Taliban using Pakistani territory: US commander

Taliban using Pakistani territory: US commander

WASHINGTON: Taliban forces fighting US troops in Afghanistan have grown stronger and more sophisticated, and are directing operations from neighbouring Pakistan, a senior US commander said on Wednesday.

More than four years into the war in Afghanistan, an operation often overshadowed by the focus on Iraq, the top US commander there said the Taliban has grown in the south and reconstituted itself elsewhere. It is displaying better military command and its leaders remain elusive, he said.

“The fact remains that we’re up against an enemy that is able to operate very effectively on both sides of the border,” Lt Gen Karl Eikenberry said in testimony to US lawmakers. “There are areas that they’re able to stay within and to direct combat operations against ourselves and against the Afghan National Army.” Despite growing violence funded, US officials say, by drug money, NATO will take over military operations in southern Afghanistan in July, according to Mary Beth Long, the Defense Department’s principal deputy assistant secretary for international security affairs.

Ultimately, NATO rather than the United States will play the lead military role throughout Afghanistan. Long did not offer lawmakers a timeline, saying NATO would take full responsibility when conditions were “right.”

The planned transition to NATO’s military leadership will allow the United States to bring home some of its 23,000 troops in Afghanistan, a Pentagon spokesman said. But in his public testimony, which preceded a closed-door classified briefing to lawmakers, Eikenberry did not discuss troop levels or offer a timeline for their drawdown.

While the US military had disclosed plans in December to cut its contingent from 19,000 to about 16,500 this spring, troop levels remain higher. Including troops from other countries, the coalition force on the ground numbers 28,000, Eikenberry said. Reuters

Taliban stage public execution in North Waziristan

Taliban stage public execution in North Waziristan

Staff Report

MIRANSHAH: The local Taliban staged the public execution of an alleged killer near the North Waziristan headquarters on Friday.

The man who was executed, Ehsanullah, had allegedly killed two other men, and was shot by the victims’ relatives. “The man was shot with AK-47 assault rifles by relatives of the murdered men,” said eyewitnesses in Ipi, a town near Mir Ali where the execution was carried out.

Ehsanullah had been accused of killing two men on June 22 and the matter was brought to the Taliban’s notice. Eyewitnesses said that the Taliban had “arrested” the man and had asked the victims’ relatives to kill him in public.

“The militants blindfolded him and tied his hands together, dragged him to a public area in the village and gave assault rifles and three bullets to one of the relatives of each of the dead,” the eyewitnesses said. “The sound of the gunshot echoed in the area, as people chanted ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great).”

Senior elders told Daily Times that Friday’s execution was first of its kind in North Waziristan, where the Taliban’s influence was spreading despite the presence of large contingents of the army.

“Real Talibanisation has now begun,” a senior teacher of a government school in Mir Ali said in reaction to the killing.

Agencies add: The families of the victims had refused compensation or “blood money” in exchange for pardoning the accused, opting instead to have him executed.

Separately, a religious leader Pir Lala Khan was shot dead and three others were injured in Spinkai Raghzai village in neighbouring South Waziristan tribal district, a security official said.

It was not immediately clear who had killed Khan, but similar killings have been blamed on pro-Taliban militants.

Afghans arrest 2 Pakistani suicide bombers

Two ‘suicide bombers’ held in Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, June 29: Afghan officials claimed on Thursday that they had captured two Pakistani nationals who were part of a 20-member team that entered southern Afghanistan to carry out suicide attacks.

Two other men from the same group were killed on Wednesday when they detonated a car bomb near a US-led coalition convoy in Zabul province, while 16 other Pakistani nationals were still at large, a police official said.

Ghulam Rasoul Aka, police chief of Zabul’s Sari Safa district where the Pakistani pair were seized, said his information was based on the confession of the detained men.

Kabul has repeatedly accused Islamabad of failing to stop infiltration from the Pakistani side of the border. Islamabad strongly denies the charges.—AFP

Barry McCaffrey: Pakistan a safe haven for Taliban

Commentary: Middle Ages on comeback trail?

By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
UPI Editor at Large

WASHINGTON, June 29 (UPI) -- Three years ago the Taliban operated in squad sized units. Last year they operated in company sized units (100+ men). This year the Taliban are operating in battalion-sized units (400+ men). So reported Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey (Ret), professor of International Affairs at West Point, after his second trip to Afghanistan to assess the balance of forces.

The former drug czar in the Clinton Administration and commander of the 24th Infantry Division in the Gulf War, McCaffrey concluded that in the past three years, Taliban has reconstituted the obscurantist movement that took Afghanistan back to the Middle Ages in the 1990s. "They are brutalizing the population," said the general's written report, "and they are now conducting a summer-fall campaign to knock NATO out of the war, capture the provincial capital of Kandahar, isolate the Americans, stop the developing Afghan educational system, stop the liberation of women, and penetrate the new police force and Afghan National Army."

Taliban now have "excellent weapons" and "new field equipment" -- prized by the equipment-poor ANA -- and "new IED technology and commercial communications," McCaffrey said. "They appear to have received excellent tactical, camouflage and marksmanship training," and "they are very aggressive and smart in their tactics."

"The Afghan Army is miserably under-resourced," the report concluded. "This is now a major morale factor for their soldiers. They have shoddy small arms -- described by Defense Minister Wardak as much worse than he had as a Mujahideen fighting the Soviets twenty years ago. Afghan field commanders told me they try to seize weapons from the Taliban who they believe are much better armed... (They) have little ammo... no mortars, few machine guns, no MK19 grenade guns, and no artillery... no helicopter or fixed transport or attack aviation now or planned... no body armor... no Kelvar helmets... no light armored wheeled vehicles."

The Afghan National Police is even worse off than the army: "They are in a disastrous condition, badly equipped, corrupt, incompetent, poorly led and trained, riddled by drug use and lacking any semblance of... infrastructure."

McCaffrey didn't mince words about Pakistan's links with Taliban: "Their base areas in Pakistan are secure." Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf hotly denies what is undeniable. But McCaffrey counters, "Pakistan is an active sanctuary for the Taliban and is struggling against the 'Talibanization' of their side of the frontier... Pakistani madrassas (Koranic schools) continue to get the very bright sons of the Afghan rural areas because of poverty and lack of a proper Afghan educational system."

McCaffrey said there were two obstacles on the unmarked Pak-Afghan border. Firstly, the border -- a long, 1,400-mile line through deserts and mountains that peak at 15,000 feet -- does not exist. A British colonial official and an Afghan king drew an arbitrary line on a map in 1893 and agreed it would be the border for the next 100 years. The Pashtun tribes are the same on both sides. Secondly, the Pak army has lost some 700 men killed and several thousand wounded while trying to establish control over its Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) where Taliban and al-Qaida call the shots among tribal fundamentalists.

This week some 400 tribal leaders held a jirga in North Waziristan with Musharraf's representative and demanded the dismantling of all army checkpoints and the return all troops to their base camp. Musharraf's answer was to move 10,000 additional troops to FATA, for a total of 90,000.

Taliban will soon adopt a strategy of "waiting us out," McCaffrey predicted. Anyone who has spent any time in Afghanistan in recent years says, "Afghans know the foreigners will leave sooner or later and Taliban is here to stay." That was why McCaffrey recommended a firm, irrevocable minimum of 10 to 15 year U.S. and NATO commitment to see Afghanistan locked in to a democratic future.

Arrayed against a resurgent Taliban, McCaffrey says, "We have a very, very small U.S. military presence (17,000 troops) in a giant and dangerous land which is one-third larger than Iraq (the size of Texas). U.S. forces face thousands of heavily armed Taliban as well as pervasive criminal and Warlord forces... Afghanistan is awash with weapons. Taliban suicide bombings and IEDs are now constant and rapidly growing in intensity and effectiveness.

"NATO forces will face a great challenge during the coming 24 months as ISAF assumes total responsibility for the security situation," the general's report stated. "The training and partnership of the Afghan Forces will require at least five years of continued robust U.S. military presence."

"In my view," McCaffrey continued, "the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan requires a continuing division-sized U.S. military force with at least six ground combat battalions supported by significant U.S. Army aviation (gunships and transport helicopters), engineers, USAF CAS and C-130/AC-130, civil affairs, military police, reconnaissance, intelligence, logistics, and 155mm and MLRS artillery support."

Also needed, he wrote, is "a continued robust presence of Special Operations Forces for counter-terrorist unilateral action. (These SOCOM Forces are inspiring for their incredible professionalism in stealthy air-ground actions supported by superb intelligence. They are very judicious in their employment of force. They are, in my judgment, the most dangerous people on the face of the earth.)

"We will encounter some very unpleasant surprises in the coming 24 months that will require U.S. fighting forces which can respond rapidly throughout this huge and chaotic country to preserve and nurture the enormous successes of the past five years. The Afghan national leadership is collectively terrified that we will tip-toe out of Afghanistan in the coming few years -- leaving NATO holding the bag -- and the whole thing will again collapse into mayhem. They do not believe the U.S. has made a strategic commitment to stay with them for the 15 years required to create an independent, functional nation-state, which can survive in this dangerous part of the world."

According to McCaffrey, Afghanistan remains "devastated by the peril of half a million landmines, which kill and maim hundreds a year." The country also produces 90 percent of the world's opium poppy (4,500 tons a year), and is the world's largest heroin producing and trafficking country. Which accounts for at least half the GDP -- and buys the Taliban's guns envied by ANA.

Sodomy and Bestiality in Pakistan's youth

Desegregation of the sexes and promiscuity — Ishtiaq Ahmed

My younger brother, who worked for years in the Pakistan Agricultural Supplies and Services Corporation (PASSCO), told me that in southern Punjab, much of NWFP, Sindh and Balochistan sodomy and bestiality are common among rural youths. In fact, he caught two boys trying to rape a goat in the vicinity of the mazar of Hazrat Sultan Bahu. The punishment meted out to them was 10 blows with a chhittar (shoe) each on their butts. They protested however that in many rural areas having sex with an animal was considered a rite of passage on the way to becoming full members of the male society!

'Suicide attack' on Pakistan army

'Suicide attack' on Pakistan army

A suicide car bomber has killed at least six soldiers in Pakistan's North Waziristan district, officials say.

At least two others were wounded when the bomber rammed his car into a checkpoint near the town of Miranshah, officials said.

The blast came a day after local militants in the area declared a month-long truce with security forces.

The BBC's Zaffar Abbas says such bombings in the Waziristan region are a major new challenge for authorities.

It is the third suicide attack in the area in the space of a month. Dozens of militants and troops have been killed in the area this year.

Tens of thousands of Pakistani security forces are trying to flush out foreign Islamic militants and their local supporters in the country's restive tribal belt along the border with Afghanistan.

Roads closed

"We can confirm at the moment that a car packed with explosives rammed a check post on the Bannu-Miranshah road," a government official told Reuters news agency.

Officials say the explosives-laden vehicle detonated about six kilometres (four miles) east of Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan region.

They say paramilitary soldiers at the checkpoint ordered the car to stop, and as it did so it exploded.

"The bomber's body was also blown to pieces," an official said.

Within a few minutes, helicopter gunships were in the air trying to locate other members of the group.

All roads in the area were closed off after the blast.

The casualties are the heaviest sustained by Pakistani security forces in North Waziristan since bloody clashes in Miranshah earlier this year.

Ceasefire 'holds'

The authorities have said it is unclear who is behind the attack.

Local pro-Taleban militants first denied involvement, and then told the BBC one of their members had detonated the explosives.

The militants' spokesman, Abdullah Farhad, claimed the bomber had acted in "self-defence" after security officials tried to arrest him.

He insisted the ceasefire the militants announced on Sunday still held.

Our correspondent says that the attack has inflicted a serious blow to efforts by the new governor of North West Frontier Province for a negotiated settlement of the conflict.

He says it was largely because of those efforts that local militants offered their one-month conditional ceasefire.

Officials say some of the demands - like the withdrawal of security forces from the area - were unreasonable, but some saw the offer as a positive first step towards a durable truce.

The News International: Poverty numbers are made up.

We can’t reduce poverty by changing the numbers

Instead of shooting the messenger, we should be addressing the problem By Kamal Siddiqi Editor Reporting KARACHI: Earlier this month, the number of Pakistanis living below the poverty line dropped significantly when the government termed its own 2001 poverty assessment methodology “flawed” and said the overall poverty level had declined to 23.9 per cent from the till now accepted figure of 33 per cent. In his wisdom, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Dr Akram Sheikh told newsmen that the number of people “living below poverty line now stood at 39 million”. He said the new methodology had been “verified” by a committee, comprising Secretary Planning Akram Malik and representatives of the World Bank, United Nations Development Program and Germany’s Department for International Development and it “puts the (incidence of) poverty at 23.9 per cent,” much below the government’s earlier estimates. In other words, now one in four Pakistanis and not one in three is below the poverty line. At least, this is the case in the books of planners in Islamabad. Using the same methodology, the Secretary Planning said that the poverty level in 2001 was now estimated to be 34 per cent while the earlier ‘flawed’ methodology had put it at 32.1 per cent. Two weeks later the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) - the two organisations cited by the government in its revised figures, estimated that poverty rate in Pakistan ranges between 25.7 per cent and 28.3 per cent as against the government’s estimates of 23.9 per cent. The two institutions asked the government to “improve the methodology of arriving at poverty estimates” to depict a genuine picture of the overall condition and standard of living of people in the country. They also raised questions about poverty surveys that did not portray the condition of majority of rural people. The bitter truth is the government is once again playing with numbers. The government is happy to let the economy take care of poverty. Our PM holds the view that a higher growth rate will, in itself take care of poverty. However, there are many that do not agree with this assertion. One of the strongest critics of the growth removes poverty policy is a Karachi-based think tank, the Social Policy and Development Centre. Economic growth is only one pillar of the plan to fight poverty. Other areas that need to be tackled are improving governance and devolution, investing in human capital and targeting the poor and the vulnerable. The SPDC view has consistently been while accelerated that GDP growth represents the necessary condition for poverty reduction, it cannot be achieved through growth alone. There is an alternative view that poverty reduction is not only a function of increased economic growth but also of diminished inequality. This was a point brought home in the SPDC’s annual report last year. These views seemed to be too uncomfortable for the present set up and at the time the media speculated that it was one of the reasons why the then head of the SPDC had to quit his job. A classic case of shooting the messenger. Last week, this newspaper reported that the country’s chief economist had been removed from his post after he differed with the government on poverty reduction and GDP growth rate figures. The government has, however, denied this outright. Official sources say that Pervez Tahir, the chief economist of the Planning Commission was removed and posted as head of the National Energy Conservation Centre on May 30 after he reportedly told the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission that he disagreed with the Poverty Reduction Figures. Lets attack the problem not those who diagnose it.

WB, UNDP question poverty estimates

WB, UNDP question poverty estimates

ISLAMABAD, June 19: The World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have estimated that poverty rate in Pakistan ranges between 25.7 per cent and 28.3 per cent as against the government’s estimates of 23.9 per cent.

The two institutions have asked the government to improve the methodology of arriving at poverty estimates to depict a genuine picture of the overall condition and standard of living of people in the country. They also raised questions about poverty surveys that did not portray the condition of majority of rural people.

The government had announced early this month that 23.9 per cent people lived below the poverty line and that poverty rate had declined by about 10.6 per cent from 34.46 per cent in 2001. It said the estimates and methodology had been endorsed by development partners, like the WB, the DFID of the United Kingdom, the Asian Development Bank and UNDP’s expert Prof Nanak Kakwani.

Prof Kakwani said in a written reply to Dawn’s questions that he had got the poverty estimates of 25.7 per cent in 2004-5 and 35.7 per cent in 2001-2 by using a refined methodology.

“In my report, I also expressed the views that the CRPRID (Centre for Research on Poverty Reduction and Income Distribution) methodology could be improved considerably,” he said.

He, however, confirmed that by adopting the poverty estimates and methodology used by the government’s CRPRID, he arrived at the poverty estimates of 34.46 per cent in 2001-2 and 24 per cent in 2004-5.

He said the earlier poverty figure of 32.1 per cent being used by the government for 2001-2 “cannot be justified by any methodology”.

He said: “The new methodology which I am proposing brings greater dis-aggregation. It provides separate poverty lines for food and essential basic non-food items of consumption such as clothing, housing, education, health, transport and so on. It is more transparent and can identify the genuine poor.”

The World Bank Country Director for Pakistan John Wall told Dawn that his institution had no hesitation to endorse the numbers arrived at by the CRPRID to avoid confusion and it had adopted the government’s definition of poverty line.

He, however, said that according to the World Bank’s estimates based on the government’s survey the poverty rate in the country was about 28.3 per cent in 2004-5, compared with 33.3 per cent in 2001, showing a decline of five per cent. He argued that the government used the consumer price index (CPI) to gauge the poverty rate from 2001 to 2005 but it did not adequately represent the price situation, particularly in rural areas, and that was why the government was now working on expanding the CPI coverage. He said there was a wide difference in prices situation indicated by the CPI and the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) survey.

He said the CPI-based and survey-based poverty rate was put at 30 per cent in 1998-9 but the difference between the two methods was very big during the period between 2001 and 2005.

He said the results of 2001 and 2005 were not comparable because 2001 was a drought year and 2005 emerged as a bumper crop year.

In Tribal Pakistan, a Tide of Militancy(Taliban takes over parts of Pakistan)

In Tribal Pakistan, a Tide of Militancy

Influence of Taliban Said to Be Spreading Beyond Border Areas Near Afghanistan

By Pamela Constable

Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 20, 2006; Page A11

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- In North Waziristan, barbers are ordered not to shave off beards, and thieves have been swiftly beheaded. In Swat, television sets and VCRs have been burned in public. In Dir, religious groups openly recruit teenagers to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan. In the Khyber area, armed squads have burst into rooming houses, forcing people to pledge to obey Islamic law.

A tide of Islamic militancy is spreading across and beyond the semiautonomous tribal areas of northwest Pakistan that hug the Afghan border, despite the deployment of some 70,000 Pakistani army troops there, according to a variety of people with close family, professional or political ties to the tribal regions.

Senior army officers in this provincial capital say they are making steady progress in pacifying the restive tribal belt and reining in religious extremists, who U.S. and Afghan authorities say have fomented much of the violence that has led to more than 500 deaths in Afghanistan in the past two months.

"We have them on the defensive now," Lt. Gen. Mohammed Hamid Khan, commander of the 11th Army Corps, said in an interview. "The miscreants have gone into their shells, and things have cooled down tremendously." Khan said the army had shifted from mass raids to "snap operations" based on intelligence and now controls key towns once in the hands of militants.

But other observers say the army's aggressive efforts since 2004 have backfired, alienating the populace with heavy-handed tactics and undermining the traditional authority of tribal elders and officials. They say the local Taliban movement, which has close ethnic and theological links to the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan, has won new supporters and been able to carve out enclaves of alternative power.

"Things are starting to spin out of control," one Western diplomat in Islamabad said of the tribal areas, which have historically been deeply conservative. "In some areas, it's beginning to look like they are setting up a government within a government."

The tribal areas are off-limits to foreign visitors, including journalists, except for periodic, brief helicopter visits with military authorities. But in recent interviews here, tribal lawyers, educators and politicians with knowledge of events in the areas described growing fundamentalist influence and intimidation that is spilling beyond the sparsely inhabited tribal zones and edging closer to settled, government-run localities.

In the past six months, they said, dozens of tribal elders and officials have been killed, including an uncle of the current provincial chief minister. Fundamentalist clerics have freely used FM radio stations to preach holy war and set up public recruiting offices in towns such as Dir and Bannu just outside the tribal areas. Music stores have been shut down and thieves executed before crowds.

"North and South Waziristan are in the grip of Talibanization" and all of the seven federally administered tribal agencies "can come under its grip, too," said Afrasiab Khattak, a human rights activist and official of the secular Awami National Party. "The army has put up an honest fight, but it has failed, and the government has failed. The traditional system has been made ineffective, and the Taliban have moved into the vacuum."

One university instructor, who comes from South Waziristan, said that when he visited a year ago the area was blanketed with army troops, but that when he went back several months ago for a funeral, not a uniformed soldier was in sight while armed men in Taliban-style turbans patrolled in trucks. He asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.

"The situation is not what the government says," he said. "The Taliban are totally in control. The people welcome them and the youths idolize them. There is no government, only the security forces who kill people. The Taliban settle disputes and deliver justice on the spot. The tribal areas are becoming nurseries for the Taliban, and the army can't stop it."

Last week, the discovery that a journalist in North Waziristan had been assassinated generated expressions of alarm and protests in multiple cities. Hayatullah Khan, who had been missing since December after reporting that the United States appeared to have staged a missile attack on Pakistani soil, was found shot in the head and handcuffed. Officials blamed religious extremists, but Khan's relatives and others said they suspected Pakistani intelligence agencies were behind his killing.

Many government critics here accuse the intelligence services of fomenting religious extremism in the tribal areas as a means of keeping Afghanistan unstable and vulnerable to Pakistani control. Senior Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai, have also made such claims, which Pakistani officials deny.

"In my view, stability for Afghanistan is the best thing for Pakistan," said Hamid Khan, the army corps commander. "All the turmoil there affects us; we get the refugees, the criminals, the drugs, the weapons. The miscreants have much safer sanctuaries on that side than on ours. If we want strategic depth, better we should have good relations than instability."

The Pakistani army has suffered numerous casualties since it entered the tribal areas two years ago under pressure from Washington to crack down on Islamic radicals. There have been repeated bloody clashes with tribal militiamen and, more recently, a spate of roadside bombings and one suicide bombing that targeted an army convoy. Visitors to the conflict zone describe soldiers as being largely confined to their outposts.

Until recently, most religious violence was limited to North and South Waziristan, the poorest and most isolated of the tribal areas, where Islamic fervor has always been strong. Although a recent truce has calmed South Waziristan, the fundamentalist fervor now seems to be erupting in other parts of the region.

In Swat, a peaceful agricultural valley, Islamic preachers persuaded people to hand over their television sets in May and burned stacks of them in public. In the Khyber Agency, a prosperous commercial area that straddles a major highway into Afghanistan, armed followers of an Islamic preacher burst into shops and lodging houses in early June, demanding at gunpoint that people pledge to follow Islamic law. In the ensuing clashes with another religious militia, several dozen people were killed.

"There are elements that have decided to create Taliban enclaves and to 'Waziristanize' the other tribal agencies," said Khattak, the human rights activist. "The government says it is taking action, but it is not. The source of the problem is here, not in Afghanistan. If such a bloody drama can happen in Khyber, it can happen anywhere."

Even in Peshawar, a huge city with a landscaped military district and a modern university, support for the revived Taliban movement is evident among students and worshipers at numerous mosques. Secular politicians say the militant fervor is being encouraged by the Islamic political parties that dominate the provincial government.

On a recent Friday, men emerging from prayer services said they were upset about army attacks on civilians in tribal areas and worried that U.S. forces in Afghanistan would enter Pakistan as well. One man, an English teacher, said the U.S. forces were "savages and barbarians" while the Taliban were "religious scholars and sincere people."

Another man with a black turban and bushy beard proudly identified himself as a former Taliban member who had fought in the capture of Kabul in 1996. Today, he said, the same conditions of lawlessness and immorality have returned on both sides of the border, demanding new action.

"Under the Taliban there was peace, there was order, there was justice. Now our people are facing cruelty, injustice and crime. It has all come back, and it cannot be allowed to continue," said Wahidullah, 32, who runs a religious academy for boys. "If I didn't have other responsibilities now, I would love to join the fight again."

Australia: Pakistani found guilty of plot to blow up national electricity grid or a Sydney defence site

Lodhi guilty of terror plot

Natasha Wallace
June 19, 2006 - 3:33PM

A man accused of planning to blow up the national electricity grid or a Sydney defence site has been found guilty of serious terror offences.

Faheem Khalid Lodhi, 36, is the first person in the country to be convicted of planning a terrorist act and faces a maximum penalty of life in jail.

Before he was arrested, Lodhi had gathered maps, chemicals and recipes for poisons and homemade bombs to carry out his plan.

Before delivering its verdict just after 2pm today, the NSW Supreme Court jury of six men and six women had deliberated for five days.

The jury had previously indicated it could not reach a verdict after the seven-week trial, but was ordered to push on.

As evidence Lodhi was planning the attack, the prosecution relied on several documents seized during ASIO raids in October, 2003, at the Lakemba home where Lodhi lived with his wife, Aysha Hamedd, and from his desk at his workplace in the city.

They included a so-called "terror manual", a 15-page, handwritten document in Lodhi's native Urdu language with numerous recipes for explosives and poisons that he had obtained from the internet. Lodhi said he was just curious and had paid little attention to it.

The prosecution also produced a list of chemical prices Lodhi had sought, maps of the national electricity grid he had bought and aerial photographs he downloaded from the internet of three Sydney defence sites, Holsworthy Army Base, Victoria Barracks and HMAS Penguin at Mosman.

Police also seized DVDs and CDs of jihadist doctrine and terror training.

The prosecution also alleged that Lodhi was in close contact with French terror suspect Willy Brigitte while the latter was in Sydney and had used a false name to open a mobile phone account to call Brigitte.

Lodhi had offered various explanations for the documents - the chemical list was for an export company he was planning, the maps a marketing tool for another planned venture to send generators to Pakistan and the aerial photographs were for his resume as he had worked on each of the defence sites in the past.

He also gave false personal details for the chemical and map inquiries but said it was a mistake.

Lodhi was found guilty of three terror-related charges, one of which carries life and two a maximum of 15 years' jail.

These charges were that he collected maps of the Australian electricity supply system in preparation of a terrorist act (15 years), that he sought information on chemical prices for the use of explosives for a terrorist act (life), and that he possessed a document with information on the manufacture of poisons and bombs in preparation for a terrorist act (15 years).

He was found not guilty of one charge of downloading aerial photographs of Sydney defence sites in preparation of a terror act (15 years).

He still faces five charges of making a false or misleading statement to ASIO.

The devout Sunni Muslim, who emigrated from Pakistan in 1998 for a better life, repeatedly denied being a terrorist, saying that killing innocent people was not part of Islam.

"This country is my country. These people are my people," he told the court.

Justice Anthony Whealy remanded Lodhi in custody to face sentencing submissions on June 29.

Daily Times: Pakistan fires chief economist because he wouldn't go along with fudged numbers

EDITORIAL: The poverty of thought

General Pervez Musharraf and his civilian sidekicks want to “re-brand” Pakistan. Nothing wrong with that per se, we concede. But improving the image should not lead to hiding facts or fudging them. Pakistan is beset with many ills, as are most other states and societies, therefore every effort must be spared to improve the situation. But it ill becomes a government to conjure up a rosy picture of welfare when many people are clearly hurting. Worse, to penalise those who say that the truth is different. Take the case of poverty alleviation. The government has been insisting, for at least three years now, that the relative numbers of the “poor” in this country are declining dramatically. But independent economists have been shaking their heads at this claim and pointing to how the figures are being fudged. The problem stems from the fact that most independent economists remain unimpressed with the impact of high growth rates in two years or so. They have asked the basic — and legitimate — question of whether these impressive growth figures have dramatically translated into alleviating poverty. Yes, the rate of growth of poverty may have declined, but this is a far cry from saying that the level of impoverishment has radically fallen. If the growth has not alleviated poverty, goes the argument, then we need to redefine the entire concept and also cast another glance at the structural anomalies that might hinder the poor from benefiting from the high tide of growth in these “propitious times”.

Now we learn that the government’s chief economist has been shunted aside and given another brief because he differed with the image-builders on poverty reduction and growth figures. Pervaiz Tahir, says the Planning Division secretary, Akram Malik, may have been the country’s chief economist but he was no expert in calculating poverty figures. Mr Malik says experts from the UNDP, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have also corroborated the government’s claim that poverty has been reduced by 10 percent during 2001-05. Presumably, Mr Tahir was using a methodology not to the liking of the government, or maybe the chief economist did not know his mathematics and statistics. Mr Tahir, when contacted by the media, said the entire Planning Commission knew his views on the issue.

The fact is that Mr Tahir did not want to be party to an exercise in dissembling. The chief economist did not attend the meetings of the committee headed by the Planning and Development secretary and informed his deputy that the poverty reduction figures being finalised by the government were “impossible”. He also stayed away from the meeting of the Annual Plan Coordination Committee (APCC) because the meeting agenda did not include the mandatory Economy Paper. Mr Tahir was also absent from the NEC meeting days ahead of the budget speech.

Such is the government’s obsession with presenting “Shining Pakistan” and such is its abhorrence of any comment or critique on this issue that it is prepared to do everything to hide its warts and all. Little wonder then that it has lost all credibility. In this country, we have faced the problem of availability of data for decades; now we have a bigger problem and a bigger question to address: when and where data is available, we cannot trust its integrity. When the national interest is subordinated to the government’s interest, how can Pakistan shine? *

Pakistan government GDP numbers have no credibility: Numbers without surveys

'Flawed methodology' mars credibility of GDP growth rate

From MEHTAB HAIDER
ISLAMABAD-The use of ‘flawed methodology’ have raised questions over the credibility of provisional GDP growth of 6.6% in outgoing fiscal mainly because Ministry of Finance showed 8% growth for livestock without knowing the results of recently done census report and 9.3% growth for small and household manufacturing without conducting any survey.
The independent economists have pointed out that the government had shown 9.3% growth in Small and Household manufacturing sector in Economic Survey for 2005-06 without conducting any survey to gauge its real number.
From 2000-2001 to 2004-05, the small and household growth remained constant at the level of 7.5% in last five years but it suddenly jumped up to 9.3% in outgoing FY 2005-06 without any basis.
“The government did not conduct any survey and incorporated growth of power looms sector which grew by over 20 percent in FY 2005-06,” an official source confirmed while talking to The Nation.
The independent economists say that the government should have adopted the same methodology for previous years but it was changed only for 2005-06 in order to show 6.6% GDP growth in outgoing financial year as overall manufacturing sector was not showing the desired number.
When contacted Dr Kaiser Bengali told this scribe that there is no hard data for many sectors of economy such as livestock, ownership and dwellings and many others where the economic managers could easily manipulate the figures for obtaining the desired results.
He emphasized the need to improve data collection system.
The independent economists also figured out that the government had conducted livestock census but its results are not yet made public. However, the government showed 8% growth in livestock, which enabled the government to achieve overall agri growth at 2.5% in FY 2005-06.
The growth in livestock sector stood at 3.8% in FY 2000-2001, 3.7% in 2001-02, 3% in 2002-03, 2.5% in 2003-04 and 2.3% in 2004-05. The growth of this sector suddenly jumped up to 8% in FY 2005-06.
When this scribe contacted to Ministry of Finance high-ups, they said the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MINFAL) provided the data to National Accounts Committee and on basis of this data the government showed its growth of 8% in outgoing fiscal year.
“We received data from MINFAL and National Accounts Committee also granted its nod for estimating growth figures,” the official added.
The government, the official said has hired services of a German consultant for removing anomalies in its methodology for measuring GDP growth figures. The growth figures were estimated in transparent manner in front of everyone and donors are also on board in this connection, the official claimed.
According to official communication of MINFAL regarding livestock growth numbers, the number of cattle increased from 24.2 million in 2004-05 to 25.5 million in FY 2005-06. The number of buffaloes increased from 26.3 million in FY 2004-05 to 28.45 million in 2005-06.
The number of sheep increased from 24.9 million in FY 2004-05 to 25.5 million in 2005-06 while number of goats increased from 56.7 million in 2004-05 to 61.9 million in 2005-06. Interestingly, the number of camels stood at the same level of 7.7 million in FY 2004-05 and FY 2005-06.
The number of horses increased from .31 million in 2004-05 to .34 million in 2005-06. The total milk production increased from 29.4 million tons in FY 2004-05 to 31.3 million in 2005-06.

Jamaat ud Dawa(Lashkar-e-Toiba front) held prayer for Zarqawi

Sunday, June 11, 2006

EDITORIAL: Our quest for a ‘soft image’ and our love for Al Zarqawi don’t square

President Pervez Musharraf on Friday directed the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and other relevant departments to highlight the “soft image” of Pakistan in the country and abroad. As he spoke, the National Assembly was busy doing just the opposite. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) demanded that the house offer fateha for the soul of Abu Musa’b Al Zarqawi. MMA legislators Maulana Ghafoor Haideri and Dr Farid Paracha wanted to call down blessings on Al Zarqawi. The speaker prevented the embarrassing situation from getting out of hand by quoting the rules, which say the house could offer fateha only on the demise of a present or former member of parliament or his relatives.

In Lahore, however, President Musharraf’s “favourite” jihadi outfit, Jamaat ud Dawa, offered a special namaz-e-janaza in absentia for the Shia-killer from Jordan and condemned the statement by the Foreign Office that the death of Al Zarqawi was an important milestone in the war against terrorism. The prayer was led by the Dawa leader Hafiz Saeed while the congregation cried their heart out for the dead man.

That Al Zarqawi killed Shiites in Iraq did not matter, which in itself is quite revealing. Those who mourned him forgot that he also killed some Pakistanis working in Iraq. This is the kind of internal extremism that hurts Pakistan and demonstrates how most of us are involved in sectarianism despite our assertions to the contrary. The Shia party inside the MMA should have protested the folly of Maulana Haideri and Dr Paracha in asking the National Assembly to bless the memory of the man. But it didn’t. And this is not all.

The High Court in Karachi recently acquitted two doctors of helping Al Zarqawi “because the police failed to make a good case against them”. Dr Akmal Waheed and Dr Arshad Waheed had kept Al Zarqawi in their house in Karachi and looked after him and then sent him to South Waziristan for his journey to Afghanistan. The two Karachi doctors were revealed as Jandullah members by the Jandullah leader, Ataullah. The doctors had admitted that they were members of Jandullah and that they had provided medical aid to Al Qaeda and sent men to be trained as Al Qaeda activists to Nek Muhammad in Wana through his brother. The doctors had also admitted that they had maintained their relationship with the Jamiat Talaba Islam till late.

It is our bad luck that, apart from President Musharraf, no one else in the PMLQ or opposition wants to “soften” Pakistan’s image. The opposition is advocating defiance in the face of “American imperialism” and, since the “soft image” routine is alleged to be linked somehow to the enterprise of sucking up to the United States, everyone wants a “hard image” instead. Of course, very little attention is paid to the national economy which desperately needs a “soft image” internationally to flourish. In many ways the national economy clashes with the objectives of the Pakistani national polity and its textbook nationalism. The emotion behind all nationalisms is isolationist and all nationalisms seek an external enemy to achieve internal cementation through the vision of a just war.

The economy wants peace at all cost; it abhors isolationism, and will not accept the condition of war. Also, where nationalism rejects self-analysis, the economy works only through self-analysis. The truth is that our “hard image” is not projected falsely by “Western media”. Our image is what we are, as proved by the Al Zarqawi incident above. No one is clear about what Pakistan should be — not even President Musharraf, who talks of a “soft image” but doesn’t show the will or ability to roll back the hard image and its manifestations. *

British-Pakistani police officers more likely to be corrupt

Secret report brands Muslim police corrupt

Fury over internal Met study which says Asians need special training

Sandra Laville and Hugh Muir
Saturday June 10, 2006

Guardian

A secret high-level Metropolitan police report has concluded that Muslim officers are more likely to become corrupt than white officers because of their cultural and family backgrounds.

The document, which has been seen by the Guardian, has caused outrage among ethnic minorities within the force, who have labelled it racist and proof that there is a gulf in understanding between the police force and the wider Muslim community. The document was written as an attempt to investigate why complaints of misconduct and corruption against Asian officers are 10 times higher than against their white colleagues.

The main conclusions of the study, commissioned by the Directorate of Professional Standards and written by an Asian detective chief inspector, stated: "Asian officers and in particular Pakistani Muslim officers are under greater pressure from the family, the extended family ... and their community against that of their white colleagues to engage in activity that might lead to misconduct or criminality."

It recommended that Asian officers needed special anti-corruption training and is now being considered by a working party of senior staff.

The report argued that British Pakistanis live in a cash culture in which "assisting your extended family is considered a duty" and in an environment in which large amounts of money are loaned between relatives and friends.

The leaking of the report comes at a time when the Met needs the cooperation and trust of the Muslim community more than ever and as the force tries to contain the fallout from last week's anti-terrorist raid in Forest Gate in which a man was shot. The first version was considered so inflammatory when it was shown to representatives from the staff associations for black, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim officers, that it had to be toned down. There are 31,000 officers in the Met - 7%, or 2,170, are black and minority ethnic; among these an estimated 300 are Muslim.

One Muslim officer with the Met said: "It is like saying black officers are more likely to be muggers. Today it is Muslim officers who are treated as the Uncle Toms. How can they say to the Muslim community 'trust us', when they don't even trust their own Muslim officers."

Ahmanrahman Jafar, vice-chairman of the legal affairs committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, said it was shortsighted of the Met to be alienating its Muslim officers at such a sensitive time.

"We've got about 1,000 wrongful anti-terrorist arrests since 9/11 and I believe that if Muslim officers were involved in looking through that intelligence and understanding the context, we would have far greater efficiency in the police force and a far greater prosecution rate," he said. To support its conclusions, the report gives examples of cases in which Pakistani Muslim officers have been accused of corruption and misconduct. According to its critics, the report gives insufficient weight to the motivation of those who made the complaints or issues of institutional racism.

Superintendent Dal Babu, chairman of the Association of Muslim Officers, said the report had racist undertones. "We are gravely concerned about its contents and the message it sends to recruits and potential recruits," he said.

George Rhoden, chair of the Metropolitan Black Police Association added. "We have made it clear that we disagreed totally with the conclusions ... the whole thing needs to be researched in a much more comprehensive way."

THE TERROR RAIDS: The Pakistan Connection(Canada terrorist plot)

THE TERROR RAIDS: The Pakistan Connection

Man held in U.K. tied to cell here

TIMOTHY APPLEBY AND OMAR EL AKKAD AND HAMIDA GHAFOUR

TORONTO, LONDON -- Pakistani links to the alleged Canadian terror conspiracy have multiplied with the arrest of a 21-year-old man at Britain's Manchester Airport on Tuesday.

The man, who arrived on a flight from Pakistan, is reported to have lived at one time with some of the Toronto-area suspects.

The arrest is the third confirmed connection to Pakistan, a major base for Islamic radicals.

The unidentified man, whose hometown is Bradford in Yorkshire, was being interrogated under Britain's Terrorism Act about the alleged plot, which saw 17 suspects across the Greater Toronto Area scooped up Friday night and Saturday morning. Ottawa is expected to start extradition hearings.

Also detained at about the same time was a 16-year-old British youth from the nearby Yorkshire town of Dewsbury, arrested around the same time the flight landed.

Authorities would not comment on their role in the alleged Canadian plot, in which 12 adult males and five juveniles were arrested after the RCMP-controlled delivery of three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to some of the suspects in Newmarket, north of Toronto.

Mixed with fuel oil, ammonium nitrate can be fashioned into crude but powerful bombs, and prosecutors have named a number of buildings in Toronto and Ottawa believed to have been on the suspects' hit list.

One of the 12 adults picked up Friday and Saturday had visited Pakistan in recent months. In a synopsis of the prosecution's case, seen by The Globe and Mail, 23-year-old Jahmaal James is said to be the only suspect to have visited that country during the two-year investigation.

In brief interviews, Mr. James's father and a man who attended the same Mississauga mosque as Mr. James said Mr. James went to Pakistan a few months ago to get married, returning to Canada without his new wife.

But the Crown's synopsis states that police have surveillance evidence showing that in conversations with fellow suspect Fahim Ahmad, 21, Mr. James was encouraged to visit a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.

Whether he did so was not stated.

References to the region also arise in website statements posted in 2003 by a third man arrested on the weekend, Zakaria Amara, 20.

While discussing the possibility of using a game of paintball as training for real combat, Mr. Amara wrote: "if ur intention is that of training, then go to peshawar or kashmir and train properly..."

Pakistan is one of only three countries to have recognized Afghanistan's repressive Taliban regime as a legitimate government, before the Taliban were toppled in late 2001, and it plays a central role in Islamic extremism. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the other two.

For years, Pakistan's madrasas -- madrasa is the Arabic word for school, but is most often used to describe Pakistan's hard-line Islamic education centres -- have been criticized for teaching a violent, deeply conservative interpretation of Islam that espouses holy war against a varied list of groups deemed infidels.

One of two U.S. men, who is under investigation by the FBI and who visited Canada in March of last year to meet three of the Canadian suspects, was born in Pakistan.

Syed Haris Ahmed immigrated to the United States from Pakistan in 1997 when he was 12. On March 23, a federal grand jury in Georgia indicted him for material support of terrorism.

The oldest of the Toronto-area suspects, 43-year-old Qayyum Abdul Jamal has perhaps the most direct blood ties to Pakistan among the Canadian accused. He was born in Karachi.

Ahmed Said Khadr, one of Canada's most notorious terrorism suspects, was killed by Pakistani authorities in 2003, and one of Mr. Khadr's four sons disappeared in Pakistan.

The BBC also cited a connection between the 21-year-old British man's detention and the mass arrests in the GTA, but a spokeswoman for West Yorkshire police would not confirm or deny it.

Nor would the RCMP, saying the matter was under investigation.

After the twin arrests in Britain, police were searching at least three homes located near a mosque in Bradford. Both Yorkshire towns have sizable Indo-Pakistani communities and Dewsbury was home to one of the July 7 suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London last summer.

In what may be a related development, meanwhile, newspapers reported yesterday that the allegedly foiled Canadian conspiracy may have been part of an elaborate international network linked to fugitive Iraqi terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Over the past nine months, police and intelligence agents in eight countries including Canada, the United States and Britain have worked through masses of emails and phone calls that have led to the arrests of about 30 suspects, The Times of London said.

Intelligence sources told the newspaper the network communicated through the Internet and began unravelling when police in Bosnia arrested an 18-year-old Muslim convert last October and seized his computer. Within hours there were raids in London.

The Canadian end of the network came to light when police arrested a man in London who allegedly ran al-Qaeda websites for Mr. Zarqawi, The Wall Street Journal said.

Younis Tsouli, who played a role in distributing images of hostages in Iraq being beheaded, was believed to have been in touch with the Toronto cell, the Journal reported.

Mr. Zarqawi, who has a $25-million (U.S.) bounty on his head, has urged young Muslims around the world to ignite religious wars in their home countries.

The Canadian suspects were drawn to his cause through the Internet and radical Islamist websites, the Journal said, quoting a U.S. federal official as saying the investigators wanted to snare as many suspects as possible.

"We let the operation run as long as we had to, to make sure we could identify as many would-be terrorist operators as we could and then to pick them off one, two, three and finally 17 at a time."

Wall St brokers outsource investment research to India

Yalman Onaran
June 6, 2006

JPMORGAN Chase had no analysts in India four years ago. Now, the third-largest US bank has 80, including Naresh Bilandani, a 26-year-old London School of Economics graduate hired last year in Mumbai to help provide clients with investment recommendations on European lenders.

The India section accounts for 14 per cent of JPMorgan's research staff world-wide and illustrates a growing trend. Niket Patankar, who sells research services to investment banks in less expensive markets, estimates that India's analyst ranks have swelled to 5700 now from 300 in 2002. Merrill Lynch, the second-largest US securities firm by market value, and Morgan Stanley, the third biggest, employ more than 50 of them.

Securities firms are leaning on India's expanding pool of financial talent for number-crunching so they can afford to keep franchise analysts in New York and London. Wall Street's 2003 settlement with US regulators cut off research departments from the revenue they got for helping investment bankers bring in fees. Now institutional customers such as Fidelity Investments are refusing to pay the inflated trading commissions that subsidised analyst reports for decades.

"We got outsourced," said Tom Larsen, who lost his job in London covering UK companies when Credit Suisse moved five of the seven analyst jobs in his group to India. "Wall Street is aware that the old model, financed by investment banking, doesn't work any more. So it's trying different … models, including outsourcing."

Mr Larsen, 45, is now a senior policy analyst at the CFA Institute, the US organisation that licenses chartered financial analysts after candidates have passed a three-level set of once-a-year, half-day exams on everything from research ethics to discounted cash flow modelling.

The number of people taking CFA tests in India climbed fivefold since 2002 to 3178 this year, according to the CFA Institute. US candidates fell by about 25 per cent to 30,384.

Mr Patankar, co-founder of New York's Adventity, predicts India will have more than 20,000 analysts in 2011. That would put it ahead of the 15,229 securities analysts working at brokerages and investment banks in the US, according to Thomson Financial. The UK has 1228 analysts.

"Research is probably the easiest investment-banking service that can be duplicated in India, where people are just as smart and educated as here," said Nejat Seyhun, a professor of finance at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "Technology has reduced the need for physical presence."

The trend mirrors past shifts in industries from computers to cars, where companies from Dell to Ford Motor moved production to low-cost centres such as Malaysia and Vietnam.

JPMorgan is keeping more experienced analysts, such as Michael Weinstein, ranked No.1 in Institutional Investor's annual poll, for his coverage of medical supply and device companies. Mr Weinstein, based in New York, works less than an hour's drive from the biggest company in that industry, Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Mr Bilandini's Mumbai office is 5178 kilometres from the Athens headquarters of the National Bank of Greece, one of the companies that he tracks for JPMorgan.

Investment banks are "salami-slicing their research activities and separating what needs to be at high-cost centres like New York from what doesn't," said Chris Gentle, director of financial services research at Deloitte Services in London. "Pressure to move offshore will grow as investment banks look for ways to cut costs while their budgets are squeezed."

Wall Street's research spending fell about 35 per cent from 2001 to 2005, estimates Brad Hintz, an analyst in New York for Sanford C. Bernstein who tracks the securities industry. Mr Hintz's own firm relies mainly on bundling, or billing clients for research and trade execution in a single commission, for the revenue it needs to compensate analysts.

Total commissions paid for trading US stocks dropped to $US11.3 billion in 2005 from $US13.4 billion in 2002, according to a survey of 239 fund managers by industry consultants at Greenwich Associates in Connecticut. The proportion allocated to research remained constant at 40 per cent, the survey found.

That decline made it impossible for the securities industry to maintain the same research staff in high-cost centres.

The number of analysts working for the 10 biggest firms declined 21 per cent to 2641 as of November from 3364 in 2001, according to Thomson figures.

India is helping to reverse the trend. Analysts in cities like Mumbai make as little as $US20,000 ($26,570) a year, according to Absolute Return, a hedge fund newsletter. That compares with an average of $US181,000 in the US in 2005, a survey by the CFA Institute found.

Even though they earn less, analysts in India enjoy a higher standard of living. Per capita income in the country is about $US3000, based on purchasing power, compared with $US40,000 in the US.

"The multinationals have the best-paying jobs and a great working environment," said Mr Bilandani, who gets paid about 70 per cent more than what he would get working for one of the local banks.

JPMorgan's global head of research, Nick O'Donohoe, said moving some of its research to India helped the firm increase coverage 50 per cent in four years to 1230 companies. Merrill Lynch now publishes reports on 2840 stocks, up 24 per cent from 2004.

Some banks are less sanguine about the benefits. Citigroup, the biggest US financial services company, is increasing its research staff in major centres such as New York and London, and opening new offices in Russia and Thailand.

"Cutting the number of analysts is a move away from quality," said Matthew Carpenter, Citigroup's head of research for the Americas. "There's a great value for research if you can differentiate yours from others."

Citigroup was hardest hit when New York Attorney-General Eliot Spitzer cracked down on conflicts of interest in equity research. The company paid $US400 million to resolve the allegations, the biggest share of the $US1.4 billion settlement with regulators in May 2003.

Then-chairman and chief executive officer Sanford Weill was barred from talking to research staff without a compliance official at his side and former telecommunications analyst Jack Grubman, who earned $US20 million a year during the internet bubble, was banned from the industry for life. Citigroup slashed its analyst ranks to 300 in 2003 from almost 450 in 2000. Mr Carpenter said that number had increased to 350 since then.

Pakistani Businessmen reject 6.6 per cent GDP growth claim

Businessmen reject 6.6 per cent GDP growth claim
By Aamir Shafaat Khan
KARACHI, June 4: Businessmen and industrialists have sounded a note of caution over deteriorating health of the country’s economy. In their reaction to the Economic Survey 2005-2006 on Sunday, they said in practical terms the figure of 6.6pc GDP growth rate in 2005-06 looked exaggerated. They said the economic survey was basically a fudging of figures and the business community was more interested in budgetary measures to be announced on Monday.

Site Association of Industry Chairman Ameen Bandukda told Dawn that the most worrisome flashback of the economy during the last nine months was the declining manufacturing output and low agricultural growth which was an alarming sign for the future economic growth.

“In sharp contrast, the services sector relating to finance and insurance, retail and wholesale trade, transport and communication, etc., posted an impressive growth of 8.8pc in 2005-2006 as against eight per cent recorded last year. Large-scale manufacturing and agriculture sectors should have recorded positive growth in the last nine months as compared to the service sector,” he said.

He said banks, insurance and leasing companies made roaring profits but they had not passed on profits to their clients.

Mr Bandukda said trade deficit had swelled to $10 billion, which was also a dangerous sign and resulted in the increase in imports of non-productive items.

“The government should think seriously as to why industrial manufacturing output and agriculture have missed their targets and come out with some package to achieve the growth next year. These sectors are job-oriented,” the Site chairman added.

The agriculture sector grew by only 2.5pc as against the target of 4.2pc and last year’s growth of 6.7pc, with major crops and forestry registration a negative growth of 3.6 and 5.7pc, respectively.

Manufacturing, the second largest sector of the economy, recorded a growth of 8.6pc as against the target of 12pc and last year’s growth of 12.6pc.

F.B. Area Association of Trade and Industry Chairman Rehan Zeeshan expressed doubt about achieving the 6.6pc GDP growth rate in 2005-06 when key sectors like manufacturing and agriculture had shown a dismal performance. Besides, strikes and poor law and order situation in the last one year also hit the industrial output, especially in Karachi.

Mr Zeeshan said the economy was likely to show an average performance in the next fiscal year unless some measures were announced to ascertain the reasons behind the fall in manufacturing and agriculture outlook.

8.7 billion $ of imports listed as "others"

Import of unexplained items rises to $8.73bn

By Our Staff Reporter

KARACHI, June 3: The mysterious column of ‘others’ in the import list has grown so big that the amount mentioned in it becomes equal to trade deficit of the country.

The import being made under the head of ‘others’ is over 92 per cent of the total trade deficit and 38 per cent of the total import bill of the first 10 months of the current fiscal year.

The trade deficit, which reached $9.428bn during July-April 2005-06, has been a main source of concerns for the government.

Economists and analysts have been analysing the import bills through the cost of oil import, machinery and food imports. Surprisingly, the items that are not considered for analysis is the column of others mentioned thrice in the import lists.

No details are provided either by the Federal Bureau of Statistics or the State Bank which used to get data from the FBS. What are being imported under the column of others is not mentioned but the size of amount reached $8.730 billion.

This huge unexplained import bill is 92.6 per cent of the total trade deficit during the first 10 months of the fiscal year 2005-06. The haunting trade deficit put serious threat to the balance of payment position of the country. The deficit would be managed through financing in terms of foreign investments, privatisation proceeds and remittances sent by overseas Pakistanis.

The country’s import bill rose to $22.951 billion in the first 10 months and the biggest among all was the import bill under the head of ‘others’. This bill is 38 per cent of total imports.

“We do not get details of imports under the head of others,” said a State Bank official. “I believe that the details come after four or five months.”

The SBP publishes quarterly reports and analyses of the economy without details about 38 per cent of imports.

“The amount is so huge and is just equal to trade deficits and it should be taken seriously,” said an analyst. Most of the brokerage houses have no idea about what type of the things coming under the head of others. However, they analyse and prepare their reports on basis of only 34 major items that makes only 62 per cent of total imports.

“Ignoring 38 per cent of the total import bill while analysing the trade deficit is not justified,” said the analyst, adding that it was government’s responsibility to make arrangement for complete details.

The government has been assuring that the import bill is soaring because of high oil import bill and huge investment of the textile industry for the import of machinery. But the highest import under the head of machinery was motor vehicles which were almost double than the textile machinery.

The import of road motor vehicles was of $1,223 million, while the import of textile machinery was of $693 million. The import under the head of ‘others’, in the machinery group alone consumed $2,750 million.

US government demands Pakistani MPs on US bound flights be frisked

ASF to check US-bound MPs at airports

By Rauf Klasra ISLAMABAD: US government has told the Airport Security Forces (ASF) of Pakistan in clear words to make Pakistani parliamentarians boarding any PIA direct flight to Washington, pass through the metal detectors at three major airports after stripping them of their belts, wrist watches and mobile phones. A Defence Ministry official said that if these instructions were not followed in letter and spirit, there was a serious possibility that PIA might land in trouble and may be stopped from operating between the US and Pakistan. He confirmed that ASF has been asked to carry out the checks of MPs before boarding plane in the light of instructions from the US administration. This is the first time in Pakistan that MPs would be asked by ASF officials to strip off their belts and other metallic substance before passing through the metal detectors at Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad airports or they would not be allowed to take a flight to the US. As a part of the regime of security measures proposed by the US which is already introduced at all the airports of America after 9/11, Pakistani MPs would also be subjected to ‘rechecks including still alarm resolution.’ The Ministry of Defence told The News that after deliberating upon the ‘matter’ it has been considered expedient that these instructions given by Americans be brought to the notice of MPs to extend ‘full cooperation’ to the Airport Security Force on duty at the airports. The concerned officials of the Senate and the National Assembly informed that instructions received from ministry of defence through letter No 11-27/2005-asf issued by joint secretary MOD Shahidullah Baig have been conveyed to the members of parliament for compliance of new regime of security checks. In the light of the instructions, the ASF at Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi has been given sweeping powers to subject the parliamentarians to strict security check before allowing them to board the plane. Earlier, a US Transport Security Agency (TSA) team recently carried out inspections of Pakistan’s three main airports after PIA started direct flights to Washington and other cities of the US. The team found many lapses in the security regime and recommended that Pakistan should improve the security standard in certain areas in accordance with standards of the international civil aviation authority. According to MoD letter quoting US TSA team, ‘Requirement is that when the passenger passes through metal detector gate and it alarms then it is required to be resolved by requesting the passenger to remove all metallic material carried on his person including watch, mobile and belt etc.’ The defence ministry in its letter to the parliamentarians has said that the government is left with no option but to follow these instructions and that they all should extend ‘full cooperation’ to the ASF staff at the airport while carrying out rechecks including still alarm resolution.