable dated last Feb 24, North Korea sent to Iran 19 of the missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Intelligence agencies believe Tehran is some way from developing a nuclear warhead. The officials said the deal had significantly advanced Iran’s development of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Other findings include how since 2007, America had mounted a highly secret effort to remove from a Pakistani research reactor enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. Frustrations with Pakistan were reflected in reported comments by King Abdullah who called President Asif Ali Zardari the greatest obstacle to progress, adding: “When the head is rotten, it affects the whole body.”
The cables reveal the desperate attempts by the US administration to find homes for former Guantánamo Bay detainees.
In one instance Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama. In another accepting prisoners would be “a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe”.
The cables also detailed suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government after the vice-president was caught with $52 million (£33 million) in cash on a visit to the United Arab Emirates last year.
They also detailed how one state department communiqué had named Saudi donors as the chief financiers of al-Qaeda, while China was engaged in a global effort to hack into Google’s computers.
The cables detail claims of inappropriate behaviour by a member of the Royal family and criticism of Britain’s military operations in Afghanistan and David Cameron.
The cables include requests for “specific intelligence” about British MPs. The communiques last night threatened a global diplomatic crisis and put America’s relations with Europe and the Middle East under a cloud. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel was depicted as “risk aversive”, while the Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin was an “alpha dog”. Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai was “driven by paranoia”. The unguarded comments were contained in the classified cables from US embassies, details of which were published by several newspapers on the internet last night. Some of the cables were sent as recently as last February.
The first package of memos published by The Guardian, the New York Times and Germany’s Der Spiegel failed to name the British Royal or the behaviour. The cables are being released over the coming fortnight, rather than all at once, putting America’s foreign relations under unprecedented pressure.
One of the most damaging allegations was that Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah repeatedly urged America to attack Iran.
The Saudi leader was recorded as having “frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme”.
The leak said he told the Americans to “cut off the head of the snake” at a meeting in 2008. The leaks also disclose how leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt referred to Iran as “evil” and a power that “is going to take us to war”.
The papers also claimed that the US Government was running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at Mr Ban and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK. They alleged that the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, called for biometric information on the UN secretary general.
A classified directive was issued to US diplomats under the name of the secretary of state in July last year, asking for forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.
American diplomats were also asked to compile a profile of Alan Duncan, the homosexual former oil trader who is now the international development minister.
The Americans particularly asked for information on the relationship between Mr Duncan and William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, with whom he used to share a flat, and also Mr Cameron.
The US administration also wanted information “on key UN officials, to include under-secretaries, heads of specialised agencies and their chief advisers” as well as intelligence on Mr Ban’s “management and decision-making style”.
Washington asked for credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and even frequent-flyer account numbers for UN figures and “biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives”. The secret “national human intelligence collection directive” was sent to US missions at the UN in New York, Vienna and Rome as well as 33 embassies and consulates, including those in London, Paris and Moscow.
Some of the cables offered personal and highly embarrassing descriptions of other world leaders. Kim Jong-il, of North Korea, was said to suffer from epileptic fits, while President Medvedev of Russia was “hesitant”.
The documents also claimed that Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was known for his “wild parties” while Libya’s president Muammar Gaddafi had a “sumptuous blonde as a nursing sister”.
Barack Obama was reported to want to “look East rather than West” while feeling no emotional connection towards Europe.
Washington tended to view the world in terms of two super powers with the European Union playing a secondary role, the cables said.
According to a review of the WikiLeaks documents published in the New York Times, Saudi donors were chief financiers of militant groups such as al-Qaeda and Chinese government operatives had waged a campaign of computer sabotage targeting the United States and its allies.
The WikiLeaks website suffered its own “cyber attack” hours before the release of the documents, with unknown hackers trying to stop the publication.
The White House last night condemned the “reckless and dangerous action” in releasing the classified US diplomatic cables, saying it could endanger lives and risk relations with friendly countries.
Robert Gibbs, a White House spokesman, said: “When the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only US foreign policy interests, but those of our allies around the world.”
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We condemn any unauthorised release of this classified information, just as we condemn leaks of classified material in the UK.
“We have a very strong relationship with the US government. That will continue”.
Buckingham Palace said it had no information about any allegations of inappropriate behaviour by a member of the Royal family.
It is not known who was the source of the leak, however there has been speculation that it could have come from Bradley Manning, a US Army soldier, who has been accused of leaking and transmitting national security information.
He was charged in July.
It also emerged that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, had been rebuffed by the US government after he sought information “regarding individuals who may be 'at significant risk of harm’ because of” his planned release of classified documents.
His unusual move to open an 11th-hour dialogue about the documents came after a Swedish appeals court last week upheld an arrest warrant on rape charges for Mr Assange, validating an international warrant.
Mr Assange, who denies he has committed any crime, was believed to have recently spent time in London but his whereabouts yesterday were unknown. He had been under investigation in Sweden since August over rape.
One report said that Wikileaks had 251,287 cables from 270 US embassies and consulates from a single computer server.
The leaked documents went on to make further allegations. They claimed that Iran had obtained missiles from North Korea to give it the capacity to launch strikes on capitals in Western Europe for the first time.
According to a cable dated last Feb 24, North Korea sent to Iran 19 of the missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Intelligence agencies believe Tehran is some way from developing a nuclear warhead. The officials said the deal had significantly advanced Iran’s development of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Other findings include how since 2007, America had mounted a highly secret effort to remove from a Pakistani research reactor enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. Frustrations with Pakistan were reflected in reported comments by King Abdullah who called President Asif Ali Zardari the greatest obstacle to progress, adding: “When the head is rotten, it affects the whole body.”
The cables reveal the desperate attempts by the US administration to find homes for former Guantánamo Bay detainees.
In one instance Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama. In another accepting prisoners would be “a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe”.
The cables also detailed suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government after the vice-president was caught with $52 million (£33 million) in cash on a visit to the United Arab Emirates last year.
They also detailed how one state department communiqué had named Saudi donors as the chief financiers of al-Qaeda, while China was engaged in a global effort to hack into Google’s computers.
Wikileaks embassy cables: The key points at a glance
US standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: leaks
By Masroor Gilani (AFP) – 7 hours ago
ISLAMABAD — The United States has led top secret efforts to remove highly enriched uranium from Pakistan for years, worried it could be used to make an "illicit" nuclear device, according to leaked US cables.
The New York Times said they were among quarter of a million confidential American diplomatic cables released by whistleblower WikiLeaks in what Pakistan condemned as an "irresponsible disclosure of sensitive official doucments".
The country's nuclear arsenal is one of the most sensitive topics for the United States as it tries to improve relations with the conservative Muslim nation on the front line in the campaign against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Parts of Pakistan's northwest is gripped by a homegrown Taliban insurgency. Its semi-autonomous wild border area with Afghanistan is subject to a covert US drone war targeting Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders.
Islamist militants embarked on a nationwide bombing campaign across Pakistan in 2007, the same year that the Times said the secret efforts began.
In May 2009, it quoted then US ambassador Anne Patterson as saying that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts.
The Times attributed the reason to a nameless Pakistani official who said: "If the local media got word of the fuel removal, 'they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan?s nuclear weapons'".
Islamabad has been adamant that its nuclear weapons are in safe hands and US President Barack Obama has publicly concurred.
But the Times said the leaked documents showed the United States trying to remove the uranium from a research reactor, fearing it could be diverted for use in an "illicit nuclear device".
The newspaper did not elaborate on how the United States had sought to remove the uranium or the nature of any such device.
Experts estimate that Pakistan already has up to 100 nuclear weapons.
Pakistan's foreign ministry said it had been offically informed of the leaks by the US government in advance.
"At this stage we are examining the relevant documents and their contents," ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told AFP when asked about the Times report.
The United States has longstanding concerns about proliferation from Pakistan and is reported to have set up an elite squad that could fly into the country and attempt to secure its weapons should the government disintegrate.
Pakistan announced that it had nuclear weapons in 1998, scrambling to secure the technology after India's first nuclear test in 1974.
Western analysts believe China assisted Pakistan in developing the Khushab nuclear site to produce plutonium, which can be miniaturised for cruise missiles -- presumably aimed at India.
In 2004, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's bomb, confessed to running a nuclear black market that sent secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. He was put under house arrest for five years.
Although he retracted his remarks, US officials say he is still a risk.
Pakistan also opposes a proposed Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which would limit access to highly enriched uranium and plutonium used to make weapons.
Pakistan says the treaty would give a permanent nuclear imbalance to India, with which it has fought three full-fledged wars since independence in 1947.
Day 1, Sunday 28 November
Guardian
There are no fewer than 251,287 cables from more than 250 US embassies around the world, obtained by Wikileaks. We present a day-by-day guide to the revelations from the US embassy cables both from the Guardian and its international media partners in the story.
The US faces a worldwide diplomatic crisis. More than 250,000 classified cables from American embassies are leaked, many sent as recently as February.
• Saudi Arabia put pressure on the US to attack Iran. Other Arab allies also secretly agitated for military action against Tehran.
• Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.
• Details of the round-the-clock offensive by US government officials, politicians, diplomats and military officers to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions and roll back its advance across the Middle East.
• How Israel regarded 2010 as a "critical year" for tackling Iran's alleged quest for nuclear weapons and warned the United States that time is running out to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.
• The secret EU plot to boycott the inauguration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president after the disputed Iranian election in 2009.
• Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were denied blueprints for a secret nuclear reactor near Qom and told by Iran that evidence of bomb-grade uranium enrichment was forged.
• Saudi Arabia complained directly to the Iranian foreign minister of Iranian "meddling" in the Middle East.
• The US accused Iran of abusing the strict neutrality of the Iranian Red Crescent (IRC) society to smuggle intelligence agents and weapons into other countries, including Lebanon.
• Britain's ambassador to Iran gave the US a private masterclass on how to negotiate with Iran.
• How a 75-year-old American of Iranian descent rode a horse over a freezing mountain range into Turkey after officials confiscated his passport.
Plus:
• The story of how the 250,000 US embassy cables were leaked.
• Background on Siprnet: where America stores its secret cables.
• Editor's note: publishing the cables.
• Explore the Guardian's searchable database of the leaked embassy cables
Der Spiegel
A long piece in English primarily about the US view of Germany, including some bracing views of Berlin's leadership and the description of Chancellor Angela Merkel as "risk averse and rarely creative".
New York Times
The New York Times highlights US intelligence assessments that Iran has acquired missiles from North Korea which could for the first time enable Tehran to strike at western European capitals.
El País
A trawl through the 3,620 documents in the haul originating from the US embassy in Madrid, dating from 2004 to this year (in Spanish).
Le Monde
The French paper also leads on the allegations of US spying on UN leaders but also covers Washington's view of France, as gleaned from the cables (in French). President Nicolas Sarkozy is described as "susceptible and authoritarian", and a French diplomatic adviser has described Iran as a fascist state and Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez as a madman transforming his country into another Zimbabwe.
Kabul says US relations unaffected by Karzai claims
Afghanistan said Monday its relations with the United States would not be affected by leaked cables portraying President Hamid Karzai as weak and paranoid, and his brother as a corrupt drugs baron.
The American diplomatic cables raised the issue of suspected high-level corruption within the Afghan government, long a concern among Western backers who see it as undermining the nine-year war against the Taliban.
Internet whistleblower WikiLeaks has begun releasing a quarter of a million confidential US diplomatic cables, detailing embarrassing and inflammatory episodes in what the White House called a "reckless and dangerous action".
But Karzai's spokesman Waheed Omer told a news conference the leaks "won't have any impact on the strategic relations between the US and Afghanistan".
"We don't see anything substantive in the document that will strain the relationship," Omer told reporters, adding: "We'll wait and see what else comes out before making further comment."
On leaked US criticism of Karzai as an "extremely weak" leader, which follows negative US media reports, Omer said: "Such comments are not new. But the president... will carry on with what he thinks is good for Afghanistan."
US diplomats described Karzai in the documents as "driven by paranoia" and "conspiracy theories".
The leaked cables also reveal American feelings about the president's younger brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, long dogged by claims of unsavoury links with the lucrative opium trade and private security firms, which he denies.
Western officials have kept quiet in public on the tainted record of the president's half brother, who is a powerful figure in Kandahar, where US forces are leading the fight to break the Taliban.
But one note, that followed a meeting between the younger Karzai and US envoy Frank Ruggiero in September 2009, revealed:
"While we must deal with AWK (Ahmed Wali Karzai) as the head of the provincial council, he is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker."
Kandahar is a make-or-break battleground in the US-led fight to defeat the insurgency, and the United States has poured thousands of extra troops into the area to wrest initiative from the Taliban and bolster the Afghan government.
"The meeting with AWK highlights one of our major challenges in Afghanistan: how to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt," the report said.
In the 2009 meeting with American and Canadian officials, the president's brother urged the allies not to fund small-scale cash projects -- a cornerstone of its counter-insurgency strategy -- but to build large mega-projects instead.
"Given AWK's reputation for shady dealings, his recommendations for large, costly infrastructure projects should be viewed with a healthy dose of scepticism," the report said.
"We will continue to urge AWK to improve his own credibility gap," said the report, adding that both Ahmed Wali Karzai and Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa had tried to influence the awarding of contracts in the province.
Ahmed Wali Karzai also showed disdain for elections in the region, the report said, claiming that local elders were better placed to provide governance.
In a second meeting in February, Ahmed Wali Karzai told Ruggiero that he was willing to take a polygraph test to prove his innocence over claims of his involvement in the opium trade.
"He appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities, and that the coalition views many of his activities as malign, particularly relating to his influence over the police," said the cable.
"We will need to monitor his activity closely."
Another cable from the US embassy in Kabul said former vice president Ahmed Zia Massoud carried 52 million dollars in cash to Dubai last year.
The cable referred to the cash as "a significant amount" that Massoud "was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money?s origin or destination," it said.
The American diplomatic cables raised the issue of suspected high-level corruption within the Afghan government, long a concern among Western backers who see it as undermining the nine-year war against the Taliban.
Internet whistleblower WikiLeaks has begun releasing a quarter of a million confidential US diplomatic cables, detailing embarrassing and inflammatory episodes in what the White House called a "reckless and dangerous action".
But Karzai's spokesman Waheed Omer told a news conference the leaks "won't have any impact on the strategic relations between the US and Afghanistan".
"We don't see anything substantive in the document that will strain the relationship," Omer told reporters, adding: "We'll wait and see what else comes out before making further comment."
On leaked US criticism of Karzai as an "extremely weak" leader, which follows negative US media reports, Omer said: "Such comments are not new. But the president... will carry on with what he thinks is good for Afghanistan."
US diplomats described Karzai in the documents as "driven by paranoia" and "conspiracy theories".
The leaked cables also reveal American feelings about the president's younger brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, long dogged by claims of unsavoury links with the lucrative opium trade and private security firms, which he denies.
Western officials have kept quiet in public on the tainted record of the president's half brother, who is a powerful figure in Kandahar, where US forces are leading the fight to break the Taliban.
But one note, that followed a meeting between the younger Karzai and US envoy Frank Ruggiero in September 2009, revealed:
"While we must deal with AWK (Ahmed Wali Karzai) as the head of the provincial council, he is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker."
Kandahar is a make-or-break battleground in the US-led fight to defeat the insurgency, and the United States has poured thousands of extra troops into the area to wrest initiative from the Taliban and bolster the Afghan government.
"The meeting with AWK highlights one of our major challenges in Afghanistan: how to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt," the report said.
In the 2009 meeting with American and Canadian officials, the president's brother urged the allies not to fund small-scale cash projects -- a cornerstone of its counter-insurgency strategy -- but to build large mega-projects instead.
"Given AWK's reputation for shady dealings, his recommendations for large, costly infrastructure projects should be viewed with a healthy dose of scepticism," the report said.
"We will continue to urge AWK to improve his own credibility gap," said the report, adding that both Ahmed Wali Karzai and Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa had tried to influence the awarding of contracts in the province.
Ahmed Wali Karzai also showed disdain for elections in the region, the report said, claiming that local elders were better placed to provide governance.
In a second meeting in February, Ahmed Wali Karzai told Ruggiero that he was willing to take a polygraph test to prove his innocence over claims of his involvement in the opium trade.
"He appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities, and that the coalition views many of his activities as malign, particularly relating to his influence over the police," said the cable.
"We will need to monitor his activity closely."
Another cable from the US embassy in Kabul said former vice president Ahmed Zia Massoud carried 52 million dollars in cash to Dubai last year.
The cable referred to the cash as "a significant amount" that Massoud "was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money?s origin or destination," it said.
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