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Uri Aftermath: Global Media Doubts Surgical Strike Claims
India’s claims of cross-border ‘surgical strikes’ are being taken with a pinch of salt even by the international media. Leading US newspaper, The Washington Post, in an article on Sunday published interviews of locals living along the Line of Control. The majority of villagers in the three areas along the LoC said that they did not witness any cross-border movement of troops or hear the sound of any helicopters. The residents of Bhimber, Chamb and Sahmani said that a heavy exchange of fire did take place, although no one said that “they had seen or heard anything that supported India’s claim that it carried out cross-border strikes on several staging areas for militant groups that left “double digits” of militants dead,” according to the article. Another well-reputed publication, ‘The Diplomat’, in a piece titled ‘Is India Capable of a Surgical Strike in Pakistan Controlled Kashmir?’ raised some serious questions about the capabilities of the Indian military. The article asks whether the Indian forces have the requisite capability for those much-hyped ‘surgical strikes’. The piece takes a critical look into India’s defence system, stating that the majority of the acquired warfare mechanisms and machinery are along the ‘Cold War’ lines. It also blatantly states that most of the Indian machinery is in a ‘training and testing’ or rather an ‘infancy’ phase. According to a BBC Urdu article, when the locals residing merely two kilometres away from Indian check-posts were inquired about the strikes they said: “What surgical strikes? That day there was just more than usual firing.” It seems that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, under exceeding pressure following the Uri attacks, made a face-saving move, which lacks the substance to make it convincing and credible. Moreover, the Indian army’s muddled up and porous information also raised more doubts regarding the authenticity of such ‘strikes’. Interestingly, Pakistan Army after firmly denying the claims of strikes...
CPEC: A Baloch Perspective
During one hundred years of colonial rule in greater India and Balochistan, the British Raj constructed thousands of kilometres of railway lines, roads, bridges, airports, telegraph lines and strategic garrisons. The logic behind all this massive infrastructure investment was very clear: to maintain colonial rule, maximise exploitation and counter the Russian advance towards the warm waters of Balochistan. From 1878 to 1922 the British rail network crisscrossed Balochistan’s landscape, creating wonders such as the Khojak Pass, one of the longest tunnels in South Asia. In addition, British engineers built marvellous bridges. But all this didn’t bring any economic miracles to the province. Simply because all this infrastructure was purpose-built and without an inclusive and participatory process to involve local communities. The British Raj’s speedy rails and motors helped transport oppression and mobilise killing machines to suppress anti-colonial freedom fighters. In 1947 Pakistan came into being and the Baloch were promised a good future. Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah promised special status to maintain Balochistan’s autonomy and special development plans in return for Balochistan joining Pakistan. However, immediately after annexation with Pakistan a deliberate policy of under-development of the province started, keeping a resource-rich region dependent on financial handouts. A new breed of rulers from Karachi, Lahore and then Islamabad arrived to replace the white colonisers. Within five years of independence Balochistan’s top-grade gas was pumped and transmitted to the far end of northern Punjab, leaving the Baloch with just dust and smoke. Jobs and scholarships went to a special class of people and gas-related industries, like fertiliser industries, were established in Punjab. Since 1948, countless promises have been made but the Baloch have only received death and despair. The result at the end of these 70 years has been over 81 percent poverty, 70...
Taliban Fighters Raise Flag in Strategic Afghan City of Kunduz
The Taliban launched a large-scale assault Monday on Kunduz, a northern Afghan city that briefly fell to the insurgents a year ago and was only fully liberated weeks later with the help of U.S. airstrikes. The insurgents reached a central roundabout and hoisted their flag, residents said on condition of anonymity, fearing retribution. But Amruddin Wali, a member of the provincial council, said security forces still control the airport, police headquarters, provincial government offices and the intelligence agency. "Intense fighting is going on right now at the governor's compound and the NDS (intelligence agency) office," he said. The Taliban said they had seized the roundabout and several checkpoints, but did not claim to have captured the city. The heavy fighting forced government offices, schools and shops to close, said Mohammad Yusouf Ayubi, head of the Kunduz provincial council. He said parts of the city were empty and highways to the south and east were closed. Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said Afghan forces had launched airstrikes on Taliban positions, and were carrying out offensive operations outside the city. "I totally reject claims that the Taliban have taken over Kunduz city," he said, adding that the insurgents had captured an area to the west. The Interior Ministry said a policeman was killed and four were wounded in the ongoing fighting. The attack came as President Ashraf Ghani left for an international aid conference in Brussels, where he expects donors to pledge $3 billion a year through 2020 to aid the country's reconstruction as it continues to wage a 15-year war against the Taliban. The fall of Kunduz last year marked the Taliban's first capture of an urban center since the group was driven from power by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Afghan forces backed by U.S. air power spent around three weeks driving the militants out of the city. Kunduz came under threat again in April, but U.S.-backed Afghan forces fended off the...
EU Signs Deal to Deport Unlimited Numbers of Afghan Asylum Seekers
The EU has signed an agreement with the Afghan government allowing its member states to deport an unlimited number of the country’s asylum seekers, and obliging the Afghan government to receive them. The deal has been in the pipeline for months, leading up to a large EU-hosted donor conference in Brussels this week. According to a previously leaked memo, the EU suggested stripping Afghanistan of aid if its government did not cooperate. The deal, signed on Sunday, has not been made public but a copy seen by the Guardian states that Afghanistan commits to readmitting any Afghan citizen who has not been granted asylum in Europe, and who refuses to return to Afghanistan voluntarily. It is the latest EU measure to alleviate the weight of the many asylum seekers who have arrived since early 2015. Afghans constituted the second-largest group of asylum seekers in Europe, with 196,170 applying last year. While the text stipulates a maximum of 50 non-voluntary deportees per chartered flight in the first six months after the agreement, there is no limit to the number of daily deportation flights European governments can charter to Kabul. With tens of thousands set to be deported, both sides will also consider building a terminal dedicated to deportation flights at Kabul international airport. The agreement, Joint Way Forward, also opens up the deportation of women and children, which at the moment almost exclusively happens from Norway: “Special measures will ensure that such vulnerable groups receive adequate protection, assistance and care throughout the whole process.” If family members in Afghanistan cannot be located, unaccompanied children can be returned only with “adequate reception and care-taking arrangement having been put in place in Afghanistan”, the text says. The EU has negotiated the agreement with the Afghan government as part of the run-up to this week’s Brussels donor conference, where international donors will pledge aid for Afghanistan for the...
Visa Restrictions for Afghan Truckers Relaxed
The local authorities on Saturday relaxed visa restriction for Afghan truckers transporting goods to Pakistan via Torkham border. The federal government had restricted the entry of Afghans to the country without valid passports and visas after Sept 30. The restrictions were first imposed in June 1 when all Afghan nationals without visas were barred from entering Pakistan via Torkham and Chaman borders. They were later relaxed for Afghan transporters, mostly having only the route permits issued by the counselor general offices of both countries in Peshawar and Jalalabad. However, the transporters were told to secure passports and get Pakistani visa stamped on them before Sept 30 for future entry to Pakistan. After the expiry of that deadline on Saturday, a large number of Afghan vehicles loaded with goods were denied entry to Pakistan through Torkham border as their drivers and helpers didn’t have passports and visas. However, the local authorities later agreed to allowed entry to those with fresh route permits for trade in Pakistan. The development came after local and Afghan transporters held talks with Pakistani officials. A fine of Rs2,000 each was imposed on trucks, whose drivers didn’t have valid route permit. The officials told transporters that they would need valid passports and visas for entry to Pakistan in future. Pakistani Transporters Union president Haji Azeemullah welcomed the move and said it would ensure smooth bilateral trade. He said more than 60 percent of Afghan transporters had got passports, while the rest would follow suit in few days. Meanwhile, the Frontier Corps on Saturday arranged a free medical camp for the returning Afghan nationals at Torkham border. The relevant officials said around 100 Afghans, mostly women and children, were given free medicines at the camp. They said more doctors and medicines were needed to continue caring for the returnees free of charge. This article originally appeared in Dawn News, October 02, 2016....
Afghanistan in the shadow of the US Presidential Election
As US is entering in to its sixteenth year of its longest war in Afghanistan with no ending point in sight; the two leading US presidential candidates did not show any big interest during their first historic presidential debate to talk about their longest military war in Afghanistan and their future plans for the betterment of the situation in that region. Meanwhile the leaders of the National Unity Government of Afghanistan are preparing to leave for another important conference to Brussels. The Brussels conference happens right after the Warsaw Summit in July 2016 during which the world leaders reaffirmed their mutual commitment to ensure long-term security and stability in Afghanistan. On the other side the National Unity Government of Afghanistan signed a historic peace accord with Hezb-i-Islami; a deal that the NUG hopes will lead to peace and prosperity in the country and more agreements with other fighters in the future. The US Green and Libertarian Parties Apart from the US Democratic and Republican parties there are two other major parties in US that both the media and the people have rarely talked about them and are not hearing from them so often. These parties are “The Green Party” led by an American physician, activist and politician Jill Ellen Stein and the “Libertarian Party” chaired by American businessman, author and politician Gary Earl Johnson. These two candidates have also expressed their unwillingness in fight against terrorism in Afghanistan. The Green Party nominee Jill Stein has always been against the war in Afghanistan and in Jan 2012 she had considered the Afghan and Iraq war illegal. In Dec 2011 she had said that US does not need to be in Afghanistan because there’s no military solution to that war and prior to that on Sep 2010 she called the Afghan and Iraq war a military misadventure and had asked the Obama administration to end the war. Very recently on May 2016 she had said that war on terror has cost $6T and a million lives. The...
South Asia’s Quest for A Future
In 2014, when Narendra Modi was elected Prime Minister, the noted Indian historian, Pankaj Mishra, wrote that “India is entering its most sinister period since independence in 1947”. In less than three years since he took over, Modi has tried to transform some of the fundamental tenets of Indian polity and foreign policy. For Pakistani policymakers who are in the process of formulating a comprehensive policy response to India’s aggressive posturing, there is need to focus on two areas: where is Modi coming from, since his political genealogy is different from his predecessors, and how should Pakistan’s India policy go beyond an ad hoc, reactive, moment-to-moment, tactical, approach? As Pankaj Mishra wrote, ‘Modi is a life-long member of the RSS, a para-military Hindu organisation inspired by the fascist movements of Europe’. Modi was propelled to power from his perch as Chief Minister of Gujrat, where over 1,000 Muslims were murdered under his watch during the ethnic cleansing of 2002. Gujrat is also home to the famed Hindu temple of Somnath, which was destroyed several times by the Muslim conqueror, Mahmud of Ghazni. Given his background and ideological training as an RSS activist for several decades, Modi, like most of his Hindutva comrades, suffers from what can be termed as a deep-seated ‘Mahmud of Ghazni Complex’: viewing Muslims as marauders, invaders and ‘foreigners’ alien to the soil of ‘Mother India’. Fear and loathing of Muslims are part of this worldview. Three components of Modi’s India need to be understood. First, Modi’s Pakistan policy stems, in part, from an ideological approach, an extension of his domestic RSS base. Being ‘tough’ on Pakistan is also meant as a message of intimidation to the people of occupied Kashmir as well as the Muslims of India in this convoluted congruence between the Hindutva ideology and Indian foreign policy, even if it means cutting the nose to spite the face. For instance, scuttling the SAARC Summit damages Pakistan...
Fata into The Fold
In November 2015, the prime minister constituted the Fata Reforms Committee. In August, the committee submitted its report to him (rather than the president as constitutionally mandated). It recommended the prime minister convene a meeting of all political parties to secure a grand consensus. The president and prime minister may then jointly convene a combined jirga in Peshawar to announce the reforms. The committee could not have been unaware of the president’s powers with respect to the tribal areas under Article 247(6) of the Constitution. For changing the status of any tribal area, the president has to ascertain the people’s views through a representative jirga. The report, however, appears to favour political interests over the area’s people — in part due to its political composition. Issues with the report may have resulted from a lack of expertise and knowledge of Fata. Meaningful reforms will not be that easy to achieve. In outlining Fata’s history, the report borrows heavily from earlier reports. The closed-door and open-door policies receive mention, but not the aggressive ‘forward policy’ preceding them, which carried British influence far into Afghanistan and led to Kabul’s occupation in 1839. Not long after, suggestions were made that Kabul become the summer capital of British India — but a violent uprising erupted in 1841. With Elphinstone’s army decimated, the British suffered one of their worst military defeats. Lessons learnt from the First Anglo-Afghan War led to the closed-door policy. The report unjustly criticises the British for not developing the areas. Give the devil its due; it was British blood and genius that brought the previously ungoverned area of Yaghistan under its yoke. That yoke served Pakistan well for about five decades. Ask any political agent alive and he will tell you that the people themselves resisted every effort of the government to open up. Roads, hospitals, schools, etc were considered inroads into their...
Pakistan closest to us in South Asia, says Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan
He was speaking to the media at the inauguration ceremony held at the Azakhel repatriation centre which was attended by a high-level diplomatic delegation, comprising ambassadors of Afghanistan, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, the European Union and the Charge d’Affaires of the Netherlands, head of ECHO Pakistan, Chief Commissioner for Afghan Refugees Dr. Imran Zeb Khan and UNHCR Representative Indrika Ratwatte. He also stated that Afghanistan, as an independent entity, enjoys friendly relations with many countries, including India, but it should not be lumped together with India on important issues. The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) inaugurated the agency’s second voluntary repatriation centre in Nowshera district, to facilitate the safe and dignified return of Afghan refugees to Afghanistan. Zakhilwal who was speaking to the media said that there was misrepresentation of facts concerning India’s influence in Afghanistan. Answering a question on the Saarc Summit, the Afghan envoy said that although Afghanistan was not a prominent member of the Saarc grouping, it was geographically part of both Central and South Asia. With the opening of a new centre in Azakhel in Nowshera, UNHCR now has the capacity to facilitate the return of up to 10,000 refugees every day via the Torkham border crossing, a UNHCR statement said. Appreciating Pakistan’s decision to extend the stay of Afghan refugees till the end of March next year, UNHCR’s Representative Indrika said: “This … is an important decision … which recognises the importance of policies to manage the legal stay of registered Afghans in Pakistan.” Chief Commissioner for Afghan Refugees Dr Imran Zeb Khan said: “Pakistan has ensured that the repatriation remains voluntary and that returns are conducted in safety and dignity.” Dr Zeb also acknowledged the commitment and ownership of Afghanistan to facilitate the repatriation of Afghans and the steps taken to enable their sustainable reintegration. Dr Omar Zakhilwal encouraged...
China Blocks River, Sets Off Alarm Bells in India
China moved ahead with blocking a tributary of River Brahmaputra in Tibet on Saturday to build its ‘most expensive’ hydropower project in the region. The Indian media is reading too much into the Chinese move which came days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi considered plans to reconfigure the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan in the aftermath of the Sept 18 deadly attack on an Indian military base in Uri which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants. The Xiabuqu tributary of River Yarlung Zangbo — the Tibetan name for Brahmaputra — was blocked at Xigaze in Tibet on Friday as part of construction of the $740 million Lalho project, according to China’s Xinhua news agency, Describing it as the ‘most expensive’ undertaking in Tibet, the report said the project will serve multiple purposes, including irrigation, flood control and power generation. “The Lalho reservoir is designed to store up to 295 million cubic metres of water and help irrigate 30,000 hectares of farmland in Xigaze, which usually suffers from severe drought,” the report said. “It will have two power stations with a combined generation capacity of 42 megawatts,” it added. Construction of the Lalho project began in June 2014 and is scheduled to be completed in 2019. Beijing’s move has set off alarm bells in Delhi, which, according to theTimes of India (ToI), is worried of the blockade’s impact on lower riparian regions which lie in India. According to the Indian daily, Xigaze is closely located to India’s Sikkim state and River Brahmaputra, which flows into India’s Arunachal Pradesh state, originates there. “It is unclear what impact the blockade of the river will have on the flow of water from the Brahmaputra into the lower riparian countries like India and Bangladesh as a result,” the ToI report said. China extends veto on JeM chief’s blacklisting In another blow to Delhi on Saturday, China extended its decision to block India’s appeal to the United Nations to label Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM)...
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I am also a member of National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting. Recently, we held a meeting with the Director General of Radio Pakistan and we told them to initiate such local programs (like Constituency Hour) in regional languages to educate and inform people. Even Indian Radio can be heard in FATA which is being used for propaganda purposes and must be closed. Therefore, we should launch some standard and quality programs like CRSS that will change the taste of the listeners.