Lahore, Feb 4: A security guard pointing a gun at your chest may not be a perk of first-class travel in the West, but it’s all part of the service on Pakistan’s gleaming Business Express.
Thirteen carriages have been lovingly restored into a sleek sleeper to ply the 1,200 kilometres between Pakistan’s two biggest cities, Lahore and Karachi, on an 18-hour journey that once used to take upwards of 30 hours.
Presided over Friday by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, perhaps keen to front a good-news story as he faces contempt charges, and waved off by excited crowds it is Pakistan’s most luxurious and expensive train.
For 5,000 rupees one way, or 9,000 rupees return, passengers are waited on by a bevy of attentive stewards, as they settle down to watch films on flat-screen TVs or power up laptops.
Afternoon tea and piping hot dinner — courtesy of chefs at five-star hotels are borne into cabins as uniformed guards carrying rifles in the corridors are a reminder of a country troubled by kidnappings, Taliban and Al-Qaeda violence.
Then as night falls, stewards come round with crisp bed linen to turn slightly hard green bunks into inviting beds.
It’s all part of a first private investment of millions of rupees in the ailing state railways, billed as the last hope of preventing a much-loved relic of British rule from falling into ruin.
Corruption, mismanagement and neglect have driven Pakistan Railways to the brink.
Since Gilani’s government took power in 2008, the group has retired 104 of 204 trains in a country larger than Britain and Germany combined.
It relies on handouts of $2.8 million a month just to pay salaries and pensions, and faces expected losses of $390 million in the current fiscal year.
But the new train pulled away five minutes early and customers boarded from a brand-new business lounge at Lahore station. Decorated in tinsel, the engine then ground to a halt 10 minutes later to pick up more passengers.
Mariyam Imran, a strikingly beautiful young advisor for cosmetics firm L’Oreal, is delighted. A frequent traveller and terrified by a recent emergency landing on increasingly precarious state airline PIA, she is an avid convert.
“It’s beautiful. It’s relaxing, compared to the trains before. I’m so happy and very comfortable. The staff are good. It’s a marvellous train,” the 22-year-old young mother told AFP.
Travelling with her businessman husband, three-year-old daughter and sister-in-law they are heading to Karachi for a short break before returning to host a Valentine’s Day party at home in Lahore on February 14.
“I hate PIA. Oh my God, that emergency landing. Compared to the plane, this train is best. The service is very good.”
Gilani congratulated staff on what he called a “deluxe” and “state of the art” service that would serve as a trail blazer for future private-public partnerships capable of turning around Pakistan’s depressed economy.
“It’s a big, big initiative from the private sector, which we have welcomed with open arms,” Arif Azim, the chairman of Pakistan Railways, told AFP.
Years of decline saw customers flock to airlines and luxury coaches.
Azim hopes that if the Business Express, and a similar service to be rolled out on February 20 between Lahore, the textiles centre of Faisalabad and Karachi, are a success then investors will sink millions more into saving the railways.
“The sky’s the limit because we’re in a pretty bad shape. We need a totally new fleet. Seventy-five per cent of our wagons can be described as vintage,” he said.
Retired journalist Ishtiaq Ali is taking his young, second wife home after a two-week holiday to show her snow for the first time in Murree, a resort in Pakistan’s foot hills of the Himalayas.
“Oh my goodness, what the hell are you talking about,” he jokes when asked how the new train compares to the best rail services in the West.
“It’s impossible. There’s no education, there’s no security, there’s no insurance. In Pakistan, you can go outside and you can be held at gunpoint.”
It may not be a bullet train. It may not be the Orient Express, but his young wife smiles as she edges out of Lahore, speeding past clapped-out carriages shunted onto sidings.
I first became aware of Pakistan’s blasphemy law soon before I turned 18. It was 1991, and although less than three years had passed since a plane explosion killed General Zia and subsequent elections brought Benazir Bhutto to power, the optimism which surrounded those events had already largely dissipated.
Benazir’s ineffectual government had lasted less than two years before being dismissed on corruption charges, and Zia’s protégé Nawaz Sharif was the new prime minister. If Benazir lacked the political power and nerve to overturn any of the repressive laws which Zia had introduced or strengthened in the name of Islam, Nawaz lacked the inclination to do so. The coalition of parties which he headed – the Islamic Democratic Alliance – had, from the outset, knowingly positioned itself against Benazir’s secular, female-led Pakistan People’s Party.
So it wasn’t surprising, but it was sickening, when Sharif’s government went along with the Federal Shariat Court’s ruling of October 1990, stating that an existing law which permitted life imprisonment rather than death to those found guilty of blasphemy was repugnant to Islam. “The penalty for contempt of the Holy Prophet … is death” the court plainly declared, and the government drew up a bill to bring the law into accordance with this ruling.
The blasphemy law, as it’s come to be known, had been around in a milder form long before the Federal Shariat Court’s ruling. In 1947, when the new nation of Pakistan adopted the Indian penal code (drawn up by the British), it included Section 295-A, which ran as follows: “Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of Pakistan by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.”
For the first few decades of Pakistan’s existence, 295-A was scarcely ever invoked, but when General Zia came to power following a military coup and decided the best way to circumnavigate the absence of a popular mandate was to claim the role of religious saviour, everything changed in the relationship between religion and state.
“Islamisation” became the word of the hour – or rather, of the decade that followed Zia’s usurpation of power. All political parties were banned, their leaders imprisoned if they weren’t in exile, except for the right-wing religious party, the Jamaat-e-Islami; advancement in the army and government became tied to a willingness to espouse Zia’s Islam; school curriculums were “Islamised” – which meant science fell out of favour, religious instruction was raised above all other subjects and the heroes of Pakistan’s history were men who killed (usually Hindus and Sikhs) in the name of religion. It’s worth noting that everyone in Pakistan today under the age of 40 who attended government schools (which is most of the school-going population) would have had Zia’s curriculum and world view pressed into their brains from a very early age.
At the private school I attended, where we followed the ‘O’-level syllabus and used English language texts published outside Pakistan, I grew up learning an entirely different version of the world. Our history lessons covered the ancient world, medieval Europe, a patchwork of Indian history from the Aryan invasions to the rise of Buddhism to the Mughals, through the British Empire to the creation of Pakistan. Islamic lessons – known, to the great amusement of my parents, as RI (religious instruction) – weren’t given any great prominence, but at the same time all students knew that RI was the one lesson where you couldn’t question anything.
Where did this attitude come from? I didn’t learn it from my home life, I know; was it merely the atmosphere of Zia’s Pakistan seeping through or had religion always been sealed in a protected bubble, except in the most radical circles? That’s a question which requires more space to discuss – for the moment, suffice it to say that by the mid-80s an extremist version of Islam had not only been codified in law but had made its way into daily life. Moreover, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and India’s acts of brutality against the largely Muslim population of the Kashmir Valley provided seemingly endless opportunities for pro-jihad propaganda. And then, of course, there was Saudi Arabia, delighted with the Wahabbism of Pakistan’s new head of state and only too happy to spend its petrodollars funding Wahabbi mosques and madrassas in Zia’s beleaguered nation.
All this is necessary to understand the atmosphere in which Zia widened the scope of the blasphemy laws, most notably with the addition of a new section 295-C: “Use of derogatory remarks, etc. in respect of the Holy Prophet. Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.”
From the first, the new and expanded blasphemy laws were used as tools of persecution, used not only against non-Muslims but also against Muslims belonging to minority sects (who were viewed by the Wahabbis as being as bad as, if not worse, than non-Muslims). In an entirely skin-crawling manner, the newly fanged laws made perfect sense for Zia’s rule – if you’re going to claim that your authority stems from your role as champion of Islam, then you have to show yourself zealous in finding and punishing those who offend Islam, both at home and abroad. I have to confess that I don’t recall any conversations around the blasphemy laws in Zia’s days. Perhaps this is because there was so much else to froth at the mouth about around his Islamisation policy. Or because I was 13 at the time.
But I remember very clearly the terrifying period four years later, in the newly democratic Pakistan, when Nawaz Sharif’s government did something which Zia’s government had considered and rejected: impose a mandatory death sentence in blasphemy cases. Every hope that the end of Zia would see a reversal of his Islamisation policies died right there and the number of cases registered under 295-C kept on rising. Most of those who were accused, particularly in the early days, were non-Muslims or Ahmediyyas (a group who refer to themselves as Muslim but have been declared non-Muslim by the Pakistan state and are subject to vicious persecution).
But the case which most struck me was that of Akhtar Hameed Khan – a development activist, and one of the great heroes of Pakistan, and in particular of my home city of Karachi. I always heard his name uttered with admiration in my household, so it was chilling to pick up the newspaper one morning and find him accused of blasphemy, and even more chilling to hear the offending words were in a poem for children that ‘could be read’ as blasphemous if you chose to interpret them in a particular way. In the end, he escaped conviction (as he did on the other two occasions when he was accused under the blasphemy law), but the incident was enough to make it clear to me that the law could be used against any writer who strayed from orthodoxy.
In Benazir’s second term in office, her government made some attempts to amend the blasphemy law to decrease its abuse by those seeking to persecute minorities or settle private scores. Her law minister Iqbal Haider later said he had won the agreement of other parties including the hardline religious Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) for making those amendments; but as soon as a newspaper erroneously reported that the government was planning to repeal the blasphemy laws, there were mass demonstrations by religious groups, which so intimidated the government that Iqbal Haider quickly declared support for the laws and dropped all talk of amendments.
It was around this time, while at university, that I first encountered the term “Kafkaesque”. It seemed designed for the blasphemy laws: if one person had said something blasphemous, their words could not be repeated, not even to a policeman or in a court of law, because voicing the blasphemous words would itself be an act of blasphemy, and so the accuser would become the accused. Those charged under the blasphemy law were immediately imprisoned and placed in solitary confinement, awaiting trial, for their own protection; failure by the police to do so, the logic went, left open the possibility that the accused would be killed either by their neighbours (if they weren’t imprisoned) or by other inmates (if they were imprisoned) because passions run so high over blasphemy charges.
The only ray of light in all this was the refusal by the Supreme Court to uphold a single guilty plea in all the blasphemy cases that came before it, though in reality this could mean that an accused person could be in solitary confinement for years and years while the case worked its way through the judicial system. The judges themselves were not immune to pressure: in 1997, Arif Iqbal Bhatti, a High Court judge, was assassinated after finding three men not guilty of blasphemy.
At a certain point, it started to seem impossible to imagine anything would change. Attempts to merely modify the law had failed – President Musharraf had been the latest head of state to suggest the possibility, only to backpedal furiously in the face of pressure from the religious right.The growing feeling in Pakistan that Islam was a religion under threat in the world meant that there was even less likelihood than before of anyone mounting a challenge to the status quo.
Into this situation strode Salman Taseer, governor of Punjab (the most powerful province in Pakistan). In an entirely unprecedented move, he went with his wife to visit a Christian woman in prison, Aasia Bibi, who had been in solitary confinement for over a year after an altercation with a group of Muslim women, who had refused to drink from the same glass of water as her because they considered her “untouchable”. These women later claimed Aasia Bibi had spoken blasphemous words in the course of the fight, and she was taken away to solitary confinement and later found guilty by the lower court.
Salman Taseer promised that Aasia Bibi would receive a presidential pardon. He also called the blasphemy law “a black law” and pointed out that it was man-made, not God-made. President Zardari, whose backing Taseer claimed to have, started to dither. No presidential pardon was immediately forthcoming, and the judiciary (already at loggerheads with Zardari for entirely separate reasons) ruled that he had no right to grant a presidential pardon until the appeals process was exhausted.
While Taseer continued to rail against the blasphemy law his own party deserted both him and Sherry Rehman, the already out-of-favour minister who had tabled a bill to amend the laws. The law minister, Babar Awan, insisted there was no possibility of changing the laws, and the interior minister Rehman Malik went one better and said that he would personally kill anyone who blasphemed. The rightwing press – who make Fox News look left-wing by comparison – applauded this stance and condemned Taseer.
“I was under huge pressure sure 2 cow down b4 rightest pressure on blasphemy. Refused. Even if I’m the last man standing” Taseer tweeted on 31 December. Four days later he was dead, gunned down by one of his own security guards, who said he did it because of Taseer’s stand on the blasphemy law. For this, the murderer has become a hero in large parts of Pakistan – when he arrived in court to be arraigned, lawyers threw rose petals at him. Near the same time, Taseer’s sons were throwing rose petals on their father’s grave. Absent from the grave site was the head of Taseer’s party, and the country’s president, Asif Ali Zardari. It was clear that, rather than doing the only decent thing and repealing the blasphemy law in honour of Taseer’s memory, the government wanted to put as much distance as possible between itself and the memory of the bravest man in its party.
It was left to Chaudhury Shujaat Hussain, a conservative politician from the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid), to say that amendments were needed to prevent abuse of the blasphemy law. At the time, this seemed the best anyone could hope for – not to touch the law itself, but to make it very difficult for anyone to register an accusation of blasphemy against someone else. But even the faint hope of such procedural changes dimmed as the weeks went by. On 30 January, Hussain’s political party and other centre-right parties joined the right-wing religious groups in a massive rally demanding that the blasphemy laws remain untouched. The head of the JUI (F) publicly declared that the newly appointed governor of the Punjab should visit Taseer’s assassin in prison – just as Taseer had visited Aasia Bibi.
A few days after this, Prime Minister Gilani announced that Sherry Rehman had agreed to withdraw her ‘private member’s bill’ calling for amendments to the law, in keeping with the PPP’s policy of leaving the law untouched. Politically isolated and under threat from extremists, Rehman – who weeks earlier had seen a 25,000 person strong rally march through her hometown of Karachi declaring her an enemy of Islam – said she would stand by her party’s decision.
Through all this, the newspapers continued to carry stories of people charged under the blasphemy law, including a schoolboy who was reported to the authorities by an examination board for allegedly blasphemous remarks he had written on an examination paper. At the beginning of March, Pakistan’s minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti was assassinated and the Taliban claimed responsibility. He was a Christian and the only non-Muslim in the cabinet. In January, Bhatti had told AFP: “During the Aasia Bibi case, I constantly received death threats. Since the assassination of Salman Taseer … these messages are coming to me even publicly. The government should register cases against all those using hate speech”. The Kafkaesque nightmare continues.
Washington DC, Feb 8: The United States Committee on Foreign Affairs convened a congressional meeting on Thursday for an exclusive discussion on the gravity of situation in Balochistan.
The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired by Republican Dana Rohrabacher, held a session to discuss target killings and human rights situation in Balochistan, and termed it a matter requiring urgent attention. He has also co-authored an article a few days ago, favouring independent Balochistan.
In his opening remarks, Rohrabacher said Balochistan is a turbulent land marred by human rights violations “by regimes that are against US values”.
Rohrabacher further said the province had vital strategic importance.
Human Rights Watch Pakistan Director Ali Dayan Hasan, in his submitted remarks, said that cases documented by the HRW showed that Pakistan’s security forces and its intelligence agencies were involved in the forced disappearance of ethnic Baloch.
The HRW representative asked the US government in his recommendations to “communicate directly with the agencies responsible for disappearances and other abuses, demand an end to abuses and facilitate criminal inquiries to hold perpetrators accountable”.
He clarified that the HRW took no position on the issue of the independence of Balochistan. He argued that the US and UK had made forced disappearances possible by allowing them during the war on terror, which had led to the military doing the same.
Addressing the committee, scholar Christine Fair said that while she understood emotions ran high, “targeted killings are also being carried out by the Baloch”, adding that Pakistan’s abuse of human rights had served US interests.
The hearing, which lasted a little over an hour, came to an end as congressmen decided to go to the floor for a vote. In his closing remarks, Rohrabacher declared that the hearing was no stunt, and that they wanted to start a national dialogue on what US policy should be in that part of the world.
Addressing a news briefing, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said her country had not supported the idea of an independent Balochistan. She confirmed the meeting on Balochistan, but said the US position on Balochistan had not changed. She said the US “encourages” all factions involved in the province to tackle all their differences “peacefully and under the political process”. online
Collecting and analysing accurate data is an essential part of disaster preparedness, but the relevant authorities here don`t seem to think so. In general, our attitude towards preparing for and managing disasters is ad hoc and shambolic.
This is quite troubling considering the fact that various parts of Pakistan are prone to seismic activity. For example, major earthquakes struck Balochistan in 2008 and 2011, while it has been reported that six minor quakes were recorded in Karachi in 2010, along with a few recent tremors. The devastation caused by the 2005 quake in northern Pakistan has still not been forgotten.
While it is true that after the 2005 quake there has been greater awareness about disaster management both in the public and private spheres, there is much room for improvement. For example, while masons have been trained in different parts of the country — through UN help — to build safer structures, building codes, especially in cities, are routinely flouted and structures not conforming to safety standards approved.
Also, earthquake drills in schools and workplaces are almost non-existent, though experts say that considering our seismically active neighbourhood such drills should be routine. It is better to be prepared now in order to minimise damage rather than grapple with the consequences of being unprepared when disaster does strike. For a start, the disconnected seismometers should be brought online immediately.
Pakistani liberals derided host Maya Khan’s behavior on Twitter and Facebook, comparing it to the kind of moral policing practiced by the Taliban, and started an online petition asking Samaa TV to end this ”irresponsible programming” and apologize.
The company responded Saturday in a letter sent to reporters saying it had decided to fire Khan and her team and cancel her show because she refused to issue an unconditional apology for the Jan. 17 program.
Samaa TV’s decision marked an unusual victory for Pakistan’s beleaguered liberal minority, which has become more marginalized as the country has shifted to the right and whose members have been killed by extremists for standing up for what they believe.
Critics of the program also praised the company’s decision as a positive example of self-regulation by Pakistan’s freewheeling TV industry, which was liberalized in 2000 and has mushroomed from one state-run channel to more than 80 independent ones.
Some shows have been praised for serving the public good by holding powerful officials to account, but many others have been criticized for doing anything that will get ratings, including pandering to populist sentiments at the expense of privacy and sometimes truth.
”Samaa management has set a good example that some others need to follow,” said prominent human rights activist and journalist Hussain Naqi.
During the program in question, Khan and around a dozen other men and women chased down young couples in a seaside park in the southern city of Karachi. Several couples raced away from the group. One young man put on a motorcycle helmet to hide his identity, while his female friend covered her face with a veil.
Khan finally accosted one couple sitting on a bench and pestered them with questions about whether they were married and whether their parents knew they were there. The man said the couple was engaged and asked Khan to shut off her cameras and microphone. She lied and said they were off.
”What is the difference between this kind of media vigilantism and that demonstrated by the Taliban?” said Mahnaz Rahman, a director at the Aurat Foundation, an organization that fights for women’s rights in Pakistan.
Following Khan’s program, one headline in a local paper called the host and the other women who appeared on the show ”Vigil-aunties,” referring to the South Asian term ”aunty” for a bossy older woman.
A petition posted online that criticized Khan’s behavior as ”highly intrusive, invasive and potentially irresponsible” and demanded an official apology attracted more than 5,000 signatures.
Khan reportedly rejected the criticism at first but eventually issued on apology on TV to anyone she may have offended, saying ”it was not my objective to make you cry or hurt you.”
This fell short of the apology that Khan’s bosses demanded, according to a letter written by the chairman of Samaa TV, Zafar Siddiqi. It said Khan and her team would receive termination notices on Jan. 30 and her show would be canceled.
Siddiqi said the company did not ”absolve such behavior irrespective of ratings the show was getting.”
Scores of Pakistanis on Twitter praised Samaa TV’s decision.
”Journalists must never forget the dividing line between public interest & private freedom,” tweeted Najam Sethi, a prominent Pakistani journalist.
KABUL, Jan 28 — Several Taliban negotiators have begun meeting with American officials in Qatar, where they are discussing preliminary trust-building measures, including a possible prisoner transfer, several former Taliban officials said Saturday.
The former officials said that four to eight Taliban representatives had traveled to Qatar from Pakistan to set up a political office for the exiled Afghan insurgent group.
The comments suggested that the Taliban, who have not publicly said they would engage in peace talks to end the war in Afghanistan, were gearing up for preliminary discussions.
American officials would not deny that meetings had taken place, and the discussions seemed to have at least the tacit approval of Pakistan, which has thwarted previous efforts by the Taliban to engage in talks.
The Afghan government, which was initially angry that it had been left out, has accepted the talks in principle but is not directly involved, a potential snag in what could be a historic development.
The former Taliban officials, interviewed Saturday in Kabul, were careful not to call the discussions peace talks.
“Currently there are no peace talks going on,” said Maulavi Qalamuddin, the former minister of vice and virtue for the Taliban who is now a member of the High Peace Council here. “The only thing is the negotiations over release of Taliban prisoners from Guantánamo, which is still under discussion between both sides in Qatar. We also want to strengthen the talks so we can create an environment of trust for further talks in the future.”
The State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland has said only that Marc Grossman, the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, had “a number of meetings” related to Afghanistan when he visited Qatar last week.
The Taliban’s announcement this month that they would open an office in Qatar, which could allow for direct negotiations, drew fire from some Afghan factions as well as some American policy makers, who fear the insurgents would use negotiations as a ploy to gain legitimacy and then continue their efforts to reimpose an extremist Islamic state in Afghanistan.
Mr. Grossman, at a news conference in Kabul last week, said that real peace talks could begin only after the Taliban renounced international terrorism and agreed to support a peace process to end the armed conflict.
The Afghan government and the Qataris must also come to an agreement on the terms under which the Taliban will have an office. Mr. Grossman has been regularly briefing the Afghan government but Afghan officials have complained that they were being kept out of the loop.
The Taliban officials now in Doha, Qatar, include a former secretary to the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, as well as several former officials of the Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, according to Mr. Qalamuddin and Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban minister of higher education.
The former Taliban officials here described fairly advanced discussions in Qatar about the transfer of prisoners. One former official, Syed Muhammad Akbar Agha, who had been a Taliban military commander, said that five Taliban prisoners were to be transferred in two phases, two or three in one group and then the remainder.
There has also been discussion in Qatar of removing some Taliban members from NATO’s “kill or capture” lists, the former Taliban officials said.
Mr. Grossman, in his comments last week, played down talk of detainee releases, saying the United States had not yet decided on the issue. “This is an issue of United States law first of all, that we have to meet the requirements of our law,” he said.
He said the Obama administration would also consult with Congress. Under American law, the defense secretary must certify to Congress that the transfer of any Guantánamo prisoner to a foreign country would meet certain requirements, including that the country maintains control over its prisons and will not allow a transferred detainee to become a future threat to the United States.
If any detainees were released, Western and Afghan officials said, they would likely be transferred to Qatar and held there, perhaps under house arrest.
The former Taliban officials said that they were most surprised by Pakistan’s decision to allow the Taliban delegates to obtain travel documents and board a plane to Qatar. The former officials have long contended that Pakistan has obstructed talks. “This is a green light from Pakistan,” Mr. Rahmani said.
Pakistan “definitely supported this and is also helping,” Mr. Qalamuddin added. He said that if Pakistan did not approve of the talks, it would have arrested the Taliban delegates to Qatar, just as it did with Mullah Baradar, a senior Taliban official, after he began secret talks with the Afghan government in 2010.
Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Washington, Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Sharifullah Sahak from Kabul.
WASHINGTON: US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has urged Islamabad to release a Pakistani physician who helped the United States find Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad on May 2 last year.
In an interview for an episode of “60 Minutes”, a programme run by the Colombia Broadcasting Service (CBS), Mr Panetta acknowledged that the doctor provided vital clues to the United States about Osama’s lair.
The revelation came on the heels of a Friday speech by Vice President Joseph Biden in which he disclosed that he had cautioned President Barack Obama against raiding Osama bin Laden’s hideout, but the president took the decision all alone.
Speaking at a conference of House Democrats in Maryland, Mr Biden said President Obama ignored his reservations and Leon Panetta, then CIA chief, was the only member of the inner circle who backed the president.
In the CBS interview, Leon Panetta said he believed Pakistani officials knew where Osama bin Laden was hiding before US Navy SEALs found and killed him on May 2, last year.
“There is a Pakistani doctor who, as we understand, was helping our efforts there, a man named Shakil Afridi, he is now being charged with treason in Pakistan and I wonder what you think of that?” asked the interviewer.
“I am very concerned about what the Pakistanis did with this individual. This was an individual who, in fact, helped provide intelligence that was very helpful with regard to this operation.
“And he was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan. He was not in any way doing anything that would have undermined Pakistan,” Mr Panetta replied.
Dr Afridi ran a vaccination programme for the CIA to collect DNA and verify Osama bin Laden’s presence in the Abbottabad compound. Media reports claim that Islamabad had charged Mr Afridi, an employee of the Pakistan government, with treason for working for a foreign intelligence agency.
Mr Panetta headed the CIA when Dr Afridi worked for the agency. Pakistan has so far not issued any official statement on Mr Afridi’s whereabouts. “As a matter of fact, Pakistan and the US have a common cause here against terrorism, have a common cause against Al Qaeda, have a common cause against those who will attack not only our country but their country. And for them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think it is a real mistake on their part,” said Mr Panetta.
“Should they free him?” the interviewer asked. “They can take whatever steps they want to do to discipline him, but ultimately he ought to be released,” Mr Panetta replied.
Reports in the US media quoted senior Pakistani officials as saying that they wanted to resolve the issue amicably. Pakistan would release Mr Afridi quietly to US custody, once media attention died down, the reports said. Asked if he believed Pakistani officials knew Osama was hiding in Abbottabad, Mr Panetta said: “I don’t have any hard evidence, so I can’t say it for a fact. There’s nothing that proves the case. But as I said, my personal view is that somebody somewhere probably had that knowledge.”
Mr Panetta said Pakistani military helicopters were reported to have passed over the compound where the late Al Qaeda chief was found. “I personally have always felt that somebody must have had some sense of what — what was happening at this compound. Don’t forget, this compound had 18 foot walls. … It was the largest compound in the area.
“So you would have thought that somebody would have asked the question, ‘What the hell’s going on there?’” Mr Panetta said.
The defence secretary also explained why Pakistani officials were not informed when the United States raided the compound.
“We had seen some military helicopters actually going over this compound. And for that reason, it concerned us that, if we, in fact, brought [Pakistan] into it, that — they might … give bin Laden a heads up,” he said.
Diplomatic observers in Washington say that Mr Panetta’s statement was aimed at exerting pressure on Pakistan to release Dr Afridi.
BIDEN EXPLAINS HIS ADVICE: Mr Biden said in his speech he advised President Obama not to carry out the mission because he believed “we have to do more things to see if he’s there”.
The vice president gave an insider account of the internal discussions in the White House before the order was officially carried out and praised Mr Obama as a person with a “backbone like ramrod”.
Mr Biden said that for a four-to-six week period early last year, only six people knew that Osama bin Laden might be hiding in Abbottabad.
When enough information finally surfaced, the president convened his national security staff on April 28.
“The president, he went around the table, with all the senior people, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he said ‘I have to make a decision, what is your opinion’. He started with the National Security Adviser, the Secretary of State, and he ended with me,” recalled Mr Biden.
“He (Obama) went around the table with all the senior people. … Every single person in that room hedged their bet except Leon Panetta. Mr Leon said, ‘go.’ Everyone else said 49, 51 (percent in favour),” Mr Biden added. “It got to me. (Mr Obama) said ‘Joe — what do you think?’ I said, ‘You know, I didn’t know we had so many economists around the table.’ I said we owe the man a direct answer. Mr. President, my suggestion is don’t go.” “You end up having to make decisions based on the moon, will there be enough light. And we had to make a decision,” said Mr Biden.
According to the Vice President, Mr Obama left that meeting and said he would make the decision in the morning. “The next morning he came down to the diplomatic entrance, getting in a helicopter I believe to go to Michigan, I’m not positive for that. He turned to Tom Donilon (then national security adviser) and said “go,” Mr Biden related.
The Vice President was not the only person who had second thoughts about pulling the trigger.
Former defence secretary Robert Gates has also admitted he had reservations about the raid.
President Obama, Mr Biden argued, showed leadership. “He knew what was at stake. Not just the lives of those brave warriors, but literally the presidency, and he pulled the trigger,” Mr Biden said.
“This guy doesn’t lead from behind — he just leads.”
A Pentagon official told Fox News that Adm. Mike Mullen, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time, “certainly recognised the risk, but he did not hesitate in offering his advice that we should go.”
Another official said that Gen. James Cartwright, who was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time, was leaning against a raid and more toward an air strike in that final meeting.
FOR some years, Pakistan has been in the crosshairs of change, a change that is not acceptable to some, not enough for others, and too late for still others.
And that perhaps lies at the heart of our current political imbroglio political and state grandees are not ready to understand the true dynamics of change. If they do grudgingly, it`s from their own perspective, that is, at the cost of `rivals` whether these be persons, institutions or interests.
The mother of all changes, which has set off the process of the formation of a new power structure, lies in the spectacular constitutional reforms that the present parliament, for all its shortcomings, has brought about. The reforms have reset the configuration of powers.
Within parliament, the powers have slid to the National Assembly and Senate, leaving the traditionally pro establishment president toothless. Within the centre-province symmetry, the provinces have received more financial and administrative powers, hence the intensifying demand for more provinces. The elites seem more interested in finding new avenues of authority, away from the ramparts of a receding power that once rested in the powerful capital.
Within the state-society grid, it is society that has gained thanks to a host of new constitutional tools, particularly Article 19 A that has shattered the red-tapism to keep the public and media off the rulers` shenanigans. Article 25 A has given a new tool to civil society, rights campaigners and the common man to get the state, if need be through a vibrant judicial forum, to discharge its constitutional duty of ensuring free education to all children between five to 16 years of age.
Within civil-military relations, a democratic and constitutional dispensation has emerged as the consensus form of government. All organs of state are bound by constitutionalism. Hence, the chief justice reiterates his resolve to uphold democracy, notwithstanding the perceived failure of the government to deliver.
Even at the height of civil military tensions, the army chief vouches for constitution, which is clearly a healthy aberration from the past. The ever-divided political leadership is also united on it.
Given all these positive indicators, how come democracy continues to be in peril, and why are new theories being churned out as an alternative to `failed` democracy? It is because the constitutional changes are inherently disruptive; they many not necessarily augur well for all the actors of state and society. Often, some powers are pruned, and others, strengthened; some offices shed power while others gain authority, as dictated by the new constitutional order and the prevailing political culture.
Thus, constitutional change carries both the force of the past and the promise of the future. It is, therefore, a synthesis. But the synthesis follows an antithetic process, destroying all the barriers that come in its way.
Whether the destruction is peaceful or bloody depends on three factors. One, the socio-political environment, internal and extraneous; two, the relative strength of the resistance to the change that is long due and cannot be resisted any longer; and finally the catalysts of change, be it the political leadership, rights campaigners, judges, or common citizens like Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian peddler whose self immolation triggered the `Arab Spring` Moreover, the change must conform to socio-political demands. In western societies political change was invariably preceded by economic and social transformation. By the 19th century, new capitalist and working classes had emerged to supplant the landed gentry allied with an omnipotent monarch.
Also, a culture of the sciences, technology, humanist literature and modern social, political and ecclesiastical approaches had long prepared the ground for modern democratic welfare polity. Yet, the change was not necessarily peaceful. The West confronted a number of revolutions, regicides and global conflagrations before a universal consensus on democratic polity was achieved.
On the contrary, in much of the colonial world, radical independence movements led by maverick leaders initially substituted the colonial powers. But most of these newly independent countries had authoritarian or totalitarian regimes.
A rather long and painful process of democratisation saw the removal of these regimes under a secondor third-generation leadership. The democratic trajectory of Latin America, East Asia and East Europe saw this trend during the last decade of the 20th century. And now much of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia are treading this path, though with varying degrees of success.
What is common to both East and the West is the observation that only a successful democracy is sustainable. Europe was plunged into the most horrendous world wars when democracy and newfound internationalism failed to mend social and political fissures. The rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe was the result of democratic failures as well as the industrial propertied classes` quest for protection Our propensity for allying with authoritarianism owes to the fact that while the powerful landed, business and bureaucratic elites are duly catered to by an undemocratic system, the overwhelming majority of lower and marginalised classes, the real repository of political power, have been over and again neglected by democratic and civilian rulers.
No wonder, the elite`s emphasis is more on governance, which means political stability and certainty of the law. Less stress is laid on social reforms, which means redistribution of wealth and power. The existing constitutional reforms, accompanied by judicial activism, have once again brought the possibility of `socio-political change`. But alas, the lacklustre performance of the democratic government has once again put this change in perils, and hence its own survival.
Women demonstrators (Credit: dw-world.de)SUCH are the paradoxes in Pakistan’s politics, that at a time our politicians are locked in a grim power struggle in Islamabad, the same gentlemen joined hands to pass unanimously the women’s commission bill last Thursday.
Whether this show of unity on a matter concerning women should be interpreted as an act of chivalry or a demonstration of ‘woman power’, it will be widely welcomed. One must, however, admit that it was the clout of the women’s caucus and the determination of the speaker — also a woman — to get the treasury and opposition benches to forge a consensus that ultimately carried the day. The bill is expected to have a smooth sailing in the Senate.
This certainly has been an uphill struggle. When the commission was set up in July 2000, it was widely felt that its mandate was too weak to allow it to function as an effective body. This view was confirmed in July 2001 when Aurat Foundation and Shirkat Gah organised an international conference where representatives from abroad briefed the participants about the powers wielded by similar bodies in their countries.
It became increasingly clear that the announcement made with great fanfare by Gen Musharraf was no more than a gimmick.
The National Commission on the Status of Women (NSCW) lacked the capacity to bring about the emancipation of women and the elimination of discrimination against them.
Hence it was demanded that the powers and independence of the women’s commission should be enhanced to optimise its performance. The participants of the Islamabad conference also called for greater transparency and accountability in the commission’s selection and working.
It took more than a decade and a lot of hard work and advocacy to get the government to consider a change in the status quo.
The new body with the simple nomenclature of the National Commission for Women will certainly have more teeth in some respects as compared to its predecessor. It will be autonomous with the power to raise its own finances. Its composition will be more representative. Thus a bipartisan parliamentary committee will give a list of nominees from which the prime minister will select the members.
The prime minister will appoint the chairperson with the agreement of the leader of the opposition. This would hopefully ensure that the working of the commission is not hamstrung by inter-party conflict. Autonomy should allow the commission to bypass the red tape of bureaucracy and proceed to take up issues it feels are urgent.
The bill adopted by the National Assembly is significant in another way. The commission has been empowered to take up complaints of violations of women’s rights and even hold an enquiry into the matter if it is not being attended to. It can also inspect jails to check on female prisoners. In effect it will have the powers of a civil court. The ordinance of 2000 did not grant this power to the NCSW which could only monitor such violations and individual grievances, and then undertake initiatives for better management of justice and social services through the concerned forums.
In respect of the commission’s power of reviewing and monitoring the laws, policies and programmes of the government in the light of their implications for gender equality, empowerment of women, political participation and representation, the new law upholds the provision of the previous ordinance. It can also recommend repeal, amendment or new legislation as its predecessor could do. As before, it is authorised to sponsor research and maintain a database on gender issues as well as recommend the signing or ratification of international instruments.
The catch in all these provisions is that the commission can only make recommendations. It has no power to enforce its own views. When Justice Majida Razvi was the chairperson of the NCSW she had the Hudood Ordinances reviewed and the commission very strongly recommended their repeal. Her appeal fell on deaf ears. It was only later that the injustice inflicted on women by the Hudood Ordinances was neutralised by adopting the Women’s Protection Law of 2006. Will an autonomous commission have more powers of implementation? Most unlikely.
India’s National Commission for Women has been described as a strong body and yet one of its former members, Syeda Hameed, writes in her book They Hang, “The stories I tell are, of course, stories of women abused and violated by men wielding brute power. But they are also about the National Commission for Women, the nation’s apex body for women vested with the power to summon the highest functionaries of the land and seek redress — yet it remains ineffective for the most part … Perhaps it was ignorable or ignorance combined with indifference, but the truth of the matter is that the commission’s reports and jurisdiction are not binding on anyone, and its jurisdiction stops at its front door.”
Our commission can expect no better treatment from the male-dominated administration. But there is still hope. If the chairperson is an active and experienced person as the incumbent (Anis Haroon) is, she can use her office to draw public attention to the issue that needs to be addressed.
Working in close liaison with women parliamentarians the National Commission for Women can make an impact on the laws.
In other words the battle has to go on. But every victory helps create greater awareness and should be used in the campaign to mobilise women at the grass-roots. That is where lies the strength of the women’s movement wherever it may be.
Human RIghts Watch (Credit:uniosil.org)New York, Jan 23 – Pakistan’s fledgling democratic government, under increasing pressure from the military, appeased extremist groups, ignored army abuses, and failed to hold those responsible for serious abuses accountable in 2011, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2012. Targeted killings and other attacks on civilians by the Taliban and sectarian and ethnic militant groups, as well as killings of journalists, were commonplace during the year.
Security deteriorated dramatically throughout the country as the result of suicide bombings by the Taliban and affiliated groups, which targeted civilians and public spaces, including marketplaces and religious processions. There was a dramatic increase in targeted killings in the southwestern province of Balochistan, while 800 people were killed in often politically motivated violence in Karachi. Law enforcement authorities made little attempt to resolve enforced disappearances of terrorism suspects and opponents of the military.
“The past year was disastrous for human rights in Pakistan,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Bombs killed hundreds of civilians, advocates of religious tolerance were assassinated, and the military undermined democratic institutions. From Karachi to Quetta, Pakistan is teetering on the edge of becoming a military-run Potemkin democracy.”
In its 676-page report, Human Rights Watch assessed progress on human rights during the past year in more than 90 countries, including popular uprisings in the Arab world that few would have imagined. Given the violent forces resisting the “Arab Spring,” the international community has an important role to play in assisting the formation of rights-respecting democracies in the region, Human Rights Watch said in the report.
In Pakistan, persecution and discrimination under cover of law against religious minorities and other vulnerable groups reached a zenith in 2011, Human Rights Watch said. Freedom of belief and expression came under severe threat as Islamist militant groups murdered Punjab’s governor, Salmaan Taseer, and the federal minorities’ minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, over their public support for amending the country’s often abused blasphemy law. The government notably failed to provide protection to people threatened by extremists or hold the extremists accountable. Taseer’s self-confessed killer, Mumtaz Qadri, was convicted of murder, but the presiding judge had to flee the country amid fears for his safety.
Extremist groups exploited the government’s passivity by intimidating minorities and with an upsurge in blasphemy allegations and cases, Human Rights Watch said. Religious minorities, Muslims, children, and mentally disabled people have all been charged under the blasphemy law, which violates the right to freedom of conscience and religion under international law.
“Government appeasement of extremist groups who fomented Taseer and Bhatti’s murders has led to a rash of blasphemy allegations and well-justified fear for those who question the use of the blasphemy law,” Adams said. “The Pakistan government needs to summon the courage to stand up to extremists and hold those responsible for violence and threats to account.”
Journalists, particularly those covering counterterrorism issues or who are perceived to be taking public positions against the military, faced unprecedented threats. At least ten journalists were killed in Pakistan during the year. A climate of fear pervaded efforts by the media to cover the military, and militant groups with the result that journalists rarely report on human rights abuses by the military in counterterrorism operations. The Taliban and other armed groups regularly threatened media outlets over their coverage.
Saleeem Shahzad, a reporter for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online and for Adnkronos International, the Italian news agency, disappeared from central Islamabad on the evening of May 29. He had received repeated and direct threats from the military’s abusive Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Shahzad’s body, bearing visible signs of torture, was discovered two days later near Mandi Bahauddin, 130 kilometers southeast of the capital.
Following an international and domestic furor caused by the killing, a judicial commission was formed within days to investigate allegations of ISI complicity. In August, Human Rights Watch testified before the commission. The commission released its findings in January 2012, but failed to identify the perpetrators or exhaustively investigate the role of the ISI, which remains the principal suspect.
Despite widespread allegations of ISI and military involvement in coercion, abduction, torture, and killings of perceived opponents, including journalists, no military personnel have ever been held accountable for such abuses.
“Unless Shahzad’s murderers are identified and held accountable, media freedoms will decline even further in Pakistan as journalists operate in fear for their lives,” Adams said. “The government needs to bring charges wherever the trail leads, including to the ISI.”
The southern port city of Karachi experienced an exceptionally high level of violence during the year, with 800 people killed, Human Rights Watch said. The killings were carried out by armed groups backed by all the political parties with a presence in the city. The Muttaheda Qaumi Movement (MQM), Karachi’s largest political party, with heavily armed cadres and a well-documented history of human rights abuse and political violence, was widely viewed as the major perpetrator of targeted killings. The Awami National Party and ruling Pakistan People’s Party-backed Aman (Peace) Committee killed MQM activists.
Relations between Pakistan and the United States, long Pakistan’s most significant ally and its largest donor of humanitarian and military assistance, deteriorated markedly in 2011. Factors fueling the diplomatic crisis included the killing of two men by a CIA contractor at a Lahore traffic junction; the withholding of US$800 million in military aid to Pakistan; Pakistan’s alleged support for militants from the “Haqqani network,” a group that US officials accused of targeting the US Embassy and NATO troops in Afghanistan; the alleged harboring by Pakistan of Osama bin Laden and his killing by the US; and the November 26 killing during military operations of 24 Pakistani troops on the Afghan border by NATO forces.
The United States carried out about 75 aerial drone strikes during 2011 on suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. These strikes resulted in claims of large numbers of civilian casualties, but lack of access to the conflict areas has prevented independent verification.
“Little is known about who is killed in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan and under what circumstances,” Adams said. “So long as the US resists public accountability for CIA drone strikes, the agency should not be conducting targeted killings.”
In November, Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, was forced by the Pakistani military to resign his position after allegations that he was responsible for a secret memo delivered to senior US military officials seeking support for Pakistani civilian control of national security policy. Haqqani is now blocked from leaving Pakistan and has publicly expressed fear for his life. His lawyer, the prominent human rights defender and former UN human rights envoy Asma Jahangir, has expressed similar concerns and raised serious reservations about a lack of due process in the legal proceedings against Haqqani.
“The military has gained increasing control of state institutions to the detriment of the rights of the Pakistani people,” Adams said. “Civilian officials are now afraid to oppose the military on any key issues, making it increasingly difficult for the government tackle past and present rights violations by the military.”
