Taliban’s Jannat

Through courtsey of a friend, we received few pictures which depicts scenes of heaven waiting for the suiside bombers. Our friend informed us that in recent Parade Lane attack, killers picked up little kids from ground and then shot them. This was told by a young kid who servived this ordeal.

Which ideology, what so ever would allow this? Do you believe that such a merciless killer would go in his so called heaven? Just see few more picturesof his ‘Jannat’. Who is doing so and with which agenda? Who is benifitting from this? You guess your self.

No Muslim will ever do that, we are 100 % sure. We believe some body else is getting his revenge in the garb of this situation. See minutely and do notice something written on the wall of the house. If you don’t know the background, ask somebody else or if you want, explain it here for others.

For international audiance, the writing on one of the house means,’Rest house for Pakhtoon Kha (Pakhtoon lovers)”.

(courtesy The News)
The mystery surrounding the 12 controversial cartons full of critical evidence against Asif Ali Zardari and the late Benazir Bhutto, deepened on Tuesday as the boxes landed in London but disappeared, raising fears that the evidence may be destroyed quickly if not taken over by a responsible government agency.

Pakistan HC sources told The News in London that the boxes, which were removed in a clandestine operation from a Swiss lawyer’s office on Monday, had reached the posh Hampstead residence of Wajid Shamsul Hasan in the London area, although he officially denies any link with the operation.

These sources told The News that the 12 cartons were transported on Flight LX 338 from Zurich (ZRH) to London (LHR) on Tuesday. The sources confirmed that the Pakistan HC staff received the cartons after the flight arrived at Heathrow at 7:15 pm but they never arrived at the HC offices.

When Pak HC Wajid Shamsul Hasan was asked whether it was true that these 12 boxes of evidence had reached his home, he replied: “My official response is only this: that this record is in the Government of Pakistan’s custody in London.”

Earlier in another telephonic conversation when HC Wajid was asked why he visited the lawyer’s office in Geneva to receive the confidential evidence, he claimed that he was designated by the NAB for this purpose.

Janus-like and potentially creating more uncertainty in an already difficult region is how we would describe US President Obama’s speech on his new strategy for Afghanistan.The face turned towards the militants and the Afghan government tried to send a stern message: a military surge to ‘seize the initiative’ and ‘reverse the Taliban’s momentum’ is supposed to ‘accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces’ and create space for ‘a more effective civilian strategy’.
The face turned towards the US public and Congress tried to soothe anxiety over what is now the longest war in American history: the US will ‘begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011’ and ‘the days of providing a blank cheque [to the Afghan government] are over’.
While we understand the reasons President Obama must try and look in two directions at the same time, a fundamental question remains unanswered: can Afghanistan be ‘saved’ after eight years of a war that by all accounts is going very badly, when the US is thinking both of hunkering down and exiting?
As strategies go, the one laid out by Mr Obama is not especially ambitious, at least in theory: ‘the three core elements of our strategy [are]: a military effort to create the conditions for a transition; a civilian surge that reinforces positive action; and an effective partnership with Pakistan’.
But experience suggests that the war zone in Afghanistan does not lend itself to a ‘civilian surge’ in quick order.
The British discovered this in Helmand several years ago. And Mr Obama should himself know this because he promised a similar civilian surge in his March speech on his ‘first’ AfPak strategy, but it did not materialise.
So even if there are military successes thanks to the additional troops that are to be injected into Afghanistan, it is not clear whether success on the civilian side is possible within the time frame that Mr Obama has set.
Nothing in Tuesday’s speech explained how the US intends to resolve that conundrum and at the moment the second prong of the new strategy seems little more than a triumph of hope over experience.
On the Pakistan front, though, Mr Obama sent a more encouraging signal. Appreciating the Pakistani public’s opposition to militancy and the security forces’ operations in Swat and South Waziristan, the US president pledged: ‘America will remain a strong supporter of Pakistan’s security and prosperity long after the guns have fallen silent’.
A welcome change from the ‘do more’ line, Mr Obama’s words on Pakistan suggested an understanding of common interests rather than a focus on the differences.

Paul D Scott

Just what are the US and its coalition allies doing in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq? Is it state-building or nation-building? Is it development or reconstruction? Or, is it a little of this and little of that? The two terms are often used almost interchangeably, but they reflect vastly different approaches, disciplines, tactics, goals and strategies.

State-building, nation-building, development and reconstruction are not only operational and tactical code words but also battles over bureaucratic turf. Turf is connected to budget and budget to timeframe. When we get to “reconstruction,” the terminology becomes more opaque. The World Bank defines reconstruction as institution-building. But what are you actually reconstructing? The answer to some is obvious: the physical structure destroyed by war. At the institutional level, and this is where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama have to get their terminology correct before they can explain and convince.

Germany and Japan are usually the starting point for any discussion over nation-building. However, both were: 1) totally defeated with all their war-making capacity ended, 2) totally occupied, 3) were advanced industrialised economies, 4) were never colonised, 5) had ethics of both individual and group achievement and high literacy rates and, lastly, 6) had prewar experience in democratic governance, a complex media, and competing political parties. By using these as the starting point on nation-building, American policy-makers condone and encourage the exercise of war and occupation.

Germany was a divided occupation. Japan was run almost totally by the Americans. In Japan, the bureaucracy was purged but functioned during the occupation and the Emperor remained on the throne as a symbol of national unity and also actively working with the overall goals of the Americans. President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as others, boldly stated that the occupation of Iraq would be modelled after Germany and Japan. If a pretext for invasion and war was nation-building built on Japan and Germany, then the naïveté becomes even more inexcusable.

If we eliminate Germany and Japan as successful case-studies of nation building then where do Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan and all of post-colonial Africa fit in? If nation-building refers to regime change, invasion, occupation and then a formula of quickly held elections and the “shock therapy” of market liberalisation, then many of the results of nation-building would be illiberal democracies with high degrees of corruption and dysfunctional institutions.

If NATO, Australia, the US and Canada, not to mention a recent pledge by Japan for $5 billion in aid in Afghanistan, actually think they are engaging in nation-building, then they are unwittingly committed to building a failed state that they themselves helped to create and nurture. But there may be other reasons to play the nation-building card. If one result of nation-building is the placing of the nascent state within the orbit of the most powerful western economies and polities, then the exercise will be carried out despite the human and economic costs.

If one looks at South America today, one can see the recent rise of democratic governments that took place despite the interference of outside states in their nation-building. During the Cold War what America wanted in South America were anti-communist regimes, not democracies.

In the post-Cold War period, the failure of outside actors to be successful in nation-building has been generally placed on divided ethnicities and tribalism. These are convenient rationalisations for failures. The failures, however, have deeper causes. Ethnic divisions and tribal loyalties can be fanned by a number of sources, both indigenous and, more importantly, exogenous. We must note that US aid allocations (all grant assistance) for Iraq appropriated from 2003 to 2006 totalled $28.9 billion. About $17.6 billion (62 per cent) went for economic and political reconstruction assistance. The remaining $10.9 billion (38 per cent) was targeted at bolstering Iraqi security.

A higher proportion of Iraqi aid has been provided for economic reconstruction of critical infrastructure than was the case for Germany and Japan. Total US assistance to Iraq thus far is roughly equivalent to total assistance (adjusted for inflation) provided to Germany — and almost double that provided to Japan — from 1946 to 1952.

For Germany, in constant 2005 dollars, the United States provided a total of $29.3 billion in assistance from 1946 to1952 with 60 per cent in economic grants and nearly 30 per cent in economic loans, and the remainder in military aid. Beginning in 1949, the Marshall Plan provided $1.4 billion with the specific objective of promoting economic recovery.

Adjusting for inflation, the constant 2005 dollar total for the Marshall Plan aid was $9.3 billion, of which 84 per cent was grants and 16 per cent was loans. During the period of the German and Japanese occupations, the US accounted for half of the world’s gross domestic product. Today the number hovers around 22 per cent. This stark fact makes the exercise of nation-building automatically more multilateral. This also means that wider participation is needed.

The failure is not on so-called tribalism and ethnic divisions but on the complicit corruption of installed governments and contractors. International organisations as well as some international NGOs also benefit from poor governance and worst practices. Calling it tribalism misses the point, but this is the intention.

It is reassuring to see that there is an active debate among rich donor countries. Anyone in the field knows that despite the new models coming from the British and the OECD, there is still no consensus on how to proceed. Catchword phrases like “disarm, demobilise and reintegrate armies” are meaningless if the policies cannot be put in practice, or if the conflict is still raging. Everyone understands the values of human security, but how does one provide employment in a ravaged economy? Everyone realises that donors and international aid do not go to the areas and groups most in need. How does one redirect coordinate and refocus aide?

Building government capacity (state-building), especially in post-conflict states, will require years, if not decades, of assistance and financing. How can multilateral development assistance be coordinated, financed and maintained? Policy-makers must also develop a more nuanced approach that guarantees that all stakeholders, and not just the elite, have sufficient space, voice, and respect in the setting and implementation of agendas.

President Obama, a former community organiser, must know that solutions and agendas cannot be imposed. Nation-building begs the fundamental questions of: who does it and how is it done? Any increase in outside military operations will result in a predictable Newtonian response. If nation-building, at the positive level, means ensuring, protecting, sustaining and nurturing communities of memory, values, and experience, then it is obvious that a commitment must be made towards reconciliation. Once communities are safe, they will form a composite of nations in which the state can get respect as well as power.

Everyone knows that “words are deeds.” So, again, just what are the US and its coalition allies doing not only in Pakistan but also in Afghanistan and Iraq? Is it state-building or nation-building? Is it development or reconstruction? Most importantly, just what do the peoples of Pakistan and Afghanistan think the US and its coalition allies are doing? One hundred years ago, one may have asked similar questions of the British Raj.

A recently declassified 2002 State Department intelligence report, obviously made possible by the shifting US strategy in Afghanistan, bares it all – including the US tacit approval of the inhumane conduct of the Northern Alliance. Abdul Rashid Dostum, a long-time Indian- and CIA-sponsored warlord, has been held responsible for the massacre and the timings suggest that, through the acknowledgment of his crimes, the US is trying to soften the impact of his close association with the Karzai government in the forthcoming elections. Many Pakistani and Afghan Taliban were flown to India for investigations and are reportedly lying in one of the many mass graves that dot the IHK landscape, particularly in Baramula district.

The Indian clout that led to the transfer of Taliban prisoner to India is linked to India’s crucial support to the Northern Alliance in 1996-97. India was instrumental in cobbling together disparate non-Pakhtun groups, including the Uzbek Jumbish-e-Milli of Rashid Dostum, the Tajik Jamiat-e-Islami of Burhanuddin Rabbani and the Hazara Hizb-e-Wahdat of Karim Khalili, under the overall leadership of the late Ahmad Shah Masood, the charismatic Tajik commander.

Just as Dostum was consigning thousands of Taliban to death by suffocation and later dumping their bodies into the mass graves of Dasht-e-Leili, a team of RAW officials was busy selecting Pakistani and Afghan nationals for flying to India’s own undisclosed Guantanamo to be used as clay pigeons for fake encounters and promoting the thesis of “cross-border-terrorism.” The Indian team, led by a major general, was given free access to prisoners held in the Dashtak jail in Panjshir. The selected prisoners were shifted to 6 Frontier Corps Headquarters at Kunduz under facilitation by Marshal Faheem and Yunus Qanooni. In another incident a batch of 300 prisoners of Pakistani and other assorted nationalities was airlifted by Indian intelligence agencies from the Northern Alliance jails in Shiberghan and Bagram in November 2001. Having disappeared without a trace, these hapless people in all probability landed in the mass graves.

The mass graves in Kashmir are not a matter of conjecture but a painful reality which has failed to elicit a reaction from India – or an outcry from global community. In a shocking report, “Facts Under Ground: a Fact Finding Mission on Nameless Graves and Mass Graves in Uri Area,” the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) has indicated the location of mass graves in Uri, in Baramula district, where at least 1,000 unknown persons have been interred by the Indian Army and security agencies. The braves are believed also to hold the remains of those who were clandestinely flown in from Afghanistan.

President Obama’s ordering of a probe into the mass graves of Dasht-e-Leili goes a long way in repairing the much eroded moral authority of the US in Afghanistan. The Indian leadership doesn’t tire of laying claim to the UN Security Council seat needs to follow suit. Unlawful killings and torture are violations of both international human rights law and international humanitarian law, set out in treaties to which India is a party and it must come clean on the Issue in a credible and transparent manner.