LONG LIVE BALOCHISTAN

JWP chief says his militia killed 30-35 commandos, shot down 2 helicopters

CLICK TO LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW OF NAWAB BUGTI


LAHORE: Tribal chief Nawab Akbar Bugti rejected the government’s claims of having killed 31 militants in a recent operation in Dera Bugti, saying that his private militia had instead inflicted severe damage on security forces.

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: PAKISTANI FORCES SUFFER HEAVY LOSE IN BALOCHISTAN.
CLICK TO LISTEN BBC NEWS

Tribal rebels in Pakistan's Balochistan province have denied claims that Pakistani troops killed 31 of their fighters in attacks this week.

Some rebels had been injured in the clashes and security forces had now withdrawn from the Dera Bugti area, spokesmen for the tribesmen said.

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Conflicting accounts of battle in Pakistan

Military says it killed 31 insurgents; tribal leaders deny toll, say they shot down a helicopter
By Naseer Kakar
ASSOCIATED PRESS
QUETTA, Pakistan - Security forces killed 31 fighters in an offensive against renegade Baluch tribesmen in southwestern Pakistan, officials said Thursday.

An aide of a top Baluch tribal leader, however, denied it, and said his militia had shot down a military helicopter — a claim rejected by the government.

It was not immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting accounts of Wednesday's fighting near Dera Bugti, a remote town about 210 miles southeast of Quetta, the capital of restive Baluchistan province.

Thousands of security forces have been deployed to battle the long-running insurgency in tribal regions of Pakistan's poorest province.

Tribesmen are demanding more royalties for natural gas extracted from their lands and oppose government moves to establish new military garrisons.

Abdur Raziq Bugti, the provincial government spokesman, said security forces on the ground, backed by helicopter gunships, targeted hideouts of militants accused of blowing up gas pipelines and attacking officials.

He said that intercepts of communications among the militants — who are led by prominent Baluch chieftain Nawab Akbar Bugti — indicated that 31 fighters had been killed.

Security forces also seized a cache of weapons, including rockets and land mines, but did not recover any bodies of dead militants, he said.

Wadera Alam Khan, a close aide of Akbar Bugti, denied any tribal fighters were killed.

"The helicopters bombed uninhabited mountainous areas that did not cause us any casualties. The government claims are based on lies," Khan said by phone from Dera Bugti.

"Our resistance fighters fired at and shot down a helicopter, and we are sure that all those flying in it have been killed," he said — although he offered no evidence to back up the claim.

The provincial government spokesman, and a military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not have the authority to make media comments, said no helicopter had been shot down in the operation.

The government offensive this year has forced renegade chieftain Akbar Bugti from his redoubt in Dera Bugti and into hiding in arid mountains.

The violence has raised fears of a repeat of an uprising that rocked Baluchistan in the 1970s, when thousands died in a large-scale military operation against rebellious tribesmen.

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Pakistan may hear a different tune from US

By Arun Kumar, Indo-Asian News Service

Washington, July 7 (IANS) Pakistan may well again raise the issue of an India type nuclear deal with US when Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri visits Washington next week, but he is more likely to hear a different tune - the war on terror and restoration of democracy in Pakistan.



When she meets Kasuri on Monday, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is expected to focus more on how growing tension between Kabul and Islamabd is affecting the global war on terror and how further democratisation of Pakistan can put it firmly on what President Pervez Musharraf calls the road to 'enlightened moderation.'

In tune with President George Bush's famous phrase in Islamabad last March that 'Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories', she may well remind Kasuri, as she did during her recent trip to Islamabad that the nuclear deal with India resulted from 'a special circumstance.'

And Pakistan's energy needs could well be met by other means like development of its coal reserves with US help as promised by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. But on the nuclear issue, the Americans are not expected to be any more receptive especially after offering it a $5.1 billion arms package, including 36 new F-16 fighter planes.
The Kasuri visit is taking place in the backdrop of a widening gulf between Kabul and Islamabad on the question of flushing out terrorists, especially the Taliban, operating from the tribal belt of North Waziristan and parts of Baluchistan.

He is thus expected to address a major US concern that in the face of increased terrorist activities, Kabul and Islamabad keep blaming each other instead of working together to curb terrorism. He would also try to remove misperceptions about Islamabad's new strategy to tackle extremism in the tribal belt through dialogue.

Washington would like to strengthen the trilateral mechanism of US, Afghanistan and Pakistan, aimed at eliminating the threat from Al Qaeda and the Taliban, at both tactical and strategic levels to make more effective.

Kasuri's interlocutors are also likely to remind him about Washington's expectation that starting with what Musharraf calls an 'enlightened and moderate Pakistan', Islamabad is finally going to move further on the road to democracy with free and fair elections in 2007.

While Afghanistan will be the primary focus, issues like US-Pakistan strategic dialogue and the composite dialogue process with India are expected to figure on Kasuri's agenda.

Kasuri will also meet with the National Security Advisor Steve Hadley and the chairmen of two key panels of US Congress, Richard Lugar and Henry Hyde, which are due to review the $5.1 billion arms package for Pakistan with the lower house committee taking it up on July 13.

The Congress has only until July 27, or 30 days after it was notified by the Pentagon, to reject the arms package. But it is widely expected that the deal would be approved as the administration has kept Congress members in the picture since March 2005 when US decided to sell F-16s to Pakistan.

Kasuri winds up his visit to Washington with a lecture on the war on terror, the Indian nuclear deal and US-Pakistani relations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on July 11.

Copyright Indo-Asian News Service

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Dropping Musharraf?
Conn Hallinan | July 6, 2006

Editor: John Feffer, IRC


Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3347

There is a whiff of “regime change” in the air these days, but not where you might expect it. Not in Iraq, where the conservative U.S.-backed Shiites are already in power. Not in Iran, where White House threats have served to unite, rather than divide, that country. But in Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf has recently fallen out of U.S. favor.

Consider the following developments.

The Bush administration's “man in Kabul,” Afghan President Hamid Karzai, recently fingered Pakistan as the source of the current fighting in the southern part of his country. “The world should go where terrorism is nourished, where it is provided money and ideology,” he told a Kabul press conference this past June. “The war in Afghanistan should not be limited to Afghanistan.”

Chris Patten, former European Union commissioner for external affairs, echoed this theme in a mid-May commentary in the Wall Street Journal. “The problem in Afghanistan,” wrote Patten, “is Islamabad.”

When President Bush visited Pakistan in March, he lectured President Musharraf about the need to be more aggressive in the “war on terrorism,” although Pakistan has lost more soldiers fighting the Taliban in its northwestern tribal areas than the entire NATO coalition has lost in Afghanistan. And Bush refused to discuss the issue of Kashmir, the major flashpoint in Pakistan-India relations that has brought the two nuclear-armed powers to the brink of war on several occasions.

Indeed, when Musharraf asked for the same nuclear agreement that Washington had just handed New Delhi, Bush openly insulted his Islamabad hosts. With the Pakistani president standing stiffly beside him, Bush told the press, “I explained that Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and histories.”

The nuclear deal—which was favorably voted out of House and Senate committees—would let India bypass Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty sanctions slapped on it for secretly developing atomic weapons. The Indians could freely buy uranium for their civilian reactors and in turn divert their meager domestic uranium supplies into constructing more nuclear weapons.

The Bush Administration also cut $350 million in civilian and military aid to Pakistan because of a “ failure” to improve democracy and human rights.

And according to Syed Saleem Shahzad, Pakistan bureau chief for the Asia Times, “ Western intelligence” has helped funnel money through Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and London to insurgents in Pakistan's Baluchistan Province.

One can hardly blame Pakistan for feeling as though they are in the U.S. crosshairs. But why the sudden thumb's down from Washington? Musharraf has basically done everything the White House wanted him to do, including breaking with the Taliban and sending 90,000 troops to seal the border with Afghanistan.

The answer is not that Pakistan has fallen out of favor, but that it is a pawn that has outlived its usefulness in a global chess match aimed at China.

Chess with China
In 1992 the George H.W. Bush administration drew up a Defense Planning Guidance document that laid out a blueprint for a post-Cold War world. “The United States will attempt to dissuade any military competitor from developing disruptive or other capabilities that could enable regional hegemony or hostile action against the United States,” the document read, continuing, “Of the major and emerging powers, China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States.”

Jump ahead to the year 2000 and a Foreign Affairs article by soon-to-be national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice: “China is not a ‘status quo' power, but one that would like to alter Asia's balance of power in its own favor … The United States must deepen its cooperation with Japan and South Korea and maintain its commitment to a robust military presence in the region,” she wrote, adding that the United States had to “pay close attention to India's role in the regional balance” to recruit the latter into an anti-China alliance.

While September 11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq derailed this grand scheme, recent developments suggest it is back on track, with strong support from the influential American Enterprise Institute, the Project for a New American Century, and wealthy foundations like Scaife, Olin, and Carthage.

The anti-China alliance is already well underway.

Japan and Australia have agreed to field U.S.-supplied anti-ballistic missiles, and the administration is wooing India to do the same. While the rationale for the ABMs is North Korea, the real target is China's twenty intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Japan—which has one of the largest navies in the world—is stepping up its military coordination with the United States and has agreed to support the United States in case it intervenes in a war between China and Taiwan.

In the meantime, the United States is pouring men and materials into Asia and beefing up bases in Japan and Guam. It is also conducting war games with India, and jointly patrolling the Malacca Straits with the Indian Navy.

There is a certain schizophrenia in U.S. policy toward China, because the United States needs China to ramrod the Six Party Talks with North Korea and would like China to join Washington's full court press on Iran. So far, however, China has refused to go along with economic sanctions against either Pyongyang or Tehran, a stance that has chilled relations with the Bush administration even further.

These counter-trends, however, are more than offset by Washington's continuing efforts to build bases in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, plus recent attacks by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on China's military (using some of the same language as in the 1992 document). In short, the Defense Guidance Plan appears to be alive and well.

But while chess is a supremely logical game, diplomacy is considerably messier, and the grand scheme to corner the dragon is stirring up some dangerous regional furies.

Japan Rising?
To get Japan on board the anti-China coalition, Washington has encouraged Tokyo to adopt a more muscular foreign policy. As a result, Japan has sent troops to Iraq and dumped Article Nine of its constitution renouncing war as a “sovereign right of the nation.”

When he was secretary of state, Colin Powell told the Financial Times, “If Japan is going to play a full role on the world's stage, Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution will have to be examined.”

Japanese right-wingers, with the support of over 100 members of the Diet, as well as powerful industrial organizations like Canon and Mitsubishi, are pushing textbooks that rewrite the history of World War II and downplay Japanese atrocities. But this resurgent Japanese nationalism has angered and frightened nations in the region, many of which have vivid memories of World War II.

Goading the dragon has become almost a sport in Japan. The government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi recently took control of a lighthouse first established by right-wing nationalists on Diaoyu Island, an action China called a “provocation against, and an intrusion into territorial sovereignty.” Japan and China have also clashed over the Chunxiao offshore oil field. A Japanese official told the Financial Times that Tokyo was pursuing “proportional escalation” over the fields.

South Korea, which suffered through more than three decades of brutal Japanese occupation, is barely on speaking terms with Tokyo, and has come close to blows with Japan over the Tokdo Islands claimed by both nations.

Washington's support for Japan's growing militarism has also fueled anti-Americanism in South Korea and a growing movement to close U.S. bases in that country. This is hardly the atmosphere for a grand alliance.

From Kashmir to Baluchistan
The law of unintended consequences may be playing itself out with Indian and Pakistan as well. India's central strategy has always been to insure control of Kashmir and to weaken the Pakistani Army, two goals that the Bush administration seems to share.

According to the Asia Times, a CIA official told the Indians that weakening the Pakistani army was central to the U.S. goal of bringing “democracy” to Pakistan, though the lack of it never bothered Washington in the past. The Times also reports that the CIA has been meeting with exiled former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who recently formed the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy.

General Hamid Gul, former head of the Pakistani InterService Intelligence organization, told the PakTribune that he thought the United States was aiming to replace Musharraf.

If the United States sides with India on Kashmir, Pakistan could be looking at a strategic defeat in a long-running dispute that would not only weaken the army but possibly destabilize the entire country.

So could a stalemate in Pakistan's counterinsurgency war in Baluchistan.

The Baluchistan conflict dates back to the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan. The Baluchs, who are ethnically distinct from the Punjabis who dominate Pakistan, were forced to become part of the new state. It is Pakistan's poorest province and at the same time home to the country's largest oil and gas deposits, two realities that help fuel the insurgency.

India has been sharply critical of Pakistani actions in Baluchistan, although the Indians are highly aggressive with their own separatist movements.

In a March meeting with U.S. Central Command chief General John Abizaid, Musharraf accused India of aiding the insurgents financially, a charge New Delhi denies.

Is U.S. support for the nuclear deal and the Kashmir policy a quid pro quo for India joining the anti-China alliance? It is hard to fathom what else might explain Washington's relentless criticism of Pakistan for not doing enough in the “war on terrorism,” or the recent cut in aid.

Pakistan's response has been to raise defense spending, step up its production of nuclear weapons, and test a new generation of long-range missiles. But there is a significant section of the Indian elite that doesn't particularly fear a nuclear war between the two nations. “India can survive a nuclear attack,” says former Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes, “but Pakistan cannot.”

Washington's obsession with China is unleashing some particularly malevolent forms of nationalism that threaten to destabilize a broad swath of the region from South Asia to the north Pacific. In this chess match, India, with its enormous population and economic potential, is a major piece on the board. Pakistan, with a sixth the population and a tenth the economic potential, is a pawn.

An expendable one it would appear.


Conn Hallinan is a foreign policy analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and a lecturer in journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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Pakistan revives body for federal, provincial coordination

By Indo Asian News Service

Islamabad, July 7 (IANS) Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has revived a constitutional body to debate on federal and inter-provincial issues and find a way to tackle contentious matters between the federal government and the provinces.



To be headed by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, the body was revived on Thursday on the directives of the Supreme Court.

Named Council of Common Interests (CCI), it would have the four provincial chief ministers as members as well as three federal ministers from three provinces concerned with inter-provincial issues.

Somewhat akin to India's Inter-State Council, the members are to be nominated by the prime minister.

The ministers include Salim Saifullah Khan, minister for inter-provincial coordination, from North-West Frontier Province, Safdar Yar Mohammad Rind, minister of states and frontier regions, from Balochistan, and Ghaus Bakhsh Mehar, minister for narcotics control, from Sindh.

Addressing a press briefing, Shaukat Aziz said the CCI had been revived after several years to provide a constitutional platform to provincial representatives to freely express their views on issues of concern.

The News daily said: 'Not only the incumbent regime but also successive governments took a long time to realise the significance of the CCI in a federation.' The government and media analysts did not indicate after how many years the CCI was being reconstituted.

The Supreme Court in its verdict on the Steel Mills privatisation case had last month asked the government to revive the CCI. The privatisation process of the Pakistan Steel Mills was criticised and the deal scrapped.

Aziz said the president had approved his recommendations on reconstitution of the CCI, which is answerable to parliament.

The body is required to formulate and regulate policies in relation to matters in the Federal Legislative List and, in so far as it is in relation to the affairs of the federation, in the Concurrent Legislative List.

If the federal or a provincial government is dissatisfied with a decision of the CCI it may refer the matter to the parliament in a joint sitting, the decision of which will be final.

Pakistan has several long-pending disputes among the provinces and regions on sharing of natural resources, including river waters and gas. The CCI would be the forum where aggrieved parties, including the government, could make their appeals.

Copyright Indo-Asian News Service

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MMA to fiercely resists Musharraf’s re-election: Fazl
QUETTA: Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) secretary general Maulana Fazlu Rehman has said that the religious alliance would strongly resist any move by present or any assembly to re-elect Musharraf as President for a second term.

Addressing the Nafaz-e-Shariat Conference in Kalat on Thursday, he said that MMA would never allow a President who has encouraged social degradation in the country, to be elected for the second term.

He said that contrary to the general impression that MMA supports the current uniformed regime, it would never permit the Assembly to re-elect President Musharraf for the second term.

He said that the current regime has itself admitted their failure to solve the main problems of the country, and its popularity has declined considerably. Hence they should bid farewell to their rule to save it from further annihilation.

He strongly refuted any differences in MMA polity, and said that the only solution for a way out of the current impasse was transparent and fair elections through an independent Election Commission.

While referring to the current budget, he said that the government has presented a total of seven budgets during its long tenure, and has brought nothing but disaster in its economic policies, causing more poverty, inflation and unemployment in their wake.

He lamented the sorrowful condition of provincial autonomy, while condemning the crisis of Balochistan.

He said that MMA would fully participate in a movement against the regime alongside its other opposition allies, and would leave no stone unturned to struggle for implementation of Islamic laws in the Country.

He also derided the government for Steel mill privatization fiasco, and vowed to nationalize all privatized assets, if voted to power, and to bury the army’s role in politics forever.

He also criticized Islamic Ideology Council as being a fake institution, and vowed to nominate true Islamic minded Ulema as its members.

He said that all the religious minded parties were struggling to uphold Islamic principles and values, which were being impugned with impunity by the current regime on the directives of its western masters.

He cited government’s bid to exclude Islamiyat from the education syllabus, countrywide, but was refrained from doing so due to MMA’s resistance, and government has been forced to announce Islamiyat studies from class one onwards.

He said that MMA wanted the rule of Constitution in the Country, but army rulers have always tended towards decimation of democracy, and institutions of the Country.

Commenting on the International scenario he said that America has not only committed acts of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan but has also set its eyes over Iran, which would never be permitted. The Conference was also addressed by such notables as secretary general of the party , Maulana Ghafoor Haidri, Maulana Abdul Majeed Nadeem Shah, district nazim Kalat Hafiz Muhammad Ibrahim and others.

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IRSA to meet water shares to provinces
ISLAMABAD: Indus River System Authority (IRSA) has started to supply water to provinces in accordance with their need due to the increase in water flow in rivers and dams.

IRSA sources said that presently 1,51,000 cusec water was being supplied to Sindh, 1,37,000 cusec to Punjab, 12,000 cusec to Balochistan and 8,000 cusec water being provided to NWFP.
They said that situation of water available for irrigation was improving and water flow in Indus river has been increased by 12,000 cusec.

Water flow in dams and rivers have been increased by 3,45,000 cusec in Northern Areas due to increase in temperature and down pour in different areas there after which outflow has been increased to 2,72,000 cusec.

Sources further said that about 74,000 cusec water was being stored in Mangala and Tarbila dams adding, presently water storage in Tarbila dam is 1.6 million acre feet and 2.9 million acre feet in Mangala dam.

Water flow in River Indus has been increased from 1,88,000 cusec to 200,000 cusec while 43,000 cusec water flows in River Kabul and 71,000 cusec has been recorded in Chanab river, they said.

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Presidency now selecting cops for Balochistan
Posted by Admin on 2006/7/7 2:09:00 (1 reads)
ISLAMABAD: The Presidency and not the Prime Minister’s Secretariat will now decide which police officers of BPS 18 to send to serve in the violence-hit province of Balochistan, after Quetta complained that the Punjab government was blocking pending transfers.

A close aide of President General Pervez Musharraf - Lt General (r) Hamid Javed – in the Presidency has been tasked to directly select police officers from Punjab and post them in the troubled province, without yielding to pressure from the Punjab government or contacts of police officers who are unwilling to serve in Balochistan.

Sources confirmed that as a first major step, the Presidency had selected a group of nine officers of the Punjab Police, including the district Police officers of Narowal and Pakpattan, to serve in Balochistan.

Sources said that the Punjab government and Punjab Inspector General Major (r) Ziaul Hassan were not consulted in the selection, and the first they heard about it was when they received a fax from Islamabad containing the names of the officers and the ‘request’ to shift them to Balochistan.

Sources confirmed that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s powers to approve such transfers had been scrapped by the Presidency following complaints from the Balochistan government that the Punjab government was blocking the much-needed transfer of competent police officers.

Sources said the legal role of Establishment Secretary Tariq Bokhari in such postings and transfers had also been curtailed on the basis of a report that he was under pressure from politicians and influential cops to cancel their transfer orders. Sources said Mr Bokhari was now advising everyone who approached him regarding a transfer to contact the Presidency.

Sources said the decision to curtail the powers of the PM in such cases was taken after the Balochistan IGP, facing criticism for failing to bring security to the province, complained that he lacked competent officers. He is reported to have told the president that officers being shifted to Balochistan from Punjab would get their transfer orders cancelled through the Punjab government or even the prime minister in some cases. The president then decided to hand the task to Gen Hamid.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=200677\story_7-7-2006_pg1_2

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Disappearances bother Balochistan

By Malik Siraj Akbar

QUETTA: The Balochistan government has decided to covertly engage in negotiations with the federal government over the illegal disappearances of people in the province.

Sources told Daily Times that the Balochistan government had decided to lodge a ‘soft protest’ over the increasing reports of citizens allegedly being abducted by intelligence agencies. “The provincial government intends to send Finance Minister Ehsan Shah to Islamabad to discuss the increasing number of illegal detentions in Balochistan with Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao,” said a source asking not to be named. Daily Times also learned that in a recent telephone chat with Sherpao, Mr Shah had pleaded the case of two people, one a driver and the other a cable operator, reported missing from his constituency. A source said that Sherpao had assured Shah of getting one of the missing free, but Shah demanded both’s release.

“No innocent citizen is in custody of the agencies,” said Governor Owais Ghani. About Ali Asghar Bungulzai, a tailor from Quetta, who has been missing since October 18, 2001, Ghani said he had moved from pillar to post to find him but to no avail. “The chief of an intelligence agency had admitted in front of Hafiz Hussain Ahmed that Ali was in their custody,” said Daad Mohammad, Ali’s elder brother. Hafiz confirmed Daad’s claim and said that he had also been told to send some clothes for Ali.

It’s too late to talk to Bugti

QUETTA: It is too late for the government to offer Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti another invitation for negotiation because he has defiantly spurned all offers for peaceful talks, said Governor Owais Ahmed Ghani.

In an exclusive interview to Daily Times at the Governor’s Secretariat on Thursday, Ghani said that Balochistan did not belong to a handful of sardars and nawabs. “The government believes in taking the middle-class, educated majority of the province into confidence regarding all development plans,” he said, adding that there are no contacts between the government and Akbar Bugti. He said if Bugti is sincere with Balochistan and his people he should give up weapons and surrender. “Akbar Bugti would be given amnesty because of his old age,” said Ghani.

The governor said that most tribesmen had realised that their chiefs were fighting for their own interests. This realisation, he added, had prompted a large number of tribesmen to surrender to the government. Ghani said the government had evidence that some foreign countries were assisting the Baloch sardars in creating unrest in the province. Ghani refused to comment on suspected Indian involvement in the Balochistan crisis. He said the Gwadar Port will be inaugurated soon after the construction work is finished.

Balochwarna want to ask Mr Ghani the stooge of Islamabad's Punjabi generals that do you think Nawab Bugti will talk to a cheap person like? We doubt it.