Megalomaniac

The beheading of Jaspal Singh by militants has shocked most Pakistanis. He was kidnapped by unidentified militants from the Chora Tanga area of Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency about two weeks ago along with two others, Surjeet Singh and Gurvinder Singh. The militants had demanded a ransom of Rs 30 million to be paid by February 20. This is reportedly the first time a Sikh has been killed by militants. Another Sikh, Mahal Singh, has allegedly been killed in the Orkazai Agency by the militants. Officials have not confirmed the report. Rahimullah Yusufzai, a veteran journalist based in Peshawar, said that it has been reported that the relatives of the kidnapped Sikhs went to meet Mangal Bagh, a militant leader, asking him to mediate with whoever was responsible for the kidnappings. “Militants kidnap for ransom often and justify this in the name of jihad. Many people are kidnapped daily from Peshawar, Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore by the militants for extortion money,” said Yusufzai. About 9...

“Oh my sweet valentine, I guess I knew you well, Left my old better half to be all by myself. Oh my sweet serenade, I guess we tore it up, Night-time sang our song until we gave it up. Though I don’t have long I know, I’ll just let my lovin’ show, Cause there ain’t nothin’ like a petal in a rainstorm. No there ain’t nothin’ like a petal in a rainstorm.” These are the lyrics of a song, ‘Oh my sweet Valentine’, by Ryan Adams. It seems as if these lyrics were written keeping in view this year’s Valentine’s Day in Pakistan. Imagine President Asif Ali Zardari singing this song for Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and you will get my drift. On the eve of Valentine’s Day, President Zardari sent a ‘romantic’ gift to his beloved chief justice in the form of a notification that elevated Lahore High Court Chief Justice Khwaja Sharif to the Supreme Court and appointed Justice Saqib Nisar as acting Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court. Unfortunately, the chief adjudicator was not impresse...

After the two blasts on Friday in Karachi, a three-day mourning period is being observed in the mega city. Markets and schools remained closed on Saturday while public transport was off the roads amid citywide strikes. It was a relief to see that the situation remained relatively peaceful and people showed restraint despite the fact that emotions were running high. The death toll has risen considerably since the day of the blasts and relatives of the victims mourn the loss of precious lives along with the whole Pakistani nation. Security is on high alert following the blasts. The MQM has demanded an operation against militants hiding in different areas of Karachi. Addressing a press conference on Saturday, Dr Farooq Sattar reiterated MQM chief Altaf Hussain’s warning of a Swat-like situation in Karachi. The authorities have been dismissive of these warnings so far. Rivalry between the Mohajirs and the Pashtuns is a bitter reality but to perceive the MQM’s demands as servings its own in...

During his visit to Bahawalpur, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif expressed grave concern over the large chunk of land occupied by the military in Cholistan. Mr Sharif said that only the people of Cholistan have the right to have that land and there should be no occupation by outsiders (read the army). He also criticised the occupation of lands by influential people without any allotment. Allotment of land to the high-ups in the military is not a new phenomenon. Under various schemes from the 1960s onwards, many senior and junior army officers were allotted agricultural lands in Sindh, Cholistan and some other districts of Punjab. Former President General Pervez Musharraf allotted a large chunk of land to himself and other Generals in Cholistan. Since the area is known for its brackish water, there was a plan to build two canals from the proposed Kalabagh Dam to irrigate Cholistan’s dry lands. But when Musharraf tried to build a consensus on the building of the Kalabagh Dam, he did not succeed ...

As Karachi buried its dead, it was a grim reminder of the recent sectarian terror wave that has enveloped the largest city of Pakistan. The blast on the day of Ashura , in which at least 43 people were killed and dozens more wounded in Karachi, was still fresh in memory when another blast rocked a bus going to the Chehlum procession, killing more than a dozen people and injuring scores of others on Friday. Women and children were also among the dead and injured. The procession marks the end of the 40-day mourning period commemorating the martyrdom of Hazrat Imam Hussain in Karbala. The injured were taken to the Jinnah Hospital where less than two hours later there was another blast in its parking lot near the emergency ward, killing 13 more and injuring dozens others. The death toll has risen to 31 overnight. These ruthless terrorist acts cannot be condemned enough. It is with heavy heart that we heave a sigh of relief at another bomb being discovered in the hospital premises before i...

India formally asked Pakistan on Thursday to revive foreign secretary-level Indo-Pak talks. Pakistan’s foreign office has sought a clarification as to the agenda of the meeting and has shown a desire for the resumption of the composite dialogue, suspended following the terror attacks in Mumbai in November 2008. The 26/11 terror attacks cannot be condemned enough. They turned out to be a diplomatic disaster for the subcontinent. The composite dialogue between India and Pakistan, which had been initiated after decades of tensions between the neighbouring nuclear armed states, was stalled post-26/11. Since then Pakistan has been asking for a resumption of the dialogue but India wanted guarantees that the Mumbai attackers would be brought to justice and non-state actors would not be allowed to operate from Pakistani soil. This led to an increase in tensions and an ensuing war of words. With the passage of time, voices within India and at the international level opined that this was a self-...

In a bomb attack on a military convoy in Lower Dir, three American soldiers and four female students lost their lives. Around 100 people were injured, a large majority of them being female students of a local school. The US soldiers were travelling with a military convoy comprising local troops, journalists and officials to attend the opening ceremony of a girls’ school that was renovated with American aid and humanitarian assistance. The Taliban had previously blown up the school. This was the first fatal Taliban ambush on American soldiers in Pakistan in nearly three years. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility and said, “The Americans killed were members of the Blackwater group. We know they are responsible for bomb blasts in Peshawar and other Pakistani cities.” Some people have been arrested and investigations are underway. It seems as if the TTP tried to kill two birds with one stone: killing American soldiers who were training Pakistani forces to fight the T...

Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in a rare press briefing, said, “We want a strategic depth in Afghanistan but do not want to control it.” These words underlie the fact that the Pakistan Army has still not given up on the idea of ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan – a policy that has proved to be disastrous for Pakistan in the past few decades. If one reads between the lines, General Kayani’s statement is also indicative that though Pakistan may not want to control Afghanistan, it wants a government of its own choice in place to control the war-torn country. While General Kayani boasted that the successful military operations in the tribal areas have led to a substantial decline in cross-border attacks on Nato forces in Afghanistan, militants in Peshawar blew up a tanker carrying fuel for the Nato forces on Monday. This is not to say that the general was wrong in his assumptions; of course there have been fewer incidents of this sort in the recent past as the mili...

In the land of the ‘pure’, hypocrisy reigns supreme. A glaring example of this is Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan’s recent and not-so-recent antics. The law minister was able to get his own high-rise plaza exempted from scrutiny. Not only did he get illegal paper-work done to show his three-storey building as a two-storey building, he also papered over the fact that the building was being used for commercial purposes and was not a residential building as he had claimed in the official documents. Not only is Mr Sanaullah Khan a member of the ruling party in Punjab, the PML-N, he is also the provincial law minister. If the law minister himself is breaking the law, how can the government of Punjab have the moral authority to ask the citizens to follow the rule of law? With the Punjab chief minister’s drive against ‘illegal buildings’ and the Punjab government on a rampage against high-rise commercial plazas, the omission of Mr Sanaullah’s own property is a grim reminder of the dou...

“Blessed is the leader who seeks the best for those he serves” is an adage that best describes veteran communist leader of India, Jyoti Basu, who passed away on January 17, 2010. He was 95 years old. Even in death, the great leader proved that he was a people’s man through and through. Mr Basu’s body will be donated for medical study and research while his eyes were donated to an eye bank right after his death. While pursuing a law degree in Britain, Jyoti Basu developed an interest in Marxism. Upon his return to India, instead of practising law, he joined the Communist Party of India (CPI). He earned the respect of the party as well as the people by his dedicated work for people’s rights. He soon joined politics and was elected to the Bengal Provincial Assembly in 1946. When the CPI split in 1964, Basu joined the CPI (Marxist) and was the last surviving member of the party’s first politburo. The split in CPI took place after differences between China and the Soviet Union emerged. The ...

Just days ahead of the London conference on Afghanistan, a meeting between the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan took place in Islamabad. The timing of this trilateral meeting is of utmost importance. The purpose of the London conference is to set an agenda for bringing peace in war-torn Afghanistan with the help of the regional players and the international community. The conference is being touted as one of the most important agenda-setting ones for the future of Afghanistan. Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan’s trilateral meeting is significant as it is very rare to have these three neighbours sitting together. The foreign ministers discussed the situation in Afghanistan and agreed on a joint framework to meet the regional security challenges. The declaration said that any regional or international conference on Afghanistan should “acknowledge the salience of our trilateral engagement and cooperation for achieving common objectives and lasting peace and stability in Af...

A US delegation led by the Special Envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, met President Zardari in Lahore. The president took up serious issues with Holbrooke keeping in view present and past circumstances in the region. Of great significance was President Zardari’s mention of fighting a ‘rival ideology’ in the past along with the US and the West. The reference was obviously to the Afghan communist regime and the ensuing battle between the mujahideen and the communists after the Soviet forces entered Afghanistan in support of their co-ideologists. President Zardari told Holbrooke that it was because of the Afghan jihad that militancy rose in Pakistan. Though this is certainly not something new for the Americans, the president’s reminder about the West’s role in general and the US’s role in particular in leading to the rise of religious extremism in this region is noteworthy. The covert support of the US for the jihadis in the Afghan war is no secret. It was a policy ...

Sixty-two years ago, Pakistan was created on the basis of the Two-Nation Theory. Those who fought for the freedom of this country might have had a secular perspective but were still of the view that in order to secure the rights of the Muslim minority in the Indian subcontinent, a new country had to be formed. It is quite ironic to see that a country that came into being to secure the rights of a minority is now itself guilty of violating the rights of other minorities living here. Uri Avnery, an Israeli peace activist, quoted a letter from his Israeli friend Dov Yermiya in an article ‘Our responsibility’ ( Daily Times , August 4, 2009). Mr Yermiya declared that he would not be “loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions” and further wrote, “Israel will never be forgiven for the terrible toll of [Palestinian] blood spilt, and especially the blood of children, in hair-raising quantities.” I wonder if Pakistan could be forgiven for spilling the blood of its own people, especia...

Conspiracy theory is the only industry in Pakistan that runs round the clock and the production quality as well as product variety are absolutely out of this world. The whole school of conspiracy theory reflects a certain mindset, which comes up with half-baked stories based on little or no evidence. Just like former US President George W Bush had his axis of evil, a lot of Pakistanis have their own axis of evil — India, Israel and the US. If anybody so much as sneezes in the land of the pure, any one of these three countries or all of them are behind it. This is exactly what Mr Ijazul Haq did in his two articles, ‘A criminal conspiracy’ and ‘Punish the Bahawalpur conspirators’ published in Daily Times on September 8 and 9, 2009. He has not only blamed Pakistan’s own ‘axis of evil’ but he has blamed everyone and his uncle for General Ziaul Haq’s death: Russia, Afghanistan, Al-Zulfiqar, the Pakistani military and many others. First, let us examine why the Russians may not be responsibl...

As part of my morning regimen (read drudgery), I have been scanning half a dozen local English dailies for the last few hours. I find something in common in almost all the Editorial/Opinion pages of these dailies (including this newspaper’s). The subjects being discussed in editorials or opinion pieces are the same: Asif Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, Musharraf, deposed judges, democracy in Pakistan, ‘crises’ (which range from rising militancy to soaring inflation, from energy debacle to oil crisis, etc.) facing down the barrel, called, my country. Well, pardon me dear readers, but I will be committing the sin of touching upon the same topics, albeit a bit differently – which by the way sounds like a clichéd dialogue spouted by scores of pedestrian Lollywood movie producers/directors/actors/actresses, engaged in the lowly business of making a rehashed version of a gazillion Bollywood movies and then claiming, “ Ismay kuch different dekhne ko milega public ko ” (The public would get to see so...

The ‘marriage of convenience’ between the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has ended up in divorce. The PML-N on Monday (August 25) formally pulled out of the coalition government. Their representatives will henceforth sit on the Opposition benches in parliament. In a press conference at Punjab House, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif showed the media a copy of the agreement made with the PPP – on which the PPP later backtracked – outlining the steps intended to be taken for the impeachment of then president Pervez Musharraf and restoration of the deposed judges. Mr Sharif said that he was left with no choice but to snap ties with the PPP. “It was a tough decision which we had to take. We made many efforts to keep this alliance alive,” he said. All eyes are now set on the presidential elections, scheduled for September 6. The PML-N has nominated Justice (retd) Saeeduz Zaman Siddiqui for the office of president while Mr Asif Zardari is the presidenti...

‘Liberty, equality and fraternity’: the Dravidian Movement in South India “We are fit to think of ‘self-respect’ only when the notion of superior and inferior caste is banished from our land” — Periyar Ramasami. I visited India last year in November as a Panos fellow. The trip was quite memorable in itself, but one thing that left a deep impact on me was our visit to Anna Arivalayam in Chennai, the official headquarters of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). DMK is the ruling party in Tamil Nadu. A permanent exhibition depicting the entire history of the Dravidian Movement has been installed in Anna Arivalayam. The exhibition includes portraits of Dravidian stalwarts, scholars and leaders who inculcated the spirit of Tamil language and Tamil culture into the minds of the people; drawings and photographs of significant events that took place during the evolution of the movement; a mini-theatre has been set up where documentary films of Dravidian leaders, namely Periyar Ramasami, C.N. A...

If there is one barometer through which one could gauge the intensity with which the engines are moving towards acquiring the vision of ‘Shining India’, it is their mass media. Wilbur Schramm, the guru of mass communication, too emphasised that the mass media is reflective of a society’s level of development. Using this touchstone, it would be advantageous to compare the media of both Pakistan and India with regard to the quality, cost, readership/viewership, economics and the amount of freedom afforded them by the state to know at what level of development – political, social and economic – both states stand at present. During my stay in India as a Panos fellow, it was quite amazing to see that an 84-page English newspaper costs Rs 2.50 in India, while a 20-page English newspaper in Pakistan costs Rs 13. It is quite another thing that the 84-page Indian newspaper is full of advertisements (nearly half of the pages carry advertisements), a lot of pages are filled with showbiz news (som...

It is being widely debated these days how the deposed judges can be restored. Three options have been proposed till now. One, the deposed judges can be restored through an executive order; two, the National Assembly can bring about a resolution with a simple majority on this issue; and three, the issue can be resolved by making some constitutional amendments, for which a two-thirds majority of the parliament is needed. These are the three options doing the rounds. Yet there could be a fourth option – that of a referendum, as suggested by a renowned politician and former parliamentarian, Haji Saifullah Khan, in an exclusive interview with Channel 5 . A veteran politician, Haji sahab is one of those few parliamentarians who not only understand the Constitution and the law very well, but have deep knowledge of parliamentary practices too. Haji Saifullah said when the 160 million people of Pakistan would vote for the restoration of the deposed judges, the judiciary would not only be indep...

The Community Development Exchange defines ‘community development’ as: “The process of developing active and sustainable communities based on social justice and mutual respect. It is about influencing power structures to remove the barriers that prevent people from participating in the issues that affect their lives…Community workers (officers) facilitate the participation of people in this process. They enable connections to be made between communities and with the development of wider policies and programmes…Community development expresses values of fairness, equality, accountability, opportunity, choice, participation, mutuality, reciprocity and continuous learning. Educating, enabling and empowering are at the core of community development.” Community development, and struggle for the rights of the downtrodden that are embedded in Gandhinian philosophy have their manifestations in present day India. Mahatma Gandhi was a man of the masses – ready to take up the cudgels on behalf of ...