AVOID MUSLIM PAKISTAN
By Arpit Birtharia
Dec 11 2021
English.newstracklive.com
Islamabad:
Pakistan's brutal Blasphemy Law is being discussed all over the world
these days. Recently, a Sri Lankan national was beaten to death in an
alleged blasphemy case and then set on fire by fundamentalists. The Pak
PM Imran Khan-led government was criticized all over the world for
this. Meanwhile, a video has now surfaced from Pakistan that exposes
Pakistan's violent, hardcore Islamic, and chaotic face in blasphemy.
The video is said to be from the Red Mosque in Islamabad.
The
viral video shows girl students being taught in the mosque how to
behead a person if someone insults religion. In the background of the
video, the slogan of radical Tehreek-e-Lubbek Pakistan (TLP) is also
heard on the loudspeaker. This is the same slogan that supporters of
the TLP were chanting while killing Sri Lankan factory manager Priantha
Kumara in Sialkot and burning her body. Tell me, recently there was a
peace agreement between the Government of Pakistan and the TLP. Before
the agreement, the TLP had created a stir in Pakistan.
The
video was shared by Pakistani journalist and social activist Gul
Bukhari on Twitter. He has claimed that students of Lal Masjid in
Islamabad are practicing beheading of a person accused of blasphemy.
Pakistan's 'Successful Youth' project is progressing well. Hundreds of
girls and women are seen in religious costumes in the video. In front
of the girls, women are seen beheading an effigy with a sword.
'Kaamyaab Jawan' is a scheme of the Government of Pakistan, which is
said to encourage education, employment, and engagement for the youth.
3 months ago, the Lal Masjid made headlines when Maulana Abdul Aziz hoisted the Taliban flag at the mosque and threatened the Pakistani army with consequences if the Taliban flag was removed. After which Imran Khan kneeled before the Maulana and allowed him to hoist the Taliban flag.
Pakistan shuts
down access to Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites after days of
violent anti-French protests by radical Islamists over Prophet Muhammad
cartoons
Government
blocked access to social media sites including Facebook & Twitter
Comes as a
week of deadly anti-France demonstrations continue in Pakistan
Protests began
after Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan party leader Saad
Rizvi's arrest
Two police
officers have been killed, 580 injured, and three protesters have died
By LYDIA CATLING FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 03:39
EDT, 16 April 2021
Dailymail.com.uk
Pakistan has
blocked access to all social media after days of violent anti-France protests
by radical Islamists over 'blasphemous' cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Facebook and
Twitter and other sites have been temporarily blocked on orders from the
country's interior ministry said Khurram Mehran, a spokesman for Pakistan's
media regulatory agency.
A reason for
the block has not been provided and comes as police officials prepare to clear
a large demonstration in the eastern city of Lahore.
It also
follows just hours after the government said the leader of the outlawed Islamist
political party, Saad Rizvi, at the forefront of the protests, had urged
his supporters to stand down.
The government
released a note it claims was handwritten by Tehreek-e-Labiak
Pakistan party leader Saad Rizvi, in the hope it would calm tensions after days
of violent protests, in which two police officers were killed and 580
injured.
Three
demonstrators also died in the clashes with security agencies and the
government has imposed a ban on the party.
A photo of the
statement was released earlier by an advisor to the prime minister on Twitter,
but neither Rizvi himself or any of his party leadership was immediately
available for comment.
In the
statement, Rizvi asked his supporters to peacefully disperse for the good of
the country and end their main sit-in that began Monday after police arrested
the radical cleric for threatening protests if the government did not expel the
French ambassador before April 20.
Some of his
followers insisted they hear or see the words come from Rizvi himself before stopping
and the Lahore protest continued after Friday prayers.
On Thursday,
the French embassy in Pakistan advised all of its nationals and companies to
temporarily leave the Islamic country, after violence erupted over Rizvi's
arrest.
Violent
protests have been going on in Lahore since Monday, damaging private and public
property and disrupting the much-needed supply of oxygen to hospitals.
Some of the
affected included COVID-19 patients, who were on oxygen support.
Rizvi's arrest
sparked violent protests by his followers, who disrupted traffic by staging
sit-ins across the country.
Although
security forces cleared almost all of the rallies, thousands of Rizvi´s
followers are still assembled in Lahore, vowing to die in order to protect the
honor of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
Rizvi became
the leader of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan
party in November after the sudden death of his father, Khadim Hussein Rizvi.
His party also wants the government to boycott French products.
Rizvi's
outlawed party has denounced French President Emmanuel Macron since October
last year, saying he tried to defend blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet
Muhammad as freedom of expression.
Macron had
spoken after a young Muslim beheaded a French school teacher who had shown
caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class.
The images had
been republished by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to mark the opening of
the trial over the deadly 2015 attack against the publication for the original
caricatures.
That enraged
many Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere who believe those depictions were
blasphemous.
Rizvi's group
in recent years became known for opposing any change to the country's harsh
blasphemy laws, under which anyone accused of insulting Islam or other
religious figures can be sentenced to death if found guilty.
Pakistan: Imran Khan says
US 'martyred' Osama bin Laden
Dw.com
6.26.20
The Pakistani PM has said that the US
"martyred" bin Laden after its 2011 raid. Khan was critical of his predecessors'
relationship with Washington and rued Islamabad's decision to partner the US in
the war on terror.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said
Thursday that the United States "martyred" Osama bin Laden by killing
the al-Qaida leader in 2011.
The US did not make the Pakistani
government aware of its plans to take out the mastermind of the 9/11 terror
attacks and Khan delivered a thinly veiled criticism of
Washington during a speech in parliament, while also denouncing his
predecessors' foreign policies.
Khan said he regretted Pakistan's
partnership with the US in the war on terror and accused the
White House of using abusive language against Islamabad in the past.
The former cricketer turned politician
also expressed his ire at Washington's covert operation on May
2, 2011, carried out the US Navy SEALs. The special operations force pounced on
bin Laden's compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad in the
middle of the night, killing the al-Qaida chief along with several of
his operatives.
"We sided with the US in the War on
Terror," Khan said, "but they came here and killed him, martyred him
and ... used abusive language against us (and) did not inform us (of the raid),
despite the fact that we lost 70,000 people in the war on terror."
Khan: 'They blamed us for every failure'
Over the years Washington has repeatedly
accused Pakistan of harboring terrorists, something Pakistan has repeatedly
denied and Khan was keen to send a broadside in the direction of Washington. He
told parliament: "The way we supported America in the war on terror, and
the insults we had to face in return. They blamed us for every failure in
Afghanistan. They openly held us responsible because they did not succeed in
Afghanistan,'' Khan said.
However, opposition lawmaker Khwaja Mohammed Asif slammed Khan for calling bin Laden a
martyr, saying the al-Qaida chief had brought terrorism to Pakistan. "He
(bin Laden) ruined my country but he (Khan) is calling him a martyr,'' Asif
said.
Since assuming power in August 2018, Khan
said his government has reset the Pakistan-US relationship, elevating
it to one of mutual respect, for which he also credited the personal rapport he
has built with President Donald Trump.
"No one insults us now," Khan said
of modern-day relations with foreign powers.
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab
Emirates were the only countries to formally recognize the Taliban government
in Afghanistan.
But Washington has long-held grievances
against the Taliban, particularly over harboring bin Laden while he
planned terrorist attacks against the US.
After 9/11, Pakistan became an ally of the
United States against the Taliban, which was eventually ousted by a US-led
coalition in November 2001.
How Pakistan
Became a Coronavirus Super-spreader to the Entire Muslim World
Iran banned
congregational prayer. Saudi Arabia closed the Ka’aba
to pilgrims. Imran Khan allowed a quarter of a million Muslims to gather - and
returning home, they've spread the coronavirus from Kyrgyzstan to Gaza
Mar 27, 2020
Haaretz
On Sunday, the
Gaza strip reported its first two cases of coronavirus. The two Palestinian men
had recently returned from Pakistan.
They
were among the
250,000 people that gathered in
Lahore two weeks ago, to participate in the Tableeghi Ijtema [literally
"a congregation for outreach"] – an Islamic event organized by the
local Tableeghi Jamaat [Outreach Congress].
An offshoot of
the South Asian Deobandi
Islamic movement, the Tableeghi Jamaat has
spent the past century preaching Islam in the region, and now has
a presence in over 80
countries. The Raiwind area in Lahore, the capital of the Punjab
province and home to 11 million inhabitants, hosts the annual Tableeghi Ijtema, which
includes hundreds of thousands of participants from around the world.
This year,
with the congregation set for March 11-15, there had been calls to postpone the
event, given the spread of COVID-19.
By the end of February, Pakistan had already
reported its first
coronavirus cases. On the eve of the ijtema the
World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a pandemic.
Where Iran
had cancelled the
weekly Friday prayers and Saudi Arabia had suspended the
Umrah pilgrimage by the end of February, the Pakistani government was still
dillydallying over forestalling a gathering of over a quarter of a million
people in the country’s second most populous city.
On March 12,
the organizers were asked to disband the congregation, but only after around
250,000 people had already assembled in camps in preparation for the event. The
reason cited for the closure of the event wasn’t the fact that world is in the
midst of a pandemic which will completely change the
global order – it was "rainy weather."
The Tableeghi Jamaat’s reluctance to cite an infectious virus as
cause for the disbandment is rooted in its regressive ideology, whose exponents
have ranged from militant jihadists to radical
preachers to Islamic televangelists unleashing
a perilous blend of unscientific fantasies and bigoted fallacies. For these
ideologues, cancelling congregational prayers owing to an infectious disease is
synonymous with repudiating Allah’s command.
While regressive
religionists across divides exhibit dangerous disregard for
global calls for social distancing, what is rarer is for a state to continue to
kowtow to the clergies, when their precarious abandonment of logic can have
fatal ramifications for the entire country.
And yet, at a
time when Iran has shut down the holiest
Shia sites, Saudi Arabia has banned prayers at
mosques – including the two holiest in Islam – and numerous Muslim
countries like Turkey, UAE, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, among others have closed mosques,
Pakistan allowed the
Friday prayers on March 20, nationwide.
The closest
the Pakistani government came to even suggesting that the prayer is better off
being performed at home, was the tweet of President Arif
Alvi, who revealed that he had
prayed at home. President Alvi shared a quote of the
Prophet Muhammad and ended his tweet with the expression astaghfirullah [literally, "I seek forgiveness
from Allah."]
The message of
the president, which sought to justify the abandonment of congregation through
Islamic scriptures – something that many others have vied to do as
well – placed religious dogma over the state’s basic governance responsibilities
at the time of a pandemic. Seeking "forgiveness" for the
"sin" of praying at home on Fridays only reinforces the menacingly
prevalent idea of the coronavirus being a divine test that requires collective
prayer.
Little wonder
that instead of being restrained, Islamic clerics in Pakistan are currently
having a ball with their coronavirus theories, while being invited on
television ostensibly as experts on COVID-19.
Prominent
Deobandi cleric Muhammad Taqi Usmani revealed on national
TV that Prophet Muhammad had come in the dream of a Tableeghi
Jamaatmember and "shared the cure for
coronavirus." The cure was the recital of certain Quranic verses.
Asif Ashraf Jalali, a cleric from the Barelvi
sect, vowed to hold an Islamic conference, personally "guaranteeing"
the safety of all those attending, saying that even if one case of coronavirus is
reported from the congregation he "should be hanged."
The prominent
Shia cleric Zameer Naqvi declared on TV that he, too,
has the cure for
coronavirus, but won't share it because the government and the
masses are not sufficiently "serious," and feared he could be mocked
- just like "Aristotle and Socrates" were.
Even as the
tally of coronavirus patients in Pakistan crosses 1,000, underlining a precipitously
rising curve, the government’s first priority has been to ensure the Islamic
clerics that their one-stop shops aren’t under any threat. The Punjab Chief
Minister Usman Buzdar, whose government has
reacted criminally late to
the spread of COVID-19, met Islamic clerics from various sects in the lead up
to last week’s Friday prayers to ensure them that mosques won’t be shut
down in the province.
In return, the
government expects support from the influential clerics at a time when the
failure to take timely action against coronavirus is the latest in a long list
of issues that have alienated the masses, the most prominent among them being
the multi-pronged economic crises.
Perhaps
already resigned to what might lie ahead, the government is more interested in
fortifying its position against the backlash that could come in the aftermath
of the coronavirus pandemonium. Already backed by the all-powerful
military, the government wants to keep the clergy on its side as
well.
On cue,
Islamic cleric Tariq Jamil, who leads the Raiwind congregation, was invited on to
national television on Sunday, where he unequivocally backed Prime Minister
Imran Khan, who had been under pressure to announce a nationwide lockdown.
Where
governments have long subjugated themselves to the Islamists, who in turn have
historically been used by the Army has tools to keep the civilian leaderships,
and potentially dissenting masses, in check, this latest act of
submission actually has unprecedentedly far-reaching
repercussions.
Coronavirus
cases rooted to the Tableeghi Jamaat alone have now
expanded to the province of Sindh and the capital, Islamabad, where an
entire locality has been quarantined after
five members of the congregation were tested positive. In addition to Palestine,
now residents of Kyrgyzstan,
affiliated with Tableeghi Jamaat, have also
tested positive.
Given that
the Tableeghi Ijtema took
place two weeks ago, which is also the incubation period of COVID-19, we are
witnessing the cases linked to that gathering being reported this week, with
more reports expected to follow.
Considering
that Pakistan’s numbers are prodigiously underreported, one can only imagine
the actual gravity of the spread that might have been caused by the millions
who came together for the latest Friday prayers. What makes the alarm bells
even more ominous is that there still is no closure of mosques in the offing,
with another Friday looming.
In its bid to
be ‘more Muslim than Mecca,’ Pakistan might end up becoming a super-spreader of
the COVID-19. With a trajectory worse than
Italy’s, and a deteriorated healthcare setup, Pakistan is headed
towards an unimaginable crisis.
Imran Khan and
his government appeasing the Islamists shows that they’re already making preparations
to deflect the blame for what is to come. Meanwhile, this appeasement has
become a root for the spread of the disaster, which is now engulfing the rest
of the Muslim world.
Khan believes
he has a friend in
the shape of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He is also rallying in
support of lifting
sanctions against Iran. He generously praises Turkey’s
Erdogan - who visited Pakistan last
month - on the issue of Kashmir. He recently sent President Alvi to China as
reaffirmation of support, and believes he has taken the country back into
the U.S.’s good books with
the Taliban deal.
However,
should the coronavirus crisis reach gory proportions, Khan and his government
is unlikely to find much backing – neither global, nor from within the
mullah-military nexus. Meanwhile, every Friday that he allows congregational
prayers, exponentially adds to the pandemonium.
Pentagon
cancels aid to Pakistan over record on militants
SEPTEMBER 1, 2018
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military said it has made a final decision to
cancel $300 million in aid to Pakistan that had been suspended over Islamabad’s
perceived failure to take decisive action against militants, in a new blow to
deteriorating ties.
The so-called Coalition Support Funds were part of a broader suspension in aid
to Pakistan announced by President Donald Trump at the start of the year, when
he accused Pakistan of rewarding past assistance with “nothing but lies &
deceit.”
The Trump administration says Islamabad is granting safe haven to insurgents
who are waging a 17-year-old war in neighboring Afghanistan, a charge Pakistan
denies.
But U.S. officials had held out the possibility that Pakistan could win back
that support if it changed its behavior.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, in particular, had an opportunity to
authorize $300 million in CSF funds through this summer - if he saw concrete
Pakistani actions to go after insurgents. Mattis chose not to, a U.S. official
told Reuters.
“Due to a lack of Pakistani decisive actions in support of the South Asia
Strategy the remaining $300 (million) was reprogrammed,” Pentagon spokesman
Lieutenant Colonel Kone Faulkner said.
Faulkner said the Pentagon aimed to spend the $300 million on “other urgent
priorities” if approved by Congress. He said another $500 million in CSF was
stripped by Congress from Pakistan earlier this year, to bring the total
withheld to $800 million.
The disclosure came ahead of an expected visit by U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo and the top U.S. military officer, General Joseph Dunford, to Islamabad.
Mattis told reporters on Tuesday that combating militants would be a “primary
part of the discussion.”
Experts on the Afghan conflict, America’s longest war, argue that militant safe
havens in Pakistan have allowed Taliban-linked insurgents in Afghanistan a
place to plot deadly strikes and regroup after ground offensives.
INCREASING PRESSURE
The Pentagon’s decision showed that the United States, which has sought to
change Pakistani behavior, is still increasing pressure on Pakistan’s security
apparatus.
It also underscored that Islamabad has yet to deliver the kind of change sought
by Washington.
“It is a calibrated, incremental ratcheting up of pressure on Pakistan,” said
Sameer Lalwani, co-director of the South Asia program
at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.
Reuters reported in August that the Trump administration has quietly started
cutting scores of Pakistani officers from coveted training and educational
programs that have been a hallmark of bilateral military relations for more
than a decade.
The Pentagon made similar determinations on CSF in the past but this year’s
move could get more attention from Islamabad, and its new prime minister, Imran
Khan, at a time when its economy is struggling.
Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves have plummeted over the past year and it
will soon decide on whether to seek a bailout from the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) or friendly nations such as China.
“They are squeezing them when they know that they’re vulnerable and it is
probably a signal about what to expect should Pakistan come to the IMF for a
loan,” Lalwani said. The United States has the
largest share of votes at the IMF.
Khan, who once suggested he might order the shooting down of U.S. drones if
they entered Pakistani airspace, has opposed the United States’ open-ended
presence in Afghanistan. In his victory speech, he said he wanted “mutually
beneficial” relations with Washington.
A Pakistani official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he was
unaware of a formal notification of the U.S. decision on assistance but said
one was expected by the end of September.
Pakistan has received more than $33 billion in U.S. assistance since 2002,
including more than $14 billion in CSF, a U.S. Defense Department program to
reimburse allies that have incurred costs in supporting counter-insurgency
operations.
Mastung massacre: 128 martyred, over 200 injured in
suicide blast claimed by Islamic State
By Mohammad Zafar
Published:
July 13, 2018
THE
EXPRESS TRIBUNE
A suicide bomber targeting a political rally of the Balochistan
Awami Party (BAP) on Friday killed at least 128
people and injured over 200, the deadliest in a string of attacks on
electioneering that have heightened security fears ahead of the elections.
Among those slain was the candidate for PB-35 (Mastung)
Siraj Raisani, whose elder brother Nawab Aslam Raisani had served as the Balochistan chief minister from 2008 to 2013.
“My brother Siraj has been martyred,” said Haji Lashkari
Raisani, another brother who is also contesting for a National Assembly seat
from the province.
The blast – which was claimed by the militant group Islamic State
– ripped through the corner meeting in Dringarh
village of Mastung district, some 35km away from the
provincial capital making it the deadliest in the country since the 2014
carnage at the Army Public School.
“The death toll has risen to 128,” Balochistan Home
Minister Agha Umer Bangulzai
told The Express Tribune, adding that there were more than 100 wounded.
“Siraj succumbed to his wounds while he was being shifted to the Combined
Military Hospital (CMH) Quetta,” he added.
Provincial Information Minister Malik Khuram Shehzad
confirmed the attack was a suicide blast and added that the bomber detonated in
the middle of a compound where the political meeting was taking place.
“Siraj was attending the corner meeting in Dringarh,
was about to step on to the stage to address party workers when the suicide
bomber, disguised as a political worker blew himself up,” Mastung
DC Qaim Lashari said.
Emergency workers shuttled victims to nearby vehicles from the bombed-out
compound as bystanders sobbed in the darkness owing to the waning electricity
in the impoverished area.
Victims in blood-smeared clothes were taken to hospitals in Mastung
and Quetta, where they were greeted by tense crowds of mourners. The deceased
could be seen covered in shrouds.
According to the bomb disposal squad, up to 15kg of explosive material was used
causing a large number of victims as the corner meeting was packed with people.
Pakistan moves against terrorists “superficial, reversible”
The Hindu
February
22, 2018
The Donald Trump administration is not satisfied with the measures taken by
Pakistan in recent months to crack down on terrorist groups, a senior U.S
official has said. “So far, these steps have been reversible, superficial, and
steps that we have actually seen them take in the past, in periods of high
pressure,” the official told The Hindu in an exclusive conversation on
background.
The official said the U.S was concerned about tensions between India and
Pakistan, “two nuclear armed states,” but added that the onus was on Pakistan
to create conditions conducive for talks and improvement in relations.
The official said the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) plenary in Paris was
yet to take a decision on action against Islamabad on the question of terrorism
financing. “My understanding is that the FATF discussions are ongoing, FATF is
aimed at ensuring that the countries are implementing the statutes and the laws
that are necessary to counter terrorist financing, money laundering and those sort
of things…” the official said, refusing the elaborate more, since the meetings
were still on.
‘Zero tolerance towards terrorism’
The Trump administration has zero tolerance towards terrorism, and terrorist
sanctuaries inside Pakistan, said the official. “President Trump has been clear
that we need to see decisive action, not superficial action and half measures.. but decisive action against terrorist militants
in Pakistan,” said the official.
The official said the U.S had been “very clear with Pakistan about our
expectations.”
“We have been very specific and detailed in what we expect Pakistan to do, in
our numerous visits of senior officials as well as several phone calls between
senior military officials on both sides. So I think
Pakistan understands what we are looking for. Unfortunately we have not seen
the strategic shift in behavior that we are seeking..We
have seen some responses..What we have seen is that
they definitely want to be seen as taking action..Which
is good..They are not completely thumping their nose
at the U.S…They are taking steps, and they want to be seen as responsive.”
However, the U.S has not seen “that determination, in really going after
terrorist leaders that operate freely on their territory,” the official said.
On India-Pakistan ties
Asked about the current state of India- Pakistan relations and its impact on
the U.S policy for the region, the official said: “We are concerned about the status
of India-Pakistan relations. Two nuclear armed states… we know there is
potential for things to escalate very quickly, and we are very concerned about
terrorist groups that continue to function inside Pakistan, and have the the ability to conduct terrorist attacks inside India. We
are concerned about the situation. But until Pakistan really demonstrates
seriousness in cracking down on LeT or Jaish-e-Mohammad, there is not going to be that conducive
atmosphere for any dialogue or talks to take place.”
The official noted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had reached out and
traveled to Pakistan in 2015. “…and six days later you had the major attack on
Pathankot. I think there is probably some hesitation in India about reaching
out and the potential impact or backlash to any effort to reach out to
Pakistan. Situation between Indian and Pakistan, it is really not moving
forward, and I think this is unfortunate, but we need to see Pakistan
demonstrate that it is serious about cracking down on LeT
and JeM,” said the official.
‘Moving in the wrong direction’
“Frankly, they are moving in the wrong direction. The release of Hafiz Muhammad
last November was a step in the wrong direction. We will continue to monitor
the situation closely...you have skirmishes, almost on a daily basis. (But) we
don’t have any interest in trying to mediate the dispute over Kashmir. That is
something for the two sides to deal with. We are not seeking any kind of role.”
Asked whether the U.S put the onus on Pakistan to improve relations, the
official said: “You cannot expect a country to be interested in negotiations
when there is threat of terrorist groups conducting an attack whenever they see
that. So, I think there is an expectation that Pakistan is serious in cracking
down on these terrorist groups.”
Blast rips through shrine in Pakistan, 100 feared dead
PTI
Feb 17, 2017
KARACHI: Nearly 100 people were killed and several injured tonight when an
Islamic State suicide bomber blew himself up inside the crowded shrine of
revered Sufi Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan town,
some 200 KM northeast of Karachi, in a string of deadly blasts this week in
Pakistan.
The bomber entered the shrine through its Golden gate and blew himself up near
the site where the ritual of sufi dance 'Dhamal' was taking place. He first threw a grenade, which
failed to explode, SSP Jamshoro Tariq Wilayat said.
"He first threw a grenade to cause panic and then blew himself up,"
the SSP said.
Sehwan police station SHO Rasool Baksh told reporters
that around 100 people, including women and children, have been killed in the
suicide bomb attack.
Hundreds of devotees were present inside the premises of the vast mausoleum of
the saint at the time of blast.
Faisal Edhi of the Edhi foundation confirmed they have shifted 60 bodies to
hospitals in Hyderabad and Jamshoro.
The ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack on their Aamaq
news agency, saying a suicide bomber had targeted a "Shiite
gathering" at the shrine in Sindh.
Commissioner Hyderabad Kazi Shahid said since the
shrine was located in a remote area, some 130 kms from Hyderabad, ambulances
and vehicles and medical teams were being sent from Hyderabad, Jamshoro, Moro, Dadu and Nawabshah to the blast
site to take care of the injured and move the bodies.
"Emergency has been declared at hospitals in these places and rescue
operations have started," he said.
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said that the Pakistan army had been
requested to provide night flying helicopters to shift the dead and injured.
"Yes it is a tragic incident and because the
shrine is away from a major city there have been problems in providing rescue
operations," he said.
The army said a C130 aircraft will be used to lift the injured from Nawabshah.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the attack and urged Pakistan to
"stand united".
Devotees gather at the shrine of the revered Sufi saint every Thursday to
participate in a dhamaal and prayers.
Television channels reported that dead bodies and injured were lying inside the
shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, a Sufi philosopher-poet of present-day
Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The fresh wave of terror attacks started when a suicide bomber attacked a
protest rally outside the Punjab assembly in Lahore on Monday killing 14 people
and injuring dozens.
On the same day, a terrorist attack was foiled in Quetta but two officials of
the Bomb Disposal Squad were killed diffusing a bomb under a bridge in Quetta.
Terrorists also carried out attacks in Mohmand agency and Peshawar followed by
today's blast in Sindh.
Today's attack on shrine came a day after Pakistan vowed to
"liquidate" all those elements posing a threat to peace and security
in the country amid a spurt in terror attacks.
The decision was taken at high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Sharif
yesterday to review the security situation in the country.
"The meeting made a resolve that terrorism emanating within the country or
executed and harboured from outside the country would
be eliminated and those posing threat to peace and security of the country
would be liquidated by the might of the state," an official statement said
after the meeting.
The ISIS and the Taliban have frequently targeted Sufi shrines across Pakistan.
More than 25 shrines across the country have been attacked since 2005,
according to reports.
On November 13 last year, an ISIS suicide bomber killed 52 people and wounded
100 others at popular Shah Noorani shrine near Hub in
Balochistan's Lasbella
district.
In July 2010, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at the Sufi shrine of Data
Ganj Baksh Hajveri in Lahore, killing over 50 people.
A suicide attack on the shrine of Sufi saint Abdullah Shah Ghazi in Karachi
killed nine people in October 2010.
An attack on Baba Farid Shakarganj's shrine in
Pakpattan in October that year left another seven people dead.
Valentine's Day banned in Pakistan's capital
February 14, 2017
CBS
News
ISLAMABAD
-- A Pakistani judge on Monday banned all Valentine’s Day celebrations in the
country’s capital, Islamabad, saying they are against Islamic teachings.
The
judge ruled on a petition seeking to ban public celebrations of the Western
holiday, court official Niaz Saleh said. He said the order had been sent to
Pakistan’s media regulator to ensure a blackout on any Valentine’s Day
promotions in print or electronic media.
The
ban applies only to Pakistan’s capital as the Islamabad high court has no
jurisdiction beyond the city.
The
regulator in a statement directed all Pakistani media outlets not to print or
broadcast anything that promotes Valentine’s Day. No event shall be held at any
official level and at any public place, the statement quoted a part of the
court order.
Later
on Monday, the government issued an order to local
police to enforce the court ban. A similar order was in place last year in
Islamabad.
Islamist
and right-wing parties in Pakistan view Valentine’s Day as vulgar Western
import.
However,
the annual homage to romance on Feb. 14 has become popular in recent years
across the Middle East and also in Pakistan.
Though
some Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia also have sought to stamp out
Valentine’s Day, with the religious police mobilizing ahead of Feb. 14 and
descending on gift and flower shops to confiscate all red items, including
flowers, it is still celebrated widely in other places such as Dubai.
In
2013, Indonesian officials and Muslim clerics called for young people to skip
Valentine’s Day, saying it’s an excuse for couples to have forbidden sex.
Pakistan hospital bomb attack kills dozens in Quetta
8-8-16
BBC News
A
suicide bomb attack has killed at least 70 people at a hospital in Quetta in
south-west Pakistan, officials say.
About
120 others were injured in the blast, which happened at the entrance to the
emergency department where the body of a prominent lawyer shot dead earlier on
Monday was being brought.
The
casualties included lawyers and journalists accompanying the body of Bilal
Anwar Kasi.
A
faction of the Pakistani Taliban has said it was behind the bombing.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said it had also carried out the earlier attack on Mr Kasi, who was president of the Balochistan
Bar Association and had been shot while on his way from his home to the main
court complex in Quetta.
Witnesses
described scenes of chaos after the hospital blast, with "bodies
everywhere" and survivors shouting for help through the smoke and dust.
Pakistani
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and chief of army staff Gen Raheel
Sharif have both gone to Quetta and will hold talks with security officials.
Gen
Sharif met some of those wounded at the Quetta Civil Hospital.
Mr Sharif expressed
his "deep grief and anguish", adding: "No-one will be allowed to
disturb the peace of the province. The people, policy and security forces in Balochistan have given sacrifices for the country."
The
president of Pakistan's Supreme Court Bar Association, Syed Ali Zafa, denounced the assault as "an attack on
justice". The Pakistan Bar Council has announced a nationwide strike by
lawyers on Tuesday.
The
Chief Minister of Balochistan, Sanaullah
Zehri, said those injured should be given the best
medical treatment and facilities available.
There
have been a number of targeted killings in Quetta and the victims in recent
weeks have included several lawyers.
Mr Kasi had
strongly condemned the attacks and local media said he had announced a two-day
boycott of court sessions in protest at the killing of a colleague last week.
Those
killed in the hospital attack were said to include Baz Muhammad Kakar, a predecessor of Mr Kasi
as provincial bar president, and 17 other lawyers.
Two
journalists have also been identified among the dead - Shahzad Khan, a
cameraman for Aaj TV, and Mehmood Khan, a cameraman
for DawnNews.
Lawyers
in Lahore staged a demonstration to condemn the attack. Some journalists also
protested, demanding protection for freedom of expression.
Facebook
has activated its safety check feature for Quetta, allowing users to mark
themselves or others as being safe.
Pakistan's
ISI funded deadly attack on CIA camp in Afghanistan: US National Security
Archive
Chidanand Rajghatta
TNN
Apr 14, 2016
WASHINGTON: Talk about biting the hand that feeds. Even as it bilked billions
of dollars in aid from the United States, Pakistan is now revealed to have
funded the 2009 attack on a CIA camp on its border with Afghanistan that killed
seven American agents and contractors and three others.
The explosive disclosure comes in a declassified 2010 cable published by the
national security archive, that, despite being redacted in parts, asserts
unequivocally that "some funding for Haqqani attacks are still provided by
the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, including $200,000 for
the December 30, 2009, attack on the CIA facility at Camp Chapman."
The Camp Chapman attack was carried out by Khalil Abu-Mulal
al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor and double agent, whom
the CIA was trying to use to infiltrate al-Qaida in Pakistan in its hunt for
Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri. Instead, he was turned around the
Haqqani group, a terrorist proxy for Pakistan's intelligence agency.
Al-Balawi's suicide attack on December 30, 2009 at
the Camp Chapman forward post, which the CIA used to gather intelligence for
drone attacks in Pakistan, killed ten people, including two female American CIA
agents: Jennifer Lynne Matthews, 45, and a mother of three, who commanded the
base, and Elizabeth Hanson, 30, a targeting analyst. The attack was
memorialized in a movie titled Zero Dark Thirty.
While it has long been known that Pakistan's terrorism sponsorship has claimed
the lives of Indian and American civilians and military personnel, the
revelations about bankrolling the Camp Chapman attack, kept secret from the
public so far, is certain to inflame tensions between the two sides,
particularly their military-intelligence outfits. Successive US administrations
— particularly the state department led by John Kerry — have long ladled out
pabulum that Pakistan is a front-line ally in the war on terror while funneling
billions of dollars of aid, despite multiple terrorist attacks across the world
originating from Pakistan, including in San Bernardino, New York, and London.
The timing of the attack and the sequence of cables detailing the ISI's role in
organizing the attack suggests that the US administration lied to the American
public about Pakistan being a frontline ally in the way on terror even as it
funneled $ 7.5 billion in US taxpayer money to a country's whose
military-intelligence establishment was killing American soldiers and spooks.
Then senator John Kerry, who later became secretary of state, took the lead in
presenting Pakistan as a worthy ally as he engineering with senator Lugar the
Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009, which put $ 1.5 billion in US
aid into the Pakistani coffers.
The Act, stemming from what is known as the Kerry-Lugar Bill was introduced to
Congress on September 24, 2009, and passed into law on October 15, 2010. The
ISI-sponsored attack on Camp Chapman occurred on December 30, 2009. By February
6, 2010, the date on the explosive cable detailing the Pakistani role,
Washington knew ISI had engineered the attack on the CIA forward post.
"During discussions at an unknown date between Haqqani, Salar, and an unidentified ISID officer or officers,
Haqqani and Salar were provided $200,000 to enable
the attack on Chapman," the cable relates in an unredacted portion.
"Haqqani then provided the money to Salar who
then communicated the planning details to Mullawi (Sakh). Sakh then contacted Arghawan Afghan border commander of the Khost
Provincial Force.
The cable then goes on to say that Arghawan was
promised $100,000 for facilitating the attack by the then unnamed Jordanian
national (whose identity came to be known only later), but since Arghawan himself was killed in the attack, Salar kept the $100,000.
Which means, despite knowing Pakistan bankrolled the killing of its personnel,
including two female agents who put their lives on line in a remote forward
post, Washington still went ahead and rewarded Islamabad with billions of
dollars in aid — and has continued to do so to this day with finance and
armaments.
The Camp Chapman attack is counted as the second largest single-day loss in the
CIA's history, after the 1983 United States Embassy bombing in Beirut, Lebanon,
which killed eight CIA officers.
While the cable relating to the Camp Chapman attack does not identify by name
the ISI officer who supplied the $200,000, other cables in the collection
shows, with names, how deeply the ISI is enmeshed in terrorism. "As of
late December 2009, at the end of every month, senior Haqqani network
leadership met with ISID in Islamabad," a January 2010 cable states.
Identifying Colonel Nasib and Major Daoud as the
handlers. "An unknown amount of funding was provided to the Haqqanis for use in unspecified operations during these
meetings," it continues. In a subsequent meeting, the cable says, the ISI
directorate asked the Haqqanis "to expedite
attack preparations and lethality in Afghanistan."
Pak Army gives weapons, training to IS in Afghanistan: Former fighters
Hindustan
Times
Feb
25, 2016
Former
members of the Islamic State have revealed that Pakistan’s military provides
weapons and training to group’s fighters in Afghanistan and instructs them to
kill the “infidel” Afghan forces.
“Pakistani
military gave us weapons and used to tell us that Afghan forces are infidels
and you must kill them,” Zaitoon, a former IS fighter
who laid down his arms and joined the peace talks, was quoted as saying by the
TOLO news on Wednesday.
Arabistan, Zaitoon’s
co-fighter, said: “I was tasked to fight in Nazian
district [in Nangarhar]. We used to present our daily report to Punjabis and
Pakistanis and they encouraged us to fight the Afghan government.”
The
10-member group has joined the peace process due to efforts by the High Peace
Council office in the province and also with the help of the Afghan security
forces, said chairman of Nangarhar Provincial Council Malik Nazir.
“There
were 24 men in two groups – the first group was 14 Taliban fighters and the second
group included 10 Daesh fighters who for the first time joined the peace
process,” Nazir added.
Pakistan’s
Hand in the Rise of International Jihad
By CARLOTTA GALL
FEB.
6, 2016
The
New York Times
TUNIS — PRESIDENT ASHRAF GHANI of Afghanistan has warned in several recent
interviews that unless peace talks with Pakistan and the Taliban produce
results in the next few months, his country may not survive 2016. Afghanistan
is barely standing, he says, after the Taliban onslaught last year, which led to
the highest casualties among civilians and security forces since 2001.
“How much worse will it get?” Mr. Ghani asked in a recent television interview.
“It depends on how much regional cooperation we can secure, and how much
international mediation and pressure can be exerted to create rules of the game
between states.”
What he means is it depends on how much international pressure can be brought
to bear on Pakistan to cease its aggression.
Critics of the Afghan leadership say it’s not Pakistan’s fault that its
neighbor is falling apart. They point to the many internal failings of the
Afghan government: political divisions, weak institutions, warlords and
corruption.
But experts have found a lot of evidence that Pakistan facilitated the Taliban
offensive. The United States and China have been asking Pakistan to persuade
the Taliban to make peace, but Afghanistan argues that Islamabad has done
nothing to rein in the Taliban, and if anything has encouraged it to raise the
stakes in hopes of gaining influence in any power-sharing agreement.
This behavior is not just an issue for Afghanistan. Pakistan is intervening in
a number of foreign conflicts. Its intelligence service has long acted as the
manager of international mujahedeen forces, many of them Sunni extremists, and
there is even speculation that it may have been involved in the rise of the
Islamic State.
The latest Taliban offensive began in 2014. United States and NATO forces were
winding down their operations in Afghanistan and preparing to withdraw when
Pakistan decided, after years of prevarication, to clear Taliban and Al Qaeda
fighters from their sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal area of North Waziristan.
The operation was certainly a serious endeavor — Taliban bases, torture
chambers and ammunition dumps were busted, town bazaars were razed and over one
million civilians were displaced.
But the militants were tipped off early, and hundreds escaped, tribesmen and
Taliban fighters said. Many fled over the border to Afghanistan, just at the
vulnerable moment when Afghanistan was assuming responsibility for its own
security. Ninety foreign fighters with their families arrived in Paktika
Province that summer, to the alarm of Afghan officials.
Further along the border in Paktika Province, Taliban fighters occupied
abandoned C.I.A. bases and outposts. A legislator from the region warned me
that they would use the positions to project attacks deeper into Afghanistan
and even up to Kabul. Some of the most devastating suicide bomb attacks
occurred in that province in the months that followed.
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the Haqqani network, the most potent branch of the
Taliban, moved from North Waziristan into the adjacent district of Kurram. From there it continues to enjoy safe haven and
conduct its insurgency against American, international and Afghan targets.
Pakistan regards Afghanistan as its backyard. Determined not to let its
archrival, India, gain influence there, and to ensure that Afghanistan remains
in the Sunni Islamist camp, Pakistan has used the Taliban selectively,
promoting those who further its agenda and cracking down on those who don’t.
The same goes for Al Qaeda and other foreign fighters.
Even knowing this, it might come as a surprise that the region’s triumvirate of
violent jihad is living openly in Pakistan.
First, there’s Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of the Haqqani network, and
second in command of the Taliban. He moves freely around Pakistan, and has even
visited the Pakistani intelligence headquarters of the Afghan campaign in Rawalpindi.
Then there is the new leader of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour,
who has openly assembled meetings of his military and leadership council near
the Pakistani town of Quetta. Since he came to power last year, the Taliban has
mounted some of its most ambitious offensives into Afghanistan, overrunning the
northern town of Kunduz, and pushing to seize control of the opium-rich
province of Helmand.
Finally, Al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, enjoys
sanctuary in Pakistan — one recent report placed him in the southwestern corner
of Baluchistan. He has been working to establish training camps in southern
Afghanistan. In October, it took United States Special Operations forces
several days of fighting and airstrikes to clear those camps. American
commanders say the group they were fighting was Al Qaeda in the Indian
Subcontinent, a new franchise announced by Mr. Zawahri
that has claimed responsibility for the killings of bloggers and activists in
Karachi and Bangladesh, among other attacks.
Pakistan denies harboring the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and points out that it,
too, is a victim of terrorism. But many analysts have detailed how the military
has nurtured Islamist militant groups as an instrument to suppress nationalist
movements, in particular among the Pashtun minority, at home and abroad.
Perhaps most troubling, there are reports that Pakistan had a role in the rise
of the Islamic State.
Ahead of Pakistan’s 2014 operation in North Waziristan, scores, even hundreds,
of foreign fighters left the tribal areas to fight against President Bashar
al-Assad in Syria. Tribesmen and Taliban members from the area say fighters
traveled to Quetta, and then flew to Qatar. There they received new passports
and passage to Turkey, from where they could cross into Syria. Others traveled
overland along well-worn smuggling routes from Pakistan through Iran and Iraq.
The fighters arrived just in time to boost the sweeping offensive by ISIS into
Iraq and the creation of the Islamic State in the summer of 2014.
If these accounts are correct, Pakistan was cooperating with Qatar, and perhaps
others, to move international Sunni jihadists (including 300 Pakistanis) from
Pakistan’s tribal areas, where they were no longer needed, to new battlefields
in Syria. It is just another reminder of Pakistan’s central involvement in
creating and managing violent jihadist groups, one Pakistani politician, who
spoke on the condition of anonymity when talking about intelligence affairs,
told me.
This has been going on for more than 30 years. In 1990, I shared a bus ride
with young Chinese Uighurs, Muslims from China’s restive northwest, who had
spent months training in Pakistani madrasas, including a brief foray into
Afghanistan to get a taste of battle. They were returning home, furnished with
brand-new Pakistani passports, a gift of citizenship often offered to those who
join the jihad.
Years later, just after Osama bin Laden was found and killed in Pakistan, I
interviewed a guerrilla commander from the disputed region of Kashmir who had
spent 15 years on the Pakistani military payroll, traveling to train and assist
insurgents in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir and Afghanistan.
In 2012 I came across several cases where young clerics, fresh graduates from
the Haqqania madrasa in Pakistan, returned to their
home villages in Afghanistan, flush with cash, and set about running mosques
and recruiting and organizing a band of Taliban followers.
I visited that madrasa in 2013. It is the alma mater of the Afghan Taliban,
where many of the leaders of the movement were trained. The clerics there
remained adamant in their support for the Taliban. “It is a political fact that
one day the Taliban will take power,” Syed Yousuf Shah, the madrasa spokesman,
told me. “We are experts on the Taliban,” he said, and a majority of the Afghan
people “still support them.”
The madrasa, a longtime instrument of Pakistani intelligence, has been training
people from the ethnic minorities of northern Afghanistan alongside its
standard clientele of Pashtuns. The aim is still to win control of northern
Afghanistan through these young graduates. From there they have their eyes on
Central Asia and western China. Pakistani clerics are educating and
radicalizing Chinese Uighurs as well, along with Central Asians from the former
Soviet republics.
No one has held Pakistan to account for this behavior. Why would Pakistan give
it up now?
Militant group threatens English-language
schools
By Shezad Baloch
Published: May 8, 2014
The Express Tribune
An armed group based in Panjgur, Balochistan’s
western district, has threatened 23 English Language Learning Centers to shut
down and stop imparting co-education and teaching in English, which they say is
‘Haram (prohibited) in Islam’.
Masked armed men barged into one language
center on Wednesday and threatened the teachers and the young male and female
students. “Co-education and learning English language is
Haram (forbidden in Islam),” they told the teachers, according to one
instructor who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The armed men destroyed the
school’s furniture and tore textbooks during the incident.
Panjgur police have lodged an
FIR against unidentified persons under the Anti Terrorism
Act and security has been increased around the centers. “They also told girls
who were on their way home from the English Language Center and threatened
them, saying they should not go to the schools again,” SHO Panjgur
police station Mohammed Murad told The Express Tribune .
However, the girls say they are not cowed. “I
am not scared and will go to school under all circumstances,” said one of the
girls, speaking with The Express Tribune over the phone. She said the man who
was threatening the girls spoke in Balochi, with a local Panjguri
accent.
The men have also distributed threatening
letters across Panjgur. An organization calling
itself Tanzeem-ul-Islami-ul-Furqan
has circulated a list of those in charge of the private schools, accusing them
of corrupting the minds of local girls by imparting Western education. Station
House Officer (SHO) Panjgur Mohammed Murad said the
organization has emerged recently.
“Private schools should stop girls’ education –
both co-education and separate education,” warned the letter, adding, “We urge
all van and taxi drivers to refrain from taking girls to schools. Otherwise,
they will also be targeted.”
“It seems there has been a spill-over of Taliban culture into Panjgur,” remarked one of the heads of the language center,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “This development comes after
the recent operation against Baloch militants. It seems someone is trying to
radicalize people in Panjgur,” he felt.
The English Language Learning Centers remained
closed for three days after receiving the threats. Hundreds of protestors
staged a sit-in in front of the Deputy Commissioner’s Office. District
administration and police officials assured the protestors that they will
arrange foolproof security for the centers and the schools were reopened on
Tuesday. However, attendance at the schools was comparatively low.
The Panjgur and Kech regions are known as centers of learning and the
‘intellectual capital of Balochistan’.
Wanted in U.S. and India, Islamist leads mass
rally in Pakistan
By Maria Golovnina
and Syed Raza Hassan
Reuters – Fri, Sep 6, 2013
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani Islamist with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his
head appeared openly at a rally in Islamabad on Friday, denouncing India as a
terrorist state as thousands of his supporters chanted for "holy war"
against the rival nuclear nation.
India has accused Hafiz Saeed of masterminding the 2008 attack on its financial
capital Mumbai where gunmen killed 166 people over three days. The United
States has offered $10 million for information leading to his arrest and
conviction.
As dusk fell, more than 10,000 people gathered in Islamabad in a show of
defiance certain to enrage India further following weeks of tensions over the
disputed Kashmir border.
"The United States and India are very angry with us. This means God is
happy with us," Saeed told the crowd as supporters chanted
"Jihad!" ("Holy war") and "War will continue until the
liberation of Kashmir". He did not use the word "jihad" himself.
"We are ready for every sacrifice for the liberation of Kashmir," the
stocky and bearded former professor added at the rally marking Pakistan's Defence Day.
Speaking about Sarabjit Singh, an Indian prisoner who died in a Pakistani jail
this year and was given a state funeral back home, Saeed told the crowd:
"He was a terrorist. How can the Indian government give state honours to a terrorist? This means the Indian government
and army are terrorists."
India has called on Pakistan to bring Saeed to justice, an issue that has stood
in the way of rebuilding relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours since the Mumbai carnage.
Saeed is the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a
militant group banned in Pakistan but tolerated unofficially and believed to be
close to the army. Saeed has long abandoned its leadership and is now the head
of its charity wing.
India is furious that Pakistan has not detained him since it handed over
evidence against him to Islamabad, and allows Saeed to live freely in the city
of Lahore in a villa with police stationed outside.
Relations plunged to further lows last month after the killing of five Indian
soldiers along the so-called Line of Control that separates the two sides in
the Himalayan region of Kashmir.
BELLIGERENT MOOD
Seeking to defuse tensions, Pakistan's civilian leaders have kept a
conciliatory tone, but on Friday, as thousands gathered in Islamabad, emotions
spilled into the open.
The mood was strikingly anti-Western and belligerent, with speakers openly
declaring their sympathy for the Taliban fighting Western forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.
"India should stop describing Kashmir as its indispensable part,"
Saeed said from a makeshift stage mounted on a truck. "Otherwise every
part of India would be dispensable for us."
As the crowd cheered, two men performed a patriotic song threatening to
"turn the whole of India into Mumbai". Others chanted "Whoever
is a friend of India is a traitor" and waved black and white striped
flags.
"They should know there are a lot of
people here who are waiting for the conquest of India," Hamid Gul, a
former chief of the ISI intelligence service, told the crowd.
"It will be our privilege to take part in this war."
Saeed founded the LeT, which India blames for the
rampage in Mumbai, in the 1990s. He has denied involvement in any attacks.
He abandoned the leadership after India accused the LeT
of being behind an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001. His
charity, linked to the LeT, enjoys popular support
for its humanitarian work.
Tourists killed at north Pakistan mountain camp
23
June 2013
BBC
Gunmen have killed 10 people, including at
least nine foreign tourists, after storming a hotel in northern Pakistan.
The nationalities of the victims have not been
fully confirmed, although they include a number of Ukrainians and Chinese.
One Pakistani also died.
The assault happened at the base camp of Nanga
Parbat, the world's ninth highest mountain, in Gilgit-Baltistan.
It is the first such attack on tourists in the
region. The Pakistani Taliban has told the BBC it was responsible.
A spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban
said the attack was in retaliation for the killing of its second-in-command, Waliur Rehman, who died in a suspected US drone strike in
May.
The group said it would continue to target
foreigners.
Officials in the Diamir
district of Gilgit-Baltistan say the area where the gunmen struck is extremely
remote and there are no roads and no means of transportation other than mules.
They say the attackers must have been well
trained and well acclimatised. A lot of planning must
have gone into conducting this operation. The area is a vast mountain desert,
having approaches from three sides, each requiring 20 hours of walking; in
practice two days of trekking.
Sunni Muslim hard-line
groups have in the past carried out several attacks in this predominantly Shia
region, mostly along the highway by targeting passenger buses, but this is the
first time they have trekked deep into a remote area to kill foreigners.
The incident is likely to hurt the finances of
a cash-strapped Gilgit-Baltistan government which depends heavily on revenue
raised from mountain expeditions that arrive each summer from around the world.
It is also likely to hit tour operators, guides and local small businesses
linked to tourism.
An adviser to the Gilgit-Baltistan government
told the BBC that helicopters had been sent to evacuate the remaining climbers
in the region - believed to number between 20 and 25.
Part of the Himalayan Range, Nanga Parbat,
which stands at 8,126m (26,660ft), is popular with trekkers and mountaineers,
especially during June and July.
The assault is seen as a significant blow for
Pakistan's already struggling tourist industry, the BBC's Shahzeb Jillani reports from Islamabad.
'Inhumanity'
The number and nationalities of the victims
have not been made fully clear.
Two Chinese, one Chinese-American, one Nepali
and a Pakistani have been confirmed dead by local and interior ministry
officials.
Five bodies remain to be
identified, most are believed to be of Ukrainian tourists.
A Chinese tourist is known to have survived the
assault.
The trekkers had planned to climb Nanga Parbat
in the coming days, a local tour operator said.
Up to 20 attackers, reportedly dressed in local
paramilitary uniforms, stormed the hotel at the base camp in the foothills of
Nanga Parbat at about 22:45 local time on Saturday (17:45 GMT).
The gunmen separated and tied up the local
Pakistani staff and told them not to attempt to raise the alarm until morning,
a local official said.
Police and army vehicles escorted the
ambulances transporting the victims' bodies
The gunmen then shot the foreigners, taking
their money and passports.
The attackers left at about 01:00 on Sunday
local time.
One person managed to get free and raise the
alarm but the attackers had about six hours to make their escape.
The deputy commissioner of Diamir
district told the BBC a manhunt was under way involving both police and
military, on the ground and in the air.
Officials say given the terrain it would be
easy to spot human movement from the air, but no arrests have yet been made.
President Asif Ali Zardari
and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif have condemned the attack.
Mr Sharif, who was
re-elected earlier this month, said "such acts of cruelty and
inhumanity" would not be tolerated.
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said
Gilgit-Baltistan's police chief and another senior official had been suspended.
Gilgit governor Syed Mehdi Shah said: "A
lot of tourists come to this area in the summer, and our local people work to
earn money from these people.
"This will not only affect our area, but
will adversely affect all of Pakistan."
Gilgit-Baltistan is famous for its natural
beauty and the main city of Gilgit is seen as a gateway to the Karakoram and
Himalayan mountain ranges.
Commission details 675 honour
killings in Pakistan in nine-month period
AFL December 20, 2011
AT least 675 Pakistani women and girls were murdered during
the first nine months of the year for allegedly defaming their family's honour, a leading human rights group said today.
The statistics highlight the scale of violence
suffered by many women in conservative Muslim Pakistan, where they are
frequently treated as second-class citizens and there is no law against
domestic violence.
Despite some progress on better protecting
women's rights, activists say the government needs to do far more to prosecute
murderers in cases largely dismissed by police as private, family affairs.
"A total of 675 women and girls were
killed in the name of honour across Pakistan from
January to September," a senior official in the Human Rights Commission of
Pakistan said.
They included at least 71 victims under the age
of 18.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity
because he is unauthorised to speak to the media,
said figures were still being compiled for the period covering October to
December, and that a full report would be released in February.The
Commission reported 791 honour killings in 2010 and
there was no discernible decrease this year, the official added.
Around 450 of the women killed from January to
September were accused of having "illicit relations" and 129 of
marrying without permission.
Some victims were raped or gangraped before
being killed, he said. At least 19 were killed by their sons, 49 by their
fathers and 169 by their husbands.
Rights groups say the government should do more
to ensure that women subject to violence, harassment and discrimination have effective
access to justice.
Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director at Human
Rights Watch, said the state's inability to enforce rule of law, leaving
matters in the hands of tribesmen and local elders, was a major factor.
"We have a system in Pakistan where the
state and judicial recourse are absent and the vacuum is filled by local
elders," Hasan said.
"A combination of legal reforms, exercise
of administrative authority and social awareness can greatly help check the honour killings," he added.
Earlier this month, a Belgian court sentenced
four members of a Pakistani family to prison for the murder of their daughter
and sister, who defied them by living with a Belgian man and refusing an
arranged marriage.
Mullen Accuses Pakistan's Intel Service of
Aiding Attack on Embassy in Kabul
September 22, 2011
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- The top U.S. military officer on Thursday accused Pakistan's
intelligence agency of supporting Haqqani fighters in planning and conducting
last week's attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said Pakistani duplicity puts in jeopardy not only the frayed
U.S.-Pakistani partnership against terrorism but also the outcome to the
decade-old war in Afghanistan.
In his final congressional testimony before
retiring next week, Mullen said success in Afghanistan is threatened by the
Pakistani government's support for the Haqqani network of militants, which he
called a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's intelligence agency.
Repeating a charge he made earlier this week,
Mullen said Thursday that with Pakistani support the Haqqanis
were behind not only the Sept. 13 embassy assault but also a recent truck bomb
that wounded 77 U.S. soldiers and a June 28 attack against the Inter-Continental
Hotel in Kabul -- as well as "a host of other smaller but effective
operations."
Mullen said Pakistani intelligence is using the
Haqqanis and other extremist groups as its proxies
inside Afghanistan.
Mullen said Pakistan's government has chosen to
"use violent extremism as an instrument of policy," adding that
"by exporting violence, they have eroded their internal security and their
position in the region. They have undermined their international credibility
and threatened their economic well-being."
Mullen also deplored the "pernicious
effect" of Afghanistan's own poor governance and corruption.
"If we continue to draw down forces apace
while such public and systemic corruption is left unchecked," Mullen told
the Senate Armed Services Committee, "I believe we risk leaving behind a
government in which we cannot reasonably expect Afghans to have faith. At best
this would lead to localized conflicts inside the country; at worst it could
lead to government collapse and civil war."
Testifying alongside Mullen, Defense Secretary
Leon Panetta also decried Pakistani support for the Haqqani network, and he
said Pakistani authorities have been told that the U.S. will not tolerate a
continuation of the group's cross-border attacks. Panetta said the message was
delivered recently by new CIA Director David Petraeus in a meeting with the
head of the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI.
"They must take steps to prevent the safe
haven that the Haqqanis are using," Panetta
said. "We simply cannot allow these kinds of terrorists to be able to go
into Afghanistan, attack our forces and then return to Pakistan for safe
haven."
He repeated the point later, adding, "That
is not tolerable."
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich,
chairman of the committee, pressed Panetta on what options are available to the
U.S. to go after the Haqqani network. Panetta declined to go into details
publicly but made clear that the Pakistanis know what might happen.
"I don't think they would be surprised by
the actions we might or might not take," he said. He also said he has not
"spelled out" for the Pakistanis what unilateral actions the Obama
administration would be willing to take.
The remarks by Mullen and Panetta highlight a
notable shift in the administration's approach to Pakistan. Whereas U.S.
officials previously kept their strongest criticisms of Pakistan private, in
recent days they have been explicit in linking the government to extremists who
are attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Mullen's strong words are especially notable in
light of his role in trying to use personal persuasion to change Pakistani
behavior. He told the committee that he has met with his Pakistani counterpart,
Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, more than two dozen times
over the past four years, and he defended the rationale for cultivating that
link.
"Some may argue I have wasted my time,
that Pakistan is no closer to us than before and may now have drifted even
further away," he said. "I disagree." He said cooperation from
the Pakistani military is improving.
The increasingly tough U.S. rhetoric reflects a
U.S. belief that Pakistani intelligence in recent months has more aggressively
facilitated cross-border attacks by the Haqqanis, one
senior military official said Wednesday. The official spoke on condition of
anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, asked Panetta
whether he supports a move in Congress to condition further U.S. aid to
Pakistan on the administration being able to certify that the Pakistani
government is cooperating with the U.S. in fighting extremist groups, including
the Haqqanis.
"Anything that makes clear to them that we
cannot tolerate their providing this kind of safe haven to the Haqqanis, and that they have to take action -- any signal
that we can send to them -- I think would be important to do," Panetta
said.
In recent days administration officials have
taken a harsher tone toward Pakistan, accusing Islamabad of maintaining links
with the Haqqani network, a band of Islamist fighters that the U.S. says are
behind attacks in Afghanistan, including last week's attack on the U.S. Embassy
in Kabul.
Mullen said earlier this week there is a
"proxy connection" between Pakistani intelligence services and the Haqqanis, meaning the militants are secretly doing the
Pakistanis' bidding.
"The Haqqani piece of this has got to be
reversed -- period," he told the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace.
Mullen said he delivered that message to Kayani last week during a meeting in Spain.
After the U.S. raided Osama bin Laden's secret
compound inside Pakistan in May -- without alerting Pakistani authorities in
advance -- relations deteriorated further. Pakistan suspended a program under
which U.S. special operations forces helped train Pakistani forces in
counterterrorist tactics. U.S. officials on Wednesday disclosed a compromise
deal to slash the number of U.S. military personnel allowed in Pakistan to
between 100 and 150, about half of what it had been. The number of special
operations trainers would fall from 140 to fewer than 10.
Trapped in hatred
March 19, 2011
Balbir Punj
Pakistan is caught in a vortex of jihadi violence for which it has only itself
to blame. A country founded on the ideology of hate couldn’t have fared any
better.
The recent spate of violent incidents in Pakistan has left the uninitiated,
particularly the peaceniks, shocked, startled and dazed. The internecine war
between various jihadi groups in the name of Islam continues unabated.
Fundamentalists are also targetting
what remains of religious minority communities, particularly Hindus, in
Pakistan. In the process, the country is falling apart and is being
increasingly seen as a failed state by the rest of the world.
The seeds of the spiralling violence were sown in the
very ideology which led to Pakistan’s creation. The demand for an independent
Islamic state in the Indian sub-continent was fuelled
by two factors — pride in their past among Muslims and their fear of the future
in a Hindu-dominated India.
The Muslim elite of pre-partition India that provided leadership to the Muslim
masses was caught in a time warp and dreamed of reliving the Mughal glory.
After the departure of the British, the prospects of competing with the Hindus
(whom they had ruled) in a democratic set-up as equals frightened them. British
imperialists and Indian Communists helped the Muslims to divide India.
Hate drove the Muslim League in the 1940s and led to the birth of Pakistan. In
those days, it was hatred towards Hindus and Sikhs. After the creation of
Pakistan, successive regimes in Pakistan have survived on hate — the objects of
their hatred have changed over the decades. In a sense, hate unites the idea and
the ideologues of Pakistan.
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a non-practising, Westernised Muslim, did not get the support of his
community so long as he was secular. After his historic split with the Congress
and the Muslim League’s adoption of the two-nation theory, he emerged as the
‘sole spokesman’ of the sub-continent’s Muslims. Jinnah articulated what his
new-found constituency wanted him to say; hence his denunciation and
repudiation of India’s age-old values of universal brotherhood and religious
pluralism.
Jinnah’s concept of a Muslim majority ‘secular’ Pakistan was consistent with
the aspirations of the Muslim masses who had forced partition on India to realise their dream of acquiring for themselves a ‘land of
the pure’. It stood to logic that in such a land there could not be any space
for the ‘non-pure’. The cleansing of the religious minority communities is
rooted in this perception of Pakistan among Pakistanis. With each step in militarising Pakistan came
the strengthening of its jihadi ideology and the institutions that have fuelled hatred at home and abroad.
This is best exemplified by civilian rulers and military dictators competing to
prove who is a stronger defender of Islam. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto stumped the
Generals after the break-up of Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh, and
promised an ‘Islamic Bomb’. Later, he was sacked and hanged by General Zia-ul-Haq who became Pakistan’s most rabid military ruler. Gen
Zia then set about the task of Islamising Pakistan
and creating a social, economic and political order in which only fanatics
could survive.
Today, the Pakistani military sets the terms and the mullahs define the
socio-political agenda for the Government to follow. The military and the
mullahs compete as well as co-operate to be the effective rulers of the
country. As a result, Pakistan’s so-called ‘civil society’, which was in the
forefront of the movement against General Pervez Musharraf, has now gone
silent.
The nature of the killings and the Pakistani Government’s helplessness in the
face of this upsurge of Talibani terror explain the
predicament of that country. The military that funds part of the
mullah-inspired militancy uses it to scare away the Americans who have to
depend increasingly on the military leadership as a counter-balance the
mullahs. All the stakeholders in Pakistan seem to be investing in violence and
disorder as the Americans, who need Pakistan to support their operations in
Afghanistan, wring their hands in despair. Meanwhile, Pakistan descends into
deepening chaos.
What is not only surprising but also alarming is that in our own country
neither Muslim leaders nor pseudo-secularists who pander to the orthodoxy and
shut their eyes to the jihadi mindset do not seem to be interested in drawing
any lessons from the developments in Pakistan.
Islam is a minority religion in Europe but decades of pseudo-secularists
ignoring the jihadi mindset has resulted in a serious threat of terrorism
overwhelming the elected Governments and undermining the liberal societies of
Britain, Germany, France and other European nations. Mr
David Cameron in Britain, Mr Nicholas Sarkozy in
France and Ms Angela Merkel in Germany are now loath
to praise multiculturalism that has become a convenient cloak for Islamic
fanaticism and Muslim separatism. There is greater appreciation now in Europe
of the problems posed by exclusivism and bigotry in the name of faith.
But in India nothing has changed. We still continue to treat Muslims as an
exclusive community and their institutions as beyond Government’s control
although they are funded by the public exchequer and with taxpayers’ money. A
case in point is the absurd designation of Jamia Millia
Islamia, a Central university funded by the Government of India, as a minority
institution. That this negates the urgent need for liberal, cosmopolitan centres of learning is of no consequence to those who
promote Muslim exclusivism. This in turn has led to the growth of fanaticism
among a section of India’s Muslims spread across the country. For instance, the
80 absconding SIMI activists come from different States.
It is for the Muslim leadership and secularists to answer the question why the
jihadi mindset finds empathy in their community in several districts of the
country. Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, the Malabar region of Kerala, the Kashmir
Valley are some of the places where it is most evident.
Meanwhile, life has come full circle for Pakistan. Hate is a poor glue to
keep people together.
Pakistan Minorities Minister Killed in Islamabad Weeks After Governor Shot
By Haris Anwar and James Rupert
Mar 2, 2011 12:12 PM PT
Bloomberg
Gunmen in Pakistan’s capital killed a prominent Christian official, the
country’s minister for minorities’ affairs, in the city’s second high-profile
assassination this year.
As many as four men ambushed Shahbaz Bhatti, 42, yesterday as he left home
without a security escort, Geo television reported, citing a police official,
Bin Yamin. Bhatti was dead when brought to the city’s
Al-Shifa Hospital, the institution’s spokesman, Azmatullah Quraishi, said by telephone.
Bhatti, a Roman Catholic and former leader of Pakistan’s main minority-rights
group, was killed eight weeks after Salman Taseer,
governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, was shot to death by one of his
bodyguards. Both men had called publicly for changes to the country’s blasphemy
law, which prescribes the death penalty for anyone convicted of insulting the
Prophet Muhammad.
Bhatti’s assassination is likely to deepen fears of even talking about the
blasphemy law, said S.K. Tessler, a Christian retired army colonel who served
as minority affairs minister under the military regime of former president
Pervez Musharraf.
Religious intolerance in Pakistan is growing largely because “many Muslims see
the U.S. war in Afghanistan as a war against Islam,” Tessler said in a
telephone interview. “That has led on to more pressure and violence against the
Christians and other minorities.”
Of the blasphemy law, Tessler said “no one should even mention this sensitive
issue. We have to live here.”
‘Horrific Act’
In Washington, President Barack Obama denounced “this horrific act of violence”
and offered condolences to Bhatti’s family.
“He was clear-eyed about the risks of speaking out, and, despite innumerable
death threats, he insisted he had a duty to his fellow Pakistanis to defend
equal rights and tolerance from those who preach division, hate, and violence,”
Obama said in a statement. “He most courageously challenged the blasphemy laws
of Pakistan under which individuals have been prosecuted for speaking their
minds or practicing their own faiths.”
Amid escalated Islamic militant violence and Pakistan’s worst-ever monsoon
flooding in 2010, the country’s $167 billion economy has slowed its growth to
what the central bank estimated Feb. 2 will be a rate of 3 percent in the year
through June, down from a government target of 4.5 percent. The government has
faced protests over high food prices, electricity shortages and its effort to
broaden the country’s narrow tax base, a demand made by the International
Monetary Fund last year as it withheld more than 10 percent of an $11.3 billion
loan.
Violence Expected
For Pakistan’s economy, “some degree of violence and political uncertainty is
already built in” to expectations, said Mohammed Sohail,
chief executive officer at Topline Securities Ltd. in Karachi, the country’s
financial center. “There may be a marginal, short-term shift in sentiment, but
I don’t see a material shift in investors’ attitude after this killing.”
An estimated 509 people died in sectarian attacks last year in Pakistan, the
highest total since the New Delhi-based South Asia Terrorism Portal began
compiling figures in 1989, according to the monitoring group’s website. Many of
those have been members of the minority Ahmadi sect or non-Muslims, mainly
Christians or Hindus, who form 5 percent of the population.
Blasphemy Law
The blasphemy law was passed in 1987 under the army rule of General Muhammad
Zia ul-Haq as part of his policy of building a more
explicitly Islamic state in Pakistan. While no one has been executed by the
state under the law, killings over alleged blasphemy cases have included seven
Christians amid riots in 2009 in Gojra, Punjab, and
two shot dead in July in the city of Faisalabad.
Controversy over the law escalated in November after a court used it to
sentence a Christian women, Aasia
Bibi, to death. The government of President Asif Ali Zardari
expressed readiness to pardon Bibi and consider changes to the law, which
religious conservatives have used to conduct a “reign of terror” against
minorities, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
On Jan. 10, Pope Benedict XVI called on Pakistan to abrogate the law.
Islamic militants have protested, holding street rallies and promising violence
if the government tried to change the law, and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza
Gilani has said it will not do so.
“This chapter is closed for us,” said Qamar Zaman Kaira,
spokesman for the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party.
“Still, there are some elements in our society who want to spread anarchy by
using this issue. This is a long war within our society and I think it will
take a lot of sacrifices,” Kaira said.
Bhatti wasn’t using guards assigned to him by authorities at the time of his
attack, Wajid Durrani, Islamabad’s inspector general
of police, told reporters at the site of the assassination.
“He had instructed that these security officers remain at his office and not
accompany him home,” Durrani said.
Blasphemy law founders Pakistan
By GWYNNE
DYER, Special to QMI Agency
Last Updated: March 12, 2011
LONDON, ENGLAND - At least with a dictatorship,
you know where you are -- and if you know where you are, you may be able to
find your way out. In Pakistan, it is not so simple.
While brave Arab protesters are overthrowing
deeply entrenched autocratic regimes, often without even resorting to violence,
Pakistan, a democratic country, is sinking into a sea of violence, intolerance
and extremism. The world's second-biggest Muslim country (185 million people)
has effectively been silenced by ruthless Islamist fanatics who murder anyone
who dares to defy them.
What the fanatics want, of course, is power,
but the issue on which they have chosen to fight is Pakistan's laws against
blasphemy. They not only hunt down and kill people who fall afoul of these
laws, should the courts see fit to free them. They have also begun killing
anybody who publicly advocates changing the laws.
Salman Taseer, the
governor of the Punjab, Pakistan's richest and most populous province, was
murdered by his own bodyguard in January because he criticized the blasphemy
laws and wanted to change them. He said that he would go on fighting them even
if he was the last man standing - and in a very short time he was no longer
standing.
But one man still was: Shahbaz Bhatti.
Bhatti was shot down earlier this month. The
four men who ambushed his car and filled him with bullets left a note saying,
"In your fight against Allah, you have become so bold that you act in favour of and support those who insult the Prophet. . . . And now, with the grace of Allah, the warriors of
Islam will pick you out one by one and send you to hell."
Bhatti was not a rich and powerful man like Taseer, nor even a major power in the ruling Pakistan
People's Party (PPP) to which they both belonged. He was the only Christian
member of the cabinet, mainly as a token representative of the country's three
million Christians, but he had hardly any influence outside that community.
Nevertheless, he refused to stop criticizing the blasphemy laws even after Taseer's murder, so they killed him, too.
That leaves only Sherry Rehman, the last woman
standing. A flamboyant member of parliament whose mere appearance enrages the
beards, she has been a bold and relentless critic of the blasphemy laws - and
since Taseer's murder she has lived in hiding, moving
every few days. But she will not shut up until they shut her up.
And that's it. The rest of the country's
political and cultural elite has gone silent, or panders openly to the fanatics
and the bigots. The PPP was committed to changing the blasphemy laws only six
months ago, but after Taseer was killed, President
Asif Ali Zardari assured a gathering of Islamic
dignitaries that he had no intention of reviewing the blasphemy laws. Although
they are very bad laws.
In 1984 Gen. Zia ul-Haq,
the dictator who ruled Pakistan from 1977 to 1988, made it a criminal offence
for members of the Ahmadi sect, now some five million strong, to claim that
they were Muslims. In 1986 he instituted the death penalty for blasphemy
against the Prophet Muhammad. No subsequent government has dared to repeal these
laws, which are widely used to victimize the Ahmadi and Christian religious
minorities.
Ahmadis and Christians account for at most 5%
of Pakistan's population, but almost half of the thousand people charged under
this law since 1986 belonged to those communities. Most accusations were false,
arising from disputes over land, but once made they could be a death sentence.
Higher courts generally dismissed blasphemy
charges, recognizing that they were a tactic commonly used against Christians
and Ahmadis in local disputes over land, but 32 people who were freed by the
courts were subsequently killed by Islamist vigilantes -- as were two of the
judges who freed them.
The current crisis arose when a Christian
woman, Aasia Bibi, was sentenced to death last
November, allegedly for blaspheming against the Prophet Muhammad. Pakistan's
liberals mobilized against the blasphemy law -- and discovered they are an
endangered species.
The murders of Taseer
and Bhatti were bad, but even worse was the way the political class and the
bulk of the mass media responded. A majority of a population fully supports the
blasphemy law, making it very costly for politicians to act against it even if
the fanatics don't kill them. Political cowardice reigns supreme and so Pakistan
falls slowly under the thrall of the extremists.
Being a democracy is no help, it turns out,
because democracy requires people to have the courage of their convictions.
Very few educated Pakistanis believe people
should be executed because of a blasphemy charge arising out of some trivial
village dispute, but they no longer dare to say so. Including the president.
"We will not be intimidated nor will we
retreat," said Zardari the day after Bhatti's murder,
but he has already promised the beards the blasphemy law will not be touched.
Nor is it very likely that the murderers of Taseer or Bhatti will be tracked down and punished. You
could get killed trying to do that.
Gwynne Dyer's new book, Crawling
from the Wreckage, was published recently in Canada by Random House.
Pakistan lodges protest over Nato raid
Pakistan has lodged a protest with Nato after forces killed more than 30 insurgents in a rare,
cross-border air raid.
27 Sep 2010
Telegraph.co.uk
Two Apache helicopters crossed the border from
eastern Afghanistan after insurgents attacked a remote Afghan security outpost
in Khost.
A statement released late on Sunday night said:
"An air weapons team in the area observed the enemy fire, and following
International Security Assistance Force rules of engagement, crossed into the
area of enemy fire.
The ISAF aircraft then engaged, killing more
than 30 insurgents."
The raid was followed up on Saturday morning
when two Kiowa helicopters returned to the border area killing four more
insurgents.
Pakistan said the helicopters intruded into its
territory twice from the eastern Afghan province of Khost
as they chased the militants.
"These incidents are a clear violation and
breach of the UN mandate under which ISAF operates," a spokesman from the
foreign office said.
Pakistan
added that ISAF's mandate "finishes" at the Afghan border.
"There are no agreed 'hot pursuit' rules.
Any impression to the contrary is not factually correct. Such violations are
unacceptable," the foreign office statement added.
"In the absence of immediate corrective
measures, Pakistan will be constrained to consider response options," it
warned.
Responding to Islamabad's protest, Natosaid its forces have a right to self-defence.
The US regularly uses drones to launch missile
strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked insurgents in Pakistan's lawless
tribal areas.
Washington has branded the rugged, mountainous
region on the Afghan border a global headquarters of al-Qaeda and the
"most dangerous place on Earth".
September has seen a surge in attacks, with 18
drone strikes in just 23 days in North Waziristan, while Pakistani forces have
been distracted from fighting insurgents by weeks of devastating floods.
However, manned military flights across the
border are extremely rare as anti-American feeling runs high in Pakistan.
Pakistani media reported that the targets were
members of the Haqqani Network. The al Qaeda-linked group has long used North
Waziristan as its base for launching attacks against foreign forces and Afghan
government targets, and has been the frequent target of drone strikes.
Pakistan blasphemy laws used to
justify 'murder': EU parliament
(AFP) – May 20, 2010
STRASBOURG — The EU parliament on Thursday called on Pakistan to guarantee
minority rights, claiming that its blasphemy laws could be used to murder
members of political, racial and religious minorities.
In a resolution adopted in Strasbourg, the assembled Euro MPs expressed
"deep concern" at the Pakistani blasphemy laws, calling for a
"thoroughgoing review" of the legislation which is "open to
misuse."
The laws can carry the death sentence and are "often used to justify
censorship, criminalisation, persecution and, in
certain cases, the murder of members of political, racial and religious
minorities," the parliament said in a strongly-worded statement.
The texts in question "are misused by extremist groups and those wishing
to settle personal scores," the EU deputies said.
They had also "led to an increase of violence against members of religious
minorities, particularly Ahmadis, but also Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Shiites,
Buddhists, Parsis, Bahais and critical citizens who
dare to raise their voice against injustice," they added.
The parliament did recognise recent "measures
taken in the interest of religious minorities," by the Pakistan
government, such as establishing a quota of five per cent for minorities in the
federal jobs sector, recognising non-Muslim public
holidays and declaring a National Minorities Day.
The chamber also welcomed the commitment made by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza
Gilani to grant property rights to minority slum dwellers in Islamabad and the
government's undertaking to provide minority seats in the Senate.
However such initiatives cannot mask the reports and
surveys by independent agencies which "reveal that minorities in Pakistan
are deprived of basic civil liberties and equal opportunities in jobs,
education and political representation," the parliament underlined.
The resolution also criticised the practice of
including religious details on citizens' passports, a practice which the MEPs
argued could lead to "discriminatory practices..
Present in Strasbourg was Pakistan's minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti.
He told AFP that his country was "trying to improve the situation and many
steps have been taken."
He said the Pakistani authorities had made a "commitment to amend these
laws."
"These laws will be changed in such a way which could not be harmful. I'm
working on that, this will be done by the end of this year," he said.
Pakistan, founded in 1947 as a Muslim homeland during the bloody partition of
British India, is overwhelmingly Muslim. Religious minorities however form some
five percent of the population, according to government figures.
In June last year, blasphemy allegations led to mob violence against Christians
in Punjab that caused hundreds to flee, according to the US State Department's
annual report on religious freedom around the world.
The report said there was particular discrimination against the Ahmadiya community, which Pakistan considers non-Muslim as
adherents do not believe Mohammed was the last prophet.
Pakistan on Thursday condemned caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed that
appeared on Facebook, blocking the social networking site and YouTube in a
growing backlash over Internet "sacrilege."
Islam strictly prohibits the depiction of any prophet as blasphemous and
Muslims across the globe staged angry protests over the publication of
satirical cartoons of Mohammed in European newspapers four years ago.
Mosque raid by militants, suicide bombers kills 37 in Pakistan
December 5, 2009
The Washington Post
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan – In a brazen midday raid, militants stormed a mosque
filled with military officers and their families Friday, killing at least 37
people with a combination of gunfire, grenades and suicide bomb blasts.
The attack, which injured at least 86 people, was the latest in a series of
devastating strikes meant as retaliation for the Pakistani military's assault
on Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan and other tribal areas along the
Afghan border.
The dead included 17 children and at least six current or retired military
officers.
Friday's violence came just two days after President Barack Obama emphasized
the role of Pakistan in the new U.S. strategy for fighting insurgents in
Afghanistan and called on the government to step up efforts to eliminate havens
for violent groups.
The attack on the mosque was the ninth violent assault in the past 18 months in
the heavily guarded military district of Rawalpindi, 15 miles from the capital,
Islamabad.
Witnesses and officials said the attack began when a man in the front row of
worshippers suddenly stood and blew himself up. Immediately, several other
attackers began throwing grenades and shooting from the back of the mosque, where
several hundred people were praying. A second attacker blew himself up as well.
Two other attackers were killed by guards.
"I saw people falling down and pools of blood everywhere," said a
driver who gave his name as Ishtiaq. "I fled to
save my life."
Interior Minister Rehman Malik condemned the attackers as false Muslims,
saying, "Their struggle is for Shariah [Islamic law], but is this what
Shariah teaches them? I ask religious scholars to come forward and condemn
their actions. Killing innocent people is no religion."
The Taliban and other extremists groups have demanded
the national imposition of Islamic law.
In additional to the recent attacks in Rawalpindi, there has been a wave of
violence across the country – crowded markets and courthouses in Peshawar,
police training academies and Muslim seminaries in Lahore, U.N. offices in
Islamabad, and livestock markets in rural areas. More than 400 people have been
killed.
THE WORKING GIRLS OF QUETTA
Posted: Tuesday, March 24, 2009
By NBC News Shahid Qazi and Carol Grisanti
QUETTA, Pakistan – The 11-year-old girl blushed as she walked into the car
dealer’s showroom on Quetta’s Adalat Road in southwest Pakistan. Her
17-year-old cousin, eyes fixed to the ground, followed her. When the younger
girl asked the owner for five rupees (6 cents), he pointed to the back room and
told both girls to follow him.
A stocky man in his mid-forties with sallow skin and puffy eyes, he told the
girls to lift their shirts – he wanted to see. "Very nice," the owner
said. "They are getting bigger," he told the 17-year-old as he
touched her.
The 11-year-old was excited as she told us the story; we had followed them
inside the showroom pretending to be customers interested in renting one of the
Land Cruisers parked inside. The owner had given them 10 rupees (12 cents), the
girls told us, more money than they had asked for. Then, giggling, they ran
away.
It’s dangerous to be seen following these girls – some of their clients are
wealthy feudal land barons and powerful politicians, others are ordinary
shopkeepers who will give money to the poor, but want to get something in
return.
The girls are part of an alarming problem that gets little attention in
Pakistan.
"Prostitution is rampant in all the big cities throughout the
country," said Senior Superintendent of Police, Raja Shahid, who heads the
police investigation unit in Rawalpindi, a city close to the capital Islamabad.
"There are loopholes in the laws that need to be changed. For example, in
order to nab the culprits, we need to conduct a raid – but we cannot conduct a
raid without permission from a magistrate. By the time we get the permission we
have missed our chance," he said.
Calls for Islamic law
Others in the country have targeted the police’s inability to protect children
as a reason to rally the people against the government.
"This is exactly why all the religious parties are campaigning for Shariah
law," said Maulvi Noor Mohammed, a hard-line
Islamic cleric, known for his ties to the Taliban.
Mohammed preaches "jihad" against the West to young boys in his
sprawling madrassa (religious school) on the outskirts of Quetta. In an
hour-long interview with NBC News, Mohammed argued that prostitution in Quetta
is the perfect example of the corrupt morals of the secular, pro-Western
Pakistan government and why it showed the need for a worldwide Islamic
revolution.
"What these men are doing is against Islam and they must be punished
accordingly," he said. "Islam guarantees protection for these young
girls."
The last study on child prostitution in Pakistan was conducted by the
government's Federal Bureau of Statistics more than 10 years ago. At that time,
the study concluded that an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 children were involved
in prostitution.
Today, there is no reliable data or updated figures, perhaps because it is a
national shame.
Poverty increases problem
Fathers often send their young daughters out on the streets to earn money for
the family. The girls begin by begging – some as young as 3-years old – and as
they grow older, they become part of the flourishing sex trade in this deeply
conservative city in southwest Pakistan.
"The fathers of these girls are usually drug addicts or alcoholics and the
family is impoverished," said Fauzia Baloch, a coordinator for the Aurat Foundation, an NGO that works for women’s rights in
rural Pakistan. "We can act, often only when a member of the family comes
forth and complains, usually of domestic violence, and then we provide shelter
for the girls and their mothers."
On a recent afternoon, we sat outside a tea shop on Quetta’s Adalat Road and
watched young girls move easily in and out of the crushing traffic – a chaotic
scene of rickshaws, donkey carts piled high with bathtubs, rainbow-colored
trucks decorated with gaudy paintings and men on bicycles. The girls made
contact with the shopkeepers and with the men sitting in parked cars who were
waiting for them.
"We know this is going on," said Inspector Malik Durrani
of the Quetta police. "Even though prostitution is illegal in Pakistan,
the police cannot arrest anyone without first lodging a case in the
courts," he said. "[President Pervez] Musharraf changed the laws in
2007 to give women more rights but the laws are now so complex that unless the
woman complains the police are powerless to act."
Life on the streets
One 30-year-old woman with piercing
light blue eyes said she has worked the Adalat Road for 25 years. She goes by
the name of Shin Khalai.
"I started begging when I was 5 years old," Khalai
said. "My father was a drug addict and my mother sent me and my seven
brothers and sisters out on the streets to beg. I am married now – my husband
is a gambler and he knows I sleep around with other men but he wants the money
I earn so he can keep on gambling."
Haji Naseem, another car dealer on Adalat Road, blames the city’s politicians
and religious leaders. "Everyone knows what is going on with these
children," he said. "No one bothers to stop it because our leaders
have forgotten their duties to the people and are only after their own power
and their own riches," he said. "We are being destroyed from within
by moral corruption and greed."
"Look at them," Khalai pointed out three
girls, as they walked down the street, dressed in colorful shalwar kameez – the
term for traditional baggy trousers and long tunic shirts.
"They are the working girls of Quetta – those little children. What life
do they have? This is no life for any of us," she said as she walked away
– to go back to work.
Islamic law to be imposed in parts of Pakistan
By RIAZ KHAN
February 16, 2009
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — The
government agreed to impose Islamic law and suspend a military offensive across
much of northwest Pakistan on Monday in concessions aimed at pacifying the
Taliban insurgency spreading from the border region to the country's interior.
The announcement came as three
missiles believed fired from a U.S. drone aircraft destroyed a house used by a
local Taliban commander elsewhere in the northwest, killing 30 people,
witnesses said.
The cease-fire, in Pakistan's Swat
Valley hundreds of miles from the missile strike in Kurram,
will likely concern the United States, which has warned Pakistan that such
peace agreements allow al-Qaida and Taliban militants operating near the Afghan
border time to rearm and regroup.
The truce announcement came after
talks with local Islamists, including one closely linked to the Taliban.
Speaking in India, U.S. special
envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke said the unrest in Swat was
a reminder that the United States, Pakistan and India face an "an enemy
which poses direct threats to our leadership, our capitals and our people."
Amir Haider Khan Hoti, the chief minister for the North West Frontier
Province, said authorities would impose Islamic law in Malakand region, which
includes the Swat Valley. Swat is a one-time tourist haven in the northwest
where extremists have gained sway through brutal tactics including beheading
residents, burning girls schools and attacking
security forces.
He said the laws would only be
implemented when the valley was peaceful.
The Swat Taliban said Sunday they
would observe a 10-day cease-fire in support of the peace process. They
welcomed Monday's announcement, which did not mention any need for the
militants to give up arms.
"Our whole struggle is for the
enforcement of Shariah (Islamic) law," Swat Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan
said. "If this really brings us the implementation of Shariah, we will
fully cooperate with it."
Hoti gave few
details, but said the main changes were included in existing laws stipulating
Islamic justice that have never been enforced. They allow for Muslim clerics to
advise judges when hearing cases, but do not ban female education or mention
other strict interpretations of Shariah espoused by the Taliban in Pakistan and
Afghanistan.
"This was the people's demand
... for speedy justice." he said. "There was a (legal) vacuum and we
will be filling that vacuum in the near future," he told a news
conference.
Hoti also said
that troops in Swat, which had been conducting an offensive there against the
militants, would now go on "reactive mode" and retaliate only if attacked.
Pakistani military officials were
not immediately available for comment.
The missile attack Monday was the
first known such strike in Kurram. Most of the
strikes have occurred in South and North Waziristan, other tribal regions
considered major Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds.
Rehman Ullah, a resident of the
targeted village of Baggan, said drones were seen in
the sky before the attack and that he saw 30 bodies dug up. An intelligence
official said field informants reported that militants showed up at the village
bazaar and ordered 30 caskets. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he
was not authorized to speak to media.
The U.S. has stepped up missile
strikes in the border region since August, killing some suspected top
militants. Pakistan routinely protest the strikes, saying it undercuts its
fight against terror.
Regaining the Swat Valley from
militants is a major test for the Pakistani government. Unlike the
semiautonomous tribal regions where al-Qaida and Taliban have long thrived, the
former tourist haven is supposed to be under full government control and lies
less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the provincial capital, Islamabad.
Among those Islamists taking part
in talks with the government in the provincial capital Peshawar was Sufi
Muhammad, who Pakistan freed last year after he agreed to renounce violence.
Muhammad is father-in-law to Maulana Fazlullah, leader of the Taliban in Swat.
Hoti said
Muhammad had agreed to travel to Swat and urge the militants to give up their
arms.
"Seeing the trend
we can hope peace will soon be restored in Swat," he said.
President Asif Ali Zardari has been indirectly involved in the dialogue after
growing increasingly concerned about civilian casualties in Swat, said an
official in the president's office who requested anonymity because he was not
authorized to release the information.
Overall security is deteriorating
in Pakistan, and several foreigners have been attacked or abducted in recent
months.
Also Monday, a spokesman for
kidnappers holding American John Solecki captive in
Pakistan said the deadline to negotiate for his release was extended for a
"few days" after appeals from "some international
organizations." On Friday, the captors said they would kill Solecki, a United Nations official, in 72 hours if their
demands were not met.
Solecki was
abducted on Feb. 2 in Quetta, a major city in the southwest near the Afghan
border. On Friday, his kidnappers threatened to kill him within 72 hours and
issued a 20-second video of the blindfolded hostage.
Shahak Baluch,
who claims to speak for the little-known Baluch United Liberation Front,
announced the extended deadline in a call to the Quetta Press Club.
The group's name indicates a link
to separatists rather than Islamic extremists. Its demands include the release
of 141 women allegedly held by Pakistani authorities, but Pakistan has denied
it is holding the women.
The U.N. has been trying to
establish contact with the kidnappers, officials said.
Associated Press Writer Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan and Zarar Khan and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Al Qaeda suspected of Pakistan's Marriott
bombing
Sun Sep 21, 2008
* U.S., Pakistani intelligence suspect al Qaeda
* Death toll at 53, includes Czech ambassador
* Pakistani prime minister sees threat to democracy
* Some expatriates consider leaving
By Aftab Borka
ISLAMABAD, Sept 21 (Reuters) - A suicide bomb attack that killed 53 people at
the Marriott Hotel in Pakistan's capital bore the hallmarks of an operation by
al Qaeda or an affiliate, Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials said on
Sunday.
Teams combing the burnt shell of the hotel found more charred bodies after the
blast on Saturday evening ignited a blaze that swept through the hotel, part of
a U.S.-based chain and a favourite haunt of diplomats
and wealthy Pakistanis.
Internal security in nuclear-armed Pakistan, a country vital to the war against
al Qaeda and other Islamist militant groups, has deteriorated alarmingly over
the past two years.
"The sophistication of the blast shows it's the work of al Qaeda," a
Pakistani intelligence officer told Reuters.
Four foreigners were killed including the Czech ambassador, his Vietnamese
partner and two members of the U.S. armed forces assigned to the U.S. embassy.
Denmark's security service said one of their staff, attached to the Danish
mission in the capital, was missing, presumed dead.
An American State Department employee was also missing, a spokesman said.
The Interior Ministry said 266 people were wounded, 11 of them foreigners,
after the bomber blew up a truck packed with 600 kg (1,320 lb)
of explosives including artillery shells, mortar bombs and shrapnel.
Pakistan's army is in the midst of an offensive against al Qaeda and Taliban
fighters in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border.
The United States has intensified attacks on militants on the Pakistani side of
the border, alienating many Pakistanis.
Militants have launched bomb attacks, most on security forces in the northwest,
in retaliation. Security analysts said the militants wanted to show they could
strike anywhere unless the government changed its policies.
"(It) underscores the ability of these groups to really challenge the
authority of the state in the heart of the capital," said Riffat Hussein, a professor of defence
studies.
An al Qaeda video, released to mark the seventh anniversary of the Sept 11,
2001, attacks in the United States, included a call for militants in Pakistan
to step up their fight.
ATTEMPT TO DESTABILISE PAKISTAN
"They want to destabilise the country. They want
to destabilise democracy. They want to destroy the
country economically," Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told reporters.
A civilian government led by Gilani was sworn in six months ago after nine
years of rule by former army chief and firm U.S. ally Pervez Musharraf. It is
also facing an economy on the verge of collapse.
The attack will be a big blow for foreign investment and will lead to further
weakening of the rupee which is already trading at a record low, dealers and
analysts said.
The attack was staged hours after new President Asif Ali Zardari,
widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, made his first
address to parliament, a few hundred metres from the
hotel, calling for terrorism to be rooted out.
Zardari called the bombing cowardly.
"This is an epidemic, a cancer in Pakistan which we will root out,"
he said in a televised address.
Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani said the army stood
with the nation in its resolve to defeat the forces of extremism and terrorism.
HUGE CRATER
Saturday's attack was the worst in the capital.
The blast left a crater 24 feet (7 metres) deep and
59 feet (18 metres) wide, ministry official Rehman
Malik told a news conference.
Malik showed security camera footage from the front of the hotel, which had
been bombed twice before, showing a truck trying unsuccessfully to force its
way through security barriers.
A small blast could be seen going off in the truck cab, apparently as the
bomber blew himself up with a grenade, which started a fire. Minutes, later,
after a guard tried to put out the fire with an extinguisher, the truck blew
up.
Flames and smoke poured out of the 290-room, five-storey
hotel located in a high security zone. Dozens of cars were destroyed and
windows shattered hundreds of metres away.
Survivors said hotel security men had warned guests to move to the back of the
building shortly before the bomb went off.
Most people managed to flee from the fire before it spread but a Reuters
photographer saw a body lying on a top floor balcony on Sunday morning.
Malik suggested the investigation would end up pointing to al Qaeda and Taliban
militants based in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on the Afghan
border.
"In previous attacks, all roads led to FATA," he said.
The United States was ready to assist with the investigation if requested, said
U.S. embassy spokesman Lou Fintor.
Some Islamabad-based expatriates were considering leaving, after shrugging off
smaller blasts in the city.
"I'll be speaking to my boss tomorrow," said Steve, a Briton working
in Islamabad who did not want to give his full name.
Zardari, who won a presidential election this month,
left for the United States on Sunday and is scheduled to meet President George
W. Bush in New York on Tuesday before the U.N. General Assembly. (Additional
reporting by Robert Birsel, Zeeshan Haider, Kamran
Haider, Augustine Anthony and Sahar Ahmed; Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore;
editing by Matthew Jones/Keith Weir)
Pakistan's schisms spill into present
By Zaffar Abbas
BBC Islamabad correspondent
Some had hoped that Pakistan's crackdown on
Islamic extremists would herald a period of religious harmony. Officials had
dared to believe that the relative peace of cities like Karachi and Quetta -
targets of bomb attacks in recent months - was a sign of the campaign's success
in eradicating religious extremism. But two bloody attacks in the first week of
October have proved them wrong. The deadly incidents in Sialkot and Multan
indicate that sectarian violence has come full circle. Extremist groups are
once again returning to the Punjab region where they began more than two
decades ago. The attacks also reveal that Sunni extremist groups have not been
the only ones to survive a recent ban. New groups of Shia extremists sprung
into life just as soon as the old ones were stifled by the authorities.
Deep roots
Differences between the majority Sunni and
minority Shia Muslims date back to the very earliest days of Islam. They are
directly linked to the issue of succession following the death of Prophet
Muhammad. The Shia believe that after Prophet Muhammad's death, his son-in-law,
Ali, should have been given the reins of administration. They still regard him
as the first imam or spiritual leader. The Sunni, however, believe that the
appointment of one of the Prophet's companions, Abu Bakr, as the first Caliph
was correct. The Sunnis also respect Ali as the fourth Caliph of Islam.
Schism
In AD661, Ali was murdered and his chief
opponent, Muawiya, became Caliph. It was the death of Ali that led to the great
schism between Sunnis and Shias. Muawiya laid the foundation of family rule in
Islam and he was later succeeded by his son, Yazid. But Ali's son Hussein
refused to accept his legitimacy, and fighting followed. Hussein and his
followers were massacred in battle near Karbala in AD680. The deaths of both
Ali and Hussein gave rise to the Shia characteristics of martyrdom and a sense
of betrayal. Even today, Shia all over the world commemorate the killing of
Hussein with vast processions of mourning in Pakistan and other parts of the
Muslim world.
'Messianic faith'
Shia Islam has always been the rigid faith of
the poor and oppressed, of those waiting for deliverance. It is seen as a
messianic faith - awaiting the coming of the "hidden imam", Allah's
messenger, who will reverse their fortunes and herald the reign of divine
justice. Today, the Shia make up about 15% of the total worldwide Muslim
population. In Pakistan, as in most Islamic countries, the differences between
Sunni and Shia were initially confined to academic debate, and violent
incidents were extremely rare. However, the situation took a dramatic turn in
the early 1980s. The change in the regional environment, and the emergence of a
political, albeit violent, Islam, introduced a new phenomenon of sectarianism
to Pakistan. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan brought funding from the US and
Saudi Arabia for (mostly Sunni) Islamic radical groups to fight against Kabul.
The Islamic revolution that ended the monarchy in Shia Iran ushered in a new
wave of Shia radicalism in the region. And when the then Pakistani military
ruler, General Zia-ul-Haq tried to introduce his own
concept of Sunni Islam to the country, a bloody conflict broke out. Radical
groups like Sipah-e-Sahaba and Tehrik-e-Jafria have their roots in the policies of those days. Many
believe that during this period, Pakistan became the battle ground for a proxy
war, a stage on which different countries and organisations
belonging to various schools of extremist Islam supported members of their
faith and belief. The phenomenon of the Taleban also fuelled this violence, as a number of Sunni extremist
groups found both a refuge and a training ground in Afghanistan. The violence
continued in different forms even after these countries stepped back. In the
last few years, new, more radical groups have emerged, and they target each
other with venom. Between the era of General Zia and General Musharraf,
successive political governments tried to tackle the problem, but without much
success.
Global jihad
The events of 11 September 2001 changed the
world - Pakistan dumped the Taleban and, in 2002,
President Musharraf launched a major campaign against Islamic extremists,
banning several groups. But within weeks many had resurfaced, with new names
but the same old intentions. They were again outlawed last year. Yet recent
history seems to suggest that declaring radical groups illegal does nothing to
solve the problem. In fact, some Sunni extremist groups have been refining
their agenda, joining hands with suspected Al-Qa'eda
groups in a so-called global jihad. At least two groups have been found to be
involved in attacks against other minorities, particularly Christians. And yet
another group was found to be involved in the two attacks on President
Musharraf's life in December 2003. The group's leader, Amjad Farooqui, was
recently killed in a gun-battle with security forces.
Bad year
Senior officials believe the present cycle of
violence is partly sectarian, and partly linked to the campaign by the
extremist groups to destabilise the government. They
say that, having been hit in Karachi and Quetta, the groups have now returned
to the Punjab to carry out their activities. Officials say the attack on the
Sunni gathering in Multan also suggests that after a series of attacks against
Shia mosques, a new group of extremists from within the community may have
emerged to avenge the killings. After a brief lull last year, 2004 has
particularly been a bad year. Since 1980, more than 4,000 people have been
killed in Shia-Sunni violence. And with new and more ferocious groups emerging
with an ever wider and more violent agenda, it is nearly impossible to say what
form it may take in the coming months and years.
A Report On
Rising Intolerance Towards The Religious Minorities Of Pakistan
Prepared by: RESEARCH & ADVOCACY CELL
CHRISTIAN LIBERATION FRONT PAKISTAN
Pakistan, an Islamic country is situated in
South Asia. With ever increasing religious intolerance against the non-Muslim
religious minorities, Pakistan remains one of the most glaring examples of
religious intolerance in the world.
This is an admitted fact that the religious
minorities, especially the Christian community contributed a lot in the making
of Pakistan. In the fields of health and education the services of Christian
community are meritorious. But the forces which opposed the creation of
Pakistan in 1947, are now targeting the minority communities. The government is
fully aware of the situation but no steps are taken to stop the discriminative
attitude towards the minorities.
In addition to severely limiting freedom of
speech and assembly, Blasphemy laws and other discriminatory laws, continue to
hang like naked swords on the heads of non-Muslim people i.e. Christians,
Hindus, Bheels, Maingwals,
Sikhs and the indigenous people (The fourth world). Section 295/C of the
Pakistan Penal Code (blasphemy law) imposes death penalty on anyone found to
have "by words or visible representation or by an imputation or
insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiled the name of the Prophet Mohammad
of Islam". Similarly any body
blamed as blasphemer against Koran would be awarded life imprisonment under
section 295/C of the Blasphemy Act.
Before the introduction of this law, no case of
blasphemy ever surfaced in Pakistan and no non-Muslim was ever blamed as a
blasphemer. But, after the introduction of blasphemy law in 1985, hundreds of
non-Muslims, mostly Christians, have either been killed by the Muslim fanatics
or made to flee from the country or put in jails where they face inhumane
treatment both at the hands of the Muslim Jail authorities and the Muslim
inmates. Any voice raised for the repeal of blasphemy laws, is ruthlessly
suppressed. On 11 January 2001, as many as 17 people were arrested for
participating in an anti "Blasphemy Laws" protest in Karachi. Though
three Christian detainees were released six days later, the incident
nonetheless demonstrates the methods of punishment and intimidation the
government uses to attack the freedom of expression and assembly, particularly
in relation to religious issues.
In another case, two Christian young men namely
Messrs Amjad and Asif from Jhang
were sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001, under section 295/B of the
blasphemy law.
In January this year, eight Christian
evangelists including one pastor Rev. Yousaf Masih from the city of Jacobabad
were arrested because they were showing a Christian film "WHO IS
JESUS" in a Christian locality of Jacobabad.
Very recently i.e. on April 1, 2001, a Christian
Teacher Mr. Parvez Masih of a village in Sialkot district, has been falsely
blamed as a blasphemer. His Muslim enemy, due to personal grudge, has
implicated him under section 295/C of the Blasphemy Act. Mr. Parvez Masih, has
been booked and put in the jail for a crime which he never committed and
penalty for the crime is death. The innocent Christian teacher was running a
school in his village. A Muslim teacher also established his own school. But
the school of Mr. Parvez Masih attracted more students due to his dedication as
a teacher. The Muslim fellow with his grudge against the Christian teacher,
ultimately implicated him in the case of blasphemy. The poor and innocent man,
just because of his Christian faith, is being persecuted in the jail. His old
parents and other members of his family are being targeted by the fanatic
Muslims of the area. There are twenty other Christian families, which, since
April 1st are living in a constant harassment.
Christians have definitely suffered under the
blasphemy laws. In 1998, Mr. Ayub Masih, a Christian
gentleman was sentenced to death though he was quite innocent. Unable to get Ayub released, Bishop John Joseph, a widely respected
non-violent activist for minority rights in Pakistan, committed hirakiri by shooting himself in the head.
The fanatic Islamists don’t show any leniency
in cases of blasphemy though such cases mostly are ill-founded. In 1996 Mr.
Justice Arif Iqbal Bhatti of the Lahore High court
was shot dead by a Muslim Fanatic because he had acquitted three Christian
fellows from blasphemy charges.
Last year another Judge of the Lahore High
Court Mr. Justice Nazir Akhtar became highly partial on the issue of blasphemy
laws. He declared that anybody blamed with blasphemy charges, should be instantly
killed on the spot by Muslims as a religious obligation. He further remarked
that there was no need of any legal proceedings for a blasphemer. These remarks
of the judge were published in the national print media.
This is a height of injustice that there are
scores of victims of blasphemy law who are being confined in jails. They are in
jails for the last so may years but no court is
prepared to dispose off their cases. They are
compelled to live under sub-human condition in jails. They suffer the severest
kind of persecution. No judge is ready for the trial of those prisoners.
In several cases of blasphemy laws, the accused
after untold suffering in jail, have been acquitted by the courts. But no
action is ever taken against to Muslim compliments who were responsible for
ruining the lives of the innocent accused who were falsely implicated under
blasphemy charges.
Like the blasphemy laws, the Hudood Ordinance
(The Quranic Laws) require strict adherence to Muslim practices and blatantly
discriminate against non-Muslims in a court of law. Women have particularly
suffered under these ordinances, as they are frequently and wrongfully charged
for sexual misconduct such as adultery. Although most women tried under the
ordinance are eventually acquitted, they must then endure the stigma of having
been under suspicion. The Koranic Laws (Hudood Ordinances) should not be
imposed on non-Muslims, but the irony of the fate is that these laws are now
stronger than ever.
Religious minorities are alienated and deprived
of equal access to justice in other ways. For instance
if a Muslim kills a non Muslim, the perpetrators may
compensate the victims family monetarily. If non Muslim kills a Muslim the
perpetrator faces prison or the death penalty. The Federal Sharia court (FSC)
ensures that all legislative acts and judicial pronouncements including those
of the supreme court are compatible with Islamic laws. The structure of Sharia
courts is an evidence that the government wants to impose a Taliban Style
theocratic rule in Pakistan. No Christian lawyer is allowed to appear in the
Federal Shariat Court though this court hears cases
of non-Muslim people.
Another area of institutionalized
discrimination relates to the electoral system. Pakistan is the only country in
the world where the system of Separate Electorates was imposed in 1985, against
the will of the minorities. Under this undemocratic system, people cannot vote
outside their religious affiliations. So non-Muslims citizens of this Islamic
State are severely disenfranchised. The separate electorate system has always
been denounced as a scheme of religious apartheid that promoted intolerance and
served the purpose divide and rule. In the recently held local bodies election
under the devolution plan the minorities boycotted the polls overwhelmingly
because they were conducted on the basis of separate electorates.
Though the present military administration
especially General Musharaf gave assurance for
improving the situation of minorities rights. But owing the vested interests
the recent local bodies election under the devolution plan were held on
separate electorates basis.
There have also been shocking cases of rape and
murder of Christian Women. On their way home from working at a factory eight
Christian girls, were gang raped at gunpoint by Muslim Men in May, 2000. In
1998, four Muslim men raped a seven year old girl
named Nagina. In February 2001, another Christian minor girl (a school student)
named Naira was abducted by an influential Muslim fellow. The culprit is still
at large and the girl still remains un recovered because the Muslim Police is favouring the Muslim abductor. In March 2001, a Christian
girl named Farhat Javed from Summandri,
Distt. Faisalabad, was abducted by Muslim influential people just one day
before her marriage.
When a Christian a Hindu
women is abducted, she is forced to change her religion. If under
coercion she does so her previous marriage under Islamic law becomes null and
void. Nobody bothers as to what would become of the children born in the
previous wedlock. Many families, because of this forcefull
conversion to Islam, have been ruined.
Clearly, non-Muslim religious minorities in
Pakistan, are de facto second class citizens. In
addition to facing direct discrimination in laws such as the blasphemy law and
the Koranic laws, the undemocratic separate Electorates, religious minorities
face severe mistreatment from militant members of the Muslim majority.
There is a wide spread social hatred against
the non-Muslim people. they are discriminated severely in eating places and
restaurants. Even in the era of 21st century, the barber’s shops in
Pakistan bear notices which read "Non-Muslims are not provided
services" This is all in the notice of the government but no body is prepared to put an end to this kind of social
hatred.
The militant wings of the Islamic religious
political parties, are also responsible for the rise of religious extremism in
Pakistan. Inspired by the Talibans, they are hell bent
to create a conflicting situation.
In a religious convention held in the first
week of April, at Peshawar under the title of "Deoband Conference"
the Muslim fanatics vowed that they would convert Pakistan into a theocratic
state like that of Afghanistan. About one million Muslims from all over the
world attended this conference.
Another religious convention of the hardline
Islamists was held in mid April by Laskar-e-Tayyaba. The 200,000 participants of this
conference near Lahore, vowed that they would make Pakistan a complete Muslim
state. The Muslim diehard declared that they would promote the culture of
beards like that of Talibans of Afghanistan. Through
a resolution, the Christian Mission Schools in Pakistan were condemned and it
was declared that all such schools were responsible for killing the Islamic
spirit of the Muslims. On the other hand plans were
made at this convention to open more Muslim religious schools to prepare young
boys (child soldiers) to wage holy war (Islamic Term) against the infidels.
(All the non-Muslims are infidels according to Islamic teachings). For this
purpose, fund raising is done extensively. These organizations are also funded
by International Islamic groups.
In 1998, Mr. Nawaz Sharif the then Prime
Minister, through the 15th constitutional Amendment, wanted to
impose Sharia in the country. But it was CLF, which by lobbying with the
senators, failed the move of the government and the sharia bill was blocked
from passage in the senate of Pakistan. Had this bill been passed it would have
played havoc with the non-Muslims citizens of Pakistan.
All the successive governments due to their
vested interests never bothered to improve the situation. It has rather gone
from bad to worse. When General Pervez Musharaf
grabbed power in October 1999, he declared that he would take measures to
improve the conditions of the minority communities of Pakistan. He, in a Human
Rights Convention in April 2000, proposed to improve the procedure for the
registration of cases under blasphemy laws. but threatened by militant fanatic
Islamists, he had to revert his decision.
In 1974, through a constitutional amendment,
the government of Pakistan declared the Ahmedi
community as non-Muslim minority. So the practice of Ahmedi faith is severely restricted by law. Their religious
freedom is restricted and they are facing lots of hardships.
According to the constitution of Pakistan the
President and the Prime Minister of Pakistan must be Muslims who through their
oath have to declare their Muslim faith and to preserve the Islamic ideology of
the country.
Teaching of Islamiat
(Islamic studies) in compulsory in the school and colleges of the country for
the Muslim students. While students of other faiths are not required to study Islam they are not provided with parallel opportunities to
study their own faiths. the Muslim teachers compel the non Muslim students to complete courses of Islamic
Studies.
Many Christian and Ahmedi
students report that they face discrimination in applying to government educational
institutions due to their religious affiliations. They are supposed to reflect
their religion on their application forms.
The low caste Hindu community is a highly
marginalized group. They, under economic compulsions, are involved in bonded labour. They are backward and their human rights are not
recognized. They are often labelled as agents of India aid thus looked down
upon.
The other religious minorities i.e. Sikhs,
Bhais, Budhists and indiginous
groups face hardships on religious grounds in Pakistan.
The prevailing scenario foretells that if
measures are not taken and activities of the hard liners are not checked,
Pakistan would turn into a religious apartheid state where non-Muslim will
remain slaves of the Muslim majority. This is a question of life and death for
the 14 million people of the minorities of Pakistan.
Christian Liberation Front Pakistan (CLF),
which is a leading human rights organization of the minorities, has been
struggling for the repeal of discriminatory laws. The mission of CLF, as is
significant from its nomenclature, is to work for the liberation of the
oppressed minorities from their social subjugation, religious discrimination
and economic deprivation.
CLF since its inception in 1985, has been
highlighting the issues of non-Muslim minorities at national and international
level through research, lobbying, advocacy and awareness.
We provide legal and other assistance to the
victims of blasphemy and other discriminatory laws and to their families. Owing
to their backwardness and marginalization, the religious minorities of Pakistan
are voiceless people and CLF speaks for them who cannot speak for themselves.
Washington Report,
September/October 2005, page 33
The Subcontinent
Reacting to the charge that Muslims
are “the terrorists,” Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, in a July 21
televised address to the nation, strongly rejected the accusation, saying that
a handful of “misguided” youth do not represent the world’s over one billion
Muslims. He also denied that the four men reportedly responsible for the July 7
London bombings were trained in Pakistan, pointing to the fact that three of
the four were born and brought up in England, and hardly spent any time in
Pakistan, and that the fourth was not even of Asian heritage.
Urging the British government to
dig deeply to identify the causes producing such angry men in the U.K. and
elsewhere, Musharraf also acknowledged the unrest in his own country. He traced
it back “26 years,” when Pakistan joined with the United States in throwing the
Soviet Union out of Afghanistan and bringing about the eventual collapse of its
government. “In the process,” said Musharraf, “U.S. military and economic aid
poured in to train and produce the Afghan refugees into a fighting force of
Mujahedeen.”
The Pakistani leader expressed deep
regret that, when the task was completed, “the U.S. folded its bags and walked
away,” leaving behind a country (Afghanistan) that was engulfed in civil war.
“Pakistan,” Musharraf added, “inherited a drug and Kalashnikov culture” from
its northern neighbor that produced the angry Taliban religious zealots
emerging from the madrassas. “We are, therefore, in the forefront of the
war against terrorism,” he added, reminding the world that “no country has done
more” than Pakistan to curb al-Qaeda.
Musharraf warned that his
government will not tolerate any kind of extremism that spreads sectarian
hatreds or acts of violence. Advocating his favorite recipe of “enlightened
moderation,” he emphasized that “Islam abhors extremism,” and promised to do
everything in his means to establish a tolerant and peaceful society in
Pakistan.
In another televised speech 10 days
later addressing foreign journalists and Pakistani elites, President Musharraf
came down hard on the organizations and religious leaders running the country’s
more than 12,000 madrassas, or religious schools. “All [1,400] foreign
students must leave the country forthwith,” he decreed, and ordered that all madrassas
be properly registered with the government by Dec 31, 2005. The process
will require all religious institutions to describe their management structures
and provide financial statements indicating the source of their funding, along
with lists of staffs and enrolled students, curriculum, etc. According to
Minister for Religious Affairs Ejaz ul Haq, a similar
law was introduced in 2003 but was never implemented.
Musharraf’s order expelling all
foreign students from the madrassas has drawn sharp criticism from
various circles, including the chief of the ruling Muslim League party, Chaudhri Shujaat, who already has met with President
Musharraf on the subject. Fears are being expressed that the order could strain
relations with several Muslim countries, whose students may instead attend madrassas
in India.
The North West Frontier Province’s
(state) government, controlled by the Muttahida
Majlis-e-Ammal (MMA) conglomerate of religious
parties, has passed the Hisbah Act establishing a Taliban-type parallel
judicial system. The Act proposes strict shariah laws to be enforced and
adjudicated by the Hisbah courts, and imposes severe restrictions on individual
freedom, especially with regard to women. Under the new law, the principal duty
of the mohtasib—the official who holds
everyone accountable—is observance of the five daily prayers, separation of
unrelated males and females, and to discourage singing and dancing. The NWFP’s
opposition Pakistan People’s Party called it an “obscurantist pipedream” that
attempts to “Talibanize” Pakistan.
In response to a request by
President Musharraf‘s central government in Islamabad that Pakistan’s Supreme
Court reveiw the Act to determine if it violates the
provisions of the country’s constitution, the court issued a summary judgment
in early August declaring that parts of the Act are in violation of the
constitution, and asking the NWFP governor not to sign it into law.
As part of the government’s
privatization process, Islamabad handed over management and ownership control
of the Pakistan Telecommunications System to the highest bidder, from the
United Arab Emirates (UAE). Ironically, this change coincided with a rupture in
the undersea cable line that connects Pakistan’s telecommunications system with
the rest of the world. Because technicians had to come from Singapore to fix
it, it took almost two weeks to repair the line. Having already suffered a loss
of over $30 million, Pakistan now faces the possible loss of several foreign
customers. A second, alternate safety cable had been suggested in the past, but
Pakistani managers never agreed to it. As a result, Pakistan’s
telecommunications sector is at great risk.
Enough is enough
M V KAMATH
It is now close to six decades since the great
Indian sub-continent was partitioned and Pakistan brought into existence, on
the dubious principle that provinces with a Muslim majority constitute a State
on their own. The two-nation theory propagated by Mohammad Ali Jinnah now
stands debunked, especially following the break-up of the old Pakistan and the
setting up of Bangladesh as a separate State, on the equally dubious grounds of
linguistic incompatibility.
The setting up of Bangladesh stuck at the very
roots of the two-nation theory. It also demolished Pakistan's pretence that the Muslim majority State of Jammu &
Kashmir belonged to it by natural right. In pursuance of that illusion,
Pakistan has waged three wars against India and has lost all three. Having
failed to annex Jammu & Kashmir by force, Pakistan, since the early 1990s
has taken resource to war by other means, unleashing terrorism not only in
Jammu & Kashmir but also in India, but to no effect. All that the
terrorists have succeeded in achieving is to kill innocent women and children.
The latest outrage was perpetrated in Delhi on the eve of Diwali. In practical
terms it has had no effect. Apart from the grief felt by the families of those
killed and wounded, Delhi's citizens have shown extraordinary fortitude in the
face of dire circumstances. If by now Pakistan has not realised
that not war, not terrorism, nor subtle pressure brought to bear on Delhi would
ever get it Jammu & Kashmir.
A former 'Prime Minister' of Pakistan occupied
Kashmir Sardar Mohammad Abdul Gayyum was recently
reported as saying that 'an independent Kashmir is not possible in the next one
hundred years' if ever. Obviously that truth has not sunk in among the
policymakers in Islamabad.
The question naturally arises: how long is
Pakistan going to support mindless terrorism, even knowing fully way after the
experience of six decades, that it can never capture Jammu & Kashmir
whether by force, terrorism or other means?
For 60 long years India has patiently put up
with Pakistani bestiality. During these years Pakistan depended on the
undeclared support largely of Britain and the United States, and so could get
away with murder and mayhem. But hasn't the time now come for India to declare
that enough is enough? And that should there be another repetition of Delhi,
Pakistan may have to pay a grievous price? It is claimed that following the
Delhi outrage, India has taken a tough line towards Pakistan.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is reported to
have protested in unequivocal terms with Pakistan President Musharraf. Even the
UN Security Council has now been moved to pass a strong resolution stressing
'the importance of bringing the perpetrators, organisers,
financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts of violence to justice',
its finger indubitably pointed towards Pakistan. Who else would be guilty of
perpetrating, organising, financing and sponsoring
anti-India terrorism but Pakistan, though Bangladesh is not too far behind?
The Security Council's Delhi-specific directive
may not have identified Pakistan by name as the sponsor of terrorism, but when
the directive calls on UN member-States 'to cooperate actively with the Indian
authorities in this regard', Islamabad surely was the target.
Pakistan has long attempted to rationalise terrorist attacks on India as the work of
god-fearing 'freedom fighters'. The attack on Delhi's market places has torn
down that mask. And this has now been at last seen through by the Security
Council which in its latest resolution has affirmed that 'terrorism in all its
forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to
international peace and security', adding that 'any acts of terrorism are
criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of motivation, wherever, whenever and by
whosoever committed'.
In the circumstances Pakistan does not have a
leg to stand on. True, Musharraf has been quick to condemn the Delhi
marketplace attacks and offered to cooperate fully with Indian investigations
but does he have to be told that his regime has all along been known to give
shelter to terrorists such as Dawood Ibrahim, Maulana Massod
Azhar, Hafeez Saeed, Syed Salahuddin and others akin?
Unfortunately, the UN Security Council does
nothing more than pass resolutions. Why doesn't it take action against
Pakistan? If the United States, fully supported by Britain, can wage war
against Iraq falsely implicating that Iraq was engaged in producing weapons of
mass destruction, without the Security Council's backing, surely Washington can
take stern and positive action against Pakistan on solid grounds? No one found
any evidence of Iraq engaged in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. But
there is plenty of evidence to show that Pakistan is harbouring
terrorists. Isn't that sufficient ground for the US to wage war against
Pakistan? What is Washington waiting for? Another 9/11?
It must be stated in clear terms that American
hands are not much cleaner either. It was the United States that encouraged
jihadi elements in Pakistan and in other Islamic countries to create havoc in
Afghanistan to oust the Soviet-backed government in Kabul. Washington can't
pretend to be innocent on this score. Those very jihadi elements that it once
actively supported are now engaged in spreading death and destruction in India.
If the United States has not learnt this, it has learnt nothing. India must now
tell the United States specifically, and the UN Security Council in general,
that it has had enough of Pakistan-sponsored jihadis and would feel free to
teach Pakistan a lesson that it will never forget. It is not enough for Delhi
to talk tough. It must in future resort to action as suits its needs. If it has
to be war, let it be. But the world should not be left in any doubt that India
means business.
Pakistan's official excuse is that it has
nothing to do with jihadis, hate-spouting madrassahs and violence-prone
fundamentalists. No one takes its word as truth. Either Musharraf is a liar or
he is unable to control the jihadis in either case India now has the right to
take suitable action against its neighbour. According
to information available, over 50,000 innocent citizens have so far been killed
by jihadis in the last decade, but Pakistan insists that it is not accountable
for these bloody murders. It is time it is called to account. It is primarily
the task of Islamabad's patron, the United States. If it is unwilling to take
the necessary step, then it is time for the Security Council to do the needful.
Its latest resolution is fairly unambiguous. But what is necessary is immediate
and meaningful action. India's patience is wearing thin. And it must let it be
known in clear terms in places that matter. Like the White House.
(The author is a veteran journalist and chief
of the Prasar Bharati.)
Christian leaders urge Pakistan president to
repeal blasphemy law
PAKISTAN 15 November, 2005
The Christian community has called a
protest strike on 17 November in the wake of violence and destruction of
churches and Christian places in Sangla Hill. The
public security forces are under fire for their alleged inefficiency.
Lahore (AsiaNews) – Christian
religious leaders in Pakistan today wrote an open letter to the president,
Pervez Musharraf, to call for justice, proper investigations and above all an
assurance that “Christians in Pakistan are citizens like the rest”. The letter
follows recent events in Sangla Hill.
On 10 November, an angry mob of
around 2,000 people vandalised and set fire to three
churches, a nuns’ convent, two Catholic schools, the homes of a protestant
pastor and a parish priest, a girls’ hotel and the homes of some Christians,
all in the village of Sangla Hill in Nankana district
in Punjab. The attacks were sparked by a presumed case of blasphemy. The
leaders called “once more” for the laws to be repealed, saying that their
shortcomings have been revealed “yet again”.
We reproduce the text of their
letter in full:
We religious leaders of the
Christian churches condemn this massive attack and we demand a high-level
judicial inquiry and exemplary punishment to all the culprits responsible for
this deliberate outrage.
The concerned police officers
should be immediately suspended until the findings of the judicial inquiry are
concluded.
The ferocity of the attacks has
left us stunned. What provoked such heinous sacrileges? It was a baseless rumour that Yusaf Masih, a local
Christian, had set the Quran on fire.
The fact of the matter is that Yusaf was playing a game with two Muslims who lost a large
sum of money. They asked him to return the money back and when he refused, they
turned round and accused him of burning the Quran, the letter stated.
On investigation it revealed that a
few pages of Quranic verses were lying in a tin box and these were burned by
someone and Yusaf was accused. But this allegation
has yet to be proved.
Tension built up over the alleged
blasphemy on Friday evening, when certain maulvis (Muslim clerics) began to
incite the people on the mosque loudspeakers.
The parish Priest, Fr Samson Dilawar, informed the police on Friday night, twelve hours
before the attack. They sent a token force of a few policemen.
But the next morning, at the moment
of the attack, there were hardly any policemen on guard duty. They only came in
force three hours later after the crowd had dispersed.
The role of the law enforcing
agencies in this case needs to be thoroughly investigated because they have
deliberately neglected their duty, even after being warned.
The sentiments of the Christian
community are profoundly shocked and hurt by these heinous acts of desecration
on their sacred places of worship.
We strongly condemn these attacks
as acts of terrorism against a weak and defenseless religious minority.
These are not the work of an
emotional mob but well trained militants who came from
outside armed with sophisticated incendiary powders that produce high-density
heat. The ceiling fans and roof girders melted from the intense heat.
The incident sharply reveals the
ineffectiveness of the new rules of the Blasphemy law. And once again we call
for a total repeal of this Law.
Our people feel very much afraid
and insecure and only strong affirmative action on the part of your government
will reassure them about the truth of your of repeated
statement that “Christians are equal citizens of this country”.
To register our deep dismay and sadness
at the wanton desecration of our three churches and Sisters’ convent and
schools, we intend to close all our educational institutions on Thursday,
November 17, 2005.
If no action is taken, this will be
followed by others forms of protest.
Signed by
Mgr Lawrence
John Saldanha, Archbishop of Catholic Archbishop of Lahore and President
Catholic Bishops’ Conference
Reverend Alexander J. Malik,
Moderator, Church of Pakistan,
Victor Azariah, National Council of
Churches in Pakistan,
Col. Gulzar Patras, Territorial
Commander, Salvation Army.
Archbishop of Canterbury calls for Pakistan
blasphemy review
-26/11/05
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has called on President
Musharraf of Pakistan to review the country’s controversial blasphemy law. The
Archbishop is in Pakistan to visit quake-stricken zones in the north, to meet
with church leaders, and to promote inter-faith understanding.
The appeal from the spiritual head of the world’s 77 million Anglicans comes a
few days after the violence perpetrated against the Christian community of Sangla Hill.
On 12 November 2005, a crowd of 2,000 angry Muslims vandalized and then set
fire to three churches, a convent, two Catholic schools, the homes of a pastor
and a parish priest and a hostel for girls, as well as the homes of some local
residents.
The rioting was the result of hard-liners alleging that Yousaf Masih, a
Christian, burned copies of the Qur’an on 11 November 2005.
But neighbours say that he is an innocent illiterate
caught up in a local argument about money which has spawned a potent urban myth.
In Pakistan the blasphemy law hands down the death penalty for apostasy or for
desecrating the Qur’an, together with severe penalties for other more minor
offences.
Dr Williams has been careful to develop mutually respectful dialogue with
Muslim leaders in Pakistan. In a lecture to Islamic scholars in Islamabad
earlier in the week he sought to correct popular misunderstandings of
Christianity, such as the idea that it worships three gods.
The Archbishop has also said on his visit that “Islam and Christianity are part
of the same story that is told differently.” He added that that Christianity is
not a Western religion, but one with its founding roots in Asia.
Turning to blasphemy, Dr Williams questioned “a law whose penalty is so severe
and whose practice gives so many loopholes [as] to allow people to indulge in
arbitrary violence by appealing to blasphemy.”
He called on the Pakistani government to review the law, and to ensure justice
and fair treatment for Christians and other minorities alongside the Muslim
majority.
In trying to reduce the support base of militant Islamists, President Musharraf
is known to be in a quandary over this issue. He has condemned the violence
against Christian communities.
However he has also been keen to be seen denouncing
the alleged desecration of the Qur’an, in spite of the lack of evidence for it.
Meanwhile Christian and other minority leaders say that the police and the
military are not doing enough to stamp out communal violence and abuse.
The Christian presence in the Islamic State: By
Nadeem Zia, France
The Islamic republic of Pakistan appeared on
the world map on August 14, 1947. The struggle for independence started much
earlier than official partition. The population of the country is about 148
million. The minorities form approximately 3% of the total population and the
Christians constitute 1.8% of the total population. The purpose is to explore
the opportunities and challenges that are faced by the minority Christians in
the context of the majority Muslims with whom they have to interact in
Pakistan.
The Religion of the Majority
To understand the opportunities and
difficulties of the Christian minorities in Pakistan, it is essential to know
about the religion of the majority. In order to understand the religion of the
majority one has to familiarize oneself with the belief, worship, practice and
their application in daily life. The kind of religion that has developed in
subcontinent is intolerant and intransigent. Dr. Kamran Ahmed writes in the
interpretation, “there is no room for doubt, no chance of multiplicity of
truth-claims, no freedom for Muslims to convert to other religions and there is
a very strong sense of duty to fight in the name of religion. Thus the doctrinal apparatus of formal Islam that has
developed here is against the spirit of pluralism.” Although the Sufi tradition
was quite tolerant but intolerance overpowered this tradition. In this context
the Christian minority has availed itself of some opportunities and has
encountered some difficulties as well.
Education
One area or field in which the Christians can
interact with the Muslim brethren and sisters is the Christian school. The
Christian schools, especially catholic schools, run by the nuns are considered
the best educational institutes in the country, where moral, social, spiritual
and religious values are imparted in the daily discharge of duties. They cater
to the integral development of the students. During their entire stay in the
school, the parents and students experience something of the Christian religion
such as love, goodness, peace, concern, tolerance, honesty, hard work,
discipline, responsibility and punctuality. They too in return influence them
and they try to change their attitudes.
This is a place of dialogue where teachers meet
from time to time not only to discuss the progress of the students, but also to
interchange ideas on social and cultural affairs. This gives them an
opportunity to meet other parents and exchange ideas. Thus
schools become a place for a dialogue of life.
Another positive attitude that is furnished by
the schools is active participation of all the parents towards the welfare of
the weak and the needy. The people offer financial help to schools. This
experience is also another way of dialogue of life.
Difficulties
In general the life of
the minority Christians is a little hard. It contains some elements of
violence, corruption, and revenge. It is therefore, very natural that this
aspect operates in the schools as well. Since Christian schools cannot
accommodate all the students of the area, at the time of admission, there comes
a lot of pressure, threats, bribes, donations and recommendations. If none-of these work, then the heads of the school and even teachers
become the victims of revenge in different forms.
Another difficulty, which is faced by our
people, is the school Syllabi. The textbooks used in schools are politically
and ideologically influenced and only provide a limited and one-sided
viewpoint. This leads to student intolerance and prejudice. The remedy to this
problem could be the introduction of universal and global issues in the
textbooks and the contents of the course. The textbooks could be made more
universal than local. The private sector is more open to this, but the
Government policies encourage and foster the introduction of ideology.
Health
The Christian Hospitals too have played a
crucial role in building up positive and good relationships with all the
people. In these hospitals, the real dialogue of life takes place when the
doctors, nurses and paramedical staff go beyond their role playing. The service
of healing without consideration of caste, creed, and race and gender
distinction creates an impact on the people. The dignity and self-esteem of the
patient is hereby maintained. These hospitals are also models
and examples of good care, discipline, good service and hygiene.
These Christian hospitals have also provided
opportunities for training of nurses. Nurses trained in these Christian
hospitals, are much respected and have more chances of jobs in any good
hospital in the country as well as abroad.
One of the main difficulties faced by our
Christian students is that the administration of many hospitals has been given
to Muslim Doctors. As a result the number of
admissions of the Christian students in these hospitals is very limited and it
is much more difficult for them to get admission in Government run hospitals
and nursing schools. Sometimes, the interaction between the Christian nurses
and the Muslim doctors leads to a marriage, which creates a lot of social and
religious problems.
Faith Education
The early Missionaries in general and those in
Pakistan in particular made many conversions to Christianity in the
subcontinent. The converts were mostly from the lower class or the scheduled
class. Being originally from low class Hindu and Muslim background, their attitude
towards life and people were very passive and submissive and without
self-esteem. Conversions did not change their attitude. Most Christians are
sanitation workers in Pakistan. And they are looked down by people of the
majority and those holding high offices.
The Muslim community in the subcontinent has
always been a ruling class. They have not forgotten their role as rulers and
therefore they carry this complex in normal life. On the other hand, the
majority of Christians has always experienced discrimination. The Christians
have never, in the history of the sub-continent, played any key role at the
Government level. Even illiterate and uneducated Muslims consider themselves
superior to the educated Christian.
The janitors and those who work in the houses
of Muslims are humiliated, maltreated and degraded in many ways and forms. The
women and young girls who go to different houses for laundry and cleaning are
many times raped and sometime forcefully converted to Islam. Many times when there is no other reason to fire them, the owner
will simply accuse them of theft, knowing that there is no one to back them.
Therefore, it has become imperative that these people have to be conscientized
and restored to dignity and self-esteem. Inter-faith dialogue has to begin
after addressing these issues.
There is no doubt that there are many educated
Christians and many educated Muslims who are working for the harmony and mutual
understanding of both faiths, peace and tolerance. But this is confined only to
the intellectual circle, whereas the majority of the people are uneducated. We
are not denying the great impact of the dialogue maintained at this level, but
this does not fill the gap, which lies between the common people of two
religions.
Common people are always involved in the
dialogue of life in their daily routine work. At the level of ordinary life
people are quite open to extend a helping hand to their neighbors. This
dialogue operates at the level of exchanging food at the time of feasts and
other celebrations; borrowing foodstuff, requesting favors from children to
perform petty jobs. The children of the same street become friends and maintain
this friendship even after they are grown up.
Another need that requires careful attention
for people of both religions is to reconsider and reevaluate the concept of
sacred and profane. The notion of sacredness plays an important role in the
lives of Muslims. In the name of religion, one goes against the sacredness of
life. It can create chaos and people can unintentionally hurt the religious and
sacred feelings of their brothers and sisters. To deal harshly with such cases,
there exists a law in the penal code of Pakistan known as "The Blasphemy
Law." 29SC.
Popular Devotions
The common people usually follow popular
devotions. It provides spiritual, psychological and social satis6dion to the
people of both religions at the national Marian shrine at Mariamabad
one can meet Muslims as well as Christians paying their homage to Mary. On the
other hand, Christians go to the shrine of Bahauddin
Zakariya or Bhaga Sher at Multan and Data Darbar at
Lahore. Many people return to Mariamabad every year
to thank God for the favors received. Most of the time, Muslim women visit the
shrine in order to ask for the favors of a child. The Holy Quran mentions
Jesus, Mary and other prophets as worthy of reverence.
Social, Legal and Political System
The religion has been the cause of
discriminatory laws in the country. It is the society, which interprets it for
its own benefits. The subcontinent had experienced caste system; feudal system
in India and Pakistan, and some elements of the colonial mentality is still
prevalent.
On the other hand, the poor are humiliated,
discriminated against, degraded and punished even for a minor fault. Because of
this experience, the social, cultural, moral, and religious values of both the
groups differ from each other. To fill this need we need to provide education
to the poor to help them begin the upward mobility. And avail them of the economic
progress.
The Process of Islamization and the legal and
political system are a threat to the Christians. The most serious and deeply
felt threat is that they are not included in the main stream. Thus they are considered “second-class citizens”, and this
means that they are deprived of many basic rights. The blasphemy laws, quota
system for admission in different professional institutes, and family and
marriage problems are some of the instances of discrimination. This is against
the wishes of the founder of Pakistan, the Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah,
who in the charter of the rights on 11th August 1947 said: “we are all citizens
and equal citizens of the state. You may belong to any religion or caste and
creed that have nothing to do with the business of the State. You will no
doubt; agree with me that the first duty of the Government is to maintain law
and order, so that the life property and the religious beliefs of its subjects
are fully protected”.
As Pakistan is considered an ideological state
based on religion, all non-Muslims are treated as religious minorities. It is
the government’s obligation to protect all the rights and interests of the
non-Muslims. We have already entered into the third Millennium. We earnestly
wish that the world may become the place of peace for all who are
discriminated, suppressed and oppressed. It is believed that Christianity is a
religion of Law and Islam is the religion of peace - law and peace brings
harmony. And harmony means bringing a faith dialogue. A human being has to
develop himself into a man of hope, faith and love. And “Love alone can heal
the world”.
Nadeem ZIA
Paris Arch-Diocese
28/08/2006
Pakistan's gleaming surgical instruments, export
tarnished by child labor
Thursday, December 7,
2006
SIALKOT, Pakistan
The ceaseless sound of tapping metal echoes
through these muddy, garbage-strewn alleys where thousands of workers in
crumbling brick hovels churn out one of Pakistan's most successful exports —
surgical instruments.
Home to more than 2,000 instrument makers, this
city is one of the world's top producers of high-precision scalpels, forceps
and retractors, almost all of which are bound for emergency rooms in the United
States and other rich countries, where they help to save lives.
Yet, most patients a world away are unaware
that the gleam of these spotless tools are often tarnished by the toil of child
workers slogging away in dank workshops clouded with metal dust and earning
just a few dollars (euros) a month.
That is starting to change, thanks to a United
Nations-backed industry initiative to put child laborers back in school.
While the program underlines Pakistan's growing
determination to tackle one of its biggest social scourges, it highlights how
difficult eradicating child labor can be in a country where per capita income
is only US$736 (€553.51) a year.
"I like to work," says 12-year-old
Kabir Qadeer, who has done odd jobs at a dental instrument maker for the past
year-and-a-half for 1,100 rupees (US$18; €13) a month. "I had no interest
in school and quit. So my mother told me to get a
job."
Today, Qadeer is back at school — albeit for
only two hours a day after his seven-hour shift — under a program sponsored by
the U.N. International Labor Organization and the Surgical Instrument
Manufacturers Association of Pakistan, or SIMAP.
Launched in 2000, the program is modeled after
a similar initiative that has won international acclaim for reducing child
labor in Sialkot's booming soccer ball and sports equipment industry, which
supply companies like Nike and Adidas.
When the program wraps up its second phase on
Dec. 31, it will have taken more than 2,600 of an estimated 5,000 child
laborers out of the surgical tool industry.
The next phase, through 2008, will target the
remainder.
"We felt it was our responsibility to do
something," said Syed Waseem Abbas, senior vice chairman of SIMAP, and
chief executive of Professional Hospital Furnishers.
No children are employed by SIMAP's 2,300
members, according to the ILO.
The problem, however, lies with subcontractors
that do as much as 70 percent of the finished product for bigger companies in
town. There are 2,000 of these tiny workshops, sometimes employing only a
couple of people each and often operating below the radar of monitors.
Precision work on heavy equipment such as lathes is not usually done by
children, but they are routinely employed in jobs such as cleaning and sorting.
Nike's recent clash with its Sialkot supplier
of hand-stitched soccer balls shows how child labor often slips through the
cracks. Last month, Nike canceled orders from Saga Sports after accusing the
company of farming out work to subcontractors that used underaged workers.
International outcry about surgical instruments
is quiet, by contrast, partly because Sialkot's medical goods are resold
countless times by international wholesalers.
Sometimes equipment made here is even stamped
"made in Germany" at the request of middlemen worried about
Pakistan's image — further obscuring their origin.
Sialkot's roots in surgical instruments stretch
back centuries to the Punjabi swordsmiths of the Mogul empire. But it got its
modern boost during World War II, when British colonial authorities called on
the city's craftsmen for badly needed medical supplies.
Nowadays, the city pumps out 100 million
instruments a year, and the United States and Germany are its biggest markets.
International buyers may pay Sialkot suppliers US$2 (€1.5) for forceps that
eventually fetch upward of US$60 (€45) when sold to a hospital, Abbas said.
The gap is part of the problem, say some labor
rights activists.
Fairer trade would give Sialkot companies a
bigger slice of the final sale and allow them to raise pay and improve working
conditions of their employees.
"The solution lies in purchasers promoting
fair trade, rather than a simple 'we won't buy child labor.' This only makes
the poor poorer," says Mahmood Bhutta, a doctor
in Britain who has written on surgical instrument labor and is trying to set up
a fair-trade supplier.
But many poor Pakistani families rely on
incomes from their children to get by. UNICEF, the UN's child agency, estimates
there are 3.6 million working boys and girls under age 14 in Pakistan, mostly
engaged in carpet weaving, brick making, agriculture and deep
sea fishing.
"The problem with our country is that we
accept child labor as a way of life," said Fazila Gulrez,
spokeswoman for the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child.
"There's not a single economic sector in Pakistan where children are not
employed."
Twelve-year-old Qadeer is among those
apparently satisfied with the status quo.
Gathering half-finished dental probes from the
grit-covered factory floor, he says he can't wait to turn 15 so he can graduate
to the grinders, lathes and other machines reserved for his elders. His boss,
who started work at 14, has promised 100 rupees (US$1.60; €1.2) a day then.
Pakistan's crisis deepens
Declan Walsh in Islamabad
Friday July 6, 2007
The sense of crisis gripping Pakistan swelled
today as a bloody mosque siege stretched into its fourth day, suspected
militants targeted President Pervez Musharraf's plane and a suicide bomber
killed six soldiers near the Afghan border.
Gunfire rang out in a congested district of
Rawalpindi in the morning, shortly after a plane carrying Gen Musharraf took
off. The aircraft was not hit and police traced the shots to a nearby house
where they found a rifle and an anti-aircraft gun on the roof.
Security officials described it as a failed
assassination attempt but the main military spokesman, Major General Waheed Arshad, said that only the AK-47 rifle had been
discharged, suggesting the president was in only limited danger.
Gen Musharraf's plane landed safely in western
Baluchistan province, where recent floods killed 200 people and left hundreds
of thousands homeless. The military leader has already survived two
assassination attempts, a fact that has burnished his reputation as a warrior
against militancy amongst western allies.
The degree to which extremism has taken root
during Gen Musharraf's eight-year rule of Pakistan was clear in nearby
Islamabad, however, where his troops continued their siege of the Red Mosque
complex.
Bursts of heavy gunfire coupled with deafening explosions
erupted from the mosque throughout the day, interspersed with loudhailer
appeals from officers calling on the militants inside to give themselves up.
An estimated 400-500 students were inside the
mosque, 60 of them heavily armed with automatic weapons, grenades and petrol
bombs, according to the interior minister. The remainder are said to be mostly
children, about half of them girls. Their leader, the radical cleric Abdul
Rashid Ghazi, declared he would rather die than surrender.
"We can be martyred but we will not court
arrest," he said in a defiant interview with a local television station.
"We are more determined now."
The minister of state for information, Tariq
Azim, dismissed the talk of martyrdom as a bluff, noting that Ghazi's brother
Abdul Aziz had already been captured trying to flee the mosque under the
disguise of a burka.
Ghazi denied he was forcing students as young
as five to remain inside the bullet-marked mosque, but worried parents waiting
outside told a different story.
At lunchtime his militants opened fired on a
group of relatives as they approached the mosque, shooting one man in the foot.
He limped back to army lines and was sent to hospital.
"They say they are Islamic but they go
outside in a burka," raged Babar Khan, who was waiting for his two teenage
cousins. "Meanwhile poor children are going to die."
The siege has traumatized Islamabad, a
carefully planned and often lethargic city where residents like to joke about
the dullness of life. The Red Mosque is in the heart of G-6, a tree-lined neighbourhood popular with Pakistani bureaucrats and
foreign diplomats.
Since Tuesday G-6 has been cut off from the
outside world by barbed wire and troops with orders to shoot on sight.
Residents have been roused from sleep by barrages of gunfire and explosion.
"It's been absolutely terrifying," said one.
An indefinite curfew was briefly lifted today
to allow residents to seek food or escape to a safer sector.
The rise of violent extremism was also
highlighted in Dir, a remote town in North West Frontier province, where a
suicide bomber flung himself at an army convoy. Six soldiers were killed and
three injured, Reuters reported.
Urban Pakistanis split
on militants
As violence intensifies once again in the
tribal areas, polls reveal divisions among the middle class on whether a
military response is the best answer to extremism.
By Shahan Mufti
Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the October 31, 2007 edition
Reporter Shahan Mufti discusses how the
Pakistani middle class is affected by the ongoing struggle between the army and
militants.
Islamabad, Pakistan - The suicide bombing a
few kilometers away from the Army's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi on
Tuesday afternoon left at least seven dead and dozens wounded. It also
reinforced fears that Pakistan's more rapidly modernizing major cities and
towns may now feel the fight that the Pakistani Army has lately taken to the
militants in its remote tribal areas.
Despite the increasing violence, many educated
urban-dwellers – part of a growing middle class of moderate, educated Pakistanis
– find themselves stuck in the middle of a war that they are still reluctant to
embrace as their own. The public's lack of ownership for the conflict has led
to an emerging dialogue here as to whether meeting the Taliban threat with
conventional military attacks will do more to incite violence than to quell it.
There is also a growing perception among
educated Pakistanis that it is America's failure in Afghanistan that has pushed
Pakistan into the global war on terrorism and has emboldened extremes on both
sides in the process.
A poll released Wednesday by the Program on
International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that less
than half of urban Pakistanis favor sending the Pakistani Army to the
Northwestern tribal areas to "pursue and capture Al-Qaeda fighters."
Only 48 percent want the Pakistani Army to act against "Taliban insurgents
who have crossed over from Afghanistan." [Editor's note: The
above data was embargoed until early Wednesday morning.]
Yet even as a majority expresses disenchantment
with the military's involvement in politics, many people still acknowledge that
Pakistan depends upon that same Army to prevent retrograde religious militants
from making deeper inroads into the country from their bases in the tribal
territories and the more remote sections of the North West Frontier Province.
The bombing comes after intense battles in the
Swat District in the Frontier Province this week, which has left more than 100
security personnel and militants dead. Once a thriving mountainous tourist town
with some of the best skiing in the country, Swat and surrounding areas have,
in recent weeks, become a bloody battleground.
An army of some 5,000 militants, led by Maulana
Fazlullah, a local cleric notorious for his illegal radio channel on which he
preaches jihad against the American-backed state, have also taken security
officials hostage. Some were decapitated and their heads paraded through the
streets. Pakistanis had heard of such gruesome violence in the far-flung,
autonomous tribal regions, but never in "settled areas" like Swat,
which are under state jurisdiction.
"People are viewing the Army's fight
against terrorism as an extension of America's agenda in the region," says
Khalid Rahman of the Institute for Policy Studies in Islamabad. "And the
government also seems to be using this as a chance to secure its own
place" at a time when its own popularity is plummeting.
Despite their apprehensions, many still say
that historic negligence of the North West Frontier and tribal areas lies at
the root of the problem.
"The people in these regions have never
really developed faith in the system," says Asha Amirali,
a political activist with the People's Rights Movement of Pakistan, an
Islamabad-based social justice advocacy group. "They have lost faith in
the politicians, and the judicial system at the grass roots is still impotent
and disconnected from the rest of the country."
Even though Ms. Amirali,
and many like her, fear what has been termed "talibanization,"
they also think the country is at a critical juncture, where it can be free
from Army rule after eight years under President Pervez Musharraf.
The events in Swat have a haunting resonance to
the confrontation in July between religious militants and security forces that
resulted in the deaths of nearly 200 people at Islamabad's Red Mosque. But
things were slightly different a few months ago. Then, prominent secular civil
society leaders, academics, and activists had decried the militants' flaunting
of the law and many in Pakistan had backed the state to take on the holdouts in
the mosque compound. When the state finally did act, it left behind rumors of
mass graves full of children and hostages.
"The way it was handled, it just created
more hate and violence in the country," says Khurram Jamali, an investment
fund manager in Karachi. Few felt much safer in the aftermath; major cities
began witnessing their first suicide bombings. Mr. Fazlullah, the leader of the
militant group in Swat, publicly decried the Army's operation then. Now, Mr.
Jamali says, people might think twice before taking a stance. "At some
level, I want the Army to act," he admits. "But I am also worried
about where the battle will appear next if the violence continues."
Attacks on Khyber trucking threaten US supply
line
By KATHY GANNON
May 20, 2008
KHYBER AGENCY, Pakistan (AP) — Thieves, feuding
tribesmen and Taliban militants are creating chaos along the main
Pakistan-Afghanistan highway, threatening a vital supply line for U.S. and NATO
forces.
Abductions and arson attacks on the hundreds of
cargo trucks plying the switchback road through the Khyber Pass have become
commonplace this year. Many of the trucks carry fuel and other material for
foreign troops based in Afghanistan.
U.S. and NATO officials play down their losses
in these arid mountains of northwestern Pakistan — even though the local arms
bazaar offers U.S.-made assault rifles and Beretta pistols, and the alliance is
negotiating to open routes through other countries.
The most high-profile victim of the lawlessness
has been Tariq Azizuddin, Pakistan's ambassador to
Afghanistan. The 56-year-old was snatched from his Mercedes limousine three
months ago while driving toward the border. He wasn't freed until Saturday.
Pakistan's government denied it was part of a prisoner swap last week with
militants.
A senior government official said Azizuddin's kidnapping was carried out by one of dozens of
criminal gangs operating in the region, who then sold the ambassador to the
Taliban. The official agreed to discuss the case only if not identified, citing
the sensitivity of the efforts that led to the envoy's release.
"The security is absolutely becoming
precarious and this poses a threat for U.S. and NATO supplies, but it is also a
source of concern for Pakistan," said Mehmood Shah, former security chief
for the region. "It's a complex mix (of factors), but it is getting more
dangerous."
Regular trade is also being disrupted by the
raids on trucks traveling what is a vital lifeline for impoverished
Afghanistan, but there is disagreement about how serious the problem is.
Ziaul Haq Sarhadi, who heads an association of Pakistani customs
agents helping traders move goods through the customs post at Torkham, claimed
the average number of trucks has dropped to 250 a day from 500 early this year,
before violence escalated.
However, Abdul Ghani, a commander of Afghan
border guards, said there had been only a "small drop" in the number
of trucks crossing. He had no numbers.
Fuel tankers, in particular, have become a
target for militants seeking to disrupt supplies to NATO and the U.S.-led
coalition in Afghanistan.
In April, a bomb strapped to a truck carrying
11,440 gallons of fuel exploded as the vehicle sat near the Torkham customs
post waiting to cross from Khyber. In March, a bomb attack destroyed some 40
tankers in a parking lot. Dozens of people were injured by the raging fires.
Most material for foreign troops in Afghanistan
arrives by ship at the Pakistani port of Karachi in unmarked shipping
containers and is loaded on South Asia's colorfully decorated
"jingle" trucks to be driven to destinations like Bagram Air Base,
north of the Afghan capital, Kabul.
NATO and U.S. officials won't say whether the
trucks carry weapons and ammunition in addition to food, fuel and other
supplies. They suggest that theft — not a disruption campaign by militant
groups — is the main problem behind the raids on trucking.
The coalition has "no indication of a
pattern by the enemy to attack our supplies," said a coalition
spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green.
Yet NATO is seeking to reduce its dependence on
the Khyber route by negotiating with Russia and other nations to allow it to
truck in "non-lethal" supplies to Afghanistan through Central Asia.
"It's always good to have
alternatives," spokesman James Appathurai said
at NATO headquarters in Brussels. "One route for supplies is not
necessarily the best way forward."
In Khyber, a mountainous enclave that abuts the
main northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar, U.S. weapons and other supplies —
boots, camouflage uniforms and rucksacks — are offered openly for sale.
Saifur Rahman Zalmay, a weapons dealer of 30 years, hawks U.S.-made
assault rifles and pistols. For a new Beretta, he demands $10,000. New and used
M-16s rifles are a few thousand dollars less — far more than Western armies
pay.
Zalmay claimed some of the
second-hand rifles were sold to arms dealers by Mullah Ismail, a Taliban
commander killed in April in Pakistan. Ismail led a June 2005 ambush of U.S.
commandos in eastern Afghanistan and shot down a Chinook helicopter sent to
rescue them. Sixteen American special forces soldiers died on the chopper.
Shah, the former regional security chief, said
local tribes are paid a government stipend to secure the route for regular
trade as well as military supplies. But the authority of tribal elders in
Khyber has been weakening, as it is all along the frontier.
Ikramullah Khan Afridi, a tribal
leader, blamed that trend on the proliferation of radical clerics who are
sympathetic to the Taliban and have established parallel administrations and
their own militias.
"The traditional mechanism of controlling
the area through the jirga (council of elders) of the tribal area has been
weakened while the mullahs are taking the law into their own hands,"
Afridi said. "Now they are out of control."
Rivalry between extremists has also spawned
violence, such as a May 1 suicide bombing that wounded dozens of people near
Bara, one of Khyber's main towns. It targeted the headquarters of an Islamic
fundamentalist group calling itself Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
The group accused Taliban militants from nearby Waziristan of sending the
bomber.
Khyber was once regarded as one of the safest
of Pakistan's seven semiautonomous tribal regions on the rugged frontier. It
was one of the few that foreigners, including diplomats and aid workers, were
allowed to venture into, although only to travel to Afghanistan.
The deteriorating security comes despite a
relative lull in violence in other parts of Pakistan's frontier regions in
recent months. The Pakistani government that came to power in February
elections is using tribal intermediaries to try to forge peace with militants,
most notably in South and North Waziristan, where the Taliban and al-Qaida are
strongest.
Maulvi Abdul Rahman, a Taliban leader, claimed
the militants have strong enough ties with influential clerics in Khyber to
scuttle any peace talks.
Washington is skeptical that the government's
strategy will work anyway. Taking a longer view, it is planning to spend
millions of dollars upgrading Pakistan's Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force
of tribesmen that is struggling to provide security in the region, including
along the crossborder highway.
"They would be the force that should
protect U.S. and NATO supplies to Afghanistan," said Pakistan's military
spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas. The U.S. training program will start in the
last half of this year, he said.
But Zalmay, the gun
dealer, is skeptical the Frontier Corps can stop either thieves or the Taliban.
"The Frontier Corps does zero," he
said.
Associated Press writers Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Fisnik Abrashi in Kabul and Paul Ames in Brussels contributed to this report.