By Dina Kyriakidou

In Greece, hiding a little from the taxman is considered good sport, so the government, struggling with a debt crisis is shaking international markets, is firing every weapon in its arsenal to crack down on rampant tax evasion.

A snapshot of the Greek capital’s northern suburbs, where the Athenian nouveau riche have built big swimming pools as status symbols, revealed about half of them had not been declared to tax authorities.

View Larger MapSuch luxuries, along with big cars and yachts, are considered “objective criteria” of high income and authorities tax accordingly regardless of declared income. But tax dodgers quickly fought back. On the Trelo Kouneli blog, visitors exchanged advice on how to dodge the tax man. They included “Put an army net over it”, “Paint the tiles green so it looks like grass” and “Hack Google maps”.

The Socialist government faces an admittedly tough task. To climb out of the debt crisis, it must impose tough belt-tightening measures on a public that has seen politicians and businessmen get rich off the state for decades. It was no wonder that Prime Minister George Papandreou sacked his tourism minister this week after press revelations her singer husband owed 5.5 million euros in taxes and penalties. Blogs went wild with calls to stop paying taxes unless authorities stepped in.

Opinion polls and street violence indicate people will resist austerity unless social justice is done, until blatant tax evaders and those involved in a long string of scandals are thrown in jail.

Given the widespread impression that the big fish never get caught, many Greeks don’t think it’s unethical to hide a little income from a state which gives very little back. At most state hospitals and other public services, citizens regularly get unsmiling, slow service and bureaucracy for their money. Most Greeks pay a “tip”, also known as “fast-stamp” and “little envelope” to get things done.

By William Maclean

The flow of foreign militants to Pakistan worries Western governments, which fear the south Asian country has replaced Iraq as the place to go for aspiring Islamists planning attacks on the West.

The camps will probably be smaller and the skills on offer less photogenic to al Qaeda’s online video audience, but that is no deterrent to Arabs, Central Asians and Europeans making their way to the turbulent northwestern tribal areas.

Those arrivals are in addition to a steady flow of Britons of Pakistani descent who have visited the area for many years, security sources say. The assumption among many Western officials is that U.S. success in Iraq since 2006 has diverted some recruits for the anti-Western cause to the Pakistan-Afghan theatre.

While Iraq rarely provided the range of commando-style training available in the 1990s at sprawling al Qaeda camps on the border with Afghanistan, Iraq’s draw as a battlefield in 2003-2006 diverted potential jihadi trainees away from Pakistan.

The goal today for these young men is to fight U.S. forces in neighbouring Afghanistan or to gain the skills to carry out attacks back home in the Middle East, Africa or the West.

Now, porous borders, corrupt officials and inventive smugglers mean a determined foreigner has little problem simply entering Pakistan, experts say, although reaching a camp in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas can be harder due to U.S. drone attacks and tougher security checks by militant groups.

By Edmund Blair

It was a simple question but it touched a raw nerve.

Mohamed, my 46-year-old taxi driver, had been wondering where I learnt Arabic. So I explained that I had been based in Egypt a few years ago and had now returned to take up a new post in the Reuters bureau. So, I asked, how’s life these days?

And then it began. He launched into a tirade about an economy where the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer,a government that only seemed concerned about staying in power and the difficulty of paying for the education of his four sons — the eldest of whom he is now supporting through university.

Taxi drivers are an all-too-common sounding ground for foreign journalists and the kind of rant I listened to is probably not so unusual the world over. But what made Mohamed’s comments striking is that taxi drivers in other countries probably aren’t, like him, fully qualified accountants.

“There are doctors, engineers, teachers, all of them driving taxis. They just don’t earn enough otherwise,” he told me, grinding to a halt as a pick-up tried to do a U-turn in the middle of a narrow road. “This government doesn’t even provide order.” It’s hard to argue with that point on the streets of the capital where even the newest cars have scratches and dents, testimony to traffic rules that seem to be regarded — at least to any visitor — as optional.

Mohamed quit accountancy 15 years ago when he realised it couldn’t pay the bills. Now he earns about 50 to 60 Egyptian pounds, $9 to $11, for each 10-hour day. That’s what he takes home after paying for fuel and keeping his car on the road, giving him about 1,200 to 1,400 pounds a month. He might earn just half that as an accountant for the government, which still dominates the job market despite a raft of liberalising reforms introduced by a cabinet appointed in 2004.