By Saleem Shahid and Amanullah Kasi
QUETTA: Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani has accused the Frontier Corps of running a parallel government in Balochistan.

In a statement issued here on Wednesday, the chief minister said that FC’s attitude had harmed the ongoing reconciliation process and, as a result, the situation had worsened.

“The FC has established a government paralled to the provincial government,” he said.

He urged the federal government to direct law-enforcement agencies in Balochistan to work for normalising the situation and strengthening the reconciliation process.

The federal government, he said, should realise the gravity of the situation. Otherwise, he warned, it would go from bad to worse and he would not be responsible for that.

Meanwhile, a statement issued here on Wednesday by a spokesman for the FC said that the force had nothing to do with the killing of BSO activists.

“No FC personnel wer....... Read more

By Habib Khan Ghori in The Dawn, Jan 21
KARACHI: Several Sindhi nationalist parties frustrated by what they view as a ‘change’ in the Pakistan People’s Party’s original agenda have intensified their efforts to form a single platform to launch a joint political struggle for the rights of the province and its people.

Shah Mohammad Shah, head of the Save Sindh Movement (SSM) — part of a five-party alliance — and Saleem Jan Mazari of the Sindh Awami Alliance told a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Wednesday that they agreed to form the platform quickly and contest the upcoming local government elections jointly across Sindh. Pressing issues confronting Sindh were also discussed at length at a meeting held on Wednesday at the residence of the SSM chief.

The SSM groups together the Sindh Awami Tehreek, Sindh National Front, Sindh United Party, Sindh Taraqqi Pasand Party and Save Sindh Movement.

The meeting, they said, deci....... Read more

The walkout by two ministers from the Balochistan Assembly session on Monday in protest against the killing of two Baloch students at a protest rally in Khuzdar last week and condemnation of the killings by senators of both the treasury and opposition benches once again focuses minds on the plight of the Baloch. When the PPP government presented a package for Balochistan, a province that has been fighting for its rights since the inception of Pakistan, many termed it a historic step. Though the Baloch nationalists rejected the package and said that it would not bring about any change in the current situation, a broad swathe of opinion thought the nationalist leaders were being overly pessimistic. Now, however, it seems the ‘pessimist’ Baloch nationalists were right after all. This has been proved yet again by the incident in Khuzdar, where the people’s right to a peaceful protest was violated and brutally crushed. The use of brutal force by the Frontier Constabulary (FC) has not ....... Read more

ISLAMABAD: A US drone strike that nearly killed the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief may encourage the CIA to keep up its campaign to eliminate high-profile Taliban by remote control.

But the strikes may only have limited success and generate more anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, which the US sees as a front-line state in its war on terror.

Taliban officials said TTP chief Hakeemullah Mehsud was wounded slightly last week after being targeted in a drone attack. Washington says its drone strikes are key to defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Coming just days after Hakeemullah appeared in a farewell video with the suicide bomber who killed CIA agents in Afghanistan, the apparent revenge attack was a reminder that drone attacks are highly capable of eliminating top Taliban leaders.

Analysts say the high-tech aircraft – designed to throw Al Qaeda and Taliban operations into disarray – are unlikely to break resilient militant groups in the long term....... Read more

By Joshua Partlow in The Washington Post, Jan 19
SPIN BOLDAK, AFGHANISTAN — The pace of President Obama’s troop buildup in Afghanistan hinges in part on a narrow, pothole-riddled dirt track that is controlled by a 33-year-old suspected drug lord and by the whims of the Pakistani military.

It is down this road each month that thousands of cargo trucks bearing U.S. and NATO military supplies pass through the only major border crossing in southern Afghanistan — the area where most American troop reinforcements are scheduled to deploy.

Here at the border crossing, where traffic switches from the left side of the road in Pakistan to the right in Afghanistan, supply trucks must pass along with the flood of pedestrians, donkey carts, drug shipments and materials to make roadside bombs. Only about 2 to 3 percent of the vehicles are regularly searched, and payoffs to border guards are rampant, U.S. military officials say.

The chaos a....... Read more

KARACHI: Since the last week of March 2008, more than 38,800 people have been issued licences of prohibited weapons such as Kalashnikov, MP5, G3 and Uzi, mostly on direct orders of the prime minister and minister of state for interior.

Most alarmingly, these licences were issued without any police verification or an official check on the background of the applicants, according to an investigation by this correspondent. A whopping 100,000 licences of non-prohibited bore weapons, such as revolvers and pistols, were also issued without any police verification whatsoever during the same 21-month period.

There is no formal or official procedure in the country for a common Pakistani to properly apply for a prohibited bore weapon license other than finding a member of the National Assembly or the Senate having direct connections with the prime minister or minister of state for interior for the approval of license, hence prohibited bore licenses are a precious commodity and arms ....... Read more

LAHORE: Nawab Akbar Bugti’s death was the result of a clash with the writ of the state, former president Pervez Musharraf said on Tuesday.

According to a private TV channel, Musharraf said neither the president nor the chief of the army staff could give direct orders to the army and other law enforcment agencies on any particular issue and the allegations against him were baseless.

He said Akbar Bugti and his henchmen challenged the writ of the state and later took refuge in a cave. He said a four-member delegation of the army went into the cave to ask Bugti and his followers to lay down their arms. “It seems the cave collapsed which resulted in the death of Bugti and the four soldiers”, he said. He said billions of rupees were spent on the Gwadar port under his regime. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\01\13\story_13-1-2010_pg7_4

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Bill asks Zardari to certify Pakistan’s sovereignty, every year: The News, Jan 13

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Terminally ill Pak Steel displays might of corruption in Pakistan

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