Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Pakistan No Country for Minorities? Kidnapping, Rape, Forced Conversions of Hindus, Sikhs on Rise - 'COUNTRY OF ‘PARTICULAR CONCERN’

From kidnapping to rape and forced conversions, the atrocities against minorities in Pakistan are on the rise, said sources. More than 10 Hindu girls were abducted and raped in 2022.

  • Amid the floods in Sindh, a Hindu girl was raped by two locals on the pretext of providing food.
  • In another incident, two Hindu women foiled a rape bid by an unknown person on road side tents in Sindh.
  • In June, a Hindu teenager, Kareena Kumari, told a court in Karachi that she was forcibly converted to Islam and married to a Muslim man.
  • In March, three Hindu girls – Satran Oad, Kaveeta Bheel, Anita Bheel – were abducted, converted to Islam and married to Muslim men within eight days.
  • On March 21, Pooja Kumari was brutally shot dead outside her home in Rohri, Sukkur. Apparently, a man wanted to marry her but she refused, so they killed her.
Recent cases in point: A minor Hindu girl, Chanda Mehraj, has been kidnapped from Hyderabad, Pakistan. According to her parents, she was kidnapped from Fateh Chowk area while returning home. A police complaint has been lodged, but she is yet to be found. The family claimed she was being harassed by Shaman Magsi.
A 13-year-old Sikh boy was gang-raped in Jacobabad, Pakistan. The Sindh Police arrested accused Mohsin Jamali and Takri Lashari, but they managed to escape from the civil line police station Jacobabad.In September, a married Hindu woman and two teenaged girls were allegedly abducted, forcibly converted, and married to Muslims in Sindh province.
Demanding action, the communities have questioned the “silence of human rights activists”.
The forcible conversion of young Hindu girls has become a major problem in the interior of Sindh province, which has a large Hindu population in Thar, Umerkot, Mirpurkhas, Ghotki and Khairpur areas. Most of the Hindu community members are labourers.
On July 16, 2019, the issue of abducting and forcibly converting Hindu girls in various districts of Sindh province was taken up in the Sindh Assembly, where a resolution was debated and unanimously passed after it was modified over objections of certain lawmakers that it should not be restricted to Hindu girls only. But the bill which criminalised forcible religious conversions was later rejected in the assembly. A similar bill was again proposed but rejected last year.
In 2021, the United States placed Pakistan on a list of “countries of particular concern” for religious freedom violations. Human rights organizations and the US media report estimates that every year, nearly 1,000 minority girls are being kidnapped or forcibly converted to Islam. Catholic news site Aleteia reported that in 2020, the number of forced conversion cases rose to more than 2,000.
https://www.news18.com/news/world/pakistan-no-country-for-minorities-kidnapping-rape-forced-conversions-of-hindus-sikhs-on-rise-exclusive-6143617.html

#Pakistan - ATC acquits Ali Wazir, others in terrorism case

 An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) in Karachi has acquitted MNA Ali Wazir and 12 others in a case registered against them.


As per Wazir’s lawyer he was arrested in the case from Peshawar and has spent more than two years in jail. He added that the case was registered in the Sohrab Goth area of Karachi.

Wazir and 12 others were accused of making speeches against the country and national security.

Four cases have been registered against Wazir in different police stations in Karachi and he has been granted bail in all four cases, the lawyer informed the court.

Wazir has been behind bars since December 31, 2020, for allegedly delivering provocative speeches inciting hate against the state institutions and treason. 

He and some other party leaders were booked in four identical cases registered at Sohrab Goth, Shah Latif Town and Boat Basin police stations under sections of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) pertaining to the said charges.

https://www.nation.com.pk/25-Oct-2022/atc-acquits-ali-wazir-others-in-terrorism-case

#Pakistan’s leadership has historically neglected the basic principles of national security

By  

THE edifice of national security stands on the four pillars of political stability, economic and technological strength, military power and proactive diplomacy. The weakness of any of these pillars adversely affects the overall strength and durability of the structure of national security. It is imperative, therefore, that our leaders pay due attention to the strengthening of all pillars of national security while maintaining the right balance among them as overemphasis on one pillar at the expense of the others can lead to disastrous results.

Unfortunately, Pakistan’s leadership has historically neglected these basic principles, causing damage to our national security with predictably unfortunate consequences. To begin with, our military leaders, who ruled over the country directly for almost half of its life and tried to control national policies indirectly the rest of the time, have demonstrated a scant understanding of the critical importance of political stability and what it takes to strengthen this pillar of national security. 

Repeated military takeovers and meddling in political affairs undermined the sanctity of the Constitution and the rule of law, weakened the democratic institutions — thereby suppressing the people’s voice and preventing due accountability of our rulers through fair elections — and encouraged arbitrariness and corruption in the government’s decision-making processes.
The net result of such manoeuvres has left us with a politically destabilised country with all the attendant adverse consequences mentioned above. In addition, there is a widespread feeling of gloom among the people who think that their destiny is not in their hands or in the hands of their elected representatives, but is, instead, controlled by unelected institutions of the state who, it would appear, are accountable to none.

Such a feeling of helplessness inevitably creates despondency among the people and in extreme cases can cause them to take the law in their own hands by resorting to violence for the redress of their grievances. Foreign enemy powers often find in such public discontent a fertile ground for fomenting armed insurgencies aimed at the political disintegration of the country. The arrest of Kulbhushan Jadhav in Balochistan in March 2016 on the charge of fomenting terrorism in the country was a clear indication of India’s nefarious designs to destabilise and weaken Pakistan politically by taking advantage of such public discontent.

Political meddling has weakened democratic institutions.

The dominant role of the security establishment in our polity, besides weakening the political system in the country, also sucked in vast resources which arguably could have been put to much better use for accelerating economic development in the country. This was the case not only because of narrow institutional considerations but also because of an inadequate appreciation of the importance of economic and technological importance in the national security architecture.

It is worth underscoring that in any long-term contest of nations in the modern world, the ultimate outcome is determined by the balance of economic and technological power as pointed out by Paul Kennedy in his seminal work The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. While in the face of an adversary, the need to maintain a credible security deterrent at any time cannot be denied, the neglect of the imperative of economic and technological strength can lead a nation to a security disaster in the long run. It is, therefore, a matter of deep concern that India, which poses an enduring threat to our national security, is growing economically at a much faster pace than Pakistan. If this trend continues for a sufficiently long time, it will pose a serious threat to Pakistan’s national security.

While Pakistan is reasonably well placed in terms of maintaining a credible security deterrent, the country’s foreign policy establishment suffers from two main drawbacks: its overemphasis on the tactical at the expense of strategic considerations, and its focus on the short-term to the neglect of long-term foreign policy goals and concerns. Our earlier Kashmir and Afghanistan policies, whose adverse effects continue to haunt us, are prime examples of these drawbacks.

Pakistan is in dire need of a grand strategy which should bring into a coherent whole the country’s political, economic, military and diplomatic policies based on a sound analysis of the evolving global and regional ground realities. Our failure to do so will pose an existential threat to the country’s security and economic well-being.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1716940/national-security

Pakistan: Return Of The TTP In Swat – Analysis

By Sanchita Bhattacharya
On October 10, 2022, the son of a local peace committee member was shot dead by unidentified terrorists in the Waliabad area of Swat District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).
In a separate incident, on the same day, unidentified terrorists attacked a school van in the Charbagh area of Swat District, killing the driver and injuring two students. On October 9, 2022, the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) foiled a terrorist attack and killed two Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terrorists during an encounter in the Rahimabad area of Swat District. Four Security Force (SF) personnel were also injured during the encounter. The CTD team recovered hand grenades, weapons, and ammunition from the encounter scene. It is useful to mention, here, that exactly 10 years ago, on October 9, 2012, Nobel laureate and Child rights activist Malala Yousufzai was attacked in Swat, while she was returning home from school. Yousufzai was grievously injured, but survived the attack.
On September 23, 2022, CTD killed Adil Zaib, a wanted TTP militant in the Charbagh area of Swat District.

On September 13, 2022, a peace committee member and two of his Police guards were among five people killed, while several others sustained injuries, in a remote-controlled blast at the Kot Katai village of the Brai Bandi area of the Kabal tehsil (revenue unit) in Swat District. The peace committee member, identified as Idrees Khan, was the target of blast. A TTP statement later claimed,

We killed the leader of the peace committee Idress Khan in the area of Brai Bandi in the district of Swat with a bomb. Khan was involved in killing Taliban and torturing mujahedeen and their families in safe houses. The mujahedeen were pursuing him for almost 13 years.

According to partial data collated by the South Asia Terrorism Portal, there was a total of six incidents of killing, in which 12 persons, including seven civilians and five terrorists, were killed in Swat District in the current year (data till October 16, 2022).. In the corresponding period of 2021, three persons, including two civilians and a terrorist, were killed in a single incident. No further killing was reported in the remaining period of 2021. Four persons (one civilian and three terrorists) were killed in 2020 and one person (civilian) was killed in 2019. 12 persons (including 11 troopers and a terrorist) were killed in 2018, the last time fatalities reached double digit in a year. 

In Swat, which is roughly 240 kilometers (150 miles) from the capital, Islamabad, Fazal Hayat alias, Maulana Fazlullah alias Mullah Radio, started a radio broadcast in 2004 that carried him into people’s homes and, eventually, won him a wide and violent following. He was the leader of the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi. He later joined the TTP and also became its chief. By late October 2007, Fazlullah had established a “parallel government” in 59 villages in Swat Valley, establishing ‘Islamic courts’ to enforce Sharia law. In early 2009 the group temporarily gained control of about 70 per cent of Swat. Thus, Swat was a major TTP stronghold between 2007 and 2009. In these three years, according to the SATP database, a total of 4,167 persons, including 775 civilians, 422 SF personnel, 2,826 terrorists, and 144 in the ‘not specified’ category, were killed. A high of 402 civilian fatalities was recorded in 2008. SF and terrorist fatalities were highest in 2009, at 177 and 1,742, respectively. 

Prior to 2007, between March 6, 2000, when SATP started compiling data on conflict in Pakistan, and 2006, seven persons, including five civilians and two terrorists had been killed in the district. 

In 2009, the Pakistani military drove the armed group’s fighters out, and the terrorists took shelter along the border in Afghanistan. At least two million people were displaced from the area in 2009, when the Pakistan Army initiated Operation Rah-e-Rast (path to truth) in a bid to clear the area of terrorists. 

After the Operation, violence declined. Between 2010 and 2022 (till October 14), a total of 475 persons, including 142 civilians, 37 SF personnel, 294 terrorists, and two in the not specified category, were killed. Since 2010, civilian fatalities have gone into double figures thrice – in 2010, 2013 and 2014. 

The number of civilians killed in Swat in 2022 is highest in a year since 2015, when nine civilians were killed. 

An October 12, 2022, report suggested that the TTP has re-emerged in the restive areas of Swat, as militants detained Police personnel and an Army officer after the law enforcement officials launched an operation to capture TTP militants. 

Earlier, an August 12, 2022, report noted that TTP militants had established a check-post at Balasoor Top, besides roaming about freely in other areas of the Matta tehsil (revenue unit) of Swat 

The local residents said the TTP militants were not only at Balasoor Top, but were also present in large numbers in the mountainous areas of Matta tehsil, including Bar Shor, Koz Shor, Namal, Gat Peuchar and other areas. Importantly, the Geo News correspondent in Swat, Mehboob Ali, claimed that at least 200-250 TTP militants were in the area. 

Interestingly, on August 14, Pakistan military’s media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), issued a statement, admitting that the presence of a “small number of armed men on a few mountain-tops between Swat and Dir has been observed”, located far away from populated areas. The ISPR also stated, “Apparently, these individuals sneaked in from Afghanistan to resettle in their native areas”, adding that a “close watch was being maintained on their limited presence and movement in mountains.” However, the military had earlier dismissed what it termed a “misperception about alleged presence of a large number of proscribed organisation TTP’s armed members in Swat Valley”. 

Predictably, the Afghan Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in August 2021 has significantly bolstered the TTP terrorists who had taken shelter in Afghanistan, to restore operations in Pakistan. The TTP leadership, along with its foot soldiers, find safe haven in Afghanistan without any constraints. 

According to the Thirtieth report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team submitted pursuant to resolution 2610 (2021) concerning ISIL (Da’esh), Al-Qaida and associated individuals and entities, released in July 2022, 

Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) constitutes the largest component of foreign terrorist fighters in Afghanistan (between 3,000 and 4,000). One Member State reported that current TTP leader Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud has united the group, which is now more cohesive, presenting a greater threat in the region.

These terrorists are now making comeback in Swat and other areas of Pakistan. Despite ongoing talks with the Government, mediated by the Afghan Taliban, they are engaged in violence, and the talks have failed to yield any positive result so far. 

Meanwhile, people are furious over the government’s inaction, believing that their leaders were either supporting TTP, or are afraid of them, which perhaps explains why the government has not taken any effective action. 

On October 11, 2022, thousands of people took to the streets at Nishat Chowk in Mingora, Swat, for a second day, to protest a surge in suspected militant attacks in Swat Valley, fearing that violence could disrupt years of peace, development, and tourist activities. Mingora echoed with slogans of “No more terrorism” and “We demand peace from the state”. Ahmed Shah, spokesperson for the Swat Qaumi Jirga, a representative body of residents, said more than 15,000 people had attended the protest, the sixth in the past two months. Moreover, as reported on October 11, 2022, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) declared that Swat’s residents were right to hold the security forces responsible for failing to enforce the writ of the state: 

It was callous and short-sighted to have downplayed the threat from militants, given residents’ growing protests and calls for security. While the perpetrators must be brought to book promptly, the state must also stop ceding space to extremists – a lesson it has consistently failed to learn at the expense of its people.

Also, a sizeable campaign against re-Talibanization in ongoing on social media, with trending of #swatrejectsmilitancy, #PashtunLivesMatter and #swatforpeace, where many are accusing the government for not highlighting the popular anti-militancy movement. People from various walks of life are coming out openly on various platforms, to reject terrorism and militancy in Swat. 

Meanwhile, KP government spokesperson Barrister Muhammad Ali Saif, claimed that militant groups opposed to the talks were active against the government in the province. Further, as he stated on October 11, 2022, that TTP was not behind every incident of terrorism and must not be linked to all of them. He claimed during the peace talks, it had been agreed that TTP would claim responsibility for any act of violence executed by the group. 

The situation in Swat and in other parts of KP has demonstrated the inability or lack of political will of the Pakistani government to protect its own citizens from the terrorists, with whom it is engaged in negotiations. Moreover, it also highlights the weakness if the negotiation process, which appears to be moving inexorably to failure, with the TTP leadership displaying complete intransigence on its core objectives.

https://www.eurasiareview.com/25102022-pakistan-return-of-the-ttp-in-swat-analysis-2/

#Pakistan #PPP - FM Bilawal, US Ambassador Blome agree to bolster trade ties

 

In a meeting held at the Foreign Office, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and the United States Ambassador to Pakistan Donald Blome agreed on bolstering trade relations between Pakistan and the US.

FM Bilawal and Ambassador Blome discussed the issues regarding the rehabilitation of the population affected by the catastrophic floods across Pakistan.

Triggered by torrential and climate-induced rainfall, the flooding in Pakistan engulfed large swathes of the country that killed over 1,700 people. The floods also massively devastated the country's infrastructure with damages estimated at nearly $30 billion.

The foreign minister, in the meeting, thanked the US Ambassador for ensuring the provision of aid and assistance to the affectees.

The two dignitaries also spoke about advancing mutual relations during their discussion in the foreign office.

https://www.geo.tv/latest/448467-fm-bilawal-us-ambassador-blome-agree-to-bolster-trade-ties