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Christine Fair: An academic lacking critical thinking with venomous bias, bitterness, and animosity towards Pakistan

Christine Fair

An academic lacking critical thinking with venomous bitterness and animosity towards Pakistan

Carol Christine Fair (born 1968) is an associate professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS),
within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Fair is employed at the Security Studies Program (SSP) within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.[1][2]

Prior to this, Fair served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer with the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and as a senior research associate with the United States Institute of Peace. She specializes in political and military affairs in South Asia.[3]

Fair has published several articles defending the use of drone strikes in Pakistan and has been critical of analyses by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other humanitarian organizations.[4]

Fair’s work and viewpoints have been the subject of prominent criticism.[5]Her pro-drone stance has been denounced and called “surprisingly weak” by Brookings Institution senior fellow Shadi Hamid.[5]JournalistGlenn Greenwalddismissed Fair’s arguments as “rank propaganda”, arguing there is “mountains of evidence” showing drones are counterproductive, pointing to mass civilian casualties and independent studies.[6] In 2010, Fair denied the notion that drones caused any civilian deaths, alleging Pakistani media reports were responsible for creating this perception.[7]Jeremy Scahillwrote that Fair’s statement was “simply false” and contradicted byNew America‘s detailed study on drone casualties.[7]Fair later said that casualties are caused by the UAVs, but maintains they are the most effective tool for fighting terrorism.[8]

Writing for The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorfchallenged Fair’s co-authored narrative that the U.S. could legitimize support in Pakistan for its drone program using ‘education’ and ‘public diplomacy’; he called it an “example of interventionist hubris and naivete” built upon a flawed interpretation of public opinion data.[9]An article in the Middle East Research and Information Project called the work “some of the most propagandistic writing in support of PresidentBarack Obama’s targeted kill lists to date.”[10]It censured the view that Pakistanis needed to be informed by the U.S. what is “good for them” as fraught with imperialist condescension; or the assumption that the Urdu press was less informed than the English press – because the latter was sometimes less critical of the U.S.[10]

Fair’s journalistic sources have been questioned for their credibility[11]and she has been accused of having aconflict of interestdue to her past work with U.S. government think tanks, as well the CIA.[5] In 2011 and 2012, she received funding from the U.S. embassy in Islamabad to conduct a survey on public opinion concerning militancy. However, Fair states most of the grants went to a survey firm and that it had no influence on her research.[5] Pakistani media analysts have dismissed Fair’s views as hawkish rhetoric, riddled with factual inaccuracies, lack of objectivity, and being selectively biased.[11][12][13][14] She has also been rebuked for comments on social media perceived as provocative, such as suggesting burning down Pakistan’s embassy in Afghanistan or asking India to “squash Pakistan militarily, diplomatically, politically and economically.” She has been accused of double standards, partisanship towards India, and has been criticized for her contacts with dissident leaders from Balochistan, a link which they claim “raises serious questions if her interest in Pakistan is merely academic.[13]

Controversies

Fair has been accused of harassment of former colleague Asra Nomani, after Nomani wrote a column inThe Washington Post[15]explaining why she voted forDonald Trump in the 2016 United States Presidential Election. The harassment came in the form of Tweets taking aim at Nomani with a series of emotionally charged profanity and insults that lasted 31 consecutive days.[16]

  1. “C. Christine Fair”. Georgetown University academic directory. Retrieved 27 June 2016.
  2. Christine, Fair (25 September 2009). “For Now, Drones Are the Best Option”. New York Times. Retrieved 28 June 2016.
  3. Author information, Oxford University Press, retrieved 6 September 2016.
  4. “Ethical and methodological issues in assessing drones’ civilian impacts in Pakistan”. Washington Post. 2014-10-06. Retrieved 2015-10-16.
  5.  to:a b c d Norton, Ben (4 November 2015). “Not playing fair: How Christine Fair, defender of U.S. drone program in Pakistan, twists the facts — and may have conflicts of her own”. Salon. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
  6. “Do drone strikes create more terrorists than they kill?”. Al Jazeera. 23 October 2015. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  7.  to:a b Scahill, Jeremy (10 May 2010). “Georgetown Professor: ‘Drones Are Not Killing Innocent Civilians’ in Pakistan”. The Nation. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  8. Shane, Scott (11 August 2011). “C.I.A. Is Disputed on Civilian Toll in Drone Strikes”. New York Times. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  9. Friedersdorf, Conor (24 January 2013). “Yes, Pakistanis Really Do Hate America’s Killer Drones”. The Atlantic. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  10.  to:a b Waheed, Sarah (25 January 2013). “Drones, US Propaganda and Imperial Hubris”. Middle East Research and Information Project. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  11.  to:a b Ahmad, Muhammad Idrees (14 June 2011). “The magical realism of body counts”. Al Jazeera. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  12. Haider, Murtaza (27 June 2012). “An unFair comment”. Dawn. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  13.  to:a b “US professor’s anti-Pak agenda?”. The News. 7 February 2016. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  14. Chandio, Khalid (6 May 2015). Prejudice Dominates Christine Discourse. Islamabad Policy Research Institute.
  15. Nomani, Asra (10 November 2016). “I’m a Muslim, a woman and an immigrant. I voted for Trump.”. Washington Post.
  16. Frates, Katie (27 December 2016). “‘F**K YOU. GO TO HELL’: Georgetown Prof Loses It On Muslim Trump Voter”. Daily Caller.
  17. Adeney, Katherine (2015), “Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War by C. Christine Fair (Book Review)”, Political Studies Review, 13: 623–624
  18. Shaikh, Farzana (2015), “Fighting to the end: the Pakistan army’s way of war, by C. Christine Fair (Book review)”, International Affairs, 91 (3): 665–667
  19. Ghorpade, Yashodhan (2014), “C. Christine Fair and Shaun Gregory (Eds). Pakistan in National and Regional Change: State and Society in Flux (Book Review)”, Journal of South Asian Development, 9 (1): 91–97, doi:1177/0973174113520586
  20. Argon, Kemal (September 2008), “Reviewed Work: Fortifying Pakistan: The Role of U.S. Internal Security Assistance by C. Christine Fair, Peter Chalk”, International Journal on World Peace, 25 (3): 120–123, JSTOR 20752852
  21. Rizvi, Hasan-Askari (September 2008), “Fortifying Pakistan: The Role of U.S. Internal Security Assistance, by C. Christine Fair and Peter Chalk (eds) (Book review)”, Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 16 (3): 169–170, doi:1111/j.1468-5973.2008.00546.x
  22. Schaffer, Teresita C. (October 2008), “Book Reviews: South Asia”, Survival, 50 (5): 195–215, doi:1080/00396330802456536

 


Not playing fair: How Christine Fair, defender of U.S. drone program in Pakistan, twists the facts — and may have conflicts of her own

Leading drone defender Christine Fair claims critics are biased, yet is widely accused of her own double standards

Not playing fair: How Christine Fair, defender of U.S. drone program in Pakistan, twists the facts — and may have conflicts of her own
(Credit: Al Jareeza/Reuters/Patrick Fallon/Photo montage by Salon)

The U.S. drone program creates more militants than it kills, according to the head of intelligence for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the U.S. military unit that oversees that very program.

 

“When you drop a bomb from a drone… you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good, remarked Michael T. Flynn. The retired Army lieutenant general, who also served as the U.S. Central Command’s director of intelligence, says that “the more bombs we drop, that just… fuels the conflict.”

Not everyone accepts the assessment of the former JSOC intelligence chief, however. Still today, defenders of the U.S. drone program insist it does more good than harm. One scholar, Georgetown University professor Christine Fair, is particularly strident in her support.

In a debate on the Al Jazeera program UpFront in October, Fair butted heads with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, a prominent critic of the U.S. drone program. Fair, notorious for her heated rhetoric, accused Greenwald of being a “liar” and insulted Al Jazeera several times, claiming the network does not appreciate “nuance” in the way she does. Greenwald, in turn, criticized Fair for hardly letting him get a word in; whenever he got a rare chance to speak, she would constantly interrupt him, leading host Mehdi Hasan to ask her to stop.

The lack of etiquette aside, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Shadi Hamid remarked that Fair’s arguments in the debate were “surprisingly weak.”

After the debate, Fair took to Twitter to mud-sling. She expressed pride at not letting Greenwald speak, boasting she “shut that lying clown down.” “I AM a Rambo b**ch,” she proclaimed.

Fair alsocalledGreenwald a “pathological liar, a narcissist, [and] a fool.” She said she would like to put Greenwald and award-winning British journalist Mehdi Hasan in a Pakistani Taliban stronghold, presumably to be tortured, “then ask ’em about drones.”

Elsewhere on social media, Fair has made similarly provocative comments.In a Facebook post, Fair called Pakistan “an enemy” and said “We invaded the wrong dog-damned country,” implying the U.S. should have invaded Pakistan, not Afghanistan.

In another Facebook post, Fair insisted that “India needs to woman up and SQUASH Pakistan militarily, diplomatically, politically and economically.” Both India and Pakistan are nuclear states.

Fair proudly identifies as a staunch liberal and advocates for a belligerent foreign policy. She rails against neo-conservatives but chastises the Left for criticizing U.S. militarism. In 2012, she told a journalist on Twitter “Dude! I am still very much pro drones. Sorry. They are the least worst option. My bed of coals is set to 11.”

Despite the sporadic jejune Twitter tirade, Fair has established herself as one of the drone program’s most vociferous proponents. Fair is a specialist in South Asian politics, culture, and languages, with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She has published extensively, in a wide variety of both scholarly and journalistic publications. If you see an article in a large publication defending the U.S. drone program in Pakistan, there is a good chance she wrote or co-authored it.

Reviewing the “mountains of evidence”

After her debate with Greenwald, Fair wrote an article for the Brookings Institution’s Lawfare blog. While making jabs at Greenwald, Hasan, and Al Jazeera; characterizing her participation in the debate as an “ignominious distinction”; and implying that The Intercept, the publication co-founded by Greenwald with other award-winning journalists, is a criminal venture, not a whistleblowing news outlet, Fair forcefully defended the drone program.

Secret government documents leaked to The Intercept by a whistleblower show that 90 percent of people killed in U.S. drone strikes in a five-month period in provinces on Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan were not the intended targets. Fair accused The Intercept of “abusing” and selectively interpreting the government’s data. In a followup piece in the Huffington Post, she maintained that the findings of the Drone Papers do not apply to the drone program in Pakistan.

Greenwald pointed out that there are “mountains of evidence” showing that the U.S. drone program is killing large numbers of civilians, not just in Pakistan, but also in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and more. In these articles and the Al Jazeera debate, Fair took issue with the many studies cited by Greenwald, arguing they are flawed.

Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians from U.S. Drone Practices in Pakistan,” an intensive 2012 study conducted over nine months by the law schools at New York University (NYU) and Stanford University, found that the U.S. drone program had killed hundreds of civilians in Pakistan, and “cause[d] considerable and under-accounted-for harm to the daily lives of ordinary civilians, beyond death and physical injury.”

The NYU/Stanford report was based on two investigations in Pakistan; hundreds of interviews with victims, witnesses, and experts; and a review of thousands of pages of government and media documents. It concluded that the U.S. drone program had “terrorize[d] men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities.” The study indicated that drones have even returned to target rescuers after drone attacks, making “both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims.”

Fair accused the NYU/Stanford study of being “advocacy work,” arguing its findings were influenced by the human rights organizations Reprieve and the Foundation for Fundamental Rights. Reprieve has itself investigated the casualties of the drone program. It found that, in attempts to kill just 41 militants, the U.S. military killed 1,147 people in Pakistan and Yemen, as of November 2014.

According to Fair, Reprieve’s research is biased advocacy work, not scholarly research. She also accused the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), whose research the NYU/Stanford study cited, of being an advocacy organization.

For years, TBIJ has meticulously documented the casualties of drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan. It estimates between 423 and 965 Pakistani civilians have been killed by the U.S. drone program. TBIJ has also documented how U.S. drones have targeted rescuers, and even attacked funerals of people killed in drone strikes.

I reached out to the Bureau and, although it did not want to comment on the affair, it maintained it is a journalism organization, not an advocacy group. TBIJ pointed out it has done work not just on drones, but also on political corruption in Europe, British political party funding, deaths in police custody in the U.K., and more.

Numerous other studies have found the U.S. drone program in Pakistan to be wildly unpopular and counterproductive.2012 poll conducted by leading polling agency Pew found that just 17 percent of Pakistanis supported the U.S. drone program. In an article in The Atlantic, Fair and colleagues argued this Pew report was flawed. The day after the piece was published, The Atlantic’s own Conor Friedersdorf called Fair out on her sloppy methodology, accusing her of making “strained interpretations of public opinion data.” “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a better example of interventionist hubris and naivete,” Friedersdorf observed.

In the time since Fair criticized Pew’s original survey, the polling agency has done more. A 2014 Pew poll found that 66 percent of Pakistanis opposed the U.S. drone program. And another 2014 Pew study found that 67 percent of Pakistanis agreed that U.S. drone strikes “kill too many innocent people.” Only 21% of participants said drone strikes “are necessary to defend.”

Denying civilian casualties

In 2010, Fair boldly claimed that U.S. “drones are not killing innocent civilians,” wholly writing off all reports of civilian casualties. Fair rejected the research done by David Kilcullen, a former counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, and Andrew Exum, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, that said otherwise.

At the time Fair insisted that civilians had not been killed, an investigation conducted by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the New America Foundation had found that the total of civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes from 2006 to mid-2010 was “in the range of 250 to 320, or between 31 and 33 percent.”

Since then, Fair has conceded that civilians have been killed in the U.S. drone program, but she avers that their deaths are, although unfortunate, justified in the fight against extremism in Pakistan. She rebukes any study that suggests the drone program in Pakistan makes things worse or even is unpopular.

In its research, Amnesty International came to the conclusions most scholars and journalists have. Amnesty’s Pakistan researcher Mustafa Qadri explained in 2012 that, because of the drone program, “when we researched these cases, we found people were fearful of the U.S. the way they’re fearful of the Taliban.” Qadri continued, noting Pakistanis “have told us they’re taking sleeping tablets at night. They don’t know when they’re going to be targeted if they’ll be targeted, why they’ll be targeted. That really is a shocking situation.”

Fair herself admitted in her article in Lawfare that, in general, the scholarship around the U.S. drone program in Pakistan “produces mixed results, with some work showing the efficacy of leadership decapitation while other studies find that it is sometimes effective or even counterproductive.”

Pakistani-American scholar Hassan Abbas joins a long list of experts who have argued that the U.S. drone program creates more militants than it kills.

The U.N., Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have even said the Obama administration may be guilty of war crimes for its drone program. Renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky, similarly, has characterized the U.S. government’s extrajudicial assassination of militants via drone as a massive and illegal campaign of global terrorism.

Fair’s response to most critics is to accuse them of either not being specialists (e.g., Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Prize-winning Pakistani teenager who has strongly criticized the U.S. drone program and warned President Obama it was fueling terrorism) or to claim they lack adequate data to justify their point.

After hearing Fair’s rejection of the preponderance of studies on the U.S. drone program in Pakistan, Faiza Patel, co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program at New York University School of Law, asked how Fair can “claim to be the only person who knows what Pakistanis think of drones.”

The lone study

Fair says few researchers have been to Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in northwestern Pakistan, where most U.S. drone strikes take place. She argues, therefore, that they cannot know what Pakistanis there think.

I reached out to sociologist Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, who is from Pakistan’s northwestern frontier region, near FATA, and has been researching the drone war for the past decade. Ahmad teaches at the University of Stirling and has written for years about the U.S. drone program. He is also the author ofThe Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War.

“Fair claimed that opposition to drones was a luxury indulged in by elites living in Lahore or Islamabad. In FATA, she said, drones were popular. As a matter of fact, it’s only among the elites of Islamabad and Lahore that one usually finds Pakistan’s few drone defenders,” Ahmad said. “In FATA, outside a small Shia enclave, there is little support for drones.”

 
 

“This is hardly a revelation, and it is backed up by numerous opinion polls,” Ahmad added. Fair, however, argues that these opinion polls are flawed.

In her various media appearances and articles, Fair constantly points to a single investigation conducted by an Associated Press reporter by the name of Sebastian Abbot. The AP investigation was based on interviews with approximately 80 villagers at the sites of the 10 deadliest drone strikes in North Waziristan from 2011-2012.

Critics of this study point out that the sample sizes of both the strikes and the villagers are rather small. It uses a smaller sample size than that of the NYU/Stanford study, which Fair rejects. Moreover, from 2004 to February 2012, when the results of the AP investigation were released, the U.S. carried out at least 280 attacks in Pakistan’s tribal region.

Ahmad called the AP report “dubious.” It “refers to itself as a ‘study’ when all the reporter did — even according to Fair — is to dispatch a stringer into FATA to interview people,” Ahmad said. “So we have this big chain of credibility to accept before we can credit that report. First, that the reporter has no agendas — unlike the researchers she keeps accusing of — and then that the stringer has no agenda.”

“She assumes that anyone who confirms the official narrative has unimpeachable motives, but those who raise doubts, have axes to grind,” Ahmad argued.

Questionable sources

Recalling the people he has interviewed in Pakistan, Ahmad explained that, beyond “the much-reported civilian deaths, the drones also take a heavy psychological toll. They disrupt normal life and, given their penchant for mistakes, hang over every head like a lethal sword of Damocles.”

“It would only take someone insane to suggest that people living under this terror welcome drones — and, as it happens, Fair’s source for her fatuous claims is a zany fabulist,” Ahmad remarked. “For years Fair based her claims about the drones popularity on a mythical survey carried out by Farhat Taj, a graduate student residing in Norway, for something called ‘Aryana Institute.’”

Ahmad accused Taj of making up the fact that there is support for U.S. drone strikes in FATA. He also pointed out that her “institute was a letterhead organization which only maintained a web presence for a year before vanishing. It seemed to have existed only for the purpose of this report (which was duly picked up by international media). Its claims were refuted within months by a poll conducted by the New America Foundation and Terror Free Tomorrow,” Ahmad explained.

Leading publications including Reuters and The New York Times quoted Taj and the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy (AIRRA) in defense of the U.S. drone program in 2009 and 2010. The Times’ link to the alleged organization’s website AIRRA.org, however, is now and has long been dead. Internet web archive the WayBack Machine shows that the website was up in 2009, but, by 2011, it had been taken down.

At the time of the controversy, Ahmad wrote in Al Jazeera about The magical realism of body counts.” He pointed out that, despite the insistence of Fair to the contrary, it was, in fact, AIRRA’s conclusions that “can fairly be described as deeply unreliable and dubious.” Ahmad also noted that AIRRA’s findings were later even debunked by another pro-drone organization.

“Few wondered why the survey’s claims were so at odds with known public opinion in the wider region where, according to a Gallup/Al Jazeera poll conducted around the same period, only nine per cent of people showed support for the drone attacks,” Ahmad wrote at the time. “Those who did wonder, such as the journalists I spoke to in Peshawar, were universally dismissive. But the Institute had served its purpose and, typical of many NGOs, it vanished after a year.”

Despite this, Fair has quoted and continues to quote Farhat Taj in numerous articles and books. Fair draws on Tajin her 2014 book Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War. Taj is also cited in Pakistan’s Enduring Challenges, a 2015 volume edited by Fair. She again cites Taj in her 2014 Political Science Quarterly article “Pakistani Opposition to American Drone Strikes.”

Squaring the circle, Farhat Taj also quoted Fair in her own book, Taliban, and Anti-Taliban.

After the Al Jazeera debate, Fair continuously shared op-eds that were written by Farhat Taj in 2009 and 2010. Fair used the six-year-old articles expressing the opinion of just one Pakistani from FATA to imply that it is representative of the opinions of Pakistanis living in the overall region.

“With the ‘survey’ rug pulled from under her feet, Fair has moved to anecdote,” Ahmad explained. “She now claims the popularity of drones is proven by the fact that FATA denizens call them ‘ababeel,’ in reference to a Quranic story about a flight of birds that destroyed the invading armies of Abraha, the King of Abyssinia, by dropping stones on them.” Fair mentioned this alleged story in her Al Jazeera interview.

The problem with this anecdote, Ahmad contended, is that there is no documentation of it. “This story also took root only in Farhat Taj’s imagination,” he said.

Government revolving door

Critics have pointed that, aside from Fair’s outright rejection of an enormous body of research and double standards vis-à-vis the studies that have results that she likes, Fair also has a history of working with the U.S. government in a way some researchers would consider problematic.

Fair worked for almost 10 years for the RAND Corporation, a U.S.-based global think tank that scholar Chalmers Johnson has described as“a key institutional building block of the Cold War American empire” and “the premier think tank for the U.S.’s role as hegemon of the Western world.” Fair also served for three years at the U.S. government’s Institute of Peace and for several months at the U.N. Assistance Mission to Afghanistan. Since 2009, Fair has taught in Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program.

 

In the fall of 2011, Fair received a $330,000 grant from the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad Office of Public Affairs. A year later, she received another approximately $330,000 grant from the same agency, to do a “survey of Pakistanis to understand the connection between media consumption and views towards Islamist militancy in Pakistan.”

A professor who specializes in Pakistan but who asked to remain off the record expressed surprise in a message to me that these grants were so large, explaining that researchers rarely ever get so much money.

I reached out to Christine Fair, to get her side of the story. We spoke for almost 40 minutes on the phone. Fair strongly denied that U.S. government funding has ever influenced her research, and said that the majority of the grant money went to pay a Pakistani survey firm.

The results of the survey funded by the U.S. Embassy were published in an article titled “Pakistani Political Communication and Public Opinion on U.S. Drone Attacks,” co-written by Fair and two other scholars, in the September 2015 issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies. In the piece, the authors note that “Conventional wisdom holds that Pakistanis are overwhelmingly opposed to American drone strikes in their country’s tribal areas and that this opposition is driven by mass media coverage of the loss of life and property the strikes purportedly cause.” The authors reject this “conventional wisdom” and instead “contend that awareness of drone strikes will be limited because Pakistan is a poor country with low educational attainment, high rates of illiteracy and persistent infrastructure problems that limit access to mass media.”

Despite the pro-drone conclusion of the study, Fair insisted the funding from the U.S. government did not influence it. She noted that the research was further complicated because the State Department officially “can’t acknowledge” the drone program.

I heard from a source who asked to remain anonymous that Fair has done work with the CIA. Fair told me that she did some contractual work with the CIA while she was an employee at the RAND Corporation. She said she worked on two projects with the CIA, although the findings of only one were published, and it did not involve drones. “I’m afraid I can’t say more than that,” she added.

While working at the RAND Corporation, Fair said that most of her work involved Air Force and Office of the Secretary of Defense policy, but not drones.

Fair affirmed that she has nothing to hide and denied any conflicts of interest. “I’m an open book, as my C.V. indicates,” she said. And, in her research, Fair argued she often comes to “conclusions that are very different from the USG line.”

Shouting loudly

I asked Greenwald what he thought about Fair’s work with the U.S. government. “I think that what destroys her credibility are her arguments and her claims, not her funding sources,” he said. “But it is incredibly ironic that the person who runs around impugning everyone else’s ‘objectivity’ and credibility has her own research funded by the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, something she invariably forgets to mention when she’s maligning everyone else as biased.”

Fair insists that her work with the U.S. government, which she says has granted her some privileges and access to resources that other researchers do not have to their avail, has not influenced her research. She is certainly not a dogmatist, and has publicly criticized some elements of U.S. policy in Pakistan.

Yet Fair continues to steadfastly assert that the drone program in Pakistan is fundamentally different from the drone program in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. And, in order to do so, she has continuously ignored an enormous body of evidence.

Writing in the Middle East Research and Information Project, scholar Sarah Waheed characterized Fair’s work as “some of the most propagandistic writing in support of President Barack Obama’s targeted kill lists to date.”

“What Fair et al. are proposing is to educate Pakistanis about what the U.S. thinks is good for them. For these political scientists, the right kind of Pakistani possesses the right kind of knowledge: Drone strikes are for his or her own good,” Waheed wrote. “It is with U.S. intervention, through drones and propaganda, that Pakistanis can be saved from their backwardness, their tribalism, their Islamism, their nationalism — in short, themselves.”

“If there is any doubt about the morality of drone strikes,”Waheed proposes imagining “a reverse scenario: If Pakistan’s intelligence agencies were launching drone strikes into the rural Midwest with the purpose of targeting extremist militias — and in the process were killing American children with impunity — it is doubtful that most Americans would stand for it.”

Reacting to her work on drones, Ahmad ultimately summarized Fair as a “provocateur.” “It is in the unfortunate nature of our media that a person who can shout the loudest and make the most outrageous claims is seen as necessary for drawing audiences to an otherwise somnolent forum,” he said.

That Christine Fair has “become a go-to person for commentary on a subject as consequential as this,” Ahmad added, “might explain why the policy around drones is so warped.”

Ben Norton is a politics reporter and staff writer at AlterNet. You can find him on Twitter at @BenjaminNorton.

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IS THEIR ISLAM LEFT IN ISLAMABAD? SECURITY RISK TO PAKISTAN: POLITICIANS AND PROSTITUTES – PUNJAB PMLN PPP MIAN NAWAZ SHARIF & ASIF ZARDARI ENJOYED NOW EXILED ISLAMABAD CENTRAL ASIAN WOMEN

SECURITY RISK TO PAKISTAN: POLITICIANS AND PROSTITUTES OF PAKISTAN – PUNJAB PMLN PPP MIAN NAWAZ SHARIF RAFIQ ENGINEER

 

WARNING : GRAPHIC PICTURES SHOWING DEPRAVITY IN ISLAMABAD

 

Is This Nawaz Sharif & Asif Zardari’s Islam? Are We Trying

to Destroy Our Value System As a Reaction to Fundos? Pakistan is Founded on Our Identity As Muslim.India has Elected A Hindutva Fundamentalist Narendra Modi & Pakistan has “Elected” a Sex Addict Nawaz Sharif.Is This How We Denigrate Pakistani Women?

 

ISLAMABAD PROSTITUTES ARE DOING ROARING BUSINESS UNDER NAWAZ SHARIF/ZARDARI &

PMLN/PPP PATRONAGE: A HISTORICAL LOOK AT THEIR ROLE IN DESTRUCTION OF PAKISTAN

WARNING : GRAPHIC PICTURES SHOWING DEPRAVITY IN ISLAMABAD

 

DESTRUCTION OF ISLAMIC IDENTITY OF PAKISTANIS 

BY

 

NAWAZ SHARIF/ASIF ZARDARI’S/PMLN/PPP’S

 

Evil Duo of Pakistan

 

 

 

DESTRUCTION OF PAKISTAN’S VALUES 

And Lut, when he said to his people, “Do you commit an obscenity not perpetrated before you by anyone in all the worlds? You come with lust to men instead of women. You are indeed a depraved people.” (Qur’an, 7:80-81)

We rained down a rain upon them. See the final fate of the evildoers! (Qur’an, 7:84)

[Our Messengers said to Lut,] “We will bring down on the inhabitants of this city a devastating punishment from heaven because of their deviance.” We have left a Clear Sign of them behind for people who use their intellect. (Qur’an, 29:34-35)

 

 

 


 

GENERAL RAHEEL SHABBIR

&

PAKISTAN ARMY TAKE NOTICE OF SECURITY RISK TO NUCLEAR & MISSILE PROGRAM

POSED

BY

RAMPANT PROSTITUTION IN ISLAMABAD UNDER

PATRONAGE

OF

NAWAZ SHARIF & ASIF ZARDARI

PMLN & PPP MNA’S ARE CLIENTS  OF ISLAMABAD PROSTITUTES

 

 

PAKISTAN IS BEING DESTROYED FROM WITHIN

LOTS OF CENTRAL ASIA WOMEN WORK FOR FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES INCLUDING RAW

 

ISLAMABAD PROSTITUTES — — USE FACEBOOK IS — — USED TO CONNECT TO JOHNS OR CLIENTS

 

PAKISTAN THINK TANK IS ALERTING PEOPLE OF PAKISTAN ON WHAT IS GOING ON IN “ISLAM” ABAD UNDER NAWAZ SHARIF & ASIF ZARDARI’S LEADERSHIP. THE PATRONS OF THESE PROSTITUTES ARE PAKISTAN’S ELITE, MNAs,MPAs From PUNJAB, SIND, KPK, & BALOCHISTAN.

ISLAMABAD PROSTITUTES SERVING BHUTTO,YAHYA, KHAR NOW BACK IN

BUSINESS WITH

CENTRAL ASIAN AND HIRA MANDI WOMEN:

HOW THEY HARM PAKISTAN-GENERAL RANI, A HISTORICAL ROLE MODEL

 

FACEBOOK IN PAKISTAN

 

A PORTAL BEING — — USED BY PROSTITUTES:

 

Islamabad Aunties sex

 

 

ISLAMABAD PROSTITUTES SERVING BHUTTO,YAHYA, KHAR

NOW BACK IN BUSINESS WITH NEW CROP OF CENTRAL ASIAN WOMEN FOR

PMLN/PPP

MNAS:

 

 

 

 

 

CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE BY PAKISTAN MEDIA, IMRAN KHAN,& DR.QADRI ON STUDENT DRUGS AB– — USE & 300 BROTHELS IN “ISLAM” ABAD?IS THIS HYPOCRISY OR FEAR OF PMLN?

DR.TAHIR-UL-QADRI & IMRAN KHAN WHY ARE YOU SILENT ON 300 PROSTITUTION DENS UNDER “ISLAM”…ABAD MNAS PATRONAGE?

300 PROSTITUTION DENS IN ISLAMABAD: MNAS HOSTEL-A PROSTITUTES PARADISE, PEDOPHILIA,WHISKEY & BEER — — USED FREELY,SADO-MASOCHISM

PAKISTAN IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOM INVOLVED IN CENTRAL ASIAN PROSTITUTES SMUGGLING

HUGE BRIBES BEING PAID BY ISLAMABAD PIMPS & MADAMS

CENTRAL ASIAN WOMEN SUPPLIED TO ZARDARI PRESIDENCY AND PPP MNAs

References

 

 

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/foreign-prostitutes-go-to-work-as-pakistan-closes-for-ramadan-1046222.html

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2012/04/02/national/central-asian-girls-being-trafficked-to-pakistan-for-prostitution/

http://www.thenewstribe.com/2014/02/04/central-asian-women-imported-to-pakistan-for-prostitution-as-official-eyes-closed/

http://weeklypresspakistan.com/2012/04/2102

CENTRAL ASIAN GIRLS BEING TRAFFICKED TO PAKISTAN FOR PROSTITUTION

The Central Asian Prostitution Rates

WHERE IS FBR?DO ISLAMABAD MADAMS PAY TAXES?WHAT DEFENCE SECRETS THESE WOMEN FERRET OUT FROM ARMED FORCES PERSONNEL?

MAJOR NEWS CHANNELS LIKE ARY,AAJ,DUNYA HAVE A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

THE COST OF FANTASY

CIS GIRLS NOW DOMINATE THE HIGH-END ISLAMABAD SEX MARKET OFFERING SEXUAL PLEASURE AS LEISURE

SERVICES 

TIME IN HOURS 

RATE IN RUPEES/PER HEAD 

ONE TRIP (SEXUAL INTERCOURSE) 

TWO 

8,000 

TWO TRIPS 

TWO 

10,000 

TWO TRIPS 

FOUR 

15,000 

UNLIMITED TRIPS 

EIGHT OR OVERNIGHT 

25,000 

ORGY (AT LEAST ONE GIRL PER PERSON) 

EIGHT OR OVERNIGHT 

25,000 

ESCORT SERVICE (TRAVEL OUTSTATION WITH THE CLIENT, ALL EXPENSES ARE MET) 

PER DAY 

25,000 

PLAY HOSTESS AT A STAG PARTY 

FOUR HOURS 

15,000 

POSING AS NUDE MODEL FOR PHOTOGRAPHY AND SKETCHING 

ONE HOUR 

5,000 

PAYMENT IS IN ADVANCE/ALL CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED, CASH IS PREFERRED. THE WEBSITES GUARANTEE CONFIDENTIALITY. 

Human trafficking from Central Asian Countries to Pakistan is going on and highly educated girls from Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan are forced to prostitutions, the trafficking victims have said. At least six girls, trafficked from Central Asian region, say they are doctors by profession and were offered jobs in their field in Pakistan. “But we were deceived on fake jobs offer with high incentives. We were deprived of traveling documents and passports once we arrived in Pakistan so that we could not contact law enforcement agencies,” they told Online. The girls from Uzbekistan said on condition of anonymity that they were persuaded to apply to a job in the health sector of Pakistan that apparently offered high incentives, 10 times greater than a doctor earns in their home country. “But after arriving here the person who was presenting himself as a recruiting agent snatched our documents,” they said. Uzbekistan’s embassy confirmed that they had complains of human trafficking from the country and then using them as prostitute. “Yes it is an open secret, human trafficking causes several other crimes, but we remain unaware of their identities and whereabouts,” said Lutfullah, First Secretary at Uzbekistan’s embassy said. The Central Asian girls declined to give details of the person, who brought them to Pakistan fraudulently and then handed over to two females forcing them for prostitution. A girl in a guest house in the capital’s F-8/3 sector told Online, “Now, I cannot go to a police station as I have no document and they (the characters involved in the crime) have threatened us of losing life if I or five others girls, two of them from Azerbaijan, cross the limits of uncovering the network”. Three of the girls from Uzbekistan and one from Azerbaijan said that they have contacted their respective embassies to have new passports and documents but they are also delaying provision of support.When asked for his version over the issue of helping in re-issuance of passports and documents, Lutfullah said, “Yes, usually females come to the embassy in routine claiming that their passports and travelling documents were lost. Basically the passports are being issued by Uzbekistan’s Interior Ministry and not the embassy. We deal here only in travelling documents, but we need certain proofs for issuing such documents.” Online tried to contact the press attaché of the Azerbaijani embassy but he was not available to comment on the issue. Meanwhile, a senior official of the FIA who was not authorised to speak to the media said that human trafficking to Pakistan is continuing from CARs and China but some time it become hard to take a step or fully stop it due to legal complexities. “For example the immigration department is careful about issuing visas to girls from China but still human trafficking is continuing. The reason is that some Chinese workers in Pakistan show prostitutes as their wives and smuggled them here,” he further said. According to an official of FIA’s Anti Human Trafficking Cell more than 400 human traffickers involved in the heinous crime using air, land and sea routes for their activities. According to certain media reports every day 75-100 illegal immigrants are reached the country airports. There are reports that Pakistan is a destination for men, women and children from Central Asian Countries, Bangladesh and Iran who are subjected to forced labor and prostitution. According to FIA officials investigation from members of this kind of groups revealed that the three main frequent routes used by traffickers in Pakistan include Makran coast, Thar and porous border with Afghanistan, the sea routes of Karachi, Ormara, Pasni Gawadar and Jiwani are easy routes of the trafficking. Reports suggest that trafficked women are sold into brothels for $1,000 to $2,000 depending on age, beauty, race and their virginity.

CENTRAL ASIAN WOMEN “IMPORTED” TO PAKISTAN FOR PROSTITUTION AS OFFICIAL EYES CLOSED

HT

ISLAMABAD: Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has busted a four-member gang involved in trafficking of foreign women for sex trade and has arrested a member, sources said.

The Racket was headed by a former assistant director immigration and son of a former legislator from Faisalabad.

According to details, two women from Central Asian countries had arrived at Islamabad Airport from Turkish Airline on 30th January. They were cleared from the airport’s International lounge without due immigration procedure with alleged support of FIA officials.

Out of two, one of the lady passed through lounge reserved for special personalities and the other one got out of airport from common lounge.

It was astonishing that other agencies personnel were providing protocol to these ladies, seemingly as per designs of gang.

When contacted, FIA Islamabad Zone director Captain (Retd) Zafar Iqbal Awan confirmed the report and said they sent anti-smuggling personnel to the airport after the information.

Initial investigation stated that gang comprises of an ex assistant director immigration, Bahram Baloch, and Mustafa, who tells himself as a secret agency personnel.

Whereas trafficking women were used as prostitutes in Islamabad. The gang had allegedly paid Rs. 1 lac to immigration personnel to skip immigration procedure.

Bahram Balooch resides in I-8 Area of the capital.

On a query, Director FIA informed that names of women and others had been kept secret to arrest other members of these gang.

On the directions of the FIA director, anti-smuggling cell has registered case against the gang member.

 

THREAT TO PAKISTAN ARMED FORCES & NUCLEAR DEFENCE SECRETS

PAKISTAN’S LEGISLATORS ARE INTO DRUGS AND PROSTITUTION AS DISCLOSED BY JAMSHED DASTI, ONE OF THE FEW HONEST POLITICIANS IN PAKISTAN’S NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
PROSTITUTES ARE FOUND EARLY MORNING LEAVING ROOMS ALLOCATED TO MNAs.
SOME MNAs ARE PEDOPHILES AND AB– — USE YOUNG BOYS & GIRLS in MNA HOSTELS
RIGHT UNDER THE NOSE OF ISLAMABAD POLICE.
THEY ARE PMLN UNTOUCHABLES. POLICE’S HANDS ARE TIED. IF ARRESTED, THEY ARE RELEASED IN HOURS, AFTER CALLS ARE RECEIVED FROM PRIME MINISTERS SECRETARY
THE SAME POLITICIANS ARE ALSO ON COCAINE, HEROIN, ECSTASY & LSD
PAKISTAN IS BEING LOOTED & ENJOYED FOR PERSONAL CARNAL PLEASURE BY NAWAZ SHARIF’S PMLN POLITICIANS
F,G,& H BLOCKS IN ISLAMABAD ARE INFESTED WITH HO– — USES OF PROSTITUTION. WOMEN FROM CENTRAL ASIA, UZBEKISTAN, TAJIKISTAN,TURKMENISTAN, KAZAKHISTAN,
THAILAND, PHILIPINES, MYANMAR ARE FOUND UNDER PAKISTANI PIMPS & MADAMS. 
BILLIONS OF DOLLARS EARMARKED FOR DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS IN EACH MNAs JURISDICTION ARE SPENT ON ALCOHOL & WOMEN
 
THIS IS QUAID-I-AZAM PAKISTAN UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF KIM BARKER FAME SEXUAL HARASSER NAWAZ SHARIF, WHOSE WIFE HAS GROWN TOO FAT TO SERVICE HIS SEXUAL ADDICTION.
FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS ARE USING THESE PROSTITUTES TO GATHER INTELLIGENCE ON PAKISTAN’S  STRATEGIC & NUCLEAR SITES
 

300 PROSTITUTION PLACES FOUND IN ISLAMABAD

December 23, 2013 in News insightPakistan

 
Prostitution
Islamabad: It is a very shameful news for all the Pakistani Nation who calls themselves as the believer of Islam and proud to have the name tag of Islamic Republic of Pakistan should lay down their heads because 300 Prostitution places are found in the Federal Capital Islamabad. All the high commands designated persons hold their offices in the capital but how come it is possible that they are unknown of this fact. According to the report published in the newspaper some Police officers have react to this news immediately and raided on the mentioned places in the various areas of Islamabad. The police have also arrest many persons and took them in their custody. The Islamabad police is continuously working on this and it is also conducting out the raids at constant interval on the mentioned places. While this is very shameful that all these types or centers are operating in Islamabad. The allegedly mention places where these centers found are G-11, G-10, Shahzad Town, Ghauri Town, Alipur, Burma Town, Pakistan town and others.

– See more at: http://www.desitvonline.org/300-prostitution-places-found-in-islamabad/#sthash.OKNM01tT.dpuf

 
 

At 15, Shiny was the brightest student and scored straight A’s in her O-Level Examinations. Her parents were busy doctors minting a fortune and wanted her to score straight A’s in A-Levels to join a medical college in the UK. Pressures on her to perform were very high and parental care nonexistent. Browsing on the internet, she found names of anti-sleeping pills to stay awake. She used them, but fell into a depression. Within a year through friends on Facebook, she progressed to charas, heroin injections and amphetamines. Her parents, too busy with their routine, attributed dark circles around her eyes and loss of hair to over work, but never bothered to check her arms for punctures. She fell back in class and died of drug overdose before she was 17. Adnan’s mother is a widow with two sons and a daughter. She has worked hard to educate her two elder children who are now employed aboard with hefty salaries. Five years ago, they moved to Baharia Town. With no supervision, Adnan got hooked to sheesha, hash and ecstasy. He started becoming violent and would often injure himself or cut his wrists. He was expelled from the college. He reacted by bringing gangsters outside the schools and colleges where his friends studied and involved in fights with firearms. He has abandoned education and operates a gang of drug addicts, who are involved in fights outside schools and colleges. The mother, who once defended him stoutly, is now helpless. For Adnan, it is a matter of time. Meena is a foreign educated business developer. Working in a BPO, she got hooked on to drugs through young executives working at night at call centres. Out of job due to drug abuse, she now heads a gang of young addicts and peddles for the elites of Islamabad and Bharia in heroin and crack. Two of her friends have died of overdose.These are alarming events and tip of the iceberg. It is a devil that haunts the urban elite education centres and call centres where youngsters are vulnerable and the nouveaux riches, who have no time for their children.

 

A decade back, hash and heroin was deemed to be a poor man’s refuge due to the prohibitive cost of imported liquor. However, the trends are now changing. Hash, heroin, amphetamines, hallucinogens, ecstasy and Ketamine compounds have proliferated into the urban elites of Pakistan. The route of entry is invariably private education institutions and BPOs operating night shift of youngsters, who attend school or college at day. Invariably, it always begins with efforts to keep awake and ends in tragedy. Outside the premises of these institutions, peddlers and criminals operate with impunity to befriend new customers. Rave parties, dancing events and attractive satanic captions splash pages on the social media. Sheesha centres in urban malls and posh localities located in farm houses are the high points of the nouveaux riches addicts where ecstasy, syringes and crack are a token of status. Once hooked there is no return. Pakistan’s drug statistics are shocking. According to one report, over eight million Pakistanis are using drugs. The numbers are likely to touch 15 million in the next few years. Over 57 percent amongst these use heroin. According to another report amongst the women, 47 percent are college or university educated professionals. Nearly half of all urban addicts are school/college going students studying in private institutions and live in posh upcoming housings. According to DG Narcotics, private educational institutions are more vulnerable than the government educational institutions to attract the students towards drug addiction, mainly because the elites can spend more. He also expressed the opinion that addiction rate was proportional to tuition rates, where both parents were working and where parents don’t have enough time for their children. The drug of choice for the rich urban elites is not heroin but crack, a derivative of cocaine traded in dollars and euros.Private education institutions from schools to universities have failed to check this rising menace within and outside their bounds. Most hostels of boys and girls also have dens from where this trade is run. In hostels, students experiment with chemicals to manufacture stimulants and hallucinogens in which Ephedrine and Ketamine are the basic drugs of choice. Recently, a hostel in Islamabad was found to be both a drug and prostitution den. In street corners, Garda, a lethal mix of tobacco, charas and stimulants in readymade cigarette rolls is available to anyone across the counters; usually the high school students. In Pakistan’s urban centres, no one seems willing to take on the challenge. The district and municipal administrations despite tremendous civic powers at their disposal prefer looking the other way. Action by police is usually to extort more money from the peddlers and addicts. Private educational institutions in their desire to earn money prefer to keep their eyes closed, even to galas and dinners held in their own premises. Academicians lack the administrative fist and the leader’s prowess to deter, cajole or convince students. Nobody cares to inspect the hostel premises or why students have dropped semesters. Tutorial and social care groups are nonexistent. Visiting faculties consider having their hands washed of all responsibility and accountability. Cases instead of being reported to police and ANF are hushed up by disciplinary committees. There is a total absence of any dissuasive or punitive policy. The time for holding ceremonial seminars on drug abuse as a compulsive expenditure should now be over. It is time to act. Detecting and preventing drug abuse is a social, civic and collective responsibility and not confined to police and ANF. Urban administrators, cantonment boards, institutional administrations and civil society groups need to wake up to this challenge and evolve aggressive action plans to combat this menace before we lose more youngsters to this social evil.

The writer is a retired officer of Pakistan Army and a political economist.     Email: [email protected]

IMAG0258 (2)
 

Islamabad: The country’s capital Islamabad, has become a hub of drug addicts. Saach.TV, after receiving complaints from the people, visited several areas and found shocking incidents that involve also the premises of a fast-food chain. The areas also include parking lots. Youth of Islamabad often come around here to enjoy their evenings and conduct social gatherings. However, this recreation now involves drug use, besides sale and purchase. A visit by the scribe revealed the amount of drug consumption in the parking lot as well as the adjacent park near the restaurant.Unfortunately, there are no checks and balances, though there are check posts of police round these corners. There is no police present inside the premises as the restaurant has its own security outside to inspect the vehicles for any security-threatening object. Such activities are also taking part in different areas of Islamabad including prominent universities. A student of Quaid-e-Azam University disclosed to the scribe that weed is very much open in university premises and there is no check from the police. An ex-addict told the scribe that the weed is easily available in Islamabad. He said, “Mostly people take drugs to relax themselves. The culture has been imported from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and most of the weed comes from that place.” Talking about the suppliers of weed, he said, “The suppliers of weed are easily available at different places and they work on a small scale. Main handlers of the suppliers operate from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.” Giving his expert opinion on the matter, Dr. Wahab Yusufzai, a Consultant Psychiatrist and Assistant Professor at Shifa College of Medicine told Saach.TV that it is very unfortunate that this epidemic has spread in our society. He praised the role of media in identifying the issue and urged the government to run an awareness campaign. He strictly criticized the increasing culture of Sheesha among the youth and termed it as a catalyst to take youth at the verge of drugs. Talking about the technicalities and solutions to eradicate this menace from the society, he emphasized, “Police has to take measure in controlling the supply and trafficking being done. Stopping the supply will surely decrease the addiction.” He also asked the parents and universities to play their part in monitoring the youth. He said, “There should be a strong liaison among the parents and teachers and they should keep a watchful eye over the children. Parents must scrutinize the behaviour of children and also put a full stop on the increasing habit of youth to stay awake at night and sleep all day.” Saach.TV tried to contact the Inspector General of Police, Islamabad but he was unavailable. His Public Relations Officer (PRO) said, “Islamabad Police has been cracking down on these elements daily and it is evident from their daily press releases.”

– See more at: http://www.saach.tv/2012/05/18/islamabad-an-easy-drug-place/#sthash.2VrHmAUd.dpuf

 

Who is this Pakistani Spy?

Posted on January 18, 2010 by alaiwah

 

About two years ago, a British military attaché in Islamabad was dismissed after he “lost the confidence of the British High Commission” following what London called his “inappropriate relationship” with a Pakistani female ‘spy’.

Brigadier Andrew Durcan, 56, was recalled in January 2007.

All hell broke loose after Aroosa Alam of an Islamabad daily, Pakistan Observer, ventured with what she claimed was an expose on how the drama involving the British military attache and the female spy played out.

Alam pointed to a certain research fellow, who happens to work for the ISS as the spy in question. This infuriated Dr Shireen Mazari, the ISS boss, who then went to town with a rejoinder that attempted to cut Alam down to size, but which in turn, drew the fury of the offended daily. Credibility was at stake, after all.

It is no secret that in diplomatic missions, some officials serve time for work other than their stated job-description. It is quite probable that Brigadier Durcan had a few skeletons in his cupboard, which is, in part explained by his rather secretive dismissal following a “loss of confidence” at the High Commission. Islamabad’s statement that it was never informed of the decision is, again, a pointer.

British Ministry of Defence, which seconds senior officers to the Foreign Office as military attaches in embassies around the world, confirmed the dismissal but declined to discuss the disgraced official’s future postings or whereabouts.

“The High Commissioner in Islamabad considered his platonic friendship with a Pakistani national inappropriate and, as a result, lost confidence in him. He has been investigated and cleared over potential breaches of security,” is what a statement from the ministry said following the revelation.

The married Durcan is a former commander of the Gordon Highlanders, 52nd Lowland Brigade and deputy inspector-general of the Territorial Army. He was nicknamed “the tartan barrel” by officers under his command in Scotland because of his girth.

But to most Pakistanis, it is the alleged involvement of their compatriot, a female at that, which is the most intriguing element of the soap opera.

Aroosa Alam, the daredevil reporter, decided to put them out of their misery with this expose:

Careful and thorough investigation and a number of background interviews with military diplomats close to Brigadier Durcan revealed that a research fellow from Institute of Strategic Studies is the lady behind the whole affair. “Holding dual nationality, one Pakistani and other British, Ms M K, has been associated with the Institute for many years. She deals with a number of defence-related issues and has written many research papers particularly on conflict resolution, non-proliferation, and EU. “She frequently travelled between England and Pakistan. In Pakistan, she sought many interviews with various high-level defence officials even in Pakistani military hierarchy. She came under suspicion by M16 undercovers in Islamabad mission when she sought interviews with defence officials of the High Commission to be used in her research papers. “According to sources, she would ask some very pointed and pertinent questions. But when she went back she never used these interviews and wrote nothing on these issues. Intelligence authorities in the High Commission were then alarmed and started suspecting that these questions were asked by her for not her own research papers but for the consumption of some one else. This was some time last fall. The girl and the Brigadier were monitored. Phones were bugged. Even the room and the house of the British Military Attache were bugged. “Some sources claimed that some filming was also done to prepare incriminating evidence. Both were also spotted intimately together at some social functions. Sources claimed that the Brigadier also travelled to England many times to spend time with her and his engagements in England were also watched and closely monitored. “A team arrived from London in early January this year after Christmas holidays and the Brigadier was confronted for the first time about the status of his relations with the young lady. He was asked to report back to London where, according to sources, he appeared before a three-member military tribunal along with the internal inquiry report, and evidence based on phonic conversations and perhaps with some pictures”.

Aroosa Alam drew a swift riposte from Mazari, who called a press conference the very next day, refuting the allegations point-by-point. She said although the research fellow mentioned in Alam’s report did work for ISS, all references to her subordinate’s name – right from the work specifics to foreign travel and dangerous liaisons with the disgraced British official – were factually wrong.

Mazari was clinical in her assertion and rounded off the rearguard by demanding an apology from both the reporter and her paper, failing which she threatened to seek legal redress.

However, her charge that the paper was undermining national interests and becoming a tool for vested interests, drew a scathing rejoinder from the paper, which made no secret of its displeasure by stating that it did not need a sermon from someone under the microscope.

In fact, it went on to suggest that it had done a favour to Mazari by publishing what it did since that “put an end to wild guesses being made in the city about some of the known media-related female academics, including Dr Mazari herself, for being the lady in question”.

The prime time battle was apparently, won by Mazari, when the paper finally, issued a front-paged “clarification” by its editor, regretting the “inadvertent” nomination of the ‘spy’ (MK) in the story, which it denied was true.

It has now emerged that the alleged ‘spy’ is, indeed, not the one named in Alam’s controversial story but someone else. However, some contents of her story, apparently, do hold ground.

For instance, the incriminating evidence one got to see clearly belies London’s claim that its official did not have the kind of relations with the ‘spy’ that a certain Bill Clinton allegedly had with the most known intern in history.

TRAFFICKED|BY DEMAND

Palwasha*, 18-year old Afghani girl, has been a commercial sex-worker since she was 14. A year later, she was forced to marry her rapist, who was also addicted to drugs. Then she was taken to Iran and forced into commercial sex work to make money for her husband. “He used to beat me up very badly every day besides forcing me to make money for him,” she was quoted as saying in the AIHRC report. “After a year or so he sold me to an Iranian drug seller for a huge amount of money before my family found out about it in Afghanistan and my mother came to Iran to rescue me.”

The cause of the prevailing international trafficking on all continents, stems from the demand. Like others trades, be it arm-dealing, drug trafficking, the human trafficking is also an illicit market and is controlled by the basic economic theories of supply and demand. As is common knowledge in the field of economics, once the demand lowers so does the supply.

Unfortunately, no one wants to go anywhere near the sensitive, controversial topic of “demand.” There are very few international organizations, government programs or NGOs that even touch on the topic of demand in human trafficking and the organizations that do focus on demand tend to center their efforts on abolishing sex trafficking. Amongst the handful of organizations that are unanimously in agreement to eradicate the demand and are concentrating their efforts for countering the demand side of human-sex-trafficking are the STOP DEMAND, THE Sage Project and Global Centurion. 

It’s essential to truly change the mindset of the slave buyer to eradicate modern-day slavery and end the demand for slaves. And to end demand, involved people  (men and women both) need to be held accountable for their participation in buying women and children for sex.

Understanding patterns of organized criminal networks are also important to consider. The situational context is vital to also develop awareness of the recruitment practices. Many girls like Palwasha” and others fall into the hands of human-traffickers due to their vulnerable conditions such as poverty, illiteracy and impoverished house-holds.

Their recruitment usually takes place by “agents” or middle-persons (more than 65% are women) that lure their victims through girls through force (drugging/kidnapping); or coercion via promises of fake opportunities or boyfriends who trick young girls in to running away with them.

In starkly poor villages of Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries, the women agents visit houses and speak face-to-face with parents, elderly establishing a trust within a  community. This helps in getting significant large number of children, sometimes an extortion fee is also taken from the victim’s family to make think that their children will get better rewards after reaching their destinations or this amount will cover their basic needs.

Being a woman, it disgusts me to observe that more than often “women” are working as trust agents that engage to establish themselves quickly within communities.

At Islamabad, in the previous years, the dark side of diplomacy has also come to the surface. When media broke out the story that consular staff at the Switzerland Embassy was involved in a human trafficking racket. Switzerland immediately replaced all its embassy and consular staff in Pakistan. It also shut down its visa-section at Islamabad, that followed a Pakistani investigation into the illegal Swiss visas that has led to a number of arrests.

Switzerland also launched visa fraud investigations in countries  Oman, Peru, Russia, Nigeria, Serbia and Eritrea.  These issues came to the surface after local media started highlighting the plight of Pakistani visa applicants complaining about the various forms of harassment by Swiss embassy officials.

A few weeks ago, Pakistan Embassy in Libya sent the Foreign Ministry  an official letter that alleged that Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Immigration department in Islamabad, is involved in human trafficking. The embassy provided sustainable evidence to back its claims that travel documents were being used for opening bogus vacancies in fake companies, and added that the officials at FIA Immigration department in Islamabad are charging between Rs25,000-50,000 (150-350 EURO) per person to smuggle them abroad.

The letter added that hundreds of Pakistanis contact the embassy every day saying that they have no money to eat and appeal to be sent back to Pakistan. This is why, the letter urged, a ban should be imposed immediately on all people traveling to Libya and action should be taken against FIA officials involved in the fraud. Further more, the report claims that thousands of  Pakistanis sent illegally to various places across the world are dwelling in jails, fallen into hands of trafficking networks and being meted out inhumanly treatment. It adds that countless have already died in the dire conditions.

On one-hand the human-flesh trade continues, but inside Pakistan, the prominent internationally recognized campaigner of human rights, Ansar Burnecontinues to serve are a whistle-blower.

Burney is a man with a mission. The mission that is not so impossible includes crimes against humanity, degradation, child abuse, sex-slavery, human trafficking and other more subtle forms of human and civil rights violations without any discrimination or affiliation.

He has been working on issues of sexual slavery in Pakistan, the Middle East and Africa for two decades now. During this time, with assistance from the various governments and authorities, through his organization the Ansar Burney Trust, he has secured the release of thousands of persons from false imprisonment and slavery across the world; these have included young girls sold in the sex trade and young children used for modern-day slavery.

In 2005, the Ansar Burney Trust was involved in the release and repatriation of 13,967 victims(under-age) from the Middle East alone. A shocking case came to light, when Burney rescued a group of under-age trafficked girls sold into prostitution in Middle Eastern countries.

During the investigations, it was revealed that the greater demand of “under-age virgin” girls continues to rise in the Middle East.  The traffickers used the horrible method of blood capsules on the girls’ bodies in order to “prove”  their virginity.

In an interview with local media, Burney denounced this inhumane practice  and warned that “use of such blood packed in capsules used by human traffickers to show that girls are virgin, may contain viruses that can spread AIDS or other contagious diseases.”

The issue of children both boys and girls being trafficked into sexual slavery highlights other dimensions within the demand chain. As young boys too fall prey to such traffickers for sexual exploitation. A a non-governmental organization Modar (working in Tajikistan) says said there was a growing trend in the abduction and sale of Tajik boys for sexual exploitation abroad.  It reports that s groups in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Pakistan and other countries were prepared to pay as much as $70 000 for a Tajik boy between the ages of 10 and 12.

Unfortunately, human trafficking is one of the longest established, yet most neglected problems in all continents. Palwasha’s* story is a tip on the iceberg of the many cases of human trafficking which happen, literally under our noses, every day.

She may be lucky to be rescued but the scars inflicted upon her soul may not perish. Others many not be teeny-weeny bit lucky as her to get rescued at all.

Reference

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HOW THEY HARM PAKISTAN-GENERAL RANI, A HISTORICAL MODEL 

 

George Santayana said:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
—Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner’s, 1905, p. 284

THIS IS NAWAZ SHARIF’S ISLAMABAD

NIGHT OF THE GENERAL

YOUNG GENERAL RANI

 

 

Once among the country’s most influential individuals, General Rani is now just a faded page in the country’s history books.

The woman was a phenomenon. Easily the most influential figure during Pakistan’s second military regime, with the slightest gesture of her bejewelled hand she could guarantee employment, ensure promotions and bring about unwelcome transfers. Yet, interestingly, few even know her real name: Akleem Akhtar. General Rani she was, and remains to all but an intimate few.
There are enough reasons for the lady’s ascension to local legend status. In her glory days she seemed omnipotent and was brazen about her exploits. And now, even while suffering from breast cancer that has led to metastasis in the liver and kidney, bedridden and in semi-seclusion, she remains spirited and outspoken.
Yet, doing a story on her was probably the most difficult assignment I have undertaken. For one thing, everyone I was certain was acquainted with her, was reluctant to even own up to the fact that they knew her. So, for starters, I made a call to her daughter, Aroosa Alam, the defence journalist for the Pakistan Observer and the news coordinator for the Middle East Broadcasting Company, and pop star Fakhre Alam’s mother.
Aroosa nipped all efforts at contact with her mother in the bud, claiming that not only was General Rani far too unwell to entertain visitors, but also, her brothers were completely against their mother appearing in the press. “My mother has been hurt sufficiently by the media already; we don’t want her private life exploited any further,” stated a stern Aroosa.
A call to Naureen and Arshad Sami, Adnan Sami Khan’s parents, proved equally unsuccessful. Although General Rani is Naureen’s maternal aunt, she politely but firmly denied even knowing the lady. There was a similar response from Zil-e-Huma, whose mother Madame Nur Jehan’s friendship with General Rani was legion. Huma completely denied any knowledge of the woman.

A journalist working for the Jang group, Maqsood Butt nearly had an apoplexy when I mentioned the story I was working on. While in the past Maqsood Butt had written extensively on this topic and is said to have close ties with the family, he has for several years, refrained from even bringing up her name in an article.
“I promised her that I would never talk about her or her family again,” he stated nervously and refused to help me in any way.
Clearly, the woman I was seeking out was no ordinary woman. As I kept running into a blind alley and became increasingly despondent, General Rani’s lawyers, S. M. Zafar and Ijaz Batalvi, Mustafa Khar, and a few journalists and government officials who wish to remain anonymous, appeared like beacons and lit my way.
A sneak visit was arranged to General Rani’s house and thereupon begins this story.
The house General Rani resides in is rather small, with little more than a handkerchief-sized lawn in front, and the main door opening into a virtually non-existent hall that leads straight to her room. There was an air of neglect about the house; the garden was unkempt and the floor unswept. General Rani was lying in bed. My first impression was one of shock. Having visualised an elegant, elderly woman, I was instead confronted by a dark, overweight woman. Her hair had obviously suffered due to heavy doses of chemotherapy, and the loss of hair accentuated the pock-marks on her face. But though visibly ill, she was in good spirits and happy to entertain visitors – a commodity I suspect, is a rare treat nowadays.
General Rani hails from a village in Gujarat. Her father was a zamindar and the family was reportedly well-to-do. Those who knew her family describe their house as one of the bigger mansions in the area, with a number of servants running around to the residents’ bidding.
From the outset, Akleem was an independent spirit. She was a tomboy, fond of outdoor sports and hunting. And though she did not even complete her matric, her sharp intelligence more than compensated for her lack of education.
At a tender age she was married to a police officer many times her senior. Though the marriage lasted for some time and she bore six children, General Rani was never happy. Her husband was a traditionalist and believed that a wife’s primary duty was to serve her husband. A woman as strong and independent as she found this hard to digest, and squabbles were common between the two. The sham their marriage was eventually reduced to, collapsed one day – right on Murree’s Mall Road.
One summer, when the family was vacationing in Murree, a burqa-clad Rani and her husband went for a stroll on the Mall. As was customary for him, he walked a step or two behind her so as to keep an eye on her. Suddenly there was a gust of wind – “a lovely breeze” says she, and quite spontaneously Rani lifted the naqab covering her face to allow the breeze to caress her cheeks.
Her husband immediately tapped her with his walking stick to reprimand her. Enraged and insulted, she threw caution to the wind and flung her naqab to the ground, and her abaya into a cracking fire. She then turned to face her husband with a defiant gleam in her eyes.
She explains her reaction in these words: “I just felt I had had enough. The anger and frustration had been building up inside me for many months, but that day, it just all came oozing out. I wanted to tear my husband’s muffler into bits, scratch his face, pull his hair out, and do all sorts of damage to him. The only thing that stopped me were the people on the Mall.”
Though this incident marked the end of her marriage, the official divorce process (if there was one) took place later. Most sources agree that Rani was only married once, but one of her closest friend states that there was a second marriage, much later in her life and of an extremely short duration. Whatever the truth of that marriage, the dramatic end of her first proved a turning point in her life and transformed Rani irrevocably. She began to thrive on her independence and her life philosophy evolved into a specific ambition. As she puts it, “I was determined to beat men at their own game. Since my husband was in the police, I had been observing men in positions of power throughout my married life and I had realised that all men in positions of power needed a vent and the vent they require the most is a bedmate provided through a reliable agency. The higher a man’s position, the greater his demand.”
In one interview, Rani stated: “I knew that dumb, pretty girls who come with no strings attached are a universal failing of men in power. After my marriage collapsed and I had to find the means to support myself and my children, I decided to become the provider of such girls to men in need.”
In yet another conversation, she talked about the understanding she gained of the workings of the government by listening to her husband’s complaints. “I realised that in this country everything worked on mutual favours and the profession that I had chosen for myself entitled me to these favours.”
This outspokenness notwithstanding, Rani maintains she personally never allowed herself to be used or even thought of as any man’s keep. She contends she maintained her dignity and saw herself as a sexless mother figure. She says she was always the woman behind the scenes, there to run the show and mop up the mess.
The gods were obviously smiling on her, because soon after she adopted this profession, the man who was soon to run the show took a shine to her. She describes her first meeting with Yahya Khan. “At that time Agha Jani was posted at Kharian and I was living in Gujarat. We met by chance at a party in Pindi club. Though I would often frequent such parties, I never joined in the drinking and dancing. Rather, I preferred sitting some distance away from the party and usually found a seat near the men’s room, well aware of the fact that the more they drank the more visits they would have to make to the toilet and hence past me.
“Agha Jani was in full swing at this party. He was completely drunk, and was continually traipsing back and forth from the men’s room. During one of these visits, he saw me and took a fancy to me. I remember asking about him and after we were formally introduced, I invited him to Gujarat.”
Thereafter Yahya Khan began making frequent journeys from Kharian to Gujarat. Somewhere along the way she earned the title of General Rani and the name stuck. While speculation about the exact nature of her relationship with Yahya Khan rages – they were said to be friends, lovers, shared a sibling relationship or one of demand and supply at various times through the course of their relationship – the general consensus among Rani’s more intimate circle is that they never had a physical relationship. Various explanations are put forth to explain this. “Yahya never desired her,” says a friend. “She was a woman of principles and from day one, she made it clear to him what her limits were,” states another.
Nonetheless, after he became the martial law adminstrator, Rani became a cornerstone in his life. Yahya’s weaknesses were drink and women and Rani masterfully catered to both. Among the women she introduced him to were film actress Taranna – film actress Andleeb’s mother – Madame Nur Jehan and Nael Kamal. She relates how Yahya’s fascination with Nur Jehan began.
“One night Agha Jani came to visit me and was somewhat agitated. The moment he entered, he inquired if I had heard the song “cheeche da chala” from the film Dhee Rani. I smiled and stated that I had no time to listen to songs. So, he called the military secretary and ordered him to have a copy of the song delivered to my house at once. It was two o’ clock in the morning and the MS had to specially have an audio shop opened up in order to obtain the album. But the command was obeyed and within an hour, Agha Jani was blissfully listening to the song.
“Observing him I smiled and stated that since he seemed to enjoy the song so immensely, I would bring the singer to his house on his birthday. This greatly pleased him and so the very next day, I took a flight to Lahore. In those days, a suite at the Intercontinental Hotel was permanently reserved for me and so from the airport, I went directly to the hotel. From there I called Nur Jehan and asked her to come and meet me. Till now, I had never been formally introduced to her; I just knew of her, as she knew of me. Well, Nur Jehan came, and we talked, and the next week she arrived in Islamabad to dance and sing for General Yahya Khan.”
Madame Nur Jehan’s relationship with General Yahya Khan subsequently came under great scrutiny. At first, Madame persistently denied that she was on friendly terms with the general, but when objectionable pictures of both of them were printed, she resorted to another defence and officially stated that General Rani, had time and, again tried to get her involved with the general. In response to this, Rani laughed and commented that Madame was hardly a suckling infant who could be coerced into doing what others wanted her to do. The Rani-Nur Jehan tussle was played up by the press, until eventually, some time before the latter’s death, the two made up. Following is an extract from an interview General Rani gave after Madame’s death.
Q: Why did you introduce Madame Nur Jehan to General Yahya Khan?
A: Some tax inspectors were bugging Madame Nur Jehan and the poor woman was in great distress. She asked me to help her out and I introduced her to Agha Jani.
Q: How would you define your relationship with Nur Jehan?
A: She was just like my sister and I often called her baji.
Q: How would you describe her character?
A: She was an exceptionally brave and confident woman, who brought up her children singlehandedly. The only flaw she had was her greed for money.
Q: It is said that Madame tried to drive a wedge between you and Yahya Khan?
A: I don’t want to say anything on this issue. If Rani catered to Agha Jani’s every whim, there is no question that she was royally compensated. During Yahya Khan’s time, General Rani prospered way beyond her wildest expectations. There are endless reports of how she would use her ‘special relationship’ with Yahya to fill her coffers. She would ask for a plot of land or a house in return for a favour and those desperate for a job or promotion would readily fulfill her demands. During this time, politicians were also eager to win her approval and among the many who curried her favour were Mustafa Khar and Z. A. Bhutto.
General Rani describes her relationship with these two men: “Both Mustafa Khar and Z. A. Bhutto would come and sit at my house for hours on end, begging me to introduce them to the General. Mustafa Khar was particularly fond of listening to the poems I used to write. In fact if you compare Yahya Khan to these two, I would say that I was closer to Bhutto and Khar and arranged more parties for them than I did for Agha Jani.”
It was a closeness that was not to endure. As soon as Bhutto came to power, General Rani was put under house arrest and her telephone connection was cancelled. Her crime in the words of an eminent lawyer was that, “she knew too much.”
Thus began General Rani’s downfall. Once the issue of house arrest was resolved (courtesy S. M. Zafar) and her subsequent jail terms ended (the most recent for drug-trafficking), General Rani never really reverted to her former glory. By now the money that had so freely flowed into her hands had also freely flowed out.
Financially wrecked, socially ostracised, dependent only on the kindness of a few whose affections for her have endured, General Rani lives largely in the past – in the memory of days of wine and roses.

 

 

FOREIGN PROSTITUTES GO TO WORK AS PAKISTAN CLOSES FOR RAMADAN

 

 

IT IS RAMADAN in Islamabad: the restaurants are deserted all day, the mosques are crammed with the devout, and the populace are going about their tasks with a weary, hangdog, hungry air.

At the Restaurant Baiga in a market on the southwestern fringe of this planned and gridded capital of Pakistan, the sign says “Closed for Ramadan”. But there are lights on behind the lace curtains upstairs, and if you brave the smell of stale curry you will find one outpost of a quite un- Islamic import that is doing unseasonably good business.

Catarina, Vera and Sonia (not their real names) have not shut up shop for the holy month. And although their colleagues have been arrested, held in squalid jails for months on end and then booted out, these girls are staying put. They are sure that prostitution has a rosy future in this stronghold of Islamic orthodoxy.

Catarina, wearing a black negligee, curls up in the rumpled bed under the harsh fluorescent light in the large, bare room and smokes a Marlboro; Vera, thin and frizzy-haired, disappears into the shower; Sonia, much older and beefy, with the charm of an Aeroflot stewardess, the minder and madam in this small establishment, screws up her mean mouth and prepares to talk numbers.

Catarina, who has a fair complexion, jet-black hair, large eyes and a prominent nose – a winning combination in these parts – says that she is a Turk from Ankara, and a Muslim. But it soon emerges that all three are Russians. They may be Orthodox Christians, too, but although my visit coincided with the Orthodox Church’s Christmas Day, there were no signs of festivity.

The prostitutes from Russia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and other parts of central Asia first came to the Pakistani public’s attention last October, when police raided several plush guesthouses and arrested more than a dozen women.

They were held in jail for two months on grounds of overstaying their visas. But their places were quickly taken by arrivals from places in the Gulf such as Abu Dhabi. The mobile phones were handed on to the next contingent like batons, with numbers unchanged.

The women have caused a stir in Islamabad, partly because it likes to be thought of as a centre of Islamic purity, but also because, despite being the nation’s capital, it is about the size of Tunbridge Wells, and not much goes on. “Islamabad is small,” said one of the policemen involved in the operation. “Everybody noticed these women and started talking about them.”

The prostitutes are rotated in a circuit that includes several Gulf states, and until recently their Pakistani base was Karachi. With its heterogeneous population, Pakistan’s biggest city and only port is more their natural habitat.

Russians and other Central Asians first trickled into Karachi under the protection of Soviet mafia and corrupt local police in the late 1980s, to buy second-hand Western-made clothes in bulk and lug them back to Russia. Later, the girls arrived under the same protection, and business flourished.

But in the past year Karachi has become too dangerous because of fighting between terrorists. Killings are a daily occurrence, many accompanied by gruesome mutilations. Three Americans travelling in a car were shot dead along with their Pakistani driver. One foreign prostitute was also murdered. It was then that the exodus of the girls began.

Until the arrests and expulsions, they were doing very nicely in Islamabad. And now the immediate fuss has died down, they are doing very nicely again. Above the Restaurant Baiga, Sonia demanded Rs10,000 (about pounds 140) for a night with Catarina and after extended haggling the price came down only to Rs7,000 before the Independent on Sunday made the traditional excuses and left.

Across town at the Diplomat Inn (next door to a United Nations agency), the price demanded for a night in the arms of a “Turkish 16-year-old” – actually another Russian – is Rs8,000. For a young Pakistani girl, on the other hand, the rate is only Rs6,000.

The women are doing well because the classical Central Asian look – fair skin, strong nose, glossy black hair – corresponds to the Pakistani ideal of female beauty. Pakistani men appear unmoved by the delicate, small noses and almond eyes of mongoloid peoples of Central Asia, such as the Uzbeks. The Uzbeks are happy for it to stay that way. “Our country has a strong religious background,” said a spokesman for the Uzbek embassy, “and we do not indulge in such things.”

 

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Pakistan To Sell 5-7 JF-17 Thunder In 2014

 

Pakistan To Sell 5-7 JF-17 Thunder In 2014

OSIMINT (16JUL11) Pakistan Aeronautical Complex Kamra

According to a report in The Nation, Pakistan has decided to export the Chinese co-developed aircraft, the JF-17 Thunder by sometime next year.

The export of the aircraft is part of greater push to increase defense exports including Pakistani ordnance and Pakistani-built helicopters, Minister of Defense for Production Rana Tanveer said while briefing the press.

Various media outlets have suggested that talks are already under way with Sri Lanka, Kuwait, Qatar, and other friendly countries.

The PAC JF-17 Thunder, or CAC FC-1 Xiaolong, is a light-weight, single engine, multi-role combat aircraft developed by the Pakistani Air Force, the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex and the Chengdu Aircraft Industries Corporation of China.

Pakistan has reportedly manufactured between 42-45 aircraft thus far, though sources vary in their count.

However, Pakistan may have more of these aircraft than is often reported. China announced it would export 50 improved JF-17 with upgraded electronics after the death of OBL.

While no news regarding their delivery has been made public, an additional dispersal area with 8 new aircraft shelters was constructed between 2011 and 2012 at PAF Peshawar, an airfield where JF-17 are actively deployed.

JF-17_Parked_Armed

JF-17 Thunder fighters unveiled in Dubai Airshow

Date : 14-11-2011
JF-17 Thunder fighters unveiled in Dubai Airshow
DUBAI, Nov 13 : Pakistan Air Force is participating in Dubai Air  Show-2011, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister of UAE, Sheikh Muhammad Bin Rashid Al-Makhtum, on Sunday. Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman, Chief of the Air Staff, Pakistan Air Force also attended the inaugural ceremony along with a large number of delegations from different countries including Air Chiefs of a number of Air Forces, said a press release. Later, the Air Chief also addressed the press conference regarding the participation of PAF in Air show. JF-17 Thunder, K-8 and Super Mashak aircraft of Pakistan Air Force along with the PAF contingent comprising PAF pilots and technicians are participating in Dubai Air Show.

The impressive JF-17 (Thunder) jointly co-developed (by PAF & CATIC), and co-produced by PAC (Pakistan Aeronautical Complex) and CATIC (China Aero-technology Import Export Corporation) has been put up for static as well as aerial display in the Air Show.

Pakistan Air Force has inducted JF-17 in its fleet and with the co-production in full swing the aircraft are rolling out from Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC) Kamra.
The JF-17 Programme has been a success story since its inception in 1998. Developmental work on the aircraft commenced in the year-1999 and detailed design was finalized in September, 2001.
After flight testing, a Small Batch of 08 aircraft was produced in year-2007 and finally serial co-production of the aircraft started in Pakistan in the Year-2009. So far PAF’s two Squadrons have been equipped with JF-17s,while the third is planned to be raised by beginning next year.

JF-17 made its debut at Farnborough Air Show in 2010, when two JF-17s flew all the way from Pakistan to Farnborough, UK.  At Farnborough, the aircraft attracted intense focus of visitors and international media.  
Four months later in November 10, three JF-17s flew over to China to participate in Zhuhai Air Show, where the aircraft made its first ever aerobatics display. In June 11, three JF-17s participated in aerobatics and static display in 100-years Celebrations of Turkish Air Force.
At present, JF-17 aircraft stands prominent in its own class of fighters. In the present environment, when defence budgets are shrinking and Air Forces face difficulties in affording modern combat aircraft, JF-17 offers a highly cost effective solution with cutting edge capabilities.
In the shape of JF-17 aircraft, Pakistan Aeronautical Complex and CATIC offer a cost- effective, highly potent, multi-role combat aircraft which is capable of meeting the challenges of present and future Air Power employment.
The JF-17 Thunder is an all weather, multi-role, light combat aircraft that has the potential to be the main stay & work horse of any Air Force.  The design of JF-17 aircraft is based on modern concepts of aerodynamics.
The aircraft is equipped with a digital fly-by-wire flight control system that gives it the agility in all regimes of the operational flight envelope. The JF-17 has a complete glass cockpit, excellent man-machine interface and modern self-protection suite, which enhance combat potential and survivability of the aircraft.  
The JF-17 is equipped with fourth generation avionics systems, wide range of conventional and smart weapons, long range glide bombs, Beyond Visual Range & short range Air-to-Air missiles, Anti-Ship missile and Air-to-Surface missiles.  
The aircraft requires remarkably short lengths of runway for take-off & landing, which offers flexibility of aircraft operations at short air strips.
Shortly, the aircraft will also have Air-to-Air refuelling capability, which will further enhance its combat potential and employment options.

29 October 2013 

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