Begging with dignity —Rafia Zakaria

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\09\26\story_26-9-2009_pg3_2


In our sixty-second year, perhaps it’s time we came to terms with the reality that we are and have always been a nation of beggars. Ironically, it is only in embracing this grim reality that we can find the opportunity to change our future

If the recent summit in New York is a reliable gauge, then Pakistan, or rather “democratic” Pakistan is doing pretty well in the popularity contest otherwise known as the General Session of the United Nations General Assembly.
On Thursday, the “Friends of Democratic Pakistan” met to discuss the promotion of stable governance and economic development in Pakistan. The group includes Australia, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, the United Nations and European Union. President Obama, who co-chaired the meeting, announced the passage of the Kerry-Lugar Bill, which will provide Pakistan with $1.5 billion every year for the next five years.
The meeting and accompanying announcement of aid disbursement have provided much fodder for discussion in both the United States and Pakistan. The United States has expectedly tried to announce passage of the Kerry-Lugar Bill as well as the meeting itself as a major commitment that substantiates its long-term interest in Pakistan. Coming as it does, in the footsteps of an expected change in US policy toward the region, the announcements provide the Obama administration a means to deflect attention from its woes in Afghanistan by pointing to the potential of success in Pakistan.
For the Pakistani government, led by President Zardari, the task in New York is markedly more difficult. It must tread the delicate balance of being both gracious for the assistance while at the same time drawing attention to the holes in the Obama administration’s beneficence. One attempt to do just this was President Zardari’s demand, made a day before the meeting, that the United States reimburse the $1.6 million that Pakistan has spent fighting the War on Terror in the tribal belt. The demand was programmed ostensibly to emphasise the fact that aid disbursements to Pakistan are in exchange for services rendered in the US-led war against Al Qaeda rather than an act of magnanimity by the United States. In other words, the Pakistani delegation tried to paint as “payment” what the Americans would present simply as an act of generosity.
This delicate dance between grantors and receivers of aid is not in itself new. In the last few decades, as globalisation has become an economic and security challenge rather than an abstract theory, this dynamic has become a repeated accompaniment to most global summits. The rich nations controlling large chunks of the world economy have packaged their security interests as moralistic efforts to assist the poor without any strings attached. At the same time, poorer nations have sought to expose the security interests and consequent challenges to sovereignty that lie beneath the Global North’s commitments to economic and social development in the Global South.
The duelling narratives that emerge from the above dynamic mean that rich nations always have the task of presenting their aid as magnanimous while poorer ones always have an interest in presenting the aid amounts as emerging out of rich countries’ self-serving security interests.
In the current case, the challenge for the Pakistani government becomes more complex in light of ideological currents at home that present this dynamic as an inherent attack on the country’s sovereignty. Conservative commentators, especially those belonging to Islamist parties, present the need for aid as a failure by the current administration to safeguard the sovereignty of the nation. In doing so they disregard both the facts of Pakistan’s precarious economic existence in a world beset by financial crises but also the fact that whether we like it or not, the world market is controlled by countries like the United States.
In fomenting this attitude towards aid in general, these critics present the acceptance of aid as a choice rather than the necessity it has been for many governments past and present. Gullible Pakistanis are thus fed the myth that it is a particular government’s greed rather than the nation’s need that makes aid a requirement, and that the only thing keeping Pakistan from true self-sufficiency is the corruption of one or another administration.
The fact is that the acceptance or rejection of aid by Pakistan is not a facet peculiar to the Zardari administration. Governments past, present and future have been and are likely to remain tied to the disbursement of foreign assistance for many decades in the future. The scale of current security challenges and the inability of our weak state to respond to a growing insurgency necessitates that we accept any help that we get. The particular ravages of the global financial crisis on our economy and the mounting costs of a civil war that has led us to become a world leader in suicide bombings are recent precipitators of our hapless condition.
Idealistic notions of self-sufficiency that suggest that we deny how integral foreign assistance has been to our precarious existence these past sixty odd years indicate a blindness to both our local challenges and the place we hold in the international sphere. Pakistan is not and has never been a superpower, militarily, morally or economically. We do not have the infrastructure to create self-sufficiency in either our agricultural, industrial or manufacturing sectors. We do not have the natural resources to provide for all our energy needs or the capabilities to sell what we do have on the global market. Yet, instead of accepting these challenges and their consequent impact on our place in the world, we live imbued in nationalist myths and pretend that our current reliance on aid is solely a product of temporary mistakes or greedy politicians.
A novel argument for us as we poke fun at the unfortunate officials charged with the task of begging for this aid in New York would be to consider not the hokey notions of becoming the next global powerhouse fuelled by our un-availed (and largely imaginary) natural resources but rather a realistic assessment of what our capabilities and challenges really are. Not once in our sixty-two year existence have we survived without the assistance of foreign governments.
In our sixty-second year, perhaps it’s time we came to terms with the reality that we are and have always been a nation of beggars. Ironically, it is only in embracing this grim reality that we can find the opportunity to change our future.

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

Taliban Widen Afghan Attacks From Base in Pakistan

By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — Senior Taliban leaders, showing a surprising level of sophistication and organization, are using their sanctuary in Pakistan to stoke a widening campaign of violence in northern and western Afghanistan, senior American military and intelligence officials say.
The Taliban’s expansion into parts of Afghanistan that it once had little influence over comes as the Obama administration is struggling to settle on a new military strategy for Afghanistan, and as the White House renews its efforts to get Pakistan’s government to be more aggressive about killing or capturing Taliban leaders inside Pakistan.
American military and intelligence officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were discussing classified information, said the Taliban’s leadership council, led by Mullah Muhammad Omar and operating around the southern Pakistani city of Quetta, was directly responsible for a wave of violence in once relatively placid parts of northern and western Afghanistan. A recent string of attacks killed troops from Italy and Germany, pivotal American allies that are facing strong opposition to the Afghan war at home.
These assessments echo a recent report by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top military commander in Afghanistan, in portraying the Taliban as an increasingly sophisticated shadow government that sees itself on the cusp of victory in the war-ravaged nation.
General McChrystal’s report describes how Mullah Omar’s insurgency has appointed shadow governors in most provinces of Afghanistan, levies taxes, establishes Islamic courts there and conducts a formal review of its military campaign each winter.
American officials say they believe that the Taliban leadership in Pakistan still gets support from parts of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s military spy service. The ISI has been the Taliban’s off-again-on-again benefactor for more than a decade, and some of its senior officials see Mullah Omar as a valuable asset should the United States leave Afghanistan and the Taliban regain power.
The issue of the Taliban leadership council, or shura, in Quetta is now at the top of the Obama administration’s agenda in its meetings with Pakistani officials.
At the same time, American officials face a frustrating paradox: the more the administration wrestles publicly with how substantial and lasting a military commitment to make to Afghanistan, the more the ISI is likely to strengthen bonds to the Taliban as Pakistan hedges its bets.
American officials have long complained that senior Taliban leaders operating from Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province, provide money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to the Taliban in the south of Afghanistan, where most of the nearly 68,000 American forces are deployed.
But since NATO’s offensive into the Taliban-dominated south this spring, the insurgents have surprised American commanders by stepping up attacks against allied troops elsewhere in the country to throw NATO off balance and create the perception of spreading violence that neither the allied military nor the civilian Afghan government in Kabul can control.
“The Taliban is trying to create trouble elsewhere to alleviate pressure” in the south, said one senior American intelligence official. “They’ve outmaneuvered us time and time again.”
The issue has opened fresh rifts between the United States and Pakistan over how to combat the Taliban leadership council in Quetta. American officials have voiced new and unusually public criticism of Pakistan’s role in abetting the growing Afghan insurgency, reviving tensions that seemed to have eased after the two countries worked closely to track and kill Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, in an American missile strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas last month.
General McChrystal said in his assessment, which was made public on Monday, “Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan, are linked with Al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups,” and are reportedly aided by “some elements” of the ISI.
The United States ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, said in a recent interview with the McClatchy newspapers that the Pakistani government was “certainly reluctant to take action” against the leadership of the Afghan insurgency.
Pakistani officials take issue with that, adding that the United States overstates the threat posed by the Quetta shura, possibly because the American understanding of the situation is distorted by vague and self-serving intelligence provided by Afghanistan’s spy service.
A senior Pakistani official said that the United States had asked Pakistan in recent years to round up 10 Taliban leaders in Quetta. Of those 10, 6 were killed or captured by the Pakistanis, 2 were probably in Afghanistan and the remaining 2 presented no threat.
“Pakistan has said it’s willing to act when given actionable intelligence,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “We have made substantial progress in the last year or so against the Quetta shura.”
Pakistani officials also said that a move against militant leaders in Quetta risked inciting public anger throughout Baluchistan, a region that has long had a tense relationship with Pakistan’s government in Islamabad.
Mullah Omar, a reclusive cleric, recently rallied his troops with a boastful message timed for the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr.
In the message, he taunted his American adversaries for ignoring the lessons of past military failures in Afghanistan, including the invasion of Alexander the Great’s army.
And he bragged that the Taliban had emerged as a nationalistic movement that “is approaching the edge of victory.”
A half-dozen American military, intelligence and diplomatic officials said in interviews that the Taliban leadership in Baluchistan, which abuts the portion of southern Afghanistan where most of the fighting is taking place, is increasing its strategic direction over the insurgency.
“The Taliban inner shura in Baluchistan is certainly trying to exercise greater command and control over the Taliban in Afghanistan,” said one American official in Afghanistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his assessment involved classified intelligence.
The official said that Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a former inmate at the American military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who is now a top Taliban lieutenant, was involved in replacing Taliban shadow governors and commanders, as well as reorganizing the Taliban throughout the country. “The Quetta shura — you can’t knock on their clubhouse door,” a Western diplomat said. “It’s much more of an amorphous group that as best we can tell moves around. They go to Karachi, they go to Quetta, they go across the border.”
American officials grudgingly acknowledge the Taliban’s skill at using guerrilla-style attacks to manipulate public impressions of the insurgency. “We assess that the primary focus of attacks in northern provinces such as Kunduz is to create a perception that the insurgency is spreading like wildfire,” the American official in Afghanistan said. “But I think it’s more of an ‘information operations’ success than a substantive one of holding any territory.”
Another American intelligence official who follows Pakistan closely said the insurgents had sought to exploit allied countries’ political vulnerabilities, like elections in Germany on Sunday. “The Taliban have proven themselves capable of strategic planning,” the official said.
General McChrystal said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that he had been surprised by “the growth of the shadow government, the growth of its coercion and its growth into the north and west.”
Germany, which has suffered 33 combat deaths in Afghanistan, has remained committed to the Afghan mission, although it has placed strict limits on where its soldiers can serve, refusing to send them to the south.
But that commitment is now being hotly debated in the coming parliamentary elections, after an airstrike called in by a German commander this month. The NATO airstrike, directed at two tanker trucks carrying alliance fuel that had been hijacked by the Taliban, killed scores of people; the number of dead civilians remains unclear.
Other allies are also rethinking their presence in Afghanistan. A bomb that killed six Italian soldiers in Kabul last Thursday prompted Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy to declare that his nation had begun planning to “bring our young men home as soon as possible.” Italy has 3,100 troops in Afghanistan.

Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.

Transparency indicts Pakistan at critical time

By Ansar Abbasi

ISLAMABAD: In an obvious rebuke to President Asif Zardari�s efforts to seek massive aid from the world community, the global anti-corruption watchdog, the Transparency International, issued a stinging indictment on the eve of a high-profile New York meeting of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan, saying: �How can one expect from any donor to come forward to assist Pakistan from its current financial crisis, when there exist no law against corruption.�

President Zardari is to meet US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other world leaders at the Friends of Democratic Pakistan meeting in New York on Thursday but in its 2009 Global Corruption Report, released on Wednesday, Transparency International portrays Pakistan amongst the most corrupt nations in the world.

Releasing the annual report, the TI chief in Pakistan Adeel Gilani said anti-corruption efforts in the country had taken a 180 degree turn since Gen Pervez Musharraf issued the National Reconciliation Ordinance on October 5, 2007, 56 days after the ratification of the UN Convention against Corruption.

The timing for the release of the TI report would be embarrassing for President Zardari, whose government�s credibility is already seriously questioned internationally because of President�s own as well as many of his government�s key players� past plagued by serious corruption charges.

Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin tried to soften the impact of the TI report by saying in his talks with US officials in New York, the US side had assured that most of the aid to Pakistan will be channelled through the federal government, although it is still not clear whether the US Congress will approve this.

A press release issued in Islamabad and New York, Syed Adeel Gilani, Chairman TI Pakistan, said the NRO has also granted further protection to the parliamentarians, as no sitting member of parliament or a provincial assembly can be arrested without taking into consideration the recommendations of the special parliamentary committees on ethics, which are not formed yet.

Gilani said over and above the NRO, the aims of the present government which has sent serious signals all over the world is that in Pakistan corruption will not be a crime if no accountability is held for three years. �The Draft Holder of Public Office Act 2009 prepared by the government to substitute the NAB Ordinance, under consideration of the National Assembly, gives further immunity to all against corruption from October 2010,� the report said, wondering, �How can one expect that any donor to come forward to assist Pakistan from its current financial crisis when there exist no law against corruption.�

The report said corruption is a serious problem in Pakistan, and this position is corroborated by a number of recent studies and reports. An assessment of Pakistan�s infrastructure implementation capacity was carried out at the request of the government, and the resulting report was published in November 2007 jointly by the World Bank and the planning Commission of Pakistan.

It states that approximately 15 per cent of the cost of corruption lies in procurement, costing the Pakistani development budget (2007/8) over Rs150 billion. Furthermore, the World Bank�s Control of Corruption Indicator in 2007 ranks Pakistan a mere 21.3 out of 100. The Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009 ranked Pakistan 101st out of 130 countries and found that respondents pointed to corruption as the second most problematic factor for doing business in the country, after government instability.

The instability of the political situation in Pakistan cannot be underestimated as a factor in permitting corruption in the private sector to flourish. Despite Musharraf�s claim to be committed to fighting corruption, little headway has been made, and it is still considered to be �pervasive and deeply entrenched�.

Musharraf relinquished military power in November 2007, and his supporters were defeated in the February 2008 general election by a coalition of the Pakistan People�s Party and Nawaz Sharif�s Muslim League. Musharraf resigned in August 2008, facing impeachment for alleged crimes including gross misconduct and violation of the Constitution, it said.

The following is the Pakistan Chapter of the Global Report released on Sept 23: Legal and institutional changes: In a meeting with a delegation of TI Pakistan on 17 July 2007, the former prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, gave assurance that the Public Procurement Rules of 2004 would be implemented in all the federal government ministries. He also claimed that transparency was the �hallmark� of government policy and that the government was promoting e-governance as a tool for more openness and in order to make processes more efficient. He claimed that the �government had made it mandatory that integrity pacts are signed for all government contracts over Rs10 million. Moreover, the adoption of the rules �minimises discretion, gives priority to technical competence and ensures that award of contract is on the basis of lowest evaluated responsive bidder in the shortest possible time�.

He also agreed with TI Pakistan that the Election Commission should �hold the elections in the most transparent manner�. These commitments were undermined after the departure of the former prime minister in 2007. Under the caretaker government in 2008, complaints to the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority board were not acted upon.

The former president, General Pervez Musharraf, issued the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) on 5 October 2007, fifty-six days after the ratification of the UN Convention against Corruption. In many ways this was a setback for anti-corruption measures in Pakistan, as all proceedings under investigation or pending in any court that had been initiated by or involved the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) prior to 12 October 1999 were withdrawn and terminated with immediate effect. The NRO also granted further protection to parliamentarians, as no sitting member of parliament or a provincial assembly can be arrested without taking into consideration the recommendations of the Special Parliamentary Committee on Ethics or the Special Committee of the Provincial Assembly on Ethics.

Public ills, private woes � the survival of the private sector during political instability: Corruption is a serious problem in Pakistan, and this position is corroborated by a number of recent studies and reports. An assessment of Pakistan�s infrastructure implementation capacity was carried out at the request of the government, and the resulting report was published in November 2007 jointly by the World Bank and the Planning Commission of Pakistan. It states that approximately 15 per cent of the cost of corruption lies in procurement, costing the Pakistani development budget (2007/8) over Rs150 billion.

Furthermore, the World Bank�s Control of Corruption Indicator in 2007 ranks Pakistan a mere 21.3 out of 100. In terms of the business sector, there are a number of measures that indicate that there is a serious issue of corruption. TI�s Global Corruption Barometer 2006 reported that the impact of corruption on the private sector was perceived as almost equal to corruption in the public sector; and The Global Competitiveness Report 2008�2009 ranked Pakistan 101st out of 130 countries and found that respondents pointed to corruption as the second most problematic factor for doing business in the country, after government instability. The instability of the political situation in Pakistan cannot be underestimated as a factor in permitting corruption in the private sector to flourish. Despite Musharraf�s claim to be committed to fighting corruption, little headway has been made, and it is still considered to be �pervasive and deeply entrenched�.

The inauguration of the new president, Asif Ali Zardari, on 9 September 2008 ushers in a new era, but not one without challenges. The new democratically elected government will, therefore, require the immediate enforcement of good governance and transparency standards to counter the various dire problems facing Pakistan. There is an increased threat of terrorism, hyperinflation, a reduction in the Karachi Stock Exchange 100 Index, a sizeable depreciation of the currency, a substantial reduction in foreign currency reserves and a huge trade deficit inherited from the previous government.

Banking fines for cartels: the new Competition Commission: In Pakistan, monopolistic practices and cartels are perceived to hold sway in such businesses as banking, cement, sugar, automobiles, fertilisers and pharmaceuticals, to name a few. Although cartels distort market prices, they also create other anomalies. Existing players in an industry may firmly block the entry of new entrepreneurs through cartels, in order to ensure their own market dominance. This practice acts as a clear disincentive for the much-needed expansion of Pakistan�s industrial base.

In October 2007 a new Competition Commission was set up under the Competition Ordinance 2007, in order to �provide for a legal framework to create a business environment based on healthy competition towards improving economic efficiency, developing competitiveness and protecting consumers from anti- competitive practices�.

It was also meant to �restrict the undue concentration of economic power, growth of unreasonable monopoly power and unreasonably restrictive trade practices�, which are perceived to be �injurious to the economic well-being, growth and development of Pakistan�. In one of its first initiatives, the Competition Commission challenged the Pakistan Banks Association (PBA) on its decision to �collectively decide rates of profit and other terms and conditions regarding deposit accounts�. The PBA is a membership association to which only banks in Pakistan can be affiliated, and it advertised its decision openly in a daily newspaper on 5 November 2007. The terms of the agreement included a number of its member banks imposing �a four per cent profit on Rs20,000 deposits and a Rs50 charge on less than a Rs5,000 balance� on bank accounts included in the new Enhanced Savings Account (ESA) scheme. Furthermore, holders of basic accounts that met the criteria would have their accounts changed to ESAs without the prior instruction or agreement of the account-holders.

The Competition Commission considered this move by the PBA to be in violation of section 4 of the Competition Ordinance 2007, and, moreover, in acting as a cartel, the banks were alleged to have behaved anti-competitively. The implications of the changes included customers with balances of less than Rs5,000 having to pay Rs50 each month and the transfer of accounts without the account-holders� prior permission.

On 24 December a �show-cause� was issued to the PBA and the banks, and they were asked to provide justification of their behaviour to the commission by 10 January 2008.

Both the PBA and the banks issued responses on 9 January, denying the charges of cartelisation, and on 28 February 2008 a further statement was issued, arguing that the commission did not have jurisdiction in this area and that, furthermore, the changes had been made �at the behest of the regulator (the State Bank of Pakistan) in the larger public interest�. The PBA also argued that it could not be considered to be stifling competition as the deposit amounts affected by the ESA scheme amounted to only 2.25 per cent. The commission found later, however, that in terms of the number of account-holders affected the impact was much higher, constituting 45.12 per cent.

The final decision of the Competition Commission was made on 10 April 2008. The commission argued that the �PBA has acted beyond its mandate...and has been instrumental in the formation of a cartel�. As a result, it had deprived small account-holders of the benefits they were otherwise earning on their savings accounts. The PBA and the culpable banks were ordered to discontinue the practice, not to repeat it and to pay considerable fines. The PBA was fined Rs30 million, and the seven banks involved were fined Rs25 million each.

The penalised institutions did have recourse to appeal to the appellate bench of the Competition Commission, but they failed to do so within the stipulated time. On 27 May the PBA did, however, appeal against the decision of the commission with the Sindh High Court, which ordered the commission not to take any action against the PBA before the decision had been adjudicated in court.

The commission appealed against the high court�s decision, and on 15 September 2008 the Supreme Court allowed the commission to proceed against the banks. The Competition Commission�s move against the banking cartel, as well as the support provided by the Supreme Court, is encouraging. It has sent the message that such practices by the private sector, including the maintenance of unreasonable power by monopolies and restrictive trade practices, will not be tolerated and that the institutions in charge of monitoring such practices have the power to act.

Privatisation of Pakistan Steel Mills: Corruption in privatisation in Pakistan is endemic: manipulation of the process can be found at all stages, from the evaluation of profits and assets of a company to the provision of kickbacks on completion of a settlement.

One of the most famous cases relating to privatisation involves the attempted privatisation of Pakistan Steel Mills. As Pakistan�s largest and only integrated steel manufacturing plant, it is a private limited company, and 100 per cent of its equity is owned by the government. The plant is the biggest producer of steel in Pakistan and was installed in 1981, with the collaboration of Russia, by the Ministry of Industries, Production and Special Initiatives. In 1997 the government of Pakistan decided to privatise it, and, following the rules, secured approval from the Council of Common Interests.

In 1998 the privatisation of Pakistan Steel Mills was abandoned, and to make it profitable the labour force was reduced from 20,000 to 15,000.

As the steel mill had been designed, constructed and fitted out entirely by the Soviet Union, in February 2003 General Musharraf visited Moscow and signed an agreement to expand the production of the plant�s steel from 1.1 million to 1.5 million tonnes. By December 2004, less than two years later, the privatisation of the plant was being discussed again, and by 10 February 2005 the decision to privatise the mill was taken by the government. The corporation, assessed at Rs72 billion, was sold to a consortium for Rs21.58 billion on 24 April 2006.

On 23 June 2006, the Supreme Court ruled against the privatisation, and Chief Justice Chaudhry prevented the sale of the state monopoly to the private investors.

The Supreme Court concluded that approving the award of the contract reflected disregard for the mandatory rules, as well as the information necessary for arriving at a fair sale price. The unexplained haste of the proceedings also cast reasonable doubt on the ethics of the whole exercise. While Chief Justice Chaudhry acknowledged that it was not the function of the court to interfere with the policy-making of the executive, the privatisation of the mills was �vitiated by acts of omission� and violated the mandatory provisions of laws and rules. The valuation of the project and the final terms offered to the consortium were not in accord with the initial public offering given through the advertisement.

This case had implications that still resonate today, as it is considered one of the causes of the dismissal of Chief Justice Chaudhry in March 2007, who was not reinstated until July 2008.

It is, therefore, partially responsible for a great civil society movement in Pakistan, which called for the restoration of an independent judiciary. There are also unanswered questions that still need resolution. In October 2006 a case was filed against the then prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, and ten other ministers, as well as the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, alleging misuse of power � corruption as defined in section 9 of the National Accountability Bureau Ordinance 1999, which covers corruption and corrupt practices.

If found guilty, they would be subject to punishment, up to fourteen years� imprisonment, under section 10 of the ordinance for their involvement in the attempted privatisation of Pakistan Steel Mills. At the time of writing this report it was yet to be seen how the NAB, under the jurisdiction of the current government, will proceed with this case.

Anti-U.S. Wave Imperiling Efforts in Pakistan, Officials Say

By Karen DeYoung and Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 25, 2009


A new wave of anti-American sentiment in Pakistan has slowed the arrival of hundreds of U.S. civilian and military officials charged with implementing assistance programs, undermined cooperation in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and put American lives at risk, according to officials from both countries.
In recent weeks, Pakistan has rejected as "incomplete" at least 180 U.S. government visa requests. Its own ambassador in Washington has criticized what he called a "blacklist" used by the Pakistani intelligence service to deny visas or to conduct "rigorous, intrusive and obviously crude surveillance" of journalists and nongovernmental aid organizations it dislikes, including the Congress-funded International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute.
"It would be helpful if the grounds for action against them are shared with the Embassy," Ambassador Husain Haqqani wrote in late July to Pakistan's Foreign Ministry and the head of its Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Tension has been fueled by widespread media reports in Pakistan of increased U.S. military and intelligence activity -- including the supposed arrival of 1,000 Marines and the establishment of "spy" centers in houses rented by the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Islamabad. U.S. Ambassador Anne W. Patterson has publicly labeled the reports false, and she told local media executives in a recent letter that publishing addresses and photographs of the houses "endanger[s] the lives of Americans in Pakistan."
At the highest levels, bilateral cooperation is said to be running smoothly. President Obama and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari met Thursday in New York with a gathering of Pakistan's international "friends." With Obama's enthusiastic support, the Senate on Thursday approved a $7.5 billion, five-year package that will triple nonmilitary aid to Pakistan. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, meets regularly with his Pakistani counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani.
But just below the top, officials in Islamabad and Washington say, the relationship is fraught with mutual suspicion and is under pressure so extreme that it threatens cooperation against the insurgents.
"We recognize that Pakistani public opinion on the United States is still surprisingly low, given the tremendous effort by the United States to lead an international coalition in support of Pakistan," Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said after Thursday's meetings. "We are a long way from this meeting to realities on the ground."
As Obama grapples with U.S. military proposals to greatly increase the number of American troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, other options on the table include a stepped-up counterterrorism campaign against al-Qaeda strongholds in Pakistan that would require more -- rather than less -- Pakistani support.
Recent Pew Research Center surveys in Pakistan found considerable support for the "idea" of working with the United States to combat terrorism. But only 16 percent of Pakistanis polled expressed a favorable view overall of the United States, and only 13 percent expressed confidence in Obama.
Pakistanis, who are extremely sensitive about national sovereignty, oppose allowing foreign troops on their soil and have protested U.S. missile attacks launched from unmanned aircraft against suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan.
Much of the recent upheaval has focused on U.S. plans to expand the U.S. Embassy complex in Islamabad, a heavily guarded, 38-acre compound with nearly 1,500 employees, two-thirds of them Pakistani nationals. About 400 employees are to be added, half of them Americans. Reports of the expansion have led to rumors that at least 1,000 Marines also would be arriving, along with new contingents of U.S. spies.
In addition to repeatedly denying ulterior motives, the embassy has held news briefings and invited Pakistani reporters to tour its grounds. Patterson appeared on local television Saturday to reiterate that Washington has no takeover desires and that there are only eight Marines in the country, guarding the main embassy building.
Patterson also denied local media reports that the embassy has hired Blackwater, the security agency now known as Xe Services that was discredited in Iraq, to spy on and seek to kill insurgent leaders. Those reports apparently originated with U.S. media accounts this summer that the CIA had hired Blackwater to assist in a worldwide assassination program against al-Qaeda that was never activated and no longer exists.
One of the most vocal critics is security analyst and newspaper columnist Shireen Mazari, praised by supporters as a champion of Pakistan's independence. Patterson's Aug. 27 letter to Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, head of the media group that owns the News newspaper and Geo Television, complained that Mazari's column and talk shows had made "wildly incorrect" charges that could endanger Americans' safety. In particular, Patterson objected to Mazari's "baseless and inaccurate allegation" that Washington-based Creative Associates International, a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development with offices in Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East, was a "CIA front-company."
In a telephone interview Sunday, Mazari said: "I definitely have concerns about the Americans' intentions here, especially that they would like to get access to our nuclear assets. The U.S. mind-set is suspicious of strong Muslim states, and there is a certain imperial arrogance in their behavior that Pakistanis like me don't like."
Many Pakistanis see the United States as the latest in a long line of usurpers. "It's like history repeating itself, from the time the East India Company came out here," Mazhar Salim, 52, a phone-booth operator in Islamabad, said last weekend. "We are a Muslim country, and the non-Muslim world, the Americans and the Jews and the Indians, are all threatened by our civilization."
U.S. and Pakistani officials, who agreed to discuss the relationship on the condition of anonymity, said that much of the anti-Americanism reflected jousting among Pakistani politicians and retired military leaders, who often use the media to discredit one another.
Haqqani, the Pakistani ambassador, is a frequent target, accused of being too pro-American or, more recently, even pro-Indian. His letter asking for an explanation of visa denials was leaked to the Indian media, arousing suspicion that a foe of the government had sought to doubly discredit him.
But even those Pakistani officials who allege that the intelligence service has a blacklist say that the delay in issuing official visas is as much the United States' fault as it is Pakistan's.
Many more visa applications have been approved than rejected, one official said, and those sent back are "usually the ones without a clear description on the forms about what they're going to do" in Pakistan. "Sometimes the forms just say 'work for the U.S. government.' All we've done is returned those forms and said, 'Hey, what are you going to do?' "
Constable reported from Islamabad. Staff writer Glenn Kessler in New York contributed to this report.

Analysis: Pakistan unlikely to cooperate with US

By CHRIS BRUMMITT (AP) – 3 hours ago

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan's doubts about U.S. commitment to the Afghan war make it less likely to cooperate in targeting Taliban commanders said to be directing the insurgency across the border.
Pakistan has been ambivalent about the militants, sometimes trying to enlist them as potential allies in case they take control again in neighboring Afghanistan — a prospect many here believe is getting closer.
This country's role in the war is in sharp focus as President Barack Obama publicly questions the strategy he pushed last winter of building up U.S. forces in Afghanistan to fight a revitalized Taliban. The top U.S commander recently warned that NATO could lose the war.
Searching for alternatives to sending still more troops, the White House is now considering a strategy championed by Vice President Joe Biden that focuses on stepped-up missile attacks by unmanned U.S. drones against al-Qaida and Taliban targets on the Pakistani side of the border.
To be effective, such attacks require Pakistani intelligence.
The Pakistanis are believed to have withheld intelligence for years about key suspects in the Afghan Taliban, but the U.S. has been making progress in recent months securing their cooperation against certain targets. Although many of these militants were primarily trying to overthrow the Pakistani government, some also had close ties with fighters in Afghanistan.
More than 70 such attacks have killed scores of ranking militant commanders since last year, including Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. On Thursday, a missile strike near the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan killed four people, Pakistani officials said. The Pakistani government routinely issues statements of protest, even though these strikes are widely believed to take place with its support.
U.S. and NATO officials have long believed that much of the direction, manpower, money and weapons fueling the Afghan insurgency comes from across the border in Pakistan — particularly Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who is thought to be based close to the city of Quetta in Baluchistan province, and the network commanded by Siraj Haqqani in the Waziristan tribal areas.
American officials and many analysts allege that Pakistan's powerful spy agency is either protecting, tolerating or actively supporting those groups because they do not pose a direct threat to the Pakistani state and may be useful allies in ensuring that a pro-Pakistan, anti-India regime takes power in Afghanistan when the Americans leave.
Pakistan has fought three wars against India and still considers it the country's main threat. India has tried to forge close ties with Kabul and has established consulates in several Afghan cities. Pakistan does not want to see a pro-New Delhi regime on its western flank if the Americans withdraw.
While nominally a parliamentary democracy, Pakistan's army generals and intelligence chiefs in practice still control defense policy and to some extent foreign policy.
With talk of NATO pulling out of Afghanistan, an increasingly potent Taliban threat and rising questions in the U.S. about whether defeating the insurgency is possible, there is even less incentive for the Pakistani authorities to share intelligence on Haqqani and Omar, said Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University's Pakistan Security Research Unit.
"The Pakistanis want the Americans out; above all they want India out. And the only creatures who can do that are the Afghan Taliban," he said. "If the Pakistanis hand over more info on al-Qaida and the rest, it will have a marginal effect as to what happens in Afghanistan."
The Pakistanis have not supplied the U.S. with any intelligence on the Haqqani network, Gregory said. In return, Haqqani and other Afghan Taliban have not joined their Pakistani Taliban brethren in trying to seize other regions and advance on the capital, Islamabad.
"They don't want to antagonize several groups in Pakistan. If the Haqqani group starts helping the Pakistani Taliban, then God help us," said Talat Masood, a Pakistani defense analyst. "The Americans cannot stay in Afghanistan forever, but we will have to live here forever."
The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, said in a recent interview with McClatchy Newspapers that Pakistan had "different priorities" than America in this regard and was "reluctant to take action" against the leadership of the Afghan insurgency.
A senior Pakistani intelligence official, however, insisted the spy agencies of Pakistan were sharing intelligence with the CIA about militants operating both here and in Afghanistan, including the Haqqani network.
"The CIA knows about our role, but we don't want to highlight it through the media," said the officer, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with the requirements of his job.
In the past, Pakistani officials have pointed to the several al-Qaida commanders the country has handed over to the United States and ongoing military campaigns against insurgents that cost many Pakistani lives.
Pakistan has claimed several successes in the fight against the Pakistani Taliban in recent months, including a widely praised offensive against insurgents in the Swat Valley.
But at the very least, the army and the intelligence agencies give priority to battling groups fighting the Pakistani state rather than those who direct their energies toward U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
There is little government or military control in Pakistan's remote, mountainous border region. Al-Qaida's top leaders, including Osama bin Laden, may be hiding in the area, and militants move freely across the border.
U.S. missiles are believed to be fired from unmanned drones launched from Afghanistan or from a base inside the Pakistani province of Baluchistan. American officials generally do not acknowledge the attacks.
The strikes are unpopular among nationalist and Muslim politicians and activists, but they have become so routine that they attract little media attention or public protest in Pakistan these days.
Still, an increase in attacks — or strikes outside the semiautonomous areas where they have so far taken place — could turn the public against Pakistan's government at a time when its popularity is already low. Critics would surely paint Pakistani leader Asif Ali Zardari, who met with Obama in New York on Thursday, as an American lackey.
Chris Brummitt is the Associated Press bureau chief in Islamabad. AP writer Munir Ahmad contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Now, we don't cry anymore

Lieutenant General Abdul Hadi Khalid was the Afghan first deputy minister of the interior for security from May 2006 to late June 2008. Specializing in counter-narcotics, border policing and internal security, he announced the largest drug seizure in history.
He lost his post after a dispute with President Hamid Karzai's administration last year, but remains one of Afghanistan's leading thinkers on regional ethno-political dynamics and transnational criminal networks. Derek Henry Flood recently sat down with Hadi Khalid at his home in Kabul and discussed a wide range of challenges facing Afghanistan's border security as a landlocked state with six neighbors, as well as the post-Bonn agreement


 
successes and failures in the creation of the Afghan National Police.

Derek Henry Flood: Can you order the level of priority beginning with the most challenging border situations for the Ministry of Interior amongst Afghanistan's neighbors?

Abdul Hadi Khalid: First is obviously Pakistan. Then Tajikistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and finally China.

When [General Pervez] Musharraf was in power, his government claimed that the main cause of instability in our region was the presence of the international community and NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] troops in Afghanistan.

DHF: The Pakistanis claimed that NATO was a bigger threat to the region than their own furthering of the Taliban movement?

HK: They denied this in those days. But we were sure of their support for the Taliban. This was a cause of the sour relationship between Hamid Karzai and General Musharraf. When the civilian government came into power in 2008, they began to make some changes in the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] and the army. The civilian administration led by Asif Ali Zardari recognized that there was a problem. They told members of the Pakistani Taliban that if you want to be a friend of Pakistan, you must leave some of the areas under your control, such as Swat and Bajaur. But they [the Tehrik-e-Taliban] resisted and they were dangerously close to Islamabad.

For a time, the Taliban in FATA [the Federally Administered Tribal Areas] were useful to the Pakistani state because their relentless assassinations of tribal maliks [leaders] led the Pakistani government to think it could finally reach the Durand Line. But then they realized they could not control these Talibs. The maliks enforced a rigid structure of independence from the central government but they could be dealt with, unlike [Baitullah] Mahsud's men.

DHF: Is the issue of the recognition of the Durand Line as a formal border a resolvable issue with Islamabad in the near term?

HK: There is a latent fear in the Afghan government that if it formally recognizes the Durand Line as an international border with Pakistan, there could be a mass Pashtun revolt. Nonetheless, yes, I do think the issue should be solved. President Karzai averts his eyes to the Durand Line problem because he does not want to risk an internal fight that would further destabilize Afghanistan. The thinking has always been that Pashtunistan can never truly be divided as the British attempted to do. We need to have good relations with Pakistan in part because of the large number of Afghan refugees still inside their borders. Like our other neighbors, Afghanistan needs Pakistan.

Intelligence agencies in Pakistan thought they could use a pliant Taliban to destroy the tribal structure of FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] so they could better control the border with Afghanistan. This was a huge mistake. Once the Taliban had finished their war on the tribal elders, they set their sights further afield in places like Swat and Buner, close to Islamabad. Not only could these agencies not control these Talibs, now they are actively at war with them inside Pakistan. Also there are people here who are sympathetic to the idea of the reunification of Pashtunistan because they view this entire region as historically Afghan territory since the Ghaznavid period [975-1187]. Afghans once ruled Kashmir but it makes no sense to reiterate these types of territorial claims today. Pakistan cannot claim any control over Afghanistan today. They hope to gain control of Indian-occupied Kashmir but seeing as they could not even hold onto Bangladesh, I do not think their territorial aspirations are at all realistic.

The tribal maliks stood in the way of Pakistan's desire to control the Durand Line because the ISI knew the maliks would never accept the presence of the Pakistani government in this area. Since the British era, the maliks have exercised a great degree of sovereignty in FATA and they thought that by killing [the elders] via their Talib proxies, the Pakistani Army and intelligence services could finally gain control of the tribes. By decimating the system of elders, Pakistan solved one small problem but created a much bigger one for itself. They were greatly mistaken in thinking they could control men like Baitullah Mahsud. Mahsud and the Pakistani Taliban had their own ideology which contained goals conflicting with the Pakistani establishment.

But the problem of the Durand Line remains a serious one. You may have read that Pakistan forces have physically attacked our border forces in recent years and the situation there can be very tense [see Deutsche Presse-Agentur April 20, 2007]. Pakistan wants to control the Durand Line to assert itself but Karzai believes it is only so they can divide and dominate all of Pashtunistan.

DHF: Now let's discuss the situation of your border with Tajikistan and the resurgence of Taliban militancy in Konduz.

HK: The situation in Tajikistan is infecting Pakistan and the rest of Central Asia. Opium, primarily from Badakhshan province, goes north through Tajikistan while arms come south to us from Soviet-era stockpiles that are being exploited. Some of these weapons [of Tajik provenance] are ending up inside Pakistan. Afghan drug dealers buy weapons from Tajik smugglers and then resell them for a tidy profit. They often double their money on these weapons deals. Not all of these weapons are ending up in the hands of insurgents either. As the security environment declines, villagers in affected areas are buying arms and ammunition to protect themselves. In Tajikistan weapons are cheap and they are plentiful. I believe that some Tajik border forces are also complicit in this trade.

Our border police are some of the most corrupt in the world. This brings me to an important issue. In Afghanistan, all of our police are drawn from the local population where they serve whether they are on our borders, along our highways, or in our cities. I wanted to make the ANP [Afghan National Police] a singular, centrally controlled entity with truly national border police, not just men raised from the villages closest to the borders. This practice leads to corruption.

Another issue I had to deal with was the starkly differing approaches from within the Western military alliance on how the ANP's training should be conducted and how an Afghan policeman's job should be carried out. The EU [European Union] member states believed the ANP's duties should be restricted to civilian policing like their counterparts in Europe. Some Europeans even said the ANP men should not carry pistols! I told the Europeans that if your police can go to Ghazni with no weapons and come back alive then we would consider disarming our police.
The Americans, for their part, had completely the opposite idea. They saw the ANP as the lesser-armed and prepared "step-brother" of the Afghan National Army [ANA]. The Americans view the ANP as a fellow frontline force in our counter-insurgency war while the Europeans strongly proposed that the ANP be removed from the conflict altogether. The Americans are soldiers that do not understand the fundamentals of policing communities and feel the ANP should be proper security forces. We had Germans who were training our police [the German Police Project Office] at the Kabul Police Academy several years ago but they did not do a good job because they put too many limitations on their mandate. They could train police inside the police academy but not outside of it in real situations.

Then the ANP training was taken over by EUPOL [European Union Police Mission in Afghanistan] which made things far too complicated. The ANP became tangled in a web of inter-EU bureaucracy. Let's say we ask for ten police from EUPOL. EUPOL then has to go around asking EU member states to contribute individual officers for these missions. If one member state says no, they do not want to send their police, what can we Afghans do? Then the Europeans tell us that our police are civilians and must not fight against terrorism because it should not be part of their job. They tell us the fight belongs to the ANA and NATO only. Finally we convinced the Europeans that, while yes, the ANP's first task should be law enforcement and civil order, our police must be able to properly defend themselves when they come under attack from insurgents.

On the murky issue of renewed fighting in Kunduz and northern Baghlan province, it is likely related to the American negotiations with the Russian Federation and several of the Central Asian states for the transit of NATO supplies to Afghanistan. Another factor has been the disenfranchisement of the northern Pashtuns with the renewed ascendancy of ethnic Tajik Jamiat-e-Islami actors in the then-nascent Karzai-led government succeeding the Bonn agreement. The traditionally dominant northern Tajiks led by Marshal Mohammed Fahim and Ustad Atta Mohammed had no sympathy for the Pashtun power base in Konduz which had allied itself with the Taliban [Kunduz was previously an enclave for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami] and cleaved the Tajiks' northern security belt between Balkh and Takhar provinces.

The Tajik Jamiat members in Afghanistan's central government sought to divide the northern Pashtuns in a bid to lessen their power. For example, in Baghlan, the new government picked a man named Amir Gul to be a district chief. But Amir Gul has a very bad name in the local society and by putting someone like him in power, the local people turn back to Hekmatyar and [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar and say "Please help us" because they know Gul to be a corrupt man with a bad reputation among his fellow Pashtuns. Pakistan, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami were waiting for that moment [to re-enter northern Afghanistan].

DHF: What would be the motivation for Pakistan's ISI and military establishment to foment chaos in Konduz and Baghlan?

HK: Well the first reason would be that they want to prevent NATO from entrenching these northern transit routes. These alternate routes will cause Pakistan to lose a lot of money from the Karachi-Torkham route. Pakistan does not want to lose this money from NATO. Pakistan and the US have historically been allies and Pakistan is scared that if America forms a new relationship with Uzbekistan then Pakistan will be left out of future security equations in the region. The second reason is that Pakistan still wields an enormous amount of influence in Afghanistan and they do not want their role to be diminished in any way. If Uzbekistan becomes stronger in Afghanistan, Pakistan worries that its future is dark. So the reasons for Pakistan's covert support of northern militancy are both economic and political.

DHF: What is al-Qaeda's motivation for being in this environment?

HK: For al-Qaeda, the fighting in Kunduz is a new window of opportunity for them to regain a foothold in Central Asia.

DHF: How did President Karzai's pre-election pacts affect stability in northern Afghanistan?

HK: Karzai has worked to split all of the original jihadi parties dating from the anti-Soviet war. He believes that in causing these splits, he can both weaken all of his opponents and create allies all over Afghanistan. The splitting of [the Tajik-based] Jamiat-e-Islami between Marshal [Muhammad] Fahim on one side and Dr Abdullah Abdullah on the other has been another factor in further destabilizing the north. With the Tajiks divided against one another, this creates a security vacuum for the ISI and local militants who had been dormant.

Besides the resurgence of a formal terror network, Karzai's division of the old parties has led to a breakdown in social order that the political parties once maintained. This breakdown opens the door for criminal groups to operate. And along with the criminal groups are the drug producers and smugglers. Iran has been beefing up its border police recently in a robust effort to stem the flow of opiates into Mashad and Sistan-Balochistan. So Afghan narco-traffickers are looking for alternate routes. Tajikistan, with its inept and corrupt government is a viable alternative to relatively strong Iran. Instability directly south of the Tajik border eases the flow of narcotics northward.

DHF: Describe the Afghan Interior Ministry's view of its relationship with Uzbekistan?

HK: Uzbekistan is the most important nation in Central Asia. The situation with Uzbekistan's border security is much better than Tajikistan because they have a very short border with Afghanistan combined with very strong security services. During my time in the Ministry of Interior, we had good relations with them [the Uzbeks].

DHF: Can you talk about the border with Turkmenistan and the relevant situation of declining security in Afghanistan's Badghis province?

HK: Our relations with the Turkmen are also good but the circumstances there are not as good as Uzbekistan for a few reasons. They have a much longer border with many fewer police and the region of our shared border there is very lightly populated on both sides of the frontier. This makes the environment conducive to smuggling and other criminal activity.


You may have heard that there is some Taliban resurgence in Badghis similar to what is going on in Kunduz. I personally think the ISI must be behind these renewed theaters of insurgency. By creating trouble near the borders with our Central Asian neighbors, Pakistanis can say "Look you see, there is instability all over Afghanistan, not just along the Durand Line".

By stirring up instability in formerly stable areas, it may make the new NATO negotiations with CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] countries seem less appealing. Again, Pakistan does not want to lose the revenue from the Western military freight that transits through its territory. It also does not want to seem less of a crucial ally of the United States because Pakistan is deathly afraid of India, as we all know. So now we are having trouble near


 
the border with Turkmenistan and this scares their leaders. Like Uzbekistan, Ashgabat does not want the Taliban to gain a renewed presence in their region.

Now when Ashgabat sees that there is trouble in Badghis province, Pakistan can say "Look, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are your neighbors now," enhancing Pakistan's claims that Kabul's writ is weak in most of the country. This furthers Pakistan's pipe dream of regional hegemony. By making Afghanistan look weak, Pakistanis believe this makes them appear strong. They want to be the regional leaders. Pakistan can exploit the fact that Central Asian leaders fear al-Qaeda infiltration. Badghis is now becoming a new front of insecurity.

DHF: The Iranian border is a long and dangerous one. How were your relations with the Iranians? Would you describe their modus operandi as one of cooperation, competition or a mix of the two?

HK: Iran does not have a singular, consistent foreign policy for Afghanistan. Though the ANP has a good working relationship with Iran's border and counter narcotics police, Iran has an interest in weakening America's position inside Afghanistan and hindering the democratic process in Afghanistan. If Afghanistan could maintain a stable, emerging democracy, what message would that send to the young people in Iran who are restless for change? This is inconvenient for Iran's government.

Iran has many institutions and these are often in competition with one another, serving Tehran at cross-purposes. Iran's Afghan policy is fluid and changes rapidly according to interests of the day. Iran is constantly shifting its position here. Some elements of their government are conservative while others can be quite aggressive. Iran's top police chief came to Kabul and offered to help us build some border and customs infrastructure and asked for assistance with counter narcotics operations and our meetings were very friendly.

In this way, Iran tries to play all sides because their strategic position is threatened both here and in Iraq. Iran made a very bad play in temporarily aiding the Talibs. They gave them ammunition to fight Western forces but this also meant that Iran now had the Taliban back along its border for the first time since 2001. Secondly, where Talibs go, NATO forces eventually follow in pursuit of their counter-insurgency goals. So I think the Iranians realized they made a major strategic mistake on this issue. They wanted to keep NATO forces occupied in southern Afghanistan so that they could pursue various foreign policy goals of theirs but the result was now both Talibs and NATO on their border and Jundullah [ethnic-Balochi insurgents operating in the Iranian province of Sistan-Balochistan] attacking from Zabul province and from their bases in Pakistani Balochistan. Iran is now confronted with Sunni extremists and Western military forces on its eastern border. Iran is very nervous.

In 2006, a Taliban informant that we have close contact with told us that he had recently been to Iran on three separate occasions. He claimed that Iran was sending some munitions to the Taliban. But this temporary support of certain Taliban elements in western Afghanistan came to haunt the Iranians. Some of these weapons eventually ended up in the hands of Jundullah [Army of God]. Jundullah and the Taliban have some friendly working relations. Then the Iranians realized Jundullah was seeking to destabilize Sistan-Balochistan. Jundullah operates freely in the triple border area of Balochistan. When Jundullah started making some attacks against Iranian security forces, Iran realized that covert support of the Taliban was not in their interest.

DHF: So during your post, you've said the MOI [Ministry of the Interior] was able to find some reliable Taliban informants. To your knowledge, has there been any Taliban infiltration in the ANP as an institutional issue?

HK: During my time in the MOI we had four or five incidents of the Taliban penetrating ANP facilities but these were all what I would call low-level incidents. None of these penetrations added up to much for either side. There were some incidents in Farah [province], Zabol [province] and the Bala Murghab district of Badghis [province] but they were not significant. The Taliban do not have any political program that will appeal to educated people in our military and government. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan for years and our educated people understand the difference between the Taliban's motives and their actions. Pakistanis have not had to live under Taliban rule, Afghans have had this experience. And unlike the army in Pakistan since [former president] Zia ul-Haq's Islamization phase, our army and police have always been secular organizations, which makes it difficult for the Taliban to get much sympathy [from] them.

DHF: What can you tell about the little known border with China? Does the Afghan government even have a presence along the Afghanistan-China border?

HK: This is a good example of the weaknesses in our security policy. In that area, at the end of the Wakhan [Corridor, a narrow and sparsely populated pass connecting Afghanistan to China], we just have some Pamiri people [Wakhi and Afghan Kyrgyz] that are supportive of Kabul and they watch the border for us. But they are just local people. The people there do not have aviation transportation and our border police have yet to reach this area. As I said, we do not have centralization for our border security forces. During the time in my position, I repeatedly called for centralizing our border police.

DHF: Does the central government have any representation on the Chinese frontier at all?

HK: We have sent people there weapons and supplies but it is very difficult for us to control the area. I have heard that some of the villages there are even supplied by China. Throughout history we have had this problem with controlling the Wakhan, even during the era of the king [Zahir Shah]. Only in high summer is the area accessible [due to extreme weather conditions].

DHF: Is the Wakhan a drug trafficking route to China?

HK: If the Chinese do not control it, yes. The Chinese are afraid of drugs. Drugs always seem to find their routes. Central Badakhshan province is one of the oldest centers of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. Long before poppy growth in Helmand, Badakhshan was the original center of drugs in this region. In my days in the MOI, we had a plan to reach there and institute controls but [the operation] was never realized.

DHF: In your tenure as the deputy minister of interior for security, did you get a chance to survey the Chinese border at the end of the Wakhan Corridor?

HK: No, I have never been to the area. The MOI was not supplied with any helicopters from the international community to reach there as there are no roads. How can we go there without helicopters? I have been told that our MOI has recently been gifted two helicopters, one from Germany and one from Russia. So now the MOI forces have a total of two helicopters to police the entire country! I had the idea to create a new ministry for internal security to solve some of these issues but it was never realized.

DHF: The name Afghan National Police would lead one to believe that the ANP is a unified force under federal command.

HK: The problem with the system is that while the overall command of the ANP is centralized now, almost all the police around the country are still recruited from the local population. All over the world, border police are national but in Afghanistan, they are local. In a whole province you will have maybe a few commanders from outside the immediate area. I have tried to say that Afghanistan's most important force should be its border police. If our international allies are right to tell us that Pakistan is the base for so much cross-border terrorism, should not we be stopping militant infiltration at the border? Border policing should be our highest priority, especially along the Pakistan border.

DHF: Were your able to bring this concept to Karzai's attention?

HK: I mentioned it to him but Karzai is a very busy man. He cannot give these issues the time they deserve. The ANP is very poorly equipped and not prepared to confront a lot of these problems.

DHF: Speaking of equipment, what can you tell us about the staffing and financing of the ANP?

HK: After Bonn, it was decided that Afghanistan should have 62,000 national policemen. During my work in the MOI, our international donors wanted the number increased to 82,000 and now there is talk of raising the membership to 96,000, including local militias, which I think is a terrible idea. It is better to have a small, qualified force than a barely outfitted, cumbersome one. But the donors do not listen to us, they make these decisions without consulting us.

We cannot fund the ANP ourselves with our tiny tax base so the international community must pay for it. The ANP are funded in two ways. The first is the police trust fund that was established to pay for food and salaries and its budget is 14.5 billion Afghanis [approximately US$290 million]. Then there is a separate fund controlled by donors that pays for vehicles, communications gear, building procurement and weapons. We did not know in the MOI what the precise budget is because our international partners did not tell us at the time.

DHF: Your final thoughts?

HK: The United States must "Afghanize" the situation here. Afghanization is the only way forward. Afghans want to have an alliance with the United States because without such an ally, we cannot survive. Our neighbors will swallow us up and our internal problems will also swallow us. The US must genuinely empower our army, police and intelligence services to make our forces the frontline in Afghanistan.

DHF: Why has the US not done such? Is it an issue of trust?

HK: Yes, I think so. Our armies fight together but when we need military equipment, they do not [budge]. This makes President Karzai crazy. He cries to the Americans "Why, why don't you give our army and police equipment?" But the Americans still don't provide [heavy armor]. There is still a lot of mistrust between Americans and Afghans after all these years. But from the Afghan side, we are not completely honest either. The Americans say we need a several hundred thousand strong army but I do not agree. We need a small, highly mobile well-equipped army.

[Nearing the end of our interview, Khalid picks up a small Nokia phone and calls a friend to check a fact for me. He learns during the course of the call that a close friend and colleague, Dr Abdullah Laghmani, deputy head of the National Directorate for Security, has just been assassinated in a suicide attack in Laghman province, 96 kilometers west of Kabul, while leaving a mosque with several prominent local officials following a Ramadan prayer service.]

HK: I have lost thousands of friends over the last 30 years. Dr Laghmani was a very good friend of mine. In the beginning, we cried a lot. Now, we do not cry anymore.

Derek Henry Flood is an American freelance journalist specializing in analysis of Middle Eastern, South and Central Asian geopolitics through traditional reporting and photography combined with digital multimedia.

(This article first appeared in The Jamestown Foundation. Used with permission.)

China's Bigger Role in Pakistan, Afghanistan

Kevin Slaten South China Morning Post, February 12, 2009

Next week, Secretary of State Clinton makes her first trip to Beijing. She must make a case for China – a regional stakeholder – to play a greater role in stabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan.   

Currently, the Obama Administration is undertaking a major review of the war in Afghanistan. The president has already indicated that the US will probably scale back its objective there from installing a democracy to stabilizing the country and ridding it of terrorist elements. 

 

There are two major impediments to achieving stability in Afghanistan. The first is resources. Despite plans to send 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan, the total allied forces will not be able to cover the vast expanses of the country. Further manpower seems unlikely to materialize: Iraq is not going to simply go away and NATO is resisting deeper involvement. 

 

The second challenge is Pakistan. The tribal regions of the country’s northwest has given space for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to plan attacks on allied forces in Afghanistan. These militants are hard to reach due to a lack of central rule from Islamabad as well as adamant Pashtun resistance against any foreign presence. For eight months, the US has tried to fight inaccessible militants with drone attacks, but this tactic has only served to exacerbate tensions with Pakistani politicians and anger local tribes. 

 

China could assist in both “Af-Pak” challenges.

 

The People’s Republic has strategic energy and economic interests in maintaining stability in both nations. Pakistan and China share a free trade agreement and did over $6 billion in bilateral trade last year. The “All Weather” allies are aiming for $15 billion in the coming years. 

 

Beijing also considers Pakistan critical to energy security. The Gwadar port – 400km from the Straight of Hormuz – along with a network of rail and roads through Pakistan assures the convenient transport of Middle Eastern oil and gas to China through Xinjiang Province.  

 

In Afghanistan, China has deep interests in acquiring natural resources. In 2007, after President Karzai opened up his country to foreign investment of natural resources, China Metallurgical Group won the rights to develop the world’s largest undeveloped copper field in Anyak for $3.5 billion. China’s state-owned companies are also likely to pursue Afghanistan’s untapped oil, gas, and iron resources.

 

Beyond these motivations, the circumstance in Af-Pak is an opportunity for China to take another next step toward its stated goal of becoming a responsible regional power and major world player. Beijing can allay concerns in the international community over its growing influence if it shows – through action – that it is ready to contribute to stability in trouble areas in its own neighborhood.

 

China can help in two primary ways: aid and troops. In Pakistan, China has been providing military aid for decades. This funding should increase to support Pakistani forces in rooting out violent militants in FATA. (Of course, the funding will not do any good without a successful effort by Special Representative Richard Holbrooke to convince Pakistani troops to fight.) Developmental aid will also be needed to encourage tribes to reject Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

 

China can help tackle the most urgent problem in Afghanistan – a lack of manpower – by lending some of its 1.7 million ground forces to the mission. Not only will this bring the stability necessary for economic development, but Pakistan would be much more comfortable with a large build-up of Chinese troops in Afghanistan rather than US forces.   

 

Here too, China must commit aid – not just business investment. Without sufficient infrastructure, Afghanistan will continue to see its resources extracted with minimal gain to its people, therefore remaining vulnerable to militants who might offer an alternative.

 

Some would doubt the ability of Chinese and US or NATO forces to work together, citing underdeveloped military relations. But this is a chance to boost military cooperation. There is no more convenient time for building trust than when both sides want the same outcome: a stable Afghanistan.   

 

Another complaint might be that China, as a one-party state, does not share the values of NATO, which was founded around democracy, and the mission to leave a viable democracy in Afghanistan. Yet this is irrelevant for two reasons. First, as mentioned earlier, the Obama administration has become more focused on the objective of stability than democracy. Second, given that security is the paramount objective, the pragmatic choice would be to leave ideology at home and obtain the manpower necessary to achieve stability. 

 

China could be a critical part to success in Af-Pak. And given so many common challenges, this could be the first of numerous problems that China and the US tackle together.

 

This article was originally published in the South China Morning Post.

cato-at-liberty.org: Pakistan: More Aid, More Waste, More Fraud?

Posted by Doug Bandow

Pakistan long has tottered on the edge of being a failed state:  created amidst a bloody partition from India, suffered under ineffective democratic rule and disastrous military rule, destabilized through military suppression of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) by dominant West Pakistan, dismembered in a losing war with India, misgoverned by a corrupt and wastrel government, linked to the most extremist Afghan factions during the Soviet occupation, allied with the later Taliban regime, and now destabilized by the war in Afghanistan.  Along the way the regime built nuclear weapons, turned a blind eye to A.Q. Khan’s proliferation market, suppressed democracy, tolerated religious persecution, elected Asif Ali “Mr. Ten Percent” Zardari as president, and wasted billions of dollars in foreign (and especially American) aid.
Still the aid continues to flow.  But even the Obama administration has some concerns about ensuring that history does not repeat itself.  Reports the New York Times:

As the United States prepares to triple its aid package to Pakistan — to a proposed $1.5 billion over the next year — Obama administration officials are debating how much of the assistance should go directly to a government that has been widely accused of corruption, American and Pakistani officials say. A procession of Obama administration economic experts have visited Islamabad, the capital, in recent weeks to try to ensure both that the money will not be wasted by the government and that it will be more effective in winning the good will of a public increasingly hostile to the United States, according to officials involved with the project.
…The overhaul of American assistance, led by the State Department, comes amid increased urgency about an economic crisis that is intensifying social unrest in Pakistan, and about the willingness of the government there to sustain its fight against a raging insurgency in the northwest. It follows an assessment within the Obama administration that the amount of nonmilitary aid to the country in the past few years was inadequate and favored American contractors rather than Pakistani recipients, according to several of the American officials involved.

Rather than pouring more good money after bad, the U.S. should lift tariff barriers on Pakistani goods.  What the Pakistani people need is not more misnamed “foreign aid” funneled through corrupt and inefficient bureaucracies, but jobs.  Trade, not aid, will help create real, productive work, rather than political patronage positions.

Second, Islamabad needs to liberalize its own economy.  As P.T. Bauer presciently first argued decades ago–and as is widely recognized today–the greatest barriers to development in poorer states is internal.  Countries like Pakistan make entrepreneurship, business formation, and job creation well-nigh impossible.  Business success requires political influence.  The result is poverty and, understandably, political and social unrest.  More than a half century experience with foreign “aid” demonstrates that money from abroad at best masks the consequences of underdevelopment.  More often such transfers actually hinder development, by strengthening the very governments and policies which stand in the way of economic growth.
Even military assistance has been misused.  Reported the New York Times two years ago:

After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped. In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs.

Writing blank checks to regimes like that in Pakistan is counterproductive in the long term.  Extremists pose a threat less because they offer an attractive alternative and more because people are fed up with decades of misrule by the existing authorities.  Alas, U.S. “aid” not only buttresses those authorities, but ties America to them, transferring their unpopularity to Washington.  The administration needs do better than simply toss more money at the same people while hoping that they will do better this time.

U.S. Fears That Pakistan Aid Will Feed Graft

By JANE PERLEZ

Published: September 20, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — As the United States prepares to triple its aid package to Pakistan — to a proposed $1.5 billion over the next year — Obama administration officials are debating how much of the assistance should go directly to a government that has been widely accused of corruption, American and Pakistani officials say.

A slum in Karachi, Pakistan, considered to be Asia’s largest. The United States wants future financial aid to Pakistan to help its people and win their good will.

A girl mourning her mother, killed in a stampede for free flour in Karachi. There were handouts despite a bumper wheat crop.

A procession of Obama administration economic experts have visited Islamabad, the capital, in recent weeks to try to ensure both that the money will not be wasted by the government and that it will be more effective in winning the good will of a public increasingly hostile to the United States, according to officials involved with the project.
As American lawmakers move toward passage of the aid legislation, the administration knows it must get quick results from the increased assistance or face potential Congressional cutbacks down the road in a program envisioned to cost $1.5 billion every year for the next five years.
“We’re struggling over how much cash to give to the government,” said a senior American official involved in the planning, who declined to be named according to diplomatic custom.
The overhaul of American assistance, led by the State Department, comes amid increased urgency about an economic crisis that is intensifying social unrest in Pakistan, and about the willingness of the government there to sustain its fight against a raging insurgency in the northwest. It follows an assessment within the Obama administration that the amount of nonmilitary aid to the country in the past few years was inadequate and favored American contractors rather than Pakistani recipients, according to several of the American officials involved.
American officials say the main goals of the new assistance will be to shore up the crumbling Pakistani state by building infrastructure like roads and power plants, and to improve the standing of the United States with the Pakistani people.
In return, the Obama administration expects Pakistan to keep up the fight against Islamic militants, though there are worries that the effort will turn out to be a short-term spurt overtaken by Pakistan’s preoccupation with its archrival, India.
President Asif Ali Zardari has insisted that Pakistan cannot afford to continue its fight against terrorism without substantial American help, a number that he has sometimes put in the tens of billions of dollars. Mr. Zardari is scheduled to meet President Obama in New York this week, and assistance is expected to be a major topic.
American officials said the need to assist the Pakistani economy directly became alarmingly clear when recent power shortages across the country contributed to Pakistan’s first year of negative industrial growth. There were widespread complaints here, including by Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, that the government had solutions to improve the power output but was refusing to implement them in order to benefit a handful of power plant operators.
Another impetus came last week when 19 women were killed in a stampede for free flour in Karachi, even though Pakistan had a bumper wheat crop this year.
After a recent visit to Islamabad, the deputy secretary for management and resources at the State Department, Jacob J. Lew, expressed anxiety about how to ensure that the aid money was spent properly, saying he was concerned that “the money needed to go to the purposes for which it was intended.”
“We had to choose a method of funding that was most likely to produce results efficiently and effectively,” he said Sept. 11 at a briefing at the State Department.
Mr. Lew’s suggestions of inappropriate spending by the Pakistanis caused such a furor among government officials that the American ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, issued an unusual public statement on Wednesday intended to reassure the Pakistanis that the United States was “not depriving the Pakistani government any degree of direct funding as a result of lack of confidence or trust.”
Part of the Obama administration’s approach is to expand nonmilitary aid to Pakistan, after years in which almost all American assistance to the country was intended to help the military fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But some American officials said the Pakistani Army was diverting the money toward programs aimed at deterring India instead. A searing report by the Government Accountability Office last year said the Bush administration had relied too heavily on the Pakistani military to achieve its counterterrorism goals, and had paid too little attention to economic assistance.
Money intended to help civilians during the Bush years was generally delivered by American contractors who administered programs like training provincial government officials.
Mr. Tarin, the Pakistani finance minister, said in an interview that the private contractors absorbed up to 45 percent of the assistance in past years.
He said he understood, based on past American experiences in Pakistan, that the United States had concerns about “transparency.” He told the officials from Washington that they should work with the Pakistani government and develop “joint oversight which both of us trust.”
“I said, ‘Your interests are mine,’ ” Mr. Tarin said of his meetings. “Aid should be delivered through transparent platforms with maximum impact on the ground.”
The United States should invest in developing vast coal reserves in the province of Sindh, and in hydroelectric, wind and solar power to bolster Pakistan’s energy supply, he said.
The administration’s special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard L. Holbrooke, has appointed Robin L. Raphel, an experienced American diplomat, to oversee the planning of the new aid programs. Mr. Holbrooke has also sent David Lipton, a senior member of the National Economic Council, to Islamabad twice to look at ways to fix the Pakistani economy.
One key factor in trying to find more effective ways to deliver aid to Pakistan is a recognition that big projects are likely to win more Pakistani friends because they are more visible, American and Pakistani officials said.
“It was not only an assistance issue but a public image issue, too,” the senior American official said. “People talk about the Chinese nuclear reactors and the Japanese.” The United States was searching for a “signature contract,” the official said.
One road project under consideration in the troubled North-West Frontier Province would help in both improving security and gaining friends, a senior Pakistani official said. The $25 million project is designed to repair and expand the ring road around Peshawar, the capital of the province, they said.
The road has cratered because of heavy use by trucks hauling supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan from the port of Karachi through Peshawar and over the border to Afghanistan. The repairs would ease the transit of those goods, and possibly make them less vulnerable to attack by Taliban militants.
At the same time, it is hoped that the people of Peshawar who drive trucks, pedicabs, even donkey carts on the road would appreciate the American effort.
A prominent Pakistani economist, Ashfaque H. Khan, who served until recently as a senior figure in the Finance Ministry, said he had warned visiting American officials about the difficulties of plowing large amounts of American assistance into government programs without proper oversight, particularly in the power sector.
As increased American aid money pours into Pakistan, a permanent committee of American and Pakistani officials should be formed, Mr. Khan said. The members should meet every two months to review the American-financed projects, he said.
“There are ways you can minimize the risk of corruption by close coordination between the two sides,” he said.

Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting.