Some suggest staying away from Obama’s Wars By Imran Ali Teepu

ISLAMABAD: Gazetted officers of the federal government receive a book from the Cabinet Division’s Services Club every  year – for a price – to stimulate their minds.

Last year, ‘The Idea of Justice’ by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen was chosen for them and was well received. In the book the eminent Indian economist argues that a “theory of justice that can serve as the basis of practical reasoning must include ways of judging how to reduce injustice and advance justice, rather than aiming only at the characterisation of perfectly just societies”.

But some recipients are disturbed over this year’s choice of Bob Woodward’s ‘Obama’s Wars’. They find the “criticism” of President Asif Ali Zardari in it disturbing, more so when the book has been distributed through the Army’s Services Book Club (ASBC).

Both the presidential and military spokesmen sounded non-committal in their comments to Dawn on the distribution of the book by ASBC.

“ASBC routinely sends books to civilian officers,” said Maj Gen Athar Abbas of the ISPR. But he was “not aware” that this year the ASBC had sent them Obama’s Wars.

Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar was equally unaware but more dismissive. “Since I am not aware about this (distribution) I have no comments to offer,” he said.

Bob Woodward, a Washington Post journalist, writes in the book that President Zardari told the then-CIA Director Gen Michael Hayden during their meeting in New York on 12 November 2008: “Kill the seniors. Collateral damage (caused by CIA drone attacks inside Pakistan) worries you Americans. It does not worry me.”

That unattributed account of the meeting irritated Islamabad and was immediately rejected by Pakistani ambassador in Washington, Hussain Haqqani. “I am amazed that the book was purchased in bulk and distributed to civilian officials,” said a senior federal bureaucrat. His colleague concurred that Obama’s Wars should not have been a choice read because its narrative reflect’s Washington’s “paranoia like mistrust” of Pakistan.

However, there are bureaucrats who say that “anything revealing the inner thoughts of other governments about Pakistan must be read by us”.

“It was President Gen Ziaul Haq who made book reading a must in the bureaucracy. Every federal government officer of Grade 17 and above had to become a member of the ASBC,” recalled a former bureaucrat.

The missionary president, however, chose mainly religious books, including Maulana Abul Aala Maudoodi’s voluminous Tafheem-ul-Quran. After him the titles changed and books on worldly matters by international writers also found their way through ASBC, he said.

ASBC distributes the book chosen for the officers at nominal price which is deducted from their salary.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/14/some-suggest-staying-away-from-obamas-wars-2.html

US making strategic bet on India

WASHINGTON, Oct 11: The future of world politics will be decided in the Asia-Pacific region, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the centre of the action, says US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an article she has written for the November issue of the prestigious Foreign Policy magazine.

In the 5,500-word article, Secretary Clinton reviews the challenges that the United States is likely to face in the near future and concludes that real changes are taking place in the Asia-Pacific region, not in the Pak-Afghan region.

She also places India in the Asia-Pacific region, pointing out that the US “is making a strategic bet on India`s future”.

“As the war in Iraq winds down and America begins to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, the United States stands at a pivot point,” she writes.

“Over the last 10 years, we have allocated immense resources to those two theatres. In the next 10 years, we need to be smart and systematic about where we invest time and energy.”

One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade, she argues, will be to “lock in a substantially increased investment — diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise — in the Asia-Pacific region”.

She notes that the Asia-Pacific has become a key driver of global politics, includes many of the key engines of the global economy, and is home to several of key US allies and important emerging powers like China, India, and Indonesia.

“The time has come for the United States to make similar investments” in this region as it did in Europe after the World War II, she argues. “Harnessing Asia`s growth and dynamism is central to American economic and strategic interests” as the region provides the United States with “unprecedented opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge technology”.

The rapid transformations taking place in the region, she writes, underscores “how much the future of the United States is intimately intertwined with the future of the Asia-Pacific”.

She proposes a six-point strategy for staying engaged with the region, which includes maintaining political consensus and helping protect defence capabilities and communications infrastructure of US allies, particularly from non-state actors.

Describing China as one of the most prominent emerging partners in the region, she notes that the US has stayed engaged with China on all key issues, including the war in Afghanistan and on the situation in Pakistan. “The fact is that a thriving America is good for China and a thriving China is good for America. We both have much more to gain from cooperation than from conflict,” she argues. The US, she says, is also committed to working with China to address critical regional and global security issues.

Stressing the need for both the US and China to remain honest about their differences, Secretary Clinton writes: “At the end of the day, there is no handbook for the evolving US-China relationship. But the stakes are much too high for us to fail.”

India, she argues, is another key emerging power with which the US will work closely as the relationship between India and America will be one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century, rooted in common values and interests.

“There are still obstacles to overcome and questions to answer on both sides, but the United States is making a strategic bet on India`s future — that India`s greater role on the world stage will enhance peace and security,” she adds. Opening India`s markets to the world will pave the way to greater regional and global prosperity.

Indian advances in science and technology, she notes, will improve lives and advance human knowledge everywhere, and India`s “vibrant, pluralistic democracy will produce measurable results and improvements” for its citizens and inspire others to follow a similar path of openness and tolerance.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/12/us-making-strategic-bet-on-india.html

Anti-Gadhafi fighters make gains in Sirte

SIRTE: Libya’s revolutionary forces seized a convention center Sunday that had served as a key base for fighters loyal to Moammar Gadhafi in the fugitive leader’s hometown, as they squeezed remaining regime loyalists in the besieged coastal city.

An anti-Gaddafi soldier breaks a picture frame holding a photo of Moammar Gadhafi inside Ibn Sina hospital in the centre of Sirte.

The inability to take Sirte, the most important remaining stronghold of Gadhafi supporters, more than six weeks after anti-Gadhafi fighters seized the capital has stalled efforts by Libya’s new leaders to set a timeline for elections and move forward with a transition to democracy.

Gadhafi supporters also hold the inland enclave of Bani Walid, where revolutionary forces have been stymied by challenging terrain.

But the transitional leadership has said it will declare liberation after Sirte’s capture because that will mean it holds all of the seaports and harbors in the oil-rich Mediterranean coastal country.

Libya’s de facto leader, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, head of the governing National Transitional Council, said Sunday that anti-Gadhafi fighters have made huge gains in Sirte and Bani Walid, southeast of the capital.

”I do believe, God willing, that the liberation of these cities will happen within this week,” Abdul-Jalil told reporters in Tripoli.

He said that revolutionary forces are advancing on Bani Walid from five sides, while Libyan fighters in Sirte have punched their way into the city center in fierce fighting and are now cleaning out pockets of resistance.

Located 250 miles (400 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli, Sirte is key to the physical unity of the nation of some 6 million people, since it lies roughly in the center of the coastal plain where most Libyans live, blocking the easiest routes between east and west.

After a three-week siege from the outskirts, revolutionary forces launched an all-out assault on Sirte on Friday, pounding the city with tank shells, field cannons, rockets and heavy machine guns.

Loyalists have put up fierce resistance, and fired back with sniper rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

On Sunday, the Ouagadougou Convention Center, an ornate complex that Gadhafi frequently used for international summits, lay in ruins.

Throughout the siege, Gadhafi fighters used the walled complex as a base and stronghold. From there they were able to dominate surrounding neighborhoods and assault revolutionaries trying to enter Sirte.

At the nearby Ibn Sina Hospital, scores of wounded civilians crowded the corridors, lying on gurneys and floors to protect them from the shelling and gunfire.

There was no electricity or water, and a handful of medical students and nurses were the only medical staff.

Revolutionary fighters roamed the hallways checking IDs and detained about 25 people suspected of being Gadhafi fighters or mercenaries.

”These are all Gadhafi people. They are snipers and we have captured them,” said Ahmed Rahman, a field commander, as his soldiers cuffed a suspected pro-Gadhafi sniper.

The revolutionary forces also now control the University of Sirte on the southern outskirts.

As they push forward, Gadhafi loyalists are fighting in an ever-shrinking defensive perimeter consisting only of a Gadhafi palace complex, some residential buildings and a hotel near Green Square in the city center.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/09/anti-gadhafi-fighters-make-gains-in-sirte.html

Ties with Pakistan vital to security, says US

WASHINGTON: Ties with Pakistan remained vital to US national security, the White House said on Friday as the State Department pledged to continue to work with Islamabad to defeat terrorism.

“The cooperation we have with Pakistan is extremely important in terms of our national security objectives, in terms of protecting Americans, in terms of taking the fight to Al Qaeda,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told a briefing in Washington.

“And that’s why we continue to work with the Pakistanis and try to build on that cooperation,” he added.

At the State Department, spokesperson Victoria Nuland underlined “an intense relationship on a number of issues, including on the counterterrorism docket.”

She also noted that US secretaries of state and defence and the CIA’s chief had all maintained contacts with their Pakistani counterparts while a special envoy was due in Islamabad for talks on all major issues.

“We are going to continue working on this issue of counterterrorism together because it is in both of our interests,” Ms Nuland said.
The statements followed recent media reports that increased cooperation between US and Pakistani intelligence agencies had
helped defuse the existing tensions between the two countries.

The ISI – although much-maligned in the US media – has been credited in these reports with arranging a meeting between US
officials and the Haqqani network.

ISI-CIA TIES: On Friday, the Director of US National Intelligence, James Clapper, told the Associated Press news agency that the ISI had quietly stepped up cooperation with the CIA, arresting some Al Qaeda suspects at their request and allowing US interrogators access to the detainees.

Pakistan has also stopped demanding the CIA suspend the covert drone strikes that have damaged Al Qaeda in Fata, another report said.

This cooperation “could mark a turning point in US-Pakistani relations,” observed Fox News while reporting the development.

“They are doing things to cooperate and be helpful,” said Mr Clapper. Other US officials told Fox News that both countries have made some progress in restoring the joint intelligence cooperation that used to be routine prior to the covert US raid that killed Osama bin Laden.After the raid Pakistan stopped joint operations with American intelligence officers, refused access to militant detainees and delayed visas for some US officials.

At the State Department, spokesperson Nuland, however, hinted that Pakistan had also allowed US officials to question bin Laden’s wives.

“We are working well with the Pakistanis on the aftermath of the bin Laden events,” she said but refused to “get into any specifics” of this cooperation. The US also appears to have softened its stance on Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani physician, who helped Americans trace bin Laden and is now in custody in Pakistan.

Washington wants him in the United States with his family. Pakistan not only turned down the request but a parliamentary committee indicated this week that he could be charged with treason.

The White House press secretary refused to condemn Pakistan when asked to comment on the committee’s decision.

“I’d refer you to the Pakistani government,” he said.

State Department’s Ms Nuland also refused to discuss this issue at a briefing where reporters asked half a dozen questions on the decision to try Dr. Afridi on treason charges.

“I’m not, from this podium, going to get into this set of issues at all,” she said. Instead, the White House and the State Department offered a general description of their ties to Pakistan.

“We have an important relationship with Pakistan. We have had enormous successes through our cooperation with Pakistan,” Mr Carney said. “We have also made clear that we have issues with Pakistan at times, and that it is a complicated relationship.”

Ms Nuland completely rejected the assertion that the US was running a campaign against Pakistan.

“We are trying to make the case to the Pakistani people as well as to Pakistani leaders that only working together are we going to defeat this threat (of terrorism) to both of us.”The US, she said, was also trying to publicise the civilian assistance it was giving to strengthen the Pakistani democracy, education system and the economy.

“That is also one of the best deterrents to extremism, when quality of life is being raised for everyone,” she said. When an Indian journalist suggested that most Pakistani hated the US, Ms Nuland urged him to help improve the US image.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/09/ties-with-pakistan-vital-to-security-says-us.html

View from US: Mystery of the missing chapters By Anjum Niaz

Zamir Niazi would not know that 25 years since his book, The Press in Chains, was first published, it would cause an uproar today. The journalist embodying a frail frame, a soft voice, with pen and paper as his weaponry, challenged the ruling dictator Zia by exposing his press censorship and antipathy against free speech. The year was 1986. Zia was at the zenith of his power.

His information czars were like bulldogs let loose on any publisher, editor and reporter daring to cross the red line. Tamed and terribly crushed, the media hailed Zamir Niazi as its champion, instantly canonising his book as the ‘bible’ of press freedom.

A quarter of a century later what’s the brouhaha? Agatha Christie would have loved to weave a web of conspiracy around the mystery of the two missing chapters in the second edition published 15 months ago. At the heart of ‘whodunit’ are the Oxford University Press (OUP) Managing Director Ameena Saiyid, Editor Zubeida Mustafa, and the author’s two sons, Haris and Junaid. Zamir Niazi passed away in 2004. The mystery of the missing chapters in the new edition has taken a life of its own when this newspaper published a story three weeks ago.

I emailed Ameena and Zubeida for their comment on the controversy raked up 15 months too late. Ameena gave the background, saying Zamir Niazi had requested her, in 2000, to bring out a second edition that he was in the process of revising. He wanted Zubeida Mustafa, a senior journalist at Dawn, to edit this edition. However, the unfinished second edition died with its author. Some years later, son Junaid sent the OUP the revised material in the form of an e-file on a CD, requesting Ms Saiyid to pick up the project from where his late father had left it. Missing from the e-file were the two most critical chapters on the Zia and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto period.

Confusion worse confounded set in. After a flurry of exchanged emails between the sons and the OUP, the mystery of the missing chapters remained unsolved. In June 2010, Ameena Saiyid brought out the 2nd edition minus the two ‘Zees’ (Zia and ZAB) chapters. Why didn’t Ameena or Zubeida press the sons for the two missing chapters? Here’s what Ameena emailed back to me in response: “The OUP and Zubeida Mustafa did not raise the matter of those chapters with the sons nor did Zohra Yusuf who wrote the introduction. The reason? The 2nd edition is a complete rewrite. The subjects and titles of the chapters had changed…There was no (further) conversation with the sons about this. They did not raise it [instead they] said they had given us all the material.” Zubeida Mustafa’s response to my query corresponds with Ameena’s. She confirms that she did not receive the two chapters. The back-story that she gave me of her involvement in editing the 2nd edition is straight forward.

She is therefore surprised why the whole thing has been turned into a controversy. And why is she being blamed for omitting the two most significant chapters on Zia and ZAB. “The missing chapters were not there but their contents were there in different parts of the book though they may be not in identical words.”

Now, the sons want the OUP to pull out the 2nd edition of their father’s book to include the missing chapters. Ameena Saiyid has refused. “It will be difficult to simply insert the two chapters in the 2nd edition (now). They won’t fit with the flow.”

Besides, she says “If material from the original edition was not included, perhaps that was the author’s intention. I could not, as publisher, tamper with the author’s material and add or take away from it. I had to maintain the integrity of the material and use what the family/ heirs had given me since they were now the owners.”

Why should son Haris Niazi blame the publisher and the editor for the missing chapters? “Without these chapters,” Harris reportedly said, “the current generation of readers will be deprived of an account of two crucial periods in the history of the Pakistani press.” The mystery of the missing chapters can only be solved if we find out who compiled the final manuscript that was sent to the OUP? Many months after Zamir Niazi’s death, one of his friends and admirers – he had many – had asked Zubeida Mustafa to help in finalising the book. “The material was in the form of handwritten notes in tiny handwriting all over sheets of paper. They were not organised and needed a writer with plenty of time, skill and experience to do it.” Zubeida did not agree to do the project ostensibly because it required a lot of time.

In 2009, after retirement, Zubeida eventually agreed to edit the 2nd edition after the OUP sent her a complete manuscript on a CD. Whoever compiled the manuscript sent to the OUP by the sons of Zamir Niazi, can solve the mystery of the missing chapters. Who is that person? Meanwhile, the plot thickens: While Ameena Saiyid has agreed to publish “The Press in Chains” in its original form, the permission by the heirs of Zamir Niazi has reportedly been declined.

Is it a case of nerves? Who’s afraid of ZAB? Is it the heirs of the late author or is it the publisher who may fear a backlash from his son-in-law, President Asif Zardari? “There is no question of our censoring or being ordered by the PPP government to remove the Bhutto chapter as some people are implying. No one from the government has said a word. No pressure at all,” Ameena wrote to me.

The biggest losers are Zamir Niazi, the media, and the coming generations of Pakistanis who will never know the truth as told by the man of steel and nerves who refused to buckle under pressure. Let’s then hope Haris and Junaid Niazi (two very fine people) will allow the reprint of their father’s irreplaceable book The Press in Chains, as it appeared 25 years ago.

anjumniaz@rocketmail.com