Wednesday, July 30, 2014
China: Political solution to crisis in Syria contributes to stability of the region and world
China’s Special Envoy for the Middle East Wu Sike affirmed that finding a political solution to the crisis in Syria will contribute in spreading peace and stability in the region and the world as a whole.
Chinese News Agency (Xinhua) quoted Wu as saying in a press conference that the deteriorating situation in Iraq threatens all other countries of the world, adding that what is happening in Iraq could not be separated from the crisis in Syria.
He called on the international community to abandon the double standards regarding countering terrorism.The Chinese official also called for supporting Iraqi government, stressing that China is confident in Iraq’s various sides’ ability to boost cooperation to overcome the current difficult conditions.
China: ‘President Xi Jinping seeks his place in history – among the party greats’
Turkey: Claims of allocation of camps to ISIL in Istanbul spark debate
The release of a video allegedly showing a group of jihadists gathered for prayer in the rural part of Istanbul has sparked concerns in Turkey.
The video has prompted deputy Sezin Tanrıkulu of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) to question whether the gathering took place upon consent from both the police department and the Gendarmerie Command.
“Is the claim that the group alleged to have been the Turkey-branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL] has been allocated a campground or other places in Istanbul? Who is this group? Of whom does it consist?” asked Tanrıkulu in a motion filed to the parliamentary speaker’s office on July 30 in order to be answered by Interior Minister Efkan Ala.
Tanrıkulu asked for the locations of the camps if the claim was true and added: “Where is the field where the group, alleged to be the Turkey-extension of ISIL, used for holiday celebration that it organized in Istanbul on July 28, to which hundreds of people attended, as openly seen in the photographs?” The related video was released through a Turkish website administered by a group apparently close to ISIL. According to the website, the group gathered in the rural part of Istanbul for prayer and celebrations on the first day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, July 28. Tanrıkulu also asked whether it is true that the group “declared jihad in Turkey on July 28,” and whether the field in the footage was being used by the group for military training.
“Did the organization ask for permission, arranged in the name of holiday celebrations? Which authorities granted the group official permission? Why weren’t these people directed to mosques for Eid prayer, but were let to organize a holiday celebration in a field? What were the Istanbul Provincial Police Department and Provincial Gendarmerie Command doing during the hours when the group, which is the extension of the ISIL terrorist organization, was calling for jihad in Istanbul? Is it true that Istanbul Provincial Police Department and Gendarmerie Command were ordered not to interfere when the group, the extension of a terrorist organization, was calling for jihad in Istanbul? Who gave these orders?” Tanrıkulu asked. ISIL recently renamed itself simply as the Islamic State (IS). The IS stormed the Turkish Consulate-General on June 10 and has since been holding all 49 there hostage, including Turkey’s Consul General Özturk Yılmaz.
Israel Faces Latin American Backlash
http://online.wsj.com/articles/israel-faces-latin-american-backlash-1406770021
ISIL major threat for Iraq: Security Council
Soldiers of the Iraqi army have been engaged in heavy fighting with the militants on different fronts and have so far been able to push back militants in several areas. Maliki has said Saudi Arabia and Qatar are responsible for the security crisis and growing terrorism in his country, denouncing the Al Saud regime as a major supporter of global terrorism.
Far East reporters propose Gold Star award for President Putin
Islamic State fighter: 'Turkey paved the way for us'
By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON
An Islamic State fighter, who is in Ankara for medical care, told a Turkish journalist that since the war in Syria began, the “AKP government has helped us a lot.” The Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor of MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) exclusively provided The Jerusalem Post with a report on Tuesday based on an interview of the fighter by journalist Deniz Kahraman from the left liberal Aydinlik and the OdaTV website, in which the fighter says that Turkey had a crucial role in the group’s advance. The Islamist AK Party is headed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "Turkey paved the way for us. Had Turkey not shown such understanding for us, the Islamic State would not be in its current place. It [Turkey] showed us affection. Large number of our mujahedeen received medical treatment in Turkey,” said the Islamic State fighter. “We do not have the support of Saudi Arabia, but many Saudi families who believe in jihad do assist us. But anyhow, we will no longer need it, soon,” he said. "We will build the Islamic state in the territories from Tigris to Jordan and Palestine and to Lebanon. Sunni Law will rule,” he added. The Islamic State fighter explained his personal history, how he has been fighting with jihadist groups for the past 12 years, first taking part in fighting against the Americans in Fallujah, Iraq. He told the Turkish journalist how he had established a relationship with al-Qaida in Iraq and trained in small groups, learning to fight, gather intelligence, Islamic jurisprudence, and politics. “I joined the system of cells in 2010 and moved into Syria in 2011. At that time, all groups fighting against Assad were joining forces. We fought on multiple fronts with different groups and under different commanders,” he said according to MEMRI. “But when the lack of faith among the Free Syrian Army became apparent, we changed our paths,” he said adding, “When ISIS [precursor to the Islamic State] declared itself, we started fighting under its banner. I participated in 12 operations against the Kurds, and personally directed the three raids into Kamishli.” The fighter went on to assert the intelligence services of many countries “are making attempts to contact us,” pointing out that France, German, and the Dutch have been especially interested as of late. “Rather than being interested in what we do in Syria or Iraq, these countries want to learn about our mujahideen's activities in their countries.” The jihadi added that the Islamic State currently has mujahideen from 21 countries, not all Muslim ones, including from Europe and Russia. He also said that there were fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkey.MEMRI report on interview of jihadi: 'We will build the Islamic state in the territories from Tigris to Jordan and Palestine and to Lebanon. Sunni Law will rule.'
Turkey: CHP questions Saudi King’s alleged donation to foundation of PM Erdoğan's son
Istanbul’s Sevda Tepesi (Love Hill), which has belonged to the king of Saudi Arabia since 1984, has returned to the agenda after the main opposition said a construction permit for the hill was granted only after Saudi Arabia sent $100 million to a charity that counts the prime minister’s son as one of the board members.
Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Sezgin Tanrıkulu submitted a parliamentary question yesterday asking if the Service for Youth and Education Foundation of Turkey (TÜRGEV), a charity NGO that includes Bilal Erdoğan, son of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, among its board members, had received $99,999,900 donation in its account at Vakıfbank on April 26, 2012, in return for a construction permit for Saudi King Abdullah’s plot of land on the shores of the Bosphorus.
The permit was given only two months after the money transaction sent by chief of the Royal Protocol, which conducts protocol and agreements for the king, the CHP deputy added.
Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Sezgin Tanrıkulu submitted a parliamentary question yesterday asking if the Service for Youth and Education Foundation of Turkey (TÜRGEV), a charity NGO that includes Bilal Erdoğan, son of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, among its board members, had received $99,999,900 donation in its account at Vakıfbank on April 26, 2012, in return for a construction permit for Saudi King Abdullah’s plot of land on the shores of the Bosphorus.
The permit was given only two months after the money transaction sent by chief of the Royal Protocol, which conducts protocol and agreements for the king, the CHP deputy added.
Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç confirmed at the time that TÜRGEV had received $99,999,900 in aid from abroad between 2008 and 2012. Tanrıkulu also asked if the king had formally applied for the permission to conduct construction and, if so, its date, as well as why the permit was not given.
The property was reportedly purchased by King Abdullah in 1984.
Turkish Women Protest Deputy PM's No Laughing Comments
http://www.voanews.com/
Melda Onur, a lawmaker from the main opposition party CHP said on Twitter Arinc's comments portrayed laughing as a dishonorable act and left women exposed to violence.Hundreds of Turkish women posted pictures of themselves laughing on Twitter on Wednesday to protest against comments by Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc who had urged women not to laugh in public to “protect moral values.”
Opponents accuse Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government of ruling in an increasingly authoritarian manner and meddling in people's private lives, which has long been a source of conflict between the country's secularists and Erdogan's conservative supporters.
Erdogan is running to become the first directly elected president of predominantly Muslim Turkey.
Arinc's comments, in which he also criticized television soap operas for promoting decadence, also drew criticism from opposition presidential candidate Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu who tweeted: “Our country needs our women to laugh and to hear everyone's joyful laughter more than ever.”
Russia Concerned by Reports of Kiev Using Ballistic Missiles in Eastern Ukraine
Moscow is concerned by reports that Ukraine’s government troops have used ballistic missiles against independence supporters in the country’s east, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday.
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko Tuesday confirmed the country’s readiness to provide access to international experts to the crash site of the Malaysia Airlines passenger plane in Donetsk Region, declaring a unilateral ceasefire within a 20-kilometer (12-mile) radius.
“Now, unfortunately, actions suggest the opposite: Donetsk, Luhansk and other villages in these regions are being shelled with Grad rocket launchers, artillery and tanks.”
On Tuesday, citing US officials CNN reported that Ukraine’s government troops used short-range ballistic missiles in the east. The weapons have a range of about 50 miles and pack warheads of up to 1,000 pounds.
These missiles could have been fired from a Tochka short-range ballistic missile system (NATO Designation SS-21 Scarab), the report said. If the reports are accurate, these are “the most deadly missiles to date used in the conflict,” CNN said.
“All this is concerning, and everything is happening amid allegations that Russia and the militia are impeding inspectors’ access to the [Boeing] crash site,” Lavrov told a group of young Tajik diplomats.
The military governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Grachev, said earlier Tuesday eastern Ukrainian militia forces have found what appears to be a ballistic missile warhead in Luhansk Region.
A spokesman from Ukraine’s National Security information center, Andriy Lysenko, rejected the report, saying that Ukraine has no such missiles.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the Kiev government intensified military operations against its own people after getting support from Western countries.
Moscow has described the ongoing military action as a punitive operation and has repeatedly called on Kiev to put an immediate end to the bloodshed.
Pakistan: PMLN Govt hesitating to declare Taliban as terrorist
http://abbtakk.tv/Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Memon has said that Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) is afraid of declaring Taliban as Terrorist adding that government is trying to create conflicts between army and political parties.
Addressing the press conference in Hyderabad the Minister said Prime Minsiter Nawaz Sharif has been given wrong advices by his ministers. He suggested Premier to act wisely.
He demanded that Government should withdraw its decision regarding calling army in the capital. Sindh Information Minister said the government is trying to create conflict between political parties and army as political thinking is lacking in the government’s approach.
Sharjeel opined that Punjab government’s act in the Model Town Incident was barbaric.
Afghanistan a building block for China-India ties
By Raffaello Pantucci
The appointment of a former ambassador to Kabul and New Delhi by China to the role of Special Envoy for Afghanistan highlights China’s thinking of what it can do in Afghanistan.China is not seeking a leadership role in the country, but is rather looking for regional partners to support its efforts. A key partner is being sought in New Delhi where the Narendra Modi administration has welcomed Xi Jinping’s early overtures for a closer broader relationship. The opportunity presents itself that Afghanistan’s two largest Asian neighbours might be on the cusp of closer cooperation to help the nation onto a more stable footing. It is clear that there are issues with Sino-Indian collaboration on Afghanistan. First among these are differing perceptions on Pakistan and its responsibility and role in Afghanistan’s current predicament. For China, Pakistani security forces are trying to deal with a monster within their country with links across the border. For Indian authorities, it remains a Frankenstein’s monster of Pakistani construction that is, therefore, fundamentally theirs to address. China’s particularly close relationship with Pakistan plays into this divide, raising concerns in New Delhi as well as complicating China’s approaches to Afghanistan. Nevertheless, all three sides (China, India and Pakistan) seem to have found some way of working through these concerns, as there has been considerable movement and public discussion (including this project the author has been working on) between China and India in particular about their future collaborations in Afghanistan. All of this highlights how divergent views on Pakistan aside there remains substantial scope for cooperation between the two in Afghanistan. In particular, both sides agree that terrorism in Afghanistan is a problem that needs to be addressed and a part of this is through the strengthening of Afghanistan’s security forces. Neither power is going to send forces, but there does seem to be the possibility of some agreement to increase their security training contribution. While this has to be managed carefully, it is clear that there is a need to do something to support the Afghan National Security Forces post-2014, and in particular with the more than 100,000 men under arms who will become unemployed in line with the Chicago declarations of shrinking the ANSF from 350,000 to around 228,500. One idea would be that China and India step in to find a way to support the transformation of some of these men into a ‘mineral protection corps’ or some other paramilitary role that means they will continue to retain jobs rather than becoming unemployed men with arms and military training. This is a logical lead for China and India given it is most likely to be their national firms that are coming in to rebuild Afghanistan and profit from its mineral wealth.
Beyond this, the most obvious strand of cooperation between the two in Afghanistan lies in focusing on developing the country’s economy and building the nation’s technocratic infrastructure. This works through governments ensuring their state-owned firms (those most likely to be investing substantially in Afghanistan’s economy in the future given their higher risk threshold and capacity to make major infrastructure investments adjacent to mineral extraction projects) maintain a certain level of coordination when building infrastructure and that they agree to not go below certain thresholds of corruption when entering into deals within the country.Given it is state-owned firms that make the most investments in Afghanistan, it is more likely that governments in either country will be able to drive policies forwards in this direction. They can further consolidate this with support to Afghanistan’s bureaucratic future through the creation of a large pool of scholarships at their technical universities for young Afghans. This will have the effect of building a soft link between the nations as well as provide Afghanistan with the needed technocratic capability that will help it build institutions to confidently rebuild the country. The net result of these efforts is likely to be incremental. Neither China nor India are going to take the lead in Afghanistan having watched the West flounder for the past decade. At the same time, both have an interest in rebuilding Afghanistan and have many of the necessary levers of power to make a difference. The longer-term benefit of this cooperation is a tangible result for the increasingly warming Sino-Indian relationship — something that will only strengthen the hands of both powers in Asian affairs. Afghanistan could become the starting point of a new Asian order, increasingly led by billion-person giants China and India.
Afghanistan: IEC Accepts UN's Audit Criteria
On Wednesday the Independent Election Commission (IEC) announced their acceptance of the United Nations (UN) proposition on the recount and invalidation of ballots, but the presidential candidates have not yet agreed.
The UN proposal includes a total of 13 points that outline the invalidation of ballots and ballot boxes. Five points are in regards to the invalidation of ballots and the remaining eight are the criteria for the cancellation of ballot boxes as a whole.
The IEC confirmed their agreement to the UN plan at the IEC headquarter in Kabul in the presence of Ján Kubiš, head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
The audit process was postponed until the third day of Eid, but on Wednesday IEC said that the audit procedure will commence on Saturday. Meanwhile, all the election observers will be trained in accordance to the audit criteria until then.
Power-sharing in Afghanistan : The election that never ended
THREE airless aluminium warehouses, shaped like giant armadillos, sit hunched on the outskirts of Kabul. Inside hundreds of volunteers and international election observers have been bustling around in stifling heat, arguing over the shape of tick-marks on individual ballots. During Ramadan the lack of food and drink made the stale atmosphere inside the godowns all the more draining.
The Ramadan fast has since broken, but the counting goes on. Until it has finished, the presidential election that was supposed to replace Hamid Karzai hangs in suspension.
After a surprising reversal of fortunes suddenly favoured Ashraf Ghani in the second round of the presidential elections, his opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, cried foul. Alleging fraud, several of his powerful supporters threatened to establish a breakaway government.
It took an emergency agreement brokered by John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, to keep the process alive, but the deal is starting to show some of its inherent flaws. Mr Kerry has moved on and the two presidential hopefuls are now left to wrestle over its shortcomings.
To prevent Afghanistan from splitting down the middle, the candidates committed themselves to a two-pronged agreement: a full, internationally supervised audit of all 8m votes cast; and the formation of a government of national unity. Mr Ghani and Mr Abdullah were induced to hug each other before Mr Kerry and the cameras on July 12th. Since then the mood has soured. One dispute is over the national-unity bit of the deal. Mr Ghani and Mr Abdullah agreed to divide power between the president and a “chief of the executive council”, to be nominated by the losing side. In two years’ time, a loya jirga (a gathering of tribal elders, local power-brokers and elected officials) is to vote on the option to turn the new executive role into the post of prime minister.
To this extent, both sides agree. The balance of power, however, is a matter of debate. Mr Abdullah is pushing for something close to a 50-50 division of power. Mr Ghani however, perhaps feeling confident that his contested lead will stand up in the face of the audit, seems reluctant to put too much “share” in power-sharing. Referring to the Afghan constitution, his side insists that the real power must remain in the hands of the president. “Nobody can push the president,” as Abbas Noyan, a member of Mr Ghani’s team, puts it. He says Mr Ghani is committed to the agreement, but that “further details about the national-unity government will be discussed after the announcement of the audit result.” Mr Noyan claims that positions in the unity government must be based on merit, not simply on whomever the losing side chooses to introduce. And that the leader of the opposition is supposed to be someone who is loyal to the government of the president. A prime-ministerial post may be established, Mr Noyan allows, “but we will not change the system to a parliamentary one.” It becomes unclear exactly what power will be left to the executive council—Mr Ghani’s side says that its chief will be “responsible for implementing government policies”.
A decade ago it was widely thought that democracy in fissiparous Afghanistan could only work with a strong central authority. But Mr Karzai's unsatisfactory and increasingly whimsical rule, under which cronies flourished, has underlined the disadvantages of an overstrong presidency. When the Kerry deal was announced, Mr Karzai called it “a bitter pill”. As it turns out, some Afghan voters are finding it hard to swallow. “They don’t respect our votes,” said Lutfuddin Osmani, a 28-year-old NGO worker. “Why did they have to spend so much money on the elections, if [the candidates] are going to share the power anyway?” As a result of this dispute, talks behind the scenes have stalled. Mr Ghani and Mr Abdullah have met only twice since Mr Kerry’s visit, most recently on July 18th. The technical part of the agreement also provides grounds for disagreement. As the audit limps along, the agents of both candidates are arguing strenuously over minor details. Should they void only individual votes that appear spoiled? Or should they dump the whole of any contaminated ballot box? In what cases does a sharp increase in voter turnout warrant suspicion? Can a fingerprint stand in for a tick mark? Initially scheduled for four weeks, the audit was suspended for the third time on July 26th, and will not resume until after Eid. At its current pace, Afghanistan will not have a new president to inaugurate until December. Mr Kerry’s mission to Kabul left many Afghans feeling relieved. He appeared to have salvaged an election in which Western donors had invested over $130m. But neither of the rivals seems to have accepted the basic fact of the contest between them: one of the two must lose more than the other. Stalling and prevarication are the only outcomes on which they seem to stand in agreement.
Female Teachers without Pay in Balochistan
The Chief Minister of Balochistan time and again expresses his determination to promote education in Balochistan. According to Chief Minister of Balochistan his Government has imposed educational emergency. He claims that the educational budget has been raised from 4 per cent to 25 per cent. We also hear about the efforts to provide all the modern facilities to the younger generations for ensuring them quality education and facilitated life to the masses in the fields of education, health and other fields. However, the above mentioned quotations seem not less than exaggerations when we see teachers demanding for their salaries in different parts of Balochistan.
The overstatements of educational revolution in Balochistn become unsound when we see number of hurdles confronting education sector in Balochistan, where one of them is no payment of salaries to the female teachers appointed mostly in primary schools in different districts of Balochistan. Currently more than 150 Teachers are demanding for their salaries who were appointed in last five years by United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).
Recently, more than dozens of female teachers held a press conference in Khuzdar and said that they were forced to starve due to no salary for more than ten months. According to them through an agreement between government of Baluchistan and UNICEF’s education section they were appointed and it was agreed that they would be regularized after three years; however, since UNICEF concluded its project in Kalat division they were not being paid. They added that after UNICEF‘s project conclusion government of Balochistan was responsible to pay their salaries.
The teachers’ appealed government of Balochistan to recognize their plea so that they continue their services to the nation. They said that if they discontinued teaching as protest so it would affect educational career of thousands of students. The teachers from Khuzdr demanded that government should prove itself as education welcoming and fulfill their demands.
A group of teacher from Kalat district also informed The Balochistan Point that all Joiner English Teachers appointed by UNICEF have been deprived of their salaries, therefore, to pressurize the government and responsible authorizes they have decided to boycott taking classes at their schools. They further said that if they were not paid salaries and be regularized soon they would prolong their protest for their right.
No doubt, despite huge amount of funds allocated for educational development no remarkable changes have been witnessed. Numbers of schools are still with no facility, even the books have not been provided to the students required in the middle and high sections in the schools.
It is need of the time government should be sincere in its promises and rather than doing its own hyperboles it should make tangible measures. Governments’ first and foremost priority should be provision of salaries to the female teachers, assurance of facilities and protection of teachers in the already backward Balochistan. If possible theses teachers, who have been serving for more than five year should be permanent so that government’s sincerity is proved regarding the dream of educated Balochistan.
Third acid attack on women in Balochistan : Acid attack on women in Pishin
An acid attack in Pishin district of Balochistan inflicted wounds on six women. This is the third acid attack on women in Balochistan during last 10 days.According to the district administration of Pishin, the brutal attack took place in Tang area of Pishin district. Four assailants entered a house and sprayed acid on faces of women. The assailants managed to flee the crime scene without any problem. The acid attack victims were rushed to the nearest hospital. Luckily, the acid didn’t damage the faces of the women and only their feet were damaged. Deputy Commissioner of Pishin, Bashir Bazai, ruled out the involvement of religious extremists in the acid attack. An old personal enmity was the reason behind the acid attack, added Deputy Commissioner. It must be noted that government officials are quick to declare personal enmity the reason behind any criminal activity. This transfers the blame away from the government officials to some extent. The statement by Deputy Commissioner should be taken in the same context. In Baloch and Pashtun society there is no perception of attacking women in tribal or family feuds. So, the claim that perpetrators of the acid attack were motivated by family feud is absurd at best. Third acid attack on women in Balochistan within last 10 days has put serious question marks on governance of Dr. Malik. No action has been taken against the perpetrators of the first two attacks and it’s less likely that the attackers of Pishin attack will ever be apprehended.
WHY TERRORISM CANNOT BE COMPLETELY ELIMINATED FROM PAKISTAN – OPED
By Kashmala Chaudhry
Pakistan has finally launched a military offensive against militants using its land for terrorism. The operation Zarb-e-Azb has been going on since mid-June with its full pace in the North Waziristan Agency of Pakistan, from where local and foreign militants were not only operating against Pakistan but were aiming at international targets as well.
So far the operation is going on successfully in Mirali after clearing Miranshah, Boya and Degan areas of North Waziristan Agency from terrorists. More than 500 terrorists have been killed, and dozens of hideouts wiped out. Tons of armor, numerous improvised explosive device (IED) making factories have been recovered along with notebooks with clear English handwriting and formulae for explosive materials. All of this depicts how once considered strategic assets are now playing in hands of foreign forces.
The operation, however, is aimed at eliminating terrorism from Pakistan and according to the premier it could bring peace to the motherland. In this wake, Pakistan army has pledged not to spare any militant be it local or be it a foreign militant.
Although security institutes are determined at driving all the terrorists out of the country yet the question that remains integral to address is will this operation alonebe enough to eliminate terrorism from Pakistani soil. Especially when internationally declared terrorists organizations like Jammat ud Dawa are still operating freely in the rest of Pakistan and are even alleged to have the support of the state. The question is when we are going to learn from our mistakes.We nurtured the Taliban, though it is considered as a requirement of the time by some to secure our western borders because there were no other options to stop the proceedings of the then USSR. Today, these Taliban have become tools in the hands of foreign forces and are used against Pakistani soil. They have done irreparable damage to the country economically, socially, and in terms of precious lives that cannot come back ever. They have damaged the country’s image too. Yet we haven’t learnt from this mistake and are giving protection to groups like Jamat-ud-Dawa. On the one hand the state is carrying out an operation against Taliban and like-minded organizations in one part of the country, and on the other hand it is allowing these groups to move freely in the main centers of Pakistan and to recruit our youth to fulfill their agenda. Hafiz Saeed the head of JuD with a 10 million bounty on his head by the US has huge fan base in Pakistan and his gatherings attract massive crowds. Though at the moment Saeed might not seem as a threat to Pakistan — like the Taliban were once considered friends of Pakistan – however, history shows that such groups with extremist mind-sets cannot be trusted. As Hussain Nadim maintained in 2013, Saeed, a reformed militant acting on the behalf of the state, is considered a key figure by the security establishment who would either assemble militants and mollify their enmity against Pakistan or would evolve them into political actors. History, however, shows that these extremist groups cannot be trusted. Appeasing them and molding them in favor of Pakistan is not going to work. Because time and again it has been experienced that no agreement can bind them to remain faithful towards the state. And if these militants converted into political actors they again could not be considered safe because their mindset and ideology would remain the same. To eliminate terrorism, this mindset needs to be defeated. Reforms and rehabilitation policy is required at massive scale and at national level. In this regard not only curricula revision and madrassa transformation is required, but all those Dars centers which are operating as established institutions or from homes should be closed. These Dars centers are preaching extreme interpretations of religion and are attended by hundreds of women. These women are responsible for running the institution of their families. If the mindset of these women is inclined towards extremism, then growing up their children as balanced individuals who can turn down the fancy calls by such radical jammats would become difficult. And most important of all the state should abandon all such organizations which could again become a threat to Pakistan in the future.
Social Media Is Deadly in Pakistan
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws aren’t going anywhere, and innocent people are getting caught in the mix. A grandmother and her young granddaughters are the latest victims, reportedly killed in a mob attack sparked by a Facebook post. On Sunday evening, a grandmother and her two young granddaughters (seven-years-old and eight-months old) were burned to death in their homes during a mob attack on their village. A picture posted on Facebook reportedly sparked the attack. The city of Gujranwala is primarily populated by the Ahmadi Muslim sect, a minority religion that differs with tenets of Islam, including the belief in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. As Pakistani law dictates, Ahmadi members are not permitted to identify themselves as Muslim and have been subjected to violent persecution for blasphemy in the past. In fact, it is written in the Pakistan Penal Code that anyone who “defiles the The Holy Prophet Muhammad” is subject to life in jail or punishment by death. But the blasphemy accusation wasn’t even leveled at Bushra Bibi, the grandmother mentioned above. The trouble began when an 18-year-old Ahmadi man named Aqib Saleem allegedly uploaded a picture of a shrine in Mecca with a partially naked woman on top. A friend of his alerted authorities in the neighborhood, after which a mob of nearly 1,000 people burned down property in the town. According to police, the fire killed Bibi and the two young members of her family. “The police and the courts respond to the reports of citizens of alleged violations of the blasphemy law,” Phelim Kine, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, told The Daily Beast in an interview. “There’s a proven willingness by the Pakistani police and the courts to pursue these charges. And there is a proven willingness of individuals in Pakistani society who are willing to report on what they perceive as, justifiably or not, violations of this dangerously ambiguous law, that they detect through social media or personal interactions.” Kine described Pakistani social media as “the new town square” where ideas are more frequently discussed and shared than ever before. “There are credible reports in the media that Pakistani police stood by and did not intervene to protect those Ahmadiyya who were being targeted by this mob violence,” Kine said referring to Sunday’s tragic incident. “It reflects on this rising religious intolerance that we’re seeing in Pakistan that is now being broadcast and amplified through social media both by extremists and religious minorities who wish to communicate the beliefs and principles of their own faith.” Human rights organizations like Kine’s have pushed for reform of blasphemy laws for years. But as the Asia-Pacific Human Rights Network noted a death penalty sentence has not been issued in a blasphemy case in Pakistan yet. That hasn’t stopped individuals from being killed, in situations like this most recent event, prior to the conclusion of federal trials. And between 1986 and 2010, over 1,200 had been charged with violations of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.Gideon Resnick
The government has also kept close tabs on the spread of perceived blasphemy online, initiating monitoring services for sites like Google and Yahoo in 2010. Facebook was also temporarily banned that year in advance of an event called “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” which was a response to censorship of a South Park episode in which the Prophet Muhammad was visually obscured by a black box.
The recent violence was condemned by a spokesman for the Ahmadi community, who alleged that the accused individual in question had his Facebook password stolen, which resulted in the image being posted. A representative of the Ahmadi Muslim community did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast. Nor did the Embassy of Pakistan in the United States. Taha Siddiqui, the Pakistan correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, told me that he spoke with other members of the Ahmadi faith who had been targeted with violence as well. “So I spent an evening with some Ahmadis tonight in Karachi where I’m visiting my own family for Eid,” Siddiqui said in an email, referring to the ceremonial breaking of the fast after Ramadan. “Met a guy who was shot thrice and survived. He says he was targeted because of his faith.” This is by no means an isolated incident, according to Pakistani lawyer Yasser Latif Hamdani, who also suggested that anything that goes online could draw the unwanted attention of extremists. “Ahmadis have been persecuted by the Sunni majority increasingly over the past few years,” Hamdani, known for his advocacy for the Ahmadi community in Pakistan, told The Daily Beast. “As a lawyer I would say that there is no protection for content produced on social media. Pretty much any content produced can land you in trouble and it has in the past.” The rise in Islamic extremism has been widely reported in Pakistan, creating a situation so dangerous in recent years that even those who choose to defend individuals charged with blasphemy are putting their lives at risk. Rashid Rehman was assassinated in his office earlier this year after defending a university lecturer accused of blasphemy. “It just tells you how deeply felt and how dangerous this law can be in terms of motivating people towards extra-judicial violence,” Kine said. In 2011, then Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani asserted that there would be no changes to the controversial blasphemy law, even after another politician and former governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, Salman Taseer was killed for denouncing the strict legal code. With social media being increasingly used as a method of discussing and protesting religious beliefs, it seems like there is no discernable end in sight for prosecution of blasphemy in Pakistan. “The immediate aftermath has been shock and expressions of outrage but soon it will die down and be forgotten as inevitably any tragedy in recent years has in this country,” Hamdani said. “For the Ahmadi Muslim community it has been another incident in a long list of violent outrages against them in the last four years.” And despite persistent efforts from human rights groups, the law doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.
“The key is the state stepping up, the Pakistani government stepping up and realizing that this law is facilitating some of the extremely negative and extremely violent tendencies of a very small minority,” Kine said. “All I can tell you, is it’s a very, very uphill fight.”
The Hidden Costs Of Fighting Polio In Pakistan
Pakistan is currently at the center of the global effort to eradicate polio. Although the country has reported only about a hundred cases this year, that's more cases than in all other nations combined.
Eliminating the paralyzing disease is a major logistical operation in Pakistan. More than 200,000 vaccinators fan out across the country, several times a year, to inoculate millions of children. The government also deploys tens of thousands of armed security forces to guard the workers.
All this is happening while Pakistan is fighting against the Taliban — and that militant group continues to threaten polio vaccinators and parents who immunize their children.
The polio campaign is costing Pakistani lives, national pride and precious health resources. Some health leaders are starting to question whether the focus on polio is worth it.
"All the immunization workers have been redirected into the polio campaign, which has resulted in another disaster: Our routine immunization has gone down to as low as 30 percent or less," says Dr. Raza Jamal, of the National Institute of Child Health in Karachi. "So that has resulted in epidemics of measles, diphtheria, cases of pertussis — which we had stopped seeing for a long time."
Jamal supports the polio eradication effort. But, he says, it has become a national obsession and has taken a huge toll on Pakistan's already overstretched health system.
Polio is only one of many challenges facing the poor country. People lack access to jobs, sanitation, decent housing, clean water and electricity. Criminal gangs terrorize the slums of Karachi. Pakistan has a major terrorism problem. Last month, militants in suicide vests fought a five-hour gunbattle with security forces at the Karachi airport, which left 38 people dead. On the same day, 22 Shiite pilgrims were attacked and killed near the Iranian border. Amid all this, Western health officials have pushed polio to the front of the country's national agenda. Mazhar Nisar coordinates anti-polio campaigns for the Pakistani Ministry of Health, but even he thinks the constant drumbeat on polio can be a problem. "There is a serious fatigue factor in the parents," he says. "There is a serious fatigue factor among the providers."
Coordinating the mass immunization drives all across the country is a major logistical operation for the health department. And parents have started to question why the government is directing so much attention to this one disease, Nisar says.
"They [parents] said, 'When we go to the hospital, we don't get the medicines. We don't get the proper treatment. My child is dying of diarrhea. My child has measles. And yet every four or six weeks, you come with the polio vaccine,' " he says.
But being one of the last nations on Earth with polio — even if it's just a hundred cases — is an embarrassment for the government. "There are people at the highest level [of the government] who've told me they start their day with polio, they end their day with polio, as if this is the only priority," says Zulfiqar Bhutta, a professor of pediatrics at the Aga Khan University in Karachi. Bhutta has worked on polio for decades. Polio eradication is very important, he says. But it's unclear how long Pakistan can stay focused on mass immunization drives. "What we need to go and try to do is something a bit more holistic," he says, "rather than trying to focus on a single intervention and a single program that bears very little relevance to the lives and livelihoods of people." Pakistan should work to improve its basic health services, Bhutta says, so kids get immunized for polio along with everything else; and sanitation should be upgraded so the polio virus can't contaminate drinking water. But projects like those take even more time — and more resources — than the current barrage of polio immunization campaigns.
The Battle to Eradicate Polio in Pakistan
Political unrest in Pakistan has been a gift to the poliovirus, with 99 cases reported there so far this year. But Rotary International, which has already vaccinated 2 billion children in 122 countries, is hitting back hard.Jeffrey Kluger
Epidemiology can be all about geography—and that’s especially true when it comes to polio. If you live in the U.S., where polio was eradicated in 1979, the specter of the disease has faded almost entirely, though pockets of infections can occur among the unvaccinated. In Pakistan, however, things are moving in precisely the opposite direction, and have been for a while now.
One of only three countries in the world where polio remains endemic (the other two are Nigeria and Afghanistan), Pakistan had been close to joining the world’s polio-free nations, with only 58 infections in 2012. But thanks to bans on vaccinating—and deadly attacks on polio fieldworkers—by the Pakistani Taliban, the caseload rose to 93 in 2013. In 2014, the total reached 99 by July 18—a figure all the more alarming compared to this point last year, when there had been just 21 cases.
“It’s a scary number,” says Aziz Memon, Pakistani chairman of Rotary International’s polio eradication campaign. “Children in North Waziristan have been trapped for three and a half years without a drop of polio vaccine, and that’s what’s causing this.”The folks at Rotary know what they’re talking about. Since launching their polio eradication effort in 1985, they have been responsible for the vaccination of 2 billion children in 122 countries. Along with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, The Gates Foundation and others, they have helped slash the global infection rate from 350,000 cases per year in 1988 to 416 in 2013.
That’s indisputably good news, but polio is an exceedingly sneaky virus, with 200 symptom-free carriers for every one case of the disease. That fact, combined with the anti-vaccine forces in Pakistan, not to mention the porous borders cause by war and unrest in the overall region, has caused the disease to leak out from the three endemic countries, with stray cases turning up in Equatorial Guinea, Iraq, Cameroon, Syria, Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. In a handful of other countries, the virus has been detected in sewage, but it has not led to any cases of the disease—yet.It’s Pakistan though that’s considered ground zero, and Rotary has announced that it’s now deploying some very simple weapons in what has always been a village-to-village, door-to-door battle. To improve surveillance and tracking—a maddeningly difficult job in a country in which so many people live off the communications grid—Rotary has distributed hundreds of cell phones to midwives who circulate through communities, canvassing residents to find out who has received the vaccine and who has been overlooked. Information on the unvaccinated kids—the “missing children” in the fieldworkers argot—is entered into the phones and uploaded to a central spreadsheet, allowing later vaccinators to target their efforts more precisely.
“The midwives also track pregnant mothers,” says Memon. “And when their children are born they can continue to maintain complete health records, not just for polio but for other vaccines and basic health care as well.”
Rotary has also worked with The Coca-Cola Company to build what’s known as a reverse osmosis water plant—essentially a sophisticated filtration facility—in the town of Malin, within the city of Karachi. Polio is a disease spread almost entirely by human waste, and once it leeches into the water system it can spread nearly anywhere. The Malir plant, which was constructed near a school to give polio-age kids the first access to the newly filtered water, is a relatively modest one, with just 20,000 gal. (76,000 liters) of clean water on hand at any one moment, and cost only $40,000 to build. But as a pilot project it represents a very good start. “We can’t build a massive plant like the government can,” says Memon. “This is a small plant for a small community.” One thing, paradoxically, that’s working in the vaccinators’ favor is the increased number of displaced people in Pakistan. A recent push by the Pakistani military to flush the Taliban from its safe havens has broken the vaccination blockade, and already 350,000 children have received at least one dose of the polio vaccine. But 1.5 million refugees are scattered around the country. Rotary has dispatched field workers to refugee camps and transit points to identify the children and few adults who need the polio vaccine and administer it on the spot. “The government did not have any idea about what the numbers of displaced people would be,” says Memon. In the refugee camps, he adds, there are at least 40,000 pregnant women, whose babies will have to be vaccinated shortly after birth. The diabolical thing about polio—and indeed any disease science hopes to eradicate—is that even one case is too many. As long as any wild poliovirus is out there, everyone needs to be protected. It is only when the last scrap of virus has been found and snuffed, that the protective push can stop. That has happened once before in medical history—with smallpox. In the case of polio, it’s tantalizingly close to happening again.
Pakistan or Israel: what’s the difference?
Zara Ahmad
Do we take morbid pride in calling ourselves Muslims and butchering the innocent people of our own country in the name of religion? Who gave us the authority to play God? Is it just illiteracy or did our hearts really turn as cold as those of the Jews we see in Israel today?Being a Muslim in Pakistan, uploading posts and pictures on social media about the freedom of Gaza is fairly easy but when it comes to saving your own country and making things right for it by practically standing up against the ‘dark forces’, the whole nation goes silent. It is simple! Nobody wants to clean up their own mess. Today, Pakistanis are killing each other in the name of religion. Be it Ahmedis, Christians or Shias who are the victims of this never-ending violence, there is chaos everywhere despite the fact that Pakistan is a so-called ‘Muslim country’. Many Pakistanis, especially those who sit online, are feeling repugnant towards the Israelis. We are calling them cruel, insensitive, soulless and every other bad name we can think of. We are sharing the pictures of burnt Palestinian children online, we are tweeting every hour about the plight of the Palestinians and how remorseful we are about what is happening but have we taken a minute to ask ourselves how remorseful we should be about our own country? Do we take morbid pride in calling ourselves Muslims and butchering the innocent people of our own country in the name of religion? Who gave us the authority to play God? Is it just illiteracy or did our hearts really turn as cold as those of the Jews we see in Israel today? Today, every contact I have on Facebook is standing up for Gaza but will they ever stand up for Pakistan? Will they stand up for every victimised person of this country regardless of the sect he/she belongs to? We are not willing to make things better as a nation because it is difficult to step out of our comfort zone when we are not the victims of these brutal attacks. We are Muslims and we only stand up when we are the targets of sectarian violence. We only stand up when it is our children who get killed. We only stand up when it is our own houses that get burned. And if we are not the victims, then we are safe enough to continue our lives by sharing posts on Facebook and feeling satisfied at the so-called effort we are making. Maybe today, if we had resolved the sectarian conflicts in our own country, Gaza might have gotten some real help from us. If today we had realised what being a human actually is, we might have saved Gaza along with Pakistan. We are failing our country every day. We are failing because we have forgotten the law of karma. Karma awaits us all. Today, no matter how many Jewish products we boycott, we are no different than them. Today, Pakistan is divided into two forces in which half of the people are playing the part of the Palestinians and the other half have taken up the responsibility to portray the role of the cruel Zionists. The one thing we have all forgotten is that, first and foremost, we should be human. We have lost the essence of our human nature. Are we killing each other because we do not approve of each other’s choice of religion, way of faith? We are humans when we are born. Religion is a choice. And only God can judge a person on the choices they make. The only choice worth making here is between violence and peace. Any sensible human being would opt for peace. Today I am not proud to be a Pakistani because my own countrymen are killing each other every day. Today, I do not want to stand up for Gaza because my own country is acting like the aggressive Israel. We are becoming what we hate. Today, I just hope that we extinguish the fires of hate that dwell in our hearts before it is too late. It is about our country, about our people. Save both of them before you head out on a mission to save Gaza.
Anti-Ahmadi apartheid in Pakistan: Speak up for Gujranwala
Seven-year-old Hira, her sister Kainat and 55-year-old Bashiran bibi were burned alive after a violent mob set fire to their homes and then openly celebrated the barbarity. The mob was retaliating against an alleged blasphemous post on Facebook and considered it well within its right to burn alive three innocent people not even directly involved in the incident. Just as the long standing and well entrenched pro-Israeli bias in the Western media and governments is hard to shake and allows the IDF to kill and destroy with impunity, the victims in Gujranwala were Ahmadis who face an apartheid like state backed persecution in Pakistan. The constitution of the land declares them non-Muslim although the group claims to be within the fold of Islam. Ahmadis are prohibited from preaching their religion or posing as Muslims, an offence that carries a three-year jail term under the Pakistan Penal Code. Ahmadis can, however, also be booked under the more draconian provisions of the said penal code that prescribe the death penalty for blasphemy. Any expression of faith by an Ahmadi can potentially be construed as blasphemy and provide a pretext for mobs to ransack Ahmadi homes and burn their inhabitants alive. Unfortunately, when the highest court of the country was approached to seek some relief for Ahmadis and have these inhuman laws overturned, the Supreme Court not only rejected the plea but also though fit to remark that the very existence of Ahmadis was akin to blasphemy. This was 1992. Not much has changed since. Every Pakistani who wishes to acquire a national identity card or passport today, in order to be recognised as a Muslim, must denounce the leader of the Ahmadi community and declare him an impostor. Ahmadis cannot vote and have no representation or voice in political discourse. Incidents of target killings and mob violence have been taking place with increasing frequency. Yet many Pakistanis do not feel any outrage when such injustice is perpetrated at home and there continues to be a deafening silence across all strata of society. Just as one cannot expect the recent massacre in Gaza to shame the United Nations Security Council into unequivocally condemning the Israelis and declaring a Palestinian state, similarly it would be wishful thinking to expect that the Gujranwala incident will bring about a change of heart in the Pakistani parliament and that it will act to repeal the anti-Ahmadi laws in the near future. The anti-Ahmadi bias runs too deep and is interwoven with the political, economic and religious interests of groups that are extremely powerful and totally unwilling to concede any ground on this issue. The media has been criminally silent and millions will celebrate Eid without knowing that two children were burned alive not in Gaza, but in our own backyard. Is there anything then that can be done for the oppressed and marginalised Ahmadis of Pakistan? To start with, why not show support and solidarity for the victims by speaking up. It is heartening to see social media standing up to propaganda waged by the strong and well-funded pro-Israeli lobby, and creating a counter-narrative that has truly brought the world’s attention to the real facts on the ground. We too can raise our voice against the anti-Ahmadi apartheid in Pakistan to drown out the noise of hate and bigotry. If coming out on the streets is not an option, let us at least reserve one tweet, one post and one message of support for the victims of this horrific tragedy in Gujranwala and remember them in our prayers along with the people of Gaza.BY MIR NASAR AHMAD
Pakistan: Article 245: questions remain
Now that Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan has deigned to inform the public about his government’s alleged thinking behind the invocation of Article 245 of the Constitution, it is worth examining the substance of what Mr Nisar has claimed.
According to the interior minister, the decision to draft in the army to augment the law-enforcement resources of Islamabad was taken before the launch of Operation Zarb-i-Azb in North Waziristan and was done keeping in mind past experience with counter-insurgency campaigns and counterterrorism operations in the cities.
In addition, not only was the army consulted before the federal government invoked Article 245, but had been involved in the decision to invoke it.
To begin with, now that Article 245 has been invoked and the army is to be drafted in to boost the security of Islamabad from Aug 1, there are two aspects of its operation that ought to be clarified: one, the specific duration — and it must be limited — that the army will be deployed; and two, that fundamental rights and the operation of the superior court’s suo motu powers will not be curbed.
If neither of those two conditions hold, then everything that flows from the invocation of Article 245 will be questionable and poisoned by illegitimacy as far as the public interest is concerned. But consider also the total inadequacy of the justification for invoking Article 245 offered by the interior minister.
If there was a weeks-old understanding that Islamabad was under acute threat both because of the operation in North Waziristan and the growing presence of militants in the city, then why has it taken until now to act? And even now, why is Article 245 only invoked from Aug 1? What possible tactical sense could it make to give the terrorists and militants a public warning of several days to either melt away or attack immediately when, in the government’s own telling, the capital’s defences are not as strong as they ought to be at present?
What also about the rest of Pakistan’s cities and urban areas, several of which have suffered much more violence over the years than Islamabad? To talk about the need for army-led security reinforcements in one city with already significant civilian law-enforcement and intelligence resources while the rest of the country where the civilian law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus is known to be much weaker simply makes no security or policy sense.
There is another aspect to the latest vexing move by the PML-N government: in invoking Article 245, the PML-N has boosted the perception of indispensability and profile of the military in civilian domain — precisely the opposite of what the democratic project needs. If indeed Article 245 is linked to the PTI’s Aug 14 rally, then has the PML-N unwittingly made the military the final arbiter in politics yet again?
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Saudi Crocodile Tears Over Gaza
It is tough work being the Saudi ambassador to the UK. First, you have to stir yourself into action to deny the undeniable: The Israeli attack on Gaza comes with Saudi backing. That, in itself, is demeaning. But no sooner has your wrath been righteously expressed, than a colleague contradicts you. Worse still, he's the boss's brother. What is a prince to do? In his reply to my column, Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf Al Saud wrote: "To think that Saudi Arabia, which has committed itself to supporting and protecting the rights of all Palestinians to self-determination and sovereignty would knowingly support the Israeli action is quite frankly a grotesque insult." He then admits "dealings" between the Kingdom and Israel but claims those "limited to bring about a plan for peace." Then he says:David Hearst
"The Palestinian people are our brothers and sisters -whether they are Muslim Arabs or Christian Arabs. Be assured we, the people and Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, will never ever give up on them, we will never do anything to harm them, we will do all we can to help them in their rightful claim to their own homeland and return of lands taken illegally from them."Hardly was the ink dry on this official news release, when Prince Turki al-Faisal, Bin Nawaf's predecessor as UK ambassador, former intelligence chief and the brother of the current foreign minister wrote in al-Sharq al-Awast that Hamas was to blame for firing rockets and for refusing to accept Egypt's ceasefire plan (which would have disarmed them). This is Israel's and Egypt's view too. So which is it? Does the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia support Palestinians in their resistance to the occupation? Or does it support the siege manned by Israel and Egypt, until Gaza is demilitarized? These are two clear policies -- support for the Palestinian resistance to the occupation and ending the siege of Gaza, or keeping the siege in place until all factions in Gaza are disarmed. Either Israel is engaging in genocide (strong words, Mr. Ambassador) or the resisters are terrorists who must be disarmed. Decide what it is you want the Kingdom to say. You can't say both. You can't swear allegiance to the Palestinians and give a nod and a wink to their killers. And are the kingdom's dealings with Israel really "limited to bring about a plan for peace"? You are privy to the cables, Mr. Ambassador. Tell us what passed between Prince Bandar and the Mossad director Tamir Pardo at that hotel in Aqaba in November last year. The Jordanians leaked it to an Israeli newspaper in Eilat. Were Bandar and Pardo: 1. soaking up the winter sun, 2. talking about the Arab Peace Initiative, or 3. plotting how to bomb Iran? And why are your new friends the Israelis being so loquacious? Why, to take the latest example, did Dan Gillerman, Israeli ambassador to the UN 2003-08, say at the weekend that "representatives from the Gulf states told us to finish the job in Gaza time and again." Finish the job? Killing over 1,000 Palestinians, most of them civilian. Is that what you meant when you said "we will never do anything to harm them"? The carnage in Gaza at least gives the world clear sight of the protagonists. The wonder of it is that all are American allies, three have US bases on their soil and a fourth is a member of Nato. America's problems in the Middle East are more to do with their sworn allies than their sworn enemies. On one side, stands Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Jordan. They consider themselves the voice of reason and moderation, but their methods are violent -- the military coup in Egypt and the attack on Gaza have all happened in the space of 12 months. On the other, stands Turkey, Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood and its affliate Hamas. We should, however, talk of governments rather people, because one reason why the government of Saudi Arabia has such an extreme position on Hamas and the Brotherhood in general, is that it knows full well that its own people don't share their view. Saudi Arabia's leading pollster Rakeen found that 95 percent out of a representative sample of 2,000 Saudis supported the continuation of the Palestinian resistance factions. Only three per cent did not. Eighty-two percent supported the firing of rockets into Israel and 14 percent opposed it. The kingdom's hatred of Islamism stems not from the fact that it presents a rival interpretation of Islam. It is that it presents to a believer, a democratic alternative. That is what really scares the monarchy. The proof of all those secret Saudi-Israeli meetings is to be seen in the behavior of Egypt. It is impossible to believe that its new president Abdel Fattah al Sisi could act towards Hamas in Gaza independently of his paymasters in Riyadh. He who pays the piper -- $5 billion after the coup, $20 billion now -- calls the tune. Sisi sees Hamas entirely through the prism of the Muslim Brotherhood he deposed last year. Hamas is villified in the lickspittle Egyptian press as the enemy of Egypt. A trickle of aid has been allowed through the border crossing at Rafah, and it is sporadically opened to a few thousand wounded Palestinians. The Israeli Army is not alone in blowing up Hamas' tunnels. The Egyptian army announced recently they had blown up 13 more, a deed which earned them the title of being "a sincere neighbor" of Israel. Sisi is content to let Hamas and Gaza take a hammering, and make no efforts to get a ceasefire. The last initiative was not even negotiated with Hamas. Mubarak made a similar miscalculation during the 2006 incursion into Lebanon, supporting an operation which he believed would cripple Hezbollah. In the end he was forced to send his son Gamal to Beirut to express Egypt's support for the Lebanese people. Both the kingdom and Sisi know that dropping the Palestinian card is a risky business. Saudi Arabia is treading a fine line. According to my sources, Netanyahu's rejection of Kerry's peace initiative over the weekend was due in part to the full support of its Arab allies. Saudi Arabia's active support is keeping this brutal war going.
China: Xi Jinping strengthens his grip with Zhou Yongkang takedown... but what next?
Taking down a party heavyweight has given the president clout not seen since Deng Xiaoping and energised his anti-graft fight, analysts sayWith the launch of the formal investigation into former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang, President Xi Jinping has consolidated power in a way that eluded his predecessors.
Xi would have needed a strong consensus among retired and sitting party elites before moving forward with the probe, which marks the first time a Standing Committee member or ex-member has been investigated for "serious violation of disciplines" since the opening up ear of the late 1970s.Although the case sends a message the party will not hold anyone above the law, other past and current members of the committee were unlikely to become a focus of Xi's anti-graft campaign, analysts said. The president remains limited by the principle of collective leadership, which arose under Deng Xiaoping as a way to end the political chaos of the Cultural Revolution.
But a single case, especially one so high-profile, is enough for Xi, who is the general secretary of the party, to reinforce his message party stars can no longer use their power bases and state-owned firms to accumulate massive wealth - all with impunity. "The crux of the matter is that it shows how far Xi has consolidated his position as the leader of China," said Professor Steve Tsang, director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham in England.
"Not quite a strongman like Deng Xiaoping , but certainly more than Hu or Jiang managed to achieve," he said, referring to former presidents Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin . "This puts Xi in a more powerful position than any leader since Deng." Xi would have needed a majority from the party elite before moving, and securing that backing might have delayed the announcement, Tsang said.
The South China Morning Post reported last August that retired and current leaders had agreed to the investigation at their annual seaside resort gathering in Beidaihe. But the delay in launching the official investigation suggests the complexity of the internal bargaining despite the downfall of one of Zhou's key allies, Bo Xilai , the former party boss of Chongqing . Analysts said the timing of the announcement indicated party elites had reached consensus on major policy issues before the Beidaihe meeting. "The announcement suggested leaders have finally agreed on major policy issues to be finalised at the summer summit at Beidaihe," said Zhang Ming, a professor of political science at Renmin University. The summit is used to discuss the agenda of upcoming fourth plenary session of the 18th Central Committee, which is said to focus on comprehensive law reforms to stamp out corruption and abuse of power. Analysts also pointed out that before the formal investigation was announced, the party had dismantled Zhou's power base, which spanned the oil industry, Sichuan province, the Ministry of Public Security and the legal affairs establishment.
Zhou was head of the China National Petroleum Corporation, then Sichuan party boss, and minister of public security before he was promoted to the Politburo Standing Committee and put in charge of the police, courts and prosecutors.
The party's anti-graft agency has detained a dozen senior ministerial-level officials with close ties to Zhou. Analysts said the crackdown paved the way for Xi to revamp what he saw as the most corrupt sectors within the system - the state sector and security establishments. "It shows that politics has really changed in Beijing," said Dr Kerry Brown, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Sydney.
Brown said Xi might have felt the party's legitimacy was being eroded by members who treated official postings as an opportunity to get rich through their connections with state-owned companies. "I suppose rules always stand until the time when they are broken, and so just because there was this tradition of Politburo Standing Committee members never being prosecuted, that doesn't mean anything now," Brown said."Everything shows Xi regards using the party to make money for clans and networks with disdain. He seems to be operating with a higher political objective, so Zhou is very expendable on this reckoning … [as are the] retired, the networks already decimated by purges so far, and connected to a state sector dying from its own greed," Brown said. The question remains whether the Zhou investigation is a turning point in government accountability or intended merely as a warning to corrupt cadres." Only twice before has the Politburo Standing Committee targeted one of their own. In 1968, former president Liu Shaoqi was removed as deputy party chairman in a power struggle with Mao Zedong . Liu was replaced by Marshal Lin Biao, whom Mao stripped of power in 1971. Both Liu and Lin were ousted for political purposes, while Zhou is being investigated for serious violation of party disciplines. But for the 40 intervening years, the Standing Committee existed largely above the law. "If using the same criteria, other officials as senior as Zhou should be put under investigation," said Dr Xigen Li, an associate professor at the department of media and communication at City University of Hong Kong. Brown said Xi might feel it was precisely outsiders like Zhou with no family links to the history of the party who have corrupted and twisted its original mission and needed to be expelled. Overseas media have reported relatives of other party elites had amassed huge wealth. Last year, The New York Times said the family of then-premier Wen Jiabao controlled assets worth at least US$2.7 billion. Tsang said although Xi had built up immense political capital, he "very much doubted Xi is also targeting other leaders like Wen and Jiang at the moment". "If there is any real indication of that as a possibility, Wen would have worked closely with Jiang to block the detention of Zhou," Tsang said. "I do not expect other retired PSC members to be put in the same situation as Zhou." If that happened, Xi would be asserting himself as a strongman, violating the principle of collective leadership established in the post-Deng era. "Xi is asserting himself but he is not a strongman," Tsang said. Zhou's case sent a powerful message to rank and file members, as well as higher-up officials, that their positions and connections did not equal protection, said Dr Yuan Jingdong, a political scientist at University of Sydney. "This can also serve to divert or mitigate pent-up societal anger due to the growing gap between the rich and powerful, and the misfortunate and unfairly treated groups," Yuan said. "But to fundamentally redress the problems requires more than putting out fires; it requires introducing effective systems based on the rule of law, and a mechanism to monitor power."
Why plane crash happened so frequently recently
July 2014 must be the darkest month in the aviation history. Three air disasters happened in eight days and 465 people were killed. Despite the varying circumstances of each crash, insufficient preventive measures is a common cause of the accidents.
Zhang Qihuai, vice-president of Beijing Air Law Association, explained that frequent crashes are accidental, but with the development of civil aviation, the growth of the number of passengers and aircraft amortization may be the cause of aviation accidents.
Zhang said that Taiwan's TransAsia Airways was aware of the typhoons and thunderstorms weather conditions, but instead of choosing an alternate airport, it carried out a forced landing. While the MH17 did not choose to avoid the war zone, and ICAO should also be responsible for not providing timely warning.
Rainy season meets travel peak season
"Weather and traffic are the important factors that affect fight safety," Zhang said. "July, August and September are travel peak season for students on summer holidays. With frequent rain and thunderstorms, they are the bad season for flight."
With the increase in traffic, to ensure the normal operation, the airlines will also increase the capacity in two ways: extending the operational time of the current aircraft and putting the aircraft in maintenance into operation. "Some aircraft fly for an average of 16-18 hours a day, without stop. The probability of the accident has been largely increased," Zhang said.
Lack of captains globally
According to Zhang, there is a shortage of pilots, especially captains at global level. The captain and crew members are important to protect the safety of aircraft. "Shortage of pilots in peak season will result in the disorder in personnel arrangement. For example, we usually arrange a senior pilot to guide junior or fresh ones and choose the best pilots to fly over the difficult routes and areas. However we cannot apply it strictly during the peak season."
In addition, Zhang thinks that fatigue of crews is also a problem. Some crew members have to fly three or four days without rest during the peak season. Flying overtime will also cause safety hazards.
Dutch Prime Minister Urges Kiev to Stop Fighting Near MH17 Crash Site
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has called on Kiev authorities to stop its military operation against independence supporters around the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash site in eastern Ukraine, Agence France-Presse reported Tuesday, citing a government representative.
"The prime minister this morning called the Ukrainian president with a request to halt hostilities around the crash site," Jean Fransman said.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told Rutte that he would take all measures “to allow investigators access” to the scene, according to the government spokesman.
"Rutte expressed his concern about the fact it appeared the investigators may today yet again not reach the site. This is important because we want to get to the crash site as quickly as possible to get the victims and bring them home," Fransman said.
Earlier in the day, a group consisting of Dutch and Australian specialists for the third time failed to reach the crash site near the city of Torez due to ongoing fighting in the region.
On Monday, a spokesman from Ukraine’s National Security Information Center, Andriy Lysenko, claimed that the Ukrainian National Guard gained control over a number of cities in eastern Ukraine, including Torez.
A total of 298 people, including 85 children and 15 crew members, died on July 17 as a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in the Donetsk Region of Ukraine. The tragedy claimed the lives of 193 Dutch citizens.
The cause of the catastrophe remains unclear and the investigation into the circumstances is still underway, seriously obstructed by continuing clashes between independence supporters and the government forces in the region.
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