Iran - Pakistan Gas Pipeline: China likely tone awarded construction contract

As Russia and China vie with each other to win the construction contract for the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project, Pakistan is expected to finalise an engineering and procurement deal with Beijing, which may also provide financing in line with the growing energy cooperation between the two sides.



Domestic gas utilities – Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) and Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) – are also lobbying to grab the engineering, procurement and construction contract for the pipeline, which will bring in much-needed gas from Iran’s South Pars gas field.

Germany-based consultancy firm ILF is conducting a route survey for the $1.25 billion Pakistani portion of the pipeline and will soon be completing its work, after which the engineering contract will be awarded. SSGC and SNGPL had also wanted a share in the consultancy contract with ILF, which resulted in a delay in completing the survey, sources said.
ILF, which got the contract for $55 million, is working in collaboration with National Engineering Services of Pakistan (Nespak).

“A major part of the survey for laying the pipeline from Iranian border to Nawabshah has been completed and the remaining part will be finished by August 2,” an official said. More >>>

Location: Islamabad

CIA Chief Leaves Pakistan

U.S. and Pakistani officials say the top U.S. intelligence official in Islamabad has returned home because of medical reasons. 

The man cannot be named because he is undercover and the CIA has not commented on the matter. It is the second time in seven months that the top U.S. intelligence officer has left the post in Pakistan.

 The previous station chief had to leave after a Pakistani official admitted that his identity had been leaked, causing a security breach. 
Relations between the CIA and Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, have been strained since bin Laden was killed in a secret raid by U.S. special forces last May.The Central Intelligence Agency's station chief, who oversaw the intelligence team that found Osama bin Laden, is not expected to return. More >>>

Fighting back against the CIA drone war

They call it "bug splat", the splotch of blood, bones, and viscera that marks the site of a successful drone strike.


To those manning the consoles in Nevada, it signifies "suspected militants" who have just been "neutralised"; to those on the ground, in most cases, it represents a family that has been shattered, a home destroyed.

Since June 18, 2004, when the CIA began its policy of extrajudicial killings in Pakistan, it has left nearly 250 such stains on Pakistani soil, daubed with the remains of more than 2,500 individuals, mostly civilians. More recently, it has taken to decorating other parts of the world.

Since the Pakistani government and its shadowy intelligence agencies have been complicit in the killings, the CIA has been able to do all this with complete impunity. Major human rights organisations in thrall to the Obama Administration have given it a pass. So have the media, who uncritically accept officials' claims about the accuracy of their lethal toys.

Two recent developments might change all this.

The unlawful combatant

On July 18, 2011, three Pakistani tribesmen, Kareem Khan, Sadaullah, and Maezol Khan, filed a formal complaint against John A Rizzo, the CIA's former acting General Counsel, at a police station in Islamabad. Until his retirement on June 25, 2009, Rizzo served as legal counsel to the program whose victims have included Kareem Khan's son and brother, Maezol Khan's seven-year-old son, and three family members of Sadaullah (who also lost both legs and an eye in the attack).

In an interview with Newsweek's Tara McKelvey, Rizzo bragged that he was responsible for signing off on the "hit list" for "lethal operations". The targets were "blown to bits" in "businesslike" operations, he said. By his own admission, he is implicated in "murder". Indeed, he boasted: "How many law professors have signed off on a death warrant?" And that is not the full extent of Rizzo's derring-do: he claims he was also "up to my eyeballs" in Bush's program of torture in black sites in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The detailed First Information Report (FIR) that barrister Mirza Shahzad Akbar prepared on behalf of the tribesmen was filed at the Secretariat Police Station in Islamabad, whose territorial jurisdiction includes the residence of Rizzo's leading co-conspirator Jonathan Banks, the CIA station chief who has since fled Pakistan. As a party to a conspiracy to commit murder in Pakistan, Akbar believes that Rizzo is subject to the country's penal code.

Clive Stafford Smith, the celebrated human rights lawyer best known as George W Bush's nemesis over Guantanamo, is leading the campaign to secure an international arrest warrant for Rizzo. Asked about the question of jurisdiction, Smith told me that that "there is no issue of jurisdiction - these are a series of crimes, including murder … committed on Pakistani soil against Pakistani citizens". The CIA, he says, is "waging war against Pakistan". He insists that "there is no question that [Rizzo] is liable for the crimes he is committing. The only issue is whether he will face the music or be kept hidden by the authorities".

Smith, who heads the legal charity Reprieve, is a practical man, uninterested in mere symbolic gestures. Earlier, he successfully sued the Bush administration for access to prisoners at Guantanomo and has so far secured the release of 65 of them. He is confident that once the Islamabad police issues a warrant, Interpol will have no choice but to pursue the case. Furthermore, he notes, depending on the success of this test case, they will broaden it to also include drone operators.

The US position so far is to either claim that it is engaged in legitimate self-defence, or to make the policy more palatable by downplaying its human cost. Neither argument is tenable.

The laws of war do not prohibit the killing of civilians unless it is deliberate, disproportionate or indiscriminate. However, Akbar and Smith reject the applicability of these laws to CIA's drone war. "The US has to follow the laws of war," Smith recently told the Guardian. But "the issue here is that this is not a war" - there is no declared state of conflict between the US and Pakistan. Moreover, Gary Solis of Georgetown University, an expert in the laws of war, told Newsweek that "the CIA who pilot unmanned aerial vehicles are civilians directly engaged in hostilities, an act that makes them 'unlawful combatants' and possibly subject to prosecution". More >>>

Location:Islamabad

Medvezhiy Glacier Advances

In the early summer of 2011, the Medvezhiy Glacier in Tajikistan slid abruptly down its valley and for greater distance than it has in at least 22 years.

The sudden downhill slide of the glacier raised concern among glaciologists and emergency management groups about a potential glacial outburst flood that could flow down into the Vanch River valley.
According to satellite imagery and reports from local scientists, the glacier has moved roughly 800 to 1,000 meters since June 2011. The glacier normally moves 200 to 400 meters in an entire year. The mud-covered terminus of the glacier now blocks the Abdukagor River and is forming a lake behind a wall of ice 150 to 200 meters high and 300 to 350 meters across. Cracks and ice tunnels may be allowing some water to flow through; a bridge across the river downstream has been washed out from one water surge so far.
The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-color image of Medvezhiy Glacier on July 23, 2011. Annotations mark the position of the glacier terminus on May 2, June 3, and July 23, 2011.


Located in southern Tajikistan in the Pamir Mountains, Medvezhiy (Bear) Glacier is roughly 16 kilometers long, and drains out of the Academii Nauk (Academy of Sciences) Range. The upper end of Medvezhiy sits 4,500 meters above sea level, with the terminus at roughly 3,000 meters. It is described by glaciologists as a pulsating glacier with periodic surging; the most recent surges were 1989 and 2001.
Major surges in 1963 and 1973 caused the formation of ephemeral lakes that swelled behind the ice. In each case, the glacier surged as much as two kilometers down the valley and blocked the Abdukagor River with ice dams as much as 100 meters high. When the ice dams broke, more than 20 million cubic meters of water flowed down the river. No lives were lost in those instances, but infrastructure damage was significant, according to reports. Scientists have regularly surveyed the area since the 1960s.
References
Novikov, V. (2002) Severe Hydrometeorological Events and their Fluctuation. World Meteorological Organization, CBS Teschnical Conference poster, Accessed July 29, 2011.
United Nations Environment Programme/GRID-Arendal (2007) Formation of lakes and glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs) by Medvezhi Glacier, Pamirs. Accessed July 29, 2011.
UN Chronicle (2009) Global Warming and Surging Glaciers. Accessed July 29, 2011.
NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 team and the United States Geological Survey. Caption by Mike Carlowicz, with background information from Erkin Huseinov and Viktor Novikov.
Instrument: EO-1 - ALI Source

Location:Cayman Islands

The Convoluted Debate on Drones

The same week U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta declared “we’re within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda”—an assessment that many believe reflects the efforts of seven years of CIA drone strikes—former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair called America’s “unilateral” drone war in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia a mistake.


“Because we’re alienating the countries concerned,” Blair said, “because we’re treating countries just as places where we go attack groups that threaten us, we are threatening the prospects of long-term reform.”

Given that our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president has drastically escalated the use of these flying, robotic hitmen, there seems to be some confusion at the White House.

Speaking to attendees at the Aspen Security Forum, Blair said drone strikes in Pakistan should be launched only when America had the full cooperation of the government in Islamabad and “we agree with them on what drone attacks” should target. As explained elsewhere, this author accepts the efficacy of America’s drone war, but with enormous reluctance. That said, part of Blair’s assessment seems wildly out of touch. Why would Washington wait for permission from Islamabad to hunt al Qaeda?

First, individuals either within or with ties to Pakistan’s spy agency have collaborated with insurgents that frequently attack U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan. That doesn’t speak well for Blair’s call for joint cooperation. Second, we’ve known for years that elements within Pakistan have thwarted—on several occasions—foreign-led attempts to find and take out terrorists. Even someone who is not wildly enamored with drones understands the argument for employing them unilaterally when confronted with uncooperative governments. Policymakers, however, should be weighing the ability to keep militant groups off balance against the costs of facilitating the rise of more terrorists, particularly in a country as volatile as Pakistan.

A statement even more out of step than Mr. Blair’s came from Michael E. Leiter, former head of the National Counterterrorism Center. Earlier this week at the Aspen Security Forum, Leiter contended that assessments that al Qaeda was on the verge of collapse lacked “accuracy and precision,” and that al Qaeda’s leadership and structure in Pakistan “is still there and could launch some attacks.” He also raised concerns about the possible long-term effects of intensive CIA paramilitary operations on conventional espionage and analysis for issues like China: “The question has to be asked: Has that in some ways diminished some of its strategic, long-term intelligence collection and analysis mission?” More >>>

Location:Islamabad

Report: U.S. Cities Must Prepare for Water-related Impacts of Climate Change

Today marks the release of a new NRDC report called Thirsty for Answers: Preparing for the Water-related Impacts of Climate Change in American Cities.


The report makes clear that some of the most profound effects of climate change are water-related, like sea level rise, increased rain and storms, flooding, and drought. These changes affect the water we drink, fish, and swim in, as well as impact our infrastructure and the economy.

One need only look as far as the recent deadly flooding and severe storms in the Midwest, or to the impacts of the prolonged drought across the South, to understand the profound effects of water, or a lack thereof. Whether any specific weather event, like the flooding in the Midwest, reflects the impacts of climate change or not, the research compiled in our report makes clear that these kinds of events are likely to increase in the coming years as a result of climate change.

In our report, we compiled local and regional research findings about the water-related impacts of climate change in 12 U.S. cities (chosen for their geographic diversity and range in size, in order to provide a snapshot of the varied national picture): New York, Boston, Norfolk (Virginia), Miami, New Orleans, Chicago, St. Louis, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Homer (Alaska). We also analyzed what many of these municipalities are doing in terms of preparedness planning, and offer their solutions as examples for other communities to emulate.

A brief rundown of the types of changes and impacts detailed in the report include:

Rising Seas: Most of the coastal cities in the report are facing threats from sea level rise, including coastal flooding and storm surges. Miami ranks number one worldwide in terms of assets exposed to coastal flooding, and the Norfolk-Virginia Beach metropolitan area ranks tenth, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Rising seas threaten to decimate the protective wetlands surrounding New Orleans and inundate a large portion of the Florida Keys.

Increased Storms and Flooding: The Midwest and East Coast are at the highest risk for more frequent and intense storms. The frequency of very heavy rainfall in Chicago, for example, is expected to increase by 50 percent in the next 30 years. More frequent and intense rainfall contributes to the type of flooding recently seen along the Mississippi River, and combined sewer overflows that send untreated sewage and stormwater into the Chicago River and Lake Michigan.

Water Supply Impacts: Rising seas are likely to cause increased saltwater intrusion into freshwater supplies, including drinking water for millions of Americans, especially in Miami and the San Francisco Bay area. In the West, rising temperatures, less rain, and decreased snowpack will create challenges for maintaining a sufficient water supply. For example, a large decline in the spring snowpack in the watersheds that supply water to Seattle is projected over the next two decades. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

An effective response to climate change

Foreign Secretary William Hague has delivered a speech titled 'The Diplomacy of Climate Change' to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Thank you Governor Whitman. I am most grateful for your generous introduction.

I am delighted to be here at the Council on Foreign Relations. In the modern networked world, diplomacy is no longer the sole preserve of diplomats. Instead, we all have a stake in global affairs. That is why the work of renowned bodies such as this is more valuable than ever.

Today I want to talk about why I believe we, as foreign policy practitioners, need to up our game in building a credible and effective response to climate change. Climate change is perhaps the twenty-first century’s biggest foreign policy challenge along with such challenges as preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. A world which is failing to respond to climate change is one in which the values embodied in the UN will not be met. It is a world in which competition and conflict will win over collaboration.

We are at a crucial point in the global debate on climate change. Many are questioning, in the wake of Copenhagen, whether we should continue to seek a response to climate change through the UN and whether we can ever hope to deal with this enormous challenge.

I will first argue that an effective response to climate change underpins our security and prosperity. Second, our response should be to strive for a binding global deal, whatever the setbacks. And third, I will set out why effective deployment of foreign policy assets is crucial to mobilising the political will needed if we are to shape an effective response. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands