Kishanganga vs Neelum Hydropower Project

  Muhammad Shees Khan
Monday, April 11, 2011 http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=41053&Cat=2&dt=4/11/2011

The recently released report titled ‘Avoiding Water Wars in South and Central Asia’ by Senator John Kerry, substantiated Pakistan’s concerns at the building of 190 projects by India on the western rivers in contravention to Indus Water Treaty (IWT)-1960 — signed to resolve water dispute between the two newly independent countries using water as a “common resource”. 

The US Committee report cautioned that India is building 33 projects in the Occupied Kashmir that could enable her to store enough water to limit the supply to Pakistan at ‘crucial moments’ in the growing season. Pakistan has conveyed its concerns to India on these projects. Differences over sharing river waters have emerged as a major irritant in the peace process between India and Pakistan over the past few years. 

According to Indus Water Treaty of 1960, India got the exclusive control over the waters of the Ravi, the Beas and the Sutlej, whereas Pakistan controls the waters of the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab. The Treaty barred India from interfering “with the water of these rivers except for domestic use and non-consumptive use, limited agriculture use and limited utilization for generation of hydro-electric power.” 

India has interpreted the clauses of IWT-60 in such as way that shows (a) that no single dam along the waters controlled by the Indus Waters Treaty will affect Pakistan’s access to water, (b) as Pakistan has no proper system for water storage so India has a right to produce power and irrigate their lands.

The problem between the two countries arose when India decided to build a dam on the Kishanganga River that originates in Indian Occupied Kashmir, with a plea to solve the problem of navigation over a distance of 22-KM between the Wullar Lake and Baramula connecting Srinagar with Baramula. 

The Kishanganga river assumes the name of Neelum river upon entering in the Azad Kashmir region and becomes river Jhelum when it enters Pakistan. India proposed to build the barrage in 1984 on the River Jhelum, at the mouth of Wullar Lake, India’s largest fresh water lake, near Sopore town in Kashmir Valley. The proposed site for dam is near Kanzalwan - a town from where the river enters Azad Kashmir. 

The Indian plans include storing water and then tunneling it to the Wuller Lake, where it is constructing a 800MW powerhouse. The Indian point of view regarding construction of Wullar barrage is: (a) it can transport 0.5 million tons of apples and other fruits from the gardens Baramula jungles to Srinagar. (b) not affecting the stored water being put to agriculture use. (c) a navigational project. (d) would off-load silt, therefore, Mangla would get silt-free water. (e) would help maintain the flow of flood waters.

Pakistan is constructing Neelum-Jhelum Hydropower Project located near Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Administered Kashmir. It aims to dig a tunnel and divert water of Neelam River from Nauseri, about 41 KM East of Muzzafrabad. A Powerhouse will be constructed at Chatter Kalas, 22 Km South of Muzaffarabad; and after passing through the turbines the water will be released in Jhelum River, about 4 Km South of Chatter Kalas. Once completed, the Neelam Jhelum Hydroelectric Project will produce 969 MW of electricity annually at the cost of US $2.16 billion. The project will be built by a consortium comprising China Gezhouba Water and Power Company and China National Machinery and Equipment Import and Export Corporation (CMEC) in eight years. 

The “strategically important” project will help secure Pakistan’s rights over Neelum-Jhelum waters and go a long way in bridging the energy gap in the country by generating 969MW of electricity. 

Under the terms of the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 between India and Pakistan, the country which finishes its project first on the Neelum would get “priority rights” to the use of the river’s waters.

Pakistan has been vehemently opposing the construction of the Kishanganga hydropower project. Pakistan believes that the diversion of waters of Neelum is not allowed under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, and it will face a 27 per cent water deficit, when the project gets completed in 2016. 

The decrease in flow of water during ‘sowing season’ will adversely affect the crops. The reduced water flow in the Neelum would not yield the required results of the proposed Neelum-Jehlum hydropower project. Pakistan believes Wullar barrage can be used as: (a) a geo-strategic weapon - a mean to intimidate Pakistan, (b) potential to disrupt the triple canal project of Pakistan (upper Jhelum, upper Chenab, lower Bari Doab canals), (c) badly affecting the Neelum-Jehlum hydro-power project, (d) affecting agriculture in Azad Kashmir (e) would dry 5.6 million acres of lands of Punjab’s cultivable land, in case Kishanganga water is blocked and the excess is diverted to Wuller barrage, (f) would results in loadshedding, if Pakistan does not get enough water to run its turbines. (g) would dry Mangla dam. 

The water issues can be judiciously addressed by sharing the water as a “collective resource” for our future generations. Any major upstream alteration in a river system, should be negotiated, not imposed as in case of Indian water overtures on river Jhelum. 

John Briscoe, expert on South Asia’s water issues at Harvard University, speaks more about the rights and privileges of lower riparian countries, underscoring the accommodation and generosity of the upper riparian nations. 

Briscoe’s article “War and Peace on the Indus” published in “South Asian Idea” puts the onus on India, being the upper riparian, to show restraint on the Indus basin, demanding that India should be more accommodating and considerate as an upper riparian. The two countries using water as a common resource should cooperate and open up a range of possibilities through “optimum development of the rivers” by “mutual agreement to the fullest possible extent.” 

The water dispute would not be nearly as acute, if India and Pakistan talked and shared data on water. Pakistan has asked India to provide details of its agricultural acreage, crops and other projects to enable it to make plans in advance. As the Salal Dam issue was resolved through talks in 1978, given the will, the Krishanganga issue can also be settled in the light of the Indus Water Treaty-1960.    

Heck, No HEC!

BY  BAAGHI
– APRIL 10, 2011
Published as weekly column BAAGHI in Daily Times on Sunday, April 10, 2011

Following the decision of the Parliamentary Commission on the Implementation of the Eighteenth Amendment (PCIEA), the federal cabinet approved the devolution of five ministries to the provinces, including the ministry of education. While news anchors started steaming on their pulpits about the ‘devolution of the HEC’, one was compelled to see the issue with objectivity, setting all politics aside for a moment.

The hoopla has been constructed such that one tends to confuse higher education with the existence of the HEC. A reality check might help in removing this muddle. The HEC was born out of the sperm of a dictatorial regime and the womb of a fund-starved body, the University Grants Commission (UGC), working since 1974. Like all dictators in Pakistan, the last one too was obsessed with a centralised polity — a strong centre with little autonomy to the provinces. This has now been transformed into our collective psyche to undermine coalescing units as is evident from arguments currently given against the HEC’s devolution.

The popular arguments against the HEC’s devolution range from a concern for higher education in Pakistan, freezing of foreign aid for higher education in the absence of the HEC, halting ongoing scholarships, lack of coordination among and check on universities, etc. One has to admit the successful propaganda machine against the devolution by HEC beneficiaries and planners.

The vice chancellors (VCs) of 133 universities, as claimed by media reports, resolved against the devolution. Look a little closer and you will see and find that only 40 VCs (beneficiaries of the system) present in that particular meeting, out of 133 universities, had actually “expressed concerns over the devolution”. Even these 40 did not agree with protesting on the streets against it.

The HEC authorities used the rumour factory to propagate confusion about the issue. Rumours about the freezing of foreign aid for studying abroad were unleashed in the media, which was readily refuted by the biggest HEC donor, USAID, that made clear that their $ 250 million support still stands. The most vicious step that the HEC arbitrarily took was halting ongoing scholarships, just to spread panic and confusion among the students. Sadly, it worked. Without even slight understanding of the issue or any inclination to probe the facts, general opinion tilted in the direction the vested interest group wanted it.

The Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Associations (FAPUASA), one of the primary and key stakeholders, however, is still silent on the issue. In fact, many members of FAPUASA in informal discussions have revealed how apt this decision would prove in steering higher education in Pakistan. A professor of economics from Government College University explained how the HEC had been promoting bureaucratic and fascist tendencies by being highly centralised and having a dictatorial authority. Many a time, the academic staff of different universities was seen complaining about the unfair and unjust practices of the HEC that undermined equal opportunities for all.

Not long ago, academic staff in Sindh and Balochistan staged demonstrations against the HEC for being extremely partial against PhD professors and students from smaller provinces. The partiality of the HEC went to the level where PhD holders in Pashto, Sindhi and Balochi were denied the same allowances as for other disciplines. One can see the same arrogance and contempt towards the smaller provinces in the devolution debate undermining the provinces’ capability to deal with higher education. Had the HEC not been that self-serving and centralised, it would have built at least some capacity among the provinces over the last eight years.

Some political parties made a bewildering U-turn by quickly jumping onto the populist position. The PCIEA does not mention any strong voice of dissent, refuting all claims of a Punjab-based political party currently insisting on the status quo. It is interesting to note that Punjab is probably the only province that had anticipated the devolution earlier than any other province, and had made its own body on higher education, which has now been working for quite some time and leaves one wondering why the HEC or Punjab government could not strengthen it for performing the HEC’s functions at the Punjab level.

Leaving aside politics and coming back to academics, an objective look at the performance of the HEC might give us some clue towards a solution or at least direction. The white elephant, as the HEC is called by leading academicians, has been notorious for softening the system for quantity while compromising the quality of the scholars on the one hand, and disrupting teaching practices in universities on the other. Instead of carrying out their primary responsibilities, i.e. teaching, the academic staff of the universities was funnelled into pursuing peripheral activities like the publication of their papers in international journals that would win them promotions and other incentives. No wonder most supervisors would sign your PhD thesis without even reading it because they have to work on more important things — their own publications.

This emphasis on published papers did not distract only the teachers from their primary responsibility, but also aspiring PhD students. The unfair condition of GRE qualification at the time of degree awarding (not at the time of PhD admission) aside, Pakistan is probably the only country where the condition of at least three publications is imposed for awarding a PhD. You better concentrate on publications instead of your own thesis, says the HEC to PhD students.

Moreover, most senior, accomplished and foreign qualified professors were not certified as PhD supervisors, for not being among ‘favourites’ or for not pleading before the HEC for it. Many renowned names like Professor Hasan-Askari Rizvi, Professor Ijaz Shafi Gilani, Professor M Islam and many others come into this category. The HEC’s obsession with increasing the number of PhD scholars while compromising their quality made the HEC suffer itself, which was seen when it announced the selection criteria for the selection of VCs against recent vacancies that asked for a foreign PhD degree, not one from the HEC.

The assertions that foreign universities would stop recognising Pakistani degrees in the absence of the HEC remain as far from reality as the HEC authorities are from egalitarianism. One wonders if Pakistan did not produce any degree holder and if the world never recognised any Pakistani degree before the HEC or, for that matter, before the UGC. This insistence on being and remaining the only centralised dictatorial body to impose self-serving terms based mostly on whims and caprices of individuals in the HEC has not taken higher education very far — yet devolution is thought incapable of doing any better. Let us learn to respect the provinces and empower them. Let us ask the HEC authorities to go into their respective provinces and steer the devolution process ahead.

All said, it remains a necessity to build an authentic body for not only coordination, but also the rating of universities. More than universities, the departments need to be rated based on their academic records and excellence. Teachers need to be encouraged for applying the best possible teaching practices rather than pursuing selfish objectives of promotions and seeking ‘tenure track’ at the expense of academic activity. Academics need to sit down with the PCIEA and inter-provincial coordination ministry so as to facilitate and advise the process of devising an effective mechanism to replace a hegemonic HEC. VCs need to stop being politicians and the media needs to sit back, think, learn and then reflect on the subject leaving aside politics and giving way to the kind of objectivity that respects academics.

FBI Director Sheepishly Admits Agency Hasn't Solved Single Crime In 10 Years

APRIL 7, 2011 |

WASHINGTON—In response to a probe into the bureau's operational costs, FBI director Robert Mueller timidly told Congress Wednesday that the organization he oversees has not technically solved any crimes since 2001.

Mueller says the agency has been "busy with a lot of other stuff" during the 10-year span. After confirming that the FBI does indeed have more than 13,000 special agents deployed to investigate cases all across the country, Mueller stressed that the bureau's internal process was "complicated," and that the fact that not one case file has been closed in the past decade is not unexpected.

According to records, the last case the FBI officially solved was a Topeka, KS mail fraud offense in February 2001.

"It's hard to explain to a layman precisely how our operations work, but it's really more about analyzing crimes than it is about actually, you know, arresting perpetrators and convicting them," a fidgeting Mueller said. "It's a process, is what I'm trying to say. It isn't always so simple as 'solved' and 'unsolved.' That's been especially true this decade, I think."

"Besides, solving crimes, per se, is relatively basic," Mueller added. "We're trying to set our sights a little higher, is the thing."

According to Mueller, while the FBI has worked tirelessly over the past decade to obtain leads, collect a substantial amount of evidence, and organize a thorough criminal database, it has still failed to solve any cases, despite coming close several times.

Offering a variety of reasons for the surprising results, Mueller insisted that while many in the agency would love to be solving more federal crimes, in the end, the majority of cases usually work themselves out anyway.

"I think the problem here is that everybody is thinking too narrowly about this whole crime-solving thing," said Mueller, adding that preventing crimes from happening in the first place was much more important than solving crimes that had already been committed and that no one could do anything about at that point. "Besides, a lot of the really softball, solvable cases don't come across our desk at all. We let local law enforcement handle that stuff, and, you know, we don't want to step on their toes or anything."

"Honestly, I don't even associate the words 'FBI' and 'solving crimes' in my mind, really," Mueller added.

Mueller also said that investigative journalists basically solve 20 percent of crimes before the FBI even has a chance.

Growing increasingly frustrated, Mueller testified that in a broader sense, the problem of crime could not really be "solved" unless society were changed as a whole—a task, he said, that did not fall under the FBI's purview.

"We spend a lot of hours investigating and we have arrested suspects, but even if you convict someone, what have you accomplished?" Mueller asked. "At the end of the day, we can slap some cuffs on some creep, but that's not going to bring 15 decapitated kids back. That's not solving anything."

When asked for an accounting of the bureau's $7.9 billion budget, Mueller said a significant portion of those funds were dedicated to eliminating those who question the FBI's accounting.

Talibanisation of the Heart

BY NATHOO RAM, ON APRIL 5TH, 2011

The Sialkot lynching is not spontaneous. It is in fact a great tribute paid to General Zia who created the Islamo-fascist mindset with the help of Arabian money and Pakistani-sectarian manpower

In the backdrop of the public lynching and then hanging of brothers Hafiz Mueez Butt and Muneeb Butt in Sialkot on August 15, a journalist writing in an English language daily asked the following questions about the murderers: (i) Are they human? (ii) Are they Muslim? and (iii) Are they really Pakistani? (The writer thought they were none of these.)

Continue reading Talibanisation of the Heart

Mastermind of rocket attacks held

BY MIR JAMSHED BALOCH, ON APRIL 5TH, 2011

An alleged mastermind of March 23 rocket attacks in Malir City has been arrested.

A top official of CID police said on Sunday that the accused identified as Abdul Kadir Kalmati alias Rockety son of Abdul Rehman was arrested on Saturday midnight while planting an explosive device in the proximity of Police Lines, Garden Area.

The accused has confessed attacking a religious procession on February 1 this year in Malir area, the official claimed.

Continue reading Mastermind of rocket attacks held

HEC devolved at the altar of politics

BY MARYAM RAHMAN, ON APRIL 5TH, 2011
Like the Federal Education Ministry before it, now the Higher Education Commission (HEC) is being devolved to the provinces. The very ingredient that strengthens the fabric of a society — education– is being adulterated through a planned strategy.

Some portfolios are to be held by the federal government due to the nature of their strategic importance. For instance, letting provinces have independent foreign policies would be suicidal. Similarly, while provincial governments should manage the education infrastructure in their respective jurisdiction–which they were already doing–they should not have any control over the curriculum being taught. Every school in every province should have the same curriculum to maintain unity. Imagine if different lessons of Pakistan’s history pop up in different parts of the country? The consequences will be severe in the long run, and inter-provincial animosity will increase. Pakistan’s ideological debate would gain further energy and unrest would result.

Continue reading HEC devolved at the altar of politics

Afghanistan: Nato soldiers shot by Afghan 'policeman'

Two Nato soldiers have been shot dead by a man wearing an Afghan border police uniform in Afghanistan's Faryab province, officials say.

Nato is investigating the incident but said the gunman had fled the checkpoint where the shooting happened.

This is not the first time Afghan security personnel have opened fire on international forces.

Last November an Afghan border policeman killed six US soldiers who were training local police officers.

The Nato soldiers had gone to a meeting at the border police post. A man in a watch tower overlooking the entrance to the base opened fire on them, witnesses said.

The BBC's Paul Wood in Kabul said the fact that the gunman was in the watch tower suggests he was a member of the police and not an insurgent in a borrowed or stolen police uniform.

Nato's exit strategy for Afghanistan involves progressively handing over to the local security forces.

Seven provinces and cities were named in the first tranche of areas to be transferred to local control in July.

There are now more than 260,000 Afghan security personnel, of whom more than 160,000 were trained over the past year.

The Americans alone are investing $11bn (£6.82bn) a year in the training mission.

But with so many new recruits being taken on, there are questions over the vetting process, the extent to which the Taliban may have infiltrated those forces, and their loyalty and reliability, our correspondent says.

Last July, three members of the British Gurkhas were killed by an Afghan soldier. In 2009, five British soldiers were killed by an Afghan police officer in Helmand.

The attack comes after days of violent protests across Afghanistan over the burning of a Koran in the US last month.

On Friday, 14 people, including seven UN staff, were killed in Mazar-e Sharif, one of the areas to be handed over to Afghan control as US-led forces begin to withdraw in July.  

Afghanistan: President Obama burnt and beaten up!

By DION NISSENBAUM And MARIA ABI-HABIB

Associated Press

Afghans in Jalalabad protesting the Florida Quran burning beat a burning effigy of President Obama Sunday.

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan—Officials are painting the weekend killings at the United Nations mission in northern Afghanistan's largest city—which sparked cascading violence across the nation—as the handiwork of a small band of insurgents that used a protest against a Quran-burning as cover for a murderous plot.

But a Wall Street Journal reconstruction of Friday's assault, based on unreleased videos, interviews with demonstrators and the U.N.'s own recounting of events, shows a more complex picture and indicates that ordinary Afghan demonstrators played a critical role in the attack.

Stirred to action by a Quran-burning at a Florida church, thousands of people swarmed past hapless Afghan police officers, heading toward a lightly protected U.N. compound. There, members of the tight-knit staff had been paying little attention to the angry protest unfolding at the city's central mosque.

Mazar-e-Sharif has long been considered one of the safest cities in Afghanistan. So the diverse U.N. staff—including a female Norwegian fighter pilot, a seasoned Russian diplomat and German woman who had been at the mission for only a week or so—took few precautions even when the mob converged on their compound, burned an American flag and threw stones at the blast walls.

By sunset, seven U.N. workers were dead. In the ensuing days, demonstrations cascaded across Afghanistan, claiming more lives Saturday and Sunday in Kandahar, far to the south.

Based on interviews with survivors, Staffan de Mistura, head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, concluded that a handful of insurgents—including Afghans with accents suggesting they came from other parts of the country—spearheaded Friday's attack on a safe room in the compound.

The rioting, which the Taliban say erupted spontaneously, adds a disturbing new threat in a country that is fighting a mostly rural insurgency. Foreign and local military forces alike are ill-prepared for riot control.

"Every security-force leader's worst nightmare is being confronted by essentially a mob," said Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of 150,000 U.S.-led coalition forces, in an interview Sunday, "especially [a mob] that can be influenced by individuals that want to incite violence, who want to try to hijack passions, in this case, perhaps understandable passions."

The Quran-burning, held March 20 at the Dove World Outreach Center by church leader Terry Jones in Gainesville, Fla., was "hateful, extremely disrespectful and enormously intolerant," Gen. Petraeus said.

Mr. Jones called Gen. Petraeus' remarks "unconstitutional" and disputed that his actions complicate U.S. efforts to fight the Taliban. "I do not necessarily think that our actions make his job more difficult," he said in an interview Sunday. "The Taliban or radical Islam will use any excuse to incite more violence. If they don't have one, they will make up an excuse."

Friday, thousands of people gathered in Mazar-e-Sharif's revered Blue Mosque. Speaker after speaker denounced the Quran-burning, which for Muslims is abhorrent because Islam teaches that the physical book is holy.

"Stand up against the enemies of the Quran with your pen," one of the men shouted from the podium, videos show. "Stand up against them with your voices. Stand up against them with weapons. It is everyone's right to stand up against them and make a jihad."

The protesters then surprised police by pouring into the street and marching toward the U.N. office, more than a mile away. At one point, according to videos reviewed by the Journal, the badly outnumbered police tried to use a six-foot wood beam to hold back the crowd. The protesters easily surged past.

Only about 60 police were deployed, and they appeared uncertain how to respond. Initial attempts to disperse the crowd by firing warning shots appeared only to inflame the demonstrators. The besieged U.N. staffers headed to two safe rooms intended to shield against intruders and bombs.

They phoned for help from the nearby military bases of German and Swedish forces, according to a person briefed on the situation. The U.S.-led military said the situation "escalated rapidly" and that a swift-reaction team didn't arrive until after rioters were gone.

Once demonstrators flooded the compound, a dozen Afghan police guards—the first line of defense—dropped their weapons, said Brig. Gen. Esmatullah Alizai, the provincial police chief. "They were surrounded and confused," he said.

Inside the compound, a small contingent of Nepalese Gurkha guards working for the U.N. faced a conundrum: They were under U.N. orders not to open fire on demonstrators. The videos show one guard feebly trying to wave an elderly demonstrator out of the compound.

Nearby, videos show, demonstrators used bent metal rods to smash a row of white U.N. SUVs.

Among those attacking the U.N. vehicles was a young religious student from a small village not far from the city. The student said in an interview that he and one of his friends found a propane tank that they shoved under one vehicle and set off an explosion.

Nearby, the student said, two Afghan policemen were hiding with a foreigner behind a tanker. When one of the officers shot and injured a young demonstrator, the student said he saw a chance to disarm him.

"Grab his weapon," the student said he shouted to his friend, who wrestled a Kalashnikov assault rifle and used it to shoot the unarmed foreigner.

Inside the building, other attackers targeted one of the safe rooms. The door proved little protection against the mob. As intruders penetrated the safe room, Pavel Ershov, a Russian diplomat who speaks fluent Dari sought to protect three staff members by distracting the assailants, the U.N.'s Mr. de Mistura said.

"Are you Muslim?" the assailants asked Mr. Ershov, according to one diplomat briefed on the attack. Mr. Ershov lied and said he was, the U.N. said. The assailants tested him by asking him to recite the traditional profession of belief in Islam, which begins, "There is no God but Allah."

When he successfully completed the test, his life was spared. Still, he was dragged into the street and beaten badly, according to a local shopkeeper who said he participated in the assault.

The attackers searched the darkened bunker with a lamp and discovered Lt. Col. Siri Skare, a 53-year-old Norwegian military attaché—the former fighter pilot—seconded to the U.N., along with Joakim Dungel, a 33-year-old Swede who had been working in the human-rights office for less than two months, and Filaret Motco, a 43-year-old Romanian who headed the mission's political section.

As Lt. Col. Skare attempted to flee the bunker, she was intercepted by the Afghan demonstrators who had set the car on fire. She was shot with the rifle commandeered from the police officer, one of the men said. Lt. Col. Skare died of her wounds. Messrs. Dungel and Motco were killed elsewhere.

Four Afghans—men also described as "insurgents" by Gen. Alizai, the police official—were also killed. Video footage of demonstrators leaving the U.N. compound shows two men carrying Kalashnikovs and one showing off a large, blood-spattered knife.

As the attackers focused on the four U.N. workers who had been hiding in the first safe room, diplomats said, three or four others, including the German newcomer, were sheltered in a safe room in another building. They survived.

—Yaroslav Trofimov, Zamir Saar, Michael Allen and Betsy McKay contributed to this article.

Petraeus Says Quran Burning Endangers War Effort

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV AND MARIA ABI-HABIB KABUL—The Quran burning by a Florida church, which sparked three days of deadly rioting in Afghanistan, poses new dangers for the U.S.-led war effort against the Taliban, coalition commander U.S. Gen. David Petraeus warned in an interview.

General David Petraeus and Mark Sedwill, NATO's Senior Civilian Representative, have released a statement on the burning of the Holy Quran which has sparked protests across Afghanistan. Video courtesy of NewsCore.

Gen. Petraeus, who commands some 150,000 U.S. and allied troops here, spoke after Afghan rioters angered by reports of the sacrilege sacked the United Nations compound in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, killing seven foreigners, and went on a lethal rampage in the southern city of Kandahar, waving Taliban flags.

The deadly rioting, which the Taliban say erupted spontaneously, has shocked the international community and highlighted the vulnerability of the embattled Afghan government. Urban mob violence against Western targets adds a disturbing new threat in a country that is fighting a mostly rural insurgency, and where foreign and local security forces are ill-prepared for riot control.

"Every security force leader's worst nightmare is being confronted by essentially a mob, if you will, especially one that can be influenced by individuals that want to incite violence, who want to try to hijack passions, in this case, perhaps understandable passions," Gen. Petraeus said in the Sunday interview. "Obviously it's an additional serious security challenge in a country that faces considerable security challenges."

Back in September, when Terry Jones of the World Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., first announced his intention to burn Islam's holy book, Gen. Petraeus publicly urged the preacher to abandon the plan, saying it would be exploited by the Taliban and endanger the lives of American soldiers. Rev. Jones's church shelved the idea at the time. But then he reversed course and his church held a "trial" of the Quran and incinerated the book in a videotaped ceremony March 20.

"This was a surprise," Gen. Petraeus said. The Quran burning in Florida, he added, was "hateful, extremely disrespectful and enormously intolerant."

Protesters shout anti-U.S. slogans during a demonstration in Jalalabad province Sunday. Around 1,000 people blocked the main highway from Kabul to Jalalabad and burned U.S. flags, driven by anger at the actions of militant Christian preacher Terry Jones, who supervised the burning of a copy of the Koran in front of about 50 people at a church in Florida on March 20, according to his website.

 

Gen. Petraeus, U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and other Western envoys Sunday met President Hamid Karzai to discuss the security crisis caused by the Florida incident. While Gen. Petraeus said he had no doubt that Mr. Karzai is taking the situation seriously, some Western officials have complained that the Afghan president himself has exacerbated the tensions with his pronouncements on the issue.

Most Afghans learned about the Quran burning in Florida only when Mr. Karzai on March 24 condemned the act as "a crime against the religion and the entire Muslim nation," called on the U.S. and the U.N. to bring the perpetrators to justice and demanded "a satisfactory response to the resentment and anger of over 1.5 billion Muslims around the world."

Following Sunday's meeting with Gen. Petraeus and the ambassadors, Mr. Karzai requested in a new statement that "the U.S. government, Senate and Congress clearly condemn [Rev. Jones'] dire action and avoid such incidents in the future." Mr. Karzai issued this demand even though President Barack Obama has already described the Quran burning as "an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry"—adding that "to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity."

Friday's protest march on the U.N. compound in Mazar-e-Sharif followed a fiery sermon by government-paid clerics in that city's main mosque. By Saturday, however, demonstrators in Kandahar chanted "Death to Karzai" in addition to "Death to America." Nine Afghans were killed and more than 80 injured in Kandahar on Saturday, as protesters attempted to march on the U.N. officers there; shootouts erupted as they were stopped by Afghan security forces.

In fresh Kandahar protests on Sunday, two Afghans, including a child, were killed and 40 were wounded, according to provincial officials. A crowd of about 600 pelted with rocks the headquarters of the provincial governor, shouting "Death to America" and "Death to the slaves of the infidels."

"We cannot see the difference between that man in Florida and the American soldiers here," said Karimullah, a 25-year-old religious student who, like many Afghans, goes by one name and took part in Sunday's Kandahar protests. "They are killing our people here while in the U.S. they burn the Holy Quran. America just wants to humiliate the Muslim world."

—Muhib Habibi and Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.  

A golden opportunity?

Jihadists are both supporting and exploiting the Arab spring Mar 31st 2011 | CAIRO AND DARNA | from the print edition

      

AT FIRST sight, it looks familiar. Veterans of the Afghan jihad operate training camps in Libya’s lush Green Mountain, overlooking Europe’s shipping lanes. Armed jihadis cruise the dusty streets with their armed acolytes. Preachers rouse their followers to take up weapons.

But something is out of kilter with Muammar Qaddafi’s claims that Libya’s revolution is an al-Qaeda plot. These jihadis enthusiastically back the NATO-led bombing campaign. “A blessing,” says Sufian bin Qumu, an inmate for six years of a pen in Guantánamo Bay, who drove trucks for Osama bin Laden’s Sudanese haulage company before heading to the Afghan camps. “Excellent,” echoes Abdel Hakim al-Hisadi, a rebel commander who trained in Khost camp, Mr bin Laden’s base in Afghanistan. “It’s changed the way we look at the West. They saved our people and we have to say thanks.”

Not since Western governments first armed the anti-Soviet mujahideen in the 1980s have Western and jihadi groups seemed so aligned. To a man, they proclaim their differences from al-Qaeda, insisting that from the first they have waged a local struggle against a tyrannical ruler, not a global struggle targeting the West. In the mid-1990s they formed the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which for five years waged a guerrilla war in the hills above Darna, a coastal town north-east of Benghazi. Though many fled to Afghanistan after Colonel Qaddafi’s counter-insurgency, most kept their distance from al-Qaeda. “I met Sheikh Osama,” says Mr Hisadi, “but refused to shake his hand.”

Darna’s Islamist fighters are now an integral part of the wave of protest and revolt that has spread across the Arab world. Movements that began by drawing strength and gaining adherents from secular demands—for personal dignity and political freedom—have, with time, adopted a more religious and sectarian hue. Just as the protests have empowered a long-quiescent Arab middle class, so they have released the potential of Islamism, a multi-faceted, broad-spectrum current that runs deep throughout the region, but has for decades been repressed and manipulated by most Arab regimes. And some of its manifestations, as in Darna, are surprising.

The freeing by post-revolutionary Egypt and Tunisia of thousands of Islamist political prisoners has closed a dark chapter for human rights in those countries. Outfits like Libya’s Islamic Fighting Group and Egypt’s Jamaat Islamiya, both of which pursued terror campaigns in the 1990s and were on the radical fringe, express a newfound keenness for peaceful politics, explaining that their past resort to violence was only a response to repression. The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group has changed its name to the Libyan Islamic Movement, and its 12-member politburo has pledged allegiance to the National Council in Benghazi.

Milder Islamists, including Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded associates elsewhere, find today’s greater freedom exhilarating, but also challenging. Shorn of the comfort of posing as noble opponents of hated regimes, they must dirty their hands with politics, propose concrete policies and accept diversity within their own ranks. Younger members, fresh from the novel experience of working with liberal secularists and even communists to achieve shared goals, increasingly question the aloof dogmatism of ageing leaders. This emerging Islamist mainstream looks for its model not to theocracies such as Iran’s, but to the democratically elected AK party in Turkey, with its Islamic flavour diluted by tolerance for others and respect for secular institutions.

But there are also more disturbing manifestations of the Islamists’ rise. Ask Anwar Mitri, a 45-year-old school administrator in the Upper Egyptian province of Qena. On March 20th self-appointed Muslim vigilantes in his village arrested him, “tried” him and lopped off his right ear. They said this was his punishment for renting a flat to a woman who they claimed was a prostitute, and for allegedly having sex with her. Mr Mitri says his attackers told him that “Nazarenes” like himself, a member of Egypt’s 8-10% minority of Coptic Christians, were no longer protected by State Security Investigations, a feared secret-police branch that has been largely neutralised since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

Similar attacks in other parts of rural Egypt have targeted liquor stores, alleged brothels and, in one fatal case, a Muslim farmer accused of apostasy. The perpetrators are widely assumed to be Salafists, adherents of a fundamentalist group influenced by Saudi Arabia that has made strong inroads, particularly among Egypt’s poorest classes. Some assert that such incidents, as well as pre-revolutionary terror attacks targeting Egyptian Copts, may instead be the work of rogue secret policemen, whose aim is to stir sectarian divisions. Whatever the cause, Egyptian Christians have grown increasingly fearful. A recent rumour that Salafists planned to throw acid at unveiled women was enough to prompt the evacuation of Christian students from a university dormitory in the Upper Egyptian city of Asyut.

Like the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s Salafists represent a diversity of opinion. Most condemn such excesses and have, in the past, generally professed an aversion to politics. Shortly before Egypt’s revolution, one Salafist preacher went so far as to pass a death fatwa on Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel prize-winning former UN nuclear chief who has become a leading figure of Egypt’s secular opposition, for the sin of disobedience to the country’s “rightful leader”, Mr Mubarak.

But as Egypt’s protest movement gained enough momentum to overthrow the Mubarak government, Salafists, many of whom had experienced imprisonment or torture under his regime, eagerly joined in. In mid-March, when Egyptians voted in a referendum on whether to accept revisions to their constitution, Salafists were credited with boosting support for the winning yes vote by fanning fears that Christians and secularists planned to scrap an article that describes Islamic sharia as “the principal source of legislation”. To vote no, they whispered in an effective campaign using Friday sermons and leaflets, would be a vote against Islam.

Such sectarian undertones have been exploited by religious radicals, as well as governments, in Bahrain, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The Sunni ruling family of Bahrain has for years quietly fuelled Sunni fears that the island kingdom’s 70% Shia minority is being manipulated by agents from the Shia “superpower”, Iran. The pro-democracy protests that erupted in January, and have since been crushed, began with a secular agenda for reform, but under the pressure of a violent crackdown inevitably took on a more sectarian cast.

Similarly, demonstrations in the Syrian city of Deraa erupted in mid-March to protest against the jailing of minors for spraying graffiti. As a cycle of violent repression and counter-demonstrations took hold, with dozens shot dead by police gunfire, anger spread, particularly among Sunni Muslims. They make up two-thirds of Syria’s population, but have historically chafed at the dominance, during 40 years of rule by the Assad family, of the Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam whose adherents account for some 6% of Syrians.

The broader opposition, which suffers a legacy of harsh state repression and internal factionalism, has struggled to contain sectarian impulses. But the regime of Bashar Assad has been quick to exploit public nervousness over religious differences to secure acquiescence in his continued rule. Having witnessed at close hand the bloodshed in neighbouring Iraq and Lebanon, even many of Mr Assad’s detractors still appear willing to settle for limited freedoms in exchange for social peace.

A headache for the West

It is not just in countries prone to sectarianism that Islamist extremists appear emboldened. The latest issue of Inspire, an online jihadist magazine that declares itself the English-language mouthpiece of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemen-based franchise of Osama bin Laden’s global jihadist group, hails the Arabs’ revolutionary fervour as a golden opportunity. “The revolutions that are shaking the thrones of dictators are good for the Muslims, good for the mujahideen and bad for the imperialists of the West and their henchmen in the Muslim world,” declared its lead editorial on March 29th.

Such enthusiasm has yet to be reflected in any detectable rise in the influence of armed jihadist groups. Nevertheless the escalating lawlessness in Yemen, where opposition to the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh unites a ponderously broad alliance, has sharply reduced security pressure on AQAP. (Its bold raid on a munitions factory in the southern Yemeni province of Abyan prompted a subsequent explosion that killed as many as 150 people on March 28th.) But it worries the Western powers intervening in Libya. Eastern Libya, the anti-Qaddafi rebels’ stronghold, has long been a hotbed of Islamist activism. Darna, in particular, is said to have contributed a bigger proportion of jihadist fighters in Iraq than any other Arab city.

The Koran or Karl Popper?

Admiral James Stavridis, NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, recently told American senators that “flickers” of intelligence suggested the presence of al-Qaeda and Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shia guerrilla group, among Libya’s opposition. But he also said that its leadership appeared to be “responsible men and women”. Observers are not impressed by the opposition’s competence, but agree that radical elements appear to be a small minority. Their anger is for the time being directed solely towards Colonel Qaddafi and his regime, and their stated aim is to create a modern, pluralist, democratic state.

The fears, expressed loudly in Israeli opinion columns and echoed by conservatives further west, that Arab democratisation could prove a Trojan Horse for radical Islam, often fail to account for another factor. Although the fate of Palestine still unites Islamists of all stripes, they appear divided on nearly everything else.

Some, for instance, continue to decry Western intervention in Libya as an imperialist crusade, despite the fact that it followed invitations from both the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the world’s main pan-Islamic body. While the extremists of al-Qaeda cheer the democratic wave as an opportunity, Saudi Arabia’s arch-conservative, state-backed clergy have condemned it as tantamount to heresy. Iran’s state-censored media has fumed about the sad fate of Bahrain’s democracy movement, and celebrated the overthrow of “tyrants” in Egypt and Tunisia. But they have kept eerily mute regarding the bloody stifling of dissent in Syria, Iran’s sole Arab ally.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian-born star preacher on the Al Jazeera satellite channel, has proved a powerful cheerleader for protest movements everywhere. Not content simply to approve Western intervention in Libya, he passed a fatwa promising heavenly reward to any Muslim who kills Colonel Qaddafi. But as a Sunni Muslim close to the Muslim Brotherhood, he has condemned Bahrain’s democracy activists as Shia bigots and tools of Iran.

The Muslim Brotherhood itself appears to be splitting, though not along dramatic ideological lines. The group, founded in Egypt in 1928, has been an important incubator of Islamist movements, and has survived decades of repression. Its highly disciplined youth movement proved crucial to the protests that overthrew Mr Mubarak. Now many of its more articulate members appear likely to gravitate towards a new political party, founded by a disgruntled former member of the Brotherhood’s guidance bureau, rather than one backed by the bureau’s leaders.

Meanwhile, in Libya’s revolution, radicalism is showing a reasonable face. In a Friday sermon outside Benghazi’s courthouse, the uprising’s base, the preacher calls for a democratic civil state. “The discourse that I’m hearing is democratic,” says Zahi Mogherbi, a Benghazi political-science professor who blames radicalisation on the colonel’s repression.

In Darna, councillors struggle to explain why the town has sent so many jihadists to foreign wars. “Before Muammar [Qaddafi], we had no Islamic movement and no Islamist problems,” explains a local judge. “He wanted to delegitimise his opposition.” The city prided itself on its reputation as an intellectual hub, before the colonel smothered Libya’s chattering classes.

In the mountains above town Mr Hisadi, the rebel commander, is offering cursory drills to fresh recruits. He insists that he and his acolytes will lay down their arms once Colonel Qaddafi is toppled. He hopes for warm ties with the West, and aspires to recover his pulpit in the mosque from which the colonel expelled him. Mr bin Qumu, Mr bin Laden’s truck driver, wants to write his autobiography, and to open a school teaching ethics.