PAF and RSAF conducting joint exercise

ISLAMABAD  (January 17, 2011) : Pakistan Airforce (PAF) and Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) are conducting a joint air power employment exercise code name "Al Saqoor-II" in Saudi Arabia. The joint exercise commenced on January 6 and would be completed by 19th.

PAF contingent comprising F-16 and Mirage aircraft, while RSAF element consisting of F-15 aircraft are participating in the exercise in which air operations are being executed in near realistic environment.

Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman, Chief of the Air Staff, PAF visited Saudi Arabia on December 15, 2010 to meet the participating personnel of the two air forces. He also flew in a PAF F-16 to participate in the air operations. The air chief was warmly welcomed by the Chief of the Royal Saudi Air Force, Gen Mohammad Abdullah Al-Aish. The two discussed matters of professional interest and means to further enhance co-operation between the two air forces. The exercise will benefit both participants and hone their professional skills and further enhance existing brotherly relations between the two nations and air forces. It will also enable personnel of the two forces become familiar and come closer to each other.-PR

In Afghanistan ‘human maps’ help fight Taliban

 

This file photo taken on December 28, 2010 shows a US soldier from Bravo Troop 1-75 Cavalry 2nd Brigade 101st Airborne Division taking a picture of Afghan villager Mohammad Ras in Loya Derah village during a clearance patrol in Zari district of Kandahar province. Troops across Afghanistan are gathering photographs, fingerprints and employment details as well as canvassing opinions from local residents to find out what they want for the war-racked province. The goal is to strengthen relations between pro-government forces and the local population. – AFP Photo

CHARKUSAH: “I’m 105 years old,” said Bismiullah, an old man stopped by a patrol in southern Afghanistan as part of military efforts to map the population in the battle against the Taliban.
Asked what he thinks of the US army, the Afghan army and the Taliban, Bismiullah responded: “I like myself and my family, that’s it.”
Questioned who is in charge in the area, he was similarly direct: “Allah is my chief.”
The elderly man was stopped by a US-Afghan patrol in the village of Charkusah in the Zahri district of Kandahar, the southern Afghan province seen as the heart of the Taliban insurgency.
Troops in the region and across Afghanistan are gathering photographs, fingerprints and employment details as well as canvassing opinions from local residents to find out what they want for the war-racked province.
The goal is to strengthen relations between pro-government forces and the local population.
But the information gathered can also help troops catch Taliban fighters, for example by matching fingerprints on home-made bombs or guns.
Formally known as human terrain mapping, the process is an key strand of the strategy to build better ties between pro-government forces and local people as the war enters arguably its most important year.
International troops in Afghanistan, around two-thirds of whom are from the United States, are due to start limited withdrawals in July ahead of a scheduled transition of responsibility for security to Afghan forces in 2014.
Human terrain mapping was first used in its current form in Iraq in 2007 but experts say it also draws on the lessons of previous counterinsurgency campaigns such as in Vietnam.
Counterinsurgency theory holds that the key to winning such wars is to destroy the insurgents’ political control over the population.
Identifying who is an innocent civilian and who is an insurgent is a vital element.
However, gathering reliable information is not always easy in a country where many desperately poor rural people do not know basic information about themselves, such as their age.
Afghanistan has not had a census since 1979, the year of the Soviet invasion, amid security concerns across the war-torn country.
“What we do here comes from previous experience in Iraq and other parts of Afghanistan,” explained Lieutenant Wes Pennington of Taskforce Strike, 101st Airborne.
“The Taliban try to make their own COIN (counterinsurgency) tactics,” he added. “But we have more to offer, we’re better at it.”
In Charkusah, the Taliban is also trying to build support among the population, handing out money and buying harvests of marijuana and opium which they then sell on to finance their fighting, Pennington said.
People in the village are notably reluctant to talk about the Islamist insurgents.
Mohammad Sahim, a 32-year-old farmer, stressed that he knows “nothing at all” about the Taliban. As for improvements he would like to see in the local area, he stresses “food, water and a hospital”.
Staff Sergeant Alan Cable, who is asking the questions, said that such reticence about the Taliban is typical. “People usually say that they don’t know anything,” he explained.
Captain Brett Matzenbacher, in charge of the nearby Pashmul South base, is realistic when it comes to the power of the Taliban.
“The population is Taliban-influenced,” he said. “But we provide an alternative to the Taliban, a district governor who is an official authority.”
The task at hand is immense and hard-won gains can be fragile.
The Taliban would once again return to the area after the traditional winter lull was over in a few months’ time, Cpt Matzenbacher added.

Assange given offshore bank secrets

Assange vowed to publish secret details of offshore accounts after a Swiss banking whistleblower handed over data Monday on 2,000 purportedly tax-dodging individuals and firms. Former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer, who worked for eight years in the Cayman Islands, a renowned offshore tax haven in the Caribbean, personally gave Assange two CDs of data at a London press conference. Elmer said he wanted the world to know the truth about money concealed in offshore accounts and the systems in place to keep it secret. He handed over the data at the Frontline Club -- WikiLeaks' British HQ -- as Assange put in a rare appearance away from the remote country house of the club's founder, where he has been bailed to live while he awaits extradition proceedings. "I am here today to support him," Assange told reporters. "He is a whistleblower and he has important things to say." The Australian promised "full revelation" of the data but said it would be weeks before any of the information could be checked and published by the WikiLeaks website. Elmer declined to give the names of those on the CDs or say how many individuals were involved, though he mentioned the 2,000 figure in a British newspaper, which published an interview with him Sunday. He has said the information includes details on around 40 politicians, multinational companies and financial institutions from the United States, Europe and Asia all secretly avoiding paying tax. "The only hope I have is to get society to know what's going on," he said. "I have been there, I have done the job, I know what the day-to-day business is, I know how much is documented there and how much is not. "I am against the system. I know how the system works. I want to let society know how this system works because it's damaging our society. "We're going to talk about the system and that's why I'm here. "The money is hiding in offshore banking secret jurisdictions." He said he was offered money for his silence and that he offered the information to former German finance minister Peer Steinbrueck for free but had received no response. Assange said WikiLeaks has so far released 2.3 percent of the 250,000 US diplomatic cables and was struggling with the volume of data. The Australian is on bail in Britain awaiting Sweden's attempt to extradite him for questioning on sexual assault allegations. A full extradition hearing will be heard at a London court on February 7-8.

PAF at Zhuhai Air show

Turkey-Pakistan Ties: India's Loss is China's Gain

In pursuit of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's concept of strategic depth, Turkey has been reaching out to rising powers in Asia while at the same time offering itself as a mediator in disputes in its near abroad. As part of this approach, Turkey is leveraging its longstanding ties with Pakistan and its stature as one of the few industrialized countries in the Muslim world to create a diplomatic role for itself in Afghanistan. But in a sign that Ankara's geopolitical outreach cannot transcend regional fault lines, Turkey kept India out of the January 2010 tripartite summit on Afghanistan at Pakistan's behest. In the face of India's diplomatic protest, Turkey subsequently sought to downplay the move, but it may nevertheless be indicative of a larger realignment in the region, with the Pakistan-Turkey relationship serving as an incubator.

Turkey was one of Pakistan's most-consistent allies throughout the Cold War, both ideologically and militarily. Military-to-military contacts remain as strong as ever, with the two countries now seriously exploring the coproduction of weapons ranging from armored vehicles to new-generation corvettes. Importantly, both sides also wish to boost defense exports to Islamic countries as an alternative to "expensive" Western weapons. However, given that Gulf Cooperation Council countries have recently placed substantial orders for American weapons, more likely candidates would be Egypt and Iran -- with the latter increasingly wooed by Ankara even at the cost of Turkey's long-standing ties with Israel.

A strong defense relationship with Pakistan gives Ankara the confidence to continue its troop presence in Afghanistan. While Turkey likes to describe its military contingent in Afghanistan as the only foreign force acceptable to the Afghan populace, it nevertheless understands that the well-being of its securitypresence may hinge on Pakistani support, given the latter's influence with the Taliban.

Pakistan is also attractively positioned as a facilitator for greater Sino-Turkish cooperation. Turkey's rising profile in Afghanistan comes at a time when China is beginning to seriously enter Afghanistan's resource-mining sector. China is also likely to seek Turkish help in dealing with the insurgency in Xinjiang on the basis of ethnic ties between Turks and Uighurs. China has added Turkey to the list of regional countries with which it is engaged in strategic missile cooperation -- the other chief recipients being Pakistan and Iran. In a move that shows that Turkey may be adopting an unconventional deterrence posture, the Turkish army obtained the technology for the short-range J-600T Yildrim ballistic missile from China. Moreover, the Chinese air force was a surprise participant in last year's annual Anatolian Eagle air exercise, in lieu of the Israelis or the Americans. This could well be a prelude to closer aerospace cooperation among China, Turkey and Pakistan, especially given China's development of various fourth- and fifth-generation fighter aircraft.

Pakistan may serve as a bridge between Turkey and China in a more-literal manner. In 2009, the 4,000-mile Islamabad-Tehran-Istanbul freight line opened for service, and 11 train loads of aid for Pakistan's flood-affected areas have already made their way from Turkey, with more to follow. During Turkish President Abdullah Gul's visit to Islamabad last December, the two sides agreed to work on a $20-billion plan to upgrade this rail link into a high-speed freight corridor. It is not inconceivable that China will at some point link up with this project by building a rail line through the Karakoram Pass connecting Kashgar in Xinjiang to Islamabad.

Turkey has also been involved in Pakistani rebuilding efforts following the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. As for the Kashmir dispute itself, Turkey has in the last decade tempered its firm support of the Pakistani position to adopt a more-balanced approach that frames the conflict as a bilateral dispute to be solved via dialogue, rather than on the basis of 60-year-old U.N. resolutions. But given the conservative lurch in Turkish society and the ruling AKP party's political orientation, Ankara is likely to increasingly take into account Islamic sensibilities in its approach to Kashmir, similar to its shift on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

That, coupled with the fact that India has now been kept out of a fifth successive round of the trilateral dialogue that took place in late-December, makes it unlikely that Turkey's plan to present itself as amediator in Afghanistan will inspire confidence in New Delhi. For its part, Turkey has sought to delink its concessions to Pakistan from its engagement with India, which it instead wants focused on trade and energy. Turkey is currently pushing for a free-trade agreement with India and has previously invited India to join the Baku-Ceyhan-Tbilisi pipeline.

But as with all of the other transnational gas pipelines to India's west that it has been invited to join, transit through Pakistan remains problematic. By contrast, the Chinese are in a better position to benefit as potential partners in regional energy infrastructure projects, given their all-weather friendship with Pakistan and the latter's control over the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Northern Kashmir bordering Xinjiang.

This possibility that Turkey might serve as the final node in China's ambition to gain overland access to the Mediterranean and the Middle East via Eurasian corridors should be far more worrisome to India than being kept out of the tripartite dialogue on Afghanistan. The very same constituencies that propelled the AKP to power in Turkey are also those that drive Turkey's turn to the east, and linking up with China seems like the biggest economic prize on offer. Better relations with Iran may also be understood in this context.

Running through all of these shifts is Pakistan's ability to exploit its geostrategic location to frustrate India's own ambitions to build bridges to Central and West Asia, while simultaneously proving an alluring partner for a Turkey looking to emerge as a genuine global middle power.

U.S. denies Turkey’s request for combat UAVs

The United States has banned a range of advanced weapons for export to Turkey.

Officials said the administration of President Barack Obama has rejected a Turkish request for combat unmanned aerial vehicles as well as advanced munitions. They said the administration’s decision came after consultations with Congress late last year.

“There has been deep suspicion of Turkey in the United States, especially by Congress,” an official said.

So far, the Senate has blocked a Turkish request for the MQ-9 Reaper combat UAV by General Atomics. Ankara first relayed the Reaper request in late 2008, which encountered a cool reception from a Congress wary of Turkish relations with Iran, Middle East Newsline reported.

“There’s an effective arms embargo on some military products,” a Turkish diplomat said. “We don’t envision a significant change with the new Congress.”

Officials said the Turkish arms requests would mark a priority on Ankara’s agenda with Washington in 2011. They said the government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan was heartened by Obama’s appointment of Francis Ricciardone to the post of ambassador in Ankara, which had been blocked by the previous Congress.

Sikorsky Sweetens Deal in Turk Chopper Contest

ANKARA - U.S. helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky Aircraft, in competition with an Italian rival for a Turkish program to jointly produce 109 utility helicopters worth about $4 billion, offered Ankara fresh benefits to strengthen its bid.

Steve Estill, vice president for strategic cooperation at the Sikorsky president's office, told Defense News his company would guarantee that Turkey would do repair and maintenance work worth $1 billion for the S-70i Black Hawk International helicopters belonging to third countries.

"Turkey will do maintenance, repair, overhaul work for the platforms of countries that have S-70i Black Hawk International helicopters. We guarantee this," Estill said. "Altogether, this will be worth $1 billion for Turkey's defense industry over the next 20 years."Sikorsky Aircraft is offering the T-70, a Turkish version of the S-70i Black Hawk International. The Black Hawk International is in the inventories of several countries. It is the export model of the U.S. UH-60 Black Hawk.

Sikorsky's rival, the Italian AgustaWestland, is proposing the TUHP 149, a Turkish version of its A149, a newly developed utility helicopter, in the Turkish competition.