Category: Pakistan Politics

Pakistan’s former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was arrested in Lahore airport on Friday as he returned to face a 10-year prison sentence which he claimed was part of a wide-ranging, military-backed conspiracy to deny his party a second term in an election due on 25 July.

Military police boarded Sharif’s flight as it landed from a stop in Abu Dhabi after taking off in London. Paramilitary Rangers linked arms and battled against Sharif’s supporters to escort the 68-year-old off the aircraft, into a waiting car and then across the 200 yards to another small aircraft.

The Rangers also arrested Maryam, his daughter, who on 6 July was sentenced with her father to seven years in the trial over how the family came to own four luxury flats in London’s Park Lane, a story that resurfaced in the 2016 leak of the Panama Papers.

As the political drama unfolded in Lahore, fears of violence also surged ahead of the polls as 132 people were killed by a suicide bomber at a political rally in southwestern Balochistan province.

“Who wants to go to jail?”, Sharif told the Guardian from the Etihad airlines flight on which supporters yelled pro-Sharif slogans while in the air.

“But it is a very small price to pay for my mission, which is to establish the sanctity of the vote in Pakistan.”

The arrests ignited an otherwise lacklustre election campaign beset by allegations that the powerful military was “engineering” the vote to promote the main opposition party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by the former cricketer Imran Khan.

The military has denied the allegations.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Pakistan’s anti-graft court, ruled earlier this month that Sharif and his family laundered money in the 1990s to pay for the Park Lane apartments, drawing on allegations that resurfaced in the Panama Papers leak.

Before Sharif’s return, his brother Shahbaz, the former chief minister of Punjab, led tens of thousands of supporters in a welcome rally but the caravan had to negotiate a city turned into a warren of roadblocks.

Police arrested more than 500 Pakistani Muslim League (Nawaz) party (PML-N) workers in the hours before Sharif’s arrival, banned public gatherings of more than five people and cut mobile phone signals across Lahore.

The media regulator banned mentions of “convicted persons”, thwarting local journalists from broadcasting much of Sharif’s response.

“What credibility will the election have if the government is taking such action against our people?,” said Sharif.

“Somebody is forcing the caretaker government to take these actions,” he said, hinting at the role of the so-called “establishment”, whose influence Sharif attempted to limit until he was ousted in a controversial supreme court ruling last July.

A battle with the deep state, which began when the military ousted Sharif in a bloodless coup in 1999, reached its peak this week.

Sharif openly named a general at Pakistan’s intelligence service, ISI, as behind the attempts to push PML-N politicians to join the PTI, splintering the taboo by which civil leaders only refer to the armed forces in vague code; “angels” in the case of intelligence agents.

Sharif planned to appeal against his conviction on landing but analysts doubt he would receive bail before the election.

The leadership hopes that instead his sentence of “rigorous imprisonment” – which could include physical labour – will play to the party’s favour in the elections, turning him into a martyr for civilian supremacy.

Sympathy for Sharif has risen during the illness of his wife, Kulsoom, who is in a coma in a London hospital after treatment for throat cancer. In a parting photograph shared widely on social media, Sharif leans over her sickbed and touches her brow with a gloved hand, while Maryam wipes her eyes.

The latest poll shows that Khan’s party, the PTI, is marginally in front of the PML-N. On Friday, European election monitors were granted permission to deploy across the country.

Friday’s suicide attack – which was claimed by Islamic State – killed Siraj Raisani, who was running for a provincial seat with the newly formed Balochistan Awami party, the provincial home minister, Agha Umar Bungalzai, told AFP.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/13/suicide-bomb-attack-kills-85-and-wounds-100-at-mastung-pakistan-election-rally

Ousted Pakistani leader Nawaz Sharif is returning to Pakistan despite facing a 10-year jail sentence for corruption.

Sharif and his daughter Maryam both face arrest when they arrive back in Lahore from London on Friday.

The three-term PM was ousted from office last year after a corruption investigation. He was sentenced in absentia to 10 years last week.

He has accused Pakistan’s security establishment of conspiring against him ahead of July 25 elections.

“There was a time when we used to say a state within a state, now it’s a state above the state,” he told supporters of his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party in London on Wednesday.

“Despite seeing the bars of prison in front of my eyes, I am going to Pakistan.”

Thousands of supporters are expected to flock to the airport to greet Mr Sharif, who was convicted by an anti-corruption court last week over his family’s ownership of four luxury flats in London.

Hundreds of party activists in Lahore are reported to have been detained ahead of his return.

He has called for a “mass gathering of the people”.

Sharif, 67, has been one of the country’s leading politicians for most of the past 30 years. His party has blamed the military for being behind his conviction, saying it is going after the PML-N for its criticism of the security establishment and the party’s policy to improve ties with India.

In May, the Dawn newspaper published an interview with Sharif in which he questioned the wisdom of “allowing” Pakistani militants to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai, referring to attacks in the Indian business capital in 2008.

The military, which has ruled Pakistan for about half of its 70-year post-independence history, has denied it has any “direct role” in the elections or the political process.

Although he was disqualified from standing in the upcoming election by the Supreme Court, Sharif remains one of the most popular politicians in Pakistan, especially in Punjab, the most populous and electorally significant province.

Sharif walks into a jail cell

Analysis by the BBC’s M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad
The last time Nawaz Sharif was sentenced to a jail term after a military coup in 1999, he chose to accept a pardon and exile under a Saudi-brokered deal. But this time, he is walking into a jail cell.
Back then, it was thought that being the spoilt son of a wealthy father, he was too soft to face the various hardships that can befall a Pakistani politician.
But his moves this time underline that he is willing to traverse tougher territory.
Sharif may well be contemplating wider protests after the election, which many believe the military has already “engineered” enough to ensure his party doesn’t win.
And he may have made a huge personal sacrifice for this. Sharif has left behind his wife Kulsoom, who has cancer, on life support in a London hospital, knowing that he may not be able to return to be by her side.

Last week the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) court ordered Sharif to serve 10 years for owning assets beyond his income and one year for not co-operating with the NAB. The sentences are to be served concurrently.

His daughter, Maryam Nawaz Sharif, received seven years for abetting a crime and one year for not co-operating – again to run concurrently – while son-in-law Safdar Awan was given a one-year sentence for not co-operating.

Sharif and Maryam also received fines of £8m ($10.6m) and £2m respectively. Their lawyers say they will appeal against the verdict but the pair will have to surrender to the NAB before the appeal can be filed.

The case, known as the Avenfield Reference, relates to a number of properties in the UK capital.

The assault on Pakistan media ahead of vote
The Panama Papers leak in 2015 revealed several of Sharif’s children had links to offshore companies, which were allegedly used to channel funds and buy foreign assets – including luxury flats in Avenfield House, on London’s Park Lane.

His family, however, insist they legitimately acquired the four properties.

As part of the ruling, the court ordered they be confiscated for the federal government.

Pakistan’s general election
Voters will elect candidates for the 342-seat Pakistan National Assembly.

The main parties are Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N, former cricketer Imran Khan’s PTI and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s PPP

It will mark the second time that one civilian government has handed power to another after serving a full term.

The run-up to the vote has been marred by what observers say is a crackdown on political activists, journalists and critics of the powerful military.

More than 371,000 troops will be deployed to protect the election and ensure it is “free and fair”, the army says.

Distribution of the English-language daily Dawn, Pakistan’s oldest newspaper, is being disrupted in much of the country since it published an interview with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns this latest attack on media freedom.

The interview, which reportedly displeased the Pakistani military, appeared in the 12 May (Saturday) issue and the blocking began on 15 May. According to RSF’s information, distribution is being disrupted in most of Baluchistan province, in many cities in Sindh province and in all military cantonments.

The Press Council of Pakistan has notified Dawn’s editor that the newspaper breached the ethical code of practice by publishing content that “may bring into contempt Pakistan or its people or tends to undermine its sovereignty or integrity as an independent country.”

“The unwarranted blocking of the distribution of one of the main independent newspapers has yet again shown that the military are determined to maintain their grip on access to news and information in Pakistan,” RSF said.

“It is clear that the military high command does not want to allow a democratic debate in the months preceding a general election. We call on the authorities to stop interfering in the dissemination of independent media and to restore distribution of Dawn throughout Pakistan.”

Last month, the military were said to have given unofficial instructions to cable TV operators to stop carrying the Geo TV network’s channels, including Geo News, in most of the country. One of the reasons was the airtime that the network had dedicated to Sharif, who was removed as prime minister by the supreme court in July 2017 in connection with a corruption case.

KARACHI (Reuters) – A Pakistani ethnic Pashtun rights group on Sunday staged its first rally in the southern city of Karachi, the site of a killing in January that sparked the movement and led to nationwide protests and rallies.

The Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) emerged after the January killing by police of Pashtun youth Naqibullah Mehsud in Karachi.

A crowd of several thousand people gathered for the rally on Sunday in Karachi’s outlying Sohrab Goth suburb.
The PTM has said several thousand such killings have been carried out since Pakistan joined the U.S.-led war on terror and launched major military operations in 2009 and 2014 targeting Pakistani Taliban strongholds in the Pashtun majority Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) areas bordering Afghanistan.

Hundreds of thousands migrated to Karachi after the military operations, where the largest population of Pashtuns in Pakistan lives.

Among the crowd of protesters were families of missing persons, holding pictures of their loved ones who they say were taken by security officials.

The families say they have not received any information since the disappearances, some of them more than a decade ago.

The PTM estimates there are over 5,000 such cases.

“PTM was born out of the incident that happened in Karachi,” Mohsin Dawar, one of the group’s founders, told Reuters.

“The trauma and pain the Pashtuns of the FATA have experienced, the Pashtuns of Karachi have gone through a similar experience,” he said.

Officials from Pakistan’s paramilitary Rangers, which are part of the security forces, did not respond to request for comment.

The PTM leader Manzoor Pashteen’s popularity has surged amongst Pashtun youth. Some of the protesters wore the red and black patterned hat, which has become Pashteen’s trademark, as they waited for him to arrive at the rally.

But Pashteen did not board his flight from Islamabad to Karachi on Saturday morning and a representatives of local airline Serene Air said his booking had been canceled, Dawar said.

A Serene Air representative was not immediately available for comment.

Dawar said Pashteen and three other PTM leaders had started on the more than 20-hour drive from Islamabad to Karachi but they were stopped several times along the way.

“He has been stopped and detained for hours several times,” Dawar said.

Speakers at the rally said they would not leave until Pashteen arrived.

“We demand that security officials themselves bring Manzoor Pashteen here before our rally ends,” PTM member Sana Ejaz said.

After sunset, the protesters held up cellphone flashlights, refusing to move until Pashteen turned up.
Writing by Saad Sayeed. Editing by Jane Merriman

In his latest book, Kaiser Bengali shows that there is systematic and wilful discrimination and apathy towards Balochistan with the express purpose of utilising its resources for benefit of others.

Rebellions and insurgencies do not occur in a vacuum but are reactions against political and economic injustices. A new book A Cry for Justice: Empirical Insights from Balochistan by Kaiser Bengali highlights the injustices perpetrated against Balochistan with help of irrefutable data. He has the advantage of being an advisor to Balochistan and Sindh governments but more than that he has his heart in the right place.

Bengali has summoned several witnesses to present his case. These are ‘crown witnesses’ as these are part of the official data and not a figment of imagination of the oppressed and aggrieved Baloch. The figures, they say, never lie so what he has presented in black and white goes a long way in reaffirming the justified resistance of Baloch people to their political and consequent economic repression, oppression and exploitation.

The evidence presented by Kaiser Bengali shows that there is systematic and wilful discrimination and apathy towards Balochistan with the express purpose of utilizing its resources for benefit of others.

The witness ‘Gas’ is most eloquent in exposing those injustices. Even though gas was discovered in Balochistan in 1952, “not a whiff of gas was supplied to Balochistan for nearly three decades till 1982”. This despite the fact that it was the sole provider of gas for two decades. Balochistan’s share of consumption was just 2 per cent but rose to 7 per cent with the 900 MW gas-fired power plant at Uch in Dera Murad Jamali. Though, according to Quesco’s figures, Balochistan provides 2,280 MW to the national grid, its share is only 700-800 MW.

The excise duty on gas which is transferred to provinces is also flawed and eaten away by inflation. The charts tell the entire story and indict the perpetrators of injustices in Balochistan. If money is any indicator of injustices, Balochistan has been deprived of Rs. 7.69 trillion just for gas which benefited other provinces at the cost of Balochistan.

The second witness that comes forward is ‘Chronic Development Deficit’. Bengali writes that in the first two decades Balochistan doesn’t figure meaningfully in any national economic plan or budget documents and the neglect continues. Today, the province is not only lagging behind other provinces; it is falling further behind. One of the tables shows GRP average growth rate of provinces from 2000- 2011 and naturally Balochistan with 2.8 growth is not only bottom but mostly half of all others’ growth rate. In another table, ranking of Districts by Development Rankings-1996: Bottom one third districts Balochistan beats all hands down.

The Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) for Balochistan is 0.15 per cent if Gwadar is excluded. Of the total allocations 78 per cent for federal PSDP for Physical Planning and Housing/ Housing and Works from 1990-2016 were for security agencies and federal civil administration offices and housing and 11 years of these 100 per cent was exclusively for them. The roads in general present a pathetic picture as their photographs on every other page amply illustrate. Depriving people of benefits and yet expecting praise and thankfulness is insanity.

Then he dwells on ‘Deficit in Social Protection’ and we see the story is not different. The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) was established in 2008 to assist economically stressed families. In 2014-15, a total of 5.046 families received Rs88.491 billion; of this only 188,949 families in Balochistan received Rs3.290 billion a meagre 3.7 per cent. Both Punjab and Sindh’s share was 36.5 and 34.0 per cent respectively. This cannot be explained away just by the smaller population it has; the system doesn’t quite take into consideration the factors which compound poverty in Balochistan. State provided social protection too is warped and hardly helps.

Next on the stand is ‘Services Imbalances’. There are detailed charts and also constitutional provisions that show how Balochistan is put at a disadvantage wilfully and consequently it has no say in its own or Pakistan’s affairs. Denying people authority is the best way of disempowering them. Balochistan gets a lot of officials from other provinces but few from Balochistan get posted here.

A digression here; the plea for imbalance that there aren’t highly educated people in Balochistan is flawed as nothing has been done to provide sound education to the people. All ‘education emergencies’ announced with fanfare are charades in fact. The Higher Education Commission (HEC) too neglects Balochistan; a 2013 report stated that from 2002-03 to 2012-13, it allocated 737 projects worth Rs157, 102 million. Out of these 737 projects, merely 48 projects worth Rs9, 433 million were assigned to Balochistan’s seven universities. Comparatively, the two top beneficiaries of the HEC largesse the National University of Science and Technology and Comsat Institute of Information Technology were granted Rs1,5205m (22 projects) and Rs7,373m (28 projects) respectively which incidentally was Rs13,145 million more than the total allotted to Balochistan.

The last one brought to attention is ‘Representational Imbalances’ and this too shows that Balochistan’s representation is inadequate because of the lesser number of members in the National Assembly and Balochistan Assembly compounded by the large constituencies which are 13 and 9 times, respectively, larger than the average of other three provinces combined. More seats need to be allocated and constituencies made smaller.

However, I do not see much hope in this as those routinely elected are more interested in perks than in serving people.

The evidence presented by Kaiser Bengali shows that there is systematic and wilful discrimination and apathy towards Balochistan with the express purpose of utilizing its resources for benefit of others. It is the seven decades of injustices, both political and economic that have led to insurgencies, and these will only strengthen and deepen because of the absolute absence of hope or that the sane recommendations of this book will be heeded.

There is a Cherokee proverb, “Pay attention to whispers, so we won’t have to listen to screams”. Those who refuse to hear the screams cannot be expected to pay attention to whispers. The irrefutable evidence presented passes the verdict of ‘guilty as charged’ against the state and its establishment for its injustices in Balochistan.