Heavy Rains Kill

The death toll after heavy rains in Pakistan's northwest and in Kashmir rose to 71 Tuesday, officials said, as rescuers sought to evacuate dozens of people still trapped by landslides.

Ten more people were found dead in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after the weekend downpour triggered landslides and collapsed the roofs of dozens of houses.

"The number known to have died in rains so far in the northwest has now risen to 61 with over 350 houses damaged all over Khyber Pakhtunkhwa," a spokesman for the local disaster management authority said in a statement.

At least 30 people were still stranded following a heavy landslide in the area of Khoistan, he said.

While in Pakistani-held Kashmir, dozens of local tourists remained marooned in the picturesque Neelum Valley as authorities attempted to evacuate them, a local official there told the media covering the story.

The valley is connected from Muzaffarabad by Neelam road, which leads up to Kel. 

The road condition from Muzaffarabad to Athmuqam is very good and suitable for any kind of transport. From Keran to Kel road condition is not well and not suitable for low floor vehicles. 

In winters road onward Keran block due to heavy snowfall and it is very difficult to reach upper parts of the valley.

Vans serve is only Muzaffarabad to Athmuqam after every 30 minutes. Buses run daily between Muzaffarabad and Kel in good weather. 

Jeeps and horses are available to reach remote areas of the valley.

At least 45 people have died in northwestern Pakistan as torrential rains triggered flash floods, local officials said, and bad weather is hampering further search and rescue efforts.

Officials told the Australian Broadcasting Company that rescue workers had not been able to reach three affected districts in the far-flung mountainous north of the province.

"Bad weather is the main reason, we are yet unable to send helicopters to these areas," an official said.

This same official told ABC there have been reports that at least 180 houses had been destroyed in those areas.

"We need to get bodies and the injured out from under the rubble and provide food and tents to the survivors," he said, adding that four truckloads of supplies had been sent to affected districts.

At least 34 people have been admitted to hospitals with injuries, he said.

Sky News reports that a bridge connecting the villages of Toormang and Shalfalam over the Panjkora River has been partially swept away by the heavy flooding.

Flash floods are commonly triggered during South Asia's summer monsoon season. Pre-monsoon rains like the current downpour frequently cause damage in Pakistan — particularly in rural villages with minimal infrastructure.

Residents of scores of villages close to rivers were given warnings to vacate and leave for safer places, Rehman said.

"We're left on our own. Nobody from the government is coming to help us," said Habib Khan, a resident of the northern Swat valley, talking to a local TV news channel.

The channel showed damaged houses and submerged streets in the valley and other parts of the northwestern province.

Poorly built homes across Pakistan, particularly in rural areas, are susceptible to collapse during the annual spring rains, which are often heavy.

Severe weather in recent years has killed hundreds and destroyed huge tracts of prime farmland.

During the rainy season last summer, torrential downpours and flooding killed 81 people and affected almost 300,000 people across the country.

Cricket Promotes Peace?

So India and Pakistan will play each other again on Indian soil, this time in the World Twenty20 cricket tournament.

Saturday's match will take place in Kolkata (Calcutta), having had to be shifted from picturesque Dharamsala because the chief minister of Himachal Pradesh state felt the families of Indian soldiers from his state would not welcome a game with the "enemy". 

The Pakistanis nearly did not come at all, out of fear for their security. 

The question of whether, amidst all the strife that besets the two countries' cricketing relations, a mere sport can bring them together, is at one level easy to answer:   No. 

Sport can sublimate many emotions, but it cannot be a substitute for geopolitics. Cricket can be an instrument for diplomacy, not an alternative to it.

After all, six decades of cricketing ties have done little to promote good relations between the two antagonists. 

If anything, the game has been a victim of politics, as proved by the 18-year gap in cricketing relations between the two countries from 1960 to 1978, the dozen-year hiatus in Pakistani Test tours of India between 1987 and 1999, and the current stalemate, brought about by the 2008 Mumbai attacks and sustained by subsequent incidents.

The basic challenge to "normal" cricketing relations lies in the nature of partition, which carved a Muslim state out of India.

In Pakistan, cricket is expected to bear a particularly heavy burden as the embodiment of national pride against the larger (and more powerful) neighbor from which it seceded. 

The instrument of cricket in the service of a militarized nationalism, especially against India, is a feature of Pakistani cricket. 

So are explicit evocations of a religious mission (as when Pakistan's then captain, Shoaib Malik, publicly thanked "Muslims all over the world" for their presumed support for his team in the 2007 World Twenty20). 

These are two countries whose soldiers have frequently shot at each other, where border tensions have erupted into war, and where the result of a cricket match can prompt a soldier to unleash a volley of celebratory or intimidating fire on the Line of Control, the de facto border. 

Above all, this is a region where the alleged fomenting of terrorism in India by Pakistan and (in Pakistani eyes) the "sufferings" of Muslims in India creates in each side a "moral obligation" to teach the perpetrators a lesson on the cricket field. 

No other cricketing rivalry in the world has to contend with such a perverse mixture of elements sharpening the keen edge of competition between them.

Against such a background, it is expecting too much for cricket matches between India and Pakistan to remain mere sporting spectacles. 

As activist and philosopher CLR James has so memorably written, "what do they know of cricket who only cricket know?" 

The two sides played each other in the 1999 World Cup in England while the Pakistani-instigated war over Kargil in Kashmir was going on: on the very day of India's 47-run victory, six Pakistani soldiers and three Indian officers were killed.

Pakistan Raids Schools

Pakistan has shut down several religious schools run by the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group, Punjab province's law minister has said.

Fourteen people were arrested in a police raid on a mosque and seminary near the city of Daska, officials said.

The closures follow arrests this week of several members of the group, which India says was behind the recent assault on the Pathankot air base.

Jaish-e-Mohammad leader Maulana Masood Azhar is among those being held.

Seven Indian soldiers and six militants were killed in the gun battle at Pathankot, which lasted four days when heavily-armed gunmen entered the base dressed in Indian army uniforms.

The attack came days after the Indian and Pakistani leaders, Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif, met in Lahore to launch a surprise peace initiative.

Pakistan in the aftermath of the attack said that it would take action against Mr Azhar's group whose headquarters are in Punjab province.

India has repeatedly accused the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of providing militants with a sanctuary.

"Officials of the Counter-Terrorism Department raided the Jamiatul Nur seminary in the Daska area on Thursday and arrested more than a dozen people," Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah told the Reuters news agency.

"The seminary has been sealed off and documents and literature have been confiscated from the premises."

Mr Sanaullah said other offices and seminaries administered by Jaish-e-Mohammad were also raided and closed, in addition to numerous arrests. 

The law minister in a TV interview on Thursday said that Mr Azhar had been taken into "protective custody" prior to a decision being taken as to whether he should face legal action for his involvement in the Pathankot attack.

He said such a move would only be taken if it were proved "beyond doubt".

There has been no response so far from Jaish-e-Mohammad to the latest raids.

India on Thursday announced that it would re-schedule diplomatic talks with Pakistan which were postponed after the Pathankot attack. 

It is not clear if any action has been taken by Pakistan against Jaish-e-Mohammad's two major seminaries in Bahawalpur, which many say serve as the group's headquarters. 

Started by Muslim cleric Maulana Masood Azhar, Jaish-e-Mohammed has been blamed for attacks on Indian soil in the past, including one in 2001 on the parliament in Delhi which took the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war.

Seeking Peace

Add caption

ISLAMABAD — A key gathering opened on Monday in Islamabad in which four countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States — hope to lay the road map to peace for the war-shattered Afghan nation.

The meeting comes as Afghanistan's battlefield losses are mounting and entire swaths of the country that cost hundreds of U.S.-led coalition and Afghan military lives to secure slip back into Taliban hands. Taliban representatives have not been invited to the talks, vowing to talk only to the U.S. and not to the government in Kabul.

As the gathering got under way, host Pakistan — seen as key to bringing the warring Taliban factions to the table — cautioned of the difficulties ahead.

Sartaj Aziz, adviser to the Pakistani prime minister on foreign affairs, warned against prematurely deciding which Taliban factions are ready to talk, urging instead "confidence building" measures to get even the recalcitrant Taliban to the negotiating table.

But analysts and participants alike say that while there are four countries talking, much of the hope for progress toward peace rests with Pakistan, which is accused of harboring some of the fiercest factions of the Taliban, including the Haqqani group, a U.S.-declared terrorist organization. Pakistan says its influence over the Taliban is overrated.

"Even at the best of times they (Taliban) didn't listen to us," Aziz told The Associated Press earlier. "Look at Bamiyan," he said, referring to the Taliban's destruction in the summer of 2001 of some of the world's most precious statues of Buddha. The Taliban blew up the statues, ignoring the roars of dissent, including from Pakistan.

Aziz refused to say whether Pakistan has a list of Taliban representatives prepared to enter into peace negotiations. The existence of such a list was announced Sunday by Javid Faisal, deputy spokesman for Afghanistan's Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah.

At the start of Monday's conference, Aziz urged that participants avoid the media and work toward finding ways to get all the Taliban to talk peace. He said the Islamabad gathering needs to define the "overall direction of the reconciliation process" and goals that would create a "conducive environment for holding direct talks between the Afghan government and Taliban groups."

Meanwhile, a breakaway Taliban group said Monday it was ready for talks. The faction, which emerged following the revelation last year that the Taliban leader and founder Mullah Mohammed Omar had died two years ago, is believed to be relatively small and its absence from the battlefield is unlikely to be a game changer.

Imtiaz Gul, whose Center for Research and Security Studies has delved deeply into the Afghan conflict and Pakistan's decades-old involvement, says Pakistan has significant leverage with the Taliban, led by Omar's replacement Mullah Akhtar Mansoor.

Militants in both countries are allied, and getting rid of the Haqqanis, for example, could unleash a violent backlash inside Pakistan where the army has been fighting for several years to defeat a coalition of militant groups largely based in its border areas with Afghanistan, Gul said.

That battle has been brutal with thousands of Pakistani soldiers killed and wounded and thousands more Pakistani civilians killed in deadly retaliatory suicide attacks by the militants.

Gul said last month's trip by Pakistan's army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif, who travelled to Afghanistan unaccompanied by the country's powerful ISI intelligence agency, long considered the force behind the Taliban, was a signal the military was ready to move away from past practices and center future policy decisions only at the army headquarters.

Changes won't come quickly, says Gul, "but important for us is to turn the page (from supporting militants) and I think Gen. Raheel Sharif has turned that page."

Though the Taliban were not invited to Monday's talks, a senior Taliban official, who spoke on condition of anonymity fearing exposure and capture, told the AP that two Taliban delegates, currently headquartered in Qatar, will meet "soon" with China's representatives. The meeting, which will also include Pakistan, is to be held in Islamabad, said the official.

No More Haqqani

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan has outlawed the Taliban-linked Haqqani network (founder shown above), officials said recently, days after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government to fight groups that threaten Afghan, Indian and U.S. interests.

American officials blame high-profile attacks in Afghanistan on the powerful Haqqani network, which mainly operates out of Pakistan's border areas, and say it has ties to the Pakistani state.

Senior Pakistani government officials told Reuters a formal announcement of the ban would be made "within weeks."

"We have decided to ban the Haqqani network as a step in implementing the National Action Plan devised after the (Peshawar) school attack," said a cabinet member, referring to a massacre of 134 children by Taliban gunmen last month.

"The military and the government are on the same page on how to tackle militancy. There is no more 'good' or 'bad' Taliban.

"Kerry specifically pressed for action against the Haqqanis, including banning the group," the official added.

A second official, a minister who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the decision to outlaw the Haqqani group.

The United States accuses the Pakistani intelligence agency of supporting the Haqqani militants and using them as a proxy in Afghanistan to gain leverage there against the growing influence of its arch-rival India. Pakistan denies this.

A formal announcement of the ban would show the government is keen to convince the United States it will no longer differentiate between 'good' and 'bad' militants.

But it remains to be seen if the ban will translate into significant action.

There has been intense debate within the government on whether to brand the group a terrorist organization.

Some officials have argued the move would have little battlefield impact but risks setting back Afghan reconciliation efforts and unleashing more attacks against Pakistan.

In June last year the Pakistan army launched a long-expected military operation in the troubled North Waziristan region, said to be the base of the Haqqani group.