GOJRA INCIDENT….SHAME…SHAME

M WAQAR
I have no regret to mention that I am ashamed what had happened in Gojra with the minorities living in Pakistan. I am ashamed of those who did this criminal act for whatever the reason. Shame! Shame on all of us. There are no words to describe this. The government must immediately bring the perpetrators to justice and make a horrible example of them. What may I ask is the Chief Minister of Punjab doing about this? Is he going to remain an idle spectator or is he going to show some backbone and take these fanatics who sully our already muddied name, just paying money to victims cant be end of this horrible incident, money can’t bring love ones who were burnt in front of their families, are we living in 21st century? Is this the message we are sending to the world that we are barbarians, we don’t have any respect for human life, we are a country where we behead innocent people and hang dead bodies to trees, we don’t have any tolerance, ours is an intolerant society, and we are particularly intolerant of those whose faith is not Muslim. That is the message we are sending to the World. Its extremely sad. Sad to know that even in this day and age such extreme level of religious intolerance exists. How can we ever progress with such a mind set?
Where are those champions of Islam like Imran Khan,Nawaz Sharif,Qazi Hussain,Fazal Rehman? Why they are silent? Another shameful blot on our national conscience. The perpetrators of this crime must be punished and we should make an example out of them , on mere allegations (which are later proven baseless) they kill people, destroy houses and then take over property. And everyone in these mobs, from their leaders down to the foot soldiers, is scum of the earth. The police and the district administration should publicly apologize to the Christian community, Any group that targets women and children should be ashamed of themselves. The horrific incident at Gojra has humiliated and shocked the entire nation, and we should hang our heads in shame over the fact that barbaric mobs burned Christians alive as the law enforcement agencies were unable to do anything to protect them. To add to the tragedy, the aggrieved people had to launch a strong protest to get an FIR registered against some 816 perpetrators, including the Toba Tek Singh district coordination officer (DCO) and the district police officer (DPO). A report issued by the Minority Rights Group International in 2007 was a commentary on the dismal state of human rights in Pakistan in respect of its minorities. The document placed Pakistan at number eight among the first ten of some 70 countries that had denied basic rights to their minorities. The grave incident at Gojra comes as a stark reminder for the country’s bleak human rights record .  I am a Muslim but I am ashamed today for the acts done by these killers in the name of My tolerant religion and I couldn’t comprehend that how these so called protectors of Islam and Prophet(pbuh) would face Allah and Prophet (pbhu) on the day of judgment when He would ask them that who gave them the authority? who proved this blasphemy actually occurred? and how they decided that this was done by the same people they killed? Killing innocent people is not Islamic. The animals who are involved in killing and burning innocent people must be severely punished. Christians and Muslims should work together to find out who was the insensitive culprit who did this disrespectful act. Those persons are equally responsible for death of the innocent peoples.
Once again, the incident was provoked by allegations of desecration of the Holy Quran, which were unfounded according to the Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah. Instead of allowing the law enforcement agencies to do their job and respect the decision of the courts, the mobs decided to take matters into their own hands and destroy the homes and lives of the Christian community of the area. This is a shocking incident that must be condemned to the fullest, and the government of Punjab needs to make an example out of the hooligans and barbarians that conducted this massacre. They have shamed the entire nation and must be punished. We must show that we are a nation of laws, not a mob. Further, this is the second high profile incident in less than two months where Christians were targeted by Muslim extremists on baseless allegations of blasphemy. It is clear that the agenda of these mobs is very different from what they claim. Again, the law must reign supreme, not the bloodlust of extremist mobs. Its Muslims duty to not let such bloodthirsty extremists take over our religion. It is time for true Muslims to take back their religion from the violent thugs running amok . Punjab Govt is living in denial, The provincial government is not accepting that a large part of Punjab is suffering from religious intolerance due to the Taliban and religious outfits . The tearful and tragic incidence of Korian Village of Gojra is one of the so many other cruel acts of fundamentalists in Pakistan, till now we could point to Indian Gujrat and say that forming mobs to attack mobs is something that happens only in India. No longer true. Thanks to these animals wearing the mask of Islam. People who form mob and attack others are nothing but blood thirsty thugs. These are criminals waiting for any opportunity to commit most vile criminal acts. This barbaric attack on unarmed and peaceful Christian people of Pakistan must be  condemn . It is a shameful act . Extremism that has been brewing in Pakistan for decades especially after the advent of Zia era. Right wing political parties and state agencies have been busy perpetuating various internal and external hot spots to justify their consolidation of power and to divert attention from the real issues faced by 160 million people of Pakistan. This is not Pakistan of Quaid -e- Azam . This is the country of militants , instead of blaming the culprits, and also the local law enforcement agencies for their criminal negligence, there were some elements who started blaming a “foreign hand”, which is not something new in Pakistan, evidence indicates that local extremists were aided by banned terrorist organizations who were responsible for this crime against humanity, these barbarians are no “foreign hands” they are the ones who have brought us enough grief and shame. Religious fanaticism will eat up the very basis of the country if we do not curb this trend forthwith. The Punjab Government must understand that Punjab is the heartland of the country and Pakistan is on microscopic scrutiny these days. Every news emerging from Pakistan is immediately taken up by International media and what sort of image are we portraying ?Human rights are enshrined in the constitution of Pakistan and religion is often used falsely to suppress the minorities.
Progressive forces in Pakistan and around the world to become a formidable force and rise against the forces of hate and evil. Let us embrace diversity in Pakistan and create an environment where peoples of Pakistan are not judged by their color, nationality, ethnic background or a religious faith passed onto them by their ancestors just like a color of skin or a chattel. Let us make Pakistan an inclusive country - a nation of many nations.
Let us promote brotherhood and sisterhood progressive people to stand like a shield of steel between the forces of pillage and destruction and the noble causes of 160 million innocent peoples of Pakistan who are yearning for peace, prosperity, individual and collective dignity, justice and democracy. The time has come to take politics out of the business of religion and religion out of the business of politics.  We need to be hearing words of conciliation and fraternity from our mosques. It is our religious leaders who are our primary influence, and it is to them that we must look to douse the fires of intolerance and hatred. Would they? Do they have that within them? Or is inclusively and tolerance beyond those who lead our prayers? Its time for progressive, educated Pakistanis to raise your voice against this discrimination and make Pakistan a better place to live for every one. 

Pakistan's power politics

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk
Few things are as oppressive in Pakistan as the summer heat. In colonial times, the British would shift their garrison headquarters from Rawalpindi to the cool peaks of Murree, just north of present day Islamabad. Today, the elite are more likely to skip the country entirely or barricade themselves in the air-conditioned comfort of their cars and homes.

On the streets of Pakistan's vibrant cities, the industrious whir of countless generators is as ubiquitous as the hawkers desperately trying to make ends meet.

With its ever-growing population, Pakistan has always struggled to match energy supplies with demand. Those difficulties have turned violent recently. In Karachi and throughout the Punjab last week angry mobs went on a rampage and assailed power companies in frustration at the long daily power cuts that have brought modern life to a standstill.

The Gilani Research Foundation estimates (pdf) that 53% of Pakistan's population goes without electricity for more than eight hours a day. In fact, the blackouts are even longer in rural and poor urban areas which also lack other basic infrastructure like roads and waste water drainage. The situation has led to a series of annual hikes in energy costs. In the poorest slums of Karachi, for instance, people are forced to clandestinely tap into the electrical grids of rich communities because the retail price is too prohibitive. Power theft in Karachi and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas alone is believed to cost the state £138m in lost revenues.

The government has been under pressure to increase tariffs and reduce subsidies across a broad spectrum of industries including energy ever since agreeing to an IMF loan package last year in desperation as the nation's foreign reserves dwindled. The move has caused much consternation among consumers and local businesses, not just the angry mobs.

The power cuts occur with greater frequency during the long hot summer months. Every time they occur, modern life and business grinds to a halt. This, along with poor employment prospects, and education and health services – and not the Taliban – is the greatest concern for the average Pakistani.

"We have inherited these problems [from the Musharraf regime]. There was no planning done, there was no [energy] policy for the past 3-4 years," Asim Hussain, national adviser for petroleum and natural resources, tells me during a break in a London conference on Pakistan's oil and gas industry.

Just as a gaping hole divides the supply and demand for electricity in Pakistan, the country is heavily reliant on imported fossil fuels: local energy production accounts for only 15% of all usage. Oil and gas make up 80% of all of Pakistan's energy consumption and with 62,000km of pipelines, it has one of the largest networks in the world.

Authorities say they hope to raise national power generation by 4000 megawatts by 2010 but there are concerns the target is unlikely to be met as political intrigues continue to plague the government. Similar intrigues have scuppered attempts at exploiting alternative and renewable energy sources such as hydroelectricity. Among the stalled initiatives is the contentious Kalabagh dam project that proponents say will deliver greater irrigation for agriculture and quench a thirsty nation's energy needs by tapping into the Indus river. The project is opposed by all of Pakistan's provincial governments except the dominant Punjab. Critics cite multiple reasons for opposing the dam's construction including environmental degradation, mass displacement of regional communities, and domination of the project by the Punjab.

The failure to find local energy sources has compelled government and business to look abroad with mixed success. Pakistan recently signed a gas pipeline deal with Iran, but it will be some years before the taps will be turned on. Another proposal is to import LPG across the Persian gulf from Qatar, but such an ambitious venture requires substantial infrastructure still lacking in Pakistan.

With that and the unending energy crisis in mind, the Pakistan government has been wooing multinationals at a series of oil and gas exploration conferences in London, Houston and Calgary last week. With its Petroleum Policy 2009, the current government says it will reinvigorate Pakistan's troubled energy sector primarily through foreign investment.

Pakistan is not just a gateway to mineral resource wealth in Central Asia and the Middle East, it is rich in minerals and fossil fuels. According to government sources, there are believed to be reserves of 27bn barrels of oil and 280trn cubic feet of gas. Yet most of that wealth remains locked away: only 3.4% of oil and 19% of gas resources have been tapped thus far. "Pakistan has significant remaining exploration potential," explains a British geologist at the London conference. That has much to do with the country's "complex geology", and the fact that many of the most promising sites lie in the unstable regions of Balochistan and North West Frontier Province, home to separatists, militants and bandits.

Those obstacles haven't dissuaded some of the largest oil and gas companies – such as British Petroleum and ENI – from investing in large exploration licenses. "With great risks come great rewards," explains one eager executive from another multinational. "We have had years of experience in Iraq," another eager entrepreneur from a private security company assures me. The stakes are indeed high. "There is no doubt that we are dependent on foreign companies to exploit Pakistan's natural resources," senior petroleum ministry bureaucrat GA Sabri. Eighteen out of 20 companies operating ventures in Pakistan are foreign-owned.

For years indigenous and regional communities have complained that their ancestral lands have been damaged by prospecting resource companies, or that they haven't been given a stake in the riches under their feet. In a glossy pamphlet, the state-controlled Pakistan Petroleum Limited claims to be committed to developing these very same communities.

As the government and multinationals divide the spoils, however, the question remains whether the average citizen will get a seat at the table.

Where the Mullahs Are the Upper Crust

NEW YORK TIMES
THE turmoil in the Swat Valley has raised a chilling prospect for Pakistan — that the Taliban’s Islamic takeover in the once-peaceful area was turning into a social revolution, with mullahs leading peasants in the seizure of property from rich landlords who had fled in fear of their lives.

The most worrisome question has been whether the revolution would spread from Swat to the much more populous and strategic province next door, Punjab.

In the logic of revolutions, one might expect it to. This is, after all, a country where more than half the population lives in desperate poverty in the countryside, and the rich live in walled estates, blissfully untouched by ordinary peoples’ problems.

But Pakistan is more complicated than that. Its politics and economics are far more local than national; regional, ethnic and cultural differences are very deep. The mullahs of Swat may be calling for the downtrodden masses to unite, but here in Punjab, religious leaders are still firmly tied to the upper crust.

Pakistan encompasses four provinces — Baluchistan, Sindh, Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province (which includes the Swat Valley) — each with its own languages and culture. The western mountains are tribal and so remote that in some areas, Pakistan’s Constitution does not even apply. It is from those badlands that the Taliban swept outward to neighboring Swat, itself a multi-ethnic patchwork. Baluchistan, another border area, has its own struggle for national autonomy. Sindh is mostly agrarian, with Karachi, an economic hub, at its southern tip.

Punjab, the fourth and most strategic province, is the country’s heart — home to the powerful military as well as much of Pakistan’s governing class; social upheaval here would drag the whole country with it. In my travels in this province, none of the mullahs were talking about revolution. In fact, the social justice discussions that have driven political movements in the wider Islamic world — Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Sadr Army of Iraq’s Moktada al-Sadr, for example — were notably absent.

Instead, I have found a surprisingly comfortable coexistence between the mullahs, the landlords and the political elite (the latter two are often one and the same). Even the harder-line preachers, among the sternly traditional Muslims known as Deobandis, have stuck to a bland, nonconfrontational line.

One leader of a Deobandi seminary in Kabirwala, a town in southern Punjab, told me that the land was distributed as God had intended, and that the only problem with the landlords was that some were insufficiently Islamic, though now that was improving.

History explains much of the feudal outlook of the clerics in Punjab. They tend not to oppose the establishment in part because the state itself made them powerful. In the 1980s, the military dictator Zia ul-Haq gave land and money to Deobandis, a policy the United States supported because it needed both Mr. Zia and fervent jihadists in the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Mr. Zia also crushed social ferment throughout Pakistan, and the debate on class and social justice that went with it, stifling political growth. To this day, Pakistan retains a colonial-style system of patronage: I-will-vote-for you-because-you-are-important-and-I-think-you-might-be-able-to-help-me-in-my-time-of-need.

At the same time, the Zia government elevated the mullahs, once unimportant men seen mostly at weddings and funerals. They became powerful players with their own political space — a kind of middleman between state and populace, not breaking their ties to the elite that had empowered them.

“The mullahs were one of the state’s major allies,” said Aasim Sajjad, a political economy professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences who is part of a small leftist political movement in Pakistan. He argues that in Punjab, the conditions for a revolution simply are not present, in part because the mullahs are still comfortable in their ties with the state.

“I don’t see them being interested in radical social change that really attacks the existing structures of power in the society,” he said.

This is not to say that all are nonviolent, just that their violence does not challenge the state or the social order. The leader of Sipah-e-Sohaba, an ultra-orthodox Sunni political party, whose military wing believes Shiites to be apostates and has been killing them since the 1990s, was allowed to contest an election from a prison cell in 2002. (He won.) Another militant group, Jesh Muhammed, which supports Pakistani claims to Kashmir, operates unhindered in the city of Bahawalpur. And Hafez Saeed, a cleric whose associates are believed to have carried out the attack on Mumbai, India, last year, gives weekly sermons here in Lahore.

There have been acts of terrorism in Punjab, particularly after the government attacked a mosque tied to jihadists in Islamabad in July 2007. Militants here began to attack the state and the police. And though they have joined forces with the Taliban, they remain the minority and have so far not enlisted the same amount of popular support as the Taliban has in the western tribal areas.

Even in Swat, the Taliban’s takeover didn’t happen overnight. At first, some landlords lent tacit (if worried) support, donating food and money to the seminary where Fazlullah, the main Taliban leader, began his political movement. The government itself made peace deals with the Taliban. Only later did conditions worsen, with militants seizing ever more power, and eventually overrunning the landlords. The military has since fought to eject them, but it is not clear how effectively.

Mr. Sajjad, the Lahore University professor, argues, as well, that the Swat takeover was more a spontaneous eruption than a product of organized strategy, certainly different from the way Lenin led the Bolsheviks in 1917. “This was not a well-thought-out clear visionary movement,” he said. “It’s a situation that spiraled out of control in part because the state let it.”

And in any case, it was the small Swat Valley, not the strategic heartland of Pakistan. Few people here believe that the military, which calls Punjab its home, would let the province succumb to a militant takeover.

Still, this is Pakistan, whose society is in flux, and whose government often seems mostly absent.

“This place is ripe for extraordinary situations,” Mr. Sajjad said.

TEEN AGE SUICIDE BOMBERS TRAINED BY CRIMINAL TALIBAN

Editorial: DAILY TIMES
National ‘mind damage’ by Taliban

The NWFP Senior Minister, Mr Bashir Ahmed Bilour, has revealed that 200 “completely brainwashed” children of ages 6 to 13 years have been recovered from Malakand, ready to act as suicide-bombers for the Taliban. Further details are quite unsettling: the children are so completely transformed by their trainers that they refuse to reintegrate into normal society and even threaten their parents with death because they are “non-believers”.

We know that children were increasingly being used by the Taliban for their terrorist attacks in recent times. The pattern even contained the message that the Taliban and Al Qaeda were finding it increasingly difficult to train grown-up individuals to do the job. We also know that a child from Karachi is being prosecuted for being a part of the plot that took the life of Ms Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi in 2007. But new details about the use of suicide-bombing coming to light establish a pattern of employing children rather than men.

Our troops discovered suicide-factories in South Waziristan where children brought in from all over Pakistan were kept and “trained” by men who had become famous for their expertise at “converting” the boys in “half an hour”. A cleric from South Punjab was actually caught as he returned from South Waziristan after delivering the latest batch of child bombs to Baitullah Mehsud. This is the worst mind damage that the Taliban movement has done to Pakistan. It has nothing to do with Islam directly but Islam is certainly being misused as an instrument of brainwash.

The 200 child suicide-bombers now in army custody should be handled with great care. They have to be put through a debriefing with a psychologist who should grade them in accordance with the intensity of their alienation from society. They should not be let out into society after a “corrective” sermon from a cleric. That will not work, as shown again and again by men who suffered punishment in prisons, including Guantanamo Bay, and then went right back to practising terrorism once they were released.

Generally speaking, Pakistani children are ripe for the plucking. Poor and deprived, they are primed with religious instruction, as embodied in our syllabi, and succumb to Taliban trainers willingly because of the orthodox views inculcated in them by our school system. While the instruction in state-owned schools is completely benign, some of its elements are selectively employed by the trainers to fashion a suicide-bomber out of the boy. The idea of “shahadat” and the attainment of paradise are misapplied, and the Muslims that he is supposed to kill through his suicide are first apostatised into kafirs.

Unfortunately, a concordance between the orthodox clergy and the Taliban trainers helps the evil process. For instance, the condemnation of suicide-bombing through a collective fatwa issued by the ulema of Pakistan recognises the phenomenon of suicide-bombers as “fedayeen” and outlaws suicide-bombing only when it targets “innocent Muslims”. From this legal base, the boys are easily convinced that they are dying in the cause of Islam by killing those who have rendered themselves non-believers by their acts.

The national consensus against the Taliban, and effective military operations against them, have turned the tide of grown-up suicide bombers. The conduct of the state too has helped in this. For instance, Jamil and Khalique who tried to kill President Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi in 2003 by ramming their explosive-laden car into his cavalcade, were Jaish-e-Muhammad operatives who once fought the covert war against India and were caught fighting against the Americans in 2001 in Afghanistan. Thinking they would change their ways, the agencies let them off, which was a mistake.

Now, of course, the illusions of covert war have been more or less eliminated and the army is fighting against the jihadis that once were its extended front rank. This has changed the trend. The jihadis offer themselves less and less as suicide-bombers; and if they do, they have proved less and less reliable. The new trend is to get caught and start spilling the beans on their patrons, which is actually a measure of success of the army in its war against the Taliban. Ajmal Kasab had the option of suicide; he did not take it. And he has spilled a lot of beans.

The “mind damage” at the national level is being gradually healed as “intimidation” under the control of Taliban is less and less possible. But those who have been roped into becoming suicide-bombers are a special case. And if they are children they should be kept in quarantine and reintegrated into a society that they should view as benign.

TERROR CZAR AND CRIMINAL SUFI OF SWAT VALLEY

THE FRONTIER POST
EDITORIAL
An act stinking foul
This act of the ANP-led Frontier government stinks repulsively foul, as its arrest drama of TNSM’s Sufi Mohammad raises more questions than it answers. Too slim is the official version put out by Mian Iftikhar, the ANP man bossing over this provincial government’s information activity. Buy this would not even truckers parking their lorries in this ANP Goebbels’ truck adda, so riddled it is with holes. He says the Sufi was arrested as he was planning to destroy the restored peace in Malakand. But why was this old witch roaming free, in the first place? Wasn’t his act as satanic as his thuggish son-in law Fazlullah’s in pushing Malakand to the precipice, to pull the region back from where have cost so many precious lives, such a massive painful displacement of civilian populace and such a colossal human suffering? So why had he been left at large, and that too, yet more intriguingly, to live as a free man in the very provincial metropolis of Peshawar under the very noses of Frontier’s top official hierarchy and its ANP-led political leadership? What kind of an underground could it be that Iftikhar talks of the old hag having slipped into to evade arrest? And when was a hunt launched, by the way, to catch him when Iftikhar himself contradictorily asserts that because of the provincial administration’s preoccupation with relief of the IDPs had “restrained us from his arrest”? Even his very contention of preoccupation with the IDPs is all fraught. The ANP-led administration, at best, showed itself an enumerator of the displaced, and that too of doubtful credentials. Not as a relief provider. On this score, it drew wholesale flak from all around for its unfeeling unconcern for the displaced. In fact, the Punjab government earned much appreciation for relief effort, not a patch which could this ANP-dominated administration muster, so dismal was its performance on this humanitarian front. It badly let down its own people who were cared for more by others. So Iftikhar has trotted out all excuses for not nabbing Sufi earlier, none of which can hold. His versions’ inconvincibility brings to the fore more intriguingly as to where and why was this devilish character ensconced and at whose behest. And this wears on a sinisterly mysterious airs, given the fact that ANP bigwigs were such staunch admirers of this demonstrably wicked man. So much so, they acted his stout apologists when he blurted out unacceptable rebellious refrains and struck patently anti-state postures. Intrinsically innocent and simple man they said he was when the old trickster has his track record replete with abominable wickedness. Yet the ANP bigwigs projected him as a man of peace and partner of peace. And when the people cried they were propping up a Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale in-the-making, they denounced the critics as the enemies of peace and of the people of Swat. And if they are now decrying him, there has to be a method to their madness. But if the Islamabad security establishment keeps sitting idly by, it will simply only be further shooting itself in the foot. For pretty lone, it has been maligned for allegedly having soft corner for Swati extremists, by the ANP hierarchy, most of all. This establishment, for its own credibility, has to bust this contrivance once and for all. It must get actively involved in investigating this cunning Sufi, at least to hold him to account for the murder of its four personnel, including an army captain, at his orders. People want to know the truth about him. But this truth will surely not be told from Peshawar; it will have to be found out by Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

Editorial: What to do with Sufi Muhammad?

Daily Times
SHOOT HIM AND HANG HIS DEAD BODY TO A POLE OR TREE.
The chief of the banned Tehreek-e Nifaz-e Shariat-e Muhammadi (TNSM), Maulana Sufi Muhammad, has been picked up from a Peshawar house by the “security agencies” and taken to an unknown place. He was arrested along with his two sons. He lost one son during the Swat operation by the Pakistan Army and has one youngest son still living in Peshawar. His son-in-law, Fazlullah, is on the run with the Pakistan Army in hot pursuit, with the blood of hundreds of innocent people on his hands, swearing that he will battle on till the “sharia” of Sufi Muhammad is enforced.

The Sufi disappeared when things got rough in Lower Dir to which he had escaped, and he sensed that his sainthood would not save him if he remained in the midst of terrorists. The safest place for him was finally Peshawar, a city not long ago dominated by the Taliban and their disreputable allies among the criminal gangs. The NWFP government seemed unready to analyse what his presence in the city would finally lead to, in a way showing itself willing to share power with him in time to come.

During the days when his whereabouts were unknown — he was probably somewhere in Punjab — the NWFP government was not very perturbed, happy as long as he did not show up somewhere uncomfortably near. It must have known that the Sufi had lodged himself in Peshawar — some sources say he was in the city for the past three weeks — but it pretended that he was not important enough anymore to bother anyone. Now that it has owned up his arrest, it should revamp its views on what Sufi Muhammad stands for and how dangerous he could be.

Letting the saintly-looking agents of chaos go is a pattern of state behaviour. One can hardly forget the example of the cleric of Lal Masjid because the national view, as projected by the media unfortunately, is overwhelmingly in his favour. But popularity should not divert the state from making a cold-blooded assessment of what such people mean to state security. Sufi Muhammad’s case is relevant because his strategy in Swat unfolded in the glare of media publicity and finally created a national consensus against the Taliban when he failed to make it stick.

Sufi Muhammad was a known quantity because of his anarchic adventures in the 1990s but was overlooked because everyone and his uncle was for implementing, on trust, his qazi-based sharia in Malakand, including the people of the region living under the terror of his son-in-law’s routine intimidatory beheadings. Under the agreement signed with the NWFP government, he claimed he would also appoint the qazis of his choice while pretending that he could persuade his son-in-law to stop killing innocent people. But when the crunch came, he denounced the Pakistani Constitution and disclosed his true colours.

By denouncing the Supreme Court of Pakistan and democracy as a system of kufr, Sufi Muhammad cut himself off from the powerful Deobandi consensus too, proving once again that the Deobandis obeyed the Taliban not vice versa. It recalled Maulana Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid in 2007 when he began to reject his Deobandi backers because of what he claimed was their passivity in the face of the challenge to enforce sharia in Islamabad. Do we want to see Sufi Muhammad too winning like Maulana Aziz and making the Deobandi confederacy of madrassas do an about-turn? Or should we bring charges against him based on his culpability in the loss of life and property in Malakand?

Pakistan has been brought back from the brink of state-failure by the national consensus that developed against the Taliban in the wake of Sufi Muhammad’s misdeeds. The military operation is succeeding on all fronts and terrorists are now being caught before they can carry out their attacks. We simply cannot afford to roll back these achievements and allow Sufi Muhammad to restart his campaign from Peshawar where, before long, he would have been surrounded by his armed devotees, rendering his house a no-go area for the police. Taking him out of the DI Khan jail and bestowing on him a status he never deserved has let the country down. That mistake should not be made again.

Stop targeting China’s political system

Editorial..GLOBAL TIMES
No matter how differently Western media outlets reported the March 14 incident in Tibet last year and the recent riots in Urumqi, their comments shared the same judgment toward the Chinese government. China’s political system was often the single target attacked quickly and easily.“One party dictatorship,” “China’s Communist leadership” and “the continued rule of the Communist party” are terms the Western media liked to use while underreporting the severity of the riots and the brutal attacks on innocent people.This stereotypical thinking shows Western media outlets always feel the political system of their particular country is absolutely superior to China’s.Once something bad happens in China, they simply blame China’s political system. In their eyes, it is inevitable for such a “backward and flawed” political system to have problems. With no change in the system, China and its government can never solve these problems.However, every country is distinct and complex. There must be many factors that lead to the occurrence of social and ethnic problems, instead of just one. It is unwise and irresponsible to blame everything on China’s political system.For example, the imbalance of development and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor are universal problems in China’s transition from planned economy to market economy. This problem becomes entangled with ethnic issues in areas where ethnic minorities live.As a result, many Western media outlets criticize China’s problems with its policy toward ethnic minority groups and further attack China’s political system. But these problems have nothing to do with the system.Actually, China’s current political system, in the past decades, has made remarkable achievements in developing the economy, improving the well-being of the Chinese people of all 56 ethnic groups, and promoting the country’s role in the international community. China’s governmental system was the practical choice of the Chinese people and revolutionaries after a long search and struggle.History and reality have proved it to be the right choice, one in keeping with China’s characteristics.The Western media’s prejudice toward and ignorance of China’s political system’s achievements stem from deep-rooted distrust of the system’s capability to survive and to succeed.
Any country, including Western countries, cannot be free of social and ethnic problems in its development. Serious social problems such as racial issues and the high rate of crime are rife in the US and other Western countries.In recent years, social and racial unrests of various scales happened in Western countries such as the US, France and Germany.If Chinese media simply attribute all this to the US’ political system, it will be “nonsense” to Western media and do nothing good to build mutual understanding between the two countries and the two peoples.It is time for the Western media to take an objective approach toward understanding and explaining China’s problems and changes, one which is less simplistic and more open-minded.
Only in this way can they tell the truth and achieve mutual trust.

PESHAWAR'S SORRY TALE

THENEWSPK.COM
Consider this: Shakespeare’s tragic romance Romeo Juliet is on. The auditorium of Peshawar University is the venue, and the university’s English literary society is the organiser. All of a sudden, during one of the high points of the play, an emotional Romeo takes Juliet in arms and hugs her. Only a few conservatives among the audience wink in disapproval, while the rest rise in applause for the spontaneity of the scene, among them “Juliet’s” father as well (eyewitness account by a university veteran).



This was in early 1965.



Fast forward to 2002-2007: (Peshawar reels under the bigots of the opportunistic Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal)
Females cannot appear in billboards. No picture or female depiction in public places. Nishtar Hall, which used to host stage plays and musical concerts, is shut down and famed singers like Gulzar Alam are either in hiding or lie low in profile or leave the city for fear of religious zealots.
Whether the decline in Peshawar, or Malakand’s siege by Taliban zealots, the MMA also carries a great part of the responsibility and owes an apology to the Frontier’s people. It was the MMA that looked the other way and kept silent as Mangal Bagh, Mufti Munir Shakir, Haji Naamdar, and Maulana Fazlullah established their fiefdoms around Peshawar and Swat.
And now comes July 2009: “Baba, will we be able to play in the street and buy ice cream from the market without fear,” one of my nephews asks his father, when told the family is moving to Oman for a new posting.
The fears that Dr Mazhar saw in the eyes of his son and the uncertainty that accompanied the query on ice cream epitomised the socio-political decline that the city has undergone in the past three decades, beginning with the Soviet invasion and subsequent occupation of Afghanistan.
The city has virtually turned into a microcosm of the consequences of a disastrous policy pursued by the ruling establishment – personified first by Gen Ziaul Haq and then Gen Pervez Musharraf, equally assisted by the mutual animosity of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif in the 1990s.
Foreign airlines have suspended to and from the city. Ever more bunkers and road blocks are appearing on vital link roads. The murders of a USAID worker in March and a UNHCR worker on July 16 have more volatility to the socio-political environment, thus creating an air of fear. That most of the markets have lost their teeming crowds is also a direct consequence of the Peshawarites today live in fear and uncertainty, unnerved by a multitude of factors.
Firstly, the string of abductions – mostly of influential and wealthy people – haunts almost every resident of this city that has seen a dramatic surge in criminal activities. Professional criminal gangs, which in many cases enjoy political patronage, operate all around the city, often taking cover of various Taliban groups. The latest surge actually began with the plunder and torching of NATO-cargo parked at various terminals in the periphery of the city in December 2008.
Those attacks and abductions – close to 150 in the first four months of this year – injected fear and uncertainty into the hearts and minds of the locals.
Secondly, an extremely corrupt and arduous judicial system compounded by a thoroughly dishonest police has added to the plight of the hapless people, who every now and then hear of news of justice being dispensed by Mangal Bagh Afridi’s Islamic courts.
Afridi’s associates simply send for people (even living in the city) against whom affectees lodge complaints and seek justice for the simple reason that the existing system doesn’t provide justice to the majority of Pakistanis.
The courts are suffering from insufficient staff, resulting in high pendency which again is complicated by the endemic corruption within a system which at times doesn’t provide justice even to very senior government officials.
Thirdly, the bunkered leadership of the coalition comprising the ANP and the PPP has done little to assuage people’s fears or address fundamental issues of governance. Roads in the city remain potholed, utility services inefficient, and long power outages continue to fuel people’s frustrations. Adding to the outrage are the news and rumours of corruption within the ruling coalition – as valid a perception as was during the MMA government. And certain phrases, attributed to people in the seat of power by word of mouth, are visible on rickshaws or other means of public transport. One of them, for instance, says, “Don’t talk of Easy Load, it annoys baba”. This relates to an important person in the province, who is rumoured to be involved in all lucrative deals and appointments.
Fourthly, the absence of respect for the rule of law among politicians and the bureaucrats as well as the division of administrative powers – governor, chief minister, the corps commander, intelligence outfits – has resulted in insensitivity even to public issues of urgent importance.
Despite being represented in the local government, the provincial assembly and parliament, most people feel disenfranchised just because the contact between the voters and their leaders is minimal. Once voted into power, most MPs launch themselves into the pursuit of lucrative political and financial business. The MMA government did the same. The result; Peshawar, my city, today lives in fear, frustration with the socio-economic structures crumbling in the face of rising crime and the invisible nexus that exists between the world of politics and crime – all under the cover of insurgency.

PESHAWAR : Kala Me Perzo She Pa Bamono Pekhawara

Jihad and the state

Dawn Editorial
Twice this week President Zardari has spoken about the root of Pakistan’s problems with religious extremism and militancy. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the president said that the military’s erstwhile ‘strategic assets’ were the ones against whom military operations were now required. And in a meeting with retired senior bureaucrats in Islamabad on Tuesday, Mr Zardari was reported in this paper to have said that ‘militants and extremists had been deliberately created and nurtured as a policy to achieve some short-term tactical objectives’.

The president is right, and we would add the policy was wrong then and it is wrong now. It cannot be any other way. How is it possible to rationally explain to the people of Pakistan that the heroes of yesteryear are the arch-enemies of today? The militants’ religious justifications remain the same; what’s changed is that the militants were fighting the state’s ‘enemies’ yesterday but have turned their guns on the state and its allies today.

Perhaps more than anything else impeding the defeat of the militants today is the inability of the security establishment to revisit the strategic choices it made in the past and hold up its hand and admit candidly that grave mistakes were made. Should we have ever used jihadi proxies to fight the Russians in Afghanistan? Should we have ever supported the idea of armed jihad in Kashmir? Should we have ever sought to retain our influence in Afghanistan through the Taliban? If any of those choices ever made sense, then we should have no complaints about the rise of Talibanisation in Pakistan because we created the climate and opportunity for them to run amok.

Blaming the US’s invasion of Afghanistan is no good — the first and foremost responsibility of the state is to ensure the security of Pakistan, and allowing an internal threat to create a space for itself is anathema to that idea. Whatever the catalyst, the fact remains that it was because a jihadi network was allowed to flourish inside the country that we were left exposed to its eventual wrath against us.

The fault is of course not ours alone. The US, obsessed with the Soviet enemy, happily colluded in the creation of Muslim warriors. Our Middle Eastern and Gulf allies were happy to create a Sunni army to counter the ‘threat’ from post-revolution Shia Iran. But, at the end of the day, it was Pakistani soil on which they were primarily nurtured. Because they were raised in our midst we should have always been wary of the extreme blowback we are now confronted with.

India's unwise military moves

Peopledaily.com

In the last few days, India has dispatched roughly 60,000 troops to its border with China, the scene of enduring territorial disputes between the two countries.

J.J. Singh, the Indian governor of the controversial area, said the move was intended to "meet future security challenges" from China. Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh claimed, despite cooperative India-China relations, his government would make no concessions to China on territorial disputes.

The tough posture Singh's new government has taken may win some applause among India's domestic nationalists. But it is dangerous if it is based on a false anticipation that China will cave in.

India has long held contradictory views on China. Another big Asian country, India is frustrated that China's rise has captured much of the world's attention. Proud of its "advanced political system," India feels superior to China. However, it faces a disappointing domestic situation which is unstable compared with China's.

India likes to brag about its sustainable development, but worries that it is being left behind by China. China is seen in India as both a potential threat and a competitor to surpass.

But India can't actually compete with China in a number of areas, like international influence, overall national power and economic scale. India apparently has not yet realized this.

Indian politicians these days seem to think their country would be doing China a huge favor simply by not joining the "ring around China" established by the US and Japan.
India's growing power would have a significant impact on the balance of this quation, which has led India to think that fear and gratitude for its restraint will cause China to defer to it on territorial disputes.

But this is wishful thinking, as China won't make any compromises in its border disputes with India. And while China wishes to coexist peacefully with India, this desire isn't born out of fear.

India's current course can only lead to a rivalry between the two countries. India needs

to consider whether or not it can afford the consequences of a potential confrontation with China. It should also be asking itself why it hasn't forged the stable and friendly relationship with China that China enjoys with many of India's neighbors, like Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Any aggressive moves will certainly not aid the development of good relations with China. India should examine its attitude and preconceptions; it will need to adjust if it hopes to cooperate with China and achieve a mutually beneficial outcome.

'King of Pop' Michael Jackson is dead

BY M WAQAR
I am deeply saddened by the death of the most unique talent the world has seen in pop music. Michael Jackson was one of the greatest music icons of the 20th Century. A true star who will never be forgotten. There will never be another Michael Jackson. He was the consumate performer and talented in ways that we have not seen since. His appeal crossed over racial lines. His influence on R&B and Pop will live forever. Thriller is one of a kind. MTV would not be what it is today if it were not for Michael. He was a music legend, an American icon, and a talented Black man. MJ loved so many in his life and was loved by all who heard his music, saw his dancing & acting, or heard him share his heart. Such great loss to so many. Such great loss for us all. Funny thing about Billie Jean...as a kid, I never really knew what it was about. I distinctly remember hearing it as an adult and having an "ah hah!" moment when I realized the underlying theme. I don't know that I have ever been so shocked to hear of a celebrity's death. Madonna, a fellow pop icon, said, “The world has lost one of the greats, but his music will live on forever!”He ruled entire globe through his music. Rest in Peace MJ. You will forever be an icon of music and culture. Jackson was a brilliant talent, and left behind some of the greatest pop music ever made. He was exceptional, artistic and original. He gave the world his heart and soul through his music.

Iran: Four Ways the Crisis May Resolve

TIME.COM
By Tony Karon

Some observers see Iran's courageous protests against a stolen election as a replay of the 1979 revolution that ended the tyranny of the Shah — or of the "velvet revolutions" that ended communism in Eastern Europe. Others fear a repeat of China's 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. But none of these comparisons easily fits the unique combination of discord on the streets and infighting in the corridors of power currently under way in Tehran.

The situation is all the more dangerous and unpredictable because the election and its aftermath appears to have surprised all the major players, forcing them to improvise their responses to a fast-changing situation. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei appear to have been taken aback by the surge in support for the pragmatic conservative candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. The decision to hastily announce what many say was an improbable landslide victory for Ahmadinejad touched off an unprecedented wave of protests that have rocked Khamenei, who has since backtracked by ordering an investigation into claims of voter fraud. Despite violent attacks on demonstrators and arrests of political figures, security forces have in the main refrained from unleashing their repressive might on the demonstrators who are openly defying the law. The partial recount of the vote has bought Khamenei time, but the crisis of legitimacy facing those in power grows by the day.(See pictures of Iran's presidential election and its turbulent aftermath.)

Violence and the threat of violence has not deterred the demonstrators, and Mousavi is showing no inclination to back down just yet. Khamenei appears to be scrambling for a compromise that will persuade Mousavi to end the demonstrations while keeping Ahmadinejad in the presidency. But the outcome of the battle of wills may depend on how the key players read the balance of forces on the street and in the councils of the regime. The situation is delicately poised; what follows are four scenarios that could resolve it.

One: Revolution 2.0?
Despite the Twitter-enabled street scenes and revived slogans of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1979 revolution, a repeat of that successful insurrection remains highly improbable. For one thing, the protest movement is being led by a faction of the Islamic Republic's political establishment, whose members stand to lose a great deal if the regime is brought down and, thus, have to calibrate their dissent. More important, an unarmed popular movement can topple an authoritarian regime only if the security forces switch sides or stay neutral. But Iran's key security forces — the élite Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Basij militia — are bastions of support for Ahmadinejad. And they have hardly used a fraction of their repressive power. Also, while the opposition draws far larger crowds, there are still millions of Iranians strongly backing Ahmadinejad. So even if the government is unable to destroy the opposition, it's unlikely that the opposition will be in a position to destroy the government. (See pictures of the enduring influence of Ayatullah Khomeini.)

Two: A Tehran Tiananmen?
The harsh language used by Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guards to describe opposition protests — and their invoking of the specter of an Eastern European–style "velvet revolution" backed by the West — appeared to be generating a narrative that would justify a bloody crackdown, a massive use of military force that would terrify the opposition into submission. Clearly, the limited violence unleashed by the Ahmadinejad camp thus far has failed to intimidate Mousavi and his supporters. But while it would almost certainly clear the streets, the "nuclear option" of a Tiananmen Square–style crackdown would be a potentially fatal wound to the regime's own sources of legitimacy — its limited but lively democracy and the backing of Shi'ite clergy. Discord among the mullahs is growing, with some senior clerics like the esteemed house-arrested dissident Ayatullah Hossein-Ali Montazeri publicly condemning Khamenei's handling of the election and warning ordinary soldiers and police officers that they would "answer to God" for any violence against the people. A crackdown would risk reducing a regime built on clerical authority and "managed" democracy to a tyranny on par with the Shah. Khamenei will be reluctant to go that route. But his handling of the political crisis thus far will have deepened long-standing skepticism within the clergy about his abilities as Supreme Leader. A harsh crackdown, even if followed by reforms, would solve an immediate crisis, but at the cost of inflicting a possibly fatal long-term wound on the regime.


Three: Khamenei's "Divine" Retreat?
Khamenei blundered when he yoked his own position as Supreme Leader — which is typically above the factional fray of the regime's politics — so closely to Ahmadinejad. He issued a barely disguised public endorsement of the candidate, and then rushed to proclaim Ahmadinejad's "divine victory" and order all Iranians to accept it. But the mounting instability on the streets appears to have sent Khamenei into retreat, ordering the Guardian Council to investigate claims of electoral fraud. If the combination of escalating street demonstrations and the politicking of Mousavi's backers inside the regime's councils prompts Khamenei to conclude that an Ahmadinejad victory is untenable, he could press the Guardian Council to heed the opposition's demand for a new vote — or, more likely, "adjust" the result so that no candidate has a clear majority, forcing a runoff election between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. Such a course would be a bitter pill for the Supreme Leader, dealing a body blow to his efforts to install Ahmadinejad and mocking his authority by forcing him to reverse himself. Whatever its outcome, this crisis has badly damaged Khamenei's credibility within the regime, heralding the onset of a bitter backroom struggle in the coming years to choose his successor. As to whether he'll sound the retreat on the election, however, his own preference and the likely tooth-and-nail resistance to any reversal from Ahmadinejad and the security establishment that backs him mean that Khamenei may be more likely to seek a compromise that keeps the incumbent in place. That may require ...

Four: A "Zimbabwe" Option?
The option that would likely hold the most appeal to Khamenei now would be to broker an agreement similar to the one that has kept Zimbabwe's President, Robert Mugabe, in power despite essentially losing an election — by bludgeoning the opposition into settling for an important yet subordinate role in his government. Already, Khamenei has appealed to a sense of national unity and preserving the regime, hoping to cajole the opposition into accepting the results. And at his first press conference following the announcement of his victory, Ahmadinejad reportedly asked his opponents to submit lists of candidates for membership in his Cabinet. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad may be hoping that standing firm and having the Guardian Council affirm his victory after a 10-day recount will produce enough opposition fatigue, which, combined with the threat of violence, will see the protests peter out. By so doing, Khamenei would hope that the pragmatic conservatives — embodied by Mousavi — can be weaned away from the reformists (led by former President Mohammed Khatami) by giving them a stake in a national unity government and promises to moderate Ahmadinejad's style of governance. However, that scenario would come into play only if Mousavi believed that he was losing the battle and risked disaster by keeping his supporters out on the street. Right now, there are no signs that the opposition feels beaten. (Mugabe's opponents settled for the deal only when they had been so pummeled that they could see no hope of unseating him.) Which is why all four options may remain in play while the various camps test one another's strength in the coming days.

‘’Pekhawar kho Pekhawar de kana‘’

(PESHAWAR IS BEST)
Pekhawar kho Pekhawar de kana ,my favorite song while driving on New York streets but now I have stopped listening to this song, because that Peshawar, where I grew up, where I learned everything, where I had my school, college and university days, that feeling been jinxed in some way ,Peshawar, where I used to enjoy evenings with my friends after college hours, where we used to drink tea and gossip for hours is becoming ghost town as I hear and read about this city, now Peshawar is a place where people are afraid to come out, is now city of fear, where residents, confining to their homes because bunch of criminals took their right to enjoy their time , Grief, fear and terror is now name of Peshawar, when I was growing up, I used to hear about bomb blasts and killings in Beirut, sri lanka etc , now when ever I read and watch news, I see people in my home town getting killed by bombs, today it has become a routine matter in my city which was once famous for the peace and tranquility it had, because of these criminals who are wearing masks of religion ,because of these thugs , people have lost the spirit to enjoy and laugh and even work. The citizens of Peshawar are going through a torrid time.
I ask people of this great city to stand united and be strong to face the menace of terrorism. Peshawar, the  city of flowers will not face this darkness forever. It is time we recognize that what we are experiencing today is also a war, its our war, for our survival. We can hope and pray that its impact would not be as destructive as it was during the world wars or as in recent times in Afghanistan. But, let us not have any doubt; it is going to be a long haul. Our cities and towns and people will pay a price. But, we shall overcome.  While the state has a lot of work to do, the people also have to play an important part. It is not possible that foreign elements and hundreds of tons of explosives are smuggled into an urban centre and no one sees anything or that outsiders are not noticed. It is, but either because of laziness or fear nothing is done. This will have to change. Everything out of the ordinary must be reported. Spirit and morale has also to be kept high in times of adversity. The collaborators would continue to undermine it by calling this America's war. They would also praise the piety and the simplicity of these throat-cutters. And they would attack the political leadership viciously because they dare not attack the army. These people have to be isolated from the national discourse. They confuse and obfuscate and in practice, if not deliberately, aid the enemy. They have their democratic rights and no one is advocating taking them away but their voices should be marginalized even more than they already are. 
Whenever I visit Peshawar, the first thing I do go to a KEBAB place and order kebabs there, I hope when I return next time, I expect people as happy as they were when I was there last time, my heart goes for all those innocent people who are facing this terror by their own people, by the agents of other powers, for making little bit money, they are killing their own people and giving it name of Islam, shame on them, such people who are involved in this barbarian act deserve no mercy. Also shame on those politicians who were forcing Govt to make deals with criminals and killers, shame on Gen. Musharaff who did not take action against these murderers. Shame on those religious parties who when had power, were busy removing billboards with women pictures and encouraged those ignorant Taliban to grow stronger. the six-party religious alliance that ruled over the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) for five years is responsible for all this mess, today their leaders are saying if military stops operation, they will go and talk to Taliban, why did not they do this before military operation, Fazal Rehman, Qazi Hussain, be a man and go to FATA and Swat and tell those lunatics to stop their murder campaign. This disaster could be avoided if Musharaff regime had taken strong action against those who were challenging state writ. Why no one did anything when these thugs were destroying girls schools, bombing music centers and inter net café, No one cared when pukhtuns dead bodies were hanging to poles and trees, no one said anything when Taliban were beheading innocent puktuns. What happen to QAZI HUSSIAN and IMRAN KHAN’s long marches, why don’t they do their so called long march against bombings and killings??? when the Taliban throws acid in the faces of young women, gasses them and bombs their schools there is an eerie silence. There seems to be just more than a small amount of hypocrisy in this regard, doesn't there? But that is what, after all, we have come to expect from these people. Hypocrites all. Can Imran Khan,Qazi, Fazal Rehaman
Organize million man march to support a Swati girl’s right to education and walk all the way up to Mingora from Islamabad? These maniacs are doing what they are doing because they have been given a free hand to do as they please. This is what happens when our leaders make peace deals with barbarians who killed hundreds of people in cold blood and blew up hundreds of schools in Swat. No questions asked, no one convicted. Can the Shrif borthers/ Qazis/Imran Khans for once condemn these elements categorically and forcefully and by name that is the Taliban/ the lashker jhagwi/ the jesh muhammad? If only Sharif could put his weight against these elements . Why I don’t hear that Taliban notorious leaders are being killed or arrested? Why sufi was released? Why LAL MSJID mullah is free and not facing criminal charges??? But these hypocrite leaders will not do anything, This is the time for people to stand up and shout against Taliban in hordes and rallies and scream for their eradication. Look at the lashker in buneer, after the bomb blast in the mosque, they gathered up and attacked Taliban . Pakistan is at war! The Pakistani people should not just sit around and expect the army and police to solve this problem. People need to stand up and be counted. This is yet another reminder for the people of Pakistan in general and the Ulema in particular to make it abundantly clear that where their sympathies lie. A major section of organized religious setup (Ahle-hadith, Deobandi etc) has been bent in accusing our military and the government for all sort of things, yet they do not find the courage to challenge their fellow ‘believers’ for their atrocities. Our media will need to scrutinize the funding of these jehadi establishment more, especially within the country where prominent traders collect money for these people in different guise.
Dr. Naeemi’s murder is also a signal for the society that we must not look other way when challenge knocks at our door steps. We must not allow these people to roam freely among our midst, just because they wears their religion on sleeves. The early we challenge, the better it is, this is not the time to bash leaders of Pakistan in Govt. It is time for Pakistanis to be united, stand behind their civil and military leaders to eliminate the enemies of Pakistan and save Pakistan. When your enemy attacks you and your family with guns and rockets, what choice do you have? Open dialogue with the enemy or kill the enemy? Pakistan army is doing super job. They have no choice but what they are doing to save you and your future generation from ruthless murderers. Those opportunist politicians who are opposing this military operations are also enemies of Pakistan. Security officials have confirmed that the Taliban thugs in Swat are being funded in large part by several foreign charity groups. At a recent NATO meeting, Richard Holbrooke expressed similar concerns about the funds being provided to the taliban by private individuals and groups in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. He estimated that such funding rivals if not exceeds the $200-$300M drug money raised annually by the Taliban.
The media has an obligation to pinpoint these foreign charities and their nefarious anti-Pakistan agenda. Clearly, an organized foreign-based extremist network is providing institutionalized funding, expertise and manpower to the taliban thugs.
Our security agencies must take all necessary measures to hunt down traitors colluding with these charities and shut down their local operations. Importantly, the government must take up this serious matter with the relevant foreign leaders, asking them to do more to prevent such extremist elements from supporting the taliban fascists in our midst.

., ‘Ma darta tol umar da guloono khar wayalay day.... Kala mi perzo shey pa bamoono Pekhawara’ (I have always called you the city of flowers, how can I see you being bombed now).

Pakistan’s IDP Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities

The International Crisis Group
In the wake of a conceptually flawed peace agreement, the Taliban takeover of large parts of Malakand division, subsequent military action in the area, almost three million internally displaced persons (IDPs) have fled to camps, homes, schools and other places of shelter across Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP). The challenge for the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)-led government and international actors is to make relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts responsive to needs and empower local communities in Malakand Division. Failure to do so will reverse any gains on the battlefield and boost radical Islamist groups.
The military’s use of heavy force in the ongoing operations, failure to address the full cost to civilians and refusal to allow full civilian and humanitarian access to the conflict zones has already been counterproductive. The public, particularly those directly affected, is increasingly mistrustful of a military that has, in the past, swung between short-sighted appeasement deals with militants and the use of haphazard force. While there is still broad public and political support for moving against the Taliban, it could erode if civilian casualties are high and the response to IDPs’ needs is inadequate. Indeed, it will not be long before the IDPs demand greater accountability from those responsible for their displacement and assurances of a viable return.
Almost four years after they responded poorly to the October 2005 earthquake in NWFP and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), overly centralised state relief organs remain ill-equipped to deal with large-scale humanitarian crises. Likewise, despite the transition to civilian rule in February 2008, the military continues to dominate key institutions, further undermining civilian capacity. Relief and reconstruction efforts must ultimately reestablish and strengthen the link between Malakand’s citizens and the state, severed by rising militancy and the military-devised accord between the Awami National Party (ANP)-led NWFP government and the Taliban-linked Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Moham madi (TNSM) to impose Sharia (Islamic law) in the Malakand area, through the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation, which President Asif Ali Zardari signed on 13 April 2009.
As they did in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake, religious extremist groups, while opposing the military campaign, are exploiting relief efforts to advance their agenda. Communities displaced by a badly planned war may be especially vulnerable to jihadi indoctrination. The crisis, however, also presents an opportunity to win hearts and minds of millions of Pakistanis in NWFP, and more specifically in Malakand Division, who have suffered at the hands of the Taliban. Many of them fled the area even before the current operations began because of Taliban abuses, including murder and rape.
Mounting opposition from the religious lobby may give the military an opening to again enter into a compromise with the militants, as it has in earlier campaigns. The federal and provincial governments must resist any such efforts and assert civilian control over counter-insurgency policy, relief and reconstruction. Instituting civilian oversight and scrutiny is vital to retaining popular support for the struggle against violent extremism. The international community should help build civilian capacity to respond to the humanitarian crisis and also counsel the military against negotiating another deal that would again allow religious extremists more space to recruit and spread Taliban control.
The Pakistan government should:
devise a blueprint for reconstruction efforts, including revitalising war-shattered agricultural and tourism sectors;
develop mechanisms that will enable IDP communities to hold officials accountable for the distribution of assistance;
prohibit jihadi groups banned under the Anti-Terrorism Law, including those operating under changed names, from participating in relief efforts;
prioritise police training and other mechanisms to enhance the capacity of civilian law enforcement agencies to maintain security after the military operation ends and bring militant and local criminal networks and allied serving or retired district officials to justice;
rescind immediately the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation 2009, reaffirm the jurisdication of Malakand’s civil courts, the Peshawar High Court and the Supreme Court and abolish the Frontier Crimes Regulations and the Nizam-e-Adl 1999; and
build on political and public support for confronting militancy in NWFP by implementing without delay long-term political and constitutional reforms in the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA), of which Malakand is a part, as well as in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), so as to incorporate their districts and tribal agencies, respectively, into NWFP, with full provincial rights.
The international community should:
urge a humanitarian pause in fighting to allow much-needed assistance to non-combatants in conflict zones, to permit them to flee and to account for civilian casualties, with the timeframe dependent on assessment of needs and available logistical and other resources and material support, as determined by the provincial government and international and local humanitarian agencies;
ensure that relief and reconstruction are civilian-led and empower displaced communities to determine their own needs and priorities;
prioritise the relief and rehabilitation of IDPs, particularly those living outside government camps, through cash transfer programs that provide income support, payment of school tuition and paid vocational training;
support Pakistan civilian-led plans for return of IDPs to their communities with reconstruction programs that incorporate support for the provincial government and help build the capacity of civilian police and advance justice reform with new training, equipment and mentors; and
encourage long-term political and constitutional reforms in PATA and FATA through support for comprehensive governance, stabilisation and rural development programs.

How Pakistan Failed Itself

Karachi Club Scene>>>



Thursday, May. 14, 2009
TIME.COM
How Pakistan Failed Itself
By Aryn Baker / Islamabad
In the Himalayan resort town of Nathiagali, a party is under way. Ice clinks in tumblers and corks pop while the conversation — an amalgam of English and Urdu that is the mark of Pakistan's élite — flows from meditation techniques to a heated debate over a U.S. politician's warning that Pakistan is on the brink of collapse. The hostess, Rifat Haye, 54, is one of two female pilots with the national airline and is celebrating her promotion to captain. She wears jeans. Her hair is streaked with blond, and a diamond nose stud glints in the sun, as does the jeweled Allah pendant around her neck. She is frustrated with the image the world has of Pakistan, that of a failing state overrun by Muslim fanatics. Pointing first to herself, then at her guests, she says, "This is Pakistan." Then she waves her hand over the valley beyond the deck of her summer cabin. "But that is also Pakistan."

By that she means all those Pakistanis who do not belong to her class and who have as much to do with the Taliban as she does, which is to say nothing at all. But her sweeping wave inadvertently encompasses a part of Pakistan she has failed to address — the Swat valley, where the army has embarked on a campaign to rout out Islamic insurgents who threaten to destroy the Pakistan Haye knows and cherishes.

Pakistan is a complicated country, one of religious and political diversity, fractured by class and ethnicity. Pakistanis like to quip that they have a population of 170 million — and as many different opinions. Which is why defensiveness sets in when outsiders attempt to reduce the country to a terrorist statistic. The problems in Swat don't define Pakistan, says Haye. It's not that she doesn't care — she does — but that Pakistan has very little to do with her Pakistan. "What is all this talk of Talibanization? Not once have these maulvis [religious leaders] complained that a woman is flying their plane," she says. Guests nod in agreement. "There is no way the Taliban can take over Pakistan," says one. "We are too many, and they are too few."

It is indeed unlikely that Pakistan's Islamic militants can seize power. But to spread fear and insecurity and slow down economic development, they don't need to. Hundreds of terrorist attacks have taken more than 2,500 lives in the past 18 months. Talibanization may not have reached Pakistan's élite, but it is already threatening others. Women in the city of Rawalpindi complain that they are harassed if they don't wear headscarves. In Lahore, a prep school for girls has banned the wearing of blue jeans, for fear of a Taliban attack. In the capital, Islamabad, the Red Mosque's prayer leader, Abdul Aziz, sanctioned vigilante squads of baton-wielding women to go out and threaten video stores, barbershops and massage parlors for being un-Islamic. Two years ago, his followers kidnapped six Chinese masseuses, calling them prostitutes, and held them hostage. The army eventually cracked down, launching a siege and battle that saw the death of nearly 100 militants. Last month, Aziz was released from prison on the condition that he would not preach against the state. But residents in the neighborhood fear that the vigilante squads will soon be back. Talibanization doesn't start with a military takeover. It happens when there is a Red Mosque in every city and citizens are afraid to stand up to its edicts.

The government, at last, seems to be fighting back. On May 7, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced a military operation in Swat. "The armed forces have been called in," he said, "to eliminate the militants and terrorists. We will not bow before extremists." Only weeks before, the government had finalized a peace deal with the militants in which their principal demand — the establishment of Islamic law in the area — was granted in exchange for giving up arms. At first officials defended the deal, even as the militants moved on a neighboring district and their leader announced that democracy was contrary to Islam. But in a move that coincided with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's visit to Washington, the government declared the deal over. "The militants have waged war against all segments of society," Gilani said. "I regret to say that our bona fide intention to prefer reconciliation with them was perceived as a weakness on our part."

The fighting in Swat masks far more serious problems. In Waziristan, a region on the Afghan border, security forces have ceded control to the militants. Outlawed sectarian groups are gaining a foothold in Punjab province. And in the financial capital of Karachi, where Pakistani Taliban insurgents raise funds, ethnic clashes claimed more than 30 lives last month. When U.S. President Barack Obama commented during an April news conference that the Pakistani government did not "seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services — schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of the people," the nation erupted in fury, and effigies of Obama were burned. But privately many Pakistanis agreed with the U.S. President; their nation, for all its people's many talents, has failed to develop the education, economic-development and justice systems that are the bedrock of modernity and stability. "These guys have been in power for more than a year," says lawyer Anees Jillani, speaking of Zardari's government. "What have they done? We still have acute poverty, joblessness and injustice."


A Crisis of Identity
To criticize Pakistan's leaders, however — much though they may deserve it — is to miss the point. It is ordinary people, locked in a series of personal Pakistans, who seem unable or unwilling to unite over the threat to their nation. Pakistanis will point to the oppressive hand of history or the machinations of foreign nations to explain their descent into chaos, and to a certain extent both have played a role. But no one bears more responsibility for a slow collective suicide than Pakistanis themselves. A set of failures has contributed to Pakistan's fall.

Founded as a Muslim nation carved from British-ruled India in 1947, Pakistan has long struggled to unite a population divided by language, culture and ethnicity. It is quite true that Pakistan may never have resolved what Sabahat Ashraf, a Pakistani blogger now living in California, calls its "existential dilemma: Are we an Islamic state, or are we a state of Muslims?" but Islam has always been a common denominator. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the nation rallied under the banner of jihad. Today any attack on Islam, even the perception of one, is akin to an assault on Pakistan's very identity. When the militants say they too are fighting for Islam, just as the mujahedin fought the Soviets, it creates a sense of paralysis.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor at Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University, pulls up on his laptop the pages of a first-grade primer distributed in private religious schools. "A is for Allah," he reads. "B is for bandook, or gun." T, for thakrau, collision, is illustrated with a drawing of the World Trade Center in flames, while Z, for zenoub, the plural of sin, is depicted with alcohol bottles, kites, guitars, drums, a television and a chess set. Any attempt to change the religious curriculum is met with fierce resistance. "Many fear that to be seen protesting against the extremists who are pushing Shari'a [Islamic law] would be seen as protesting against Islam itself," says Hoodbhoy.

The paradox here is that historically, Pakistanis have practiced a syncretic version of Islam that venerates saints and emphasizes a personal relationship with God. But the influx of Arab preachers during the war against the Soviets brought a more austere form of the religion. Shayan Afzal Khan, an Islamic scholar who writes about women and Islam, thinks Pakistanis lack the confidence to defend their moderate beliefs. "People are afraid to take on the mullahs because we can't quote the Koran the way they do," Khan says. "We have to take our religion back," but fear gets in the way. She has decided not to publish her most recent book, about early Muslim women, in Pakistan "because the situation these days is too unstable."

Blaming India
If Pakistanis have defined themselves by their religion, they have also defined themselves by what they are not — Indian. The bloody cleavage that marked the birth of two independent nations began a long enmity cemented by three wars and the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation. The contested territory of Muslim-majority Kashmir is the flame that keeps the pot boiling. In Pakistan every prayer ends with a thought for Kashmir. Pakistanis find it impossible to believe that India, with its booming economy and flourishing democracy, has moved on from the rivalry; India, many believe, still seeks the destruction of its neighbor.

One afternoon in early May, an upscale audience gathered in Karachi to hear veteran journalist Ahmed Rashid speak on the Taliban threat. For years, Rashid has been Pakistan's Cassandra, prophesying an extremist-led doom to deaf ears. Now that the threat has become reality, he is a sought-after speaker. "I no longer say that there's a creeping Talibanization in Pakistan," he warned. "It's a galloping Talibanization." For 45 minutes, he expanded on his theme, explaining how the Pakistan Army's narrow focus on India has allowed the militant threat within the country to fester, how money that should have been spent on helicopters to combat the insurgency was squandered on fighter jets better suited to attacking India. But the message failed to sink in.

After his speech, Rashid was peppered with questions about India's designs to destabilize the country, until he exploded with frustration: "We are still getting told every night on our TVs that these Pakistani Taliban are all getting their money from India, that they are armed by India. Until we recognize the fact that this is a homegrown phenomenon and that the people throwing acid into girls' faces are Pakistani, the problem will continue."

Yet continue it does. Every day, it seems, another police official or politician proclaims that he has definitive proof that a "foreign hand" (read: India) is behind the latest bombing. The proof is never produced. It is enough that it bolsters the delusion that Pakistanis are not responsible for the crisis in their own country and thus are exempted from dealing with it.



Resenting the U.S.
Of late, the U.S. administration has sought to convince Pakistani leadership that the Indian threat on the eastern border has passed and that troops should be moved to the west, where both Pakistani and Afghan Taliban have set up training camps. To many Pakistanis, that message is suspect. The Americans have too long a history of pursuing their own interests in the region, they say. The rapid U.S. withdrawal at the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan left Pakistan in chaos. America's long support for former President Pervez Musharraf's military rule alienated Pakistanis even further. Now it is commonly accepted that every political move in the country conceals an American motive, a belief shared by many Pakistanis living abroad. "It's well known that the present civilian government headed by a corrupt psychopath was conjured up by the U.S. and U.K. to push their agenda," says Dr. Riaz Ahmed, a pediatrician practicing in the U.K. "Pakistan has been helping the Americans with their war, and what do they get in return? Violence, drugs, instability. We Pakistanis think we are being bullied into somebody else's war."

That resentment is fueled by a belief that Pakistan is suffering for Washington's failures. Zardari may say that the war on terrorism is as much Pakistan's as it is the U.S.'s, but that message has yet to take root. The growing militancy in Pakistan's tribal areas "is the price we are paying now for supporting the American war on terror," says Ahsan Iqbal, information secretary for the opposition party Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). "If we stopped supporting the American war [in Afghanistan], we would have peace tomorrow." Iqbal dismisses recent accounts in the Western press of growing Talibanization in the country as "propaganda." Shireen Mazari, a right-wing columnist, sees even more sinister plots afoot. "Is it really in the American interest to have a stable Pakistan right now?" she asks. "Or is it actually pushing us towards instability in order to achieve its agenda of obtaining access and control over our nuclear assets?" Says Rashid: "All of us go by conspiracy theories. We are all blaming somebody else for our mistakes. Why don't we wake up and start blaming ourselves?"
Missed Opportunities
One answer to that question is, because Pakistan's leaders have been so feckless. When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007, her husband Zardari assumed leadership of her political party and then the presidency. Zardari swore to bring his wife's killers to justice. He has not done so, instead wasting an opportunity to rally the nation against terrorism. There is no national media campaign to combat Taliban propaganda and no clerics on TV or radio denouncing suicide bombers.

"What we need is a national change in consciousness," says Supreme Court advocate Aitzaz Ahsan, who led a lawyers' movement that brought about the downfall of Musharraf. "People need to be bombarded with the reality of what the Taliban represent." Ahsan wants to see videos of Taliban atrocities broadcast every night. Only then, he says, will people understand and act against extremism. "The whole nation needs to see what is happening. Not just the floggings by the Taliban but the beheadings, the digging up of the graves of our saints, the burning of our girls' schools."

Instead, says Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group, Zardari's government has muddled the message: rather than punish those who used terrorist tactics, he originally met their demands in Swat. Wajiha Ahmed, a Pakistani-American graduate student at the Fletcher School of Tufts University, hopes that the current chaos holds a "silver lining ... It might put pressure on the military élite and the political oligarchy to finally change the country's outlook so that it focuses on bettering the condition of its people." But for decades, talented exiles — writers, bankers, software engineers and international civil servants — have been devoutly wishing for such a consummation. It hasn't happened yet.

That sad reality is sinking in back home. In a phone call a few days after her party, Haye, the airline pilot, worried that she might have been too dismissive of the threat. "If the Taliban infiltrates Pakistan, of course that affects us. But what can we do?" One part of the answer, for 170 million Pakistanis, is to recognize their shared destiny. Only when the entire nation understands the threat to its existence — and acts accordingly — will its people be able to confront it.

— with reporting by William Lee Adams / London, Ershad Mahmud / Islamabad and Frances Romero / New York