From the Washington Post ISLAMABAD -- A case of the deadly waterborne disease cholera has been confirmed in Pakistan's flood-ravaged northwest, and aid workers expect there to be more, the U.N. said Saturday. The discovery came as new flood surges hit the south and the prime minister said the deluge has made 20 million people homeless.
The flooding disaster has battered Pakistan's economy and undermined its political stability at a time when the United States needs its steadfast cooperation against Islamist extremism. The U.N. has appealed for an initial $460 million to provide relief to Pakistan but has said the country will need billions to rebuild once the flood recedes.
Because of the crisis, Pakistan canceled celebrations Saturday marking its creation and independence from Britain in 1947. President Asif Ali Zardari met with flood victims in the northwest, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was expected to visit country soon, possibly over the weekend.
The floods have killed about 1,500 people, and aid workers have warned that diseases could raise that toll.
One case of cholera was confirmed in Mingora, the main town in the northwest's Swat Valley, U.N. spokesman Maurizio Giuliano said Saturday. Other cases were suspected, and aid workers are now responding to all those exhibiting acute watery diarrhea as if it is cholera, Giuliano said.
Cholera can lead to severe dehydration and death without prompt treatment, and containing cholera outbreaks is considered a high priority following floods.
(Problem with the theory that Pakistanis would turn to extremists is that they and their political allies have such a lousy track record in Afghanistan during the 1990s, where they made no effort to address starvation and disease during the civil war, essentially throwing up their hands and saying, 'It's in God's hands." I'm sure the Pakistanis want more than religious platitudes. - Salaam)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The humanitarian and economic disaster caused by the worst floods in Pakistan's history could spark political unrest that could destabilize the government, dealing a major blow to the Obama administration's efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism.
The government's shambling response to floods that have affected a third of the country has some analysts saying that President Asif Ali Zardari could be forced from office, possibly by the military, which has ruled Pakistan for more than half its 63-year history.
Other experts caution that the state itself could collapse, as hunger and destitution trigger explosions of popular anger that was already seething over massive unemployment, high fuel prices, widespread power outages, corruption, and a bloody insurgency by extremists allied with al Qaida.
"The powers that be, that is the military and bureaucratic establishment, are mulling the formation of a national government, with or without the PPP (Zardari's ruling Pakistan Peoples Party)," said Najam Sethi, the editor of the weekly Friday Times. "I know this is definitely being discussed.
"There is a perception in the army that you need good governance to get out of the economic crisis and there is no good governance," he said.
The Obama administration stepped up emergency aid this week to $76 million, anxious to counter the influence of Islamic extremist groups that are feeding and housing victims through charitable front organizations in areas the government hasn't reached.
Some U.S. officials worry that those groups could exploit the crisis to recruit new members and bolster their fight to impose hard-line Islamic rule on nuclear-armed Pakistan.
"I think the mid- to long-term radicalization threat accelerates because of the mass migration and the frustration that is coming from this," said Thomas Lynch, a research fellow at the National Defense University in Washington.
Pakistan is battling militant groups led by the Pakistani Taliban, whose strongholds on the country's northwestern fringe also provide bases to al Qaida, the Afghan Taliban and allied extremists fighting NATO and Afghan troops in neighboring Afghanistan.
The Pentagon announced Friday that a three-ship taskforce carrying 2,000 Marines, Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, transport helicopters and relief supplies is sailing for Pakistan. It will replace the U.S.S. Peleliu, an amphibious assault vessel steaming off the port of Karachi that's lent 19 helicopters and 1,000 Marines to the aid operations.
U.S. officials, who requested anonymity so they could speak more freely, downplayed the threat of near-term political upheaval, and they dismissed the danger of a coup, saying that the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, wants the military out of politics.
"The military is perfectly happy to let the civilian government screw up," one U.S. official said. "The military does not want to take over because they get blamed for all the deficiencies in government."
The potential for serious turmoil, these U.S. officials said, will grow after the floods subside. Then the government must grapple with the task of rebuilding roads, bridges and other infrastructure and caring for millions of impoverished, mostly rural people who've lost their homes, crops and livestock.
"The Pakistani military quickly mobilized to support relief efforts in areas affected by the floods, and . . . seems to be handling things effectively," a second U.S. official said. "The popular ire so far seems directed at the (government). As with any natural disaster, the reconstruction phase can be a challenge, and that's when Pakistan's civilian agencies will need to step up to the plate. That'll be the real test."
The floods have affected 14 million people, of whom at least 1,600 have died and some 3 million have been left homeless. However, the impact will be felt throughout the impoverished country of 180 million.
The World Bank said Friday that an estimated $1 billion worth of crops have been wiped out, raising the specter of food shortages. Damage to irrigation canals, the bank added, will reduce crop yields once the floodwaters are gone.
The situation worsened Friday as authorities ordered the evacuation of Jacobabad, a city of 1.4 million people in southern Sindh province, and forecasters warned that fresh monsoon rains in the mountainous northwest would send a new wave of flooding south down the central Indus River valley over the weekend.
The PPP-led government came to power in 2008 elections that ended the last bout of military rule, which lasted eight years under Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
An economic slide that began just as the Musharraf era was ending has significantly worsened and the current administration is surviving on an International Monetary Fund bailout. It says that the floods could halve economic growth and force it to divert funds from development programs to relief efforts.
B-52 bombers are constantly circling the skies over Pakistan, waiting to strike when the signal is given (to strike what is never exactly clear from the rumors)
From Time magazine: From the Pakistani army barracks to the roadside chai stands along the Indus River where truckers gulp down cups of muddy tea, anti-Americanism is roiling across the country. It is whipped up by the often sensationalist, ratings-hungry Pakistani TV news talk shows - think of Fox News cranked up to full volume, in Urdu. It resounds from the mosques, in virulent anti-U.S. sermons during Friday prayers. But most ominously, according to Islamabad observers, this deep suspicion of America's intentions in the region seems to be shared by elements within Pakistan's powerful military and intelligence services.
Here's a sample of a few conspiracy theories making the rounds: the U.S. military has a secret plan to seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal; more than 9,000 agents of Blackwater, the U.S. security company, now called Xe Services, are roaming the country like bogeymen, at the CIA's behest, kidnapping people and setting off bombs that are later blamed on Pakistani Taliban militants; B-52 bombers are constantly circling the skies over Pakistan, waiting to strike when the signal is given (to strike what is never exactly clear from the rumors).
Even as the wild speculation circulates, U.S. diplomats are harassed in real life by Pakistani authorities. Their vehicles are seized and their visas tangled in bureaucratic red tape for months, crippling aid projects and counterinsurgency efforts. Sometimes photos of their residences are published in newspapers and labeled as CIA dens. American journalists, too, are singled out. Last October, an English-language Lahore newspaper, The Nation, accused a Wall Street Journal correspondent of working simultaneously for the CIA, the Israeli spy agency Mossad and, to top it off, Blackwater. A Pakistani daily also ran a photo of two British and Australian journalists at the site of a suicide bombing and insinuated that they were foreign spies.
This anti-U.S. resentment strikes many in Washington as a tad ungrateful - not to mention misplaced - given that last fall, Congress enacted the Kerry-Lugar bill granting Pakistan over $7.5 billion in economic aid over the next five years. In addition, Pakistan receives military hardware and training to combat Pakistani Taliban - whose wrath is focused on Islamabad - in the mountainous borderlands with Afghanistan.
So what gives?
Pakistan has long been characterized as a country whose rulers may be pro-American but whose people are decidedly not. In 1979, for example, Pakistani radio falsely reported that U.S. aircraft bombed Islam's holiest site in Mecca, prompting a mob to storm the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, killing five American and Pakistani staffers. This simmering hostility was stirred again after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 and boiled over, more recently, with drone missile strikes inside Pakistan's tribal territory in which dozens of suspected terrorists - and civilians - died. The Feb. 3 conviction in New York City of a Pakistani woman scientist, Aafia Siddiqui, nicknamed Lady al-Qaeda, on charges of trying to shoot Americans in Afghanistan has also ignited anger in Pakistan against the U.S. The verdict was decried by Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari and lawmakers and sparked anti-U.S. protest rallies in Lahore.
One of the men, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, is being described as more of an enabler for the other - David Coleman Headley - formerly Daood Gilani.
Both men are now being described as operatives of Lashkar-e-Toiba/Lashkar-e-Taiba who have made a number of trips to India and where investigators say they suspect Headley may have helped with scouting and planning last year's Mumbai massacre.
"We have established that Headley and Tahawwur were in touch with the same Pakistani-based 'handlers' who gave directions to the 10 terrorists who attacked Mumbai on 26/11. We are now investigating how he had corresponded with Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Zarar Shah (presently in Pakistan's custody) and other masterminds who carried out the audacious Mumbai attacks," said an investigating officer.
Indian investigators are not looking for a woman Headley met with frequently on his trips to India and who they say may have been involved in setting up safehouse for militants in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Al Jazeera: Attacks that have continued across Pakistani towns and cities are being blamed on Tehreek e-Taliban, Pakistan's Taliban.
However, the group has issued its first video statement denying involvement in targeting civilians and has blamed external forces for at least two recent blasts.
Azam Tariq, a spokesman of the Tehreek e-Taliban, posted the video statement on YouTube on Monday.
The message refers to a bombing at the Islamic University in Islamabad, which the spokesman said was orchestrated to prepare the ground for a military operation in South Waziristan, a stronghold for Pakistan's Taliban fighters.
He also said his group had no role in the bomb blast in a Peshawar market that killed at least 100 people as well as an attack in Charsada, a town located in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.
Tariq said Taliban attacks never aimed to target civilians, but that the explosions were linked to Blackwater activities in the country.
'Despite having to sleep under tents in cold and inhospitable weather, there is no let-up in our resolve to make this country a cradle of peace, a country free of suicide attacks and explosions.'
From The Dawn Newspaper: Inayatullah Khan sits on a dusty rug and prepares to pray at Pakistan's biggest religious gathering of 400,000 Muslims, cursing the Taliban for their 'unholy crusade' against humanity.
Khan travelled all the way from the tribal region of South Waziristan to take part in the four-day event, one of the world's largest Islamic meetings, in Raiwind on the outskirts of Pakistan's cultural capital Lahore.
A resident of Kanigurram, a former Taliban hub that the military says it has captured during its ongoing five-week offensive in the northwest, Khan, 50, accused the Taliban of straying from the path of God and butchering Muslims.
'They call those who refuse to follow their brand of Islam infidels, not knowing they are inviting the wrath of Allah the almighty by killing Muslims, which I call an unholy crusade,' Khan said.
A Muslim whose faith is important enough to make an arduous three-day journey and sleep in a tent for four days, Khan invited the Taliban 'to join us in spreading Islam's eternal message of love, affection and peace.'
The Tablighi Ijtema is an annual feature, founded by religious scholars more than five decades ago and focused exclusively on preaching Islam.
The Thursday-Sunday gathering in Raiwind, near the estate of opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, is being held under tight security due to the campaign of attacks that have swept the country killing more than 2,500 people in two years.
Contingents of police guard the single-carriage road, lined by eucalyptus trees, that links Raiwind with downtown Lahore.
Spread over 150 acres of land with a huge parking space made available for thousands of buses and vehicles, the venue looks like a big tented village where pilgrims sleep, say prayers and eat together.
'Despite having to sleep under tents in cold and inhospitable weather, there is no let-up in our resolve to make this country a cradle of peace, a country free of suicide attacks and explosions,' Khan said.
Pakistan is sinking into a political and constitutional crisis that threatens to sideline its vital role in the battle against Islamist insurgents and U.S.-led efforts to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan.
The trigger for the crisis is the expiration of a legal amnesty for politicians at the end of this month, which will leave key officials, including the interior minister, open to prosecution and could even jeopardize the position of Asif Ali Zardari, the pro-Western Pakistani president.
The political opposition and the military appear to be using the crisis to force the unpopular Zardari to give up most of his powers or be ousted. Soon ministers of the government could find themselves hauled before the courts over long-standing criminal charges, ranging from murder to corruption, or they could rush to seek pre-arrest bail, legal experts said.
This "would make our democracy look like a thieves' bazaar," newspaper columnist Shafqat Mahmood wrote Friday in The News, a Pakistani daily.
The amnesty, known as the National Reconciliation Ordinance, was approved by a previous government under U.S. pressure in 2007. Unless it is ratified by parliament, which now seems unlikely, the amnesty expires Nov. 28, according to a ruling by the country's powerful chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry.
Zardari, his interior minister, Rehman Malik, and Zardari's top aide, Salman Farooqui, all of whom had previously left the country to avoid answering criminal charges, are among the beneficiaries of the amnesty.
To placate his critics, Zardari may be forced, through a constitutional amendment, to cede most of his powers to Pakistan's prime minister, a less controversial but weak figure. The end of the amnesty is likely, however, to lead to court challenges to his legal right to remain in office.
Pakistan can be difficult terrain for a female Muslim cartoonist whose alter ego, Gogi, has comments in the bubble above her head on everything from male chauvinism to suicide bombers.
Gogi is a long-lashed, short-coiffed, polka dot-wearing, pixie-faced modern Pakistani woman. She is a bit like "Blondie" and a bit like Oprah - except devoutly Muslim.
Gogi creator Nigar Nazar, the first and, as far as she knows, "only woman cartoonist of Pakistan and very likely the entire Muslim world," says Gogi represents the educated and self-confident urban Pakistani.
Gogi is mostly "on the receiving end of the joke that is life," Nazar says. She deflects the onslaught with womanly humor.
"Gogi is that ray of hope in a male-dominated country where she has to brave it . . . with a tough exterior while not losing her feminine grace, charm and intelligence," Nazar said.
....
Nazar, whose father worked in the foreign service, spent several years in America as a young girl.
"It was long enough to get me hooked on comics," she said.
Gogi began as a daily comic strip in a Pakistan newspaper called The Sun in 1970, when Nazar was 22. She also animated a cartoon for Karachi Television about that time.
Nazar later freelanced for The Herald monthly before publishing books of Gogi cartoons, the first in 1975.
Gogi's style is usually gentle. She points out in one strip that the traditional headscarf, the chaddar, actually has advantages, such as hiding one from creditors.
Gogi and friend once remarked on the disparate reaction to male births and female births. When a son is born, the father passes out cigars. When a daughter is born, a father simply passes out. "That was my first meaningful cartoon," Nazar said.
Newspaper editors in Pakistan are not always receptive to Gogi as a mouthpiece for modern urban women, she said.
"I don't do political cartoons until I get very, very angry," Nazar said. "And then they don't get published. Now I can put them on my website" - gogicomics.com.
WASHINGTON - U.S. officials are holding for undisclosed reasons a Pakistani journalist who works for an American media outlet.
Rahman Bunairee, a reporter with Voice of America who has been targeted by Taliban militants, was detained Sunday at Washington Dulles International Airport by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency's spokeswoman, Kelly Nantel, said she could not say why Bunairee is being detained because of confidentiality laws.
....
Taliban militants in northwest Pakistan bombed Bunairee's home on July 8, according to a July 9 story on Voice of America's Web site. He was not home during the attack, but he told the news outlet that no one in the home was injured.
Bob Dietz with the Committee to Protect Journalists met with Bunairee in Pakistan last month. Dietz said Bunairee was coming to the U.S. to take a one-year position with Voice of America. Dietz was told Bunairee had a valid U.S. visa.
Dietz said he did not have any information about whether Bunairee sought political asylum when he got to the U.S.
In late July, Bunairee told The Associated Press that the gunmen said they'd been instructed by a "high command" to destroy the house because he had spoken negatively of the Taliban in a radio report.
"The even better course of action is to shift the weight of U.S. political and military efforts to Pakistan. There, the United States should continue its policy of waging drone attacks against al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. With better intelligence from the Pakistani side - as demonstrated recently - the U.S. Army can improve the accuracy of its strikes. And though drone strikes are controversial, targeting al Qaeda's leadership is the best military strategy - and the best way to protect Americans, Afghans, and Pakistanis from terrorism. And that fight is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
One problem (among many):
Nor do the authors deal with a widespread belief, backed by the U.S. administration, that the Afghan Taliban are based not in the tribal areas of Pakistan but in and around Quetta, the capital of its Baluchistan province. Sending U.S. drones into "mainland Pakistan" would be quite different from dropping missiles on the tribal areas - and even these cause resentment in Pakistan, which sees them as both a breach of its sovereignty and a 21st century sledgehammer in which civilians as well as militant leaders die.
The rector and the head of faculty of Darul Uloom (Waqf) Deoband said attacks by 'vigilantes' in which innocent people died was not jihad but 'individual zulm (oppression)'.
KARACHI: Senior clerics of India's top seminary whose version of Islam the Taliban claim to follow have denounced the actions of the hardline militia, saying the group does not qualify to enjoy affiliations with the historic madressah.
In an interview with a correspondent of the BBC Urdu Service, the rector and the head of faculty of Darul Uloom (Waqf) Deoband said attacks by 'vigilantes' in which innocent people died was not jihad but 'individual zulm (oppression)'.
Seen in this light, attacks on shrines, barber shops and educational institutions were all un-Islamic. Maulana Saalim Qasimi went to the extent of characterising the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which was ousted by the US forces in 2001, as 'un-Islamic'.
He said the Taliban did not comprehend fully the tenets of Islam even though much was made of their 'Islamic government'.
He said Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who supported the Afghan regime, was not a religious scholar. 'He is more of a politician than a scholar.' 'However, his father, Mufti Mehmood, was a scholar,' he said.
Maulana Aslam Qasimi, great grandson of Qasim Nanotvi, the founder of the madressah, said the recent statement by Sufi Mohammad that judiciary in Pakistan was un-Islamic was based on misconceptions and ignorance.
He said that Islam embraced concepts like democracy. 'The spirit of democracy is very much there in Islam, though concepts like democracy have been taking new shapes and forms.'
A young boy cries as he waits for his father, in a truck at a refugee camp in Mardan.
ABC News tonight reported that the Pakistani military's assault on the Taliban has engendered the largest refugee crisis in South Asia since the partition of British India.
I interviewed a large number of refugees in Swabi, but I did not meet a single person who actually saw the army and the Taleban as members of opposing camps. Instead, I heard, they were "two sides of the same coin".
The tent cities are growing in the district of Swabi, in north-west Pakistan: swelled with the thousands fleeing the fighting in nearby Buner district.
Last month, Taleban from the troubled district of Swat moved south into Buner and overran it, occupying government offices and police stations, and closing down locally popular Sufi shrines which they oppose.
The army moved in a couple of weeks ago to counter them, and is now engaged in heavy fighting in the area.
According to Shahram Khan, the head of Swabi district government, around 150,000 people have fled Buner during the last few days. This is three times the figure of 40,000 previously provided by the federal government.
Most of these people have ended up in about a dozen refugee camps set up by the government in Swabi.
'Pouring in' Many of these camps are funded by private individuals. Others are supported by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Food Programme, others by foreign and local NGOs.
The government of North West Frontier Province has already earmarked money to take care of the refugees, and it is now reaching most camps.
One such camp is located in Chhota Lahore town of Swabi district. There are rows of tents supplied by the UNHCR. Most are family shelters, but some also house one school each for boys and girls, as well as a medical dispensary.
"Tents are in short supply, and we also expect food shortages in coming days as refugees from Buner continue to pour in," says Kabir Khan, the administrator of the camp.
The refugees are, in the main, happy with the supply of food and other necessities, but nonetheless they say they cannot live in a refugee camp forever.
....
'Same coin' I interviewed a large number of refugees in Swabi, but I did not meet a single person who actually saw the army and the Taleban as members of opposing camps.
Instead, I heard, they were "two sides of the same coin".
"The Pakistani army has hurt us badly - but while they have killed civilians, I swear I haven't seen a single shell directed at the Taleban," says Shahdad Khan, a refugee sheltering at a camp in Swabi's Shave Ada area.
Others question the Pakistani military's stated commitment to "eliminating" the Taleban.
"No way," Siraj tells me. "The army brought the Taleban to our area! It's politics. The Taleban and the army are brothers."
Farrukh Rehan writes: Now that the Pakistani army is finally engaging the Taliban, there is one question on everyone's mind: Is Pakistan serious about this fight this time, or will it cut a deal with the militants, as it has done in the past with disastrous consequences?
The answer to this question depends on the outcome of a larger battle for Pakistan's soul which is raging across Pakistan's cities, homes, television channels, newspapers and in heated conversations in people's living rooms. The fight for the hearts and minds of the ordinary Pakistani is the most important fight going on in Pakistan, as its outcome will determine whether the cancer of Talibanization can be localised and ultimately rooted out, or whether it will continue to metastasize and further destabilize a country which is already reeling from economic, political, and leadership woes. As in most battles there are two adversaries - in this case two competing views of Pakistan, and the nature of the challenge facing it.
The conservative view held by many Islamist parties, populist politicians, retired army brass and hyper-nationalistic television anchors is that the Taliban are a reflection of the people's desire for an Islamic system of governance, with quick justice, order and compliance with God's will as the hallmarks of public life. Proponents of this view maintain that the excesses of the Taliban are greatly exaggerated, and that the real threat to Pakistan is from the US, which has destabilized the whole region with its Afghan war and its drone attacks on Pakistan. According to this view, the real aim of the US is to undermine Pakistan's sovereignty and deprive it of its cherished nuclear weapons. To date, the conservatives have been more vocal, and gained more traction with the Pakistani public - drowning out the concerns about the Taliban by pointing fingers at George Bush, the US and India.
On the other side are people derided as "Liberals" and "Western apologists" by the conservatives. These liberals, many of them western educated, secular and belonging to the professional urban classes, have been reminding whoever will listen that while Pakistan is a Muslim majority country, it was created as a constitutional republic with the ideals of an independent judiciary, a parliamentary system of government, and representative democracy. Liberals argue that letting parts of the country become theocratic enclaves run by armed gangs of religious extremists undermines the ideals on which Pakistan was built, threatens its territorial integrity and is a recipe for disaster. Liberals insist that the Taliban, and their policy of "Islamicization at gun point" is the real threat to Pakistan, not India or the United States.
Which narrative ultimately prevails is crucial to Pakistan's future because it determines whether the people of Pakistan see the fight against the Taliban and extremism as their own fight, or whether they will continue to see it as a US manufactured Global War on Terror into which Pakistan has been sucked. If Pakistanis see the fight in Swat as their own, then there will be public support for a continuing military offensive, there will be more latitude given to the bumbling civilian government of Asif Zardari, and there may even be some tolerance for the drone attacks which normally cause deep resentment among Pakistanis. But if the dominant narrative in Pakistan continues to be that Pakistanis are victims of global conspiracies, that the Taliban threat is exaggerated, and that Pakistan should have no part in fighting "America's war", then the military will most likely be forced to sign a truce with the Taleban, the civilian government will probably collapse under the weight of its unpopularity, and Talibanization will continue unchecked, one district at a time.
