Islamabad Archive

Islamabad, Oct 23 – In an indication that the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) could return to the ruling federal coalition, its leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has accepted an invitation to a banquet President Asif Ali Zardari will host on Monday.

‘It is learnt that President Zardari and Mr Sharif will hold a separate meeting before or after the banquet to discuss important issues, including the Kerry-Lugar bill and the National Reconciliation Ordinance. They are also like to discuss a proposal of reviving their reconciliation on the basis of the Charter of Democracy,’ Dawn reported Friday.

‘Issues relating to the 17th Amendment and the balance of power between the president and the prime minister are also likely to be discussed, besides the military operation under way in South Waziristan,’ the newspaper added.

The banquet is being hosted for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Kerry-Lugar bill that the US Congress has passed imposes strict conditionalities in return for an annual grant of $1.5 billion for five years. The PML-N is bitterly opposed to the bill, saying it impinges on Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Then president Pervez Musharaf had promulgated the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) in October 2007 granting immunity to politicians, military officers and bureaucrats charged with corruption. The measure had enabled the return from exile of Zardari and his late wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

The Supreme Court, in its July 31 order declaring as unconstitutional the emergency Musharraf had declared Nov 3, 2007, had also invalidated the NRO and given parliament time till Nov 30 to pass it into law or let it lapse. Parliament will be meeting on Nov 2 to consider the NRO and 36 other ordinances Musharraf had promulgated.

Bhutto and Sharif had worked out the Charter of Democracy governance agenda on the basis of which the slain prime minister’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had decided to jointly fight the general elections that were originally slated for January 2008. The polls were postponed by a month due to Bhutto’s assassination in a gun and bomb attack in Rawalpindi Dec 27, 2007.

The PPP and the PML-N formed the ruling coalition, along with two smaller parties, after their one-two finish in the elections but differences soon surfaced over the implementation of the Charter of Democracy, prompting the PML-N to walk out.

The differences focused on two key areas: restoration of the Supreme Court and high court judges who had been sacked after the declaration of the emergency and the repeal of the 17th amendment Musharraf had rammed through parliament in 2002 transferring key executive powers from the prime minister’s office to the presidency.

While the judges were restored after a bruising lawyer’s ‘long march’ earlier this year, the 17th amendment is yet to repealed, though Zardari had told parliament he is committed to this.

Islamabad, Oct 23 – Pakistani security agencies have arrested two top Taliban commanders in Punjab province who are believed to have masterminded the audacious Oct 10 attack on the military’s headquarters in Rawalpindi and other high-profile strikes in Lahore.

The two commanders, identified as Iqbal and Gul Muhammad, are from Faisalabad. They were arrested earlier this week by law-enforcement agencies, Dawn reported Friday, quoting senior officials.

They were members of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Shura, the umbrella council of about top 40 militant commanders that coordinates and oversees Taliban activities in Pakistan, officials said.

The duo, who were in charge of militancy in Punjab, officials claim, served as the link between Taliban’s main leadership in South Waziristan and the increasingly threatening Punjabi Taliban network, a grouping of sectarian and Kashmir-focussed militant groups responsible for Taliban hits in Punjab and the federal capital.

Their arrest, being claimed by security agencies as a major breakthrough against the Taliban in Punjab, came after telephone intercepts by intelligence agencies and disclosures by Muhammad Aqil alias Dr. Usman, who led the Oct 10 attack and was the only one to be arrested after the 22-hour hostage crisis in one of the headquarters’ buildings.

Iqbal and Muhammad are said to be of the same ranking in the militant hierarchy as Aqil, who was also one of the TTP Shura members.

Security sources say the duo were involved in most of the major attacks in Punjab this year including the three coordinated attacks in Lahore on Oct 15.

The Taliban had stepped up attacks in Punjab and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) before the start of Rah-i-Nijat, the military operation to flush out terrorists from their South Waziristan stronghold, in a bid to stave off the offensive.

The Punjab government has been downplaying reports about the rise of the Punjabi Taliban.

‘However, security analysts believe that the growing role of Punjabi Taliban has heightened the militant threat not only in Punjabi heartland, which has recently suffered multiple suicide bombings, but also in the rest of the country, because the Punjabi militants have increasingly taken control of the Taliban forces and are believed to be more lethal than their Pakhtoon counterparts’, Dawn said.

Security analysts, however, were sceptical whether the arrests would break the back of the Taliban in Punjab, it added.

Islamabad, Oct 23 – The Pakistani government was ‘failing in its duty’ to protect its citizens, an editorial in a leading English daily said Friday, a day after a senior army officer was gunned down here, perhaps in the mistaken belief that he was involved in the ongoing operations against the Taliban in the restive northwest.

Another editorial lamented that the military offensive had severely hit cultural events in the country.

‘Our police and security services are unwilling or unable to enforce even straightforward attempts to protect the populace. The ordinary people of Pakistan going about their daily business can see for themselves at every turn of the road that the state is failing in its duty to protect them,’ The News said in an editorial headlined ‘Moving targets’.

‘We need to be hearing from our leaders what it is that they propose to do to remedy the situation,’ the editorial added.

Brigadier Moinuddin Ahmed, a former deputy director general of military operations, was killed by gunmen who ambushed his jeep at 8.30 a.m. Thursday, three days after twin blasts killed seven people in the International Islamic University campus here. He was the head of the Pakistan military contingent with the UN peacekeeping mission in Sudan. He was home on leave and was due to return to his duties in Sudan Friday.

The News thought he could have been targeted because of his previous stint in the military operations directorate ‘in the assumption that he still was and had a hand in the management of the South Waziristan operation now underway’.

‘The terrorists who murdered Brig Moin may have had flawed intelligence and killed him believing his duties were elsewhere, but we have lost another valuable and experienced officer to an enemy that has the capacity, at a variety of levels, to bring this country to a shuddering halt.

‘The education system is on hold with the expectation that when most schools and colleges will re-open next week, sharpshooters are to be deployed atop key buildings in the hope of stopping them being attacked. A sense of insecurity and fear now envelops the entire population,’ the editorial contended.

The Pakistani government Tuesday shut educational institutions across the country in the wake of the Islamabad university attack. Schools and colleges run by the armed forces were shut Sunday, a day after the South Waziristan operation began.

According to Dawn, the theatre of war might have expanded to South Waziristan, but ‘it is far from business as usual in other parts of the country. In Lahore, amongst the prime victims of the deteriorating security situation are the many cultural activities that were, in happier times, emblematic of the city’.

Since the recent spate of terror attacks in the city, ‘cinema audiences have dropped by about 80 per cent. Commercial theatres have suffered similarly. The fear of a terror attack, particularly in view of the militants’ opposition to cultural activities, is a significant deterrent’, the editorial, headlined ‘Culture takes a hit’, maintained.

It also noted that the Ajoka theatre’s Panj Pani festival had to be shifted abroad ‘and there are reports that the annual Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop Performing Arts Festival, which has for years acted as Pakistan’s ambassador to the world’s theatrical circuit, may not be held this time. The Lahore Arts Council has for similar reasons been forced to cancel the International Urdu Conference. Concerts have become a thing of the past’, the editorial said.

‘As Lahore’s once-vibrant cultural scene fades, great damage is being done to the country’s emerging presence on the world’s literary and performing arts stages. More importantly, the decline represents a serious loss of income for thousands employed in the entertainment sector. The livelihoods of persons in the film, theatre and music industries are insecure even during ordinary times.

‘The uncertain security situation is likely to push into poverty those who were formerly financially stable. The loss to the city’s cultural heritage, meanwhile, is incalculable,’ the editorial maintained.

Islamabad, Oct 23 – Seven people were killed and seven injured Friday when a suicide bomber blew himself up near an air force base in Pakistan’s Attock district as the army continued its assault on the Taliban in the country’s restive northwest region.

The suicide bombing took place at a security check post near Kamra Aeronautical Complex, Geo TV reported Friday.

A police official said seven people, including two securitymen, were killed while the injured were taken to Attock Hospital.

The bombing comes just a day after a senior Pakistani Army officer, who was the head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Sudan, was gunned down along with another soldier.

Brigadier Moinuddin Ahmed, who was former deputy director general military operations, was killed by gunmen who ambushed his jeep.

Over 170 people have been killed in the latest wave of militant violence, which started with a suicide bombing at the offices of the UN World Food Programme in Islamabad Oct 5. Five employees of the agency were killed.

The most audacious attack came on Oct 10 when 10 terrorists in military uniform laid siege to the Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. At least 19 people, including nine raiders, died in the 22-hour standoff. One militant was arrested.

On Oct 15, gunmen wearing suicide vests stormed two police academies and the offices of Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency in the eastern city of Lahore. A car bomber struck a police station in the northwestern town of Kohat. At least 38 people including 11 insurgents were killed in a single day.

A twin suicide bombing Oct 20 at the International Islamic University here killed seven people.

Islamabad, Oct 23 (DPA) At least five people were killed and seven injured on Friday in a suicide bombing at a security check post in Pakistan’s eastern province of Punjab, police said.

The explosion occurred near the army-run Aeronautical Complex in Kamra, located around an hour and a half by road from Islamabad.

The suicide bomber detonated the explosive-laden car when the security personnel started to search it at the post, a local police officer said.

Islamabad, Oct 23 – The US Geological Survey (USGS) has said that a 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area at 12.21 a.m. local time Friday, Xinhua reported.

The local TV channel claimed that tremors of 6.7-magnitude were felt in Pakistani cities of Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar, the report said.

The USGS located the epicenter in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan, the report added.