Wave of Terror Attacks in Pakistan; Trump's Rocky Start

[Riaz Haq]

Who sponsored terrorism in Pakistan claiming over 100 lives last week in multiple incidents, including Lahore and Sehwan bomb blasts? Is it domestic terrorist groups inside Pakistan? Is it intended to create negative headlines to deter business and investment in Pakistan? Is it part of India's Modi's well-publicized campaign to isolate and punish Pakistan? Is to sabotage China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)?

Is it being orchestrated by Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies supporting TTP/Jamat-ul-Ahrar based in Afghanistan?

Is Pakistan justified in closing the Afghan-Pakistan border and launching attacks on terror bases inside Afghanistan? How deep should Pakistan go in pursuit of terrorists in Afghanistan?

Source: Economist Magazine

Can Pakistan government alone accomplish de-radicalization of terrorists and their sympathizers? What is the role of educators, mass media, entertainers, civil society and other groups? Can it be done quickly? How long would it take?

How's President Donald Trump's administration doing so far? Why is it having such a rocky start? Why are hate groups and hate crimes against minorities rising across America? Is it similar to the situation in Modi's India where attacks against minorities up sharply, according to USCIRF? Why are America's allies concerned about US commitments to their security? What must Mr. Trump do to improve his administration's performance?

Viewpoint From Overseas host Misbah Azam discusses these questions with panelists Ali H. Cemendtaur and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)

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Who is behind the latest spate of terrorist attacks in Pakistan Tru... from Ikolachi on Vimeo.

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[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan's market up 500% since 2009, and 56% in 12 months—leaving #India, #China far behind. How high can it go?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2017/02/19/pakistans...

Pakistan’s stock market has been red hot in recent years. The country’s main KSE index has soared close to 500% since 2009, and 56% in the last twelve months—leaving neighboring markets in India and China far behind.

Pakistan’s stock market rally has been driven by a number of favorable economic fundamentals, such as an improving macroeconomic environment—rising economic growth and falling inflation and interest rates. The country’s economy grew close to 6 percent in 2016, up from 4.8 percent in 2015, with inflation running around 4 percent, down from 10 percent four years ago. And the 10 year Treasury bond is yielding 8 percent, down from 12.5 percent four years ago.

Then there are a couple of overseas endorsements for Pakistan’s market reforms. Like $1 billion in support from the World Bank, a spike in domestic acquisitions from foreign suitors, and the inclusion of Pakistan’s market into MSCI’s emerging market index. 

Adding to these fundamentals is investor hype about the potential of the Pakistani economy which could take the equity market much higher.

How much higher? It’s hard to say.

What isn’t hard to say is that the usual red flags that killed previous market rallies are rising again. One of these flags is the growing current account deficit, which confirms that the country is trying to live beyond its means. Another red flag is persistent government deficits and rising external debt. Add falling foreign currency reserves, and Pakistan is vulnerable to the next spike in global interest rates that can crush its market.

Wait, there’s more. There’s poor infrastructure that creates bottlenecks, which could push prices of basic commodities, and eventually interest rates, higher. Besides, Pakistan is heavily reliant on imported oil, which has almost doubled from a year

[Riaz Haq]

#Trump silent about #terror attacks in #Muslim nations while condemning phantom terror attacks in West #Islamophobia

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/22/what-a...

there has always been a huge blind spot in Trump's worldview. When groups like the Islamic State launch attacks outside the West, slaughtering scores of Muslims, Trump remains curiously silent. On Thursday, for example, an Islamic State-linked suicide bomber killed at least 73 people at a famous Sufi shrine in the southern Pakistani town of Sehwan.

Did this hideous massacre — and other deadly bombings in Baghdad and Mogadishu around the same time — get any real acknowledgement from the White House? No. Instead, the American news conversation was dominated by Trump's conjuring of a phantom Islamist attack in Sweden over the weekend. Fake news overshadowed real suffering.

What happened in Sehwan was deeply important, and its absence from the White House's talking points is telling.

"The Sehwan shrine is dedicated to one of Sufism's most revered saints, Syed Muhammad Usman Marwandi, better known as Lal Shahbaz Qalandar," explained my colleague Max Bearak. "He mostly lived in the 11th century and roamed far and wide, seeking guidance in the spiritual capitals of Medina and Karbala before settling in Sehwan, along the banks of the Indus River. The shrine honoring the preacher is at least 650 years old."

The shrine was attacked while a huge throng of devotees gathered there in revelry. Sufism is a strain of Islam particularly common in South Asia — home to a population of Muslims larger than that of the Middle East — that is intertwined with older pre-Islamic traditions and suffused with mysticism, poetry and appeals to cosmic love. Sufism was the religion of wandering seers and storytellers, renegade mystics and barefoot sages.

In other words, it's the sort of thing fundamentalist jihadists hate. Sufi shrines in Pakistan have long been targets of the Taliban and other militant outfits. The Sehwan shrine drew not only Muslim devotees, both Sunni and Shiite, but Hindus, too. It was testament to a deeply embedded pluralism in the land that's now Pakistan.

[Riaz Haq]

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21717420-there-much-pakistan-cou...

Pakistan blames Afghanistan for a spate of terrorist attacks

But there is much Pakistan could do to put its own house in order

Feb 23rd 2017 | ISLAMABAD

IN THE space of five days in mid-February, Pakistan suffered ten acts of terrorism, affecting all four of its provinces. On February 13th a suicide bomber killed 15 people outside the provincial assembly in Punjab, including two senior police officers. On February 16th more than 80 were killed and over 200 injured when another suicide bomber targeted the throngs of worshippers at Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, a Sufi shrine in the southern province of Sindh. Yet more bombs killed police and soldiers in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), along the border with Afghanistan.

The attacks are all the more shocking because deaths from terrorism in Pakistan have fallen dramatically in recent years (see chart), the result of a sustained counter-terrorism campaign by the security services. Swathes of territory once lost to militants have been recovered. Operation Zarb-e-Azb, launched in 2014 to retake North Waziristan, a part of FATA that had become a jihadist stronghold, was a turning point. Until then, fretful politicians had postponed confrontation with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani offshoot of the militant Muslim group that ruled Afghanistan until the American invasion of 2001 and threatens its government to this day.

It was a faction of the TTP that claimed responsibility for the attack on the Punjab assembly. Islamic State, the extremist group that controls parts of Iraq and Syria, said it was responsible for the bombing of the Qalandar shrine, although it is likely to have worked through a local group. But Pakistan’s army identified a third culprit: Afghanistan. It said the Afghan government was not doing enough to stamp out militant groups, and that the militants, in turn, were using Afghanistan as a base to plan attacks in Pakistan. It closed all border crossings and shelled what it said were militant camps on the Afghan side of the border. The army also demanded the immediate arrest of 76 terrorists it said were living in Afghanistan.

[Riaz Haq]

#LeJ Militant Commander From #Punjab #Pakistan Reportedly Killed in US Drone Strike in Paktika #Afghanistan
http://www.voanews.com/a/pakistani-militant-commander-reportedly-ki...

A U.S. drone airstrike in southeastern Afghanistan has killed a Pakistani militant commander accused of involvement in several deadly attacks, Pakistani media reported.

Qari Mohammad Yasin, also known as Ustad Aslam, and three other militants were targeted by a U.S. unmanned aircraft that struck his car on Sunday in the Afghan province of Paktika bordering Pakistan, according to Pakistani security sources.

U.S. officials did not respond to a VOA request seeking comment. The Pentagon routinely does not comment on drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Masterminded suicide attacks

The 51-year-old Yasin, who was from Pakistan's Punjab province, had a bounty of about $48,000 on his head. Punjab authorities named him one of the most wanted men who masterminded several suicide attacks in different parts of the country.

He was involved in several high-profile terrorist attacks in Pakistan, according to Pakistani intelligence. The attacks included one on a bus carrying Sri Lanka's cricket team in 2009 and a bomb blast at Data Darbar, a Sufi shrine in Lahore. Specialized in training suicide bombers, Yasin also was an expert in making improvised explosive devices, authorities say.

According to reports, Yasin also was associated with the Amjad Farooqi group, a militant organization that engineered two assassination attempts against former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in 2003. Later, Yasin became a key member of the Punjabi Taliban, a militant group aligned with al-Qaida's subcontinent chapter in Pakistan and other militant groups that fight government and international forces in Afghanistan.

Yasin's death confirmed

Pakistan's military has been carrying out an operation to clear militants from the tribal region of Punjab since 2014. The operation has forced many Pakistani militants to cross into neighboring Afghan provinces.

Ali bin Sufyan, a spokesperson for the Pakistani militant organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al Alami, confirmed Yasin's death, saying the group carried out a bomb attack against Pakistan's military in the southwestern province of Baluchistan as “revenge.”

Al Alami is an offspring of the militant sectarian Lashkar-e-Jhangvi organization in Pakistan, which has ties to the Afghan Taliban, al-Qaida and most recently Islamic State militants. The group has been linked by law enforcement to high-profile attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A Pakistani militant who claimed to be one of the spokespersons for the Pakistani Taliban said the group would target U.S. forces in Kandahar and Bagram in Afghanistan to avenge Yasin's death.