Haqqani network’s chief made deputy leader of Taliban to protect him from US, says report

Pakistan’s powerful ISI had brought in Haqqani network’s chief Sirajuddin Haqqani as the deputy leader of the Taliban last year to protect him from the Americans, a media report said on Sunday.
The New York Times, quoting Afghan and American officials, said in a report that the “closer integration of
the feared” Haqqani militant network into the leadership of the Taliban is “changing the flow of the Afghan insurgency this year, with the Haqqanis’ senior leader increasingly calling the shots in the Taliban’s offensive.
It quoted Afghanistan’s former intelligence chief Rahmatullah Nabil as saying that “the ISI brought Sirajuddin as the deputy to the Taliban to give him protection, so if the peace talks get serious, the Americans wouldn’t be able to say, ‘We will make peace with the leader but not with the deputy’.”
Nabil, who now runs a charity for wounded Afghan soldiers, said the merger had been helped by the fact that the
Haqqanis were struggling financially, after their chief fund-raiser was gunned down near Islamabad in 2013, and that the Taliban needed Haqqani’s expertise in waging complex attacks.

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Brigadier General Charles Cleveland, the chief spokesman for United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that “Sirajuddin increasingly runs the day-to-day military operations for the Taliban, and, we believe, is likely
involved in appointing shadow governors.”
“The Haqqani network’s closer integration with the Taliban command also creates awkwardness for the Obama
administration, and is raising tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan,” it said.
The report cited some senior Afghan officials as saying that the Pakistani military was “central” to bringing the Haqqanis more closely into the Taliban during the insurgency’s leadership councils in 2015 summer, which were held in Quetta.
The report said that the Haqqanis have “refined a signature brand” of urban terrorist attacks and cultivated a sophisticated international fund-raising network, factoring prominently in the United States military’s push to keep troops in Afghanistan.
It added that the group’s growing role in leading the entire insurgency in the war-torn country has raised concerns about an even deadlier year of fighting ahead, as hopes of peace talks have collapsed.
“The shift is also raising tensions with the Pakistani military, which American and Afghan officials accuse of sheltering the Haqqanis as a proxy group,” it said.
While the Haqqani network has always nominally been a branch of the Taliban, the report said the selection of
Sirajuddin Haqqani to become the deputy leader of the Taliban during a leadership struggle in summer 2015 has turned out to be far from a “symbolic move” with Haqqani bringing to the Taliban a “more applied and lethal military expertise” than the supreme leader of the group, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour.
“Mullah Mansour has been consumed with a campaign to quell dissent against his leadership, and he is said to have limited his movements and access since a reported attack on his life in Quetta, Pakistan. Accordingly, Haqqani has stepped in, at times even running meetings of the Taliban leadership council,” the report said citing senior Afghan security officials.
A senior Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan said Haqqani had been in “constant contact” with Taliban field
commanders in the south and the north of the country, in addition to his stronghold in the southeast.
Mawlawi Sardar Zadran, a former Haqqani commander in eastern Afghanistan, said Haqqani had a central role in
appointing Taliban governors.
“No one can be appointed without his advice,” he said. “The influence of Sirajuddin in the Taliban ranks seems to be just growing.”
The report quoted a Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, as confirming Haqqani’s elevated role, saying it was
because of “his bravery”.
“We can say that not only his military obligations but all his obligations have increased,” Mujahid said.
The State Department had officially listed the Haqqanis as a terrorist group in 2012, and there is a USD 5 million
American bounty on Sirajuddin Haqqani.
The report added that the Afghan Taliban, as a group, have remained off that terrorist list, “partly to ease the prospect of starting peace talks between them and the Afghan government — a process that American officials have been centrally involved in.
“With the clear and public integration of the Haqqanis into the Taliban leadership over at least the past year, American officials have essentially been unable to dodge the claim that they are trying to broker talks with terrorists,” it said.

Source: http://indianexpress.com/

More than 300 million Indians suffer from a crippling drought

In the blistering sun and swirling dust, farmer Dhananjay Hanumant Suryavanshi squats on his empty land and caresses the parched earth.

“There is only one thought that runs over and over again in my head. Will there be good rain this year? Will there be good rain this year?” Suryavanshi, 25, said.

Four years of drought here and crop loss have forced his family to take two loans and sell a third of his land, and driven him to do menial labor. In January, his mother gave up. She drank a bottle of pesticide and fell dead near the holy basil plant in the courtyard.

Relentless drought coupled with a record-breaking heat wave and bad farming practices in the western state of Maharashtra have slashed farm output and driven farmers to desperation.

This year is the worst in decades, officials say, because most farmers are also burdened by years of accumulated debt as they continue to deplete the precious groundwater.
Dhananjay Hanumant Suryavanshi, 25, shows a picture of his mother, who drank a bottle of pesticide and fell dead near a holy basil plant in the courtyard in January. The burden of drought-induced loan is fueling farmer suicides in India. (Rama Lakshmi/The Washington Post)

About 330 million Indians are struggling under grueling heat and drought conditions across 10 states this year, the government said, severely harming the economy of a nation where nearly half the people rely on farming.

Reservoirs and rivers here in Maharashtra’s drought districts are almost dry, and a 50-car train now delivers water to Latur city, near Suryavanshi’s village. Thirsty Indians place long, serpentine lines of plastic pots and drums at the municipal water tank and village wells, and fights have broken out at water pumps.

In many places, children have turned into porters for their families, running up and down with water pots all day. A 12-year-old girl collapsed and died last month here in the searing 111-degree heat after she made five trips to fetch water.

“My whole family is in a constant state of panic over water,” said Kasi Mali, as she placed her pots in a long line. “I have missed many hours of my work as a laborer because I stand here.”

Nearly 30 percent of Indians in cities and 70 percent in villages rely on water pumped from deep underground, because the tap water supply is either insufficient or non-existent.

Only 17 percent of India’s farms have access to surface irrigation projects. Most farmers rely on the elusive annual rain or pump water from underground.

The practice has depleted the country’s groundwater supply precipitously, alarming environmentalists and raising concerns about India’s future agricultural output. Water levels have declined in 47 percent of India’s village wells over the past decade, the government said.
Indian village women carry drinking water in plastic containers on their head as they walk back to their village after collecting it from an almost dried-up well in Samba district on April 29. (Channi Anand/AP)

In Latur city,there is no groundwater even 700 feet down, residents say. In the villages nearby, the water table is in far worse shape, in some places dropping to 1,000 feet below the surface.

Environmental experts have repeatedly warned that the water table will disappear soon if India’s water usage is not regulated.

“We have gone on digging so aggressively in the last 10 years to draw water for our crops that we have used up the groundwater that is meant for the next two generations,” said Raju Dongare, a farmer. “But what else could we depend on? There were no canals or pipes coming to our farms.”

Experts also say that the drought is not a natural disaster but a consequence of decades of bad farming practices.

In recent years, the state government allowed the proliferation of sugar factories owned by local politicians, which led to a sort of gold rush among farmers here to cultivate water-guzzling sugar cane, said Pradeep Purandare, former professor of water studies at the Water and Land Management Institute.

Seventy percent of the water from the state’s dams goes to cane farms. But cane growers have drawn on groundwater, further sapping the aquifers.

This year, somewhat belatedly, the administration in Latur district launched a drive to encourage farmers to shift away from cane to oil seeds, lentils and soybeans.

“There is a mind-set among farmers that only sugar cane crop fetches good returns,” Pandurang Pole, the chief district official, said.

Latur district’s groundwater situation can sustain only 12,300 acres of cane cultivation, he said. But the area has about 10 times that much land under cultivation.

Repeated droughts have pushed tens of thousands of farmers to leave their villages to look for work in India’s overburdened cities and towns.

In Matola village, about 500 people, mostly men, have left in just the past six months. Many of the women and children left behind are selling their cattle in distress.

“There is no water in the sky or under the earth; there is nothing left here,” said Bai Gidappa Pawar, as she poured freshly ground chili powder into a jar in her kitchen. In December, her husband left for Pune city with their 16-year old son to work in a quarry. “There is not a single family here that does not have a loan hanging over its head.”

The burden of drought-induced loans is fueling farmer suicides across India. There were 12,360 suicides by land-owning farmers and farm laborers across India in 2014, according to the National Crime Records Bureau, up from 11,772 the previous year.

Since January, 43 farmers have killed themselves in Latur district alone, including Suryavanshi’s mother.

His mother was driven to take her life after the family lost more than $4,400 because of bad harvests in the sugar cane and soy bean crop in the past three years. He was unable to pay the hospital bills to treat his father’s cancer, who died three years ago. To feed his family, Suryavanshi and his brother now load boulders on to a truck for eight hours in the sun, earning less than $3 a day to feed their children.

His farm is barren now. The oppressive heat of the sun beat down on him, as he said he cannot afford to feed his buffalo for long.

He said his mother did farm labor for others and brought home extra money. That helped.

He feels her absence keenly.

“In spite of all the problems, my mother’s presence was like an umbrella protecting me from the harsh sun,” he said.  Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com