US urges Pak to accept Indian aid; hardliners blame India, US for floods

WASHINGTON: The Obama administration has urged Pakistan to accept India's aid offer even as hardline elements in the flood-ravaged country have begun a vicious campaign to blame India, the United States, and Afghanistan for the calamity, a charge Washington has simply dismissed.

Amid mounting international attention and concern for Pakistan's future in the face of the tragedy, US officials on Wednesday called on Islamabad to abjure politics and accept India's help, including an initial $ 5 million offer it has sat on saying it is under consideration, even as it is begging for international aid.

"I think the priority is to use offers of assistance to help the Pakistani people, so we would encourage Government of Pakistan to accept that (Indian) offer," Frank Ruggiero, Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan said on Wednesday. Separately, state department spokesman P J Crowley said, "In terms of responding to a disaster, politics should play no role. You have a country (India) that's willing to help (Pakistan), and...we expect that Pakistan will accept."

Their remarks came amid a rash of reports in the Pakistani media blaming India, principally, for the massive floods, purportedly because New Delhi had deliberately diverted waters from dams in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, and from the ones it "controlled in Afghanistan”. Some reports also charged that US was manipulating weather patterns over Pakistan. US officials dismissed the idea with incredulity.

"So it was the United States and India that conspired to have the monsoons come to Pakistan? I don't find that credible," Crowley said in response to a question about such reports in sections of the Pakistani media considered close to hard-line elements in its intelligence agencies and jihadists.

The inflammatory reports in a country that's been dubbed "Paranoidistan" surfaced even as Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, in an interview to ABC, endorsed a purported ISI report last week that home-grown extremism and not India constituted a primary security threat to the country.

The new line, which if genuine would reverse 63 years of regarding India as the primary threat, is ostensibly aimed at extracting more aid from the US and the international community, which have repeatedly advised Islamabad to give up its India fixation, and have been reluctant to open their purse strings because of, among other things, Pakistan's hardline policies towards India.

Pakistan's recalibration, amid unabated floods and fears of extremists getting ahead of the government in providing relief, is already starting to show results. The US has increased its aid to nearly $100 million, the World Bank has sanctioned a loan of $ 900 million, and various western and Gulf/Arab countries have also bumped up their initial modest contribution to help out Pakistan from being completely washed up.

On Thursday (Friday IST), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead the move to galvanize world attention and ramped up aid by delivering remarks at a plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly on the humanitarian situation resulting from the floods in Pakistan. She is expected to announce a further increase in US commitment.

Pakistan Must Reject India’s ‘Aid’ Offer

Pointing out India decision to release excess water into the Satluj and Beas rivers which has contributed to widespread flooding in Pakistan, an editorial in a Pakistani paper Sunday called on the government to reject the “hypocritical” Indian offer of aid.

“The offer of aid is akin is throwing salt on our wounds,” the editorial in the Urdu daily Nawa-i-Waqt said.
“Bharat (India) has released water into the Satluj and the Beas and has also offered relief material worth $50 lakh,” it said, referring to Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna Friday speaking to his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi and offering $5 million for flood victims in Pakistan.

“India on one hand is carrying out an indiscriminate massacre in occupied Kashmir and had the other day killed nine defenceless Kashmiris. It released water in the Satluj and Beas to exacerbate the flood havoc in Pakistan and and the other hand, threw salt on our wounds by offering us assistance of $50 lakh,” the editorial said.

It called on the Pakistani government to decline, with thanks, the Indian offer of aid because “India’s attitude was hypocritical”.

“It (India) has built dams to secure itself, and is releasing water into Pakistan’s rivers as part of its design to devastate Pakistan, using water as a weapon. Sometimes, it uses the water to flood Pakistan and sometimes, it restricts the flow to transform Pakistan into a parched desert as part of its conspiracy.”

The editorial said the Indian actions in Kashmir and through water showed “it was in effect waging a war against Pakistan which was causing the country extreme damage, while in an effort to hoodwink the world, India had expressed the offer for help.”

The Pakistani government should be extremely cautious of India’s “deceit and trickery”, it said, adding there were only two ways to counter India – “construction of major dams itself, and sustained efforts to free the occupied Kashmiri Valeey, where a genocide of Kashmiri Muslims was underway.”

“If the Pakistani government falters on either of these two objectives, India will succeed in its unholy designs of dismembering Pakistan,” the editorial said.

Pakistan is grappling with its worst ever floods that have left over 1,600 people dead and affected over 14 million people. A media report put the total economic loss due to the floods at around Rs.250 billion ($2.92 billion).

Unprecedented floods or India’s water war?

THE United Nations says 3.5 million children in Pakistan are at risk from waterborne diseases, warning of a “second wave of death” from the country’s devastating floods. U.N. humanitarian spokesman Maurizio Giuliano said Monday as many as six million people in Pakistan face the risk of contracting diarrhea, dysentery and other illnesses if donors do not provide more aid following the country’s devastating floods. The World Health Organization’s representative in Pakistan, Guido Sabatinelli, says a lack of clean water and unavailability of medication is a “deadly combination” for those already in poor living conditions. The U.N. has launched an appeal for $460 million, but charities say the response has been sluggish, with only about 35 percent of the goal being met so far. Three weeks of monsoon rains have triggered Pakistan’s worst flooding, with an estimated 1,600 people killed and 20 million affected in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh provinces. On Monday, authorities said a new wave of flooding was likely along the Indus River in Punjab and Sindh. The Daily Mail finds that the death and destruction following a natural disaster of unprecedented torrential rains has man-made imprints on it. The sudden swelling of the rivers continues even after the rains have stopped or their intensity has reduced. The surge of water is not due to the melting of glaciers alone.

It has been brought about that the Sarobi Dam on the River Kabul close to the Pak-Afghan border, is being maintained by India. The sudden flow of water in the River Kabul could have only occurred if Afghanistan had been hit by the same level of torrential rains as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. However, meteorological data indicates that neither was there unprecedented rainfall in Afghanistan this summer, nor any glacial melting contributing to the flooding in River Kabul. That leaves only one option available, that the flood gates of Sarobi Dam were deliberately opened to cause extreme flooding in River Kabul bringing devastation in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but none in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, carefully synchronizing the Kabul River’s flooding, the over a dozen dams built by India in Indian occupied Kashmir, release their water, flooding Chenab and Indus, causing maximum damage in Punjab and Sindh. This sinister plan is one regarding which The Daily Mail has been warning since ages, but the Indus Water Commission and concerned authorities have paid no heed. The Indian manipulation of Kabul River along with Chenab and Indus has done its damage, although as the UN warns, the worst is not over, while more floods are expected, the onslaught of epidemic and waterborne diseases is going to wreak greater havoc. For India, it is a dream come true. On the one hand, death and human misery has left the flood stricken people shell shocked, on the other, the communication infrastructure is totally devastated. The standing crops have been ruined and there is now an acute fear of famine. India bet on Pakistani leader’s callousness, corruption and selfish attitudes to act as a catalyst to catapult the devastation.

True to their salt, the Pakistani leadership obliged willingly. Foreign aid is not forthcoming because of trust deficit. Whatever trickled through is being gobbled up by the government functionaries, with little or none reaching the hungry masses. Reports are now emerging that politicians, holding to their seats in power, ensured that the flood waters were diverted away from their lands. Mature and responsible leaders like Former Prime Minister Mir Zafar Ullah Khan Jamali alleged that some political elements broke the flood safety walls in order to save their agricultural lands from floods. He said that everyone is worried about safeguarding the US airbase in Jacobabad but nobody is concerned about the citizens of Pakistan. Thus India’s macabre strategy of “water wars” has met with unprecedented success and has been abetted by Pakistani leaders.
http://dailymailnews.com/0810/18/Editorial_Column/DMEditorial.php

Where is this all Water coming from..

There is a very sinister aspect to the floods in Pakistan that no one is discussing in the media. While there were rains and flooding in some rivers of the country, the size, scale and the gush of water suddenly pumped into these rivers defies logic. This is especially true considering that rains have slowed down since the breakout of the floods on 29 July.

It is two weeks since the rains stopped but water continues to rise in the rivers Indus and Chenab. There was no flooding in India or in Afghanistan. Never before have rivers in all the provinces of Pakistan flooded at the same time without a similar act affecting the upstream, the source. While some parts of the country, like some areas of Khyber Pakhtun Khwa saw flooding in 1929, the simultaneous floods covering all of Pakistan and in all of the rivers flowing in from Afghanistan and Indian-occupied Kashmir is something truly unprecedented.

The speed and quantity of the gushing water and the short span of time in which it picked momentum preclude the possibility that melting glaciers are solely responsible for the floods.

There is no evidence that suggests that glaciers decided to melt at a faster speed just in time for the heavy monsoon rains.

There is every likelihood that what we are seeing today is that the Indians and the US-backed regime in Kabul are using water as a weapon for the first time to deluge Pakistan. There is no doubt about it.

From an initial look at the data, it seems that a natural spill of heavy rain was exploited by releasing water reservoirs in Indian-occupied Kashmir and on river Kabul. Let’s remember that the Met Office in Pakistan had already forecast heavy rains almost ten days before the first downpour. Different people received this news in different ways. Pakistani politicians, inept and incompetent as usual, slept over it. The anti-Pakistan terrorists based on Afghan soil and supported by several countries used this information to exacerbate terror against Pakistani citizens in the southwestern province of Balochistan, knowing that the State machinery would be distracted.

Interestingly, even when it comes to water, it is Indians who are sitting to the left and right of Pakistan’s borders and controlling it`s flow. The dam on Kabul river is handled by Indian personnel, while tens of dams choke Pakistan from the side of occupied Kashmir.

RIVER KABUL

In February, the Obama administration organized a meeting for senior government officials in Kabul and Islamabad who handle agricultural issues. The meeting was strangely held in Doha, Qatar, on US request. The agenda was to force the Pakistanis to grant agricultural concessions to the US-propped government in Kabul, without Pakistan getting anything in return.

But in the meeting, Mr. Zahoor Malik, a senior Pakistani bureaucrat leading the Pakistani delegation, raised the issue of an Indian company with close links to the Indian government building a dam on river Kabul near the border with Pakistan. It is not clear what the Americans and Karzai’s officials had to say about this. There is a track record, however, that the incumbent pro-US government in Islamabad has often swept such issues under the carpet in order not to jeopardize Washington’s support for the Zardari government.

All major rivers flowing into Pakistan including the Indus are blocked by Indian-built dams.

US and British officials often defend India and dismiss Pakistani concerns as ‘conspiracy theories.’ Some Pakistani analysts accuse elements within US government and intelligence of using Afghan soil against Pakistan.

But imagine this: India, a country that faces a debilitating conflict over Kashmir with Pakistan, goes to build tens of small and medium sized dams on all the rivers flowing down to Pakistan, and everything is supposed to work out smoothly? Not possible, even theoretically. But luckily Indian actions on the ground more than strengthen Pakistani concerns.

After the first wave of floods, the other rivers were flowing normally and no extraordinary rains followed. But suddenly Chenab and Indus Rivers overflowed and the flow picked up speed, turning into a flood. India’s Baghliar Dam in occupied Kashmir opened its flood gates to cause a tragedy in the plains of Pakistan [Sindh and Punjab]. While Sarobi Dam – the Indian-maintained dam near Kabul – controls the flow of Kabul River entering Pakistan. The same thing happened here. Monsoons did not lash Afghanistan and there was no flooding there of any magnitude. But again, strangely, water flowing from river Kabul into Pakistan dramatically picked up speed as water levels increased turning into a flood. The speed with which this transformation occurred could have happened only because of one of two reasons: massive rains in Afghanistan or because Sarobi Dam released large amounts of water over a sustainable period of time.

PAKISTANI POLITICIANS

ANP, a US-allied party with strong links to Kabul and New Delhi and ruling the Pakistani northwestern province, has always opposed the construction of the Kalabagh Dam which would have saved thousands of lives and property had it been there. The ANP has argued that building the dam would drown the city of Nowshehra. Ironically, ANP’s lie was exposed when not only Nowshehra but also Charsadda drowned without the Kalabagh Dam being there and thanks to the artificial floods created in Kabul River by ANP’s Indian and Afghan patrons.

[Earlier this year, Washington and New Delhi came to ANP’s defense on the Kalabagh Dam project by lobbying the World Bank to refuse Islamabad’s request for funding the dam. The Bank obliged and said it can’t fund the project due to Indian objections.]

OUR RESPONSE

How Pakistan responds to this latest Indian water war and aggression is something that remains to be seen. What is confirmed is that the incumbent pro-US government in Islamabad is useless when it comes to defending the Pakistani interest. To be fair to this government, this unusual situation in Islamabad started under former President Musharraf and continues with the current ‘elected’ government with amazing continuity. This water aggression has proved more lethal than the TTP [so-called Pakistani Taliban] and the BLA insurgencies, both of which were started from the Afghan springboard to punish Pakistan.

Pakistan has taken another serious hit, more from its corrupt rulers than external enemies. These Indian Dams now need to be destroyed. India has declared war on us by exploiting and orchestrating these floods.

PS Gog vs Maggog?

Well, I have a different view on that than most. I figure that Persia has to be knocked down several pegs, then Iraq becomes a major economic center, and finally Turkey (you know, that country where the Roman Empire lasted a thousand years longer than in the West) will establish an new Ottoman Empire including a "reformed" Islam. With appropriate tweaks, Islam could easily morph into something that shares a great deal with those who claim to be Christian but who are really socialist humanists. Once that all happens, you have a single religion that can even humanist Jews can say is a good thing and that some charismatic figure could arise within and claim to be the "final prophet" here to unite Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. So, another forty or fifty years maybe?

Every time I use some spare time to read through the latest theories various people have I keep thinking they're off the mark that that what still needs to fall in place will take about thirty-five or forty years to work out. That's even based on the somewhat questionable assumption that the burbbling about the end times is even clearly understood yet. After all, fifty years ago no one was pointing to Islam, they were busy making up crap about Europe and insisting that the Soviet Union was without a doubt the beast.

You may not recall it, but there was an awful lot of stuff written (including the most popular work although the author tries to weasel out of it) that "discovered" it would without a doubt be 1988 when it all came to a head. Basically, I think we'll know about Gog and Magog when we're supposed to and most of the effort spent thinking and worrying about it would be better used to do something useful like broadcasting the truth to the islamic world and elsewhere 24/7 in ways that it actually reaches the average folks.

Regards

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