World Information Thursday

US faces dilemma as Pakistan grapples with rising militancy Agence France-Presse . Washington
The United States is facing a major dilemma as ally Pakistan grapples with surging militant violence fuelled by groups who may also have a hand in Afghanistan’s worsening security crisis, experts say. After Monday’s deadly suicide bombing in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad and alleged Pakistani involvement in another such attack in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, one intelligence report said Pakistan lacked ‘willingness and ability’ to take on the rapidly rising threat posed by Islamist extremism and militancy. ‘The fact is that the civilian government and the country’s military establishment appear to be losing control of the situation,’ warned private US intelligence firm Stratfor in a report to clients after the twin attacks. In Pakistan, it said, there was a ‘national lack of acknowledgement that the country is being torn apart by religious extremism.’ Stratfor predicted ‘it is only a matter of time before Washington escalates its unilateral military operations deeper into Pakistani territory’ – a move experts warned could worsen ‘collateral’ damage and fuel anti-Americanism. US airstrikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, where Washington believes al-Qaeda and Taliban militants are hiding, is now regarded as almost a daily affair. As the new government of the prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, struggles to adopt appropriate policies to a series of political, economic and security crises, the US president, George W Bush, is concerned the next major terrorist strike on the United States may be planned in Pakistan. ‘Washington finds itself in a difficult position,’ said Robert Hathaway of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars. The latest US strategy of launching unilateral air strikes on suspected militant hideouts inside Pakistan is causing casualties on innocent civilians and fuelling anti-American feelings, he said. It also does not promote the objective of convincing the Pakistanis that the fight against militancy and radicalism is their fight, he said. Most people believe a long term campaign to provide education, jobs and establishing a functioning set of governmental institutions in the tribal lands could help improve people’s lives and eventually ease the security crisis. ‘That’s a long term strategy but the problem is here and now, and it’s not yet apparent that anyone either in Washington or in Islamabad really knows how to connect the two – the long term solution with immediate problems,’ Hathaway said. He blamed the Bush administration for failing to adopt a coherent policy towards Pakistan since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States. ‘Seven years after 9/11, the United States is worse off in Pakistan than it was, American interests in the region were worse off than they were, and Pakistan is worse off than it was,’ he said. The United States is only now considering a new aid strategy for Pakistan that could triple unconditional non-security aid to 1.5 billion dollars annually for a 10-year period and tie security funding to counter-terrorism performance. In coming weeks, bipartisan legislation will be introduced in the US Senate laying the foundation for the new approach, officials said. The United States provided Pakistan more than 10.5 billion dollars for military, economic, and development activities in the 2002-2007 period. Internal government studies showed there was ‘no comprehensive plan’ to destroy the militant ‘safe haven’ in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a vast, impoverished, mountainous and unpoliced area along the border with Afghanistan.
China kills five Muslims planning holy war: state media Agence France-Presse . Beijing
The Chinese police killed five Muslims who were planning a ‘holy war’ but armed only with kni-ves, state media said Wednesday, in the latest alleged terror threat ahead of the Beijing Olympics. The five were shot dead on Tuesday when police raided their hide-out in Urumqi, the capital of the Muslim-populated Xinjiang region in China’s far northwest, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing local authorities. Fifteen people, all members of Xinjiang’s Muslim Turkic-speaking Uighur majority population, were at the apartment and had been wielding knives when police conducted the raid, the report said. ‘The suspected criminals that police killed and nabbed... were from a ‘holy war’ training group,’ Xinhua said, citing an unnamed Urumqi police spokesman. ‘After police used tear gas on the premise, a roomful of people tried to break out, waving knives and injuring one policeman. The policemen were then forced to open fire, killing five on the spot and injuring two.’ It said the others had been detained and confessed to planning terrorist attacks against China’s majority Han population. The police found more than 30 knives at the apartment in which they were hiding, the biggest of which was 50 centimetres long, according to Xinhua. The report made no mention of any heavier weapons, such as guns or grenades. China has repeatedly warned of a terrorist threat from Xinjiang, which borders Afghanistan and Central Asia, and announced at least five separate raids this year in the region that have foiled attacks. China said in April it had crushed a group in Xinjiang that was plotting to kidnap foreign journalists, tourists and athletes during the Olympics. In another case, police in Urumqi said they broke up a group in January whose leaders were planning to stage attacks in Beijing and Shanghai with toxic materials and explosives. However human rights groups and exiled Uighurs allege the government has fabricated or exaggerated the terrorist threat as an excuse to crush all forms of dissent there. Many Uighurs say they have been subjected to 60 years of repressive communist Chinese rule, and have complained of an increased security crackdown ahead of next month’s Games. The Xinhua report on Wednesday said the Uighurs, 10 men and five women, threatened to ‘perish together’ when cornered by police and shouted ‘sacrifice for Allah’. ‘The suspects confessed they had all received training on the launching of a ‘holy war.’ Their aim was to kill Han people, the most populous ethnic group in China whom they took as heretics, and found their own state,’ Xinhua said. When contacted by AFP, Urumqi police referred all media inquiries to the regional police headquarters. However the Xinjiang police refused to comment. Xinjiang is a vast region of deserts and stunning mountain ranges that is home to more than eight million Uighurs who have long chafed under Chinese control.
Female students rally at Pakistan’s Red Mosque Agence France-Presse . Islamabad
Several thousand female Islamic students rallied at the radical Red Mosque in the Pakistani capital on Wednesday, just days after a suicide bomber killed 19 people during a protest there. The blast on Sunday targeted policemen guarding the protest by thousands of Islamists who had gathered to mark the one year anniversary of a military raid on the al-Qaeda linked mosque. Security was again tight for Wednesday’s rally called to demand the reconstruction of a seminary destroyed in the controversial raid, an AFP correspondent witnessed. Nearly 2,000 students, many clad in all-covering burqas, sat inside the mosque compound and chanted slogans against the US-backed president, Pervez Musharraf, who ordered last year’s raid which left 100 people dead. ‘We will take revenge against those who killed innocent men, women and children during the operation,’ Ume-Hassan, wife of the mosque’s former firebrand leader Abdul Aziz told the rally. ‘Our protest will continue against the forces of tyranny,’ she said as the students shouted ‘Go Musharraf Go’ and ‘Hang Musharraf’. The police formed pickets outside the compound and used metal detecting scanners to check the protesters for weapons before allowing them inside. The students became a symbol last year of the mosque’s defiance against the government, and conducted an Islamic vigilante campaign in the capital that included kidnapping several Chinese nationals they claimed were prostitutes. Government forces besieged the mosque on July 3, 2007, after a clash between police and militants in the building. Army commandos stormed it a week later, laying waste to parts of the building and leaving scores dead.