Pakistan’s truck art inspires catwalk fashion range

The bright expressive colours used by long-distance truck drivers across Pakistan have inspired a new fashion range.

Courtesy: BBC

NATO Reaches Transit Deal With Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan

NATO reached an agreement with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to ship military equipment out of Afghanistan through Central Asia, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen reported today:

We also reached agreement on reverse transit from Afghanistan with three Central Asian partners: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. These agreements will give us a range of new options and the robust and flexible transport network we need….

With Russia we have a transit arrangement, a reverse transit arrangement already, and the fact that we have now concluded a transit arrangement, three concrete transit arrangements with Central Asian countries at the Chicago Summit, will make the use of the Russian transit arrangement even more effective.

Read more » http://www.eurasianet.org/node/65494

Why Imran Khan has decided not to go to Quetta with his so-called Tsunami

Graphic details: Killing of Brahumdagh Bugti’s sister and niece in Karachi on 31st January

Brahamdagh Bugti’s sister, and Mehran Baluch’s sister-in-law Zamur Bugti (34), and 13-year old daughter, Jaana Domki were visiting the house of Zamur’s maternal uncle after attending a wedding ceremony of a cousin at Carlton Hotel in D.H.A, Karachi. They were accompanied by their driver (Barkat Baloch) and a helper’s 12 year old daughter. They were travelling in a black Toyota sedan (Registration: ANR-353). The car also had an MPA Balochistan plate on it.

Between 1 and 1:30 AM on the 31st of January, shortly after leaving the uncle’s house, a black coloured car intercepted Bugti’s car near Gizri Bridge, Clifton. A man dressed in black shalwar kameez and wearing a black face mask jumped out of the car and shot the driver, Barkat Baloch, as they tried to get away. The driver was killed on the spot as a result of multiple bullet wounds to the head. Then the assailant opened the rear door at which point two bikes arrived at the scene and parked on the left and right side of the car. Upon opening the door, Zamur Bugti offered her jewellery, phone and valuables to the man, thinking that he was a robber. In response the killer told Zamur that he didn’t need her valuables and that he was there to kill her and her daughter, in urdu. Zamur Bugti told him to spare her daughter and that he could kill her. At this point the killer went to the daughter who was sitting on the front passenger seat and fired multiple shots at her, hitting her in the chest and neck.

Zamur Bugti was made to witness the brutal killing of her daughter. Zamur Bugti was then shot over a dozen times in the head, face and neck at point blank range and was left in a pool of blood. During this incident, the police were spectating from a distance.

We have gathered all this information from a first-hand witness who was a helper’s daughter. She was deliberately spared by the killer. The girl ran back to the house which they had just left and informed the family there of what had happened. The family members immediately rushed to the scene where they found the previously spectating policemen close to the victims’ bodies, trying to steal jewellery the victims were wearing. A family member who just arrived at the scene from the uncle’s house witnessed this and yelled at them and told them to get away, so they stepped back. No personal belongings were taken.

Pakistan targets cities in North India

by Wichaar

Karachi, July 25 (TruthDive): A report in the media states 25 more nuclear missiles are to be added by Pakistan with a range of 700 -1000 kms to keep parity with India. This means most of the cities and nuclear establishments in North India are vulnerable to attack.

Reproduced below is the media report: If the government successfully achieves its target, this would be the highest number of missiles Pakistan had ever produced in a year. These air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles would be able to hit a target at a distance between 700 to 1,000 kilometers, which would put nearly all major Indian cities within their range.

Sources said the plan was in line with Pakistan’s official policy of having what is rhetorically called ‘maintaining a minimum deterrence’ especially against India. They added that the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) — a high powered body that oversees Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal — was also supervising the production of new missiles.

The SPD works under the National Commands Authority (NCA) that is headed by the prime minister and has all services chiefs as its members. Sources said it was in one of the recent NCA meetings that SPD briefed the authority about the plan that envisaged the production of highest number of missiles ever in a year.

The disclosure comes on the heels of reports earlier in the year that Pakistan was rapidly adding to its nuclear arsenal and the number of its warheads might have surpassed France.

Officials in Islamabad have denied those reports but insiders said Pakistan has been ‘watching closely with concern’ India’s increasing nuclear cooperation with the United States and France.“That is the benchmark… if we see something happening in India on this front, naturally we react and we have to,” said another official.

Courtesy: → Wichaar

New York Times – Pakistan Spies on Its Diaspora, Spreading Fear

By MARK MAZZETTI, ERIC SCHMITT and CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — F.B.I. agents hunting for Pakistani spies in the United States last year began tracking Mohammed Tasleem, an attaché in the Pakistani Consulate in New York and a clandestine operative of Pakistan’s military spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence.

Mr. Tasleem, they discovered, had been posing as an F.B.I. agent to extract information from Pakistanis living in the United States and was issuing threats to keep them from speaking openly about Pakistan’s government. His activities were part of what government officials in Washington, along with a range of Pakistani journalists and scholars, say is a systematic ISI campaign to keep tabs on the Pakistani diaspora inside the United States.

The F.B.I. brought Mr. Tasleem’s activities to Leon E. Panetta, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and last April, Mr. Panetta had a tense conversation with Pakistan’s spymaster, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha.

Within days, Mr. Tasleem was spirited out of the United States — a quiet resolution typical of the spy games among the world’s powers.

But some of the secrets of that hidden world became public last week when two Pakistani-Americans working for a charity that the F.B.I. believes is a front for Pakistan’s spy service were indicted. Only one was arrested; the other is still in Pakistan.

The investigation exposed one part of what American officials say is a broader campaign by the Pakistani spy agency, known as the ISI, to exert influence over lawmakers, stifle public dialogue critical of Pakistan’s military and blunt the influence of India, Pakistan’s longtime adversary.

American officials said that compared with countries like China and Russia — whose spies have long tried to steal American government and business secrets — the ISI’s operations here are less extensive and less sophisticated. And they are certainly far more limited than the C.I.A.’s activities inside Pakistan.

Even so, officials and scholars say the ISI campaign extends to issuing both tacit and overt threats against those who speak critically about the military.

The ISI is widely feared inside Pakistan because of these very tactics. For example, American intelligence officials believe that some ISI operatives ordered the recent killing of a Pakistani journalist, Saleem Shahzad. ….

Read more → The New York Times

Rangers shooting: Lust for blood

by Maheen Usmani

The video of Sarfaraz Shah’s last traumatic moments imploded on to cyber space with some enthusiasm and a profusion of expletives. Messages like “check kar yeh video” (check out this video), “here’s the full video, yaar,”  “sharing the HD version,” “uncut footage” and “exclusive video” pepper the Facebook newsfeed. Bloodied and battered thumbnails accompany the excited posts. Lust for blood, it seems, is not exclusive to criminals.

Slowly, steadily and grimly, Sarfaraz Shah’s life was extinguished on tape. His blood was squeezed out drop by drop, fanning out in a wider and wider crimson circle around his wiry frame, as he lay on the ground beseeching for help:

“Haspataal puhancha day yar, mujhay haspataal to puhancha day!’’ (Take me to hospital, my friend, please take me to hospital!)

How ironic that Sarfaraz was begging for help from the same people who had looked him in the eye and shot him at point blank range moments ago. The very same “law enforcers” in the garb of Rangers who have been deputed to safeguard Karachi and it’s besieged people. As Sarfaraz lay face down in a pool of his own blood, the footage showed a few pair of boots ambling past him. …

Read more: The Express Tribune