Headlines:

• Currency Crisis Hits Egypt's Wheat Supply
• Iran to Set Up $4bn Oil Refinery in Gwadar
• $500 Billions Wasted? Why America Is the Afghan ATM
• US Senator Says 4,700 Killed in US Drone Strikes

Details:

Currency Crisis Hits Egypt's Wheat Supply:

Egypt, the world's largest wheat importer, is struggling to buy the staple in the international market because of the impact of a currency crisis, creating a fresh challenge to the government of Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist president. Grain traders shipping wheat to Egypt said Cairo had cut back on its overseas purchases as the Egyptian pound plunged against the US dollar. The slowdown has depleted the country's grain stocks to unusually low levels, traders added.  Cairo on Wednesday said that government inventory levels of wheat, usually at enough to cover six months' worth of consumption, had almost halved to just 101 days. "They are living hand-to-mouth," said one Swiss-based international grain trader. The Egyptian cabinet added that wheat reserves would stretch by another month with the arrival of supplies tendered for delivery in March and April. With more than 40 per cent of Egyptians living below the poverty line, subsidised bread is an important part of the Egyptian government's strategy for maintaining social peace. Lower inventories made it vulnerable to any supply disruptions, analysts and traders said, "The two things [the government] can't lose control of are bread and fuel," said Firas Abi Ali at Exclusive Analysis, the political consultancy, in London. The Egyptian authorities have been wary of touching food subsidies since rioting swept Egyptian cities in 1977 after the government decided to raise the prices of a range of staples. The authorities were forced to rescind their decision to restore order. During the food crisis of 2007-08, which pushed the cost of wheat to an all-time high, many families became reliant on subsidised bread, with long queues forming in front of bakeries and frequent scuffles breaking out. Army bakeries were drafted in to augment the supply.

Iran to set up $4bn oil refinery in Gwadar:

In a major move to boost bilateral cooperation with Pakistan, Iran has agreed to set up a $4 billion oil refinery in Gwadar with an estimated capacity of about 400,000 barrels per day. Pakistani Prime Minister's Adviser on Petroleum and Natural Resources Dr. Asim Hussain told Dawn on Wednesday that an understanding to this effect had been reached during a meeting between Iranian delegation led by Oil Minister Rostam Ghasemi and Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf. An official said a memorandum of understanding for setting up the refinery was expected to be signed during President Asif Ali Zardari's visit to Tehran on February 27. He said land for the project would be provided to Iran near Gwadar Port. Dr. Asim said Pakistan was expected to pay the price of gas to be delivered to it through the Pak-Iran gas pipeline and petroleum products purchased from the proposed refinery in the form of food products, particularly wheat, rice and meat. He said a technical team would visit Tehran on Thursday to finalise parameters of the MoU on the refinery and settle issues relating to the Pak-Iran gas pipeline. Earlier, a company owned by the UAE government had committed to set up a refinery at Khalifa Point in Balochistan but backed out for unknown reasons.

$500 Billions Wasted? Why America Is the Afghan ATM:

President Obama is set to announce the withdrawal of 34,000 American troops from Afghanistan by 2014, cutting the number of U.S. military personnel by half. But if the White House does not want to undermine the progress made in the last 12 years, the Government Accountability Office says the United States is going to have to shell out billions of dollars to Afghanistan well beyond the end of the war. The GAO report released Monday says Afghanistan would essentially collapse without U.S. financial support since it does not have enough money to pay for its own security forces. It doesn't generate nearly enough revenue to maintain a viable government. And the tens of billions of development dollars meant to revive the Afghan economy and create strong government institutions have largely been wasted or stolen.  According to GAO, the country's government infrastructure is also likely to collapse without broader international support since it, too, is almost entirely dependent on international donors for revenue. For instance, from 2006 to 2011, Afghanistan only accounted for 10 percent of total public expenditures. Even as domestic revenues have grown from just $600 million in 2006 to $2 billion in 2011, public expenditures increased over that time from $5.8 billion to $17.4 billion. The shortfall was covered largely by the United States, with Washington springing for 37 percent of all non-security expenditures. The main problem is that Afghanistan has no way to generate its own revenue. It doesn't have a functioning infrastructure or national economy, has no formal tax collection system, and the entire country is riddled with corruption. In other words, if the United States does not develop a plan to pay to maintain and develop the Afghan military, any gains made since the start of the war would be lost, and more than $500 billion would have been wasted.

US Senator Says 4,700 Killed in US Drone Strikes:

A US senator has said an estimated 4,700 people, including some civilians, have been killed in the contentious bombing raids of America's secretive drone war, local media reported on Wednesday. It was the first time a lawmaker or any government representative had referred to a total number of fatalities in the drone strikes, which have been condemned by rights groups as extrajudicial assassinations. The toll from hundreds of drone-launched missile strikes against suspected al Qaeda militants in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere has remained a mystery, as US officials refuse to publicly discuss any details of the covert campaign. But Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch supporter of the drone raids, openly cited a number that exceeds some independent estimates of the death toll. "We've killed 4,700," Graham was quoted as saying by the Easley Patch, a local website covering the small town of Easley in South Carolina. "Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we're at war, and we've taken out some very senior members of al Qaeda," Graham told the Easley Rotary Club. Graham's office did not dispute his reported remarks but suggested that he had not divulged any official, classified government figure. A spokesman told AFP that the senator "quoted the figure that has been publicly reported and disseminated on cable news." His remark was unprecedented, as US officials have sometimes hinted at estimates of civilian casualties but never referred to a total body count. "Now this is the first time a US official has put a total number on it," said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Abu Hashim