At a time when the Pakhtuns are being depicted by the Western media as extremists and terrorists, a group of Pakhtun diaspora in Europe has launched a forum named Peace for Pakhtun Now.
Jan Assakzai, a London-based Pakhtun from Balochistan’s Pishin district, is the founding chairman of the forum in London. Hundreds of Pakhtuns from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and other Pakhtun-populated areas in the country live in London and rest of UK and many have already joined the organisation.
Having lived in the United Kingdom for the last 11 years, Jan Assakzai was quoted as saying by an online magazine Pakhtun Voice that the primary task of the forum was to portray the Pakhtun as peace-loving nation to the world and pinpoint the government policies that turned the Pakhtun areas into a battlefield for vested interests.
To a question, he said: “It is commonly believed in Europe that Pakhtun areas in Pakistan are supplying more recruits to Al-Qaeda and terrorists to undermine the interest of the Western countries than any part of the world.” But we have to prove this impression wrong by presenting the true picture, he added.
“We are Pakhtuns and are always ready to stand up for Pakhtuns’ rights to have a peaceful coexistence in a democratic Pakistan and that is why we have the right to criticise the anti-Pakhtun policies of the government and establishment,” he stressed.
The initiative of launching the forum for presenting Pakhtuns as peaceful people was taken by a small group of Pakhtuns living in the UK. It plans to arrange a get-together in London from all over Europe from where they would expand to other parts of Europe with a consensus agenda.
To a query, he said that over 1,000 people had sent him emails and every day more people were appreciating the forum. “People are sending me emails from Europe, North America, Middle East and Pakistan for joining the group,” he added.
M WAQAR..... "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary.Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --Albert Einstein !!! NEWS,ARTICLES,EDITORIALS,MUSIC... Ze chi pe mayeen yum da agha pukhtunistan de.....(Liberal,Progressive,Secular World.)''Secularism is not against religion; it is the message of humanity.'' تل ده وی پثتونستآن
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Forum launched in UK to portray true image of Pakhtuns
At a time when the Pakhtuns are being depicted by the Western media as extremists and terrorists, a group of Pakhtun diaspora in Europe has launched a forum named Peace for Pakhtun Now.
Jan Assakzai, a London-based Pakhtun from Balochistan’s Pishin district, is the founding chairman of the forum in London. Hundreds of Pakhtuns from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and other Pakhtun-populated areas in the country live in London and rest of UK and many have already joined the organisation.
Having lived in the United Kingdom for the last 11 years, Jan Assakzai was quoted as saying by an online magazine Pakhtun Voice that the primary task of the forum was to portray the Pakhtun as peace-loving nation to the world and pinpoint the government policies that turned the Pakhtun areas into a battlefield for vested interests.
To a question, he said: “It is commonly believed in Europe that Pakhtun areas in Pakistan are supplying more recruits to Al-Qaeda and terrorists to undermine the interest of the Western countries than any part of the world.” But we have to prove this impression wrong by presenting the true picture, he added.
“We are Pakhtuns and are always ready to stand up for Pakhtuns’ rights to have a peaceful coexistence in a democratic Pakistan and that is why we have the right to criticise the anti-Pakhtun policies of the government and establishment,” he stressed.
The initiative of launching the forum for presenting Pakhtuns as peaceful people was taken by a small group of Pakhtuns living in the UK. It plans to arrange a get-together in London from all over Europe from where they would expand to other parts of Europe with a consensus agenda.
To a query, he said that over 1,000 people had sent him emails and every day more people were appreciating the forum. “People are sending me emails from Europe, North America, Middle East and Pakistan for joining the group,” he added.
Jan Assakzai, a London-based Pakhtun from Balochistan’s Pishin district, is the founding chairman of the forum in London. Hundreds of Pakhtuns from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and other Pakhtun-populated areas in the country live in London and rest of UK and many have already joined the organisation.
Having lived in the United Kingdom for the last 11 years, Jan Assakzai was quoted as saying by an online magazine Pakhtun Voice that the primary task of the forum was to portray the Pakhtun as peace-loving nation to the world and pinpoint the government policies that turned the Pakhtun areas into a battlefield for vested interests.
To a question, he said: “It is commonly believed in Europe that Pakhtun areas in Pakistan are supplying more recruits to Al-Qaeda and terrorists to undermine the interest of the Western countries than any part of the world.” But we have to prove this impression wrong by presenting the true picture, he added.
“We are Pakhtuns and are always ready to stand up for Pakhtuns’ rights to have a peaceful coexistence in a democratic Pakistan and that is why we have the right to criticise the anti-Pakhtun policies of the government and establishment,” he stressed.
The initiative of launching the forum for presenting Pakhtuns as peaceful people was taken by a small group of Pakhtuns living in the UK. It plans to arrange a get-together in London from all over Europe from where they would expand to other parts of Europe with a consensus agenda.
To a query, he said that over 1,000 people had sent him emails and every day more people were appreciating the forum. “People are sending me emails from Europe, North America, Middle East and Pakistan for joining the group,” he added.
Pakistani terrorist Faisal, an embarrassment for Pakistani-Americans
SILVER SPRING, Maryland: Across from a counter serving up heaping plates of kabobs and curries, Zahid Hussain scrolled through his phone for messages from fellow Pakistani-Americans. The topic was hardly a surprise.
“Pakistanis are afraid. When they see on television, 'Pakistani terrorist in Times Square,' they just want to hide their face,” Hussain said at a brightly lit Pakistani restaurant in suburban Washington.
Hussain, who publishes a local Urdu-language newspaper, said he spoke with his school-age children after hearing that a Pakistani-American, Faisal Shahzad, was arrested in Saturday's plot to sow destruction in one of New York's busiest intersections.
Hussain immigrated to the United States in 2003 and said his children had once even asked if they could change their names due to the image of their homeland in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
But for many Pakistani-Americans, the bomb plot instilled not so much fear but embarrassment. The community has been proud of its prosperity in this nation of immigrants and has come under far less scrutiny than Pakistani British.
“Back in the 1960s, Pakistanis were always held in great esteem. They were seen as making very valuable contributions to America. That deteriorated after September 11,” commented Arshad Qureshi, a 70-year-old actuary after saying his evening prayers at a neatly manicured Maryland mosque.
Qureshi refused to criticise Americans who voice suspicions about Pakistan.
“If you go to the root causes, I would blame ourselves,” he said.
Ashraf Qazi, chairman of the Council on Pakistan Relations, an advocacy group for Pakistani-Americans, believed that Americans understood that only a few terrorism suspects have emerged from a community estimated at more than half a million.
“I don't think the public in general believes in guilt by association,” Qazi said by telephone from Michigan, where he runs a health care company.
“You're really at a loss for words when you look at this situation,” he said. “I think this also shows the need for us to be more vigilant.”
Shahzad, who became a US citizen a little over a year ago, had achieved undergraduate and business degrees in the United States and married a fellow Pakistani-American.
But the 30-year-old was also saddled with debt and his home reportedly went into foreclosure as the US economy entered a tailspin over the housing debt bubble.
Shahzad was not the first Pakistani-American to come under the scanner of US authorities. But there has been significantly less attention to extremism among Pakistani-Americans than among the much larger community of Pakistani British.
In 2005, home-grown extremists bombed three underground trains and a bus in London, killing 52 people.
While some Americans say the US model does a better job at integration, Pakistani immigration to the United States and Britain has followed different patterns.
Pakistani immigrants to the United States are more recent and more dispersed. Unlike in Britain, the United States has few monolithically Pakistani neighbourhoods except arguably for a few small areas in New York, Chicago and Houston.
“There isn't the ghettoisation, where you have this concentration of angry people that just amplifies everyone else's anger,” said Adil Najam, a professor at Boston University who is researching the Pakistani diaspora.
Najam found that Pakistani-Americans are also generally prosperous. While the community ranges from business executives and doctors to cab drivers and gas station attendants, fewer Pakistani-Americans are jobless altogether.
Najam said this was the work of US visa laws which required immigrants to be employable. Many Pakistanis went to Britain after being granted asylum, allowing entire village communities to transplant their social structures.
But Najam warned of risks for younger Pakistani-Americans, saying that in Britain it was not the original immigrants but their descendants who suffered the most acute alienation.
“What I worry about is that you have a generation of Muslims, and not just Pakistanis, who because of September 11 could be developing these feelings that their society is not really theirs,” Najam said.
“If we allow them to be alienated, it would not be good for anyone.”
“Pakistanis are afraid. When they see on television, 'Pakistani terrorist in Times Square,' they just want to hide their face,” Hussain said at a brightly lit Pakistani restaurant in suburban Washington.
Hussain, who publishes a local Urdu-language newspaper, said he spoke with his school-age children after hearing that a Pakistani-American, Faisal Shahzad, was arrested in Saturday's plot to sow destruction in one of New York's busiest intersections.
Hussain immigrated to the United States in 2003 and said his children had once even asked if they could change their names due to the image of their homeland in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
But for many Pakistani-Americans, the bomb plot instilled not so much fear but embarrassment. The community has been proud of its prosperity in this nation of immigrants and has come under far less scrutiny than Pakistani British.
“Back in the 1960s, Pakistanis were always held in great esteem. They were seen as making very valuable contributions to America. That deteriorated after September 11,” commented Arshad Qureshi, a 70-year-old actuary after saying his evening prayers at a neatly manicured Maryland mosque.
Qureshi refused to criticise Americans who voice suspicions about Pakistan.
“If you go to the root causes, I would blame ourselves,” he said.
Ashraf Qazi, chairman of the Council on Pakistan Relations, an advocacy group for Pakistani-Americans, believed that Americans understood that only a few terrorism suspects have emerged from a community estimated at more than half a million.
“I don't think the public in general believes in guilt by association,” Qazi said by telephone from Michigan, where he runs a health care company.
“You're really at a loss for words when you look at this situation,” he said. “I think this also shows the need for us to be more vigilant.”
Shahzad, who became a US citizen a little over a year ago, had achieved undergraduate and business degrees in the United States and married a fellow Pakistani-American.
But the 30-year-old was also saddled with debt and his home reportedly went into foreclosure as the US economy entered a tailspin over the housing debt bubble.
Shahzad was not the first Pakistani-American to come under the scanner of US authorities. But there has been significantly less attention to extremism among Pakistani-Americans than among the much larger community of Pakistani British.
In 2005, home-grown extremists bombed three underground trains and a bus in London, killing 52 people.
While some Americans say the US model does a better job at integration, Pakistani immigration to the United States and Britain has followed different patterns.
Pakistani immigrants to the United States are more recent and more dispersed. Unlike in Britain, the United States has few monolithically Pakistani neighbourhoods except arguably for a few small areas in New York, Chicago and Houston.
“There isn't the ghettoisation, where you have this concentration of angry people that just amplifies everyone else's anger,” said Adil Najam, a professor at Boston University who is researching the Pakistani diaspora.
Najam found that Pakistani-Americans are also generally prosperous. While the community ranges from business executives and doctors to cab drivers and gas station attendants, fewer Pakistani-Americans are jobless altogether.
Najam said this was the work of US visa laws which required immigrants to be employable. Many Pakistanis went to Britain after being granted asylum, allowing entire village communities to transplant their social structures.
But Najam warned of risks for younger Pakistani-Americans, saying that in Britain it was not the original immigrants but their descendants who suffered the most acute alienation.
“What I worry about is that you have a generation of Muslims, and not just Pakistanis, who because of September 11 could be developing these feelings that their society is not really theirs,” Najam said.
“If we allow them to be alienated, it would not be good for anyone.”
Pakistani politicians shelter militants
By KATHY GANNON,
Associated Press
JHANG, Pakistan – It's a troubling trend in Pakistan's biggest and richest province of Punjab: Leaders there are tolerating and in some cases promoting some of the country's most violent Islamist militant groups.
Provincial officials have ignored repeated calls to crack down on militant groups with a strong presence here, with one senior minister campaigning publicly with members of an extremist group that calls for Shiite Muslims to be killed.
Some of the militant groups are allied with the northwest-based Pakistani Taliban, which claimed responsibility for a failed car bombing in New York City last week. A group based in Punjab, Jaish-e-Mohammed, also has been implicated as having possible links to one of the people detained in Pakistan in connection with the bombing attempt.
The head of the Punjab government, Shahbaz Sharif, even asked militants not to attack his province — because he was not following the dictates of the United States to fight them — much to the dismay of the central Pakistani government.
"It makes the Punjab a de facto sanctuary for the militants and extremists that the Pakistan army is fighting in the frontier and in the tribal areas," said Aida Hussain, a former ambassador to the United States and prominent Shiite leader. "In fact this is an undermining of the armed forces of Pakistan and it is an undermining of constitutional governance."
Critics believe the policy of tolerance is a shortsighted bid by Sharif and his brother, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, for political support in the predominantly Sunni province, which accounts for nearly 60 percent of Pakistan's 175 million people and much of the country's wealth.
Punjabi militants have won over fellow followers of the Deobandi sect of Islam with their radical religious interpretations and outspoken assaults on minority Shiites. This translates into votes that leaders of radical groups can bring to local politicians on both the right and the left.
"It's all about political expediency rather than outright support for these groups," said Moeed Yusuf of the United States Institute of Peace. He said the policy was risky because it sends the wrong signal to Pakistanis who have rallied behind the military in its assault on extremists in the Afghan border areas.
Signs of a militant Islamist presence are everywhere in this region.
In the blisteringly hot central Punjab town of Jhang, the outlawed Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, or Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet, has been emboldened by conciliatory signals from local authorities. After being courted for votes last March, the group ripped off yellow government seals and reopened its offices.
Their distinctive green, black and white striped flags fly defiantly atop homes and mosques. The maze of narrow streets in Jhang is littered with graffiti in support of the SSP, even though then-President Pervez Musharraf banned the organization in 2002.
The group's supporters rant against Shiites, whom they revile as heretics, demand the release of some of the country's most wanted terrorists and give sermons urging the faithful to attack their enemies.
Just a few miles (kilometers) from the Punjab provincial capital of Lahore is the headquarters of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is banned in Pakistan, India, the United States and other countries but is now under provincial government protection. India blames Lashkar-e-Taiba for the deadly 2008 attacks in Mumbai and routinely harangues Pakistan for allowing its leader, Hafiz Saeed, to remain free. Pakistani authorities point to its courts, which have repeatedly said there is not enough evidence to hold him.
And in the southern Punjab city of Bawahalpur is the headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammed, the group possibly linked to a suspect in the Times Square bombing case. The group's leader, Masood Azhar, was among three militants freed by India in 1999 in exchange for the release of passengers aboard a hijacked Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar, Afghanistan.
"Until the (Pakistani) leadership understands the real nature of these groups, and embraces the fact that none of them can possibly remain biddable tools over the long term, Pakistan leaves itself open to being repeatedly stung," said Arthur Keller, an ex-CIA case officer in Pakistan.
Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan, who is in charge of enforcing the law in Punjab province, defended his decision to campaign alongside members of the Sipah-e-Sahaba group in March. The minister said the organization represents thousands of votes and cannot be ignored.
"I think all these fears and speculation are confused in the mind of the people...mostly outsiders," he said.
He said groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba were not taking part in the war against the Taliban in the northwest, but only resisting Indian control of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. And he said the Punjab government was hoping to moderate such groups.
"If they change their direction, become more progressive, that is good," he said.
Critics believe the Punjabi government is pursuing a dangerous course because militant Islamist groups are increasingly entwined.
"You promote one organization and indirectly you promote all of them," Sheikh Waqqas Akram, a parliamentarian from Jhang, told The Associated Press.
"The dynamics have changed in Pakistan. These organizations are interlinked, organized. They have the vehicles and the weapons to carry out terrorist activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Akram said. "If they are not the suicide bombers, they are the ones providing the (explosives) jackets. If they are not providing the jackets, then they are providing the houses. And if they are not providing the houses, then they are providing the food."
In an interview with the AP, the director-general of Sipah-e-Sahaba, Hamid Hussain Dehlo, denied working with other militant organizations, insisting his group's only agenda "is to fight against Shiite Muslims who are the worst kafirs in the whole universe," referring to Shiites by the Arab word for "nonbeliever."
Despite Dehlo's claim, there is evidence of links to other militant groups. A spinoff group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, was believed to be involved in the 2002 kidnap-murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, and in the March 17, 2002 attack on the International Protestant Church in Islamabad during which five people, including an American mother and her daughter, were killed.
U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials believe Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has ties to the Pakistan Taliban, as well as al-Qaida.
Associated Press
JHANG, Pakistan – It's a troubling trend in Pakistan's biggest and richest province of Punjab: Leaders there are tolerating and in some cases promoting some of the country's most violent Islamist militant groups.
Provincial officials have ignored repeated calls to crack down on militant groups with a strong presence here, with one senior minister campaigning publicly with members of an extremist group that calls for Shiite Muslims to be killed.
Some of the militant groups are allied with the northwest-based Pakistani Taliban, which claimed responsibility for a failed car bombing in New York City last week. A group based in Punjab, Jaish-e-Mohammed, also has been implicated as having possible links to one of the people detained in Pakistan in connection with the bombing attempt.
The head of the Punjab government, Shahbaz Sharif, even asked militants not to attack his province — because he was not following the dictates of the United States to fight them — much to the dismay of the central Pakistani government.
"It makes the Punjab a de facto sanctuary for the militants and extremists that the Pakistan army is fighting in the frontier and in the tribal areas," said Aida Hussain, a former ambassador to the United States and prominent Shiite leader. "In fact this is an undermining of the armed forces of Pakistan and it is an undermining of constitutional governance."
Critics believe the policy of tolerance is a shortsighted bid by Sharif and his brother, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, for political support in the predominantly Sunni province, which accounts for nearly 60 percent of Pakistan's 175 million people and much of the country's wealth.
Punjabi militants have won over fellow followers of the Deobandi sect of Islam with their radical religious interpretations and outspoken assaults on minority Shiites. This translates into votes that leaders of radical groups can bring to local politicians on both the right and the left.
"It's all about political expediency rather than outright support for these groups," said Moeed Yusuf of the United States Institute of Peace. He said the policy was risky because it sends the wrong signal to Pakistanis who have rallied behind the military in its assault on extremists in the Afghan border areas.
Signs of a militant Islamist presence are everywhere in this region.
In the blisteringly hot central Punjab town of Jhang, the outlawed Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, or Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet, has been emboldened by conciliatory signals from local authorities. After being courted for votes last March, the group ripped off yellow government seals and reopened its offices.
Their distinctive green, black and white striped flags fly defiantly atop homes and mosques. The maze of narrow streets in Jhang is littered with graffiti in support of the SSP, even though then-President Pervez Musharraf banned the organization in 2002.
The group's supporters rant against Shiites, whom they revile as heretics, demand the release of some of the country's most wanted terrorists and give sermons urging the faithful to attack their enemies.
Just a few miles (kilometers) from the Punjab provincial capital of Lahore is the headquarters of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is banned in Pakistan, India, the United States and other countries but is now under provincial government protection. India blames Lashkar-e-Taiba for the deadly 2008 attacks in Mumbai and routinely harangues Pakistan for allowing its leader, Hafiz Saeed, to remain free. Pakistani authorities point to its courts, which have repeatedly said there is not enough evidence to hold him.
And in the southern Punjab city of Bawahalpur is the headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammed, the group possibly linked to a suspect in the Times Square bombing case. The group's leader, Masood Azhar, was among three militants freed by India in 1999 in exchange for the release of passengers aboard a hijacked Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar, Afghanistan.
"Until the (Pakistani) leadership understands the real nature of these groups, and embraces the fact that none of them can possibly remain biddable tools over the long term, Pakistan leaves itself open to being repeatedly stung," said Arthur Keller, an ex-CIA case officer in Pakistan.
Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan, who is in charge of enforcing the law in Punjab province, defended his decision to campaign alongside members of the Sipah-e-Sahaba group in March. The minister said the organization represents thousands of votes and cannot be ignored.
"I think all these fears and speculation are confused in the mind of the people...mostly outsiders," he said.
He said groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba were not taking part in the war against the Taliban in the northwest, but only resisting Indian control of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. And he said the Punjab government was hoping to moderate such groups.
"If they change their direction, become more progressive, that is good," he said.
Critics believe the Punjabi government is pursuing a dangerous course because militant Islamist groups are increasingly entwined.
"You promote one organization and indirectly you promote all of them," Sheikh Waqqas Akram, a parliamentarian from Jhang, told The Associated Press.
"The dynamics have changed in Pakistan. These organizations are interlinked, organized. They have the vehicles and the weapons to carry out terrorist activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Akram said. "If they are not the suicide bombers, they are the ones providing the (explosives) jackets. If they are not providing the jackets, then they are providing the houses. And if they are not providing the houses, then they are providing the food."
In an interview with the AP, the director-general of Sipah-e-Sahaba, Hamid Hussain Dehlo, denied working with other militant organizations, insisting his group's only agenda "is to fight against Shiite Muslims who are the worst kafirs in the whole universe," referring to Shiites by the Arab word for "nonbeliever."
Despite Dehlo's claim, there is evidence of links to other militant groups. A spinoff group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, was believed to be involved in the 2002 kidnap-murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, and in the March 17, 2002 attack on the International Protestant Church in Islamabad during which five people, including an American mother and her daughter, were killed.
U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials believe Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has ties to the Pakistan Taliban, as well as al-Qaida.