At least 3 people, including a policeman, were injured when a blast hit the Adezai area of Peshawar on Monday.
Initial reports suggest that the explosion occurred near the main market of Adezai in Peshawar. No causality was reported whereas 3 people were injured in the incident.
Police and rescue official immediately rushed to the site of blast and the area has been cordoned off following the attack. The injured have been shifted to the nearby hospital.
Security officials have started a probe into the nature of the blast which is yet to be determined.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Pakistan terrorists getting outside funding: Holbrooke
Terrorists in Pakistan are getting funding from outside the country, US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke has said.
Sources of funding for terrorists come from outside the country as well as through extortion of NATO supply convoys, Holbrooke said at the Special Radio Roundtable discussion Sunday.
Without elaborating on the funding sources, he said he was aware of the sacrifices made by the Pakistan Army in the war against terror and that too in difficult terrain.
The army is battling heavily armed Taliban guerrillas in the rugged mountainous Waziristan region. The fight against terror has been a challenge for the army as the militants are well-entrenched.
Holbrooke, who is here to represent the US at the Pakistan Development Forum, said this was a serious issue and they were working to address it. The forum is an international consortium that provides economic aid to Pakistan.
The US has provided billions in assistance to help Pakistan cope with the aftermath of the recent floods, Daily Times quoted Holbrooke as saying.
Pakistan was one of the most under-taxed countries in the world, the US envoy said. He added that it was the obligation of the rich to contribute from their income for the welfare of the people and mitigate the sufferings of people in distress.
Sources of funding for terrorists come from outside the country as well as through extortion of NATO supply convoys, Holbrooke said at the Special Radio Roundtable discussion Sunday.
Without elaborating on the funding sources, he said he was aware of the sacrifices made by the Pakistan Army in the war against terror and that too in difficult terrain.
The army is battling heavily armed Taliban guerrillas in the rugged mountainous Waziristan region. The fight against terror has been a challenge for the army as the militants are well-entrenched.
Holbrooke, who is here to represent the US at the Pakistan Development Forum, said this was a serious issue and they were working to address it. The forum is an international consortium that provides economic aid to Pakistan.
The US has provided billions in assistance to help Pakistan cope with the aftermath of the recent floods, Daily Times quoted Holbrooke as saying.
Pakistan was one of the most under-taxed countries in the world, the US envoy said. He added that it was the obligation of the rich to contribute from their income for the welfare of the people and mitigate the sufferings of people in distress.
Pakistan warned, Reform or risk aid
www.telegraph.co.uk
Britain has warned Pakistan that its failure to reform its corrupt and wasteful government has put in jeopardy its chances of emerging as the biggest recipient of British foreign aid. Foreign aid donations to Pakistan have fallen far short of a UN target over corruption fears. The country's officials have rebuffed efforts to ensure aid spending on recovery from the devastating floods it suffered in August is not tainted by corruption.
A row over Pakistan's demands that aid payments are handed over to the government in cash is threating to derail efforts to raise billions of pounds to rebuild schools, roads, power plants and homes.
Andrew Mitchell, the International Development Secretary, is attending the Pakistan Development Forum in Islamabad on Monday and will demand four sweeping reforms across four sectors in return for continued growth in British aid payment.
Britain stands ready to increase its support to Pakistan as part of the aid review but this will be dependent on a commitment to put in place much-needed reforms," he said. "If Pakistan takes this opportunity to grasp the nettle of reform as it is starting to do, then it has the chance to come back stronger."
But Pakistani officials rejected out of hand efforts by foreign countries to impose conditions on how it spends aid. "That is not acceptable," said Salman Siddique, the Finance Secretary.
Mr Siddique said that Pakistan had already submitted a bill to introduce a VAT for the first time and had imposed a 10 per cent flood tax on the incomes of the wealthy. But even after the measures, Pakistan has one of the world's lowest tax takes at just 10 per cent of GDP.
Mr Mitchell is to demand a root and branch overhaul of the tax system, an overhaul of government spending to eliminate waste, a "transparent" system to dispense rebuilding aid free from political interference and a campaign to drive out corrupt officials.
Without a plan to radically shake up the bureaucracy, Pakistan is facing a humiliating blow to its efforts to finance the reconstruction of the flood ravaged economy.
Almost 2,000 people died and extensive damage was caused across a swathe of territory the size of England. A World Bank report said that $9.7 billion (£6 billion) worth of damage was caused as 20 million people lost their homes and their livelihood.
Aid agencies said there was a danger that a stand-off over reforms would harm the victims of the floods. "It is very important we don't play politics with people's lives," said Shaheen Chughtai, an Oxfam adviser. "Overall the majority of aid in Pakistan goes to the people who need it. We can be ambitious by making an investment in rebuilding now that ensures Pakistan is better able to withstand the next disaster."
The United Nations however only received $800 million of the $2 billion, the biggest appeal in its history, it called for to provide immediate relief.
It is expected to encounter even less enthusiasm as it appeals for billions today and tomorrow at the Pakistan Development forum.
Britain has warned Pakistan that its failure to reform its corrupt and wasteful government has put in jeopardy its chances of emerging as the biggest recipient of British foreign aid. Foreign aid donations to Pakistan have fallen far short of a UN target over corruption fears. The country's officials have rebuffed efforts to ensure aid spending on recovery from the devastating floods it suffered in August is not tainted by corruption.
A row over Pakistan's demands that aid payments are handed over to the government in cash is threating to derail efforts to raise billions of pounds to rebuild schools, roads, power plants and homes.
Andrew Mitchell, the International Development Secretary, is attending the Pakistan Development Forum in Islamabad on Monday and will demand four sweeping reforms across four sectors in return for continued growth in British aid payment.
Britain stands ready to increase its support to Pakistan as part of the aid review but this will be dependent on a commitment to put in place much-needed reforms," he said. "If Pakistan takes this opportunity to grasp the nettle of reform as it is starting to do, then it has the chance to come back stronger."
But Pakistani officials rejected out of hand efforts by foreign countries to impose conditions on how it spends aid. "That is not acceptable," said Salman Siddique, the Finance Secretary.
Mr Siddique said that Pakistan had already submitted a bill to introduce a VAT for the first time and had imposed a 10 per cent flood tax on the incomes of the wealthy. But even after the measures, Pakistan has one of the world's lowest tax takes at just 10 per cent of GDP.
Mr Mitchell is to demand a root and branch overhaul of the tax system, an overhaul of government spending to eliminate waste, a "transparent" system to dispense rebuilding aid free from political interference and a campaign to drive out corrupt officials.
Without a plan to radically shake up the bureaucracy, Pakistan is facing a humiliating blow to its efforts to finance the reconstruction of the flood ravaged economy.
Almost 2,000 people died and extensive damage was caused across a swathe of territory the size of England. A World Bank report said that $9.7 billion (£6 billion) worth of damage was caused as 20 million people lost their homes and their livelihood.
Aid agencies said there was a danger that a stand-off over reforms would harm the victims of the floods. "It is very important we don't play politics with people's lives," said Shaheen Chughtai, an Oxfam adviser. "Overall the majority of aid in Pakistan goes to the people who need it. We can be ambitious by making an investment in rebuilding now that ensures Pakistan is better able to withstand the next disaster."
The United Nations however only received $800 million of the $2 billion, the biggest appeal in its history, it called for to provide immediate relief.
It is expected to encounter even less enthusiasm as it appeals for billions today and tomorrow at the Pakistan Development forum.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
China to build another nuclear reactor for Pakistan
Pakistan's increasing reliance on China will be seen as headache for the US, which uses civilian and military aid to gain leverage over Islamabad in the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists.
"It's no secret that this is in the pipeline. We have a power shortfall and this is one of the ways of meeting it," said an official speaking on condition of anonymity.
President Asif Ali Zardari is due in China this week for the opening of the Asian Games. Plans for a fifth atomic energy reactor follow confirmation of a deal to build two 650MW reactors at Chashma, in Punjab province, on top of one civilian reactor which has already been completed and another due to be finished next year.
The US has opposed the plans because Pakistan has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
There are fears that fissile material might fall into the hands of Islamic extremists which are headquartered along the border with Afghanistan.
Last month, the Institute for Science and Security claimed that Pakistan had secretly accelerated the pace of its nuclear weapons programme. The Washington-based nuclear watchdog obtained satellite images showing that a row of cooling towers at Khushab-III reactor had been completed, suggesting the plant could soon begin producing plutonium.
Imtiaz Gul, a political analyst in Islamabad, said confirmation of a fifth reactor had emerged just as President Obama was cementing ties with India – timing that suggested it was a deliberate signal to Washington.
"China is very interested in doing these deals and is willing to sell things that other countries won't so the Pakistanis think they have this leverage over the US, that they have another provider of support," he said.
Abdul Basit, Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: "We have ongoing civil nuclear co-operation with China, in accordance with our international obligations and International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards."
"It's no secret that this is in the pipeline. We have a power shortfall and this is one of the ways of meeting it," said an official speaking on condition of anonymity.
President Asif Ali Zardari is due in China this week for the opening of the Asian Games. Plans for a fifth atomic energy reactor follow confirmation of a deal to build two 650MW reactors at Chashma, in Punjab province, on top of one civilian reactor which has already been completed and another due to be finished next year.
The US has opposed the plans because Pakistan has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
There are fears that fissile material might fall into the hands of Islamic extremists which are headquartered along the border with Afghanistan.
Last month, the Institute for Science and Security claimed that Pakistan had secretly accelerated the pace of its nuclear weapons programme. The Washington-based nuclear watchdog obtained satellite images showing that a row of cooling towers at Khushab-III reactor had been completed, suggesting the plant could soon begin producing plutonium.
Imtiaz Gul, a political analyst in Islamabad, said confirmation of a fifth reactor had emerged just as President Obama was cementing ties with India – timing that suggested it was a deliberate signal to Washington.
"China is very interested in doing these deals and is willing to sell things that other countries won't so the Pakistanis think they have this leverage over the US, that they have another provider of support," he said.
Abdul Basit, Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: "We have ongoing civil nuclear co-operation with China, in accordance with our international obligations and International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards."
Afghanistan: How Well Is the U.S. Really Doing in Kandahar?
Surghar Daily
NATO commanders are boasting of dramatic progress just weeks into the U.S.-led push into Taliban strongholds around Kandahar province. They say the heavily pounded insurgents have fled some areas for good, setting the stage for the Kabul government to finally establish its rule in the region and to initiate reconstruction. These upbeat claims coincide with talk about behind-the-scenes negotiations with the militants, suggesting that for all the fierce hostilities, an endgame is in mind, if not in sight.
But the military's purported gains in the southern war zone do not align with the bleak picture painted by most sources on the ground.
When General David Petraeus assumed command of U.S. and multinational forces in June, he inherited a slow-cooked counterinsurgency strategy that put a priority on protecting Afghans over Taliban body count. There was also deepening skepticism about the war from the American public and President Obama, who declared a summer 2011 timetable to start withdrawing troops. And Petraeus had a deadline: a war review was slated for December, meaning measurable results had to be posted within months, not years.
So while counterinsurgency has remained the stated strategy, military planners have gone back to what they do best: killing insurgents as aggressively as possible, with the aim of dealing a decisive blow to the Taliban in Kandahar, the movement's birthplace and strategic nerve center.
Now, as the fighting season winds down, the coalition's spin machine is in high gear. A host of recent stories have supported the military's assertion that clearing operations in districts surrounding Kandahar are making headway, with some going so far as to say that insurgents have been "routed." These stories tend to be lopsidedly sourced to military and civilian officials. Yet many reports from journalists embedded with troops in the field are at variance with the official assertions.
Most describe a stalemate at best, or even describe the Taliban as having the initiative. Aid organizations, meanwhile, note that civilian casualties in Kandahar are at an all-time high. Thousands have fled their homes en masse. Development projects are at a near standstill.
There's a familiar precedent to all of this. Before the Kandahar offensive, a military-driven public-relations thrust came in advance of the siege of Marjah, a Taliban-held town in central Helmand province's opium-poppy belt. In the weeks ahead of the February operation to oust them, military officials framed the operation as a stepping-stone for the broader push east. With most of the Taliban already long gone, U.S. forces encountered few hiccups in Marjah.
A governor was quickly installed as part of a government-in-a-box strategy that would connect neighboring population centers and take them into Kabul's orbit. But since then, the insurgents have regrouped in Marjah.Nine months on, despite some small improvements — increased commerce, reopened schools — the Taliban still threatens anyone who might cooperate with the Afghan government in Marjah, which has continued to struggle under a replacement governor. Hit-and-run attacks harass U.S. forces there each day.
It is still too early to gauge the impact of operations around Kandahar. As they do every year, insurgents have begun to decamp for the borderlands for the winter — which would bring a decline in violence in any event. Embedded reporting is also limited to narrow snapshots and not the bigger picture. Sometimes, even those glimpses are not available.
In October, for instance, a day before a key operation kicked off in Arghandab district, all media embeds were abruptly cancelled. (The two-week blackout was followed by bold assertions of success.) Some of the secrecy may relate to the ongoing black ops carried out by special-forces units to dismantle the Taliban's leadership structure.Senior military sources insist that on any given day, two to three low- to mid-level commanders are killed, along with as many as 20 to 30 foot soldiers. These figures are impossible to confirm.
In the meantime, NATO commanders have intimated that contacts between Afghan officials and the Taliban are taking place with the U.S. military's consent. But with their efforts overwhelmingly focused on wiping out insurgents, there's a growing consensus this is nothing more than a psychological ploy to confuse the enemy — and one that could backfire.
By targeting Taliban commanders, some say that the coalition risks further atomizing an insurgency that already has many moving parts, leaving less experienced guerrillas to fill the vacuum and extend the fighting. The political deal needed to take troops home could well be pushed further out of reach. At the same time, optimistic reports from Kandahar could create unrealistic expectations among the American public.
If the Taliban remains robust when fighting resumes in the spring, what remains of U.S. popular support may come crashing down. In that case, any exaggeration of the current campaign's progress would be more than misleading. It would be self-defeating.
NATO commanders are boasting of dramatic progress just weeks into the U.S.-led push into Taliban strongholds around Kandahar province. They say the heavily pounded insurgents have fled some areas for good, setting the stage for the Kabul government to finally establish its rule in the region and to initiate reconstruction. These upbeat claims coincide with talk about behind-the-scenes negotiations with the militants, suggesting that for all the fierce hostilities, an endgame is in mind, if not in sight.
But the military's purported gains in the southern war zone do not align with the bleak picture painted by most sources on the ground.
When General David Petraeus assumed command of U.S. and multinational forces in June, he inherited a slow-cooked counterinsurgency strategy that put a priority on protecting Afghans over Taliban body count. There was also deepening skepticism about the war from the American public and President Obama, who declared a summer 2011 timetable to start withdrawing troops. And Petraeus had a deadline: a war review was slated for December, meaning measurable results had to be posted within months, not years.
So while counterinsurgency has remained the stated strategy, military planners have gone back to what they do best: killing insurgents as aggressively as possible, with the aim of dealing a decisive blow to the Taliban in Kandahar, the movement's birthplace and strategic nerve center.
Now, as the fighting season winds down, the coalition's spin machine is in high gear. A host of recent stories have supported the military's assertion that clearing operations in districts surrounding Kandahar are making headway, with some going so far as to say that insurgents have been "routed." These stories tend to be lopsidedly sourced to military and civilian officials. Yet many reports from journalists embedded with troops in the field are at variance with the official assertions.
Most describe a stalemate at best, or even describe the Taliban as having the initiative. Aid organizations, meanwhile, note that civilian casualties in Kandahar are at an all-time high. Thousands have fled their homes en masse. Development projects are at a near standstill.
There's a familiar precedent to all of this. Before the Kandahar offensive, a military-driven public-relations thrust came in advance of the siege of Marjah, a Taliban-held town in central Helmand province's opium-poppy belt. In the weeks ahead of the February operation to oust them, military officials framed the operation as a stepping-stone for the broader push east. With most of the Taliban already long gone, U.S. forces encountered few hiccups in Marjah.
A governor was quickly installed as part of a government-in-a-box strategy that would connect neighboring population centers and take them into Kabul's orbit. But since then, the insurgents have regrouped in Marjah.Nine months on, despite some small improvements — increased commerce, reopened schools — the Taliban still threatens anyone who might cooperate with the Afghan government in Marjah, which has continued to struggle under a replacement governor. Hit-and-run attacks harass U.S. forces there each day.
It is still too early to gauge the impact of operations around Kandahar. As they do every year, insurgents have begun to decamp for the borderlands for the winter — which would bring a decline in violence in any event. Embedded reporting is also limited to narrow snapshots and not the bigger picture. Sometimes, even those glimpses are not available.
In October, for instance, a day before a key operation kicked off in Arghandab district, all media embeds were abruptly cancelled. (The two-week blackout was followed by bold assertions of success.) Some of the secrecy may relate to the ongoing black ops carried out by special-forces units to dismantle the Taliban's leadership structure.Senior military sources insist that on any given day, two to three low- to mid-level commanders are killed, along with as many as 20 to 30 foot soldiers. These figures are impossible to confirm.
In the meantime, NATO commanders have intimated that contacts between Afghan officials and the Taliban are taking place with the U.S. military's consent. But with their efforts overwhelmingly focused on wiping out insurgents, there's a growing consensus this is nothing more than a psychological ploy to confuse the enemy — and one that could backfire.
By targeting Taliban commanders, some say that the coalition risks further atomizing an insurgency that already has many moving parts, leaving less experienced guerrillas to fill the vacuum and extend the fighting. The political deal needed to take troops home could well be pushed further out of reach. At the same time, optimistic reports from Kandahar could create unrealistic expectations among the American public.
If the Taliban remains robust when fighting resumes in the spring, what remains of U.S. popular support may come crashing down. In that case, any exaggeration of the current campaign's progress would be more than misleading. It would be self-defeating.
US readies Afghan police for security handover
On a hillside above the city of Kandahar, a US soldier demonstrates to a group of Afghan police how to apply a tourniquet to a bleeding leg.
"The next thing we're going to go over is what to do if someone is shot in the chest," said the US Military Police officer from the 504th MP Battalion.
Lessons like this one at police sub-station 8, a small, heavily-fortified joint US-Afghan base, are taking place across the country as NATO troops rush to prepare Afghan forces to take responsibility for security nationwide.
The Afghan police have been seen typically as corrupt, incompetent and largely incapable of working unsupervised by US or NATO troops. Huge numbers of recruits leave after a short time because of the risks they face.
But despite the obstacles on a national level, and the sometimes fraught relations between US troops and their Afghan partners, both sides at police sub-station 8 insist that the training is progressing well.
After some Afghan National Police (ANP) officers tried out the techniques demonstrated, the morning session moved on to crime scene procedures.
"This is another thing we can help you with. This will help you prosecute the bad guys in Afghanistan," Private Steven Van Hulle told the group of about 10 policemen as they sat in a courtyard below machine-gun nests.
Nearby, a US military police sergeant took aside four senior officers to lecture them, with the aid of an interpreter, on leadership and the importance of setting an example to their men.
Setting up checkpoints, clearing buildings, patrolling, engaging with the public and marksmanship are the other main areas the training covers.
The police are seen as central to the goal of getting the Afghan authorities to take the lead in the fight against the Taliban, who were ousted after the US-led invasion in late 2001 but who continue to wage a deadly guerrilla war.
There are currently about 80,000 police officers and US and NATO forces hope to bring that number up to 134,000 by October next year, alongside the 170,000 personnel planned for the army by the same date.
US military leaders back the government's plan for the Afghan police and army to assume responsibility for security by 2014, with the timetable for the handover likely to dominate an upcoming NATO summit.
But there is still work to do, despite coalition claims of progress in building the capacity of local forces.
"The Afghan police are the problem and they are the solution to the problem," British Major General Nick Carter said last week before he handed over command of Afghanistan's volatile south to a US counterpart.
American military police here say that the wider problems that afflict the force are not issues at this sub-station.
"We've had a couple of examples where guys have left," said Lieutenant Derick Hoy, one of the MPs running the training, but added that absenteeism was not a major problem.On patrol, the US soldiers put the Afghans at the front so they can engage with local people and encourage them to go to the police station to resolve their problems.The Americans say illiteracy is a problem. Half of the men they are training can neither read nor write, a reflection of the high illiteracy rate in the country as a whole, which is estimated at up to 80 percent.
They hoped to bring in a contractor to provide reading and writing classes for the officers, who earn around 11,000 Afghanis (255 dollars) a month.
"Obviously the education poses a problem. But there are not many things out there (on the streets) that you need to read and write for. Back at the office the NCOs can do the paperwork." said Hoy.
Hamadullah Giagargund, 24, was one of the policemen at the morning session."The most important thing I learned was how to find IEDs," he said, referring to the improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs, which are the Taliban's weapon of choice to kill or maim patrolling security forces.
Giagargund and his classmates all said they were happy with the training, which they said was far better than the basic one-month course they got when they first joined the national force.
"The next thing we're going to go over is what to do if someone is shot in the chest," said the US Military Police officer from the 504th MP Battalion.
Lessons like this one at police sub-station 8, a small, heavily-fortified joint US-Afghan base, are taking place across the country as NATO troops rush to prepare Afghan forces to take responsibility for security nationwide.
The Afghan police have been seen typically as corrupt, incompetent and largely incapable of working unsupervised by US or NATO troops. Huge numbers of recruits leave after a short time because of the risks they face.
But despite the obstacles on a national level, and the sometimes fraught relations between US troops and their Afghan partners, both sides at police sub-station 8 insist that the training is progressing well.
After some Afghan National Police (ANP) officers tried out the techniques demonstrated, the morning session moved on to crime scene procedures.
"This is another thing we can help you with. This will help you prosecute the bad guys in Afghanistan," Private Steven Van Hulle told the group of about 10 policemen as they sat in a courtyard below machine-gun nests.
Nearby, a US military police sergeant took aside four senior officers to lecture them, with the aid of an interpreter, on leadership and the importance of setting an example to their men.
Setting up checkpoints, clearing buildings, patrolling, engaging with the public and marksmanship are the other main areas the training covers.
The police are seen as central to the goal of getting the Afghan authorities to take the lead in the fight against the Taliban, who were ousted after the US-led invasion in late 2001 but who continue to wage a deadly guerrilla war.
There are currently about 80,000 police officers and US and NATO forces hope to bring that number up to 134,000 by October next year, alongside the 170,000 personnel planned for the army by the same date.
US military leaders back the government's plan for the Afghan police and army to assume responsibility for security by 2014, with the timetable for the handover likely to dominate an upcoming NATO summit.
But there is still work to do, despite coalition claims of progress in building the capacity of local forces.
"The Afghan police are the problem and they are the solution to the problem," British Major General Nick Carter said last week before he handed over command of Afghanistan's volatile south to a US counterpart.
American military police here say that the wider problems that afflict the force are not issues at this sub-station.
"We've had a couple of examples where guys have left," said Lieutenant Derick Hoy, one of the MPs running the training, but added that absenteeism was not a major problem.On patrol, the US soldiers put the Afghans at the front so they can engage with local people and encourage them to go to the police station to resolve their problems.The Americans say illiteracy is a problem. Half of the men they are training can neither read nor write, a reflection of the high illiteracy rate in the country as a whole, which is estimated at up to 80 percent.
They hoped to bring in a contractor to provide reading and writing classes for the officers, who earn around 11,000 Afghanis (255 dollars) a month.
"Obviously the education poses a problem. But there are not many things out there (on the streets) that you need to read and write for. Back at the office the NCOs can do the paperwork." said Hoy.
Hamadullah Giagargund, 24, was one of the policemen at the morning session."The most important thing I learned was how to find IEDs," he said, referring to the improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs, which are the Taliban's weapon of choice to kill or maim patrolling security forces.
Giagargund and his classmates all said they were happy with the training, which they said was far better than the basic one-month course they got when they first joined the national force.
Karzai says US should reduce operations' intensity
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the United States must reduce the visibility and intensity of its military operations, especially night raids that fuel anti-American sentiment and could embolden Taliban insurgents.
Karzai's remarks in an interview Saturday with The Washington Post come as the international military coalition has stepped up pressure on insurgents at the same time that the president has set up a peace council in hopes of reconciling with the top echelon of the Taliban.
"The time has come to reduce military operations," Karzai said in the interview. "The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan ... to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life."
Karzai also said he met with one or two "very high" level Taliban leaders about three months ago, but described a peace process in its initial stages — one that amounts to little more than "the exchange of desires for peace." He said, however, that he believes Taliban leader Mullah Omar has been informed of his discussions.
He said the Taliban share his feeling that the nine-year-old war has taken too high a toll on the people of Afghanistan.
"They feel the same as we do here — that too many people are suffering for no reason," Karzai said. "Their own families are suffering."
Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, claims the 30,000 U.S. reinforcements and thousands of troops dispatched to the war this past year have made substantial progress in beating back the insurgency, although the coalition is not claiming victory.
In the past three months, more than 300 insurgent leaders have been captured or killed, more than 850 lower-level militants have been killed and at least 2,170 foot soldiers have been apprehended. NATO officials say the captures are key to crippling insurgent networks.
Karzai said the U.S. should end the rising number of Special Operations forces night raids that aggravate Afghans and could strengthen the Taliban insurgency.
He said he wants American troops off the roads and out of Afghan homes and that the long-term presence of so many foreign soldiers will only make the war worse.
"I don't like it in any manner and the Afghan people don't like these raids in any manner," Karzai said. "We don't like raids in our homes. This is a problem between us and I hope this ends as soon as possible. ... Terrorism is not invading Afghan homes and fighting terrorism is not being intrusive in the daily Afghan life."
Karzai said in the interview that he was speaking out not to criticize the United States but in the belief that candor could improve what he called a "grudging" relationship between the countries, although he said tension had eased and he feels he can talk openly about his feelings. "We don't shout at each other as often as we did before," Karzai said.
White House officials had no immediate comment early Sunday.
Karzai has repeatedly criticized civilian casualties caused by U.S. and NATO operations.
The number of Afghan civilians killed or injured in the war soared 31 percent in the first six months of the year, but Taliban bombings and assassinations were largely responsible for the sharp rise, according to the United Nations. The U.N. said the number of deaths and injuries caused by NATO and Afghan government forces dropped 30 percent compared with the first six months of last year, largely a result of curbs on the use of air power and heavy weapons.
President Barack Obama has set July 2011 as a target to begin drawing down U.S. troops, if conditions allow, but American officials expect troops to be in Afghanistan for some time after that. Karzai has said he wants Afghan security forces to be able to take the lead in protecting and defending the nation by 2014. The mechanics of that transition will be a key topic of a three-day NATO meeting that starts Friday in Lisbon, Portugal.
Karzai's remarks in an interview Saturday with The Washington Post come as the international military coalition has stepped up pressure on insurgents at the same time that the president has set up a peace council in hopes of reconciling with the top echelon of the Taliban.
"The time has come to reduce military operations," Karzai said in the interview. "The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan ... to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life."
Karzai also said he met with one or two "very high" level Taliban leaders about three months ago, but described a peace process in its initial stages — one that amounts to little more than "the exchange of desires for peace." He said, however, that he believes Taliban leader Mullah Omar has been informed of his discussions.
He said the Taliban share his feeling that the nine-year-old war has taken too high a toll on the people of Afghanistan.
"They feel the same as we do here — that too many people are suffering for no reason," Karzai said. "Their own families are suffering."
Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, claims the 30,000 U.S. reinforcements and thousands of troops dispatched to the war this past year have made substantial progress in beating back the insurgency, although the coalition is not claiming victory.
In the past three months, more than 300 insurgent leaders have been captured or killed, more than 850 lower-level militants have been killed and at least 2,170 foot soldiers have been apprehended. NATO officials say the captures are key to crippling insurgent networks.
Karzai said the U.S. should end the rising number of Special Operations forces night raids that aggravate Afghans and could strengthen the Taliban insurgency.
He said he wants American troops off the roads and out of Afghan homes and that the long-term presence of so many foreign soldiers will only make the war worse.
"I don't like it in any manner and the Afghan people don't like these raids in any manner," Karzai said. "We don't like raids in our homes. This is a problem between us and I hope this ends as soon as possible. ... Terrorism is not invading Afghan homes and fighting terrorism is not being intrusive in the daily Afghan life."
Karzai said in the interview that he was speaking out not to criticize the United States but in the belief that candor could improve what he called a "grudging" relationship between the countries, although he said tension had eased and he feels he can talk openly about his feelings. "We don't shout at each other as often as we did before," Karzai said.
White House officials had no immediate comment early Sunday.
Karzai has repeatedly criticized civilian casualties caused by U.S. and NATO operations.
The number of Afghan civilians killed or injured in the war soared 31 percent in the first six months of the year, but Taliban bombings and assassinations were largely responsible for the sharp rise, according to the United Nations. The U.N. said the number of deaths and injuries caused by NATO and Afghan government forces dropped 30 percent compared with the first six months of last year, largely a result of curbs on the use of air power and heavy weapons.
President Barack Obama has set July 2011 as a target to begin drawing down U.S. troops, if conditions allow, but American officials expect troops to be in Afghanistan for some time after that. Karzai has said he wants Afghan security forces to be able to take the lead in protecting and defending the nation by 2014. The mechanics of that transition will be a key topic of a three-day NATO meeting that starts Friday in Lisbon, Portugal.
Asfandyar says he is not going to quit active politics
Awami National Party (ANP) leader Asfandyar Wali Khan on Saturday dismissed media reports that he was resigning from “active politics” due to security and health issues.
Addressing a press conference at the Chief Minister’s House after chairing the party’s central working committee meeting, he said he would not leave active politics until achieving his goals.
He dispelled the media reports that the ANP was likely to give him the ‘rehbar status’ to keep him off the active politics over security threats and health conditions.
Asfandyar Wali had narrowly survived a suicide attack at his Wali Bagh residence on October 2, 2008. He was immediately moved out and security around him stepped up to guard him against any possible attack.
The idea of keeping him off active politics, according to party sources, was aimed at “securing” him. “That idea could not win support from the central committee meeting on Friday,” the sources said.
The party had accorded ‘rehbar status’ to late Khan Abdul Wali Khan when his health deteriorated and made his son Asfandyar Wali Khan the party president.
“I have achieved many of the party goals, for example, renaming the province and provincial rights (under the 18th Amendment). However, I will continue to play my role as long as I have not achieved remaining goals, such as peace,” the nationalist leader declared.
Asfandyar, meanwhile, was categorical that kidnapping of his cousin and vice-chancellor of Islamia College University, Dr Ajaml Khan, would not make him rethink over the war against militancy. “No way... I will not back out form this war,” he said while admitting that the kidnappers might try to “blackmail” him over the demands for the release of kidnapped educationist. In the second video this week, the kidnappers set November 20 as new deadline to let the government consider their demands for Dr Ajmal’s release. However, the provincial government says it received no demands yet.
They central ANP president aired the party’s concerns on the introduction of new tax to support the floods victims. “We support broadening tax base. But we cannot support the move to burden the taxpayers more,” he announced.
Asfandyar Wali repeated the ANP demand for operation in Karachi to purge the metropolitan city of weapons. “You need operation to deweaponise the city,” he said, adding that peaceful Karachi “is in interest of everyone and Karachi does not belong to one ethnic group”.
Addressing a press conference at the Chief Minister’s House after chairing the party’s central working committee meeting, he said he would not leave active politics until achieving his goals.
He dispelled the media reports that the ANP was likely to give him the ‘rehbar status’ to keep him off the active politics over security threats and health conditions.
Asfandyar Wali had narrowly survived a suicide attack at his Wali Bagh residence on October 2, 2008. He was immediately moved out and security around him stepped up to guard him against any possible attack.
The idea of keeping him off active politics, according to party sources, was aimed at “securing” him. “That idea could not win support from the central committee meeting on Friday,” the sources said.
The party had accorded ‘rehbar status’ to late Khan Abdul Wali Khan when his health deteriorated and made his son Asfandyar Wali Khan the party president.
“I have achieved many of the party goals, for example, renaming the province and provincial rights (under the 18th Amendment). However, I will continue to play my role as long as I have not achieved remaining goals, such as peace,” the nationalist leader declared.
Asfandyar, meanwhile, was categorical that kidnapping of his cousin and vice-chancellor of Islamia College University, Dr Ajaml Khan, would not make him rethink over the war against militancy. “No way... I will not back out form this war,” he said while admitting that the kidnappers might try to “blackmail” him over the demands for the release of kidnapped educationist. In the second video this week, the kidnappers set November 20 as new deadline to let the government consider their demands for Dr Ajmal’s release. However, the provincial government says it received no demands yet.
They central ANP president aired the party’s concerns on the introduction of new tax to support the floods victims. “We support broadening tax base. But we cannot support the move to burden the taxpayers more,” he announced.
Asfandyar Wali repeated the ANP demand for operation in Karachi to purge the metropolitan city of weapons. “You need operation to deweaponise the city,” he said, adding that peaceful Karachi “is in interest of everyone and Karachi does not belong to one ethnic group”.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Children, Not Adults, Spread Whooping Cough
A new study on whooping cough outbreaks and how social patterns affect transmission suggests that blanket vaccination campaigns that target teens and adults could be a waste of time, as children largely spread the disease among themselves.
The findings contradict the common idea that infected adults are behind outbreaks of whooping cough, a contagious disease caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis.
A US advisory panel last month recommended that adults over 65 get a booster vaccine for tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough to protect infants that are too young to be vaccinated.
But according to research by Pejman Rohani and colleagues at the University of Michigan, older people may not be the culprit.
Whooping cough infects 30 to 50 million people a year around the world and kills around 300,000, mostly children in developing countries.
Developed countries have regular outbreaks, including one in California that has affected more than 6,000 people and killed at least 10 infants, said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The researchers used a situation that occurred in Sweden to study the effects of social interactions around the spread of whooping cough.
Sweden stopped its whooping cough vaccination program in 1979 because of safety concerns, and did not resume routine vaccinations for 17 years. But during that time, health officials continued to track cases of whooping cough by age group.
“We took advantage of an unplanned natural experiment,” Rohani told Reuters in a telephone interview.
The team compared this to a 2008 study of more than 7,000 people from eight European countries that tracked social contacts by age. They used a computer model to see how social contacts affected the spread of the disease.
The team discovered that once Sweden resumed vaccinating young children, there was a big drop in the number of whooping cough cases in all age groups except teenagers. They found that with social mixing patterns, children mostly interact with other children and are unlikely to be infected by adults.
“Infant immunization produces a protective effect for other children, who are likely to be mixing with other infants,” the team wrote. Infected adults did not play a big role in spreading the disease to children.
The UM study shows that, overall, “the role of adults in transmission is minimal,” and that blanket booster-vaccinations of adults would unlikely be an efficient strategy for controlling whooping cough, said Aaron King, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology with a joint appointment in mathematics, who was part of the study.
The researchers stressed that because the study used incidence data from Sweden, results could vary with any incidences in the United States, where infant vaccination compliance rates are lower and the population is much more diverse. “We need similar analyses for the United States,” said Rohani.
The study makes two strong conclusions, King said. “The first point is that we see strong evidence for the efficacy of vaccination directed at children when compliance is high. The second is that better knowledge of actual contact patterns among age groups is crucial for the design of more effective and economical vaccination strategies.”
Rohani said more studies would need to be conducted to explain how social networks affect regional disease outbreaks. But looking at social networks is another way to better understand how infectious diseases are spread and could save time and the expense of mass vaccinations that may not work.
The findings from the study were published Thursday in the journal Science.
The findings contradict the common idea that infected adults are behind outbreaks of whooping cough, a contagious disease caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis.
A US advisory panel last month recommended that adults over 65 get a booster vaccine for tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough to protect infants that are too young to be vaccinated.
But according to research by Pejman Rohani and colleagues at the University of Michigan, older people may not be the culprit.
Whooping cough infects 30 to 50 million people a year around the world and kills around 300,000, mostly children in developing countries.
Developed countries have regular outbreaks, including one in California that has affected more than 6,000 people and killed at least 10 infants, said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The researchers used a situation that occurred in Sweden to study the effects of social interactions around the spread of whooping cough.
Sweden stopped its whooping cough vaccination program in 1979 because of safety concerns, and did not resume routine vaccinations for 17 years. But during that time, health officials continued to track cases of whooping cough by age group.
“We took advantage of an unplanned natural experiment,” Rohani told Reuters in a telephone interview.
The team compared this to a 2008 study of more than 7,000 people from eight European countries that tracked social contacts by age. They used a computer model to see how social contacts affected the spread of the disease.
The team discovered that once Sweden resumed vaccinating young children, there was a big drop in the number of whooping cough cases in all age groups except teenagers. They found that with social mixing patterns, children mostly interact with other children and are unlikely to be infected by adults.
“Infant immunization produces a protective effect for other children, who are likely to be mixing with other infants,” the team wrote. Infected adults did not play a big role in spreading the disease to children.
The UM study shows that, overall, “the role of adults in transmission is minimal,” and that blanket booster-vaccinations of adults would unlikely be an efficient strategy for controlling whooping cough, said Aaron King, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology with a joint appointment in mathematics, who was part of the study.
The researchers stressed that because the study used incidence data from Sweden, results could vary with any incidences in the United States, where infant vaccination compliance rates are lower and the population is much more diverse. “We need similar analyses for the United States,” said Rohani.
The study makes two strong conclusions, King said. “The first point is that we see strong evidence for the efficacy of vaccination directed at children when compliance is high. The second is that better knowledge of actual contact patterns among age groups is crucial for the design of more effective and economical vaccination strategies.”
Rohani said more studies would need to be conducted to explain how social networks affect regional disease outbreaks. But looking at social networks is another way to better understand how infectious diseases are spread and could save time and the expense of mass vaccinations that may not work.
The findings from the study were published Thursday in the journal Science.
G20 leaders agree: Let’s put off decisions until next year
The world’s biggest economies avoided a breakdown in cooperation at a G20 summit here by agreeing to put off decisions on issues dividing leading countries until next year.
“These things didn’t happen overnight, they’re not going to be fixed overnight,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said of the intractable global trade and investment patterns that are hampering economic growth and pitting fast-growing emerging economies against debt-burdened industrial nations.Leaders of the G20, which took shape in 2008 to fight the recession, pledged to address these irritants, but failed to agree on a mutually-acceptable system for identifying economic imbalances that countries must fix for the good of the international economy. Canada will lead a G20 working group that will try in 2011 to set out guidelines that member nations must live up to.“I think it’s fair to say we did not resolve those issues here,” said Harper, whose mood after the two-day meeting in Seoul was decidedly less buoyant than after leaders agreed in Toronto in June to cooperate on economic policy in the wake of the recession.
“We are keeping things at least on a path that is viable,” he told reporters. But “moving forward, G20 credibility does depend on showing results and achieving concrete action.”
Underneath the tensions that emerged in Seoul are disagreements over how to address global imbalances in trade and investment flows that contributed to the recent recession. The United States is looking to exporting nations like China to adjust their economic policies to increase domestic demand at home rather than relying on the American consumer. In particular, U.S. President Barack Obama wants China to scrap its policy of keeping its currency, the yuan, artificially low on exchange markets, which the U.S. says hurts American exporters by giving Chinese companies an unfair price advantage.
G20 leaders agreed on the need for countries to refrain from keeping their currencies at artificially low rates but there was no mechanism to back up the principle.
Obama welcomed the leaders’ call for joint action but again implored China to let its currency float in keeping with market forces. “China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep (its currency) undervalued,” Obama said at a news conference. He said the communiqué reflected the G20’s belief that “letting currencies reflect market fundamentals. . . is the best way to assure that everybody benefits from trade rather than just some” and he expressed hope that China would gradually reform its currency policy.
China has so far dismissed Obama’s demands, saying the U.S. needs to get its own financial house in order to cure its economic woes.
Without the pressure of an impending global economic calamity, G20 nations have found it harder to put aside their individual differences and ambitions to pursue strategies of mutual benefit. “Risks remain,” the joint communiqué said. “Some of us are experiencing strong growth, while others face high levels of unemployment and sluggish recovery. Uneven growth and widening imbalances are fuelling the temptation to diverge from global solutions into uncoordinated actions.”
There are fears that aggressive use of currency settings by countries trying to improve their export sales abroad could lead to a currency war that could badly hurt the world economy.
The G20 did agree on banking reforms intended to prevent a financial collapse such as the one that spawned the recent recession. And leaders threw their weight behind efforts to reduce international trade barriers under the long-stalled Doha round of global trade negotiations.
At his wrap-up news conference here, Harper said that he does not need the approval of Parliament to extend Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan because it will be a training mission not involving combat.
“My position is, if you are going to put troops into combat, into a war situation, I do think, for the sake of legitimacy. . . the government does require the support of Parliament. But when we’re talking simply about technical or training missions, I think that is something the executive can do on its own,” he told reporters. He noted, however, that the Liberals have indicated that they favour a training mission. “If they have any specific ideas they want to share, I’m not resistant to having debates on that matter in the House of Commons,” Harper added.
“These things didn’t happen overnight, they’re not going to be fixed overnight,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said of the intractable global trade and investment patterns that are hampering economic growth and pitting fast-growing emerging economies against debt-burdened industrial nations.Leaders of the G20, which took shape in 2008 to fight the recession, pledged to address these irritants, but failed to agree on a mutually-acceptable system for identifying economic imbalances that countries must fix for the good of the international economy. Canada will lead a G20 working group that will try in 2011 to set out guidelines that member nations must live up to.“I think it’s fair to say we did not resolve those issues here,” said Harper, whose mood after the two-day meeting in Seoul was decidedly less buoyant than after leaders agreed in Toronto in June to cooperate on economic policy in the wake of the recession.
“We are keeping things at least on a path that is viable,” he told reporters. But “moving forward, G20 credibility does depend on showing results and achieving concrete action.”
Underneath the tensions that emerged in Seoul are disagreements over how to address global imbalances in trade and investment flows that contributed to the recent recession. The United States is looking to exporting nations like China to adjust their economic policies to increase domestic demand at home rather than relying on the American consumer. In particular, U.S. President Barack Obama wants China to scrap its policy of keeping its currency, the yuan, artificially low on exchange markets, which the U.S. says hurts American exporters by giving Chinese companies an unfair price advantage.
G20 leaders agreed on the need for countries to refrain from keeping their currencies at artificially low rates but there was no mechanism to back up the principle.
Obama welcomed the leaders’ call for joint action but again implored China to let its currency float in keeping with market forces. “China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep (its currency) undervalued,” Obama said at a news conference. He said the communiqué reflected the G20’s belief that “letting currencies reflect market fundamentals. . . is the best way to assure that everybody benefits from trade rather than just some” and he expressed hope that China would gradually reform its currency policy.
China has so far dismissed Obama’s demands, saying the U.S. needs to get its own financial house in order to cure its economic woes.
Without the pressure of an impending global economic calamity, G20 nations have found it harder to put aside their individual differences and ambitions to pursue strategies of mutual benefit. “Risks remain,” the joint communiqué said. “Some of us are experiencing strong growth, while others face high levels of unemployment and sluggish recovery. Uneven growth and widening imbalances are fuelling the temptation to diverge from global solutions into uncoordinated actions.”
There are fears that aggressive use of currency settings by countries trying to improve their export sales abroad could lead to a currency war that could badly hurt the world economy.
The G20 did agree on banking reforms intended to prevent a financial collapse such as the one that spawned the recent recession. And leaders threw their weight behind efforts to reduce international trade barriers under the long-stalled Doha round of global trade negotiations.
At his wrap-up news conference here, Harper said that he does not need the approval of Parliament to extend Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan because it will be a training mission not involving combat.
“My position is, if you are going to put troops into combat, into a war situation, I do think, for the sake of legitimacy. . . the government does require the support of Parliament. But when we’re talking simply about technical or training missions, I think that is something the executive can do on its own,” he told reporters. He noted, however, that the Liberals have indicated that they favour a training mission. “If they have any specific ideas they want to share, I’m not resistant to having debates on that matter in the House of Commons,” Harper added.
Pakistani stocks, o/n rates end lower; rupee weakens
Pakistani stocks ended lower on Friday following a suicide car bomb attack the previous day in the country's commercial hub, dealers said.
At least 15 people were killed and 100 injured in a suspected Taliban suicide car bomb attack on Thursday at a security compound in Karachi where militants were held. [ID:nLDE6AA21L]
The Karachi Stock Exchange's benchmark 100-share index .KSE ended 0.29 percent, or 31.22 points, lower at 10,874.02.
Volume fell to 97.52 million shares, compared with 125.22 million traded on Thursday.
"The blast weighed on the market. However, the prospect of a potential approval of a leveraged product got some local institutions to step in to support the market towards the end," said Asad Iqbal, chief investment officer at Faysal Asset Management Ltd.
The approval of margin buying is expected this month.
In the currency market, the rupee PKR= ended weaker at 85.63/70 to the dollar, compared with Thursday's close of 85.37/42 due to higher imports payments, especially of oil, dealers said.
In the money market, overnight rates fell to end between 11.5 percent and 12 percent, compared with Thursday's close of 13 percent despite scheduled outflows of 9.3 billion rupees as dealers said there was increased liquidity in the interbank market.
Dealers said they were waiting for the treasury bill auction which is scheduled for Nov. 15, instead of Nov. 17 due to holidays
At least 15 people were killed and 100 injured in a suspected Taliban suicide car bomb attack on Thursday at a security compound in Karachi where militants were held. [ID:nLDE6AA21L]
The Karachi Stock Exchange's benchmark 100-share index .KSE ended 0.29 percent, or 31.22 points, lower at 10,874.02.
Volume fell to 97.52 million shares, compared with 125.22 million traded on Thursday.
"The blast weighed on the market. However, the prospect of a potential approval of a leveraged product got some local institutions to step in to support the market towards the end," said Asad Iqbal, chief investment officer at Faysal Asset Management Ltd.
The approval of margin buying is expected this month.
In the currency market, the rupee PKR= ended weaker at 85.63/70 to the dollar, compared with Thursday's close of 85.37/42 due to higher imports payments, especially of oil, dealers said.
In the money market, overnight rates fell to end between 11.5 percent and 12 percent, compared with Thursday's close of 13 percent despite scheduled outflows of 9.3 billion rupees as dealers said there was increased liquidity in the interbank market.
Dealers said they were waiting for the treasury bill auction which is scheduled for Nov. 15, instead of Nov. 17 due to holidays
Pakistani stocks, o/n rates end lower; rupee weakens
Pakistani stocks ended lower on Friday following a suicide car bomb attack the previous day in the country's commercial hub, dealers said.
At least 15 people were killed and 100 injured in a suspected Taliban suicide car bomb attack on Thursday at a security compound in Karachi where militants were held. [ID:nLDE6AA21L]
The Karachi Stock Exchange's benchmark 100-share index .KSE ended 0.29 percent, or 31.22 points, lower at 10,874.02.
Volume fell to 97.52 million shares, compared with 125.22 million traded on Thursday.
"The blast weighed on the market. However, the prospect of a potential approval of a leveraged product got some local institutions to step in to support the market towards the end," said Asad Iqbal, chief investment officer at Faysal Asset Management Ltd.
The approval of margin buying is expected this month.
In the currency market, the rupee PKR= ended weaker at 85.63/70 to the dollar, compared with Thursday's close of 85.37/42 due to higher imports payments, especially of oil, dealers said.
In the money market, overnight rates fell to end between 11.5 percent and 12 percent, compared with Thursday's close of 13 percent despite scheduled outflows of 9.3 billion rupees as dealers said there was increased liquidity in the interbank market.
Dealers said they were waiting for the treasury bill auction which is scheduled for Nov. 15, instead of Nov. 17 due to holidays
At least 15 people were killed and 100 injured in a suspected Taliban suicide car bomb attack on Thursday at a security compound in Karachi where militants were held. [ID:nLDE6AA21L]
The Karachi Stock Exchange's benchmark 100-share index .KSE ended 0.29 percent, or 31.22 points, lower at 10,874.02.
Volume fell to 97.52 million shares, compared with 125.22 million traded on Thursday.
"The blast weighed on the market. However, the prospect of a potential approval of a leveraged product got some local institutions to step in to support the market towards the end," said Asad Iqbal, chief investment officer at Faysal Asset Management Ltd.
The approval of margin buying is expected this month.
In the currency market, the rupee PKR= ended weaker at 85.63/70 to the dollar, compared with Thursday's close of 85.37/42 due to higher imports payments, especially of oil, dealers said.
In the money market, overnight rates fell to end between 11.5 percent and 12 percent, compared with Thursday's close of 13 percent despite scheduled outflows of 9.3 billion rupees as dealers said there was increased liquidity in the interbank market.
Dealers said they were waiting for the treasury bill auction which is scheduled for Nov. 15, instead of Nov. 17 due to holidays
Obama: Extend tax cuts for middle class, not the wealthy
President Obama said today his top priority is to extend the George W. Bush tax cuts for middle class Americans, and he will talk with Republicans next week about what to do with the tax rates for wealthier Americans."I continue to believe that extending permanently the upper-income tax cuts would be a mistake and that we can't afford it," Obama told reporters at the G-20 summit in Seoul, South Korea. "And my hope is, is that somewhere in between there we can find some sort of solution."
He added: "I'm not going to negotiate here in Seoul. My job is to negotiate back in Washington with Republican and Democratic leaders."
The tax cuts expire at the end of the year, and are the top priority of the lame duck Congress that meets next week.Obama said the Bush tax cuts should lapse for individuals who make more than $200,000 a year and couples who make more than $250,000.
Republicans, including incoming House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, say no one's taxes should be increased in a bad economy, and that many wealthy people also create jobs.
Obama and aides have said they oppose a "permanent" extension of tax cuts for the wealthy, suggesting he may be open to a temporary extension.
That possibility has angered some of Obama's liberal supporters.
"The White House and congressional leaders need to say we are scheduling one vote, one vote only, and that vote is on renewing the middle class tax cuts," said Adam Green, co-founder, Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "And if Republicans want to oppose tax cuts for 98% of Americans, we dare them to and will pummel them politically if they do. That's how you fight and put Republicans on defense."
In Seoul, Obama said his top goal is "to make sure that taxes don't go up for middle-class families" next year, "not only because they need relief after having gone through a horrendous recession, but also because it would be bad for the economy."
He added: "I'm not going to negotiate here in Seoul. My job is to negotiate back in Washington with Republican and Democratic leaders."
The tax cuts expire at the end of the year, and are the top priority of the lame duck Congress that meets next week.Obama said the Bush tax cuts should lapse for individuals who make more than $200,000 a year and couples who make more than $250,000.
Republicans, including incoming House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, say no one's taxes should be increased in a bad economy, and that many wealthy people also create jobs.
Obama and aides have said they oppose a "permanent" extension of tax cuts for the wealthy, suggesting he may be open to a temporary extension.
That possibility has angered some of Obama's liberal supporters.
"The White House and congressional leaders need to say we are scheduling one vote, one vote only, and that vote is on renewing the middle class tax cuts," said Adam Green, co-founder, Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "And if Republicans want to oppose tax cuts for 98% of Americans, we dare them to and will pummel them politically if they do. That's how you fight and put Republicans on defense."
In Seoul, Obama said his top goal is "to make sure that taxes don't go up for middle-class families" next year, "not only because they need relief after having gone through a horrendous recession, but also because it would be bad for the economy."
Obama: Extend tax cuts for middle class, not the wealthy
President Obama said today his top priority is to extend the George W. Bush tax cuts for middle class Americans, and he will talk with Republicans next week about what to do with the tax rates for wealthier Americans."I continue to believe that extending permanently the upper-income tax cuts would be a mistake and that we can't afford it," Obama told reporters at the G-20 summit in Seoul, South Korea. "And my hope is, is that somewhere in between there we can find some sort of solution."
He added: "I'm not going to negotiate here in Seoul. My job is to negotiate back in Washington with Republican and Democratic leaders."
The tax cuts expire at the end of the year, and are the top priority of the lame duck Congress that meets next week.Obama said the Bush tax cuts should lapse for individuals who make more than $200,000 a year and couples who make more than $250,000.
Republicans, including incoming House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, say no one's taxes should be increased in a bad economy, and that many wealthy people also create jobs.
Obama and aides have said they oppose a "permanent" extension of tax cuts for the wealthy, suggesting he may be open to a temporary extension.
That possibility has angered some of Obama's liberal supporters.
"The White House and congressional leaders need to say we are scheduling one vote, one vote only, and that vote is on renewing the middle class tax cuts," said Adam Green, co-founder, Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "And if Republicans want to oppose tax cuts for 98% of Americans, we dare them to and will pummel them politically if they do. That's how you fight and put Republicans on defense."
In Seoul, Obama said his top goal is "to make sure that taxes don't go up for middle-class families" next year, "not only because they need relief after having gone through a horrendous recession, but also because it would be bad for the economy."
He added: "I'm not going to negotiate here in Seoul. My job is to negotiate back in Washington with Republican and Democratic leaders."
The tax cuts expire at the end of the year, and are the top priority of the lame duck Congress that meets next week.Obama said the Bush tax cuts should lapse for individuals who make more than $200,000 a year and couples who make more than $250,000.
Republicans, including incoming House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, say no one's taxes should be increased in a bad economy, and that many wealthy people also create jobs.
Obama and aides have said they oppose a "permanent" extension of tax cuts for the wealthy, suggesting he may be open to a temporary extension.
That possibility has angered some of Obama's liberal supporters.
"The White House and congressional leaders need to say we are scheduling one vote, one vote only, and that vote is on renewing the middle class tax cuts," said Adam Green, co-founder, Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "And if Republicans want to oppose tax cuts for 98% of Americans, we dare them to and will pummel them politically if they do. That's how you fight and put Republicans on defense."
In Seoul, Obama said his top goal is "to make sure that taxes don't go up for middle-class families" next year, "not only because they need relief after having gone through a horrendous recession, but also because it would be bad for the economy."
Taliban, military attacks in deadly lockstep
Pakistan's reluctance to mount another major offensive against the Taliban may be due to its fear of equally deadly reprisals by the militants, which erode the government's credibility among its people, analysts say.
Last year, Pakistan launched two major offensives against militants linked to al Qaeda and Taliban in the northwest bordering Afghanistan and the United States has been pushing it to mount another one in their last bastion, North Waziristan.
North Waziristan is a major base for Afghan militants fighting Western forces across the border which critics say Pakistan sees as a bargaining chip for any eventual solution of the Afghan problem once U.S. troops leave.
But analysts say reprisal attacks by militants would be more lethal if the military goes into North Waziristan.
"There would definitely be more retaliation if they go into North Waziristan because the strongest militant groups are sitting there and this is also a factor of reluctance to launch operation there," security and political analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said.
Violent reprisal attacks by militants have taken a heavy toll on civilian lives and they sap what scant support an alliance with the United States against Islamist militants exists in Pakistan.
More than 2,200 people have been killed in big militant attacks across Pakistan in the past three years and militants tend to intensify such attacks whenever the military mounts big offensives on their sanctuaries.
"Their retaliation is in proportion to the attacks and operations against them. If you are launching big operations against them, then they will launch big attacks," said Rahimullah Yusufzai, an expert on tribal and militant affairs.
Big military offensives in the northwest have almost halted after Pakistan deployed tens of thousands of troops for relief efforts during August's devastating floods, leading to a relative lull in militant attacks since then.
But a new bout of such attacks appears to have started in recent days.
At least 15 people were killed in a massive car bomb attack on the office of a police investigating agency in Karachi on Thursday while at least 71 people were killed in attacks on two mosques near the northwestern city of Peshawar last week.
The latest attacks came amid worries among militants that a fresh offensive in North Waziristan is imminent.
Hafiz Gul Bahadur, the main Taliban commander in North Waziristan, last month warned of an "endless war" if an operation was launched in his power base.
Pakistani officials say they will go into North Waziristan on their own timing, but they add an offensive in the region seems to have become inevitable.
Last year, Pakistan launched two major offensives against militants linked to al Qaeda and Taliban in the northwest bordering Afghanistan and the United States has been pushing it to mount another one in their last bastion, North Waziristan.
North Waziristan is a major base for Afghan militants fighting Western forces across the border which critics say Pakistan sees as a bargaining chip for any eventual solution of the Afghan problem once U.S. troops leave.
But analysts say reprisal attacks by militants would be more lethal if the military goes into North Waziristan.
"There would definitely be more retaliation if they go into North Waziristan because the strongest militant groups are sitting there and this is also a factor of reluctance to launch operation there," security and political analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said.
Violent reprisal attacks by militants have taken a heavy toll on civilian lives and they sap what scant support an alliance with the United States against Islamist militants exists in Pakistan.
More than 2,200 people have been killed in big militant attacks across Pakistan in the past three years and militants tend to intensify such attacks whenever the military mounts big offensives on their sanctuaries.
"Their retaliation is in proportion to the attacks and operations against them. If you are launching big operations against them, then they will launch big attacks," said Rahimullah Yusufzai, an expert on tribal and militant affairs.
Big military offensives in the northwest have almost halted after Pakistan deployed tens of thousands of troops for relief efforts during August's devastating floods, leading to a relative lull in militant attacks since then.
But a new bout of such attacks appears to have started in recent days.
At least 15 people were killed in a massive car bomb attack on the office of a police investigating agency in Karachi on Thursday while at least 71 people were killed in attacks on two mosques near the northwestern city of Peshawar last week.
The latest attacks came amid worries among militants that a fresh offensive in North Waziristan is imminent.
Hafiz Gul Bahadur, the main Taliban commander in North Waziristan, last month warned of an "endless war" if an operation was launched in his power base.
Pakistani officials say they will go into North Waziristan on their own timing, but they add an offensive in the region seems to have become inevitable.
Bomb stokes fears Islamists expanding in Pakistan
Pakistan on Friday accused Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked bombers of attacking police in Karachi, stoking fears that Islamist networks are expanding their fight in the country's economic capital.
Gunmen rode up to the Crime Investigations Department (CID), used to detain terror suspects, on Thursday evening, exchanged fire with police and detonated a truck packed with explosives.
The attack killed up to 18 people and damaged the building in Karachi's most fortified downtown area, near government buildings, the US Consulate, five-star hotels frequented by Westerners and high-rise company offices.
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) swiftly claimed responsibility, with spokesman Azam Tariq telling AFP from an undisclosed location that the attack was to avenge "the arrest and torture" of his comrades.
But Interior Minister Rehman Malik blamed Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, the Al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked extremist group notorious for attacking Shiite Muslims and with its roots in the central province of Punjab, not the northwest.
"Lashkar-i-Jhangvi is behind the attack on CID building at Karachi," he told reporters in Islamabad on Friday.
Karachi police said that activists from Jhangvi and TTP had been rounded up in recent weeks.
"We detained at least 10 suspects from the bomb site and the nearby impoverished neighbourhoods," one security official told AFP.
"We think they have links with TTP and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi.
"We have arrested quite a large number of suspects in the last few months from Karachi and it shows that these groups have penetrated into the city. It seems as though these people have gained strength in Karachi."
The teeming city, with a population of 16 million, is politically tense and steeped in rivalries between the Urdu-speaking majority and an influx of ethnic Pashtuns from the northwest, which has been hit by Taliban insurgency.
But while outbreaks of political violence have killed more than 150 people this year and extremists have targeted Shiite and Sufi religious gatherings, attacks on government security forces in Karachi have been rare.
The significance is not to be underestimated. Karachi is Pakistan's economic hub, home to its stock exchange and lifeline for a depressed economy wilting under inflation and stagnating foreign investment.
It has further attracted attention from Islamist militants as the Arabian Sea port where NATO supplies dock to be trucked overland to support the more than 150,000 US-led troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Pakistani analysts said militant organisations had regrouped and were capable of dragging government forces into urban guerrilla warfare.
"For the Pakistani state, it is going to be kind of urban guerrilla warfare if they want to eliminate these groups," said security analyst Hasan Askari.
"They're not in a position to overwhelm the state, but they are capable of sudden attacks and causing instability."
The United States frequently calls on Pakistan to step up the fight against extremists that it says are fuelling the war in Afghanistan.
Pakistan flatly denies US suggestions it is not doing enough to tackle Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants who have carved out strongholds in the northwest and last year inched closer to the capital Islamabad.
According to Pakistani military statistics, 2,421 army and paramilitary soldiers were killed in fighting from 2002 until April this year.
Bombings across the country have killed more than 3,800 people since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad three years ago.
A Pakistani intelligence official told AFP there were two Jhangvi factions in Karachi, one allied to TTP that carries out bomb attacks and kidnappings, and another focused on killing Shiites.
"It seems as though TTP and its allied LJ group were involved in yesterday's attack," the official said.
"Some important security buildings in Karachi were their targets and this CID office had been receiving threats for quite some time."
Gunmen rode up to the Crime Investigations Department (CID), used to detain terror suspects, on Thursday evening, exchanged fire with police and detonated a truck packed with explosives.
The attack killed up to 18 people and damaged the building in Karachi's most fortified downtown area, near government buildings, the US Consulate, five-star hotels frequented by Westerners and high-rise company offices.
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) swiftly claimed responsibility, with spokesman Azam Tariq telling AFP from an undisclosed location that the attack was to avenge "the arrest and torture" of his comrades.
But Interior Minister Rehman Malik blamed Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, the Al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked extremist group notorious for attacking Shiite Muslims and with its roots in the central province of Punjab, not the northwest.
"Lashkar-i-Jhangvi is behind the attack on CID building at Karachi," he told reporters in Islamabad on Friday.
Karachi police said that activists from Jhangvi and TTP had been rounded up in recent weeks.
"We detained at least 10 suspects from the bomb site and the nearby impoverished neighbourhoods," one security official told AFP.
"We think they have links with TTP and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi.
"We have arrested quite a large number of suspects in the last few months from Karachi and it shows that these groups have penetrated into the city. It seems as though these people have gained strength in Karachi."
The teeming city, with a population of 16 million, is politically tense and steeped in rivalries between the Urdu-speaking majority and an influx of ethnic Pashtuns from the northwest, which has been hit by Taliban insurgency.
But while outbreaks of political violence have killed more than 150 people this year and extremists have targeted Shiite and Sufi religious gatherings, attacks on government security forces in Karachi have been rare.
The significance is not to be underestimated. Karachi is Pakistan's economic hub, home to its stock exchange and lifeline for a depressed economy wilting under inflation and stagnating foreign investment.
It has further attracted attention from Islamist militants as the Arabian Sea port where NATO supplies dock to be trucked overland to support the more than 150,000 US-led troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Pakistani analysts said militant organisations had regrouped and were capable of dragging government forces into urban guerrilla warfare.
"For the Pakistani state, it is going to be kind of urban guerrilla warfare if they want to eliminate these groups," said security analyst Hasan Askari.
"They're not in a position to overwhelm the state, but they are capable of sudden attacks and causing instability."
The United States frequently calls on Pakistan to step up the fight against extremists that it says are fuelling the war in Afghanistan.
Pakistan flatly denies US suggestions it is not doing enough to tackle Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants who have carved out strongholds in the northwest and last year inched closer to the capital Islamabad.
According to Pakistani military statistics, 2,421 army and paramilitary soldiers were killed in fighting from 2002 until April this year.
Bombings across the country have killed more than 3,800 people since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad three years ago.
A Pakistani intelligence official told AFP there were two Jhangvi factions in Karachi, one allied to TTP that carries out bomb attacks and kidnappings, and another focused on killing Shiites.
"It seems as though TTP and its allied LJ group were involved in yesterday's attack," the official said.
"Some important security buildings in Karachi were their targets and this CID office had been receiving threats for quite some time."
Pakistan bomb shows militant reach
Islamist militants who attacked a police facility in the heart of Pakistan's largest city were attempting to free comrades they believed were detained there, a senior minister said Friday.
The coordinated assault late Thursday in Karachi, using a car bomb and guns far from Taliban and al-Qaida heartlands along the Afghan border, showed the ability of militants to strike back despite being hit by U.S. drone strikes and Pakistani army operations.
A gang of around six gunmen managed to penetrate a high-security area of Karachi that is home to the U.S Consulate, two luxury hotels and the offices of regional leaders. They opened fire on the offices of the Crime Investigation Department before detonating a huge car bomb that leveled the building and others nearby.
The police offices housed a detention facility that was believed to be holding criminals.
The CID takes the lead in hunting down terrorists in Karachi. Earlier this week, the agency arrested six members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an al-Qaida linked group blamed for several high profile attacks in recent years. The suspects were presented before a court earlier Thursday.
"The terrorists were well prepared and they had came here to rescue their associates. But under a strategy, we had not kept those men at this building. So their plan failed," said Qaim Ali Shah, the chief minister of Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital.
He did not say how he knew that the gang was attempting a rescue and not simply attacking the building, the type of strike that militants in Pakistan have often carried out in the past. Shah and other officials have not said whether the attackers escaped or where killed in the blast, which left a crater 10-feet (3-meter) wide in the floor.
Islamist militants are known to have found shelter among Karachi's 14 million people, and there have been occasional attacks on Shiite Muslims, whom al-Qaida and the Taliban believe to be infidels, as well a blast last month at a Sufi shrine.
But the city had largely escaped a wave of violence last year that saw many attacks in Lahore, Peshawar and other cities.
"These attacks which are happening around the country, they are carried out by enemies of the nation," said Karachi resident Faisal Mehmood. "It is not in Islam that you kill your brothers."
The government has declared war on the militants, and the army has moved into several areas in the northwest close to Afghanistan where the fighters are primarily based. The United States has increased the tempo of missile strikes in the region over the last two months, with close to 100 this year alone.
But the Pakistani state still distinguishes between militants who attack inside Pakistan and those who focus on fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan or Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region, believing the latter to be "good" militants. Critics say this policy is shortsighted, noting that groups are increasingly coalescing and support each other.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, according to media reports. However, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was the more likely culprit, or that it was working with the Taliban.
The Pakistani Taliban is allied with al-Qaida and has emerged as the most potent threat to the stability of the nuclear-armed country since 2007. Its suicide squads have killed thousands of people in attacks on government, security force and Western targets, most of them civilians, shaking faith in the civilian government.
The coordinated assault late Thursday in Karachi, using a car bomb and guns far from Taliban and al-Qaida heartlands along the Afghan border, showed the ability of militants to strike back despite being hit by U.S. drone strikes and Pakistani army operations.
A gang of around six gunmen managed to penetrate a high-security area of Karachi that is home to the U.S Consulate, two luxury hotels and the offices of regional leaders. They opened fire on the offices of the Crime Investigation Department before detonating a huge car bomb that leveled the building and others nearby.
The police offices housed a detention facility that was believed to be holding criminals.
The CID takes the lead in hunting down terrorists in Karachi. Earlier this week, the agency arrested six members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an al-Qaida linked group blamed for several high profile attacks in recent years. The suspects were presented before a court earlier Thursday.
"The terrorists were well prepared and they had came here to rescue their associates. But under a strategy, we had not kept those men at this building. So their plan failed," said Qaim Ali Shah, the chief minister of Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital.
He did not say how he knew that the gang was attempting a rescue and not simply attacking the building, the type of strike that militants in Pakistan have often carried out in the past. Shah and other officials have not said whether the attackers escaped or where killed in the blast, which left a crater 10-feet (3-meter) wide in the floor.
Islamist militants are known to have found shelter among Karachi's 14 million people, and there have been occasional attacks on Shiite Muslims, whom al-Qaida and the Taliban believe to be infidels, as well a blast last month at a Sufi shrine.
But the city had largely escaped a wave of violence last year that saw many attacks in Lahore, Peshawar and other cities.
"These attacks which are happening around the country, they are carried out by enemies of the nation," said Karachi resident Faisal Mehmood. "It is not in Islam that you kill your brothers."
The government has declared war on the militants, and the army has moved into several areas in the northwest close to Afghanistan where the fighters are primarily based. The United States has increased the tempo of missile strikes in the region over the last two months, with close to 100 this year alone.
But the Pakistani state still distinguishes between militants who attack inside Pakistan and those who focus on fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan or Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region, believing the latter to be "good" militants. Critics say this policy is shortsighted, noting that groups are increasingly coalescing and support each other.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, according to media reports. However, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was the more likely culprit, or that it was working with the Taliban.
The Pakistani Taliban is allied with al-Qaida and has emerged as the most potent threat to the stability of the nuclear-armed country since 2007. Its suicide squads have killed thousands of people in attacks on government, security force and Western targets, most of them civilians, shaking faith in the civilian government.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Afghanistan Develops a National Women’s Cricket Team
Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) is about to create a National Women’s Cricket Team for the 2011 Asian Elite Cup Tournament in February 2011. Their participation in the Asian Cup will be one of the first times an Afghan women’s team has been able to take part in an international event.
Women’s Cricket has a short but highly motivated and fast moving history in Afghanistan. More than 100 young women are currently playing cricket in Kabul and three women took part in a recent umpire’s training course. The ACB has set up training and coaching sessions to increase women’s participation. The sessions take place in four girl’s schools around Kabul, with more schools showing interest and joining the programme daily. In each school, 50 women players have been trained by ACB coaches and trainers. Training sessions have also taken place in Bagh-e-Zanana, a “women’s only” park in Kabul and in Darul Itam.
A women’s championship tournament will take place shortly and will be used to select the new Afghanistan Women’s National Cricket Team for the Asian Cup Tournament.
“This development is so exciting for our young women cricketers and their families and supporters,” Diana, ACB Women’s Cricket Development Officer, commented when asked about the creation of the Women’s Team, “we love our country and hope to support it through our sport. Seeing a women’s cricket team in the Asian Cup will do so much to raise the hopes of many women here.”
Plans are also afoot to build a cricket academy for women in Kabul. Locations and designs are being considered which will provide the culturally appropriate situation for women cricketers.
Afghanistan Cricket Board, in consultation with women leaders and with cultural sensitivity, has decided to use the design of the United Arab Emirates women’s cricket uniform for the Afghan one. It includes a scarf, or hijab. In developing the National Women’s Team the ACB is placing strong emphasis upon Islamic law and Afghan cultural sensitivities.“Women’s cricket provides an opportunity for Afghan young women to be fit and have healthier and more active lives,” CEO of the Cricket Board, Dr Hamid Shinwari, said, “The ACB has a strong commitment to developing the game for women in a way that is good for them and, at the same time, respects our Islamic and Afghan values. Women’s cricket will build self-esteem, leadership and positive values for young women in our country, just as it is doing for young men.”
Women’s Cricket has a short but highly motivated and fast moving history in Afghanistan. More than 100 young women are currently playing cricket in Kabul and three women took part in a recent umpire’s training course. The ACB has set up training and coaching sessions to increase women’s participation. The sessions take place in four girl’s schools around Kabul, with more schools showing interest and joining the programme daily. In each school, 50 women players have been trained by ACB coaches and trainers. Training sessions have also taken place in Bagh-e-Zanana, a “women’s only” park in Kabul and in Darul Itam.
A women’s championship tournament will take place shortly and will be used to select the new Afghanistan Women’s National Cricket Team for the Asian Cup Tournament.
“This development is so exciting for our young women cricketers and their families and supporters,” Diana, ACB Women’s Cricket Development Officer, commented when asked about the creation of the Women’s Team, “we love our country and hope to support it through our sport. Seeing a women’s cricket team in the Asian Cup will do so much to raise the hopes of many women here.”
Plans are also afoot to build a cricket academy for women in Kabul. Locations and designs are being considered which will provide the culturally appropriate situation for women cricketers.
Afghanistan Cricket Board, in consultation with women leaders and with cultural sensitivity, has decided to use the design of the United Arab Emirates women’s cricket uniform for the Afghan one. It includes a scarf, or hijab. In developing the National Women’s Team the ACB is placing strong emphasis upon Islamic law and Afghan cultural sensitivities.“Women’s cricket provides an opportunity for Afghan young women to be fit and have healthier and more active lives,” CEO of the Cricket Board, Dr Hamid Shinwari, said, “The ACB has a strong commitment to developing the game for women in a way that is good for them and, at the same time, respects our Islamic and Afghan values. Women’s cricket will build self-esteem, leadership and positive values for young women in our country, just as it is doing for young men.”
U.S. Tweaks Message on Troops in Afghanistan
New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is increasingly emphasizing the idea that the United States will have forces in Afghanistan until at least the end of 2014, a change in tone aimed at persuading the Afghans and the Taliban that there will be no significant American troop withdrawals next summer.
In a move away from President Obama’s deadline of July 2011 for the start of an American drawdown from Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all cited 2014 this week as the key date for handing over the defense of Afghanistan to the Afghans themselves. Implicit in their message, delivered at a security and diplomatic conference in Australia, was that the United States would be fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan for at least four more years.
Administration officials said the three had made loosely coordinated comments at the conference, in Melbourne, to try to convince Afghans that the United States was not walking away next summer and to warn the Taliban that aggressive operations against them would continue. Although Mr. Obama and administration officials have repeatedly said that July 2011 would be only the start of troop withdrawals, the Taliban have successfully promoted the deadline among the Afghan populace as a large-scale exit of the 100,000 United States troops now in the country.
“There’s not really any change, but what we’re trying to do is to get past that July 2011 obsession so that people can see what the president’s strategy really entails,” a senior administration official said Wednesday.
In Australia, Mr. Gates said the Taliban would be “very surprised come August, September, October and November, when most American forces are still there, and still coming after them.”
The message shift is effectively a victory for the military, which has long said the July 2011 deadline undermined its mission by making Afghans reluctant to work with troops perceived to be leaving shortly. “They say you’ll leave in 2011 and the Taliban will chop their heads off,” Cpl. Lisa Gardner, a Marine based in Helmand Province, told a reporter this past spring. This summer Gen. James T. Conway, then the Marine Corps’s commandant, went so far as to say that the deadline “was probably giving our enemy sustenance.”
Last year the White House insisted on the July deadline to inject a sense of urgency into the Afghans to get their security in order — military officials acknowledge that it has partly worked — but also to quiet critics in the Democratic Party upset about Mr. Obama’s escalation of the war and his decision to order 30,000 more troops to the country.
On Wednesday, the White House insisted that there had been no change in tone. “The old message was, we’re looking to July 2011 to begin a transition,” a White House official said. “Now we’re telling people what happens beyond 2011, and I don’t think that represents a shift. We’re bringing some clarity to the policy of our future in Afghanistan.”
Like most people involved in the issue, the official asked for anonymity because a review of Mr. Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan is under way and people involved in it are reluctant to speak openly to reporters.
Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, was adamant on Wednesday night that the White House had not shifted. “The president has been crystal clear that we will begin drawing down troops in July of 2011,” he said. “There is absolutely no change to that policy.”
The 2014 date will be a focus at a NATO summit meeting that Mr. Obama is to attend next week in Lisbon, Portugal, where the alliance is to be presented with a transition plan, drawn up by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, that calls for a gradual four-year shifting of security responsibility to the Afghans. Administration officials said that the document had no timetable for specific numbers of troop withdrawals and instead set forth the conditions that had to be met in crucial provinces before NATO forces could hand off security to the Afghans.
Administration officials emphasized that the 2014 date was first set by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who mentioned it in his inaugural address last year and again at a conference in Kabul this past summer.
The officials acknowledged that the 2014 date was based on the presumption that the American military would be successful enough in fighting the Taliban that significant withdrawals would be under way by then. Recently, commanders in some parts of Afghanistan have reported a tactical shift in momentum away from the Taliban, but officials in Washington, though encouraged, have been skeptical or reluctant to say this will translate into strategic success.
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was last in Afghanistan in September, said the 2014 date made sense, because the Afghan Army and the police were scheduled to increase their numbers to 350,000, their goal, by 2013.
“It is far enough away to allow lots to happen, yet it is still close enough to debunk the myth of an indefinite foreign occupation of the country,” Mr. O’Hanlon said.
But Mr. Gates has said that the United States will nonetheless be in Afghanistan for many more years to come.
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is increasingly emphasizing the idea that the United States will have forces in Afghanistan until at least the end of 2014, a change in tone aimed at persuading the Afghans and the Taliban that there will be no significant American troop withdrawals next summer.
In a move away from President Obama’s deadline of July 2011 for the start of an American drawdown from Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all cited 2014 this week as the key date for handing over the defense of Afghanistan to the Afghans themselves. Implicit in their message, delivered at a security and diplomatic conference in Australia, was that the United States would be fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan for at least four more years.
Administration officials said the three had made loosely coordinated comments at the conference, in Melbourne, to try to convince Afghans that the United States was not walking away next summer and to warn the Taliban that aggressive operations against them would continue. Although Mr. Obama and administration officials have repeatedly said that July 2011 would be only the start of troop withdrawals, the Taliban have successfully promoted the deadline among the Afghan populace as a large-scale exit of the 100,000 United States troops now in the country.
“There’s not really any change, but what we’re trying to do is to get past that July 2011 obsession so that people can see what the president’s strategy really entails,” a senior administration official said Wednesday.
In Australia, Mr. Gates said the Taliban would be “very surprised come August, September, October and November, when most American forces are still there, and still coming after them.”
The message shift is effectively a victory for the military, which has long said the July 2011 deadline undermined its mission by making Afghans reluctant to work with troops perceived to be leaving shortly. “They say you’ll leave in 2011 and the Taliban will chop their heads off,” Cpl. Lisa Gardner, a Marine based in Helmand Province, told a reporter this past spring. This summer Gen. James T. Conway, then the Marine Corps’s commandant, went so far as to say that the deadline “was probably giving our enemy sustenance.”
Last year the White House insisted on the July deadline to inject a sense of urgency into the Afghans to get their security in order — military officials acknowledge that it has partly worked — but also to quiet critics in the Democratic Party upset about Mr. Obama’s escalation of the war and his decision to order 30,000 more troops to the country.
On Wednesday, the White House insisted that there had been no change in tone. “The old message was, we’re looking to July 2011 to begin a transition,” a White House official said. “Now we’re telling people what happens beyond 2011, and I don’t think that represents a shift. We’re bringing some clarity to the policy of our future in Afghanistan.”
Like most people involved in the issue, the official asked for anonymity because a review of Mr. Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan is under way and people involved in it are reluctant to speak openly to reporters.
Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, was adamant on Wednesday night that the White House had not shifted. “The president has been crystal clear that we will begin drawing down troops in July of 2011,” he said. “There is absolutely no change to that policy.”
The 2014 date will be a focus at a NATO summit meeting that Mr. Obama is to attend next week in Lisbon, Portugal, where the alliance is to be presented with a transition plan, drawn up by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, that calls for a gradual four-year shifting of security responsibility to the Afghans. Administration officials said that the document had no timetable for specific numbers of troop withdrawals and instead set forth the conditions that had to be met in crucial provinces before NATO forces could hand off security to the Afghans.
Administration officials emphasized that the 2014 date was first set by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who mentioned it in his inaugural address last year and again at a conference in Kabul this past summer.
The officials acknowledged that the 2014 date was based on the presumption that the American military would be successful enough in fighting the Taliban that significant withdrawals would be under way by then. Recently, commanders in some parts of Afghanistan have reported a tactical shift in momentum away from the Taliban, but officials in Washington, though encouraged, have been skeptical or reluctant to say this will translate into strategic success.
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was last in Afghanistan in September, said the 2014 date made sense, because the Afghan Army and the police were scheduled to increase their numbers to 350,000, their goal, by 2013.
“It is far enough away to allow lots to happen, yet it is still close enough to debunk the myth of an indefinite foreign occupation of the country,” Mr. O’Hanlon said.
But Mr. Gates has said that the United States will nonetheless be in Afghanistan for many more years to come.
Pakistan border region becomes terror epicenter
It’s a land of daunting mountains, crisscrossed with rugged paths. Tucked in the valleys, families live a subsistence existence in mud houses secluded behind 10-foot-high walls, cooking over open fires and sleeping under the sky. Dirt poor, uneducated, their only knowledge of the outside world comes from a crackling radio.
The wilds of North Waziristan, on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, have become a crossroads for terrorism. The United States is pushing Pakistan to mount an offensive there before the year is out, but Pakistan is saying it won’t be rushed.
US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen has branded North Waziristan the “epicenter of terrorism,” and President Barack Obama has said controlling it is key to winning the Afghan war.
In mosques, mullahs tell worshippers that it is their religious duty to fight the US-led forces just over the mountains in Afghanistan. Villagers open up their homes to would-be fighters and suicide bombers heading across the border to kill coalition troops – or heading the other direction into Pakistan’s heartland to carry out attacks that have shaken the fragile US-allied government in Islamabad.
The threat is also exported far abroad.
Among the thousands of militants holed up in the territory are scores with European or US passports, believed to be planning attacks in Europe and North America. The arrest of a German in Afghanistan this year revealed a plot hatched in North Waziristan to carry out bloody bombings and shootings in Europe. It was also to North Waziristan that US resident Faisal Shahzad traveled to train in arms and bombmaking, before attempting to detonate a car bomb in New York City’s tourist-packed Times Square in May.
Any offensive will be a formidable task. Until 2004, the Pakistani army had not entered North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s highly autonomous tribal border belt. Even now the army, with 140,000 soldiers deployed elsewhere in the tribal region, has little presence in North Waziristan. At their base in the region’s main town, Miran Shah, they rarely patrol.
One of the main militant groups in North Waziristan led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur handed out pamphlets at the bazaar in Miran Shah on Sunday warning the government that any offensive would result in “unending war.” A copy of the pamphlet was obtained by The Associated Press and verified by intelligence officials and local residents.
Some 10,000 foreign militants are in North Waziristan, says Kamran Khan, a parliament member from Miran Shah, a figure that mirrors estimates by US and Pakistani officials.
They are mixed in a cauldron of armed jihadist organizations, including Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and Al-Qaeda. One of Afghanistan’s deadliest insurgent groups, the network of Jalaluddin Haqqani, has been headquartered in Miran Shah for three decades. US and Pakistani intelligence believe they sighted Al-Qaeda’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, in the territory in 2004 and nearly killed him with a drone strike.
“Everyone is there. There are Arabs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Indonesians, Bengalis, Punjabis, Afghans, Chechens and the ones they call the white jihadis” – meaning European militants, Khan said, speaking to The Associated Press in Islamabad.
Residents are widely sympathetic with the Taliban and their fight against the Americans in Afghanistan, said Khan, 28, who says he only travels to Miran Shah with an escort of 30 armed guards because of regular death threats.
“Our area has no development, no education, only madrasas (Islamic religious schools),” said Khan. “Our people listen five times a day to the maulvis (clerics) and they are always saying this is jihad.”
Because of the dangers, international journalists are restricted by the government from entering the territory. Its tribes have close connections with the key border city of Peshawar, 170 kilometers (100 miles) to the northeast.
Roughly the size of Connecticut, North Waziristan’s population of 350,000 is mainly Pashtun, the same majority ethnic group in Afghanistan that is the backbone of the Taliban. Mountain paths lead across the unguarded border into the Afghan provinces of Paktia and Paktika, both Taliban strongholds.
In the 1980’s, North Waziristan was a vital supply route for US-backed rebels fighting the invading Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Islamic holy warriors from around the globe flocked to the territory.
Among them were Osama bin Laden and his Arab warriors, who before setting across the border stayed in Miran Shah’s gritty hotels, where pieces of dirty foam on the wooden floors serve as beds.
Washington has stepped up drone attacks in the territory. One resident told AP of two cemeteries in North Waziristan with the graves of 300 foreign fighters, most killed by drones.
Pakistani officers say the army will launch an offensive — but the question is when. They say the military won’t be rushed.
“It has to lay the foundations, create the conditions, weaken and divide its enemies” and solidify civilian control elsewhere in the tribal belt so troops there can be deployed in the operation, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk frankly of the plans.
The initial foray could be a limited operation against Mir Ali, a small town east of Miran Shah where US intelligence says Al-Qaeda has reconstituted, the official said.
But most likely, any offensive would not go after the Afghan Haqqani network, a key target that Washington wants hit to ease attacks on its troops in Afghanistan. Doing so could spark a backlash from sympathetic Pashtuns in the tribal belt and fuel accusations by rightwing politicians and TV commentators that the Pakistan army is selling out to Americans.
If Pakistani forces go too far, “there will be a contagion of rage across the Pashtun tribes against the Pakistan army, and they will be faced with the choice of being driven from the tribal region (or) having a major wave of attacks in Pakistan cities,” Michael Scheuer, former CIA pointman in the hunt for bin Laden, told AP.
Instead, an offensive would likely focus on the Pakistani Taliban, which has declared war on the Islamabad government, and on any non-Afghan militants.
Another challenge is that the Pakistani military is tied down elsewhere.
The army is still trying to stabilize neighboring South Waziristan, where an operation late last year flushed out Taliban fighters but also drove hundreds of thousands of residents from their homes.
And many troops are busy holding down the nearby valley of Swat, where the military put down a Taliban surge in 2008.
“If we leave Swat today, they (the Taliban) will be back tomorrow,” said the security official.
The wilds of North Waziristan, on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, have become a crossroads for terrorism. The United States is pushing Pakistan to mount an offensive there before the year is out, but Pakistan is saying it won’t be rushed.
US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen has branded North Waziristan the “epicenter of terrorism,” and President Barack Obama has said controlling it is key to winning the Afghan war.
In mosques, mullahs tell worshippers that it is their religious duty to fight the US-led forces just over the mountains in Afghanistan. Villagers open up their homes to would-be fighters and suicide bombers heading across the border to kill coalition troops – or heading the other direction into Pakistan’s heartland to carry out attacks that have shaken the fragile US-allied government in Islamabad.
The threat is also exported far abroad.
Among the thousands of militants holed up in the territory are scores with European or US passports, believed to be planning attacks in Europe and North America. The arrest of a German in Afghanistan this year revealed a plot hatched in North Waziristan to carry out bloody bombings and shootings in Europe. It was also to North Waziristan that US resident Faisal Shahzad traveled to train in arms and bombmaking, before attempting to detonate a car bomb in New York City’s tourist-packed Times Square in May.
Any offensive will be a formidable task. Until 2004, the Pakistani army had not entered North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s highly autonomous tribal border belt. Even now the army, with 140,000 soldiers deployed elsewhere in the tribal region, has little presence in North Waziristan. At their base in the region’s main town, Miran Shah, they rarely patrol.
One of the main militant groups in North Waziristan led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur handed out pamphlets at the bazaar in Miran Shah on Sunday warning the government that any offensive would result in “unending war.” A copy of the pamphlet was obtained by The Associated Press and verified by intelligence officials and local residents.
Some 10,000 foreign militants are in North Waziristan, says Kamran Khan, a parliament member from Miran Shah, a figure that mirrors estimates by US and Pakistani officials.
They are mixed in a cauldron of armed jihadist organizations, including Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and Al-Qaeda. One of Afghanistan’s deadliest insurgent groups, the network of Jalaluddin Haqqani, has been headquartered in Miran Shah for three decades. US and Pakistani intelligence believe they sighted Al-Qaeda’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, in the territory in 2004 and nearly killed him with a drone strike.
“Everyone is there. There are Arabs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Indonesians, Bengalis, Punjabis, Afghans, Chechens and the ones they call the white jihadis” – meaning European militants, Khan said, speaking to The Associated Press in Islamabad.
Residents are widely sympathetic with the Taliban and their fight against the Americans in Afghanistan, said Khan, 28, who says he only travels to Miran Shah with an escort of 30 armed guards because of regular death threats.
“Our area has no development, no education, only madrasas (Islamic religious schools),” said Khan. “Our people listen five times a day to the maulvis (clerics) and they are always saying this is jihad.”
Because of the dangers, international journalists are restricted by the government from entering the territory. Its tribes have close connections with the key border city of Peshawar, 170 kilometers (100 miles) to the northeast.
Roughly the size of Connecticut, North Waziristan’s population of 350,000 is mainly Pashtun, the same majority ethnic group in Afghanistan that is the backbone of the Taliban. Mountain paths lead across the unguarded border into the Afghan provinces of Paktia and Paktika, both Taliban strongholds.
In the 1980’s, North Waziristan was a vital supply route for US-backed rebels fighting the invading Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Islamic holy warriors from around the globe flocked to the territory.
Among them were Osama bin Laden and his Arab warriors, who before setting across the border stayed in Miran Shah’s gritty hotels, where pieces of dirty foam on the wooden floors serve as beds.
Washington has stepped up drone attacks in the territory. One resident told AP of two cemeteries in North Waziristan with the graves of 300 foreign fighters, most killed by drones.
Pakistani officers say the army will launch an offensive — but the question is when. They say the military won’t be rushed.
“It has to lay the foundations, create the conditions, weaken and divide its enemies” and solidify civilian control elsewhere in the tribal belt so troops there can be deployed in the operation, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk frankly of the plans.
The initial foray could be a limited operation against Mir Ali, a small town east of Miran Shah where US intelligence says Al-Qaeda has reconstituted, the official said.
But most likely, any offensive would not go after the Afghan Haqqani network, a key target that Washington wants hit to ease attacks on its troops in Afghanistan. Doing so could spark a backlash from sympathetic Pashtuns in the tribal belt and fuel accusations by rightwing politicians and TV commentators that the Pakistan army is selling out to Americans.
If Pakistani forces go too far, “there will be a contagion of rage across the Pashtun tribes against the Pakistan army, and they will be faced with the choice of being driven from the tribal region (or) having a major wave of attacks in Pakistan cities,” Michael Scheuer, former CIA pointman in the hunt for bin Laden, told AP.
Instead, an offensive would likely focus on the Pakistani Taliban, which has declared war on the Islamabad government, and on any non-Afghan militants.
Another challenge is that the Pakistani military is tied down elsewhere.
The army is still trying to stabilize neighboring South Waziristan, where an operation late last year flushed out Taliban fighters but also drove hundreds of thousands of residents from their homes.
And many troops are busy holding down the nearby valley of Swat, where the military put down a Taliban surge in 2008.
“If we leave Swat today, they (the Taliban) will be back tomorrow,” said the security official.
US lawmakers voice concern about Afghan corruption
Afghan President Hamid Karzai must curb corruption in his government or current gains being made on the battlefield could be lost, a group of U.S. lawmakers warned Wednesday on a visit to Afghanistan.
Ahead of a meeting with Karzai, Sen. John McCain, the senior Republican on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, said he and three of his colleagues will express their concerns about rampant bribery and graft in the Afghan government.
"We are concerned about continuing corruption at all levels of government," McCain said. "We know that without addressing this very serious issue long-term success is jeopardized."
McCain, who was joined at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul by Sens. Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham and Kirsten Gillibrand, said the tens of thousands of U.S., NATO and Afghan troops who have been fighting in Taliban strongholds in the south have made progress in recent months, but significant challenges remain.
"Obviously the clearing, holding and securing is vital and what we are hopeful of is that good governance will go along with that," McCain said. But he added: "Now, whether it actually will or not is yet to be determined."
The lawmakers arrived in Afghanistan after visiting Iraq. Their next stop is Islamabad where McCain said the four would push Pakistani officials to pressure the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani insurgent network, which plots attacks in Afghanistan from hideouts inside Pakistan — out of the reach of coalition ground forces.
"The Haqqani network continues to operate with impunity and we will be going to Pakistan and raising that issue with the Pakistani leadership," said McCain.
Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut and chairman of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee, said bipartisan support for Afghanistan continues in Congress following last week's midterm election. The support, however, is not unconditional, he said."Every time there is a corruption case, or evidence of corruption ... it makes it harder for us in Congress in a budget-difficult environment to sustain the support that we need to succeed here," Lieberman said. "That's why it's in Afghanistan's interest, President Karzai's interest to fight corruption."
Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, echoed Lieberman's comments, saying she too was concerned about "chronic problems with corruption, lack of transparency and oversight and accountability in funding and spending."
Graham of South Carolina, a top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, acknowledged Karzai's complaint that the flood of international money into Afghanistan also has fostered corruption.
"We've been spreading money around this country for years and actually we've been paying some of the people who are part of the problem," Graham said, noting that the U.S. and NATO are working to reform contracting procedures. "Better governance is the key to us leaving here and sustaining the gains we've made."
"There are a couple high-visibility (corruption) cases that hit close to home that have somehow stalled," Graham added, without identifying the cases.
He said he planned to tell Karzai that if corruption was not curbed, "there is no amount of troops in the world that can turn this country around."
Lieberman also said he planned to reassure Karzai that the U.S. was committed to Afghanistan — and that no mass exodus of U.S. troops was planned in July 2011, the date President Barack Obama hopes to start withdrawing American forces. Some Afghans liken the date to U.S. abandonment of the war and Lieberman said he's heard that even the Taliban were spreading rumors that Americans are leaving in mid-2011.
"What will happen in July 2011 is not the beginning of an American pullout," Lieberman said. "That was a goal the president set for a review of where we were, based on conditions on the ground. And if conditions on the ground justify, some American troops would begin to be withdrawn."
McCain was critical of Obama's July 2011 date, saying it has discouraged U.S. partners in Afghanistan and has convinced the Taliban that they only need to wait for the U.S. to leave. He said Obama needs to state clearly that U.S. troops will only be pulled out if security allows.
"He has not done that to my satisfaction so far," he said.
Ahead of a meeting with Karzai, Sen. John McCain, the senior Republican on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, said he and three of his colleagues will express their concerns about rampant bribery and graft in the Afghan government.
"We are concerned about continuing corruption at all levels of government," McCain said. "We know that without addressing this very serious issue long-term success is jeopardized."
McCain, who was joined at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul by Sens. Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham and Kirsten Gillibrand, said the tens of thousands of U.S., NATO and Afghan troops who have been fighting in Taliban strongholds in the south have made progress in recent months, but significant challenges remain.
"Obviously the clearing, holding and securing is vital and what we are hopeful of is that good governance will go along with that," McCain said. But he added: "Now, whether it actually will or not is yet to be determined."
The lawmakers arrived in Afghanistan after visiting Iraq. Their next stop is Islamabad where McCain said the four would push Pakistani officials to pressure the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani insurgent network, which plots attacks in Afghanistan from hideouts inside Pakistan — out of the reach of coalition ground forces.
"The Haqqani network continues to operate with impunity and we will be going to Pakistan and raising that issue with the Pakistani leadership," said McCain.
Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut and chairman of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee, said bipartisan support for Afghanistan continues in Congress following last week's midterm election. The support, however, is not unconditional, he said."Every time there is a corruption case, or evidence of corruption ... it makes it harder for us in Congress in a budget-difficult environment to sustain the support that we need to succeed here," Lieberman said. "That's why it's in Afghanistan's interest, President Karzai's interest to fight corruption."
Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, echoed Lieberman's comments, saying she too was concerned about "chronic problems with corruption, lack of transparency and oversight and accountability in funding and spending."
Graham of South Carolina, a top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, acknowledged Karzai's complaint that the flood of international money into Afghanistan also has fostered corruption.
"We've been spreading money around this country for years and actually we've been paying some of the people who are part of the problem," Graham said, noting that the U.S. and NATO are working to reform contracting procedures. "Better governance is the key to us leaving here and sustaining the gains we've made."
"There are a couple high-visibility (corruption) cases that hit close to home that have somehow stalled," Graham added, without identifying the cases.
He said he planned to tell Karzai that if corruption was not curbed, "there is no amount of troops in the world that can turn this country around."
Lieberman also said he planned to reassure Karzai that the U.S. was committed to Afghanistan — and that no mass exodus of U.S. troops was planned in July 2011, the date President Barack Obama hopes to start withdrawing American forces. Some Afghans liken the date to U.S. abandonment of the war and Lieberman said he's heard that even the Taliban were spreading rumors that Americans are leaving in mid-2011.
"What will happen in July 2011 is not the beginning of an American pullout," Lieberman said. "That was a goal the president set for a review of where we were, based on conditions on the ground. And if conditions on the ground justify, some American troops would begin to be withdrawn."
McCain was critical of Obama's July 2011 date, saying it has discouraged U.S. partners in Afghanistan and has convinced the Taliban that they only need to wait for the U.S. to leave. He said Obama needs to state clearly that U.S. troops will only be pulled out if security allows.
"He has not done that to my satisfaction so far," he said.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Karzai invites Gilani for visit to Kabul
ISLAMABAD: Afghan President Hamid Karzai called Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani over the telephone on Tuesday and invited him for his first official visit to Kabul in the near future.
The president said he would like to discuss the whole gamut of bilateral relations between the two countries with the prime minister during the visit.
The prime minister accepted the invitation and expressed confidence that high level contacts would bring the two fraternal countries even closer.
It was decided by the two leaders that their respective ministries of foreign affairs would coordinate to agree on the mutually acceptable timeframe of the visit.
The president said he would like to discuss the whole gamut of bilateral relations between the two countries with the prime minister during the visit.
The prime minister accepted the invitation and expressed confidence that high level contacts would bring the two fraternal countries even closer.
It was decided by the two leaders that their respective ministries of foreign affairs would coordinate to agree on the mutually acceptable timeframe of the visit.
Obama's India visit is Pakistan's wake-up call
ISLAMABAD — The symbolism, trade deals and fine words of Barack Obama's courtship of India should be Pakistan's wake-up call to fix its economy and eradicate Islamist militancy to ward off isolation, analysts say.
The US president declared India a world power, the India-US alliance "one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century" and unveiled deals worth 10 billion dollars designed to create 50,000 American jobs in an ailing economy.
Going further than any US president before, he backed India's quest for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, although with no immediate prospect of reform and likely strong Chinese opposition, it was a largely symbolic move.
Just weeks after Pakistan's latest round of "strategic dialogue" with the US in a bid to overcome mistrust, the warm embrace between Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stood in stark contrast.
"Pakistanis have to be more realistic on understanding India's growing international role," political analyst Hasan Askari told AFP.
"India is investing in the United States while our economy is in bad shape. There is no Pakistani investment in the West, very little in the Middle East. We ask for money from the United States, while India does not."
Indian deals will funnel 10 billion dollars into the US economy, while under a US Congress bill American taxpayers fork out 1.5 billion a year for development in Pakistan with promises of another two billion dollars in military assistance.
While Obama's visit reflects the shift in power to emerging nations since the financial crisis, Pakistan is a client state with a Taliban and Al-Qaeda presence plotting to kill US soldiers and fanning the war in Afghanistan.
Pakistan, whose status as a nuclear power still alarms the West, has been stifled by decades of military rule, recession and Islamisation.
Its security forces are fighting a Taliban insurgency in the northwest. Bomb attacks have killed thousands nationwide and its tribal belt is considered an Al-Qaeda headquarters subject to a covert US drone war.
Writing in The News daily, public policy consultant Mosharraf Zaidi said the only lesson to draw from Obama's visit was "the deals being made".
"While we drown in the inanities of this country's infinite and perpetual search for identity, we are deepening our current bankruptcy, and ensuring a future of mostly begging for handouts."
With Obama visiting Indonesia, APEC in Japan and the G20 in South Korea, Zaidi said: "The reason he is not visiting Pakistan is obvious. Pakistan does not belong on that list of countries and that is not India's fault".
Analysts say Islamabad should soften its foreign policy, dominated by the anti-Indian military, to avoid isolation as the United States looks to end the war against the Afghan Taliban which Pakistan helped to create.
"In today's world, defeat can be described in one way only: international isolation... Pakistan must learn to be more objective about the crisis it is facing internally," wrote The Express Tribune in an editorial.
"Pakistan can sort out this crisis through self-correction."
But there was also gratitude; unlike British Prime Minister David Cameron -- who sparked a diplomatic crisis when he accused Pakistan of exporting terror while in India -- Obama refused to be drawn into fresh criticism of Islamabad.
He urged India and Pakistan to resolve their differences and called on Islamabad to do more against militants, but acknowledged the country was making progress against what he called the "cancer" of extremism.
Askari said in what was a nod to the US realisation that the country is indispensable to forging peace in Afghanistan, Obama did not sideline Pakistan.
"What he said about terrorist havens in the tribal areas is what the Americans have been saying before his visit... he avoided any criticism of Pakistan which the Indians were expecting," said Askari.
Former lieutenant general-turned-security analyst Talat Masood said Pakistan was obviously concerned by US-India ties, and would remain apprehensive about India unless relations with Pakistan are normalised.
"But there is not much it can do. Pakistan has to adjust itself to the existing reality. It should improve its own domestic situation," Masood said.
The US president declared India a world power, the India-US alliance "one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century" and unveiled deals worth 10 billion dollars designed to create 50,000 American jobs in an ailing economy.
Going further than any US president before, he backed India's quest for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, although with no immediate prospect of reform and likely strong Chinese opposition, it was a largely symbolic move.
Just weeks after Pakistan's latest round of "strategic dialogue" with the US in a bid to overcome mistrust, the warm embrace between Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stood in stark contrast.
"Pakistanis have to be more realistic on understanding India's growing international role," political analyst Hasan Askari told AFP.
"India is investing in the United States while our economy is in bad shape. There is no Pakistani investment in the West, very little in the Middle East. We ask for money from the United States, while India does not."
Indian deals will funnel 10 billion dollars into the US economy, while under a US Congress bill American taxpayers fork out 1.5 billion a year for development in Pakistan with promises of another two billion dollars in military assistance.
While Obama's visit reflects the shift in power to emerging nations since the financial crisis, Pakistan is a client state with a Taliban and Al-Qaeda presence plotting to kill US soldiers and fanning the war in Afghanistan.
Pakistan, whose status as a nuclear power still alarms the West, has been stifled by decades of military rule, recession and Islamisation.
Its security forces are fighting a Taliban insurgency in the northwest. Bomb attacks have killed thousands nationwide and its tribal belt is considered an Al-Qaeda headquarters subject to a covert US drone war.
Writing in The News daily, public policy consultant Mosharraf Zaidi said the only lesson to draw from Obama's visit was "the deals being made".
"While we drown in the inanities of this country's infinite and perpetual search for identity, we are deepening our current bankruptcy, and ensuring a future of mostly begging for handouts."
With Obama visiting Indonesia, APEC in Japan and the G20 in South Korea, Zaidi said: "The reason he is not visiting Pakistan is obvious. Pakistan does not belong on that list of countries and that is not India's fault".
Analysts say Islamabad should soften its foreign policy, dominated by the anti-Indian military, to avoid isolation as the United States looks to end the war against the Afghan Taliban which Pakistan helped to create.
"In today's world, defeat can be described in one way only: international isolation... Pakistan must learn to be more objective about the crisis it is facing internally," wrote The Express Tribune in an editorial.
"Pakistan can sort out this crisis through self-correction."
But there was also gratitude; unlike British Prime Minister David Cameron -- who sparked a diplomatic crisis when he accused Pakistan of exporting terror while in India -- Obama refused to be drawn into fresh criticism of Islamabad.
He urged India and Pakistan to resolve their differences and called on Islamabad to do more against militants, but acknowledged the country was making progress against what he called the "cancer" of extremism.
Askari said in what was a nod to the US realisation that the country is indispensable to forging peace in Afghanistan, Obama did not sideline Pakistan.
"What he said about terrorist havens in the tribal areas is what the Americans have been saying before his visit... he avoided any criticism of Pakistan which the Indians were expecting," said Askari.
Former lieutenant general-turned-security analyst Talat Masood said Pakistan was obviously concerned by US-India ties, and would remain apprehensive about India unless relations with Pakistan are normalised.
"But there is not much it can do. Pakistan has to adjust itself to the existing reality. It should improve its own domestic situation," Masood said.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
A Pakistani film hotbed threatened by fundamentalism
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
The ancient city of Peshawar in Pakistan’s northwest has long been a cultural crossroads. In the last few decades, it also become a centre for popular Pashto cinema. These are ultra-low-budget movies made by locals for locals, revenge stories filled with blazing guns, broad slapstick and Bollywood-style dance numbers, are financed and sold by local shop-owners. In other words, they’re not coming soon to multiplex near you.
In the highly entertaining, intimate and eye-opening The Miscreants of Taliwood, George Gittoes – a respected Australian war artist who has worked in many of the world’s hot zones – takes us deep into this filmmaking frontier. The final film in a documentary trilogy exploring popular culture in the context of war, Miscreants contrasts Pashto movies and their makers with the complex social and political struggles in a region few Westerners know beyond the nightly news.
The film was well received at last year’s Telluride festival, and it receives its Canadian premiere this weekend at Toronto’s International Diaspora Film Festival, which presents a slate of mostly foreign movies focusing on outsider stories.
Miscreants opens with the homegrown movie industry on the brink of being shut down by the ruling MMA Islamic fundamentalist coalition, which has been burning DVDs and systematically shutting down shops that sell DVDs (often with bombs) over several years. “The culture will come to a standstill,” says one eloquent shopkeeper. “The people will lose entertainment.” All that may be left to watch, people worry, are videos made by the Taliban of increasingly horrific executions.
Gittoes’ investigations land him on the front lines – including at the Red Mosque siege in Islamabad in 2007. And he later played a variety of Western characters in Pashto movies and even made one himself. An act of personal activism, the film was made in the local style and became a best-seller, all proceeds going to the players.
In addition to asides about male sexual behaviour, the status of women and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Gittoes interviews Peshawar University professors and even, in one edgy scene, an MMA leader. But the most memorable characters are the film folk, in particular Javed Musazai, a tall, burly fellow who supports an large extended family through his acting.
A sprawling, personal performance-art essay, Miscreants of Taliwood makes a convincing case for popular entertainment as a basic human right.
Obama says Progress by Pakistan in tackling terror not quick as we like.
US President Barack Obama on Sunday said the progress by Pakistan in fighting terrorism is not quick as "we would like" and asserted that they were working with Islamabad to eradicate extremism which is a "cancer".
Noting that there are going to be some elements in Pakistan that are affiliated with Taliban, al-Qaida and LeT, he said they are "irreconcilable" and there needs to be a military response to those who perpetrate violence like they did in Mumbai and New York in a "significant, ongoing" way.
Obama also observed that it would surprise Indians when he says this that it is in India's interest that Pakistan remains "peaceful, stable and prosperous" and that the US will work with Islamabad to reject extremism which is a "cancer" which threatens to engulf it.
Interacting with students of St Xaviers College in a typical US town-hall style meeting, he expressed confidence that in time, trust develops between India and Pakistan and dialogue begins perhaps from "less controversial issues building upto more controversial issues".
"India and Pakistan can prosper and live side by side, this will not happen tomorrow but needs to be the ultimate goal. The US can be a partner but cannot impose this process. India and Pakistan have their own understanding," he said.
He made these comments when a girl student asked why Pakistan was not being declared a terrorist state by the US.
Obama reacted that it was a good question and said "I must admit that I was expecting it".
Read more: Progress by Pakistan in tackling terror not quick as we like: Obama - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Progress-by-Pakistan-in-tackling-terror-not-quick-as-we-like-Obama/articleshow/6883229.cms#ixzz14addLUwe
Noting that there are going to be some elements in Pakistan that are affiliated with Taliban, al-Qaida and LeT, he said they are "irreconcilable" and there needs to be a military response to those who perpetrate violence like they did in Mumbai and New York in a "significant, ongoing" way.
Obama also observed that it would surprise Indians when he says this that it is in India's interest that Pakistan remains "peaceful, stable and prosperous" and that the US will work with Islamabad to reject extremism which is a "cancer" which threatens to engulf it.
Interacting with students of St Xaviers College in a typical US town-hall style meeting, he expressed confidence that in time, trust develops between India and Pakistan and dialogue begins perhaps from "less controversial issues building upto more controversial issues".
"India and Pakistan can prosper and live side by side, this will not happen tomorrow but needs to be the ultimate goal. The US can be a partner but cannot impose this process. India and Pakistan have their own understanding," he said.
He made these comments when a girl student asked why Pakistan was not being declared a terrorist state by the US.
Obama reacted that it was a good question and said "I must admit that I was expecting it".
Read more: Progress by Pakistan in tackling terror not quick as we like: Obama - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Progress-by-Pakistan-in-tackling-terror-not-quick-as-we-like-Obama/articleshow/6883229.cms#ixzz14addLUwe
Mosques stained red with blood
EDITORIAL:Daily Times
Terror always seems to be lurking in every nook and corner for the people of Pakistan. Friday, one of Islam’s holy days, has been stained red with blood too many times and the massacre in Darra Adam Khel is no exception. With 67 dead — mercilessly including 11 children — and more than 100 worshippers injured, the suicide attack in Waali Mosque is one of the deadliest this year. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have denied responsibility for the attack, citing it as one carried out by “foreign hands”. Quite a ridiculous claim considering that the TTP’s modus operandi has been to target the masses when they are at their most vulnerable; holy places, whether mosques, shrines or Ahmedi places of worship have been favoured targets for their blood sport. Denying responsibility due to the political fallout of such incidents by no means means that the militants have turned over a new leaf. The fact that the mosque was a regular meeting place for leaders belonging to an anti-Taliban lashkar — none of whom are reported as being amongst the dead — shows the motive that the TTP would have: trying to silence opposing voices.
Darra Adam Khel was not enough for the militants. Another mosque in the Badaber area of Peshawar was attacked with hand grenades tossed inside the mosque’s compound. Four fatalities, some 24 injured. With a slight lull in the terror storm, Pakistan was beginning to harbour illusions that the militants had been restrained. However, this seems more like a deliberate pause on the terrorist’s part as the attack at Darra Adam Khel has seen them come out once again in full force. Also, we should not assume that the militants are confined to carrying out their activities in just FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — where a cluster of attacks have taken place — as terror cells have been shown to exist throughout the country. More vigilance is needed and more resources need to be given to those who are entrusted with law enforcement in areas sensitive to terror attacks. Local police and security apparatus need to be on even higher alert, especially when gatherings in places of worship convene. It is imperative to pre-empt such attacks before they happen and that is why our intelligence agencies need to step up. Otherwise, once a suicide bomber is deployed, he is almost unstoppable.
The militants have been on the receiving end of a pounding by army offensives and massive US aerial drone strikes, of late concentrated in North Waziristan (NW). A recent report by the Wall Street Journal indicates that these strikes are forcing the insurgents to find sanctuaries elsewhere, particularly in Kurram and Orakzai Agency, where they are said to be regrouping. Another view also exists, one that claims the militants are being allowed to leave, rather than being forced. With the army’s policy of saving the Afghan Taliban for a rainy day, it is said that the militants are being given safe passage to leave NW and relocate before a full-scale operation is launched. If this is true, the military should not be surprised if terror attacks continue. *
Terror always seems to be lurking in every nook and corner for the people of Pakistan. Friday, one of Islam’s holy days, has been stained red with blood too many times and the massacre in Darra Adam Khel is no exception. With 67 dead — mercilessly including 11 children — and more than 100 worshippers injured, the suicide attack in Waali Mosque is one of the deadliest this year. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have denied responsibility for the attack, citing it as one carried out by “foreign hands”. Quite a ridiculous claim considering that the TTP’s modus operandi has been to target the masses when they are at their most vulnerable; holy places, whether mosques, shrines or Ahmedi places of worship have been favoured targets for their blood sport. Denying responsibility due to the political fallout of such incidents by no means means that the militants have turned over a new leaf. The fact that the mosque was a regular meeting place for leaders belonging to an anti-Taliban lashkar — none of whom are reported as being amongst the dead — shows the motive that the TTP would have: trying to silence opposing voices.
Darra Adam Khel was not enough for the militants. Another mosque in the Badaber area of Peshawar was attacked with hand grenades tossed inside the mosque’s compound. Four fatalities, some 24 injured. With a slight lull in the terror storm, Pakistan was beginning to harbour illusions that the militants had been restrained. However, this seems more like a deliberate pause on the terrorist’s part as the attack at Darra Adam Khel has seen them come out once again in full force. Also, we should not assume that the militants are confined to carrying out their activities in just FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — where a cluster of attacks have taken place — as terror cells have been shown to exist throughout the country. More vigilance is needed and more resources need to be given to those who are entrusted with law enforcement in areas sensitive to terror attacks. Local police and security apparatus need to be on even higher alert, especially when gatherings in places of worship convene. It is imperative to pre-empt such attacks before they happen and that is why our intelligence agencies need to step up. Otherwise, once a suicide bomber is deployed, he is almost unstoppable.
The militants have been on the receiving end of a pounding by army offensives and massive US aerial drone strikes, of late concentrated in North Waziristan (NW). A recent report by the Wall Street Journal indicates that these strikes are forcing the insurgents to find sanctuaries elsewhere, particularly in Kurram and Orakzai Agency, where they are said to be regrouping. Another view also exists, one that claims the militants are being allowed to leave, rather than being forced. With the army’s policy of saving the Afghan Taliban for a rainy day, it is said that the militants are being given safe passage to leave NW and relocate before a full-scale operation is launched. If this is true, the military should not be surprised if terror attacks continue. *
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Pakistan mosques under attack ,blast hits mosuqe in Peshawar
At least 64 people were killed in blasts at two Sunni mosques in Pakistan's restive northwest
Friday, November 5, 2010
Barack Obama focused on economy...
President Barack Obama says Americans do not want gridlock in US politics as they try to fix the economy.
Int’l flights from Peshawar allowed
Peshawar—The approval for international flights from Peshawar International Airport has been given after the improvement of law and order situation in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa.
In this connection first direct flight will take off from Peshawar International Airport to London here on Friday, it is to be mention that direct international flights from Peshawar International Airport have been canceled, after the critical situation of KPK after 9/11 incident, however it has been started again after the removal of sanctions which was imposed by European Unions, America and Britain.
Sources told that higher security officials from America and Britain have visited to Peshawar and Lahore airport for inspection last month, after their approval clearance has been given for international flights.
In this context first international from Peshawar will take off on Friday after that international flights for others country will also be started soon.
Airline sources told that special arrangements are being made for the landing of flights at night and after completing arrangements landing for national and international flights have been started. Sources added that the extension of Peshawar Airport would be started after the rescheduling of international flights on Peshawar International airport, however runway has been extended
In this connection first direct flight will take off from Peshawar International Airport to London here on Friday, it is to be mention that direct international flights from Peshawar International Airport have been canceled, after the critical situation of KPK after 9/11 incident, however it has been started again after the removal of sanctions which was imposed by European Unions, America and Britain.
Sources told that higher security officials from America and Britain have visited to Peshawar and Lahore airport for inspection last month, after their approval clearance has been given for international flights.
In this context first international from Peshawar will take off on Friday after that international flights for others country will also be started soon.
Airline sources told that special arrangements are being made for the landing of flights at night and after completing arrangements landing for national and international flights have been started. Sources added that the extension of Peshawar Airport would be started after the rescheduling of international flights on Peshawar International airport, however runway has been extended
Pakistan ranks 125 on UN’s Human Development Index
Pakistan ranked 125 among 169 countries on UN’s 2010 Human Development Index (HDI) that measures achievements in health, education and income indicators, as an alternative to purely macroeconomic assessments of national progress.
The HDI forms part of the Human Development Report 2010, a flagship study produced annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
It was released at UN Headquarters in New York on the report, entitled: “The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development” marks its 20th anniversary.
The first UNDP Human Development Report was prepared and launched in 1990 under the leadership of late Dr. Mahbubul Haq, a former Pakistan finance minister.
This year rankings on HDI cover the period 2005-2010 using consistent data and technology. The report said the ranking should not be compared to previous Human Development Reports due to the use of different indicators and calculations.
India ranked 119 while Sri Lanka 99; Bangladesh 129, Maldives: 107, and Nepal: 138. Bhutan apparently did not provide any data this year.
Oil-rich Norway as the country with the best quality of life is ranked number 1 on the HDI. Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Ireland followed at the top of the standings.
Zimbabwe came in last among the 169 nations ranked, behind Mozambique, Burundi, Niger and Democratic Republic of Congo.
In this 20th edition, the report reviews trends over the past four decades and concludes that people today are generally healthier, wealthier and better educated than they were in 1970.
These advances are not directly linked with national economic growth, showing that impressive long-term gains can and have been made even without consistent economic performance, according to the report.
The report also highlights serious inequalities, both within and between countries. Over the past 40 years, countries at the lower end of the Human Development Index experienced an improvement of less than 20 per cent, compared to the top-performing group, which averaged gains of 54 per cent.
The HDI forms part of the Human Development Report 2010, a flagship study produced annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
It was released at UN Headquarters in New York on the report, entitled: “The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development” marks its 20th anniversary.
The first UNDP Human Development Report was prepared and launched in 1990 under the leadership of late Dr. Mahbubul Haq, a former Pakistan finance minister.
This year rankings on HDI cover the period 2005-2010 using consistent data and technology. The report said the ranking should not be compared to previous Human Development Reports due to the use of different indicators and calculations.
India ranked 119 while Sri Lanka 99; Bangladesh 129, Maldives: 107, and Nepal: 138. Bhutan apparently did not provide any data this year.
Oil-rich Norway as the country with the best quality of life is ranked number 1 on the HDI. Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Ireland followed at the top of the standings.
Zimbabwe came in last among the 169 nations ranked, behind Mozambique, Burundi, Niger and Democratic Republic of Congo.
In this 20th edition, the report reviews trends over the past four decades and concludes that people today are generally healthier, wealthier and better educated than they were in 1970.
These advances are not directly linked with national economic growth, showing that impressive long-term gains can and have been made even without consistent economic performance, according to the report.
The report also highlights serious inequalities, both within and between countries. Over the past 40 years, countries at the lower end of the Human Development Index experienced an improvement of less than 20 per cent, compared to the top-performing group, which averaged gains of 54 per cent.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Obama Faces the World
By TONY KARON
As President Barack Obama finds his domestic political agenda increasingly hamstrung by Republicans' control of the House of Representatives and their veto power in the Senate, the temptation will grow to seek presidential achievements beyond these shores. But, if anything, the impact of the congressional power shift will make an already forbidding international environment tougher still for the President.
Many world leaders will read Tuesday's vote, rightly or wrongly, as a sign that Obama's reelection prospects are in jeopardy, and their calculations will be affected by the President's diminished authority. Besides the expected push-back against a range of foreign and domestic initiatives, Republican budget-cutting impulses and skepticism of aiding governments of questionable commitment to U.S. goals could also imperil U.S. funding to Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. (See Obama's World Cup of diplomatic challenges.)
Herewith, a quick survey on the foreign policy challenges confronting the President, and his post-election prospects for success in each.
Please, Bibi, Please ...
A Middle East peace agreement was the singular achievement for which Jimmy Carter's one-term presidency is remembered, but Obama is unlikely to repeat that feat. Buoyed by the support of an overwhelmingly sympathetic U.S. Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is more likely than ever to resist pressure from Obama for concessions to the Palestinians - and he was doing a good job of that even when the President was at the height of his powers. The Palestinians, meanwhile, believe Netanyahu has no intention of offering a deal they would deem credbile, and will now have even more reason to doubt that Washington will apply the pressure on Israel the Palestinians believe is essential to achieve any deal. The Mideast is more likely to present Obama with crises than with opportunities. (See behind the crisis in Obama's Mideast peace process.)
Stop START
The showpiece foreign policy achievements claimed by the Obama Administration so far have been in the sphere of nuclear non-proliferation. It presided over a global conference to tighten nuclear security in April, and managed to get a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia that would cut both sides' warhead fleets. But ratification of the treaty requires 67 votes in the Senate, and with significant opposition from more hawkish Republicans, that goal now appears in jeopardy. Russian lawmakers have made clear they'll delay their own ratification pending a U.S. vote.
See photos of Obama's first year in the White House.
See how Obama become Mr. Unpopular.
Iran: Spinning Wheels and Ticking Clocks
Despite winning a new round of U.N. sanctions and unprecedented extra European measures to pressure Iran over its nuclear program, a diplomatic solution remains as elusive as ever. Last year, Iran's internal power struggles put the kibosh on a confidence-building deal to exchange uranium, but the election result may bring U.S. internal politics into play as a further complicating factor. The U.S. and its allies have not formulated their position on the terms of an acceptable compromise with Iran, and doing so just became a lot harder. President Obama will face pressure from a hawkish legislature to get more confrontational with Iran, even if that threatens to destroy the carefully crafted international consensus. Sanctions are not changing the game, and pressure is mounting on Obama as Iran draws closer to being able to build a bomb, yet he knows that military action could carry consequences more dangerous than any current threat from Iran's nuclear program. Iran, too, is less likely to offer an opportunity for Obama than to present him with a headache.
Who Lost Afghanistan?
Obama has been trying to extricate the U.S. from an unwinnable war in Afghanistan since he took office, although he was boxed in by his generals into escalating U.S. involvement via a troop surge. The President hopes to begin drawing down by next summer, but military commanders believe that would be ill-advised. Now, they'll have a powerful ally in the new Congress, where the specter of U.S. defeat will be used to paint Obama as weak on national security, which will also raise the domestic political cost of progress toward the inevitable political settlement with the Taliban. (See photos of U.S. troops deep in the Taliban heartland.)
Who Lost Iraq?
Obama has declared the Iraq war over, and is sticking to the timetable negotiated by the Bush Administration to withdraw all U.S. forces by the end of next year. The fact that the Iraqis are largely ignoring Washington's efforts to break their political stalemate through a power-sharing arrangement between incumbent prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and his top rival, Iyad Allawi, demonstrates just how little influence the U.S. now wields in Baghdad. Former U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker predicted last week that a new Iraqi government would ask Obama to extend the stay of U.S. troops beyond the agreed deadline. Perhaps, but only if Iran is agreeable. (See TIME's photoessay "Iraq Going Forward.")
Not For All the Tea in China...
Beijing was the bogeyman of a lot of anti-Democrat campaign advertising in the midterm election, and President Obama is certainly under pressure to get tough on Beijing. But global economic power has shifted in ways that make it difficult for the U.S. to pick fights with its most important creditor without putting the prospects for America's own economy at risk. As for military posturing to contain China's regional muscle flexing, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may have revived a belief in Beijing in Mao Zedong's dictum that the United States "in appearance... is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a paper tiger." Difficulties elsewhere will prompt the Administration to strengthen ties with China's regional rivals ranging from India and Japan to Vietnam. But mindful of the stakes, neither Washington nor Beijing is likely to make moves that disrupt the stability of their relationship - and that means more business as usual rather than any game changer for Obama.
It's the Economy, Stupid
President Obama has been struggling against the austerity tide among Western nations to caution about the danger of a premature curtailing of economic stimulus amid a tepid global recovery. But the U.S. election has effectively ended any possibility of further stimulus spending by Washington, too. The global financial management mechanisms put in place in response to the 2008 financial meltdown - particularly the upgrading of the G20 forum - will be tested by tensions over currency and balances of trade in the coming months, while U.S. leadership has been undercut by the view that Washington's regulatory failures helped cause the crisis. The most immediate challenge facing the new Congress will be whether to raise the U.S. debt ceiling early next year, because the Treasury is a few months away from reaching the limits of its permitted borrowing. Expanding a national debt already equivalent to more than 90% of GDP will go against every instinct of the Republican majority in the House, but declining to do so would risk potentially cataclysmic consequences in the global financial system.
As President Barack Obama finds his domestic political agenda increasingly hamstrung by Republicans' control of the House of Representatives and their veto power in the Senate, the temptation will grow to seek presidential achievements beyond these shores. But, if anything, the impact of the congressional power shift will make an already forbidding international environment tougher still for the President.
Many world leaders will read Tuesday's vote, rightly or wrongly, as a sign that Obama's reelection prospects are in jeopardy, and their calculations will be affected by the President's diminished authority. Besides the expected push-back against a range of foreign and domestic initiatives, Republican budget-cutting impulses and skepticism of aiding governments of questionable commitment to U.S. goals could also imperil U.S. funding to Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. (See Obama's World Cup of diplomatic challenges.)
Herewith, a quick survey on the foreign policy challenges confronting the President, and his post-election prospects for success in each.
Please, Bibi, Please ...
A Middle East peace agreement was the singular achievement for which Jimmy Carter's one-term presidency is remembered, but Obama is unlikely to repeat that feat. Buoyed by the support of an overwhelmingly sympathetic U.S. Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is more likely than ever to resist pressure from Obama for concessions to the Palestinians - and he was doing a good job of that even when the President was at the height of his powers. The Palestinians, meanwhile, believe Netanyahu has no intention of offering a deal they would deem credbile, and will now have even more reason to doubt that Washington will apply the pressure on Israel the Palestinians believe is essential to achieve any deal. The Mideast is more likely to present Obama with crises than with opportunities. (See behind the crisis in Obama's Mideast peace process.)
Stop START
The showpiece foreign policy achievements claimed by the Obama Administration so far have been in the sphere of nuclear non-proliferation. It presided over a global conference to tighten nuclear security in April, and managed to get a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia that would cut both sides' warhead fleets. But ratification of the treaty requires 67 votes in the Senate, and with significant opposition from more hawkish Republicans, that goal now appears in jeopardy. Russian lawmakers have made clear they'll delay their own ratification pending a U.S. vote.
See photos of Obama's first year in the White House.
See how Obama become Mr. Unpopular.
Iran: Spinning Wheels and Ticking Clocks
Despite winning a new round of U.N. sanctions and unprecedented extra European measures to pressure Iran over its nuclear program, a diplomatic solution remains as elusive as ever. Last year, Iran's internal power struggles put the kibosh on a confidence-building deal to exchange uranium, but the election result may bring U.S. internal politics into play as a further complicating factor. The U.S. and its allies have not formulated their position on the terms of an acceptable compromise with Iran, and doing so just became a lot harder. President Obama will face pressure from a hawkish legislature to get more confrontational with Iran, even if that threatens to destroy the carefully crafted international consensus. Sanctions are not changing the game, and pressure is mounting on Obama as Iran draws closer to being able to build a bomb, yet he knows that military action could carry consequences more dangerous than any current threat from Iran's nuclear program. Iran, too, is less likely to offer an opportunity for Obama than to present him with a headache.
Who Lost Afghanistan?
Obama has been trying to extricate the U.S. from an unwinnable war in Afghanistan since he took office, although he was boxed in by his generals into escalating U.S. involvement via a troop surge. The President hopes to begin drawing down by next summer, but military commanders believe that would be ill-advised. Now, they'll have a powerful ally in the new Congress, where the specter of U.S. defeat will be used to paint Obama as weak on national security, which will also raise the domestic political cost of progress toward the inevitable political settlement with the Taliban. (See photos of U.S. troops deep in the Taliban heartland.)
Who Lost Iraq?
Obama has declared the Iraq war over, and is sticking to the timetable negotiated by the Bush Administration to withdraw all U.S. forces by the end of next year. The fact that the Iraqis are largely ignoring Washington's efforts to break their political stalemate through a power-sharing arrangement between incumbent prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and his top rival, Iyad Allawi, demonstrates just how little influence the U.S. now wields in Baghdad. Former U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker predicted last week that a new Iraqi government would ask Obama to extend the stay of U.S. troops beyond the agreed deadline. Perhaps, but only if Iran is agreeable. (See TIME's photoessay "Iraq Going Forward.")
Not For All the Tea in China...
Beijing was the bogeyman of a lot of anti-Democrat campaign advertising in the midterm election, and President Obama is certainly under pressure to get tough on Beijing. But global economic power has shifted in ways that make it difficult for the U.S. to pick fights with its most important creditor without putting the prospects for America's own economy at risk. As for military posturing to contain China's regional muscle flexing, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may have revived a belief in Beijing in Mao Zedong's dictum that the United States "in appearance... is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a paper tiger." Difficulties elsewhere will prompt the Administration to strengthen ties with China's regional rivals ranging from India and Japan to Vietnam. But mindful of the stakes, neither Washington nor Beijing is likely to make moves that disrupt the stability of their relationship - and that means more business as usual rather than any game changer for Obama.
It's the Economy, Stupid
President Obama has been struggling against the austerity tide among Western nations to caution about the danger of a premature curtailing of economic stimulus amid a tepid global recovery. But the U.S. election has effectively ended any possibility of further stimulus spending by Washington, too. The global financial management mechanisms put in place in response to the 2008 financial meltdown - particularly the upgrading of the G20 forum - will be tested by tensions over currency and balances of trade in the coming months, while U.S. leadership has been undercut by the view that Washington's regulatory failures helped cause the crisis. The most immediate challenge facing the new Congress will be whether to raise the U.S. debt ceiling early next year, because the Treasury is a few months away from reaching the limits of its permitted borrowing. Expanding a national debt already equivalent to more than 90% of GDP will go against every instinct of the Republican majority in the House, but declining to do so would risk potentially cataclysmic consequences in the global financial system.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
American Voters decide pivotal congressional, gubernatorial races Tuesday
Voters are deciding which party controls Congress and picking governors in 37 states. All 435 seats in the House and 37 in the Senate are being decided.
The most expensive midterm elections in history finally began Tuesday, as voters started casting ballots to decide who goes to Congress and governors' offices.
With all predictions, the election is considered a referendum on both the Democratic-controlled Congress and President Barack Obama's first two years in office.
Polls indicate a dissatisfied electorate could clean house -- literally -- by tossing out the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and possibly doing the same in the Senate.
Losses by the governing party are common in the first mid-term election it faces, but the shift Tuesday could rival or match historic levels dating back decades.Unemployment -- at a rate of 9.6 percent amid a slow recovery from economic recession -- has been the dominant issue, with Republicans accusing Obama and the Democrats of pushing through expensive policies that have expanded government without solving the problem.
Obama has led Democrats in defending his record, saying steps such as the economic stimulus bill and auto industry bailout were necessary to prevent a depression, while health care reform and Wall Street reform will lay the foundation for sustainable future growth.
Democratic Party Chairman Tim Kaine told CNN Tuesday that party candidates will still pose a challenge to Republicans.
"While I think we've got the headwind we're running against, we're not throwing in the towel," Kaine told CNN's "American Morning."
"However the numbers are, the margins will be closer," Kaine said.
Former President Bill Clinton worked the phones Tuesday on behalf of Democrats in Ohio, where first-term Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland is fighting to hold on to his seat.
Clinton called in to four Ohio radio stations during a day of campaigning that will take him from New York through West Virginia and Kentucky before he ends up in Florida.
But Rand Paul, the Tea Party-backed Republican Senate candidate in Kentucky, voiced the sentiments of many in the grassroots anti-establishment movement.
"What I'm going to work to try to change is the whole government," he told CNN. "I think government's broken from top to bottom." He insisted that the government needed to balance its budget, loosen regulations on business and cut waste in the defense budget. "We have a significant recession, probably the worst recession since the Great Depression," he said on "American Morning." He blamed Obama's health care reform and banking regulation. "And my fear is it's not just President Obama's policies, ObamaCare and the new banking regulations. I don't care who proposed them but I think they're a disaster for our economy," he said.
As voting day approached, voter anger appeared to tune out the Democratic arguments.
Conservative groups and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce funded attack ads that skewered increased spending under Obama and the health care reform bill he championed, while labor unions and traditional Democratic donors warned a GOP victory would bring back Republican deregulation and policies that caused the recession.On the day before Election Day, phone service went out at Democratic and Republican field offices in New Hampshire, officials from both parties said.
A spike in campaign robocalls may be the culprit, according to Comcast, one of the telephone services in the area.
"Comcast -- and we believe, other local phone carriers in New Hampshire and Massachusetts -- are experiencing severe call volumes on the evening before the election due to auto dialing activity that is generating a massive number of inbound political phone calls to our network," company spokesman Marc Goodman said Monday.
The long and bitter campaign season will cost more than $3.5 billion -- the most expensive non-presidential vote ever, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group.
With around 100 of the 435 House seats at stake considered "in play," or competitive, the anti-Democratic mood is predicted to result in big Republican gains.
On the Senate side, where 37 of the 100 seats are being contested, the majority will be decided by key races in Nevada, Washington, and a few other states where Democratic incumbents face strong challenges.
Republicans need to win an additional 39 seats to claim the House majority, and 10 more Senate seats to overtake Democrats there.
A national poll released Monday showed the number of Americans who say things are going badly in the country -- 75 percent -- is higher than it has been on the eve of any midterm election since the question was first asked in the mid-1970s.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey also indicates that the economy remains, by far, the top issue on the minds of Americans. The economy ranked higher in the poll than all other major issues combined, including terrorism, health care, illegal immigrants and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In addition, the rise of the conservative Tea Party movement has added a new element to the election cycle, roiling Republican races by boosting little-known and inexperienced candidates to victory over mainstream figures in primaries across the country.
Tuesday's vote will show how many of the so-called Tea Party candidates can win in a general election, but no matter the final tally, the result is expected to shift the Republican agenda to the right.
That means little chance of compromise or bipartisan approaches on major issues, observers warn.
Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist who worked for the last Republican House speaker, Dennis Hastert, put it bluntly: "It's been a hostile atmosphere, but it will be hostile on nitroglycerin."
Ohio Republican Rep. John Boehner is expected to be the new House speaker if the GOP wins control of the chamber. He already has signaled little appetite to negotiate with the White House or congressional Democrats, saying last week that "this is not a time for compromise."
Boehner and other conservatives say the top priorities must be spending cuts to try to balance the budget and job creation to spur the economy. However, they also advocate extending Bush-era tax cuts for everyone at a cost of $4 trillion over the next decade.
In the Senate, legislative gridlock is likely if Republicans strengthen their current minority of 41 seats. Obama and Democrats accuse Senate Republicans of using obstruction tactics as a political tool, showing the distrust and animosity that already exists.
Democrats are also wary of a recent comment by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who told the National Journal, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
The first test of a new relationship will come in mid-November when Congress convenes a post-election lame-duck session to try to clear unfinished legislation before the newly elected Congress convenes in January. Among other issues, lawmakers must decide whether and how to extend Bush-era tax cuts.
Voters on Tuesday also will decide governors' races in 37 of the 50 states, with the outcome potentially having an influence on redistricting based on the results of the 2010 census.
Every 10 years, the states redraw House district lines to reflect population shifts. Some states gain more House seats due to population growth, while others lose seats due to declines.
In most cases, state legislatures draw the lines, and governors have the power to approve or veto the maps. Governors also can influence whether any loss or gain of seats in their state involves districts represented by Republicans or Democrats.
The list of states that will gain or lose seats is released in December. However, Election Data Services issued estimates based on preliminary census figures that indicated Texas will gain four seats, Florida will gain two, and Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington will each gain one. The estimates also indicate Ohio and New York will lose two seats, and Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey and Pennsylvania will each lose one.
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