Pakistan’s War On Civilians

By Paul Rogers

29 May, 2009
OpenDemocracy.net

The car-bombing in Lahore of a police station and the local headquarters of Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) agency on 27 May 2009 is more than the seventh major attack on the city since January 2008 – and the third since March 2009, when the Sri Lankan cricket team and a police academy were targeted. The bomb, which killed twenty-seven people and and injured over a hundred, is a further indication of the systemic, interrelated and deep- rooted nature of Pakistan’s internal-security troubles.

Lahore, after all, is Pakistan’s cultural centre, a sophisticated city that lies close to India and is a long way from the intense fighting currently being waged in the Swat valley in North West Frontier Province (NWFP). If it can be repeatedly attacked with apparent impunity, it tells its own story about how the different parts of the country are becoming implicated in an all-consuming conflict (see Ayesha Siddiqa, “Pakistan: a country on fire”, 24 September 2008).

The military machine

The exact link between the Lahore bombing – and the twin attacks that followed in Peshawar on 28 May that killed eleven people and injutred dozens more – and what is happening in Swat is not yet clear, but Islamist militants in western Pakistan had threatened attacks across the country in response to the army’s operations in the NWFP. What is clear, though, is that those operations are massive and sustained and are having huge human consequences, whatever the belief in Islamabad that they are necessary to counter the increasing power of the Taliban and other militias.

A United Nations source has estimated the flow of internal refugees since mid-May 2009 as 2.4 million people; by 29 May, the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) calculated that the figure exceeded 3 million. There are few examples of such vast and sudden movements in recent history; the scale of what is happening recalls the traumatic events prior to the founding of Bangladesh in 1970-71, when many millions of people fled from the Pakistani army across the border into India.

Much of the destruction in Swat is because the Pakistani army is simply not constructed for counterinsurgency or counter-guerrilla warfare – and the conflict in Swat is a combination of this with an out-and-out civil war. Pakistan has a standing army of 550,000, equipped with nearly 2,500 main battle-tanks and over 4,000 artillery pieces, five times the size of the British army. That may be large by any standards; but the “threat” from India has long dominated the Pakistani military posture, and India commands well over a million troops, 4,000 tanks and more than 10,000 artillery pieces.

What is essentially a powerful land army geared to armoured battles and artillery bombardments on the plains of south Asia, is now engaged in a war against its own people in a bitter internal conflict that is being conducted under a blanket of tight media control. Because of this, every impression is being given of a successful campaign against weak opponents – the Taliban – who are being put to flight. Where foreign journalists can report at all, they do so under tight army control and the rare visits they are able to make are to towns that are firmly under the army’s control (see Shaun Gregory, “Pakistan and the ‘AfPak’ strategy”, 28 May 2009).

The civilian impact

Even so, two issues are emerging. One is that the assault will be prolonged and very violent. The army is readily using its huge firepower advantage, but the militias that it is trying to defeat are proving highly resilient. Even army sources now speak of “steady progress amid stiff resistance” and acknowledge that the war has some time to run (see Robert Birsel, “Bombs seen stiffening Pakistan resolve on militants, Reuters, 29 May 2009).

In the city of Mingora, for example, there has been intensive street-fighting, yet the government security forces have gained control of just one quarter of the urban area. More generally, the militias are now avoiding conflict in exposed places and are dispersing to towns and villages across the valley. The army in response is using helicopter gunships, strike-aircraft and artillery, whose main effect is widespread destruction including the wholesale flattening of villages.

The second issue follows: the serious humanitarian consequences (both short- and long-term) of the conflict. The United Nations estimates that $450 million is needed for immediate aid to respond to exceptional displacement of peoples. An indication of Washington’s concerns over the situation is the decision on 22 May to make an immediate commitment of $110 million in humanitarian aid. But this will barely touch the larger problem that many thousands of civilians are caught up in the fighting and prevented by a a Pakistani army curfew from escaping the conflict-zone.

Also on 22 May, the United Nations and several partner agencies launched an appeal for $543 million in aid; but by 28 May, the “humanitarian action plan” had reached only 21% of this total.

A leading Islamabad newspaper cites a report from Human Rights Watch’s Asia director, Brad Adams: “Reports of civilians killed in the crossfire continued to flood in…as people break the curfew in desperate bids to find food and water for their families, or try and escape the aerial and ground bombardments” (see “Trapped civilians face catastrophe in Swat”, Dawn, 26 May 2009).

The surge of over 2 million refugees who have fled from the area has overwhelmed the Pakistani government and agencies:

“The true dimensions of the refugee problem are apparent in Mardan, one of the primary destinations for civilians fleeing the battles in Swat and in neighbouring Buner and Dir. The city is studded with refugee camps consisting of endless rows of tan canvas tents that bake under the 110-degree skies. Schools are packed to capacity with families sleeping on concrete classroom floors, with each classroom housing 40 or more people” (see Griff Witte, “Pakistani Refugee Crisis Poses Peril”, Washington Post, 25 May 2009).

A small proportion only of these refugees – 20%, according to Save the Children – is housed in government camps. Most are living outside them; half of the displaced are children.

The signal of war

The inability to cope with a crisis caused by its own military action means that Pakistan’s government is ceding influence to others (radical groups in particular) that are quick to fill the vacuum:

“The army has warned that some Taliban fighters joined the fleeing residents and may have infiltrated the refugee camps… Outside the camps, radical Islamist agendas are rushing in to fill the void left by the paucity of government services. The Falah-e-Insaniyat foundation, the successor to a group known as Jamaat-ud-Dawa, has established a major presence near Swat, feeding tens of thousands of displaced people and providing them with quality medical care” (see “Foundation provides food to 275,000 IDPs”, The News, 17 May 2009)

In the longer term there are indications that the physical damage done to settlements will take years to repair. Qamar Zaman Kaira, Pakistan’s information minister, said that the authorities had started “initial satellite surveys for the rehabilitation of homes, businesses and cultivable lands”. The very fact that the destruction demands satellite surveys gives some indication of the impact of the war after barely two weeks.

The war in northwest Pakistan may still be in its early stages, but it is already operating with an intensity that is not fully appreciated beyond the region. Pakistani army sources are presenting the operation as an extensive and determined effort to isolate a relatively small group of extremist militias. But three factors – the failure to cope with refugees, the ability of the militias to disperse, and the rapid provision of aid by radical movements – suggests that the long-term effects of the army’s campaign could be to intensify Pakistan’s divisions. The Lahore bombing and Peshawar attacks may be early signals of that.

This article is published by Paul Rogers, and openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation to Open Democracy. Commercial media must contact theo.edwards@opendemocracy.net for permission and fees.

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001

IDPs threaten strike if supply of cooked food stopped

[Here is the gross human tragedy being created in Pakistan, in order to accomodate the American demands to wage war.  The play-acting charade that has displaced millions, claimed thousands of lives and totally ruined large sections of the Northwest could have been handled much differently.  The government could have found some accomodation with these armies of radical militants created to serve as proxy forces, short of the road it is now on.  Seeing the deteriorating situation in NWFP, knowing that the same circumstances are planned for FATA, it is getting harder to rationalize the Pakistani government decisions.  The Pakistani people will pay any price to continue the money flow into private bank accounts, in order to maintain the umbilical cord to Washington.  The people are being taken to hell to play America's strategic games.  Now that they are in hell, why not pocket the money meant to feed them, as well?]

IDPs threaten strike if supply of cooked food stopped

By Akhtar Amin

MARDAN: The internally displaced persons (IDPs) lodging at Sheikh Shahzad and Sheikh Yaseen camps in Mardan on Saturday threatened to come on the roads if the government stopped the supply of cooked food to them.

During a visit to the camps, IDPs from Swat, Buner and Dir districts of Malakand Division told Daily Times that the camps in charges Friday evening announced that the government had decided not to supply cooked food to the IDPs.

The IDPs asked where had gone millions of dollars donated by the international community to Pakistan to provide food and shelter to them. They complained that about 90 percent of the IDPs were living outside camps having no access to the government’s relief package. They said the government’s decision to stop supply of cooked food to just 10 per cent of the IDPs living at the two camps in Mardan carried no logic. Najeebullah, who fled from the military operation against the Taliban in Mingora and took refuge at Sheikh Shahzad Camp, told Daily Times that the camp administration’s announcement had created panic among the IDPs.

He disclosed that almost all the IDPs living in the camps sold their monthly ration [two bags of wheat, 5 kg coking oil and 5 kg pulses] to meet their other basic needs, as they had no cash to meet their other requirements. He said the IDPs sold their ration because women could not cook food due to scorching heat at the camps.

Sultan Mohammad Deewana, 60, who is lodging with his family at camp number 5 of Sheik Shahzad Camp, said that the IDPs would be left with no option but to come on the roads if the government stopped the supply of cooked food (two time meal and one time tea) to the camps.

He said the camp administration made the announcement Friday evening but on Saturday they extended the deadline to another five days. The federal government was also criticized for not providing the announced Rs 25,000 relief package to the registered IDPs for fulfillment of their basic needs.

It was observed that about 90 percent tents had no gas stoves to cook food. Women were facing great hardship in using latrines, as these had been constructed side by side for both men and women.

Zulekha, 45, complained that the latrines were not cleaned and they carried no symbols to guide the users. She also complained that safe cold drinking water was not available to them.

‘US wants to make aid conditional to continuing war’

LAHORE: The US wants to attach conditions with its aid to Pakistan to exert pressure on Pakistan regarding its nuclear programme and ensure that it continues the war against terror in a better way, former Arms Control and Disarmament Agency director Brig (r) Naeem Salik has said. Speaking on the programme ‘Najam Sethi Special’ on Dunya News channel on Saturday, Salik said US President Barack Obama was on the record saying that the US did not want to given a ‘blank cheque’ to Pakistan.

Taliban may target ulema, mashaikh

[This is not Islam.  Religious "holy warriors" would not target their own people.  Whatever they are teaching these "reglious students" in the madrassas is the opposite of "holy."  Radical Islam, just like radical Christianity, is anti-religion.]

Taliban may target ulema, mashaikh

LAHORE: The Taliban may target ulema and mashaikh in major cities of Pakistan, a private TV channel quoted its sources as saying on Saturday. The Taliban are present in all the major cities, including Lahore and Islamabad, and could target the clerics any time, the channel said. Authorities have directed foolproof security for all cleric conventions in light of possible terror attacks, it added. daily times monitor

Is radical Islam normal Islam?

—by Khaled Ahmed

Radical Islam and International Security: Challenges and Responses;
edited by Hillel Frisch & Efraim Inbar;
Routledge 2008;
Pp227; Price £70;
Available at bookstores in Pakistan

Tibi shares Fukuyama’s view that Europe has become a battlefront of Islamism. To avoid misunderstandings, it is important to note that at issue is a small but highly active minority among the Islamic diaspora, not the entire diaspora itself

Bassam Tibi, professor of international relations at the University of Goettingen, and a visiting faculty member at Cornell University as the AD White Professor-at-large, has contributed significantly to this volume. As someone educated in Germany, he attributes extremism and radicalism among Muslims there “to the discrimination and denial of young Muslims to joining the German community”. He is from the ashrafia of Damascus and would have gone astray had not some Jewish teachers given him support. The label of ‘guest-worker’ turns people to radical thoughts. (p.29)

Tibi questions the term extremism (Arabic tatarruf) as applied to political Islam. Questioning the use of “extremism” is important in order to know that political Islam is not a fringe phenomenon of delinquency, but rather an ideology of political movements that represent the major oppositions in most countries of the world of Islam, particularly in the Middle East (e.g., the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt). Some of these movements of political Islam (e.g., Hizballah in Lebanon; SCIRI and the Mahdi Army in Iraq) already participate in power and governance. (p.11) Extremism is thus increasingly the characteristic of mainstream Islam.

After the ‘religionisation’ of a political conflict, issues become non-negotiable since the discourse of negotiation becomes absolutist. The formula Filastin Islamiyya versus Israel indicates an Islamisation of the conflict with non-negotiable claims. (p.12) Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, later embraced by Hamas, Hasan Al Banna wrote Risalat al-Jihad in the early 20th century, which is used today as a basic reading for the indoctrination of the jihadist ideology. (p.13) This is the paper used by madrassas all over the world and in Western Europe in their policy of recruitment. They first teach jihadism, then create an appeal for action under it. This is the two-track strategy to deal with Islam and Islamism. (p.13) Without jihadism, radicalism will not march.

Scholars in Europe who refuse to include Islamism in security studies are fearful of the accusation of Islamophobia. This sentiment adds to the confusion between Islam and Islamism. (p.21) Important components of Islamist jihadism exist throughout Europe, Germany being a prominent case in point. The new German tolerance vis-à-vis Islamism is among the wrong lessons contemporary German scholars have drawn from their shameful past. (p.24)

Tibi shares Fukuyama’s view that Europe has become a battlefront of Islamism. To avoid misunderstandings, it is important to note that at issue is a small but highly active minority among the Islamic diaspora, not the entire diaspora itself. In the case of Germany there are approximately 100,000 Islamists among the diaspora community of 3.7 million. This figure varies from one country to another. The Islamists comprise 10 percent of the diaspora in the Netherlands. (p.26)

Rushda Siddiqi, an Associate Fellow with the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in New Delhi, has contributed her article, The Islamic Dimension of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, and thinks that Pakistan, created to safeguard the identity of a religion, is the realisation of a fundamentalist imagination. She thinks, “Pakistan has been one of the first states in contemporary history to employ non-state proxies to safeguard its interests in the region and in the international arena”. Initially, Pakistan benefited from its non-state actors and the mechanisms they employed. The government used its foreign office to support terrorist activities in Kashmir. “In the long run, however, the use of non-state actors backfired, increasing the state’s vulnerability to a backlash not only by the states affected by Pakistan’s terrorist proxies, but also by the non-state actors within Pakistan”. (p.153)

According to her, there are two institutions that play the main role, the madrassa and the ISI. A coordinated effort between the two has been responsible for the use of terrorism as a tool of foreign policy. The ISI has also created organisations that play a role in the domestic politics of target countries. The Taliban in Afghanistan and the Lashkar-e Tayba in India are two examples. The aim of having a controlled homegrown movement in Afghanistan ensured that Pakistan would not face hostility on the western border. And a friendly polity in Afghanistan would be an effective counter to the Shia government in Iran. Afghanistan could also provide Pakistan with strategic depth in its conflict with India. (p.158)

Arye L Hillman in his An economic perspective on radical Islam quotes the well known Muslim economist Timur Kuran who sees economic impediment in Islamic jurisprudence. He also looks askance at the practice of waqf or charity trust which came into being to avoid being bothered by the ruler and to avoid normal taxation in the name of charity. He points out that the Islamic legal system did not necessarily apply to Jews and Christians living under Islam, and, and in consequence, Jews and Christians came to dominate economic activity in Islamic societies. (p.55)

Barbara Crossette explains female genital mutilation and denial of sexual satisfaction of women as reflecting lack of trust of women by men. Lack of trust is also pressed into prohibitions on women being in the company of men, “which reduces income”. When social mobility and incomes are low, gender relations provide compensating benefits or “rents for males through polygamy”.

Hillman pursues Timur Kuran’s thesis about the Muslims, likening his work to that of Max Weber who first linked economics to religion, dividing Christianity into Catholicism with a weak work ethic and Protestantism of the ‘north’ with a strong work ethic. If Islamic economics doesn’t help, what explains its existence and popularity? Why would anyone believe that Islamic economics is capable of raising productivity, stimulating growth, or reducing inequality? These questions mask an essential, if paradoxical, fact: “the main purpose of Islamic economics is not to improve economic performance. Its purpose is to help prevent Muslims from assimilating into the emerging global culture whose core elements have a Western pedigree.” (p.59)

According to Kuran, the ‘supreme values’ of radical Islam deprioritise economic achievement and impose self-deprivation on their own population. “Theories of economic development presuppose that intended beneficiaries experience economic improvement. These theories lose applicability when ‘supreme values’ require economic self-deprivation and when ongoing life has no value.” (p.62) *

Predator Drones Could Face Legal Challenges From Human Rights Advocates

Human rights activists are turning their attention to the drone program in part because they say there’s no warning to innocent civilians who are in a targeted area.

By Megan Dumpe Kenworthy

FOXNews.com

Human rights activists at odds with President Obama over his recent national security decisions are indicating that they might legally challenge the U.S. military’s use of Predator drones, a weapon that intelligence officials say is their single most effective tool in combating Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Predator spy planes are unmanned aerial vehicles that are virtually invisible when flying overhead. The Air Force uses them frequently in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they are able to track and hit targets from the air when mountainous terrain makes it notoriously hard to send troops.

“That’s the spooky thing about the Predator,” national

security and terrorism expert Neil Livingstone said. “Even if the Predator is directly overhead and you know it’s overheard, you still can’t see it or hear it. This is kind of like death out of the blue.”

Human rights activists are turning their attention to the drone program in part because they say there’s no warning to innocent civilians who are in a targeted area.

Gabor Rona, international legal director of Human Rights First, a U.S.-based group that advocates universal rights and freedom, said large number of civilians are being unintentionally hit, harmed and killed.

“This is not only a violation of the international laws of war,” he said. “It’s bad policy.”

Opponents of the drones say that the policy could be illegal. The laws of war allow individuals who are engaged in hostilities to be targeted in an armed conflict but strictly prohibit actions against those not engaged.

“Even when you’re attacking a legitimate military objective, you cannot cause civilian casualties that exceed the value of a legitimate military attack,” Rona says.

It’s undeniable that more civilians have been killed than actual Al Qaeda terrorists in the 16 Predator strikes this year. But there’s little chance that could change.

“So many of these guys surround themselves with collateral casualties,” Livingstone said, and large numbers of women and children are strategically placed around hotbeds of activity. Livingstone makes the point that even if high-value targets are killed in one of these drone attacks, Al Qaeda still can claim a “propaganda victory” because of the number of civilian casualties.

Two high-value Al Qaeda operatives were killed on New Year’s Day this year in northern Pakistan. Usama al Kini and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan were wanted for their involvement in the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. More than 200 people were killed in the embassy bombings, including 12 Americans. The men sought refuge in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

“Our military fighting in Afghanistan has got to be able to pursue high level (operatives) who flee across the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan,” said Matt Bennett, a national security expert for a Washington-based think tank.

On the presidential campaign trail, Obama had said that if there was legitimate intelligence about high-level Al Qaeda personnel he would not hesitate to act. And although there’s no formal agreement between the U.S. and Pakistan when it comes to Predator drone attacks, Pakistan more or less looks the other way.

Even so, human rights advocates continue to grow more disillusioned by the president’s decisions on the Guantanamo military commissions and his refusal to release photos of alleged detainee abuse by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other national security issues. The Predator program, which is a holdover from the Bush administration, could be the next legal battle.

“This is part of a broader campaign on the left to begin the drumbeat of withdrawal from Afghanistan and Pakistan generally to change the direction there and make it about only providing aid and not about military engagement,” Bennett said.

Taliban getting funds from abroad: PM

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Saturday the Taliban perpetrating heinous terrorism in Pakistan were being funded from abroad and the drug mafia was also involved in the funding. Gilani said he feared that an increase in the United States presence in Afghanistan might cause the Taliban to enter Pakistan again. The prime minister vowed to take “full care” of the internally displaced persons (IDPs), saying they would be offered financial assistance to rebuild their houses and the world community would be approached for the purpose.

Forty Taliban killed in South Waziristan: Official

‘Militants came in force and attacked a paramilitary camp and fighting lasted for eight hours. At least 40 militants were killed while four soldiers died,’ said an intelligence official in the region. — AP/File Photo

VIDEO FEATURE

Displaced & Distraught

WANA: Security forces killed at least 40 Taliban militants when they repelled an attack on a paramilitary camp in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border overnight, intelligence officials said on Sunday.

‘Militants came in force and attacked a paramilitary camp and fighting lasted for eight hours. At least 40 militants were killed while four soldiers died,’ said an intelligence official in the region.

Another security agency official put the militant toll even higher. There was no independent confirmation of the casualty estimates. — Reuters

Who killed Benazir?

By Humayun Gauhar | Published: May 31, 2009

Trying to identify assassins of the great is a zero sum game. Theories sprout up instantaneously, depending on where the theorists are coming from politically. The real assassins are hardly ever definitely identified. Surprising, then, that an experienced journalist like Seymour Hersh slipped into the maze called ‘Who killed Benazir Bhutto?’
I should refresh your memories. Pakistani newspapers of May 18, 2009 carried a story by Online, a private Pakistani news agency, that Hersh had claimed in an interview to an Arab TV channel that a “US special squad killed Benazir Bhutto”? The channel was not identified. Try as I might I have not been able to find the purported interview on any English language Arab television channel. The salient points in the story are?
Seymour Hersh told an Arab television channel that the Joint Special Operation Command was formed and headed by Dick Cheney.
Within the JSOC is a “death squad”.
The squad killed Benazir Bhutto.
At the time General Stanley McChrystal, the new US army commander in Afghanistan, headed it.
It also killed Rafik Hariri and the Lebanese army chief for refusing to allow the US to set up military bases in Lebanon.
Ariel Sharon, the then prime minister of Israel, was also a key man in the plot.
Many websites suspect that Benazir was killed because she said in a November 2, 2007 interview to Sir David Frost on Al-Jazeera TV that Osama Bin Laden had been murdered by Omar Saeed Sheikh because it took away the justification for the presence of the US army in Afghanistan.
The BBC website that carries transcripts of Al-Jazeera interviews edited out her words about Osama’s death.
Newspapers of May 20 carried a vehement denial by Seymour Hersh. The Nation also carried a rather acerbic letter to the editor written, it seems, in some umbrage by the US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson. Hersh described as “complete madness” reports that the squad headed by General McChrystal “had also killed Hariri and the Lebanese army chief.” “Vice president Cheney does not have a death squad. I have no idea who killed Hariri or Bhutto. I have never said that I did have such information. I most certainly did not say anything remotely to that effect during an interview with an Arab media outlet.” McChrystal, he said, had run a special forces unit that engaged in “High Value Target activity…while I have been critical of some of that unit’s activities in the pages of the New Yorker and in interviews, I have never suggested that he was involved in political assassinations or death squads on behalf of Cheney, as the published stories state.” He regretted that he hadn’t been first contacted by any of the publications before they printed the story (point taken). “This is another example of blogs going bonkers with misleading and fabricated stories and professional journalists repeating such rumours without doing their jobs…and that is to verify such rumours.”

Then there’s Her Excellency, who made the following points:
“We…are offended and outraged that your newspaper would republish this especially repugnant brand of spurious and unsubstantiated rumor.”
“Regrettably, these baseless, sensational and third-hand allegations have been repackaged and republished without any responsible attempt at either verification or solicitation of comment from an official source of the United States government.”
“This, without any byline story, was distributed by a Pakistani wire service, which in turn allegedly quoted an unidentified Arab broadcast organization, which in turn allegedly quoted a single source (a journalist), who in turn relied on comments that were allegedly erased from an interview that took place almost two years ago.”
“Regrettably, these baseless, sensational and third-hand allegations have been repackaged and republished without any responsible attempt at either verification or solicitation of comment from an official source of United States government…most troubling of all is the complete failure to provide an opportunity for the accused party, the United States government, to refute these claims.”
“…We take exception to allegations that the US government had anything whatsoever to do with the tragic assassination of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, late Benazir Bhutto.”
Lectures on the ethics of journalism we’ve all heard before. How one wishes, though, that Her Excellency would deliver the same lecture on the ethics of journalism to US media. They need it more than we do – “The Taliban are about to take over Islamabad”, “Pakistan’s nuclear weapons about to fall into terrorist hands” and other such garbage. The important point in her letter, one that cannot be challenged without proof, is that the US government had anything to do with Benazir’s assassination.
Benazir certainly alleged that Omar Saeed Sheikh had killed Osama Bin Laden because on January 4, 2008 the BBC’s Steve Herrmann acknowledged that, “Under time pressure, the item producer responsible for publishing the video on the BBC website edited out the comment, with the intention of avoiding confusion. The claim appeared so unexpected that it seemed she had simply misspoken. However, editing out her comment was clearly a mistake, for which we apologise…” On January 9 the BBC added: “As promised above, we’ve now updated the original clip with the full version of the interview.”
People have heard the interview many times. Benazir said the words deliberately and cautiously, after stopping and taking a breath before uttering Osama’s name. Spurious excuses such as these insult people’s intelligence and beget conspiracy theories for which people are then mocked by the perpetrators of spurious excuses.
What adds spice to the story is that former President Pervez Musharraf says in his best selling autobiography that Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British national educated in the London School of Economics, was first recruited by Britain’s intelligence agency MI6 and sent to Bosnia and Kosovo to fight the Jihad there. It could be that he later ‘turned’, says the general. But it could also be, say I that he is still working for MI6 pretending that he has ‘turned’ as a smokescreen or camouflage. Isn’t that what is called a ‘double agent’?
What makes me not believe the theory that Benazir was killed by the US – a point that Hersh missed – is: If she was killed because she revealed that Osama Bin Laden was dead, killed by Omar Saeed Sheikh, in her interview with Sir David Frost was telecast on Al Jazeera on November 2, 2007, why was the first assassination attempt against her was made two weeks earlier, on October 18? Or was that somebody else? If it was, then how do we know that it was not that somebody else that killed her on December 27, 2007 and not the US? In any case, her assassination was more a case of misadventure. Her assassins were certainly there, but got no opportunity until she suddenly stuck her head out of the sunroof of her vehicle, which she was not supposed to. That is when they went for her with everything blazing. While everyone has been asking why the place was hosed down, no one has asked why Khalid Shahinshah, supposed to be looking after her security, along with two photographers behind him, were making such peculiar gestures standing besides Benazir on the stage, as if signaling something to someone? What possessed her to break with security protocol and stick her neck out of the window? Have the numbers on the SIMs of all the phones of those in her vehicle been examined, including her own phone?
Hersh’s denial is interesting, for it reveals more than it denies. He certainly makes it clear that he never said or wrote anywhere that a US special death squad killed Benazir Bhutto and I haven’t found anything where he even remotely says so. However, he doesn’t deny the existence of what he called “an executive assassination wing” in a speech at the University of Minnesota on March 10 this year… “General McChrystal ran a special forces unit that engaged in High Value Target activity.” If people – important politicians and not just terrorists or those that the US thinks are terrorists – are not “High Value Targets”, I’ll eat my hat Mr. Hersh.
Perhaps I’ll continue with this next week because there’s so much to tell, unless something happens – which is well within the realm of possibility – that demands more attention.
E-mail: humayun.gauhar@gmail.com

Iran summons Pak envoy over mosque blast

[The United States Army calls it "counter-insurgency," the rest of the world calls it just plain terrorism, but whatever it is it operates out of southern Afghanistan and secret bases in Pakistan, this time calling its foot soldiers "Jundullah."]

Iran summons Pak envoy over mosque blast

Published: May 31, 2009

TEHRAN (AFP/Reuters) – Iran summoned Pakistan ambassador over the deadly bombing of a mosque in the southeast after rebels reportedly claimed responsibility, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday.
Mohammad Bakhsh Abbasi was summoned after Iran’s state television quoted the pan-Arab channel Al-Arabiya as saying that the Jandullah (Soldiers of God) group said it was behind Thursday’s mosque attack which killed 30 people.
According to state television, the chief of the Iranian armed forces, General Hassan Firouzabadi, said on Saturday that Iran ‘has located the base of the group’s head and informed Pakistan’s government of his arrest’.
The Iranian authorities said they immediately arrested three men involved in the bombing. The trio were executed on Saturday morning near the mosque in Zahedan city, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province.
In recent years, the restive province has been the scene of a deadly insurgency by Jundallah, which is strongly opposed to the government of predominantly Shia Iran.
The province has a substantial Sunni minority and lies on a major narcotics-smuggling route from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Meanwhile, an Iranian official accused the United States of involvement in a mosque bombing that killed 30 people. Washington denied the allegation.
Jalal Sayyah, of the governor’s office in Sistan-Baluchestan province, said three people had been arrested in connection with the blast on Thursday in a crowded mosque in the city of Zahedan, in a region where many of Iran’s minority Sunnis live.
“The terrorists, who were equipped by America in one of our neighbouring countries, carried out this criminal act in their efforts to create religious conflict and fear and to influence the presidential election,” Sayyah told state radio.

Abbas Repackaging Zionist Bush Scheme for Strangling Gaza

Tighten blockade, finish Hamas, charge US troops with policing Palestinian population until they can be transferred to Jordan, this is merely a continuation of murderous plans of “cast lead.”

Abbas is typical of all Bush/Cheney lackies; they are all traitors to their own people.

Hamas: Abbas gave Obama ‘detailed plan’ on how to overthrow us in Gaza

[After dissing Obama on the issue of illegal Israeli colonies within the West Bank, Pres. Obama might be disinclined to cooperate on Netanyahu's plans to finish the destruction begun by his disgraced predecessor.  SEE: Israel: We Won't Bow to U.S. Settlement Requests]

Israel: We Won’t Bow to U.S. Settlement Requests

An official close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will not agree to U.S. demands to freeze settlement activity in the West Bank.

FOXNews.com

Israel will not agree to U.S. demands to freeze all settlement activity in the West Bank, the AFP reported an official close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying.

“I want to say in a crystal clear manner that the current Israeli government will not accept in any fashion that legal settlement activity in Judea and Samaria be frozen,” Transport Minister Yisrael Katz said, using the Israeli term for the West Bank. “The government will defend the vital interests of the state of Israel.”

It was the first high-level reaction to President Obama’s call Thursday during a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that Israel stop settlement activity, a key hurdle in Mideast peace talks.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said last Sunday Israel will continue to build homes in existing West Bank settlements, but would not allow any new settlements to be created.

“We will not build new settlements,” he said, according to remarks released by his office. “But it is not fair not to provide a solution to natural growth.”

Obama met Thursday with Abbas and challenged Israelis and Palestinians to be fair brokers in the quest for peace, calling on Israel to stop settlement construction in the West Bank.

“We can’t continue with the drift, with the increased fear and resentment on both sides, the sense of hopelessness around the situation that we’ve seen for many years now,” Obama said, referring to the idea of Palestinians and Israelis living peacefully as neighbors. “We need to get this thing back on track.”

“I am confident that we can move this process forward,” Obama said after meeting with Abbas at the White House. The president said that means both sides must “meet the obligations that they’ve already committed to” — an element of the peace effort that has proved elusive for years.

Abbas told The Associated Press after the session with Obama that no meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are on the horizon. He said there are no preconditions for such a meeting but “obligations” on Israel through the so-called road map for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Abbas said he is meeting his commitments under the road map and that Israel should do the same. He cited continued settlement construction as a commitment Israel is not meeting.

Pakistan seeks ‘hardcore’ Taliban

more about " Pakistan seeks ‘hardcore’ Taliban", posted with vodpod

Committee to mediate between Taliban, govt

TANK: A 15-member peace committee of the Mehsud tribe will step up mediation to defuse tension between the Baitullah Mehsud-led Taliban and the South Waziristan political administration, a tribal mediator said on Friday. “We have decided to play a role in defusing the tension,” Senator Saleh Shah told reporters. “We are contacting the Taliban in this regard,” he added. The committee members had suspended peace efforts following clashes between the Taliban and the security forces. staff report

Bombs seen stiffening Pakistan’s resolve on Taliban

[Finally, the shoe is on the other foot and the militants are experiencing the other side of the terrorism equation.  With each bombing the resistance to the violence grows, creating unity of cause with the state, just as American bombs formerly drove the people to support the Taliban resistance.  If the US was a true ally, then it would now let-up on the Predator attacks which were driving the people's motivation, allowing the Pakistani people to unite in common purpose behind their government.]

Bombs seen stiffening Pakistan’s resolve on Taliban

* Analysts says Taliban trying to undermine state’s determination to fight them, and broad public support the army’s campaign enjoys

ISLAMABAD: A series of bomb attacks in Pakistan aims to undermine the country’s resolve to fight the Taliban but is likely only to strengthen determination to defeat the militants, analysts say.

Pakistan has undertaken its most concerted effort to roll back an expanding Taliban insurgency that has raised fears for the important US ally’s stability, and for the safety of its nuclear weapons.

The army late last month went into action against Taliban who had seized a district only 100 km from the capital after the United States criticised a peace pact as tantamount to abdicating to the Taliban.

This month, the military launched a full-scale offensive to root out the Taliban from their stronghold in nearby Swat.

But the Taliban have responded with eight bomb attacks in towns and cities since late April, three on Thursday in the northwest, a day after 24 people were killed in a suicide gun and bomb attack in the eastern city of Lahore.

Undermine: The Taliban are trying to undermine the state’s determination to fight them, and the broad public support the army’s campaign enjoys, analysts said on Friday.

“This is exactly what the militants are trying to do because they have done it successfully in the past. But things have changed substantially,” security analyst Ikram Sehgal said.

“I don’t think it will undermine the resolve of either the public or the government. They realise that this sort of thing will only escalate if they vacillate any further,” he said. Pakistan signed up to the US-led campaign against militancy after the 9/11 attacks but at best ambivalently.

Pakistan had used these fighters to oppose Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan in the 1980s and later backed the Afghan Taliban. Militants were also used to oppose India in the Indian-held Kashmir.

Pursuit of strategic interests apparently at odds with US aims and mixed messages from the state and media brought muddle.

The Taliban overplayed their hand when, under cover of a controversial peace pact, they denounced the constitution and pushed out of the former tourist valley of Swat towards the capital.

“The Taliban attempt to make their presence felt in an area that a large number of Pakistanis are familiar with, and the way they went about it, the brutality, exposed them and changed opinion,” said Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group think-tank.

“They are no longer considered alienated, disaffected Pakistanis who need to be brought into the fold. They’re looked upon much more as criminals who should be brought to justice.”

The violence the Taliban have unleashed demonstrated the extent of the threat they posed and is steeling opposition, Ahmed said.

“It strengthens the government’s position that the terrorists pose a major threat … It’s no longer a remote conflict being fought in FATA,” she said.

The state now had to show it can finish the offensive in Swat quickly and wind up the militant networks. “Their main aim is to weaken public opinion, especially in Punjab,” said retired Brigadier Asad Munir, a former intelligence agency officer, referring to Pakistan’s most prosperous and politically important province, of which Lahore is capital.

“You won’t see this now but if the operation is prolonged then things will start changing. They have got to do it in a week or 10 days,” he said of the Swat operation.

Wavering at this stage would dash the hopes of the public and be disastrous, he said.

‘Taliban state’: “If they stop the operation now then prepare yourself for a Taliban state,” he said.

Threat of disease looms amdist unhygienic conditions

A cook makes food for displaced people at the Chota Lahore refugee camp, at Swabi, in northwest Pakistan, Friday, May 29, 2009. The U.N. humanitarian chief issued a desperate appeal for hundreds of millions of dollars to help 2.4 million Pakistanis who have fled the war against Taliban militants, warning that the U.N. can only sustain its current aid efforts for one month. -AP

GENEVA: The UN refugee agency is pitching tents and building toilets for the families hosting an estimated 2 million Pakistanis uprooted by an offensive against the Taliban.

About 200,000 are sheltering in displacement camps and the rest have sought refuge in other villages and regions.

Doctors are treating people for disease, infection and mental disorders, and fear the monsoon season may bring more illness.

‘Many local families have seen their households double or triple overnight,’ UN agency spokesman Ron Redmond said on Friday. ‘The longer that situation goes on, the more difficult it becomes for … the people who are hosting them to maintain the same generosity.’

About 5,000 ‘family tents’ to shelter up to 50,000 people were distributed this week in the Mardan and Swabi districts of the North West Frontier Province, he said.

‘You are going to start seeing these tents being erected in the gardens of houses throughout those districts where families are hosting displaced people,’ Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva, where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is based.

It is also providing hygiene kits and latrines to households, he said, as well as repairing village water pumps and improving sanitation facilities in mosques, which have also been helping to house and care for the uprooted.

Crowded host villages could also face the threat of disease as a result of low vaccination coverage and unhygienic conditions, the World Health Organisation told the briefing.

WHO spokesman Paul Garwood said that uprooted people without proper shelter also could face added risks during the monsoon season from water-borne diseases such as dysentery.

About 30,000 of those displaced by Pakistan’s conflict are estimated to have severe mental disorders as a result of the stress they have undergone, and this number could double as the fighting stretches on, Garwood said.

Doctors in the region have been treating people for acute respiratory-tract infections, diarrhoea, diabetes, high blood
pressure and asthma, and have reported some outbreaks of measles among the displaced though these appear to have been brought under control, according to the WHO.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is working with the Pakistani Red Crescent Society, also raised concerns about people who have been unable to leave areas of Swat where fighting is continuing.

In the main Swat town of Mingora, ICRC spokesman Florian Westphal said ‘there is no running water, there is no electricity, the district hospital has closed down’.

‘We are continuing our attempts to access that area, including Mingora, as quickly as possible, security permitting.’

Civilians suffer in war against Taliban

‘Both sides were firing mortar shells — an inaccurate weapon that often hits targets other than the intended one.’ — AP

MARDAN: Moabullah dragged the dead in his wheelbarrow for burial behind a girl’s school. There were about 30 bodies, he says, many blown apart in fighting between the Pakistan army and Taliban militants in the Swat Valley.

As Pakistan fights to take back the valley and other parts of the northwest, residents fleeing the fighting are pouring into hospitals and refugee camps. Many, like Moabullah, are telling their stories to anyone who will listen.

Taken together, their accounts — along with those of aid workers and hospital staff — suggest significant civilian casualties, mostly as a result of aerial raids by an army more equipped for conventional war with India than guerrilla warfare with the Taliban.

The Associated Press conducted more than 150 interviews in refugee camps from Mardan to Swabi, at hospitals and basic health units as well as into the battle zone in Buner to seek a picture of the plight of civilians amid the combat.

No independent tallies of the dead have been conducted. Aid groups like the international Red Cross and US-based Human Rights Watch say such a task is impossible until they are able to enter most parts of the roughly 4,000-square-mile area of fighting — about four times the size of Hawaii.

But the very perception among villagers of the causes of widespread killings, injuries and damage to homes could undermine popular support needed for the US-backed Pakistan army campaign and possibly generate sympathy for the insurgency.

‘Civilian casualties are much higher than those of either the army or the Taliban,’ said Ali Bakt, speaking at a hospital in the northwestern capital of Peshawar after fleeing the Taliban mountain stronghold of Peochar.

He said both sides were firing mortar shells — an inaccurate weapon that often hits targets other than the intended one.

Yusuf, a 21-year-old man who fled the fighting in Buner, said he supported the military operation but was fed up with the civilian casualties.

‘It’s good to take action against the Taliban, but there is a problem for civilians,’ said Yusuf, who like many in the Pakistani frontier region offers only one name. He recalled the killings of 10 people whose bodies could not be recovered for three days because of the fighting.

The army is not releasing tolls of civilian casualties, but insists they are minimal and that it is doing everything possible to avoid causing them.

‘In our judgment there are very few casualties,’ military spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas said, emphasizing the main targets are militant training camps and their mountain hide-outs. ‘But even if we are fighting in a populated area, we are using precision strikes.’

At a government-run hospital in the town of Mardan just south of the Swat Valley, Moabullah gave his account of the carnage.

‘I myself put the bodies in the wheelbarrow and took them to a graveyard behind a girls’ school,’ Moabullah said as he held the hand of his dehydrated nine-year-old son, Abu Bakr, who was lying in a rancid-smelling bed.

Intravenous drips from makeshift poles were nourishing the thin boy and, in the next bed, an elderly gentleman who appeared to be malnourished and barely breathing.

The old man’s nephew, Nawab Ali, said they fled their homes in the Swat Valley’s main city of Mingora on May 22, defying an army-imposed curfew. They had run out of food, and water supplies were low.

‘People were coming on foot. We had just reached near the village of Abwa when the army fired on us. Six people were killed and seven others hurt. I saw this myself,’ Ali said. ‘The army was trying to hit the Taliban but hit civilians trying to flee instead.’

Four women were killed including the mother of a four-month-old baby, whose grandfather carried him to safety, according to Ali.

The AP interviews suggest that many casualties occurred after residents defied the curfew to flee their homes, often out of desperation because of little food, water or medical aid. Most villagers blamed the casualties on government aerial assaults and missile attacks. They said they were either caught in the crossfire or targeted for defying the curfew.

But villagers also recounted, particularly in Mingora, Taliban refusing to allow people to leave because the militants wanted to use the civilians as human shields, according to Ali Dayan Hasan, Human Rights Watch’s Pakistan representative.

Hasan said he had a report that militants slit the throat of one man after he said he told soldiers there were no Taliban in his village. The Taliban didn’t believe his account of what he’d said to the army.

The army launched its offensive to oust the Taliban nearly a month ago after a peace deal soured and Taliban streamed out of their Swat Valley stronghold to take over neighbouring regions. So far, the fighting has caused 1.5 million people to flee.

The military claims to have killed more than 1,000 Taliban fighters, a figure that cannot be independently verified, and says more than 50 soldiers have also died.

The International Committee for the Red Cross said it fears the fighting has taken a high toll on civilians but that verification is impossible in most parts of the battle zone. In areas it has been able to enter like Dagar in Buner the Red Cross has treated 240 war wounded, said spokesman Sebastian Brack.

In the emergency room at The Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, a dirt-smeared admission ledger indicates the majority of the wounded were from Swat, Dargai, Buner and Dir, where the heaviest fighting has taken place.

In one week the hospital received more than 50 victims including a three-year-old, two 13-year-olds and a 10-year-old from Swat.

Most, like sweets salesman Saddar Ali of the Shah Deri area in Swat, had shrapnel wounds while fleeing in defiance of the curfew. Four relatives carried Ali into the emergency room. He was then laid gently on a stretcher covered with a hot, sticky, brown plastic sheet.

Khan Maluk, 50, said most of the sun-baked mud homes in Fizaqat, not far from Mingora, were destroyed in blistering shelling.

‘One of my relatives died and the security guard was killed,’ he said as he watched over his mentally handicapped son, who had an arm wound. The young man rocked back and forth, crying and moaning as his father spoke.

Lying on a bed, his head propped up by a handful of rags, 20-year-old Saddam Hussein — the name is not that unusual in the Muslim world — said he too was wounded when he defied the curfew.

His family had fled their Kalam home in the Swat Valley during a previous army operation against the militants, then returned within days of a peace accord last month. When the new fighting broke out, Hussein, a day labourer, packed up and left, hoping to find work.

Left behind and trapped in their home were his mother, brothers and sisters.

‘It’s been eight days now since I have heard from my family. The last phone call I received, they said they had nothing to eat and to send them something,’ he said. ‘Since then I have had no contact.’

In another small hospital room, more than eight patients crowded into four beds.

Jahan, a middle-aged woman wrapped in a pale green chador, said jets bombed Pir Aman Qilla, just next door to her village in Takhtabund.

‘I could see 10 houses were destroyed,’ Jahan said. ‘But we couldn’t leave our homes. We couldn’t find the dead.’

A patient at the Mardan hospital, Ziaullah Khan, said he heard aircraft overhead in the Buner town of Pir Baba after fleeing his Mingora home.

‘Then we came under fire,’ Khan said. ‘We were using a back road. Five vehicles were hit. One van had 15 people from one family in it. But our van was still running. We had to leave. We couldn’t stop.’

The stories were similar at a dusty, wind-swept refugee camp on the edge of Mardan.

Hayat Khan, of Odigram village in the Swat Valley, said he lost his niece to the fighting: ‘In front of me, two or three were killed by the army,’ he said.

Fazlur Rahman, who fled from Dir, said ‘350 homes in our village was destroyed. You can decide from that how many are dead, and the others can’t move because of the curfew.’

Another refugee, Sirajuddin, said he fled Gumbatmera village in the Swat Valley on May 20 after military jets pounded the area, destroying a large number of homes.

‘I am a local and I know who is there and who was in the houses. For some 24 days it has been going on. I went to seven funerals in two days and one time we all ran away because of the jets. What I know is that in the destroyed houses there are people who are dead. But we can’t get to them.’

Afzal, a 65-year-old wearing a beard dyed bright red with henna, said he saw soldiers fire shells at two vehicles that were defying the curfew to harvest wheat.

‘Maybe they thought they were Taliban,’ he said. ‘We don’t know about army or Taliban — but we know lots of civilians are dying.’

Waziristan militants start mining region: report

Given the ongoing military operation in Swat, militants in Waziristan have started mining the area. — AP/File

Pakistan

Ten militants killed as troops move ahead in Waziristan

ISLAMABAD: A latest advisory issued by the Interior ministry to the country’s security agencies reveals that the Taliban and other militants operating in Waziristan have started planting landmines in the area, a BBC report said.

Given the ongoing military operation in Swat, militants, after consulting with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan chief Baitullah Mehsud, have begun mining the area, the advisory says.

Mehsud has ordered Asmatullah Muawiya and Qari Zafar to plant landmines across the South Waziristan tribal region, whereas, different militant groups active in North Waziristan have taken the task on.

Meanwhile, a source in the interior ministry said top police officials in all four provinces had been alerted regarding a possible terrorist plot in the Punjab province. They had also been advised to beef up security in their respective areas, the source told BBC.

The government advisory said militants were planning suicide attacks in different areas of the Punjab province in reaction to the ongoing anti-Taliban operation in Swat and other districts. The fundamental targets in these attacks are likely to be the armed forces and law enforcement institutions.

Stolen US arms being used in Swat: ISPR

By Iftikhar A. Khan

Major General Athar Abbas addressing a press conference at PID. -APP File Photo

ISLAMABAD: The military on Friday said US weapons stolen from Afghanistan were being used against security forces in Swat and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

While speaking to Dawn, military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said the terrorists in FATA and Swat were getting material and financial support through the Afghan border and alleged that some hostile foreign agencies were abetting them.

Answering a question about the assertions over the security of strategic assets of Pakistan, he said the United States should stop worrying about the nukes and start thinking about the weapons lost in Afghanistan.

‘We are not surprised if these weapons slip out from Afghanistan and many of them are found in Swat and are being used against our troops’, he remarked.

Giving details on the progress of operation Rahe Rast, he said security forces have recovered a huge quantity of looted and stolen food items and a cache of arms including 12.7 mm guns from four tunnels discovered during search and cordon operations in Peochar.

He said that the food items recovered from tunnels were apparently stolen and looted as these were otherwise not locally available.

He said the packing of the food items also shows that they were part of relief goods meant to reach the people stranded in the areas where the military operation against militants was taking place.

General Athar Abbas said the security forces continued with cordon and search operation and successfully cleared the stronghold of miscreants at Peochar village.

He said that forces have secured Bahrain and the area was under their complete control.

General Athar Abbas also said that 28 miscreants were killed and seven were apprehended in various areas of Swat during exchange of fire, while five soldiers and two civilians were injured.

The military spokesman said cordon and search operations were still continuing in Mingora.

Militants getting Nato arms from across border

[Somebody in Afghanistan is supplying weapons to the Pakistani Taliban.  Care to make any guesses who it is?]

Militants getting Nato arms from across border

Published: May 30, 2009

ARMY spokesman Maj-Gen Athar Abbas has maintained that he sees Swat as a political problem, which can only be partially solved by military intervention and he claimed many of the Taliban’s arms are coming across the border from Afghanistan.
He agreed when asked whether that included Nato weapons, as suggested in recent reports. He said Washington was too focused on the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
The United States should “stop worrying about the nukes and start worrying about the weapons lost in Afghanistan,” he said in an interview with the CNN.
He described the conflict in Swat as “an existential threat” – a fight for the very existence of Pakistan in its current form. And he seemed acutely aware that the portrayal of that conflict to the West would be critical.
The office of Maj-Gen Athar Abbas has a bank of six flat-screen televisions covering most of one wall, showing all the main international English-language news channels, and several local ones besides, according to a CNN report.
This is one of the rooms where Pakistan’s media war is being fought, and Maj Abbas, the Pakistan Army’s main spokesman, is a key part of the battle.
CNN correspondent Dan Rivers says, “I kid with him that CNN isn’t among the channels on his screens, and he seems slightly hurt, insisting it is. He’s right and I’m wrong – CNN was on a commercial break. In fact, I rather get the impression Abbas, who has become the face of the Army’s operation against Taliban militants in the Swat Valley, watches our coverage closely. One of his subordinates complains about one of our reports – not the accuracy, but something in the general tone,” he adds. The correspondent says whatever Abbas thinks of CNN, he is more than willing to explain how the Pakistan army sees the broad picture as it fights in the Swat Valley.

The current conflict there is intricately linked to the situation in Afghanistan, in his view.
A US government report last month warned that the Pentagon did not have “complete records” for about one-third of the 242,000 weapons the United States had provided to the Afghan army, or for a further 135,000 weapons other countries sent.
The Afghan army “cannot fully safeguard and account for weapons,” the Government Accountability Office found.
When asked how Taliban are well armed the Taliban, the Army spokesman replied they were “very well equipped from the border area.”
He also conspiratorially suggested they also were getting weapons and support from “foreign intelligence agencies.”
When asked what that meant, he smiled and said he can’t elaborate – declining to repeat the speculation in the press here that India may be somehow involved in stirring up trouble on Pakistan’s northwestern border.
But the very suggestion plays to a military strategist’s nightmare scenario – the Pakistan Army bogged down in the northwest, unable to focus on the disputed province of Kashmir, a key element of its conflict with India, according to the CNN.
The military wants to get done in Swat as soon as possible, but Maj-Gen Abbas acknowledged troops would be there for some time. He estimated that 10 to 15 per cent of the Taliban there were foreign fighters: “Well-trained Arabs, Afghans, with a sprinkling of central Asians and North Africans.”
He also said there were Yemenis, Saudis and Uzbeks fighting, as Pakistan had become the destination du jour of the international jihadist, with Arabs in commanding positions and the other foreign fighters bringing in expertise.
He said he thought that perhaps Mingora, the main town at the gateway to the Swat Valley, might be secured in 48 hours, but it might be much, much longer before the area was totally pacified.
“First you have to disarm the Taliban and then re-establish the writ of government,” he said.
He admitted that Swat and neighbouring Bajaur districts “were lost to the state” and that now “we are paying in blood for areas we had already occupied.” Now, he said, the Army is set for a long fight. “We are prepared for that – we are mentally prepared.”
But, according to the CNN, they are also prepared for the conflict to be taken to other parts of Pakistan. An ISI building was attacked in Lahore this week. The Taliban claimed they carried out the attack and Maj Abbas said the security services expected more attacks.
The broadcast says there is also the risk of the Taliban using the mass exodus of civilians from the Swat Valley as cover to penetrate other towns and cities. Already almost three million people have flooded out of what was once a tranquil tourist destination, and the military fears that among the mass movement of humanity there will be those plotting to strike at the heart of Pakistan’s cities.
“It’s a very big issue — a serious concern,” Abbas said.

And now psywar

Published: May 30, 2009

AS Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan came under terrorist attacks on Thursday killing 13 and injuring 90 unsuspecting victims, a Tehrik Taliban Pakistan leader threatened to attack more cities inside Punjab, calling on the population to leave them, thus signaling the beginning of psychological warfare, or psywar.
The surge in attacks is an expression of desperation. It indicates that the situation could become worse before it starts improving. Hakimullah Mehsud has not only threatened to conduct attacks inside Lahore, Multan, and Rawalpindi, but also the federal capital. His statement, however, is indicative of the militants’ weak spots. While he has claimed the attack in Lahore was motivated by the military operation in Swat, the fact that it came weeks after the operation had started, and only after tanks and heavy artillery started rolling into South Waziristan, shows that despite the claims of solidarity every militant group is for itself in the ultimate analysis. TTP spokesman Muslim Khan’s intercept, pleading for help, reveals the same weakness. If one was to accept Hakimullah Mehsud’s statement that the TTP was “looking for this (Lahore) target for a long time,” what one would conclude is that it is finding it increasingly difficult to penetrate the Punjab heartland. Despite the fact that the police is not trained or equipped to fight the terrorists, it succeeded in barring the terrorists from entering the ISI headquarters. The Army, which so far has lost 90 soldiers, including officers, during the Swat operation, is fully determined to face the challenge as General Kayani’s statement on Thursday indicates.

The initiation of psywar by the militants is meant to spread panic among the population and weaken the government’s resolve to fight. Thankfully, Pakistan is run by an elected government and, unlike the Musharraf administration, is dealing with the situation with the full support of Parliament. What is more, the PPP and the PML(N) are finally on the same page. The military is wholeheartedly carrying out the policy devised by the government. What is needed is that the security agencies, which are increasingly under attack, improve their efficiency and fully concentrate on eliminating the threat faced by the country. Meanwhile, provincial intelligence agencies have to be provided the sophisticated equipment that they have been clamouring for to intercept messages between terrorists. Their demand for electronic gadgets which can help them detect explosives from a distance, to be better able to ward off attacks, should also be met. The need for cooperation between the federal and the provincial governments was never so dire as it is today.

Head money on top terrorists shows failure of spy agencies

By Ansar Abbasi

ISLAMABAD: The announcement of head-money in millions on all the top commanders of the Taliban in Swat presents a perfect case of intelligence agencies’ failure to hunt down the extremist-cum-terrorist networks, as all the top commanders are still wanted and none has been apprehended or killed.

Background interactions reveal despite the great challenge the country’s intelligence agencies are confronted with, average and below average defence and police officers have been posted in leading spy agencies, rendering them incompetent. In view of this situation, faulty reports have been generated, which led to wrong decisions.

By announcing head-money on the key militant figures, the government has admitted that it has no knowledge of their whereabouts. It was a serious lapse on the part of the government and security agencies that they had launched the Swat operation but without ascertaining as to where the likes of Maulana Fazlullah, Muslim Khan, Ibne Amin and Shah Doraan were. So far, the Army claims to have killed more than 1,000 militants but none of the top militant commanders was included in this huge number of killings.

Sources said the top posts, particularly in the military-dominated agencies — the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) and the Military Intelligence (MI) — are generally held by career generals, two-star and three-star. However, against the mid-level and most importantly field posts, those defence officers who do not have a promising career are appointed.

“Without talented and career officers, the field intelligence apparatus of the country cannot meet the challenge they are entrusted,” a source said, adding only career officers with promising future would prove to be effective spies as in case of failures their career prospects would be affected.

Rarely career officers of the level of captain, major and even colonel of the Pakistan Army, Air Force or Navy were posted to the ISI and the MI. Assigning them field positions was simply out of question.

The Military Intelligence is a pure Pakistan Army’s baby; however, the ISI despite being a civilian agency is ruled by Army officers, who hold almost all its key positions: whether in the field or at its headquarters at Aabpara.

Similarly, the Intelligence Bureau, which is a pure civilian agency, is in a bad shape. The IB is an organisation that has the combination of officers from the Police Service of Pakistan (PSP) and the agencies’ own recruits. The top post of director-general of the Intelligence Bureau is included in the cadre of the Police Service of Pakistan but the post is now rarely offered to the PSP officers. Generally, it goes to retired or serving Army officers or political appointees.

Under the rules, the IB contains a reasonable number of posts for police officers from BS-18 to BS-21 but like the ISI and the MI career police officers are not posted to the IB. Generally, only unwanted PSPs are dumped in this agency and many of the PSP posts, particularly in BS-20 and BS-21, remain vacant as even the average PSPs do not want to be posted to the IB. It is rare that some motivated officer joins the IB out of his own desire.

Owing to the faulty intelligence, the military operations become more difficult and chances of collateral damage grow as is the case in Swat. Efficient intelligence networks successfully penetrate into militant and terrorist groups but no such thing is seen to have happened in Swat where the military has to resort to area weapons instead of target weapons owing to which chances of civilian casualty have grown.

Hard-line Kashmir separatist denounces Taliban

SRINAGAR: “Acts of terrorism” by Taliban extremists in Pakistan are un-Islamic, a hard-line Muslim politician campaigning for Kashmir’s independence from India said Saturday.

Referring to Thursday’s spate of bomb attacks in Pakistan’s northwestern cities, in which 15 people were killed, Syed Ali Geelani told reporters that, “such attacks are forbidden in Islam as innocents are killed. “Islam is a religion of peace and such attacks defame the religion,” said the 79-year-old Geelani, who supports a two-decade insurgency against India’s rule over half of Kashmir.

Geelani, who heads a hard-line faction in the region’s main separatist alliance, the Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, called on the Taliban to lay down their arms and hold peace talks with Pakistan’s government. “Taliban leadership needs to give up violence and adopt peaceful means to get their demands addressed,” Geelani said, warning that killings of “innocent people cannot be tolerated.”

Like many separatists seeking an end to India’s rule over part of Kashmir, Geelani is opposed to negotiations with New Delhi until it recognises Kashmir as a disputed territory.

Zion Sets Its Sights On the Rest of the Americas

Israel to attend OAS summit to counter Iran clout

JERUSALEM: Israel’s deputy foreign minister will attend the annual summit of the Organization of American States next week in a bid to counter Iran’s growing influence in Latin America, an official said on Saturday.

Danny Ayalon plans to meet representatives of several Latin American states at the summit in Honduras as arch-foe Iran tightens trade and military ties with a number of countries, mainly Venezuela and Bolivia, the official told.

“Israel sees in the summit a chance to deepen economic and diplomatic ties with Latin America and to match Iran’s and (the Lebanese militia) Hezbollah’s involvement in the region,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.

The decision to send a high-ranking Israeli representative to the OAS summit for the first time in years stems from Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s plan to bolster diplomatic ties in regions such as Latin America and Africa.

PM concerned over Nato forces raise in Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani said that military action was solution to no problem; however, the government had to launch the operation under inevitable circumstances and he took this decision in consultation with consensus.

Talking to media at the PM Secretariat, he said the increase in US presence in Afghanistan may cause the militants to enter Pakistan again, adding the borders will be strictly monitored to counter the menace.

The Prime Minister said the terrorists present in Pakistan are being funded from abroad, and the elements in drug mafia are also supporting them.

Gilani said the affected people of Swat would be given financial assistance to build their houses and the world community would be approached for the purpose.

He said, “Those who are fighting for the defence of country should be supported,” adding he salutes the jawans of Pakistan army who are busy with operation in Swat.

The PM said the army personnel are fighting for the nation to save their future and their sacrifices would not go in vain.

Earlier, speaking at a ceremony here, he said the country is in safe hands.

The media should project the real face of Islam to the world, adding he is against all bans on media and the government will put an end to all the Draconian Laws to give more freedom to the media.

On this occasion, the PM distributed letters to the employees of the government television channel, who have been made permanent.

Swat Relief: Call out for Doctors, Community health workers, Gynecologists & Nurses

Posted by Teeth Maestro

A Severe Health Crisis:

There are 66,000 pregnant women living at the relief camps in Pakistan and many of them are likely to give birth in the next three months, the UN has said. Displaced children need special health and nutrition assistance as well as access to primary and emergency medical care to prevent disease. With the dire conditions, these people are living in there is a serious threat of an epidemic spreading in the camps.

Termed as the worst humanitarian crisis that Pakistan has experienced. UNHCR reports that there are 2.2 million people displaced. Conditions for the conflict areas are a cause of concern since access to water, electricity and health care is extremely limited. Fighting and a general lack of security have disrupted supply chains in Dir, Buner and Swat, making goods – food in particular – scarce and expensive. In addition, frequent curfews make it difficult for people to obtain whatever basic services do happen to be available in their towns and villages. In Mingora, for example, the Swat district’s main hospital is now abandoned and water and electricity have been cut off for over a week.

Large camps are being set up to house civilians fleeing conflict-stricken areas. According to official statistics, however, only a fraction of the 2.2. Million officially registered internally displaced people (IDPs) have moved into them.

We urgently require doctors, community health workers, gynecologists and nurses to go up to the areas. We, a group of citizens working with Concern for Children (organization tied with GSK) have arranged accommodation and are arranging for travel expenses for anyone who would like to go to these areas.

For more information please contact 0333-3464403 or email us at Moneeza.ahmed@gmail.com or info@concernforchildren.org.pk

We are working in conjunction with Sungi and Omar Asghar Khan Development Foundation to provide emergency medical care to those IDP’s that have not been able to reach the government camps. These people are living with host families who are themselves impoverished, or have been placed in make shift shelters in schools.

The organisations on the ground have informed us that the need for female doctors, especially gynecologists is dire and many women in the make shift shelters are likely to give birth in unhygienic surroundings, far from medical care. We will be taking up missions of female doctors, medicines and safe delivery kits to those that need it the most

NADRA charging Rs 50 for ID Card Verification from IDP’s in Swat

Posted by Teeth Maestro

more about “untitled“, posted with vodpod

Translated by Noman Qadir courtesy of the Video posted on PakistanIDP

NADRA is charging Rs.50 for folks who lost/misplaced or had their cards destroyed in the process of fleeing their homes. The provincial government, district government, civil society and individual citizens are doing all they can to feed, house and clothe these IDPs.

The federal government charges them Rs.50 for their Identification Cards. Call your MNA, Senator, Uncle, or Auntie, call anybody and everybody you can, and tell them how outrageous this is. NADRA should stick to making money on contracts from foreign governments (as it does when it mass produces machine readable passports for other countries). This software house financed by the taxpayer should not be charging IDPs for a document that is a human and constitutional right in Pakistan.

It is indeed a sad situation that the government has the audacity to charge anything so as to merely get verified and be able to get relief aid to feed their families – this is criminal

Collection Drive for IDP Relief team to Swat

UN estimates there are 980,000 people being displaced out of NWFP – there is tremendous suffering and a severe lack of funds and Volunteers.

Facebook Event – Collection / Donation appeal for IDP’s in SWAT
I plan to lead a team to the affected areas hopefully to depart from Karachi on the 18th of May 2009 to take the collected donation items personally into the region of Mardan and physically distribute the items only to the needy and suffering.

We are interested in anything that you can contribute. We are hoping to pre-pack the collected items into small handy packages so as to distribute items to each individual person. The small packages will help us avoid hoarders who made even the 2005 Earthquake a business.

Please Please do not donate old/expired stuff. Make sure edible items are hygienic and properly packed.

• Most Important things Pedestal Fans, Tents, Mattress.
• Utensils: Jerri cans (large plastic cans that hold 20 liters of water or other liquids), Crockery, Buckets
• Toiletries: Tissues, Soaps, Dettol (antibacterial cleaners), Towels
• Food: Rice [3 kg pack], Wheat [3kg pack], Sugar [1 kg pack], Tea [1 box each], Variety of Daals [1 kg each], Milk [in tetra packs or powder], Safe drinking water

Medicines:

1. Most important thing is Anti Mosquito sprays
2. Water purification tablets.
3. Life Saving drugs.
4. Vaccines for malaria, cholera, typhoid, influenza.
5. Pain killers including strong ones like morphine derivatives, tremadol, pethadine, kinz .
6. Antibiotics e.g. tetnus, amoxil, gentamycin.
7. IV cannulas
8. IV Drip sets
9. IV drips: normal saline, ringerlactate
10. Local anesthetics (injections)
11. Cotton bandages, cotton.
12. Surgical instruments: e.g needle holders, forceps, tweezers.
13. Suturing materials, Skin staples.

Just think about it that if you live in tent then which kind of things you need there so buy it and donate it.

AND YES THE ENTIRE TRIP WILL BE DIGITALLY BLOGGED | PHOTOBLOGGED & TWITTERED

USA’s Secret War In Pakistan

USA’s Secret War In Pakistan
by Richard Engel, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent

JALALABAD, Afghanistan – October 07, 2008

U.S. military officials don’t talk about our secret war in Pakistan. Don’t even ask, I was told, on U.S. military bases in Afghanistan at Bagram and Jalalabad. on’t ask about the remotely-controlled American drones armed with missiles that are now hunting across the Pakistani border, searching through the mountain peaks, valleys and dusty villages inside Pakistan for the leaders of a few dozen networks of al-Qaida fighters, Taliban militants, warlords, weapons smugglers and opium traffickers.

And certainly don’t ask about the troops on bases here in Afghanistan who don’t wear uniforms, have long beards (so they can better blend in during covert operations), tattoos and don’t mingle with regular soldiers. They eat in their own chow halls, plan their own missions and don’t talk much. They don’t talk at all to the media.  They’re the men who have been called in to cross into Pakistan when the drones can’t get deep enough to find and kill their targets.

They are elite Special Operations Forces, the most-highly trained and covert of the U.S. military. They are America’s ghost warriors. According to Pakistani villagers who claim to have witnessed their operations, the “Special Ops” work in small teams, fast roping out of helicopters, air assaulting their objective before the enemy can re-group. Their strengths are rapid violence, stealth, mobility and surprise. The Special Operations Forces don’t receive much attention or credit in the media, but they’re leading America’s secret war inside Pakistan, at least for now.

The Army Times, a military newspaper, recently reported that the U.S. will temporarily halt ground incursions into Pakistan. The newspaper quoted an unnamed Pentagon official as saying, “We are now working with the Pakistanis to make sure that those types of ground-type insertions do not happen, at least for a period of time to give them an opportunity to do what they claim they are desiring to do.” The newspaper said the halt did not apply to the incursions by drones.

U.S. perspective

While details of American operations in Pakistan are sparse, several commanders have helped me understand the American motivation for the raids. They say the cross-border incursions are necessary because the Pakistani government has failed to contain Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. Pakistan’s tribal region – 10,000 square miles along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan – has become a no-man’s-land where radical militants train, equip, rest, regroup, refit, plan and launch attacks on American troops in Afghanistan and on the Pakistani government in Islamabad.

Pakistan has taken some action. In August, the Pakistani military launched an offensive in Bajaur, a militant stronghold near the border. The Pakistani army is also building alliances with tribal leaders who have turned on the Taliban and al-Qaida. But Pakistan’s actions have yet to produce significant results, according to tribal elders, witnesses, and the U.S. military. The border region remains a lawless insurgent safe haven that the United States has decided it can no longer tolerate. From the U.S. perspective, the military had to act in Pakistan, a U.S. ally, because the Pakistani government and military could not, or would not, crack down on Islamic radicals.

Pakistan’s perspective

Sipping cups of green tea in a villa in Islamabad, I recently spoke for three hours with a Pakistani military official, who also worked for several years in his country’s intelligence service, to get the other side of the story. He argued passionately that both Pakistan and the United States share the same goal – to wipe out the dangerous radicals – but that the U.S. cross-border incursions are counter-productive. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said Pakistan has deployed 120,000 troops along its border with Afghanistan, stationed at 1,000 posts.

He compared Pakistan’s force to just over 30,000 U.S. troops at about 100 posts on the Afghan side of the border. “You see where the insufficiency of forces is?” he asked.  “I don’t understand why [the Americans] don’t just kill the militants on their side of the border. They show us videos as proof of militants crossing into Pakistan. Why don’t they just sort them out there, in Afghanistan, instead of making videos?’” I asked the Pakistani official about the U.S. cross-border raids. Do they help? Don’t they target the same people who plot attacks against Pakistan? Unlike the U.S. military, he had a lot to say.

The official claimed there have been about 50 drone incursions into Pakistan since this summer, along with roughly 10 “physical incursions.” He claimed the raids had killed “several hundred” civilians and were causing panic in the tribal areas. “The villagers hear the buzzing [of the drones] and are terrified. They are scared to have weddings, funerals or any social gatherings, afraid they will be blown up by the drones,” he said. The official also claimed the U.S. strikes undermine the Pakistani military’s ability to operate in the tribal areas. It’s a problem of logistics and terrain, he explained.

The few roads in the mountainous border area run through villages. Since the Pakistani military lacks aircraft, the roads are the army’s main supply line. The official argued that if the villagers, angered by American air strikes, turn on the Pakistani military – who are after all U.S. allies – they could cut off Pakistani troops. “We may have to pull them out completely if [the American incursions] continue. We cannot leave the troops there, if we are cut off from supplies and can’t support them.”

Human toll

While the United States and Pakistan argue over the incursions, conditions in border villages are rapidly deteriorating. The mountain town of Swat was once known as the Switzerland of Pakistan, a resort where Pakistanis vacationed to escape the bustle of Islamabad and Karachi.  Today it is a battle zone. According to a Pakistani military spokesman, in Swat Valley Taliban and al-Qaida fighters have burned down 111 girls schools, destroyed 37 government buildings, blown up 29 bridges, incapacitated the main power plant and cut the gas supply.

Villagers are often completely without power.  Schools that haven’t been burned down don’t operate. Not surprisingly, more than a quarter million refugees have escaped areas like Swat and Bajour.  At least 20,000 refugees have crossed into Afghanistan.  Aid workers say tens of thousands more may be coming.

What can be done?

A senior U.S. military official told me he’d heard Pakistan’s argument – leave us alone, we’ll handle it, stay out – a thousand times, but had yet to see results. But what can the U.S. actually do? It’s difficult to fight a secret war, especially here. The Special Operations Forces must fight in the mountains, far away from their bases in Afghanistan, against a battle-hardened enemy funded by the opium trade.

Since U.S. troops must operate covertly, they also can’t afford to lose a single man, fearing the enemy would drag his body Somalia-style through the streets, exposing their presence. The Americans also can’t leave anything behind, no equipment, no bags of MREs, no tracks, no trace they were there fighting America’s newest, most secret war. Both American and Pakistani officials seem to agree that the only long-term solution to combating the militants in the border region is through better coordination.  For now, however, there’s little trust between the two sides, and suspicions are growing.

Gunmen attack Ahmadinejad election campaign centre

TEHRAN : Gunmen attacked President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election campaign centre in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan on Friday, wounding three people including a child, the official IRNA news agency said.

It said the gunmen, on motorcycles, opened fire at the centre at around 7:00 pm (1430 GMT) a day after a suicide bomber killed 25 people and wounded 125 others in an attack on a Shiite mosque in Zahedan.

Iran’s state-broadcaster said the pan-Arab television channel Al-Arabiya reported that the Jundullah (Soldiers of God) Sunni rebel group said it was behind Thursday’s mosque attack.

Zahedan is the restive capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“Three knife-wielding people on motorbikes stopped outside the centre on Saadi Street, cursed, made threats and tore up billboards,” Mohammad Reza Zahed Sheikhi, who heads Ahmadinejad’s election office in Zahedan, told IRNA.

He said that as campaign workers for the June 12 presidential election went to protest, “the attackers pulled out guns and shot at them.”

He said two campaign workers, Nasser and Khodadad Miri, received arm, stomach and shoulder wounds and were taken to hospital. The child was also shot in the stomach and was undergoing surgery, he told IRNA.

“The men ran away, but the police chased and arrested them,” Sheikhi said.

A senior government official who declined to be named told AFP that incidents targeting any election candidates will be investigated.

The attack on the mosque and Friday’s shooting were reminiscent of a similar outbreak of violence just days before Iran’s last presidential election in 2005 which Ahmadinejad won.

Bombs hit Tehran and the city of Ahvaz in southwestern Iran in June four years ago, killing at least eight people and wounding scores more.

The deputy governor of Sistan-Baluchestan, Jalal Sayah, told the semi-official Fars news agency that the bombers of the Shiite Amir al-Momenin mosque were “hired by America and the agents of the arrogance.”

Officials in the Islamic republic usually use the term “global arrogance” to refer to arch-foe Washington.

Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsooli also pointed the finger at the United States and Israel.

“Enemies try to influence the election by terror, just as they did in Zahedan yesterday,” Mehr news agency quoted him as saying.

“The terror agents are neither Sunni nor Shiite but American and Israeli seeking a Sunni-Shiite divide.”

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a statement read out by state television, urged restraint.

“Those who committed this enormous sin may have done it out of anger and ignorance, but undoubtedly the hands of political planners in some interfering powers and their spy services are covered in the innocent victims’ blood.”

Khamenei said Sunni clerics in the province “should once again express their firm stand in loathing the corrupt ones who commit such crimes in the name of defending Sunni adherents. Shiite clerics should prevent thoughtless and angry reactions.”

Zahedan MP Payman Foroozesh told ILNA news agency the mosque attacker was a suicide bomber.

Provincial justice chief Ebrahim Hamidi told ISNA news agency that one person had been arrested over the bombing and “charged with armed opposition and acting against national security.”

He said most attacks in Sistan-Baluchestan province were carried out by Jundullah.

Iran’s former premier and presidential hopeful Mir Hossein Mousavi also blamed “foreign forces” for the mosque blast.

“The fewer foreign forces in the region, the more security there is. They provoke extremism in the region such as the incident in Zahedan,” said Mousavi, one of four candidates in next month’s presidential election.

Iran has in the past blamed US and British agents based in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan for attacks in border provinces with significant ethnic minorities.

Sistan-Baluchestan province has a large ethnic Sunni Baluch minority.

In recent years, the province has seen a deadly insurgency by Jundullah, which is strongly opposed to the government of predominantly Shiite Iran.

The province also lies on a major narcotics-smuggling route from Afghanistan and Pakistan.