On 24 November 2011, the Government of Afghanistan awarded a Canadian mining company, Kilo Goldmines, approximately 25 percent of the stake to develop the massive Hajigak iron deposit in Bamiyan Afghanistan. A consortium of Indian companies won the other 75 percent of the development.
The Hajigak deposit – the largest iron deposit in Asia and possibly the world – is “truly significant on a global scale”.....Continue Reading.........
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
Afghanistan: A New Sectarian War?
Ahmed Rashid
Steve McCurry/Magnum Photos
People from the Hazara Shia community, Afghanistan, 2006.
Throughout a decade of terrible conflict in their country, there is one kind of violence Afghans have largely avoided: between Sunni and Shia. Despite the sectarian tensions that have splintered much of the Muslim world since September 11, there were no major sectarian attacks in Afghanistan between 2001 and the fall of 2011. To the contrary, the Taliban, who adhere to the conservative Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam, have taken extra care not to aggravate Afghan Shia, who make up about 10 to 15 percent of the population....Continue Reading....
People from the Hazara Shia community, Afghanistan, 2006.
Throughout a decade of terrible conflict in their country, there is one kind of violence Afghans have largely avoided: between Sunni and Shia. Despite the sectarian tensions that have splintered much of the Muslim world since September 11, there were no major sectarian attacks in Afghanistan between 2001 and the fall of 2011. To the contrary, the Taliban, who adhere to the conservative Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam, have taken extra care not to aggravate Afghan Shia, who make up about 10 to 15 percent of the population....Continue Reading....
Refugee inquiry to tackle backlog
THE former attorney-general Michael Lavarch will conduct an independent review of the refugee and migration tribunals amid a backlog of cases and allegations that the process is being abused....Continue Reading...
Attacks on Afghan Shiites Highlight Pakistan's Policy Failure
BY ARIF RAFIQ | 12 DEC 2011
BRIEFING
Last Tuesday’s deadly attacks on Shiite processions in Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif in Afghanistan are further evidence of dangerous instability in neighboring Pakistan and of the Pakistani state’s failure to act coherently to counteract it. A clear understanding of the group responsible is important to understanding the crossborder ramifications of the attacks.
Contrary to reports in prominent news outlets, the Pakistani Sunni sectarian terrorist group Lashkar-e Jhangvi (LeJ) was not responsible for the attacks. Rather, an LeJ splinter group known as Lashkar-e Jhangvi al-Alami (LeJ-A) -- not the original LeJ organization -- has claimed responsibility for them. A person claiming to be an LeJ-A spokesman made the announcement in communication with a number of news outlets, including BBC Urdu and Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
LeJ-A has claimed responsibility for a small number of very deadly attacks in Pakistan since 2009. These include attacks on Shiite Muslims in Kohat in 2009 and 2010: a September 2009 attack on a market in a predominantly Shiite area that killed 33 people, and an April 2010 attack on internally displaced Shiites that killed 44 and injured 70. In addition, multiple attacks on a Shiite procession in Lahore in September 2010 killed 29 civilians and injured 243.
The original LeJ was founded in 1996 by dissident members of a third group, Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), who felt that the SSP was not militant enough. Prior to being banned in 2003, the SSP was a registered political party, though in practice it was an anti-Shiite terrorist group. The SSP continues to maintain an unofficial though highly visible role in politics, actively using its swing voters to tilt hotly contested races, while at the same time feeding Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal areas with non-Pashtun militants.
LeJ, on the other hand, rejects involvement in formal politics. It has a long record of terrorist violence against Pakistani Shiites and even the Pakistani government. In recent years, the group has also been involved in attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team. But LeJ-A split from LeJ -- mirroring the LeJ’s previous split from SSP -- on the grounds that LeJ was insufficiently extremist. Despite their common history, LeJ and LeJ-A are now two distinct organizations. In fact, LeJ-A is only one of many LeJ splinter groups -- all of which are more rapacious and less controllable than the original group, and all of which also have short half-lives.
The trend toward fragmentation reflects an increasingly messy jihadist landscape in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The Pakistani Taliban, the major umbrella organization for Pashtun jihadist groups in the tribal areas and the nearby settled areas, is splintering, due in part to efforts by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to stoke divisions within the fragile network.
The ISI is applying a policy of divide and rule toward both LeJ and the Pakistani Taliban, a strategy the spy agency has applied in the past to its political opponents, such as the Pakistan People’s Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement. The outcome of such an approach in Pakistan tends to be more divisions and greater instability, with quite considerable negative externalities: While splintering reduces militant groups' coherence and unity of command and purpose, the end result is often more deadly violence or the emergence of increasingly nihilistic groups.
Now, LeJ-A has apparently reared its ugly head in Afghanistan for the first time. Though the brutal attacks on Shiite civilians were shocking, it is not clear that they are a harbinger of things to come. The LeJ-A attack could prove to be an isolated phenomenon in Afghanistan. After all, the group is small and lacks the capacity to conduct a sustained campaign even at home in Pakistan.
What’s more, there is no indication of an emerging sectarian war in Afghanistan. After the attack, enraged Afghan Shiites in Kabul chanted slogans denouncing Pakistan and the United States, not their fellow Afghan Sunnis -- that is, they expressed their anger in the form of Afghan nationalism, not sectarianism. Even the Afghan Taliban, which mercilessly killed Hazara Shiites in the 1990s, unequivocally condemned Tuesday’s attacks, although LeJ-A, if its claims of responsibility are true, might have received support from insubordinate or rogue elements of the Afghan Taliban.
Unlike Afghanistan, Pakistan does face a clear and present danger from sectarian violence. LeJ and its offshoots are engaged in a systematic campaign of slaughtering Shiites -- particularly ethnic Hazaras -- and other religious minorities in Pakistan. This year, 179 people have been killed in sectarian violence in the country.
Pakistan has no coherent national-level counterradicalization program. Its military-intelligence establishment spearheaded a bold counterradicalization program in the Swat area, home to a bloody but successful counterinsurgency operation launched in 2009. But elsewhere in the country, the Pakistani establishment supports militants who fight in Afghanistan and India, and there remains a risk that these groups will set their sights on Pakistani targets in the future, just as former jihadist assets of the ISI are now doing.
To make matters worse, the Pakistani state lacks the judicial muscle to prosecute terrorists. In 2010, 75 percent of those prosecuted in Pakistani anti-terrorism courts were acquitted. Earlier this fall, Pakistan’s so-called troika -- the prime minister, president and army chief -- resolved to bolster the courts.
But until Pakistan’s military and civilian leadership produce a comprehensive national security policy that provides for a coherent transition away from the use of jihadists as proxies, no number of additional judicial agents will be able to halt the wave of instability and violence that Pakistan’s military has been intent on pushing outward for at least the past four years.
Arif Rafiq is president of Vizier Consulting, LLC, which provides strategic guidance on Middle East and South Asian political and security issues. He writes at the Pakistan Policy Blog and tweets at @pakistanpolicy.
World Politics Review
BRIEFING
Last Tuesday’s deadly attacks on Shiite processions in Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif in Afghanistan are further evidence of dangerous instability in neighboring Pakistan and of the Pakistani state’s failure to act coherently to counteract it. A clear understanding of the group responsible is important to understanding the crossborder ramifications of the attacks.
Contrary to reports in prominent news outlets, the Pakistani Sunni sectarian terrorist group Lashkar-e Jhangvi (LeJ) was not responsible for the attacks. Rather, an LeJ splinter group known as Lashkar-e Jhangvi al-Alami (LeJ-A) -- not the original LeJ organization -- has claimed responsibility for them. A person claiming to be an LeJ-A spokesman made the announcement in communication with a number of news outlets, including BBC Urdu and Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
LeJ-A has claimed responsibility for a small number of very deadly attacks in Pakistan since 2009. These include attacks on Shiite Muslims in Kohat in 2009 and 2010: a September 2009 attack on a market in a predominantly Shiite area that killed 33 people, and an April 2010 attack on internally displaced Shiites that killed 44 and injured 70. In addition, multiple attacks on a Shiite procession in Lahore in September 2010 killed 29 civilians and injured 243.
The original LeJ was founded in 1996 by dissident members of a third group, Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), who felt that the SSP was not militant enough. Prior to being banned in 2003, the SSP was a registered political party, though in practice it was an anti-Shiite terrorist group. The SSP continues to maintain an unofficial though highly visible role in politics, actively using its swing voters to tilt hotly contested races, while at the same time feeding Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal areas with non-Pashtun militants.
LeJ, on the other hand, rejects involvement in formal politics. It has a long record of terrorist violence against Pakistani Shiites and even the Pakistani government. In recent years, the group has also been involved in attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team. But LeJ-A split from LeJ -- mirroring the LeJ’s previous split from SSP -- on the grounds that LeJ was insufficiently extremist. Despite their common history, LeJ and LeJ-A are now two distinct organizations. In fact, LeJ-A is only one of many LeJ splinter groups -- all of which are more rapacious and less controllable than the original group, and all of which also have short half-lives.
The trend toward fragmentation reflects an increasingly messy jihadist landscape in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The Pakistani Taliban, the major umbrella organization for Pashtun jihadist groups in the tribal areas and the nearby settled areas, is splintering, due in part to efforts by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to stoke divisions within the fragile network.
The ISI is applying a policy of divide and rule toward both LeJ and the Pakistani Taliban, a strategy the spy agency has applied in the past to its political opponents, such as the Pakistan People’s Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement. The outcome of such an approach in Pakistan tends to be more divisions and greater instability, with quite considerable negative externalities: While splintering reduces militant groups' coherence and unity of command and purpose, the end result is often more deadly violence or the emergence of increasingly nihilistic groups.
Now, LeJ-A has apparently reared its ugly head in Afghanistan for the first time. Though the brutal attacks on Shiite civilians were shocking, it is not clear that they are a harbinger of things to come. The LeJ-A attack could prove to be an isolated phenomenon in Afghanistan. After all, the group is small and lacks the capacity to conduct a sustained campaign even at home in Pakistan.
What’s more, there is no indication of an emerging sectarian war in Afghanistan. After the attack, enraged Afghan Shiites in Kabul chanted slogans denouncing Pakistan and the United States, not their fellow Afghan Sunnis -- that is, they expressed their anger in the form of Afghan nationalism, not sectarianism. Even the Afghan Taliban, which mercilessly killed Hazara Shiites in the 1990s, unequivocally condemned Tuesday’s attacks, although LeJ-A, if its claims of responsibility are true, might have received support from insubordinate or rogue elements of the Afghan Taliban.
Unlike Afghanistan, Pakistan does face a clear and present danger from sectarian violence. LeJ and its offshoots are engaged in a systematic campaign of slaughtering Shiites -- particularly ethnic Hazaras -- and other religious minorities in Pakistan. This year, 179 people have been killed in sectarian violence in the country.
Pakistan has no coherent national-level counterradicalization program. Its military-intelligence establishment spearheaded a bold counterradicalization program in the Swat area, home to a bloody but successful counterinsurgency operation launched in 2009. But elsewhere in the country, the Pakistani establishment supports militants who fight in Afghanistan and India, and there remains a risk that these groups will set their sights on Pakistani targets in the future, just as former jihadist assets of the ISI are now doing.
To make matters worse, the Pakistani state lacks the judicial muscle to prosecute terrorists. In 2010, 75 percent of those prosecuted in Pakistani anti-terrorism courts were acquitted. Earlier this fall, Pakistan’s so-called troika -- the prime minister, president and army chief -- resolved to bolster the courts.
But until Pakistan’s military and civilian leadership produce a comprehensive national security policy that provides for a coherent transition away from the use of jihadists as proxies, no number of additional judicial agents will be able to halt the wave of instability and violence that Pakistan’s military has been intent on pushing outward for at least the past four years.
Arif Rafiq is president of Vizier Consulting, LLC, which provides strategic guidance on Middle East and South Asian political and security issues. He writes at the Pakistan Policy Blog and tweets at @pakistanpolicy.
World Politics Review
Sunday, December 11, 2011
SAIL asks Rs 45K cr interest-free loans to develop Hajigak mines
Priyadarshi Siddhanta
Posted: Mon Dec 12 2011, 00:08 hrs
New Delhi:
A consortium led by state-owned steel giant SAIL has suddenly turned around and demanded that the government provide interest-free loans to the tune of Rs 45,000 crore to develop the prized Hajigak mines in Afghanistan and build a steel plant. The Afghan government had recently awarded the seven member consortium B, C and D blocks of the Hajigak mines in the Bamiyan province, located about 130 km west of Kabul. The three blocks together have reserves of 1.28 billion tonne.
Winning the bid has enabled the consortium called AFISCO (Afghan Iron & Steel Consortium) to commence formal negotiations with the Hamid Karzai government following which it would be granted licence for mineral concessions for Hajigak. The syndicate has also offered to set up a 6 MT steel plant adjacent to the mines and build the entire evacuation infrastructure and a 200 km of railroad network till the Iranian border city of Zahedan.
Indian Express
Posted: Mon Dec 12 2011, 00:08 hrs
New Delhi:
A consortium led by state-owned steel giant SAIL has suddenly turned around and demanded that the government provide interest-free loans to the tune of Rs 45,000 crore to develop the prized Hajigak mines in Afghanistan and build a steel plant. The Afghan government had recently awarded the seven member consortium B, C and D blocks of the Hajigak mines in the Bamiyan province, located about 130 km west of Kabul. The three blocks together have reserves of 1.28 billion tonne.
Winning the bid has enabled the consortium called AFISCO (Afghan Iron & Steel Consortium) to commence formal negotiations with the Hamid Karzai government following which it would be granted licence for mineral concessions for Hajigak. The syndicate has also offered to set up a 6 MT steel plant adjacent to the mines and build the entire evacuation infrastructure and a 200 km of railroad network till the Iranian border city of Zahedan.
Indian Express
Further darkening of the horizon
Continued violence in Afghanistan seems to queer the pitch for US-Pakistan relations even as the Bonn conference fails to offer any potent solution
By Tanvir Ahmad Khan, Special to Gulf News
This was to be the season of hope in and around Afghanistan, but what we have instead is a further darkening of the horizon. Relations between Pakistan and the United States remain severely strained. The long awaited Bonn Conference has not even remotely lived up to its promise. No less ominously, violence in Afghanistan suddenly wore a new garb on the Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram.
It is probably an index of personal shock that I turn to the third factor first. Having lived in Kabul for four years and followed events in Afghanistan professionally for the last three decades, I am all too aware of ethnic and other divisions in the diversely constituted Afghan society, but sectarian violence was never a significant fault line.
In the social hierarchy, perpetuated by the Durrani state created by Ahmad Shah Abd Ali in the mid-18th century, social groups such as the Hazaras, who practice Shiite Islam, got relegated to a lower order only on ethnic and linguistic grounds. The American military intervention in 2001 reversed this trend as it dispossessed the predominantly Pashtun tribes of power and upgraded other ethnic groups. The backlash and resistance from Pashtun Taliban, however, articulated itself in political terrorism and not sectarian violence.
It has been a battle of turf and not of sects during the last decade. Unlike Iraq, where mysterious forces transformed the post-Baathist conflict into deadly sectarian combat, the Taliban fought the US, Nato and the Karzai government in the name of Islam and national sovereignty. They were quick to dissociate themselves from the most extraordinary attacks on Shiite gatherings in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar that left 59 dead this Ashura.
Article continues below
Pakistan has faced a similar phenomenon in recent years though the government mounted a huge security operation this year and ensured total peace for the large, emotionally charged, Muharram processions.
Unsubstantiated claim
Unable to provide any other explanation, President Hamid Karzai made an unsubstantiated claim that the unprecedented sectarian violence in Afghanistan was the work of a banned extremist Sunni organisation rooted in the Punjab province of Pakistan. He offered no explanation how this outfit could operate as far away from Pakistan as Mazar-e-Sharif.
Pakistani analysts stopped taking Karzai's allegations seriously some time ago, but remain deeply preoccupied with the possibility that an invisible hand is stoking a sectarian fire now in Afghanistan. There was the carnage in Iraq. Pakistan itself was rocked by sectarian tensions despite a long history of Shiite-Sunni harmony. Iran produced evidence that a small militant Sunni group, Jundullah, was using Pakistani soil to launch murderous attacks in Iran at the behest of CIA.
Western think tanks regularly underline the supposed fragility of the oil-bearing eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia because of their Shiite population.
Last but not the least, the current Syrian harshness is being increasingly portrayed as rooted in a sectarian Alawite vs Sunni contest for power. It seems the region will hear a lot more of the so-called Shiite-Sunni "contradiction" in the months ahead.
Despite a decade that separated it from the earlier path-breaking Bonn 1, the Bonn Conference of December 5 (Bonn2) ended with an impressive communique, but little measurable progress towards reconciliation and reconstruction.
Not enough progress
Not enough, if any, progress had been made in contacts with the Taliban to seat them amongst the 90 states and 15 international organisations.
Reeling under a lethal Nato Special Forces attack that obliterated a Pakistani check post near the Afghan border, an attack noted for its duration and precise targeting of all the 49 Pakistani soldiers — Pakistan had stayed away from Bonn 2. In its simplest formulation, the conference looked stalemated between the American doctrine of "fight, talk and build" and the rest of the world, including the otherwise absent Pakistan and most of the European powers, veering round to a new approach described as "talk, talk and talk" after a futile 10-year old military campaign. Pakistan is still maintaining a stoppage of Nato supplies imposed after the destruction of its Salala check post.
Efforts are afoot to de-escalate tensions between Islamabad and Washington, but are regularly endangered by Washington peppering up peaceful overtures with gratuitous threats.
Meanwhile, issues between the two so-called allies have unleashed undercurrents that endanger the stability of Pakistan's elected government. An act as natural as President Asif Ali Zardari seeking medical treatment in the tranquillity of Dubai has let loose a storm of rumours, each darker than the other.
But of that, another day, another column.
Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary and ambassador of Pakistan. He is currently the chairman and director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad.
Gulf News
By Tanvir Ahmad Khan, Special to Gulf News
This was to be the season of hope in and around Afghanistan, but what we have instead is a further darkening of the horizon. Relations between Pakistan and the United States remain severely strained. The long awaited Bonn Conference has not even remotely lived up to its promise. No less ominously, violence in Afghanistan suddenly wore a new garb on the Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram.
It is probably an index of personal shock that I turn to the third factor first. Having lived in Kabul for four years and followed events in Afghanistan professionally for the last three decades, I am all too aware of ethnic and other divisions in the diversely constituted Afghan society, but sectarian violence was never a significant fault line.
In the social hierarchy, perpetuated by the Durrani state created by Ahmad Shah Abd Ali in the mid-18th century, social groups such as the Hazaras, who practice Shiite Islam, got relegated to a lower order only on ethnic and linguistic grounds. The American military intervention in 2001 reversed this trend as it dispossessed the predominantly Pashtun tribes of power and upgraded other ethnic groups. The backlash and resistance from Pashtun Taliban, however, articulated itself in political terrorism and not sectarian violence.
It has been a battle of turf and not of sects during the last decade. Unlike Iraq, where mysterious forces transformed the post-Baathist conflict into deadly sectarian combat, the Taliban fought the US, Nato and the Karzai government in the name of Islam and national sovereignty. They were quick to dissociate themselves from the most extraordinary attacks on Shiite gatherings in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar that left 59 dead this Ashura.
Article continues below
Pakistan has faced a similar phenomenon in recent years though the government mounted a huge security operation this year and ensured total peace for the large, emotionally charged, Muharram processions.
Unsubstantiated claim
Unable to provide any other explanation, President Hamid Karzai made an unsubstantiated claim that the unprecedented sectarian violence in Afghanistan was the work of a banned extremist Sunni organisation rooted in the Punjab province of Pakistan. He offered no explanation how this outfit could operate as far away from Pakistan as Mazar-e-Sharif.
Pakistani analysts stopped taking Karzai's allegations seriously some time ago, but remain deeply preoccupied with the possibility that an invisible hand is stoking a sectarian fire now in Afghanistan. There was the carnage in Iraq. Pakistan itself was rocked by sectarian tensions despite a long history of Shiite-Sunni harmony. Iran produced evidence that a small militant Sunni group, Jundullah, was using Pakistani soil to launch murderous attacks in Iran at the behest of CIA.
Western think tanks regularly underline the supposed fragility of the oil-bearing eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia because of their Shiite population.
Last but not the least, the current Syrian harshness is being increasingly portrayed as rooted in a sectarian Alawite vs Sunni contest for power. It seems the region will hear a lot more of the so-called Shiite-Sunni "contradiction" in the months ahead.
Despite a decade that separated it from the earlier path-breaking Bonn 1, the Bonn Conference of December 5 (Bonn2) ended with an impressive communique, but little measurable progress towards reconciliation and reconstruction.
Not enough progress
Not enough, if any, progress had been made in contacts with the Taliban to seat them amongst the 90 states and 15 international organisations.
Reeling under a lethal Nato Special Forces attack that obliterated a Pakistani check post near the Afghan border, an attack noted for its duration and precise targeting of all the 49 Pakistani soldiers — Pakistan had stayed away from Bonn 2. In its simplest formulation, the conference looked stalemated between the American doctrine of "fight, talk and build" and the rest of the world, including the otherwise absent Pakistan and most of the European powers, veering round to a new approach described as "talk, talk and talk" after a futile 10-year old military campaign. Pakistan is still maintaining a stoppage of Nato supplies imposed after the destruction of its Salala check post.
Efforts are afoot to de-escalate tensions between Islamabad and Washington, but are regularly endangered by Washington peppering up peaceful overtures with gratuitous threats.
Meanwhile, issues between the two so-called allies have unleashed undercurrents that endanger the stability of Pakistan's elected government. An act as natural as President Asif Ali Zardari seeking medical treatment in the tranquillity of Dubai has let loose a storm of rumours, each darker than the other.
But of that, another day, another column.
Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary and ambassador of Pakistan. He is currently the chairman and director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad.
Gulf News
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