U.S. officials: Iraqi insurgents educating Afghan, Pakistani militants

BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY AND JOHN WALCOTT

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Islamic militants in Iraq are providing military training and other assistance to Taliban and al Qaida fighters from eastern and southern Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal areas, U.S. intelligence officials told Knight Ridder.

A small number of Pakistani and Afghan militants are receiving military training in Iraq; Iraqi fighters have met with Afghan and Pakistani extremists in Pakistan; and militants in Afghanistan increasingly are using homemade bombs, suicide attacks and other tactics honed in Iraq, said U.S. intelligence officials and others who track the issue.

Several Afghan and Pakistani "exchange students" volunteered to join the fight against American and Iraqi forces in Iraq, but were told to return to Afghanistan and Pakistan to train other militants there, two U.S. intelligence officials said. They and other officials spoke only on condition of anonymity because the intelligence is highly classified.

The intelligence suggests that if the trend continues, American forces, already contending with escalating violence in Iraq, could face the same thing in Afghanistan in the coming months, further complicating the Bush administration's plans to withdraw some troops.

"The worst case would be if the terrorists in both places are becoming more connected, and that they either want to take some of the heat off the jihadists in Iraq or that they figure we're stretched too thin in both places, so they're going to try to turn up the heat in both," one U.S. intelligence official said.

Al-Qaida's role in the contacts among militants from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan isn't entirely clear, said Seth Jones, a specialist on Afghanistan at the RAND Corp., a consulting firm that advises U.S. government agencies.

But he added that "there is substantial speculation that it is al-Qaida or affiliated groups" that are arranging the exchanges.

"I think there is absolutely no question that the partial evidence strongly suggests that there have been increasing contacts between Afghan insurgents and Iraqi insurgents either in Iraq itself or in Pakistan, the trails going in both directions," Jones said.

Militants traveling to or from Iraq mostly are making their way on routes used by drug traffickers and smugglers through Pakistan's province of Baluchistan, where government forces are facing a tribal insurgency, and southern Iran, the two American intelligence officials said.

They said there was no solid evidence that Iran's Islamic regime was arranging, financing or aiding what one of the U.S. intelligence officials called "terrorist Route 66."

But it's possible that members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, other paramilitary groups or some local officials may be turning a blind eye to the traffic, perhaps in exchange for bribes, the officials said.

While religious and ethnic violence is swelling in Iraq, Afghanistan has witnessed a surge in attacks by the Taliban, many of them apparently aimed at testing NATO troops from Britain, Canada and the Netherlands as they begin taking over security duties in the south from American forces.

The U.S. intelligence officials said the relatively small number of Afghan and Pakistani militants going to Iraq were receiving a professional military education from foreign terrorists and Iraqis tied to al-Qaida, then returning home to train other fighters.

Tactics that have proved effective in Iraq, especially homemade bombs, suicide and car bombs, and secondary ambushes - in which troops, police and emergency workers are hit as they respond to an initial attack - increasingly are being used in Afghanistan, they said.

"Everybody accepts that there has been a qualitative shift in the sophistication of these attacks," said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department intelligence expert who's now at the Middle East Institute, a nonpartisan research center.

American officials suspect that the training and transfer of tactics have been discussed among Iraqi insurgents and Afghan and Pakistani militants in at least two recent meetings in Pakistan, said an expert who asked not to be further identified.

The Bush administration has been pressing Pakistan's leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to develop a comprehensive plan to halt the infiltration of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters from Pakistan into Afghanistan, several experts said.

In response, they said, Pakistan quietly has sought American assistance to seal parts of the 1,500-mile border of massive mountains and plunging valleys with a fence and minefields, an idea that one U.S. official called "absolutely idiotic."

British-Pakistani Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist bought Kevlar from Canada

Terror trove bought here

Recruiter for militant group visited Ontario on a false passport just months after Sept. 11, 2001
He obtained textile for armour plating at a plant in Cambridge, Michelle Shephard reports

Mar. 31, 2006. 05:12 AM

MICHELLE SHEPHARD

STAFF REPORTER

In January 2002, just four months after the 9/11 attacks when both Canada and the U.S. were still on high alert for more assaults, a Briton named Mohammed Ajmal Khan wasn't on anyone's radar as he travelled to Toronto to buy a seemingly benign product.He came in search of 1,000 square metres of Kevlar.Stronger than steel, Kevlar has many uses — from the protective coating on military jeeps and hummers and body armour used by U.S. Navy seals, to hockey sticks and the siding of canoes. It's unclear what 31-year-old Khan told employees when he visited Barrday, a Cambridge, Ont., factory that specializes in industrial textiles, but he had already made email contact with the company so they were anticipating his arrival. Khan came with a friend and the pair was asked to sign an agreement that would preclude them from disclosing what they saw during a tour of the facility.Khan had fake identification, and bogus company credentials, and after the purchase was made, and the Kevlar shipped to an address in Pakistan, Khan returned to his Coventry home. His friend Palvinder Singh, who had come to Toronto for a wedding, also returned to Britain shortly afterwards.What happened next to the Kevlar once it reached Pakistan, according to London Metropolitan Police, was enough to send Khan behind bars for nine years. Earlier this month, the Briton was jailed for terrorism offences, which included providing equipment for the Pakistani-based separatist group Lashkar-e-Tayibba. Fighting for independence in Kashmir against India, the group has close ties to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, according to Western intelligence services. Both Canada and Britain have designated the group a terrorist organization. British police say the militant group was conducting operations in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, in areas where British and American forces were stationed, and where Canadian troops now are deployed. According to emails later recovered by Scotland Yard investigators, the Kevlar that Khan bought was to be used for armouring up to six vehicles.Khan also admitted he attended a Lashkar-e-Tayibba training camp in Pakistan and by September 2001 held a senior role in the organization, responsible for foreign recruits. His friend who accompanied him to Barrday was also charged, but acquitted last month after arguing he was presumed guilty by association — he knew Khan since childhood but had no knowledge the materials were shipped to a terrorist organization.London police hailed the conviction as the arrest of a major "terrorist quartermaster.""Khan's conviction is very important. It sends a clear message to anyone prepared to train as a terrorist or support terrorism that they can expect to be prosecuted. We also want to reassure the public that we will continue to do everything possible to fight terrorism," said Peter Clarke, head of London Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorist branch.While not often fighting themselves, terrorist quartermasters (those who acquire equipment for the organization) are lifelines for the group."These are people who are fundamentally integral to these kind of organizations or networks because they are the people that actually provide weapons or equipment so that they can carry out these attacks," says Alex Standish, British editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest. "Terrorist organizations or groups do not want to draw attention to themselves so there's always a difficulty in procurement."Standish says the IRA has a documented history of effectively using quartermasters to quietly import materials from around the world. Different grades of aramid fibres, which are best known by its brand name of Kevlar, face export restrictions from Canada if they're military or nuclear grade. It's not clear what type Khan purchased and whether it was on the restricted list, thereby requiring an export permit from the Canadian government.International Trade Canada spokesperson Brooke Grantham said he could not disclose if a permit was issued or requested in this case.Individual companies may also require certain requirements for the sale of a large amount of Kevlar. A Barrday representative said this week he could not disclose what criteria Khan would have to meet before his sale was completed."Our position is we cannot comment on that issue. We were involved and participated with different police forces to aid in the capture and really we were advised we shouldn't discuss the matter," said Tony Fiorenzini, Barrday VP of manufacturing.Khan also pleaded guilty to buying remote control and video equipment and a global positioning system. The London court was told the equipment was used to test an unmanned aerial vehicle "drone." Indian and Pakistani forces in the region have shot down similar drones laden with explosives, the court heard.Khan was arrested on Sept. 12, 2003 at London's Heathrow Airport as he returned on a flight from Bahrain. After searching three properties in Coventry, police seized his computer and an air pistol converted to fire live ammunition. He was released on bail but rearrested March 1, 2005 following a further investigation by the police force's anti-terrorist branch.The investigation also included American citizens, Masaud Khan, who was jailed for life plus 65 years in June 2004, and Seifullah Chapman, who was sentenced to 85 years for providing material support to the terrorist group.

Pakistani Al-Qeada terrorist busted in Canada(had ties to LeT)

Suspected al-Qaida captain busted

Man, 40, caught with suitcase, cash, bogus papers

AN ALLEGED TERRORIST --- with links to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden -- has been arrested in the Toronto area trying to flee the country, say Sun immigration sources.

In one of the most significant terrorism arrests in Canada since Sept. 11, 2001, a man believed to be a captain of the Pakistani extremist organization Mujahadeen-E-Lashkar-E-Tayyba or LET, which is funded by Osama bin Laden and has direct ties to al-Qaida, was arrested March 16, by Canadian border service officers in Newmarket.

Intelligence sources say members of the LET have been trained in Afghan terrorist camps.

Ontario immigration sources say 40-year-old Raja Ghulam Mustafa, a Pakistani national, who went by the last name Murtaza, was arrested outside his home with a packed suitcase and a significant amount of cash on him.

Following the arrest, conducted by the Canadian border service's Greater Toronto Enforcement Centre officers, Mustafa's residence was searched and a briefcase containing fraudulent documents and a laptop were seized.

It's believed that Mustafa may have been tipped off that GTEC officers were investigating him and that he made plans to flee to the U.S.

Officials told the Sun Mustafa was "surprised" that he was found by law enforcement.

Sources say Mustafa had already given his landlady notice that he would be leaving.

He is being held at the Toronto West Detention Centre.

In 1997, Mustafa was arrested on violations in the U.S. but was released on a peace bond after he filed a claim for refugee status.

LIVED WITH FUGITIVE

During that time he fled to Canada under a phony identity and was eventually able to secure refugee status here.

Mustafa moved to Newmarket to live with his brother-in-law Syed Maqsood Aly, a fugitive wanted in the U.S. for drug trafficking and fraud, say sources.

Both men were at one point living with Syed's brother Nusrat Sheikh Aly -- a suspected human smuggler wanted by U.S. authorities.

It's now believed Nusrat Aly has fled the country.

Yesterday, both Canadian Border Services Agency and Immigration and refugee board officials were keeping tight-lipped on the arrest.

Charles Hawkins, spokesman for the IRB in Toronto, said he couldn't comment on the case.

However, the Sun has learned the case will be dealt with in private immigration hearings.

The Canada Border Services Agency also refused to comment on the case.

Homeland Security refuses PIA permission for Lahore-NY flight

PIA not permitted Lahore-NY non-stop flight

BY AMRAIZ KHAN
LAHORE - The US Homeland Security, expressing its security concerns, has not permitted PIA to bring its nonstop flight to New York, sources in the airline confided to The Nation here on Thursday.
PIA flight Pk-711 is scheduled to fly to New York non-stop today. It is interesting to note that the route of PIA flight PK-721 leaving Lahore for New York last Sunday was changed at the eleventh hour due to unknown reasons.
A delegation comprising officials from US main security agencies including Home Land Security and Traffic Safety Authority visited Pakistan recently and expressed their security concerns over the prevalent security measures at various International Airports.
The US security officials termed the security environment at Karachi and Islamabad Airports as worst where they believed that many influentials got away without security search and checks. They also said in the report that there were many entrance points on these airports. However, the security arrangements at Allama Iqbal International Airport have been found close to satisfaction, sources added.
It is interesting to note that PIA announced its flight to New York without prior permission from the host country. According to rules every airline was bound to seek prior permission to change the route from the country concerned.

Pakistan’s economic freedom ranking drops to 98th in world(Bangladesh 96th, India 66th)

Pakistan’s economic freedom ranking drops to 98th in world

By Sajid Chaudhry

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s economic freedom ranking in the world declined to 98 out of 127 countries as compared to 90 the previous year, reported the Economic Freedom of the World Report 2005’s Special Pakistan Edition on Wednesday.

Published by Alternate Solutions Institute in collaboration with Friedrich Naumann Foundation, the report is based on findings of The Fraser Institute, Canada, that reviewed the country’s economic freedom situation in 2003 while comparing the economic freedom situation in 2002. The economic freedom ranking of Pakistan with a score of 5.7 was 90th in the world out of 127 countries in 2002, which then declined to 5.6 in 2003, the report said.

The Economic Freedom of the World Report 2005 Special Pakistan Edition highlighted that the despite de-nationalisation, de-regulation, privatisation and liberalisation, we are moving down on the scale of economic freedom. We are being bracketed with poor African countries such as Mali, Papua New Guinea and that we are behind many than many under-developed and developing countries such as Madagascar, Nigeria and Senegal. The economic freedom forecast for Pakistan in the current year 2006 is not so encouraging. In the South Asian countries, even Bangladesh has better ranking of economic freedom of 96th than Pakistan and that India is far ahead of us with a ranking of 66th in the world.

The decline in Pakistan’s ranking is attributed to (a) size of the government and its expenditures, taxes on enterprises, (b) weak legal structure and security of property rights, (c) inadequate access to sound money (credit), (c) limited freedom to exchange with foreigners and (d) weak regulations of credit, labour and business. The report has suggested that our performance scale of economic freedom in the area of legal structure and security of property rights, judicial independence, protection of intellectual property rights and integrity of legal system requires immediate attention.

Jihad won’t be removed from school curriculum: education minister

Jihad won’t be removed from school curriculum: education minister

ISLAMABAD: The government will not remove the subject of jihad from the school curriculum, Education Minister Javed Ashraf Qazi said on Tuesday. The minister told reporters after a prize distribution ceremony at a school here that the government’s new education policy will be implemented from 2007. “ Geography and history will be re-introduced in the new education policy that will be implemented in 2007,” he said. “We will teach Islamiat from class one to twelve.” The new syllabus will also include the subject of human rights, he added. The minister said a census would be carried out to ascertain the literacy rate in Pakistan. “The results of a census regarding the literacy rate in the country will be available in June 2006,” he said. He said students will be taught in both English and Urdu. Science, maths and history will be taught in English and the other subjects in Urdu, he said. Online

Government expert in Lodi terror case describes Pakistani camps run by Jaish-e-Mohammad

Government expert in Lodi terror case describes Pakistani camps

DON THOMPSON

Associated Press

SACRAMENTO - A former Pakistani police chief on Thursday described a terrorist-training camp in Pakistan in an account similar to that given by a Lodi man who is standing trial on federal terrorism charges.

Hassan Abbas, now an author and lecturer living in Massachusetts, told jurors about a camp in a mountainous region of Pakistan once operated by Jaish-e-Mohammed, an extremist political party that has been banned.

The camp was in a region near Balakot, a town also mentioned by defendant Hamid Hayat during a lengthy interrogation by FBI agents last June, Abbas said. Hayat, 23, is accused of training at an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan in 2003 and returning to his home in the Central Valley town of Lodi to plot attacks inside the U.S.

His father, Umer Hayat, a 48-year-old ice cream vendor, is accused of knowing his son attended the camp and lying about it. They are being tried at the same time but before separate juries.

Prosecutors have no hard evidence that Hamid Hayat actually attended such a camp. By putting Abbas on the stand, they sought to give jurors details about the kinds of training camps they claim Hamid Hayat attended.

When the trial resumes next week, prosecutors are expected to introduce satellite photos they claim show a terror training camp in Pakistan.

Abbas, who was paid about $35,000 for his research and testimony, worked as a police chief and police administrator in Pakistan from 1996-2001 and has been on the stand since Wednesday, testifying about Pakistani culture, religion and politics.

He said the extremist group trained a large number of people for jihad, or holy war, primarily for the conflict with India over the Kashmir region.

While the Pakistani government says it cracked down on such training camps after the 2001 terror attacks in the U.S., Abbas said "dozens and dozens" of them operated between 2000 and 2005.

They were run by various political and religious organizations that attracted Muslims from around the world, Abbas told jurors. Most trained hundreds of people at a time, sequestering them for weeks and drilling them on the use of weapons, he said.

That conflicts with some of the Hayats' own statements to the FBI, which were captured on videotape. Umer Hayat, for example, said he saw a thousand terrorists training in a huge underground room, and Hamid Hayat said he frequently visited a nearby town after a day of training.

Defense attorneys claim Hamid Hayat intended only to attend a Muslim religious school during his roughly two years in Pakistan.

Abbas said between 5 percent and 15 percent of Pakistan's more than 20,000 religious schools, or madrassahs, serve as recruiting grounds for jihadi training camps.

The Hayats were arrested last June, shortly after Hamid Hayat returned from Pakistan, and have pleaded not guilty.

Hamid Hayat faces up to 39 years in prison if he is convicted of three counts of lying to the FBI and separate charges of providing material support to terrorists. His father faces up to 16 years in prison if convicted of two counts of making false statements to the FBI.

British-Pakistanis planned to poison beer at soccer games

US witness tells of plot to poison soccer beer

By Michael HoldenFri Mar 24, 11:34 AM ET

A U.S. informant, testifying at the trial of seven Britons accused of planning bombings in the UK, told a London court on Friday one of the suspects had discussed poisoning beer for sale at British soccer matches.

Mohammed Babar, 31, a Pakistan-born American who has admitted terrorism-related offences in New York, said Waheed Mahmood also suggested setting up mobile hamburger vans and poisoning the food before handing it over.

Babar is the key prosecution witness against the British suspects, accused of planning to use ammonium nitrate fertilizer to make bombs for use against targets such as pubs and clubs.

He has admitted in closed U.S. hearings to being an accomplice and trying to acquire the ingredients for what U.S. authorities call "the British Bomb plot," the court was told.

Babar said that Mahmood had raised the poison plots during discussions in Pakistan with himself and two of the other defendants, Anthony Garcia and Salahuddin Amin.

He said they could get jobs as barmen at soccer stadiums and use syringes to poison cans of beer.

TAKEAWAY POISON PLAN

Mahmood had also suggested distributing leaflets from a bogus takeaway restaurant.

"You would just have a phone number where they could call up and order food," Babar told the Old Bailey court Mahmood had said.

"What you could do is poison the food like that when they call for a takeout."

Babar, who said he wanted to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks, added it was also Mahmood who suggested that Britons who came over to Pakistan to fight in Afghanistan should strike back in Britain instead.

The Briton, who the court has heard worked for a gas contractor, earmarked utility plants and telephone networks as possible targets.

"He said we should strike in the UK and do operations over there," Babar told the jury.

"He had a very detailed knowledge of how things worked. He knew exactly the thing to hit. Whether it be telephone, electricity or gas, he seemed to have an idea of what he was talking about."

Earlier, Babar had told the court he had supplied computers to help al Qaeda.

He said he had given computers to Mahmood, whom he described as a contact for fellow Britons who wanted to receive training for jihad.

Seven Britons: Anthony Garcia; Jawad Akbar; Omar Khyam; his brother Shujah Mahmood; Waheed Mahmood; Nabeel Hussain and Salahuddin Amin are accused of conspiring with Canadian Momin Khawaja to cause an explosion "likely to endanger life."

Garcia, Khyam and Hussain are also charged with possessing 600 kg (1,300 lb.) of ammonium nitrate fertilizer -- sometimes used to make bombs -- which detectives suspect was for terrorist purposes.

Khyam and Shujah Mahmood are also accused of possessing aluminum powder, also for suspected terrorist purposes.

They deny all charges and the trial continues.

Pakistani military drops fliers in tribal areas warning people about jews and hindus

Military drops leaflets in Waziristan

By our correspondents

WANA/MIRAMSHAH: Planes dropped leaflets in both South Waziristan and North Waziristan on Thursday on the occasion of Pakistan Day to urge the tribesmen to beware of foreigners and their local supporters who had allied themselves with the "Yahood Aur Hanood" (Jews and Hindus).

The leaflets, in Urdu and Pashto, carried the title "warning". The Pakistan Army produced and dropped the leaflets. There was a prayer at the end of the leaflets for the tribespeople. The leaflets, dropped in Wana, Makeen, Tiarza and other places in South Waziristan and in Miramshah and Mir Ali tehsils in North Waziristan, argued that the war on terror in Waziristans was not against the people of the tribal areas. The statement said it was a war against foreigners and their local harbourers "who were standing shoulder to shoulder with the Yahood Aur Hanood" and were posing threats to Pakistan’s integrity and causing harm to the tribal society. The leaflets asked the tribespeople to keep out the troublemakers from their areas and defend their land against intruders.

Tribesmen who read the leaflets were wondering over the use of the word "Yahood Aur Hanood" to describe the enemy in the leaflets. Most thought it meant the Jews worldwide and the dominant Hindus of India. Meanwhile, the Pakistan Day celebrations in South Waziristan were marred by rocket attack on a military outpost in Ganj Takray area in Shakai.

Pakistani-American terrorist(Mohammed Junaid Babar) gives evidence against British-Pakistani terrorists

FBI informer 'met Britons on Afghan jihad'

Rosie Cowan, crime correspondent
Friday March 24, 2006


An FBI informer with al-Qaida links told the Old Bailey yesterday how he met a group of about 15 to 20 young men of Pakistani descent - mostly British and mainly from London and Crawley, West Sussex - in Afghanistan who he said had "come for the jihad".

Mohammed Junaid Babar, 31, who has pleaded guilty in a US court to being part of a British bomb plot, has been flown from the United States to give evidence against seven British men accused of conspiring to carry out a terrorist campaign in the UK. He arrived at court amid heavy security, driven from a police station in an armoured convoy with a helicopter overhead.

Babar, a Pakistani-born US citizen who has been given immunity from prosecution in the UK, told the court how days after 9/11 he flew to Afghanistan to fight against the Americans, even though his mother had been caught up in the World Trade Centre attack. She escaped from the first of the twin towers - where she worked - when it was hit by suicide bombers.

He travelled first to London, where he stayed for three or four days, and then on to Pakistan, where he met the group of young men. In court he gave a list of names of those he met in Pakistan which were similar to a list of aliases allegedly used by the defendants given by David Waters QC, prosecuting, in his opening speech.

Omar Khyam, 24, his brother, Shujah Mahmood, 18, Jawad Akbar, 22, and Waheed Mahmood, 33, all from Crawley, Anthony Garcia, 27, from Ilford, Essex, Nabeel Hussain, 20, from Horley, Surrey, and Salahuddin Amin, 30, from Luton, Bedfordshire, all deny conspiracy to cause explosions in the UK.

Khyam, Garcia and Hussain also deny possessing 600kg (94st) of ammonium nitrate fertiliser for terrorist purposes, while Khyam and Shujah Mahmood deny having aluminium powder, which can also be used to make bombs. On Wednesday, the court heard that a central London nightclub and the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent were among potential targets.

The case continues

Terror suspect 'was involved in al-Qaeda plot to obtain a dirty bomb'

Terror suspect 'was involved in al-Qaeda plot to obtain a dirty bomb'

AN ALLEGED Islamist terrorist accused of planning attacks on targets in Britain was involved in a plot to buy a “dirty bomb” from the Russian mafia, the Old Bailey was told yesterday.

Salahuddin Amin was said to have been entrusted by senior figures in a terror cell in Pakistan to act as a go-between in their planned purchase of the radioactive device.

He is standing trial alongside six alleged accomplices for conspiring to detonate explosives at key sites in Britain, causing maximum damage and fatalities. Among the intended targets were the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, the National Grid, synagogues and a nightclub in Central London, the court was told during the second day of the trial.

However, the plotters did not realise that as they pondered which of many potential targets to strike, their movements were being monitored by police, David Waters, QC, for the prosecution, said. Some of their cars and homes had been bugged. One defendant, Jawad Akbar, allegedly said in a recording: “The biggest nightclub in Central London. No one can put their hands up and say they are innocent — those slags dancing around.”

Mr Amin was said in 2001 to have moved to Pakistan where he attended explosives and weapons training camps with five of the other men and supplied equipment for jihad (holy war).

Mr Waters told the jury: “An indication to the trust imposed in Amin and his position in the Pakistani end of the organisation is gained from the passing of information to him in relation to a radioisotope bomb.”

Referring to alleged senior terrorists, Mr Waters said that Mr Amin was asked by Pakistan-based militants to contact a man named Abu Annis. Through Annis contact had been made via the internet with Russian mafia based in Belgium.

Mr Waters said that at least two of the defendants intended to leave Britain for Pakistan in the days before the intended attack on a UK target.

He said that Waheed Mahmood worked for Transco National Grid at its Brighton depot. Computer discs giving detailed plans of Britain’s electricity and gas systems, including pipelines, cables and sub- stations, had been found at another defendant’s house.

“Anyone armed with such information would have no difficulty identifying, in the context of this case, a potential target,” Mr Waters said.

The men had bought 600kg (1,323lb) of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, supposedly for an allotment, even though that amount would cover five football pitches; had hired a lorry and had taken it to a storage depot in West London.

They had refused to answer questions from the curious manager about what they would do with it, and had chosen the password “pink” in reference to a character in the film Reservoir Dogs.

Mr Waters said that staff at the depot eventually became suspicious and contacted police, who exchanged the fertiliser for an inert substance without alerting the men. An undercover officer started working as a receptionist at the depot.

The defendants were said to have acquired other bomb ingredients: aluminium powder had been discovered in a biscuit tin behind a shed at the home of Omar Khyam and his brother, Shujah Mahmood.

Britain: Terrorists planning attacks on pubs, nightclubs, trains were British-Pakistani and trained in Pakistan

Independent:

'Terrorists had what they needed to bomb Britain' By Nicola Woolcock

SEVEN Islamic terrorists plotted to blow up a significant British target causing maximum loss of life with remotely detonated explosives, the Old Bailey was told yesterday. Six trained at terrorist camps in Pakistan, two were said to have worked for al-Qaeda’s third-in-command and one said that Britain “needed to be hit because of its support for the US”. Their alleged plan to attack a nightclub, train or pub was averted at the last minute — after they had acquired all the bomb ingredients but before they could decide which site to hit. The men, mostly British-born, are standing trial after being held at Belmarsh prison for up to two years. The defendants, the court was told, obtained ammonium nitrate fertiliser, aluminium powder and detonators to set off the device remotely. The plot, which involved accomplices in Canada, the US and Pakistan, was foiled after months of surveillance by MI5, anti-terrorism and Special Branch officers. David Waters, QC, for the prosecution, said that some of the defendants had pretended to be tourists to disguise that they were attending a terrorist training camp in Pakistan and acquiring explosive ingredients. Their plan, he said, was to use a bomb or bombs to “kill and injure citizens of the United Kingdom . . . They were intercepted before the plot could reach fruition . . . when most of the necessary components were in place. All that remained before their plans achieved their ultimate goal was for the target or targets to be finally agreed. “Many of the defendants have spent time in Pakistan. Some have family connections with that country. Their principal purpose, however, in spending time in Pakistan was to acquire expertise in relation, particularly to explosives.”

Telegraph: 'Terror plot against pubs and trains'
By John Steele and Duncan Gardham

One of the defendants, Waheed Mahmood, had been working for National Grid Transco which was "of significance in this case", Mr Waters said. The company operates the high voltage electricity system in England and Wales and the high pressure gas system in Britain.

The aim of the plot was "at the very least to destroy strategic plant within the UK or more realistically to kill and injure citizens of the UK", Mr Waters said. A "great deal of preparation" had been done in Pakistan but the targets were to be in Britain, he said.

In July 2003 members of the group travelled to a training camp in Kalam posing as tourists. At the camp they carried out a successful explosion using between a pound and two pounds of ammonium nitrate, and aluminium powder, and making a U-shaped hole under the ground.

They also used false names in Pakistan, the court was told. One of the defendants used the name Hamza and codes were used in e-mails, including referring to detonators as "cigarettes".

Financial Times:
Seven deny plotting bomb campaign

Is the Next Silicon Valley Taking Root in Bangalore?

By SARITHA RAI

BANGALORE, India, March 19 — Twenty young engineers, mostly from the Indian Institute of Technology, India's premier technology school, peer into computer monitors in the no-frills office of Read-Ink Technologies, a start-up company housed in a small building in the bustling Indiranagar neighborhood of this city.

Bangalore's flourishing outsourcing companies, including Infosys Technologies and Wipro, have attracted worldwide attention with their global clients and tens of thousands of workers. Less known are the many technology start-ups, like Read-Ink, that have taken root here in recent years.

The new firms are drawn by the region's big pool of engineering graduates, many of whom have expertise in esoteric new technologies. That advantage, coupled with labor costs much lower than those of Silicon Valley, is starting to turn Bangalore, long a center for lower-end outsourcing services, into a center of higher-end innovation.

Some of these firms are self-financed, others have capital from the West. Some are run by foreigners. Others are founded by Indians, including returnees from overseas.

Read-Ink, one of the self-financed operations, is developing an advanced handwriting recognition software that can read scanned forms, claim forms, medical records and even digital tablets.

Its founders, Thomas O. Binford, a retired computer science professor from Stanford University, and his wife, Ione, a former manager at Hewlett-Packard, arrived here four years ago with five suitcases. They say they are now close to signing up their first business customer.

The signs of this shift toward high-value work are becoming more visible. Executives at Silicon Valley Bank, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., and provides consulting services to technology and venture capital firms, said they were seeing twice as many Indian start-ups looking for capital investment than even a few months ago.

"Our technology and private equity clients are leveraging India at an unprecedented rate," said Kenneth P. Wilcox, chief executive of Silicon Valley Bank and SVB Financial Group.

When the members of the Bangalore chapter of the Indus Entrepreneurs, a nonprofit network for entrepreneurs, collaborated with the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham to sponsor a business plan competition last month, they were stunned to draw 125 entries vying for the $150,000 top prize.

At the same time, Bangalore is becoming a hunting ground for venture capitalists looking for promising investment opportunities, such as Promod Haque, managing partner at the venture capital firm Norwest Venture Partners in Palo Alto, Calif.

About 40 percent of Norwest Venture's portfolio companies, or about 20 companies, have development operations in India, mainly in Bangalore. "More and more people are figuring out that Bangalore is a critical step in making start-ups capital-efficient," Mr. Haque said, explaining that cost savings here can help stretch initial investment funds.

Mr. Haque is taking a hybrid approach to investment. He pairs entrepreneurs of Indian origin who have returned to India (many have spent time working in Silicon Valley and elsewhere) with Western executives who have marketing and management expertise.

One of his investments is Open-Silicon, a two-year-old silicon engineering company. Its chief executive is based here, but its headquarters and marketing chief are based in Sunnyvale, Calif. "Like Open-Silicon, which has most of its customers within a five-mile radius of its headquarters, many technology start-ups are servicing American and European markets," Mr. Haque said.

Indrion Technologies, another new Bangalore start-up, has six engineers working on embedded semiconductor solutions for sensor-control networks. Its co-founder and chief executive, Uma Mahesh, a computer science engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology, is optimistic that he can attract venture capital because innovation among India's new companies is "a very believable story for investors."

Perhaps not surprisingly, this increased start-up activity in Bangalore has caught the eye of influential American lawmakers. Many American political and business leaders have said they are worried about a technological brain drain from the United States to places overseas.

Representative Jerry Lewis, a California Republican who is the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said that he was trying to find a government agency to sponsor projects in areas like nanotechnology, semiconductors, energy and pharmaceuticals, and possibly to collaborate with agencies in India.

"We are figuring out what kind of support and funding is needed from the Congress," Mr. Lewis said in a phone interview, adding, "The issue is not so much about losing innovation leadership as it is about how to make innovations happen on a cheaper scale and how to make more of it happen."

That Bangalore can be an incubator city for start-ups is demonstrated in Read-Ink, which the Binfords have financed entirely from their savings and retirement fund. They live and work in the same building, saving on rent. The ground floor contains a kitchen and employee dining room as well as the Binfords' bedroom and employees' guest rooms.

Mrs. Binford also runs an all-night accounting back-office service for American customers. "It is a small service with seven accountants," she said, "but helps cover the costs."

Improving the accuracy of handwriting recognition beyond what currently marketed software products offer is a complicated technical problem. "Current products have an accuracy rate of 80-85 percent; ours will be a 5-7 percent improvement," said Mr. Binford, Read-Ink's chief technology officer.

But in getting there, the Binfords have struggled to recruit and retain the best engineers in a competitive market. They said they had deliberately stayed in stealth mode for fear of talent poachers.

There are other growing pains. Finding venture investors at the early stages of a start-up business can be difficult because the majority of investors prefer to make safer later-stage investments. There is also a lack of homegrown innovators serving as role models.

"The entrepreneurial heroes of the Valley are accessible to many people," said Sabeer Bhatia, who moved from Bangalore to the Silicon Valley and co-founded Hotmail, later acquired by the Microsoft Corporation.

Sridhar Mitta, president of the Bangalore chapter of the Indus Entrepreneurs, said, "We are not going to be another Valley anytime soon," but he added, "The city can match up with Boston or Austin as a competitive place to start up innovative product companies."

Brit-Pakistani arrested for buying terrorist equipment for Lashkar-e-Toiba(for attacks on US forces in Afghanistan)

UK "quartermaster" for Pakistan militants jailed

17 Mar 2006 15:16:17 GMT

Source: Reuters
LONDON, March 17 (Reuters) - A British man, who bought equipment which might have been used in attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan, was jailed on Friday after he admitted being a "terrorist quartermaster", UK police said. Mohammed Ajmal Khan, 31, bought material that was sent to and used by the proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based militant group fighting in Indian-ruled Kashmir and that Britain says has links to al Qaeda. The group was banned in 2002 after being blamed for a bloody attack on the Indian parliament which brought Pakistan and India close to a fourth war. British police said Khan had provided material for the group when it was planning and conducting operations in Afghanistan in 2002-3 when coalition forces were involved in heavy fighting in the region. "Khan is a terrorist," said Peter Clarke, head of the UK's anti-terrorism branch said in a statement. "He has been trained in violence. He went to great lengths to buy terrorist equipment, some of which could well have been used against British forces." London's Snaresbrook Crown Court heard that Khan had access to more than 20,000 pounds ($35,000) to buy equipment, which included 1,000 sq metres of Kevlar -- a material used to make armour plating for vehicles and for bullet proof armour. He was also involved in buying remote high tech videos and a global positioning system which were used to test an unmanned aerial "drone". British police said such drones laden with explosives had been shot down by Indian and Pakistani forces in the region and that the LeT had claimed on its Web site to have used them successfully in attacks. He had been trying to buy night vision and thermal imaging equipment when arrested in 2003 and also worked closely with Masaud Khan and Seifullah Chapman -- both given long jail terms in the United States in 2004 for terrorism-related offences. Mohammed Khan received eight years for conspiring to enter into "an arrangement as a result of which money or other property is made available or is to be made available for the purposes of terrorism". He was also given a further year in jail for being in contempt of court.

'Book of Jihad' found in terror suspects' Lodi home, FBI says(anti-American Pakistani newspaper articles)

'Book of Jihad' found in terror suspects' Lodi home, FBI says

DON THOMPSON

Associated Press

SACRAMENTO - Federal agents found publications promoting jihad and a Pakistani militant group in the central California home of a father and son charged with lying about involvement in an al-Qaida training camp, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

FBI officials found the items while searching the family home in Lodi two days after the men were arrested last June, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Tice-Raskin said during the men's trial in U.S. District Court.

"This is the book entitled 'Book of Jihad,'" he said. "It teaches the virtues of violent jihad," the Arabic term for holy war.

A magazine found with the book was published in Urdu by "a well-known militant group in Pakistan," Tice-Raskin told U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr.

FBI agent Bridget Cox testified that the magazine had "pictures of violence, dead persons and military items like machine guns." She said financial and insurance documents were seized with the publications.

Hamid Hayat, 23, and his father, 48-year-old Umer Hayat, are being tried in front of separate juries, which were together in the courtroom for the second time Wednesday during the fifth week of their trial.

Hamid Hayat is being tried on three counts of lying to the FBI and separate charges of providing material support to terrorists by attending the camp. His father is charged with two counts of making false statements to the FBI.

Both men have pleaded not guilty. Their attorneys contend that the younger man never actually attended a camp despite repeated promises, and government witnesses say they have little proof other than the men's statements, which were videotaped by the FBI.

Agents searching their home also found a scrapbook kept by Hamid Hayat that was filled with anti-American Pakistani newspaper articles that defend al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan's Taliban, and indict the United States as "the world's biggest terrorist." The articles date from 1999 to just after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

FBI translator Phamas Batti testified earlier this week that agents also seized two books from a laundry room, including one with the word "jihad" written on it.

The separate juries previously have viewed hours of incriminating statements given by the men during lengthy videotaped interviews with the FBI. They also have been read transcripts of hundreds of hours of secretly taped conversations with an FBI informant who infiltrated Lodi's Pakistani community in the months after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Economic growth figures revised downwards

Economic growth figures revised downwards
By Khaleeq Kiani

ISLAMABAD, March 12: The government has significantly lowered economic growth forecasts made in the annual plan of the federal budget for 2005-06 because of lower than expected growth in agriculture and manufacturing sectors.

Subsequently, the government had revised the estimated GDP (gross domestic product) growth rate down to 6.2-6.4 per cent during 2005-06, instead of the budgetary target of seven per cent, a senior government official told Dawn.

A few days ago, the revised estimates was approved by the National Economic Council under the prime minister on the basis of mid-year review by relevant government agencies. The official said that the final growth rate might be even lower. Services sector is the only major segment of national economy that is likely to meet its budgetary target of 6.8 per cent.

The annual plan had forecast the GDP growth at 7 per cent by projecting 4.8 per cent growth in agriculture, 9.5 per cent in industrial manufacturing and 6.8 per cent in services sectors. However, the agriculture sector’s growth estimate has now been revised to 3 per cent while the estimate for industrial sector’s growth has been put at 9.0 per cent.

Major crops had been projected to grow at 6.6 per cent but the estimate were reduced to 1.9 per cent mainly because of lower than targeted production of cotton and sugarcane.

Similarly, the large- scale manufacturing was originally estimated to grow at 13 per cent but it has now been revised to 12 per cent. “Even this 12 per cent growth is disputed,” said the official, adding that the growth of cotton yarn needed to be verified.

He said the services sector was also showing negative tendencies but would be offset by earthquake-related activities, including a significant increase in the volume of exports and imports and unprecedented inflows of foreign private investment. As a result, “services sector growth rate is estimated to maintain 6.8 per cent target,” he said.

Informed sources said the 6.4 per cent GDP growth had been estimated on the basis of 12 per cent growth of large-scale manufacturing but there were strong indications that the growth might be just 10 per cent, reducing the GDP growth rate to 6.2 per cent.

According to the Planning Commission, the GDP growth was running below target and inflation was higher than the targeted rate. It said that while export growth was impressive but the rate of increase in imports was even larger, which could lead to a huge trade deficit.

These sources said the government’s target for borrowing for budget financing had already exceeded the full year’s target in just six months, which showed a massive widening of gap between revenue and expenditure.

The borrowing for budget financing from July to January 21 stood at Rs109 billion against the annual credit plan of Rs98 billion, showing the pressure on the fiscal situation.

Pakistani press reaction to the Bush visit

Daily Times

VIEW: Why did he come at all? — Kamran Shafi

“Part of my mission today was to determine whether or not the president is as committed as he has been in the past to bringing these terrorists to justice, and he is,” said Dubya, and as if these damning words were not enough, added: “He understands the stakes, he understands the responsibility and he understands the need to make sure our strategy is able to defeat the enemy.”

I don’t know about you, gentle reader, but watching the gruesome sight live on TV I felt as if he had delivered an almighty kick to my solar plexus and regions below, knocking the very breath out of me. I swear if I hadn’t been reclining in my La-Z-Boy at the time I should have fallen to the ground. The Big General too, seemed to have been gobsmacked, for instead of immediately making a firm riposte he remained stock still, at a complete loss for words. It was only after Dubya, realising the severity of his remarks in the face of his host, asked Musharraf, “Do you want to say something to that?” that Musharraf said, astoundingly, “May I add to this, with your permission”, and then went on about Pakistan’s intentions and his own intentions, and strategising this, and strategising that.

Let's see what the "director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad" has to say..(BTW, is is true that mullah omar is going to the news?)

Pak-US relations: no room for illusions

President Bush's visit to South Asia was all one expected it to be, although the level of intimacy he achieved with India went far beyond expectations. In Pakistan, a lot of time was devoted to a visit that in the end produced little of long-term strategic value for the country -- no matter what spin one puts on it. But why do we always have expectations from the US when they consistently make it clear that these will be refuted. In the present context, the most painful example was the nuclear issue. Despite consistent statements from US officialdom -- right from the top down -- that Pakistan could never be treated to a deal similar to the Indo-US nuclear deal, we were being told by various utterances from Scherezade Hotel that we would be demanding such a deal and it could actually happen. A delusional air surely hangs heavy in various corridors here!

Hit and run

For all those bleating about the different treatment that Pakistan got from the Bush visit, it's time for a reality check. India is the world's largest democracy at over one billion people with one of the fastest growing middle class currently numbered around a mammoth 300 million. It is also one of the world's hottest economies with large global corporations bludgeoning each other to get a footprint in. While India has one of the largest militaries in the region, no general has ever intervened despite the blunders the civilians made.

Every nation in the world wants to get access for itscompanies to do business in India, and what makes their economy so compelling is the huge growth in purchasing power that the consumers across the border are experiencing. Throw in the rapid strides being made by Indian scientists in the fields of biotechnology, engineering, and of course software -- everyone wants a piece of the action. From a corporate perspective, if you're not in India you're missing the boat.

More from manto's rag..

EDITORIAL: Self-correction is in national interest now

Frankly, it is Pakistan’s set-in-concrete “theory of socio-political-military relationship” with India which has brought it to this sorry pass, where neither foreign policy nor internal consensus can be handled effectively. The macro attitude towards India has drifted away from realism, and Pakistani society has been indoctrinated to accept the inflexibility of “barrack-room” thinking as a part of its nationalism. Today, trouble with borders on both sides springs from the pursuit of this inflexible project of making India bend to Pakistan’s revisionist agenda. This revisionism has focused on Kashmir but textbook indoctrination has moved further than Kashmir, making the two countries’ coexistence ideologically untenable. That is why the world is not with Pakistan today and is trying to tell us that there are other ways of facing up to India than war and reliance on such national-security theories.

The Bush visit and after

INAYATULLAH

The Bush visit to India and Pakistan has served to clear the air in many ways. For one, it has formally set the seal on the distinction USA makes in regard to its relations with India and Pakistan. There is little doubt left in recognising that India is more to US than a strategic partner. The Old Fort Bush address in Delhi is a gushing acknowledgement of the new reality. How effusive the head of a sole superpower could be! Bush was telling India that the two together would be reshaping the world. The US President was thus on a mission to make a historic pronouncement. Also to go out of the way to forge opportunities with a view to strengthening the new global partner.
Notice needs to be taken of the fact that, unlike India, there was little of substance in the visit for Pakistan. If the expectation – a reasonable one at that – was that there would at least be some compensatory measures or gestures, like an investment agreement or some significant movement on Kashmir. No such thing happened. The hope raised about a Kashmir settlement in the US President’s pre-visit press briefing evaporated when Bush merely referred to the need for the two countries to sort it out bilaterally.
On the other hand, Pakistan has to ensure that no “crossborder” infiltration takes place any more. India can take its own time to pursue its agenda in the matter. Instead of talking to Pakistan it may start holding meetings with the Kashmiri leaders. The militants somehow have to be neutralised and tamed. As Kashmir is very much a part of the Indian Union, the problem will be overcome with the passage of time. Pakistan having thrown all its cards on the table even before the negotiations on the subject have begun, may well be reduced to the status of a spectator. It is for India to dish out its own version of self-rule or autonomy and some demilitarisation.

Dawn Magazine: 3/12/2006

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/dmag18.htm

Our beef with Bush

By Anjum Niaz

Bush brought zilch, and who is responsible? More on that later. Many a blossom bloomed and then lost its lustre. It was time-sensitive. The buds began to appear when George Bush confirmed his arrival in Pakistan. These buds started to open up as the visit drew closer. The night before Bush stealthily showed up on our soil, the buds turned into full blown analysts on America and its policies. I mean the pundits who sat in a huddle with the host in the middle before TV cameras second-guessing why, when, where and what Bush was carrying in his bag for us.

Each analyst and his anchor had a mouthful of wisdom to share with the viewers. Sitting on the other side of Atlantic with Europe and the Arab world in between, our gurus waxed knowledgeable on America. Not lagging behind were the op-ed pages of newspapers that spawned unending columns of writers posing as American experts/scholars.

Suddenly there was an information explosion in Pakistan.

Still, with our half-baked knowledge on all things American, the sleuths in the media got licked by the 700 strong American security men who fooled us into believing that George and Laura Bush were taking the Islamabad highway en route to go wherever they were camping for the night.

As darkness descended, so did silence. Not a car could be seen on the dual highway. Roads entering the highway were blocked with trees and police cars. The tall lamp posts stood sentinel, casting a spidery yellow light on the haunted highway. It was too quiet for comfort, too surreal for belief, as we waited for the VIP caravan to hurtle past any second. No one came. Bush had landed and whisked off on a helicopter to the American ambassador’s residence.

The decoy by the Americans had worked perfectly. Potential snipers and suicide bombers were taken on a wild goose chase and dumped by the wayside.

With Bush’s exit, TV pundits and writers are back. “We told you so,” is the line they are parroting. After the fact, that is.

The truth is that Bush is not America, unlike Musharraf, who sadly is Pakistan. There is more to America than Bush.

Do our illustrious writers and soothsayers here know how Pakistan and its people are viewed in America? Want to know? For the ordinary Americans, we don’t exist. Nor do they care. We only have an identity in very select circles like the right-wing think-tanks of Washington. And I have news for you. They don’t like us. One can tell these white male chauvinists to go to hell. But we can’t. They dictate the foreign policy to Bush and his White House.

Newsmaker

He came, he played cricket and flew away in the darkness of the night. Yes, that was basically the highlights of President Bush’s 24-hour long visit to Pakistan. Well, in between he met our president, held a press conference and attended a dinner. He said the mandatory words about us being an ally in the war on terrorism, made a casual reference to next year’s elections and gave a green signal to the construction of a natural gas pipeline across Pakistan from Iran to India.

Actually, those who expected much more from him have probably just got up from a long sleep and don’t know have a clue about how Uncle Sam operates. If anything, this South Asian visit was primarily to further US-India ties and Pakistan just happens to be in the neighbourhood so leaving without a courtesy call at Islamabad would have been rude. After all, the US still needs our help to nab Osama and Mullah Omar, besides President Musharraf’s help in keeping the religious factions here under a tight lid. Moreover Clinton too dropped in just for a few hours after he too visited India for a few days.

It was clearly India that Bush wanted to woo and he did with a nuclear deal. Need one add here that the US is opposing Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme while it has offered this deal to India despite the fact that it is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and in violation of its own laws.

Why all these Bush fires?
Iqbal Mustafa

With all that has been written about the heart-breaking (rather nose-smashing) visit of Mr Bush last week that has left almost everyone mortified, here and abroad, there is little room left to add anything. However, I would like to dilate upon the passions that the visit inflamed.

First, the inferences drawn by some observant commentators: The New York Times, in a scathing editorial on March 3, 'A pointless visit to Pakistan', sums up the visit by stating "The Bush-Musharraf summit meeting is one between two leaders far more interested in guns than butter." Fakir Syed Aijazuddin defines it succinctly as, "In Kabul, he gave Afghanistan the reassurances that it craved; in New Delhi, he gave India what it wanted; and in Islamabad, he gave Pakistan what it deserved."

Referring to Mr Bush's comment that India and Pakistan are two different countries with different needs and different history, he surmises, "At a stroke, he severed the gristle of history that has connected the two nations. He has liberated them from each other, like amputated Siamese twins, and told them to learn to lead their lives separately."

Kamran Shafi does not wear any velvet gloves when he writes. He has dissected every move, gesture and inflection of what every one saw on TV with a Freudian scalpel. He took a special offence to General Musharraf asking Mr Bush's permission to speak at one point during their live press conference. Ayaz Amir's tone has been unusually low key and stoic. He states, "Bush may have done Pakistan no other favours but for this shift of focus he deserves our thanks. While we may have badly needed this splash of cold water on our faces, all in all the Pakistani reaction is still a bit strange and not a little tinged by something that can only be called paranoia."

Best of all, in my opinion, was the animated cartoon caricature of George Bush shown by GEO TV on 4th March several times titled 'Bush Bush hota hai'. That just captured the underlying reality of Pak-US relations to a tee. Humour indeed is a funny way of saying serious things. Bush came through like a doctored simpleton that he really is. As the most powerful man in the world, he agreed to accept General Musharraf's invitation to sneak into the best-protected bunker in the world.

Two beleaguered leaders acted out a pantomime of their individual authorities behind fortified walls, safe from all the mounting dissent around them for their perplexing ability to start bushfires (no pun intended) without any clue about how to put them out. The endearing personal rapport between the two leaders is perhaps based on this uncanny ability -- birds of a feather. There was a sad irony in the two champions of democracy hiding behind ironclad security to keep those very people at bay for whom they profess to be risking their lives and careers.

It is interesting to note that this is not the first time Pakistan has been let down, even snubbed by the US. It happened in mid sixties after the 65-war misadventure. It happened in the seventies when Mr Bhutto referred to Mr Jimmy Carter as 'that peanut farmer from Georgia.' It happened again after the Geneva Accord over Afghanistan in late eighties. President Clinton's visit in the late nineties was staged to put Pakistan in its place and we obliged by changing traffic rules for his limousines and giving him free access to a live television broadcast, like a presidential address, while he refused to be photographed with a democratically elected cabinet.

So what is different this time that is making us blow our tops off? Quite obviously, the Indian parallel stands out so starkly. I nearly choked when I heard President Musharraf admonish that we should not be India-centric. It reminded me of the cowboy who picked up a hot horseshoe, just out of the furnace and having burned his hand dropped it in frenzy. The Ironsmith laughed and asked, "Kin' of hot, ain't it?" The cowboy tipped his hat back and said nonchalantly, "Nopes! Just don't take me long to look at a horseshoe."

Having spent half a century developing 'India-specific' weaponry systems at a huge social cost that has left the country at the brink of destitution in civic terms, the Commander in Chief of our armed forces tells us not to be India-centric. It is black comedy! The militarisation of the civilian mind over five decades has turned Pakistan's raison d'être into a negation of India.

For all these years, we have lived with an illusion that there is some modicum of parity between the countries. Military has talked about a 1:3 numerical deterrent and such nonsense for long. Our nuclear programme owed its birth to the loss of East Pakistan and in response to the Indian nuclear development programme. In 1998, we conducted the nuclear test in response to the Indian explosion. Every development strategy, these days, begins with slides of cross-country comparison charts beginning with India. There is a mad rush of delegations to visit India on every little issue like which end to feed the cows from for a better dairy strategy. For all India's strength and our weaknesses, we had one saving grace on our side -- favours of US power.

Now Mr Bush has pricked our bubble of assumed parity. In the earlier years, illusion of parity had some grounds but since the early nineties when India has marched on towards globalisation of its economy and grown into an emerging world player, we held on to a belief in the myth of parity; India has only been pretending it. On March 3, 2006, we came to face the bitter truth that we stand orphaned. Mr Bush redefined our relationship with the US as 'cash on delivery' basis for services rendered.

This has happened at a time when public opinion about US is at its lowest watermark ever. To be fair to General Musharraf and his government, public sentiment against US as a country is only skin-deep. We hate America only as far as it is denied to us. Let US embassy adopt an open visa policy, and before you could say Pakistan Zindabaad, half of the population would have jumped ship. The General's problem is, as I wrote last week that he wants to walk in the middle of the road, which is always a dangerous zone in highly polarised situations.

The world is coagulating into secular and non-secular halves. The dilemma with us in Pakistan is that we host an overbearing presence of what General Musharraf is referring to as 'extremists' these days, nurtured over decades through militarisation of minds and bigoted school syllabi while now we desperately seek to walk in step with the secular side of the world.

India, China, Malaysia, Turkey, Morocco and Arab Emirates do not carry such baggage. They have a more predictable and stable relationship with the secular world. Countries like ours would remain in internal turmoil with unstable external relations for times to come.

We do not need George Bush to create bushfires in our courtyard. We have enough kindling wood in our intellectually confused political thought for self-inflammation. As for slights, no one can humiliate you without your consent!

The writer is a consultant for agro-economy and organisational management

America and our strategic calculus
Dr Farrukh Saleem

Should we be afraid of the truth? One, America, while making clear that her strategic priority is India, still wants Pakistan to remain under America's tent. Two, America will not -- and cannot -- pressurise India to settle Kashmir on Pakistani terms. Three, we don't have a military solution to Kashmir. Four, we have lost a lot more than gained through our strategy of 'bleeding India' in Kashmir. Five, our dream of military parity with India is just that. Six, if our military objective is 'to liberate Kashmir at an opportune time' then our current defence allocation of Rs223 billion is peanuts (we need maybe 20 times that much every year for the following 50 years). Seven, if the State of Pakistan exists for the welfare of Pakistanis then a defence allocation of Rs223 billion will keep us oceans away from our goal.

Dutch court convicts 9 Islamist extremists trained in Pakistan

Dutch court convicts 9 Islamist extremists

PARIS -- A Dutch court convicted nine members of an Islamic extremist cell on terror charges Friday, but the relatively light sentences and acquittals of five other suspects revealed continuing legal obstacles to fighting terrorism in the Netherlands.

The verdicts announced in a heavily-guarded courtroom in Amsterdam were a partial victory for prosecutors in the case against the Hofstad Group, which stunned the Netherlands when its leader assassinated filmmaker Theo van Gogh in November 2004.

The predominantly Dutch-born militants stood out because of their youth, ferocity and the prominent role of women members in the network. The threat it posed forced a number of political figures in the usually tranquil country to go into hiding, temporarily flee the country and protect themselves with 24-hour security details.

The three-judge panel convicted van Gogh's assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, who is already serving a life sentence for the ritualistic shooting and stabbing of the outspoken filmmaker.

The judges imposed 15-year and 13-year sentences, respectively, on Jason Walters, 21, and Ismail Aknikh, 23, for attempted murder and membership in a terrorist group. Walters and Aknikh, both of whom had traveled to Pakistan to train with militants, wounded three police officers with grenades during a standoff in The Hague soon after the van Gogh murder.

No US apology for Bajaur civilian deaths

No US apology for Bajaur civilian deaths

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: Richard Boucher, the new head of South and Central Asia at the State Department, stopped short of offering an apology for the death of more than a dozen civilians in the Bajaur airstike by US planes.

Asked at a talk he gave on Thursday at the Johns Hopkins University on President George Bush’s recently-concluded trip to South Asia as to why the United States had not apologised for the death of innocent civilians, including women and children, in an airstrike on the tribal town of Bajaur, he danced around an answer, in the end falling well short of the apology that he could well have made. It was obvious that he was not going to venture an answer that would go beyond what, by all indications, is a well-considered decision, No apology!

Washington has been encouraged in its resolve not to apologise by what many see as the Pakistan government’s apologetic and pusillanimous position on the issue. At no point has Pakistan demanded an apology from the United States. Even the US ambassador in Islamabad was not formally summoned to the Foreign Office to express Pakistan’s outrage at the attack. The Bajaur incident was mentioned, almost in passing, by the Foreign Minister when he ran into the American envoy at some venue in Islamabad.

Boucher’s first reaction to the question was that he did not have a “good answer”, which he followed by saying that when the bombing took place, he was “not in the job.”

He said it was always regrettable when innocent people got killed in “crossfire,” suggesting that “policy decisions” could not be influenced by such considerations.

Ahmadis under fire(hate literature)

Ahmadis under fire

By Ali Waqar

LAHORE: The Ahmadiyya Community supported the Pakistan Movement and stood by Quaid-e-Azam, but hate literature against the community accusing them of being traitors and urging their social boycott is being published unchecked, according to an annual review report published by the community.

The report said hate literature against the community began in 1953 and more than 1,379 pieces of hate material were published in the Urdu press in 2005. The material included decrees on murdering Ahmadis, allegations that they conspire against Pakistan, provoking the government to take aggressive steps against Ahmadis and creating hurdles in their worship. The review report, supported with the copies of newspaper clippings, said in many cases government bodies also supported the people promoting hatred.

The report demanded an end to discrimination against the community and urged the government and the media to promote Quality, tolerance and inter-faith harmony. It said human rights should be protected without religious discrimination.

According to a separate annual report by the community, 11 Ahmadis were killed, 60 charged on religious grounds and 16 accused of blasphemy in 2005.

The Ahmadiyya Community has appealed to the government to take concrete steps to stop the discrimination.

Pakistani cities at terrorism risk: State Dept

Pakistani cities at terrorism risk: State Dept

WASHINGTON: The US State Department in a travel warning described all Pakistani cities, including Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore, as bearing “high terrorist risk”

The department described Pakistan as a country with “extreme security and travel threat in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, high terrorist risk in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore and all other cities.”

The advisory says, “Pakistan has been a conflicted state ever since it was founded in 1947 when a section of India was cordoned off to make a Muslim state. Two wars were subsequently fought over Kashmiri, and a third resulted in the creation of Bangladesh. Nuclear testing by India prompted copycat testing in Pakistan in 1998, and since then militant, religious and extremist groups have congregated there to target American and Western interests by destroying their properties. Islamabad and the tribal areas are particularly extremely dangerous and targeting Western business interests. Extreme hatred for Americans and Westerners is very common among general public.” khalid hasan

Pakistani government passes off car imports as capital goods

Extra consumer goods import behind trade deficit

From MEHTAB HAIDER
ISLAMABAD — A major chunk of imported items under the category of machinery is consumer goods which is the main cause of worrisome in the wake of projected trade deficit up to $10 billion this fiscal, sources told The Nation Wednesday.
Out of total imports of $22 billion in last financial year 2004-05, over $11 billion imports were consumer-related items only, which is not a positive sign for the national economy.
“More than 25 per cent imported items in the category of machinery are mainly consumer related items,” the sources quoted data.
According to them, this ratio will increase this fiscal ending on June 30, as all consumer goods such as mobile phone, cars, television sets and refrigerators showed an increasing trend in the first six fiscal months.
To justify the projected trade deficit up to $10 billion during this fiscal, policy makers are continuously saying that machinery is being imported which will result into more economic activity.
“This is factually wrong and they are misguiding people with jargons of an increase in machinery import,” the sources said.
To put this into perspective, if auto imports (cars for personal, non-commercial use), mobile phone sets and consumer durables are added together for FY05, it would appear that around 25 per cent of total machinery imports are related to consumer goods, the sources said.
The situation is more depressing as the policy makers do not seem to ratify their mistake rather are continuously hiding facts from the masses.
The mobile phone import is likely to cross $1 billion this fiscal while import of new and old cars under various schemes will be over $900 million. The import of machinery, which actually generates economic activities, will not be over $2.5 billion of the calculated $26 to $27 billion.
On the other hand, policy makers draw their satisfaction in the presence of this fact that Pakistan’s external account is likely to remain well funded over the next few years as a result of international commitments for quake assistance.
However, the underlying cause of a widening trade imbalance needs to be addressed irrespectively, especially when it is clear that a significant portion of ‘machinery’ imports is not capital goods at all.
The non-oil, non-food (NONF) trade balance has moved from a surplus of almost $1 billion in 2004 to nearly $1.1 billion in 2005.
The fact that the bulk of imports under capital goods is for domestic consumption rather than to increase the productive capacity of the export sector will not allow any alleviation of the stress the rupee (and forex reserves) is likely to face from this situation.
By keeping the rupee stable and hence over-valued given the inflation differentials between Pakistan and its trade competitors - policymakers are compounding the problem. The deterioration in the trade account has occurred in response to run-away growth in imports. Non-oil imports rose 35 per cent in 2004 and in 2005. For 2006, we project non-oil imports of around $22.5 billion, with an almost unchanged pace of growth.
While the import of ‘machinery’ is the principal contributor to the overall non-oil, non-food import bill, this category is clearly inaccurately reported. For the fiscal 2005, the import of personal vehicles was $750 million constituting 13 per cent of the overall ‘capital goods’ category.
Similarly, the CBR data suggests that the import of mobile phone handsets to the tune of $300 million to over $1 billion annually is being categorized as ‘capital goods’ (under PCT 85-25- 2010).

Shireen Mazari's analysis of the Bush visit

Pak-US relations: no room for illusions

Shireen M Mazari

President Bush's visit to South Asia was all one expected it to be, although the level of intimacy he achieved with India went far beyond expectations. In Pakistan, a lot of time was devoted to a visit that in the end produced little of long-term strategic value for the country -- no matter what spin one puts on it. But why do we always have expectations from the US when they consistently make it clear that these will be refuted. In the present context, the most painful example was the nuclear issue. Despite consistent statements from US officialdom -- right from the top down -- that Pakistan could never be treated to a deal similar to the Indo-US nuclear deal, we were being told by various utterances from Scherezade Hotel that we would be demanding such a deal and it could actually happen. A delusional air surely hangs heavy in various corridors here!

Of course, the US arguments for sustaining this differential treatment on the nuclear issue do not hold in any rational discussion given India's formal nuclear cooperation with Iran and the Saddam regime as well as its scientists' work in Iranian facilities, but then rationality has never been a strong point of US policies in this region. In any case, President Bush tried to put the delinking of India's nuclear status from that of Pakistan's in as polite a form as he could muster: As he put it, "Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories. So as we proceed forward, our strategy will take in effect those well-known differences". Apart from the fact that he conveniently forgot that the two countries histories are also interlinked, he was right in stating that our nuclear histories are different because India broke the nuclear taboo in this region and it is India that has an extensive nuclear agenda as well as a questionable record in terms of nuclear cooperation officially with regimes like the Saddam regime! So is India being rewarded for its nuclear ambitions and past shenanigans?

Even more galling from the Pakistani standpoint, even on investment and market access opportunities, nothing was formalized. At the end of the day there were many promises and a commitment to a strategic dialogue at mid-level seniority, but nothing concrete. There can be no delusions as to where Pakistan stands with the US: We have an issue-specific strategic cooperation on the issue of terrorism. Beyond that, the US seeks an intrusive role in our domestic polity -- be it education or our political structures. Much has already been written on the Bush visit to Pakistan but there is nothing new or substantive for Pakistan that one can discuss. The only substantive agreement was the Declaration on Principles relating to the Integrated Cargo/Container Control Programme (IC3), which is part of the anti-WMD and anti-terror agenda of the US. Even the issue of US forces violating Pakistan's sovereignty was ignored in terms of an expression of regret, let alone an apology, despite the fact that President Bush focused primarily on the "war on terror". Even the Bush body language in Islamabad was in marked contrast to the gushing and euphoric body language we saw in India. But why was anyone expecting anymore?

On Kashmir, where many Pakistanis went into a state of heady expectations after the Bush remarks to the Indian media prior to his visit, Bush clearly reversed into the traditional US posturing by the time he arrived in Pakistan from India. So on that count, too, it was clear that the US was not prepared to so much as put India in an even mildly irritable mood. Thankfully, President Musharraf also sought only US "facilitation" rather than mediation -- the latter portending dire results for Pakistan in the face of the new Indo-US relationship.

Far more important, especially in the long term, is the Indo-US nuclear deal. While the US talks of declining its relationship with India from its relationship with Pakistan, this delinkage in the nuclear field is going to have serious repercussions for Pakistan, especially when seen in the broader context of the US-India military pact with its missile defence component. In fact, the single most critical factor to come from the Bush visit is the Indo-US nuclear deal -- which was preceded by a nuclear agreement between France and India.

Effectively, the US has killed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). After all, any nuclear assistance to India, even in the civilian field, directly contravenes the NPT. Such assistance also contravenes the US Non-Proliferation Act, but the US can alter that. However, it cannot alter the NPT unilaterally so it has simply decided to kill it in a most brazen fashion. The global non-proliferation agenda is dead as a result of US unilateralism and total disregard for international treaties. Also, by allowing India a delinkage between its military and civilian facilities -- with India deciding which is which -- the US has accepted India de facto into the nuclear club. Pakistan remains outside and can now be targeted in the future on its nuclear programme. Not that we cannot hold our own -- but it will be a source of future unwarranted threat/political pressure.

To make its rejection of the NPT even starker, the US has also given out its decision to retain its nuclear arsenal and to bolster it further -- thereby writing off Article 6 of the NPT. It is in this context that the US and Britain conducted a joint subcritical nuclear experiment (February 23), Krakatau, at the Nevada test site. This has been followed by a statement from Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration declaring that "the United States will, for the foreseeable future, need to retain both nuclear forces and the capabilities to sustain and modernise those forces".

Nor is the Indo-US nuclear deal and the US formal abandonment of disarmament significant only for Pakistan. There will be consequences in terms of how the US now challenges Iran's nuclear programme. After all, having laid the NPT to rest, how can there be any rationalisation of taking the Iran nuclear issue to the UNSC? Also, unless the IAEA critiques the Indo-US nuclear deal, how can it further the goals of non-proliferation? Or is there now going to be a formal acceptance of the discriminatory approach to non-proliferation where only certain states' will be targeted for their WMD programmes, while everyone else can continue to develop their WMD totally unchecked. After all, that is the signal that has been given to India in terms of its fissile material and nuclear weapons development. If one contrasts the manner in which the US is dealing with North Korea, where dialogue is being sought to resolve the nuclear issue, and Iran, one can make a valid assumption that it is the programmes of Muslim states that will be targeted in the future.

In hindsight, Pakistan should have taken note of the Bush reference to its nationals as "Paks" in his opening statement to the Indian media in Washington. That would have better prepared many in Islamabad for the Bush visit. It would certainly have removed all delusional notions.

The writer is director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad

Email: smnews80@hotmail.com

British-Pakistani students arrested in university raid in Leeds(Terrorism)

TERROR RAID ON MUSLIM STUDENTS

Three held as police probe radical cell on university campus

BY DAVID BRUCE
CHIEF CRIME REPORTER
ANTI-TERRORIST police are believed to have smashed a radical Muslim cell operating in West Yorkshire – home of the July 7 suicide bombers.
Details emerged today of arrests by the Metropolitan Police Anti Terrorist Squad at a university halls of residence in Bradford.
The arrests came just three days after a man walked into a central London police station to be arrested under the Terrorism Act.
Police confirmed today that Anti-Terrorist branch officers, assisted by West Yorkshire Police, swooped on a hall of residence behind Bradford University and arrested three men aged 18 and 19 late last Thursday.
The three were taken to London, where they were being held on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
Concerns
A fourth man, aged 19, was arrested nearby, early last Friday. He was today still being held in West Yorkshire.
It is understood the men were arrested after concerns were raised about a group expressing extremist Muslim views.
Those arrested are all understood to be British-born students from Pakistani families.
They are not believed to originate from West Yorkshire.
Officers seized a number of computers during the raids.
Unconfirmed reports suggested one man had run up a bill of £10,000 by buying "specialist equipment" off the internet.
Scotland Yard said in a statement today: "The arrests are in connection with an investigation separate from the continuing inquiries into the events in London during July 2005."
A spokeswoman added: "Three men – two men aged 18 and one aged 19 – were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000.
"They are in custody at central London police stations. A fourth man aged 19 was arrested later nearby in the Bradford area and is in custody in West Yorkshire. He is also being questioned on suspicion of the same offences."
Scotland Yard said the arrests followed the arrest of an 18-year-old man from east London who voluntarily attended a central London police station by appointment last Monday.
The teenager was then arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
l A total of 52 innocent people were killed and more than 700 injured in last year's July 7 blasts on three London tube trains and a bus.