Will Pakistan Army Wake Up Now ? Aey Mard e Mujahid jaag Zara

Would it be too rude to say that Pakistan Army had it coming? No, I mean, literally. As reported in the media, there were intelligence reports that the attack on GHQ was imminent and had been well planned.

Two facts stand out about the armed terrorists who attacked.

a. They knew they will not be able to come out alive from the heavily guarded military headquarters. These were highly trained and motivated terrorists who wanted to make a big impact by attacking the nerve centre of Pakistan Army.

b. The terrorist must have known that the attack was going to have more of a symbolic value than anything else. In fact this is akin to attack on Pentagon and World Trade Centre. In an irony some may say that GHQ can be seen as representing both the corporate and military interests in Pakistan.

This was an audacious attack, whose consequences and implications had been undoubtedly, thought through. However, most probably, where terrorists failed is that they may have hoped to prolong their action and inflict more damage and destruction then actually occurred.

But post GHQ attack, the most obvious and loudly ringing question is following: Will the Army wake up now to the fact that there are no more ‘good militants’ and ‘bad militants’ ?

This is not a Tehrik e Taliban but a Tehrik e Kharijaan ? These guys are ‘Zalimuun’ and ‘Mujrimuun’, and they must be treated as murderers and criminals.

Is the Army now going to draw a Line and say ‘No More’? Does Army now realise and understand that complete defeat and dismantling of TTP or TKP ( Tehrik e Kharijaan), is in its own best interest ?

PAKISTAN BEWARE – India’s thirst is making us all wet

Published in NewScientist 03 October 2009

New Scientist discusses how Water is being sucked up in North India at astronomical rates. This is having considerable negative impact on the height of water tables in the area. Considering there exists a serious water dispute between Pakistan and India, and that how India has used its ‘water muscle’ in the past in an attempt to choke Pakistan, this reading is alarming for Pakistan.

ONE nation’s thirst for groundwater is having an impact on global sea levels. Satellite measurements show that northern India is sucking some 54 trillion litres of water out of the ground every year. This is threatening a major water crisis and adding to global sea level rise.

EU reluctant to commit troops to Afghanistan without clear shift in strategy

Geraint Rees Published in Open democracy 29 – 09 – 2009

European Union defence ministers have expressed reluctance to committing more troops to Afghanistan except as part of a limited plan training the Afghan military and police.

The statements were made as EU defence ministers met yesterday in Göteborg, Sweden, for informal discussions on theEU’s security and defence policy. Several ministers were reluctant to send front line troops, instead wishing to focus resources and efforts on training Afghan security forces. ‘We have a lot, about 2,000 men in Afghanistan. I think it’s far more important in the long run that we have more Afghan military, and Afghan police,’ Dutch defence minister Eimert Van Middelkopp told reporters.

The ToD Verdict: The statements come in anticipation of a possible call by the US for the EU to commit more front line troops to support the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan. The US is considering a request by General Stanley McChrystal, commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, for up to 30,000 extra troops, without which the eight-year mission “will likely result in failure“. In a leaked report to the Pentagon, General McChrystal expressed doubts that any purely military solution to the Afghan war would succeed and called for a complete overhaul of tactics that would focus on safeguarding the Afghan population. Extra troops would be needed to secure civilians in population centres in an effort to loosen the grip of the growing Taliban-led insurgency, but the exposure of troops under such a strategy would almost inevitably result in higher casualties.

How Top Generals May Trap Obama in a Losing War By Tom Engelhardt

Front and center in the debate over the Afghan War these days are General Stanley “Stan” McChrystal, Afghan war commander, whose “classified, pre-decisional” and devastating report — almost eight years and at least $220 billion later, the war is a complete disaster — was conveniently, not to say suspiciously,leaked to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post by we-know-not-who at a particularly embarrassing moment for Barack Obama; Admiral Michael “Mike” Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has been increasingly vocal about a “deteriorating” war and the need for more American boots on the ground; and the president himself, who blitzed every TV show in sight last Sunday and Monday for his health reform program, but spent significant time expressing doubts about sending more American troops to Afghanistan. (“I’m not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan… or sending a message that America is here for the duration.”)

Devastating Report Documents Israeli Crimes Against Civilians in Gaza: Where’s the Outrage?

By Roane Carey, The Nation

The Goldstone report has been denounced in Israeli and ignored by the U.S. press, unless you count the NY Daily News, which called it a “blood libel against Israel.”

The recently released UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission on the December-January Gaza conflict, released on the eve of Barack Obama’s attempt to jump-start comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, was but the latest in a series of investigations, most of them by human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Like its predecessors, the so-called Goldstone report, named after chief investigator Richard Goldstone, is devastating in its critique of Israeli actions: indiscriminate use of firepower; deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian structures, including hospitals, schools, mosques, water and sewage plants, and rescue vehicles; use of white phosphorus munitions in built-up areas; use of human shields; abusive treatment of detainees; imposition of a blockade on Gaza before and after the attack itself–the report concludes that Israel violated international humanitarian law, committed “grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons,” and war crimes, possibly even crimes against humanity. The courageous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy summed it up well in Haaretz: it was “an unrestrained assault on a besieged, totally unprotected civilian population which showed almost no signs of resistance during this operation.”

The real issues in Pakistan

Dawn Editorial, 18 Sep, 2009

PEOPLE are dying queuing for grain in Pakistan. This is a country where food inflation is forcing parents to pull their children out of school – they can eat sparsely or be educated, not both. Lives are being lost to ailments that are easily curable. Street crime is rampant across a country where human life is worth less than a cellphone. Yet our political leaders appear oblivious to the misery that is everywhere. They seem to have no perspective, no grip on reality. Does a man who can’t feed his children really care whether or not Pervez Musharraf is tried for treason? Is a mother whose child has died of gastroenteritis likely to give much thought to America’s military presence in the region? Will a jobless person be impressed by the president’s much-touted ‘achievements’ during his first year in office? Our leaders have clearly lost sight of the core issues.

This is a country where religious minorities are targeted by Muslim mobs while the law-enforcers look on. Deadly attacks against Christians, in particular, are on the rise in Punjab. As is usually the case in such incidents, the violence has been triggered by unproven allegations of blasphemy. Robert Fanish Masih, who had been arrested last Saturday on blasphemy charges after Muslims went on the rampage in village Jaithikey near Sialkot, was found dead in his cell on Tuesday. The next day his family and community members, who had all been forced to flee Jaithikey, were prevented from burying him in their native village. And this heartless, inhumane act wasn’t the work of Muslim vigilantes alone. The local police also told the mourners to turn back, on the grounds that their presence could fan violence. In short the victims were punished, not the aggressors.

The Punjab government needs to take urgent steps to protect minorities in the province for the situation there is deteriorating. Its stance on minority rights will be gauged by its response. The centre, meanwhile, should start working towards the repeal of the blasphemy laws. For too long they have been used to settle personal scores, grab land – and to kill. These draconian laws must be struck off the books.

This is a Defining Moment for Pakistan – A Clarion Call

Part I

Azhar Aslam

The current situation in Pakistan is chaotic rapidly descending into anarchy. Despite a democratic set up in place, the state institutions are absent. Rule of law is non-existent. Terrorism and unchecked and unabated criminal activity has become the order of the day. Sate is failing to provide even the basics: peace, security of life, food, justice and environment for economic opportunity to earn a dignified living.

Then there are internal conflicts of all hue and kind: provincial, political, social, institutional. Emotionally charged and labile we Pakistanis continue to carry so much historical baggage that we are almost being crushed under the sheer weight of it. Finally to top it all we are under external ‘pressures” from ‘friends and foe’ alike. Governed by a group who even the outsiders are reluctant to hand aid money to, for the lack of trust and transparency, this vicious combination of mainly internal deficiencies and external threats have brought the country to the edge of a precipice.

Taliban backlash haunts Swat locals

Tuesday, 04 Aug, 2009 | 10:02 AM PST |

 Frightened civilians fear the Taliban will pounce again on Swat as residents try to rebuild shattered lives and shot nerves in the mountain valley once likened to Switzerland.

What’s gone wrong at the CIA, and should it be abolished?

By Rupert Cornwell   Tuesday, 14 July 2009 Published in ‘ Independent’.

Why are we asking this now?

The CIA is currently embroiled in two controversies that go to the heart of the problems surrounding the world’s largest intelligence agency. It is accused of keeping Congress in the dark about a secret post-9/11 project, on the orders of the former vice-president Dick Cheney and probably in violation of the law. Meanwhile the Justice Department is moving towards a criminal investigation of whether CIA operatives illegally tortured captured terrorist suspects. A rule of thumb about an intelligence service might be: the less you hear about it, the better it’s probably doing its job. Instead, the CIA seems to be eternally in the headlines.

India’s Maoist dilemma: the case of Lalgarh

For all the talk of ‘ failed state’ the article below makes an interesting reading and can serve as an eye opener. How truth can be hidden, distorted,sidelined, downplayed, bypassed…. and ( for Pakistan) how moutains can be made out of mole hill by constant badgering to the point that you start believing in the lies, distortions and exaggerations as truth.  Note the fact that one third of India has this insurgency.

Aaradhana Jhunjhunwala,   8 – 07 – 2009  on opendemocracy.net

The ongoing security crisis in West Bengal exposes the cracks in Indian democracy, stemming from a volatile mix of poor governance, petty politics, and a fundamental breakdown in credibility

A battle rages on in the Indian state of West Bengal, between Maoist guerillas called the Naxalites (Naxalbari is the name of a village in West Bengal where the movement was born in 1967) and national and paramilitary forces. The Naxalites, a banned outfit deemed as “a terrorist organization” by the central government, had proclaimed the Lalgarh area of West Midnapore district in Bengal, with its 44 villages, a “liberated zone” on 16 June 2009.

Sex workers being educated, trained on health Dawn Friday, 10 Jul, 2009

KARACHI: A three-day skill building workshop on STIs (sexually transmitted infections) and HIV got under way on Thursday to educate and prepare sex workers for running various preventive health programmes solely for their own benefit.

The United Nations Population Fund, an international agency, is organising the workshop with the collaboration of the National Aids Control Programme. About 70 female sex workers, mainly from the red light areas of both Karachi and Hyderabad, turned up on the first day to attend lectures and interactive sessions.

The female workers were brought to the workshop entitled ‘Skill building workshop on HIV and sex works’ with the support of an NGO and contraceptive marketers, said an organiser, adding that there was a plan to bring the female sex workers operating from kothis, bungalows and those giving services on call to such a forum in the future.

When British Princes Can Spend Time In The Trenches With The Soldiers, Why Can’t The Sons Of Pakistani Politicians?

Source: Paknationalists

           

Why cant Bilawal Zaradri, Yousaf Gillani’s Sons, Hussain Nawaz, Humaza Shabaz , Munas Elahi, son of Mullah Fazlurehman, spend some time with Pakistani armed forces in FATA and SAWAT, like Prince William and Prince Harry go on front line with British Armed Forces not as observers but soldiers.