INLAND / ISLAND Pakistani villagers take shelter on a dry patch in the flood-hit Badin district of Sindh province on September 14. Pakistan called on the world to speed up relief efforts after torrential rains exacerbated major floods, killing 270 people and making another 200,000 homeless in the south of the country. (Photo: Asif Hassan / AFP-Getty via MSNBC.com)
A recent wave of violence in Karachi, Pakistan has left roughly 90 people dead in the last four days. Shops burn and gunfire echoes around neighborhoods, leaving the residents of Pakistan’s largest city stranded, short on supplies, and afraid to leave their homes. This violence is largely the result of political and ethnic tensions playing out violently in Pakistan’s financial centre. Analyst Imtiaz Gul told Reuters: “This can be summed up in five words – a turf war between political parties. This is a turf war between the MQM, and ANP and the PPP, for territory – for political space in this big city.”
The MQM are the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and they have an intense rivalry with the Awami National Party (ANP), although both deny responsibility for the persistent gunfire, grenade-throwing and killling that have ravaged the city. The PPP stands for the Pakistan People’s Party.
There are, of course, two things to be angry about here. The first is that anywhere from 85 to more than 90 people have been murdered in the past four days and the streets of Karachi are on fire. The second is that the Western media is too preoccupied with Rupert Murdoch to report on this. At my most recent check, the word Pakistan doesn’t even appear on the home page of the New York Times while the word Murdoch is on there twice. How many more people have to die and how many more days does this have to go on for there to be actual coverage of this?
Read more at Dawn, Reuters, and the Express Tribune (which is live-blogging).
Photo: Protesters burn things in the middle of a street in western Karachi. Credit: AFP
The cellphone of Osama bin Laden’s trusted courier, which was recovered in the raid that killed both men in Pakistan last month, contained contacts to a militant group that is a longtime asset of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, senior American officials who have been briefed on the findings say.
The discovery indicates that Bin Laden used the group, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, as part of his support network inside the country, the officials and others said. But it also raised tantalizing questions about whether the group and others like it helped shelter and support Bin Laden on behalf of Pakistan’s spy agency, given that it had mentored Harakat and allowed it to operate in Pakistan for at least 20 years, the officials and analysts said.
In tracing the calls on the cellphone, American analysts have determined that Harakat commanders had called Pakistani intelligence officials, the senior American officials said. One said they had met. The officials added that the contacts were not necessarily about Bin Laden and his protection and that there was no “smoking gun” showing that Pakistan’s spy agency had protected Bin Laden.
But the cellphone numbers provide one of the most intriguing leads yet in the hunt for the answer to an urgent and vexing question for Washington: How was it that Bin Laden was able to live comfortably for years in Abbottabad, a town dominated by the Pakistani military and only a three-hour drive from Islamabad, the capital?
“It’s a serious lead,” said one American official, who has been briefed in broad terms on the cellphone analysis. “It’s an avenue we’re investigating.”
The revelation also provides a potentially critical piece of the puzzle about Bin Laden’s secret odyssey after he slipped away from American forces in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan nearly 10 years ago. It may help answer how and why Bin Laden or his protectors chose Abbottabad, where he was killed in a raid by a Navy Seals team on May 2.
The New York Times, “Seized Cellphone Offers Clues to bin Laden’s Pakistani Links.”
Ugh.
Also: for those of you wondering why we need newspapers?
Stories like this are why we need newspapers.
(via inothernews)
(via inothernews)
