Quote:Former and current U.S. officials say the Pakistanis might have been stalling to release Davis so he could be extensively questioned, hoping he could provide more information about CIA activities in the troubled country or possibly even identify other agency officers.



The senior Pakistani intelligence official told the AP the two men in the response vehicle that went to aid Davis, killing the bystander, have left the country. The official said the Pakistani government's decision to let them leave was a concession to the U.S.

Quote:ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan's ISI spy agency is ready to split with the CIA because of frustration over what it calls heavy-handed pressure and its anger over what it believes is a covert U.S. operation involving hundreds of contract spies, according to an internal document obtained by The Associated Press and interviews with U.S. and Pakistani officials.

Such a move could seriously damage the U.S war effort in Afghanistan, limit a program targeting al-Qaida insurgents along the Pakistan frontier, and restrict Washington's access to information in the nuclear-armed country

Quote:Pakistan: The leader of the Pakistani political party Pakistan Tehrik-Insaaf (PTI), Imran Khan, said his party will take to the streets if US agent Raymond Davis is freed - on bail or otherwise -- or the price of petroleum products and other commodities rise, The News reported on 28 February.



Khan called upon the people, especially the young, to save Pakistan from corrupt leaders with a revolution for change. He said the current regime took money from foreigners who are allowed to kill innocents in drone attacks and operate secret agents like Davis that kill innocents on the roads in broad daylight. He added if the Egyptians, who are more oppressed than Pakistanis, can have a revolution and change, then Pakistan should be able to as well.



Comment: One significant part of Khan's rant is the call to anti-American activism directed at the youth. A second point is the linkage to increased fuel and commodity prices. Khan created a link that otherwise does not exist ,but which implicilty blames the US for higher prices for basic necessities and other ills. The link is rhetorical, not based in economics.



Regardless, Pakistan has not experienced the political convulsions that cell phone technology and social media have enabled in the Middle East. Pakistan's turn is coming - there are just too many grievances against the Gilani government. Imran Khan, who is a famous retired cricket champion who has gone into politics, has not helped the cause of internal stability.

Quote:CIA's Rambo runs amok

March 03, 2011 4:33:33 AM



G Parthasarathy



With tensions mounting between Pakistan and the US over the Raymond Davis affair, the flaws in America's AfPak policy have become more glaring than before.



It could well have been a scene from a Sylvester Stallone ‘Rambo’ thriller. The ‘good guy’ is ‘Rambo’ Raymond Davis, a Special Forces sharpshooter-turned-CIA agent, sent to eliminate ‘bad guy’ terrorists in ‘major non-NATO ally’ Pakistan. ‘Rambo’ Raymond Davis is followed by two ‘bad guys’ through the shady areas of Lahore on January 27. The ‘bad guys’ are actually ISI agents assigned to trail ‘Rambo’ Raymond Davis, who has been eliminating the agency’s jihadi and Taliban assets in Pakistani terrorist badlands, including in the tribal areas straddling the AfPak border. The ISI stalkers draw their pistols and move towards ‘Rambo’ Raymond Davis’s car. He draws his trusty six-shooter and brings down the two ‘bad guys’. He then radios for help and an American Consulate car rushes to the scene, with the rescuers running over a pedestrian while driving the wrong way on a one-way street. ‘Rambo’ Raymond Davis is overpowered and jailed. All hell breaks loose between the two ‘major non-NATO allies’.



The American version of the status of Mr Davis is that he holds a diplomatic passport and was issued a visa after being designated a ‘regional affairs officer’ — an euphemism for his being a CIA operative — with his background known to the hosts. He was also listed as ‘administrative and technical staff’ which entitles him to diplomatic immunity. According to the Pakistanis, Mr Davis is actually an employee of the private security agency, Hyperion Protective Consultants. Oddly, while the Americans insist Mr Davis is an embassy employee, the US State Department spokesman has described him as a “(Lahore) Consulate employee”. Amid these flip-flops by the Obama Administration, former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureishi, who had avoided a scheduled visit to Munich, evidently fearing that he was on the verge of being fired, joined issue immediately after he lost his job. Mr Qureishi claimed his Ministry had carried out a detailed study and concluded that Mr Davis was not entitled to diplomatic immunity. :mrgreen:



These developments have come just when Pakistan’s politics is becoming increasingly volatile. The Zardari Government in Islamabad does not want hassles in Pakistan’s relations with the US. The issue would have been settled and Mr Davis quietly repatriated to the US if the incident had taken place in the Federal Capital Area, where President Asif Ali Zardari controls the police. But, Lahore is not the federal capital. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has shown no inclination of making life easy for Mr Zardari. After easing Mr Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party out of the ruling coalition in Punjab, moves will be initiated to get his brother, Mr Nawaz Sharif, back as Pakistan’s Prime Minister. Mr Nawaz Sharif knows that his PML(N) will sweep the polls in any national election. The Sharif brothers also have no inhibitions in being seen to be supportive of the growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan. Mr Shahbaz Sharif has funded Hafiz Saeed’s Jamaat-ud-Dawa’h after it was declared an international terrorist organisation. The Punjab Police has swiftly arrested and charged Mr Davis with murder, knowing that the judiciary headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is virulently anti-Zardari. The Lahore High Court has deferred the case till March 14. In the meantime, Mr Davis sleeps in a Lahore jail despite assertions by US President Barack Obama that he enjoys diplomatic immunity and should be released.



Stirring this boiling cauldron is the all-powerful Pakistani Army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and his ever-loyal ISI chief, now under extension, Lt General Ahmed Shuja Pasha. There has been no love lost between the CIA and the ISI in recent days. The CIA is furious that its base in the Khost Province of Afghanistan, near the AfPak border, was attacked and destroyed by jihadis from across the Durand Line. Tensions between the two intelligence agencies escalated when the ISI leaked the identity of the CIA Station Chief then working undercover in Pakistan. Moreover, Mr Davis was undermining the ISI by establishing his own links to eliminate the jihadis in the Pashtun tribal areas along the AfPak border. Worse still, he was evidently attempting to undermine and infiltrate the citadel of the ‘holiest of the holies’ the Lashkar-e Tayyeba and the Patron Saint of the ISI, the redoubtable Hafiz Mohammed Saeed. The Pakistani Army quietly joined the chorus seeking to push the Americans into a corner and force them to offer concessions, even though Gen Kayani does not exactly love fellow Punjabi Nawaz Sharif. What the Americans, like some in South Block, have failed to acknowledge is that Gen Kayani believes that the US needs Pakistan just now more than Islamabad needs Washington, DC. He evidently feels that the Americans will blink first, which they show every inclination of doing, in this standoff.



The Davis affair is a manifestation of the larger malaise affecting the transactional US-Pakistan relationship. Thanks to some adept diplomacy by India, the Obama Administration soon gave up the thoughtless proposal mooted by Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid that the US should actively involve itself in meddling in the issue of Jammu & Kashmir by appointing Mr Bill Clinton as a Special Envoy. Moreover, its initial honeymoon with China soon led to estrangement, accentuated by the global economic downturn. The realisation dawned in Washington that New Delhi would be a useful partner in fashioning an inclusive Asian architecture for security and cooperation. While Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his bureaucrats have been constantly moaning that the Americans are not treating them ‘equally’ with India and denying them a nuclear deal, Gen Kayani appears hell bent on giving the US a difficult time by providing support and haven to the ‘Quetta Shura’ headed by Mullah Omar and to the Taliban’s Haqqani network.



American diplomacy in Afghanistan also needs review. Afghan President Hamid Karzai disagrees with American policies and is meeting Lt Gen Shuja Pasha regularly, seeking Pakistani cooperation for ‘reconciliation’ with the Taliban. The Americans have not evolved a coherent strategy of how to get the Taliban to renounce violence and abide the Afghan Constitution. Nor is there confidence that the Afghan National Army will develop the capabilities to overcome Taliban depredations by 2014. The realisation has to dawn that terrorist safe havens in Pakistan cannot be eliminated unless the US reduces its dependence on Pakistani logistical support and fashions alternative logistical arrangements with Russia and Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbours. Only then can the international community evolve viable policies for governance within Afghanistan and ensure that the AfPak border is no longer what Admiral Mike Mullen has called “the epicentre of global terrorism”.

Quote:Pakistan Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti shot dead



Pakistani Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti has been shot dead by gunmen who ambushed his car in broad daylight in the capital, Islamabad.



He was travelling to work through a residential district when his vehicle was sprayed with bullets, police said.



Mr Bhatti, the cabinet's only Christian minister, had received death threats for urging reform to blasphemy laws.



In January, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who had also opposed the law, was shot dead by one of his bodyguards.



The blasphemy law carries a death sentence for anyone who insults Islam. Critics say it has been used to persecute minority faiths.



No security escort



Mr Bhatti, 42, a leader of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), had just left his mother's home in a suburb of the capital when several gunmen surrounded his vehicle and riddled it with bullets, say witnesses.



The minister's driver was spared.



Mr Bhatti was taken to the nearby Shifa hospital, but was dead on arrival.



The gunmen, who were wearing shawls, escaped in a white Suzuki car, according to witnesses.



The minister had not been accompanied by his guards or the security escort vehicle that is standard for all Pakistani ministers, and it is not clear why.



Pamphlets by al-Qaeda and Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab, a branch of the Taliban in Pakistan's most populous province, were found at the scene.



Tehrik-i-Taliban told BBC Urdu they carried out the attack.



"This man was a known blasphemer of the Prophet [Muhammad]," said the group's deputy spokesman, Ahsanullah Ahsan.



"We will continue to target all those who speak against the law which punishes those who insult the prophet. Their fate will be the same."



Vendettas



Security has been stepped up on all main roads in Islamabad.



In January, Mr Bhatti told the BBC he would defy death threats he had received from Islamist militants for his efforts to reform the blasphemy law.



"This is a concerted campaign to slaughter every liberal, progressive and humanist voice in Pakistan," Farahnaz Ispahani, an aide to President Asif Ali Zardari, told AP news agency.



The Vatican condemned the murder of the Catholic politician as "unspeakable".



Governor Taseer was shot dead on 4 January, also in Islamabad, by one of his own police bodyguards. The killer has been feted by many in the country as a hero.



The governor had backed a private member's bill in parliament by Sherry Rehman, a female MP, to amend the blasphemy law in an attempt to make miscarriages of justice less likely and remove its death penalty.



But in the face of strident popular opposition, the federal government said it would not support the proposed reforms.



Ms Rehman said last month she was receiving death threats every half hour by e-mail and telephone.



Christians, who make up an estimated 1.5% of Pakistan's 185 million population, were left reeling by Mr Bhatti's death.



"We have been orphaned today!" Rehman Masih, a Christian resident of Islamabad, told AP news agency. "Now who will fight for our rights?"



Pakistan's blasphemy law has been in the spotlight since a Christian, Asia Bibi, was sentenced to hang in Punjab last November.



She denies claims she insulted the Prophet Muhammad during a row with Muslim women villagers about sharing water.



Although no-one convicted under the law has been executed, more than 30 accused have been killed by lynch mobs.



Critics say that convictions under the law hinge on witness testimony, which is often linked to grudges.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12617562

Quote:Miss Ralia Ram was a Lahore-born Christian lady who wrote letter after letter to Quaid-e-Azam warning him about Congress machinations. She too believed in the righteousness of Pakistan. Her letters are easily accessible in the several volumes of the Jinnah Papers. Fortunately in 1947, Christians were not a target group. Many Hindus and Muslims saved their lives by faking a Christian identity. Both in Amritsar and in Kasur thousands of Muslim refugees received medical aid from Christian volunteers.



Even more interesting is the fact that the majority of Punjabi Christians supported the Muslim League’s case for Pakistan before the Punjab Boundary Commission. Their leader, S P Singha, argued that the Christians would rather have a united Punjab, but if Punjab were to be divided they could expect better treatment in Pakistan than in caste-ridden India <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /> . The leader of the Anglo-Indians Mr Gibbon informed the Punjab Boundary Commission that the Anglo-Indians were happy to be in Pakistan. They regarded Lahore and West Punjab as their homeland.[color="#FF0000"][You reap what you show.] [/color]



I have already mentioned in an earlier op-ed that the leadership of the Ahmediyya community was deeply worried about persecution in a sectarian Pakistan. However, just before the partition of India it was decided to support the Pakistan movement (Munir Report 1954: 196-7). Thereafter the Ahmedis put all their efforts behind the Muslim League’s campaign. Sir Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, a leading member of the Ahmediyya community, presented the Muslim League case before the Punjab Boundary Commission with sterling competence. [color="#FF0000"][You reap what you show.] [/color] The counsel for the Congress Party, Mr Setalvad, could not restrain himself from publicly paying compliments to Zafarullah during the proceedings. In 1947, the Ahmedis were still included in government statistics among Muslims, and that alone had inflated the Muslim percentage of the Gurdaspur district to a bare majority of 51 percent.



http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.com/2010/12/pakistan-and-dehumanisation-of.html