DWS, Sunday 21st April to Saturday 27th April 2013.html

	DWS, Sunday 21st April to Saturday 27th April 2013
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NATIONAL NEWS
Farmhouse declared sub-jail: Musharraf on judicial remand for two weeks By Munawer Azeem and Malik Asad ISLAMABAD, April 20: It was after hours-long consultations at the highest level that the local administration of Islamabad declared the farmhouse residence of former military dictator retired General Pervez Musharraf a sub-jail after an anti-terrorist court granted his 14-day judicial remand in the judges’ detention case. . The former president, who had to spend a night at the officers’ mess of the Police Line headquarters on a transit remand, was shifted to his heavily-guarded fortress-like farmhouse on Saturday evening after issuance of a notification declaring Musharraf’s residence a sub-jail on a request by police. Sources said the district administration and police had decided to constitute a joint investigation team (JIT) under the Anti-terrorism Act to investigate the charges against Musharraf. The team will be headed by SP City Capt (retd) Muhammad Ilyas and it will comprise representatives of the ISI, IB and police. A notification is expected to be issued in a day or two. The dream of former army chief Gen Musharraf to contest the May 11 elections as the head of his All Pakistan Muslim League (APML) have already turned sour after rejection of nomination papers from all four constituencies in Karachi, Islamabad, Kasur and Chitral. At the time of his return to the country last month after living in exile for over four years, Gen Musharraf had announced that he was ready to face charges against him in the courts of law. Besides judges’ detention case, he is also facing charges of abetment in the murders of Benazir Bhutto and Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Bugti. In addition to this, the Supreme Court in its July 31, 2009 judgment had declared his act of imposing emergency in November 2007 as unconstitutional. Earlier in the day, the chief commissioner’s office turned down the police request, asking it to give reasons for declaring the farm house as sub-jail. The permission was granted when the police officials said that the accused was a high-profile personality and former head of the state and that he was under threat from militants groups, including the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. Besides this, the police officials added, the retired general was also facing threats from lawyers and the groups affiliated with Lal Masjid. They were of the view that police would have to make extraordinary arrangements for transportation of the former president from Adiala Jail to the courts at the time of hearings and anything could go wrong. Moreover, they said, the Adiala Jail administration was also opposed to the idea of keeping a former president in prison due to security concerns. The sources said the chief commissioner was also informed that already 59 high-profile terrorists belonging to the TTP and other militant groups were detained in the prison and they might become a security risk for the former army chief. On these grounds, the police were finally granted permission and Gen Musharraf was then shifted to the farmhouse under supervision of the Deputy Inspector General of Prison Punjab. The police and the bomb disposal squad had thoroughly scanned the farmhouse before transporting Gen Musharraf. Besides Adiala jail staff members, personnel of Rangers have also been deployed outside the farmhouse. According to an administration officer, there is no bar on the former president to move inside the house. However, he added, visitors were not allowed to see him. He said the servants of Gen Musharraf had been allowed to stay with their boss, but his family members would not be able to meet him without permission. He further said that the kitchen of the farmhouse would remain operational, but the jail staff would be responsible to arrange their food. Earlier in the morning, the judge of the recently established Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) of Islamabad, Syed Kausar Abbas Zaidi, granted 14 days judicial remand of Gen Musharraf in the judges’ detention case with the directive that the accused be presented before the court again on May 4. FIRST_EVER CASE: Interestingly, this is the first-ever case that the Islamabad ATC is hearing. The case is based on an FIR registered under Section 344 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) by a lawyer, Aslam Ghumman, in the Secretariat police station on Aug 11, 2009. The complainant had accused Gen Musharraf of confining 60 judges of the superior courts for more than five months after imposition of emergency on Nov 3, 2007. The Islamabad High Court (IHC), while dismissing the pre-arrest bail petition of the former president on Thursday, had ordered police to also book him under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997 with the observation that confining the judges in their houses and restraining them from performing their lawful duty was an act of terrorism. Subsequently, the police in its request for obtaining judicial remand informed the ATC judge that Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act had been added to the FIR. The counsel for the complainant, Niazullah Niazi and Chaudhry Ashraf Gujjar, opposed the police request for granting judicial remand of Gen Musharraf and contended that the accused must be handed over to police on physical remand as he was still required to be interrogated with regard to all the events that took place after the imposition of emergency. Qamar Afzal, the counsel for Gen Musharraf, argued that the accused had voluntarily surrendered before a court of law and after having been taken into custody had already been thoroughly interrogated. The court after hearing the arguments ordered that “keeping in view the request made by the prosecution the accused, namely Pervez Musharraf, is remanded to judicial lockup, who shall be produced before the court on May 4, 2013.” Earlier, Musharraf’s counsel and the prosecution had requested the ATC judge to hear the matter in his chamber, but the complainant’s lawyers opposed it. Clad in traditional Shalwar Kameez, Mr Musharraf passed a smile to the lawyers present in the courtroom, but got no response. The lawyers later chanted slogans and even passed some objectionable remarks against the former president in the courtroom and in the presence of the judge after conclusion of the hearing. Some of the lawyers tried to attack Mr Musharraf but the presence of Rangers and his personal security guards saved him. The former president faced a similar situation outside the courtroom. Little over a dozen supporters of the former president also had a mild scuffle with the lawyers who kept on calling Gen Musharraf a “traitor”. A group of lawyers also chased the vehicle in which Gen Musharraf was taken out of the court’s premises.
Islam should serve as unifying force: Kayani By Kalbe Ali ISLAMABAD, April 20: Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said on Saturday that since Islam is the basis of Pakistan’s creation, it can never be taken out from the body politic. . “Let me remind you that Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and Islam can never be taken out of Pakistan. However, Islam should always remain a unifying force. I assure you that regardless of odds, the Pakistan Army will keep on doing its best towards our common dream for a truly Islamic Republic of Pakistan, as envisioned by the Quaid-i-Azam and Allama Iqbal,” he said in his address at the passing out parade of 127th PMA Long Course, 46th Integrated Course and the first Mujahid Course at the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul. Turning to national security, Gen Kayani said Pakistan was strong enough to defend itself against any external aggression and that internal threats had not weakened the capabilities of its armed forces. “Let it suffice to say that Pakistan is fully capable of responding effectively to any threat,” the army chief said, without naming India or any other country. “Despite our current focus on internal security, we remain fully prepared to defeat an external direct threat.” Without mentioning the incidents but apparently referring to the January cross-border strife at the Line of Control (LoC), he said: “We have exercised restraint in the face of some very belligerent statements in recent months… Let there be no doubt that with a strong Pak Army and the nation standing with it united, no harm can ever come to Pakistan, Insha Allah.” Pakistan faced a barrage of accusations from India of launching deadly attacks on their side and violating the 2003 ceasefire along the LoC. The chief of army staff said: “Pakistan is a peace loving country. Our quest for peace is essentially based on a genuine desire to improve our lot and that of our future generations, let no one see it as a weakness.” He said in its short history the country had overcome many challenges which were not so easily tackled by smaller countries. “I am sure we can do it again. We are going through difficult times but so has every other successful nation at some time in their history,” the COAS said. He said that the army was committed to the cause and as always standing with the nation. “I assure you that we will succeed if we remain committed to the basis for creation of Pakistan and remain steadfast as a nation.” Addressing the future army commanders, he said: “You will be fortunate to command the soldiers who are known for their unflinching loyalty and sense of sacrifice. Our soldiers are known for delivering best results in the most challenging environment. He congratulated the graduating cadets on successful completion of their basic military training, including those from other Muslim countries including Palestine, Sudan and Turkmenistan. He expressed confidence in the high standards of training at the academy and said that life as commissioned officers in the army would be challenging because it demanded the best in professional skills and leadership qualities.
Suicide attack by woman in Bajaur; four killed By Anwarullah Khan KHAR, April 20: A woman suicide bomber blew herself up at the main gate of a government-run hospital in Khar, the main town of Bajaur tribal region, on Saturday, killing four people and injuring five others. . The dead included a member of Bajaur Levies and a health worker. Two Levies personnel were injured. Kareem Khan, a watchman at the agency headquarters hospital, told Dawn that the woman, apparently in her 20s with face covered, was about to enter the hospital when security guards asked her to stop. However, the unidentified woman detonated explosives strapped to her body. According to Assistant Political Agent Assad Sarwar, she was aged between 23 and 25. Soon after the blast, Levies personnel cordoned off the area. An official said threats had been received about suicide bombing in the area. It was the second suicide attack carried out by a woman in Bajaur. On Dec 25, 2010, a woman blew herself up at a distribution centre of the World Food Programme in Khar, killing 45 people and injuring 80 others.AFP adds: “At least four people were killed and four others were wounded in the blast outside the main gate of the hospital,” said Mohammad Riaz, chief doctor at the hospital. Local administration official Abdul Haseeb confirmed that it was a female suicide bomber.
Musharraf held responsible for Lal Masjid operation By A Reporter ISLAMABAD, April 20: The Lal Masjid commission has given a clean chit to the military leadership, but held former president retired General Pervez Musharraf, former prime minister Shaukat Aziz and their political allies responsible for the 2007 operation. . Justice Shehzada Sheikh of the Federal Shariat Court, head of the commission, has recommended in his report that those responsible should have murder cases registered against them. He also suggested that the former rulers should be forced to pay compensation to the aggrieved families. The report, submitted to the Supreme Court on March 22 this year, stated that after six years it was not easy to condone the lack of accountability of public position-holders.
Number of women candidates not rising By Amir Wasim ISLAMABAD, April 20: Despite the welcome addition of a woman candidate contesting independently from Bajaur Agency, the overall number of women candidates contesting on general seats of the National Assembly (NA) has stayed much the same since the 2002 election. . Even in the ranks of mainstream political parties which champion equal rights and participation of women, the number of women candidates contesting in the upcoming general elections has remained unchanged or, worse still, gone down. According to details of candidates filed by eight mainstream political parties, there is no significant increase in the number of women candidates in the 2002, 2008 and 2013 elections. Moreover, the two main religious parties — Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) and Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) — have maintained their tradition of totally ignoring women candidates on general seats and, like the previous two elections, no woman candidate has been awarded a party ticket by these two parties. This year, 36 women candidates were awarded party tickets on 272 general NA seats. There were 34 women candidates for these seats in 2008 while the number in 2002 election was 38. Even though the PPP once again has the highest number of women candidates on general seats, the number has dropped from 15 in the 2008 elections to 11 women candidates for the May 11 vote. In 2002, the PPP had fielded 10 women, only one less for this year’s election. Only two parties — the PML-N and Karachi-based Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) — can claim to have gradually increased the number of women candidates in their ranks. The PML-N has awarded tickets to seven women candidates for the May 11 election while it had fielded six women in 2008 and four in the 2002 election. Similarly, the MQM also nominated seven women on NA general seats. In 2008, the party had fielded five women while there were four women candidates for the 2002 election. Only one party ticket for general NA seat was issued to Khushbakht Shujaat from the party’s stronghold in Karachi and Hyderabad, a seat she had previously secured in the last by-election. The rest were issued to women contestants from Punjab. Meanwhile, the number of candidates from the PML-Q has reduced to four from eight women fielded by the party in both 2008 and 2002 elections. The party leadership justifies this reduction in number by arguing that they are contesting polls in fewer constituencies as compared to the previous two elections, owing to their seat adjustment with the PPP this year. The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has awarded party tickets to only four women out of the 227 candidates it fielded for contesting general NA seats. The candidates include Hina Manzoor in Rawalpindi (NA-54), Wajiha Akram in Narowal (NA-116), Dr Yasmin Rashid in Lahore (NA-120), Marium Batool in Rahimyar Khan (NA-195) and Naz Baloch in Karachi (NA-240). The PTI had boycotted the 2008 election while it had fielded two women candidates in 2002. Two women are contesting from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa-based Awami National Party (ANP). They are Khurshid Begum from Kohat and Irum Fatima from Haripur. PROMINENT CANDIDATES: Former NA speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza will try her luck for completing a hat-trick of winning the NA seat from Badin, her home constituency. Besides the outgoing NA speaker, the two sisters of President Asif Ali Zardari — Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho from Nawabshah and Faryal Talpur from Larkana — will also be in the run for NA seats. Former federal information minister Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan is contesting on two seats from Sialkot (NA-110 and NA-111). Meanwhile from Lahore, first-timer Bushra Aitzaz, the wife of the PPP’s legal wizard and Senator Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, is also in the run for the first time. Similarly, former minister and PPP’s Samina Khalid Ghurki is also in the field on the NA seat from Lahore (NA-130). Meanwhile, for the NA seat from Okara (NA-144), the PPP has also awarded a ticket to Shafiqa Rao, the widow of Rao Sikandar Iqbal. Former PML-Q MNA Sumaira Malik is contesting on a PML-N ticket from Khushab (NA-69) while her sister Ayla Malik is a PTI candidate but on a reserved seat. The PML-N has also awarded party tickets to former MNAs, Ghulam Bibi Bharwana from Chiniot (NA-88) and Saima Akhtar Bharwana from Jhang (NA-90). Another former MNA Saira Afzal Tarar has also managed again bag a PML-N ticket from Hafizabad (NA-102). In Vehari, PML-N stalwart Tehmina Daultana is contesting for the second time on NA-169. Another significant PML-N ticket-holder is Marvi Memon, who has preferred to contest the election on a general seat from Thatta instead of becoming a legislator on reserved seat. The PML-N has also issued party tickets to former tehsil nazim of Tando Allahyar, Raheela Magsi, who is also the sister of former revenue minister Irfan Magsi. A total of 64 women, mostly independent candidates, had contested the 2008 election on general seats from 60 NA constituencies — 47 in Punjab, seven in Sindh, two each in KPK and Balochistan and two in Islamabad. In 2002, 57 women had contested the general election on 50 NA seats and out of them 13 managed to reach the House.
MQM fields 671 candidates across country: Altaf urges Taliban to lay down arms, enter mainstream politics By Azfar-ul-Ashfaque KARACHI, April 20: In what is being described as a major shift in policy towards the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain has appealed to its leaders to lay down arms and enter mainstream politics. . “You cannot make friends by using force... make them yours with the power of peace and love,” he said in his speech from London to a big gathering held on Saturday at the Lal Qila ground to kick off the MQM’s election campaign. The MQM has fielded 671 candidates — 221 for the National Assembly and 450 for the four provincial assemblies. Mr Hussain used the occasion to convey to the Taliban that his party would have no objection if they stopped killing innocent people and instead joined mainstream politics. He, however, did not name the Taliban when he said the MQM, the PPP and the ANP were being targeted and conspiracies were being hatched to stop these ‘enlightened and liberal’ parties from taking part in the general elections. He said that while the three parties were being targeted, the other parties were being allowed to run their election campaigns. “The Chief Election Commissioner, the Supreme Court and the caretaker government should take notice of this discrimination and injustice.” He said the MQM was not being allowed to run its election campaign freely because scores of its workers had been killed but not a single killer had been arrested so far. Mr Hussain urged the authorities to accept the mandate of the MQM and stop conspiring against it. “The MQM is not an ethnic party and it is contesting elections from all over the country.” He said he accepted all political and religious parties and believed that all of them had a right to participate in the elections. He said he would revoke the membership of his party’s workers if they were found to be involved in tearing off a single banner of any other party. The MQM leader urged the people of Lyari to exercise their right to vote in favour of his party’s candidates in order to show that 99 per cent of the Lyari people did not believe in violence. Giving details of the MQM candidates, Mr Hussain said his party had fielded 22 women for as many general seats of the national and provincial assemblies. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he said, the MQM had fielded 21 candidates for NA seats and 45 for PA seats. In Balochistan, seven candidates had been fielded for NA seats and 21 for PA seats. In Punjab, the MQM was contesting elections for 132 NA seats and 256 PA seats. In Sindh, the party had fielded candidates for all 61 NA and 128 PA seats. Interestingly, the MQM did not field its prominent former MNAs Wasim Akhtar and Haider Abbas Rizvi from any NA or PA constituency.
Zehri names nationalist leaders in FIR By Our Staff Correspondent QUETTA, April 21: PML-N’s Balochistan President Sardar Sanaullah Zehri has lodged an FIR against Mir Amanullah Khan Zargzai and 11 others, including veteran leaders Khair Bakhsh Marri and Sardar Attaullah Mengal, with Zehri Levies Thana for a bomb attack on his convoy last week. . Mr Zehri’s son, brother and nephew and two other people were killed in the attack on the convoy going to Anjira. Levies sources said here on Sunday night that the FIR had been registered against Mir Amanullah Khan Zargzai and his sons Ejaz, Shahzad, Obaidullah, Niaz, Asadullah and Ayaz. Mr Zehri also nominated in the FIR Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, his son Hyarbyar Marri, Sardar Attaullah Mengal and his sons Sardar Akhtar Mengal and Javed Mengal, accusing them of helping Mr Zargzai in the attack.
Poll-related violence in Balochistan: NP chief’s house, ANP rally attacked By Saleem Shahid QUETTA, April 21: The house of National Party (NP) chief Dr Malik Baloch was attacked in Turbat while two activists of the Awami National Party were killed in firing at ANP’s election rally in Pishin district on Sunday. . The banned Baloch Republican Army (BRA) is reported to have claimed responsibility for both the attacks, although it was not confirmed by independent sources. According to police, armed men on motorcycles hurled a grenade at the house of NP chief Dr Malik when he was presiding over a party meeting. The grenade exploded in an open area inside the house causing panic among the participants of the meeting. The gunmen also opened fire at security guards deployed at the house. The guards returned fire. An exchange of fire took place, but no casualty was reported from either side. NP’s provincial president Tahir Bizenjo told Dawn on phone that Dr Malik and other leaders attending the meeting were safe. But BRA spokesman Sarbaz Baloch claimed in a call made from an unspecified place that four security guards of the National Party had been injured. But police denied the claim and said no one was hurt. In the Pishin incident, a local leader and a worker of the ANP were killed and two others injured when gunmen opened fire at a vehicle in the party’s election rally in Killi Karbala area. According to police, ANP’s Killi Karbala unit chief Mustafa Khan and activist Naqibullah suffered multiple bullet wounds and died on the spot. The two injured workers were taken to a hospital in the area. “We are investigating the incident,” police said. No arrest was made till late night. Pishin’s Assistant Commissioner Yasir Bazai, however, claimed that local people had captured and killed one of the attackers. It was the fourth election-related attack in Balochistan over the past one week. Offices of district election commissions were earlier attacked in Nushki, Kharan and Awaran. Meanwhile, addressing a press conference after the Turbat attack, NP President Dr Malik, who is contesting for a provincial assembly seat (Kech PB-48), said his party would continue its democratic struggle for the rights of Baloch people. “Such attacks cannot force the NP to change its policy of bringing about changes through democracy.” NP’s central information secretary Jan Muhammad Buledi condemned the attack and termed it an attempt to sabotage the democratic process. He said it was surprising that an FC camp and SSP office were located quite near the residence of Dr Malik, but the assailants had successfully carried out their attack and escaped. “The breaking of security zone is a matter of great concern,” he added. Mr Buledi accused the government of failing to provide security to candidates and the environment under which political parties could smoothly carry out election campaigns. “We believe in respecting others and others should also respect our way of struggle,” he said.
Pakistan, US agree to promote Afghan peace dialogue By Khawar Ghumman ISLAMABAD, April 21: Pakistan and the United States reiterated on Sunday their commitment to take the ongoing Afghan reconciliation process forward through meaningful dialogue and by addressing concerns of all major stakeholders, including the Taliban. . The two sides said they trusted each other and were deeply concerned about what they called unpredictable nature of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who in the past had harmed peace talks by unnecessarily hitting out either at the US or Pakistan. A high-powered US delegation comprising David Pearce, acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan; retired Lt Gen Douglas Lute, Special Assistant to the President on Afghanistan and Pakistan; Dr Peter Lavoy, Principal Assistant Secretary of Defence for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs and Richard Olson, the US Ambassador to Pakistan, had a detailed meeting with the Chief of the Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and other military officials. Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jillani also attended the meeting. The Inter-Services Public Relations said in a terse press release: “The two sides discussed matters of mutual interest with particular focus on Afghanistan reconciliation process.” A military official told Dawn that both sides were of the opinion that every effort would be made to take the Taliban leadership on board because without their active involvement the peace talks could not succeed. “From day one, we have been telling the Americans that if at all they are interested in some sort of reconciliation process within Afghanistan, it’s simply out of question without taking the Taliban on board. Now they have not only accepted this viewpoint but also endorsed Pakistan’s efforts in this regard,” the military official said. Sunday’s meeting had further built the momentum, he added. Now with the US government having announced the plan to leave Afghanistan by the end of next year, they could not afford any major derailment of the reconciliation process and this was the main item on the agenda of the meeting, he said. The role of President Karzai has become a matter of a common concern of the two sides because of his tendency to frequently go off at a tangent. In January last year, Mr Karzai complained that the US government was sidelining him in negotiations with the Taliban, saying it was essential that the Afghan government played a lead role in any peace talks. Answering a question, the military official said the mutual distrust between the Karzai government and Pakistan was not a new thing and would take some time before it transformed into a truly neighbourly relationship. “Our effort at the moment is to give an honest push to the ongoing reconciliation process.”
Musharraf’s speeches to be reviewed by JIT By Ikram Junaidi and Syed Irfan Raza ISLAMABAD, April 21: A joint investigation team (JIT) constituted by the district administration and police to investigate the role of former president retired Gen Pervez Musharraf in the judges’ detention case started its work on Sunday. It decided to seek record of the statements and speeches made by the former president after imposing emergency in the country on Nov 3, 2007. . Sources said the JIT, headed by SP, City, Capt (retd) Mohammad Ilyas, was reviewing the statement Gen Musharraf had recorded before a police team at his farmhouse after rejection of his bail plea by the Islamabad High Court last week. The JIT plans to obtain the record from the Ministry of Interior and Cabinet Secretariat regarding the arrest of the judges of the superior courts. The ex-army chief is under detention at his luxurious farmhouse on the orders of an anti-terrorism court that granted his 14-day judicial remand on Saturday with the directive that the accused be presented before it on May 4. The sources said that in his initial statement the former president had defended his act of imposing emergency, saying he had made all decisions at that time after detailed discussion with “relevant departments”. The former military ruler, the sources said, had stood by his speech which he had made while announcing imposition of emergency, which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on July 31, 2009. In his statement, Gen Musharraf said that at that time there was a democratic government headed by an elected prime minister. Having no regret for his act, the former president said all his steps had been in the best interest of the country. When contacted, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Islamabad, Bani Amin Khan, confirmed that the JIT had been constituted in accordance with the Anti-Terrorism Act and it had started investigation. “I have instructed the team to give me a report on a weekly basis.” The head of the JIT is a former army officer, who has been a member of the Islamabad police team for the past three years. The JIT also comprises representatives of the ISI, IB and police officers. Meanwhile, the security personnel deployed at the farmhouse of the former president which has been declared a sub-jail did not allow any visitor to meet Gen Musharraf. His dream of contesting the May 11 polls has already been shattered by rejection of his nomination papers from all the four constituencies in Karachi, Islamabad, Kasur and Chitral from where he wanted to contest for National Assembly seats.Gen Musharraf, who had ruled the country till August 2008 as an absolute ruler after dismissing Nawaz Sharif’s government in 1999, had earlier announced that he was ready to face the charges against him in courts. Besides the judges’ detention case, he is also facing charges of abetment in the murders of Benazir Bhutto and Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Bugti. Talking to reporters outside the farmhouse, the secretary general of the All Pakistan Muslim League, Dr Mohammad Amjad, alleged that the leader of his party was being subjected to the worst treatment in his own house. “He has been kept in two rooms of his house and even his wife and family members are not allowed to meet him,” he alleged. He said Mr Musharraf had also not been allowed to use telephone and internet facilities and had been living in a situation which could be described as worse than a jail. Another APML leader and Musharraf’s lawyer, Ahmed Raza Kasuri, claimed at a news conference that military officials were concerned about the way the former head of state was being treated. Terming the army as one ‘Biradri (community)’, he said: “If lawyers are the Biradri of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry then we can call army a family of Gen Musharraf.” He claimed to have met a number of serving and retired generals over the past few days and said they had criticised the treatment being meted out to Mr Musharraf.
An intense four-way contest By Cyril Almeida KASUR: Surrounded by a handful of supporters, Assef Ahmad Ali is standing in front of the enormous, raised desk of a district judge. Ali is here for the business of the day: to submit his party affiliation and have an electoral symbol allocated. . The former foreign minister who quit the PPP and his seat, NA-140, in late 2011 had hoped to be contesting on a PTI ticket with a cricket bat as his electoral symbol. Instead, Ali is requesting a matka, a water pitcher, as his symbol and will contest as an independent candidate. Ali’s journey from the PPP to the PTI and now, once again, as an independent candidate on a seat he won in 2008 by defeating Khurshid Kasuri, Musharraf’s foreign minister, is a tale of broken promises, hubris and an independent streak — a streak Ali can afford to indulge because of his reliable vote bank among the dominant Arain biradiri, of which he is a sardar. “I quit the PPP because it isn’t the party of Benazir anymore. It’s a party of power players and I was lost,” Ali said. “When I joined the PTI, Imran had assured me that my case would not go to the parliamentary board because I’ve been a former foreign minister and am senior.” He continued: “When I was asked to appear before the (PTI) parliamentary board, I felt insulted. I said, ‘I will not appear before these pygmies. They are my junior.’ ” Ali had in fact been out-manoeuvred by Kasuri, who joined the PTI after quitting his faction of the PML-Q. In a bitter intra-PTI struggle, Kasuri’s enormous wealth, appetite for power politics and determination to stand from NA-140, where his ancestral village is located, gave him the edge over Ali. Now, Ali has revenge on his mind. “Oxford always beats Cambridge,” the St John’s College alumnus said of his rival, Kasuri. But Ali is no longer considered the front-runner. He appears to have been overtaken by Kasuri, who has won over an influential ally, a 27-year PPP veteran who quit the party earlier this month to join the PTI, and by a winner of the Feb 2012 by-election, Malik Rasheed, who won as an independent on the seat vacated by Ali and has since joined the PML-N. Rural politics: On a long drive to a village meeting in this rural constituency, Khurshid Kasuri explained why, in his reckoning, he had lost the 2008 election to Assef Ahmad Ali in NA-140. “The death of Benazir certainly was a factor. But more than that, my wings had been cut off by Pervaiz Elahi,” Kasuri said, referring to his two Punjab Assembly running mates, who covertly supported Assef in the 2008 race. Elahi, according to Kasuri, saw Kasuri as a potential rival for the prime minister slot in 2008 and wanted him side-lined. “In 20 years, I’ve never mentioned Assef in a single race. He talks about me in every speech, in every conversation. I talk about only issues,” Kasuri said of the 2013 race. “It’s not for me to say who is strong or weak (as a candidate) but Malik Rasheed has a lot of support,” Kasuri replied, when pressed about who he sees as his main rival. What is clear, though, in this rural constituency south of Lahore is that party affiliation matters little, with perhaps only the PML-N able to claim some support. Of the four main candidates — Azeemuddin Lakhvi lost the NA-140 by-election to Rasheed by less than a hundred votes — every single one of them has changed parties since 2008. “As you get further away from Lahore and into the rural areas, it becomes more and more about the dharras and biradiris. It’s a reality that you can’t ignore,” Kasuri said. So while Kasuri did talk about Imran Khan and the PTI at his meeting with a small group of potential voters in a field, his principal campaign planks are the big-ticket development projects carried out during his 2002-07 term and dharra/biradiri support. Kasuri’s biggest coup has been to lure across Muhammad Hussain Dogar, the PPP veteran who is now Kasuri’s running mate. Dogar had wanted to contest NA-140 on a PPP ticket but found his way blocked by Azeemuddin Lakhvi, who joined the PML-Q after his narrow by-election loss in 2012. “Kasuri has killed two birds with one stone. Dogar could have been a rival on NA-140 and would have taken votes with him, but now he is Kasuri’s ally,” Saleemur Rehman, a local journalist, explained. Kasuri himself was unapologetic about the apparent disconnect between the kind of politics it takes to win in rural Kasur and the PTI’s message of change. “Change is an overall thing. If 80 per cent are new faces (in the PTI), what’s the harm if 20 per cent are established faces. You need that 20 per cent.” Local support: Up against two formidable figures, Khurshid Kasuri and Assef Ahmad Ali, and a third opponent, Azeemuddin Lakhvi, who relies on a substantial Ahl-e-Hadith vote bank, Malik Rasheed, the PML-N candidate, has fought his way to the front by practising a very local kind of politics. “For 35, 40 years, this constituency, NA-140, was an orphan constituency. Lakhvi, Kasuri, Assef, none of them have their roots here and none of them live here,” claimed Rasheed. “I am a people’s man. My dera is always open, I’m always available, the people’s thanna-katchery problems are solved,” Rasheed continued, eating a small bowl of fruit mixed with cream. “Arain, Dogar and Kamboh are the biggest biradiris here. I don’t belong to any of them and yet I won,” Rasheed said of his by-election victory, his first National Assembly contest, which he won as an independent after the PML-N left Rasheed and Lakhvi to fight for the seat and the party nomination. Now, having secured the PML-N ticket, Rasheed expects a boost. “Had I got the PML-N ticket, I would have got sixty-five or seventy thousand votes,” Rasheed said of his 2012 victory, in which he captured 47,000 votes. PML-N (Rasheed) vs PTI (Kasuri) vs Independent (Assef Ahmad Ali) vs PML-Q (Lakhvi) —- the four-way contest in NA-140 has made victory impossible to predict. While rivals are quick to downplay Azeemuddin Lakhvi’s base as a narrow, purely religious vote bank, Lakhvi is very much the dark horse.
Four soldiers die in blast By Pazir Gul MIRAMSHAH, April 21: Four security personnel were killed and six others wounded in a blast in Frontier Region Bannu, adjacent to North Waziristan Agency, on Sunday. . According to reports reaching here, a military convoy was going from Mirali to Bannu when one of the vehicles was hit by an explosive device placed near the Khawaja Khwar checkpost. The device was detonated by remote control. The injured were taken to a military hospital in Bannu. Security personnel carried out a search in the area, but no arrest was reported.
Independents outnumber political nominees: 850 in fray for 47 NA seats in KP, Fata By Iftikhar A. Khan ISLAMABAD, April 21: Over 850 candidates are in the run for 47 National Assembly seats in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), with the Pakistan Muslim League-N being the only party to have fielded candidates for all the seats. . Only two of the 35 constituencies in KP have the number of candidates in single digits and only three of the 12 in Fata less than 20 candidates. In KP the maximum number of candidates for a single constituency (NA 24) is 33. Over one-thirds of the constituencies in Fata have 30 or more candidates and the maximum number of candidates — 40 — is in NA 36. More than half of the candidates for NA seats in KP and Fata — 432 — are independents and the remaining have been fielded by 39 political parties. However, only 13 parties have nominated more than 10 candidates. The number of contestants from the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) is 46, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) 45, Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) 41, Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians (PPP-P) 38, Awami National Party (ANP) 33, Maulana Samiul Haq-led Muttahida Deeni Mahaz 22, Tehreek Tahuffuz-i-Pakistan of nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan 20, and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) 19 each. The All Pakistan Muslim League and the Pakistan Muslim League-Q have fielded 13 candidates each and the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) 11. Interesting contests: PTI chief Imran Khan will confront Ghulam Ahmad Bilour of the ANP in NA 1 (Peshawar-1). The PPP-P and PML-N have fielded relatively unknown candidates — Zulfiqar Afghani and Afzal Khan Panyala — in the constituency. PML-N Secretary General Iqbal Zafar Jhagra will contest election from NA 3 (Peshawar) against Noor Alam Khan of the PPP-P, whose assets are worth Rs32 billion, and Ghulam Ali of the JUI- F. ANP leader Asfandyar Wali Khan has been pitted against Sikandar Hayat Sherpao, son of Aftab Sherpao in NA 7 (Charsadda). Others in the run for the constituency include Maulana Gohar Shah of the JUI-F, Khanim Ullah of the PPP-P, Kaleem Akbar Durrani of the PML-N and Fazal Muhammad Khan of the PTI. Former chief minister Amir Haider Hoti of the ANP and Nawabzada Khawaja Muhammad Hoti of the PML-N are contesting for NA 9 (Mardan). Former chief of Intelligence Bureau Masood Sharif Khattak — who had joined the PPP after his retirement and was with the PTI until recently — will be contesting election as an independent candidate from NA 15 Karak. In NA 20 (Mansehra) former federal minister Azam Khan Swati, who was elected as senator in 2006 on JUI-F ticket, is a candidate of the PTI. Another former federal minister Syed Qasim Shah who had quit the PML-Q will be contesting against him from the platform of the JUI-F. Retired Captain Muhammad Safdar, son-in-law of PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, will contest polls from NA 21 (Mansehra). His opponents include Maulana Abdul Malik of the JI and Nawabzada Salahuddin Saeed of PTI. Another interesting contest will take place in NA 24 (Dera Ismail Khan) where JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s opponents include film actress Musarrat Shaheen, former minister Waqar Ahmad Khan of PPP-P and deputy speaker of the dissolved National Assembly Faisal Karim Kundi as an independent candidate. Mr Kundi is also contesting polls as PPP-P candidate against Maulana Fazlur Rehman for NA 25 (D.I. Khan). Former chief minister Akram Khan Durrani of the JUI-F, Anwar Saifullah Khan of PPP-P and Professor Muhammad Ibrahim of JI are candidates for NA 26 (Bannu). Saleem Saifullah Khan of the PML-N will be contesting polls against Maulana Fazlur Rehman from NA 27 (Lakki Marwat). PROVINCIAL ASSEMBLY: As many as 1,438 candidates are in the run for 99 general seats in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly. The PTI has fielded maximum number of candidates — 98 — followed by 91 put up by the PML-N, 87 by the JUI-F, 86 by the JI, 82 by the PPP-P and 79 by ANP. The number of independent candidates comes to 571.
NAB seeks police help to arrest power defaulters By Our Staff Reporter ISLAMABAD, April 21: As the 30-day deadline for clearing outstanding electricity dues ended on Friday, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) approached provincial governments to seek police help to arrest the defaulters. . Sources said the bureau was also planning to freeze the assets of defaulters. However, NAB has yet to compile data of defaulters in order to send their names to provincial authorities. It is also not clear yet how much of the total Rs110 billion dues NAB has to recover. “We are compiling the data and will be able to send the list of defaulters to the provincial authorities on Monday,” NAB spokesman Ramzan Sajid said. He said letters had been sent to the chief secretaries, chief commissioner of Islamabad and inspector generals of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, intimating them that criminal proceedings had been initiated against the defaulters under the National Accountability Ordinance 1999 to recover the defaulted money. “In this regard a 30-day notice was issued to all defaulters through the print and electronic media for the payment of dues failing which they will be arrested and prosecuted under the law,” the spokesman said. The spokesman said that in view of a Lahore High Court verdict NAB’s instructions did not apply to defaulters of the Lahore Electric Supply Company till a final decision was announced by the court.
Govt wants to divert water project funds By Khaleeq Kiani ISLAMABAD, April 21: Major water sector projects of strategic nature are facing serious bottlenecks because of cost overruns and financing constraints that could delay their targeted economic benefits to the nation. . Officials told Dawn on Sunday that one of the most important projects — Diamer Bhasha dam — was facing cost overruns and financing gaps even before construction could be taken in hand. Over Rs25 billion had been released but that would be used for land acquisition. Another strategically important project — Neelum Jhelum hydropower project of 969MW — is facing serious financing problems and even finding it difficult to pay for the services being provided by foreign contractors. Sources said that in view of slower progress on Diamer Bhasha dam and urgent financing needs of the Neelum Jhelum project, the government had decided to divert about Rs5bn from Bhasha dam to Neelum Jhelum project but the process stopped because of a general restriction imposed by the Election Commission (ECP) of Pakistan on diversion of funds. The ministries of finance and water and power have requested the ECP to relax the ban as a special case in order to meet the urgent financial needs of the Neelum Jhelum project. The two ministries are also in the process of allowing Wapda to shift its borrowing limit of Rs20bn from Bhasha to Neelum Jhelum project in the form of two Islamic Sukuk bonds through domestic banks. Wapda had originally been given permission to issue two Sukuk bonds of Rs10bn each for Diamer Bhasha dam but it would now be able to raise Rs20bn during the current fiscal year for Neelum Jhelum project whose estimated cost has increased from the original Rs84bn to about Rs275bn as a result of change of its design after the earthquake, involvement of tunnel boring machine and overall project delays. According to a presentation given to the Asian Development Bank recently, major water and power sector projects, which are in different stages of construction, need a total of Rs1.67 trillion between 2014 and 2020 for which over Rs960bn financing required from international lenders is “un-committed”. About Rs220bn has been estimated to be arranged through the Public Sector Development Programme, while Rs200bn has been committed by international lenders. An amount of Rs18bn has to be arranged through self financing in the share of hydel tariff and Neelum Jhelum surcharge being charged to the consumers, while Rs110bn would be borrowed from commercial banks and private investments by local parties before 2020. Provided the financing becomes available, these 12 projects would be able to add about 15,896MW to the national grid by 2022. The estimated cost of the 4,500MW Diamer Bhasha dam has recently been revised to about $14.5bn (Rs1.43tr), up from $11.5bn (Rs894bn) about a year ago, showing an increase of more than 26 per cent. In terms of local currency, the project cost has increased by over 60pc. The project that was originally estimated to be completed by 2016-2017 is now expected to be delayed till 2023. The cost of land acquisition and resettlement of affected people from the site has increased from Rs60bn to Rs116bn on account of additional safeguards recommended by the ADB. The cost of construction of the dam and transmission line is estimated at $5.7bn (about Rs565bn). On completion, the mega project is estimated to provide recurring annual econometric benefit of about $5.2bn (Rs515bn at the current exchange rate), including $3.3bn on account of more than 19,000 gigawatt hours replacing four million tonnes of furnace oil. It would increase the share of hydropower in the electricity supply to almost 54pc from the current 33.6pc and the contribution of expensive oil-based power projects would drop to less than 15pc from the current 35pc. The electricity cost of Diamer Bhasha dam has been estimated at eight cents per unit, compared with the current average tariff mix of about 12.5 cents. The dam will also add live water storage capacity of 6.4 million acre feet. Subsequent to initial bickering from almost all international lending agencies, the government has requested the ADB to act as lead financier and sought its board’s approval on an urgent basis so that physical work on the dam can be started. The ADB is reported to have promised to speed up the approval process.
Jirga warns of ending peace deal By Our Correspondent MIRAMSHAH, April 21: A local jirga in North Waziristan Agency has said it will end a five-year-old peace agreement with the government if curfew in the tribal region is not lifted by April 24. . The agency remained under curfew for the sixth consecutive day on Sunday. The curfew was imposed after clashes erupted between security forces and militants in the Miramshah area, which left 18 people injured. The jirga asked the political administration to lift the curfew, open roads for traffic and abolish new checkposts in the area. The Uthmanzai tribe and local Taliban had signed the agreement with the government in 2007. Tribal elders at the jirga said they would pull out of the peace agreement unilaterally if the government failed to accept their demands. People in the agency were critical of the government after the imposition of curfew. They expressed concern over closure of educational institutions in the area. Recently, a local Taliban shura stopped students from attending schools after security forces closed the main road for traffic. A large number of students studying in Peshawar and other parts of the country have been stranded in different parts of North Waziristan because of the curfew. Hundreds of people and a number of trucks loaded with goods have been stranded in Bannu. There is shortage of vegetables, fruits and other basic commodities in local markets because of closure of the main roads. In Miramshah, the price of 80-kg bag of wheat flour has jumped from Rs2,700 to Rs4,000 and tomato is being sold at Rs150 per kg. Candidates taking part in May 11 elections have restricted their election campaigns because of the prolonged curfew and tensions in the area.
LHC allows Raja to contest election LAHORE, April 22: A full bench of the Lahore High Court allowed on Monday former premier Raja Pervez Ashraf to contest the May 11 election. . The bench comprising Justice Ijazul Ahsan, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Syed Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi set aside the decisions of returning officer for NA 51 Gujjar Khan (Rawalpindi) and an election tribunal comprising judges of the LHC’s Rawalpindi bench which had declared Raja Ashraf ineligible. Mr Ashraf was represented by Farooq H. Naek, Sardar Latif Khan Khosa, Ahsan Bhoon and Abid Saqi. The court observed that the petitioner could not be declared disqualified in the absence of a declaration issued by a court of law. It held that neither the returning officer nor the election tribunal had the jurisdiction to invoke provisions of article 62 unless a declaration was issued by court against a person. The counsel for Raja Irfan Aziz, a rival candidate of the former prime minister, had challenged the petition and argued that the Islamabad High Court had issued a judgment against the petitioner for illegally awarding a contract to the NLC. He said the court had also referred the matter to NAB for investigation. Mr Naek said the IHC judgment had been challenged in the Supreme Court. But no stay was granted.—Staff Reporter
Caretakers’ mandate is to hold peaceful polls: Govt washes its hands of Musharraf case By Nasir Iqbal ISLAMABAD, April 22: It’s now official. Reiterating its earlier stance the caretaker government finally declined on Monday to prosecute former president retired Gen Pervez Musharraf for treason. . “It is likely to become a controversial exercise in long-term for both political parties and institutions of the state and, therefore, it should be best left for the elected government (to decide),” said a five-page statement read out by Deputy Attorney General Dil Mohammad Alizai on behalf of Attorney General Irfan Qadir before a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court. The bench headed by Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja had taken up a set of petitions seeking initiation of a high treason case against Gen Musharraf for imposing emergency on Nov 3, 2007. The bench ordered Rawalpindi Adiyala jail officials manning the Chak Shahzad farmhouse of Gen Musharraf after it was declared a sub-jail to allow his counsel Ahmed Raza Kasuri, Ibrahim Satti and Malik Qamar Afzal to meet him and get instructions and inform the court on Tuesday. The order was issued after Gen Musharraf’s lawyers complained that despite clear directives conveyed to the jail authorities by none other than the court’s registrar, the legal team had been kept waiting with the excuse that instructions were being sought from the Punjab government. “Different apprehensions are being cropped up in our minds since we have deliberately not been allowed to meet Gen Musharraf for the past three to four days,” Mr Kasuri regretted. He requested for a medical check-up of the former military ruler at the Combined Military Hospital. The court assured the counsel that it would ensure that the due process and the rights available to Gen Musharraf under the constitution were not impaired. But what baffled the court was a reply submitted by Additional Interior Secretary Khushdil Malik who said that neither there was record of any effort in his ministry to initiate a treason case against Gen Musharraf under section 3 of the High Treason (Punishment) Act of 1973 nor the Jan 23, 2012 unanimous resolution by the Senate had been communicated to it which suggested to the federal government to detain the former president on his return to the country and initiate a treason trial under Article 6 of the constitution. At the last hearing, acting Law Secretary Sohail Qadeer Siddiqi had informed the court that under a 1994 SRO, the interior secretary had been nominated as the authorised person to file complaints on treason charges. “We have reached a point where we do not understand what the state is doing and the impression we are gathering is neither the government had done anything in the past nor does it intend to do in future as well,” Justice Jawwad regretted. The interim government in its statement explained that it was heavily preoccupied with managing law and order and coordinating with police, law-enforcement agencies and the armed forces for the security of 20,000 candidates. “The resources and attention are already stretched to facilitate the holding of timely elections and effect smooth transfer of power to the rightful elected representatives of the people of Pakistan,” it said. The statement categorically said the legal proceedings pursuant to Article 6 of the constitution would be a measure not in the mandate of the caretaker government. It cited the parliamentary practice which obligates the interim set-up to confine its work to ‘day-to-day’ routine matters and effectively maintain the status quo for the elected government. “The caretaker government should avoid taking any controversial step and should not commit any process that is not reversible by the incoming elected government,” it argued. Justifying the reasons, the statement referred to a working paper by a globally respected NGO, Democracy Reporting International, as well as the 1988 judgment by Justice Abdul Shakurul Salam highlighting the role of caretakers and also the 1980 verdict by Indian judge Justice S. Mukherjee about the interim government. “That is why the interim government deferred some items of the Council of Common Interests in a recently held meeting for the next elected government. It is not making any binding commitments with the IMF, World Bank or any other donor agency,” the statement said, adding that the caretaker set-up had also decided not to enter into any agreement or treaty to bind the future elected government and had turned down a request to be involved in the Reko Diq matter taking the view that this was best left for the elected government to decide. The caretaker set-up, it said, had been left with only 20 days to finalise arrangements for conducting the general elections. “The coming elections pose an unprecedented challenge for the caretakers as the level of threat to candidates had never been so high in any previous election. That is why the caretakers are focusing all their attention on making arrangements in coordination with the provincial governments, political parties and the Election Commission,” it said. Meanwhile, Advocate Abdul Hakeem Khan, one of the petitioners, moved another application and said that in order to meet the ends of justice and fair play the apex court should order immediate shifting of Gen Musharraf to Adiyala jail like ordinary prisoners from where he should be taken to the courts concerned as and when needed.
Payments made to journalists: Promised bang ends in whimper Dawn Report ISLAMABAD, April 22: The explosion that journalists had been predicting for Monday was not more than a damp squib. . The list of the recipients of the ‘special publicity funds’ of the information ministry made public by the Supreme Court on Monday revealed nothing sensational; instead it just provided some of the routine expenses of the ministry such as Eid cakes; the names of a few widows who receive a pittance; and lists of journalists accompanying Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani on trips abroad that were sanctioned by their organisations. The list was based on the details of Rs177.8 million spent by the Ministry of Information from its “Special Publicity Funds (SPF)” in the last 21 months on journalists and media organisations under various heads. Another list involving Rs86.8 million spent through “secret funds” was sealed by the SC for the time being on the request of the ministry. The two lists were provided by the ministry in response to the petitions filed by journalists Hamid Mir and Absar Alam and others asking the court to disclose the names of the beneficiaries of the secret funds of the ministry. However, there were a couple of interestingly large disclosures — Rs37 million was paid to the advertisement company Midas (Pvt) Limited on February 1 last year for “media campaign titled Benazir Bhutto song”, followed by Rs35m on Sept 30, 2011 to the “CNBC television” for its show “Pakistan This Week”. The payment to the CNBC had been made with the approval of the prime minister, says the list.Another fairly large amount of Rs2.47 million is described as having been spent on “payment of hotels for boarding and lodging of journalists, dinner in honour of KP Union of Journalists, Eid cakes for editors and columnists, and dinners for CPNE, APNS and anchors.” Another payment of Rs700,000 had been made to “M/S Publisher of the book titled ‘Mufahamat.’” There are a number of individual journalists who have been paid though most of the amounts are not too large and neither are most of the recipients very famous. For instance, the list shows that the ministry paid Rs215,107 as “reimbursement to Syed Sajjad Shah, CE Apna TV Channel.” The name of the CE of the Apna TV appears a number of times in the list for various smaller amounts; he has been paid another Rs183,374 under the heads of “payment of rent-a-car”, “boarding and lodging at PC Hotel Lahore” and “payment of air ticket”. Neither is this list complete. For example it show a blank box with an expenditure of Rs500,000 and the payment has been made on May 25 last year. In addition, a large chunk of the numbers in the middle of the numbered list is missing -- expenses numbered from 72 to about 110 are conveniently missing. And some of the items are inexplicable. For instance, an expense of Rs140,000 has been shown against “Drawn for Mr Shahzad for online transmission”. The list also shows that the ministry paid for the hotel stay of a number of journalists. For example it paid Rs167,932 for the stay of “journalists Arif Nauman and Muhammad Usman etc” at Marriott Hotel in Islamabad and Rs167,932 for the stay of “journalists Jasmeen Manzoor and Ejaz Khokhar etc” at Marriott Hotel, Islamabad, and Rs157,199 on the stay of “journalists Ali Ahmed Dhillon of Daily Leader and Mr Ali Bux”. The list also says that a journalist Mian Mohammad Nadeem has been paid Rs200,000 without explaining why. Another expenditure of Rs186,972 has been shown against “reimbursement to DG RIO PID Karachi for the air tickets of Safma journalists (Jasmeen Manzoor and Ejaz Khokhar).” The name of senior journalist Saaleh Zaafir repeatedly appears in the list and he has been paid various amounts ranging from Rs100,000 to Rs300,000 “for special assignment”. Dawn tried to get in touch with Mr Zaafir but was unable to do so. The highest amount of Rs500,000 “for special assignment” has been paid to Jameel Soomro; however, there are no details provided of whether or not he is a journalist and where he works. The ministry paid another Rs86,000 for the hotel stay and air travel of Mr Soomro.
Candidate of BNP-A escapes attack By Saleem Shahid QUETTA, April 22: The secretary general of Balochistan National Party-Awami (BNP-A), Mir Asadullah Baloch, and some members of his party escaped a bomb attack on their convoy in Panjgur on Monday. . Mr Baloch was returning from the Tasib area of Panjgur where he had gone to hand over the body of a civil engineer to his family. The engineer had been gunned down earlier in the day. When his convoy of half a dozen vehicles was passing through Khuda-i-Abdan, a locality on the outskirts of the town, the bomb exploded. A senior police officer said the roadside bomb was detonated by remote control. BNP-A sources said soon after the bomb blast some people opened fire and gunmen escorting the convoy fired back. Mr Baloch who was minister for agriculture in the Raisani government is contesting for two Balochistan Assembly seats — PB 42 and PB 43 (Panjgur). Meanwhile, a blast took place in the border town of Chaman which left five people, including two levies personnel, injured. According to a senior administration official, the bomb was fixed with a motorcycle parked near a pushcart. It was detonated by remote control when levies vehicle passed through the area. CIVIL ENGINEER: In Panjgur, gunmen shot dead a civil engineer when he was inspecting a place allotted for a school building. Sub-engineer Abdul Qadeer worked for the Provincial Building and Works Department. Also on Monday, gunmen on a motorcycle killed an inspector of Intelligence Bureau and injured two other people in Dalbandin. The inspector was identified as Mehmoodul Haq who hailed from Gujranwala.
Faustian bargain By Naziha Syed Ali OVER 40,000 Pakistanis are estimated to have died at the hands of terrorists in the years since 9/11. However, this bloody saga has been over three decades in the making. During this period, in certain parts of the country, particularly in south Punjab, extremist elements have entrenched themselves in the warp and weft of the electoral landscape. . Political expediency is the bottom line in alliances or seat adjustments between mainstream parties and extremist/sectarian groups. According to analyst Mohammed Amir Rana, “Although there are perhaps a maximum of 2,000 to 3,000 votes in each constituency where there is support for extremist groups, this is an important vote because, like the minority vote, it will be cast.” That means these groups, both Shia and Sunni, have the potential to influence the result in close contests. In the coming elections for example, even the ‘secular’ PPP has made seat adjustments with the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) — formerly Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) — in Toba Tek Singh in central Punjab, although in the 2002 elections the latter’s candidate, Maulana Ahmed Ludhianvi, had polled only 1,000 votes here compared to the PPP candidate’s 53,000 plus, the second highest. In 2008 the PPP was again the runner-up here, this time to the PML-Q candidate, by less than 4,000 votes. That narrow margin may explain the PPP’s opportunistic understanding with the ASWJ in the impending polls. (Incidentally, back in the 1990s, when it ruled Punjab with a slim majority the PPP coalition government had actually inducted an SSP member into the provincial cabinet.) The PML-N too is expected to make some seat adjustments with the ASWJ, especially in south Punjab, in the coming polls. Of late, the former has often been accused of being close to extremist groups — ironically so, as it was during its second tenure from 1997 to 1999 that the state for the first time took concerted action against sectarian groups in Punjab. Abbas Nasir, former editor of Dawn, attributes this partly to its travails in recent years. “When Justice Dogar declared the Sharifs ineligible to contest elections or hold public office [in 2009], a deep-seated paranoia set in. If the PPP and PML-N coalition [formed in 2008] had stayed intact, and Shahbaz Sharif had not felt besieged by a hostile opposition in Punjab, the situation would have been better.” Patronage and appeasement of extremist groups became part of state policy back in the ’80s under General Zia. This approach was taken firstly to counter the support and funding of Shia sectarian groups in Pakistan by the post-revolution Iranian regime, and then as a corollary of the state’s proxy wars in Afghanistan and later in Kashmir. The US, determined to repulse the communist advance into Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, alarmed by the potential impact of the Iranian revolution in the region and on its own Shia population, poured money into the state’s coffers during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 till 1989 to fund a so-called holy war that was to have profound and long-lasting repercussions on Pakistan’s internal politics. This “jihad” was handled by the Pakistani military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), with manpower provided by right-wing parties and extremist groups as well as students at hardline madrassahs that proliferated across the country with the help of foreign funds. General Zia’s policy of decimating mainstream political forces created a void that was filled by extremist groups. In 1985, when elections were held on a non-party basis during his tenure, many candidates made alliances with sectarian groups because they had the space to operate across Pakistan and recourse to mosques from where they could rally supporters. Meanwhile, militants from the SSP and LJ had virtually free rein to terrorise minority sects and communities in Pakistan, and often got away with murder. According to a senior police official, “Our officers were very careful and diplomatic in their investigations, so no real threat was created for jihadi and sectarian organisations. … If we took any action against SSP activists, they would start contacting different tiers in the government and drum up so much support that we would be compelled to retreat.” Shia militants from groups such as the Sipah-i-Mohammad Pakistan (SMP) also committed violence, but without the advantage of state patronage, they were unable to sustain the momentum. After 9/11, Musharraf could no longer ignore international pressure and, by early 2002, he had banned the SSP, the LJ, the Shia sectarian organisations Tehreek-i-Jafria Pakistan (TJP) and the SMP, along with Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Tehreek-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi. The banned groups soon re-emerged with new names. For instance SSP became Millat-i-Islamia Pakistan, and when that too was banned, it recast itself as the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat. The banning of these organisations was counter-productive in some ways. Many of its activists went underground, thereby going off the radar completely, or joined political parties and injected their extremist philosophy into them. Journalist Zahid Hussain cites the example of a large number of SSP activists who joined the PML-N. “That is why today several of its second-tier leaders are ideologically close to the SSP and that, more than anything else, is a very dangerous trend.” Among the sectarian groups, the Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) also made considerable headway into mainstream politics. Its president Azam Tariq, who had 65 cases registered against him, was elected three times to the National Assembly and once to the Punjab Assembly. In 2002, during Musharraf’s presidency, he contested elections as an independent candidate from prison but was released in order to cast the crucial vote that gave Zafarullah Khan Jamali, who was supported by a coalition including the PML-Q and the MQM, the one-vote majority Jamali needed to become prime minister. In return, Azam Tariq demanded, and got, the release of several SSP prisoners. In 2008, when Shahbaz Sharif was a candidate for by-elections from Bhakkar, an area in south Punjab where extremist groups wield considerable influence, members of the PML-N (some say Sharif himself) paid a visit to Malik Ishaq, one of the LJ’s founders who was then in prison, accused of scores of sectarian killings. The SSP subsequently withdrew its candidate from the seat and Shahbaz Sharif was elected unopposed.Among the Shia organisations, the TJP also sought political legitimacy, which it achieved (under a new name because it had been banned by then) as part of a coalition of religious parties called Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal that was considerably successful in the 2002 elections. The 2013 elections will see a new alliance called the Muttahida Deeni Mahaz, comprising five hardline Sunni religious parties including the ASWJ and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Samiul Haq). The alliance is fielding 70 candidates, and has said that it will seek seat adjustments with political parties.
Loans promised to jobless: Nawaz launches poll campaign in Sindh By Mohammad Hussain Khan TANDO ALLAHYAR, April 22: PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif promised here on Monday to provide loans at low mark-up to all unemployed skilled youths of Sindh if he was elected to power in the May 11 elections. . Addressing a large public meeting in Sharlimar Garden in Tando Allahyar to kick-start his party’s election campaign in Sindh to support PML-N candidates in the area, Dr Rahila Gul Magsi and her younger brother Dr Irfan Gul Magsi, Mr Sharif said he would solve the problem of water shortage in tail-end areas of Sindh and build new distributaries for farmers of Jhando Mari, Chambar ad Bukera Sharif. He said if elected to power, the PML-N would not allow anyone to block water flow and would punish the elements found involved in such activities. He severely criticised President Asif Ali Zardari for doing nothing the people of Sindh. The president, he said, even didn’t bother to know about the condition of poor people of Sindh who were now finding it difficult to survive in the face of sky-rocketing prices of food items and essential goods and spine-breaking inflation. Besides, he said, load-shedding had turned the life of the poor into hell. “It is irony that although President Zardari belongs to Sindh he does not have time to look after the needs of the poor people of the province and to solve their problems.” Mr Sharif recalled that he visited Sindh when it was hit by a devastating flood while President Zardari had been visiting London and Paris at that time to spend time at his newly-bought property there. He said his government had launched a military operation in Sindh against bandits in 1992 and rid the masses of the menace. In those days, he said, Karachi also used to be quite a peaceful city. He praised Dr Rahila Magsi’s works as district nazim of Tando Allahyar and paid tribute to her father, late Allah Bux Magsi, who used to visit him when he was in jail in connection with the plane hijacking case. Referring to the dissolution of the PML-N-led coalition government in Sindh in the 90s, he said when Hakim Said was murdered “we decided to end our coalition with a party which was responsible for the murder. No party ever dissolves its own provincial government but we did it for the sake of peace”. Referring to problems faced by youths, he said: “If students in Punjab can get laptops why not students of Sindh?” He announced that the PML-N, if elected to power, would provide computers to students of Sindh also. “I ask President Zardari why he has failed to end lawlessness in Karachi and why he could not do anything for the people over the last five years?” He said with 14 to 16 hours of load-shedding farmers in Sindh could not cultivate their lands and such a situation would definitely lead to poverty and increase the crime rate. He recalled that the Supreme Court had clearly mentioned in a recent order that certain political parties had militant wings. “Why didn’t you (Mr Zardari) lodge cases against those who had killed 50 to 100 people and why did you tolerate all this,” Mr Sharif asked. He said that being in the government did not mean to became and behave like a king. He said the Punjab government had provided relief goods worth millions of rupees to Sindh when its own large areas were under water because of severe flood. “Today Pakistan’s debt stands at Rs15800 billion, although it was Rs6000 billion when Gen Musharraf left the government. What your (Mr President) government has done to control this mounting debt.” The PML-N chief announced that his government would launch a metro bus on the pattern of Lahore in Karachi. Speaking on the occasion, Dr Rahila said that 75 per cent of tail-end areas of Tando Allahyar where President Asif Ali Zardari owned two sugar mills did not get irrigation water. She said that as a district nazim she had provided gas to 75 villages, electrified 400 villages and built 716 kilometres of roads and a 300-bed hospital in the area.
PTI pledges ‘Islamic welfare state’ By Gohar Ali Gohar BATKHELA, April 22: Chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan said on Monday he and his party would lay the ‘foundation stone of a new Pakistan’ on May 11 and urged “every patriotic Pakistani to play his role for bringing about this change”. . Addressing an election rally in the Darqai area during a visit to Malakand, he pledged to make Pakistan a model Islamic welfare state whose citizens would be respected across the world. The election, he said, was a contest between ‘Junoon (passion) and money’. Severely criticising the PML-N and PPP, he said (President Asif) Zardari and (PML-N chief) Nawaz (Sharif) were two sides of the same coin. “They are brothers but are opposing each other to deceive the masses.” Urging the nation to vote for the PTI to “get rid of Zardaris and Sharifs”, he said gone were the days when the PML-N and PPP took turns to rule the country. “The black era of fake tigers is over because the people have awakened from deep slumber.” The day is not far off when plunderers of national wealth will be taken to task. Corrupt rulers will be held accountable and looted wealth will be recovered and used for people’s welfare if the PTI comes to power. Spelling out his party’s priorities, he said it would introduce a system based on merit and justice and end the “culture of favouritism and easy load”. He said price hike, unemployment and lawlessness had paralysed the nation. “Steps will be taken on war footing to take the masses out of the prevailing situation and put them on the path of progress and prosperity.” He said successive governments had mortgaged the motherland to the US and made the nation its slave but the PTI would break the shackles of slavery and make Pakistan stand on its own feet. He said future belonged to the youth who could bring about a real change and urged them to spread the PTI message for a ‘new Pakistan’ and also convince their parents and other members of their family to vote for its candidates. Mr Khan said 80 per cent of PTI candidates were young and educated people who could transform Pakistan into a developed and prosperous country. Syed Zahid Jan adds from Vari (Upper Dir): Addressing a huge rally here, Mr Khan said his party would end dynastic politics. Instead of offspring of political leaders, the PTI would provide an opportunity to common youths to play their role, he said. “The party will transform Pakistan into a state where an ordinary man could become prime minister and rich and poor people would receive equal treatment.”
Kerry to host Pak-Afghan talks tomorrow BRUSSELS, April 22: US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday he would host a meeting of top Afghan and Pakistani officials this week in Brussels to discuss reconciliation with the Taliban and other issues. . Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his defence minister, along with Pakistan’s military chief and foreign secretary, will attend Wednesday’s meeting, Mr Kerry said. “I will be meeting with President Karzai and General (Ashfaq Parvez) Kayani and the civilian foreign minister from Pakistan while I am here,” Mr Kerry told reporters. He said the goal was to advance the peace process “in the simplest most, most cooperative, most cogent way so that we wind up with both Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s interests being satisfied but most importantly with a peaceful and stable Afghanistan, which is worth the expenditure and the treasure and effort of these last years”.’ Reconciliation efforts between the Taliban and Afghanistan promoted by the United States have hit several snags, including the assassination of Mr Karzai’s hand-picked negotiator, which shattered the little trust that existed between his government and Taliban that might be willing to talk peace. At the same time, Mr Karzai has repeatedly said that any reconciliation cannot take place without the involvement of Pakistan, whose security services have close ties to the Taliban. Afghanistan accused Pakistan earlier this month of placing unacceptable conditions on efforts to bring peace to the country after 12 years of war, the latest in a series of barbed exchanges that has sunk relations between the two neighbours to a new low. Luring the Taliban to the negotiating table is a key goal of the United States and its allies as they work for a peaceful solution in Afghanistan ahead of the final pullout of foreign combat forces in 20 months. Afghanistan and its international backers consider Pakistan a critical player in bringing the Taliban and other militant groups into peace talks. Pakistan holds dozens of Taliban prisoners and has been accused of backing the militants in an effort to be able to exert influence in Afghanistan after withdrawal of US-led foreign troops. But in Islamabad, the foreign ministry said Gen Kayani and Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani will attend the Trilateral Core Group Meeting. “Pakistan has consistently endeavoured to facilitate an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process. Pakistan remains committed to continue its positive and constructive role towards a durable peace in Afghanistan,” the statement said. The Afghan side was less supportive of Pakistan’s role so far, with a Karzai spokesman noting that the Pakistanis have taken no practical steps yet. “As you know there have been many talks and negotiations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but I must say unless Pakistan does not act honestly and take practical steps to what they are saying, it will be very difficult to have any progress in the peace process or fight against terrorism and extremism, so we need an honest and practical act by the Pakistanis on all those issues that they are committing and promising,” Mr Karzai spokesman Aimal Faizi said. Mr Kerry is in Brussels to attend a Nato foreign ministers meeting on Tuesday. He will also meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and various European officials.—AP
Govt to hold probe into attack on Zehri convoy By Our Staff Correspondent QUETTA, April 22: The caretaker government of Balochistan decided on Monday to hold a probe into the bomb attack on the convoy of Sanaullah Zehri, the provincial chief of PML-N, in which his son, brother and nephew were killed. . A Joint Investigation Team (JIT) comprising officials of different law-enforcement agencies would hold the investigation, said an official spokesman after a meeting held here with Chief Minister Nawab Ghous Bakhsh Barozai in the chair. The meeting reviewed the law and order situation with reference to deployment of security forces in and around polling stations on May 11. Special security measures along with additional deployment will be finalised by April 25 for sensitive districts of Kalat and Makran divisions. The home department, officials said, had established a control room which would monitor round the clock law and order situation in the province from Thursday. The meeting was informed that adequate security would be provided to the polling staff. “All available resources will be utilised for holding elections in a peaceful environment,” it was decided. Chief Secretary Babar Yaqoob Fateh Mohammad suggested hiring retired employees of security forces for providing security to political leaders and election candidates. The meeting approved the proposal. It also gave approval to a ‘Chief Minister Mashkel Development Package’ for reconstruction of the border town where houses and infrastructure were destroyed or badly damaged by a powerful earthquake last week.
Altaf wants Musharraf given chance to defend himself By Gohar Ali Khan HYDERABAD, April 22: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain has again said that the next chief minister of Sindh would be from his party. . Addressing a general workers’ meeting at MQM’s zonal office here late on Monday evening, he congratulated the party’s candidates and said people, including Sindhis, Baloch, Pakhtuns and Punjabis would vote for them, especially in Sindh. Mr Hussain said that smokers and those who were addicted to ‘paan’ or ‘gutka’ would not be given MQM tickets in the next general elections and advised such people to give up the habit immediately. He reminded people that it was the Muttahida which had first raised voice against feudal and capitalist systems and sent people belonging to poor families to parliament. “I am happy that today all political parties are forced to say that the MQM represents people from poor and middle class. The MQM is not a party of the rich or capitalists,” he said. He said that 99 per cent of MQM candidates in the coming elections were poor and educated. He said if the MQM came to power it would enforce the local government system which worked for people’s wellbeing. The local government improved sanitary system and addressed other problems of people, he added. The MQM chief said his party would not tolerate corruption. The corrupt will be behind bars even if he or she belonged to the Muttahida. Nepotism and favouritism will be eliminated and all decisions will be taken on merit. He said the job of parliament was to legislate and the duty of courts was to implement the law. Nobody, whether a soldier or a civilian, should take the law into his own hands. Mr Hussain said he always stood by the truth and opposed retired General Pervez Musharraf and President Asif Ali Zardari whenever their governments did something wrong. He said Gen Musharraf was a dictator and he was accused of violating the constitution. “He is a citizen of Pakistan. He came to Pakistan, got protective bail, surrendered before courts and today he is in jail.” He appealed to the media and masses to be careful while criticising him. Some leaders are using objectionable language against him which may be used also against them in the future.“I appeal to the Supreme Court and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to give Gen Musharraf a chance to defend allegations levelled against him. It is the duty of the apex court, the ECP and political parties to fulfil their constitutional responsibility and allow Gen Musharraf to defend himself.” The MQM chief said justice should be enforced in the country. “I apologise to the apex court in advance if I have said something inadvertently.”
Explosives found in car near Musharraf’s farmhouse By Munawer Azeem ISLAMABAD, April 23: The trial and tribulation of retired Gen Pervez Musharraf got a new twist on Tuesday with the discovery of 45 kilograms of explosives in a car abandoned near his farmhouse in Chak Shahzad. . Islamabad’s Inspector General of Police Bani Amin Khan said the car was spotted by security personnel near the farmhouse when the former military ruler was being taken back there after his appearance in an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi. He said the car was immediately taken away from the route and later during search officials found 45kg of explosives in it. The explosives were rigged to fuses, detonator and remote control. “It was ready to blow up and needed only detonation from remote control,” the IG added. Another officer said apparently the explosive-laden car was brought there to target Gen Musharraf. But, he added, because jammers were used during the transportation of the former president, the explosives did not detonate. He said the registration plate of the car showed that it was issued by the Islamabad Excise and Taxation Authority, but it was being suspected that the original plate had been replaced with it. The preliminary investigation had suggested that the car was stolen from the neighbouring city and further investigation was under way to ascertain other details about the car, including the details of its owner, he said, adding that seats, gear box and mudguards of the car were altered to fix the explosives. However, sources in police told Dawn that the car was spotted by some passers-by on the opposite lane of the road where the farmhouse was located and they informed police about it. Police and personnel of bomb disposal squad reached there and during search found the explosives, they added. The sources were of the view that on the pretext of Tuesday’s event, a move could be launched to shift the former president from his farmhouse. According to them, there is a difference of opinion among officials concerned over security of Gen Musharraf. Some officials were in favour of keeping the former president at his farmhouse, which has been declared a sub-jail, while some wanted him to be shifted to jail, said the sources. They revealed that before Gen Musharraf had been shifted to the farmhouse some senior officials had boycotted in protest a meeting which had to take decision. And because their nod was necessary for a decision, their subordinates were used to fulfil legal requirements, they added. On Monday some senior police officials tried to get the attention of media personnel by revealing that the big cache of weapons found in different places at Shahzad Town on Oct 8, 2001, was meant to target Gen Musharraf. According to them, terrorists were trying to dump the weapons, including suicide jackets and missiles, for the purpose of targeting the former president whenever he would return to the country. At that time it was said that the weapons were meant to target the Parliament House.
Four blasts kill 6 in Quetta; LJ claims responsibility By Saleem Shahid QUETTA, April 23: At least six people, including a Frontier Corps man, were killed and over 45 others injured in a suicide car bomb blast and three other explosions that rocked the Balochistan capital on Tuesday evening. . The banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for the car bomb attack. A spokesman for the group, Abubakar Siddiq, called local reporters and said it had carried out the attack. The Hazara Democratic Party’s chairman, Abdul Khaliq Hazara, had a narrow escape as he was passing through the area after addressing an election corner meeting when the blast took place. “A suicide bomber riding an explosives-laden car detonated the vehicle in Nichari area when a soldier of the Frontier Corps stopped it and started searching it,” Col Maqbool of the FC told Dawn. The soldier was killed in the powerful explosion, he added. Police said the bomber was driving the car towards Alamdar Road, probably to carry out an attack on members of the Hazara community, but he detonated the vehicle when the FC soldier flagged it down. “As a result of powerful explosion that was heard across the city, six people, including the FC man, were killed and 37 others, four children among them, were injured,” Quetta police chief Mir Zubair Mehmood said. A majority of people in the Alamdar and Marriabad areas belong to the Hazara Shia community. Over 100 people were killed on Jan 10 in a suicide blast reportedly carried out through an ambulance at a snooker club on Alamdar Road. Mr Zubair said investigation was under way to ascertain how the explosive-laden car had reached the area despite tight security arrangements. The explosion damaged more than 10 houses and shops. “The election office of Sehr Gul, a candidate of the PML-Nawaz, is also in the same area,” police said. The FC post was also damaged. Police and FC personnel took the bodies and the injured to the Sandeman Civil Hospital and the Combined Military Hospital. “The FC soldier and two other people were killed on the spot and three others died in the CMH,” police said. Hospital sources said at least 10 injured people were in a critical condition. According to the bomb disposal squad, 80-100kgs of explosives had been used in the explosion. Earlier in the day, three bomb blasts were reported in Jinnah Town, Gwalmandi and Gordat Singh Road areas. Five people were injured in Gwalmandi and one on the Gordat Singh Road. Police said improvised explosive devices had been used in the three blasts. Rescue teams rushed to the places and took the injured to hospitals. Some of the severely injured were referred to the CMH. Law enforcement personnel cordoned off various areas and launched a search operation after the attacks. Balochistan Governor Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Magsi and Chief Minister Nawab Ghous Bakhsh Barozai condemned the blasts. The caretaker chief minister also visited the CMH and inquired after the health of the injured. He announced that the provincial government would bear the expenditure on their treatment.
Altaf appeals for closure of business across Sindh: MQM poll offices shut after attack By S. Raza Hassan KARACHI, April 23: At least two persons were killed and 18 others injured in a bomb blast at an election camp of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement here on Tuesday night. . Soon after the attack, MQM chief Altaf Hussain asked leaders of his party to shut all election offices and announced a day of mourning across Sindh on Wednesday. “In these conditions how can people dare step out of their homes to cast vote,” he asked. The massive blast near the People’s Chowrangi in North Nazimabad shattered windows of nearby apartment buildings. “A group of political workers were standing outside the MQM election office when an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded in the crowd,” SSP district central Amir Farooqui said, adding: “We have found marks of ball bearings at the scene which suggest that they were packed in the explosives.” “The IED weighing around one and a half kilograms contained ball bearings and small sized nuts and bolts,” a bomb disposal unit official said, adding that the device had been detonated by remote control. The blast caused panic and people started running for shelter. The two men killed in the blast were identified as Saad Siddiqui and Ajmal Hussain, both workers of the MQM. The injured were taken to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. “The place was bustling with political activities and songs were being played. The MQM workers were putting up a large poster of kite, the party’s election symbol, at the time of the blast,” residents said. The MQM chief condemned the attack on the election office and appealed to traders and transports to close their businesses on Wednesday to register their protest. He also directed leaders of his party to shut all election offices for the time being in view of threats of more terrorist attacks. In a statement issued in London, Mr Hussain said maintaining peace and order was the prime responsibility of the caretaker government and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). He claimed that 25 workers, including a candidate, of the MQM had been killed over the past few days. He directed the MQM leaders to convey to the ECP and the government the party’s decision to shut all its election offices. “How peaceful elections can be held amid terrorist attacks,” he asked. Mr Hussain said all political and religious parties should condemn the attack. He said his party had time and again warned the authorities that terrorist elements were planning attacks on the Pakistan Peoples Party, Awami National Party and MQM to stop them from carrying out campaigns and contesting elections. But no concrete plans had been evolved to improve law and order, he regretted.
Bilawal kicks off campaign with video message By Syed Irfan Raza ISLAMABAD, April 23: As the government advised Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to avoid appearing in public because of security concerns, the PPP chairman launched his party’s election campaign on Tuesday in a new style, through a hard-hitting video message. . Bilawal Bhutto regretted the government’s advice and said it was obstructing his party’s election campaign. Sources said the PPP chairman wanted to launch the campaign from Multan last Sunday with an address at a public meeting. But security departments said he should desist from appearing in public because of a serious threat he was facing. When contacted, a senior official of the Ministry of Interior dealing with matters of security said intelligence agencies had received information that Bilawal Bhutto and leaders of some other parties could be attacked during their campaigns. “Instructions have been issued from the interior ministry not only for Bilawal Bhutto but also for the heads of some other mainstream political parties — including the PML-N, Awami National Party and former president retired General Pervez Musharraf,” he said. Several bomb blasts have taken place recently in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during election rallies of different political parties. Also, a car carrying heavy explosives was taken into custody by police from near Gen Musharraf’s farmhouse in Chak Shahzad, Islamabad on Tuesday. The PPP chairman said in his video message that he was aware that his life was in danger because the elements who had assassinated his mother Benazir Bhutto on Dec 27, 2007 in Rawalpindi during the party’s election campaign, were after him. “The murderers of Quaid-i-Awam and BB Shaheed now want to eliminate us as well (but) I don’t care for my life. The world knows that the PPP has laid down lives for democracy,” he said. There were clear indications in the message that he had been barred from launching PPP’s elections campaign. He said: “I wanted to lead the campaign along with you; I wanted to launch the election campaign in the streets of my country alongside my workers. I know that Janisars of BB Shaheed are waiting anxiously for me, but we are at war against this mindset.” He said once again the enemies of peace and prosperity were targeting the PPP. “They belong to a specific mindset. PPP has fought against this mindset over the past five years and continues to fight it. “We have to continue this journey of democracy till we reach our destination, when there will be no fear and terror. But, today obstructions are being created in our way because we don’t have any friends sitting in higher institutions who can issue stay orders as in case of others.” He said: “We are being attacked, corpses are being taken from our houses because we are not Zia’s remnants whose houses are being protected and with whom deals are being signed.” Criticising the policies of the PML-N’s previous government in Punjab, the PPP chairman asked where were those people who claimed to have created a paradise (rivers of milk and honey) in Punjab. “Can’t they see development and prosperity of people of south Punjab,” he said. Responding to allegations of bad governance and corruption levelled by Nawaz Sharif against his father, President Asif Ali Zardari, he said: “Can’t they see the people of South Punjab who are facing hardships because of lack of basic amenities and have to walk several miles just to get clean water? Can’t they see millions of teenagers who work in workshops? The people are dying of hunger and poverty and you are doing politics on Sasti Roti scheme. You had time to do politics on the metro bus scheme worth Rs70 billion but forgot the poor people of Punjab. You ended up establishing Danish Schools instead of providing education to the youth of Pakistan. You don’t care for the masses, you don’t know what the public wants. You don’t know what is poverty and labour.” He said if the PML-N leaders wanted to know what is meant by service to humanity, they should see the Benazir Income Support Programme which had given rights to women of Pakistan. “Dramatisation of issues is not service to the people,” Concluding his message, Bilawal Bhutto recalled facilities and opportunities provided by the PPP to the people of Sindh and said they had provided the highest number of jobs to its youths, initiated projects to end unemployment and protected the rights of the province. “We have given the powers to Sindh never given before.”
A bellwether race in central Punjab By Cyril Almeida KASUR: There are no high-wattage names contesting NA-139, no eye-catching personalities or over-the-top politics. But the complex race in this half-urban, half-rural constituency in central Punjab offers something more: tantalising clues to the electoral prospects of the PML-N, PTI and PPP in the region. . Waseem Akhtar, the winner in 2008, is the quintessential PML-N candidate: personally not very popular, but a leading contender because of the solidly PML-N vote bank in the city. Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmad, winner in 2002, is the archetype of the PPP contender: a likeable people’s man who relies enormously on rural support and gets hammered in the city by an urban electorate suspicious of, if not outright hostile to, the PPP. Muhammad Hussain Dogar embodies the contradictions of the PTI: a veteran politician who recently joined the party in the hope of combining his reliable vote bank at the provincial-assembly level with a PTI surge to carry him to a maiden victory on a National Assembly ticket. All three candidates are in with a shot in 2013, rendering NA-139 one of the more unpredictable races this election. Swimming hardest against the tide is Chaudhry Manzoor, who joined the PPP prior to his 2002 victory and is now a member of the party’s central executive committee. Manzoor can appear a throwback to a different era of politicians: he travels around his constituency in a micro hatchback; is well-versed in global political history and ideological politics — a nod to his socialist origins; and is eager to talk about marginalised sections of society. Since joining the PPP inner circle, however, tales have begun to accrue of a politician tainted by modern politics. Manzoor readily admits the magnitude of the challenge before him on May 11. “One-to-one it is difficult,” Manzoor said. “I won in 2002 because there were several strong candidates. Anyone who wants to enter the race, I welcome.” And while his rural vote bank is fairly reliable, Manzoor recognises the formidable headwinds he faces as a PPP candidate. “About the PPP, what is it people say? That it is corrupt? But here everyone knows about the dirty dealings of the PML-N guy (Waseem Akhtar).” “Load shedding?” Manzoor continued. “In Kasur, there is less load shedding than in Lahore,” Manzoor claimed, crediting his friendships and contacts in the water and power ministry with helping mitigate Kasur’s energy crisis, an especially devastating crisis for a city dominated by employment-generating tanneries and power looms. PTI challenger: Manzoor’s wish for more contenders in a race he is sure to lose to Waseem Akhtar, the PML-N candidate, in a two-way contest has been answered — though perhaps not in the way Manzoor may have hoped. Muhammad Hussain Dogar — a 27-year veteran of the PPP and a Punjab Assembly member from an adjacent constituency — has waded into NA-139 in a campaign that is as much about stepping up to the next level of politics as taking on Manzoor. Dogar, who wears his political ambitions on his sleeve, said: “I said that in Kasur the PPP should have its own candidates. But the party gave so many tickets to the PML-Q.” In essence, Dogar, the PPP district president until quitting the party earlier this month, had wanted the PPP ticket in NA-140, the constituency that covers the one he was elected from as a Punjab Assembly member in 2008. But Dogar found his way blocked by Manzoor, who holds sway over the PPP high command by virtue of his position as an influential member of the party’s CEC. Slighted by Manzoor and offered a ticket by the PTI, Dogar jumped at the opportunity to contest NA-139. However, for all the support the PTI has in Kasur city, Dogar faces two problems: the other half of this NA constituency is rural and he does not belong to either half of the constituency — Dogar’s base being an adjacent rural Punjab Assembly constituency. In NA-139, Dogar is circumspect about the net effect of the PTI. “There is silence in the PTI vote. The tsunami will have to be brought,” Dogar said. “PTI workers have passion but they are not politically savvy. There is also a lack of workers and we’ll have to rely on voters directly.” The freshly minted PTI candidate — he remained a PPP MPA until the Punjab Assembly was dissolved last month — also admitted he had yet to be fully welcomed by the PTI old guard. “Those that are disgruntled, the old PTI worker will bring on board. Already some have come out in support of me,” Dogar said. PML-N stronghold “Mian Nawaz Sharif regards Kasur as his backyard,” Nadeem Haroon, the PTI district president admitted, discussing the party’s prospects in NA-139. “It will be tough but there are four (main) candidates now and the Ansari biradiri is also split.” Therein lies the tale of Waseem Akhtar, the PML-N winner in 2008, and why he continues to be the candidate to beat. Akhtar, who is a distant relative of key PML-N leaders, has a rough style of politics, accused by opponents, and even allies, of aloofness, corruption and running criminal enterprises. “Land grabbing, fraud, gunmen, appropriating state money, he’s involved in all of it,” alleged Naveed Hashim Rizvi, a fierce critic of Akhtar who vied for the PML-N ticket as a member of the PML-Q Like-minded faction before belatedly jumping into the race as an independent. “Yes, the people’s reservations are there,” admitted Naeem Safdar Ansari, who is Akhtar’s running mate but keeps him at arm’s length. However, Ansari added, “In the city, in NA-139, the party vote matters a lot.” The solidly PML-N vote bank in Kasur city has much to do with the dominant Ansari biradiri, a hyper-politicised clan whose byzantine politics notwithstanding has always been aligned with the PML-N. In settled circumstances, Akhtar on a PML-N ticket could canter to victory in NA-139. But the Ansari biradiri has yet to decide on its final alliances ahead of the election and, in the past, divisions among the Ansaris have allowed non-PML-N candidates to benefit. There is also the Rizvi factor, the insurgent independent candidate and former Kasur city nazim who readily admits Akhtar is his target. “It’s very difficult to predict,” an Ansari biradiri leader said of the race. “Dogar could break Chaudhry Manzoor’s votes and Naveed Rizvi could hurt Sheikh Waseem.” PTI hurting PPP, independent hurting PML-N, and each of the party candidates embodying the advantages and disadvantages of his party in the region — NA-139 may be a below-the-radar contest, but it is also a revealing microcosm of elections in central Punjab.
IMF offered $5bn facility, but no deal signed: adviser By Khaleeq Kiani ISLAMABAD, April 23: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has offered about $5 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) at higher interest rate, short disbursement and longer repayment period to help Pakistan repay its debt and to support its balance of payments position.. Speaking to journalists on his return from Washington after a week-long visit, Prime Minister’s Adviser on Finance Dr Shahid Amjad Chaudhry said talks with the IMF “went extremely well” and the fund’s attitude was “extremely positive and keen to engage with the new government in a dialogue”. Mr Chaudhry said his delegation had neither signed any deal with the IMF nor it finalised anything because it was the prerogative of the elected government. “We were in a listening mode and hope the new government will have sufficient range of options to proceed further,” he said. If the new government wishes an IMF mission will come to Pakistan in June for discussing an agreement on a programme that is doable in Pakistan’s circumstances for disbursements by the coming summer. The adviser said he had discussed broad engagement and ways of handling IMF-Pakistan relations and the choice of the programme. He said the IMF offer had disbursement period of 3-4 years and repayment period of 5-10 years. “This gives flexibility” to the new government to overcome structural weaknesses because the repayment — about $1bn per annum — has to start after disbursement. Unlike Standby Arrangement’s interest rate of 15-30 basis points, the EFF programme has an interest rate of 200-300 basis points over and above the market-related interest linked with special drawing rights. He said he was not fully in the picture about reconciliation of dues from the coalition support fund (CSF) currently being discussed by Finance Secretary Dr Waqar Masood Khan who was expected to return on Wednesday. He said the choice of instrument of Standby Arrangement in 2008 was wrong and overloaded with conditions, although well-intentioned, because it envisaged heavy repayments soon after disbursement. Responding to a question about the possible run on banks as a result of declining reserves, the adviser said Pakistan was a unique country that had never defaulted in its debt obligations to any local or international lender or the private sector and was still capable of paying back its debt on time. Mr Chaudhry said the two sides also “agreed in principle” that other international financial institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank would be requested to discuss programme assistance separately with the new government. He said the outcome of the discussions with the IMF would be presented to the prime minister and the cabinet and then discussed with political parties so that their views could be incorporated in the draft budget document for the next financial year. Mr Chaudhry said national economy had performed reasonably well and the current estimates of economic (gross domestic product) growth rate are 4 per cent which showed the economy was recovering. He said the finance ministry was still working on the fiscal deficit estimated to range between 6.9 per cent and 7.3 per cent of GDP during the current fiscal year. The worrying thing was that Pakistan has to repay about $850 million to the IMF in May and then substantial amounts in July and September. Therefore, foreign exchange reserves would remain constrained and the challenge of inability to meet these obligations would be there until August. He conceded that the economy faced “multiple challenges” and the immediate risk was of energy crisis built on usual structural problem where receipts on account of sale of electricity were substantially low, involved heavy subsidies and huge system losses. “The problems relating to power sector inefficiencies and low tariff have to be remedied.” He said the ministry of finance would strive to keep the economy stable and transfer it to the new government in as stable a condition as possible and meet requirements of the petroleum ministry for importing oil for the power sector. He said if handled properly the system had the strength to maintain its course and whatever restructuring was required would have to be faced by the upper class without affecting the poor sections.
Nato calls for Pakistan’s role for Afghan peace BRUSSELS, April 23: Pakistan must play a positive role in bringing stability to Afghanistan as foreign troops prepared to leave the country in 2014, the head of Nato said on Tuesday, before a US-chaired meeting that would try to ease friction between often feuding neighbours. . US Secretary of State John Kerry will host talks between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and senior Pakistan officials in Brussels on Wednesday, with the aim of calming tension over border disputes and the stalled peace process. “If we are to ensure long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan we also need a positive engagement of Afghanistan’s neighbours, including Pakistan,” Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters as alliance foreign ministers met in Brussels to discuss Nato’s mission in Afghanistan. Wednesday’s US-chaired meeting is part of a series of on-off discussions between Afghanistan and Pakistan at the behest of the United States. US officials hope that Mr Kerry, who has a good relationship with Mr Karzai, can bring the parties back to the negotiating table and make constructive progress on an issue that has long-term security implications for Washington. Mr Kerry said on Monday the aim of the meeting would be to “try to talk about how we can advance this process in the simplest, most cooperative and most cogent way, so that we wind up with both Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s interests being satisfied, but, most importantly, with a stable and peaceful Afghanistan”. The talks follow weeks of tension with Pakistan over their 2,600km border and stalled peace efforts. Although there have been several meetings in western capitals over the past few months in which representatives of the Taliban have met Afghan peace negotiators, there have been no signs of a breakthrough. As well as Mr Karzai and Mr Kerry, Wednesday’s meeting will include Afghanistan’s defence minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani, a US official said. Nato-led forces are expected to cede the lead role for security in Afghanistan this spring to Afghan soldiers, 12 years after the United States invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban government harbouring Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on US cities. Most foreign combat forces are due to pull out by the end of 2014, leaving a smaller Nato-led training mission behind and a contingent of US force to fight militants. The White House has yet to decide how many US troops will remain in Afghanistan after 2014 and this could be a factor influencing both Taliban and Pakistani strategy. Much depends on progress in negotiations with Mr Karzai on a Bilateral Security Agreement to define the future legal status of US forces. Nato defence ministers meeting in Brussels on Feb 22 discussed keeping a combined Nato force of between 8,000 and 12,000 troops. That compares to combined Nato forces of about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan now. General James Mattis, the head of the US military’s Central Command, said in March he had recommended keeping 13,600 American troops in Afghanistan after 2014.—Reuters
Woman and daughters suffer acid attack By Our Staff Correspondent MULTAN, April 23: A woman and her two daughters suffered burns in an attack in their house on Monday night. . Azizan Bibi and her daughters Sania and Sonia were sleeping when Altaf Baloch and Nazeer allegedly barged into the house in Naurangabad and attacked them with acid, Azizan’s husband Ghulam Mohammad told police. The victims were shifted to Nishtar Hospital where Azizan and Sonia were admitted. Sania, who suffered minor burns, was sent home after first aid. Doctors said Azizan and Sonia were in critical condition because they had suffered 40 to 50 per cent burn injuries. Police have registered an FIR under section 324 and 34 of the Pakistan Penal Code and section seven of the Anti-Terrorism Act. Police have arrested Nazeer. However, Altaf has managed to flee. According to police, the attack was caused by a minor dispute between the victims’ family and their neighbour Altaf.
PM reshuffles federal bureaucracy By Khawar Ghumman ISLAMABAD, April 23: Prime Minister retired Justice Mir Hazar Khan Khoso on Tuesday ordered postings and transfers in the federal bureaucracy and brought back Abdul Khaliq to the finance ministry as its special secretary. . Mr Khaliq was additional secretary (budget) in the finance ministry, when the caretaker government took charge of the country. He was later made officer on special duty (OSD) by the prime minister apparently in response to media criticism of the ministry for releasing billions as development grants to former members of the National Assembly. Former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf is facing charges of diverting funds meant for other sectors towards his discretionary fund which he later on used for development schemes in his home constituency. According to a press release issued by the Prime Minister House, other postings and transfers included the appointment of Zafar Qadir, another OSD, as secretary in the information ministry. Shahid Rashid presently posted as secretary of information technology department has been sent to the Ministry of Industries in the place of Zafar Mehmood who has reached the age of superannuation. Fazal Abbas Maken, currently working as additional secretary at the PM Secretariat, has been transferred as additional secretary of religious affairs department. Hassan Raza Zafar, another additional secretary of the PM Secretariat, will now work as additional secretary for commerce. Tariq Peerzada, chief commissioner of Islamabad, has been posted as additional secretary of finance. Jawad Paul, who was with the National Institute of Public Policy, Lahore, will now be chief commissioner of Islamabad. Mohammad Asif Sheikh presently posted in the Establishment Division has been sent to the Economic Affairs Division as additional secretary. All the changes have been made after the former interior secretary, Khawaja M. Siddiq Akbar, was recently appointed as principal secretary to the prime minister, and had also been given the additional charge of Cabinet Division. Nargis Sethi, secretary of Cabinet Division, is currently on leave.
Afghan Taliban say foreign captives safe KABUL, April 23: The Afghan Taliban said on Tuesday a group of foreign captives had been moved to a ‘safe area’ following the largest kidnapping of foreigners in six years, highlighting Afghanistan’s insecurity as Nato troops made preparations to leave the country. . Afghan security forces were hunting for the group of eight Turks, a Russian, a Kyrgyz man and an Afghan, all seized after their helicopter made a forced landing on Sunday in a rugged district partly controlled by the militants. “They have been moved to a safe area, they have no health problem and they are fine. They are inside Afghanistan,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said by phone from an undisclosed location. The Mi-8 helicopter, carrying Turkish road engineers and with a Russian and Kyrgyz crew, landed in the Azra district of Logar province, not far from the border with Pakistan. Asked what would happen to the group, Mujahid said: “The Taliban leadership will decide.” The helicopter took off from Khost province on Sunday afternoon and was headed for Kabul when bad weather forced it to land.—AFP
Kerry hosts meeting in Brussels: Kayani, Karzai hold talks to ease tensions BRUSSELS, April 24: Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani held “productive” talks on Wednesday on easing tensions between their countries, US Secretary of State John Kerry, who hosted the meeting, said.. Mr Kerry cautioned, however, that any results of the Brussels talks would have to be measured in improving relations as Nato winds down its Afghanistan mission. “We had a very extensive and ... a very productive and constructive dialogue ... But we have all agreed that results are what will tell the story, not statements at a press conference,” Mr Kerry told reporters, without disclosing any details of what was discussed. Afghanistan and Pakistan have developed differences over efforts to pursue a peace process involving the Afghan Taliban. Mr Kerry hosted the meeting between Mr Karzai and Gen Kayani and Mr Jilani, with the aim of calming tensions over border disputes and the stalled peace process. “I think that everybody here agreed today that we will continue a very specific dialogue on both the political track as well as the security track,” Mr Kerry, flanked by Mr Karzai and Gen Kayani, said after more than three hours of talks. “We have a commitment to do that in the interests of Afghanistan, Pakistan and peace in the region.” After talks over lunch, Mr Kerry, Gen Kayani and Mr Karzai strolled together in the sprawling garden of the residence of the US ambassador to Nato on the outskirts of the Belgian capital. Mr Kerry told reporters at the start of the meeting that Afghanistan was in “a critical transformational period”. The secretary said he was “very hopeful for a productive series of discussions”. The talks would cover “security and other issues regarding the relationships in the region as well as the road forward heading towards 2014,” he said. Mr Karzai called it an important meeting and said he was glad Gen Kayani and Mr Jilani had found the time to travel to Brussels. “Let’s hope...for the best,” he told reporters. Neither Mr Karzai nor the Pakistan officials made any comment at the end of the meeting. The talks came a day after a gathering of Nato foreign ministers in Brussels at which alliance Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Pakistan must crack down on militants who allegedly used the country as a sanctuary to launch attacks in Afghanistan. The meeting follows weeks of tension with Pakistan over their border and stalled peace efforts. Afghan officials accuse Pakistan of supporting Afghanistan’s Taliban and other insurgent factions. Pakistan says Afghanistan has provided safe haven to militants on the Afghan side of the border. Pakistan strongly rejects the charge it helps the Afghan Taliban. In a statement posted on its Brussels Embassy website on Monday, Pakistan said it had “consistently endeavoured to facilitate an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process. “Pakistan remains committed to continue its positive and constructive role towards a durable peace in Afghanistan. “Pakistan is convinced that a peaceful, stable, prosperous and united Afghanistan is in the interest of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the region,” it said. Nato-led forces are expected to cede the lead role for security in Afghanistan this spring to Afghan soldiers, 12 years after the United States invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban government harbouring Osama bin Laden. The White House has yet to decide how many US troops will remain in Afghanistan after 2014. Much depends on progress in negotiations with Mr Karzai on a Bilateral Security Agreement to define the future legal status of US forces. The US government sees Pakistan as a key player in brokering peace with the Afghan Taliban who have been battling the Kabul government and US-led Nato forces since 2001. In his remarks before talks, Foreign Secretary Jilani called it a very important meeting, adding: “We are looking forward to a very productive and forward-looking discussion.”—Agencies
MQM to run door-to-door election campaign By Our Staff Reporter KARACHI, April 24: Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain asked his party’s workers and candidates on Wednesday to carry out door-to-door election campaign in their constituencies and inform people about “injustices being meted out to the MQM”. . He was speaking at a meeting held in London in connection with the day of mourning for two MQM workers killed in a bomb blast at the party’s election camp in North Nazimabad on Tuesday night. The party shut all its election offices after the attack. According to an MQM statement, Mr Hussain condemned the attack and said the forces opposed to the MQM were targeting innocent workers in order to force the party out of the election process. “The persistent killings of MQM workers over the past 10 days brought back the memories of the 1986 Qasba-Aligarh tragedy and the June 1992 operation clean-up.” He said unconstitutional, undemocratic and illegal actions were being taken against the MQM to prevent it from launching a full-fledged election campaign. He urged MQM workers and ‘Haq Parast’ people to carry out election campaign on their own and inform the people about injustices to which the party was being subjected. “We want to tell our enemies that our determination remains unshaken and we are full of vigour and energy,” he added. Mr Hussain expressed concern over the failure of law-enforcement agencies to arrest the perpetrators of the Tuesday’s attack as well as the killers of MQM workers. He urged the caretaker government to protect people, arrest criminals and ensure holding of peaceful elections. In a late-night development, the MQM chief and President Asif Ali Zardari discussed on phone the political situation in the country.
16 hurt in 3 Quetta blasts By Our Staff Correspondent QUETTA, April 24: At least 16 people, two of them policemen, were injured in three blasts here on Wednesday and death toll in Tuesday’s suicide attack rose to eight. . Meanwhile, house of a candidate for the May 11 election was attacked in Kalat but caused no casualty. In Quetta, police said, bicycles had been used to carry explosives to the sites of two of the blasts which caused panic. The first blast took place in the Satellite Town where an explosives-laden bicycle had been parked near a private hospital. Thirteen people, including a child, were injured when the explosives went off. Police and security personnel took the injured to the Civil Hospital where four of them were said to be in a critical condition. After examining the site of the blast, bomb disposal personnel said that around 1kg explosives had been used. In the other blast in the Sariab Road area, two policemen were injured. Officials said that the explosives had been detonated by a remote control near the Kechi Baig police station when a police van arrived there. “The van patrolling the area was the target,” a senior police official said, adding that two police constables in the vehicle were injured. The van was damaged and a wall of the police station collapsed. In the third incident, an explosive device planted on road went off at Jadoon Chowk on New Jan Muhammad Road. One person was injured. Meanwhile, two men who were injured in Tuesday evening’s car blast died at the Combined Military Hospital, raising the toll to eight. Poll candidate’s house attacked: In Kalat, men on a motorcycle hurled grenades at the house of Maulana Mehmood Shah, the provincial general secretary of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Nazaryati group) who is a contesting for the Balochistan Assembly’s PB-36 seat. The grenade exploded in the backyard of the house, damaging walls and smashing windows. No one was injured.
Imposition of emergency: Musharraf asks SC to summon abettors By Nasir Iqbal ISLAMABAD, April 24: Former president retired Gen Pervez Musharraf suggested to the Supreme Court on Wednesday to summon people who had aided, abetted or collaborated in his emergency proclamation of Nov 3, 2007. . “Their presence is necessary in the proceedings under the constitutional jurisdiction of the Supreme Court under enforcement of the fundamental rights,” said a reply submitted by Gen Musharraf to one of the petitions filed by Barrister Amjad Malik. A three-judge bench, headed by Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja, had taken up a set of petitions seeking initiation of a treason case against the former military ruler. “The word ‘treason’ against an individual amounts to a wild and reckless allegation of a ‘traitor’ and proceedings under article 184(3) of the constitution on such charges will amount to adversely affecting the fundamental rights of Gen Musharraf in terms of articles 4, 8, 10 and 10A of the constitution,” the reply said. The current proceedings, it argued, would eventually become a talk of the town and would mean condemning Gen Musharraf without a fair trial. “The conscious decision of the caretaker government not to file a complaint under section 3 of the High Treason Punishment Act 1973 is a policy matter and exercise of any discretion by the Supreme Court in this regard will mean entering into the realm reserved for the executive. “A policy decision in the national interest on security reasons is immune from the apex court’s constitutional jurisdiction,” the reply argued. During the proceedings, Advocate Ibrahim Satti, representing Gen Musharraf, argued that the July 31, 2009, judgment of the Supreme Court in which findings were recorded against the former president had been vitiated with bias because Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry had presided over the bench. He recalled that the chief justice was a party in a reference filed by Gen Musharraf in the Supreme Judicial Council against him. Similarly, he recalled, Gen Musharraf was also a party in a petition the chief justice had filed in the apex court against the reference. The counsel asked how could the July 31, 2009, verdict be considered impartial when it had been issued by a bench presided over by the chief justice himself. Advocate Satti cited some cases to establish principles laid down by the apex court itself suggesting disqualification of a judge from sitting on a bench to hear a case which also includes a personal bias or prejudice towards a person. Referring to article 189 of the constitution, he said the binding effect of any judgment of the Supreme Court was limited to a high court if any question of law had been decided. He cited article 191 of the constitution under which the Supreme Court Rules of 1980 had been framed by the court itself regulating its functions and asked when the apex court itself was framer of the rules which were not subject to approval by the president then how could the court interpret these rules independently. Under these rules, the counsel said, the authority of constituting division or different benches of the apex court had been vested in the chief justice. Ahmed Raza Kasuri, another counsel for Gen Musharraf, jumped to the rostrum to say that if the court did not consider his client’s case a significant one, it meant that it was not focusing on this important case which the entire world was watching with great interest. He was replying to an observation made by Justice Jawwad Khawaja that the current case might be important for Gen Musharraf’s counsel, but not for the court because all cases were important for it even if it pertained to two and a half marlas of land. The case will be taken up on Thursday.
The battle for Balochistan By Zahid Hussain THE return of the nationalists to the hustings may have given greater legitimacy to the electoral process in Balochistan, but it will not be easy to bring the province’s alienated population back into the mainstream. . The province stands dangerously polarised — and the electoral process is under threat by insurgent groups and by separatists, such as the Baloch National Front that has called for a shutter-down strike from May 5 to election day on May 11. It is now a battle between the moderates who have chosen to return to the democratic path and the hardliners who believe the elections would harm their cause for independence. Tensions are running high. Even members of the influential Baloch tribal elite are divided. The recent attacks on candidates of nationalist parties allegedly by armed insurgent groups reflect the explosive situation in the run-up to the elections. There has been a dramatic turnaround in Baloch politics after Akhtar Mengal returned home last month to lead his faction of the Balochistan National Party (BNP-M) in the coming elections. Just a few years ago, the former chief minister stood trial for sedition. He languished in jail for almost two years before being released in 2008. Losing hope in the political struggle for the rights of his province, Mr Mengal, like many of his compatriots, left the country in self-exile. His return to mainstream politics has certainly raised hopes about a possible political solution to the long-festering Balochistan crisis. But it may not be so easy for the Baloch chieftain to win back the confidence of his people after his long absence from the province. The BNP-M boycotted the 2008 elections in protest against the military operation, extra-judicial killings and the illegal detention of political activists by the intelligence agencies in Balochistan. The party took part in the 2002 elections, but resigned from parliament and the Balochistan Assembly in 2005 after the assassination of Akbar Bugti in an army operation. The death of one of the most powerful tribal chiefs and political figures turned the long-simmering unrest in the province into an uprising. Balochistan had remained relatively quiet for almost two decades, after the end of the insurgency in 1980 until the return to civilian rule in 1988, which brought the Baloch nationalists into the political mainstream. Although their major demands relating to gas royalties and the allocation of federal resources remained unfulfilled, democracy provided the Baloch population with at least a sense of political participation. But the return of military rule in 1999 ended that relative calm. Tension mounted when the military started building new cantonments in 2004. The move was seen as a means to further tighten federal control over the province and the apprehension was not without basis. Instead of addressing the genuine grievances of the Baloch people, the military mounted a ruthless operation. The air force was used against the civilian population forcing thousands of tribesmen to flee their homes. Since Balochistan became part of Pakistan some 65 years ago, Baloch nationalists have led four insurgencies — in 1948, 1958-59, 1962-63 and 1973-77 — which were brutally suppressed by the state. Now a fifth is under way and this time the insurgents are much stronger. Unlike the past, the educated middle-class youth, rather than tribal leaders, are leading the separatist movement. An overwhelming majority of Baloch nationalists had rejected secession and struggled for autonomy within the framework of the Pakistani federation. But state repression blurred the division, pushing many moderates to ally themselves with the radicals. A large number of nationalist parties’ cadres joined the armed struggle. As Balochistan has descended into anarchy, the state’s authority has eroded. The military seems to have contained the insurgency, but has failed to win the trust of the alienated population or to effectively establish the writ of the state in a large part of the province. The policy of killing and dumping the bodies of political activists has pushed increasing numbers of people, particularly among the young generation, into the fold of separatist groups. Although the military operation has been halted over the past few years, tribal ‘death squads’ allegedly propped up by intelligence agencies are still active. According to the Human Rights Watch, around 300 corpses of disappeared persons were discovered in 2011. This situation inspires little confidence in the fact that moderates are returning to democratic politics. Besides the BNP-M, the National Party led by Dr Malik Baloch and the Balochistan National Party-Awami led by Israrullah Zehri are also participating in the elections. Mainstream political parties such as the PML-N and PPP are in the race as well. It is certainly not going to be easy for the nationalist parties to regain their support base after being absent from their areas for so long. Then there is a strong perception that Akhtar Mengal has returned to the country after a deal with the security establishment. The candidates cannot even campaign in their constituencies where the armed groups hold sway. There are three major insurgent groups operating in the province. The strongest among them is believed to be the Balochistan Liberation Army, led by Hyarbyar Marri who took over the command of the outfit after the assassination of his brother Balach Marri by the Pakistani military intelligence in 2007. The two other groups are the Baloch Republican Party, led by Brahmdagh Bugti, the grandson of Akbar Bugti, and the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) led by Dr Allah Nazar. The divisions largely reflect tribal differences, but the groups share the common agenda of independence. While the influence of the insurgent groups is the strongest in the Turbat, Panjgur and Awaran areas, they also have a significant presence in the Gwadar, Khuzdar, Mastung, Kharan and Kalat areas. State control in the Dera Bugti, Barkhan and Bolan areas is tentative despite the huge presence of security forces. A strike called by a separatist group against the elections recently brought parts of Makran to a complete halt for several days. Even banks and government offices remained shut. The Pakistani national anthem is not sung in many schools and buses play pro-independence songs. The conflict has even divided political families. While Akhtar Mengal is leading his party into the elections, his younger brother Javed Mengal has his loyalties with the insurgents. Similarly, one of the brothers of Hyarbyar Marri, the leader of the BLF, is a candidate for the National Assembly from the Kohlu-Barkhan area. Changez Marri is contesting on a PML-N ticket. Certainly this presents a very dire political scenario, but an uninterrupted democratic process is the only way to restore the confidence of the people of Balochistan in the federation. The decision by the nationalist parties to return to electoral politics despite the threat of violence is indeed a step forward in Balochistan’s struggle for democratic rights.
Over 16,690 vying for 1,170 national, provincial seats By Iftikhar A. Khan ISLAMABAD, April 24: Over 16,690 candidates are in the run for 1,170 seats of national and provincial assemblies, according to the final list of contestants released by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Wednesday after disposal of appeals.. The heavyweights in the list include two former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Raja Pervez Ashraf, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan, former chief ministers of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif and Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, ANP chief Asfandyar Wali Khan, MQM’s deputy convener Dr Farooq Sattar, former chief ministers of Sindh Qaim Ali Shah and Arbab Ghulam Rahim, former chief ministers of Khyber Pakhtunkhawa Amir Haider Hoti, Aftab Ahmad Sherpao, Pir Sabir Shah and Mehtab Ahmad Khan Abbasi and former chief minister of Balochistan Akhtar Mengal. Other prominent candidates are former leader of the opposition in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, former speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza, Mehmood Khan Achakzai, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Khurshid Kasuri, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Khurshid Shah, Naveed Qamar, Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar, Qamar Zaman Kaira, Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, Ahsan Iqbal, retired Captain Safdar and Chaudhry Wajahat Hussain. According to the data received by the ECP from provincial election commissions, there were 7,020 candidates for 272 general seats of the National Assembly after disposal of appeals, but 2,349 candidates withdrew their nomination papers, leaving 4,671 in the run. There are 258 candidates for 60 seats reserved for women in the National Assembly. Of them 123 are on 35 seats from Punjab, 58 for 14 seats from Sindh, 45 for eight seats from KP and 32 for three seats from Balochistan. There are 71 candidates for 10 seats reserved for minorities in the National Assembly. There are 10,958 candidates for 577 general seats of provincial assemblies, 559 for 128 seats reserved for women and 175 for 23 seats reserved for religious minorities. There are 5,758 candidates for 297 general seats of the Punjab Assembly, 2,809 for 130 seats of the Sindh Assembly, 1,438 for 99 of the KP Assembly and 953 for 51 of the Balochistan Assembly. Over 230 candidates are in the run for 66 seats reserved for women in the Punjab Assembly, 127 for 29 seats in the Sindh Assembly, 126 for 22 in the KP Assembly and 75 for 11 in the Balochistan Assembly. There are 55 candidates in Punjab and Sindh assemblies for eight and nine seats reserved for non-Muslims and for three seats in KP and Balochistan there are 28 and 37 contestants, respectively. EYE-CATCHING CONTESTS IN PUNJAB: The Punjab which accounts for more than half of the National Assembly constituencies will witness some important and interesting electoral battles. Former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf will contest election from NA-51 (Rawalpindi) against former Tehsil Nazim Raja Javed Akhlas (PML-N) and Raja Farhat Fahim Bhatti of the PTI. Former leader of the opposition Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan is contesting for two national and two provincial assembly seats. He will face Basharat Raja, a joint candidate of the PML-Q and the PPP in NA-52 (Rawalpindi), and Ghulam Sarwar Khan of the PTI and Intikhab Hussain Shah of the PPP in NA-53. PTI chief Imran Khan may give a tough time to Hanif Abbasi of the PML-N in NA-56. Former deputy speaker of the AJK Legislative Assembly Raja Israr Abbasi (PPP) is also in the run for the seat. Imran Khan is also contesting for NA-1 (Peshawar), NA-71 (Mianwali) and NA-122 (Lahore). Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi is contesting from NA-61 (Chakwal) against Sardar Mansoor Hayat Tamman (PTI) and Sardar Mumtaz Khan (PML-N). He is also contesting for NA-105 (Gujrat) seat against his traditional rival Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar (PPP). In NA-106 (Gujrat), former information minister Qamar Zaman Kaira will face Chaudhry Jaffar Iqbal of the PML-N. PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif is contesting for the National Assembly seats, NA-68 (Sargodha) and NA-120 (Lahore). No prominent leader from any political party is in the run in any of the constituencies. Former interior minister Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat will contest as an independent candidate. He will face Syed Abid Hussain Imam (PPP), a son of former speaker of the National Assembly Syed Fakhar Imam. Interestingly, Fakhar Imam himself is contesting on PML-N ticket from NA-156 (Khanewal). He will face former minister of state Raza Hayat Hiraj (Independent). Former information minister Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan will contest from NA-110 and NA-111 (Sialkot). In NA-110, she will face PML-N leader Khawaja Mohammad Asif. In NA-117 (Narowal), PML-N leader Ahsan Iqbal will contest against singer Abrarul Haq of PTI. Anwarul Haq Chaudhry of the PPP is also in the run. In NA-148, Ali Moosa Gilani (PPP), a son of former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, will face Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi (PTI) and Ghaffar Dogar (PML-N). Abdul Qadir Gilani, another son of Mr Gilani, is contesting from NA-151 (Multan). In NA-149 (Multan), a prominent Jamaat-i-Islami leader Liaquat Baloch will face Tariq Rasheed of the PML-N and Malik Amir Dogar of the PPP.
Villagers chop off man’s hands By Our Correspondent DERA GHAZI KHAN, April 24: Tribesmen chopped off hands of a fellow tribesman in remote area of Choti Bala on Tuesday night. . The victim said he had faced the wrath of his rivals because of an old enmity, but the suspects told police that he had sneaked into their house with the intention of theft, but was caught and had his hands chopped. According to sources, Fida Hussain, Atta Mohammad, Nazir Ahmed, Mohammad Ishaq chopped off hands of Tufail in Nanger Fida Hussain village. Tufail was taken to a hospital in Dera Ghazi Khan. He told Dawn that his relatives had kidnapped a woman of the suspects’ family 10 years ago, but the dispute was settled through a jirga. Even then, the suspects picked him up and brutalised him to satiate their thirst for revenge. Police have registered a case against the four suspects under section 334, 148, 149 of the Pakistan Penal Code and arrested Fida Hussain and Mohammad Ishaq. Raids were being conducted to arrest the remaining two. But an AFP report quoted police as saying Tufail crept into a village house to steal, but was caught red-handed and had his both arms severed at the elbow by his would-be victims. The incident happened overnight after Tufail, 34, entered a house in Nanger village, police official Mohammad Ayub said. “The four male family members present in the house severed Tufail’s both arms at the elbow.” “One of the culprits in police custody did confirm that they severed Tufail’s arms in a fit of anger because he had snuck into their house with an intent to burgle.” Tufail is in a stable condition, Ayub said.
Naek to defend caretaker govt in Senate By Amir Wasim ISLAMABAD, April 24: Former law minister Farooq H. Naek will defend the caretaker government in Senate after his nomination as the Leader of the House by Prime Minister Mir Hazar Khan Khoso. . Talking to Dawn on Wednesday, Mr Naek confirmed the development and said that he had sought prior approval of his party before accepting the offer made by the prime minister. Mr Naek, who had served as chairman of the Senate chairman from 2009 to 2012, said his role would be to represent the prime minister in the upper house as provided in Senate rules. “Let’s see” was his simplest response when asked how he would defend the caretaker government when his party had no role in the state of the affairs. The office had fallen vacant when Mr Jahangir Badar resigned as leader of the house on April 15. After Mr Badar’s resignation, there was a brief debate in the Senate and members were of the view that with the dissolution of the National Assembly, there were no members of the treasury and opposition in the house. When some members suggested that any member of the caretaker cabinet could be given the role, it was pointed out by others that Senate rules did not allow any non-member to become the leader of the house or leader of the opposition. The matter was left undecided and Senate Chairman Nayyar Bokhari asked members to discuss the issue. In the meanwhile the caretaker prime minister requested Mr Naek to represent him in the Senate till a new prime minister was elected. The job of the leader of the house is not only to represent the prime minister but to ensure presence of the ministers in the house during the question hour or any other business. Having no representation in the house, the caretaker ministers had to face a difficult time in Senate in its last session when members harshly criticised the government for failing to provide protection to election candidates in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Balochistan. A Senate session is expected to be called next week because 33 members have submitted a requisition notice for discussing developments in cases being faced by Gen Musharraf.
Singing legend Shamshad dies By Jawed Naqvi NEW DELHI, April 24: You could scarcely find a picture of hers until the 1970s, when she stopped singing, though her voice had regaled millions of moviegoers across the world from as early as 1941. . Camera-shy since she turned down an acting offer on her father’s advice, Shamshad Begum who died in Mumbai on Tuesday will be best remembered for her lilting songs and a determined aversion of publicity. She was 94. On most occasions popular playback singers for Hindi / Urdu movies were given their breaks by eminent music directors of their period. Lata Mangeshkar got hers from Anil Biswas, Mohammed Rafi was inducted by the legendary Naushad. Shamshad Begum was a rare singer after K.L. Saigal who would boost the careers of music directors of repute, including self-confessedly of Naushad who acknowledged that she played a pivotal role in his phenomenal success. Two other iconic music composers, O.P. Nayar and S.D. Burman, owed their popularity to her roaring success in the 1940s and 1950s when she was the highest paid female playback singer. Nayar described her voice rather faithfully by likening its clarity to a temple bell. It is generally believed that early movie producers would nudge the still new female singers Lata Mangeshkar and her younger sister Asha Bhosle to imitate Shamshad’s style. Her untrained musical range was phenomenal, and while she was adept at belting out folk-based songs Shamshad Begum is credited with singing one of the first numbers based on western pop music. C. Ramchandra’s ‘Meri jaan...Sunday ke Sunday’ remains an all-time hit. In the late 1940’s, future musical stars Madan Mohan and Kishore Kumar would sing as chorus boys for her songs. According to one account, Shamshad promised she would sing songs composed by Madan Mohan once he started a career as music director and would accept a lower fee. She also predicted that Kishore Kumar would go on to become a great playback singer in future. Her crystal-clear voice caught the attention of sarangi maestro Ustad Hussain Bakshwale Saheb, who took her as his disciple. She and Noorjahan were discovered by Ustad Ghulam Haider in early 1930’s and 1940’s respectively. Nigar Sultana lip-synced ‘Teri Mehfil Mein Qismat Azma Kar’ from Mughal-e-Azam and ‘Mere Piya Gae Rangoon’ from Patanga. ‘Saiyan Dil Mein Aana Re’ was picturised on Vyjantimala, and ‘Boojh Mera Kya Naam Re’ was filmed on Minoo Mumtaz. They are extremely popular today. The singer’s daughter Usha Ratra told local media that Begum died in Mumbai on Tuesday after a period of declining health. “The golden voice of Shamshad Begum, playback singer of great eminence in some of the most historic film songs .. now silent .. RIP,” veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan said on Twitter on Wednesday. “I am saddened to hear of the death of Shamshad Begum. I have sung with her in several films and she had a pleasant and simple personality,” Mangeshkar wrote on Twitter. Begum was born in Amritsar, and started her career on radio in 1947 before singing for the movies.
Day of mourning in Sindh today, traders to keep businesses shut: Eight die in militant attacks on MQM, PPP By S. Raza Hassan KARACHI, April 25: True to their declared stance of keeping liberal democratic parties out of the election process, militants continued to mount pressure on MQM and PPP and attacked the election office of the former in Karachi and the office of a candidate of the latter in Nushki in Balochistan on Thursday.. KARACHI, April 25: True to their declared stance of keeping liberal democratic parties out of the election process, militants continued to mount pressure on MQM and PPP and attacked the election office of the former in Karachi and the office of a candidate of the latter in Nushki in Balochistan on Thursday.
Day of mourning in Sindh today, traders to keep businesses shut: Eight die in militant attacks on MQM, PPP By S. Raza Hassan KARACHI, April 25: True to their declared stance of keeping liberal democratic parties out of the election process, militants continued to mount pressure on MQM and PPP and attacked the election office of the former in Karachi and the office of a candidate of the latter in Nushki in Balochistan on Thursday.. The acts of terror claimed at least eight lives in Sindh and Balochistan, casting a pall of gloom over election activities across the country. In Karachi, the MQM announced a day of mourning across Sindh on Friday. Traders said they would to keep their businesses shut and schools announced a day of closure and rescheduled some exams. The first attack of the day took place in Nushki when a hand-grenade was hurled at the election office of a PPP candidate. A tribesman was killed in the attack. The attack on the MQM election office, second in the city in three days, claimed six lives and left over 12 people, including a woman, injured. In yet another terror attack, some elements opened fire on a Rangers’ post in Sindh’s second largest city, Hyderabad. A Rangers sepoy died in the attack. In Karachi, an explosive-rigged motorcycle was blown up by remote control in North Nazimabad. The proscribed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack. Speaking to Dawn.Com on telephone from an unspecified location, TTP spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan said his organisation had targeted the MQM as it had vowed to do so. The TTP had threatened to attack the PPP, Awami National Party and MQM. But MQM spokesman Wasay Jalil expressed his party’s resolve of not leaving the ground and to take part in the May 11 elections. MQM chief Altaf Hussain strongly condemned the blast. A rescue worker said one injured man and some human limbs were strewn across the site. A severed head was also found, police said. “The blast took place in Nusrat Bhutto Colony at a corner of a narrow street near the MQM office which was closed at the time,” District Central SSP Amir Farooqui told Dawn. The brunt of the explosion was borne by a nearby laundry. The owner of the shop and his two sons were killed in the blast, SSP Farooqui said. The officer pointed out that the scene of the blast lay close to Kunwari Colony, not far from an area considered to be a Taliban stronghold. “Initial findings by the bomb disposal unit suggested that around 5 to 6 kg of explosives was used in the bombing. The explosives were laced with ball-bearings detonated through a remote control device,” he said. Adjoining small shops and houses and vehicles parked in the area were damaged by the blast. There was utter confusion at the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital’s emergency unit where people were frantically searching for their loved ones, while others were comforting their relatives. Distressing scenes were seen in the hospital’s mortuary where relatives, grieving over the bodies, were being comforted by members of their families and friends. In a similar blast on April 23, four people were killed when an improvised explosive device (IED) went off outside an MQM election camp at People’s Chowrangi in North Nazimabad.
Doctrine of necessity alive, says counsel By Nasir Iqbal ISLAMABAD, April 25: A counsel representing former president retired Gen Pervez Musharraf said in the Supreme Court on Thursday that its July 31, 2009, judgment of declaring the 2007 emergency unconstitutional had not buried the infamous concept of doctrine of necessity, rather it was still very much alive. . The Supreme Court in its July 31 verdict had termed the personal interest of Gen Musharraf as the major cause of imposition of the Nov 3, 2007, emergency, Advocate Ibrahim Satti argued before a three-judge bench headed by Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja which had taken up a set of petitions seeking initiation of a treason case against the former military ruler. He said the apex court, while dealing with the constitutional deviations by dictators in the past, had dealt with three reasons for the proclamation of emergency or abrogation of the constitution -- one that it had become a necessity because of the prevalent situation at the time, or it had become indispensable for the welfare of the people to proclaim emergency or due to the personal reason of a person who had imposed the undemocratic rule. But in its July 31 verdict, the counsel argued, the apex court had dealt with only the personal reason of Gen Musharraf and left aside the two other reasons. At this, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain, a member of the bench, asked the counsel if he was implying that the doctrine of necessity was still alive. The counsel replied in the affirmative. “You have created an impression as if the apex court has still left open a window to validate future extra-constitutional deviations,” Justice Hussain said. He recalled that the apex court in its July 31 verdict had categorically held that neither parliament nor the Supreme Court or a high court would validate constitutional deviations in future. Rather the code of conduct for judges was amended to restrain them from legalising such deviations in future. Advocate Satti argued that two petitions which eventually culminated in the July 31 verdict had never raised any prayer against Gen Musharraf, rather sought relief against the judges who had taken oath under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO). It was during the proceedings on July 22, 2009, that the name of Gen Musharraf had surfaced and the court issued a notice to him, the counsel said, adding that the then attorney general had also taken a plea that the government had decided not to defend the proclamation of Nov 3 emergency. During the proceedings on Thursday when the court sought the opinion of Attorney General Irfan Qadir about the emergency, he said: “If we follow the 2000 Zafar Ali case, perhaps the Nov 3 emergency was unnecessary.” But he said the court should not ask questions at the spur of the moment and if it wanted any assistance in the matter he would give his stance later. Advocate Satti cited an appeal filed by Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar against the contempt charges for taking oath under the PCO and said the court had shown magnanimity by pardoning him. The counsel argued that the court should repeat the same generosity by allowing Gen Musharraf to face treason trial if a special court was set up by raising legal defence and plea available to him in accordance with the law on its merit independent of the observations made against him in the July 31 judgment. He contended that the July 31 verdict had said nothing about registering a treason case against Gen Musharraf. “If it is not done, all the legal rights available to Gen Musharraf will be hampered and he will be left without any defence or right to agitate at the forum concerned,” Advocate Satti said, adding that anything that came from the court would influence other functionaries and that could be harmful for his client. The court will take up the case on Monday.
Bilawal off to Dubai By Syed Irfan Raza ISLAMABAD, April 25: PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is leading his party’s election campaign for the coming general elections, is now in Dubai. . The president’s spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, said on Thursday that Bilawal Bhutto left for Dubai on Wednesday and was expected to return soon. Makhdoom Amin Fahim, a senior PPP leader, said Bilawal Bhutto would not lead the PPP’s election campaign. Mr Fahim said he would lead the party’s election campaign in Sindh and former prime ministers Yousuf Raza Gilani and Raja Pervez Ashraf in Punjab. Bilawal Bhutto’s departure amid electioneering is quite significant at a time when his father, President Asif Ali Zardari, is not taking part in political activities because of restrictions by courts. Bilawal Bhutto, who has been advised not to appear in public because of security threats, did not attend an election gathering of his party in Multan on Sunday. He kicked off the PPP’s election campaign on Tuesday through a video message. In his video message, the PPP chairman said that hindrance was being created in the way of PPP. He said he knew that his life was in danger and people who were behind the assassination of his mother Benazir Bhutto now wanted to kill him. In reply to a question that whether the absence of Bilalwal Bhutto and Mr Zardari from electioneering affect the PPP’s performance, Mr Babar said: “It will not make any difference because Bilawal will address party members through video whenever required during the party’s election campaign.” ZARDARI: President Zardari held a party meeting in Karachi on Thursday in the absence of Bilawal Bhutto. The PPP is said to be handicapped because its top leaders cannot appear in public for the party’s election campaign. On the other hand, election campaigns of the PML-N and the Tehreek-i-Insaf are in full swing and Sharif brothers and Imran Khan are addressing public gathering regularly. Frontline PPP leaders are not holding public meeting to counter their political opponents. Several bomb attacks on election gatherings or candidates, particularly in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, have claimed many lives. When Bilawal Bhutto had gone abroad a few days ago some media reports had suggested that he had differences with his father over distribution of party tickets for elections. However, he had returned soon and launched the party’s election campaign.
Partnerships, some solo ventures in the sectarian sector By Nasir Jamal KHANEWAL: In Kabirwala, politics and religion become so intertwined. Known for producing cadres and leaders for the hardcore anti-Shia formations like the banned Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (now active as Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat) and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, the area has seen emergence of a close alliance between local politicians and extremists since the 1990s. . Raza Hayat Hiraj, for example, appeared to realise the importance of the rising power of Deobandi vote in his constituency (NA-156). His late father Iqbal Hiraj had developed ties with the SSP over time and Raza has used these to twice return to the assembly in the last two elections by defeating his rival Syed Fakhr Imam. The Deobandi leadership from the area understands the “significance of keeping its vote bank united” to defeat the candidates they don’t approve of. Party affiliation matters little. What matters is the candidate’s relationship with the ASWJ and local Deobandi leadership. “If more than one [Deobandi] candidate is in the run, it will divide the vote bank. Hence, we try that only one remains in the fray,” says Mufti Hamid Hasan, who teaches Hadith at Kabirwala’s famous Deoband seminary, Darul Uloom Eidgah, the alma mater of SSP founder Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi and his successor Maulana Ziaur Rehman Farooqi. It was on the basis of this principle that a compromise was struck during the last election and the nomination of ASWJ ticket-holder Iftikhar Haqqani was withdrawn in favour of Hiraj. “The Darul Uloom doesn’t direct its students and followers to vote for a particular candidate or party. Our job is to guide the people to prudently use their vote and elect honest, clean and religious-minded candidates,” he clarifies. In response to a question, he says the Hiraj family has generously donated money to the seminary. Now the alliance between the Hiraj family and the ASWJ appears to be under a cloud. It seems the Darul Uloom is still favouring Hiraj for the May polls, but the leadership of the ASWJ has changed its mind because of his refusal to accommodate its nominee for a provincial seat under him. “We (ASWJ) have faithfully supported Hiraj since 1997 because of his father’s commitment to our cause. Iqbal Hiraj was a signatory to the Namoos-i-Sahaba bill, which was tabled by the slain SSP leader Maulana Azam Tariq. Iqbal Hiraj refused to withdraw his support for the bill despite pressure from the then prime minister and his party’s leader, Benazir Bhutto,” said Maulana Abdul Khaliq, a khateeb at a local mosque fielded by the ASWJ from NA-156. “Hiraj is willing to have a Shia as his running mate for one provincial seat but is not ready to accommodate one of our men on the other,” he says, and adds, almost as an aside: “Also, he has done nothing for development.” Hiraj, who didn’t answer phone calls and messages seeking an appointment, is contesting as an independent candidate this time. He returned to the assembly on a PPP ticket in 2002 (he later joined the Patriots group) and on a PML-Q ticket in 2008. His opponent, Syed Fakhr Imam, is trying his luck on the PML-N ticket after losing last two polls on the PML-Q and PPP tickets. He knows that the division of the 20,000-odd anti-Shia Deobandi vote concentrated in his constituency between Hiraj and Khaliq will boost his chances, but fears that a compromise may well happen any time. Such an eventuality could leave the ‘gentleman politician’ struggling for a victory he so desperately needs to resurrect his political career. As you move deeper into south, such a blatant alliance as seen between the candidates and extremist groups in Kabirwala becomes less visible to ordinary voters in spite of the increasing presence of seminaries and militant sectarian and jihadi outfits. Still, the footprints of the ASWJ are scattered all over in south Punjab, which is home to thousands of registered and unregistered large and small seminaries. At places, the anti-Shia group camouflages itself under other banners. Thus if at one place the Deobandi parties are united under the Muttahida Deeni Mahaz, at others known committed Deobandi candidates are running as independents. And where the group does not have its own men, it has allied itself with individual candidates from other parties in exchange for their support in bad times. At many places Bahawalpur onwards to Rahimyar Khan local residents will tell you that the candidates fielded by the ASWJ are few and unknown and do not stand a chance to return to the assemblies. “There is no denying that the size of the religious voters is significant in this area because of the presence of the seminaries all around. The support, however, is scattered in small portions over constituencies and not concentrated in one or two areas to make an impact on the outcome of election,” says Farooq Azam Malik, a Bahawalpur National Awami Party candidate from Bahawalpur city seat (NA-185). He also dismisses the talk that politicians fund seminaries to buy their support in the election. In Khanpur, where a suicide attack on a Muharram procession left 21 dead in January 2011, Malik Mohammad Yaqoob warns against underestimating the “power of Deobandi vote”. The tehsil president of the ASWJ, who represents Malik Ishaq’s group in the organisation, says: “We have substantial strength in different constituencies and our support is crucial for the success of a candidate. Why would the candidates of different political parties come to us seeking our support if we did not have significant support base amongst voters?” Yaqoob, who openly admits to serious differences between Malik Ishaq and Maulana Ludhianvi, points out that his group had fielded its own candidates, Ghulam Rasool Shah who along with Malik Ishaq is in detention as co-accused on charges of his involvement in Shia killings, from Bahawalnagar, Mohammad Hussain from Rahimyar Khan, Asif Muavia from Shorkot (Jhang’s tehsil bordering Kabirwala) and Rao Habib from Mailsi, to name a few. “Our candidates are not contesting from the platform of the ASWJ or the Muttahida Deeni Mahaz. Some of them will continue in the race while others will withdraw if adjustment is made with other candidates,” he says. He explains that his group in the ASWJ has fielded so few candidates because their leader Malik Ishaq is not in favour of contesting elections as it could take away the organisation’s focus from its “mission”. Besides, he adds, “our people do not have money to contest the (expensive) elections”.
Rangers sepoy shot dead in Hyderabad By Mohammad Hussain Khan HYDERABAD: A soldier of the Rangers was killed in an attack on a checkpoint on Thursday evening. . Hyderabad SSP Saqib Ismail Memon told Dawn that two men riding a motorcycle opened fire at the checkpoint outside the Rangers officers mess in Latifabad. Two Rangers personnel were on duty at the time and one of them, Mohammad Riaz, was hit by two bullets in the head and chest. He died on the spot. Police collected seven spent bullet casings of 9mm pistol from the scene. There was no electricity in the area at the time of the attack. Fear gripped the neighbourhood after the incident. DIG Akram Naeem Barokha told Dawn that police had found some clues, but refused to elaborate. However, he added that police and Rangers were sharing information. On April 11, a candidate of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement for a Sindh Assembly constituency, PS 47, was gunned down in Hyderabad. The Taliban had claimed responsibility for the killing of Fakhrul Islam.
Tribesman killed in Nushki By Saleem Shahid QUETTA: A tribal elder was killed and another man injured in a grenade attack on an election office of the PPP’s National Assembly candidate Sardar Omer Gorgaig in Nushki town on Thursday. . According to police, men on a motorcycle hurled a grenade on the office in Hindu Mohalla, close to a police station. The grenade exploded in front of the office, severely injuring two people. Security personnel took the injured to the district hospital, but it referred them to Quetta because their condition was critical.
Musharraf formally arrested in Benazir case, interrogated By Malik Asad RAWALPINDI, April 25: After securing permission from an anti-terrorism court (ATC) here, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) formally arrested former president Pervez Musharraf on Thursday and interrogated him in the Benazir Bhutto murder case. . However, retired Gen Musharraf expressed lack of confidence in the joint investigation team (JIT) constituted by former interior minister Rehman Malik. The Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench had dismissed on Wednesday a plea for pre-arrest bail of Gen Musharraf after his counsel, citing security concerns, did not appear to argue in the case. FIA’s Special Prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali presented before ATC judge Chaudhry Habibur Rehman on Thursday the LHC order dismissing the bail petition. He said the court should allow the FIA to arrest Gen Musharraf because his custody was required for interrogation in the murder case. The FIA, however, suggested that due to security concerns Gen Musharraf might be kept in his Chak Shahzad farmhouse which had been declared a sub-jail. The ATC allowed the FIA to arrest Gen Musharraf and keep him in the sub-jail. According to FIA sources, JIT officials visited the farmhouse after the curt orders and formally arrested him in the Benazir murder case. The JIT also put some questions to the former army chief but he did not provide satisfactory answers, the sources said. However, Gen Musharraf’s counsel Barrister Salman Safdar said the team had not questioned the former president. “Unless the FIA takes physical custody of Mr Musharraf, it cannot interrogate him,” he said. He said Gen Musharraf had no confidence in the JIT because it had been constituted by Mr Malik and the former PPP government wanted to drag him into what he termed were false cases. The former government had also implicated him in several other cases, the lawyer said. He said Gen Musharraf would file a petition for constitution of a new JIT because some members of the current team had made political statements against him. Barrister Safdar said Mr Malik was in charge of Ms Bhutto’s security and she had died because of his negligence. In order to hide crucial facts he had constituted the JIT comprising handpicked officers, he alleged. He said Gen Musharraf had been implicated in the case because of suspicions of Ms Bhutto, but before her death she had also said she suspected three other persons -- Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, former deputy prime minister in the PPP-led coalition government; former Inter-Services (ISI) director general Hameed Gul and former Intelligence Bureau chief Ijaz Shah. The FIA had neither implicated any of them nor recorded their statements, he said. He claimed that the FIA had no expertise in investigating murder cases. “Although murder is a scheduled offence in the FIA Act, the agency generally investigates financial matters and human trafficking cases,” he said. The lawyer alleged that the investigation of the murder case had been transferred to the FIA to mess up facts. He said he would request the court to quash the entire investigation by the JIT against Gen Musharraf in the case.
JUI-F leader accuses ECP of violating constitution By Our Staff Correspondent QUETTA, April 25: The secretary-general of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, has accused the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) of violating the constitution by issuing a warning to the candidates against seeking votes in the name of religion. . Addressing a press conference on Thursday at the Quetta Press Club, he criticised Chief Election Commissioner retired Justice Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim for declaring that candidates seeking votes in the name of religion would be penalised. “The CEC seems to be ignorant of provisions laid down in the constitution which say that Islam is the religion of this country,” said the JUI-F leader. “How can the CEC stop political parties and candidates from seeking votes in the name of religion in a country which has been created in the name of Islam?” The JUI-F leader accused the ECP of misusing its powers. “The ECP should take decisions and issue warnings and instructions within the parameters of powers vested in it and must not violate the constitution,” he added. He alleged that the ECP had miserably failed in fulfilling its commitment to provide foolproof security to electoral candidates. “The bomb blasts on political rallies and murder of candidates is a proof to this,” he added. He said that JUI-F leader Maulana Agha Mohammad had remained a member of the National assembly as well as a senator but now the election commission had rejected his nomination papers for not having a graduation degree. The JUI-F leader said that his party would win in the elections in Balochistan with majority if rigging was not allowed in polling. He said the JUI-F would participate in the elections at all costs. On the occasion, Sardar Ahmed Khan Bangulzai, a local tribal chieftain, announced his decision to join the JUI-F. Senator Hafiz Hamdullah was also present.
Record of over 1,300 candidates sought: LHC asks poll body to punish defaulters By Our Staff Reporter LAHORE, April 25: A full bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) asked the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Thursday to take action against May 11 election candidates who had defaulted on tax and government dues. . The bench headed by Justice Ijazul Ahsan also asked the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), State Bank (SBP) and National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to submit record of the candidates about whom appeals were pending in courts. The number of such candidates is said to be 1,329. The bench was hearing a petition seeking implementation of Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution in order to keep defaulters of taxes and government dues and those possessing fake educational degrees and holding dual nationality out of the election process. An FBR official told the bench that the bureau had provided to the ECP the record of over 600, but the commission had not given it basic information about the remaining contestants. The petitioner’s counsel Azhar Siddique said that of the 600 candidates mentioned by the FBR at least 14 had been found to be tax defaulters, but the ECP had not taken any action against them. They are: Usman Ibrahim, Mohammad Shahbaz Khan, Mohammad Usman Saeed, Rana Asif Tauseef, Rana Zahid Tauseef, Dildar Ahmad, Mohammad Tayab Mir, Saifullah Sial, Gulzar Ahmad, Hafiz Shabbir Ahmad, Mohammad Arshad Tarar, Khizar Hayat Virk, Nadeem Khadim and Shafqat Ali. The ECP’s counsel said the elections were round the corner and the commission was working hard to complete the process. He said the proceedings on the petition could hamper the smooth election process. Justice Ahsan said the role of the ECP was not limited to conducting the polls only but it was also responsible for making the process transparent and spotless. He said the real duty of the commission would begin after the elections. The bench asked the ECP to take action against the defaulters and adjourned further hearing till April 30. CONDITIONAL PERMISSION: The bench conditionally allowed former MNA Syed Gulzar Sibtain to contest the elections from NA-145, Okara, and asked the ECP to include his name in the list of valid candidates. An election tribunal had disqualified Mr Sibtain while admitting an appeal filed by former minister of state Samsam Bokhari alleging that he was involved in a case of canal water theft and had concealed his assets in nomination papers. Advocate Ahsan Bhoon represented the former MNA and said his client had not been nominated in the case. He said Mr Sibtain had withdrawn his shares from a CNG station which his opponent had accused him of owning. Provisionally allowing Mr Sibtain to contest the polls, the bench summoned the record of the case from local police by April 30. In another case, the bench asked the FBR to submit the income tax and sales tax details of former minister Rana Farooq Saeed Khan. The bench had already conditionally allowed him to contest the elections from NA-79, Faisalabad.
Refugees to remain in camps: official - Border with Afghanistan to be sealed on polling day By Iftikhar A. Khan ISLAMABAD, April 25: Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan will be sealed on the polling day and Afghan refugees will be confined in their camps to guard against any act of terrorism. . The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) met on Thursday to review security arrangements for the May 11 elections and a senior official of the interior ministry who attended the meeting was quoted as saying that the restriction on movement of the Afghan refugees would be imposed a day before the polling and would continue for three days. The meeting presided over by Chief Election Commissioner retired Justice Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim was attended by the defence secretary, additional interior secretary, provincial chief secretaries and home secretaries, inspectors general of police and representatives of various ministries having a role in conducting the elections. The official said the interior ministry was mobilising all resources to protect political leaders, candidates and voters in accordance with ECP directives. The meeting was informed that control rooms would be set up in all the provinces which would be assisted in setting up election security committees. The chief secretaries said they were confident that despite various challenges the provinces would be able to hold the elections in a secure environment through proper planning and coordinated efforts. They also shared with the ECP their provinces’ security plans. “We cannot afford to fail as our failure will mean failure of Pakistan. If we succeed you will be heroes of the country,” the CEC was quoted as having said at the meeting. Remarks made by additional chief secretary of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) Dr Tashfeen served to boost the morale of other participants when he said that if elections in Fata were possible there should be no problem in other parts of the country. The meeting decided to set up polling stations within IDP (internally displaced persons) camps. Dr Tashfeen suggested polling stations at appropriate locations to ensure that the IDPs living in other places did not have to pass through dangerous areas to exercise their right to vote. He informed the meeting that 355 candidates were contesting for the national and provincial assembly seats in Fata. Over 140 election meetings were held -- 15 of them by independent candidates. No act of terrorism was reported from any of the places where gatherings were held. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa election commissioner suggested deployment of a person with first-aid box at each polling station, besides ambulances kept on standby to meet any emergency. The proposal was supported by all the participants. He was of the opinion that an efficient control over entry of voters into polling stations would help avert any major mishap. DEPLOYMENT OF ARMY: Defence Secretary retired Lt Gen Asif Yasin Malik reiterated the government’s stance that army soldiers should not be deployed at polling stations; they should be kept as quick response force. He was of the opinion that police, Rangers and other civil armed forces should be deployed at the polling stations. The meeting decided that the provincial administrations would discuss their requirement about deployment of troops with local military commanders. LOADSHEDDING: Talking to reporters, ECP Secretary Ishtiak Ahmad Khan said the commission had called water and power secretary to express its desire for a halt to loadshedding for the next three weeks, particularly from May 10 to 12. He said security cameras would be installed at sensitive polling stations wherever possible and video recording arrangements would be made at the rest. He said the defence secretary had renewed the army’s commitment to playing a role in free and fair elections and ensuring a secure environment for voters. Mr Khan said the elections would be held in all agencies of Fata and all parts of Balochistan, adding that the army would have a key role in providing security in both the areas.
Rs400bn fiscal adjustment likely in next budget By Khaleeq Kiani ISLAMABAD, April 25: With a promise by the US that $1.8 billion will be disbursed to Pakistan by June 30, the country will have to make upfront budgetary adjustments of more than Rs700bn (almost 3.5 per cent of GDP) during the next two years as part of a $5bn Extended Fund Facility (EFF) ‘agreed in principle’ with the International Monetary Fund.. The next fiscal year should see an upfront budgetary adjustment of Rs400bn while the year 2014-2015 over Rs300bn. The fresh adjustment is anticipated to involve revenue measures and reform gains worth Rs550bn (both at federal and provincial levels) and over Rs220bn on power subsidies reduction through tariff rationalisation and attract over $7bn flows from the lending agencies in return. A senior government official told Dawn that overall response from bilateral and multilateral lenders had been very encouraging during recent engagements, indicating international community’s general support to Pakistan’s smooth political transition process and willingness to work with the new democratic set-up that has to facilitate withdrawal of coalition forces from Afghanistan. But Pakistan will have to show seriousness that it is politically geared to take deep-rooted structural reforms as required under the IMF’s EFF programme when the new democratic government takes over after the May 11 elections. This will have to be articulated in the draft budget documents currently in the process of finalisation in consultation with major political parties. The fresh fiscal adjustment will be in the form of about 1pc of GDP (about Rs220bn) expenditure control on account of power sector restructuring through rationalisation of tariff, reduction of losses and improvement in governance. Sources said the existing difference between applicable electricity tariff and the tariff approved by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) stood at Rs3.08 per unit, entailing a Rs350bn subsidy from the budget. However, the recent tariff determination by Nepra had increased the per unit difference by almost Rs6 per unit, envisaging an increase in the financing gap to Rs550bn. Therefore, the average electricity tariff will be increased upfront substantially for upper echelon of consumers to reduce the gap by about Rs200-230bn at the start of the next fiscal year. Another 2.5pc of GDP (almost Rs550bn) adjustment will come from the revenue side, including Rs350bn (1.5pc of GDP) worth of new taxes. Provincial taxes will also be improved by increasing provincial income tax, property tax, motor vehicle tax and agricultural income tax and expanding general sales tax on services that was considered to be far below the potential. The new IMF facility of $5bn or above will be dovetailed with about $2bn additional funding from development agencies like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, USAID and UK’s Department for International Development to meet huge investment requirement in the power sector. Therefore, overall lending programme from the multilateral lenders has been estimated at $7bn. This is necessary to support the government’s efforts to reduce subsidies with increased social protection programmes so as to contain the negative impact on poor sections arising out of proposed higher electricity rates and at the same time move to a high-growth path, the official explained. It was in this background, the official said, that while reconciliation of Islamabad’s outstanding dues on account of Coalition Support Fund (CSF) would continue as an ongoing process between Pakistan’s military and the US administration, the latter agreed to disburse about $1.8bn during the current fiscal year. The amount would help the government conclude its fiscal accounts on a relatively positive note, he added. Pakistan is reported to have filed claims of around $3bn on account of services and logistic support to the US-led coalition forces. The US authorities suspect that bills worth $1bn were ‘cooked up’ or lacked documentary evidence. The two sides, however, appreciated that it would be a great support to Islamabad, facing huge fiscal deficits and declining foreign exchange reserves, if undisputed amounts were cleared within next two months. The current financial year is estimated to have 6.9pc to 7.3pc of fiscal deficit, says caretaker prime minister’s adviser on finance Dr Shahid Amjad Chaudhry. Independent economists, however, suspected the deficit could be contained below 8pc of GDP this year and hence would largely depend on US support in the absence budgetary items like privatisation proceeds of the PTCL, auction of third-generation telecom licences and international bonds coupled with over Rs300bn shortfalls in tax revenues and higher power subsidies.
Terror training bid: Three UK Muslims get jail terms LONDON, April 25: Three British Muslims, including a convert to Islam, were jailed on Thursday for travelling to Pakistan for terror training. . White Muslim convert Richard Dart, a 30-year-old former security guard for the BBC, was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment at the Old Bailey central criminal court in London. Imran Mahmood, 22, was jailed for nine years and nine months and 26-year-old Jahangir Alom for four-and-a-half years. Dart and Alom had admitted seeking terror training in Pakistan while Mahmood, who did join a Pakistani terror camp, gave them advice. Judge Peregrine Simon told the trio they had “radical Islamist beliefs and have shown yourselves to be committed to acts of terrorism”. Dart refused to stand as he was sentenced, saying: “I believe ruling and judging is only for Allah.” The court heard that Dart and Mahmood discussed bomb-making and identified the southern English town of Royal Wootton Bassett – where British soldiers killed in Afghanistan were repatriated until 2011 – as a potential target. “These are dangerous men,” Stuart Osborne of Scotland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Command said in a statement after sentencing. “Mahmood had received terrorist training in Pakistan and suggested he had knowledge of how to make homemade explosives while Dart and Alom made great efforts to travel to Pakistan and aspired to seek training from terrorist groups there.” The three men were arrested in July. All of them had been stopped at airports while travelling to and from Pakistan. Traces of explosives were found on two of Mahmood’s rucksacks when he was stopped at Manchester Airport in 2010.—AFP
Two police, four militants killed KARAK, April 25: Two policemen and four militants, one of them an Iranian national, were killed in an encounter in Barbara area of Banda Daud Shah tehsil of Karak district on Thursday. . Police said that another four policemen were injured in the clash and two injured militants were arrested. Officials said that a pre-dawn operation had been launched following reports that some suspected militants were present in the area. “As militants saw the police party they started firing,” said an official. The police party fired back and the ensuing gunbattle lasted four hours. The injured were taken to hospital in Banda Daud Shah, where two of them, ASI Murshed Ali and Constable Musharraf Zahid, died. The dead militants were identified as Bilal from Iran, Moavya, a resident of Mohmand Agency, Fareed, a resident of Miramshah, and Sultan of Gilgit.—Nasir Iqbal Khattak
Third strike in four days in Karachi; Taliban claim responsibility:11 die in blast at ANP meeting By Our Staff Reporter KARACHI, April 26: As the city observed a day of mourning for people killed in Thursday’s bomb blast near an MQM election office in North Nazimabad’s Nusrat Bhutto Colony area, Karachi was aggrieved by a gruesome militant attack on the street corner meeting of a candidate of another liberal democratic party, the ANP, on Friday evening. . This was the third militant attack in four days as the militants appeared determined to keep the MQM, ANP and PPP out of the electoral process, possibly encouraged by the reluctance of two mainstream parties actively engaged in electioneering in Punjab to condemn the wave of terror attacks in three other provinces. At least 11 people were killed and over 50 others injured when a bomb blast hit the election meeting of Awami National Party (ANP) candidate Bashir Jan in Orangi Town. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Earlier in the day, Abdul Rehman Khan, another ANP candidate contesting for the NA-255 seat, survived an attack when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Landhi area. Bashir Jan, the ANP general secretary for Sindh survived the attack as he was inside his car at the time of the attack. “I was sitting in my car when the explosion took place. The car was thrown up a few feet in the air because of the impact of the blast,” Mr Jan said. This was the third attempt on his life. Earlier, he had been fired upon near Hasan Square and he was wounded when an IED exploded near his car in the Frontier Colony area last year. “A street corner meeting was supposed to be held in a small ground surrounded by walls. The blast took place when Bashir Jan was approaching the venue in his car through a narrow street,” SSP district west Asif Ajaz Shaikh told Dawn. Although police had not been formally informed about the meeting in advance, a police mobile with a few personnel had been deputed at a distance from the venue at the request of the organisers, he said. “Preliminary findings suggest that Bashir Jan was the target of the attack. Because a large number of people were there he could not be targeted,” SSP of CID’s counter-terrorism unit Raja Umar Khattab told Dawn. He said the explosives weighing about 10kgs had been placed in a rickshaw. The brunt of the attack was borne by three vehicles parked in the street and some shops. Debris started falling on the narrow lane after the blast. The windscreen of Bashir Jan’s vehicle was damaged, he said. The bodies and the injured were taken to different hospitals. The Civil Hospital received six bodies, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital three and Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre one. One of the critically injured died in Civil Hospital. Speaking to Dawn.com on phone from an undisclosed location, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan said the TTP had carried out the attack on the ANP election meeting because of their secular politics. Talking to a private news channel, ANP chief Asfandyar Wali condemned the attack and said his party would not bow down to the terrorists who were targeting political workers. “People know who are behind these barbaric acts; they want to force us out of the election process,” he said, but made it clear that the ANP would not boycott the May 11 elections. The Muttahida Quami Movement chief also condemned the attack. DAY OF MOURNING: The ANP announced a peaceful day of mourning on Saturday. The party leader Senator Shahi Syed appealed to the people, traders and transporters to observe mourning but not to shut their businesses.
ECP asks candidates to stop personal criticism By Our Staff Reporter ISLAMABAD, April 26: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has taken notice of personal attacks by some election candidates on their opponents and urged them to follow the code of conduct and avoid indulging in criticism of personal nature. . The commission also imposed a ban on postings and transfers of government officials in Sindh. It pointed out that under the code of conduct, political parties, candidates and their supporters were required to refrain from deliberately disseminating false and malicious information and spreading disinformation to defame other political parties and leaders. The use of abusive language against leaders and candidates of other parties must be avoided and criticism must remain confined to policies and programmes, past record and performance. Under the code, the ECP said in a statement, parties and candidates were required to refrain from criticising any aspect of private life of leaders or workers of other parties and using unverified allegations and distorted information. The ECP expressed the hope that such violations of the code would not recur. Otherwise, it warned, the commission would issue a directive under the law. Though it did not mention any party or leader, it appears that the statement was prompted by a complaint lodged by President Asif Ali Zardari’s spokesman Senator Farhatullah Babar about criticism of the person of the president by some political leaders, particularly of the PML-N. Ban on transfers and postings in Sindh: On March 2, the ECP had directed the federal and provincial caretaker governments to shuffle federal and provincial secretaries and to assess neutrality of heads of autonomous, semi-autonomous and government institutions and important officials of police force and district administration but after complaints about postings and transfers of officers carried out in Sindh under political pressure, the commission had to reconsider the decision. Observing that postings and transfers because of political considerations were undesirable and affected fairness and impartiality of the electoral process, the commission slapped a complete ban on transfers and postings of officials of the federal, provincial and local governments in Sindh. A notification to this effect was issued by ECP Secretary Ishtiak Ahmad Khan on Friday. It said that in the event of an exigency, approval should be obtained from the commission before any posting and transfer. The ECP condemned recent killing of leaders and activists of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and an attack on its election office on Thursday. Responding to complaints made by the party, the commission said that violence reflected failure of the government despite assurances given by it about maintaining law and order. The commission said it had repeatedly directed the provincial governments to provide protection to candidates and political leaders. It called upon the Sindh government to make adequate arrangements to protect candidates and leaders, particularly in Karachi. The commission offered condolences to the MQM on deaths of its leaders and workers. In a related development, former federal minister Sardar Yar Muhammad Rind has filed an application with Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry seeking transfer of Deputy Commissioner of Quetta Abdul Waheed Shah for allegedly helping former provincial finance minister Asim Ghaloo in his election campaign from the circuit house, a government property adjacent to the DC House. He appealed that Mr Ghaloo be ordered to vacate the circuit house.
JUI-F rally targeted in Machh By Saleem Shahid QUETTA, April 26: Attacks on election candidates and their offices continued in Balochistan on Friday with a bomb-and-rocket attack on the rally of a candidate of JUI-F and grenade attacks on the election office and house of a candidate of a nationalist party. . The candidate of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (F) escaped the bomb-and-rocket attack in the Machh area of Bolan district. Six people were injured and two vehicles damaged. Grenades were hurled at the election office of the National Party in Quetta and the house of its candidate in Buleda area of Kech. JUI-F’s Muhammad Hashim Shahwani is contesting for the Balochistan Assembly’s seat of PB-30 Kachhi-1. Levies official Asadullah said Mr Shahwani and his supporters were going to Kolpur to open an election office. When their convoy reached near the Hark area of Machh a powerful explosion took place on the Quetta-Sibi road. Soon after the blast, at least three rockets were fired from nearby mountains but failed to hit the convoy. Sources said the attackers also fired at the convoy with automatic weapons. “Six people, including a Levies man, were injured,” the sources said, adding that guards of Mr Shahwani took positions and returned fire and the exchange of fire continued for some time. The Levies took the injured — Tanvir Ahmed, Hafiz Ghulamullah, Lakhmir, Muhammad Siddiq, Bakhtiar and Raza Muhammad -- to Machh hospital. Later they were referred to a Quetta hospital where two of them were said to be in critical condition. “The explosive device planted along the road was detonated by a remote control,” Levies officials said after initial investigation. At a press conference in Quetta, Mr Shahwani blamed the Bolan district administration for the attack and said despite his request the administration had failed to provide security. Meanwhile, grenades were hurled at an election office of the NP in the Sariab Road area of the provincial capital. The office was damaged but no casualty was reported. The house of a provincial assembly candidate of the party in the Buleda area of Kech came under a similar attack. According to sources, a grenade hurled at the house of Azim Buledi landed and exploded in the backyard.
Sarabjit’s condition serious after attack by inmates By Asif Chaudhry LAHORE, April 26: Convicted Indian spy on death row Sarabjit Singh suffered severe injuries in the head when some suspects attacked him when he left his barracks for strolling in Kot Lakhpat jail on Friday. . Singh was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of the Jinnah Hospital where a medical board comprising senior neurosurgeons was treating him. Hospital sources described his condition as serious. In the night, Additional Superintendent of Jail Ishtiaq Gill filed an application with a police station for registration of case about the attack. Quoting the application, a police official said the suspects attacked Singh when he left his barracks for strolling. They assaulted him with bricks and other blunt weapons and left him seriously injured. The reason behind the incident could not be immediately ascertained. Profusely bleeding, Singh was initially moved to the surgical emergency of the Jinnah Hospital. Punjab Prisons IG Mian Farooq Nazir has suspended the superintendent and four jail wardens of the Kot Lakhpat jail for negligence which led to the incident. “A high-powered medical board has been constituted to treat the patient,” Allama Iqbal Medical College Principal Prof Dr Mahmood Shaukat told Dawn. The board includes a senior neurosurgeon and Principal of Post Graduate Medical Institute Prof Dr Anjum Habib Vohra, senior neuro-physician of King Edward Medical University Prof Dr Naeem Kasuri and head of the neuro department of AIMC Prof Dr Zafar Chaudhry. He said the condition of the patient was critical. A separate room has been temporarily converted into the ICU for exclusive treatment of Singh. “We had received the patient with several deep head injuries and he was unconscious,” a doctor treating Singh told Dawn. He said the patient was wearing a police trouser and casual shirt when shifted to the emergency. Keeping in view the deteriorating condition of the patient an endotracheal tube had been placed into the trachea (windpipe) to help him breathe artificially. The doctor said that after initial treatment in the emergency unit, Singh had been shifted to the main ICU and put on ventilator. Last year in September, he said that Singh had written a letter to his sister and daughters, alleging that the jail authorities were slow-poisoning and mentally torturing him. Quoting the prosecution, the official said Singh had illegally crossed into Pakistan on Aug 29, 1990. He was arrested on charges of carrying out four bombings in Faisalabad, Multan and Lahore and was later sentenced to death. DIG Prisons for Lahore Region Malik Mubashar Khan was investigating the matter. INDIAN REACTION: “It is deplorable that this attack took place. The Indian High Commission has sought consular access. As soon as we get a response, we will act,” Preneet Kaur, Indian Minister of State for External Affairs, told NDTV. Two officials from the Indian embassy have rushed to Lahore from Islamabad. Pakistan Foreign Office in a statement said it would investigate the incident. Sarabjit’s sister Dalbir Kaur told NDTV: “I had told everybody he is not safe. This is a conspiracy. The attack was pre-planned.” The Kot Lakhpat jail currently has some 17,000 prisoners though its official capacity is only 4,000. There have been instances in the past of prisoners being killed within the prison. Authorities had tightened Singh’s security after the recent execution in India of Afzal Guru, who was convicted of involvement in the 2001 terror attack on the parliament. Singh’s mercy petitions were rejected by courts and former President Pervez Musharraf. The outgoing PPP-led government put off Singh’s execution for an indefinite period in 2008.
A wily politician tries to hang on By Cyril Almeida DEPALPUR: It’s a little past midnight when Khurram Jahangir Wattoo, son of Manzoor Wattoo, steps up to a podium to address a few dozens supporters in the small town of this largely rural tehsil of Okara district. . Slogans ring out in praise of the Wattoos and a provincial-assembly candidate accompanying Khurram Jahangir. Then, someone behind Wattoo shouts out, “Long live PPP.” The audience goes momentarily silent, refusing to shout support for their party. This in a town where the PPP has enjoyed a historical vote bank. The Wattoos and Depalpur are synonymous: Manzoor Wattoo, the family patriarch and wily politician, has used this area as a springboard to national fame, and infamy too, as a former chief minister of Punjab and federal minister — positions attained through intrigue, ambition and ruthlessness on an epic scale. Independents in Feb 2008, after Manzoor Wattoo quit the PML-Q, the family has since thrown in its lot with the PPP. Today, Manzoor, the PPP president in Punjab, is the architect of the party’s campaign from Okara to Lahore. In Depalpur, however, the Wattoos face strong headwinds in the two National Assembly seats here, NA-146 and NA-147. First, there is Wattoo fatigue in the electorate: Manzoor is contesting both National Assembly seats, while a son, Khurram Jahangir, and a daughter, Jahanara, are standing from provincial-assembly seats. With the elder Wattoo also in a provincial assembly race here, five of the six seats in Depalpur — NA and Punjab Assembly — have a Wattoo-PPP candidate. Second, as Khurram Jahangir confronted at his midnight meeting with voters, there is a strain of anti-PPP sentiment here, particularly in the town — though Depalpur is largely a rural tehsil where party affiliation matters little. On a late-night drive back to his family home in Wasewevala, some 30kms from Depalpur town, Khurram Jahangir Wattoo, who won NA-147 in a June 2008 by-election after his father vacated it having won both NA-146 and NA-147 in the Feb 2008 elections, admitted: “People are not happy with the PPP. With the load shedding and other factors, people say it’s not a good party.” The younger Wattoo, who is now a Punjab Assembly candidate, continued: “The PPP’s image is so negative and people are saying the N-League will come to power. The voter tends to go where he thinks power lies.” PML-N challenges: Manzoor Wattoo’s strongest challenge lies in NA-146, which includes the more politicised Depalpur town and is adjacent to his principal stronghold, NA-147. In 2008, Manzoor only won NA-146 after a late-night recount in controversial circumstances gave him victory by a margin of less than a thousand votes. The defeated candidate in 2008, Rao Muhammad Ajmal Khan, son of an influential politician who once defeated Nawaz Sharif, won the seat in 2002 as an independent. Now, Ajmal is on a PML-N ticket, having quit the PML-Q after his 2008 loss. “I’m feeling confident,” Ajmal said, sitting on a chair in a darkened field next to a stage where a PML-N rally had just begun. “Wattoo hasn’t been seen around here (NA-146) much. When he comes, he just meets the important people, doles out some money and leaves. People aren’t happy.” Ajmal explained his own appeal to voters: “I swore on my father’s grave that I would work for the people’s benefit. Until I came, there had been no mega projects here. I brought schools here, built roads, gave Sui gas connections.” The PML-N candidate’s crowning achievement in Depalpur was to establish a sub-campus of the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, while he was a PML-Q MNA. Now inactive, caught up in the struggle between Ajmal and Wattoo, the campus’s fate is a sore point. “I don’t talk much about Wattoo in my campaign. But where it is a real issue (the agriculture university), I tell the people about it.” Ultimately, though, politics here is about groupings and dharras and Ajmal has worked to win over local players previously aligned with Wattoo. A key supporter of Ajmal in the 2013 race is the Khokhar family, whose scion, Malik Ali Abbas Khokhar, is Ajmal’s running mate. Ali Abbas Khokhar summed up his family’s influence in NA-146 in this way: “In 2008, we were with Wattoo and he won. In 2002, we were with Rao Ajmal and he won.” Khokhar was also straightforward about why his family is so influential in the rural parts of this constituency: “The literacy rate here is low. In the city there is more awareness, here it is all about dharras. Rural life is all about the politics of police stations.” Wattoo stronghold: “We wanted father to have a safe seat. It was important that he enter the National Assembly,” Khurram Jahangir Wattoo said, explaining why the elder Wattoo was once again the family candidate in NA-147, the seat the younger Wattoo won in a 2008 by-election. “Manzoor Wattoo is the favourite in NA-147,” said Imtiaz Wattoo, an election monitor with a local NGO. Imtiaz, no relation to the Wattoo political family, explained: “147 is entirely about dharras and personalities, there is no party vote there. Wattoo’s position may be weaker than in 2008 but there’s no strong opposition to speak of either.” The main opponent, such that he is, in NA-147 is Muhammad Moeen Wattoo, the leader of a rival family of Wattoos in Depalpur. Moeen is now on a PML-N ticket but as an independent in 2008 he supported Manzoor Wattoo in the general election and Khurram Jahangir in the by-election several months later. “Even though they are rivals, the Wattoos don’t want any other families to break through,” Shahzad Aqdas, a local lawyer, said of the rival Wattoo families’ support for another, sometimes overt and sometimes covert depending on circumstances. “Moeen’s strength is more in the provincial assembly seat anyway. Even now, he might end up supporting Manzoor Wattoo on the NA seat a day or two before the election.” The key to Manzoor Wattoo’s strength in NA-147 is his mastery of patronage politics in a rural area where political parties have a negligible role. “Jobs,” Khurram Jahangir said, explaining in a word the primary driver of politics in the area. As federal minister for industries and production and later Kashmir affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan, the elder Wattoo leveraged his position in the last government to win maximum support in his stronghold. “National Fertiliser Corporation, Utility Stores, Sui, all the BISP staff in this area, Nadra staff to some extent too, jobs were given by Wattoo to his people,” Shahid Aqdas said. “People didn’t even have to go to the relevant department, there were readymade appointment letters available at his dera with the name left blank, to be filled in as necessary.” Aqdas added that the jobs were largely doled out to members of Wattoo’s local political network, ensuring they would mobilise voters come election time.
Rs45bn to be injected into power sector By Khaleeq Kiani ISLAMABAD, April 26: Conceding that allocations for tariff differential subsidy were underestimated in this year’s budget, the government on Friday decided to inject another Rs45 billion and 150 million cubic feet of natural gas into the power sector to increase electricity generation by about 3,500MW before the May 11 general elections. . The prime minister’s adviser on finance, Dr Shahid Amjad Chaudhry, told a news briefing that the decision for bringing into use more generation capacity was taken by Mir Hazar Khan Khoso. The adviser was accompanied by Water and Power Minister Dr Musadik Malik and Petroleum Minister Sohail Wajahat. Amjad Chaudhry said the three ministries — finance, petroleum and water and power — had reached an agreement that about 1,500MW of power could be brought into the grid immediately and another 2,000MW could be added in about two weeks. This would reduce the current shortfall by over 75 per cent. The current shortfall stood at about 4,600MW as the system was generating about 9,200MW against a demand of 13,800MW. To achieve this, the Ministry of Finance would immediately release Rs10bn and another Rs35bn would be provided to the power sector on demand next month. About Rs20bn had already been injected into the power sector recently. The adviser said the chronic issue of circular debt and shortages could not be resolved unless electricity rates were increased, but this was a major political decision which the next elected government should take keeping in mind various slabs and their socio-economic impact. “It was decision of the prime minister that the caretaker government would not touch electricity tariff,” he said. Shahid Amjad Chaudhry said the government was contacting provincial governments to see if their electricity arrears could be deducted at source under the mechanism of the National Finance Commission while the National Accountability Bureau was also taking steps to improve recovery of outstanding electricity dues. He said Petroleum Minister Sohail Wajahat had given a commitment to divert 150m cubic feet of gas from other sectors. If the promise were redeemed, it would help utilise about 1,100MW of additional capacity lying idle in independent power producers due to gas curtailment. Mr Wajahat declined to explain from which sectors his ministry would cut down natural gas to divert to the power sector. He, however, said he would ensure that gas supplies were made on the basis of efficiency and hence it might not be helpful if he announced diversions in advance. In reply to a question, finance secretary Dr Waqar Masood Khan conceded that tariff differential subsidy allocated in the budget last year at Rs120bn was on the lower side because it was assumed that there would be a substantial rise in tariff. But the assumption turned out to be wrong. The secretary said the revised target at Rs291bn set by the previous government in the budget strategy paper before leaving office last month was still intact. Amjad Chaudhry, however, explained that electricity demand could go up in coming days with a rise in temperature and hence raising the generation would remain a moving target and might leave substantial shortfalls. Power Minister Dr Musadik Malik promised that the caretakers would do whatever they could to provide relief to people from the torment of loadshedding. He said he had sought Rs150bn to increase electricity production, but was pushed back by the finance ministry because of its negative fallout on future government and increase in inflation. About 1,100MW of capacity in independent power producers could be utilised by providing about 4,000 tons of furnace oil per day purely on the basis of their efficiency with a capital injection of Rs10bn, he added. Musadik Malik said the hydropower generation capacity was dependent on water requirements of provinces that were expected to improve next month as irrigation needs go up and provide cushion to generation of about 2,500MW of more electricity. However, the increase in electricity demand would offset this increase. People ought to conserve energy for demand side management as supply side management alone would not help, the minister observed. He said the tariff structure was heavily flawed because the government was selling electricity at Rs2-6 per unit to various consumers, but it was purchasing it at Rs14-15 per unit. He said the power sector required massive restructuring process to put the electricity system on a sustainable path, but as caretakers they could not take major decisions. However, they would leave behind a road map which if the new government wanted to implement would bring about a positive change.
LHC seeks ministry’s help over petition against YouTube ban By Our Staff Reporter LAHORE, April 26: The Lahore High Court (LHC) sought on Friday assistance of the Ministry of Information and Technology on a petition challenging the ban on YouTube, a widely used social media website, and directed the federal government to seek the point of view of Google administration based in Singapore. . Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah issued the order on a petition moved by local NGO ‘Bytes for All’ challenging the ban imposed by the former government last year on the YouTube for exhibiting blasphemous material. YouTube is a subsidiary of Google. The government had decided to continue the ban after the Google administration refused to remove the blasphemous material. Almost all Muslim countries had strongly protested against the blasphemous videos uploaded on the social media website. During the course of hearing, a deputy attorney general told the court that the federal government was willing to lift the ban but the blasphemous material was still there. The deputy attorney general pointed out that there was no agreement between Pakistan and the Google under which the government could censor controversial material. A representative of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) told the court that like several countries, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Pakistan would also be able in about four months to censor controversial and undesirable stuff from websites. Justice Shah issued a notice asking IT Minister Dr Sania Nishtar to appear personally before the court or depute a responsible official of the ministry to assist the court on the matter. The judge also directed the federal government to approach the Google administration in Singapore and seek their point of view. He also asked the government to arrange, if possible, the appearance of a Google representative in the court on May 17. The court would resume hearing on May 3 to the extent of the response of the Ministry of Information and Technology. The NGO had said the ban amounted to infringing upon fundamental rights about reading and acquiring knowledge. It said a large number of people had been affected by the ban.
Four Indian police die in Kashmir ambush SRINAGAR, April 26: Kashmiri militants killed four Indian police on Friday in an ambush on a patrol near the town of Sopore in India-held Kashmir, a senior officer said.. The four had just descended from their vehicle to conduct a routine patrol in the village of Hygam when they came under attack, Superintendent Imtiyaz Hussain said. “Four of our policemen got killed in the ambush by militants,” he said. A hunt for the attackers was under way, the officer added. The village is around 45km northwest of Srinagar. It is the first deadly attack in the region since March 13 when a group of militants disguised as cricketers killed five paramilitary police in an ambush in Srinagar. Militants have fought Indian forces in Kashmir since 1989 for the independence of the region or its merger with Pakistan. The conflict has left tens of thousands, mostly civilians, dead so far.—AFP
11 British Islamists jailed for bomb plot LONDON, April 26: Eleven British Muslims were jailed on Friday for planning what a court heard was an Al Qaeda-backed plot to carry out a string of bombings that they hoped would rival 9/11 and the 2005 London attacks.. The conspiracy involved at least six of the plotters travelling to Pakistan for terror training, with the eventual aim of setting off eight rucksack bombs in crowded areas and possibly other timed devices. Ringleader Irfan Naseer received a life sentence, his right-hand man Irfan Khalid was jailed for 18 years and co-conspirator Ashik Ali was jailed for 15 years by a judge at Woolwich Crown Court in southeast London. Eight other members of the cell which was based in Birmingham, central England, were also sentenced on Friday. “Your plot had the blessing of Al Qaeda and you intended to further the aims of Al Qaeda,” Judge Richard Henriques said as he sentenced the men. “The only barrier between (Naseer’s) team and mass murder was the intervention of the authorities.” The terror cell was heavily influenced by the teachings of American-born Al Qaeda preacher Anwar al Awlaki, who was killed by a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011, police said. Prosecutors said that the attacks planned by the men would have been the deadliest since the July 7, 2005, London bombings, in which 52 people were killed by three Islamist suicide bombers on subway trains and a fourth bomber on a bus. Khalid meanwhile boasted that the attack would be “another 9/11”, referring to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the trial heard. The plot was also the most significant terror plan uncovered in Britain since the 2006 plot to blow up transatlantic airliners using bombs in drinks bottles, police said. The judge said the attacks may have been intended to target Birmingham, although police said the planned location was not clear. Naseer, a jobless 31-year-old pharmacy graduate nicknamed Chubbs because of his weight, and Khalid and Ali, both 28, were found guilty by a jury in February of engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts.—AFP
Editorial NEWS
Put the past behind — Call for Musharraf’s trial RETIRED General Pervez Musharraf has once again united a polarised polity and society. On Friday, as he and his legal eagles were running from court house to the police headquarters, the rest of the country came together to criticise him in the media and on the streets; in the Senate, politicians once again called for his trial under Article 6, merely underscoring the legal woes of the former dictator. In this context, it’s hard to not join this “sound and fury” calling for a trial of ‘public enemy number one’ but to do so would not be just. Indeed, no one can deny the role played by Gen Musharraf in the coup of 1999 and then in November 2007 when he imposed an emergency, deposed the judiciary, tried to censor the media and threw many people behind bars. But was he acting alone both times? In all honesty, he was not. . If the 1999 coup was bloodless it was because it enjoyed more widespread support than Pakistan would today like to admit to. And this is exactly why the emergency was rolled back in 2007 because it was unacceptable to the public at large. More than that, a trial of Gen Musharraf alone would simply throw a cover over his accomplices — the generals who helped him, the judiciary that validated the coup, the politicians who joined him and many others. To hold him guilty alone would simply perpetuate this myth that a military coup and the subversion of democracy is the ‘sin’ of an individual instead of a collective act. This has even been acknowledged in the historic Supreme Court verdict on the 2007 emergency that pointed out the role played by judges and politicians in upholding undemocratic acts. In fact, that verdict was a sign of the maturity of Pakistani society — it had acknowledged past mistakes and was now ready to move forward. To now focus on Gen Musharraf and press for his trial would be reversal of our society’s evolution. His trial, if the current national mood prevails, will smack of vindictiveness and a desire for revenge — emotions that are best avoided. It needs to be realised that Gen Musharraf’s departure in 2008 and his arrest at present are possible because the door to military coups has been shut than to presume that his trial alone will prevent further coups. Sometimes justice is best served by letting history be, rather than forcibly dragging it into the present. Gen Musharraf too is part of Pakistan’s past and he should be left there.
A provocative deal: US-Middle East arms sales THE US is reportedly working on a $10bn deal to sell weapons and aircraft to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, ostensibly to counter Iran. Though approval is still required from Congress, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel is due in the Middle East to seal the deal with the states concerned. News of the deal came a day after the Iranian president criticised “a foreign presence” in the Gulf, claiming it was a “source of insecurity”. It is not difficult to imagine how the arms sale will be perceived in Tehran. The arrangement will retain Israel’s military edge in the region while significantly boosting the capabilities of America’s Gulf Arab allies. As it is the Gulf is a lucrative market for the US arms industry. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have previously inked similar arms deals with Washington. . Considering the already volatile atmosphere in the Middle East, the deal will only ratchet up tensions in the region. It sends an aggressive signal to Iran indicating that should diplomacy fail on the nuclear stand-off, the heavy firepower will be rolled out. It also serves as a blunt reality check regarding the state of the Muslim world. While there is certainly no love lost between Tehran and Tel Aviv, the weapons deal speaks volumes for the mistrust between Gulf Arabs and Iranians, despite claims of Muslim brotherhood. The proposed deal is a stark reminder of the region’s geopolitical divisions, pitting Iran, Syria and Hezbollah on one side and the Gulf monarchies and Israel on the other, under the American umbrella. In a more rational world, the Gulf states could have put their considerable petrodollars to more productive use, instead of buying deadly toys aimed at their perceived enemies. Instead of raising the temperature through provocative rhetoric and questionable arms purchases, both the Arabs and Iranians should solve their outstanding issues through dialogue on a regional basis, while external players should refrain from fanning the flames of mistrust.
Long-term solution needed: ‘No-go’ areas ON Thursday, the Sindh High Court, while hearing a petition seeking the recovery of a kidnap victim in Karachi, directed the provincial chiefs of police and the Rangers to eliminate ‘no-go’ areas in the city. This echoes the Supreme Court’s orders to the police and Rangers a few weeks ago while hearing the case pertaining to Karachi’s law and order problems. At the time, it had come to light that localities within the jurisdiction of at least seven police stations contained “partial no-go areas” where law enforcement officials could not enter without enormous risk to their lives. . One can scarcely quibble with the order per se. It is unacceptable that some neighbourhoods should be out of bounds for law enforcers while criminal gangs hold residents hostage by dint of intimidation and threats of violence, particularly with an election around the corner and the additional security concerns it entails. There has been some forward movement on this score during the last few weeks, with the Rangers carrying out clean-up operations in certain localities, arresting a number of alleged criminals and seizing weapons caches. However, to expect a comprehensive and sustainable clean-up of the city’s militant- and gang-infested areas within a short span of time is perhaps unrealistic. The likelihood that any such move would be vocife-rously resisted was illustrated soon enough with an attack on the Rangers outside their Korangi office, which killed four of its personnel and injured three. After all, a host of factors perpetuated over several years have led to this situation: among them, parochial politics, an influx of migrants due to natural disasters and militancy, unchecked proliferation of weapons and a highly politicised police force. This is a problem that will requ-ire both comprehensive action and political will to resolve.
Obsessive focus Gen: Kayani’s comments PERHAPS it is a sign of the times that Gen Kayani’s comments at the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul will attract little meaningful attention or comment. “Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and Islam can never be taken out of Pakistan ... The Pakistan Army will keep on doing its best towards our common dream for a truly Islamic Republic of Pakistan,” Gen Kayani said. In truth, however, both the timing and the content of Gen Kayani’s speech ought to be parsed carefully. Given the recent travails of election candidates facing new, and unwarranted, scrutiny of their Islamic credentials and a debate being triggered on the true ideology of Pakistan, the army chief ought to have considered whether weighing in on such matters at this time was the appropriate thing to do or not. The political battle lines have already been drawn, with religious elements and anti-democratic forces beating the drum of an exclusionist version of Pakistan’s ideology and trying to make it an election issue. Has Gen Kayani, wittingly or unwittingly, given those religious elements and anti-democratic forces a boost going into next month’s election? . The substance too of the comments requires close examination. Who is trying to take Islam out of Pakistan; where is the threat to the public’s right to practise their Muslim faith? In fact, the threat is in the opposite direction: to those of other faiths who are also Pakistani and some of whom don’t even enjoy the theoretical right to practise their faith without fear or intimidation. If Islam is in fact the core of the Pakistani state, does that mean non-Muslim Pakistanis have no place in this state and society? Even among Muslims, from the early 1950s, the question of which of the many different interpretations of and schools of thought in Islam ought to be given precedence over the rest has been a dangerously divisive issue when the state has seen fit on occasion to tackle it. More relevantly to Gen Kayani’s institution, the exclusive, obsessive even, focus on using Islam to galvanise the armed forces is precisely where the origins of the tragic and disastrous policy of state-sponsored jihad has arisen. Gen Kayani and the army high command should stick to questions of national security and leave it to the politicians to sort out for whom and why Pakistan was created. The ideology of Pakistan should be an issue for politics, not the armed forces.
Time to act: Gas allocation CNG STATIONS are back on the policy radar. Following complaints from industry, the government has agreed to review its gas allocations to various sectors of industry, and look once more at the wisdom of resuming supplies for CNG stations. It would be proper for the caretaker government to return to the original gas allocation priority list that carries the approval of the Economic Coordination Committee since that list has the widest possible consensus of stakeholders and industry experts. It makes no sense that gas should be supplied to captive power plants of the textile industry while it is diverted away from the large power plants of the independent power producers and Wapda. It makes equally little sense to pump precious natural gas into highly inefficient automobile engines while our fertiliser plants are gasping for their vital fuel, impacting food prices. The priority list for allocating gas among various stakeholders has been made; it only needs to be implemented. . It’s time the caretaker government lived up to its name. It is understood that its mandate is limited, but there is a reason why it is called a caretaker government: it is supposed to look after things until a new government is sworn in. Given a limited mandate, the petroleum minister has the perfect reason to return to the original allocations agreed upon by the ECC. It might be a tightrope act at times, but he should realise that in an appointed government with a limited mandate, he is free from any political constraint or reciprocal obligation. This freedom should be utilised and the limited mandate exercised to provide gas first and foremost to the power plants that feed the national grid, followed by the fertiliser industry. The textile sector needs to audit the efficiencies of its captive power plants before pressing its demands, and efficiencies in utilisation should become important criteria for deciding allocations. Anything else would be exercising more than a limited mandate, and would justifiably lead to questions.
Still waiting: Earthquake victims’ travails WE can only hope that the state eventually makes good on its promises because for now, good intentions alone are evident: provincial disaster management authority trucks will soon arrive with relief goods, the PDMA has completed its initial survey of the losses and these will be submitted to the government soon, a plan to build container homes as temporary shelters has been finalised and the Quetta Electric Supply Company has set up an emergency cell. The director-general of the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority has said that the affected people will not be left on their own. All these words paint a rosy scenario. But on the ground, the picture is very different. Several days after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake flattened much of the border town of Mashkel, the roughly 15,000 people rendered homeless are still waiting for food, tents and potable water. They are still waiting for an indication of whether state and society are willing or able to help. . It is true that the state apparatus has generally been found to be sluggish and unable to cope whenever there are large numbers of people to be helped in emergency circumstances, be it in the aftermath of floods, large-scale displacement in the northwest or the current post-earthquake scenario. Yet, unfortunately, in Mashkel’s case relief efforts are being significantly hampered by the fact that it is so remote, and that road access is at best limited. Whatever few goods have reached the area have been flown in by Pakistan Army helicopters. Erra has promised now that the road network in the area will be improved and a water-provision scheme established. Mashkel was never the beneficiary of the sort of development it needed; now, it is doubly the victim.
Not the full picture: Lal Masjid commission report IN its recently released report on the 2007 showdown between the state and militants holed up inside an Islamabad mosque, the Lal Masjid commission has absolved the army of responsibility for the debacle. Instead, blame has been placed on the shoulders of Gen Musharraf, Shaukat Aziz and members of thecabinet at the time. But before the state files murder charges — as recommended by the one-judge commission — we must ask whether these recommendations are in consonance with some aspects of the affair that need greater critical appraisal. In other words, the sensitive nature of such an investigation should have entailed far broader terms of reference for the commission than merely affixing blame and focusing on compensation issues. . There are three crucial aspects of the Lal Masjid operation that can be considered independently of the report: a) the military operation that resulted in clearing the mosque of militants and the death of many civilians was an institutional decision, not solely that of Gen Musharraf, who was then army chief; b) the situation in the capital had been allowed to come to such a pass that a military operation became necessary; c) the operation was badly mishandled, resulting in the death of all those who were inside the complex, not just the militants. True, there was justification for the operation. The Lal Masjid militants had challenged the writ of the state in the heart of Islamabad. Aside from the seminary students’ moral policing in the capital, Sharia ‘courts’ were set up inside the mosque and there were a number of fire-fights with the police, paramilitary and army even before the military launched its operation. Heavy weaponry was stashed inside the place of worship — and later used by militants during the siege. While the details of the siege itself were covered extensively by the media, very little is known about the identity of the armed militants who were in control of the mosque complex and their agenda. Here is where a bigger probe is needed; and also to answer what went on inside the complex during the operation and what prompted the military to act in a way that there was no survivor to give an alternative version of events. It can only be hoped that a wider probe will also summon army officials. Fact and fiction must be separated before blame is affixed on those responsible for carrying out a flawed operation and those whose terrorising tactics were getting out of hand.
Fatwa on vote: Ulema conference IS not casting a vote a sin? If it is then the envisaged fatwa occupies the other end of the spectrum in which some ulema consider the electoral process — in fact democracy itself — un-Islamic. But over the decades, there has been a sea-change in this thinking. Some leading religious parties, initially opposed to Western-style democracy and elections, have reversed their position and taken part in polls. For the people of Pakistan, however, a fatwa this way or that is of no consequence, because over the last 50 years, they have unmistakably settled for democracy and never seen the issue of voting or not voting as a religious one. Against this background, the outcome of a meeting of ulema in Islamabad on Thursday will be watched with interest. If not voting voluntarily is a sin, what position will the ulema adopt in cases where women are prevented from voting? Are the women guilty of sin or should we hold as sinners those who keep them away from the polling booth? The issue is relevant to some parts of the country where traditions have stood in the way of a woman’s right to exercise her franchise.. The Islamabad moot is to be attended by virtually all political parties; that should give us an idea of its importance. If the conference makes progress, there will be a larger convention of 5,000 ulema, representing all schools of fiqh, including those from Saudi Arabia and Al-Azhar. Let us hope the conference does not get bogged down in dogmatic hair-splitting, and, instead, the learned participants adopt a position that recognises the modern political ethos and upholds a democratic approach. The Pakistan Ulema Council will use the occasion to launch a 40-page booklet, which deals with electoral issues in the light of Sharia. The PUC’s thrust has been towards a more liberal interpretation of the texts. For that reason, it would be interesting to see what response it evokes from the more tradition-bound sections of the ulema.
Easy pickings: Muggings at traffic jams THE police in Karachi may euphemistically refer to it as “snatchings” but for the city’s residents, it’s an opportunistic crime that any citizen may have to face at any time: being relieved of your cash and valuables while stuck in a traffic jam. A young man — sometimes a whole group ‘working’ several vehicles at the same time — knocks on a car window with a gun, or brandishes it at a motorcyclist; the helpless victim hands over whatever he can, and watches in fearful frustration as the mugger calmly walks on to the next target. The stash of watches, wallets, mobile phones and jewellery thus collected is easy to fence, the hapless citizenry sitting ducks for criminals whose ruthlessness is only underscored by the nonchalance with which this crime is usually committed. It can happen anywhere, regardless of the locality, and to anyone, regardless of economic standing, and it’s so common that people have started carrying decoy phones and leaving documents such as identity cards and driving licences at home.. Cognisant perhaps of the futility of going to the police, few victims bother to register complaints. Nevertheless, the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee says that over 20,000 mobile phones were reported stolen in 2012 and 2011 each, of which half were ‘snatched’. The answer can only lie in better and more coordinated policing. Given this discernible pattern, when a traffic jam occurs word should go out on the police wireless and a mobile unit be sent to the spot. Meanwhile, efforts need to be made to shut down the thriving trade being done in stolen mobile phones. Citizens too can play a crucial role: through each phone set’s unique IMEI number, a stolen handset can be permanently shut down. Noting and reporting the IMEI number should become the norm.
Out in the cold: Women on general seats ONCE again, it seems the electoral field is going to be a largely all-male spectacle. Now that tickets have been awarded for the May 11 polls, it’s clear that while political parties may court the female vote for its strategic value, they cannot bring themselves to consider women as viable candidates for general seats. The list of candidates for 272 National Assembly general seats includes only 36 women, a figure that has remained more or less unchanged since the last two elections in 2008 and 2002. . While religious parties such as the JI and the JUI-F have predictably bypassed women as potential candidates, one would have expected other mainstream parties to do better. The PPP has nominated 11 women on general seats, four less than in 2008. The MQM has given tickets to only seven female candidates, nominally more than in the last two elections and the ANP has merely two women in the running. The PML-N, with seven, has also scarcely improved upon its past performance, while the PML-Q’s tally has dropped from eight to four, although the party contends that this is on account of it having nominated fewer candidates overall. The PTI, whose campaign is predicated on the mantra of ‘change’, could only come up with five women among the 227 candidates to whom it has awarded tickets for the National Assembly. At this rate, the presence of women in the country’s premier house of representatives would have been little more than token had it not been for the 60 reserved seats for women, a quota that, ironically enough, was increased by a military-led government in 2002. The last five years of democracy, although flawed in many ways, saw considerable pro-women legislation, an important step towards raising the status of women in a patriarchal social milieu. Female legislators also demonstrated initiative in parliamentary pro-ceedings, outperforming their male counterparts in many respects, a fact proved by statistical reviews of the outgoing parliament. To build on what they have achieved in terms of legislation, the political parties should have taken the lead in raising the profile of their women members instead of caving in to a conservative, risk-averse approach. A few women in some of the country’s most backward areas have challenged this mindset by standing for election as independents. It’s a pity that our political parties have not demonstrated the same courage and instead, on the threshold of a historic juncture, relegated women’s participation in the transition of power to the sidelines.
Uneven campaign spirit: Electioneering efforts ELECTION meetings are finally taking place. The flags have been unfurled, the chants pierce the air and rallies move the crowds. The media is projecting the electioneering as an exercise which signifies the Pakistani people’s hope in democracy of which a general election is the first and basic ingredient. The debates between candidates, the exchange reflected in the speeches made by politicians at their rallies, the focus on issues even when personalities remain prominent — all this is good advertisement for the system, and let us hope that this is how it will continue right up to the May 11 vote. Let us also hope that poll activity will be diversified with time, for there are complaints that not every party is enjoying equal opportunity to project itself before the people as their worthy representative.. To begin with, the militant moral keepers of this land have made it absolutely clear that, while they oppose demo-cracy per se, when it comes to dishing out penalties, they consider some of the players more guilty than others. This has forced some visible campaigners of the past, such as the PPP and ANP, to keep a low profile this time. Just as the interim administration and the media need to strive towards creating as even a playing field for everyone as possible, the leadership of these ‘restrained’ parties must find openings to reach out to the people. And for that to happen, the leadership must first be seen to be leading in the face of the odds. It may sound cruel to be preaching bravery to the targeted but there is simply no other option. This fact has been to an extent illustrated in the ANP’s controlled electoral drive. The PPP, which has been least visible on the election radar, must also realise this. It must somehow arrange for itself to be seen electioneering and being led by someone who is in command and seen to be so. So uneven is the contest. Such is the truth.
The regional battleground: Syrian conflict IT is all quiet on the diplomatic front while the slaughter in Syria continues. Damascus, according to eyewitnesses, is unrecognisable. A week’s fighting in one of its suburbs has led to 500 undocumented deaths, making it one of the bloodiest weeks in 25 months of civil war. The world community’s indifference to the misery of the Syrian people is to be seen in the transformation of the Syrian scene. The hopes aroused by the Arab Spring have vanished in the Levant, for the anti-Baathist revolt has fallen victim to a larger conflict that has acquired a sectarian and geopolitical character. For all practical purposes, it is now a proxy war, with regional states and world powers training and arming rival militias. The battle lines are not difficult to see.. Iraqi and Syrian factions loyal to Al Qaeda have come together and caused dissensions in the Free Syrian Army. Iran has supplied the government of President Bashar al-Assad with arms worth $12bn, while Hezbollah, Iran’s ally, is in action on the government’s side. America is training the FSA’s moderate, Jordan-based factions, which are also getting arms and money from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. The American camp, however, has slightly reduced arms supplies to the FSA for fear they may fall into Al Qaeda’s hands. The result of this manoeuvring is that neither side is able to clinch victory. The silver lining is that Russia and China, the Baathist regime’s backers, no more insist on President Assad’s political survival. Both are willing to go for a settlement in which Assad loyalists will have a place but not the president himself. Peace can perhaps come to the blood-drenched land if rival powers pressure the opposition into accepting this proposal.
Joint effort needed: Combating pre-poll violence FOR months, the Pakistani Taliban had threatened to disrupt the elections; now, they are delivering on their promise. The attack on an MQM campaign office in Karachi on Tuesday has bloodily underlined the severity of the challenge: from Peshawar to Quetta and now Karachi, violence against political parties, or rather just a subset of political parties, is radically reshaping the electoral battle ahead. Given that elections are essentially participatory and open in nature, it is impossible to secure every single potential target and prevent every single attack. But that does not mean that all those who have a role to play are doing everything they can to discourage the violence and secure the elections. For one, the caretaker administration has been far too quiet and passive. The essential responsibility of the caretakers is to ensure elections take place in a relatively free and fair environment. In the present circumstances, that means mobilising the security and intelligence apparatus on a war footing to go after the militant cells and communication networks. While zero violence unhappily appears out of reach, the state still has a formidable capacity to take on violent elements — when the state is focused, committed and crystal clear about what needs to be done and why.. There is also a responsibility that falls on the shoulders of politicians and political parties who have avoided the Taliban’s wrath. Keeping quiet is the safe option — but only in the short term. Today, the Taliban have marked the ANP, PPP, MQM and sundry ‘un-Islamic’ politicians as their targets. But the Taliban have also been clear that they regard the very system of democracy to be unacceptable. So for parties like the PML-N, PTI and the religious bloc, silence may seem like a good idea while the price of speaking out is painfully high; in fact, this attitude only strengthens the anti-democratic forces in the country — something which is to the detriment of all political parties, including the ones not in the Taliban’s crosshairs at the moment. Finally, there is a responsibility that falls to the political parties and politicians who are under attack: they must soldier on and give the voters a genuine choice on May 11. It is a horrible choice to make — having to stand in an election while knowing they could lose their lives — but withdrawal or a boycott would give the Taliban precisely what they want. State, society and politics must stand by and encourage politicians making the hardest of choices in a grim electoral climate.
On the rampage: Lawyers run amok RAMPAGING lawyers are back in the news. Over the past few days members of the legal fraternity have featured in a number of violent attacks. A melee erupted outside the Rawalpindi district courts on Tuesday when some black coats clashed with supporters of Pervez Musharraf. Both groups came well-prepared as they attacked each other with rods and projectiles. Some lawyers have made it a point to protest — often violently — when-ever the retired general, or his counsel, makes a court appearance. On Saturday, a number of lawyers had given supporters of Gen Musharraf a hiding in Islamabad. Meanwhile, the beginning of the week saw lawyers in Lahore scuffle with an income tax official. In fact, policemen, political workers and journalists have all tasted the wrath of the lawyers, some of whom have been accused of threatening witnesses and obstructing justice. Not even fellow legal practitioners and members of the judiciary have been spared, with reports of judges being mishandled and locked up in their chambers. Evidently, the success of the lawyers’ movement for the restoration of the judiciary has gone to the black coats’ heads, and many members of the legal fraternity now resort to violence at the slightest provocation. . Meanwhile, it is unfortunate that this tendency is hardly criticised by a society that has become inured to violence and condones thuggish beha-viour in general. Bar councils have taken action, but their efforts have been a drop in the ocean. Apparently, senior lawyers and bar councils do not take serious note of the antics of their more violent colleagues due to reasons of bar room politics; often it is the same hotheads who are most effective in rallying support when bar elections come around. It is high time the higher judiciary and the bar councils took steps to end this hooliganism. With the faces of lawyers clearly visible in video footage and photographs, it should be fairly easy to identify at least some of the errant black coats who must be made to answer for their violent tendencies.
Battle for life: Falling immunisation rates IF any proof were needed of Pakistan’s tendency to regress, one has only to look at the country’s social indicators. Take, for instance, child health. Much of the world, as it gears up to mark World Immunisation Week at the end of the month, has seen success in protecting children through vaccinations. But in Pakistan, immunisation coverage that hovered at 90pc a decade ago now stands at an abysmal 20pc to 50pc in different parts of the country. Of the staggering 435,000 deaths of children under the age of five every year, approximately 20pc — or 100,000 deaths — are the result of illnesses such as pneumonia or measles, which can be easily prevented through available vaccines.. As pointed out at Tuesday’s news conference in Karachi to mark immunisation week, a large section of our population is either unaware of or careless about having children vaccinated. Shockingly, this is the case even though over the years some 7,000 centres under the Expanded Programme for Immunisation have been set up across the country where nine crucial vaccinations are available free of cost. This situation is as frightening as it is unacceptable, especially given the fact that the EPI has been operational for four decades. With focus narrowing in recent years to the polio immunisation campaign that has met with a great deal of resistance from hard-line elements who have frequently killed polio workers, other routine vaccinations seem to gave gone off the radar — even though over 80 children have died of measles in Sindh alone since the beginning of the year. Poor access to information is a major reason for this state of affairs. Why are we see-ing no push for raising awareness about the critical need for vaccinations and their free availability amongst Pakistan’s millions?
No clear signals: Brussels talks WHEN Pakistani, Afghan and American leaders meet, the inevitable focus is on the US drawdown in Afghanistan over the next year and a road map for peace and stability post-2014. But, while official details about what transpired in Brussels between Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, President Hamid Karzai and Secretary of State John Kerry are predictably non-existent, the backdrop to the meeting is telling enough. With tensions along the Pak-Afghan border escalating in recent weeks — disputes over Pakistani checkposts in Mohmand Agency, missiles fired into Kunar and an Afghan military delegation postponing a scheduled visit — Mr Kerry will have been keen to get the Pakistani and Afghan sides together to ratchet down tensions and focus on the goal the Americans care most about: ensuring stability in Afghanistan post-2014 and preventing an eventual Taliban takeover.. The public comments made later by Mr Kerry — “results are what will tell the story, not statements at a press conference” — suggest that strong views were exchanged behind closed doors and perhaps not much movement was made or common ground found. Privately, the American and Pakistani sides express a growing understanding of each other’s positions and baselines in the region while both also suggest a frustration with the Afghan side led by Mr Karzai, for whom the clock is winding down rapidly with presidential elections slated for a year from now. Then again, convergences between the US and Pakistan on Afghanistan have proved transitory, or even illusory, in the past and it is difficult to pinpoint which among the three sides has a less coherent framework for achieving long-term stability in Afghanistan and the wider region, particularly the tribal areas of Pakistan. Brussels could prove to be just another dot in a regional picture that refuses to become clearer, even as the self-imposed US deadline for winding down its war in Afghanistan approaches. From a Pakistani perspective, perhaps the most obvious talking point is Gen Kayani’s presence at the meeting with an elected Afghan leader and the cabinet appointee of a US president. With no interim foreign minister, Prime Minister Mir Hazar Khan Khoso has charge of the foreign ministry portfolio. Even though he is caretaker prime minister with a limited mandate, he should have been the one formally leading the Pakistani team in Brussels with Gen Kayani by his side. Much as it may reflect the reality of the situation, it sends a dismal signal when a military chief is seen publicly and directly negotiating national security and foreign policy issues with leaders from other countries.
Playing with lives: Bomb detector scam THE whistle was blown on him in 2008, and after a police investigation lasting nearly three years, the jury at Old Bailey in Britain found businessman Jim McCormick guilty on three counts of fraud on Tuesday. It was far from an ordinary case of deception: McCormick’s company ATSC manufactured devices that could supposedly detect explosives; the millionaire’s company claimed they worked even long range and through lead-lined rooms or multiple buildings. The devices were sold to and extensively used by several countries — including Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Niger and Lebanon — with internal security issues. In fact, these devices were useless. As the judge told the Old Bailey jury, tests found that there was “no way in which the device could work according to the presently known laws of physics”. While McCormick got rich, “both civilians and armed forces personnel were put at significant risk in relying upon this equipment”, to quote the detective who led the investigation.. Why is this relevant to Pakistan? Because back when the British government and scientists denounced the device, the ADE651 was being used in Pakistan, particularly at airports. When contacted by this newspaper in January 2010 after McCormick’s suspected scam came to light, the Airport Security Force at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport bypassed the matter, saying that what they were using was not actually the ADE651 but a similar device based on the same principles that had been designed by the ASF. Yet a written request for an opportunity to test the device was refused. What’s worse, whether it’s the ADE651 or its clone, the use of the antenna-bearing device continues to be in evidence. True, there have not yet been cases here where the device has allowed explosives to be slipped through security cordons — but it could be only a matter of time before this happens. The security situation in the country is nightmarish enough; is it too much to ask that the use of bomb-detecting devices known to be ineffective be curtailed?
More questions: Secret funds FOR reasons of propriety and ethics, transparency in financial dealings between the government and media is essential. In this respect, the release of the list of alleged recipients of the information ministry’s ‘special publicity fund’, as ordered by the Supreme Court recently, has not resulted in any earth-shattering disclosures. But it has raised a number of questions regarding payments made by the state to media organisations and individual journalists. Most of the expenditures fall within the domain of the routine and banal, such as payments for rent-a-car services, airfares and iftar dinners. Yet certain payments fall in a much greyer area and demand further explanation. For example, relevant data in some of the boxes is missing as is a whole set of serial numbers. In other instances, payment has been made to journalists without explaining why, while relatively large sums paid to individuals for ‘special assignment’ also piques our curiosity. ‘List A’ has been challenged by some journalists as there are suspicions that it might have been doctored or the information contained is faulty. Meanwhile, ‘List B’, pertaining to ‘secret service expenditure’, has not been made public.. Further clarification is required because as Justice Jawwad Khwaja, who is on the bench hearing the case, said, the nation needs to know what is spin, what is paid content and what is independent writing. We feel List B should be made public while the information ministry should shed further light on aspects of List A. The Supreme Court has ordered the audit of List A so hopefully more information should be available in the coming weeks. Once a clearer picture emerges, media houses need to conduct internal inquiries if there is any indication that their representatives might be guilty of financial impropriety.
Evading the truth: Ulema moot outcome THE proceedings of Thursday’s ulema conference should dispel the impression in many quarters that the religious right as a whole is opposed to democracy. That a majority of the ulema at the Islamabad gathering belonged to the Deobandi group and supported some positive resolutions condemning terrorism sends a strong signal to retrogressive forces which oppose democracy and consider violence a legitimate means for imposing their rigid philosophy on all. The booklet released at the congress contains the views of scholars, including the conference participants, on a number of electoral issues, including women’s right to vote and take part in politics. Even though there were dissenting voices from some hardline elements, the majority of ulema agreed that women had every right to vote and to be voted in. As chairman of the Pakistan Ulema Council, Hafiz Mohammad Tahir Ashrafi’s stance was encouraging: that those who believed change could occur through violence were wrong. Nevertheless, religious leaders including the PUC chairman and Maulana Samiul Haq, who also emphasised the sanctity of the ballot, already believe in electoral politics. Indeed, for them, the way to an Islamic state is through the ballot. Hence, what was said at the conference, while no doubt encouraging, was not altogether surprising.. Also, while the presence at the conference of some religious parties taking part in the May elections may have been a reassuring sight for pro-democracy forces, the participants fell short of identifying those who categorically disown democracy and the parliamentary system. In fact, some religious figures at the conference went to the extent of justifying violence. The reticence to condemn unequivocally may have stemmed from a desire to keep all options open after the elections, including retaining links with the militants. But such a stance will do little to send a clear message to those who perpetrate violence that religious forces are united in their opposition to the militants. This is especially true as a number of parties did not attend the conference, presumably because of ideological and political differences with the participants and organisers. This together with the fact that the proceedings themselves showed up the divisions that exist in Pakistan’s religious establishment on elections, democracy, sectarian issues, and above all, terrorism, is of concern. While democracy is all about the right to opinion, there can be no two views on terrorism — it must be condemned and its perpetrators identified. The failure to do so was perhaps the conference’s biggest lapse.
An opportunity: Funds from the US and IMF THE Pakistani team returning from Washington after meetings with IMF and US officials a few days back brought some good tidings for the next elected government. First, the US has agreed to release the coalition support fund of $1.8bn before the end of this fiscal on June 30 to help the government close the year with a smaller than anticipated budget deficit. The receipt of CSF will also refurbish the country’s dwindling foreign exchange reserves in the interim. Second, the IMF has expressed its willingness to provide an extended fund facility of $5bn or more to support its weakening balance-of-payments position. This must provide the new government the much-needed fiscal space to start implementing its economic agenda with some peace of mind and without fretting about the exchange rate. . But the new government will be required to implement a few revenue actions to make upfront budgetary adjustments of Rs770bn or equal to 3.5pc of GDP in the next two years as part of the IMF’s programme. These budgetary adjustments will involve the generation of additional federal and provincial tax revenues of Rs550bn through the imposition of new levies and the removal of exemptions to different sectors, and the withdrawal of power subsidies of over Rs220bn through tariff rationalisation and improved governance. The process of revenue adjustments has to start from the next year and will have to be articulated in the budget. The poorer segments of population that will be affected by higher electricity prices will be compensated by an increase in targeted cash grants under the social protection programme. The IMF facility will be followed by financial assistance of $2bn from other multilateral and bilateral lenders and donors. This will be an opportunity that the next government should not squander. If it seriously undertakes the restructuring of the economy without wasting time, the new government may also attract foreign private investment for building social and economic infrastructure to put the economy back on the road of growth.
The road to peace: PKK’s withdrawal THE announcement of a withdrawal date by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, from Turkish territory is a major step on the long road to lasting peace between the Turks and the Kurds. PKK leader Murat Karayilan announced on Thursday that the insurgent group would start withdrawing to northern Iraq — an autonomous region already under Kurdish control — on May 8. In a Middle East awash with conflict, this is a rare bit of good news. It follows last month’s groundbreaking announcement of a ceasefire by the PKK’s jailed chief Abdullah Ocalan. Still we must greet this development with guarded optimism as the PKK has yet to disarm (that is supposed to come later) while Mr Karayilan cryptically warned the withdrawal would cease if the PKK was “provoked” by the Turkish military. It’s that hardliners on both sides may try to derail the process; these include more militant Kurdish groups as well as ultra-nationalist Turks, who view the Kurds with intense suspicion.. Much blood has already flowed in this conflict, with some figures suggesting around 45,000 killed as the Turkish state and Kurdish insurgents have battled each other for three decades. Clearly the conflict has reached a stalemate, with Ankara unable to totally crush the insurgency while the Kurds have realised their goals — either independence or greater autonomy — cannot be achieved through armed struggle. Hopefully as the peace process continues both sides will repose greater trust in each other. Turkey should constitutionally recognise the Kurds’ cultural and political rights while Kurdish groups must refrain from threatening Turkey’s territorial integrity. If the deal succeeds, it may prove to be a model for Iran, Iraq and Syria to resolve their issues with their own Kurdish minorities.
Columns and Articles
In the throes of discourse By Muhammad Amir Rana INCONSISTENT and at times contradictory statements in the Urdu- and English-language manifestos of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazal (JUI-F) for the upcoming general elections eliminate the impression given by some political analysts that the party is taking a more pronounced anti-establishment stance and is struggling to go beyond religion-oriented politics. . The Urdu version of the JUI-F’s manifesto offers few variations on the party’s political objectives and targets as compared to its previous manifestos. The English version, which was distributed by the party to the foreign media and diplomatic missions in Islamabad, appears to be more comprehensive and modern in outlook. While the Urdu version still contains clauses like compulsory jihad training and conservative views on women and minority rights, the English version carries slogans and phrases that speak of peace, freedom, humanity, and minority rights. The anomalies in the manifesto could be described as an attempt by the JUI-F leadership to raise its ‘moderate’ credentials in the eyes of the foreign media and international community. They are also a reflection of the growing internal tensions and contradictions within religious parties whose leaderships may realise the implications of changing internal and external political scenarios but who lack the ability and methodology to pass on this realisation to their lower ranks and largely conservative supporters. Though madressahs have increased their influence in mainland Pakistan, madressah students and teachers mainly come from the peripheries and lack the capacity to influence the local political discourse. In order to effect the required change, a good organisational network and likeminded people among the leadership are needed, and the JUI-F lacks both. The Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) nonetheless qualifies on both counts but it is persisting with its previous path despite the recent changes in the political landscape, and its manifesto reflects that it is still stuck to its traditional ways. It would not be an easy task for religious political parties to suddenly divert from the traditionalist discourse they have cultivated and strengthened over the last 65 years. This discourse is two-fold: Islamisation and religion-socialization. They made early gains on the Islamisation front, by managing to define the ideological discourse of the state through the Objectives Resolution of 1949. Since then, they have remained in the forefront of the ensuing process of Islamisation of politics and the Constitution in Pakistan and gained considerable ground in these areas. At the same time, they have been promoting a discourse of religious socialisation, or a process of education whereby one can learn to see the world through the lens of religious significance, and that dovetails with their political objectives. On that front too their achievements are significant and the trend of religio-socialisation is becoming increasing visible in society. The ‘enforcement of divine law’ is the common agenda in the manifestos of all religious political parties. While their primary objectives also include plans for economic, political, constitutional and foreign policy reform, their emphasis is on complete Islamisation of the state and society. Like the JUI-F and JI, many of these parties advocate reforms but remain silent on how these would be translated into policy. The mainstream political parties also share many objectives of the religious-political parties. The PML-N promises in its manifesto to turn the country into “a modern ideological Islamic state”. The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s statement of objectives focuses on ways of making Pakistan an ideal Islamic state. The PPP says “Islam is our way”. But if all political parties, excluding those who represent the left-wing side of the ideological spectrum, share the same vision, where is the point of divergence? First, religious and religious-political organisations engage in multifarious activities, including the religio-socialisation process. On the other hand, religious parties distinguish themselves on the basis of religion and consider themselves the saviours of Pakistan’s Islamic ideology. They are generally suspicious of the country’s political leadership, and believe that it wants to turn Pakistan into a secular state. The proliferation of religious organisations usually occurs on account of different interpretations of religious teachings along sectarian lines. For instance, when the JUI-F says that no law can be made against the Quran and Sunnah, it seeks to confine legislation within the Hanafi framework. The JUI-F claims that the state must follow the majority’s faith in its legislative function. Other sects want political protection and endorsement of their respective religious ideas. Most of these religious parties believe that parliament should only identify the areas where Sharia legislation is required. They do not envisage a role for parliament beyond that nor are they clear on what role it will play after Islamisation of the constitution and legislation is accomplished. In the last two decades, the orthodox religious-political organisations, especially the JUI-F, have gained more from the electoral process and influenced the masses more than the JI has. The JUI-F, the Barelvi Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan and Salafist Markazi Jamiat Ahl-i-Hadith are conservative in this regard and focus on local issues. This despite the fact that the JUI-F had links with the Taliban in Afghanistan and groups affiliated with it engaged in militancy in India-held Kashmir. On the national level, these organisations share common agendas, but their distinct worldviews make a huge difference to their approach. After 9/11, for instance, the JI mainly focused on global issues to express solidarity with the Muslim ummah. The party continued to protest against the US even as Pakistan was experiencing severe political and economic crises. More importantly, the JI mobilised its supporters among the urban middle class since they were more attracted to such causes, although their strength has rarely helped the party on the national level. So far, the religious political discourse is a significant caveat in the way of major electoral success for religious parties. This cannot be removed by manipulating the Urdu and English versions of manifestos. It requires a change in approach, one which must be aligned with ground realities. The writer is editor of the quarterly research journal Conflict and Peace Studies. mamirrana@yahoo.com
A flawed programme By Samia Altaf PAKISTAN’S polio eradication programme is a frustrating paradox. Despite an understanding of the epidemiology of the disease, access to sophisticated technology and ample resources, and both national and international commitment, the programme continues to perform poorly. . Experience does not justify optimism for the future — the number of cases of polio increased from 40, in 2005, to 156 in 2012. Vaccination coverage rates in some areas remain around or below 50pc which is not enough to confer herd immunity and certainly not enough to eradicate the virus. Children are reported to have received expired vaccines, and there are serious concerns that new strains of Type 2 virus are emerging, indicating poor coverage and serious performance gaps. Pakistan’s porous borders, displaced populations, and poor healthcare and social service systems may also enable the virus to spread to neighbouring countries. (Genetic analysis shows that two out of three chains of polio transmission in Afghanistan originate in Pakistan; the 2011 outbreak in China, which caused 11 deaths, was imported from Pakistan; polio strains have recently been found in Egypt, which had been polio-free since 2004.) The usual explanations for this situation, such as funding and security constraints, are implausible and insufficient. Violence, including the recent murders of polio workers, has indeed been a serious impediment, but the fact remains that immunisation rates were not much better before the Taliban began targeting the programme and its workers. And funding has been significant: Pakistan has received over $9.5 billion over the last 25 years, and in 2012 alone USAID invested $24.3 million, the WHO offered $4.8m, the Japan International Cooperation Agency gave concessional loans worth 5m yen, and the Planning Commission itself committed Rs26bn. The private sector and other donors, such as the Gates Foundation and the Islamic Development Bank, continue to donate large amounts. Several reviews over the past few decades have looked beyond funding and security and highlighted deeper systemic problems in the polio programme. Problems on the supply side include operational issues of procurement, storage, and transport of vaccines. Personnel practices are weak; despite extensive donor investment in ‘capacity building’ the programme does not maintain a full component of staff and hires people only for intensive vaccination campaigns lasting three to five days. On the demand side, the programme’s communication methodology and health education component are inadequate, failing to provide the education needed by recipients to ensure acceptance of vaccination as a valid health protection strategy. A UNICEF-sponsored survey conducted in 2012 in 29 high-risk districts across the country found a large majority of the public unaware of the existence of a vaccine for polio though they had heard of the disease. At best, brochures are distributed to announce immunisation campaigns but these are insufficient to create effective demand in areas with extremely low literacy rates. The design of the polio eradication programme is clearly inappropriate and outmoded. It was designed three decades ago and has not changed since, despite radical transformations in the country, rendering it out of context with local constraints and lived realities. It is also rigidly structured, with management responsibilities divided amongst UN agencies, NGOs and the government, and so lacks the internal flexibility necessary to cater to emerging challenges either in the field or at the policy level. Policymakers have understood these deficiencies for the past many years, and some efforts have been made to address them. Donor money has enabled piecemeal attempts, but the donors themselves contribute to the design problems by creating skewed incentives, focusing on ‘how much’ rather than on ‘how’ money is spent. They provide unconditional financial support for a particular component of the programme, without much required accountability; though funding is nominally tied to performance results, failures are ignored in the interest of continuing the programme. In many instances, failure in year one is blamed on a lack of funding, and the money for year two is simply increased. It should not be surprising when year two yields the same results. The government’s efforts have been largely lip service; they have not shown much interest in taking the systematic and comprehensive approach needed. In general, they prefer to let NGOs and donors take responsibility. This strategy is not going to work. Issues of data integrity remain unaddressed and incentives to over-report coverage complicate the picture reducing confidence in claims of progress. The responsibility of designing an appropriate, effective programme is ultimately that of the federal government and its implementation, following the passage of the 18th Amendment, of the provincial governments. Donors, WHO and Unicef can and are willing to help, but it is the government that needs to abandon the piecemeal approach and complacency of the past and look thoroughly at how to address this pressing situation. One immediate action to restore confidence would be to allow public access to data captured electronically at the field level and to move to third-party management of its consolidation and reporting. This would allow cross-checking of raw data against the aggregated figures which is a major gap at this time. It would be ideal to have a centre for health studies located in an academic institution to become an independent monitor of the polio programme’s design, implementation and reporting. Opening up the programme to civil society participation could yield significant benefits in promoting accountability and realigning operational incentives beyond shrinking the existing credibility gaps. The writer is a public health physician and the author of So Much Aid, So Little Development: Stories from Pakistan.
Notes from central Punjab By Cyril Almeida THERE won’t be an election. Voters aren’t quite sure why or how, but they appear convinced: there won’t be an election. . Is it Zardari? Kayani? The Taliban? The court? The election gods? Who or what exactly will forestall the election? There is no consistent, or even dominant, theory. It’s just an amorphous feeling out there, a hope even, that somehow there won’t be an election. Where did the feeling come from? Folk can’t pinpoint it; it’s just there, a nagging thought at the back of their minds. It’s the first question they ask when you ask them about the elections: are you sure there is going to be an election, they counter. When told that the election, on time, on May 11, is as much a certainty as anything can be in Pakistan, they shrug. “Pata nahin. Humein nahi lagta.” Candidates too are wary, but theirs is a fear of a different kind. Turnout will be low, most say. Somehow, the public just doesn’t seem all that interested in the election. It’s not just that the campaigns have started very late. Constituency politicians have a feel for the electorate in a way that goes beyond hard maths and logic. And many are sensing the electorate has tuned out, if it had ever tuned in to begin with. Some, though, are fearing the silent voter. He’s the guy who seems uninterested, who won’t turn up at jalsas or corner meetings and who’ll turn away candidates and their supporters knocking on his door. But come election day, he’ll make his way to the polling station and deliver a knockout punch. Never have voter and candidate both been so wracked by uncertainty. It’s a funny mood out there at the moment. Thug love: A rule of thumb, particularly in rural politics: the worse the stories about a candidate, the stronger his vote bank. He’s a thug; his goons are everywhere. He’s corrupt. He’s immoral. He’ll steal your chickens and slaughter your goats. He’ll sell his mother and sister and his grandmother too for votes. And he’ll likely win. This isn’t rural Sindh or south Punjab — voters aren’t enslaved and the competition can be intense. How does a candidate manage to be both a thug and a winner? By being very, very clever. The thug is also a people’s guy. His dera is always open, his phone always on, his people ready to serve. He’ll attend every funeral and will arrive at every wedding with an envelope in hand. He’ll talk like you, eat like you and live like you — except his house will be much bigger and his vehicle of choice an SUV. If you’re his voter, he’ll move heaven and earth to fix a problem you have. That’s the good part. The nasty side is equally real. The thug-winner has an elaborate network of facilitators, smaller thugs and henchmen. The money he skims off contracts or earns through his criminal enterprise is shared — though far from equally — with his network. Sharing the loot wins him loyalty and the loyal network delivers him votes from mohalla to mohalla, street to street and door to door. So what the soft touch can’t win over, intimidation and threats can. Chaudhry sahib needs your vote. If you don’t happen to need a helping hand and aren’t impressed by his rustic charm, his elaborate network of facilitators, smaller thugs and henchmen will coax you into doing the right thing. It is, though, the most delicate of arts. Push too hard and the thug-winner can go from being feared but respected to being loathed — meaning he’d start to lose. Play it too soft and an upstart will replace you soon enough. To find the winner in any given constituency, you don’t necessarily have to look at the numbers. Just listen carefully to voters’ stories and identify the guy who is respected and feared, or sometimes loved and hated, in equal parts — that’s your guy, the thug-winner. Lahore Lahore aye: It’s not just south Punjab that is envious of Lahore and the money lavished on it; money which has made possible Lahore’s wide boulevards, manicured lawns and jangla bus service. Much of central Punjab, particularly in the districts along the border with India, has serious Lahore envy too. And it should. Gas pipelines have only now reached parts of it, the educational and health infrastructure is below par, and the road network is far from the best. But the PML-N isn’t apologetic about the attention lavished on Lahore. Far from it. “How many of you have travelled on the jangla bus?” a PML-N candidate asked at a corner meeting in an obviously poor neighbourhood far from Lahore. A few hands shot up. “Didn’t you feel like you were in Dubai?” the PML-N leader exclaimed. “Shahbaz Sharif is the only leader who could get it done. It took Turkey three years to build, but Shahbaz sahib did it in 11 months.” Small matter that the road to Lahore, some 100km away, is a heavily potholed single track on which accidents are frequent. “Aren’t we also Pakistanis? Aren’t we also a part of Punjab?” a PML-N rival asked rhetorically, denouncing what he saw as a disproportionate and unjust focus on Lahore. Along the 100-km, potholed road to Lahore, a local complained, “When we go to Lahore, we get very angry. Lahore gets four-billion-rupee bridges and we have to put our lives in danger just to travel in our own district.” Driving into Lahore, the injustice of the contrast is impossible to ignore: central Punjab has a point; its grouse is legitimate. But it doesn’t have a choice. It will vote Sharif. The writer is a member of staff. cyril.a@gmail.com Twitter: @cyalm
Farcical debate By Syed Irfan Ashraf WITH a congressional hearing in the United States on the drone issue set for April 23, some groups in that country are making efforts to create a consensus for bringing an end to drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. . At a protest rally and in discussions in Illinois, in which I participated, the majority demanded that their senator and chair of the first-ever Senate committee on drone strikes, Dick Durbin, make efforts to bring the culture of robot wars to a halt. However, in this article, my argument focuses on the behaviour of state apparatuses in Pakistan and the US, which manipulate the human rights discourse in a way that helps to extend their anti-civilian agenda. The corporate media, many human rights groups and civilian networks tend to believe the state narrative — one reason why their efforts to promote the human rights discourse on the drone issue have not always been successful. The consequent suffering in Pakistan and the military determinism in the US is the outcome of the state’s take on global security. In Pakistan, the state apparatus largely controls the drone debate, which encourages civilians, tribesmen and the media to condemn drone strikes as long as the US remains the focus of their ire. However, the security set-up here is rarely held responsible, even though it has been pointed out that drone strikes have been carried out with logistical support from the Pakistani state apparatus. This blinkered view has brought no relief to oppressed tribesmen. Fata has been in the throes of a bloodbath for the last eight years. But civil society is reluctant to find a new perspective that can truly be called a human rights one. In 2004, Taliban commander Nek Muhammad was killed in the first-ever drone attack. No one protested when the military claimed it had killed him. Similarly the military first claimed it had attacked a madressah in Bajaur Agency (a large number of students died) although later it emerged that it was a US drone strike. Civil society groups from the rest of the country were uninterested in the local protests. Ever since then drone strikes have become a regular feature of tribal people’s lives. Nobody knows what is happening in the country’s strategic backyard, thanks to the information black hole. In 2006, journalist Hayatullah was killed for reporting on a drone strike, it is believed. This sent a threatening signal to all his tribal colleagues who were deterred from reporting such attacks. Resultantly, silence prevailed, which was effectively maintained by the killing of tribal journalists from time to time. The fear factor was witnessed not in journalists alone, but also in survivors of drone attacks and families of the dead and injured who did not want to be quoted in news stories. We should not forget that much of the information about civilian casualties in drone strikes is the outcome of embedded reports and ‘subsidised’ journalism. Had it not been for the tragic Salala incident in 2011, the death of tribal people in drone attacks would still have gone unopposed. The overnight killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers along the Pak-Afghan border by Nato gunships and helicopters changed the official outlook on human rights violations in Fata. Survivors of drone strikes suddenly sprang up. Protest rallies in Peshawar and Islamabad were encouraged. To awaken the global conscience, pictures of children maimed or killed in drone strikes were collected from Fata to give a human form to the anti-drone campaign. In reality, however, the aftermath of the Salala deadlock stripped the human rights’ debate of its moral vitality because the human tragedy had been politicised. Apparently, the incident was used to make it clear to the US that Pakistan’s support for drone strikes was subject to funding and the safety of its armed personnel. Disregard of either would make it difficult for the US to justify its relevance in Afghanistan. In plain words, the understanding seemed to be that spilling tribesmen’s blood in drone strikes was okay as long as the US continued funding the military and did not harm its men. This is how the human rights discourse on civilian deaths in drone strikes can be manipulated and converted into a bargaining chip. For the US, the nuisance value of the military has always remained central to its relations with Pakistan. Therefore, any risk on this count could mean the end of the drone project. It would be a tough challenge because US forces in Afghanistan have so far failed to explore alternatives to drones. Pilotless drone attacks are the only effective weapon against Al Qaeda and its affiliates, and the best way of ensuring the US forces kill the enemy without getting killed themselves. Therefore, the drone project provides the allied forces a justification to convince taxpayers back home of their utility in Afghanistan. Back in the US, anti-drone activists are expected to raise two points. First, the US has to set an example before discouraging other countries interested in joining the drone project. Second, the drone policy was a central election plank for the Obama administration’s Af-Pak policy. Now in his second term, Obama can hardly afford to carry a bloodstained drone legacy into the future. What do we do to get access to the tribal belt to understand the implications of years of constant surveillance and continuous attacks on victims of the most highly sophisticated robot war in the world? Here lies the real challenge for worldwide human rights organisations and civilian networks. They need to ensure an inquiry into the matter, which must be independent of state control. I have observed that the people in the US (including some from the Pakistani diaspora) are interested in demystifying the drone ‘policy’. But it is also important for them to unequivocally point out the plight of Fata’s millions who languish on the Pak-Afghan strategic fault line. The writer has written extensively on various aspects of militancy and conflict.
Pride and prejudice By Hajrah Mumtaz BEFORE the hair-raising dénouement of the hunt for the young men suspected of having perpetrated the bombings at the Boston Marathon last week, the interim couple of days during which there were no leads and no information were illustrative of a problem that several are convinced has become entrenched. . The problem is the assumption that terror is linked to one religion, and that someone from the world’s Muslim nations must be responsible. So it was that one of the first purported ‘suspects’ the unthinking — or merely the grossly prejudiced — found to hang out to dry was a 20-year-old Saudi man. The New York Post, a right-of-centre newspaper, led the charge. On CNN, a former official of the Bush administration, Fran Townsend, insinuated the same: “We know that there is one Saudi national who was wounded in the leg who is being spoken to.” The same idea was launched from other quarters too, including Democrats. As we found out shortly thereafter, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a man of the wrong background. Before the authorities had released the by now familiar images of the two young men in white and black baseball caps, the New York Post published front-page photos of two men, one with a duffel bag and the other with a backpack. The oversized headline announced: “Bagn” while the subhead added “Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon”. Turned out, the newspaper was wrong. The New York Post compounded what feels uncomfortably like prejudice with professional misconduct. If a newspaper fails to get its facts straight, doesn’t check its sources, then … well, here’s the satirical ‘news’ site, The Onion, putting words in the mouth of the editor of the New York Post: “[…] yet people have this obsessive need to get bogged down in all the teeny tiny minutiae — the precise number of dead, how many explosions there were, etc — when we all know that these kinds of details don’t matter when you’re in the middle of a terrible emergent tragedy. “Who focuses on that stuff? Not me, that’s for damned sure. All I cared about in the moment was giving our readers a vague, erroneous conception of what was happening on the ground while also beating our competitors to the punch with a more sensationalistic story featuring a drastically higher body count.” Such was the scale of the misreporting in general that, unusually, the FBI was driven to issuing a statement of correction asking that news outlets verify information through official channels. Is such prejudice becoming entrenched in parts of the media in the West? Regrettably, there are indications that this might be the case. The day after the July 2011 gun and bombing attacks in Oslo (which for a while were thought of as not being linked), the featured headline on The New York Times’ internet page implied that Muslims were responsible. The Washington Post published a column on the same assertion. Similar prejudices were displayed after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Many people have for years now been warning that such attitudes are becoming rooted in society in general. And, regrettably, it has to be conceded that more times than one would like to face up to, someone related to the Muslim world is found to have been behind violence as, indeed, was the case with the Boston bombings. Of course it’s unjust to hold the entire population complicit for the actions of a few, but reality is not a kind place. In the aftermath of the Boston attacks, much of this community found itself desperately hoping — in vain, as it turns out — that it wouldn’t in some way find itself in a news story about the men being pursued by the FBI. If some sections are giving in to their baser emotions, are there any voices of reason? Writing in The Guardian, here’s what Glenn Greenwald had to say on April 16: “One continually encountered yesterday expressions of dread and fear from Arabs and Muslims around the world that the attacker would be either or both. That’s because they know that all members of their religious or ethnic group will be blamed, or worse, if that turns out to be the case. “… One tweeter, referencing the earthquake that hit Iran this morning, satirised this collective mindset by writing: ‘Please don’t be a Muslim plate tectonic activity’. … No other group reacts with that level of fear to these kinds of incidents, because no other group has similar cause to fear that they will all be hated or targeted for the acts of isolated, unrepresentative individuals.” But before any readers find in this article vindication for their long-cherished views that the West is ‘against us’, let me point out one other aspect of prejudice: here in Pakistan, we are hardly strangers to it. What else is the so rampant ‘anti-American sentiment’? In burning down a food outlet thought of as being American, aren’t the perpetrators punishing the community at large for the actions of a few? If the sins of a few madmen who are also Muslim ought not be used to hold the whole Muslim world responsible, should strikes that are the domain of a single government be enough to tar the entire West with the same brush? The world swings in mood between societies’ liberalism and conservatism, between times of freedom and repression, when people tend to be active or reactive. Unfortunately, it would seem, this is an age of the pendulum’s swing to the right. The writer is a member of staff. hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com
Perceptions ofnational power By M. Zaidi APOLOGISTS may downplay it, but the fact is that power is the core attribute of a state, defining its position in international politics by giving it the leverage to influence other states. . Power may corrupt, or be used unscrupulously, but without the pursuit of power no nation can seek to attain parity with states let alone influence international decision-making. As Hans Morgenthau wrote, the prestige of a nation is its reputation for power. That reputation, the international observers’ perception of that power, can be as important as the reality of power itself. What others think about us is as important as what we actually are. The power equation becomes complicated when there are other challenges facing the state as well, such as economic problems. This exacerbates the uncertainty horizon for such states. What may be a perfectly viable option for a financially secure state may not be feasible for one facing an economic crunch. Socio-cultural factors also cause the limitation of choice, such as the religious environment of a state facing national security uncertainty, ethnic and nationalist violence etc. However, it’s not just underdeveloped states that face this problem; Adm Michael Mullen, former US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said in 2010 that the single biggest threat to US national security was debt. In a global recession such as that in place today, security paradigms can be reflective of the times being faced by politicians. As political leaders play to their domestic galleries, they will surely take more nationalist and parochial positions on important international issues. This is worrying because 2013 will be a year demanding intense international cooperation to cope with a deteriorating economic climate. The result could be serious damage to the underpinnings of globalisation. However, there are similarities in the security policies of states of equally high stature and among those on a lesser plane. As Michael Mandelbaum has argued, similar security policies recur throughout history and across the international system in states that, whatever their differences, occupy similar positions in the international system. The security policies of very strong states are different from those of very weak ones, and both differ from those of states that are neither very strong nor very weak. Thus, there are certain structural paradigms that will nudge a state towards a certain national security and foreign policy path and which resonate with their international standing. As that standing improves or deteriorates, the choices for a national security and foreign policy trajectory expand or shrink simultaneously. Robert Gilpin states that a wealthier, more powerful state will select a larger bundle of security and welfare goals as compared to a less wealthy and less powerful state, which implies that its foreign policy goals and national security goals will be broader and more expansive. Correspondingly, states with fewer resources at their disposal will have fewer choices in rationalising an expansive security doctrine. It is only when states reach a certain critical mass that they can attempt to explore the possibilities of doctrines with more international outreach. As society is always evolving, the security doctrine also changes keeping pace with how society in a particular country views its relationship with the world, as well as with societal roles within that society. These ideas shape how society views itself vis-à-vis the rest of the world which shapes beliefs and ideals, which in turn shape threat perceptions. Demographics such as geography are an important determinant of state security; insularity gives more of a strategic rational choice leverage to states. Conversely, intensively landlocked states have less choice in strategy, since closely situated territorial disputes will almost inevitably end up in opponents engaging each other eyeball to eyeball. Resultantly, such conflicts may be exacerbated in military conflicts. A state that considers itself global will also have bigger challenges since its interests are necessarily wider than those of regional powers. However, it may be easier for global powers to make their national security agendas more comprehensive and coherent, since their interests are also spread diffusely. As D.C. Watt recounts, French military thought was obsessed with the single, potentially more powerful enemy. British thinking, by contrast, was distracted, literally, by commitments all over the world. Then, there is the historical legacy of power. Colonial Britain, for instance, had a much bigger burden to bear and shed than the US (with the Philippines being the only mandate of the US) after the First World War. Politics also plays a huge part, since internal conditions may be as instrumental in shaping doctrine as external ones. Put simply, national strategy may become the flag-bearer of political stances rather than rational-choice strategic ones. Such aspirations for gaining and retaining power may also evolve into hegemony. Hegemonic postures will tend to not only give a global orientation, they will also intentionally diffuse the context of the enemy. Thus, instead of clearly identifiable enemies, esoteric threats such as chaos, ‘terror’, instability etc will become dominant themes. As the then president George Bush articulated US strategy even before the Persian Gulf War, “As the world’s most powerful democracy, we are inescapably the leader, the connecting link, in a global alliance of democracies. The pivotal responsibility for ensuring stability of the international balance remains ours”. This resonates with the fact that America now has multiple enemies and its alliances have tended to see waxing and waning periods. Since a hegemonic state has usually more than one indistinct enemy, it will also try to keep its options open by entering into alliances of convenience, which are easily retractable. No matter how much it is glossed over, power does play a huge part in national security doctrines. The writer is a security analyst.
A deafening silence By Zahid Hussain A TRAUMATISED young boy fiercely slapping his face repeatedly and crying incessantly in the midst of burnt corpses — the scene from the latest bombing in Peshawar was haunting. . The footage, repeated several times on TV channels, told the story of the horror wreaked by the Taliban on the night of April 17 in an attack on an Awami National Party (ANP) election rally. It was shocking to see the scale of destruction. But even more appalling was the callous attitude of most political parties to the gruesome carnage. There was no reaction beyond routine messages of condolence on the loss of lives, no condemnation of the Taliban who have claimed responsibility for the attack and who are threatening to derail the democratic process. This criminal silence on the part of the political parties, particularly the PML-N, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl is meant to buy security for themselves in exchange while the militants target their rivals. This policy of appeasement makes them inadvertently complicit in the Taliban’s terrorist campaign against particular political parties. But this opportunism may cost them heavily in the future when the militants turn on them too. It is not surprising that the Taliban have declared war on the ANP. The party during its tenure of power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had valiantly stood up to terrorist outfits and consequently borne the brunt of the relentless militant violence that has gripped the troubled province. Undoubtedly, the latest surge in the violence is aimed at preventing the party returning to power by denying it a level playing field in the run up to the elections. Not surprisingly, once again the PPP and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) are also on the Taliban’s hit list. Both these parties have taken a relatively stronger stand against militancy and terrorism. The militants have claimed responsibility for killing a former MQM provincial legislator and a party candidate for the Sindh Assembly last month. By sparing other political parties, the militants have shrewdly divided the political forces and created huge space for their activities. Spilling over from KP and the tribal areas, Taliban violence has reached Karachi and other parts of the country, creating an alarming scenario for the country’s political stability. Violence is likely to escalate as the election campaign picks up. Over the past 10 years, militant violence has claimed thousands of innocent lives, crippled the economy and fuelled sectarian tensions. Yet, this grave threat to national security barely figures in the election campaign. Shockingly, the issue posing an existential threat to Pakistan is no more than a footnote in most of the political parties’ election manifestos which are devoid of any clear understanding of the menace, leave alone any concrete plan to deal with it. Combating militancy and religious extremism certainly does not appear to be a priority for most political parties. For example, the PML-N, referring to Gen Musharraf’s regime, puts the blame squarely on the long authoritarian rule for the rise of militancy in Pakistan. “The distorted political activity and denied civil rights to the people, generated widespread anger and frustration, which may have encouraged some to opt for violence,” the PML-N manifesto declares. Nothing could be more absurd and bizarre than this explanation of the rise of militancy and terrorism wrecking the country and threatening its unity and stability. So, according to the PML-N, the militants have been killing innocent people, forcibly using small children as suicide bombers, attacking defence installations and destroying schools because of the denial of fundamental rights. But what is the PML-N’s explanation for the escalation in militant violence over the past five years when democracy was restored? Perhaps the PML- N will find some justification for that too. Is it not ironic that perhaps the strongest defence of the Taliban and its terrorist activities comes not from any conservative Islamic group, but from a so-called moderate national party that may come into power in the coming elections. The manifesto has no mention of the thousands of members of security forces who lost their lives fighting the insurgents. The PTI has taken the problems of terrorism and militancy even more lightly in its manifesto. The issue is literally covered in a few lines and that too as a sub-section of the security policy. There is obviously no mention of Taliban terrorism and its cost to the nation. The party sees the menace linked with Pakistan’s support for the so-called US war on terror. This flawed argument distorts the whole genesis of militancy and extremism in Pakistan. The roots of militancy and radicalisation are much deeper and the problem will certainly not go away with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Imran Khan has for long taken an extremely soft approach towards the Taliban and his confused views on terrorism and militancy are reflected fully in his party’s manifesto. There is no doubt the PPP has covered the issue much more comprehensively in its manifesto. But during its five-year term, the party failed to evolve a comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy. In fact, no urgency was witnessed in dealing with the menace of terrorism during its government. It took almost five years for the party to get the bill on National Counterterrorism Authority passed by the National Assembly. So while the PPP manifesto gives a lot of detail on the measures it proposes to take, it leaves open the big question of why these measures were not implemented previously. This widening division across Pakistan’s major political forces on how to deal with the country’s most critical threat does not augur well for the future. Instead of offering solutions in their party manifestos for a problem so critical for the stability of the country and for the future of democracy, there appears to be a state of denial. The cracks appear to be growing visibly and frighteningly larger. The writer is an author and journalist. zhussain100@yahoo.com Twitter: @hidhussain
On local government By Asif Saeed Memon IN the shadow of a half-constructed multi-story plaza between two empty plots strewn with construction rubble, sits a shabby looking shed of concrete blocks and corrugated iron roof. . Inside, under the pale glow of an energy saver light bulb sits a shalwar kameez clad grade-7 official tapping away at a battered desktop computer. Meet Mr Kaleem (real names have been changed on request), secretary of his union council in Sialkot. He is surrounded by some locals with documents to be attested or corrected. Just outside the shed sits Mr Jawed the former nazim of the union council. He is no longer an elected official since the local government system introduced by former president Gen Musharraf became defunct. Regardless, he comes to this office every day in his white starched shalwar kameez on his motorcycle and sets up with an empty chair next to him. He is on friendly terms with the public official inside, who often comes out to ask him a question. “Jawed Sahib, this woman is a widow and says she cannot get her husband’s pension because of something wrong in the death certificate … or something. I cannot understand what the problem is.” Jawed asks the woman, Naseem Bibi, to sit in the empty chair and proceeds to pepper her and the flustered official with questions. “When did your husband die?” “Where is your marriage certificate? ID cards? His service record?” Naseem hands over a wad of documents to him. It is obvious that she cannot read. Jawed’s brow furrows as he reviews each document carefully. Then: “Here! You see, your deceased husband’s name is incorrect on the death certificate. Bibi, you will need to go to the hospital where your husband passed away and get them to correct the name based on his ID card and your marriage documents.” The woman looks worried. Jawed continues, “Don’t worry. I will call someone.” He pulls out a phone from his pocket and places a call. After he finishes his call he assures the woman that she will have her problem solved if she goes to the hospital. The woman looks relieved and thanks him, before heading off. Kaleem, looking relieved heads back into the shed. One of the more contentious debates in Pakistani politics is between those in favour of elected local government and those opposed to it. Those in favour argue for “complete” devolution down to the district level. On their side is the argument that there are a number of public services which are best delivered at the local level. It is also undeniable that an elected local government is more likely to feel accountable towards those who vote it in (and could vote it out) than a government functionary, sent to the district by Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar or Quetta. An officer at the local level is beholden to senior officers and provincial representatives, not directly to local ones. There is little here to disagree with. A minority argues against devolution to districts on the grounds that it would create yet another tier of corruption and waste. In principal Article 140-A of the constitution makes the debate moot. It commands that the provinces shall establish “a local government system and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to the elected representatives of the local governments.” However, the Constitution is silent on the time frame. The real argument is over the politics of devolution. For decades military regimes have used various kinds of local governance mechanisms to thwart and weaken democratic rule, generally, and party politics, specifically. Because so many of our political disagreements mirror provincial boundaries (actual or hoped for provinces), a favourite tool of such regimes has been local government systems; from Ayub’s Basic Democracies within one unit to Musharraf’s LG system. A central consequence is to bypass the provinces, and thereby provincial political actors. This undermines the essential nature of the federation: that the provinces are the federating units. In this context, expecting political parties who derive their legitimacy and power through the ballot at the provincial level to let go of some of the hard-earned legislative and fiscal authority to the local level may be asking for too much too soon. In Punjab, the battle between Lahore and the southern part of the province is complicated by the demand for a separate province. Expect local government to feature prominently in the back and forth, post elections. In Sindh, expect the PPP, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), and Sindhi nationalists to be locked in a constant battle on the matter. The only realistic chance for the MQM to truly govern independently is to have elected government at the local level. The PPP, loath to give up power to local actors, agreed to decentralise six metropolitan areas in Sindh while maintaining the commissioner system elsewhere, but it later reversed the decision. Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have passed laws governing the establishment of local governments, but implementation is a considerable way off. Almost every party manifesto includes a commitment to establish local government systems if they come to power. The move towards elected local government will most probably be messy and convoluted, pushed and pulled in every direction by interest groups. What emerges ought to have greater legitimacy than previous efforts, however, owing to the fact it would be authored by elected provincial legislators. Back at the shed, I ask Kaleem why he thinks Jawed does it, an ousted public official serving locals for no personal gain. Kaleem shrugs his shoulders, “Maybe, he hopes that if the LG system comes back they will remember. Maybe they will vote for him again.” The writer is an Associate Fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute. Twitter: @asifsaeedmemon
Messiahs in waiting By Asha’ar Rehman WHY do people fight? Now if this were not difficult enough to answer, these days the question is, why do people want to fight an election? . This is specifically about the third type of people who are in the run. The first type consists of those who contest an election to win it. Then there are those who want to compete. But why do we have so many of those who don’t appear to have too serious a claim on representing the people and who show little or no aptitude for giving it a real shot? The knowledgeable put it down to the human desire for prominence. But surely there are more respectable ways of winning a bit of fame than allowing yourself to be swept away by a desire to give the people their true representative, a messiah they had all been waiting for and are likely to not recognise when he arrives. We do write up this crap that an individual has a right to be not always counted — an individual can initiate a bit of counting in his or her own name, by standing in an election. It is frightening to notice just how many of these simple souls appear to believe what they hear or read. There is no more easy explanation for an ‘also-ran’ enrolling in an election than a few people’s craving for some light-hearted fun at the expense of an obscure candidate spiked by the candidate’s faith in miracles. The one who fights deep inside believes in the people rediscovering their common sense right when they are about to stamp the ballot paper. They are because they think they can win. Often inclined to stand independent of any party afflictions, this time these people with hardly any pretensions to power or any known record of pursuing politics as a pure sport without any (apparent) consideration for rewards have found some party banners to contest under. Many of them have, surprising the onlooker with the pluralism that has set in around us without it being noticed. There are the 250-odd Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) candidates in Punjab introduced to the people on the weekend among the anti-feudal roars. There is one gentleman peering down a pole as a Pervez Musharraf nominee, and there could certainly be more of his party waiting to be discovered in the rich pile made up of various groups and well-intentioned heroes of their own streets. The MQM and Musharraf’s All Pakistan Muslim League are national players. But there are in the picture parties no more prominent than their chosen candidates. If anything, these candidates have been a more permanent feature of the campaign so far. Unrecognised they may be, but they have at least been spared the ignominy of the party ticket having been snatched away from them after the posters had been printed and hung and the close relatives, always in the vanguard of the thrust for change in a party, in a household, been informed. They are there hanging by the polls, looking down from posters that must have cost a few bucks, decorated with titles of caste and profession, like the drowsy-looking gentleman in my constituency who would have been real but for his current existence in a Muslim League which doesn’t really matter. In comparison, the parties which are there to win or to compete have had too many to choose from and too many to ditch, until they have found the person, usually a man but in rare instances a courageous woman, to carry the party’s colours. There are more parties than we had thought there were, a phenomenon which a cynic in Lahore puts down to the lack of unity in our ranks. He obviously prefers the simple old city neatly demarcated into two camps. Run the list of ‘potential winners’ by him and he would shake his head at every mention, until we are down to a clutch of independents. From there we work our way back to the parties and the winners and the earnest competitors among them right until we have restored the two-camp system of our convenience. The Sunday socialising hour has been purposefully utilised instead of being wasted on mundane subjects of jobs, marriages and the remembrance of what it was once. This could well be it. Perhaps the candidates who are not there to compete are there to spend time in activity which cannot be easily described as a waste. In local conversations, they are invariably identified as people with a little extra to spend. They could be fathers or brothers with sons and brothers abroad or in earning positions here. According to the economist’s classical theory, they have the money, and are now trying, in the best manner they can think of, to assert as best as they can their right to power. The old saying is that once you are in an election, you can never be out of one, meaning the next time you are more likely to be picked by a worthy party as its candidate. A few have benefited from this logic, just as many have realised the fallacy of it all rather too late to restart with investments in more worthwhile ventures. In the cities more so than in the villages, the current election brings more proof of how a majority of independents are left alone to reflect on the cons of their past attempts at providing the people with an alternative. This has been a ticketed circus. The loyalties are changing at the drop of a name. The independents in the towns, however, remain largely unsought and unsolicited. The parties are more inclined to replace their own less-wanted election candidates with those from the old or current rival camp. The tickets have been given and taken away at a speed turning the affair into a mass wedding where saying who is marrying who takes a lot of skill. The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.
Muslim world in decline By Najmuddin A. Shaikh MYANMAR is a country that is supposed to be recovering from years of dictatorial rule and moving towards democracy and an opening up to the rest of the world. It is a country with an opposition leader who has won the Nobel Prize for her struggle against dictatorship and for upholding human rights.. It is also here, however, that Buddhists are killing Muslims with the apparent complicity of government forces, most recently in the town of Meiktila. This blatant violation of human rights, duly documented in a BBC-obtained video has elicited no more of a response from Aung San Suu Kyi, than previous massacres documented and now released by the Human Rights Watch office in New York. The European Union, taking its cue from America, has lifted sanctions as a reward for moving away from military rule and so far appears unmoved by the atrocities visited upon the Rohingya Muslims who are primarily distinguished from other Burmese only by their religion. The Muslim world has done little to ameliorate the plight of these Muslims other than support token resolutions in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). In Nigeria, the latest clashes in the north between the Boko Haram, translated loosely as ‘western education is forbidden’, and the Nigerian army has, according to some possibly exaggerated reports, killed 185 people. Founded in 2002 with the aim of having an Islamic government in northern Nigeria, the leaders of Boko Haram are said to have only elementary knowledge of the Holy Quran but have achieved some recruiting success because of the unemployment and poverty prevailing in the region. The group is now apparently sending volunteers to fuel the insurgency in Mali where Islamists after some initial success have been routed by the French forces sent in to support the secular government. All the Mali insurgents achieved was the destruction of Timbuktus famous libraries containing invaluable texts and manuscripts from the era when Timbuktu was the seat of Islamic learning. All that will be achieved in Nigeria or nearby Mauritania is the destruction of the little economic progress that has been made and the exacerbation of the conditions of poverty and unemployment in Muslim-majority areas. In the West, the Boston bombing, and the emerging conclusion that the brothers from Chechnya were radicalised by local rather than foreign sources, has led to calls for increased vigilance. Almost inevitably the US authorities will move towards the UK model, keeping more than 5,000 Muslims under constant surveillance along with greater emphasis on ensuring greater interaction with Muslim communities and mosques. News yesterday of arrests in Spain of two suspected terrorists from the Maghreb and in Canada of two residents with Arab-sounding names, perhaps of Arab extraction and accused of having connections with Tehran-based Al Qaeda operatives, can only worsen the paranoia. It goes without saying that stricter standards will now be applied to Muslims seeking admission either as immigrants or visitors to the US and, even more so than now, Muslims in the West will have to contend with ‘Big Brother watching’ and the prejudices that plague a suspect community. In the Arab heartland, strife flows not from a struggle against Western domination but from sectarian differences within the world of Islam. In Syria, where more than 80,000 people have died and more than a million have had to flee the country, the struggle for liberation from dictatorship has become a battle between Islamic sects. Even if all the promises made by the Syrian opposition in the recent meetings in Istanbul are faithfully abided by and even if President Bashar al-Assad is finally driven out, Syria will take decades to recover from the destruction and perhaps the same length of time to restore a measure of sectarian and ethnic harmony. Iraq has an even greater sectarian divide exacerbated by the Syrian conflict and to compound the problem an ethnic divide between the Kurds in their autonomous regions and the Nouri al-Maliki government in Baghdad. Despite burgeoning oil revenues, Iraq’s infrastructure and particularly its power sector have yet to be restored. The daily bombings in Baghdad and other major cities, occasioned at least in part by what is seen as the persecution of Sunnis by the Shia-dominated government, has promoted a sense of insecurity. The results of elections for provincial councils held in only 12 of Iraq’s 18 provinces will not be known for some time but since elections have not been held in Sunni-dominated areas the sectarian divide will only become more pronounced, perhaps giving Al Qaeda in Iraq and its affiliates a further boost. In Egypt, clashes between pro- and anti-government forces continue. The economy, partly rescued by $5bn in loans from Libya and Qatar, needs an IMF package but the elimination of food and fuel subsidies that the IMF will insist upon will provide fresh impetus to the opponents of the Morsi government. In Palestine, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s resignation has raised new questions for the internal administration of the territory under the Palestine Authority while Gaza continues to suffer the privations caused by the economic blockade. To make matters worse, the Palestinians have been asked to recommence negotiations with the Israelis without insisting on a freeze on settlement activity. How will the Palestinian people and Hamas in Gaza react if Mahmoud Abbas agrees to do so? So much has already been written in our media and around the world about the sorry state of affairs in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is difficult for political parties having no links with Islamist extremists to hold mass rallies or engage in other large-scale election activity. The armed forces are having to contend with a difficult insurgency in the tribal areas. In Afghanistan, reconciliation remains a seemingly unachievable goal while President Hamid Karzai’s decisions become less and less understandable. To say that the Islamic world is in disarray and decline and that Muslim communities find themselves under siege-like conditions in the West and elsewhere is perhaps an understatement. Is this what Islamic resurgence is about? The writer is a former foreign secretary.
Unanswered questions By Mahir Ali A DAY or so after last week’s Boston marathon bombings, a local luminary solemnly declared that there could be no possible justification or explanation for the outrage.. The first part of that statement is incontrovertible — and it is in fact somewhat surprising that so many foreign leaders, in expressing their condolences, thought it necessary to signpost the unjustifiable nature of that act of violence. Perhaps, in such circumstances, stating the obvious serves as a cover for not having much to say beyond pledging allegiance to the United States of America as it experiences a painful pinprick relative to the nations where terrorism consumes lives on a more or less daily basis. It’s still a bit odd, though — implicitly suggesting that there could be a coherent alternative narrative. There can’t, at least not by any rational measure. There has got, on the other hand, to be an explanation, and to not seek it would be tantamount to criminal negligence. Fortunately, most Americans are keen to know why the brothers Tsarnaev behaved the way they did. Unfortunately, a complete answer may never be forthcoming. The Chechen connection is a bit of a curve ball — not just for the average American, who is unlikely ever to have heard of Chechnya, but also for most terrorism experts, who are finding it hard to draw a connection between the historic restiveness in that Russian territory and the desire to wreak havoc on American soil. Chechen anguish in the modern era stretches back to Josef Stalin’s deportation of that ethnic group from its homeland towards the end of the Second World War. An estimated 30 per cent of Chechens are believed to have perished as a consequence. They were permitted to return under Nikita Khrushchev, but the desire for independence lingered on, evidently, for the next four decades or so, when the break-up of the Soviet Union offered another opportunity. Two wars followed, wiping out another 20pc of Chechnya’s population. An abortive bid for independence under the secular leadership of Gen Dzhokhar Dudayev — assassinated in 1996 — eventually made way for an Islamist insurgency. That, too, was crushed, but not exactly eliminated. It seeped through into neighbouring regions, notably Dagestan. Hitherto, however, Chechnya-related terrorism has tended to target Russians — invariably innocents in Moscow. Salafism in Chechnya and its surrounds was bolstered by recruits from abroad, but a Chechnyan role in foreign violence was not really on anyone’s radar until last week — although Ramzan Kadyrov, the region’s pro-Putin leader has been suspected of sending his thugs to murder exiled foes. Last year, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspected Boston perpetrators, spent seven months with his family in Dagestan. Acquaintances and family members have been quoted as saying that he had veered towards fundamentalist Islam well before then. It appears that Russia requested the FBI to investigate him in 2011. The FBI did, and found no obvious cause for alarm — although the fact that he was interviewed may have been crucial in persuading the US authorities to delay processing his application for citizenship. The FBI has lately been criticised for its failure to recognise him as a threat, but it is perfectly conceivable that two years ago Tamerlan had no violent intent beyond the time he spent in the boxing ring. It would certainly be interesting to know, however, what exactly alerted the Russian authorities to him. It may have been nothing more than his internet profile, which reveals an interest, via YouTube, in jihadist diatribes. Then again, no evidence has emerged that he was under surveillance during his sojourn in Dagestan. It is also far from clear why his father sought, and was granted, political asylum in the US in 2002, having previously lived in Kyrgyzstan and, briefly, in Dagestan. Yet he was able to settle in Dagestan last year, with no apparent repercussions. He was joined there earlier this year by his wife — who has lately commented that her sons couldn’t possibly have been involved in the dastardly crime committed in Boston. Intriguingly, though, she appears to have believed that the atrocities of September 2001 were an inside job intended to defame Muslims — an opinion evidently shared by her sons. There are, inevitably, a host of questions at this stage, and there’s a fair chance many of them will remain unanswered, given that Tamerlan died last Friday and there are doubts whether his younger brother, Dzhokhar, who was charged on Monday with using weapons of mass destruction to cause death and damage to property, will be able to respond coherently in any interrogation. Anecdotal evidence suggests the 19-year-old Dzhokhar wasn’t quite as alienated from his environs as the 26-year-old Tamerlan: friends have described him as laid-back and inclined to relish doses of marijuana. The extent to which he was misled into last week’s gory misadventure by his elder brother cannot clearly be delineated at this stage, but some such stupidity is broadly deemed to be a part of the scenario. It is somewhat gratifying that Dzhokhar, contrary to advice from some Republican legislators, ultimately was not designated as an enemy combatant. He has spent most of his life in the US, and perhaps deserves to be seen in the same light as other Americans who perpetrate acts of random violence. A few commentators have pointed to the irony that the US Senate rejected even the mildest gun controls in the same week as the Boston bombings, even though gun violence has consistently accounted for far more deaths than acts formally designated as terrorism, and despite up to 90pc popular support for background checks on weapons purchasers. It is perfectly reasonable for jihadist fantasies to be a cause for concern in the Boston aftermath, but surely the same goes for the culture of violence that permeates American society. mahir.dawn@gmail.com
Silencing dissent By Rafia Zakaria THE trial of Saudi Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani had been going on since June 2012 in the criminal court in Riyadh. . When Mr Qahtani appeared in court on March 9 this year, he faced 11 charges. As president of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), he was accused among other things of “attempting to plant the seeds of discord and strife”, “questioning the Saudi Ulema Council by implying that they were a tool of the Saudi government”, “questioning the ability of the Saudi judiciary to deliver justice in accordance with Islamic Sharia” and “accusing the Saudi regime of being a police state built on injustice and oppression veiled in religion”. A copy of the prosecutor’s memo listing all the charges in Arabic can be found on various sites on the internet. Mr Qahtani founded the ACPRA in 2009, a human rights organisation that helped detainees in Saudi prisons, many of them held without charge or trial. It was one of the few independent such organisations there. As its founder Mr Qahtani — a Western-educated economics professor — became in recent years one of the most fervent critics of the Saudi establishment. Because of his position on the lack of legal and political rights available to prisoners in Saudi Arabia, he faced several obstacles. A year ago, Mohammed Saleh al-Bejadi, co-founder of the ACPRA, was also arrested by the Saudi authorities. He was subsequently sentenced to four years’ imprisonment and a five-year travel ban. After his arrest, and during and after his trial and sentencing, Mr Bejadi was not allowed to see his legal team. They were also not permitted to visit him during his trial, forced instead to stand outside the courtroom for hours while proceedings took place inside. When Mr Qahtani and his fellow defendant Dr Abdullah al-Hamid appeared in court on March 9, therefore, they knew that their chances could not be good. According to reports, shortly after 10am Hammad al-Omar, the judge appointed to the proceedings, began to read the judgement against them. Predictably, both Mr Qahtani and Dr Hamid had been found guilty on every single count. They were sentenced to five and 10 years respectively and travel bans equivalent to the prison sentences were also imposed. Additionally, the court ordered the forced disbanding of the ACPRA, the confiscation of all of its property and the shutting down of its social media accounts. The trial and sentencing of Mr Qahtani is representative of a potent strain of upheaval festering within Saudi society as it deals with the reverberations of the Arab Spring. The trial of Mr Qahtani, short as it was, represented the nervousness of the Saudi establishment in confronting demands for change and an opening up of civil and political rights. At a hearing prior to the sentencing, the court had faced severe criticism for not holding open proceedings. The March 9 hearing was perhaps in response to this very pressure, open to the public. However, apprehensive about the defendant’s supporters packing the courtroom, the Saudi authorities ensured that most of the seats were filled by members of the Saudi security establishment. Like so many other posturing ‘freedoms’ in Saudi Arabia, a trial “open to the public” did not allow the public to be present. Unusual for Saudi Arabia was the response of ordinary Saudis, many of whom took to the social media to criticise the verdict. According to reports from Twitter, Saudi Arabia has seen a phenomenal increase in the number of users over the past few years, with almost 250,000 new users signing up in a single week. Three million Saudis are said to have Twitter accounts equalling nearly 11pc of the total Saudi population and representing the fastest single growth in the use of that means of social networking. Though not revolutionary in itself, the elevation must be alarming to Saudi authorities when they consider the importance of the social media in whetting and sustaining the uprisings in Egypt and other parts of the Arab world. The fact that many Saudi Twitter users were using the platform to criticise the government annoyed even Saudi religious authorities with the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh calling Twitter users a “council of clowns”. The newfound affinity of Saudi citizens to tweet their displeasure at Saudi authorities is, however, unlikely to help Mr Qahtani, whose condition in prison is reported to be grave following a recent hunger strike to protest his sentence. Beyond the local, international help is also unlikely to be of much assistance. While Amnesty International and other rights groups immediately issued denunciations of the sentences, few of Saudi Arabia’s long-standing allies have taken up the issue. In his first visit to Saudi Arabia, US Secretary of State John Kerry not only ignored the case of the imprisoned activists but went as far as to commend the Saudi king’s decision to appoint 30 women to “advisory” roles in the Shura Council as an example of positive reform in the country. The American silence, added to the general inability of countries in the Muslim world to take on Saudi Arabia on any issue, however egregious, means that at least for the present time, imprisoned Saudi activists such as Mr Qahtani can expect little redress and no justice. The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy. rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
Spare Islam and Iqbal By I.A. Rehman GEN Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s warning against separating Islam from Pakistan’s polity or politics should not surprise anyone because Islam has been used as a battle cry by almost all Muslim warriors across the globe and throughout the ages, even when both sides have recited the same Kalima and the issue is nothing more than ownership of the throne or a piece of land.. Also not surprising is the way the general’s words have been flashed by a section of the media as if he has supported the pseudo-religious parties’ challenge to the non-theocratic forces in the country’s general election. This interpretation may not be correct because while Gen Kayani refers to religion as a unifying force, the politicians in religious robes are using it to divide the people. That the army chief should have been aware of the possibility that his speech on the eve of a crucial election could be exploited for partisan purposes cannot be gainsaid. Reference has been made to the armed forces’ resolve to defend the Islamic republic as envisioned by the Quaid-i-Azam and by Allama Iqbal. Pakistan’s religious lobby has never accepted Jinnah as an authority on Islam. Nor did he himself claim that distinction except for his assertion that Islam viewed marriage as a civil contract and that it did not sanction child marriage. For that reason Ziaul Haq adopted the policy of denying and suppressing Jinnah’s vision of a secular Pakistan and tried to use Iqbal, quite inappropriately and unsuccessfully, to justify his illegitimate rule under a religious facade. That Ziaul Haq’s plans to turn the democratic state of Pakistan into a theocracy of the most primitive variety could derive no support from Iqbal can easily be shown. Iqbal’s basic premise was that Islamic thought had been deprived of its essential dynamism by being kept frozen and immobile for 500 years. He therefore called for ijtihad to revive “the principle of movement in the nature of Islam”. Ziaul Haq, on the other hand, through his scheme of so-called Islamisation, extended constitutional protection to the frozen and immobile Islamic law and barred the door to ijtihad. The issue has acquired contemporary relevance because religion is being used by diverse forces to exploit the opening provided by the general election to capture the state of Pakistan. On the one hand, some elements want to impose their version of religion at the point of the gun or the butcher’s blade. And on the other hand, quite a few parties are invoking religious symbols for establishing a theocracy or a caliphate to replace democracy. Both groups are using Islam as a divisive force. While they often quote Iqbal to justify mixing religion with politics they deliberately distort the poet-philosopher’s argument. For instance, Iqbal’s support is sought to denounce secularism without appreciating his argument. Iqbal says: “The ultimate Reality, according to the Quran, is spiritual, and its life consists in its temporal activity. The spirit finds its opportunities in the natural, the material, the secular. All that is secular is therefore sacred in the roots of its being.” (Emphasis added). Pakistani advocates of theocracy often summon Iqbal in their defence and deliberately conceal his concept of a theocracy. In Iqbal’s view, “the state according to Islam is only an effort to realise the spiritual in a human organisation. But in this sense all state, not based on mere domination and aiming at the realisation of ideal principles, is theocratic”. Again he argues: “The essence of ‘tauhid’ as a working idea is equality, solidarity and freedom. The state, from the Islamic standpoint, is an endeavour to transform these ideal principles into space-time forces, an aspiration to realise them in a definite human organisation. It is in this sense alone that the state in Islam is a theocracy, not in the sense that it is headed by a representative of God on earth who can always screen his despotic will behind his supposed infallibility.” (Emphasis added). Those raising the slogan of ‘khilafat, not jamhooriat’ may also take note of Iqbal’s endorsement of ‘Turkey’s ijtihad’ “that according to the spirit of Islam the caliphate or imamate can be vested in a body of persons, or an elected assembly”, and his firm view that “the republican form of government is not only thoroughly consistent with the spirit of Islam, but has also become a necessity in view of the new forces that are set free in the world of Islam”. On the impossibility of reviving the one-man caliphate in modern times Iqbal fully endorsed Ibn Khaldun’s verdict. The danger Pakistan faces today is from the plea to return to what Iqbal called an uncritical vision of the past. There is a great need to ponder over his warning against reviving ancient modes of managing public affairs. “Thus a false reverence for past history and its artificial resurrection constitute no remedy for a people’s decay,” he says. What this means is that the problems the people of Pakistan have been facing in establishing a functional and durable democracy cannot be solved with remedies evolved in the period before democracy. It is possible that the conservative sections of society have run out of political options to oppose the growing movement for reconstructing the state in accordance with Jinnah’s ideals of people’s democracy, nationhood on the basis of a common citizenship, federalism, gender equality and the rule of law. In sheer desperation they are whipping up a wave of religiosity to prevent Pakistan’s transition to a modern democracy. In this situation, the less one speaks of the role of religion in public affairs and avoids expropriating Iqbal’s thought the better it will be.
Homing pigeons and stool pigeons By Jawed Naqvi I HAVEN’T scoured the list in case some friend’s name pops up, but I am caught between delight and relief that Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the publication of a list of journalists who were allegedly on secret payrolls of Pakistan’s information ministry.. Delighted because what was in the realm of whispers for years has now been thrown open to public scrutiny. Relieved because newspapers themselves stoically carried the story about their colleagues’ moment of introspection. (Not their moment of truth since the named people have yet to give their side of the picture — as they should.) More needs to be unearthed in this affair, but rather than judges or other officials who could have a vicarious motive in humiliating them, the journalists should offer to do a probe themselves. There is a churning on everywhere. Journalists who misled the world by cooking up stories of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction have been exposed although the revelations came too late to save the Arab nation from being invaded. The mighty Rupert Murdoch and his best journalists were hauled over the coals in the British parliament for practices tantamount to corruption. Closer home, we should be eager to know if the Indian media with its loftier name and hoarier past is prepared to follow the lead of their colleagues in Pakistan to diligently scan its own probity. The media in India has been under pressure from a changing profile of the profession, not always for the better. Intelligence agencies and corporate interests are among the big under-the-table paymasters of journalists traditionally. Sometimes saddling the media with intelligence gathering can misfire. Queen Victoria is said to have cancelled a £500 annual contract with the British news agency that plied her with spurious intelligence from the battlefield in Crimea. As a journalist I should not forget my humble origins. My predecessors were pigeons — homing pigeons. Most self-respecting journalists would, of course, prefer to be aligned with their human avatars. Leading gurus like Alistair Cooke, Mazhar Ali Khan or Sham Lal were early mutants to transit from homing pigeons that mainly carried missives of relevance to the capitalist speculator, to an audience hungry for news and analysis of political, social and cultural importance. Reuters, the agency I have worked with, started off in the 19th century by deploying homing pigeons to ferry market-moving stories between European bourses. From the battlefield too, it was a pigeon that brought the news of Napoleon’s defeat from Waterloo to England. The man who kept a pet pigeon on the ship that carried the first account of Lincoln’s assassination across the Atlantic reportedly made a kill at the Liverpool bourse by offloading American scrips before the news-bearing ship could berth and the bear ran amok. The list released in Pakistan — subject to verification — has shone a light on another kind of bird that purports to pass for journalist: the stool pigeon. How else can we describe the eager pen pushers who may be on the dole of official and quasi-official agencies, hired to plant or kill stories? (Journalists flaunting their national flags seem somehow more prone to falling prey to the lure of rigged narratives. They may not be necessarily on the take, but their Walter Mitty-esque zeal has found them short on facts in Iraq and Kashmir, for example.) The Murdoch phenomenon has not left any corner of journalism untouched. It cannot be presumed that his empire’s unethical ways in London are necessarily different from his interests in Delhi. One obvious way to verify the linkages is to look at the neo-liberal editorial priorities of the media outfits Murdoch operates in India. Who are the Indian journalists associated with the text and TV outfits and what is their political clout and their worldview? It has also been muttered on occasions that self-proclaimed defence analysts rented to run down one arms deal in preference to another on TV or in print may have a business stake in the outcome. My friend and former BBC correspondent in Delhi Satish Jacob has made a short film on serious corruption dogging the Indian media. The phenomenon of ‘paid news’ that he discusses is structurally not too different from the prevalence of quid pro quo to plant or kill stories without publicly announced payoffs. Paid news defines a new policy by editors and their corporate paymasters to offer positive publicity to political candidates for a fee. The dispatch reads like a credible report when it is in fact a shameless advertisement. Jacob recalled another shameful incident for journalism in which senior scribes belonging to a widely watched TV channel were seen demanding bribes from a politician whose business interests they would otherwise besmirch with an exposé. That the senior journalists were caught on camera was a valiant enterprise, but we have yet to be told what they had on his company that made its politician-owner make the secretly recorded offer of a bribe. Everything in India today, from communal riots to the federal budget, has a corporate aspect. The evolving military strategy to take out Maoist rebels from the forests of Chhattisgarh is nothing if not of corporate orientation given the arriving plunder of the virgin resources business houses are drooling over. Curiously, private profit and the state’s perspective on Chhattisgarh, just to stay with one example, are not divergent. When it started under questionable circumstances in the 1980s, it took a mysteriously proscribed book by a foreign scribe to throw light on the shady side of the Reliance group of companies, as no Indian news outfit would touch it. Now the politically connected company owns more than two dozen TV channels. What chance for probity? Unless checked by some miraculous force (why not the Press Council of India?) the pigeons are set to mutate into an Orwellian nightmare, coalescing the genes of the homing pigeon and the stool pigeon. The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi. jawednaqvi@gmail.com
The IMF carousel By Khurram Husain GOING by the words of the interim finance advisor to the prime minister, Shahid Amjad Chaudhry, it appears that a bailout package of some sort is waiting on the other side of the elections. . On his return from Washington DC, where he had gone to attend the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, a routine affair held every year and attended by finance ministers and central bankers from all around the world, Mr Chaudhry said the IMF is “keen to engage with the new government” and help in providing the assistance required for meeting all external debt obligations. According to the advisor, the IMF is offering $5 billion in a quick disbursing loan called the extended fund facility that carries a higher interest rate compared to the stand-by arrangement the last government took out in November 2008. What this would essentially mean is that Pakistan would take out another loan, on higher interest rates, to repay the one that was taken in 2008. This would buy us another few years at least, until the $5bn have been digested, and another balance of payments crisis begins to loom. A pattern is now unmistakably clear. Something is broken in the bowels of Pakistan’s political economy, as a result of which the country keeps getting washed up on the shores of a balance of payments crisis. Each time this happens, money arrives from abroad, usually through the IMF, and pulls the country back into the water. For a short period of time, which varies depending on the amount of the bailout, all seems fine. Then once more, the reserves begin hitting all-time lows, the financial sector begins to twitch uneasily, the rupee begins to falter, talk begins to swirl about the central bank’s ‘firepower’ and noises begin to be made about another bailout. This pattern has been repeating itself with predictable rhythms for almost a quarter century now. Of course, the broken political economy has been around a lot longer, but the repeated approaches to the IMF really began with the structural adjustment facility of 1988. Every new government is extended a bailout of some sort, sometimes a large one like in November 2008 which lasted the entire period of the PPP government, and at other times a small one like the stand-by given to the Musharraf regime in 2000, which was barely enough to take the country forward for another six months. Of course, the Musharraf government, which was in the dog house in its first three years, became the beneficiary of the mother of all bailouts in 2001, not only through the IMF, but also because of a generous renegotiation of all Paris Club debt obligations. But always, as if on cue, the bailout money runs out and the crisis resurfaces. Not only that, it also takes the same form every time — a rapid drainage of liquidity from the financial sector which necessitates extraordinary administrative measures, while emergency liquidity is pumped into the system from the central bank, and the government goes on a crisis call to the IMF. As predicted by almost everyone, this time is no different. Nobody in the world wants to see instability in Pakistan at a time when Nato is preparing to extricate itself from its ruinous war in Afghanistan. If basic stability can be purchased in Pakistan for a mere $5bn, then so be it. A small price to pay. Of course, the addiction to foreign bailouts breeds its own dysfunctions. Everybody remembers clearly how the PPP government behaved towards the economy in its first few months, seeing the approaching balance of payments crisis through indifferent eyes, comfortable in the assurance that outside powers will never let the country sink, that external help will arrive before anything untoward happens. The repeated operation of this cycle of bailouts has created a political economy of its own, a set of perceptions which holds that it is the job of outside powers to keep the economy on an even keel, that it is the job of the donor community to govern the country. For the rulers, whether civilian or military, the deliverables of government comprises politics and politics alone. The quarter-century legacy of repeated recourse to foreign-funded bailouts includes the withering away of domestic expertise in economic management. Sakib Sherani has written ably about the emptying out of all serious economic expertise from the Planning Commission, whose best minds have gone over to the World Bank or the IMF (‘Managing the economy’, Dawn, Jan 27, 2012). Today the government lacks the capacity to even articulate a clear line on crucial national issues like the power crisis or dwindling gas reserves, or tax reform or anything else for that matter. Where a clear line can be developed, the government lacks the muster and capacity to see to its implementation, as in the Federal Board of Revenue reforms that have languished for at least a decade, if not longer if one were to trace the beginnings back to Vito Tanzi’s advice on value-added tax in the late 1970s. The withering away of all state capacity for reform, for governance, for addressing the country’s economic ills, is a direct consequence of heavy donor community involvement that Pakistan has become addicted to. Of course, no donor can fix this problem for us. The solution has to come from within. An attitude has taken hold that the matter cannot be fixed, that the minds of those in power cannot be changed, that the dysfunctions are too deep and that are too many vested interests clinging on like barnacles that would prevent any rectification. It’s a tempting view, and perhaps by retirement I might be seduced by its fatalistic allure. But not yet. The writer is a Karachi-based journalist covering business and economic policy. khurram.husain@gmail.com Twitter: @khurramhusain
Why not land reforms? By Faisal Bari SOME political parties are promising to create a new or naya Pakistan, others are promising to go back to the Pakistan that had originally been dreamt of. But all are promising fundamental changes: defending the status quo is not an option in this election. . Even if parties want to actually defend the status quo, seeing the mood of the public, they are promising change. But, still, no party has made land reform a basic plank of their manifesto. Can we think of changing Pakistan fundamentally without changing the politics of land, rural or urban, in the country? Many people now argue that Pakistan is no longer feudal. And they may well be right. A feudal society, defined in terms of certain modes of production and ownership patterns of productive assets, might not be what is present in Pakistan. But the nexus between land and power is still very strong. Land buying and selling, for certain castes and classes, is almost impossible; landowning is associated with access to a lot of other important services, and there are clear links between landowners and tiers of the state at the local level: the police, courts and the bureaucracy. So how can the issue of land market reform not be important? Large landholdings are still an issue in some parts of the country. And we do need to deal with it. But that is not all that is meant when land reforms are talked about. Land reforms are about opening up land markets so that any person with money, and from whatever class or caste, can buy land when available; giving state land to people for productive use; reducing or eliminating holdings of the military and government departments; consolidating land parcels; keeping land records more efficiently to lessen or eliminate the role of the patwari; updating land titling to allow more land to come to the markets; and breaking the nexus between landowners and state institutions like the police, local courts and politics. One of the more effective ways of tackling poverty is through the distribution of productive assets to the poor. For rural areas, given that the majority of poor already have a link with agriculture and/or have human capital in this area, giving land to the poor and/or livestock, makes the most sense. Given current poverty levels, can we afford to not think about distributing or redistributing land? The major parties have either ignored the issue in their manifestoes or given rather weak and lukewarm ideas. The PPP has not really taken up the issue even though it was the PPP that brought in the 1972 regulations for land reform. The PML-N has focused only on computerisation and land consolidation. The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf does promise giving state land to the poor, and computerising records etc., which others do too, but starts off by saying that it will implement the existing legislation on land reforms. There is a problem with the existing legislation. A Sharia appellate bench of the Supreme Court, comprising three judges and two ulema, declared that land reforms were un-Islamic. This was on appeal after the Federal Sharia Court had held that land reforms were Islamic. If the promise is to implement existing legislation and the appellate court’s decision stands then, subject to the court’s definition of what constitutes land reform, we are saying that there cannot be any land reform. The decision of the appellate bench needs to challenged and reconsidered. It was not a unanimous decision (one judge had dissented and dismissed the appeal), and there are issues with the Sharia bench’s jurisdiction regarding the cases on land reform. Earlier, the court had dismissed the same case. But more crucially, it is hard to accept that we have to give up a very important means of creating equity, equality, social justice and social harmony because of a weak judgment by the court, when even the head of the bench acknowledged that the court had been poorly assisted in the case. Does Islam really consider land reform to be un-Islamic? If so, why? Is it about the takeover of private property by the state? Does this hold under all circumstances? And what about elements that are not halal or religiously acceptable? If the state buys out private property, to redistribute it to the poor, is it unacceptable? Would that be the case even if the government pays market prices? Or is it unacceptable if the price is less than market price? The other elements of land reform pertaining to reducing the patwari’s role, land consolidation and transfer, and updating land ownership data, are even less controversial from the Islamic standpoint. All of these elements can clearly be part of the strategy for all parties and should be. But irrespective of the above, no party has made the issue an important part of their manifesto and we have not heard anything about it in the campaign so far. Is this a reflection of the power of the landowning classes? Do we still need an argument for why the issue is important? Is it a comment on the health of our democracy that even the numerically superior hordes of the poor cannot make such an important issue come on the agenda of the mainstream parties? There is a petition with the Supreme Court that is looking to challenge the basis of the appellate court decision. We hope the court will take it up soon. And we hope the incoming government, in the interest of the majority, will also support the petition and join the argument for opening the doors to land reforms. The writer is senior adviser, Pakistan, at Open Society Foundations, associate professor of economics, LUMS, and a visiting fellow at IDEAS, Lahore.
The terrorism industry By Aasim Sajjad Akhtar AS was widely predicted, the menace of ‘terrorism’ has reared its ugly head yet again in the run-up to the general election. . The ‘secular’ political forces being targeted are crying conspiracy, while those who have cultivated links with the religious right — whether ideological or otherwise — are trying to maintain a low profile, neither overtly condemning the attacks nor defending them. Outraged liberal commentators have been quick to expose the hypocrisy of the parliamentary right-wing, and rightfully so. They would do well not to forget the reactionaries plying their trade in the media, educational institutions, and a host of other spaces within wider society. It is thus that the much-talked-about ‘consensus’ vis-à-vis ‘terrorism’ that many have craved over the past many years remains as elusive as ever. My sense is that there is very little chance that such a consensus will be forged soon. And while the unwillingness of some of our political bigwigs to antagonise the militant right and the military establishment is part of the problem, it is by no means the only sticking point. The fact is that we need a very different kind of consensus regarding the phenomenon of terrorism than that which the liberal lobby is peddling. Since the events of Sept 11, 2001, virtually all governments, alongside the corporate media, have tried to project a particular understanding of ‘terrorism’ in which emphasis is laid on the threat posed by terrorists to the purportedly universal ideals of democracy, freedom and human rights. This global narrative exempts the state from any possible censure for either propagating terror or sustaining the political, economic and social structures within which terrorism may thrive. The state posits itself as the ultimate defender of both the ‘people’ and ‘peace’ and is hence empowered to use all its power — coercive, ideological and otherwise — to pre-empt the ‘terrorists’. It is in this context that almost all states — including our state — over the past few years have armed themselves with new and unprecedented legal powers under the guise of fighting terrorism. The mainstream discourse revolving around the existential threat posed to human civilisation by terrorism and enhancing the capacity of states to ward off this existential threat is propagated not only in the popular media but also through the field of Terrorism Studies which has emerged as a bona fide scholarly discipline in a matter of a few years. Dozens of academic journals have come into existence with experts travelling the globe performing designated functions as analysts, consultants and counterterrorism manual writers. And all this while — completely neglected by the terrorism industry — has taken place an incredible expansion of the biggest terrorism network of all: the coercive and surveillance apparatus of the modern state. The right-wing has successfully monopolised indignation vis-à-vis imperialism’s drone technology and its implications for state sovereignty, but steers clear of questioning the parallel acquisition by the Pakistani state of innumerable state-of-the-art weapons and technologies that have increased its capacity to inflict terror manifold over the past few years. Unfortunately, liberals tend to eulogise such weapons and technologies under the pretext that they are necessary for the ‘counter-terror’ crusade. In fact, these weapons and technologies have been deployed by the state, alongside anti-terror legislation, to visit violence on whomever necessary, and wherever necessary. Baloch insurgents have suffered the most onslaughts, but large innocent populations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have also been subjected to repeated exhibitions of the state’s coercive and surveillance power. All in the name of fighting terrorism. In the meantime, ‘terrorism’ just doesn’t seem to go away. In fact, most liberal commentators contend that the situation gets worse by the day. A hue and cry erupts from time to time regarding the lack of commitment of political parties and the absence of consensus over how to deal with ‘terrorism’ but comparatively little is said (or done) about the unaccountable and increasingly lethal terror machine that is the state (let alone imperialism). To take just one example, there is a complete dearth of objective analysis about the virtual futility of expanding the state’s coercive apparatus vis-à-vis the modern suicide bomber and so-called improvised explosive devices which have changed the nature of warfare entirely. In the final analysis, it defeats the purpose to express extreme moral indignation about terrorism and its victims selectively. In doing so, the liberal lobby loses more ground to the millenarian right, which takes refuge in populist rhetoric of course, but only because it can. What is required is a holistic critique — and political movement — against the terrorism industry, with a particular emphasis on the role and character of the modern state as well as the military-industrial complex here and abroad, that profits greatly from the persistence of war in this region and many other parts of the world. Experience suggests that many liberals who want us to denounce terrorism would not be willing to accept the definition of the phenomenon I have presented. Indeed adopting such an understanding of terrorism would alienate the very governments and lobbies that are at the forefront of the terrorism industry, and that have made global experts out of more than one Pakistani journalist and writer who tows the appropriate ‘terrorism’ line. The social reality is much more complicated than the ‘with us or against us’ logic that has carried over from the Cold War into the ‘age of terror’. In deliberately simplifying this reality, liberals do themselves and their cause no favour. They simply end up mimicking the logic of reactionaries, ensuring that ordinary people at the receiving end of the many different kinds of terrorism that do exist continue to be blighted by the nexus of imperialism, state and the religious right. The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
Time to reassess drones By Julia Thompson THE US drone strike programme has entered a period of re-evaluation and reconfiguration. Nowhere is this more evident and important than in Pakistan. . Key indicators of reassessment and public inquiry include a sustained decrease in the reported number of strikes since 2010 and an even sharper drop in recent months. Members of Congress have become increasingly vocal in expressing their concerns, exemplified by John Brennan’s extended confirmation process for the CIA directorship and Sen Rand Paul’s 13-hour Senate filibuster over the US drone policy. In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama pledged to “continue to engage Congress” and to ensure proper transparency to the American public. Recently reported findings of the president’s intelligence advisory board that the US intelligence community has become too focused on military operations to the neglect of intelligence gathering, reflect American concerns over the drone strikes programme. These indicators of reconsideration suggest a growing appreciation that drone strikes’ security gains may not be worth the political cost. Drone strikes do not appear to have sidelined the leadership of targeted groups in Pakistan, while engendering considerable public resentment of the United States. Evidence of the programme’s re-evaluation as it relates to Pakistan is most apparent in the dramatic decline in the number of drone strikes since 2010. While a record 122 drone strikes occurred in 2010, the number fell to 73 in 2011 and 48 in 2012. If American denials of involvement with two suspected drone strikes in early February were accurate, there was a complete two-month pause in strikes from mid-January to mid-March this year. US media reports attributed this lull in part to John Brennan’s extended confirmation process. An incident between the United States and Pakistan did not prompt the early-2013 pause, unlike the two-month halt that followed the November 2011 Salala incident, when 24 Pakistani soldiers died in a US attack on Pakistani border posts. One trend line has been clear: CIA drone strikes in Pakistan have declined markedly as Pentagon drone strikes in Afghanistan have increased. The military efficacy of drone strikes in Pakistan is constrained for several reasons. Confined to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, drone strikes avoid cities and settled areas. It has been observed that rarely do these strikes in sparsely populated areas net “big fish,” because militant leaders are more likely to find safety in cities than in zones of conflict. Osama bin Laden was found to reside in Abbottabad; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was discovered in Rawalpindi; and Abu Zubaydah in Faisalabad. In March, Pakistani officials detained Lashkar-i-Jhangvi leader Qari Abdul Hayee in Karachi, accused of involvement in US journalist Daniel Pearl’s 2002 murder. According to the public policy institute New America Foundation, the percentage of confirmed strikes killing leadership targets fell sharply from 33pc in 2008 to less than 7pc in 2010. Strikes directed at ‘leaders’, have since stabilised at roughly 10pc per year. In 2013, three of 10 confirmed strikes have killed leadership targets. It remains to be seen whether the pattern of strikes so far in 2013 reflects an enduring change in targeting. Drone strikes are deeply unpopular in Pakistan as an infringement of sovereignty, a finding supported by UN special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights Ben Emmerson last month. Politicians of all stripes condemn civilian deaths. Political hopefuls — including PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan — have vowed to end the drone strikes. In late February, President Asif Ali Zardari also termed drone strikes “counterproductive” and stressed the need for both countries to “find a way out”. Likewise, public opinion in Pakistan overwhelmingly opposes drone strikes. A May 2011 Pew Global Attitudes poll found that 65pc felt they were a “very bad thing”, and only 2pc found them “good” or “very good”. Drones have become the symbol within Pakistan of all that is wrong with Washington’s approach to Islamic extremism. More than 60pc of Pakistanis oppose US-led efforts to fight terrorism, and 69pc view America as more of an enemy than a partner of Pakistan. Public opinion does not serve as the leading determinate of US foreign or military policy. But it is prudent for the United States to weigh the benefits of continuing current policy versus its drawbacks, which in this case include public vitriol and strained American-Pakistani relations. The apparent US re-evaluation of drone strikes in Pakistan is warranted, particularly with the approaching advent of a new civilian government. The programme appears to have limited utility and is deeply unpopular in Pakistan. The trend since 2010, accentuated so far in 2013, points to limited strikes in the future, targeted increasingly at the militant leadership. Julia Thompson is a research associate with the Stimson Centre, a global security think tank based in Washington DC.
Party vs government By A.G. Noorani IN India the established principles of the parliamentary system governing the relationship between the ruling party and its government in power have been subjected to great stress. . A recent clash in public between two powerful general secretaries of the Congress brought to the fore the relations that have subsisted between the Congress and the government headed by Dr Manmohan Singh. When the Congress emerged as the largest single party in the 2004 general election, everyone expected its president Sonia Gandhi to head the coalition. Instead, she gave the palm to Dr Manmohan Singh who is a highly respected economist but is no politician. Though a sound working relationship developed in the last nine years, there was no mistaking where the seat of power lay. On a good few key issues, the prime minister pushed through policies which bore his deep personal impress, despite criticisms within the party. The Indo-US nuclear deal is one example. The peace process with Pakistan is another. To some other issues, Sonia Gandhi lent her weight; for example the Right to Information Act. This equation received a rude jolt recently. Quite out of the blue, Digvijay Singh, general secretary of the Congress, said last month “this model has not worked very well. There should be no two power centres … Whoever is prime minister must have authority to function although Sonia Gandhi has really never interfered”. Three points deserve note. This well-informed man tells us that the relationship between the party chief and head of government “has not worked very well”. His assertion that the former has “really never interfered” is palpably untrue. She does so, albeit with circumspection, especially in appointments to the cabinet and in key sectors of the bureaucracy. The principle he propounded is the bedrock of the parliamentary system the world over — “whoever is prime minister must have authority to function”. Power must reside with the prime minister who is responsible to parliament, and to no external authority. A correction followed swiftly through another general secretary, Janardan Dwivedi, who said on April 2: “The relationship which exists between Sonia Gandhi as Congress president and Manmohan Singh as prime minister is unique and something which has never been seen before, I think, in any democracy.” No one had any doubt as to who inspired, rather instructed, this direct contradiction of a colleague’s statement. People asked as to what did the words “for future also” signify, especially since, on April 15, for the first time, Dr Manmohan Singh refused to rule out a third term for himself while Rahul Gandhi has shown signs of reluctance to grasp the reins of power. Dwivedi was altogether wrong when he claimed that this model “has never been seen before”. In no other country, to be sure; but it was tried in India more than once. From January 1966 when she became prime minister till 1969, when she split the Congress, the proud Indira Gandhi was obliged to pay obeisance to the Congress president K. Kamaraj. So did P.V. Narasimha Rao to Sonia Gandhi in the first few months after he became prime minister in 1991. Manmohan Singh has neither the ambition nor the aptitude for such games. Nor was Atal Behari Vajpayee his own master as prime minister. In 1998, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh overruled his choice of Jaswant Singh as finance minister. This was a pronounced deviation from the settled rules of the parliamentary system. Unless it is corrected, the system will survive only as a lifeless skeleton. Its roots lie in the practices established during the freedom movement. They were not discarded completely after independence. When the Congress first formed ministries in several provinces in 1937, the party leadership nominated the premiers in all but name. The ministries were regarded as a front in the struggle for freedom and were responsible to the Congress leadership. Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah called “the Congress high command” a “fascist grand council”. In an article published in Time and Tide (London) on Jan 18, 1940, he squarely said: “It is their desire [that the central and provincial governments should be] responsible not to their legislatures or to the electorate but to a caucus, unknown to the constitution, the working committee of the Congress.” After independence, breaches became more pronounced. Now, no Congress chief minister can form a cabinet, expand it, dismiss a minister or advise the governor to dissolve the assembly without the approval of the central leadership. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru became president of the Congress after he had defeated challenges to his authority. Congress presidents who were elected later were the ones who enjoyed his blessings and knew their place. Once Indira Gandhi became all powerful she reduced the party to an appendage of the government. Nehru’s dicta were contradictory. In November 1937, he wrote: “It is to the Congress as a whole that the electorate gave allegiance, and it is the Congress that is responsible to the electorate. The ministers and the Congress parties in the legislatures are responsible to the Congress and only through it to the electorate.” After independence, when the top leadership was in government, Nehru said that “normally a party executive lays down the broadest lines of policy and leaves it to the government to work it out”. That is the correct position. In Britain, the party lays down the policy and drafts the election manifesto. Its MPs pledge themselves to fulfil the promise made in the document but their implementation rests with the government responsible only to the House of Commons — and to none else. Prof R.T. McKenzie, an authority on British political parties, wrote of both parties the Conservatives and Labour “neither party in parliament allows itself to be directed or controlled by its mass organisation”. The leader is elected by the parliamentary party; not nominated by the party outside. The writer is an author and a lawyer.
Top dog to underdog By Irfan Husain I NEVER thought the day would come when I would actually feel sorry for Musharraf. But I just can’t bring myself to side with the violent, thuggish lawyers baying for his blood.. From top dog to underdog is a long fall, but Musharraf accomplished it with a short flight from Dubai to Karachi. The moment he landed, reality (as opposed to the virtual reality of Facebook and Twitter) asserted itself in the shape of a miserably small group of supporters. Some returning hajis have bigger reception parties. It’s been downhill ever since for the ex-dictator. From stinging editorials to nasty comments on TV chat shows, he has faced a barrage of criticism. But it has been in the courts where he has met his Waterloo. As expected, the judiciary is having a field day putting their nemesis through the wringer. Far from addressing adoring crowds, Musharraf is reduced to confessions to CNN that have done little to add to his much-reduced image. The admission that he did indeed authorise the Americans to launch drone attacks has not gone down well, especially on the eve of elections in which he hoped to rise from the ashes. But why did he expect a different welcome? When he boasts that he has more ‘likes’ on Facebook than Imran Khan, he forgets that much of his support comes from Pakistani expatriates. This community of fans saw him through rose-tinted glasses, and basked in the reflected glory of a leader in the Ayub mould who was respected abroad. But to be fair to the man, there were few alternatives to his pro-US shift in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. In the early days of the American invasion of Afghanistan, his policy seemed to pay dividends in the shape of massive loans written off and increased aid flows. For a country hit with a range of sanctions following our nuclear tests and Musharraf’s coup, this renewed Western engagement was a lifeline for a pariah state. For several years, the economy did very well, and the middle class expanded at an impressive rate. And to Musharraf’s credit, he did increase the number of reserved seats for women in our assemblies, apart from ending the discriminatory system of separate electorates for minorities introduced by Zia. As the judiciary and a section of the media indulge in a paroxysm of Musharraf-bashing, it’s easy to forget his achievements. But the fact is, whether we like it or not, he was president of Pakistan and deserves a modicum of respect. And while he’s certainly not above the law, he should not be subjected to the kind of uncivilised behaviour our lawyers have displayed. Although I have little time for the dark, muttered warnings from retired generals, I am all for a degree of decorum even though this does not seem to be a priority for either our judges, or our lawyers. Musharraf’s monumental misjudgement in his handling of the judiciary ended his rule. By all means, try him for this and any other crimes he is accused of, but let’s not make a circus of the process. Above all, the charges he faces ought not to have derailed his electoral bid. Disqualifying him means depriving the electorate of the opportunity of disabusing him of the notion that he is a hugely popular leader. If he had won from any of the seats he wanted to contest, he would have faced the daily indignity of rubbing shoulders with other parliamentarians, many of whom have good reason to dislike him. Letting him run would have strengthened democratic traditions. Even if his Chak Shahzad fortress had not been declared a sub-jail, where would Musharraf go? With his life under constant threat, he would have discovered that even close friends would have been reluctant to tempt fate and the Taliban by inviting him over. The recent discovery of an explosives-laden car outside his house underscores the magnitude of the risk to his life. I wonder how the car made it past the checkpost on the only approach to Chak Shahzad? Was it by any chance subjected to scrutiny by the hand-held explosive-detection devices we see while entering the premises of airports and other high-security areas? If so, it’s easy to see why the car was probably waved through: these devices simply do not work, and their seller, Jim McCormick, has just been arrested in the UK for the scam that made him a cool £50 million. These phoney detectors were sold for as much as £10,000 each, and only cost £15 to put together. But I digress. The truth is that Musharraf, a soldier who has often boasted of his grasp of strategy, has put himself in an untenable position. Among the first things they teach you at command school is to never join battle without a clear escape route. Musharraf has none. The only way he can extricate himself is through international intervention. While the army might like to help, it now lacks the political clout to pull their ex-chief’s chestnuts out of this particular fire. The Americans, too, would not like to put their hands into this hornet’s nest. Only the Saudis have the muscle with the Pakistani establishment to allow Musharraf back into the exile he never should have left. No matter how this saga ends, Musharraf’s return was a huge blunder. But being the kind of person he is, I doubt he’ll learn from it. Soon after the 1999 coup, a Time magazine reporter interviewed his mother for a cover story on the latest Pakistani general to seize power. In the report, the delightfully blunt lady was quoted as saying: “I have three sons; one joined the civil service, and the next one became a doctor. Musharraf was not as bright as his brothers, so we sent him into the army.” irfan.husain@gmail.com
Godless or plain sensible? By Abbas Nasir REGARDLESS of its success, for several years the army saw the defence of the country’s territorial integrity as its primary job and didn’t see itself as the guardian of its ‘ideology’. . Even then a succession of military leaders demonstrated so much commitment to safeguarding the country’s at best loosely defined ‘ideological frontiers’ that they may have done so at the expense of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country. Military ruler Gen Yahya Khan’s information minister, the reputedly pro-Jamaat-i-Islami Gen (retd) Sher Ali Khan, invented the term ‘ideology of Pakistan’ ahead of the 1970 elections, thinking perhaps it would be the glue to hold the country together. We all know how miserably he failed. However, even at this stage the culture within the army was unchanged where loyalty to unit and country remained the foremost concerns and not ‘ideology’ and where the officers’ mess retained some of the best-stocked, mahogany-topped bars in the country, where officers and their families played tombola on weekends. The atmosphere may have been elitist but was far less prone to divisive ideologies. After seizing power, Gen Zia made no bones about his adherence to his own narrow version of religion to more or less the exclusion of all other brands. The rest of the general staff followed the leader as if on cue. Shalwar-kameez waistcoats replaced ‘monkey jackets,’ ‘blue patrols’ and lounge suits. The Soviet army’s march into neighbouring Afghanistan was a godsent for Zia. It enabled him, in partnership with the CIA, to father what would become an unstoppable monster. Yes, for what else would one call such an ideology? A hate-filled philosophy that makes Pakistani Muslims turn on one another with the sort of relish even the vilest of predators wouldn’t reserve for the choicest of prey. This ideology is tearing Pakistan apart. Official figures say the murderous campaign of the zealots has so far claimed the lives of more than 3,500 army and paramilitary soldiers and injured or maimed nearly 12,000 others. This is not counting the civilian casualties. It was against this backdrop that last Sunday’s newspapers carried army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani’s statement in which he delivered a ‘reminder’ at the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul, not far from where US Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011. “Let me remind you that Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and Islam can never be taken out of Pakistan. However, Islam should always remain a unifying force. I assure you that regardless of the odds, the Pakistan Army will keep on doing its best towards our common dream for a truly Islamic Republic of Pakistan, as envisioned by the Quaid-i-Azam and Allama Iqbal.” Whilst the general hadn’t, perhaps the military’s media wing should have shared the background to his statement. It wasn’t clear who, if anyone, was trying to “take Islam out of Pakistan”. Ask anyone around you if they see Islam in danger of being taken out of Pakistan. You’ll only hear one response: no. Also, it would have been hugely beneficial to the young cadets and officers at the PMA had Gen Kayani defined a truly Islamic republic as “envisioned” by the Quaid and Iqbal and referred to the constitutional provision which made it incumbent on the army to strive towards realising the dream. Frankly, an army chief who says his hand has been stayed by a lack of “national consensus” in imposing the writ of the Islamic Republic on large swathes of the country’s land where its territorial integrity is in tatters, should have ideally refrained from making this statement. He may not have realised it but his words could easily have been interpreted as further encouragement by militants who have said they’ll attack and disrupt the election campaign of the political parties seen as ‘secular’. Dishonestly, some have described secular parties as ‘godless’ merely because these parties feel that given the dozens of schools of thought, with often widely differing interpretations of religious tenets, the use of religion in the affairs of the state can be, and is, divisive. A tolerant state where all citizens enjoy equal rights, where bigotry has no room and where the role of the men in khaki is in line with the Quaid’s wishes expressed in Quetta all those years ago would be closest to Jinnah’s vision, Gen Kayani would agree. The definitive piece of writing on Iqbal’s vision appeared in Thursday’s Dawn penned by I.A. Rehman. If the general has to be proactive, then wise counsel would have it that he move to ensure that there is a level playing field for all those participating in the May 11 elections regardless of whether they are closer ideologically to one state institution or another. The inability of the multi-billion rupee intelligence juggernaut at his disposal as also the men under arms at his command to afford protection to several major political parties in the country is nothing that a professional soldier would be proud of. The army’s foreign detractors, particularly those in the West and in unfriendly or hostile countries such as India and Afghanistan, have long accused it of having an institutional bias in favour of militant Islam and against forces representing liberal thought in the country. Instead of moving to dispel such impressions and clearly demonstrating his commitment to a tolerant, pluralistic, Pakistan, the general chooses to make a vague statement on “Islam being taken out of Pakistan”. Large chunks of the populace in Gen Kayani’s, Nawaz Sharif’s and Imran Khan’s ideal Saudi Arabia and even in Iran agree on what Islam is and, therefore, while the two may be in a clash regionally, there is domestic peace as there is consensus within each on what constitutes Islam. Pakistan is so, so different. Test my hypothesis. Just stop four, five people at random on a busy street and ask them what their belief is. I am not prescribing something I haven’t tried. I learnt religion is best left to the individual. Call me godless if you will but please ponder if there is truth in what I say. The writer is a former editor of Dawn. abbas.nasir@hotmail.com
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