Bloody Start of Year 2013 in Pakistan

[Riaz Haq]

What has caused a sudden and tragic jump in mass casualty attacks in Pakistan with over 200 deaths, mostly of Hazara Shias, in a single day on January 10, 2013? Is it just impunity or blow back from intensified US drone attacks early in 2013 as President Barack Obama accelerates US pull-out from Afghanistan? Or is it lack of national political consensus in Pakistan to punish the blood-thirsty Taliban and their murderous sectarian allies like LeJ and SSP?

Background:

In a rare public statement on the effectiveness of US drone campaign in FATA, General Officer Commanding 7-Division Maj-Gen Ghayur Mehmood serving in Waziristan in 2011 said: "Yes there are a few civilian casualties in such precision strikes, but a majority of those eliminated are terrorists, including foreign terrorist elements.” In addition, Maj-Gen Ghayur, who led Pakistani troops in North Waziristan at the time, also said that the drone attacks had negative fallout, scaring the local population and causing their migration to other places. Gen Ghayur said the drone attacks also had social and political repercussions and law-enforcement agencies often felt the heat.

In other words, US drone strikes do kill mainly militants in FATA but also cause a blow back in the rest of the country for law enforcement and innocent civilians, and the Pakistani civil administration has failed miserably in dealing with it.

Blow Back:

The January 10 terrorist attacks appear to be a strong and swift blow back to the stepped up  US CIA campaign of seven strikes in the first 10 days of the year 2013. This raises a basic question as to why the Hazara community,  minorities and ordinary civilians are targeted? Here are some of the possible reasons:

1. Hazaras are a soft target. They are easily identifiable by their facial features and known to live in certain neighborhoods in and around Quetta.

2. Police in Baluchistan have miserably failed in bringing to justice the sectarian attackers who are allied with the Taliban and operate with impunity.

3. When the police do arrest and prosecute terror suspects, the conviction rate in Pakistani courts is in single digits. It's either due to inadmissible evidence, poor investigative techniques, lack of witnesses or possibly judges who fear for their lives.  Well-known terror suspects who openly confess to murderous attacks are allowed to walk free by judges for lack of eye-witnesses.

4.  Pakistani parliament has failed to enact serious anti-terrorism legislation in the last 5 years to respond to rising civilian casualties in terrorist attacks. The goverment has also failed to protect witnesses, lawyers and judges involved in prosecuting terrorism suspects.

Possible Solutions: 

1. Enact the “Investigation for Fair trial bill-2012” as soon as possible. This bill makes electronic evidence such as video footage, telephone wire-taps and e-mails admissible in terrorism  cases to reduce reliance on eyewitnesses. 

2. Start a serious witness protection program and provide enhanced security to lawyers and judges in terrorism cases.

3. Train police, prosecutors and judges in modern criminal justice techniques and processes to  increase their effectiveness.

3. Build broad national political consensus for decisive military action in FATA from where the Taliban terrorists and their sectarian allies get support and training to carry out devastating terrorist attacks against innocent civilians throughout Pakistan.

Summary:

Pakistan must now prepare to better protect its civilian population from the intense blow back  as the US intensifies its drone campaign in FATA to ensure safe withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014.

Here's a recent video discussion on the subject:



Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Obama Re-election and Pakistan

Pakistan's Year 2012 in Review

Taliban Attacks on Polio Workers

American CIA Sponsored Fake Vaccination Campaign

Violence Against Social  Change in Pakistan

Silent Social Revolution in Pakistan

The Eclipse of Feudalism in Pakistan

Social and Structural Transformations in Pakistan

Malala Moment: Profiles in Courage-Not!

Urbanization in Pakistan Highest in South Asia

Rising Economic Mobility in Pakistan

Upwardly Mobile Pakistan

[Riaz Haq]

Here's an excerpt from Time magazine about the impunity of Shia murderer Malik Ishaq of LeJ:

The failure to stop these militants is the collective failure of Pakistan’s power elites: the politicians, the army and the judiciary. Less than 24 hours after the Quetta attacks, Malik Ishaq, a notorious LeJ leader, was in Karachi inciting further anti-Shi‘ite hatred. “I don’t have fun making speeches,” the self-confessed killer of Shi’ites told his supporters. “You know what I have fun doing.”

Ishaq was shockingly released from prison in 2011 after the courts said they didn’t have enough evidence to convict him. As is often the case, witnesses are not protected and are either eliminated or reduced to a terrified silence. The prosecution and the police fail to marshal the evidence necessary to support a conviction. There are also questions that analysts raise about Islamabad’s intelligence agencies’ links to sectarian groups like the LeJ and its parent organization, the SSP.

Ishaq has barely been prevented from roaming around freely. He was briefly taken into custody once only to be released again. He and his cohorts are also the beneficiaries of sordid deals with Pakistan’s power elites. When the army’s headquarters were under siege in 2009, Ishaq was reportedly flown from prison to help negotiate a stand-down. The Punjab government, lead by the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N, has courted votes alongside leaders of the anti-Shi‘ite SSP.

The failure of Pakistani authorities to protect the Shi‘ite population and act against their killers is eroding faith in the state and its institutions. Their failures amount, as Human Rights Watch has said, to complicity. It also raises troubling questions about Pakistan’s identity. In 1947, after the partition of the subcontinent, Pakistan was founded ostensibly as a state for the region’s Muslims — and the minorities that live there. The founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was himself a secular man of a Shi‘ite background.

http://world.time.com/2013/01/15/pakistans-newest-martyrs-why-anti-...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's Washington Post on Obama admin playbook on drone strikes:

The adoption of a formal guide to targeted killing marks a significant — and to some uncomfortable — milestone: the institutionalization of a practice that would have seemed anathema to many before the Sept. 11 , 2001, terrorist attacks.

Among the subjects covered in the playbook are the process for adding names to kill lists, the legal principles that govern when U.S. citizens can be targeted overseas and the sequence of approvals required when the CIA or U.S. military conducts drone strikes outside war zones.

U.S. officials said the effort to draft the playbook was nearly derailed late last year by disagreements among the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon on the criteria for lethal strikes and other issues. Granting the CIA a temporary exemption for its Pakistan operations was described as a compromise that allowed officials to move forward with other parts of the playbook.

The decision to allow the CIA strikes to continue was driven in part by concern that the window for weakening al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan is beginning to close, with plans to pull most U.S. troops out of neighboring Afghanistan over the next two years. CIA drones are flown out of bases in Afghanistan.

“There’s a sense that you put the pedal to the metal now, especially given the impending” withdrawal, said a former U.S. official involved in discussions of the playbook. The CIA exception is expected to be in effect for “less than two years but more than one,” the former official said, although he noted that any decision to close the carve-out “will undoubtedly be predicated on facts on the ground.”

The former official and other current and former officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were talking about ongoing sensitive matters.

Obama’s national security team agreed to the CIA compromise late last month during a meeting of the “principals committee,” comprising top national security officials, that was led by White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan, who has since been nominated to serve as CIA director.
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Imposing the playbook standards on the CIA campaign in Pakistan would probably lead to a sharp reduction in the number of strikes at a time when Obama is preparing to announce a drawdown of U.S. forces from Afghanistan that could leave as few as 2,500 troops in place after 2014.

Officials said concerns about the CIA exemption were allayed to some extent by Obama’s decision to nominate Brennan, the principal author of the playbook, to run the CIA.

Brennan spent 25 years at the agency before serving as chief counterterrorism adviser to Obama for the past four years. During his White House tenure, he led efforts to impose a more rigorous review of targeted killing operations. But he also presided over a major expansion in the number of strikes.

CIA officials are likely to be “quite willing, quite eager to embrace” the playbook developed by their presumed future director, the former administration official said. “It’s his handiwork.”

Brennan’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled for Feb. 7.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-drone-str...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's a News story on US assistance offer to help law enforcement in Pakistan:

ISLAMABAD: US Ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson Sunday said the US would extend all the necessary assistance and equipment to help Pakistani law enforcement agencies to check incidents of suicide attacks and bomb blasts.

He said the United States highly values its relations with Pakistan, adding that they acknowledge the sacrifices made by Pakistan during war on terrorism.The ambassador had meeting with Interior Minister Rehman Malik and exchanged views on bilateral relations and security situation, particularly in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

He appreciated the arrangements made by the Ministry of Interior during the long march for the security of the participants. Olson also lauded interior minister’s services for taking special measures to ensure safety of ambassadors and diplomats.

The interior minister said Pakistan was doing its level best to improve law and order but it has its own limitations. He said due to resource constraint, the law enforcement agencies were handicapped. He welcomed the ambassador’s assurance for the equipment and hoped that this would help in nabbing the miscreants. The ambassador also pointed to the assistance for improvement of power situation and for the education sector in Pakistan.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-13-20418-Pakistan-to-be-given...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's a Guardian Op Ed on latest blowback from Mali in Algeria:

To listen to David Cameron's rhetoric this week, it could be 2001 all over again. Eleven years into the war on terror, it might have been Tony Blair speaking after 9/11. As the bloody siege of the part BP-operated In Amenas gas plant in Algeria came to an end, the British prime minister claimed, like George Bush and Blair before him, that the country faced an "existential" and "global threat" to "our interests and way of life".

While British RAF aircraft backed French military intervention against Islamist rebels in Mali, and troops were reported to be on alert for deployment to the west African state, Cameron promised that a "generational struggle" would be pursued with "iron resolve". The fight over the new front in the terror war in North Africa and the Sahel region, he warned, could go on for decades.

So in austerity-blighted Britain, just as thousands of soldiers are being made redundant, while Barack Obama has declared that "a decade of war is now ending", armed intervention is being ratcheted up in yet another part of the Muslim world. Of course, it's French troops in action this time. But even in Britain the talk is of escalating drone attacks and special forces, and Cameron has refused to rule out troops on the ground.

You'd think the war on terror had been a huge success, the way the western powers keep at it, Groundhog Day-style. In reality, it has been a disastrous failure, even in its own terms – which is why the Obama administration felt it had to change its name to "overseas contingency operations", until US defence secretary Leon Panetta revived the old title this week.

Instead of fighting terror, it has fuelled it everywhere it's been unleashed: from Afghanistan to Pakistan, from Iraq to Yemen, spreading it from Osama bin Laden's Afghan lairs eastwards to central Asia and westwards to North Africa – as US, British and other western forces have invaded, bombed, tortured and kidnapped their way across the Arab and Muslim world for over a decade.

So a violent jihadist movement that grew out of western intervention, occupation and support for dictatorship was countered with more of the same. And the law of unintended consequences has meanwhile been played out in spectacular fashion: from the original incubation of al-Qaida in the mujahideen war against the Soviet Union, to the spread of terror from western-occupied Afghanistan to Pakistan, to the strategic boost to Iran delivered by the US-British invasion of Iraq.

When it came to Libya, the blowback was much faster – and Mali took the impact. Nato's intervention in Libya's civil war nearly two years ago escalated the killing and ethnic cleansing, and played the decisive role in the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime. In the ensuing maelstrom, Tuareg people who had fought for Gaddafi went home to Mali and weapons caches flooded over the border.

Within a couple of months this had tipped longstanding demands for self-determination into armed rebellion – and then the takeover of northern Mali by Islamist fighters, some linked to al-Qaida. Foreign secretary William Hague acknowledged this week that Nato's Libyan intervention had "contributed" to Mali's war, but claimed the problem would have been worse without it.

In fact, the spillover might have been contained if the western powers had supported a negotiated settlement in Libya, just as all-out war in Mali might have been avoided if the Malian government's French and US sponsors had backed a political instead of a military solution to the country's divisions.....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/22/mali-fastest-bl...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's a ET overview of plans for Karachi:

KARACHI:

Karachi has perpetually evolved ever since Sir Charles Napier first set foot on the once sleepy backwater in 1843 and discovered its potential. Around 170 years later, the growth shows no signs of stopping. From flyovers and exotic animals to the country’s tallest building – there will be lots of new additions to look forward to in 2013. There may be a lot of pessimism, but as architect Shahid Abdulla says, “We have already been battered and now it’s time to bounce back just like [Pakistan’s performance in] hockey and cricket!” Here is what some of prominent personalities had to say about what’s lined up for over 18 million people who call Karachi their home:

Director of the Karachi Zoological Gardens, Bashir Sadozai:

Bashir Sadozai

“This year we will import a pair of white tigers and bigger enclosures will be constructed for all the big cats. This year will also see a veterinary hospital within the zoo. We are also trying to ensure that animals breed and their offspring survive – a miniature horse is pregnant.”

Architect Shahid Abdulla:

Shahid Abdulla

“A lot of people will be interested in the completion of the remaining part of the Dolmen City Mall in Clifton. Around 60 per cent of it has been opened to the public. The Ocean Towers [near Do Talwar] will also stand out. It will have the finest movie theatre and the building is beautiful.”

Town planner Arif Hasan:

Arif Hasan

“It’s a myth that more flyovers can help improve traffic congestion. We need a mass transit system, which includes Karachi Circular Railway. But how long it will take for to actually start working is anyone’s guess. Our vision should be to make the roads pedestrian-friendly.”

DIG Traffic Police Khurram Gulzar

Khurram Gulzar

“People need to change their mindset. Please be patient. Everyone seems to be in a hurry. We have around 3,200 police constables deputed every day to manage traffic. Even then, it’s very difficult to convince people to follow traffic rules.

We must move bus and truck stands to the outskirts. The infrastructure cannot sustain them anymore. But the completion of the other track of the Lyari Expressway will help a lot in easing traffic woes.”

Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s director-general of technical services, Altaf Memon:

Altaf Memon

“Five flyovers will be constructed this year. Four of them are being built on Shahrae Pakistan and one on Sharae Faisal near the Jinnah International Airport. We also plan to start work this month on two more overheard bridges at Shaheen Complex intersection and Golimar.

Another important project is the improvement of Banaras Chowk. The place underneath the Banaras Flyover is in shambles. We couldn’t construct the roads before because of multiple reasons.”

Director-general of parks and horticulture, Niaz Soomro:

Niaz Soomro

“The renovated Hill Park will be ready by February. It will have a series of water fountains and a safer view point on the hill. [The previous spot] was closed for public after it was declared dangerous.

I am also sure people will love to visit Aziz Bhatti Park once we are done reconstructing the pond there. A wooden skating platform for children has also been planned. Hopefully, work on Clifton Aquarium will also start this year.”

http://tribune.com.pk/story/487704/here-we-grow-again-karachis-evol...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's PakistanToday on politics driving economy and stocks in Pakistan:

KARACHI - Among other factors, the political activity near the looming general elections in the country is calling the shots when it comes to Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE).
Last Thursday witnessed the KSE climbing to a new high with the benchmark KSE-100 share index peaking beyond 17,000 points level.
The market observers attributed the historic positive to the politico-economic factors developing on the country’s internal and external fronts. The KSE 100-share index gained 148 points to close at 17,056.36 points compared to Wednesday’s 16,908.67 points. The intraday high and low the index hit on the day were recorded at 17,067.58 and 16,908.67 respectively, the closing point of the previous day.
Of the total 353 scrips traded, 205 gained, 123 lost and 25 saw no change in their price. The trading volumes were higher to climb to 271 million shares as against 218 million of the previous session. The trading value also rose to Rs 6.90 billion from Rs 5.49 billion on Wednesday. The market capital grew beyond Rs 4.263 trillion compared to Rs 4.22 trillion a day earlier.
The free float KSE-30 index also set in the green zone and gained 125 points to last at 13,931.66 points against 13,806.38 points of the previous trading session.
The day marked mostly the second and third tier stocks leading the volumes with Fauji Cement, the volume leader, counting its traded shares as 60.334 million, gaining Re 32 paisas on each of its stakes that were priced at Rs 7.48 in the opening and Rs 7.80 at closing.
Turnover on the future market also headed northward to stand at 22.983 million shares compared to Wednesday’s 22.172 million.
According to stocks analysts, the result announcement session had led other positives to help the index peak to the historic high.
Muhammad Sohail, a broker and senior analyst at the KSE, said the announcement of “good” corporate results was the leading attributable factor for Thursday’s stocks market boost.
“Good corporate results, foreign buying and a relative calm on local political front helped the equities to cross the 17000 mark,” Sohail, the Chief Executive Officer of Topline Securities, told Pakistan Today.
Another equity analyst Ashen Mehanti, a director at Arif Habib Securities, said the rate-cut by the central bank in its Wednesday’s T-bill auction had coupled with the favorable announcement factor.
“Stocks closed at record high amid rising trades in the earnings announcements session at KSE after the SBP slashes yield on T-bills,” the analyst said.
Other catalysts Mehanti cited were the investors’ hope for a possible cut in the SBP discount rate to be announced next month, rising local cement prices, easing political uncertainty and renewed foreign interest. The abovementioned factors, the analyst said “played a catalyst role in bullish close in stocks across the board at KSE ahead of major earning announcements due next week”.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2013/01/27/news/profit/political-ec...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's the Guardian on an off-road car race in South Waziristan tribal area:

With its rugged hills, narrow valleys and green plains, South Waziristan has long been perfect terrain for the sort of guerrilla warfare favoured by the Taliban in its fight with the Pakistani army.

Now it's the turn of the country's fledgling off-road car-racing community to have the run of the landscape.

In an effort to persuade a sceptical public that it has got the better of the Taliban and that life in one of the country's seven troublesome tribal "agencies" is improving, Pakistan's army is inviting car enthusiasts to hold a motor rally on a 80-mile (130km) route in the region in the last week of March.

The race will start just outside the agency and pass through various key locations, including the town of the Kotkai, a former Taliban-controlled town where militants once trained child suicide bombers until the army retook the area amid heavy fighting in the summer of 2009.

Organisers hope about 50 cars and their back-up vehicles will take part in the race, which they want to become an annual fixture in Pakistan's motor sports calendar.

"Peace has returned to this area and locals will feel confident once foreigners and people from other parts of the country come," said Major Farooq Virk, a military spokesman. "It is very secure and no incident has happened in this area for the last year and a half."

So far just a handful of car enthusiasts have signed up. One of them is Asad Marwat, president of the Islamabad Jeep Club, who said some car owners may stay away because of the perceived security threats.

"If it is something for the benefit of country, and it can bring some positive images around the world, we will take our chances," he said. "Hard-core rally buffs won't have any problem."

Just three months ago authorities did their best to dissuade the politician and former cricketer Imran Khan from travelling along exactly the same route to Kotkai with a few thousand of his supporters by arguing it was too dangerous.

The army now insists that South Waziristan is safe and ready to open up for business – or at least the small portion of it that has benefited from near-saturation coverage by Pakistani troops.

Critics say peace has been achieved at the expense of the people of the area, particularly members of the Mehsud tribe, who were forced to leave South Waziristan when operations to clear the Taliban were launched in 2009.

"Such gimmicks have been tried in the past with no impact," said Rustam Shah Mohmand, a retired political agent who served in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). He recalls football and basketball matches being held in other areas where the army has dislodged militants.

"With 80% of the Mehsuds having left the area, staging such shows cannot really achieve anything," he said.

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Car clubs have sprung up around Pakistan in the last 10 years with enthusiasts meeting for organised races that take advantage of the country's varied terrains, including deserts and snow-capped hills.

The most prominent Pakistani petrol-head is Mir Nadir Magsi, an elected politician once described as the "Pakistan's Michael Schumacher" for his winning streak in various rallies.

Asad Sethi, the founder of the Frontier 4x4 Car Club in Peshawar, has just returned from a weekend event in Malam Jabba, a hill town once overrun by the Taliban.

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But critics are unlikely to be convinced as long as the tribesman who used to live in the area stay away.

..

http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2013/jan/29/pakistan-car-race-talib...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's a PakistanToday report on PEW, an economic think tank often critical of PPP-led coalition, welcoming govt steps to revive economy:

ISLAMABAD - The Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW) on Thursday said recent steps taken by the government, including the ratification of the Iran pipeline agreement and handing over the Gawadar Port to a Chinese firm seemed highly promising.
These steps will go a long way in reviving the economy which is in tailspin, said PEW President Dr Murtaza Mughal.
He said that Chinese cooperation in the pipeline project would turn it into a reality in less than the expected time, which would be a great service to the country and the people who have been reeling under the energy crisis. Mughal lauded Tehran’s patience as the project had been delayed for a long time due to US pressure.
Allowing the transfer of concession agreement for Gawadar Port from the Port of Singapore Authority to the China Overseas Port Holding will attract investment, provide opportunities to the people of Balochistan and bring Islamabad and Beijing closer, he said.
He said the announcement of the three-year Strategic Trade Policy Framework, in which an export target of $95 billion had been set, and backed by steps to support the plan, would help improve confidence in the business community. The government should ensure that this trade policy does not meet the fate of the trade policy framework for 2009-12, which had failed due to want of funds, he added.
The ministry of water and power’s plan to generate 3,000MW electricity from sugarcane bagasse on a fast track basis is equally encouraging, he observed. He said all necessary amendments in existing policies should be ensured to attract investment to make this possible.
Lauding US assistance for water and power projects and optimum use of hydropower resources, Mughal said the US should stop opposing the Iran gas pipeline project otherwise an anti-US feeling will run high among the masses.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2013/02/01/city/islamabad/steps-for...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's a CSM story on Opposition using energy crisis as an election issue:

Right now the opposition is slamming the government on this point, claiming there's an easy solution: Pakistan is sitting on the world’s sixth-largest coal deposit, the Thar Coalfields in Sindh Province, but since the reserves were discovered 22 years ago, little has been done to develop them.

But negotiating the complex political web that has kept Pakistan in the energy dark ages is not as simple as opposition leaders suggest, say analysts. What should be a mere technical challenge has escalated as the government has become paralyzed.

RECOMMENDED: How much do you know about Pakistan? Take this quiz.

“It is not a lack of political will to address the energy crisis,” says Adil Najam, vice chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences and a leading Pakistani expert on environment and development policy. “It is a lack of political ability.”

For the past 22 years, plans to develop the Thar Coalfield have been stuck in limbo because of disagreements between the provincial and federal governments. The federal government wants a majority stake in any mining ventures, and has suggested a 80/20 split with the province. Though it has accepted investment from the federal government, the Sindh provincial government wants absolute control over the coalfields and has been adamant in insisting that Sindh alone should benefit from its natural resources.

So the two are in a bind: The ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government is unwilling to force development plans for fear of splitting what has traditionally been its strongest support base. Fear of creating a surge of Sindhi nationalism in the country’s second-most populous province tempered even former President Pervez Musharraf's attempt to develop the coalfields during Pakistan’s nine-year military rule.

For any candidate to campaign on the promise of quick fixes is to ignore the reality of Pakistan’s political system, says Hasan Askari Rizvi, an independent political analyst in Pakistan. “It is an attractive slogan,” says Mr. Rizvi, “But it is overly ambitious and unrealistic.”

Get our FREE 2013 Global Security Forecast now

The next Pakistan government will be a coalition made up of diverse forces and their first priority will be figuring out how to pull together and move in one direction, Rizvi says.

Pakistan generates 38 percent of its electricity using imported oil, according to the International Energy Agency. Gas and hydro make up another third, a figure that would be higher if investment in both areas wasn’t marred by political brinkmanship. Energy from coal makes up a tiny 0.1 percent of the country’s energy mix.

Despite a history of gridlock, cricketer-turned-candidate for prime minister Imran Khan has made developing the coalfields the central piece of his energy policy in his campaign manifesto. He has claimed that his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI, Pakistan Movement for Justice), can transform Pakistan from an energy importer to an energy exporter by 2016.

The main opposition party, the Pakistan Muslim League Narwaz (PML-N) has similarly made vague promises to “provide the full energy needs of an expanding industrial sector through maximum exploitation of domestic sources of energy, namely coal.”

A web of more than 20 different provincial and federal entities are involved in powering Pakistan. This has created an energy sector devoid of any long-term integrated planning, headed up by a government that is caught in a debt trap by its own unsustainable subsidies....

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2013/0201/Pakista...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's an AP story on fracturing of TTP:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Five years after setting up an umbrella organization to unite violent militant groups in the nation's tribal regions, the Pakistani Taliban is fractured, strapped for cash and losing support of local tribesmen frustrated by a protracted war that has forced thousands from their homes, analysts and residents of the area said.

The temperamental chief of the group known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Hakimullah Mehsud, recently offered to start peace talks with the government, raising the prospect of a negotiated end to Pakistan's war against insurgents in a lawless region that runs the length of the border with Afghanistan.

The group's offer of sanctuary to Afghanistan's Taliban has been one of the most divisive issues in U.S.-Pakistan relations and has confounded efforts to get the upper hand against Afghan insurgents after more than 11 years of war.

Pakistan denies providing outright military and financial help to militants fighting in Afghanistan. With 120,000 Pakistani soldiers deployed in the tribal regions, Pakistan has waged its own bloody battle against insurgents that has left more than 4,000 soldiers dead.

In interviews with analysts, residents and militant experts, Mehsud's network has emerged as a narrow collection of insurgents - often with links to criminal gangs - that has only limited influence in a vast tribal region overrun by scores of insurgent groups led by commanders with disparate agendas and varying loyalties.

Rather than a precursor to peace, Mehsud's offer to talk peace is an attempt to regain stature, silence critics and gain concessions from a weak government heading into nationwide elections, according to those familiar with the militant organization.

Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan has repeatedly denied reports of divisions within the TTP, including reported challenges to Mehsud's leadership.

But Amir Rana, director of the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, said Mehsud's offer to talk was an attempt to divert attention from internal rifts that are ripping the organization apart and diminishing its influence. Meshud speaks for fighters restricted to his own tribe, based in North and South Waziristan, he said.
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"They are weak, there is infighting," said Mansour Mehsud, director of research at the FATA Research Center named for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Pakistan's tribal regions have a special status under Pakistani law that allows tribal traditions and customs to rule. Many of the laws and rules applying to the tribal area date back to the early 20th century when the British ruled the subcontinent. Unable to control the tribesmen, the British made agreements that allowed them safe passage through tribal territory.

"They used to have the support of most people but not anymore," said Mehsud, who has no relation to the TTP leader although he shares the same tribal links. "People used to think that they would bring justice based on the Quran but instead fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of people."

Mehsud said the Pakistani Taliban also were running out of money and that extortion and kidnappings had become one of their biggest sources of income.

A wealthy trader living on the edge of the tribal area, who was afraid to give his name because he feared retribution, said the Taliban swindled thousands of dollars from him. He said he was threatened, his family was terrorized and then a bomb exploded at his home, seriously wounding his niece.

He said other businessmen told him that they too had paid large sums of money to the Taliban. In his tribal culture, he said it is shameful to admit to being robbed because it is seen as a sign of weakness, so no one has said anything.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/15/3235824/pakistani-tribesmen-p...