Good riddance, Tony Blair – you’ve been tolerated as Middle East envoy for too long

By Francis Beckett

Blair’s stint as the Quartet’s representative has been a tragic waste, focused more on business than on peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

On 27 June 2007, Tony Blair stepped down as Britain’s prime minister and as an MP, and took up an appointment as Middle East envoy for the Quartet, a diplomatic group consisting of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia. Eight years on, it looks as though the US secretary of state, John Kerry, has pulled the plug on the mission – not a moment too soon.

For years, it’s been clear that Blair in the Middle East is at best a passenger and at worst a liability. The failure is a tragedy because although controversial among critics of Blair’s role in the Iraq war, his appointment didn’t have to play out the way it did. It looked at first like one of George W Bush’s better ideas. Who better to help bring peace to the Middle East than the man credited with achieving a settlement in Northern Ireland? Where would you find a better diplomatic big hitter to knock heads together? Bush drove the appointment – “the guy sacrificed his career for me” he is said to have told an aide.

And even though Russia agreed reluctantly, and the Palestinian Authority was not consulted, a determined effort by Blair would have brought them round quickly. Expectations were comfortingly low. No one expected him singlehandedly to bring peace to the region. Blair would have been forgiven a lot, in Britain, even in Palestine, if he had been seen to put his heart and soul into trying. But instead the Israelis have tolerated him because he has been so tame, and no other player has any time or respect for him.

How did it come to this?

The first reason is that his mandate has largely limited him to helping the Palestinian economy. His predecessor, James Wolfensohn, an Australian-born, former World Bank president, was limited by the same mandate, and that’s why he resigned. Wolfensohn shared the opinion of business people such as Lord (Clive) Hollick and informed journalists such as Le Monde’s Laurent Zecchini and Israeli affairs specialist Max Blumenthal: that progress in peace talks comes first, and only when they have delivered some sort of stability will private investment follow.

Palestinian negotiator Hanan Ashrawi told me: “Jim Wolfensohn resigned because he is a man of great principle and courage who did not want to be used. They had to find someone who would play the game, and Tony Blair accepted the role.”

Blair, in a private letter to Hillary Clinton in 2009, when she was US secretary of state, talked of using the role to achieve a “transformative change” agenda. But it turns out that transformative change was to be achieved by the project Blair worked hardest on in the Middle East: securing the Israeli release of electromagnetic frequencies for the commercial launch of the Palestinian mobile telephone operator, Wataniya.

Getting competition in the Palestinian mobile phone market may or may not have been key to transformation, but it indirectly benefits the bank JP Morgan, where Blair is a consultant and whose clients include investors in Wataniya.

The second reason for Blair’s failure is that he has simply not put in enough time and effort. He says he spends about a week a month in the region, but all of our sources – including diplomats and Middle East correspondents, who monitor his activities as closely as he will allow – tell us that this may be an over-generous estimate. They say that during his one week of every month, he arrives at his Jerusalem offices on Monday evening, and leaves on Thursday evening. Ashrawi told us: “He is very part-time. His presence is not intrusive. It does not feel like a week a month. He certainly doesn’t report to me once a month.”

While Blair is there, his engagements may be on Quartet business but at least some of them are with people who form the bedrock of his lucrative consultancy business, and there is no transparency about what is discussed.

And that brings us to the third problem: the conflict with his other interests. No one can be quite sure if the person attending meetings is there solely as the Quartet’s Middle East representative, or because he is also the patron and founder of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, or the principal of Tony Blair Associates, or indeed all of these distinguished gentlemen.

Very early on in his tenure, Blair went to a meeting with the emir of Kuwait, allegedly on Quartet business. Yet he was accompanied not by anybody from the well-staffed Quartet office but by his former Downing Street chief of staff Jonathan Powell, then a consultant with Tony Blair Associates. If anything to do with Middle East peace came out of the meeting, no one knows what it was; the emir eventually gave Blair a £27m consultancy contract.

Wolfensohn told us: “For Tony Blair to say ‘I would like to talk to you about the peace process’ is a very different entry point from saying ‘I would like to get an oil concession in the east of your country for a client, or I would like to become an adviser to your country’.”

The fourth reason for Blair’s failure is that he has not made sufficient attempts to get the Palestinians on board. Where he has stepped outside the mandate, it has been one-sided, in praise of Israel. His outspoken attacks on Islam, and his periodic calls for more war in the Middle East, are perhaps acceptable from a former prime minister with an involvement in faith debates and no current public responsibilities, but not from the Middle East envoy.

The letter to Hillary Clinton also shows that Blair could have moved into the political realm if he had wanted to, because in private he makes disparaging comments about the Palestinian security apparatus. Yet he has chosen not to do the one thing that Wolfensohn believed could make his mission mean something. No wonder exasperated members of the Palestinian Authority have called him “useless, useless, useless”.

Blair has lasted this long as the Quartet’s envoy only because the Israelis could be sure he would never bring them unwelcome news, and because he symbolised a comforting untruth to which American negotiators cling: that private-sector investment in Palestine can be used as a path to a two-state solution. The Quartet should now look for someone who will make peace their top priority.

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#NeverForget - Pakistan school terror survivors 'avenge' deaths by studying

https://news.tes.co.uk

By  R Vaughan

The survivors of the Pakistani school attacked by terrorists in December are responding their peers’ deaths by showing no fear and returning to study in school, according to one of the country’s UN youth advocates.

The students of the Public Army School in Peshawar, where 145 people were killed, including 132 pupils, last December wanted to show “solidarity” by working harder and eradicating terrorism through education, she added.

Anusheh Aziz, an 18-year-old school student in Lahore, Pakistan, who acts as a youth advocate for the UN, said the reaction from her peers was the “complete opposite” from what the terrorists had intended.

“You can see there is this renewed urge among young people to study more and to drive terrorism out with a proper education,” Ms Aziz said at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai on Sunday.

“That was the most positive thing that happened in the whole event and you feel this reflected by the actions of the students in Peshawar. In solidarity, they said they would use the same buildings [where the attacks took place]. They said we want to avenge this event by studying.”

According to research published by the University of Maryland in the US, Pakistan has suffered more attacks to its schools in the years between 1970 and 2013.

The most recent took place in December when seven extremists associated with the Taliban targeted the school in Peshawar in the north west of the country.

But the rise in attacks on schools in her country had not made Pakistan’s young people too afraid to attend lessons, Ms Aziz said.

“It renews this urgency within us to defeat terrorism,” she said. “To fight against it through education, specifically, because this is what they are afraid of. That the more enlightenment there will be in the country [then] people would not be indoctrinated.”

Gordon Brown, the former prime minister who now acts as the UN’s special envoy for education, has called for greater fortifications to be built into the country’s schools. But Ms Aziz disagreed.

“Personally, I don’t think having fortifications would make schools any safer,” she said. “You have to end terrorism. What happened in Peshawar was a security lapse, if you might call it that, so it can be a short term solution but we must work to a long term solution as well.”    

Pakistan - Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto condemns twin blasts near Lahore Church

ppppunjab.wordpress.com

Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has strongly condemned twin bomb blasts near a Church in Lahore resulting in loss of innocent human lives this morning.

In a press statement, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said terrorism of every kind has to be eliminated to secure the future of the country and its people adding such coward attacks would not deter the nation from its resolve to restore peace and tranquility.

He said from schools to hospitals, mosques to churches, bazaars to shopping centers, civilians and law enforcing agencies, the terrorists have been targeting every sign of human enlightenment.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari expressed sympathies with those who lost their loved ones in the Lahore blasts and urged best possible medical facilities to those injured.

Obama may not reduce troops in Afghanistan

By Jim Acosta

President Barack Obama is considering whether to scrap his drawdown plan to reduce U.S. forces in Afghanistan to 5,500 troops by the end of this year.

A senior administration official said Saturday this is at the request of new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The two leaders spoke earlier this week via video conference.

The official said no final decisions have been made.

"Presidents Obama and Ghani have had regular discussions on the security transition and peace and reconciliation processes in Afghanistan, as well as planning for President Ghani's upcoming visit to Washington," the administration official told CNN. "In the context of supporting Afghanistan's evolving national security strategy and associated opportunities, President Ghani has requested some flexibility in the troop drawdown timeline and base closure sequencing over the next two years and we are actively considering that request."

During a trip to Afghanistan last month, shortly after he took office, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he might advise Obama to consider slowing the drawdown of U.S. forces from Afghanistan -- partly because of better relations with the new Afghan government. Any review would be based on the reality on the ground.


There are about 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Report Says Kabul Used $5 Million In Foreign Aid To Pay Al-Qaeda Ransom

A report in the New York Times newspaper says Afghan officials gave $1 million from a secret CIA fund and $4 million from other countries to pay for a hostage to be freed in 2010.

The report says the payments were just part of a long list of examples of how poor oversight and loose financial controls led the United States to inadvertently finance the militants it is fighting.

Documentation of the ransom payment was included in correspondence between Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s general manager Atiyah Abd al-Rahman that has been submitted as evidence by federal prosecutors at the Brooklyn trial of Abid Naseer.

Naseer is a  Pakistani Al-Qaeda operative who was convicted this month of supporting terrorism and conspiring in to bomb a British shopping center.

The letters were unearthed from computer files and documents seized by U.S> Navy Seals during the 2011 raid that killed Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

It had been classified information until it was introduced as trial evidence.

UK AND US FLAWED ASSESSMENTS ON PAKISTAN’S STRATEGIC UTILITY – ANALYSIS

By Dr Subhash Kapila

The single-most striking feature of foreign policy formulations on South Asia of Britain and the United States are their flawed assessments on Pakistan’s strategic utility to their respective national security interests, singly and jointly.

Prevailing overwhelmingly in the strategic calculations of Britain and the United States centring on Pakistan are a number of flawed assessments that Pakistan is of great strategic value for the stability of South Asia and the region and that Pakistan is a reliable Western ally of long standing and strategic value in the furtherance of British and American security interests in South Asia and that Pakistan is an essential partner in combatting global terrorism.

Further, both Britain and the United States have bought the myth sold to them by successive Pakistan Army Chiefs that it is the Pakistan Army that shields the West from global terrorist outfits like the Al Qaeda earlier and now the ISIS as articulated by the present Pakistan Army Chief.

Flawed assessments of Pakistan’s strategic utility by Britain and the United States and imparting an over-sized strategic halo on Pakistan by both of them have encouraged Pakistan to box much above its strategic weight. Basking in this unwarranted strategic halo, Pakistan has pretentions of strategic equivalence with India, and hence its disruptive strategies in South Asia.

Pakistan as a dysfunctional and failing state stands reflected in many of the assessments of British and American intelligence agencies and in business risk-forecasting estimates. These estimates chiefly arise from the explosive mix of disruptive factors that characterise the Pakistan state in 2015. This explosive mix comprises political instability; constant spells of Pakistan Army rule; a Pakistan Army induced ‘garrison state’ and ‘siege mentality’; economic backwardness arising from disproportionate defence budgets dictated by the Pakistan Army; and, more significantly where nuclear weapons are bandied as ‘Islamic Nuclear Bombs’ combined with use of Islamic Jihadi terrorism as an instrument of state-policy; all of these threaten the stability of South Asia and contiguous regions.

Britain and the United States have no cogent reasons to offer to substantiate their strategic fixation that Pakistan is of great strategic value for the stability of South Asia. On the contrary, the historical record of the last over six decades of South Asia amply illustrate that South Asia would have been stable and secure but for the region-disruptive policies of Pakistan.

Strategically ironic is the fact that in British and American Pakistan-fixated policy formulations, there is a policy blindness and irresponsible obliviousness to the prevailing strategic and military delinquencies of Pakistan, the Pakistan Army and its notorious intelligence agency, the ISI engaged in fostering proxy wars on both flanks of Pakistan through its Jihadi militias and terrorist outfits. British and American Forces fighting in Afghanistan against global terrorism were at the receiving end of Pakistan’s strategic delinquencies and double-timing.

Moving to the second point of Pakistan’s strategic utility to Britain and the United States as a staunch Western ally of long-standing and which can be relied upon to further British and American strategic interests in South Asia and the region, again, their policy establishments need to refer to their respective intelligence agencies’ assessments on Pakistan.

In this regard, one would like to first dwell on Pakistan’s record of strategic utility to the United States as its major strategic patron and then dwell on Pakistan’s strategic utility to Britain as the latter flows from the former.

Pakistan has been a rental state of the United States and the Pakistan Army a rental army available for furtherance of United States policy formulations of tactical expediency in South Asia. To this end the Pakistan Army was collusive in drone strikes on its own people, when with its own intelligence agency could have neutralised the terrorist elements nurtured by it in its frontier regions, without massive collateral damage to the rest of the population.

Pakistan moved out of the American strategic-utility orbit soon after 1962 when it exchanged the United States for China as its main strategic partner and military mainstay.

Pakistan Army’s double-timing of the United States post-US intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 is well documented and too recent to be recounted. This Pakistani double-timing of the United States occurred despite large infusions of US military and financial aid by to Pakistan in the last fifteen years, not forgetting the earlier billions of aid pumped into Pakistan.

Moving to analysis of Britain’s flawed assessments on Pakistan’s strategic utility to Britain in South Asia and the region, let it be said without further analysis that Britain has no realistic strategic interests in South Asia which Pakistan can be used for furtherance of.

In my assessment, Britain’s strategic interests in South Asia get strait-jacketed into the loyal furtherance of United States strategic formulations on South Asia.

Britain does have legitimate political and economic interests in South Asia centring on the rise of India as an emerging power and the British imperatives to invest politically and economically in India’s potential and its strategically benign rise. In terms of South Asia it is India that is better placed strategically as opposed to Pakistan for Britain to carve a niche in South Asia.

However, for the furtherance of Britain’s above spelt strategic interests, Pakistan has no role to play. On the contrary, Pakistan-fixated British strategic formulations can not only distort British formulations in South Asia but also affect Indian public perceptions of Britain.

Britain’s chief interests in Pakistan arise from the British domestic politics factor where the nearly three million strong Muslim populations in Britain, predominantly from Pakistan, have emerged as a political factor in electoral politics in certain constituencies.

Going by recent reports on rise in Islamist tendencies in Britain and some terrorism attacks in the past, Britain should legitimately hope that Pakistan could be a strategic asset in calming the restlessness that seems to be shaping in the Muslim community in Britain.

In this direction, no evidence has emerged to suggest that Pakistan has contributed in any meaningful way to inject messages of reason and advice to the Muslim community in Britain that they should get assimilated as responsible citizens of the liberal British society. In that case Britain could have then considered Pakistan as a strategic asset to Britain. .

On a wider and higher strategic plane beyond the South Asian confines is the consideration as to what extent Pakistan as the staunch Western ally provided political and military support to British and American security interests and interventions in the Middle East? During the Gulf Wars when other Muslim nations were fighting along with the US-UK coalition in Iraq, where was Pakistan as the “Major Non-NATO Ally”?

Lastly, the myth bought by Britain and USA that the Pakistan Army stands as a wall protecting the West against global terrorist outfits like the Al Qaeda and the ISIS, let the facts available speak for themselves. The horrific 9/11 attacks on USA were conceived, financed and facilitated by Pakistan as per Western published sources. Osama bin Laden was ensconced in the heart of Pakistan Army’s most prominent garrison town for years until liquidated directly by US Special Forces actions.

Concluding, strong strategic imperatives exist contextually for the United States and Britain to revise their assessments of Pakistan’s strategic utility to their respective national security interests. Pakistan’s strategic utility is exclusively reserved for China and no amount of ‘strategic halos’ endowed on Pakistan by Britain and the United States will tempt Pakistan to wriggle out of China’s tight strategic embrace.

Pakistan - Fighting Terrorism on Social Media

By Mina Sohail

Pakistan is trying to combat terrorist organizations online, with mixed results.

Following the devastating attack on Peshawar’s Army Public School on December 16, 2014, where the Pakistan Taliban killed more than 130 children, military and political leaders formed a National Action Plan to counter terrorism. One point in the 20-point plan called for the formation of a committee to counter online terrorism, in a country estimated to have nearly 30 million Internet users.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has been taking action against pages on social media and online videos posted by terrorist groups. There are approximately 60 banned organizations in Pakistan, according to the National Internal Security Policy (NISP) document. Recently the federal government has been reluctant to confirm a reported ban on Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD), but news reports say that the ban is part of the National Action Plan. The Twitter account of JUD chief Hafiz Saeed was suspended two months ago but the organization’s website can still be accessed and Twitter accounts with his name still exist.  

According to Ahmed Rashid, author of several books on Pakistan and Afghanistan and veteran policy critic, questions the priorities. “Social media is a very big part of recruitment in the West. In Pakistan it helps produce a point of view amongst those on Twitter and other such sites but doesn’t have the power to recruit.” Rashid says that access to social media is limited in Pakistan, as opposed to more developed societies in Europe where there are huge online followings.

“Before we get on to internet and social media, what is needed is better state control of mosques and seminaries,” says Rashid. “The real danger in Pakistan is from mosques that continue to deliver Friday sermons calling for jihad and extermination of India and America.” Rashid adds that most Muslim countries have a centralized system where the sermon is drafted and regulated by the state, unlike in Pakistan where, he says, “We have a free-for-all system which is extremely dangerous. It is from here that most of the hate material, posted online, actually finds inspiration.”

Yet addressing the mosque is but a fraction of the overall picture. There are a total of 22,052 seminaries in Pakistan, 15,954 in Punjab, 4,264 in Sindh, 1,400 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 1,247 in Balochistan and 187 in Islamabad.

Rashid maintains that, “The government should bring seminaries under control. A large number are under the control of militant groups and their ideology and don’t serve as function of seminaries which is to produce religious scholars and not preach militants.”

The government’s campaign to register seminaries in the country and obtain data on their financial resources, teachers and students has met with strong resistance. In many seminaries, which are always affiliated with a mosque, a modern education is replaced with a questionable interpretation of religion that influences young minds. These seminaries then become fertile ground for terrorist recruitment.

Globally, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is strengthening its grip by recruiting online. “Look at our online numbers, this isn’t our main problem,” says Farieha Aziz, Director at Bolo Bhi, a Karachi based nonprofit geared towards digital security privacy.  “Blocking sites will not solve any problem as terrorists just recreate new accounts. This is just a face saving measure for the government.” Aziz emphasizes the need for a multi-dimensional approach to deal with social media. “The mechanism requires a lot of thought and we are not even talking about it.”

Aziz believes that the Pakistani government should be focused on disseminating a cogent counter narrative. It needs to come up with its own websites that explain a peaceful version of religion to provide a “soft” alternative to extremist views.

A recent news report in The Guardian says that the U.K. “is creating a special force of Facebook warriors, skilled in psychological operations and the use of social media to engage in unconventional warfare in the information age.” The Israeli and U.S. militaries already have similar teams. The Guardian continues: “Against a background of 24-hour news, smartphones, and social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, the new British brigade will attempt to control the narrative.  Soldiers with journalism skills and familiarity with social media are among those being sought.”

“Psychological-ops or unconventional warfare is fairly common now. But the danger of that is that it can be propagandist when it’s run by state institutions,” says Aziz. “For example, Israeli IDF has a Twitter account and uses it to valorize its soldiers or promote a particular view on the Gaza conflict. Then locally, DG ISPR also has a Twitter account.” Aziz adds that while this can be one way of putting information out there, or countering certain views you have identified, it is just one perspective. There may be others. “There aren’t just banned outfits but also people who may not be militants but they are either sympathetic towards them or subscribe to and promote their views. And this does need to be tackled and it can’t just be done by blocking. You block one page or account and another will be created almost immediately.”

Aziz says she feels the country is still figuring out how to respond to online extremism and needs to “sift through situations and come up with adequate, proportionate and effective responses.”

The Pakistani government has banned some websites but no concerted effort has been made to block all terrorist sites. The government has blocked access to YouTube and pornographic sites. It regularly shuts down websites run by the Tehriki-i-Taliban, which quickly reemerges with new ones. With YouTube and other blocked websites being used through proxies in Pakistan, blocking may seem useless, but Sagheer Wattoo, spokesman for the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, disagrees. Wattoo says that “deterrence is the best defense.” He adds that a local NGO filed a petition with the Islamabad High Court seeking to protect the rights of internet users. ”After the attacks, a change came in all of us,” he says. “If we do not even deter terrorists organizations from operating their sites online then things are likely to go haywire.”

However, experts say that an online government policy will be severely crippled without corresponding or supporting action in the offline world. Many mosques deliver inflammatory preaching and propagate extreme views, clerics breed sectarianism and fatwas are often issued against minority Shia. Part of the government’s strategy in countering terrorism is to take steps that show tangible progress. That means monitoring – if not completely ending – public sermons that spread hate and eventually find their way on social media in the form of brazen video messages and clips.

Lahore church attacks: A lesser story than Pakistan's cricket triumph

The day when Islamists attacked churches in Lahore, most Pakistanis were celebrating the national cricket team's win over Ireland. Such is the apathy of the common Pakistanis regarding the plight of minorities.

"These attacks happen every second day in Pakistan. There isn't much to celebrate in this country, so why shouldn't we revel in the victory of our cricket team in the World Cup?" Hammad Yusuf, a university student in Karachi, told DW.

Yusuf's sentiments are also reflected in the local media: There was scant coverage of the suicide bombings on two churches in Lahore's Youhanabad area on Sunday, March 15 while TV channels gave more airtime to Pakistan's qualification to the Cricket World Cup's quarter-finals in Australia-New Zealand. The cricket story also dominated social media as Pakistan's Facebook and Twitter users congratulated the national squad on its triumph over Ireland.

Living in fear

But for the Christian community in Pakistan, which forms 1.6 percent of the country's population, the persecution, massacres, and the legal and social discrimination in the Islamic Republic are never ending.

The twin bombings in Lahore, which killed 14 people and wounded over 50, are a routine affair in the predominantly Sunni nation. In September 2013, two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the courtyard of Peshawar's All Saints church, killing 82 people and leaving as many injured. The attack on the church in the northwestern Pakistani city is believed to be the deadliest ever against the Christian community.

The Christians in Pakistan live under constant fear

One of the most violent attacks on Christians and their places of worship in Pakistan was carried out in 2009 in the central Gojra town of the Punjab when Muslims burnt more than 70 Christian houses and many churches, killing seven people, after a rumor that the Koran had been desecrated.

The Christians in Pakistan live under constant fear of the blasphemy law. Rights activists, however, say the law is often implemented in cases which have little to do with blasphemy. They believe the blasphemy law is used to settle petty disputes and personal vendettas. Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis are often victimized as a result.

Experts say that Christians fear militants and common Pakistanis alike. The fact that most people did not unequivocally condemn the recent Lahore bombings and chose to revel in their cricket team's win was proof of anti-minority sentiment, some observers underline. "The days are gone when we said it was a small group of religious extremists, xenophobes, hate-mongers, and bigots who commit such crimes," Karachi-based journalist Mohsin Sayeed told DW. "Now the venom has spread to the whole of Pakistani society." He added that those who condemned such "barbaric crimes" were now a minority in the country.

Asad Butt of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) agrees: "Religious intolerance is definitely growing in Pakistan," Butt told DW.

Taking matters into their own hands

Some 5,000 Christians took to the streets in Lahore on Monday, March 16, and shouted anti-government slogans in a second day of protests against suicide bombings. The attacks also sparked mob violence with Christians smashing up cars and a bus station in a show of anger.

"We have taken to the streets to get justice, we want protection," 50-year-old protester Maqbool Bhatti told the news agency AFP. Bhatti, a government employee, said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government had failed to provide security to the country's Christians. "There was no proper security on Sunday, the government should protect all churches," he added.

Cricket: Opiate of the masses?

Samson Salamat, a Christian community leader, said the government must formulate a national plan to deal with the situation. He denied reports that Christians were involved in violent protests. "I fear that some people are trying to tarnish the image of our peaceful community. Christians in Pakistan have never taken the law into their hands," Salamat told DW correspondent, Tanvir Shahzad, in Lahore.

Zaeem Qadri, spokesman of the Punjab's provincial government, told DW that adequate security was provided to churches prior to the attacks. "It was an attack on Pakistan. It was a reaction against operation Zarb-e-Azb which the government has initiated against extremists. We will not let militants damage relations between Muslims and Christians," said Qadri.

Despite government assurances, Pakistani Christians say they have no faith in the authorities anymore. Christian volunteers have set up their own check points around Youhanabad and have cordoned off their places of worship in various parts of the eastern city ahead of funerals planned on Tuesday for those killed in Sunday's attacks.

On Monday, special prayers were held at churches across the country, as well as candle-light vigils by Christian groups and members of civil society.

"The state has no intention to protect the minorities and the majority Muslims are least bothered about their plight," said Waqas Ahmed, a civil society activist in Lahore. "Holding vigils is the least we can do for our Christian brothers and sisters."

Global Minorities Alliance condemns twin attacks on Pakistan Churches

Global Minorities Alliance  vehemently condemns the utter negligence of Government and its on-going blatant disregard of the protection of religious minorities in Pakistan, which is a cause of grave concern for people everywhere.

On Sunday March 15 2015, the peaceful worship of the largest Christian community in Punjab was disrupted by atrocious terrorist attacks. The Christian community of Youhanabad, Lahore​ had been the target of two suicide bombings in two churches which killed 15 people and left more than 70 injured.

GMA’s Chief Executive, Manassi Bernard commented: “Pakistan Government has failed on number of occassions to protect religious places inspite of consistent requests from local churches which, has contributed to these fresh violence and the irreplaceable loss of innocent lives.”

Mr Bernard further maintained that: “We can not imagine the trauma of families who lost their loved ones during the recent attack and we extend our condolence to the bereaved families.”
He further said: “It is the fundamental right of every citizen to protest when rights are suppressed but he further urged Christian community in Pakistan to protest without taking law in its own hand.”

Pakistan church bombing protests escalate, 10 more Christians killed

http://www.christiantoday.com/



Carey Lodge

A further 10 Christians have been killed in protests against Sunday's attacks on two churches in Lahore, Christian Today has learned, bringing the total death toll across the two days to more than 25.

Shamim Masih, chief reporter for the British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA), told Christian Today from Lahore that four Christians had been fatally shot by police and six more killed by Muslims who attacked those protesting in Yohanabad, south Lahore, today.

The Muslims were carrying sticks and beat the Christians with metal bars, he said. One woman also reportedly killed a man by running him over with her car, though it is not known whether the incident was deliberate.

Police intervened with tear gas, Masih said, but "the situation is getting worse and worse". Many Christians are now hiding in their homes behind locked doors, afraid of more attacks. Masih has done the same.

Others have continued to protest, and the demonstrations have spread throughout Pakistan. Masih said that reports of violence perpetrated by Christians today have been fabricated – they are not carrying any weapons, and overall are largely peaceful.

However, those protesting yesterday did turn to violence. Two suspects linked to the church attacks were lynched and their bodies burned. Christian Today was told that those killed were accomplices to one of the church suicide bombers. Protesters from the Christian community also blocked a nearby main road, many of them reportedly carrying clubs, car windows were allegedly smashed and a bus station was attacked.

Christians in Pakistan have been the subject of many attacks in recent years, the most violent of which was the Peshawar church bombing in September 2013 which caused 115 deaths. In the past, protests have usually been peaceful.

"They are angry," Masih said of those demonstrating over the past two days. "I can see the anger on their faces and the aggression as well, but they are helpless."

Chairman of the BPCA, Wilson Chowdhry, said that the organisation does not condone any violence and has called for a peaceful solution to the crisis. But for Pakistani Christians, this latest attack may have proved to be a step too far.

"There is a lot of hurt in the community, a lot of rage. They are still recovering from the incident in Peshawar," Chowdhry said. Christians in Lahore have been attacked before, and have reacted peacefully, but the city "has never seen that many victims before. [Militants] have burned homes but not taken lives, this time they took lives".

The frequency and intensity of attacks against Christians in Pakistan have increased in recent years, Chowdhry said. "Here we had two suicide bombers ready to attack not one, but two churches... the government does not provide the same protections to Christians as it does to other groups in Pakistan."

Sunday's bombings occurred minutes apart in Yohanabad, a majority Christian suburb of Lahore, just after worship services had taken place. St John's Catholic Church and Christ Church were targeted, with reports putting the death toll at 14, and nearly 80 wounded. The Pakistani Taliban splinter group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Masih said that 17 people were killed, and 82 injured. 35 remain in critical condition. Maryam Bibi, a parishioner at Christ Church, told him: "As soon as the service finished I could hear firing and asked my mother to stay seated at the front of the church. Soon after there was blast at the gate and pieces of flesh and blood had sprayed across all of those in the church.

"Everywhere I looked there was broken window panes, blood, and quite morbidly, shoes were scattered across the blast site."

Masih also said that the two police officials who were supposed to be protecting the churches and worshippers on Sunday were in fact sitting in their car watching the Pakistan-Ireland cricket match on their phones. "Instead of protecting the service they were watching the match," he said. It was the swift action of volunteer security officers Zahid Masih and Akash Bashir that prevented more lives being taken in the attacks.

Hate speeches are now being made from tannoys at mosques across Lahore, inciting Muslims to attack Christians, Chowdhry said. He warned that the situation is at risk of escalating much further.

"Christians are being blamed incorrectly during a relatively peaceful [protest] and we are concerned that the violence will escalate as local mosques are not being prevented from preaching hatred," Chowdhry said. "It is imperative that churches pray for the situation now. We need God's divine intervention if peace is to be restored any time soon."

The BPCA has launched an appeal for the victims of Sunday's attack. 

Pakistan's Christians Under Attack - Blood In Youhanabad

The enemy is organised, stealthy, and coordinated. There can be no forgetting this, as the Taliban threat inside Pakistan is downplayed beneath the bravado of government and army efforts to unite against militancy following the Dec. 16 attack in Peshawar. The enemy has not been weakened and sectarian attacks have remained constant in scale and frequency. Shias and those of the Christian faith have repeatedly been at the brunt of the killing. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its more powerful splinter groups remain as brazen as they ever were and the establishment has been at best, unable, or at worst, unwilling, to tackle the problem at the required level; a level that engages with the problem of intolerance, that washes out the narratives of hatred that fuel attacks such as the ones that took the lives of 15 church goers in Youhanabad at two separate locations. How did it happen? Were the two policemen guarding the churches intelligent security for a high risk minority area? How did two coordinated attacks occur when the enemy is apparently pushed against a corner by the load of textual nonsense that is the National Action Plan? Where are the results three months on, dozens of executions and hundreds of raids and arrests later? The country has sacrificed due process of law, and democracy has been put on the back burner, because a state of emergency has been declared and in a state of emergency, we are told, raising hue and cry over insignificant things like democratic rights and habeus corpus is akin to betraying the spirit of the times. However, the path of this government is just not comprehensive enough, or mature enough, to solve a complex problem, a historic web of deceit, lies and logistical inabilities.
Condemnation is not enough. Neither is puny financial compensation to aggrieved families. It is clear to see that the government can no longer buy the silence and compassion of the Christian community using stop gap measures, as the entire country broke out in violent protests following the attacks, with two suspected militants beaten to death and burnt in the streets by an angry mob. When the Chief Minister of the Punjab has been exposed in dirty deal-cutting with the enemy of the state, when law is de-prioritised and the rule of kings prevails, when every government narrative is smoke and mirrors to distract a distressed populace, when the military continues to be involved in dangerous double games, innocent people will play in blood. The brink seems near. Any more pushing might lead to complete collapse.

Pakistan - Attack on churches

THE suicide attacks against two churches in Lahore yesterday could have been just another gruesome incident in the long list of horrors that has been inflicted on this country in recent years.

The reaction by sections of the Christian community in Lahore and other cities of the country — with protesters taking to the streets and some turning to violence that resulted in two deaths — though suggests that the state’s halting response to the terrorism threat is leading to dangerous ruptures in society.

Know more: 15 killed in Taliban attack on Lahore churches

When non-Muslim and sectarian communities take to the streets in protest and turn to mob violence, it surely reflects the acute stress and intolerable strain that they are under. While all mob violence is deplorable, perhaps the lesson for the state here is that endless violence and horrors visited on a population lead to fear taking over and ugliness manifesting itself.

 The state and the security establishment in particular will likely point to the fact that the group which has claimed responsibility, the Jamaatul Ahrar, is under renewed pressure both inside Pakistan and in Afghanistan, at the urging of the state here.

The next phase of Operation Khyber-I does appear to place the militant group in the military’s crosshairs and the announcement of a re-merger between the TTP and the Jamaatul Ahrar over the weekend suggests that the groups are under significant pressure.

As in the past, when hard security targets become more difficult to attack and a militant group is in the throes of being significantly diminished, strikes on soft targets such as places of worship or markets have spikes.

Perhaps, then, that is what the latest attack in Lahore indicates: a desperate effort by the militants to try and stoke a societal backlash and in doing so put pressure on the state to curb its anti-militant operations.

 Even if that were the case, however, there are still some serious questions to be asked. Why, for example, has the production of suicide bombers reached the level where they can be dispatched seemingly to any part of the country on any given day by any one of several militant groups?

Given the young age of many of the bombers used in recent attacks, they have clearly not been indoctrinated in the distant past. So, how, why and where is this almost industrial-scale indoctrination programme continuing without the state being able to find and dismantle it?

Beyond that there is the question of the failure to deal with the more complicated, and even vexing, aspects of the National Action Plan.

Even the military appears to acknowledge that a militarised strategy cannot end militancy and terrorism, but there seems to be no real effort to try and think beyond military operations in Fata and counterterrorism operations in the cities. Will — can — that change?

Video Report - Pakistan: Christians protest after deadly blasts outside churches

Pakistan is a failing state and Christians are paying the ultimate price

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/



by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith

The latest bombings show the Pakistani state to be weak in the face of terror and that the Taliban is still very much in business.

Yet again, churches have been bombed in Pakistan, and though the Pope has spoken of his sadness at the event, on the whole it has passed most of the world by. There are several reasons for this, the most obvious of which is that this is the sort of story that we are accustomed to seeing come out of Pakistan. Fourteen people murdered, scores maimed in a sectarian bombing? In Pakistan that is not news, that is normal. Pakistan, people will say, is on the way to becoming a failed state. After all, if the state exists to protect its citizens, all of them, whatever their religion, the state of Pakistan is failing. Indeed it may have already failed, and our usual diagnosis of it being a failing state may well be hopelessly over-optimistic.

Quite a lot of people who know Pakistan – VS Naipaul comes to mind – see it as a failed state already, an experiment gone terribly wrong; I have heard this view too from several Indian friends of mine. What we see now, they think, is the grim reaping of what was sown when India was partitioned in 1947. They add that the Pakistani Christians are paying the price for not emigrating to India at Partition. The tragedy of modern Pakistan is compounded by the fact that the country has long been a British and American protégé, and a major aid recipient. Are we pouring all that money into the south Asian equivalent of Somalia?

If these bombing show up the Pakistani state as weak and defenceless in the face of terror, they also show us something else, namely that the Taliban has not gone out of business, but are very much still here. Perhaps the Taliban simply want to remind us that ISIS is not the only game in town. Perhaps this is their attempt to try and seize back the standard from the Caliph?

Something else is at work too. The Christians of Pakistan are a tiny minority, but at the same time they are, given the size of the population, quite numerous, estimated at 2.5 million. This makes them a visible minority, an easy target for bombers and of course, let us not forget,thanks to the blasphemy laws, the object of state-sponsored persecution.

One has to ask: why can’t an avowedly Muslim state, founded by Muslims for Muslims, simply leave its Christian population alone? One ought to remember too that Christianity predates Islam in south Asia by many centuries. What is the problem for the Muslims of Pakistan? Have they got a problem with the concept of tolerance?

Another awful fact is that there are several pro-Taliban groups active in Britain today and quite a few Taliban apologists; nor are the Taliban a small or isolated group. They are well funded, and have widespread support. They represent a significant strand of opinion in the Muslim world, inside Pakistan and outside it too. The usual platitudes are demonstrably false: this is the work of a small group who represent no one, blah blah blah. We need to take this seriously. After all the Taliban would blow up churches all over the world, if they could. They can’t, of course, but that should not make us complacent.