Pakistan hosts summit involving Afghanistan, Iran

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will next week host the leaders of Afghanistan and Iran at a summit devoted to counter-terrorism, the foreign ministry in Islamabad said Thursday.

The talks come at a time of heightened tension between Iran and the United States, notably over speculation about a possible Israeli attack against Iran’s controversial nuclear programme.

It also comes with Afghanistan keen to start peace talks with Taliban insurgents. Kabul is reportedly concerned about being sidelined by contacts between the US and the Taliban.

“It is a two-day summit, to be held on February 16 and 17 in Islamabad,”ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told reporters.

It will be attended by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he said.

“The trilateral summit is important for the leaders to get together and discuss important regional issues pertaining to counter-terrorism and organised crimes including drug trafficking,” Basit said.

Despite strong US objections, Pakistan says it is pressing ahead with a multi-billion-dollar project to build a gas pipeline to import fuel from Iran.

“We are looking to complete the pipeline project by 2014 to meet our energy requirements. It is important for our economic growth,” Basit said.

In the deal signed in 2010, Iran has agreed to supply natural gas to its eastern neighbour from 2014.

On Monday, US President Barack Obama unveiled new sanctions on Iran’s central bank in an effort to force it to reverse course on its nuclear programme.

Asked about US sanctions, Basit said Pakistan opposed any new conflict in the region and called for dialogue.

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Af-Pak said to attract fewer foreign fighters for jihad

PARIS: The Afghan-Pakistan jihad is attracting fewer foreign fighters following the death of Osama bin Laden, the growing threat posed by US drones, and lack of funds, Western security officials say.

While no precise figure is available, it would appear that the number of would-be jihadists from abroad has been drying up, according to one security official who declined to be named.

However, more Pakistanis are willing to take up the fight and make up the numbers, he also warned.

“Over the past six months, young Frenchmen there have nearly all left Pakistan. There were 20 to 30 of them, who had either converted (to Islam) or had links to the Maghreb; today there are hardly any left,” he said.

“Other European countries whose nationals used to go to Pakistan to join the jihad have drawn the same conclusion – a drastic reduction over recent months,” he added.

The “Arab Spring” revolts also acted as a magnet, with a number of jihadists moving to Libya to join the fight to remove Muammar Qaddafi from power, he said.

“Fighting in Afghanistan is also less attractive because of the idea that the Afghan taliban want to concentrate more on home fighting and that world jihad is less and less their cup of tea,” he added.

For Frank Cilluffo, who co-authored “Foreign Fighters” for the Homeland Security Policy Institute, “first and foremost, military actions, including the use of drones, has made the environment less hospitable to foreign fighters traveling to the region, by disrupting al Qaeda’s (and associated entities’) training camps and pipelines.”

Direct and indirect accounts by jihadists also speak of disarray within al Qaeda in northwestern Pakistan where activists avoid coming together for fear of being attacked and whose weapons training now takes place indoors because of aerial and satellite surveillance.

In a report, entitled “Militant Pipeline” describing the links between the northwestern Pakistani frontier and the West, researcher Paul Cruickshank quotes one Ustadh Ahmad Faruq, described as a Pakistan-based al Qaeda spokesman who recently acknowledged his network’s difficulties.

“The freedom we enjoyed in a number of regions has been lost. We are losing people and lack resources. Our land is being squeezed and drones fly over us,” he reportedly said in an audio cassette.

“It’s difficult to have reliable figures,” on the number of foreign fighters, according to Cruickshank, who is a fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security.

“I think the drone strikes have been a major issue for the militants, the death of bin Laden is going to be a very big challenge as well. He was so important for a lot of these militants – he was the al Qaeda brand.

“By going over there they were joining his cause. The fact that he has been removed from the scene is likely to be a great recruiting challenge for al Qaeda,” he said.

“But the conflict is still going on in Afghanistan and in the radical circles it is still viewed as a very legitimate jihad. So it’s likely that the number of volunteers is going to be diminished, but as long as there are US soldiers to fight, I don’t think it’s going to dry up entirely,” he added.

Hafiz Hanif, a 17-year-old Afghan who trained in northwest Pakistan, recently told Newsweek magazine the number of foreign fighters there was dwindling.

“When new people came they brought new blood, enthusiasm and money. All that has been lost. Now leaders seem to spend all their time moving from one place to another for their safety,” he said.

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Rights violations shame Pakistanis at Congress hearing

WASHINGTON: Guilt and shame were the two dominant feelings that overwhelmed many Pakistanis at a US congressional hearing room on Wednesday as witnesses detailed human rights abuses in Balochistan. Some were also troubled – while some felt elated – as all five US lawmakers who attended this unusual hearing of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations stressed the Baloch right to self-determination.

But this emotive session – which often drew warm applause from Baloch nationalists – offered little insight into how to resolve this difficult issue. Perhaps, that’s not even the intention of those who had organised the meeting. They wanted to highlight Balochistan as a possibly explosive spot close to a US war-theatre and they succeeded in doing so.

There was some score-settling as well, particularly from US lawmakers upset with Pakistan over Osama bin Laden’s discovery in Abbottabad and with Islamabad’s decision to close Nato’s supply lines to Afghanistan.

“They sheltered the man who master-minded the slaughter of 3,000 Americans. Those who still believe Pakistan is a friend, they need to wake up,” said Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican, who organised and chaired the hearing.

Dr. M. Hosseinbor, a Baloch nationalist scholar, assured the Americans that the Balochs were natural US allies and would like to share the Gwadar port with the United States, would not allow the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline through their lands and will fight the Taliban as well.

Ralph Peters, a retired US military officer, urged the US administration to break up its ties with Pakistan and support the Baloch struggle for freedom.

C. Christine Fair, an assistant Professor at Georgetown University, in her written statement, disagreed with the suggestion, saying that given the ethnic diversity of the province, its complicated history, and the existing geographic constraints, an independent Balochistan was untenable.

But such comments on Baloch politics were not what shamed the Pakistanis, and others, in the room. It was rampant human rights violations by both sides that shamed them.

According to the statistics submitted at the hearing, around 6,000 people were displaced and scores killed in 2005 around Dera Bugti district alone.

Estimates of total number of people displaced from all districts range from tens to hundreds of thousands.

After Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s ouster, Pakistan’s Interior Ministry estimated that 1,100 Baloch had disappeared during his rule. So far, the government has only uncovered the fate of a handful of these people.

Armed Baloch groups are also responsible for targeted killings and destroying private property. In the past several years, they have increasingly targeted non-Baloch civilians and their businesses, as well as major gas installations and infrastructure. They have also killed teachers, physicians and lawyers and struck police and security forces and military bases throughout the province.

Militant religious groups also have carried out targeted killings of those Muslims who belong to sects different from there.

It was Prof. Fair, who was the first to point out, that while she understood emotions ran high, targeted killings were also being carried out by the Baloch.

Amnesty International’s Advocacy Director T. Kumar called on the US to “apply the Leahy Amendment without waivers to all Pakistani military units in Balochistan” to prevent the Pakistani military from using US-made weapons against the Baloch.

Ali Dayan Hasan, the Pakistan director for Human Rights Watch, said that Pakistan’s security forces and its intelligence agencies were involved in the enforced disappearance of Baloch nationalists.

He asked the US government to “communicate directly to the agencies responsible for disappearances and other abuses including the army, ISI, IB, Frontier Corps, police, to demand an end to abuses and facilitate criminal inquiries to hold perpetrators accountable.”

Congressman Rohrabacher declared that the hearing was no stunt, and that they wanted to start a national dialogue on what US policy should be in that part of the world.

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