news blog from Kellie

October 26, 2011 at 9:16am

We need to talk about the Haqqanis

In a question and answer session last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about how the United States would balance its need to work with Pakistan while also putting it under pressure to end its alleged support for the Haqqani network. Her answer, according to the State Department transcript, was to remind her audience that the United States had also played a role in creating the mujahideen to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. “Now, I also think it’s important to take a little historical review. If you go on YouTube, you can see Sirajuddin Haqqani with President Reagan at the White House, because during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the United States Government, through the CIA, funded jihadis, funded groups like the Haqqanis to cross the border or to, within Afghanistan, be part of the fight to drive the Soviets out and bring down the Soviet Union,” she says. I have to assume she means Jalaluddin Haqqani, the elderly father who has since passed on much of the leadership of the Haqqani network to his son, Siraj. Yet here is the thing. I cannot find any evidence that Haqqani ever visited the White House. I have asked around among Afghanistan and Pakistan experts. I have skimmed through my copy of Charlie Wilson’s War. I have asked on Twitter if anyone could show that Haqqani had ever visited the United States. And so far I have nothing. I am not going to say definitively that Jalaluddin Haqqani never visited the United States – the little voice in my head that says people who live in glass houses should not throw stones stops me from doing that. But my working assumption – until proved otherwise – is that Clinton was wrong. So why does it matter? The United States and Saudi Arabia did fund the mujahideen in the 1980s and to some extent bear the responsibility for what is happening now. It matters for three reasons. It matters because if we can’t get our historical facts right, policy decisions are being made based on very shaky foundations. The nature of U.S., Saudi and Pakistani support for the jihad against the Soviets is still very much open to debate. According to its defenders, the Pakistan army paid a very high price for fighting the Soviets on America’s behalf. Pakistan also had some three milliion Afghan refugees to deal with and when the Soviet Union retreated from Afghanistan it was left with thousands of armed Islamist militants without a cause and a raging Afghan civil war on its borders. Helping bring the Taliban to power in Kabul and turning the jihadis on Kashmir was a way of dealing with that problem. Yet – and here is where history matters – how much was Pakistan a victim of the U.S. Cold War against the Soviet Union and how much did it turn it to its advantage? It might have been possible during the jihad against the Soviets for Pakistan to support Afghan nationalist insurgents with U.S. and Saudi money – Pakistan controlled the way these funds were spent. The Pakistan army chose to stress Islamist militancy over Pashtun nationalist militancy in part because it has always been afraid of Pashtun nationalism on its side of the border. By stressing Islamist over nationalist/ethnic militancy, the Pakistan army opted for what to a military mind was the best way to protect the integrity and unity of Pakistan. (This was also obvious in some ways for an army which had lost East Pakistan to ethnic nationalism in the 1971 war which led to the creation of Bangladesh.) - In many ways, that mindset continues. Work out how far the Pakistan army is dependent on instrumentalising Islam in its security posture and you are a long way to understanding how big the gap is between the United States and Pakistan. The contestable reading of history matters also for how it is portrayed nowadays. The story about Haqqani being entertained at the White House is an old one. Yet it was revived recently in the Pakistani media with a photo purporting to show that encounter – which appeared in fact to involve a different person. Commenting on the alleged White House meeting, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani said on Twitter that the “fact remains neither Jalaluddin nor Sirajuddin Haqqani met Pres Reagan. Maulvi Khalis did.” The photo underpinned a powerful narrative in Pakistan – that the United States rather than Pakistan is responsible for creating Islamist militancy. The United States is uncontestably responsible for many things – for the invasion of Iraq, for winning the Cold War to become the world’s sole superpower and for championing an untrammeled free market system that has contributed to the current global financial crisis. But how much did Washington with its money create Islamist militancy and how much was it a product of Pakistani security thinking? If we don’t know the answers to that question, how are we supposed to judge whether the Haqqani network should be included in peace talks in Afghanistan? We know the idea of talking to the Haqqanis is on the table. The Pakistan army alluded to contacts between the Americans and the Haqqani network in a statement condemning allegations made by Admiral Mike Mullen, outgoing chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the Haqqani network was a “veritable arm” of the Inter-Servitable.ces Intelligence (ISI) agency. In its response, the Pakistan army statement quoted army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani as saying “Admiral Mullen knows fully well which all countries are in contact with the Haqqanis. Singling out Pakistan is neither fair nor productive.” Writing in the Washington Post, David Ignatius said that “U.S. officials know the ISI also facilitated a secret meeting during the last several months between the United States and a representative of the Haqqani clan.” The aim was to find out whether the Haqqani network – or parts of it – were “reconcilable”. “The message to the Haqqanis is that they can best protect political power in their ancestral homeland in Paktika, Paktia and Khost provinces by coming to the table now,” he wrote. Technically, the US administration’s conditions for bringing back Afghan militant groups into the political process do not in any case exclude the Haqqani network - requiring only as end-conditions of talks that they sever ties with al Qaeda, renounce violence and agree to respect the Afghan constitution. And as Joshua Foust wrote at Registan.net, it is hard to find moral grounds for excluding the Haqqanis when some of the United States own allies in Afghanistan have if anything an even worse track record. Or as former CIA officer Robert Baer put it in Time, “when the U.S. finally leaves, don’t be surprised to see the Haqqanis in Kabul.” Yet what do we know about the Haqqanis? Consider for a moment that one of the arguments that has been put forward in the past for talking to the Quetta shura Taliban – to whom the Haqqanis declare allegiance — is that they are stakeholders in the conflict – whether the United States and its allies likes this or not. However unpopular they might be even among ordinary Afghans, they were once in power in Kabul and they have their own form of shadow governance in parts of Afghanistan. Does the Haqqani network – for so long based in Pakistan and with its alleged ties to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency — still have enough of a constituency in Afghanistan to make them a valid player in a political settlement? According to Michael Semple, who has spent years working on Afghanistan, it would be more appropriate to label the Haqqani network the “Waziristan Militant Complex”. Writing in Foreign Affairs, he argues that “the Haqqanis’ lethal effectiveness derives from the wide range of Pakistani tribal fighters at their disposal. “What is new here, and key to understanding the attack on the embassy (and perhaps even the Rabbani assassination), is that over the last two years the Haqqanis have developed what amounts to a special forces capability. They have built up intelligence-gathering networks and infiltrated government institutions in Kabul and the surrounding provinces. With the help of al Qaeda and Central Asian fighters, foreign militants in Waziristan have developed advanced combat training and technology for roadside bombs. The Haqqanis draw on this expertise without actually controlling the groups who deliver it. Rather than the Haqqani Network, it would be more appropriate to call this the Waziristan Militant Complex.” In an article written last year, Tom Gregg argued that the United States should open talks with the Haqqanis while Jalaluddin was still well enough to contribute and still command respect within Afghanistan in peace talks. “Sirajuddin, on the other hand, does not know the meaning of the word. He has been brought up in war, has never lived as a citizen of a functioning nation state, has little to no experience of government, is not a tribal elder and is not even a credible religious leader. In this regard he is motivated more by a radical Islamist ideology than his father, and less obviously constrained by a desire to maintain good relations with the local tribal leaders,” he wrote. “Sirajuddin is in his early 30′s, grew up in Miram Shah, Pakistan and, prior to 2001, only occasionally traveled to his native village of Garde Serai, nestled in the rugged mountains of Paktia province. In Miram Shah he was involved in Islamic Studies but, unlike his father, did not graduate from a prestigious madrassah and is too young to have been a well-known fighter during the anti-Soviet jihad.” Personally, I find it very hard to judge whether the Haqqani network has a role to play in any Afghan settlement. I have heard very powerful arguments on both sides. And in any case it is not my job as a journalist to judge — but rather to keep collating and unearthing the evidence as I go along. But one thing seems to me can be said with certainty. We should not be allowing a narrative to develop in which the Haqqanis appear to have an obvious role in an Afghan settlement – or at the very least a role which might help the west extract itself from Afghanistan – without knowing more about who they are. And we should certainly not drift mindlessly into that narrative simply because, or especially because, the U.S. Secretary of State has, historically speaking, invited them into the White House. (File photo of Presidents Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari)

October 18, 2011 at 6:33am

Hong Kong stocks slide as short squeeze ends, China shares weaken

* Support lacking after decreased short-selling: traders* Sinohydro debuts strongly, bucks Shanghai declineBy Clement TanHONG KONG, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Hong Kong stocks fell sharply in thin trade on Tuesday, with short-term investors knocking down Chinese financial, property and material stocks and aiming to retrace most of October’s gains after a bout of short covering fizzled out.Support for falling share prices was lacking, as the level of short-selling had dropped significantly following the Hang Seng Index’s 16 percent bounce, as of Monday, from a 2-1/2-year low plumbed on Oct 4.”The problem now is that nobody is willing to buy at current levels…we rallied quite a bit in the past week, the short squeeze that sustained that rally is over for now,” said Alex Wong, Ample Finance Group’s director of asset management.The Hang Seng Index closed down 4.3 percent at 18,076.5 points, holding above a gap that formed when the benchmark rose significantly on Sept. 11 — between the high on Sept. 10 at about 17,800 and the low of Sept. 11 at about 18,041.The China Enterprise Index slumped 5.2 percent, while the Shanghai Composite Index declined 2.3 percent to finish at 2,383.5 points after data on Tuesday showed China’s third-quarter growth at the slowest pace in two years.Bucking the broader negative tone on Tuesday was Sinohydro Group , which had built the Three Gorges Dam and made its listing debut in Shanghai. Investors piled into the stock, helping it surge almost 40 percent at one stage.While market watchers said Sinohydro’s performance bodes well for future mega-IPOs, they attributed the magnitude of its gains on the day, which spurred a 30-minute mandatory trading suspension, to speculative money.GROWTH-SENSITIVE SECTORS HARD HITChinese material, financial and property counters, among the hardest hit by fears of a sharp slowdown in China’s economy in the last quarter, led losses on the day in Hong Kong.Such fears were not undercut by fresh China data which showed that while GDP growth slowed in the third quarter, it remained above 9 percent. To some market-players, the numbers were not strong enough to spawn optimism, and not weak enough to suggest any policy-loosening was imminent. The data prompted some investors bearish on China to liquidate long positions in growth-sensitive sectors.Steel producer Citic Pacific Ltd , the top beta play among Hang Seng Index components, bled 11.8 percent, while China Overseas Land & Investments Ltd slumped 9.8 percent.Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) lost 6.1 percent, almost halving its bounce up from a trough on Oct. 4 to a peak on Oct. 13.ICBC, considered the healthiest of the “Big Four” Chinese banks partly because of its large deposit base, had less than 1.0 percent of its total turnover on Monday shorted.In Shanghai, PetroChina Co Ltd , China Shenhua Energy Co Ltd and Sinopec Corp were among the top drags on the benchmark, while Anhui Conch Cement lost 5.4 percent.

6:18am

UPDATE 1-Check Point Q3 profit, revenue beat forecasts

TEL AVIV Oct 18 (Reuters) - Internet and network security provider Check Point Software Technologies beat estimates with a 15 percent gain in quarterly profit on new product launches and sales growth across all regions.The Israel-based company posted third-quarter earnings per share excluding one-off items of 72 cents, compared with 63 cents a year earlier. Revenue grew 13 percent to $308.3 million, it said on Tuesday.Check Point was expected to earn 70 cents on revenue of $307 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.The company itself had projected quarterly revenue of $300-$308 million and EPS ex-items of 67-70 cents.”We exceeded our projections as a result of growth in all regions,” said Gil Shwed, Check Point’s chairman and chief executive. “Our software blade platform continues to gain traction in the marketplace, while our annuity software blades have provided significant contribution to our revenues and deferred revenue growth.”

October 16, 2011 at 6:46am

Indonesia’s Bakrie says close to securing new loan deal

Commodity giant Glencore International has been seen as a frontrunner and likely partner for the Bakries since news of the refinancing talks earlier this month, with analysts pointing to its relationship with the family and existing coal marketing agreements.Reuters reported on Thursday that Glencore was nearing a deal to make a $800 million to $900 million loan that would give it additional marketing rights on coal produced by Bakrie-controlled Bumi Plc , the world’s largest exporter of seaborne thermal coal.

October 14, 2011 at 7:15am

UPDATE 1-Slovak president to meet party heads over interim govt

BRATISLAVA Oct 14 (Reuters) - Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic said on Friday he would formally dismiss the fallen government of Prime Minister Iveta Radicova and meet the heads of political parties on Monday to discuss the shape of an interim cabinet.Gasparovic met earlier with Radicova, whose government collapsed on Tuesday after failing to ratify a deal boosting the euro zone’s rescue fund in a parliamentary vote that was tied to a confidence motion.The ruling coalition later passed the measure ratifying an expansion of the European Financial Stability Facility in another vote on Thursday after securing support from the opposition by agreeing to hold an early election in March.Radicova’s cabinet will remain in office until a new administration is formed. Coalition officials have not given details on how it will operate and it is possible that it will work only in a caretaker capacity.”I will dismiss the government and will have to name a new government,” Gasparovic told journalists. “Therefore I have decided that, Monday morning, I will summon the heads of the parliamentary parties so we can decide on the next steps.”Gasparovic did not say exactly when he would dismiss the government but said he had also met with opposition leader Robert Fico, head of the leftist Smer party.Fico has said he will stay in opposition until the election slated for March 10, which cuts the original term of the current Slovak parliament in half.Slovakia’s most popular party by far with more than 40 percent support and 62 of the chamber’s 150 seats, Smer supported the EFSF but held back its vote in the first ballot because to trigger the government collapse.The most likely scenario now is probably a minority government including Radicova’s SDKU party, the Christian Democrats, and the centrist Most-Hid.They may find support from Smer, but their former fourth coalition partner, the SaS party of free-marketeer Richard Sulik, told a Czech newspaper on Friday that he would not support them in a new administration.”Our ministers will undoubtedly be replaced. They will be recalled. The government of three rightist parties will not have the support of SaS,” Sulik said in an interview in Czech newspaper Hospodarske Noviny.There is no time limit on when a new cabinet must be appointed. If Gasparovic does not appoint one, Radicova’s administration could technically stay on as a government-in-demise in the five months until the election. Radicova has not said whether she wants to stay in her post.

October 13, 2011 at 10:46pm

RPT-BlackBerry outages irk India, threaten key RIM market

* Rivals matching BlackBerry features in cheaper products* Consumer market seen most vulnerable for RIMBy Devidutta Tripathy and Henry FoyNEW DELHI/MUMBAI, Oct 13 (Reuters) - A four-day service outage has cast a shadow over BlackBerry’s reputation in India, one of the smartphone maker’s few growing markets, where the frustration of hundreds of thousands of users could mean a chance for its rivals to gain ground.The repeated shutdowns of email and messaging services that left BlackBerry users with only voice calls and SMS text infuriated Indian customers, including a tennis star and a Bollywood icon, leaving BlackBerry maker Research In Motion scrambling to control the damage.”In the capital market, every second matters. Time lost is money lost. Had it been for couple of hours, that was okay. But it stretched much beyond that,” said Jagannadham Thunuguntla, strategist and head of research at SMC Global Securities in New Delhi.RIM has fixed the root cause of the global disruption of BlackBerry services and is still working to clear a backlog of delayed messages, its co-CEOs said on Thursday, hoping to control the damage.More than a million people use BlackBerry in India, the world’s second-biggest mobile phone market. RIM has established a strong, but not dominant, foothold in the price-sensitive market thanks largely to its cheap models.A large corporate user base that relies on its enterprise email system, the huge popularity of RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger platform among young people and competitive pricing mean it outsells Apple Inc.’s iPhone by around five to one.In the June quarter, BlackBerry accounted for 15 percent of smartphone sales in the country, researcher IDC said, trailing Nokia’s share of nearly 46 percent and Samsung’s 21 percent, but far ahead of Apple’s 2.6 percent.The lowest-priced BlackBerry 8520, RIM’s best-selling model in India, is available at about 9,000 rupees ($184). The entry-level iPhone 3GS model is around 20,000 rupees.But low-cost competitors, especially those based on Google’s Android system, are poised to grab market share.”Apple is still a premium user play, but if you look at others, especially the Android ones, you can have the same features that BlackBerry is offering pretty much at half the cost,” said Abhishek Chauhan, Senior Consultant, ICT Practice, at Frost & Sullivan.BLACKBERRY BOYSBlackBerrys were initially seen as a tool for executives.With rising incomes and a burgeoning middle class in India, RIM has expanded, targeting young professionals and students with its youthful “We’re the BlackBerry boys” commercials, portraying the smartphone as a gadget for the aspiring masses.RIM’s shipment to India quadrupled to 770,652 in 2010, from 191,379 in 2009, according to CyberMedia Research, which estimates that RIM has sold 1.06 million smartphones in India over the past three years.”Companies will not switch to Apple or Google phones overnight, especially given BlackBerry’s secure corporate email system,” said Romal Shetty, head of telecommunications analysis in India for KPMG.”But from a youth perspective, there is certainly more of an impact from these kinds of failures. There is definitely a dent made in reputations.”BlackBerry’s free instant messaging service, has been a big draw for India’s urban youth, but rival products from Apple and Google now mean it is not unique.”The BB service failure surprisingly did affect me, from being out of touch with my Gmail to not being able to ‘ping’ my friends. The handicap was overwhelming at times,” said 22-year-old Snigdha Ahuja, who works for a television channel in Mumbai.”BBM doesn’t work.. I feel handicapped! Makes u realise how addicted u become of certain electronics,” wrote Indian tennis star Sania Mirza on Twitter.”Such a dependence on technology (in) our lives today .. no BBM and it seems like a major portion of your life has shut down ..!!,” wrote Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan.

October 11, 2011 at 1:14pm

On the Move: Veteran Citi adviser starts RIA, taps Focus

The 25-year veteran, who most recently co-headed Convergent Wealth Advisors’ Institutional Group, has started her own independent advisory firm in a partnership with Focus Financial, the firm said on Tuesday.The move illustrates a recent surge of experienced brokers going into business for themselves.Van Dusen and her 10-member team opened shop at their new Rochester, New York-based firm, LVW Advisors, on Monday. The team had been together for more than a decade after forming at Citi Smith Barney in the late 90s.”It’s been a business model that’s been in my head for 20 years,” Van Dusen said in an interview. “The industry just wasn’t there before. I couldn’t have put together the pieces the way I did.”Large asset groups are streaming into registered investment adviser practices, said Rich Schwarzkopf, a New York-based recruiter with Schwarzkopf Recruiting Services.”It’s probably one of the fastest-growing segments of the financial services industry, Schwarzkopf said. “Their assets have been growing enormously for the past couple of years.”FOCUSVan Dusen turned to Focus to build up her new firm’s technological infrastructure. The partnership also helped LVW source vendors for products, aid in succession planning and offer equity ownership advice.”I needed to be able to set up shop … in a way that wasn’t distracting,” Van Dusen said. “Most advisers are good investment people, but they need guidance in building a business the right way.”Van Dusen, who has about $4.9 billion in assets under management, collectively has about 35 clients with her team and said she expects to retain all of them during the transition. She said her firm is in the process of hiring another adviser to join the team.”We have a sizable business now and our foremost goal is to retain our clients and keep them happy,” she said.About 50 percent of LVW’s clients are institutional, while the other are high-net-worth clients, whose assets range from $10 million up to about $1 billion.LVW is the 23rd team to join Focus since its start in 2006 and is the sixth transaction for the firm this year.Focus has largely grown by acquiring independent advisers and teams across the United States.The firm’s vice president Rich Gill told Reuters that Focus has grown about six-fold since he first joined in May 2007. Focus had about $7 billion in assets under management at the time, and now has about $45 billion,He said Focus does not set targets for asset growth.”It’s really about quality,” Focus founder Rudy Adolf said in an interview. “If we don’t grow that much in a particular year, but the deals we do are very good, we’d prefer to have quality than just growth.”

12:21pm

Will Obama’s jobs plan find traction?

President Barack Obama proposes a jobs package heavily weighted toward tax cuts for workers and businesses to help boost the economy. The challenge will be rallying enough popular support to pressure Republicans to get behind his plan, despite their vehement opposition to most of his agenda. Will Obama’s jobs plan pass Congress? Yes Yes, with significant revisions No View Results

12:21pm