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.
Hasan Abdullah Despite hundreds of attacks and the deaths of thousands of Pakistanis, there is still a great deal of confusion about the number, nature and end goals of the militant organisations operating in Pakistan. For some, they remain figments of a fevered imagination. To others they are proxies of foreign powers. This belief has not come out of the blue. It is part of an obscurantist narrative the state itself created and propagated. The problem with this narrative is that while it may have delegitimised some jihadi groups within public ranks, it is counter productive in the long run for a number of reasons. First of all, it fails to address the very ideology that promotes militancy and hence the state’s failure to present an effective counter-ideology. Secondly, the jihadi groups simply have to prove that the state-promoted narrative is a “baseless lie” to win recruits, as indicated by scores of interviews of jihadis. The fact is that these groups are very much in existence and the ones who carry out attacks against Pakistan’s …
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.
Washington Post The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
Shakeel Anjum Tuesday, January 10, 2012 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.
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.
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.
Dr Irfan Zafar 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?
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.
By Bill RoggioJuly 15, 2011 11:17 AM 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:
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.
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.
Awaam by Vision21 