Thursday, January 29, 2009
Aasim Sajjad Akhtar
Over the past few weeks a vigorous debate has raged on these pages about the nature of the war taking place in Swat. It is important to congratulate the editors of these pages for providing space to this debate; one of Pakistan's most pressing crises is an intellectual one, deriving from a lack of exchange of ideas without fear of suppression.
The debate has pitted those who claim that the situation in Swat is a reflection of long-standing class inequities against those who refute this notion of 'class war'; while the former suggest that the 'Taliban' has generated support amongst the subordinate classes the latter argue that the 'Taliban' has imposed itself in the area on the basis of brute force. At the risk of generalization, let me venture that those who argue that there is a clear class dimension to the war in Swat are convinced that US imperialism and its client Pakistani military are bigger enemies of the people than the 'Taliban'. On the other hand, those who emphasise the brutality of the 'Taliban' above and beyond the machinations of the US and Pakistani militaries argue that the 'Taliban' is the biggest menace facing society.
There is a need to move beyond the binary of the 'Taliban' and the Pakistani/American militaries. This is not to suggest that the principal protagonists of the so-called 'war on terror', namely the Pakistani and American militaries should not be identified as such, but only to make clear that the relationship between the 'Taliban' and the Pakistani military is very, very shady.
Nonetheless there is a need to transcend the superficial analyses that are floating around in the popular media where conspiracy theorists typically identify the age-old 'enemies of Pakistan' as creating chaos in the shape of the 'Taliban'. However, even some of the more historically accurate narratives which acknowledge the deep consensual relationship between the religious right and the military establishment do not consider how this relationship has evolved and why the religious right is able to make inroads into society (regardless of whether it is supported by the establishment or not).
In short, I concur with the proposition that there is a class dimension to the war in Swat in the sense that long-standing social schisms have been exploited by the 'Taliban' to generate support. I believe however that there is a need to recognize the tremendous ideational power that Islam plays in the wider society. If the 'Taliban' engenders at least some support from historically marginalized social groups by promising to attack the edifice of class and state power in the area, then these same social groups are also moved by the promise of eternal salvation.
I recognize the points that have been made about the changes in society on account of migration that has spouted now sources of wealth and attendant worldviews. But here it is worth pointing out the sociological roots of the original jihadi/sectarian organizations, such as the Sipah-e-Sahaba (SSP) which was supported by the relatively mobile urban merchant classes of small-town Punjab who wanted to challenge the monopoly on political power of the incumbent landed class (that happened to be primarily Shia and could be made the target of a Sunni supremacist politics of exclusion). Thus the new wealth that has changed the landscape of Swat society may not necessarily have changed the configuration of local politics and the 'Taliban' may be seen as a vehicle to challenge the prevalent political hierarchy.
I also think that the romance of the 'Taliban' amongst ordinary people in Swat has worn off to a significant extent. So historically marginalised social groups were originally enamoured by the 'Taliban's' lure of salvation in both 'deen' and 'duniya'. However even if the 'Taliban' has provided material benefit for some segments of Swat's population, it has also resorted to unbridled use of force to operationalise its 'Islamic' dictates to the point where it has become clear that it does not offer the glorious alternative order that it claimed to do.
Having said this, by continuing to rain bombs down upon innocent people, the Pakistani military is providing every incentive to the local population to look at the 'Taliban' as an alternative to the violence of the state. And thus the nebulous relationship between the 'Taliban' and the military emerges as a central part of the tragic story of the Swat war.
In conclusion, by suggesting that the 'Taliban' exploits historically evolved conflicts within society, one is not arguing that it's warped millenarian vision actually represents a progressive alternative. But it is also true that simply decrying the 'medieval' and 'barbarian' project of the 'Taliban' and therefore implicitly providing a mandate to the militaries that have imposed war on Swat and other parts of the Pakhtun belt will serve only to sharpen the appeal of this millenarian vision. What Swat really needs is a genuinely anti-imperialist force to resist the so-called 'war on terror' and build a progressive and equal society not through brazen coercion but through popular mobilization. (The News)
The writer is a political activist associated with the People's Rights Movement. He also teaches colonial history and political economy at LUMS. Email: aasim@lums.edu.pk
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Thursday, 29 January 2009
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
Imran Khan condemns murder of Yousufi
In the following news item, Imran Khan seems to condemn the sectarian killing of the Hazara / Shia leader in Quetta. However, Imran Khan did not care to pinpoint and condemn "the elements [who] are conspiring to split the nation". He also did not explain how "we get united to foil nefarious designs of the miscreant elements."
So much for the rhetoric. How can we expect Imran Khan to condemn the terrorists of Taliban / Sipah-e-Shahaba when he seems to support their stance instead of the Pakistani nation's stance on the war on terror?
Imran condemns murder of Yousufi
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Islamabad: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan Tuesday strongly condemned the bomb blast in DI Khan and murder of Hazara Democratic Party’s Chairman Hussain Yousufi in Quetta.
He termed the murder of Hussain Yousufi as heinous crime, adding that such elements are conspiring to split the nation. He said that it is high time “we get united to foil nefarious designs of the miscreant elements.”
He expressed his deep grief and sorrow over the loss of lives and sympathy to those injured and prayed for early recovery of the injured.
He said that the whole nation should get united against the elements, which want to destabilise the country.
He urged the government for adopting an effective policy to ensure protection to life and property of citizen and improve law and order in the country.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=159528
...
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28 January 2009: Another Shia youth killed in D.I.Khan. The Taliban cum Sipah-e-Sahaba terror reins the city.
Why does not Government arrest the District and City Police Offers as well as Commandants of Pakistan Army / ISI in the area and investigate the series of sectarian killings, done by the Taliban / Sipah-e-Sahaba, sponsored by the ISI's internal jihad wing.
Gunmen kill Shia Muslim in DI Khan
PESHAWAR: Gunmen killed a Shia Muslim in Dera Ismail Khan on Tuesday, police said, in at least the second sectarian-linked attack to blight the country in 48 hours. “Unidentified gunmen shot dead Athar Hussain Shah on the Dayal road while he was returning to town from his nearby farm and then escaped,” local police official Tauqir Abbas said. Abbas said the victim was the son of a caretaker at a local Shia mosque. “It seems to be a sectarian killing,” the official said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. afp (Daily Times)
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Gunmen kill Shia Muslim in DI Khan
PESHAWAR: Gunmen killed a Shia Muslim in Dera Ismail Khan on Tuesday, police said, in at least the second sectarian-linked attack to blight the country in 48 hours. “Unidentified gunmen shot dead Athar Hussain Shah on the Dayal road while he was returning to town from his nearby farm and then escaped,” local police official Tauqir Abbas said. Abbas said the victim was the son of a caretaker at a local Shia mosque. “It seems to be a sectarian killing,” the official said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. afp (Daily Times)
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Mourning Swat: A paradise lost - Wusatullah Khan
Taliban + Sipah-e-Sahaba + Al Qaeda + Jihadis = A case of multi-directional terror in Pakistan
A case of multi-directional terror
Days after a Baloch terrorist organisation killed two innocent Punjabis in Quetta to “avenge injustice to the Baloch”, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian organisation aligned with Al Qaeda and Taliban, has killed the Shia Hazara leader Hussain Ali Yousafi. In consequence, protesting Hazaras have rampaged in Quetta, damaging property, vowing more if the government didn’t catch the killers. More sectarian mayhem occurred the same day in Dera Ismail Khan in the NWFP, when a leader of Sipah Sahaba and a member of the NWFP assembly were targeted with a cycle-bomb, claiming five more lives as collateral damage. The same day, Tehran radio reported that several members of Iran’s border security forces were killed near the Pakistani border in an ambush allegedly set up by elements from inside Pakistan. The ominous observation made in the report was: “Pakistan has become a backyard for rebels and drugs smugglers” and that “Iran could help if Islamabad is not able to secure its side of the boundary”. This looks like the gelling of a new policy of pre-emptive action inside Pakistan by Iran to save its citizens from being killed by Pakistan-based anti-Iran organisations like Jundallah. The “complaint” is of the same order as the protests lodged with Pakistan, vociferously and not so vociferously, by neighbours like Afghanistan, India, China, Uzbekistan and Russia.
Just as an element of Pakhtun nationalism within the Taliban movement is killing people in Afghanistan along with the citizens of Pakistan, Baloch nationalism threatens to cross the border and give Iran a casus belli. Again, the likely reaction from the neighbour will not indict Pakistan directly but plead Pakistan’s incapacity to look after itself to infiltrate Pakistani territory. Therefore those who think in Pakistan that Islamabad has isolated itself by accepting to participate in the war against terrorism led by the United States should look closely at where Pakistan’s multidirectional terrorism is leading it. The development of a common target for the Baloch militants and the Taliban is most frightening. This means that two kinds of terrorisms might pool their resources to challenge the state of Pakistan even more seriously.
Presidential statements about Swat, where the writ of the state disappeared long ago, are hardly credible. Mr Zardari says the Taliban will not be allowed to impose their agenda, as if he leads a consensus within the state to go out and confront the Taliban. The opposite truth is that he is backed by a “unanimous” resolution of Parliament which most Pakistanis think mandates removal of the Pakistan army from the Tribal Areas. The political opposition of the PPP and a section of its allies within the coalition actually believe that the army should return from their operations against the terrorists. The Taliban have in fact imposed their agenda and are ruling vast areas with their rough justice, which they call sharia. Three thousand Taliban warriors in Swat have 20,000 state troopers cowering in bunkers.
Fear of being targeted forces the politicians and the media to focus on other far less critical challenges, like Article 58-2(b) of the Constitution and the restoration of a deposed chief justice. The example in antithesis is the ANP, in the cross-hairs in the NWFP because it articulates its opposition to the terrorists. Isn’t Punjab too within the orbit of the policy of intimidation through sharia? Lahore seized four bombs from three locations in the Lower Mall police limits on Monday, all weighing three to four kilograms and timed to explode. Had they not been discovered, there could have been more bloodshed on a single ill-starred day in Pakistan.
This is not an occasion for routine condemnation and more threats of toppling the government in power. This is the day when Pakistan must take another look at its “national consensus” underpinning its foreign policy. The only way out is for Pakistan to seek a much closer coordination with its neighbours and the global community to survive as a state. (Daily Times)
....
Bane of sectarian violence
A DEPLORABLE side effect of the communalisation of the state in Pakistan is the sectarian frenzy it has released in the country. Had it not been for the fact that the people by and large still display a spirit of tolerance in their inter-sect dealings, as was seen during the month of Muharram, society could well have been up in flames. It is no coincidence that extremists of all shades who preach jihad and justify violence in the name of religion also call for the destruction of minority sects they believe do not fall within the ambit of Islam. But what needs to be viewed with serious concern is that, as the extremists spread their tentacles all over the country, sectarian incidents are on the rise. The killing of the Hazara Democratic Party chairman in Quetta on Monday is a brutal demonstration of this phenomenon. This comes in the wake of a series of assassinations, bomb attacks on imambargahs, target killings and even self-styled executions in Hangu, Kurram, Karachi and Balochistan. The casualties of the last few months run into hundreds. This undercurrent of sectarian violence has not been addressed the way it should have because it has been masked by the mayhem unleashed by terrorists claiming to be fighting an anti-imperialist war for the imposition of the Sharia or the army’s crackdown on the warring Baloch nationalists.
Apart from causing loss of life — which should be condemned in the strongest terms possible — the evil of sectarianism, if left unchecked, could prove to be the undoing of our already fragmented social and political fabric. As the Quetta incident shows, the community’s angry reaction to the killing of a high-profile leader can be violent and result in the destruction of property and the breakdown of law and order. Thus the fissures widen as a strategy of imposing peace without addressing the root of the problem allows the perpetrators to attack again when the situation permits. What is harrowing is that the avowedly sectarian outfits, many of which mushroomed under the Islamisation policy of Ziaul Haq, have been allowed to flourish even when they are officially banned. The Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, which claimed the killing of the Quetta leader, is one such example of how sectarianism grew blatantly under the benign patronage of the state.
It is a pity that governments of the day, by relying on the crutches of religion, failed to anticipate the outcome of their flawed approach. Sectarianism was inevitable when obscurantists were appeased and given a free rein to preach violence. The need of the hour is that the government cracks down forcefully on banned religious groups before their violence spills into neighbouring states and others compel us to act. (Dawn)
Read more...
Days after a Baloch terrorist organisation killed two innocent Punjabis in Quetta to “avenge injustice to the Baloch”, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian organisation aligned with Al Qaeda and Taliban, has killed the Shia Hazara leader Hussain Ali Yousafi. In consequence, protesting Hazaras have rampaged in Quetta, damaging property, vowing more if the government didn’t catch the killers. More sectarian mayhem occurred the same day in Dera Ismail Khan in the NWFP, when a leader of Sipah Sahaba and a member of the NWFP assembly were targeted with a cycle-bomb, claiming five more lives as collateral damage. The same day, Tehran radio reported that several members of Iran’s border security forces were killed near the Pakistani border in an ambush allegedly set up by elements from inside Pakistan. The ominous observation made in the report was: “Pakistan has become a backyard for rebels and drugs smugglers” and that “Iran could help if Islamabad is not able to secure its side of the boundary”. This looks like the gelling of a new policy of pre-emptive action inside Pakistan by Iran to save its citizens from being killed by Pakistan-based anti-Iran organisations like Jundallah. The “complaint” is of the same order as the protests lodged with Pakistan, vociferously and not so vociferously, by neighbours like Afghanistan, India, China, Uzbekistan and Russia.
Just as an element of Pakhtun nationalism within the Taliban movement is killing people in Afghanistan along with the citizens of Pakistan, Baloch nationalism threatens to cross the border and give Iran a casus belli. Again, the likely reaction from the neighbour will not indict Pakistan directly but plead Pakistan’s incapacity to look after itself to infiltrate Pakistani territory. Therefore those who think in Pakistan that Islamabad has isolated itself by accepting to participate in the war against terrorism led by the United States should look closely at where Pakistan’s multidirectional terrorism is leading it. The development of a common target for the Baloch militants and the Taliban is most frightening. This means that two kinds of terrorisms might pool their resources to challenge the state of Pakistan even more seriously.
Presidential statements about Swat, where the writ of the state disappeared long ago, are hardly credible. Mr Zardari says the Taliban will not be allowed to impose their agenda, as if he leads a consensus within the state to go out and confront the Taliban. The opposite truth is that he is backed by a “unanimous” resolution of Parliament which most Pakistanis think mandates removal of the Pakistan army from the Tribal Areas. The political opposition of the PPP and a section of its allies within the coalition actually believe that the army should return from their operations against the terrorists. The Taliban have in fact imposed their agenda and are ruling vast areas with their rough justice, which they call sharia. Three thousand Taliban warriors in Swat have 20,000 state troopers cowering in bunkers.
Fear of being targeted forces the politicians and the media to focus on other far less critical challenges, like Article 58-2(b) of the Constitution and the restoration of a deposed chief justice. The example in antithesis is the ANP, in the cross-hairs in the NWFP because it articulates its opposition to the terrorists. Isn’t Punjab too within the orbit of the policy of intimidation through sharia? Lahore seized four bombs from three locations in the Lower Mall police limits on Monday, all weighing three to four kilograms and timed to explode. Had they not been discovered, there could have been more bloodshed on a single ill-starred day in Pakistan.
This is not an occasion for routine condemnation and more threats of toppling the government in power. This is the day when Pakistan must take another look at its “national consensus” underpinning its foreign policy. The only way out is for Pakistan to seek a much closer coordination with its neighbours and the global community to survive as a state. (Daily Times)
....
Bane of sectarian violence
A DEPLORABLE side effect of the communalisation of the state in Pakistan is the sectarian frenzy it has released in the country. Had it not been for the fact that the people by and large still display a spirit of tolerance in their inter-sect dealings, as was seen during the month of Muharram, society could well have been up in flames. It is no coincidence that extremists of all shades who preach jihad and justify violence in the name of religion also call for the destruction of minority sects they believe do not fall within the ambit of Islam. But what needs to be viewed with serious concern is that, as the extremists spread their tentacles all over the country, sectarian incidents are on the rise. The killing of the Hazara Democratic Party chairman in Quetta on Monday is a brutal demonstration of this phenomenon. This comes in the wake of a series of assassinations, bomb attacks on imambargahs, target killings and even self-styled executions in Hangu, Kurram, Karachi and Balochistan. The casualties of the last few months run into hundreds. This undercurrent of sectarian violence has not been addressed the way it should have because it has been masked by the mayhem unleashed by terrorists claiming to be fighting an anti-imperialist war for the imposition of the Sharia or the army’s crackdown on the warring Baloch nationalists.
Apart from causing loss of life — which should be condemned in the strongest terms possible — the evil of sectarianism, if left unchecked, could prove to be the undoing of our already fragmented social and political fabric. As the Quetta incident shows, the community’s angry reaction to the killing of a high-profile leader can be violent and result in the destruction of property and the breakdown of law and order. Thus the fissures widen as a strategy of imposing peace without addressing the root of the problem allows the perpetrators to attack again when the situation permits. What is harrowing is that the avowedly sectarian outfits, many of which mushroomed under the Islamisation policy of Ziaul Haq, have been allowed to flourish even when they are officially banned. The Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, which claimed the killing of the Quetta leader, is one such example of how sectarianism grew blatantly under the benign patronage of the state.
It is a pity that governments of the day, by relying on the crutches of religion, failed to anticipate the outcome of their flawed approach. Sectarianism was inevitable when obscurantists were appeased and given a free rein to preach violence. The need of the hour is that the government cracks down forcefully on banned religious groups before their violence spills into neighbouring states and others compel us to act. (Dawn)
Read more...
Many people said that if the ISI was sincere with the Pakhtuns it must target-kill the entire Taliban leadership just like the Taliban did with elders
What Pakhtuns think
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Farhat Taj
There are many Pakhtun who argue that some elite state intelligence agencies and the Taliban, as of Swat for example, are 'natural allies' and feed on each other. The Taliban want a besieged and helpless population whom they can rule with impunity. The ISI, they claim, is facilitating this rule and in return the Taliban create chaos and violence. Some may ask the obvious question: why would any one want chaos and violence in the area?
Two arguments are put forward by many Pakhtuns in this regard. Some refer to the well-known but often-discredited theory of strategic depth, which envisions that Afghanistan will become the fifth province of Pakistan and that the central Asian Islamic states will become its client states. Thus Pakistan will become a robust regional power vis-a-vis India in South Asia and acquire a leadership role in the Muslim world. Therefore, by having a region close to Afghanistan which is full of violence and chaos is a way of preventing the US, India and Iran from establishing a firm foothold in the area. Also, US and NATO forces are in Afghanistan, which means that it is important to have a kind of a buffer between Afghanistan and the rest of Pakistan. Furthermore, many American think-tanks are of the view that a chaotic FATA is bad for both US and NATO forces because it allows the militants a haven to launch attacks inside Afghanistan, and then retreat back to Pakistan.
There are of course many other Pakhtuns who do not give credence to the theory of strategic depth. Their view is that if the conflict in FATA were to end and the region became peaceful, the flow of dollars from America would stop. There are also Pakhtuns who believe that foreign intelligence agencies such as RAW, Mossad or the CIA are involved in the violence. But they too primarily blame local state actors and their pursuit of the doctrine of strategic depth or of an unhindered flow of aid money from America as primary motives for what is happening in the area. They are just not ready to accept that the Taliban can and are able to occupy large parts of Pakistan without the tacit consent or support of these state actors. Of course, one has to only look at the past and see that it is a part of the public record that people like Nek Mohammad were welcomed with open arms by the then Peshawar corps commander or that some Taliban leaders were given funds in exchange for changing their ways – and which they did not!
One man said: "Look at the ease with which the Taliban have been occupying Waziristan for years and now Swat. How is that possible given that we have one of the largest and well-trained armies in the world?"
What I have written in the two parts of my article are views gained from travelling very recently across NWFP and parts of FATA. I spoke to internally displaced people of FATA in NWFP, daily wage-earners, public transport drivers, shop-keepers, low-ranking government employees, journalists, lawyers, students, teachers and housewives. Almost everywhere people were resentful of the military leadership and the ISI and held them responsible for the brutal excesses of the Taliban. They were not even willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the ISI. Many people said that if the ISI was sincere with the Pakhtuns it must target-kill the entire Taliban leadership just like the Taliban have done in the case of over 200 tribal leaders and must restore the writ of the government in the Taliban-occupied areas.
People are especially angry over the presence of so many foreign Taliban militants and refer to them as no better than 'mad dogs'.
I would humbly request the army chief and the ISI director-general to pay heed to what the people of NWFP and FATA are saying and to act to remove their grievances. This is crucial both for both Pakhtun society as well as for the survival of the state. It should be remembered that although an ethnic minority, the Pakhtuns are better integrated in the state structure than other minorities such as the Baloch or Sindhis. They have served the nation with their blood in times of war and also in other state-related duties. If the current violence is left unchecked, and given the perception – right or wrong – among many Pakhtun that certain state institutions are behind it or are acquiescing in it, the further integration of the community with the rest of the country will be put at risk.
Last, but by no means least, I would also request fellow citizens to build up pressure on the government and the military to decisively deal with the Taliban and restore the government's writ in FATA and NWFP. The armed forces are financed by taxpayers hard-earned money and we all have a right to demand that the army provide us security and protect us from extremists who want to butcher us and destroy are way of life. (The News)
The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy. Email: bergen34@yahoo.com
Read more...
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Farhat Taj
There are many Pakhtun who argue that some elite state intelligence agencies and the Taliban, as of Swat for example, are 'natural allies' and feed on each other. The Taliban want a besieged and helpless population whom they can rule with impunity. The ISI, they claim, is facilitating this rule and in return the Taliban create chaos and violence. Some may ask the obvious question: why would any one want chaos and violence in the area?
Two arguments are put forward by many Pakhtuns in this regard. Some refer to the well-known but often-discredited theory of strategic depth, which envisions that Afghanistan will become the fifth province of Pakistan and that the central Asian Islamic states will become its client states. Thus Pakistan will become a robust regional power vis-a-vis India in South Asia and acquire a leadership role in the Muslim world. Therefore, by having a region close to Afghanistan which is full of violence and chaos is a way of preventing the US, India and Iran from establishing a firm foothold in the area. Also, US and NATO forces are in Afghanistan, which means that it is important to have a kind of a buffer between Afghanistan and the rest of Pakistan. Furthermore, many American think-tanks are of the view that a chaotic FATA is bad for both US and NATO forces because it allows the militants a haven to launch attacks inside Afghanistan, and then retreat back to Pakistan.
There are of course many other Pakhtuns who do not give credence to the theory of strategic depth. Their view is that if the conflict in FATA were to end and the region became peaceful, the flow of dollars from America would stop. There are also Pakhtuns who believe that foreign intelligence agencies such as RAW, Mossad or the CIA are involved in the violence. But they too primarily blame local state actors and their pursuit of the doctrine of strategic depth or of an unhindered flow of aid money from America as primary motives for what is happening in the area. They are just not ready to accept that the Taliban can and are able to occupy large parts of Pakistan without the tacit consent or support of these state actors. Of course, one has to only look at the past and see that it is a part of the public record that people like Nek Mohammad were welcomed with open arms by the then Peshawar corps commander or that some Taliban leaders were given funds in exchange for changing their ways – and which they did not!
One man said: "Look at the ease with which the Taliban have been occupying Waziristan for years and now Swat. How is that possible given that we have one of the largest and well-trained armies in the world?"
What I have written in the two parts of my article are views gained from travelling very recently across NWFP and parts of FATA. I spoke to internally displaced people of FATA in NWFP, daily wage-earners, public transport drivers, shop-keepers, low-ranking government employees, journalists, lawyers, students, teachers and housewives. Almost everywhere people were resentful of the military leadership and the ISI and held them responsible for the brutal excesses of the Taliban. They were not even willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the ISI. Many people said that if the ISI was sincere with the Pakhtuns it must target-kill the entire Taliban leadership just like the Taliban have done in the case of over 200 tribal leaders and must restore the writ of the government in the Taliban-occupied areas.
People are especially angry over the presence of so many foreign Taliban militants and refer to them as no better than 'mad dogs'.
I would humbly request the army chief and the ISI director-general to pay heed to what the people of NWFP and FATA are saying and to act to remove their grievances. This is crucial both for both Pakhtun society as well as for the survival of the state. It should be remembered that although an ethnic minority, the Pakhtuns are better integrated in the state structure than other minorities such as the Baloch or Sindhis. They have served the nation with their blood in times of war and also in other state-related duties. If the current violence is left unchecked, and given the perception – right or wrong – among many Pakhtun that certain state institutions are behind it or are acquiescing in it, the further integration of the community with the rest of the country will be put at risk.
Last, but by no means least, I would also request fellow citizens to build up pressure on the government and the military to decisively deal with the Taliban and restore the government's writ in FATA and NWFP. The armed forces are financed by taxpayers hard-earned money and we all have a right to demand that the army provide us security and protect us from extremists who want to butcher us and destroy are way of life. (The News)
The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy. Email: bergen34@yahoo.com
Read more...
SOS from D.I.Khan. Why has Police and Army failed to protect Shias in D.I. Khan?
D I Khan bomb blast
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
So attuned have we become to living in an age of violence that we now barely seem to notice acts of terror unless they kill a significant number of people. Indeed these incidents often barely make it into the news. Human life it seems has become increasingly dispensable. Murder no longer moves us. The cycle bomb blast in the town of Dera Ismail Khan ranks as a minor incident by our standards. Only six people died. This no longer counts as a high number. But the unexplained incident is an example of the regular, almost constant violence that we now live amidst. There seems to be no escape from it.
There have as yet been few studies of the impact this violence has on people. The fact is though that fear is now a part of life. Everywhere, people tend to avoid public places that they believe could be targeted by terrorists. The kinds of lives we lead have changed. The question is whether anything can be done to ensure that these changes do not become permanent ones. Incidents such as that at D I Khan are reminders of the challenges we face. So far, when such blasts or acts of other random killings have taken place in the past, we have seldom received information as to who carried them out, or why. This failure to bring people to any kind of justice only adds to the insecurity and air of uncertainty that exists everywhere. It has created a sense of trauma that exists in many places, despite the resilience of people accustomed to fending for themselves. But the fact is that as the situation continues to worsen, fewer and fewer are able to do so. The poor, such as those who died in the latest act of random terror, are the most vulnerable, the most likely to be killed in bazaars, in the streets or in other places. The state must move in now to protect these people and re-establish its role as an institution able to bring order to the lives of its citizens. (The News)
Please consider signing this petition.
SOS from Pakistan - Save Pakistani Shias Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/ShiaSOS/petition.html
Read more...
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
So attuned have we become to living in an age of violence that we now barely seem to notice acts of terror unless they kill a significant number of people. Indeed these incidents often barely make it into the news. Human life it seems has become increasingly dispensable. Murder no longer moves us. The cycle bomb blast in the town of Dera Ismail Khan ranks as a minor incident by our standards. Only six people died. This no longer counts as a high number. But the unexplained incident is an example of the regular, almost constant violence that we now live amidst. There seems to be no escape from it.
There have as yet been few studies of the impact this violence has on people. The fact is though that fear is now a part of life. Everywhere, people tend to avoid public places that they believe could be targeted by terrorists. The kinds of lives we lead have changed. The question is whether anything can be done to ensure that these changes do not become permanent ones. Incidents such as that at D I Khan are reminders of the challenges we face. So far, when such blasts or acts of other random killings have taken place in the past, we have seldom received information as to who carried them out, or why. This failure to bring people to any kind of justice only adds to the insecurity and air of uncertainty that exists everywhere. It has created a sense of trauma that exists in many places, despite the resilience of people accustomed to fending for themselves. But the fact is that as the situation continues to worsen, fewer and fewer are able to do so. The poor, such as those who died in the latest act of random terror, are the most vulnerable, the most likely to be killed in bazaars, in the streets or in other places. The state must move in now to protect these people and re-establish its role as an institution able to bring order to the lives of its citizens. (The News)
Please consider signing this petition.
SOS from Pakistan - Save Pakistani Shias Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/ShiaSOS/petition.html
Read more...
Systematic killing of the Hazara community in Balochistan...
Targeting Hazaras
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The killing of the chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party in Quetta adds to the violence inflicted on the minority community. The murder, for which the Sunni extremist group, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, has claimed responsibility, has been labelled a sectarian one. The Hazaras, a distinct ethnic group which make up about 9 per cent of the Afghan population, have lived in the region for centuries. Most are Shias. There are believed to be about 200,000 Hazaras in and around Quetta, with the figure increasing as a significant number fled Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The persecution of the Hazaras by the predominantly Pukhtoon Taliban has been well documented and was another ugly feature of that era in Afghan history.
In July last year six members of the same community were killed in Quetta. This led to days of protests in which over a dozen people died. The HDP, angered over the murder, has issued a new strike call. The incident points to the growth of Talibanization in Quetta, with the LeJ known at least indirectly to be linked to the wide network of militants that has spread throughout our country. But the action against Hazaras also exposes the growing ethnic divides in our society, notably in Balochistan. Nationalist sentiments here sometimes take on ugly ethnic dimensions. Some Baloch nationalist publications attack minority groups living in the province for centuries, including Punjabis, Pathans and Hazaras. Even in Sindh, some groups call for settlers from other parts of the country to be driven out. These developments are dangerous ones. Both ethnic and sectarian tensions have already torn our society apart and created deep fissures that run through it. We need somehow to patch these over and recreate the harmony that once existed in our cities and towns. Quetta, as a place that is among the most volatile, should be a centre where such initiatives are begun without delay, bringing together communities and preventing a descent into a still greater orgy of violence during the months ahead. (The News)
For a detailed account of the sufferings of the Hazara community, visit:
http://hazaranewspakistan.wordpress.com/
....
BBC Urdu dot com report:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2009/01
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2009/01/090114_quettafiring_ayub.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2009/01/090126_quetta_killing_nj.shtml/090127_hazara_funeral_strike_zs.shtml
....
Hazara tribesmen under attack in Quetta
* Hazara MPA says killings of minorities motivated by religion
* Says Quetta has been communally harmonious until recently
By Malik Siraj Akbar
QUETTA: Hazara tribesmen in Balochistan, numbering around 300,000, are currently living under unprecedented terror, uncertainty and insecurity.
The tribe, residing in Balochistan for more than a century, have been subject of discrimination by the majority Balochs and Pashtuns due to their ethnic background and religious affiliations. While a majority of Hazaras is Shia, local Baloch and Pashtun are Sunnis. The Hazaras in Quetta have been targeted by some religious quarters for some time now, with more than two dozen men from the minority tribe having been killed in the last two months. Lashkar-e-Jhangavi (LJ), a banned Sunni organisation has accepted responsibility for most of the killings.
The common notion that the LJ was solely targeting Shia scholars was negated when it claimed responsibility for the January 26 murder of Hussain Ali Yousafi, chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) - an accepted and acclaimed secular and democratic leader.
Motivation: Syed Nasir Ali Shah, a Hazara and a member of the National Assembly, told Daily Times that the killings were not Hazara-specific. The slayings were religiously motivated, Shah said, adding the acts were being carried out by forces that wanted to convert Balochistan into a ‘Talibanised’ province.
“Those who are carrying out these assaults are trying to create sectarian disharmony between the Sunni and Shia sects in Quetta,” he said, adding that the target killings were meant to widen the gulf between the Sunnis, Shias and Hazaras against the local Baloch and Pashtuns.
Harmony: Shah said historically, Quetta had been communally harmonious. He said people from all sects used to participate in religious ceremonies of the others until recently.
Attacks on the Hazaras first began during the military regime of General Ziaul Haq. On July 6, 1985, the military government tried to forcibly stop a Shia procession in Quetta, when 30 people, including some policemen, were killed.
In 2001, eight Hazaras were killed when their vehicle was ambushed near the city’s Poodgali Chowk. Another 12 Hazaras, all police cadets, were gunned down on June 8, 2003 when they were on their way to a training centre near Sariab. On 4 July, 2003, in one of the worst acts of sectarian violence in the history of Pakistan, some 58 people, most of them Hazara Shias, were killed, while around 200 were injured when a suicide bomber attacked Imambargah-e-Kalan in Quetta.
Another 38 persons, mostly Hazaras, were killed in an assault on March 2, 2004. The incident left 200 people injured. On July 19, 2008, nine Hazaras were killed in Quetta in a clash between the police and Hazara protesters. HDP Secretary General Abdul Khaliq Hazara said sectarianism in Quetta increased during the regime of former President Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf.
“We are a liberal, secular people. Hazara community, however, entirely comprises of Shias. Now, some invisible forces are trying to target our democratic leaders on the simple grounds that our religious affiliations coincide with Shia Islam,” he said.
In his seminal book ‘War and Migration’, Alessandro Monsutti classifies the Hazara migration to Balochistan in the following phases:
From 1878-1891: Following the second Anglo-Afghan war, the first Hazaras came to Quetta to seek employment in British-run companies under the Raj. They are thought to have worked on the building of roads and the Bolan Pass railway as well as enlisting in the British army of India. At that time, there could have been no more than a few hundred Hazaras in Balochistan. From 1891-1901: The subjugation of Hazarajat by Abdul Rahman, between 1891 and 1893, triggered a mass exodus of Hazaras to Turkestan, Khorasan and Balochistan.
From 1901 to 1933: The situation in Afghanistan returned to normal under Habibullah (1901-1919), the son of Abdul Rahman. He offered amnesty to the Hazaras but this proved to be of little help in improving the lot of the Hazara community in Afghanistan. In 1904, the 106th Pioneers, a separate regiment for the Hazaras formed by the British, offered greater careers prospects, social recognition and economic success.
From 1933-1971: The regiment of Hazara Pioneers was disbanded in 1933. Deprived of this social and professional outlet, Hazaras went to settle in Quetta between the 1930s and 1960s, although the process of migration never completely dried up.
From 1971-1978: Following the 1971 drought, Hazaras then settled in Quetta or went to Iran in search of work. Between 1973 and 1978, tensions over the Pushtunistan issue between the Daud government and Pakistan were an additional factor in the Hazara migration. After 1978: Following the Communist coup in April 1978 and the Soviet Union intervention in December 1979, the migratory movement assumed hitherto unprecedented dimensions.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\02\06\story_6-2-2009_pg7_15
Read more...
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The killing of the chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party in Quetta adds to the violence inflicted on the minority community. The murder, for which the Sunni extremist group, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, has claimed responsibility, has been labelled a sectarian one. The Hazaras, a distinct ethnic group which make up about 9 per cent of the Afghan population, have lived in the region for centuries. Most are Shias. There are believed to be about 200,000 Hazaras in and around Quetta, with the figure increasing as a significant number fled Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The persecution of the Hazaras by the predominantly Pukhtoon Taliban has been well documented and was another ugly feature of that era in Afghan history.
In July last year six members of the same community were killed in Quetta. This led to days of protests in which over a dozen people died. The HDP, angered over the murder, has issued a new strike call. The incident points to the growth of Talibanization in Quetta, with the LeJ known at least indirectly to be linked to the wide network of militants that has spread throughout our country. But the action against Hazaras also exposes the growing ethnic divides in our society, notably in Balochistan. Nationalist sentiments here sometimes take on ugly ethnic dimensions. Some Baloch nationalist publications attack minority groups living in the province for centuries, including Punjabis, Pathans and Hazaras. Even in Sindh, some groups call for settlers from other parts of the country to be driven out. These developments are dangerous ones. Both ethnic and sectarian tensions have already torn our society apart and created deep fissures that run through it. We need somehow to patch these over and recreate the harmony that once existed in our cities and towns. Quetta, as a place that is among the most volatile, should be a centre where such initiatives are begun without delay, bringing together communities and preventing a descent into a still greater orgy of violence during the months ahead. (The News)
For a detailed account of the sufferings of the Hazara community, visit:
http://hazaranewspakistan.wordpress.com/
....
BBC Urdu dot com report:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2009/01
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2009/01/090114_quettafiring_ayub.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2009/01/090126_quetta_killing_nj.shtml/090127_hazara_funeral_strike_zs.shtml
....
Hazara tribesmen under attack in Quetta
* Hazara MPA says killings of minorities motivated by religion
* Says Quetta has been communally harmonious until recently
By Malik Siraj Akbar
QUETTA: Hazara tribesmen in Balochistan, numbering around 300,000, are currently living under unprecedented terror, uncertainty and insecurity.
The tribe, residing in Balochistan for more than a century, have been subject of discrimination by the majority Balochs and Pashtuns due to their ethnic background and religious affiliations. While a majority of Hazaras is Shia, local Baloch and Pashtun are Sunnis. The Hazaras in Quetta have been targeted by some religious quarters for some time now, with more than two dozen men from the minority tribe having been killed in the last two months. Lashkar-e-Jhangavi (LJ), a banned Sunni organisation has accepted responsibility for most of the killings.
The common notion that the LJ was solely targeting Shia scholars was negated when it claimed responsibility for the January 26 murder of Hussain Ali Yousafi, chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) - an accepted and acclaimed secular and democratic leader.
Motivation: Syed Nasir Ali Shah, a Hazara and a member of the National Assembly, told Daily Times that the killings were not Hazara-specific. The slayings were religiously motivated, Shah said, adding the acts were being carried out by forces that wanted to convert Balochistan into a ‘Talibanised’ province.
“Those who are carrying out these assaults are trying to create sectarian disharmony between the Sunni and Shia sects in Quetta,” he said, adding that the target killings were meant to widen the gulf between the Sunnis, Shias and Hazaras against the local Baloch and Pashtuns.
Harmony: Shah said historically, Quetta had been communally harmonious. He said people from all sects used to participate in religious ceremonies of the others until recently.
Attacks on the Hazaras first began during the military regime of General Ziaul Haq. On July 6, 1985, the military government tried to forcibly stop a Shia procession in Quetta, when 30 people, including some policemen, were killed.
In 2001, eight Hazaras were killed when their vehicle was ambushed near the city’s Poodgali Chowk. Another 12 Hazaras, all police cadets, were gunned down on June 8, 2003 when they were on their way to a training centre near Sariab. On 4 July, 2003, in one of the worst acts of sectarian violence in the history of Pakistan, some 58 people, most of them Hazara Shias, were killed, while around 200 were injured when a suicide bomber attacked Imambargah-e-Kalan in Quetta.
Another 38 persons, mostly Hazaras, were killed in an assault on March 2, 2004. The incident left 200 people injured. On July 19, 2008, nine Hazaras were killed in Quetta in a clash between the police and Hazara protesters. HDP Secretary General Abdul Khaliq Hazara said sectarianism in Quetta increased during the regime of former President Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf.
“We are a liberal, secular people. Hazara community, however, entirely comprises of Shias. Now, some invisible forces are trying to target our democratic leaders on the simple grounds that our religious affiliations coincide with Shia Islam,” he said.
In his seminal book ‘War and Migration’, Alessandro Monsutti classifies the Hazara migration to Balochistan in the following phases:
From 1878-1891: Following the second Anglo-Afghan war, the first Hazaras came to Quetta to seek employment in British-run companies under the Raj. They are thought to have worked on the building of roads and the Bolan Pass railway as well as enlisting in the British army of India. At that time, there could have been no more than a few hundred Hazaras in Balochistan. From 1891-1901: The subjugation of Hazarajat by Abdul Rahman, between 1891 and 1893, triggered a mass exodus of Hazaras to Turkestan, Khorasan and Balochistan.
From 1901 to 1933: The situation in Afghanistan returned to normal under Habibullah (1901-1919), the son of Abdul Rahman. He offered amnesty to the Hazaras but this proved to be of little help in improving the lot of the Hazara community in Afghanistan. In 1904, the 106th Pioneers, a separate regiment for the Hazaras formed by the British, offered greater careers prospects, social recognition and economic success.
From 1933-1971: The regiment of Hazara Pioneers was disbanded in 1933. Deprived of this social and professional outlet, Hazaras went to settle in Quetta between the 1930s and 1960s, although the process of migration never completely dried up.
From 1971-1978: Following the 1971 drought, Hazaras then settled in Quetta or went to Iran in search of work. Between 1973 and 1978, tensions over the Pushtunistan issue between the Daud government and Pakistan were an additional factor in the Hazara migration. After 1978: Following the Communist coup in April 1978 and the Soviet Union intervention in December 1979, the migratory movement assumed hitherto unprecedented dimensions.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\02\06\story_6-2-2009_pg7_15
Read more...
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
True to form, Maulana Fazlur Rehman assured ministry for brother
True to form, Fazl assured ministry for brother
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Rich senator from Mansehra with US background also made minister
By Rahimullah Yusufzai
PESHAWAR: When it comes to extending favours, JUI-F leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman seldom looks beyond his family. Once again on Monday, he chose his younger brother Maulana Attaur Rehman to be one of the two federal ministers from the quota of cabinet berths allotted by President Asif Ali Zardari to his party.
The other JUI-F nominee in the federal cabinet is Senator Azam Khan Swati, a wealthy politician from Mansehra district who lived in the US for years. Azam Swati, who in the past served as District Nazim of Mansehra, is sometimes referred to as one of the financiers of the JUI-F. He has been given the portfolio of tourism.
The JUI-F now has three federal ministers. Rahmatullah Kakar, who belongs to Balochistan, is federal minister for housing. He was inducted in the king-sized federal cabinet, which is becoming rather unwieldy, when an earlier batch of ministers was administered oath of office.
Maulana Attaur Rehman, elected MNA from NA-25 constituency in Tank district in the NWFP, was certain to become a minister. Though the name of Maulana Mohammad Qasim, the JUI-F MNA from Mardan who was re-elected in the February 2007 general elections despite the pro-ANP wave that swept the province, was sometimes mentioned as a likely candidate for a berth in the federal cabinet, he had little chance in comparison to the brother of the party head Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Maulana Qasim was compensated by recommending his name to become chairman of a parliamentary committee.
To his credit, Maulana Attaur Rehman too was re-elected as MNA in the last year’s elections. He polled 44,673 votes to narrowly defeat his PPP opponent, Dawar Khan Kundi. The latter approached the court and demanded recounting. But the resourceful Maulana prevailed and was declared as MNA by the Election Commission.
Of all the portfolios, Maulana Attaur Rehman has reportedly been given science and technology. Someone said he should have been made minister of religious affairs, Hajj and Auqaf.
Defending his selection as federal minister, a JUI-F leader said Maulana Attaur Rehman being an MNA and man of the masses would be better able to serve the electorate and stay in touch with party members. He argued that his name was recommended by the JUI-F shura to become minister. He refuted the impression that Maulana Fazlur Rehman had anything to do with his brother’s nomination as minister.
This isn’t the first time that Maulana Fazlur Rehman has preferred someone from his family to land a prized position. During the rule of the Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA) from 2002-2008, he and Maulana Attaur Rehman were serving as MNAs. His two sisters-in-laws, Shahida Akhtar Ali and Rehana Ismail were elected lawmakers on the seats reserved for women. The former was an MNA and the latter MPA.
Later Maulana Lutfur Rehman, another brother of Maulana Fazlur Rehman, was elected an MPA in a by-election from their native Dera Ismail Khan. Needless to say, the MMA’s provincial government left no stone unturned to enable him to win the by-poll. Though Maulana Lutfur Rehman resisted the temptation of becoming a provincial minister at a time when his family was politically the most influential in the NWFP, he didn’t need to join the cabinet, as his position was even otherwise unassailable. He was among the most powerful lawmaker and politician at the time.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman fielded himself and three of his brothers on five assembly seats in the February 2008 elections. Maulana Lutfur Rehman tried his luck on two provincial assembly seats from Dera Ismail Khan and lost both. A younger brother Obaidur Rehman contested for another NWFP Assembly seat from Dera Ismail Khan and was defeated. The two older brothers, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Maulana Attaur Rehman, had better luck as they won their seats. However, Maulana Fazlur Rehman won from another district, Bannu constituency after having lost his traditional assembly seat in Dera Ismail Khan.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman isn’t the only politician who keeps his family’s interest above everything else in politics. All top political families whether belonging to secular, nationalist or religious parties follow the practice. There aren’t any honourable exceptions on this count in Pakistan’s patronage-based politics. (The News)
Read more...
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Rich senator from Mansehra with US background also made minister
By Rahimullah Yusufzai
PESHAWAR: When it comes to extending favours, JUI-F leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman seldom looks beyond his family. Once again on Monday, he chose his younger brother Maulana Attaur Rehman to be one of the two federal ministers from the quota of cabinet berths allotted by President Asif Ali Zardari to his party.
The other JUI-F nominee in the federal cabinet is Senator Azam Khan Swati, a wealthy politician from Mansehra district who lived in the US for years. Azam Swati, who in the past served as District Nazim of Mansehra, is sometimes referred to as one of the financiers of the JUI-F. He has been given the portfolio of tourism.
The JUI-F now has three federal ministers. Rahmatullah Kakar, who belongs to Balochistan, is federal minister for housing. He was inducted in the king-sized federal cabinet, which is becoming rather unwieldy, when an earlier batch of ministers was administered oath of office.
Maulana Attaur Rehman, elected MNA from NA-25 constituency in Tank district in the NWFP, was certain to become a minister. Though the name of Maulana Mohammad Qasim, the JUI-F MNA from Mardan who was re-elected in the February 2007 general elections despite the pro-ANP wave that swept the province, was sometimes mentioned as a likely candidate for a berth in the federal cabinet, he had little chance in comparison to the brother of the party head Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Maulana Qasim was compensated by recommending his name to become chairman of a parliamentary committee.
To his credit, Maulana Attaur Rehman too was re-elected as MNA in the last year’s elections. He polled 44,673 votes to narrowly defeat his PPP opponent, Dawar Khan Kundi. The latter approached the court and demanded recounting. But the resourceful Maulana prevailed and was declared as MNA by the Election Commission.
Of all the portfolios, Maulana Attaur Rehman has reportedly been given science and technology. Someone said he should have been made minister of religious affairs, Hajj and Auqaf.
Defending his selection as federal minister, a JUI-F leader said Maulana Attaur Rehman being an MNA and man of the masses would be better able to serve the electorate and stay in touch with party members. He argued that his name was recommended by the JUI-F shura to become minister. He refuted the impression that Maulana Fazlur Rehman had anything to do with his brother’s nomination as minister.
This isn’t the first time that Maulana Fazlur Rehman has preferred someone from his family to land a prized position. During the rule of the Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA) from 2002-2008, he and Maulana Attaur Rehman were serving as MNAs. His two sisters-in-laws, Shahida Akhtar Ali and Rehana Ismail were elected lawmakers on the seats reserved for women. The former was an MNA and the latter MPA.
Later Maulana Lutfur Rehman, another brother of Maulana Fazlur Rehman, was elected an MPA in a by-election from their native Dera Ismail Khan. Needless to say, the MMA’s provincial government left no stone unturned to enable him to win the by-poll. Though Maulana Lutfur Rehman resisted the temptation of becoming a provincial minister at a time when his family was politically the most influential in the NWFP, he didn’t need to join the cabinet, as his position was even otherwise unassailable. He was among the most powerful lawmaker and politician at the time.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman fielded himself and three of his brothers on five assembly seats in the February 2008 elections. Maulana Lutfur Rehman tried his luck on two provincial assembly seats from Dera Ismail Khan and lost both. A younger brother Obaidur Rehman contested for another NWFP Assembly seat from Dera Ismail Khan and was defeated. The two older brothers, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Maulana Attaur Rehman, had better luck as they won their seats. However, Maulana Fazlur Rehman won from another district, Bannu constituency after having lost his traditional assembly seat in Dera Ismail Khan.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman isn’t the only politician who keeps his family’s interest above everything else in politics. All top political families whether belonging to secular, nationalist or religious parties follow the practice. There aren’t any honourable exceptions on this count in Pakistan’s patronage-based politics. (The News)
Read more...
Obama vows to listen to Muslims: Obama's first interview as president (Al-Arabiya TV exclusive)
Obama's first interview as president (Al-Arabiya TV exclusive)
Obama vows to listen to Muslims
By Edward Luce in Washington
Published: January 27 2009
Barack Obama on Monday night granted an Arabic-language television channel his first formal interview as president – an unprecedented gesture that appeared aimed at offering the Muslim world a sharp contrast with his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Mr Obama, who in his inaugural address last week promised the Muslim world a “new way forward based on mutual respect and mutual interest”, told the Al Arabiya television channel that his administration wanted listen to the Muslim world and re-examine America’s “preconceptions” towards the region.
Mr Obama also went further than he had at any point during the general election in speaking openly about his own personal ties to the Muslim world.
“Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect,” he told the Saudi-owned station. “I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.”
Mr Obama spent four years of his childhood in Indonesia, which is widely tipped to be the first majority-Muslim country he will visit within his first 100 days in office.
He pledged his strong backing for the peace brokering efforts of George Mitchell, the former Senator, whom he appointed last week as his special envoy for the Israel and Palestine. Mr Mitchell is expected to visit the region within the next few days.
Mr Obama implicitly conceded in the interview that terms such as “war on terror” had proved counter-productive over the last seven years. “The language we use matters,” he said. “We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name. I cannot respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians and we will hunt them down. But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship.”
Just five days into office, Mr Obama has issued several executive orders declaring an end to torture and closure of Guantanamo Bay among steps including permitting US aid agencies to promote family planning after an eight-year hiatus.
The new president has also appointed envoys to the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan.
In the midst of intense negotiations with Congress to push through an $825bn stimulus package, Mr Obama also on Monday offered a big boost to the environmental lobby by unblocking a Bush-era waiver that allows California and other states to impose higher carbon emission standards on industry.
The interview with Al Arabiya is likely to further antagonise conservative Republican critics of Mr Obama, who have already attacked his move to close Guantanamo within a year.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Read more...
Obama vows to listen to Muslims
By Edward Luce in Washington
Published: January 27 2009
Barack Obama on Monday night granted an Arabic-language television channel his first formal interview as president – an unprecedented gesture that appeared aimed at offering the Muslim world a sharp contrast with his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Mr Obama, who in his inaugural address last week promised the Muslim world a “new way forward based on mutual respect and mutual interest”, told the Al Arabiya television channel that his administration wanted listen to the Muslim world and re-examine America’s “preconceptions” towards the region.
Mr Obama also went further than he had at any point during the general election in speaking openly about his own personal ties to the Muslim world.
“Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect,” he told the Saudi-owned station. “I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.”
Mr Obama spent four years of his childhood in Indonesia, which is widely tipped to be the first majority-Muslim country he will visit within his first 100 days in office.
He pledged his strong backing for the peace brokering efforts of George Mitchell, the former Senator, whom he appointed last week as his special envoy for the Israel and Palestine. Mr Mitchell is expected to visit the region within the next few days.
Mr Obama implicitly conceded in the interview that terms such as “war on terror” had proved counter-productive over the last seven years. “The language we use matters,” he said. “We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name. I cannot respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians and we will hunt them down. But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship.”
Just five days into office, Mr Obama has issued several executive orders declaring an end to torture and closure of Guantanamo Bay among steps including permitting US aid agencies to promote family planning after an eight-year hiatus.
The new president has also appointed envoys to the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan.
In the midst of intense negotiations with Congress to push through an $825bn stimulus package, Mr Obama also on Monday offered a big boost to the environmental lobby by unblocking a Bush-era waiver that allows California and other states to impose higher carbon emission standards on industry.
The interview with Al Arabiya is likely to further antagonise conservative Republican critics of Mr Obama, who have already attacked his move to close Guantanamo within a year.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Read more...
Swat: Taliban hit-list and two-finger sign
If international humiliation and domestic depression is what the Taliban wanted, they have found the device with which to do it in Swat. They have released a list of 43 people whom they have declared “wanted” and liable to punishment under the Taliban sharia. People on the list include former and current members of the national and provincial assemblies, district and local nazims, officials of political parties, local elders and other influential residents of the troubled valley.
And what is the Taliban sharia all about? Warlord Fazlullah says those on the list will face some sort of sharia court but he also says in the same breath that the “enemies” would “be arrested or killed by his men”. He promises that they would face the court only if they escape getting killed. The death sentence has already been passed and his men will most probably try to do the rough justice with their own hands. In his mind, Mr Fazlullah is content that the sharia court is there to back him up but only if he wants the court to do the job. There can be no doubt that he will make it clear to the court what kind of verdict he wants for his “enemies”.
This is not sharia. This is a clear stratagem of war. It becomes clear when he announces amnesty for those of his “enemies” who have stopped opposing him. This he has done without reference to the sharia courts he presumably has functioning in Swat. The charade is lost on no one except those who forgive the atrocities of these people because in their minds these have come about only because the army has not been withdrawn from Swat as per the “unanimous” resolution of the Pakistani Parliament. Publicists opposed to the government continue to bring up witnesses from the Swat region who complain only of the “atrocities” committed by the army through collateral damage.
One can make an easy prediction. The ANP claim that “good news” will come from Swat “in fifteen days” will have to be swallowed without a glass of water like the earlier papers signed with the warlord. The hit-list is in fact his answer to the ANP’s “good news”. The scene in Swat is depressing and it is all the more so because it is a warlord’s two-finger sign in the face of our mighty army. Swat is the war that Pakistan will have to fight if it wants to survive. All other “threats” are political red herrings. (Daily Times)
...
No easy solution
THE news from Swat and Muridke is the latest evidence that militancy and terrorism are a hydra that defies an easy solution. Begin with Swat. Both the armed forces and the militants are changing tactics as fighting escalates. At the moment, the militants are in the ascendant and pressing ahead with the enforcement of their version of the Sharia. The Tehrik-i-Taliban have now demanded that some 50 prominent local political figures appear before a ‘court’ to answer what will presumably be ‘charges’ of ‘opposing’ Islam, i.e. the Swati Taliban. The charade is of course little more than a thinly veiled death threat. Given the disastrous security situation in the area, the Pakistan Army claims it has developed a “new strategy” to fight the militants which involves beefing up the troops in Swat and going after militants hiding among the locals and using them as human shields. Meanwhile, in Muridke the Punjab government has taken over the Jamaatud Dawa’s headquarters and appointed an administrator to oversee the welfare operations run by the group, including schools and hospitals.
Muridke, with its pro-poor face, and Swat, with its uninhibited, brutal militants, represent the two ends of the militancy spectrum in Pakistan. The tactics for uprooting the Jamaatud Dawa/Lashkar-i-Taiba in Punjab and the TTP in Swat must therefore necessarily be different. However, there are at least two commonalities between the two very different battles.
First, no military or law enforcement action will be successful without full political support. In Swat, the TTP has successfully cowed the politicians and across the political divide there are voices questioning whether the state should use force to reassert its writ. While there can be no purely military solution to militancy, the politicians must not be bullied into appeasement. Today the TTP has a hit list of prominent Swatis; what’s to stop them from issuing another list of politicians from Peshawar or the NWFP or even Islamabad? In fact, appeasing the TTP in Swat today virtually guarantees the militants will spread their tentacles further afield in Pakistan. The same goes for the Jamaatud Dawa. If the provincial and federal governments do not work together to ensure the group is shut down for good, in all likelihood it will re-emerge later in a new form, and perhaps with an even more virulent ideology. Second, a winning counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism strategy has to focus on the welfare of local populations. The Jamaatud Dawa’s welfare network must be absorbed by the state and its beneficiaries continue to get the services. Similarly, in Swat the terrorised locals must be looked after and shielded from attack. Militancy will only be defeated when the population sees the state as a protector and ally, and not as part of the problem. (Dawn)
Read more...
And what is the Taliban sharia all about? Warlord Fazlullah says those on the list will face some sort of sharia court but he also says in the same breath that the “enemies” would “be arrested or killed by his men”. He promises that they would face the court only if they escape getting killed. The death sentence has already been passed and his men will most probably try to do the rough justice with their own hands. In his mind, Mr Fazlullah is content that the sharia court is there to back him up but only if he wants the court to do the job. There can be no doubt that he will make it clear to the court what kind of verdict he wants for his “enemies”.
This is not sharia. This is a clear stratagem of war. It becomes clear when he announces amnesty for those of his “enemies” who have stopped opposing him. This he has done without reference to the sharia courts he presumably has functioning in Swat. The charade is lost on no one except those who forgive the atrocities of these people because in their minds these have come about only because the army has not been withdrawn from Swat as per the “unanimous” resolution of the Pakistani Parliament. Publicists opposed to the government continue to bring up witnesses from the Swat region who complain only of the “atrocities” committed by the army through collateral damage.
One can make an easy prediction. The ANP claim that “good news” will come from Swat “in fifteen days” will have to be swallowed without a glass of water like the earlier papers signed with the warlord. The hit-list is in fact his answer to the ANP’s “good news”. The scene in Swat is depressing and it is all the more so because it is a warlord’s two-finger sign in the face of our mighty army. Swat is the war that Pakistan will have to fight if it wants to survive. All other “threats” are political red herrings. (Daily Times)
...
No easy solution
THE news from Swat and Muridke is the latest evidence that militancy and terrorism are a hydra that defies an easy solution. Begin with Swat. Both the armed forces and the militants are changing tactics as fighting escalates. At the moment, the militants are in the ascendant and pressing ahead with the enforcement of their version of the Sharia. The Tehrik-i-Taliban have now demanded that some 50 prominent local political figures appear before a ‘court’ to answer what will presumably be ‘charges’ of ‘opposing’ Islam, i.e. the Swati Taliban. The charade is of course little more than a thinly veiled death threat. Given the disastrous security situation in the area, the Pakistan Army claims it has developed a “new strategy” to fight the militants which involves beefing up the troops in Swat and going after militants hiding among the locals and using them as human shields. Meanwhile, in Muridke the Punjab government has taken over the Jamaatud Dawa’s headquarters and appointed an administrator to oversee the welfare operations run by the group, including schools and hospitals.
Muridke, with its pro-poor face, and Swat, with its uninhibited, brutal militants, represent the two ends of the militancy spectrum in Pakistan. The tactics for uprooting the Jamaatud Dawa/Lashkar-i-Taiba in Punjab and the TTP in Swat must therefore necessarily be different. However, there are at least two commonalities between the two very different battles.
First, no military or law enforcement action will be successful without full political support. In Swat, the TTP has successfully cowed the politicians and across the political divide there are voices questioning whether the state should use force to reassert its writ. While there can be no purely military solution to militancy, the politicians must not be bullied into appeasement. Today the TTP has a hit list of prominent Swatis; what’s to stop them from issuing another list of politicians from Peshawar or the NWFP or even Islamabad? In fact, appeasing the TTP in Swat today virtually guarantees the militants will spread their tentacles further afield in Pakistan. The same goes for the Jamaatud Dawa. If the provincial and federal governments do not work together to ensure the group is shut down for good, in all likelihood it will re-emerge later in a new form, and perhaps with an even more virulent ideology. Second, a winning counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism strategy has to focus on the welfare of local populations. The Jamaatud Dawa’s welfare network must be absorbed by the state and its beneficiaries continue to get the services. Similarly, in Swat the terrorised locals must be looked after and shielded from attack. Militancy will only be defeated when the population sees the state as a protector and ally, and not as part of the problem. (Dawn)
Read more...
PML-N, Nawaz Sharif, make a choice. Parliament? or Street Politics... - By Nazir Naji
![[col2.gif]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmeKdnlq3tiohoSfSI7-nk_2jNGqyPxHgFO2bUKr8t-sqztctRJKNfkuG-QmFODhepE4bteLo1FFmY4Y2IPnbEkyCb5-5BKnQBZFF0sY7_LD-fv2o3mol_MV_yaW0mCMK-E9rXQxoyQzU/s1600/col2.gif)
Nazir Naji
(Daily Jang)
A threat of mid-term elections?
Looking at the intense war of statements between the ruling PPP and the PMLN, many observers are speculating that a “mid-term” election could be on the cards. For some reason, 2010 is the year when the PPP is supposed to bow out of power and yield elections. How this will be done is not clear in anybody’s mind. The media is hostile to the PPP government, and people brought under pressure by the economic crisis in the country are open to the possibility. Yet the political calculus in Parliament doesn’t indicate any mid-term change in Pakistan. In fact, there is evidence that the PPP will consolidate itself in power after March this year.
But for the same reason, March this year is also more realistic as the moment of possible political crisis in Pakistan than the year 2010. A part of the Senate will be up for election and the PPP is bound to increase its standing in the upper house, given the current strength of the parties. The lawyers’ movement, through its Long March, promises to prevent the PPP from achieving this. The Long March this time is supposed to be decisive in the intensity of its “dharna” in Islamabad. But judging from the weak “build-up” the movement received this weekend in Lahore, it hardly looks promising from the anti-PPP point of view. The political parties, including the ruling party in Lahore, the PMLN, were not able to manage the kind of show of strength needed for “toppling” the government in Islamabad through overwhelming street power. If anything, the blocking of the city’s traffic actually alienated many among the citizens from the movement.
Speculation is rife about the intentions of the PMLN. “Experts” say Mr Nawaz Sharif is not interested in destabilising the PPP government just yet but wants it to go in 2010 nonetheless. This doesn’t stand to reason. What will happen in 2010 that will be more dangerous for the PPP than the occasion of the Senate elections in 2009? Is the PMLN counting on the army to unseat the PPP through a martial law since Article 58-2(b) will either not be there or will be exercisable only by a PPP president? And if the army doesn’t do it, will another “dharna” by the lawyers’ movement do the trick? Nothing looks likely beyond 2009.
The PPP is moving adroitly in the direction of improving its position in Parliament. The MQM has been cajoled to join the coalition in Islamabad formally and get its ministers inducted in the cabinet expansion coming up shortly. It is the fourth largest grouping in the National Assembly and figures meaningfully in the electoral collegium for the Senate too. President Asif Zardari and Mr Altaf Hussain have also reached an agreement on the sharing of power in Sindh and the stage is set for the avoidance of cutting each other’s support for their Senatorial candidates.
On the other hand, the move to get the PMLN and the PMLQ to merge to prevent the undercutting of their Senatorial candidates has failed. The PMLN wants to go it alone, and it is not clear how it will fulfil its plan — if there is one — to cause the mid-term elections to take place in 2010. If the device is a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly, one should forget that it will happen any time during the current term of government. The PMLQ, however, is convinced that five years is too much for a government to eke out in power and has proposed in its draft 18th Amendment that the term of the National Assembly be curtailed to four years. Why four years and why not just two years? At least that is what some people say the opposition is aiming at as it plans to topple the government in 2010. (Daily Times)
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![[1100561452-2.gif]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqG7dl50KgTadP6V2l3nZZUwzsyASRxARS2J5Dqe3HCwTRvqLVArJO_NS3DSQLEYxmkS_i_FebmE2LLNX0DYLGrBOMS0kXn6-V2bJF1Mvp7cCIHmTiI2ZpexDcgHedA4q8V8JJF4TF5IE/s1600-h/1100561452-2.gif)
Derailed de-radicalisation
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Zeenia Satti
Just like the Afghan war was allowed to turn into Pakistan's civil war, similarly, the Mumbai attacks are likely to usher in civil unrest in Punjab. While events in neighbouring countries adversely impact Pakistan's domestic politics, the same are cited internationally as the manifestations of Pakistan failing as a state. Both Musharraf and Zardari have allowed their country's political milieu to be defined by outside powers. When a state allows its domestic political relations to be determined by outside powers, it brings upon itself the misfortune of losing control over its polity and becoming thus a failed state. The Pakistani incumbents have hurled their country down this slope lock stock and barrel.
Counter terrorism is an evolutionary process. All over the world, governments try to de-radicalise radical groups through facilitating disengagement from radicalism and promoting involvement with peaceful activities. Political discourse on de-radicalisation and counter terrorism is occupied with developing mechanisms for "disengagement" from radicalism through an "integrated" approach.
It would be to Pakistan's long term advantage if radical groups could be disengaged from cross border military pursuits and engaged instead in peaceful activities inside Pakistan. The eradication of poverty and hunger, the professionalization of down trodden youth, provision of health care, education, and shelter for the homeless are all fit subjects for jihad in Islam. If a radical organization has already established such activities in Pakistan, the state should lend it hearty support and protection while continuing to monitor its activities.
Demobilization and disengagement, as defined in political science, are the best antidote to terrorism. At present, many countries in the world are strategizing "disengagement from radicalism" at different levels, including Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India, Algeria, Indonesia, Colombia, and Malaysia.
Unfortunately, while governments beset with terrorism elsewhere are painfully striving to set up disengagement programs, the Zardari government has just shut down such a program in Pakistan. The post Mumbai clamp down on JUD and the closure of its schools is a political blunder. The LeT's transformation into JUD is a model of disengagement countries faced with radical groups dream of achieving. Islamabad could have utilized the Mumbai attacks to demobilize the LeT by standing up for JUD and rendering it open to international scrutiny. It could have used its media to provide extensive coverage to JUD's civic activities and should have lent it whole hearted praise. This would not only have instilled in the JUD and its followers a heightened sense of patriotism, it would also have helped it purge those elements that are given to violence. To de-radicalise, one has to facilitate cooperative relations and capacity development. Mumbai could have been utilized to promote a change in JUD syllabus.
Mumbai challenged the political world view of jihadi groups that seek a solution to the Kashmir problem through terrorism. The fact that the Mumbai attacks had a severely negative bearing on the Kashmiri struggle should have been the "cognitive opening" used by Pakistan to divide a wedge between the LeT and the JUD, to the detriment of the former so as to completely dehydrate its military life line. Islamabad could then tackle the LeT leadership to New Delhi's satisfaction but without a negative fall out on itself. Through erudite policy, Islamabad could promote a fundamental change within all its militarized groups' political understanding of the Kashmir problem, facilitating the abandonment of their cross border ventures.
Ever since the CIA had Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his secular, progressive politics eliminated through Pakistan's military, Pakistan has been steadily infiltrated with religious groups who are funded by petro dollars and adhere to a reactionary version of Islam espoused by Saudi Arabia. The Islamisation of Pakistan has thus gone on imperceptibly for almost thirty years during which time reactionary groups have dotted the entire landscape of Pakistan. Yet, Pakistanis have never empowered religious parties in any of their general elections. It is now well established that the sole exception of the MMA victory in the 2002 election was a fraud perpetrated by the Musharraf regime.
Militarily, in the past the Islamist groups were never a threat to Pakistan as the focus of their activities remained Indian occupied Kashmir and Soviet Occupied Afghanistan. Since 9/11, both India and the U.S have launched a policy towards Pakistan that has not only intensified the militarization of radical groups within Pakistan but has also cleverly shifted their target to Islamabad. Islamabad is unwittingly abetting this policy.
The Pakistani Islamist groups have come into being over a long period of time and were sustained by regional developments. The same developments can be used to dismantle these groups but Pakistan needs time for this. Those who show no patience in this task are averse to Pakistan's internal cohesion.
Zardari is providing even more incentive then Musharraf to the radical groups to swell their ranks and shift the target of their militarism to Islamabad. Disillusionment, after much hope has been shattered, makes people turn away from democracy to other means. The longing for a leadership that addresses the emotional grievances of people is making the Pakistani youth vulnerable to extremism. Zardari has refused to fulfil a single hope of the anti Musharraf movement. When such a government launches punitive action against any group, it not only reinforces the group's clandestine camaraderie but even promotes camaraderie where none already exists. Islamabad could have used the Mumbai attacks to promote de-radicalisation in an erudite manner; instead, it has pursued policies that are more likely to radicalise and destabilise Punjab. (The News)
The writer is a consultant and analyst of energy geopolitics based in Washington DC. Email: zeenia.satti@yahoo.com
Read more...
Zeenia Satti
Just like the Afghan war was allowed to turn into Pakistan's civil war, similarly, the Mumbai attacks are likely to usher in civil unrest in Punjab. While events in neighbouring countries adversely impact Pakistan's domestic politics, the same are cited internationally as the manifestations of Pakistan failing as a state. Both Musharraf and Zardari have allowed their country's political milieu to be defined by outside powers. When a state allows its domestic political relations to be determined by outside powers, it brings upon itself the misfortune of losing control over its polity and becoming thus a failed state. The Pakistani incumbents have hurled their country down this slope lock stock and barrel.
Counter terrorism is an evolutionary process. All over the world, governments try to de-radicalise radical groups through facilitating disengagement from radicalism and promoting involvement with peaceful activities. Political discourse on de-radicalisation and counter terrorism is occupied with developing mechanisms for "disengagement" from radicalism through an "integrated" approach.
It would be to Pakistan's long term advantage if radical groups could be disengaged from cross border military pursuits and engaged instead in peaceful activities inside Pakistan. The eradication of poverty and hunger, the professionalization of down trodden youth, provision of health care, education, and shelter for the homeless are all fit subjects for jihad in Islam. If a radical organization has already established such activities in Pakistan, the state should lend it hearty support and protection while continuing to monitor its activities.
Demobilization and disengagement, as defined in political science, are the best antidote to terrorism. At present, many countries in the world are strategizing "disengagement from radicalism" at different levels, including Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India, Algeria, Indonesia, Colombia, and Malaysia.
Unfortunately, while governments beset with terrorism elsewhere are painfully striving to set up disengagement programs, the Zardari government has just shut down such a program in Pakistan. The post Mumbai clamp down on JUD and the closure of its schools is a political blunder. The LeT's transformation into JUD is a model of disengagement countries faced with radical groups dream of achieving. Islamabad could have utilized the Mumbai attacks to demobilize the LeT by standing up for JUD and rendering it open to international scrutiny. It could have used its media to provide extensive coverage to JUD's civic activities and should have lent it whole hearted praise. This would not only have instilled in the JUD and its followers a heightened sense of patriotism, it would also have helped it purge those elements that are given to violence. To de-radicalise, one has to facilitate cooperative relations and capacity development. Mumbai could have been utilized to promote a change in JUD syllabus.
Mumbai challenged the political world view of jihadi groups that seek a solution to the Kashmir problem through terrorism. The fact that the Mumbai attacks had a severely negative bearing on the Kashmiri struggle should have been the "cognitive opening" used by Pakistan to divide a wedge between the LeT and the JUD, to the detriment of the former so as to completely dehydrate its military life line. Islamabad could then tackle the LeT leadership to New Delhi's satisfaction but without a negative fall out on itself. Through erudite policy, Islamabad could promote a fundamental change within all its militarized groups' political understanding of the Kashmir problem, facilitating the abandonment of their cross border ventures.
Ever since the CIA had Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his secular, progressive politics eliminated through Pakistan's military, Pakistan has been steadily infiltrated with religious groups who are funded by petro dollars and adhere to a reactionary version of Islam espoused by Saudi Arabia. The Islamisation of Pakistan has thus gone on imperceptibly for almost thirty years during which time reactionary groups have dotted the entire landscape of Pakistan. Yet, Pakistanis have never empowered religious parties in any of their general elections. It is now well established that the sole exception of the MMA victory in the 2002 election was a fraud perpetrated by the Musharraf regime.
Militarily, in the past the Islamist groups were never a threat to Pakistan as the focus of their activities remained Indian occupied Kashmir and Soviet Occupied Afghanistan. Since 9/11, both India and the U.S have launched a policy towards Pakistan that has not only intensified the militarization of radical groups within Pakistan but has also cleverly shifted their target to Islamabad. Islamabad is unwittingly abetting this policy.
The Pakistani Islamist groups have come into being over a long period of time and were sustained by regional developments. The same developments can be used to dismantle these groups but Pakistan needs time for this. Those who show no patience in this task are averse to Pakistan's internal cohesion.
Zardari is providing even more incentive then Musharraf to the radical groups to swell their ranks and shift the target of their militarism to Islamabad. Disillusionment, after much hope has been shattered, makes people turn away from democracy to other means. The longing for a leadership that addresses the emotional grievances of people is making the Pakistani youth vulnerable to extremism. Zardari has refused to fulfil a single hope of the anti Musharraf movement. When such a government launches punitive action against any group, it not only reinforces the group's clandestine camaraderie but even promotes camaraderie where none already exists. Islamabad could have used the Mumbai attacks to promote de-radicalisation in an erudite manner; instead, it has pursued policies that are more likely to radicalise and destabilise Punjab. (The News)
The writer is a consultant and analyst of energy geopolitics based in Washington DC. Email: zeenia.satti@yahoo.com
Read more...
Monday, 26 January 2009
Countering extremism and Imam Abu Hanifa's advice - Syed Mansoor Hussain
Countering extremism - Syed Mansoor Hussain
If the coalition in the Punjab can survive then perhaps there is hope that these two parties will develop some sort of an understanding at the centre to mobilise Pakistanis against the real and immediate threat of religious extremism
I am a secular liberal and a Muslim. Many of my readers will think of this statement as an oxymoron. Similarly, if I say that the Jama’at-e Islami is a liberal party, most of my liberal and secular readers will probably go into a terminal state of ‘shock and awe’.
But then the JI does believes in the rule of law, in individual rights, free enterprise, democracy (as demonstrated by its being the only political party in Pakistan that elects its leadership in transparent elections every so often), and, above all, the equality of all under law.
Yes, there might be a quibble about what law we are talking about, but such quibbles are common even between avowed liberals and democrats of all sorts and can be solved through democratic means; the 17th Amendment and the reinstatement of the deposed chief justice being appropriate examples.
If we in Pakistan want to resist the rising tide of Muslim extremism, then we better realise that conservative Muslims like those of the JI for instance have a lot more in common with liberal Muslims than they have with the extremists that are blowing up girls’ schools, burning CD shops and forcing men to grow beards.
I have often griped about officialdom and the elite, and for good reason. But I have always gotten along rather well with ordinary people and, most surprisingly for me, with the devout and conservative Muslims that I have come across. I respect them and they respect me!
Indeed it has to be such mutual respect that forms the basis of collaboration between liberals and conservatives in the fight against religious extremism. After all, religious extremism attacks and undermines all of our beliefs and practices and will continue to undermine the rule of law and our ability to function as a free and a democratic society.
Confronting religious extremism is however complicated by the fact that there are two distinct forces that are using religion at this time. It is important in my opinion to separate them and tackle them differently. The first type of terrorism and violence we see in Pakistan these days is politically motivated. The second type is motivated by a desire to implement an extremist Islamic system within Pakistan.
As far as the politically motivated movement is concerned, it is primarily concerned with the US and NATO ‘occupation’ of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s support for this operation. At this point in time, there is little Pakistan can do to about this except keep trying to prevent the western border areas from becoming safe havens for those that are fighting US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
In time, the US will leave Afghanistan and things will return to whatever counts as normalcy for that unfortunate country. Once that happens, hopefully much of the politically motivated violence we confront in Pakistan will subside. Unfortunately religious extremism will still be around and will continue to be a problem for Pakistan as a country and for us as a people. And only we as Pakistanis will be responsible for either restraining this impulse or giving into it.
My primary interest is therefore in the rise of religious extremism within Pakistan as manifested by the situation in Swat and the recent ‘anti-culture’ bombings in Lahore. Here I would like to make a simple point. I believe that most Pakistanis are not beholden to the extreme version of Islam that is being pushed by those that bomb girls’ schools in Swat or terrorise theatres in Lahore.
The problem, of course, is how to mobilise all those that oppose religious extremism. In the general elections last year, the parties elected are all opposed to extremism. Some might be more conservative than others but then that is the way politics plays out. Interestingly enough, the four major political parties in the country are sitting in coalition with each other either at the centre or in the provinces.
Immediately after the general elections, when the PPP and the PMLN decided to join hands at the centre and in the Punjab, people like me thought that this combination would indeed offer Pakistan an opportunity to have a ‘united’ front against extremism, both of the left and the right. And having these two parties together would also allow the country to face its financial and external problems more effectively. Sadly, over the last year these two parties have drifted apart.
Even though the ‘grand’ coalition at the centre is gone, the PPP and the PMLN still are coalition partners in the Punjab. If the coalition in the Punjab can survive then perhaps there is hope that these two parties will develop some sort of an understanding at the centre to mobilise Pakistanis against the real and immediate threat of religious extremism.
Extremism is not only a religious problem but also a law and order problem and if religious extremists destabilise the Punjab, it will undermine the PMLN government as well. The supremacy of the rule of law is then the one thing that can unite these two parties and others against the increase of religious extremism and its consequent violence.
Finally, I would like to quote Imam Abu Hanifa from his reply to a letter by Uthman Batti:
“I assert that all people of the Qibla are mu’mins and that none of them becomes an infidel by omission of works. He who has faith and also performs his duties is without doubt a mu’min and destined for Paradise. He who is devoid of both faith and works is an infidel and destined for Hell. He who has faith, but omits to act is certainly a Muslim, but a sinful one. It is up to God to punish or forgive him.”
Good advice and something to build on when it comes to accepting each other as Muslims. And yes, I want my Basant back! (Daily Times)
Syed Mansoor Hussain has practised and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com
Read more...
If the coalition in the Punjab can survive then perhaps there is hope that these two parties will develop some sort of an understanding at the centre to mobilise Pakistanis against the real and immediate threat of religious extremism
I am a secular liberal and a Muslim. Many of my readers will think of this statement as an oxymoron. Similarly, if I say that the Jama’at-e Islami is a liberal party, most of my liberal and secular readers will probably go into a terminal state of ‘shock and awe’.
But then the JI does believes in the rule of law, in individual rights, free enterprise, democracy (as demonstrated by its being the only political party in Pakistan that elects its leadership in transparent elections every so often), and, above all, the equality of all under law.
Yes, there might be a quibble about what law we are talking about, but such quibbles are common even between avowed liberals and democrats of all sorts and can be solved through democratic means; the 17th Amendment and the reinstatement of the deposed chief justice being appropriate examples.
If we in Pakistan want to resist the rising tide of Muslim extremism, then we better realise that conservative Muslims like those of the JI for instance have a lot more in common with liberal Muslims than they have with the extremists that are blowing up girls’ schools, burning CD shops and forcing men to grow beards.
I have often griped about officialdom and the elite, and for good reason. But I have always gotten along rather well with ordinary people and, most surprisingly for me, with the devout and conservative Muslims that I have come across. I respect them and they respect me!
Indeed it has to be such mutual respect that forms the basis of collaboration between liberals and conservatives in the fight against religious extremism. After all, religious extremism attacks and undermines all of our beliefs and practices and will continue to undermine the rule of law and our ability to function as a free and a democratic society.
Confronting religious extremism is however complicated by the fact that there are two distinct forces that are using religion at this time. It is important in my opinion to separate them and tackle them differently. The first type of terrorism and violence we see in Pakistan these days is politically motivated. The second type is motivated by a desire to implement an extremist Islamic system within Pakistan.
As far as the politically motivated movement is concerned, it is primarily concerned with the US and NATO ‘occupation’ of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s support for this operation. At this point in time, there is little Pakistan can do to about this except keep trying to prevent the western border areas from becoming safe havens for those that are fighting US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
In time, the US will leave Afghanistan and things will return to whatever counts as normalcy for that unfortunate country. Once that happens, hopefully much of the politically motivated violence we confront in Pakistan will subside. Unfortunately religious extremism will still be around and will continue to be a problem for Pakistan as a country and for us as a people. And only we as Pakistanis will be responsible for either restraining this impulse or giving into it.
My primary interest is therefore in the rise of religious extremism within Pakistan as manifested by the situation in Swat and the recent ‘anti-culture’ bombings in Lahore. Here I would like to make a simple point. I believe that most Pakistanis are not beholden to the extreme version of Islam that is being pushed by those that bomb girls’ schools in Swat or terrorise theatres in Lahore.
The problem, of course, is how to mobilise all those that oppose religious extremism. In the general elections last year, the parties elected are all opposed to extremism. Some might be more conservative than others but then that is the way politics plays out. Interestingly enough, the four major political parties in the country are sitting in coalition with each other either at the centre or in the provinces.
Immediately after the general elections, when the PPP and the PMLN decided to join hands at the centre and in the Punjab, people like me thought that this combination would indeed offer Pakistan an opportunity to have a ‘united’ front against extremism, both of the left and the right. And having these two parties together would also allow the country to face its financial and external problems more effectively. Sadly, over the last year these two parties have drifted apart.
Even though the ‘grand’ coalition at the centre is gone, the PPP and the PMLN still are coalition partners in the Punjab. If the coalition in the Punjab can survive then perhaps there is hope that these two parties will develop some sort of an understanding at the centre to mobilise Pakistanis against the real and immediate threat of religious extremism.
Extremism is not only a religious problem but also a law and order problem and if religious extremists destabilise the Punjab, it will undermine the PMLN government as well. The supremacy of the rule of law is then the one thing that can unite these two parties and others against the increase of religious extremism and its consequent violence.
Finally, I would like to quote Imam Abu Hanifa from his reply to a letter by Uthman Batti:
“I assert that all people of the Qibla are mu’mins and that none of them becomes an infidel by omission of works. He who has faith and also performs his duties is without doubt a mu’min and destined for Paradise. He who is devoid of both faith and works is an infidel and destined for Hell. He who has faith, but omits to act is certainly a Muslim, but a sinful one. It is up to God to punish or forgive him.”
Good advice and something to build on when it comes to accepting each other as Muslims. And yes, I want my Basant back! (Daily Times)
Syed Mansoor Hussain has practised and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com
Read more...
Ahmad Hasan Dani: Death of a legend
Renowned historian, archeologist Prof Dani dies
Updated at: 1155 PST, Monday, January 26, 2009 (The News)
ISLAMABAD: Famous historian and archeologist Professor Ahmad Hasan Dani has passed away here on Monday. He was 89.
Prof. Dani was under treatment in Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) since several days.
Government of Pakistan had awarded him Hilal-i-Imtiaz and Pride of Performance in acknowledgement of his services.
....
Ahmad Hassan Dani (Urdu: اØمد Øسن دانی) FRAS, SI, HI (born 20 June 1920, died 26 January 2009 in Islamabad) was a Pakistani archaeologist, historian, and linguist who is among the foremost authorities on South Asian archaeology and history. He was Emeritus Professor at the Quaid-e-Azam University and the director of Taxila Institute of Asian Civilizations. Throughout his career, Dani held various academic positions and international fellowships, apart from conducting archaeological excavations and research. He was also the recipient of various civil awards in Pakistan and abroad. As a prolific linguist, he spoke more than 14 local and international languages and dialects.
Visiting, research and honorary fellowships
During his Associate Professorship at Dhaka University, Dani worked as a Research Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1958–59). Later, in 1969 he became Asian Fellow at the Australian National University, Canberra. In 1974, he went to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia as a visiting scholar. In 1977, he was Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Over the span of his career, Dani has been awarded honorary fellowships of Royal Asiatic Society of Bangladesh (1969), German Archaeological Institute (1981), IsMEO Rome (1986) and Royal Asiatic Society (1991).
Research expeditions
Dani was extensively engaged in excavation works on the pre-Indus Civilization site of Rehman Dheri in Northern Pakistan. He also made a number of discoveries of Gandhara sites in Peshawar and Swat Valleys, and worked on Indo-Greek sites in Dir. From 1985, he involved in research focusing on the documentation of the rock carvings and inscriptions on ancient remains from the Neolithic age in the high mountain region of Northern Pakistan along with Harald Hauptmann of Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, University of Heidelberg. In 1990–91, he led the UNESCO international scientific teams for the Desert Route Expedition of the Silk Road in China and the Steppe Route Expedition of the Silk Road in the Soviet Union.
Awards
* 2000 Hilal-e-Imtiaz, Government of Pakistan
* 1998 Légion d'honneur, President of the French Republic
* 1997 Aristotle Silver Medal, UNESCO
* 1996 Order of the Merit, Government of Germany
* 1994 Knight Commander, Government of Italy
* 1992 Aizaz-e-Kamal, Government of Pakistan
* 1990 Palmes Academiques, Government of France
* 1986 Gold Medal, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh
* 1969 Sitara-e-Imtiaz, Government of Pakistan
* 1944 Gold Medal, Banaras Hindu University
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Ahmad Hasan Dani
DR Dani was a scholar, historian, linguist, anthropologist and an archaeology and museum expert of sterling qualities and stature. He was the rare Pakistani who was respected around the world for his passion for history and the contribution he made to allied fields of knowledge. In a country where antiquities and the past are fading further into oblivion, he stood tall among the handful of petitioners for safeguarding and conserving cultural heritage. His passion for history was reciprocated by history itself when he became a part of
it as a key member of Sir Mortimer Wheeler’s team that excavated and completed the documentation of Moenjodaro in the 1940s. The Gandhara civilisation further up north, too, was among his beneficiaries in that he painstakingly documented the many sites and set up museums across Taxila and the Swat and Peshawar valleys. Rehman Dheri near Swabi was Dr Dani’s own find.
The scholar’s spread of activities was as vast as his interests. Spanning an entire land mass from the sub-continent to eastern China, Afghanistan, Central Asia and going all the way to the steppes, Dr Dani was part of many global teams of experts who worked on archaeological sites in the whole region. In his last decades, and as long as foreign tourism was part of the Pakistan landscape, he became the darling of both tourists and foreign academics who came here to see or study the country’s antiquities. Mild in speech and manner and extremely forthcoming when questioned about any of his fields, Dr Dani voluntarily made himself available to such audiences. He was one of the reasons for the increase in European and Japanese study groups that came to Pakistan in droves throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He will be missed by all who have any enthusiasm for heritage and culture. (Dawn)
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A story of an employee reinstated by the PPP government
A story of an employee reinstated by the PPP government - by Tahir Sarwar Mir
Also please read:
http://letusbuildpakistan.blogspot.com/2009/01/7700-sacked-govt-employees-to-be.html
Read more...
Also please read:
http://letusbuildpakistan.blogspot.com/2009/01/7700-sacked-govt-employees-to-be.html
Read more...
Swat 26 Jan 2009 update: Yet Another school destroyed by the Taliban
Another school destroyed, woman killed in Swat shelling
Updated at: 0945 PST, Monday, January 26, 2009 (The News)
SWAT: Militants in Swat blown up another school with explosives in Swat whereas a woman was killed and eight others injured when a shell hit a house in Charbagh area.
According to sources, operation against militants continued in Swat overnight. Meanwhile, firing with interval of time continued in Mingora on Sunday night, however, no loss of life was reported.
Militants blew away government boys high school in Odigaram area. So far, 185 schools have been destroyed in Swat, official tally said.
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We know that the Pakistan Army / ISI is an accomplice. Where is the international community?
Read more...
Updated at: 0945 PST, Monday, January 26, 2009 (The News)
SWAT: Militants in Swat blown up another school with explosives in Swat whereas a woman was killed and eight others injured when a shell hit a house in Charbagh area.
According to sources, operation against militants continued in Swat overnight. Meanwhile, firing with interval of time continued in Mingora on Sunday night, however, no loss of life was reported.
Militants blew away government boys high school in Odigaram area. So far, 185 schools have been destroyed in Swat, official tally said.
.....
We know that the Pakistan Army / ISI is an accomplice. Where is the international community?
Read more...
Taliban/Sipah-e-Sahaba attack Dera Ismail Khan once again....
5 killed in DI Khan blast
Updated at: 1120 PST, Monday, January 26, 2009 (The News)
DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Five people have been killed and several injured in Dera Ismail Khan blast on Monday.
According to reports, the blast occurred outside town hall at circular road. A car and a motorbike were parked at the spot of the blast. It is however unclear whether the bomb was planted in a car or motorbike.
Police and high officials of administration have reached the scene of the blast whereas security forces have cordoned off the area. The injured have been shifted to hospital where six reported in a critical condition.
President Asif Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Adviser to the Prime on Interior Affairs Rehman Malik have denounced the attack.
Terrorist organization Sipah-e-Sahaba (alias Laskar-e-Jhangavi)has previously conducted a number of suicide attacks/bomb blasts targeting the Shia population of Dera Ismail Khan. These two organizations are part of the greater Pakistan Tehreek-e-Taliban.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2009/01/090126_dikhan_blast_rh.shtml
Read more...
Updated at: 1120 PST, Monday, January 26, 2009 (The News)
DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Five people have been killed and several injured in Dera Ismail Khan blast on Monday.
According to reports, the blast occurred outside town hall at circular road. A car and a motorbike were parked at the spot of the blast. It is however unclear whether the bomb was planted in a car or motorbike.
Police and high officials of administration have reached the scene of the blast whereas security forces have cordoned off the area. The injured have been shifted to hospital where six reported in a critical condition.
President Asif Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Adviser to the Prime on Interior Affairs Rehman Malik have denounced the attack.
Terrorist organization Sipah-e-Sahaba (alias Laskar-e-Jhangavi)has previously conducted a number of suicide attacks/bomb blasts targeting the Shia population of Dera Ismail Khan. These two organizations are part of the greater Pakistan Tehreek-e-Taliban.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2009/01/090126_dikhan_blast_rh.shtml
Read more...
SOS from Quetta: Systematic killing of Hazaras / Shias by the Taliban/Sipah-e-Sahaba Terrorists...............
Shia leader shot dead in Quetta
Updated at: 1140 PST, Monday, January 26, 2009
QUETTA: A leader of Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) has been shot dead in Quetta on Monday.
According to reports, unknown persons opened fire on HDP leader Hussain Ali Yousfi at Jinnah Road. The body was shifted to hospital.
Terrorists belonging to Sipah-e-Shaba (Taliban) have attacked and killed a number of Shias in Quetta in the past few weeks.
BBC Urdu dot com report:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2009/01/090126_quetta_killing_nj.shtml
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Shi'a leader's murder sparks violence in Pakistan's Quetta
Jan 26, 2009 (BBC Monitoring via COMTEX) --
As you know, we have been reporting on the killing of the chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party [Shi'a party]. Unknown armed men have killed the Hazara Democratic Party Chairman Hussain Ali Yousufzai.
Police say that armed men sitting in a vehicle fired indiscriminately at the chairman outside his shop on Jinnah Road in Quetta. Hussain Ali Yousufi died on the spot and his body was taken to Civil Hospital in Quetta.
A large number of persons and workers of the Hazara Democratic Party gathered at the hospital. Following this incident shopkeepers, in a state of shock, closed down their shops.
The Lashkar-i-Jhangvi [Sunni militant group] has claimed responsibility for this killing and the Baluchistan Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani has condemned the killing of Yousufi.
The Hazara Democratic Party has announced a 40-day mourning period after Yousufi's killing.
Tension gripped Quetta City and people came out on the roads earlier protesting the killing. Incidents of arson and violence have also been reported in different parts of the city.
Now for more on this let us cross over live to Quetta where our correspondent Syed Ali Shah has been following the story for us the entire morning:
[Begin live relay via telephone, anchor Razeshta Sethna] Thanks for joining us. What is the latest you have from Quetta? Earlier, when I was speaking to you, you told me about incidents of violence and arson in the city.
[Shah] Indeed incidents of arson and violence have been reported from different parts of the city. The situation is still tense. However, all of the injured people, we have reports about five people have been injured in these acts of arson and violence in different parts of the city. All of the injured have been shifted to Civil Hospital Quetta for medical treatment.
However, crowds of people, they can still be seen on Mannan Chowk, Meezan Chowk, Jinnah Road, Liaquat Bazaar, Sattar Road, on different roads of Quetta City. So the situation is indeed very tense. The protesters, they burnt a private bank, two vehicles, they also smashed the glasses of a bank, shops and they have also set on fire vehicles and motorcycles, in order to protest over the killing of Chairman Hazara Democratic Party Hussain Ali Yousufi. So the crowd of people, they are chanting slogans against the killing of Hussain Ali Yousufi, the chairman Hazara Democratic Party. The workers of Hazara Democratic Party, they took out a protest rally which passed through different roads of Quetta City. The protesters were demanding the arrest of killers.
In the meantime, the workers of Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party also took out a protest rally which also passed through different roads of the city. The leaders of Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party they were appealing their workers to be peaceful and calm and not to cause any harm to public and private properties.
[Sethna] Now Ali Shah we also have reports that the Lashkar-e Jhangvi has claimed responsibility for the killing of the Hazara Democratic Party chairman, do you have any more information on that?
[Shah] Indeed, the spokesman for the banned Lashkar-e Jhangvi, he telephoned newsmen in Quetta Press Club he claimed the responsibility for killing the chairman of Hazara Democratic Party Hussain Ali Yousufi. Actually in sectarian-related terrorist incidents since January 1st around nine people have been killed in Quetta City and other towns of Baluchistan.
[Sethna] Thanks very much for that update from Quetta. [end of live relay]
Syed Ali Shah reporting on the killing of the Hazara Democratic Party Chairman Hussain Ali Yousufi.
Source: Dawn News TV, Karachi, in English 0900gmt 26 Jan 09
BBC Mon Alert SA1 SADel dg
BBC Monitoring. Copyright BBC.
http://individual.com/story.php?story=95318770
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On 14 January, DSP among 4 policemen shot dead in Quetta
Unidentified assailants killed four policemen including a DSP in a shootout in Quetta on Wednesday. Motorcyclists ambushed a police team on Sariab Road at around 11am, police officials told Daily Times. Three of the murdered policemen belonged to Hazara community and were Shia. Banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for the killings, which appear to be part of a recent series of target killing of Shias in the provincial capital that has claimed six lives in a month. Ensuing protests by members of the Shia and Hazara communities paralysed businesses in the provincial capital.
On 9 January 2009:
Shia leader, guard killed in Sibi
QUETTA: Unidentified men killed a central leader of the Fiqah Jafferia along with his guard in Sibi district on Saturday. The assailants opened fire on Saqlain Haider and his guard, Ghulam Ali. They were taken to a hospital in Sibi where they succumbed to their injuries. People staged a sit-in condemning the ‘target killing’ of the Shia leader. They chanted slogans and demanded the culprits should be arrested immediately. No one has claimed responsibility for the killings.
On 5 January 2009:
2 Shias killed in Quetta
QUETTA: Unidentified assailants killed two Shias in the city on Monday despite tight security arrangements due to Muharram.
Police sources said motorcyclists attacked two Hazaragi-speaking members of the Shia community on Kirani Road. Those killed were identified as Muhammad Essa and Muhammad Khan. The assault appeared to be a case of sectarian violence.
The assailants managed to escape. The bodies were handed over to the families after necessary legal and medical formalities were carried out by police and medical staff of the Civil Hospital. No group claimed responsibility for the killings.
Police and other law enforcement agencies have enforced tight security in Quetta to prevent sectarian violence during Muharam. Quetta has been at the centre of sectarian violence for many years. Most recently, on November 21, 2008, two Shias, including leading religious scholar Agha Hassan Zakari, were killed.
AFP reported the men, a rickshaw driver and his friend, were shot multiple times after being stopped on the busy road.
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Thousands protest killing of policemen
Web posted at: 1/15/2009 0:22:33
Source ::: AFP
Supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami protest against the Israeli offensive on Gaza, in Karachi yesterday. Thousands of schoolchildren took part in the protest.
QUETTA: Thousands of people protested in Pakistan’s southwestern city of Quetta yesterday after four police officers were shot dead in what an official said was a sectarian attack against Shias.
The police were killed when gunmen riding a motorbike sprayed their vehicle with bullets on a main road on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of restive gas-rich Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.
The province, which has been in the grips of an insurgency for more than four years, has also been the scene of sectarian attacks between Sunni and Shia extremists. More than 4,000 people carried the bodies of three of the officers, all Shiites, through the streets to the home of a top military official, to demand justice, a photographer at the scene witnessed.
Protesters called for a military probe into the killings before dispersing peacefully.
“Shias have been targeted in the province for quite some time and the latest attack was directed against Shiite officers,” said provincial minister Jan Ali Changezi, who participated in the protest.
The killing was later claimed by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ), a banned Sunni Muslim extremist group with links to Al Qaeda. “We claim the responsibility for today’s attack,” Ali Haider, identifying himself as a spokesman for the group, said in telephone calls to local media.
Earlier, senior police official Humayun Jogezai said the officers had been shot dead in their vehicle as they were travelling to a training academy.
A high-ranking police official also sustained serious injuries.
LJ is regarded as Pakistan’s fiercest Sunni extremist outfit and is accused of killing hundreds of Shias since its emergence in the early 1990s. Former president Pervez Musharraf banned the group in August 2001. Shias account for about 20 percent of Pakistan’s 160 million-strong, Sunni-majority population. The groups usually coexist peacefully but outbreaks of sectarian violence have claimed more than 4,000 lives since the late 1980s.
Baluchistan has also been wracked by insurgency since 2004, with rebels demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region’s natural resources. Taliban militants have also been blamed for attacks in the province.
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Pakistan+%26+Sub-Continent&month=January2009&file=World_News2009011502233.xml
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Baloch protest against ‘Talibanisation’
The Balochistan National Party (BNP) Information Secretary and former senator Mr Sanaullah Baloch told Daily Times on Sunday that “supporters” of the Taliban had “captured land worth Rs2 billion in the eastern and western parts of Quetta” to “undermine the Baloch nationalist movement”. He accused the government of failure to establish its writ in the city where “Taliban and their supporters were consolidating their grip”. He complained of the emergence of “no-go” areas where these elements had dug themselves in. He came close to explaining the state of divided politics in the province when he said that “the Taliban supporters” enjoyed the support of the government and its intelligence agencies who wish “to pit the religious elements against the Baloch nationalists”. He wondered why the state had not carried out military operations against these elements while it was still attacking Dera Bugti and Sui areas. Dealing with the problem of Afghan refugees, he called them “a burden on the economy of Balochistan and the biggest cause of lawlessness and terrorism in the country’s largest province”.
Mr Baloch has indirectly put his finger on the way a new political map is militating against the old deeds of omission and commission of the Pakistani state. The PPP in power in the centre is a liberal-secular party, supported by another secular party, the MQM, in Sindh. The party in power in the NWFP is ANP, which is traditionally secular-nationalist like the Baloch. It is flouting the pro-Taliban mood in the establishment and asking the army to be more effective against Taliban encroachments. In Balochistan, however, the ethnic-political picture is more complex.
As in the NWFP and the Tribal Areas, the Afghan jihad and its refugees have destabilised the ethnic balance in Balochistan. When Mr Baloch refers to “supporters” of the Taliban he is pointing to the dominant Pashtun party, the JUIF, which also queered the pitch in the NWFP for the ANP when it succeeded it in power in Peshawar. What five years of power in the NWFP by the “supporters” of the Taliban did to the ground realities there is now happening to Balochistan, a fact pointed out by scholars who have studied closely the dubious Musharraf policy of giving safe haven to the absconding Afghan Taliban leaders in Quetta.
The JUIF is a religious party but it is quite clearly an ethnic party capturing the Pashtun vote to the detriment of the secular Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PKMAP), the same way it had edged out the secular ANP in the NWFP. The JUIF contrasts sharply with Jama’at-e-Islami which remains a religious party appealing to the Pashtun and non-Pashtun alike. The other factor going against the secular Baloch parties is the JUIF’s deft political footwork in Islamabad, sitting inside the federal coalition with the PPP while strongly supporting the Taliban and opposing the military operations Mr Baloch wants against the Taliban in Balochistan.
Unfortunately, however, the separatism of Baloch nationalism plays into the hands of the Pashtun-dominated JUIF which shies away from any rhetoric of insurgency and separation embraced by sections of the Baloch. Quite meaningfully, the Islamisation or “Talibanisation” it favours for Balochistan and the rest of Pakistan is equally radical in its endgame and cannot be opposed openly and vigorously because it gibes with the religious constitution of Pakistan that welcomes the sharia as the faith of the state. The Taliban terrorism is against the government agencies and the Shia. In contrast, Baloch terrorism, while targeting state functionaries, also kills certain non-Baloch and Punjabi elements and destroys the economic lifeline of Pakistan, the province’s natural gas installations and pipelines.
The ethnic balance has been dangerously upset in Balochistan by the jihad waged by the state for over 20 years. This jihad has transformed Pashtun society all over Pakistan and sidelined the nationalists, but it has damaged the cause of the Baloch more effectively. It is true that state functionaries have become indoctrinated by jihadi culture over time just as they have learnt to “prejudge” the Baloch after long years of treating them as “rebels”. Ironically, in the long run, it is the jihadi culture which will destroy the “modern state” and not Baloch nationalism.
In the days to come, Balochistan will acquire strategic importance as the transit terrain for Iranian gas. One hopes that before the pipeline from Iran is finalised the province will get the kind of autonomy it wants. There is no doubt that gas from Iran will be a crucial asset which the state of Pakistan will go to any length to protect. The Pashtun will not oppose it; but the Baloch might. That means that once again the state will have to choose between the Baloch and the Pashtun and, regrettably, might even rely on the unwise and dangerous policy of pitting the “Taliban” against the Baloch. The JUIF is sure to be more supple politically than the proud and inflexible Baloch. Clearly, there is a lesson to be learnt by the Baloch nationalists.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\01\06\story_6-1-2009_pg3_1
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For a detailed account of the sufferings of the Hazara community, visit:
http://hazaranewspakistan.wordpress.com/
....
Please consider signing this petition.
SOS from Pakistan - Save Pakistani Shias Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/ShiaSOS/petition.html
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Security of Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif
(Daily Waqt)Ghost OF TK Says:
Security for Sharif Brothers: 20 Inspectors, 35 Sub-Inspectors, 66 ASI’s, 85 head constables and 850 Constables
That is over 1000 Police out of 30,000 police for the whole of Lahore city (population 10 million)
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Sunday, 25 January 2009
What is Bhuttoism?
Ma Says:
Bhutto haters cannot comprehend what does or doesn’t Bhutto mean to PPP.
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Some Comments:
MalangBaba says:
Today even Zia’s children and his political heirs and partners in crime (NS, Qazi etc) are affraid to link themselves with his name. This is the legacy of a dictator.
...
I think Arian community of Lahore is fedup with Nawaz Sharif and his arrogance. They are being pushed to PPP. I think it is a good start to widen PPP’s vote bank in Lahore.
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Hameed Gul’s reference make no sense. He is a sworn enemy of PPP. He is person who created IJI and supplied money to Sharifs anf Qazis to run a joint election campaign against PPP. Being head of ISI this guy presided the first meeting of IJI. He even awarded tickets to IJI candidates and manipulated the election results in Punjab to give IJI lead in Punjab assembly just few days after it lost in Punjab in National elections. He is bigger criminal than any other general in Pakistan.
Can he be believed. How was not in a position to become a shoe polisher of Bhutto in Ayub days.
Ziaists are very good in lies like their dictator peer.
...
I am neither too old not too young. fortunately I saw Shaheed Bhutto’s time as a young student and saw the cruel face of Ziaists. My family was not a Bhutto fan but I became a big fan of Bhutto after I witnessed the shameless atrocvities committed by Zia and his partners in crime in particular Jamaat Islami.
I do remember a lot. But unfortunately most of anti-Bhutto members of this forum don’t even remember that pl of Pakistan rejected the boycott call of elections just 11 months ago. I don’t expectr U to remember what Nawaz Sharif used to say about Justice Iftikhar till March 8, 2007 and what Imran Khan used to say about Mush till he dumped him in 2002.
...
Read more...
Bhutto haters cannot comprehend what does or doesn’t Bhutto mean to PPP.
.....
Some Comments:
MalangBaba says:
Today even Zia’s children and his political heirs and partners in crime (NS, Qazi etc) are affraid to link themselves with his name. This is the legacy of a dictator.
...
I think Arian community of Lahore is fedup with Nawaz Sharif and his arrogance. They are being pushed to PPP. I think it is a good start to widen PPP’s vote bank in Lahore.
....
Hameed Gul’s reference make no sense. He is a sworn enemy of PPP. He is person who created IJI and supplied money to Sharifs anf Qazis to run a joint election campaign against PPP. Being head of ISI this guy presided the first meeting of IJI. He even awarded tickets to IJI candidates and manipulated the election results in Punjab to give IJI lead in Punjab assembly just few days after it lost in Punjab in National elections. He is bigger criminal than any other general in Pakistan.
Can he be believed. How was not in a position to become a shoe polisher of Bhutto in Ayub days.
Ziaists are very good in lies like their dictator peer.
...
I am neither too old not too young. fortunately I saw Shaheed Bhutto’s time as a young student and saw the cruel face of Ziaists. My family was not a Bhutto fan but I became a big fan of Bhutto after I witnessed the shameless atrocvities committed by Zia and his partners in crime in particular Jamaat Islami.
I do remember a lot. But unfortunately most of anti-Bhutto members of this forum don’t even remember that pl of Pakistan rejected the boycott call of elections just 11 months ago. I don’t expectr U to remember what Nawaz Sharif used to say about Justice Iftikhar till March 8, 2007 and what Imran Khan used to say about Mush till he dumped him in 2002.
...
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SOS message from Swat, Pakistan to Mr. Richard Holbrooke
Urgent appeal to Mr. Richard Holbrooke. If you want to understand, expose and address the unholy nexus between the Taliban and the Pakistan Army (ISI), focus your attention on what is happening in Swat.
It is an SOS message from the majority of the innocent peace loving women, men, children and school going girls from Swat and the rest of Pakistan to the international community. Please save us from the cruel, unholy nexus of the Taliban and the evil-jihadi minded elements in Pakistan Army and the ISI.
For a complete account of what is happening in Swat, read the articles provided at the following link:
http://letusbuildpakistan.blogspot.com/search/label/Swat
The following is a most comprehensive recent report by The New York Times.
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Radio Spreads Taliban’s Terror in Pakistani Region
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
Published: January 24, 2009
Pakistani Taliban punished a man accused of impersonating one of them to extort money in Matta, in the volatile Swat Valley.
Swat Map
Hundreds gathered Jan. 11 in Swat to watch drug dealers punished. The Taliban also have made it a crime to shave a beard.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Every night around 8 o’clock, the terrified residents of Swat, a lush and picturesque valley a hundred miles from three of Pakistan’s most important cities, crowd around their radios. They know that failure to listen and learn might lead to a lashing — or a beheading.
Using a portable radio transmitter, a local Taliban leader, Shah Doran, on most nights outlines newly proscribed “un-Islamic” activities in Swat, like selling DVDs, watching cable television, singing and dancing, criticizing the Taliban, shaving beards and allowing girls to attend school. He also reveals names of people the Taliban have recently killed for violating their decrees — and those they plan to kill.
“They control everything through the radio,” said one Swat resident, who declined to give his name for fear the Taliban might kill him. “Everyone waits for the broadcast.”
International attention remains fixed on the Taliban’s hold on Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal areas, from where they launch attacks on American forces in Afghanistan. But for Pakistan, the loss of the Swat Valley could prove just as devastating.
Unlike the fringe tribal areas, Swat, a Delaware-size chunk of territory with 1.3 million residents and a rich cultural history, is part of Pakistan proper, within reach of Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the capital.
After more than a year of fighting, virtually all of it is now under Taliban control, marking the militants’ farthest advance eastward into Pakistan’s so-called settled areas, residents and government officials from the region say.
With the increasing consolidation of their power, the Taliban have taken a sizable bite out of the nation. And they are enforcing a strict interpretation of Islam with cruelty, bringing public beheadings, assassinations, social and cultural repression and persecution of women to what was once an independent, relatively secular region, dotted with ski resorts and fruit orchards and known for its dancing girls.
Last year, 70 police officers were beheaded, shot or otherwise slain in Swat, and 150 wounded, said Malik Naveed Khan, the police inspector general for the North-West Frontier Province.
The police have become so afraid that many officers have put advertisements in newspapers renouncing their jobs so the Taliban will not kill them.
One who stayed on the job was Farooq Khan, a midlevel officer in Mingora, the valley’s largest city, where decapitated bodies of policemen and other victims routinely surface. Last month, he was shopping there when two men on a motorcycle sprayed him with gunfire, killing him in broad daylight.
“He always said, ‘I have to stay here and defend our home,’ ” recalled his brother, Wajid Ali Khan, a Swat native and the province’s minister for environment, as he passed around a cellphone with Farooq’s picture.
In the view of analysts, the growing nightmare in Swat is a capsule of the country’s problems: an ineffectual and unresponsive civilian government, coupled with military and security forces that, in the view of furious residents, have willingly allowed the militants to spread terror deep into Pakistan.
The crisis has become a critical test for the government of the civilian president, Asif Ali Zardari, and for a security apparatus whose loyalties, many Pakistanis say, remain in question.
Seeking to deflect blame, Mr. Zardari’s government recently criticized “earlier halfhearted attempts at rooting out extremists from the area” and vowed to fight militants “who are ruthlessly murdering and maiming our citizens.”
But as pressure grows, he has also said in recent days that the government would be willing to talk with militants who accept its authority. Such negotiations would carry serious risks: security officials say a brief peace deal in Swat last spring was a spectacular failure that allowed militants to tighten their hold and take revenge on people who had supported the military.
Without more forceful and concerted action by the government, some warn, the Taliban threat in Pakistan is bound to spread.
“The crux of the problem is the government appears divided about what to do,” said Mahmood Shah, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier who until 2006 was in charge of security in the western tribal areas. “This disconnect among the political leadership has emboldened the militants.”
From 2,000 to 4,000 Taliban fighters now roam the Swat Valley, according to interviews with a half-dozen senior Pakistani government, military and political officials involved in the fight. By contrast, the Pakistani military has four brigades with 12,000 to 15,000 men in Swat, officials say.
The Taliban are thought to be responsible for the killing of a popular Swat Valley dancing girl, Shabana, whose body, above, was found Jan. 2 in Mingora. The Taliban have made gains in the strategic region, in part by meting out harsh punishments.
But the soldiers largely stay inside their camps, unwilling to patrol or exert any large presence that might provoke — or discourage — the militants, Swat residents and political leaders say. The military also has not raided a small village that locals say is widely known as the Taliban’s headquarters in Swat.
Nor have troops destroyed mobile radio transmitters mounted on motorcycles or pickup trucks that Shah Doran and the leader of the Taliban in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, have expertly used to terrify residents.
Being named in one of the nightly broadcasts often leaves just two options: fleeing Swat, or turning up headless and dumped in a village square.
When the army does act, its near-total lack of preparedness to fight a counterinsurgency reveals itself. Its usual tactic is to lob artillery shells into a general area, and the results have seemed to hurt civilians more than the militants, residents say.
In some parts of Pakistan, civilian militias have risen to fight the Taliban. But in Swat, the Taliban’s gains amid a large army presence has convinced many that the military must be conspiring with the Taliban.
“It’s very mysterious how they get so much weapons and support,” while nearby districts are comparatively calm, said Muzaffar ul-Mulk Khan, a member of Parliament from Swat, who said his home near Mingora was recently destroyed by the Taliban.
“We are bewildered by the military. They patrol only in Mingora. In the rest of Swat they sit in their bases. And the militants can kill at will anywhere in Mingora,” he said.
“Nothing is being done by the government," Mr. Khan added.
Accusations that the military lacks the will to fight in Swat are “very unfair and unjustified,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the chief military spokesman, who said 180 army soldiers and officers had been killed in Swat in the past 14 months.
“They do reach out, and they do patrol,” he said.
Military officials also say they are trying to step up activity in Swat. This weekend, soldiers were deployed to protect a handful of educational buildings in Mingora, amid a wave of school bombings.
General Abbas said the military did not have the means to block Taliban radio transmissions across such a wide area, but he disputed the view that Mingora had fallen to the militants.
“Just because they come out at night and throw down four or five bodies in the square does not mean that militants control anything,” he said.
Few officials would dispute that one of the Pakistani military’s biggest mistakes in Swat was its failure to protect Pir Samiullah, a local leader whose 500 followers fought the Taliban in the village of Mandal Dag. After the Taliban killed him in a firefight last month, the militants demanded that his followers reveal his gravesite — and then started beheading people until they got the information, one Mandal Dag villager said.
“They dug him up and hung his body in the square,” the villager said, and then they took the body to a secret location. The desecration was intended to show what would happen to anyone who defied the Taliban’s rule, but it also made painfully clear to Swat residents that the Pakistani government could not be trusted to defend those who rose up against the militants.
“He should have been given more protection,” said one Pakistani security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject. “He should have been made a symbol of resistance.”
Gruesome displays like the defilement of Pir Samiullah’s remains are an effective tactic for the Taliban, who have shown cruel efficiency in following through on their threats.
Recently, Shah Doran broadcast word that the Taliban intended to kill a police officer who he said had killed three people.
“We have sent people, and tomorrow you will have good news,” he said on his nightly broadcast, according to a resident of Matta, a Taliban stronghold. The next day the decapitated body of the policeman was found in a nearby village.
Even in Mingora, a town grown hardened to violence, residents were shocked early this month to find the bullet-ridden body of one of the city’s most famous dancing girls splayed on the main square.
Known as Shabana, the woman was visited at night by a group of men who claimed to want to hire her for a party. They shot her to death and dragged her body more than a quarter-mile to the central square, leaving it as a warning for anyone who would flout Taliban decrees.
The leader of the militants in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, gained prominence from making radio broadcasts and running an Islamic school, becoming popular among otherwise isolated homemakers and inspiring them to sell their jewelry to finance his operation. He also drew support from his marriage to the daughter of Sufi Mohammed, a powerful religious leader in Swat until 2001 who later disowned his son-in-law.
Even though Swat does not border Afghanistan or any of Pakistan’s seven lawless federal tribal areas, Maulana Fazlullah eventually allied with Taliban militants who dominate regions along the Afghan frontier.
His fighters now roam the valley with sniper rifles, Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortar tubes and, according to some officials, night-vision goggles and flak vests.
His latest tactic is a ban on girls’ attending school in Swat, which will be tested in February when private schools are scheduled to reopen after winter recess. The Taliban have already destroyed 169 girls’ schools in Swat, government officials say, and they expect most private schools to stay closed rather than risk retaliation.
“The local population is totally fed up, and if they had the chance they would lynch each and every Talib,” said Mr. Naveed Khan, the police official. “But the Taliban are so cruel and violent, no one will oppose them. If this is not stopped, it will spill into other areas of Pakistan.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/world/asia/25swat.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
.....
Some Comments:
OMG, can't anyone stop this cruel regime? How could the Taliban get hold of money and guns? Why do people let other people do stupid things in the name of religion? Why is UN so impotent? This is so depressing.
— claudia, denver
What do they call that armed, unmanned drone - THe Predator? Hmm.
— Cedarglen, Oregon
Well... the birds come home to roost. ISI's support of the Taliban now reverberates internally within Pakistan? It seems that no historical lessons can be learned, indeed. Zardari should consider inviting the Israelis to assist Pakistan in rooting out the evil in their midst.
— ML, Kabul, AFG
Obama needs to get a grip on Pakistan early in his administration rather than later. A comprehensive plan of dealing with and containing any fall out of Pakistan's Talibanization should be formulated. Despite years of NATO presence in the region it is clear that the Pakistani government or the Pakistani intelligence and military are NOT part of the solution. American aid to these agencies only emboldens them and in turn the Taliban. Unless severe economic and diplomatic pressure is exerted on Pakistan to reign in terrorists like the Taliban on its soil, there is not going be any change.
— Ian, NYC
If there was ever a chance for us--the U.S-- to show leadership in the region, it is now.
We must do something that gives hope to the embattled people of Swat. I have seen the valley in happier times and I know its people want to live a normal life. I despair and cringe when I think of little school children--especially girls--who will never know the pleasure of reading, writing, or thinking for themselves. We have to convince the government of Pakistan it is time to take action against destruction being wrought by the Taliban. We have to help them in every way.
We can't just let remote controlled drones do our work. It is time for us to act on the ground. But I am not sure that will happen. We seek expedient answers in a place where expediency won't work. I hope President Obama will act to bring peace to a place that once welcomed people from America with broad smiles and not with the hatred they do now.
— S.B., Anchorage, Alaska
If the Taliban cancer, like the breast cancer, is not nipped at the bud stage, it will spread and most certainly metastasize and destroy the newly democratic Pakistan. Part of the blame for this belongs to the USA also because, while proclaiming loudly that it loves democracy, it has consistently and unwaveringly supported its former dictator, the corrupt President Musharraf for ten years (1999 to August 18, 2008). Musharraf turned a blind eye towards the Taliban and allowed it to spread, and some of his generals even supported the Taliban. It is quite reasonable to expect similar results, next in Egypt, whose dictator Mubarak American presidents have supported for decades, and then in Jordan, whose King American presidents adore. This policy is not only short sighted, it is hypocritical too.
United States should encourage Prime Minister Zardari to immediately send a huge army to fumigate the entire Swat area and eradicate the Taliban infestation(or swat them as one would a fly?). It should be very easy to spot the infested towns: just look for areas where every man has beard and then look for and cull Taliban's ruthless leaders. The time to act is now. Prime Minister Zardari should waste no more time.
Poverty, discontent, and lack of good educational opportunity are the breeding grounds of the Taliban. In northern India, even in areas dominated by Muslims, Taliban hasn't taken root because the people have access to schools and they have at least some hope for a better life in the future.
— Yesh Prabhu, Plainsboro, NJ
As far as I know, triangulating the source of radio transmissions should be fairly easy. Are the Pakistani military complicit, or just afraid to do anything? Reading your article I think the Swat residents would welcome foreign help in removing the Taliban, if the Pakistani government would be courageous enough to invite them. People in Pakistan should realize that the Taliban are as much a foreign power as western nations are. The Taliban are not about religion, but only about gaining power to abuse people. The Taliban are perverting Islam to meet their own (secular) interests.
— Math Fuzzy, Europe
Pakistani Terrorism + Pakistani Taliban + ISI + Nuclear Weapons = Goodbye America.
— Amit, NYC
ISI brought out this jinnee from the bottle.World and Pakistan government should ask ISI to go to Swat and face this terrible music.Pretty faces of women activists appearing on Paki TV to " defend" their rights, have a lot to defend,before Taliban reaches their cosy homes in Lahor,Islamabad and Karachi.Pak armed forces keep warning India about giving befitting reply in case of a conflict.They too should feel ashamed that they are unable to rein in these mercenaries.Taliban is an American gift to this part of the world.Mr.Barak Obama has his role cut out, if he wants US policies to succeed in Afghanistan-Pakistan.Are Russians having the last laugh?
— Jitendra Desai, Surat - Gujarat- India
Everytime I read of these activities I become enraged. Enraged not by the ignorance of those dealing out such practices but enraged at the lack of anger coming from the rest of the world, the UN, other great countries that would view these activities as anti-human, barbarism. Yet, there is no outrage, there is no condemnation what there is, is silent tolerance of a regime of hatred murder, power mongering, fear producing and terrorism based on a belief that I can only describe as insane. Yet the world watches and does NOTHING !!!!!
— Eddie Z, New York
Swat is charming tourist attraction. It was a very peaceful place having nice and and courteous people. Crimes are committed in the name of religion. In this area writ of the Government must be maintained at any cost. Obviously some thing is wrong somewhere.
— snashraf, Karachi
Islamic radicalism like Saudi-supported wahaabism and the taliban movement could be strongly denounced by Islamic thinkers and theologians (imams and others). That would be the first step before military action and effective supression. As long as many of the 1.5 billion muslims in the world believe these guys are rightful western military action will be as effective as trying to mop up a raising tide.
However, no such condemnation is being heard, aside from one or another isolated, usually european-muslim religious authorities. Saudi Arabia, the birth place of Islam and protector of its most holy places is stunningly silent.
The US and most of Europe have the saudis as allies (all that oil...) so it is hard to see any end to the disgusting, insane radicalism. I pity the moderate Pakistanis, a talented and intelligent people that have to submit to such barbaric medieval savagery.
— Pete, Sao Paulo
Taliban got to be crushed and there is no other option. Pakistani army and security establihment has failed in making any real progress, despite tall claims that army operation has been undertaken to control the situation. What is pakistani army for? Why is it so ineffective?Why cant it control a group of few thousand hardliners and mercenaries who have terrorised the whole region. People are being misled and great efforts are being made in pakistani media to portray all this as the price of supporting the American war on terror. The civilian government, led by nationalist party, in the Frontier province has been made totally ineffective as elected representatives fear for their lives. Who is supporting and financing taliban? Why is no one talking about Saudi connection as huge amount of private saudi money is coming to support the arab millitants operating in the region. The new amerian administration got to act quickly against taliban and all whats happening in the tribal/swat region of pakistan.It has got to support Pakistani civilian government and send a clear message to Pakistani establishment that it has got to deliver by crushing taliban and not to play with fire any more.
— BUK, Karachi, Pakistan
Read more...
It is an SOS message from the majority of the innocent peace loving women, men, children and school going girls from Swat and the rest of Pakistan to the international community. Please save us from the cruel, unholy nexus of the Taliban and the evil-jihadi minded elements in Pakistan Army and the ISI.
For a complete account of what is happening in Swat, read the articles provided at the following link:
http://letusbuildpakistan.blogspot.com/search/label/Swat
The following is a most comprehensive recent report by The New York Times.
......
Radio Spreads Taliban’s Terror in Pakistani Region
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
Published: January 24, 2009
Pakistani Taliban punished a man accused of impersonating one of them to extort money in Matta, in the volatile Swat Valley.
Swat Map
Hundreds gathered Jan. 11 in Swat to watch drug dealers punished. The Taliban also have made it a crime to shave a beard.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Every night around 8 o’clock, the terrified residents of Swat, a lush and picturesque valley a hundred miles from three of Pakistan’s most important cities, crowd around their radios. They know that failure to listen and learn might lead to a lashing — or a beheading.
Using a portable radio transmitter, a local Taliban leader, Shah Doran, on most nights outlines newly proscribed “un-Islamic” activities in Swat, like selling DVDs, watching cable television, singing and dancing, criticizing the Taliban, shaving beards and allowing girls to attend school. He also reveals names of people the Taliban have recently killed for violating their decrees — and those they plan to kill.
“They control everything through the radio,” said one Swat resident, who declined to give his name for fear the Taliban might kill him. “Everyone waits for the broadcast.”
International attention remains fixed on the Taliban’s hold on Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal areas, from where they launch attacks on American forces in Afghanistan. But for Pakistan, the loss of the Swat Valley could prove just as devastating.
Unlike the fringe tribal areas, Swat, a Delaware-size chunk of territory with 1.3 million residents and a rich cultural history, is part of Pakistan proper, within reach of Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the capital.
After more than a year of fighting, virtually all of it is now under Taliban control, marking the militants’ farthest advance eastward into Pakistan’s so-called settled areas, residents and government officials from the region say.
With the increasing consolidation of their power, the Taliban have taken a sizable bite out of the nation. And they are enforcing a strict interpretation of Islam with cruelty, bringing public beheadings, assassinations, social and cultural repression and persecution of women to what was once an independent, relatively secular region, dotted with ski resorts and fruit orchards and known for its dancing girls.
Last year, 70 police officers were beheaded, shot or otherwise slain in Swat, and 150 wounded, said Malik Naveed Khan, the police inspector general for the North-West Frontier Province.
The police have become so afraid that many officers have put advertisements in newspapers renouncing their jobs so the Taliban will not kill them.
One who stayed on the job was Farooq Khan, a midlevel officer in Mingora, the valley’s largest city, where decapitated bodies of policemen and other victims routinely surface. Last month, he was shopping there when two men on a motorcycle sprayed him with gunfire, killing him in broad daylight.
“He always said, ‘I have to stay here and defend our home,’ ” recalled his brother, Wajid Ali Khan, a Swat native and the province’s minister for environment, as he passed around a cellphone with Farooq’s picture.
In the view of analysts, the growing nightmare in Swat is a capsule of the country’s problems: an ineffectual and unresponsive civilian government, coupled with military and security forces that, in the view of furious residents, have willingly allowed the militants to spread terror deep into Pakistan.
The crisis has become a critical test for the government of the civilian president, Asif Ali Zardari, and for a security apparatus whose loyalties, many Pakistanis say, remain in question.
Seeking to deflect blame, Mr. Zardari’s government recently criticized “earlier halfhearted attempts at rooting out extremists from the area” and vowed to fight militants “who are ruthlessly murdering and maiming our citizens.”
But as pressure grows, he has also said in recent days that the government would be willing to talk with militants who accept its authority. Such negotiations would carry serious risks: security officials say a brief peace deal in Swat last spring was a spectacular failure that allowed militants to tighten their hold and take revenge on people who had supported the military.
Without more forceful and concerted action by the government, some warn, the Taliban threat in Pakistan is bound to spread.
“The crux of the problem is the government appears divided about what to do,” said Mahmood Shah, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier who until 2006 was in charge of security in the western tribal areas. “This disconnect among the political leadership has emboldened the militants.”
From 2,000 to 4,000 Taliban fighters now roam the Swat Valley, according to interviews with a half-dozen senior Pakistani government, military and political officials involved in the fight. By contrast, the Pakistani military has four brigades with 12,000 to 15,000 men in Swat, officials say.
The Taliban are thought to be responsible for the killing of a popular Swat Valley dancing girl, Shabana, whose body, above, was found Jan. 2 in Mingora. The Taliban have made gains in the strategic region, in part by meting out harsh punishments.
But the soldiers largely stay inside their camps, unwilling to patrol or exert any large presence that might provoke — or discourage — the militants, Swat residents and political leaders say. The military also has not raided a small village that locals say is widely known as the Taliban’s headquarters in Swat.
Nor have troops destroyed mobile radio transmitters mounted on motorcycles or pickup trucks that Shah Doran and the leader of the Taliban in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, have expertly used to terrify residents.
Being named in one of the nightly broadcasts often leaves just two options: fleeing Swat, or turning up headless and dumped in a village square.
When the army does act, its near-total lack of preparedness to fight a counterinsurgency reveals itself. Its usual tactic is to lob artillery shells into a general area, and the results have seemed to hurt civilians more than the militants, residents say.
In some parts of Pakistan, civilian militias have risen to fight the Taliban. But in Swat, the Taliban’s gains amid a large army presence has convinced many that the military must be conspiring with the Taliban.
“It’s very mysterious how they get so much weapons and support,” while nearby districts are comparatively calm, said Muzaffar ul-Mulk Khan, a member of Parliament from Swat, who said his home near Mingora was recently destroyed by the Taliban.
“We are bewildered by the military. They patrol only in Mingora. In the rest of Swat they sit in their bases. And the militants can kill at will anywhere in Mingora,” he said.
“Nothing is being done by the government," Mr. Khan added.
Accusations that the military lacks the will to fight in Swat are “very unfair and unjustified,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the chief military spokesman, who said 180 army soldiers and officers had been killed in Swat in the past 14 months.
“They do reach out, and they do patrol,” he said.
Military officials also say they are trying to step up activity in Swat. This weekend, soldiers were deployed to protect a handful of educational buildings in Mingora, amid a wave of school bombings.
General Abbas said the military did not have the means to block Taliban radio transmissions across such a wide area, but he disputed the view that Mingora had fallen to the militants.
“Just because they come out at night and throw down four or five bodies in the square does not mean that militants control anything,” he said.
Few officials would dispute that one of the Pakistani military’s biggest mistakes in Swat was its failure to protect Pir Samiullah, a local leader whose 500 followers fought the Taliban in the village of Mandal Dag. After the Taliban killed him in a firefight last month, the militants demanded that his followers reveal his gravesite — and then started beheading people until they got the information, one Mandal Dag villager said.
“They dug him up and hung his body in the square,” the villager said, and then they took the body to a secret location. The desecration was intended to show what would happen to anyone who defied the Taliban’s rule, but it also made painfully clear to Swat residents that the Pakistani government could not be trusted to defend those who rose up against the militants.
“He should have been given more protection,” said one Pakistani security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject. “He should have been made a symbol of resistance.”
Gruesome displays like the defilement of Pir Samiullah’s remains are an effective tactic for the Taliban, who have shown cruel efficiency in following through on their threats.
Recently, Shah Doran broadcast word that the Taliban intended to kill a police officer who he said had killed three people.
“We have sent people, and tomorrow you will have good news,” he said on his nightly broadcast, according to a resident of Matta, a Taliban stronghold. The next day the decapitated body of the policeman was found in a nearby village.
Even in Mingora, a town grown hardened to violence, residents were shocked early this month to find the bullet-ridden body of one of the city’s most famous dancing girls splayed on the main square.
Known as Shabana, the woman was visited at night by a group of men who claimed to want to hire her for a party. They shot her to death and dragged her body more than a quarter-mile to the central square, leaving it as a warning for anyone who would flout Taliban decrees.
The leader of the militants in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, gained prominence from making radio broadcasts and running an Islamic school, becoming popular among otherwise isolated homemakers and inspiring them to sell their jewelry to finance his operation. He also drew support from his marriage to the daughter of Sufi Mohammed, a powerful religious leader in Swat until 2001 who later disowned his son-in-law.
Even though Swat does not border Afghanistan or any of Pakistan’s seven lawless federal tribal areas, Maulana Fazlullah eventually allied with Taliban militants who dominate regions along the Afghan frontier.
His fighters now roam the valley with sniper rifles, Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortar tubes and, according to some officials, night-vision goggles and flak vests.
His latest tactic is a ban on girls’ attending school in Swat, which will be tested in February when private schools are scheduled to reopen after winter recess. The Taliban have already destroyed 169 girls’ schools in Swat, government officials say, and they expect most private schools to stay closed rather than risk retaliation.
“The local population is totally fed up, and if they had the chance they would lynch each and every Talib,” said Mr. Naveed Khan, the police official. “But the Taliban are so cruel and violent, no one will oppose them. If this is not stopped, it will spill into other areas of Pakistan.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/world/asia/25swat.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
.....
Some Comments:
OMG, can't anyone stop this cruel regime? How could the Taliban get hold of money and guns? Why do people let other people do stupid things in the name of religion? Why is UN so impotent? This is so depressing.
— claudia, denver
What do they call that armed, unmanned drone - THe Predator? Hmm.
— Cedarglen, Oregon
Well... the birds come home to roost. ISI's support of the Taliban now reverberates internally within Pakistan? It seems that no historical lessons can be learned, indeed. Zardari should consider inviting the Israelis to assist Pakistan in rooting out the evil in their midst.
— ML, Kabul, AFG
Obama needs to get a grip on Pakistan early in his administration rather than later. A comprehensive plan of dealing with and containing any fall out of Pakistan's Talibanization should be formulated. Despite years of NATO presence in the region it is clear that the Pakistani government or the Pakistani intelligence and military are NOT part of the solution. American aid to these agencies only emboldens them and in turn the Taliban. Unless severe economic and diplomatic pressure is exerted on Pakistan to reign in terrorists like the Taliban on its soil, there is not going be any change.
— Ian, NYC
If there was ever a chance for us--the U.S-- to show leadership in the region, it is now.
We must do something that gives hope to the embattled people of Swat. I have seen the valley in happier times and I know its people want to live a normal life. I despair and cringe when I think of little school children--especially girls--who will never know the pleasure of reading, writing, or thinking for themselves. We have to convince the government of Pakistan it is time to take action against destruction being wrought by the Taliban. We have to help them in every way.
We can't just let remote controlled drones do our work. It is time for us to act on the ground. But I am not sure that will happen. We seek expedient answers in a place where expediency won't work. I hope President Obama will act to bring peace to a place that once welcomed people from America with broad smiles and not with the hatred they do now.
— S.B., Anchorage, Alaska
If the Taliban cancer, like the breast cancer, is not nipped at the bud stage, it will spread and most certainly metastasize and destroy the newly democratic Pakistan. Part of the blame for this belongs to the USA also because, while proclaiming loudly that it loves democracy, it has consistently and unwaveringly supported its former dictator, the corrupt President Musharraf for ten years (1999 to August 18, 2008). Musharraf turned a blind eye towards the Taliban and allowed it to spread, and some of his generals even supported the Taliban. It is quite reasonable to expect similar results, next in Egypt, whose dictator Mubarak American presidents have supported for decades, and then in Jordan, whose King American presidents adore. This policy is not only short sighted, it is hypocritical too.
United States should encourage Prime Minister Zardari to immediately send a huge army to fumigate the entire Swat area and eradicate the Taliban infestation(or swat them as one would a fly?). It should be very easy to spot the infested towns: just look for areas where every man has beard and then look for and cull Taliban's ruthless leaders. The time to act is now. Prime Minister Zardari should waste no more time.
Poverty, discontent, and lack of good educational opportunity are the breeding grounds of the Taliban. In northern India, even in areas dominated by Muslims, Taliban hasn't taken root because the people have access to schools and they have at least some hope for a better life in the future.
— Yesh Prabhu, Plainsboro, NJ
As far as I know, triangulating the source of radio transmissions should be fairly easy. Are the Pakistani military complicit, or just afraid to do anything? Reading your article I think the Swat residents would welcome foreign help in removing the Taliban, if the Pakistani government would be courageous enough to invite them. People in Pakistan should realize that the Taliban are as much a foreign power as western nations are. The Taliban are not about religion, but only about gaining power to abuse people. The Taliban are perverting Islam to meet their own (secular) interests.
— Math Fuzzy, Europe
Pakistani Terrorism + Pakistani Taliban + ISI + Nuclear Weapons = Goodbye America.
— Amit, NYC
ISI brought out this jinnee from the bottle.World and Pakistan government should ask ISI to go to Swat and face this terrible music.Pretty faces of women activists appearing on Paki TV to " defend" their rights, have a lot to defend,before Taliban reaches their cosy homes in Lahor,Islamabad and Karachi.Pak armed forces keep warning India about giving befitting reply in case of a conflict.They too should feel ashamed that they are unable to rein in these mercenaries.Taliban is an American gift to this part of the world.Mr.Barak Obama has his role cut out, if he wants US policies to succeed in Afghanistan-Pakistan.Are Russians having the last laugh?
— Jitendra Desai, Surat - Gujarat- India
Everytime I read of these activities I become enraged. Enraged not by the ignorance of those dealing out such practices but enraged at the lack of anger coming from the rest of the world, the UN, other great countries that would view these activities as anti-human, barbarism. Yet, there is no outrage, there is no condemnation what there is, is silent tolerance of a regime of hatred murder, power mongering, fear producing and terrorism based on a belief that I can only describe as insane. Yet the world watches and does NOTHING !!!!!
— Eddie Z, New York
Swat is charming tourist attraction. It was a very peaceful place having nice and and courteous people. Crimes are committed in the name of religion. In this area writ of the Government must be maintained at any cost. Obviously some thing is wrong somewhere.
— snashraf, Karachi
Islamic radicalism like Saudi-supported wahaabism and the taliban movement could be strongly denounced by Islamic thinkers and theologians (imams and others). That would be the first step before military action and effective supression. As long as many of the 1.5 billion muslims in the world believe these guys are rightful western military action will be as effective as trying to mop up a raising tide.
However, no such condemnation is being heard, aside from one or another isolated, usually european-muslim religious authorities. Saudi Arabia, the birth place of Islam and protector of its most holy places is stunningly silent.
The US and most of Europe have the saudis as allies (all that oil...) so it is hard to see any end to the disgusting, insane radicalism. I pity the moderate Pakistanis, a talented and intelligent people that have to submit to such barbaric medieval savagery.
— Pete, Sao Paulo
Taliban got to be crushed and there is no other option. Pakistani army and security establihment has failed in making any real progress, despite tall claims that army operation has been undertaken to control the situation. What is pakistani army for? Why is it so ineffective?Why cant it control a group of few thousand hardliners and mercenaries who have terrorised the whole region. People are being misled and great efforts are being made in pakistani media to portray all this as the price of supporting the American war on terror. The civilian government, led by nationalist party, in the Frontier province has been made totally ineffective as elected representatives fear for their lives. Who is supporting and financing taliban? Why is no one talking about Saudi connection as huge amount of private saudi money is coming to support the arab millitants operating in the region. The new amerian administration got to act quickly against taliban and all whats happening in the tribal/swat region of pakistan.It has got to support Pakistani civilian government and send a clear message to Pakistani establishment that it has got to deliver by crushing taliban and not to play with fire any more.
— BUK, Karachi, Pakistan
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and they only think Bhuttos mean a race or a clan. but the fact is contrary to it.
the fact is in the eyes of PPP Voters ZARDARI and his Sister Firyal TALPUR are Bhuttos while Mumtaz, Ghanwa, Fatmah, and Zulfiqar Junior are NOT Bhuttos.
so being Bhutto is not being of a Bhutto clan but it is something of character, sacrifice, commitment and standings.
but Bhutto haters, right wingers, products of the ISI and General Zia will never understand as their hearts and minds are locked by the Mullahs and jihadis.
MalangBaba Says:
@democrat,
“zerdari is elected president of pakistan,we all should respect him,second he is entitled to govern his own way,if u dont like his policies,its fine,vote him out in next eletions but dont try to derail democray,……..”
They are as democratic as Zia. their justice is justice of Zia. They can worship even Shaitan as far as he promise to kill Bhuttos.
Their democracy is selective
Their justice is selective
They never respected democratic mandate in the past they will never accept it in future.
A year ago they were asking for head of Shaheed BB
Now they r repeatedly calling for killing of President zardari and Balawal. But they don’t know that Bhuttos like Egyptian phoenix are reborn from their own ashes. Tum Kitnay Bhutto Maaro gay?
Read the following articles on Bhuttoism:
Bhuttoism - By Dr. Farid A. Malik
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto versus Nawaz Sharif: A comparison - By Dr. Safdar Mehmood
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto did not compromise on national interests. They have become immortal. writes Dr. A.Q. Khan
Bhutto family and Pakistan - by Asadullah Ghalib