Drazen Jorgic

Missing Wood for Trees: Pak Plans Complaint Against India for ‘Forest Bombing’

Climate change minister Malik Amin Aslam said Indian jets bombed a “forest reserve” and the government is undertaking an environmental impact assessment.

Islamabad: Pakistan plans to lodge a complaint against India at the United Nations, accusing it of “eco-terrorism” over air strikes that damaged pine trees and heightened tensions between the two countries, a government minister said on Friday.

India and Pakistan are amidst their biggest stand-off in many years, with the US and other global powers mediating to de-escalate tensions between arch-foes who have fought three wars since their independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

Indian warplanes on Tuesday bombed a hilly forest area near the northern Pakistani town of Balakot, about 40 km (25 miles) from India’s border in the Himalayan region of Kashmir. New Delhi said it had destroyed a militant training camp and killed hundreds of “terrorists”.

Also read: Did Balakot Airstrikes Hit Their Target? Satellite Imagery Raises Doubts

Pakistan denied there were any such camps in the area and locals said only one elderly villager was hurt.

Climate change minister Malik Amin Aslam said Indian jets bombed a “forest reserve” and the government was undertaking an environmental impact assessment, which will be the basis a complaint at the UN and other forums.

“What happened over there is environmental terrorism,” Aslam told Reuters, adding that dozens of pine trees had been felled. “There has been serious environmental damage.”

Two Reuters reporters who visited the site of the bombings, where four large craters could be seen, said up to 15 pine trees had been brought down by the blasts. Villagers dismissed Indian claims that hundreds of militants were killed.

The UN states that “destruction of the environment, not justified by military necessity and carried out wantonly, is clearly contrary to existing international law”, according to the UN General Assembly resolution 47/37.

India and Pakistan are also engaged in a diplomatic tussle, with New Delhi vowing to isolate Pakistan over its alleged links to militant groups. Islamabad is currently putting pressure on the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to uninvite India’s foreign minister from their next meeting.

(Reuters)

Abducted Pakistani Writer Alleges ‘Intimidation’ Ahead of Polls

“I feel very insecure. I have restricted my son’s movement. I worry every time my husband or I go out,” Gul Bukhari said, adding that she now often sends live updates on her whereabouts to her friends and family.

Islamabad: A Pakistani writer and activist says she fears for her life after being briefly abducted from a military cantonment in the city of Lahore on 5 June, an incident that triggered national outrage and saw fingers pointed at the powerful armed forces.

Gul Bukhari, a harsh critic of the military and its alleged meddling in politics, said there was an atmosphere of “fear and intimidation” in the media and politics in the run-up to Pakistan’s 25 July general election.

“I feel very insecure. I have restricted my son’s movement. I worry every time my husband or I go out,” Bukhari said, adding that she now often sends live updates on her whereabouts via WhatsApp to a friends and family group.

The military has denied playing any role in Bukhari’s disappearance. “We have nothing to do with it,” said army spokesman major general Asif Ghafoor days afterwards. He added that the incident should be investigated.

Ghafoor’s office did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment about accusations the army was stifling the media.

Since Bukhari’s abduction there have been mounting complaints from media houses and journalists about being muzzled by threats of physical and financial retribution against those who cross “red lines” in reporting about the military.

Bukhari declined to go into details of her ordeal, in which she was dragged from her car and hooded before assailants dropped her back at her house four hours later. But she told Reuters her abduction could be “viewed within that context” of intimidation ahead of this month’s election.

She said she has asked the police to offer her security but none has been provided. When contacted by Reuters, police had no immediate comment.

After Bukhari’s disappearance, many blamed the military. A driver who was transporting her to a Waqt TV studio at the time told colleagues afterwards that men in army uniforms stood guard while others in plainclothes dragged her from the car.

Bukhari, a dual Pakistani-British national, credits her release to swift coverage by international media outlets and a ferocious social media backlash inside Pakistan, which saw politicians and rights activists across the political spectrum voice their outrage about her disappearance on Twitter.

She said her abduction had nonetheless sent a message that “nobody is untouchable, no one is immune” ahead of polls.

“It was very audacious, it was very visible,” she said. “If there was a sense of fear, now it is complete. Now there is not just sense of fear, it’s panic.”

A day before Bukhari’s abduction, major general Ghafoor told a news conference that the military was aware of those making or re-tweeting “anti-state” comments on social media. He then displayed a web-chart with names and pictures of many prominent journalists and TV personalities. Bukhari was not on the list.

Targeted

Other activists and media outlets say they feel targeted for criticising the military.

Dawn, the leading English-language newspaper which angered the army in May by publishing an interview with ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, says its deliveries have since been blocked in what it calls a “wide-ranging and seemingly coordinated” assault on the publication and its finances.

Waqass Goraya, who alleges he was tortured when he and four other bloggers were abducted for several weeks last year, accused military intelligence agents of going to his family home and threatening his parents.

“They are targeting my parents to deliver a message to me that I may be safe abroad but my family in Pakistan is not,” said Goraya, who fled Pakistan last year.

The military did not comment on Goraya’s allegations or the disruption to Dawn‘s distribution.

Goraya and Bukhari, both active Twitter users, say they are also the targets of a co-ordinated trolling campaign on social media.

“The first thing I do in the morning, and sometimes last thing at night, is block and mute (on Twitter),” Bukhari said. “There is sexual abuse, threats of murder.”

Bukhari, who writes a column in the Nation newspaper, has frequently defended Sharif’s government and on social media championed a Pashtun-led rights movement that has staged nationwide rallies in protest at heavy-handed tactics in the army’s campaign against Islamist militants.

Since her abduction, Bukhari has continued to tweet to her 80,500 followers about widespread allegations of military interference in politics.

“My voice has become a little different, but the content is the same,” she said

(Reuters)

Euphemisms for Military Mask Pakistan’s Political Fears

Ahead of the July 25 vote, ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has cautioned that “aliens” (Pakistan’s military) will attempt to prevent his party from winning another five-year term. Others whisper about the role the country’s feared “angels” (intelligence services) might play.

Islamabad: In most countries, politicians who warned that aliens were trying to influence an upcoming general election would likely find themselves ridiculed by the media and shunned at the ballot box.

In Pakistan, where cryptic references to “invisible hands” wielded by “the boys” have long been part of the political lexicon, such talk is a staple of the campaign trail.

The colourful terminology is partly a reflection of Pakistan’s rich linguistic heritage, peppered with English terms such as “blue-eyed boy” (one favoured by those in power) and “red lines” (forbidden subjects).

A closer look, though, shows a political vocabulary born out of fear of openly criticising the country’s powerful military – the unnamed subject of most of the creative language.

“These terms are particular to Pakistan because of our governance structure,” said Jibran Nasir, a prominent human rights lawyer and activist. “We have militarised politics, and that’s something you don’t get so often in a modern-day democracy.”

Pakistan’s military, which did not respond to a request for comment, has repeatedly denied interfering in modern-day politics.

Coming a decade after former army chief Pervez Musharraf was forced from power, July’s general election is billed as a historic event that would mark only the second democratic transition of power for a nation that has been ruled by the military for nearly half its history since independence in 1947.

But intensifying allegations of military meddling threaten to cast a shadow over the milestone, with senior figures in Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) alleging “hidden forces” are trying to weaken the party.

“Higher powers”

With newspapers abuzz with claims the military is attempting to engineer the election result and media houses complaining that “higher powers” (the military) are crushing free speech, journalists too are relying on oblique terms to get their message across without angering the “Establishment” (the military and intelligence top brass, along with some senior civil servants and judges).

Newspaper editorials and social media are awash with fears the poll may be delayed due to behind-the-scenes scheming by “anti-democratic forces” – yet another euphemism used to describe the army and its spy bodies, including the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

In a recent speech, Sharif accused “invisible aliens” of intimidating his lawmakers and pushing them to switch sides.

“The real aliens…have been there for 70 years,” Sharif said. “Now, it is going to have a match, God willing, with humans, and humans with the blessing of God will defeat the aliens.”

On June 4, Pakistan’s military spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor declined to comment when he was asked at a news conference about the military being referred to as “aliens”.

Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician whose Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party is seen as PML-N’s main challenger, denies colluding with the military, but has in the past teased crowds at rallies that a “third umpire” might dismiss PML-N’s then-premier Sharif, widely interpreted as relying on a cricketing metaphor to suggest the army might intervene.

Nasir, the rights lawyer, said introducing “aliens” into the political lexicon was a calculated move by Sharif.

“It may be difficult for low-level PML-N workers to openly and publicly keep repeating that Nawaz Sharif is not competing against Imran Khan but against the military,” Nasir said.

“But it is easy for a worker to say he’s fighting ‘aliens’, and act naive. Everybody knows what he means.”

Many of the oblique terms for the military took hold in the 1970s and 1980s, during the rule of General Zia-ul-Haq, who had journalists tortured and whose censors vetted all stories before they were published.

“This language is well-honed and these terms all fit into the historical background of a military that has a pervasive role in Pakistani politics,” said Cyril Almeida, a columnist for Dawn, the country’s largest English-language newspaper.

Many writers also feel the influence and overflow of Pakistan’s lingua-franca Urdu, a flowery and poetic language, has swelled the popularity of such colourful turns of phrase in English, which is Pakistan’s second official language widely spoken by the political and business elites.

“Bad form”

Terms such as “angels”, referring to ISI and other intelligence agencies, hail from the belief that none of their work is documented and their involvement cannot be proven – but they still exist.

On June 5, a prominent social activist who was openly critical of the military was abducted for several hours. Her colleagues blamed a “sensitive institution”, another commonly used term in Pakistan to refer to the military and ISI.

The doublespeak often befuddles diplomats engaged in talks with Pakistani civilian government officials.

“We’ve noticed they will never say ‘ISI’. It’s as if somehow it would be bad form for them to admit they actually exist,” said one Western diplomat.

“They always tell us they have to run our request past ‘relevant authorities’ or talk to ‘appropriate authorities’.”

In a conspiracy prone nation, it’s hard to untangle the truth from paranoia. But what is clear is the widespread belief by prominent politicians, businessmen and even ordinary people that their phones are tapped.

In a recent meeting with a government minister in his office, the official signalled that he was talking about the military by folding his right arm and using his first two fingers to tap an invisible rank insignia on his shoulder.

On-the-record interviews can be equally bewildering for journalists.

Talal Chaudhry, state minister for interior affairs until last week, recently told Reuters that certain state institutions were pressuring rights activists to stifle dissent and create a “controlled democracy”, which in Pakistan refers to the concept of de facto military control.

But when asked which state institutions he was referring to, Talal declined to name them.

“By naming them things might get even worse and we don’t want to make things worse,” Talal said. “We want to make them better.”

(Reuters)

Pakistan Seeks Economic Lifeline With Fresh China Loans

Lending to Pakistan by China is on track to hit $5 billion by June. The new loans will help bolster Pakistan’s rapidly-depleting foreign currency reserves, which tumbled to $10.3 billion last week from $16.4 billion in May 2017.

Islamabad: Pakistan expects to obtain fresh Chinese loans worth $1-2 billion to help it avert a balance of payments crisis, Pakistani government sources said, in another sign of Islamabad’s growing reliance on Beijing for financial support.

Lending to Pakistan by China and its banks is on track to hit $5 billion in the fiscal year ending in June, according to recent disclosures by officials and Pakistan finance ministry data reviewed by Reuters.

The ramp up in China‘s lending comes as the United States is cutting aid to Pakistan following a fracture in relations between the on-off allies. In February, Washington led efforts that saw Pakistan placed on a global terror financing watchlist, drawing anger in Islamabad amid fears it will hurt the economy.

The new Chinese loans that are being negotiated will help bolster Pakistan‘s rapidly-depleting foreign currency reserves, which tumbled to $10.3 billion last week from $16.4 billion in May 2017.

The talks come only weeks after a group of Chinese commercial banks lent $1 billion to Pakistan‘s government in April.

The reserves decline and a sharp widening of Pakistan‘s current account deficit have prompted many financial analysts to predict that after the general election, likely in July, Islamabad will need its second International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout since 2013. The last IMF assistance package was worth $6.7 billion.

Beijing’s attempts to prop up Pakistan‘s economy follow a deepening in political and military ties in the wake of China‘s pledge to fund badly-needed power and road infrastructure as part of the $57 billion China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key cog in Beijing’s vast Belt and Road initiative.

“I think this month we will get that $1-2 billion,” said a senior Pakistan government official, saying the funds will come from Chinese state-run institutions.

A second government official confirmed Pakistan was in “sensitive” talks with Beijing over extra funding for up to $2 billion.

Pakistan finance ministry officials did not respond to a request for comment.

China‘s finance ministry and central bank, who were faxed questions about the loans, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Although Pakistan‘s economic growth has soared to nearly 6 percent, the fastest pace in 13 years, the structural problems with the economy are coming to the fore. It is similar to 2013, when foreign currency reserves dwindled and Pakistan narrowly escaped a full-blown currency crisis.

“The current situation appears to be a replica of what we experienced in 2013, albeit on a slightly larger scale,” said Yaseen Anwar, who was the governor of the central bank, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), back in 2013.

The darkening macroeconomic outlook prompted the IMF earlier this month to downgrade its economic growth forecast for Pakistan to 4.7% for the next fiscal year ending in June 2019, way below the government’s own ambitious target of 6.2%.

“Temporary Bridge”

Over the past nine months, Pakistan has enacted a series of measures to combat its ballooning current account deficit, including hiking tariffs on more than 200 luxury items and devaluing its currency by about 10%.

In the six months to end of March, Pakistan took bilateral loans worth $1.2 billion from China, according to the Pakistan Finance Ministry document reviewed by Reuters. During this period the government also borrowed about $1.7 billion in commercial loans, mostly from Chinese banks, finance ministry officials added.

In April, Pakistan‘s central bank borrowed another $1 billion from Chinese commercial banks to buffer its reserves, State Bank of Pakistan Governor Tariq Bajwa told the Financial Times (FT). A spokesman for the central bank told Reuters the FT report was accurate.

The $1-2 billion under discussion would be in addition to that loan.

So far, all the measures appear to have had a limited impact on Pakistan‘s economy and foreign exchange reserves continue to plummet.

The collapse of the reserves is mainly due to the central bank’s efforts to maintain an artificially strong rupee over the past few years, analysts say. The currency is now trading at about 115.50/116 to the US dollar, down 9.8% in last six months after two separate devaluations since December.

In the past three weeks, reserves have declined by $1.2 billion and now stand at two months worth of import cover.

“This new (Chinese) money is a temporary bridge until August or September, when a new government will come into office and the country will likely opt for a new IMF programme,” said Saad Hashmey, chief economist at brokerage house Topline Securities.

Hashmey and several other economists are predicting another currency devaluation by the end of 2018.

Pakistan may also seek help from Saudi Arabia. The Middle Eastern ally loaned $1.5 billion to Pakistan in 2014 to shore up its foreign currency reserves.

Rising Exports

The scale of the task facing Pakistan is huge as the current account deficit widened to $14 billion in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year, according to SBP data. Dollar-denominated debt repayments in 2018 are also expected to top $5 billion, analysts say.

Part of the problem for Pakistan has been a multi-year consumer boom accompanied by huge imports of Chinese machinery for CPEC projects, which has piled pressure on the current account deficit. More recently, a jump in the oil price has compounded the problem as Pakistan is a fuel importer.

One of the senior Pakistani government officials said the money from China should give the economy breathing space.

He said exports have shot up in the last two months, helped by the devaluation in the rupee, and that should help ease the current account deficit.

However, Pakistan‘s central bank appears more nervous as oil prices climb, raising its main policy rate by 50 basis point to 6.5% on Friday and warning the “the balance-of-payments picture…has further deteriorated”.

(Reuters)

Blow After Blow Dims Re-Election Hopes of Pakistan’s Ruling Party

Besides internal division and interference from other state institutions, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz also faces tough competition from Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.

Islamabad: Reeling from clashes with the judiciary and hobbled by media restrictions linked to the powerful military, Pakistan’s ruling party‘s once-wide path to retaining power is narrowing ahead of a general election this summer.

In the past year, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party has seen a prime minister – its founder Nawaz Sharif – and foreign minister both ousted by the courts, while its finance minister, charged with corruption, fled the country. On Sunday, a gunman shot and wounded its interior minister.

All of this comes before another court ruling due next month that could send Sharif to jail for 14 years over a corruption case he says is a “conspiracy” against him.

An alleged religious extremist has been arrested over the gun attack on interior minister Ahsan Iqbal.

That appears unrelated to PML-N’s wider problems with the military and judiciary – both of whom deny pursuing a political agenda. But the assassination attempt adds to a growing list of woes afflicting a party that less than a year ago was deemed a shoo-in for another five-year term.

Such a series of body blows suggests the PML-N is unlikely to repeat its success at the 2013 election, which left it with a majority in the national assembly, with most analysts predicting a hung parliament that will usher in a coalition government.

“All these other issues that are thrown up just distract the party from doing what it needs to do in an election,” said Huma Yusuf, a columnist and Wilson Center Global Fellow. “It makes it an unequal playing field.”

PML-N’s main challenge is expected to come from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, led by cricket hero-turned-politician Imran Khan, who has promised a radical change for the poor if he is elected as premier.

‘Aliens’ at work

Sharif, a three-time prime minister whose second term was cut short by a bloodless military coup in 1999, has cast the electoral campaign as a battle to protect Pakistan’s fragile democracy after a decade of uninterrupted civilian rule.

While no-one is suggesting the army wants to outright seize power again, PML-N insiders say Sharif’s relationship with the generals is in tatters and accuse shadowy military networks of working with the judiciary to weaken the party.

Sharif on Thursday said “aliens”, a typical coded reference to the military establishment, had been calling PML-N lawmakers and pushing them to abandon the party or join PTI. The lawmakers were threatened with corruption cases being opened against them if they disobeyed, he said.

The military, which did not respond to a request for comment, has strongly denied interfering in politics.

PML-N officials accuse the military of using its muscle to arm-twist the media, as tv channels at times mute the sound on Sharif and his allies if they criticise the judiciary or the military. Newspapers have also omitted Sharif comments on those topics.

Geo TV, Pakistan’s most popular station, was taken off the air across much of the country at the end of March and only resumed coverage in April after striking a deal with military representatives to cease favourable coverage of Sharif and stop any criticism of the Supreme Court and the “establishment”, according to two officials who work at the station’s media group. Geo said it was committed to an independent editorial policy.

PML-N has tried to circumvent the restrictions by focusing on social media, live streaming all rallies on Facebook and spreading its messages on WhatsApp and Twitter.

Opposition leader Imran Khan speaks to supporters during a celebration rally after the Supreme Court disqualified Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Islamabad, Pakistan July 30, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Faisal Mahmood/File Photo

‘Let go of their ego’

Analysts say the party is also hamstrung by internal divisions.

Sharif is yet to fully throw his weight behind his brother Shehbaz Sharif, who is the PML-N president and favourite to replace current Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. In the dynastic world of Pakistani politics, that has prompted speculation Nawaz fears his daughter and presumed heir Maryam would lose out in a future succession battle to Shehbaz’s son, Hamza.

Another internal debate is over whether to take a more conciliatory line with the military and judges.

One PML-N minister, speaking on condition of anonymity, said while Sharif’s tone has hardened in recent months, ties with the military establishment would have to be repaired if the party was to govern again.

“The largest political force in the country – PML-N – should not be at loggerheads with both the judiciary and the army,” he said. “All sides need to let go of their ego and come together for the good of the country.”

Pakistan’s judges have denied singling out Sharif or the PML-N, and instead say they are enforcing accountability, while Sharif’s critics accuse the veteran leader of making up excuses to try to evade justice over corruption.

Two serving PML-N ministers are facing contempt of court charges, while former finance minister Ishaq Dar went into exile in London mid-way through a corruption trial.

Foreign minister Khawaja Asif, a Sharif loyalist, was removed from parliament by a lower court in late April as he was deemed not “honest” under a constitutional provision that the Supreme Court also used to oust Sharif. The courts said both men did not declare salaries drawn from United Arab Emirates companies, an allegation they both dispute.

Sharif has portrayed his party as a victim of interference from other state institutions, while accusing Khan of being a pawn of the military, a charge Khan vehemently denies.

Electoral battleground

Despite the series of setbacks, Sharif is still drawing sizeable crowds at rallies, and a nationwide poll conducted in March by Gallup Pakistan showed PML-N had a 12 point lead over PTI.

The party‘s fate will be largely decided by how it performs in the vast Punjab province, long a PML-N stronghold that returns 143 of the 272 directly contested seats in the national assembly.

Mushahid Hussain Sayed, a PML-N senator who is on the campaign trail with Sharif and Shehbaz, said PML-N’s message was resonating with voters who see signs of economic progress in infrastructure projects, from six-lane highways and bus transport systems to power stations, including vast projects funded by Beijing as part of China’s Belt and Road intuitive.

PML-N also boasts a well-oiled electoral machine built over many decades in Punjab, where Sharif was chief minister in the 1980s and where in the same role Shehbaz has built a strong reputation as a competent administrator since 2008.

But PTI leader Khan, whose stock has risen since Sharif’s ouster, believes the path to victory in Punjab will be through so-called “electables”, wealthy and largely fickle politicians who carry large rural vote banks due to their status as feudal lords, tribal chieftains and heads of various clans.

At least seven lawmakers in southern Punjab have switched allegiance away from PML-N to PTI this week, and Khan has forecast a flood of defections once the electables see PML-N is unlikely to be on the winning side.

“The PML-N grip is breaking as we speak,” Khan said.

(Additional by Syed Raza Hassan in Karachi and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; Writing by Drazen Jorgic)

(Reuters)

Pakistani Anti-Establishment Journalist Says He Escaped Abduction Attempt

Taha Siddiqui reports for France 24 and is the Pakistan bureau chief of Indian television channel WION.

Pakistani journalist Taha Siddiqui, who escaped a kidnapping attempt, speaks at a gathering in Islamabad, Pakistan May 23, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Sara Farid/Files

Islamabad: A Pakistani journalist, known for criticising his country’s military establishment, said on Wednesday he had narrowly escaped being kidnapped by armed men, in an incident that came months after he complained of being harassed by the security services.

Taha Siddiqui, who reports for France 24 and is the Pakistan bureau chief of Indian television channel WION, said the attempted abduction took place while he was being driven by taxi to the airport serving the capital Islamabad and the neighbouring, larger garrison city of Rawalpindi.

“I was on my way to airport today at 8:20 am when 10-12 armed men stopped my cab & forcibly tried to abduct me. I managed to escape. Safe and with police now,” Siddiqui tweeted from a friend’s Twitter account early in the morning.

“Looking for support in any way possible #StopEnforcedDisappearances,” he added in the same tweet.

Rights groups have denounced the kidnappings of several social media activists over the past year as attempts to intimidate and silence critics of the Pakistan’s security establishment.

Last year, five Pakistani bloggers went missing for several weeks before four of them were released. All four fled abroad and two afterwards told media that they were tortured by a state intelligence agency during their disappearance.

The military has staunchly denied playing a role in any enforced disappearances, as has the civilian government. In the past, militants have also targeted journalists.

Siddiqui spoke to Reuters from a police station where he was filing a report on the incident, and described how his taxi was stopped on the highway when another vehicle swerved, and braked suddenly in front of it.

About a dozen men armed with rifles and revolvers pulled him out of the cab, beat him and “threatened to kill” him.

“They threw me in the back of the vehicle in which I had been travelling, but the door on the other side was open,” Siddiqui said.

“I jumped out and ran and was able to get into a taxi that was nearby, whose driver then floored it.”

When the taxi stopped, Siddiqui hid in a ditch for a while, he added.

Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists said “Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency should stop harassing Taha Siddiqui”, referring to the civilian agency that last year began a crackdown on online criticism of the powerful military.

Siddiqui last year filed a court petition to stop the agency from harassing him.

Saroop Ijaz, a lawyer who works with Human Rights Watch, said Siddiqui’s kidnap attempt was worrying development and added that “violence and the threat of it are not legitimate means to deal with dissenting voices” in the country.

(Reuters)

China Gives Large Amounts of Aid to Pakistani Town Gwadar; Hopes to Extend Maritime Reach

Beijing’s unusual largesse has fuelled suspicions in the US and India that Gwadar is part of China’s future geo-strategic plans to challenge US naval dominance.

A general view of Gwadar port in Gwadar, Pakistan October 4, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Drazen Jorgic/Files

Gwadar: China is lavishing vast amounts of aid on a small Pakistani fishing town to win over locals and build a commercial deep-water port that the United States and India suspect may also one day serve the Chinese navy.

Beijing has built a school, sent doctors and pledged about $500 million in grants for an airport, hospital, college and badly-needed water infrastructure for Gwadar, a dusty town whose harbour juts out into the Arabian Sea, overlooking some of the world’s busiest oil and gas shipping lanes.

The grants include $230 million for a new international airport, one of the largest such disbursements China has made abroad, according to researchers and Pakistani officials.

The handouts for the Gwadar project is a departure from Beijing’s usual approach in other countries. China has traditionally derided Western-style aid in favour of infrastructure projects for which it normally provides loans through Chinese state-owned commercial and development banks.

“The concentration of grants is quite striking,” said Andrew Small, an author of a book on China-Pakistan relations and a Washington-based researcher at the German Marshall Fund think tank.

“China largely doesn’t do aid or grants, and when it has done them, they have tended to be modest.”

Pakistan has welcomed the aid with open hands. However, Beijing’s unusual largesse has also fuelled suspicions in the United States and India that Gwadar is part of China’s future geo-strategic plans to challenge US naval dominance.

“It all suggests that Gwadar, for a lot of people in China, is not just a commercial proposition over the longer term,” Small said.

The Chinese foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Beijing and Islamabad see Gwadar as the future jewel in the crown of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship of Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative to build a new “Silk Road” of land and maritime trade routes across more than 60 countries in Asia, Europe and Africa.

The plan is to turn Gwadar into a trans-shipment hub and megaport to be built alongside special economic zones from which export-focused industries will ship goods worldwide. A web of energy pipelines, roads and rail links will connect Gwadar to China’s western regions.

Port trade is expected to grow from 1.2 million tonnes in 2018 to about 13 million tonnes by 2022, Pakistani officials say. At the harbour, three new cranes have been installed and dredging will next year deepen the port depth to 20 metres at five berths.

But the challenges are stark. Gwadar has no access to drinking water, power blackouts are common and separatist insurgents threaten attacks against Chinese projects in Gwadar and the rest of Baluchistan, a mineral-rich province that is still Pakistan’s poorest region.

Security is tight, with Chinese and other foreign visitors driven around in convoys of soldiers and armed police.

Beijing is also trying to overcome the distrust of outsiders evident in Baluchistan, where indigenous Baloch fear an influx of other ethnic groups and foreigners. Many residents say the pace of change is too slow.

“Local people are not completely satisfied,” said Essar Nori, a lawmaker for Gwadar, adding that the separatists were tapping into that dissatisfaction.

Pakistani officials are urging Gwadar residents to be patient, vowing to urgently build desalination plants and power stations.

Cautionary tale

China’s Gwadar project contrasts with similar efforts in Sri Lanka, where the village of Hambantota was transformed into a port complex – but was saddled with Chinese debt.

Last week, Sri Lanka formally handed over operations to China on a 99-year lease in exchange for lighter debt repayments, a move that sparked street protests over what many Sri Lankans view as an erosion of sovereignty.

The Hambantota port, like Gwadar, is part of a network of harbours Beijing is developing in Asia and Africa that have spooked India, which fears being encircled by China’s growing naval power.

But Pakistani officials say comparisons to Hambantota are unfair because the Gwadar project has much less debt.

On top of the airport, Chinese handouts in Gwadar include $100 million to expand a hospital by 250 beds, $130 million towards upgrading water infrastructure, and $10 million for a technical and vocational college, according to Pakistani government documents and officials.

“We welcome this assistance as it’s changing the quality of life of the people of Gwadar for the better,” said senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the parliamentary committee that oversees CPEC, including Gwadar.

China and Pakistan jointly choose which projects will be developed under the CPEC mechanism, Sayed added.

When China suggested a 7,000 metre runway for the new airport, Pakistan pushed for a 12,000 metre one that could accommodate planes as large as the Airbus 380 and be used for military purposes, according to Sajjad Baloch, a director of the Gwadar Development Authority.

The scale of Chinese grants is extraordinary, according to Brad Parks, executive director of AidData, a research lab at the US-based William and Mary university that collected data on Chinese aid across 140 countries from 2000-2014.

Since 2014, Beijing has pledged over $800 million in grants and concessional loans for Gwadar, which has less than 100,000 people. In the 15 years before that, China gave about $2.4 billion in concessional loans and grants during this period across the whole of Pakistan, a nation of 207 million people.

“Gwadar is exceptional even by the standards of China’s past activities in Pakistan itself,” Parks said.

Hearts and minds

There are early signs China’s efforts to win hearts and minds are beginning to bear fruit in Gwadar.

“Baluchistan is backward and underdeveloped, but we are seeing development after China’s arrival,” said Salam Dashti, 45, a grocer whose two children attend the new Chinese-built primary school.

But there are major pitfalls ahead.

Tens of thousands of people living by the port will have to be relocated.

For now, they live in cramped single-story concrete houses corroded by sea water on a narrow peninsula, where barefoot fishermen offload their catch on newly-paved roads strewn with rubbish. Many of the fishermen say they fear they’ll lose their livelihoods once the port starts operating.

Indigenous residents’ fear of becoming a minority is inevitable with Gwadar’s population expected to jump more than 15-fold in coming decades. On the edge of town, mansions erected by land speculators are popping up alongside the sand dunes.

Analysts say China is aware that previous efforts to develop Gwadar port failed partly due to the security threat posed by Baloch separatists, so Beijing is trying to counter the insurgents’ narrative that China wants to exploit Baluchistan.

“That weighs heavily on the minds of the Chinese,” Parks added. “It’s almost certainly true that they are trying to safeguard their investments by getting more local buy-in.”

Chinese officials, meanwhile, are promoting the infrastructure development they are funding.

“Every day you can see new changes. It shows the sincerity of Chinese for development of Gwadar,” Fijian Zhao, the deputy chief of mission at the Chinese embassy in Islamabad, tweeted last month.

Naval facility

For its investment in Gwadar, China will receive 91% of revenues until the port is returned to Pakistan in four decades’ time. The operator, China Overseas Ports Holding Company, will also be exempt from major taxes for more than 20 years.

Pakistan’s maritime affairs minister, Hasil Bizenjo, said the arrival of the Chinese in the region contrasted with the experience of the past two centuries, when Russia and Britain, and later the United States and the Soviet Union, vied for control of the warm water ports of the Persian Gulf.

“The Chinese have come very smoothly, they have reached the warm waters,” Bizenjo told Reuters. “What they are investing is less than a peanut for access to warm waters.”

When a US Pentagon report in June suggested Gwadar could become a military base for China, a concern that India has also expressed, Beijing dismissed the idea.

“Talk that China is building a military base in Pakistan is pure guesswork,” said a Chinese defence ministry spokesman, Wu Sian.

Bizenjo and other Pakistani officials say Beijing has not asked to use Gwadar for naval purposes.

“This port, they will use it mostly for their commercial interests, but it depends on the next 20 years where the world goes,” Bizenjo said.

(Reuters)

Pakistan’s Supreme Court Disqualifies Finance Minister Ishaq Dar

The court also disqualified Sharif from office after an investigative panel alleged his family could not account for its vast wealth.

Pakistan’s finance minister Ishaq Dar gestures during a news conference to announce the economic survey of fiscal year 2016-2017, in Islamabad, Pakistan, May 25, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Faisal Mahmood/Files

Islamabad: Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Friday disqualified finance minister Ishaq Dar from office after an investigation into the wealth of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, state-run PTV news channel said.

The court also disqualified Sharif from office after an investigative panel alleged his family could not account for its vast wealth.

Dar, who was Sharif’s former accountant, had submitted documents to the Supreme Court about how the Sharif family obtained their wealth that included a portfolio of upscale London properties.

Dar has been considered one of the most influential people in Sharif’s cabinet and credited with bringing the economy on to a more sure footing after the 2013 balance of payments crisis.

(Reuters)

Pakistan’s Supreme Court Considers Dismissal of PM Sharif Over Corruption Report

The court is expected to make a decision in a week or two, with analysts split on whether it will dismiss Sharif or recommend a fresh investigation.

FILE PHOTO: Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan addresses attendees during the 70th session of the UN General Assembly at the UN Headquarters in New York, September 30, 2015. Credit: Reuters/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan addresses attendees during the 70th session of the UN General Assembly at the UN Headquarters in New York, September 30, 2015. Credit: Reuters/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

Islamabad: Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Friday finished hearing arguments on a scathing corruption report into the family wealth of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and will begin deliberating on whether or not to disqualify the premier.

The court is expected to make a decision in a week or two, with analysts split on whether it will dismiss Sharif outright or recommend a fresh investigation and corruption trial by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

Few expect the judges to drop the case, since the Supreme Court appointed the investigatory panel that alleged the Sharif family’s wealth was beyond its means.

It further accused his children, including presumed heir Maryam, of signing forged documents to hide ownership of posh London flats.

Sharif has denied wrongdoing and slammed the 254-page report by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) as biased and slanderous. He has also rejected opposition demands to stand down.

Sharif’s lawyers have been arguing that the JIT overstepped its remit, and disputed its findings.

Ejaz Afzal Khan, who heads the three-judge Supreme Court panel hearing Sharif’s case, on Friday announced the hearings had been concluded by saying: “judgement reserved”.

Khan did not say when the Supreme Court would announce its decision, however.

Opposition parties believe Sharif is wobbling and expect the Supreme Court to deliver a knockout blow to his premiership by employing a little-used constitutional provision to dismiss a sitting official.

“From our legal perspective it’s crystal clear: he can’t survive this,” said Shafqat Mahmood, a lawmaker and senior official with the opposition PTI party.

Sharif’s allies interpret the court‘s decision not to summon him as indicating that it will order a NAB investigation.

Such an outcome would be seen as something of a victory by the ruling PML-N party because it would probably allow Sharif to finish his term and even contest the next polls in 2018.

Sharif has faced numerous investigations since he served his first two terms in the 1990s and now has many pending NAB cases. Both those terms were cut short, and he spent a long time in exile after being deposed in a military coup in 1999.

Sharif, son of an industrialist, has denied all the claims against him and his supporters say he has never been convicted of anything despite facing unprecedented scrutiny during three stints in power.

Sharif has talked of a conspiracy against him, but has not named anyone. Privately, however, his allies say elements of the military and the judiciary are bent on toppling him.

Last week, the army spokesman brushed aside suggestions that the military was the hidden hand behind the investigation.

Opposition politicians say Sharif is concocting conspiracy claims to save himself, and argue that if he really wanted to protect democracy he would step down.

(Reuters)

Chinese Men Killed by ISIS Were Preachers, Says Pakistan

Pakistan has said that the two Chinese men were preachers who had posed as business people to enter the country.

A soldier stands guard near the site where two Chinese teachers were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen, in Quetta, Pakistan May 24, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Naseer Ahmed

Islamabad: Pakistan identified on Monday two Chinese nationals recently abducted and killed by ISIS and, in a new twist, said the two were preachers who had posed as business people to enter the country.

The interior ministry named the two as Lee Zing Yang, 24, and Meng Li Si, 26, and said their violation of visa rules had contributed to their abductions. Previously officials said they were Chinese-language teachers.

The two were abducted by armed men pretending to be policemen on May 24 in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan province. Last week, ISIS‘s Amaq news agency said its members had killed them.

“Instead of engaging in any business activity, they went to Quetta and under the garb of learning [the] Urdu language from a Korean national…were actually engaged in preaching,” the ministry said in a statement.

It did not say what kind of preachers they were, nor did it say if the Korean was from North Korea or South Korea.

The interior ministry confirmed the two Chinese had been killed but it was not clear if their bodies have been found.

The kidnapping was a rare crime against Chinese nationals in Pakistan, which has long had close ties to Beijing, but it has alarmed the growing Chinese community in the country.

China has pledged to invest $57 billion in Pakistan in projects linked to its “Belt and Road” infrastructure plan aimed at linking China with the Middle East and Europe.

But the infusion of cash has come with frequent requests for Pakistan to improve security, especially in the western Baluchistan province that will house a deepwater port and a road artery vital for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPC).

The incident has prompted Pakistan to boost security around Chinese nationals and other foreigners, and accelerated plans for thousands-strong special police protection units to focus on safeguarding Chinese citizens.

Interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said in response to the case that there should be a review of the visa process for Chinese nationals entering Pakistan, and for a databank to track Chinese workers in different parts of the country.

Khan ordered the databank to be “shared with all security agencies”, his ministry said in astatement.

At present, Chinese citizens are able to obtain visas faster than other nationals, and for longer periods when their work relates to CPEC projects.

Khan said the government must work on keeping visitors secure but also appeared to try to shift the blame for the security lapse onto the Chinese nationals, saying they should have informed the authorities of their activities.

“The minister observed that it is highly unfortunate that a misuse of the terms of [the] business visa contributed to the unfortunate incident of abduction and subsequent murder of two innocent Chinese,” the ministry said.

(Reuters)