DAWN Umar Riaz There were human bodies strewn like dry leaves on an autumn day. For the first time in life, I saw burnt human flesh, smelled it, touched it and collected it; pieces of small children, big boys, and women. There was a severed hand with just a pink Mickey Mouse watch wrapped around and an amputated foot with the familiar Cheetah joggers. More than 130 dead bodies and an equal number of injured.
For quite some time, we see important issues and incidents taking place in our country passing through the phases of the reactionary cycle and ending up with a question mark on them. By the virtue of media proliferation and the cut throat competition in breaking the news and opinion branding, We, the awaam, often stand confused about the facts. The gust of news and various opinions typically exhaust us of the matter and soon after we become indifferent to it. But in the process what we turn our backs on is the real abuse of someone’s right hard pressed under the heap of manipulations. It is right that in present times unfortunately nothing has been left simple to understand due to the politicization and mediatization of even irrelevant issues, yet it’s our right and duty to identify the wrong and call it so. The murderous attack on Malala Yousafzai is the latest of such incidents. In relation to that here we are sharing an article written by our team member for our readers to form …
By Rasul Bakhsh Rais Published: June 26, 2011 The writer is professor of political science at LUMS rasul.rais@tribune.com.pk When, how and on what terms will the Afghan war end? If we go by the political rhetoric of the warring sides, the Taliban and the United States and its Nato allies, there will be no solution until each side achieves its central objectives. The problem is that both sides in any conflict cannot achieve their objectives until they reach some middle ground by recognising that the other side has some legitimate concerns, interests and can be acknowledged as a party with whom some political business can be done.
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.
New America Foundation // Terror Free Tomorrow Public Opinion Survey People of Pakistan’s tribal areas strongly oppose the U.S. military pursuing al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters based in their region; American drone attacks deeply unpopular. Residents of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) back instead Pakistan military fighting against the militants. Scant support for al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban in FATA. The New America Foundation and Terror Free Tomorrow have conducted the first comprehensive public opinion survey covering sensitive political issues in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. The unprecedented survey, from June 30 to July 20, 2010, consisted of face-to-face interviews of 1,000 FATA residents age 18 or older across 120 villages/sampling points in all seven tribal Agencies of FATA, with a margin of error of +/- 3 percent, and field work by the locally-based Community Appraisal & Motivation Programme. Funding for the poll was provided by the United States Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded think tank, which had no other role in the poll.
Waldman’s one-sided and highly biased report refers to several unnamed single sources. Accusations against Pakistan are mostly based on hearsay. By Shiraz Paracha The London School of Economics’ (LSE) recent report on the alleged links between the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban is yet another proof of an unholy alliance, in which Western secret services, the mainstream Western media and some Western academic institutions are partners.
The ironies we witness every day in Pakistan would have us shaking our heads were it not for the fact that they usually provoke such deep visceral dread. Take the furore over the recent shutdown of Facebook and other websites. In Pakistan the debate framed the issue mainly in terms of either the freedom of speech or the legitimacy of government censorship. Both models, as constructed here in Pakistan, were flawed and reductionist. Let that be as it may, I wish to point out something else. The websites were shut down because many people found their content ‘blasphemous’ and hurtful to their sentiments as Muslims.
Cautious interest as Afghan government seeks to draw all parties to the table By Julius Cavendish in Kabul he Taliban fighter sitting in the front of the car was expressive, engaging, and dismissive of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s pleas for men like him to lay down their guns. Omar Khel, a tribal militant from Wardak province outside Kabul, is exactly the kind of reluctant rebel the Afghan government and the international community want to bring in from the cold. “I am not in favour of fighting,” Mr Khel, a chubby man with strong features and grey-flecked hair, said. “I don’t have enmity with the Americans. I have enmity with Fahim, with Khalili, with Dostum. We are fighting them.” He had named the three most notorious warlords in the new Afghan government.
Jonathan Paris This Report analyses the prospects for Pakistan over a one to three year time horizon. It looks at economic, political, security, and bilateral issues. There are three possible scenarios for Pakistan over this relatively short time horizon; Pakistan probably will avoid becoming a “failed state” and is unlikely to find a “pathway to success” but, as Pakistan confronts a myriad of vexing challenges, the most likely scenario is that it will “muddle through”. 1. Economy Looking at the economy optimistically, in just over 20 years, Pakistan will surpass Indonesia and become the fifth most populous country and the one with the most Muslims. Its youth bulge provides it with a baby boom which, if educated and employed, could provide its economy with a demographic dividend long after the equivalent bulges in China and India have aged and retired. Pakistan has an opportunity to leverage its domestic consumer market to attract multinationals and build up competitive economies of scale in industries like food, electronics, autos and engineering for the export market. Peace with India …
By Nadeem F. Paracha After enjoying a little more than two years of relative peace, Karachi was rudely dragged back on the mutilated map of terror today [yesterday]. A single suicide bomber managed to slip his dynamite strapped body inside a large procession of Shia mourners on Karachi’s M A Jinnah Road and blow himself up, killing and injuring dozens of innocent people, including some security men who were patrolling the fringes of the procession. The attack has come as a rude shock to the citizens of Karachi and the Sindh province who had been witnessing horrific scenes of similar carnage perpetrated by extremists in the mosques and markets of Punjab and NWFP, and had, for the last couple of years, been somewhat spared from the madness that the terrorists have been displaying in the country, especially ever since 2003. Although the Taliban have yet to claim responsibility for the attack – and given Karachi’s history, the attacker may well hail from one of the banned sectarian outfits that have long been established in the …
If the Taliban produced a soap opera, Pakistani comedy writer Younis Butt pondered one day, what would it be like? The love triangles would be impossible to understand, he thought, because all the women would be hidden behind burkas and no one would know which character was engaged in a heated tiff with another. An Islamic variety show would be equally absurd, he decided. With singing and dancing frowned upon, women covered from head-to-toe could only sit in a spotlight with their backs turned to the camera.
By Bilal Qureshi Isn’t it time? For every decent human being, it is sickening to see people being butchered the way human beings are slaughtered in Pakistan these days. Human life has no respect or value for barbaric animals responsible for these bombings and suicide attacks. And if the news of bombings and killing was not enough, I was horrified to learn that Lahore’s commissioner (incorrectly) blames India for these attacks while Punjab’s law minister (correctly) believes that the thugs being smoked out from Swat and Wazirstan are actually behind these attacks to force the government to back down. Isn’t it time for Pakistan to get united? Isn’t it time stop obsessing about India? Isn’t it time to be realistic?
Awaam by Vision21 