W O R L D

Pak troops set to storm Hakimullah’s hometown
Advancing Pakistani troops today surrounded and were poised to storm the hometown of Tehreek-i-Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud in country’s lawless tribal region as 78 Taliban terrorists and nine soldiers were killed in fierce fighting which entered the third day today.

Pak schools closed due to terror threats
Islamabad/Lahore, October 19
Schools and educational institutions, including those run by the army, across Pakistan were closed down today for a week due to terror threats in the wake of a major offensive against the Taliban in the South Waziristan tribal region.

Variety of sources feeding Taliban war chest: NYT
Washington/Kabul, October 19
A sophisticated financial network appears to be paying for the Taliban insurgent operations, and some of the sources include the illicit drug trade, criminal activity, kidnappings, extortion and foreign donations that American officials say they are struggling to cut off.

Pak troops set to storm Hakimullah’s hometown
Afzal Khan writes from Islamabad & PTI

Advancing Pakistani troops today surrounded and were poised to storm the hometown of Tehreek-i-Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud in country’s lawless tribal region as 78 Taliban terrorists and nine soldiers were killed in fierce fighting which entered the third day today.

“Troops have encircled Kotkai, the home village of Hakimullah and his suicide attack trainer Qari Hussain, capturing key heights around it and the area is expected to fall anytime,” Army officials said.

The army pincers have also closed upon two other major towns, including Wana in the Taliban heartland. The security forces advance came as 18 terrorists and two soldiers were reported killed in the last 24 hours, raising the Taliban toll to 78.

“In the past 24-hours, 18 terrorists have been killed in various incidents and security forces losses are two dead and 12 injured,” chief military spokesman Athar Abbas told a news conference. Army was aiming to “target and neutralise Taliban leadership in the ground and air offensive.”

“The high level targets are the leadership and we will get them,” Abbas said as Pakistani air force jets, helicopter gunships and heavy artillery pounded the Taliban positions on mountaintops.

The army’s advance has been slowed down by Taliban heavily mining the roads and strewing the entire area with roadside bombs, which they have successfully used against US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani military operations which are meeting stiff resistance also came up when a visiting top US general Gen David Petraeus today met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to discuss the operation in South Waziristan and bilateral defence cooperation. Having code-named the campaign as ‘Rah-e-Nijat’ or ‘Path to Salvation,’ Abbas said Pakistan military was advancing on two axes from the southeast and southwest on Taliban’s main defences in the region.

Thirty-five soldiers, including officers, were injured, the spokesman said and disclosed that security forces had moved about 12 to 15 kms into Taliban-held areas from two directions.

Forces advancing on the Taliban’s stronghold along the Jandola-Sararogha axis had “made an envelopment manoeuvre around the town of Kotkai,” he said.

Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Qamar Zaman Karia said all the terrorist activities in the country have links to South Waziristan.

He said state within state would not be tolerated in Pakistan. The government will not rest until it succeeds in cleansing the country of terrorists.

The Information Minister said so far 14,500 families have migrated from South Waziristan. The work on registration of these migrants is continuing in top speed and each family is being provided rupees five thousands a month to buy items of daily use.

Pak schools closed due to terror threats

Islamabad/Lahore, October 19
Schools and educational institutions, including those run by the army, across Pakistan were closed down today for a week due to terror threats in the wake of a major offensive against the Taliban in the South Waziristan tribal region.

All army-run schools, including those in Lahore, Muzaffarabad and Rawalpindi, were closed for a week. Schools and colleges run by the federal government in Quetta and Rawalpindi too were closed for a week.

“The decision has been taken by the authorities for security reasons in the wake of the military operations in South Waziristan,” an army official in the eastern city of Lahore said.

The official said there were reports that the Taliban could target educational institutions, especially those located in cantonments, in a move to pressure the government to end the military operation in Waziristan and other tribal areas. “They (Taliban) are so desperate now that they can go to any extent,” he said.

In the federal capital, notices pasted outside several leading private schools said they had been closed for three days.

In the north western city of Peshawar, which witnessed several suicide attacks in recent days, schools and colleges were closed for three days.

The authorities directed private schools located within cantonments and residential colonies built by the military to close down till Saturday and take measures to improve security.

English-medium schools across the country were advised by provincial education departments to deploy private security guards, raise walls and install security cameras.

The police have been directed to prepare lists of schools whose security measures are inadequate. “The schools’ administrations will have to deploy their own security force as the police department already has a shortage of manpower,” a police official said.

The Federal Interior Ministry has asked provincial governments and authorities in Islamabad to put in place foolproof security arrangements to avert militant attacks. — PTI

Variety of sources feeding Taliban war chest: NYT

Washington/Kabul, October 19
A sophisticated financial network appears to be paying for the Taliban insurgent operations, and some of the sources include the illicit drug trade, criminal activity, kidnappings, extortion and foreign donations that American officials say they are struggling to cut off. According to the New York Times, in Afghanistan, the Taliban have imposed an elaborate system to tax the cultivation, processing and shipment of opium, as well as other crops like wheat grown in the territory they control.

In the Middle-East, Taliban leaders have sent fund-raisers to Arab countries to keep the insurgency’s coffers brimming with cash. Proceeds from the illicit drug trade alone range from $70 million to $400 million a year, according to Pentagon and UN officials.

By diversifying their revenue stream beyond opium, the Taliban are frustrating American and NATO efforts to weaken the insurgency by cutting off its economic lifelines, the officials say.

Despite efforts by the US and its allies last year to cripple the Taliban's financing, using the military and intelligence, American officials acknowledge they barely made a dent.

“I don't believe we can significantly alter their effectiveness by cutting off their money right now," the paper quoted Representative Adam Smith, a Washington State Democrat on the House Intelligence and Armed Services Committees who travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan last month, as saying.

American officials are debating whether cracking down on the drug trade will anger farmers dependent on it for their livelihood.

But even if the US and its allies were able to staunch the money flow, it is not clear how much impact it would have. The CIA recently estimated in a classified report that Taliban leaders and their associates had received $106 million in the past year from donors outside Afghanistan, a figure first reported last month by The Washington Post.

Private citizens from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and some Persian Gulf nations are the largest individual contributors, an American counter-terrorism official said. Top American intelligence officials and diplomats say there is no evidence so far that the governments of Saudi Arabia, the UAE or other Persian Gulf states are providing direct aid to the Afghan insurgency. — ANI

EU urges Karzai to allow new vote

Brussels, October 19
Afghan President Hamid Karzai must allow a second round presidential vote if a fraud inquiry deems the initial vote count invalid, the Swedish EU presidency said today, amid fears that he will refuse.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt called on all sides “to fully respect all parts of the agreed procedure, that includes the work of the (UN-backed ECC) electoral complaint commission and the independent election commission.

“If these results point towards the need for a second round, a second round must be held,” he stressed during a press conference with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Brussels.

A European diplomat explained the need for such a call from the European Union. “We received worrying news that he (Karzai) might not accept a run-off vote,” one European diplomat said. “We want to underline to president Karzai the importance of guaranteeing the credibility and the legitimacy of the future president of Afghanistan,” the diplomat told AFP.

Bildt, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, added that the European Union fully supported the mission of top UN envoy Kai Eide, who has been shuttling between Karzai and his main rival, ex-foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah. — AFP

‘World large enough for both India, China’

New York, October 19
Describing the recent verbal spat between China and India as “irritants,” Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor has said the two countries shared a healthy relationship and minor issues should not be “blown out of proportion”.

“I think its important that everyone scale down a little bit the temperature. It’s not as if there is any substantive reason for hostilities between our countries,” Tharoor told journalists in New York.

India and China exchanged verbal volleys earlier this month over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing considers a disputed region.

However, Tharoor played down the controversy, saying the fresh border skirmishes were "irritants" and relations between the Asian neighbours should be viewed in a broader context.

“It is a relationship which has featured so much development and trade that China is now our number one trading partner in manufactured goods,” Tharoor said.

He pointed out that as many as 7,000 Indians were studying in China and Indian companies like Infosys were hiring Chinese workers to work for them in India.

“The world is large enough for both India and China to fulfil the needs of their people and to be of service to the humanity,” he said.

“If you look at the nuts and bolts of our daily interaction on economics we have Indian companies that have opened branches in Shanghai,” he said.

Earlier this month, China protested to Singh’s Arunachal visit and also expressed displeasure at Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai lama’s scheduled visit to the state next month.

China’s leading state-run newspapers, including People’s Daily, have published editorials slamming the Indian media for the recent rise in tensions and for hyping border disputes.

Tharoor said he had a cordial exchange with the Deputy Permanent Representative of China in the UN, Liu Zhenmin, on the day such an editorial was published.

“I said this sort of thing should not be happening between our countries,” Tharoor noted, indicating that the higher echelons of power on both sides did not want to see the situation worsening.

“He (Zhenmin) went out of his way to be warm and friendly and to say how much he appreciated my presence and the relations with India and I made it a point to say that we should put certain things behind us,” the minister added.

Commenting on the Chinese objections to the PM’s visit to Arunachal, Tharoor said: “Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of the territory of India and any Indian citizen going to Arunachal Pradesh is not the business of any third country”.

Pak using jihadi elements to destabilise India: Tharoor

Washington: India has charged Pakistan of using 'jihadi' elements to "destabilise" it and Afghanistan and expressed willingness to normalise relations with Islamabad if it takes one step towards peace.

"It (Pakistan) has been one of actually using jihadi militants as an instrument of destabilisation in both Afghanistan and India. And we think that's wrong," Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview.

"Let me say one thing very clear to you. We actually have a vision of a peaceful subcontinent. India is not interested in being a threat to Pakistan or any other country," Tharoor said.

"We want good relations with our neighbours. And we actually believe, fundamentally at the strategic level, that a peaceful, stable and prosperous Pakistan is in our interests," he said.

He recalled Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement that India will meet Pakistan more than half-way if it takes one step.

"He (Prime Minister) said this in our Parliament. It takes a lot of political courage to do that when you're talking about a country from which assaults like the Mumbai massacre have been launched against us," Tharoor said.

"All we're asking is for Pakistan to show us enough good faith, and it will be reciprocated with generosity and conviction on the Indian side," Tharoor said. — PTI

China projects Kashmir as separate country

Kathmandu, October 19
Besides issuing separate visas to Indian passport holders from Jammu and Kashmir, China is also projecting the disputed territory as an independent country in other ways.

Visitors to Tibet, especially journalists invited by the Chinese government, are given handouts where Kashmir is indicated as a country separate from India.

Media kits providing “basic information” about Tibet - which China attacked and annexed in the 1950s - says Tibet “borders with India, Nepal, Myanmar and Kashmir area”.

Except the “Kashmir area”, the other three are sovereign countries.

Maps too, available in China, Myanmar and Nepal, show an India denuded of Kashmir.

Also, China’s policy of extending assistance to only the government of a country indicates it considers India’s nuclear rival and neighbour Pakistan to be in control of Pakistan-administered Kashmir by offering financial assistance to build a dam on the Indus river there.

China, now locked in a row with India, is also asking for the tightening of the open border between India and Nepal that, it says, is abetting anti-China activities and demonstrations by Tibetans crossing into Nepal from India.

Beijing is also indirectly asking for the closure of the seat of the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of the Tibetans, in Dharamshala in India, hinting that such a step would improve India-China relations.

China, which fought a war with India in 1962, says Arunachal Pradesh belongs to it. India says it is an integral and inalienable part of India.

On the eve of the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh in November, China has been hurrying Nepal to deploy armed security forces along the border between northern Nepal and Tibet.

Both Nepal’s Home Minister Bhim Rawal and Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal recently visited Mustang, the northernmost district in Nepal to assess the security plan. Mustang was once both part of an ancient Tibetan kingdom and later the base of anti-China guerrilla attacks by Tibet’s Khampa warriors. — IANS