Border defence units don't know their job

An Indian parliamentary panel was recently amazed when told that the country's Military Intelligence (MI) had no knowledge of the infrastructure and the roads being created by different countries, particularly China, across India's borders.

Taking exception to such lack of information, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, which was examining officials on the 'construction of roads in border areas', said the response of the MI and the Defence Ministry 'speaks volumes of the casual attitude towards such an important matter concerning the security of the nation'.

"The committee feels that it is utmost necessary to keep a watch on the construction activities on our borders by different countries and maintain the data in this regard. Besides, there is urgent need to ensure that our plans are in consonance with the impending security challenges," the panel said, recommending that a mechanism be formulated in this regard.

The Defence Secretary and representatives of Border Roads Organisation (BRO) told the parliamentary committee that they would not be able to meet the deadline of 2012 to implement Long Term Perspective Plans (LTPP), which involve the construction of 277 roads of 13,100 km length at a cost of Rs 24,886 crore.

The panel recorded strong reservations at the evidence of the BRO representative, who defended the tardy progress by saying the BRO takes far lesser time than other agencies like the Public Works Department (PWD).

Angered at the response, the panel reminded the BRO that it was a prestigious organisation that needed to adhere to international standards.

Further, it said despite celebrating its golden jubilee in 2010, the BRO was yet to learn how to make tunnels.

Like the army, the BRO also has a shortage of officers. Out of its authorised strength of 1,999 officers, the BRO has 1,204, implying 36.9 percent deficiency. It also has 12.7 percent deficiency in subordinate cadre.

India has 14,880 km of land border with seven countries running through 92 districts in 17 states.

The committee also told the defence ministry to resolve the problems in construction of border roads. "We desire that specific action taken in this direction be intimated to us," it said.

For creating a Wide Area Network (WAN) for the BRO, the committee said the government had sanctioned the project in 2006 to improve communication links in border areas but the Expression of Interest (EoI) was released only in 2009.

"The committee doesn't appreciate the inordinate delay in such an important assignment. Since communication is vital in border areas, the committee would like it to be completed within a time-bound manner," the committee said.

On the steps taken by the defence ministry to get forest and wildlife clearances, the committee said a three-level single window system has been operationalised in this direction and timelines have been fixed by the environment ministry.

"The ministry has not replied in regard to preparing a checklist for nodal officers clearly delineating responsibility of giving timelines. The committee wishes that the ministry furnish action in this regard soon," it said.

Converted dalits get no justice

IN 1935, the British arranged for a number of 'low' castes, whose names were specified in a schedule (hence called Scheduled Castes), to be given reservation in government jobs and elected bodies. These castes were not defined by religion, and included a number of castes whose ancestors had converted over the centuries to various religions, such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Sikhism, in search of liberation from the tyranny of Brahminism.

Recognising the legitimacy of the demands of the 'low' castes for reservation, the Constitution of India continued with the special provisions for SCs under Article 341, but in 1950, a Presidential order specified that no person professing any religion other than Hinduism would be deemed to be an SC member.

This was stiffly resisted by non-Hindu Dalits, and so over the years, the Indian State was compelled to extend SC status to Sikh and Buddhist Dalits. Yet, it continues to deny the same to Christian and Muslim Dalits. This violation of the Constitutional rights is a patent act of discrimination on the basis of religion engaged in by the State. It compels Dalits to identify themselves as 'Hindus', thereby artificially inflating Hindu numbers. Although the Brahminical texts clearly do not recognise Dalits as members of Hindu society, treating them as 'polluting' outcastes, by insisting that the Dalits identify themselves as 'Hindus' if they wish to enjoy SC status, the State has engaged in a massive act of religious conversion, more aptly described as 'religious bribery', converting, through the force of law, millions of people to a religion predicated on the brutal denial of their humanity. According to law, if a Christian or Muslim Dalit converts to 'Hinduism', he is automatically entitled to SC status. In this way, too, the State acts as a Hindu missionary agent.

'Upper' caste Hindu leaders seek to justify the discriminatory religious clause attached to the SC category by claiming that it is a 'compensation' for the degradation that Hinduism prescribes for the Dalits, using this as an argument to deny SC status to Christian and Muslim Dalits. This claim is deeply flawed. It contradicts their repeated claims of the alleged superiority of Hinduism and its supposed teachings of universal compassion and tolerance. It also ignores the fact Sikhism and Buddhism denounce untouchability but yet Buddhist and Sikh Dalits enjoy SC status. There is thus no reason to deny the same status to Dalit followers of other egalitarian religions, such as Christianity and Islam. The absurdity of this restriction appears even more apparent when one considers that it does not apply in the case of Scheduled Tribes.

It is clear that the misplaced perception of Islam and Christianity being 'non-Indic' - and, therefore, 'foreign' - religions is at the root of the refusal to extend SC status to Christian and Muslim Dalits. It is apparent that this restriction also stems from a fear, pervasive among the 'upper' caste Hindu ruling class, that if SC status were extended to Christian and Muslim Dalits, scores of so-called Hindu Dalits might convert to Christianity and Islam in order to escape the shackles of 'Hinduism' which, as Ambedkar rightly considered, is a code designed to consign them to eternal, religiously-sanctioned slavery. This poses a threat to 'upper' caste hegemony.

Deprived of SC status for decades, most Christian and Muslim Dalits are probably worse off, in terms of major socio-economic indicators, than so-called Hindu Dalits. Unlike the latter, they are denied reservations in jobs and elected bodies, are not protected by anti- SC atrocity legislation, and lack separate provision in government schemes. In addition to being Dalits, they suffer discrimination as religious minorities, at the hands of agencies of the State, 'upper' caste Hindus and their 'upper' caste co-religionists. This is added justification for scrapping the discriminatory provisions of the 1950 Presidential order and for extending SC status to them.

Newt Gingrich: Potential President, or Skilled Showman?

Newt Gingrich was barely through the door of the Point of Grace Church in a Des Moines, Iowa, suburb when a man stopped him and thrust out his hand. "We need you," he said. The former House Speaker, television pundit and GOP idea maven flashed his medium-warm grin, said thank you and then turned to meet a throng of admirers gathering around him. For many of the attendees at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition's annual spring kickoff on March 7, Gingrich was as much celebrity as candidate, and it seemed an open question whether people there wanted Gingrich as President - or just a high-profile agitator.

"We watch you on Fox all the time!" exclaimed one well-wisher, referring to Gingrich's appearances on the cable network, which lately have featured grandiose claims about America's descent into Barack Obama-imposed socialism. A couple, Tom and Karen Quiner, stopped Gingrich to rhapsodize about a made-for-DVD film he recently produced that describes Pope John Paul II's role in the fall of Communism. "We've been passing around your video," Karen told Gingrich. "It was so moving."

Such encounters offer a glimpse of the appeal in conservative circles of the multimillion-dollar, multimedia empire Gingrich has created in the 12 years since he left office under less-than-ideal circumstances (affair, divorce, scorn from his colleagues). His content machine cranks out books, DVD movies, paid speeches, television appearances, grass-roots organizing work. Along the way, this output has made Gingrich a wealthy man. And now he may be about to set it all aside to pursue a long-burning ambition of becoming President, a goal many people consider about as plausible as some of Gingrich's other designs, like his 1995 vision for a "massive new program to build a lunar colony." Gingrich has reportedly told supporters he's leaning toward an early-April announcement of his candidacy.

It won't be an easy one. He has always operated on a Wagnerian scale, and there's little doubt he feels qualified to lead the U.S. through what he awkwardly calls "a crossroads that we cannot hide from." Yet he is also one of the most divisive figures in politics. Though he may have high name recognition, he is disliked by roughly half of those who are familiar with him - a stigma matched within the GOP only by Sarah Palin. He has a flair for hyperbole that seems antithetical to executing a well-disciplined national campaign. And he has a personal life for which he says he has sought God's forgiveness. "He's one of the most creative thinkers out there," says Tom Quiner. Quiner's wife agrees but then pauses. "I don't know," she says. "He's got some baggage."

Indeed he does. It's unclear whether that baggage is too heavy for a journey to the White House - and whether Gingrich, 67, is really serious about running in the first place. But as he took the podium at the Point of Grace Church before an enthusiastic audience of perhaps 1,500, Gingrich was in his element. The former history professor declaimed about the fate of the Republic in a speech that ranged from Abraham Lincoln to Cold War-era Poland and even Albert Camus, as he outlined a battle with Obama and the "secular, socialist left." "We need a political change so deep and so profound," Gingrich told the crowd, "that nothing we have seen in our lifetime is comparable."

We've been down this road with Gingrich before. He has hinted at his presidential ambitions in nearly every election since he rose from the Atlanta suburbs to national fame in 1994 by leading the Republicans' reclamation of the House of Representatives after 40 years of Democratic rule. Most recently, in late 2007, Gingrich announced a "feasibility assessment" of his prospects for the 2008 campaign but then concluded it would be "irresponsible" to leave his just-founded nonprofit activist group, American Solutions for Winning the Future.

The serial flirting, coupled with Gingrich's nonstop product output (he has written more than 20 books since 1994, including three that were published in the past year alone), fuels suspicion that he's more profiteer than candidate. "We've heard this before," says one veteran presidential-campaign operative who advises a potential rival. "I'll believe it when I see it." It doesn't help that Gingrich himself has alluded to the benefits that accrue to those who are discussed as possible Presidents. "It helps sell books," he admitted to the Des Moines Register in 2005. "It helps communicate ideas. It helps get attention."

Gingrich's aides insist that this time is different. His spokesman, Rick Tyler, argues that in past cycles Gingrich hadn't severed financial or business ties - whereas this month his contract was suspended by Fox News, and he stepped down from a position at the American Enterprise Institute. "Those are two very solid indications of seriousness," Tyler says. Adds Ralph Reed, a longtime Evangelical Christian operative who has known Gingrich for decades: "I think he'll get in."

Further evidence of Gingrich's seriousness is the spadework he's doing with Reed's fellow religious-conservative activists. Next month, Gingrich will speak at the San Antonio megachurch of Evangelical pastor John Hagee. Later this month he will return to Iowa to promote another DVD movie, Rediscovering God in America, which he produced with his wife Callista and which highlights the role of faith in America's heritage.

Callista's presence at his side is one reason Gingrich has some extra work to do with religious conservatives. Although she converted him from Baptist to devout Catholic in 2009, Callista is also his third wife, nearly 23 years his junior and the woman he began seeing while still married to his second wife, Marianne. He likewise started to see Marianne while still married to his first wife, Jackie, whom he reportedly presented with divorce terms while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery. "He was a son of a gun when he was younger," conceded one Newt admirer at the church event. "The way he treated his first wife was not good."

Gingrich was briefly a national celebrity after leading the Republicans to a 1994 victory that he described, of course, as "a historical tide." But he was quickly outmaneuvered by Bill Clinton - in part because he simply couldn't hold his tongue. Gingrich can seem as if he has no filter. Many Republicans feel they lost the upper hand in the 1995 budget showdown because Gingrich told reporters he felt slighted after being seated at the rear of Air Force One during an international trip with Clinton and hardened his position on budget cuts in response. Today Gingrich argues that his record as Speaker is strong - that his pressure was central to Clinton's reluctant adoption of a balanced budget and a tough welfare-reform law. Yet Republicans looking for a winning candidate in 2012 may note that Clinton trounced Gingrich politically and used him as a foil to ensure his own 1996 re-election. "What had been a noble battle for fiscal sanity," former House majority leader Tom DeLay, then a Gingrich lieutenant, would later write, "began to look like the tirade of a spoiled child."

Gingrich was forced out less than two years later, blamed by House Republicans for their 1998 election losses following the failed impeachment campaign against Clinton - which Gingrich, despite his own extramarital affair, had vigorously led. (Gingrich draws a distinction between his infidelity and Clinton's perjury.) Exiled from Congress, Gingrich busied himself with writing, teaching and television punditry. In the mid-2000s he reappeared with new projects, including a center dedicated to modernizing health care; he seemed to be tempering his image as a radical. In 2007 he even appeared with then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a television advertisement promoting a campaign to address climate change.

More recently, however, the old firebrand has returned. Gingrich's 2010 book To Save America warned that "the secular socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did." He has also described "a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us [and] is prepared to use violence." According to Gingrich, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is "a mortal enemy of our civilization." And as for President Obama, Gingrich has endorsed the notion that his thinking was shaped by a Kenyan father whom Obama met just once. "What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension that only if you understand Kenyan, anticolonial behavior can you begin to piece together [his actions]?" Gingrich said to the National Review in September.

How these views would cohere as a campaign platform remains unclear. At the Point of Grace Church, Gingrich called for an "American exceptionalism" that protects the role of God in society and reins in the power of government. "You loan power to the government, the government does not loan power to you," Gingrich told the crowd. "Power does not start with a bunch of judges and bureaucrats."

Gingrich's best bet may be to set himself up as an alternative to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, whose conservative credentials many party faithful view with suspicion. Whomever he meets in the race, though, the biggest threat to Gingrich's candidacy is likely to be Gingrich himself. He raised eyebrows this month when his aides offered conflicting takes on whether he would create an official presidential exploratory committee. (He did not, perhaps because doing so would have brought legal and campaign-finance strictures that would have forced Gingrich to give up most of his business ventures.) "It led to unfortunate confusion," Gingrich recently conceded. "I wish we had been a little more structured."

Granted, the episode was a minor snafu, of interest mainly to political insiders. But the support and respect of insiders is vital at this early stage, and some wondered anew whether Gingrich lacks the self-discipline for the demanding presidential stage. Executive function has never been his strong suit. "If you can't get the rollout right, which is something you can totally control," says the veteran GOP operative, "how are you going to get other things right when events are not in your control?"

Others are more charitable, suggesting that the irascible Gingrich of old has matured in his later years. At the Point of Grace Church, Navy veteran Lee Booton of Ankeny, Iowa, pulled out a small blue Bible from his pocket: "This book here says that with age comes wisdom. And that's what's happened to Newt."

If Gingrich is truly prepared to run for President - trading in the comfort of private jets and hotel suites for cheap rooms and bus trips through rural Iowa and New Hampshire - he'll have to prove people like Booton right.

Shahid Afridi proud of Pakistan's performance

Shahid Afridi pronounced himself "proud" of his team's performance in the World Cup and hoped that their reception on arrival in Pakistan would reflect the side's achievement in getting to the last four at a time when expectations were significantly lower.

Pakistan lost by 29 runs to India in Mohali in a scrappy match, in which they were generally off their game with bat, ball and, most damagingly, in the field. They were in with a chance at various stages, including when they began the chase, only to let it slip each time.

Afridi said the batting, their weaker suit, had been problematic again. There were several starts but no stand greater than the opening one of 44. "We were struggling to build partnerships right through the tournament," he said. "The matches where we had partnerships we made good scores. Because we couldn't make partnerships, today we struggled and played some bad shots at the wrong time as well."

But their run-in to the game, with only one loss in seven matches, came after another period of turmoil which saw them lose three key players in last year's spot-fixing scandal, including a dangerous new-ball opening pair in Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir. To add to the instability, Afridi wasn't appointed captain until two weeks before the tournament began but an unheralded Pakistan side beat Sri Lanka, Australia and West Indies en route to the semi-final.

Afridi had said before the tournament he wanted his team in the last four and despite the loss, seemed in generally upbeat mood. "I am proud of my team and the boys have done a great job in this World Cup. A few of the youngsters are very promising and we played as a unit. Winning and losing is something different but we really played really good cricket and no one was expecting us to play cricket like this. As captain I'm very happy."

The run was Pakistan's best in a World Cup since 1999, when they were runners-up to Australia. In 2003 and 2007 they were eliminated before the knock-out stages, disastrous results which led to intense anger and criticism on their return. It is unlikely Afridi's side will receive a similar reception though already the early signs of reaction from Pakistan seemed to focus on Misbah-ul-Haq's slow batting in the chase as the cause of defeat.

"We have played better than those sides [of 2003 and 2007] and they were good sides," Afridi said. "We didn't have much hope from this side but I have respect for my team. Reception? We will go back, people will give us confidence, they backed us. If those people who make us stars say a little what's wrong with that? It's nothing big. Nobody wanted Pakistan to lose, we wanted to win, but people I think realize we gave it our all. To win six games from eight is a big achievement."

A few incidents apart, Pakistan went through the tournament without any major scandal and a visible sense of unity and togetherness within the squad. That in itself was a minor triumph given what had gone before. "The difficult circumstances we played cricket in, the difficult circumstances we have gone through in the last nine-ten months, to build this team and the effort we put in was phenomenal.

"I'd like to thank the PCB chairman for giving me support and the way the boys supported each other and me, the management and the coach, they really helped me a lot. To take a broken team, make it into a team for the World Cup and to perform like no one was expecting, I'm happy with that."

Punjab Assembly: Rowdiness, walkout after lipstick attack

Women opposition lawmakers in the Punjab Assembly had to fend off nasty behaviour of treasury members, who criticised their role, hurled a bundle of assembly agenda at them and resorted to abusive language.

Incidentally, no opposition member even tried to rescue their women colleagues from unparliamentary behaviour.

The Wednesday session, which started an hour and a half late at 11.28am, witnessed another day of chaos, thumping desks and shouting matches. The session was presided over by Speaker PA Rana Muhamamd Iqbal Khan.

The pandemonium started when PML-Q's Samina Khawar Hayat called one of her party's dissident lawmaker, Sheikh Alauddin a 'lota' (turncoat).

Allauddin shouted at her, accusing her and other women opposition lawmakers of wasting Punjab government money on "your makeup".

He said that women parliamentarians like Samina spent money they charged against their medical bills on their "makeup".

Cursing such "extravagance," Alauddin insisted that the Punjab government had been paying "their perks and privileges from public money".

Samina Hayat tried to protest the remarks, but no one from the opposition came to her rescue.

When she started flinging various cosmetic items at Alauddin, he caught some of them, like a lipstick and powder holder, after they struck him in the face. Coming to Alauddin's rescue, members of treasury benches started to protest over Samina's actions.

This was when a number of members of opposition benches tried to shout down the treasury members.

PML-N's Khalid Imtiaz Khan Baloch hurled a bundle of agenda papers at PML-Q's Samuel Kamran which hit her in the face and passed abusive remarks. Kamran was about to start weeping when some of her colleagues approached her and encouraged her to remain determined.

PML-Q's Muhammad Qamar Hayat Kathia, who tried to start a fist fight with Baloch, was restrained by his other colleagues.

There were at least two dozen lawmakers from both sides who had risen from their seats and started a brawl, but they were calmed down by Deputy Speaker Rana Mashhud Khan and PML-Q's parliamentary leader Chaudhry Zahiruddin Khan.

Later, PPP's Ashraf Sohna said that the provincial government was not serious in running the house business as treasury members lacked tolerance needed for smooth proceedings. He was speaking on a point of order.

Meanwhile, PML-N's minister Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor interrupted Sohna, accusing him of "telling lies" and calling him and his colleagues "enemies of democracy".

However, Sohna persisted and said that members of opposition benches had refrained from using derogatory language in the assembly at all times. Later, the provincial Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan regretted that members on both sides of the political divide "crossed the limits of parliamentary norms".

He said that the matter should be resolved in the speaker's chambers and if members of the treasury benches were found guilty, he and other lawmakers would tender an apology before the house.

The speaker formed a committee to persuade the protesting opposition members to attend the session without any success.

Sheikh Alauddin, before tabling a motion in the provincial assembly, insisted before the house that he would not tender an apology for his behaviour.

Treasury benches introduced four new bills and passed seven pending ones in a house lacking members of the opposition benches.

Al-Qaeda heralds Arab revolts as 'great leap forward'

London--Al Qaeda's most influential English-language preacher said revolts sweeping the Arab World would help rather than harm its cause by giving Islamists freed from tyranny greater scope to speak out.

Western and Arab officials say the example set by young Arabs seeking peaceful political change is a counterweight to Al-Qaeda's push for violent militancy and weakens its argument that democracy and Islam are incompatible.




But Al-Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, in an article published online on Tuesday, said the removal of anti-Islamist autocrats meant Islamic fighters and scholars were now freer to discuss and organize.




"Our mujahideen brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and the rest of the Muslim world will get a chance to breathe again after three decades of suffocation," he wrote, using a term that refers generally to Islamic guerrilla groups or holy warriors.




"For the scholars and activists of Egypt to be able to speak again freely, it would represent a great leap forward for the mujahideen," wrote Awlaki, an American of Yemeni origin who is believed to be hiding in southern Yemen.




He said it did not matter what sort of government succeeded Arab autocrats, as these were unlikely to be as repressive. Imagining that only a Taliban-style regime would benefit Al-Qaeda was "a too short term way" of looking at events.




"We do not know yet what the outcome would be (in any given country), and we do not have to. The outcome doesn't have to be an Islamic government for us to consider what is occurring to be a step in the right direction," he said.


"In Libya, no matter how bad the situation gets and no matter how pro-Western or oppressive the next government proves to be, we do not see it possible for the world to produce another lunatic of the same calibre of the Colonel (Qadhafi)."

Awlaki said the revolts had broken "the barriers of fear" among Muslims whose "defeatism" under tyranny had deepened after Algeria's crushing of an Islamist uprising in the 1990s.




Awlaki made his remarks in the fifth edition of "Inspire", an online Al-Qaeda magazine aimed at Muslims in the West.




The publication is produced by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), an arm of Al-Qaeda responsible for the group's most spectacular attempted attacks in recent years.




Another writer, called Yahya Ibrahim, said Al-Qaeda was not against regime changes through protests but was against the idea that the change should be only through peaceful means to the exclusion of the use of force.




Inspire also contained an interview with AQAP military leader Qasim al-Raymi, also known as Abu Hurairah al-Sana'ani, one of the world's most wanted Islamist militants.




He called on Muslims living in the West to kill groups of "Jews and Christians" whenever they heard of US drone strikes in Pakistan or Israeli killings of Palestinians.




Such attacks "would stop the striking, killing, occupation, humiliation and disgrace of our holy places that America and the West perpetrates."




Yemen has been at the centre of Western security concerns after AQAP launched failed plots to bomb cargo airliners in October 2010 and to destroy a US-bound passenger plane in December 2009.

India's corrupt politics

SOMEHOW he remains a figure of unruffled equanimity. As members of parliament erupt, banging their desks and screeching with rage, Manmohan Singh sits stiff, silent and smiling. For the past week opposition parties-the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lined up unusually with the Communists-have been in a frenzy, accusing the prime minister of lying to parliament and of dismally weak leadership. They have repeatedly called on Mr Singh (pictured here with the BJP's Lal Krishna Advani) to quit. For the moment, he is going nowhere.

The furore follows publication by the Hindu, via WikiLeaks, of embarrassing American diplomatic cables that include an envoy's account of meeting officials of the ruling Congress party before a confidence vote in July 2008. The diplomat said they showed him two chests full of cash to bribe opposition MPs-the going rate was $2.2m each. Mr Singh narrowly won the parliamentary vote, which had been called over a controversial civil-nuclear deal with the United States.

The cable seemed to confirm what many long assumed. In it, Congress members bragged about how they could even offer opposition MPs jet planes for their votes, yet fretted over how crooked parliamentarians failed to keep their word. Pressed about the affair on March 18th, Mr Singh "absolutely" denied any bribes. A lie, howled the opposition, insisting on a special parliamentary debate to discuss his statement. On March 23rd they got it, after the BJP stormed out of a session on financial reforms.

The drama will take a toll even on the serene Mr Singh. A run of corruption scandals has already battered his government. Now his political judgment looks impaired. Unedifying was his claim that, since voters re-elected Congress in 2009, it was somehow irrelevant to ask whether MPs were bribed earlier.

Yet India is unlikely to get a new prime minister soon. Congress hopes a bright showing in state elections next month-in West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Kerala-will change the political momentum. Even if it does not, the party will shun a reshuffle at the top. Sonia Gandhi, Congress's boss, who would have been prime minister herself but for the accident of being born in Italy, is at least as responsible for the government's poor political choices. If the technocratic Mr Singh were forced out, attention would turn to her.

No obviously better prime minister stands by to replace Mr Singh. The likeliest candidate is Rahul Gandhi, Sonia's son and the scion of India's chief political dynasty. Most assume he does not want to step up until elections in 2014. Some in Congress think he will never be ready. Another leaked cable, gleefully reproduced in the press this week, passed on observations by a friend of the Gandhi family, in 2005. Rahul, the friend said, was proving to be a lacklustre leader, with "personality problems" that "are severe enough to prevent him from functioning as PM".

The Dis-Integration of Europe

One by one, the leaders of Europe's three biggest immigration destinations have stepped up to solemnly repudiate a policy that has long ceased to exist. In recent months, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have let it be known that multiculturalism shall no longer be the continent's doctrine of immigrant integration.

"The multicultural approach, saying that we simply live side by side and be happy about one another, utterly failed," declared Merkel in a speech in October 2010.

"Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We've failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong," said Cameron on February 2011.

"Multiculturalism is a failure. The truth is that in our democracies, we cared too much about the identity of the migrant and not sufficiently about the identity of the country that welcomed him," Nicolas Sarkozy announced on French TV later that month.

These unusually convergent statements would seem to signal a dramatic turning point in Europe's relations with its Muslim populations, who are the target of these putative reforms. The speeches were designed to convey the image of political leaders fully in control of their national destiny, boldly charting a new course for their societies. The reality, however, is far less grandiose. Merkel, Cameron, and Sarkozy are playing a catch-up game with the right wing of their constituency by savaging a straw man -- multiculturalism -- and offering precious few concrete proposals behind their new proposed course of action.

They are also ignoring and jeopardizing years of hard work by their own interior ministries to refine and streamline a new generation of demanding yet fair policies toward local Muslim organizations. In the process, these national leaders are feeding the very fire they hope their speeches will contain: a growing far-right populism based on the rejection of Islam.

The anti-immigrant opinions first voiced in late 20th-century Europe increased in intensity during the terrorism jitters of the 2000s and have been reinforced by burgeoning anti-Islam sentiment during the 2010s. What's happening is that the deleterious political impact of the 2008-2009 economic crises is now being felt, and the result is a sizeable populist wave throughout Western Europe.

This wave generally takes the form of extreme right parties -- even though some of them, like in the Netherlands and Britain, incorporate liberal elements like the defense of gay rights and women's rights. (The English Defence League has both Jewish and gay branches.) All of these populist movements, however, have one feature in common: they are explicitly anti-Islam. Just as anti-Semitism was the common denominator of populist movements in the 1930s, the single-minded focus on Muslim immigration has become the defining trait of anti-establishment parties in today's Europe. The logical effect is to push the center-right parties to the right, for fear of losing their constituency.

And tack right they have. In Germany, Merkel's speech was designed to catch up with the national debate sparked by Thilo Sarrazin's bestselling book, Germany Does Away With Itself, as well as with an assertive nativist wing of her governing coalition. Sarrazin, a former Bundesbank board member originally from the Social-Democrat SPD party, has sold more than a million copies of his book, which denounces the dumbing-down of Germany through Muslim immigration. In Britain, Cameron must keep an eye on his populist wing as well as the British National Party. In the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte is cracking down on headscarf wearing and other behavioral signs of Muslim religiosity among state employees and unemployment check recipients in exchange for the parliamentary support of Geert Wilders's anti-Islam faction. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy, who successfully courted voters from Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front in 2007 by broaching the theme of "national identity," kept the flame alive with an official debate on the subject in 2009 and another on the wearing of the burka in 2010. This spring, his UMP party announced yet another debate on "Islam and laïcité" -- as France calls its official policy of religious neutrality.

But these leaders are battling a ghost. The much-maligned "multiculturalism," which all three leaders have singled out in their broadsides, is really a political anachronism. Its traditional meaning -- allowing communities to live segregated from society or somehow beyond the writ of the state -- has long been abandoned by European countries.

The current uproar over Islam's "compatibility" with European values made more sense in the early-to-mid 1990s, when lambs were still being slaughtered in bathtubs, foreign imams arrived on tourist visas, and sidewalk prayers were the only option many Muslims had. Back then, the religious practices of Muslims in Germany -- much like elsewhere in Europe -- were still filed under foreign affairs, not domestic politics. Germany, Britain, and France, which together are home to around two-thirds of Europe's 16 million Muslims, have worked over the past two decades to bring the practice of Islam into line with that of other major religious communities, while cooperating with Muslim groups to marginalize violent extremists. After years of leaving Islam outside domestic institutions, public authorities began to treat the faith as a domestic religion, encouraging Muslims to embrace national citizenship, and bringing Islamic organizations into the fold. Dozens of high-level national politicians -- including Sarkozy -- expended significant resources and political capital overseeing this process in the 2000s, and no one could mistake their solutions for multiculturalism. Still, Europe's leaders want to shake off this shadow. What exactly do they propose changing?

It's long been common practice for center-right parties in Europe to lift far-right platform planks on insecurity, immigration, and Islam -- the "LePen-isation" of French politics, for example, has been denounced by the left for decades -- but this latest populist turn presents several practical and political problems. A key difference between the anti-Islam backlash and earlier waves of anti-immigrant sentiment is that the communities concerned are no longer immigrants, but citizens, and the influx of new immigration has been dramatically reduced. The old far-right rhetoric that blamed foreigners for social or economic woes ("two million unemployed = two million immigrants," went Le Pen's 1983 slogan) doesn't work anymore because its logical consequence -- deporting them -- is legally impossible.

But does the milder language European leaders are using now work any better? Cameron's rhetoric, for example, slips between his prescription for what "a genuinely liberal country does" -- i.e., promote "freedom of speech, freedom of worship, democracy, the rule of law, and equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality" -- and the engagement test he proposes for Muslim organizations, e.g. "do they believe in universal human rights?" Clearly "to belong" in Britain does not require promoting either gay rights or feminism, as many native groups would fail this test. Indeed, this was the direction several German states took in 2007 by adding several short-lived questions to naturalization procedures that probed Muslim candidates' attitudes toward shari'a law, Israel and same-sex cohabitation.

Today's vocabulary represents a step back in time to when governments preferred to wear blinders rather than take history by the hand. "Islam does not belong to Germany," is today's rendition, courtesy of new German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, of the old Christian Democratic saw that "Germany is not a country of immigration" -- ideological obstruction in the guise of dispassionate observation. The policy prescriptions are not much more inspiring. David Cameron offers two specific ideas: withdraw public subsidies from illiberal Muslim organizations and withhold a "ministerial platform" from those whose values we don't like. The former already has already taken place as a side effect of last October's budget cuts, and the latter -- break off counter-radicalization efforts in cooperation with nonviolent Islamist groups -- is an internal coalition disagreement over the question of whether nonviolent extremism is a gateway to or a stopgap against terrorism. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrat Party argued in response to his boss's speech that "If we are truly confident about the strength of our liberal values we should be confident about their ability to defeat the inferior arguments of our opponents.... But you don't win a fight by leaving the ring. You get in and win."

Clegg's statement is strikingly similar to the logic Sarkozy used in 2003 when he rejected criticism of his engagement with Islamic groups while at the interior ministry: "If you find Islam to be incompatible with the Republic, then what do you do with the five million people of Muslim origin living in France? Do you kick them out, or make them convert, or ask them not to practice their religion? With the French Council for the Muslim Religion, we are organizing an Islam that is compatible with the values of the Republic." Incidentally, Sarkozy's highest favorability ratings, 58-59 percent so far), came between January and May 2003, at the height of his involvement with the French Council for the Muslim Religion.

The understandable urge of European leaders to watch their right flank has the potential to backfire politically. Government leaders have amplified the anti-Islam discontent by making it official and respectable. The "national identity" and burqa debates in France were blatant overtures to the National Front electorate. But as Le Pen himself once observed, voters tend to prefer the original to the photocopy. Sarkozy's strategy, far from containing the far-right challenge in France, appears to have vindicated the National Front's long-time insistence on the Muslim threat to French identity. For example, Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie's daughter who has recently taken over leadership of the party, now leads in some polls for the first round of the 2012 presidential elections. She recently quipped, "A little more blah-blah about Islam and laïcité, and I'll soon be at 25 percent" in the polls. This is exactly what happened.

Nor is scare-mongering about Islam a winning formula for domestic tranquility. Muslim citizens may well tire of being singled out not only by far-right parties but also by centrist governments themselves. That may wind up giving common cause to disparate and diverse Muslim populations, now divided by ethnicity and national origin, as well as sectarian and ideological orientation. In other words, imposing restrictions on religious freedoms without ensuring basic institutional equality for Islam could eventually lead Muslims to rally in defense of religious values -- exactly the outcome governments are hoping to avoid.

The current posturing of Merkel, Cameron, and Sarkozy may also set back the successful efforts of the last decade to integrate Muslim communities, creating new rifts and unraveling the more subtle policy evolutions of recent years, when states secured guarantees from Islamic groups that they would respect the law of the land and adapt their practices to the local context. Muslim religious leaders may now legitimately ask themselves, to take just one example, what purpose is served by a council convened by the Interior Ministry if one minister says "Islam is part of Germany" (as Wolfgang Schäuble did in 2006) only to have his successor say, "No it's not"?

Those in government face a choice, and it is the same choice they've faced for years: Roll up your sleeves and help mediate between religious groups, or keep your cuffs buttoned and let foreign governments and transnational movements handle it for you. These issues are not going to go away. Recent demographic projections published by the Pew Forum foresee an overall increase of Muslim minorities in Europe from 6 percent of the total population to 8 percent over the next 20 years. Italy, Britain, Belgium, and Sweden are all likely to see their Muslim populations double by 2030. These Muslims will increasingly be native citizens, born and raised in their respective societies. They will no longer be the mere object of policy debates, but will increasingly participate in them as full voting members of society, albeit still as a minority. The kind of citizens they are encouraged to be will matter more than their sheer numbers.

Will political parties actively seek out Muslim participation? Will school and university planners rise to the challenges presented by an ethnically diverse and economically disadvantaged minority? Will there be an ambience of religious freedom and efforts to punish illegal discrimination? Or will the forces of intolerance and mutual suspicion win out? The past decade provided some heartening examples of "state-mosque relations," but the new decade is off to an inauspicious start. Many non-Muslims are clearly worried about their future in a changing Europe. But the prospect of failed integration should be far more frightening to all concerned.

US Army apologises over new Afghanistan abuse images

The US Army has apologised for any distress caused after new images of US troops posing with the bodies of Afghan civilians were published in a magazine.

In a statement, the US Army said the photos in Rolling Stone magazine were disturbing and contrary to its values.

Similar photos appeared in German paper Der Spiegel last week. The killings apparently took place early last year.

The US Army is in the midst of courts martial of those allegedly involved, one of whom was jailed last week.

According to executive editor Eric Bates, Rolling Stone magazine obtained about 150 photos in all, and posted 17 of them on its website.

Also posted are two videos allegedly showing US attacks on Afghans.

Bates would not say how the magazine obtained the photographs.

Responding to their publication, the US Army said it would "relentlessly" pursue the truth, no matter how difficult or lengthy the investigation.

"The photos published by Rolling Stone are disturbing and in striking contrast to the standards and values of the US Army," it said in a statement.

"Like those published by Der Spiegel, the Army apologises for the distress these latest photos cause.

"Accountability remains the Army's paramount concern in these alleged crimes, and we continue to investigate leads."

'Rogue army unit'

The photographs are alleged to have been taken by a "rogue" US Army unit in Afghanistan in 2010.

They feature US soldiers grinning over the corpses of Afghan civilians they had allegedly killed.

Specialist Jeremy Morlock was sentenced last week to 24 years in prison for his part in the killing of unarmed Afghan men.

Under a plea deal he is expected to testify against four comrades also to be tried over the killings last year in Kandahar province.

"The plan was to kill people," Morlock told a military judge during his trial.

Pakistan allots land to women in an effort to end a cycle of debt

More than six months after the worst floods in Pakistan's recent history soaked this village in one of the poorest corners of the country, farmers are still trying to clean up standing water and heavy silting so they can begin sowing their seeds.

When the fields are cleared, Nimat Khatoon, a 50-something peasant farmer who has worked for the wealthy owner of these fields since her childhood has something worth the wait: a four-acre slice of land to call her own.

"It's something I couldn't dream of seeing in my lifetime. We're so happy," she says with a toothy grin, as her children play around her home made of wooden slats and a thatched roof.

Ms. Khatoon is one of some 5,800 peasants in the province of Sindh to receive farmland, previously designated as government-owned flood runoff, from the provincial government over the past two years. A total of 95,000 acres has already been doled out, and in March another 92,000 acres are to be allotted to women only.

The land allocations could help break the cycle of debt accrued by landless peasants, and serve as a jump-start to those whose livelihood was threatened even after the floods receded.

"Land is the main source of wealth in rural Pakistan," explains Amil Khan, a spokesman for the charity Oxfam, which is assisting the government with the project. "If you have no land you don't have a stake in the system."

Cycle of debt

Indeed, seeds and fertilizers are provided by landlords to tenants who are then forced into high interest rates when repaying their debt. What's more, it has become the norm for landless farmers to receive far less than half the profit from the crops, and use most of that to begin paying their never-ending debt.

The government of Sindh - a province home to Pakistan's biggest landlords - embarked on this project in an effort to redress this widening imbalance. But it has taken on a special significance after the 2010 floods, which destroyed 2 million hectares of crops, pushing landless tenants deeper into debt.

By targeting women, says Mr. Khan, the government is hoping it will help increase the women's standing in their own communities, and early signs are pointing to its success. "People realize they are receiving this because of the women," he says.

Khatoon's family still owes some 40,000 rupees ($470) to the landlord her family has worked under for generations - a princely sum, which could still take another year to clear - though thanks to her newly acquired land, she's hopeful that for the first time ever, the cycle of debt won't begin afresh next year.

After the floods

It's a rare piece of good news to come out of Pakistan after the floods. According to the United Nations World Food Program, hundreds of thousands of flood victims are still living in temporary camps or shelters, while analysts warn of Middle-East style unrest if food inflation, which has soared to some 64 percent in the past three years, continues to rise as the government prints money to finance its deficits.

Zaighum Habib, senior agriculture adviser at Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, says food insecurity is rising in rural areas because government subsidies put in place intended to provide relief to those affected by floods almost exclusively help landowners and not tenants.

"The problem is not the crop yield," she says, noting that while in some areas fields remain fallow, favorable agro-climatic conditions have meant that in Sindh and Punjab, Pakistan's main food-producing provinces, wheat yields are expected to get back to 90 percent of last year's crop before the flood.

About food insecurity

Food insecurity continues, she explains, because "the livelihoods of the lowest strata are not being addressed. First, they are still beholden to debt cycles." Second, the low-interest loans from the government favor large landowners, she explains, because small-scale farmers usually don't use the banking system.

Dr. Habib says these policies came about because of the influence of feudal landowners in Pakistan's parliament, who have held sway since the country gained independence from Britain in 1947. But the move away from that to the new program is a key step toward undercutting that influence.

The Sindh government initiative distributes high-risk government land that runs alongside rivers and tributaries. This land was previously designated as government-owned flood runoff, but was used by local landlords. Rich landlords have struck back by filing legal challenges via local peasants in their employ, to wrest back land that was in their de facto control.

At other times, criminal gangs take matters into their own hands. One villager, Aasi Suman, says she was forced to leave her government-allotted plot of land after land-grabbing mafia beat her and her six young children with bricks, at one stage flinging her 1-year-old child across the floor.

She and her children now live in a tent, while her case is fought in court by lawyers funded by Oxfam's local partner organization. Lawyers working on the case express optimism, and point to previous success in similar cases.

But Khan, of Oxfam, says the government could still take a firmer hand to the situation. "The government has very good intentions, which are being circumvented by factors on the ground. It needs to refocus its attention on finishing the job."

Taliban captured Want Waigal district in Nuristan province

Taliban fighters attacked the headquarters of Want Waiigal district at 5am and captured the district after a little resistance of police, provincial police chief, Shams-ur-Rahman Nuristani, told Pajhwok Afghan News.

He asked the government to give heavy and light weapons to police, because there were not enough arms and ammunitions with police.

More information about the incident would be disclosed soon, he added.

About 300 Taliban fighters attacked on the district headquarters on Tuesday morning and captured the district, former police chief of the district who lives there, said.

Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said that they captured the district after a little resistance and the police fled from the district.

The Spider Group and free access given to CIA, FBI

By: Ansar Abbasi

Following some unbelievable concessions offered to the Americans by Islamabad after 9/11, Pakistan is today home to one of the biggest networks of CIA and FBI outside the US.

While generally the governments both at the Centre and in the Punjab are soft on the issue of Raymond Davis amid reports that the double murderer would be bailed out to please Washington, some Pakistani authorities present an extremely gloomy picture if corrective measures are not immediately taken.

The US embassy spokesperson when approached on Thursday with a questionnaire for the US version on issues focused in this story, she responded on Friday with a statement, "The United States respects the laws of Pakistan and international laws. We do not comment on matters of security."

While the Americans are reluctant to talk on sensitive issues threatening the sovereignty of Pakistan, the sources said that the kind of free hand that has been given to the Americans in Pakistan after 9/11 is unbelievable.

"We have no idea how many foreign as well as local agents of CIA and FBI are operating within the territorial limits of Pakistan," an official source said, warning that the American agents are spread all over.

Not only General Musharraf had allowed the CIA and FBI to hire local agents in Pakistan in the garb of so-called war on terror but the Americans were also free to move in and move out without any check. "At times we did not know who is coming and who is going, and what is brought in and what it taken out," the source said.

One unbelievable concession that the American "officials" and "diplomats" including the likes of double murderer Davis, have been enjoying after 9/11 but withdrawn only in October 2009 on the instructions of the Defence Ministry, was the facility of unchecked arrivals and departures with no scrutiny of their luggage at the Benazir Bhutto International Airport (BBIA) in Islamabad.

Gammon Gate of the BBIA, which was basically meant for food catering services and had a direct outside airport link without passing through immigration and customs checks, was specified for the US officials and for the UN officials too. This special facility allowed the Americans to have unchecked arrivals and departures to and from the Islamabad Airport.

The facility was massively misused and there were reports of even unauthorised and undeclared import of sensitive material and equipment, including weapons. This fact had raised serious alarm bells ringing among the Pakistani authorities and forced them to withdraw the facility but after a lot of damage was already done.

A CAA order, issued on the subject in 2009, did concede that the customs and immigration authorities having no arrangements/staff to check the movement and crew and other foreigners, etc. "The equipment related to aeroplane, the crew and their personal luggage also passes through this gate. During checking, US vehicles and the luggage they carry to and from apron area are not properly searched\checked by the ASF staff deputed to control the entry\exit at the Gammon Gate," a document said, adding in view of this, use of the Gammon Gate by foreigners should be stopped forthwith as it was a serious security hazard.

Meanwhile defence authorities in Pakistan are also in the knowledge of this phenomenal spread in the American spy agencies' network after 9/11.

Even an American newspaper, The Washington Times, reported a few years back that the FBI had organised some former Pakistani army officers and others into a band known as the "Spider Group" to local Taliban and al-Qaeda fugitives hiding in tribal areas along the Afghanistan border.

Quoting a federal law-enforcement official in Washington, the report said the move marked an attempt by the FBI to develop a "free flow of information" to US agents who previously had worked under some restriction with Pakistan's official Inter-Services Intelligence.

The Spider Group, the report said, was also asked to recruit locals in Pakistan's tribal areas, where hundreds of wanted "terrorists" are allegedly holed up under the patronage of tribal chiefs. Members of the Spider Group include a mix of Muslim and Christian retired army and intelligence officers and have been trained and equipped by the FBI.

It has also been reported in the media that a spymaster of one of the country's intelligence agency had informed the Interior Ministry that a provincial head of a private security agency besides others were spying for the CIA. The security agency was contacted and the said official was removed. It was also reported that a large number of the private security agencies personnel are doing espionage for the American intelligence agencies.

A local journalist Azaz Syed had revealed a few years back that once he had approached the legal section of the US embassy in Islamabad after reading an advertisement in an international publication for the recruitment of FBI agents for South Asia. He said that for the purpose of doing an investigative story, he had offered himself for FBI services to spy on Taliban in exchange of information from the US embassy but the diplomat interviewing him was interested in the civil bureaucracy and was not ready to give any information. "I was told that I would get assignments relating to civil bureaucracy and in return would be paid well," Syed was quoted to have said.

The US Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) - the spy military aircraft - are yet another source of concern for many here. The UAVs were allowed to do the espionage in tribal areas of Pakistan for "specific jobs" only but since the UAVs are not caught by the radars so these spy planes have also crossed their limits a number of times. Initially the Pakistan Air Force had objected not to allow surveillance to these US UAVs but Musharraf had decided otherwise because of US insistence that this was a must apparently to track down so-called al-Qaeda targets.

The present regime instead of curbing the "free for all" situation here for the Americans, not only allowed extraordinary laxity in visa issuance for the Americans without security check but also obliged them risking our own security.

While some of the reflection of how the Interior Ministry under Rehman Malik had served the US was given in The News' Wednesday report - "A policy which has brought sheer disaster" - the volume of actual favours given to the Americans is far more.

After former US Ambassador Anne Peterson's letter to Malik requesting for the issuance of prohibited bore licences for Dyne Corp's local partner Inter-Risk, officials of the US embassy met the State Minister for Interior Tasneem Ahmed Qureshi and later formally wrote to him setting clear deadlines for the issuance of licences in three parts. The interior minister acted accordingly as per the wishes of the US embassy.

Gerald M Feierstein, Charge d'Affaires and interim, US embassy in Islamabad, had written to Tasneem Qureshi on May 7, 2009 stating, "......I would like to request the issuance of 134 prohibited bore (pb) licences on behalf to Inter-Risk (Pvt) Ltd to accomplish this security goal. 50 pb licences are needed as quickly as possible and an additional 50 pb licences will be needed in June 2009. The remaining 34 licences will be needed in July 2009."

Within a week following this letter, Personal Secretary (PS) to State Minister for Interior Tasneem Qureshi wrote a "Top Priority" directive on minister's behalf ordering Section Officer (PB), Ministry of Interior: "The Minister of State for Interior has been pleased to approve Fifty (50) PB arms licence in favour of M/S, Inter-Risk (Private) Limited.

"2. Arm Section may issue the licenses under intimation to this office by 20-5-2009."

While the state minister issued strict direction for the issuance of 50 pb licences to Inter-Risk by May 20, 2009, the deputy commissioner Islamabad received an official communication from office of the district coordination officer/political agent FR Bannu the same day. The letter's subject was "Confirmation/Verification of Weapon Gift" and it read as: "The enclosed certificates (consisting 50 nos) for gift of weapon, gifted by Malik Khanzada Khan Wazir Daryoba Agency FR Bannu duly verified by the undersigned for further necessary action."

These apparently gifted weapons were provided to the Inter-Risk by the US embassy. However, the Government of Pakistan did not know from where these weapons were coming.

The US embassy spokesperson Courtney Beale was sent by The News on Thursday the following questionnaire:

1. Is it a fact that Pakistan today is home to one of the biggest CIA-FBI networks after General Musharraf had allowed the American intelligence agencies to hire their local agents apparently to follow Taliban and al-Qaeda?

2. Are the US drones involved in spying of Pakistan's strategic sites?

3. Do you agree that the US officials and diplomats have been misusing the concessions offered to them at Pakistani airports particularly at Islamabad airport where instead of passing through normal checks they were allowed to come and go through Gammon Gate? The facility was withdrawn in October 2009 after the Pakistani authorities found it having misused. Misuse means unchecked arrival and departure of individuals and material. Yours comments please.

4. What do you say about the pressure having been exerted by the US embassy on the Pakistani Interior Ministry to issue prohibited bore licences to Dynacorp's local partner Inter Risk? It became a major scandal over a year ago. Will you please also confirm from where the weapons came, which were given to Inter-Risk.

In response to these questions, Courtney's brief response was: "The United States respects the laws of Pakistan and international law. We do not comment on matters of security."

The War on Libya is not to protect civilians, its to cause carnage

By: Connie Fogal

The War on Libya is not to protect civilians, its to cause carnage, civil war using mercanaries a.k.a. Al-CIAdah, and loot the wealth of the country while depopulating it. Also, the environment is being contaminated with depleted uranium coating bombs.

Netanyahu the prime minister of Israel said yesterday that the US was pushing for peace in the ME. He said that the whole wold has been blaming Israel for the unrest in the ME but the recent revolutions proved that the US and the world was wrong. The S** did not mention that the whole turmoil in the Arab Nation has been Israel. The Arabs wanted democracy to elect their leaders to mobilize force and role on Israel. Israel knew the axiom of the past sixty years and that is any normal life for Arabs mens a danger to Israel.. They poured the trillions of dollars looted from the US though the corrupted Rothschilds Banking System in 2008 into this stages circus of revolutions. They used a complicated system through Ontology by combining Cybernetics and Mind control to disrupts Arab younger generation. They got what they wanted, a short gap which will end sometime in the near future. Israel should be liquidated with the Rothschilds Banking System to give peace for the whole world..The world has never lived in tranquility since the miserable violent insult they called "French Revolution" . Obama represents violence in an era where the human being has reached high level of mind understanding. Those miserable strata from residues of the past should have been siphoned immediately after the collapse of the USSR..The establishment needs new blood from different breed of people...US can control through its cultural impact not through absolute physical violence..etc..

Its not a humanitarian mission because Zionists' aim is to steal Libya's wealth, contaminate its environment with uranium tipped bombs. If it was a humanitarian mission, such bombs would not be used and behind the scene multibillion oil deals between Israel and Libya would not be taking place and Israel would not have supplied 50,000 mercenaries to Qaddafi.

Government Backers, Police Attack Jordan Protest

Protesters demanding reforms clashed with government supporters in the center of Jordan's capital on Friday, pelting each other stones until security forces charged in and beat protesters, as unrest intensified in this key U.S. ally.

The clashes, in which 120 were injured, were the most violent in more than two months of protests inspired by the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. One man reported to have been killed while protesting was later identified as a government supporter who died of a heart attack.

Protests in Jordan have generally been smaller than those in other Arab nations - and in another difference have not sought the ouster of the country's leader, King Abdullah II. But the young Jordanians organizing the demonstrations said this week they are intensifying their campaign, demanding the removal of the prime minister, creation of a more reformist government, the dissolving of what is seen as a docile parliament and the dismantling of the largely feared intelligence department.

Hundreds of anti-government activists - many of whom coordinated through Facebook - vowed to camp out in a central Amman square in front of the Interior Ministry until their demands are met. Their numbers swelled to more than 1,500 during the day to include members of the Islamic Action Front, Jordan's largest opposition party, and their leftist allies.

In the afternoon, several hundred government supporters attacked the protesters, sparking stone-throwing clashes until about 400 riot police stormed the square. The pro-government crowd appeared to disperse as the security forces waded in, hitting protesters with clubs and firing water cannons. At least a dozen protesters were dragged into a nearby government building.

One person died. The opposition Islamic Action Front said he was a protester and that he was beaten to death by police. Later, however, a spokesman for the anti-government protest movement, Ziad al-Khawaldeh, said the man who died was not among the protesters.

Police chief Lt. Gen. Hussein Majali said the man was a government supporter who died of a heart attack while running for cover when clashes broke out. He identified him as 55-year-old Khairi Jamil Saad. Other government officials, including the foreign minister, also said he was on the pro-government side and died of a heart attack.

Majali said 120 people were hurt, including 52 policemen. Eight people were detained for questioning.

Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit accused the Islamic Action Front and the umbrella group it is part of, the Muslim Brotherhood, of inciting the violence.

The Muslim Brotherhood rejected the accusation. "The protesters were peaceful and didn't attack anyone," said Jamil Abu-Bakr. "The prime minister is running away from his responsibility."

Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said police had surrounded the protesters to protect them but were then caught in the middle when counter-demonstrators attacked the crowd.

Hospital officials said more than 100 people were admitted with serious to minor injuries to the head and the body. The officials insisted on anonymity, fearing government reprisal. An Associated Press reporter saw three police officers, their faces covered with blood, being taken away in ambulances.

One of the wounded, Mohammed Maaytah, 26, said he passed out after suffering an eye injury from a hurled stone.

"As I tried to get up from the ground, five policemen attacked me with batons and kept beating me until I passed out again," he said. "The police were supposed to protect us, but they attacked us."

Noor Smadi, 23, said she was also beaten by police until "I fainted."

"Our Cabinet is a bunch of criminals," she said. "They had policemen beat us savagely, although we insisted that our protest was peaceful."

A similar clash broke out in the same square late Thursday, injuring 35 people.

Elsewhere, 3,000 pro-king loyalists took to the streets of the capital in two separate protests, waving portraits of the monarch and chanting "our lives and souls we sacrifice for you, King Abdullah."

Around 7,000 people reiterated pledges of loyalty to the king in demonstrations in the Red Sea port of Aqaba and the Jordan Valley, bordering Israel and the West Bank, the Petra state news agency said.

About 400 members of Islamic Action Front and their leftist allies also staged another demonstration outside Amman's Kalouti mosque, near the Israeli Embassy. They demanded an end to Jordan's 1994 peace treaty with Israel.

In the western city of Salt, some 300 Salafis - an ultraconservative Islamic sect banned in Jordan - protested in the city, demanding convicted al-Qaida prisoners be released from Jordanian jails.

Meanwhile, Petra said 15 leftists and independents quit a national dialogue committee with the government on reforms to protest police using force against the protesters. The 53-member committee was formed earlier this month to draft laws that would give wider public freedoms.

Investigators suffering from absence of law

Investigators dealing with cyber crimes have found themselves paralysed since the Prevention of Electronic Crime Ordinance (PECO) lapsed in November 2009 and this comes at a time when usage of electronic modes is growing quite rapidly, according to a senior official of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

"This is similar to cutting off our right hand and leaving us to deal with cyber crime in a paralysed state.

Criminals are running amok," said the official, requesting anonymity.

"We had been dealing with corporate sector crimes, financial fraud, email phishing and other similar attacks through electronic medium, but these are now up for grabs and we are unable to do anything."

"Without PECO, we are using Electronic Transaction Ordinance (ETO) as a backup, but the law is not very significant for courts and our trials start at the Judicial Magistrate level. The trial drags on for ages because the case grade is low and people often get away with the crime," said the official.

Citing the case of a foreign exchange company, the official said that the money changer's lawyers filed for relief, taking advantage of the lapse of the ordinance and the court granted it.

However, the official said this was not the main issue, as the major hurdle comes in dealing with mobile cellular operators. These companies claim they are no longer bound to provide information to FIA and insist it should come through the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which takes a month during which the criminal is able to find an escape route.

An alternative

In the absence of PECO, the National Response Centre for Cyber Crimes (NR3C) is trying to help victims wherever it can. An NR3C official said the centre has ways to help people and is using Sections 36 and 37 of the Electronic Transaction Ordinance (ETO), introduced in 2002, which deal with violation of privacy information and damage to information systems.

Another official praised the work FIA had been doing, pointing out that Rs61 million had been recovered by NR3C units during investigations into different cases.

NR3C, which according to sources is going to expire, played a crucial role during a hacking war that broke out between Indian and Pakistani hackers some time ago. It also helped arrest a man for alleged involvement in hacking websites of prominent personalities, including President Asif Ali Zardari.

Another FIA insider said that the agency is still able to hunt down illegal gateway exchanges with or without the assistance of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), adding that illegal exchanges were costing the national exchequer around Rs437.45 million per month. So far, FIA and PTA have shut down 21 such exchanges.

The insider said that without PECO, the penalty for hacking a sensitive information system was the same as intruding a normal system. However, for the first time, 12 people had been arrested for hacking the Supreme Court website and other government websites, with the hackers being from far flung areas such as Bannu, Kohat and Fateh Jang.

According to analysts, ETO 2002 was the first IT-relevant legislation designed by lawmakers and provided the first solid foundation for legal sanctity and protection for e-commerce locally and globally. It laid the foundation for a comprehensive legal infrastructure. PECO came later and dealt with electronic crimes including cyber terrorism, data damage, electronic fraud, electronic forgery, unauthorised access to code, cyber stalking and cyber spamming.

The bill covered penalties ranging from six months imprisonment to capital punishment for 17 types of cyber crimes, which would apply to every person who commits an offence, irrespective of his nationality or citizenship. It gave exclusive powers to FIA to investigate, frame charges, arrest criminals and confiscate material as it feels necessary. However, the bill has been blocked by MNA Marvi Memon in the assembly terming it "contrary to the fundamental rights" of people.

There was also no provision to tackle child pornography or copyright within the law.

Another issue is that some of the offences like cyber stalking and spamming have very harsh punishments which the senior FIA official said could be rationalised because there are plenty of young children indulging in these acts without knowing the consequences.

The forsaken miners of Balochistan

At the start of the year, I wrote a piece making some not-entirely-serious predictions for 2011. Among my guesses: "In a repeat of the Chilean miners' story, the world's media will turn its attention to 15 workers trapped in a mine in Pakistan. They will lose interest when it turns out none of the miners are members of the Taliban."

Turns out I was wrong. It is technically impossible for the media to lose interest in a story when it never has any to begin with. The blast at a coal mine at Sorrange, near Quetta on March 20, should have had everyone rapt with attention. There was tragedy: Spread over the course of two days, because of a mounting death toll, it transpired that 45 miners had died in the mine after an explosion. There was evidence of corruption: The mine was owned by the government-run Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation and had been subleased to a private contractor. The contractor had been given a warning, just two weeks prior to the explosion, that the mine was dangerous and that adequate safeguards should be put in place, but nothing was done.

Firstly, there were no sexy visuals of photogenic families praying valiantly. The mine was 4,000 feet deep and the blasts were caused by methane gas explosions, so there were also no World Trade Centre-style images of people jumping to their certain deaths. In short, there wasn't any opportunity for sensationalism.

Then, the tragedy took place in Balochistan, which might as well be 'over there', as far as the rest of the country is concerned. For all we know, Balochistan is an enclave of fierce tribesmen and fiercer landlords. Certainly nothing that should have the level of government and media resources poured into it, as the other provinces. Since most of Balochistan's problems cannot be traced back to the Taliban, there is also no international aid to be scooped by exploiting its problems and miseries.

The neglect of the mine blast story in particular, and Balochistan in general, makes accountability next to impossible. With such scant focus on the original time, no one is going to have any inclination to doggedly pursue the story. There are many questions that need to be asked and answered. Which government agency or individuals were responsible for allowing the coal mine to continue operations, even after the chief mines inspector declared it unsafe? Exactly what safety conditions was the contractor violating and will it now be barred from operating other mines? Have the families of the dead miners been paid compensation and will the case be pursued in court? Most importantly, are the other hundreds of mines in the province, and indeed the country, following work-safety regulations?

Right now, the only question that can be answered is the final one. The answer is a resounding 'no'. Mine accidents that take lives in the single figures, receive even less attention than the blast in Sorrange. But there are dozens of them each year. One newspaper reported that there were over one hundred accidents in Balochistan's mines over the last three years. Most of these accidents took one or two lives and so were easily ignored. Even 45 deaths, it seems, will not be enough to awaken authorities from their stupor.

The only story about Balochistan's mineral resources that has been deemed worthy of scrutiny is the battle over the control of copper and gold in Reko Diq. The tragedy at Sorrange might, now, convince some that the ownership of the potential windfall Reko Diq will provide the government of Balochistan, is slightly less vital than the safety of those who will work there. Or is that far too optimistic a wish?

Soldier Gets 24 Years for Killing 3 Afghan Civilians

A soldier accused of killing Afghan civilians for sport was sentenced Wednesday to 24 years in prison after he pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against other defendants in the case.

Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock, one of five soldiers from an Army Stryker brigade based here who are accused of staging combat situations to kill three civilians in Afghanistan last year, told the military judge presiding over the case, Lt. Col. Kwasi L. Hawks, that the deaths were neither justified nor accidental.

"The plan was to kill people, sir," Specialist Morlock told the judge at the start of a court-martial.

The sentence, plea and agreement to testify followed a deal Specialist Morlock and his lawyers negotiated with prosecutors in January. The military sentencing guidelines for the charges to which he pleaded guilty - including three counts of premeditated murder, conspiracy to commit murder and assault - recommend life in prison, with or without the possibility of parole. His lawyers say he could be eligible for parole in about seven years.

Specialist Morlock, 22, of Wasilla, Alaska, is the first of the five to face a court-martial.

Few new details emerged in the proceeding. Specialist Morlock had already given several interviews to investigators in which he described how members of his unit used grenades and rifles to fake combat situations so they could kill civilians who he said posed no threat.

As part of his plea on Wednesday, Specialist Morlock reasserted claims he had made earlier that another of the accused, a superior, Staff Sgt. Calvin R. Gibbs, was the ringleader in the killings. A lawyer for Sergeant Gibbs has said all the killings were in justified combat situations.

The two rows of public seating in the small military courtroom were filled with family and friends of Specialist Morlock's. The hearing included testimony from several of his supporters, including his high school hockey coach, who recalled Specialist Morlock leading his team to the state championship while serving as its captain his senior year.

Specialist Morlock also spoke. He apologized to families of the victims, to "the people of Afghanistan themselves" and to fellow soldiers. He and others referred to his close relationship to his father, a former Army paratrooper who died in a boating accident in Alaska in 2007.

"I violated not only the law but the Army core values, and I also violated the principles my father instilled in me," he said, adding that he had "lost my moral compass."

A lawyer for Specialist Morlock called to the witness stand a sociologist who had reviewed an internal investigation of the Stryker brigade and its former commander, Col. Harry D. Tunnell. The sociologist, Stjepan Mestrovic, said the documents portrayed a "dysfunctional" brigade and command structure that "created an environment that led to these crimes."

Colonel Tunnell was removed from his position last summer, after the investigation into the killings was under way. He could not be reached late Wednesday; he has refused to respond to questions about the brigade in the past. Neither he nor other officers in the brigade have been charged in the killings.

Some soldiers in the case are accused of posing with dead Afghans in photographs and then sharing the pictures with others. The Army, worried the pictures could complicate its efforts in Afghanistan, has put tight restrictions on the images. But this week, the German magazine Der Spiegel published three photographs, including one that appears to show Specialist Morlock smiling as he holds a dead man up by the hair on his head.

Referring to other soldiers in combat zones, Frank Spinner, a lawyer for Specialist Morlock, told reporters, "To the extent his actions have placed their lives in jeopardy, he can only express regret."

Bishop flays Holy Quran desecration

The Rt Revd Dr Alexander John Malik, Bishop of Lahore, while condemning the desecration of Holy Quran in Florida, USA by Terry Jones said that the pastor committed an ugly and abhorrent act which only promoted hatred in the fabric of the society.

He said that such acts were in flagrant contradiction to the teaching of Christianity. He said that we believed in respecting each other religion and interfaith harmony to exercise love and peace.

Furthermore, he said that such acts like that of Terry Jones were the manifestations of sick minds busy in spreading hatred, bigotry and unease in the society.

Shahbaz condemns: Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif has expressed deep shock and anguish over the burning of Holy Quran in the American state, Florida.

In a statement issued here on Wednesday, the CM strongly condemned this shameful act.

He said this tragic incident had posed a big question for the international community propagating tolerance.

Shahbaz Sharif said this incident was the worst kind of religious prejudice, and the international community should take immediate notice of it.

The CM demanded that the Pakistan government should immediately contact the international organisations for taking action against those responsible of this incident.

Palestinian child hospitalized in Israel after hurt by IDF fire in Gaza

A Palestinian child wounded by an Israel Defense Forces mortar shell in Gaza on Tuesday has been transferred to an Israeli hospital, Israel Radio reported on Wednesday.

The transfer was coordinated with medical officials in Gaza, according to Israel Radio, and the 8-year-old child was evacuated by ambulance. Israel has also reportedly offered the Palestinian Authority to grant medical assistance to others wounded by IDF fire.

At least eight Palestinians, including four civilians, were killed Tuesday during heavy exchanges of fire between the Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip. Another eight civilians were wounded.

The day's exchange was one of the most serious rounds of fighting near the Strip since the end of Operation Cast Lead in January 2009.

My Promise to Pakistan

By Ahsan Waheed


ZoneAsia-Pk

March 23 is the day every Pakistani celebrates a holiday. What for? In 1940, the All India Muslim League gathered at Lahore, Pakistan, to resolve for the creation of an independent Muslim homeland, as the Muslims were a separate nation of the Indian subcontinent. Enough of the history lesson; where are we today? Are we independent? Are we Muslim? Are we free?

Pakistan was achieved after a lot of struggles and hardships - suffering that cannot even be imagined today, despite news media and social interactivity websites keeping an eye on each and every occurence happening everywhere. Pakistan was created after the blood, toil, sweat and tears of so many Muslims who debated on the ideology of a Muslim homeland, presented legislation and bills on the separate nationhood of Muslims in the Imperial legislatures of British India, and most importantly, on the dedication, commitment, and jihad of the ordinary Muslims of India who packed up their belongings, wrapped up their lives, and moved to the Western enclave of Pakistan to start their lives anew; free from the tyranny of the Hindu majority that had exposed itself all to well in the Congress ministries of 1937.

Read Complete Article Here: http://www.zoneasia-pk.com/ZoneAsia-Pk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3970:my-promise-to-pakistan&catid=70:free-talk&Itemid=84

Why Raymonds will continue to happen

By: Naeem Sadiq

Pakistan's 'ghairat' came calling once again on the afternoon of March 16, 2011. The chartered aeroplane carrying Raymond Davis had grossly violated the 'honour space' of Pakistan. Public sentiments were invoked to avenge the fractured 'national honour'. Few were willing to admit that our state, inundated with loans and lackeys, happily discovered the shortest 'sharai' path that links Kot Lakhpat with Lahore airport. A dynastic ruling elite with a penchant for lawlessness and a total lack of concern for its citizens could not possibly have chosen any other course. It may be interesting to examine five other apparently isolated events that happened around the same time and which can explain why Raymonds will continue to happen in Pakistan.

While Raymond was on board a flight out of Pakistan, so was the chief minister of Punjab, making a brotherly get-well visit to London. The head of the PML-N had opted to have a stent inserted into his artery at the elite Central London Hospital. Instead of improving local hospitals, the ruling elite prefer to fly out to exotic locations, often utilising funds siphoned from the taxpayers' account. Can the interests of poverty-stricken Pakistanis be defended by a ruling elite that has its vital interests deeply embedded in foreign lands? Till this situation is reversed, Raymonds will continue to happen in Pakistan.

Another event that took place around the same time as Raymond's departure was the shocking revelation by the National Database and Registration Authority that out of the 80.2 million votes that chose our 'honourable' parliamentarians in 2008, 36 million were bogus. That means that approximately 45 per cent of the members sitting in parliament have entered through questionable corridors. Add to this another 57 confirmed by the Higher Education Commission as fraudulent degree-holders and 298 who refuse to submit their degrees for verification and you have an exceptional composition of delinquents who would be happy to partake in every conceivable crime.

Why should a foreign country respect a Pakistani court, when the Pakistani government itself refrains from doing so? Only four days before Raymond's expeditious release, the ruling party called for a province-wide strike to protest against the Supreme Court verdict of annulling the appointment of the NAB chairman. A lawless state machinery, at war not just with its people but also with its own institutions, is hardly expected to produce results any different from what it did in the Davis case. Around the same time as Davis was sipping coffee on his flight out of Pakistan, the prime minister was signing documents to extend the services of the top man in the ISI. It is irrational for us to recycle the same dynastic politicians, bureaucrats, judges and generals and then also feel stunned at getting the same disappointing results. A cartel of fossilised ruling elite dedicated to extending its own life cycle cannot be expected to defend the interests of its people. Raymonds will continue to happen as long as we continue to tolerate a ruling class that lives beyond its means as well as its warranty period. The fifth and perhaps the most important event was an act of omission, hugely underplayed and least protested. Davis was projected as if he was the only foul fish that we had in the country. What about the 500 or so other CIA security contractors who are engaged in similar dirty tricks? Why did we not demand a collective exodus of these criminals?

While we brood over the fast track dispensation given to a foreigner, we do not seem perturbed about the quality of justice delivered to our own citizens. We have a judicial system that can conduct a trial and release a multiple killer in two hours but do nothing about the 8,000 prisoners still languishing in jails for having been sentenced to death over the past 20 years. We are upset at the indecent haste shown for Raymond, but we have no programme to improve our dilapidated judicial processes. Raymonds will continue to happen in Pakistan for as long as we do not address the causes that create them. Neither the state nor the society seem ready to take on this challenge.

U.N. Nuclear Aid Linked

Iran, Sudan, Syria, and other countries the U.S. has named state sponsors of terrorism have received millions of dollars in U.N. nuclear technology aid-and Hillary Clinton won't stop the flow of cash. Laurel Adams of the Center for Public Integrity reports.

The State Department is refusing to block U.N. nuclear technology aid to countries that are on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime.

The reason, says Hillary Clinton's department, is that such a clampdown would hinder other countries that have nothing to do with terrorism.

The U.S. provides $20 million a year to help finance the International Atomic Energy Agency, which promotes peaceful use of nuclear energy. But some IAEA funds have gone to countries that could potentially use nuclear technology to build weapons, the Government Accountability Office warns in a new report.

Neither the State Department nor the IAEA have sought to limit the so-called technical cooperation aid to terror-linked nations such as Iran, Sudan, Syria, and Cuba, or countries that are not party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, such as India, Israel, and Pakistan, the congressional watchdog says.

The former head of the program told investigators that requests for technical assistance are evaluated strictly on technical merits, thwarting efforts to assess national-security concerns.

"State officials told us that the U.S. did not systematically try to limit TC projects in Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria-which the department designated as sponsors of terrorism," the report says. "These four countries received more than $55 million in TC assistance from 1997 through 2007."

During the same time frame, India, Israel, and Pakistan received $24.6 million in technical assistance, even though none is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Nuclear equipment and technology, even if geared toward peaceful purposes, also can be used to develop nuclear weapons. Yet the former head of the TC program told the investigators that requests for technical assistance are evaluated strictly on technical merits, thereby thwarting efforts to assess national-security concerns.

The GAO has suggested repeatedly that the State Department withhold the U.S. contribution to IAEA that would go to countries accused of aiding terrorists.

"The United States has applied several types of sanctions limiting foreign assistance and trade to states it has designated as sponsors of terrorism and to other countries. To avoid the appearance of an inconsistent approach and to foster greater cohesion in U.S. policy toward such nations, we believe that it is fair for Congress to consider requiring State to withhold a share of the U.S. contribution," the GAO says.

Withholding funds would undermine the Obama administration's ability to convince other member countries to contribute to the fund, and since the funding is not traced to specific projects, it would punish all recipients in the program, the State Department said in response.

The IAEA provides minimal information on project proposals, usually just project titles, which further hinders efforts by the Energy Department to assess the risk of proliferation in countries requesting assistance.

Why the ISI has played a silent spectator to the CIA/Black Water operations?

By Yousuf Nazar




I have suspected for long that the United States has been conducting false flag operations in Pakistan through covert operatives. I wrote on my blog on January 10, 2008, Could CIA be conducting Operation Gladio in Pakistan?

False flag operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one's own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and can be used in peace-time. Operation Gladio was a covert operations project conducted by the UK and UK intelligence during the 1960s in Europe and involved massacres and bombing conducted by the covert operatives of these agencies with the objective of blaming them on the communist Soviet Union and discrediting it.

On December 11, 2009, the Guardian published a story, "Blackwater operating at CIA Pakistan base", which said:

"the US contractor Blackwater was operating in Pakistan at a secret CIA airfield used for launching drone attacks, according to a former US official, despite repeated government denials that the company is in the country.The official, who had direct knowledge of the operation, said that employees with Blackwater, now renamed Xe Services, patrol the area round the Shamsi airbase in Baluchistan province.He also confirmed that Blackwater employees help to load laser-guided Hellfire missiles on to CIA-operated drones,"

On September 16, 2010, noted investigative journalist Wayne Madsen published an article in the Online Journal titled, " Blackwater/Xe cells conducting false flag terrorist attacks in Pakistan." The author of the Wasden Report (who formerly worked for the US Navy and the State Department) claimed that he has learned from a deep background source that Xe Services, the company formerly known as Blackwater, has been conducting false flag terrorist attacks in Pakistan that are later blamed on “Pakistani Taliban” and noted that only recently did the US State Department designate the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as terrorist organization.

On March 17, 2011, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published an uncharacteristically candid and realistic article, "Perfidious America" declaring that the [Raymond] Davis case has knocked Washington off the moral high ground in Pakistan. It is probably for the first time that a pro-establishment American paper such as the WSJ acknowledged that 'suspicions of Pakistanis about the US operations in Pakistan have a basis in reality' noting that in his book "Obama's Wars," Bob Woodward revealed the existence of a secret 3,000-strong army of paramilitary Afghan fighters created by the CIA to target Taliban and al Qaeda commanders inside Pakistan through "false flag attacks." Recall that the Wikileaks had revealed that President Zardari had told Richard Halbrooke that he suspected that the US was destabilizing Pakistan through the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Former Indian Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar in an article published by the AsiaTimes (February 15, 2011) pointed out that "the heart of the matter is that Pakistan has been wondering for a long time who it is who could be instigating the so-called "Pakistani Taliban" to inflict such bloody wounds on the Pakistani military and weaken and incrementally destabilize the Pakistani state" and concluded that Davis can most certainly provide the proverbial "missing link" to Pakistan to connect several dots on an intriguing chessboard. Ambassador Bhadrakumar had also noted that that Davis' detention sent alarm bells ringing all the way to the White House and the US was apprehensive that the Davis case had the potential to shake up the very foundations of its alliance with Pakistan.

So the most important question to come out of the Raymond Davis, as I wrote in the Express Tribune on February 28, 2011, is not whether he killed in self-defense or not, whether the ISI manipulated the media or not, whether he was an accredited diplomat or not, whether he enjoyed diplomatic or consular immunity or not, or whether he was spy or a CIA contractor.

The most critical question is what hundreds of CIA agents (according to scores of reports including those carried by top US papers recently) are doing in Pakistan, and why they were provided cover by an embassy whose facilities are being upgraded by a massive spending program exceeding one billion dollars, according to official US documents, as either the ISI looked the other way or was sleeping.

Going further, given the dirty and murky CIA-ISI deal that resulted in the release of Raymond Davis, the most important question seems to be why the civilian and military leaders of Pakistan have kept silent, at the least, and therefore have been complicit in the false flag operations against the state and the people of Pakistan despite the fact that the head of the state had expressed his suspicions that the CIA was behind some the terrorist attacks. The nation and the super-patriots that our TV anchors are ought to tell General Kayani that issuing press statement condemning drone attacks can no longer fool the people. The masses may be silent and may feel helpless for now but the time will come when they will ask loudly, why did you co-operate with the Americans when you knew they were upto no good?