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NICK SCHIFRIN

ABC News Reporter

Nick Schifrin is ABC News' Pakistan-based reporter, responsible for covering Pakistan and Afghanistan. Appointed full-time to the position in July 2008, Schifrin has covered the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto's assassination and the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan. He has also reported from Iraq, covering the U.S. and Iraqi military campaigns in Sadr City in May 2008.

View the latest blogs from Nick Schifrin below:

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Suicide Bomber Kills at Least Five at Islamabad Paramilitary Post

April 04, 2009 12:29 PM

ABC News correspondent Nick Schifrin reports:

A suicide bomber struck a paramilitary outpost in Islamabad this evening, killing at least five troops and injuring at least five more, according to the deputy police chief for investigations.

The suicide bomber entered the Frontier Constabulary tent camp, which is surrounded by residential areas, around 7:45 p.m. local time. The blast was followed by heavy gunfire, but that came from the security forces themselves, the deputy police chief said.

But in the last 20 minutes, residents of the areas immediately surrounding the attack have seen army rangers running around, seemingly searching for the attackers.

We're not able to explain the discrepancy at this time.

This was the second attack in the last two weeks on security forces in Islamabad. Rumors that the gunfire came from the attackers spread quickly and put much of the city on edge for an hour.

The frontier constabulary was created as a paramilitary force for the tribal areas but is also responsible for security for some VIPs, embassy officials and other personnel throughout the country. Many of them live in tents nestled in parks in Pakistan's largest cities. The target of tonight's attack housed about 30 troops.

Eleven days ago a suicide attacker tried to enter an Islamabad police station housing police investigators. He was stopped at the gate and killed himself and a guard.

-Nick Schifrin

April 4, 2009 in Nick Schifrin | Permalink | User Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

You Think You Had a Tough First Day?

February 22, 2009 4:28 PM

ABC News' Nick Schifrin and Habibullah Khan report from Islamabad, Pakistan:

The first day of work is, usually, all about finding your way: how long it takes to get to the office, where you're going to sit, who your coworkers are and what they think of the new guy.

But in Pakistan's Swat Valley, where the Taliban have waged a yearlong campaign of true terror against the local population, the first day on the job is so much worse than anything you've ever feared.

This afternoon, on his very first day as Swat's district coordination officer – the top post in local government --  Khushal Khan was kidnapped. A group of masked men stopped his car, apparently overpowered his six armed guards and whisked him away for a little talking-to.

Khan was released about eight hours later in exchange for the release of two Taliban prisoners, sources told us this evening. But the Taliban's message will last far longer than that: Welcome to work. We can do whatever we want, and you can't stop us.

Perhaps it comes as no surprise that the Taliban can kidnap a local government official. But we are in the middle of a cease-fire during which the Taliban has publicly agreed to consider laying down their weapons in return for the imposition of Sharia, Islamic law.

So much for a cease-fire.

They've broken it at least three times in the last week: Once to kill a respected local TV reporter; once to speak ill of the local government on their pirated radio broadcasts; and today, when they kidnapped Khan.

The outgoing district coordination officer, Shaukat Yousafzai, told us tonight it was a “clear violation” of the cease-fire. And a senior government official told us that the military will be sending additional troops into Swat, though they will remain in a “defensive” position.

Politically, the kidnapping will put more pressure on the Pakistani government to abandon what Richard Holbrooke, the new U.S. special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, fears could be a "surrender" to the Taliban.

“The governments have gone through such agreements before,” Zubair Towali, a Swat human rights activist, told us last week when the agreement was first announced. “And those didn’t work. It just gives the militants a chance to regroup and regain power.”

That seems to be the message the U.S. will send when Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, as well as Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and Pakistani spy agency chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Pasha, arrive in Washington this week for a Holbrookian conversation about the future of U.S.-Afghan-Pakistani relations. There is a real fear that if the Pakistanis don't engage the Taliban militarily and let them have their Islamic law in Swat, the valley would become a safe haven for militants fighting Americans in Afghanistan.

But many people here think this is a shrewd move by the provincial government. If the Taliban refuse to honor the cease-fire, then the government will be in a better position to bring the army back into Swat to try and crush the militants in a campaign that would certainly include many civilian casualties.

“In case it fails, and the other side doesn’t abide, then I think the government will be at a high moral plane to restart the military operation,” a senior military official told us.

Either way, fixing Swat is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. I think everyone wishes Khan luck – and hopes his second day is better than his first.

February 22, 2009 in Nick Schifrin | Permalink | User Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

How an Acid Attack Brought a Father & Daughter Closer

February 05, 2009 8:53 AM

ABC News' Nick Schifrin reports from Lahore, Pakistan:

In a country where 80 percent of women suffer domestic violence, according to Human Rights Watch, we have recently found a hero.

Well, a few heroes.

There's a 22-year-old woman with a beautiful smile named Saira Liaqat. She is a victim of an acid attack, but she has found a new life as a beautician. We should all learn from her determination, her hope, and her strength.

[Courtesy: SmileAgain foundation]

There's the woman who helped her find that hope: Musarrat Misbah, probably the most famous salon manager in South Asia. But for the last five years she has dedicated herself to helping victims of acid attacks with free medical care and free training. We should all learn from her sacrifice, her dedication, and her vision.

And then there's Saira's father. Syed Liaqat ali Naqvi is a rickshaw driver who spends almost four hours taking his daughter to and from the salon, every day. He is a jovial man with a smoker's voice and a smile that, while almost always there, is missing a few teeth. Usually, the families of women burned with acid are burdened by their daughters. Usually, the fathers will cast the daughters out and blame the daughters. Usually, daughters are not valued as much as sons. Naqvi is a hero because none of that applies to him. We should all learn from his love.

[Courtesy ABC News]

Excerpts from interview with Syed Liaqat ali Naqvi:

What happened to your daughter?

[Courtesy ABC News]

When my daughter was about 16 years old, my wife’s uncle broached the subject that Saira has become of age and he asked us to get her married to his son. I said this cannot happen because my daughter is still studying… But some relatives, my wife’s brother and sisters, they are very nice people, they said to me that this is a very good proposal and it is a good idea, so why don’t you agree, and by Allah’s will there will be no worries.

I got convinced and agreed to the proposal. We also came to the understanding that since my daughter was still studying, once she finishes with her education only then would she be sent to her husband’s house. They agreed with this, but only two months after the ceremony, her husband started saying that he wanted her to be sent to his house. So I told him that we had an understanding and that we weren’t even able to send her formally to his house given our present circumstances.

If not two years, at least give us two months so that we can send her formally to your house, and we can send her belongings later. To that he said that he couldn’t even wait for two months… On Wednesday, July 30, 2003, at around 12-12:30, the boy came with his sister to our house… He came inside and went straight into the room where Saira was present.

As he walked in he took Saira by the hand and told her, “Come, I’ve come to take you with me." Saira refused and said that she couldn’t leave against her parents wishes, and that her parents were respected in that society. She said, “We are eastern people, and we can’t take off without our parents’ permission in our society.” He said, “No, you are married to me, come with me.”

He then asked her to get him a glass of water. My daughter then got up, and went to the kitchen nearby. Just as she filled up the container with water and turned, he was standing at the kitchen door… Just as she turned, he sprayed what was in the bottle on her face, she felt a burning sensation.

When you looked at her, did you have any hope for her at all?

[Courtesy: SmileAgain foundation]

I had no hope whatsoever, I felt as if my daughter had been taken away from me, firstly her face had been burnt with the acid and secondly, I felt angry when I’d look at her face and I’d ask myself what they had done with my daughter.

Do you blame yourself?

It isn’t our fault. Because we just gave them the proposal merely thinking that they are also poor like us and hardworking too. The reality of it turned out to be different to what we thought. Turned out, what we had thought wasn’t even true 1 percent. Now what can we tell others, what happened to an innocent girl. (Sniffs)

What about today -- do you feel proud of your daughter?

I can safely say that I am so proud of my daughter, that I’m not even this proud of my sons, the way I am of my daughter, because she has made a very big sacrifice. She could have gone with her husband when he asked her to, but she still refused and didn’t forget her eastern customs and consequently portrayed her parents as respected icons in the society. For her parents' respect she got burnt, and didn’t even lose her own respect in the process.

You said your daughter’s pictures of before she got the burns were very beautiful. Do you still have the same feelings and emotions towards her?

I still think my daughter is very beautiful. … I can safely say now, that my daughter doesn’t need any support, nor does she need society’s support.

How have you treated Saira different since the incident?

There has been no change at all. The same way that I loved her before, I love her today, because she is my life -- without her I will feel incomplete. She is my life. She’s her mother’s life. And mine also. We love her more than our lives.

Was Saira a burden on your family before or after this incident?

I’m telling you that Saira isn’t my daughter. Musarrat Misbah has turned her into a son to me. She was my daughter, but now a son for me. I told you before that I’m prouder of my daughter than I am of my sons.

Has this experience made you a stronger individual in the society?

I used to be a worker before and I’m one today also. And I am proud of the fact that my daughter is -- by the grace of God -- very brave and very strong. What happens usually after such incidents is that the girl cannot be reassured by her parents and she cannot regain strength. But this daughter of mine shocked me with her bravery. She would say that I was fine yesterday, and I’m fine today also.

Do you feel that your place in the society has changed since this incident?

Yes. Before, I was merely a rickshaw driver; I would roam streets and today -- thank god -- I am a great father who found Musarrat Misbah, I am a great father to have gotten my daughter a place in the society. Thanks to her, I feel like a someone in the society today. I cannot express it in words. Musarrat Misbah gave us a place in the society, so that today we walk around with pride.

Can we say that your daughter helped in you gaining confidence and strength?

Absolutely. I can say with pride that Saira showed me the path to live. And the biggest part in this was that of Musarrat Misbah’s and SmileAgain’s, because if I didn’t go to Musarrat, then my daughter wouldn’t be this able. If these things weren’t there, then I wouldn’t have had this desire and incentive to live, which I do now -- for my daughter, my wife, myself.

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February 5, 2009 in Nick Schifrin | Permalink | User Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)

Pakistan Issues Rare Response to Western Media Story on Nukes

January 11, 2009 11:51 AM

ABC News' Nick Schifrin reports:

It was almost exactly a year ago that a bus provided by Pakistan’s interior ministry drove a group of foreign reporters to the perfectly manicured lawns of Interservices Public Relations, or ISPR, the Pakistan military’s PR arm, to meet a well-spoken retired lieutenant general.

His name was Khalid Kidwai, and he was -- and still is -- responsible for securing the nuclear labs, weapons and research of the only Muslim country in the world with the Bomb.

Over two hours he took the 60 or so people in the room through a long PowerPoint presentation, laying out why, in his words, Pakistan’s nuclear weapon security was “foolproof.”

He told us it was “irresponsible” and “inaccurate” to say otherwise -- just a couple days after IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei warned out loud that "nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of extremist groups in Pakistan or Afghanistan."

ElBaradei, Kidwai told us, had "no business to talk like that. If you open and shoot your mouth without any information -- that is very bad."

This weekend, about 330 days after Kidwai’s briefing, Pakistan’s foreign ministry released a rare, White House-esque denial to a must-read New York Times Magazine article that features Kidwai prominently.

In the article, chief Washington correspondent David Sanger imagines a Pakistan that cannot control its own nuclear weapons. Sanger quotes an unnamed, senior U.S. administration official as saying the Bush administration has been worried about “steadfast efforts of different extremist groups to infiltrate [Pakistan’s nuclear] labs and put sleepers and so on in there.”

Sanger continues: “After more than four years, no one in Washington has a clear sense of whether the small, covert American program to help Pakistan secure its weapons and laboratories is actually working. Kidwai has been happy to take the cash and send in progress reports, but auditors from Washington have been rebuffed whenever they have asked to see how, exactly, the money was being spent.”

And more: “If a real-life crisis broke out, it is unlikely that anyone would be able to assure an American president, with confidence, that he knew where all of Pakistan’s weapons were -- or that none were in the hands of Islamic extremists. ‘It’s worse than that,’ the participant in the [table-top] simulations [of Pakistan losing a nuclear weapon] told me. ‘We can’t even certify exactly how many weapons the Pakistanis have -- which makes it difficult to sound convincing that there’s nothing to worry about.’”

It’s exceptional -- if not unprecedented -- for Pakistan’s foreign ministry to single out a Western article. The statement called Sanger’s work, which is actually an excerpt from his upcoming book, “most unfortunate and contrary to the facts,” especially “at this juncture when the new administration is about to take office.”

But read it closely and you’ll realize the statement is not harsh at all and doesn’t deny any point in the article. “We are prepared to continue to working closely with the international community on arms control and disarmament issues and engage with the US and other nuclear weapon states with a view to enhancing mutual trust and confidence in relevant domains, including prevention of risks of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, on an equitable and non-discriminatory basis,” the statement concludes.

For those still reading, there is an amazing tale in Sanger’s article unrelated to nuclear weapons.

He writes that when Prime Minister Yusuf Gilani visited the White House last summer, he happily presented President Bush with a “gift”: evidence that the Pakistani military had recently raided a madrasa run by legendary jihadi/current militant commander Jalaluddin Haqqani. What Gilani didn’t know -- and perhaps didn’t know until he read Sanger’s article -- was that Bush and company knew that two days before the “raid” the Pakistani military had warned the Haqqanis. “It was something like, ‘Hey, we’re going to hit your place in a few days, so if anyone important is there, you might want to tell them to scram,’” Sanger quotes an unnamed official describing the warning.

No wonder the White House doesn’t trust the Pakistani government.

January 11, 2009 in Nick Schifrin | Permalink | User Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Foreign Fighters Attack Pakistani Corps Near Border

January 11, 2009 10:40 AM

January 11, 2009 in Nick Schifrin | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Pakistan Admits Mumbai Gunman Is Pakistani

January 07, 2009 12:02 PM

By NICK SCHIFRIN, ABC News Digital Reporter, ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

A month after Indian investigators and multiple reporters identified the surviving gunman of the Mumbai attacks as Pakistani, the Pakistan government today finally admitted that fact.

The admission came from both the information ministry and the foreign ministry following weeks of denials by the government. Sources tell ABC News that  Mehmud Ali Durrani, advisor to Pakistan's National Security Council has been sacked for giving a statement about Qasab's Pakistani nationality prior to consulting Prime Minister Yusuf Gilani.

Government officials' alternating claims that the gunman wasn't Pakistani -- or that its investigation hadn't concluded whether he was Pakistani -- had incensed Indian and some American officials.

Even though on Dec. 11 Pakistan's interior chief admitted to ABC News that Pakistani soil had been used as a launching ground for the attacks, a Pakistani official blames the long delay on confirming Ajmal Qasab's identity on the fact that he never received a national identity card. Every male Pakistani over the age of 18 is supposed to obtain one, but the system wasn't computerized until Gen. Pervez Musharraf took power in 1999.

On Dec. 22, Ajmal Qasab wrote to the Pakistani high commission in New Delhi saying he was Pakistani and needed legal help. But many government officials here dismissed that news, going so far as to complain the letter was a copy, not an original, and therefore couldn't be trusted.

The admission comes on a day when the government here has sounded relatively sanguine, saying in a statement that "material received from India is being seriously examined" and that "Pakistan remains fully determined in its investigations to uncover full facts pertaining to the Mumbai incident."

That's a long way from 12 paragraphs of vitriol the foreign ministry released Tuesday following Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's accusation that "some official agencies in Pakistan" were behind the attacks.

What a difference a day makes.

"Pakistan is conducting its own investigation and will proceed on the basis of our own investigation," the government official writes in an e-mail. "We will not act under pressure. We recognize global threat of terrorism and will fight it in Pakistan's interest. We will gradually share results of our investigation in accordance with our law and due process."

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January 7, 2009 in Nick Schifrin | Permalink | User Comments (17) | TrackBack (0)

Are Indian Troops Moving Toward Border?

December 30, 2008 9:45 AM

By NICK SCHIFRIN, ABC News Digital Reporter, Islamabad

Today Pakistan’s foreign minister made a rare televised address, accusing India of moving its troops toward the border and asking the Indian military to relax its posture as a goodwill gesture.

A military official said Monday that Pakistan had moved troops to reinforce forward positions toward the border to the point where they could be called up within 12 hours. The Indians, according to the Press Trust of India (PTI), the country's best news agency, have done something similar, and recently told their three service chiefs that they couldn’t take leave.

The Pakistani foreign minister did not make any promises about Pakistani troops if India moved its troops back.

Basically, both countries are moving troops toward the border but not to the border.

As PTI put it: "The effort is to maintain a more alert posture without causing undue alarm in Western capitals -- so that the time taken for full operational readiness is reduced to a minimum."

But Indian Foreign Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee denied any such moves today, and in general the momentum in the last few days has been toward a relaxation of tensions. As a goodwill gesture, India today is releasing across the Wagah border about 60 Pakistanis who had been held in Indian jails.

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December 30, 2008 in Nick Schifrin | Permalink | User Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Pakistan: No Orders for Troops to Move East

December 26, 2008 12:57 PM

By NICK SCHIFRIN and HABIBULLAH KHAN, ABC News Islamabad

Pakistani defense officials tell ABC News that an Associated Press report claiming 20,000 troops are moving from Pakistan's western border to the eastern border with India is not correct.

They claim that the military is undergoing regular, scheduled rotations, and that if an AP reporter saw trucks moving out of a tribal area, those troops were on a scheduled rotation, and not acting under new orders.

But as we reported a few days back, the Pakistani military is moving relatively small amounts of troops around to reinforce its border with India.

Some troops have been skimmed from the ongoing operation in Swat to go to the east, officials tell us. Some troops scheduled to go to the Northwest Frontier Province to fight the Taliban from the Punjab province in the east have been told to stay where they are. And the military has cancelled any scheduled leaves for all troops.

The air force is on high alert, and pilots are in their combat gear 24/7, officials say.

Neither government wants war but tension has increased considerably between the two nuclear armed countries that have fought three wars.

As Samina Ahmed, the International Crisis Group's Pakistan country director, puts it: "The potential for this particular situation turning more serious cannot be underestimated."

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December 26, 2008 in Nick Schifrin | Permalink | User Comments (42) | TrackBack (0)

Cricket as Metaphor

December 18, 2008 3:48 PM

By NICK SCHIFRIN, ABC News, Islamabad

In 2004, when diplomats on both sides of the Radcliffe Line realized the Pakistan-India relationship needed a thaw, they did not turn to an international conference or a European mediator.

They turned to that Commonwealth pastime of ball, bat, wicket.

Americans don't really understand cricket. They don't get the rules. They make fun of the clothes and the tea breaks. And they certainly don't understand how important cricket is in this part of the world.(Left: Indian cricket fans before a 2005 India-Pakistan match. AP photo/Manish Swarup)

Consider this thought experiment, for American readers out there. Take baseball, the U.S. national pastime, and everything it represents to American culture -- read the prologue of “Underworld,” watch “Field of Dreams,” consider Lou Gehrig's story.

Take the pre-steroid-era worship of the baseball player, the families around their TVs watching New York's teams back when they included the Dodgers and the Giants, take the 4 million kids playing Little League today.

And then expand it out. Give every American kid -- rich and poor -- in every small park in every part of the United States a cheap baseball, bat, makeshift bases and glove -- because the equipment requirements for informal cricket are a fraction of those for informal baseball -- and eliminate most other forms of entertainment.

Replace Babe with Sachin, Cy with Muttiah. And imagine the United States as a former subject, beating its once colonial masters, in a game created by the master.

The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once put it thusly: "The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity."

So when India's cricket team cancels a planned five-week tour of Pakistan -- as it did today -- do not dismiss it as pure sport. It is an international diplomatic snub, a message from one rival to another: I don't want anything to do with you right now.

No cricket, no relationship.

Things got pretty frank among the Indian sports community immediately after the Mumbai attacks. MS Gill, India's sports minister, gave this undiplomatic quotation to the Press Trust of India wire service:

"Is it possible for one team to arrive in Mumbai and indulge in mass murder, and have another team go and play cricket in the winter afternoon sun at Lahore, immediately after?"

No relationship, no cricket.

Both countries' foreign ministers say the peace process -- ignited in part by the 2004 cricket matches, the first in 14 years -- is on "pause." Diplomats admit that more than the peace process is on hold. The two countries are barely talking to each other, except through the media or in protest.

Pakistan says it's waiting for India to present it with evidence that Pakistanis plotted the Mumbai attacks. India says it's waiting for Pakistan to give details of its crackdown on the terrorist groups inside Pakistan blamed for the attacks.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry called the Indian deputy high commissioner in Islamabad to complain about what Pakistan says are violations of its sovereignty by Indian fighter jets. India denied it.

Diplomats aren't talking to each other; they're calling journalists to find out what the other country is doing.

"There's not a lot of communication between India and Pakistan," a U.S. official told me this week. "We're trying to change that."

In many ways, the decision by India to cancel the Pakistan tour hurts Pakistan more than it hurts India, whose team is, these days, far superior.

"We can safely say that it will be a loss of [$25 million to $30 million], but I fear it could be more because [of] our television rights deal," Pakistan Cricket Board chief operation officer Salim Altaf told Agence-France Press. That's because last month, the cricket board signed a $140 TV deal that won't be paid if a series is canceled.

"This is the Indian government saying [to Pakistan], 'We're severely displeased and you must to do something if you want to continue normal relations,"' Indian analyst Prem Shankar Jha told The Associated Press. "It's showing displeasure in a manner that people really will notice."

That is because, perhaps more than any other one event, India-Pakistan cricket matches have the ability to persuade each country's various religious, geographic and ethnic identity groups to think in nationalistic terms. And to think about how the countries are linked in their British histories, how they share virtually the same language, the same cultures, the same pastimes.

And so, perhaps above all else, it will be the common people separated by a border who lose out the most here.

They will miss the rivalry, the camaraderie, the sport of India-Pakistan cricket.

"It's a big disappointment and a setback to Asian cricket," former Pakistani cricketer Sarfraz Nawaz told the AP. "The terrorism acts could happen anywhere in the world, but that does not mean that sports activities should come to a halt."

December 18, 2008 in Nick Schifrin | Permalink | User Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

With a Little Help From Your Friends

November 17, 2008 2:35 PM

By NICK SCHIFRIN, ABC News, Islamabad

After stopping the lifeline of America’s troops in Afghanistan for the second time in three months, the Pakistani government has reopened the military supply line that goes from Karachi to Kabul. From here on out, though, there will be one, major difference: NATO/U.S./U.N. supply trucks will be traveling in groups of 25 and they will be protected by as many as 200 security forces, according to the local government head in Pakistan’s Khyber Agency.

In the seven years since the war in Afghanistan began -- during which time as much as 80 percent of the equipment used there has traveled through Pakistan – never before has the supply line been escorted by Pakistani troops. The group of 200 men deployed as escorts and along the road will come from the Frontier Corps, which patrols in the tribal areas, as well as the Hasadar Force, basically the local police. The escort will begin as the trucks enter Khyber (just past Peshawar) and continue until they pass through the Torkham border crossing, about 30 miles away.

The decision to add escorts was made after a group of Taliban hijacked 12 trucks last week and took joyrides in an American humvee, posing for the cameras as they did so. Not a pretty sight for the U.S. and ISAF command in Afghanistan.

Talk to the military in Afghanistan and they’ll insist that the vast majority of their supplies are getting through. And they’re right. But the fact is that the supply line has never been more exposed, and it is the red line in the U.S. relationship with Pakistan.

November 17, 2008 in Nick Schifrin | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)