Pakistan bombing – What, Why, Who and other issues

The incident – ‘What’:
Pakistan People’s Party Chairperson Benazir Bhutto arrived in her motherland on 18^th October, after eight years of exile. She was welcomed by millions of people at the airport. Unfortunately, a bomb attack turned Bhutto’s jubilant homecoming parade into a scene of carnage. The streets, packed with hundreds of thousands of her jubilant supporters, quickly became a scene of bloodshed. The campaign bus was heavily scorched and dented. Sources confirmed that a sole attacker first threw a grenade at the rally to break through the security cordon. Then he detonated the suicide jacket containing around 15 kgs of RDX explosive as he approached towards the bullet proof truck in which Benazir Bhutto was traveling. Impact? – 138 people dead and counting while over 480 others were injured. Bhutto said she also heard shots fired — possibly indicating multiple attackers. She said streetlights were not working and cell phone access was down at the time of the attack.

It was no surprise that Bhutto would be welcomed with suicide attacks upon her arrival. Many Islamic extremist groups are enraged by a recently brokered US backed power-sharing deal between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto. In times, such groups expressed their will of carrying out attacks against Bhutto due to her support for the United States, against which they are fighting in Afghanistan. Few days back, a spokesperson of Pro-Taliban militants told a member of Pakistan parliament that “we don’t accept President General Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto because they only protect the interests of the US”.

Benazir Bhutto herself had written a letter to General Musharraf couple of weeks ago, mentioning name of three people who wanted her to be dead.

‘Why’ and ‘Who’?
Benazir Bhutto played no hide and seek and suspects that Islamic militants are involved in the blasts, but has simultaneously blamed some elements within General Musharraf’s government of perhaps staging the attacks in collaboration. She said “I am not accusing the government. I am accusing certain individuals who abuse their positions, who abuse their powers”. The names she refused to say in the public are supposedly -Ijaz Shah, the head of the civilian spy agency Intelligence Bureau and her two old political rivals, the chief ministers of Punjab and Sindh provinces.

After the blast, Bhutto said, “the attack was more an attack on the unity and integrity of the country than on any individual or any one political party”. This statement signifies that she will not point fingers against her ally General Musharraf but will negotiate with Musharraf to promote democracy in a possible power-sharing deal.

There are strong chances that Islamist supporters of late military ruler Zia-ul-Haq are behind the blasts. Zia-ul-Haq overthrew Bhutto’s father, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, in 1977 and had him hanged two years later.

Authorities say the suicide bombing bore the hallmarks of a warlord and the al-Qaeda terror network. The Pakistani government formed a four-member police team to probe into the two blasts. Already, police took three people in for questioning. Investigators also quizzed seven militants in jails in Karachi for possible information on the blasts. Bhutto supporters, meanwhile, said they were not yet even sure if the probe could be trusted.

There is also a possibility that some third terrorist forum has emerged to dispirit the political process in Pakistan. The United States, which has backed the proposed power-sharing deal between key ‘war on terror’ friends Musharraf and the Oxford and Harvard educated Bhutto, has offered its assistance in the investigation.

Riot hit Pakistan:
As expected, major Pakistani cities observed riot after the bombing. Rioters held rallies and blocked roads by setting ablaze tyres in several cities across southern Pakistan. Dozens of stick-wielding young men forced traders to close shops in Karachi’s Liari district. When the riot police took stand on the area, they were welcomed with stones from the rioters. Hundreds of people took to the streets chanting anti-government slogans after attending the funeral of four victims of the bombing. Some districts of Sindh province observed a general strike on 20^th after Bhutto’s call for three days of mourning.

Bad but not worst:
-It was just a good luck to Benazir Bhutto, who escaped the attack. Her death would have incited much destructive violence in the country. – Over the years, the military government maintained a negative attitude towards political parties and political leaders. On 18 October, the Pakistan People’s Party demonstrated its organisational capacity to mobilise its activists from all over the country for a focused political activity.

The coming days:
In the months to come, Pakistani politics will be still less clearly defined in its alignments. Military ruler Musharraf’s popularity has slumped since he tried to sack the court’s chief justice in March this year while Islamic militants have paid him back for a bloody raid on the Red Mosque in Islamabad in July with 22 suicide bombings since then. This bombing will bring public support in favor of Musharraf. He will in turn take hasty steps to cut hands of his enemies. Things will go nasty.

The election process itself, marred by violence in ethnically and politically divided Pakistan, could now be at risk amid the current wave of violence and unrest.

Peace and calmness are distant from settling in Pakistan.

 

Updates:

The Pakistan government said, it has no plan to remove Intelligence Bureau Director General Brigadier (Retd) Ejaz Shah on demand of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairperson Benazir Bhutto, it has been learnt.

Benazir Bhutto urged Pakistan to enlist international experts to help find those behind last week’s suicide attack which turned the former premier’s homecoming parade into bloody carnage.

Investigators probing the attack on former premier Benazir Bhutto’s motorcade now feel that the twin blasts were carried out by two suicide bombers, even though the Pakistan’s Interior Minister maintained that only one bomber was involved.

Bhutto eyes major stake in caretaker governments.

 

Myanmar: ‘Humanity’ and ‘Business’ are two separate issues

Despite global annoyance over Myanmar’s bloody crackdown on the Buddhist monks and dissents, multinational firms are still competing and racing to grab contracts on the country’s rich natural resources. This move by the multinationals is actually throwing an economic lifeline to the military regime which is otherwise facing a serious threat from the general people.

Multinational firms from China, South Korea, India and Thailand are looking to exploit the energy resources of Myanmar. US based energy giant Chevron, French oil group Total and China’s top oil producer, China National Petroleum Corporation are among the companies giving much needed income to the Myanmar’s autocratic government. Currently, France’s Total and Malaysian Petroliam Nasional Bhd, pump gas from fields off Myanmar’s coast through a pipeline to Thailand, which takes 90 % of Myanmar’s total gas output. Recently, Indian Oil Minister Murli Deora was in Yangon, for signing contracts between Indian ONGC Videsh and Myanmar’s military rulers to explore three offshore blocks.

Altogether, nine foreign oil companies are involved in 16 oil and gas blocks of the country. These petroleum corporations offer economic support to the country’s repressive junta, and in some cases are complicit in human rights abuses. According to the US legal director of Earth Rights International, “They are funding the dictatorship”. “The oil and gas companies have been one of the major industries keeping the regime in power”. Co-coordinator of the Alternative ASEAN Network, Debbie Stothard said “All these profits go to the regime”. He added “these companies don’t care about human rights and what is going on in Yangon”.

Japan’s Nippon Oil Corp, South Korea’s Daewoo International, Malaysia’s state-run Petronas and two Indian power giants, Gail India and Oil and Natural Gas Corp, are also racing for new billion-dollar contracts. Japan’s Nippon Oil said, there would be no change in its Myanmar operations following the crackdown on demonstrations. It said that it sees the political situation and energy business as separate matters.

Last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged his country’s businesses, including Total, to freeze their investments in the impoverished nation, which has been ruled by the military since 1962. Total has a 31% stake in Myanmar’s major Yadana project, which would carry gas from fields in the Andaman Sea to power plants in Thailand. Total has not yet made any public announcement on the issue.

One more time, these blood eating multinationals have proved that ‘Humanity’ and ‘Business’ are actually two separate issues.

Thailand moves forward with the new referendum

Voters in Thailand approved the new constitutional referendum proposed by the military-backed government which seized power in September, 2006. Exit polls showed that 70% of the votes were posted in favor of the draft constitution, which would replace a 1997 constitution.

A diverse group of opponents has been campaigning against the basic law, warning it will only empower the nation’s bureaucracy and the military at the expense of elected leaders. On 18th August, opposition leaders of the ‘Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship’ released 1,000 red balloons in Bangkok urging voters to reject the draft charter.

An estimated 45 million Thais were eligible to vote. About 60% of Thailand’s voters turned out on 19th August – anything less than a 50 percent voter turnout would have been interpreted as a condemnation of last year’s coup. Earlier, the government has deployed 15,000 troops to increase security for the country’s first-ever referendum at 810 polling stations in the trouble-torn deep South. All the nation’s security forces have been enlisted to campaign for the charter. TV stations, all under government or military control, have run a steady stream of adverts reminding people to vote; it worked.

The ousted democratic government and this military installed government, both had / have trouble in tackling the Muslim Insurgences of the South. The area has witnessed more than 2,300 slayings since January, 2004, when Muslim militants stormed an army arms depot and stole 300 war weapons, signaling an escalation in the separatist struggle that has simmered on and off in the area for the past five decades. The three provinces are already under “emergency decree,” allowing authorities to detain suspects without charges for up to a month. Most Muslim organizations in the area have said they will support the new constitution, Thailand’s 18th since the overthrow of the absolute monarchy in 1932. Nearly 80 per cent of the 2 million people living in the three southernmost provinces profess to be Muslims, making the Thai Buddhists of the deep South a minority community in predominantly Buddhist Thailand. The three-province area, which borders Malaysia, comprised an independent Islamic sultanate known as Pattani for hundreds of years before being conquered by Bangkok in 1786. The area came under direct rule of the Bangkok bureaucracy in 1902.

This new constitution gives the military too many liberties and leaves the country vulnerable to a future of military coups too similar to its pastn. a rejection of the charter could re-ignite political tensions, delaying elections and injecting fresh uncertainty into Thailand’s wobbly economy.

On recent development, a 300-strong paramilitary ranger task force detained 18 insurgent suspects and seized weapons on Friday, during a raid in Sungai Padi district of Thailand’s far southern province Narathiwat. The raid was a follow-up operation after a clash between authorities and militants in the area on Aug. 10, Thai News Agency reported. The rangers also confiscated ammunition, radio transceivers, 20 mobile phones, and remote control circuitry. All detainees will be questioned by the police and undergo forensic tests.

While ousted Premier’s football Club Manchester City beats mighty Man United in England on 19th, the commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Army, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, received a prestigious military award from Singapore Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean. The Meritorious Service Medal was awarded to Sonthi in recognition of his contributions toward enhancing the strong ties between the Singapore and Thai Armies.

• A total of 45,671,531 eligible voters throughout the country had been urged to cast their ballots in Thailand’s first-ever national referendum during the given eight-hour polling.

  The Suan Dusit Poll said it surveyed 20,237 voters around the country and found that 67.94 percent of the surveyed voters endorsed the draft while the remaining 32.06 percent voted against the draft.

  In Bangkok, 75.49 percent of voters accepted the charter while only 24.51 percent rejected it.

  In other provinces apart from Bangkok, 67.56 percent of voters voted yes while 32.44 percent voted no.

  In the northern and northeastern regions, considered as the strongholds of the former ruling party Thai Rak Thai and its founder, ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, some 65.58 and 57.07 percent “Yes” votes were counted respectively, according to the poll.

  Another exit poll carried out by Ramkhamhaeng University found that 60.19 percent of 17,346 voters nationwide it surveyed approved the draft constitution, while the other 39.81 percent voted against it.

Will Jemaah Islamiyah bounce back?

Indonesian police arrested the country’s most wanted terrorist Zarkasi from Yogyakarta city on 15 June, 2007. Zarkasi, the Indonesian born terrorist was leading the Southeast Asian terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah since 2004. Just two days earlier to this, police exposed that they had captured Jemaah Islamiyah’s military chief Abu Dujana, during a raid in the island of Java. These two arrests will disrupt Jemaah Islamiyah’s network for sure, but whether it will stop the group’s destructive activities remains a question.

Jemaah Islamiyah is responsible for a string of violence in the Asia Pacific region, including the 2002 bombings on the island of Bali, which left 202 people including 80 foreigners dead. Jemaah Islamiyah meaning ‘Islamic Group’ is dedicated to the establishment of an Islamic State in Southeast Asia incorporating Indonesia, southern Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. Over 900 active members are incorporated in the group while thousands other remain as supporters. Leaders of the group are mostly Indonesian nationals who fought or trained in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s. Several researches indicate that, in addition to raising its own funds, JI receives money and logistic assistance from Middle Eastern and South Asian contacts, Islamic minded nongovernmental organizations and other terrorist groups including the al-Qaida.

The recent arrests of Jemaah Islamiyah’s leader and military boss surely gave its network a major blow but it still possesses the ability to bounce back as it did after the arrest of Hambali in 2003. Keeping JI’s past record in mind, it is predictable that the group will try to regroup very quickly and will mark its presence in the region with a bang. In the process, existing leadership will definitely try to find new techniques of operation so that their network will not be easily detected by the security forces in future.

The capture of Riduan bin Isomoddin Hambali, Jemaah Islamiyah leader and al-Qaida’s Southeast Asia operations chief in August 2003, damaged the group’s strengths but could not reduce its ability to carry out bomb attacks. On September 2004, JI activists activated a car bomb near the Australian Embassy in Jakarta and left 11 people dead.

Intelligent reports suggest that some JI leaders currently are recruiting activists and holding military training in the southern Philippines. One of the main players – Abu Bakar Bashir, considered as the religious leader of the group faced couple of years behind the bars till 2006 and now living in Java. Additionally, Indonesian police are still looking for Malaysian born Noordin M Top, now heads a breakaway faction of Jemaah Islamiyah. As long as these two persons roam free and preaches new recruits, danger of destructive attacks remains wide open.

Foreign governments, specially Australia, human rights groups and corporate houses operating in Indonesia criticised the government for failing to control Jemaah Islamiyah’s violent activities. The government admitted that detecting JI militants in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, where administration is open to mass corruption, is very hard. The recent arrests will bring a fair share of relief to the government but it must not lie back for a single moment as the ideology of JI is still intact and it remains a legal organisation in Indonesia.

Capturing the most wanted criminals will not do much if the judicial system does not provide support to it. Indonesian government therefore needs to continue its search to arrest other militants and has to improve both legislative and judicial systems of the country to root out Jemaah Islamiyah for ever.

India – 77% people lives below the poverty line

A recent government report said “seventy-seven percent of Indians, about 836 million people, live on less than half a dollar a day. India is considered as one of the hottest economies of the world but now it seems, it needs to do something about the enormous inequalities.

The report entitled “Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganized Sector” by the state-run National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS) said, most of those living on below 50 US cents per day were from the informal labor sector with no job or social security, living in abject poverty. For most of them, conditions of work are utterly deplorable and livelihood options extremely few.

According to the report, based on data from 2004-2005, 92 percent of India’s total workforce of 457 million were employed as agricultural laborers and farmers, or in jobs such as working in quarries, brick kilns or as street vendors. The report said, “such a sordid picture co-exists uneasily with a shining India that has successfully confronted the challenge of globalization powered by economic competition both within the country and across the world.”

Around 26 percent of India’s population lives below the poverty line. Economic liberalization since the early 1990s has created a 300 million-strong middle class and led to an average annual economic growth of 8.6 percent over the last four years, but millions of the country’s poor remain untouched by the boom. The report said the majority of those working and living under “miserable conditions” were lower castes, tribal people and Muslims and the most disadvantaged of these were women, migrant workers and children.

Twenty die in Tahiti plane crash

All 20 people on board died on 10 August when an aircraft crashed into the sea after taking off from the French Polynesian island of Moorea, according to reports received in New Zealand. Nobody survived a routine 15-kilometre flight to the capital Papeete which should have taken no more than five-to-seven minutes, the Oceania Flash news website reported. The 19 passengers included two officials from the European Commission’s delegation to the Pacific, Michel Gauche, who was based in Fiji and Jean-Pierre Pierard, based in Noumea, New Caledonia, the website reported. The pilot was named as Michel Santurelle and there were unconfirmed reports that two Australian tourists were among the dead. It was not clear what caused the Air Moorea De Havilland Twin Otter plane to plunge into the sea soon after take off on a perfect sunny day.

Malaysian police are tracking down a human trafficking syndicate

Groups of gangsters in the eastern Sarawak state on Borneo island are holding women from the Philippines, Indonesia and China as prostitutes for foreign labourers working at the massive Bakun hydroelectric dam construction site in the state, said the Star paper.

Malaysian police are tracking down the masterminds of a suspected syndicate using foreign women as sex slaves after receiving text messages from the women who are allegedly being held against their will. One of the women, who obtained the mobile number of a reporter from the English daily, began sending cries for help via several short message service (SMS) which were then sent to police. Following surveillance, police launched a raid last week, resulting in the arrest of a local pimp and 10 women from Indonesia, the Philippines and China.

The al-Qaida threatens to attack North Africa

The al-Qaida threatened that it will attack “infidels” in North Africa and asked Muslims to stay away from possible targets. It plans to launch attacks with all means of detonation, bombing and demolition.

The threat came through a Islamic website.

A 17 October statement posted on an Islamist website claims to be from the Tawhid and Jihad group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It begins with a personal pledge of allegiance from Zarqawi and his fighters to Osama Bin Laden. But what is the evidence for his relationship with al-Qaeda – and for his status as the mastermind of the Iraq insurgency? The statement has not been authenticated and verifying the author of web postings is almost impossible.

In February 1998, al-Qaeda issued a statement under banner of “The World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders” saying it was the duty of all Muslims to kill US citizens—civilian or military—and their allies everywhere. Al-Qaeda would merge with Egyptian Islamic Jihad (Al-Jihad) of Ayman al-Zawahiri in June 2001.

The Al-Qaeda is labeled as a terrorist organization by the UN Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the EU, the US, Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland.

23 Koreans kidnapped in Afghanistan

About 23 Korean Christians, on an evangelical and aid mission, were kidnapped by Talibans on 19 July, on their way to Kabul from Kandahar. The Taliban later threatened to kill all of them unless Seoul immediately pulls out its 200-strong contingent of troops.

The South Korean government reportedly is in indirect contacts with insurgents holding about 20 of its citizens in Afghanistan after a Taliban spokesman threatened they would be killed unless its own captives are freed. Seoul promised that it would withdraw troops Afghanistan by the end of this year, one of the Taliban’s demands.

South Korea’s cabinet and security chiefs held an emergency meeting on 22 July as an apparent deadline loomed for the fate of 23 nationals. South Korea’s foreign minister, defence minister, the head of the country’s spy agency and other security officials met in Seoul early Sunday.

Aircraft crashes in Brazil

A commercial airliner, A 320 Airbus SAS plane, skidded off the runway and slammed into a gas station and a building on July 17, 2007, at Conghas  Airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil. For this reason, the plane was set on fire and about 200 people died. Brazilian federal prosecutors gave order for a complete investigation. Although the airport is short and has slick runways, the accident was caused because of possible pilot error or failure of the breaking system. The video footage of the incident shows that the plane moved down through the runway, faster than normal speed. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva promised a thorough investigation. It should be noted that an accident like this also took place a year ago.

Further read:

Silva in air safety pledge as disaster leaves Brazil angry

Airport security restrictions are now being eased 

Official move to shut Brazilian crash airport 

One Thruster Turned Off in Brazil Crash