Pakistan Terrorism Toll in 2013
Total number of deaths in Pakistan terrorist violence declined from 6,211 in 2012 to 5,279 in 2013, the lowest since 11,704 fatalities suffered in 2009, according to figures compiled by South Asia Terrorism Portal.
While civilian casualties remained essentially flat--down only slightly from 3007 in 2012 to 3001 in 2013-most of the overall drop from 6,211 to 5,379 occurred in fatalities suffered by the security forces and the terrorists.
Pakistan's biggest province Punjab with more than half the country's population remained relatively unscathed by terrorist violence with just 81 terror casualties in 2013. By contrast, FATA, Sindh, KP and Balochistan suffered disproportionately with 1,716, 1668, 936 and 960 terror-related deaths respectively.
Sindh suffered the most civilian casualties in 2013 with 1285 dead in terrorist attacks. It is followed by 718 in Balochistan, 603 in KP, 319 in FATA and 64 civilian deaths in Punjab. Few terror-related deaths in Punjab, Pakistan's biggest province, appear to be the main reason why terrorism is not seen as a major problem by majority of Pakistanis in public opinion surveys. According to a survey conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI), 42% respondents said electricity is the single most important issue facing Pakistan; while 21% said inflation, 12% said unemployment, 10% said terrorism and 3% each cited law and order, corruption and poverty as the most crucial issue. Only 1% considered gas/petrol shortage as the single most important issue of Pakistan.
It seems that Pakistan's new prime minister Mr. Nawaz Sharif's agenda is set in response to the surveys like the IRI survey which are heavily influenced by the perceptions of his party's political base in Punjab. While the Sharif government is focusing on the energy and the economy, it is hard to de-link these priorities with action on terrorism. With Pakistan's domestic savings rate at an all-time low of just 4.3% of GDP, the country badly needs foreign direct investment in energy sector to revive the economy. Such foreign investment is unlikely to materialize in a big way without first tackling the scourge of terrorism in the country. What is urgently needed is a comprehensive strategy and a clear plan of action to fight terrorism in a coordinated fashion.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Nawaz Sharif's Silence on Taliban Terror in Inaugural Speech
Taliban vs. Pakistan
Nawaz Sharif's First 100 Days
Yet Another Peace Deal and Shia Blockade
Taliban Insurgency in Swat
Musharraf's Treason Trial
General Kayani's Speech on Terror War Ownership
Impact of Youth Vote and Taliban Violence on Elections 2013
Imran Khan's Social Media Campaign
Pakistan Elections 2013 Predictions
Why is Democracy Failing in Pakistan?
Viewpoint From Overseas-Vimeo
Viewpoint From Overseas-Youtube
Source: SATP |
Pakistan's biggest province Punjab with more than half the country's population remained relatively unscathed by terrorist violence with just 81 terror casualties in 2013. By contrast, FATA, Sindh, KP and Balochistan suffered disproportionately with 1,716, 1668, 936 and 960 terror-related deaths respectively.
Source: SATP |
Sindh suffered the most civilian casualties in 2013 with 1285 dead in terrorist attacks. It is followed by 718 in Balochistan, 603 in KP, 319 in FATA and 64 civilian deaths in Punjab. Few terror-related deaths in Punjab, Pakistan's biggest province, appear to be the main reason why terrorism is not seen as a major problem by majority of Pakistanis in public opinion surveys. According to a survey conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI), 42% respondents said electricity is the single most important issue facing Pakistan; while 21% said inflation, 12% said unemployment, 10% said terrorism and 3% each cited law and order, corruption and poverty as the most crucial issue. Only 1% considered gas/petrol shortage as the single most important issue of Pakistan.
Pakistan Savings Rate as Percent of GDP (Source: World Bank) |
Pakistan FDI as Percent of GDP (Source: World Bank) |
It seems that Pakistan's new prime minister Mr. Nawaz Sharif's agenda is set in response to the surveys like the IRI survey which are heavily influenced by the perceptions of his party's political base in Punjab. While the Sharif government is focusing on the energy and the economy, it is hard to de-link these priorities with action on terrorism. With Pakistan's domestic savings rate at an all-time low of just 4.3% of GDP, the country badly needs foreign direct investment in energy sector to revive the economy. Such foreign investment is unlikely to materialize in a big way without first tackling the scourge of terrorism in the country. What is urgently needed is a comprehensive strategy and a clear plan of action to fight terrorism in a coordinated fashion.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Nawaz Sharif's Silence on Taliban Terror in Inaugural Speech
Taliban vs. Pakistan
Nawaz Sharif's First 100 Days
Yet Another Peace Deal and Shia Blockade
Taliban Insurgency in Swat
Musharraf's Treason Trial
General Kayani's Speech on Terror War Ownership
Impact of Youth Vote and Taliban Violence on Elections 2013
Imran Khan's Social Media Campaign
Pakistan Elections 2013 Predictions
Why is Democracy Failing in Pakistan?
Viewpoint From Overseas-Vimeo
Viewpoint From Overseas-Youtube
Comments
Civilian casualties have been particularly high, according to the report, totaling around 26,270 deaths in Afghanistan and 21,500 in Pakistan. The study says that most of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan are caused by militant groups, but the number caused by international forces has been increasing since 2012...The turmoil in Pakistan, which has its own Taliban and al Qaeda factions, has become more closely related to that of Afghanistan, with refugees and anti-government militants crossing borders. "It is important for policy makers and others to view the effects and implications of these wars together, because they are so interconnected," said Neta Crawford, the author of the Brown study.
-Sir Colin McColl, former MI6 Chief
For years public figures have condemned cyber espionage committed against the United States by intruders launching their attacks out of China. These same officials then turn around and justify America’s far-reaching surveillance apparatus in terms of preventing terrorist attacks. Yet classified documents published by WikiLeaks reveal just how empty these talking points are. Specifically, top-secret intercepts prove that economic spying by the United States is pervasive, that not even allies are safe, and that it’s wielded to benefit powerful corporate interests.
At a recent campaign event in New Hampshire Hillary Clinton accused China of “trying to hack into everything that doesn’t move in America.” Clinton’s hyperbole is redolent of similar claims from the American Deep State. For example, who could forget the statement made by former NSA director Keith Alexander that Chinese cyber espionage represents the greatest transfer of wealth in history? Alexander has obviously never heard of quantitative easing (QE) or the self-perpetuating “global war on terror” which has likewise eaten through trillions of dollars. Losses due to cyber espionage are a rounding error compared to the tidal wave of money channeled through QE and the war on terror.
When discussing the NSA’s surveillance programs Keith Alexander boldly asserted that they played a vital role with regard to preventing dozens of terrorist attacks, an argument that fell apart rapidly under scrutiny. Likewise, in the days preceding the passage of the USA Freedom Act of 2015 President Obama advised that bulk phone metadata collection was essential “to keep the American people safe and secure.” Never mind that decision makers have failed to provide any evidence that bulk collection of telephone records has prevented terrorist attacks.
If American political leaders insist on naming and shaming other countries with regard to cyber espionage perhaps it would help if they didn’t sponsor so much of it themselves. And make no mistake, thanks to WikiLeaks the entire world knows that U.S. spies are up to their eyeballs in economic espionage. Against NATO partners like France and Germany, no less. And also against developing countries like Brazil and news outlets like Der Spiegel.
These disclosures confirm what Ed Snowden said in an open letter to Brazil: terrorism is primarily a mechanism to bolster public acquiescence for runaway data collection. The actual focus of intelligence programs center around “economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation.” Who benefits from this sort of activity? The same large multinational corporate interests that have spent billions of dollars to achieve state capture.
Why is the threat posed by China inflated so heavily? The following excerpt from an intelligence briefing might offer some insight. In a conversation with a colleague during the summer of 2011 the EU’s chief negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Hiddo Houben, described the treaty as an attempt by the United State to antagonize China:
“Houben insisted that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is a U.S. initiative, appears to be designed to force future negotiations with China. Washington, he pointed out, is negotiating with every nation that borders China, asking for commitments that exceed those countries’ administrative capacities, so as to ‘confront’ Beijing. If, however, the TPP agreement takes 10 years to negotiate, the world–and China–will have changed so much that that country likely will have become disinterested in the process, according to Houben. When that happens, the U.S. will have no alternative but to return to the WTO.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/20/the-terrorism-pretext-mass-surveillance-is-about-money-and-power/
The sources told Geo News the authorities decided to ban the services as they were not able to decrypt the communication carried out through BlackBerry Enterprise in Pakistan.
They said that the PTA has sent a letter to all the mobile phone operators in the country to put an end to the services.
The sources, however, added that the ban would not affect common consumers as the BlackBerry Enterprise services are essentially used by corporate organisations.
http://www.geo.tv/article-192075-Pakistan-decides-to-block-BlackBerry-Enterprise-services-
Are terrorists more of a threat than slippery bathtubs?
President Obama, er, slipped into hot water when The Atlantic reportedthat he frequently suggests to his staff that fear of terrorism is overblown, with Americans more likely to die from falls in tubs than from attacks by terrorists.
The timing was awkward, coming right before the Brussels bombings, but Obama is roughly right on his facts: 464 people drowned in America in tubs, sometimes after falls, in 2013, while 17 were killed here by terrorists in 2014 (the most recent years for which I could get figures). Of course, that’s not an argument for relaxing vigilance, for at some point terrorists will graduate from explosives to nuclear, chemical or biological weapons that could be far more devastating than even 9/11. But it is an argument for addressing global challenges a little more rationally.
The basic problem is this: The human brain evolved so that we systematically misjudge risks and how to respond to them.
Our visceral fear of terrorism has repeatedly led us to adopt policies that are expensive and counterproductive, such as the invasion of Iraq. We have ramped up the intelligence community so much that there are now seven times as many Americans with security clearances (4.5 million) as live in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, Donald Trump responded to the Brussels attacks with crowd-pleasing calls for torture or barring Muslims that even Republican security experts agree are preposterous.
On the same day as the attacks, a paper by James E. Hansen and other climate experts was released arguing that carbon emissions are transforming our world far more quickly than expected, in ways that may inundate coastal cities and cause storms more horrendous than any in modern history. The response? A yawn.
Hansen is an eminent former NASA scientist, but he’s also an outlier in his timing forecasts, and I’m not qualified to judge whether he’s correct. Yet whatever the disagreement about the timeline, there is scientific consensus that emissions on our watch are transforming our globe for 10,000 years to come. As an important analysis in Nature Climate Change put it, “The next few decades offer a brief window of opportunity to minimize large-scale and potentially catastrophic climate change that will extend longer than the entire history of human civilization thus far.”
To put it another way, this year’s election choices may shape coastlines 10,000 years from now. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have both mocked the idea of human-caused climate change, with Trump suggesting that it is a hoax invented by China to harm the American economy (he now says that last point was a joke).
The upshot is that Brussels survived this week’s terrorist attacks, but it may not survive climate change (much of the city is less than 100 feet above sea level).
Doesn’t it seem prudent to invest in efforts to avert not only shoe bombers but also the drowning of the world’s low-lying countries?
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Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, says that the kind of threats that we evolved to deal with are those that are imminent rather than gradual, and those that involve a deliberate bad actor, especially one transgressing our moral code. Explaining our lack of concern for global warming, he noted,“Climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, not flags.”
In short, our brains are perfectly evolved for the Pleistocene, but are not as well suited for the risks we face today. If only climate change caused sharp increases in snake populations, then we’d be on top of the problem!
Yet even if our brains sometimes mislead us, they also crown us with the capacity to recognize our flaws and rectify mistakes. So maybe we can adjust for our weaknesses in risk assessment — so that we confront the possible destruction of our planet as if it were every bit as ominous and urgent a threat as, say, a passing garter snake.
It is true that Islamic State, the TTP and many other groups have bases inside Afghanistan. Afghan spooks may well provide them some assistance (in 2013 American special forces caught a leader of the TTP on his way to Kabul for secret talks). But the beleaguered government in Kabul, which has lost much of its territory to the Taliban insurgency, is in no position to satisfy Pakistan’s demand that it detain particular militants. They are based in areas where its writ is minimal or non-existent.
Moreover, the Afghan government is beleaguered in part because the Afghan Taliban has itself long enjoyed sanctuary on Pakistan’s side of the border. This week the Afghan government announced that its forces had killed Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a Taliban leader repeatedly captured and released by Pakistan. With many more of the Taliban’s leaders, bomb-makers and indoctrinators beyond the reach of Afghan troops and their allies in NATO, it has proved impossible to defeat the 16-year insurgency. Yet Pakistan has shielded the Taliban because it sees the group as its only ally in Afghanistan, a country it fears is too cosy with India, its arch-rival.
While the army harasses Afghanistan, there is much that Pakistan could do to fight terrorism domestically. A National Action Plan drawn up in the wake of the massacre of more than 130 schoolboys by the TTP in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2014 has not been fully implemented. Regulation and reform of madrassas, religious schools that foster militancy, has been half-hearted. Notorious peddlers of sectarianism remain at large. It does not help that the army wants an even bigger role in domestic security—a source of tension with the civilian authorities. There is nothing Afghanistan can do about all that.
Imran Khan’s national security advisor says Islamabad has concrete evidence showing New Delhi’s link with the attack, one that left 144 children dead.
India was involved in the 2014 deadly terrorist attack on a military-run school in Pakistan in which 144 children, between the age of 8 and 18, were killed, a top Pakistani official said on Tuesday.
Islamabad has spent years gathering data, which shows New Delhi had a hand in the assault on the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar as well as some other terrorist activities, claims Moeed Yusuf, who is Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s National Security Advisor.
Even though Pakistan and India have repeatedly accused each other of backing terrorists and militants, Yusuf made fresh revelations in an interview with Indian journalist Karan Thapar of The Wire.
“Malik Faridoon who masterminded the attack from Jalalabad (in Afghanistan) was in touch with handlers at the Indian consulate as children were massacred in broad daylight,” he said.
“The same person was treated in New Delhi in 2017.”
Yusuf said Pakistan has obtained a record of eight phone calls including the numbers used by the Indian handlers to orchestrate the attack.
This revelation came in response to Thapar’s question about the 2008 Mumbai carnage in which 166 people were killed and for which New Delhi blames Islamabad.
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This was the first interview by any Pakistani government official to Indian media after India's illegal attempt to annex occupied Kashmir by revoking Article 370 of the Indian constitution.
Holding India responsible for terrorist attacks in Pakistan, Yusuf said that New Delhi had used a consulate "in a neighbouring country" to launch attacks on a five-star hotel in Gwadar, the Chinese consulate in Karachi and the Pakistan Stock Exchange.
He further said that India recently spent $1 million to merge the Tehreek-e-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP) and four other terrorist organisations in Afghanistan under the supervision of RAW officials.
Read more: Attack on Chinese consulate in Karachi foiled; 2 policemen martyred
Yusuf said that Aslam alias Achu, a militant involved in the attack on the Chinese consulate, had undergone treatment at a hospital in New Delhi, which was proof of India's involvement in the matter.
He told Thapar that the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan was using think-tanks as a front to funnel money to terrorists in Balochistan.
The national security adviser also said that Pakistan had evidence that the mastermind of the APS massacre was in contact with an Indian consulate and that he had the phone number of the handler as well.
"We have evidence to the T," he was quoted as saying by The Wire.