Prince Turki Proposes Saudis Lead Economic Warfare Against Iran

22 06 2011

[It looks like Prince Turki is still keeping the "Safari Club" still alive, still serving in his position as secret financier and organizer for the CIA.  The specialty of the organization is acting for the agency whenever there is no Congressional support for the latest secret plans, as when they rallied international support for supplying the "Contras" after the Boland Amendment had made that support illegal.]

Shackley decided to privatise some of CIA’s covert operations. The money for these activities came what was called the Safari Club. This was established when George Bush was director of the CIA. This was admitted by a speech made by Prince Turki (February 2002). He claimed:

“In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here (in the US), your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything… In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. The principal aim of this club was that we would share information with each other and help each other in countering Soviet influence worldwide, and especially in Africa.”

Saudi Arabia may be forced to use its oil policy and enormous economic clout as a way to foil Iran’s nuclear power program and regional ambitions, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal reportedly told a private group of British and American servicemen at an airbase in England that “Iran is very vulnerable in the oil sector, and it is there that more could be done to squeeze the current government,”

Turki, a former Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and U.K. as well as the former chief of Saudi intelligence, currently holds no official position in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia is greatly concerned by Iran on many levels. Tehran, a Shia Muslim power, is seeking to expand its influence in the Mid-East, putting it face to face against the Saudis, who are ruled by a Sunny Muslim elite.

For example, the Iranians have repeatedly condemned the Sunni rulers of Bahrain who have cracked down brutally on protesters (most of whom are part of that nation’s Shia majority); while the Saudis have steadfastly supported and aided the Bahrain royal family.

According to WSJ, Turki also told that assembly that Tehran’s “meddling and destabilizing efforts in countries with Shiite majorities, such as Iraq and Bahrain, as well as those countries with significant Shiite communities…must come to an end. Saudi Arabia will oppose any and all of Iran’s actions in
other countries because it is Saudi Arabia’s position that Iran has no right to meddle in other nations’ internal affairs.”

The Saudis believe that Iran is supporting the anti-government movements in both Bahrain and Yemen (two of Saudi Arabia’s next door neighbors). The Saudis are also worried about Iranian support of the Hezbollah in Lebanon – Hezbollah is on the verge of taking a majority position in Beirut’s cabinet.

Even within OPEC, the Saudis have urged other members to raise output in order to lower global oil prices, while Iran has strongly resisted this decision.

Turki reportedly said that the Saudis can easily compensate for lower reduction in oil production by Iran, adding that Tehran’s economy and finances would be paralyzed by falling oil exports.

“To put this into perspective, Saudi Arabia has so much [spare] production capacity — nearly 4 million barrels [per] day — that we could almost instantly replace all of Iran’s oil production,” the prince said.

Perhaps of greater concern to Riyadh is Iran’s incipient nuclear program (which Tehran claims is being developed only for peaceful purposes).

Turki said: “It is in our interest that Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon, for their doing so would compel Saudi Arabia, whose foreign relations are now so fully measured and well assessed, to pursue policies that could lead to untold and possibly dramatic consequences.”

The Saudi will also seek to challenge Iranian influence in Iraq (a Shia-majority country).

“There are people and groups in Iraq that are, as much as they deny it, completely beholden to Iran, and that is not only unacceptable, but it is bad for the future of an ethnically and religiously diverse country,” Turki said.





Italian minister breaks ranks over Libya

22 06 2011

Italian minister breaks ranks over Libya

Ian Traynor
Amr Moussa ... reservations  about air strikes.Amr Moussa … reservations about air strikes. Photo: AFP

BRUSSELS: Italy’s Foreign Minister has called for an immediate halt to hostilities in Libya to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid, in what is the first sign of a fracture in the NATO coalition.

Speaking in Italy’s parliament, Franco Frattini called for ”an immediate humanitarian suspension of hostilities”.

”With regard to NATO, it is fair to ask for increasingly detailed information on results as well as precise guidelines on the dramatic errors involving civilians,” he said.

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The call came days after NATO acknowledged the accidental killing of civilians in a Tripoli bombing on Sunday.

Mr Frattini’s speech is an added blow to the coalition that delivered UN approval for military action against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

The outgoing head of the Arab League and a frontrunner to become president of a democratic Egypt has also voiced his strong reservations about NATO’s bombing campaign in Libya, calling for a ceasefire and talks on a political settlement while Colonel Gaddafi remains in power.

Amr Moussa, the veteran Egyptian diplomat who played a central role in securing Arab support for the NATO air campaign against Colonel Gaddafi, said he now had second thoughts about a bombing mission that may not be working. ”When I see children being killed, I must have misgivings. That’s why I warned about the risk of civilian casualties,” Mr Moussa said.

Arab support, in the form of an endorsement from the Arab League, was essential to the Anglo-French-led bombing campaign launched in March after a United Nations Security Council resolution mandating the use of force to protect Libyan civilians.

But senior European officials say the Arab world is again turning against the West because of the Libya campaign.

”The Arab League is telling us that we’re losing the support of the Arab world,” said one senior source involved in the negotiations over Libya.

In an interview, Mr Moussa made clear he thought the military campaign would not produce a breakthrough. ”You can’t have a decisive ending. Now is the time to do whatever we can to reach a political solution,” he said.

”That has to start with a genuine ceasefire under international supervision, a ceasefire that is implemented rigorously. Until the ceasefire Gaddafi would remain in office and the ceasefire would be accepted by both sides. Then there would be a move to a transitional period – to reach an understanding about the future of Libya.”

Asked whether that meant a halt to the NATO air strikes, he said: ”A ceasefire is a ceasefire.”

Senior diplomats in Brussels dealing with the Libyan crisis say there are no signs of Colonel Gaddafi giving up.

They also say the opposition leadership in Benghazi will have no truck with the Libyan leader and is making his removal a precondition for a negotiated settlement of the war.

Repeated offers of a ceasefire from Colonel Gaddafi have been dismissed as meaningless by the NATO leadership and Western governments. ”There are different political channels going on to persuade the Gaddafi regime it has to go,” said the senior European Union official.

UN envoys, the Russian government, and the South Africans had been talking directly to Colonel Gaddafi or his entourage. All reported no progress.

”The Russians have just tried mediating and came back from Tripoli saying Gaddafi is not moving one bit,” said the official.

Guardian News & Media; Telegraph, London; Agence France-Presse





Pakistan Ignores Saudi Demands, Zardari and Gilani Will Attend Iranian Anti-Terrorism Conference

22 06 2011

Pakistan to attend Iran moot despite Saudi disapproval

President Asif Ali Zardari along with Minister for Oil and Natural Resources Dr Asim Hussain, Interior Minister Rehman Malik and Minister for Water and Power Syed Naveed Qamar will represent Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD: Rejecting Saudi Arabia’s request against participating in an Iranian-sponsored International Conference on Global Fight against Terrorism, Pakistan will attend the meeting in Tehran on June 25, an official told The Express Tribune.

President Asif Ali Zardari along with Minister for Oil and Natural Resources Dr Asim Hussain, Interior Minister Rehman Malik and Minister for Water and Power Syed Naveed Qamar will represent Pakistan in the meeting that will continue for two days.

Many Western, Middle Eastern and most Central Asian countries have decided to stay away from the conference. The UN and European Union sanctions against Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions have kept EU countries from attending as well.

Neighbouring Middle Eastern states, led by Saudi Arabia, have decided to ignore the Iranian invitation as a mark of their resentment over Tehran’s alleged support to the  “peoples uprising”  in Bahrain and other Arab countries.

Before the inauguration of the conference, Zardari will hold talks with his Iranian counterpart over the $7.6 billion Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline project that will provide a desperately needed supply of energy to Pakistan from 2014 .Discussions will also cover another proposal of electricity supply to Pakistan from Iran.

The talks between the two leaders over the gas project, strongly opposed by the United States, may culminate in a decisive step for the execution of the already delayed project. Iran has already completed the construction of 1,000 kilometers of the pipeline out of the 1,100 kilometers portion on Iranian soil.

Iran has also proposed that an electricity transmission network be built next to the pipeline, connecting the electricity grid of Iran with that of Pakistan. Additionally, Iran has offered to sell 1,000 megawatts hours of electricity to Pakistan at a subsidised rate.

Saudis conveyed their opposition to the Iranian conference to Islamabad through Pakistan’s charge d’affaires in Riyadh last month. The Pakistani envoy was told that Riyadh also planned to host an international conference against terrorism.

Saudi Arabia, while asking Pakistan not to attend, had maintained that hosting the conference was an attempt by Tehran to come out of world isolation.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Republic of Benin, Bolivia, Sudan and a few other countries have also accepted the invitation by the Iranian president.

The main purpose of the conference is to provide an opportunity for exchanging views on the reasons for the growth in terrorist activities, and challenges and obstacles to the fight against terrorism.

Iranian Defence Minister Brigadier General Ahmed Vahidi said last month that western countries were the source of spreading terrorism worldwide, an IRNA report said.  The minister added that western states were violating the territorial integrity of other countries through occupying and destroying them under the pretext of fighting against terrorism. He made these remarks during his meeting with the president of Mauritania.

Earlier in May, Iran hosted the International Conference on the Global Alliance against terrorism for peace in Tehran. The event, which brought together over 100 foreigners and 300 local experts, focused on efforts aimed at uprooting terrorism. (edited by Zehra Abid)

Published in The Express Tribune





A summit in Tehran trumps the US

22 06 2011

A summit in Tehran trumps the US 

By M K Bhadrakumar

Almost directly in proportion to the nosedive in Washington’s ties with its allies in Kabul and Islamabad, Iran has stepped up its political and diplomatic activity over the Afghan problem and the regional situation. Tehran estimates that the United States’ relations with the Afghan and Pakistani governments have suffered a serious setback and a swift recovery is unlikely.

Thus, a window of opportunity has opened for Tehran to roll back the 10-year ascendancy of the US in the geopolitics of the region. Tehran is determined not to miss the opportunity.

The immediate focus is on somehow torpedoing the US’s plans to establish military bases in Afghanistan and expand into the strategically vital Central Asian region, while also outflanking Iran in the east. The Iranian political and diplomatic thrust comes at a time when US-Afghan differences have surfaced during the negotiations, which lately spilled into the public domain.

But, Tehran also sees this as a high-stakes game with much wider ramifications than a matter of frustrating the US plans on military bases. Tehran’s objective will be to scatter the cordon of the US-Saudi-Israeli alliance in the wake of the upheaval in the Middle East.

Afghanistan, after all, becomes part of the Greater Middle East and Pakistan has been a long-time ally of the US and Saudi Arabia and together the three countries – Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan – become a strategic hub of immense significance to the geopolitics of a vast region stretching from the Levant to the Ferghana Valley.

To be sure, Tehran’s aim will be to forge regional unity with Kabul and Islamabad on the basis of their shared concerns and interests vis-a-vis US regional policies.

Iranian efforts will get a boost this week with the visits by the Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and President Hamid Karzai to Tehran to participate in the international conference on terrorism at the invitation of the Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad. The conference is scheduled for on June 25-26, but Zardari is arriving on a two-day visit on Thursday.

The fact that Zardari and Karzai are attending a conference on terrorism hosted by Iran at this point in time is by itself a significant indicator of the way winds are blowing currently in regional politics. The Saudi Arabian government reportedly made a diplomatic demarche with Pakistan, suggesting it should ignore the Tehran conference and instead attend a similar conclave on terrorism that it proposes to convene shortly in Riyadh.

The US will also be highly displeased with Karzai’s decision to stand shoulder to shoulder with Iran at this juncture on the “war on terror”. It knocks the bottom out of the US’s contention that Iran foments terrorism. Zardari is taking a delegation of ministers that includes Interior Minister Rehman Malik, Minister for Oil and Natural Resources Asim Hussain and Minister for Water and Power Syed Naveed Qamar.

The Iranian media reported that Zardari’s talks will cover the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project, which is strongly opposed by the US, and that a “decisive step for the execution of the already delayed project” can be expected during his visit. Iran has already completed the construction of 1,000 kilometers of the pipeline out of the 1,100 kilometers portion on Iranian soil.

Iran has also proposed that an electricity transmission network be built next to the pipeline, connecting the electricity grid of Iran with that of Pakistan. Additionally, Iran has offered to sell 1,000 megawatts hours of electricity to Pakistan at a subsidized rate.

‘Attempts to bypass’
Tehran is making an all-out attempt to impart a new dynamic to its bilateral ties with Pakistan. Tehran traditionally harbored a sense of frustration over the US-Pakistan alliance. Ahmadinejad said recently that Tehran is in possession of “specific evidence” to the effect that the US is planning to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

Indeed, Iranian intelligence is very active in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, given the US military presence and US support for the terrorist group Jundallah which foments violence in the Sistan-Balochistan region in eastern Iran bordering Pakistan. Tehran has an intelligence sharing mechanism at the bilateral level with Pakistan and most certainly Malik will be discussing ways and means of strengthening the arrangement. Pakistan can help Iran counter Jundallah while Iran can share intelligence regarding the US’ covert activities on Pakistani soil.

Iran seems to share the estimation by Russia and China that Pakistani foreign policy is on a course correction of reducing Islamabad’s political, economic and military dependence on the US.

Equally, Tehran factors in that the US is keeping both Islamabad and Kabul at arm’s length over its dealings with the Taliban and is adopting a method of sharing information with these key partners on a need-to-know basis.

Last Saturday, Karzai utilized a nationwide address to lash out at the US to the extent of exposing that US is already holding direct talks with the Taliban. Significantly, Pakistan swiftly took the cue from Karzai and made a strong demarche in the same regard with the Americans on Monday.

Senior Pakistani officials have reportedly conveyed concerns to visiting US deputy special representative Frank Ruggiero about Washington’s “attempts to bypass” Islamabad and to deliberately keep Pakistan at bay about its efforts to seek a peace deal with the Taliban ahead of the phased withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The statement issued by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry after talks between State Minister Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar and Ruggiero in Islamabad on Monday said: “The minister underscored the importance of clarity and strategic coherence as well as transparency to facilitate the Afghan people and the Afghan government in the process for peace and reconciliation.”

The Pakistani newspaper Tribune quoted a Pakistani diplomat, who is posted in Kabul, as alleging that Islamabad is being kept in the dark by the US over its recent contacts with the Taliban. “We do know that some meetings have taken place between the US officials and the Afghan Taliban in Germany and Qatar. It seems Pakistan is being deliberately kept out by the US to minimize our role in future political dispensation of Afghanistan,” he insisted.

Again, Dawn newspaper quoted an unnamed Pakistani officials as saying, “On one hand they [the Americans] are talking to Mullah Omar’s aide, but on the other the Taliban leader is on the list of the five men that they [the Americans] want to be taken out,” asking acerbically if there could be space in the US’s political dialogue for the Haqqani network as well.

However, it will be a rush to judgment to conclude that Islamabad and Kabul are coordinating their opposition to the US. The Afghan-Pakistan relationship remains highly problematic, the trust deficit is substantial and a radical improvement in the climate of relations proved elusive.

In fact, border skirmishes have increased in frequency. To what extent the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are fueling these tensions as part of the concerted effort to “pressure” Pakistan remains unclear. Clearly, a genuine meeting of minds between Karzai and Islamabad cannot materialize so long as these subterranean tensions keep erupting on the Afghan-border region involving the Pakistani military and the Afghan forces.

Maybe, Tehran can lend a hand to sort out these tensions. To be sure, Iran has a strong interest at this point in bringing Afghanistan and Pakistan closer together in a purposive working relationship.

Iranian Defense minister Ahmed Vahidi, who visited Kabul last week, had a substantive meeting with the former Northern Alliance strong man and current vice president, Mohammed Fahim. Vahidi told Fahim, “The great and brave nation of Afghanistan is capable of establishing its security in the best possible form without the interference of the trans-regional forces [read the US and NATO].”
Vahidi told his Iranian counterpart Abdulrahim Wardak, “Their [the US] presence hinders materialization of the will of the great, hard-working and resolute nation of Afghanistan and will cause discord, tension and insecurity and waste of the country’s capital.”

Wardak and Vahidi signed a document relating to bilateral security cooperation. At the signing ceremony, interestingly, Wardak responded, “Given the threats and challenges facing the region, we believe that joint defense and security cooperation between Iran and Afghanistan is very important for establishing peace and security in the region.” Wardak also said, significantly, that Afghanistan will try to increase its defense and security ties with Iran at this juncture to “fulfill our joint security objectives in the region. We believe that expansion of joint defense and security cooperation with Iran is in favor of our interests.”

Pashtun fault line 
On his return to Tehran on Sunday, Vahidi said US efforts to establish bases in Afghanistan are part of its plan to impose a “hegemonistic system” on the region, “but all of the countries and peoples of the region are opposed to this plot. The presence of the foreign forces in the region, especially US troops, is very harmful and represents a gross violation of the national sovereignty of regional countries and undermines their security.”

Interestingly, he added, “As far as we know, the great Afghan nation does not agree to the establishment of US military bases, and it is natural that the country’s officials, following their people, do not approve of such plans.” In a veiled reference to Pakistan, Vahidi said the countries of the region are also opposed to the presence of foreign troops in a neighboring country because extra-regional countries are actually seeking to impede the Islamic countries’ progress.”

Tehran would factor in the prevailing impression in the region that the US and Britain are working on the so-called “Blackwill plan” – named after Robert Blackwill, a US official who served in the George W Bush administration’s National Security Council – who first argued that the best Afghan solution lies in partitioning that country along the main Pashtun ethnic fault line.

The plan suggested that the US should vacate the southern and southeastern provinces of Afghanistan and let Taliban rule be re-established in those parts, and withdraw its forces instead to the safe haven of the northern region inhabited by the non-Pashtun tribes, which are friendly, from where it could effectively sustain its counterinsurgency operations through special forces and/or use of air power.

The moves by the US and its allies to hold direct talks with the Taliban (without involving Afghanistan or Pakistan), as well as the decision to incrementally remove the sanctions against those select Taliban leaders who are willing to compromise, mesh with the objectives of the Blackwill plan.

The US aims to persuade the Taliban to give up their trenchant opposition to long-term US-NATO military presence in the Hindu Kush.

The Taliban hope to reclaim their lost strongholds in the Pashtun-dominated southern and south-eastern regions of Afghanistan. Bearing this in mind, over the past two year period, the US has been spending huge funds on renovating or reconstructing bases in the non-Pashtun regions of Afghanistan so as to bring them on par with Western standards and living conditions.

The US drawdown commencing in July essentially devolves upon 30,000 troops which were inducted last year for the surge. Both US and NATO officials have recently begun hinting that the departure of the Western troops from the region need not be expected for the foreseeable future.

What is particularly noteworthy in this context is the role being played by Germany in setting up peace parleys between the US and the Taliban. Der Spiegel first reported that more than one meeting has taken place in Germany between a key aide to Mullah Omar and US officials. Last Sunday, in a television interview the US defense secretary Robert Gates confirmed that such meetings have been held.

The German forces occupy the Amu Darya region, which straddles the safe haven that Blackwill outlined for relocating the US troops on a long-term basis. The German forces initiated a robust anti-insurgency campaign in the northern region in the recent months with a view to sanitizing the region, which, in turn, resulted in reprisal attacks by the insurgents. The German operations seem to be geared to the Blackwill plan.

The Germans have worked hard to develop good working relations with the Uzbek government in Tashkent and are extensively using the Termez military base, which used to be the biggest Soviet base in Central Asia, as a supply base for the operations in the northern region. New railway lines are under construction connecting Mazari-i-Sharif with Termez across the Amu Darya, which will connect Afghanistan with the Soviet-era railway grid that goes all the way to Berlin.

The Germans have also tapped into their expanding strategic ties with Russia to systematically develop a transit route through Russian territory, which enable them to bring supplies into Afghanistan via Termez. The Russian route leading to Termez enables the NATO forces to drastically reduce the dependence on the two Pakistani routes. Russia has lately allowed even weapons and ammunition being transported via this route. (These communication links can eventually be a new Silk Route.)

The Blackwill plan holds the dangerous potential to splinter the Afghan nation. Afghanistan has historically held been together by tenuous bonds of nationhood. Regionalism and ethnicity continue to pose challenges to national unity.

If Afghan unity comes under serious threat, the consequences will be extremely serious for Pakistan. It will be a matter of time before the Pashtun residues spill over the Durand Line and destabilize Pakistan. Any accentuation of the ethnic fault lines or strengthening of ethnic identities in neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan, in turn, would have serious negative repercussions for Iran (and Central Asian countries).

Quite obviously, the US is overestimating its capacity to realize its “grand strategy”. The Pakistani army chief Parvez Kiani told a visiting German delegation in Rawalpindi on Monday rather bluntly that Pakistan’s stability will be his first priority.

In sum, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran have an existential interest to thwart the Anglo-American peace plan to directly negotiate with the Taliban behind their back. This is precisely why all three are strongly pitching for a genuinely indigenous “Afghan-led” peace process. Put differently, a realignment of the three-way relationship between Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran will be in the interests of regional stability.

The recent visits of the Pakistani leaders to Moscow and Beijing are being followed up with Zardari’s talks this week in Tehran. Iran has shifted into a proactive mode vis-a-vis the Afghan situation, shedding its low-key, reticent approach. On his part, Karzai is also strategically defying the US by strengthening his ties with Tehran.

How these nascent tendencies play out is worthy of a close look. They are to be seen against the broader regional backdrop which shows up many currents – the “thaw” in Russia-Pakistan relations; Russia’s “return” to Afghanistan; the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) aspirations to play a formative role in Afghanistan in the post-2014 scenario; the India-Pakistan dialogue process; India’s pursuit of an independent Afghan policy with accent on equations with Karzai’s government; China’s growing interest in contributing to an Afghan settlement; and, finally the commencement of a process that could lead to SCO membership for India and Pakistan.

Within hours of Obama’s announcement on Wednesday regarding troop drawdown in Afghanistan, Zardari will be heading for Tehran to confabulate with Ahmadinejad; two days later Karzai also arrives in the Iranian capital. Nothing brings out more vividly the extraordinary tilt in regional politics.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.





Brit Mining Company Sinks Its Hooks In Central Asia

22 06 2011

["Rio Tinto is a combination of two companies: Rio Tinto plc, based in the UK, and Rio Tinto Limited, based in Australia."]

ALMATY – Global miner Rio Tinto Ltd is ready to commit funds for an exploration drive in Central Asia that it hopes could unearth the world’s next giant copper deposit, a company official told Reuters.

The company hopes to start drilling in Uzbekistan this year and is ready to proceed with a joint venture in Kazakhstan to explore multiple copper targets, Rio Tinto’s general manager for exploration in Central Asia Chris Welton said.

“We are looking for an Oyu Tolgoi,” Mr Welton said in an interview, referring to the Mongolian deposit set to become one of the world’s biggest copper mines outside Chile.

Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic five times the size of France, holds three per cent of the world’s recoverable oil reserves as well as large deposits of copper and other industrial metals.

But the geologists who mapped the region in Soviet times were not counting on copper prices that set record highs above $10,000 a tonne this year.

Mr Welton said Central Asia could hold much greater, deeper reserves than those already mapped.

“Ideas have moved on. Technology has moved on. We are looking to apply that here in Kazakhstan,” he said.

With regions such as South America, the United States and the Pacific rim well explored, Welton said relatively unmapped regions such as Central Asia were the next big frontier.

“The big new discoveries that are going to make a big difference for a company like Rio, and also for copper supply, are beginning to come out of frontier terrains,” he said.

“We look at Kazakhstan and say: ‘The geology’s right. It’s got great potential and there’s been very little modern exploration done’.

Rio Tinto is awaiting the approval of state-owned miner Tau-Ken Samruk to begin work on a 50-50 joint venture to explore a region of Kazakhstan, within which it plans to identify target areas for drilling.

The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding last year, but delays to the final agreement have meant Rio Tinto has reallocated its $US3.5 million (A3.29 billion) Kazakh exploration budget for 2010.

“Quite rightly, Kazakhstan is taking its time on this agreement. This will be a precedent agreement, the first one that Tau-Ken signs, so they want to get it right,” Mr Welton said.

“We also want to get it right, but we also want to start spending,” he said.

“If we get a deal signed this year, we will put the licence applications in immediately.”

Rio will fund exploration until resources and reserves are registered with the state, at which point the joint venture partners would fund development of any mine on a pro rata basis.

“If we get a decent-sized, high-quality set of targets, I would’ve thought we would be looking at a minimum spend of somewhere around $10 million next year,” Mr Welton said.

The next big find

Rio Tinto, the world’s fifth-largest copper miner, will do its own exploration from scratch in Central Asia and, in searching for a potentially giant deposit, does not plan to acquire existing deposits or mines, Mr Welton said.

When referring to the potential for an Oyu Tolgoi-type deposit in Kazakhstan, Mr Welton said such reserves were not on the state balance.

“They’re not known,” he said. “These are purely conceptual targets that we are looking to progress.”

He said Rio’s approach was to target specific areas that it believes could hold prospects.

Copper is its focus in Central Asia, as the region’s relative isolation from sea ports would make bulk commodities such as iron ore or coal less competitive.

To improve government relations, Rio Tinto plans to open an office in the Kazakh capital Astana this year.

It has also registered a representative office in Tashkent, capital of neighbouring Uzbekistan, as part of its push into the country.

Mr Welton said Rio was looking to partner with Uzbek state exploration company Goskomgeologiya and had already applied for a copper licence in a region close to the Kyrgyz border.

“We are hoping to have that licence issued by the third quarter this year. We would start drilling almost immediately,” he said, adding that some of the Kazakh exploration budget for this year had been reallocated to Uzbekistan.

“We firmly believe that there are multiple copper prospects that are of high calibre and untested, so we’ll be looking to build a portfolio of two or three projects (in Uzbekistan).”





Egypt clerics challenge Islamic Brotherhood

22 06 2011

Egypt clerics challenge Islamic Brotherhood

MICHAEL JANSEN

THE “ARAB Spring” has prompted the Sunni Muslim world’s most venerable institution of religious learning to issue a declaration of independence from the Egyptian government and to state it supports demands raised by uprisings in the Arab world.

An 11-article document written by clerics and learned laymen was revealed in a televised address by the grand imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University and the Sunni community’s most senior cleric, Ahmad el-Tayeb.

While extending support to the “civil” state incorporating Islamic principles and relying on Islamic jurisprudence, he said: “Islam has never, throughout its history, experienced such a thing as a religious or theocratic state.” Such states had generally been autocratic and inflicted suffering on humanity, he said.

The document and Sheikh Tayeb’s comments amount a to major challenge to the Muslim Brotherhood and other religious parties that seek to turn Egypt into an “Islamic state” and who have reservations about equal rights for Coptic Christians and women. Known as one of the most moderate and progressive Sunni clerics in Egypt, Sheikh Tayeb has long been a critic of the conservative brotherhood.

In the document, the clerics say the 1,000-year-old university supports universal democratic rights and free and fair elections, and recognises a country’s citizens as the sole and legitimate source of legislation. Sheikh Tayeb said, “We need a serious commitment to universal human rights, the rights of women and children.” Minorities should enjoy full citizenship rights, he added. He urged Egypt to strive for social justice, and insisted that decent education and healthcare were rights that all citizens must enjoy.

The document’s authors support freedom of expression in the arts and literature within the ambit of Islamic philosophy and morality. They call for scientific investigation and efforts to eliminate illiteracy and to secure economic development.

Egypt must retrieve its prominent role in Arab, Muslim and African affairs and maintain its sovereignty of decision-making and its support for the Palestinian cause, the document says.

The cleric demanded independence from the state for Al-Azhar University itself, which has throughout its history been used by rulers to promote their agendas among the faithful. He also said that Al-Azhar’s supreme clerical committee – not the Egyptian government – should elect the grand sheikh at the university.

Separately, Egypt’s “Constitution First” campaign is threatening to organise a million-person march on July 8th if the ruling military council fails to agree that a new constitution should be drafted ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections. Campaigners are circulating a petition calling for the establishment of a constitutional commission including representatives of all social and political groups. Three million people have signed the petition, which will be submitted to the generals once it has 15 million signatures.

Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei led a Facebook poll of presidential candidates conducted by Egypt’s military council.

Prime Minister Essam Sharaf has distanced himself from the generals by backing postponement of parliamentary elections scheduled for September.





Aoun says March 14 has no sense of humor, hopefully some members will end up in prison

22 06 2011

Aoun says March 14 has no sense of humor, hopefully some members will end up in prison

Change and Reform bloc leader MP Michel Aoun on Tuesday accused the March 14 alliance of lacking a sense of humor, saying his statement pertaining to former Prime Minister Saad Hariri did not mean that he hopes “God will take away [Hariri’s] life.”

Aoun said during an annual Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) dinner in Kesrouan on Friday evening that the plan of the former PM – who has been out of the country for almost three months – for Lebanon is over and a “one-way ticket” out was booked for him.

“[The March 14 alliance] is fierce but disrespectful,” said the FPM leader following his bloc’s weekly meeting.

“They do not appreciate a sense of humor. Since they rejected the ‘one-way ticket’ out statement, we will issue them a ‘one-way ticket’ in. There is a big section of Roumieh Prison that is being renovated and it fits a lot [of people]. God willing some [members of the March 14 coalition] will be in it.”

Also, Aoun slammed US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, saying the US envoy is a “weird creature,” who – according to Aoun – was used to forming the cabinet in Lebanon.

“This is the first time a cabinet is formed against [Feltman’s] will,” he said, adding that Feltman has to be more respectful.

The MP said that the newly-formed cabinet’s Ministerial Statement, which has yet to be issued, will not target anyone.

“We want justice, and we do not want forgery. We reject decisions that are against international law and UN legitimacy.”

He also called for waiting for the indictment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is investigating the 2005 assassination of former PM Rafik Hariri and will reportedly indict members of the Iranian- Syrian-back Shia group, Hezbollah.

The FPM leader addressed the ongoing events in Syria, reiterating Syrian Bashar al-Assad’s statement that there is a conspiracy in the country.

“No one denied that reforms must be carried out in Syria,” said Aoun, adding, “Assad developed a thorough plan.”

Assad said Monday that dialogue could lead to a new constitution and even the end of his Baath Party’s monopoly on power but refused to reform Syria under “chaos.”

More than 1,300 civilians have been killed and some 10,000 people arrested, according to Syrian rights groups.

Meanwhile, the new Lebanese cabinet – headed by Prime Minister Najib Mikati – was formed last week after almost five months of deliberations between the March 8 parties. The March 14 coalition had announced it will not take part in the upcoming government following the forced collapse of Saad Hariri’s unity cabinet.

-NOW Lebanon





Middle East Leaders Wander in the Desert: World View

22 06 2011

Middle East Leaders Wander in the Desert: World View

By Nicholas Noe & Walid Raad

As the Syrian leadership continued to come in for criticism across much of the Arab media, several commentators turned their attention toward Turkey and the role Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan is said to be assuming in both cajoling and chastising his former “friend” in Damascus, President Bashar Assad.

Erdogan — whom some writers are calling the “Islamic Prime Minister” — stood on the balcony of his party’s headquarters to celebrate his recent win in parliamentary elections, wrote Al-Hayat columnist Elias Harfoush, and announced that “the victory of Ankara is that of Damascus, and the victory of Izmir is that of Beirut, and the victory of Diar Bakr is that of the West Bank and Jerusalem and Gaza.”

For decades, Harfoush continued, Damascus has meddled in the affairs of Palestine, Lebanon,Iraq and even Egypt and some Gulf countries. The Assad family also “used its relationship with Iran in order to serve” its own Syrian project — just as it supported the Western alliance against the Iraqi Baath party of Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Gulf War.

By gaining this external legitimacy, the regime did not think that the internal front was an important one. There was a conviction that internal support, i.e. the one provided by the people to the party and to the `leader of the state and society’ is granted as long as this party is performing the regional tasks required by the nationalistic battle `that rises above every other voice.

Instead, Harfoush concluded in the Saudi owned, London-based daily, the Syrian leadership has been rudely awakened to the disarray, with more than 10,000 refugees reportedly now in southern Turkey and more than 1,000 dead during the three months of unrest.

“The strength of the democratic regime that Turkey currently enjoys is what protects it” in the face of its own troubles in the region, vis-a-vis Israel and the European Union, as well as what allows it to play a larger role in the affairs of the Middle East in general.

For some though, this expanded Turkish push is also having an important effect on a different regional power vying for influence among its neighbors: Iran. Contrasting official Iranian support for Damascus with Erdogan’s recent statements that the Syrian leadership’s crackdown was “inappropriate” and “inhumane,” columnist Rajeh Khoury opined that the Turkish prime minister’s rhetoric “fell like black rain on the ears of those persons in Tehran who are keen on expanding Persian power” in the region. “This takes us back a hundred years in history,” Khoury wrote approvingly in the Beirut-based An-Nahar, a newspaper that has been especially cutting in its criticism of Syria in recent years. “The ‘sultanate’ is coming back” only under a modern and attractive image: “A mixture of open political Islam with no beards and with ties, along with the leftovers of the secular Ataturk heritage that still lingers in the broader Turkish culture.”

And while the mullahs in Iran are finding this Turkish balancing act poses a danger to their own Islamic ambitions in the Middle East, the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood is also nervous, especially in Egypt, “where the group has called for growing a million beards at a time when the challenge consists of finding millions of Egyptian pounds in order to feed the people!”

For Abdul Wahab Badr-Khan writing in the Jerusalem-based Al-Quds, Turkey’s rising currency and relatively sudden break with Damascus also offers a stark reversal of a key trend that many analysts thought was gaining strength over the past few years.

“For a while, a `strategic partnership’ seemed possible between the members of the Turkish-Syrian-Iranian trio but now the calculations are completely different since Iran does not see any future for its interests in the Syrian people and it will fight to win its wager on the regime alone, while Turkey is wagering on an elected, civilian authority and will try to move the regime from the stage of bullets to that of reforms” — or possibly turn on the regime in full if it rejects such reforms.

One columnist long critical of both Iran and Syria went even further, arguing that Tehran may yet find reason to break with Syria of its own accord. Writing in the Saudi owned Asharq al-Awsat daily, Amir Taheri asked: “Is Iran beginning to abandon the Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad? Officially, the Baathist regime in Damascus and the Khomeinist regime in Tehran remain strategic allies.”

However, Turkey’s “new ambitions” in the region “clash with Iran’s hegemonic plans.”

“For Khomeinists in Tehran, Erdogan’s claim” to be the leading Islamic model ”is as provocative as waving a red cloth at a Spanish bull. (The Khomeinist constitution claims that Ali Khamenei is `Leader of all Muslims throughout the world’),” noted Taheri.

But with some Iranian media beginning to mildly criticize Assad’s crackdown, Tehran’s jettisoning of their allies in Damascus “cannot be ruled out.”

“Khomeinists have never hesitated to drop a protege when he looked like a loser.”

If Tehran’s attitude changes, the key, once again, would be Turkey. “Having initially backed the Assad clan, Turkey has now switched to supporting the uprising. By doing so it is banking on the future as the Assad clan increasingly looks like the past. Iran, however, is still wedded to the past in Syria, and could therefore emerge as a loser.”

An additional word of caution was sounded by the London-based, Palestinian owned Al-Quds al-Arabi, a daily which has long supported states like Syria and opposed the U.S. and Israel. Arguing that the Syrian state-controlled media committed a “grave mistake when it quit known traditions and launched a campaign of instigation against Turkey and its elected government,” the paper sharpened its criticism by saying that attacking Turkey and its prime minister “at a time when the country is hosting Syrian refugees is illogical, let along undiplomatic, considering that it creates unjustified enmities. The Syrian authorities must realize there is a difference between friends such as Erdogan — who is calling on them to introduce fast and immediate reforms out of a concern for Syria — and its enemies stalking the country and exploiting the bloody oppression exercised by the army and security forces.”

Sadly though, as the unrest and violence in Syria enters its fifth month, advice from friends, much less from enemies, seems more than likely to fall on deaf ears in Damascus and among their allies — all the more so as violence on both sides increases.

 

noe@mideastwire.com





Drones and terror strikes

22 06 2011

Drones and terror strikes

After the many reports alleging double dealing of the Pakistani establishment whereby it was accused of giving its proxy militant friends a heads up in any impending army operation in North Waziristan by moving them to the relatively safer area of Kurram Agency, the US seems to have gotten wind of the location of some of its most sought after targets. A drone strike in Kurram — only the fourth such attack in the Agency — has caused significant damage to the militants as nine belonging to the Haqqani network were killed. The Haqqani network, a particularly determined Afghan Taliban foe of the US, has been the long untouched ‘friend’ of the Pakistani establishment. Following the Haqqani militants fleeing from North Waziristan to Kurram, the question begs to be asked: is the establishment trying to make amends with the US after the recent tensions in the Pak-US relationship by providing intelligence on these militants or is the US going it alone with help from its eye in the sky (satellites)? It looks like the US is not falling for any dilly-dallying now and is stepping up its range of attacks wherever it suspects militants are holed up, with or without our consent.

Not only has the US been complaining of our lacklustre efforts at combating the militants, Karzai’s government has complained in no uncertain terms about cross-border shelling by the Pakistani military on Afghan villages in Kunar province. This came after a pre-dawn attack some five days ago by some 300 Afghan militants who crossed over into Pakistan and stormed villages Manu Jangal and Takha in Bajaur Agency, killing and injuring civilians. The military has stepped up its retaliation attacks and it seems militants from Afghanistan are also bent upon dealing with not just the security forces in Pakistan but also anti-Taliban lashkars that have been effective in dealing with the militants. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) seems to have found safe havens with their Afghan brethren across the border, hence these brazen attacks on the Pakistani security forces. Things are heating up at the border, more so now after the border areas in Afghanistan have been left unmonitored to a large extent because of the pullout of US troops from these lawless areas. A string of deadly attacks on US forces there have rendered the place open for cross-border raids, shelling and attacks by militant foot soldiers.

At the same time, dozens of terrorists attacked and killed nine pro-government tribal elders in Mohmand Agency on Monday. These elders are like an endangered species — they have been favourite targets for the militants. Meanwhile, in Lower Dir, a nine-year-old girl was reportedly kidnapped by militants and made to wear a suicide jacket that was to detonate at a paramilitary check post. Luckily, the young girl managed to flee her captors who then escaped. Could the militants be running out of recruits to have used this risky and desperate measure or were they merely sending out a warning on how they can go to any merciless extent to achieve their blood-drenched cause?

From the fact that Pakistan and Afghanistan are literally the front line states in this terror war, to the border between the two states heating up and to how a frenzied pitch is being reached by militants and militaries alike, it is clear that all the players are now positioning themselves for maximum leverage in the post-US withdrawal situation. A change is set to come in Afghanistan once the US leaves and, by default, will come in Pakistan too. The terror war is about to reach its conclusion. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan have to be prepared to dealwith the new ground realities, hopefully together. *





Someone’s Militants Are Trying To Trash The Kurram Peace Deal

22 06 2011

[It is no coincidence that American drones and mysterious Pakistani militants always target the same areas and the same people.  Look for attacks upon lashkar fighters in the area next.]

Three security officials, four militants killed in Khyber, Orakzai

policeLocal police and government officials confirmed the attack and death toll. — Photo by Reuters

PESHAWAR: At least three security officials were killed in attacks on checkpoints in the Khyber and Orakzai tribal regions on Wednesday, DawnNews reported.

Four militants were also killed in the ensuing clashes.

In one of the attacks, militants ambushed the Sarband checkpoint before dawn. The checkpoint lies just outside the town of Bara in Khyber district, part of Pakistan’s tribal region on the Afghan border where Taliban and al Qaeda-linked networks have bases.

In the second attack in the Khyber tribal region, a bomb blast occurred at a tribal police checkpoint in the town of Jamrud. The blast killed a policeman and wounded three others, Khyber administrator Shafeerullah Khan said.

“One tribal policeman was martyred and three others were wounded in the bomb blast at the checkpoint,” Khan said.

A third attack took place in the Orakzai tribal region.

A covert US drone war targets Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders in Pakistan’s rugged northwest tribal region and bomb attacks there are common.

Nearly 4,500 people have been killed across Pakistan in attacks blamed on Taliban and other extremist networks based in the tribal belt since 2007.





Putin Joins the Anti-Syrian Chorus

21 06 2011

Putin calls for pressure on Syria (updated)

Putin calls for pressure on Syria (updated)Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gestures as he speaks during a press conference, in Paris, Tuesday June 21, 2011.AP

Associated Press

PARIS (AP) —Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called Tuesday for international pressure on Syria’s leadership over its deadly crackdown on anti-government protests — but said Iraq-style international intervention would only make matters worse.

Russia has been resistant to a new Western-backed draft U.N. resolution condemning Syria’s government.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Monday that his country remains firmly opposed to such a resolution.

However, Putin — who brought Medvedev to power and still dominates Russian politics — said Tuesday that “we need to apply pressure on the leadership of any country where massive unrest, and especially bloodshed, is happening.”

He called for a political solution in Syria, and said Russian officials are working on this at the United Nations, without elaborating.

“Russia understands and acknowledges that in the modern world it is impossible to use political instruments of 40 years ago. This concerns all countries, including Syria. I hope the Syrian leadership understands this, and will make the necessary conclusions,” he told a news conference.

He dismissed talk of a Russian alliance with Syria, saying their close ties dated to the Soviet era and that no “special relationship” remains now with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

He spoke strongly against international intervention. Russia has said NATO went too far in interpreting the U.N. resolution authorizing international involvement in Libya.

“The development of the situation in certain countries of the region shows that their situation is not improving because of our efforts to lead the process,” Putin said.

“Look at what is happening in Iraq. What, has total peace arrived there? There they never had any extremists. Yes there was another regime, abnormal and silly, perhaps, but there were no extremists. And now the whole country is run by warlords. So has it gotten better? Of course not.”





US gives Karzai a rare dressing down over ‘occupation’ rhetoric

21 06 2011

US gives Karzai a rare dressing down over ‘occupation’ rhetoric

By David Usborne, US Editor

President Hamid Karzai and US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry AP

President Hamid Karzai and US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry

Straying beyond the normal boundaries of diplomatic nicety, the American Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, delivered a sharp verbal slap to President Hamid Karzai yesterday for his criticism of Nato’s operations in his country implying that the US was becoming weary of it.

While Mr Eikenberry, who was delivering an address at Herat University, did not mention Mr Karzai by name, there was no doubting whom he was castigating. His remarks came one day after a speech by Mr Karzai in which he said the Nato countries were in his country “for their own purposes”.

“When Americans, who are serving in your country at great cost – in terms of life and treasure – hear themselves compared with occupiers, told that they are only here to advance their own interest, and likened to the brutal enemies of the Afghan people, they are filled with confusion and grow weary of our effort here,” said Mr Eikenberry, who is to leave the post later this summer.

“Mothers and fathers of fallen soldiers, spouses of soldiers who have lost arms and legs, children of those who lost their lives in your country – they ask themselves about the meaning of their loved one’s sacrifice,” he said. “When I hear some of your leaders call us occupiers, I cannot look these mourning parents, spouses and children in the eye and give them a comforting reply.”

That Mr Eikenberry would air such grievances in public and with such evident personal passion will be seen as an indicator that relations between Washington and Mr Karzai are becoming dangerously strained. The new rift comes at a delicate moment with President Barack Obama preparing to decide on the details of a drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan that is supposed to start this summer.

On Saturday, Mr Karzai also went further than ever before in acknowledging that efforts are under way to start talks with the Taliban as a first step towards a political settlement. “The foreign military and especially the United States itself is going ahead with these negotiations,” he said in his speech.

But the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, who retires at the end of this month, used warned at the weekend against building up expectations regarding such contacts. And he advised against any precipitate withdrawal of US troops arguing that keeping the Taliban militarily engaged is the only way to draw them into political talks.

“The Taliban have to feel themselves under military pressure, and begin to believe that they can’t win before they’re willing to have a serious conversation,” he said, adding that it would be months before any “substantive headway” can be made in peace talks.

So close to stepping down from a job in which he has spanned the administrations of Mr Obama and former president George Bush, the Defense Secretary is using his last days in office to articulate some of his broader views on America’s role in the world. In an interview with The New York Times, he suggested his experience in office had led him to be more wary about excercising American military power.

“If we were about to be attacked or had been attacked or something happened that threatened a vital US national interest, I would be the first in line to say, ‘Let’s go.’ I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity,” Mr Gates said. “I am just much more cautious on wars of choice.”

Mr Karzai’s criticisms of Nato are not new but seem in recent weeks to have taken a more ferocious tone. In particular, the Afghan leader has berated the alliance for killing civilians and for conducting nighttime raids which he has opposed. But it was his comment on Saturday about Nato members being self-serving that seems to have triggered the indignation of Mr Eikenberry.

“They’re here for their own purposes, for their own goals, and they’re using our soil for that,”





Pak clerics declare suicide bombings unlawful

21 06 2011
Press Trust Of India
Islamabad
Hundreds of Islamic scholars in Pakistan’s restive North Waziristan tribal region have declared suicide bombings as unlawful and asked all foreign militants hiding in the area to stop such attacks, according to media reports on Tuesday. About 300 religious scholars unanimously agreed on the move to

declare suicide attacks as “haram” or forbidden by Islam and condemned all forms of terrorist activities in North Waziristan Agency.The scholars strongly condemned all those involved in recruiting and training suicide bombers. They issued a stern warning to terrorists that such acts would have serious consequences, Geo News channel reported.

The meeting of the prominent ‘ulema’ of North Waziristan Agency was held in the Madrassah Nizamia religious school at Eidak, a town in Mirali area. The school is a leading and respected institution in North Waziristan.

The meeting warned all foreigners to stop their violent activities as they can only live in North Waziristan peacefully according to local customs.

A teenager who was arrested about two months ago after his suicide vest did not explode during an attack on a crowded Sufi shrine in Punjab province later told police that he had been trained in a camp in North Waziristan.

He also revealed that around 300 youths were being trained at a centre in the region and would be sent out for attacks across Pakistan and Afghanistan.

US authorities insist that al Qaeda and Taliban elements have established numerous centres in North Waziristan for cross-border attacks on foreign and Afghan forces.

Pakistan is under pressure from the US to launch a military operation against militants in North Waziristan, but Islamabad says it has no resources for such an offensive and that its troops are already engaged in other tribal regions.

Pakistani media recently reported that the army has chalked out a strategy to separate violent extremists from tribesmen as the first step to weaken the militants.

A decree from the Islamic scholars of Waziristan may be a step towards achieving the goal of isolating the extremists.

Against the backdrop of the prevailing insecurity in North Waziristan Agency, the pronouncements by the ulema of the region are historic and very significant, Geo News quoted observers as saying.





Top Russian Reactor Designers Among Those Killed In Russia Aircrash

21 06 2011

Kudankulam reactor designers among those killed in Russia aircrash

VLADIMIR RADYUHIN

Russian designers of the Kudankulam nuclear reactors died in an aircrash in northern Russia that killed 44 people. Eight people survived the crash.

The Tu-134 airliner on a flight from Moscow crash landed in thick fog on a highway less than a km short of the runway at its destination, Petrozavodsk, in Russia’s Republic of Karelia, minutes before midnight on Monday. The aircraft veered from the highway towards a nearby forest breaking into several parts and bursting into flames.

The plane was carrying 52 people, nine of whom were crew members. The eight survivors included a nine-year-old boy, his teenage sister and their mother.

Three top officials of Russia’s main nuclear reactor design company, Gidropress, were killed in the aircrash along with two other senior nuclear engineers. Gidropress CEO and Designer General Sergei Ryzhov, Deputy CEO and Chief Designer Gennady Banyuk and Chief Designer Nikolai Trunov were all involved in designing two VVER-1000 (Version V-412) nuclear reactors for the the first stage of the Kudankulam power project in Tamilnadu. Another four reactors of this type are to be built at Kudankulam under second and third stages of the plant’s expansion.

Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said that pilot error was the likely cause of the Tu-134 crash, which reminded him of the catastrophe of Polish President Lech Kaczynski’s plane, Tu-154, near the Russian city of Smolensk in April 2010, in which 96 people died. The Polish aircraft also crashed short of the runway as it tried to land in bad weather. Investigation blamed the crash on pilots who rejected ground control advice to divert to another airport. A traffic controller at the Petrozavodsk airport, Sergei Shmatkov, also said the pilot of the Tu-134 turned down his suggestion to circle again.

The Tu-134′s black boxes have been recovered and were in good shape, officials said.





IMF Seeks to Avoid Repeating Kabul Bank Collapse Before Aid to Afghanistan

21 06 2011
IMF Seeks to Avoid Kabul Bank Repeat Before Afghan Aid

The government took over Kabul Bank, the country’s biggest commercial financial institution, in September. Thousands of depositors rushed to withdraw their money last year after learning that Kabul Bank’s owners had lost hundreds of millions of dollars they had lent to themselves. Photographer: Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images

IMF Head of Middle East and Central Asia Masood Ahmed

Masood Ahmed, head of the International Monetary Fund’s Middle East and Central Asia department. Source: AFP/Getty Images

IMF Seeks to Avoid Repeating Kabul Bank Collapse Before Aid to Afghanistan

By Sandrine Rastello

Afghan authorities need to prevent a repeat of the conditions that led to Kabul Bank’s collapse, before the International Monetary Fund agrees to an economic program, the institution’s regional chief said.

The Washington-based IMF recognizes the country’s progress in dealing with Kabul Bank, in particular the decision to liquidate it,Masood Ahmed, the head of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia department, said in a Bloomberg News interview yesterday. At the same time, IMF support is contingent on the country’s strengthening its financial system, he said.

“We are ready to move forward and support the Afghan authorities, including in the form of a new program, as soon as some remaining actions which we have been discussing with them for a number of weeks are undertaken,” according to Ahmed.

An agreement with the IMF on an economic program may make about$125 million available to Afghanistan and signal the fund’s approval of its policies, a condition for some governments that provide assistance. An estimated 97 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is generated by spending on foreign troops and aid efforts, according to a U.S. Senate report released this month.

Ahmed’s comments came as Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal accused the institution of not wanting to conclude the talks, calling future discussions with the IMF “a waste of my time,” Reuters reported yesterday.

Kabul Bank

The government took over Kabul Bank, the country’s biggest commercial financial institution, in September. Thousands of depositors rushed to withdraw their money last year after learning that Kabul Bank’s owners had lost hundreds of millions of dollars they had lent to themselves.

“The cost of that kind of crisis is large for the budget, it is large in terms of foregone expenditures in other areas, it has reputational consequences for the financial sector and it tends to overshadow the progress that has been made in so many other areas in economic management in Afghanistan,” Ahmed said.

The central bank will seek expressions of interest by next month for the purchase of Kabul Bank, and hopes to sell it by October, central bank Governor Abdul Qadir Fitrat said last month.

“Regarding the costs of Kabul Bank insolvency, a budget allocation is a critical measure going forward to ensure that additional tax revenues are used to begin paying for the costs,” Ahmed said when asked what measures need to be taken.

He declined to confirm whether measures also include a draft law to cut insider lending and bank owners’ powers, saying that the focus has been on ensuring “that the kinds of problems that happened in Kabul Bank do not recur elsewhere in the financial sector.”

Afghan Law

The IMF has called for revisions to the existing “banking law to improve corporate governance” among Afghanistan’s 17 commercial banks, an effort that Afghan officials said the cabinet rejected in January.

The new legislation, drafted last year by the central bank, would bar any shareholder from serving as a bank’s chief executive officer or supervisory board chairman, central bank Governor Fitrat said in a Feb. 26 interview at his office in Kabul.

President Barack Obama has vowed to end the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan by 2014, handing over security duties to Afghan forces that the U.S. is training and equipping.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sandrine Rastello in Washington atsrastello@bloomberg.net





In Dubai, Pasha tipped off Rana about 26/11

21 06 2011

In Dubai, Pasha tipped off Rana about 26/11

PTI

In this photo taken on November 27, 2008, Taj Hotel caught fire during the terror attacks in Mumbai.
PTIIn this photo taken on November 27, 2008, Taj Hotel caught fire during the terror attacks in Mumbai

Tahawwur Rana, cleared by a Chicago court of involvement in Mumbai attacks, knew about the 26/11 plot as he was part of “the inner circle” and was tipped off about the “imminent” strikes by none other than LeT’s Pasha during a meeting in Dubai, according to U.S. prosecutors.

“That the city of Mumbai was under siege was not something that came like a bolt out of the blue to Rana. He knew about it. He knew about it ahead of time. He knew about it because he knew about it from David Headley, and he knew about it because Pasha had tipped him off in Dubai,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Victoria Peters told jurors during closing arguments in Rana’s trial before the Chicago court.

In summer of 2008, Rana was told by his childhood friend Headley, who has confessed to his involvement in the Mumbai strikes, all the details about the attack plan that was going to occur a few months in the future, Ms. Peters said.

“He knows that Lashkar fighters are finalising their plans to take over the city of Mumbai. He knows that Headley’s activities in Mumbai, the things that he’s been doing while using the cover that he has provided, he knows that Headley’s activities are leading to something very, very serious and that it is on the near horizon,” she said, adding that is why Rana is so security-conscious.

When the attacks in Mumbai began, Rana was not surprised, she argued.

“He knew they were coming. He knew from Headley, but he also knew from Pasha. Headley had asked Pasha (also known as Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed) to tell Rana not to stop in Mumbai on Rana’s way back to the United States. In Dubai, Pasha did just that. He gave Rana that warning. You know from Rana’s own words that he knew that the attack in Mumbai was going to happen before it started,” she said.

Under the U.S. laws, the government cannot appeal against the verdict, even though if it disagrees with the verdict of the jury.

The U.S. Government had expressed disappointment at the verdict.

Ms. Peters presented before the court transcripts of a conversation between Rana and Headley in this regard.

Headley: “Did Pasha not say that“? Rana: “Yes.” Headley: “When he mentioned that.” Rana: “What?” Headley: “Pasha had mentioned that in Dubai that this is how …” And Rana says, “That he said to me as well.”

The U.S. attorney said Pasha gave Rana the warning.

“Members of the jury, this exchange between Rana and Headley, this exchange speaks volumes. What does it tell you about Rana that Pasha gave him this warning that the attacks were imminent?

“What it tells you is that Pasha knows that Rana is part of the inner circle. Pasha can trust Rana. Pasha knows that Rana knows. What if Rana weren’t part of this inner circle? What if Rana had absolutely no idea that there was going to be an attack in Mumbai?” she said.

Ms. Peters continued: “Think about that. Wouldn’t you expect Rana, if he didn’t know that this attack was imminent, wouldn’t you expect him after the attack happens and the city of Mumbai is basically held siege by these armed men for three days, wouldn’t you expect him to go to the FBI or the police or somebody and say, ‘Guys, there’s this guy I met in Dubai, Pasha, he told me something really strange before these attacks took place, he told me, don’t go to Mumbai.’”

“If Rana wasn’t playing on the same team, why would Pasha have told him that? Pasha trusts Rana. He knows that Rana is Headley’s trusted friend. So there’s no risk on Pasha’s part. There’s no risk for him to give this warning,” she said.





A bill to settle a terrible debt

21 06 2011

A bill to settle a terrible debt

SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN

This October 21, 2008 photo shows a taxi damaged during a protest by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena supporters in South Mumbai against the arrest of their chief Raj Thackeray for his alleged involvement in the attack on Biharis. File Photo: Vivek Bendre
This October 21, 2008 photo shows a taxi damaged during a protest by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena supporters in South Mumbai against the arrest of their chief Raj Thackeray for his alleged involvement in the attack on Biharis. File Photo: Vivek Bendre

For decades, the victims of communal and targeted violence have been denied protections of law that the rest of us take for granted. It’s time to end this injustice.

In a vibrant and mature democracy, there would be no need to have special laws to prosecute the powerful or protect the weak. If a crime takes place, the law would simply take its course. In a country like ours, however, life is not so simple. Terrible crimes can be committed involving the murder of hundreds and even thousands of people, or the loot of billions of rupees. But the law in India does not take its course. More often than not, it stands still.

If the Lokpal bill represents an effort to get the law to change its course on the crime of corruption, the new draft bill on the prevention of communal and targeted violence is a modest contribution towards ensuring that India’s citizens enjoy the protection of the state regardless of their religion, language or caste.

The draft law framed by the National Advisory Council and released earlier this month for comment and feedback is a huge improvement over the bill originally drawn up by the United Progressive Alliance government in 2005. The earlier version paid lip service to the need for a law to tackle communal violence but made matters worse by giving the authorities greater coercive powers instead of finding ways to eliminate the institutional bias against the minorities, Dalits and adivasis, which lies at the heart of all targeted violence in India.

The November 1984 massacre of Sikhs provides a good illustration of how the institutionalised “riot system” works. Let us start with the victim. She is unable to get the local police to protect the lives of her family members or property. She is unable to file a proper complaint in a police station. Senior police officers, bureaucrats and Ministers, who by now are getting reports from all across the city, State and country, do not act immediately to ensure the targeted minorities are protected. Incendiary language against the victims is freely used. Women who are raped or sexually assaulted get no sympathy or assistance. When the riot victims form makeshift relief camps, the authorities harass them and try to make them leave. The victims have to struggle for years before the authorities finally provide some compensation for the death, injury and destruction they have suffered. As for the perpetrators of the violence, they get away since the police and the government do not gather evidence, conduct no investigation and appoint biased prosecutors, thereby sabotaging the chances of conviction and punishment.

With some modifications here and there, this is the same sickening script which played out in Gujarat in 2002, when Muslims were the targeted group. On a smaller scale, all victims of organised, targeted violence — be they Tamils in Karnataka or Hindi speakers in Maharashtra or Dalits in Haryana and other parts of the country — know from experience and instinct that they cannot automatically count on the local police coming to their help should they be attacked.

If one were to abstract the single most important stylised fact from the Indian “riot system”, it is this: violence occurs and is not immediately controlled because policemen and local administrators refuse to do their duty. It is also evident that they do so because the victims belong to a minority group, precisely the kind of situation the Constituent Assembly had in mind when it wrote Article 15(1) of the Constitution: “The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them”.

How are policemen and officials able to get away with violating the Constitution in this manner? Because they know that neither the law nor their superiors will act against them. What we need, thus, is not so much a new law defining new crimes (although that would be useful too) but a law to ensure that the police and bureaucrats and their political masters follow the existing law of the land. In other words, we need a law that punishes them for discriminating against citizens who happen to be minorities. This is what the draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 does.

The CTV bill sets out to protect religious and linguistic minorities in any State in India, as well as the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, from targeted violence, including organised violence. Apart from including the usual Indian Penal Code offences, the NAC draft modernises the definition of sexual assault to cover crimes other than rape and elaborates on the crime of hate propaganda already covered by Section 153A of the IPC. Most importantly, it broadens the definition of dereliction of duty — which is already a crime — and, for the first time in India, adds offences by public servants or other superiors for breach of command responsibility. “Where it is shown that continuous widespread or systematic unlawful activity has occurred,” the draft says, “it can be reasonably presumed that the superior in command of the public servant whose duty it was to prevent the commission of communal and targeted violence, failed to exercise supervision … and shall be guilty of the offence of breach of command responsibility.” With 10 years imprisonment prescribed for this offence, superiors will hopefully be deterred from allowing a Delhi 1984 or Gujarat 2002 to happen on their watch.

Another important feature is the dilution of the standard requirement that officials can only be prosecuted with the prior sanction of the government. The CTV bill says no sanction will be required to prosecute officials charged with offences which broadly fall under the category of dereliction of duty. For other offences, sanction to prosecute must be given or denied within 30 days, failing which it is deemed to have been given. Although the bill says the reasons for denial of sanction must be recorded in writing, it should also explicitly say that this denial is open to judicial review.

Another lacuna the bill fills is on compensation for those affected by communal and targeted violence. Today, the relief that victims get is decided by the government on an ad hoc and sometimes discriminatory basis. Section 90 and 102 of the CTV bill rectify this by prescribing an equal entitlement to relief, reparation, restitution and compensation for all persons who suffer physical, mental, psychological or monetary harm as a result of the violence, regardless of whether they belong to a minority group or not. While a review of existing state practice suggests victims who belong to a religious or linguistic ‘majority’ group in a given state do not require special legal crutches to get the police or administration to register and act on their complaints, the CTV bill correctly recognises that they are entitled to the same enhanced and prompt relief as minority victims. The language of these Sections could, however, be strengthened to bring this aspect out more strongly.

The CTV bill also envisages the creation of a National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation. The authority’s role will be to serve as a catalyst for implementation of the new law. Its functions will include receiving and investigating complaints of violence and dereliction of duty, and monitoring the build up of an atmosphere likely to lead to violence. It cannot compel a State government to take action — in deference to the federal nature of law enforcement — but can approach the courts for directions to be given. There will also be State-level authorities, staffed, like the National Authority, by a process the ruling party cannot rig. The monitoring of relief and rehabilitation of victims will be a major part of their responsibilities.

On the negative side of the ledger, the NAC draft makes an unnecessary reference to the power of the Centre and to Article 355 of the Constitution. The aim, presumably, is to remind the Centre of its duties in the event of a State government failing to act against incidents of organised communal or targeted violence. But the Centre already has the statutory right to intervene in such situations; if it doesn’t, the reasons are political rather than legal. The draft also unnecessarily complicates the definition of communal and targeted violence by saying the acts concerned must not only be targeted against a person by virtue of his or her membership of any group but must also “destroy the secular fabric of the nation.” Like the reference to Art. 355, this additional requirement can safely be deleted without diluting what is otherwise a sound law.

The BJP and others who have attacked the bill by raising the bogey of “minority appeasement” have got it completely wrong again. This is a law which does away with the appeasement of corrupt, dishonest and rotten policemen and which ends the discrimination to which India’s religious and linguistic minorities are routinely subjected during incidents of targeted violence. The BJP never tires of talking about what happened to the Sikhs in 1984 when the Congress was in power. Now that a law has finally been framed to make that kind of mass violence more difficult, it must not muddy the water by asking why it covers “only” the minorities. In any case, the Bill’s definition covers Hindus as Hindus in States where they are in a minority (such as Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Nagaland), as linguistic minorities in virtually every State, and as SCs and STs. More importantly, persons from majority communities who suffer in the course of communal and targeted incidents will be entitled to the same relief as minority victims. If someone feels there is any ambiguity about this, the bill’s language can easily be strengthened to clarify this.

At the end of the day, however, we need to be clear about one thing: India needs a law to protect its most vulnerable citizens from mass violence, its minorities. This is a duty no civilised society can wash its hands of.





Terrorists Eight-Year Old Girl To Wear Suicide Vest

21 06 2011

Terrorists force minor girl to wear suicide vest

Anita Joshua

Photo: AP

GREAT ESCAPE:Suhana at a press conference in Lower Dir in Timergarah, Pakistan, on Monday.ISLAMABAD: In a first case of its kind, an eight-year-old girl was reportedly forced by terrorists to wear a suicide vest for blowing herself up at a check-post in the Lower Dir area of Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa – formerly North West Frontier Province.

However, she surrendered herself to the very police she was supposed to attack. Narrating her experience to the media, Suhana — a Class III student — said she was kidnapped from her hometown in Peshawar by two women and a man on Sunday.

The kidnappers apparently beckoned her and when she approached them, they put a handkerchief around her nose after which she fell unconscious. Once she regained consciousness, Suhana said she was forced to wear a suicide vest and taken to the police post in Balambat area of Lower Dir.

After dropping her off near the check-post with the instruction to approach the police and blow herself up once she got there, her abductors fled the spot. Making use of the opportunity, she ran to the police and raised an alarm, Suhana said.

This is arguably the first case of someone so young being forced into becoming a suicide bomber and that, too, within a day of being in the clutches of terrorists. Using children as suicide bombers is nothing new in this country and the past few months have thrown up many instances where teenaged boys blew themselves up.

Often they did not even know who their targets were as became evident in April when a 14-year-old would-be suicide bomber – nabbed before he could detonate himself – told the police that he and his associates were told that they were being taken to Afghanistan to attack the Americans. Instead, they were dropped off at the Sufi shrine of Sakhi Sarwar in South Punjab on April 3 where their attack killed over 40 people.





US cautioned to take Pakistan along on talks with Taliban

21 06 2011

US cautioned to take Pakistan along on talks with Taliban

By Baqir Sajjad Syed

Frank Ruggiero, US Deputy Special Representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, called on Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Ms. Hina Rabbani Khar. -APP

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan cautioned the United States on Monday that its peace talks with the Taliban might not make headway without clarity on ‘reconcilables’ and without taking Islamabad and Kabul on board about dialogue with the Afghan insurgency leadership.

US Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Frank Ruggiero in his meetings at the Foreign Office was rather curtly told that American unwillingness to share information on the talks was against the spirit of rebuilding modicum of trust after a spate of bruising incidents beginning with the May 2 Abbottabad raid on Osama bin Laden compound.

In a statement on Mr Ruggiero’s meetings, the Foreign Office said: “The importance of clarity and strategic coherence as well as transparency to facilitate the Afghan people and the Afghan government in the process for peace and reconciliation” was underscored.

Mid-ranking US State Department and CIA officials have met Taliban representatives led by Tayyab Agha, a personal aide of Mullah Omar, at least thrice since January 2011 – once in Qatar and twice in Germany.

On Saturday, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates stated officially about direct talks with Taliban representatives, but the confirmation came only after President Karzai had publicly spoken about the meetings.

Secretary Gates claimed the interactions were at preliminary stage that were not likely to progress till winter, probably around the time when the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan is held in December, but observers say the official American acceptance of being in talks with the Taliban was in itself significant and denoted they were hopeful about the outcome.

Although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has acknowledged Pakistan’s legitimate concerns about reconciliation in Afghanistan and the criticality of its involvement in the process, diplomatic sources regret that the US was not ready to take Pakistan along.

Responding to the criticism he confronted at the Foreign Office, Mr Ruggiero was quoted in the Foreign Office media statement as having reiterated the importance the Obama administration attached to the ‘Core Group’ comprising Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US “in the Afghan-led and Afghan-owned process of reconciliation and peace”.

The core group is meeting again in Afghanistan on June 28 – the third time in a series of meetings that started a day after Osama bin Laden was killed in the Abbottabad raid. Alongside the trilateral mechanism, Pakistan and Afghanistan have set up a joint commission on peace and reconciliation which recently held its inaugural session in Islamabad and its second tier comprising officials would be meeting soon to discuss modalities for cooperation.

Pakistani officials sounded critical over lack of clarity about who the US considered as reconcilable. “On one hand they are talking to Mullah Omar’s aide, but on the other the Taliban leader is on the list of the five men that they (the Americans) want to be taken out,” an official, asking not to be named, said, adding that Pakistan would also like to hear if there could be any space in the political dialogue for the Haqqani network, whose operational commander Sirajuddin Haqqani is also on the list of five most wanted terrorists.

A US official, speaking about Mr Ruggiero’s meetings, said a whole range of issues in relations between the US and Pakistan, including Afghan peace and reconciliation, was discussed.





The Real War –vs– The Illusions

21 06 2011

The Real War –vs– The Illusions

Peter Chamberlin

In the complicated calculus of the men who would plan our destinies for us, if we would only let them, it is often hard to fathom which line of reasoning represents their dominant thinking on any strategic subject.  In Afghanistan and in Pakistan, it is getting harder to distinguish between the minimum acceptable goals for the Empire and less-desirable, though ultimately acceptable conditions for ending the war.  In particular, thinking of the “pipeline wars” (which American corporations seem to be losing, badly), if America is projected to fail miserably in its plans for Central and South Asia, then what secondary objectives is the Empire preparing for the region?

Could it be possible that the rationale for the US terror war is falling apart so quickly since the big production in Abbottabad, that the secondary objective of playing spoiler for the winners in the energy war is replacing the primary mission of Central Asian energy-looting as America’s military solution for economic salvation?  The war itself is unsustainable, absent the collective will of the American people to wage this war without a valid reason, or foreseeable end, the 911 attacks having been replaced long ago with whatever excuse Obama wanted to use as justification.  On top of this, the bin Laden psyop is having the unintended consequence of undermining support for continuing the war and increasing the public uproar to find an end to this war that now has no adversary, in the absence of a terrorist mastermind.  It is slowly winding-down to total defeat for the United States, absent another earth-shattering unifying, “Pearl Harbor-like event” in the near future.  What will the American administration do to sustain this unpopular war?  How far will they go to keep the Afghan/Pakistan war going?

The NATO side is currently still pursuing a policy of faking negotiations with old acquaintances of Mullah Omar, like Tayyab Aga, allegedly discussing reconciliation efforts for harmless “Taliban” (those who are not veteran Taliban fighters).  These fighters are expected to turn-in their weapons for cash, even though the actual Taliban spokesmen for Mullah Omar insist that there will be no negotiations as long as occupation forces remain in Afghanistan.  The US has staked-out the position that those who fought against the coalition government cannot be “reconciled,” meaning that all those who have fought against the American occupation have no other choices but to keep fighting until they die in combat, or turn themselves in for arrest.  The Taliban still insist that there is nothing to talk about as long as the occupation continues.  Mullah Omar has issued hand-written warning notes to local mosques stating that those who negotiate with the Americans are marked for death. There is no room for compromise there for either side.  So what good will it do for US/British negotiators to talk to second or third level Taliban who have no sway with high command?  It is more than likely that all of this reconciliation talk is merely for public entertainment purposes, maintaining popular support for the war and Obama, by pretending that Obama is getting it right and peace may be just around the corner.

It is becoming clear to those who care to look for the truth about the war, that the US never intended to leave Afghanistan, it has always planned to use Afghanistan and Pakistan as a military beachhead into Central Asia (SEE: Neutral Afghanistan serves regional stability).  Every American spokesperson who has publicly denied these now obvious facts, has been consciously lying to the world, in order to advance this mass deception as far as possible before the American people wake-up.  Researchers and analysts are breaking through the carefully constructed wall of American deception to understand just how cynically American leaders have manipulated Pakistan and India, playing them off against one another in a dangerous game of brinkmanship designed to serve only Imperial ends.

Indian and Pakistani writers have to dig deeper to understand the psyops that are still playing-out along the Durand Line.  They must ask:  How deep does the American deception go, or is everything about this war a deception?  Only then can it become apparent the defensive actions that each nation must take, perhaps in a united action against the Imperial designs.

Indian writer M K Bhadrakumar reports on American attempts to sideline both Afghan and Pakistani governments from any negotiations with the Afghan Taliban (SEE:  CIA instigating mutiny in the Pakistani army), in order to buy time to force an American compromise.  His article offers the following novel explanation of why American leaders would intentionally engineer a risky potential “colonel’s coup” to unseat Gen. Kayani:

“The only way is to set the army’s house on fire so that the generals get distracted by the fire-dousing and the massive repair work and housecleaning that they will be called upon to undertake as top priority for months if not years to come.”

In the opinion of this former Indian diplomat, Washington was actively destabilizing Islamabad, and it was endangering the entire region in order to do it.  A destabilized nuclear sub-continent has always been the implied result of these American machinations.  It is only logical to ask whether this has always been the plan, and for what conceivable reasons?  Did they really believe that they could force both Afghans and Pakistanis to follow orders that would harm their own countrymen, or that their plans would succeed even if they got everything that they wanted from them?  What could American leaders hope to get out of this planned conflagration that they probably could have achieved by less violent, more honorable means?  There is nothing “honorable” about this ongoing thirty-year war.  Our “upstanding” national leaders have always planned to use American military muscle to protect their great redistribution of wealth (the exact opposite of the Marxist concept, the rich get everything), as they looted, raped and plundered the entire world, even our allies.  It is only now, in the end game, when these things are being made clear to all who care to see.

The plan has always been to use American military muscle to create for themselves the power to dictate a political/military solution to the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, by sidelining all the valid neighborhood players, even the Afghan “straw man” government itself, much as it has already done for itself in Iraq.  They have even applied the same time-tested formula for destabilization which was used in Iraq, but without the same results.  The US is no more in position to dictate terms to Afghanistan today than it was ten years ago.  Unlike Iraq, where the “Anbar solution” of tribal militias was field-tested, there are no major differences between Afghans to exploit.  Iraq is nothing like Afghanistan or Pakistan.  Different solutions were required, even though Pentagon and CIA geniuses only knew the one song of divide and conquer.  That is why they have failed so miserably in the Far Eastern war theater.

Since they had only one song and dance routine, the CIA and their ISI counterparts have kept playing on the same theme, in their little war games, intended to hold the attention of  patriotic Americans and Pakistanis.  In Afghanistan, Western powers have manipulated the tribal and national differences by developing the Northern Alliance coalition of Hamid Karzai, which is mostly comprised of Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazara Shia, as a counterfoil to mostly Pashtun Taliban forces.  The anti-Taliban coalition efforts of a massive nationwide propaganda effort, supplemented with an equally massive program of enormous pay-offs, backed-up by NATO firepower have failed to buy or intimidate loyalty from local warlords or join their forces to the Karzai/Northern Alliance government.

Since Karzai’s reelection, the Western media, politicians and generals have been steadily undermining the support Karzai did have, undercutting his efforts to create a High Peace Council, probably well on their way to grooming his replacement, someone like former Afghan spymaster, Amrullah Saleh, who is already a long-term CIA asset, besides being Karzai’s exact opposite.  Saleh is one of those selected individuals, unfortunate enough to be native to a CIA-targeted country, who was sent to America before 2001, for specialized training by the CIA.  As a top junior aid to legendary Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, he was there in Takhar Province, serving as the CIA liason, when the “Lion of Panjshir” was assassinated on September 9, 2001.  He has been a favorite of the spooks since then, especially after the FBI forced him on Karzai as his new spy chief in Feb. 2004, coincidentally, just one month before Pakistani Taliban founder Abdullah Mehsud was released from two and one-half years at Guantanamo “brainwashing academy” into his custody as Afghan intelligence chief.  The story of the Tehreek e-Taliban Pakistan that he helped to inspire is a tale of grief and double-crossing.  They are the “poison” that was introduced into the Pakistani soil, which Saleh so colorfully described.

The Americans are hedging their bets in Afghanistan, like always, fronting two streams of the Afghan political spectrum at once.  The Karzai/Rabbani alliance is backing the reconciliation talks with the Taliban that could lead to the partitioning of Afghanistan, split between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban in control of the south, in order to facilitate pipeline and development plans for the north.  This is the State Dept. best solution.  This position is allegedly unacceptable to Northern Alliance candidate Saleh, who advocates carpet-bombing Pakistan and night-time Special Forces decapitation raids all the way from Balochistan to Bajaur.  His position is that there can never be victory in the war against the Taliban until their support lines to the Pak Army are cut.  He represents the most radical factions of the CIA, who advocate total war with Pakistan.

In order to dissuade the Pak Army from continuing to support the Afghan Taliban, the CIA master-plotters have created their own versions of “lashkars,” such as the fake Pakistani Taliban, to battle and terrorize the Army and the people of Pakistan.  Since 2003, Musharraf’s generals have been helping him and his successor Gen. Kayani, to revive the defeated Taliban movement as a substitute for concerted, decisive military action against the remnants of “al-Qaeda” and the Afghan Taliban leadership, who had been all been allowed to regroup in Waziristan and Balochistan by both the ISI and the CIA.  They originally relocated there from northern Afghanistan in the infamous “Kunduz airlift,” where they were spared from certain annihilation at the hands of Uzbek Gen. Dostum and the Northern Alliance forces.  Once they were flown there, they began to reoccupy the old CIA/ISI training camps there which had formerly been vacated after they were used to drive-out the Soviets.  The IMU terrorists of Tahir Yuldeshev, who were brought across the border with Abdullah Mehsud in his instant army of fake Taliban (composed of Northern Alliance fighters), ran the camps and shared their military expertise with the new Taliban recruits being readied to keep the Afghan conflict going.

Abdullah brought his Uzbek and Chechen fighters to Wana, where they joined-up with Nek Mohammed.  This was long before the Pakistani Taliban began their waves of Pakistani terrorism, when they still had the trust of the real Afghan Taliban.  Because of his trust for new militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, as well as his initial distrust of Abdullah Mehsud, because of the Guantanamo years, Mullah Omar sent his hand-picked emissary, celebrated veteran commander Mullah Dadullah, to bless the Pakistani Taliban union and name Baitullah as its head.  Dadullah oversaw the effort in S. Waziristan, where he had been working closely with Nek Mohammed and his successors, Abdullah and Baitullah Mehsud to develop a formidable new Taliban army of 20,000 fighters or more, including a suicide-bomber academy.  After Dadullah shepherded the Waziri Accord peace treaty between the Pakistani Taliban and the Army on orders from Mullah Omar himself, Dadullah was also targeted for drone assassination, just like Nek before him (even though British Special Forces claim the kill).

Under the command of Baitullah, the Pakistani Taliban (now called Tehreek e-Taliban Pakistan, TTP) unleashed a wave of terror upon tribal leaders, government forces and the mosques of the unbelievers.  At first, this terror was blamed upon the IMU terrorists who had been given shelter by the Mehsud leadership, providing an opening for the Pak Army to introduce a counter-insurgency, in the form of aggressive tribal lashkars of their own.

Local Ahmadzai Wazir militant leader Maulvi Nazir created a lashkar army of 900 heavily armed men, who proceeded to run the IMU terrorists out of his territory around Wana, S. Waziristan.  The Army then began to replicate the lashkar-building process in other towns, hoping to enlist the tribals in a massive show of force to evict the “bad Taliban” and those labeled as “al-Qaeda” from Pakistan.  Nothing much came from the effort, except for a bunch of dead lashkar militiamen.

Needing a concrete strategy to counter US destabilization plans and demands for total war in the Tribal Regions, Pakistan has continued to sell the “good/bad Taliban” theme as a path to eventual “reconciliation,” putting distance between the two groups, so that heavy force could then be used to eliminate the criminal Taliban in successive operations.  But each time that Pakistan made a little headway, lashkar leaders would be eliminated in car-bomb attacks, or by the occasional Predator drone.

Beginning with the massive drone assault in Bajaur, on October 30, 2006, which killed 80 religious students, drone attacks have become the favorite weapon for radicalizing locals and driving them into the eager arms of the Taliban.  This is one of the reasons for believing that American leaders have always secretly supported the formation of militant armies, in order to have someone to fight and to provide valid-seeming reasons for prolonging the war.  Everything they do creates more resistance.

The complex CIA schemes have forced Pakistan to develop its own ISI counter-schemes as a matter of self-defense against American demands to wreck the country and force the Pakistani people into open rebellion against their elected government.  The ten-year deception in Pakistan has gone through many stages, fronted by many separate players, all of them having some stake in the Empire winning the contest. Today in Afghanistan we have an ongoing war, fueled by a series of major deceptions.  The more obvious it becomes that the war is being lost, the more the deceptions will fall apart.  At some point, the lies will fall apart faster than they can be reconstructed in a new form.

In Pakistan, we see at least ten times the number of major deceptions which we can see unwinding across the border.  I guess that this is what they mean by an “intelligence driven war.”  Every interested great power has a game at play now in Pakistan; every interested great power is double-gaming someone else, partners are being made to be cashed-in later, when it will bring the greatest advantage.  Pakistan’s military, the “Establishment” and every one of the many “mafias” (land mafia, gas mafia, etc.) have their own separate games going on, all of them game off each other.  Seeing daylight through this morass of webs of intrigue is almost an impossibility.  It is not surprising that the game-players are having such a difficult time controlling the eventual outcome of this soon to be exploding psychological warfare experiment.

American mind-benders have playing their usual games and inventing a few new ones in their careful efforts to destabilize Pakistan without really upsetting the apple cart, losing control of the situation.  It suits CIA and American military purposes to give the ISI enough rope to hang itself.  This explains why they seem to go along with Pakistan’s generals, even when they are obviously lying or playing games to avoid causing a rupture in relations.  In their international media campaign to embarrass the Pak Army and government, the media-masters are careful to go just so far in slandering them, but not far enough to force negative international reactions.  US leaders understand the close relationship between the ISI and certain militant groups, but, until recently never charged the Army with supporting militants in public.  Since open psychological war broke-out between the two sides in 2008 (SEE:  US/Pakistan Showdown/Throwdown July12), they have maintained a love/hate relationship, creating difficult circumstances for fulfilling contracts and such.  As far as the United States is concerned, Pakistan has a contractual obligation to help eliminate the “al-Qaeda” militants that the US and Pakistan have created together.

For these reasons, the CIA lets the ISI have its Lashkars and its “strategic depth” militants, preferring to seize the opportunity to use the controlled media to weave stories about the Wana battles into tales of “al-Qaeda,” the mythical international terrorist network. Beginning with the story about Mullah Nazir and his battle against the IMU terrorists of Abdullah and Baitullah Mehsud, CIA-sponsored Pakistani and Western reporters have invented stories of “good Taliban” turning against “al-Qaeda.”  (The most reliable of these al-Qaeda story creators was Asia Times reporter Syed Saleem Shazad, the author of the Al-Qaeda/Taliban split story.  Syed worked tirelessly, over several years to weave a tapestry out of whole cloth about the “al-Qaeda” monolith that stood astride the Durand Line, threatening the entire world with “Islamist terrorism.”).

Since its inception, the concept of “good Taliban vs bad Taliban has been fully implemented by both sides, although neither side could agree on whether the “bad Taliban” were those who attacked only Pakistan, or those who attacked only Afghan coalition targets.  It seems that most of the time, there has been no Taliban who attacked both sides, except when the Pak Army gave in to American demands and turned its guns upon its friends.  By cultivating peace treaties and non-aggression agreements with individual tribal groups, Pakistan had developed an equilibrium with the militants, and for short intervals, terror attacks seemed to have almost come to an end—until the Predator assassination campaign began, ultimately destroying any trust, driving tribal fighters by the thousands into the arms of the Taliban.

American drones have consistently targeted those militant leaders and outfits that the Pak Army has chosen to protect under the wing of its “strategic depth” concept.  Both militant and lashkar leaders have fallen prey to drone missiles—the majority of them friends of the Army.  The CIA has intensified the drone attacks as the administration upped the ante, demanding more and more that Pakistan dare not give, since national suicide is out of the question.

The big question then becomes then:  Is Obama willing to accept a partial non-Haqqani offensive against the TTP, the mad dog killers of Col. Imam and Khalid Khawaja, in N. Waziristan, in place of an anti-Haqqani offensive?  Of all the militant groups, the criminal gangs who have attached themselves to the psychopathic killer Hakeemullah Mehsud, heir to all that Baitullah stood for, are by far the most dangerous.  The only explanation for such a grouping of monsters who have never attacked American or NATO troops, is that they consider them to be allies, or at least employers.  If the US would support the elimination of these killers first, as a favor to our struggling ally, then perhaps Pakistan’s influence upon such “Taliban” as Haqqani can help bring the Afghan war to a resolution, if that is what Obama really wants.

If events follow the time-tested patterns of previous Pakistani offensives, then an operation in N. Waziristan would mean another flushing of refugees onto the roadways  and trails of neighboring provinces (overwhelming limited social services wherever they come to rest, Pakistan already has more refugees than any other country).  This will once again demonstrate Pakistan’s basic inability to carry-out the total war actions that the US is demanding from them.  Pakistan doesn’t have either the manpower or the equipment needed to meet national disasters (just like most other nations), nor the capabilities required to eliminate an entrenched heavily armed insurgency.  Will Obama accept this excuse for doing half of what he has demanded, just as Bush eventually did in the past?

The basis of the new great Show seems to be the “Waziristan Accords,” agreements between the Army and the Ahmadzai Wazirs of Mullah Nazir of the South and Uthmanzai Waziris in the North, led by Gul Bahadur.  The agreement allegedly binds the tribes to police their own areas against Mehsuds or foreign terrorists.  The antecedent to this Wazir option is the creation of multiple lashkars amongst the other tribes, even among the Mehsuds, if that is possible, considering the fate of the previous anti-Mehsud Mehsud leader, Qari Zainuddin Mehsud, that might prove to be impossible.

Pak plans to rope in tribals to take on al-Qaeda, according to the Indian press.  If the plan really is to rebrand the Tehreek e-Taliban Pakistan as the new “al-Qaeda,” as the IMU Uzbeks once were, then this might put Pakistan’s generals and American generals on the same page.  Once the offensive actually gets underway it will become obvious exactly who is on what page.  Until then, we will have to get by on the delicious clues given us in Pakistan news leaks, or the latest militant attacks, to try to understand the mindset of the generals on both sides, who continue to run the show.

In light of recent events in S. Waziristan that are described below, it is possible to project the shape of the upcoming offensive: The Army goes after Hakeemullah Mehsud and the foreign terrorists under his protection, demanding from Haqqani lieutenant and local Wazir tribal leader Gul Bahadar that he fulfill his treaty commitments under the Waziristan Accords and actively suppress foreign terrorists, as well as the criminal Mehsuds, if they violate his territory, thus limiting the operating range of fleeing TTP militants (SEE:  Pakistan Using Wazir Tribe of Mullah Nazir to Set-Up Next Psyop):

“The alleged 2007 agreement referred to in [that] report, between Nazir and the govt., allows the Army to wash its hands of the Wana region, making the tribes responsible for keeping-out Uzbeks, Mehsuds, Al-Qaeda and other foreign militants, an impossible task for the outgunned tribes.”

But this plan too, is being undermined by the government leaks that “telegraph” their next moves to the militants, raising lashkars for what is coming next, giving their friends there plenty of time to either prepare or relocate.  It might be that the Army telegraphing its next moves gives Hakeemullah the same opportunity to flee the area before the battle, that it gives to Haqqani.  It is here where the Army will rely upon the new Kurram Treaty to bring Haqqani into action against Hakeemullah in Kurram and perhaps in Hangu, Hakeemullah’s home turf, as well.  We are already seeing an impending confrontation between the two groups over continued TTP attacks upon Shia, in spite of having signed the truce, thus endangering the fragile peace (SEE:  Kurram Agency: Haqqani warns Hakimullah not to ‘sabotage’ peace deal):

“Things have now reached a very awkward point … Haqqani has said some very strong words to Hakimullah: ‘Stop it yourself or my men will make you stop it’.”

It may be that Haqqani also has a personal grudge to settle with Mehsud, over the murder of Col. Imam and Khalid Khawaja, who was highly respected by his father Jalaluddin and by all Afghan Taliban, since Mehsud refused to spare the old jihadi teacher’s life.  If that is the case, then he may be more than willing to help-out the ISI clean-up the mess.

The timing of the events around Col. Tarar’s kidnapping and murder nearly one year later, help to confirm the “rogue” out of control status of Hakeemullah Mehsud, when compared to the Haqqanis.  Ignoring all Haqqani, ISI, or Afghan Taliban pleas, Hakeemullah Mehsud gave the order to kill Col. Imam, which can be seen on YouTube.

(SEE:  Taliban release video of killing of Col Imam).

Taliban release video of killing of Col Imam, posted with vodpod

His body was then dumped in the Danday Darpakhel area of Miramshah on January 23, 2011.  This was clearly intended to serve as a challenge to Haqqani’s authority.  On Jan. 27, CIA agent Raymond Davis shot two ISI agents dead in Lahore.  The Haqqani-backed Kurram peace deal between the Turi tribe and Shia was struck ten days later, on February 3.

On Feb.7, 2010, top Taliban leaders were placed under protective custody (or arrest) in Pakistan, beginning with Taliban number two, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.  As far as can be ascertained, the Mullahs were arrested to stop the previous attempt to initiate secret American/Taliban negotiations—that time they were with Mullah Omar’s actual second in command.

On 2/26/2010, Khalid Khwaja petitioned the Lahore High Court to block US efforts to have the arrested Taliban extradited to Afghanistan and into US custody.

One month later, 03/25/2010, former ISI agent Khwaja was abducted, along with Col. Imam and the British journalist Asad Qureshi, in North Waziristan.  They were allegedly in Waziristan at the insistence of retired generals Beg and Gul, trying to interview Sirajuddin Haqqani and Wali-ur Rahman Mehsud.

The Asian Tiger organization… offered to release them in exchange for three important Afghan Taliban figures — Mulla Abdul Ghani Biradar, Mulla Abdul Kabir and Mansoor Dadullah — presently ‘in the custody of the Pakistan government’. The group didn’t even know that Kabir wasn’t, in fact, in detention in Pakistan.”

Khalid  Khwaja was found dead in Miranshah on April 30, 2010.  Qureshi was ransomed.

The Murder of Col Imam was a turning point for several parties, in many areas of their relationships. The fact that Hakeemullah ignored pleas from fellow Islamist Sirahuddin Haqqani, as well as the ISI, confirms the split between the Pakistani Taliban group and the ISI-supported Afghan Taliban.  Hakeemullah Mehsud and his TTP followers, especially the IMU Uzbeks and the just as radical Punjabi recruits of the Lashkar e-Jhangvi are a criminal/terrorist menace and must be eliminated from Pakistan.  The US military has no intention of helping the Pak Army with this formidable task, such as focusing drone attacks first upon this criminal network, even though it would be a simple task, even considered as an obligation to help an ally and old friend.  The American military is only interested in those fighters in Pakistan who wage war on NATO, not those who choose to fight against Pakistan.  Reciprocity might be the better choice over issuing demands and making ultimatums to Pakistan’s generals.

Col Imam was a bitter critic of the United States which, he said, had left the Afghan mujahideen in the lurch after the defeat of the Soviet forces in the late 1980s.  The CIA hated Imam and the Pakistani Taliban hated him.  When he went to N. Waziristan he was carrying a list of 14 Taliban leaders who worked for India and probably the US.  That list ended-up in Hakeemullah’s hands.  His name was alleged at the top of the list.  Perhaps that was why he had to die.

From the Pakistani press comes the claim that Col. Imam and Khalid Khawaja may have been killed by Ilyas Kashmiri, as revenge for his being tortured by the Army in 2003 for trying to kill Musharraf.  Other elements of the national press claim that the pair were killed for calling the Afghan Taliban mujahedeen and the Pakistani Taliban criminals.

If that was the case then it would justify Pakistan setting Kashmiri up for a drone kill in Wana on June 3.  Unlike the surreptitious drone whacking of Baitullah Mehsud (where ISI allegedly tricked the CIA into striking Baitullah), it appears that a potential joint effort to get Kashmiri may have been conceivable, considering Headley’s testimony about Kashmiri’s connections to the Mumbai attack, made Ilyas Kashmiri an embarrassment for both sides.  Like always, in this tortuously slow dance between Pakistani and American leaders, that has been grinding-on for decades now, at times it is impossible to tell whether the two sides are in almost perfect step with each other, whether they are hopelessly out of sync, or even at times, whether they are moving at all.  Judging by today’s deadly drone strike on Haqqani forces in Kurram, it seems like they might be at odds with each others plans.  Recent reports have revealed that the US is attempting to draw Ibrahim Haqqani into negotiations, even though US drones continue to strike Haqqani targets in Kurram Agency.

Can the Obama team accept Pakistan’s revised game plan and spin it in an effective manner, so that it will fool the yokels back home, even after all the yelling that they have done over North Waziristan?  Or is the great game suddenly no longer about maintaining the illusion?  Has the American/NATO position deteriorated so far down that they must force a “game-changer” upon us all?  Have run up against so many walls that we have given-up entirely upon the American vision for Afghanistan and Pakistan as the new international strategic corridor, the new “Silk Road” to Central Asia?  Is the new intent to simply so destabilize the region that no one else can reap the economic rewards?

There are many good questions here that no one wants to touch, or to see answered.  The questions will answer themselves in short order, whenever it becomes apparent whether Obama opts for Pakistan’s pacification or for its destabilization.  Will he maintain and escalate the state of confrontation until it leads to widespread violence between two old allies, or will he choose to calm things down in Pakistan, even as he risks revealing the American hand and long-term plans for moving into Central Asia?

Perhaps the most important part of this whole new (recycled) psyop is that the Tehreek e-Taliban Pakistan will now play the role of “Al-Qaeda” (SEE:  The CIA/ISI Soap Opera In South Waziristan) for the remainder of this drama.

chamberlinpeter@hotmail.com








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