Lashkar-e-Taiba contemplating next move after U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, expert says

Lashkar-e Taiba was blamed for terror attack in Mumbai in 2008, including this attack on the Taj Mahal hotel.  (David Guttenfelder/Associated press File photo)

Lashkar-e-Taiba's well-organized attacks in 2008 on Mumbai temporarily seemed to paralyze the Indian security forces, riveted the world's attention, and put the venerable militant group back on the map.

In the five years since LeT extremists stormed the streets of Mumbai, killing 166 and holding India's commercial capital hostage, LeT has been relatively quiet. But that doesn't mean it's disappeared, argues an expert on the group.

Stephen Tankel testified Wednesday before the House Homeland Security Committee, and explained LeT's operational capabilities and the prospects for an LeT attack in North America.

Tankel, a professor at American University, non-resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of the 2011 book Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba, told The Star in an interview that U.S. lawmakers are keeping tabs on LeT, which considered Mumbai an operational success, since it bolstered the group's recruiting and fundraising efforts and gave LeT a measure of prestige.

"This a group that is patient, that is calculated," Tankel said, adding it's likely based on open source evidence that LeT is continuing its recruitment efforts in North America.

In January, Pakistani-born Canadian Tahawwur Rana was sentenced to 14 years in prison for providing material support to overseas terrorism, including LeT. During the same month, American David Headley, who confessed to helping plan the  2008  attacks in Mumbai, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

"LeT leaders saw the value in having someone like David Headley and it's fair to surmise that they are even more keen now to have more like him," Tankel said.

He said Canada and the U.S. likely remain potential LeT targets.

"Ideologically both countries remain within LeT's target set," he said. "The U.S. more so than Canada. LeT sees itself as a pan-islamist organization that defends and avenges violence against Muslims. But "they're also worried about taking steps that would endanger their privileged status within Pakistan," Tankel said.

One of the questions being posed in security circles, Tankel said, is what LeT will do after the U.S. withdraws its troops from Afghanistan next year.

It's possible that the group has been directed not to be too active in Kashmir because Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan is chock-a-block with militant activity.

Pakistan's murky Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate established Lashkar-e-Taiba in 1989 to help attack Indian resources in the disputed Kashmir region. LeT head Hafiz Muhammad Saeed currently lives in the open in Lahore, even though the U.S. has placed a $10 million bounty on his head and the United Nations has placed him on a terrorist list.

When the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, LeT may enjoy a more free hand to target Indian officials in Kashmir. Tankel said it's widely believed that LeT is active in Kashmir on a small-scale directly and indirectly through a domestic militant group know as Hizbul Mujahidin.

But it's similarly possible that Pakistan's western border won't become more peaceful in 2014.

That’s because neither the insurgency Pakistan supports in Afghanistan, nor the one it is facing at home, are likely to end.

And so the beat goes on.

U.S. and Canadians should not become complacent, said Tankel, who has interviewed numerous LeT leaders.

While LeT has resisted attacking North American targets to this point out of strategic calculation, "they could determine that they could get away with it, even if that determination is wrong. They could think 'this won't be traced back to us.' Or they could think ‘Pakistan is too weak and the U.S. is not in a position to punish us.’

"They don't always weigh cost and benefits the way we do. While keeping the threat in perspective and not overreacting, we need to be aware of the fact that it's not their ideology that is stopping LeT from attacking here."

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at The Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Rapes and the brave women who report it

Watch Outlawed in Pakistan on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

 

 

 

Often it takes the courage of one woman -- and her family -- to expose the greater issue of sexual violence.

In India, it was the rape and death of Jyoti Singh Pandey. She was the 23-year-old student attacked Dec. 16 after boarding the bus with her fiancé (they were on their way home from watching the movie the Life of Pi). She was gang raped, assaulted with an iron bar and dumped naked on the side of the road. She died 13 days later in a Singapore hospital. 

Her name wasn't public until her father made it so.

“We want the world to know her real name,” Badri Singh Pandey, told The People, a Sunday paper in London. "My daughter didn’t do anything wrong. She died while protecting herself. I am proud of her. Revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived these attacks. They will find strength from my daughter.”

In Somalia, it was 27-year-old Lul Ali Osman Barake, who went to prison briefly for reporting her rape. Thanks to the international outcry of her story she was released and the government forced to confront the issue of rape conducted by its forces. 

With so much news out of Pakistan, rape is not an topic that has been widely covered, and like India, Somalia and elsewhere, it is considered a taboo subject. Even those who defend survivors of sexual violence are at risk, as are sometimes the journalists who cover their stories.

Kainat Soomro is a brave teenager. When she was just 13, she accused four men of gang raping her. Speaking of a rape at all -- the admission of lost virginity outside of marriage -- could be a death sentence to some. But Soomro's family refused to carry out a so-called "honour killing." 

For four years, filmmakers Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellmann followed her story for a PBS Frontline film, "Outlawed in Pakistan." 

The filmmakers joined New York Times correspondent Declan Walsh for a live chat about the complex case and how it provides a window into the greater problem of Pakistan's sexual violence -- and the stigma of reporting it. 

The whole series can be found here.

Michelle Shephard is the Star's National Security correspondent and author of"Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone." She is a three-time recepient of Canada's National Newspaper Award. Follow her on Twitter @shephardm

Pakistan’s most famous tiger still roaring

A supporter of Nawaz Sharif chants slogans during an election campaign rally in Punjab province during last week's election campaign. The tiger is the election symbol of PML-N. Picture taken May 4.  (Reuters/Mani Rana )

Hold that tiger obit.

The tiger that campaigned for Pakistan poll winner Nawaz Sharif – whose party mascot is also a tiger – was rumoured to have died of its exertions in the sizzling heat of Lahore.

But after the story went viral on the Internet  BBC reporter Owen Bennett-Jones confirmed that it is alive and in “rude good health,” as is the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, which won the majority of seats in the weekend election.

And unlike many voters in electrically-challenged and impoverished Pakistan, where the average wage is $1,200 a month -- and many earn much less -- the toothy beast lives in an air-conditioned den.

“It’s my baby,” said indignant owner Idrees Ahmed, a Sharif supporter who took the tiger to campaign rallies, where it was showered with rose petals as it reclined on the hood of a moving car. “If someone told you your baby had died how would you feel?”

The World Wide Fund for Nature, which defends endangered species, earlier challenged Ahmed to prove the white tigress, named Sandy, was still alive.

It followed reports that a tiger had been brought “unconscious” to a university veterinary department. Local TV news channels reported that it had died of dehydration. Actress Faryal Gohar planned to petition the Lahore High Court against the illegal use of animals at election rallies. Sharif's daughter, Maryam Nawaz, tweeted that the reports were "lies." 

Confusion continued when the owner of the "dead" tiger was named as Ahmed Ali, not Idrees Ahmed -- raising questions about the reports and the tiger's fate.

The media sensation made Sandy the most popular party animal in Pakistan during a particularly bloody election campaign that saw more than 100 people die in militant bombings.

Tiger images were hoisted by crowds, cuddly tiger toys were sold in shops and stands, and fluffy stuffed tigers were propped on car hoods as a sign of solidarity with Sharif. Enthusiasts even had tigers painted on their faces.

In spite of the violence, and complaints of vote rigging, the election was a roaring success. At least for Sandy, who has retired from politics and won't have to form a government, or fight tooth and claw with political foes.

Olivia Ward has covered politics, human rights and conflicts from the former Soviet Union to South Asia, winning national and international awards.

Expelling a journalist out of Pakistan doesn't stop coverage of the story

If Pakistani authorities were trying to stifle coverage of the elections by throwing New York Times reporter Declan Walsh out of the country, it backfired.

So much so that his explusion on the eve of the vote has become part of the election story  -- newly elected prime minister Nawaz Sharif said a briefing that he will look into Walsh’s expulsion after taking the oath of office, Telegraph’s reporter Rob Crilly tweeted.

Last Thursday at 12.30 a.m., Walsh received a short letter hand delivered to his home in Islamabad informing him that his visa was cancelled, according to The New York Times. He was given 72 hours to leave Pakistan.

Walsh, 39, is a veteran reporter. He has been covering Pakistan since 2004, first for The Guardian and more recently the New York Times. 

It is easy to pick on local journalists through intimidation or worse but taking on what is probably the world’s most powerful newspaper is another matter.  The story has been picked up everywhere.

The ministry of interior's decision also backfired in another way because it overshadowed a positive development – this election was the first in Pakistan’s history that one elected, civilian government finished its term and peacefully - so far - handed the reins to another government. 

Pakistani citizens braved many obstacles to cast their ballots, and in huge numbers, too. 

The violence from extremists “did not deter Pakistani citizens from casting their vote in unprecedented numbers and reconfirming their determined support for democratic rule, thereby defying extremist threats and actions,” as the European Union’s election observation mission stated. 

An experienced, respected journalist like Walsh has been good at teasing out such nuances in a country most of the world sees as a basket case.

As Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper noted in an editorial: “The powers that be must realise that such efforts only boomerang and work to enhance Pakistan’s image as an unwelcome place for journalists.” 

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

Drones come home to roost as Pakistan’s new government flies high

Protest rally against U.S. drone strikes in central Pakistan's Multan in January 2013. At least eight people were killed and four others injured in two separate U.S. drone strikes. (Xinhua/Zuma Press/MCT)

On the morning of March 17, 2011, dozens of Pakistani tribal elders were  meeting to settle a local mining dispute in remote North Waziristan. The site was a bus terminal they believed would be safe from the deadly drones that buzzed overhead in pursuit of local al Qaeda militants.

But before noon 50 of them were dead, smashed to pieces by a bevy of Hellfire missiles. It was a case that outraged Pakistanis and raised resentment of Washington to new heights.

This week the drones came home to roost in the Peshawar High Court, where Chief Justice Dost Mohammed declared the U.S. guilty of war crimes for its strikes on the tribal areas, and ruled that the attacks were a breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty and international law.

It will be one of the first political tests for Pakistan’s newly-victorious former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League in weekend elections that also saw the rise of fierce drone opponent Imran Khan and his Movement of Justice party.

The judge ordered the Pakistani government to take “immediate action” to stop future attacks, as well as call for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council or General Assembly -- and compensation for the survivors and families of the victims of the bus station attack.

Shahzad Akbar, the families’ lawyer, said it was a “landmark judgment,” predicting that they would at last get justice. And he pointed out that Pakistan’s new government would run the risk of contempt of court if it failed to follow through.

In the melee of a violent election, which has left more than 100 dead in Taliban bombings, the judgment has had little coverage, in spite of campaigning by London-based Reprieve and Akbar’s Foundation for Fundamental Rights.

Is Washington listening? 

“Since 2006, various Pakistani officials have said exactly this and the United States has conducted over 340 drone strikes,” says Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations, a critic of U.S. drone policy. “So I do not expect anything new to come of this latest ruling from the bench.”

The UN’s British special rapporteur on counter-terrorism, Ben Emmerson,  supported  calls for Washington to halt the drone attacks, which he said are not sanctioned by Pakistan and have caused major damage to the tribal area. Former U.S. State Department official Harold Koh issued a strong rebuke of the Obama administration’s “persistent lack of transparency” about its clandestine killing program.

But until now, Pakistan – which is in dire financial straits and gets most of its aid from the U.S – has not moved to break off relations or take the case to the International Criminal Court. Washington’s 2013 budget request for Pakistan is for $2.4 billion in counter insurgency and development aid. But it is tied to Islamabad’s “co-operation in counter terrorism efforts” against foreign and domestic militants.

With Sharif -- who has promised to halt drone strikes -- in power, serious challenges lie ahead for the new government. All the more so if Khan holds a balance of power.

The strikes, Khan told the Star’s Michelle Shephard, are only “creating anti-Americanism. It is helping the militants to recruit people. Collateral damage means anyone losing a family (member) goes and joins the militants.”

After this election the voices that back his view will only grow louder.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to South Asia, winning national and international awards.



 



 

 

Nigeria a newcomer in list of deadliest countries for journalists

Index of most dangerous countries for journalists. (Committee to Protect Journalists)

Nigeria is a new addition to the list of the most dangerous countries in which to be a journalist, joining mainstays such as Pakistan, Somalia and Mexico.

Five journalists in Nigeria have been murdered since 2009. None of the cases have been solved.

“Investigations into these killings are usually carried out with sloppiness, and no real culprits are caught," said Ayode Longe, a senior officer with the Media Rights Agenda, a press freedom group in Nigeria. “That has emboldened others to assault journalists, believing nothing would be done to them."

The global index is released each year by the Committee to Protect Journalists and calculates unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country's population.

The index also found soaring impunity rates in Somalia, Pakistan, and Brazil.

The CPJ said conditions for journalists are improving in Nepal and Russia, "although both nations remain dangerous for the press."

The analysis founds increasing anti-press violence in Somalia, Pakistan, and Brazil, where national leaders are unwilling or unable to address the issue. In Somalia, 23 journalist murders have gone unsolved over the past decade.

The CPJ report highlights the cased of Wali Khan Babar, a journalist with Geo TV in Pakistan who was murdered in 2011.

While several suspects connected to one of the country’s leading political parties, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, are facing trial, the prosecution has been hindered by the murders of five people connected to the investigation, including witnesses and police officers.

In November 2012, an eyewitness was gunned down two days before he was due to give testimony, the CPJ said.

Iraq is said to be the most dangerous country in which to be a journalist. Over the past 10 years, there have been 93 unsolved killings of journalists in the country of 33 million. Somalia was ranked No. 2, followed by the Philippines, where 55 journalists have been murdered without any convictions in the country of 94 million.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

A turbulent homecoming - and arrest - for Pakistan's leader

A pedestrian walks past an election poster of former Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf on a street in Islamabad on Friday. (AMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images)

He was living in a three-bedroom apartment in central London, steps away from all the glitz and culture of one of the world's greatest cities. Evenings were spent playing bridge late into the night and singing ghazal songs with old friends.  

Not a bad way to spend retirement, some might say.

But Pervez Musharraf, 70, had no intention of a cozy retirement funded by lucrative lecture tours around the world.  Instead the former military leader returned home last month after five years of self-imposed exile, hoping to make a democratic play for power in May’s election with his party, the All Pakistan Muslim League. 

But his homecoming hasn’t been warm.  Musharraf is now under house arrest in Islamabad on charges of unlawfully detaining judges dating back to his rule. 

That’s just one of his headaches.

The Senate passed a resolution demanding he should be charged with high treason. He failed four times to get a candidacy seat for next month’s elections. And the Taliban has promised to assassinate him. Besides his support for American foreign policy the Taliban don’t like his fondness for dogs – he has two Pekingese, Dot and Buddy  - and the occasional tipple of whiskey.

Mush, as he is known to pundits, is just as unpopular as he was when he ruled Pakistan from 1999 to 2008. His support of George Bush’s war on terror, going after Al Qaeda and Taliban militants after 9/11, caused a huge amount of anger.  When he left office, he was facing impeachment. 

His legal troubles are setting a historical precedent because no army chief in Pakistan has ever been arrested.  What happens next to Musharraf may set the tone for the balance of power between the military and a corrupt civilian leadership who between themselves have done a terrible job of governing the country.  

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at the Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

Malala on Time's most influential list but her father is also an inspiration

(Courtesy of Time Magazine)

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who stood up to the Taliban by going to school and was shot in the head by the militants for her bravery, has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world and her pensive, youthful gaze looks at us from the black and white cover. 

“The Taliban almost made Malala a martyr; they succeeded in making her a symbol,” wrote Chelsea Clinton in the magazine.

The 15-year-old is recovering well from her injuries. In March she returned to the classroom, studying at a girls' high school near her family’s temporary home in England where she was flown for medical treatment last year. 

She signed a $3 million book deal, landed the cover of a bastion of the liberal American establishment and the UN named November 10 Malala Day. Her fame and position as a global advocate for Muslim women is assured. 

But something else makes Malala extraordinary and sets her apart from millions of other Pakistani and Afghan schoolgirls who yearn for an education: Malala’s first champion in life was her father. In that context, she is a lucky girl. Mothers in Afghanistan and Pakistan often wish their girls could enjoy better opportunities in life than them, but it rarely happens unless the fathers agree.

The fathers almost always make the final decisions about their children’s future with one eye kept on the family's honour, which is always tied to a girl's personal reputation.  It takes a big man to ignore social pressures of a rural Pashtun culture that values girls only as mothers and housewives and a society that considers girls who are educated beyond primary school as unsuitable brides. Those attitudes are prevalent in areas not under Taliban control. In places like the Swat Valley, where the Yousafzais lived, the family had the additional terror of Taliban death threats against those who sent their girls to school. 

Ziauddin Yousafzai is an enlightened man. He ran a school named after a Pashtun poet warrior. He was an active supporter of girls’ education who wrote his daughter’s birth on the family register -- unheard of in a society that values only boys. He admitted to the New York Times once that his daughter was special, and that after his two younger sons went to bed, Malala was allowed to stay up and talk politics. On Malala’s first day of school in England it was Ziauddin who accompanied her. 

The American magazine covers may come and go, celebrity endorsements from the likes of Angelina Jolie fade, but for Malala it will be the enduring support of her father which will hold her in good stead throughout her life. 

Let’s hope Ziauddin Yousafzai now inspires other fathers in Pakistan and Afghanistan to do the same. 

Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai and her father Ziauddin walk to school in Birmingham, central England, on March 19. (LIZ CAVE/AFP/Getty Images)

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at the Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

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Pakistani volunteers search a destroyed vehicle at the site of a suicide bomb attack at an election campaign rally in Peshawar on Tuesday.  A suicide bomber killed nine people and wounded dozens more at a Pakistan election campaign rally attended by a former cabinet minister in the northwestern city of Peshawar, officials said. Pakistan's umbrella Taliban faction claimed responsibility for what was the fourth deadly attack on politicians or political parties in three days as the country prepares to hold historic polls on May 11. (AFP/Getty Images)

 

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Who becomes a terrorist? Do extremist groups turn exclusively to the poor when they are recruiting?

List of bribed journalists must be released, Pakistani judge orders

If working as a spokesperson for the Pakistan government isn't the most grueling job in the South Asian country, it must come close.

Each day seems to brings another political scandal. Many lawmakers and high-income Pakistanis don't pay income tax, which has led the U.K. and other donors to question foreign aid to the country. Some Pakistani politicians quietly support the Taliban, while others are embroiled in a string of corruption allegations.

In some instances, the government has found it's simply easier to covertly pay off journalists not to write controversial stories instead of dealing with a public backlash.
Paying off reporters is an effective tactic that's become popular in Pakistan, pervasive enough that has led to the creation of a new term for journalists who accept the payoffs: a presstitute.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan is expected next week to reveal a list of182 payments made to journalists in 2011 and 2012, according to a story in The News, an English daily newspaper. At the same time, the court has decided not to reveal 18 other payments, the paper said.

“It is apparent from the record that you are in the habit of buying off journalists and columnists,” Justice Jawwad S Khawaja said to a government lawyer.
It's not immediately clear what the payments were used for.

A government lawyer told a court that one payment of 5 million rupees ($51,500) was made to thwart India's alleged efforts to interfere in the Pakistani province of Balochistan. He also observed that another $3 million was given to a private TV channel, money that was partially used to pay to air nationalistic songs on private channels.

Of course, there are plenty of honest, incorruptible journalists in Pakistan, and the dangers of reporting there are significant. Pakistan last year was ranked the second most dangerous country for journalists in a report released by the United Nations.

Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist well known for being critical of the government and military, spoke publicly last year about a bomb that was planted under his car, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

"It is a message to me...and the journalist community," Mir said on Geo News, a local broadcaster.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

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