#Pakistan - Time to put the house in order




A list of blacklisted outfits recently released by the federal interior ministry includes Hafiz Saeed’s Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) and its subsidary Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF). Like several previously issued statements, the latest press release also held that aiding and abetting any of the mentioned organisations would be considered a crime. But how far the government will be able to implement its own order is yet to be seen. Going by the track record, such orders do little to bring a halt to extremist groups’ activities because they are not followed by action.
The activities of banned outfits continue despite inclusion of their names in such lists because they start operating under different names. It is unfortunate that the government has still been unable to devise a mechanism to stop this trend.
Hafiz Saeed formed a political party named Milli Muslim League (MML) last year which participated in NA 120 by-elections in Lahore. That the administration remains unwilling to act against the newly-formed group means the government does not have a plan to deal with banned radical groups which have continued their political activities after changing names. This was one of the core points of the National Action Plan (NAP), a document which is quite literally dead now.
The state’s inaction is hardly surprising, because the DG ISPR had admitted last year that a plan to bring extremists into the mainstream was underway. Therefore, the new list may have something to do with the US decision to cut aid to Pakistan on grounds that the country is not doing enough against terror. If the interior ministry’s new list is indeed linked only to the US’s tough talk, we hope that the list will serve its purpose rather than merely satisfying the authorities in the US.
It is about time Pakistani leadership accepted that the country needs to act against extremism not because the US demands it but because it is in our own interest. The achievements made in ongoing military operations will be affected if the extremists continue to gain ground. Therefore, the attitude of tolerance towards religious extremists needs to end now. Political activities of all religious extremist groups including Milli Muslim League and Tehreek-e-Labbaik should be stopped.

Pakistan's water crisis: a contaminated supply hits two thirds of households







Barely 15 days old, Kinza whimpers at an Islamabad hospital where she is suffering from diarrhoea and a blood infection, a tiny victim among thousands afflicted by Pakistan's severely polluted and decreasing water supplies.

Cloaked in a colourful blanket, Kinza moves in slow motion, like a small doll. Her mother, Sartaj, does not understand how her daughter became so ill.
“Each time I give her the bottle, I boil the water,” she tells AFP.
But Sartaj and her family drink daily from a stream in their Islamabad neighbourhood, one of several waterways running through the capital that are choked with filth. Boiling the water can only do so much.
They are not alone. More than two-thirds of households drink bacterially contaminated water and, every year, 53,000 Pakistani children die of diarrhoea after drinking it, says Unicef.
Cases of typhoid, cholera, dysentery and hepatitis are rampant. According to the United Nations (UN) and Pakistani authorities, between 30 and 40 per cent of diseases and deaths nationwide are linked to poor water quality. And it is costing the country billions. In 2012 the World Bank, which has warned that “substantial investments are needed to improve sanitation”, estimated that water pollution costs Pakistan $5.7 billion, or nearly 4pc of GDP.
“Water is the number one problem for the country,” says professor Javed Akram, vice chancellor at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad.
In Lahore, Pakistan's second largest city, the situation is even worse than in Islamabad. The Ravi River which supplies the city's 11 million or so inhabitants with drinking water also serves as a spillway to hundreds of factories upstream.
River fish are eaten by locals, but “some papers show that in the fishbones, some heavy metal contamination (is) found,” says Sohail Ali Naqvi, a project officer with the conservation group WWF.
The Ravi is also used to irrigate neighbouring crops, which are themselves rich in pesticides, warns Lahore environmentalist Ahmad Rafay Alam.
'Absolute scarcity'
The lack of water infrastructure is glaring. In a country where the “environment is not part of the political agenda”, there are “nearly no treatment plants”, warns Imran Khalid, a researcher at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute.
“Those who can afford it buy bottles of water, but what about those who cannot?” he says.
In Karachi, a megacity whose population could be as many as 20m people, mafias fill the vacuum left by the creaking local network, selling the precious water they bring in by tanker trucks at high prices. In the face of widespread indignation, Sindh along with Punjab, together home to more than half of the country's population, have already announced measures to improve water quality, though their efficacy is yet to be seen. But Pakistan's water is not only contaminated, it is becoming scarce.
Official projections show the country, whose population has increased fivefold since 1960 to some 207m, will run dry by 2025, when they will be facing an “absolute scarcity” of water with less than 500 cubic metres available per person in Pakistan.
That's just one third the water available in already parched Somalia now, according to the UN.
'Lack of education'
Pakistan, a country with massive Himalayan glaciers, monsoon rains and floods, has just three major water storage basins, compared with more than a thousand in South Africa or Canada, says Bashir Ahmad of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council. As such any surplus is quickly lost, said Ahmad, who denounced “a lack of political vision” to counter the nationwide water crisis. While official statistics show that 90pc of the country's water is used for agriculture, the massive irrigation network, built decades ago by British colonists, has deteriorated.
Much of its use appears to defy common sense. “We are neglecting the northern areas, where there (is) a lot of rainfall, to focus on irrigated areas like Sindh or Punjab,” says Ahmad.
There, in arid areas where temperatures can soar up to 50 degrees Celsius, Pakistan grows water-intensive crops such as rice and sugar cane.
“The crisis is looming. In all urban areas, the water table is going down day by day,” warns Muhammad Ashraf, chairman of the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources.
Pumps draw deeper and deeper into the water table, where the arsenic content is naturally higher, he warns. An international study in August said some 50-60m Pakistanis are slowly poisoning themselves with arsenic-tainted water.
Yet waste remains the norm. In Islamabad, roads are sprinkled to drive away dust, cars are washed daily, and verdant lawns watered generously. “We own our houses, but not our streams,” Ashraf sighs. “That's why we dump our waste in the rivers.”

#Pakistan - INJUSTICES BEING COMMITTED AGAINST SHIA HAZARA COMMUNITY: SUPREME COURT

The Supreme Court on Monday remarked on the plight of the Shia Hazara community, which has been the target of multiple terrorist attacks over the years, while hearing a case pertaining to the deadly Quetta suicide bombing in August 2017.
Finally, the apex court of Pakistan mentions the Shia victims of takfiri terrorism. But, Shia citizens of Pakistan want capital punishment and hanging of the terrorists involved in these killings. 
During the hearing, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government also submitted a report on a 2016 attack at a courthouse in Mardan in which 14 people lost their lives.

"Injustices are being committed against the (Shia) Hazara community," said Justice Asif Saeed Khosa while heading a three-member bench of the apex court on Monday. "The whole country grieves when the funeral processions of members of the (Shia) Hazara community are carried."
Finally, the apex court of Pakistan mentions the Shia victims of takfiri terrorism. But, Shia citizens of Pakistan want capital punishment and hanging of the terrorists involved in these killings.
During the hearing, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government also submitted a report on a 2016 attack at a courthouse in Mardan in which 14 people lost their lives.

http://www.shiitenews.org/index.php/pakistan/item/32448-injustices-being-committed-against-shia-hazara-community-supreme-court

Post Trump tweet, China set to have a iron grip on Pakistan


Atul Aneja
The rise in anti-American sentiments in Pakistan appears to be conflating with the perception of China as a more reliable ally. China now appears set for an even tighter embrace of its already “iron brother” Pakistan, following a New Year slide in ties between Islamabad and Washington.
An Op-ed in the state-run tabloid, Global Times, posted late on Sunday, noted that China should pay more attention to the potency of its economic assistance to Pakistan “as ties are set to get closer amid hostility from the U.S.”
“After U.S. President Donald Trump used Twitter to slam Pakistan for harbouring terrorists, the U.S. State Department said on Thursday that it would suspend security assistance to Pakistan until the country takes decisive action against the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network,” it said quoting Reuters.
The winner after Trump tweet
An article in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) had noted that in South Asia “there is one clear winner from Donald Trump’s tweet tantrums this week: China, which suddenly finds its leverage over Pakistan multiplying as a result of the U.S. President’s mood swings.”
The rise in anti-American sentiments in Pakistan appears to be conflating with the perception of China as a more reliable ally. This is notwithstanding the recent differences between Beijing and Islamabad over some of the financial aspects of a hydro-power project under the omnimbus $57 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Not waiting for the shrillness of Mr. Trump’s New Year tweet to die down, Islamabad hit back with a potent riposte.
Pakistan’s central bank swiftly announced that it would use the Chinese Yuan (CNY) to settle bilateral trade and investment with China.
“The central bank’s decision is significant given Islamabad had been resisting this demand from China. But one tweet from Trump managed to achieve what months of intense pressure and lobbying from Beijing could not,” the SCMP article observed. Tweet plays into hands of religious right
Mr. Trump’s tweet also played into the hands of the religious right, now harbouring political ambitions in Paksitan’s elections next year. The Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) demanded the expulsion of the U.S. Ambassador during street protests in Lahore. In Karachi, the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC) — a religious part conglomerate of 40 religious parties and sectarian groups — burnt a U.S. flag and picture of Mr. Trump. The council will now hold multiparty conferences in Faisalabad on Jan. 12 and in Lahore on Jan. 13 against the U.S. threats to Pakistan.
In China’s officialdom, Mr. Trump’s verbal assault on Pakistan triggered a robust defence by Beijing of its all-weather ally. The Chinese foreign ministry credited Islamabad for its “prominent contributions” in countering terrorism, soon after the tweet. It added, “China and Pakistan have maintained the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership. China stands ready to further deepen cooperation with Pakistan in various fields to bring greater benefits to the two peoples.”
A new geopolitical calculus
The Global Times article signalled that Pakistan would be justified in defining a new geopolitical calculus that covers China and Russia. “In these circumstances, it makes perfect sense for Pakistan to shift its foreign policy focus toward China and Russia,” it observed.
China, it said, would continue its economic support to Pakistan, which is its prime partner. China sees Pakistan as a prime partner “under the Belt and Road initiative, with land and sea projects worth billions of dollars [known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor] under construction,” it observed.

Pakistani Court Grants Bail To Pro-Taliban Cleric



A Pakistani court has granted bail to pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Mohammad, days after Washington suspended security assistance to Pakistan until it takes "decisive action" against Islamic militants.
A high court in the northwestern city of Peshawar ordered the elderly cleric's release on January 8 on health grounds.
At the hearing, Mohammad claimed that he should be released "as his health is deteriorating with each passing day," Dawn newspaper reported.
"He was too old to move and was suffering from kidney problems and weakness, and was taken to hospital many times," his lawyer Fida Gul told the AFP news agency.
Believed to be in his 90s, Mohammad is the chief of the banned group Tehreek Nifaz-e Shariat Mohammadi and the father-in-law of Maulana Fazlullah, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban.
Mohammad, who has been held in a maximum-security prison since 2009, is currently on trial on charges of murder, treason, terrorism, and rebellion.
The Peshawar court's decision came less than a week after the United States announced a freeze on aid to the Pakistani military.
"Until the Pakistani government takes decisive action against the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani group...the United States will suspend that type of security assistance to Pakistan," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on January 4.
Pakistan has responded harshly to the move, with the Foreign Office saying Washington's "arbitrary deadlines, unilateral pronouncements, and shifting goalposts are counterproductive" to addressing the threat of terrorism.

Pakistan and the Myth of “Too Dangerous to Fail”


By C. Christine Fair and Sumit Ganguly
Could Trump’s “Madman” Approach Work on Islamabad?
On January 1, U.S. President Donald Trump sent out a tweet accusing Pakistan of “lies and deceit” and then threatened to cut off all assistance that was in the pipeline. After some backtracking, saying it would slash only some funds, the administration returned to its initial position, announcing that it would in fact suspend all security-related assistance, including the Coalition Support Fund program, a very lucrative cash cow that has accounted for close to half of the $34 billion lavished on Pakistan since 2002.
This is not the first time, of course, that U.S. officials have called Pakistan out for its perfidy despite American generosity. Former President Barack Obama did so, albeit with more finesse, and even acted militarily against Pakistan in May 2011 when he ordered in U.S. Navy SEALs to kill Osama bin Laden, who was hiding in a safe house less than a mile from the premier military academy where Pakistani officers are trained. But Washington rarely followed through with its threats.
This time, the situation is different. The mere fact that the Trump regime is now on the verge of making good on its threat should cause some concern within the corridors of power in Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the overweening Pakistani military establishment.
A CREDIBLE THREAT
In the past, Pakistan weathered the United States’ storms of displeasure with the confidence that as long as the Americans were in Afghanistan, they needed Pakistan’s air and ground routes for resupply. Islamabad also believed that it had pretty much convinced Washington to stay engaged no matter what because its country’s fleet of terrorists and its fast-growing nuclear arsenal made it “too dangerous to fail.” In fact, Pakistan encouraged Americans to fear the worst outcome: a rupture in the state security apparatus that would allow terrorists to get their hands on Pakistani nuclear know-how, fissile materials, or weapons—even as Pakistan used U.S. funds to invest in such assets along the way.
These two factors—logistical dependence and nuclear coercion—gave Pakistan wide leeway in antagonizing the United States, including supporting, training, funding, and giving sanctuary to the various militant groups killing Americans and their allies in Afghanistan.
In fact, since 9/11 most of Washington’s threats in cutting aid have rung hollow for these reasons. Trump’s irrationality has changed this calculation. Now all bets are off, as Trump likely cares little about Pakistan’s well-curated myth that it is too dangerous to fail. But even if the Trump administration follows through and withholds aid—including allocations that are still in the pipeline from previous fiscal years (possibly totaling well over $2 billion, although exact figures are still being tabulated)—will it induce a change in Pakistan’s behavior?
Probably not. Trump’s White House has not yet discussed the equally important Economic Support Fund through which Washington has given Islamabad $11.1 billion since 2002. Also, Pakistan’s “all weather” friend, China, has already announced that it is standing by and intends to foster closer ties. However, whereas the United States provides military assistance, China provides loan assistance, and its history of predatory lending in developing countries does not bode too well for Pakistan. In Sri Lanka, for example, China built a needless and economically unviable port at Hambantota. The revenues have been paltry and Sri Lanka has been unable to service the loans. China is also investing in an economically unviable port in Gwadar, in Pakistan’s restive province of Balochistan. Thus, Pakistan should be more wary of China’s embrace than it is letting on.
Although the aid cutoff may not compel Pakistan to cease its noxious policies, Islamabad would be feckless to dismiss its symbolic significance. Since the onset of the “war on terror” in October 2001, the United States has periodically threatened to end or at least curtail assistance to Pakistan unless it demonstrated a real commitment to meeting U.S. goals. In the end, however, every administration failed to act on its rhetoric. Now, Trump may have given Pakistan a reason to believe Washington.
MORE DRASTIC OPTIONS
Apologists for Pakistan have already started their familiar drumbeat about the possible adverse repercussions of a severance in aid. Quite unsurprisingly they are arguing that Pakistan can ride out this drop in assistance, that Pakistan may lack the requisite ability to rein in the various terrorist networks that are operating on its soil, and that it can make it exceedingly difficult for the United States to continue supplying its forces in Afghanistan.
Each of these charges merits discussion, but only the last point is credible. China may well be willing to bail Pakistan out on a one-off basis, but it should be noted that Beijing has refused to do so in the past and there is little reason to expect it to behave charitably now. China deems Pakistan to be a useful ally and an invaluable strategic surrogate against India in South Asia. However, it does not want to take Pakistan on as another ward. Consequently, a lasting U.S. aid cutoff could impose significant economic costs on Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s claim that it lacks the ability to rein in, if not crush, various terrorist organizations operating from within the country needs to be forthrightly challenged. The Pakistani military establishment has spawned, organized, and supported these organizations over decades. It may not be able to dismantle them overnight, but it certainly has the institutional and military wherewithal to terminate them in due course. More to the point, when the Pakistani state chooses to crush insurgents, as it did with the Baloch in the late 1970s and 1980s, it gives them no quarter. Consequently, there is little reason to believe that Islamabad could not do so again were it so inclined.
Retaliation, however, is a real risk. Pakistan would most likely do what it has done in the past: block the ground lines that are currently being used to resupply the Afghan National Security Forces. This means Washington will have to turn to air transport. (The so-called Northern Distribution Network was never terribly useful and has been subject to Russian diktat.) This is where the Trump administration is most vulnerable. Should Pakistan cut off access to air routes over Pakistan, Trump will be in a difficult position. Had he continued with Obama’s rapprochement with Iran, he could have availed himself of the alternative land route that India helped build through Iran’s port of Chabahar. (In fact, India just concluded its first shipment through that route by delivering a million tons of wheat to Afghanistan.)
In the end, what will happen if this aid cutoff fails to get Pakistan to cooperate? In that case, the United States has other, more drastic options available. It could, for example, choose to rescind Pakistan’s status as a “major non-NATO ally.” This designation confers substantial financial and military benefits on Pakistan, apart from the diplomatic prestige that comes with it. After much puffery, the Trump administration has sent an unequivocal message to a dubious ally. The task before it now is to ensure that Pakistan realizes that it will not enjoy a future that resembles the past. This administration, its various other foreign policy vagaries and foibles aside, appears to have adopted a judicious stance when dealing with the persistent duplicity of an ostensible ally. Even if this course of action does not change Pakistan’s behavior, at least the Americans can have the satisfaction of knowing they are no longer subsidizing a country that undermines its regional interests in almost every way conceivable.

Daesh footprint increased in Pakistan in 2017: report


More than 150 people were killed in around six terrorist attacks claimed by the outlawed terrorist Daesh group in Pakistan in 2017.
This was stated in the Pakistan Security Report 2017, released by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), an Islamabad-based think-tank specialising in security and conflict dynamics of Pakistan and the region.
The organisation compiled its findings on the basis of its multi-source database, coupled with interviews and articles by subject experts.

Decrease in number of attacks, fatalities

The report tallied that militant, nationalist/insurgent and violent sectarian groups carried out a total of 370 terrorist attacks in 64 districts of Pakistan in 2017 — including 24 suicide and gun-and-suicide coordinated attacks — killing 815 people, besides injuring 1,736. These attacks posted a 16 per cent decrease from the total in the previous year; even the number of people killed fell by 10 per cent.
Of these attacks, as many as 213 or 58 per cent, were perpetrated by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), its splinter groups mainly Jamaatul Ahrar and other militant groups, killing 186 people.
Meanwhile, nationalist insurgent groups, mostly in Balochistan and a few in Sindh, carried out 138 attacks, or 37 per cent of the total, killing 140 people. As many as 19 terrorist attacks were sectarian-related, in which killed 71 people and inflicted injuries on 97 others.

Cross-border attacks increase

The report also noted that compared to 2016, a significant surge of 131 per cent was witnessed during 2017 in cross-border attacks from Pakistan’s borders with Afghanistan, India and Iran. A total of 171 cross-border attacks claimed 188 lives and injured 348 others.
Furthermore, security forces and law enforcement agencies killed a total of 524 militants in 2017 – compared to 809 in 2016 – in 75 military/security operations as well as 68 armed clashes and encounters with militants reported from across four provinces and FATA.

Emergence of Daesh

At the same time, some new challenges raised their heads; these included emergence of self-radicalised individuals and small terrorist cells, growing incidence of religious extremism including on educational campuses, and, most importantly, increasing footprints of Daesh in parts of the country and convergence of its fighters in Afghanistan near the border. In 2017, Daesh and its local affiliates/supporters claimed six major terrorist attacks, killing 153 people.
In Balochistan, the group carried out a suicide attack on the convoy of Senate Deputy Chairman Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri in Mastung, besides abducting Chinese nationals from Quetta and killing them later. Sindh’s deadliest attack in terms of casualties was on the Sufi shrine in Sehwan Sharif, claimed by Daesh as well.

Confusion over NAP’s ownership

In the report, National Security Adviser Lt Gen (retd) Nasser Khan Janjua reveals that the National Security Policy has been documented and internally circulated in the government.
Similarly, National Counter Terrorism Authority National Coordinator Ihsan Ghani said that the new National Internal Security Policy is in review at present and it, along with a Counter-Extremism Policy, will be released in 2018 too.
The report also reveals ambiguities about which government body is responsible for implementing the National Action Plan. 

#Pakistan - Media’s moment of shame





By 



The Jadhav family reunion exposed the true nature of the moment for what it really was: a real-time media event to conduct propaganda and a security driven foreign policy.
Pakistan and India have fought three overt wars — in 1948, 1965 and 1971 — and half a war that was Kargil, in 1999, which was a tad more covert than it was overt. But it is the more insidious and unceasing propaganda war that has been the world’s most populous neighbourhood’s forever war. It’s the war that never sleeps and it’s the war that’s conducted through the media.
This media has for about two decades now become a real time affair and has expanded its remit to the omnipotent internet, making sure most people remain hostage to its biases.
It is this propaganda war that was on full display in all its ugly transgressions of human dignity on December 25, 2017. It is the day when Pakistani and Indian media went willingly berserk, committing treason with the principles of professional journalism in service of an angry patriotism.
For journalists, being unbiased is not optional — it is mandatory. The Jadhav women are neither terrorists nor on trial, nor a party to the Indo-Pak rivalry, even if Jadhav is indeed guilty of killing.
The occasion was a union of the mother and wife with the alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav in Islamabad. This had come about after a secret Pakistani military court convicted Jadhav of spying and facilitating terrorist acts in the country and sentencing him to death. It suspended the sentence after being restrained by the International Court of Justice which was approached by India.
The meeting between a man certified as an enemy combatant and his mother and wife was an unusual display of bilateral diplomacy even by the sulky Indo-Pak standards. The gesture in itself was a refreshing expression of propriety and heart by Islamabad for catering to human values. For a moment it seemed like a thank you note from Pakistan to India for its many citizens receiving life-affirming heart surgeries in India. It was the moment pregnant with the promise of Pakistan actually winning hearts and minds in India.
It was not to be.
The carefully media-choreographed show by the state turned out to be just like any of the several other moments of peace overtures in bilateral history that threatened to deliver on their promise rather than merely serve as a ruse for one-upmanship. Astonishing photos and notes on the meeting started filling tv screens in Pakistan — almost immediately borrowed and flashed by their counterparts in India — within minutes the Jadhav family meeting started.
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Even before the meeting that lasted only 43 minutes ended, real-time tv channels in both Pakistan and India were already deep into an opinionated analysis phase rather than first complete event reporting. The social media in both countries, in keeping with the high-octane mood of the moment, also exploded with public opinion in real-time with the Jadhav family union.
The Jadhav family was the latest pawn in the propaganda wars on both sides. This exposed the true nature of the moment for what it really was: a real-time media event to conduct propaganda and a security driven foreign policy.
None of this was more apparent from the boorish behaviour of the posse of journalists in the Foreign Office, situated to ensure they had at least two occasions to confront the mother and wife of Jadhav — on their arrival and departure. On both occasions it was made sure they would have some minutes before entering and exiting the building to face the media even though New Delhi had conveyed to Islamabad they would not talk to the media and turned down Pakistan’s invitation to the Indian media to cover the event.
Several of the journalists present bombarded the two women with questions that went beyond the remit of journalism — such as “How does it feel to be the mother of a terrorist?” “Did [Jadhav] tell you he was committing acts of terrorism in Pakistan and killing Pakistanis?” “Do you now finally understand Pakistan is a peaceful state and it is India that is a terrorist state?” Awful.
Journalists are guardians of public interest. Their professional remit is accountability of policymakers and the government. For journalists, being unbiased is not optional — it is mandatory. The Jadhav women are neither terrorists nor on trial, nor a party to the Indo-Pak rivalry, even if Jadhav is indeed guilty of killing Pakistani citizens.
The same goes for any Pakistani terrorist convicted and punished — their families are not to blame for their acts. If the Jadhav women did not want to speak, the Pakistani media should have respected that right as professional duty. The media’s silence — haranguing is not journalism — could have spoken out louder than anything else said on the subject of Pakistan’s good gesture of allowing the meeting. And yet, knowing that the Jadhav women would not talk to the media — the Indian deputy high commissioner accompanying them made sure of that — the Foreign Office briefing to the same set of journalists later was preceded by answers to the very same questions. A videotaped pre-meeting statement of Jadhav was played to them, reiterating his guilt and remorse, and praising Pakistan for arranging the meeting — answers to questions that were put to his mother and wife.
In the end, this otherwise human and beautiful gesture by Pakistan leaves in its wake a sense of despondency. It appears that even tangible human relationships and possible new beginnings using these human relationships to resolve the inhuman nature of states can’t be successful.
The problem between Pakistan and India is not just the entrenched political economy of conflict centred on security interests — it is also majorly the media on both sides. Conflict fills up the coffers of media profits. People’s perceptions of issues are largely based on media’s own perceptions of those issues.