US begins Afghan pullout through Pakistan route

The US has started using the land route through Pakistan to pull American military equipment out of Afghanistan as it draws down its troops in the country, US and Pakistani officials said Monday.
The US moved 50 shipping containers into Pakistan over the weekend, said Marcus Spade, a spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan. The containers were the first convoys to cross into Pakistan as part of the Afghan pullout, he said.
Twenty-five containers that originated from a base in the southern Afghan district of Kandahar entered Pakistan through the border crossing at Chaman in southwestern Balochistan province on Saturday, said Ata Mohammed, a shipping official.
Another 25 containers entered Pakistan on Sunday through the other major Afghan border crossing at Torkham in the northwestern Khyber tribal area, said Mohammed Yousuf, a local political official.
Pakistan will be a key route for the US to withdraw tens of thousands of containers of equipment out of landlocked Afghanistan as it pulls most of its combat troops out by the end of 2014.
Pakistan closed the route for nearly seven months after US airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani troops at a post along the Afghan border in November 2011. Islamabad reopened the route in July 2012 after Washington apologized for the deaths.

Pakistan test fires nuclear-capable missile

Pakistan successfully carried out a test fire of the nuclear-capable and short-range ballistic missile Hatf IX (Nasr) on Monday

A statement released by the Inter Services Public Relations  (ISPR) said that the test fire was conducted with successive launches of two missiles from a state of the art multi tube launcher.
The statement further said that Nasr, with a range of 60 km, and inflight maneuver capability can carry nuclear warheads of appropriate yield, with high accuracy.
This quick response system, which can fire a four Missile  Salvo  ensures deterrence against threats in view of evolving scenarios. Additionally Nasr has been specially designed to defeat all known Anti Tactical Missile Defence Systems.

CIA used ISI facilities in Karachi, says US report

Pakistan extended full cooperation to the CIA in tracing suspected terrorists and provided secret detention and interrogation facilities to the US intelligence agency, says a report.

A Washington-based rights advocacy group, Open Society Justice Initiative, reported that Pakistan “captured, detained, interrogated, tortured, and abused” hundreds of individuals for the CIA.

The report documents participation of 54 foreign governments in CIA’s operations against terrorists and was first published by The New York Times on Tuesday.

The chapter on Pakistan shows that the country also permitted its airspace and airports to be used for flights associated with CIA’s operations.
A 2010 UN report observed that from December 2001 until the summer of 2002, Pakistan operated a secret detention programme under which detainees were initially detained in Pakistan before being transferred to Afghanistan and/or to Guantanamo Bay.

Former President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged capturing 672 alleged Al Qaeda members and handing over 369 of them to the United States.
According to Amnesty International, “most of the known victims of rendition were initially detained in Pakistan.”

Lift the ban on YouTube, cry artists

The government’s ban on video-sharing website YouTube has been protested on Twitter and Facebook time and again by everyone from ordinary citizens to journalists and musicians in the past four months.

While most have tried to live a life without YouTube — either by using Vimeo and Dailymotion — or around it by using proxies, the Pakistani music industry has suffered largely in silence. One group of artists has realised the importance of such a video-sharing platform, and has come up with a unique way to protest the ban — YouTube Aloud, a collaborative effort between Omran Shafique (Momo) from Mauj, Hamza Jaafri from CoVEN and Pakistan’s child prodigy Usman Riaz.

“YouTube Aloud is a social media page where we [and the Facebook community] express our thoughts about how this ban is having a negative effect on society,” Riaz tells The Express Tribune.

“Everything that I have learnt and achieved is a direct result of having a close connection to the online realm,” says Riaz. “YouTube can be the reason I became a TED Fellow. I would have never had a chance to speak on the TED stage or perform with Preston Reed — the man whose videos I used to watch on YouTube when I first picked up the guitar — if I didn’t have access to YouTube.”

Exports to China surge over 200% in five years

 Pakistan’s exports to China rose 219% in the last five years from 2007-08 to 2011-12, far higher than the 43% increase in imports, says Commerce Minister Makhdoom Amin Fahim, indicating a reduction in trade deficit with Beijing.

In a written reply to a question from Muhammad Talha Mehmood in the Senate on Wednesday, Fahim stressed that shipments to China had accelerated after the free trade agreement between the two countries came into force in 2009.

Giving a breakdown of export figures for the past five years, he said Pakistan exported goods worth $684.8 million to China in 2007-08, $701 million in 2008-09, $1.154 billion in 2009-10, $1.634 billion in 2010-11 and $2.184 billion in 2011-12.

In an effort to boost to bilateral trade, Fahim said Beijing had been asked to facilitate Pakistan’s participation in exhibition and trade fairs in China. In response, China is offering space in all exhibitions without any fee and rent.

After five days: Chaman border reopens for transit trade

After five days, the Afghan authorities reopened the Chaman border crossing for Pakistani containers destined for Central Asian countries on Wednesday.

Around 35 to 40 containers loaded with fruit and vegetables made their way across, according to sources in Chaman. However, most of the containers which had been refused entry into Afghanistan earlier had returned to Karachi, they added.

The containers were allowed to enter Afghanistan following talks between a delegation of transporters and Afghan officials, Chaman Customs Superintendent Iqbal Tareen told The Express Tribune.

In an official statement, the Pak-Afghan Chamber of Commerce, however, claimed their efforts had led to the reopening of the border crossing.

Higher Education Commission — under renewed threat

There has been a major transformation of the landscape of our universities under the Higher Education Commission (HEC) during the last decade. Six of our universities are now ranked among the top 500 of the world. There were none in the year 2002. Our international research publications have soared from about 600 annually in 2002 to about 8,000 annually in 2012, bringing us ahead of India in terms of research publications per million people. The period 2003-2008 was described as “a golden period” for higher education in Pakistan by the Chairman of United Nations Commission on Science Technology and Development, who also recommended that these policies should be emulated by other developing countries.

However there was a dramatic change for the worse in 2008 when the present government came into power. Attacks against the higher education sector started almost immediately in 2008 and have continued unabated since then. They have proved that the analysis and fears expressed by the world’s top science journal Nature in 2008 were correct. In an editorial in its August 28 issue, entitled “After Musharraf”, it had said that the PPP had a very poor record as far as support to education was concerned.

The HEC had found that 51 members of parliament had obtained fake degrees in order to contest elections and that there were another 393 who probably were in the same boat but simply refused to submit their documents for verification. It is these honourable ladies and gentlemen who ganged up against the HEC to teach it a lesson.

The fundamentalist mind

FUNDAMENTALISM is a controversial term, ascribed first to 19th-century American Protestant groups which preached strict adherence to basic biblical tenets.

It is now applied loosely to all groups exhibiting broadly similar tendencies. While a consensus definition eludes scholars, certain key characteristics are generally ascribed to fundamentalists.

Firstly, they desire strict adherence to their interpretation of an earlier ideology which they view as being perfect and timeless. Their interpretation often distorts the original ideology. Usually, the idealised ideology is religious since religious reverence makes it easier to recruit followers, though political, economic and nationalistic ideologies also occasionally spawn fundamentalism.

Secondly, fundamentalists see only black or white, viewing themselves as perfect and others as wrong.

Thirdly, fundamentalists often invoke the memory of a past community which prospered by supposedly following the idealised ideology.

Deadly riots ahead of Bangladesh war crimes verdict

 A man was burned to death as riots rocked Dhaka ahead of a verdict Tuesday against a senior Islamist opposition official accused of genocide during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence against Pakistan.

Abdul Quader Molla, 64, assistant secretary general of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, could be sentenced to death by the controversial International Crimes Tribunal following charges of rape, genocide and murder.

Jamaat announced a nationwide strike on Tuesday after the tribunal on Monday announced the verdict would be delivered the following day. Jamaat warned it would resist at any cost a “government blueprint” to execute its leaders.

The verdict is expected to be given at around 11:30 am (0530 GMT).

Afghan peace talks Pakistan’s urgent priority

Pakistan treats the Afghan peace process as an “urgent priority”, Ambassador Sherry Rehman said on Monday as the US media reported that mistrust among key players had floundered talks with the Taliban.

“Pakistan looks clearly to an Afghan-led roadmap for reconciliation, understands that this is an urgent priority,” said Pakistan’s envoy to the US, rejecting insinuations that Islamabad was trying to delay the talks.

“Pakistan also has shown support at the highest level for any track of dialogue that the Afghans deem important,” she added.

The US media reported on Monday that Mulla Omar has recently made a surprise offer to share power in a post-war Afghanistan. But “mistrust and confusion” among key players had floundered the peace effort, the report added.