Karzai wants immediate halt to Nato night raids

KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday demanded an immediate halt to Nato-led night raids after the military insisted the operations will continue despite the recent death of a pregnant woman.

Karzai has led public criticism of the controversial raids, saying they endanger lives and harass local communities, and repeatedly called on US-led international forces to stop entering Afghan homes.

The latest spat comes after the pregnant wife of an anti-drugs official was killed during a raid in the eastern Paktia province in the early hours of Saturday when Nato-led forces returned gunfire coming from a compound.

Nato has defended the operations as the safest way of targeting insurgent leaders, insisting they will continue but with the increasing involvement of Afghan special forces.

“The president of Afghanistan wants an immediate halt to the night raids and house searches of Afghans,” presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi said.

“He doesn’t want any foreigner to go to the homes of Afghans and search their homes.”

A loya jirga meeting of Afghan elders last month made halting the raids a condition of a strategic partnership document being negotiated with Washington.

The agreement will govern the relationship between American troops and the Afghan government after the scheduled withdrawal of combat troops in 2014.

“What Nato officials say is in total contradiction to the decisions of the loya jirga, to the demands of the Afghan people…and it is in total contradiction to what the president of Afghanistan wants,” Faizi said.

“One of the main reasons that we have not been able to agree on a strategic partnership is the problem of night raids on Afghan houses.”

He said the Afghan government would have no problem with the raids if they were “100 per cent conducted by Afghans”.

“We don’t want the war on terrorism to be fought inside people’s houses,” he added.

The spokesman for Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, said in 85 per cent of night raids no shot is fired and they cause less than one per cent of civilian casualties.

“Night operations remain the safest form of operations conducted to take insurgent leaders off the battlefield,” he said Monday.

Jacobson said it was in everybody’s interests to “Afghanise” the night raids as quickly as possible, that numbers of Afghan special forces were being increased, and that Afghan troops were involved in almost all such operations.

The raid on Saturday targeted a leader of the Taliban-linked Haqqani militant network, Nato said, but the Paktia provincial governor described it as an “arbitrary operation”.

The provincial anti-drugs chief was detained but has since been released. A suspected insurgent remains in custody.

On Saturday, two wounded women were evacuated after they were found in a room where the shooting had come from and one of them, the pregnant wife of the anti-narcotics chief Hafeezullah, later died of a gunshot wound.

Several of the man’s sisters and daughters were also injured in the raid, he was quoted as saying.

According to the United Nations, the number of civilians killed in violence in Afghanistan rose by 15 per cent in the first six months of this year to 1,462, with insurgents blamed for 80 per cent of the killings.

There are around 140,000 international troops in Afghanistan fighting a decade-long Taliban insurgency alongside Afghan government forces.

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Indian president Patil calls for better maritime security

ON BOARD INS SUBHADRA, India: India’s president on Tuesday stressed the need to improve maritime security, as the energy-hungry nation grows and ramps up offshore oil and gas exploration activity.

Conducting only the 10th presidential fleet review since independence in 1947, Pratibha Patil said safeguarding India’s coastal waters was “a major requirement for the social and economic well-being of our country”.

“The oil exploration activities off our coasts and at sea are of significant economic importance,” she said in an address on board the naval patrol ship INS Subhadra.

“Therefore, the protection of our coast, our ‘sea lines of communications’ and the offshore development areas is a major pre-requisite of our nation’s development.”

The 77-year-old head of state, who is also supreme commander of India’s armed forces, took the salute of sailors from 81 ships anchored within sight of Mumbai’s landmark Gateway of India monument.

She also witnessed a ceremonial fly-past of fighter jets and helicopters.

Maritime security has been pushed up the homeland security agenda since 10 militants hijacked an Indian fishing boat and forced it to sail to Mumbai in November 2008.

The gunmen slipped under the coastguard and naval radar before launching an audacious assault on landmark targets in the financial and entertainment hub, killing 166 and injuring more than 300.

Offshore oil and gas fields are becoming increasingly important as India imports about 80 per cent of its crude oil and has been frantically trying to find new, domestic fuel sources as the country’s economy grows.

Major companies involved in exploration include India’s largest private sector firm, Reliance Industries, which earlier this year signed a $7.2 billion deal with BP to tap reserves off India’s east coast.

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Indian police charge Kashmir officials over textbook

SRINAGAR: Indian authorities have filed charges against Kashmir education officials over a textbook for first graders that illustrates the word ”oppressor” with a sketch resembling an Indian police officer.

Anti-India sentiment runs deep in the Indian-controlled part of the disputed Himalayan region, where violent confrontations routinely erupt between stone-throwing protesters and baton-wielding police.

Police official Shailandra Mishra said Tuesday that authorities were angered by an Urdu-language textbook illustrating the word ”zalim,” or oppressor, with a drawing of a mustachioed man wearing a cap and uniform and carrying a bamboo club similar to those carried by Indian police.

Police charged officials responsible for the creation and publication of the book, along with the head of the government-run board of education, with criminal conspiracy, sedition and defamation Monday. The charges could carry a 10-year sentence.

Mishra also said the word was inappropriate in a book for such young students.

Sheikh Bashir, chairman of the board of education, said the body had already issued a notice to delete the picture from the textbook.

”We’ve initiated a departmental inquiry to know why the mistake occurred. Let me assure that it was not a deliberate attempt or a conspiracy to defame the police,” he said.

Last year, police arrested a college lecturer on charges he gave his students an English exam filled with questions attacking a crackdown on demonstrations challenging Indian rule in the region. Police accused the lecturer of promoting secession and spreading disaffection against the state.

Kashmir is divided between Hindu-majority India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan, but claimed by both in its entirety. Though many living in Indian-controlled Kashmir are agitating for independence or merger with Pakistan, India considers it illegal to question the country’s claim to the region.

Indian forces have largely suppressed a violent rebellion that broke out in 1989, but Kashmiris have turned instead to holding street protests. More than 68,000 people have died in the conflict.

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Investigators link WikiLeaks suspect to Assange

FORT MEADE, Maryland: US Army investigators presented evidence for the first time Monday directly linking the US soldier accused of spilling secrets to WikiLeaks to the founder of the site, Julian Assange.

Testifying at a hearing to determine if US Army Private Bradley Manning should face a court-martial, the investigators said contact information for Assange was found on a computer hard drive belonging to Manning.

The digital forensics experts also said they had found evidence of online chats between Manning and a computer user with the screen name “Julian Assange”.

In addition, they said they recovered State Department cables, US military reports from Iraq and Afghanistan and other classified material from Manning’s computers and storage devices.

The testimony, which came on the fourth day of the hearing being held at this sprawling army base, was the most compelling government evidence yet linking Manning to one of the most serious intelligence breaches in US history.

Manning, who turned 24 on Saturday, could face life in prison if convicted of “aiding the enemy,” the most serious of the 22 charges he is facing.

Mark Johnson, a private contractor who works for the US Army’s Computer Crime Investigative Unit (CCIU), said a computer hard drive obtained from Manning had contact information for Assange, the Australian-born WikiLeaks founder.

US Army prosecutors showed a screenshot of a message said to be taken from a file on the drive. “You can currently reach our investigations editor directly in Iceland – 354 862 3481 – 24 hour service – Ask for Julian Assange,” it said.

The investigators also said they had recovered online chats between Manning and a user by the name “Julian Assange” during which WikiLeaks was discussed.

Assange, who is in Britain fighting extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges, has consistently denied knowing the source of the material received by his site but has expressed support for Manning.

The investigators said they had found a file on an SD card recovered from Manning’s aunt’s house that contained 91,000 US military field reports from Afghanistan and another 400,000 from Iraq.

A message allegedly from Manning described the cache as being “one of the most significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare”.

Special Agent David Shaver, head of the CCIU’s digital forensics and research branch, said investigators had also found 10,000 State Department cables that were apparently not passed on to WikiLeaks because of a corrupted file.

Among the documents Manning is suspected of giving WikiLeaks are some 260,000 State Department cables which led to an embarrassing string of revelations for the United States and other governments.

Shaver also said an additional 100,000 encoded State Department cables were found on a computer used by Manning between November 2009, when he was deployed to Iraq, and May 2010, when he was arrested.

The courtroom was cleared twice — over defence objections — on Monday of the public and the media to allow for discussion of classified material.

Defence attorneys have argued that Manning struggled with gender issues and emotional problems but his superiors repeatedly failed to provide counselling, take disciplinary action or revoke his security clearance.

His defence attorneys have also suggested that Manning, who is gay, had difficulty serving in a US military that was operating under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy towards homosexuals which has since been repealed.

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was escorted out of the hearing on Monday after approaching the defence table and introducing himself to Manning during a break in the proceedings, witnesses said.

Ellsberg was told by security officers it was a violation of the court rules to approach Manning but was allowed to return when the hearing resumed.

Another Manning supporter, Dan Choi, a former US Army lieutenant and gay activist, was barred for the day for creating what the military described as a “disturbance” outside the courtroom.

Choi has been attending the hearing in full army dress uniform and he said on his Twitter feed, @ltdanchoi, that security officers “were very angered that I wore a uniform, which is my legal right”.

Manning supporters have been among the general public attending the hearing and have held vigils and protest rallies outside the gates of Fort Meade.

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Kosit: Govt must help push economy

BANGKOK: The government must take a leading role in mobilizing the economy as floods had weakened the private sector, Kosit Panpiemras, executive chairman of Bangkok Bank, said on Tuesday.

At a seminar, Economic Rehabilitation and Direction in 2012, Mr Kosit said the Thai economy must be pushed ahead by the government because the production sector is weakening by the devastating floods.

Only 80 per cent of the inundated industrial plants would be able to resume production in the next six months and therefore they are not in a position to help boost the economy, particularly in the first quarter of next year, said the banker.

He said two negative factors that could derail the recovering economy are global economic recession and impacts of the great floods.

Only the monetary policy of the central bank’s monetary policy committee could not help resolve these problems, he added.

Methee Supapong, senior director of Domestic Economic Department at the Bank of Thailand, said the widespread flooding had directly affected investment.

He believed 90 per cent of the flooded manufacturers would be able to resume operations in the second quarter of next year.

Mr Methee said political uncertainty is a major risk factor for Thai economy in 2012 because no one knows what would happen after the floodwater has receded.

The central bank will within this week send officials to survey flood damage to the seven industrial estates, starting from Bang Pa In and Bang Wa (Hi-Tech) industrial estates. They will also listen to opinions and requirements of the flooded manufacturers, he said.

The gathered information will be used for mapping out suitable monetary policy at the meeting of the monetary policy panel, scheduled for Jan 2.

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