United Nations give warning of second wave of Pakistani flood deaths

Pakistan  The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $459 million in aid for flood-hit Pakistan, warning of a second wave of death among sick, hungry survivors unless help arrived quickly.Roiling floods triggered by unusually heavy monsoon rain have scoured Pakistan’s Indus river basin, killing more than 1,600 people, forcing 2 million from their homes and disrupting the lives of about 14 million people, or 8 percent of the population.President Asif Ali Zardari, whose government has come in for harsh criticism for its perceived sluggish response to the disaster, defended a decision to travel abroad as the floods began, saying he helped focus international attention on the plight of the victims.The floods, the worst in the region in 80 years, have raised fears for the prospects of the nuclear-armed U.S. ally already battling a deadly Islamist militancy.U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday the U.S. military was tripling the number of helicopters in Pakistan to 19 from six and sending in a landing platform to be used off the coast of Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city.

Washington, which had already committed $55 million to Pakistani flood relief efforts, also announced it was contributing a further $16.2 million to the U.N. refugee agency and International Red Cross for emergency assistance to flood victims.Aid agencies have complained of a lackluster donor response to the crisis, while a U.N. spokesman said help was needed soon.”If we do not respond soon enough to the urgent needs of the population, if we do not provide life-saving assistance as soon as is necessary, there may be a second wave of death caused by diseases and food shortages,” said U.N. humanitarian operations the spokesman Maurizio Giuliano.Hundreds of roads and bridges have been destroyed from northern mountains to the plains of the southern province of Sindh, where the waters have not yet crested, meaning the situation could get worse.

Countless villages and farms have been inundated, crops destroyed and livestock lost. In some places, families are huddled on tiny patches of water-logged land with their animals surrounded by an inland sea.On the outskirts of the city of Sukkur, in Sindh, hundreds of people waited for food supplies at a tent camp.”I can’t find my 12-year-old son. I’ve been to my village with soldiers on a boat but there was no sign of him,” said farmer Mohammad Hassan.”I’m so worried. I don’t know what to do. Should I take care of my family here or go and look for my son?” Hassan, a father of 10, told Reuters before rushing into a throng jostling around a truck that arrived with rations of cooked rice.

ECONOMIC DAMAGE

The International Monetary Fund has warned of major economic harm and the Finance Ministry said the country would miss this year’s 4.5 percent gross domestic product growth target, although it was not clear by how much.Pakistani stocks ended 0.17 percent down at 9,875.68 as the economic costs of the disaster rattled investors. the market has lost 5.37 percent since the floods began.The United Nations says the disaster is the biggest the country has faced and it would cost billions of dollars to rehabilitate the victims and rebuild ruined infrastructure.Giuliano said he was optimistic aid would arrive and $150 million had already been pledged. The U.N. World Food Program needs $150 million to feed 6 million people for three months.Zardari defended his decision to travel to France and Britain at the end of last month.

“Some have criticized my decision, saying it represented aloofness, but I felt that I had to choose substance over symbolism,” he said in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal.The British government had pledged $24 million in aid, following his meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron, the Pakistani leader said.

Pakistan’s military, which has ruled the country for more than half of its 63-year history, has taken the lead in relief efforts, reinforcing the faith many Pakistanis have in their armed forces and highlighting the comparative ineffectiveness of civilian governments.Analysts say the armed forces would not try to take power as they have vowed to shun politics and are busy fighting militants.U.S. military helicopters have been airlifting survivors in an effort that may win Washington some supporters in Pakistan, where anti-American sentiment runs high.

“Let’s not talk about politics. We were trapped here and they came to evacuate us,” said Abdul Rehman, 37, rescued by a U.S. helicopter after being stranded with a new-born baby and wife.”They’re doing good. Let’s appreciate them.”The United States needs a stable Pakistan to help it end a nine-year war by the Taliban in Afghanistan.(Reuters)

Pakistani troops killed at least 34 militants after about 150 Taliban attacked a military checkpost in the northwest on Friday

Pakistani troops killed at least 34 militants after about 150 Taliban attacked a military checkpost in the northwest on Friday, challenging government assertions crackdowns have weakened the group.Homegrown Taliban rebels are seeking to topple the U.S.-backed government of unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari, who has been pressured to hand over some of his key powers, such as dissolving parliament and appointing military chiefs.

A senior military officer and four paramilitary soldiers were also killed in the attack in Orakzai, a day after Pakistani jets killed nearly 50 people, mostly militants, in strikes on a school and a seminary in the same region, a government official said.Fourteen soldiers were wounded in the Taliban assault.

Orakzai, one of seven Pakistani tribal regions near the Afghan border, also known as agencies, has seen a surge in military attacks in recent months, targeting militants who were driven out of their bastion of South Waziristan.Pakistan mounted two offensives last year in the northwestern Swat Valley and in South Waziristan on the Afghan border, which it says threw al Qaeda-linked militants into disarray.But despite losing ground, the Taliban hit back with bombings that killed hundreds, prompting troops to step up attacks in other northwestern regions where militants are believed to have taken refuge after offensives.In the latest attack, about 150 Taliban launched a pre-dawn assault on a checkpoint in Orakzai, triggering fierce fighting.

“They attacked from three sides which continued for nearly three hours in which a lieutenant colonel and four other security officials were killed,” said government official Khaista Rehman.”Security forces launched the counter-attack in which 24 militants have been killed,” he said. A paramilitary official, said as many as 30 militants may have been killed.

Army jets and helicopter gunships later targeted suspected militant hideouts in various parts of Orakzai and killed another 10 militants, said government official Mohammad Asghar Khan.Orakzai is considered a militant stronghold of Pakistan Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, who is widely believed to have been killed in a U.S. drone aircraft attack in January.

Pakistani action against militants along its Afghan border is seen as crucial to the U.S. efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan, particularly as Washington sends more troops there to fight a raging Taliban insurgency before a gradual withdrawal starts in 2011.

The two allies pledged increased cooperation in tackling militants during two days of talks in Washington that ended on Thursday, with Washington promising to speed up overdue military payments.U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates praised Pakistan for increased coordination over stabilizing Afghanistan, including the recent arrest of a key Afghan Taliban commander in what has been described as a joint American-Pakistani raid in Karachi.(Reuters)

the leader of a major Taliban faction attacking Western forces in Afghanistan was killed in a recent missile strike by a U.S. drone in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD  A son of the leader of a major Taliban faction attacking Western forces in Afghanistan was killed in a recent missile strike by a U.S. drone in Pakistan, security officials said on Friday. A pilotless U.S. drone fired two missiles into a compound owned by the Haqqani militant network on Thursday in Pakistan’s North Waziristan ethnic Pashtun tribal region on the Afghan border, killing three people.Mohammad Haqqani, a son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, head of the Haqqani network which is linked to al Qaeda and has carried out several high-profile attacks in Afghanistan, was among the dead, Pakistani security officials said.

But another son of the elder Haqqani, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is a much more high-profile target of the U.S. drones.”Mohammad Haqqani is a younger brother of Sirajuddin. He (Mohammad) was killed in the attack,” a security official who declined to be identified told Reuters.Veteran guerrilla commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is in his 70s, has passed on the leadership of his militant faction to Sirajuddin.U.S. forces in Afghanistan describe Sirajuddin as one of their biggest enemies and the United States has posted a bounty of up to $5 million for him.

Thursday’s drone strike was in Dandi Darpakhel village near North Waziristan’s main town of Miranshah where many members of Haqqani’s extended family have been living since the U.S.-backed Afghan jihad, or holy war, against Soviet forces in the 1980s.
BORDER STRONGHOLD Sirajuddin Haqqani was known to visit the village but another Pakistani intelligence agency official said he was not there at the time of the attack.Residents and government officials also confirmed the death of Mohammad Haqqani.U.S. drones have targeted the village several times and 23 people, many of the members of the Haqqani family, were killed in a strike there in September 2008.The elder Haqqani set up a sprawling madrasa or Islamic seminary in the village in the 1980s.Jalaluddin Haqqani has had close links with Pakistani intelligence, notably the military’s main Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

U.S. ally Pakistan officially objects to the drone strikes, saying they are a violation of its sovereignty and fuel anti-U.S. feeling which complicates Pakistan’s efforts against militancy.But at least some strikes are carried out with the consent of Islamabad, in particular those on Pakistani Taliban militants fighting the state.The latest missile strike came a day after Pakistan confirmed the arrest of the Afghan Taliban’s top military strategist, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in the city of Karachi this month.

The Haqqani faction does not launch attacks in Pakistan but sends fighters across the border into Afghanistan from its stronghold in lawless North Waziristan.The United States has stepped up missile strikes in North Waziristan since a Jordanian suicide bomber killed seven CIA employees at a U.S. base across the border in the Afghan province of Khost in late December.Separately, two pro-Taliban militants suspected of involvement in several high-profiles attacks in Pakistan were killed in a shootout with police in the central city of Faisalabad after they refused to surrender.”They plotted more attacks. They opened fire on police when we intercepted them. Both of them have been killed,” senior police official Sarfraz Falki told(Reuters)

bomb blast at a mosque in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt killed 29 people including some militants

PESHAWAR, Pakistan A bomb blast at a mosque in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt killed 29 people including some militants Thursday, underscoring the relentless security threat here even as Pakistani-U.S. cooperation against extremism appears on the upswing.The attack in Khyber tribal region came as U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke met with Pakistan’s prime minister in Islamabad, the capital. It also followed revelations that Pakistani authorities have been picking up Afghan Taliban leaders on their soil, a longtime U.S. demand.

The explosion tore through a mosque in the Aka Khel area of Khyber, killing at least 29 people and wounding some 50 others, local official Jawed Khan said. Earlier reports had said the blast occurred in the Orakzai area at a cattle market.The two areas border one another, and the market is apparently near the mosque.Officials were still investigating whether the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber or a planted device.No group claimed responsibility, but Khan said the dead included militants from Lashkar-e-Islam, an insurgent group in Khyber that has clashed with another militant outfit known as Ansarul Islam. Both espouse Taliban-style ideologies.Earlier this week, officials confirmed that a joint CIA-Pakistani security operation had captured the No. 2 Afghan Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.On Thursday, an Afghan official told The Associated Press that around the same time — some two weeks ago — two Taliban leaders from northern Afghanistan also were arrested in Pakistan by Pakistani authorities.The U.S. and Pakistan have said very little on the record about the arrests, but they could signal a shift in Pakistani policy. Pakistan has long frustrated the Americans by either denying that the Afghan Taliban use its soil or doing little to root them out.

The arrests could mean that Pakistan has decided to turn on the Afghan Taliban, a group that it helped nurture as a strategic ally against longtime rival India, though some suspect the Pakistanis were forced to act because the U.S. had solid intelligence on Baradar that it could not deny.The arrests came as Western and Afghan troops fight the Taliban for control of Marjah town in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province.Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told Holbrooke that the U.S. should take into account Pakistan’s concerns that the Marjah offensive could lead to Afghan refugees and militants heading to Pakistan’s southwest and northwest, according to Gilani’s office.

The pair also discussed U.S. humanitarian aid efforts, with Gilani pressing for a quicker release of funds. The U.S. has pledged $7.5 billion in aid to Pakistan over the next five years.Talking with reporters in Kabul on Wednesday, Holbrooke said the U.S. was restructuring the way it doles out aid to Pakistan and intends to consult more with the Pakistanis and pursue more visible projects.”It is very, very time consuming work because of the huge, long lead times of contracts, because of the congressional role,” he said.

Pakistani military confirmed on Wednesday that the Taliban's top military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar had been captured

ISLAMABAD The Pakistani military confirmed on Wednesday that the Afghan Taliban’s top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, had been captured.U.S. and Pakistani officials who declined to be identified said on Tuesday Baradar had been captured in the Pakistani city of Karachi in a raid by Pakistani and U.S. agents.”At the conclusion of detailed identification procedure, it has been confirmed that one of the persons arrested happens to be Mullah Baradar,” the military said.It declined to say where he had been caught or to give other details, citing security reasons.The capture came as U.S. forces spearhead one of NATO’s biggest offensives against the Taliban in Afghanistan in an early test of U.S. President Barack Obama’s troop surge policy.U.S. officials and analysts said it was too soon to tell whether Pakistan’s cooperation against Baradar would be extended to other top militants on the U.S. hit list.The arrest followed months of behind-the-scenes prodding by U.S. officials who saw inaction by Islamabad as a major threat to their Afghan war strategy.

Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik had on Tuesday declined to confirm Baradar’s capture, saying a large number of people had fled operations by NATO forces in Afghanistan to Pakistan and many had been picked up.He denied that there had been any joint operation by Pakistani and U.S. agents.Though nuclear-armed Pakistan is a U.S. ally, anti-U.S. sentiment runs high and many people have long been suspicious of the U.S.-led campaign against militancy and oppose any U.S. security operations in Pakistan.

“HE IS WITH US”A Pakistani intelligence official said security agents had been searching for Baradar in the southwestern city of Quetta, where the United States says a Taliban leadership council is based.

“Sensing that he might be arrested, he somehow slipped out of Quetta and into Karachi, maybe in disguise. That’s where we arrested him, about four days back,” said the official, who declined to be identified.”He is with us and is being interrogated.”Asked if the United States was involved in the questioning, he said: “Yes of course. We have that sort of cooperation with them.”Baradar’s arrest comes amid a renewed drive for peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.Asked if the Taliban commander could help with any reconciliation process, the Pakistani agent said: “It might lead to that eventually … Anything is possible but so far we have not come to that.”Pakistan is anxious to have a say in post-war Afghanistan in order to limit the influence of old rival India there.Anger in Pakistan toward the United States has been exacerbated by attacks by pilotless U.S. drone aircraft on militants in lawless enclaves along the Afghan border.

In the latest strike, a U.S. drone fired a missile into the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border, killing at least three militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.The drone targeted a militant compound in the village of Tapi, about 15 km (9 miles) east of Miranshah, the main town in the region, which is a hotbed of Taliban and al Qaeda militants. It was the second attack on the village this week.There was no information about the identity of those killed or of three men wounded in the strike, they said.Pakistan objects to the drone strikes, saying they are a violation of its sovereignty and complicate its efforts against militancy.The Pakistani army has made gains against militants battling the state over the past 10 months but it has ruled out a major offensive against Afghan Taliban factions on its soil, saying its forces are already stretched.(Reuters)

Pakistan ISLAMABAD suicide bombing death toll rises to 8

Shiite Muslim

ISLAMABAD The death toll from a suicide bombing at a Shiite Muslim gathering in the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir increased to eight Monday, police said, as minority Shiites marked the key holy day of Ashura.Another 80 people were wounded in Sunday night’s bombing in Muzaffarabad – a rare sectarian attack in an area police say has little history of militant violence. The dead included three police, said police official Yasin Baig, adding that another 10 police were among the wounded.The suicide bomber set off explosives he was carrying as police searched him outside a ceremony commemorating the seventh century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson during the Islamic holy month of Muharram.Security has been tightened across Pakistan during Muharram, and particularly for Monday’s Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram, a month of mourning that is often marred by bombings and fighting between Pakistan’s Sunni Muslim majority and its Shiite minority.

In the northwestern city of Peshawar, which has been repeatedly hit by suicide bombings in the past months, thousands of police were guarding processions, and troops were on standby, local police chief Liaqat Ali Khan said.

“Our security level is red alert,” Khan said, adding that the recent wave of attacks required police to be extra vigilant.

More than 500 people have been killed in attacks across Pakistan since October. Insurgents are suspected of avenging a U.S.-supported Pakistani army offensive against the Taliban in a northwest tribal region along the Afghan border.Maj. Aurangzeb Khan said paramilitary forces were deployed and were carrying out helicopter patrols in the southern port city of Karachi, where a blast that authorities attributed to a buildup of gas in a sewage pipe wounded about 30 people on Sunday.

“Our men will remain with all the processions till their culmination,” Khan said.To the east in Lahore, all entry and exit points to processions were blocked to traffic and anyone joining a procession had to pass through scanners, said police official Chaudhry Shafiq.

“There is always a threat, especially in the ongoing terror attacks,” Shafiq said.After Sunday night’s bombing in Kashmir’s Muzaffarabad, Baig, the police official there, said Shiite mourners at the commemoration ceremony took to the streets to protest the bombing, with some firing shots in the air. Baig said authorities restored order within about an hour.

He said it was the first time a suicide bomber attacked a Shiite gathering in the region.Muslim militants have fought for decades to free Kashmir, which is split between India and Pakistan and claimed by both, from New Delhi’s rule. But while Muzaffarabad has served as a base for anti-India insurgents to train and launch attacks, the capital – and most of the Pakistani side – has largely been spared any violence, with militants focusing on the Indian-controlled portion.

The bombing highlights the growing extremism of militants in Pakistani Kashmir. Many of the region’s armed groups were started with support from Islamabad. But some of them have turned against their former patrons and joined forces with the Taliban because the government has reduced its support under U.S. pressure.

The partnership is a dangerous development for Pakistan as it could enable the Taliban to carry out attacks more easily outside its sanctuary in the country’s tribal areas in the northwest. More than 500 people have been killed in retaliatory attacks since the military launched a major anti-Taliban offensive in mid-October in the militant stronghold of South Waziristan near the Afghan border.