Minus one Zardari to go March 13, 2009

Pakistan army and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani have asked President Asif Ali Zardari to go if he does not accept a new deal hatched by them in consultation with foreign powers.

The new political deal, backed by Washington, London and the army establishment, has quietly been conveyed to Pakistan PM Gilani, to bring down the political temperature in the country.

As part of the deal, the PM has been asked to immediately convince Zardari to demonstrate the flexibility required to break the present deadlock, before the ‘Long March’ reaches Islamabad.

Gilani has reportedly been given 24 hours to convince Zardari into agreeing to the new political and constitutional arrangement, as further delay will not produce any positive results for the political forces currently on the warpath.

The ball is now firmly in the court of President Zardari, who has to take a decision swiftly on endorsing the agreement brokered by powerful international actors.

If Zardari does not accept the new deal then:

* Army, foreign powers will be left with no option but to implement ‘minus-one formula’
* Presidents office will be completely marginalised, Zardari will be removed
* Gilani will take over as power will be restored to PM office
* Nawaz Sharif’s PML(N) will join the cabinet
* Deposed SC chief Justice Iftikar Chaudhary will be reappointed.

Terms of the deal are:
* Pak PM Gilani has been asked to convince Zardari to accept the new political and constitutional arrangement
* The deal also states the removal of Punjab governor Salman Taseer, who is an obstacle to good relations between the PPP and the PML(N)
* Implementation of the new Constitutional package through the Parliament
* The deal also demands the restoration of Supreme Court Justice Ifthikar Chaudhary.

Since March 11, there have been a series of meetings that have shaped this deal.

The Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani met PM Gilani in Islamabad on March 11, where in the ninety minute meeting the former essentially told the latter to set the deal in motion.

On Thursday, the US ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson met former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. The reason ostensibly was after Sharif alleged that there was a plot to assassinate him.

Meanwhile, the PM has not met the president after he returned from his trip to Dubai. He has however been talking to the President over the phone.

UK foreign secretary David Miliband also telephoned President Asif Ali Zardari to discuss the present situation on Thursday.

Nandita Das, Mahesh Bhatt grace second-last day of KaraFilm Festival February 15, 2009

The second-last day of the KaraFilm Festival finally put a smile on the organisers’ faces as the two of Kara’s “oldest supporters,” Mahesh Bhatt and Nandita Das, finally managed to make it to the festival. In addition, the day was highly promising with the festival drawing its biggest crowd yet.

Das (who came on Friday for Ramchand Pakistani’s premiere as well) and Bhatt (who arrived on Saturday) were welcome signs and a massive statement of commitment from the neighbours across the border.

Bhatt and Das, during a small press conference held at the Arts Council said that the High Commission had knowledge of their association with Kara, and that it was very easy for them to get a visa, with Bhatt’s visa arriving within an hour.

Bhatt said that he had been coming to the past four Kara’s and the government’s on both sides knew this, as well as the nature of Kara itself. The festival provides a great forum to interact with like-minded people from different parts of the world, they said, adding that in troubled times, the exchange of people and artistes becomes important because they are part of the peace process.

Bhatt was of the opinion that the moderate voice in these tense times should be accorded more importance. The incident involving a Pakistani comedian was much regretted by the Indian public, he said, adding that the trend at the moment was such that any production involving Pakistanis was being put off as the distributors and exhibitors would object.

Hasan Zaidi, the chief organiser of Kara, said that the reason some Indian films could not be shown at the festival was because distributor refused to release their films. Das’ film Firaaq, which was screened on Saturday, was brought over by her own efforts and was yet to be released in Indian cinemas.

Das said that had it not been for Kara, she would not have met Mehreen Jabbar and never would have become part of Ramchand Pakistani. For now, she hoped that a good script from Pakistan would find its way to her so she could work on this side of the border as well.

Among the screenings on Saturday was “Right to Life,” a documentary on the problem of the lack of proper facilities, funds, and personnel, which affect birthing mothers.

The story follows one of the most prominent gynaecologists of Karachi, and perhaps even of Pakistan, Dr Shershah Syed. Attended by a host of midwives, nurses, doctors and students who filled up the hall to capacity, the documentary showed how primitive Pakistan is in the health sector.

If nothing else, the main obstacle is the government, who, while knowing how something should be done, does not do it right just to pocket a few coins for itself. The lack of funds, a flawed national policy and the government’s attitude towards healthcare means that there is rarely enough for everyone.

Earlier in the morning, children were treated to the animated film Kungfu Panda, where a panda must learn the ancient art of kungfu to protect not only himself but his village as well.

A host of children came to watch the premiere showing, including groups from various schools. Among them were also children from the Garage School project, and the Adamjee Orphanage.

Two brothers shot dead amid robbery in Karachi February 13, 2009

KARACHI: Dacoits killed two real brothers amid robbery as brothers resisted against them while a person sustained injuries resisting against bandits during another incident of plundering in Karachi on early Thursday, police said.
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According to sources, four dacoits broke into a house located in Sajjan Goth in Samanabad area and opened fire on dwellers who resisted against them.
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Deceased brothers, identified as Abdul Samad and Abdul Aziz, were married whose dead bodies were shifted to Civil Hospital Karachi, police sources added.
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Other incident occurred in Ibrahim Haydir area where looters opened fire on Kamal Hussain (40) amid an incident of street crime.
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He was moved to local hospital here for providing medical attainment, sources maintained.

Fatima bhutto and George Clooney ARE U SERIOUS February 13, 2009

Are George Clooney [Images] and Benazir Bhutto’s [Images] niece Fatima an item?

If the National Enquirer is to be believed, the Hollywood star and the 26-year-old niece of slain Pakistan leader are engaged in ’secret romance’.

According to the tabloid, Clooney was so ’smitten’ by the ‘brainy foreign beauty,’ after meeting her at an international conference last year, that he started a long distance relationship with her.

Fatima, an outspoken journalist, lives in a prosperous suburb of Karachi with her brother and step-mother.

‘George has courted her by phone and e-mail, and arranged to meet her abroad when their schedules allowed,’ a friend of Clooney told the paper. ‘Now he wants her to spend time with him in Hollywood. He’s still out there with his usual assortment of eye-candy hanging from his arm. But George insists those days could be coming to an end if Fatima wants to take their relationship to the next level.

‘Fatima was educated at Columbia University [in New York] and knew of [Clooney's] heart-throb rep,’ said the Enquirer. ‘But she didn’t take his advances seriously because she thought their age difference would make a serious relationship impractical.’

Impractical or not, Fatima has shown a steely determination where politics is concerned and has often criticized Pakistan’s government in her columns. An avid thinker, whose book of poetry, The Whispers of the Desert, and a memoir of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake was published recently, is also reported to be contesting her late aunt’s former seat in the Larkana constituency in the next elections.

Racism In The Elevator February 4, 2009

Cartoon Of the Day February 4, 2009

37 Korean Troops Convert to Islam January 31, 2009

“I became a Muslim because I felt Islam was more humanistic and peaceful than other religions. And if you can religiously connect with the locals, I think it could be a big help in carrying out our peace reconstruction mission.” So said on Friday those Korean soldiers who converted to Islam ahead of their late July deployment to the Kurdish city of Irbil in northern Iraq.

At noon Friday, 37 members of the Iraq-bound “Zaitun Unit,” including Lieutenant Son Hyeon-ju of the Special Forces 11th Brigade, made their way to a mosque in Hannam-dong, Seoul and held a conversion ceremony.

Moreover, as the faithful face the “Kaaba,” the Islamic holy place in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, all Muslims confirm that they are brothers.

For those Korean soldiers who entered the Islamic faith, recent chances provided by the Zaitun Unit to come into contact with Islam proved decisive.

Taking into consideration the fact that most of the inhabitants of Irbil are Muslims, the unit sent its unreligious members to the Hannam-dong mosque so that they could come to understand Islam. Some of those who participated in the program were entranced by Islam and decided to convert.

A unit official said the soldiers were inspired by how important religious homogeneity was considered in the Muslim World; if you share religion, you are treated not as a foreigner, but as a local, and Muslims do not attack Muslim women even in war.

Zaitun Unit Corporal Paek Seong-uk (22) of the Army’s 11th Division said, “I majored in Arabic in college and upon coming across the Quran, I had much interest in Islam, and I made up my mind to become a Muslim during this religious experience period [provided by the Zaitun Unit].”

He expressed his aspirations. “If we are sent to Iraq, I want to participate in religious ceremonies with the locals so that they can feel brotherly love and convince them that the Korean troops are not an army of occupation but a force deployed to provide humanitarian support.”

STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE January 7, 2009

A Precursor to More War Crimes? September 11, 2008

In the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday, September 3, three U..S. helicopters
carrying U.S. Special Operations Forces swooped down onto the Pakistani
village of Musa Nika, in South Waziristan, killing fifteen to twenty people
according to early reports. The U.S. press noted that this is the first
known ground assault of U.S. troops in Pakistan. The provincial governor
said twenty civilians including women and children were killed.. The Foreign
Minister denounced the attack, declaring that “no important terrorist or
high-value target” was hit. The chief spokesman for the Pakistani Army
registered its “strong objection.” Gen. Athar Abbas declared that the attack
could provoke a general rebellion of local tribes against his government,
and threaten NATO supply lines from Karachi into Afghanistan. The Foreign
Minister angrily declared that “no important terrorist or high-value target”
was hit. The U.S. ambassador was summoned to receive Islamabad’s official
protest.

This is heavy stuff. But this news got sidelined by the star coverage
conferred by the mainstream media on Sarah Palin, whose ringing oration,
dripping with ignorance and contempt for the world, brought down the house
Wednesday night in that celebration of stupidity in St.Paul. That speech,
authored by George W. Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully for whatever vice
presidential candidate McCain selected, asserted among other things that
Bush’s “surge” had prevented al-Qaeda from taking over Iraq. The message is
clear: all U.S. military action is designed to protect the U.S. from
al-Qaeda terror.

Why would the mainstream media, pronouncing “a star is born,” want to
highlight the little news story about remote Waziristan? Palin was splashed
all over the front page of the* Boston Globe* on Thursday; the Pakistan
story was on page A-3. On Friday a follow-up AP story made page A-26. It
emphasized how the raid had “complicated life for presidential front-runner
Asif Ali Zardari.”

But this largely ignored event holds potentially horrifying significance.
“Top American officials” have told the* New York Times*that this raid “could
be the opening salvo in a much broader campaign by Special Operations forces
against the Taliban and Al Qaeda inside Pakistan, a secret plan that Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates has been advocating for months within President
Bush’s war council.” The plan of course enjoys the support of John McCain,
who never met a warlike action he didn’t like, as well as his opponent in
the presidential race. Barack Obama has been saying for over a year that if
the U.S.has “actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets” in
Pakistan and the chance to hit them, it should do so. The hell with
Pakistani sovereignty! Why should such a detail matter after “we were
attacked”?

Why should the outraged opposition of the Pakistani government constitute a
major news story? Pakistan’s only a nuclear-armed Muslim country of 165
million people, which has at great cost to itself agreed — under duress,
indeed the threat of being “bombed back into the Stone Age” — to abet U.S.
objectives in neighboring Afghanistan. It’s just a country that having
helped create and nurture the Taliban in order to stabilize Afghanistan,
broke with that organization at the demand of the U.S. in 2001 and then
found its frontier provinces flooded with Islamist militants fleeing across
the border.
According to a White House “fact sheet” issued in August 2007:

- Pakistan has worked closely with the United States to secure the arrest
of terrorists like Khalid Shaykh Mohammad, Abu Zubaydah,
and Ramzi bin al
Shibh. Pakistan has killed or captured hundreds of
suspected and known
terrorists, including Mullah Obaidullah, who ranked second
in theTaliban
hierarchy at the time of his capture.
- About100,000 Pakistani troops are deployed in the region near
the Afghan border, and hundreds of Pakistani security
forces have given
their lives in the battle to combat terrorism post-9/11.
- Pakistan provides vital logistical support to coalition forces
in Afghanistan.

- President Musharraf has a comprehensive strategy that combines
three critical components — strengthened governance,
increased economic
development,

and improved security — aimed at eradicating
extremism in the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

No government has provided more assistance to Washington as it pursues its
goals in Southwest Asia. No country has been more dramatically destabilized
as the price of its cooperation. But not only does the U.S. political class
take this disasterous compliance for granted, it wants to further emphasize
Islamabad’s irrelevance by attacking the border area at will. It insults the
sensibilities of a population that holds bin Laden in far greater esteem
than the U.S. president. It provokes the powerful Inter-Service Intelligence
(ISI), originally the creation of the CIA, once a close partner with the
U.S. in the project of destroying the secular pro-Soviet state that existed
in Afghanistan from 1978 to 1993. (The ISI, a power unto itself, is already
annoyed that Afghanistan, where anti-Indian Kashmiri jihadis used to hone
their skills in training camps, has been cozying up to India.) Its embrace
undermines any leader who seeks nationalist and religious credentials in the
Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

“There’s potential to see more [attacks on Pakistan],” an unnamed U.S.
official told the* New York Times*. Who do these people think they’re
dealing with? It is one thing to ignore the government of Iraq, placed in
power by the U.S. invasion, when it says no to a permanent U.S. military
presence, U.S. forces’ immunity from Iraqi law, or the privatization of
Iraq’s petroleum resources. It’s one thing to laugh at al-Maliki & Co. and
say, “Well, they don’t mean that,” confident that they’ll eventually knuckle
under. It’s another thing to suppose that the Pakistanis, when they say
“No,” mean anything other than “No” and will simply burn with quiet
resentment indefinitely as U.S. forces violate their sovereignty..But that
sort of insane arrogance stems naturally from the post 9-11 “us vs. them”
mentality of U.S. leaders. Not just the neocons, mind you, but the entire
political mainstream.

Pakistan, these leaders will note, is not doing enough to prevent militants
from crossing over the border to attack U.S. and NATO forces in
Afghanistan.One should respond to this assertion with the following points:

- The U.S. is conflating Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. But these are not
the same thing. (This is perhaps the most obvious but obviously
neglected
point of fact in the post 9-11 era.) The Taliban is an indigenous
Afghan
movement and — however unsavory — unquestionably enjoys a social
base.
Al-Qaeda is a mostly Arab force rooted in the U.S.-sponsored
anti-Soviet
Mujahadeen of the 1980s.
- Nobody in Afghanistan asked the U.S. to invade, bomb, or continue
bombing Afghanistan for seven years. Nor did the Pakistanis.
- The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, against the advice and
will of Pakistan, and the failure of that invasion to crush
al-Qaeda, pushed
al-Qaeda and Taliban forces into Pakistan. It’s likely the latter far
outnumber the former.
- Pakistan’s government had never firmly controlled the frontier
provinces or deployed large-scale military forces there in
deference to the
sensibilities of local tribes. Washington, oblivious to Pakistan’s
realities,* demanded* that Islamabad suppress the al-Qaeda and Taliban
forces that fled into the region. In effect, it demanded that
Pakistan clean
up a mess that the U.S. invasion had created.
- Pakistan’sefforts to obey Washington have taken a terrible toll on
the Pakistani Army, solidified local resistance to the central
government,
and in fact produced a* Pakistani* Taliban rooted in the local
Pashtuns who identify with the Afghan Pashtuns and have no use for the
border between Afghanistan and Pakistan drawn by colonialists who never
consulted with them in drawing the map.
- Faced with the prospect of a general tribal-based rebellion,
Islamabad has cut deals with local Taliban-linked groups. Washington
has
expressed its disapproval, claiming such deals continue to allow
militants
to cross back and forth across the border attacking its forces and
their
allies in Afghanistan. Washington is, in effect, asking Pakistan’s
government to risk civil war and its own collapse to prevent Afghans
from
attacking its forces in Afghanistan whose deployment Pakistan
opposed in the
first place.
- Washington is saying to this nuclear power, Pakistan: “You must
obey!” And some in Pakistan are saying: “You do not know this
region. You’ve
responded to 9-11 by lashing out in all directions, creating enemies
you
never had before.* You* created this problem, our headache, in
Waziristan and adjoining regions. And you make it worse by
saying that since
we’re not handling it to your satisfaction, you’re going to start
landing
your troops in our villages, shooting on our civilians. And
you’re expecting
us to say, ‘Ok, no problem, boss?’ You’re crazy.”

It* is* crazy,even for a cocky hyper-imperialist power, to manifest such
arrogance and contempt. Such attacks on Pakistan say to the Muslims of the
world: “You are the problem and we reserve the right to slaughter you,
because back home, we have powerful politicians who respond to a mass base
that thinks fighting you all is, as Sarah Palin put it, ‘a task from
God.’* (USA!
USA! USA! USA!)* If you don’t agree with our program to restructure your
region, supporting* our* misogynistic fanatical Islamists in the Northern
Alliance as opposed to the Taliban misogynistic fanatical Islamists you used
to sponsor, we’ll invade you and take care of the problem ourselves.* (USA!
USA! USA! USA!)* Get used to it. It’s not just the Bush crowd. We’ve got
Obama on board now too. We will strike Pakistani targets as we see fit.
Screw international law, which we invoke when it serves our needs and ignore
when it might restrain us. Nobody is allowed to cross any border to attack
our brave Americans, no matter where we invade, or why. Just accept that,
world, and avoid our wrath. (*USA! USA! USA!*)”

That’s indeed the message to Pakistan. If there were a free press in this
country, honest education and genuine discussion, the people would recoil in
horror from the crimes committed in their name and the premises — largely
lies — behind those crimes. But we have none of that, just some posts on
the internet. The outlook is grim.

Pakistan Turns into Toba Tek Singh July 7, 2008

Pakistan is like an airplane lost in a dark ominous cloud, running on autopilot. Its coordinates and destination were set by previous crew members, who have been made to disappear or have parachuted out.

Passengers with gurgling stomachs and sweaty brows having long realized the trouble and appear paralyzed. They have seen a stream of crew members pushed off the plane or bail out with parachute — shady hunks in khakis, but some rare trustworthy ones too.

The Captain, Asif Zardari, took over when his wife was shoved off the plane. The First Officer, Nawaz Sharif, is there propped up by his benefactor General Zia ul Haq. CIA operatives onboard, passengers learned, had forced Zia to jump off with a crate of mangoes tied to him.

Every so often the passengers are flashed the grinning faces of the two pilots to assure them that the plane is in safe hands. A sharp journalist on flight notes the lack of sparkle and empathy in their eyes and wonders if their bright smiles are a sham.

Air traffic control is in the hands of General Pervez Musharraf supported by American engineers. They built the autopilot and are the only people who now have flight plan that was entered in the plane. Suddenly, a violent thumping on the door disturbs the peace inside the locked control room. Outside, deposed Chief Justice Chaudhry Iftikhar and his attorney Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan having caught wind of the plot are trying to force their way in.

Meanwhile pandemonium reigns in the cabin. A lunatic Mullah from NWFP with a huge beard announces that he is Muhammad Ali Jinnah. While the agitated passengers look at him, from the back of the cabin a man in cricketing whites who had earlier been talking to the Mullah, declares himself Master Tara Singh. Jinnah and Singh launch into a bhangra dance in the two aisles but fail to attract the attention of the agitated passengers who are sweating in their seats. Fearing more trouble the two mad entertainers are locked up in the same toilet by on-flight security men. [This bit was left out by Dawn.]

To avoid further ruckus in the cabin the cool-headed Purser Saadat Hasan Manto puts on the film “Toba Tek Singh”, a classic drama about the confusion at the time of partition when Hindu lunatics in a city in Punjab were repatriated to India. Suddenly calm reigns as passengers get glued to the monitor in front of them. This is like the reassurance of seeing oneself in the mirror on waking every morning. That’s me you tell yourself, that face is mine, I have survived the night! The few who don’t get the plot finally realize its parallel with their condition when they read the film notes in the flight magazine (http://tinyurl.com/45wje2).

The rest of the world retains an interest in the future of this unstable flight – an unfolding drama viewed from ground level seemingly as surreal as that experienced by those onboard. Some characters in the drama are highlighted by the international press.

The New York Times in its Sunday magazine elaborates the past and present of Aitzaz Ahsan. He makes it to the Prospect magazine’s top 100 global intellectual’

s list.   In the NYT piece, Ahsan talks about himself being the virtual deputy prime minister in Benazir Bhutto’s cabinet after Zia ul Haq was killed in 1988. Inexperience and other flaws of Bhutto mixed with serious interference by the army prevented much headway. The president fired the government in 1990. Nawaz Sharif stepped in and got the courts to try the Bhutto and her hubby, Zardari. They were defended in court by Ahsan, who now expresses disdain for Benazir viewing herself as the life chairperson of the People’s Party and has little doubt about the corruption of the couple, which he said was evident in their expenses. He nonetheless remains a member of the party, which is clearly non-democratic within its ranks. No one knows how he balances his alliances.

Justice Iftikhar who originally approved of Gen Musharraf’s takeover in 1999 has redeemed himself through his activist role in highlighting the fact of countless Pakistanis having disappeared due to the ‘war on terror’. This exposure has earned him the ire of the Yanks. He also exposed and thus stopped the deal to sell off the national steel mill to a crony of the Citibanker-turned-Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who is now safely back in America after his 5-year overseas duty. The Chief Justice also helped to stop the New Murree project which would have replaced a pristine pine forest in the hills with luxury hotels and villas for the filthy rich.

Meanwhile as the airborne drama of Pakistan unfolds the common citizen is burdened by sky-rocketing prices of food and other commodities, as well as a serious shortage of power coupled with serious eco-disasters. This writer, who needs to walk the darkened bazaars near his home daily from 2-3 am during blackout to avoid mosquitoes and heat, can find many who live a far more deprived existence. Take the Afghan refugee along his nightly route, a scavenger, who gathers discarded plastic bottles from the shopping area for recycling. He earns Rs 60-100 daily, a sum below subsistence level.

The plane can be flown safely if Pakistanis wake up to the reality of their situation and begin to change things for the better. Good sense and political will are levers needed to disengage the autopilot and take control of the country.