Tying the hands of a person who is speaking, the Arab proverb goes, is akin to "tying his tongue." Western soldiers in Iraq know how important gestures can be when communicating with locals. To close, open and close a fist means "light," but just opening a fist means "bomb." One soldier recently home from Iraq once tried to order an Iraqi man to lie down. To get his point across, the soldier had to demonstrate by stretching out in the dirt. Translation software could help, but what's the best way to make it available in the field?
The U.S. military in the past would give a soldier an electronic handheld device, made at great expense specially for the battlefield, with the latest software. But translation is only one of many software applications soldiers now need. The future of "networked warfare" requires each soldier to be linked electronically to other troops as well as to weapons systems and intelligence sources. Making sense of the reams of data from satellites, drones and ground sensors cries out for a handheld device that is both versatile and easy to use. With their intuitive interfaces, Apple devices—the iPod Touch and, to a lesser extent, the iPhone—are becoming the handhelds of choice.
Using a commercial product for such a crucial military role is a break from the past. Compared with devices built to military specifications, iPods are cheap. Apple, after all, has already done the research and manufacturing without taxpayer money. The iPod Touch retails for under $230, whereas a device made specifically for the military can cost far more. (The iPhone offers more functionality than the iPod Touch, but at $600 or $700 each, is much more expensive.) Typically sheathed in protective casing, iPods have proved rugged enough for military life. And according to an Army official in Baghdad, the devices have yet to be successfully hacked. (The Pentagon won't say how many Apple devices are deployed, and Apple Computer declined to be interviewed for this article.)
The iPod also fulfills the U.S. military's need to equip soldiers with a single device that can perform many different tasks. Apple's online App Store offers more than 25,000 (and counting) applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which shares the iPhone's touchscreen. As the elegantly simple iPods—often controlled with a single thumb—acquire more functionality, soldiers can shed other gadgets. An iPod "may be all that they need," says Lt. Col. Jim Ross, director of the Army's intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors operations in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.
The iPod isn't the only multifunction handheld on the market, but among soldiers it's the most popular. Since most recruits have used one—and many already own one—it's that much easier to train them to prepare and upload new content. Users can add phrases to language software, annotate maps and link text or voice recordings to photos ("Have you seen this man?"). Apple devices make it easy to shoot, store and play video. Consider the impact of showing villagers a video message of a relaxed and respected local leader encouraging them to help root out insurgents.
Since sharing data is particularly important in counterinsurgency operations, the Pentagon is funding technology that makes it easier for the soldier on the ground to acquire information and quickly add it to databases. Next Wave Systems in Indiana, is expected to release iPhone software that would enable a soldier to snap a picture of a street sign and, in a few moments, receive intelligence uploaded by other soldiers (the information would be linked by the words on the street sign). This could include information about local water quality or the name and photograph of a local insurgent sympathizer. The U.S. Marine Corps is funding an application for Apple devices that would allow soldiers to upload photographs of detained suspects, along with written reports, into a biometric database. The software could match faces, making it easier to track suspects after they're released.
Apple gadgets are proving to be surprisingly versatile. Software developers and the U.S. Department of Defense are developing military software for iPods that enables soldiers to display aerial video from drones and have teleconferences with intelligence agents halfway across the globe. Snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan now use a "ballistics calculator" called BulletFlight, made by the Florida firm Knight's Armament for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Army researchers are developing applications to turn an iPod into a remote control for a bomb-disposal robot (tilting the iPod steers the robot). In Sudan, American military observers are using iPods to learn the appropriate etiquette for interacting with tribal leaders.
Translation is another important area. A new program, Vcommunicator, is now being issued to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It produces spoken and written translations of Arabic, Kurdish and two Afghan languages. It also shows animated graphics of accompanying gestures and body language, and displays pictures of garments, weapons and other objects. Procurement officials are making a "tremendous push" to develop and field militarily useful Apple devices, says Ernie Bright, operations manager of Vcom3D, the Florida firm that developed the software. The iPod has already transformed the way we listen to music. Now it's taking on war.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Iran's New South American Embassies Tied to Hizbullah Activity, U.S. Routes by Michael Braun
Iran's new South American embassies tied to Hizbullah activity, U.S. routes. U.S. officials said Iran and its proxy, Hizbullah, were expanding activities in South America and using the same trafficking routes into the United States as Mexico's drug cartel.
The officials said Iran has opened six embassies in South America since 2004 in an effort to establish an intelligence and operational network.
"That is of concern, principally because of the connection between the government of Iran, which is a state sponsor of terrorism, and Hizbullah," Adm. James Stavridis said.
Outgoing Drug Enforcement Administration chief of operations Michael Braun said Hizbullah, with help from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has been using the same trafficking routes as the drug cartel in Mexico. Braun told The Washington Times that Hizbullah was employing Mexican weapons smugglers, forgerers and other personnel to smuggle drugs into the United States.
Stavridis, head of the military's U.S. Southern Command, said much of the Iranian and Hizbullah activity was taking place in the area that borders Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. In a hearing to the House Armed Services Committee on March 17, Stavridis also cited the Iranian presence in the Caribbean.
"We see a great deal of Hizbullah activity throughout South America, in particular," Stavridis said.
In August 2008, the United States supported an operation in the triborder area that targeted a drug trafficking network connected to Hizbullah. Stavridis said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration also facilitated an operation that led to the arrest of several dozens of suspected drug traffickers connected to Hizbullah in Colombia.
Stavridis said Hizbullah has formed a direct connection with drug traffickers in Colombia. He said Colombia has become the pivotal element in the war against drugs.
"Indentifying, monitoring and dismantling the financial, logistical and communication linkages between illicit trafficking groups and terrorist sponsors are critical to not only ensuring early indications and warnings of potential terrorist attacks directed at the United States and our partners, but also in generating a global appreciation and acceptance of this tremendous threat to security," Stavridis said.
The officials said Iran has opened six embassies in South America since 2004 in an effort to establish an intelligence and operational network.
"That is of concern, principally because of the connection between the government of Iran, which is a state sponsor of terrorism, and Hizbullah," Adm. James Stavridis said.
Outgoing Drug Enforcement Administration chief of operations Michael Braun said Hizbullah, with help from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has been using the same trafficking routes as the drug cartel in Mexico. Braun told The Washington Times that Hizbullah was employing Mexican weapons smugglers, forgerers and other personnel to smuggle drugs into the United States.
Stavridis, head of the military's U.S. Southern Command, said much of the Iranian and Hizbullah activity was taking place in the area that borders Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. In a hearing to the House Armed Services Committee on March 17, Stavridis also cited the Iranian presence in the Caribbean.
"We see a great deal of Hizbullah activity throughout South America, in particular," Stavridis said.
In August 2008, the United States supported an operation in the triborder area that targeted a drug trafficking network connected to Hizbullah. Stavridis said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration also facilitated an operation that led to the arrest of several dozens of suspected drug traffickers connected to Hizbullah in Colombia.
Stavridis said Hizbullah has formed a direct connection with drug traffickers in Colombia. He said Colombia has become the pivotal element in the war against drugs.
"Indentifying, monitoring and dismantling the financial, logistical and communication linkages between illicit trafficking groups and terrorist sponsors are critical to not only ensuring early indications and warnings of potential terrorist attacks directed at the United States and our partners, but also in generating a global appreciation and acceptance of this tremendous threat to security," Stavridis said.
U.S. Military Expresses Concern About Perception of an Iraqi Crackdown on Sunnis by Alissa J. Rubin and Rod Nordland
Military officials say their fear is that the arrests, while relatively few so far, have created a public perception that the government is cracking down on the groups, which could undermine the Awakening program, widely credited with helping to end the insurgency in much of Iraq.
“We don’t think it’s a systemic problem,” said Col. Jeffrey Kulmayer, chief of reconciliation and engagement for the American forces in Iraq, and the military’s top liaison with the Sons of Iraq, as it calls the Awakening Councils. “But with each individual arrest the perception is there that it’s an assault on the entire program.” In addition to the 15 Awakening leaders arrested in recent weeks, the military is tracking the cases of five others who are the subjects of arrest warrants.
American generals are so concerned about Awakening Councils that Colonel Kulmayer says he reports to them daily on problems the groups are having, including delayed salary payments. The late payrolls have been cleared up in most areas, he said, the one exception being Diyala Province.
“We’re going to track very carefully that the right thing is being done, that the good guy is not being arrested but that the bad ones are,” he said.
The military is determined to intervene if necessary, Colonel Kulmayer said, and has already in the case of a prominent council leader in Baghdad, Col. Raad Ali of the Ghazaliya neighborhood, a one-time stronghold of Al Qaeda. “It turns out the charges were trumped up,” Colonel Kulmayer said. Officials persuaded a judge to dismiss the case and release him, the colonel said.
The number of arrests is small relative to the total number of Awakening leaders, he said. Of the 323 leaders in Baghdad, eight have been detained; of the 275 leaders in Diyala and Salahuddin, seven have been detained, he said. In addition to the leaders, at least 164 rank-and-file Awakening members, and as many as 200, have been arrested, he said.
In addition to the delays in paying salaries, a budget crisis brought on by the plunge in oil prices has made it hard for the government to make good on its promise of jobs for Awakening members. These developments have shaken Awakening members’ faith in the government’s intentions, which they said could send some in the movement back to the insurgency.
“I think all these things happened at the same time and made it look bad,” Colonel Kulmayer said. But he insisted that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and top levels of the Iraqi government remained committed to financing the program and integrating its members into permanent ministry jobs, which pay substantially more than the roughly $300-a-month stipend earned by Awakening members.
The problem lies mainly with the process of issuing arrest warrants. Under Iraqi law, a warrant requires only two witnesses, and records are not centralized, Colonel Kulmayer said, so charges can easily be fabricated. Those doing so, he said, are “factions in the country that are trying to undermine the reconciliation.”
He identified those factions as Shiite extremists and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which American intelligence has found to be a homegrown Sunni militant group with some foreign leadership.
The American military initially sponsored most of the Awakening Councils but has been handing responsibility for managing and paying them to the Iraqi government with the promise that members will be hired into permanent government jobs. However, with the exception of 4,291 police officers, none of the 94,000 Awakening members have been given government positions.
American generals held discussions with senior Iraqi government officials in recent days and won a renewed commitment to hire the Awakening members in government jobs, said Colonel Kulmayer, citing a resolution issued Tuesday by the Council of Ministers, the Iraqi cabinet.
“That’s new and that’s important, because before it was just concept, and now we’ve moved from concept to implementation,” Colonel Kulmayer said. He added, however, that he had not yet seen the text of the resolution.
The secretary of the Council of Ministers, Ali al-Allaq, said it had “decided to employ the Awakening members in the ministries,” but still needed to discuss the details.
Other military officials who work on Awakening issues say they have yet to be convinced that the Shiite-led government is any more likely now than in the past to produce jobs for the largely Sunni Awakening members. Even if the men are transferred to ministries, they say, that does not guarantee they will keep their jobs after money for the Awakening program runs out later this year.
“In the end, maybe it will work out, but there are difficulties we are not dealing with yet,” said one military official, who was not authorized to speak to the news media.
The recent surge in violence continued Wednesday when a parked car full of explosives blew up in Kirkuk, killing 13 people and wounding 22, according to the Kirkuk police operations commander, Yazgar Shakoor. The victims were mostly security guards at an oil installation.
“We don’t think it’s a systemic problem,” said Col. Jeffrey Kulmayer, chief of reconciliation and engagement for the American forces in Iraq, and the military’s top liaison with the Sons of Iraq, as it calls the Awakening Councils. “But with each individual arrest the perception is there that it’s an assault on the entire program.” In addition to the 15 Awakening leaders arrested in recent weeks, the military is tracking the cases of five others who are the subjects of arrest warrants.
American generals are so concerned about Awakening Councils that Colonel Kulmayer says he reports to them daily on problems the groups are having, including delayed salary payments. The late payrolls have been cleared up in most areas, he said, the one exception being Diyala Province.
“We’re going to track very carefully that the right thing is being done, that the good guy is not being arrested but that the bad ones are,” he said.
The military is determined to intervene if necessary, Colonel Kulmayer said, and has already in the case of a prominent council leader in Baghdad, Col. Raad Ali of the Ghazaliya neighborhood, a one-time stronghold of Al Qaeda. “It turns out the charges were trumped up,” Colonel Kulmayer said. Officials persuaded a judge to dismiss the case and release him, the colonel said.
The number of arrests is small relative to the total number of Awakening leaders, he said. Of the 323 leaders in Baghdad, eight have been detained; of the 275 leaders in Diyala and Salahuddin, seven have been detained, he said. In addition to the leaders, at least 164 rank-and-file Awakening members, and as many as 200, have been arrested, he said.
In addition to the delays in paying salaries, a budget crisis brought on by the plunge in oil prices has made it hard for the government to make good on its promise of jobs for Awakening members. These developments have shaken Awakening members’ faith in the government’s intentions, which they said could send some in the movement back to the insurgency.
“I think all these things happened at the same time and made it look bad,” Colonel Kulmayer said. But he insisted that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and top levels of the Iraqi government remained committed to financing the program and integrating its members into permanent ministry jobs, which pay substantially more than the roughly $300-a-month stipend earned by Awakening members.
The problem lies mainly with the process of issuing arrest warrants. Under Iraqi law, a warrant requires only two witnesses, and records are not centralized, Colonel Kulmayer said, so charges can easily be fabricated. Those doing so, he said, are “factions in the country that are trying to undermine the reconciliation.”
He identified those factions as Shiite extremists and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which American intelligence has found to be a homegrown Sunni militant group with some foreign leadership.
The American military initially sponsored most of the Awakening Councils but has been handing responsibility for managing and paying them to the Iraqi government with the promise that members will be hired into permanent government jobs. However, with the exception of 4,291 police officers, none of the 94,000 Awakening members have been given government positions.
American generals held discussions with senior Iraqi government officials in recent days and won a renewed commitment to hire the Awakening members in government jobs, said Colonel Kulmayer, citing a resolution issued Tuesday by the Council of Ministers, the Iraqi cabinet.
“That’s new and that’s important, because before it was just concept, and now we’ve moved from concept to implementation,” Colonel Kulmayer said. He added, however, that he had not yet seen the text of the resolution.
The secretary of the Council of Ministers, Ali al-Allaq, said it had “decided to employ the Awakening members in the ministries,” but still needed to discuss the details.
Other military officials who work on Awakening issues say they have yet to be convinced that the Shiite-led government is any more likely now than in the past to produce jobs for the largely Sunni Awakening members. Even if the men are transferred to ministries, they say, that does not guarantee they will keep their jobs after money for the Awakening program runs out later this year.
“In the end, maybe it will work out, but there are difficulties we are not dealing with yet,” said one military official, who was not authorized to speak to the news media.
The recent surge in violence continued Wednesday when a parked car full of explosives blew up in Kirkuk, killing 13 people and wounding 22, according to the Kirkuk police operations commander, Yazgar Shakoor. The victims were mostly security guards at an oil installation.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
iPhone Apps are Changing the World of Software and the Way We Work and Play by Luke Bainbridge
Since they launched last July, iPhone applications have become one of the fastest - and most popular - technological innovations ever. There are thousands of simple and free apps, including ones that are altering the face of music.
It can create a virtual pint, electronic flute or whoopee cushion; help you to beat traffic while avoiding speed cameras; let you read the complete works of Shakespeare; control your home television from the office; tell you the time anywhere in the world; or simply guide you to the nearest place to purchase a decent latte.
In fact, there does not appear to be much (bar enhancing your love life or curing a hangover) that an iPhone app cannot do - and that is why it has become one of the fastest-growing technological innovations of recent times.
More than 25,000 have been created - often by individuals working from home - and they have been downloaded more than 800 million times from the online iPhone App Store. From Coldplay to Manchester United, institutions of every shape and size are scrambling to get a piece of the action. Even Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, was surprised at the initial success, exclaiming: "I've never seen anything like this in my career in software."
Now Trent Reznor, lead singer in a band at the vanguard of bringing technology into the music industry, plans to take things a step further, creating an app that will transform the experience of being a Nine Inch Nails fan.
NIN: Access, which is awaiting approval from Apple, could be one way forward for a music industry decimated by downloading in recent years. The application, which will be downloadable free, will let users start multiple conversations with strangers at gigs, locate other NIN fans in their vicinity, stream music, download photos and upload their own remixes. It will create an NIN community orchestrated by the band itself - not by any record company and not via any of the many social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook.
"People are going to steal your music whether you like it or not; it's out there, it's free," said Reznor in an interview with the Observer. "You're never going to make a lot of money selling records like you used to, that's a fact. It's over."
And if the latest research is anything to go by, access to music is exactly what iPhone apps fans are after.
A survey, carried out by comScore Inc - a marketing research company - found that the single most popular app to date is Tap Tap Revenge, which has been downloaded by a third of those using the App Store. The iPhone equivalent of the Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution rhythm games, Tap Tap Revenge allows the reader to play or tap along to music and the company has already linked up to the likes of Reznor to customise versions of the game.The latest is Tap Tap Revenge: Coldplay Edition, released last week, which, should you be so inclined, allows you to tap along to 10 of Coldplay's greatest hits including Yellow and Viva La Vida.
The study found that the best - and generally most successful apps - utilised the iPhone's hardware, such as its motion sensor or GPS.
It also revealed that 12 of the top 25 most popular applications were games, including versions of classics such as Hangman and Pacman, while social networking applications proved popular.
"With the amount of downloads they've had since the App Store launched last July, it must be one of the fastest rising businesses since the launch of the internet," said David Rowan, editor of the newly launched Wired UK magazine. "What's good about the App Store is that there's quite a low barrier to entry, so many of these programmers actually have day jobs and are just working on these apps in their spare time."
Individuals can download the software, create their own application, and for a one-off fee of $99 (£68) register as a developer with Apple, and then have it stocked in the App Store. If they do decide to charge for their application, they can set the price, and keep 70% of the charge, with 30% going to Apple.
Most applications in the store are written by third-party developers. For some this has been a return to the early days of the internet, or even computing itself, when young aspiring developers could make a living from their bedrooms.
A major part of the App Store's success is down to its simplicity and pricing. Most of the apps are free or a nominal price such as 49p. As one developer puts it: "If an app only cost 49p, people don't mind if they only use it once or twice, and it's not even the end of the world if it actually turns out to be a bit crap."
Ross McKillop, who developed the MMS application, which allows users to send and receive pictures and video (frustratingly, the iPhone can't receive a picture text message, although the next model will rectify that), thinks the reason iPhone App has taken off is simple: "We've had mobile phones with internet access for years, but it was so sluggish and non-user-friendly that hardly anyone bothered using it."
Malcolm Barclay has a background in computers but is a self-taught programmer who saw a gap for an application that offered updates on the London Underground. "The idea doesn't have to be unique," he said. "It's not rocket science that you might want to be able to retrieve Tube information on your phone, it just comes down to execution. I just wanted to make it so simple and easy to use, and of course I made it free, so there was no reason not to try it."
After the success of Barclay's TubeStatus, he was deluged with requests to provide a fuller package including maps and a journey planner option. "I thought someone else would do it, but after a few months no one had, so I just did it myself." TubeDeluxe sells for 59p.
The concept took shape for Nine Inch Nails one night last summer when Reznor was "fooling around" with his phone backstage before a gig and noticed fans queuing to get in were already uploading pictures of the scene. "So we then communicated with them and said, 'We're backstage' and that freaked them out," explained Reznor. "But that got the wheels turning and we thought, 'How can we develop that?' "
The fact that NIN are not tied to a record label frees them to experiment with such new ideas. "Record labels do not know how to deal with the new media environment that they're confronted with," he added. "They've made their fortunes selling plastic discs and now no one wants to buy plastic discs - they're just trying to get their fingers in every other pie, but they're so greedy and ignorant they're not prepared to do what they have to do." The key to success, argued Reznor, is not to see the apps primarily as a way to make money: "All we're trying to do is make something cool. Something that as a fan you'd say, 'Hey, I want to have that'. If we can monetise it, then that's fine, no problem."
The notion of thousands of fans talking at a concert via their iPhone may sound hellish to old-fashioned gig goers. "On a personal level, I do find that kind of silly," agreed Reznor. "I tend to not take cameras on vacation any more as I want to experience that moment as a human, not as a documenter. At a concert, it's up to them, I can't tell them how to experience a concert. If that makes you feel like you had a better time, holding a phone up the whole time, then OK."
Naturally, Apple's competitors are keen to move into the market. The main competitors are Google Android Market, launched in October last year, for phones that run on the Android system, Nokia's Ovi store, and the just launched Blackberry App Store. Microsoft is also planning to launch a Windows Marketplace later this year. "Nothing keeps still for very long in this field," said Rowan, "and when you have a booming market dominated by one company, other people are going to look at it."
A few developers have made a small fortune, but McKillop has a sober word for anyone looking to cash in: "We certainly haven't made a fortune from our application. Although we have got a lot of other work through it. I believe the guy who created the iFart [whoopee cushion] is a millionaire though ... draw your own conclusions from that."
It can create a virtual pint, electronic flute or whoopee cushion; help you to beat traffic while avoiding speed cameras; let you read the complete works of Shakespeare; control your home television from the office; tell you the time anywhere in the world; or simply guide you to the nearest place to purchase a decent latte.
In fact, there does not appear to be much (bar enhancing your love life or curing a hangover) that an iPhone app cannot do - and that is why it has become one of the fastest-growing technological innovations of recent times.
More than 25,000 have been created - often by individuals working from home - and they have been downloaded more than 800 million times from the online iPhone App Store. From Coldplay to Manchester United, institutions of every shape and size are scrambling to get a piece of the action. Even Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, was surprised at the initial success, exclaiming: "I've never seen anything like this in my career in software."
Now Trent Reznor, lead singer in a band at the vanguard of bringing technology into the music industry, plans to take things a step further, creating an app that will transform the experience of being a Nine Inch Nails fan.
NIN: Access, which is awaiting approval from Apple, could be one way forward for a music industry decimated by downloading in recent years. The application, which will be downloadable free, will let users start multiple conversations with strangers at gigs, locate other NIN fans in their vicinity, stream music, download photos and upload their own remixes. It will create an NIN community orchestrated by the band itself - not by any record company and not via any of the many social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook.
"People are going to steal your music whether you like it or not; it's out there, it's free," said Reznor in an interview with the Observer. "You're never going to make a lot of money selling records like you used to, that's a fact. It's over."
And if the latest research is anything to go by, access to music is exactly what iPhone apps fans are after.
A survey, carried out by comScore Inc - a marketing research company - found that the single most popular app to date is Tap Tap Revenge, which has been downloaded by a third of those using the App Store. The iPhone equivalent of the Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution rhythm games, Tap Tap Revenge allows the reader to play or tap along to music and the company has already linked up to the likes of Reznor to customise versions of the game.The latest is Tap Tap Revenge: Coldplay Edition, released last week, which, should you be so inclined, allows you to tap along to 10 of Coldplay's greatest hits including Yellow and Viva La Vida.
The study found that the best - and generally most successful apps - utilised the iPhone's hardware, such as its motion sensor or GPS.
It also revealed that 12 of the top 25 most popular applications were games, including versions of classics such as Hangman and Pacman, while social networking applications proved popular.
"With the amount of downloads they've had since the App Store launched last July, it must be one of the fastest rising businesses since the launch of the internet," said David Rowan, editor of the newly launched Wired UK magazine. "What's good about the App Store is that there's quite a low barrier to entry, so many of these programmers actually have day jobs and are just working on these apps in their spare time."
Individuals can download the software, create their own application, and for a one-off fee of $99 (£68) register as a developer with Apple, and then have it stocked in the App Store. If they do decide to charge for their application, they can set the price, and keep 70% of the charge, with 30% going to Apple.
Most applications in the store are written by third-party developers. For some this has been a return to the early days of the internet, or even computing itself, when young aspiring developers could make a living from their bedrooms.
A major part of the App Store's success is down to its simplicity and pricing. Most of the apps are free or a nominal price such as 49p. As one developer puts it: "If an app only cost 49p, people don't mind if they only use it once or twice, and it's not even the end of the world if it actually turns out to be a bit crap."
Ross McKillop, who developed the MMS application, which allows users to send and receive pictures and video (frustratingly, the iPhone can't receive a picture text message, although the next model will rectify that), thinks the reason iPhone App has taken off is simple: "We've had mobile phones with internet access for years, but it was so sluggish and non-user-friendly that hardly anyone bothered using it."
Malcolm Barclay has a background in computers but is a self-taught programmer who saw a gap for an application that offered updates on the London Underground. "The idea doesn't have to be unique," he said. "It's not rocket science that you might want to be able to retrieve Tube information on your phone, it just comes down to execution. I just wanted to make it so simple and easy to use, and of course I made it free, so there was no reason not to try it."
After the success of Barclay's TubeStatus, he was deluged with requests to provide a fuller package including maps and a journey planner option. "I thought someone else would do it, but after a few months no one had, so I just did it myself." TubeDeluxe sells for 59p.
The concept took shape for Nine Inch Nails one night last summer when Reznor was "fooling around" with his phone backstage before a gig and noticed fans queuing to get in were already uploading pictures of the scene. "So we then communicated with them and said, 'We're backstage' and that freaked them out," explained Reznor. "But that got the wheels turning and we thought, 'How can we develop that?' "
The fact that NIN are not tied to a record label frees them to experiment with such new ideas. "Record labels do not know how to deal with the new media environment that they're confronted with," he added. "They've made their fortunes selling plastic discs and now no one wants to buy plastic discs - they're just trying to get their fingers in every other pie, but they're so greedy and ignorant they're not prepared to do what they have to do." The key to success, argued Reznor, is not to see the apps primarily as a way to make money: "All we're trying to do is make something cool. Something that as a fan you'd say, 'Hey, I want to have that'. If we can monetise it, then that's fine, no problem."
The notion of thousands of fans talking at a concert via their iPhone may sound hellish to old-fashioned gig goers. "On a personal level, I do find that kind of silly," agreed Reznor. "I tend to not take cameras on vacation any more as I want to experience that moment as a human, not as a documenter. At a concert, it's up to them, I can't tell them how to experience a concert. If that makes you feel like you had a better time, holding a phone up the whole time, then OK."
Naturally, Apple's competitors are keen to move into the market. The main competitors are Google Android Market, launched in October last year, for phones that run on the Android system, Nokia's Ovi store, and the just launched Blackberry App Store. Microsoft is also planning to launch a Windows Marketplace later this year. "Nothing keeps still for very long in this field," said Rowan, "and when you have a booming market dominated by one company, other people are going to look at it."
A few developers have made a small fortune, but McKillop has a sober word for anyone looking to cash in: "We certainly haven't made a fortune from our application. Although we have got a lot of other work through it. I believe the guy who created the iFart [whoopee cushion] is a millionaire though ... draw your own conclusions from that."
Just An Observation: Our Armchair Jihadists by Sami Yousafzai
After being shot, Sami Yousafzai fled Pakistan for London, thinking he was escaping Islamic extremism. He was shocked by the menacing support for the Taliban he found here.
I still don’t know who wanted me dead. I’d been sitting in my car one day last November, not far from my house in the northwest Pakistan city of Peshawar, when a group of strangers walked up. One of them pointed a pistol through my window.
I remember that he wore a turban and shalwar kameez – the tunic and baggy pants common in the area – and that he had a long beard, dyed red with henna.
He shot me in the chest, hand and arm and then fled with his friends.
Miraculously, none of the bullets hit any arteries or vital organs. As soon as a doctor had patched me up, I booked a flight to London, where I planned to lie low for a while to rest and seek further medical help for a bullet that was lodged in my arm.
But more than that, I just wanted to be somewhere calm and safe, far from AK-toting gunmen, the suicide bombers and the daily, random violence of Pakistan’s borderlands.
My sense of relief at being in London didn’t last long. In one of the city’s many south Asian neighbourhoods I saw a tall young Afghan who reminded me of my would-be assassin, striding down the street like a bad dream. He, too, had a long beard and wore a shalwar kameez plus a big, loose turban of white silk.
Anyone dressed like that in Islam-abad would immediately have been picked up for questioning by the police. I had flown halfway across the world to get away from killers who resembled this young Londoner. I stared after him until he was gone from view.
But as the days passed I spotted him again and again. He stood out even in a neighbourhood full of Asians dressed in traditional garb. The locals had a nickname for him: “Talib Jan”. It’s a friendly Afghan slang term for a Taliban member, rather like GI Joe for Americans.
The crowded, run-down terraced houses in this area and others like it have become home to hundreds of Afghans who arrived in England as fugitives from the Taliban’s brutality. Nevertheless, most of Jan’s neighbours spoke of him tolerantly or even approvingly.
In fact, during my three-month stay in England I met a surprising number of Muslims who shared Jan’s fascination with the Taliban. The older generation had little love for the extremists. But among some younger men, frustrated and marginalised in British society, I discovered a fury that was depressingly familiar.
Many immigrants were blatant, vocal and unquestioning in their support for what they imagined to be “jihad”. Few seemed troubled by the brutality that had characterised the reign of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, or by his banning of music or of education for girls.
Indeed, many looked back on Omar’s rule as a kind of Islamic utopia and eagerly snapped up the Islamist leaflets handed out after Friday prayers at various mosques.
I introduced myself to Jan at one of those mosques and complimented him on his taste in clothes: that’s how people dress back home in Afghanistan, I said. (I was born in northern Afghanistan; my family fled to Pakistan in 1979 to escape the Soviet invasion.)
Despite his fierce appearance, Jan turned out to be friendly and outgoing. He listened with interest to my story, but mostly he talked about himself, his Islamist views, his fierce support for the Taliban and his contempt for the Brits and Americans fighting them.
His vehemence surprised me. Now 23 years old, Jan had been born in eastern Afghanistan and attended a madrasah in Pakistan. The Taliban were still ruling Afghanistan when his parents paid a people-smuggler to sneak him to England at 14.
There he applied for political asylum, claiming the Taliban had persecuted him and his family. Now, of course, he’s a legal resident yet openly cheers for his supposed oppressors to defeat troops from his adopted homeland. The irony seems lost on him.
In London he prowls the streets as a one-man, self-appointed morality patrol. He castigates any young Muslim couples whom he sees holding hands in public and he criticises acquaintances for shaping their beards into what he disapprovingly calls a “French cut” that frames the mouth.
His diatribes can be frightening. Several young men told me they were afraid Jan had friends who could create problems for them or their relatives in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Some feared they might be disowned if Jan got word to their families about their “immoral” lives in London.
At a neighbourhood restaurant one day, I noticed that my waiter looked miserable. Khalil, a clean-shaven, broad-shouldered young Afghan who wears a gold ring in one earlobe, told me that he’d been dumped a few days earlier by his girlfriend, a beautiful young Englishwoman.
They’d been out walking when Talib Jan marched up and began denouncing Khalil, threatening to let his family back in Afghanistan know that their son was having a forbidden affair.
The girl was frightened by Jan, but more than that, she was furious at Khalil for lying to her: he had told her he was Turkish. She told him they were through.
Now Khalil worries that same routine will be repeated with every girl he meets. He’s also convinced that Jan knows how to find his family in Afghanistan and can make big trouble for him there.
“I wanted to marry that girl, but now I have no hope,” he told me. “My family lives in the insecure countryside. If I go back and the Taliban know I have an English girlfriend, they will behead me.”
I asked if he thought Jan was a member of the Taliban. “No,” Khalil answered. “He is not with the militias, but he is a big headache for every Afghan who knows him.”
As far as I can tell, Jan is an armchair jihadist. Certainly I saw no sign that he had direct ties to the Taliban, or that anyone was paying him to proselytise. On the contrary, he works hard to support himself with business deals – such as buying and selling used cars.
I often found him in a little shop that sells mobile phones and watches. A crowd of young bearded men hang out there: more armchair jihadists.
The shop’s 35-year-old owner, a Pakistani from Peshawar, loves to show them the latest Taliban videos on his mobile phone, featuring beheadings of alleged antiTaliban “spies” and ambushes of US forces.
When asked if he was worried the authorities might discover his collection of videos, he told me: “If our Taliban brothers can stand up to B-52 bombing and modern US war technology, it would be cowardly of me to be afraid to watch and share their heroic actions.”
The shopkeeper disturbed me: he is relatively well educated and a former banker, yet makes no secret of his Islamist leanings. Giving change, he avoids touching a woman’s hand.
He also claims that in his days as a radical religious student in Peshawar in the mid 1990s, he and a group of friends murdered several prostitutes in what he calls a “moral cleansing drive”. (This may or may not be true.) He warned me about speaking against the Taliban, even in London: people’s loved ones at home could get hurt, he said darkly.
Jan, too, is always glad to pull out his Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone and share videos of Taliban training camps and coalition convoys hit by IEDs. He even has Taliban ringtones – fire-and-brimstone sermons and Koranic recitals from jihadist mullahs. If you want copies, he’ll transfer them to your phone or point you to the right website.
“I’m winning converts to a holy cause every day,” he says. As for the police, Jan says he’s never had problems with them. They seem to regard him as a deeply religious man, he says, or at least as a harmless eccentric.
In fact, Jan embodies a powerful need among many young Muslims in Britain to preserve a sense of identity in a foreign land.
One 50-year-old engineer told me he worries constantly about his four children – particularly his two sons, aged 19 and 20. They seem addicted to internet porn, he says, but what scares him even more is the amount of time they spend on jihadist websites. He worries as well about extremist operatives who hang out at local mosques, trying to recruit young people to the Taliban cause.
The appeal of extremism is especially strong for immigrants fed up with hard times and bigotry.
In Birmingham I met an unemployed man from Kandahar who said he’d just lost his job and feared he wouldn’t be able to feed his family.
“If I get hit by a car or bus one day crossing the street, who will look after my family?” he asked. “It would be better for me to go and fight and die with the Taliban. Then at least I could see paradise.”
One 35-year-old British Muslim, an office worker, told me he was infuriated by widespread discrimination. He hadn’t had a promotion in 10 years, he said, and he believes this is because he’s an ardent Muslim who has a long beard and never joins his colleagues at the pub.
“This kind of behaviour is what makes Muslims extremist,” he said.
Jan himself says most Britons look on him with “love and kindness”, but others occasionally stare at him with “hate” and won’t sit next to him on the train.
Most of these young men, even Jan, will probably never give up their lives in Britain to join the jihad in Afghanistan. But something of that far-off fight, some tinge of blood and chaos and hatred, has certainly seeped into the streets of London.
Alokozai, 27, arrived in the city a year ago after an arduous trip via the Afghans’ underground network. He used to be an interpreter/fixer for British troops in Kandahar. The pay was excellent by Afghan standards – some $1,600 a month – but then the death threats began. His family’s lives would be worthless unless he left his job, the anonymous letters warned.
He quit. In Britain he applied for political asylum, thinking he had finally escaped the Taliban’s wrath. Then the phone woke him one night at 3am. “Death angels will soon clutch at your throat,” an Afghan voice warned. “Remember, we have Islamic brothers in the UK. Your family should not rest easy in Kandahar, either.”
He says he could only listen to the voice, too scared to say anything himself.
Now Alokozai worries all the time. Too many Afghans in London sympathise with the Taliban, he says. He thinks many recent asylum seekers, especially those from southern Afghanistan, have ties to the Taliban and remain under the sway of extremist ideas. “They will create trouble for Britain in the near future,” he predicts.
Equally disturbing to him are the thoroughly assimilated Muslims, who also treat him like a traitor to his religion. When they find out he worked for British forces in Afghanistan, they ask him: “How many houses did you bomb?” And: “How many innocents did you kill?”
“These people are as narrow-minded and have as much hate in their eyes as the Taliban do in Afghanistan,” he says. “I cannot understand how these Afghans and Pakistanis can wear western clothes, dance and drink and then condemn me and see the Taliban as their heroes.”
Neither can I. On a train one day I met Owais, a 27-year-old Pakistani from Kashmir, who began praising the Taliban and talking seriously of going to live in Afghanistan after Mullah Omar returned to power.
“My fervent wish is that, next winter, we may be able to breathe freely in the restored Islamic state of Afghanistan,” he declared in Urdu.
Here you can breathe freely, too, I told him.
At this point his travelling companion butted in. “No, only in a true Islamic state can we be free,” said Ishaq, a 25-year-old Afghan immigrant who was wearing a long white tunic over his jeans. “The West is destroying the spirit, soul and values of Islam. Muslims should avoid contact with the West.”
As I go home to my family, I too wonder and worry about such men. There is too much of Peshawar in them – and in London.
I still don’t know who wanted me dead. I’d been sitting in my car one day last November, not far from my house in the northwest Pakistan city of Peshawar, when a group of strangers walked up. One of them pointed a pistol through my window.
I remember that he wore a turban and shalwar kameez – the tunic and baggy pants common in the area – and that he had a long beard, dyed red with henna.
He shot me in the chest, hand and arm and then fled with his friends.
Miraculously, none of the bullets hit any arteries or vital organs. As soon as a doctor had patched me up, I booked a flight to London, where I planned to lie low for a while to rest and seek further medical help for a bullet that was lodged in my arm.
But more than that, I just wanted to be somewhere calm and safe, far from AK-toting gunmen, the suicide bombers and the daily, random violence of Pakistan’s borderlands.
My sense of relief at being in London didn’t last long. In one of the city’s many south Asian neighbourhoods I saw a tall young Afghan who reminded me of my would-be assassin, striding down the street like a bad dream. He, too, had a long beard and wore a shalwar kameez plus a big, loose turban of white silk.
Anyone dressed like that in Islam-abad would immediately have been picked up for questioning by the police. I had flown halfway across the world to get away from killers who resembled this young Londoner. I stared after him until he was gone from view.
But as the days passed I spotted him again and again. He stood out even in a neighbourhood full of Asians dressed in traditional garb. The locals had a nickname for him: “Talib Jan”. It’s a friendly Afghan slang term for a Taliban member, rather like GI Joe for Americans.
The crowded, run-down terraced houses in this area and others like it have become home to hundreds of Afghans who arrived in England as fugitives from the Taliban’s brutality. Nevertheless, most of Jan’s neighbours spoke of him tolerantly or even approvingly.
In fact, during my three-month stay in England I met a surprising number of Muslims who shared Jan’s fascination with the Taliban. The older generation had little love for the extremists. But among some younger men, frustrated and marginalised in British society, I discovered a fury that was depressingly familiar.
Many immigrants were blatant, vocal and unquestioning in their support for what they imagined to be “jihad”. Few seemed troubled by the brutality that had characterised the reign of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, or by his banning of music or of education for girls.
Indeed, many looked back on Omar’s rule as a kind of Islamic utopia and eagerly snapped up the Islamist leaflets handed out after Friday prayers at various mosques.
I introduced myself to Jan at one of those mosques and complimented him on his taste in clothes: that’s how people dress back home in Afghanistan, I said. (I was born in northern Afghanistan; my family fled to Pakistan in 1979 to escape the Soviet invasion.)
Despite his fierce appearance, Jan turned out to be friendly and outgoing. He listened with interest to my story, but mostly he talked about himself, his Islamist views, his fierce support for the Taliban and his contempt for the Brits and Americans fighting them.
His vehemence surprised me. Now 23 years old, Jan had been born in eastern Afghanistan and attended a madrasah in Pakistan. The Taliban were still ruling Afghanistan when his parents paid a people-smuggler to sneak him to England at 14.
There he applied for political asylum, claiming the Taliban had persecuted him and his family. Now, of course, he’s a legal resident yet openly cheers for his supposed oppressors to defeat troops from his adopted homeland. The irony seems lost on him.
In London he prowls the streets as a one-man, self-appointed morality patrol. He castigates any young Muslim couples whom he sees holding hands in public and he criticises acquaintances for shaping their beards into what he disapprovingly calls a “French cut” that frames the mouth.
His diatribes can be frightening. Several young men told me they were afraid Jan had friends who could create problems for them or their relatives in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Some feared they might be disowned if Jan got word to their families about their “immoral” lives in London.
At a neighbourhood restaurant one day, I noticed that my waiter looked miserable. Khalil, a clean-shaven, broad-shouldered young Afghan who wears a gold ring in one earlobe, told me that he’d been dumped a few days earlier by his girlfriend, a beautiful young Englishwoman.
They’d been out walking when Talib Jan marched up and began denouncing Khalil, threatening to let his family back in Afghanistan know that their son was having a forbidden affair.
The girl was frightened by Jan, but more than that, she was furious at Khalil for lying to her: he had told her he was Turkish. She told him they were through.
Now Khalil worries that same routine will be repeated with every girl he meets. He’s also convinced that Jan knows how to find his family in Afghanistan and can make big trouble for him there.
“I wanted to marry that girl, but now I have no hope,” he told me. “My family lives in the insecure countryside. If I go back and the Taliban know I have an English girlfriend, they will behead me.”
I asked if he thought Jan was a member of the Taliban. “No,” Khalil answered. “He is not with the militias, but he is a big headache for every Afghan who knows him.”
As far as I can tell, Jan is an armchair jihadist. Certainly I saw no sign that he had direct ties to the Taliban, or that anyone was paying him to proselytise. On the contrary, he works hard to support himself with business deals – such as buying and selling used cars.
I often found him in a little shop that sells mobile phones and watches. A crowd of young bearded men hang out there: more armchair jihadists.
The shop’s 35-year-old owner, a Pakistani from Peshawar, loves to show them the latest Taliban videos on his mobile phone, featuring beheadings of alleged antiTaliban “spies” and ambushes of US forces.
When asked if he was worried the authorities might discover his collection of videos, he told me: “If our Taliban brothers can stand up to B-52 bombing and modern US war technology, it would be cowardly of me to be afraid to watch and share their heroic actions.”
The shopkeeper disturbed me: he is relatively well educated and a former banker, yet makes no secret of his Islamist leanings. Giving change, he avoids touching a woman’s hand.
He also claims that in his days as a radical religious student in Peshawar in the mid 1990s, he and a group of friends murdered several prostitutes in what he calls a “moral cleansing drive”. (This may or may not be true.) He warned me about speaking against the Taliban, even in London: people’s loved ones at home could get hurt, he said darkly.
Jan, too, is always glad to pull out his Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone and share videos of Taliban training camps and coalition convoys hit by IEDs. He even has Taliban ringtones – fire-and-brimstone sermons and Koranic recitals from jihadist mullahs. If you want copies, he’ll transfer them to your phone or point you to the right website.
“I’m winning converts to a holy cause every day,” he says. As for the police, Jan says he’s never had problems with them. They seem to regard him as a deeply religious man, he says, or at least as a harmless eccentric.
In fact, Jan embodies a powerful need among many young Muslims in Britain to preserve a sense of identity in a foreign land.
One 50-year-old engineer told me he worries constantly about his four children – particularly his two sons, aged 19 and 20. They seem addicted to internet porn, he says, but what scares him even more is the amount of time they spend on jihadist websites. He worries as well about extremist operatives who hang out at local mosques, trying to recruit young people to the Taliban cause.
The appeal of extremism is especially strong for immigrants fed up with hard times and bigotry.
In Birmingham I met an unemployed man from Kandahar who said he’d just lost his job and feared he wouldn’t be able to feed his family.
“If I get hit by a car or bus one day crossing the street, who will look after my family?” he asked. “It would be better for me to go and fight and die with the Taliban. Then at least I could see paradise.”
One 35-year-old British Muslim, an office worker, told me he was infuriated by widespread discrimination. He hadn’t had a promotion in 10 years, he said, and he believes this is because he’s an ardent Muslim who has a long beard and never joins his colleagues at the pub.
“This kind of behaviour is what makes Muslims extremist,” he said.
Jan himself says most Britons look on him with “love and kindness”, but others occasionally stare at him with “hate” and won’t sit next to him on the train.
Most of these young men, even Jan, will probably never give up their lives in Britain to join the jihad in Afghanistan. But something of that far-off fight, some tinge of blood and chaos and hatred, has certainly seeped into the streets of London.
Alokozai, 27, arrived in the city a year ago after an arduous trip via the Afghans’ underground network. He used to be an interpreter/fixer for British troops in Kandahar. The pay was excellent by Afghan standards – some $1,600 a month – but then the death threats began. His family’s lives would be worthless unless he left his job, the anonymous letters warned.
He quit. In Britain he applied for political asylum, thinking he had finally escaped the Taliban’s wrath. Then the phone woke him one night at 3am. “Death angels will soon clutch at your throat,” an Afghan voice warned. “Remember, we have Islamic brothers in the UK. Your family should not rest easy in Kandahar, either.”
He says he could only listen to the voice, too scared to say anything himself.
Now Alokozai worries all the time. Too many Afghans in London sympathise with the Taliban, he says. He thinks many recent asylum seekers, especially those from southern Afghanistan, have ties to the Taliban and remain under the sway of extremist ideas. “They will create trouble for Britain in the near future,” he predicts.
Equally disturbing to him are the thoroughly assimilated Muslims, who also treat him like a traitor to his religion. When they find out he worked for British forces in Afghanistan, they ask him: “How many houses did you bomb?” And: “How many innocents did you kill?”
“These people are as narrow-minded and have as much hate in their eyes as the Taliban do in Afghanistan,” he says. “I cannot understand how these Afghans and Pakistanis can wear western clothes, dance and drink and then condemn me and see the Taliban as their heroes.”
Neither can I. On a train one day I met Owais, a 27-year-old Pakistani from Kashmir, who began praising the Taliban and talking seriously of going to live in Afghanistan after Mullah Omar returned to power.
“My fervent wish is that, next winter, we may be able to breathe freely in the restored Islamic state of Afghanistan,” he declared in Urdu.
Here you can breathe freely, too, I told him.
At this point his travelling companion butted in. “No, only in a true Islamic state can we be free,” said Ishaq, a 25-year-old Afghan immigrant who was wearing a long white tunic over his jeans. “The West is destroying the spirit, soul and values of Islam. Muslims should avoid contact with the West.”
As I go home to my family, I too wonder and worry about such men. There is too much of Peshawar in them – and in London.
Analysis: Pakistani TNSM Serves as Taliban Front by Bill Roggio
As the Pakistani government seeks to re-establish the 'peace accord' with the Swat Taliban after Sufi Mohammed walked out on the agreement, senior officials are defending the negotiations as legitimate talks with an influential local group. But the group the government is negotiating with, the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammed [TNSM or the Movement for the Enforcement of Mohammed's Law], is far from an impartial broker. Recent statements from the TNSM's leader and its spokesman show the group sides with the Taliban and has the ability to direct the Taliban to conduct attacks.
The agreement, known as the Malakand Accord, calls for the withdrawal of the Pakistani Army from Swat, the release all Taliban prisoners, the withdrawal of any criminal cases against Taliban leaders and fighters, and the imposition of sharia in the Malakand Division, a region that encompasses more than one-third of the Northwest Frontier Province.
The Pakistani government has denied that the Swat negotiations are with the Taliban and instead notes the government is negotiating with the TNSM. At an April 9 forum in Washington, Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States, insisted the government is dealing with the TNSM and not the Taliban.
"Pakistan has not done a peace deal with the Taliban in Swat Valley. Period," Haqqani told the Washington forum. "Pakistan has negotiated an arrangement, locally, with the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammedi of Swat."
Haqqani echoed statements made by President Asif Ali Zardari in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in the beginning of March.
"In the highly volatile Swat Valley, our strategy has been to enter into talks with traditional local clerics to help restore peace to the area, and return the writ of the state," Zardari wrote. "We have not and will not negotiate with extremist Taliban and terrorists. The clerics with whom we have engaged are not Taliban. Indeed, in our dialogue we'd made it clear that it is their responsibility to rein in and neutralize Taliban and other insurgents."
TNSM is in the Taliban camp
Zardari and Haqqani's statements about negotiations with the TNSM vice the Taliban are technically correct. But both Zardari and Haqqani have obscured the real nature of the TNSM and its relationship with the Taliban. The TNSM is essentially a front group for the Swat Taliban.
In the early 1990s, the TNSM provided the ideological inspiration for the Afghan Taliban. The TNSM seeks to install a Taliban-like government, complete with sharia, or Islamic Law, throughout northwestern Pakistan.
The group is allied with Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar. In an interview in mid-February, Sufi Mohammed, the leader of the TNSM, admitted his fondness for the Afghan Taliban and described the Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 as "ideal."
“I believe the Taliban government formed a complete Islamic state, which was an ideal example for other Muslim countries," Sufi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur just days before the Malakand Accord was signed.
Sufi and the TNSM are not merely local Islamists who advocate for sharia in the Swat valley. He and his group have called for Islamist domination of the world.
"We hate democracy," Sufi told a crowd of thousands of followers in Mingora after the ratification of the Malakand Accord was announced in mid-February. "We want the occupation of Islam in the entire world. Islam does not permit democracy or election.’’
Sufi and the TNSM actively fought the US in Afghanistan. Sufi sent more than 10,000 fighters into the country to battle US and Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan.
The TNSM's activities were deemed so radical that the Pakistani government banned the group and labeled it a terrorist organization. Sufi was arrested and placed in jail, where he remained until 2007. The government needed someone to negotiate a peace deal with the Swat Taliban, and Sufi fit the bill. After his release, Sufi claimed to eschew violence. The TNSM is still listed as a banned group inside Pakistan, yet the government continues to negotiate with this group.
Another direct link between the TNSM and the Taliban is the relationship between Sufi and Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Swat Taliban. Sufi is Fazlullah's father-in-law.
Fazlullah has sponsored numerous suicide attacks, beheadings, and other acts of terror. The targets have been local political leaders, policemen, soldiers, and tribal leaders. Fazlullah actively opposes polio vaccinations for children, claiming the shots are designed to sterilize the Muslim people. Fazlullah is also a senior deputy in Baitullah Mehsud's unified Pakistani Taliban movement.
TNSM leader admits the group controls Taliban violence. The TNSM has made little effort to hide its relationship with the Taliban. Statements made by senior leaders show the TNSM openly sides with the Swat Taliban and the group has the ability to control the violence.
On April 11, TNSM spokesman Amir Izzat admitted the TNSM has the capacity to order the Taliban to conduct attacks. "We have not asked the Taliban to take up arms, but the government would be held responsible for any resurgence of violence in Swat," Izzat said while discussing negotiations to restore the agreement.
Sufi, who is supposed to be the impartial arbiter of the peace agreement, shed the façade of impartiality after defending the Taliban following a series of Taliban attacks and kidnappings on government security forces and government officials.
"The Taliban are doing nothing wrong," Sufi said after the Taliban killed two soldiers in March. "The government is responsible for violations."
Why does Pakistan negotiate with the TNSM?
With the TNSM clearly linked to the Taliban, the inevitable question arises: why would the Pakistani government negotiate with this group?
The government’s willingness to negotiate with the TNSM highlights how poorly the government and military have handled the situation in Swat and the Northwest Frontier Province in general, and just how strong the Taliban has become.
In Swat, the military has been defeated three times since the summer of 2007. By the time the last military offensive in Swat ended this February, the government controlled only the district's main town of Mingora. And the control of Mingora was tenuous at best. The Taliban routinely executed civilians and policemen and dumped their bodies in the town square.
The Pakistani government faces several dilemmas in Swat. The military wants an end to the fighting, partly out of ambivalence to the problem, partly out of sympathy to the Taliban, and mainly because it views the fighting in Pakistan's northwest as a distraction from what it perceives to be the real enemy: India.
The Pakistani government also faces internal and external pressures to end the fighting and restore its writ in Swat. Some of the secular political parties and elements in the Pakistani media excoriated the government for allowing Swat to spiral out of control. The US and other Western governments want the Pakistanis to halt the spread of the Taliban, as al Qaeda has re-established its safe havens in existing Taliban territory.
The government needs to put an end to the fighting, but it has been negotiating from a position of weakness. With the Taliban in control of Swat, and the military searching for the exit, the Zardari government needs a partner so it can negotiate the end of the fighting.
The government can't openly admit that it is caving to the Taliban, lest it incur the wrath of the US and domestic opposition. But with no one to negotiate with but the Taliban, the government has promoted the TNSM as a legitimate, popular, local political movement that merely sought to impose sharia. In order to maintain this, the government has willfully and knowingly distorted the TNSM's direct links to the Taliban.
The agreement, known as the Malakand Accord, calls for the withdrawal of the Pakistani Army from Swat, the release all Taliban prisoners, the withdrawal of any criminal cases against Taliban leaders and fighters, and the imposition of sharia in the Malakand Division, a region that encompasses more than one-third of the Northwest Frontier Province.
The Pakistani government has denied that the Swat negotiations are with the Taliban and instead notes the government is negotiating with the TNSM. At an April 9 forum in Washington, Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States, insisted the government is dealing with the TNSM and not the Taliban.
"Pakistan has not done a peace deal with the Taliban in Swat Valley. Period," Haqqani told the Washington forum. "Pakistan has negotiated an arrangement, locally, with the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammedi of Swat."
Haqqani echoed statements made by President Asif Ali Zardari in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in the beginning of March.
"In the highly volatile Swat Valley, our strategy has been to enter into talks with traditional local clerics to help restore peace to the area, and return the writ of the state," Zardari wrote. "We have not and will not negotiate with extremist Taliban and terrorists. The clerics with whom we have engaged are not Taliban. Indeed, in our dialogue we'd made it clear that it is their responsibility to rein in and neutralize Taliban and other insurgents."
TNSM is in the Taliban camp
Zardari and Haqqani's statements about negotiations with the TNSM vice the Taliban are technically correct. But both Zardari and Haqqani have obscured the real nature of the TNSM and its relationship with the Taliban. The TNSM is essentially a front group for the Swat Taliban.
In the early 1990s, the TNSM provided the ideological inspiration for the Afghan Taliban. The TNSM seeks to install a Taliban-like government, complete with sharia, or Islamic Law, throughout northwestern Pakistan.
The group is allied with Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar. In an interview in mid-February, Sufi Mohammed, the leader of the TNSM, admitted his fondness for the Afghan Taliban and described the Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 as "ideal."
“I believe the Taliban government formed a complete Islamic state, which was an ideal example for other Muslim countries," Sufi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur just days before the Malakand Accord was signed.
Sufi and the TNSM are not merely local Islamists who advocate for sharia in the Swat valley. He and his group have called for Islamist domination of the world.
"We hate democracy," Sufi told a crowd of thousands of followers in Mingora after the ratification of the Malakand Accord was announced in mid-February. "We want the occupation of Islam in the entire world. Islam does not permit democracy or election.’’
Sufi and the TNSM actively fought the US in Afghanistan. Sufi sent more than 10,000 fighters into the country to battle US and Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan.
The TNSM's activities were deemed so radical that the Pakistani government banned the group and labeled it a terrorist organization. Sufi was arrested and placed in jail, where he remained until 2007. The government needed someone to negotiate a peace deal with the Swat Taliban, and Sufi fit the bill. After his release, Sufi claimed to eschew violence. The TNSM is still listed as a banned group inside Pakistan, yet the government continues to negotiate with this group.
Another direct link between the TNSM and the Taliban is the relationship between Sufi and Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Swat Taliban. Sufi is Fazlullah's father-in-law.
Fazlullah has sponsored numerous suicide attacks, beheadings, and other acts of terror. The targets have been local political leaders, policemen, soldiers, and tribal leaders. Fazlullah actively opposes polio vaccinations for children, claiming the shots are designed to sterilize the Muslim people. Fazlullah is also a senior deputy in Baitullah Mehsud's unified Pakistani Taliban movement.
TNSM leader admits the group controls Taliban violence. The TNSM has made little effort to hide its relationship with the Taliban. Statements made by senior leaders show the TNSM openly sides with the Swat Taliban and the group has the ability to control the violence.
On April 11, TNSM spokesman Amir Izzat admitted the TNSM has the capacity to order the Taliban to conduct attacks. "We have not asked the Taliban to take up arms, but the government would be held responsible for any resurgence of violence in Swat," Izzat said while discussing negotiations to restore the agreement.
Sufi, who is supposed to be the impartial arbiter of the peace agreement, shed the façade of impartiality after defending the Taliban following a series of Taliban attacks and kidnappings on government security forces and government officials.
"The Taliban are doing nothing wrong," Sufi said after the Taliban killed two soldiers in March. "The government is responsible for violations."
Why does Pakistan negotiate with the TNSM?
With the TNSM clearly linked to the Taliban, the inevitable question arises: why would the Pakistani government negotiate with this group?
The government’s willingness to negotiate with the TNSM highlights how poorly the government and military have handled the situation in Swat and the Northwest Frontier Province in general, and just how strong the Taliban has become.
In Swat, the military has been defeated three times since the summer of 2007. By the time the last military offensive in Swat ended this February, the government controlled only the district's main town of Mingora. And the control of Mingora was tenuous at best. The Taliban routinely executed civilians and policemen and dumped their bodies in the town square.
The Pakistani government faces several dilemmas in Swat. The military wants an end to the fighting, partly out of ambivalence to the problem, partly out of sympathy to the Taliban, and mainly because it views the fighting in Pakistan's northwest as a distraction from what it perceives to be the real enemy: India.
The Pakistani government also faces internal and external pressures to end the fighting and restore its writ in Swat. Some of the secular political parties and elements in the Pakistani media excoriated the government for allowing Swat to spiral out of control. The US and other Western governments want the Pakistanis to halt the spread of the Taliban, as al Qaeda has re-established its safe havens in existing Taliban territory.
The government needs to put an end to the fighting, but it has been negotiating from a position of weakness. With the Taliban in control of Swat, and the military searching for the exit, the Zardari government needs a partner so it can negotiate the end of the fighting.
The government can't openly admit that it is caving to the Taliban, lest it incur the wrath of the US and domestic opposition. But with no one to negotiate with but the Taliban, the government has promoted the TNSM as a legitimate, popular, local political movement that merely sought to impose sharia. In order to maintain this, the government has willfully and knowingly distorted the TNSM's direct links to the Taliban.
Iraq, Turkey, and US Step Up Intel Sharing on PKK by Moussa Mohammed Moussa Mohammed
Iraq's national security minister Shirwan al-Waili said on Saturday that Iraq, Turkey and the United States had agreed to step up intelligence sharing to help combat Kurdish rebels.
Waili said the three countries had formed a special committee to examine how best to rein in the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has launched attacks on Turkey from its hideouts in the mountains of northern Iraq.
"There will be a special committee in Baghdad to exchange information on how to stop the political, military and media activities of the PKK," he said after meeting with Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay and the US ambassador.
"Our forces have the authority and the power to close the (PKK) bases," he said in an interview with state-run television.
"Our fight against terrorism is not limited only to Al-Qaeda, but is against all those who endanger the security of Iraq and disturb our relations with neighbouring countries."
Atalay had flown to Baghdad on Saturday for talks on fighting the Marxist group as clashes inside Turkey claimed nine lives.
"We expect both the central Iraqi government and the regional administration in the north to undertake concrete steps" against the rebels, Turkey's Anatolia news agency quoted Atalay as saying before his departure.
The minister had also said ahead of the meeting that he hoped the three-way cooperation "will produce good results, particularly in intelligence sharing."
The talks are part of three-way consultations between Turkey, Iraq and the United States initiated in November when the three formed a joint committee.
The Iraqi Kurds, whom Ankara had long accused of tolerating the rebels on their territory and even aiding them, also joined the committee.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, said last month that the PKK militants must lay down their arms or leave the country.
The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, has long used mountainous bases in Kurdish-run northern Iraq as a launching pad for attacks on Turkish targets across the border.
Waili said the three countries had formed a special committee to examine how best to rein in the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has launched attacks on Turkey from its hideouts in the mountains of northern Iraq.
"There will be a special committee in Baghdad to exchange information on how to stop the political, military and media activities of the PKK," he said after meeting with Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay and the US ambassador.
"Our forces have the authority and the power to close the (PKK) bases," he said in an interview with state-run television.
"Our fight against terrorism is not limited only to Al-Qaeda, but is against all those who endanger the security of Iraq and disturb our relations with neighbouring countries."
Atalay had flown to Baghdad on Saturday for talks on fighting the Marxist group as clashes inside Turkey claimed nine lives.
"We expect both the central Iraqi government and the regional administration in the north to undertake concrete steps" against the rebels, Turkey's Anatolia news agency quoted Atalay as saying before his departure.
The minister had also said ahead of the meeting that he hoped the three-way cooperation "will produce good results, particularly in intelligence sharing."
The talks are part of three-way consultations between Turkey, Iraq and the United States initiated in November when the three formed a joint committee.
The Iraqi Kurds, whom Ankara had long accused of tolerating the rebels on their territory and even aiding them, also joined the committee.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, said last month that the PKK militants must lay down their arms or leave the country.
The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, has long used mountainous bases in Kurdish-run northern Iraq as a launching pad for attacks on Turkish targets across the border.
Disease Detective Plans GPS Enabled Asthma Inhaler by Justin Yu
Thanks to David Van Sickle, we'll soon be able to track (and hopefully eliminate) recurring asthma attack outbreaks. Sickle, a scholar in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is working with students in the biomedical engineering program to create an asthma inhaler with a built-in GPS receiver.
The project is still in its early stages, but David's goal is to eventually map out danger zones that could be life-threatening to those stricken with the lung disease. He already has it all mapped out: "rescue inhalers" will pinpoint the location of each asthmatic attack and cross-reference it with other devices, attempting to detect new locations and trends that previously flew under the radar undetected by asthma researchers. Sickle envisions a time when his technology can help researchers discover exactly why people suffer from asthma.
"It will allow us to better target public-health interventions to the places and times when people are really suffering," Sickle said.
Asthmatics interested in participating in the trials should be at least 18 years old, and can call 608-261-1036 or e-mail asthmap@mailplus.wisc.edu for more information.
The project is still in its early stages, but David's goal is to eventually map out danger zones that could be life-threatening to those stricken with the lung disease. He already has it all mapped out: "rescue inhalers" will pinpoint the location of each asthmatic attack and cross-reference it with other devices, attempting to detect new locations and trends that previously flew under the radar undetected by asthma researchers. Sickle envisions a time when his technology can help researchers discover exactly why people suffer from asthma.
"It will allow us to better target public-health interventions to the places and times when people are really suffering," Sickle said.
Asthmatics interested in participating in the trials should be at least 18 years old, and can call 608-261-1036 or e-mail asthmap@mailplus.wisc.edu for more information.
World's First Femtocell Standard Published By 3GPP
The Femto Forum, 3GPP and the Broadband Forum today announced that the world's first femtocell standard has been officially published by 3GPP, paving the way for standardised femtocells to be produced in large volumes and enabling interoperability between different vendors' access points and femto gateways. The new standard, which forms part of 3GPP's Release 8, and interdependent with Broadband Forum extensions to its Technical Report-069 (TR-069), has been completed in just 12 months following close cooperation between 3GPP, the Femto Forum and the Broadband Forum.
The new femtocell standard covers four main areas: network architecture; radio & interference aspects (both completed last December); femtocell management / provisioning and security (finalised this month). In terms of network architecture, the crucial interface between potentially millions of femtocells and gateways in the network core has been called Iuh. This re-uses existing 3GPP UMTS protocols and extends them to support the needs of high-volume femtocell deployments.
The new standard has adopted the Broadband Forum's TR-069 management protocol which has been extended to incorporate a new data model for femtocells developed collaboratively by Femto Forum and Broadband Forum members and published by the Broadband Forum as Technical Report 196 (TR-196). TR-069 is already widely used in fixed broadband networks and in set-top boxes and will allow mobile operators to simplify deployment and enable automated remote provisioning, diagnostics-checking and software updates. The standard also uses a combination of security measures including IKEv2 (Internet Key Exchange v2) and IPsec (IP Security) protocols to authenticate the operator and subscriber and then guarantee the privacy of the data exchanged.
"In just 12 months we've gone from initial discussions to publication of the world's first femtocell standard. Operators can now deploy femtocells in the knowledge that their vendors are working to the 3GPP standard." said Adrian Scrase, the 3GPP's Project Coordination Group Secretary. "Considerable effort was expended in 2008 with 3GPP meeting a very demanding schedule for the availability of 3GPP approved specifications."
"Our operator members have been insistent that the dozens of approaches to integrating femtocells with mobile operators' core networks had to be filtered down to a single standard. This new standard is crucial in turning the many femtocell operator trials taking place around the world into mass market commercial deployments," said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum.
"All technologies require standards in order to make the transition from niche application to wide scale adoption. By employing and extending best of breed standards, such as TR-069 for management of the Femto Access Point as part of the home network, this new femtocell standard has the best possible chance of succeeding. We are pleased to have collaborated on this new converged service with 3GPP and the Femto Forum" said George Dobrowski, the Broadband Forum's Chairman.
Building on this success, work is already being done to further incorporate femtocell technology in the 3GPP's release 9 standard, which will address LTE femtocells as well as support more advanced functionality for 3G femtocells. Femtocell standards are also being developed for additional air interface technologies by other industry bodies.
The new femtocell standard covers four main areas: network architecture; radio & interference aspects (both completed last December); femtocell management / provisioning and security (finalised this month). In terms of network architecture, the crucial interface between potentially millions of femtocells and gateways in the network core has been called Iuh. This re-uses existing 3GPP UMTS protocols and extends them to support the needs of high-volume femtocell deployments.
The new standard has adopted the Broadband Forum's TR-069 management protocol which has been extended to incorporate a new data model for femtocells developed collaboratively by Femto Forum and Broadband Forum members and published by the Broadband Forum as Technical Report 196 (TR-196). TR-069 is already widely used in fixed broadband networks and in set-top boxes and will allow mobile operators to simplify deployment and enable automated remote provisioning, diagnostics-checking and software updates. The standard also uses a combination of security measures including IKEv2 (Internet Key Exchange v2) and IPsec (IP Security) protocols to authenticate the operator and subscriber and then guarantee the privacy of the data exchanged.
"In just 12 months we've gone from initial discussions to publication of the world's first femtocell standard. Operators can now deploy femtocells in the knowledge that their vendors are working to the 3GPP standard." said Adrian Scrase, the 3GPP's Project Coordination Group Secretary. "Considerable effort was expended in 2008 with 3GPP meeting a very demanding schedule for the availability of 3GPP approved specifications."
"Our operator members have been insistent that the dozens of approaches to integrating femtocells with mobile operators' core networks had to be filtered down to a single standard. This new standard is crucial in turning the many femtocell operator trials taking place around the world into mass market commercial deployments," said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum.
"All technologies require standards in order to make the transition from niche application to wide scale adoption. By employing and extending best of breed standards, such as TR-069 for management of the Femto Access Point as part of the home network, this new femtocell standard has the best possible chance of succeeding. We are pleased to have collaborated on this new converged service with 3GPP and the Femto Forum" said George Dobrowski, the Broadband Forum's Chairman.
Building on this success, work is already being done to further incorporate femtocell technology in the 3GPP's release 9 standard, which will address LTE femtocells as well as support more advanced functionality for 3G femtocells. Femtocell standards are also being developed for additional air interface technologies by other industry bodies.
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