birdman of Waziristan

 South Waziristan tribal agency, arguably the most dangerous place in Pakistan’s militant-infested north-west, has become the unlikely focal point of an impromptu bird conservation project involving a nature-loving tribesman and ornithologists across northern Europe.

The project is the result of the guilt felt by Ehsanullah Wazir, a local journalist, who in 1999 was given a ring taken from the leg of a bird killed by a catapult-wielding schoolboy in Dabkot village. The ring had been attached by ornithologists to track the bird’s migrationary patterns.

“I lost the ring and felt very guilty about not having reported it to the appropriate authorities,” he said.

However, in March 2001, the opportunity to assuage his guilt arose when a friend recovered another ring that, upon careful examination, was found to bear the address of a bird observatory in the Swedish town of Annsjon.

Wazir wrote to the address with details of where the bird, a “shangharai” in the Pashto language, had been killed and was surprised to receive a rapid reply from Thomas Holmberg, the head of the centre.

The young tribesman, it emerged, had inadvertently solved a mystery about the winter migration of the tiny bluethroat sparrow that had mystified European ornithologists for years.

“Where our Scandinavian bluethroats spend their winter has long been under discussion, although India had often been suggested as a possible area of wintering. The recovery of the bluethroat from Pakistan is the most memorable event for Swedish bird-ringing this year,” wrote Mr Holmberg, enclosing a book about the birds of the Indian subcontinent and advice on how to record migratory data for scientific purposes.

Inspired by the response, Wazir set up the Waziristan Birds Ringing and Protection Centre and launched a campaign to stop the widespread hunting of migratory birds.

He began by writing to schoolteachers throughout the area, urging them to educate children about the birds and to ask them to deposit any rings they recovered from hunted birds at the school for collection.

Wazir persevered with the campaign, lobbying the head of the local administration to take action against hunting, which is illegal if deemed excessive.

Meanwhile, he sought support from officials further down the chain but it turned out that all of them were avid hunters, who, privately admitting the fact to Wazir, officially declared hunting in the area as minimal and not requiring extraordinary administrative action.

Wazir discovered that he had inadvertently won over some powerful supporters among the Taliban commanders who had taken sanctuary in South Waziristan in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Citing Islamic injunctions against recreational hunting, the Taliban banned the activity for one migratory season although they later relented after pleas from local tribesmen.

Undaunted, in 2003 Wazir carried out a survey of bird migratory patterns in the 32 sq km area around Dabkot, the first in a century, the only previous one having been conducted by British colonialists.

His study, carried out with the help of friends, established that the nearby convergence of the Zhob and Gomal rivers was an attractive one-night stopover for migratory flocks that, in addition to the bluethroat sparrow, included breeds of crane, partridge and quail native to India.

The birds typically flew north-west over South Waziristan into Afghanistan in March and April, and returned in August and September, Wazir found.

His fellow Ahmedzai clansmen had initially viewed his one-man quest with much mirth, but as rings recovered from bluethroats in subsequent years connected Wazir with ornithologists in Finland, Germany and Norway, their mirth turned to wonder – and new-found respect for Wazir’s quest.

“My efforts seemed so strange to them because they could not imagine that a hyperactive sparrow, which they only ever saw fluttering from one spot to the next, could fly such huge distances. But as news of the data recovery and interaction with Sweden and other countries spread, they were amazed,” he said.

Still, Wazir knows he may never be able to persuade his fellow tribesmen to stop hunting the migratory birds. “Hunting is such an addictive pastime among tribesman that it usually becomes a lifelong pursuit. Once they start, men will hunt as long as their legs can carry them.”

The toll taken by local hunters, working with professional bird trappers from adjacent districts of the North West Frontier Province, is enormous, surveys by Wazir have discovered.

Hunters use bird cries – recorded or from tame birds – to lure migrating flocks, capturing an estimated 500 cranes, and 80 to 250 quails and partridges per night for a month each in spring and late summer.

Unlike the catapult-bearing schoolchildren, the hunters are motivated by money, selling the captured birds to pet-seeking locals for about 1,500 rupees (Dh67) for an average pair. However, cranes with extraordinarily shrill calls can attract up to 200,000 rupees, Wazir found.

Increasingly, his work has been hampered by frequent bloody exchanges between the Pakistani military and militants in South Waziristan.

A renewed and potentially bloody campaign is forthcoming, a military spokesman said on Monday.

“The violence has affected our tentative conservation efforts in South Waziristan,’ Wazir said.

“But I will never abandon them and will continue this mission for the rest of my life.”

China interested in tri-nation gas pipeline

With India going slow on the tri-nation gas pipeline, Iranian ambassador to India Seyed Mehdi Nabizadeh Tuesday said China is interested in the
proposed multi-billion project but left the door open for New Delhi to rejoin the peace pipeline.

The Iranian envoy, however, remained quiet on whether Iran is holding talks with China over the tri-nation pipeline involving Iran, India and Pakistan.

The envoy invited India to rejoin the pipeline project but made it clear that the offer was not for the "unlimited period".

"Work on the project is progressing very fast and one should understand the urgency to join the pipeline," the envoy told reporters here when asked whether Iran is setting any time frame for India to rejoin the project.

India has not officially quit the project, but has serious reservations about its viability due to differences over the pricing of the Iranian gas and security of the pipeline that will pass though violence-prone areas of Pakistan.

Early this month, Petroleum Minister Murli Deora denied reports that India has quit plans to build the gas pipeline with Iran and Pakistan. "With Iran the question is still open, but because of the political situation in Pakistan, just now there is a little bit of a stop on that," he had said.

The project, termed as the peace pipeline due to its potential to bring together the three countries and spread prosperity in the region, was signed by Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of the tripartite summit on Afghanistan security in Tehran in May.

Beautiful Article: by Orya Maqbool Jaan

Kamra - Pakistan Special Weapons Facilities

Kamra - Pakistan Special Weapons Facilities

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India’s Internet Connection to China Inexplicably Cut

Indian internet connections to servers in China appear to have been cut with no ability for Indian web users to access websites hosted in China.
The breach also appears to have affected corporate email with Indian employees are unable to connect to their colleagues and friends in China. Users in India have had to use services based overseas like Gmail to connect to China.
The reason for the disruption is currently unknown. It may be related to heightening border tensions between China and India that led to two Indian military personnel being  shot and wounded after coming under fire from Chinese troops in the Indian-controlled Kerang area of Sikkim around two weeks ago.
On Monday, U.S. officials led by White House Adviser Valerie Jarrett, met with the Dalai Lama in northern India. During the two hour meeting, the officials and the spiritual leader talked about the problems of the Tibetan people and ways on how this can be resolved, reported Reuters.
The Dalai Lama is slated to tour the United States and Canada this month for a series of religious teachings and will probably meet U.S. President Obama then.
“She (Jarrett) came to brief His Holiness on President Obama’s administration’s focus on Tibet,” Tenzin Taklha, an aide to the Dalai Lama, told Reuters.
“His Holiness conveyed to Ms. Jarrett the issues that he would like President Obama to take when he visits China,” the Dalai Lama’s office said in a statement. “His Holiness… was hopeful that during his presidency (Obama) the Tibetan people can see progress in the resolution of their problem.”
Mr. Obama is also scheduled to visit China this year for talks in hopes of improving economic and diplomatic ties.

Anti-Americanism rises in Pakistani media rumor mill

For weeks now, Pakistan's media have portrayed the United States, its military and defense contractors in the darkest of light, part of an apparent campaign of anti-American vilification that is sweeping the country and, some say, putting American lives at risk.
Pakistanis are reacting to what many see as an "imperial" U.S. presence, with Washington dictating to Pakistan's military and government. Polls find Pakistanis see their nation's top donor, officially a close ally, as instead a hostile power.
Pakistan's media has been filled with stories of undercover U.S. agents, a huge U.S. Marine contingent coming to the embassy and Blackwater private security running amok.
The U.S. mission in Islamabad had to present three August briefings to Pakistani journalists to dampen highly charged stories, which could undermine relations as Washington prepares to finalize a tripling of civilian aid to Islamabad, to $1.5 billion a year.
Pakistan is a key priority for the United States because of its nuclear arms and potential usefulness in taking on al-Qaida within its borders and ending the Afghan Taliban safe haven.
"I think this recent brouhaha over the embassy expansion has been difficult to beat back," U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson said in an interview last week. She said Pakistan's media "just seems to be taken over by conspiracy theories."
Briefing Pakistani journalists last month, Ms. Patterson told them there were only nine Marines stationed to guard the Islamabad embassy and, even after an upcoming expansion, their number would be no more than 15 to 20. Press reports had put the figure at 350 to 1,000 Marines. She also stated flatly that "Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan."
Ms. Patterson wrote last week to the owner of Pakistan's biggest media group, Jang, to protest two talk shows on its Geo TV channel. She also cricitized a newspaper column by analyst Shireen Mazari in The News, a daily, saying the "wildly incorrect" column and shows compromised Americans' security.
There are 250 U.S. citizens posted at the Islamabad mission on longer-term contracts, plus another 200 on shorter assignments, the embassy said. The present embassy compound can accommodate just a fraction of them. By independent estimates, U.S. officials live in some 200 houses throughout Islamabad.
Pakistani press and bloggers also targeted U.S. aid worker Craig Davis, insisting that he is an undercover secret agent. Mr. Davis, a USAID development contractor, is based in the volatile northwestern city of Peshawar and now appears to be at risk. Last year, American Stephen Vance, another USAID contractor in Peshawar, was gunned down outside his home.
"In one or two cases," Ms. Patterson said, "these commentators have identified very specific embassy employees as CIA or Blackwater, and that very much puts the employee at danger. In at least one case, we're going to have to evacuate the employee."

Read more:http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09251/996344-82.stm#ixzz0RAjPgpTc

Anti-US drive to be continued: JI Amir

Anti-US drive to be continued: JI Amir

Nawaz Sharif new principles frustrate the military

Six months ago, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s opposition leader, took the moral high ground in national politics, throwing his weight behind a campaign for the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry that came within hours of toppling the government of Asif Ali Zardari, the president.
Today, Mr Sharif now finds himself under fire from well-entrenched foes – some in the presidency, others within the military hierarchy.

Aides of the president are allegedly behind the dredging up of Mr Sharif’s tainted past as a protégé of the military’s Inter Service Intelligence directorate and his alleged involvement in conspiracies to overthrow the 1988-1990 government of Benazir Bhutto, the since assassinated former prime minister.

Meanwhile, public enthusiasm for his party has begun to dwindle because of the revelations and a series of sleazy episodes involving Muslim League politicians, news of which was leaked to Pakistan’s voracious cable news networks by Mr Sharif’s erstwhile military patrons.

The scandals have ranged from credit card theft and forgery of education certificates, which forced the party to seek the resignation of two members of parliament, to assault, kidnap and rape, although only the forgery case has been substantiated.

The parallel campaigns have dented public enthusiasm for Mr Sharif’s party and public faith in Pakistan’s fragile democracy, reviving the “both parties are thieves” sentiment that facilitated the overthrow of Mr Sharif’s government in October 1999 by Gen Pervez Musharraf, who resigned as president in September 2008.

At the heart of the parallel smear campaigns is Mr Sharif’s push to consolidate his moral leadership by pressing his party’s demand for the trial, on treason charges, of Mr Musharraf and the eliminating of clauses that he had added to the constitution.

That has brought Mr Sharif into conflict with Mr Zardari, who resents the renewed onslaught against his authority as president, which would be hugely reduced by the proposed constitutional amendments, and with the military.

While he remains the military’s civilian politician of choice because of his deep-rooted support in Punjab province, from where most of the military is recruited, the military is angry at his insistence on the persecution of Mr Musharraf, because it would erect a potentially lethal hurdle for the plotters of any future coup d’état. (Pakistan has had four in 62 years of independence.)

Hawks within the military and Muslim League alike had hoped the attacks allegedly launched by aides of the president would infuriate Mr Sharif to the extent that he would launch another campaign to force the president and, subsequently, the Pakistan People’s Party-led coalition government, out of office. 

Indeed, tensions flared last week, prompting the Muslim League to issue a 48-hour ultimatum demanding a cessation of the smear campaign against Mr Sharif, and it seemed that political chaos was imminent.

But within 24 hours of the ultimatum, the tensions between the government and opposition camps suddenly dissipated and, addressing a national convention of his party on Monday, Mr Sharif issued a definitive proclamation. “I will not support any attempt to remove the government by extra-constitutional means. Instead, I will be the one to block any such move,” he said.

The Nawaz Sharif of the 1980s and 1990s would not have hesitated to collude with the military to grab power, but eight years in exile, spent largely in Jeddah after the Saudi government brokered a deal for his release from jail, have changed him as a man and and as a politician.

Once susceptible to the conspiratorial urges of party hawks and intelligence operatives, Mr Sharif has developed a set of political principles, based upon the exclusion of the military from national politics, that overrides the temptation to exploit chinks in the Zardari armour, unless it is at the ballot box.

Those principles were at the heart of Monday’s proclamation and immensely frustrating to the military, which is straining to reassert its historical role as arbiter of political power ahead of March 2010, when Gen Pervez Ashfaq Kayani, the army chief of staff, enters the lame duck phase of his tenure with only eight months of service left.

Blackwater has begun to expand its presence in Karachi

 US private security outfit Blackwater has begun to expand its presence in Karachi port city in the backdrop of the Peshawar debacle last month when Craig Davis a suspected operative of the US company was caught red handed involved in objectionable activities.
Well-placed sources told The Nation on Monday that Blackwater, which has been operating in the region including in Afghanistan and Pakistan under different names, is believed to have hired on rent at least seven private houses in posh Defence area of Karachi port city.
Sources were not sure whether the move to hire houses was part of any long-term strategy or as a stopgap arrangement because plans were afoot to hire services of retired personnel of Pakistani law enforcement agencies to oversea various operations including logistical support to handle consignments of the US private security company.
It was further learnt from knowledgeable sources that Blackwater had acquired hundreds of acres of land near Pataro in Sindh in order to launch a supposedly Agriculture Research Institute.
Craig Davis along with some other US citizens came into spotlight in Peshawar after their Pakistani neighbours wrote a letter to the Interior Ministry demanding a thorough probe into their dubious activities.
Later Craig Davis was identified as operative of Creative Associates International Inc; a Washington- based US firm believed to be one the wings of Blackwater, now renamed Xe Worldwide. Davis, who had to leave Pakistan, is learnt to have returned again and resumed his “official” activities. 
However, despite frequent attempts, it was not immediately possible to contact the US Embassy to confirm the status of Craig Davis.

Pakistan's female fighter pilots

Six years ago an ad in the Sunday paper changed a young Pakistani woman's life and made aviation history.

The ad read: "Pakistan Air Force recruiting females cadets."

Back then Ambreen Gul was 20-years old and living in Karachi. Her mother wanted her to be a doctor. She remembers her reaction when she told her she wants to fly.

"She was like: 'You're a girl,'" says Gul. "How will you do it? How will you fly?"

The following day Gul took the first step in proving her mother wrong. She was among the first in line at the recruitment center.

For nearly six decades it was only men who had flown Pakistan's fighter jets. Today Gul is one of seven women who are trained and ready to fly Pakistan's F-7 supersonic fighter jets.

"This is a feeling that makes you proud and makes you humble also," says Gul.

Humility doesn't mean lack of confidence.

"We can do everything better than the men," explains cadet Nida Tariq.

"We're more hardworking, more consistent and more patient," adds cadet Anam Faiq.

To become a fighter pilot takes three years of training at the Air Force Academy in Risalpur, Pakistan, where the halls are lined with grainy black-and-white pictures of nearly six decades of male graduates who went on to fly for the Pakistan Air Force.

The training is often intensely physical. Here, equal opportunity means equal treatment.

If they are not good enough as per their male counterparts, we don't let them fly," says commanding officer Tanvir Piracha.

Some of Pakistan's female pilots wear hijabs. Others prefer to go without the Muslim headdress. Most say changing the misconception of Muslim women is just as important as serving their country.

"Islam gives equal opportunity to females. Whatever we want to do we can," says pilot Nadia Gul.

"To tell you the truth I've been given equal opportunity or I suppose more than men have been given," says Air Force cadet Sharista Beg.

Air Force officials say fighter pilots are playing a vital role in the fight against the Taliban. They're training in counterinsurgency, collecting aerial intelligence and targeting militant strongholds in the treacherous mountains of Pakistan's tribal region along the Afghan border. Ambreen Gul says her goal now is to fly in combat.

"I would give my life for my country," she says.

But women rarely fly in combat anywhere in the world and it's never been done in Pakistan. It's another barrier Gul plans to break.