IMF: (Pakistan) inevitable crutch

According to a Business Recorder exclusive, the next government would be under considerable pressure to request another International Monetary Fund (IMF) package by November this year as the balance of payment (BoP) position would have deteriorated to dangerous levels by that time premised on several repayments to the IMF scheduled from May onwards. The repayment schedule is as follows: in May 382.34 million dollars, in June 175.5 million dollars, and 1.1 billion dollars during July-November of the current calendar year defined as fiscal year 2013-14. The assessment sourced to the Ministry of Finance that the need go to the IMF would arise in November is no doubt based on certain historically prevalent conditions in Pakistan: the sustained failure to undertake three major fiscal consolidation measures. First, the government needs to reform the tax structure through a constitutional amendment with the specific objective of developing a tax system which is equitable, fair and non-anomalous. This must include compelling the rich landlords sitting in the country's national and provincial assemblies to pay a tax on their farm income commensurate to other income groups including the salaried class, and eliminating exemptions granted to some influential groups. Responsibility of sales tax collection also needs to be given to the provinces for both goods and services while shifting income tax collection on all kinds of income (including on agriculture sector) to the centre. The collection of certain taxes also needs to be in the domain of the local government for improvement in collection such as: a fixed tax on retail and doing away with professional tax. Pakistan needs a total reconstruct and depoliticization of the revenue collection mechanism and reassignment in responsibility. Second, all untargeted subsidies need to be eliminated. Why should the supply of electricity or fuel for its production be subsidised to all and sundry? Direct delivery of targeted cash handouts to the needy through the BISP is now possible. In addition, the federal government has also historically been engaged in extending subsidy towards commodity operations. Even the provincial purchase of wheat is guaranteed by the Federal government against credit provided by banks. What has been particularly galling for economists is the decision by the PPP-appointed economic team to show subsidies to the power sector as a separate one-off. Further, the federal government twice (and likely do it once again) has converted bank loans into bonds and this appears as a debt owed to banks. How can a one-off loan every year be not accounted for in fiscal deficit at all? This accounting gimmickry must stop as it disables any economic team from formulating a realistic budget and making informed macroeconomic forecasts. Thirdly, the budget also faces annual haemorrhaging from state-owned entities and huge bailout packages each year has implied good money being pumped after bad. What will possibly happen if the Fund logically demands a reduction in subsidies and a cap on direct budgetary support from SBP, as per SBP's own Act, or via SBP's open market operations (OMOs)? A definite rise in interest rates is an almost certainty. The Fund would also like a targeted build-up of forex reserves so that Pakistan can pay back the loan provided by the Fund. Would the Fund not vigorously advocate depreciation of PKR? The answer will be in the affirmative. The thinking in the Fund may have changed and may not be as typical as seen in the past. But its stand on domestic taxation (without a raise in rates) through improvement in tax-to-GDP ratio is not likely to change. Similarly, its insistence to introduce target subsidies by doing away with across-the-board subsidies that are unsustainable would definitely raise alarm among many powerful segments of society such as agriculturists who could encounter a rise in urea prices as well as water rates. Phasing out subsidies might lower the pain if done on an extended time base. One more conditionality the Fund is likely to impose would be strengthening of regulatory bodies. Depoliticizing the regulatory process is painful but can be transitory or ephemeral if regulators comprise high quality professionals and are allowed to stop the government siphoning off funds in the name of fiscal needs. This would require politicians to take a back seat. The transformation for the better may not come in months but in years. There is no doubt that the elected government would procure the new IMF package with the primary objective of facilitating repayments to the 2008 SBA but the fact remains that until and unless we proactively undertake fiscal consolidation, Pakistan would remain in the economic morass it faces today though it may periodically hold its head above water in years when farm output has been good, for which weather plays a role, and our major export items - consumables mainly - command high international prices. Reliance on these external factors must stop and in-house reforms need to be implemented with or without a Fund programme. Taking loans and investing in growth-oriented projects does help but loans for meeting current and non-development expenditure badly shrink growth space. This is absolutely unacceptable.

Pakistan: Sectarian terrorists allowed to run in the elections

EDITORIAL : Daily Times

It is difficult to decipher the tilt the county would take once the elections are over. Not only are these the bloodiest elections in the history of Pakistan, they are the most notorious as well due to a large number of extremists contesting. These are not ordinary extremists. Their criminal history is tainted with creating chaos and killing people on sectarian lines. Maulana Ahmed Ludhianvi, the chief of one-time Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) stands out in the list of 70 contestants running in the elections from banned religious organisations. Ludhianvi lost in 2008, but that did not mean he lost the muscle to dominate his native town, Jhang. The city is infamous for sectarian extremism, being the hometown of Maulana Azam Tariq, the slain head of SSP, a party now reinvented as the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), contrary to past perceptions, appears to be part of SSP. LeJ has been actively involved in exterminating Shias in Pakistan and its leader Malik Ishaq feels no hesitation in talking about his hatred and faulty perception of Shias. He considers them out of the fold of Islam and finds himself obligated to finish them off. LeJ has been openly accepting responsibility for killing Shias, especially from the Hazara community. The power enjoyed by Ludhianvi on the other hand can be gauged from the fact that not only he has been allowed to run for the elections in spite of several FIRs filed against him, no law enforcers could arrest him in the past until the uproar from the aggrieved Shias and the media shook them up to the reality. The question is, why has he been allowed to run in the elections? How did he manage to avoid the filter of Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution that so many others fell foul of? Considering that exercise was a memory test on Quranic verses and rituals, the filter failed for people like Ludhianvi. In one of his interviews, he said that he would openly attack Shias in parliament once he gets there. To him, Ahmadis and Shias both belong to the same status, i.e. outside the pale of Islam, and therefore liable to be killed. Given the boldness he is exuding, very little reason is left not to believe that there are elements in Pakistan’s power circles that have the desire to turn this country into a theocratic state. On the one hand the secular/liberal parties are cornered and on the other sectarian terrorists like Ludhianvi are being facilitated. Civil society is conspicuous by its absence in not challenging in court such rogues trying to get into parliament. This situation cannot be taken lying down. This country, according to its founder Mr Jinnah, was never meant to accommodate people who want to kill people on the basis of their faith.

How credible can violence-ridden Pakistani elections be?

Violence against liberal parties has put a question mark on the credibility of Pakistani elections. The liberal PPP, the ANP, and the MQM are unable to campaign due to the consistent Taliban attacks. "We have to fight the mindset that is hampering the nation's progress. We have to defeat the ones who whip women, bomb mosques and deprive girls like Malala Yousufzai of education," Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, head of Pakistan's largest political party, the Pakistan Peoples' Party (PPP), recently told his party's supporters in a video message. Bhutto-Zardari is unable to come to Pakistan and campaign for the upcoming parliamentary elections due to security risks. The PPP, the Awami National Party (ANP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) ruled the country for the last five tumultuous years. But in the run-up to the May 11 parliamentary elections, the parties have not been able to hold public rallies due to attacks on their leaders and officials by the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).The Taliban have been waging a bloody insurgency in Pakistan for many years to enforce the Islamic law in the country. They also demand that the government sever ties with the United States, which they blame for illegally occupying Afghanistan. After a failed deal with the Taliban in 2009, the former ruling coalition launched several military operations against the Taliban in the country's northwestern areas, which border Afghanistan. But the operations were not enough to defeat the Taliban or reduce the violence.

Violence

Due to the inability to hold public rallies, the PPP, the ANP and the MQM have been forced to campaign for elections through advertisements, social media messages and TV talk shows, questioning the credibility of elections. The ANP says the Islamist militants have killed more than 700 of its workers and leaders. But it says it won't resort to violence in response. “Non-violence is our weapon against terrorism," said ANP secretary-general Ehsan Wyne. "If the Taliban accept the Pakistani government's writ and the country's constitution, and also endorse democracy as a valid system, we are ready to talk to them.” The Taliban have rejected these conditions. The MQM, which enjoys support in the southwestern Sindh province, particularly in Pakistan's financial hub Karachi, has had to shut its election camps following attacks by the Taliban. The MQM claims that the terrorists have killed 25 of their activists and an election candidate in the last few days.

Soft on the Taliban

By comparison, center-right parties such as former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) have been spared by the Taliban. The two parties want to engage with the Taliban unconditionally. “The policies that have embroiled us in terrorism should be changed. And, of course, dialogue is necessary to understand each other's stance and remove misconceptions about each other,” said right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami's official Farid Paracha. Former cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan also wants Pakistan to change its strategy toward the Taliban. “How long is the army going to bomb its own people and how long will this go on?" Khan questioned. "The hope for Pakistan lies in a genuinely democratic and sovereign government, which can talk to the Taliban.” Political analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi believes the PML-N and the PTI condemn terrorism but don't say anything against the militant organizations. “They don't want to lose their right-wing vote by doing so,” Rizvi told DW.

Winners may not be choosers

Pakistan's political parties are clearly divided on the issue of terrorism, which the international observers believe is a worrying sign. “The different approaches that parties take have an impact on elections and also on the election campaign," said Michael Gahler, head of the European Union Election Observation Mission. "Terrorism, too, is an issue which will have an impact on elections and, therefore, it will be considered when we publish our preliminary report.” Rizvi, however, said the winners of the elections may not be choosers in their approach to violence. “Even if a party which is soft on the Taliban comes to power, it will not be able to wrap up the military operations against the militants altogether. Whoever comes to power, the military operation and talks would go together,” Rizvi said.

Four Saudi nationals arrested following Tanzania Church blast

Four Saudi nationals and two others have been arrested following a bomb attack at a church in Tanzania’s northern city of Arusha that killed two people and injured 44 others.

Death toll in Bangladesh building collapse rises above 650

Workers at the site of the multi-story building collapse near the Bangladeshi capital on Monday kept up their grim task of removing severely decomposed bodies from the rubble as the death toll climbed above 650. The building, which housed five factories full of garment workers, caved in on April 24, trapping hundreds of people in a tangled heap of concrete slabs and twisted metal in Savar, a suburb of the capital, Dhaka. Rescue workers managed to save more than 2,400 people from the mountain of debris during days of dangerous, painstaking work in high temperatures. But they gave up hope of finding any more survivors a week ago and are now using heavy machinery to pick apart the ruins and uncover the bodies buried inside. The number of people confirmed dead has now reached 657, said Col. Sheikh Zaman, a military official overseeing the recovery operation in Savar.

Missing loved ones

Amid the stench of death that permeates the surrounding streets, a large number of people continue to wait near the site of the collapse for news of missing relatives. Their gathering point is a school playing field where bodies retrieved from the ruins are taken for initial identification attempts. The task of identifying is made all the more difficult by the decomposed state of many of the bodies. If authorities cannot identify them through ID they might be carrying or other means, the bodies are taken to a morgue in Dhaka. Some of the people camped out in the area have also been holding up trucks transporting rubble removed from the disaster to check if they're mistakenly carrying the remains of people, recovery operation officials have said. Zaman said authorities still don't know exactly how many bodies remain encased in the wreckage because the factory owners still haven't provided a full account of how many people inside when the building gave way. The recovery effort is expected to continue for several more days. The owners of the building and the factories are under police investigation over accusations they ordered workers to enter the premises on the day of the collapse despite cracks appearing in the structure the day before. Heavy machinery blamed Preliminary results of a government inquiry into the building collapse found that "heavy machinery and high-capacity generators" were "largely responsible," the state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha News Agency reported last week. "During the inquiry, we have found that use of substandard materials during the construction also contributed to the building collapse," the leader of the inquiry, Main Uddin Khandaker, told BSS. Bangladesh's $20 billion garment industry accounts for 77% of the country's exports. Among those caught up in the finger-pointing after the building collapse disaster are Western retailers and clothing brands that Bangladeshi suppliers say put heavy pressure on prices, resulting in bad pay and conditions for workers. On Saturday representatives of Bangladesh's government, industry and workers issued a joint statement laying out an "action plan" to improve worker safety in the wake of the disaster. The European Union has said it is considering trade action against Bangladesh if it doesn't take clear steps to improve the safety conditions of its millions of garment workers.

Bangladesh's Fascist Islamist: '''Hefajat’s barbarity''

THE wanton violence and destruction perpetrated by Hefajat-e-Islam on Sunday and Monday defies logic and description. We wonder what measure of madness can overcome a group of people who, in the name of ventilating their demands, can go berserk and indulge in senseless destruction of public and private property. They behaved as if they were in an enemy territory. We condemn this in the strongest possible terms. Nearly a hundred government and private vehicles were put on fire, and hundreds of shops in an around the Shapla Chattar area suffered the same fate at their hands. Whose property were they burning? Whose livelihood were they destroying? By creating mayhem, by destroying public and private assets, by turning a part of the capital into a battle-zone, Hefajat has blatantly violated its democratic right, and for which, we feel, it owes an apology to the nation. We respect Hefajat’s right to hold its own views on different socio-political-religious issues, with which we of course do not agree, but that does not give it the right to resort to setting public and private property on fire or to resort to criminal activities as a means to have their demands met by the government. No political party or socio-political group has the right to hold the people to ransom to coerce an elected government to meet its demand. We have seen their demands ventilated on 5 April of this year and we see no reason why that programme should have been replicated a month later, and that too topped up in violence. If it is the 13 point demands that Hefajat wants the government to implement than the PM has articulated the government’s point of view in this regard. And if there are any disagreements on that, the only civilised norm would have been to engage the government without threatening to bring it down or giving ultimatums for dire consequences. We are constrained to say that instead of showing respect to Islam and upholding its image, which the group claims is its intention, its gratuitous exploitation of the religion has not only denigrated it but have also cast the group as one that adheres to violence rather than peace which is the they very fundamental of Islam.

Peshawar High Court makes history

The Express Tribune

There have been division benches with both male and female judges. However, forming a division bench comprised of only women judges allows the Peshawar High Court (PHC) to leap ahead of other courts in the country. May 2 was a historic day when such a bench heard cases related to 73 petitions. This was not only warmly welcomed by lawyers and litigants who all stood up in honor of Justice Irshad Qaisar and Justice Musarrat Hilali – the moment was also described as ‘history in the making’. Lawyers think the female bench will convey a softer image of Pakistan to other countries, proving Pakistani women do not fall short by any standards. Women from Pakistan can not only fly jets, treat patients and report stories. They can also give verdicts in court cases. “Yes, keeping in view the law and order, it (female bench) could be something exclusive. But let me tell you one thing, us Pashtuns have always honored females,” PHC Bar Association President Ishtiaq Ibrahim told The Express Tribune. According to Ibrahim, social norms in Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) are based on strict cultural values which do restrict women. “But that does not mean we have restricted our females to their homes only.” “There are Pashtun teachers, doctors, sportswomen, journalists, lawyers and even law officers representing the provincial government. This conveys to the world how liberal our society is,” stated Ibrahim. He said the image portraying Pashtuns the world over goes completely against actual facts and the division bench exclusively comprising women judges proves this. “This has never happened in the history of the country’s judiciary – there has been no other occasion of a division bench comprising two female judges exclusively, something which was witnessed last week,” said Barrister Bacha. The barrister was among the lawyers who stood up to honour the bench. He urged women in Pakistan be provided equal opportunities. “I tell you, they (Pakistani women) are no less than men and are women of the modern world. I witnessed this when [the female division bench] was giving verdicts at the PHC,” Bacha said emphatically. “The women of K-P are not necessarily confined to the four walls of their homes; they share the burden of their men.”

In Pakistan's Baluchistan, Nationalist Parties Return to Contest Vote

Authorities in Pakistan’s insurgency-wracked Baluchistan province have put in place extremely tight security measures to ensure May 11 national elections are held peacefully. Separatist groups have threatened to disrupt the polls. But the participation of Baluch nationalist parties has led to hopes the vote could bring much needed political stability to the mineral and energy-rich province. Militants in Pakistan's volatile Baluchistan province have already attacked election-related events. The violence has led to a more subdued campaign season in most of the region. Residents and independent observers expect an all time low turnout. But authorities are confident that deployment of around 70,000 security forces across the province will ensure the safety of voters and prevent a disruption of the May 11 vote. "We are providing security to all polling stations and to the people, and it is the resolve of the provincial government to conduct just, free, fair and transparent elections," explains Provincial Home Secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani, who is supervising the security arrangements. Baluchistan is Pakistan’s biggest, but least populous, province. Despite being the richest of all four provinces in natural resources, its estimated 12 million people are the poorest in the country. While the rest of Pakistan is benefiting from Baluchistan's mineral and energy wealth, a World Bank report says the southwestern province has the worst economic growth record, the weakest infrastructure and the lowest national socio-economic indicators. Residents have long complained of being neglected by both the provincial and central governments. The resentment has helped fuel the low-level Baluch insurgency that has long battled the Pakistani state for political autonomy. "Baluchistan is a typical question of a mismanaged province by our own politicians, by our own administrations," said Wazir Ahmed Jogazai, a senior Baluch politician and a former deputy speaker of the national legislature. The people in Baluchistan are also opposed to the heavy presence of military forces in their province. Some accuse the Pakistani security forces of using brutal methods to suppress demands for greater political and economic autonomy. The law and order situation worsened after the Pakistani army's 2006 killing of senior Baluch politician Nawab Akbar Bugti. His death is said to have broadened support for the Baluch fighters seeking independence from Pakistan. The killing also prompted moderate nationalist parties to boycott Pakistan's 2008 national elections. End to violence But after five years on the political sidelines, the parties contesting this year's vote, promise to bring an end to the violence through the ballot. "Good luck for Pakistani democracy that major nationalist parties of Baluchistan," Zafarullah Khan, the executive director of the non-governmental Center for Civic Education Pakistan, said, "they are contesting elections, they are showing a lot of courage to give electoral process of Pakistan a chance to solve the Baluch question. But their challenge is that certain Baluch separatist, those who don’t find their future in the electrical process, they are posing a lot of challenges for them and restricting their campaign.” Former army general Talat Masood also agrees that participation of Baluch nationalist parties could go a long way in addressing the problems of their province. “If they can get back into the political fold I think that will be extremely helpful because that will sooth the passions and will bring them into the political process rather than they remain alienated," he said. But nationalist leaders such as Jahanzaib Jamaldini have long accused the military establishment of manipulating election results in favor of politicians they have created to counter nationalist forces. He warns that if those policies are not abandoned the insurgent violence will increase. “So, what we want is a free and transparent elections, mandate should be respected, trust deficit should be defused then there could be a way out to settle the problems [of Baluchistan]," he said. Worsening the so-called "trust deficit" between the Pakistani government and the people in Baluchistan are the hundreds of people alleged to have been disappeared in the last several years. Baluch activist groups blame the army for disappearances and targeted killings. Pakistani authorities reject the allegations and instead blame separatist groups.

Rehman Malik presents evidence against Sharif brothers

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader, Rehman Malik on Monday presented what he said was evidence of money laundering against the Sharif brothers and alleged that the money earned through it was transferred to Saudi Arabia, Geo News reported. While addressing a press conference here today, Rehman Malik told the media that he is presenting his complaints and evidence before the Supreme Court and Election Commission of Pakistan. He also claimed to quit his political career if failed to prove the allegations. Rehman Malik said the Sharif brothers transferred the cash outside Pakistan and was deposited in an account titled as ‘Qazi’. In 1998, the amount was transferred to Hudaibiya accounts. The PPP leader further said that more names will be revealed in money laundering case and complained that immediate actions had been initiated against PPP. He said that Ishaq Dar has already admitted that Shahbaz Sharif asked to convert dollars into local currency.

Sarabjit murder: Revenge is not the answer now

His tragic life and gruesome end have evoked such charged emotions and so much anger against both the Indian government, which has seemed helpless and soft, and a Pakistani government that did nothing to save Sarabjit's life. In this atmosphere there have been calls for extreme measures. The evidence of this is the brutal assault on a Pakistani prisoner in Jammu's Kot Balwal jail who, like Sarabjit, has also been put on a ventilator. While it may be very difficult to be rational in these trying circumstances, it is important that India does not lose the moral high ground it occupies now after the death of Sarabjit. There will be calls for lowering diplomatic engagement and banning people from the country, like musicians and cricketers among others. But New Delhi must be pragmatic. While making efforts, more consistent and strenuous than the ones made for Sarabjit, to secure the release of the nearly 220 Indian prisoners in Pakistan, the government must not give in to the jingoism from some quarters that want to teach Pakistan a lesson by shunning its people. There are extremists on all sides, but unless we continue with what is often termed engagement using soft power, a bad situation will only get worse. Most Indians have been revolted by the politics preached by outfits like the Shiv Sena, which have targeted cultural and sports personalities from across the border. But, India ought not to descend to such pettiness. We cannot expect reciprocity for our every move from Pakistan. It is a deeply troubled and isolated state. It is in the grips of fundamentalism and what even its own leaders now concede to be non-state actors. Cutting off cultural and other people-to-people contacts is not going to result in any tangible benefit. This is not to suggest that the government does not keep up pressure on Pakistan to mend its ways and to abandon its policy of trying to bring India to its knees through the export of jihadis. This is a policy, as we have seen, which has cost Pakistan dearly with terror attacks in the country becoming an almost daily occurrence. The killing of the Pakistani prosecutor in the 26/11 case and the Benazir Bhutto murder case just after the Sarabjit murder shows the extent of chaos and violence in the country. It is not that there has not been condemnation in Pakistan over the death of Sarabjit. We have to equally condemn the attack on the Pakistani prisoner in Jammu. The government has to make every effort to see that Pakistani prisoners are not targeted in Indian jails. This tragic event underscores all the more the need to engage, at least in the areas of least contention, with a fractious neighbour one cannot wish away.

Attack on PPP office injures one

A bomb blast targeting an election office of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on Monday in Charsadda’s Shabqadar Mirzai area left one injured. According to details, a man was injured in a blast and the party’s office was completely destroyed. The police cordoned off the area and started an investigation. Three parties — PPP, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Awami National Party (ANP) – have vowed to fight terror and have braved attacks on them by the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in their campaign to contest the coming elections. - See more at: http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2013/05/06/news/national/attack-on-ppp-office-injures-one/#sthash.GqX7p9nw.dpuf

LeJ terror suspect contesting on PML-N ticket

A Lashkar-e-Jhangvi-linked alleged terror suspect who has already spent five years in jail on murder charges and had known links with a slain al-Qaeda linchpin Amjad Hussain Farooqi is running for a National Assembly seat from Gujrat on a PML-N ticket. Chaudhry Abid Raza Gujjar had been handed down death sentence under section 302 and section 7 of the Anti Terrorism Act 1997 for the murder of six people during a failed assassination attempt on the former Nazim of Gujrat, Ghulam Sarwar Bhooch, in 1998. His nomination papers for the upcoming elections were rejected by Returning Officer Malik Ali Zulqarnain Awan on April 6, 2013 after an independent candidate, Raja Haq Nawaz, took up his conviction on the murder charge as well as his alleged connections with some banned sectarian outfits, including the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP). Abid was also listed under Section 11 (E) of the 4th Schedule of Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 for his alleged involvement in terrorism-related activities. But strangely enough, he was cleared by an election tribunal of the Lahore High Court on April 18, 2013 to contest the general elections. The PML-N leadership’s decision to award the party ticket for NA-107 to Abid Raza of Kotla Arab Ali Khan Group instead of the party’s district president Malik Hanif Awan has surprised many because Awan and his nephew Jamil Awan had won that seat twice in 2008 general elections and in 2012 by-elections, respectively. According to Awan, the party leadership told him that Hamza Shahbaz had made a commitment to award the PML-N ticket to Abid Raza at the time of the December 2008 by-elections to appease the Kotlas who had also been vying for a PML-N ticket for the by-election. But some PML-N rebels allege that the leadership of a banned sectarian group, which is well-known for its proximity with the PML-N, in Punjab had persuaded the Sharifs to award the ticket to Abid Raza. Nevertheless, the PML-N’s decision to award the party ticket to Abid Raza from NA-107 is equally alarming for the law enforcement agencies which had arrested him many times for interrogation since his 2003 release from Gujranwala Central Jail. It was during his detention in Gujranwala jail on murder charges that Abid had developed close ties with LeJ’s Malik Mohammad Ishaq and Ghulam Rasool Shah who were languishing in the same jail for the May 1997 murder of the SSP Gujranwala Ashraf Marth. While Abid’s appeal against the death sentence was being heard by the Lahore High Court, his family managed to strike a deal with Ghulam Sarwar Bhooch. After an ‘out of court settlement’ between the two groups and the withdrawal of the murder case, Abid Raza was set free on July 3, 2003 from Gujranwala jail. However, he was taken into custody by the intelligence agencies a few months later in connection with the December 2003 twin assassination attempts on Pervez Musharraf by two suicide bombers in Rawalpindi. According to well-informed sources in the law enforcement agencies, Abid Raza was arrested in the wake of intelligence reports that the most wanted al-Qaeda linchpin in Pakistan Amjad Hussain Farooqi had been using the huge haveli/dera of Abid [spanning over more than six kanals] located in the Kotla town (also called Kotla Arab Ali Khan) of the Kotli district of Azad Jammu & Kashmir as his base camp to mastermind and plan the Rawalpindi suicide attacks on Musharraf. The former ameer of the al-Qaeda-sponsored Brigade 313, Commander Ilyas Kashmiri who was killed in a US drone attack on June 4, 2011 in South Waziristan, also belonged to Kotli. Kashmiri was arrested in December 2003 following two failed assassination attempts on Musharraf in Rawalpindi. In 2008, five years after he was named in the bids on Musharraf’s life, Kashmiri was accused of plotting to assassinate General Ashfaq Kayani in Rawalpindi. Ilyas Kashmiri was considered close to Amjad Hussain Farooqi. On September 26, 2004, ten months after Musharraf put the state agencies on his track with Rs20 million on his head, Amjad Farooqi was killed in a shootout in Nawab Shah. In an interview with a private TV channel on June 4, 2004, Musharraf had named Amjad Farooqi, the man who had also masterminded the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl with the help of Sheikh Ahmed Omar Saeed, as the chief plotter of the two failed assassination attempts against him. Amjad Farooqi was killed 50 days after the August 7, 2004 arrest and extradition of the fugitive ameer of the Harkat ul-Jehad al-Islami (HUJI) chief Qari Saifullah Akhtar from Dubai and the ensuing information he had provided to his interrogators. Subsequent investigations revealed that Qari Saifullah, during his stay in the UAE, had actually been tasked by Abu Faraj Al Libbi, the then chief operational commander of al-Qaeda in Pakistan, to carry out the twin suicide attacks on Musharraf. In turn, Qari Saifullah had engaged Amjad Farooqi to plan the attack by hiring two suicide bombers - Khaliq Ahmed and Jameel Suddhan. According to sources in the law enforcement agencies, after being arrested soon after the Musharraf attacks, Abid Raza was taken to Rawalpindi and was interrogated by a Joint Interrogation Team (JIT) composed of officials from numerous agencies and led by the then Corps Commander of Rawalpindi and the current Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani. Abid reportedly conceded to his interrogators that Amjad Hussain Farooqi had been staying at his dera/haveli but he claimed that he never knew that he was an al-Qaeda linked terrorist who was planning to target Musharraf. Abid reportedly maintained that Amjad Farooqi actually came to him with the reference of some of his former inmates from Gujranwala Central Jail (most probably Malik Ishaq and Ghulam Rasool) and that he had nothing to do whatever Farooqi had been planning. Abid Raza was interrogated by the agencies for almost eight months and eventually set free on the intervention of the Chaudhrys of Gujrat who were very close to Musharraf at that time. The Chaudhrys were approached by Chaudhry Naeem Raza, a member of Punjab Assembly on a PML-Q ticket and an advisor to the then Punjab Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi (between 2002 and 2007). Naeem Raza is the elder brother of Abid Raza who had to quit as advisor after the arrest of his brother for his alleged involvement in the assassination attempts on Musharraf. However, despite being released, Abid Raza was placed on the 4th schedule of Section of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, under which persons charged with terrorist activities, after being released, are kept under vigilance by the law enforcement agencies. Approached by this correspondent, Naeem Raza confirmed that he had made frantic efforts for the release of his younger brother who was picked up by the ISI for sheltering Amjad Farooqi. “But I never knew that I was paving the way for the release of an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist. I actually came to know of this fact after his release when all kinds of sectarian elements and jihadis started flooding his dera at Kotla Arab Ali Khan. To tell the truth, Abid Raza had once introduced me to Amjad Hussain Farooqi with another name, saying that he was his Ustad. I never knew he was an al-Qaeda operative and was planning to attack Musharraf. After the Rawalpindi attacks on Musharraf, the ISI not only picked up Abid Raza but they also interrogated me as a suspect, only because of my brother’s jihadi links. Brigadier Ejaz Awan of the ISI had shown me a picture and asked if I knew that person. I immediately recognized him and told the Brigadier that he was introduced to me by Abid as his Ustad who was staying at his dera along with several others. But I was literally shattered to know that he was Amjad Farooqi. Frankly speaking, Abid Raza publicly claims to be a key leader of the Punjabi Taliban who had secured the PML-N ticket by assuring the Sharifs that the Taliban won’t target them in their election campaign”, said Naeem Raza who is contesting the coming election on a provincial assembly seat (PP-115) as a PML-Q candidate from Kharian. When approached Abid Raza strongly refuted that he has any terrorist links as being alleged by his “political opponents”. Asked if he was arrested in connection with the Musharraf attacks following his release from Gujranwala jail in a murder case, masterminded by Amjad Farooqi who used to hide at his dera in the Kotli area, Abid Raza said: “You must know that those arrested in connection with the Musharraf attacks were never released. I was seized by the agencies because of the maneouvering of my political opponents. I was taken to Rawalpindi but was finally released because the agencies had nothing against me. My opponents even allege that I was taken to the Guantanamo Bay after being arrested from Afghanistan which is absolutely baseless. That Abid Raza was someone else from Karachi, having the same name”. To another question, Abid refuted having any link either with al-Qaeda, Amjad Farooqi, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi or the Sipah-e-Sahaba. But he conceded that he was a diehard Sunni Deobandi, adding that being a Deobandi was not a crime. About the murder case, Abid Raza said he was sentenced to death but was released after spending five years in jail because of an out of court settlement with the rival party as per the Islamic Shariah. As the PML-N spokesman Senator Pervaiz Rasheed was approached by this correspondent and asked as to why an alleged terror suspect was awarded a party ticket by his leadership, he said: “All the allegations (against Abid Raza) had been proved wrong in the court of law and he was released honourably. He was in fact victimised by his influential political rivals of the area who monopolised politics (at that time). Abid Raza had challenged his rivals and fought against them bravely in the court of law to clear his name. His innocence was even acknowledged by the Election Commission of Pakistan which accepted his nomination papers and declared him a bona fide candidate for parliamentary elections”.

Extremists Pursue Mainstream in Pakistan Election

By DECLAN WALSH

Pakistan — Dust swirled as the jeep, heralded by a convoy of motorcycle riders and guarded by gunmen in paramilitary-style uniforms, pulled up outside the towering tomb of an ancient Muslim saint. Out stepped Maulana Abdul Khaliq Rehmani, a burly cleric with a notorious, banned Sunni Muslim group. Thanks to a deft name change by his group, he was now a candidate in Pakistan’s general election, scheduled for Saturday. Supporters mobbed Mr. Rehmani as he pushed into a small mosque in a rural district of Punjab Province, where a crowd had gathered in a courtyard. The warm-up speaker played on some typical populist tropes. “Islamabad is a colony of America,” he shouted. “Thousands of their agents are in the capital, and they are destabilizing Pakistan.” But Mr. Rehmani preferred to paint his campaign as a rural class struggle. “Feudalism has paralyzed Pakistan,” he said, his voice rising as the audience — farmers with weather-beaten faces, many fresh from toiling in the fields — listened raptly. “By the will of God, every poor person in this district will vote for us!” As election fever grips Pakistan this week, Sunni extremist groups are making a bold venture into the democratic process, offering a political face to a movement that, at its militant end, has carried out attacks on minority Shiites that have resulted in hundreds of deaths this year. Mr. Rehmani’s group, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, is fielding 130 candidates across Pakistan in this election. Few are expected to win seats in the Parliament, which is dominated by more moderate parties. But experts say they are flexing their political muscle at the very time when Pakistan urgently needs to push back against extremism. Relentless Taliban attacks on secular parties in recent weeks have tilted the field in favor of conservative parties, while the election authorities have been ambiguous. Some candidates were disqualified for having forged their university degrees, or for having an anti-Pakistani “ideology.” But candidates with nakedly sectarian groups have been allowed to participate freely. “These elections are critical,” said Ayesha Siddiqa, a defense analyst and the author of several reports on militancy in southern Punjab. “General Musharraf and his military started accommodating these groups. Now we see them trying to enter the political mainstream.” Mr. Rehmani was speaking at a rally in Khanewal, a district of lush fields and poor farmers between the city of Multan and the Indus River. His group, once known as Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, is the country’s main anti-Shiite group and was banned as a terrorist organization by Pervez Musharraf, then the president, in 2002. Sipah is widely viewed as the ideological center of sectarian thinking in Pakistan; its most notorious offshoot is Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the militant group responsible for much of the sectarian bloodshed this year: roadside executions, drive-by shootings and two major suicide attacks in the western city of Quetta that killed almost 200 people earlier this year. But relatively little sectarian violence touches Sipah’s political heartland in southern Punjab, where such groups drive deep roots in conservative rural communities by exploiting religious sentiment, profound social inequality and — in some cases — the support of mainstream politicians eager to capture their votes. In Khanewal, for instance, Mr. Rehmani is estimated to control 12,000 to 20,000 votes, not enough to win a seat, but sufficient to swing the vote in the event of a tight race. At the last election in 2008, his group supported Raza Hayat Hiraj, a candidate for General Musharraf’s party who went on to win the seat in Parliament. This time, however, the group has fielded its own candidate, Mr. Rehmani. Mr. Hiraj has been rejected by that group, and finds himself under political attack locally. He has also had a change of heart about Sipah. “They are very strong fanatics,” he said in an interview, saying that the group had a “different mind-set” when he supported them — under pressure from his own party. “I was told to go into an alliance with them,” he said. “These people don’t even consider Shiites to be like human beings. Their first philosophy is to kill a Shiite.” A similar dynamic exists in other pockets of Punjab where extremists enjoy a foothold: politicians, even those who profess not to share the extremists’ values, are happy to embrace their votes. All parties, including the Pakistan Muslim League-N, which is tipped to do well in this election, have been guilty. The phenomenon helps explain how sectarian groups can carve out the space to operate, said Ms. Siddiqa, the analyst. “There is an argument that if you engage these groups politically, they might turn into Pakistan’s version of Sinn Fein or Hezbollah,” she said, referring to the political wings of militant movements in Ireland and Lebanon. “That is a very dangerous proposition.” Other factors play a part, too. Although sectarianism has been a problem in Pakistan since the country’s birth in 1947, it turned militant in the 1980s when the military dictator, Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, promoted Sunni extremist groups to counter Iranian influence after the 1979 revolution in that country, which created a Shiite theocracy. Sectarian recruiters found rich terrain in the fields of Punjab, where poor Sunni farmers felt exploited by wealthy Shiite landowners who lorded over their tenants in a modern-day feudalism. Some of the same factors are still at play today. “These people are slaves to the feudal lords,” Mr. Rehmani said after the rally, sitting on a rope bed in a field outside the mosque. Indeed, one of his opponents is a Shiite landlord: Fakhar Imam, a member of a large and politically influential family. Mr. Imam is a former speaker of Parliament while his wife, Abida Hussain, is a former ambassador to the United States. In 1991, his brother was shot and wounded in a sectarian attack. In an interview after a rally in Kabirwala, the main town of Khanewal District, Mr. Imam played down the importance of sectarianism as a political factor. “People are more concerned with gas, jobs and electricity,” he said, speaking by torchlight after the city power went off. Still, there is little doubt that sectarian politics are the seedbed of more violent actions. Militants from Kabirwala took part in a high-profile attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore in 2009 that killed eight people. And the founder of Sipah-e-Sahaba, Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, was educated in a madrasa just a few hundred yards from Mr. Imam’s rally. The head of the madrasa, Maulana Irshad Ahmed, bristled at any suggestion that the institution had a connection with terrorism. Instead he offered juice and samosas to a visiting Shiite journalist, and offered a tour of the complex, which belongs to the conservative Deobandi sect and houses 2,000 students. In the corridors of a new, three-story building, filled with dormitory rooms that doubled as classrooms, bearded teenagers crowded around teachers, listening to religious instruction. A similar-size mosque was under construction next door; Mr. Ahmed said he hoped the complex would soon have 4,000 students. After the rally in Khalid Walid village, Mr. Rehmani rose to leave, trailed by his armed guards. He apologized: he was rushing to another campaign rally. As his convoy disappeared into the dusk, it passed under the village’s dominant feature: the red-brick tomb of Hazrat Khalid Walid, a 13th century saint from the moderate Sufi strain of Islam, who was famed for his sense of tolerance.

Clash resumes in contested Afghan, Pakistan border area

A new bout of fighting erupted on Monday in a border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the latest indication of a sharp deterioration in relations between the important U.S. allies. Pakistan is seen as vital in bringing stability to Afghanistan as most Western forces prepare to withdraw by the end of next year. The United States and other powers involved in Afghanistan have been trying to promote cooperation between the Asian neighbors, who have a history of mistrust. Afghan officials said the clash on Monday erupted after Pakistani troops tried to repair a gate on the border, in the Afghan district of Goshta, where last week an Afghan border policeman was killed in an exchange of fire. It is unclear if there were any casualties on Monday. "This morning's clash began after the Pakistani side continued to repair the gate, which was damaged in the previous fighting," said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province. Afghanistan says the gate at Pakistan's Gursal military post encroaches on its territory. The Nangarhar governor has spoken several times to Pakistani consular officials to tell them not to repair the gate, Abdulzai said. Pakistani military spokesmen were not immediately available for comment. Afghanistan and Pakistan have had testy relations since Pakistan was formed in 1947, at the end of British colonial rule over India. Afghanistan has never officially accepted the border between them. Pakistan helped the Taliban take power in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Many Afghan leaders say Pakistan is still helping the militants, seeing them as a tool to counter the influence of its old rival, India, in Afghanistan. Pakistan denies helping the Taliban and says it wants peace and stability in its western neighbor. But in an indication of how bad ties have become, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, without naming Pakistan, last week called on the Taliban to fight Afghanistan's neighbor, where, he said, plots were made against Afghanistan. Earlier last week, troops from the two sides exchanged fire for about five hours. Karzai has ordered officials to take "immediate action" to remove the gate and other Pakistani military installations near the Durand Line, the 1893 British-mandated border. Afghanistan maintains that activity by either side along the Durand Line must be approved by both countries.

8 Pakistani soldiers and police killed in violence

Military operations and insurgent attacks in lawless districts of Pakistan left eight members of the security forces and around 30 militants and criminal suspects dead on Sunday, officials said. Two soldiers and 16 militants were killed in clashes in the Tirah Valley area of the Khyber tribal region in the northwest, the military said in a statement. Another three soldiers were wounded in the remote mountainous district near the Afghan border. The army launched an offensive last month into the valley targeting the Pakistani Taliban and an allied group, Lashkar-e-Islam. The military statement said the latest fighting forced the militants to flee from two of their hideouts, leaving behind a huge cache of arms and ammunition. In the North Waziristan tribal region, another northwestern district bordering Afghanistan, a roadside bomb attack on a convoy killed two soldiers and wounded three, said two Pakistani intelligence officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The tribal region is home to both Pakistani and Afghan militant groups, including al-Qaida-linked organizations with significant numbers of foreign fighters. The military conducts sweeps against the insurgents, inflicting losses but not preventing them from striking back with roadside bombs and ambushes targeting soldiers, government-allied militias, anti-militant politicians, and others. Also Sunday, two members of the paramilitary Frontier Corps were killed in clashes in the Bolan district of the southwestern province of Baluchistan, said government official Waheed Shah. He said the fight also killed 13 "criminals" suspected in kidnappings and robberies. In the province's Sibbi district, a convoy of an independent candidate running in Pakistan's May 11 parliamentary elections was attacked by two gunmen who killed two of his police guards, said police official Owais Ahmad. He said candidate Sardar Sarfraz Domeki's other guards fired back, killing one of the attackers and wounding the other. He said the police were questioning the wounded attacker. The southwestern province has seen for years a low-level insurgency by nationalist groups who want a greater share of regional resources of oil and gas. Lawlessness in the region has also allowed sectarian groups and criminal gangs to operate.

Pakistan: A most violent election

A Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) unit office near the party’s headquarters Nine Zero was hit by two blasts in sequence, killing three people and injuring 35, including children. The two bombs exploded within 20 minutes of each other, a tactic the terrorists have been resorting to for some time. According to the government’s bomb experts, the second bomb was deliberately exploded with some delay to target rescuers and the public that usually rush to the site of explosions. Both bombs were reportedly detonated by remote control. The attack, the ninth in a series of attacks against electioneering mainly by the MQM and Awami National Party (ANP) in Karachi, came just one day after ANP National Assembly candidate Sadiq Zaman Khattak and his four-year-old son were gunned down by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Karachi. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the country, a Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) candidate was targeted in Lower Orakzai Agency, but fortunately escaped, while an attack on a JI office in Peshawar injured two people. In the same city, a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf office was bombed, fortunately without loss of life as the office was empty at the time. This election is turning out to be one of the bloodiest in our history. Since January till the end of April this year, 2,674 people have been killed, according to a report by a think tank. Admittedly, the toll includes militants targeted by the security forces and drone strikes, as well as personnel of the security forces engaged in operations against the terrorists, and also casualties on both sides in the nationalist insurgency in Balochistan. However the bulk of the dead are citizens and political leaders and workers of the three secular-leaning mainstream parties, the PPP, MQM and ANP. The toll now includes the JI and PTI after the incidents referred to above. This is an intriguing development since it was widely considered that these parties were respectively pro-Taliban and harbouring a soft corner for the militants. If their ideological ‘friends’ are now turning on them, it merely reflects their naiveté in believing they would be spared the unwanted attentions of the terrorists or that the fanatics could be persuaded to cease terrorist actions and be peacefully integrated into the mainstream. For these parties and the widely acknowledged front runner in this election, Nawaz Sharif and the PML-N, this reality is, or will, bite sooner or later, much to their chagrin. Surprisingly, while former ANP information minister in the previous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has rounded on the caretaker government and the Election Commission of Pakistan for their failure to provide security to his party and the other two parties hitherto being exclusively targeted by the terrorists, the caretaker federal cabinet, if Information Minister Arif Nizami is to be believed, seems to be living in cuckoo land. According to Mr Nizami, the cabinet believes law and order and security are satisfactory or at least improving. This sanguine head-in-the-sand attitude contrasts sharply with the everyday lived experience of most citizens and the political parties. The caretaker government needs a reality check, followed by some evidence it takes its responsibilities vis-à-vis security for the elections more seriously than has been in evidence so far. We have the strange conjuncture of arguably one of the bloodiest and most violent elections in our history and a seemingly toothless caretaker government attempting to paper over its manifest failure to discharge its primary duty — the holding of free, fair, transparent elections in an enabling secure environment where parties and voters are not cowed into submission, either during campaigning or on polling day. With five days to go for the exercise of the electorate’s right to freely express its will, the prospects for the situation on May 11 are grim and frightening.

Pakistan: Is this only Punjab’s election?

Daily Times

By— Farooq Sumar

It so happens that other than Punjab all other provinces are affected by the TTP threat. Is this a coincidence or do we smell a rat?

Punjab’s role since the inception of Pakistan has been controversial, to say the least. Its dominance of the federal government, its share of economic development, with over 70 percent of the bureaucracy and over 90 percent of the armed forces from Punjab were a bone of contention for the 54 percent East Pakistanis and the other three provinces. That served as a major reason for the creation of secessionist forces in East Pakistan. After the breakup, Punjab has become the majority province with around 62 percent of the population, but it continues to grab a disproportionate share in government jobs and its hold on the armed forces continues as before. No real efforts have been made to remove disparities; the recent doling out of a few pennies is not the solution, as technical knowhow and infrastructural support needed to be provided to the deprived and backward provinces to close the gap. This failure has led to higher unemployment and illiteracy in Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan as compared to Punjab, factors that encourage violence. Ziaul Haq’s administration deliberately disrupted Karachi and Sindh in the 1980s, but in the next 25 years no government has had the will to eliminate the criminal political parties and the mafia. As a matter of fact, all federal governments have provided legitimacy to these criminal groups. As a result, Karachi has suffered from violence and oppression of the worst kind almost continuously in these two decades and more. KP has been sacrificed twice in 30 years to serve the US’s interests and those of our local resident dictators, Zia from 1981 to 1988, Pervez Musharraf from 2001 to 2008. KP is a full blown war zone, the stench of death is all around and fear is writ large on people’s faces. The Baloch people have only seen the military bomb, strafe, kill and imprison their people in four major operations since independence and the fifth operation is ongoing. Hundreds of Baloch go missing and their mutilated bodies are found later. What have successive federal governments done to put a stop to this madness? Why has the powerful Punjab not used its clout to restore sanity and instead played a major role in perpetrating the subjugation of the Baloch? The deterioration in the three smaller provinces has been either ignored or precipitated by the policies of the overwhelmingly Punjab-dominated establishment and ruling cliques. The KP’s destruction since the 1980s was considered as dispensable, the Baloch were always considered traitors and, therefore, needed to be occupied. The destruction of Karachi led to the relocation of industry in Punjab and drying up of future investments; the loss of its economic dominance had its advantages for others. The establishment and the ruling cliques thought that as long as Punjab, the largest province, remained stable and intact, the federation was safe. What a dim view! Unless all the parts are safe, the federation cannot be secure. I cannot forget a statement once made by the urbane Syeda Abida Hussain on the floor of the National Assembly: “Mr Speaker, Sir, Punjab is not just a province, it is 62 percent of Pakistan!” Well, as long as Punjab does not learn to start behaving as a province and stop bullying the rest, the federation cannot progress. This attitude must change if we want to see this remaining part of Pakistan survive as one and it must start now by taking tough and decisive measures to thwart the Taliban’s and other criminals’ efforts to derail the elections in the three smaller provinces. As far as Punjab is concerned, there too are extremists of Zia and Hamid Gul’s creation — the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Sipah-e-Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, to name a few. Since the Sharifs are the political creation of Zia and were nurtured by Gul and the ISI up to sometime in the 1990s at least, their connections with the extremists have been rather cordial. Therefore, according to media reports there are electoral alliances and seat adjustments with the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, the successor of the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba. During its five-year rule in Punjab, the PML-N has provided safe haven to these extremist groups. So the Jhangvis have been free to create mayhem in Balochistan and other provinces and kill as many Shias as they please and come back to rest and recuperate in southern Punjab. I suppose the deal must be that they are not to take any such actions in Punjab. Therefore, the PML-N government in Punjab has been exporting terrorism to other provinces by providing protection to terrorists in return for peace in Punjab. Politics is dirty one knows but such opportunism cannot be condoned. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP’s) announcement to target the PPP, ANP and MQM is a severe blow to the democratic aspirations of the people. The ANP and MQM are largely in KP and Sindh respectively, while the PPP is a national party. The impact of the TTP threat is actually being felt in KP, Karachi particularly, and Balochistan. It so happens that other than Punjab, all other provinces are affected by the TTP threat. Is this a coincidence or do we smell a rat? Why, for instance, are the PPP candidates not under attack in Punjab? Bombings are taking place every day in Karachi. There is hardly any election activity in this city of almost 20,000,000. Similar is the situation in KP. Public meetings and corner meetings are an essential part of the electioneering process. Without hearing the various candidates, how can you exercise your freedom to vote? With the situation worsening daily, imagine the chaos on polling day. The much touted police and Rangers have been ineffective and, regretfully, will remain so. Surprisingly, the other major players like the PML-N, PTI, JUI-F and JI are either silent or have made muted responses. There is no outright condemnation of the Taliban; there is no expression of sympathy or condolence. When even one party’s right to participate is threatened, the whole election process is compromised. The election cannot remain free and fair and its legitimacy can be challenged if the voting is insignificant. If the PML-N and PTI feel that only Punjab is important, they are mistaken; this is a general election and not just Punjab’s election. Responsibility and maturity requires a national approach to this problem, not a petty view that the opponents have to deal with it. Not only the parties but also the TV talk shows give one this clear impression as most are concentrating on Punjab. Sorely missing is expert analysis and legal views on this issue. What we are facing is a real threat of a major disruption in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur and probably Larkana, KP and Balochistan. The belated decision to deploy 70,000 troops in aid of the federal government, taken as I write, is welcome. However, if this Quick Deployment Force (QDF) remains under the control of provincial caretakers the impact will be watered down, as it is a well known fact that some are quite partisan. Therefore, some modus operandi needs to be found whereby a call for help by a candidate or returning officer/polling station in-charge is monitored either by the ECP or the QDF directly also. This would ensure that the QDF’s response is directed in good time to where it is needed. Besides responding to calls, the sensitive areas should also be patrolled by army troops as a preventive measure. This operation needs to be managed well as its failure can cause irreparable damage. This election is important to us not only for a change in government but also to prove our ability to hold a reasonably fair and free election and continue the process in future. If it fails, God forbid, who knows what doctrines will be brought into play in the ensuing chaos.

Turkey controlling anti-government protests in Iraq

News Agencies

A top Iraqi official has accused Turkey of controlling anti-government protests that have rocked the country over the past few months. Iraq’s Acting Defense Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi made the remarks on Sunday, AFP reported. "There are foreign agendas controlling these sites," Dulaimi said of the protests, adding, "It is like Anbar, or Mosul or Samarra (the cities hit by protests) are part of the Ottoman Empire." He went on to say that "protest sites have become a safe haven for terrorists and killers and those who call for strife, sectarianism and hate." Iraq has recently seen a wave of deadly violence, including terrorist attacks targeting both Shia and Sunni Muslims. According to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), April 2013 was Iraq's deadliest month since June 2008, with a total of 712 people killed and 1,633 wounded in bomb attacks and other violence. Iraq has been the scene of demonstrations since December 2012, when the bodyguards of former finance minister, Rafie al-Issawi, were arrested on terrorism-related charges. The demonstrators accuse Maliki of discrimination against Sunni Muslims and demand his resignation. Maliki, however, has denied accusations, saying regional countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are fueling sectarian tensions in Iraq.

‘Containing Iran’: Israel ‘in talks’ to join alliance with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey

Israel is considering partnering with several moderate Arab states in a US-brokered defense alliance that would be aimed at containing Iran, which is accused of nuclear weapon ambitions, a British newspaper reported Sunday. The alliance would see Israel teaming up with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to forge a Middle East ‘moderate crescent’ to contain, rather than confront, Iran, the Sunday Times reported, citing an unnamed Israeli official. According to the report, such an alliance would give Israel access to radar stations in Saudi Arabia and the UAE in exchange for its own early warning radar information and anti-ballistic missile defense systems, the source said. In addition to US-made Patriot anti-missile systems, Israel has deployed the Iron Dome all-weather defense system, although this system guards against rockets fired from distances of 4 to 70km away. The report suggested that Jordan would be protected by Israel’s Arrow long-range anti-missile batteries. “The plan is to start with information-sharing about Iran’s ballistic missiles,” said an Israeli official. The proposal, known by participating diplomats as ‘4+1’, is being brokered by the United States. If successful, it would represent a marked shift in Middle East policy at the White House, which in the past has said it is not interested in containing Iran, but rather preventing it from achieving nuclear weapon capability. However, Turkey has dismissed the report. “These are manipulative reports which have nothing to do with the reality,” a Turkish Foreign Ministry official told Hürriyet Daily News. Tehran denies it is attempting to build a nuclear weapon, saying that its nuclear research is aimed at creating new energy resources for its civilian sector. The prospects for the plan’s success, however, remain questionable as Israel does not maintain formal diplomatic relations with Riyadh or Abu Dhabi, while relations with Ankara have been rather strained for the last several years. Relations between Israel and Turkey sharply deteriorated following the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid, which left eight Turkish nationals dead after their ship attempted to break an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip. In March 2013, Israel apologized for the raid on the Turkish vessel, which observers say represents a step toward the normalization of relations between the two countries. The Sunni states of Saudi Arabia, UAE and Jordan, not to mention Israel and the United States, are all wary of Shiite Tehran gaining any strategic advantage in the region, a factor that may compel the Arab states and Israel to put aside their differences and join some sort of alliance.

Women in Pakistan face opposition in fight for voting rights

For decades, not a single woman in this dusty Pakistani village surrounded by wheat fields and orange trees has voted. And they aren't likely to in next week's parliamentary election either. The village's men have spoken. "It's the will of my husband," said one woman, Fatma Shamshed. "This is the decision of all the families." Mateela is one of 564 out of the 64,000 polling districts across Pakistan where not a single woman voted in the country's 2008 election. The men from this village of roughly 9,000 people got together with other nearby communities to decide that their women would not vote on May 11 either. Next week's election will bring a major first for democracy in Pakistan — the first time a civilian government has fulfilled its term and handed over power to another. But women still face an uphill battle to make their voices heard in the political process, as voters, candidates and in parliament, where they hold 22 percent of the seats in the lower house. Women represent only about 43 percent of the roughly 86 million registered voters, according to election commission data. In more conservative areas like Khyber Paktunkhwa province and Baluchistan, the percentage drops even further. In places like Mateela, the fact that men decide women should not be allowed to vote is a decades-old tradition. Some men say women don't have the mental capacity. Other times they don't want wives and daughters to leave the house. Some simply don't see the point. At a recent gathering in the village, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Islamabad, activists tried to encourage the opposite. The Association for Gender Awareness & Human Empowerment, an independent group working to increase voter participation, met with residents, trying to encourage them to let women vote. Mateela's men sat with male activists in a courtyard near the village mosque. Secluded behind a gate, the women sat on a concrete floor and listened to a female activist talk about the benefits of voting. Yar Mohammed, one of the village elders, insisted it isn't a matter of discrimination. The problem, he said, is that the local polling station is mixed gender. The men worry that their wives and daughters will be harassed, so they want a separate women's station. In some places, but not all, polls are specified for men or women only. "We stop our women from going to polling stations because we think if they do, men would tease them by staring or touching them," he said. Mateela's women certainly want a political voice. They talk of their desire to see better roads, schools where their daughters can get an education and a reliable supply of gas for cooking and heating. They don't directly defy their fathers and husbands — but they do lobby them to change their minds. One resident, Mohammed Shamshed, said the women in his family "come up to us and say, 'We want to vote.'" "But we tell them that it is a collective decision," he said. Rubina Arshad said things are slowly starting to change as men and women become more educated. "This is the tradition and the culture, from many, many years ago. We could not cast the vote," she said. Another deterrent to women voting has been that many don't have the proper identification card, called a CNIC card. Historically, many men in conservative areas haven't seen the need to send their wives or daughters to get the ID card or haven't wanted to pay for it. But activists say that has begun to change in recent years — in large part because it makes more financial sense for men. Poor women who want to receive money through the Benazir Income Support Program, a government plan to give money to poor people, need a valid ID card. And many programs that give out aid to flood victims or people displaced in fighting in the tribal areas also require an ID card. "These two have tremendously enhanced the registration of women," said Muddassir Rizvi, CEO of the Islamabad-based Free and Fair Election Network. "If they see an advantage of a relationship with the state, then they agree to things." There are other encouraging signs as well, with more women competing in the elections. In Pakistan, 60 of the 342 seats in the lower house of parliament, known as the National Assembly, are reserved for women. They are handed out to parties in proportion to how they do in the overall race, so women don't have to campaign publicly for them. But women can also run for the general seats, in competition with men on the campaign trial. In 2008, 64 women ran for general seats and 18 made it to the parliament. This year, the number of women contesting general seats has jumped to 161, out of a total of 4,671 candidates, according to data provided by U.N. Women, which focuses on women's empowerment and gender issues. Elections for provincial assemblies saw a bigger rise, with 355 women running among nearly 11,000 candidates, up from 116 in 2008. The type of women running has also changed. Traditionally, many female candidates have been from wealthy, land-owning families and were seen more as a continuation of political dynasties than as women entering politics in their own right. Benazir Bhutto was famous for being Pakistan's first female prime minister, but she was also the daughter of a powerful political family. Experts say many of the women running this year are from the middle or even lower classes. A woman in the tribal area of Bajur is running for parliament, marking the first time a woman has ever run for election from the conservative tribal areas that border Afghanistan. In the southern city of Hyderabad, a Hindu woman is also running for election. Still, the number of female candidates is extremely low, and most run as independents without the support of a political party. The Pakistan People's Party, the party that Bhutto headed before her assassination in 2007, is fielding women candidates in only 7 percent of the races. A PPP spokeswoman, Sharmila Farouqi admits that is not enough. "There is a perception that women cannot contest elections against men due to many reasons," she said. "There is a need to encourage and support women." When they do get into the parliament, women tend to get down to business. According to FAFEN's data, female lawmakers last term asked more questions and submitted more bills and resolutions than men. The women also banded together to help pass five pieces of important legislation protecting women, including laws against sexual harassment in the workplace, according to Farkhanda Aurangzeb, from the Islamabad-based Aurat Foundation. In Mateela, the men say they are willing to let women vote if the election commission sets up a separate polling station. But the commission said that isn't possible because the voting lists had already been finalized. Abdul Hamid Abbasi, an activist from AGAHE, tried to convince the tribal elders that allowing women to vote will increase their power at the polls. "You can change your fate by electing a good candidate," he says. "It won't be possible without the active participation of women voters."

President Zardari takes notice of cheques delay

President Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday called for a report from the concerned ministry while taking note of the complaints voiced by some victims of recent violence in Quetta that the compensation cheques have not been honoured. Spokesperson Senator Farhatullah Babar said that the President also advised the Finance Ministry to look into the complaints and ensure that the promised compensation is paid to the victims without any delay. Zardari also advised the concerned ministry to look into the system of paying compensation and streamline it further to facilitate the victims and their families. He also took note of the complaints about inadequate medical treatment to those injured in the violence and directed the officials concerned to ensure proper and adequate medical treatment to the injured, he said.

Jail Officials: We are being forced to make prisoners vote PML-N:

The Express Tribune

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Saturday took notice of a complaint by four Sialkot Jail officials stating that they were being coerced by their seniors to ensure that all voters in the prison voted for the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. Election Commission Director General Sher Afgan said they had received the complaint and that it had been sent to the Punjab Election Commissioner Mehboob Anwer for inquiry. Anwer said the complaint had been sent to the Home Department. He said the department had been directed to respond at the earliest and file an inquiry report. However, he said, they had not yet received a reply from them. Punjab Prisons IG Farooq Nazeer said he had constituted an inquiry committee under Prisons DIG Mubashar Ahmad Khan to probe the allegation. Khan’s report, he said, had been sent to the Home Department from where it would go to the ECP. Nazeer said the complaint appeared to be a mischief by some jail officials. “There are 1,110 votes in jails all over the Punjab. This gives an estimate of five to six votes per constituency. That would not make much difference to the results anywhere,” he said. A similar complaint was filed last week by some jail officials from Lahore’s Camp Jail against their superintendent, Ejaz Asghar. Prisons DIG Saliq Jalal had visited the jail and decided that the allegation was false.

Video:Song Critical of Pakistani Generals Is Blocked Online...Dhinak Dhinak by Beygairat Brigade

We want Quaid’s not Taliban’s Pakistan

Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) Chief Altaf Hussain Sunday reiterated that his party wants Quaid-e-Azam and Allama Iqbal’s Pakistan and not Taliban’s Pakistan. Altaf Hussain while addressing a public meeting via telephone as part of MQM’s electoral campaign here in the province of Punjab, said if religion does not espouse subjecting people to coercion then why mosques and Imam Bargahs are being attacked. The MQM Chief said despite all the propaganda, the graph of his party’s popularity could not be prevented from moving up. He demanded that the south Punjab be made an independent and autonomous province and urged the people not to look towards those who merely chant slogans and try to them show green pastures. “Only keep the politicians’ character in view,” he advised the people. Altaf Hussain claimed that MQM was practically struggling for the people’s rights and promised to resolve their issues after coming into power. He vowed to establish a community centre and a hospital in Jahanian besides providing educational facilities to its people. The farmers’ difficulties in connection with selling their wheat produce will be resolved, he added. Hussain announced to initiate an ambulance service in Jahanian within a couple of days.

PML-N being given relief by the courts: Aitzaz

Former president Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan said on Saturday that PML-N is being given relief from the courts. While talking to journalists outside Lahore High Court on Saturday, he said, “We appeared before the court in the case regarding the advertisement related to the conversation between Shahbaz Sharif and Justice (r) Abdul Qayyum and gave detailed and cogent arguments. We inquired as to why the case was being heard all of a sudden; which magic wand does Shahbaz Sharif possess that his case is being heard immediately and a stay order has also been issued. We had brought tapes of the conversation in the court but the counsels for Sharif brothers said that they are withdrawing the case.” He said that ever since these tapes had become public 12 years ago no objection has ever been raised then why is the PML-N raising issues today. He went on to say that the election commission had no power to stop the screening of this advertisement. “Nawaz League has fully retreated from the courts. Shahbaz Sharif’s eligibility can also be challenged in the Asghar Khan case,” he said. “In the NRO cases our prime minister was sacked immediately and the second one was summoned forthwith but no action is being taken against those involved in the Asghar Khan case despite the fact that the Supreme Court has ordered that the money involved should be recovered,” he said. “Courts are giving relief to PML-N,” he added. PPP leader Latif Khosa said that the petition filed in the Lahore High Court should not have been admitted as legal formalities had not been met therein. “There are separate laws for Sharif brothers and separate for the PPP,” Khosa alleged. - See more at: http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2013/05/04/city/lahore/pml-n-being-given-relief-by-the-courts-aitzaz/#sthash.jupNQbRI.dpuf

Pakistan: '' 84 percent for Sharia law? ''

The US-based PEW Research Centre's Forum on Religion and Public Life has released the results of its recent world-wide opinion survey of Muslim populations. The part pertaining to Pakistan is startling, though reflective of two seemingly contradictory realities. It of course is included among majority of 39 countries surveyed, where Muslims say that "Islam is the one true faith leading to eternal life in heaven and that belief in God is necessary to be a moral person." But what is hard to believe is the finding that "support for making Sharia the official law of the land tends to be higher in countries like Pakistan (84%) and Morocco (83%)." That surely is not how the situation looks like from inside Pakistan. The support for Sharia calls for a more careful interpretation. If 84 percent of the population supports Sharia law, religious parties should have been dominating electoral politics in this country. The reality though is quite the contrary. People tend to separate politics from religion. They vote for the mainstream parties, always confining religious parties to the periphery of national politics. So where did the 84 percent figure come from? Part of the explanation may lie in the framing of the question. When asked if they want Sharia laws, most Muslims are expected to answer in the affirmative. It may be recalled that while deciding to exploit the public's religious sentiments in order to prolong his stay in power, a much hated military dictator, General Ziaul Haq, had held a referendum asking just one question of the voters ie, if they liked Islam. The answer had to be yes. And it was stretched to mean they wanted him to remain president. As the survey report notes, Muslims around the globe have differing understanding of what Sharia means in practice. There are as many versions of Sharia law as are sects. Also Muslim societies are not homogenous; local cultures have their own influence. Which is why the survey found that Muslims differed widely on such questions as whether polygamy, divorce and family planning are morally acceptable and whether daughters should be able to receive the same inheritance as sons. Pakistan, unlike certain nearby Muslim countries, is home to several different sects. Therefore, the constitutional proviso that no law would be repugnant to the spirit of Islam serves just fine. Overall, like most other Muslims surveyed, Pakistanis see no inherent tension between being religiously devout and living in a modern society. They have fought long and hard for democracy in the hope of building a just society where all communities and sections of society can live as equal citizens with equal opportunities for individual advancement and collective progress.

Balochistan under siege

BY:Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

The government admits that 18,000 persons were displaced from Dera Bugti. Such a large exodus results from the terror that military operations and presence create The headline, “Election security: Balochistan braces for surgical operation” in a national daily left me amazed at the deviousness media uses in its reporting of distressing events and issues to make them look completely innocuous, or even praiseworthy. The crafty employment of words and phrases is truly beguiling and lethally effective in constructing or deconstructing opinions and views about issues. These clichés deceive people into believing that the ‘establishment’ or institutions’ favoured narrative is the absolute truth. This deception is done with such dexterity and panache that readers have no idea that they have been duped and deprived of the truth; moreover, they find themselves applauding and cheering something that is patently obnoxious, brutal and destructive. The ease and frequency with which this trickery succeeds demands that people be informed and educated about this farce, otherwise, we will find people following these sophisticated pied pipers without ever understanding the fatal consequences that follow from blindly believing spurious and misleading ideas, policies and actions to be the truth. The usage of the words ‘surgical operation’ would make people believe that this destructive and devastating operation of repressing people militarily is more akin to the activities in operation theatres. It conjures images of anesthetists ensuring painless cuts with sutures, bandages and compulsory post-operative care. It presents something as brutal and horrifying as a military operation in a sanitised manner, thus neutralising the abhorrence that something so horrible would otherwise evoke. Needless to say, military operations are systematic, premeditated brutal actions aimed at guaranteeing elimination of those perceived as a danger to the establishment’s philosophy. Those affected by this surgical operation do not view it as benign and compassionate as the media and institutions would like to project and peddle it. Military operations epitomise terror for people who have seen the ravages and depredations of operations and incursions by the military and paramilitary during 64 years. The government admits that 18,000 persons were displaced from Dera Bugti. Such a large exodus results from the terror that military operations and presence create. Fear forces people to flee the dangers they face from those who view them as the enemy. The surgical operation report had stated that Home Secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani, while briefing a select-group of journalists said, “As many as 6,500 army soldiers, 17,000 FC men, 28,000 police and 15,000 Levies (tribal police) will be deployed in all 30 districts and 92 tehsils of Balochistan.” However, he did not mention how many local Tontons Macoutes that have terrorised the Baloch people for a decade now will be assisting the regular troops. He said that the ‘targeted operation’ was prompted by frequent complaints by the Balochistan National Party-Mengal, National Party, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Pakistan People’s Party and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam. Untarnished loyalty this. In a May 1 report, Durrani said the operation is being launched against the Balochistan Liberation Army, the Balochistan Republican Army, the Balochistan Liberation Front, the United Baloch Army and the Lashkar-e-Balochistan. Incidentally, no mention was made of the sectarian outfits responsible for carnages against the Hazara community in particular and Shias in general. Apparently, these sacrosanct outfits are beyond the ambit of the surgical operation, which is singularly directed against the Baloch nationalist forces and people. While claiming that district administrations had already identified the militants and their hideouts, Durrani made no bones about the intent behind the deployment, and with smug arrogance threatened: “Not a single militant will be spared by May 11.” He said arrests would be made and bullets would also be fired during the targeted action. This operation’s declared aim is to search for and kill all those fighting for their rights and resources and to suppress their supporters. Apparently, the establishment’s real aim is to kill as many Baloch as possible during this operation. A slow-motion genocide has for long been practised in Balochistan; I wonder how many of the Professor Gregory Stanton’s described eight stages — classification, symbolisation, dehumanisation, organisation, polarisation, preparation, extermination and, eventually, denial of genocide — have seen implementation. The Sarmachars in 11 districts will be targeted initially. Towns will be under curfew to deny them urban sanctuary; a news blackout is inevitable but news will filter out through the social media. Military patrols in perceived enemy territory are necessarily and naturally edgy. They see enemies everywhere and are trigger-happy. The wary and endangered people usually try to flee and this makes them even more suspect. A huge cultural and communication gap exist. Moreover, gun-wielding soldiers get offended at the slightest show of resentment. The disrespect for women and sanctity of homes during search operations occurs regularly. Even Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl’s Maulana Ghafoor Haideri said Frontier Corps personnel disgraced his family members, including women and children, during a raid on his house, prompt defiance and resistance leading to clashes. Palpable tension is pervasive even without overt resistance but if a patrol is attacked, as many will be, then the entire population in the vicinity is targeted as the enemy. The principle of collective retribution is a common response of armies whenever soldiers get killed. The My Lai, Haditha, Toota massacres were all outcomes of such confrontations. The establishment having failed to break the determination of the Baloch people with its continuing ‘dirty war’, Naseebullah Baloch’s body found in Surjani Town was of the 13th Baloch activist dumped in Karachi in two months. The new tactics now include a resort to overt military operation against the Baloch masses. Brute force is the establishment’s preferred option and it refuses to learn. Having failed in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it is now conducting a dirty war in Sindh. The bodies of Amir Khuhawar and Sajjad Markhand of Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaz abducted on April 24 from Larkana were found a few days later. From May 1 to May 15 Balochistan will officially be under siege to ensure that the new old players favouring the ‘establishment’ get a chance to share the pie, which till now was the sole preserve of the Raisani-led PPP coalition. These 15 days like the 72 hours of Tikka Khan during the 1973 operation will extend interminably. This operation will inescapably fail as have all preceding it because the sea (masses) in which the fish (Sarmachars) survive remains as committed as ever to fight against the injustices. This ‘destined to fail operation’ will only help sow more anger and resentment in the hearts of the Baloch already fed up of being dictated to and devastated by military operations for the last 64 years.

Satirical Song, a YouTube Hit, Challenges Extremism in Pakistan

A satirical song that takes a tongue-in-cheek swipe at religious extremism, militancy and contradictions in Pakistani society has become an instant hit here, drawing widespread attention as a rare voice of the country’s embattled liberals. The song, “Aalu Anday,” which means “Potatoes and Eggs,” comes from a group of three young men who call themselves Beygairat Brigade, or A Brigade Without Honor, openly mocking the military, religious conservatives, nationalist politicians and conspiracy theorists. Their YouTube video has been viewed more than 350,000 times since it was uploaded in mid-October. The song is getting glowing reviews in the news media here and is widely talked about — and shared — on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. The name of the band is itself a satire of Pakistan’s nationalists and conservatives, who are often described in the local news media as the Ghairat Brigade, or Honor Brigade. Local musicians have produced work in the past vilifying the West, especially the United States, but rarely do they ridicule the military or religious extremists, and none have had Beygairat Brigade’s kind of success. Sung in Punjabi, the language of the most populous and prosperous province, the song delivers biting commentary on the current socio-political milieu of the country, in which religious radicalism and militancy have steadily risen over the years and tolerance for religious minorities is waning. Just this year, a governor who opposed Pakistan’s contentious blasphemy law was killed by one of his guards. The assassin was then celebrated by many in the country, including lawyers who greeted him with rose petals and garlands. The song rues the fact that killers and religious extremists are hailed as heroes in Pakistan, while someone like Abdus Salam, the nation’s only Nobel Prize-winning scientist, is often ignored because he belonged to the minority Ahmadi sect. “Qadri is treated like a royal,” wonders the goofy-looking lead vocalist in the song, referring to Malik Mumtaz Qadri, the elite police guard who killed the governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, in January after he challenged the blasphemy law. Another line in the song, “where Ajmal Kasab is a hero,” makes a reference to the only surviving Pakistani gunman involved in the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. Still another line, “cleric tried to escape in a veil,” alludes to the head cleric of Islamabad’s Red Mosque — which was the target of a siege in 2007 by the Pakistani government against Islamic militants — who tried unsuccessfully to break the security cordon by wearing a veil. The song even makes fun of the powerful army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, for extending his role for another three years. Potatoes and eggs “never tasted so good,” wrote Fahd Husain in a commentary on Tuesday in The Daily Times, a newspaper based in Lahore. “They will always be credited for being politically incorrect when most needed, and giving voice to all those Pakistanis who live in fear.” The popularity of the song on the Internet has made it a sensation across the border in India as well, surprising the band members, who have been incessantly asked whether they feel they have put their lives in danger by ridiculing the mighty. There are certainly enough provocations to rile nationalists and conservatives. At one point in the music video, the lead singer holds a placard that reads, in English: “This video is sponsored by Zionists.” The band members chose to upload the song on YouTube instead of handing it to television networks because they said the work was too offbeat and might be censored. Not surprisingly, some have criticized the song and its taunts as pedestrian and in bad taste. “We were not expecting such a huge response,” said Ali Aftab Saeed, 27, the lead vocalist, who lives in Lahore, a city that is often considered the country’s cultural capital. He said the assassination of Mr. Taseer was the inspiration for the song and its lyrics. Resistance poetry and literature are not new to Pakistan, and they raised spirits during the somber years of military dictatorships. During the protest rallies of the seminal lawyers movement in 2007, when they led the campaign to oust the president, Pervez Musharraf, the lawyers would sing and dance to a poem written by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, considered a giant of Urdu literature. Habib Jalib, another famous Pakistani poet, wrote several poems against Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator in the 1980s. But “Jalib is irrelevant to the generation of urban, young, middle-class kids that Beygairat Brigade is addressing,” said Nadeem Farooq Paracha, a culture critic based in Karachi. “This band is offering an alternative narrative to the one this generation has grown up on, and provides a counternarrative to establishmentarian and conservative notions of politics, history and society advocated by televangelists, conspiracy theorists and, of course, the right-wing electronic media,” Mr. Paracha added. “And what better and more effective way to do this than by using satire and pop music.” The band members, on the other hand, have no pretensions of being revolutionaries, activists or intellectuals, though they do feel that the song represents those who do not believe in extremism and want to live peacefully. “At the end of the day,” said Mr. Saeed, the lead vocalist, “we are just musicians who raised some questions.”

Song Critical of Pakistani Generals Is Blocked Online, With No Official Explanation

By SALMAN MASOOD

A Pakistani band with a reputation for satirizing the country’s military may have finally gone too far. About two weeks ago, the band, Beygairat Brigade, released a song that criticizes generals even more directly than their previous offering, which became a viral video hit when it was released two years ago. But over the past 10 days, the videoof the song, “Dhinak Dhinak,” has been mysteriously blocked in Pakistan on Vimeo, a video-sharing Web site. The band released the song on Vimeo because YouTube has been banned in Pakistan since September, when a video insulting the Prophet Muhammad caused riots across the Muslim world. No official explanation has been given for the apparent ban on the video of the song, which critics have praised for its sharp humor. As band members sway and dance, they sing of “the generals” who carry out coups and proxy wars, their corruption (“When pockets are full, all the strings are theirs to pull”) and their ability to eliminate critics (“If it’s one of them you give a naughty look to, very soon you will disappear from view”). The lead singer, Ali Aftab Saeed, suspects that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority blocked the video after a nod from the military. “The song was not against the military,” Mr. Saeed insisted in an interview. “We have nothing against the military. We were discussing generals, including General Musharraf, who had imposed coups and were not held accountable.” He was speaking of the former Pakistani leader,Pervez Musharraf. Last month, Capital TV, a new news network, briefly was taken off the air after a guest on a talk show used abusive language toward the army chief, Gen.Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Khurram Mehran, spokesman for the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, denied that the government had blocked the video. “I am not aware of any directives to ban the video,” he said. Still, on Saturday, the video remained blocked on several Internet service providers in Pakistan. Some critics say the song is groundbreaking. “This is definitely something that was never done before,” said Nadeem Farooq Paracha, a culture critic and columnist. “They went a step further. It is a sarcastic take on the history of army’s role in politics and automatically stands out.” He said most of the satire in the country lampooned politicians but treated the military as a sacred cow. The military, once virtually immune to public criticism, has come under pressure from several sides in recent years. Some elements of the news media are increasingly critical, and the former military ruler, Mr. Musharraf, is facing several legal prosecutions that could result in jail time or even the death penalty, a predicament previously unimaginable. Recording and producing the song proved difficult, said Mr. Saeed, the singer. Several studio owners declined to record the song, deeming it too controversial. A studio owner who eventually agreed requested that his name not appear in the credits, Mr. Saeed said. Still, he said the apparent censorship of the song’s video caught him by surprise. The band’s earlier hit, “Aalu Anday,” had escaped that fate. He admits that the band was trying to “push a little, create more space,” but not to push too far. “I thought we had wittily discussed the issue,” he said. “We tried not to be offensive.”