Comment by Riaz Haq on April 18, 2018 at 2:27pm

From Dawn newspaper:

https://www.dawn.com/news/1402319

A senior Baloch activist claimed on Tuesday that he heckled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif during his 2015 visit to Washington at the behest of Indian intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

Ahmer Mustikhan, foun­der of the American Friends of Balochistan (AFB) group, posted three online statements on Facebook on Tuesday after a district court in Maryland rejected an appeal to muzzle him.

AFB’s two Indian supporters — Soumya Chowd­hury and Krishna Gudipati — had filed the appeal, asking the judge to stop Mr Mustikhan from publicly sharing the internal affairs of the group. The court agreed with the Baloch activist’s plea that the US constitution guaranteed his freedom of expression.

Mr Mustikhan, who is also a journalist, claimed in the videos that he was “let down” by RAW operatives working from the Indian embassy in Washington. He identified one of them as Nagesh Bhushan who, Mr Mustikhan said, manned RAW’s Balochistan Desk.

On Oct 22, 2015, Mr Mustikhan heckled Mr Sharif during his speech at the US Institute for Peace in Washington and was removed by security personnel as he continued shouting for several minutes.

He then appeared on a series of Indian talk shows, explaining why he heckled the prime minister. He also heckled other Pakistani leaders, particularly former president Pervez Musharraf.

“I did this with a heavy heart, as I have no fight with Nawaz Sharif. He is an elected prime minister,” he told Dawn.

“Others, I heckled willingly.”

Mr Mustikhan said that India was supporting terrorism in Pakistan and this support started after the Kargil war and that’s why the current insurgency had continued for 12 years.

Mr Mustikhan claimed that RAW encouraged militants to kill Punjabi, Pakhtun and even Sindhi civilians. “We have no fight with civilians. They are our brothers,” he said. “They gave me a lot of mental torture [for opposing their plans]. They say if you kill, you are a hero otherwise you are zero.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on April 25, 2018 at 9:51am

RAW: India’s External Intelligence Agency
India’s primary espionage agency and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have long been at odds in a long-standing battle for influence.

Backgrounder by Jayshree Bajoria


https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/raw-indias-external-intelligence-a...

Since its inception in 1968, RAW has had a close liaison relationship with KHAD, the Afghan intelligence agency, due to the intelligence it has provided RAW on Pakistan. This relationship was further strengthened in the early 1980s when the foundation was laid for a trilateral cooperation involving RAW, KHAD, and the Soviet KGB. Raman says RAW valued KHAD’s cooperation for monitoring the activities of Sikh militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Sikhs in the Indian state of Punjab were demanding an independent state of Khalistan. According to Raman, Pakistan’s ISI set up clandestine camps for training and arming Khalistani recruits in Pakistan’s Punjab Province and North West Frontier Province. During this time, the ISI received large sums from Saudi Arabia and the CIA for arming the Afghan mujahadeen against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. “The ISI diverted part of these funds and arms and ammunition to the Khalistani terrorists,” alleges Raman.

---------------

As a result, India established a dedicated external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing. Founded mainly to focus on China and Pakistan, over the last forty years the organization has expanded its mandate and is credited with greatly increasing India’s influence abroad. Experts say RAW’s powers and its role in India’s foreign policy have varied under different prime ministers. RAW claims that it contributed to several foreign policy successes:

the creation of Bangladesh in 1971;
India’s growing influence in Afghanistan;
the northeast state of Sikkim’s accession to India in 1975;
the security of India’s nuclear program;
the success of African liberation movements during the Cold War.
Over the last forty years the organization has expanded its mandate and is credited with increasing India’s influence.

RAW’s first leader, Rameshwar Nath Kao, led the agency until he retired in 1977. Many experts, including officers who worked with him, credit Kao with RAW’s initial successes: India’s triumph in the 1971 war with Pakistan, and India’s covert assistance to the African National Congress’s anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. “To a large extent, it was Kao who raised RAW to the level of India’s premier intelligence agency, with agents in virtually every major embassy and high commission,” writes Singh. But the organization has been criticized for its lack of coordination with domestic intelligence and security agencies, weak analytical capabilities, and complete lack of transparency.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 16, 2018 at 11:31am

China strengthens its grip on south Asia By: Elliot Wilson Published on


@ 2018 Results index If the Belt and Road Initiative has a blind spot, it is surely to be found in south Asia. The region is home to one country that can’t get enough of the project (Pakistan), and another (India) that wants nothing to do with it. Does this matter? Well, yes and no. On the plus side, Pakistan, which is chronically short of friends and capital, shows no sign of falling out of love with a project that continues to shower it with financial largesse. The list of Chinese-funded and Chinese-built infrastructure projects is long and impressive. Take the $2.9 billion, 400-kilometre stretch of the M5 Motorway funded by China Development Bank (CDB) and built by China State Construction Engineering. When the motorway is completed later this year, the cities of Karachi and Lahore will finally be linked, by a project that was first drawn up as long ago as the 1990s. CDB is the financial driving force behind many of the big local BRI deals. In December 2017, the policy bank was a key player in a 10-year, $700 million syndicated term loan raised for the finance ministry, a deal that included partial guarantees from the World Bank. It is funding an $883 million coal-fired power plant at Port Qasim. And in April, CDB shelled out $1 billion to a government that, not for the first time, faces a looming financing crisis. Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves dipped below the $10 billion mark this July, for the first time since 2014. China is unlikely to turn off the spigot, even though the position of prime minister, vacated after the arrest of Nawaz Sharif in July, has been filled by Imran Khan, the former cricketer who campaigned hard against alleged corruption in local China-backed construction projects. Yet Beijing is clearly keen to keep Khan on-side: days after his election, it handed Pakistan another $2 billion, bolstering the perception that however bad its finances get, China will not turn its back on the south Asian state. That should come as no surprise. Beijing plans to spend up to $57 billion by 2030 on a profusion of new domestic infrastructure projects – ports, airports, highways, power plants, transmission lines, solar parks – which are all part of the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Both can see clearly what they get out of this transactional alliance: for China, a reliable overland route to the Indian Ocean that bypasses the Malacca Strait, and for Pakistan, the infrastructure it always wanted and needed, but couldn’t afford. And so we turn to India, which has, to say the least, a different relationship with its giant neighbour. It was a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2014, and is the second-largest contributor after the People’s Republic, funding the China-led multilateral to the tune of $8.4 billion. It is also a founding member of another multilateral, the Shanghai-headquartered New Development Bank, which is chaired by KV Kamath, the former chairman of Indian IT firm Infosys. Yet India adamantly refuses to be considered a belt-and-road nation. Rafiqul Islam At a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in June, India was the only member state that did not tacitly endorse the BRI programme. New Delhi resents the mere existence of the CPEC project with Pakistan, and fears being outflanked in its own backyard by Beijing, which is funding a series of massive infrastructure projects in states that border India, or are historically aligned with it. The question arises: does India need to be part of the BRI project? 

Full article: https://www.euromoney.com/article/b19zv4qt994gg1/china-strengthens-...
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Comment by Riaz Haq on October 21, 2018 at 9:58pm

Five years on: Belt and Road projects changed lives of many


https://tribune.com.pk/story/1805002/1-five-years-belt-road-project...


Qasir Abbas, a 40-year-old Pakistani farmer who owns a 400-acre mango farm in Multan in the central Punjab Province, witnessed changes brought about by the construction of the Multan-Sukkur Motorway, locally known as M5.

Abbas sells mangoes from his hometown, known for conditions favourable to food and crops such as mango, cotton and sugarcane, to the southern major port city of Karachi, some 900km away. However, the two cities were connected with a poorly maintained highway, with the whole journey taking about 21 hours.

Governor inaugurates CPEC’s Centre of Excellence

The 392km six-lane M5 is the largest transportation infrastructure project under the CPEC, a corridor linking Karachi and northwestern Peshawar and running through the populated provinces of Punjab and Sindh.

The first 33-km section of the M5 was inaugurated in May this year, with a speed limit of 120 km per hour. The whole project is scheduled to be completed by August 2019. “By then, it will take only 14 hours to transport my mangoes to Karachi,” Abbas said.

In Laos
Life took a surprising turn in early 2016 for Bounmy Phonmixay, a 21-year-old young woman in the central Lao town of Kasi, when a team of engineers arrived for a rail project near her home.

CPEC to bring development revolution, says Bizenjo

It was literally a game-changer.

A single mum, Bounmy lives with her mother and her three-year-old daughter. Two years ago, she was almost in a depressing state of hopelessness, struggling to make ends meet by growing paddy rice and vegetables on leased land. Then, she found a job working at the construction site of the China-Laos railway, an infrastructure project under the Belt and Road Initiative.

When she showed up for an interview with Xinhua recently at the railway project site in Kasi, she was wearing the makeup she likes. “I like wearing makeup, but I seldom did it in the past since I didn’t have much money back then. Now I can afford my own cosmetics and put on makeup whenever I want to,” she said joyfully.

The game changer

The Chinese engineers were there to prepare for the railway project, which links the Mohan-Boten border gate in the northern part of the landlocked country with the capital Vientiane.

Is CPEC also a game changer for Balochistan?

Bounmy was offered the job in 2016 to cook for the builders who were away from home. She got to know many of the builders and was happy with her new job. She learned to cook some dishes, both Chinese and Lao.

“I earn 1.5 million kip (about $176) every month. I give 200,000 kip to my mother, spend 500,000 kip on my daughter’s snacks, milk and toys, and still have 800,000 to myself,” she said. “Although it is quite a busy job, working here makes me feel like being home.”

The China-Laos railway is the first overseas route to connect with the railway system in China, leveraging Chinese technology, equipment and investment. It is designed to have an operating speed of 160 km per hour.

“We grow excellent paddy rice and xiaomila (a pepper) here in Kasi, but not many people know it,” she said. “Hopefully, with the new railway in place, more people would travel to Kasi and take our products farther away so they would be better known to all.”

China rejects reports of talks with Baloch rebels to protect CPEC investment

The railway is expected to be fully operational in 2021, but Bounmy does not worry about losing her job by then. “I have learnt a lot from my work, especially Chinese cooking. When the railway is in place, there will be many people traveling around the station, then I’ll start my own restaurant there,” she said.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 26, 2018 at 8:34pm

Leader of #ChineseConsulate attack in #Karachi #Pakistan reported dead.“The important #BLA commander Aslam Baloch, along with five associates in the organization were martyred in an enemy attack on Monday,” BLA's Jiand Baloch announced #Balochistan #CPEC https://reut.rs/2Ly6ljL

One of the alleged masterminds of an attack by a Pakistani separatist group on the Chinese consulate in Karachi last month has been killed along with five associates, the insurgent group said on Wednesday.

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), which opposes projects linked to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative in resource-rich Baluchistan, issued a statement on Tuesday confirming the death of Aslam Baloch, one of its leaders.

“The important BLA commander Aslam Baloch, along with five associates in the organization were martyred in an enemy attack on Monday,” Jiand Baloch, a spokesman for the separatist group said in a statement that gave no further details.

Pakistan’s Samaa Television reported that Aslam was killed along with a number of his commanders in a suicide attack in Aino Maina in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, across the border from Baluchistan.

There was no claim of responsibility for the killings and a spokesman for the Pakistani foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Last month, three attackers stormed the Chinese consulate in Karachi, killing four people. Security forces killed the three attackers who were carrying explosives.

Pakistan has long accused its old rival India of supporting insurgents in Baluchistan. India denies helping Baluchistan insurgents and accuses Pakistan of nurturing Islamist militants throughout the region.


China has funded development of a deepwater port at Gwadar in south Baluchistan, and is also investing in other projects as part of the giant China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Baluchistan, on the borders of Afghanistan and Iran, has rich mineral and natural gas reserves but is Pakistan’s poorest province.

Separatists have for decades campaigned against what they see as the unfair exploitation of resources, in particular natural gas and minerals.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 2, 2019 at 4:27pm

85% of work completed on #Pakistan's Rs. 14 billion national #highway N-70 project: Rakhi Gaaj-Khar-Bewata, project funded by #Japan widens hilly sections for #Gwadar-bound heavy #cargo traffic with the installation of 8 steel bridges- UrduPoint. #CPEC https://www.urdupoint.com/en/pakistan/85-pc-work-of-rakhi-gaj-bewata-section-of-n-657787.html

Improvement and strengthening projct of Rakhi Gaj- Bewata section of Multan- Qila Saifullah Highway (N-70) is nearing completion and so far its 85 percent physical work has been completed.

Costing Rs 13753 million, Rakhi Gaaj-Khar-Bewata, project funded by Japan aims to make the hilly portion of the road wide and safe for Gwadar-bound cargo traffic with the installation of eight steel bridges, an official of National Highway Authority (NHA) told APP on Sunday.

He said that work on the project started in July 2016 and as per schedule it was to be completed in July this year. He said due to hilly terrain the project may be completed by end of the year.

He said that road from Multan to Qila Saifullah was being improved and widened to link it up with the road network under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The hilly portion of N-70, which was constructed in the late 19th century had seven difficult turns to negotiate to climb up the high mountain of Girdo to reach Fort Munro or Bewata. To remove these hurdles for Gwadar-bound heavy cargo traffic, Japanese technology of steel bridges was being used,he said.

He said almost 33-kilometre portion of N-70 was being widened and improved with installation of eight steel bridges having a total length of 1.5 kilometre.

The Japanese engineering company which had made Kohat tunnel was working on this project too, he said. 

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 2, 2019 at 4:39pm

NHA Plans Dualization Of Indus Highway By 2023

https://www.urdupoint.com/en/pakistan/nha-plans-dualization-of-indu...

National Highway Authority (NHA) has been working on dualization of Indus Highway (N-55) and as per plan the highway would be dualized by 2023.
An official of NHA told APP on Thursday, the authority has already working on the dualization of Peshawar-DI Khan Road as per following details.

He said Peshawar-Kohat section and Sarai Gambila-DI Khan section have already been dualized while dualization of Kohat-Sarai Gambila section was under way.

He said an allocation of 2,000 million has been made in Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) 2018-19.

He said work has already been started and would be completed in 24 months.

To a question, he said due to increase in traffic volume NHA has already undertaken the dualization of 330 km Peshawar to DI Khan section of the Indus Highway.

In recent years, Indus Highway has been unable to cope with the increasing traffic volume mainly large size of vehicles due to the lack of road capacity and deterioration of the road.

--------------

Jamshoro-Sehwan section: ‘Construction of Indus Highway to help control accidents’

https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/468371-jamshoro-sehwan-section-con...

Federal Secretary Communications Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui on Tuesday paid a surprise visit to under-construction Jamshoro-Sehwan Section of the Indus Highway and emphasized upon the scheduled completion of the project as per international standards of construction.


Senior officers of National Highway Authority gave a detailed briefing to the secretary communications regarding progress on the project. While talking to the media during his visit, Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui said he was inspecting the construction work of the project on the directive of Prime Minister Imran Khan.

We desire, he said, earlier completion of Jamshoro-Sehwan Road project that will pave the way for socio-economic development of the area besides gearing up the pace of industrial development. Federal and provincial governments are cooperating with each other for giving relief to the people of the Sindh province, he said.

Federal Secretary Communications Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui also planted a tree at Aamri in connection with Clean & Green Pakistan drive initiated by Prime Minister Imran Khan. He urged the civil society to join hands with the government to make this drive a success.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 4, 2019 at 7:57pm

Khuzdar-Shahdadkot Motorway Likely To Become Functional In April

https://www.urdupoint.com/en/pakistan/khuzdar-shahdadkot-motorway-l...

Khuzdar-Shahdadkot Section of Gwadar-Rattodero Motorway has nearly been accomplished and would likely to become fully functional in April this year.
An official of National Highway Authority (NHA) told APP on Monday that 188 Km section of 231 km project has already been completed and open for traffic and people of Baluchistan and Sindh are benefitting by transportation of vegetables and by generating other business.

He said that only 5 km of Khori-Wangu Package is under construction.

In this five-KM portion, the remaining work would be completed within couple of months, the official said .He said that cause of delay was non-availability of funds.

The M-8 project is also known as the Gwadar-Rattodero Motorway. The project is dividedinto two sections; the first from Gwadar to Khuzdar, and the second from Khuzdar to Ratodero.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 4, 2019 at 10:26pm

After #BLA #terrorist listing by #US, will the #British and the #Swiss governments deny asylum to #Indian proxies Hyrbyair Marri and Brahmdagh Bugti? #Balochistan #Pakistan #India https://tribune.com.pk/story/2005438/6-bla-terrorist-listing/

The United States on Tuesday took a step of massive significance to Pakistan by declaring the Balochistan Liberation Organisation (BLA) to be a terrorist group. It was a welcome change from the norm, where Pakistan usually has to scramble to ban organisations well after the world has declared them to be terrorists. The BLA has been a proscribed entity in Pakistan since 2006. The listing means that all of the BLA’s property and interests in property subject to US jurisdiction are blocked, and US individuals and entities are prohibited from engaging in any transactions with them. The US also declared Jaish al-Adl, which has been involved in deadly terrorist attacks against Iran, a global terrorist organisation. Jaish al-Adl is essentially the successor to the previously banned Jundallah group.

Pakistan has long claimed that the BLA is a proxy of India’s premier external intelligence agency, the innocuously-named Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). If true, the listing would also be a potentially massive embarrassment for New Delhi. But even if Pakistan cannot prove to the world that India is explicitly sponsoring the BLA, and thus terrorism in Pakistan, India has openly been hosting a number of BLA leaders and sympathisers, giving them a platform from which to spew their terrorist vitriol before the media in the ‘world’s biggest democracy’. It would be more-than-fair for Pakistan to push for the case that India is actively sympathising with terrorists by doing such things.

It will also be interesting to see what they do with the asylum application filed by alleged BLA leader Brahamdagh Bugti, and for that matter, what the Swiss do, since he is currently living it up in the picturesque and famously neutral European state. There is also the issue of another alleged BLA leader, Hyrbyair Marri, who has been granted asylum by the British. Will the British reinvestigate the terrorism charges Pakistan filed against him a decade ago, and will the US back Pakistan if it tries to prove that the British and Swiss are harbouring terrorists?

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 5, 2019 at 10:08am

#US designates #BLA "terrorist". #Pakistan demands that “perpetrators, organizers, financiers and external sponsors including those glorifying these acts of terror against Pakistan [must be] held accountable and brought to justice”. #India #CPEC #India https://www.dawn.com/news/1492218


ON Tuesday, the US acceded to a long-standing demand by Pakistan when it designated the banned Balochistan Liberation Army as a global terrorist organisation, describing it as “an armed group that targets security forces and civilians, mainly in Baloch areas of Pakistan”. With that, the BLA’s assets in the US, if any, stand frozen and it is now illegal for anyone in that country to assist it in any manner. The Pakistan Foreign Office responded by pointing out that “perpetrators, organisers, financers and external sponsors including those glorifying these acts of terror against Pakistan [must be] held accountable and brought to justice”.

Gratuitous violence, especially against civilians, is the hallmark of terrorist organisations; it cannot be glossed over by terming it a freedom struggle. Moreover, when groups who profess to be fighting for their rights resort to such actions, they damage their own cause immeasurably. Over the years, of the main Baloch separatist groups, the BLA — led by late Khair Bux Marri’s son Hyrbyair Marri from exile in London — has taken responsibility for some of the most heinous acts of violence in Pakistan. With the gathering pace of CPEC — anathema to the separatists — the BLA appears to have taken a yet more proactive role in the insurgency. In November 2018, it launched a brazen attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi; only a swift response by the security personnel present managed to avert multiple casualties. On April 18, around a dozen gunmen belonging to an alliance of separatist groups, including the BLA, singled out and killed 14 bus passengers; the toll included 11 personnel of the navy, air force and Coast Guards, while they were travelling on the coastal highway near Ormara in Gwadar district. On May 11, several of its operatives launched an audacious attack on Gwadar city’s only luxury hotel where Balochistan-based Chinese overseeing CPEC projects as well as visiting Chinese delegations are lodged. Given that ‘Free Balochistan’ banners frequently pop up in Europe — the ongoing Cricket World Cup in the UK has also been witness to an aeroplane flying the banner — money is obviously being funnelled into the campaign. Even as Pakistan is asked to crack down on terror financing by extremist groups on its soil, the avenues of funding for groups threatening the country’s integrity must also be shut down. Meanwhile, the gains from the US move against the BLA must be reinforced by the state recognising Balochistan’s legitimate claims.

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