Pakistan talks with IMF on $10-$15 billion package: report

Reuters
Tuesday, October 21, 2008

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Pakistan is in informal discussions with the International Monetary Fund and other bodies over a $10-$15 billion package designed to stabilize its economy and avoid a balance of payments crisis, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

A little over half the total would come in the form of an IMF loan and the balance would be provided by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and bilateral donors, potentially including Saudi Arabia, the report said.

Pakistan is also seeking funds from China, it said.

The scale of support under consideration reflects international anxiety that Pakistan, considered a vital country in the "war on terror," is at risk of being destabilized by the global financial crisis.

On Monday, a senior Pakistani government official said the country was considering an IMF loan that would disburse funds over the next two years to bolster investor confidence shaken in part by falling foreign currency reserves, the newspaper said.

"We are basically seeking help for around seven quarters including the one which began this month," the Financial Times quoted the official as saying.

The Wall Street Journal quoted an official in Pakistan's Finance Ministry as saying that the government was looking for $4 billion to avoid defaulting on its debt.

"We are hopeful that Pakistan will get approval soon, with the country receiving $1.5 billion in one go and the rest in five equal installments of $500 million," the official said on Monday.

A senior IMF official told Reuters on Monday ahead of talks on Pakistan's restructuring plan that the country's seven-month-old civilian government should consider an emergency support package from the IMF.

He said Pakistan has not made a formal request to the IMF for emergency funds but that options were running out.

"Market borrowing is not an option, not in the current markets," Mohsin Khan, director of the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia department said in an interview.

Pakistan is rapidly losing foreign currency reserves. Analysts say Islamabad needs up to $3 billion to $4 billion urgently to stabilize the economy, although the total financing gap for the balance of payments was projected at around $7 billion for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009.

Pakistan would be required to accept an IMF program as a condition for multilateral financial support, the FT report said.

International officials indicated the IMF would not impose extensive new conditions, but would essentially bless the reform program prepared by Pakistan's economic team. However, the IMF would require changes in monetary policy, the report said.

Shaukat Tarin, the top economic adviser to the prime minister, has proposed cutting the budget deficit from over 7 per cent of gross domestic product to a range of 4 to 4.5 per cent.

Pakistan's government has already slashed domestic subsidies on fuel and plans to stop borrowing from its central bank. It had intended to raise foreign exchange by selling stakes in two banks and a gas project, but these plans have been jeopardized by the financial crisis.

(Reporting by Valerie Lee; Editing by Bill Tarrant)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102100033.html

Pakistan seen asking for bailout during IMF check-up

Reuters
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Simon Cameron-Moore

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan is expected to seek a multi-billion-dollar rescue package from the International Monetary Fund to avert a balance of payments crisis when officials meet in Dubai on Tuesday.

Pakistan is undergoing an annual economic health check-up, which all IMF members have to go through, but it is already in a critical condition, with the central bank holding barely enough foreign currency to cover six weeks of imports.

Inflation is running close to 25 percent, the budget deficit is unsustainable, government borrowing from the central bank has squeezed liquidity in the banking system, and the international bond market has priced in a debt default.

Consultations with the IMF are taking place in the Gulf because of a security scare posed by the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan.

Last month, an IMF team left Islamabad in a hurry after a suicide bomber killed 55 people and destroyed the Marriott hotel.

The seven-month-old civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari has been trying to get IMF endorsement for its economic strategies in order to persuade other multilateral lenders and friendly countries to come to its rescue.

But it hasn't wanted to take IMF money unless there was no other option.

"Were they to make a formal request, we can move really fast," Mohsin Khan, director of the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia department said in an interview in Dubai on Monday.

Fears for the stability of the nuclear-armed Muslim nation virtually guarantee Pakistan a sympathetic hearing.

Pakistan's support is crucial in the war against al Qaeda and the global jihadi movement, and for the NATO mission to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan.

Meekal Ahmed, a former IMF economist who also served with the Pakistan's Planning Commission, said the government should stop dithering, and present its economic package. He said the IMF will probably ask Pakistan to to tighten up its proposals.

The fastest prescription, according to Ahmed was to; "Cut development spending, cut current spending, cut defense spending."

Ahmed said that regardless of the security crisis, Zardari should overrule any resistance from Pakistan's powerful army to make sacrifices as defense was one of the biggest tickets on the budget.

He said Pakistani economists have also recommended taxation of agriculture and the services sector, which must include real estate and the stock market, regardless of its current fragility.

Pakistan's landed aristocracy has long resisted a tax on agriculture despite past pressures from the IMF and elsewhere.

REPORTS PAKISTAN SEEKING UP TO $15 BLN

Other lenders appear reluctant to step forward without the IMF first committing funds and setting conditions on Pakistan to fulfill targets for economic adjustment.


Analysts say Islamabad needs up to $3 billion to $4 billion urgently to stabilize the economy, although the total financing gap for the balance of payments was projected at around $7 billion for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009.

The Financial Times newspaper reported on Tuesday that Pakistan wanted $10-$15 billion from the IMF and other bodies, of which the IMF would cover about half with disbursements over a two year period.

"We are basically seeking help for around seven quarters including the one which began this month," the Financial Times quoted the official as saying.

The balance would be provided by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and bilateral donors, potentially including Saudi Arabia and China, it said.

A Dow Jones report said Pakistan was only seeking $4 billion from the IMF, of which $1.5 billion would be up front and the rest disbursed in five quarterly installments of $500 million.

A Pakistani official described the reports as speculative.

(Editing by Jan Dahinten)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102100229.html

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Saudis Held Talks Between Taliban, Afghans

By Faiza Saleh Ambah and Candace Rondeaux
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 22, 2008

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 21 -- Saudi Arabia hosted a session between Afghan officials and the Taliban last month at the request of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said Tuesday.

The officials met in the city of Mecca and attended an iftar, the evening meal that ends the fast between sunrise and sunset during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, according to several people who attended the session.

Saud said Saudi Arabia hosted the meeting because it is "interested in security and peace in Afghanistan."

"But the matter rests with the Afghans themselves," he said. "If we felt from the Afghans that there is a desire to solve problems . . . there will be [mediation] attempts. But if we don't see any response, then it will be difficult to find a way to get involved in the matter."

Saud spoke after a meeting with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana in which the two discussed, among other issues, the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Saud's confirmation of the session comes amid a wave of violence in Afghanistan. In the past week, Taliban fighters killed 30 people after hijacking a bus in the southern province of Kandahar, and gunmen shot dead a foreign aid worker on the streets of Kabul, the capital.


According to participants, the session included several Pakistani officials, including former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Sharif, who now leads the largest opposition bloc in Pakistan's Parliament, has been a vocal advocate of negotiating with Taliban commanders in his country.

Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, attended the meeting and said there was no discussion of peace talks. Zaeef said Karzai's government missed an opportunity when it failed to engage the Taliban in talks three years ago. Since then, he said, the Taliban has grown stronger. "Before, the Taliban had no hope that the American rule would collapse here," he said. "Now, they have hope."

While Taliban forces appear to have gained the upper hand across large swaths of Afghanistan, dissension and dissatisfaction among some members could provide an impetus for talks.

"There are some in the Taliban that believe that negotiations are the only way," Zaeef said.

Rondeaux reported from Kandahar.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102102557.html

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Pakistani, Afghan chiefs seek way out of violence

By ZARAR KHAN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, October 28, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistani and Afghan tribal chiefs were seeking ways Tuesday to end the violence dogging their countries, including offering talks to Taliban militants.

Tribal and political leaders were concluding a two-day jirga, or traditional council, set up to foster cooperation between the uneasy allies of the United States. The meeting of some 50 leaders in Islamabad is a follow-up to a much larger "peace council" in Kabul last year which vowed to fight terrorism together.

The Taliban has gained strength in both countries, and there are increasing calls for dialogue with the insurgents as a way to ease the turmoil.

The idea for the jirga process had been hatched almost a year earlier during a White House meeting between President Bush, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

The pledges of cross-border cooperation made in 2007 have largely failed to materialize.

Karzai has accused Pakistan of secretly aiding the Taliban _ a charge Islamabad rejects as an attempt to mask failures of the government and international community in Afghanistan.

Still, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Pakistan's return to full democratic rule _ former army chief Musharraf resigned as president in August _ had changed the equation in favor of cooperation against terrorism.

"A democratic polity draws its strength from the mandate of the people. It has a much greater chance of success than a dictatorship," he said.

Qureshi told the council on Monday that talks should be open to "sons of the soil willing to forsake the path of violence."

Violence in both countries has risen steadily since U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001. Many militants fled to Pakistan's border regions, where they have established bases and struck back with increasing success.

The Afghan government is seeking talks with elements in the Taliban leadership in an effort at reconciliation and the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan said the two sides recently had contacts in Saudi Arabia.

U.S. officials, who are preparing to reinforce their troops in Afghanistan, have played down the significance of the talks.

However, some in Pakistan have seized on the Afghan initiative to push back against constant U.S. pressure for a military crackdown in Pakistan's wild tribal belt.

The Pakistan army is already involved in heavy fighting in two northwestern regions, but faces criticism because of civilian casualties and the destruction caused by airstrikes and artillery bombardments.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102800136.html

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Afghans, Pakistanis Opt to Talk to Taliban

Council Backs Dialogue With Insurgents

By Shaiq Hussain
Special to the Washington Post
Wednesday, October 29, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 28 -- Pakistani and Afghan leaders on Tuesday agreed to make contact with insurgent groups, including the Taliban, in a bid to end bloodshed and violence in their troubled border regions.

Leaders from the neighboring countries reached the decision here at the end of a two-day jirgagai, or mini-tribal council, which was attended by 50 officials and tribal elders from both sides.

The meeting was held as a follow-up to a grand tribal jirga in Kabul in August 2007. "We agreed that contacts should be established with the opposition in both countries, joint contacts through the mini-tribal council," said Abdullah Abdullah, leader of the Afghan delegation and former foreign minister.

Abdullah said the door for negotiations was open for opposition forces in Afghanistan.

When asked to clarify whether the opposition included the Taliban and other militant groups, Owais Ghani, the head of the Pakistani delegation and governor of the troubled North-West Frontier Province, said, "Yes, it includes all those who are involved in this conflict situation."

"We will sit, we will talk to them, they will listen to us and we will come to some sort of solution. Without dialogue, we cannot have any sort of conclusion," Ghani said.

Both governments have wrestled in recent months with the question of how to confront a vigorous insurgency that has spilled over from the border region and now threatens wide swaths of Pakistan and Afghanistan, including this capital city and the Afghan capital of Kabul. The essential question is whether to fight the insurgents, talk with them or to try to do both at once. Government and public sentiment has been leaning lately toward negotiations.

The U.S., too, has recently indicated a greater willingness to allow talks, with the goal of peeling off more moderate insurgents from those considered irreconcilable.

Abdullah said the mini-jirga had recommended that both countries deny sanctuary to the terrorists and insurgent elements that are waging war against the Afghan and Pakistani governments. "There is an urgent and imperative need for dialogue and negotiations with the opposition groups in both countries, with a view to finding a peaceful settlement of the ongoing conflict," read a statement released by the council. The council agreed to meet again in three months to evaluate progress.

Pakistan hosted the meeting at a time when it is confronting a grave balance-of-payments crisis. Pakistani authorities say the country has just a few weeks to raise billions of dollars in foreign loans to meet huge debt payments.

To overcome the financial crunch, it is negotiating a deal with the International Monetary Fund and has approached friendly states such as the United States, China and Saudi Arabia for aid.

During a visit to the Pakistani capital on Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Pakistan has just a "few days" to avert a looming financial crisis.

Addressing a joint news conference here with his Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, he said Pakistan must secure a loan from the IMF. "I hope the decision will be taken soon. It won't help to have it in six months or six weeks. Rather, we need it in the coming six days," he said. "Then one can perhaps avoid the most difficult situation in Pakistan."

He said Germany would help Pakistan in reaching a deal with the IMF.
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Friday, Oct. 17 at 3 p.m. ET: Election 2008:
Washington Post Endorses Obama



The choice is made easy in part by Mr. McCain's disappointing campaign, above all his irresponsible selection of a running mate who is not ready to be president. It is made easy in larger part, though, because of our admiration for Mr. Obama and the impressive qualities he has shown during this long race. Yes, we have reservations and concerns, almost inevitably, given Mr. Obama's relatively brief experience in national politics. But we also have enormous hopes.


Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. At home, we believe, he would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an understanding of the need for focused regulation. Abroad, the best evidence suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement, continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of U.S. values and interests. Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great president. Given the enormous problems he would confront from his first day in office, and the damage wrought over the past eight years, we would settle for very good.

The first question, in fact, might be why either man wants the job. Start with two ongoing wars, both far from being won; an unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan; a resurgent Russia menacing its neighbors; a terrorist-supporting Iran racing toward nuclear status; a roiling Middle East; a rising China seeking its place in the world. Stir in the threat of nuclear or biological terrorism, the burdens of global poverty and disease, and accelerating climate change. Domestically, wages have stagnated while public education is failing a generation of urban, mostly minority children. Now add the possibility of the deepest economic trough since the Great Depression.

Not even his fiercest critics would blame President Bush for all of these problems, and we are far from being his fiercest critic. But for the past eight years, his administration, while pursuing some worthy policies (accountability in education, homeland security, the promotion of freedom abroad), has also championed some stunningly wrongheaded ones (fiscal recklessness, torture, utter disregard for the planet's ecological health) and has acted too often with incompetence, arrogance or both. A McCain presidency would not equal four more years, but outside of his inner circle, Mr. McCain would draw on many of the same policymakers who have brought us to our current state. We believe they have richly earned, and might even benefit from, some years in the political wilderness.

OF COURSE, Mr. Obama offers a great deal more than being not a Republican. There are two sets of issues that matter most in judging these candidacies. The first has to do with restoring and promoting prosperity and sharing its fruits more evenly in a globalizing era that has suppressed wages and heightened inequality. Here the choice is not a close call. Mr. McCain has little interest in economics and no apparent feel for the topic. His principal proposal, doubling down on the Bush tax cuts, would exacerbate the fiscal wreckage and the inequality simultaneously. Mr. Obama's economic plan contains its share of unaffordable promises, but it pushes more in the direction of fairness and fiscal health. Both men have pledged to tackle climate change.

Mr. Obama also understands that the most important single counter to inequality, and the best way to maintain American competitiveness, is improved education, another subject of only modest interest to Mr. McCain. Mr. Obama would focus attention on early education and on helping families so that another generation of poor children doesn't lose out. His budgets would be less likely to squeeze out important programs such as Head Start and Pell grants. Though he has been less definitive than we would like, he supports accountability measures for public schools and providing parents choices by means of charter schools.

A better health-care system also is crucial to bolstering U.S. competitiveness and relieving worker insecurity. Mr. McCain is right to advocate an end to the tax favoritism showed to employer plans. This system works against lower-income people, and Mr. Obama has disparaged the McCain proposal in deceptive ways. But Mr. McCain's health plan doesn't do enough to protect those who cannot afford health insurance. Mr. Obama hopes to steer the country toward universal coverage by charting a course between government mandates and individual choice, though we question whether his plan is affordable or does enough to contain costs.

The next president is apt to have the chance to nominate one or more Supreme Court justices. Given the court's current precarious balance, we think Obama appointees could have a positive impact on issues from detention policy and executive power to privacy protections and civil rights.

Overshadowing all of these policy choices may be the financial crisis and the recession it is likely to spawn. It is almost impossible to predict what policies will be called for by January, but certainly the country will want in its president a combination of nimbleness and steadfastness -- precisely the qualities Mr. Obama has displayed during the past few weeks. When he might have been scoring political points against the incumbent, he instead responsibly urged fellow Democrats in Congress to back Mr. Bush's financial rescue plan. He has surrounded himself with top-notch, experienced, centrist economic advisers -- perhaps the best warranty that, unlike some past presidents of modest experience, Mr. Obama will not ride into town determined to reinvent every policy wheel. Some have disparaged Mr. Obama as too cool, but his unflappability over the past few weeks -- indeed, over two years of campaigning -- strikes us as exactly what Americans might want in their president at a time of great uncertainty.

ON THE SECOND set of issues, having to do with keeping America safe in a dangerous world, it is a closer call. Mr. McCain has deep knowledge and a longstanding commitment to promoting U.S. leadership and values.

But Mr. Obama, as anyone who reads his books can tell, also has a sophisticated understanding of the world and America's place in it. He, too, is committed to maintaining U.S. leadership and sticking up for democratic values, as his recent defense of tiny Georgia makes clear. We hope he would navigate between the amoral realism of some in his party and the counterproductive cocksureness of the current administration, especially in its first term. On most policies, such as the need to go after al-Qaeda, check Iran's nuclear ambitions and fight HIV/AIDS abroad, he differs little from Mr. Bush or Mr. McCain. But he promises defter diplomacy and greater commitment to allies. His team overstates the likelihood that either of those can produce dramatically better results, but both are certainly worth trying.

Mr. Obama's greatest deviation from current policy is also our biggest worry: his insistence on withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq on a fixed timeline. Thanks to the surge that Mr. Obama opposed, it may be feasible to withdraw many troops during his first two years in office. But if it isn't -- and U.S. generals have warned that the hard-won gains of the past 18 months could be lost by a precipitous withdrawal -- we can only hope and assume that Mr. Obama would recognize the strategic importance of success in Iraq and adjust his plans.

We also can only hope that the alarming anti-trade rhetoric we have heard from Mr. Obama during the campaign would give way to the understanding of the benefits of trade reflected in his writings. A silver lining of the financial crisis may be the flexibility it gives Mr. Obama to override some of the interest groups and members of Congress in his own party who oppose open trade, as well as to pursue the entitlement reform that he surely understands is needed.

IT GIVES US no pleasure to oppose Mr. McCain. Over the years, he has been a force for principle and bipartisanship. He fought to recognize Vietnam, though some of his fellow ex-POWs vilified him for it. He stood up for humane immigration reform, though he knew Republican primary voters would punish him for it. He opposed torture and promoted campaign finance reform, a cause that Mr. Obama injured when he broke his promise to accept public financing in the general election campaign. Mr. McCain staked his career on finding a strategy for success in Iraq when just about everyone else in Washington was ready to give up. We think that he, too, might make a pretty good president.

But the stress of a campaign can reveal some essential truths, and the picture of Mr. McCain that emerged this year is far from reassuring. To pass his party's tax-cut litmus test, he jettisoned his commitment to balanced budgets. He hasn't come up with a coherent agenda, and at times he has seemed rash and impulsive. And we find no way to square his professed passion for America's national security with his choice of a running mate who, no matter what her other strengths, is not prepared to be commander in chief.

ANY PRESIDENTIAL vote is a gamble, and Mr. Obama's résumé is undoubtedly thin. We had hoped, throughout this long campaign, to see more evidence that Mr. Obama might stand up to Democratic orthodoxy and end, as he said in his announcement speech, "our chronic avoidance of tough decisions."

But Mr. Obama's temperament is unlike anything we've seen on the national stage in many years. He is deliberate but not indecisive; eloquent but a master of substance and detail; preternaturally confident but eager to hear opposing points of view. He has inspired millions of voters of diverse ages and races, no small thing in our often divided and cynical country. We think he is the right man for a perilous moment.

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Muslims Strive for Tolerance -- and Votes
By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 1, 2008;

Mukit Hossain has been up since 5 a.m., crisscrossing Northern Virginia in his tiny 10-year-old pickup truck to help turn out the Muslim vote in a presidential campaign that has left many Muslims feeling marginalized. He has stopped five times to pray in the truck, which is covered with political bumper stickers. One says "We Need Syeed" -- Afeefa Syeed, a candidate for Loudoun County supervisor -- and he thinks that may be one reason a state trooper stopped him last week and asked all kinds of personal questions before giving him tickets for a cracked windshield and not wearing his seat belt.
As he heads up Interstate 395, Hossain says his best investment last year was the GPS device that tells him how to get where he's going. The only advice the voice does not give is where to go to escape the suspicion many Muslims encounter -- suspicion that follows a man to his job and his children to their schools, lives with his family on their street, hangs over him as he tries to participate in a democratic society.
The sun is high and the air cold when he pulls into the Muslim American Society Center in Alexandria to meet with Ibrahim Ramey, director of its civil rights division. Ramey, a Virginia native who converted to Islam, sees an anti-Muslim sentiment running through the campaign season.
Republicans spread a false rumor that Barack Obama, whose middle name is Hussein and whose paternal grandfather was Muslim, is secretly a Muslim himself; Obama, a church-going Christian, denied it, and many said he did not go far enough in denouncing the racism behind the claim. At a rally, John McCain corrected a supporter, saying Obama is not an Arab but a family man.
"There is a subtext of extreme distrust that filters in the mainstream," Ramey says, "that Muslims are not patriotic. That Muslims are unworthy of trust. The comments generally tend to underscore an element of deep racism and xenophobia in the political establishment. Sometimes, it's spoken openly. Sometimes, it is spoken in code."
"The rhetoric of anti-Muslim sentiment has become more acceptable in public gatherings and in the right-wing media," Hossain says. "It has made Muslims very, very concerned that there is a rekindling of the post 9/11 paranoia," when many Muslims were detained for questioning simply for being Muslim and many more feared being attacked in the streets.
So Hossain, a Bangladeshi immigrant who laughs when he tells you he has just bought a farm in rural Virginia "where the real Americans live," organizes. The 48-year-old dictates news releases. He distributes get-out-the-vote literature. He gives speeches at mosques. He calls taxi drivers, promising monetary help for those who take time Tuesday to get people to the polls.
"Many of the Muslims who came to this country came from countries where voting was a dangerous and dirty thing to do," Hossain says. "We have to convince them that voting is not only safe and clean, but it is a civic responsibility."
In the center parking lot, he hands Obama volunteer David Kirshbaum, 53, a stack of yellow cards printed with a mild endorsement of the candidate by the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee: "Muslim Americans were upset that Senator Obama, when called a Muslim by fear and hate mongering bigots, failed to make a principled stand . . . by not asking what's wrong in being a Muslim anyway while he asserted his own faith. However . . . now that has become a target of racial slurs and pejorative epithets, it is incumbent on us to make the same principled stand we had asked of him. We must challenge the politics of bigotry and divisiveness."
It took Colin Powell, a Republican, to break the tension.
"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?" Powell said last month on "Meet the Press." "The answer's 'no.' Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, 'He's a Muslim, and he might be associated with terrorists.' This is not the way we should be doing it in America."
Powell's public plea was a salve to the Muslim community.
"It was brilliant. It was courageous. I was extremely proud of General Powell," Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim elected to Congress, said in a telephone interview. "He said something people were waiting to hear. I think it is important in America for a 7-year-old, whether Muslim or Christian or Jewish. He or she should think they could be president. This is the land of opportunity. Powell talked about a soldier losing his life. Talked about the photo on the son's grave. That there was not a cross or a Star of David at the top, but a crescent, an Islamic symbol. When he talked about that, I had to wipe away a tear."
Last week, a DVD entitled "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" was sent to voters in battleground states, showing images of children reciting calls for jihad.

"We are getting calls from all over the country saying, 'My friends, co-workers and neighbors got copies of the DVD, and I'm afraid they would have very negative feelings toward me and my family,' " said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington. "Can you imagine receiving a hate-filled DVD that demonizes your faith and you being the only Muslim on the block? How would that make you feel?"
The council recommends that Muslims who have received the mailing simply have conversations with friends and neighbors who also received it. "Our research shows that prejudice goes down when people meet an ordinary Muslim, like the bus driver, the physician, the checkout person at the local Wal-Mart," he says. "Anybody you interact with or see as an ordinary American, but they happen to be Muslim."
Ahmed Rehab, executive director of CAIR in Chicago, says the DVD is one more example of the way "Muslims and Arabs have become political lepers." Another was the statement made by McCain a few weeks ago when he took the microphone away from a woman at one of his rallies after she said she didn't like Obama because "he is an Arab." "No," McCain said, "He is a good, decent family man."
Ahmed said he knows McCain did not intend to say that "a decent man is not an Arab. . . . I know that is not what he meant because that is too obscene."
* * *
Hossain's next stop is a McDonald's on Little River Turnpike, but he is late, and the student organizer he was supposed to meet has left. Hossain goes inside and orders a fish sandwich, fries and a soda. He does not want it super-size. "After the election," he says, "I will stop eating junk food for a while." (A BBC reporter recently did a short segment on Hossain and the dangers of being politically active and described Hossain as short with the "beginning" of a paunch.)
In his home country, he witnessed poverty, hunger and famine. In the United States, for the first time, he heard people making jokes about famine. He came to this country to attend Duke and graduated with degrees in philosophy, mathematics and economics. Now he is a telecommunications consultant between jobs.
Underneath, he says, he is a human rights activist, fighting not just for Muslims but for other ethnic groups, which share a common experience, facing discrimination in a society that seems to not want "otherness," no matter what that looks like.
"Over the last eight years, whatever the ugly underbelly of society used to be has become more public and acceptable," Hossain says. "Presidential candidates have not been immune to that. It's acceptable to make racial slurs and not flinch about it. I hope whoever the next president is makes a tremendous effort to bring back basic decency. . . . This 'us versus them' sentiment is very powerful in terms of winning elections. But it may be equally fatal for building a civil society."
His cellphone rings. His next appointment is with Abdul Hashem Ahamed, 48, a Herndon taxi driver who will drink tea with Hossain at a Starbucks in McLean, where he also manages a 7-Eleven. He will agree to take Muslim voters to the polls Tuesday.
But before Hossain sets out for their meeting, he steps into the McDonald's parking lot and excuses himself. For 15 minutes or so, he sits in his truck, eyes closed, head bowed, lips moving, an American Muslim in a baseball cap praying between campaign stops.

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Gunman kidnap Afghan government adviser in Pakistan

Reuters
Monday, November 3, 2008

CHITRAL, Pakistan (Reuters) - Gunman in Pakistan have kidnapped an Afghan government adviser visiting relatives in a northwestern border region, police said Monday, the third prominent Afghan kidnapped in Pakistan in recent weeks.

Akhtar Kohistani, an adviser at the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, was abducted in Seerdoor Kadak, a village in Pakistan's northwestern Chitral district, while visiting his in-laws.

"Unidentified armed men broke into his in-laws' house last night and took him away," said Chitral police chief Sher Akbar Khan.

Chitral is opposite the insurgency-plagued Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan. Khan said the motive for the abduction was not known and his men were investigating.

Late last week, gunmen kidnapped Zia-ul-Haq, a brother of Afghan Finance Minister Anwar Ul-Haq Ahady, in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, security officials said.

Pakistani police are also searching for Afghanistan's top diplomat in Pakistan, ambassador-designate Abdul Khaliq Farahi, who was kidnapped on September 22 in Peshawar.

Islamist militants are fighting the governments of both Pakistan and Afghanistan, which are both important U.S. allies. Kidnapping by criminal gangs is also a problem in both countries.

(Reporting by Gul Hammad Farooqi and Alamgir Bitani; Writing by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel and Alex Richardson)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...110300131.html

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Pakistan warns Petraeus against missile strikes

By NAHAL TOOSI
The Associated Press
Monday, November 3, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan on Monday warned the U.S. general newly tasked with overseeing America's two wars that frequent missile strikes on its territory risk inflaming anti-American sentiment.

Gen. David Petraeus met with Pakistan Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar as part of his first international trip since taking over U.S. Central Command on Friday.

The visit indicated how crucial the U.S. considers Pakistan's support in the fight against Islamist extremists, especially those in its neighbor Afghanistan. But it also comes amid Pakistani calls to halt U.S. missile strikes on suspected militant targets on its soil.

A Defense Ministry statement said Mukhtar told Petraeus, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Richard Boucher and others in the entourage that the missile strikes from drones "generate anti-America sentiments as well as create outrage and uproar among the people."

The U.S. wants Pakistan to do more to crack down on insurgents who use pockets of its northwest region as sanctuaries from which to plan attacks on U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, where violence is running at its highest levels since 2001.

The missile strikes in the border region indicate U.S. impatience with Pakistani efforts.

Washington is suspected in at least 17 missile strikes in Pakistan since August. Despite repeated Pakistani condemnations, the strikes have continued.

In September, a U.S. ground assault in a tribal region in Pakistan's northwest spurred outrage in Pakistan and prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity. There have been no reports of additional ground assaults since.

Acting U.S. Embassy spokesman Wes Robertson declined to provide specifics on Petraeus' agenda for security reasons. However, he also is expected to meet with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, President Asif Ali Zardari and Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

At the Defense Ministry, officials also briefed Petraeus on Pakistani military operations against insurgents in its border regions. According to the statement, both sides "stressed the need for enhanced cooperation to eliminate the scourge of terrorism."

Another topic that could come up during the general's trip is negotiations with the Taliban. Pakistani and Afghan leaders have vowed to seek talks with elements of the militant movement.

Petraeus, previously the top U.S. commander in Baghdad, has indicated support for efforts to reach out to members of the Taliban considered moderate enough to cooperate with the Afghan government.

Meanwhile, Zardari was scheduled to arrive Tuesday in oil-rich Saudi Arabia to request a deferral on oil payments and other possible support, the Foreign Ministry said. Another potential topic: negotiating with the Taliban.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan needs billions in outside assistance to avoid defaulting on its international loans. The impoverished nation of 170 million people is hampered by high inflation, chronic power outages and a sinking currency.

Analysts said Zardari's visit could yield some temporary relief, but that he was unlikely to return with a package that would render moot politically unpopular IMF aid.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...110300428.html

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U.S. Airstrikes Creating Tension, Pakistan Warns

By Candace Rondeaux
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 4, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 3 -- Pakistan's defense minister cautioned the newly appointed head of the U.S. Central Command on Monday that launching further missile strikes in the country's troubled tribal areas could increase tensions between the two nations.

Pakistani Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar issued the blunt warning to Gen. David H. Petraeus during his first official visit to Pakistan after taking over command last week of U.S. military strategy in a region that includes Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan. Mukhtar, who also called for more coordination between the U.S. and Pakistani militaries, said the recent increase in U.S.-led cross-border strikes had created "bad blood" between the two allies. On Friday, 27 people were killed in two U.S. airstrikes in northwest Pakistan.

The Pakistani Defense Ministry said in a statement released shortly after the meeting that frequent attacks inside Pakistan by U.S. Predator drones "could generate anti-American sentiments" and "create outrage and uproar" among Pakistanis.

Petraeus, who took charge of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on Friday, and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard A. Boucher, met with Mukhtar and Pakistan's top military officer, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani. It was part of the first leg of a tour that is expected to soon include a visit to Afghanistan.

Petraeus was also expected to meet with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and several other government officials, although a U.S. State Department spokesman in Islamabad said he could not confirm the meeting with Zardari. The spokesman declined to comment on Petraeus's talks with Pakistani officials.

The visit comes after sharp diplomatic clashes between American and Pakistani officials over U.S. military action in Pakistani territory in recent months. At least 100 people have been killed in 17 U.S.-led strikes in the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan, including at least 15 in a cross-border ground raid Sept. 3. Pakistani officials protested the strikes, saying they are counterproductive.

U.S. officials have remained mum about the airstrikes. But as the U.S.-led military effort in Afghanistan suffered several setbacks this year, the United States has become more insistent that Pakistan quell the flow of insurgents into Afghanistan. Petraeus and U.S. officials have repeatedly pointed to Pakistan's tribal areas as safe havens for top Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders.

With casualties at record highs among foreign troops in Afghanistan, and security in decline in Kabul, the capital, and across the country, Petraeus's efforts to resuscitate the flagging military mission there will be as closely watched by Pakistan as they are by the United States.

More than 1,200 Pakistani troops have been killed in fighting in the country's volatile border region since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001. Although the Pakistani military has recently stepped up efforts to quell the insurgency in and around the tribal areas, U.S. officials have said they are only "cautiously optimistic" that Pakistan's strategy will work.

Petraeus, who oversaw a surge of U.S. troops in Iraq and a sharp downturn in violence there, has advocated increasing the 33,000-strong U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, He has also indicated backing for efforts to turn moderate Islamist insurgents into supporters of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government. Under Petraeus's command in Baghdad, a similar attempt to arm and organize disaffected Iraqi tribal leaders in western Anbar province won U.S. troops a much-needed reprieve in battling insurgents there.

In an echo of that strategy, Pakistani officials have begun to arm tribal militias in the largely lawless northwest and encourage them to fight pro-Taliban insurgents. But skepticism remains because the tactic has been tried before with little success.

A similar idea has been proposed in Afghanistan. However, some NATO officials have expressed doubts that the approach would be easily grafted onto the war there. On Saturday, Maj. Gen. Marc Lessard, the outgoing Canadian chief of NATO's command in southern Afghanistan, cautioned that efforts to arm locals against insurgents might be complicated by intricate family and tribal ties unique to the region.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...02.html?sub=AR

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