08 COMMENT The language terrorists understand
Friday, 21 February, 2014
The Libyan bedlam General Hifter, the CIA and the unfinished coup
Dialogue is not their course of action
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eTS pounded six terrorist hideouts in North Waziristan killing 35, according to an unofficial tally. IeD producing factories that have killed and maimed hundreds of security personnel and innocent civilians were also destroyed in the air attacks. Like the earlier targeted strikes last month, the attacks followed the killings of security personnel. This is likely to be interpreted as a significant shift in military policy after takeover by the new COAS. A message has thus been conveyed to the TTP that attacks on soldiers will henceforth not go unavenged. The army has also made it known that it not only possesses precise information about the whereabouts of the terrorists’ nests but also has the capacity to take them out without suffering casualties. The much awaited action would dispel a pall of gloom that had set in due to the government’s fascination with unproductive talks. The terrorist outfits are seen by people as bands of violent zealots who are out to destroy the state in pursuit of their madcap agenda. In its preference for talks, the PML-N government failed to see what was visible even to the common man: the TTP and similar outfits were putting up demands that negated the ideals of the country’s founding father and conflicted with the moderate Islam practised by the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis. The idea to convince them through arguments alone was a non-starter from day one. What happened after the APC resolution, adopted under the pressure of the PML-N and PTI, was simply massacre. The statistics given by a military spokesman are illustrative. During the period of five months 460 innocent people, including 308 civilians, 114 soldiers and 38 policemen, died in terrorist acts within the country. The figure for the injured in these attacks stood at 1,264, with 684 civilians, 531 military men and 49 policemen. The TTP and its affiliates have all along treated the offer of talks as a sign of weakness. Their being treated as stakeholders and thus provided recognition by the state added to their intransigence. The tendency was further strengthened by those politicians who invented lame excuses for every bloody attack the terrorists conducted. Sometime it was a drone attack, another time the presence of US troops in Afghanistan. The only way to drive sense into the militant leadership’s head is speaking to them from a position of strength. The army has employed a language that they understand. What is needed now is to promptly respond to their attacks through effective military action irrespective of whether they target security personnel or common civilians.
Dedicated to the legacy of the late Hameed Nizami
Arif Nizami Editor
Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad Joint Editor Lahore – Ph: 042-36375963-5 Fax: 042-32535230 Karachi – Ph: 021-35381208-9 Fax: 021-35381208 Islamabad – Ph: 051-2287273 Fax: 051-2818125 Web: www.pakistantoday.com.pk Email: editorial@pakistantoday.com.pk
Ramzy BaRoud
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N Friday, Feb 14, 92 prisoners escaped from their prison in the Libyan town of Zliten. 19 of them were eventually recaptured, two of whom were wounded in clashes with the guards. It was just another daily episode highlighting the utter chaos which has engulfed Libya since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Much of this is often reported with cliché explanations as in the country’s ‘security vacuum’, or Libya’s lack of a true national identity. Indeed, tribe and region seem to supersede any other affiliation, but it is hardly that simple. On that same Friday, Feb 14, Maj. Gen. Khalifa hifter announced a coup in Libya. “The national command of the Libyan Army is declaring a movement for a new road map” (to rescue the country), hifter declared through a video post. Oddly enough, little followed by way of a major military deployment in any part of the country. The country’s Prime Minister Ali Zeidan described the attempted coup as “ridiculous”. Others in the military called it a “lie.” One of those who attended a meeting with hifter prior to the announcement told Al Jazeera that they simply attempted to enforce the national agenda of bringing order, not staging a coup. hifter’s efforts were a farce. It generated nothing but more attention to Libya’s fractious reality, following
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NATO’s war, branded a humanitarian intervention to prevent imminent massacres in Benghazi and elsewhere. “Libya is stable,” Zeidan told Reuters. “(The parliament) is doing its work, and so is the government.” But Zedian is not correct. his assessment is a clear contradiction to reality, where hundreds of militias rule the country with an iron fist. In fact, the prime minister was himself kidnapped by one militia last October. hours later, he was released by another militia. Although both, like the rest of the militias, are operating outside government confines, many are directly or loosely affiliated with government officials. In Libya, to have sway over a militia is to have influence over local, regional or national agendas. Unfortunate as it may be, this is the ‘new Libya.’ Some will find most convenient ways to explain the chaos: ‘east Libya is inherently unruly’, some would say; ‘it took a strong leader like Gaddafi to maintain the national cohesion of a country made of tribes, not citizens,’ others would opine. But the truth is oftentimes inconvenient and requires more than mere platitudes. Libya is in a state of chaos, not because of some intrinsic tendency to shun order. Libyans, like people all over the world, seek security and stability in their lives. however, other parties, Arab and western, are desperate to ensure that the ‘new Libya’ is consistent with their own interests, even if such interests are obtained at the expense of millions of people. The New York Times’ David Kirkpatrick reported on the coup from Cairo. In his report, “In Libya, a Coup. Or Perhaps Not,” he drew similarities between Libya and egypt; in the case of egypt, the military succeeded in consolidating its powers starting on July 3, whereas in Libya a strong military institution never existed in the first place, even during Gaddafi’s rule. In order for hifter to stage a coup, he would need to rely on more than a weak and splintered military. Nonetheless, it is quite interesting
that the NYT chose to place hifter’s ‘ridiculous’ coup within an egyptian context, while there is a more immediate and far more relevant context at hand, one of which the newspaper and its veteran correspondents should know very well. It is no secret that hifter has had strong backing from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for nearly three decades. The man has been branded and rebranded throughout his colorful and sometimes mysterious history more times than one can summarize in a single article. he fought as an officer in the Chadian-Libyan conflict, and was captured alongside his entire unit of 600 men. During his time in prison, Chad experienced a regime change (both regimes were backed by French and US intelligence) and hifter and his men were released per US request to another African country, then a third. While some chose to return home, others knew well what would await them in Libya, for reasons explained by the Times on May 17, 1991. “For two years, United States officials have been shopping around for a home for about 350 Libyan soldiers who cannot return to their country because American intelligence officials had mobilized them into a commando force to overthrow Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader,” NYT reported. “Now, the Administration has given up trying to find another country that will accept the Libyans and has decided to bring them to the United States.” hifter was then relocated to a Virginia suburb in the early 1990’s and settled there. The news is murky about his exact activities living near Washington D.C., except for his ties to Libyan opposition forces, which of course, operated within a US agenda. In his thorough report, published in the Business Insider, Russ Baker traced much of hifter’s activities since his split from Gaddafi and adoption by the CIA. “A Congressional Research Service report of December 1996 named hifter as the head of the NFSL’s military wing, the Libyan National Army. After he joined
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Nuclear power plants near Karachi The priorities of our parliamentarians and their understanding of problems faced by their constituents often make people wonder whether they all live in the same province. however, one thing is certain which is that the welfare of people, and even serious threats to their lives are of no concern to very many of our parliamentarians. And the summary dismissal by Peoples Party parliamentarians of a request by MQM members to discuss the setting up of additional nuclear power plants dangerously close to Karachi, a city of nearly twenty million people, provided a proof about the attitude of our parliamentarians towards people, if a proof was in fact needed. According to Frontier Post report of February 15, Muttahida Qaumi Movement MPAs Syed Khalid Ahmed and Muhammad Moen Amir Pirzada presented the adjournment motions, saying that the already inaugurated nuclear plants being established forty kilometres from Karachi should be discussed as renowned scientists like Dr Pervez hoodbhai, Zia Mian and A h Nayar have expressed severe reservations in a column published in a section of the press. At this point, parliamentary affairs Minister Dr Sikandar Mandhro declared the motion to be against rules and regulations saying if the house started discussing newspaper columns, it would set a bad precedent. It did not matter to the Minister that it was not a question of discussing just any column but a matter that concerned the lives of nearly twenty million Pakistanis. The Speaker of the Sindh Assembly went even further and gave his ruling that being a non-issue, the motion could not be discussed. As a matter of fact, there should have been no need for the MQM MPAs to raise this issue in the Sindh Assembly because being a matter of serious public concern, there should have been an open public hearing in respect of these additional nuclear power plants near Karachi. however, according to a comprehensive report on the issue by Faiza Ilyas titled ‘Nuclear plant project okayed after secret eIA hearing’ published in a leading english daily (Dawn, Feb. 3), public hearing was skipped on the request of Pakistan Atomic energy Commission and a committee of experts, whose names were not disclosed, constituted by the Sindh environment Protection Agency conducted the environmental impact assessment, on the basis of which a no-objection certificate was issued. According to the report, a Sepa official claimed that the Pakistan environmental Protection Act had a provision to skip the public hearing of
an eIA if the case was of ‘national importance’ which would mean that the lives of twenty million people of Karachi were not regarded as of ‘national importance’. With vast potential for solar, wind power and coal-fired power stations in Sindh, some of which could start producing electricity much sooner than the atomic power plants, one fails to understand what was the rush to set up additional atomic power plants so near the largest city of Pakistan, also when the worldwide trend is to move away from the nuclear source for power generation because of its hazardous nature. We know about the Chernobyl disaster in Russia and also the recent Fukushima disaster the costs of which are likely to go up to a few hundred billion dollars apart from other grave consequences. It beats me as to why a country like ours which has been unable to handle disasters of much smaller magnitude, and has considerable difficulty even coping with heavy rains and medium-level floods, should go for additional nuclear power generation, especially with a plant of untested design and so near a big city, the possible mishaps at which it neither has the technical ability nor the finances to handle. S R H HASHMI Karachi
Wrong medicine I can see many tense faces with a feel of agony on the threat Pakistan received a few days back from a neighbouring country that if Pakistan couldn’t recover its security guards earlier kidnapped by terrorists allegedly operating from Pakistani soil, then our neighbour reserves the right to enter into Pakistan and take the appropriate measures to free its guards. Sure, no issue with protest by foreign office or anguish on street, no one can object to the same. But what about the slaughter (literal beheading) of 23 soldiers of Frontier Constabulary the other day, of which the responsibility has been proudly claimed by no one else but Taliban with whom the government has been pleading to declare a ceasefire. Shame doesn’t end at the slaughter of these soldiers, but the main issue is more troublesome — these soldiers were kidnapped by Taliban in June 2010. Pakistani public is justified to ask former and present federal and KP province governments and army itself: What have we been doing in the last three years to free these soldiers which would have been detained not in Somalia but in North Waziristan, a territory still part of Pakistan on present-day maps? If we don’t have any answers, then why get angry on threats being received from neighbours. MASOOD KHAN Jubail, Saudi Arabia
CMYK
the exile group, the CRS report added, hifter began ‘preparing an army to march on Libya’. The NFSL, the CSR said, is in exile ‘with many of its members in the United States.” It took nearly 15 years for hifter to march on Libya. It also took a massive war that was purported to support a popular uprising. hifter, as Baker described, is the Libyan equivalent of Iraq’s Ahmed Chalabi, a discredited figure with strong allies in Washington D.C. Chalabi was sent to post-Saddam Iraq to lead the ‘democratization’ process. Instead, he helped set the stage of the calamity underway in that Arab country. It is no wonder why hifter’s return was a major source of controversy. Since the news of his CIA affiliation was no big secret, his return to Libya to join the rebels in March caused much confusion. Almost immediately, he was announced by a military spokesman as the rebels’ new commander, only for the announcement to be dismissed by the National Transitional Council as false. The NTC was largely a composition of mysterious characters that had little presence within Libya’s national consciousness. hifter found himself as the third man in the military ladder, which he accepted but apparently grudgingly so. Despite the coup failure, Libya will subsist on uncertainty. Arab and Western media speak of illegal shipments of weapons arriving into various Libyan airports. The militias are growing in size. The central government is growing irrelevant. Jail breaks are reported regularly. And Libyans find safety in holding on tighter to their tribal and clan affiliations. What future awaits Libya is hard to predict, but with western and Arab intelligence fingerprints found all over the Libyan bedlam, the future is uninviting. Ramzy Baroud is an internationallysyndicated columnist, a media consultant and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).
Highlights of the SRO
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he Civil Service of Pakistan (Composition and Cadre) Rules 2014 is a landmark SRO in the sense that it carries something for everyone. The very first and most important aspect is the formalisation of the change of nomenclature of the group from “DMG” to “PAS”. Another wonderful aspect of the new rules is that the president has been bound to act on the advice of FPSC. It will be mandatory on the president of Pakistan to make appointments only on the recommendations of FPSC. There has been much talk about the issue of encadrement of posts. It is important to fully comprehend the concept of encadrement before formulating opinions. All the posts in the federal secretariat have been allotted to various groups (like PAS, SG, and others). The allocation for PAS is: DS (25 per cent), JS (35 per cent), AS (65 per cent) and Federal Secretary (65 per cent). As for promotion to BS-20 and BS21, it is pertinent to add here that 65 per cent of the vacancies of JS have been reserved for SG/others and 100 per cent of vacancies of Sr JS have been reserved for SG/others on the same 33 per cent-66 per cent basis as explained above. Another important aspect of these rules is the induction of PCS officers into PAS. As the reader might already know about the long standing litigation going on in the SC between PCS and PAS about the distribution of vacancies, the present SRO is likely to put to rest all such litigation. The PCS lobby had asked for revival of induction of PCS officer as per the original 1954 Cadre Rules. In its original version the Cadre Rules 1954 only provided for induction against 20 per cent vacancies. The present SRO is however a step further to that in the sense that it provides for 30 per cent induction for PCS officers in BS-19 and that too through an open competitive process under FPSC. –Ed Note