Current Projects
CRSS ED Imtiaz Gul to advise UN Rapporteur on Drones
Ben Emmerson QC, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, has picked up Imtiaz Gul, the executive director of the independent Centre of Research and Security Studies, as part of a group of international specialists who will examine CIA and Pentagon covert drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The second Pakistan on the panel of experts isJustice Shah Jehan Khan Yousafzaiwhohas spent two decades assenior judgein the circuit of Peshawar high court, has heard high-profilelegal challengesto the drone campaign. Ben Emmerson announced the launch of the enquiry in London on Jan 24thsaying that those states using this technology and those on whose territory it is used are under an international law obligation to establish effective independent and impartial investigations into any drone attack in which it is plausibly alleged that civilian casualties were sustained.– Inclusion of two Pakistani experts i.e. Imtiaz Gul, a multiple author and security analyst,and Justice Shah Jehan Khan Yousafzai, who boasts a long legal career plus an in-depth understanding of the implications of the controversial drone strikes underscorea growing international appreciation of the public resentment of the CIA-operated drone strikes. CRSS helped Emmerson in compiling cases wherein innocent people, mostly women and children, became victims of the predator attacks. One area the inquiry is expected to examine is the deliberate targeting of rescuers and funeral-goers by the CIA in Pakistan, as revealed in aninvestigationby the Bureau for the Sunday Times. Emmerson recalled that the Bureau had (in October 2012)alleged that since President Obama took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. Christof Heyns [UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killing] … has described such attacks, if they prove to have...
India-Pakistan Tensions: Brinkmanship?
The events that followed a series of controversial incidents on the Line of Control beginning on January 6 lead to an obvious conclusion: the ups and downs that the Pakistan-India relations suffer from every now and then stem from deep-rooted bilateral mistrust, if not hatred and dislike with in certain segments of the Indian society. Within a span of 12 days, almost all those who matter in India - from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Sushma Sauraj to the army chief inter alia - took umbrage to the incidents on the Line of Control, vowing revenge. Then came the turnaround. "It is unfortunate that out of context debates take place in the media. But the media is free. You have to take the good and bad of the media if you believe in a free society. But we are not going to be influenced necessarily by jingoistic conversations that take place on some sections of the media," India's External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid told Karan Thapar on CNN IBN'sDevil's Advocateprogramme (January 20). Asked if the peace process had been put on hold, the minister said, "I don't think so. I think the peace process is going well. What our indication is, we have got back on track quite a bit. I don't even know to what extent we had gone off track but certainly there was a sense that we were slipping." Only two days earlier, Khurshid had offloaded his anger by describing the alleged beheading of an Indian soldier as "absolutely unacceptable, ghastly, and really, really terrible and extremely short-sighted on their part". He said any response would be "proportionate". This assessment on January 20 sounded ridiculous and paradoxical to earlier pronouncements. One simply cannot dismiss as a teenager's reckless rhetoric what the Indian civilian and military leaders harped on for several days. It is therefore instructive to revisit what Indian leaders said. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh: "Those responsible for this crime will have to be brought to book. It can't be business as usual."...
Pakistan Conflict Tracker Weekly Report – January 04-10, 2013
Weekly Data Sheet – January 04-10, 2013
The wave of violence further escalated across Pakistan during the current week. Meanwhile, the spate of ethno-political violence in the largest metropolis, Karachi, continued unabated during the week, wherein 29 persons (32 in the last week) perished. Also, the wave of bomb blasts across the country, spree of target killings and the recovery of mutilated dead bodies continued to mount death toll during the week. The data collected through10 newspapers that CRSS uses as the source, indicates that as many as 153 persons lost their lives as a result of 70 violent incidents across the country during the reported week (for detailssee data sheet).The violent incidents also left 83 people injured. Like in case of preceding weeks, civilians bore the major brunt of the ongoing spate of violence across Pakistan during the current week, as civilians accounted foralmost 50 percent of the total death toll across Pakistan. Numerically, 76 civilians lost their lives and 50 others were wounded in violent clashes of various kinds across the country. The second highest number of fatalities were ofmilitants, wherein 72 militants got killed under different circumstances. Furthermore, six CIA operated drone strikes were also reported during the week, killing 36 suspected militants in different areas of North and South Waziristan Agency (FATA). Meanwhile thesabotage campaign by the militants continued to demolish state infrastructure and undermine stability as militants blew up a portion of gas pipeline in Dear Bugti (Balochistan), three power pylons, a grid station,two government schools, an under construction jail, a hujra(place of gathering), and eight shops in different areas across the country. Meanwhile, four sectarian attacksleft five people, including two Shias and three Sunnis, dead in different parts of the country this week. Moreover, the loss of lives due to target killings increased by 11 percent, (47 percent of the total dead against last week 36 percent) during the...
Pakistan Conflict Tracker Monthly Report – December 2012
The raging wave of violence surged significantly during December across Pakistan. Ethno-political violence in Karachi, religio-terrorism in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and nationalist-separatist violence in Balochistan meanwhile continued unabated. The deadly wave of target killing in Karachi, started in the last week of March, continue to mount death toll during December. The deadly wave left almost 121 persons dead (due to target killing) during the current month. In total, 139 persons perished in Karachi during December in different circumstances. The data collected throughten newspapers, that CRSS uses as the source, suggests that some 441 people lost their lives in 231 incidents of violence across the country (for details see data sheet). The violent clashes also left 506 people injured in December. Concise look into the casualty figures underlines that the civilians remained the major target of violent actors, with the civilians accounting major loss of lives as a result of various acts of violence and terror in Pakistan. As noted in pie chart I below, civilians were 60 percent of the total dead in December. The share of the civilian deaths is lower than the previous month, wherein 74 percent of the dead were innocent civilians. As a whole, 272 civilians were killed in different circumstances during the month. Moreover, the data suggests that the militants fighting against the state remained the second major target i.e. 27 percent (114) of the total dead. Clashes also left 55 security forces– personnel (13 percent of total deaths) dead and these were mostly recorded in insurgency infested areas of FATA, Karachi and Balochistan. Furthermore, during December (from 30 November to 03 January), six CIA operated drone strike were reported in different areas of North Waziristan Agency (FATA), leaving as many as 24 suspected militants dead. Between March 2012 and January 03, 2013, 42 drone attacks have killed almost...
The Bara Tragedy
The inhumane killing of 18 tribesmen on January 15, 2013 in Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency of Federally Administered Tribal Areas, should serve as a wakeup call for all the parties in the on-going war against terrorism in Pakistan. The recovery of these mutilated dead bodies underline the scale and level of utter disregard for human lives by the actors involved in this conflict. The residents of the area, enraged by the indiscriminate violence and atrocity committed with their loved ones; took all the corpses of these 18 dead people to Peshawar and finally lay them outside the Governor House of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) to mark a protest. They claimed that security forces were involved in the incident while the security forces forcefully denied the accusations and alleged that militants committed these atrocities to defame the security forces. In the recent years Khyber Agency has become a center of malicious activities led by various militant outfits and armed militias funded by unknown sources. The name of the infamous killer, Mengal Bagh (the head of Lashkar-i-Islam, a pro-Taliban militant group) is not unfamiliar to the people of the locality who introduced his own version and interpretation of highly reactionary and regressive form of religion and also devised his own way in which areas like Bara, and adjoining regions under his control, would be administered and governed. A classical example of non-state funded militias working within the boundaries of the state though not conforming to the state laws. Therefore, the security forces have been highly engaged in battling this lethal militant outfit in these areas including the Valley of Tirah (Khyber Agency) for quite some time, where it is assumed that all these rogue elements have gone into hiding due to the favorability of the terrain, a highly rugged mountainous area with dense greenery. If one has to inquire about the evidence of security forces' activity in the region, the best people to ask would be those...
Weekly Data Sheet – December 28, 2012-January 03, 2013
Pakistan Conflict Tracker Weekly Report – December 28, 2012 – January 03, 2013
The wave of violence further escalated across Pakistan during the current week. Meanwhile, the spate of ethno-political violence in the largest metropolis, Karachi, continued unabated during the week, wherein 40 persons (32 were in the last week) were perished. Also, the wave of bomb blasts across the country, spree of target killings and the recovery of mutilated dead bodies continued to mount death toll during the week. The data collected through10 newspapers that CRSS uses as the source indicates that as many as 130 persons lost their lives as a result of 57 violent incidents across the country during the reported week (for detailssee data sheet).The violent incidents also left 189 people injured. Like in case of preceding weeks, civilians bore the major brunt of the ongoing spate of violence across Pakistan during the current week, as civilians accounted formore than 60 percent of the total death toll across Pakistan. Numerically, 85 civilians lost their lives and 147 others were wounded in violent clashes of various kinds across the country. The second highest number of fatalities was ofmilitants, wherein 31 militants got killed under different circumstances. Furthermore, one CIA operated drone strike was also reported during the week, killing five suspected militants in Mana Gurbaz area of North Waziristan Agency (FATA). Meanwhile thesabotage campaign by the militants continued to demolish state infrastructure and undermine stability as militants blew up a portion of Gas pipeline in Dear Bugti (Balochistan) and Charsadda (KP) provinces respectively, two power pylons in Dadu (Sindh),two houses and five government schools in KP were also blown up. Meanwhile, five sectarian attacksleft 23 people, including 22 Shia and one Sunni, dead in different parts of the country this week. Moreover, the loss of lives due to target killings decreased by 12 percent, (36 percent of the total dead against last week 48 percent) during the current week. Overall, 39 percent of...
The Threat Lies Within
In its newly published warfare doctrine manual ¿Green Book– Pakistani military has added a new chapter titled ¿sub-conventional warfare–. The new addition suggests, that the military has finally acknowledged 'internal dynamics' as the real security threat to the country. According to this new warfare doctrine, military will focus on threats lying within the state like religious radicalization, fundamentalism, extremism and terrorism. The new position contrasts with pronouncements, particularly by the military establishment until recently, which blamed 'external factors' for the country internal troubles. The new thinking, as spelt out in the ¿Green Book–, also came through a recent speech the Army Chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani gave to Pakistan Navy officers. "Today, we are pitched against an amorphous enemy when the conventional threat has also grown manifold," army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani said during an address at the naval academy on December 29, 2012. "The increasingly complex external environment and our rather precarious internal dynamics have created a myriad of security challenges" he underscored. The scale of threat was clearly manifest in the daring two-pronged storming of the Peshawar airbase on December 15, the assassination of anti-Taliban, Awami National Party leader Bashir Bilour in Peshawar (capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) on December 22, the cold-blooded execution of 22 Levies ´ a semi-official tribal police - near the city on December 29, and the killing of about 20 Shia pilgrims near Mastung in north-western Balochistan underscore the intensity of the war on the state and people of Pakistan. During 2012, Pakistan lost slightly over 6,000 people falling to various forms of violence. But the change in doctrine hardly befits the widespread perceptions that centre on the military establishment's broader geo-political agendas in Afghanistan and vis-à-vis India. Most people still believe that the establishment is hamstrung by its view on...
Pakistan Security – 2012 Dance of death and destruction continues
The overall level of violence declined by almost 15 percent during 2012[1] across Pakistan.[2] Meanwhile, ethno-political violence in Karachi (Sindh), religio-political terrorism in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and nationalist-separatist violence in Balochistan continued unabated. The deadly wave of target killings in Karachi, presumably triggered by the rivalry between Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Awami National Party (ANP) in March, has continued to date, claiming almost 991 persons, as a result of 791 violent attacks in the course of 2012. Among these 917 were civilians and 74 security forces– men. The data collected throughten newspapers that CRSS uses as the source, underlines that as a whole, 6059 persons perished during 2012, as a result of 2536 incidents of violence (for details see data sheet below). A concise look into the casualty figures underlines that the civilians remained the major target of violent acts, with the civilians accounting for almost 52 percent of the total deaths off various forms of violence and terror across Pakistan. As noted in pie chart I below, 3041 civilians were dead in 2012. Moreover, the data suggests that the militants fighting against the state remained the second major target of violence i.e. 37 percent of the total dead. Clashes between militants and security forces also left 699 security forces– personnel (11 percent of total deaths) dead and these were mostly recorded in insurgency infested areas of FATA, Karachi and Balochistan. Furthermore, during 2012, 49 CIA operated drone strikes were reported in different areas of Pak-Afghan bordering areas, mostly in North and South Waziristan agencies (FATA), leaving as many as 345 suspected militants dead. Meanwhile, continuing their sabotage campaign to demolish state infrastructure, militants blew up 116 private and state-run schools in different parts of FATA and KP during the course of current year. Also 108 sabotage attacks...
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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.