Azeem Daultana, he will be so missed, his lovely smile was so disarmig and he was so soft spoken, full of caring and gentleness and one of God’s finer Creations of humanity. He was my son’s very close friend like brothers from childhood, they were, a sad loss of a very fine person; RIP, Azeem Bayta.

www.azeemdaultana.com

This article was reproduced without editing for the benefit of readers, as received by email from circulation

Air Marshal Ayaz A Khan (R)

The disused Bhandari airstrip 200 miles south of Quetta in Balochistan was gifted to Shiekh Zahid Al-Nahyan the ruler of Abu Dhabi by the government of Pakistan in the 1990?s. The airstrip called Shamsi was developed by Emirates Shieks into a jet capable airfield , and was used for falcon hunting of rare Bustards in Balochistan.

It was leased out to US Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 by UAE with President Musharraf?s approval, and was developed by the United States Air Force as a military air base in great secrecy for bombing of Afghanistan. CIA occupation of the base clearly had his approval. General Pervez Musharraf as President should have comprehended the long time strategic implications of handing over Shamsi air base to Washington!

Development of of Shamsi for clandestine operations was kept a highly guarded secret, and Chief Minister Magsi and even Corps Commander were not allowed to visit it, when it was being developed for Drone operations and construction of the required infrastructure for this purpose was taking place. There is no evidence on record that the UAE government handed over Shamsi to the CIA for Drone operations. I was general Musharraf who handed over Shamsi and allowed US Air Force operations against Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants from some other PAF bases including the Shahbaz Air Base.

The PPP led government continued Musharraf?s policies till recently, and allowed CIA to launch Predator drones from Shamsi Air Base for the destruction of terrorist hideouts in FATA. Islamabad?s denials that the government was unaware of CIA drone operations from Shamsi till very recently, may be justified by being kept in the dark, by ally America, which has refused to share anti-terrorist intelligence with Pakistan.

The United States spent billions of dollars on the development of Shamsi air base. The USAF developed Bandari airstrip into a jet capable airfield with long runways for handling bombers and heavy transport aircraft. Shami has taxiways, tarmacs and refueling facilities for sustained bomber, fighter and drone operations. By 2006 Predator drones began to be launched against Taliban hideouts and selected targets in the tribal belt. Shamsi has remained a busy base for anti-terrorist operations in FATA.

Few weeks back Washington post reported that three months ago the US had stopped air and drone strikes from Shamsi base. This was soon after the Raymond Davis dispute exploded into a full fledged fiasco. The Post reported that US-CIA personnel and the Predator drones remain at Shamsi air base till further decision. Recently Google Earth showed three predator drones parked on the Shamsi tarmac, next to a hangar.

During the last six years Predator drones launched from Shamsi Air Base killed hundreds of militants and in collateral damage greater number of civilian men women and children have been killed and injured. It is shocking that Pakistani soil is being used for launching American missiles for bombing Pakistani villages and homes in FATA and killing Pakistani citizens along with foreign militants. The drones cannot distinguish Pakistani citizens from Al-Qaeda terrorists. Thus drone attacks kill peaceful citizens along with the terrorists. According to some defence specialists the collateral damage in Pakistan is minimal as compared to Afghanistan.

Ahmad Noorani
Sunday, November 27, 2011

ISLAMABAD: Shamsi Airbase was the major operational centre for US drones that was given to UAE which sublet it to American forces to launch attacks on targets in the tribal areas.

In the in camera session of the parliament the top military authorities had admitted that Shamsi Airbase was given to UAE by the government and now it turns out that it was in the use of the US and has been asked to be shut down. There were also reports that the notorious Blackwater people also remained stationed at Shamsi.

Shamsi Airbase was first given to the US by the Musharraf government under secret agreements after the 9/11 attacks. Some of media outlets had also published pictures of US drones parked at the base in 2004-05.
When the Musharraf regime was asked by the media to explain the pictures, US and Pakistani spokesmen had explained that the drones parked were used only for landing at the base, and not in the attacks. It was a ridiculous explanation as landings could not happen unless the planes took off with missiles to fire at Pakistani targets.

Some other airbases were also given to US forces immediately after the 9/11 when US forces attacked Afghanistan and a Nato website had then revealed, by mistake, that some 59,000 sorties took off from Pakistani bases to attack the Taliban government in Afghanistan in three months and hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs were dropped by aircraft which used Pakistani soil.

The cutting off of Nato supply through Pakistan will hit the major sources of furnishing all kind of goods ranging from oil to food, weapons to fuel for Nato forces fighting against Afghans.
The supplies are shipped to the Karachi port from where these are loaded on big Nato tankers and transported to Afghanistan through roads of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Pakistan had also blocked Nato supplies in October 2010 after a Nato helicopter strike, which had killed three soldiers then. However, after some calls from Washington and reported apologies both military and civilian leadership had reopened the supply line in a few days.

Most of Nato supplies mostly comprising big tankers and trucks are also sitting targets of anti-US fighters inside Pakistan.

(A Satire written by Jean Pierre Marches – Nom de plume)

Recently I have been in the news again. I thought it appropriate that
I gave a response, but my decency requires that I should not hit below
the belt as most have done in the past.

I am a democratically elected leader of the Great Islamic Republic of
Pakistan. Just as a reminder to my critics that 498 members of the
Senate out of a total of 500 voted for me as the President. They were
the representatives of the people of Pakistan. It is a great
compliment to me and rather reluctantly, I accepted the challenge to
serve my great nation.

For those who want to change the rules of the game now will have to
wait till the next elections when my term is over.

I have suffered at the hand of various governments in the past. My
loving wife Benazir Bhutto was murdered by the political enemies. I
was  incarcerated in the jail for 8 long years. I was ill and suffered
from innumerable diseases as I had very little medical attention. The
scar left from that period still haunts me. I have nightmares and
sometimes I find myself floating from Islamabad to Manhattan in USA or
to an unknown Chateau in Normandy, France. These are terrible visions
and I hope and pray to the Almighty that no one should suffer such
ignominy.

   
_

ISLAMABAD: Who says the billions looted by our corrupt rulers are not coming back into the country? Ironically they are, but only after being cleansed and sanitised by being brought back through official legal avenues while a clueless State Bank looks on helplessly.

An investigation by The News revealed that a substantial portion of the foreign remittances of $23.8 billion, during the almost four-year rule of the PPP led govt, is actually a major source of re-routing of dirty money earned through corruption and tax evasion by the political mafia and its business associates. To cite one instance, while there have been no mentionable increases in salaries or the number of Pakistani ex-pats working in the UAE, there are instances where the remittances have surged three-fold from Abu Dhabi, a favourite fund parking choice of our dirty elite.

The foreign remittances stood at $6.4 billion in 2007-08 and went up to $7.6 billion in 2008-09. The remittances witnessed another jump and touched $8.6 in 2009-10 and surged to $11.2 billion in the last financial year ending on June 30, 2011. This rising trend continued in the first quarter (July-Sept) period of the current fiscal year as it stood at $3.297 billion during this period. The figures of the Bureau of Immigration showed that the number of employed workers in the Gulf region did not witness any unprecedented increase but the received remittances jumped up three times in the case of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, the European Union and maintained the same level from the USA despite the fact that the developed economies such as the USA and EU were facing an acute financial and debt crisis.

The economists describe this funds-movement phenomenon as money laundering, pure and simple, and the easiest method of turning black illegal wealth into legal white money. No questions asked, no taxes paid. And the method is one of the cheapest money laundering tools as well. The entire exercise of taking dirty funds out illegally and bringing them back clean and legal costs a mere 2 percent of the cost of the entire value of the involved sums.

As put by one economic crime investigator, “This is what we call the Dutch disease that needs to be investigated because if it evaporated it could cause us to plunge into a default on our external account.” This is not a baseless apprehension as proven in the wake of emerging realities. Workers’ remittances showed a declining trend by a massive 32% to $890 million in September 2011 compared to $1,310 million in August 2011.

“One should not see development on the remittances front for the first quarter as it is a worrisome indicator if closely reviewed by the economic managers. In terms of remittances, Pakistan can be compared with the Philippines as its growth is almost flat with authorities expecting a 4.5 percent jump keeping in view the economic outlook of major economies such as the USA, United Kingdom, European countries and the Gulf region. But there is a complete mismatch in the case of Pakistan as the country is witnessing a phenomenal  increase by 25 percent without having any economic justifications,” a top officer of the government’s economic team told The News here on Saturday.

Former economic advisor to the government of Pakistan, Dr Ashfaque Hassan Khan who is currently serving as Dean NUST Business School (NBS) opined that there was a mysterious growth in remittances which was not consistent with the level of economic activities in countries from where the bulk of expatriate Pakistanis were sending their money. For example, he said, the US has been the single largest source of remittances and its economy is near to recession as millions of people have lost their jobs. He asked how Pakistanis are still maintaining the same level of remittances as had been the case during the good times in the USA.

He said that another major source of remittances was the European countries, which had been suffering a severe debt crisis for the last two years and economic growth there was almost flat. How one can justify that Pakistanis can afford to continue sending money despite experiencing a standstill economic growth in the EU countries, he asked.

Dr Ashfaque said that another major source is the Middle East and remittances from there witnessed a three-fold increase in recent years. Neither the wages nor the number of overseas employees increased in this period so there is no justification for the sudden jump, he said, arguing, “What is happening on remittances is an unknown phenomenon,” and lamented that so far no credible response had come from the SBP.–

by Khurshid Anwer

I cannot recall an instance when one pillar of the state had made such scathing observations about another pillar of state. To wit, the remarks of the chief justice of the supreme court about the executive.

But the executive is unmoved, neither defending the charges, nor going for course correction. ‘Business as usual’ appears to be the strategy. ‘Catch us if you can’, the PM and his boss seem to be saying to the chief justice. Literally thumbing their nose at him.

The CJ calls the “Affair of the probes chaotic”. This is putting it mildly. The term chaotic fails to describe the NICL probe.

As the PIA boss said to the reporter, “We are the PPP government, we don’t fire, we only hire”. The message coming through here is, “We are the PPP government, we are friends of friends, we don’t allow our friends to be held accountable”. We are a law unto ourselves.

Talking about the officials involved in the RPP scams, he has said, “The court could not shut its eyes to corruption”. As the PPP government so conveniently does.

He said FIA is showing no progress on the cases sent to it. And if the court orders action against the relevant officer he is promoted to high rank next day. While an honest and capable officer is posted to Gilgit.

Those who should be probed are being appointed secretaries. All the inquiries sent by the court are pending.

Every institution in the country is infested with corruption and there is not even a single institution which could be trusted.

Circumstances have come to a point where a file from the minister’s table reaches to secretary’s table in five months.

The CJ needs to fall back on folk wisdom:

‘Latun ke bhoot batun se nahi mante’

A few contempt-of-court notice would be in order.

Air Commodore (retd) Sajad Haider pays tribute to an unsung Christian warrior of the 1965 war

Wing crews in front of a B-57, with leader Bill Latif in centre



Come September, much exaggeration is fed to the ignorant nation to distract it from the chaos, corruption and bloodshed that is today’s Pakistan. Each September 7th, the Defense Services are shareholders in this bizarre state’s corporate extravaganza by the celebration of Defense Day to commemorate the 1965 war as a victory.

Retired veterans are put up by ignorant TV anchors and much unsubstantiated rhetoric unfolds about shooting down the enemy like partridges. The official history of the 1965 War by the Pakistan Air Force is in fact biased and evasive of the real happenings.

In truth, celebrating the war as a victory was a ruse, which was cleverly devised by Ayub Khan’s state propaganda machine to masquerade the debilitating failure of leadership.

However, no one should underestimate the gallantry of the soldiers of the army and the pilots of the PAF who halted the juggernaut of the Indian invasion comprising two army corps supported by their air force (four times the size of the PAF), against Sialkot, Lahore and Kasur in the North.

It is in this context that I would like to share the story of one of those many real heroes whose legacy as a fearless warrior in war and a thorough professional in peacetime is a legend amongst the men in blue of the vintage PAF. Air Commodore Nazir (Bill) Latif had brilliant eyes, which mirrored his soul and a massive, generous heart. I can still picture him today standing in his uniform, his exceptional pilots’ golden wing on the right breast pocket and the highest individual gallantry award in the row of distinction medals on his left chest.

Every single day he would call me at 11 am with the words: "How are you today; is everything alright? It will be alright, don’t worry"

Bill Latif was born to a Christian family – his father Professor Latif was the renowned psychology professor at the Forman Christian College in early 1950s.

Towards the end of his life, Bill Latif never spoke about his legendary achievements or tribulations. It was unthinkable for this non-controversial warrior to publicly boast to the media about his exemplary career as a consummate professional. That is why few in this nation would have heard about this gallant son of the soil.

Tragically, this legend glided gently, silently into the sunset on the 1st day of July, 2011 (I believe that is the date because no one from the PAF or the retired officers who knew about his death had the compassion to inform me about his sudden death, knowing how very close I was to him as he braved through the last three distressing years).

Sabres in the 1971 war

Both of the founding Commanders-in-Chiefs of the PAF, Air Marshals Asghar Khan and Nur Khan, had held Bill Latif in the highest professional esteem and helped him during his recent desolation when he was hit by a stray bullet, losing one eye, followed by a stroke and prostate cancer. They were not informed of Bill’s demise.

Bill Latif had been alone in the world, after having lost his wife years ago. I was one of his closest colleagues during his difficult years but I never heard a whisper of complaint through his most tenuous moments. Every single day he would call me at 11 am with the words: "How are you today; is everything alright? It will be alright, don’t worry.

" How could one respond to a friend so positive even as he braved a lost eye, a stroke following the extraction of the bullet, and prostate cancer? "Sir, I am on top of the world" was my only reply, even if it was far from reality.

He was the true legend for whom the Hilal-e-Jurat was created, but instead it went to losers in high quarters

Bill Latif was undoubtedly one of the best fighter pilots, bomber pilots and commanders during peace and in both the wars. He was an exceptional case, the only one to my knowledge who was kicked up even as a cadet to a higher batch because he was so good from the start.

He commanded several fighter squadrons, all the fighter wings of the PAF; twice commanded the B-57 Bomber wing, especially when he replaced two mediocre predecessors to perk up the poor performance of the bombers. Bill Latif also commanded the prestigious Fighter Leader’s School (Top Gun School) where I was his flight commander.

I had the honour to serve under him again as squadron commander of No.19 Squadron when he was the Commander of the largest No. 32 Fighter wing at Mauripur (Masroor Base). Later I served with him when he commanded the famous No. 33 Tactical wing at Sargodha, and finally when he was base commander Peshawar, where I left him to join the Air Staff College.

Four PAF F-86F fighter-bombers return from an interdiction mission – September 1965

He was a spectacular flyer, instructor and commander; and he never ever raised his voice or used expletives so common in our profession. That was the quality that made every subordinate and superior place him on the highest pedestal.

Once as a squadron commander he was leading a flight of four fighters, with Flt. Lt. Rehmat Khan as deputy with two younger pilots as wingmen. The weather at Mauripur began to deteriorate and a general immediate recall to all aircraft was ordered by the air traffic control. Bill Latif brought his formation back but the visibility had dropped to below the minimum required for landing.

Low on fuel, he made a swift though ominous decision. He ordered all three in the formation to head in different directions and eject. Three F- 86s crashed to the ground as their pilots parachuted down to safety to live and fly another day.

The aerobatic team of black F-6s (call sign Rattlers) perform over Sargodha. This team was led by Wing Commander Nazir Latif

What about Bill Latif? Tinchoo Zaheer, my old buddy, batch mate and a fighter as well as bomber pilot, recalls: "The weather had moved in too fast and when we heard Bill’s formation overhead, the runway visibility was down to 100 yards at the most.

We had a prayer on our lips, as there was no alternative for diversion and the formation had been gone long, thus it was low on fuel. Lo and behold, after the thunder of the four fighters had swished away, we heard the sound of a fighter engine as though someone had landed in that treacherous weather.

Suicidal was the only word to describe the act, and it could only be Bill Latif!" That was my commander, friend and a real warrior. Bill Latif saved one fighter that day at the risk of his own life. This is but one of a thousand episodes which filled the life of this legend.

He was hit by a stray bullet, losing one eye, followed by a stroke and prostate cancer

The performance of the Bombers in the 1971 war was spectacular but it came as a surprise when the Indian historians Jagan Mohan and Samir Chopra (and the Official Indian record of war) exposed the truth about the PAF performance during the 1965 war and the Indian Air Force losses to PAF bomber raids in the 1971 war.

Bill Latif not only could take credit for the overall performance by the bombers but he was also the only commander in his air rank that flew dangerous daylight and night missions against the Indian deluge in Khokhrapar sector threatening Hyderabad. He led his men in both wars with great leadership, aplomb and courage.

In 1965 his last mission was the deepest penetration in enemy territory against their farthest bomber base in Agra – with Mig-21s, SAM missiles and the inferno of light and heavy anti-aircraft shells emblazing the sky over the target.

Nazir Bill Latif with a PAF Martin B-57 Canberra bomber

He was a spectacular flyer, instructor and commander; and he never ever raised his voice or used expletives so common in our profession

It is an ominous indicator that a Christian warrior, who along with many of that faith fought with exemplary courage (some even gave their blood for Pakistan), it is ominous that such a man was given little recognition by the Government of Pakistan.

He was the true legend for whom the Hilal-e-Jurat was created, but instead it went to losers in high quarters. This odious fracas goes on relentlessly with the highest medals being pinned on ignoble quislings whose only achievement is bootlicking and looting.

Farewell Bill the great fighter, you will always live on in the brave hearts who loved and admired you. I can see a new shiny star in the firmament and know it must be you with such brilliance, in the holding pattern, awaiting your turn for scrutiny.

By:Humayun Gauhar Sunday, 16 Oct 2011

Once upon a time a man called America enticed a woman called Pakistan, promising all kinds of things that Lotharios always do. The giddy girl fell for it. America fathered many children with her. A woman called Saudi Arabia the midwife every time. One child was named ‘Mujahideen al Amreeka’ and later renamed ‘Taliban bin CIA al ISI’. Another, conceived with ova supplied by the midwife, was named ‘Al Qaeda bin Amreeka’. A third was named ‘Haqqani bin Amreeka al Jaal’. There were many others. America fathered them for a purpose.

After the children had served their purpose, the father abandoned them. Naturally, they turned against him and became his enemies. Ever since, he has been doing everything to kill them. The children are killing him back. The children are winning. The father is desperate. He has gone bankrupt. His political system is paralysed. He cannot think logically. He hypocritically blames the mother and the donor-midwife for having fathered them too like self-procreating organisms and also turned on them. But he never blames himself for abandonment as callous fathers do. So he is paying the price, as are the mother and the midwife.

The writer is a political analyst. He can be contacted at humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com