The India Visit: Obama and India

The US is now looking to India. Why?

US trade policies with China have been a disaster for US manufacturing and have resulted in a huge transfer of wealth and power to China. There are very few Americans that will argue otherwise. China is increasingly becoming a hostile competitor to US interests and certainly not the partner envisioned by the naive proponents and architects of the Chinese and American relationship.

Now we arrive in India, tarnished and weakened, with a president that is also tarnished and weakened. Our strategic objectives are our concern with Afghanistan and Pakistan and of course China. The naive and optimistic expect that we can gain much from a renewed and strengthened relationship with India.

India has placed high trade barriers to much that the US could sell to India. India has sold much in the way of outsourcing to US corporations, but outsourcing is a job killing machine and hugely unpopular with Obama's core constituency.

India resents the past high handed moralizing made by the US towards India when they were developing their own nuclear defense. The Indians are aware that Obama and the US recognize the need for a closer relationship with India. They will negotiate hard for what they want and expect a lot in return for what they concede. This is an opportunity that comes with strategic risk. A politically weakened Obama, dealing with India, does not give me a sense of security that we will come out the winner with India.

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Taliban murder Pakistani couple for adultery, on video. Allah Akbar, of course.

Taliban gunmen have been filmed executing a surprised couple whom they repeatedly shot for the alleged crime of adultery.

Pakistan is getting a close look at the horror of what is before them. It is late in the game but Pakistani paramilitary troops assisted by helicopter gunships attacked Taliban militants in the Malakand Agency on Sunday. They claimed that they killed 30 militants. 

Of course, had they been attacked by US forces, 29 of them would have been widows and orphans on the way to a religious shrine.

It is too little too late.

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Taliban gunmen shooting couple dead for adultery caught on camera

Telegraph

Their deaths were squalid, riddled with bullets in a field near their home by Taliban gunmen as the execution was captured on a mobile telephone.

In footage which is being watched with horror by Pakistanis, the couple try to flee when they realise what is about to happen. But a gunman casually shoots the man and then the woman in the back with a burst of gunfire, leaving them bleeding in the dirt.

Moments later, when others in the execution party shout out that they are still alive, he returns to coldly finish them with a few more rounds.

Their "crime" was an alleged affair in their remote mountain village controlled by militants in an area that was only recently under the government's sway. It was the kind of barbarity that has become increasingly familiar across Pakistan as the Taliban tide has spread.

But this time, with black-turbaned gunmen almost at the gates of Islamabad, the rare footage has shown urban Pakistanis what could now await them.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned that Islamic extremists could take over the nation.

In the past few days the footage has circulated among Pakistanis who usually show little interest in the rough ways of the distant frontier regions.

They have now started to wake up to the fear that al-Qaeda-linked rebels from the frontier could take over their nation.
The killings happened in Hangu district, in North West Frontier Province, about two hours drive from the regional capital Peshawar. The punishment was administered by a local group of the Pakistani Taliban, the Islamic militia which has swept across the NWFP towards the capital Islamabad.

Last week, the Taliban had reached within 60 miles of Islamabad, in Buner district. Their takeover sparked panic in the West, which was already appalled by a peace deal that the government had signed this month with Taliban in adjacent the Swat valley.

In an extraordinary move, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called on the people of Pakistan to defy their government, saying they "need to speak out forcefully against a policy that is ceding more and more territory to the insurgents".

The Taliban had agreed a withdrawal, in the last couple of days, to their stronghold of Swat. That will scarcely make the government and elite in the capital Islamabad feel much safer, as Swat is only 100 miles from them.

"The Taliban are steady and confident, the government is weak and faltering," said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University and one of Pakistan's leading intellectuals.

"A Taliban victory will enslave our women, destroy Pakistan's rich historical and cultural heritage, make education and science impossible, and make the lives of its citizens impossibly difficult. Some are already contemplating an exodus."

Pakistan today stands on a knife-edge, threatened with anarchy. The desperate deal signed with the Taliban in Swat looks set to fall apart. The result will almost certainly be violence. An army convoy heading into Swat on Saturday morning was stopped by the Taliban and forced to turn back, in a naked display of their power.

They seem to have been only emboldened by the peace agreement. Many believe that a bloody military operation now looks inevitable,

For those in areas falling under Taliban control, their harsh rule is terrifying.

An SOS text message sent out on Friday by a terrified local resident, in an area of Swat called Bahrain, says that the Taliban have established total control. Asking not be named for fear of reprisal, he said that they have set up check posts at the entrance to Bahrain, from where they kidnap those they want, including young women.

"They've even warned the local schools to close the girl classes or face dire consequences. Yet the government says its writ is in Swat."

Another Swat resident said: "Every day I see armed Taliban move around freely. At the time of prayer, if they see anyone in his shop or walking about, they whip him with a stick."

The Pakistani Taliban, a copy of the Afghan extremist movement, have long controlled the tribal area along the Afghan border, which is a sanctuary for militants, including al-Qaeda. But it is their march into the heart of the country that has horrified ordinary Pakistanis, and the wider world. And the threat comes not just from the Taliban to the west. Islamic extremists, who are not part of the Taliban, are already entrenched in Islamabad and across the Punjab, the most populous province, seemingly ready to surface when their moment comes.

Islamabad's defences are being hurriedly fortified, with paramilitary troops stationed on the Margalla Hills, which overlook the city from the West. In the capital, there are thousands of followers of the radical Red Mosque, where there are now open calls for Islamic revolution at the weekly Friday prayers.

"The Taliban will not stop at Swat. They will come towards Islamabad," said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military analyst based in Lahore. "If the army is to take action against them, it is going to be a really bloody battle. And then civil government will be knocked out."

"Extremist groups based in Islamabad will move from within and they (Taliban) will build pressure from outside."
The footage Pakistanis have been watching shows them what they could expect.

A local journalist was invited to witness the execution, who filmed it with his mobile phone for a Pakistani channel, Dawn News. The Sunday Telegraph is showing the footage in the West for the first time.
There were no names for the two victims.

"Using the media is part of their (the Taliban's) psychological warfare," said Imtiaz Gul, chairman of Centre for Research and Security Studies, an independent think tank in Islamabad. "This way, they inject fear into the minds of people who might oppose them, keeping the majority silent."

After the couple were shot, the family were told to take their bodies away for burial. The punishment was administered by a local group of the Pakistani Taliban linked to warlord Baitullah Mehsud.

"We have three foreigners, including women," the gunman said into the phone. The response was brutally simple: "Kill them."

Yahoo

Gunshots then rang out inside the Mumbai hotel, followed by cheering that could be heard over the phone.

The ruthless exchange comes from a transcript of phone calls Indian authorities say they intercepted during the November Mumbai attacks. They were part of a dossier of evidence New Delhi handed Pakistan this week that it says definitively proves that the siege was launched from across the border.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Tuesday that he did not believe the gunmen were acting alone, and Pakistani state agencies must have had a hand in the attacks.
The dossier made no mention of any Pakistani officials or agencies.

Pakistani authorities are reviewing the evidence but have dismissed Singh's claims. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani accused India of waging a "media and diplomatic offensive against Pakistan."

"It is clearly unhelpful to any serious and objective investigations and amounts to unnecessarily whipping up tensions in South Asia," Gilani said.

But Pakistani Information Minister Sherry Rehman did say Wednesday that the lone surviving gunman was a Pakistani citizen, after weeks of refusing to confirm Delhi's claims. Islamabad had previously said it could not find Ajmal Kasab — the only one of 10 not killed as commandos ended the siege — in its databases.

Indian leaders have made clear they do not want a military conflict with Pakistan, and Pakistan's intelligence chief said there will be no war over the Mumbai attacks.
"We may be crazy in Pakistan, but not completely out of our minds," Pakistan's intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shujaa Pasha, told German news magazine Der Spiegel. "We know full well that terror is our enemy, not India."

Predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan have fought three wars against each other since they gained independence in 1947.

The Mumbai transcripts, which were translated into English by Indian authorities and obtained by the newspaper The Hindu, show that the gunmen who carried out the attacks were in close contact with their handlers throughout the siege. India says the handlers directing the attacks that left 164 dead were senior leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group.

The handlers told a team of gunmen who had seized a Jewish center to shoot hostages if necessary.

"If you are still threatened, then don't saddle yourself with the burden of the hostages. Immediately kill them," he said.

Six Jewish foreigners, including a rabbi and his wife, were killed inside the Jewish center.

Later in the night, nearly 24 hours after the attacks began, the handlers urged the gunmen to "be strong in the name of Allah"

"Brother, you have to fight. This is a matter of prestige of Islam," the handler said. "You may feel tired or sleepy, but the commandos of Islam have left everything behind, their mothers, their fathers."

The gunmen were told several times not to kill any Muslim hostages.

The attackers used several different mobile phones, including those belonging to the hostages. Shortly after the siege began, Indian authorities say they began intercepting calls from inside the hotel. They were also able to pick up calls carried over the Internet, which the handlers used to route some calls, according to the dossier.

The siege lasted nearly three days, far longer than security experts said it should have, and, apparently, far longer than the terrorists expected as well. The handlers told the gunmen on Nov. 27 that "the operation has to be concluded tomorrow morning." But it was 36 more hours before it finished.

Much of the dialogue has a teacher-student dynamic, and indeed, the surviving gunman has said he and the rest of the group were trained by Lashkar in Pakistan.

"We made a big mistake," one of the gunman says into the phone in the early hours of the siege.
"What big mistake?"
"When we were getting into the boat ... another boat came. Everyone jumped quickly. In this confusion, the satellite phone of Ismail got left behind."

The investigation shows the gunmen entered Mumbai, which sits on the Arabian sea, by a rubber dinghy.

The attacks against iconic Mumbai targets were covered nonstop by news channels around the world. The handlers used the TV reports to guide the gunmen, the dossier says, including warning when commandos roped down to the Jewish center from helicopters.
The dossier included photographs of dozens of items recovered in the attacks, including GPS units, mobile phones, guns, and explosives, as well as data gleaned from satellite phones, and details from the interrogation of the lone surviving gunman.
It also had pictures of more mundane items India calls incriminating because they were made in Pakistan, including pickles, detergent, a match box, tissue paper, a Mountain Dew bottle, shaving cream and a towel.

But the strongest — and most chilling — evidence that the gunmen were not acting alone came from the phone transcripts.

"Keep your phone switched on," a handler said in the midst of the siege, "so that we can hear the gunfire."

Pakistan Coup, Mid-term Review

Does he take his coffee black?

Some people are better at coups than others. The Russians always seemed good at these sort of things as they were particularly vicious and clumsy at crushing dissent. The clumsiness part always seemed to work well because it served the purpose of dishing out lots of collateral damage which had a colon cleansing effect on nosy civilians. You can always tell a good coup by studying the street litter and the degree of emptiness on the streets. Empty streets well sprinkled with discarded shoes and other personal affects are always good signs. Think Tianeneman square. Streets, crowded with thousands of lawyers in Armani Knock-offs, is not the same and does not have the desired panache.

Successful coups require brutal simplicity, a large black coffee approach. The Pakistani coup has more of a "marble mocha macchiato with skim milk" feel to it. I am sure you agree.

Responding to internal or external threats is always a good idea for a coup. It provides justification and virtue. Musharraf may be getting around to that part.

Overall I give him a "D-" on his coup, but finals are coming and we shall see.

Army claims Pakistan rebel deaths BBC

Militants in Swat maintain a highly visible profile

At least 33 militants have been killed in clashes between the army and pro-Taleban rebels in north-western Pakistan, the military has said.
The troops attacked rebel positions in the mountains of Swat using helicopter gunships and artillery.

Two soldiers were also killed in the attack, the army said.

Located near the country's restive tribal area along the Afghan border, Swat has been the scene of recent clashes between the two sides.

The authorities say there are fears that the Swat valley is becoming a haven for al-Qaeda and the Taleban and last month the army sent reinforcements to the area.

Shelling

The men were killed on Wednesday in a series of attacks in Swat, a valley about 160kms (100 miles) northwest of the capital, Islamabad, army spokesman Maj Gen Waheed Arshad said.

"Helicopters were used in the operation. They shelled known militant positions on hill tops," he said.

"In one incident a vehicle carrying 17 militants was targeted, the vehicle fell from a hilltop and all were killed. They were militants, there is no doubt, they had arms," he added.

Officials said the dead militants were loyal to a pro-Taleban rebel cleric, Maulana Fazlullah.

An army statement said militants fired six mortar rounds on Wednesday at the airport near Mingora, the region's main town, killing two troops and injuring five more.

Ringed by mountains, the Swat Valley is a scenic area traditionally popular with tourists, but has been overrun by militants in recent times.