ISLAMABAD, April 30: The government is all set to approach five countries and the United Nations to seek extradition of top Baloch insurgents accused of fomenting unrest in Balochistan which has been in the throes of a low-profile separatist insurgency since 2006.
The security agencies have identified 161 training camps of Baloch insurgents, nearly two dozen of them are believed to be located in Afghanistan and two in Iran.
“We are taking up the issue of Baloch insurgents with five countries [India, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Iran and Afghanistan],” said a top security official, who did not want to be named in this report. Dr Allah Nazar, Hyrbyair Marri, Brahumdagh Bugti, Javed Mengal
and some other wanted insurgents are commanding their fighters in the province, he added.
Hyrbyair Marri, the head of the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), has been living in self-exile in the United Kingdom where he has been granted political asylum. The BLA has been responsible for most violence in Balochistan.
Army chief General Raheel Sharif and Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had taken up Marri’s issue with British officials and sought his repatriation to Pakistan, the security official said.
Brahumdagh Bugti, the founder of the Baloch Republican Army (BRA), has been living in Switzerland seeking political asylum. The BRA has been involved in attacks on security forces, national installations and civilians in Balochistan.
The security official said Islamabad through diplomatic channels was also in contact with Swiss authorities to bring Brahumdagh back to Pakistan. “The Afghan government has assured Pakistan its full support to stop Baloch insurgents from operating from its soil,” he added.
The government has requested Iran through its Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Qashqavi to make maximum efforts to block the influence of some Baloch separatists operating from Iranian soil, he added. “Pakistan is considering taking up the issue of Indian involvement in Balochistan unrest at the United Nations,” he added.
Earlier this month, the government quietly expanded the scope of a targeted military operation in Balochistan with the consent of the provincial government in an effort to dismantle the training camps of insurgents, the security official said. “We have expanded the military operation in Balochistan.”
The paramilitary Frontier Corps is assisting the military in targeted operations against separatists. “IGFC Balochistan Maj Gen Sher Afgun had briefed Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on such operations earlier this week,” he added.
The expansion of the operation came under the National Action Plan against terrorism, which is being executed by the armed forces across the country to wipe out militancy from the country, another senior official of the interior ministry told The Express Tribune.
The FC has been tasked to expedite operations against anti-state elements as well as to enhance border security, security of important places and state properties, said the official who is familiar with the meeting between the IGFC and Chaudhry Nisar.
The IGFC also floated the idea of bringing police from Karachi, Quetta, Peshawar and Lahore under the federal government for the time being to restore peace in the country’s metropolitan cities, he added. “The IGFC also requested the interior minister for more funds to expand the scope of the operation.”
Sabeen’s supporters (Credit: dawn.com)ISLAMABAD, May 3: Can the words of a grief-stricken woman be used to accuse her of treachery against the state? From the sentiments of social media users, it would appear so.
On the night of Sabeen Mahmud’s murder, social media was awash with expressions of anger, disgust and disbelief at the killing of one of Karachi’s leading civil society activists. One of the many tweets that expressed utter disgust and disillusionment with the current state of the country came from a woman who was close to Ms Mahmud.
“I stood in a dark corner of the house and cried. I was overcome with grief and couldn’t process it. I was fed up with all the senseless violence that plagued Pakistan and in that state, I sent out the tweet.”
That expression of grief, however, unleashed a nightmare for the woman in question. Days after the incident, when civil society members gathered to remember Ms Mahmud, the same tweet was re-circulated, this time amongst a more militant and decidedly more extreme segment of social media users.
Countless death threats, rape threats and messages inciting violence against her and other activists – such as Lums professor Taimur Rehman and National Students Federation activists – who were talking about human rights violations in Balochistan and asking for justice for Sabeen Mahmud, were issued by various social media users and pages.
“I’ve worked on sensitive issues before, and have received my share of hate mail. But this harassment was on a scale I had never seen before. The rabidity of the comments, across all social media platforms, got to me and, on the advice of some friends, I deactivated my accounts on social media,” she told Dawn.
Threats of physical and sexual violence against women are not a new phenomenon on social media and the fact that many of the users copy-and-pasted the exact same message again and again has led a number of IT experts to observe that this appeared to be a coordinated effort.
Fahad Desmukh, a journalist and rights activist, told Dawn that even though freedom of expression activists preferred to err on the side of more freedom, the reality of social media was that users – especially public figures – would have to put up with a certain amount of abuse and venom from others who do not agree with their ideas.
“However, when that abuse turns into threats of rape, physical violence or incitement to violence against the victim, that is very scary,” he said.
Shahzad Ahmed, country director of the digital rights group Bytes For All, said that even though offences such as these were covered in the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) and the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), law enforcement agencies aren’t the best forum for victims, especially women, to take their cases.
The law provides protection, for example, against incitement to violence under Section 109 of the PPC; against intimidation and threats to a person’s life under Section 506; and against threats of injury or damage to property under Section 503. However, Mr Ahmed said that these laws had never been properly enforced in cases where online activity has been concerned.
“If an individual, especially a woman, takes her case to the National Response Centre for Cyber Crimes (NR3C), local law enforcement or even the courts, there is a tendency to blame the victim,” he said, adding, “a woman exposes herself to more scrutiny and name-calling by pursuing their case through the authorities”.
This is reminiscent of what happened to the late Sabeen Mahmud around Valentine’s Day two years ago, when she ran a campaign extolling peace and love. ‘Faasla na rakhein, pyaar honay dein’ was the message she and her fellow campaigners were spreading.
However, around the same time, a parallel movement that cited Islamic texts and opposed the observance of ‘decadent festivals’ such as Valentine’s Day, cropped up in Karachi and other cities. When Ms Mahmud dismissed their views via her social media account, a concerted campaign was initiated by conservative elements to malign her. They even insinuated that Ms Mahmud had insulted scripture and termed her a blasphemer.
This is a very dangerous accusation in Pakistan, where dozens are killed in the name of blasphemy every year, without anything in the way of due process. So when Ms Mahmud approached the authorities, her plight was belittled and she was asked, “Why did you do this in the first place?”
Both Mr Ahmed and Sana Saleem of Bolo Bhi told Dawn that even though social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook have strict policies regarding incitement to violence and threats of sexual or physical assault, the sites are not always quick to take action against malicious content.
“A good way to get a dangerous post removed is to get a couple of dozen people to report that post or user. If enough people report it, the website is forced to review it. Sometimes they don’t and we get in touch with them directly and plead the case. But we can do this because we’ve had contact with the Facebook team. Not everyone has that kind of access,” Ms Saleem said.
The situation becomes more perilous when the vitriol is echoed by Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that purport to have intimate knowledge of the military’s workings. For example, the Facebook page called simply ‘ISI’ – with over 341,000 subscribers, as well as its allied Twitter page, ‘@ISI_RT’ – have posted photographs of human rights activists, including women, and extolled followers to murder, rape or do bodily harm to them.
Due to the nature of the incident – Ms Mahmud was killed shortly after hosting a controversial seminar titled #UnsilencingBalochistan where Baloch nationalist activist Mama Qadeer was also invited – many of her friends placed the blame for her killing squarely on the state’s shoulders.
A military official Dawn spoke to regretted the practice, but said that the army had little to no control over such pages.
“Journalists and media savvy individuals know that ISPR has one official website and only one Facebook and Twitter page. Most of these other pages copy information from the official websites in order to establish their credibility. They can be operated by anyone, but the average user is not necessarily in a position to judge that,” he said.
The official pointed out that ISPR had issued formal statements in the past, explaining that neither the chief of army staff, nor the DG ISI, have accounts on social media. This was because imposter accounts purporting to be run by the two senior functionaries became quite popular on social networking websites, leading many users to believe that they were, in fact, genuine.
“Social media is a comparatively new medium, so we are looking into what can be done. But in the absence of a proper mechanism whereby such content can be checked, e.g. a cybercrime law, there is only so much the institution can do to clarify its position,” he said.
Veteran rights activist Hina Jilani disagrees. “Defending human rights is one of the most difficult things to do in this country. If the state cannot protect lawyers or activists who are involved with sensitive cases, what guarantees are there that the state is not backing their actions,” she asked, rhetorically.
Ms Jilani – who has been a vocal human rights activist for many decades – was also targeted by several social media users for her defence of Sabeen Mahmud. However, saying that she did not bother with the social media at all, she said that the situation today was far scarier than it was back in her day.
“If journalists or activists fell afoul of the state, they were mostly hauled off to jail. Now, they are just bumped off. This practice began under Gen Zia but gained prominence under the rule of Gen Musharraf,” she said.
Disagreeing with the impression that those with extremist views are ‘lone wolves’ without an agenda, she said that the fact that their views were freely aired on mainstream media, while progressive voices were stifled, proved that they enjoyed state support.
This is exactly what the woman grieving for Ms Mahmud is worried about.
“I have limited my presence on social media and am staying at home until the outcry dies down,” she told Dawn, adding that even though she knew the cause was worth fighting for, it was only natural to be scared for one’s own life given the extent to which Pakistani society had become intolerant of others’ opinions.
Arabs travel for the hunt to Pakistan (Credit: zistboom.com)Wallah, it is once again the season of the hunt. We Arabs love God’s magnificent creatures; we travel all over the world to find them and kill them. For there is no struggle more glorious than a Sheikh’s entourage of armed bodyguards versus a small, defenseless bird. In the great deserts of Arabia there are few animals to hunt. There are camels but they do not understand the idea of running away; they stand there, idiots, and it is the Sheikh who has to run away to make distance. Ya tifl, that is not good.
That is why we come to our friends in al-Bakistan, where everyone looks like our servants from back home. They have many of these (houbara) bastards for our falcons to hunt. The Sheikh Abu bin Ibn says there will be great reward on the Day of Judgment for those who have killed the (houbara) bastards for this illegitimate bird is close to Shaitan and there is good in striking it down.
We choose the second day of the second month for this pilgrimage to al-Bakistan; the weather is nice and hot but by the grace of God their country is a bit rural, too few malls and eight lane highways and five star hotels. I ask the locals, “Have you not been blessed with the divine gift of oil?”
They cast their eyes downwards and make faces as if to say no. The Sheikh Riyal bin Petrolyam tells me people do strange things with oil in al-Bakistan, like but it in their hair or in their food. I say no, no, you have to find Americans and sell it to them but the Sheikh says they do not understand.
The hospitality here is heartwarming and we truly feel part of a global Muslim Ummah which is why we build balace sized homes with electrified fences to keep the locals out.
We start the hunt on a Friday for verily on this day there is a blessing upon those who carry radar devices and radio transmitters in a ten vehicle cavalcade. This year we go to the inhospitably arid dunes of Chagai.
Ya Habibi, this is the thrill of the hunt; pitting yourself in air-conditioned cars against harsh deserts, ferocious foreign journalists and keepers of wildlife reservations. Wallah there is nothing more dangerous than an enraged conservationist.
And though we do not gamble verily we make a bet of 40 camels to see who can strike down a (houbara) bastard before the other, and this time Sheikh Abu bin Ibn’s falcon did fly away and when he started firing upon the houbara bushes in anger, the recoil set him upon the hot desert floor and the bullet hit a passerby and there was much rejoicing, for surely God smiles upon him who falls down while firing a rifle.
Then we heard the crown prince had landed in al-Bakistan and upon seeing the airport at the capital had remarked, “Is this a joke?” but then the prince told the Sheikhs that whatever has been promised to you has been promised tenfold, and in dollars, to the government of al-Bakistan for truly he is a friend who lets his brother hunt in his home.
The Sheikh Riyal bin Petrolyam tells me people do strange things with oil in al-Bakistan, like but it in their hair or in their food. I say no, no, you have to find Americans and sell it to them but the Sheikh says they do not understand.
For even though the locals are forbidden to strike the (houbara) bastard, for Arabs that they establish a special hunting license, called a keffiyeh, that is worn around the head and makes blessed all animals killed while wearing it.
This follows a long tradition of Arabs enjoying safaris in South Asia from the days of Muhammad bin Qasim who made the journey to hunt the prized wildlife known as Maharajas.
But some people try to make bad this relationship like last year when an al-Bakistani bureaucrat whispered ill things about the crown prince saying he had personally destroyed the habitat of hundreds of flying creatures and should no longer be given a visa. Surely, as justice is served on the wings of the falcon, the bureaucrat is now washing dishes somewhere in Sibi and close bond between Arabs and whatever these locals call themselves is preserved.
When the crown prince joined us in Chagai, he explained that in nature many things had been made good for man, and the bastard is one of them, for the bastard is good for the kindling of an Arab’s passions and keeps him young and virile.
And the Sheikhs Wiz bin Khalifa, Khalid bin Naum and Sahil bin Kahil did raise a toast of halal wine to his speech and there was much rejoicing.
NOBODY, of course, had anything to do with it, when Sabeen Mahmud’s car was stopped by two men on a motorbike who shot her at point-blank range through the windows. The Pakistani Taliban denied all responsibility. The Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI, promised all possible help to the police. Nawaz Sharif’s government ordered the police to find the perpetrators within three days. The police said they were very busy ascertaining a motive.
Really, it wasn’t hard to spot one. Here in the midst of anarchic, dysfunctional, crammed, crazy, noisy Karachi was a woman who was even more anarchic, crazy, noisy and in-your-face. She was at the heart of every disturbance, from supporting rank outsiders in the local elections to organising flash protests on social media, and spiced up every organisation she belonged to, which was any outfit committed to challenging discrimination or injustice.
No veil or scarf for her; with her short-cropped hair and black-rimmed glasses, she looked like a New York intellectual and felt like a postmodern hippie child. She loved Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen and the Beat poets. She’d give you a straight, cool stare, equally straight talk, an easy laugh, and a philosophy of absolute fearlessness. If you were afraid, she’d say, you’d get nothing done: especially not in army-ridden, intolerant Pakistan, where so much was never to be questioned or discussed, and certainly not by women.
The centre of all she did was the Second Floor (T2F for short), the café/bookshop/ performance space she founded in 2007. She had a pittance in the bank at the time, but a reckless dream of copying the old Pak Tea House in Lahore where radicals used to meet. By working on tech projects all the hours she could, maxing out her credit cards and begging money from relations, she gave Karachi a place where talk—about art, science, politics, anything—could flow freely, and citizens could get online and organise. Two years later, when the nervous landlord kicked her out, the café had become such a lifeline for Karachi’s free-thinkers that she easily found a better place. She called the performance area “Faraar”, Urdu for “escape”.
There, in a comparatively shabby street in the posh Defence district, poets on open mic advocated revolution; people sat around for hours discussing life on Mars; musicians tried out their pieces, artists hung weird stuff on the walls, home-made films were screened, and anyone could wander in and shoot the breeze, no matter what their creed or disposition or label— Punjabi, Bihari, or whatever. In 2007, when President Pervez Musharraf fired some Supreme Court judges, Ms Mahmud invited lawyers to plot their protests there. In 2013 she organised a hackathon, Pakistan’s first, where for a whole weekend people brainstormed new ideas and apps to make Karachi work better. Don’t just bad-mouth the government, she would say. Take charge! Change things!
No one paid to belong to T2F, though you could buy good coffee and brownies, as well as alternative books. Those takings covered about half the costs and gave her a salary, not that she cared much. She ran her own media-and-tech consulting firm and was president for a time of the Karachi outpost of an organisation that fostered tech entrepreneurs, but didn’t want to make money. The point was to fight the “horrible stuff” going on in Pakistan and the world.
Where had all this adrenalin-boosted energy come from? She blamed her mother, Mahenaz, for instilling “mad ideas at a young age” and supporting her ever after. (Mahenaz was in the car with her, and was hurt in the attack.) But she was spurred on just as much by anyone who told her she could not or must not do a thing. When a computing teacher belittled her at school she decided to master computers by herself, falling in love at 14 with a Macintosh Plus that had Pink Floyd and Lenny Bruce in it, and teaching herself to solder wires and write programs. Small wonder she believed, first, that formal education was stultifying, and second that computers, especially Macs, could shake everything up in the way she longed to see.
Even sport pricked her defiance. Her school, Karachi Grammar, didn’t let girls play cricket, so she played it at home with any spare passing males she could find. A bat, stumps and proper hard ball went with her to the office—to whack assailants over the head, apart from anything else.
Inviting enemies in
Abuse and threats came often. She laughed them off. Other dissidents left Karachi, but she loved it too dearly to live anywhere else. Friends said she should put a security guard on the café door; she preferred to invite her enemies in, to eat panini and join the conversation. In 2007 she hosted a talk by an author who had uncovered army finances; ISI people were invited, and some came. On April 24th she had just held a meeting to “un-silence” Baluchistan, Pakistan’s most neglected and separatist province, where hundreds of activists and students had been abducted, probably killed. Lahore University had been warned off the subject. There would probably be “blowback”, she told a friend; “I just don’t know what that blowback entails.”
The authorities and jihad-makers were all most extremely sorry. Not half as sorry as the artists, poets and thinkers of Karachi, who suddenly found it hard to breathe.
It’s done it again. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s recent victory in Karachi’s NA-246 constituency, its seventh in a row, has dealt a blow to its critics, who claimed the party’s grip was loosening in a city yearning for political change.
Far from weakening the party, the Rangers’ raid on MQM’s headquarters on March 11 and subsequent events seem to have revitalized the link between the party and its constituents. The by-election on April 23 reaffirmed its capacity to bounce back in challenging times. Its core constituency (the Urdu-speaking middle- and lower-middle classes of Karachi’s District Central) sent packing the self-styled ‘liberators’ who promised voters “freedom from fear.” Opponents have had to face the fact that the “living dead,” as Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf described MQM voters, are alive and kicking.
On closer inspection, however, the ‘landslide’ victory of the MQM is not as blatant as it seems. And while this victory is certainly a shot in the arm for an embattled party, it provides only temporary respite.
Rarely has a by-election captured as much attention at the national level as the one in NA-246. On one hand, everyone was eager to see how the MQM was going to get out of the awkward corner where the military establishment, with the support of the federal government, had pushed it in the preceding weeks. The involvement of all the contenders’ central leadership only contributed to raise the stakes even further.
Once again, PTI chief Imran Khan and his entourage demonstrated their unfamiliarity with Karachi’s ground realities by convincing themselves that their rhetoric of salvation would be enough to ravish the MQM’s home constituency, where it has remained undefeated since 1988. By equating Mohajirs at large, in a constituency where they account for more than 80 percent of registered voters, with passive victims waiting to be liberated from the yoke of crime and authoritarianism, the PTI alienated potential voters and probably even drove a significant number of its past voters back toward the MQM.
Instead, the PTI should have realized that the MQM’s grip over Azizabad and other Urdu-speaking localities of NA-246 is less the outcome of its coercive tactics than of its patronage politics. The MQM has delivered, providing its constituents with public jobs, helping them overcome bureaucratic and legal hurdles, facilitating their access to water and electricity (however imperfect these services remain). Khan and the PTI also ignored the fact that the largely uncontested authority of the MQM over this part of the city has preserved a semblance of peace in the area. Every MQM voter may not sympathize with the party’s muscular style of politics, but most residents of these localities will admit that at least some order reigns in this part of town.
Kunwar Naveed Jamil, the MQM candidate, received 95,644 votes or a bit more than 73 percent of the total cast. This is similar to what Nabil Gabol, whose resignation from the National Assembly required this by-election, secured in the 2013 election as an MQM candidate. As such, Jamil’s score puts paid to allegations, including from Gabol, that the MQM owed its recent victories to wholesale rigging. Conducted under the close watch of the Rangers, no one can claim that the MQM’s comfortable win was the outcome of electoral malpractices. The party has demonstrated that it has retained a large vote-bank in its home constituency.
At the same time, despite its relatively poor showing, the PTI has seen its vote share (percentage of votes polled minus invalid ones) increase from 17 percent to 19 percent. This should already be a source of concern for the MQM. Clearly, the PTI has made a dent into the MQM’s vote bank and it seems here to stay. But this is not the only matter of concern. Electoral assessments in terms of vote share always present a strong bias as they fail to account for invalid votes and, more importantly, for the abstention rate. This bias is particularly blatant in the case of NA-246, a constituency known for its erratic level of participation since 1990.
After 1988, when the constituency registered a record rate of participation (53 percent), this rate declined to 28 percent in 1990 and further to 9 percent in 1993 (when the MQM boycotted the polls). During the following elections this rate increased steadily: 17 percent in 1997, 37 percent in 2002, and 63 percent in 2008. In 2013, however, the turnover fell to 52 percent, only to decline further during this by-election, where it fell to its 2002 level, at 37 percent. This corresponds to the average rate of participation registered since 1988 but the significant reduction of votes polled (131,418 in 2015 against 189,405 in 2013) raises several questions nonetheless. How much does this decline owe to delays in the voting process (which, according to the MQM, were instigated by law and order agencies), greater scrutiny over this particular election (which made electoral malpractices nearly impossible), and more simply to the electoral fatigue of local residents?
The fact remains that only 27 percent of registered voters of NA-246 gave their votes to the MQM, against 38 percent in 2013 and 60 percent in 2008. One might argue that large-scale rigging biased the results of the 2008 and 2013 elections. Indeed, a recent review of the constituency’s electoral history suggests that the MQM’s average bag in NA-246 (except for 1988) is around 19 percent. In this sense, the results of this by-election are indeed a significant success for the MQM, as they point toward an increase of its actual vote share. And yet, what has emerged from this election is a downsized political party which will have to come to terms with a harsh reality: even in its home constituency, where its political journey begun in the late 1980s, it can no longer claim to enjoy the unconditional support of the masses.
For all its claims that NA-246 ‘belonged’ to the party (a claim resonating with larger claims of ‘ownership’ over Karachi), the MQM leadership will have to cope with the fact that voters’ behavior can no longer be taken for granted, be it in the party’s strongholds or, a fortiori, in more contested constituencies. Gone are the days of the MQM’s uncontested authority over Karachi and, in this sense, this by-election could prove to be an important milestone in Karachi’s political history, confirming its transition toward a post-hegemonic political order—a configuration where the MQM, for now, remains the predominant political force but where it has to cope with unprecedented competition from electoral rivals and, thus, has to resort to more active campaigning to win the day.
So where do the MQM and Karachi politics go from here?
In the short term, Karachi’s predominant party has won a certain breathing space but is not yet over the hill. Those who had started questioning MQM chief Altaf Hussain’s authority within the party, however surreptitiously, have been silenced for now even as his succession remains an open question. As investigations into Imran Farooq’s murder and pending money-laundering cases follow their course, Hussain’s future in the U.K. remains uncertain. In any case, and however inconceivable this may still be for MQM workers and sympathizers, Hussain will not always be there to steer the party in the face of adversity. Sooner or later, it will have to generate a new leadership, a process which will be fraught with tensions and for which, considering the absence of a strong and consensual second-tier leadership within the party, the MQM seems largely unprepared. The transition of the party to a post-charismatic politics, what Max Weber called the “routinization of charisma,” will be its greatest challenge and this time there is no guarantee that the party will emerge victorious, or survive at all.
The reaction of the military establishment to this electoral victory also remains uncertain. Targeted operations against the party’s alleged “militant wing” will probably continue, while judicial pressure on party leaders and activists may increase in the coming months, both in Pakistan and in the U.K. This pressure will severely constrain the margin of maneuver of the party and might contribute to its normalization. But one cannot entirely exclude a return to its militant posturing and disruptive tactics, especially in the case of Hussain’s forced retirement.
The by-election results suggest that the PTI’s time has not yet come. But for all its shortcomings, the PTI has confirmed that it could become a serious challenger to the MQM’s supremacy, provided it draws lessons from its relatively poor showing on April 23. If the PTI is to consolidate its position in Karachi politics, it will have to consider joining forces with the Jamaat-e-Islami to avoid excessive scattering of votes expressing a desire for political change. At the same time, however, such an alliance might compromise the growing support for the PTI among the Shia. At a more structural level, the PTI will have to strengthen its local apparatus in order to embed itself firmly in the everyday life of Karachi’s low-income residents, who hold the key to electoral success. For this, the PTI leadership will have to relinquish its histrionics and start addressing the more pressing concerns of local voters, while engaging more serenely with its main rival, which, during this by-election, proved unequivocally that it is not ‘occupying’ Karachi by force.
The uncertainties surrounding the current reconfiguration of Karachi’s political landscape also have to do with the future of ethnic and sectarian politics in the city. This by-election signaled a return of the MQM to its earlier ethnic posturing, which compromised its attempts to expand its constituency beyond Mohajirs. Not that this really matters electorally. For all its attempts to tone down its ethnic rhetoric and field non-Mohajir candidates in recent elections, the MQM has always failed to draw a significant number of voters from non-Mohajir backgrounds. The MQM’s capacity to retain the support of Shia voters, both among Ismaili and Twelver Shia communities, will likely be more significant for its future. In NA-246, the Shia vote seems to have scattered and, following the alliance of the Majlis-e-Wahdat-e-Muslimeen with the PTI, a large number of Shia voters appear to have opted for the latter.
The capacity of the PTI to woo Shia voters is proof of its capacity to overcome the ethnic and sectarian fault lines that have come to characterize Karachi politics and social life. Here lies the major challenge to the MQM’s predominant position: in the PTI’s potential to emerge as a truly pan-ethnic and/or pan-Islamic party. While this potential remains largely unrealized, the PTI has an obvious advantage over its rival: it is less bounded to a specific linguistic group. In a city whose demography is fast changing and where Mohajirs are no longer the majority, this could prove to be a major strategic advantage, provided the emerging challenger starts to understand this city in all its complexity, rather than through the simplistic dyad of occupation and liberation.
Gayer is a research fellow at the Centre d’Études et de Recherches Internationales, Paris, and author of Karachi: Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City (Hurst, 2014), available in Pakistan through HarperCollins India.
ISLAMABAD, April 30: Pakistani pilgrims wishing to perform Hajj this year will have to declare whether they are Shia on their Hajj application forms if they have any hopes of making the sacred pilgrimage.
Confirming that the conditions had been forward by Saudi Arabia, government officials responsible for making Hajj arrangements said, “Saudi Arabia will not entertain any Hajj application from aspirants that fail to specify whether the applicant is a Shia or a Sunni.”
Taking Saudi requirement seriously, the government has added a question on page eight of the Hajj application form with the question “Are you Shia.”
The Ministry of Religious Affairs Spokesperson Muhammad Farooq said, “Aspirants are supposed to fill it with: ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.”
Riyadh has made it mandatory for all Hajj pilgrims to declare their sect as it fears that sectarian tensions could rise in the kingdom owing to the conflict in Yemen.
“Saudis do not want a repeat of the 1987 demonstrations during the Hajj pilgrimage, which led to the deaths of over 400 people in Makkah,” a senior official of Pakistan Hajj mission observed.
Religious affairs ministry officials, who are facilitating applicants (under government scheme) for getting visa, said the Saudi authorities also slightly amended the new Hajj visa form requirements. Though officials insisted that there was no such written instruction from Saudi authorities. But they said that the decision to insert the question was taken at a high level.
On the other hand, the religious affairs ministry spokesperson claimed that the question had been added on the request of representatives of Shia community in the country in order to prevent exploitation of the ‘mehram’ rule by Sunni women for performing hajj. Shia women, unlike their Sunni counterparts, can perform Hajj without a ‘mehram’. There have been reports that Sunni women have in the past exploited this provision.
Commenting on the new condition put forward by the Saudi Arabia, Chairman Pakistan Ulema Council Tahir Ashrafi said that he supports the Saudi move, adding that every country has the right to set new terms and condition to ensure better security.
“It’s not a new move. Pilgrims should abide by Saudi laws and declare their sect. Pilgrims are treated equally regardless of their sect,” he stated.
Amin Shaheedi, a representative of the Shia community in the Council for Islamic Ideology, said that, “We have no problem with this new addition. If Saudis are satisfied with this new move, Shia community is ready to abide by newly amended laws.”
ISLAMABAD, April 27: The killing of Sabeen Mahmud – a prominent rights campaigner – on Friday has sent shockwaves through the country’s progressives, as those who speak out against alleged abuses by the state say they are under increasing threat.
Mahmud, the 40-year-old director The Second Floor cafe in Karachi which regularly hosted debates and arts events, was killed when gunmen attacked her car as she left the venue minutes after hosting a seminar on abuses in Balochistan.
The same talk – featuring prominent Baloch activist Mama Qadeer who has campaigned for the “missing people” of Balochistan – had been cancelled by the prestigious Lahore University of Management Sciences weeks earlier after members of faculty reported pressure from intelligence agencies.
Police say they are examining whether she was targeted because of her work at the cafe, which held talks against religious extremism as well as state brutality.
“She had no personal enmity so there is much possibility that she might have been targeted because of her intellectual activities. She was getting threatening calls from some unknown callers. We are working (out) who they might be,” senior police official Jamil Ahmed said Sunday.
Her death led to an outpouring of grief with hundreds of mourners attending her funeral Saturday, as the United States and the European Union joined Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in officially condemning the killing.
But most analysts say there is little chance her murderers will ever be brought to justice given the recent history of impunity among those who target the country’s marginalised liberals.
Last year, prominent TV host Raza Rumi narrowly escaped a gun attack on his car in Lahore that killed his driver, while another anchor, Hamid Mir, survived being shot in the stomach in Karachi shortly after hosting a TV programme about Balochistan.
No perpetrators have been brought to justice in either case.
TV anchor Mir, whose brother quickly pointed the finger at the Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) for the attempt on his life, said he saw several parallels with the attack on Mahmud.
“The most common factor was Mama Qadeer Baloch because I received threats when I invited him on my show,” Mir told AFP.
“I got six bullet injuries, she got maybe four. I was attacked by the people who were riding a motorcycle, she was too. My attackers were guided by some people who were sitting in a car and this was the same case in her incident.”
Hashim Bin Rashid, a leftwing columnist and activist, says that there is a growing atmosphere among the country’s urban middle classes that encourages the silencing of dissenting voices.
“The overall atmosphere of fascism… is much more worrying – where anyone is offering any dissent is going to be called a traitor,” he said.
Activists who write about the rights of Baloch people on social media, or condemn the killing of minorities, are often loudly berated and receive death threats that are never investigated, while on the other hand the government blocks pages belonging to progressive groups on Facebook, he added.
Mir said the room for freedom of expression on Balochistan had significantly narrowed in the mainstream media.
“Since I was attacked last year, the media has been facing a lot of pressure,” said Mir, who now travels with an armed escort.
“They feel they are helpless, they cannot express their views in the media openly, they cannot get justice. They feel anyone who speaks truth or people who become voice for the voiceless will be silenced. This is not good for democratic society.”
Abid Hussain, a Karachi-based journalist who attended Friday’s seminar and had known Mahmud for more than a decade, described her loss as “unquantifiable”.
“I truly hope we are able to rally around her and do our best to continue her legacy and what she taught us… but the sceptic in me says that it won’t be possible,” he said.
The first test, he said, would be whether a talk on Baochistan scheduled to be held at the University of Karachi next month is allowed to go ahead – and safely.
Islamabad April 27: A leading member of Pakistan’s small band of liberal social activists has been gunned down outside the pioneering Karachi arts venue she founded, in an apparent bid to silence discussion about the country’s brutal efforts to smother separatism in the restive province of Balochistan.
The murder of Sabeen Mahmud on Friday sent shockwaves through Pakistan’s embattled intelligentsia both because she was much loved but also because the killing happened immediately after an event she organised with Mama Abdul Qadeer, an elderly Baloch activist campaigning on behalf of so-called “missing people” abducted by the state security apparatus.
Witnesses said she was shot several times by unknown gunmen in her car just after she left the talk at The Second Floor, or T2F as her cafe and arts space is known. Her mother was also critically injured in the gunfire and rushed to hospital.
On Saturday Pakistan’s army spokesman Asim Bajwa decried the killing of Mahmud as “tragic and unfortunate”.
Intelligence agencies had been “tasked to render all possible assistance to investigating agencies for apprehension of perpetrators and bringing them to justice,” General Bajwa said.
Although Mahmud had also made enemies among religious militants – not least with her counter-protest against Islamist attempts to stop Karachites marking Valentine’s Day – many of her friends believe the country’s “deep state” is responsible.
Pakistan’s military establishment is extremely touchy about the issue of Balochistan, where a nationalist movement has developed into a potent insurgency in the last decade.
The separatists are demanding independence from a Pakistani state they claim is oppressive and only interested in extracting the province’s energy and mineral resources.
Authorities are particularly sensitive about Qadeer, the 73-year-old who in 2013-14 walked 1,200 miles from the Baloch capital of Quetta to Islamabad to protest about missing people, including his own son who was found dead and mutilated in 2011 having vanished in 2009.
In March he was banned from travelling to the US to attend a human rights conference in the US.
This month the Lahore University of Management Sciences, one of the country’s most prestigious colleges, was forced to cancel an event to which Qadeer had been invited.
Following the cancellation of the LUMS talk Mahmud was all too aware of the risks and asked her circle of friends on Facebook about what “pre-emptive measures” she should take before hosting what she called “Un-silencing Balochistan (Take 2)”.
“A lot of people did say there would be blowback but nobody thought they could shoot someone dead like that,” said Taha Siddiqui, an outspoken journalist and one of Mahmud’s many friends on Pakistan’s liberal-left.
“Shooting dead seemed a little too brutal, something that happens only in remote areas of Balochistan,” Siddiqui said. “But now they are doing in in Karachi.”
The country is extremely sensitive to the threat from nationalists, given it lost half its territory when East Pakistan seceded to form Bangladesh in 1971.
Authorities are especially keen to quell the insurgency now the province is slated to play a critical role in the grand strategic plan to turn Pakistan into a land corridor connecting China with Arabian Sea.
Last week Chinese president Xi Jinping made an important stat visit to Pakistan where he signed off on a multi-billion dollar spending splurge which hopes to turn Gwadar, a town on the coast of Balochistan, into one of the world’s great trading hubs.
Many Pakistani activists and journalists have learned that it is best not to publicly scrutinise the Balochistan issue.
Hamid Mir, the country’s most famous television news presenter, was seriously wounded by gunmen in Karachi following a confrontation with the army over his coverage of Qadeer.
Mahmud’s funeral procession began on Saturday at T2F, the cafe she established to organise debates and art events.
Local novelist Mohammed Hanif described T2F as “a space for Karachites to come and play and create”.
“The deep state already controls media in reference to Balochistan coverage,” said the acclaimed writer and journalist. “Now Baloch voices can’t be heard in private spaces.”
KARACHI, April 25: Those who knew her will remember her smiling. Sabeen Mahmud was a bastion of art in a forsaken city, a city where 20 million live a life of death. In a city of lifeless droves, Sabeen was alive. Today, she is more alive than ever. She is alive because one cannot imagine she is not. She is alive because if she isn’t, are we? No, we’re dead. She’s alive.
She turned the T2F into a haven of art. If you wanted a space to have a stimulating conversation over a cup of coffee, you went to T2F. If you wanted a space to perform, you went to T2F. If you wanted to rehearse with your bandmates for your upcoming gig, you went to T2F. If you wanted to get away and read a book, you went to T2F. And when you went to T2F, you saw Sabeen smiling. You saw her cherishing the art she had surrounded herself by, reaching out to amateurs, reassuring the professionals. I cannot imagine going there and not seeing her warm, smiling face.
One cannot overstate Karachi’s loss. It has lost its voice; it has lost the best of its inhabitants. One cannot help but despair, to sit in stupor ― silent, catatonic. But knowing Sabeen, this is not how she would want to have us be. No. She would want us to speak up, louder than before. Louder, so that those who silenced her can hear. Louder, lest they think they have won. Louder, so that they are deafened by the noise. Louder, so that they may never silence anyone again.
Even in their immediate grief, Karachi’s shrinking community of artists and intellectuals is taking stock. “It can frighten some people, but it can also inspire others to take a stand as she did, with courage and bravery. We have to keep fighting for our freedom of speech and expression and not let this city become a dead city. Arts and culture ― dance, drama and music ― are the best methods to combat violence,” classical dancer Sheema Kermani told The Express Tribune.
Musician Louis J Pinto, aka Gumby, has played at some of the grandest venues of the world. Yet, his new band decided to have its first performance at T2F recently. For artists, young and old, this was the space where there was no other. Sabeen made sure of that. “Her contribution to society is her legacy, which we should continue to move forward. As an artist, I think we should all continue doing what we do best. It’s the right thing to do and that’s what Sabeen would have wanted,” said the drummer.
Dancer Joshinder Chaggar agrees. “As an artist in Karachi, Sabeen is so intimately woven into our lives. But for me, this has only magnified her presence and cause. I am in awe of this woman who really, truly lived. She lived large, passionately; she supported others. I mean she was a magician. In terms of taking her legacy forward, we need to start living like her. Really LIVING, and singing our song and standing up for what we believe in. Sabeen is still alive; her soul is resonating through the city and vibrating in our hearts.”
Assistant Professor and Chairperson of the Social Sciences & Liberal Arts department at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Dr Framji Minwalla says of her, “This is a devastating loss. Every life we lose is a devastating loss. I have met few people like Sabeen: brave, honest, genuinely caring and committed, an idealist who found astonishing ways to ground those ideals in concrete action. It’s difficult for me to imagine Karachi without her in it. She made at least my work and world easier to manage. She made me a better, more engaged thinker, and for that and much more I am immeasurably grateful. The deliberate targeting of activists, thinkers, people of conscience, people working hard to make this country saner, progressive, more equitable will not silence the growing anger we feel. The work will continue because the many people Sabeen touched will make certain it continues.”
Today, Karachi is draped in despair, but the heavens must be rejoicing. To them has returned a curator nonpareil. We’ll meet at the seventh floor, Sabeen.
(Additional input by Hasan Ansari and Saadia Qamar)
Late Warren Weinstein with Pakistani businessman, Majyd Aziz
WASHINGTON, April 23 — For more than a decade, Warren Weinstein, an American aid worker and economic adviser, worked in Pakistan trying to improve living conditions there. He moved to the city of Lahore. He learned the Urdu language and dressed in the traditional clothing.
His work came to an abrupt end in the summer of 2011, just days before he was scheduled to return to his family home in Rockville, Md., when he was abducted by a group of armed men who broke into his home in Model Town, an old, affluent neighborhood in Lahore.
United States intelligence officers searched for him for years, but the White House revealed on Thursday morning that Mr. Weinstein, 73, had been killed when he was present during an American counterterrorism strike at a compound of Al Qaeda in January. Giovanni Lo Porto, 37, an Italian who had been held since 2012, was also killed in the strike.
In an extraordinary statement on Thursday, President Obama apologized for the strike and hailed Mr. Weinstein as a humanitarian who had committed his life to a “spirit of service” to his own country and to the people of Pakistan.
The home of Warren Weinstein’s family in Rockville, Md., on Thursday. Credit Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press
“He devoted his life to people across Africa and South Asia,” a somber, grim-faced Mr. Obama said. “He was a loving husband, father and grandfather, who willingly left the comforts of home to help the people of Pakistan.”
Elaine Weinstein, Mr. Weinstein’s wife, expressed her grief at the discovery of his death in a statement she posted on a website, www.bringwarrenhome.com, that had been set up to find him and bring him home safely.
“We are devastated by this news and the knowledge that my husband will never safely return home,” she wrote. “We were so hopeful that those in the U.S. and Pakistani governments with the power to take action and secure his release would have done everything possible to do so, and there are no words to do justice to the disappointment and heartbreak we are going through.”
A veteran aid worker, Mr. Weinstein had spent more than 40 years traveling the world, serving in Africa and South Asia before settling in Pakistan, where his wife once wrote that he had sought to help strengthen the country’s dairy, agriculture and furniture industries.
A Fulbright scholar who earned his Ph.D. in international law and economics, Mr. Weinstein was proficient in seven languages. He served as a Peace Corps director in Ivory Coast and Togo. From 2004 until he was captured in 2011, he worked as an adviser for J.E. Austin Associates, a contractor for the United States Agency for International Development.
“He was a genuinely warm person,” said Stephen R. Weissman, the former staff director for the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa, who first met Mr. Weinstein in 1974. “Someone said to me that he is not worried about Weinstein being with Al Qaeda because he would win them over. He was that kind of person.”
Mr. Weinstein’s relatives have attributed his decision to take an assignment in Pakistan to his longstanding affinity with that troubled country, which was also felt by the Pakistanis he met.
“He was an unassuming man who liked wearing shalwar kameez and lived happily without much security,” said Fasi Zaka, a consultant who met Mr. Weinstein in Peshawar, Pakistan, the capital of conflict-ridden Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. Shalwar kameez is the baggy trousers and long shirt that constitute Pakistan’s national dress.
“Behind the genial exterior was a very smart man committed to Pakistan and making its broken systems work,” Mr. Zaka said. “The first time I met him, he said, ‘Show me the smart kids who aren’t afraid of getting their hands dirty in the field.’ ”
In a column she wrote last year for Newsweek, Mrs. Weinstein described the sense of peace and security that her husband often said he felt working in Pakistan.
“Warren especially respected the culture’s focus on hospitality and the welcoming of strangers embodied in unwritten codes such as the concept of Pashtunwali,” Mrs. Weinstein wrote. “This welcoming atmosphere, and the protection it promised, gave my husband a great sense of peace and safety, and he made every effort to reciprocate it.”
But she also described her concern for her husband’s failing health. She said he had severe asthma and a heart condition. She said she worried that his health would suffer during his captivity.
“If he is not afforded the traditional Pakistani hospitality that he has come to love and respect, I fear that we will lose him,” Mrs. Weinstein wrote in the column.
Mrs. Weinstein said that during her husband’s captivity, he was not allowed to communicate with anyone back home. The only images that she saw of him were the occasional videos released on the Internet by Al Qaeda. The last of those, in December 2013, showed Mr. Weinstein with a gray beard and wearing a cap.
In the video, he pleaded with Mr. Obama to negotiate with the captors for his release, saying he felt “abandoned and forgotten” by his country.
“The years have taken their toll,” Mr. Weinstein said in the video. “I have been cut off from my family. My wife, who is over 70, my two daughters, my two grandchildren, my son-in-law and perhaps new members of the family whom I have never met. Needless to say, I have been suffering deep anxiety every part of every day.”
Mr. Weinstein’s death from an American drone strike is a tragic twist on a case that had already put a human face on the cost of United States involvement in the campaign against terrorism. In the 2013 video, and in an earlier one in 2012, Mr. Weinstein had pleaded with the president to secure his release.
“My life is in your hands, Mr. President,” Mr. Weinstein said in the 2012 video. “If you accept the demands, I live. If you don’t accept the demands, then I die.”
Jeanene Harlick, a longtime friend of Mr. Weinstein’s daughter Alisa, said the family had struggled during his captivity, though they initially stayed quiet about it, fearing that starting a public campaign might hurt their chances of getting him back.
“They were frustrated with the way the government was dealing with it, and that the government was giving them very little information,” said Ms. Harlick, 41, of San Mateo, Calif., who met Ms. Weinstein in 2004 when they were both journalists at a newspaper in Oregon.
Ms. Harlick described Mr. Weinstein as a selfless person who passed on his generosity and compassion to his daughter.
“Most of his life was spent in foreign countries, and that was very hard for his family, but he did it because he was so devoted to helping these people,” Ms. Harlick said.
He reveled in his aid work and had an active and unusual mind, she added, learning several languages to communicate in the countries where he traveled, and even inventing his own language and filling many journals with writings in it.
Mr. Weinstein’s family had mounted a yearslong multimedia campaign to return him to the United States. They used the Twitter hashtag #BringWarrenHome, and they sought media appearances to keep pressure on his captors and on the United States government.
The website, which includes pictures of Mr. Weinstein and his wife in happier times, was updated Thursday morning with a small black box bearing white type: “Warren Weinstein was kidnapped on August 13, 2011, while working in Lahore, Pakistan, and died in captivity during a U.S. counterterrorism operation in January 2015.”
Meredith McCain, 65, lives across the street from Mrs. Weinstein in Rockville, on a quiet street where neighbors tied yellow ribbons around the trees. Ms. McCain said that she did not know Mr. Weinstein because he was often abroad, but that his wife had once attended a birthday party for Ms. McCain’s sister, with whom she lives.
“She talked about him in the here and now,” she said, adding, “He was never off her mind.”
Correction: April 23, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the contractor for whom Warren Weinstein worked as an adviser. It was J.E. Austin Associates, not J.E. & Austin Associates.
Rukmini Callimachi contributed reporting from New York; Julie Hirschfeld Davis from Washington; Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan; Emmarie Huetteman from Rockville, Md.; and Declan Walsh from London.
