Another Balochi doctor assassinated

Dr Baqir's funeral in Jecobabad earlier today

The assassination campaign continues in Balochistan, most recently with the murder of Dr Baqir Shah yesterday in Quetta. Shah, a prominent police surgeon, conducted the postmortems on five foreigners - four Russians and a Tajik, including two women - who were shot dead by police and soldiers from the Frontier Corps in Kharotabad on 17 May. The security forces at first insisted that all five had been killed by the explosion of a hand grenade in their possession, but Dr Shah's examination proved that they had all been killed by bullets fired by the security forces themselves. The Russian and Tajik embassies both declared that their nationals had been innocent of any crime.
There had been signs that Dr Shah was in danger. Following his postmortem on the five people killed in May, he was badly beaten by a group of ten men dressed in police uniforms, who attempted to abduct him. He later issued a statement that he had received threats to his life, saying he had been pressurised to change his postmortem report.
Dr Shah was the third prominent Balochi doctor to have been killed in the last three months, prompting strikes and walk-outs by colleagues across the province. Two further doctors remain missing. The slain doctor was on his way home from Bolan Medical Complex hospital, where he worked, when two men opened fire from point blank range at his head. He was taken to Bolan Medical Complex Hospital in his car where he was pronounced dead.
His assistant, Abdul Hameed Mengal, the only witness, who was sitting in the car, told the police that when  Dr. Shah slowed his car close to his house, one of the two gunmen rushed towards him and  started firing. Both assassins covered their faces and escaped on motorcycle.
The Baloch Doctors’ Forum (BDF) strongly condemned the killing of  Dr Shah saying the incident was part of the ongoing “government-sponsored cycle of targeted assaults on Baloch doctors”.
The BDF called an emergency meeting for today (Friday) and also announced a strike in hospitals all over Balochistan in protest against Dr Shah's killing. Out-patient departments will remain closed for an indefinite period.

Who's representing the Taliban?

Useful article on who may or may not be representing the Taliban in peace talks, written by Mujib Mashal for al-Jazeera.

New evidence in Benazir murder case

Dawn reports an interesting development in the investigation into the murder of Benazir Bhutto, almost exactly four years ago on 27 December 2007. The paper has published a five-line letter from Brigadier Abdul Basit Rana on behalf of the then head of the ISI, to Syed Kamal Shah, secretary of Pakistan's Interior Ministry.
The letter, dated 10 December 2007 and headlined 'al-Qaeda Threat', states: "It has reliably been reported that a few extremist groups related to al Qaeda have made some plan to assassinate Mrs.Benzir Bhutto and her adviser Mr Rehman Malik on 21 December 2007. The exact plan of execution not known."
Immediately on receiving the letter Kamal Shah added in his own writing "This is a threat with specific date, we should sensitize them". He directed Brig Javed Iqbal Cheema, then director general of the Interior Ministry's National Crisis Management Cell,  to speak to Rehman Malik and warn him. Cheema wrote back to say he had done so. Malik is known immediately to have written a three-page memo requesting a tightening of security around the recently returned politician.
According to Dawn, Brig Rana, who provided the intelligence, has yet to appear in front of the official investigation into Bhutto's murder, so it is uncertain where the information originated. Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack on her car in Rawalpindi. It is widely believed that the killing was organised by Baitullah Mahsud, then leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Mahsud was killed in a drone strike in August 2009.

Bhutto in Rawalpindi moments before she was killed

Sen. Lieberman calls for Taliban censorship

The Telegraph reports that Joe Lieberman, chair of the US Senate Homeland Security Committee, wants to block the Taliban's twitter account. Aides told the paper that pro-Taliban feeds, including @ABalkhi and @alemarahweb - which I follow - should be blocked because they regularly boast about the deaths of "cowardly invaders" and "puppet" Afghan government forces.
Grow up Mr Lieberman. We live in the information age. Censorship achieves nothing. You should be more concerned about the fact that the Taliban is far more effective in communicating its messages than US forces in Afghanistan. And it will soon have a public office in one or more Islamic countries if press reports emanating from Afghanistan today can be believed.

Body of former bank governor's killer found

More on the death of former Afghanistan central bank head Mir Najibullah Sadat Sahou, who was shot dead at the end of September in San Diego, California, which I wrote about here.
Mr Sahou, who drove a taxi, was shot dead late at night by a passenger, who then took his cab and abandoned it on a coast road several miles away. At the time there was some suggestion of a possible political motive for the killing.
Now police have revealed that recreational divers  recently found the body of the main suspect in the killing, Ismael Raul Lopez, in the Pacific Ocean. Along with the bones, divers also found part of Lopez's skull with a bullet hole in it. Police believe that the killer either jumped the curb of the coastal road by accident or intended to drive into the sea, as paint marks on the cab matched those of the wooden fence next to the road. One theory is that the 28-year-old convicted paedophile tried to commit suicide by driving the car into the ocean. When that failed he walked to the water's edge and then shot himself in the head.

Redacted version of border incident report

A redacted version of the official investigation by Brigadier General Stephen A Clark into the recent incident at the Salala Checkpoint, Khas-Kunar province on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed can be found here.
While stating that the catalyst for the engagement was the opening of fire on a joint Afghan Army/US Special Forces operation by Pakistani soldiers from the other side of the poorly demarcated border, the report admits that procedures and directives governing this kind of operation close to the border "lacked clarity and precision" and were not followed. It further states that "time-sensitive senior Command override measures" for such incidents are lacking and that a series of mis-communications within the chain of command delayed confirmation of the identity of the Pakistani forces that had been attacked.
That having been said, the hysterical reaction of the Pakistan military to the incident had more to do with internal politicking and relations between the military and the civilian government than to the incident itself. Pakistan's military and intelligence communities are increasingly disturbed by the devastation being caused to the insurgency along the border by the US drone campaign and operations such as the one that led to this firing incident. It is no secret that they are only willing to take action against insurgents who are fighting the Pakistani state itself, not against those who target NATO and US forces across the border in Afghanistan.

Pakistan Taliban crisis deepens

An interesting article in Pakistan's Express Tribune sheds further light on the demise of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. The article suggests that the TTP is now in terminal decline, with its leader Hakimullah Mahsud isolated due to threats from drones and from the Pakistan military.
They quote a former associate thus: “He is virtually a lonely man running for his life … he is always on the move and doesn’t meet even his once most-trusted lieutenants”.
As I suggested below in the article on Shamim Mahsud and the TTP in South Waziristan, the reason for Hakimullah's isolation is partly due to the existence of peace talks with the Pakistan government - although I was wrong in thinking that it was the Waliur Rehman faction that was excluded from talks.
In fact, it is Hakimullah who has refused to talk to Pakistan's government - presumably under the influence of al-Qaeda and other die-hard jihadists - while Waliur Rehman from South Waziristan and Maulvi Faqir Mohammad from Bajaur are reported to be in discussions.
The latest claim from Maulvi Faqir Mohammad came 10 days ago, when he said talks were progressing and that they had so far resulted in the release of 145 Taliban prisoners. However, Mullah Dadullah, leader of the TTP in Bajaur, quickly denied the claim, adding that fighting would continue until sharia law was introduced throughout the whole of Pakistan.
The Express Tribune article says that money has dried up for the TTP and this has led to the desertion of former supporters, many of whom only fought for money. The TTP's shura, or ruling council, has shrunk from nearly 40 members to less than 10.
The reason funds are in short supply, the article speculates, is that the Afghan Taliban has stopped paying the TTP because it is now in negotiations with the Afghan government.
Presumably Pakistan will introduce an amnesty for TTP members that agree to call a truce with the government, although the ISI will be happy if they continue to fight across the border in Afghanistan.
However, if talks with the Afghan Taliban leadership are really underway, this may be difficult. The big question is where this will leave the foreign jihadists. In his recent interview (see below), Shamim Mahsud was quite happy to show correspondents the houses in the Ladda area where fighters from Turkmenistan were living and training. How will they and the other foreigners fit into the picture?

The murder of a good man

Zarteef Khan Afridi

How sad to hear of the murder of Zarteef Khan Afridi, coordinator in the Khyber Agency for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Afridi, 52, was shot dead by masked men on 5th December as he walked to the school in the Saparee area where he had taught for more than 20 years. The killing was claimed by the Abdullah Azzam Brigade - a cover name that could refer to any of the half-dozen militant groups that infest the area.
Hundreds of people turned out in Peshawar on 8th December to honour Zarteef's memory. His family said that Zarteef had recently been receiving death threats because of his opposition to Taliban activity in Khyber and because of his support for women's rights - in a remarkable display of his own practical support for women's rights he married off his three daughters without asking for or receiving bride money.
He was well known for promoting education and the observance of human rights. The HRCP called him a "tireless human rights defender". Some idea of his work can be found here.
In 1996 he founded the FATA Education and Welfare Society to promote secular education over madrassah schooling. He was almost a lone voice amongst tribesmen in Khyber seeking to promote secularism. For this he was labelled by local leaders and clergy as a kaffir.
Despite the threats, which grew in regularity and vehemence, Zarteef declined to leave Khyber. Sadly, he paid with his life for this brave decision.

Confusing reports on Pakistan Taliban

TTP fighters train in South Waziristan

It's a little depressing when you cannot rely on major news agencies to get even basic details right. Both AP and Reuters are carrying reports about a journey made by their correspondents to meet leaders of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Laddah region of South Waziristan.
According to the Reuters account, the group of three senior tribal journalists met with Shamim Mahsud, the "deputy commander" of the TTP at his secret base in the mountains close to the border with Afghanistan.
According to an updated report by Ishtiaq Mahsud of AP, the reporters had been invited to meet with Hakimullah Mahsud, leader of the TTP, but he had cancelled, with his aides saying he had had to meet a delegation of Afghan Taliban elders who had arrived from across the border. This report again refers to and quotes from Shamim Mahsud, now calling him the "operational commander" of the TTP.
But a third report, from Sailab Mehsud in the Dawn newspaper, differs yet again. This  says that the journalists met with Shamim Mahsud, who Sailab describes (correctly) as "the key operational commander and chief of Laddah sub-division chapter of TTP". However, he adds that "The journalists were invited to meet commander Waliur Rehman, Emir of South Waziristan Taliban, but he was busy in meetings with some Taliban delegations from Afghanistan and other areas of Pakistan. Then they had to meet Shamim Mehsud."
Confused? You should be. There is a big difference between meeting Hakimullah in South Waziristan and meeting Waliur Rahman.
It may help to know that Shamim Mahsud and Waliur Rahman, his emir, are not exactly close to Hakimullah Mahsud and the rest of the leadership of the TTP. For a time there was a blood feud between Shamim and Qari Hussein, Hakimullah's deputy, over who had the right to train suicide bombers. You can read more about that in an interesting article published by the FATA Research Centre. The fact that Shamim seems to have facilitated this unusual trip for journalists is significant, simply for this fact alone. It suggests that Shamim is attempting to reassert Waliur Rahman's claim to leadership of the TTP, perhaps because the South Waziristan faction of the group has been excluded from peace talks rumoured to have been held recently with the government.
Either way, perhaps our main foreign news agencies, on whom we rely for important information, can try a little harder to get basic information right first time.

Available in a variety of colours....

I am grateful to Mujib Masha, who tweets as @MujMash, for tweeting this fantastic pic of an old Jeep photographed recently at the Torkham border post in the Khyber Pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Its flying an Afghan flag, so presumably it's on that side of the border.

Getting aid right in Pakistan

Bringing out a report on the effect of the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act - which regulates US non-military aid to Pakistan - just as relations between the two countries disappear down the pan may not be the best of timing. But a 17-strong panel brought together by the Woodrow Wilson Center's Asia Program has concluded that robust US civilian assistance to Pakistan serves important interests in both countries.
Aiding Without Abetting: Making US Civilian Assistance to Pakistan Work for Both Sides also warns that changes are needed to the Act and offers almost 30 recommendations. The report recommends that aid should not be tied to security or economic reform and that Pakistan should be pressed to return to an arrangement with the IMF.
It suggests a more realistic timeline for stepping up the percentages of US aid to be dispensed through Pakistani government structures, while at the same time pressing the country to improve tracking and donor oversight of aid. Support for the Benazir Income Support Program should only be continued if political manipulation can be halted.
Priorities for funding should be clean urban water, power, sanitation, youth organisations and literacy training. Support should also be given to the small/medium enterprises sector.
There are many other good proposals in this report from a group of experts who clearly understand the weaknesses of the present system.
However, it is hard to be as optimistic as the authors of this report about the prospects for the future. It is self-evident that much of the senior bureaucracy in Pakistan is in reality a kleptocracy. Aid enriches officials - and international NGOs - and only seldom reaches down to the masses. Monitoring costs consume an ever-increasing proportion of aid. And the political context is becoming ever-more complex. The Woodrow Wilson report says that terminating the US assistance program "would fuel anti-Americanism in Pakistan". In truth, relations between the two countries are so bad at present, that short of outright war, it is hard to perceive them as being any worse: the Raymond Davis affair, the killing of bin Laden, the growing Pakistani opposition to drone attacks, the recent cross-border attack, the ongoing support by the Pakistan military for the insurgency in Afghanistan and many other incidents mark what must be the worst year for US-Pakistan bilateral relations in a generation. I'm not convinced that even a $7.5 billion aid program can sort that lot out.  

BAE Systems dishonours a US hero

Former US Marine sergeant Dakota Meyer, a recipient of America's highest award for valour, is suing British defence contractor BAE Systems, saying the company ridiculed his award and falsely claimed he was mentally unstable and suggested he had a drink problem. The claims, says Meyer, cost him a job.

Meyer has filed a lawsuit in San Antonio, Texas, claiming his former employer - BAE Systems OASYS Inc, prevented him from getting a job by telling his prospective employer that he was a poor worker during the three months he worked for the company in the spring of this year.

Even worse for BAE Systems, it turns out that Meyer left the company after protesting that it was selling advanced thermal-optic sniper scopes to Pakistan. The scopes were more powerful than those used by US troops and Meyer was appalled that they could be used against his former comrades in Afghanistan. "This is where I could see me still 'doing my part' for the guys who are in the same situation now that I was in 18 months ago," he explained in an email to his former supervisor. Meyer's lawsuit alleges that the supervisor "berated and belittled" him after he objected to the sale.

After Meyer resigned in May, he attempted to get his old job back, but the BAE supervisor then wrote to his previous manager, saying that he was mentally unstable, was not performing his duties and had problems with social drinking.

Mayer received his Medal of Honor from President Obama at the White House in September this year. The citation reads: "For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the repeated risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a member of Marine Embedded Training Team 2-8, Regional Corps Advisory Command 3-7, in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, on 8 September 2009". During a six-hour ambush at Ganjgal in Kunar, he saved 36 lives. Ignoring orders to the contrary, he repeatedly drove a Humvee into the ambush site to rescue his fellow Marines and Afghan soldiers. Together with fellow Marine, Staff Sgt. Juan J. Rodriguez-Chavez, he made five runs to pull out wounded Afghan troops, and then went back in, only to find that the remaining four Marines were dead. Rodriguez-Chavez was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions (along with Captain Ademola D Fabayo) that day. Mayer is only the third living recipient of the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War and the first living US Marine to be so honoured.

The company intends to contest the case, although the chances of BAE Systems winning  are negligible. Who was the idiot that sanctioned the action against Meyer? And who was the even bigger idiot trying to sell such advanced weaponry to Pakistan?

Debating the US National Intelligence Estimate

Excellent, well-informed article by Steve Coll in the New Yorker on the latest US National Intelligence Estimate on the war in Afghanistan. Coll says the NIEs, which are seldom published and are classified Secret or Top Secret, contain the most up-to-date information on the Obama Administration's take on the war. The last two, he says offered a gloomy picture, with the 2010 report warning that "large swathes of Afghanistan are still at risk of falling to the Taliban".
The new draft, around 100 pages long and due to be circulated shortly, contains six Key Judgments and is said to be gloomier than the typical public statements made by US military commanders in Afghanistan.
It is said to raise doubts about the authenticity and durability of alleged gains in Kandahar and Helmand provinces since the Obama troop surge and also suggests that the next generation of political leaders after Karzai will be more corrupt.
It also questions the success of the programme to train and equip the Afghan military and police forces, noting that the projected cost of running a force of 350,000 after 2014 will be $8-10 billion a year, more than the US is willing or able to pay.
As Coll points out, you hardly need secret information to come to these conclusions. It is not hard to see that little progress is being made in the country and that conditions in many areas are deteriorating, despite the billions of dollars sloshing around in military and civilian aid.
Coll says that Maj.Gen. John R Allen, the US commander in Afghanistan, and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador, believe the NIE to be too pessimistic and that they intend to dissent from its conclusions. With General David Petraeus now in charge of the CIA there is also a danger, says Coll, that intelligence from that quarter will also be 'militarised'. To guard against this he argues that unclassified versions of the key judgments in the latest NIE should be published so that they can be publicly debated. Well said.

Can the Libyans solve a bin Laden mystery?

Until its final days, the regime of Libya's Colonel Gaddaffi liked to remind the West that it was his government that issued the very first arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden, way back in March 1998.
That warrant accused bin Laden and three Libyan accomplices of responsibility for the 1994 murders of Germany's top counter-terrorism officer, Silvan Becker and his wife Vera, in the coastal city of Sirte - ironically the place where Gaddaffi himself met his end in October. The warrant was forwarded to Interpol headquarters in Lyon France and on 15 April 1998 it was issued as an official international arrest warrant. However, the 'red notice' warrant received almost no publicity at the time and was only revealed years later in an obscure French book on bin Laden.
With the death of Gaddaffi and the capture of his intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi a few days ago, perhaps the true story of the Beckers' murder will be revealed.
At the heart of this story is the question of whether or not the Beckers were killed by Islamists opposed to the Gaddaffi regime or by the regime itself. 
According to the official story, Becker worked for Division Six, the terrorism department of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (the BfV). He had responsibility for Arab terrorism and latterly, for the Tamil LTTE. Vera Becker is also believed to have worked for the BfV and both were said to be working on the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing, elements of which were planned in Germany.
Working in such sensitive posts, they should never have been in Libya in the first place and no convincing explanation of how the couple ended up there on a 'sight-seeing' tour has ever been given.
However, on 10 March 1994, soon after arriving in Libya, the couple were both shot and taken to a military hospital in Sirte. Vera Becker died on 28 March and Silvan Becker died on 10 April 1994.
Were the couple on an officially 'unauthorised' visit to Libya - don't forget that Libya had been accused of bombing the La Belle nightclub in Berlin in April 1986 and that there were no diplomatic relations between the two countries - or was something else afoot? To this day, the BfV refuses to offer any further information on the affair or even to confirm that Becker was involved in the La Belle/Lockerbie investigations.
The Libyans accused three citizens - Faraj al-Alwan, Faez Abu Zeid al-Warfali and Faraj al-Chalabi, all members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Groups - of carrying out the killings on the instructions of Osama bin Laden. All three are still wanted by Interpol where their mugshots can be found on the official website.
However, other scenarios have been proposed. According to some reports, the Beckers travelled to Egypt under false identity to work with Egyptian intelligence officers evaluating the results of the embargo on Libya and to update their information on changes within the leadership of the Libyan intelligence community. Having finished their official business in Cairo, the couple headed up to Alexandria for a few days relaxation. 
According to this scenario, it was whilst they were in Alexandria that they were likely abducted and taken across the border to Libya where they were interrogated and later shot - although presumably the Libyans would have killed them outright rather than let them live.
The Interpol warrant for bin Laden was first revealed by French writers Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie in their book Bin Laden: the Hidden Truth. They maintained that the warrant was not acted upon or publicised because Western intelligence agencies, in particular MI6, were funding the Libyan Islamic Fighting Groups to the tune of £100,000 in the hope that they would assassinate Gaddaffi.
Whatever happened, with the departure of Gaddaffi and his security apparatus, there is now an opportunity to solve this case.

Will the real Zabihullah Mujahid please stand up?

Reports that Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has been arrested in Paktika Province may be somewhat premature. Much as all IRA statements in the past were signed by P O'Neill, which was never a specific person, ZM is a nom-de-guerre used to show that statements are sanctioned by the Taliban leadership, not the actual person. Whilst there is possibly a person who issues press statements on behalf of the Taliban leadership, it is much more likely to be the cover name for anyone speaking on their behalf. The person arrested in the Saw Hawsa area of Paktika told his captors that he was the Paktika ZM and that others existed in different areas. 

Of more significance is the Taliban's claim yesterday to have obtained detailed security plans (see above) for this week's Karzai-controlled 'loya jirga' taking place in Kabul. The 28 pages and six maps seem genuine enough although Afghan government officials claim they are fake.