Rehman Malik admits defeat in unblocking YouTube

After months of effort, sending out innumerable tweets, setting up a special committee and raising the matter in the cabinet and even enjoying four hours of success in the campaign, Interior Minister Rehman Malik finally admitted defeat in having video sharing website YouTube unblocked in Pakistan.

On Thursday, Malik tweeted from his verified account:

    “Dear All; I can only make recommendations to open the UTube and I did so. Accordingly the U tube was unblocked but was re-blocked by the Govt.”

It is the same account from which Malik had tweeted almost a month ago that people should expect a notification on YouTube being unblocked.

That joy was short lived as hours after the site was reopened, it was blocked again.

The orders for that block came from the office of the same person who had ordered it shut on September 18, 2012 – Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf.

Business Express: Auditors question contract changes, suspect revenue slippages

Federal auditors have questioned the rationale behind the Economic Coordination Committee’s decision to amend a contract awarded to a private concern for operating the Business Express train service, believing it will cause a loss of Rs2 billion to the national exchequer over a period of five years.

In a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) held here on Wednesday, Acting Auditor General of Pakistan Tanveer Ahmad commented that the basis on which the ECC – the economic decision-making body of the cabinet – reduced revenue share of Pakistan Railways (PR) in Business Express “does not seem reliable”.

The revenue share of PR in the train has been slashed from 88% occupancy to 65%. This will bring down the national carrier’s earnings by Rs1.1 million per day and the loss will reach Rs2 billion for the five-year contract period.

Four Brothers, the operator of the train which was required to pay Rs3.2 million per day to the PR, will now be paying Rs2.1 million, said Arif Azeem, Secretary of the Ministry of Railways, while briefing PAC on the contours of the deal and recent changes made in it.

PR awarded the contract to Four Brothers for running the train between Karachi and Lahore on public-private partnership model with terms that they would pay an amount equivalent to 88% occupancy or Rs3.2 million per day besides investing Rs225.8 million in coaches and locomotives.

PAC members asked whether the ECC had the authority to review the agreement and whether the decision-makers would be questioned by the National Accountability Bureau. But nobody had answers to these questions.

Ex-supporter Jemima Khan says Assange has alienated allies

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange risks turning from a popular hero into an L Ron Hubbard figure, tolerating only “blinkered, cultish devotion”, said one his former backers Jemima Khan.

Jemima is Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan’s former wife and daughter of the late financier James Goldsmith.

Claiming Assange had alienated his supporters, Jemima, associate editor of the New Statesman, wrote for the weekly British magazine that Assange’s anti-secrecy organisation was now “guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose”.

She compared the Australian to US science-fiction author Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology.

Assange has been holed up inside the Ecuadoran embassy in London after losing his battle in the British courts against extradition to Sweden, where he faces questioning over allegations of rape and sexual assault. Ecuador has granted him political asylum.

Absence of the state

IT is an interesting fact that Karachi has the highest literacy rate in Pakistan, but also the highest rate of political violence. Being the economic hub of Pakistan, Karachi accounts for more than 25 per cent of the country’s GDP, 54 per cent of central government tax revenues, 70 per cent of national income tax revenue and 30 per cent of industrial output.

Contrast this with the fact that in the last three years (2010-2012), about 5,000 people have died in Karachi as a result of targeted killings, according to the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee. The question is: why is Pakistan’s most literate as well as most developed city also its most violent? What explains the descent of Karachi into a cycle of violence and chaos?

This question can be answered by examining the role of ethno-political parties in Karachi as well as the role of the state and its policing powers.

Putting the spate of ethnic violence in Karachi in a conceptual context, one notes that inter-ethnic tensions in the city have to do with the fact that ethnic groups in the metropolis are placed not in a hierarchical/ranked position vis-à-vis each other, but are rather unranked.

Afghan peace talks Pakistan’s urgent priority

Pakistan treats the Afghan peace process as an “urgent priority”, Ambassador Sherry Rehman said on Monday as the US media reported that mistrust among key players had floundered talks with the Taliban.

“Pakistan looks clearly to an Afghan-led roadmap for reconciliation, understands that this is an urgent priority,” said Pakistan’s envoy to the US, rejecting insinuations that Islamabad was trying to delay the talks.

“Pakistan also has shown support at the highest level for any track of dialogue that the Afghans deem important,” she added.

The US media reported on Monday that Mulla Omar has recently made a surprise offer to share power in a post-war Afghanistan. But “mistrust and confusion” among key players had floundered the peace effort, the report added.

The United States hopes to reach some peaceful arrangement for transfer of power in Afghanistan before withdrawing its forces from the country by 2014.

“Although the Taliban appear more ready to talk than ever before, peace talks remain elusive because of infighting among a rising number of interlocutors,” reported the Associated Press, quoting official sources in Kabul.

Urdu and Japan: a relationship of red blooms and green fragrance

Among foreign nationals who have written about, and in Urdu, the Japanese stand head and shoulders above the rest. For more than 100 years, people in Japan have been learning and teaching Urdu as a foreign language.

In the promotion of Urdu, the role of university teachers has been instrumental. Prof Gamou Reiichi, who is known as Japan’s Baba-i-Urdu, was the one to plant Urdu’s exotic sapling in Japanese soil. The sapling was tended lovingly by Prof Suzuki Takashi, a pupil of Prof Reiichi’s, and other scholars such as Prof Hiroji Kataoka, Prof Asada Yutaka, and Prof Hiroshi Hagita made sure that this alien plant kept blooming and bearing fruit. Teachers from the latter generation who worked for the promotion include Prof So Yamane, Prof T. Matsumura, Prof Hiroshi Kankagaya and Prof Kensaku Mamiya.

This plant is now producing cherry-red flowers. The fragrance of these flowers, strange as it seems, has a colour, too — it is green, the colour of our national flag. What has prompted me to write these lines is the title of a book, ‘Surkh phoolon ki sabz khushboo’, meaning the green fragrance of red flowers, which appeared in December 2012.

iPillow

China poised to control strategic Pakistani port

 China is poised to take over operational control of a strategic deep-water Pakistani seaport that could serve as a vital economic hub for Beijing and perhaps a key military outpost, according to officials.  

The construction of the port, in the former fishing village of Gwadar in troubled Balochistan province, was largely funded by China at a cost of about $200 million. It has been a commercial failure since it opened in 2007, because Pakistan never completed the road network to link the port to the rest of the country.

Chinese control of the port would give it a foothold in one of the world’s most strategic areas and could unsettle officials in Washington, who have been concerned about Beijing’s expanding regional influence.

The port on the Arabian Sea occupies a strategic location between South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. It lies near the Strait of Hormuz, gateway for about 20 per cent of the world’s oil.

Empowering spy agencies: Amidst walkouts, Fair Trial Bill sails through Senate

The Senate unanimously passed the Fair Trial Bill 2012 on Friday in a session marred by back-to-back walkouts by both opposition as well as government allies.

The bill – which has already been cleared by the National Assembly – was tabled in the upper house of Parliament by Law Minister Farooq H Naek. Neither side of the aisle opposed the proposed law. Deputy Chairman Kazim Baloch presided over the proceedings.

The Fair Trial Bill 2012 empowers spy agencies to intercept private communications in order to catch terrorists. The bill triggered a controversy after certain quarters felt that the wire-tapping powers would threaten privacy and civil liberties.

Walkouts

Lawmakers from the Awami National Party (ANP) staged a walkout in protest against the fresh wave of target killings in Karachi and statements by Interior Minister Rehman Malik predicting more terrorist attacks in the country’s economic capital.

Chronicles of carnage: US ‘war’ in Pakistan regains intensity, states report

CIA drones pounded Pakistani soil with renewed intensity during the first month of 2013, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s monthly report based on the ‘Covert Drone War’ project.

In a jarring display that fuelled the recent, heightened spate of violence in Pakistan, January saw six drone strikes in merely nine days – a number exceeded only by August 2012. Compared to the January of last year, the number of strikes doubled this year.

The report also covered Yemen and Somalia. Yemen saw eight drone strikes during the month, with none of them confirmed as US attacks. No operations were reported in Somalia.

In Pakistan, there have been a total of 362 US drone attacks since 2004 – most of them during the tenure of incumbent President Barack Obama: 310 or 85.6%.

Although it is difficult to ascertain the exact number of casualties, the Bureau believes 2,629 to 3,461 people were killed and 1,267 to 1,431 wounded. Of the total fatalities, 475 to 891 were civilians, including 176 children.

High-value hits

The January drone strikes killed 27 to 54 people, of which 0 to 2 were reportedly civilians. Three senior, high-value militants were also successfully hit.

The very first strike of the month killed prized target Mullah Nazir. Nazir had been on the CIA hit-list for a long time, and had been involved with multiple attacks on Nato and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) commander Wali Muhammad Mehsud was also killed during the month, as was senior al Qaeda commander Sheikh Yaseen al Kuwaiti, reportedly hit by eight missiles while at home with daughter and wife.

The Taliban characterised

The report also indicated a supposed classification of the Taliban into two categories – ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – by the Pakistani military and intelligence community. Maulvi Nazir was apparently labelled as one of the ‘good’ Taliban because his group did not carry out terrorist attacks within the country. Following the same line of reasoning, the TTP emerged as the ‘bad’ Taliban, responsible for numerous bloody attacks in Pakistani cities.