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A disaster in the making’: Pakistan’s population surges to 207.7 million

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — For years, Pakistan’s soaring population growth has been evident in increasingly crowded schools, clinics and poor communities across this vast, Muslim-majority nation. But until two weeks ago, no one knew just how serious the problem was. Now they do.

Preliminary results from a new national census — the first conducted since 1998 — show that the population has grown by 57 percent since then, reaching 207.7 million and making Pakistan the world’s fifth-most-populous country, surpassing Brazil and ranking behind China, India, the United States and Indonesia. The annual birthrate, while gradually declining, is still alarmingly high. At 22 births per 1,000 people, it is on a par with Bolivia and Haiti, and among the highest outside Africa.

“The exploding population bomb has put the entire country’s future in jeopardy,” columnist Zahid Hussain wrote in the Dawn newspaper recently. With 60 percent of the population younger than 30, nearly a third of Pakistanis living in poverty and only 58 percent literate, he added, “this is a disaster in the making.”

The chief causes of the continuing surge, according to population experts, include religious taboos, political timidity and public ignorance, especially in rural areas. Only a third of married Pakistani women use any form of birth control, and the only family-planning method sanctioned by most Islamic clerics is spacing births by breast-feeding newborns for two years.

Even if the birthrate slows, some experts estimate that Pakistan’s population could double again by midcentury, putting catastrophic pressures on water and sanitation systems, swamping health and education services, and leaving tens of millions of people jobless — prime recruits for criminal networks and violent Islamist groups.

But instead of encouraging fresh ideas to address the population crisis, the census has triggered a rash of arguments over whether certain areas have been over- or undercounted, or reclassified as urban instead of rural. These squabbles amount to fights over political and financial spoils, including the number of provincial assembly seats and the amount of funding from the central government.

A few people, however, are paying close attention to the larger picture. One is Shireen Sukhun, a district officer for the Population Welfare Department in Punjab province. Her mission is to persuade Pakistani families to have fewer children and offer the families access to contraceptive methods — but she is keenly aware of the obstacles.

“The fatal combination we face is poverty and illiteracy,” Sukhun said. “It takes a long time to change people’s mind-sets, and we don’t have the luxury of leaving it to time.”

One outpost in her campaign is a tiny, bench-lined room in Dhoke Hassu, a congested working-class area of Rawalpindi. Inside, Rubina Rehman, a family welfare worker, listens all day to women’s problems with feverish babies, painful deliveries and other woes. Once they feel comfortable with her, she broaches the topic of contraception.

It has not been an easy sell. All the clients are Muslims, and most have little education. Some have been taught that God wants them to have many children. Some have husbands who earn too little to feed a large family but keep wanting another child. Some would like help but are too shy to discuss a taboo topic.

“When we first opened this post, women were frightened to come, and some people asked why we were against increasing the ummah [Muslim masses],” Rehman said. “But we explained how the prophet taught that you should have a gap of 24 months between each child, and that you should consider the family’s resources when making decisions. Now we do not face such opposition.”

On Thursday, a dozen women crowded into Rehman’s office, some carrying infants or toddlers. Several leaned close and whispered to her, then slipped packets of birth-control pills into their purses. One woman named Yasina, 35, explained proudly that she had gotten an “implant” — a hormone dose injected under the skin that prevents conception for several years.

“I already have five children, and that is more than enough,” she said. At first she had agreed to a tubal ligation, which the government arranges at no cost, but her husband, a laborer, would not allow it. “So I got the implant instead, and I didn’t tell him,” she said, bursting into laughter as the other women smiled.

Outside, the markets and alleys of Dhoke Hassu were teeming with a mix of Afghan refugees, migrants from rural Punjab and government workers. Some expressed confidence that God would provide for any children that came. But many said that it was important to balance family size with income and that their Muslim beliefs did not conflict with such practical needs.

“If half of our population is young, what will happen to their lives, their jobs, their needs?” mused Rizvi Salim, 29, a government railways employee carrying his only child, a 2-year-old girl, in his arms. Salim said that he was raised with seven siblings but that today, “things have changed. We do believe that God will take care of us all, but we also need to plan for our futures.”

But upwardly mobile urban communities are more open to such perspectives than rural areas, where two-thirds of all Pakistanis live. In village life, the influences of traditional culture and Islamic teachings are stronger, and the reach of public media campaigns about baby spacing is much more limited.

Attempts to open rural family welfare offices are often met with community suspicion and political opposition, but health officials say more mothers are asking about birth control. The remaining major taboo, they said, is permanent contraceptive practices such as vasectomies or tubal ligations.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the population nearly doubled, from 17.7 million in 1998 to 30.5 million this year. The province is home to several million Afghan refugees, numerous Islamist militant groups and conservative religious leaders suspicious of supposed foreign plots to sterilize Muslims. But their views, too, are evolving.

“Islam does not contradict the idea of family planning, but it challenges the Western concept of birth control,” said Mufti Muhammad Israr, a religious scholar in Peshawar, the provincial capital. He said Islam allows “natural family planning” via breast-feeding but not “stopping the reproductive system permanently. The prophet Muhammad asked believers to marry and produce children.”

Hospital officials in Mardan, a large district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said this month that they frequently deal with cases of child malnutrition and often see mothers with several very young children. They said that although more married couples are seeking family-planning services, women still have difficulty getting their husbands to cooperate.

One pregnant housewife waiting to see a gynecologist in Mardan had a small child on her lap and a 5-year-old girl by her side. All looked weak and malnourished.

“My husband doesn’t care about my health or the health of our children. He can barely support us, but he wants more,” said Zarina Bibi, 34. She said that a doctor had advised her to take a break from childbirth for several years but that she had no choice. “My husband doesn’t want birth control.”

Correction: The headline on an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the rate at which Pakistan’s population has grown.
Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.

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Trump’s plan prompts ‘paradigm shift’ in foreign policy

ISLAMABAD, Sept 8: Pakistan on Thursday hinted at bringing a ‘paradigm shift’ in its foreign policy in view of the fast-changing situation on regional and international fronts, particularly after the new US strategy on Afghanistan and South Asia.

Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif, while speaking at a news conference, said the change was necessitated by recent developments “which are perhaps the biggest since the World War II”.

While he said Islamabad was not seeking confrontation with the US, he made it clear that relations with Washington would now be driven by Pakistan’s national interests.

Asif spoke against the backdrop of Pakistan’s ongoing push to recalibrate its approach to respond to the latest challenges thrust upon the government by President Donald Trump’s new roadmap for Afghanistan and South Asia.

The new strategy, while seeking troops surge to break the stalemate in Afghanistan, has envisaged tough measures against Pakistan to change its alleged approach towards certain militant outfits, including the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network.

The government summoned the envoys posted in key world capitals to seek their input in the aftermath of the Trump’s strategy.

Trump’s exit strategy from Afghanistan

Diplomats stationed in the US, Russia, the UK, Afghanistan, India, Iran and Saudi Arabia among others presented their recommendations to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who attended the concluding session of the conference.

After three days of deliberations at the Foreign Office, the envoys advised the government to avoid any ‘knee-jerk’ reactions and prefer diplomacy to confrontation for sorting out differences with the US.

Although details were not made public, official sources said senior diplomats suggested that the government tread a careful path in determining the direction of the country’s foreign policy in the wake of the Trump’s new plan.
The crux of their input was: Pakistan must seek engagement with the US and avoid taking any steps that might pit the country against the super power.

However, they agreed that the time had come for Pakistan to put its foot down to protect its national interests and to not give in to undue pressure being exerted by the Trump administration.

At the press conference, the foreign minister said the envoys reviewed the foreign policy in view of the changing scenario.

“We are undergoing a seismic shift. This is perhaps the biggest change after the World War II,” he said, adding that in view of the new alignments, Pakistan would have to review the situation ‘pragmatically’ and adjust its policies accordingly.

When asked whether the ‘paradigm shift’ means Pakistan would now deal with the US differently, Asif clarified that Islamabad was not seeking any confrontation with the US.

“We want to remain engaged with the US. The Pakistan-US relations have survived many ups and downs in the past and will survive this time too,” he insisted.

However, he made it clear that relations with the US would now be driven by ‘Pakistan’s national interests’.

Clearly drawing the line, the foreign minister said Pakistan would not allow the US and other countries to make it a ‘scapegoat’ for their own failures in Afghanistan.

One of the key aspects of the new Pakistani approach “is to reach out to regional players” for a political solution to the Afghan imbroglio.

“Pakistan strongly believes that Afghanistan is the foremost problem of regional countries – including China, Russia and Iran,” said the foreign minister, adding that emphasis should be on seeking a regional solution to the Afghan problem.

And in order to garner support for such an initiative, the foreign minister on Thursday left for Beijing where he would hold crucial meetings. From there, he will travel to neighbouring Iran, and is also expected to visit Russia and Turkey.

The envoys, said Asif, also discussed how to change the world’s perception of Pakistan and its counterterrorism campaign. Despite its enormous sacrifices as well as the gains, the world views Pakistan’s success through a different lens, he conceded.

“We have discussed this aspect in detail and agreed to work towards bridging this perception gap,” he said, while hinting at the launch of a diplomatic initiative to sensitise the world about its successes in the war on terror.

The foreign minister went on to say “whether or not the world recognises that Pakistan is winning the war on terror, 200 million people of the country bear witness that the country, by and large, is peaceful.”

NA rejects Trump’s ‘hostile, threatening’ statements

He insisted: “Pakistan is the only country that is on the verge of defeating the menace of terrorism. Our national and educational institutions and places of worship are much safer now, as the security situation has significantly improved.”

Asif also played down the hype over the BRICS joint communiqué in which leaders of the emerging economies – including China and Russia – expressed concerns over the threat posed by groups allegedly based in Pakistan.
There was nothing new in the BRICS declaration, he said and referred to the Heart of Asia Conference in December 2016 where a similar declaration was issued which was also endorsed by Pakistan.

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Donald Trump’s New Policy About Afghanistan, Pakistan & South Asia

What are the processes that have led the US Republican president, Donald Trump to enunciate a much tougher policy toward Pakistan?

In this interview with Sindh TV, US based journalist Nafisa Hoodbhoy reveals why after 16 years of involvement in Afghanistan, the US administration has decided to enunciate an Afghan policy that includes both Pakistan and India.

It explores how the Trump administration’s policy decision that India do more business with Afghanistan is a departure from former president Barak Obama’s Af-Pak policy, that focused single handedly on the two countries.

Moreover, it discusses how Trump’s refusal to lay a time table for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan changes the dynamics in a war that completes its 16th year on September 11.

The interview can be heard and seen at the following address:

https://www.facebook.com/livebtn/posts/900016503489366

https://www.facebook.com/livebtn/posts/900016503489366

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U.S. Gives Military Assistance to Pakistan, With Strings Attached

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration notified Congress on Wednesday that it was putting $255 million in military assistance to Pakistan into the equivalent of an escrow account that Islamabad can only access if it does more to crack down on internal terror networks launching attacks on neighboring Afghanistan.

The dueling messages sent to Pakistan — promising aid but attaching strings if the country’s counterterror efforts fall short — are part of an increasingly confrontational turn in an alliance that has long been strained.
The United States has provided Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid since 2002. But the annual funding has declined in recent years as Washington became increasingly disenchanted with Pakistan’s quiet support for the Haqqani network and the Taliban, whose attacks have been responsible for the deaths of American troops in Afghanistan.

Still, American officials have long recognized that Pakistan has tried to crack down on terror groups, and plays an important role in facilitating supply shipments to the United States military in Afghanistan.
“We can no longer be silent about Pakistan’s safe havens for terrorist organizations, the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond,” Mr. Trump said.

He added: “We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting. But that will have to change, and that will change immediately.”
State Department officials said that Mr. Trump’s promised changes would bring explicit conditions on military aid. Once Pakistan more aggressively pursues the Taliban and Haqqani network, the aid will be released — a determination to be made by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, officials said.

Last week, Mr. Tillerson suggested that the United States’ patience with Pakistan was nearing a breaking point.
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“We’re going to be conditioning our support for Pakistan and our relationship with them on them delivering results in this area,” Mr. Tillerson said.

Critics of American aid to Pakistan said the administration was still not being tough enough.

“I would have preferred that the money just disappeared,” said C. Christine Fair, an associate professor at Georgetown University. “But if they’re going to do this, they should have said Pakistan can’t buy strategic weapons that could be used to attack India, such as F-16s.”

The $255 million in military assistance was the largest portion of $1.1 billion in aid authorized by Congress in 2016 that also included money for counternarcotics operations and health initiatives. If the State Department had failed to notify Congress in the next few weeks of its intention to spend the money, it would have been returned to the United States Treasury.

Rather than lose such a carrot, Trump administration officials said they wanted to use the money as incentive for Pakistan to change its behavior. By effectively putting the funds into escrow, the Trump administration also allows its own ongoing review of its policy toward Pakistan to continue unaffected by aid concerns, officials said Wednesday.

The Obama administration tried to use the sale of eight new F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan in the same way to persuade Pakistan’s government to better police its border with Afghanistan. Congressional strings on the deal made it less attractive to Pakistan.

In 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously said at a town-hall meeting in Islamabad: “You know, it’s like the old story: You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors.”

Mr. Trump’s explicit call for India to become more engaged in Afghanistan demonstrated that Washington’s long history balancing the two South Asian rivals has tipped in India’s favor, which has deeply alarmed Islamabad.
But the Trump administration can ill afford to ignore Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal, which has served as a source for nuclear materials sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

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The Empire Stopper By ROD NORDLAND AUG. 29, 2017 (nytimes.com)

When the American author James A. Michener went to Afghanistan to research his work of historical fiction, “Caravans,” it was 1955 and there were barely any roads in the country. Yet there were already Americans and Russians there, jockeying for influence. Later, the book’s Afghan protagonist would tell an American diplomat that one day both America and Russia would invade Afghanistan, and that both would come to regret it.

Michener’s foresight was uncanny, but perhaps that is not terribly surprising. Afghanistan has long been called the “graveyard of empires” — for so long that it is unclear who coined that disputable term.

In truth, no great empires perished solely because of Afghanistan. Perhaps a better way to put it is that Afghanistan is the battleground of empires. Even without easily accessible resources, the country has still been blessed — or cursed, more likely — with a geopolitical position that has repeatedly put it in someone or other’s way.

In the 19th century there was the Great Game, when the British and Russian empires faced off across its forbidding deserts and mountain ranges. At the end of the 20th century it was the Cold War, when the Soviet and American rivalry played out here in a bitter guerrilla conflict. And in this century, it is the War on Terror, against a constantly shifting Taliban insurgency, with President Trump promising a renewed military commitment.
Wars of the last three “empires” to invade Afghanistan coincided with the age of photography, leaving a rich record of their triumphs and failures, and an arresting chronicle of a land that seems to have changed little in the past two centuries.

The British Empire
Over an 80-year period, the British fought three wars in Afghanistan, occupying or controlling the country in between, and lost tens of thousands of dead along the way. Finally, exhausted by the First World War, Britain gave up in 1919 and granted Afghanistan independence.

It is striking, looking at these photographs, how little the rural Afghan landscape has changed between the early 19th and 21st centuries. The mud-walled fortifications of those days can still be seen throughout the country, and some of them are still in use as military facilities today. The fort in Kabul during the British occupation in 1879, shown below, looks very much like the famous Qala-i-Jang fortress in northern Afghanistan where the century’s first American combatant, a C.I.A. agent, was killed in 2001.

The insurgents’ dress, and even that of many pro-government militiamen, has changed little from the British period.

One of the books inspired by that period was “Flashman,” the first in a series of historical novels by the Scottish author George MacDonald Fraser. The book’s hilarious eponymous character, Flashman, is a caddish rake and self-described coward who manages to be the lone survivor of the Battle of Gandamack, arguably the British army’s worst ever defeat. Flashman is, of course, fictional, but he has a thoroughly modern eye when he describes the nature of the British war against the Afghans.

“There were scores of little petty chiefs and tyrants who lost no opportunity of causing trouble in the unsettled times,” Flashman recounts. “Our army prevented any big rising — for the moment, anyway — but it was forever patrolling and manning little forts, and trying to pacify and buy off the robber chiefs, and people were wondering how long this could go on.”

The British lost that Battle of Gandamack, but they were back in the next fighting season exacting vengeance, and eventually defeated the Afghans. It was for many of them a sobering experience.

A British Army chaplain, G. R. Gleig, who witnessed it, called it “a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, was acquired with this war.”

Sovietstan
The Soviet Union spent the postwar period pacifying and modernizing its Central Asian republics with great success. But it was mistaken in assuming that the same program could stick in Afghanistan. The Soviets invaded in 1979 to try to quell a brewing civil war and prop up its allies in the Afghan government, and they limped out in 1989.

The Soviets brought schools and roads, civil institutions and freedoms for women. But their occupation was unbearable to a generation of Afghan insurrectionists who declared a holy war and enjoyed the extensive support of the United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

It was a brutal war, on all sides. “Two Steps from Heaven,” a novel by the Russian writer Mikhail Evstafiev — himself one of the “Afgantsy,” as Soviet veterans of that Afghan war are known — describes a set of arrangements amid perpetual conflict that seem conspicuously familiar today: “As the years passed, numerous military installations grew up on the territory adjacent to the palace. A compound covered several square kilometers. It was guarded assiduously against the Afghans and, as was to be expected, Soviet power reigned supreme in that one specific part of Kabul.”

“The distance between the Afghans and the Soviets was measured in centuries,” Evstafiev wrote. “A man felt safe and secure only inside the garrison, surrounded by barbed wire, tanks and machine guns; fate had strewn Soviet military divisions all over Afghanistan, they were like islands in an ocean, lonely, far from the mainland.”

The Soviets left the Afghan landscape permanently disfigured with the bombed-out husks of tanks, and the earth itself seeded with more mines than anywhere else on the planet. When their client state in Kabul collapsed, what ensued was years of bitter civil war that destroyed many of the cities, and led to the rise to power of the Taliban in 1996.

That first battle, fought at the Qala-i-Jangi fort, featured American personnel on horseback, using lasers to guide bombs released from jet aircraft.

Since then more than a million American servicemen and women have served in Afghanistan; 2,400 of them lost their lives, along with another 1,100 NATO and other coalition allies killed. Afghan security forces lose three or four times that number just in a year now; the conflict killed more than 3,000 Afghan civilians in the past year, as well. American casualties this year have totaled only 11, most of them Special Operations troops on counterterrorism missions. NATO casualties: zero.

By 2010, as American military numbers rose to 100,000, American and other coalition troops were in every one of the 34 Afghan provinces, often scattered — as the Soviets had been — in isolated fortresses. Now they are mostly restricted to a few major bases, and their numbers are estimated at around 12,000, including an influx of perhaps another 4,000 from President Trump’s military commanders. The Afghan security forces, at the same time, have peaked at around 330,000 — roughly the same size they were during the Soviet period.

Many years after he had researched “Caravans,” James Michener was asked which country he would most want to revisit. His answer was Afghanistan, which his American diplomat character had described as “one of the world’s great caldrons.”

“I remember it as an exciting, violent, provocative place,” Michener wrote. “Almost every American or European who worked there in the old days says the same.”

And in these days, too, Americans seem committed to return to Afghanistan for many years to come.

“We are with you in this fight,” the American military commander, Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., told Afghans on Thursday. “We will stay with you.”

The American century in Afghanistan is far from over; its book has not been written yet.

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Talks with US suspended in protest, Senators told

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif said on Monday that Pakistan had suspended talks and bilateral visits with the United States as a mark of protest over the recent anti-Pakistan diatribe by US President Donald Trump.

Sources quoted the minister as telling the Senate, which converted itself into a committee prior to its regular session, that Pakistan had taken the fiery remarks seriously.

US Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Alice Wells was supposed to arrive here on Tuesday, while the foreign minister himself was to travel to the US last week under the previous schedule.

About the recently unveiled policy of the US president on South Asia, Mr Asif said it envisaged no military role for India in Afghanistan. According to the sources, the minister said it was rather a role of economic development. He claimed during the in-camera session of the committee that India would not be allowed to use Afghan soil to destabilise Pakistan.

FM Asif says Trump’s South Asia policy envisages no military role for India in Afghanistan
The remarks were surprising for many as they believed that India was already using Afghan territory for subversive activities in Pakistan. A participant in the meeting told Dawn that the members instead sought the details of the India-sponsored terror incidents in Pakistan, including the ones carried out by the under-arrest serving officer of India’s intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing, Kulbhushan Jadhav.

The members raised questions as to what would be the mechanism to check if the enhanced Indian presence was not abused to foment terrorism in Pakistan. They also sought to know details of the unusual number of Indian consulates in Afghanistan, which it is said was more than those it had in the US.

The members also asked the government to share a fact-sheet on US assistance received after 9/11, the reimbursed amount of coalition support fund (CSF) and the financial loss incurred by the country as a frontline state against the war on terror.

Foreign Secretary Teh¬mina Janjua informed the house that a meeting of Pakistan’s envoys had been convened from Sept 5 to 7 to chalk out a strategy after announcement of the new US policy on South Asia.

It was decided that the Committee of the Whole will meet again Tuesday to finetune policy guidelines in the light of emerging realities and the role of the United States, developed by a six-member committee of the house. The policy guidelines will be given shape of a resolution which is most likely to be passed by the Senate on Wednesday.

Before the foreign minister made a request to declare the proceedings in camera, Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani reminded him of his proposal for a joint session of parliament made in the presence of Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. He said that if a resolution passed separately by the Senate was sent to the National Assembly, it would be sitting in judgement on a document of the other house. He said it would also not send a good message if both the houses passed different resolutions.

The foreign minister, however, said the National Assembly might endorse the resolution passed by the Senate or slightly alter it.

Senator Farhatullah Babar of the PPP noted that the substance and spirit would remain the same and there would be no harm in the two houses passing separate resolutions on the same subject
.
During its regular session shortly after the meeting of the committee of the whole, military dictators came under fire.

Speaking on the motion on creating awareness about the Constitution, Farhatullah Babar called for compulsory teaching of the Constitution and constitutionalism in all military academies in the country.

Referring to General Zia, he said a former military dictator in a newspaper interview described the Constitution as a “mere 15-page document that I can tear at will and all the politicians will follow me wagging their tails”. Another military dictator said that the Constitution could be dispensed with if the country faced threats, he added.

He said that the Quaid after his visit to Quetta in June 1948 and meeting some senior officers had said in his conversation with them he had noticed that they did not fully grasp the value of the Constitution. The Quaid then explained to them the importance of the Constitution and the value of upholding it.

Secondly, Mr Babar said that those who subverted the Constitution and their abettors must not be allowed to escape punishment. He wondered what made it possible for the last dictator who instead to going to the court turned his car towards a hospital in Rawalpindi. He called for removing the portraits of dictators from all official premises.

A resolution moved by Mr Babar to preserve the culture and heritage of the people of Kalash in Chitral and for the inclusion of this area in the Unesco World Heritage Site was passed unanimously when Law Minister Hamid Zahid said he did not oppose it.
https://www.dawn.com/news/print/1354652

Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2017

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Pakistan finds itself on the defensive in Trump’s Afghan war strategy

It feels like a lifetime ago, but it was just in November, weeks after his election, that then-President-elect Trump was lavishing praise on Pakistan, calling it a “fantastic place … doing amazing work.”

But as Trump said in outlining his new strategy in South Asia, things look different from behind a desk in the Oval Office, and his views toward Pakistan seem to have changed since that strange phone call with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Sharif is gone, having resigned last month in the wake of a corruption scandal, leaving Pakistan’s military as unquestionably the most powerful force in the country. But that military — one of the United States’ most troublesome allies and the recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. aid — now finds itself on the defensive as Trump demands it “change immediately” its policy of harboring the Taliban and other militant groups carrying out attacks in Afghanistan.

Trump’s tough talk signaled a possible shift as the U.S. tries to restart its failing 16-year war in Afghanistan. Many Afghans on Tuesday praised Trump’s blunt assessment of Pakistan and expressed hope that more American troops could reverse Taliban insurgents’ momentum and stem the mounting casualties suffered by Afghan security forces and civilians.

With the Taliban holding more territory than at any point since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, Trump’s announcement of a “fight to win” strategy — though lacking in specifics — soothed Afghans who worried the United States was abandoning its longest war as it had settled into a bloody stalemate.

“I am grateful to President Trump and the American people for this affirmation of support for our efforts to achieve self-reliance and for our joint struggle to rid the region from the threat of terrorism,” Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said in a statement.
“The Afghan government welcomes renewed U.S. emphasis on seeing security in Afghanistan as part of a wider regional package.”

Pakistan scrambled to respond to the criticism. Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif met with the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad and “underlined Pakistan’s continued desire to work with the international community to eliminate the menace of terrorism.”

Late Tuesday, following a two-hour Cabinet meeting, Pakistan’s government issued a statement saying it had “taken note” of Trump’s Monday night address and rejected his “false narrative” that it provided safe havens to militant groups.

“No country in the world has done more than Pakistan to counter the menace of terrorism. No country in the world has suffered more than Pakistan from the scourge of terrorism, often perpetrated from outside our borders,” the statement said.

“It is therefore disappointing that the U.S. policy statement ignores the enormous sacrifices rendered by the Pakistani nation in this effort.”

Pakistani officials were particularly stung by Trump’s embrace of its rival India, which the U.S. has not often included in its Afghan strategy despite its being the largest country in the region.

Trump “has given a negative message to Pakistan,” said Sherry Rehman, a Pakistani lawmaker and former ambassador to Washington. “The best possible way forward is to promote peace and harmony in the region instead of dividing Pakistan and India.”

Opposition leader Imran Khan lashed out on Twitter, saying Pakistan had lost tens of thousands of lives to terrorism and was “being made scapegoats for the policy failures of the U.S. and India.”

Pakistan’s military — which denies allegations that it nurtures terror groups who attack India and Afghanistan — appeared to anticipate Trump’s criticism, holding a news conference on Monday to trumpet the success of Zarb-e-Azb, a years-long operation involving around 200,000 troops to eliminate militant havens in the northern tribal areas.

In between slides showing statistics — officials say around 3,500 militants have been killed and thousands arrested — the military played short films set to dramatic music showing Pakistani troops in the remote region.
Pakistan has carried out dozens of such offensives and been accused of picking and choosing which militant groups it confronts. The Haqqani network, which U.S. officials blame for some of the deadliest attacks against its forces in Afghanistan, has largely escaped the effect of more than a decade of Pakistani military operations.

But Pakistani officials insist this time is different. They argue that terrorism-related deaths in Pakistan have fallen by about half since 2014. They blame several high-profile terror attacks on militants who, they say, enjoy safe havens in Afghanistan and the backing of Indian intelligence agencies.

“A militant resurgence is now out of the question,” Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor told reporters Tuesday. “They want to regain lost influence, but it won’t happen. It’s too late for that.”
Congress already has reduced funding for the Pakistani army and denied it the chance to purchase U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets at subsidized prices. But because U.S. strategic planners fear that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of militants, Washington has been reluctant to exert too much pressure on the Pakistani security establishment.

“Anyone who thinks this shift in Pakistan strategy will be easy to implement, remember: Pakistan negotiates with a gun to its own head,” tweeted Vipin Narang, an MIT political science professor who studies South Asia.
Many Afghans said they hoped U.S. pressure would force Pakistan to bring Taliban leaders to the negotiating table and curtail their ability to direct attacks from across the border.

“I believe the U.S. has seen Pakistan in a better light than Afghanistan, so I would be optimistic and support the new strategy of the United States if it implements it honestly,” said Nasir Karimi, a 22-year-old psychology student at Kabul University.

“Still,” Karimi added, “I can’t trust that the U.S. will be honest.”

Afghans’ wariness is rooted in a history of U.S. inconsistency in the country. U.S. forces quickly ousted the Taliban government from power in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks but then diverted troops and focus to the Iraq war, allowing Taliban fighters to stream back into the country.

President Obama announced a troop increase in 2009 but, in the view of many Afghans, undermined the strategy by setting a withdrawal deadline that reassured the Taliban that it could simply lie in wait. Trump, too, once advocated for bringing all U.S. troops home before saying in his Monday night address that he had changed his mind after months of consultations with Cabinet and military officials.

As the U.S. troop presence dwindled from more than 100,000 to 8,400 today, the Taliban has regained control of large chunks of northern and southern Afghanistan while the government holds just 60% of the country’s 407 districts, according to the most recent assessment by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Trump did not specify how many additional U.S. troops would be deployed, but Pentagon officials have said the number is expected to be about 4,000. They will be focused on “killing terrorists,” Trump said, including the Taliban, Islamic State loyalists and remnants of Al Qaeda.

“President Trump has embraced a strategy that gives Afghanistan what it needs,” said the Afghan ambassador to Washington, Hamdullah Mohib, including “a shift away from talking about timetables and numbers to letting conditions on the ground determine military strategy.”

United States as terrorist groups are active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, “the highest concentration in any region anywhere in the world.” Some observers noted that neither country is subject to Trump’s travel ban on citizens from countries deemed prone to terrorism.

Trump’s speech provoked mixed reactions in India, where officials welcomed the promise to be tougher on Pakistan but questioned his call for New Delhi to play a greater role in building Afghanistan’s economy.

The Indian foreign ministry issued a statement saying India “has been steadfast in extending reconstruction and development assistance to Afghanistan,” which has included hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and constructing a new parliament building.

And Indian analysts chafed at Trump’s reference to the U.S. trade deficit with India when he said that because “India makes billions of dollars in trade with the United States,” it should “help us more with Afghanistan.” Indian investment in Afghanistan is based on its own regional security and should not be tied to demands from Washington, said Kabir Taneja, associate fellow at Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

“I think President Trump needs to understand, or someone needs to explain to him, that everything cannot be equated to trade data,” Taneja said.

“New Delhi does not act at America’s behest on its Afghanistan policy. It knows better,” he added. “Attaching possibilities of better joint cooperation over security in Afghanistan to some sort of trade [spreadsheet] is a self-defeating act for Washington.”

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Altaf Hussain meets Khan of Kalat, US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher in London

Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) founder Altaf Hussain on Thursday met with United States (US) Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and self-exiled Baloch leader, the Khan of Kalat Mir Suleman Dawood Jan, at the MQM’s London Secretariat, according to a press release issued through the party’s website.

The Khan of Kalat joined the latter half of the meeting, which included lunch and lasted over four hours.
Hussain briefed Rohrabacher on what he claimed were “unlawful arrests, torture, abductions, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings” of MQM workers and members of the mohajir community in Karachi and other parts of Sindh by security forces.

He also apprised Rohrabacher of alleged “arrests, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and acts of mistreatment” of Baloch people by security forces.

Congressman Rohrabacher pledged to raise these issues in the US Congress and at other appropriate forums, the press release said.

The Khan of Kalat and Hussain also agreed to “work together” for the rights of the mohajir community and Baloch people.

All three agreed to continue holding such meetings in the near future.

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher has a history of making anti-Pakistan moves in the US Congress, but has not always been successful in achieving his objectives.

Earlier in July, a US Congressional panel titled “Pakistan: Friend or foe?” — where Rohrabacher also spoke — had come close to challenging Pakistan’s existence as a state.

The Khan of Kalat had left the country in 2007 on the recommendations of a ‘grand Baloch Jirga’ after developing serious differences with the state following the killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.

The Baloch Jirga had been convened in Kalat in September 2006 by the Khan. Tribal leaders and elders from Balochistan were invited to attend the jirga, held for the first time in 103 years, to discuss the situation in the province with special reference to the killing of Nawab Bugti.

The jirga had reportedly asked the Khan to leave the country, and “struggle for the rights of Balochistan and its people” from abroad.

The Khan has since then been provided political asylum by the British government and currently lives in London.
A Baloch delegation that visited the Khan in London in July 2015 to convince him to return to Pakistan failed in its mission, as he maintained that only the Grand Baloch Jirga which sent him abroad had the mandate to make a decision regarding his return.

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‘At the Stroke of Midnight My Entire Family Was Displaced’

August marks the 70th anniversary of the end of British colonial rule in India and the creation of the two independent countries of India and Pakistan, carved along religious and political lines. More than 10 million people were uprooted. We asked readers how they or their families were affected. These are some of their stories.

‘Was he calling out for me?’

In 1947 I was 10. We lived in comfort in Jammu and Kashmir state.

We lost everything at the time of the creation of Pakistan. Things can be replaced, not lives.

My father, an intellectual and educationalist, was murdered. Eight of us crossed into Pakistan dressed in summer clothes and nothing else. Winter came and we had nothing to wear and no roof over our heads. By the following summer my feet had outgrown my shoes and I had to walk barefoot on scorching earth. My feet sometimes still feel that hot surface.

Even today I get nightmares about my father’s murder. As a physician I wonder how the end came. Was he in pain, was he cold, was he thirsty, was he calling out for me?

‘My father recalled hiding in a Muslim family’s house’
My father, Anand B. Khorana, was about 10 years old at the time of partition. His father was a civil engineer and the whole family (my grandparents, father and his five siblings) had recently moved into a new home they built as a mark of their “middle-class” status. The oldest child, a daughter, had recently become engaged. The family had lived for generations in the state of Punjab and could not conceive of living any place else. As my late father told it, everyone had heard rumblings about the state being divided into a Pakistani half and an Indian half, but few thought it would happen imminently.

At the stroke of midnight my entire family was displaced. Their land and home were deemed to be on the Pakistani side and in a few days it was pretty clear that a Hindu family, regardless of their prior status, was in danger. I don’t know all the details but, unlike most families who decided to emigrate immediately (many losing their lives on the trains in the process), my father’s family went into hiding for a few months. My father recalled hiding in a Muslim family’s house (a former employee of my grandfather’s).

Eventually, things calmed down and the family made the trek to India and resettled, initially in Delhi in refugee quarters. My grandfather was able to find a job similar to his prior one. All of their property, including the house they had recently built, was lost but the family was grateful to have made it out alive — unlike so many others. The only person believed lost was the eldest daughter’s fiancé but, a year later, she spotted him at a train station in Delhi. They married and had several children.

‘We carried the heavy utensils, because we thought copper was more valuable than silver’

My parents were young when they walked from what’s now Bangladesh to India. Baba called East Pakistan “home” until he died in 2004. His family, landowners in Dhaka, fled with their belongings; copper utensils, large bowls, plates. He used to say, “We never needed anything, so we didn’t know the value of money. We carried the heavy utensils, because we thought copper was more valuable than silver. We were children, what were we to do?”

When Baba’s bank job moved him to New Delhi, he spent days recreating his childhood vegetable garden. Cabbage, cauliflower, peas, spinach, okra, we had it all. He used to say, “Our pumpkins were bigger than the sun!” and I would believe him. Everything in Bangladesh, the place he left, was better. The roses were more fragrant, the eggplants more purple, the fish were fresher — Delhi could never compete.

Ma was 12 when her family fled Barisal for Kolkata. They sold everything, including Ma’s favorite school books. She mourned those books until she died, in 2008. But she was proud that she hadn’t marked any of them with a pen or pencil. “They were pristine,” she would say, “so Thakur da could sell them at a premium. That money helped us escape.”

My father’s family was part of the British colonial administration. During partition my father was in Pakistan attending school while the rest of his family was in Pune, India. As hostilities erupted between Hindus and Muslims, my father was cut off from his family. He couldn’t get British citizenship because most of his papers were lost during the upheaval. So, in the ’50s, he made his way to the United Arab Emirates by ship and started a family there.

My siblings and I have been effectively stateless. Although we are familiar with Indian and Pakistani culture, we belonged to neither culture. We grew up in the Middle East, in Dubai, among other Asians but could not identify with them.
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‘He would never forgive himself if anything happened to her’

When partition was announced, my father, who worked for the British Indian Government, was posted in Bombay. He was advised that as a Muslim he would have better career opportunities in Pakistan. He was asked to report to offices in Rawalpindi as soon as possible. He left and my mother, Rosy, who was 20, and their six-month-old daughter stayed behind until he could arrange for their accommodation. Because of the chaos he could not come back to get them, so he asked my mother to take a train to Lahore. On the train a Sikh gentleman noticed my mother alone with an infant and asked her where she was going. When she told him Lahore, he was shocked and told her about the massacres that were taking place on trains going to Pakistan — my mother and father hadn’t known.
He said he was traveling to Amritsar (30 miles from Lahore) but would accompany her to Wagah, a border town between India and Pakistan, because he would never forgive himself if anything happened to her. He told my mother that if anyone asked, she was his daughter. He thought her name, Rosy, was fine since it was secular. But my sister’s name, Shahina, was distinctly Muslim, so if anyone asked her name was Nina.

He stayed with them until Wagah and walked with them to the Pakistani border, kissed them both on their foreheads and told them he wished he could take them all the way to Lahore, but he would not make it back alive.
My sister, who lives in Karachi, is still called Nina by everyone in the family. My mother insisted on that.

‘We prayed as we imagined the worst. Almighty God had other plans.’

On Sept. 7, a bespectacled Sikh man, much like my father, was killed in town and a rumor spread that he had come to set fire to the local mosque.

The next day dislocated families from surrounding villages who had taken shelter in schoolyards, grain markets and other vulnerable locations were attacked. I can still hear the cries of people shot or stabbed outside the Gurdwara and the gunfire that began around 4 p.m., as the last train left the Jaranwala Railway Station, in Pakistan, and continued into the evening.

That night women and children were sheltering in a room on the second floor of the Gurdwara with instructions on what to do if the militia broke through the doors and entered the temple. The thought still gives me chills. The temperature outside was in the 90s Fahrenheit, but inside the heat was oppressive. Some men stayed on the main floor or on the rooftop lookout, armed with sticks, swords, a pistol and one double-barreled gun. We were certain our end was imminent. We prayed as we imagined the worst.

Almighty God had other plans. For the next three days we holed-up in the Gurdwara. Our ranks swelled with the addition of the injured who were able to escape. We heard rumors that we would be attacked on Sept. 12, after Friday prayers. But there was a knock at the giant door of the temple around 10 a.m. and four Sikh military officers ordered us to leave in ten minutes and said they would escort us to the caravan of refugees that was passing. Everyone scrambled and ran with the clothes on their backs, relieved and hopeful to live another day or die with others traveling toward the new border and sanctuary of India.

‘I was probably the first member of my family to visit the home since 1947’

My father was a refugee and a migrant. As his child I have lived a peripatetic life, but have always been able to maintain connections with my family in Pakistan. I lived in Aligarh while I was researching my dissertation and visited the home where my father and my grandmother were born. I met the son of the family who had migrated from Lahore and received the home as refugee property (though he had been born later, in independent India). I was probably the first member of my family to visit the home since 1947 and met people who remembered my family, who were known for their love of rooftop kite flying. The family who lives there now sent homemade sweets for me to take to my Pakistani family.

‘He spent days carrying two Muslims from the East to the West’
My mother’s younger brother lived in Jammu and must have been a lad of 15 at the time of the partition. He was aware of the mass violence around him, but he did not take up arms and perpetuate the violence. He was a strong swimmer, and he spent days carrying two Muslims from the East to the West and then two Hindus from the West to the East on his shoulders — back and forth. My uncle’s story reminds me that people can stop the cycle of violence.

‘It was not a national tragedy for him, but a very personal one’
My paternal grandfather and grandmother moved to Bombay during partition with their two little sons. I shared a room with my grandfather growing up and heard stories of how things were before and silences about what happened during. In his last year my grandfather would often weep about partition. It was not a national tragedy for him, but a very personal one.

My maternal grandfather moved to Lucknow in India at the height of the violence. They lost many cousins and relations, but the immediate family made it safely. He restarted an optical shop called Lahore Opticals, named after the city of his birth, and became successful. When Hindu-Muslim strife breaks out in India, the shop is invariably targeted. But my grandfather never changed the name. His shop is now run by my uncle and is still named after the city they fled, now in Pakistan.

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ISIS Claims Suicide Bombing That Killed at Least 15 in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suicide bomber riding a motorcycle rammed into a military truck near a busy bus station in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 15 people, including eight soldiers, and wounding at least 40 others, military officials said on Sunday.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack on Saturday in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province in the southwest. A military spokesman said the attack had been aimed at sabotaging Independence Day celebrations, as Pakistan will mark its 70th anniversary on Monday.

Active-duty troops in the Pakistani Army have rarely come under attack in Quetta, although paramilitary forces and police officers have repeatedly faced assaults by militants in the city.

The explosion, which was heard far away and set off a fire that engulfed vehicles nearby, left several people critically injured. The wounded were taken to Civil Hospital and Combined Military Hospital.

The attack, near several important government and private buildings — including the provincial assembly — renewed concerns about security arrangements in the city, which has long reeled under militant and sectarian violence despite the heavy presence of security forces and paramilitary soldiers.

Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, the Pakistani army chief, arrived in the city on Sunday morning to chair a high-level security briefing and visit the wounded at the military hospital, officials said. The interior minister, Ahsan Iqbal, had also traveled to the provincial capital on Saturday for meetings with senior civil and military officials.

The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has claimed to be behind several terrorist attacks in the province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, in recent months.

Pakistani officials, however, played down the presence of the Islamic State in the province, asserting that the group does not have an organized presence there.