Saturday, January 6, 2018

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Music Video - Henry Mendez "El Tiburón (The Shark)"

Music Video - Shakira - Loca (Spanish Version) ft. El Cata

Spanish Music Video/Mix - Luis Fonsi, Demi Lovato - Échame La Culpa

Music Video -Trey Songz - Animal

Prosecute Saudi Arabia for Yemen war crimes, rights group urges Britain



Britain should prosecute Saudi-led coalition states for committing ‘war crimes’ in Yemen, human rights campaigners have said. With 130 children dying there every day, the conflict has been described as the “world’s worst humanitarian disaster.”
More than 10,000 have been killed and three million displaced in Yemen since 2015, and UK-based campaign group Human Rights for Yemen is now calling on Britain’s Attorney General Jeremy Wright to prosecute Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
The Saudi-led coalition has already been condemned internationally over its attacks on civilian targets in its bombing campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.
Up to 2,000 schools have suffered damage due to the coalition’s air strikes, according to evidence gathered by the Legal Centre for Rights and Development, based in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.
Pointing out that “any civilian site is considered sacred under the Geneva Conventions and its Protocols,” the campaigners want Britain to intervene and to hold the alleged criminals to account under UK statute.
Kim Sharif, Director of Human Rights for Yemen, said: “The UK has a moral and legal duty to uphold the rule of law. The government has willingly ignored the atrocities that have been inflicted on the people of Yemen, and has been totally complicit in the destruction.
We believe that Saudi forces are committing war crimes, and violating the Geneva Convention. We are calling for this to be investigated immediately, and are confident that there is jurisdiction to bring such proceedings in UK courts,” Mr Sharif concluded.
The UK itself has been condemned for failing to stop its arm sales to the Saudi kingdom, despite overwhelming evidence that the weapons are being used in violation of international humanitarian law.
According to Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), the UK approved arms sales worth £4.6 billion to Saudi Arabia in the past two years.
Amid concern over the civilian death toll in Yemen, CAAT launched a judicial review of the government’s decision to carry on selling arms to Saudi Arabia. But the High Court ruled it lawful for the UK to carry on doing business with the Saudis, after evidence was seen proving the continued arms sale was “rational.”
The government recently admitted, however, that it had identified up to 318 cases in Yemen since the conflict began that could amount to a violation of international law.
Under UK law, weapons should not be exported “if there is a clear risk that the items might be used in the commission of a serious violation of international law.”
Speaking in the House of Commons in an emergency debate, Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt admitted: “We have been tracking 318 incidents of potential concern since 2015, and this is used to inform the MOD’s advice to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.”
A spokeswoman for the AGO told RT:
 “We received an application last year. It was missing information required to consider it properly and we informed the applicants as such. We will of course consider any new requests for the Attorney General’s consent to prosecute.”

Norway Suspends Military Exports to UAE amid Crimes in Yemen



The United Arab Emirates, which is part of a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, has been accused of war crimes and torture in the impoverished nation.

Amid major humanitarian crisis in Yemen caused largely by the Saudi-led war in the country, Norway has suspended exports of weapons and ammunition to the United Arab Emirates over concerns they could be used in the war in Yemen, the foreign ministry said Wednesday.

The UAE is part of a Saudi-led coalition formed in 2015 to fight the Houthi rebel group that controls most of northern Yemen and the capital Sanaa, in a war that has killed more than 10,000 people and displaced more than 3 million.
While there is currently no evidence that Norwegian-made ammunition has been used in Yemen, there was a rising risk related to the UAE's military involvement there, the Norwegian government explained. Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide said there's "great concern" over the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. 
Existing export permits had been temporarily revoked and no new licenses would be issued under the current circumstances, she added.
In 2016, Norwegian exports of weapons and ammunition to the UAE rose to 79 million Norwegian crowns, about US$9.7 million, from 41 million in 2015, Statistics Norway data showed.
Since the start, the war against Yemen has been mostly backed by the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s western allies such as the U.S., and Britain, who continue to provide the rich oil Arab nations with billions of dollars in weapons and military arsenal.
The UAE has been one of the most instrumental forces in the Saudi war against Yemen providing both air and ground support for the coalition which has been accused of war crimes amid targeting of civilians in schools, local markets, wedding parties and even hospitals.
But Abu Dhabi’s violation does not stop there. The small country has also been accused of carrying out widespread torture, similar to that used by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
In June a detailed investigation by the Associated Press showed that the UAE carried out human rights violations through the establishment of 18 secret prisons in liberated provinces, notably Aden and Mukalla.
Some of those who survived what they called “the no-return prisons” told AP of being crammed into shipping containers smeared with faeces, and being tied to a spit like a roast and spun in a circle of fire. The witness said U.S. agents were present at the prisons but were only involved in the interrogation part, while UAE officers carried out the torture. 
The United Nations, Amnesty International and other human rights organizations accused the UAE and Saudi Arabia of wars against humanity over their actions in Yemen.
https://www.telesurtv.net/SubSecciones/en/news/world/index.html

I'm Chinese, and this is how I see Taiwan



During welcome week here at NYU, I heard a girl introducing herself: “I'm from Taiwan. I'm Taiwanese.” I feel heartbroken every time I hear the word “Taiwan,” and a part of me was waiting for her to say “Taiwan, China.” I have to say I was prepared, coming here, knowing that not everyone I meet will share the same view as I do. I was even told not to argue with people about this issue, but it still strikes me hard when I hear people speak of Taiwan without mentioning China. From what I’ve learned, both at school and at home, no matter historically or politically, the island of Taiwan is an inseparable part of China. Though this could be a personal issue I'm attached to, it also has political backgrounds.
Later, in my dorm, I read an article by Jane Perlez on The New York Times called “China Sees New Ambiguity with Donald Trump's Taiwan Call.” The article introduces the cause and effect of a phone call between president-elect Trump and Taiwan’s leader Tsai Ing-wen. An expert from a university in China is quoted: “Mr. Trump broke a Chinese taboo merely by using Ms. Tsai's title. Chinese media refers to Ms. Tsai as the 'leader of the Taiwan region,' to indicate that Beijing regards Taiwan not like a sovereign nation but as Chinese territory to eventually be brought under its control.” This is important because the one-China policy, agreed upon by the late US President Richard Nixon in 1978, is relationship bedrock for China-U.S. relations, yet the phone call no doubt challenged this consensus.
Adam Taylor, in his article "With Trump in China, Taiwan worries about becoming a 'bargaining chip,” from The Washington Post, concludes, “Taipei is pursuing a number of policies that seem [to be] designed [for currying] favor with the Trump administration, including a ban on all trade with North Korea.” This develops the matter that China and the U.S. both want the DPRK to abandon its nuclear weapons program, however, Trump's call diminished the bond between the two countries, thus making it harder for them to work together.
To complicate matters, in article The New York Times op-ed titled "Taiwan feels forgotten. But not by Trump,” Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian illustrates how Taiwan feels abandoned and ignored, standing from the side of right deviated Taiwanese/standing with Taiwan’s right deviation. Bethany quotes Tsai, "We are this vibrant democracy, but people always forget about us.” But Taiwan cannot be left out by the world, because it is not an independent country, and it can never be neglected within China, because it is a very important region that shapes China as a whole. Bethany's article is not helpful for Americans to understand this complicated matter, and is counterproductive to the progress made in China-U.S. relations. Tsai's political stance as right deviation is wrong and meaningless, because nothing can cut off the bond of blood between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.
Historically or politically, there has never been a controversy on whether Taiwan belongs to China or not. In 1885, Taiwan was established as a province of China, after being a city which belongs to Fujian province for many years. Though occupied by Japan during the Second World War, it came back to China with glory after Japan was defeated. Thereafter, the Kuomintang (KMT) fled to Taiwan, because they lost the civil war against the Communist Party of China (CPC), and since then, Chinese mainland and Taiwan have developed under different systems. But that doesn't change the fact that Taiwan is still a part of China, and will always be a part of China. Ma Ying-jeou, the former leader of Taiwan, tried hard to deepen the connections with the mainland and made great progress in enhancing the relationship. However, as a radical right-deviate, Tsai keeps trying to push Taiwan away from its motherland China.
Why do “Taiwanese” harbor this belief that they are a separate country?
In my New Student Seminar class, I approached a Taiwanese girl and asked her why some Taiwanese people refuse to acknowledge the fact that they’re a part of China, and this question caught her by surprise. She never thought about it before and after a few seconds told me that all her beliefs are based on how she was raised and what she was taught; “Like a religion,” she said. The way she described how she gets offended when people mix up Taiwan as a part of China, and how there can only be “Taipei, China” in the Olympics, was very upsetting, and my feelings get hurt every time a Chinese person from Taiwan tries to separate themselves from Chinese mainland, or when I see a flag of Taiwan sitting next to other country flags. This mutual feeling of anger, sadness, and powerlessness actually places us on the same side.
This complicated feeling we have toward our culture reminds me of Jamaica Kincaid, an American writer. Growing up as a colonial child, Kincaid conveys in her essay “On Seeing England for the First Time” about how she was forced to see England. When she finally saw it, everything was not like how she was told. She wanted to fight for a change, and let her own people see the real England, and also let the world see what stereotyping did to them. She asked, “Who were these people who forced me to think?” which indicates that she was angry about being forced to see the world, hurt about losing her own culture over another that was disappointing, and felt powerless because what is done is done and she cannot change the history.
For me, my question is: Who are these people to decide if they want one part of my country to belong to my country or not? I am angry because it is none of their business, hurt because some people who call themselves Taiwanese are pushing Chinese mainland away, and feel powerless because this is a huge political issue that I alone cannot change. When people accuse China of “coaxing” other countries to agree to the one-China policy, they need to understand that we Chinese are not "coaxing" anything. The problem is that their misinterpretation of "Taiwan Independence" is affecting their judgment. For the majority of people in Taiwan, it only means to have their own system, just like the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region does. In this sense, they already have their independence. People in the world need to recognize the fact that Taiwan, this Mandarin speaking island, is a part of China.
When I was talking to the Taiwanese girl, who is now my friend, we both agreed that it isn't the place for the U.S. to try to decide its fate. Additionally, this historical controversy doesn't prevent us from being friends. In fact, if not for this conversation, we probably would have never talked to each other. I finally understand why I was warned not to argue with people about this matter—as a teenager, I should not worry about this political issue, nor could I have done anything to change it. "Keep believing what you believe, but also try not to let this affect your life," my mom told me when I was telling her about this through FaceTime. I believe, historically, Taiwan never left China. I believe, economically, it makes no sense for Taiwan to leave Chinese mainland. I believe, people holding different beliefs can become great friends. I also believe, after all the difficult negotiations and sacrifices made by both parties, Taiwan will eventually realize that it is an inseparable part of China. For I believe in my beliefs, I embrace those with different beliefs, and hope for the best for all. 

#China - Trump and Kim trade "nuclear button" threats unhelpful



On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) on social media, saying that he too has a “nuclear button” on his desk and his button is “much bigger” and “more powerful.”
“North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times,’” Trump tweeted. “Please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his,” the U.S. president said.
Trump’s outburst on social media comes after Kim Jong Un, the top leader of the DPRK, declared in a New Year’s Day speech that his nation is a nuclear power, which “no force and nothing can reverse.”
“In no way would the United States dare to ignite a war against me and our country,” Kim said. “The whole of its mainland is within the range of our nuclear strike and the nuclear button is on my office desk all the time.”
In fact, Trump does have a red button on his desk, but its purpose is much more benign. In an interview with The Associated Press, Trump revealed its purpose: to order a Coke. “With the push of a red button placed on the Resolute Desk that presidents have used for decades, a White House butler soon arrived with a Coke for the president,” the AP reported.
Social media users were quick to troll the U.S. president for bragging about the size of his nuclear button. “Also there’s a red button for Diet Cokes,” said The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman. “No no that one brings Diet Coke. You have to use the phone for the nukes,” said The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro. “Is it right next to the Diet Coke button? Please be careful!” wrote actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani.
But on a more serious side, the “mine is bigger than yours” hostility from the U.S. president is unhelpful. “Spoken like a petulant ten year old,” said Eliot Cohen, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
As one of the most powerful countries in the world, the United States has an important role to play in promoting peace and prosperity.
China has stressed that the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue should be resolved peacefully through dialogue and consultation. Just yesterday, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs encouraged dialogue. “We encourage the two sides, as major parties concerned, to resume dialogue and build mutual trust and make concrete effort to bring the issue back to the right track of settlement through dialogue and consultation at the end.”
We will unleash “fire and fury” against you. The U.S. military is “locked and loaded.” We will “totally destroy” you. My “nuclear button” is bigger (and better) than yours. Such threats are not conducive to building trust and resolving the thorny issue.  As Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the U.S. pointed out, the U.S. should refrain from making threats and do more to find effective ways to resume dialogue and negotiation.

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There's never been a better time to be single




By Bella DePaulo
"Marriage is a healthy estate," British physician William Farr wrote in 1858, in one of the first studies to conclude that married people were better off than their single counterparts. "The single individual is more likely to be wrecked on his voyage than the lives joined in matrimony."
The ensuing decades have done little to dissuade social scientists of their certainty that single people were doing themselves a disservice. Until now. In 2017, it was that conviction that got wrecked.
The new science of single people As a psychologist, I study single people -- their lives, their happiness, the stigma they face -- and I can say that 2017 was a banner year for the publication of massive studies challenging what we thought we knew about their supposedly inferior life voyages. New insights just kept coming: on sex and dating, on self-esteem, on what it means to be an adult. And they came just in time: In recent history, there have never been as many unmarried adults as there are right now.
Here are a half dozen of the coolest discoveries about single people from the year 2017.
Demographically, single people are more powerful than ever before.
In 2017, the Census Bureau reported that a record number of adults in the U.S. were not married. More than 110 million residents were divorced or widowed or had always been single; that's more than 45 percent of all Americans aged 18 or older. And people who did marry were taking longer than ever to get there.
The median age of first marriage rose to 29.5 for men; for women, it reached 27.4. (These trends are likely to continue: A report from the Pew Research Center a few years ago predicted that by the time today's young adults reach the age of 50, about one in four of them will have been single all their life.)
Living alone is also becoming more popular. Last summer, the Canadian press was abuzz with the news that for the first time in the nation's history, more people were living in one-person households than in any other arrangement. In the U.S., the number of people living without a spouse or partner rose to 42 percent last year, up from 39 percent a decade ago.
Why I bring all my baggage on my first dates
Individualistic practices like living alone aren't just Western phenomena -- they've gone global. In analyses of a half-century of data (1960-2011) from 78 nations around the world, psychology researcher Henri C. Santos and his colleagues found that the popularity of such practices grew significantly for 83 percent of the countries with relevant data. Individualistic beliefs, like valuing friends more than family, have also been on the rise, increasing significantly for 79 percent of the nations across the five decades.
Marriage is no longer considered a key part of adulthood.
A half-century ago, Americans who had not yet married wouldn't be considered real adults. That's no longer the case. According to a 2017 Census Bureau report, more than half of the participants in a nationally representative sample (55 percent) said that getting married was not an important criterion for becoming an adult. The same percentage also said that having a child was not an important milestone of adulthood.
More important now is completing formal schooling and having full-time employment; 95 percent said that each of those criteria was at least somewhat important.
High-schoolers aren't as into dating -- or sex.
In a study published last fall, psychologists Jean M. Twenge and Heejung Park analyzed four decades' worth of data (1976-2016) on the sex and dating experiences of more than 8 million students in the ninth through twelfth grades. The percentage of teens who had ever been on a date was lowest in the most recent years of the study. And along the same lines, the percentage who had had sex was at an all-time low in recent years.
Single people are having more sex than married people.
Moving past the teens and on to people 18 and older, the same holds true: Adults are having less sex than they used to. Analyzing survey data collected from more than 26,000 people between 1989 and 2014, researchers found that the average person now has sex around nine fewer times per year than the average person in the early '90s.
But not all groups followed the same sexual trajectory -- the drop was especially pronounced for the people who were married or divorced, compared to people who had always been single. In fact, according to one of several ways of looking at the data, singles are now having sex more often than married people are.
Why dating in your 20s is terrible
And then there are people that aren't having sex at all. The idea that there are some people who just do not experience sexual attraction has a more prominent place in our cultural consciousness today, something for which the the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), founded in 2001, gets much of the credit.
By 2017, there was enough research on asexuality, including large-scale studies, to justify a review article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Defying the early skepticism on the topic, authors Lori A. Brotto and Morag Yule concluded that asexuality is a unique sexual orientation, one that applies to up to 3 percent of adults, and not a sexual dysfunction or psychiatric disorder.
A relationship doesn't mean higher self-esteem ...
As teens shrug at the idea of dating and adults put off or skip marriage altogether, skeptics might wonder, aren't they all missing out on that boost of self-esteem that comes from "having someone"?
Not really. In a landmark study on the link between romantic relationships and self-esteem, researchers Eva C. Luciano and Ulrich Orth studied more than 9,000 adults in Germany as they entered or ended romantic relationships or stayed single. Their conclusion: "Beginning a relationship improves self-esteem if and only if the relationship is well-functioning, stable, and holds at least for a certain period (in the present research ... one year or longer)."
People who started new romantic relationships that failed to last a year ended up with lower self-esteem than the people who stayed single. There was nothing magical about marriage, either; people who married enjoyed no better self-esteem than those who stayed in romantic relationships without tying the knot.
... and marriage doesn't mean better health.
Part of the mythology of marriage, long bolstered by the writings of social scientists, is that people who marry become healthier than they were when they were single. After all, the logic goes, married couples get all that loving support from each other, and they make sure their spouses are taking care of themselves. But three big methodologically sophisticated studies published in 2017 shook our faith in that idea.
In one of the studies, researchers followed more than 79,000 U.S. women between the ages of 50 and 79 over a three-year period, tracking whether they got married (or started a serious relationship), stayed married, got divorced or separated, or stayed single. Author Randa Kutob and her colleagues also took repeated physical measurements of the women's waist size, body-mass index, and blood pressure, and asked them about their smoking, drinking, exercise, and eating habits.
With just one exception, every significant finding favored the women who either stayed single instead of marrying, or who got divorced instead of staying married. For example, the women who married gained more weight and drank more than those who stayed single.
The women who divorced ate healthier, exercised more, and had smaller waists than the women who stayed married. (The one exception was that the women who divorced were more likely to start smoking than the women who stayed married.) The frustration of dating as someone who doesn't drink
In the second study, a 16-year survey of more than 11,000 Swiss men and women, the people who married reported slightly worse overall health than they had when they were single, even taking into account changes in health that often occur with age. And in the third study, sociologist Dmitry Tumin surveyed more than 12,000 adults in the U.S. who got married for the first time to see if they described their general health as better after they married or better when they were single.
He broke down the data several ways: He examined men's marriages separately from women's; he conducted separate analyses of the marriages of people born in different decades; he evaluated marriages that lasted for different lengths of time.
In all the scenarios he looked at, with one exception, the people who got married never reported being healthier. The exception was for the oldest women (born between 1955 and 1964) whose marriages lasted at least ten years, who considered themselves slightly healthier.
It's a powerful blow -- one of many -- against the notion that marriage is the ideal way to live. For a long time, we've accepted the idea that unless they hurry up and marry, single adults will stay sexless and unhappy until they die (and sooner, at that). But it seems single people don't scare so easily anymore -- in unprecedented numbers, they are going ahead and living their single lives, which are often healthier and more fulfilling than those of their coupled counterparts. In 2017, finally, the weight of the scientific evidence from the most sophisticated studies was on their side.

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Video Report - #China to build Military base at #Jiwani in #Pakistan

NACTA DIRECTED TO CONDUCT RESEARCH ON DAESH FOOTPRINTS IN #PAKISTAN

A Senate panel on Friday tasked the National Counter-Terrorism Authority (Nacta) with conducting research on the footprints of the takfiri militant Daesh group in Pakistan and its linkage with banned Deobandi terrorist outfit Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks.

The Senate Standing Committee on Interior, which met here under the chairmanship of Rehman Malik, also asked Nacta to take steps for capacity-building of the Federal Investigation Agency to effectively combat cyber terrorism and crimes.
Nacta’s national coordinator Ihsan Ghani presented a report on implementation of the National Action Plan over the last three years covering 20 salient points of the antiterrorism plan.
The report says 483 terrorists have been convicted since partial lifting of moratorium on death penalty in March 2015. It mentions extension in the term of military courts for another two years in March 2017 and constitution of 11 special trial courts and says: “These special trial courts serve as a cogent deterrent against terrorism, and the decrease in the incidence of terrorism can be attributed to quick trial and sentencing of terrorists.”
The report says the parallel administration in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas by different factions of the TTP has been brought to an end and they are no more in a position to use the territory for plotting and executing terrorist attacks.
It highlights the steps being taken to strengthen Nacta and reveals that the joint intelligence directorate is being staffed and it has received its first office building as well as the initial batch of officers.
About funding without which terrorist activities cannot continue, the report says terrorists and terrorist organisations could collect funds from a variety of sources such as charity and other nondescript formal and informal financial channels.
“In countries where banking sector works in isolation from the counterterrorism apparatus, tracking terrorism financing is a gigantic task. Extremists primarily collect money as subscription from sympathisers and criminal activities like extortion, gunrunning and narcotics trade. Such groups transfer funds through the formal financial system, alternative remittance services, trade, cash, non-profit organisations and charities; this merits presence of an effective combating financing of terrorism regime which has investigative, analytical, deterrent and preventive roles,” it adds.
The report says Nacta has taken various initiatives to choke funding of terrorist elements and organisations. It refers to the National Task Force on Choking Financing of Terrorism — a coordinating body of over 20 federal and provincial organisations, concerned with the policy and operational matters pertaining to combating financing of terrorism, regulation and monitoring of cross-border movement of currency, effective regulation of branchless and internet banking and creation of units for countering financing of terrorism in provincial counterterrorism departments.
The report contains details of money laundering and other related cases and reveals that around Rs1.5 billion has been recovered in 919 hawala and hundi cases, under which 1,209 arrests have been made. It says 426 money laundering cases have been registered and 571 persons arrested.

http://www.shiitenews.org/index.php/pakistan/item/32417-nacta-directed-to-conduct-research-on-daesh-footprints-in-pakistan

Cutting Off Pakistan, U.S. Takes Gamble in Complex Afghan War






Afghan officials have pleaded with three American presidents to reconsider their support for Pakistan, which was both receiving billions of dollars in American aid and harboring the leaders of a Taliban insurgency that the United States has struggled to defeat.
But when President Trump suspended nearly all American security aid to Pakistan on Thursday for what he called the country’s “lies and deceit,” any jubilation in the halls of power in Afghanistan — and there was some — was leavened with worry over how the move might affect a complex war that has pushed the Afghan government to the brink.
If there is one consensus among Afghan leaders and their American counterparts, it is that dealing with Pakistan is both vital and difficult.
American and Afghan officials accuse Pakistan’s powerful military intelligence service of maintaining influence with the Taliban and the group’s most ascendant faction, the Haqqani network, which is behind many of the large-scale attacks on Afghan cities. Through those links, Pakistan has the ability to control at least some of the tempo of the fighting in Afghanistan — and it has done little to constrain it over the past two years, the officials say.
At the same time, Pakistan enjoys leverage over the American military response to that militant violence: The United States mission has always relied on Pakistani air and ground routes for supplies to the troops in Afghanistan. The question on the table after the cutoff of military aid to Pakistan is who will come under the most pressure: the Pakistanis, or the coalition fighting the Taliban.
Muhammed Umer Daudzai, a former Afghan interior minister and ambassador to Pakistan, said the pressure on Pakistan had come too late, with the country having developed regional allies who would help it weather the financial toll.
“The financial sanctions may not bite Pakistan because they have developed alternatives,” Mr. Daudzai said. “The only area the impact could be huge, but it’s a bit too early to judge, is the field of air force. The Pakistani system is still hugely dependent on the U.S. It can take a long time to switch from that.”
Pakistani officials expressed both anger and caution over the American move. Several indicated that cutting off ground supply routes to Afghanistan was actively being considered, but that a formal decision was not likely to be announced on Friday.
The commander of the Pakistani Air Force also seemed to suggest that Pakistan’s airspace might be blocked to the Americans. In Islamabad on Thursday, Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman said his force was “fully prepared to defend all the aerial frontiers of the country.”
On Friday, the Foreign Ministry released a statement saying, “We are engaged with the U.S. administration on the issue of security cooperation and await further details.”
“We believe that Pakistan-U.S. cooperation in fighting terrorism has directly served U.S. national security interests as well as the larger interests of international community,” the statement said. And in a measured criticism of Mr. Trump’s move, it said that working for peace requires “mutual respect and trust,” adding that “arbitrary deadlines, unilateral pronouncements and shifting goal posts are counterproductive in addressing common threats.”
Across the Pakistani political spectrum, officials accused the United States of making Pakistan a scapegoat for the failures in Afghanistan.
Imran Khan, a prominent opposition politician whose positions on foreign and defense policy are often closely aligned with Pakistan’s security establishment, called for steps to disengage diplomatically from the United States. “We must immediately remove excessive U.S. diplomatic, nondiplomatic and intelligence personnel from Pakistan so that diplomatic parity is established according to international legal norms governing diplomatic relations between states,” he said in a statement, adding that the ground and air routes for American military supplies should also be shut down. In past cases when relations frayed and Pakistan blocked American access to its supply routes, the United States military relied on a more expensive alternative that connects Baltic and Caspian ports through Russia and Central Asian countries. But that route is vulnerable to Washington’s chilly relations with Russia, which has used its influence over Central Asian states to limit access.
At its peak, when the United States had about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, the alternative route helped with the transportation of about one third of nonlethal material with Russia’s consent. The American-led coalition also used Manas, a major air base in Kyrgyzstan, as the transit point for almost all of the coalition troops and a refueling center for tens of thousand aircraft.
Kyrgyzstan, apparently in response to Russian pressure and incentives, first increased the annual rent to $60 million from $17 million, and then the United States left the base in 2014.
From the American and Afghan standpoints, trying to change Pakistan’s outlook has only grown more difficult in recent years as the relative consensus has broken down among major players in the region — like Russia and Iran — over the American mission to eradicate international terrorist groups in Afghanistan.
In private, senior Afghan officials said they were watching just how focused the United States would be in maintaining the pressure on Pakistan, a nuclear state that has long managed to shrug off previous American and international pressure.
More publicly, however, President Ashraf Ghani and his government were measured in their reaction, staying away from directly addressing Mr. Trump’s move to freeze what could amount to more than a billion dollars in American aid.
“We welcome any decision that contributes to bringing stability in the region and Afghanistan,” said Haroon Chakhansuri, a deputy chief of staff to Mr. Ghani. “We want honest partnership in the region to fight against a common enemy, terrorism.”
Some Afghan officials and analysts feared that Mr. Trump’s pressure on Pakistan might escalate the violence across Afghanistan before it brings any change in Pakistani cooperation. Already, officials are bracing for more urban bombing attacks in the winter months, when the regular fighting slows down a bit.
Also vulnerable are about two million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, who feel an increase in harassment in such periods of high political tension.
An important factor in whether the American pressure could result in a change of Pakistani attitude is whether American diplomacy can appeal to China and Russia’s shared concerns of militant extremism in the region, and persuade them not to give Pakistan a release valve. Russia is concerned about the rise of an Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan, most of whose fighters are from the tribal areas of Pakistan, while China fears that an unstable Afghanistan provides sanctuary to its Uighur insurgency.
“You have an anti-American sentiment in the region on the one hand, but on the other hand you have the fear of terrorism and extremism in the region,” said Davood Moradian, the director of the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies in Kabul. “If the U.S. uses active diplomacy, it can convince the regional players to align with efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, because they will not compromise on their own national security for the sake of Pakistan.”
Mr. Moradian said factors that make Pakistan a military power, such as hardware and training, are oriented toward the United States, with China less able to easily fulfill them. And he described the Pakistani elite as more integrated in the West — with houses, business, and bank accounts there — and thus more likely to feel the pressure of targeted sanctions.
“I don’t think Pakistan will be able to absorb sustained U.S. pressures,” Mr. Moradian said. “In the Pakistan-American dynamics, Pakistan is far more vulnerable.”
He continued: “Pakistan’s success has been in absorbing pain for a short period, and then getting away. Washington has not been able to bear pain for a limited period of time in the hopes of longer success.”
Before the Trump announcement on freezing aid to Pakistan, senior Pakistani officials had shrugged off the threats. One official said every threat from Washington was pushing Pakistan closer to China. The two countries have a partnership to develop up to $60 billion in infrastructure in Pakistan under the “One Belt, One Road” program, and have tightened their military ties.
Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Pakistan’s foreign minister, recently urged a revisiting of ties with the United States, which he called neither a friend nor an ally.
“The world is vast enough,” he said, “and the U.S. is not feeding us.”