Daily Telegraph
When Peter Oborne first arrived in Pakistan, he expected a ‘savage’ backwater scarred by terrorism.
Years later, he describes the Pakistan that is barely documented – and that he came to fall in love with
It was my first evening in Pakistan. My hosts, a Lahore banker and his charming wife, wanted to show me the sights, so they took me to a restaurant on the roof of a town house in the Old City. Continue reading
She was bitterly crying on phone begging for her life in the captivity, as she had seen her 16-year-old brother on a CD being slaughtered by kidnappers and pieces of his dead body were sent to her father by them some six years back. Continue reading
Paul Rogers, 09th September 2011
There is intense rethinking in the Pentagon about the “war on terror”. The outcome of the Libyan conflict will reinforce its principal trends.
When Donald Rumsfeld was appointed George W Bush’s defence secretary in 2001, he had the clear aim of fighting wars with minimal “boots on the ground”. From that point, the United States would fight its enemies mainly from the air and the sea. This vision of a high-tech military age saw armies as increasingly redundant. Continue reading
The fight against Lashkar-i-Jhangvi is part of the country`s larger battle against the Taliban who have declared war on the state and people of Pakistan. The enemy is ruthless and indifferent to human suffering and innocent deaths, and targets school buses, hospitals and funerals without any qualms of conscience. While the government has to operate within the sphere of the law, these constraints should not deter the state in its resolve to stamp out terrorism in all its forms and give protection to the people.
Dawn.com is your source for the latest breaking news, current events and top stories from Pakistan, South Asia and the world.
via Sectarian killings.
North Waziristan has a total area of 4,707 km2 with an estimated Population of 361,246. Pakistan has a total area of 796,095 km2 with a population of around 170,600,000 and United States covers an area of 9,826,657 km2 with an estimated population of 308,745,538. Unites States forces are ranked 3rd in the world with 1,477,896 active personnel. Pakistan maintains the 7th largest army with 617,000 personnel. Ever wondered what is so powerful about North Waziristan with a handful of terrorists making the 3rd and the 7th largest Armies in the world being pushed against the wall? Continue reading
Jawed Naqvi
THE fiendish worldview of Norway’s mass murderer shares a range of features with right-wing ideologues everywhere, not just with Hindu extremism, which he sees as an ally in a delusionary war with Muslims and Marxists.
His hatred of Muslims may betray a narrow communal bias. But then, all religious extremists hate rival religions.
It is Anders Behring Breivik’s hatred of Marxists, not so much of a religious foe, that betrays far more in common with Europe’s right-wing movements of the 1920s and after. And here the root is not spiritual but purely material, the kind that usually finds wide support from a combination of existing feudal and capitalist elites. Continue reading
Pakistan’s Supreme Court has granted bail to a Lashkar-e-Jhangvi leader who is thought to have been involved in the March 3, 2009 assault on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore. From Dawn: Continue reading
Islamabad, 13 June (AKI/Dawn) – Pakistani military authorities have expressed serious concern over what they call dismally low rate of terrorist convictions by courts throughout the country and have asked the government to see if some necessary changes could be made in relevant laws, Dawn has learnt through reliable sources. Continue reading
By Syed Shoaib Hasan BBC News, Karachi
The deadly 15-hour siege on Pakistan’s Mehran naval airbase in Karachi on Monday was carried out by attackers with military-level training, raising suspicions they had inside help.
Questions are being asked about the security of Pakistan’s vital military installations after a well-organised group of gunmen held off Pakistan’s equivalent of the US Navy Seals – the Special Services Group-Navy (SSG-N) – for 15 hours. Continue reading
By Vision21
Part II
Pakistan is at war. In this war the whole of the country has become a battlefield. This war is being fought as much within our cities as on the frontlines of the militant areas. This war is not merely a military battle. Rather it is an attack on our very foundations, diverse cultural system, social value system, intellectual milieu and for want of better term, an attack on the progressive and forward looking interpretations of Islam. Therefore, it has become a war for the very survival of people, a war which we must win. But this war has to be fought and won on the several different fronts. Without that military action alone will not work and may result in huge blowback.
In the first part of this article, we have laid out briefly the significance of the ongoing war in Waziristan as a symbol of the paradigm of destruction and the threat to the future of Pakistan’s stability and meaning. In Pakistan there exist two main conditions of a sudden social change. There is absence of law and order and a completely broken and fragmented educational system, which has produced fault lines in the social order of this country. Unfortunately it is anarchic Taliban who have become champion of social change. But it is a pretense only. And it is a negative pretense. The need is that a positive and forward looking socio-political agent should lead this social change.
The long stretched scenario of the war on terror and its effects have created an environment of fear and insecurity, for the average Pakistanis who are caught between existence and survival. The state that promises them law and order and access to safe and secure life remains invisible. The authority to curb the evil of terrorism has been ceded solely to the military, with no civilian leadership. There is lack of society-welfare-oriented approach to deal with the menace of terrorism. Due to the absence of any such strategy, the gap has been filled with the militants feeding off the local population. The discontent of the local people with education, governance and lack of economic opportunities, have given space to the nihilistic interpretation of Islamic teachings…Click here for complete article
by Awaam
“Aik insaan ka qatal poori insaniyat ka qatal hai” Quran
( Killing one human being is akin to killing whole Humanity)
“Musalman wo hai jis k haath oar zuban se doosray musalman mehfooz rahain” Hadith
a(Muslim is the one, the evil of whose hand and tongue does not touch other Muslims)
These were the commandments of God and His prophet that we distributed, among the flood affectees in the form of leaflets, along with the aid items a few months back in Drab Majoke, Charsaddah. To be honest, I was not very sure when getting these leaflets printed, whether anyone will bother to read them or not, especially considering the calamity these poor people faced. We were also not sure about the level of the literacy in the camp and interest these people had in such ‘Bookish Activities’. May be it was simply our arrogance and pride.
However the hope that even if one person reads it and may ponder and reflect over it, encouraged us to undertake the endeavour. Continue reading
