Z Suleman Sadiq Gill was taken into custody on Sept 15, 2014 and accused of multiple offenses. He struggles with being labeled a criminal for the crime of free thought.
Growing Islamic terror designs in the subcontinent is a major challenge for India, especially in the backdrop of some youth getting swayed by it, and there was no scope for taking this lightly, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said here on Saturday.
“Though ISIS is born in Syria and Iraq, it is a fact that the Indian subcontinent is not outside its radar, especially as some Indian youth are also getting attracted towards it. Moreover, al-Qaeda had recently announced formation of a new outfit for the Indian subcontinent, while it is for certain that Pakistani state actors are also involved in trying to destablise India,” Singh said. He was inaugurating the 49th All India Conference of DGPs and IGPs here on Saturday.
Singh however expressed confidence that these Islamic terror groups will never be able to succeed in India and said that majority of the Indian Muslims will not side with them. “I am sure these terror groups will never succeed in India. They may try to convert India into an Islamic country on the assumption that large numbers of Muslims will support them. But the fact remains that Indian Muslims had fought and sacrificed equally with others for India’s idependence,” Singh said.
He particularly referred to al-Qaeda’s announcement in September of new outfit for the Indian subcontinent called Qaeda-ul-Jihadi, with intentions of specifically targeting Gujarat, Assam, Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir and Bangladesh, and identified this too as a major challenge.
“Moreover, the South Asia wing of al-Qaeda has claimed it had tried to hijack a Pakistani naval frigate with the intention of attacking Indian and US naval vessels. Some people of the Pakistani Navy were also involved in this. But I am confident our police and security forces will be able to strike back at any such attempts,” the home minister said.
On Left-Wing extremism, the home minister however said that the influence of Maoist tterror groups had reduced last year. “Left-Wing extremism has to be put to an end at all cost. We are ready to talk, but cannot allow any violence to occur,” he said. Singh also suggested better coordination among para-military forces and state police forces in tackling Left-Wing extremism, and called for giving the leadership role to officers of the state police.
On the Jammu and Kashmir situation, Singh said recruitment of local youth by terrorist groups had gone down. “But whenever there is an incident, Pakistan puts the blame on non-state actors. I would like to ask Pakistan, why can’t its ISI ascertain who these non-state actors are?
- See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/rajnath-singh-hits-out-at-pakistan-says-countrys-state-actors-play-a-role-in-attempts-to-destabilise-india/#sthash.Uqu8HpqH.dpuf
In early November, a suicide bomber detonated himself at a checkpoint on the Pakistani side of the Wagah border, killing sixty people. Immediately after, Hamid Gul, the former chief of the ISI, Pakistan’s powerful military-controlled intelligence agency, gave an interview on Pakistani television accusing India of being behind the attack. “We offered our hand in friendship, and this is how they repay us,” he said. Despite the fact that the attack was claimed by three different militant groups based in Pakistan, many Pakistanis shares Gul’s sentiments. And given how bad relations between the two countries have been recently, that should not surprise.
For a brief moment after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election victory, there was optimism in both India and Pakistan. In an unprecedented move, Modi invited his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif to attend his inauguration ceremony. The previous year, when Sharif was contesting his own elections, he made bettering relations with India – “normalization” as both Pakistan and India call it – a campaign promise. Many thought that with two governments both interested in normalization, both having secured solid majorities in their respective election victories and facing little domestic political opposition, it was finally time for the nuclear-armed rivals to move forward.
Unfortunately, it has all been downhill since. Modi has virtually ignored Pakistan, scuttling scheduled talks on the pretext that Pakistan was communicating with separatists from the disputed Kashmir region. He issued a series of statements accusing Pakistan of “waging a proxy war of terrorism,” including a speech in the Kashmiri town of Kargil, where both countries fought a mini-war in 1999. An opportunity to meet in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September was spurned; both countries have been tight-lipped over a possible meeting at the upcoming SAARC summit in Kathmandu next week, neither showing much optimism.
The diplomatic fallout has had lethal consequences. Within the past few months, border security forces have engaged in heavy shelling across the border, killing dozens of civilians and security personnel, shattering a ceasefire that has held for the better part of a decade. Given the initial optimism, why has the relationship soured so quickly?
Pakistan’s Domestic Troubles
The smiles and handshakes at Modi’s inauguration notwithstanding, perhaps a more prescient symbol of the relationship was on display in Herat, where four heavily armed gunmen attacked India’s consulate on the eve of the inauguration. Both Indian and Afghan security officials blamed militant groups backed and based in Pakistan, which has a history of using militant outfits as a tool of foreign policy in both Afghanistan and the disputed region of Kashmir. Many suggested that the attack was a message from the Pakistani military not just to India, but to the Sharif government as well, namely that it is the military, which relies on its rivalry with India to justify its disproportional budget, that ultimately decides Pakistan’s foreign policy – not Sharif. It is hard to argue with that: Under military pressure, Sharif reneged on a promise to grant India “most-favored nation” status despite renaming it “non-discriminatory market access,” a policy meant to deregulate and increase bilateral trade.
The military’s unwillingness to improve relations also reflects just how deeply antipathy towards India is embedded within its ranks. Despite a concerted military campaign against the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the military is unwilling to dismiss its policy of patronizing militant groups that target India. The policy, known derisively as “good Taliban, bad Taliban” by critics, asserts that the Pakistan military is only interested in fighting militants that threaten it directly. Others, like the Haqqani Network, which primarily targets NATO and Afghan forces, or Lashkar-e-Taiba, which primarily attacks India, are either tolerated or, in some cases, provided with support. Hafiz Saeed, the leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which conducted the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 162 people, roams freely in Lahore with a security detail granted by the government despite repeated calls from India and the United States for his arrest (the United States has even put a $10 million bounty on his head). His continued freedom encourages India to believe that Pakistan is still not serious about tackling its various militants, particularly those who target India.
Sharif has also been severely weakened by protests across the country led by opposition politicians Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri, both accusing Sharif of rigging last year’s elections and calling for his ouster. Protesters staged a sit-in for months right in front of parliament, leading to a cancellation of many foreign visits, including one by Chinese President Xi Jinping (who still went to India, his next scheduled stop). Sharif has lost much of his legitimacy and political capital, and is unable to carry out many of his proposed policies, given the strength of the opposition.
‘Muscular’ Foreign Policy
Modi’s party, the Hindu nationalist BJP, had always accused the previous Congress government of being “soft” on national security, and promised to conduct a more “muscular” foreign policy once in power. This meant a less friendly approach to Pakistan than that of his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, who was seen as more amenable to a deal. Since coming to power, Modi’s administration has been combative in its statements, especially in the wake of the cross-border shelling. His right-hand man and the BJP’s current president Amit Shah said the Indian government would give “a befitting reply” to the shelling that the Indian government alleged was started by Pakistan. While the fiery speeches might reflect domestic concerns – the BJP faces tough competition from the ruling National Conference party in local elections next month – they have had an adverse impact on Pakistani diplomatic efforts, which have been discouraged by what they see as a lack of reciprocation.
Modi also seems to be more preoccupied with his other campaign promise, making India a global power. Since he became prime minister, Modi has made significant efforts to improve relations with the United States, Japan, China and most recently Australia, where he recently attended the G-20 summit. Given that his stated priority is improving and liberalizing India’s economy, Modi may have concluded that spending precious political capital on Pakistan is useless unless Pakistan is fully committed to peace, which it simply cannot be as long as its military is interfering in politics. Given India’s superior military and its significant presence in Kashmir, and given the relative infrequency of terror attacks, Modi perhaps believes that India can afford to ignore Pakistan for the time being while he focuses on bagging trade deals and investment contracts from elsewhere.
Persistent Tensions
The tensions come at a time when other links between the two countries are growing. Numerous Pakistani television and movie stars have crossed over the border to find sustained commercial success in Indian movies; musicians perform to packed audiences, and Bollywood remains ever-popular in Pakistan. Citizens on both sides make regular cross-border visits. Even the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded to Malala Yousufzai and Kailash Satyarthi, a Pakistani and an Indian. (Malala invited both Sharif and Modi to attend the ceremony in Oslo.)
The two governments, however, remain immune to this bonhomie. The impasse comes at a inopportune time. Climate change threatens precious water resources India and Pakistan share, as well as the ability of both countries to feed their citizens. Despite (or perhaps because of) India’s heavy military presence, Kashmir continues to simmer, always close to boiling over. As NATO forces leave Afghanistan, regional powers including Iran, China, Pakistan and India jostle for influence. With both Indian and Pakistani military budgets – and nuclear stockpiles – increasing, South Asia is heading towards a nuclear arms race, endangering the stability of the region and its economic integration. All of these issues have direct repercussions for South Asia’s security and well-being, and will require concerted and protracted negotiation and cooperation. In the current circumstances, that seems very unlikely.
THERE is much to criticise in the conduct of vast sections of the media and especially the level of editorial influence many owners of media houses exercise. But let it also be clear that the prosecution of the Jang group ownership and senior employees on charges of hurting religious sentiment smacks of persecution.
Consider that the controversial content that Geo Entertainment aired earlier this year had already been dealt with by the regulators, the channel was fined and even taken off air, and the Jang/Geo group had profusely apologised for any hurt caused.
The matter should have ended there. Instead, it morphed into a witch hunt, with FIRs filed, criminal investigations launched and, finally, a conviction by an anti-terrorism court, a verdict now suspended on appeal in another jurisdiction.
There is nothing in the original mistake by Geo or its subsequent actions that justifies the kind of criminal proceedings it has been subjected to. Indeed, what the media group is being made to suffer so viciously appears to be payback for perceived Jang/Geo transgressions elsewhere. To put it more bluntly, media freedom is being curtailed and the media group is being made to pay for its belligerent views on the perennial civil-military divide.
The great rupture for the media was ostensibly triggered by the Hamid Mir assassination attempt in April, but its roots are much deeper. In the story of the national media’s shift from relatively impartial observers to hyper-partisan players in the political process in recent years, Geo is far from blameless.
The group is seen as having sacrificed the editorial independence of its professional journalists and to be thriving on the notion of its kingmaker status on the national stage. Ultimately though, there are two different sets of transgressions: the one almost invented and championed by Geo and mimicked by other media groups; and what has been done to Geo since that fateful day in April.
Even an unsympathetic view of all that the group has attempted in the name of journalism cannot come close to cancelling out the alarm at what the treatment of Geo means for journalistic independence and media freedom in the country. Once state-backed repression of sections of the media in the name of the national interest or to protect the so-called sanctity of certain national institutions begins, the road to perdition for all media has begun. The media in this country must realise this danger and put up a united front against any attempt to silence it.
Police arrested three men for beating up two polio vaccinators in Lahore, officials said Friday, the latest case of violence against health workers seeking to immunise children against the crippling disease.
A scuffle broke out when two polio vaccinators visited the family's home for a second time Thursday to double check that they hadn't missed any children out of the polio immunisation campaign. The health workers and the men of the house got into a fight after the family said there were no children at home, a local police official said.
Police officer Mohammad Kamran said that police arrested three men on the complaint of the polio vaccinators after about 60 health workers held a protest outside the police station.
The three men – from the low-income Siddique Colony neighbourhood of Lahore – were arrested but later released on bail.
“Since beating someone is a bailable offence, the trio was released on bail later,” Kamran told AFP.
Mohammad Usman, the supervisor of the vaccination team, told AFP that the men became irritated because the health workers knocked on their door twice in the same day when there weren't any children in the house.
The vaccinators always visit homes a second time to be sure they haven't missed children who need to be immunised, Usam added.
Gunmen on Wednesday killed four members of a polio vaccination team in the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of southwestern Balochistan province.
Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio remains endemic.
Attempts to stamp it out have been badly hit by opposition from militants and attacks on immunisation teams, which have claimed more than 60 lives in the last two years.
The militants have in the past claimed that the polio vaccination is a cover for espionage or a Western conspiracy to sterilise Muslims.
Officials say the number of polio cases recorded in Pakistan has reached 246 for the year – a 14-year high and more than double the total for the whole of 2013.
Among the new cases detected, 136 are in the troubled northwestern tribal areas at the border with Afghanistan, the stronghold of Taliban and Al Qaeda militants.
Three men accused of drugging and gang-raping a female patient at a government hospital in the Pakistani province of Punjab have been arrested, police say.
The men being held are health department employees, officials say.
The woman was at the hospital in the Burewala area with her husband and new baby for a check-up on 11 November.
Her husband says he left her for 15 minutes but when he returned she had disappeared leaving her baby and purse. He later found her in a hospital room.
He told BBC Urdu's Shumaila Jaffrey in Lahore that after three hours of searching, he made a complaint to the police. He then returned to the hospital to continue the search.
"I didn't leave any room or washroom, I went downstairs, and saw a room. I was afraid to go inside, one of the mirrors on the door was broken, and someone had put a wooden bench in front of it. I pushed it, went inside.
"It was completely dark, there was no light. I saw my wife lying on a stretcher. She was not in her senses, I brought her home," he said.
He said that his wife told him three men had given her an injection and that she had been raped.
Police told the BBC the woman is being cared for by doctors and that blood tests and DNA tests are under way.
A woman was allegedly raped by a group of five workers of Tehsil Headquarters Hospital(THQ),on Thursday,, a private media channel reported.
The woman came to the hospital with her husband for a medical check-up where they were asked to wait due to peak time.
After the outdoor time was over, two employees named Maqbool and Ramzan along with others took the woman to a room feigning for check-up and allegedly gang raped her after injecting a drug injection.
The couple has submitted an application with the police, but they added, that police have not filed a case as yet.
Whating is fuking wrong with all the blacks in St Louis. They done like the decision so they burn down their own houses. This make no fuking senses to me. Some peoles please explain?
Lahore High Court is the oldest High Court in the country. Our goal is to enforce the supremacy of the Constitution and the Rule of Law through independent and impartial adjudication. Through this website we wish to be accessible to the litigating parties and the public at large for basic information about our work and important events. It is our constant endeavor to provide speedy and fair justice in causes that are brought to or reported to the Lahore High Court. Insha’Allah!
Be careful what you wish for. A rabid public that wants an officer indicted based upon his race seems starngely reminiscent of a time when black boys were convicted of raping white women for no reason other than their race. How far we have not come.
There have been 1 million Bangladeshi and more than 200,000 Burmese women trafficked to Karachi, Pakistan. (Indrani Sinha, SANLAAP India, "Paper on Globalization & Human Rights") 200,000 Bangladeshi women have been trafficked to Pakistan for the slave trade and prostitution. (Trafficking in Women and Children: The Cases of Bangladesh, p.8, UBINIG, 1995)
200,000 Bangladeshi women were trafficked to Pakistan in the last ten years, continuing at the rate of 200-400 women monthly. (CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)
In Pakistan, where most of trafficked Bengali women are sold there are about 1,500 Bengali women in jail and about 200,000 women and children sold into in the slave trade. (estimates by Human Rights organizations in Pakistan, Trafficking in Women and Children: The Cases of Bangladesh, p.14, UBINIG, 1995)
India and Pakistan are the main destinations for children under 16 who are trafficked in south Asia. (Masako Iijima, "S. Asia urged to unite against child prostitution," Reuters, 19 June 1998)
More than 150 women were trafficked to Pakistan every day between 1991 and 1993. (Indrani Sinha, SANLAAP India, "Paper on Globalization & Human Rights")
100 - 150 women are estimated to enter Pakistan illegally every day. Few ever return to their homes. ("Rights-South Asia: Slavery Still A Thriving Trade," IPS, 29 December 1997)
There are over 200,000 undocumented Bangladeshi women in Pakistan, including some 2,000 in jails and shelters. Bangladeshis comprise 80 percent, and Burmese 14 percent, of Karachi’s undocumented immigrants. (Zia Ahmed Awan, affiliate with Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid, Sindh police report in 1993, "Rights-South Asia: Slavery Still A Thriving Trade," IPS, 29 December 1997)
A Bengali or Burmese woman could be sold in Pakistan for US$1,500 - 2,500 - depending on age, looks, docility and virginity. For each child or woman sold, the police claim a 15 to 20 percent "commission." ("Rights-South Asia: Slavery Still A Thriving Trade," IPS, 29 December 1997)
Women kidnapped at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border are being sold in the marketplace for R600 per kilogram as of 1991. (CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)
Auctions of girls are arranged for three kinds of buyers: rich visiting Arabs (sheiks, businessmen, visitors, state-financed medical and university students), the rich local gentry, and rural farmers. (CATW - Asia Pacific "Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific" (19)
19,000 Pakistani children have been trafficked to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). 160,000 Nepalese women are in Indian brothels. (LHRLA, Indrani Sinha, SANLAAP India, "Paper on Globalization & Human Rights")
Orphaned girls are sold as ‘wives’ to men who may resell them (CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)Methods and Techniques of Traffickers Bangladeshi and Burmese women are being kidnapped, married off to agents by unsuspecting parents, trafficked under false pretenses, or enticed by prospects of a better life, into brothels in Pakistan. Border police and other law enforcement agencies are well aware of the trafficking through entry points into Pakistan like Lahore, Kasur, Bahawalpur, Chhor and Badin. (Sindh police report in 1993, "Rights-South Asia: Slavery Still A Thriving Trade," IPS, 29 December 1997)
Nepalese and Bangladeshi woman and girls are trafficked under false pretenses, such as jobs, then are forced into prostitution in brothels in Pakistan. (CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)
A rise in trafficking of girls, aged 8-15, in Pakistan has occurred during this last decade. (CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)Policy and Law Trafficked women are further victimized by the police and the legal system, which treat them as criminals. The women are booked under Pakistan's controversial 'Hudood Ordinances.' The Zina Ordinance, which comes under the Islamic Hudood Ordinance, makes adultery or sex outside marriage a crime against the state. Women and girls in prostitution are often charged with Zina. Sometimes, they are booked under the Passport Act. Either way, they have to spend long periods in prison. For illegal immigration, the sentence is four years, but many women end up serving three or four years extra, either waiting for trial or to clear immigration formalities. (Nausheen Ahmed, "Rights-South Asia: Slavery Still A Thriving Trade," IPS, 29 December 1997)
The governments of Pakistan in the last 26 years have established three commissions of inquiry into the sexual exploitation of women. However, the government under Bhutto in the seventies, the Zia regime of the eighties and the present government have all disregarded the commission's recommendations. (Binoo Sen, National Commission for Women India, "Paper on Political Commitment") Prostitution
Official Response and Action A Pakistani military court will try two Pakistani soldiers, who organized a prostitution ring while with a United Nations mission in Haiti. ("Weekly News Update on the Americas," Issue #419, Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, 8 February 1998)
Organized and Institutionalized Sexual Exploitation and Violence:
Arabs stationed for a short time in Pakistan take "temporary wives," abandoning the women and any children afterwards. (CATW - Asia Pacific "Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific" (22) Case A Pakistani woman was threatened with contempt of the Supreme Court if she did not allow her ex-husband to have sex with her. Conjugal rights were reinstated to her ex-husband, although she has since remarried. If she refuses to allow her ex-husband to have sex with her she will be punished according to the law. (Anwar Iqbal, "Wife faces contempt in sex case," United Press International, 9 May 1998
Very interesting video shows wide open prostitution in a Muslim country, Pakistan. A brothel is open for 2 hours in the city of Lahore every evening, with bribed cops looking the other way. The women all say that they are still Muslims, and they go together to a local Muslim mosque or shrine where they pray and petition Allah to be relieved of their sins. The praying, the petitioning to Allah for forgiveness and the use of the word “shrine” imply a Sufi overlay to these women’s Islam.
The women look very much like Indian people. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would think that they were Indian Hindus. There does not seem to be much physical difference between Pakistanis and Indians, though Pakistanis like to think so. I knew a Pakistani woman once who hated Indians. I saw her on cam once, and I told her that she looked like an Indian. She got pretty upset at that. “No I don’t! I don’t look like an Indian! We don’t look like Indians! We are not Indians!”
This same woman told me that there was a ton of prostitution in Pakistan, even in smaller cities and all the way down to small towns and even villages. She basically said about every village had some of this going on. I was stunned to say the least.
The fact that there is open prostitution in Pakistan makes me think once again what a “Hinduized” form of Islam must be practiced in that country. The truth is that in much of the Muslim world, there is not a heck of a lot of prostitution, certainly not open prostitution. If there is a lot of open prostitution in a Muslim country, one legitimately wonders what sort of accretions have crept in to the syncretistic or schismatic form of Islam practiced there.
WASHINGTON: Pakistan has the fastest growing nuclear weapons programme in the world and by 2020 it could have enough fissile material to produce more than 200 nuclear devices, a top American think tank has said.
"Though many states are downsizing their stockpiles, Asia is witnessing a buildup. Pakistan has the fastest-growing nuclear programme in the world. By 2020, it could have a stockpile of fissile material that, if weaponized, could produce as many as 200 nuclear devices," council on foreign relations has said.
The report 'Strategic Stability in the Second Nuclear Age', authored by George Mason University's Gregory Koblentz, has identified South Asia as the region "most at risk of a breakdown in strategic stability due to an explosive mixture of unresolved territorial disputes, crossborder terrorism, and growing nuclear arsenals."
Pakistan, the report said, has deployed or is developing 11 delivery systems for its nuclear warheads, including aircraft, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.
"Pakistan has not formally declared the conditions under which it would use nuclear weapons but has indicated that it seeks primarily to deter India from threatening its territorial integrity or the ability of its military to defend its territory," the report said.
CFR said while Pakistan is focused predominantly on the threat posed by India, it is reportedly also concerned by the potential for the US to launch a military operation to seize or disarm Pakistani nuclear weapons.
"This concern is based in part on reported contingency planning by the US military to prevent Pakistani nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists," CFR said.
CFR said India is estimated to possess enough fissile material for between 90 and 110 nuclear weapons and is expanding its fissile material production capacity.
China, it said, is estimated to have 250 nuclear weapons for delivery by a mix of medium, intermediate, and intercontinental-range ballistic missiles and bombers.
"Though nuclear arsenals are shrinking in the rest of the world, Asia is witnessing a nuclear buildup. Unlike the remaining P5 countries, China is increasing and diversifying its nuclear arsenal," the report said.
WASHINGTON — American investigators intercepted a conversation this year in which a Pakistani official suggested that his government was receiving American secrets from a prominent former State Department diplomat, officials said, setting off an espionage investigation that has stunned diplomatic circles here.
That conversation led to months of secret surveillance on the former diplomat, Robin L. Raphel, and an F.B.I. raid last month at her home, where agents discovered classified information, the officials said.
The investigation is an unexpected turn in a distinguished career that has spanned four decades. Ms. Raphel (pronounced RAY-full) rose to become one of the highest-ranking female diplomats and a fixture in foreign policy circles, serving as ambassador to Tunisia and as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs in the Clinton administration.
Ms. Raphel, 67, considered one of the leading American experts on Pakistan, was stripped of her security clearances last month and no longer has access to the State Department building.
Photo
Robin L. Raphel in 1997. She has lost her security clearance and State Department access, officials say.CreditRafiqur Rahman/Reuters
The investigation is a rare example of an F.B.I. espionage case breaking into public view. Counterintelligence — the art of spotting and thwarting spies — is the F.B.I.’s second-highest priority, after fighting terrorism, but the operations are conducted almost entirely in secret. On any given day, Washington’s streets crawl with F.B.I. surveillance teams following diplomats and spies, adding to files that are unlikely ever to become public.
The senior American officials briefed on the case spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation. Spokesmen for the F.B.I. and Department of Justice declined to comment.
Ms. Raphel has not been charged with a crime. The scope of the investigation is not known, and it is unclear exactly what the Pakistani official said in the intercepted conversation that led to suspicion about Ms. Raphel. It is also not clear whether the conversation was by telephone, email or some other form of communication.
Still, the new details shed some light on the evidence that Justice Department prosecutors are weighing as they decide whether to bring charges. And they help explain why the F.B.I. viewed the matter seriously enough to search her home and State Department office, steps that would bring the investigation into the open.
Ms. Raphel is among a generation of diplomats who rose through the ranks of the State Department at a time when Pakistan was among America’s closest allies and a reliable bulwark against the Soviet Union. After retiring from the government in 2005, she lobbied on behalf of the Pakistani government before accepting a contract to work as a State Department adviser.
While the F.B.I. secretly watched Ms. Raphel in recent months, agents suspected that she was improperly taking classified information home from the State Department, the officials said. Armed with a warrant, the agents searched her home in a prosperous neighborhood near the Maryland border with Washington, and found classified information, the officials said.
Andrew Rice, a spokesman for Ms. Raphel, said: “Nothing has changed for Ambassador Raphel. She has not been told she is the target of an investigation, and she has not been questioned.”
In a sign of the seriousness of the case, Ms. Raphel has hired Amy Jeffress, a lawyer who until recently was one of the Justice Department’s top national security prosecutors. Ms. Jeffress served as a counselor to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on security matters, as the Justice Department’s attaché to London, and as chief of national security at the United States Attorney’s Office in Washington. She joined the law firm Arnold & Porter this year. Ms. Jeffress declined to comment.
Taking home classified information is a crime, but charges are rare. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in 2008 for keeping information about the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program at his house. John M. Deutch, the C.I.A. director from May 1995 to December 1996, lost his security clearances but was not charged for keeping government secrets on his home computer.Samuel R. Berger, a former national security adviser, pleaded guilty in 2005 to a misdemeanor and paid a $50,000 fine for removing classified documents from the National Archives.
While the United States and Pakistan remain allies in the war on terrorism, tensions between the two countries have been frequently strained. American officials suspect Pakistan of supporting the Taliban and believe Pakistan has dispatched several double agents to collect intelligence from the United States government. Pakistani officials bristle at the C.I.A.’s use of drones and operatives inside the country.
This animosity has spawned a new generation of American Foreign Service officers who view Pakistan with suspicion, making Ms. Raphel and her generally sympathetic view of Pakistan out of step within the State Department.
Nevertheless, Ms. Raphel’s reputation as a seasoned diplomat with broad connections in Pakistan led Richard C. Holbrooke, who was then special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, to recruit her out of retirement to work at the American Embassy in Islamabad, helping to disburse aid money.
Her longstanding relations with Pakistan’s government have also made her an object of scorn in India, the bitter rival of Pakistan, and a country that has grown closer to the United States during both the Bush and Obama administrations. The Indian news media has aggressively covered the espionage case in recent weeks, with The Times of India describing Ms. Raphel as a “brazenly pro-Pakistan partisan in Washington” with a “pathological dislike for India which she did little to conceal.”
In 1988, Ms. Raphel’s former husband, Arnold L. Raphel, then the American ambassador to Pakistan, was killed in a mysterious plane crash with the president of Pakistan, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq.
The cause of the crash was never determined, spawning numerous theories, including that it was an assassination and that nerve gas in a canister hidden in a crate of mangoes had been dispersed in the plane’s air-conditioning system.
He may be living in exile thousands of miles away but Altaf Hussain is among the most proactive political leaders in Pakistan. Governing his party, the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), from London, he is the first to react to any developments in the Pakistani political scene, often managing to outdo the politicians living in Pakistan. Mr. Hussain possesses a keen insight into the foreign affairs of Pakistan and has always maintained a neutral stance regarding bilateral relations with other countries. This is why his remarks about the alleged presence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Pakistan should not be taken lightly.
One thing which we cannot forget is the fact that Mr. Hussain was the first one who warned the government about the presence of Taliban in Pakistan. The government took his comments in their stride and now the entire country is paying the price for their negligence. So much so, the ex-Army Chief admitted that terrorism is the foremost issue plaguing the sovereignty and survival of Pakistan. Mr. Hussain had the foresight to predict this scenario some six or seven years ago, which shows the level of involvement he still has in Pakistani politics.
So, it seems foolish to dismiss his comments as a ploy to attract attention. For all intents and purposes, the ISIS could well have established their base in Pakistan. Moreover, Mr. Hussain claimed that several members of the Taliban are now switching allegiances and are joining the ISIS. If the ISIS and the Taliban merge, Pakistan could be embroiled in terrorism and infighting for the next several years. This situation is not to be taken lightly, especially after the Additional IG of Police in Karachi accepted that the ISIS is indeed present and active in the city of lights.
Originally, there were reports that the ISIS would target Muharram procession for their first major attack in Pakistan but thankfully that did not come to fruition. However, that does not in any way indicate or validate the fact that the ISIS is not present in Pakistan and what their strength is. It might be some time before the people in positions of power wake up to the threat. By then, it could be too late to do anything to curb the danger to the innocent citizens of the country, a similar situation to the one we are facing with the Taliban and other militant groups at present.
The ISIS is notorious for its brutality, often making the Taliban seem like a conservative militant wing. They have posted pictures and videos of people being killed and shot brutally. They even shared pictures of the beheaded people on their website and other platforms. This is one group that Pakistan can definitely do without and Mr. Hussain appears to be the only politician interested in preventing this scenario. Let’s hope the government wakes up and smells the coffee before the situation gets out of hand.
One thing citizens can do is spread the word about the threat posed by the presence of the ISIS in Pakistan. The easiest way to go about this is to start using #ISISinPakistan in your status updates and tweets from now. Keep in mind the more people you are able to alert about the situation, the more lives
can be saved in the long run. For now, we can only hope the ISIS is not in Pakistan but to doubt Mr. Hussain’s information could indeed prove to be a huge mistake, especially in context of the situation the country is in already.
A U.S. drone strike killed six suspected militants in northwestern Pakistan, security officials said on Friday, as al Qaeda said two members of the group had been killed in a previous strike.
Two missiles struck a house in Mada Khel village of the North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border on Thursday night, said a security official based in the area.
Six people were killed and three wounded, he said, citing intercepts of Taliban conversations.
The bodies surface quietly, like corks bobbing up in the dark. They come in twos and threes, a few times a week, dumped on desolate mountains or empty city roads, bearing the scars of great cruelty. Arms and legs are snapped; faces are bruised and swollen. Flesh is sliced with knives or punctured with drills; genitals are singed with electric prods. In some cases the bodies are unrecognisable, sprinkled with lime or chewed by wild animals. All have a gunshot wound in the head.
This gruesome parade of corpses has been surfacing in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province, since last July. Several human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have accounted for more than 100 bodies – lawyers, students, taxi drivers, farm workers. Most have been tortured. The last three were discovered on Sunday.
If you have not heard of this epic killing spree, though, don't worry: neither have most Pakistanis. Newspaper reports from Balochistan are buried quietly on the inside pages, cloaked in euphemisms or, quite often, not published at all.
The forces of law and order also seem to be curiously indifferent to the plight of the dead men. Not a single person has been arrested or prosecuted; in fact, police investigators openly admit they are not even looking for anyone. The stunning lack of interest in Pakistan's greatest murder mystery in decades becomes more understandable, however, when it emerges that the prime suspect is not some shady gang of sadistic serial killers, but the country's powerful military and its unaccountable intelligence men.
This is Pakistan's dirty little war. While foreign attention is focused on the Taliban, a deadly secondary conflict is bubbling in Balochistan, a sprawling, mineral-rich province along the western borders with Afghanistan and Iran. On one side is a scrappy coalition of guerrillas fighting for independence from Pakistan; on the other is a powerful army that seeks to quash their insurgency with maximum prejudice. The revolt, which has been rumbling for more than six years, is spiced by foreign interests and intrigues – US spy bases, Chinese business, vast underground reserves of copper, oil and gold.
Advertisement
And in recent months it has grown dramatically worse. At the airport in Quetta, the provincial capital, a brusque man in a cheap suit marches up to my taxi with a rattle of questions. "Who is this? What's he doing here? Where is he staying?" he asks the driver, jerking a thumb towards me. Scribbling the answers, he waves us on. "Intelligence," says the driver.
The city itself is tense, ringed by jagged, snow-dusted hills and crowded with military checkposts manned by the Frontier Corps (FC), a paramilitary force in charge of security. Schools have recently raised their walls; sand-filled Hesco barricades, like the ones used in Kabul and Baghdad, surround the FC headquarters. In a restaurant the waiter apologises: tandoori meat is off the menu because the nationalists blew up the city's gas pipeline a day earlier. The gas company had plugged the hole that morning, he explains, but then the rebels blew it up again.
The home secretary, Akbar Hussain Durrani, a neatly suited, well-spoken man, sits in a dark and chilly office. Pens, staplers and telephones are neatly laid on the wide desk before him, but his computer is blank. The rebels have blown up a main pylon, he explains, so the power is off. Still, he insists, things are fine. "The government agencies are operating in concert, everyone is acting in the best public interest," he says. "This is just a . . . political problem." As we speak, a smiling young man walks in and starts to take my photo; I later learn he works for the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency.
We cut across the city, twisting through the backstreets, my guide glancing nervously out the rear window. The car halts before a tall gate that snaps shut behind us. Inside, a 55-year-old woman named Lal Bibi is waiting, wrapped in a shawl that betrays only her eyes, trembling as she holds forth a picture of her dead son Najibullah. The 20-year-old, who ran a shop selling motorbike parts, went missing last April after being arrested at an FC checkpost, she says. His body turned up three months later, dumped in a public park on the edge of Quetta, badly tortured. "He had just two teeth in his mouth," she says in a voice crackling with pain. She turns to her father, a turbaned old man sitting beside her, and leans into his shoulder. He grimaces.
Suspected members of the Baloch Liberation Army are paraded by Pakistani police. Photograph: Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty Images
Bibi says her family was probably targeted for its nationalist ties – Najibullah's older brother, now dead, had joined the "men in the mountains" years earlier, she says. Now a nephew, 28-year-old Maqbool, is missing. She prays for him, regularly calling the hospitals for any sign of him and, occasionally, the city morgues.
Over a week of interviews in Karachi and Quetta, I meet the relatives of seven dead men and nine "disappeared" – men presumed to have been abducted by the security forces. One man produces a mobile phone picture of the body of his 22-year-old cousin, Mumtaz Ali Kurd, his eyes black with swelling and his shirt drenched in blood. A relative of Zaman Khan, one of three lawyers killed in the past nine months, produces court papers. A third trembles as he describes finding his brother's body in an orchard near Quetta.
Patterns emerge. The victims were generally men between 20 and 40 years old – nationalist politicians, students, shopkeepers, labourers. In many cases they were abducted in broad daylight – dragged off buses, marched out of shops, detained at FC checkposts – by a combination of uniformed soldiers and plain-clothes intelligence men. Others just vanished. They re-emerge, dead, with an eerie tempo – approximately 15 bodies every month, although the average was disturbed last Saturday when eight bodies were found in three locations across Balochistan.
Activists have little doubt who is behind the atrocities. Human Rights Watch says "indisputable" evidence points to the hand of the FC, the ISI and its sister agency, Military Intelligence. A local group, Voice for Missing Persons, says the body count has surpassed 110. "This is becoming a state of terror," says its chairman, Naseerullah Baloch.
The army denies the charges, saying its good name is being blemished by impersonators. "Militants are using FC uniforms to kidnap people and malign our good name," says Major General Obaid Ullah Khan Niazi, commander of the 46,000 FC troops stationed in Balochistan. "Our job is to enforce the law, not to break it."
Despairing relatives feel cornered. Abdul Rahim, a farmer wearing a jewelled skullcap, is from Khuzdar, a hotbed of insurgent violence. He produces court papers detailing the abduction of his son Saadullah in 2009. First he went to the courts but then his lawyer was shot dead. Then he went to the media but the local press club president was killed. Now, Rahim says, "nobody will help in case they are targeted too. We are hopeless."
Balochistan has long been an edgy place. Its vast, empty deserts and long borders are a magnet for provocateurs of every stripe. Taliban fighters slip back and forth along the 800-mile Afghan border; Iranian dissidents hide inside the 570-mile frontier with Iran. Drug criminals cross the border from Helmand, the world's largest source of heroin, on their way to Iran or lonely beaches on the Arabian Sea. Wealthy Arab sheikhs fly into remote airstrips on hunting expeditions for the houbara bustard, a bird they believe improves their lovemaking. At Shamsi, a secretive airbase in a remote valley in the centre of the province, CIA operatives launch drones that attack Islamists in the tribal belt.
The US spies appreciate the lack of neighbours – Balochistan covers 44% of Pakistan yet has half the population of Karachi. The province's other big draw is its natural wealth. At Reko Diq, 70 miles from the Afghan border, a Canadian-Chilean mining consortium has struck gold, big-time. The Tethyan company has discovered 4bn tonnes of mineable ore that will produce an estimated 200,000 tonnes of copper and 250,000 ounces of gold per year, making it one of the largest such mines in the world. The project is currently stalled by a tangled legal dispute, but offers a tantalising taste of Balochistan's vast mineral riches, which also includes oil, gas, platinum and coal. So far it is largely untapped, though, and what mining exists is scrappy and dangerous. On 21 March, 50 coal workers perished in horrific circumstances when methane gas flooded their mine near Quetta, then catastrophically exploded.
Two conflicts are rocking the province. North of Quetta, in a belt of land adjoining the Afghan border, is the ethnic Pashtun belt. Here, Afghan Taliban insurgents shelter in hardline madrasas and lawless refugee camps, taking rest in between bouts of battle with western soldiers in Afghanistan. It is home to the infamous "Quetta shura", the Taliban war council, and western officials say the ISI is assisting them. Some locals agree. "It's an open secret," an elder from Kuchlak tells me. "The ISI gave a fleet of motorbikes to local elders, who distributed them to the fighters crossing the border. Nobody can stop them."
The other conflict is unfolding south of Quetta, in a vast sweep that stretches from the Quetta suburbs to the Arabian Sea, in the ethnic Baloch and Brahui area, whose people have always been reluctant Pakistanis. The first Baloch revolt erupted in 1948, barely six months after Pakistan was born; this is the fifth. The rebels are splintered into several factions, the largest of which is the Balochistan Liberation Army. They use classic guerrilla tactics – ambushing military convoys, bombing gas pipelines, occasionally lobbing rockets into Quetta city. Casualties are relatively low: 152 FC soldiers died between 2007 and 2010, according to official figures, compared with more than 8,000 soldiers and rebels in the 1970s conflagration.
But this insurgency seems to have spread deeper into Baloch society than ever before. Anti-Pakistani fervour has gripped the province. Baloch schoolchildren refuse to sing the national anthem or fly its flag; women, traditionally secluded, have joined the struggle. Universities have become hotbeds of nationalist sentiment. "This is not just the usual suspects," says Rashed Rahman, editor of the Daily Times, one of few papers that regularly covers the conflict.
At a Quetta safehouse I meet Asad Baloch, a wiry, talkative 22-year-old activist with the Baloch Students' Organisation (Azad). "We provide moral and political support to the fighters," he says. "We are making people aware. When they are aware, they act." It is a risky business: about one-third of all "kill and dump" victims were members of the BSO.
Baloch anger is rooted in poverty. Despite its vast natural wealth, Balochistan is desperately poor – barely 25% of the population is literate (the national average is 47%), around 30% are unemployed and just 7% have access to tap water. And while Balochistan provides one-third of Pakistan's natural gas, only a handful of towns are hooked up to the supply grid.
The insurgents are demanding immediate control of the natural resources and, ultimately, independence. "We are not part of Pakistan," says Baloch.
Well-armed Baloch insurgents in the contested region south of the capital Quetta. Photograph: Banaras Khan/AFP
His phone rings. News comes through that another two bodies have been discovered near the coast. One, Abdul Qayuum, was a BSO activist. Days later, videos posted on YouTube show an angry crowd carrying his bloodied corpse into a mortuary. He had been shot in the head.
The FC commander, Maj Gen Niazi, wearing a sharp, dark suit and with neatly combed hair (he has just come from a conference) says he has little time for the rebel demand. "The Baloch are being manipulated by their leaders," he says, noting that the scions of the main nationalist groups live in exile abroad –Hyrbyair Marri in London; Brahamdagh Bugti in Geneva. "They are enjoying the life in Europe while their people suffer in the mountains," he says with a sigh.
Worse again, he adds, they were supported by India. The Punjabi general offers no proof for his claim, but US and British intelligence broadly agree, according to the recent WikiLeaks cables. India sees Balochistan as payback for Pakistani meddling in Kashmir – which explains why Pakistani generals despise the nationalists so much. "Paid killers," says Niazi. He vehemently denies involvement in human rights violations. "To us, each and every citizen of Balochistan is equally dear," he says.
Civilian officials in the province, however, have another story. Last November, the provincial chief minister, Aslam Raisani, told the BBC that the security forces were "definitely" guilty of some killings; earlier this month, the province's top lawyer, Salahuddin Mengal, told the supreme court the FC was "lifting people at will". He resigned a week later.
However, gross human rights abuses are not limited to the army. As the conflict drags on, the insurgents have become increasingly brutal and ruthless. In the past two years, militants have kidnapped aid workers, killed at least four journalists and, most disturbingly, started to target "settlers" – unarmed civilians, mostly from neighbouring Punjab, many of whom have lived in Balochistan for decades. Some 113 settlers were killed in cold blood last year, according to government figures – civil servants, shopkeepers, miners. On 21 March, militants riding motorbikes sprayed gunfire into a camp of construction workers near Gwadar, killing 11; the Baloch Liberation Front claimed responsibility. Most grotesque, perhaps, are the attacks on education: 22 school teachers, university lecturers and education officials have been assassinated since January 2008, causing another 200 to flee their jobs.
As attitudes harden, the middle ground is being swept away in tide of bloodshed. "Our politicians have been silenced," says Habib Tahir, a human rights lawyer in Quetta. "They are afraid of the young." I ask a student in Quetta to defend the killing of teachers. "They are not teachers, they work for the intelligence agencies," one student tells me. "They are like thieves coming into our homes. They must go."
The Islamabad government seems helpless to halt Balochistan's slide into chaos. Two years ago, President Asif Ali Zardari announced a sweeping package of measures intended to assuage Baloch grievances, including thousands of jobs, a ban on new military garrisons and payment of $1.4bn (£800m) in overdue natural gas royalties. But violence has hijacked politics, the plan is largely untouched, and anaemic press coverage means there is little outside pressure for action.
Pakistan's foreign allies, obsessed with hunting Islamists, have ignored the problem. "We are the most secular people in the region, and still we are being ignored," says Noordin Mengal, who represents Balochistan on the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
In this information vacuum, the powerful do as they please. Lawyer Kachkol Ali witnessed security forces drag three men from his office in April 2009. Their bodies turned up five days later, dead and decomposed. After telling his story to the press, Ali was harassed by military intelligence, who warned him his life was in danger. He fled the country. "In Pakistan, there is only rule of the jungle," he says by phone from Lørenskog, a small Norwegian town where he won asylum last summer. "Our security agencies pick people up and treat them like war criminals," he says. "They don't even respect the dead."
Balochistan's dirty little war pales beside Pakistan's larger problems – the Taliban, al-Qaida, political upheaval. But it highlights a very fundamental danger – the ability of Pakistanis to live together in a country that, under its Islamic cloak, is a patchwork of ethnicities and cultures. "Balochistan is a warning of the real battle for Pakistan, which is about power and resources," says Haris Gazdar, a Karachi-based researcher. "And if we don't get it right, we're headed for a major conflict."
Before leaving Quetta I meet Faiza Mir, a 36-year-old lecturer in international relations at Quetta's Balochistan University. Militants have murdered four of her colleagues in the past three years, all because they were "Punjabi". Driving on to the campus, she points out the spots where they were killed, knowing she could be next.
"I can't leave," says Mir, a sparky woman with an irrepressible smile. "This is my home too." And so she engages in debate with students, sympathising with their concerns. "I try to make them understand that talk is better than war," she says.
But some compromises are impossible. Earlier on, students had asked Mir to remove a portrait of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan's founding father, from her office wall. Mir politely refused, and Jinnah – an austere lawyer in a Savile Row suit - still stares down from her wall.
