Suicide Attack In Iran Frames Visit To Pakistan By Saudi Crown Prince – Analysis

By James M. Dorsey

This week’s suicide attack on Revolutionary Guards in Iran’s south-eastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan, the second in two months, could not have come at a more awkward moment for Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan.

The assault on a bus carrying the guards back from patrols on the province’s border with the troubled Pakistani region of Balochistan killed 27 people and wounded 13 others. It occurred days before Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman was scheduled to visit Pakistan as part of a tour of Asian countries.

While Baluchistan is set to figure prominently in Prince Mohammed’s talks with Mr. Khan, the attack also coincided with a US-sponsored conference in Warsaw, widely seen as an effort by the Trump administration to further isolate Iran economically and diplomatically.

Inside the conference, dubbed The Ministerial to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted that US policy was designed to force Iran to alter its regional and defense policies and not geared towards regime change in Tehran.

Yet, US President Donald J. Trump appeared to be sending mixed messages to the Iranians as well as sceptical European governments with his personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, addressing a rally outside the conference organized by the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, a controversial Iranian exile group believed to enjoy Saudi backing.

Mr. Giuliani told the protesters who waved Iranian flags and giant yellow balloons emblazoned with the words, “Regime Change” that “we want to see a regime change in Iran.”

Mr. Trump appeared to fuel suspicion that Mr. Giuliani represented his true sentiment by tweeting on the eve of the Warsaw conference in a reference to the 40thanniversary of the Islamic revolution: “40 years of corruption. 40 years of repression. 40 years of terror. The regime in Iran has produced only #40YearsofFailure. The long-suffering Iranian people deserve a much brighter future.”

In a statement, the Revolutionary Guards blamed the attack on “mercenaries of intelligence agencies of world arrogance and domination,” a reference to Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel.

Jaish-al-Adl (the Army of Justice), a Pakistan-based splinter group that traces its roots to Saudi-backed anti-Shiite groups with a history of attacks on Iranian and Shiite targets, has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The group says it is not seeking Baloch secession from Iran. Instead, it wants to “force the regime of the guardianship of jurisconsult (Iran) to respect the demands of the Muslim Baloch and Sunni society alongside the other compatriots of our country.”

Militants targeted a Revolutionary Guards headquarters in December in a rare suicide bombing in Chabahar, home to Iran’s Indian-backed port on the Arabian Sea, a mere 70 kilometres from the Chinese supported port of Gwadar, a crown jewel in the Pakistani leg of the People’s Republic’s Belt and Road initiative.

The attacks coupled with indications that Saudi Arabia and the United States may be contemplating covert action against Iran using Pakistani Balochistan as a launching pad, and heightened Saudi economic and commercial interest in the province, frame Prince Mohammed’s upcoming talks in Islamabad.

During his visit, Prince Mohammed is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding on a framework for US$10 billion in Saudi investments.  

The memorandum includes a plan by Saudi national oil company Aramco to build a refinery in Gwadar as well as Saudi investment in Baluchistan’s Reko Diq copper and gold mine.

The investments would further enhance Saudi influence in Pakistan as well as the kingdom’s foothold in Balochistan.

They would come on the back of significant Saudi aid to help Pakistan evade a financial crisis that included a US$3 billion deposit in Pakistan’s central bank to support the country’s balance of payments and another US$3 billion in deferred payments for oil imports.

Taken together, the refinery, a strategic oil reserve in Gwadar and the mine would also help Saudi Arabia in potential efforts to prevent Chabahar from emerging as a powerful Arabian Sea hub.

Saudi funds have been flowing for some time into the coffers of ultra-conservative anti-Shiite, anti-Iranian Sunni Muslim madrassahs or religious seminars in Balochistan. It remains unclear whether they originate with the Saudi government or Saudi nationals of Baloch descent and members of the two million-strong Pakistani Diaspora in the kingdom. 

The funds help put in place potential building blocks for possible covert action should the kingdom and/or the United States decide to act on proposals to support irredentist activity.

The flow started at about the time that the Riyadh-based  International Institute for Iranian Studies, formerly known as the Arabian Gulf Centre for Iranian Studies, an allegedly Saudi government-backed think tank, published  a study that argued that Chabahar posed “a direct threat to the Arab Gulf states” that called for “immediate counter measures.”

If executed, covert action could jeopardize Indian hopes to use Chabahar to bypass Pakistan, significantly enhance its trade with Afghanistan and Central Asian nations and create an anti-dote to Gwadar.

Pakistani analysts expect an estimated US$ 5 billion in Afghan trade to flow through Chabahar after India in December started handling the port’s operations.

Iranian concerns that the attacks represent a US and/or Saudi covert effort are grounded not only in more recent US and Saudi policies, including Mr. Trump’s withdrawal last year from the 2015 international agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program despite confirmation of its adherence to the accord and re-imposition of harsh economic sanctions against the Islamic republic.

They are also rooted in US and Saudi backing of Iraq in the 1980s Gulf war, US overtures in the last year to Iranian Kurdish insurgents, the long-standing broad spectrum of support of former and serving US officials for the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and in recent years of Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former head of Saudi intelligence and ex-ambassador to the United States and Britain.

Said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran analyst: “The concern was never that the Trump admin would avert its eyes from Iran, but rather that is in inflicted by an unhealthy obsession with it. In hyping the threat emanating from Iran, Trump is more likely than not to mishandle it and thus further destabilize the Middle East.”

#PulwamaAttack - Trump bluntly tells Pakistan to end terrorism

The Trump White House on Friday bluntly asked Islamabad to “end immediately the support and safe haven provided to all terrorist groups operating on its soil” following the Pulwama attack, going much beyond a more cautious state department approach towards Islamabad. Although the State Department also condemned the attack in the “strongest terms” and said the “United States is resolutely committed to working with the Indian government to combat terrorism in all its forms,” it lamely called on “all countries to uphold their responsibilities pursuant to UN Security Council resolutions to deny safe haven and support for terrorists,” — as if, given that the statement was about the Pulwama attack, there was more than one country playing host to UN-designated terrorists.

President Trump’s office had no such equivocation as it implicitly accused Pakistan of fostering and inflicting terrorism on the region. Terming it a “heinous” terrorist attack, the White House said “The United States calls on Pakistan to end immediately the support and safe haven provided to all terrorist groups operating on its soil, whose only goal is to sow chaos, violence, and terror in the region.”

“This attack only strengthens our resolve to bolster counterterrorism cooperation and coordination between the United States and India,” the statement added, going beyond the State Department’s formulation that “The United States is resolutely committed to working with the Indian government to combat terrorism in all its forms.” President Trump has whittled down US aid to Pakistan to almost zero, a policy that does not sit well with many State Department bureaucrats who believe Washington should continue to lubricate a state closely identified with the use of terrorism as a policy instrument.

It’s not often that the White House and the State Department read from a different page, but in this case, the White House unequivocally went beyond the rather circumspect formulation in Foggy Bottom to call out Pakistan for its terrorism. It is not clear if this was the result of any direct intervention by Trump, who is not known to pull punches in identifying adversaries, and who does not see Pakistan in any considerate light given its long and transparent history of hosting terrorists. The US President was engaged for the most part on Thursday and Friday with the scrap over border wall funding as he prepared to declare a national emergency.

#PulwamaAttack - India unleashes its military on Pakistan after a terror attack stoked the feud between the nuclear rivals

Alex Lockie

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday unleashed the country's military against rival Pakistan in response to a terror attack by Muslim separatists that killed 44 on Thursday.

Modi said his country's "blood boils" and gave his military a "free hand" to determine "the timing, place and nature of their response." India and Pakistan have been bitter rivals for years, and both countries have built nuclear arsenals to hold each other at bay.

Modi unleashing the military has been called an "abdication of political responsibility" that could lead to a "super dangerous" conflict between the nuclear rivals.Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi on Friday unleashed the country's military against rival Pakistan in response to a terror attack by Muslim separatists that killed 44 on Thursday. "I know there is deep anger, your blood boils looking at what has happened. At this moment, there are expectations and the feelings of a strong response which is quite natural," Modi said in a speech mourning the police forces killed and those injured.India regularly accuses Pakistan of training and arming militants and smuggling them across the border into the Indian region of Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region on the countries' shared border.

Following the terror attack, where an explosive-laden truck plowed into a bus carrying police forces, India said it had "incontrovertible evidence" of Pakistan's involvement in the attack. Pakistani-based Islamist militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed the attack, but Pakistan quickly denied any official involvement. "Our neighboring country thinks such terror attacks can weaken us, but their plans will not materialize," said Modi of Pakistan.

"Security forces have been given permission to take decisions about the timing, place and nature of their response," Modi continued.Rajesh Rajagopalan, a professor of international politic at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, tweeted that Modi's statement was an "abdication of political responsibility," because he handed over control of the response to the military. Christopher Clary, an international affairs expert and professor at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University of Albany, said that Modi unleashing the military had the potential to get out of control.

While Clary told Business Insider he didn't interpret Modi's words to mean he had authorized a major military action against Pakistan, cross-border conflicts happen frequently.

India and Pakistan have been bitter rivals for decades, but enjoyed a period of relative clam for the past few years. But recently, both Pakistan and India have grown in nationalist fervor, with online militias on Facebook and elsewhere lusting for blood and mocking each other's militaries and nations. Also, with Modi's Hindu-nationalist party facing elections later this year, the Indian leader may feel pressured to make a show of force.

If India engages in a cross-border strike as they appear set to, "it would be hard on Pakistan not to do something in retaliation. After a while, the back and forth can get super dangerous," said Clary. "We don't have that many countries with nuclear weapons that share a common border, so things can get pretty hairy."

 Additionally, the White House came down hard on Pakistan and urged them to "end immediately the support and safe haven provided to all terrorist groups operating on its soil."

 https://www.businessinsider.com/indias-modi-unleashes-military-on-pakistan-after-pulwama-terrorism-2019-2

#PulwamaAttack - Why #Kashmir attack could spark a military confrontation in South Asia

The militant attack in India-ruled Kashmir has once again put New Delhi and Islamabad on a war footing. Analysts at the Munich Security Conference say it is a setback to those who wish to see lasting peace in the region.

At least 41 Indian paramilitary troops were killed on Thursday in a suicide bombing in the Pulwama district of India-administered Kashmir. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, which translates as "The Army of Mohammed," claimed responsibility for the deadly attack, according to local media.It was not the first time that the Islamist group allegedly perpetrated an attack in the Indian part of Kashmir, although the Thursday assault was the deadliest in the disputed region.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the attack as "dastardly," while other Indian officials said they have "incontrovertible evidence" that Islamabad had "a direct hand" in the bombing. They have vowed a harsh response to the attack.Pakistan's government, meanwhile, said it condemns acts of violence anywhere in the world and denied any involvement. The bombing immediately drew strong condemnation from the international community, including from the United States and Germany.

'No business as usual for India'

The bombing is a huge setback to the already turbulent India-Pakistan ties. The two nations have thorny relations and fought three full-fledged wars, two of them over the disputed Kashmir region. India blames Pakistan for supporting Islamist terror attacks on India. Pakistan routinely denies Indian accusations that it supports terrorism. Since the late 1980s, Kashmir's separatist insurgency has waxed and waned, but it began to pick up in the last five years as a fresh generation of Kashmiris was drawn to militancy.

Samir Saran, president of the New Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation, told DW on the sidelines of this year's Munich Security Conference that there is no doubt that Pakistan was behind the latest Kashmir attack. He also accused Islamabad of waging an "asymmetrical war" against New Delhi. "It was a cold-blooded terrorist attack, conducted by militants from across the border, trained and funded by the proxy network sustained by Pakistan," Saran said.

He added that the Thursday attack could force India to react militarily and target militants' sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the border. "After the attack, it can't be business as usual for New Delhi," the foreign policy and security analyst said.

With India set to hold a general election by May, Saran pointed out, the Modi government will be under pressure to show that it's acting tough on Pakistan. "This happened at a time when India is in the midst of or rather at the beginning of the election cycle... the prime minister will have to respond. Otherwise, he will appear weak and therefore all bets are off. I suspect this is bigger than we think it is."

'Hurtful' for Kashmir's political movement

Talat Bhat, a Kashmiri activist and documentary filmmaker based in Sweden, says he's worried that the latest deadly assault would "hurt" the peaceful political movement for the rights of the Kashmiri people.

"Pakistan needs to act against Jaish-e-Mohammed and other Islamist groups. The Pakistani army's 'strategic assets' are damaging the Kashmir cause, the cause for a national liberation movement. New Delhi gets away with its human rights violations as a result of such acts," Bhat told DW.

Toqeer Gilani, the president of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, also conceded that the latest Kashmir bombing was "damaging" for the "freedom movement" in the Himalayan region. "The assault would not bring any sympathy from the international community for the Kashmir plight. It will also increase an arms race in South Asia and keep the region backward," Gilani told DW.

Will China turn against Jaish-e-Mohammed?

India has once again demanded that Jaish-e-Mohammed and its leader Maulana Masood Azhar be declared as terrorists by the United Nations. The group has its roots in another Islamic militant group active in Kashmir, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which is believed to have links with al-Qaida. But New Delhi's UN efforts have been thwarted by Beijing, a close ally of Pakistan. How likely is it that China would reconsider its approach toward Jaish-e-Mohammed?

"China's role in this is not difficult to understand. Last year, Beijing blocked an attempt to declare Masood a terrorist. China considers India its enemy," Bhat said. But Gilani believes it would be hard for China to ignore the latest attack on Indian paramilitary personnel.

Siegfried O. Wolf, an expert at the Brussels-based South Asia Democratic Forum, says China is "indirectly" encouraging Pakistan. "Beijing will most likely not intervene in Pakistan's policy of backing militants that are operating in Afghanistan and India. Any measures against such groups, or the withdrawal of support, will be perceived as a hostile act by regional jihadists," Wolf told DW, adding that Beijing would not want that just for India's sake.

Experts say China's response to Jaish-e-Mohammed and its leader would be crucial when it came to a possible international action against Kashmiri militants. There are growing calls in India for the government to take unilateral actions against these groups. Indians have also taken to social media to vent their fury and call for swift retribution against Pakistan. But the consequences of any unilateral action by New Delhi could be devastating for regional peace and relations between the two nuclear-armed South Asian rivals.

https://www.dw.com/en/why-kashmir-attack-could-spark-a-military-confrontation-in-south-asia/a-47541203

Indian PM Modi warns Pakistan of strong response for Kashmir attack

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned Pakistan on Friday to expect a strong response to a car bomb attack on a military convoy in Kashmir that killed 44 paramilitary policemen, ratcheting up tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors.Coming just months ahead of a general election in India, the attack was the worst in decades in Jammu and Kashmir, even though there has been a long running insurgency in the country’s only Muslim majority state.

“We will give a befitting reply, our neighbor will not be allowed to destabilize us,” Modi said in a speech, after meeting with security advisers earlier to discuss options.

The Pakistan-based Islamist militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) claimed responsibility soon after a suicide bomber rammed a explosives-laden car into a bus carrying Central Reserve Police Force personnel on Thursday.

The White House urged Pakistan in a statement “to end immediately the support and safe haven provided to all terrorist groups operating on its soil”.India said it had “incontrovertible evidence” of the Pakistan involvement in the attack. The Pakistan government responded with a stiff denial, while calling the attack a matter of “grave concern.”As outrage and demands for revenge flooded Indian social media sites, Arun Jaitley, one of the most senior figures in the Hindu nationalist-led government, spelt out New Delhi’s diplomatic response.“The ministry of external affairs will initiate all possible steps, and I am here referring to all possible diplomatic steps, which have to be taken to ensure the complete isolation from the international community of Pakistan,” Jaitley, the country’s finance minister, told reporters.The first step, he said, would include removing most favored nation (MFN) trade privileges that had been accorded to Pakistan - though annual bilateral trade between the two countries is barely $2 billion.

The last major attack in Kashmir was in 2016 when Jaish militants raided an Indian army camp in Uri, killing 20 soldiers. Weeks later, Modi ordered a surgical strike on suspected militant camps across the border in Pakistan Kashmir.

When he swept to power in 2014, Modi had vowed to tough line with mostly Muslim Pakistan. The two countries have gone to war three times since independence from Britain in 1947, twice over Kashmir.The Line of Control, the disputed de facto border dividing Indian and Pakistani held Kashmir is widely regarded as one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints, especially after the two countries became nuclear armed states in 1998.

CRACKDOWN IN KASHMIR

Hundreds of thousands of Indian troops are deployed in Kashmir. Having waxed and waned since the late 1980s, the insurgency began to intensify in the last five years as a fresh generation of Kashmiris were drawn to militancy. And since last year, the number of attacks has increased.Soon after Thursday’s attack, Jaish released photographs and a video of Adil Ahmad Dar, a young Kashmiri villager it said had carried out the suicide attack on the convoy as it passed through Pulwama district.In the video, Dar warned of more attacks to avenge human rights violations in Kashmir.

Jaish is one of the most deadly groups operating in Kashmir, and has a long history of strikes against India.

In 2001, it mounted a deadly attack on the parliament in New Delhi that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of another war. India’s past efforts to add Jaish’s supremo, Maulana Masood Azhar, to a U.N. Security Council blacklist of al Qaeda-linked terrorists have been blocked by China.

Indian forces picked up seven people for questioning, after mounting a sweep in Pulwama, a police official said.

The bus in which the paramilitary personnel were traveling was part of a convoy of more than 70 vehicles on the heavily guarded Jammu-Srinagar highway.

Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik said there were security lapses and authorities are investigating why such a large convoy, transporting nearly 2,500 security personnel, was on the road.

Peshawar to Pulwama, how Pakistan differentiates snakes in its backyard & front yard

SHEKHAR GUPTA

The Pakistani establishment believes the snakes it rears in its front yard will only bite its neighbour. The school attack didn’t change that deadly delusion.

There was much disagreement in the commentariat in the winter of 2014. In the week of the massacre of Pakistani Army officers’ children in their school in Peshawar, I disagreed with the dominant view that it will be a turning point and the Pakistani establishment will be jolted into giving up on all terrorists. If Samba, Gurdaspur, Pathankot and Uri weren’t yet convincing enough evidence, this Pulwama carnage once again shows that our pessimism was, regrettably, realistic.

I had said then that the Pakistani establishment will surely squash snakes in its backyard. But it believes the snakes it rears in its front yard will only bite its neighbour. This deadly delusion even Peshawar will not demolish. This has been vindicated many times over since. When it comes to India and Afghanistan, the Pakistani establishment is addicted to terror.

This is what I had then written:

There is much revulsion in India over that mass slaughter in Peshawar. There is sympathy for Pakistan. But it is also laced with some serves-you-right schadenfreude, a little bit of I-told-you-so and the inevitable: Will you still keep rearing snakes in your backyard hoping they will bite only your neighbours?

This complex reaction is entirely in the nature of how estranged cousins in a subcontinental family relate to each other. We feel a fraternal, even filial connect. But also with a patronising sense of let-down and grievance. You know me so well, we are brothers, why don’t you ever listen to me?

Some of this has been on display this week. Within 24 hours of this most shattering massacre, and not long after schoolchildren elsewhere had observed their two-minute silence, we were returning to “normal”. On the Pakistani side there were the expected blame-India noises, led by a terrorist with a $10-million global bounty on his head, and every public appearance of his is like running a finger in India’s eye. His prime-time Sancho Panza is the subcontinent’s most prized and delinquent idiot to hold high public office. Even if we parade our worst, we Indians can’t rival Hafiz Saeed and Pervez Musharraf. But we can certainly be equals in the game of competitive cussedness.

I have written often that the media, particularly 24×7 TV, is no longer a force for liberal moderation on either side, and true to form, warrior anchors had locked horns again, barracking “guests” from the other side. Sure enough, while grieving families were still not done with funeral prayers, we were already at the pickets, asking them how long will they keep nurturing Hafiz Saeed and his Lashkars, as they accused us of complicity and crediting our RAW with mythical prowess so formidable as to greatly embarrass it.

None of this us-versus-them-versus-us business is funny. These chronic prejudices cloud our judgment, influence our responses. As the extent of the tragedy unfolded, even my immediate reaction was that this, finally, was the turning point. Only an utterly suicidal terror group would target the children of its own country’s army. Even the old mafia refrained from attacking policemen and almost never hit their families. Now, I thought at once, this will remove all old notions like equivocation, good/bad terrorist finessing, militias in the west (of Pakistan) are my enemies and those in the east my force-multipliers. That it will make the Pakistani establishment see the light, that one set of terrorists is as bad as the other and that you can’t be fighting one while feeding the other. Within 24 hours, I was eating my words.

There was plenty of fight-to-the-finish talk against terror, also that there are no good or bad Taliban, but not a line to suggest the Lashkars were also to be put in the same basket. If anything, the establishment was probably complicit in letting Saeed come out vocally and re-state his jihad threat against India. Saeed would not do this in defiance of his patrons.

Further, the one line we never heard from anybody in authority in Pakistan was: There is no place for any armed non-state actor, Taliban or Lashkars, Pathan or Punjabi, foreign or indigenous, on our soil. All attack was confined to terrorists of the Taliban, there was even sympathy for Afghanistan and appreciation for its President Ashraf Ghani’s promise of cooperation. It was so cynically nuanced that you couldn’t help believing that even in this moment of its country’s worst terror tragedy, weeks after another shattering outrage at Wagah, the establishment was not going to change the way it defined friend and foe. Or that it would get Saeed to shut up.

Surely, the Pakistan Army’s campaign against the Taliban is for real. It is a counter-insurgency of an intensity never seen in the subcontinent with generous use of air power, including assault helicopters. The Pakistan Army doesn’t always make its casualties public, but if you trawl its military blogs and discussion groups carefully, you find evidence that it is taking severe casualties, including many young officers, in its sizeable special forces. This is real war, and it is because the army is doing serious damage that the Taliban have now hit their children. You can be quite safe in concluding that if there is a point of inflexion in any insurgency, organised armed challenge to state power, it must be this. Even on our side of Punjab, the turning point came in 1992 when Sikh terrorists had carried out widespread killings of policemen’s families overnight. That is when Punjab Police decided that the fight against terror was theirs and accomplished in months what the army and paramilitary forces had failed to do in a decade. For the Pakistan Army, the killing of their schoolchildren in Peshawar is a similar turning point.

At the same time, I am not yet buying the argument that this is the turning point to change the course of the future. The Pakistani establishment remains umbilically connected to the Islamist ideology of nation-building, way to the Right of the ideals of its founding fathers. This discourse is rooted in fearful insecurity and suspicion, particularly, though not only, of the bigger brother, with what you see as a conflicting ideology of nation-building.

If Pakistan is being redefined from the mid-fifties onwards as anything but India, permanent hostility must substitute any residual kinship. Then comes the reality check: The size of India’s economy, military, the strength and stability of its society. To the simplistic, tactical military mind, this creates an “asymmetry”, so what better way to fight it than with “asymmetric” warfare. That’s how India-centric jihadis become force-multipliers, a strategic asset.

This, I dare say regretfully, is not about to change.

The only way to reverse this is to persuade Pakistani public opinion to embrace the truth that the existentialist Indian threat they have been fed on is a cynical, self-destructive mythology which does no more than protect their army’s pre-eminence in the power structure, undermines their economy, and diminishes them into a global migraine rather than the largest Muslim population with modern democracy, and thereby a model for the rest of the Islamic world. Indonesia had got there much earlier, and now is Bangladesh catching up. Pakistan has brought this curse upon itself, that while Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded and Palestinians were dispossessed of their lands, the world’s angriest Muslims live in Pakistan. Which is also today the second biggest victim of terrorism, all of it home-grown.

American public figures are masters of the sound bite. If Madeleine Albright imprinted her TM on her description of Pakistan as a global migraine and Bill Clinton wagged his finger at Islamabad saying the map of the subcontinent could no longer be redrawn with blood, the current favourite is Hillary. Her warning as Secretary of State, that you can’t rear snakes in your backyard and hope they will only bite your neighbours, will be repeated often after the Peshawar outrage. There is, however, a vital flaw in her argument. The way the Pakistani establishment looks out, it has a backyard, but also a front yard. The snakes it rears in its front yard still only bite the neighbour. That deadly delusion even Peshawar will not fray.

Haseena Gul Tanha | Sardar Ali Takkar | زما نه مه بېلېږه | حسينه ګل تنها | سردار علي ټکر

#Pakistan - #Balochistan: 15 Persons abducted from district Awaran and Kech

Pakistani security forces have abducted at least fifteen people from Balochistan’s Awaran and Kech districts in the past two days.

According to details, Pakistan FC and intelligence agencies conducted offensives in Balgtar Fairozi area in district Kech and abducted at least eight persons on Monday.

The abducted men have been named as Niaz son of Bahar, Rajab son Mehrab, Zaman son of Mohammad, Nazar son of Ghafoor, Fairoz son of Omitan, Waheed son of Essa, Noor Khan son of Afzal and Wahab son of Aziz.

Whereas as in similar offensive Pakistani forces abducted Barkat son of Qadir Bakhsh, Ali Bakhsh son of Sahib Dad and Qadir Bakhsh from Peerandar region of district Awaran.

Pakistani forces also abducted Karim Jan son of Allah Dad, Pahlan son of Allah Dad, Asadullah son of Miya Pasand and Karim son of Khuda Bakhsh from Jhao area in district Awaran.

It is pertinent to mention that despite the release of more than two dozen people Pakistani forces have abducted hundreds of more people from different areas of Balochistan.

http://balochwarna.com/2019/02/13/balochistan-15-persons-abducted-from-district-awaran-and-kech/

#AsiaBibi - #Pakistan puts Asia Bibi in ‘no fly’ list

Smriti Sen Gupta

Despite being acquitted from capital punishment by Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Christian labourer Asia Bibi is not only being barred from leaving the country, authorities have already put he in ‘no fly’ list, fearing if she is allowed to leave Pakistan, Asia Bibi may disclose lots of secrets about Pakistani society’s ugly attitude towards the religious minorities.

This step was taken secretly following suggestion from country’s intelligence agencies.

Earlier, the Guardian reported, Bibi, who spent eight years on death row, was transferred from a location near the capital to a house in the southern port city of Karachi, her friend Aman Ullah told the Associated Press. She and her husband are locked in a single room in a house where the door opens only “at food times”.

It further said, Canada has offered her asylum and she wants to join her daughters there. Pakistani authorities have said she is free to travel, but Bibi, 54, says she is being prevented from going.

“She has no indication of when she will leave,” said Ullah, who added that Bibi was frightened and frustrated. “They are not telling her why she cannot leave.” He spoke to her by telephone, after the threats from extremists angered by his assistance to Bibi forced him to flee the country on Friday.

A construction labourer, Bibi was sentenced to death in 2010 in what swiftly became Pakistan’s most infamous blasphemy case. She had been accused by Muslim villagers of insulting the prophet Muhammad in a row over a cup of water. She always insisted she was innocent.

Blasphemy is a highly inflammatory issue in Pakistan, where even unproven accusations of insulting Islam can spark lynching. Human rights activists say blasphemy charges are frequently used to settle personal scores.

After the Supreme Court overturned Bibi’s conviction, cities across Pakistan were paralyzed for several days by violent demonstrations with enraged extremists calling for her beheading.

In a deal to end the violence, the government, led by the prime minister, Imran Khan, struck a deal allowing the petition seeking an appeal against the supreme court’s judgment. Khan was accused of capitulating to the extremists’ demands.

https://www.weeklyblitz.net/news/how-is-pakistani-christian-asia-bibi-now/

Media Watchdog The Information Mystery: Is PTI caught in social media’s spinning web?

By Warda Imran

The current Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government seems to be at crossroads once again as debate on media and press freedom takes a dark turn with each statement spurred by the Information Ministry headed by Fawad Chaudhry. Speaking at an event recently, Chaudhry warned media houses that “their current model would not last long if they didn’t change their ways”.

Rather than appearing to be an advice from the concerned federal authority, it seemed to be soaked in threatening tones.

“The news media wants government advertisements and sponsorship, but what would happen to its freedom if the media looks up to the government as its saviour and not as a client,” Chaudhry added.Surprising as it may seem to him, media houses earn their bread and butter from advertisements and that is the way it is everywhere. To claim that an investment in the form of sponsorship will tarnish the media’s independence highlights the government’s intention to control what’s left of formal media in the country.He further said that the government has reserved one-third of the government advertisements for digital media:

“News media will have to reinvent itself and the print media will have to adopt to digital technology, even cable TV has more than five years left,” he added.

I’m a little surprised as almost every major media house in Pakistan has a digital platform. Almost all the media houses that began from print and TV have now crawled into the digital platform but that in no way signifies the demise of the other mediums.

Let’s not forget we live in a country where access to a digital gadget is still considered a luxury and there are remote areas where internet is available but users are not and vice versa. While Pakistan moves swiftly towards digitisation, there is little proof that the country can shift towards total digitisation in the near future. According to a Digital Global Report prepared by We Are Social, the number of internet users in Pakistan is almost 22% of the entire population. The rest still rely on television, multilingual newspapers and magazines for information.

While I laud the information minister’s attempt at supporting the digital platforms, I am more disappointed in his complete disregard for those who are employed in the print, broadcast and radio sections and those who consume it. If I remember, the PTI is for the sab se neecha tabqa (poorest section of society), and while they sing that slogan in their conferences, the attitude towards the media seems to be the opposite. Supporting the digitisation or prophesising the end of print and TV only makes sense if 50% or more of the population can afford and have access to digital gadgets.Major media giants that Chaudhry can only dream of welcoming or housing in Pakistan such as Buzzfeed and Vice announced shocking cutoffs this month that opened doors of debate on how profitable digital platforms in the face of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are becoming repositories of news. Buzzfeed’s layoffs amounted to 15% of the total which is more than 220 jobs across departments, even if it’s the renowned New York newsroom. Vice announced 10% layoffs and Verizon which owns Huffington Post and Yahoo cut 800 workers in the media division.

While many argue that digital platforms and models can generate money, the smokescreen on social media can make it almost impossible to get the audience required to generate profit. Facebook’s numbers have grown at an astounding speed even though it was engulfed in the privacy breach scandal for a good part of last year. This means that users online resort more to Twitter and Facebook for their information, and while digital news outlets relied on their support, the social media giants didn’t care if their numbers trumped the media. In the end, it’s a game of numbers.

Facebook, Google and Twitter have created a market for advertisements for themselves which previously helped digital news platforms stay afloat. Even if commercial businesses wanted to invest in news outlets or pay them for advertisements, the rising numbers on other social media platforms tempted them to opt for them instead. This could lead to a “new publishing depression”.And while developed countries like the US saw the rise and fall of print, television and radio, they are now entering the same experience with digital platforms. This should make our information ministry realise that with social media giants growing stronger each day, digital platforms are struggling to make ends meet. And in Pakistan, the cycle spins the other way. News outlets here rely on advertisements in print and TV to keep their digital presence alive.And let’s not forget the hefty amounts each government has spent on TV advertisements; it wasn’t a treat to watch Nawaz Sharif or Shehbaz Sharif in the middle of talk shows with their governmental schemes, neither is it fun to watch Imran Khan’s face outlining his multiple schemes. TV advertisements still exist because a large portion of our population consumes it.

With growing distrust on the digital media and general scepticism on online platforms, users tend to turn to Google to search for news or read up on Facebook, while news outlets – even online – seem to be sinking in the noise created by other social media platforms. Specifically in the US, with so much debate on what constitutes “fake news” and with their president openly disrespecting media houses, survival has become difficult.

If The Guardian is correct and we are to enter a publishing depression, I’d advise Chaudhry to invest and work on platforms that work in Pakistan rather than being super aspirational because maybe by the time we become digital, the digital would have collapsed. And so while we should strive to progress, we shouldn’t dump and disregard formal news mediums because they play a crucial role in the dissemination of news for the common man. And even though mobile phones become more and more affordable each day, it may show a decline in reliance on print and TV, in foresight (as the case with the US), it can also lead to complications in the future.

My piece of advice would be to bid goodbye to the legacy of print and TV media but in a graceful way; invest in it until it survives and pull the plug when it seems to yield no fruit. Currently, when many from the older generation fall into the web of “fake news” as a study by Princeton University suggested, I envision a return to print and TV – in Pakistan at least. Should this be the case, our information ministry should be ready to help the media rather than threatening its members and making it sound like media outlets are not progressing.

It’s hard for me to imagine that 12-15 years ago, everything was all print and digital media was a dream. And it’s hard to imagine that in the next 12-15 years, print and TV will have lost its charm. But while we wait for it to decline, we should honour those who spent their entire lives in formal media and also make initiatives to help them shift into the digital age. Layoffs and cutoffs aren’t the solution, train your human resources to get with the times, leaving them behind will come as karma to the outlets. And don’t forget, karma’s been on edge lately.

#Pakistan - Two more #polio cases reported from #Hangu, #Lahore

Two new polio cases were reported in the country on Thursday, ARY News reported.

The first case was reported in a four-month-old girl in Hangu, while another case was detected in an eight-month-old boy in Lahore’s Shalimar Town area.

Total of four cases of polio had been reported in the ongoing year.

The surge in the number of polio cases has set the alarm bells ringing as Pakistan is on the verge of eradicating the crippling disease that has paralysed hundreds of children in the country.

Though concerted efforts are being made to interrupt the transmission of the poliovirus, it is still circulating in the environment, pointing to the gaps in the programme.

Earlier, the first polio case of the year 2019 had been reported from Bajour district on February 2.

“Sad News: The ongoing active virus circulation in Bajour Tribal District has paralysed yet another child as Pakistan reports its 1st polio case of 2019 from Khar. The child is 11 months old. Bajour has now reported 6 polio cases alone during the last 3 months,” he tweeted.

#Pakistan - 2.42 Trillion rupees added to the debt in the last six months

Since the last election in July 2018, the newly elected government had added a total of 2.42tr to the debt and it grows to Rs 26.64 trillion till December 2018.

The growth of debt is due to low revenues and high expenditures. FBR has failed to collect the revenue target. The government’s estimate shows that more than 70% of the total budget will go to debt and defense servicing, which is greater than the net revenues. Due to this, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has proposed to target the primary budget balance, which means that the government has to lower its expenses than revenues.IMF has said that the only way to come out from the debt trap is by achieving primary balance.

The overall increase in the federal government debt seems not in line with the budget deficit requirements due to currency depreciation. The external debt of the central government increased by 16.7% to Rs.9.1 trillion in the first half of the current fiscal year. There was a net increase of Rs1.3 trillion in the external debt, largely due to currency devaluation.

The external debt of the federal government expanded by 16.7% to Rs.9.1 trillion while there was a net increment of Rs1.3 trillion in the external debt, mainly because of currency devaluation.

The expanding external debt remains a worry because of the past government’s failure to pull in non-debt making inflows and improve net incomes.

The PTI government has not yet changed the course of the monetary policy and it is to a great extent executing the arrangements pursued by the past Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) organization.

SBP’s most recent debt bulletin shows that the most troubling perspective was the proceeded with development in the momentary domestic debt that presented the government to refinancing.

As opposed to the short term debt, the nation’s long term debt reduced by 3.7% to Rs7.2 trillion. Its share was 46% in the domestic debt in June 2018, which tumbled to 41.4% by December.

#Kashmir car bomb kills 44; #India demands #Pakistan act against militants

By Fayaz Bukhari

 A suicide bomber rammed a car into a bus carrying Indian paramilitary police in Kashmir on Thursday, killing 44 of them in the deadliest attack in decades on security forces in the disputed region, raising tensions with arch foe Pakistan.
The Pakistan-based Islamist militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) claimed responsibility for the attack. The Indian government demanded that Islamabad take action against militant groups operating from its soil.Kashmir is a Muslim-majority region at the heart of decades of hostility between India and Pakistan. The neighbors both rule parts of the region while claiming the entire territory as theirs.

The explosion targeting a convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) was heard from several miles away, according to witnesses. Mohammad Yunis, a journalist who reached the site minutes later, told Reuters he saw blood and body parts scattered along a 100-metre stretch of the main highway running through the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

“We demand that Pakistan stop supporting terrorists and terror groups operating from their territory and dismantle the infrastructure operated by terrorist outfits to launch attacks in other countries,” the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement, hours after the attack.

There was no immediate comment from the Pakistani government. Islamabad denies New Delhi’s accusations that it gives material help to the militants fighting Indian rule in Muslim-majority Kashmir. It says it gives only moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people in their struggle for self-determination.

Television images showed a mangled car amid rubble and snow around the site. Reuters photos showed tens of policemen surveying damaged vehicles and one policeman was seen carrying a plastic cover with guns inside.

The death toll stood at 44, a senior police official said. The Central Reserve Force Police is a paramilitary organization that is working with the Indian military to quell the 30-year insurgency in Kashmir.

“I strongly condemn this dastardly attack. The sacrifices of our brave security personnel shall not go in vain,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tweet.

#Pakistan’s ‘grey list’ fate hangs in balance as #FATF meets in #Paris on Feb 17

The International Financial Action Task Force is going to review measures taken by Pakistan to curb money laundering and terror financing next week.

The European Commission has proposed to put the country’s name on the black list.

Pakistan government has finalised a strategy for meeting with FATF. The meeting will be held from February 17 to 22 in Paris, France.

The federal government has prepared a functional strategy for FATF meeting, a high-level delegation led by finance secretary will represent Pakistan in the said talks.

National Counter Terrorism Authority director general and other top officials from the Financial Monitoring Unit of the State Bank will be part of the delegation too.

Pakistan team will brief the FATF authorities on measures it has taken to curb money laundering and terror financing. The delegation will put forward a list of measures Pakistan wants to adopt.

Meanwhile, the Asia Pacific Group (AGP) of FATF will present its report on meeting held with Pakistani authorities in Sydney from January 8 to January 10.

In that meeting, APG group reviewed Pakistan’s progress in four key areas: terrorism financing risk assessment report, Customs department’s report on cash couriers, implementation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions, and inter-agency coordination

According to sources, FATF will decide about retaining Pakistan’s name in the greylist or include it in the black list, after completion of its review in September 2019.

Pakistan is among 83 countries with a risk score of 5.0 or above. These are countries that could be loosely classified as having a significant risk of money laundering and terrorist financing, according to the Basel AML Report 2018, an independent annual ranking that assesses the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing in 129 countries.

“Money laundering and terrorist financing continue to cripple economies, distort international finances and harm citizens around the globe,” says the report, which forms its global index based on the FATF’s country evaluation reports. It estimates that the amount of money laundered worldwide ranges from $500 billion to a staggering $1 trillion.

Pakistan has criminalised both money laundering and terrorist financing but has not been able to enforce these laws effectively. Being on the grey list doesn’t come with any sanctions, but if we remain on this list, we face the risk of being put on the black list. This is where it gets problematic.

Being on the black list means our banking system will be regarded as one with poor controls over AML and CFT standards — forget bringing PayPal to Pakistan, expatriates will find it difficult to send remittances and traders’ cost of business will increase because our banks will face higher scrutiny in international payments and foreign banks might not even do business with Pakistani banks. The government, too, will struggle to raise funds from international markets if we are placed on the black list.

Pakistan has been on and off the grey list in the past. The last time we were removed from the grey list was in February 2015. If the ongoing consultations between the FATF and the Pakistani government are successful, we will be taken off the grey list and placed on the white list.

https://www.samaa.tv/news/2019/02/pakistans-grey-list-fate-hangs-in-balance-as-fatf-meets-in-paris-on-feb-17/

#ValentinesDay #ValentinesDay2019 - Why there’s nothing wrong if Valentine’s Day becomes part of Pakistan’s culture

Haroon Khalid

It is the same story every year. There is something about Valentine’s Day and young men and women exchanging red roses and balloons that threatens cultural purists in Pakistan. In 2016, Mamnoon Hussain, then Pakistan’s president, urged its citizens not to celebrate Valentine’s Day because it was part of Western culture, and not Islamic. He made these comments on the death anniversary of Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar, a Muslim League stalwart who was a prominent leader of the Pakistan Movement. Ironically one of the oft-repeated accusations by Islamic scholars and religious leaders against the Muslim League and the Pakistan Movement for nationhood was that it was not rooted in Islamic culture. They accused both of adopting notions of nationalism and nationhood, which did not have an Islamic origin but were imported from the West.

In 2017, it was the Islamabad High Court’s turn to speak against Valentine’s Day. It instructed the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, a government body, to stop the promotion of Valentine’s Day on television. In 2018, it went a step further, asking for all signs of Valentine’s Day to be removed from public spaces. This led to absurd scenes of police officials chasing balloon and flower vendors around Islamabad. The High Court judgment was delivered by the maverick Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui, who a few years ago was an activist of the Jamaat-e-Islami – a socio-political religious organisation – and who also contested an election as their candidate.

The Jamaat

The Jamaat-e-Islami has been against the celebration of Valentine’s Day for a long time, and has celebrated February 14 as Haya Day for several years. The word “haya” can be translated into “honour” or “shame”.

But then, under its founder Maulana Maudadi, the Jamaat had opposed Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Pakistan Movement too, calling nationhood a western concept. After the creation of Pakistan, they began calling for the Islamisation of the country’s laws. This dream was fulfilled under Zia-ul-Haq, who ruled Pakistan between 1978 and 1988.Thus in a few years, from being opposed to the very creation of Pakistan, the Jamaat found itself at the vanguard of dictating to the State what is and should be acceptable culture. Interestingly it was able to do this through its nuisance value, without having any serious electoral presence.

Coming back to Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui, there are several narratives that suggest that he garlanded Mumtaz Qadri soon after he assassinated liberal politician Salman Taseer in Islamabad in 2011. In a strange twist of events, Siddiqui was also one of the judges to uphold Qadri’s death penalty in 2015. Qadri was executed in 2016.

Since the creation of Pakistan, following the lead of the Jamaat-e-Islami, several politico-religious parties and organisations have mushroomed and have also vociferously and sometimes forcefully expressed their opinions of what constitutes Pakistani culture and what does not. However, what is lost in this simplistic bifurcation of “us” and “them” is the acknowledgement of the symbiotic relation that existed and continues to exist between “us” and “them”. For example, the majority of the puritan movements that have over the years criticised the corruption of Pakistani values and culture – such as the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Tableegh-e-Jamaat and the Deoband Movement – are themselves product of the western, colonial experience.

Western influence

Take the Deoband religious movement for instance. According to Pakistani historian Dr Tahir Kamran, who has studied its rise in the late 19th century, its madrasa, which was established in Deoband, in Uttar Pradesh, was inspired by colonial schools and colleges. It was organised in a manner that borrowed heavily from the British education system rather than the traditional Islamic madrasa system. The madrasa’s curriculum was set up by professionals, and the organisation was affiliated with colleges and held regular examinations just like colonial institutions did. The curriculum itself promoted a literalist reading of Islamic scriptures, moving away from popular, devotional shrine-based religion, which was syncretistic in nature, and was more attuned with “our” cultural values.

The Deoband movement gained much prominence among the urban working and middle classes in Punjab. In the aftermath of the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989) and with the influx of the Saudi petro-dollar, the movement gained considerable popularity in Pakistan – it easily aligned with the religious outlook of the Salafist Saudi Islam and the political and religious ideology of the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Similarly, a man inspired by the Deobandi interpretation of religion founded the Tableegh-e-Jamaat – a movement headquartered in Lahore that now has a national outreach.In contemporary Pakistan, these organisations now dictate the narrative of what Pakistani culture is and not. These voices find much more sympathetic ears all across the country, starting particularly after the Islamisation of Pakistan’s educational curriculum under Zia. This is because this narrative is easily absorbed by journalists, bureaucrats, police officials, lawyers and judges – all of whom have been educated on this curriculum.

Like the colonists before them, these organisations end up imagining culture and societies as static and fixed with no sharing and borrowing. The irony remains that the very institutions that today argue for returning to this so-called “pure” form of culture are a product of cultural borrowing and sharing.

So perhaps 50 years ago Valentine’s Day was not a part of Pakistan’s culture. But that does not always have to be true. There would be no notions of Pakistani nationhood or even the contemporary interpretation of Islam had there been rigid boundaries between cultures. It is time now to acknowledge the fluidity of culture and abandon mythological concepts of an imagined culture. Let people celebrate Valentine’s Day. Let it become part of our culture.

US Urges Its Citizens to Reconsider Travelling to Pakistan Due to Terrorism

The Federal Aviation Administration, in a notice issued on Wednesday, said that terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in Pakistan.

The US has urged its citizens to reconsider their travel to Pakistan mainly due to terrorism and risks to civil aviation operating within or near the country. The Federal Aviation Administration, in a notice issued on Wednesday, said that terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in Pakistan.

"Reconsider travel to Pakistan due to terrorism," the State Department said in a latest travel advisory. It asked Americans not to travel to Balochistan province and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province, including the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), due to terrorism, and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir area due to terrorism and the potential for armed conflict.

Terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in Pakistan, it said, adding that terrorists may attack with little or no warning, targeting transportation hubs, markets, shopping malls, military installations, airports, universities, tourist locations, schools, hospitals, places of worship and government facilities.

Noting that terrorist attacks continue to happen across Pakistan, with most occurring in Balochistan and KPK, including the former FATA, the State Department said large-scale terrorist attacks have resulted in hundreds of casualties over the last several years.

India and Pakistan maintain a strong military presence on both sides of the border. The only official Pakistan-India border crossing point for persons who are not citizens of India or Pakistan is in the province of Punjab between Wagah, Pakistan, and Attari, India, the advisory said.

Urging its citizens not to travel to PoK, the State Department said militant groups are known to operate in the area.

"The threat of armed conflict between India and Pakistan remains. Indian and Pakistani military forces periodically exchange fire across the Line of Control," it added. https://www.news18.com/news/world/us-urges-its-citizens-to-reconsider-travelling-to-pakistan-due-to-terrorism-2035989.html