Global News Journal

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Bajaur bombing highlights conflicting U.S.-Pakistan interests

Last week's suicide bombing in Pakistan's Bajaur region, which killed at least 40 people, had a grim predictability to  it.  The Pakistan Army cleared Pakistani Taliban militants out of their main strongholds in Bajaur, which borders Afghanistan's Kunar province, after 20 months of intense fighting which ended earlier this year.  But as discussed in this post in October the insurgents' ability to flee to Kunar -- where the U.S. military presence has been thinned out -- combined with a failure to provide Bajaur with good governance, suggested the security situation in the region was likely to be deteriorating. The bombing appeared to confirm those fears.

The implications go far beyond Bajaur. The Pakistan Army has resisted U.S. pressure to launch a military offensive against militant strongholds in North Waziristan until it has secured gains made elsewhere.  Pakistani daily The Express Tribune quoted army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas as reiterating that point after the Bajaur bombing and after fighting in the neighbouring Mohmand region. Until areas "cleared" by the military were consolidated, "it is impossible to rush into another campaign,” it quoted him as saying.

The Taliban in Bajaur also had historically close ties with militants who overran the Swat valley and caused worldwide alarm by pushing further into Pakistan's heartland before they were ousted by the Pakistan Army in 2009.  Any further evidence of the Taliban regaining ground in Bajaur would therefore be a cause for concern that military gains in Swat -- itself reeling from this summer's devastating floods -- could also be reversed.

In some aspects -- though not all -- Pakistan's problems in tackling militants are a mirror image of those faced by the United States on the other side of the border.  Soldiers can drive militants out of their strongholds, but they can't stop them melting into the local population or fleeing across the border. And they can't hold and build on those military gains without civilian back-up to provide people with governance. 

When I visited Bajaur on an army-organised trip in April, the military commander in the main town of Khar -- target of last week's suicide bombing -- made two points. First he said the Americans had to "do more" on their side of the border to stop militants fleeing into Afghanistan.  Second he drew a graph showing how security gains made from military operations do not even remain static without governance, but actually dwindle over time -- probably rather similar to graphs drawn by U.S. commanders on the other side of the border.

You might think the answer would be to coordinate approaches in both Pakistan and Afghanistan -- a much talked about idea that somehow never quite managed to get off the drawing boards in Washington and into the field. If anything military coordination appears to be getting worse. 

The United States, keen to concentrate its forces in areas where they can make a difference, and to protect population centres, has been pulling troops back from remote outposts in Kunar and elsewhere.  Within the context of Afghanistan, that may make sense.  But from Pakistan's point of view, it leaves its  military exposed. Meanwhile, Pakistan has resisted pressure to launch an operation in North Waziristan, both because it needs to consolidate gains elsewhere, and because it fears a backlash of suicide bombings on its towns and cities. Within the context of Pakistan that may also make sense. But from the U.S. point of view, it leaves its own military exposed. 

from Afghan Journal:

An address for the Taliban in Turkey ?

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has supported a proposal to open an office for the Taliban in a third country such as Turkey.  Such a move could help facilitate talks with the  insurgent group on reconciliation and reintegration of members back into society, and Kabul was happy for Turkey to be a venue for such a process, he said last week, following a trilateral summit involving the presidents of Turkey and Pakistan.

The question is while a legitimate calling card for the Taliban would be a step forward, the insurgent group itself shows no signs yet of stepping out of the shadows, despite the best entreaties of  and some of his European backers. The Taliban remain steadfast in their stand that they won't talk to the Afghan government unless foreign troops leave the country. More so at the present time when U.S. commander General David Petraeus has intensified the battle against them and the Taliban have responded in equal measure.

Perhaps some elements of the Taliban may not be averse to the idea of a parallel engagement to the battlefield but then so amorphous and diffused is the nature of the group that it only complicates the picture further, as The Nation wrote in an editorial.

 Nevertheless, the idea of a representative office for the Taliban is a major step forward in efforts to seek a negotiated settlement of the Afghan conflict, says Strafor's Kamran Bokhari. First, it gives the Taliban the political legitimacy they have been demanding for years, he says. Second with Turkey jumping into the fray, the idea may not be that far fetched. While Pakistan may not be most credible partner in seeking a settlement given its close ties to the Afghan Taliban and other militant groups, Turkey carries enough weight both in the United States and the Islamic world to be able to nudge the different players along.

It has already played a similar role with respect to Iran.

 But of course there is a lot of ground to cover before any of this can materialise including the act of setting up an office for the Taliban. They do not represent an organisation in the classic sense of the word and you can't really tell who speaks for them.

from Afghan Journal:

Suicide bombings in Pakistan: the bloodiest year

Even before Saturday's horrific attack in which at least 40 people were killed in Pakistan's Bajaur region on the Afghan border,  the current year is turning out to be the most successful for suicide bombers in the country since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

According to an analysis by Amir Mir in The News, 1224 people were killed and more than 2100 wounded in sucide bombings during the year, slightly up from the previous year which was itself a record since Pakistan signed up for the war on terrorism. The number of suicide attacks, by itself, fell by as much as 35 percent, which means the attacks that took place had a greater strike rate.

 On an average, the "human bombs" killed just over a 100 people each month, which tells you just how much the country has been sucked into the fires of extremism. The latest attack was carried out, according to Pakistani media. by a burqa-clad woman bomber in a food distribution centre where people displaced by the fighting earlier between security forces and Taliban militants  had gathered for aid.

Amir provides an interesting breakup of the suicide attacks by geography and by the targets of the attacks.  There isn't a part of Pakistan untouched by the suicide bomber, though Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa or North West Frontier Province as it was formerly called, was by far the most common staging ground for such attacks. followed by the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas and then Punjab. Of the 52 suicide attacks, not counting the latest one, 37 took place in the Pashtun belt of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and FATA.

Quite a dramatic transformation of the battleground because suicide bombing in Pakistan was earlier seen as a Punjabi phenomenon with most of the attacks in Punjab and Sind, and none in the Pashtun heartland of the northwest. The trigger, according to strategic affairs writer Manzar Zaidi ,was provided by the operation to evict suspected militants from Islamabad's Lal Masjid in 2007. That year saw a dramatic increase in the number of suicide attacks over the previous year with the sharpest rise in the northwest, he wrote in a piece for Dawn back in August. Many others believe the raid on the mosque was the turning point in the Pakistani state's conflicted ties with militant groups.

The targets of the suicide attackers vary too. While in the northwest the rise of the suicide bomber has resulted in Muslims killings Muslims and Pasthuns killing Pashtuns, in the Punjab, the targeting is much more precise. The attacks have been concentrated on Shias, Ahmadiyas, and within the Sunni divide, on the Barelviswhom the Wahabis and the Deobandi Taliban consider as kafirs because they visit shrines of saints, offer prayers and believe music, poetry and dance can lead to god.

The best reads of 2010

As part of our 2010 Year in Review coverage, Reuters Editor Toni Reinhold chooses the most interesting, informative, eye opening and enlightening Reuters stories of the past year.

Bulldozers overhaul Luxor, city of pashas and pharaohs By Alexander Dziadosz

In the dusty streets behind the pasha’s grand villa, bulldozers and forklifts are tearing into the city where Agatha Christie found inspiration and Howard Carter unearthed Tutankhamen. Egypt has already cleared out Luxor’s old bazaar, demolished thousands of homes and dozens of Belle Epoque buildings in a push to transform the site of the ancient capital Thebes into a huge open-air museum. Officials say the project will preserve temples and draw more tourists, but the work has outraged archaeologists and architects who say it has gutted Luxor’s more recent heritage…

Worst of times, best of times: tale of two Irelands By Peter Graff

Country A is drowning. A catastrophic recession has thrown a tenth of its workforce out of jobs. Firms are shutting, banks are barely solvent. The standard of living is eroding, taxes are being hiked, state spending is being slashed, and the deeply unpopular government is being forced into an election it is certain to lose.  Country B has a huge and growing trade surplus. It is attracting a flood of international investment, building thriving hi-tech export industries. Taxes are low and staying low, and the English-speaking population is highly skilled. Both countries are Ireland…

Africa mulls biofuels as land grab fears grow By Simon Akam

Farmers in this iron-roof village in Sierra Leone say they didn’t know what they were getting into when they leased their land for a biofuel crop they now fear threatens their food harvests. Addax Bioenergy, says it went through long consultations with locals when it won a lease for around 50,000 hectares (123,600 acres) for ethanol sugarcane in the poor West African country’s centre…

UN victory for gay rights supporters

Suporters of rights for gays and lesbians worldwide secured a major victory at the United Nations this week. The 192-nation U.N. General Assembly voted to restore a reference to killings due to sexual orientation that had been deleted from a resolution condemning unjustified slayings. The shift came after the United States submitted an amendment to restore the reference, which the General Assembly’s human rights committee removed last month from a resolution on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions that is adopted every two years.

The U.S. amendment that restored the reference to sexual orientation was adopted with 93 votes in favor, 55 against and 27 abstentions. The amended resolution was then approved with 122 yes votes, one against and 62 abstentions. (Saudi Arabia cast the sole vote against the resolution, and the United States was among those who abstained.)

The committee’s deletion of the reference last month — at the proposal of African and Arab nations — had outraged Western countries and human rights activists. Similar resolutions adopted in previous years have explicitly mentioned killings due to sexual preference, along with slayings for racial, national, ethnic, religious or linguistic reasons and killings of refugees, indigenous people and other groups.

Cary Alan Johnson, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), was pleased with the outcome. “The outpouring of support from the international community sent the strong message to our representatives at the U.N. that it is unacceptable to make invisible the deadly violence LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people face because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation.”

Not everyone was happy. Zimbabwe’s U.N. Ambassador Chitsaka Chipaziwa told the General Assembly that there was no need to refer explicitly to sexual orientation: “We will not have it foisted on us. We cannot accept this, especially if it entails accepting such practices as bestiality, pedophilia and those other practices many societies would find abhorrent in their value systems.” A European diplomat later told Reuters that Chipaziwa’s statement was “disgraceful.”

The opposition to the U.S. amendment came mainly from African and Muslim states. However, they had powerful support from diplomatic heavyweights like China and Russia, both of which voted against including a reference to slayings of people because of their sexual orientation. Several states that had voted against the inclusion in November reversed their positions and voted for the U.S. amendment this week, among them the African nations South Africa and Rwanda.

Although President Barack Obama himself welcomed the adoption of the U.S. amendment, Washington sent an ambiguous signal of support by abstaining from the vote on the amended resolution condemning extrajudicial, arbitrary and summary executions. The U.S. delegation did not explain its abstention. Several Western diplomats suggested that the U.S. abstention was unrelated to the issue of sexual orientation, but was connected with the U.S. use of unmanned drones to kill suspected Taliban and al Qaeda militants in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

from Africa News blog:

Africa’s trying tradition of sit-tight leaders

It may seem odd to ask the question only a day after he was sworn in, but will Guinea’s President Alpha Conde go when the time comes?

Long-suffering opposition leader Conde is the first freely-elected president of a country that has known dictatorship, with varying degrees of brutality and oppression, for pretty much the entire period since independence from France in 1958. And French rule wasn’t that much fun for Guineans either.

Conde took office with the pledges that might be expected; to heal division, to improve services, to fight corruption, to put food on every table etc. etc. In particular, he said he would work to unify his ethnically-divided country in the way Nelson Mandela did for South Africa after apartheid.

Nobody could wish him anything but the best of luck, but what if he doesn’t do well enough in the face of such immense challenges? What if his people tire of him or simply want to give someone else a chance?

As the situation in neighbouring Ivory Coast makes only too clear, the record of African leaders in allowing that someone might replace them is poor at best.

Ivory Coast was once the example of what Guinea could have been without its despots. Lacking the resources of France’s “Pearl of West Africa”, an independent Ivory Coast prospered under more liberal rule and became the new jewel.

More than a decade of crisis has put an end to that. Fears for the country are deepening again as incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo defies calls to step down made by the United Nations, African Union and regional group ECOWAS. They say opposition leader Alassane Ouattara won November elections and is now the president.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Pakistan:the unintended consequences of U.S. pressure

U.S. pressure on Pakistan has always led to deep resentment within the Pakistan Army, which has taken heavy casualties of its own fighting Pakistani Taliban militants on its side of the border with Afghanistan. But there are signs that this resentment is now spiralling in dangerously unpredictable ways.

The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency has denied  it was responsible for revealing the name of a senior Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official in Pakistan, forcing him to flee the country after threats to his life. But the suspicion lingers that the ISI, which falls under the control of the Pakistan Army, is flexing its muscles in response to U.S. pressure.

In an article for Time magazine, former CIA officer Robert Baer said that even if you accepted the ISI denial, "what can't be dismissed is a lawsuit filed by a Pakistani tribesman in which he accuses the CIA of murdering his brother and his son in a drone attack. According to press reports, none of which have been confirmed by the CIA, it was the appearance of the station chief's name in a filing in this suit, along with unspecified threats, that caused him to be pulled. Regardless, the suit itself could be an ominous sign that the Pakistanis may be coming to the end of their rope in the 'war on terror'."

His assumption was that the ISI, which until now is believed to have given tacit support to the U.S. drone strikes, had supported the case by the Pakistani tribesman.

Even more alarming are Pakistani press reports suggesting that fake WikiLeaks cables planted in the Pakistan media were deliberately designed by Pakistani intelligence to whip up public opinion against U.S. pressure to "do more". (h/t Five Rupees).

"The fake story is not an isolated incident," Azhar Abbas, the managing director of GEO News, wrote. "Political and security observers believe a concerted effort is once again being made to encourage and promote a typical extremist mindset. Some analysts-cum-anchors have re-emerged from quasi-oblivion. Many journalists and analysts are briefed and encouraged to take an aggressively anti-West, especially anti-US, stance. Experts, who ‘preach’ extremism in disguise, are encouraged to participate in talk shows."

Maintaining the support of the Pakistani people has been essential in Pakistan's own battle against the Pakistani Taliban - a widely circulated video of a girl being flogged in the Swat valley rallied public opinion behind the army when it launched a military operation there last year to drive out militants from the region.  The authenticity of that video is a subject of much debate in Pakistan. But be that as it may, if public opinion were to turn decisively against military operations, no amount of American pressure would be able to convince the Pakistan Army to launch a new ground assault to assert control of areas now held by militants, including North Waziristan.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

China’s South Asia tour: win-win meets zero sum

Just over a year ago, President Barack Obama suggested during a visit to Beijing that China and the United States could cooperate on bringing stability to Afghanistan and Pakistan.  As I wrote at the time, China — Islamabad’s most loyal partner — was an obvious country to turn to for help in working out how to deal with Pakistan.  Its economy would be the first to gain from greater regional stability which opened up trade routes and improved its access to energy supplies. And it also shared some of Washington’s concerns about Islamist militancy, particularly if this were to spread unrest in its Muslim Xinjiang region.

The big question was whether the suggestion would fall foul of the zero sum game thinking which has bedevilled relations between India, Pakistan and China for nearly 50 years.  India was defeated by China in a border war in 1962 and since then has regarded it as its main military threat. Pakistan has built close ties with China to offset what it sees as its own main military threat from its much larger neighbour India. China in turn has been able to use its relationship with Pakistan to clip India's wings and curb any ambitions it has at regional hegemony.

So where does Obama's suggestion stand now that Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has just completed a visit to both India and Pakistan?  The answer to that probably depends on how far economics and how far politics determine the behaviour of India and Pakistan in the coming years. China itself is seen as putting its economic interests first, or in the words of the People's Daily, a search for "win-win results consistently dominate China's diplomacy".

In India, Wen offered expanded trade and greater cooperation between two countries which increasingly have reason to align their positions in negotiations within the G-20 economies. That is positive for those whose world view is seen through the lens of economic development --among them Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In an editorial in The Hindu, Siddharth Varadarajan argues that India needs to stop focusing so much on China as a strategic threat and take advantage of the gains it can reap from Chinese economic growth.  And while expanding trade left India with a $16 billion trade deficit with China in 2007-2008, you can argue that India could still be a long-term beneficiary if rising Chinese wages open up space for cheaper Indian manufacturing.

However, at the same time the two countries apparently failed to make any progress on the political and strategic issues which divide them, among them their disputed border and Chinese support for Pakistan.  That is a worry for those who focus primarily on the strategic, rather than the economic, environment in South Asia -- particularly given that both Beijing and Delhi have become much scratchier about their political disputes in the last few years. 

"During the first visit of a major Chinese leader to India in more than four years, some easing of political tensions should have been accomplished. Instead the two sides decided to kick all contentious issues down the road and expand bilateral trade by two-thirds over the next five years. However, increased trade is no panacea for the sharpening geopolitical rivalry,"  Brahma Chellaney wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

In short, there is no real consensus on what to make of Wen's visit as India grapples with growing Chinese power and tries to decide whether to hitch a ride on the coat tails of China's economic growth or stand up to it.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

From Thuggees to fake WikiLeaks

The fall-out from the fake WikiLeaks cables in Pakistan continues to be far more interesting than the real WikiLeaks cables. To recap, several Pakistani newspapers retracted stories last week which quoted WikiLeaks cables ostensibly accusing India of stirring up trouble in Baluchistan and Waziristan, cited U.S. diplomats as ridiculing the Indian Army, and compared Kashmir to Bosnia in the 1990s.  Since the anti-India narrative presented in the stories chimed with the views of Pakistani intelligence agencies, the alleged cables were then dismissed as fakes and most likely an intelligence plant.

However, just to complicate matters, some of the information in the "fake cables" is also in the "real cables".  For example, the real cables do contain allegations of Indian support for Baluch separatists, largely sourced to British intelligence, according to The Guardian. The British newspaper, which had advance access to the cables, also cited them as evidence that India practiced systematic torture in Kashmir.

So if the anti-India stories really were an intelligence plant, why did "the agencies" in Pakistan not use actual cables to bolster their allegations, rather than fake cables which could be easily discredited?

In a column in The Express Tribune headlined "Can't they just be spies?",  journalist Aamer Khan blamed it on an inability to manage the media. Recalling a news agency he said was set up by Pakistani intelligence to spread the word about the Kashmir revolt, he said that eventually, "the spooks running the operation went haywire and lost all perspective on what they had set out to achieve. As more and more newspapers started accepting its copy, the agency started reporting a dramatic increase in the number of Indian casualties at the hands of our fearless jihadis."

The daily death toll rose at such a furious pace that several years later one Western analyst said if that agency were to be believed, jihadis must have killed all the Indian Army posted in the Kashmir Valley twice over by then. He concluded that the fake WikiLeaks story suggested nothing had changed in the last 20 years.

This implied inefficiency is intriguing. The Western media narrative ascribes a great deal of power to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency in its influence over the Afghan war, based on its alleged support for the Taliban.  But bear in mind that an organisation sometimes believed capable of ending the Afghan war did not - if it was indeed responsible - manage to plant durably a WikiLeaks story even when it had real cables to back up its case.

 Nadeem Paracha at Dawn, however, argued it did not matter that some newspapers retracted the story since enough papers and television channels carried it for it to be believed. He ascribed the fake WikiLeaks cables to an over-enthusiastic pro-military media eager to deflect attention from real cables which highlighted the role played by the Pakistan Army in the country's politics as well as other awkward revelations about Pakistan's  ally Saudi Arabia.

from Environment Forum:

Polar bears, sure. But grolar bears?

Most people have seen a polar bear, usually at the local zoo. And most zoo-goers know that wildlife advocates worry about the big white bears' future as their icy Arctic habitat literally melts away as a result of global climate change. But apparently more than the climate is changing above the Arctic Circle.

The new mammal around the North Pole is the grolar bear, a hybrid created when a polar bear and a grizzly bear mate. Then there's the narluga, a hybrid of the narwhal and beluga whale. The presence of these two new creatures and others produced by cross-breeding may be caused when melting sea ice allows them to mingle in ways they couldn't before, according to a comment in the journal Nature.

These hybrids could push some Arctic species to extinction, the three American authors said in their Nature piece. They identified 22 marine mammals at risk of hybridization, including 14 listed or candidates for listing as endangered, threatened or of special concern by one or more nations.

"Some people may say these are just a few freaks. Others will say the sky is falling," lead author Brendan Kelly, of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, told the Natural Resources Defense Council's OnEarth website.

"What we’re saying is that these are a few of the many examples of hybridization happening among marine mammals in the Arctic right now. It fits with what we would expect as a result of the rapid change in Arctic habitat. This sort of hybridization may be happening with more frequency, and we should pay attention."

What does a grolar bear look like? Basically a smudged polar bear. Only DNA tests showed that a grolar encountered this year was the offspring of a hybrid mother and a grizzly bear father. In 2006, Arctic hunters shot a white bear with brown patches which was dubbed a "pizzly."

There is hope for the polar bear, according to another study in Nature, as reported by my colleague Yereth Rosen from Anchorage. Significant curbs on climate-warming carbon emissions could save the big white bears' habitat, researchers said. But will these curbs come to pass? After two weeks of international climate talks in Cancun, the outlook is still unsettled.