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Pakistan’s protest preacher
Pakistani FM discusses political turmoil
Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar discusses her country's political turmoil with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
Pakistan's protest preacher
Islamic cleric Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri discusses the protests he is leading in Pakistan with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
Pakistan revolution or political theater?
By Samuel Burke, CNN
Every time the world’s attention turns to Pakistan, it seems like another wheel has fallen off the bus.
The country is seeing a new wave of suicide bombings and Taliban threats, while new tensions with neighboring India have arisen once again over Kashmir.
Last week brought some of Pakistan’s worst-ever sectarian violence. In just one day a series of bomb blasts killed nearly 100 people in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood.
Now a fiery Islamic preacher is drawing large crowds of protestors with his calls to fight Pakistan’s endemic corruption.
Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri gained prominence with his fatwa against terrorism in 2010.
Last month, massive crowds in Pakistan followed the 61-year-old cleric from Lahore to Islamabad. Now, tens of thousands of followers are camped out around him at the doorstep of the country’s parliament.
Speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday from the bulletproof container from which he preaches, ul-Qadri said that his aim is to make the democratic process more “free and fair.”
He denied accusations that he is putting Pakistan’s upcoming elections in jeopardy, saying that this is “the most appropriate time” for him to take up his cause.
The country is poised for its first-ever democratic handover of power from one civilian government to another.
Ul-Qadri also denied allegations about the opaque source of his funding. In addition to his protests, commercials with his image are running on Pakistani television. Many suspect he is backed by the military.
“I have no connection with the military establishment,” he said indignantly.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar dismissed ul-Qadri as a “non entity” in a separate interview with Amanpour on Wednesday.
“30,000 people is no big deal,” Khar told Amanpour. Pakistan has a population of over 176 million people.
She acknowledged that corruption is a concern for the government, but said ul-Qadri lacks credibility.
“This character has launched himself in Pakistan to deliver the Pakistanis from their own elected leaders,” she said.
Khar said that a date for elections will be called before March 16, and then occur some 60 to 90 days after.
Khar also expressed uncertainty about the source of ul-Qadri’s funding, but pointed out that the military issued a statement distancing itself from him.
“There are all sorts of conspiracy theories about him, but he does have an organization which is very well organized,” Khar said.
She does not think, however, that a coup is likely, despite the attention on ul-Qadri.
“That would be the worst case-scenario,” she told Amanpour. “I would not worry about it because Pakistan has now become a civil society.”
India and Pakistan’s border
There has been a recent outbreak of border violence and military tensions over Kashmir, but it appears that one of the worst flare-ups since a ceasefire was signed nine years ago might now deescalate.
“The best way to deal with this – rather than raising the rhetoric and any sort of negative commentary – is for a political-level discussion,” Khar told Amanpour. “I am open to dialogue with the Foreign Minister of India. I invite him for a dialogue at the political level so we can resolve the cross-LoC (line of control) issue, the crossfire issue, and to ensure that we continue to respect the ceasefire. This is crucial.”
Constant attacks against Shiite minority
Human Rights Watch says more than 400 Shiites were slaughtered in 2012.
In the most recent attacks against Shiites, the victims’ families refused to bury their dead until the government addressed their concerns.
“The government needs to step up the game. There’s no question about it,” Khar said, but stressed that tensions between Shiite and Sunni are not as deeply rooted in Pakistan as they are in other Muslim countries.
“In my school, in the parliament, in my workplace I don’t know who is Shiia or Sunni. For the broad majority of Pakistanis this is not an issue – ethnicity is not an issue. However there are these fringe elements who will try and make it an issue and create chaos through it,”
Khar said that the government needs to give the minority group additional protection, adding that the focus will be to go after the groups that are attacking the Shiite minority.
Pakistani leader meets protesting families of bombing victims
CNN’s Juliet Fuisz produced this piece for television.
More Americans killed in gun deaths than in terrorist attacks
Guns kill more than terrorism
One month after the Newtown Massacre, Christiane Amanpour speaks with Tom Diaz, a former member of the NRA.
Mother of Virgina Tech student
Christiane Amanpour speaks with Azar Nafizi, an author and teacher whose son survived the massacre at Virginia Tech.
By Samuel Burke, CNN
It has now been one month since the grieving families of Newtown, Connecticut put their children on the school bus, only to have them never return.
Teachers, of course, were victims too - but all of the lives lost in that American school massacre are just a small fraction of the total number of gun deaths in the United States.
In fact, the number of Americans killed in guns deaths is far larger than the number of those killed in terrorist attacks around the world every year.
In 2010, 13,186 people died in terrorist attacks worldwide; in that same year, in America alone, 31,672 people lost their lives in gun-related deaths, according to numbers complied by Tom Diaz – until recently, a senior analyst at the Violence Policy Center. FULL POST
Turning off the lights in Afghanistan
By Lucky Gold, CNN
Just as President Obama considers accelerating the exit of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the prospects for peace and prosperity there may be dimming – literally.
The Kajaki Dam on the Helmand River symbolizes all that has gone right and wrong in Afghanistan.
It was built by American contractors in the 1950s, and survived both the Soviet invasion and Taliban rule after that.
Since the beginning of this latest Afghan war, the U.S. has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade hydro-electric generators in order to bring electricity to three hundred thousand people and bolster agriculture in the region.
At an even greater cost, the U.S. and NATO have committed the lives of coalition forces to protect the workers from insurgents bent on killing them and destroying the projects.
Afghans have vowed that the work will go on, but the price – both in blood and treasure – only keeps rising. With the United States’ imminent withdrawal, the dam could become vulnerable again.
Now, it seems that unless Afghans are willing to pay for it with money and manpower, the lights – and the hopes of a people – will be extinguished.
Karzai confident he can get U.S. troops immunity
Part 1: Amanpour & Karzai
Christiane Amanpour's exclusive interview with President Hamid Karzai. Part 1: U.S. troop immunity.
Part 2: Amanpour & Karzai
Christiane Amanpour's exclusive interview with President Hamid Karzai. Part 2: The American presence in Afghanistan.
By Samuel Burke, CNN
In the only interview that President Hamid Karzai granted while he was in the United States, he expressed confidence to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that the Afghan people will accept the United States’ demand for immunity for American troops left in place there after the 2014 withdrawal.
In a joint press conference with President Obama on Friday, Karzai had stated that he would take the issue to his people, but now he has said that immunity is likely to become a reality.
“I can tell you with relatively good confidence that they will say ‘alright, let’s do it,” Karzai told Amanpour about selling the issue to Afghans. “And I’m sure that they will understand.”
At the press conference, President Obama said that he had stressed to Karzai that “the United States already has arrangements like this with countries all around the world, and nowhere does the U.S. have any kind of security agreement with a country without immunity for our troops.”
In the final stages of the U.S. intervention in Iraq, President Obama was unable to obtain a similar agreement, propelling him to withdraw all U.S. forces from that country in December 2011.
Karzai rejected the notion that has been floated that the U.S. might leave “zero troops” in Afghanistan after the pullout is completed at the end of 2014.
Life after Obama fires you
Life after Obama fires you
General Stanley McChrystal discusses how President Obama fired him
Part 2: Gen. Stanley McChrystal
Part 2: McChrystal on the United States' wars in the Middle East with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
Part 3: Gen. Stanley McChrystal
Part 3: McChrystal on nation building
By Mick Krever, CNN
When General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, was summoned to the White House in June 2010, he knew he was in for something big.
“I suspected in my heart that the president would accept my resignation,” McChrystal told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in a wide-ranging interview that aired Friday on CNN International.
President Obama did accept his resignation, days after an embarrassing article was published by Rolling Stone magazine in which the general and his team appeared to be insubordinate to the president.
McChrystal is now retired, and teaches at Yale University. His new memoir, in which he writes about his lifelong military career, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but says almost nothing about his firing three years ago, is called “My Share of the Task.”
The article in Rolling Stone, for which a reporter was embedded with McChrystal, took him by surprise, but he quickly grasped the gravity of its impact.
Elephants slaughtered from the sky
By Samuel Burke, CNN
The slaughter of elephants and rhinos is happening on such a massive scale in Africa that the animals’ very existence is threatened.
Just this week poachers murdered an entire elephant family in Kenya. Eleven elephants were shot and killed from a helicopter – the country’s single worst slaughter on record.
These majestic animals are regularly killed using machine guns from helicopters – their tusks often used to make ivory trinkets.
The United States government says the butchering is not the result of excessive hunting, but rather organized crime, with black market ivory and horn worth some eight-billion dollars a year.
Stopping it is no longer only about protecting the planet's natural resources.
“It is also a national security issue, a public health issue and an economic security issue,” outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. Killing off these animals will affect the tourism dollars to Africa in the long term.
Former CIA official: 'War is hell. Get over it.'
By Mick Krever, CNN
Every so often, politics and moviemaking coincide in a way that aligns the attentions of both Hollywood and Washington.
The release of Zero Dark Thirty, the graphic film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, is such a moment.
Detractors say it overemphasizes the positive role of torture, and that the CIA may have over-shared operational details with its writer.
But on the day it was nominated for a best picture Academy Award, a former top CIA official, while admitting that there may not have been a “direct correlation” between torture and the bin Laden breakthrough, said torture’s importance in the broad fight against al Qaeda should not be minimized.
“I would categorize what we got from detainees as equally as important as things like human-source intelligence and technical intelligence,” Philip Mudd told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour said. “It was critical.”
FULL POST
U.S. mayor: ‘I'm not afraid of the NRA’
By Samuel Burke, CNN
It has been less than four weeks since the tragic school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, but in that time there have been more than 600 gun-related deaths in the United States.
Vice President Joe Biden has been tasked to deliver gun control recommendations to the president, but in the meantime some American politics are already taking action.
Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head two years ago, just announced she is launching a national campaign that will directly face off against the NRA.
Mayor Jerramiah Healy of Jersey City, New Jersey, has been at the forefront of trying to get guns off America’s streets.
Healy does not buy National Riffle Association arguments that gun control will not stop this plague of gun violence and he is not afraid of the powerful group trying to get him out office, as it has done with other legislators.
“I'm not in an area where the NRA is going to have any serious sway,” he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Wednesday. “The city's been sued by the NRA because of our city ordinances and the laws that we've brought down to Trenton that are now the laws of the State of New Jersey.” FULL POST
Venezuelan lawmaker: ‘Cuba making decisions for Venezuela’
By Samuel Burke, CNN
The Venezuelan Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that President Hugo Chavez’ inauguration can be postponed.
The court also ruled that in the meantime, Chavez' handpicked vice president, Nicolás Maduro, should run the government.
Opposition lawmaker Maria Corina Machado told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that she believes the Venezuelan constitution clearly states that the National Assembly president, Diosdado Cabello, should run a caretaker government before new elections are called. FULL POST
Exiting the nuclear club
The world believes that Iran, despite its denials, is trying to join the handful of nations around the world that possess nuclear weapons.
Over the past two decades, that list of countries has been growing, with nations like Pakistan and India publicly acknowledging their nuclear weapons.
There has been just one exception.
Just as Nelson Mandela was emerging from prison over 20 years ago to lead South Africa out of the wilderness of racial hatred, his country was in the midst of another change that could be a model for the rest of the world.
By 1991, the Rainbow Nation had become the only country to dismantle and destroy its own nuclear arsenal. That decision, along with the end of apartheid, helped restore South Africa's international legitimacy.
It also made the country a leading voice for nuclear sanity.
Today, South Africa's weapons-grade uranium left over from the apartheid era is being turned into medical isotopes that can detect cancer and other diseases.
Swords into plowshares.
@camanpour on Twitter
