THE government in Islamabad is big on ceremony borrowed from the past. It loves to lavish medals and honorifics on the deserving and the people it finds deserving. One recent act that highlights this fetish for resorting to old rituals was the federal government`s decision to observe a holiday to mark the passing away of the extremely respected Begum Nusrat Bhutto.
Monday, Oct 24, was declared a holiday to mourn her death. This further shortened a working week already reduced by a recent government declaration of the two-day weekend closure. At a time when the long Eid-ulAzha holidays are just around the corner, this was a strain on the economy and has led to questioning the logic behind the declaration. Some of the criticism has its origins in the acrimonious sentiment the Bhutto surname generates, but another aspect of it makes quite a lot of sense.If rituals are part and parcel of a state they have to be tempered by current realities. Also, a statement in a national leader`s memory that leads to complaints of distress from groups representing the general public can hardly be construed as a compliment. The three-day closure, including the holiday on Monday, badly affected a lot of people in the runup to Eid, and as responses to the declaration of holiday go, it brought to the fore a Pakistan divided across various lines.
Ultimately, this did not make for a farewell befitting a leader who had fought for democracy whose fundamental purposeistocreateconsensus based on pluralism, not infighting. Missing was a meeting bringing together not just Bhutto followers but democrats of various shades from all over Pakistan for a joint final salute to Begum Nusrat Bhutto. That joint salute would have better suited the occasion.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Insecure gas project
IN SPITE of an agreement between Islamabad and Ashgabat on the price of gas, the future of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) project remains as uncertain as ever. The construction of the pipeline was to commence next year and the project was scheduled to come online by 2016.
The implementation is most likely to be delayed further due to the poor security situation in Afghanistan. The Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement signed by the four participating countries in 2008 had originally envisaged the work to begin in 2010 and the supply of gas to commence by 2015. The delay is severely felt since the TAPI pipeline has enormous economic significance for the participating countries; it will link them through what is now called the `new silk route`. It will provide Turkmenistan revenues and a way to diversify its gas export routes, and offer Pakistan and India a new energy resource to overcome their power shortages.
Afghanistan will get a handsome transit fee and a much-needed opportunity to set up industries along the route of thepipeline. Further, the plan is expected to deepen regional integration and economic and political cooperation, thus contributing to stability.
The western powers, especially the US have been backing the project since the early 1990s because, according to geopolitics analysts, the completion of the project will isolate Iran and reduce Russian influence in Central Asia. The US has already convinced India to get out of the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project to the disappointment of both Islamabad and Tehran. Its geopolitical and economic significance notwithstanding, the implementation of the project will continue to depend upon peace in war-torn Afghanistan.
Even though the segments of the pipeline passing through Afghanistan will be buried in the ground, it is naive to expect anyone to invest money in the project as long as its route remains insecure due to the Taliban insurgency and the influence of warlords. Pakistan should stick to the project but without abandoning its plans to purchase gas from Tehran.
The implementation is most likely to be delayed further due to the poor security situation in Afghanistan. The Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement signed by the four participating countries in 2008 had originally envisaged the work to begin in 2010 and the supply of gas to commence by 2015. The delay is severely felt since the TAPI pipeline has enormous economic significance for the participating countries; it will link them through what is now called the `new silk route`. It will provide Turkmenistan revenues and a way to diversify its gas export routes, and offer Pakistan and India a new energy resource to overcome their power shortages.
Afghanistan will get a handsome transit fee and a much-needed opportunity to set up industries along the route of thepipeline. Further, the plan is expected to deepen regional integration and economic and political cooperation, thus contributing to stability.
The western powers, especially the US have been backing the project since the early 1990s because, according to geopolitics analysts, the completion of the project will isolate Iran and reduce Russian influence in Central Asia. The US has already convinced India to get out of the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project to the disappointment of both Islamabad and Tehran. Its geopolitical and economic significance notwithstanding, the implementation of the project will continue to depend upon peace in war-torn Afghanistan.
Even though the segments of the pipeline passing through Afghanistan will be buried in the ground, it is naive to expect anyone to invest money in the project as long as its route remains insecure due to the Taliban insurgency and the influence of warlords. Pakistan should stick to the project but without abandoning its plans to purchase gas from Tehran.
Declare assets or face civil disobedience` Imran`s Lahore rally stuns opponents
LAHORE, Oct 30: Imran Khan surprised his detractors on Sunday by holding a massive public meeting, described by political observers as one of the biggest rallies held in Lahore over the past two decades. And in a hard-hitting speech he asked the rulers to declare their assets and threatened a civil disobedience movement and a countrywide blockade if they did not do so.
`Declare your assets or face the wrath of people,` the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf chief roared.
He said declaration of politicians` assets was necessary for a transparent governance. If politicians did not do so, the PTI would set up a commission to prepare a list of politicians and their assets and take it to court, he said.
Mr Khan laid out his `plan to save the country` as his supporters, including a large number of youths and women, raised enthusiastic slogans.
Caravans of youths from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also attended the meeting in the vast Minar-i-Pakistan ground.Imran Khan said the PTI would never use the army against its own people nor would ever beg for aid.
`Jinnah would have never begged and Imran will rather die than beg,` he said.
Though there was nothing new in the speech or the plan, the large meeting helped his party to maintain the momentum it had built with a series of rallies in Punjab and other areas.
Mr Khan said the PTI would end corruption, declare an education emergency, improve tax collection, pursue an independent foreign policy, bring Balochistan into the mainstream national politics, end the war on terror and protect rights of minorities and women.
He said most of the crises in the country were a result of corruption of the ruling elite.
Once it is taken up by an independent election commission and judiciary, the rest will be easy. `Pakistan is losing over Rs3,000 billion a year in tax corruption. If it can be tapped, the country does not need foreign aid.
Once the government wins the confidence of people, economic woes would simply go away.
Mr Khan said a country that had `over 180 billion tons of coal reserves could not in any way be called an energy starved state`. There is an equally great potential in hydro-electric resources.`If the PTI can run thermal units even at 70 per cent of their installed capacity, currently running at 25 to 30 per cent, the country will have no energy crisis,` he said.
On foreign policy, he said the focus should be on `independence, not slavery: the PTI will want friendship with everyone, including the Americans, but on the basis of equality. The Americans will be told that Pakistan cannot fight their war and Pakistan Army cannot do its bidding.
`Ties with China will form the cornerstone of PTPs foreign policy. I am leaving tonight for China at the invitation of the Chinese government and friendship with them will be pursued to the fullest.
In a bid to dispel a perception of belonging to the `ultra right wing` he said the PTI would `declare an education emergency for women; they will be educated and their right to property will be ensured as enshrined in Islamic laws. The minorities should rest assured that the PTI will stand for them once in power`.
He said drone attacks were part of the problem rather than a solution. `They are feeding terrorism. The PTI believes that they are pushing over one million armed Pakhtuns to the other side of the divide. Once Pakistan quits the US-sponsored war on terror, these one million armed tribal people will take care of militancy and terrorism in their areas.
It is simply a matter of making the right choices.
He said: `The Lahorites are slow to wake up, but once they do, as they are now, they are unstoppable.` He urged the people to `mobilise themselves to save the country`.
He concluded his speech by warning both President Asif Ali Zardari and Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Nawaz Sharif that `change is not only imminent but already under way and the corrupt will not find a place now to hide` AFP adds: Mr Khan said that his party would help US troops pull out from Afghanistan and bring militancy in the country to an end.`My message to America is that we will have friendship with you but we will not accept any slavery,` he told the crowd.
`We will help you in a respectable withdrawal of your troops from Afghanistan, but we will not launch a military operation in Pakistan for you.
Top US officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, last week visited Pakistan to press for action against militants, particularly the Haqqani network, which is blamed for anti-US attacks in Afghanistan.
Witnesses said the rally was attended by some 150,000 people while organisers put the number at over half a million.
People came in packed buses, trucks, cars and tractors from Lahore and other cities. Roads were blocked for hours due to heavy crowds.
`Declare your assets or face the wrath of people,` the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf chief roared.
He said declaration of politicians` assets was necessary for a transparent governance. If politicians did not do so, the PTI would set up a commission to prepare a list of politicians and their assets and take it to court, he said.
Mr Khan laid out his `plan to save the country` as his supporters, including a large number of youths and women, raised enthusiastic slogans.
Caravans of youths from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also attended the meeting in the vast Minar-i-Pakistan ground.Imran Khan said the PTI would never use the army against its own people nor would ever beg for aid.
`Jinnah would have never begged and Imran will rather die than beg,` he said.
Though there was nothing new in the speech or the plan, the large meeting helped his party to maintain the momentum it had built with a series of rallies in Punjab and other areas.
Mr Khan said the PTI would end corruption, declare an education emergency, improve tax collection, pursue an independent foreign policy, bring Balochistan into the mainstream national politics, end the war on terror and protect rights of minorities and women.
He said most of the crises in the country were a result of corruption of the ruling elite.
Once it is taken up by an independent election commission and judiciary, the rest will be easy. `Pakistan is losing over Rs3,000 billion a year in tax corruption. If it can be tapped, the country does not need foreign aid.
Once the government wins the confidence of people, economic woes would simply go away.
Mr Khan said a country that had `over 180 billion tons of coal reserves could not in any way be called an energy starved state`. There is an equally great potential in hydro-electric resources.`If the PTI can run thermal units even at 70 per cent of their installed capacity, currently running at 25 to 30 per cent, the country will have no energy crisis,` he said.
On foreign policy, he said the focus should be on `independence, not slavery: the PTI will want friendship with everyone, including the Americans, but on the basis of equality. The Americans will be told that Pakistan cannot fight their war and Pakistan Army cannot do its bidding.
`Ties with China will form the cornerstone of PTPs foreign policy. I am leaving tonight for China at the invitation of the Chinese government and friendship with them will be pursued to the fullest.
In a bid to dispel a perception of belonging to the `ultra right wing` he said the PTI would `declare an education emergency for women; they will be educated and their right to property will be ensured as enshrined in Islamic laws. The minorities should rest assured that the PTI will stand for them once in power`.
He said drone attacks were part of the problem rather than a solution. `They are feeding terrorism. The PTI believes that they are pushing over one million armed Pakhtuns to the other side of the divide. Once Pakistan quits the US-sponsored war on terror, these one million armed tribal people will take care of militancy and terrorism in their areas.
It is simply a matter of making the right choices.
He said: `The Lahorites are slow to wake up, but once they do, as they are now, they are unstoppable.` He urged the people to `mobilise themselves to save the country`.
He concluded his speech by warning both President Asif Ali Zardari and Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Nawaz Sharif that `change is not only imminent but already under way and the corrupt will not find a place now to hide` AFP adds: Mr Khan said that his party would help US troops pull out from Afghanistan and bring militancy in the country to an end.`My message to America is that we will have friendship with you but we will not accept any slavery,` he told the crowd.
`We will help you in a respectable withdrawal of your troops from Afghanistan, but we will not launch a military operation in Pakistan for you.
Top US officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, last week visited Pakistan to press for action against militants, particularly the Haqqani network, which is blamed for anti-US attacks in Afghanistan.
Witnesses said the rally was attended by some 150,000 people while organisers put the number at over half a million.
People came in packed buses, trucks, cars and tractors from Lahore and other cities. Roads were blocked for hours due to heavy crowds.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Population control: the rich controlling the poor?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15449959
As the world population reaches seven billion people, the BBC's Mike Gallagher asks whether efforts to control population have been, as some critics claim, a form of authoritarian control over the world's poorest citizens.
The temperature is some 30C. The humidity stifling, the noise unbearable. In a yard between two enormous tea-drying sheds, a number of dark-skinned women patiently sit, each accompanied by an unwieldy looking cloth sack. They are clad in colourful saris, but look tired and shabby. This is hardly surprising - they have spent most of the day in nearby plantation fields, picking tea that will net them around two cents a kilo - barely enough to feed their large families. Continue reading the main story
Find out more
- A three-part radio version of this story was broadcast on World Service.
- You can listen again using the link below.
Vivek Baid thinks he knows how to help them. He runs the Mission for Population Control, a project in eastern India which aims to bring down high birth rates by encouraging local women to get sterilised after their second child.
As the world reaches an estimated seven billion people, people like Vivek say efforts to bring down the world's population must continue if life on Earth is to be sustainable, and if poverty and even mass starvation are to be avoided.There is no doubting their good intentions. Vivek, for instance, has spent his own money on the project, and is passionate about creating a brighter future for India.
But critics allege that campaigners like Vivek - a successful and wealthy male businessman - have tended to live very different lives from those they seek to help, who are mainly poor women.
These critics argue that rich people have imposed population control on the poor for decades. And, they say, such coercive attempts to control the world's population often backfired and were sometimes harmful.
Population scare
Most historians of modern population control trace its roots back to the Reverend Thomas Malthus, an English clergyman born in the 18th Century who believed that humans would always reproduce faster than Earth's capacity to feed them.
Giving succour to the resulting desperate masses would only imperil everyone else, he said. So the brutal reality was that it was better to let them starve.
Continue reading the main story
From Thomas Malthus' Essay on Population, 1803 edition:
A man who is born into a world already possessed - if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food.
At nature's mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he does not work upon the compassion of some of her guests. If these guests get up and make room for him, other intruders immediately appear demanding the same favour. The plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity; and the happiness of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery and dependence in every part of the hall.
'Plenty is changed into scarcity'
A man who is born into a world already possessed - if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food.
At nature's mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he does not work upon the compassion of some of her guests. If these guests get up and make room for him, other intruders immediately appear demanding the same favour. The plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity; and the happiness of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery and dependence in every part of the hall.
Rapid agricultural advances in the 19th Century proved his main premise wrong, because food production generally more than kept pace with the growing population.
But the idea that the rich are threatened by the desperately poor has cast a long shadow into the 20th Century. From the 1960s, the World Bank, the UN and a host of independent American philanthropic foundations, such as the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, began to focus on what they saw as the problem of burgeoning Third World numbers.
The believed that overpopulation was the primary cause of environmental degradation, economic underdevelopment and political instability.
Massive populations in the Third World were seen as presenting a threat to Western capitalism and access to resources, says Professor Betsy Hartmann of Hampshire College, Massachusetts, in the US.
"The view of the south is very much put in this Malthusian framework. It becomes just this powerful ideology," she says.
In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson warned that the US might be overwhelmed by desperate masses, and he made US foreign aid dependent on countries adopting family planning programmes.
Other wealthy countries such as Japan, Sweden and the UK also began to devote large amounts of money to reducing Third World birth rates.
'Unmet need' What virtually everyone agreed was that there was a massive demand for birth control among the world's poorest people, and that if they could get their hands on reliable contraceptives, runaway population growth might be stopped.
But with the benefit of hindsight, some argue that this so-called unmet need theory put disproportionate emphasis on birth control and ignored other serious needs.
"There was an unmet need for contraceptive services, of course. But there was also an unmet need for health services and all kinds of other services which did not get attention. The focus became contraception."
Had the demographic experts worked at the grass-roots instead of imposing solutions from above, suggests Adrienne Germain, formerly of the Ford Foundation and then the International Women's Health Coalition, they might have achieved a better picture of the dilemmas facing women in poor, rural communities.
"Not to have a full set of health services meant women were either unable to use family planning, or unwilling to - because they could still expect half their kids to die by the age of five," she says.
Us and them
Continue reading the main story
Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay (above) presided over a mass sterilisation campaign. From the mid-1970s, Indian officials were set sterilisation quotas, and sought to ingratiate themselves with superiors by exceeding them. Stories abounded of men being accosted in the street and taken away for the operation. The head of the World Bank, Robert McNamara, congratulated the Indian government on "moving effectively" to deal with high birth rates. Funding was increased, and the sterilising went on.
In Delhi, some 700,000 slum dwellers were forcibly evicted, and given replacement housing plots far from the city centre, frequently on condition that they were either sterilised or produced someone else for the operation. In poorer agricultural areas, whole villages were rounded up for sterilisation. When residents of one village protested, an official is said to have threatened air strikes in retaliation.
"There was a certain madness," recalls Nina Puri of the Family Planning Association of India. "All rationality was lost."
India's sterilisation 'madness'
In Delhi, some 700,000 slum dwellers were forcibly evicted, and given replacement housing plots far from the city centre, frequently on condition that they were either sterilised or produced someone else for the operation. In poorer agricultural areas, whole villages were rounded up for sterilisation. When residents of one village protested, an official is said to have threatened air strikes in retaliation.
"There was a certain madness," recalls Nina Puri of the Family Planning Association of India. "All rationality was lost."
In 1968, the American biologist Paul Ehrlich caused a stir with his bestselling book, The Population Bomb, which suggested that it was already too late to save some countries from the dire effects of overpopulation, which would result in ecological disaster and the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in the 1970s.
Instead, governments should concentrate on drastically reducing population growth. He said financial assistance should be given only to those nations with a realistic chance of bringing birth rates down. Compulsory measures were not to be ruled out. Western experts and local elites in the developing world soon imposed targets for reductions in family size, and used military analogies to drive home the urgency, says Matthew Connelly, a historian of population control at Columbia University in New York.
"They spoke of a war on population growth, fought with contraceptive weapons," he says. "The war would entail sacrifices, and collateral damage."
Such language betrayed a lack of empathy with their subjects, says Ms Germain: "People didn't talk about people. They talked of acceptors and users of family planning."
Emergency measures
Critics of population control had their say at the first ever UN population conference in 1974.
Karan Singh, India's health minister at the time, declared that "development is the best contraceptive".
But just a year later, Mr Singh's government presided over one of the most notorious episodes in the history of population control.
In June 1975, the Indian premier, Indira Gandhi, declared a state of emergency after accusations of corruption threatened her government. Her son Sanjay used the measure to introduce radical population control measures targeted at the poor.
The Indian emergency lasted less than two years, but in 1975 alone, some eight million Indians - mainly poor men - were sterilised.
Yet, for all the official programmes and coercion, many poor women kept on having babies.
The BBC's Fergus Walsh finds out whether the numbers will rise or fall in the future
For example, in India, a disparity in birth rates could already be observed between the impoverished northern states and more developed southern regions like Kerala, where women were more likely to be literate and educated, and their offspring more likely to be healthy.
Women there realised that they could have fewer births and still expect to see their children survive into adulthood.
Total control By now, this phenomenon could be observed in another country too - one that would nevertheless go on to impose the most draconian population control of all.
Continue reading the main story
"I remember very well the evening of 8 March, 1980. The local Communist Party official in charge of my village came over waving a government document. He said: 'The Party has decided to impose a cap of 1% on population growth this year.' He said: 'We're going to decide who's going to be allowed to continue their pregnancy and who's going to be forced to terminate their pregnancy.' And that's exactly what they did."
"These were women in the late second and third trimester of pregnancy. There were several women just days away from giving birth. And in my hearing, a party official said: 'Do not think that you can simply wait until you go into labour and give birth, because we will not allow your baby to live. You will go home alone'."
China: 'We will not allow your baby to live'
Steven Mosher was a Stanford University anthropologist working in rural China who witnessed some of the early, disturbing moments of Beijing's One Child Policy."I remember very well the evening of 8 March, 1980. The local Communist Party official in charge of my village came over waving a government document. He said: 'The Party has decided to impose a cap of 1% on population growth this year.' He said: 'We're going to decide who's going to be allowed to continue their pregnancy and who's going to be forced to terminate their pregnancy.' And that's exactly what they did."
"These were women in the late second and third trimester of pregnancy. There were several women just days away from giving birth. And in my hearing, a party official said: 'Do not think that you can simply wait until you go into labour and give birth, because we will not allow your baby to live. You will go home alone'."
The One Child Policy is credited with preventing some 400 million births in China, and remains in place to this day. In 1983 alone, more than 16 million women and four million men were sterilised, and 14 million women received abortions.
Assessed by numbers alone, it is said to be by far the most successful population control initiative. Yet it remains deeply controversial, not only because of the human suffering it has caused. A few years after its inception, the policy was relaxed slightly to allow rural couples two children if their first was not a boy. Boy children are prized, especially in the countryside where they provide labour and care for parents in old age.
But modern technology allows parents to discover the sex of the foetus, and many choose to abort if they are carrying a girl. In some regions, there is now a serious imbalance between men and women.
Moreover, since Chinese fertility was already in decline at the time the policy was implemented, some argue that it bears less responsibility for China's falling birth rate than its supporters claim.
"I don't think they needed to bring it down further," says Indian demographer AR Nanda. "It would have happened at its own slow pace in another 10 years."
Backlash In the early 1980s, objections to the population control movement began to grow, especially in the United States.
In Washington, the new Reagan administration removed financial support for any programmes that involved abortion or sterilisation.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Adrienne Germainif you give women the tools they need - education, employment, contraception, safe abortion - then they will make the choices that benefit society”
The broad alliance to stem birth rates was beginning to dissolve and the debate become more polarised along political lines.
While some on the political right had moral objections to population control, some on the left saw it as neo-colonialism. Faith groups condemned it as a Western attack on religious values, but women's groups feared changes would mean poor women would be even less well-served.
By the time of a major UN conference on population and development in Cairo in 1994, women's groups were ready to strike a blow for women's rights, and they won.
The conference adopted a 20-year plan of action, known as the Cairo consensus, which called on countries to recognise that ordinary women's needs - rather than demographers' plans - should be at the heart of population strategies.
After Cairo
Today's record-breaking global population hides a marked long-term trend towards lower birth rates, as urbanisation, better health care, education and access to family planning all affect women's choices.
With the exception of sub-Saharan Africa and some of the poorest parts of India, we are now having fewer children than we once did - in some cases, failing even to replace ourselves in the next generation. And although total numbers are set to rise still further, the peak is now in sight.
China promoted birth control before implementing its one-child policy The term population control itself has fallen out of fashion, as it was deemed to have authoritarian connotations. Post-Cairo, the talk is of women's rights and reproductive rights, meaning the right to a free choice over whether or not to have children.
According to Adrienne Germain, that is the main lesson we should learn from the past 50 years.
"I have a profound conviction that if you give women the tools they need - education, employment, contraception, safe abortion - then they will make the choices that benefit society," she says.
"If you don't, then you'll just be in an endless cycle of trying to exert control over fertility - to bring it up, to bring it down, to keep it stable. And it never comes out well. Never."
Nevertheless, there remain to this day schemes to sterilise the less well-off, often in return for financial incentives. In effect, say critics, this amounts to coercion, since the very poor find it hard to reject cash.
"The people proposing this argue 'Don't worry, everything' s fine now we have voluntary programmes on the Cairo model'," says Betsy Hartmann.
"But what they don't understand is the profound difference in power between rich and poor. The people who provide many services in poor areas are already prejudiced against the people they serve."
Work in progress For Mohan Rao, it is an example of how even the Cairo consensus fails to take account of the developing world.
"Cairo had some good things," he says. "However Cairo was driven largely by First World feminist agendas. Reproductive rights are all very well, but [there needs to be] a whole lot of other kinds of enabling rights before women can access reproductive rights. You need rights to food, employment, water, justice and fair wages. Without all these you cannot have reproductive rights."
Perhaps, then, the humanitarian ideals of Cairo are still a work in progress.
Meanwhile, Paul Ehrlich has also amended his view of the issue.
If he were to write his book today, "I wouldn't focus on the poverty-stricken masses", he told the BBC.
"I would focus on there being too many rich people. It's crystal clear that we can't support seven billion people in the style of the wealthier Americans."
Pakistan's shadowy secret service
Pakistan's directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, usually called the ISI, is accused of many vices.
Critics say it runs "a state within a state", subverts elected governments, supports the Taliban and is even involved in drug smuggling. The Pakistani authorities deny the allegations.
Like many other military intelligence organisations, the shadowy ISI zealously guards its secrets and evidence against it is sketchy.
Surveillance However, the agency is a central organ of Pakistan's military machine which has played a major - often dominant - role in the country's often turbulent politics.
Gen Zia ul-Haq helped the US against the Soviets in Afghanistan In the 1950s, when Pakistan joined anti-communist alliances, its military services and the ISI received considerable Western support in training and equipment.
The ISI's attention was focused on India, considered Pakistan's arch-enemy.
But when Ayub Khan, the army commander-in-chief, mounted the first successful coup in 1958, the ISI's domestic political activities expanded.
As a new state bringing together diverse ethnic groups within what some described as contrived borders, Pakistan faced separatist challenges - among Pashtuns, Balochis, Sindhis and Bengalis.
Much of the country's early history was shaped by politicians seeking regional autonomy and the central civilian and military bureaucracies trying to consolidate national unity.
The ISI not only mounted surveillance on parties and politicians, it often infiltrated, co-opted, cajoled or coerced them into supporting the army's centralising agenda.
Defeat and disgrace The army ran the country from 1958 to 1971, when East Pakistan broke away with Indian and Soviet help to become Bangladesh.
Gen Musharraf denied the ISI was backing the Taleban But they gained fresh purpose in 1972 when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the new civilian leader, launched a clandestine project to build nuclear weapons.
A year later military operations were launched against nationalist militants in Balochistan province.
These two events helped rehabilitate the ISI and the military.
After Bhutto was ousted by Gen Zia ul-Haq in 1977, the Balochistan operations were ended but the nuclear programme was expanded.
The Marxist revolution in Afghanistan in the same year threatened Pakistan by opening a second "strategic front" (the first being with India to the east).
The ISI was restored to its past eminence.
Secret funding The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 transformed the regional setting.
The aims of the army and those of the ISI often differ Revolutionary Iran offered some aid to anti-Soviet guerrillas in western Afghanistan.
But all other foreign assistance to the mujahideen arrived via Pakistan, to be handled by the ISI whose Afghan bureau co-ordinated all operational activities with the seven guerrilla militias.
This was done in such secrecy that the Pakistani military itself was kept in the dark.
Just to get a sense of the scale of the operation - the CIA provided enough arms to equip a 240,000-man army, and the Saudis matched US funding dollar for dollar.
Other countries provided arms and money and Muslim countries also encouraged volunteers to join the jihad or holy war.
Mujahideen role Foreign money helped to establish hundreds of madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan's cities and frontier areas.
The ISI is accused of backing protesting lawyers in 2007-8 The ISI managed this operation, handling tens of thousands of tons of ordnance every year and co-ordinating the action of several hundred thousand fighters in great secrecy.
Eventually, in 1988, the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw its forces by 1989, and did so.
This was seen as a great victory for the mujahideen and their patrons in Pakistan and farther afield, and a trigger for the subsequent Soviet collapse.
The 10-year-long Afghan war not only bestowed on the ISI huge experience of covert warfare, it also created for it a vast reserve of motivated manpower that could be used as its proxy in the geo-strategic horseplay of regional powers.
The strength of this proxy force has been sustained through endless fresh recruitment from religious seminaries and from areas under the militants' control.
There is plenty of evidence that in 1988, without directly involving Pakistan in a conflict, the ISI moved Islamic militants from Afghanistan to Indian-administered Kashmir to start an insurgency there.
The insurgency still continues and its funding, logistics and communications are all believed to be controlled by the ISI.
India has repeatedly accused Pakistan, and especially the ISI, of involvement in Kashmir and in attacks elsewhere in India.
Civilian targets In Afghanistan, many believe the ISI helped the Taliban at a tactical as well as a strategic level to capture power and defeat forces sympathetic to India, Iran or the Central Asian states.
The ISI has also been linked with Islamabad's 2007 Red Mosque siege Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's attempt to clip the ISI's wings and hand over its operations to the Military Intelligence (MI) translated into huge political costs for him.
It is widely suspected that the Red Mosque militants who challenged the Musharraf regime in Islamabad had the ISI's backing.
The siege of the Red Mosque in July 2007 led to the killing of more than 100 people holed up in the mosque, including male and female students of a religious seminary.
The event sparked the formation of the Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has launched scores of attacks against Pakistani military and civilian targets.
The lawyers' movement during 2007-8, which ultimately brought Mr Musharraf down, is also believed to have enjoyed direct or indirect support from the ISI.
More recently, the "Punjabi Taliban" that is attacking government targets under the TTP banner are known to have been facilitated by the ISI in their sanctuaries in the north-western Waziristan tribal region.
The BBC has been told from reliable sources that both the Punjabi Taliban and tribal fighters are conducting operations against Nato forces in Afghanistan with the logistical support of the Pakistani military.
Sources say this support is orchestrated by the ISI.
Afghanistan: Pakistan army denies backing Taliban
The Pakistan army has strongly denied claims made in a BBC documentary that the Pakistani security services are supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Pakistani army spokesman Major Gen Athar Abbas described the allegations made by US and Afghan officials as "baseless and malicious".He claimed that the US and Afghanistan were trying to blame Pakistan for their own failures.
The first part of the documentary Secret Pakistan aired on Wednesday.
The programme accuses Pakistan of playing a double game, acting as America's ally in public while secretly training and arming its enemy in Afghanistan.
'Miserable performance' Gen Abbas said the ISI (Pakistani secret service) had itself suffered at the hands of al-Qaeda and its affiliates, saying about 300 officials had died in attacks.
"You think it is sane for any intelligence operator to harbour people who'll attack its own men?" he said.
He also claimed that Pakistan was being used as a scapegoat for the situation in Afghanistan.
"The performance of all intelligence agencies in Afghanistan has been miserable. That's why they want to dump this on Pakistan and the ISI," he said.
"We have the right to take legal action and legal response against the BBC," he added.
BBC spokeswoman Helen Deller said the documentary was made in line with BBC editorial guidelines and did "not attempt to take sides".
"Secret Pakistan was made in accordance with the BBC's editorial guidelines, information we gained was checked with multiple sources and the programme strove to be fair and accurate."
"The Pakistani position and official response to the allegations made not only by Western officials and Taliban fighters but also Pakistani representatives is carried throughout by several different voices."
The US has long suspected Pakistan, or elements within the ISI, of supporting militant groups in order to increase its influence in Afghanistan.
Similar claims in the past have been repeatedly denied by Pakistan.
Saudi Arabia names Prince Nayef as heir to throne
Saudi Arabia has named Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz al Saud as the heir to the throne of King Abdullah.
The move follows the death last week of the previous crown prince, Sultan bin Abdul Aziz.The new crown prince, aged 78, has been the oil-rich kingdom's interior minister since 1975 and will now also become deputy prime minister.
King Abdullah, 87, is recovering from his third operation to treat back problems in less than a year.
Prince Nayef is a brother of the late Crown Prince Sultan, and like his brother, is regarded as less reform-minded than King Abdullah. He has been interior minister since 1975.
A royal court statement read out on state television said the crown prince had been appointed after the king met the Allegiance Council, a family body set up in 2006 to make the process of succession in the conservative Islamic kingdom smoother and more orderly.
The succession in Saudi Arabia still passes among the sons of King Abdulaziz, who established the modern Saudi kingdom during his reign from 1902 to 1953.
Next in line is expected to be Crown Prince Nayef's younger brother, Prince Salman, who is the governor of Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia's new Crown Prince Nayef has served as interior minister since 1975 New ministries controversy
ON Wednesday, just before he left for Australia to attend a Commonwealth meeting, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani created four new ministries. There are indications that the heated debate this act has ignited will still be raging when the prime minister returns home after a few days. It will not die down easily, even though the federal government appears to have the law on its side.
The PPP-led government, heavily dependent on allies and forever having to appease its own members, had a fair idea it could not give a pledge to keep the cabinet small.
Consequently, as it piloted the 18th Amendment through parliament, it got inserted in the constitution a meaningful proviso that the clause which limits the size ofthe cabinet to 11 per cent of the total strength of parliament will only take effect after the formation of the next National Assembly. Besides, there are rules of business which allow a prime minister to `whenever necessary, constitute a new ministry consisting of one or more divisions`.
This gives the prime minister the legal authority to expand the size of his cabinet even when his action contravenes the principle behind the devolution of 17 ministries to the provinces and a downsizing drive at the centre under the 18th Amendment.The four ministries announced on Wednesday are in addition to an equal number created in the recent past. The decision has been justified in the name of good governance.
Since a purge in the cabinet in February was carried out on similar grounds, it is difficult to say which model of good governance is Mr Gilani as the head of some 50 ministers or advisers.
The question is one of necessity. What does the `whenever necessary` term in the rules or business stand for? Does it mean public need or some kind of consensus? Or does the arbitrary creation of a handful of ministries amount to pandering to the wishes and demands of those occupying the treasury benches? Much can be said to explain the situation of a government that has to tolerate blackmail by friends for continuing in power. But those truly deserving of sympathy are the people. The ideal of devolution has been lessened in value by the practical needs of politics, and the public will have to pay for the extravagance of a government that works in its name. The people will have to fund ministries that have been devolved to the provinces as well as those created at the federal level to accommodate a few souls who find themselves out of a job of their choice.
The PPP-led government, heavily dependent on allies and forever having to appease its own members, had a fair idea it could not give a pledge to keep the cabinet small.
Consequently, as it piloted the 18th Amendment through parliament, it got inserted in the constitution a meaningful proviso that the clause which limits the size ofthe cabinet to 11 per cent of the total strength of parliament will only take effect after the formation of the next National Assembly. Besides, there are rules of business which allow a prime minister to `whenever necessary, constitute a new ministry consisting of one or more divisions`.
This gives the prime minister the legal authority to expand the size of his cabinet even when his action contravenes the principle behind the devolution of 17 ministries to the provinces and a downsizing drive at the centre under the 18th Amendment.The four ministries announced on Wednesday are in addition to an equal number created in the recent past. The decision has been justified in the name of good governance.
Since a purge in the cabinet in February was carried out on similar grounds, it is difficult to say which model of good governance is Mr Gilani as the head of some 50 ministers or advisers.
The question is one of necessity. What does the `whenever necessary` term in the rules or business stand for? Does it mean public need or some kind of consensus? Or does the arbitrary creation of a handful of ministries amount to pandering to the wishes and demands of those occupying the treasury benches? Much can be said to explain the situation of a government that has to tolerate blackmail by friends for continuing in power. But those truly deserving of sympathy are the people. The ideal of devolution has been lessened in value by the practical needs of politics, and the public will have to pay for the extravagance of a government that works in its name. The people will have to fund ministries that have been devolved to the provinces as well as those created at the federal level to accommodate a few souls who find themselves out of a job of their choice.
IMF Report about Pakistan
A NEW International Monetary Fund report on the Middle East and Central Asia has painted a bleak picture of Pakistan`s economic outlook. It forecasts real GDP growth of just 2.6 per cent in FY2012 compared to Pakistan`s Annual Plan target of 4.2 per cent, inflation of nearly 14 per cent compared to the government`s own target of 12 per cent and a fiscal deficit of 6.5 per cent.
The report mainly discusses various global and regional factors for the softness in the region`s economies, including the continuing weakness of advanced economies and its effects on external demand. But it also points out Pakistan`s particular challenges: floods, urban violence, massive subsidies meant to absorb the impact of rising food and fuel prices, a poor business environment, unequal growth that leaves out those at the bottom of the economic ladder, an inefficient labour market and increasing domestic government borrowing that is squeezing the availability of credit to the private sector.
Many of the prescriptions the report suggests are not new, and by nowshould be obvious to any observer of the Pakistani economy. But they drive home the fact that the solutions are known, and that what is missing is the political will to implement them. Untargeted subsidies are singled out as being one of the main contributors to fiscal imbalances. The report claims that from the last quarter of2010 to the second quarter of 2011, none of the increase in international diesel prices, for example, was passed on to Pakistani consumers. The recommendation is to replace these with targeted social safety nets and to spend the savings on infrastructure, health and education.
This is part of an overall observation that Pakistan`s politicians and economic planners would do well to heed: growth that is not inclusive will not pay off in the long run.
Another aspect that has been stressed is reforming labour markets and the business environment, especially in light of the growing number of young people. But without enforcing legal frameworks, curbing corruption, educating the workforce and better governance, such reform will remain out of reach.
The report mainly discusses various global and regional factors for the softness in the region`s economies, including the continuing weakness of advanced economies and its effects on external demand. But it also points out Pakistan`s particular challenges: floods, urban violence, massive subsidies meant to absorb the impact of rising food and fuel prices, a poor business environment, unequal growth that leaves out those at the bottom of the economic ladder, an inefficient labour market and increasing domestic government borrowing that is squeezing the availability of credit to the private sector.
Many of the prescriptions the report suggests are not new, and by nowshould be obvious to any observer of the Pakistani economy. But they drive home the fact that the solutions are known, and that what is missing is the political will to implement them. Untargeted subsidies are singled out as being one of the main contributors to fiscal imbalances. The report claims that from the last quarter of2010 to the second quarter of 2011, none of the increase in international diesel prices, for example, was passed on to Pakistani consumers. The recommendation is to replace these with targeted social safety nets and to spend the savings on infrastructure, health and education.
This is part of an overall observation that Pakistan`s politicians and economic planners would do well to heed: growth that is not inclusive will not pay off in the long run.
Another aspect that has been stressed is reforming labour markets and the business environment, especially in light of the growing number of young people. But without enforcing legal frameworks, curbing corruption, educating the workforce and better governance, such reform will remain out of reach.
Too little, too late - Will the government never learn?
PROPER administration is as much about maintaining an image as it is about delivering the goods, and Pakistan Railways has failed badly on both counts. Mismanagement and alleged corruption have reduced the PR to a shadow of its former self. But even for an enterprise as bogged down in difficulties as the railways, the treatment suffered by PR pensioners in Lahore was shocking.
Elderly people gathered outside the National Bank`s Mughalpura branch on Tuesday to collect their long-delayed dues.
Men and women jostled to gain access to the single window to collect tokens.
Despite a long wait of several hours, many pensioners failed to get their money and were forced to spend the night on the premises hoping to get paid the next day. Wednesday proved more of a nightmare. Desperate senior citizens, many of whom had not been paid for as long as four months, waited their turn in thescorching sun. No arrangements had been made for their comfort by either thePRorthe bank.There was not even sufficient bank staff to attend to matters, even after one pensioner died and two others fainted.
It was in the afternoon that the bank announced it would remain open until all the cases had been served, while in the evening it said that `allout efforts` were being made to facilitate the PR pensioners. Compensation for the deceased pensioner`s heirs has been announced. Islamabad too has been galvanised, with President Zardari ordering an inquiry. All this, however, is a case of too little, too late. Given that the decision to release the pensions had been made earlier, we should have seen greater efforts at ensuring that the retired employees were paid in a hassle-free manner. Instead, insults were heaped on the pensioners` woes.
Will the government never learn?
Elderly people gathered outside the National Bank`s Mughalpura branch on Tuesday to collect their long-delayed dues.
Men and women jostled to gain access to the single window to collect tokens.
Despite a long wait of several hours, many pensioners failed to get their money and were forced to spend the night on the premises hoping to get paid the next day. Wednesday proved more of a nightmare. Desperate senior citizens, many of whom had not been paid for as long as four months, waited their turn in thescorching sun. No arrangements had been made for their comfort by either thePRorthe bank.There was not even sufficient bank staff to attend to matters, even after one pensioner died and two others fainted.
It was in the afternoon that the bank announced it would remain open until all the cases had been served, while in the evening it said that `allout efforts` were being made to facilitate the PR pensioners. Compensation for the deceased pensioner`s heirs has been announced. Islamabad too has been galvanised, with President Zardari ordering an inquiry. All this, however, is a case of too little, too late. Given that the decision to release the pensions had been made earlier, we should have seen greater efforts at ensuring that the retired employees were paid in a hassle-free manner. Instead, insults were heaped on the pensioners` woes.
Will the government never learn?
Haqqani safe havens have to be destroyed; strong Pak-India ties real game-changer Clinton wants Mulla Omar in peace talks
WASHINGTON, Oct 27: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a congressional panel on Thursday that any Afghan-led peace process would have to include the Quetta Shura and its leader Mulla Omar.
Her statement before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs also emphasised several other key points reflecting a major change in US approach towards seeking a peaceful end to the Afghan conflict.
`There is no solution in the region without Pakistan and no stable future in the region without a partnership.
The US needs to negotiate with the Haqqani network while continuing to work with Pakistan to destroy the safe havensithasinside Fata.
The US aid to Pakistan should not be conditioned to disbanding Lashkar-iTaiba. And the `real game-changer in the region` would be a stronger relationship between Pakistan and India.
Her statement indicated that the new US approach had evolved further after Secretary Clinton`s visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan last week where she discussed this strategy with the leaders of those two countries as well.
After the visit, she told the US media that the United States and Pakistan had reached 90-95 per cent agreement on the issues that at one stage appeared close to breaking up their relationship.
The lawmakers, who still seem upset with Pakistan over its alleged links to the militants, created several opportunities for the secretary to browbeatPakistan but she refrained from doing so.
Congressman Steve Chabot, a Republican, asked Secretary Clinton if the US was prepared to negotiate with Mulla Omar. `And if so, under what circumstances and what would our conditions be?` he asked.
`Well, Congressman, the negotiations that would be part of any Afghan-led peace process would have to include the Quetta Shura and would have to include some recognition by the Quetta Shura which, based on everything we know, is still led by Mulla Omar, that they wish to participate in such a process,` she responded. `We are pursuing every thread of any kind of interest expressed.
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the panel`s chairperson, questioned the wisdom of engaging the Haqqani network while it continued to attack US soldiers in Afghanistan. `What`s the US strategy, crackdown or negotiate with the Haqqani network or a little bit of both,` she asked.
`It`s both,` said Secretary Clinton.
Later, while responding to Congressman Chabot, she said the US agreed to meet the Haqqani network because that the ISI had asked them to do so.
`This was done in part because I think the Pakistanis hope to be able to move the Haqqani network towards some kind of peace negotiation and the answer was an attack on our embassy` in Kabul.
The US still wanted to stay engaged with the Haqqani network to test whether these organisations had any willingness to negotiate in good faith, she told Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen.
`There is evidence going both ways, to be clear. Sometimes we hear that theywill, that there are elements within each that wish to pursue that, and then other times that it`s off the table.` she added.
Secretary Clinton noted that only last week the US had launched a major military operation in Afghanistan that rounded up and eliminated more than 100 Haqqani network operatives. `And we are taking action to target the Haqqani leadership on both sides of the border,` she said. `We are already working with the Pakistanis to target those who are behind a lot of the attacks against Afghans and Americans.
Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen asked Secretary Clinton to comment on a recent statement by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that if there was war between Pakistan and America, he would side with Pakistan.
Secretary Clinton said that as soon as she heard this statement, she asked the US ambassador in Kabul to figure out what Mr Karzai meant and the ambassador reported back that Mr Karzai was talking about the long history of cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan, in particular the refuge that Pakistan provided to millions of Afghans during the Soviet occupation.
`This was not at all about a war that anybody was predicting,` she said.Responding to a question about recent remarks by US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta and former military chief Admiral Mike Mullen, who blamed Pakistan for continuing to support the militants, Secretary Clinton said that neither Mr Panetta nor Admiral Mullen ever questioned the need to stay engaged with Pakistan.
She said that everyone in the US administration believed that the Haqqanis had safe havens inside Pakistan and used these hideouts for attacking US and Afghan soldiers.
`And we also agree, however, ... that there is no solution in the region without Pakistan and no stable future in the region without a partnership.
Congressman Ed Royce, another Republican, reminded her that another congressional panel had asked the Obama administration to condition US assistance to Pakistan to shutting down the LeT and asked her if she was willing to do so.
`We have had intensive discussions with our Indian counterparts` on the LeT and on the attacks it allegedly carried out in India.
But `I do not want to commit at this time to taking such a path because I think it`s important that there be further consideration of all of the implications,` Secretary Clinton said.
`Certainly, every time we meet with the Pakistanis, we press them on the LeT about the continuing failure, in our view, to fulfil all of the requirements necessary for prosecutionrelated to the Mumbai attacks and we will continue to do so,` she said.
Secretary Clinton said that like the congressman, she too worried about the possibility that LeT attacks inside India could trigger yet another war between India and Pakistan.
`And we discuss it in great depth with our Indian counterparts, because it is, first and foremost, a concern of theirs. It is obviously also concerning to us.
Congressman Joe Wilson, also a Republican, noted that Pakistan was developing a most-favoured nation trade status with India and asked what the US could do to promote a level of trade and positive contact between India and Pakistan.
`Well, Congressman, I agree with you that the real game-changer in the region is not so much our bilateral relationship as the relationship between Pakistan and India. And the more that there can be progress, the more likely there can be even more progress,` the secretary said.
`So we have in Pakistan today a leadership, both civilian and military, that wants to see progress with India, and we have the same on the Indian side.
Her statement before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs also emphasised several other key points reflecting a major change in US approach towards seeking a peaceful end to the Afghan conflict.
`There is no solution in the region without Pakistan and no stable future in the region without a partnership.
The US needs to negotiate with the Haqqani network while continuing to work with Pakistan to destroy the safe havensithasinside Fata.
The US aid to Pakistan should not be conditioned to disbanding Lashkar-iTaiba. And the `real game-changer in the region` would be a stronger relationship between Pakistan and India.
Her statement indicated that the new US approach had evolved further after Secretary Clinton`s visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan last week where she discussed this strategy with the leaders of those two countries as well.
After the visit, she told the US media that the United States and Pakistan had reached 90-95 per cent agreement on the issues that at one stage appeared close to breaking up their relationship.
The lawmakers, who still seem upset with Pakistan over its alleged links to the militants, created several opportunities for the secretary to browbeatPakistan but she refrained from doing so.
Congressman Steve Chabot, a Republican, asked Secretary Clinton if the US was prepared to negotiate with Mulla Omar. `And if so, under what circumstances and what would our conditions be?` he asked.
`Well, Congressman, the negotiations that would be part of any Afghan-led peace process would have to include the Quetta Shura and would have to include some recognition by the Quetta Shura which, based on everything we know, is still led by Mulla Omar, that they wish to participate in such a process,` she responded. `We are pursuing every thread of any kind of interest expressed.
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the panel`s chairperson, questioned the wisdom of engaging the Haqqani network while it continued to attack US soldiers in Afghanistan. `What`s the US strategy, crackdown or negotiate with the Haqqani network or a little bit of both,` she asked.
`It`s both,` said Secretary Clinton.
Later, while responding to Congressman Chabot, she said the US agreed to meet the Haqqani network because that the ISI had asked them to do so.
`This was done in part because I think the Pakistanis hope to be able to move the Haqqani network towards some kind of peace negotiation and the answer was an attack on our embassy` in Kabul.
The US still wanted to stay engaged with the Haqqani network to test whether these organisations had any willingness to negotiate in good faith, she told Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen.
`There is evidence going both ways, to be clear. Sometimes we hear that theywill, that there are elements within each that wish to pursue that, and then other times that it`s off the table.` she added.
Secretary Clinton noted that only last week the US had launched a major military operation in Afghanistan that rounded up and eliminated more than 100 Haqqani network operatives. `And we are taking action to target the Haqqani leadership on both sides of the border,` she said. `We are already working with the Pakistanis to target those who are behind a lot of the attacks against Afghans and Americans.
Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen asked Secretary Clinton to comment on a recent statement by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that if there was war between Pakistan and America, he would side with Pakistan.
Secretary Clinton said that as soon as she heard this statement, she asked the US ambassador in Kabul to figure out what Mr Karzai meant and the ambassador reported back that Mr Karzai was talking about the long history of cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan, in particular the refuge that Pakistan provided to millions of Afghans during the Soviet occupation.
`This was not at all about a war that anybody was predicting,` she said.Responding to a question about recent remarks by US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta and former military chief Admiral Mike Mullen, who blamed Pakistan for continuing to support the militants, Secretary Clinton said that neither Mr Panetta nor Admiral Mullen ever questioned the need to stay engaged with Pakistan.
She said that everyone in the US administration believed that the Haqqanis had safe havens inside Pakistan and used these hideouts for attacking US and Afghan soldiers.
`And we also agree, however, ... that there is no solution in the region without Pakistan and no stable future in the region without a partnership.
Congressman Ed Royce, another Republican, reminded her that another congressional panel had asked the Obama administration to condition US assistance to Pakistan to shutting down the LeT and asked her if she was willing to do so.
`We have had intensive discussions with our Indian counterparts` on the LeT and on the attacks it allegedly carried out in India.
But `I do not want to commit at this time to taking such a path because I think it`s important that there be further consideration of all of the implications,` Secretary Clinton said.
`Certainly, every time we meet with the Pakistanis, we press them on the LeT about the continuing failure, in our view, to fulfil all of the requirements necessary for prosecutionrelated to the Mumbai attacks and we will continue to do so,` she said.
Secretary Clinton said that like the congressman, she too worried about the possibility that LeT attacks inside India could trigger yet another war between India and Pakistan.
`And we discuss it in great depth with our Indian counterparts, because it is, first and foremost, a concern of theirs. It is obviously also concerning to us.
Congressman Joe Wilson, also a Republican, noted that Pakistan was developing a most-favoured nation trade status with India and asked what the US could do to promote a level of trade and positive contact between India and Pakistan.
`Well, Congressman, I agree with you that the real game-changer in the region is not so much our bilateral relationship as the relationship between Pakistan and India. And the more that there can be progress, the more likely there can be even more progress,` the secretary said.
`So we have in Pakistan today a leadership, both civilian and military, that wants to see progress with India, and we have the same on the Indian side.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Pakistan judge Pervez Ali Shah 'flees death threats'
Pakistan judge Pervez Ali Shah 'flees death threats'
Malik Mumtaz Hussein Qadri became a hero to many in Pakistan A Pakistani judge who convicted a Muslim extremist of murder has fled to Saudi Arabia after getting death threats, his colleagues say.
Pervez Ali Shah gave the death sentence to Malik Mumtaz Hussein Qadri for killing Punjab Governor Salman Taseer.Qadri said he believed Mr Taseer was undermining blasphemy laws, which may lead to execution for people convicted of insulting the Prophet Muhammad.
The Lahore High Court later denied Judge Shah had fled.
A court spokesman said that he had taken temporary leave in order to go on a pilgrimage.
"He remains presiding officer of the child protection court. He left with proper permission from the court," the spokesman told AFP news agency.
But Saiful Malook, who prosecuted the Qadri case, said the government had sent Judge Shah abroad.
"The death threats have forced Shah to leave Pakistan along with his family for Saudi Arabia," Mr Malook told local media.
Continue reading the main story
Pakistan's religious laws
- General laws against trespass and defiling monuments first codified in 1860 by India's British rulers
- Expanded in 1927 and inherited by Pakistan after partition in 1947
- Islamisised under 1980s military government of Zia ul-Haq
- 1982: Life imprisonment introduced for desecration of Koran
- 1984: Ahmadi sect barred from calling themselves, and behaving as, Muslims
- 1986: Death sentence for blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad
- High rate of conviction in lower courts, but usually overturned in higher courts
Qadri, who was one of a team of police bodyguards assigned to protect Mr Taseer, shot him 27 times in the back in January.
Qadri said he was proud of what he had done - and many Pakistanis staged large protests in his support.Mr Taseer had called for debate about the blasphemy law, which human rights groups have condemned as unjust.
He also came out in support of a Christian mother of five, Asia Bibi, who had been sentenced to death for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.
The assassination divided Pakistan, with many hailing Qadri as a hero.
The BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad says that it is a case that continues to cause emotions to run high in Pakistan.
Our correspondent says that his fate will serve as a warning to other judges willing to take on the tough task of tackling extremism in Pakistan.
Correspondents say Mr Taseer's killing and other high-profile murders and abductions of moderates have temporarily stifled the debate over the blasphemy laws.
Pakistan's government has said it has no intention of amending the legislation.
Yemen women burn veils in Sanaa in anti-Saleh protest
Yemen women burn veils in Sanaa in anti-Saleh protest
Burning clothing is a traditional Bedouin tribal gesture by women appealing for help Hundreds of women have set fire to their traditional veils in Yemen in protest at the violence used against anti-government demonstrators.
The women, in the capital Sanaa, made a pile of veils in the street which they then doused with petrol and set alight. Women have played a key part in the uprising against Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
A Yemeni woman activist, Tawakkul Karman, was joint winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.
She received the award for her role in the struggle for women's rights and democracy in Yemen.
The veil-burning protest began when a group of women spread a black cloth across a main street.
They threw full-body veils, known as makrama, onto it.
As the flames rose, they chanted, "Who protects Yemeni women from the crimes of the thugs?"
The Associated Press news agency says they also handed out leaflets appealing for help.
"Here we burn our makrama in front of the world to witness the bloody massacres carried out by the tyrant Saleh," the leaflets read.
The message on the hand reads "get out", a message to President Saleh More than 20 people died in the fighting in Sanaa and the country's second city, Taiz.
On Tuesday, the government announced a truce which it said had been agreed with rival forces, but there was no sign of any pause in the clashes.
President Saleh has held on to power through eight months of protests against his 33-year rule.
The demonstrations were relatively peaceful to begin with but have increasingly degenerated into fighting between Saleh loyalists and different tribes and militias who have sided with the protesters.
There has been widespread international criticism of the Yemeni government's response to the uprising.
The United Nations Security Council has urged Mr Saleh to step down.
The president says he will sign a deal brokered by Gulf Arab countries to hand over power in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
He has repeatedly indicated that his departure is imminent, but has yet to name a date
Tunisia elections
NINE months after Tunisians overthrew dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Ennahda, an Islamist party banned by the previous regime, appears to have won the most seats in the North African country`s elections for a constituent assembly. Since the Islamists have not won an outright majority, they will most likely form a coalition government with leftist and liberal parties.
Turnout has been strong and international observers appear satisfied with the fairness of the polls.
Ennahda styles itself after the AKP, Turkey`s ruling party, which also has Islamist roots, and has distanced itself from extremism while pledging to respect pluralistic values.
Following the polls in Tunisia, which gave birth to the Arab Spring, Egypt is due to hold parliamentary elections next month; there too a party aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood is tipped to lead.
The Tunisian elections seem to confirm the belief that Islamists will fill the political void left bydecades of dictatorialrule in many parts of the Arab and Muslim world. It is true that in most of these countries Islamists form the most well-organised political groups, as even during autocratic rule these entities used the mosque to organise themselves. As dictators disallowed democratic freedoms and crushed dissent, the most active opposition was formed by parties rooted in political Islam.
Tunisia should serve as a lesson to others. Most importantly, the democratic process must not be stalled for fear of an Islamist takeover. History should be allowed to run its course and the people`s choices need to be respected. If fledgling democracy an evolutionary process, especially in societies run for long periods by autocrats is tinkered with the results can be disastrous. We have before us Algeria`s example: a savage decade-long civil war ensued there in the early 1990s when the state cancelled elections Islamists were poised to win.
Turnout has been strong and international observers appear satisfied with the fairness of the polls.
Ennahda styles itself after the AKP, Turkey`s ruling party, which also has Islamist roots, and has distanced itself from extremism while pledging to respect pluralistic values.
Following the polls in Tunisia, which gave birth to the Arab Spring, Egypt is due to hold parliamentary elections next month; there too a party aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood is tipped to lead.
The Tunisian elections seem to confirm the belief that Islamists will fill the political void left bydecades of dictatorialrule in many parts of the Arab and Muslim world. It is true that in most of these countries Islamists form the most well-organised political groups, as even during autocratic rule these entities used the mosque to organise themselves. As dictators disallowed democratic freedoms and crushed dissent, the most active opposition was formed by parties rooted in political Islam.
Tunisia should serve as a lesson to others. Most importantly, the democratic process must not be stalled for fear of an Islamist takeover. History should be allowed to run its course and the people`s choices need to be respected. If fledgling democracy an evolutionary process, especially in societies run for long periods by autocrats is tinkered with the results can be disastrous. We have before us Algeria`s example: a savage decade-long civil war ensued there in the early 1990s when the state cancelled elections Islamists were poised to win.
Afghan reconciliation
Afghan reconciliation
| 10/27/2011 12:00:00 AM`OPERATIONALISE` has become a key concept in the US-Pakistan relationship, mentioned by both the US secretary of state and the Pakistani foreign minister last week.
It was used in reference to a number of plans for regional security, but the focus seems to have been on Afghanistan`s reconciliation process. This was confirmed on Tuesday when State Department officials said the next step forward in US-Pakistan relations is to flesh out the operational details of the dialogue. Given the mixed achievements of the Isaf and Afghan military effort next door, this is a welcome move, demonstrating an acceptance that force alone is not going to resolve the power struggle in Afghanistan at least not before the Americans leave in 2014.
Despite Ms Clinton`s claims that the US and Pakistan have agreed on most issues, however, the mechanisms, parameters and goals of the reconciliation process seem to be shrouded in confusion.
One example of this is the repeated mention by both sides of the Sept 29 allparty conference resolution as an indication of Pakistan`s willingness to support dialogue. That is broadly true, but dialogue with whom? Insofar as it offers specifics, the resolution states Pakistan should talk `with our own people in the tribal areas` and makes no mention of the Haqqani network or the Afghan Taliban, despite the fact that theconference took place in the context of American accusations about Pakistani support for the former.
Second, while not specifically mentioning North Waziristan, it states that defending Pakistan`s sovereignty is a `sacred duty` and that `national interests ... shall guide Pakistan`s policy`. In the context of events at the time, this is effectively an indication that Pakistan will only launch an operation against the Haqqanis if and when it wants to and not under US pressure.
How will this be squared with America`s recently expressed desire that militants be `squeezed` even as talks are taking place? Can the Haqqani network be brought to the table if Pakistan refuses to go after it? But relying on the APC resolution only seems to be one potential source of confusion about the reconciliation process. Many questions remain. Will the three countries maintain their own separate dialogues? How will the core group of America, Pakistan and Afghanistan work alongside the bilateral effort that Pakistan and Afghanistan have supposedly been working on? What red lines are in fact workable? Is giving up arms, for example, a realistic precondition given the cultural issues involved? It is about time to start implementing the reconciliation process or to restart it, rather but the path forward is not as clear as public diplomacy might suggest.
Pensioner`s death in Lahore jolts govt out of slumber
Pensioner`s death in Lahore jolts govt out of slumber
LAHORE, Oct 26: Retired employees of Pakistan Railways started receiving their pension on Wednesday evening, about five hours after a pensioner died and two others fainted while standing in long queues outside a bank in Mughalpura.
Mahmood Khan had come to the bank near the Carriage Shop in Mughalpura on Tuesday morning. Unable to reach the bank`s window to get a `token` for payment, the 70-year-old retired bus driver of the Mughalpura Workshops decided to spend the night there like many others in the hope of getting paid on Wednesday.
`There were four people between Khan and the window when he collapsed at around 9:15am. We took him to the nearby PR hospital in a rickshaw where doctors pronounced him dead,` said Qayyum who had spent the night with his former colleague.
The death of the elderly could not move the bank management and only one employee was there to make the payment and he took 15 to 20 minutes on each case.
Pensioners had to wait for hours for their turn in scorching sun. There was no arrangement for drinking water or a shade in a clear violation of a State Bank order in this regard.Because of the unbearable heat, another pensioner Syed Jaffar Hussain fainted after about an hour. The 75-yearold retired employee, however, gained consciousness after some time and a relative took him to his house in Nabipura.
After another pensioner Muhammad Shafi fainted half an hour later some officials of the Shalamar Town municipal administration arrived there with some packs of juices.
`My family is on the verge of starvation. I have not been paid pension for four months. I will be forced to start begging if I don`t get pension today,` the 85year-old man said.
When Kulsoom Bibi, a widow, was narrating her ordeal, bank manager (operations) Ehsan came out at around 2pm and announced that the branch would remain open till all pensioners were paid and more employees would be there to deal with their cases.
He did not answer questions about there being no shade and no arrangement for drinking water outside the bank. The bank`s provincial management issued a statement in the evening: `The National Bank of Pakistan is making all-out efforts to facilitate Pakistan Railways pensioners at all its pension disbursing branches.
`All the staff in branches from wherepension distribution is managed will work till late hours to help all pensioners present at these branches. In addition to this, the number of pension distribution counters at all these branches has also been increased to speed up the process.
`The NBP has also made arrangements to provide shade and water for those who are waiting outside the branches. We may add that NBP disburses pension of all government organisations/departments as per their mandate and funds being available in their respective accounts with the bank,` said the statement.
Railways Director (Public Relations) Abdul Hameed Razi told Dawn that Rs363 million had been transferred to the pension account of the bank and majority of retired employees would get their dues by Thursday evening and all employees and pensioners would be paid before Nov 5.
Expressing sympathies with the family of Mahmood Khan, Mr Razi said Minister for Railways Haji Ghulam Ahmad Bilour had announced a compensation of Rs500,000 for his heirs.
Amin Ahmed adds from Islamabad: President Asif Zardari expressed concern over the death of the pensioner the and long queues at the branch of the National Bank of Pakistan at Railways Headquarters and ordered an immediate inquiry.
According to his spokesperson Farhatullah Babar, the president directed Railways` Secretary Javed Iqbal to visit Lahore, investigate the matter and submit a report to theprime minister within three days and its copy to the Presidency.
Railways` General Manager Saeed Akhter told Dawn that the secretary would be in Lahore on Thursday.
He said the secretary also spoke to the NBP president and urged him to take to task the staff of the branch.
It is learnt that the NBP president assured Mr Javed Iqbal that arrangementswould be made to ensure prompt and smooth payment of pensions.
Video footage of TV channels on Wednesday morning showed that the NBP had taken no measures for quick payment of pensions.
Besides, the NBP management had asked women pensioners and widows to approach the same window which was meant for male pensioners.
Mahmood Khan had come to the bank near the Carriage Shop in Mughalpura on Tuesday morning. Unable to reach the bank`s window to get a `token` for payment, the 70-year-old retired bus driver of the Mughalpura Workshops decided to spend the night there like many others in the hope of getting paid on Wednesday.
`There were four people between Khan and the window when he collapsed at around 9:15am. We took him to the nearby PR hospital in a rickshaw where doctors pronounced him dead,` said Qayyum who had spent the night with his former colleague.
The death of the elderly could not move the bank management and only one employee was there to make the payment and he took 15 to 20 minutes on each case.
Pensioners had to wait for hours for their turn in scorching sun. There was no arrangement for drinking water or a shade in a clear violation of a State Bank order in this regard.Because of the unbearable heat, another pensioner Syed Jaffar Hussain fainted after about an hour. The 75-yearold retired employee, however, gained consciousness after some time and a relative took him to his house in Nabipura.
After another pensioner Muhammad Shafi fainted half an hour later some officials of the Shalamar Town municipal administration arrived there with some packs of juices.
`My family is on the verge of starvation. I have not been paid pension for four months. I will be forced to start begging if I don`t get pension today,` the 85year-old man said.
When Kulsoom Bibi, a widow, was narrating her ordeal, bank manager (operations) Ehsan came out at around 2pm and announced that the branch would remain open till all pensioners were paid and more employees would be there to deal with their cases.
He did not answer questions about there being no shade and no arrangement for drinking water outside the bank. The bank`s provincial management issued a statement in the evening: `The National Bank of Pakistan is making all-out efforts to facilitate Pakistan Railways pensioners at all its pension disbursing branches.
`All the staff in branches from wherepension distribution is managed will work till late hours to help all pensioners present at these branches. In addition to this, the number of pension distribution counters at all these branches has also been increased to speed up the process.
`The NBP has also made arrangements to provide shade and water for those who are waiting outside the branches. We may add that NBP disburses pension of all government organisations/departments as per their mandate and funds being available in their respective accounts with the bank,` said the statement.
Railways Director (Public Relations) Abdul Hameed Razi told Dawn that Rs363 million had been transferred to the pension account of the bank and majority of retired employees would get their dues by Thursday evening and all employees and pensioners would be paid before Nov 5.
Expressing sympathies with the family of Mahmood Khan, Mr Razi said Minister for Railways Haji Ghulam Ahmad Bilour had announced a compensation of Rs500,000 for his heirs.
Amin Ahmed adds from Islamabad: President Asif Zardari expressed concern over the death of the pensioner the and long queues at the branch of the National Bank of Pakistan at Railways Headquarters and ordered an immediate inquiry.
According to his spokesperson Farhatullah Babar, the president directed Railways` Secretary Javed Iqbal to visit Lahore, investigate the matter and submit a report to theprime minister within three days and its copy to the Presidency.
Railways` General Manager Saeed Akhter told Dawn that the secretary would be in Lahore on Thursday.
He said the secretary also spoke to the NBP president and urged him to take to task the staff of the branch.
It is learnt that the NBP president assured Mr Javed Iqbal that arrangementswould be made to ensure prompt and smooth payment of pensions.
Video footage of TV channels on Wednesday morning showed that the NBP had taken no measures for quick payment of pensions.
Besides, the NBP management had asked women pensioners and widows to approach the same window which was meant for male pensioners.
Karzai abandons peace talks with the Taliban
Karzai abandons peace talks with the Taliban
President Karzai says peace can only be achieved by talks with Pakistan Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said his government will no longer hold peace talks with the Taliban.
He said the killing of Burhanuddin Rabbani had convinced him to focus on dialogue with Pakistan.Former Afghan President Rabbani was negotiating with the Taliban but was killed by a suicide bomber purporting to be a Taliban peace emissary.
US President Barack Obama has renewed calls for Pakistani action against militants of the Haqqani network.
Mr Karzai, speaking to a group of religious leaders, said there were no partners for dialogue among the Taliban. It was not possible to find the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, he added.
"Where is he? We cannot find the Taliban Council. Where is it?" he said.
"A messenger comes disguised as a Taliban Council member and kills, and they neither confirm nor reject it. Therefore, we cannot talk to anyone but to Pakistan," Mr Karzai told the meeting.
"Who is the other side in the peace process? I do not have any other answer but to say Pakistan is the other side in the peace talks with us."
A statement by members of the nationwide council of religious scholars praised Rabbani's efforts to bring peace to the country, and condemned his killing in the strongest terms.
'Terrorist hot bed' Last week, the US military accused Pakistan's spy agency of helping the Haqqani militant network in a recent attack on Kabul.
Pakistan's foreign minister responded by warning that the US could lose Pakistan as an ally if it continued to publicly accuse Islamabad of supporting militants.
Late on Friday, President Barack Obama renewed calls for Pakistan to take action against the group.
"My attitude is, whether there is active engagement with Haqqani on the part of the Pakistanis or rather just passively allowing them to operate with impunity in some of these border regions, they've got to take care of this problem," said Mr Obama.
Pakistan has long denied supporting the Haqqani group, but BBC correspondents say it has a decades-old policy of pursuing foreign policy objectives through alliances with militants.
Although Islamabad denies the network has safe havens inside Pakistan, the country's former national security adviser told the BBC that it was operating in North Waziristan, in Pakistan's restive tribal belt.
"Today North Waziristan is a hot bed," said Retired Maj Gen Mahmoud Durani.
"It's not just Haqqanis. Everybody who is anybody in the terrorist field is there. Although there is military (there)... I think they have a fair amount of freedom of action."
He said the army was too overstretched to take on the Haqqani group.
The BBC's Orla Guerin says that, privately, officials admit that the group is not a target for Pakistan because its members don't kill and maim inside the country.
US officials say they are close to deciding whether to label the group as a foreign terrorist organisation, and the Treasury Department on Thursday announced new sanctions on five individuals it said were linked to "the most dangerous terrorist organisations operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan".
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Afghanistan: Pakistan accused of backing Taliban
Afghanistan: Pakistan accused of backing Taliban
Pakistan has been accused of playing a double game, acting as America's ally in public while secretly training and arming its enemy in Afghanistan according to US intelligence.
In a prison cell on the outskirts of Kabul, the Afghan Intelligence Service is holding a young man who alleges he was recruited earlier this year by Pakistan's powerful military intelligence agency, the ISI.He says he was trained to be a suicide bomber in the Taliban's intensifying military campaign against the Western coalition forces - and preparations for his mission were overseen by an ISI officer in a camp in Pakistan.
After 15 days training, he was sent into Afghanistan.
Continue reading the main story 
“Start Quote
Bruce Riedel Adviser to President Obama in 2009In Afghanistan we saw an insurgency that was not only getting passive support from the Pakistani army and the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, but getting active support”
"There were three of us. We were put into a black vehicle with black windows. The police did not stop the car because it was obviously ISI. No-one dares stop their cars. They told me... you will receive your explosive waistcoat, and then go and explode it."
Taliban bases in Pakistan The man recruited to be a suicide bomber changed his mind at the last minute and was later captured by the Afghan intelligence service. But his story is consistent with a mass of intelligence which has convinced the Americans that, as they suspected, for the last decade Pakistan has been secretly arming and supporting the Taliban in its attempt to regain control of Afghanistan.
These suspicions started as early as 2002, when the Taliban began launching attacks across the border from their bases in Pakistan, but they became more widely held after 2006 when the Taliban's assault increased in its ferocity, not least against the ill-prepared British forces in Helmand province.
The final turning point in American eyes was the attack on Mumbai when 10 gunmen rampaged through the Indian city, killing 170 people - two weeks after Barack Obama's US presidential election victory in November 2008.
Despite Pakistan claiming it played no part in the attack, the CIA later received intelligence that it said showed the ISI were directly involved in training the Mumbai gunmen.
President Obama ordered a review of all intelligence on the region by a veteran CIA officer, Bruce Riedel.
Continue reading the main story 
“Start Quote
Najib Taliban militia commanderBecause Obama put more troops into Afghanistan... so Pakistan's support for us increased as well”
"Our own intelligence was unequivocal," says Riedel. "In Afghanistan we saw an insurgency that was not only getting passive support from the Pakistani army and the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, but getting active support."
Training and supplies Pakistan has repeatedly denied the claims. But the BBC documentary series Secret Pakistan has spoken to a number of middle-ranking - and still active - Taliban commanders who provide detailed evidence of how the Pakistan ISI has rebuilt, trained and supported the Taleban throughout its war on the US in Afghanistan."For a fighter there are two important things - supplies and a place to hide," said one Taliban commander, who fights under the name Mullah Qaseem. "Pakistan plays a significant role. First they support us by providing a place to hide which is really important. Secondly, they provide us with weapons."
Another commander, Najib, says: "Because Obama put more troops into Afghanistan and increased operations here, so Pakistan's support for us increased as well."
He says his militia received a supply truck with "500 landmines with remote controls, 20 rocket-propelled grenade launchers with 2000 to 3000 grenades... AK-47s, machine-guns and rockets".
Pakistani military Evidence of Pakistan's support for the Taliban is also plain to see at the border where insurgents are allowed to cross at will, or even helped to evade US patrols.
And the recent drone attacks in Pakistan have become increasingly effective as intelligence has been withheld from the Pakistanis, claims Mr Riedel.
"At the beginning of the drone operations, we gave Pakistan an advance tip-off of where we were going, and every single time the target wasn't there anymore. You didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to put the dots together."
Osama Bin Laden's capture and killing followed this same model - the Americans acting on their own, to the humiliation of Pakistan. Trust between the two supposed allies has never been lower.
Continue reading the main story 
SECRET PAKISTAN
- Secret Pakistan is on BBC Two on Wed 26 Oct and Wed 2 Nov at 21:00 (UK time)
- Watch afterwards via iPlayer (UK only)
Bin Laden was the reason America had attacked Afghanistan and overthrown the Taliban who had always refused to hand him over. His death has removed a major obstacle to peace.
Peace talksBut those who claim that Pakistan's hidden hand has shaped the conflict fear the same is now true of the negotiations for peace. Last year, in the Pakistani city of Karachi, Mullah Baradar, the Taliban's second-in-command, was captured by the ISI.
Secretly, Baradar had made contact with the Afghan government to discuss a deal that would end the war. He had done so without the ISI's permission and he was detained "to bring him back under control" according to one British diplomat.
More recently, Hawa Nooristani, a member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, says she was called to a secret meeting.
Waiting for her was a commander from the most lethal faction of the Taliban, the Haqqani network, which first brought suicide bombing to Afghanistan. To her astonishment he said he wanted peace talks.
"He said it was vital Pakistan intelligence knew nothing of the meeting. He said not to disclose it because Pakistan does not want peace with Afghanistan and even now they are training new Taleban units.
"He was also scared that the Pakistanis will arrest him because he lives in Pakistan and he said it would be easy for them to arrest him."
Talks with the Taliban collapsed after the killing of former President Rabbani Any future peace will have to be concluded with Pakistan President Karzai has since declared
To American policy advisers like Bruce Riedel, the message is clear:
"The ISI may not be able to deliver the Taliban to the negotiating table, but they can certainly spoil any negotiations process. So far, there's very little sign, that I've seen, that Pakistan is interested in a political deal."
While denying links to the Taliban, Pakistan insists that it is doing no more than what any country would do in similar circumstances.
"We cannot disregard our long term interest because this is our own area," said General Athar Abbas, chief spokesman for Pakistan's military.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during a recent visit to Pakistan: "The Pakistanis have a role to play, they can either be helpful, indifferent or harmful."
But there are those like Mr Riedel who fear that the forces unleashed in 10 years of war may yet come to haunt the whole world:
"There is probably no worse nightmare, for America, for Europe, for the world, in the 21st Century than if Pakistan gets out of control under the influence of extremist Islamic forces, armed with nuclear weapons...The stakes here are huge."
What happens in Pakistan may yet be the most enduring legacy of 9/11 and the hunt for Bin Laden.
Secret Pakistan is on BBC Two at 9pm on Wednesday 26 October and Wednesday 2 November or watch online afterwards (UK only) via BBC iPlayer.
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