The fall of Swat....Barbarian Taliban destroying Pakhtoons

Editorial:
The fall of Swat
Daily Times
After a year of military operations in Swat, the territory controlled by the terrorists has reportedly increased from 25 percent to 75 percent. On Friday, the army killed 12 Taliban in different parts, but could not prevent the demolition by them of a rest house owned by the ANP’s late leader, Mr Abdul Wali Khan. The party that rules in Peshawar has been systematically decimated in Swat as its allies walk in fear and no longer criticise the Taliban in public, accusing only the army of being “indiscriminate”.

Swat had voted last year for ANP as a liberal alternative to the now defunct MMA because they wanted their home territory to be made safe against the vandalism of the Taliban. But what they have got is the systematic destruction of the female educational infrastructure in Swat by the Taliban and loss of protection by the state. The terrorists had warned last month that if any girls’ schools opened after January 15, they would be bombed. Consequently, after the expiry of the deadline, none of the 400 plus schools has reopened, causing 80,000 girls to go without education for the foreseeable future. Along with them, 8,000 female teachers will be rendered jobless in state sector and private institutions.

The federal information minister, Ms Sherry Rehman, has responded to the questioning in the National Assembly by saying that the government is not oblivious to the situation and will do something about it. But this isn’t terribly credible. The Taliban have already bombed out of existence 122 girls’ schools in Swat while the army operations go on inside a fast shrinking territory of the writ of the state. The inhabitants no longer believe that the state is capable of protecting them and talk on TV channels freely in favour of the army clearing out of the area and the government negotiating with the terrorists to give them what they want, including a literal ban on the public movement of women.

The ANP government began talking peace with the Taliban after coming to power in 2008. It reached an agreement on the enforcement of sharia with the terrorists and even let their founder-cleric out of jail as an earnest of its peaceful intent, but, according to the ANP leaders, the contract was sabotaged by the warlord Baitullah Mehsud who sent in more “foreigners” into Swat to tighten his hold on the territory. Reporters have described youths who behead people in the valley as people who speak differently from the locals and even look like non-Pakistanis.

In Pakistan, the foremost obstacle in pacifying Swat is the national division of opinion. A majority of the people who mould public opinion think that “it is not Pakistan’s war”, and trace it to the cruelties inflicted on the innocent people of Swat by the Musharraf regime. A recent opinion on the plight of Swat was expressed like this: “Swat was totally peaceful until two years ago. Then the government of Pervez Musharraf destroyed its peace. It spilled the blood of innocent people, and now the same innocent people had become greatest oppressors. They are killing each other in the name of Islam. What a great irony that the dictator who loudly proclaimed his enlightened moderation cast Swat into the clutches of religious extremism. And now he is going around the world lecturing on peace”.

But the truth is that Swat saw its trouble first in the mid-1990s with a radical cleric Sufi Muhammad asking for sharia. In 2001, the Sufi joined the Taliban in Afghanistan to fight the Americans. After his arrest, his son-in-law Maulvi Fazlullah unfurled the flag of jihad in Swat and was soon taking orders from the South Waziristan warlord Baitullah Mehsud. Today, Swat lives under the sharia of Fazlullah. Civilian collateral damage has been considerable, and may have caused rebellion in some cases, but most of the “obedience” observable in the valley is because of the fear of beheadings by the terrorists.

The measure of lack of success of military operations in Swat can be had from the fact that the terrorists now have an autonomous state of their own, complete with running sharia courts and an FM radio station exhorting the people to accept the new order or die. They have their own network of intelligence and an information secretary that you can ring up and talk to. Every day the people of Swat wake up to find someone or the other either beheaded or hanged on the Green Chowk of Mingora now called Khuni Chowk. Those who could flee Swat have done so; those who have nowhere to go will live under the terrorists. The “state” will soon have to survive on the economy of contraband and kidnappings in the settled areas of the NWFP.

Pakistan can turn away from the obligation of saving Swat only at the risk of further more dangerous erosion of the state. It is a war that has to be fought and Pakistan cannot afford to lose it. Islamabad must realise that Swat terrorists have their networks in the rest of the country; and last year, Lahore’s girls’ schools had received threats of closure the same way as in Swat.

War from Kabul to Peshawar and then …

Wali Khan spent the last days of his life at home in one of the most beautiful places in the Swat Valley. The house which is surrounded by greenery and a picturesque river has a significant place in the history of Pakistani politics.

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Wali Khan took several important decisions in this house. I met Wali Khan in the same house in the 1980s along with other senior journalists. An active politician, Wali Khan had foretold that the situation will become dangerous especially in the NWFP if Pakistan would not stop sending armed people to Afghanistan in the name of Jihad. Most people did not share his foresight at the time, however, his prediction has proved true today.

I remembered his words again as I read the news about militants attacking and damaging the residence of the late ANP leader, Khan Abdul Wali Khan. The war that started in Afghanistan in the 1980s by Ziaul Haq in the name of Jihad has now reached Peshawar from Kabul.

A few days ago, I had the chance to meet Mian Iftikhar Ahmed, a minister of NWFP (Pakhtoonkhawa) in an informal meeting held in Karachi. He was here to attend a conference, which was to be convened by the Sindh Inter Provincial Coordination (IPC) Minister, Makhdoom Jameeluzzaman. However, the conference was cancelled due to other engagements of the federal IPC Minister, Raza Rabbani. I was the only journalist in this luncheon meeting with other guests Mian Iftikhar Ahmed, Information and IPC NWFP, PPP leaders Nafees Siddiqi, ANP Sindh Chief Shahi Syed, Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan Secretaries IPC and Joint Secretary IPC federal government. The purpose was to create an IPC ministry and the departments in the provinces were to share their problems and suggest solutions.

Taking advantage of this occasion, I asked Mian Iftikhar about the situation in the NWFP. Most of the information that he shared was off-the-record. However, it was quite alarming. He explained that the people who had elected religious parties in the last election rejected them this time around and as a result the ANP and other liberal parties came into power. The people of NWFP were happy over this change while the political parties had the mandate to serve and develop the province.

He said that their major demand to change the name of NWFP to Pakhtoonkhawa has been accepted as the PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari had agreed for the constitutional amendment to change the name of the province. Unfortunately, the situation changed suddenly, just after the government started planning. Terrorists came out and started sabotage and suicide activities in the province. Consequently, the government started negotiations with Jihadi groups to handle the situation and people welcomed this move as they wanted peace. However, some quarters got angry with this political move and finally the terrorists increased their activities.

Being a political party, the ANP persuaded the public to stand united against terrorism. People and tribes took action against terrorists in their respective areas, which forced the terrorists to take shelter in other areas including Swat. In retaliation, the terrorists who are equipped with modern arms and latest communication equipments, spread terrorism by exploding schools, government buildings and taking civilians hostage while there is an Army operation in progress.

Mian Iftikhar said that his province needed political, moral and financial support to fight against terrorists — which in fact should be construed as a fight for Pakistan. He added that the writ of the government is only followed in Peshawar, but the provincial capital is also under the siege. Terrorists in the provincial capital have attacked not only the Governor, but also other government functionaries. Mian Iftikhar asserted that support for the NWFP situation should be the top priority, otherwise the situation will soon be out of control. He emphasised that the terrorists would not stop in the NWFP, they will also enter Islamabad, Punjab and other provinces.

He further disclosed that Punjab is also not safe from the threat of terrorism as some terrorists also come from training camps in southern Punjab. After the NWFP they would spread their fight to Punjab, if the provincial and federal government do not take action.

Unfortunately, the media and religious parties call these elements ‘Jihadis’. However, they are terrorists because Jihadis never kill women, children and explode schools. “If somebody has the impression that terrorists will stop at Attock border in the NWFP, they are living in a fool’s paradise. Terrorism is a threat for all, they will not stop until they have breached Islamabad, Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan.”

His community is looking for support from the entire nation. “Please do something before everything is destroyed,” Mian Iftikhar said.

What went right for Bush

Article from: The Australian
THE final word on George W. Bush's foreign policy belongs, perhaps, to his successor, Barack Obama, who will be inaugurated as president of the US next week. In his most wide-ranging television interview on foreign policy, Obama was asked last week whether he stood by a remark he made in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, which has been constantly shelled by Hamas rockets from the Gaza Strip. Obama said that if his town, where his daughters slept each night, was constantly being attacked by rockets he would want to do something about it.

In the light of Israel's military campaign in Gaza, the TV interviewer asked if Obama still felt that way?

He replied: "That's a basic principle of any country: that they've got to protect their citizens."

Obama was further asked to differentiate himself as strongly as possible from the Bush administration's policy of supporting Israel. Would he instead be ushering in a bold new policy?

Obama replied: "If you look not just at the Bush administration but what happened under the Clinton administration, you are seeing the general outlines of an approach."

Good grief! These words should shock every true Bush hater in the world. But wait, there's more.

Obama's nominee for secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said that the Obama administration would put more emphasis on diplomacy and try to engage Syria and Iran in dialogue. (Just, indeed, as the Bush administration has tried to do.)

But, just like Bush, she and the new administration would not take the military option off the table in dealing with Iran.

On Hamas, she said: "You cannot negotiate with Hamas until it renounces violence, recognises Israel and agrees to abide by past agreements. That is an absolute. That is my position and the president-elect's position." It is also one of the most contentious positions of President Bush, Democrat Obama's Republican predecessor.

Then there is the US prison in Guantanamo for terror suspects. Obama has pledged to shut it. Indeed, Bush wanted to shut it, too. But Obama's people now say that doing so might take a year or more, because, like Bush, Obama will face the dilemma of what to do with intractably dangerous people whose countries of origin either won't have them back under any circumstances or would be likely to torture or kill them if they did take them back.

It would be wrong to suggest there is no difference between Obama and Bush in foreign policy. But from the moment that Obama's hawkish, almost neo-conservative foreign policy essay appeared in the US journal Foreign Affairs in July 2007, it has been clear that the continuity in US foreign policy from Bush under Obama would vastly outweigh the change.

Indeed, Obama is the American Kevin Rudd, though, with no disrespect to our Prime Minister, Obama is more glamorous and better looking.

But, like Rudd, Obama is likely to engage in some powerful symbolic gestures while keeping much of his predecessor's policies in substance.

Obama is even keeping some of Bush's key personnel, most remarkably Defence Secretary Robert Gates, and some key Bush administration figures in the National Security Council.

Obama acknowledges the success of the Bush troop surge in Iraq and wants to imitate it in Afghanistan.

In truth, there is no greater compliment in political life than for a political opponent to adopt his predecessor's policies once he gains office.

All this is the opposite of the popular stereotype - parroted nowhere more faithfully than in the Australian media - of a bumbling, incompetent Bush producing a train wreck of a foreign policy requiring profound remedial action. So great is the emotional prejudice against Bush - on display again in a remarkably silly essay by Don Watson in the January issue of The Monthly magazine - that it is almost impossible to get a serious, rational, dispassionate discussion of the Bush foreign policy legacy.

But it is time to take serious stock of what Bush has meant for foreign policy. From an Australian perspective, it is necessary to distinguish different parts of the Bush time in office.

There is Bush's record on issues of special concern to Australia, such as Asia and trade policy, and Bush's incredible increase in aid for Africa. But there is the big question mark over the Middle East and the lack of action on global warming.

It is necessary to distinguish, too, between Bush before 9/11 from Bush after 9/11, also to distinguish the first George W. Bush term from the second, for they were very different.

None of these complexities normally figures in the celebratory denunciations of Bush constantly emanating from pundits and opinion panjandrums across the world.

One important reality check came from Walter Russell Mead, the Henry Kissinger fellow at the US Council for Foreign Relations, in a recent lecture to the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne.

Mead is in no sense a Bush partisan or neo-con. He is a non-partisan voice of great elegance and sophistication in US foreign policy. Speaking just after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and in the midst of the global financial crisis, He asserted that he was an optimist about the international scene. He advanced five reasons for his optimism.

One: Financial and banking crises are a regular and perhaps inevitable part of the capitalist system. But the US and the world always recovers from them and life goes on, generally with a better understanding of the way economies work and often, therefore, a better regulatory system.

Two: The failure of Osama bin Laden and his project throughout the Islamic world. This is most evident in Iraq. The Sunni Arabs there saw the US in a sense at its worst - given the abuses of Abu Ghraib and the mismanagement of the early part of the occupation - and al-Qa'ida potentially at its most appealing as the leader of resistance against Western domination. And yet in the Iraqi Sunni awakening, they rejected al-Qa'ida and chose partnership with the West.

Three: The rise of Asia. Mead rejects the intellectually constipated notion that China's rise equals America's decline. Instead he thinks that Asia is producing numerous big powers - China, Japan, India - that will naturally balance each other and always seek the involvement of the US as a further balancing and stabilising force.

Four: The enduring strength of American soft power. But how can this be? Surely Bush's global unpopularity has permanently ruined America's standing in the world? Not at all, Mead argues. One election, the triumph of Obama, and suddenly the world loves the US again.

European magazines recently at the centre of anti-Americanism declare that we are all Americans now and that Obama is the president of the world.

But if anti-Americanism is so easily banished, was it really such a powerful force? Another possible explanation (and here I am not quoting Mead) is that much anti-Americanism is exported from the US itself and reflects not much more than the visceral hatred of Bush by The New York Times class.

The New York Times itself is reprinted all over the world and its attitudes and disdains aped by faux sophisticates from Brussels to Balmain.

Five: The enduring dynamism of US society. No candidate ran in the US presidential election in 2008 as the status quo candidate.

I find Mead's arguments pretty convincing. If there is even a glimmer of truth to them, they suggest that the world Bush created was not altogether and entirely as evil as contemporary reviews suggest.

From Australia's point of view, at any rate, the Bush presidency was overwhelmingly successful.

What are the core Australian national interests that Canberra would always want a US administration to protect? Surely three would be: a stable security order in the Asia Pacific; the integrity of the international trading system; and the health of the US-Australian alliance.

On all three, Bush was outstandingly good for Australia. Bush's success in Asia is simply undeniable, and Rudd, among many others, has often acknowledged it. Michael Green, the former Asia director at the NSC under Bush, has in several important articles collated opinion poll data about the US in Asia. It turns out that Asia is the one region in the world where the US's poll ratings are higher at the end of the Bush administration than they were at the beginning.

This was anything but inevitable. When Bush was first elected, the fear du jour of the international know-alls was that Washington and Beijing would find themselves in confrontation.

Then in April 2001 a US reconnaissance aircraft and a Chinese fighter jet collided and the US plane had to make an emergency landing on Hainan Island. The world held its breath. Here was the confrontation all had feared.
In fact, the Bush team handled the ensuing days of tension, while the Chinese temporarily held the American air crew hostage, with great sophistication, calm and restraint.

It was a sign of things to come. The US-China relationship has never been better managed than over the past eight years. China has grown wealthy as a result of the good relationship. At the same time, Washington's management of Taiwan has been masterful. It has maintained its security guarantee for Taiwan but consciously and effectively reined in its independence aspirations and managed downwards its independence vote.

The biggest success for the US was India, where it negotiated a new nuclear co-operation agreement that will help the transformation of Indian industry, and incidentally do more than almost any single act of government policy anywhere to counter greenhouse gas emissions. But most importantly it cements the new strategic partnership between Washington and New Delhi.

The US also reinvigorated its alliances with Japan and South Korea. Both contributed substantial troop contingents to Iraq. At Australian urging the Bush administration also revived its relationship with Indonesia. All of this is of the greatest possible benefit to Australia and is a powerfully positive framework for the Obama administration to inherit.

On trade, it is true that the Bush administration was unable to complete the Doha round of trade liberalisation. But it never walked down the path of renewed tariff protectionism. It never played the protectionist card against China; will Obama be as good on this score? And it negotiated free-trade agreements with Australia, South Korea, Singapore and a slew of South American countries.

On the US-Australia alliance, the Howard government got everything it wanted from Washington, from profoundly important new intelligence-sharing arrangements to unrivalled technological access. These arrangements have been institutionalised and act as great force multipliers for Australia. The Rudd Government has sensibly consolidated them and they will be in place for the Obama administration.

Undoubtedly the hinge point of the Bush administration was the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Many of those who now oppose the military aspects of the US's response supported them at the time. Indeed, The New York Times's Maureen Dowd, admittedly the most air-headed of all significant North American columnists, once wrote of then US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld that he was sexy and charismatic.

Bush's mainstream opponents agreed with his decision to intervene in Afghanistan, and Obama is pledged to stay the distance there. Iraq remains the great divider of opinion.

This is no place to rehash all the Iraq arguments but what is absolutely clear is that everyone involved in Iraq policy, in every relevant nation, believed that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. They believed this partly because Saddam wanted them to, and partly because no other explanation of the facts made sense. But it is legitimate to criticise Bush for a wrong judgment on Iraq; it is not legitimate to say he lied his way into war, as Bush critics have to acknowledge that the WMD beliefs were nearly universally held.

The greatest and most justified criticism of Bush arises from the mismanagement of the early years of the Iraq occupation and the dreadful scandal of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. On the flipside, Bush gets all the credit for the subsequent troop surge, which was opposed by his key advisers and which has given Iraq a chance to emerge independent and semi-democratic.

The other great criticism of Bush is that he failed to wield the brilliant and powerful individuals of his national security team - Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Rich Armitage, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice - into a coherent team.

The second Bush administration was much less internally divided than the first and ran a consultative, cautious, centrist policy, concentrating on winning the wars it was involved in.

If you believe that global warming is the surpassing issue of the day, then Bush did not do enough to combat it, though it is clear the Kyoto Protocol was a flawed instrument for attacking this problem and there was never support for it in the US (remember Bill Clinton had recommended against its ratification).

Bush did neither significant harm nor significant good to the UN. That body's impotence and fatal moral confusion long predate him. But consider Africa. In his first term, Bush tripled US aid to sub-Saharan Africa. That's right, the US under Bush was giving three times more to Africa than it was under Clinton. And the increases kept coming during Bush's second term, so that if Obama continues the rate of increase, US aid will again be doubled by 2010.

Now how does that fit into the conspiracy theories about Bush? Was he pandering to the African-American vote? Was there a secret neo-con objective? Does Cheney have relatives there? Or could it be that Bush was trying to do some good?

It's too early to judge the Bush project in Iraq. But I am sure that, overall, history will judge Bush much more kindly than today's commentators do.

Political institutions in Pakistan must be authoritative: Biden

WASHINGTON: On the occasion of his briefing to President-elect Obama on Pakistan’s recent visit, U.S. Vice President-elect Joseph Biden said, for the swift progress of Pakistan it in indispensable that the political institutions in Pakistan should be authoritative instead of individuals or personalities.

VP-elect said I went to read Pakistan stance over various issues instead of delivering our policy. “I did not reveal the policy of new U.S. government instead my visit was meant for hearing from Pakistani government ”.

Briefing Obama, Biden also informed that he had left some of US governments’ reservations with Pakistani government. Biden said that government and the people of Pakistan have extended their good wishes for president-elect Obama for his tenure as U.S. president.

Talking to media after briefing President-elect said Al-Qaeda and Osam Bin Ladin are still the chief threat to United States’ sovereignty.

He added to take all actions necessary to wipe out Al-Qaeda bases.

India razes slums, leaves poor homeless

NEW DELHI, India... Hanso Devi moved to New Delhi from Rajasthan with just one hope -- to make a better life for herself and her family.She, her husband, five children and other relatives erected a hut to live in --- a home that provided shelter and a base for her husband's streetside blacksmith business.The problem is that the land they built on belongs to the government. And the government has decided to take it back.In a matter of minutes bulldozers level the place, leaving Devi and her family perched on a bed atop a sea of rubble. They have nowhere to go."They did it so fast that there was no time to take out anything. And the bulldozer broke everything on the way," Devi said."It's like we were picked up and thrown away," she said.Bulldozers razed the makeshift home and hundreds of others earlier this month as the Indian government moves to improve New Delhi for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
Officials say the land is for a road and the demolitions are simply part of a master plan to clean up the city and move slum-dwellers to proper housing.But, the government says, there will be no relocation for families like Hanso Devi's because they do not meet relocation requirements.The government says they are squatting too close to the road, and are located in a major development zone."You see they have encroached on the specific project lengths -- there will be no notice, no relocation projects for them," said New Delhi Mayor Arti Mehra, who says she and the city are worried about those who have been left homeless.About 3 million people live in New Delhi's slums, the government estimates. Mehra says New Delhi is slated to build 100,000 new apartments, though only 6,800 are under construction.Critics say demolishing housing that has been here for years and relocating some residents but not others will hurt many who live on the margins of society."They'll be pushed to the brink," said A.K. Roy of the Hazards Centre Sanchal Foundation, a non-governmental organization."Eventually I think what the planners are doing, they are not realizing they'll be building up a pool of violence."The people who live in New Delhi's slums are some of the city's maids, drivers, street vendors and day laborers. Roy argues the city could not survive without the services that the slum dwellers provide.The slums may not have looked like much to outsiders, but to families who had lived there for years, they were everything. Their businesses, homes and temples were there. Now they are lost.Some huts are still standing, for now. Among them is the home of Sheila Naurang Lal, built more than 20 years ago by the family who still lives there.But that is little comfort for Lal as she sees what has happened to the homes a few yards from her house."I came to the road yesterday after being scared seeing the bulldozer," Lal says. "You must have seen the front part has been broken."
It has been two days since the latest slum eradication, but families are still eking out a living amid the ruins. A mother cooks for her children, a 90-year-old woman with a walker sits on her bed and someone's pet goat is tied up at a shrine, waiting for its owner.Hanso Devi looks around as night falls. She will spend another night in the open with nothing to keep her warm but a small fire."We are going to sleep right here. There is no place other than this."

Pakistan unrest world's flashpoint

As world attention remains intensely focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict, a similar but far more serious situation with implications way beyond the Middle East may be closer than most people think.Israel's Gaza action has diverted attention away from the fallout of November's carnage by Islamist gunmen in Mumbai that left nearly 200 dead. Indian authorities have submitted dossiers on investigations linking the planned, co-ordinated attacks to Pakistani nationals and their Pakistan-based sponsors. The reports have gone to the Pakistan Government and Western countries.
After more than a month of consistent denials, Pakistan has grudgingly begun to acknowledge evidence of the involvement of individuals and organisations in that country, despite the FBI, European and Russian investigators having established these links.Both the outgoing Bush Administration - rather too late in the day - and Obama's regime have acknowledged that the key to making headway in the war on terror lies in dealing with the Pakistan situation first.The biggest foreign-policy challenge awaiting President-elect Barack Obama is not Iraq or Afghanistan but Pakistan, Stephen Hadley, United States national security adviser told the Wall Street Journal last week."Pakistan's increasingly turbulent border region poses threats not just to the US mission in Afghanistan, but also to neighbouring India, as evidenced by the recent Mumbai terrorist attacks, as well as to urban areas of Pakistan itself - and the world beyond. If extremists succeed in destabilising Pakistan, the resulting chaos will threaten the entire region. That's why I think Pakistan is at the centre," he said.What he left unsaid is the intelligence agencies' fears this might already be happening. The increasingly porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border has waves of Taleban militants making inroads into Pakistan. A month ago, militants bombed a Nato depot destroying dozens of trucks and communication infrastructure besides killing three workers. As a result the Western coalition's operations in a crucial area around Peshawar were temporarily suspended.Amid rumours of possible military action by India after the Mumbai attacks, the Pakistani Army threatened to move 100,000 troops from its Afghan frontier to its border with India to the East - causing consternation through the Western countries' camp. India assured the world it was not contemplating military action but the Pakistani Army's alacrity in announcing a troop withdrawal from the western front was an emphatic signal about its priorities.The Taleban considers India one of its main enemies along with Western nations but unlike them India is within easy striking range. It is a soft target and a great one for global exposure.There is no doubt Pakistan's announcement to move troops emboldened the Taleban to infiltrate further into Pakistani territory. In fact, the Taleban leadership even issued media statements that it would fight India alongside Pakistani forces.Indian media have consistently carried reports of the increasing Talebanisation of Pakistani villages where women are barred from being seen in public and schools for girls are being razed. Men have to wear beards and recruitment into their armies continues.The legal system is being replaced by the Taleban's own brand of brutal, instant justice.Not containing the Taleban's slow, but what appears to be steady, eastward foray into Pakistan immediately puts the country's nuclear hardware and infrastructure within its greater reach with each passing month. As things stand, Taleban activity is less than 200km from some of Pakistan's nuclear installations.There is no knowing how safe and secure the country's nuclear chain of command is, what with poorly defined demarcations between the Army and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which world intelligence agencies know is teeming with highly placed officials, many of them retired army brass, that are partial to radical Islamist causes and the nuclear establishment.It's more a question of when, not if, the Taleban infiltrates the Pakistan's nuclear defence system. Not that the Western countries are unaware of this - but the question is how to deal with the situation.While the West needs to do everything it can to keep President Asif Ali Zardari's democratically elected fledgling Government alive, the Mumbai attacks have pointed to the Government's progressive marginalisation with each passing week. The West is painfully aware that nothing can be achieved without the Army's help.It can't deal with the Army directly so long as a civilian government is in place and the Army won't listen to its own Government (its reversal of the President's assurance to send the intelligence chief to India after the Mumbai carnage is a case in point).Instead of the Gaza situation for a moment consider a scenario involving Western nations (with India included). And rather than Hamas they are dealing with a far more geographically widespread and nuclearised Taleban.
Instead of the 30-60km range rockets that Hamas has been using on Israeli targets, the scenario in Pakistan could involve dozens of 700-2000km nuclear-capable missiles ready to fly at the push of a button. What you might have is a scenario that will leave the Middle East situation looking like a bar brawl.

Chavez Turns Into Palestinian Hero

Venezuelan flags and portraits of President Hugo Chavez have been flying high during protests in the West Bank against Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip.
The Venezuelan president's decision on January 6 to expel Israel's ambassador from Caracas -- the only country apart from Mauritania to take such a step -- has made the left-wing South American leader a hero to Palestinians.Hamas, the Islamist movement which controls Gaza, has welcomed Chavez's "courageous decision," while Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanon's Hezbollah group, urged Arab states to follow the Venezuelan president's example.Chavez on Saturday accused Israel of being the "murder arm" of the United States and said the solution to the Gaza crisis was in the hands of Barack Obama when he becomes US president later this month.Mohammed al-Lahham, an MP for the Fatah party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, said Chavez was "a symbol of the struggle for liberty, like Che Guevara. This distinguishes him from the world's other presidents."His opposition to Washington, Israel's loyal ally, over the invasion of Iraq and to the Israeli offensive against Lebanon in 2006 have made Chavez a symbol for all peoples who "are resisting and fighting against occupation," he said.Venezuelan flags and portraits of Chavez could be seen lofted by demonstrators in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, Ramallah and Hebron during rallies last week.Al-Jazeera television ran an interview with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro in which he slammed "the criminals who govern Israel" and who have "carried out a holocaust against Palestinians for 60 years.""I would like to be able to give Chavez a Palestinian passport so he could become a Palestinian citizen. Then we would elect him and he would become our president," said Mahmud Zwahreh, mayor of Al-Masar, a community near Bethlehem where 8,000 people live in poverty."This is the right reaction" to American domination, said the mayor, who is printing out as many portraits as he can of the Venezuelan president to hand out to protesters."Everyone here knows about him. More and more people are coming to ask me for photos to carry during the demonstrations," Zwahreh said.Mohammed Brijeh, who heads an action group in the Bethlehem area against the security wall between Israel and the West Bank, said: "Chavez's response is worth more than the UN's."The United Nations "only does what Israel wants," he said."If only we had leaders as strong as Hugo Chavez," Brijeh said, while Zwahreh said: "We have no leader with a clear strategy and mission."
Abbas and his moderate Fatah movement have been weakened by rivalry with Hamas and by the ever-present memory of his predecessor Yasser Arafat, whose portraits still adorn many public buildings and homes.Iyad, who runs a shop near the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, has no doubt: "Chavez is the best president. He always supports the Palestinians.""He is better than Arab leaders. Jordan and Egypt should have also expelled their ambassadors (from Israel). It is a real shame that we have no leaders like him," said Assem, another shopkeeper.

Pakistan torn over how to handle Taliban: experts.

After years allowing Taliban militants to operate in the rugged tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, Pakistan is now torn over how to respond to US calls for decisive action against extremists.
Islamabad is under intense pressure from Washington, other western nations and Kabul to eliminate Taliban and Al-Qaeda havens in the tribal belt, from where fighters are said to stage attacks on foreign forces in Afghanistan.
But experts say Pakistan's desire to please the United States, a vital political and military ally, has run up against its own strategic interests in the region and its loyalty to Pashtuns, the predominant ethnicity among the Taliban.
"Pakistan's Taliban policy has suffered from indecisiveness, inconsistency and ambiguity," political analyst Hasan Askari told AFP.
"Pakistan's choices will become tougher in the future because its efforts to control the Taliban do not enjoy support throughout society. A good number of ordinary people see India as more of a threat than the Taliban."
The extremist Taliban movement emerged in the mid-1990s from Islamic schools along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and -- with Islamabad's support -- eventually seized power in Kabul in 1996.
At the time, Pakistan's security establishment wanted a pro-Islamabad regime in Kabul that would give the country a foothold in Afghanistan, and much-needed strategic depth in the region to use against its nuclear-armed rival India.
President Pervez Musharraf disowned the regime following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States -- carried out by Al-Qaeda which was being harboured by the Taliban.
However, he allowed thousands of Taliban to enter his country's northwest tribal belt after their ouster in a US-led invasion in late 2001.
"Pakistan did not want to sever all of its links with the Taliban movement, as doing so would have Pakistan totally out of the regional power game in Afghanistan," defence analyst Riffat Hussain told AFP.
Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar is still widely believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas.
"Tens of thousands of Taliban poured into Pakistan's northwest and southwest but security forces were under strict orders only to arrest Al-Qaeda members," a senior security official with knowledge of counter-terrorism policy told AFP.
Hussain, head of strategic studies at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, said former military ruler Musharraf, who resigned last year, had two reasons for tolerating the militants' presence on Pakistani soil.
"Musharraf personally believed that there were many good Taliban who should be co-opted in the post-Taliban power dispensation in Afghanistan," Hussain said.
Islamabad also wanted an "insurance policy" against the US-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, which it viewed as hostile, he added.
Another security official said that barring the Taliban from Pakistani soil would have angered ethnic Pashtuns at home, saying: "Antagonising them completely is against our long-term national interest."
But putting up with the Taliban was a risky policy, and security officials say it has backfired, as the extremists formed alliances with other militant groups and started attacking Pakistani targets.
Those militant groups -- such as that of renegade warlord Baitullah Mehsud, believed to have masterminded the assassination of Pakistani former premier Benazir Bhutto -- are now allied with the Al-Qaeda network.
"For years Pakistan targeted Al-Qaeda and tolerated the Taliban, but this policy has failed and resulted in making the Taliban a strong force not just in Afghanistan, but in many parts of Pakistan," a top security official told AFP.
Musharraf's successor Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani now must review Pakistan's role in the US-led "war on terror," which may mean a rethink on the Taliban.
"Pakistan will be asked to become the anvil for the hammer of American special forces operations in the tribal areas," Hussain said, predicting that Islamabad could be asked to stage joint anti-militant operations with the US.
Askari agreed, but said Islamabad would ask Washington to put a stop to attacks on militant targets in the border zone by unmanned CIA aircraft because "they create credibility problems" for the Pakistani government.
"Pakistan faces a double challenge -- controlling the Taliban in the tribal areas and containing militant groups based in mainland Pakistan," Askari said.
"Unless there is a simultaneous development of internal stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the problem may not be addressed."

The Sources of Arabs’ Shame: Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia

The Sources of Arabs’ Shame: Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia
12.01.2009 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/world/asia/106932-arab_shame-0

By Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar

“Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.” (Arthur Miller)

It is now over two weeks since Israel started its vicious assault on Gaza resulting, so far, in close to 600 dead and thousands of injuries mostly civilians. Israel true to its nature is once again ignoring all international laws and conventions. With its usual thirst for blood of the civilians, Israel is continuing its bombing of workshops, administrative buildings, roads, bridges, fuel depots, prisons, schools and mosques; killing and injuring large number of civilians in one of the world’s most impoverished and densely populated areas of the world. The Israelis are following their old method of destroying everything that makes a society a society, the infrastructure. The collective punishment of the Palestinians for what Hamas or Islamic Jihad is supposed to be doing or has done, reminds one of the collective punishments that Nazis meted out in the occupied areas in Eastern Europe during the WWII.

International Red Cross just issued a statement [[1]] condemning Israel for its brutality against civilians. There are several things that seem to have shocked the Red Cross. In one episode after several days of heavy pressure from the Red Cross, several ambulances were allowed to enter a neighbourhood to evacuate the injured civilians. In one house they found 12 bodies all civilians and mostly women and children. They also found four very young children still alive next to their dead mothers, too weak to stand. They have been holed-up in the same house for close to 4 days.

Apparently the whole neighbourhood was full of dead and injured civilians with Israeli forces only 80 meters away. According to the Red Cross the Israeli forces knew of the situation and not only didn’t do anything to help the civilians, but also were stopping Red Cross from providing assistance. Representative of the Norwegian Red Cross’ People’s Action calls this a war crime.

But this is only the tip of the ice berg. The Israeli forces have begun to use civilians as human shields. According to Amnesty International Israeli forces occupy civilian houses and keep the civilians as hostages on the first floor, while they position their soldiers on the second floor; ensuring that any fire on the house (especially with anti-tank or RPG missiles) kills the civilians as well.

In yet another report, the United Nations condemned Israel for targeting civilians. The head of the UN agency in Gaza running the school that was attacked by Israel forces categorically rejected the claim by Israel that Hamas fighters were in or even near the school. Israel bombed the UN run school, killing 43 children and injuring 100. [[2]]

Israel also targets ambulances and humanitarian relief convoys in Gaza. According to UN, at least one Palestinian was killed when UN relief convoy came under fire from Israeli forces. “The attack took place on Thursday as the lorries travelled to the Erez crossing to pick up supplies that were to have been allowed in during a three-hour ceasefire.” [[3]]

The atrocities committed by Israel is a genocide of a conquered people. Gaza is a concentration camp and no amount of PR can reduce the magnitude of this horrible crime against humanity and decency.

But Israel is Israel. She has shown that cruelty is in her nature. Here I am talking about the successive Israeli governments and not Israeli people in general. I am sure there are many in Israel that if became aware of what really is happening would not approve of it. This of course excludes the settlers and the Zionist movement. These groups like the South African white supremacists consider others to be inferior to them; or that they have the god given right to do as they please.

But states seldom are representative of their people. It is the elite and/or the governing class that makes the decisions. The state of Israel is determined to never allow the Palestinians to have a viable state. The maximum that they are willing to allow is some form of Bantustan (South African) or North American reservation (for Native Americans). With carte blanche from US and most of the European powers, Israel has been implementing this policy. Setting-up such a system takes many years. People’s spirit has to be crushed through collective punishment, economic strangulation and above all excessive and continuing violence. This has to continue for many years so the people lose hope of ever achieving anything more than what is on offer.

This of course cannot be done without the approval of other countries. Israel has the approval of the world’s most powerful nation, the United States. In addition, because of her US connections, she has managed to get a nod and a wink from the Europeans as well. So with this carte blanche in hand she has set forth to change the “reality” on the ground in her favour. By systematically settling extremists in the middle of populated Palestinian areas, she has made the creation of a viable Palestinian state almost impossible. A simple look at the map of the Palestinian territories resembles a Swiss cheese, with pockets of densely populated Palestinian areas surrounded by settlements and their protective military garrisons.

The violence both official (state sponsored) and unofficial (settlers) has been incessant. Couple this violence with economic strangulation and you will see the reasons behind the Palestinians’ anger and frustration. Any resistance is automatically branded as an act of terrorism and punished with even more violence, with US and Europeans cheering the Israelis on the side lines.

If you recall when Georgia invaded the Russian protected enclave of Abkhazia, and met Russian counter attack, the whole Western world with US at its head condemned Russia. Pushing for UN action and even sending warships with “humanitarian” supplies. Russians did not commit one thousandth of the Israeli atrocities and we had the Georgian president and other politician talking day and night about the horrible things the Russians were doing. Yet today we have US and European governments sitting silently watching this genocide taking place without doing anything. US even vetoes resolutions condemning Israeli actions, forgetting that no peace is ever made possible by killing so many innocent women and children.

But whenever a power tries to relocate a group of people by force, the Newton’s Third Law of Motion comes into effect. Newton's Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This means that if you try to imprison a person that person will try to break out. If you try to subjugate a people they will resist. This is the underlying causes of most liberation movements. The same applies to the Palestinians. They are resisting. We can agree or disagree with their methods, but theirs is a reaction to actions taken against them; we call this self-defence.

Israel is trying to push Palestinians into submission and in the process forcing many to leave the occupied territories. They are trying to show the Palestinians that they are alone and resistance in the face of an overwhelming force is suicide. Israel has tried this tactics before and has failed. The children that had to stay with their dead mothers for four days will not forget. The starved people of Gaza are not going to forget this barbarity; and neither shall the people of honour and conscious, regardless of their nationality, Israelis included.

But as for one of those who have followed the Israel ’s actions for the past 30 years, I can say that I didn’t expect anything different from Israel. The lies and deceits are all too familiar to fall for again. The current Israeli action in Gaza was not a reaction to the recent event, but planned a year ago. Just read the New York Times article in which among others they interview a senior Israeli military officer [[4]].

Israel is now trying to portray herself as a nation that is defending itself, while the truth is that Israel is a cruel occupying power trying to force a people out of their land. And this is being done with the help of some Arab nations; the very same nations that constantly talk about Arab and Muslim solidarity. These nations are: Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan .

The Arab Collaborators

The often asked question, when it comes to the Palestinians, is about the role of Arab countries in the Palestinian struggle for freedom. The people not familiar with the political landscape of the area often see the Middle East as two camps, Arab countries on one side and Israel on the other. The reality is totally different. Israel has seldom been alone. Beside its usual American, French, British and other staunch allies, she has had the hidden backing of several Arab countries.

For close to 30 years now, many Arab countries have been collaborating with Israel; some like Egypt (gained independence: 1922) and Jordan (gained independence: 1946) openly while others like Saudi Arabia (founded: 1932), UAE (founded: 1972) and Kuwait (founded: 1961) from behind the scenes. The reasons for this collaboration vary from country to country but they all have one thing in common: the rulers of these countries are all dictators and need foreign protection from their own people. Some such as Saudi Arabia , Jordan , Kuwait and UAE were put in power by the British. The founder of Saudi Arabia, Abdul-Aziz bin Saud (the kingdom is name after him) was put in power by the British. The same goes for the others, except Egypt which experienced a coup by the army officers in 1952 resulting in the ousting of the monarchy and the accompanying British influence. But the Western influence returned with Anwar Sadat. All these countries are dictatorships and all are under pressure from their people. What they cannot accept is any democratically elected form of government in their mist. They fear that if an Arab government becomes democratic they may have to become one themselves, hence losing power. One of the things that they love about Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, is that he won the election not by popular vote but by popular method of rigging the election; something that these Arab leaders understand and respect.

In contrast Hamas really represented the aspiration of the people. Soon, Mahmood Abbas term as president is over and he had to stand for re-election something that he would surely lose. In contrast Hamas really won the municipal elections in 2005 and the Parliamentary election in 2006. The elections were supervised by international observers, many from Europe, and US.

Palestinians were fed-up with the corrupt regime of Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah. They wanted to clean house. But as soon as Hamas took over, the US and the Europeans put an embargo on Hamas, calling it a terrorist organisation and not a peace partner. Israel closed the borders and refused to let anything into Gaza. Egypt also did the same.

What is not mentioned much in the media is that this was done with the complete approval of the Saudi Arabia , Egypt and Jordan . After all, Egypt could have opened its border for transfer of food and fuel. The reasons behind this hostility were and are that Hamas is a truly elected government and worst of all, Hamas is a branch or an off-shoot of Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt.

Muslim Brotherhood has a branch or related organisation in Jordan as well. Egypt and Jordan are worried that should Hamas survive and show its resistance, their people may get the idea that they can also resist the tyrannical rule of these despots. One must not forget that Muslim Brotherhood represents the only serious challenge to the Mubarak’s rule in Egypt.

Egypt

The 81 year old Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has been “president” since 1981 (28 years). He has won every election with a comfortable majority. He is much loved by his secret services. Prior to every election he arrests and imprisons all the opposition, ensuring a “clean” election. Torture is so widely used and accepted in Egypt that US outsources torturing of some its prisoners to Egypt . This alone should tell you volumes about the nature of Mubarak’s rule. He is now trying hard to crown his playboy son as his successor. But the Americans are not so sure if the son is capable of keeping the 80 million Egyptians in line and is therefore looking for alternative candidates. The head of the feared main secret service is one of the prime candidates along with some of the top generals. Challenging him is the Muslim Brotherhood organisation, enjoying grass root support from all sections of the Egyptian society including Lawyers, doctors, judges and student associations. Not surprisingly, US and Israel call Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation.

By all accounts, the Muslim Brotherhood be it in Jordan, Egypt or the occupied territories such as Gaza runs a clean operation, running many charity organisations and providing services to the poor and the needy. As such wherever they are, they pose a threat to the corrupt regimes, since they provide an alternative to the people of that area.

Jordan

King Abdullah II of Jordan, born of a British mother, educated in the West, including the Jesuit Center of Georgetown University, was brought to power by the CIA. His Uncle was a long time crown price, yet after his father died in a US hospital, Madeline Albright, Clinton ’s Secretary of Estate flew to Jordan to inform the Jordanians that the King on his death bed had changed his will and named his son Abdullah as his successor. The new king Abdullah II married the Princeton graduate Lisa Halaby, the daughter of the former head of Pan American Airlines. She is now called Queen Noor; Noor meaning Light in Arabic.

The majority of this Kingdom of 5 million people are Palestinians who are not very friendly to this King. In 1967 there was a Palestinian uprising (led by PLO) against King Hussein (ruled: 1952-1999, the father of the current king), which resulted in heavy casualties among Palestinians. In addition, the Kingdom is currently full of Iraqi refugees who resent the King’s help to the Americans in invasion of their country. On top of all this, we have the Muslim Brotherhood which tries hard to abolish the monarchy. King Abdullah relies heavily on the US support and backing for staying in power. King Abdullah also sees a natural ally in Israel , a country that can come to its aid in case of another uprising.

Saudi Arabia (House of Saud)

I don’t have to tell you much about Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom is run by the 84 year old, ailing Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. His personal wealth is estimated at $21 billion USD. He rules a clan of 8000 princes who in turn rule the country. Saudi Arabia is the centre of corruption in the Arab world. The Saudi rulers corrupt everything with their money. Lacking the necessary mental power or physical courage, they try to stay in power by subterfuge, lies, and deception. They fund the real extremists on the one hand while portraying themselves as the protectors of the Western interest on the other. They preach intolerance and xenophobia to their people decrying the Western decadence, while spending a lot of time enjoying the life in the West. They pay the West for protection against their own people and they pay the extremists to do their fighting elsewhere. Saudi rulers are indeed the worst of them all.

House of Saud is also the financier of the so called “Arab Moderates” and extremism that they cause. House of Saud financed the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. They later financed the Taliban. They also paid the Saddam Hussein to fight Iran . Then they paid the Americans and Egyptians to fight Saddam Hussein. They are the financiers of death and misery. They finance anything, anywhere, as long as this reduces the threat to their illegitimate rule. They are currently financing the civil war in Somalia, bandits in Baluchistan ( Pakistan and Iran ) and god knows what else. They are detested by their own people and neighbours yet loved by Bush, Cheney and the oil companies. As long as they provide the money and oil the US is willing to tolerate them. And guess what? Muslim Brotherhood hates the House of Saud too. This makes them a threat and hence has to be dealt with.

The Collaboration

As can be seen each country has a good reason to eliminate Hamas, but each is restrained by its population. Israel has no such a restrain imposed on it. She not only can wage a terrible war, but also get assistance from Arab countries. Indeed it is the second time (the first was the Lebanon invasion of 2006) that Israel is getting open and solid support from these Arab countries. The invasion of Gaza was discussed in Egypt before its implementation. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are Israel’s active partners.

Egypt is actively involved in stopping all aids from getting to Palestinians in Gaza save a token few trucks. These few trucks are allowed to go through so they can be filmed and shown to Egyptian people. All demonstrations are banned and all Egyptian volunteers for Gaza are either arrested or sent back.

There are hundreds of thousands of volunteers across the Muslim world that are willing to go to the aid of the Palestinians, but the Egyptian authorities don’t allow them passage. Egyptians even stop medical aid from passing through their territories. This is part of a report from Associated Press:

“RAFAH, Egypt : Frustration is mounting at Egypt 's border with the Gaza Strip, where many local and foreign doctors are stuck after Egyptian authorities denied them entry into the coastal area now under an Israeli ground invasion.

Anesthesiologist Dimitrios Mognie from Greece idles his time at a cafe near the border, drinking tea and chatting with other doctors, aid workers and curious Egyptians.

"This is a shame," said Mognie, who decided to use his vacation time to try help Gazans. He thought entering through Egypt , which has a narrow border with the Hamas-ruled strip, was his best bet.

"That in 2009 they have people in need of help from a doctor and we can go to help and they won't let us. This is crazy," he added.” [[5]].

In addition there are many Iranian cargo planes full of food and medicine which have been sitting on the tarmacs in Egypt for days waiting for permission to deliver their cargo. Egyptians even denied the medical aid sent by the son of the Libyan President Qaddafi to land in Egypt [[6]].

One thing is clear: these three countries do not want the Israelis to fail in their mission of totally destroying Gaza. Hosni Mubarak said so himself. The daily Haaretz reported that Hosni Mubarak had told European ministers on a peace mission that Hamas must not be allowed to win the ongoing war in Gaza.

As Egypt physically aids the Israeli military by denying food, fuel and medicine to the civilians, The House of Saud helps Israel by giving her time and diplomatic cover. When Israel started its invasion there was an immediate call for an Arab summit. Saudi Arabia and Jordan (along with Egypt of course) delayed the summit. The Saudis along with the UAE said that they had another meeting to attend to and therefore Palestinian issue had to wait. After a few days when the summit was eventually held, they issued the same old statements. Yet this time same as the Israel ’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006, they blamed the victims. In a statement Saudi Arabia blamed Hamas for Israel 's continuing offensive in the Gaza Strip. Saudi Arabia , after blaming Hamas, declared that it will not even consider an oil embargo on Israel ’s supporters. She then again blamed Hamas.

By this time, the three Arab countries along with Kuwait and UAE began singing the old song: international community is not doing anything about the catastrophe that is taking place in Gaza. It seems that these Arab tyrants have no shame at all. This reminds me of a quote from Marquis De Sade (1740-1814): “One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.”

These Arab leaders (many are indeed too old to blush) are complicit in the murder of so many civilians, especially young children. According to Agence France-Presse, quoting the medics on the ground, fully one third of all people killed have been children [[7]]. How can these Arab leaders justify this to their people?

The answer is that they cannot. Israel knows this and for the second time can show the Arab street that their leaders are nothing but a bunch of old hypocrites. These Arab leaders are now exposed and can do nothing but to cooperate fully with Israel and US. What stand between them and their people’s rage is their army and secret services; which in turn are supported by US.

Israel has cleverly exposed these leaders for what they are: collaborators of the worst kind. These Arab leaders have brought an unimaginable shame to their people. To quote Lucien Bouchard: I have never known a more vulgar expression of betrayal and deceit. Our hope is now with the people of these countries to clean this stain from their honour.

Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar

Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar lives in Norway. He is a management consultant and a contributing writer for many online journals. He can be contacted at : Bakhtiarspace-articles@yahoo.no

Bigger role of China in Regional Cooperation

Without any doubt, the past decade was a crucial period for China's reform and opening up. China was confronted with two most severe external economic challenges during this period. One was the Asian financial crisis from 1997-98. The other is the current world financial crisis.

The crises have not only changed China's relations with the rest of Asia, but also greatly boosted the integration of this region. China now has a much bigger role to play in fighting the global economic woes and enhancing regional cooperation.

In the 1990s, as China's fast-paced economic growth and opening up continued, the country was forced to face the challenge brought by the unexpected Asian financial crisis, which also constituted a great shock to Hong Kong's economy, shortly after the region was handed over to China.

At the moment, many people predicted that China might step into the same crisis, following in the footsteps of some Southeast Asian countries and the Republic of Korea. However, thanks to the prudent financial policies the Chinese government took to prevent the financial risks and the decision not to depreciate yuan, the country not only avoided direct financial shocks, but also succeeded in maintaining its fast economic growth, becoming the "engine" to boost the Asian economy.

During the 1997-98 crisis, although the International Monetary Fund (IMF) got heavily involved in the financially troubled economies, Western countries, especially the United States, took no practical bailout measures. Instead, they focused on criticizing the development mode and value system of these Asian countries.

Under such circumstances, some Asian economic leaders called for the search of regional solutions to deal with the crisis. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed wanted to carry out the concept of "East Asia Economic Group" that he had long been promoting, and Japan's economic leaders proposed to set up the "Asian Monetary Fund" (AMF).


In line with the guiding principle of being a "responsible country", and within the framework of the IMF, China, via bilateral channels, provided aid worth more than $4 billion to Thailand and other countries, and credit and free medicine to Indonesia and other countries. To maintain regional stability, China shouldered great pressures and paid a great price by not depreciating its currency. This move had played a decisively important role in stabilizing Asia's financial and monetary market.

Such a responsible behavior laid the foundation for China to improve its relations with some Southeast Asian countries. Gradually, China has become an important driving force for Asian regional integration.

In the wake of the Asian financial crisis, especially after China's accession to the WTO, a large amount of investment from Asia flew into China. China, with an ever-enlarging market, cheap but experienced laborers, favorable economic and labor policies, as well as its US dollar-pegged exchange rate, was very attractive to those export-oriented Asian economies. It could be said it was the Asian financial crisis that made China a "world factory" in its true meaning.

During the Asian financial crisis, although China did not give immediate support to the initiative for an AMF, it did actively seek regional resolutions to overcome the financial crisis, namely the formula of "ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea," which later evolved into the well-known 10+3 forum.

Since 1997, China has been an active participant in and a firm supporter of the East Asian cooperation process, with the 10+3 as its main channel. It has been proved this process is laying the foundation for the "East Asian Integration". At the meantime, China has actively taken part in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which took shape even before the financial crisis, and East Asia Summit (EAS), which is something between APEC and 10+3.

One decade after the Asian financial crisis, Asia, including China, is being challenged with another financial crisis, only on a larger scale. Can Asian countries deepen their cooperation to fight back? Can China play a bigger role in Asian cooperation?

China, flanked by Europe and the United States, has chosen three ways to fight the global financial crisis.

The first is the overall "self-relief". When the overseas demand is cut by a very large margin, changing the mode of domestic economic growth by stimulating the domestic demand will ensure the "scientific development." China's continuous economic growth will make crucial contribution to the restoration of world economic growth.

The second is active participation in global cooperation. Against the backdrop of the financial crisis, China hosted the Asia-Europe Summit and participated in the world financial summit held in Washington.

The third is regional cooperation. In addition to self-relief efforts and global cooperation, regional cooperation turned out to be more urgent and more important. China had wasted no time to call for further East Asian cooperation - centered around 10+3 - to cope with the financial crisis.

During the 7th Asia-Europe Summit held in Beijing last October, China convened East Asian leaders to have a deep discussion on how to further regional financial cooperation. Also China has tried to push the China-Japan-South Korea cooperation in the face of the financial crisis. On Dec 13, 2008, leaders from China, Japan and Republic of Korea held the first-ever trilateral summit outside of the "10+3" framework. The trilateral summit had a strong symbolic significance in international cooperation and would inject new impetus into East Asian cooperation.

Stabilizing the worldwide financial market and reforming the existing international financial system are two difficult tasks that can only be done gradually. But regional monetary and financial cooperation is relatively easier. The strengthening of such cooperation will help reform the international financial system.

Regional cooperation could enlarge the roles big Asian powers, China and Japan in particular, can play in international economic institutions. As Germany, UK and France have enhanced their international economic roles via the European Commission, China and Japan can achieve the same goal via the Asian cooperation mechanism, framework and system.

The current economic crisis

The current economic crisis came as a bolt from the blue for most. In the meantime, experts warned in the early 1970s that the world economy was heading for a crisis in the first decades of the 21st century.The current crisis was predicted 30 years ago.
In the 1960s, Western countries concluded that oil-stained beaches, smoggy megalopolises, and heavy pollution of major European rivers were too high a price for the benefits of mass production. In 1968, a group of industrialists, politicians, and scientists set up the Club of Rome in the Italian capital. They had enough money to conduct a series of studies with the participation of prominent scientists, and the use of tested methods.
Computer-predicted disaster
The Club's first report, which had the tell-tale title "Limits to Growth," caused a shock. It was compiled by a group of scientists headed by Dennis L. Medows, who decided to create a cybernetic model of global development. Having focused on five global processes: fast industrialization, population growth, increasing shortage of food, depletion of non-renewable resources, and degradation of the environment, they modeled the future on a computer.
The emotionless machine produced an answer that sounded like a verdict: the human race is in for a disaster. Considering that the population was growing at a rate of over two percent annually at that time, while industry was growing at up to five to seven percent, modern civilization was bound to reach the limits of growth in the first decades of the 21st century. Mineral resources will have been depleted; environmental pollution will have become irreversible; a sudden uncontrolled drop in the population and decline in production will have become inevitable. Millions of people will have died as a result of man-made catastrophes, spontaneous economically motivated social conflicts and unknown pandemics.
To prevent the cataclysm, the authors of the report offered a concept they called "zero growth," under which new purchases should only replace used up items. For example, a new car should be purchased only when the old one has stopped running; there should be universal birth control - no more than two children per family, and they suggested restricting consumption.
The report was a bombshell. It called into doubt the foundations of the Western economies. The zero growth concept contradicted the very logic of industrialized society which rested on the principle of supply-and-demand. The concept did not offer a future for the poor people of the non-capitalist world: a resident of a Soviet communal apartment was bound to live in it until he died, while a Chinese peasant was doomed to heat his hut with manure and dead-wood.
Does the truth begin as heresy?
Needless to say, the report was subjected to severe criticism, primarily because its authors did not offer any solutions. They admitted that their model was far from ideal, but the conclusions of their opponents were no less fallacious. Optimistic scenarios were not limited to only good wishes. The concept of a post-industrial society, for one thing, promised a miraculous salvation. It was very similar to the bright future predicted by communist ideologists.
Unprecedented technical breakthrough was the sine qua non both for building communism in the U.S.S.R. and for post-industrialized society in the West. It was supposed to produce technology which would resolve a number of environmental and socio-economic problems (for instance, let machines do arduous, dirty work).
As a result, the elites of the industrially advanced countries preferred to live with a due account of restrictions, and grow until they reach the natural limits in the hope of a technological leap which would allow them to go beyond the limits.
Global self-deception
The talk of the looming global crisis quickly ground to a halt in the latter half of the 1980s. Optimists were bragging about the resolution of global problems, and many analysts were confident that the bright post-industrial future had already arrived.
They seemed to be right but only at first glance. The majority of the European and U.S. middle class were white collar workers, involved in finances, marketing, and research. But in reality, driven by the market's logic, the leaders of the industrialized countries simply followed the path of least resistance. They switched the dirtiest and most labor-consuming industries to the developing countries, and let guest workers from the same countries take the worst jobs at home because they were cheaper than machines.
However, practice has shown that even a very advanced country cannot resolve global problems alone. Indeed, the once lifeless Czech Vltava or the German Rhine now abound with dozens of fish species, but the environmental crisis which the West has overcome is now looming elsewhere. It became clear that it would go beyond the limits of assembly lines several years ago when the Amur River was covered by a huge benzol spill. Resource restrictions are even more obvious - regardless of where a plant or factory oriented to the world market is located, a certain amount of resources is required to produce a commodity.
Finally, to control the production scattered all over the world, a sophisticated financial system had to be construed. With time, it started taking on a life of its own, produced by a fictitious economy with the profits of financial institutions depending not on real production but on intricate financial transactions.
This resulted in a big number of disproportions in the world economy. Investment in the financial market surpassed corporate capital, while the funds accumulated in the financial bubble exceeded the money in the real economy by many times.
As a result, an attempt to mothball the problem ended in failure. Having reached the limits of growth, the financial system collapsed and triggered the current economic turmoil.

Energy crisis deepens

PAKISTANIS stumbled on to 2009 in the dark, with no gas to keep them warm in the winter. Many are lining up at petrol pumps. This is not how a people should enter a new year. The energy shortage is worsening by the day, in fact by the hour. The average duration of rolling power blackouts has more than doubled to 18 hours a day of late, from eight hours in the summer. This is the situation despite the reduction of 6,000 MW in demand from the summer peak of 17,000 MW. Domestic and industrial consumers in Punjab and the NWFP are facing gas supply cuts due to a widening supply-demand gap. Adding insult to injury, the government has raised gas rates but refuses to reduce oil prices in line with the global trend. No wonder, people are protesting in Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Lahore.

Like all bad things the energy shortage is blamed on the previous government which not only failed to see the oncoming crisis but was also unsuccessful in attracting investment to the power and gas sector for several years. However, the people have every right to ask the incumbent rulers as to what steps they are taking to remedy the situation. Did they see the crisis worsening during the winter? If they didn’t, how could they be any better than their predecessors? If they did, what did they do to augment power and gas supplies? The state, which otherwise has a strong presence in public life, was nowhere to be seen when petrol station owners, expecting a fall in oil prices, stopped buying and supplying fuel to consumers. Now the people are being told that President Asif Zardari has convened a meeting to sort things out. Officials claim that the shortages will be overcome by the end of the current year. But until then, there does not seem to be any light at the end of a very dark tunnel. The problem is aggravated with a lack of visible activity on the part of the government. A sense of helplessness prevails. A decisive remedial step now, however unlikely it may seem under the circumstances, will not only benefit the people, it will give a boost to the government which has drawn flak in recent days over its real or perceived inability to move forward.

The implications of the energy crisis for the economy are huge. The risk of an economic downturn, and consequently of widespread unemployment, will increase if the shortages are allowed to persist for long. That will have serious social and political consequences. It is high time that the government got down to resolving the problem on a fast-track basis rather than appear to wait for the end of 2009.

Teen trained to be suicide bomber feels tricked

Story Highlights
Teen is serving at least 5 years for plot to carry out suicide bombing
He says Muslim radicals at school duped him into becoming a would-be bomber
The thing he misses most about home is his mom and dad: "I miss my parents"
Detention facility is teaching jailed children a moderate interpretation of Islam
By Atia Abawi
CNN
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A 14-year-old who was trained to kill by radicals in the tribal regions of Pakistan now sits in a crowded classroom at a detention facility in Kabul. His only wish is to see his parents again."I miss my parents, my mom and dad," Shakirullah says in soft tones. Like others in tribal regions, he goes by one name.
Shakirullah is already a convicted terrorist for planning to carry out a suicide bombing. He says Muslim radicals lied and tricked him into becoming a would-be bomber. "I have been detained for trying to commit a suicide attack," he says.He says his recruiters told him it was his mission as a Muslim to kill British and American soldiers because they were killing Muslims. Watch teen say recruiters "cheated me" They told him that once he blew himself up he wouldn't die because God would save him for being a true Muslim.Asked what he now thinks of Americans and Westerners, Shakirullah is calm, but quick in his response."I don't know. God knows what type of people they are, whether they are good or bad. I don't know them," he says.Shakirullah now passes his hours in a cell block at a juvenile detention facility in Kabul. He is serving at least five years in detention. He is to be transferred to an adult prison in a couple of years, authorities say.He hasn't heard from his family in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. He tried to send them a letter through the International Committee of the Red Cross but is not sure it reached them."I don't know what they are thinking. They have no news of me," he says.
On this day, Shakirullah attends a rehabilitation class, easily lost in the crowd of boys with shaved heads. All of the children are convicted for various crimes, including theft, fighting and even murder.Three boys like Shakirullah are here, all guilty of planning to kill themselves and others after being recruited by terrorist groups.With the increased violence in Afghanistan, international observers say they have seen more and more children being recruited by armed groups and national forces. The Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan with its strict Islamic rule from 1996 to 2001, has regrouped and launched a fierce insurgency."As you see in many places in the world, children are being used in armed conflict. They've been recruited as child soldiers; they've been recruited as armed groups. And the phenomena is now impacting, again, Afghanistan," says Catherine Mbengue, the UNICEF representative in Afghanistan. Watch one boy's struggle begging for food on streets.Inside the detention center, Shakirullah walks up to his cell, his sandals sliding across the tile floor.The cell block is empty and has metal bunk beds lined across the wall and a television set, ready for the times they have electricity. Shakirullah shares this space with 10 other boys. He sits in the center of the room with a blanket draped around him.He barely makes eye contact and looks away as soon as he does. He is shy, but forthright in his words. "I didn't want to do it but he forced me to go," he says of his recruiter.Rubbing his face with his hand, he says he now spends his time dreaming of his life back home in rural Pakistan. His eyes begin to water and his voice becomes softer when he talks about missing his mother.Asked what he misses most about her, he says simply, "A mother is a mother."His was a life of farming and tranquility in Pakistan, he says. It was also a life that took a drastic turn when his father decided to send Shakirullah for studies at a madrassa.He says his dad wanted him to learn more about Islam and the Quran, something he could not do himself. He says his father didn't know radicals ran the school.In the madrassa, Shakirullah learned to recite the Quran in Arabic, not his native language. He relied solely on the fanatical interpretations the mullahs were giving him."When I finished reciting the Quran, a mullah then came to me and told me, 'Now that you have finished the Quran, you need to go and commit a suicide attack.' That I should go to Afghanistan to commit a suicide attack," he says.The teenager wasn't given the chance to say goodbye to his parents or siblings when he was driven to the Pakistan-Afghan border and handed over to strangers.He says he was taken to the southeastern province of Khost, a hotbed for terrorist activity in Afghanistan. Suicide attacks have risen in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion to topple the Taliban began in late 2001, after the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.Shakirullah says that before the police arrested him, he was learning how to drive a car but that he was not sure how he was supposed to carry out his attack.Khost is the province where a suicide car bomb went off near a voter registration site this past Sunday, killing 16 people, 14 of whom were children.At the juvenile detention facility, Shakirullah and the others are now being taught a different interpretation of Islam."The teachers educate them on Islam, and explain to them that the acts that they were doing is not right for them and for others," says Mir Fayaz ah-Din, who works and lives with the boys at the facility, mentoring them and helping them in their rehabilitation."The way you want to kill yourself and someone else -- it in itself is a big offense in Islam."
Shakirullah now says of his recruiters, "They cheated me."

Scenic Pakistani valley falls to Taliban militants

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Taliban militants are beheading and burning their way through Pakistan's picturesque Swat Valley, and residents say the insurgents now control most of the mountainous region far from the lawless tribal areas where jihadists thrive.The deteriorating situation in the former tourist haven comes despite an army offensive that began in 2007 and an attempted peace deal. It is especially worrisome to Pakistani officials because the valley lies outside the areas where al-Qaida and Taliban militants have traditionally operated and where the military is staging a separate offensive."You can't imagine how bad it is," said Muzaffar ul-Mulk, a federal lawmaker whose home in Swat was attacked by bomb-toting assailants in mid-December, weeks after he left. "It's worse day by day."
The Taliban activity in northwest Pakistan also comes as the country shifts forces east to the Indian border because of tensions over last month's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, potentially giving insurgents more space to maneuver along the Afghan frontier.Militants began preying on Swat's lush mountain ranges about two years ago, and it is now too dangerous for foreign and Pakistani journalists to visit. Interviews with residents, lawmakers and officials who have fled the region paint a dire picture.A suicide blast killed 40 people Sunday at a polling station in Buner, an area bordering Swat that had been relatively peaceful. The attack underscored fears that even so-called "settled" regions presumptively under government control are increasingly unsafe.The 3,500-square-mile Swat Valley lies less than 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad.A senior government official said he feared there could be a spillover effect if the government lost control of Swat and allowed the insurgency to infect other areas. Like nearly everyone interviewed, the official requested anonymity for fear of reprisal by militants.
Officials estimate that up to a third of Swat's 1.5 million people have left the area. Salah-ud-Din, who oversees relief efforts in Swat for the International Committee of the Red Cross, estimated that 80 percent of the valley is now under Taliban control.Swat's militants are led by Maulana Fazlullah, a cleric who rose to prominence through radio broadcasts demanding the imposition of a harsh brand of Islamic law. His appeal tapped into widespread frustration with the area's inefficient judicial system.Most of the insurgents are easy to spot with long hair, beards, rifles, camouflage vests and running shoes. They number at most 2,000, according to people who were interviewed.In some places, just a handful of insurgents can control a village. They rule by fear: beheading government sympathizers, blowing up bridges and demanding women wear all-encompassing burqas.
They have also set up a parallel administration with courts, taxes, patrols and checkpoints, according to lawmakers and officials. And they are suspected of burning scores of girls' schools.In mid-December, Taliban fighters killed a young member of a Sufi-influenced Muslim group who had tried to raise a militia against them. The militants later dug up Pir Samiullah's corpse and hung it for two days in a village square — partly to prove to his followers that he was not a superhuman saint, a security official said on condition of anonymity.A lawmaker and the senior Swat government official said business and landowners had been told to give two-thirds of their income to the militants. Some local media reported last week that the militants have pronounced a ban on female education effective in mid-January.
Several people interviewed said the regional government made a mistake in May when it struck a peace deal with the militants. The agreement fell apart within two months but let the insurgents regroup.The Swat insurgency also includes Afghan and other fighters from outside the valley, security officials said.Any movement of Pakistani troops from the Swat Valley and tribal areas to the Indian border will concern the United States and other Western countries, which want Pakistan to focus on the al-Qaida threat near Afghanistan.On Friday, Pakistani intelligence officials said thousands of troops were being shifted toward the border with India, which blames Pakistani militants for terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month that killed 164 people. But there has been no sign yet of a major buildup near India.
"The terrorists' aim in Mumbai was precisely this — to get the Pakistani army to withdraw from the western border and mount operations on the east," said Ahmed Rashid, a journalist and author who has written extensively about militancy in the region."The terrorists are not going to be sitting still. They are not going to be adhering to any sort of cease-fire while the army takes on the Indian threat. They are going to occupy the vacuum the army will create."Residents and officials from the Swat Valley were critical of the army offensive there, saying troops appeared to be confined to their posts and often killed civilians when firing artillery at suspected militant targets.The military has deployed some 100,000 troops through the northwest.
A government official familiar with security issues estimated that some 10,000 paramilitary and army troops had killed 300 to 400 militants in Swat since 2007, while about 130 troops were killed. Authorities have not released details of civilian casualties, and it was unclear if they were even being tallied.The official, who insisted on anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, disputed assertions that militants had overrun the valley, but said a spotty supply line was hampering operations. He said the army had to man some Swat police stations because the police force there had been decimated by desertions and militant killings.A Swat militant boasted that "we are doing our activities wherever we want, and the army is confined to their living places.""They cannot move independently like us," said the man, who was reached over the phone and gave his name as Muzaffarul Haq. He claimed the Swat militants had no al-Qaida or foreign connections, but that they supported all groups that shared the goal of imposing Islamic law."With the grace of Allah, there is no dearth of funds, weapons or rations," he said. "Our women are providing cooked food for those who are struggling in Allah's path. Our children are getting prepared for jihad."