A death on screen

On Wednesday, a young man was pitilessly killed in the heart of Karachi by state security forces. The repugnant moment was caught, in its entirety, on camera, and broadcast across the country and online.

In broad daylight, beside a park named after assassinated Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the youth is dragged by his hair and thrown to a gang of Rangers (paramilitary police forces). Tall, weeping, and clothed in jeans and a t-shirt, he wipes his brow in anguish. The Rangers surround him. "Who will do it?" they suggest with their eyes to one another. They tease and test the boy's will by pointing their rifles at him. The youth pleads, bending down to touch their feet. He wants mercy, but clemency is out of stock here. One Ranger steps forward, menacingly, looking directly into the eyes of the youth, and presses his G3 rifle into his neck. But he withdraws, giving his target a moment more to cry, to beg, knowing, that these few seconds of life are a loan: "I am helpless... don't kill me brother," he pleads. The pack encircles 18-year-old Sarfaraz Shah, and two Rangers, ostensibly protectors of civilians, shoot two bullets into the teenager's shuddering legs and hands. He lay there, in a pool of claret-colored blood and dust, trembling, crying desperately for help. The Rangers leave him to die.

Journalists, bloggers, and writers of all stripes have been reporting about the increasing violence in and around Karachi for some time. Often, however, such reports are constructed in the imagination. We write from witness testimonies and conjure up how events unfolded. While these accounts have given our stories due alarm, press journalism here could not have captured the unbounded shock and innate horror that the video showing Shah's torturous death has. And perhaps, for the first time in a long time, among a people who are divided among a variegation of indicators, such as wealth, ethnicity, political preference, the reality of how brutish some security personnel in Karachi can be has now been witnessed in its true form, across the board.

An immediate effect of the video has been a ripple of shock and anguish that has passed through the country. Yesterday, Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani announced on the floor of the National Assembly that he would personally look into the matter of Shah's killing; and vitriol spewed from politicians, like Minister of State Sheikh Waqas Akram, who said the Rangers behind the incident should be killed on the street. A bit much, one may feel, but it captures the public mood. Today, Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry said that the incident was enough cause for both the head of the Rangers in Sindh province and the Police Inspector General in Sindh to tender their resignations. Such reactions would not have occurred, unfortunately, had it not been for the video. The people of Pakistan are furious and disgusted, and willing to show this widely through social media, as well as in the streets of Karachi. And though boiling emotion may surface daily pertaining to all sorts of matters in Pakistan, this catastrophe has evidently drawn a sentiment of unique sorts, given the detail in the footage. People want heads to roll, and demand immediate answers. Chief among them is the reason why the Rangers are even in Karachi.

The Rangers traditionally safeguard Pakistan's border areas. Therefore the challenges they are trained for differ quite significantly than those witnessed daily within the confines of a cosmopolitan city such as Karachi. Yet, at least in the time that I have been working in the city, I have seen large intimidating vehicles thundering around some of the most beautiful and bustling parts of the city, filled with the ferociously daunting -- and fully armed -- Rangers. Historically, the Rangers have been commissioned by the federal government but paid by the province, who request the rangers to aid provincial police when necessary. And, if anarchy emerges, or chaos increases, then the Rangers are given jurisdiction to use their weapons. This is what happened earlier this year when Interior Minister Rehman Malik gave shoot-on-sight orders for bandits and extortionists in order to restore peace in Karachi and provide a sense of security to city's business community.

Yet unless a twist of Herculean proportions emerges soon, it will be hard to imagine that Shah was a threat to the security of Karachi or its business community, even if, as the security forces assert, he was stealing from people in the park. This is a city where criminals carry grenades and Kalashnikovs, where targeted killings occur almost daily, and where small levels of street violence can touch off street battles.

In many countries, no less in Pakistan, written accounts can be falsified and people made to be liars. This video of a callous murder, however, speaks for Shah, and the actions of his killers, from beyond the grave.

Bilal Baloch is a graduate student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is currently conducting field research in Karachi.

 “terrorists in uniform”?

Pakistan Rangers Gun Down Unarmed Man

Pakistan's security forces, reeling from the controversial shooting and killing of five unarmed Russians, faced fresh embarrassment on Wednesday after TV channels aired gruesome footage of a paramilitary trooper gunning down a youth at point blank range in Karachi.

The footage shows the youth, identified as Sarfraz Shah, apparently pleading for mercy after being surrounded by five troopers of the Pakistan Rangers at Benazir Bhutto Park in Boat Basin area of Karachi. 

The officials claimed security personnel had shot Shah after he fired at them.

However, the footage aired on all TV news channels clearly showed that Shah was unarmed when he was shot.

The footage shows Shah being grabbed by the hair and roughed up by a man clad in a white shirt who has a pistol in his hand. 

PAKISTAN today arrested five soldiers for shooting dead a young man at point blank range in a park after the killing was filmed live and broadcast on television, shocking human rights activists.

Five members of the Rangers paramilitary rounded on 25-year-old Sarfaraz Shah in Karachi's most exclusive neighbourhood of Clifton yesterday, claiming he had tried to rob a policeman's family.

A police official later told AFP on condition of anonymity that only a toy gun had been recovered. The public park is named after assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, whose family home is in Clifton.

Footage of the incident, filmed by an unidentified cameraman, was broadcast repeatedly on local television stations and uploaded to Internet site YouTube.

The clean-shaven man, wearing black trousers and a navy shirt, is seen crying and pleading for his life as a soldier cocked his rifle at his neck.

A soldier is heard saying: "This is the man" to which the man responds: "I am helpless, my friend.

"Please do not fire, please not, please please," he cried.

After being shot in the hand and thigh, as blood seeps onto the ground, the man pleads: "Please take me to the hospital, please take me, please save me, o friend save me."

He tries to stand, but quickly crumples to the ground. A soldier is heard saying: "Ok, that's enough". The man continues to beg for help as soldiers appear to amble around, watching him fall unconscious and bleed to death.

Several hundred people attended Shah's funeral in Karachi, the country's biggest city which has suffered scores of killings linked to political and ethnic tensions in recent months. Mourners chanted "the Rangers are killers".

PM’s warning

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilan told lawmakers on Thursday it was illegal to abuse state institutions, after an MP called the paramilitary “terrorists in uniform” over the killing of an unarmed man in Karachi.

Gilani warned parliamentarians that under article 63 of the constitution, abusive language could not be used against the superior judiciary and armed forces, according to state news agency APP.

“The PM requested the chair to expunge the language being used against institutions,” the agency reported.

Earlier, lawmaker Khwaja Saad Rafique from the opposition Pakistan Muslim League N party, used “foul language” against the Ranger paramilitary force, calling them “terrorists in uniform” who must be “bridled”, APP said.

President asks for inquiry report

President Asif Ali Zardari summoned a report of the Karachi incident of rangers killing. PM ordered an inquiry into the matter. He promised to personally handle the incident.

US has designs on Pakistan’s nukes: Iran

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday accused the United States of planning to sabotage Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, amidst claims by a leading think-tank that South Asia poses the biggest nuclear threat today.

“We have precise information that America wants to sabotage the Pakistani nuclear facilities in order to control Pakistan and to weaken the government and people of Pakistan,” Ahmadinejad told a news conference in Tehran.

The United States would then use the UN Security Council “and some other international bodies as levers to prepare the ground for a massive presence [in Pakistan] and weaken the national sovereignty of Pakistan,” he added, without elaborating.
Meanwhile in Stockholm, a leading Swedish think-tank upped the ante, saying that India and Pakistan are stockpiling nuclear weapons at a rapid pace, adding an almost identical 20 to 30 warheads in the last one year.

In its annual report for 2011, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) also pointed out that India and Pakistan continued with the development and deployment of ballistic and cruise missiles that are capable of delivering nuclear weapons, estimated to be 110 warheads with each of the countries.

According to the report, India currently holds about 80 to 110 nuclear warheads – about 30 more than its estimated 60-80, a year ago. Pakistan, too, boasts of about 90 to 110 warheads, up by 20 warheads from 70-90 in 2010.

“India and Pakistan, which along with Israel, are de facto nuclear weapons states outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), continue to develop new ballistic and cruise missile systems capable of delivering nuclear weapons. They are also expanding their capacities to produce fissile material for military purposes,” the report said.

Sipri deputy director Daniel Nord said India and Pakistan constituted the biggest nuclear threat today. “South Asia is the only place in the world where you have a nuclear weapons arms race,” he added.

India has no means for officially releasing data on its nuclear weapons stock, but Sipri’s estimates seem to be based on calculations of the country’s inventory of weapons-grade plutonium, as well as the number of operational nuclear-capable delivery systems.

India currently operates 20 nuclear reactors, mostly meant for civilian energy use. Pakistan operates two plutonium production reactors, and construction work on two more such facilities appears to be under way. Sipri also said that the world’s eight nuclear powers – Britain, China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the US – possess more than 20,500 warheads.
The think-tank regretted that disarmament vows have failed to reduce the nuclear threat as the nuclear powers invest in new weapons systems. “More than 5,000 nuclear weapons are deployed and ready for use, including nearly 2,000 that are kept in a high state of alert,” it warned in the report.

As of January 2011, Russia had 11,000 nuclear warheads, including 2,427 deployed, while the United States had 8,500, including 2,150 deployed, the report said.

 Anti-Americanism: Alive and Well in the Age of Obama

By Joseph LoconteWednesday, September 16, 2009

Filed under: World Watch, Numbers

Islamic countries distrust the United States under the leadership of President Obama about as much as they did under President George W. Bush. What's going on?

Throughout the Bush presidency, opinion polling from the Pew Research Center trumpeted America’s “abysmal” approval ratings across the globe. The problem, pollsters suggested with numbing regularity, was that a “cowboy president” had inflamed the Muslim world—and America’s European allies—with his “unilateral” war on terrorism. The remedy, of course, was a new administration with a fresh approach: a president committed to multilateralism, smart diplomacy, and American soft power. Right on cue, a Pew report hailed Barack Obama’s election for inspiring “global confidence” in U.S. leadership and rescuing America’s reputation from eternal perdition.

This hagiographic storyline, however, is evaporating like a morning mist. A newer Pew survey suggests that most Islamic countries distrust the United States under the leadership of President Obama about as much as they did under President George W. Bush. Yes, majorities of the Muslim populations interviewed still believe that America plays a mostly destructive role in the world. Most view the United States as “an enemy” and “a military threat” to their own country. Most disapprove of theAmerican-led effort to combat terrorism. Large numbers, in fact, voice strong support for terrorism and Osama bin Laden. Western Europeans, though expressing positive personal views of Obama, show little enthusiasm for key U.S. foreign policy objectives. In other words, anti-Americanism is alive and well in the age of Obama.

The most alarming poll finding, in view of Pakistan’s nuclear capability, is that more Pakistanis express positive views of Osama bin Laden than they do of President Obama.

The Pew poll, completed just after Obama’s Cairo speech to the Muslim world, drew on 27,000 interviews in 25 countries, including five Muslim-majority states. The desultory findings from Muslim respondents—reported by Pew researchers with a mix of confusion and rationalization—received scant attention from the mainstream media. No wonder: If the survey results represent attitudes in the Middle East and beyond, then the most cherished liberal assumptions about radical Islam and U.S. foreign policy are exposed as desperate falsehoods.

Perhaps the most fearsome example is Pakistan, where only about 16 percent of respondents express a positive view of the United States—a drop of three percentage points from when Bush was president. Thanks in part to terrorist attacks that have killed scores of ordinary Pakistanis, disapproval of terrorism and the Taliban has risen sharply in recent months. Nevertheless, most Pakistanis (64 percent) view the United States as an enemy. The most alarming finding, in view of Pakistan’s nuclear capability, is that more people express positive views of Osama bin Laden than they do of Obama. Let that soak in. Nearly one in five respondents (18 percent) trust bin Laden to “do the right thing” in world affairs, compared to 13 percent for Obama. Given Al Qaeda’s record of slaughtering Muslims as effortlessly as they do Western infidels, the Pakistani psyche seems headed for moral collapse.

Many people in Muslim-majority states believe the United States is playing a largely negative role in the world, according to a survey.

The situation in other Muslim lands looks nearly as grim. Echoing the Pew findings, a recent World Public Opinion survey suggests that many people in Muslim-majority states believe the United States is playing a largely negative role in the world (72 percent in Turkey say the United States is playing a mainly negative role, 69 percent in Pakistan, 67 percent in Egypt, 53 percent in Iraq, and 39 percent in Indonesia.) In Egypt, where America-bashing is virtually the only permissible form of public protest, high levels of anti-Americanism persist. Palestinians, by a more than two-to-one margin (51 percent to 23 percent), have more confidence in the leader of Al Qaeda than in President Obama. Obama gets higher approval ratings in Turkey—about 33 percent—but most respondents oppose his Afghanistan policy and express highly unfavorable attitudes toward the United States. Indeed, at least 86 percent of Turks say America abuses its power to get Turkey to do what it wants, and 76 percent see the United States as having a “hypocritical” agenda. This comes despite continuing U.S. support for Turkey’s admission to the European Union, assistance against terror attacks of the Kurdistan Workers Party, and an Obama trip in which he reassured Turks that America “is not, and never will be, at war with Islam.” A recent report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy has begun to grasp the essential reality: “Combined with historical data, these new polls show that anti-Americanism might be becoming an internalized component of Turkish society, and that anti-Americanism in Turkey does not relate to specific U.S. administrations.”

Big Game in the Region !

Isolating Pakistan from Afghanistan

Following Operation Geronimo, the secretive Indo-US alliance in Afghanistan is brought to the fore. Most certainly, bringing the Indians to Afghanistan is part of the Indo –US strategic partnership that also includes transfer of US nuclear and missile technology to India.

This game is being played just to ensure the survival of the puppet regime in Kabul. It shows how important Afghanistan is to the United States that it is sacrificing Pakistan after declaring it “ Major Non-NATO Ally.”

At present, the US administration is no longer interested in the security interest of Pakistan or any Pak mediation role with Taliban. The Americans are contacting Taliban and holding talks with them both in Qatar and Germany in accordance with a well conceived plan to reintegrate Taliban into the ruling Afghan regime. With Al-Qaeda in a state of disarray following the physical liquidation of Osama bin Laden, the stage is set to delink Taliban from Al-Qaeda, a prerequisite to the programme of Afghan reconciliation.

To ensure the isolation of Pakistan from the Afghan scene, the US administration is waging an unprecedented media war against the military and security establishment to the extent that it has nearly closed down communications between the United States and Pakistan. Ostensibly this policy is paving the way for replacing Pakistan with India in Afghanistan. This reading is reinforced by the visit of Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh to Kabul on May 12-13 in which he committed $500 million to infrastructure projects and training Afghan police. Actually the grant is a price for introducing the Indians everywhere in Afghanistan under the pretext of implementing “ development projects.”

Viewing this unbelievable strategy, one can argue that the Americans are making a blunder by isolating Pakistan and ignoring the geography and common history between Pakistan and Afghanistan and by bringing an outsider not only to fill the void but also to create more instability and complications in the region. Additionally, no other neighbouring states or regional powers especially Central Asian Republic, China and Russia would accept aliens in Afghanistan or any other destabilizing power .

Most probably, the American administration has grossly miscalculated by ignoring the impact of such strategy on the national security of Pakistan and its reaction. You simply cannot replace one imperial power with another and presume that the Afghans would accept Hindu imperialists. Both the Americans and the Indians fail to show to their peoples and the international community as to why would the Afghans not targets the Indians following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The American decision makers also ignored the fact that no regime in Pakistan would accept Indian domination of Afghanistan and creating another hostile front in addition to the highly destabilized Easter Front. You simply cannot push a nuclear power to the wall and presume that you can get away with it.

On their part, the Indians are standing on the wrong side of history by siding with a defeated colonial power. Certainly they would never be accepted by the Afghan people since they are seen as an extension to the American regime that devastated the Afghan people by brutal force. They would definitely expose themselves to a Third Afghan Jihad once the American complete their retreat from Afghanistan.

Viewing the events of the last decade, it is clear that Washington and New Delhi have worked out a very close strategy to gradually cut off Pakistan from Afghanistan. One of the most outstanding outcome of this strategy is creating , training and arming TTP in a bid to transfer the Afghan battle deep into FATA and Pakistani cities. First, the TTP fighters are trained in Guantanamo camps. Subsequently, the are released and sent to Afghan territories where Indians military personnel disguised as security guards trained them and pushed them to Pakistan to target the Pak army and security agencies. This policy is similar to the policy of creating the so-called Sahawaat mercenary troops in Iraq to fight the American war against the national Iraqi resistance.

Earlier, the game of creating Indo and US supported TTP mercenaries were kept top secret. The Americans deceived Pakistan by the “ strategic dialogue” and Kerry Lugar bill. India showed some unexplained flexibility when it unconditionally agreed to resume the composite dialogue.

Evidently, the game was to divert the attention from the Indo-US scheme to destabilize Pakistan and to shift chaos and anarchy from Afghanistan to everywhere in Pakistan. Once, this is achieved, Washington and New Delhi would combine to seize the nuclear and missile assets of Pakistan, ensure its Balkanization and advance towards Chinese Tibet and Xingjian. 

The new pan-Arabism

Let us dream for a moment. Although the future is uncertain and danger still lurks at every street corner, Arab society could be experiencing an inspiring moment of renewal. Spreading with contagious euphoria across the Middle East, popular uprisings are providing the Arabs with an immense opportunity, such as occurs rarely, perhaps only in every three or four generations. The opportunity must not be squandered.

Although much blood has been spilled — in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and elsewhere — fresh blood has, at the same time, been infused into a senile and decaying political system.

Right across the region, the young and the not so young are united in long-stifled aspirations. Formulating the same demands for political freedom, economic opportunity and, above all, dignity, they call out to each other across national boundaries, copying each other, drawing encouragement from each other's experience. The Arab peoples are responding to each other as never before.

Satellite television and internet communications have undoubtedly succeeded in creating a sense of community, informing Arab societies about each other, ventilating common problems, linking Maghreb to Mashreq. Social networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have also played a role in bringing the Arabs together. Had it not been for such new inventions, the spark lit in Tunisia by the self-immolation of a young street vendor might not have set fire to the combustible, pent-up grievances of Egypt, which in turn inspired revolts in Libya, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere.

But something more profound is at work. As autocracies are brought down, the region seems to be experiencing a new pan-Arab moment. More genuine than that promoted in the past by individual leaders such as Jamal Abdul Nasser or his rivals in the Baath party, this incipient pan-Arabism is a union of peoples, rather than a union of leaders for their own geopolitical ambitions. Political pan-Arabism was a failure. Will popular pan-Arabism be more successful? Will Arab solidarity be more than an empty slogan?

The last time something of this nature happened was a century ago when the Ottoman Empire was defeated in the First World War. After four centuries of Ottoman rule, some Arabs saw in the empire's collapse an opportunity for a national awakening. Demands were formulated for freedom, self-determination and unity. But the nascent Arab nationalism of the time was brutally crushed — by the imperial ambitions of Britain and France; by the quest for statehood of the Zionist movement, which flourished under British protection; and also, it must be said, by Arab rivalries, which remain to this day a source of weakness and paralysis.

Today's revolution is primarily against internal rather than external colonists. The post-revolutionary period is bound to be chaotic. There will be instability, fierce infighting while new political parties are formed and new forces take shape, even attempts here and there at counter-revolution. Faced with popular uprisings, those Arab rulers still in place will inevitably look to their defences. But they should not miss the import of what is happening. They should embrace the new trend rather than fight it. It seems to me, and no doubt to many other observers, that three developments are necessary at this historic moment if the Arab Revolution is to succeed.

Curse of sectarianism

The first is that those Arab monarchies which have so far been spared popular uprisings must themselves introduce and implement far-reaching reforms. Ruling families need to open their ranks to ordinary citizens; representative institutions need to be created; shura councils or parliaments must be given real responsibility; accountability insisted upon; corruption curbed; arbitrary arrests and police brutality ended. In a word, power must be shared and the people's energies harnessed for the common good.

A second development will be even more difficult to bring about, but is perhaps even more important. Sectarianism is the curse of Arab societies. What does it matter if an Arab man or woman is a Sunni or a Shiite, an Alawi, an Ismaili or a Druze, a Christian or a Muslim? Political and religious authorities across the region should make a resolute attempt to consign sectarian differences and conflicts to history. What alone matters is that Arabs — whether male or female, rich or poor, and whatever their backgrounds or religious beliefs — should feel and behave as Arab citizens. It is surely time to launch an ‘Arab Union' based on common citizenship to match the European Union, which the Europeans managed to create over the past half-century.

A third necessary development is a recognition that oil wealth belongs not just to a few privileged Arabs but to all of them. It must be shared across the region. Generosity is, after all, the greatest of Arab virtues. The oil-poor countries will need help from their richer brothers. Solidarity is meaningless if it is not backed with cash.

Just as Western Europe pumped billions into the poorer parts of Eastern Europe after the Soviet collapse, so the oil-rich Arabs must urgently come to the aid of their poorer neighbours. With oil prices at near-record levels, it is a scandal that the great majority of Arabs still scrape a living on two dollars a day or less.

Youth unemployment is the number one problem of the Arab world. In country after country it has been the real motor of the revolution. A great bank or fund needs to be set up which, by tapping into Arab sovereign wealth funds, would be dedicated to creating jobs across the region. Countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Syria and others, need massive aid, well-directed and managed, if the democratic movement is not to collapse in disillusion and despair.

If it does, no one will be spared.

Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs.

ISI under fire

The head of a Pakistani media organisation has criticised the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) for terming as baseless the charge levelled by Human Rights Watch over the spy agency's involvement in the brutal killing of journalist Syed Salim Shahzad.

Shahzad, 40, was kidnapped in Islamabad last Sunday and his body, bearing marks of severe torture, was found in a canal in Punjab province on Tuesday.

He is widely believed to have been seized by intelligence officials for alleging that terrorists attacked a key naval base in Karachi on May 22 after the navy refused to free sailors held for suspected militant links.

Hamid Haroon, president of All Pakistan Newspapers Society, said in a statement that an ISI spokesman has questioned the ‘baseless allegations' levelled by Human Rights Watch on the basis of an email from Saleem Shahzad.

No veiled threats

An unnamed ISI official had said that ‘the reported e-mail of Shahzad to Ali Hasan Dayan of HRW (Human Rights Watch) which is being made the basis of baseless allegations levelled against ISI has no veiled or unveiled threats in it'.

Dawn quoted Haroon as saying: "The e-mail in the possession of Ali Dayan, the monitor for Human Rights Watch (HRW) stationed in Lahore is indeed one of the three identical e-mails sent by Shahzad to HRW, his employers (Asia Times Online) and to his former employer, myself. [Also] the allegations levelled by HRW at the ISI are essentially in complete consonance with the contents of the slain journalist's e-mail."

"... for the information of the officers involved in Shahzad's gruesome murder that the late journalist confided to me and several others that he had received death threats from various officers of the ISI on at least three occasions in the past five years. Whatever the substance of these allegations, they form an integral part of Shahzad's last testimony."

Haroon added that in the last threat on October 18, 2010 "he [Shahzad] recounted the details of his meetings at the ISI headquarters in Islamabad between the Director General Media Wing (ISI), Rear Admiral Adnan Nazir, with the Deputy Director General of the Media Wing, Commodore Khalid Pervaiz, also being present on the occasion|".

He went on to say that "the ostensible agenda for this meeting was the subject of Shahzad's story of Asia Times Online with respect to the Pakistan government freeing senior Afghan Taliban commander, Mullah Baraadar. The senior officials present suggested to Shahzad that he officially deny the story, which he refused to do, terming the official's demand as ‘impractical'".

"The senior intelligence official was ‘curious' to identify the source of Shahzad's story.

Top Pakistani militant Ilyas Kashmiri reported killed in US drone attack

Ilyas Kashmiri, a top Pakistani militant and senior Al Qaeda operative, reportedly has been killed in a US drone strike in the tribal territory of South Waziristan, according to press reports and a statement from the group he headed.

Kashmiri is believed to be behind some of the deadliest attacks in India and Pakistan, including a 2009 suicide attack on Pakistan’s spy agency and attacks on US forces in Afghanistan.

He is the operations chief of a group called Harakut-ulJihad Islami, which has some 3,000 militia members and is classified by the US as a terrorist organization tied to Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Punjabi Taliban.

A Newsweek profile headlined “Is Ilyas Kashmiri the New Bin Laden?” said he “has the experience, the connections, and a determination to attack the West – including the United States—that make him the most dangerous Qaeda operative to emerge in years.”

A Pakistani intelligence official said Kashmiri was among nine militants killed in the strike. While identifying individuals killed in such attacks can be difficult, a fax from the militant group he was heading – Harakat-ul-Jihad al-Islami's "313 Brigade" – confirmed Kashmiri was "martyred" in the strike.

Described by U.S. officials as Al Qaeda's military operations chief in Pakistan, he was one of five most-wanted militant leaders in the country, accused in a string of attacks, including the 2008Mumbai massacre.

Kashmiri also has been linked to last month's assault on a Pakistani naval base in Karachi.

He is also accused of masterminding several raids on Pakistan police and intelligence buildings in 2009 and 2010, as well as a failed assassination attempt against then-President Pervez Musharrafin 2003. The US Department of State says he organized a 2006 suicide bombing against the US consulate in Karachi that killed four people, including an American diplomat.

The US had offered a $5 million reward for information on Kashmiri’s whereabouts.

The attack on Kashmiri comes just a month after US Navy SEALs killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Ladenhiding out in Pakistan, and it represents a major blow against the terrorist organization.

That operation – planned and carried out without informing Pakistan – strained relations between the two countries. Many sources found it difficult to believe that Pakistani intelligence services didn’t know of bin Laden’s whereabouts in a compound near military facilities.

Since then, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullenhave gone to Islamabad as part of an effort to repair relations.

Secretary Clinton pointedly said there is no evidence that anyone at the highest levels of the Pakistani government knew bin Laden was living outside Islamabad, in Abbottabad, the Monitor’sHoward LaFranchi reported recently. She also underscored the “close cooperation” between the US and Pakistan over the past decade that she said has resulted in the killing or capture of many “terrorists” and “violent extremists.”

Kashmiri and his men were said to be having tea in an apple orchard when the attack occurred, according to a BBC report. Local sources said two rounds of two missiles each were fired within a space of a few seconds. A Pakistani official later confirmed to the BBC that Kashmiri was among those killed.

n a statement faxed to a Pakistani television station, Harakat-ul-Jihad al-Islami spokesman Abu Hanzla Kashir said: “We confirm that our commander in chief, Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, along with other companions, was martyred in an American drone strike on June 3, 2011, at 11:15 p.m. God willing, America will very soon see our full revenge. Our only target is America.”

Is America really our Enemy No 1?

Six months ago, an extraordinary news report was published byDawn, which recounted the contents of a military briefing given to journalists on November 30, 2010. A top Pakistani military official stated that Pakistan “has transited from the ‘most sanctioned ally’ to the ‘most bullied ally’” of the US. Essentially an off-the-record briefing, the contents were leaked to the public wherein the army leadership declared that the US had a “transactional” relationship with Pakistan. That the US was “interested in perpetuating a state of ‘controlled chaos’ in Pakistan”; and the “real aim of US strategy is todenuclearise Pakistan.”

Paranoia about the US runs deep into the Pakistani psyche now. Other than the reticent generals, it is the vocal media men who have now made anti-Americanism an article of faith of Pakistani patriotism.

The recently published WikiLeaks cable of May 2008 reveals that many of Pakistan’s National Defence University (NDU) students and instructors “have an anti-American bias”. In the cable, former US ambassador Anne Patterson reported on US Army Colonel Michael Schleicher’s study period at the NDU, where he attended the Senior Course along with 110 Pakistani officers. Schleicher estimated that a third of the class was religiously devout, a third moderate and less than a third overtly secular. He also said that pedagogy at the NDU represented misperceptions about US policy and culture. A guest speaker (a general) held that “the US National Security Agency actively trains correspondents for media organisations”.

At the time this cable was released in Pakistan, Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, also lectured at the NDU, where he tried to argue that it is “perfectly possible for two nations to have an alliance but not have a total convergence of interests. For example, just as Pakistan’s views about India are not shared by the US, America’s views about Iran are not shared by Pakistan.”

After a long spiel on reasoned view of foreign policy, Haqqani asks, “What is the principal national security threat to Pakistan?” The audience is invited to vote by raising hands for categories, ‘from within’, ‘from India’ and ‘from the US’. Not surprisingly, a majority of hands were raised for the US.

Perhaps the best summation of the syndrome comes in Haqqani’s own words: “If [the biggest threat to Pakistan’s security] really comes from the US, then we’ve already lost, ladies and gentlemen, because you can’t beat the US in a military confrontation and that is the reality which we have to accept, whatever our emotions. Because, let us be honest, we do not have the means to take on the one military power in the world that spends more on defence technology than the next 20 nations in the world. So, that is where I think we sometimes end up having what I call ‘emotional discussion’. I see it on Pakistani television all the time.”

A calm Haqqani tries to reason with martial minds: “How can we be integrated into the global economy if we are not part of the international economic system which, right now, whether we like it or not, is led by a single country. A reality based foreign policy for Pakistan will have to integrate [Pakistan] into the global economy. [The policy] will have to take into account Pakistan’s concerns emanating from the terrorist threat within the country.”

Perhaps this is where the greatest of our challenges resides. The enemy is somewhere within, deep into the Pakistani psyche — an inheritor of the ‘invasion-threat.’ In a century that defines power in terms of economic and technological advantages, our national ideology leads us to somewhat simplistic thinking. We still only celebrate Turko-Afghan Muslim invaders of the subcontinent and resent the arrival of the European colonialist in the garb of traders. But the world has moved beyond Ghauri and Lord Clive. The religion-based ideology designed to forge national unity might end up being our undoing, coupled with an unwillingness to embrace the realities of the contemporary world. In any case, how can we explain how an institution continues to be the largest recipient of US assistance and its ally for decades; and apparently resents it too?

Published in The Express Tribune, June 4^th, 2011.