Month: January 2024

The Israeli army said Tuesday it is channelling water into Gaza’s tunnels in a bid to destroy the sprawling underground network used by Hamas militants to launch attacks on Israel.

“It is part of a range of tools deployed by the IDF (Israeli army) to neutralise the threat of Hamas’s subterranean network of tunnels,” the military said in a statement, confirming media reports.

Dubbed “the Gaza metro” by the Israeli army, there were 1,300 tunnels over 500 kilometres (310 miles) in Gaza at the start of the war in October, according to a study from US military academy West Point.

The military vowed to destroy them in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack in southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Some 250 hostages were also dragged to Gaza during the October 7 attack, of which around 132 are still held captive, including bodies of at least 28 people believed to have been killed.

Since the Hamas attack, Israel has launched a withering air, land and sea offensive in Gaza that has killed at least 26,751 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the territory.

The Israeli army says that many hostages taken by Hamas have been or continue to be held in the vast network of tunnels.

In December some Israeli media reported the military was leaning towards flooding the tunnels with seawater pumped from the Mediterranean.

But experts had warned the option was dangerous and poses huge risks to Gaza’s besieged civilians.

“It will cause severe damage to the already fragile water and sewage infrastructure that’s in Gaza,” the then UN humanitarian coordinator for Palestinian territories, Lynn Hastings, had warned in December.

“There’s even a risk to buildings and roads collapsing because of the increased pressure and infiltration of sea water into Gaza.”

On Tuesday the army said it had taken care in a way as to not “damage the area’s groundwater”.

“The pumping of water was only carried out in tunnel routes and locations that were suitable, matching the method of operation to each case,” it said.

“This tool is one of a range of capabilities developed by the IDF and Israel’s security establishment in recent years in order to operate against Hamas’ underground infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.”

The maze of tunnels was initially used to bypass Israel’s devastating blockade on the Gaza Strip after Hamas came to power in 2007, allowing the smuggling of people, goods and weaponry in and out of Egypt.

It extended the network after the 2014 Israel-Hamas war and uses them to emerge across Gaza to launch rocket attacks on Israel.

LONDON/ISLAMABAD: A leading Pakistani-American supporter of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has signed an agreement with another US-lobbying firm LGS LLC headed by Stephen Payne — an American lobbyist who also was lobbied for former military dictator Pervez Musharraf in 2001.

The documents available with The News show that prominent PTI supporter Pakistani-American Fayaz Quireshi of Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FDP) hired a lobbying firm LGS LLC in Washington DC initially for 45 days from January 16 to March 1, 2024. The firm will be paid $50,000 against its services of which $35,000 has already been paid in two installments on January 11 and 17.

Stephen Payne had also worked for Musharraf as a lobbyist in 2001. Quireshi has hired him to meet with Congressional offices on its behalf. The lobbying firm will endeavour to bring congressional awareness surrounding the current and ongoing issues facing members of the PTI party in Pakistan.

A PTI USA source said that Quireshi is a physician and he has hired the lobbying firm on instructions of PTI leadership in Pakistan to “raise awareness about human rights abuses in Pakistan and to campaign against the state oppression to get the US government to get tough on Pakistan”.

Friends of Democratic Pakistan has told the US authorities in its submission that FDP’s is hiring the lobbyist to help PTI Pakistan. It says that FDP’s “work may benefit a foreign political party as its goal is to support the interests of PTI, a political party from Pakistan”. Documents say that the lobbying is funded by the US citizens of Pakistani origin led by Quireshi.

The lobbying contract with Stephen Payne has been signed just days after Imran Khan blamed the US government yet again for causing the fall of his government in an alleged conspiracy run by the US diplomat Donald Lu through General Bajwa. PTI has come under question for hiring US lobbyists to help it out against the very government it accuses of removing it from the power and especially so that Imran Khan has told his followers he’s fighting to liberate Pakistan from the US influence.

PTI’s latest lobbyist Stephen Payne is the same Republican lobbyist who worked for Pervez Musharraf’s dictatorship, soon after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Payne was caught on video telling a politician from Kazakhstan he could arrange meetings with high-ranking Bush administrations officials in exchange for a large donation to Bush’s presidential library fund. Payne was one of several Bush supporters who made up a firm known as Team Eagle, which signed a $180,000-a-year contract with the Musharraf government on October 13, 2001, according to a government database maintained under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

The firm was also known as Team Barakat, according to FARA documents.

In a letter dated January 21, 2006, Musharraf thanked Payne’s Worldwide Strategies. Musharraf wrote to Payne: “It gives me great pleasure to thank you for playing such an important role in strengthening US Pakistan ties. The challenges faced by both our countries in the aftermath of September 11th, brought us even closer, in which you played a pivotal role.”

It is important to note here that three weeks ago, PTI US leader Atif Khan had confirmed that the party has hired a new public relation and a new lobbying firm to monitor Pakistan’s general elections and to engage with the US and international media.

Atif, who was recently appointed PTI Core Committee member along with Sajjad Burki by former PM Imran Khan, said the PTI USA has signed a three-month contract with a PR firm to monitor and observe elections in Pakistan which are scheduled to take place on 8 February 2024. He said the PR firm will work with the mainstream US media to highlight any irregularities.

Atif said that, separately, a new lobbying firm has been hired for “election monitoring and human rights violations’’. He said: “We have signed a contract with the lobbying firm. We are working closely through our overseas volunteer workers. We will make the happenings in Pakistan a worldwide news. Unfortunately, the US State Department sits on the fence when it comes to human rights violations in Pakistan.”

The PTI had previously hired an American consultancy firm headed by Robert Laurent Grenier, the ex-CIA station chief in Islamabad. While in power in July 2021, Robert Laurent Grenier’s firm called Grenier Consulting LLC was recruited to lobby for the party. The contract was signed secretly by Iftikhar Durrani with the firm in July 2021 under the “supervision of senior [PTI] party officials and under the direction of Pakistan government officials” for $25,000 per month. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Law and Justice Ministry said later on that the contract was signed without their involvement despite the fact that the dues in the contract were to be paid by the government of Pakistan.

Grenier is a CIA veteran who worked as the spy agency’s top counter-terrorism official from 2004 to 2006.

He was also the CIA station chief in Islamabad during the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. After the removal of PTI government in April 2022, the PTI-USA Inc., a subsidiary of PTI, hired another lobbying firm Fenton/Arlook to provide “public relations services, including but not limited to distributing information to and briefing journalists, placing articles and broadcasts, arranging interviews with representatives or supporters of PTI, advising on social media efforts and other such public relations services.”

The firm contacted hundreds of the US and western media organisations and was able to secure several interviews for Imran Khan and news stories highlighting PTI’s narrative. PTI’s spokesman Raoof Hassan and Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali didn’t respond to questions.

ISLAMABAD: A federal cabinet meeting presided by Caretaker Prime Minister Anwarul Haq Kakar will be held on today (Tuesday) to mull over greenlighting the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR)’s revamp and digitisation, contrary to the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s suggestions to enhance the tax administration,

Some startling disclosures showed that the caretaker setup has adopted a poor governance mechanism during its tenure.

The cabinet meeting’s minutes mentioned that the forum had formed an inter-ministerial body that would be convened by the finance minister with ministers of foreign affairs, privatisation, law and justice, energy, commerce, IT and telecommunications. The meeting also considered the summary submitted by the revenue division ‘Restructuring of the Federal Board of Revenue and Digitisation’. The committee was tasked with deliberating on the reform proposals and refining them for consideration by the cabinet in its next meeting.

The minutes state that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) shall (i) make the tax return form simple enough for the common person to understand and fill out; and (ii) reduce its length to no more than two pages, with provisions for supplementary information where required.

“Given its constitutional and legal mandate, the caretaker government would only carry out the groundwork for the Federal Board of Revenue’s structural reforms, keeping in view the public interest, but legislation to effect these reforms would be left to the newly elected government,” the official minutes of the last cabinet meeting state.

Now the question arises: if there was a futile exercise keeping in view the minutes of the last cabinet meeting, why were all energies wasted?

On the other hand, the IMF’s Technical Assistance Report on Revenue Administration Diagnostic stated that the proposals to develop the FBR into a semi-autonomous revenue authority are fully supported and encouraged.

“The IMF has recommended a fixed tenure for the chairman of the tax authority,” the report added.

The IMF has shared options to transform the FBR into a single national tax authority to administer all federal and progressively provincial taxes or restructure the FBR as a federal tax agency with coordinated linkages across all provincial tax agencies.

The IMF report, prepared by Robert Woods, an expert in the Fiscal Affairs Department of the Fund, proposed a future for the revenue authority and stated that the task force established by the government has developed different proposals to restructure the revenue administration.

The proposal options under consideration were to transform the FBR into a single national tax authority to administer all federal and progressively provincial taxes or to restructure the FBR as a federal tax agency with coordinated linkages across all provincial tax agencies.

The establishment of the tax authority as a performance-driven semi-autonomous revenue authority with its own service rules, recruitment, and management policies ultimately operating under a single-line budget.

There is a need to ensure strong governance and performance management by appointing an independent tax oversight and administration board. It recommended a fixed tenure for the head of the tax authority.

The restructuring of Customs is to focus on trade facilitation, border control, and anti-smuggling operations, either by separating the Customs from the FBR to form a customs and border control authority under the finance ministry under the oversight of its board or by establishing a single reporting head for Customs within the tax authority. The proposal to adopt digital revenue administration through electronic invoicing and a digital withholding system is also under consideration. The proposal for strengthening information technology support for digital administration is also being considered.

The caretaker finance minister has left no stone unturned to bulldose the FBR restructuring plan of her own choice and pressured it to write in the summary that the inter-ministerial extended the support of the revamp plan.

However, the FBR members insisted that they would write in the summary that there was stiff opposition to this restructuring plan incorporated in the summary to give a chance to the federal cabinet to make an informed decision. But there was pressure to show through the summary that everything was okay.

The FBR made it clear that they would only send the summary once they received the minutes of the last cabinet meeting. How could they comply with the verbal orders without having read the last minutes of the meeting?

On Monday evening, the FBR received the official minutes of the last Federal Cabinet meeting, in which an inter-ministerial committee was constituted to further deliberate on the summary for the FBR restructuring.

Earlier, the secretary of revenue/chairman of the FBR had refused to prepare and forward another summary without getting the official minutes of the last cabinet meeting.

Deliberate efforts were going on to convince the law minister to withdraw his comments on the inability of the caretaker government to make massive legislation under which the government had to bring 1010 changes to the existing tax laws.

This Inter-Ministerial Committee proved another fiasco because none of the caretaker ministers except Ejaz Gohar had supported the FBR revamp idea. However, Gohar had also raised the question of massive under-invoicing in the official meeting. There were the fewest reform proposals given by the minister of foreign affairs, but he had also proposed three to four recommendations to implement them to improve tax efficiency.

The energy minister had proposed to abolish the FBR and establish a new tax entity. The minister for law had opposed such massive legal changes and argued that it was not the power of the caretakers to make such legislation.

The six-page dossier, seen by Reuters, alleges that some 190 UNRWA employees, including teachers, have doubled as Hamas or Islamic Jihad members. It has names and pictures for 11 of them.

The Palestinians have accused Israel of falsifying information to tarnish UNRWA, which says it has fired some staffers and is investigating the allegations.

One of the 11 is a school counsellor accused in the Israeli dossier of providing unspecified assistance to his son in the abduction of a woman during the Hamas infiltration in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 253 kidnapped.

Another, a UNRWA social worker, is accused of unspecified involvement in the transfer to Gaza of a slain Israeli soldier’s corpse and of coordinating the movements of pick-up trucks used by the raiders and of weapons supplies.

A third Palestinian in the dossier is accused of taking part in a rampage in the Israeli border village Beeri, one-tenth of whose residents were killed. A fourth is accused of participating in an attack on Reim, a site both of an army base that was overrun and a rave where more than 360 revellers died.

The dossier was shown to Reuters by a source who could not be identified by name or nationality. The source said that it was compiled by Israeli intelligence and shared with the United States, which on Friday suspended funding for UNRWA.

Asked about the dossier, a spokesperson for UNRWA said she could not comment due to an ongoing probe by the United Nations.

More than 10 countries, including major donors the United States and Germany, have halted their funding to the agency.

Aid operation jeopardised

That is a huge problem for an agency that more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians look to for day-to-day assistance, and which has already been hard-stretched by Israel’s onslaught on Hamas in the enclave.

UNRWA said today it would not be able to continue operations in Gaza and across the region beyond the end of February if funding were not resumed.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency was set up for refugees of the 1948 war at Israel’s founding in what was British-ruled Palestine. It also tends to millions of the original refugees’ descendants in Palestinian territories and abroad. UNRWA employs 13,000 people in Gaza.

Israel has long accused UNRWA of perpetuating the conflict by discouraging the resettlement of refugees and has on occasion said agency staff took part in armed attacks against it.

UNRWA denies wrongdoing, describing its role as relief only.

“From intelligence information, documents and identity cards seized during the course of the fighting, it is now possible to flag around 190 Hamas and PIJ terrorist operatives who serve as UNRWA employees,” the Hebrew-language dossier says.

It accuses Hamas of “methodically and deliberately deploying its terrorist infrastructure in a wide range of UN facilities and assets”, including schools. Hamas denies that.

Two of the alleged Hamas operatives cited in the dossier are described as “eliminated”, or killed by Israeli forces. A 12th Palestinian whose name and picture are provided is said to have no factional membership and to have infiltrated Israel on Oct 7.

Also on the list of 12 men are a UNRWA teacher accused of arming himself with an anti-tank rocket, another teacher accused of filming a hostage and the manager of a shop in a UNRWA school accused of opening a war room for Islamic Jihad.

More than 26,000 people have been killed in Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, the enclave’s health ministry said. With flows of aid like food and medicine just a trickle of pre-conflict levels, deaths from preventable diseases as well as the risk of famine are growing, aid workers say.

Most of Gaza’s people have become more reliant on UNRWA aid, including about 1m who have fled Israeli bombardments to shelter in its facilities.

“The terrorist organisations are cynically exploiting the residents of the strip and the international organisations whose mission is to provide aid … and in doing so are causing de facto harm to residents of the strip,” the dossier said.

At the weekend, UN head Antonio Guterres vowed to hold to account any employee involved in “abhorrent” acts but implored nations to keep funding UNRWA for humanitarian reasons.

“The tens of thousands of men and women who work for UNRWA, many in some of the most dangerous situations for humanitarian workers, should not be penalised,” he said. “The dire needs of the desperate populations they serve must be met.”

Venezuela’s Supreme Court, loyal to President Nicolas Maduro, upheld on Friday a 15-year ban on Machado holding public office.

It also confirmed the ineligibility of a possible opposition stand-in — two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles.

The 56-year-old Machado described the ruling as “grotesque” and showed no sign she would bow out of the race.

“Nicolas Maduro will not choose the candidate of the people, because the people have already chosen their candidate, period,” Machado told her supporters.

“I received the mandate of almost three million Venezuelans” in an opposition primary in October, she said. “We are going to win and they must prepare to lose.”

“They cannot hold elections without me,” she added.

Last year, Maduro’s government and the opposition reached a mediated deal in Barbados to hold a free and fair vote in 2024 with international observers present.

That agreement saw the United States ease sanctions against the South American country, allowing US-based Chevron to resume limited oil extraction and leading the way to a prisoner swap.

But on Monday, White House spokesman John Kirby said members of the Maduro government “haven’t taken those actions” promised in Barbados, and he spoke of Washington’s “options with respect to sanctions.”

Hours later the US Treasury announced it was reinstating some sanctions on Venezuela and its mining sector.

According to a statement by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, any US companies doing business with Venezuela state-owned mining concern Minerven have until February 13 to complete a “wind down of transactions” with the firm.

US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Ben Cardin said he was “deeply disappointed” with the Venezuela court’s ruling and said Maduro was behaving “like dictators around the world” to avoid competing in a fair election.

“As Machado’s absurd disqualification clearly violates the Barbados Agreement, the US must reimpose related sanctions until a clean election is assured,” Cardin said in a statement.

– EU ‘very concerned’ –

The Supreme Court said Machado would remain disqualified “for being involved… in the corruption plot orchestrated” by former opposition leader Juan Guaido.

Guaido, now in exile, was recognized for years by dozens of countries as the legitimate president of Venezuela after a 2018 election that saw Maduro inaugurated for a second successive term despite widespread fraud claims.

Maduro has not confirmed he will seek a third term, but is widely expected to do so. No date has yet been set for the election, which is expected in the second half of 2024.

The European Union said in a statement Monday it was “very concerned” by the disqualification of Machado and Capriles.

“Decisions intended to prevent members of the opposition from exercising their core political rights can only undermine democracy and the rule of law,” it said, urging “the full implementation of the Barbados Agreement.”

Last week, Maduro said the deal was “mortally wounded” after government authorities claimed to have foiled numerous US-backed plots to assassinate him.

The government insisted Monday that all was above board.

“Those who wanted to appeal appealed and also pledged to respect the outcome,” said Jorge Rodriguez, head of that government delegation involved in talks with the opposition.

And senior official Diosdado Cabello said there would be “free, transparent, credible, universal, direct and secret elections without the presence of the United States, without the presence of the OAS,” the Organization of American States.