Source: CBS
President Obama called Pakistani President Zardari to offer condolences, but not an apology for the NATO strike that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers. Rebecca Jarvis talks to CBS News national security analyst Juan Zarate for insight.

This article titled “US bomb warning to Pakistan ignored” was written by Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Jon Boone in Kabul, for The Guardian on Thursday 22nd September 2011 21.32 UTC

The American commander of Nato in Afghanistan personally asked Pakistan’s army chief to halt an insurgent truck bomb that was heading for his troops, during a meeting in Islamabad two days before a huge explosion that wounded 77 US soldiers at a base near Kabul.

In reply General Ashfaq Kayani offered to “make a phone call” to stop the assault on the US base in Wardak province. But his failure to use the American intelligence to prevent the attack has fuelled a blazing row between the US and Pakistan.

Furious American officials blame the Taliban-inspired group the Haqqanis – and, by extension, Pakistani intelligence – for the 10 September bombing and an even more audacious guerrilla assault on the Kabul US embassy three days later that killed 20 people and lasted more than 20 hours.

On Thursday the US military chief, Admiral Mike Mullen, described the Haqqanis as “a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence [spy] agency”. He earlier accused the ISI of fighting a “proxy war” in Afghanistan through the group.

Pakistan’s defence minister, Ahmed Mukhtar, rejected the American accusations of Haqqani patronage as “baseless”. “No one can threaten Pakistan as we are an independent state,” he said.

The angry accusations lift the veil on sensitive conversations that have heretofore largely taken place behind closed doors. On 8 September, General John Allen, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, raised intelligence reports of the impending truck bomb at a meeting with Kayani during a visit to Islamabad.

Kayani promised Allen he would “make a phone call” to try to stop the attack, according to a western official with close knowledge of the meeting. “The offer raised eyebrows,” the official said.

But two days later, just after Allen’s return to Kabul, a truck rigged with explosives ploughed into the gates of the US base in Wardak, 50 miles south-west of Kabul, injuring 77 US soldiers and killing two Afghan civilians.

Afterwards the US ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, blamed the Haqqanis. “They enjoy safe havens in North Waziristan,” he said, referring to the Haqqani main base in the tribal belt.

Allen’s spokesman said Nato “routinely shares intelligence with the Pakistanis regarding insurgent activities” but he refused to confirm the details of the conversation with Kayani.

The Pakistani military spokesman, General Athar Abbas, said: “Let’s suppose it was the case. The main question is how did this truck travel to Wardak and explode without being checked by Nato? This is just a blame game.”

US allegations of ISI links to Haqqani attacks stretch back to July 2008, when the CIA deputy director, Stephen Kappes, flew to Islamabad with intercept evidence that linked the ISI to an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.

But American disquiet has never been so uncompromisingly expressed as in recent days. The issue dominated three hours of talks between the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar.

On Tuesday Mullen said he had asked Kayani to “disconnect” the ISI from the Haqqanis. In Washington the CIA chief, David Petraeus, delivered a similar message in private to the ISI chief, General Shuja Pasha. Even the soft-spoken US ambassador to Islamabad, Cameron Munter, has joined the chorus of condemnation, delivering a hard-hitting message through an interview on Pakistani state radio.

“We’ve changed our message in private too,” one US official said. “Before, we used to make polite demands about the Haqqanis. Now we are saying ‘this has to stop’.”

The new mood is driven by a combination of climbing casualties and brazen attacks. The Haqqanis were also blamed for a recent assault on the InterContinental Hotel, while August was the deadliest month for US forces in Afghanistan, with 71 deaths.

Nato is now investigating whether the Haqqanis had a hand in Tuesday’s assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, President Hamid Karzai’s peace envoy to the Taliban. Rabbani was killed at his home by a suicide bomber wearing an explosives-packed turban. A bloodstained four-page letter he was carrying at the time of the attack, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, insisted that “Pakistan is not our boss”.

American officials have vowed to act unilaterally if Pakistan fails to comply with their demands over the Haqqanis. But it remains unclear how far they are willing to go against Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country that still provides vital counter-terrorism support.

There was some hope of resuscitating fragile relations between the Pakistani and American intelligence services, which were buffeted by the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden on 2 May. Officials from both countries hailed a joint operation on 28 August to arrest Younis al-Mauritani, a senior al-Qaida operative, in the western city of Quetta. On 5 September the Pakistani military issued a press release that highlighted Pakistani-American co-operation; some viewed the raid as a possible turning point in relations.

But the flurry of Haqqani attacks over the past two weeks seems to have washed away whatever goodwill was generated by the arrest.

US officials say debate is raging inside US policy circles about what to do next. The defence secretary, Leon Panetta, is said to have privately advocated US military incursions into the Haqqani stronghold in Waziristan – a risky gambit other officials reject as dangerous folly, citing the historical record of failure of western armies in the tribal belt.

Other US officials say Washington could slash non-military aid such as the $7.5bn five-year Kerry-Lugar-Berman package, which was approved in 2009.

There is also debate about the exact nature of the ISI’s relationship with the Haqqanis. One western official said it was not a puppetmaster scenario. “It’s not like they have a chain of command, with the Pakistanis handing down XOs [executive orders],” he said. Neither are the Pakistanis necessarily providing logistical support, he added: “It’s murkier than that.”

But, the official added, the US believes Pakistan is “actively tolerating” the Haqqanis. And the ISI could, if it wanted to, seriously disrupt their activities.

He warned that Pakistan was heading towards international isolation. “If it keeps going like this, it could end up like Syria – before the Arab spring.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Detained doctor who helped CIA find Bin Laden barred from leaving Pakistan” was written by Saeed Shah in Islamabad, for The Guardian on Tuesday 6th September 2011 15.53 UTC

The Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA track Osama bin Laden to his compound in the town of Abbottabad has been barred from leaving the country.

The official Pakistani commission investigating the al-Qaida leader’s presence in the country announced on Tuesday that Dr Shakil Afridi and others it wanted to question are banned from going abroad without its permission. This is a blow to Washington’s efforts to get Afridi freed from Pakistani custody and give him sanctuary in the US.

The Guardian revealed in July that, before bin Laden’s death in May, Afridi had set up a fake vaccination programme in Abbottabad in the hope of being able to obtain DNA samples from the house where the al-Qaida chief was suspected of living.

The CIA was never sure of bin Laden’s presence in the Abbottabad house, even when the decision was made to launch a unilateral American special forces operation to raid the compound on 2 May.

The doctor had been recruited by the CIA for an elaborate scheme to vaccinate residents for hepatitis B, a ploy to get a DNA sample from those living in the house to see if they were bin Laden family members.

Pakistani and American officials are at loggerheads over the fate of Afridi: Washington sees him as a hero, while Islamabad says that he committed a serious crime by working for a foreign intelligence agency. The commission’s latest decision will be helpful to the Pakistani authorities in resisting American demands to free Afridi.

The issue of Afridi is entangled in Pakistan’s anger over the operation to kill Bin Laden, which was undertaken without its knowledge, and the Pakistani military’s fears that the CIA has established an extensive spy network in the country using Pakistani citizens.

Afridi was arrested by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency three weeks after the bin Laden operation, on the outskirts of Peshawar, in north-west Pakistan. He has not been charged with any crime. His real job was working as a government health official, in charge of a part of the tribal area that borders Afghanistan. He has been held ever since. Washington wants to give Afridi and his wife and children a new life in the US.

Pakistan felt humiliated by the bin Laden operation: not only was the al-Qaida leader living comfortably in a picturesque garrison town, but an American special forces squad was able to enter its territory by helicopter and kill him before Pakistan’s defence forces were alerted.

The government named a five-member commission of inquiry in June, headed by a supreme court judge, “mandated to ascertain the full facts regarding the presence of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan”.

“Abbottabad Commission has imposed a ban on traveling abroad for all persons related to Abbottabad incident including Dr Shakil Afridi till further orders. No such person should be allowed to leave the country without clearance from the Abbottabad Commission,” the commission said in a statement.

Previously, the commission had barred the three wives of bin Laden, who had lived with him in Abbottabad and were taken into custody by Pakistani authorities, from leaving the country until it finishes its inquiries. Two of the wives are Saudi citizens, while the third is Yemeni. Several of bin Laden’s children, and possibly grandchildren, are also in Pakistani custody.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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This article titled “Pakistani PM: US promises not to repeat Bin Laden raid” was written by Julian Borger, diplomatic editor, for The Guardian on Thursday 21st July 2011 15.19 UTC

Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, says he has received US assurances there will be no repeat of the unilateral raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in May.

Gilani’s remarks, in an interview with the Guardian, contradict assertions by the US president, Barack Obama, and other American officials that US forces would take similar action against other al-Qaida leaders if necessary.

Gilani was speaking in London at a time when Pakistani relations with the west, particularly the US, are at a low in the wake of the raid on Bin Laden’s hideout in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad on 2 May.

After the special forces operation, US officials voiced suspicions that Bin Laden must have had a network of local supporters, possibly inside the Pakistani state, while Pakistani leaders were outraged not to have been consulted over the raid inside their territory.

“Since we were sharing information with US and there was a tremendous relationship with the CIA and ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence], therefore we could have done a joint operation in Abbottabad, but it didn’t happen. Therefore we had a lot of reservations,” Gilani said.

He added: “They have assured us in future there will be no unilateral actions in Pakistan, and there would be co-operation between both agencies.”

The Pakistani prime minister said he had received the assurance personally from the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. In her public statements, however, Clinton has declared the US would strike unilaterally against other top militants if others did not.

She said in May: “We’ve made it clear to people around the world that if we locate someone who has been part of the al-Qaida leadership, then you get him or we will get him.”

Speaking to the BBC just before his visit to Britain the same month, Obama was equally blunt on the issue. He said: “We are very respectful of the sovereignty of Pakistan. But we cannot allow someone who is planning to kill our people or our allies’ people – we can’t allow those kind of active plans to come to fruition without us taking some action.”

On Thursday, however, Gilani said any repeat of the Abbottabad raid would be “totally unacceptable”.

“Public opinion would further aggravate against the United States and you cannot fight a war without the support of the masses. You need the masses to support military actions against militants,” he said.

He said another raid would damage “not only our relationship, but also our common objective, to fight against militants. We are fighting a war and if we fail that means that it’s not good for the world. We can’t afford losing.”

After the raid against Bin Laden, the Pakistani government said it had stopped the US launching drones from its territory in pursuit of militants in tribal areas. Nevertheless, drone strikes on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan have continued.

“We don’t allow our bases to be used. They have other bases they use,” Gilani said. Asked where those bases were, he replied: “I don’t know. You ask the Americans. This is a question to put to them.”

The prime minister said: “Drone attacks are against our strategy too, because we have been isolating the militants from the local population and when there are drone attacks they get united again.”

Gilani deflected questions on some of the other irritants in US-Pakistan relations. On the allegation this month by the US chairman of the joint chief of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, that the Pakistani government had “sanctioned” the killing of journalist Saleem Shahzad, the prime minister said Mullen should present his evidence to the inquiry into the killing. He said he was not aware if the American had done so.

On FBI allegations this week that the Pakistani military, including the ISI, had spent $4m (£2.4m) on trying to influence US policy on Kashmir in Pakistan’s favour, and the arrest of a Kashmir separatist lobbyist alleged to have been involved, Gilani claimed he was not sufficiently well informed to comment. “I have been travelling. I don’t have full information,” he said.

On Wednesday night, Gilani told an audience of British and Pakistani business leaders at a London hotel that his country’s most important foreign relationship was with China.

“China is a rising power and Pakistan’s all-weather friend. This is a relationship that has no parallel. Uniquely, there are no downs but only ups in Pakistan-China relations. China is a source of pride and strength for us,” Gilani said.

The emphasis on the Chinese relationship has been a Pakistani government theme since the raid on Abbottabad and the cutting of US aid to Pakistan, but Gilani denied Islamabad was playing one world power off against another.

“We want to have relationships with both China and the United States. We don’t want to lose our relationship with the United States. We want to improve our relationship with the US [on the basis of] mutual respect and mutual interest,” the prime minister said.

However, he made it clear there was some way to go before that state was achieved. “It will take some time,” he said. “There can’t be a quick fix.”

Amid near-constant sniping from Washington, Gilani’s government found support from General David Petraeus, the departing US commander in Afghanistan who is soon to become CIA chief.

“I do believe they want to eliminate the al-Qaida presence and I do believe they want to eliminate the Taliban Pakistani presence,” Petraeus told journalists in Paris.

According to Reuters news agency, he said “it is credible [Pakistan] did not know” Bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “US-Pakistan relations worsen with arrest of two alleged spies” was written by Ewen MacAskill, Declan Walsh, for The Guardian on Tuesday 19th July 2011 19.48 UTC

Relations between Washington and Islamabad deteriorated further when the US justice department charged two men alleged to have been in the pay of the Pakistani intelligence service.

One was involved with the Kashmiri American Council, through which it is alleged Pakistan channelled millions of dollars to influence members of the US Congress. The US said there are also Kashmiri centres in London and Brussels that the FBI alleged are run by elements of the Pakistani government. FBI special agent Sarah Webb Linden, in an affidavit unsealed , named the one in London as the Justice Foundation/Kashmir Centre run by Nazir Ahmad Shawl.

The FBI arrested the executive director of the Kashmiri American Council, Ghulam-Nabi Fai, aged 62, at his home in Fairfax, Virginia, later. The other, Zaheer Ahmad, 63, is believed to be in Pakistan. Both are US citizens and face a prison sentence of five years if convicted.

Relations between the US and Pakistani intelligence have been increasingly strained this year after the arrest of a CIA operative, Raymond Davis, in Pakistan and the revelation that Osama bin Laden had been in hiding near Islamabad.

A US senator, Dianne Feinstein, chair of the intelligence committee, this week described the relationship as in crisis.

The US has also engaged in covert funding in Pakistan to achieve its goals. Last week the Guardian revealed how the CIA funded an extensive fake vaccination programme in Abbottabad, where Bin Laden was living, in order to obtain DNA samples from inside his house.

Fai’s arrest may come to be seen as a tit-for-tat reprisal for the victimisation of several Pakistanis who participated in that vaccination programme. The arrests come as the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, is on a visit to India.

The two men are accused of having conspired to act as agents of a foreign government without that interest being declared and falsifying, concealing and covering up the fact.

Lisa Monaco, assistant attorney general for national security, said the two were accused of breaking the law that required the US and the American public to know the underlying source of information and identity of those attempting to influence US policy and laws.

The US attorney for Virginia, Neil MacBride, added: “Mr Fai is accused of a decades-long scheme with one purpose – to hide Pakistan’s involvement behind his efforts to influence the US government’s position on Kashmir.”

The affidavit alleges that the centre was run by elements of the Pakistani government, including Pakistan’s military intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI).

According to the affidavit, Fai allegedly set out in a budget request to the Pakistan government in 2009 a request for $100,000 for contributions to members of Congress. The justice department said there was no evidence that any elected official who received financial contributions was aware of the Pakistani connection.

Kashmiri activists reacted with dismay and shock to news of Fai’s arrest, describing him as an eloquent advocate for the Kashmiri cause. Several said they believed he had become a victim of deteriorating relations between Washington and Islamabad in the wake of the US raid that killed Bin Laden on 2 May.

“I think his arrest is just about settling scores with Pakistan,” said Tariq Naqash, a journalist in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-held Kashmir. Farooq Rehmani, chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Freedom League, said Fai came from Srinagar in Indian-controlled Kashmir but had been living in the US for at least 30 years. “I know him personally. He comes from Kashmir and he has been campaigning for our cause,” he said.

According to the affidavit, a confidential witness told investigators the money was transferred to Fai through Ahmad, an American living in Pakistan. The FBI interviewed Fai in March 2007 when he allegedly stated he had never met anyone who said they were with the ISI. The affidavit alleged that four Pakistani government handlers have directed Fai’s US activities and that Fai has been in touch with them more than 4,000 times since June 2008.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “US pressures Islamabad to free doctor who helped CIA track down Bin Laden” was written by Saeed Shah in Islamabad, for The Guardian on Tuesday 12th July 2011 19.05 UTC

Washington is pressing Islamabad to release a doctor being held for helping the CIA track down Osama bin Laden as the diplomatic falling-out between the countries grows more bitter.

Dr Shakil Afridi was arrested by Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency after it discovered he had been recruited by the CIA to run a fake vaccination programme in Abbottabad to try to get DNA samples from the al-Qaida leader’s suspected hideout.

American authorities are trying to rescue the Pakistani doctor, his wife and children, and take them to the United States, according to Pakistani and US officials.

The revelation that Bin Laden was living comfortably in northern Pakistan – and the clandestine operation by US special forces to kill him on 2 May – have pushed ties between Washington and Islamabad to breaking point. Over the weekend, the US announced that it would punish Pakistan for its lack of co-operation in the anti-terror fight by cutting $800m (£500m) in military aid.

In retaliation, Pakistan’s defence minister on Tuesday threatened to pull out over 100,000 troops posted on its side of the border with Afghanistan, which would be a security disaster for the coalition’s ongoing military campaign.

The recruitment of Afridi has added to the tensions. The doctor, in his late 40s, is thought to have been detained in late May or early June, and is not thought to have been charged. He is being held for working for a foreign intelligence agency, which can be punishable by the death penalty.

Friends say they last saw him attend the funeral of a distant family member in Peshawar, the provincial capital of the north-west, on 18 May. Afridi worked as the doctor in charge of Khyber, part of the tribal area, on the edge of Peshawar. It is believed that he was snatched by the ISI at Karkhano bazaar, a market for smuggled goods, on his way back home to Peshawar from work in Khyber, that lies between Peshawar and Khyber. He was initially held in custody in Peshawar, but may have been transferred to custody in Islamabad.

From a humble family, Afridi graduated in 1990 from Khyber Medical College, the top medical academy in the north-west of the country. He had been accused of corruption in the past but was cleared of misdoings, according to one person who knows him.

The CIA was never sure that Bin Laden was hiding inside the house in Abbottabad, northern Pakistan. It recruited Afridi, who set up a fake vaccination programme in Abbottabad. It was hoped that this would produce a DNA sample from one of the Bin Laden children. A nurse working for the doctor managed to get inside the compound, though it is not thought that the right DNA was obtained.

The Guardian revelations about the fake CIA vaccine programme made headline news in Pakistan on Tuesday, but government officials offered no comment.

Already chilly US-Pakistan relations grew colder in recent days with the news that Washington is to withhold $800m of military aid. Much of that money would have gone toward reimbursing Pakistan for the costs of keeping over 100,000 troops in the tribal area, guarding the border with Afghanistan, under a scheme known as Coalition Support Funds.

“This is money we have already spent on this war,” Ahmad Mukhtar, Pakistan’s defence minister, said in an interview with Express 24/7, a Pakistani news channel. “The next step is that the government or armed forces will remove these soldiers from the border.”

According to figures released by the US Congress, Washington has paid Pakistan $8.9bn in Coalition Support Funds since 2001. The money is meant to pay for the costs of maintaining the Pakistani troops in the tribal area.

Pakistan’s armed forces are accused of allowing militants to sneak across the border from safe havens in the tribal area to carry out attacks in Afghanistan. However, Pakistan says it maintains 1,100 border check posts and does its best to stop the flow. If those posts were removed, the Taliban would be able to pour across unhindered. But Mukhtar’s comments are likely to be a warning shot, as pulling out those troops from the tribal area would create a huge security threat for Pakistan too.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

My favorite military analyst, Ralph Peters, was fired up last night on O’Reilly. He says Pakistan’s decision to arrest the 5 men who helped us locate Osama bin Laden should be the last straw. We should stop pretending Pakistan is an ally. We should cut off all funds to that country. He told O’Reilly that any member of Congress who votes to keep funding Pakistan will have blood on his/her hands.

Watch the whole thing. It’s a great segment.

(H/T Right Scoop via Conurls)

This article titled “Afghanistan worst place in the world for women, but India in top five” was written by Owen Bowcott, for The Guardian on Wednesday 15th June 2011 01.12 UTC

Targeted violence against female public officials, dismal healthcare and desperate poverty make Afghanistan the world’s most dangerous country in which to be born a woman, according to a global survey released on Wednesday.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Pakistan, India and Somalia feature in descending order after Afghanistan in the list of the five worst states, the poll among gender experts shows.

The appearance of India, a country rapidly developing into an economic super-power, was unexpected. It is ranked as extremely hazardous because of the subcontinent’s high level of female infanticide and sex trafficking.

Others were less surprised to be on the list. Informed about her country’s inclusion, Somalia’s women’s minister, Maryan Qasim, responded: “I thought Somalia would be first on the list, not fifth.”

The survey has been compiled by the Thomson Reuters Foundation to mark the launch of a website, TrustLaw Woman, aimed at providing free legal advice for women’s groups around the world.

High maternal mortality rates, limited access to doctors and a “near total lack of economic rights” render Afghanistan such a threat to its female inhabitants. “Continuing conflict, Nato airstrikes and cultural practices combine to make Afghanistan a very dangerous place for women,” said Antonella Notari, head of Women Change Makers, a group that supports women social entrepreneurs around the world.

“Women who do attempt to speak out or take on public roles that challenge ingrained gender stereotypes of what is acceptable for women to do or not, such as working as policewomen or news broadcasters, are often intimidated or killed.”

The “staggering levels of sexual violence” in the lawless east of the DRC account for its second place in the list. One recent US study claimed that more than 400,000 women are raped there each year. The UN has called Congo the rape capital of the world.

“Rights activists say militia groups and soldiers target all ages, including girls as young as three and elderly women,” the survey reports, “They are gang raped, raped with bayonets and some have guns shot into their vaginas.”

Pakistan is ranked third on the basis of cultural, tribal and religious practices harmful to women. “These include acid attacks, child and forced marriage and punishment or retribution by stoning or other physical abuse,” the poll finds.

Divya Bajpai, reproductive health adviser at the International HIV/Aids Alliance, added: “Pakistan has some of the highest rates of dowry murder, so-called honour killings and early marriage.” According to Pakistan’s human rights commission, as many as 1,000 women and girls die in honour killings annually.

India is the fourth most dangerous country. “India’s central bureau of investigation estimated that in 2009 about 90% of trafficking took place within the country and that there were some 3 million prostitutes, of which about 40% were children,” the survey found.

Forced marriage and forced labour trafficking add to the dangers for women. “Up to 50 million girls are thought to be ‘missing’ over the past century due to female infanticide and foeticide,”, the UN population fund says, because parents prefer to have young boys rather than girls.

Somalia, a state in political disintegration, suffers high levels of maternal mortality, rape, female genital mutilation and limited access to education and healthcare.

Qasim added: “The most dangerous thing a woman in Somalia can do is to become pregnant. When a woman becomes pregnant her life is 50-50 because there is no antenatal care at all. There are no hospitals, no healthcare, no nothing.

“Add to that the rape cases that happen on a daily basis, and female genital mutilation being done to every single girl in Somalia. Add to that famine and drought. Add to that the fighting [which means] you can die any minute, any day.”

Monique Villa, the chief executive of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, said: “Hidden dangers – like a lack of education or terrible access to healthcare – are as deadly, if not more so, than physical dangers like rape and murder which usually grab the headlines.

“In Afghanistan, for instance, women have a one in 11 chance of dying in childbirth. In the top five countries, basic human rights are systematically denied to women.

“Empowering women tackles the very roots of poverty. In the developing world when a woman works, her children are better fed and better educated because they spend their money for their family.”

The survey was based on responses from more than 200 aid professionals, academics, health workers, policymakers, journalists and development specialists chosen for their expertise in gender issues.

Each country was also ranked in terms of six risk factors including: health, discrimination and lack of access to resources, cultural and religious practices, sexual violence, human trafficking and conflict-related violence.

In terms of individual risk categories, Afghanistan was deemed to be the most dangerous for health, economic/discrimination and non-sexual violence; the Congo is most plagued by rape and sexual violence; and India has most problems with trafficking.

“You have to look at all the dangers to women, all the risks women and girls face,” said Elisabeth Roesch, who works on gender-based violence for the International Rescue Committee in Washington.

“If a woman can’t access healthcare because her healthcare isn’t prioritised, that can be a very dangerous situation as well.”

The TrustLaw website has been in existence for some time, linking up local NGOs and social entrepreneurs with established law firms who are prepared to offer legal advice on a pro-bono basis. The groups are vetted by Transparency International.

More than 450 law firms are already involved including some from China. Among those that have recently benefited have been the charity Riders for Health, which delivers medicine to remote villages, and reviewed its contracts in Nigeria.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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This article titled “Pakistan to return Osama bin Laden helicopter wreckage to US” was written by Declan Walsh in Islamabad, for The Guardian on Monday 16th May 2011 18.45 UTC

Pakistan will return the wreckage of the US special forces helicopter used in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden as a tentative first step towards hitting the reset button in their badly damaged relations.

Senator John Kerry announced the offer in Islamabad after 24 hours of meetings with Pakistan’s military and civilian leadership amid deep mutual mistrust and recriminations since Bin Laden’s killing on 2 May.

The US feared cutting-edge military technology in the tail of the helicopter, abandoned after US forces blew up the rest of the craft, could be reverse-engineered in China.

A joint statement following the talks reported “a constructive exchange of views” – diplomatic speak for tough-talking – but also an agreement to work together against “high value targets”. It was not clear if these targets included the Taliban leader Mullah Omar or al-Qaida’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, both of whom are believed to be in Pakistan.

Kerry, considered the “good cop” of US diplomacy with Islamabad, stressed the “extraordinary” nature of the mission that killed Bin Laden, saying it had been kept secret for operational reasons and not due to US mistrust of Pakistan. This claim contradicted earlier comments by the CIA chief, Leon Panetta, that Pakistani intelligence (ISI) had been excluded in case someone tipped off the al-Qaida leader.

“This had to be an American operation, and it had to be as secure as humanly possible,” he said. But he stopped short of alleging Pakistani complicity with Bin Laden, saying there was “no evidence at this point in time”.

The deal comes amid growing anti-American anger inside Pakistan, which on Friday passed a motion condemning the US raid and calling for a complete review of the relationship with the US, including potentially cutting Nato’s supply line to Afghanistan.

A senior Pakistani military official told the Guardian the raid had sparked vivid anti-American sentiment inside the armed forces, and that General Kayani had faced anger during a tour of military bases last week. There were also questions about the poor perfomance of the ISI, the official said, but rejected suggestions that agency personnel had helped Bin Laden.

Instead, he suggested, the US needed to make major concessions to rebuild the relationship including, he said, a nuclear cooperation deal similar to the one between Washington and India. But there are few signs that the US will make any concessions, with Kerry also under pressure from US senators who want to slash aid to Pakistan or cut relations entirely.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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I wrote last week about the Pentagon’s fear that China would end up with parts of the downed helicopter used in the raid against Bin Laden. The covert mission to kill the world’s most wanted terrorist ended up accidentally revealing to the world a secret stealth helicopter used by Special Forces. One of the special choppers clipped one of the walls of Bin Laden’s compound and was forced to make a hard landing. The Navy SEALs had no choice but to blow it up on site. Unfortunately, a tail rotor survived the blast intact and is now in Pakistani hands.

Pakistani officials said today that China has already privately expressed interest in seeing the tail rotor:

Pakistani officials said today they’re interested in studying the remains of the U.S.’s secret stealth-modified helicopter abandoned during the Navy SEAL raid of Osama bin Laden’s compound, and suggested the Chinese are as well.

The U.S. has already asked the Pakistanis for the helicopter wreckage back, but one Pakistani official told ABC News the Chinese were also “very interested” in seeing the remains. Another official said, “We might let them [the Chinese] take a look.”

Pakistan has some balls threatening to give our technology to the Chinese after we just busted them for harboring Osama bin Laden. These bastards are out of control. Even entertaining the idea of giving them $3 billion in aide this year is complete lunacy. These people are not and have never been our friends. They go along with us just enough to keep the money flowing but not enough to make any real difference in the War On Terror.

President Obama should call up President Zardari and inform him that we’re coming to get our tail rotor back. How much are we going to let these jerks get away with? This is a freaking embarrassment.