By Nafisa Hoodbhoy
MITHI, May 5: People living in a village of Thar district said they had seen a mysterious flying object come crashing down on a school building late on Friday night. Some villagers even said they were sure that the object was a meteorite.
The object struck Ladki village of Diplo taluka, 60 kilometres from here. It caused a small crater in the school ground. The object weighed about few hundred grams. Prem Shivani – dawn.com
Without fair access to land, peasant and farm workers in Pakistan have no reason to protect land from desertification (© DfID/Flickr)
Land is a critical productive asset and the majority of livelihoods in the dry lands of the developing world depend on it.
The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is one of the main environmental treaties, borne out of the Rio Earth Summit, and it addresses land; its resources, its productivity and the role of stakeholders in combating desertification.
Those poor people, who use land to meet their daily livelihood needs – farmers, tenants, agricultural workers and pastoral communities – are the primary stakeholders for desertification.
They are the ones whose decisions and practices affect the health of top soil, in either positive or negative ways.
In many of the world’s least developed and underdeveloped countries, access to land and land governance systems do not provide the proper entitlements or access to land for poor tenants and pastoralists.
This is one of the main reasons why these communities are not encouraged to take care of the land on which they depend.
While climatic changes and prolonged droughts are putting increasing pressure on the productivity of soil, the government’s lack of interest in agriculture and natural resource management worsens the problem.
This absence of title of land for the landless tillers and the denial of legitimate access to rangelands for pastoralists, are adding to the increase in desertification, as people do not own the land titles they do not care about the land.
Land ownership in Pakistan
Pakistan’s example is most pertinent. Land ownership in Pakistan is highly concentrated: 75% of agricultural land is owned by just 25% of the people – while the rest of the agri-land is owned by the 75% small famers.
Land owners in Pakistan are mostly absentee land lords, while the work is done by peasants and share croppers who get their income as part of the harvest’s proceeds.
SCOPE Pakistan works with stakeholders on the ground to raise awareness of desertification issues.
These peasants have been demanding land for a long time, and there has so far been three attempts to take excess land from large land owners to re-distribute it to the landless farmers – but without political influence they were unable to regain much land and the impacts of land reforms were minimal.
Land degradation in the form of water logging, salinity on canal irrigated lands and soil erosion on rain-fed land can be observed in Pakistan.
Around 50% of the farm land in Pakistan is subjected to desertification. The impact of land degradation on large farms – owned by absentee land lords in for example the Sindh Province – can be observed more prominently than that is small farms in say the Punjab province, where average land holdings are relatively small (less than 25 acres).
With no access to titles, pastoralists have no incentive to manage rangeland, which are mostly owned and managed by the Forest Department.
Here you can see large scale deforestation and uncontrolled exploitation of natural fauna and flora, resulting in desertification.
There are, however, some examples across the country where communities have somehow maintained their local control on a small scale and where the rangelands are still very healthy.
Moving forward
In the absence of inclusive land governance and pro-poor land access policies, UNCCD objectives can be hard to accomplish.
Co-operation among stakeholders cannot achieve its objectives until the primary stakeholders – tenants, peasants, pastoralists and small land holders – are taken on board and empowered by creating an enabling environment.
Continuous absence of tenure rights, long overdue and reforms and pro-poor land access policies are the main hurdles in creating this environment for grassroots actors in which they can play a role in protecting productive soil and land resources.
The UNCCD recognizes this principle in Article 3 (a), which states:
“The Parties should ensure that decisions on the design and implementation of programmes to combat desertification and/or mitigate the effects of drought are taken with the participation of populations and local communities and that an enabling environment is created at higher levels to facilitate action at national and local levels.”
And Article 5 (e), which demands its parties to:
“Provide an enabling environment by strengthening, as appropriate, relevant existing legislation and, where they do not exist, enacting new laws and establishing long-term policies and action programmes.”
Participation of grassroots land users is absolutely essential, and can only be made possible when they are accommodated in the national level decision making and policy development process.
As much as 50% of farmland in Pakistan is affected by desertification.
Meaningful, effective and equitable land reforms are urgently needed in many developing countries, which are facing a desertification crisis – to address land, poverty and food security in a holistic way.
Debates in and around the UNCCD are lacking this vital link.
Although we often listen the rhetoric about the importance of participation of stakeholders, particularly affected populations in decisions fighting against desertification, it is time that this issue be raised at the UNCCD and at a national level.
It is time we ensure real participation of farmers, tenants, pastoralists and landless agriculture laborers who are at the frontline in the fight against desertification.
Tanveer Arif, is CEO at Society for Conservation and Protection of Environment (SCOPE), an active NGO following UNCCD, since 1993
LAHORE, May 8: India is willing to look at more land border transit points with Pakistan and opening new border crossings at places like Munnabao in Rajasthan is a possibility , Sharat Sabharwal, India’s high commissioner to Pakistan said on Monday. He was addressing the inaugural session of the 2nd Aman Ki Asha Indo-Pak Economic Conference . At present, Attari-Wagah is the only land route for trade between the two nations.
Later this month, Indian and Pakistani home secretaries are expected to sign off on an agreement that will liberalize the business visa regime. In the works are multiple entry visas, abolishing police checkposts and multi-city visas.
These measures are expected to give a fillip to Indo-Pak trade which today is languishing at sub $3-billion . Sabharwal said the Indian commerce ministry believes that trade between the two can touch $12billion in the next five years. He reiterated commerce minister Anand Sharma’s promise that for every one step Pakistan takes, India will take two. “We will like to carry the process of trade liberalization forward in a manner to create a win-win situation for both sides.” The Indian high commissioner appreciated Islamabad’s decision to accord the most favoured nation (MFN) status to India and to move from a positive list of imports from India to a negative list.
Delivering the keynote address, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said core issues should be settled through dialogue and called for enhanced people-to-people contact. Gilani said his government was committed to normalization of ties. “Non-state actors from both sides of the border are determined to harm relations. We need to be vigilant . He said that in sectors like information technology, education, health engineering, there is huge scope for cooperation. He commended the Times of India and the Jang group of Pakistan for launching the Aman ki Asha initiative when tensions were running high between the two nations.
Hoping that the India-Pakistan economic conference will boost the peace process, he said poverty, disease and ignorance should not become the fate of the region. “Our people have suffered because of the policies of the past. They deserve better. No more time should be wasted .” He described industry captains at the conference as the “best ambassadors of peace” for both countries . “The world is marching on and it is time for us to shed the baggage of the past and grab the opportunity at hand and act with urgency to build relations of mutual trust.”
Speakers at the conference highlighted the fact that improved economic relations between the two nations will lead to peace and prosperity . Some delegates were worried that offering MFN status to India might result in highly skewed trade relations with the balance tilting in favour of India. Their concerns were addressed by Pakistani business leaders such as Mian Muhammed Mansha, chairman, MCB Bank, and Bashir Ali Muhammed, chairman, Gul Ahmed.
They were unequivocal in saying that greater trade will benefit the Pakistani people and industry would gain from greater competition in the longer run. Mansha said he was keen on starting a bank in India.
Adi Godrej, CII president and head of the Godrej Group said the two largest economies of south Asia should work together to ensure that bilateral trade touches $10billion in the near term. Textiles, agriculture, engineering, IT, education and healthcare are sectors which can see immediate traction, he said. “Removal of tariff barriers should set in motion processes for the removal of asymmetries in trade.”
Group managing director of Jang Group Shahrukh Hasan said the Aman ki Asha initiative has helped change perceptions in both countries. “Peace which has been tantalizingly elusive is inevitable,” he said. He and almost all speakers said a liberalized visa regime is a must for any forward momentum in relations. “MFN and FDI are of no use without people being able to travel across the border,” he said.
Rahul Kansal, executive president , Times Group, said history has shown that when foes develop deep economic stakes in each other, war becomes a non-option . “We are at a historic moment; it will be pity if we can’t seize the opportunity.”
Aman ki Asha is an initiative of the Times of India and the Jang Group of Pakistan and the Lahore trade meet is co-sponsored by CII and Pakistan Business Council.
Before his death, Osama bin Laden boldly commanded his network to organize special cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan to attack the aircraft of President Obama and Gen. David Petraeus.
“The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make (Vice President Joe) Biden take over the presidency,” the al-Qaida leader explained to his top lieutenant. “Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour … and killing him would alter the war’s path” in Afghanistan.
Administration officials said Friday the Obama-Petraeus plot was never a serious threat.
The scheme was described in one of the documents taken from bin Laden’s compound by U.S. forces on May 1, 2011, the night he was killed. I was given an exclusive look at some of these remarkable documents by a senior administration official. They have been declassified and will be available soon to the public in their original Arabic texts and translations.
The man who bin Laden hoped would carry out the attacks on Obama and Petraeus was Pakistani terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri.
“Please ask brother Ilyas to send me the steps he has taken into that work,” bin Laden wrote to his top lieutenant, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman. A month after bin Laden’s death, Kashmiri was killed in a U.S. drone attack.
Bin Laden’s plot to target Obama was probably bluster since al-Qaida apparently lacked the weapons to shoot down U.S. aircraft. But it’s a chilling reminder that even when he was embattled and in hiding, bin Laden still dreamed of pulling off another spectacular terrorist attack against the United States.
The terrorist leader urged in a 48-page directive to Atiyah to focus “every effort that could be spent on attacks in America,” instead of operations within Muslim nations. He told Atiyah to “ask the brothers in all regions if they have a brother … who can operate in the U.S. (He should be able to) live there, or it should be easy for him to travel there.”
U.S. analysts don’t see evidence that these plots have materialized.
“The organization lacks the ability to plan, organize and execute complex, catastrophic attacks, but the threat persists,” said a senior administration analyst who has carefully reviewed the documents.
The bin Laden who emerges from these communications is a terrorist CEO in an isolated compound, brooding that his organization has ruined its reputation by killing too many Muslims in its jihad against America. He writes of the many departed “brothers” who have been lost to U.S. drone attacks. But he’s far from the battlefield himself in his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he seems to spend considerable time watching television.
Because of constant harassment and communications difficulties in Pakistan’s tribal areas, bin Laden encouraged al-Qaida leaders to leave North and South Waziristan for more distant and remote locations.
Bin Laden’s biggest concern was al-Qaida’s media image among Muslims. He worried that it was so tarnished that, in a draft letter probably intended for Atiyah, he argued the organization should find a new name.
The al-Qaida brand had become a problem, bin Laden explained, because Obama administration officials “have largely stopped using the phrase ‘the war on terror’ in the context of not wanting to provoke Muslims,” and instead promoted a war against al-Qaida.
Bin Laden ruminated about “mistakes” and “miscalculations” by affiliates in Iraq and elsewhere that had killed Muslims, even in mosques. He told Atiyah to warn every emir, or regional leader, to avoid these “unnecessary civilian casualties,” which were hurting the organization.
It would be better to concentrate on attacking the U.S. homeland. This led to sharp disagreements with his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who favored easier and more opportunistic attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas.
Bin Laden and his aides hoped for big terrorist operations to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. They also had elaborate media plans. Adam Gadahn, a U.S.-born media adviser, even recommended to his boss what would be the best television outlets for a bin Laden anniversary video.
“It should be sent for example to ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN, and maybe PBS and VOA. As for Fox News let her die in her anger,” Gadahn wrote. At another point, he said of the networks: “From a professional point of view, they are all on one level — except (Fox News) channel, which falls into the abyss as you know, and lacks neutrality, too.”
What an unintended boost for Fox, which can now boast that it is al-Qaida’s least favorite network.
Islamabad, April 29: The beheaded corpse of a British aid worker has been discovered in the Pakistani city of Quetta, almost four months after he was kidnapped.
The body of Khalil Rasjed Dale was left on a road outside the city, in southern Baluchistan province, with a note attached which said he had been killed because a ransom had not been paid to his captors.
Dale, who had been working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), was kidnapped in January while driving near the organisation’s Quetta office.
He was abducted by gunmen as he made his way home in a clearly-marked ICRC vehicle on 5 January. His assailants are said to have bundled him into a car about 200m from an ICRC residence.
At the time, police in Quetta said Dale was abducted by unknown assailants driving a Landcruiser following a visit to a local school. He was travelling with a Pakistani doctor and a driver, who were not seized.
Quetta police chief Ahsan Mahboob said the killers’ note read: “This is the body of Khalil who we have slaughtered for not paying a ransom amount.”
Dale had been a Muslim convert for more than 30 years.
William Hague, the foreign secretary, said “tireless efforts” had been made to secure Dale’s release and the British government had worked closely with the Red Cross.
“I utterly condemn the kidnapping and killing of Mr Dale and send my deepest condolences to his family and loved ones as they come to terms with their tragic and distressing loss,” he said.
“We are devastated,” said ICRC director general Yves Daccord. “Khalil was a trusted and very experienced Red Cross staff member who significantly contributed to the humanitarian cause.
“All of us at the ICRC and at the British Red Cross share the grief and outrage of Khalil’s family and friends.”
Separatist militants and the Taliban are extremely active in Quetta, which is just a couple of hours’ drive to the border with Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, where the Taliban is battling US forces.
The ICRC has working relations with movements such as the Taliban, but its staff remain vulnerable to criminals and kidnappers.
Retired nurse Sheila Howat, a former colleague of Dale’s at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, said: “It’s dreadful what has happened to him, really awful. The world has lost someone who really cared for others.”
Something is missing in Washington, and I’m not referring to bipartisanship. I’m talking about Pakistan expertise.
Last year, Shuja Nawaz, head of The Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, lamented the exodus of Pakistan experts from Washington policy-making jobs. Yet this only represents the tip of the iceberg.
Scan the speaker rosters of the city’s think-tank symposia, study the bylines of policy briefs and commentaries, and scrutinise the talking heads on DC talk shows.
What do you see? The same set of names, drawn from Washington’s small group of esteemed Pakistan-watchers.
Numbering about two dozen, they include diplomats (Teresita Schaffer), scholars (Stephen Cohen, Christine Fair), and those who have engaged both public service and academia (Daniel Markey, Lisa Curtis, Marvin Weinbaum). In more recent years, this fraternity has also taken in transplanted Pakistanis (such as Nawaz).
Yet beyond this venerable group, there is little else. In a city that constantly refers to the immense strategic significance of Pakistan, this deficit of expertise is striking — yet also unsurprising.
Americans, after all, are notoriously uninformed about foreign affairs — and even about a nation that their government insists is so important (my countrymen have been known to confuse Pakistanis with Palestinians).
Also, US public opinion toward Pakistan is strongly negative — a February 2012 Gallup poll found that only 15 per cent of Americans regard Pakistan positively (in the last 10-plus years, only once has this figure exceeded 30 per cent). Such a climate does not exactly encourage Americans to gravitate toward Pakistan.
Even those who wish to become students of Pakistan face obstacles. This is because US higher education doesn’t emphasise Pakistan like it does other nations and regions. A range of universities — the University of Washington, University of California at Berkeley, and SAIS/Johns Hopkins, to name just a few — boast programs specifically dedicated to the study of China. Yet Pakistan Studies programs are rare.
By no means does this signify a paucity of Pakistan-oriented scholarship in the United States — consider, just for starters, Anita Weiss’s work on gender, Sarah Halvorson’s on geography, and Ayesha Jalal’s on history — yet it does suggest that America’s higher education system refuses to place a high premium on Pakistan.
Little wonder many recent graduates flock to careers as China hands or Middle East specialists — yet few vow to become part of the next generation of Pakistan experts. My own experience is illustrative; during the early months of the Iraq War, I decided to pursue a master’s degree in Middle East studies. I entered the South Asia field only later on, through a combination of luck and happenstance (and I’m glad I did).
Wait, you may say: What about that cottage industry of Pakistan experts that has sprouted in Washington in recent years? “Only in DC can you be a Pakistan expert without ever visiting the region,” grumbled Washington-based journalist Huma Imtiaz last year. “Yet your average Pakistan expert, fresh out of college or mid-career, claims to possess a deep understanding of how Pakistan’s politics, military, and society work.”
Alas, this is not a cottage industry of Pakistan specialists — it is one of Af-Pak experts. In Washington, Pakistan is inextricably tied to Afghanistan and to the war that the US is embroiled in there. Little wonder two of the most popular (and best) information portals consulted by Washington Pakistan-watchers — the AfPak Channel and Colin Cookman’s Pakistan/Afghanistan/Terrorism News brief — focus on Afghanistan as much as (if not more than) Pakistan.
Predictably, those representing this new wave of “Pakistan experts” are mostly security specialists fixated on the Afghanistan War; few nurture an abiding interest in Pakistan’s public health woes, its burgeoning IT sector, or Lollywood; they are more concerned about the threat posed to US forces in Afghanistan by militant sanctuaries in North Waziristan, and about Islamabad’s role in the Afghan endgame.
With Washington’s Pakistan-followers effectively proxies for Afghanistan War- watchers, what will happen in 2014, when US combat forces have left Afghanistan? Will a reduced US military footprint in Afghanistan spell an end to Pakistan-heavy policy papers, panels and punditry in Washington? Will there still be ample experts on hand to contemplate Pakistan’s natural resource shortages, economic malaise, and education crisis — long-term challenges having little to do with Afghanistan?
Here is where the narrative grows less gloomy. Washington boasts a promising organisation, the Young Professionals Working Group on Pakistan, which comprises aspiring analysts of the country. Some of the capital’s most insightful Pakistan analysis in recent years has come from new and younger faces — Shamila Chaudhary, Moeed Yusuf, Joshua White, Stephen Tankel.
Further afield, a cultural engagement program, Caravanserai, has barnstormed across America, hosting performances and film screenings by Pakistani artists — and hoping to pique schoolchildren’s interest in Pakistan.
Bipartisanship may be a lost cause in Washington. Yet there is still hope for strengthening and expanding the city’s ranks of Pakistan experts.
Michael Kugelman is the program associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He can be reached at michael.kugelman@wilsoncenter.org and on Twitter @michaelkugelman
ISLAMABAD, April 26— Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Thursday convicted Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani of contempt for defying its orders to reopen an old corruption case against the president, but the justices spared Gilani any prison time.
The sentence was symbolic, lasting only until judges left the courtroom. But Gilani’s political future remains clouded with the possibility that he could still be removed from office.
For months the political crisis had distracted from U.S. efforts to restore full diplomatic ties with Pakistan, which were badly strained after American warplanes inadvertently bombed two border outposts last November, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers.
The continuation of Gilani and his party in power, at least for now, provides a measure of stability that experts say should help speed the resumption of a cooperative, if uneasy, relationship between the two counterterrorism allies. Pakistan’s Parliament has already indirectly granted the chief U.S. request: that the nation reopen its border to NATO convoys, including thousands of oil tankers, that supply troops in Afghanistan.
Gilani could have been sentenced to up to six months in prison, but his ruling Pakistan People’s Party was hardly pleased with the outcome. “This is a dark day in the history of the country,” Firdous Ashiq Awan, a former information minister, told journalists outside the court.
Analysts were divided over whether the conviction meant the prime minister would have to give up his seat in Parliament, and thus his higher office. They said that could happen in a matter of weeks or months, depending on the outcome of legal wrangling.
Political score-settling here often includes new leaders bringing questionable criminal cases against members of parties who have fallen from power. Gilani’s conviction stemmed from his adamant refusal to pursue money-laundering and kickback cases brought by Swiss authorities against President Asif Ali Zardari.
Gilani has maintained that the constitution grants Zardari immunity from prosecution, and Zardari has denied the allegations, which date to the 1990s.
Although Gilani has served longer than any prime minister in the nation’s 64-year history, he also bears the stain of being the only prime minister found guilty of contempt; two others were charged but not convicted.
After his courtroom punishment, which lasted about 30 seconds, Gilani chaired a special cabinet meeting where he seemed sanguine about the entire matter. “Politics has lots of ups and downs,” he said, according to one cabinet member in the room and various media reports.
A career in politics means unavoidable tumult, the embattled premier noted, offering an Urdu proverb: “Working with coal will make your hands black, too.”
Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, who himself faced contempt of court charges as prime minister in 1997, called on Gilani to quit.
“He should step down without causing further crisis,” Sharif said on the cable channel Geo News. He also called for new elections.
Correspondent Shaiq Hussain contributed to this report.
ISLAMABAD, April 23: The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) on Monday began an inspection of all passenger planes operated by private airlines after a near-miss in Karachi that came just two days after a fatal crash in Islamabad.
The checks were ordered on Sunday after a Shaheen Air flight with 178 people on board narrowly avoided disaster when its left rear tyre burst after its landing gear broke as it touched down at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi.
On Friday, a Bhoja Air Boeing 737 came down in fields near Islamabad as it tried to land, killing all 127 people on board – Islamabad’s second major crash in less than two years.
“The CAA launched a comprehensive inspection of airplanes being flown by private airlines, from today,” CAA spokesman Pervez George told AFP.
The CAA has already received a plane from Bhoja Air for so-called “shakedown” checks by engineers, George said.
He refused to give any timeline for completion of the process, saying “it is difficult to say how much time the inspectors will take to examine each plane and all its systems”.
“We have asked all the private airlines to reschedule their domestic and international flights during the inspection so the passengers do not have to suffer,” he added.
Inspection work will begin with Bhoja Air planes before moving on to Shaheen Air International and Airblue.
George said planes from the national flag carrier Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) had shakedown checks a few months ago and would not be subject to the special inspection.
Another Shaheen flight with more than 100 passengers bound for the Iranian city of Mashhad was prevented from taking off at Lahore on Sunday after a fuel overflow during refuelling, George said.
In July 2010 an Airbus jet operated by Airblue crashed into the hills overlooking Islamabad while coming in to land after a flight from Karachi, killing 152 people in the worst air disaster ever on Pakistani soil.
On April 18, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry ruled that the three Hindu women who had been converted to Islam, Rinkel Kumari, Dr Lata Kumari and Aasha Kumari, should decide if they want to return to their parents or stay with their new husbands. All three stated that they had willingly converted to Islam and wanted to live with their husbands.
However, there are still concerns about the climate of intimidation in which these cases were carried out and both Rinkel and Dr Lata had previously made contradictory statements in court about their conversions. Often in such cases the Hindu parents and lawmakers receive death threats and therefore raises the question if these decisions by the three women were made under duress.
Imagine your name is Bharti. You are a 15-year-old Hindu girl who lives in a small apartment in Lyari. Your father is a driver and social worker who raises money for others while struggling to pay your family’s medical bills. You have three older brothers, who are busy with their own jobs and families. Your future seems bleak.
Imagine you then meet Abid. He is the son of a police constable and promises to marry you. He promises you many things – but on the condition that you convert to Islam. You agree and run away with him. His family teaches you the Kalima and gives you a niqab to wear. After a few days, they take you to a maulvi. While the nikah form is being filled, you already know what you have to say. You tell the maulvi that you are 18-years-old and your name is now Ayesha.
Imagine that a few months pass. You are still living with Abid and his family. Your father lost the court case after a medical report was produced that stated that you are 18. You couldn’t look your mother in the eye when she came to court. You haven’t once been able to visit your home since you ran away. Your in-laws still haven’t given you a cell phone but sometimes you are able to borrow a phone and briefly talk to your brothers. When you speak to them, you can’t help but cry.
Be it the mean streets of Lyari or the dusty villages of interior Sindh, stories such as these are becoming increasingly common in Pakistan. In the last four months alone there have been at least 47 reported cases of alleged forced conversions of young girls from minority communities. But none of these cases have quite captured the fascination of the public as that of Rinkel Kumari.
Nineteen-year-old Rinkel disappeared from her home in Mirpur Mathelo, a village in the Ghotki district of Sindh, on February 24. The answer to what happened to her varies significantly, depending on whom you speak to. According to her father Nand Lal, a government schoolteacher, Rinkel woke up somewhere between four and five in the morning to go to the bathroom when she was drugged and kidnapped by armed men. She regained consciousness at around nine in the morning to find herself in Barchundi Sharif in Daharaki – a stronghold of PPP MNA Mian Abdul Haq, also known as Mian Mitho, who is the spiritual leader of the shrine where conversions regularly take place. Just hours after her arrival in Barchundi Sharif, Rinkel was forcibly converted to Islam, married off to one of the kidnappers, Naveed Shah, and subsequently renamed Faryal.
Mian Mohammed Aslam, the son of Mian Mitho, provides a different version of events. He stated on an evening news show that Rinkel showed up with Naveed Shah at his doorstep, expressing her wish to convert to Islam and get married. Aslam added that he contacted Rinkel’s parents to let them know his daughter was with him and even invited them to come visit her before she converted, but they never showed up.
And to add to the confusion, there is a third account of events according to which Rinkel was indeed in love with Naveed and went to meet him on the morning of February 24, but did not know that he would be waiting with other men, ready to kidnap her.
In response to the latter accounts, Rinkel’s family has stated that they did not want to meet their daughter at Mian Mohammad Aslam’s residence because they were concerned that they would not be able to talk freely in the presence of the MNA’s son. And her parents have denied suggestions that Rinkel knew Naveed, stating that since there is no phone in their house and Rinkel does not own a cellphone, there was no way for them to have contacted each other.
But be it Rinkel, Bharti or any other girl, the problem at the heart of all these cases is that nobody knows what actually happened to the victims. Some of the girls, including Rinkel, have made somewhat contradictory statements, initially saying that they willingly converted to Islam and later crying that they want to return to their parents. And in all known cases, the accused have fiercely guarded the girls from meeting their families. This raises several questions: Were the girls’ statements made under duress? Should non-Muslim parents be allowed to meet their now Muslim daughters? Does tempting a young girl with false promises count as coercion? Are these forced conversions and marriages essentially cases of rape and sexual harassment committed in the guise of Islam?
Advocate Iqbal Haider believes the answer to all these questions is an unequivocal yes, and he does not hide his disgust towards Mian Mitho and others involved in such conversions: “Mian Mitho is exploiting his status as an MNA and has been indulging in the most objectionable activities.” PPP MNA Mian Mitho
Haider has fought many cases of forced conversions and described the kind of problems that commonly arise in such cases. “No police officer would dare defy the orders of an MNA. The police is not independent,” stated Haider, adding, “I recently saw it in court when two police officers led the girl into the courtroom and her alleged husband was glued to her.”
The police was apparently unconcerned that the man was yet to be proven as the husband and that he was imposing his presence on the girl. It was only when Haider shouted at the police that they separated the two. The families are often not allowed anywhere near their daughters and Rinkel’s parents and their supporters have received public death threats from Mian Mitho and his abettors.
It was against this climate of intimidation that the court decided to move Rinkel and Dr Lata, a 29-year-old who also converted and got married in February, to Islamabad. Haider will not be representing any of the cases in the Supreme Court but he believes it was the right decision to move the girls to more neutral territory. “Keep the girls in Islamabad in a protected area but you can’t keep them there forever. I hope the court holds judicial inquiries into each and every case.”
Haider emphasised the importance of cross-examining all the witnesses since the girls’ statements are often made under duress. And he also pointed out the importance of having a liberal judge since, in his words, “There are bigots everywhere.”
Rinkel and Lata had their court hearing in Islamabad on March 26. Rinkel was barely able to speak and it took her two minutes to answer whether she studied science or arts in school. Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudry instructed everybody to leave the court so that he could talk to the girls privately. The girls were then allowed to briefly meet their parents before being sent to Darul-Aman for two weeks, according to the court’s orders.
In a phone conversation the day after the ruling, Rinkel’s father, Nand Lal, revealed that in the few minutes the family spent with Rinkel, she cried non-stop and said that she wanted to return home with them. She also told them that Mian Mitho’s men had threatened her to not make a statement in favour of her family. While her father hopes that Darul-Aman will provide a safe environment for his daughter, the family does fear that Mian Mitho’s men will be able to reach her there as well. If Rinkel is happily married, as Mian Mitho and his followers like to claim, then why do they feel the need to resort to these intimidatory tactics?
PPP MNA Nafisa Shah, who has publicly condemned the forced conversions, believes this environment of intimidation is the main source of the problem. “Coercion does not just mean using brute force,” she said, “We have an extremely claustrophobic environment in which there is space for only one religion.” And it is this claustrophobic environment that limits opportunities for minority communities in the country and makes the offer to convert and get married all the more alluring to young, vulnerable women. Nafisa Shah also pointed out that Hindus are rarely involved in serious crimes in Pakistan, but because they don’t have arms, they become all the more vulnerable to outside threats.
Nafisa Shah did not want to specifically talk about Mian Mitho, but she made it clear that these forced conversions go against the ideology of the PPP and points out that people like Shahbaz Bhatti and Salmaan Taseer lost their lives as a result of speaking up against prejudicial laws. Shah emphasised that the space for dialogue and multi-faith expression is shrinking and attributes Talibanisation as the source of this problem. She also added that conversions are not an issue, but the fact that in Pakistan it is a one-way street of only minorities converting to Islam that causes concern.
According to Bharti’s nikahnama she is 18-years-old.
Abdul Hai, assistant coordinator at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, agrees that there is nothing wrong with converting, even if it is for the sole purpose of getting married. “The real problem is where is the girl going?” he adds “Maulvis will say in court that the girl’s parents are kafirs and that she can no longer meet them. How can you forcibly cut the girl off from her parents?”
Senior journalist and human rights activist, Akhtar Baloch reiterates the points made by both Shah and Hai: “You cannot stop adults from converting or getting married. But why is it only the Hindus who are converting to Islam? And that too girls? Why don’t we have men converting to Islam or Muslims converting to other religions?”
Baloch is also concerned that the cases being highlighted in the media are of those who are financially more secure and he fears that there are countless more cases that go ignored.
One such case is that of Bharti. On December 2011, Narain Das found his daughter was missing from home and filed an FIR at the Baghdadi thana only to soon discover that his daughter had run off with Abid, the son of Anwar Kalia who is a constable at Preedy police station.
This is not the first time one of Das’s children ran off to convert to Islam. Around 12 years ago, Das’s employers, car dealers, lured his oldest son Lakshman, who was at the time barely a teenager, to convert to Islam. The men, who Das drove cars for, would send the young boy to fetch alcohol and when Das scolded him, they suggested that he convert so that he would no longer have to live by his parent’s rules. Das and his wife would try to visit Lakshman but each time he would run away. When Das finally got a hold of his son, Lakshman said that he ran away because he was told that if he met his non-Muslim parents they would all become wajib-ul-qatl. Das had enough knowledge of Islam to know this was untrue but as a cautionary measure got a fatwa from a neighbourhood maulvi. When Lakshman was nearly 18, Das proposed to his son’s converters that they should get his son married and help him get started in life. The next day, Das was called to take his son back home.
“I bet nobody in all of Pakistan has done what I did next to my son,” said Das. He went on to relate how he got his son a job with a Muslim butcher and when a Hindu girl fell in love with his son, he told her parents that she would have to convert to Islam since his son is a Muslim.
“I have a Muslim son. I have Muslim grandchildren. And I am the Hindu dada of those children,” Narain said, stating that he has no issue with his daughter converting to Islam. What offends him is that his daughter was lured to run away and that Kalia’s family is preventing them from contacting each other.
Also, Das has NADRA documents stating that Bharti is 15 but the police got a medical report alleging that she is 18, over which Das lost the court case.
Das was visibly furious when I met him. “If these NADRA documents hold no meaning, then close down all their offices in the country. And how can Bharti suddenly be older than her brother Sunny? Next they’ll come and say she’s older than her parents.”
The family has received death threats for pursuing this case and Das added, “The biggest mistake I made was hiring Amarnath Motumal as my lawyer. Not because Amarnath is a bad person, but because he is a Hindu and the other side clearly threatened him.”
Motumal, who is also the vice-chairman of HRCP, confirmed that Bharti is indeed only 15 but the case is now unfortunately closed and he hopes public outcry might lead to a new, fairer trial.
Das revealed how Anwar Kalia had the police on his side. The DIG Sindh ruled that Bharti should be taken to a women’s thana and that Anwar Kalia’s family would not be allowed to visit her there. However, these orders were ignored and Kalia’s family would go take meals to Bharti everyday. He also describes Bharti’s alleged husband (Das and his family do not recognise the marriage since Bharti was under coercion) as a good-for-nothing drunkard and drug addict. Her brothers tell me I can ask anyone in the neighbourhood about Abid’s reputation.
Occasionally her brothers were able to speak to her on the phone and they said she would always cry and say she made a mistake. In trying to get in touch with Bharti, I spoke to Abid’s uncle who firmly advised me to move on and not bother them, saying “Bharti is happily married so there is no point in talking to her.”
He admitted that they medically proved her age but did not want to disclose the name of the hospital or doctor they went to. And the maulvi who presided over the nikah ceremony, Mohammed Abbasi, was of little help as well. When asked how he confirmed Bharti, or rather Ayesha’s age, when she had no form of identification on her, he said, “She said so. And you can tell by looking if someone is 15 or 18.”
He also shamelessly told me how Narain Das spoke to him on the phone for an hour, begging for help, but he did nothing. “I have given my statement to the police and the girl married willingly.” It also does not concern him that the witnesses were only from the boy’s side even though in Islam, witnesses from the bride’s side are required.
“If they didn’t accept me as a witness because I’m Hindu, then why didn’t they take my Muslim son as a witness?” Das asks. “And why is it that Dr Lata who is 29 is taken to a women’s shelter, but my 15-year-old daughter is sent away with the accused? Why should I be dealt a different judgement because I am poor?”
Had Rinkel’s family not been able to find the right contacts, had Mian Mitho not been involved, had the Pakistan Hindu Council not decided to take up the issue, her case too perhaps would have been left ignored.
New cases of forced abductions are emerging every month. But Nafisa Shah is sceptical about giving exact figures because nobody is able to find out for certain if the girl in question converted willingly or not. How can one know when soon after the conversion, the girls are married off and cut off from the public? Even in the rare case in which a girl speaks up, there is fear of persecution. According to Seema Rana, a member of the Hindu community who is doing research on these conversions, a girl from Lyari was asked to take an oath on the Quran in court. She refused, saying that she cannot take the oath since she is a Hindu and was forcibly converted. The girl was returned to her parents, but her family feared the accused might take revenge and immediately got her married. Even though the girl is willing to talk about her experiences, her family is too afraid to give her name to the media.
Without access to the girls themselves, we can only imagine what truly happened to them.
These young girls – long forgotten by all but their families – were allegedly kidnapped from their homes and forced to convert to Islam.
Four men kidnapped 13-year-old Mashu from Jhaluree, a village near Mirpur Khas, on December 22, 2005. They then allegedly forced her to convert to Islam and renamed her Mariam. Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi was involved in her conversion and soon after her abduction and conversion, she was married to one of the kidnappers.
Anita Kumar, a 22-year-old Hindu woman with two young children, was kidnapped from her house in Moro, Sindh in April 2011. In the process her two children, aged four and two, were beaten up and locked up alone in the house. The Supreme Court allowed her marriage to a Muslim man, even though she was still married to her first husband, Suresh Kumar. She has since then been renamed Aneela Fatima Pervez.
Gajri, a 15-year-old Hindu girl, was kidnapped by a neighbour from her home in Katchi Mandi in the Rahim Yar Khan district on December 21, 2009. She was later discovered in a madrassa, but by then she had already been converted to Islam and married to her neighbour, Mohammed Salim. Her parents later received an affidavit, in which the daughter stated that she had converted to Islam willingly but they were not sent a copy of the marriage certificate. The parents are not allowed to visit their daughter since they are non-Muslims.
On October 18, 2005, a Hindu driver, Sanno Amra, came home from work to find that his three daughters Reena, Usha and Rima had disappeared from their house in Punjab Colony, Karachi. The oldest sister was 21 and the youngest was 17 – legally still a minor. When Amra pursued the case he started receiving death threats and eventually found affidavits in the mail, which stated that his daughters had willingly converted to Islam. The parents were only allowed to briefly visit the daughters, and that too in the presence of maulvis and police officers.
PESHAWAR, April 16: Authorities on Monday removed four senior officials over a jail break in the restive northwest and launched a probe into whether it had any link to multiple attacks in Afghanistan.
The provincial government said a “total failure” of intelligence was to blame for the break-out, in which dozens of inmates including Taliban militants and death row prisoners fled a prison after armed militants attacked before dawn on Sunday.
More than 150 heavily-armed militants stormed the jail outside the town of Bannu, near the lawless tribal region where Taliban and al Qaeda linked militants have carved out their stronghold.
“It was a total failure of intelligence agencies,” Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told a news conference.
The militants came in dozens of vehicles, continued to operate for more than two hours and went back undetected, he said.
“We have removed the deputy superintendent of Bannu Jail, the city commissioner and two other senior police officers,” he said, adding that a five-member committee had been set up to investigate the matter.
The provincial government has also taken note that the jail break in Pakistan coincided with multiple attacks by Taliban insurgents across the border in Afghanistan on Sunday.
Some 36 insurgents were killed nationwide as Afghan forces regained control of Kabul on Monday 18-hour after the Taliban assault, which left 11 members of the security forces and four civilians dead.
Hussain said “the committee will try to find out whether the jail break in Pakistan, claimed by local Taliban, had any link to coordinated attacks in Afghanistan.” Senior Bannu police official Iftikhar Khan earlier told AFP that a total of 384 inmates had escaped the jail, of whom 53 returned voluntarily while 11 others were arrested.
Most of those who escaped were militants, including 34 prisoners on death row.
Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack which he said was launched to free some of their key members.
The attack began around 1:00 am (2000 GMT Saturday) and continued for two hours, with militants in cars and pick-up trucks shooting and throwing grenades to force their way into the prison, which held 944 prisoners.
A former member of the air force sentenced to death for an attack on former president Pervez Musharraf was among the escaped militants, according to officials.
Adnan Rasheed was convicted after a bomb planted under a bridge in Rawalpindi near Islamabad in December 2003 exploded moments after Musharraf’s motorcade passed. His appeal is pending before the Supreme Court.