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Showing posts with label Greater Pakistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greater Pakistan. Show all posts
Monday, September 8, 2014
Friday, May 23, 2014
"Time for Talks is Over!", Gen. Raheel tells Nawaz Sharif
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Sharif came to power a year ago promising to find a peaceful settlement with the Islamist militant group, but as round after round of talks failed, the powerful armed forces favoured a military solution.
Their patience finally ran out and, late on Tuesday afternoon, during a tense meeting, the army effectively declared it would override a crucial plank of the government’s strategy and take matters into its own hands.
“The army chief and other military officers in the room were clear on the military’s policy: the last man, the last bullet,” a government insider with first-hand knowledge of the meeting told a foreign news agency.
Asked to sum up the message General Raheel Sharif wanted to convey at the gathering, he added: “The time for talk is over.”
The next day, Pakistani forces launched rare air strikes against militants holed up in the remote, lawless tribal belt near the Afghan border. It is not clear whether Sharif authorized the operation.
On Thursday, they backed that up with the first major ground offensive against the Taliban there, undermining Sharif’s year-long attempt to end a bloody insurgency across his country through peaceful means.
Disagreement over the militant threat is the latest row to flare up between the government and military, and relations between the two branches of power are at their lowest ebb for years, according to government officials.
The government did say talks with the Taliban would go on.
“We will talk with those who are ready for it and the (military) operation is being launched against those who are not ready to come to the negotiating table,” spokesman Pervez Rashid told local media on Thursday.
But the operations put the military, which has a long record of intervening in civilian rule through plots and coups, firmly back at the centre of Pakistan’s security policy.
The balance of power is shifting at a time when foreign troops are preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan, and arch-rival India has just elected a Hindu nationalist leader promising to be more assertive on the international stage.
“This is the clearest signal yet that the army will dictate its terms now,” a member of Sharif’s cabinet said.
TALIBAN ON THE OFFENSIVE
The Pakistani Taliban, as distinct from the Afghan Taliban which is actively targeting NATO forces in Afghanistan, is believed to be behind attacks on Pakistani soldiers and civilians that have killed thousands in recent years.
The Pakistan army has distinguished between “good” Taliban like the feared Haqqani network – who do not attack Pakistani security forces but fight in Afghanistan – and “bad” Taliban, indigenous Pakistani militants who are seeking to create an Islamic state.
While Pakistan’s military wants to go after the “bad” Taliban, it has, despite pressure from Washington, largely avoided taking on groups who launch attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan from Pakistan’s North Waziristan region.
Prompting the latest intervention, the Pakistani Taliban have become increasingly bold, striking the army in tribal areas including a recent battle in which an army major died. Earlier this month, nine soldiers were killed in an explosion near the Afghan border.
“We will avenge the blood of every last soldier. Talks or no talks, the army will retaliate,” said one military official, who, like most others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.
The army has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its history. Sharif himself was toppled by the army in 1999 during his previous tenure as prime minister.
But, humiliated after a secret 2011 U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil, the army stood back from politics and supported last year’s first democratic transition of power which brought Sharif back to office.
Sharif manoeuvred carefully, hand picking a new army chief and trying to forge a partnership with the military in the early days of his tenure, but the overtures had little lasting impact.
TRADE, DIPLOMACY
There are other signs of civil-military discord.
Sharif came to power promising to rebuild relations with India, but has been under pressure to toughen his stance from hardliners at home, particularly within the army.
The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over the still-disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.
Sharif’s policies towards India have been heavily scrutinized; some in the army justify its hefty budget by pointing to – and, critics say, playing up – the potential threat from India.
And despite signs the military has become more amenable to overtures from its old foe than in the past, a trade deal pushed by the prime minister and aimed at improving ties with India was cancelled at the last minute after pressure from the army, top government officials said.
Sharif now faces a dilemma over whether to accept an invitation by Indian Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi to attend his inauguration next week.
The army is also bitter about the trial of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who ousted Sharif from power in 1999 and was arrested after he returned to Pakistan to take part in last year’s election.
Ties with Afghanistan have never been easy, but some officials believe the army wants to torpedo the government’s relationship with a future Kabul administration, risking deterioration in regional security as NATO troops prepare to leave this year.
Generals have jealously guarded the right to dictate policy on Afghanistan, seeing friendly guerrilla groups as “assets” to blunt the influence of India there.
TENSIONS COME TO SURFACE
Though simmering under the surface, tensions between the government and the army spilled into the open last month when a popular journalist was shot by unknown gunmen, and his channel, Geo News, blamed the army’s powerful spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Public criticism of the shadowy ISI is almost unheard of in Pakistan. In a rare public response, the army demanded that Geo News, the country’s most-watched news channel, be shut down.
The government’s media regulator has since resisted the army’s demands to cancel the channel’s license, which the military sees as a direct sign of defiance.
“Everyone was looking out to see how the government would treat the army in this crisis — as a friend or foe?” said a senior military official. “But the government allowed this to become a free-for-all, army-hunting season.”
For Sharif, buckling under military pressure is a major risk. “This is not about one TV channel but about freedom of expression and about living in a democracy,” Rashid said. “We should live and let live.”
But despite putting on a brave front, officials say the government is feeling under siege.
“Never in the last year has the government felt weaker or more vulnerable,” one of Sharif’s key economic advisers said. “Now every time we have to take a major decision, on India, on Afghanistan, we will have to think ‘How will the army react?’”
A serving general said the army chief would always pick the “institution over the constitution if push comes to shove,” adding: “As a society and a state, we have to avoid a context in which the army is pushed to do something it doesn’t want to.”
(Pakistan Today)
Pakistan Cyber ForceSunday, January 19, 2014
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Thursday, October 31, 2013
NATO confirms Kabul-Delhi Nexus Sponsoring Suicidal Bomb Attacks, Killings in Pakistan
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The recent arrest of Latifullah Mehsud, the TTP’s second incommand, by the US forces and his subsequent interrogation has in particular badly exposed how Kabul has been fueling terrorism inside Pakistan by exploiting certain militant elements amongst the Pakistani Taliban.
Informed sources said that not only it has been confirmed that the recent attack on Maj General Sanaullah Khan Niazi and two other army men in Upper Dir was the work of Kabul and New Delhi but the later attacks on the Peshawar Church, in Qissa Khwani Bazaar and on an official bus of the Peshawar Secretariat were masterminded by the same nexus and by using the local militants.
Pakistani authorities have a lot to share in regard to the recent post-APC terrorist attacks but it is deliberately not making such information public to ensure that the peace process does not get derailed.
What is, however, seen as encouraging for Pakistan is the fact that the US-led Nato ISAF commanders have confirmed that there does exist “safe havens” across the Durand Line where some Pakistani militants are trained and equipped to launch subversive activities inside Pakistan.
The recent arrest of TTP’s second-in-command Latifullah Mehsud by the US-led Nato-troops and his subsequent interrogation has endorsed the Pakistani viewpoint on how the Kabul-New Delhi nexus was actively involved in terrorism inside Pakistan.
Shortly before his recent capture by the US-troops, it is said that Latifullah Mehsud had met key figures in Kabul, including top Afghan intelligence officials. According to reports, Latifullah Mehsud was arrested by American forces as he was driving along a main highway in eastern Logar province’s district of Mohammad Agha. It is said that American forces seized Mehsud while he was with the Afghan army.
Although, Pakistan has opted to keep silent on the issue, the New York Times on Wednesday reported how the US raid in Afghanistan exposed Kabul’s plan to turn the tables on the Pakistan Army.
The report said that a bungled attempt by the Afghan government to cultivate a shadowy alliance with Pakistani militants escalated into the latest flashpoint in the troubled relationship between Afghanistan and the US.
“Tipped off about the scheme, United States Special Forces raided an Afghan convoy that was ushering a senior Pakistani Taliban militant, Latif Mehsud, to Kabul for secret talks last month, and now have Mr Mehsud in custody,” the report said, adding: “Publicly, the Afghan government has described Mr Mehsud as an insurgent peace emissary. But according to Afghan officials, the ultimate plan was to take revenge on the Pakistani military.”
Kabul is really upset over this American forces raid and due to what a source called “singing” of Latif Mehsud. Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Mr Karzai, is reported by the New York Times to have admitted, “Mr Mehsud had been in contact with officials from the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s Intelligence agency, for ‘a long period of time’.”
“The Pakistani Taliban leader ‘was part of the NDS project like every other intelligence agency is doing,” Faizi said in an apparent reference to the support provided in the Afghan Taliban by Pakistani intelligence. He added, “He (Mehsud) was cooperating. He was engaged with the NDS — this I can confirm.”
These developments are an endorsement of Pakistan’s viewpoint that external hands are involved in terrorism and no less than Washington has now undeniable proofs, but for the sake of the dialogue process Islamabad is careful.
As hinted by the Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, groundwork for a formal initiation of the dialogue process has almost been completed and within the next few days some major development towards the dialogue process would take place.
Indirect contacts have already been established and those involved in the facilitation process sound optimistic. The government is keen to pursue the option of dialogue despite serious challenges and major hiccups whereas different militant groups are also prepared to positively respond to the government’s peace initiative.
To pre-empt conspiracies of those out to derail the peace process, not much is being made public. Though for others nothing has moved since the All Parties Conference, a lot has been happening behind the scenes and now the stage has come where a formal initiation of the dialogue process would be kickstarted.
(The News)
Related: Ex-Indian Army Chief: India sponsors Bomb Blasts in Pakistan, Funds Baloch Separatists
Pakistan Cyber Force
Monday, October 21, 2013
Ex-Indian Army Chief: India sponsors Bomb Blasts in Pakistan, Funds Baloch Separatists
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Buying silence of Kashmiri leaders in Indian held Kashmir and phone tapping inside India were also part of the sensitive report.The ex-army chief reveals this in an inquiry report prepared by India’s DG military operations shining light on activities of an army unit raised after the Mumbai attacks.
VK Singh last month announced a political alliance with BJP leader Narendra Modi who was responsible for the massacre of the Muslims in Indian Gujarat.A portion of the explosive report indicting the former army chief of terrorist activities inside Pakistan was downplayed by the Indian media that largely used ‘neighboring country’ as a reference and instead highlighted its parts relating to his activities of phone-tapping inside India and buying silence of politicians in Indian-held Kashmir through loads of cash.
The dirty tricks sanctioned by the top Indian general were carried out by Tactical Support Division (TSD), an Indian army unit raised after Mumbai attacks on the directives of the Defence Minister and National Security Adviser Shev Shankar Menon in order to “perform a particular task to secure borders and internal situation in the country.”
TSD consisted of six officers, five JCOs and 30 men and operated out of an unmarked two-storeyed building within the Delhi Cantonment dubbed the ‘Butchery’, that was a refurbished slaughterhouse of colonial times, The India Today reported.
“The division was headed by Colonel Munishwar Nath Bakshi, a tall, flamboyant intelligence officer in his early 40s, better known by an unusual nickname, ‘Hunny’,” it said.As the inquiry body was set up to investigate, Col Bakshi, a confidante of Gen Singh, got himself admitted in a mental hospital pretending that he was under serious mental stress.
Former Army Chief VK Singh allegedly used TSD, a clandestine collective of handpicked military intelligence personnel, to settle scores on both sides of the contentious Line of Control (LOC) between Pakistan and India, reported The India Today, in its October 7 edition.
Between October and November 2011, India Today reported this month, TSD had claimed money “to try enrolling the secessionist chief in the province of a neighbouring country” and “Rs1.27 crore (Indian currency) to prevent transportation of weapons between neighbouring countries”. In early 2011, TSD claimed an unspecified amount for carrying out “eight low-intensity bomb blasts in a neighboring country”, according to this weekly Indian magazine.
The Hindustan Times earlier reported about the covert operation inside Pakistan by TSD and quoted its former official stating it was assigned to nab Hafiz Saeed of Jamaatud Dawah but didn’t mention TSD’s involvement in terrorist activities in Pakistan as has been revealed through inquiry board.
Since there was no explicit mention of Pakistan, it didn’t emerge on the radar of Pakistani media. The News spoke to different journalistic sources in India privy to details who confirmed that it was about Pakistan.
India’s Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) Lt Gen Vinod Bhatia, who headed a Board of Officers’ inquiry under the direct orders of Gen Bikram Singh, current army chief, to review the functioning of the TSD submitted the report in March this year to the Indian government. While report is not being publicised, however, TSD was closed in December 2012.
An RTI request filed for the copy of this report was also denied, stating that sharing this information was prejudicial to national security and can harmrelations with the neighbouring countries.
“In so far as your request for supply of order regarding setting up of ‘TSD’ and enquiry etc, is concerned, it is regretted that the same cannot be supplied in terms of Section 8 (1) (a) of the RTI Act,” the ministry said in reply to an RTI query as quoted in an Indian paper.
“The section bars disclosure of information which would prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the state, relation with foreign state or lead to incitement of an offence,” it further stated.
The inquiry report on TSD started leaking after former army chief’s disclosure in a TV interview that the army had “transferred funds to all ministers in Jammu and Kashmir since 1947”. His comments triggered a firestorm of indignant counter-allegations all the way from Delhi to Srinagar. The payouts, he insisted, were not “bribes” or for “political purpose”, but part of the larger initiative to promote stability in the insurgency-ridden state.
(TheNews)
Pakistan Cyber ForceWednesday, October 2, 2013
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Monday, September 23, 2013
Hindustan Times: 'Indian Army Behind Insurgency in Pakistan'
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Military intelligence unit of Indian
army was involved in carrying out various secret missions within
Pakistan. This across the border activity under the approval of Vice
Army Chief and Director General Military VK Singh as revealed by Indian
Newspaper ‘Hindustan Times’. When the newspaper authorities contacted
army officials said that the unit Technical Services Division (TSD) has
been shutdown and only few senior officials of army know about it.
The spokesperson of army said that it is
up to the defence minister to call for an inquiry for that matter.
According the most secretive unit report, the secret missions have been
carried out in those countries who are enlisted as enemies and work
against Indian interests and who are destabilising peace in Indian
Territory.
The report also said that Pakistan’s
Inter Services Intelligence must be defeated as it is against the state
affairs. The newspaper previously revealed that this unit was created on
the orders of Ministry of Defence after Mumbai bomb blasts incident.
It also carried out several operations such as operation Rehbar in
Kashmir, operation Seven Sisters in East and Operation Deep Strike in
areas of Pakistan.
Pakistan Cyber Force
(The News Tribe)
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Monday, September 2, 2013
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Friday, August 30, 2013
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Indian Rupee and Economy in Free Fall
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Even with the intervention, the rupee closed at a record low of 63.25 Rupees (Rs) to the dollar. This was half a rupee lower than its close on Monday, when the rupee depreciated by 2.3 percent. As recently as the beginning of May, the rupee was trading at around 54 rupees to the dollar.
India’s principal stock index, the Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex, meanwhile, fell by 1.2 percent Tuesday to close at an 11-month low.
While the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance is publicly dismissing the rupee’s fall as a bad patch and continues to claim that higher economic growth is just around the corner, there is a growing sense of foreboding, if not desperation, in government and ruling class circles.
In the corporate media there is widespread discussion of whether India could soon confront a current account crisis akin to that in 1991, when India was forced to seek an emergency bailout from the IMF.
Over the past three months as the rupee has depreciated, the government has announced a series of measures aimed at attracting foreign capital—including removing or lowering foreign investment caps and further reducing government spending at the expense of working people. But these have failed to arrest the rupee’s slide.
The immediate trigger for India’s currency crisis were the comments made on May 22 by U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that the U.S. central bank may soon pare back its $85 billion per month bond-buying program. Nervous overseas investors responded by pulling more than $11 billion dollars out of Indian stocks and bonds.
More fundamentally, the crisis is rooted in a dramatic slowing in India’s economic growth and its growing, massive dependence on inflows of foreign capital to meet its current account deficit. In the last fiscal year, which ended March 31, India recorded growth of 5 percent, the lowest in a decade, and far less than the minimum 8 percent needed to prevent a rapid rise in unemployment.
Sections of corporate India have been pressing for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to abandon its reputed preoccupation with curbing inflation, which at the retail level is currently close to 10 percent, and lower interest rates so as to stimulate economic growth.
Instead, to stop the rupee’s slide, the RBI has tightened liquidity, thereby driving up the cost of credit and further undercutting economic growth, and has sold off dollars, drawing down its foreign exchange reserves to about $277 billion.
On Tuesday, the yield on India’s 10-year government bond reached 9.42 percent, before falling back to 8.92 percent. The bond yield is the highest rate reached since Aug. 1, 2008 just a month and a half before the eruption of global financial crisis and will mean an already financially beleaguered government has to pay more to borrow money. In recent weeks foreigners have been selling Indian government debt and now reportedly hold just 43 percent of a government limit of $30 billion.
In a further attempt to stem the rupee’s slide and the depletion of its foreign currency reserves especially US dollars, the RBI imposed capital controls on August 14. Henceforth Indian corporations—with the notable exception of large government-owned enterprises or PSUs (Public Sector Units)—will not be allowed to invest more than 100 percent of their net worth (assets minus liabilities) outside the country in any year; individuals will be restricted to a maximum of $75,000. Prior to this, the annual ceilings were 400 percent and $200,000 respectively. The import of gold coins, which the government claims has contributed to the current crisis, has been banned.
Speaking last week, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan dismissed the mounting apprehensions of a current accounts crisis, by noting that in 1991 India had reserves equivalent to only a few weeks of imports. “Now,” he affirmed, “we have reserves of six to seven months. So there is no comparison.”
The reality is very different. India’s economy is exponentially more connected to the world capitalist economy today than 22 years ago and world capitalism is riven by imbalances and contradictions that have given rise to greatest crisis since the Great Depression—a crisis that five years on is no closer to resolution that when it erupted in 2008.
India’s current accounts deficit reached $87.8 billion, 4.8 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, in 2012-13 from a mere $2.5 billion (0.4 percent of GDP) in 2004-05. As a recent article in the Economic and Political Weekly observed, this deficit can be traced to India’s merchandise trade deficit that has shot up from $33.7 billion (5.5 percent of GDP) in 2004-05 to a gargantuan $190.9 billion (10.6 percent of GDP) in 2012-13.
India’s exports have stagnated over the past year as the economic crisis has led to a steep fall in demand for goods and services in Europe and North America. The cost of India’s imports, which are dominated by petroleum and gold, have in the meantime shot up, and the fall in the value of the rupee will push them higher still.
Over the past several years, India has financed much of the current accounts deficit through short-term debt. As the Hindu observed in an article in late June, the total short term-debt due before March 31, 2014 now amounts to a staggering $172 billion. The payment of this debt will consume over 62 percent of the foreign exchange reserves. In contrast the debts that were falling due within one year back in 2008 March amounted to a mere $54.7 billion, about 17 percent of the reserves at that time.
The crisis enveloping the Indian economy has caused increasing friction between the Congress-led Indian government and the RBI. While the former has repeatedly made known its preference for interest rate cuts aimed at boosting growth, the RBI has resisted, arguing that inflation needs to be contained and that a further erosion of the rupee’s value, will, by driving up energy costs—India’s imports three-quarters of its petroleum—severely dampen growth. Although it has not dared say so publicly, the RBI is also clearly concerned that if it is not seen to be vigorously defending the rupee, its value could plummet sending the entire economy into a tailspin. Also, it is acutely aware of the large foreign borrowings India’s corporate giants have contracted, seeking to take advantage of the much lower interest rates that have prevailed in the U.S. and Europe since 2008. Under conditions where the rupee is rapidly depreciating, such “cheap money” loans quickly turn into their opposite.
The conflict between the RBI and the government reflects the fact the Indian economy is now caught between a proverbial rock and a hard-place, with the Indian elite facing a choice between trying to boost economic growth by letting the rupee slide still further, thereby fueling growth-sapping inflation or defending the rupee by tightening credit and thereby further squeezing economic growth. And in the background looms the threat of a rapid depletion of India’s reserves as foreign capital spurns a crisis-ridden economy.
Mouthpieces of foreign finance capital such as the Financial Times are urging the Indian government to seize on this crisis as an opportunity to implement further “economic reforms,” i.e. to intensify the exploitation of the working class, by slashing social spending and dismantling labor and other regulations that stand in the way of investor profits.
In a recent article on the economic problems afflicting India, the paper stated: “Curbing subsidies by raising fuel prices by as much as Rs5-Rs6 a litre would be a reassuring signal that India is committed to tackling the ‘twin’ fiscal and current account deficits now pressuring the currency.”
This step according to the IMF’s (International Monetary Fund) resident agent in India, quoted in the same article: “would give investors a lot of encouragement. It would show that even in the midst of a pre-election campaign [a general election is scheduled for April-May 2014], you have the guts to do the right thing.”
(WSWS)
Pakistan Cyber ForceThursday, August 22, 2013
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Pakistan Arrests Indian Spy, four others near Wagah border
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They said the spies working in connection with recent rise in tension along the line of control and were allegedly involved in collecting information by establishing contacts with army and rangers personnel. All the arrested men were transferred to an undisclosed location for further interrogation.
(Edited by Pakistan Cyber Force Web Desk)
Pakistan Cyber Force
Monday, August 12, 2013
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Chinese Army repels Indian attack; Destroys Indian Army Post inside India
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What is worrying is that the Chinese successfully tampered with the
Indian security apparatus in Chumar despite Indian hollow claims of Indian Army being at anadvantageous position in this region by "dominating" the heights and
maintaining a better logistical connection than the Chinese.
According to a report, the camera, which was removed, was placed at
a height of 13,000 feet to monitor the Chinese activities across the
LAC. The report also said that the Chinese pressurized India to bring
down some of its sheds and observation posts near the LAC after the
month-long border row between the two countries in April. India,
accordingly, dismantled one of the tin sheds sheltering a camera on its own territory.
Sources also said that the Chinese officials who chased the Indians back into their own borders, intruded into the
Indian territory and asked the local people to vacate the area in Hindi for
they claimed that the area belonged to them.
The Indian government allegedly kept the facts hidden and it is yet
not known whether India’s defence minister A K Antony raised the issue
during his recent visit to Beijing. It was only after the media exposed
the June 17 incident that the Indian army conceded to the fact that Chinese
troops had indeed entered the Indian territory and took away a
surveillance camera and destroyed an army post.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Pakistan Expells NY Times Bureau Chief over Anti-State activities
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"It is informed that your visa is hereby canceled in view of your undesirable activities," the order said. "You are therefore advised to leave the country within 72 hours."This means Walsh must leave Pakistan by the night of the elections. Saturday's election is being hailed as a milestone in the development of the country's much abused democracy.
The Zionist mouthpiece New York Times urged the country to reconsider the decision and reinstate Walsh's visa. Walsh, 39, was the Guardian's correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan from 2004 to 2011. The New York Times hired him in January 2012. He is an expert in knitting subversive anti-Islam and anti-state propaganda. The New York Times' executive editor, Jill Abramson, sent a letter of protest to Pakistan's interior minister, Malik Muhammad Halib Khan, and asked him to reinstate Walsh's visa. "We respectfully request that you overturn this decision and allow Mr Walsh to remain in Pakistan," Abramson said. She said the ministry's accusation "is vague and unsupported, and Mr Walsh has received no further explanation of any alleged wrongdoing."
The finger of blame is likely to be pointed at the country's powerful military establishment, which made clear its anger at some of Walsh's reporting, particularly on the CIA's clandestine drone programme, an extremely controversial subject in the country. In March, Walsh blurted his latest piece of anti-state propaganda and reported that "unnamed US officials" had denied two drone strikes that had been reported by Pakistan's media, most likely based on information provided by Pakistan's military intelligence service. The report suggested the army "may be using the [drone] program to disguise its own operations".
The story earned a firm rebuke from the army's media
office. At the time, a spokesman denied the claims and said "such an
accusation is distortion of the facts and seems to be aimed at diluting
Pakistan's stance on drone strikes". The Pakistani military is
widely credited as being the most powerful institution in the country
and it has repeatedly seized power since the creation of the country in
1947. Civilian authorities are currently in an even weaker position than
normal, as the country is ruled by a non-political caretaker government
that was appointed to manage the affairs of the country during the
general election campaign. A new government is not expected to take
office for weeks after the completion of Saturday's election. The
process could be even more drawn out if the polls return a hung
parliament and a weak coalition government.
Pakistan Cyber ForceTuesday, January 22, 2013
Nuclear War Alert issued to Indian Occopued Kashmir Residents
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It warns of “initial disorientation” from a nuclear attack, stating the blast may “carry away many prominent and familiar features”. The instructions were issued on Monday in a local English-language newspaper by the State Disaster Response Force, which is part of the police. They vividly describe a nuclear war scenario to prepare residents to deal with “the initial shock wave”. The notice tells them to “wait for the winds to die down and debris to stop falling”. “Blast wind will generally end in one or two minutes after burst and burns, cuts and bruises are no different than conventional injuries. (The) dazzle is temporary and vision should return in few seconds,” it says.
It tells residents to build toilet-equipped basement shelters “where the whole family can stay for a fortnight”, and says that they should be stocked with non-perishable food. Police confirmed they issued the notice but said it “should not be connected with anything else”, in an apparent reference to border tension. An Indian counter-terrorism expert criticised the warning as valueless for Kashmiris, who could be forgiven for imagining war was an imminent prospect.“There can be no conceivable motive for issuing a notice like this,” Ajay Sahni, Executive Director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi told AFP.
Pakistan Cyber Force
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