Tuesday, July 24, 2018
#PTI - #PrimeMinisterImranKhan - #Pakistan - Imran Khan: A Taliban Goebbels? 08/05/2010
By —Dr Mohammad TaqiDaily times
8/5/2010
The PTI and its leader are perhaps politically insignificant, but conceding space to such Ziaist propaganda has the potential to radicalise the nation, especially our youth. Fortunately, Mr Khan is not perceived as an American stooge — he is seen as a Taliban apologist
“The lowest form of popular culture — lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives — has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage” — Carl Bernstein, US journalist.
Perhaps ordinary Pakistanis are not much better off either. But it is not just the journalists embedded with the jihadists who are peddling nonsense. Among the politicians, Mr Imran Khan keeps outdoing himself in the craft of black propaganda. He has been stuffing people with this Goebbels-speak for years and, unfortunately, the western print media is one such avenue he uses to push his outlandish assertions.
While the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman, Muslim Khan, had the dubious courage to clearly own up to the savagery of his outfit, Mr Imran Khan, who is the head and de facto chief spokesman of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, stoops to the lowest levels of skulduggery in defending Taliban atrocities. Sheer disinformation, misinformation, contempt for truth, and an utter disregard for the realities of people’s lives, particularly of the Pashtuns, are what Mr Khan’s spoken and written words are all about.
He seems to have perfected the art of repeating half-truths and quite often just plain lies over and over again. In his article ‘Don’t blame Pakistan for the failure of the war’ (The Times, UK, July 27, 2010), he has some real gems to share. He writes: “Before the West invaded Afghanistan, my country had no suicide bombers, no jihad and no Talibanisation.”
Perhaps Mr Khan had been too busy playing cricket to take note of al Qaeda’s activities in the early 1990s at Abdullah Azzam’s Maktab-al-Khidmat — a base camp in Peshawar for Arab jihadists. Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden met each other in Peshawar courtesy Professor Azzam. Suicide bombings were not a norm then, but Azzam himself was killed in a car bombing in November 1989, allegedly orchestrated by his more extremist friends. He disagreed with their concept of takfir, i.e. declaring people who did not meet their definition of Muslim as infidels, who they believed deserved to be murdered. Benazir Bhutto, Dr Najibullah, several Arab rulers and Muslim minorities were placed in this category.
The early 1990s were the formative years of world jihadism and these men in Peshawar were not confined to just Afghanistan. The Afghan-Arabs, as they became known, worked hand in glove with all varieties of Pakistani jihadists and after 1992, Afghan territory was used for their cause. For example, training and sanctuary were provided at the Al-Badr camp in Khost to terrorists who unleashed havoc in Pakistan and around the world.
Mr Khan has completely glossed over the terrorist acts of the jihadists trained in the Pak-Afghan border regions. Riaz Basra of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was one such figure who was involved in over 300 acts of terror on Pakistani soil, including an attempt on Mian Nawaz Sharif’s life, way before the US forces had set foot in Afghanistan. Along with Akram Lahori and Malik Ishaq, Basra had used the training facilities in Sarobi (near Jalalabad). This was the beginning of Talibanisation in Pakistan.
While the terrorist cadres were trained in Afghanistan, their leadership was groomed at various madrassas in Pakistan. However, Mr Imran Khan is either ignorant of this fact or is protecting such nefarious characters when he writes, “Until that point [army action in FATA in 2004], we had no militant Taliban in Pakistan. We had militant groups, but our own military establishment was able to control them. We had madrassas, but none of them produced militants intent on jihad until we became a frontline state in the war on terror.”
Only two entities from what is literally the Ivy League of the jihadist network need a mention to refute Mr Khan’s claim. Karachi’s Jamia Islamia aka Binori Mosque has produced hundreds of jihadist leaders that include Maulana Azam Tariq of Sipah-e-Sahaba, Qari Saifullah Akhtar and Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil, the leaders of Harkatul Jihad Al-Islami, and the founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, Maulana Masood Azhar. The association of this madrassa’s patron (Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai) with the Afghan Taliban, especially Mullah Omar, is well known.
It might not have dawned on Mr Imran Khan but Jalaluddin Haqqani carries the title Haqqani for a reason — he had spent six years at Darul-Uloom Haqqaniah in Akora Khattak. Among the top 32 officials in Mullah Omar’s government, 11 — including six top ministers — were educated in madrassas in Pakistan. Out of these 11, seven were students at the Haqqaniah seminary. The US was nowhere in the picture when the alumni of these madrassas were on a killing spree in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Mr Khan betters himself still when he claims, “After the WikiLeaks revelations yesterday, reports are being floated that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is aiding the Afghan militancy. The fact is that the ISI is not that powerful, but certainly in an environment of chaos and uncertainty Pakistan will need to protect its interests through all means necessary.” Even the ISI may take serious offence to this, as it is positioning itself as the power that can deliver the Taliban, especially the Haqqani network, provided the new set-up in Kabul is to its liking.
These assertions by Mr Khan might even be amusing if he was not capable of even worse assertions. Blaming the US for all ills is one thing, but he has as easily blamed the victims of terrorism. Writing about the Karsaz bombing in ‘Benazir Bhutto has only herself to blame’ (The Telegraph, UK, October 21, 2007), he noted, “I am sorry to say this, but the bombing of Benazir Bhutto’s cavalcade as she paraded through Karachi on Thursday night was a tragedy almost waiting to happen. You could argue it was inevitable...it is different for me campaigning in public, even in the frontier region, because I am not perceived as an American stooge, or a supporter of the war on terror.” Benazir and not the takfiris were to be blamed as per Mr Khan’s views!
The PTI and its leader are perhaps politically insignificant, but conceding space to such Ziaist propaganda has the potential to radicalise the nation, especially our youth. Fortunately, Mr Khan is not perceived as an American stooge — he is seen as a Taliban apologist.
#ElectionPakistan - #Pakistan election raises fears of 'creeping coup'
By M Ilyas Khan
A day before Pakistan's 11th national election, the country's dream of undiluted democracy appears to be receding - again.
In its 70-year history, Pakistan has alternated between quasi-democracy and pure military rule. In the process it has become embroiled in international conflicts and morphed into a home base for Islamist militancy.
Over the past decade, Pakistanis have witnessed democracy at its most undiluted thus far, but it's now under threat from what some say appears to be a "democratic coup" of sorts.
And just as in the past, the country's powerful military establishment remains the chief suspect behind the fresh round of political manipulation.
In the past, the military used to either stage a direct coup or use special powers to sack an elected government and then manipulate elections to ensure it wasn't re-elected.
In 2008, those special powers were done away with, leading to a first in 2013: an elected government completing its five-year term.
But since then the tide appears to have reversed, and critics say the establishment is resorting to more primitive tactics to recover its edge.
A three-pronged approach is in evidence.
First, as some legal experts have observed, the courts have selectively applied the law to clip the wings of the outgoing government, thereby creating an advantage for its rivals.
On Sunday, Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court said that the ISI intelligence service was interfering in the judiciary, and had pressured judges not to release convicted ex-PM Nawaz Sharif ahead of the vote.
Mr Sharif was disqualified from office by the Supreme Court on questionable grounds last year, and has since been sentenced to 10 years in jail by a trial court, in a ruling which one legal expert described as an embarrassment to his community.
According to the Dawn newspaper, Justice Siddiqui told the Rawalpindi Bar Association he was not afraid of speaking out against the powerful ISI, saying: "I am not afraid even if I am assassinated."
Second, authorities have either looked the other way as banned militant groups have joined the election process, or have actively helped them to do so. And third, the military has been given what many call an obscenely large role in administering the voting process on election day.
#ElectionPakistan2018 - 'Terrorist' Turned Candidate: Pakistani Extremists Contest National Elections
Frud Bezhan ,Daud Khattak
He is also a candidate in the country's July 25 national elections, vying for a seat in the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly. Gujjar’s bid to represent the capital, Islamabad, has been approved by the Pakistan Election Commission.
Gujjar is among an unprecedented number of religious extremists and members of militant groups running for seats in the national and provincial assemblies in Pakistan, which has long been accused of failing to crack down on extremist groups. Numbering more than 1,500, the unparalleled presence of candidates from radical religious and militant groups among the more than 12,000 candidates overall has raised fears they could bring extremist ideologies into the political mainstream.
When Pakistan's election authorities refused to register the Milli Muslim League (MML) for the elections, Gujjar and other MML members entered the field under the banner of Allah-o-Akbar Tehreek (AAT), another hard-line Islamist party in Pakistan.
"Groups that were refused registration by the Election Commission are now simply participating under another name," says Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, the head of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency, an Islamabad-based think tank. The United States considers the MML to be a foreign terrorist group, calling it a front for the Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT) militant group co-founded by U.S.-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed, who has a $10 million bounty on his head.
The United States and India accuse Saeed of masterminding LeT's 2008 attacks in Mumbai that left 166 people dead, an allegation he denies. LeT is an Al-Qaeda-linked armed militant group that is fighting against Indian control in the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir and was banned in 2002 after being linked to an attack on India's parliament. AAT has more than 260 candidates contesting the polls. Its campaign posters feature Saeed’s face alongside their candidates and are emblazoned with the name of the MML, which has officially endorsed the AAT. Gujjar, the candidate, rejects that he is a member of MML, although other candidates openly admit that AAT and the MML "are one party."
"The mainstream political parties have disappointed the people of Pakistan, and our aim is to bring real change," Gujjar told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal.
Gujjar insisted that AAT is not an armed group and seeks a peaceful solution to the "Kashmir dispute." The majority-Muslim Himalayan region is divided between India and Pakistan. Each country claims the region in its entirety and have fought two wars over it.
Extremist Tickets
Lashkar-e Taiba is not the only extremist group suspected of running in the elections under the guise of another political party. Many of the militant groups deny exploiting the loophole, but a list of candidates published by election authorities suggests otherwise. Sectarian groups such as the Ahle Sunnat Wahl Jamaat (ASWJ) – banned by the United States and Pakistan – are fielding candidates under the banner of the little-known Rah-e Haq party. The ASWJ was banned for allegedly being the political wing of the militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which has been allied with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) extremist group and is responsible for the killing of hundreds of Shi'a. More than 150 candidates with former ties to the ASWJ are running with the Rah-e Haq party or as independents. Muhammad Amir Rana, whose Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies has long tracked radical groups in the region, says that while banned groups have resurfaced under different names, their ideologies remain the same.
"These new entrants are still exploiting religion and religious sentiments to further their cause," Rana says.
It's a practice that Mehboob says should not be allowed. "If a party is banned, it should not be allowed to contest under another name," he says.
Others suggest that while such parties are unlikely to sweep to power by using this method, their influence on the vote is potentially significant.
"By enabling these groups to contest elections, you bring toxic views into the political mainstream and risk legitimizing the types of ideologies that can spawn radicalization," says Michael Kugelman, South Asia associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. "That's a particularly bad thing in Pakistan, where society is already radicalized to a great extent."
'Political Motive'
Many extremist candidates were taken off Pakistan’s terrorism watch list by the caretaker government in place to oversee the elections. Election authorities say they have simply followed court orders. But activists say the courts are influenced by the country's all-powerful military, which has an oversize role in domestic and foreign affairs. Over the weekend, protesters lined the streets outside the army headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi in a show of defiance. Demonstrators condemned the army and its spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, for alleged manipulation of the vote.
Many in Pakistan have criticized the move.
"The interior minister should reveal how [members of] banned organizations were allowed to contest the elections," Senator Raza Rabbani, a member of the Pakistan People's Party, said on July 16. "How were the names of [members of] banned outfits removed from the Fourth Schedule?" added Rabbani, referring to the name of Pakistan’s terrorism watch list. "People from the Fourth Schedule are being allowed to contest the poll," Senator Pervaiz Rasheed, a member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), said the same day. "Be afraid of the day when those people will be present in this [parliament]." Shamila Chaudhary, a senior South Asia fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, says that the participation of extremists in elections could, in theory, offer them an incentive to abandon extremist views.
"But based on the extremist candidates running for office and their rhetoric, there is no evidence to suggest they will refashion themselves," says Chaudhary.
Kugelman suggests that the Pakistani establishment, dominated by the military, could benefit from extremists vying for office.
"The establishment hopes to use these groups as a tool to siphon off votes from the PML-N, which the military does not want to return to power," he says.
Opposition leader Imran Khan's Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) is seen by many as the military’s favored party. Ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif fell out with the military brass and the PML-N has accused the army of trying to deny it a second term. The military has rejected allegations that it is interfering in the vote.
Sharif was dismissed from office by the Supreme Court in July 2017 for allegedly concealing assets abroad and other corruption allegations. He denies any wrongdoing. Allies of the three-time prime minister, who was toppled in a military coup in 1999, have called the proceedings a political vendetta and suggested the army might be behind it.
Kugelman says the presence of extremists in the elections could have unintended consequences.
"Supporters of conservative parties like the PTI and PML-N may simply gravitate to these hard-line groups instead," he says. "In this sense, the establishment risks undercutting the electoral prospects of PTI, the very party that the establishment is likely trying to bolster at the polls."
#YourFutureIsInYourHand - #PPP - Bilawal Bhutto — the leader among politicians
Amara Shah
By his less than a month long electioneering, young Bilawal Bhutto has turned out to be the most experienced and mature politician of them all.
Nawabzadah Nasrullah, one of the last vestiges of our lost civilised culture of politics, and famous for his penchant for Urdu poetry and witty remarks, was once vying to coble a political alliance against the then government.
With Turkish cap perched on his head and hukkah simmering before him, he was sitting with Shujaat Hussain when he was asked “politics remained your cup of tea before and after partition. What difference do you feel in the then politics and politics now?”
The elderly Nawabzadah jerked pipe of the hukkah, took a long sigh and lamented, “that time I used to sit with political stalwarts like Nehru, Abul Kalam Azaad, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Attaullah Shah Bukhari, Mahatmah Gandhi and their likes and now I am sitting with these jugglers.”
I think the same miserable episode of decadence encounters our generation.
My late father used to tell me about his long journeys to attend political jalsas and rallies right from Balakot to Rawalpindi and Lahore. In astonishment, I used to ask why would he make such a tiring journey just to listen to abusive language, character assassination of the opponents and stinking jugglery.
He used to reply, “things were different at that time as we were not lucky enough to go to universities to learn enough politics and rights. Whatever I learnt about politics, constitution, fundamental rights, I learnt through these jalsas.” He used to fondly remember and exactly quote excerpts from ZAB’s speeches.
Nowadays, the self-proclaimed ‘leaders’ and saviours of the down-trodden use such foul language in their speeches that PEMRA and Election Commission have to ban them. Resultantly, the threads of respect, civic sense, sobriety, culture, etiquette and civilisation have worn out from our social fabric.
However, in this politically abusive gala, one shrilled voice beats the tympanic membrane of my ear. Neither character assassination, nor abusive language, nor false accusation, nor political buffoonery, nor hollow rhetoric. A very composed, confident, persuasive and politically canvassing voice of PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto.
Many analysts used to say that Bilawal was not politically mature.
“He is too young to comprehend the complexities of Pakistani politics. He can’t stand the sizzling heat of July and August as he is used to comfort and cozy weather of London. He has been brought up in palaces, how can he peep into thatched mud houses in the nook and corner of country?” some would say.
While others would claim: “He is a pampered child, how can you expect political shrewdness and politically incisive cognitive abilities from him? He is not a Bhutto. He is not a good orator. He is just a puppet and a poster boy as his strings are being pulled by ‘corrupt Zardari’.”
The PPP Chairman has proved them all wrong. In the topsy-turvy political landscape of Pakistan, Bilawal drew attention when he interacted with international media at Davos and HardTalk at BBC.
Bilawal revived the reminiscence of ZAB speaking at security council meeting in 70s; confident, composed, full command over diplomacy and language, starring into the eyes of addressees and delivering his message without any murmur and spooning.
Having seen Nawaz Sharif fumbling papers in his hands and Imran Khan stammering while giving nonsensical answers to the HardTalk anchor’s pointed questions, Bilawal’s political maturity was a refreshing change.
The nation saw partially fledged Bilawal leaving his nest and out-flying his over-fledged political rivals. By his less than a month long electioneering, young Bilawal Bhutto has turned out to be the most experienced and mature politician of them all.
He has got guts to call a spade a spade while addressing the issues of Talibanisation, stands on the right side of history while taking on the establishment, takes sides with the oppressed while discussing religious persecution, holds out her mother’s illustrious life while encouraging women to play their due role in society and remains articulate on the mark with well calculated and thought out words while responding to the pinching questions of the journalists.
The Bilawal who roars like a lion while promising to carry his mother’s legacy on is seen sobbing while offering fateha at Bilour House in Peshawar and Sarawan House inQuetta.
The fledgling Bilawal, in the political aviary, sprinkled splashes of shame on all hooters when on the incidents of shahadat of Haroon Bilour and Siraj Raisani, he declined to make any political statements.
On this occasion his words were, “you may put political questions to me on other occasions because I cant I cant sloganeer while standing on the graves of my illustrious countrymen.”
It was a tight slap to all so called propagandists in the garb of analysts and his political opponents. His composure, maturity and empathetic heart reverberates in every inquisitive mind that Bhuttos need not be apprentice for politics and sacrifices.