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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)...
The Modi Doctrine
Narendra Modi, the 14th prime minister of Bharat Ganarajya, has declared war on Pakistan-war through other means. Here’s the triangle of the Modi Doctrine. Soft power internationally: A country’s soft power includes its diplomatic strength, its propaganda arsenal and the use of economic aid. A country’s soft power is its ‘ability to attract and co-opt’ other countries through means that are non-coercive. A country’s soft power is its ability to ‘demonise the enemy’ by portraying the ‘enemy as purely evil’. In the US, the Modi Doctrine depends on the India-Caucus which is the largest country-specific caucus in the United States House of Representative. On September 20, Congressman Ted Poe, the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, along with Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, introduced HR 6069, the Pakistan State Sponsor of Terrorism Designation Act (it has since been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs). Within South Asia, India has already demonstrated its ability to co-opt Bangladesh and Afghanistan. For the record, on a bilateral basis, the Modi Doctrine intends to use water as a weapon of war (once again, war through other means). The Israeli model in Kashmir: The Israeli Model has two components. First, disproportionate use of brutal military force. Second, establishing settlements of non-Muslims in Kashmir. Disproportionate use of military forces, as per the Israeli model, means deploying a soldier over every dozen Muslim inhabitants of Kashmir. Currently, estimates vary but up to 700,000 Indian soldiers have been deployed to brutally crush the Kashmiri freedom struggle (the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, passed by the parliament of India, grants special powers to the Indian armed forces). Additionally, the Modi government – along with Mehbooba Mufti, the chief minister of Indian Occupied Kashmir – has plans of acquiring land and settling 200,000 to 300,000 Hindus in protected Israeli-type townships (‘transition camps’ have already...
Collective Responsibility of Police and Public Needed for Crime-Free and Just Society, RPO Mardan
Public-Police dialogue should be interactive and two-way in nature to develop linkages between the two. It is extremely important to disseminate and share with the citizens the public service vision of police leadership to help address the trust deficit. The vision of reforms was an operationally autonomous police which besides possessing the powers to control the crimes in the society, is democratically controlled and accountable to the public. The behaviors of police might have changed due to the uphill counter-terrorism challenges in the society, but the reforms will hopefully improve their public relations skills to fill this gap. But KP police is still considered better than other provinces. These were the remarks made by Mr. Ijaz Ahmad, DIG/ RPO Mardan during a public forum on police reforms at TMA Hall, Charsadda. Mr. Sohail Ahmed, DPO Charsadda and Haji Mukarram Khan, District Council Member Charsadda also spoke on the occasion. The event was participated well by the senior police officers and members of community with diverse backgrounds including lawyers, local government representatives, media, academia and youth representatives. The forum was part of the project “Ulasi Police” an awareness and advocacy campaign undertaken by the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) – as part of USAID Small Grants and Ambassadors’ Fund Program – to strengthen the rule of law in KP province by promoting and disseminating the significant police reforms aimed at incorporating local communities’ policing needs and international human rights standards. The endeavor aims to tackle the trust deficit between the public and police, help KP police become an accountable and community-focused police force. Mr. Ijaz Ahmad, DIG Mardan said that it was enormously important to develop public-police partnership for rule of law as weak civil society leads to crimes and injustice. Police Policy Board - an inclusive group comprising cadres of police officials from different...
CRSS Quarterly Security Report Q3, 2016
Pakistan experienced a 19.4% rise in the number of fatalities from violence from July to September, when compared with the last quarter. The most affected province was Balochistan, followed by FATA, Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, respectively, in terms of the number of casualties suffered from violence. FATA observed a 90.5% rise in fatalities from violence-related activities this quarter while Punjab recorded a 52% increase when compared with the last quarter. However, it must be said that Punjab remains one of the least affected units in the federation. This quarter also witnessed continuous operations being carried out in various districts of Punjab in an attempt to preempt any terrorist activities as well as locating and arresting various gangs and banned outfits in the province. Sindh, on the other hand, observed a reduction in fatalities from violence-related activities. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, despite the introduction of the KP Police Ordinance 2016, the efficiency of the law enforcement agencies did not improve. In fact, there were more civilian and security officials’ casualties reported from the province than those of militants’. While the Pakistan Army had claimed that the threat of terrorism had been mitigated to a great extent, this did not show in the data gathered between July and September. Due to the rising count of civilian casualties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in this quarter particularly, the Army decided to launch a military operation in the Khyber Agency in August against insurgents and militants still hiding and active near the border areas. Pakistan has faced both external and internal security threats in these months, with India on the eastern border threatening to isolate Pakistan regionally by branding it the “mothership of terrorism”, and even withdrawing from the Pakistan-hosted 19th SAARC summit, and Afghanistan on the western border closing border trade with Pakistan a third time this year. Several Indian and Afghan spies were also...
Losing in Afghanistan
New Pentagon Data Reveals No End to America's Longest War For one and a half decades, the United States and its partners in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have waged a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. And, year after year, the Taliban has staved off defeat. One assumption in U.S. policy has been an unwavering faith that the United States can ultimately force an acceptable outcome in Afghanistan. Early in the conflict, the country sought outright defeat of the Taliban. Later, as the feasibility of that objective was called into question, it embraced a more modest goal of leaving Afghanistan with a security force of its own, capable of defending the country against the Taliban. The objectives may have changed, but accompanying troop extensions have anchored the United States’ commitment to its ambitions. Following that pattern, in July of this year, U.S. President Barack Obama announced the latest troop extension, guaranteeing that the next U.S. president will inherit approximately 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. By a variety of indicators, ISAF and the Afghan government it supports are losing the war. According to data recently released by the Pentagon to one of the authors, violence in Afghanistan following Obama’s 2009 troop surge has remained at levels vastly exceeding those observed during the initial years of the war. Meanwhile, measures of insurgent activity, from kidnappings to weapons sales, have remained at levels at or above those observed when the United States “surged” troops into the country. Perhaps most alarmingly, since 2010, when ISAF began tracking combat outcomes on a consistent basis, the number of insurgent attacks resulting in the deaths of Afghan police officers and soldiers have continued to steadily climb. These trends call into question the logic of further extending the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. For years, available evidence has suggested that decisive victory over the Taliban is not possible....
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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.