Coal Project Is Latest Sign of Growing Pakistan-China Relationship

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ISLAMKOT, PAKISTAN — As the car speeds along gleaming blacktop highways in Pakistan’s southern desert of Tharparkar, it is clear the new roads were not built to serve the poor herders and nomads who live in cone-shaped straw homes and subsist on herding sheep and cattle.

Indeed, a few decades ago, the Tharparkar desert in Sindh province bordering India was accessible only by crab-shaped vehicles that crawled over sand dunes by day and under star-studded skies at night, to reach the people of a forgotten century.

That changed as international feasibility studies sanctioned by Islamabad found that nearly half the desert covered coal. The turning point came as China offered to excavate and convert the fuel to help Pakistan cover its electricity shortfall of 25,000 megawatts.

So while the world turned away from coal to cleaner fuels, the Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC) began digging a layered, rectangular trough near the town of Islamkot.

From above, the mining area looks like Pakistan’s 5,000-year-old archaeological site, Moen Jo Daro (Mound of the Dead). But with Pakistani and Chinese flags fluttering side by side — and the hustle-bustle of dump trucks — the excavation clearly looks to the future.

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Across the barren hills, the State Power International Mendong (SPIM) and China Machinery Engineering Corporation’s power plants are poised to convert the coal to energy — reportedly 660 megawatts by the end of 2017.

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Just outside the power plants sits a Chinese housing colony for the workers it has imported, a common practice for the country’s foreign projects.

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It’s a stark reminder of just how far Pakistan has allowed China’s entry into sensitive border territory.

In April 1965, Pakistan fought a territorial war with India to retake parts of the desert’s marshlands, called Rann of Kutch. Pakistan lost the claim, but it alarmed India sufficiently to fence its Gujarat border and install watch towers to prevent further incursions. New Delhi has so far not objected to the Thar project.

General Pervez Musharraf, the former army chief, gave a militaristic response to India’s enhanced border security. In 2000, his government constructed roads to Tharparkar, instituted border checks and intensified the scrutiny of visitors.

More recently, Washington’s embrace of India — and its rivalry with China — has fostered new regional alliances.

As Pakistan’s friendship with China solidifies, including the multifaceted China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’s projects, power generation is a big part of China’s $62 billion investment.

SECMC Director of Operations Syed Murtaza Azhar Rizvi said China would help extract 19 million tons of coal until 2030, using modern technology to counter the harmful effects of burning coal.

Partners in change
Meanwhile, Engro has a mandate from the Sindh government to ensure that the desert people, sitting atop the world’s seventh-largest coal reserves, become willing partners in the transformation of their habitat.

Already, Engro has created “Khushal Thar” (Prosperous Thar), training 694 people on monthly stipends to be supplied to their Chinese partners.

Armed with a strategy for social change, Engro trains women as dump truck drivers. Recruiter Jehan Ara said the corporation, initially concerned about a backlash, first discussed the community’s response to inducting women into an all-male profession, and only then made the positions official.

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Interviewed in Islamkot, Marvi, 35, beamed at the prospect of driving dump trucks. Having six children was apparently no deterrent. Her husband, Ratan Lal, was on hand to cheer her, saying: “She is tough; she climbs trees to gather firewood and gets water from afar.”

Environmental Concerns
But the community has concerns that water from the mining process, discharged into Gorano village 28 kilometers away, could pollute drinking water sources. In Mithi town, people have repeatedly demonstrated to sound the alarm, with the fears echoed by Sindh’s civil society.

Attempting to assuage the community’s environmental fears, Engro has contracted with the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography to treat the mined water and use it for farming.

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In a biosaline farm outside “coal alley,” an oasis has sprouted amidst the desert, boasting grains and fruits.

For generations, the desert people have lived amid peacocks, sheep and camels. Engro plans to compensate and relocate them from their straw homes to model homes, fully equipped with schools and hospitals. Muslims and Hindus are to be resettled side by side, emblematic of the peaceful coexistence within the border community.

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China’s coal reserves are declining, so it may get some of Thar’s production, and some of its out-of-work miners and engineers are putting their skills to use again.

But with unemployment also rampant in Pakistan, SECMC maintains it constantly negotiates with the Chinese to hire cheaper Pakistani labor, which has been a sticking point on some projects.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s sights are firmly set on the future. It expects that sustained coal excavation will eventually help get rid of deliberate power shutdowns aimed at preventing system failures, make electricity affordable and fire up its industries.

The stated goal is to put young people to work — and the nation on the road to prosperity.

https://www.voanews.com/a/coal-project-is-latest-sign-of-growing-pakistan-china-relationship/4125106.html

The deadly network of human trafficking

LAHORE: The notorious gang of human traffickers, involved in an effort to smuggle 20 now deceased people to Europe, has very strong and organised network bases across the country and even outside its borders.

The initial investigations conducted by the Federal Investigations Agency (FIA) disclosed that the suspected human traffickers used fake names and whatsapp to communicate. The investigations further revealed that the suspects used to send people to Iran and Iraq under the garb of pilgrimage on visas, while the gang had people working for them to transport people illegally to Europe. The gang also sent people through illegal border crossing to Iran and Iraq via Balochistan. From Iraq and Iran, they were to be transported to Europe illegally but unfortunately their journey ended in the barren mountains of Turbat.

FIA arrested eight land route agents for investigations linked to the Turbat killings. A team conducted a raid in Sadhoki, Gujranwala and arrested seven suspects. The team also recovered 142 original Pakistani passports, fake stamps, pictures, several original CNICs, medical certificates, photocopier machines, laptops and internet devices from their possession.

The arrested suspects were identified as Muhammad Hasnain Khan, a resident of Bhakkar district and seen as the prime suspect by the FIA, Afzaal Ahmad, a resident of Mandi Bahauddin, Iqrar Hussain, a resident of Bhakar, Raja Muhammad Farooq Khan, a resident of Kotli Azad Kashmir, Imran Khan, a resident of Bhakhar, Faisal Ameen, a resident of Sialkot and Rasheed Abbas Khan, a resident of Bhakhar.

An officer of FIA said the gang sent people to Iran and Iraq for pilgrimage with proper documents and visa while their accomplices received these people to smuggle them to Turkey and then to Greece through illegal border crossing. While some of the gang members would smuggle people through illegal border crossing via Quetta, Iran, Turkey and then Greece to enter Europe.

The officer said they checked call records of the main suspect Muhammad Hussain and found communication with agents through calls and whatsapp communication. He was in frequent contact with Zafar Mayo, the brother of Akhtar Mayo, another major suspect of the Turbat tragedy. FIA has registered a case under section 3/4 HTO, 17/22 EO and 18 EO in the FIA Gujranwala Police Station.

The officer said in another raid, one more land route local agent, Qasier Munir, a resident of Gujrat, was arrested.

Meanwhile, FIA has also arrested seven passengers, booked by different agents, leaving from Kharian to Lahore to proceed to Quetta for illegal border crossing to reach Greece via Iran and Turkey. The passengers told the FIA team that they have paid Rs130,000 each to different land route agents whom they identified as Sajid alias Bobi, Tayyab and Nisar. A case FIR No 356/2017 under section 17(1)22(b) EO 1979 3/4 HTO 2002 has been registered at PS FIA Gujrat against the suspects.

15 men from Punjab found dead in Kech
On November 19, FIA had arrested an agent Waheed Khan. During investigations, he revealed that he had handed over deceased Zulfiqar Ali to Talib, an agent at Quetta. During further investigations, it also transpired that his real name was Muhammad Sadiq. FIA Lahore had shared the information with FIA Quetta and the suspected agent, Talib, was arrested. During investigations, he revealed that his real name was Muhammad Sadiq.

Two days ago, FIA arrested a suspected agent identified as Muhammad Tanveer, a resident of Sialkot. He had allegedly sent two men, namely Ghafor and Zafran, both residents of village Awan Bagwal Sialkot district, with the help of his nephew Rashid Cheema who was reportedly working as his accomplice in Turkey.
These two victims were among the deceased found at Panjgor border. The arrested agent had received Rs150,000 each from them.

Sources disclosed that the statement of the BLF spokesman was published in a local newspaper in which he had claimed that all those 20 men killed in the incident had ‘confessed’ they were working for Frontier Work Organisation (FWO) and BLF has recorded their ‘confession’ in a video tape.

Turbat massacre victims were close friends, took selfie in Quetta

All five young men whose bodies were found dumped in Turbat on Saturday were close friends and belonged to Punjab’s Gujrat district.

According to Express News, the bodies of all the victims were shifted from Karachi to Lahore through a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight. The victims’ relatives and CCPO received the bodies at the Allama Iqbal International airport where moving scenes were witnessed. The bodies were later moved to their ancestral village in Gujrat.

Four of the victims identified as Usman Qadir, Danish Ali, Saqib and Qasim were residents of Khori Rasool Pur village while Badar Munir was a resident of Jalalpur Jattan. All the victims can be seen in a selfie which has lately surfaced on social media. According to sources, they were illegal immigrants who wanted to sneak into Iran en route to Europe.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the massacre, though the banned Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) of Dr Allah Nazar had claimed credit for the November 15 killings in which 15 young men were shot dead execution-style in the same district of the volatile Balochistan province.

Human smuggling is a huge business in Pakistan and other South Asian countries.

Pakistan unveils 1,700-year-old sleeping Buddha, evoking diverse heritage

A reflection of the diverse history and culture of the South Asian country, the ancient Buddhist site in Bhamala province was first discovered in 1929. Eighty-eight years on, excavations resumed and the 14-metre-(48-foot)-high Kanjur stone Buddha image was unearthed, and opposition leader Imran Kahn presided over Wednesday’s presentation.

“This is from the 3rd century AD, making it the world’s oldest sleeping Buddha remains,” Abdul Samad, director of Bhamla’s archaeology and museums department, told Reuters.

“We have discovered over 500 Buddha objects and this 48-foot-long sleeping Buddha remains,” he added.

Khan said: “It’s a question of preserving these heritage sites which are an asset for our country.”

The region was once the center of Buddhist civilization that took root under the Mauryan king Ashoka 2,300 years ago.

The presentation of the Buddha image coincided with a lockdown of major highways around the nation’s capital to contain a rightist protest against a perceived slight to Islam by members of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

A general view of main stupa, is seen after it was discovered and unveiled to the public, during a ceremony at the Buddhist-period archeological site near Haripur, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province, Pakistan, November 15, 2017.

Minority communities in Pakistan are often targeted by right-wing groups and successive governments have in the past been reluctant to embrace the country’s non-Muslim heritage.

But recent attempts to improve Pakistan’s image have included overtures to minority communities by the PML-N.
In January, then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif inaugurated the restoration of Hindu temples at Katas Raj in Punjab province.

Imran Khan, chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) political party, along with the members of the media, looks on during the unveiling ceremony of the Buddhist-period archeological site near Haripur, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province, Pakistan.

Considered a conservative figure, Khan has stressed dialogue with Islamist hardliners including the Taliban but on Wednesday said the preservation of sites like Bhamala could promote religious tourism.

“It’s a world heritage site (and) because of it people can come for religious tourism and see these places,” he said.

Khan dismissed the protesters in Islamabad, seeking to project a more tolerant image of Pakistan. “It’s a very small part of what is happening in Pakistan. The majority of the population wants to see such (Buddhist) sites restored.”

Khan’s opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party is hoping to make big gains at the 2018 elections as the PML-N has been increasingly embroiled in corruption investigations.

Sharif resigned as prime minister in July after the Supreme Court disqualified him for not declaring a source of income and faces trial before an anti-corruption court.

Opinion | Editorial Choking on Air in New Delhi

One year after a record-breaking toxic haze blanketed New Delhi, prompting school closings, car pileups and flight delays, the smog is back and it’s worse than ever. It has reached levels nearly 30 times what the World Health Organization considers safe, or the equivalent of smoking more than two packs of cigarettes a day.

On Tuesday, the Indian Medical Association declared the situation a “public health emergency.” The current haze comes on top of air pollution so bad it killed 2.5 million people in India in 2015, according to an article published last month in the medical journal The Lancet — more than in any other country.

The main culprit that turns New Delhi, already one of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, into what Delhi State’s chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, called “a gas chamber,” is the annual burning of crop stubble by farmers in nearby states who are too poor to clear their fields for replanting by less polluting means. But rather than help farmers afford the equipment they need to clear stubble without burning it, turn it into compost or use it to generate biogas, state governments simply issue bans that nobody pays much attention to.

The visibility is so poor it’s hard to make out the colors of traffic lights at intersections. The deputy chief minister of Delhi State, Manish Sisodia, ordered the closing of some 4,000 schools after seeing children vomiting out the window of a school bus ferrying them through the acrid air on Wednesday. While wealthier citizens can afford indoor air purifiers and masks to filter bad air when they venture outdoors, there is no relief for the poor.

A ban by India’s Supreme Court on firecrackers during the Hindu festival of Diwali last month brought temporary relief. To further reduce the dust, Delhi’s government has reintroduced an alternate day limit on the use of private cars, prohibited heavy trucks from entering the city and halted some construction projects. But it is crop burning that has pushed the area’s already high pollution level off the charts.

A hodgepodge of stopgap measures is clearly not up to the task of checking this spiraling air-pollution crisis. India’s gasping millions need Prime Minister Narendra Modi to demonstrate some of the strong leadership he promised when he was elected in 2014. In this case, he could and should swiftly launch an emergency national action plan that includes funds for state governments to help farmers move quickly to other means of disposing of crop stubble.

Musharraf quick to welcome newly formed MQM-PSP alliance

Former president Pervez Musharraf, in a video message on Wednesday, welcomed the formation of a political alliance between Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), however, Musharraf did so even before it was formally announced.

The video message was shared on social media from the official account of Musharraf’s political party — All Pakistan Muslim league (APML).

Musharraf started the video message by expressing his delight on the merger of political forces representing the Mohajir community. He, however, was quick to clarify that he had no sympathy for MQM and didn’t see any future of that party, but it was necessary for the Mohajir community to unite under one political umbrella.

The former president went on to say that he did not support community-based politics and preferred to do politics for the betterment of the country.

“If the factions of APML unite in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, and join hands with them [the newly formed alliance] then this will give birth to a new national-level political force,” Musharraf said while presenting his formula for changing the existing political scenario in the country.

He urged all the communities living in Karachi and rural Sindh to unite under this platform, so that they are able to defeat PPP and form the government in the province.

Alliance or merger?
The announcement of an alliance between the political parties that, until recently, were highly critical of each other attracted mixed reactions on Twitter from politicians. MQM stalwart Ali Haider Abidi announced his decision to quit the party and vacate his NA-251 seat while the press conference was ongoing.

On the other hand, Faisal Sabzwari provided clarification that MQM and PSP had only formed an “alliance” and not announced a merger.

Senior MQM members Nadeem Nusrat and Mustafa Azizabadi did not hold back in hiding their displeasure over the announcement. They lashed out at the “establishment” and praised Abidi for quitting the party. Azizabadi claimed that “Muhajirs” will not accept this alliance.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) leader Asad Umar regarded the event as a long-formed conclusion.
Umar’s colleague Naeemul Haque said there was “nothing wrong” with the announced alliance, however, he raised questions over the leaders’ past.

The leaders of MQM and PSP set aside their bitter rivalry to announce that they were gearing up for the eventual consolidation of their political forces.

“The modalities of this alliance will be decided in the days to come,” MQM Pakistan chief Dr Farooq Sattar had said while addressing a much-hyped press conference at the Karachi Press Club with PSP chairman Mustafa Kamal by his side.

A Mass Shooting in Texas and False Arguments Against Gun Control

The recent mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, raises familiar questions—and myths—about guns in America.

Hey, good morning. The Giants looked terrible, didn’t they? One more Russian connection turned up in the Trump Cabinet—Oh, what’s that? A gun massacre in Texas? Oh, was it a terrorist attack? How many dead? Twenty, they’re saying! Now it’s more than twenty? Twenty-six dead and twenty wounded. In a church, too, small children ripped apart. Who did it? A man with a history of domestic abuse, wearing a ballistic vest, and using an assault-type rifle. Yes, that’s real enough. That one counts as a massacre.

Some version of this numbed dialogue—or internal monologue—must have gone on in countless American kitchens this morning. We have become so inured to gun massacres that the numbers must be insanely large, the victims unimaginably helpless, before it even quite registers as an event. Charles Whitman, the sniper who killed people from the University of Texas at Austin clock tower, in 1966, and in some ways inaugurated the modern American gun massacre—whose chief note is the random slaughter of unknown people by a gunman gripped by a vague and nameless rage—was thought to have done something unimaginable at the time. He killed sixteen people that day.

Feelings of powerlessness and depression are bound to infect those—by all surveys, the majority of Americans—who would like to see something done to prevent these increasingly common occurrences of mass slaughter. It’s hard to be hopeful. If nothing was done after the killing of twenty school children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, and if nothing was done—not even the “bump stock” limitation—after the murder of fifty-eight concertgoers from a sniper’s perch in Las Vegas, a month ago, then twenty-six more dead won’t alter things. But there is never a time to give way to hopelessness: the politics are hard but far from insurmountable, and, meanwhile, as with every public crisis, the truth matters and clarifies and brings light, even when the light can’t immediately show a better path forward. If we can’t defeat the gun lobby now, we can out-argue it, and expose it. Here are some myths that are trotted out regularly by that lobby, and that will likely be trotted out again today.

1. The kinds of rules and limitations most often proposed—i.e., a ban on military-style weapons of the kind used in the two most recent high-profile gun massacres and in so many others before—wouldn’t have an effect on gun violence in America, which tends to be concentrated on handguns, and more typically involves suicides and domestic disputes. Gun massacres are not the only or even the most lethal form of gun violence.
Nor are measles the only or the worst form of infectious disease, but vaccinating against them raises the level of public health generally and makes the next advance more likely. Making one kind of gun illegal or restricted makes the broader work of restricting violence more plausible. (Which is, of course, exactly why the National Rifle Association, et al., oppose it.) Most reforms in the long history of human progress were initially deprecated as being too small or too soon or not enough—yet a small reform emboldens people to think in new ways about their condition and the possibility of remedying it. All public-health measures seem at first inadequate to the public miseries they attempt to cure. Each step forward—each public sewer built, each antibiotic discovered—clears the way for more.

2. Why, if there are too many guns in America, is there less crime than there used to be? People keep buying guns and the crime rate keeps going down. Doesn’t that prove that the more guns there are, the less crime there will be?

Well, no—the crime rate, contrary to the picture of carnage that Donald Trump likes to frighten his voters with, has been going down over the past decades in every Western country, in the suburbs of Ottawa as well as in the streets of Manhattan. (There does seem to have been a recent uptick in homicides in American cities, but it is only a blip on the much larger picture of a dramatic fall.) The only question worth asking is why, given that crime has declined so universally, does America still have such a uniquely highly level of gun violence? Crime rates descend, gun massacres increase. That’s the “Why” to ask and answer.

Along with this argument goes, most often, a disdainful rejection of common sense and science, one rooted in the idea of guns as symbolic objects. You’ve confused an M4 with selective fire with an AR-15 with a Slide Fire modification—or whatever the current detail may be. How can you talk about gun control when you don’t know the difference between a machine gun and a semiautomatic? Thirteen-year-olds in love with their guitars display similar indignation when someone confuses a Stratocaster with a Telecaster. This says something about the psychology of the gun obsessed, but nothing about the nature or the sources of mass violence.

3. Given the number of weapons of mass murder already in place in the country, any change we can make, any law we might pass—even if we could pass such laws—will be inadequate to the problem. And, anyway,, any particular proposal being debated wouldn’t have stopped this or that massacre, whose perpetrator would have escaped its rules.
This misunderstands the nature and power of civic reform. As the social scientist Franklin Zimring has shown repeatedly, we didn’t need to build, so to speak, a twelve-foot barrier separating the criminal from his crime in order to see crime decrease—we built a series of smaller obstacles, which ended by producing dramatic results. Nor does social reform work by tailoring legislation to the precise shape of the previous harm. Gun control in any form will limit gun violence. Child labor was a terrible thing, and small boys forced to become chimney sweeps was among the worst of it. But if we want to abolish child labor, we don’t put lids on chimneys. We abolish it more broadly, and know that the specific abuse will likely end, too.

4. The Second Amendment.
In a piece that I wrote after the gun massacre in Las Vegas, I suggested that we end a truce over the Second Amendment—meaning not that we should go to war with the Second Amendment, but that the willingness of people who are concerned by the larger emergencies posed by the Trump Administration to defer arguing over the Second Amendment seems ill-founded. The reason that we have no need to declare a truce “with” the Second Amendment is that the Second Amendment was clearly originally intended to do the work of regulating guns. The argument that the Second Amendment remains a formidable obstacle in the way of gun control, even if there were a political will to pass such legislation, is perhaps the most frustrating of the objections. Only a recent, radical, and bizarre rereading found in it an individual right to gun ownership. The decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, in 2008, which featured Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s invention of a previously undiscovered right to private gun ownership, was 5–4. Had Obama appointed the Supreme Court Justice whom he had been elected to appoint, the voting pattern on the Court would have tipped, and almost certainly reason would have been restored on this interpretation. Once again, I urge everyone to read the (Republican-appointed) Justice John Paul Stevens’s great and bewildered dissent on the ruling, which inserted an individual right to gun ownership into the fabric of constitutional law. In truth, no kind of gun regulation involving individuals would be unconstitutional given the long-decided meaning of the Amendment.

5. The social science on gun violence is inconclusive.
It will always be a given that it’s impossible to have real controlled experiments. The closest thing in this case would be to have two contiguous countries—both with similar “root” populations, and both subject to massive immigration from abroad. Both would have a frightening number of mentally ill people capable of mass killing. One, however, would have reasonable gun-control laws regularly reinforced, in the light of new kinds of violence—with guns broadly available for recreation and pest control, but the kinds capable of killing many people quickly prohibited or highly restricted. The country on the other side of the border would impose few gun-control measures. Then we would compare the results. One country—let’s call it Kanada—would have a per-capita rate of gun homicide seven times smaller than the other country. That experiment’s been run. The results are in. We really do know. Now we only have to do.

8 Dead as Truck Careens Down Bike Path in Manhattan in Terror Attack

New York, Oct 31: A driver plowed a pickup truck down a crowded bike path along the Hudson River in Manhattan on Tuesday, killing eight people and injuring 11 before being shot by a police officer in what officials are calling the deadliest terrorist attack on New York City since Sept. 11, 2001.

The rampage ended when the motorist — whom the police identified as Sayfullo Saipov, 29 — smashed into a school bus, jumped out of his truck and ran up and down the highway waving a pellet gun and paintball gun and shouting “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” before he was shot in the abdomen by the officer. He remained in critical condition on Tuesday evening.

Mayor Bill de Blasio declared the incident a terrorist attack and federal law enforcement authorities were leading the investigation. Investigators discovered handwritten notes in Arabic near the truck that indicated allegiance to ISIS, two law enforcement officials said. But investigators had not uncovered evidence of any direct or enabling ties between Mr. Saipov and ISIS and were treating the episode as a case of an “inspired” attacker, two counterterrorism officials said.

Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference, “Based on information we have at this moment, this was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians.”

The names of the victims had not been released by 9 p.m. Tuesday. The Belgian and Argentinian governments said their citizens were among the victims.

Mr. Saipov came to the United States from Uzbekistan in 2010, and had a green card that allowed permanent legal residence. He had apparently lived in Paterson, N.J., and Tampa, Fla. An official said he rented the truck from a Home Depot in New Jersey.

The truck came crashing to a stop near the corner of Chambers and West Streets by Stuyvesant High School. Sirus Minovi, 14, a freshman there who was hanging out with friends, said people scattered.

“We heard people screaming, ‘gun’ ‘shooter’ and ‘run away,’” Mr. Minovi said. “We thought it was a Halloween prank.”

He realized it was not a joke when he saw the man staggering through the intersection, waving guns and screaming words he could not make out. A passer-by approached the attacker, apparently trying to calm him, Mr. Minovi said, until the man realized the attacker had a gun. The man “put his hands up and was backing away,” Mr. Minovi said.

Almost immediately, as investigators began to look into Mr. Saipov’s history, it became clear that he had been on the radar of federal authorities. Three officials said he had come to the federal authorities’ attention as a result of an unrelated investigation, but it was not clear whether that was because he was a friend, an associate or a family member of someone under scrutiny or because he himself had been the focus of an investigation.

Over the last two years, a terrorism investigation by the F.B.I., the Department of Homeland Security, the New York Police Department and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn resulted in charges against five men from Uzbekistan and one from Kazakhstan for providing material support to ISIS. Several of the men have pleaded guilty. It is unclear whether Mr. Saipov was connected with that investigation.

Martin Feely, a spokesman for the New York F.B.I. office, declined to comment on whether Mr. Saipov was known to the bureau.

F.B.I. agents were expected to search Mr. Saipov’s home in Paterson, N.J., and his car on Tuesday night, a law enforcement official said. A phone, which was recovered at the scene of the attack, also would be searched, another official said.

The attack unfolded as nearby schools were letting out on a crisp Halloween afternoon. It ended five blocks north of the World Trade Center. The driver left a roughly mile-long crime scene: a tree-lined bike path strewn with bodies, mangled bicycles and bicycle parts, from wheels twisted like pretzels to a dislodged seat.

Mr. Saipov, a slim, bearded man, was seen in videos running through traffic after the attack with a paintball gun in one hand and a pellet gun in the other. Six people died at the scene and two others died at a hospital, officials said. The authorities credited the officer who shot him with saving lives.

“He was Johnny-on-the-spot and he takes the guy down,” a city official said.

Coming five months after a car rammed into pedestrians in Times Square, killing one, Tuesday’s attack again highlighted the danger of a car attack on busy city streets. The Times Square incident was not a terrorist attack. But both incidents brought to mind the terrorist attack last year in Nice, France, in which a cargo truck killed scores of people celebrating Bastille Day.

The episodes also evoked calls from terrorist magazines, including in a recent edition of Rumiyah, a magazine used by ISIS, for attackers to mow down pedestrians with trucks, continue the attacks with a knife or a gun and claim credit by shouting or leaving leaflets.

Students in Halloween costumes streamed out of nearby schools after lockdowns were lifted and huddled with parents. Their faces, once painted for the holiday, were streaked with tears.

Emily, 12, a seventh-grader at I.S. 289 whose father asked that her last name not be printed, had been walking on her usual route home when other students turned and ran in the other direction.

“All the kids were screaming, ‘Run!’, ‘Gun!’ ‘Run inside,’” she said, still wearing cat ears. She said mothers pushing strollers and children in costumes ran in a herd back toward the school.

President Trump responded to the attack on Twitter: “In NYC, looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person. Law enforcement is following this closely. NOT IN THE U.S.A.!”

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Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo cautioned at a news conference, “There’s no evidence that suggests a wider plot or a wider scheme.” In the aftermath, city and state law enforcement agencies increased security at high-profile locations.
Terrorism analysts noted that on Monday a French pro-ISIS media unit, known as the Centre Mediatique An-Nur, put out a specific threat for Halloween, mentioning the date on a banner spread on the encrypted app Telegram and on ISIS-affiliated Twitter accounts.
In chat rooms with ISIS followers, supporters cheered the Tuesday’s attack. At the same time, ISIS members were trying to discern if the attacker was one of their supporters.
The Islamic State’s official media outlets made no mention of the violence in Manhattan. In the past, the terrorist group has generally not claimed attacks when the perpetrator is in custody, as was the case in the Manhattan truck attack.
Mr. Saipov wove a deadly path on a stretch usually bustling with commuters, runners and cyclists, drawn by the downtown offices nearby or the shimmering river.
He turned onto the bike path alongside the West Side Highway at Houston Street just after 3 p.m. and sped south, striking numerous pedestrians and cyclists, many of them in the back, the authorities said. People scattered and dove to the asphalt.
The truck, labeled with a sign saying, “Rent me starting at $19,” rammed into the bus near Chambers Street. The bus serves two schools in Lower Manhattan and transports students with special needs. Two adults and two children on the bus were injured, the authorities said.
Mr. Saipov jumped out of the truck before a uniformed officer assigned to the city’s First Precinct shot him, Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill said. The police said they were not looking for additional suspects.
Officials said the 11 people were taken to nearby hospitals with serious, but not life-threatening, injuries.
Rukmini Callimachi, Jim Dwyer, Luis A. Ferre Sadurni, J. David Goodman, Adam Goldman, Alexandra S. Levine and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting

Troubling Turn in Afghan War: Taliban Profits Soar by Making Heroin

KABUL, Afghanistan — The labs themselves are simple, tucked into nondescript huts or caves: a couple-dozen empty barrels for mixing, sacks or gallon jugs of precursor chemicals, piles of firewood, a press machine, a generator and a water pump with a long hose to draw from a nearby well.

They are heroin refining operations, and the Afghan police and American Special Forces keep running into them all over Afghanistan this year. Officials and diplomats are increasingly worried that the labs’ proliferation is one of the most troubling turns yet in the long struggle to end the Taliban insurgency.

That the country has consistently produced about 85 percent of the world’s opium, despite more than $8 billion spent by the United States alone to fight it over the years, is accepted with a sense of helplessness among counternarcotics officials.

For years, most of the harvest would be smuggled out in the form of bulky opium syrup that was refined in other countries. But now, Afghan and Western officials estimate that half, if not more, of Afghan opium is getting some level of processing in the country, either into morphine or heroin with varying degrees of purity.

The refining makes the drug much easier to smuggle out into the supply lines to the West. And it is vastly increasing the profits for the Taliban, for whom the drug trade makes up at least 60 percent of their income, according to Afghan and Western officials.
“Without drugs, this war would have been long over,” President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan said recently. “The heroin is a very important driver of this war.”

At a time when the Taliban has been aggressively seizing territory from the government, particularly in opium-producing regions, the prospect of even more drug profits cuts to the heart of American commanders’ hopes of urging the Taliban to seek peace with the Afghan government.

“If an illiterate local Taliban commander in Helmand makes a million dollars a month now, what does he gain in time of peace?” one senior Afghan official said.

Another official, Gen. Abdul Khalil Bakhtiar, Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister in charge of the counternarcotics police, said the insurgents had used the growing insecurity of the past two years to establish more refining labs, and move them closer to the opium fields.

General Bakhtiar estimated last year that there were 400 to 500 labs in the country, mostly in regions controlled or contested by the Taliban. His forces have destroyed over 100 of them.

But then he admitted, “They can build a lab like this in one day.”

Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said the group “had nothing to do” with processing heroin, and denied that major laboratories existed in the areas under its control.

The Taliban have long profited from the opium trade by taxing and providing security for producers and smugglers. But increasingly, the insurgents are directly getting into every stage of the drug business themselves, rivaling some of the major cartels in the region — and in some places becoming indistinguishable from them.

The opium economy in Afghanistan grew to about $3 billion in 2016, almost doubling the previous year’s total and amounting to about 16 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The increase in processing means the Taliban have been able to take a greater share of the $60 billion that the global trade in the Afghan opium crop is estimated to be worth. Demand remains high in Europe and North America: Ninety percent of the heroin on the streets of Canada, and about 85 percent in Britain, can be traced to Afghanistan, the State Department says.

Despite the size of Afghanistan’s opium problem, not much is being done about it. Opium eradication or interception got little attention in the Trump administration’s new strategy for the Afghan war.

Various police forces bear the brunt of the drug war in Afghanistan, but are often complicit in the opium trade themselves, feeding corrupt networks within the Afghan government, both locally and nationally.

The fight to disrupt the flow of Afghan drugs to Western and regional capitals, and cash to the coffers of the Taliban, has largely fallen on a small police unit, the National Interdiction Unit, of about 450 to 600 commandos who are mentored by American Special Forces.

“We have to merge these two things together — the counterterrorism and the counternarcotics. It has to go hand in hand, because if you destroy one, it is going to destroy the other,” said Javid Qaem, the Afghan deputy minister of counternarcotics.

Mr. Qaem said the situation could improve if opium crop eradication efforts factored more into the planning of security operations. He gave the example of Helmand Province, where eradication operations were attempted, but only started after this year’s crop had been harvested.

“In Helmand, we were targeting to do more than 2,000 to 3,000 hectares of eradication,” Mr. Qaem said. “We couldn’t do anything there, none at all, because Helmand was almost an active battlefield, the entire province.”

At the provincial level, counternarcotics officials have proved far from trustworthy, their directors often appointed by local strongmen or vulnerable to their influence.

A senior counternarcotics official in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals, recounted how the elite unit was painstakingly following a network of money launderers in one opium-rich province who were helping to import the chemicals needed for refining heroin. The officers finally had enough evidence to make a high-level arrest, nabbing one of the network’s leaders — only to lose him when a powerful police commander personally stepped in to set the suspect free. There was no recourse.

In that environment, the small National Interdiction Unit, sequestered in a secure mountainside base in Kabul, has been one of the surest bets in striking against the opium and heroin networks. And even that has not been foolproof: Its top commander was replaced recently for failing a polygraph test and “was probably leaking information to hostile forces,” according to a report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. The force also has a one-stop-shop justice center, advised by the British.

A United States Army Special Forces member working with the unit said advisers accompanied the Afghan force on about 30 percent of its operations. Those usually end up as larger-scale raids in Taliban areas, requiring a more complex approach.

“The Taliban derives its funding from the narcotics taxing, sales and trafficking,” said the adviser, who, like other Special Forces members spoke on condition that his name not be used. “It is a priority: We are specifically after denying Taliban their revenue.”

The elite forces and their American advisers, often flying up to six helicopters from Kabul, operate at night. They land miles away from the target to avoid fire, and then make their way by foot.

Still, the raids rarely, if ever, result in arrests; the suspects often flee as soon as they hear the motors. The operations last no more than a few hours, culminating with the torching of the drugs and equipment after a process of documentation.

There are other indicators that more opium is being processed within Afghanistan, officials say, including data from the drug seizures and the amount of chemicals needed for the processing.

In previous years, the amount of opium seized in Afghanistan would far outnumber, by at least five times, the processed morphine and heroin. In 2015, for example, about 30,000 kilograms, or 66,000 pounds, of opium was sized, compared with a little over 5,000 kilograms, or 11,000 pounds, of heroin and morphine combined.

So far in 2017, the seizure numbers seem flipped, officials say: The amount of heroin and morphine, both requiring some level of processing, combined is almost double that of opium.

The Afghan government said that so far this year it had seized about 73 tons of the chemical precursors needed for processing. That number for all of 2015 was just a little over 1.4 tons of solid and close to 5,000 liters, or about 1,300 gallons, of liquid precursors. One recent shipment alone, which cleared customs and was caught being transferred to another vehicle when agents found it, could have made 15 tons of heroin.

If the initial data is any indication, the 2017 poppy harvest was another record year, Afghan officials say. Eradication was abysmal, with security forces unable to even raze fields in Sarobi, just 50 miles from the presidential palace in Kabul.

Mr. Qaem, the deputy minister, said that just as eradication efforts were about to begin in Kabul District, the district’s leadership was changed. And workers were hard to find: They had to be brought in from other provinces, as the local laborers would not destroy their neighbors’ fields.

But the biggest problem was hidden Taliban bombs, he said. Each day, before laborers could destroy the fields, demining teams had to first clear them of explosives.

“It seemed easy — it was Kabul,” Mr. Qaem said. “But it was tough. It was almost a war there, every day.”

Pakistan vows cooperation in fight against terrorist groups

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s prime minister pledged his country’s cooperation in fighting Islamist militants during talks here Tuesday with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has insisted that Pakistan do more to curb support for terrorist groups or face U.S. reprisals.

“The U.S. can rest assured that we are strategic partners in the war against terror and that today, Pakistan is fighting the largest war in the world against terror,” Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told Tillerson just before their closed-door talks began. Pakistan’s army and intelligence chiefs also attended the meeting.

Moments earlier, Tillerson alluded to U.S. concerns that Pakistan is providing safe haven to terrorist groups — a charge Pakistan has repeatedly denied. At the same time, he described Pakistan as having an “important role” in the Trump administration’s strategy and referenced “our joint goals of providing peace and security to the region and providing opportunity for [a] greater economic relationship.”

On Monday, during a brief and unannounced visit to Afghanistan, Tillerson struck a much harsher tone, saying he intended to make clear in his talks Tuesday that Pakistan’s relationship with the United States would suffer — including possible aid cuts — if it did not take specific actions to curb support for militant groups, including the Haqqani network, a Taliban affiliate.

Tillerson’s arrival in Pakistan was low key and heavily secured; he landed at a military air base in Rawalpindi, near the capital, at midafternoon with little official protocol or fanfare, and his only visits were to the U.S. Embassy and the prime minister’s office in Islamabad. Traffic was blocked across the capital during the official convoy’s movements.

Pakistan’s Senate chairman, Raza Rabbani, said Tuesday that Tillerson’s threatening message the day before “seems like that of a viceroy’s before they visit a country.”

Abbasi, though, appeared eager to assure Tillerson that he had heard the message, telling him when they met Tuesday that Pakistan’s government is committed to the war against terrorism. “We have produced results,” he said. “And we are looking forward to moving ahead with the U.S. and building a tremendous relationship.”

Despite the largely cordial tone of their opening remarks, followed by several hours of private talks in the prime minister’s office before Tillerson flew to India for a longer stay, the enormous gap between American and Pakistani concerns and priorities has been evident in comments by numerous Pakistani officials and opinion-makers in the past week.

The Trump administration has focused strictly on the demand for more Pakistani cooperation in curbing terrorism and in ending the 16-year conflict in next-door Afghanistan. Many Afghans view Pakistan — which once backed the Taliban regime in Kabul — as a source of violent Islamist militancy and a permanent threat to their country’s stability.

Pakistanis, on the other hand, are far more worried about the threat from India, their larger rival and neighbor to the east, which is led by a Hindu nationalist government. The two countries have fought four limited wars. Both claim the Himalayan border region of Kashmir, and Pakistan has repeatedly accused Indian troops of abusing protesters in the Indian-controlled portion.

Pakistani officials said they intended to raise the issue of India forcefully Tuesday, especially President Trump’s overture to New Delhi to become more deeply involved in developing Afghanistan. That gesture has been viewed here as a direct U.S. rebuke to Pakistan and an invitation to India to jointly dominate the conflicted region.

“Our job will be to show Tillerson that he is mistaken in thinking that the U.S. can ever defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan by relying only on India,” the editors of the News International newspaper wrote Tuesday. “Pakistan is still needed to negotiate a political end to the war,” they wrote, adding that Washington is “looking for scapegoats” to blame for its failures in Afghanistan.

Pakistani Defense Minister Khurram Dastgir, who participated in the talks with Tillerson, told a TV news show Tuesday night that “we told him the threat of India is very real” and that Pakistan wants “mutual respect and cooperation,” not economic aid, from Washington.

Dastgir said a single meeting was held with Tillerson, including senior civilian and military officials, “to give a united message” to Washington. Pakistan’s military establishment cooperates with U.S. intelligence agencies on terrorism issues but has bristled at suggestions from civilian leaders that it allow U.S. troops to operate in Pakistan.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is due to visit Pakistan soon and is expected to reinforce Tillerson’s demands; he has told Congress several times that Pakistan is still sheltering the Haqqani network, despite its denials. There has been no specific description of likely sanctions on Pakistan if administration officials decide they are not satisfied.

Ever since Trump accused Pakistan in August of harboring “agents of chaos,” officials here have made numerous efforts to restore American goodwill. Earlier this month, Pakistan’s military unexpectedly announced that its troops had rescued an American woman, her Canadian husband and their three children after five years in Taliban captivity, based on a U.S. intelligence tip. Trump hailed the release as a “positive moment” in the strained relationship.

But observers in both countries doubt that such efforts will do much to resolve the larger tension between the former Cold War allies, which now fear different enemies and seek contradictory solutions to regional conflict. Any smaller signs of cooperation, wrote columnist Huma Yusuf in the Dawn newspaper this week, are only “the piecemeal politics of placation.”

“Washington has now effectively read Pakistan the riot act,” said Michael Kugelman, a Pakistan expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. If the Trump administration decides to take drastic measures, the relationship could “plunge into deep crisis,” he said. For the moment there is a “modest thaw,” as indicated by Tillerson’s visit, Kugelman said, but he added that U.S.-Pakistan relations will soon be “put to the test in a big way.”

Morello reported from Qatar. Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.