SWAT BUDDHA destroyed by Taliban gets facelift :- 23.6.12 - The Pioneer

When the Taliban blew the  face off a towering,  1,500-year-old rock carving of  Buddha in northwest Pakistan  almost five years ago, it fell to  an intrepid Italian archaeologist  to come to the rescue.  Thanks to the efforts of Luca  Olivieri and his partners, the 6-  meter (nearly 20-foot)-tall image  near the town of Jahanabad is getting  a facelift, and many other  archaeological treasures in the  scenic Swat Valley are being  excavated and preserved.  Hard-line Muslims have a  history of targeting Buddhist,  Hindu and other religious sites  they consider heretical to Islam.  Six months before the Sept 11,  2001 attacks, the Taliban  shocked the world by dynamiting  a pair of 1,500-year-old  Buddhist statues in central  Afghanistan.  The Jahanabad Buddha,  etched high on a huge rock face  in the 6th or 7th century, is one  of the largest such carvings in  South Asia. It was attacked in  the fall of 2007 when the  Pakistani Taliban swarmed  across the scenic Swat Valley.  The army drove most of them  out two years later, but foreign  tourists who used to visit the  region still tend to stay away.  Olivieri himself had to  leave in 2008 after more than  two decades of tending to the  riches dating back to Alexander  the Great and the Buddhist,  Hindu and Muslim invaders  who followed. 

Northern Nigeria church bombing leave 25 dead:- 18.6.12 - The Pioneer

Suicide bombers targeted  four churches in a series of  attacks in northern Nigeria on  Sunday, killing at least 25 people,  many of them children,  and prompting reprisal attacks.  As many as 80 people were  also reported wounded in the  restive Nigeria region that has  become a centre of ethnic strife  in the country. In Kaduna city,  where 10 people were killed  inside a Catholic church and 29  wounded, the attacks also led  to reprisals by Christian youth  against local Muslims.  Following reports of violence,  the government imposed  a 24-hour curfew to prevent the  situation from going out of  hand. In all, two churches were  attacked in Kaduna city while  another two were bombed in a  nearby Zaria city.  Red Cross officials in the  city said in a church located in  Zaria town, most of those  killed or wounded were children.  At least 25 people have  been killed in the violence, initial  estimates by officials said.  In the first attack, a bomber  tried to drive a Honda Accord  SUV into an Evangelical Church  of West Africa (ECWA) auditorium  but was stopped by  security men causing his bomb  to explode at the entrance,  killing some persons and the  bomber, Spokesman of Nigerian  police Frank Mba said.  Eyewitnesses at another  scene of attack said a bomber  drove into KC church in Zaria,  killing several people including  children and students of a  nearby polytechnic.  While no group claimed  responsibility so far, similar  attacks in the past have been  blamed on radical Islamic sect  Boko Haram. Kaduna state  has previously seen attacks by  Boko Haram.  Last Sunday the group  attacked two church services,  sparking violence which killed  seven people. Hundreds have  died in its previous attacks on  churches. Boko Haram says it  wants Islamic sharia law in  place across Nigeria and analysts  suggest it is trying to  trigger clashes between  Christians and Muslims.  A country of 150 million  people, Nigeria's population is  equally divided between  Christians and Muslims. 

Two bomb blasts kill 34 in northwest Pakisthan:- 18.6.12 - The Pioneer

Atotal of 34 people were killed  and dozens more injured in  two bomb attacks in the restive  northwest Pakistan on Sunday,  with militants targeting a crowded  market and a police van. A  powerful car bomb went off in  a market at Landi Kotal town in  the restive Khyber tribal region,  killing at least 27 people, including  three children, and injuring  nearly 60 others.  Officials at a local hospital  said they had received 18 bodies  while nine persons died  while being taken to Peshawar,  the capital of Khyber-  Pakhtunkhwa province.  The children who died  were aged between nine and 12  years, officials said. They said  57 people were injured and several  of them were in a serious  condition. The bomb was hidden  in a pick-up truck that was  parked in the market. About  five kilogrammes of explosives  were used in the attack.  The blast targeted members  of the pro-Government  Zakakhel tribe, who had  formed a militia to take on local  militants. Twelve shops and 10  cars were destroyed by the  blast. Gascylinders stored in a  shop blew up, triggering a fire.  Police and security forces cordoned  off the site and launched  a search operation.  No group claimed responsibility  for the attack. The  banned Tehrik-e-Taliban  Pakistan and the Lashkar-e-  Islam are active in Khyber  Agency. In a separate incident,  a police van was targeted with  a bomb hidden in a cart in  Kohat town of Khyber-  Pakhtunkhwa province tonight.  Seven persons, including  four policemen, were killed  and eight others injured, officials  said. The bomb was triggered  by remote control as the  van was passing by. The blast  damaged another car. A child  was among the dead.  The Tehrik-e-Taliban  Pakistan claimed responsibility  for the attack. In yet another  incident, the bomb disposal  squad foiled a terrorist attack  by defusing a bomb at Kohat  Road in Peshawar. 

Pak deliberately harassing our diplomats: US :- 23.6.12-TOI

Washington: The United States has said that Pakistan government is “deliberately, wilfully and systematically” harassing and obstructing American diplomats in the country, marking a new low in the already strained ties between the two nations.
    The harassment and obstruction has increased dramatically and reached “new levels of intensity”, said a state department report, which has urged Washington to take the issue up at bilateral talks with Islamabad.
    The department’s internal watchdog said the harassment of diplomats had heightened since the May, 2011 US raid on a compound in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden and rose further after November Nato airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, prompting Islamabad to block Nato supply lines into Afghanistan.
    “Official Pakistani obstructionism and harassment, an endemic problem in Pakistan, has increased to the point where it is significantly impairing mission operations and programme implementation,” said an internal report of the US state department office of inspector general on Thursday.
    The 82-page report marked “sensitive but unclassified” described the harassment of US diplomats in Pakistan as “deliberate, wilfully and systematic” and said ending it should be a top priority in talks with Pakistan. The report cites the cases of harassments as delays in getting visas, block shipments for aid programme and construction projects, denials of in-country travel request and surveillance and interference with mission employees .
    But extensive parts of the report are blacked out. The report noted that US diplomats have long been subjected to unusual governmentinitiated obstruction, but recently it has gotten worse. PTI
US mulling new covert raids in Pak?
    US military and intelligence officials are so frustrated with Pakistan’s failure to stop local militant groups from attacking Americans in neighboring Afghanistan that they have considered launching secret joint US-Afghan commando raids into Pakistan to hunt them down, officials said. But the idea, which US officials say comes up every couple of months, has been consistently rejected because the White House believes the chance of successfully rooting out the deadly Haqqani network would not be worth the intense diplomatic blowback from Pakistan that inevitably would ensue. AP

Man under scam cloud is new Pakistan PM :- 23.6.12-TOI

Raja Pervez Ashraf A ‘Sacrificial Lamb’ In Zardari-Court Row?

Islamabad: Pakistan’s newly elected Prime Minsiter Raja Pervez Ashraf took oath of office on Friday following high drama which saw withdrawal of PPP’s first chosen candidate Makhdoom Shahabuddin after a court issued arrest warrant against him in a drug scam.
    Ashraf, a unanimous candidate of the PPP and its coalition partners, received 211 votes while Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s Sardar Mehtab Abbasi got 89. The third candidate, Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, withdrew his candidacy and stayed neutral.
    The new PM may immediately come under pressure from the supreme court to launch corruption inquiry against Zardari. He is being seen as something of a sacrificial lamb. Soon after being elected, Ashraf vowed to hold free and fair elections and sought the opposition’s support for this. He promised to address the ongoing energy crisis in the country and stabilise the restive Balochistan province. Ashraf also promised “peaceful co-existence” with India and Afghanistan.
    President Asif Ali Zardari congratulated Ashraf on his success and said “Ashraf ’s election as PM is an indication of the nation’s confidence in democracy.”
    Ashraf has been active in national politics since 1988. He fought but lost parliamentary elections in 1990, 1993 and 1997, but won in 2002 and 2008. His repeated promises as minister of water and power in Gilani’s cabinet to end power shortages in one year remained unfulfilled and his tall claims became a joke in Pakistani media. Gilani dropped him from the cabinet in a reshuffle in February 2011. However, a few months later, he returned as minister for information technology. Ashraf ’s incompetent handling of the power sector and his alleged corruption in the infamous rental power projects is being hotly debated on TV channels. Critics call Ashraf “Raja Rental” for his alleged involvement in $1.5 billion rental power project scam. He denies those charges.
‘RAJA RENTAL’
    Raja Parvez Ashaf, 61,
comes from a family of agriculturists
    A strong loyalist of the Bhutto family, he was elected to the National Assembly from Gujar Khan constituency in Rawalpindi district
    As water and power minister under PM Gilani, he was seen by many Pakistanis as someone who had failed to ease a crippling energy crisis
    Resigned from Gilani’s cabinet in February last year after allegations of corruption in power projects
    Ashraf oversaw the import of short-term power stations, or ‘rental power’ projects that cost the government millions of dollars but produced little energy. The policy earned him the nickname ‘Raja Rental’
    Returned to the cabinet in April this year when he was appointed minister for information technology