LVHS IR/GSI Blog: South and Central Asia (1st)

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

IS group claims killing of university professor in Bangladesh

Unidentified attackers hacked a university professor to death in Bangladesh on Saturday, police said, with the Islamic State group claiming responsibility for the brutal killing.

Police said English professor Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, was hacked from behind with machetes as he walked to the bus station from his home in the country's northwestern city of Rajshahi, where he taught at the city's public university.

"His neck was hacked at least three times and was 70-80 percent slit. By examining the nature of the attack, we suspect that it was carried out by extremist groups," Rajshahi Metropolitan Police commissioner Mohammad Shamsuddin told AFP.

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Shamsuddin said police had not yet named any suspects but added that the pattern of the attack fitted with previous killings by Islamist militants.

The Islamic State (IS) group said it was behind the murder, accusing the professor of calling for atheism.

"Islamic State fighters assassinate a university teacher for calling to atheism in the city of Rajshahi in Bangladesh," the jihadist group's Amaq news agency said in a statement.

Nahidul Islam, a deputy commissioner of police, told AFP that Siddique was involved in cultural programmes, including music, and set up a music school at Bagmara, a former bastion of an outlawed Islamist group, Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

"The attack is similar to the ones carried out on (atheist) bloggers in the recent past," Islam said, adding nobody had been arrested yet.

Homegrown militants

Homegrown Islamist militants have been blamed for a number of murders of secular bloggers and online activists since 2013, the most recent being in the capital Dhaka early this month.

Police said that in each of the attacks unidentified assailants hacked the victim to death with machetes or cleavers.

Eight members of banned Islamist group Ansarullah Bangla Team, including a top cleric who is said to have founded the group, were convicted late last year for the murder of atheist blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider in February 2013.

Sakhawat Hossain, a fellow English professor from the university and a friend, said the slain teacher played the tanpura, a musical instrument popular in South Asia, and wrote poems and short stories.

"He used to lead a cultural group called Komol Gandhar and edit a bi-annual literary magazine with the same name. But he never wrote or spoke against religion in public," Hossain told AFP.

Hundreds of students of Rajshahi University staged impromptu protests, marching on the campus in batches and shouting slogans, demanding the arrest of the killers, local police chief Humayun Kabir told AFP.

"The students were shocked at the latest brutal killing of their teachers. Some 500 of them shouted slogans and joined the marches calling for protection of all teachers and exemplary punishment for the killers," Mostafiz Mishu, a student who witnessed the protests, told AFP.

'Gruesome pattern'

Police said Siddique was the fourth professor from Rajshahi University to have been murdered. In February, a court handed down life sentences to two Islamist militants for the murder of another professor, Mohammad Yunus.

The recent killings have sparked outrage at home and abroad, with international rights groups demanding that the government protect freedom of speech in the Muslim-majority country.

Champa Patel, Amnesty International's South Asia director, condemned the latest killing as "inexcusable", saying it was part of a "gruesome pattern".

"The authorities must do more to put an end to these killings. Not a single person has been brought to justice for the attacks over the past year," Patel said.

Ansar al-Islam, a Bangladesh branch of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, this month claimed responsibility for the murder of 26-year-old Nazimuddin Samad, a law student who was killed on the streets of Dhaka, according to US monitoring group SITE.

Police, however, blamed the Ansarullah group for the murder.

Bangladesh authorities have consistently denied that international Islamist networks such as Al-Qaeda or IS, which recently claimed responsibility for the murders of minorities and foreigners, are active in the country.

A long-running political crisis in Bangladesh, which is majority Sunni Muslim but officially secular, has radicalised opponents of the government and analysts say Islamist extremists pose a growing danger.

(AFP)

Date created : 2016-04-23

Pakistani doctor who helped find bin Laden still languishing in jail

Five years after Pakistani doctor Shakeel Afridi helped the CIA track and kill Osama bin Laden, his supporters say US authorities have left him to languish in jail in a bid to smooth troubled relations with Islamabad.

Afridi, believed to be in his mid-50s, has no access to a lawyer, and his appeal against a 23-year prison sentence for aiding the US operation has stalled.

"I have no hope of meeting him, no expectation for justice," his elder brother Jamil told AFP.

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The former senior surgeon lives in solitary confinement in a small room, according to his lawyer, able to see his immediate family no more than six times a year.

Afridi's role in one of the most famous assassinations of recent decades is murky.

Details of how he was sought out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are unclear – Pakistani reports suggest officials at Save the Children acted as go-betweens, though the charity denies involvement.

What is known is that Afridi's job was to run a fake Hepatitis C vaccination programme with the aim of obtaining genetic samples from Abbottabad, a garrison city and home to the Pakistan Military Academy.

It was there that al Qaeda chief bin Laden and his family had set up home in the mid-2000s, under the noses – and some say protection – of senior Pakistani military officers.

Deadly raid

In the darkness of May 2, 2011, two helicopters carrying elite Navy Seals touched down inside the compound.

In a dramatic raid just one kilometre from the military academy, they fought their way in and surprised the terror mastermind.

They shot him in the head and fled with his body, abandoning a damaged Black Hawk helicopter.

The killing was a huge success for US President Barack Obama, whose country was profoundly scarred by the attacks on New York and Washington of September 2001.

It decapitated al Qaeda, badly hampering the organisation's ability to carry out further atrocities.

But it drove a wedge between Islamabad and Washington, with lingering suspicions that the Pakistanis had for years been covering up the whereabouts of one of the world's most wanted men.

Weeks after the raid, Afridi was arrested and thrown in jail, accused of having ties to militants, a charge he has always denied.

Commentators believe Pakistan opted to punish Afridi in this way, rather than try him for treason, because that would have entailed a public trial that would have thrown a spotlight on Islamabad's role in harbouring bin Laden.

A furious US senate committee voted to cut aid to Islamabad by $33 million – $1 million for each year of his original sentence.

The sentence was later cut by 10 years.

But since then, US pressure for Afridi's release has tapered off, and analysts say Washington has dropped the issue, preferring to concentrate on what it sees as more pressing matters – such as negotiating with Islamist extremists in Afghanistan.

"The Taliban talks have taken priority over everything. The Americans don't want to muddy the water by raising other issues that are contentious," says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani author and security expert.

Trump rebuked

Qamar Nadeem, Afridi's lawyer who has been denied access to him for the past two years, believes his client's best hope for early release is US pressure, "But so far they have not shown their support," he says.

Donald Trump, the Republican presidential frontrunner, claimed in an interview last week that if he became president he would get Pakistani authorities to release Afridi “in two minutes”.

"I would tell them, let [Afridi] out and I'm sure they would let [him] out. Because we give a lot of aid to Pakistan," Trump told Fox News on Friday, adding that Pakistan "takes advantage like everybody else".

His comments drew an angry rebuke from Pakistan’s interior minister on Monday. Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said the "government of Pakistan and not Donald Trump" would decide Afridi’s fate.

"Pakistan is not a colony of the United States of America," he retorted, adding that Trump's comments "serve to show not only his insensitivity but also his ignorance about Pakistan".

Michael Kugelman, an analyst at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington said all hope is not lost for Afridi.

He said, rather than having abandoned him, the Americans may have decided that shouting about it is not going to work.

"In Washington the issue has likely moved off the front burner because it's clear that Pakistan isn't willing to play ball and negotiate an arrangement that could set him free," he said.

"(But) the Afridi issue has never really gone away, and my sense is that US officials quietly press Pakistan about it from time to time."

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Date created : 2016-05-03

Thursday, April 21, 2016

US drone strikes outnumber warplane attacks for first time in Afghanistan

Drones are firing more weapons than conventional warplanes for the first time inAfghanistan and the ratio is rising, previously unreported US Air Force data for 2015 show, underlining how reliant the military has become on unmanned aircraft.

The data show strikes by unmanned aircraft accounted for 56% of weapons deployed by the air force in Afghanistan in 2015, up dramatically from 5% in 2011.

In the first quarter of 2016, about 300 weapons were deployed by the air force, with drones accounting for 61%.

The trend may give clues to the US military’s strategy as it considers withdrawing more troops from the country, while at the same time shoring up local forces who have struggled to stem a worsening Taliban insurgency.

In 2015, drones released about 530 bombs and missiles in Afghanistan, half the number in 2014 when weapons dropped by unmanned aircraft peaked.

The 2015 total is, however, almost double the number of bombs and missiles released by drones at the height of the “surge”, when the Nato mission expanded to well over 100,000 troops, mainly Americans, after 2009.

President Barack Obama said in 2013 the Afghan drawdown after 2014 and progress against al-Qaida would “reduce the need for unmanned strikes”, amid concerns from human rights groups and some foreign governments about civilian casualties.

On one level, that has played out; the number of missiles and bombs dropped by drones in Afghanistan actually fell in 2015, largely because the US-led Nato mission ceased combat operations at the end of 2014 and is now a fraction of the size.

Yet as the force has shrunk, it has leant on unmanned aircraft more than ever, the Air Force data reveals, with drone strikes accounting for at least 61% of weapons deployed in the first quarter of this year.

“In recent months it’s definitely flowed more,” Lieutenant Colonel Michael Navicky, commander of the 62nd Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, said of the tempo of both drone strikes and surveillance operations.

“We’ve seen increased weapons deployment in the past few months, and the demand is insatiable,” he said from a US air base in the southern city of Kandahar.

The longer-term shift towards drones has gone largely unnoticed amid the large conventional air campaign.

The role of drones is likely to form a key part of a review underway by US General John Nicholson, head of Nato troops in Afghanistan, as he prepares to report to Washington in June on how many soldiers he thinks should remain.

Nicholson declined to discuss details of the review in a recent interview with Reuters.

The current plan is to roughly halve the US presence to 5,500 troops by 2017, most involved in counter-terrorism operations. The training and advising mission would be largely wound down.

Like much of the US military machine in Afghanistan, the drone operation had been winding down in line with plans for further withdrawals, Navicky said.

At the end of 2015, however, military commanders “hit the brakes and reversed course” on the drone reduction, and have since ordered more airstrikes, especially against Islamic State militants who pose a threat in the east, he said.

The Taliban have also forged closer links with al-Qaida, Nicholson said, potentially blurring the lines between what is a legitimate target and what is not, while the Taliban themselves have made gains in the north and south.

The data cover strikes conducted by the Air Force, which handles the majority of Afghan air operations.

The CIA, US Army, and special operations units also have smaller fleets of drones and other aircraft, so the air force data may reflect a redistribution among different organisations, although they tend to coordinate closely on missions.

Drone missions are secretive and have been widely criticised in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where locals and officials have blamed them for unnecessary loss of civilian life.

In the latest instance, residents in Paktika province complained that a series of airstrikes in April, which locals said were from drones, killed nearly 20 civilians. The US military said it was still looking into the incident.

Activists and investigators have focused on covert air operations in places such as Pakistan and Yemen, leaving Afghanistan as “really a blind spot for drone analysis”, said Sarah Kreps, a professor at Cornell University who studies unmanned aircraft.

“The strikes in Afghanistan are one of the most under-reported aspects of drones.”

In a time of troop limits imposed by leaders in Washington, the drone squadron is especially useful as only about 200 of nearly 1,000 personnel who support and operate the aircraft are deployed to Afghanistan, Navicky said.

“Remotely piloted aircraft mean more flexibility with fewer people and aircraft,” he said. “Because they are unmanned, sometimes you can accept more risk. All that is always going to be valuable.”

Iran: US Supreme Court ruling on Beirut blast a 'theft'

Iran has rejected a ruling by the US Supreme Court that clears the way for families of victims of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut and other attacks to collect nearly $2bn in frozen Iranian funds.

The state IRNA news agency quoted the spokesman of Iran's foreign ministry, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, as saying on Thursday that "such a verdict is a theft of the assets and properties of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

From the United Nations, Ansari spoke to IRNA and said Wednesday's ruling is "tantamount to a ridicule of justice and law".

The ruling directly affects relatives of victims, including families of the 241 US service members who died in the Beirut bombing.

The lawsuit was brought by more than 1,000 Americans who have waged a long legal battle seeking compensation for attacks they say Iran orchestrated.

The plaintiffs accused Iran of providing material support to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia political and military group responsible for the truck bomb attack at the Marine compound in Beirut.

Iran denies any links to the attack.

The plaintiffs also sought compensation related to other attacks including the 1996 Khobar Towers truck bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 US service members.

After lobbying by the families, the Obama administration, the US Senate, and a legal group representing leaders of the House of Representatives all filed court papers backing the families.

In 2012 the US Congress passed a law stating that the frozen funds should go towards satisfying a $2.65bn judgment won by the families against Iran in US federal court in 2007.

Banks have no right to seek information about my assets abroad: Mallya

Kingfisher Airlines Chairman Vijay Mallya claimed privilege in the Supreme Court from divulging details of his overseas assets to his debtor banks, saying a Non-Resident Indian (NRI) like him is not obliged to disclose riches abroad even in “Indian income tax returns”.

In a 41-page affidavit filed in the Supreme Court on Thursday, Mr. Mallya said his lenders have no right to seek information about his assets abroad as well as the assets of his children, who are U.S. citizens, and estranged wife, who is also an NRI.

Moreover, he argued that these assets were never considered by the banks while granting loans or restructuring the loans of Kingfisher Airlines and there was no reason to grant the banks any access to them.

He however revealed that the net estimated current value of the overseas assets of himself, his wife and children aggregate to $114.571 million or around Rs.780 crore. He said specific details of these assets would be handed over to the court on April 26, the next date of hearing, in a sealed envelope.

Read: Kingfisher Airlines crisis: Timeline

Mr. Mallya was responding to an order passed by a Bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and Rohinton Nariman to disclose assets in India and abroad of himself and his wife and children. In the order passed on April 7, the Bench had also wanted to know when the businessman, believed to be abroad, would return and be present in the Supreme Court to kick-off negotiations to settle the carrier's debts running up to Rs. 9,000 crore.

Supreme Court versus Centre

But Mr. Mallya played the victim card, pitting the government against the apex court.

Denying that he had absconded, Mallya said the government's suspension of his passport without even hearing him first and the subsequent issuance of non-bailable warrant against him has in effect made void the Supreme Court's efforts to pave the way for his return to India and work out a settlement with his lenders.

“The very basis of the April 7 order has been obliterated by the Ministry of External Affairs by suspending Vijay Mallya's passport by its letter dated April 15, 2016. This was followed by the Enforcement Directorate obtaining a non-bailable warrant against Vijay Mallya on April 18, 2016 on a demonstrably false case against him,” the affidavit said.

Even as probe agencies are looking into whether loan amounts advanced were siphoned off, Mr. Mallya vehemently denied that he used any of his loans to “amass properties in the names of family members or relatives or friends with any intention to defeat the process of recovery of alleged dues by the banks”.

Mr. Mallya said the recent actions of the Centre only confirmed his apprehensions that he was “needlessly persecuted and wrongly prosecuted”.

He said the Centre was in “unseemly haste” to initiate “coercive proceedings” against him as a consequence of an “unfair and unfortunate media trial” against him. He said Kingfisher Airlines was a genuine commercial and business failure, “nothing more and nothing less”.

In fact, he contended that the running the business of a private airline is full of pitfalls and Kingfisher Airlines crashed due to reasons beyond the control of the management.

Kingfisher versus Air India

Denying he owes money over Rs. 9000 crore in debts, Mr. Mallya contrasted the persecution of his carrier by the banks to the lenient approach they adopted when it came to the case of the State-owned Air India.

“The banks have resorted to blatant discrimination against Kingfisher Airlines. A large number of banks, including public sector banks (the lead bank being State Bank of India) have provided a restructured facility in an amount in excess of Rs. 40,000 crore to Air India,” Mr. Mallya said.

He pointed out that despite Air India's account being one of the largest non-performing assets (bad loan) in the aviation sector, lender to Air India have chosen not to resort to any recovery measures and continue their financial facilities to it.

Demonstrating efforts by his other businesses to revive the airline's health, he said UB Group and its associates had infused large sums of money aggregating to over Rs. 6,100 crore into Kingfisher Airlines, all of which has been lost or is incapable or recovery. He said the liabilities of the airline, including the dues of the banks, amount to Rs. 15,730.86 crore as on March 31, 2013.

He alleged that the banks coerced him to sign a personal guarantee, failing which they had threatened to not re-structure his debts. He reiterated how every single one of his one-time settlement proposals have been rejected by the banks.

He even alleged how the service tax authorities, after seizing six aircrafts and two helicopters of Kingfisher Airlines, then valued at Rs. 497 crore, refused to permit the company to maintain them.

Severe drought likely in next two months: Minister

Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs and Higher Education T.B. Jayachandra today said the State is likely to face severe drought situation in the next two months.

He told reporters on the premises of Siddaganga Institute of Technology here that the situation has arisen due to lack of pre- and post-monsoon rains. The months of May and June will be challenging but the State government will take all necessary measures to address drought.

He said the government is expecting Rs.1,500 crore from the Centre in connection with the crop loss due to lack of post-monsoon rains. The Central team which visited drought-hit areas of the State has submitted its report to the Union government.

Chotoo, gang members surrender unconditionally to army: ISPR

LAHORE: Leader of the infamous Chotoo gang, Ghulam Rasool, along with 13 gang members has “surrendered unconditionally to the army”, the military spokesperson announced on Wednesday.

Addressing a press briefing regarding the ongoing operation in Rajanpur area, Lt Gen Asim Bajwa said “the military has successfully completed operation Zarb-i-Ahan”.

He also confirmed that the 24 policemen taken hostage by the Chotoo gang have been rescued.

“The army will not vacate this area until all the miscreant elements are neutralised,” Bajwa maintained.

The military media-wing chief said that security forces will eliminate this ‘no-go area’ and any other such area across the country.

Earlier it was reported that members of the Chotoo gang surrendered to the Army and at least 170 gangsters were taken into custody by the armed forces.

Rajanpur District Police Officer Ghulam Mubashir Maikin had told Dawn that the return of hostages to their families was "in process".

A senior police officer earlier told Dawn that the gang had been using the hostages as a human shield to protect their women and children.

A search operation is also being conducted to secure Rajanpur's Kacha area.

Ghulam Rasool alias Chotoo

Police launched the Rajanpur offensive after a go-ahead from the interior ministry. After seven police officials were killed and 24 others taken hostage, the Army announced on April 16 that it would be taking over the operation.

Director General Inter-Services Public Relations Lt-Gen Asim Bajwa had said a cordon was being reinforced and police and Rangers had already been deployed to participate in the operation under the Army.

The Chotoo gang, led by Ghulam Rasool, alias Chotoo, was given a deadline by the Army to surrender on Monday, failing which, the Army said it would begin a full-scale operation in the area.

A source in the police department said that Chotoo had demanded safe passage for himself, his family and some loyal accomplices to proceed to Dubai in return of safe release of the captive policemen, Dawn earlier reported.

The rise of Chotoo and his gang

Ghulam Rasool alias Chotoo, the ringleader of the Chotoo gang worked as a security guard for MPA Atif Mazari for three to five years in Rojhan, according to police officials.

He also worked for the Punjab police as an informer till 2007 and used to inform police about gangs involved in robberies and kidnapping for ransom in Rajanpur and Muzaffargarh districts.

According to locals and police, Chotoo belongs to Bakrani clan of Mazari tribe of Rojhan area. He later developed differences with police over unknown reasons and established his own gang to carry out criminal activities.

Some small and prominent gangs operating in Rojhan, Dera Ghazi Khan and adjoining districts of Sindh and Balochistan also joined the Chotoo gang. They include Bilal alias Bilali Jaakha, Baba Long, Gumani Gopang, Sindhi group, Bosans of Muzaffargrah and Khalid Kajlani.

The riverine area of Kachi Jamal in Rajanpur, a stronghold of the Chotoo gang, has a population of more than 10,000 people living in small villages. They depend mostly on rearing animals and farming. Chotoo is known for helping the locals and never carried out any criminal activity in the area. But he made it a no-go area for police who found it almost impossible to get information about him from the locals.

The biggest operation carried out by Rajanpur and Rahimyar Khan police against the Chotoo gang was in 2010 which continued for three months, but to no avail. The last operation was conducted in 2013.

During an operation in Kotla Mughlan area of Rajanpur some years ago, police, however, succeeded in recovering a doctor from the gang and killing a gangster.