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Fears of fresh floods in Pakistan as monsoon season nears
Pakistan's disaster management chief has admitted to the BBC that floods are likely again in a matter of weeks because of a lack of proper prevention measures.
Millions of Pakistanis were affected following monsoon rains in both 2010 and 2011 prompting huge international aid mobilisation efforts.
Aleem Maqbool reports from the worst affected area last year, the province of Sindh.
China has asked Pakistan to do more to end the presence of ethnic Uighur Islamic militants in its tribal areas, Pakistani officials say.
Last year, Pakistan handed over to China a handful of Uighur militants who were captured by the security forces in the tribal areas, he said.
Etim militants are among hundreds of Islamist fighters from all over the Central Asian region who are said to be hiding in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.
At least two top-ranking Etim leaders have been killed in the region over the last decade - one in a Pakistani military raid in 2003 and the other in a drone strike in 2010.
Muslim Uighurs make up about 45% of the population of Xinjiang. Some say waves of Han Chinese immigration and heavy-handed government policies have marginalised their culture and traditions.
wonder if uighurs count as good talibs for pak? and what about unkil? it seems that the chess pieces between unkil and dragon are going to get more and more muddled...
Pakistan will pay a UAE prince a whopping Rs 36 million as compensation for four of his falcons that flew away when customs officials mishandled them at the Rawalpindi airport causing him mental and emotional anguish.
After Sheikh Muhammad Sultan Ahmed Mualla lost his falcons at the airport in Rawalpindi in March, the Federal Tax Ombudsman directed the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to pay him Rs 35 million as compensation for the birds and an additional Rs 1 million for the mental and emotional anguish caused to him, a media report said today.
The ombudsman directed the FBR to submit a compliance report within 30 days, The News daily reported.
Truely a rentier state!
Not sure I get it. Why would Federal Tax Ombudsman ask Federal Board of Revenue to pay compensation ? Why is taxation department involved here ?
ramana wrote:What is the Sir Creek issue that makes it so important for the pis talks?
Ramana, I quote from my Indus River System BRM article
The Indus remains important to both India and Pakistan in another less visible way. The extension of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) beyond the 200 nautical mile (nm) limit from coastal baseline depends on the ability to prove the sedimentation of the Indus river into the sea. If not claimed before May, 2009, it becomes a common heritage of mankind under the control of the International Sea Bed Authority (ISBA). While most of India’s claim is in the Bay of Bengal area where it has already come to maritime boundary agreement with Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia and is on the verge of doing so with Sri Lanka, it remains to be done with Pakistan in the Arabian Sea. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS-III) protocol [37] allows the EEZ to be extended beyond the conventional 200 nm limit into the sea under several conditions. In places like the sedimentary basin of the Indus river, the sediment thickness of the rivers beyond the foot of the continental slope can be used to establish the outer limit of the continental shelf of a claimant. This requires baseline and bathymetry survey data. There are five maritime zone boundaries out of which four are defined by distance, viz. Coastal Waters (3 nm from baseline), Territorial Sea (12 nm), Contiguous Zone (24 nm), and EEZ (200 nm). The fifth zone, the outer limit of the extended continental shelf, is defined by Article 76 of UNCLOS based on several combinations of geophysical, hydrographic and geomorphologic data. One such determinant is the "1% thickness formula" which is the line joining “…the outermost fixed points at each of which the thickness of sedimentary rocks is at least 1% of the shortest distance from such point to the foot of the continental slope.” The Indus thus becomes important for India as she is a claimant to the Indus basin. A crucial part of the claim is the delineation of the Territorial Sea Baseline (TSB) which is the set of coordinate points that define the line from which the seaward boundaries are to be measured. The TSB, from which maritime zones defined by distance are measured, can consist of either normal baseline, which includes bay closing lines and river closing lines or other parameters. The continuing Pakistani wrangle with regards to Sir Creek has delayed the compilation and validation of the TSB thereby delaying the computation of the zone boundaries. The Sir Creek in the Rann of Kutch is a distributary of the Indus and has deposited sedimentation beyond the EEZ, enabling India to stake a claim as per UNCLOS beyond the EEZ. This is important for India in view of the potential it has for national security, energy prospecting, mining, laying pipelines etc.
The Pakistani security have roughed up diplomats. Now that the KSA-TSP relationship is not all that warm, this is not very surprising. Also, the Saudis are one of the most arrogant people on Planet Earth and I won't be surprised if KSA the diplomat also provoked the incident.
Someone needs to let the pakis know that not only do their saudi brethren call them servant class, but the khan's refer to them as 'bad servants' (Raymond Davis case)
The US killed a commander loyal to 'good' Taliban leader Mullah Nazir in a drone strike in South Waziristan. Today's strike is the first in South Waziristan since mid-March.
Kapil wrote:
Look at the comments thread in the Saudi Officer vs ASF Story -It feels strange no one is whining about India
Patience Watson! Patience! India is the center of Pakistani Universe.
fecal matter will hit the rotating electro mechanical device when they figure out that ASF guy is a RAW agent!
Pakistan will pay a UAE prince a whopping Rs 36 million as compensation for four of his falcons that flew away when customs officials mishandled them at the Rawalpindi airport causing him mental and emotional anguish.
After Sheikh Muhammad Sultan Ahmed Mualla lost his falcons at the airport in Rawalpindi in March, the Federal Tax Ombudsman directed the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to pay him Rs 35 million as compensation for the birds and an additional Rs 1 million for the mental and emotional anguish caused to him, a media report said today.
The ombudsman directed the FBR to submit a compliance report within 30 days, The News daily reported.
Before UAE accuses Pakistan of flying falcons it should realize that Pakistan is itself a victim of flying falcons (& eagles) .
USA should also compensate Pakistan for the mental and emotional anguish suffered due to flight of national bird.
5 kg heroin recovered from cement bags imported from Pakistan
AMRITSAR: The worst dreams of customs officials came true following recovery of 5 kilogram of heroin valued at around Rs 25 crore in the international market from a cement bag sent in sealed goods train from Pakistan on Saturday.
This is the first recovery of narcotics from Amritsar rail cargo which happened within a week's time after recovery of 10 kilogram heroin and Rs 16 lakh Fake Indian Currency Notes from goods train that arrived Attari, India from Pakistan on May 25th.
okay which company is importing "cement" from Pacquistan to India? who is pushing for its import?
Every bag coming into the country has a destination marked for it and some person/company has to claim it once it reaches India.
During offloading of the Lucky brand cement bags, the custom staff was surprised to find a bag of Pioneer brand cement upon whose search five packets of one kilogram each heroin wrapped in silver foil were recovered.
ramana wrote:What is the Sir Creek issue that makes it so important for the pis talks?
Could be something to do with this...
Sir Creek issue: Pakistan writes to UN chief
Pakistan has complained to UN chief Ban Ki-moon that the geographical coordinates notified by India of the Sir
Creek estuary are "inconsistent" with international law and "impinge" upon Islamabad's territorial limits in the
disputed area.
The complaint was made in a letter from Pakistan's mission to the UN which has been posted on the UN
website.
It is in response to India's notifications specifying its geographical coordinates and boundary claims with regard
to Sir Creek, which were placed on the website of the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea in
May and November 2009.
The letter said India's "base points impinge upon Pakistan's territorial limits in the Sir Creek area and encroach
upon its territorial waters, which are within its sovereign jurisdiction. This encroachment by India in Pakistan's
limits is a grave violation of international principles."
It said Pakistan does "not recognise the baseline system promulgated" by India.
"While the Government of Pakistan reserves its right to seek suitable revision of this notification, any claim India
makes on the basis of Indian notification to extend its sovereignty and jurisdiction on Pakistani waters or extend
its internal waters, territorialsea, Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf is, therefore, not acceptable to
Pakistan," the letter added.
The two countries had last year in May in Rawalpindi held their first round of talks in four years on the Sir Creek
issue, focussing on the delimitation of the long disputed international maritime boundary.
Sir Creek is a 96-km estuary in the Rann of Kutch separating India's Gujarat state from Pakistan's Sindh
province
India-Pakistan maritime trespassing refers to the frequent trespassing and violation of respective national territorial waters of India and Pakistan in peacetime. Most trespassing is common to Pakistani and Indian fishermen operating along the coastline of the Indian state of Gujarat and the Pakistani province of Sindh. Most violations occur due to the absence of a physical boundary and lack of navigational tools for small fishermen. Hundreds of fishermen are arrested by the Coast Guards of both nations, but obtaining their release is difficult and long-winded owing to the hostile relations between the two nations.
As usual with the Pakis they claim all of it (upto the border of the creek on the Indian side) and India is agreeable to half of it (line running in the middle of the creek). Pakis being Pakis their principle of negotiation is always been 'what we have we keep and what you have we negotiate'.
The men, Faisal Abbasi, Muhammad Shahid Husain, Muhammad Shoaib Mughal and Humbal Akhtar, had been accused of arranging meetings between Shahzad and top Pakistani Taliban leaders, and sending him money to help prepare the attack. Their lawyer, Malik Imran Safdar, said an antiterrorism court in Rawalpindi found that prosecutors failed to prove their case and released the men.
Two other men initially arrested along with the four others were released previously.
Shahzad, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty to attempting to detonate a sport utility vehicle filled with propane tanks and fertilizer in Times Square on May 1, 2010. The botched bombing marked the first time the Pakistani Taliban had tried to engineer an attack outside its strongholds in the tribal regions of western Pakistan along the Afghan border.
The son of a retired vice air marshal in the Pakistani air force, Shahzad was a financial analyst living in a Connecticut suburb when he became radicalized and went to Pakistan’s tribal areas for terrorist training. At one of his court hearings in New York, he told a judge that he viewed himself as a “Muslim soldier.”
When the Pakistanis were arrested after the failed bombing, Islamabad police described them as relatively young, middle-class men who had been close friends with Shahzad for several years. At the time, police said they facilitated Shahzad’s training at Taliban boot camps in the tribal areas and arranged for him to meet with Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mahsud. They also were accused of sending Shahzad $13,000 when he began to run short of money in the U.S. while readying the bombing attack.
Islamabad police claimed that the men had close links to Mahsud and leaders of the Pakistani Taliban, a homegrown militant group with strong ties to the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda.
sum wrote:UAE prince loses falcons in Pak, to get Rs 36 mn compensation Pakistan will pay a UAE prince a whopping Rs 36 million as compensation for four of his falcons that flew away when customs officials mishandled them at the Rawalpindi airport causing him mental and emotional anguish.
These are trained hunting falcons and they dont just "fly away". I had been following this news (too lazy to dig up links now), but at first, customs officials said that importing these falcons were illegal and the falcons were impounded and sent to the wildlife department. Upon asked for verification/letters etc from wildlife officials, they complained that they weren't contacted at all! Upon which the customs officials said that they didnt see the falcons in the first place!
Conclusion: Some Customs abdul took them and sold them in the black market.
ramana wrote:What is the Sir Creek issue that makes it so important for the pis talks?
Demarcating Sir Creek will also determine India-Pak maritime boundary. There are hydrocarbons in there. China has shown interest in exploring.
ramana wrote:Does Sir Creek change its course often? It could be case of changing course which the Pakis are trying to take advantage of?
Ah you can expect the Pakis to distort the issue!! Shifting course is one part of the problem. The other part is this: The international principle of marking boundaries on rivers relies on the Thalweg principle: The deepest points of the river forms the boundary (this is usually along the center of the river). India insists on this principle of demarcation. The Pakis insist Bin Qasim's camel drank water from the eastern edge of the river, so the entire river belongs to them and the border is at the eastern edge. This means that all of the deltas of the river belongs to them and the maritime boundary will be drawn from the eastern edge and that belongs to them too.
There are hydrocarbon reserves on the continental shelf (previously inaccessible but currently possibly accessible through techniques like hydraulic fracturing or "fracking"). The are has also not been surveyed for other minerals. Pakis in recent times have shown interest to give Chinese the contract for surveying their river basins/offshore sites to cheeni companies for mineral exploration (which presumably will be exported from the rail line from gwadar).
A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Saturday acquitted four men who had been charged with helping a Pakistani-American man carry out a failed attempt to detonate a truck bomb in New York's Times Square, said their lawyer and family members.
The four were arrested in the wake of Faisal Shahzad's May 2010 attack, which fizzled when the explosives in his vehicle produced smoke but no blast.
She has been a thorn on everyone's side. She pursued the Missing person's case. Represented Groper in court. Wants transparency in appointment of judges. Her most recent statement was to call for fair trial of Shakil Afridi (fellow who helped catch OBL).
A little known fact is that she also worked on repealing anti-Blasphemy law in Pakistan. Sherry, to bolster her "Liberal" image, went and held a press conference acting as though it was her idea and her prerogative. Unfortunately for her, it backfired with the mullahs calling her Waji-Bull-Cutlet. A few days of laying low, and the army reassuring the Mullahs that she was their munna, made them back off. Sherry went on to start the Jinnah Institute for "independent analysis of Afghanistan and other issues" (read army's mouthpiece) which is currently headed by Ejaz Haider. Interestingly she quit the chairpersonship of Jinnah Institute a few days before Husain Haqqani was sent packing and she was appointed as Paki's ambassador to US. So presumably she had a premonition about the impending appointment as US ambassador.
Asma escaped being waji-bull-cutlet then. Let us see now.
The Pakis insist Bin Qasim's camel drank water from the eastern edge of the river, so the entire river belongs to them and the border is at the eastern edge. This means that all of the deltas of the river belongs to them and the maritime boundary will be drawn from the eastern edge and that belongs to them too.
Superbly explained the Poak method of "demarcation"
The recent drone strikes, Salala attack etc. reinforce one thing very clearly - folks higher up in the Paki army don't care much about the common Paki or loiwer ranks getting killed. According to the calculations done in GHQ, this collateral damage is acceptable to achieve something more strategic in A'stan. Its only when the core Paki army leadership is threatened, they feel the need to negotiate.
5 kg heroin recovered from cement bags imported from Pakistan
AMRITSAR: The worst dreams of customs officials came true following recovery of 5 kilogram of heroin valued at around Rs 25 crore in the international market from a cement bag sent in sealed goods train from Pakistan on Saturday.
This is the first recovery of narcotics from Amritsar rail cargo which happened within a week's time after recovery of 10 kilogram heroin and Rs 16 lakh Fake Indian Currency Notes from goods train that arrived Attari, India from Pakistan on May 25th.
Associating with the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is indeed a fraught enterprise.
Besides their export of Mohammadden Terrorism, Narcotics and Counterfeit Indian Currency (FICN) there could also be the health risk of having diseases exported when associating with the Islamic Republic of Pakistan:
Rajdeep wrote:Fears of fresh floods in Pakistan as monsoon season nears
Pakistan's disaster management chief has admitted to the BBC that floods are likely again in a matter of weeks because of a lack of proper prevention measures.
Millions of Pakistanis were affected following monsoon rains in both 2010 and 2011 prompting huge international aid mobilisation efforts.
Aleem Maqbool reports from the worst affected area last year, the province of Sindh.
The recent drone strikes, Salala attack etc. reinforce one thing very clearly - folks higher up in the Paki army don't care much about the common Paki or loiwer ranks getting killed. According to the calculations done in GHQ, this collateral damage is acceptable to achieve something more strategic in A'stan. Its only when the core Paki army leadership is threatened, they feel the need to negotiate.
Plus they definitely don't care about Pashtuns. Infact majority of Pakjabis(who dominate paki army) think of Pashtuns/pathans as subhumans.Hence they are perfectly ok with their ongoing massacre which is being perpetrated by US.
Fearing death, Pak doctor who helped CIA refuses to eat prison meals
Afridi has refused to eat prison food, and that on his demand, prison authorities have provided him with essential items and cooking utensils so that he could prepare his own food.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — An American drone strike in the frontier tribal areas of Pakistan killed 10 suspected militants Sunday, Pakistani officials said. It was sixth such strike in two weeks as the U.S. pushes ahead with its drone campaign in the face of Pakistani demands to stop.
The continued attacks emphasize the importance the U.S. government puts on the drone campaign, which it considers to be a vital tool in the war against al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Two Pakistani intelligence officials say four missiles were fired at targets in the village of Mana Raghzai in South Waziristan near the border with Afghanistan on Sunday morning.
At the time of the attack, suspected militants were gathered to offer condolences to the brother of a militant commander killed during another American unmanned drone attack on Saturday. The brother was one of those who died in the Sunday morning strike. The Pakistani officials said two of the dead were foreigners, and the rest were Pakistani.
The American drone campaign has been a source of deep frustration and tension between the U.S. and Pakistan.
Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. stepped up its drone campaign in the border areas as a way to combat al-Qaida and Taliban fighters who were using Pakistan as a base for attacks against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. However, the number of drone attacks has eased in recent years.
Secretly, many Pakistani military commanders are believed to support the drone campaign. But among the Pakistani public, where the U.S. is viewed with mistrust, the drone strikes are considered an affront to the nation's sovereignty.
The Pakistani government and parliament have repeatedly asked the U.S. to stop the drone strikes.
The ongoing attacks are also complicating efforts for the U.S. and Pakistan to come to an agreement over reopening the supply routes to NATO and American forces in Afghanistan. American airstrikes inadvertently killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November, prompting Islamabad to block U.S. and NATO supply lines running throught its territory.
Pakistan has demanded an apology over the raid and an end to drone strikes as a precursor to reopening the supply lines. But the U.S. has shown no intention of ending the attacks.
Also Sunday, gunmen killed four Shiite minority Muslims, a police officer and a bystander in a busy market of southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, said police officer Abdul Wahid. He said police were investigating who could be behind the attack, but that it had a sectarian motive.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Pakistan became the scene of a proxy war between mostly Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, with both sides funneling money to sectarian groups that regularly targeted each other.
The level of sectarian violence has declined somewhat since then, but attacks continue. In recent years, Sunni attacks on Shiites have been far more common.
WASHINGTON: The United States has rejected majority of the demands pressed by Pakistan with respect to the coalition support fund claiming them to be unrealistic, DawnNews reported.
The US is not only adamant in its refusal to apologise for the Salala border checkpost incident that had resulted in the killings of 24 Pakistani soldiers in November last year but also cornering Pakistan as punishment for the apology demand.
Sources claimed that Pakistan’s federal government has decided to pass the burden of the US punishment onto the public and the price of compressed natural gas (CNG) has been increased by 15 to 20 per cent to deal with the impasse. The price hike would be affective from 1st July.
US military authorities rejected Pakistan’s request seeking USD 2.8 billion in respect of the coalition support fund stating the request as ‘unrealistic’.
Both the countries have held more than half a dozen meetings related to the disbursement of the support fund’s amount but the issue remains unresolved in face of the rejection by the US.
Pakistani-US relations went into freefall last year.
There were hit when a CIA contractor shot dead two Pakistanis and dented further by an American raid that killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and by US air strikes in November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
After the air strikes, Pakistan shut its Afghan border to Nato supplies and ordered US staff out of an air base reportedly used as a hub for drones.
Seven US drone strikes have been reported since May’s Chicago summit, which failed to secure a deal on resuming the supply lines.
In March, Pakistan’s parliament agreed to reset US relations on condition that Washington apologise for the troops’ deaths and end drone attacks on its soil.
Pakistan has been incensed by Washington’s refusal to apologise for the November air strikes and US officials have so far rejected Pakistani proposals to charge several thousand dollars for each alliance truck crossing the border.
Islamabad, which is understood to have given its tacit approval for attacks on al Qaeda and Taliban targets in the past, has become increasingly vocal in its opposition to the perceived violation of national sovereignty.
Despite Pakistani criticism US officials are believed to consider the drone attacks too useful to stop them altogether. They have argued that drone strikes are a valuable weapon in the war against Islamist militants.
According to an AFP tally, 45 US missile strikes were reported in Pakistan’s tribal belt in 2009, the year US President Barack Obama took office, 101 in 2010 and 64 in 2011.
The New America Foundation think-tank in Washington says drone strikes have killed between 1,715 and 2,680 people in Pakistan in the past eight years.
KARACHI: Pakistan on Saturday slumped to a humiliating last-place finish in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup with a 1-2 loss against Great Britain, a result that raises a huge question mark over PHF’s claims that their team in on the right track ahead of this summer’s Olympic Games in London.
The Pakistanis, who began the seven-nation tournament in the Malaysian city of Ipoh as one of the favourites, suffered five consecutive defeats to take the wooden spoon, finishing even behind hosts Malaysia — the only competing team that will not be featuring in the Olympics.
It was Pakistan’s worst show in recent times and refreshed memories of their embarrassing last-place finish at the 2010 World Cup in India.
pgbhat wrote:okay which company is importing "cement" from Pacquistan to India? who is pushing for its import?
Every bag coming into the country has a destination marked for it and some person/company has to claim it once it reaches India.
I thought that cement prices in Pakistan were higher than in India, and that Pakistan had a shortage of cement.
Speaking in Karachi on May 31, President Asif Ali Zardari said that “disengagement with the world was not a democratic option”. In the next breath, however, he asked “the international community to also take Pakistan’s domestic compulsions and national interest into account when taking stock of the country’s role in efforts against extremism and terrorism”. He then explained why Pakistan painted itself into a corner at the Chicago Summit: the government had to change the policy decision of opening the Nato supply route “because the Salala incident had necessitated a review”.
Pakistan first played up the Salala incident and demanded an apology, but when it got close to getting one, the ‘honour’ hype overwhelmed the country. Parliament took its time deciding what to do, while the politicians fulminated against the US and encouraged the media dogs to unleash themselves. Where did the “democratic option” go then? Thereafter, other unanticipated factors intervened: US President Barack Obama got sensitised over the apology in the midst of his re-election campaign; and the Pentagon’s disagreement over his Pakistan policy became intense. The Pakistan Army, seeing the aggressive approach of the US to the renegotiated rates of the supply route, has now allowed the American trainers — it had kicked out in a moment of dudgeon — to return.
Isolation is something that a state has to think about as a cornerstone of its approach to the world. This, in turn, depends on an objective assessment of the state’s importance in the international community. Any ‘outward’ approach will also depend on these ‘inward’ factors: the state of the national economy and the state of law and order. When considering these factors, a country is forced to change its stance and embrace realism. Pakistan is not like Iran and cannot afford to roar like a lion when, unlike Iran, it is sunk in a colossal energy deficit. After the national paroxysm against ‘unfair’ treatment, Pakistan is now realising that there is a limit to how much it can go on playing the “frontline state” card and telling the world it cannot move an inch on Afghanistan unless Pakistan’s spoiler’s role is recognised and it is accordingly appeased.
Whether we like it or not, Pakistan has prospered when it avoided isolation or was placed in a non-isolationist situation by happenstance during the Cold War. By going jihadi and nuclear at the same time it now puts a lot of store by ‘honour through isolation’. Just look back and see the pattern of past behaviour: after the Cold War ended, Pakistan was most at risk of clutching at isolationism for emotional satisfaction. The success of General (retd) Pervez Musharraf during his ‘high growth’ tenure occurred in sectors where Pakistan was linked to the outside world. In 1998, the country fell into a trough of global isolation after conducting the nuclear test. Despite promises of assistance from friends in the Middle East, Pakistan was soon faced with default and prospects of what was then termed a ‘failed state’. Breaking out of a period of isolation, which included turning off the tap of jihad and normalising relations with India, Pakistan embarked on a foreign policy that helped its economy to rise from its dangerously low growth rate to reach its highest growth rates by 2005. All that, of course, is now reinterpreted as a ‘phase of Pakistan’s slavery’.
Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar tried to break out of this latest phase of lethal isolation by saying that Pakistan was faced with alienating, not only the US, but also scores of other nations taking part in the Nato operation in Afghanistan and that Pakistan could not afford to offend them all. But then, the PPP got scared of offending the ‘nation’ on the eve of another election, which it hopes to win despite its abysmal governance. It has plumped for a warlike gesture of national honour. President Zardari should know that elections cannot be won through false bravado and by ignoring the economic plight of the people. No one is going to vote for the incumbent government just because it stood up on its hind legs and snarled at the rest of the world.
