The World We Live In !!

Colonel Imam, 65, is scathing about Britain's move to buy off biddable insurgents and the US surge, warning that the Taleban are "fighting addicts

Perhaps no man alive knows Mullah Omar, his Taleban insurgents and the American military quite so well as “Colonel Imam”, a battle-creased Pakistani officer who wears a faded British paratrooper’s jacket and a turban.

As a top agent for the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, Colonel Imam recruited, trained and armed almost every one of Afghanistan’s prominent insurgents and warlords during the 1980s. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Ahmed Shah Massoud and Jalaluddin Haqqani were all his charges or colleagues at one time.

“I have the Green Beret,” Colonel Imam smiled, recalling the US special forces qualification gained in Fort Bragg in 1973. “But I think this Taleban beret is better.”

He escorted Charlie Wilson, the Texan congressman who funnelled millions of dollars to the Mujahidin, into Afghanistan three times and once took the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, then the CIA’s Deputy Director, to a Mujahidin camp near the border. But his closest relationship was with Mullah Omar, the Taleban’s fugitive leader, whom he taught to fight and survive, and to bring down one superpower and tie down another, over 30 years of war. Read more…

Less To Cheer

STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL, the famously self-controlled commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, could be forgiven if he let off an expletive when he heard that soldiers under his command had killed 27 civilians on Sunday February 21st. A missile strike on a three-vehicle convoy in an isolated area on the edge of the southern province of Uruzgan wrecked General McChrystal’s vigorous efforts to persuade Afghans that foreigners in their midst are striving to implement a counterinsurgency doctrine of “protecting the people”.

That is not how it looked to Saeed Zahir Zia, a local police chief, who said that he spent all day picking through the devastation to recover body parts and corpses, many of which were so badly mutilated that they were unrecognisable. The victims included women and children and were from the Hazara ethnic group, which is famously anti-Taliban. Read more…

Guest post sent in by Truth Seeker

MQM caught spying red-handed for foreign nationals and smuggling classified state material outside Pakistan and violated Official Secret Act.  According to a report published in the press Waseem Akthar (MNA) and former advisor to the Chief Minister on policing caught with spying devices and equipments. It is reported that MQM members in Karachi were sending recordings of the meetings with President Asif Zaradri, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilliani, Chief Minister, and Interior Minister   Rehman Malik. MQM also recoded and smuggled classified proceedings of sensitive meetings at the Rangers Headquarters in Karachi discussing security plan of Karachi most important city of Pakistan. The mode of transfer of the information is not been mentioned but one can assume sending as multi media file (voice recording) via internet or by an airline employee coming to London from Karachi.

Questions come to mind are why MQM politicians recorded and smuggled sensitive recordings to London: (a) they are forced to do for third party or parties (b) Altaf Hussain’s mistrust on local leaders in Karachi (c) Paranoia and HPD of Altaf Hussain.? Read more…

Monday, February 01, 2010
By Amir Mir

LAHORE: Afghanistan-based US predators carried out a record number of 12 deadly missile strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan in January 2010, of which 10 went wrong and failed to hit their targets, killing 123 innocent Pakistanis. The remaining two successful drone strikes killed three al-Qaeda leaders, wanted by the Americans.

The rapid increase in the US drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan can be gauged from the fact that only two such strikes were carried out in January 2009, which killed 36 people. The highest number of drone attacks carried out in a single month in 2009 was six, which were conducted in December last year. But the dawn of the New Year has already seen a dozen such attacks. Read more…

NEW DELHI: While the Indians celebrate 62nd Army Day, country’s Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor, just after a couple of weeks of announcing a new war doctrine of Indian army to eliminate Pakistan and China in matter of hours even if it has to fight on simultaneous fronts, outrageously admitted Indian Army’s Armoured debacle and expressed concern about the force’s ‘night blindness’ in the area of Armoured Corps and mechanized infantry.

‘My major concern is that night blindness of the army is removed so we are able to fight in the night as in the day,’ Kapoor said at New Delhi, an admission that stunned the world in the backdrop of his two weeks old remarks.

The situation also forced Indian Defence Minister Antony to chew his own buts as he had been endorsing and projecting General Kapoor’s announcement regarding the new war doctrine for Pakistan and China.

Earlier, when his attention was brought to the fact that the Indian Army’s tanks have a night vision capability of 20 percent, Pakistan’s have 80 percent while China has 100 percent, General Deepak Kapoor admitted this outrageous military debacle by saying: ‘You are right.’ Read more…

A private company owned by President Asif Ali Zardari and his son Bilawal Zardari purchased 2,460 Kanals (307 acres) of prime land in Islamabad in March 2009.

Valued at a CDA price of over Rs 2 billion, for a mere Rs 62 million, proving after a long wait that a 1997 NAB reference against Zardari for the same deal was justified, but had to be dropped then for lack of some missing links.

The deal which Zardari was accused of in 1997, was thus completed this March, 15 years later, after a complex process of legal cases, suits and counter-suits, between a person once declared by the then government as a front man of Asif Ali Zardari, another person believed to be closely associated with the president and a private company that is jointly owned by the president, his son and a few others.

Documents and legal papers, including the sale deed and court judgments given by the PCO-led Islamabad High Court, available with The News, prove that a Karachi-based private company, Park Lane Estates (Pvt) Ltd, purchased almost 2,500 Kanals of land near Sangjani from Faisal Sakhi Butt, who himself purchased the land from a Pakistani-American living in Houston, USA, named Muhammad Nasir Khan, for merely Rs 62 million. Nasir Khan was the original purchaser of this land in 1994 and was declared to be the front man of Zardari in the Ehtesab Bureau reference filed against him in 1997.

The latest officially CDA-assessed price of similar land, adjacent to the land in question, is Rs 850,000 per Kanal. If the Park Lane land is assessed on the basis of the rate fixed by the CDA, its market valuewould be around Rs 2 billion for the entire lot. A big chunk of land, adjacent to the presidentís land, is being acquired by the CDA at this rate although Zardari and his company got it for only Rs 25,000 per Kanal, a magic deal by all standards.

However, what is important to note is the fact that all the legal requirements were met in the purchase and transfer of this land to Park Lane Estates Pvt Ltd.

According to the Form-A Annual Return of this company, its share capital, as reflected in the SECP record, shows it has 120,000 shares of which Asif Ali Zardari and Bilawal Ali Zardari own 30,000 shares each. Zardari is shown as a Director and his son as a member with four others who appear as members and debenture holders.

Another man closely associated with Zardari, Muhammad Iqbal Memon of Federal B Area Karachi, is not only the Chief Executive of the company but is also reflected as its director besides owning 30,000 shares. Three other persons with the same address as that of Iqbal Memon own the remaining 30,000 shares. Memon was himself a much wanted man after the dismissal of the second Benazir government.

Besides President Zardari and Muhammad Iqbal Memon, the other directors are Rahmatullah Habib, Muhammad Younus and Altaf Hussain. All these directors and Bilawal Ali Zardari own the total 120,000 shares of the company as on August 31, 2008.

Read more…

TRUTH AND THEORY | DAWN Editorial

AS Karachi began burying its dead, worrying questions were being raised about the arson that followed Monday’s attack on an Ashura procession. It was initially thought that enraged mourners and their sympathisers had gone on the rampage, torching commercial buildings, police stations and vehicles to vent their anger. That was alarming in itself but there are now suggestions that there may be more behind the violence than spontaneous rioting. Building after building was torched within minutes, and some feel this points to a terror campaign that was planned in advance and executed with precision shortly after the blast. Then there are reports that chemical accelerants were used in setting the fires that were still burning on Wednesday. At least one fire department official believes there are “visible signs” that phosphorus was used in Monday’s acts of arson. If so, the ‘pre-planned’ theory may gain further ground. Needless to say, Ashura mourners are unlikely to be carrying phosphorous on their persons.

Theories abound but nothing can be said with certainty as ever-resilient Karachi recovers from the events of Monday. When all the evidence isn’t in, it serves no purpose to point the finger of blame at ‘non-state actors’ or foreign intelligence agencies. For the truth to be unmasked, all angles must be explored without political interference or prompting. The key here may lie in the footage ostensibly recorded by the city government’s growing CCTV network. Cameras were apparently in operation all along the procession’s route, and as such there is every chance that the outbreak of rioting may have been captured on film. Besides detailed chemical analysis of the crime scenes, investigators must focus on gleaning as much evidence as they can from this potentially crucial footage.

The efficacy of Karachi’s emergency response set-up also needs to be revisited. True, both the police and firefighters were hampered by rioters who attacked them when they arrived on the scene. That may be so but eyewitnesses claim that fire tenders were slow in reaching the trouble spots to begin with. This charge is backed by Karachi’s capital city police officer, who made a pointed negative reference to “the capability and performance of our fire department”. Lastly, it is hoped that the authorities and private organisations will come good on their collective promise to raise reparation funds for the colossal losses — estimated at nearly Rs30bn — caused by Monday’s arson. Two years down the road, many are still awaiting compensation for the violence that rocked Karachi and other parts of Sindh following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Past injustices must not be repeated.

Story Via DAWN.COM