Pakistan and Afghanistan: The new Great Game

By Owen Bennett-Jones

 Ever since the Pakistan Taliban massacred 132 schoolboys in a Peshawar school last December, the Pakistan army has been confronting some of the country's militants, with unprecedented determination.

But the campaign is still patchy. While the Pakistan Taliban have been forced on to the back foot, other Pakistan-based militant outfits have been left undisturbed.

Publicly, Pakistani officials insist that they no longer make a distinction between the "good" Taliban (proxy forces of the Pakistan state) and the "bad" Taliban (which mount sectarian or anti-state attacks).

But privately they argue the army has to prioritise which groups to confront first. The immediate, urgent task, they say, is to fight the militants who have caused tens of thousands of deaths within Pakistan itself.

Afghan attacks

It means militant groups such as the Haqqani network, which focuses most of its efforts on Afghanistan, can fight on unimpeded. The group, which is based in Pakistan's tribal areas, is believed to have mounted a series of attacks on Kabul this summer.

It has been a devastating campaign. In the first six months of 2015, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan documented the highest level of civilian casualties in the country since it began keeping authoritative records in 2008.

Similarly, the Afghan Taliban have stepped up their military activity - most recently in the city of Kunduz in the north of Afghanistan.

Kabul for years has complained that many Afghan Taliban leaders live in and around the Pakistani city of Quetta.

When asked about the issue, Pakistani military officials say that, with as many as three million Afghans in Pakistan, it is difficult to be sure who is living where.

The lack of an outright denial is deliberate. The perception that Pakistan controls the Afghan Taliban gives Pakistani officials diplomatic leverage. If the West wants peace in Afghanistan, they are implicitly suggesting, it will have to secure Pakistani co-operation to deliver it.

In fact, history suggests that the Afghan Taliban, while happy to accept Pakistani support, are quite capable of ignoring Islamabad's instructions and formulating their own policies.

Co-operation

When the new Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, won power in 2014, he said improving the relationship with Pakistan was a top priority: if Islamabad would cut its links with the Afghan Taliban, then Kabul would try to prevent anti-Pakistan forces finding sanctuary in Afghanistan.

The two countries, he suggested, could only find stability by working together.

But for all the hope that President Ghani engendered, Islamabad and Kabul have reverted to hurling accusations at each other. And the distrust seems set to continue.

Geostrategic concerns

Senior Pakistani military officers say one of the reasons they have a continued interest in Afghanistan is because India is extending its influence there.

Islamabad fears that, among other things, Delhi is using its presence in Afghanistan to build a closer relationship with Baloch separatists, who for a decade have been fighting to split away from Pakistan.

The issue is especially sensitive because of Pakistan's plans to construct the China Pakistan economic corridor. The planned trade route will run through Balochistan, close to the Afghan border, down to the new deep-sea port of Gwadar.

Pakistan is hoping the corridor could generate billions of dollars of revenue.

It is a highly complex geostrategic situation.

Put at its most succinct, Pakistani strategists are supporting Islamist militants to counter Indian intelligence officers working with Baloch nationalists to thwart Chinese traders.

It all shows the extent to which the Great Game, in which outside powers struggle for control of Afghanistan, is alive and well.

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The Great Game

• Strategic rivalry between the British and Russian Empires for control of central Asia during the 19th and early 20th Centuries
• Officially ended with the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, which divided Persia into three zones, declared Afghanistan an official protectorate of Britain and said that neither Russia nor Britain would interfere in Tibet's internal affairs
• Britain's Capt Arthur Conolly is generally considered to have coined the term
• Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel Kim is set against the backdrop of the Great Game, which brought the phrase into the mainstream

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As has so often been the case in the past, the stability of Afghanistan depends on it being left alone. But the regional powers all see the country as a place that can cause them problems.

The result is that many of Afghanistan's neighbours sponsor local, tribal and religious militias so as to prevent anyone else's proxy getting control.

It is a process Afghan civilians recognise all too well because, more often than not, they are the ones caught in the crossfire.

Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto paid glowing tributes to Begum Nusrat Bhutto

 Bilawal Bhutto Zardari Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party has paid glowing tributes to Begum Nusrat Bhutto who lost her husband, two sons and a daughter for the cause of democracy and emancipation of the people of Pakistan from dictatorial clutches leaving behind inspiring legend for every struggling men and women.

“The sufferings, shocks and tragedies Begum Nusrat Bhutto had gone through are unmatched in the political history of South Asia and she sacrificed her everything for the people of Pakistan,” PPP Chairman stated on the 4th death anniversary of Begum Nusrat Bhutto, wife of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and mother of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, Shaheed Mir Murtaza Bhutto and Shaheed Shahnawaz Bhutto and Sanam Bhutto.

He said Begum Nusrat Bhutto was Mother of Democracy and Mother of all Jiyalas who knew every Party worker and provide solace to them despite being herself deeply grieved. She suffered physical torture, imprisonments, solitary confinement and fought every odd bravely. Begum Nusrat Bhutto led the Party valiantly together with her daughter Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir against brutal martial law regime of its time, he added.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari pointed out that his grand-mother was an icon of untiring struggle and she will always remain in the memories of the people of Pakistan, especially the PPP workers and Jiyalas who she treated like her own sons and daughters.

PPP Chairman said he is proud of his past generations who laid down their lives for a cause and pledged to continue the struggle for their vision and mission for the downtrodden and bare-foot masses.

https://mediacellppp.wordpress.com/2015/10/22/chairman-ppp-bilawal-bhutto-zardari-paid-glowing-tributes-to-begum-nusrat-bhutto/

Bilawal Bhutto for urgent practical steps to end Balochistan’s sense of deprivation

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party urged the Federal and Balochistan governments to take urgent steps to remove sense of deprivation in the province and provide basic needs to its people.
Chairman PPP was talking to Ijaz Baloch, PPP ticket-holder from Gwadar who called on him at Bilawal House today.

Ijaz Baloch informed him that people of Gwadar are facing a severe drinking water crisis since three months and authorities remain unmoved despite strong protests and demonstrations by the local people. He pointed out that Sui Gas Plants have been installed in Gwadar but the gas is provided to only few selected localities while the poor and traditional fishermen communities are deprived of gas.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that such injustices and discrimination in the provision of civic amenities in Gwadar were intolerable and his Party won’t remain silent on such acts. He said that Prime Minister Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto order construction of Akra Kaur Dam near Gwadar in 1988 and completed them same in her second tenure in 1995 to provide water facility to the people of Gwadar.

PPP Chairman stressed upon the Federal and Balochistan government to pay heed to the water shortage in Gwadar to avoid any human tragedy there adding that following 18th Amendment, the local people are made owners of their resources.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also assured Ijaz Baloch that he would meet the PPP workers from Balochistan and look into its organization.

https://ppppunjab.wordpress.com/2015/10/22/bilawal-bhutto-for-urgent-practical-steps-to-end-balochistans-sense-of-deprivation/

“Talibanization” of Pakistan - Federal clerics body to determine if Ahmadi Muslims are kill-worthy apostate or simple non-Muslims

Maulana Mohammad Khan Sherani, chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), said that he intended to take up three “most controversial religious issues”, but lacked the necessary support from council members.

“We have had these items on our agenda for a long time now, but they will only be taken up if my colleagues are ready to cooperate,” Maulana Sherani, who is also a JUI-F MNA, told reporters at the end of the two-day council meeting.

The first of these issues is the question of whether Ahmadis are to be classified as non-Muslims or murtads (those who renounce Islam). It is a widely held belief that the punishment for renouncing Islam should be death.

The second issue, he said, was the imposition of religious tax – or jizya – on Pakistani non-Muslims. The third issue, he said, was a determination of which sects fell under the ambit of Islam and which ones should be considered to be outside the ambit of Islamic ideology.

Council sets yardstick for transgender individuals to be given share in inheritance
“It is up to the members to come up and discuss these important matters and resolve them,” he said, expressing the confidence that the CII would take up these topics in its next meeting.

While these matters have been on the CII’s agenda for some time, some of the more vocal members have been reluctant to take them up for discussion as they may hurt the social fabric.

“We do not want to see riots in the country as we see in India over non-issues like the ban on beef. It is the responsibility of the religious and political leadership to set directions for society and to not be pressured into going with the flow,” said a CII member, on condition of anonymity.

The cleric was reluctant to speak on the record, because “the other problem we are combating is extremism. If I give a statement to the media, I can be accused of being somebody’s agent.”

However, analysts feel that by taking up such non-issues, the CII is stooping beneath its stature.

“They have already displayed such irrationality that nobody takes them seriously anymore,” senior journalist Zahid Hussain told Dawn.

He cited the examples of several other rulings by the council, which included the contention that the marriage age for girls could be as low as 13, as well as the pronouncement that DNA evidence was not admissible as evidence in rape cases. “Besides, their rulings are not legally binding,” he added.

But even Mr Hussain acknowledged that by virtue of their stature, senior clerics on the CII did hold sway among the masses and could easily “spark a disturbance by speaking unnecessarily on such issues”.

Transgenders’ rights

On Tuesday, the CII also ruled that transgender individuals have the right of inheritance and that their share in the family’s property should be determined by the gender they are closest to.

“If a [transgender] person is closer [in their appearance] to a woman, then the share in property applicable to women will apply for that person. If a [transgender] person is closer [in their appearance] to a man, then the share given to him should be equivalent to that given to men in the family,” Maulana Sherani said.

http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.com/2015/10/pakistan-clerics-council-to-take-up-how.html

Shia Genocide In Pakistan - Bombing at Shiite Mosque Kills 10 in Southwest Pakistan

A suicide bomber targeted a Shiite mosque in southwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 10 people and wounding several others, a government official said.

Provincial home minister Sarfraz Bugti said the attack took place in the district of Sibi, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) southeast of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province. He said the suicide attacker entered the mosque as Shiites were holding a gathering ahead of the Ashoura, a key religious event.

Six children were among those killed, Bugti said. The male suicide bomber was wearing a woman's head-to-toe burqa dress to deceive guards, he said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion fell of Sunni extremists who have been blamed for previous such attacks.

The latest attack came ahead of Ashoura, a 10-day ritual during which Shiites commemorate the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Pakistan has boosted security for Ashoura, when minority Shiite Muslims hold public rallies despite threats from Sunni extremists who consider them to be heretics.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's army said Thursday airstrikes overnight killed 21 "terrorists" in the villages of Tirah and Rajgal in the Khyber region.

The military provided no further details about Wednesday's strikes, and the information could not be corroborated as journalists are barred from tribal areas. Pakistan has been waging a military offensive against al-Qaida and other militants in the North Waziristan province bordering Afghanistan since June 2014.

Powerful General Raheel Sharif Eclipses Pakistan’s Prime Minister

President Barack Obama is set to meet Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, at the White House on Thursday. But next month, top American officials will hold talks with the man many people say calls the shots on the issues Washington cares most about: Gen. Raheel Sharif.

The chief of Pakistan’s army, Gen. Sharif has eclipsed the authority of the country’s elected leaders on critical security-policy matters, including the fight against Islamic extremists, the Afghan peace process and the country’s nuclear-weapons program, officials and analysts say.

“The civilian entities don’t have the ability to deliver on a few things at this point,” a senior U.S. official said. As for Gen. Sharif, the official said: “He can deliver.”

Gen. Sharif, who isn’t related to the prime minister, has turned himself into a cult hero by battling terrorism and restoring a measure of order in Pakistan’s biggest and most violent city, Karachi. That has bolstered the army’s standing and political power in a country where democracy has struggled to take firm root.

The improvement in Pakistan’s security situation is stark. The number of civilians and soldiers killed in terrorist attacks is on track to be lower this year than at any time since 2006, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, which tracks casualties. That has helped spark an economic rebound.

“There is God in the sky, and here on the ground there is Raheel Sharif,” said Muhammad Atiq Mir, chairman of All Karachi Tajir Ittehad, an association of small traders. Billboards in the city, paid for by local businesses, proclaim: “Thank you for saving Karachi, Raheel Sharif.”

Speaking to a small group recently at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank in London, Gen. Sharif said Pakistan’s lack of good governance had “created a vacuum” and required him to play a wide-ranging role as “a soldier-statesman,” according to a person who was present.

A senior aide to the prime minister said governing Pakistan is a “joint venture” between the elected civilian leadership and the military brass. A western diplomat described it as an “unequal coalition” that now favors the armed forces. Since Pakistan became independent in 1947, military strongmen have competed and alternated with democratically elected political leaders.

‘There is God in the sky, and here on the ground there is Raheel Sharif.’

—Muhammad Atiq Mir, chairman of All Karachi Tajir Ittehad

The civilian government insists it is firmly in charge. “The prime minister is in the driving seat,” said Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif. He said it is Nawaz Sharif who is “managing the balance between institutions.”

Gen. Sharif, who is due to step down in November next year, declined to comment.

“The army chief identifies security gaps and flags them to the government,” said a senior Pakistani army officer. “Like in any country, the military gives input.”

Pakistani politicians and political analysts, however, say the military’s sway has grown. Earlier this year, military courts were set up to try civilians for terrorism, while the military sits on new “apex committees” that oversee internal security issues across the country.

In June, Asif Zardari, who served as president of Pakistan from 2008 to 2013, gave a speech warning that the army was “stepping out of its domain.” Ayaz Amir, a former lawmaker in the prime minister’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, said: “The army is setting the direction and taking the major decisions.”

On Tuesday, Pakistan’s leading English language newspaper, Dawn, published an editorial about the prime minister’s visit to Washington, saying: “Worryingly, for the civilian dispensation and the democratic project, Mr. Sharif has appeared an increasingly peripheral figure in shaping key national security and foreign policy issues.”

Current and former U.S. officials said they believe the prime minister had ceded control over certain security matters to Gen. Sharif, while the prime minister focused on the economy and other issues. They said the prime minister appeared comfortable with the division of labor and that Gen. Sharif had been “supportive” of civilian institutions. In a recent meeting in Rawalpindi, Gen. Sharif told a visiting U.S. delegation how important it was to him “not to be seen as the main power” in Pakistan, according to a U.S. official who was present.

The prime minister’s visit comes as the administration moved to finalize a long-standing plan to sell up to eight additional F-16s to Pakistan. Administration officials said the proposed sale, aimed at bolstering Pakistan’s counterterrorism campaign against militants, won’t be formally announced on Thursday.

Officials said Thursday’s meeting between Mr. Obama and the prime minister, in the absence of Gen. Sharif, was meant to highlight the importance the White House places on empowering Pakistan’s civilian government. But given the country’s history and the role of the armed forces, U.S. officials said a transition to civilian leadership in all matters of state would take time.

In the meantime, “the U.S. can’t want something for the civilians more than they want it for themselves,” a senior administration official said.

A 59-year-old infantry officer and former commandant of Pakistan’s military academy, Gen. Sharif has won widespread approval for moving authoritatively where previous Pakistani leaders, military and civilian, have dithered. The extent of his popularity in Pakistan has prompted intense speculation that his term as army chief could be extended.

Last year, he opened a new front in the fight against extremists with an offensive in North Waziristan, a region along the Afghan border that was a haven for Pakistani Taliban, Afghan insurgents and al Qaeda—a move long advocated by the U.S. and initially opposed by the prime minister.

Army-led forces have also led a bloody fight against jihadists and criminal gangs in the country’s commercial capital, Karachi. The campaign has won Gen. Sharif plaudits, despite its reliance on what human-rights groups say are hundreds of extrajudicial executions.

Gen. Sharif also has a high profile abroad. He met the British prime minister at his official Downing Street residence earlier this year. Last year in the U.S. he met Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior officials and was awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit for his contributions to “peace and security.”

When Afghan President Ashraf Ghani made his first visit to Pakistan after being elected last year, he drove straight from the airport to see Gen. Sharif at his headquarters in Rawalpindi—before going to nearby Islamabad to meet the civilian leadership.

Officials in Washington, Kabul and New Delhi, however, also accuse the defense establishment headed by Gen. Sharif of continuing what they say is Pakistan’s policy of giving safe haven to the Afghan Taliban and other militant groups, and using them as proxy warriors in Afghanistan and India.

The U.S. has warned Gen. Sharif that it will withhold $300 million in military aid if Pakistan doesn’t do more to curb the Haqqani network, an insurgent group allied with the Taliban that is responsible for a series of recent deadly attacks in Kabul.

The U.S. sees the Haqqanis as an arm of Pakistan’s military intelligence agency. A Haqqani was named as the new deputy chief of the Taliban at a meeting held in Pakistan earlier this year.

The Pakistan army maintains it is taking on all militants. “We are against use of proxies and won’t allow it on our soil,” Gen. Sharif said in London this month, according to his spokesman.

President Obama said last week that the U.S. is keen for Pakistan to use its influence on the Afghan Taliban to advance peace talks between the militants and the Afghan government.

U.S. and Afghan officials say Gen. Sharif was the force behind a brief breakthrough in the Afghan peace process earlier this year, when a group of senior Taliban were brought to meet Afghan government representatives just outside Islamabad.

The U.S. has also been engaging in exploratory talks with Pakistan about a possible deal to limit the country’s growing nuclear-weapons program, seen as especially risky because of the country’s history of political instability and jihadist attacks on military installations.

When Prime Minister Sharif was elected in May 2013, many believed it was a time when civilians could assert themselves and that military leaders, then criticized for inaction against terrorists, would be pushed into the background. In a sign of his intention to run foreign and defense policies, Nawaz Sharif kept both those portfolios for himself after election; he is still has no foreign minister.

The prime minister started peace talks with insurgents in North Waziristan. He also made overtures to India in an effort to ease strained ties. And he moved forward with treason charges against Pervez Musharraf, an army coup leader who also served as president.

By mid-2014, however, the political ground was starting to shift, and the prime minister pushed the military hard on issues it saw as its domain. The prosecution of Mr. Musharraf was derailed after the military stood by its former leader. After an attack on Karachi’s airport, Gen. Sharif, who had promoted counterinsurgency doctrine when he was the army’s training head—focusing the army’s targets toward terrorists rather than its traditional enemy, India—launched military operations against militants in North Waziristan in June 2014.

Later that summer, Pakistani cricket player-turned-politician Imran Khan and his supporters started a sit-in protest against alleged vote-rigging in the election that propelled Mr. Sharif to office. The demonstrations paralyzed the capital, calling for the military to intervene and unseat Mr. Sharif. Some members of Mr. Sharif’s cabinet accused military intelligence agents of fomenting the protests, something the military and Mr. Khan’s party deny.

The army chief backed Prime Minister Sharif. But the price, some senior government officials say, was high: the prime minister agreed to relinquish some powers, letting the military take charge of defense and foreign policy.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/powerful-general-eclipses-pakistans-civilian-leader-1445488746

Obama sets sights on Pakistan's nuclear program after Iran

After reaching a deal to restrict Iran's nuclear capabilities, President Barack Obama may seek to curtail Pakistan's fast-growing arsenal of atomic weapons.

Obama hosts Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the White House on Thursday amid speculation that their nations are in talks to limit the scope of Pakistan's nuclear arms program in return for greater access to technology and fuel for civilian purposes, similar to a U.S. deal with its arch-rival India. Obama also wants Pakistan's commitment to curb Islamic militants operating within its borders and to play a role in brokering an accord with the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.

The discussions highlight complexities in U.S. relations with Pakistan, a country that has received more than $30 billion in American aid since 2002 even though Obama didn't trust its leaders enough to inform them of the mission there that killed Osama bin Laden. Last week, Obama cited Pakistan in calling for the elimination of sanctuaries for Afghanistan's Taliban fighters.

Sharif told Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday that Pakistan's anti-terror operations have improved internal security. Talk of a nuclear deal percolates amid growing concern over the expansion of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, which along with India's is the world's fastest-growing.

"The U.S. and Pakistan, now and historically, have been working toward differing goals," said Aparna Pande, a South Asia scholar at the Washington-based Hudson Institute. "America hopes this deal will calm Pakistan down, make it a better actor in the region. Pakistan sees it as another way to achieve parity with India and to keep building nuclear weapons."

Satellite images indicate Pakistan started up its fourth reactor earlier this year, making it capable of more than doubling the amount of weapons-grade plutonium it produces, according to the Institute for Science and International Security.

More fissile material could give Pakistan the world's third-biggest nuclear arsenal in five to 10 years -- behind the United States and Russia but twice as large as India's -- according to an August report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Stimson Center. India currently has an estimated 90 to 110 nuclear warheads, while Pakistan has about 100 to 120, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The White House and Pakistani officials have played down reports that the U.S. is nearing a deal with Pakistan to restrict its nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

"I would significantly reduce your expectations about that occurring on Thursday," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Tuesday when asked about the prospect that such a deal may be announced as part of this week's visit.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry was more emphatic, saying "no deal" is being discussed and pledging "to maintain a full- spectrum deterrence capability in order to safeguard our national security, maintain strategic stability and deter any kind of aggression from India."

The nuclear issue "probably will be discussed, but I don't think there is any mood in Pakistan to yield on that," Shuja Nawaz, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center, said in an interview. "This is a long process. Pakistan is not in a great hurry to stop developing the delivery systems it has."

Obama is in a tough spot when engaging with Pakistan given its fractious government and a political spectrum that ranges from friends of the West to those who want to destroy anything related to the U.S., Rep. Brad Sherman told Bloomberg reporters and editors in Washington on Tuesday. Sherman of California is the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

"I don't think there's one Pakistan. I don't think there's one Pakistani government," Sherman said. "But is the Pakistani military fighting and dying to combat terrorists? Yes. Are elements of the Pakistani military funding and aiding terrorists? Yes."

India and the U.S. announced a nuclear cooperation deal in 2005 to lift a three-decade ban so that India could access civilian nuclear technology and import uranium for fuel. It was approved by the U.S. Congress in 2008.

Pakistan immediately lobbied for a similar deal, but then- U.S. President George W. Bush ruled it out, saying India and Pakistan couldn't be compared.

Pakistan's past will make it tough to convince the skeptics. In the 1980s, it accepted Chinese assistance to build a bomb while it was pledging to enrich only enough uranium to produce power. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, confessed publicly in 2004 to running a network that sold technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

China this year said it has helped Pakistan with six of the seven reactors either built or under construction. Most members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group would consider this a violation of rules, making cooperation with Pakistan "impossible" unless it agrees to new commitments, said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association.

Still, violations of the rules are common. Russia flouted them to ship fuel to Indian reactors in 2001. India also ran a secret bomb program and, like Israel and Pakistan, has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

While China has stopped short of publicly backing Pakistan's aspirations to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, it has questioned the exemption awarded to India that lets it import uranium from countries including Australia and France.

Any deal is unlikely unless Pakistan agrees to safeguard its nuclear facilities under international rules and give up its tactical nuclear program, said Najam Rafique, director at the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad. Pakistan's leaders mostly want talks to maintain good ties with the U.S. and China, he said.

"I really don't think Pakistanis are very keen to have American technology," Rafique said. "It's just political expediency at this point of time."

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Hillary Clinton takes aim at Aetna-Humana merger

Hillary Clinton is taking aim at the proposed merger of health insurance giants Aetna andHumana as she ratchets up her scrutiny of U.S. corporate consolidation and its effect on consumers.

In her first remarks about the deal, she expressed "serious concern" about the proposed union, as well as one between Cigna and Anthem. Clinton is urging regulators to closely scrutinize the mergers.

"I’m worried that the balance of power is moving too far away from consumers,’’ Clinton said in a statement provided by a campaign official.

"Companies proposing to merge bear the heavy burden of demonstrating that consumers will benefit,’’ said Clinton, noting that "too often the companies end up pocketing profits rather than passing savings to consumers.’’

Aetna and Humana shareholders voted Monday to approve the two companies’ merger, but like the Cigna-Anthem deal still must be approved by antitrust enforcers.

n her statement, Clinton said the companies should "commit to passing on savings and efficiencies to consumers as lower premiums and out-of-pocket costs.’’

Her comments are part of a broader health care agenda focused on the need to lower prescription drug and other out-of-pocket health care costs.

As she attempts to strengthen her position in the Democratic presidential field, Clinton is appealing to her party’s progressive base that has made reining in corporate excess, particularly on Wall Street, a top priority.

n the first Democratic debate last week in Las Vegas, Clinton mentioned health insurers among the top enemies she’s made during her political career, listing them before the Iranians and Republicans.

Clinton’s strongest competitor, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is a self-described democratic socialist who blames growing income inequality and corporate greed, or what he’s called "casino-type capitalism’’ — including tax policies favoring the wealthy — for the nation’s economic struggles.

While Clinton is less adversarial in her approach to corporate America, she is trying to strike a similarly populist tone. On Tuesday, Clinton wrote an opinion editorial titled "Being pro-business doesn’t mean hanging consumers out to dry’’ that outlines problems she thinks are needed to "fix’’ the capitalist system in America.

According to Clinton, this includes: pharmaceutical companies gouging patients on drugs they provide for cheaper in other countries; airlines overcharging passengers even as oil prices fall; and local monopolies’’ that cause higher prices for high-speed broadband.

"Rather than offering better products for lower prices, they are using their power to raise prices, limit choices for consumers, lower wages for workers and hold back competition from startups and small businesses,’’ Clinton wrote in Quartz.

Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short said Clinton is complaining "about the side effects of Obamacare while she continues to stand by this failed and unpopular law.''

"One really has to wonder whether Hillary Clinton is simply trying to have it both ways on health care or if this is a back-door strategy to bring about single payer,''  Short said in a statement.

In wading into the debate over the insurance company mega mergers, Clinton joins a number of consumer groups, lawmakers and groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association, who’ve expressed concern that the deals would limit consumer choice and lead to an unhealthy concentration in a number of local markets.

Massive consolidation among hospitals and physician groups is one of the driving factors behind the insurer mergers. Yet with less competition, consumer groups say it will be easier for companies to offer inferior plans with higher premiums.

USA TODAY has found that areas with this little insurer competition tended to have the highest deductibles in states that use the federal HealthCare.gov exchange.

Neither deal is expected to close until at least mid-2016. That means they won't affect insurance premiums or plan choices until 2017 at the earliest.

After the shareholder vote Monday, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said the merger would offer consumers a “a broader choice of products, access to higher quality and more affordable care, and a better overall experience in more geographic locations across the country.”

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Are We Losing Afghanistan Again?

By THOMAS JOSCELYN and BILL ROGGIO

“ALLAH has promised us victory and America has promised us defeat,” Mullah Muhammad Omar, the first head of the Taliban, once said, “so we shall see which of the two promises will be fulfilled.” When his colleagues admitted this summer that Mullah Omar had died, Al Qaeda and affiliated groups around the globe remembered those words — victory is a divine certainty — in their eulogies. And in Afghanistan today, though the majority of Afghans still do not identify with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, Mullah Omar’s bold defiance in the face of a superpower is beginning to look prescient.

Since early September, the Taliban have swept through Afghanistan’s north, seizing numerous districts and even, briefly, the provincial capital Kunduz. The United Nations has determined that the Taliban threat to approximately half of the country’s 398 districts is either “high” or “extreme.” Indeed, by our count, more than 30 districts are already under Taliban control. And the insurgents are currently threatening provincial capitals in both northern and southern Afghanistan.

Confronted with this grim reality, President Obama has decided to keep 9,800 American troops in the country through much of 2016 and 5,500 thereafter. The president was right to change course, but it is difficult to see how much of a difference this small force can make. The United States troops currently in Afghanistan have not been able to thwart the Taliban’s advance. They were able to help push them out of Kunduz, but only after the Taliban’s two-week reign of terror. This suggests that additional troops are needed, not fewer.

When justifying his decision last week, the president explained that American troops would “remain engaged in two narrow but critical missions — training Afghan forces, and supporting counterterrorism operations against the remnants of Al Qaeda.” He added, “We’ve always known that we had to maintain a counterterrorism operation in that region in order to tamp down any re-emergence of active Al Qaeda networks.”

But the president has not explained the full scope of what is at stake. Al Qaeda has already re-emerged. Just two days before the president’s statement, the military announced that it led raids against two Qaeda training camps in the south, one of which was an astonishing 30 square miles in size. The operation lasted several days, and involved 63 airstrikes and more than 200 ground troops, including both Americans and Afghan commandos.

“We struck a major Al Qaeda sanctuary in the center of the Taliban’s historic heartland,” Brig. Gen. Wilson A. Shoffner, a military spokesman, said. General Shoffner described it as “one of the largest joint ground-assault operations we have ever conducted in Afghanistan.” Other significant Qaeda facilities are already being identified in local press reporting.

Recently, Hossam Abdul Raouf, a chief lieutenant of the Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, confirmed in an audio message that Qaeda’s senior leadership has relocated out of northern Pakistan — no secret to the military and the C.I.A., which have been hunting senior Qaeda figures in Afghanistan and elsewhere throughout the year.

The Taliban are not hiding their continuing alliance with Al Qaeda. In August, Mr. Zawahri pledged his allegiance to Mullah Omar’s successor, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour. Within hours, Mullah Mansour publicly accepted the “esteemed” Mr. Zawahri’s oath of fealty. And Qaeda members are integrated into the Taliban’s chain of command. In fact, foreign fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda played a significant role in the Taliban-led assault on Kunduz.

The United States made many mistakes in the 9/11 wars. After routing the Taliban and Al Qaeda in late 2001, President George W. Bush did not dedicate the resources necessary to finish the fight. President Obama was right in December 2009 to announce a surge of forces in Afghanistan, but it was short-lived. Al Qaeda is not nearly as “decimated” in South Asia as Mr. Obama has claimed.

We don’t think 5,500 troops is enough. No one is calling for a full-scale occupation of the country. But a force of as many as 20,000 to 25,000 would far better support our local Afghan allies, helping them defend multiple provincial capitals at the same time and fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban in their strongholds.

While many believe that Al Qaeda is solely focused on attacking the West, it has devoted most of its efforts to waging insurgencies. This is the key to understanding how it has been able to regenerate repeatedly over the past 14 years. Al Qaeda draws would-be terrorists from the larger pool of paramilitary forces fighting to restore the Taliban to power in Afghanistan or to build radical nation-states elsewhere. Therefore, the mission of the United States is bigger than the one Mr. Obama envisions. Drones and select counterterrorism raids are not enough to end the threat.

Al Qaeda and like-minded groups were founded on the myth that the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan because of the mujahedeen’s faith in Allah alone. This helped spawn a generation of new wars and terrorist attacks, most of which have targeted Muslims. Should the Afghans suffer additional territorial losses, Mullah Omar’s words will appear prophetic. And a new myth, one that will feed the Taliban’s and Al Qaeda’s violence for years to come, will be born.

"فاټا له خېبر پښتونخوا سره د یوځای کولو ملاتړ کوو'' - اسفندیار ولي

د عوامي نېشنل پارټۍ مشر اسفندیار ولي خان وايي، ګوند یې د فاټا «د پاکستان مرکزي حکومت تر واک لاندې قبایلي سمې» له خېبر پښتونخوا سره د ځای کېدل غواړي. د ده په خبره قامي اسمبلۍ ته د فاټا پارلماني غړیو له لوري د وړاندې کړل شوي بل د مسودې ملاتړ کوي. د مشال راډيو خبریال خالد خان ورسره خبرې کړې.

Pakistan - Surge in terror

A new spate of terrorist violence is emerging in the country. Evil mongers let loose all hell on the passengers of a bus in Quetta only a week after the Taunsa attack. Innocent citizens, mostly daily-wage labourers, became the victims of merciless terrorists. Eleven people were killed and more than 22 sustained critical injuries when a 4-5 kilogramme planted bomb ripped through the bus in Saryab Town area of the provincial capital. Quetta has long been a victim of terrorism and the incidents of target killing of the Hazara community are still fresh in memory. Militant groups have long targeted Shia pilgrims in Balochistan travelling to and from Iran. So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the latest blast. However, certain facts help narrow down the identification of the possible perpetrators of this heinous crime. As the victims were mostly ordinary citizens, there are few chances of the involvement of Baloch nationalist insurgents in the attack. Neither does the attack bear any resemblance to the acts of sectarian killings. This perhaps means elements are involved in the attack whose sole aim is to spread terror and create anarchy.

Though Operation Zarb-e-Azb has caused a considerable reduction in terrorist activities and controlled militancy to some extent, yet it does not mean that all terrorists have been wiped out and militancy has been completely eliminated. Rather, they have started carrying out scattered attacks in small towns instead of targeting big cities where the deployment of security forces has increased. It is a pattern of militancy all over the world that militants remain hidden and strike whenever they find an opportunity. This new developing trend of terror has put a question mark on the working of the security agencies. The government need not be complacent as we are still facing a war-like situation because of terrorism. The only methodology to nip terror in the bud is pre-emptive strikes. The security agencies need to make coordinated efforts at all levels to eliminate this latest scourge of terrorism. Although it is not possible to guard every place, yet our forces need to be extra vigilant to thwart any act of terror. In order to pre-empt terrorist activities, coordinated efforts are needed among all concerned departments and ministries. There is a need for a centralised system to coordinate and implement plans to curb militancy all over the country. The federal and provincial governments are working autonomously to deter terrorist activities. But a forum must be established at the Centre to supervise and monitor all operations against terrorists. Unless there are coordinated efforts and data sharing, the war against terrorism cannot succeed. An organistion at the federal level must be activated with all necessary resources to coordinate all efforts against terrorism.

Terrorist attacks on the margins can derail and weaken the fabric of society. How can a terrorist or evil monger orchestrate violence in society if vigilant eyes are there and every authority is efficiently disposing of its respective duty? Unless we unite against the menace of terror, there will be no end to such activities and the country will continue to mourn the deaths of its innocent citizens. It is high time that the federal government should intervene and bring the concerned departments and security agencies together against all terrorist groups. A more vibrant centralised force is needed to clamp down on the safe havens of the terrorists. Where is the National Action Plan? It should be implemented in letter and spirit. The prime minister has reiterated his resolve to wipe out terrorism at all costs. But only passing resolutions and condemnation will not work unless some critical practical steps are taken. In order to root out terrorism, coordination amongst the provincial and federal levels is necessary. We are fighting against terrorism and we need to keep fighting until the last terrorist is eliminated. 

Pakistan - Aseefa Bhutto visits the families of Karsaz martyrs in their homes

Aseefa Bhutto Zardari visited the families of three martyrs of Karsaz bomb blasts of October 18, 2007 at their respective houses in Karachi to personally meet their loved ones and reassure them that PPP, its leadership and workers will never forget them. 

“Families of martyrs have high regards in PPP as we are ourselves are also members of the family of martyrs,” she told the members of martyrs’ families and inquired about their day to day life, including education of the martyrs children and other problems.

Aseefa Bhutto Zardari today drove to the residences of Shaheed Tahir Narejo in Gizri, Shaheed Ayaz in Manzoor Colony and Shaheed Mohammad Rafi in Mehmoodabad.

Families of martyrs received the daughter of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto affectionately and appreciated her for remembering them. She spent some time with each family and told them that the martyrs sacrificed their lives for democracy, rights of common people and they will live forever in our hearts.

https://ppppunjab.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/aseefa-bhutto-zardari-visits-the-families-of-karsaz-martyrs-in-their-homes/

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