W.H.O. Declares Global Emergency as Wuhan Coronavirus Spreads

By Austin Ramzy and Donald G. McNeil Jr.

The announcement came as nearly 8,000 cases have been reported worldwide, almost all of them in mainland China.

The World Health Organization declared on Thursday that the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak was a global health emergency, acknowledging that the disease now represents a risk beyond China, where it emerged last month.

The decision reversed the organization’s decision just a week ago to hold off such a declaration.

Since then, W.H.O. officials said, thousands of new cases in China and clear human-to-human transmission in several other countries — now including the United States — warranted a reconsideration of that decision by the agency’s expert committee.

The W.H.O.’s declaration — officially called a “public health emergency of international concern” — does not have the force of law. But it serves notice to all United Nations member states that the world’s top health advisory body thinks the situation is grave. Governments then make their own decisions about whether to close their borders, cancel flights, screen people arriving at airports or take other protective measures.

Declaring emergencies also adds urgency to any W.H.O. appeal for money. Thus far, that is hardly relevant: The countries most affected — China, Japan, Germany, South Korea, the United States and Vietnam — can afford to wage their own battles against the virus. By contrast, the Democratic Republic of Congo has needed large infusions of cash and medical expertise to fight an ongoing Ebola outbreak, and the need for money was one of the reasons the W.H.O. declared an international emergency in that case, even though Ebola has not spread outside of Congo except in a few patients who briefly entered Uganda.

Last week, the committee was divided. Declaring emergencies is always a hard decision, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director general, because closed borders and canceled flights lead to personal hardships for millions of healthy people near the epicenter and can cause massive economic disruption.

In the worst cases, supplies of food and medicine can run short and panic can spread, threatening to do more damage than the disease does.

The agency has lavishly praised China’s aggressive response to the virus.

China effectively isolated Hubei Province, stranding more than 30 million people, at the height of the New Year holidays — an act tantamount to quarantining the Midwest at Christmastime.

Dr. Tedros, who met with President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Tuesday, said Mr. Xi had led “a monumental national response,” and that he was “struck by the determination of Chinese leadership” and by how much Mr. Xi personally understood about the outbreak.

China said on Thursday that another 38 people had died from the disease, bringing the total to 170. Nearly 8,000 cases have been reported worldwide, almost all of them in mainland China.

On Thursday, Russia closed its 2,600-mile border with China and stopped all trains except for one between Moscow and Beijing.

Within China, some medical experts have questioned their country’s response, arguing that local officials could have put in place stricter travel restrictions before the virus spilled beyond the central city of Wuhan. The country has now confirmed cases in every province and region.

The W.H.O. has made such declarations just five times since its power to do so was established in 2005: for the pandemic influenza in 2009, a polio resurgence in 2014, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa that same year, the Zika virus outbreak in 2016 and an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo last year.

Dr. Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and one of the discoverers of the Ebola virus and the presence of AIDS in Africa, said he personally considered the outbreak an emergency and found the process flawed.

“It is time for the W.H.O. to change its all-or-nothing, binary approach to declaring a PHEIC,” he said, referring to the emergency declaration. “In every emergency, there is a spectrum of alert levels, rather than ‘PHEIC or not PHEIC.’”

Dr. Tedros said the same thing at a news conference on Wednesday, suggesting that the agency might want to go to a graduated green-yellow-red system.

Opinion: Surprise, Mr. President. John Bolton Has the Goods.

Who’s telling the truth about Ukraine? There’s one way to find out.

It’s just possible that common sense and reality have a shot at prying open the doors to the Senate chamber after all. After Republican senators claimed that it was perfectly reasonable to put a United States president on trial without hearing from any witnesses, a few of them are showing signs of recognizing that the truth matters. Or, at least, that the American people believe it does.

What’s changed? Shocking but not surprising revelations from John Bolton’s book manuscript, which The New York Times reported over the weekend, have made impossible to ignore what everyone has known for months: President Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine to benefit himself politically, and against the strenuous objections of his top aides and both parties in Congress.

On Monday morning, Mitt Romney, of Utah, said, “I think it’s increasingly likely that other Republicans will join those of us who think we should hear from John Bolton.”

It’s refreshing to hear those words. And yet the fact that such a statement is noteworthy at all tells you how far from responsible governance Republicans have strayed. They hold 53 seats in the Senate, and yet the nation is waiting on just four — four!— to do the right thing and agree to call Mr. Bolton, the former national security adviser, and other key witnesses to testify in Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial.

A far more representative attitude in the Republican caucus was expressed by Roy Blunt, of Missouri, who said on Monday, “Unless there’s a witness that’s going to change the outcome, I can’t imagine why we’d want to stretch this out for weeks and months.” With this tautology Senator Blunt gives away the game: All witness testimony to date — all presented as part of the House impeachment proceedings — has only strengthened the case against Mr. Trump, but Republicans will not vote to convict him under any circumstances. By definition, then, no witness in the Senate could possibly change the outcome.The reporting on Mr. Bolton’s manuscript, which is scheduled for publication in March, has scrambled that strategy. Mr. Bolton’s foreign-policy disagreements with Mr. Trump have been public knowledge for months. Last fall, Fiona Hill, a Russia expert and former Bolton aide, testified in the House that Mr. Bolton was alarmed by Mr. Trump’s aid-for-investigations scheme, which Mr. Bolton characterized as a “drug deal.”In the manuscript, detailed descriptions of which were leaked to The Times, he recounts nearly a dozen instances in which he and other top administration officials pleaded with Mr. Trump to release the aid, to no avail. He describes Mr. Trump’s fixation on conspiracy theories about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, and about the supposed corruption of Marie Yovanovitch, the American ambassador to Ukraine. He says that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted privately to him that he knew there was nothing to the theories regarding Ms. Yovanovitch, whom Mr. Trump fired last spring.

Mr. Bolton, a hard-line conservative with decades of service in Republican administrations, is no anti-Trump zealot, which makes his allegations against the president that much more devastating. And his decision to tell these stories publicly nearly certainly waives any claims of executive privilege Mr. Trump might try to assert over their communications.

Let’s not forget the newly revealed evidence that came to light on Saturday, in the form of a tape recording released by the lawyer for Lev Parnas, who had worked for Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, in the Ukraine scheme. Mr. Trump has denied even knowing Mr. Parnas, but on the tape the two men can be heard in conversation at a dinner in April 2018. “Get rid of her,” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Yovanovitch. “Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. O.K.? Do it.”

In a late-night tweet, Mr. Trump angrily denied Mr. Bolton’s allegations. “I NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens,” Mr. Trump wrote.

You know what would be a good way to figure out who’s telling the truth? Subpoena Mr. Bolton to testify under oath.

This isn’t a close call. A majority of Americans of all political stripes want to hear from Mr. Bolton, at the least. They believe, as do congressional Democrats, that you can’t vote on whether to remove a president from office without getting the fullest possible account of his alleged offenses.

But Senate Republicans have so far refused to hear from any witnesses or to demand any documents, following the lead of Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, who has never hesitated to undermine the country’s institutions if he thinks doing so will help his party. Mr. McConnell and nearly all in his caucus seem to imagine that if they block their eyes and ears and let their mouths run, the turbulence of impeachment will eventually pass.

This is a risky strategy. One reason good lawyers insist on deposing witnesses and subpoenaing documentary evidence is to avoid any unwelcome surprises at trial. Mr. Bolton has now provided the latest of those surprises. It is surely not the last. The most galling part is that Republicans have already admitted how bad the president’s behavior was. Back in September, Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican and one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest defenders, said: “What would’ve been wrong is if the president had suggested to the Ukrainian government that if you don’t do what I want you to do regarding the Bidens, we’re not going to give you the aid. That was the accusation; that did not remotely happen.”

Except that it did, as Mr. Bolton is apparently willing to say under oath. Republicans don’t want him to do that because they don’t want Americans to exercise the simple good judgment that Mr. Graham once did.

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#FreeManzoorPashteen - Mohsin Dawar speech in National Assembly today | 30 Jan 2020

#FreeManzoorPashteen - #Pakistan’s Crackdown on Pashtun Dissent Reflects Weakness, Not Strength

By Farahnaz Ispahani

The inability of the Pakistani state to stomach Pashtun dissent reflects internal fragility.

Pakistani authorities arrested the 28-year-old leader of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM, or the Movement for the Security of Pashtuns), Manzoor Pashteen, on Monday as part of their effort to clamp down on dissent. The Pakistani military has repeatedly accused the PTM of fomenting chaos along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan by demanding civil rights and accountability for the actions of troops ostensibly fighting terrorists in that region.

Instead of silencing the opposition, Pashteen’s arrest has unleashed a storm of criticism both instead and outside the country against Pakistan’s authoritarian drift. Authorities also arrested Mohsin Dawar, member of parliament from Waziristan, who had been released on bail last September after spending four months in prison.

There is no sign that the arrests will end the nonviolent PTM campaign, which has become the strongest challenge to the military’s political control of Pakistan after the mainstream opposition decided to acquiesce to military supremacy. If anything, Pashteen has now become a symbol of resistance to military dominance and the PTM is finding support outside its traditional base.

Pashteen’s arrest was quickly condemned by international human rights organizations as well as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his predecessor Hamid Karzai. Pakistan’s government reacted sharply to the Afghan statements, describing them as interference in Pakistan’s internal matters. Given the fact that ethnic Pashtuns straddle the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Pakistani officials are always sensitive to Afghans taking in interest in the lives of Pakistan’s Pashtuns, fearing irredentist or separatist demands.

The Pakistani establishment has always been fearful of ethnic politics, which challenges the establishment’s narrative of a religion-based Pakistani nationalism. But Pakistan’s ethnicities predate the idea of Pakistan and state brutality has not been enough to erase them. Although brutal suppression did not prevent erstwhile East Pakistan from becoming Bangladesh in 1971, the Pakistani military has yet to figure out how to run Pakistan as a multiethnic federation.

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The PTM has been careful not to question the idea of Pakistan while demanding that Pashtuns in Pakistan’s tribal areas be accorded all protections and rights enunciated in Pakistan’s constitution. The movement was born in reaction to years of war and destruction. It blames Pakistani authorities for supporting the Taliban, insists that such support be shut down, and calls for the end of military oppression in the areas where Pakistan says it is acting against terrorists and jihadis.

The PTM started out as a social movement around 2014 to raise awareness for the need to remove landmines in the tribal areas, which served as the staging area for the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The territory was also the stomping ground of the Afghan Taliban, backed by Pakistan’s military, and the various anti-Pakistan local militant factions that sprouted in the aftermath of 9/11.

The PTM started protests against enforced disappearances and government-backed violence at the beginning of 2018. Pashteen cast himself as heir to the nonviolent tradition of leaders like Martin Luther King and Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Bacha Khan), known popularly as the Frontier Gandhi. He tapped into the legacy among Pashtuns of Bacha Khan, whose Khudai Khidmatgars (Servants of God) had confronted the British from 1929 to 1947 and subsequently confronted Pakistan’s undemocratic regimes.

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As a movement, the PTM is organic, young, and consists of people who have seen the loss of so much life among their own that they know there is no room to abandon or soften the stand they have taken. It represents Pakistan’s young demographic profile. Pashteen is only 28 years old while the movement’s two members of the National Assembly are in their early 30s. Gulalai Ismail, a child rights activist also in her 30s, is the movement’s leading female face.

The PTM got a boost from sentiment among Pashtuns that they have suffered due to Pakistan’s erroneous policy, first of supporting the Taliban and then trying to control the border with Afghanistan through military air campaigns and ground operations. Hundreds of Pashtun civilians have been killed in the multiple wars beginning in 1979. The PTM has wrestled with the government over the fate of the disappeared and has sought “justice for their people in all areas.”

The PTM has continued to grow even though its activities, including rallies attended by tens of thousands, have been completely blocked on Pakistan’s media. Youthful PTM members have harnessed the power of social media in Pakistan to share videos of their activities, which now resonate far away from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. PTM has inspired civil and political groups fighting for their rights all over the country.

Pakistan’s military-led establishment has, over the years, mastered the art of dealing with dynastic mainstream political parties. The generals alternately allow these parties into government to share the fruit of patronage and accuse them of corruption, using the charges as leverage for subsequent deals on policy matters. But the PTM is a movement to be reckoned with because its leaders seem focused on issues and not self-aggrandizement.

Even after Pashteen’s arrest, it is unlikely that the PTM will weaken or wither away. Pakistan’s all-powerful military could keep Pakistan’s integrity as a state by allowing the people to voice their pain and complaints. But instead it has persisted with its old tactics in calling Pashteen a traitor. If it insists on killing, jailing, torturing, or exiling him, as has been the fate of past Pakistani dissidents, the PTM might offer a different response.

Like the nonviolent civil rights movements that it seeks to emulate, the PTM will likely weaken the status quo through attrition. The very fact that the authorities of a nuclear-weapons power cannot bear criticism from a 28-year-old, delivered at rallies in a relatively remote border region of Pakistan, points to the strength and power of Manzoor Pashteen and his PTM.

'Finally free': #AsiaBibi breaks silence after #Pakistani death row hell

Recounting the hellish conditions of eight years spent on death row on blasphemy charges but also the pain of exile, Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi has broken her silence to give her first personal insight into an ordeal that caused international outrage.

Bibi was sentenced to death on blasphemy charges by a Pakistani court in 2010 but then dramatically acquitted in 2018. She now lives in Canada at an undisclosed location.

French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet, who has co-written a book about her, was once based in the country where she led a support campaign for her.

She is the only reporter to have met Bibi during her stay in Canada.

In the book “Enfin libre!” (“Finally Free”) -- published in French on Wednesday with an English version due out in September—Bibi recounts her arrest, the conditions of prison, the relief of her release but also the difficulty of adjusting to a new life.

“You already know my story through the media,” she said in the book.

“But you are far from understanding my daily life in prison or my new life,” she said.

‘Depths of darkness’

“I became a prisoner of fanaticism,” she said. In prison, “tears were the only companions in the cell”.She described the horrendous conditions in squalid jails in Pakistan where she was kept chained and jeered at by other detainees.“My wrists are burning me, it is hard to breathe. My neck... is encased in an iron collar that the guard can tighten with a huge nut,” she wrote.

“A long chain drags along on the filthy ground. This connects my neck to the handcuffed hand who pulls me like a dog on a lead.

“Deep within me, a dull fear takes me towards the depths of darkness. A lacerating fear that will never leave me.”

Many other prisoners showed her no pity. “I am startled by the cry of a woman. ‘To death!’ The other women join in. ‘Hanged!’ Hanged!’.”

‘At what price?’

Blasphemy is an incendiary charge in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where even the whiff of an unsubstantiated allegation of insulting Islam can spark death at the hands of mobs.

Her acquittal on the charges, which stemmed from an incident in 2009 when she argued with a Muslim co-labourer, resulted in violent protests that paralysed the country, led by firebrand cleric, Khadim Hussain Rizvi.

Bibi, who vehemently denied the charges against her, argued in the book that the Christian minority in overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan still faces persecution.

“Even with my freedom, the climate (for Christians) does not seemed to have changed and Christians can expect all kinds of reprisals,” she said.

“They live with this sword of Damocles over their head.”

And while Canada gives her a safer and more certain future, Bibi also has to come to terms with likely never setting foot in her homeland again.

“In this unknown country, I am ready for a new departure, perhaps for a new life. But at what price?

“My heart broke when I had to leave without saying goodbye to my father or other members of the family.”

“Pakistan is my country. I love my country but I am in exile forever,” she said.

https://www.france24.com/en/20200129-finally-free-asia-bibi-breaks-silence-after-pakistani-death-row-hell

Modi critics decry India mistreating minorities but mustn’t whitewash Pakistan’s Islamisation

FARAHNAZ ISPAHANI

‘Muslims should go to Pakistan’ is not better than Modi’s ‘Hindus have no place in Pakistan’, and is unlikely to contribute to a better world. As India slides into what is widely seen as an anti-minority environment, many people, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have cited Pakistan’s poor record of protecting religious minorities as a defence, as if it somehow justifies exclusionary policies against India’s minorities.

Critics of the Modi government, on the other hand, have questioned the very notion that Pakistan may have driven out large numbers of Hindus and Sikhs to dilute the proportion of minorities in its population.

Both are wrong. ‘Muslims should go to Pakistan’ is not better than ‘Hindus have no place in Pakistan’, and is unlikely to contribute to a better world.

A slippery slope

Unmitigated repression in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state before it was made into two union territories, legitimately worries minority rights activists around the world. Federations do not suddenly deprive a constituting state of its statehood nor do democracies practice unlimited suspension of civil rights or detention of politicians.

When such a roll-back of democracy and federal rights takes place in a region where the national minority is the majority, it naturally raises questions about treatment of the minority.So, the world is sitting up to notice. Most recently, 626 of 751 members of the European Union (EU) have moved six resolutions against India’s actions in Kashmir and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.India’s new citizenship law also cannot be justified by the persecution of minorities in Pakistan. If the purpose of the law is to enable those persecuted for their religion in India’s neighbouring countries to become Indian citizens, a law enabling citizenship for all religiously persecuted refugees would have sufficed.

Listing religions whose followers would get protection, and excluding Muslims from that list clearly has a communal purpose.

Just because India is on a slippery slope in its treatment of minorities, with widely reported attacks on Muslims and Christians and legal manoeuvres to link citizenship with religion, there is also no reason to whitewash Pakistan’s poor record of protecting religious minorities.

No purity in the ‘pure’

If anything, Pakistan’s track record should serve as a cautionary tale for Indians who see current developments as anything less than the beginning of a process that just cannot end well.As the author of a book on the history of Pakistan’s religious minorities, let me state clearly that the real culprit in the widespread persecution of religious minorities in the case of Pakistan was the desire of some to create a purer Islamic state. Since purity is always relative, every step towards purification ends up demanding another. The goal should be a diverse and secular India, albeit with a Hindu majority, and diverse and secular Pakistan and Bangladesh, with Muslim majorities, living side by side on a subcontinent its peoples have shared for centuries.

The effect of Partition

Now, a word about recent suggestions that mistreatment of religious minorities, particularly the decline of minorities in Pakistan’s population after Partition, are somehow wrong or exaggerated.One article recently claimed that “there is no authentic and reliable official data on the religious composition of Pakistan’s population in 1947” before proceeding to question the data, which comes from my book Purifying the Land of the Pure.The fact remains that in the last census preceding the creation of Pakistan in 1947 –the 1941 census – non-Muslims comprised 20.5 per cent of the population in the geographical area that became West Pakistan. There were also 32.2 per cent non-Muslims in the districts that became East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Swapping or mass transfers of population were not envisaged in the partition scheme, and no mass movement of population occurred before 1947.

So, when the partition plan was announced in June 1947, non-Muslims were expected to constitute 27.3 per cent of the population of areas that were to become Pakistan.

In his 1948 academic essay ‘The Partition of India and the Prospects of Pakistan’, Australian geographer O.H.K. Spate used district-wise census data, coupled with growth estimates, to compute the numbers of Muslims and non-Muslims for each of the new dominions, India and Pakistan.

The demographics of West Pakistan changed completely within a few months of Partition. Ishtiaq Ahmed’s excellently researched book The Punjab: Bloodied, Partitioned, and Cleansed explains how riots and organised attacks resulted in Hindus and Sikhs leaving Pakistan’s portion of divided Punjab, followed by mass exodus and expulsion of Muslims from the Indian part.

In his 1949 article titled ‘India and Pakistan: The Demography of Partition’, American sociologist and demographer Kingsley Davis said: “In 1941 there were 94.5 million Muslims and 270.2 million Hindus in the subcontinent. The Muslims comprised 24.3 percent of the total population [of undivided India], and the Hindus 69.5 percent. No other religious group represented so much as 3.0 percent of the population. Since these proportions change very slowly, they effectively describe the situation existing on the eve of partition.”

Davis explained further that 76 Muslim majority districts were situated in two clusters, one in the northwest and one in the northeast, and it was the existence of these clusters embracing some 56 million Muslims that “made the establishment of Pakistan possible.”

But a major corollary of Partition was that “40 percent of all Muslims (38 million) lived outside of the two clusters of Muslim-dominated districts and these districts contained 20.2 million non-Muslims, representing more than one-fourth of their total population. These two facts indicate the great demographic obstacle to the establishment of Pakistan: clearly partition would create two minority problems where before there had been only one, notwithstanding the fact that in each case the minority would have a contiguous nation to speak for it”.

Davis estimated that some six million Muslims entered [West and East] Pakistan and about five million non-Muslims left it. “Approximately one million persons died in the process, from starvation, exhaustion, disease or violence,” he writes.

“While the mass migrations did not bring all of the Muslims into Pakistan nor take all of the non-Muslims out, they did alter the religious composition of the two countries,” Davis points out. “The estimated percentage of Muslim inhabitants in Pakistan territory rose from 77 in 1941 to 83 in 1949.” The new demographic reality was reflected in Pakistan’s 1951 census.

Not an example to follow

The creation of Bangladesh in 1971 reduced Pakistan’s non-Muslim population significantly but between 1947 and 1951, West Pakistan had already lost the bulk of its Hindus and Sikhs and accepted large numbers of Muslim migrants primarily from Indian Punjab. Non-Muslims went from being 20.5 per cent of the population of West Pakistan (today’s Pakistan) to around 3.5 per cent.

But extremists were not content with the reduction in Pakistan’s non-Muslim population. The Muslimisation of Pakistan was followed by Islamisation in stages. Once the number of Hindus and Sikhs had dwindled, hardliners turned on Ahmadis who consider themselves Muslims and had supported Partition actively. Later, it was the turn of Shia Muslims, whom extremist Sunnis want to exclude from the fold of Islam.

So, the case of Pakistan can’t be cited by India’s extremists to justify their desire to reduce the presence and freedoms of minorities. Nor should others try and deny the extent of the problem in Pakistan to advance the case for a pluralist India.

The depletion of Pakistan’s minorities post-Partition led to subsequent demands for Islamisation that have not brought peace and progress to Pakistan to this day. For its social peace and economic prosperity, India must not go down that path.

https://theprint.in/opinion/modi-critics-decry-india-mistreating-minorities-but-cant-whitewash-pak-islamisation/355536/

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#Pakistan - We Need Two Prime Ministers

Syed Aftab Hussain Hashmi

Just after 13 months when it came into being, Pakistan lost a leader who labored indefatigably and often single-handedly to have an independent state for the Muslims of Northwest India. The Quaid, the only leader who owned this country like one owns his/her private property left the world without leaving a coherent and unambiguous blueprint for what shape the newborn country’s constitutional, political, and economic systems would take. After him, this country saw no such a leader who owned this country albeit anyone that followed him came with a promise of change and with an apparent resolve of outperforming his/her predecessors. I said apparently as the results over the years show that few outdone their predecessors and some did but not in the intended direction. The latest change-maker to occupy the chair is Imran Khan.

Mr. Khan entered politics in 1996 when he witnessed the corruption of the ruling elite, their apathy to the issues ordinary people faced every day, the injustices that characterised the daily lives of a majority of his compatriots, the loot and plunder of the tax-payers’ money, and the legacy of the colonial institutions still intact. Hence he called his party a movement for justice in Pakistan—Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, a revisionist party that would dislodge the status-quo. Initially, a lone fighter in the world of Pakistani politics where intruders are usually unwelcome, he made his presence felt in 2011 when he addressed a huge gathering at Minar-e-Pakistan. Ever since then, in fact ever since he entered politics, whatever he said and whatever he promised resonated with every that Pakistani who wished his/her country to come out of this decades-old extractive system and experience a new beginning, a new reality, and a ‘new Pakistan.’ After 22 years of hectic struggle, his and his acolytes’ prayers were answered when he took oath as PM in August 2018. There were lofty promises made in the first address. We rejoiced; we were overjoyed and our hearts brimmed with pride to listen to him for Pakistan got an informed Prime Minister. Someone who understood the real issues such as water crisis, climate change, malnutrition, the value of education, the tragedy of injustice; someone who would invest in humans, would look after the poor of this country, would see to the making of the welfare state on the pattern of the State of Medina; someone who could read without paper, who would ensure the civilian supremacy and someone who would help navigate the foreign policy of this country when it was—and is—needed the most.

But that was not to be. It’s been 21 months and we have not seen—not even a modicum of—what he had promised us. True, they ask not to expect the results overnight since it’s a ‘mess’ of the past seventy years that needs to be cleaned up. The majority of this nation understands this. However, being a citizen of this country, I may well ask what about the 90 days which were promised to us? He had, time and again, solemnly declared that all it would take just ninety days to root out corruption from this country. We know that was a ‘political statement’ as our politicians are fond of calling such far-fetched claims ‘political statements’ when one reminds them of those. But we haven’t seen even the slightest movement towards the task. What about the task force on bringing the laundered money back? What about the across-the-board accountability which he had promised? ‘I will start with my own party’ were his words. The current spree that he so vociferously cash upon is anything but accountability. It is not only selective and one-sided but it is a farce and let that be called vengeance and nothing more than that. Simulate, if you could, in your mind what would have been the fate of the responsible machinery if Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit was sanctioned by the government of Shahbaz Shareef in Punjab, you’d see the one-sidedness of this whole exercise known as the promised accountability.

We were promised the rule of law. ‘Do nahi, aik Pakistan’ was the catchphrase employed to refer to a utopia where there will be equal law applied to all—poor and rich alike. But hearing the Spokesman of the PM Mr. Nadeem Afzal Chan, himself confessing that Atif, the son of Naqeebullah Mehsud, who was killed by Rao Anwar—the police officer, notorious for his encounters—won’t get justice in this system, broke us. Remember that this isn’t an ordinary analyst who opined in a TV show but someone who’s the official Spokesman of the highest authority in this country, throwing the arms before this system. Who and what is this system? As a common man, all we know is that if you are a murderer, you should be in jail serving your time. But here we see that someone who is accused of four hundred and forty-four murders roam free and is given VIP treatment. What an irony that the party was named as ‘Movement for Justice.’ The same goes for other cases such as the Salahuddin case, the Sahiwal incident, the Rahim Yar Khan Train incident, where the victims still await justice.

The latest report of Transparency International, although doesn’t measure actual corruption but is based on perceptions of how much the government is corrupt. First, perceptions are not always devoid of reasons. Secondly, it was these same perceptions-based reports that Mr. Khan would readily and frequently cite to indict the governments of PML(N) and PPP for being corrupt. Typically from atop the container, he would first introduce Transparency International and then list the reports to loud cheers from his supporters. But as it is said in Urdu, ‘aayena dikhaya tou bura man gay’—when the mirror was shown to them, they termed the report biased and based on ‘questionable’ data.

Not to mention good governance. In the times since these assemblies are formed, there have been few or no debates at all about the core policy matters in both the houses. Laws are passed through Ordinances as if it’s an autocracy and not a functioning democracy. Where is participation? Where is transparency? So much for the meritocracy and the conflict of interest—the two issues he mentioned in his inaugural address that he will take great care of while awarding ministries and other positions of responsibility. Quite a few questions can be asked here too especially about some of his Special Assistants. The claims of no nepotism here look hollow.

If you study him right from the start to a day before coming into power, he has, if not reneged on his promises, surely trampled on his own principles and performed far lower than his own standards he set for himself or for any other Prime Minister. How forcefully he was against giving extensions to individuals? And how forcefully he defended the extension later? Amidst all this, if he has not given up anything, it is his promises: Promises of good days where all will be well. This reminds me of a parable.

Once there was a singer with a mellifluous voice. The King of the day knew about him; he was invited asked to sing for the king. The singer kept on singing and the King promised rewards: silver, gold, diamonds, and other such precious commodities. He came happily and informed his wife that the King has promised him such and such rewards. The next day he went to the King’s court and asked for the redemption of rewards. “Which rewards?” King inquired. “Your Highness, yesterday when I sang, you promised me such rewards. I am here to take them,” the singer said. “No, there was no give-and-take in this. You pleased my eardrums with your voice; I made yours one with my words. That’s all,” the king replied. Seems the Prime Minister is pleasing our eardrums with his lyrical speeches.

To this, a friend playfully remarked that there should be two prime ministers in this country: One to talk only and one to do something. Mr. Khan is an ideal prime minister to talk about. There should be another one to act!

https://dailytimes.com.pk/548382/we-need-two-prime-ministers/

#RT #MUSTREAD - #Pakistan - Imran Khan: Notice Served, Eviction Remains Uncertain – Analysis

By Sushant Sareen

Pakistan’s ‘selected’ Prime Minister, Imran Khan, loves to live in a world of an alternate reality, which he conjures up in his own mind. By his own admission, he would rather not see or hear anything that shatters the delusions he harbors in his head. No surprise then that even when four out of five Pakistanis believe their country is headed in the wrong direction, Imran Khan is convinced that the country is headed in the right one. Since he was placed in the office of Prime Minister around eighteen months back, Imran Khan has presided over the most vindictive , vicious and vacuous government in Pakistan. The sense of drift in the affairs of state is overwhelming, and there is deep disquiet even among his sponsors – the Pakistan military establishment. After all, if you have a Prime Minister who thinks that the greatest economic achievement of any government is to maintain the Current Account Balance without bothering about either inflation, growth, galloping debt, or any other economic parameter, then you know how bad things are.

Because of the feckless governance and political mismanagement, even as Imran Khan strutted around in Davos hard-selling Pakistan as the next big thing in the global economy, back home, no one is quite buying his spiel. The new year has brought with it rumblings within the party and in the ‘establishment’, with the political air being thick with intimations of something-going-to-give-way-soon. No one is quite sure what is going to give, but there appears to be a consensus that business as usual is no longer a tenable proposition. For months now, there have been reports that the ‘selectors’ (read military establishment) are getting uneasy with the man they ‘selected’. Instead of heeding their ‘advice’ to fix things and make changes in the administration, Imran Khan has doubled down on the political non-entities he has picked to run the provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

For more than a year, the military has gone along, even propped up the Imran Khan regime. Without the support of the military, the flimsy majority the prime minister enjoys in the National Assembly (cobbled together by the military) would disappear very fast. One of the ‘iron laws’ of Pakistani politics is that if the military backs a government, then even a minority can be converted into a majority; but if the military opposes a government, even a 2/3rd majority can be converted into a minority. This support, which has kept Imran Khan ensconced in the PM house, is now appearing rattled. At the very least, the military is sending signals (or if you will, putting Imran Khan on notice) that he needs to shape up by making changes in the way things are being run, not just at the centre, but also in the provinces, particularly in Punjab.

The new year started with hectic political negotiations to get parliament to clear the law on giving an extension to the army chief. Ironically, what should have been a feather in the cap of the government, cementing its relations with the military, has turned out to be the biggest disrupter in Pakistani politics. The alacrity with which the two main opposition parties – PML-N and PPP – supported the army chief’s extension bill fuelled rumours of a deal between the ‘establishment’ and these parties, spooking the ruling PTI. Within days of the passing of the extension bill, the political churn started with both allies and disgruntled leaders making threatening noises.

The MQM was the first to quit the cabinet. While it did not withdraw support to the government, the act of leaving the cabinet set alarm bells ringing. After all, the new MQM, which has been bludgeoned into obedience by the military, just is not in a position to take such a big step without a nudge and wink from the real rulers of Pakistan. Even as the ruling party scrambled to woo the MQM back, another component of the ruling coalition – Grand Democratic Alliance, a motley crew of anti-PPP and pro-establishment politicians from Sindh – came up with their complaints. A third component – BNP-Mengal – has for long been threatening to withdraw the outside support it lends to the government as its demands were not being met. The BNP-M again came out with their litany of complaints.

But what really shook up the ruling party was when arguably its most important coalition partner – PMLQ – accused the PTI of violating the agreement on the basis of which it joined the coalition and gave an ultimatum to either deliver on the bargain or else the PMLQ would decide its next course of action. Without the PMLQ’s support, the PTI government in Punjab province will collapse, and will have trouble garnering a majority even in the National Assembly. Within days, the PTI leaned over backward to appease the PMLQ, and while it engaged the MQM, it has been unable to deliver on its demands because these demands on enforced disappearances of MQM workers and reopening its offices are in the hands of the military establishment.

Even as the allies were putting pressure, serious fissures erupted within the ranks of the PTI. One federal minister fired a missive to the Prime Minister questioning the functioning of the Punjab government; party MNAs from Karachi targeted a federal minister from the same city; in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa there was a virtual rebellion against the Chief Minister; in Punjab pressure started mounting to replace the sitting Chief Minister and in Balochistan the PTIs coalition partner also faced a rebellion by none other than the Speaker of the assembly.

The speed and the suddenness at which things were happening naturally raised serious questions on whether the system was on the verge of collapsing. At the very least, not just party leaders but also allies and opponents were sensing that the government was weak and vulnerable, that chinks had appeared in the armour of Imran Khan and his coterie, and so the time was ripe to make their moves and see how far they could push the envelope. However, there are also more ominous suggestions on what might be happening. Three of the four coalition allies – PMLQ, MQM and GDA – are quintessential lackeys of the military establishment. They would not dare to rattle the cage without a go-ahead from their controllers in Khakis. Therefore, if these parties were suddenly making threatening noises, then it had to be seen as a signal from the establishment to Imran Khan. In other words, the prime minister was being given a bit of a jolt to become organized and arrest the drift in governance and fix the administrative disarray that was becoming not only untenable, but also embarrassing for the military. The overtures by the military to the opposition – the spate of bails for incarcerated opposition politicians, permission to Nawaz Sharif to go abroad, easing up on the pressure on the two main opposition parties – is also being seen as the establishment weighing its options and preparing for Plan B if the current plan (Imran Khan) fails to deliver.

Despite the growing disquiet in the military, two things have worked in Imran’s favour so far. The first is Imran Khan’s anti-India, anti-Modi tirades endears him to the Pakistan ‘deep state’ like nothing else does. He knows this, and will continue to berate against India as part of his political survival strategy. The second thing that has worked is that there is still no clear candidate to replace Imran Khan either within the ruling party, or in the opposition. Even though the military is believed to be preparing for its Plan B, it doesn not seem to have a viable alternative, at least not anyone visible on the horizon. Many names are floating around, but none of them is acceptable just yet. They either do not have the stature, or they do not have the numbers or they do not entirely enjoy the trust of the deep state, and in many case none of the three attributes. While an in-house trick seems like the easiest thing to do, there is no one in PTI who can replace Imran Khan without splitting the party right down the middle. If push comes to shove, the ‘establishment’ could pick someone from either PTI or the opposition to do the job, but then the numbers game would demand support from the opposition. Essentially, that would mean some sort of national government, which sounds great in theory, but an unworkable proposition in practice.

Amid the Byzantine intrigues, Imran Khan is digging in his heels. He has already let it be known that he will not roll over and play dead and if things get out of hand. He will dissolve the National Assembly, a prospect that is unpalatable to most political players. What is more, he has tried to quell the rebellion in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by sacking three very powerful ministers. While this was a signal to both his party and his allies, he has doubled down on his support for the Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar and declared that there is no question of replacing him. According to Imran Khan, if Buzdar is replaced then it will lead to a game of musical chairs in all of the provinces, and that is just not acceptable. Nevertheless, this is not going to go down well with the ‘establishment’. While the military is unlikely to wield the guillotine immediately, it will probably have started to sharpen the knives. If the drift in governance is not arrested over the next few months, patience will run out, as will the lease of life given to the Imran Khan government.

https://www.eurasiareview.com/29012020-imran-khan-notice-served-eviction-remains-uncertain-analysis/

Arrest of Pashtun leader and need for new social contract

By IMAD ZAFAR

Anyone who takes the risk of challenging the policies of the deep state in Pakistan is destined to be called a traitor. The arrest of Manzoor Pashteen, the leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, is not a surprise. Pashteen was arrested in Peshawar on Monday and sent to prison on judicial remand for 14 days. The charge against him is sedition, and it has been stated in the First Investigation Report (FIR) that in a speech in Dera Ghazi Khan, Punjab province, on January 18 he threatened the state by saying he does not believe in the constitution of Pakistan.

This FIR itself is a mockery of the state and its brutal use of force and the judicial system to its advantage, as the constitution has been abrogated four times by military dictators but they never were sent to jail for not believing in the constitution and subverting it.

Pashteen’s arrest was always in the cards, but one wonders how the invisible forces can even think that by his arrest they will suppress the movement for Pashtun rights, or that he will change his views in prison.

So far we have seen that unlike the major political parties such as the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), which faltered when put to the test, the PTM has successfully stood up to the state without compromising. The demands of this ethnic-Pashtun movement are simple and in accordance with the constitution, calling for the arrest of “encounter specialist” Rao Anwar, asking the authorities not to adopt the policy of “good Taliban and bad Taliban,” and giving the people of the tribal areas equal economic opportunity.

Life for the less-developed areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan is entirely different from urban Pakistan, so naturally the youth of these areas when they protest for their rights are bitter and have a lack of trust in the state. The state needs to act, and it needs to make sure that the genuine concerns of the PTM are addressed, but it seems that the state has not learned the very basic lesson that it is its duty to be answerable to those citizens who have a sense of deprivation due to government policies.Arresting citizens who demand their rights and portraying them as traitors to the people of urban Pakistan who have no clue of what exactly is going on in the tribal belts of KP and Balochistan will only increase the divide within the masses. Unlike the other political movements like the PPP, which showed defiance against the dictatorship of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq but then returned to power after making a deal with the military establishment, and the recent U-turn by the PML-N from the politics of resistance to the politics of dealmaking, Pashteen and his movement have no compromise in their genes. This is mainly because the PTM is purely focused on the fundamental rights of Pashtuns and it demands that the state work under the ambit of the constitution. It has no objective to attain power, and that makes it entirely different from all the other major political parties. In fact, two of its prominent leaders, Ali Wazir and Mohsin Dawar, were also arrested last year but they faced up to the oppression and did not surrender.It it not rocket science that our government needs to understand the concept of democracy and the role of a modern and civilized state in the light of the 21st century. The colonial mindset of the era of British rule is outdated and won’t work any more.

The government needs to decide now whether it wants to remain an authoritarian state where the actual power lies with a group that is armed and uses accusations of treason to exploit the masses or whether it is ready to change this style of governing and let the masses take ownership of the state by freeing them from the fear of enforced disappearances, treason charges, and prison if they raise their voices for their fundamental rights.

If the state wants to continue its dogmatic approach and rule with fear and force, then the fate of traveling in blind circles will continue for Pakistan. However, if the state is ready to devise a new social contract with its citizens based on mutual respect and equal opportunities and status for every citizen, then the chances are that Pakistan can get out of this quagmire of self-inflicted problems.

For argument’s sake, let’s accept that the establishment’s charges are true and the PTM is being funded by external hands to destabilize the tribal belt in Pakistan. The question remains, what has the establishment done to stop young Pashtun minds from becoming tools of these alleged foreign elements? Is it not the duty of the establishment that indirectly rules the country to think of the tribal belt and Pashtun youth as collateral damage of the war in Afghanistan and to address their problems?

If the PTM is really funded by external hands and Manzoor Pashteen is a traitor, then why is the state afraid to start a dialogue with him in the presence of intellectuals and people from the media? If Pashteen is a traitor, he will have no ground to stand on.

But Pashteen is not ready to accept the hegemony of the military establishment in state affairs, and he is saying what even the likes of Nawaz Sharif, Asif Zardari and Asfandyar Ali Khan don’t dare to say. He is making his voice heard in every nook and corner of the country despite being banned from the mainstream media. The reason is that there are millions who are not Pashtuns but who like Pashteen and his supporters are unhappy over the role of the establishment in the affairs of state.

Only a meaningful dialogue can break the ice between the state and the PTM – and not only the PTM, but the state needs to start a dialogue with the masses through the intellectuals instead of the power-hungry political elite, as the current breed of politicians do not represent the true voices of the masses and are only interested in their own vested interests.

It is time for the state to start a dialogue with the youth of PTM, and the government institutions should work under the ambit of the constitution, as ruling with fear and by brainwashing the masses will only produce more slaves. And more and more youth deprived of the opportunities to live, to grow and to get equal opportunities will join movements like the PTM.

If the barrel of the gun could guarantee the future of a country, the Soviet Union could not have collapsed, and the debacle of East Pakistan could never have happened. It is a social contract that allows civic liberties, freedom and equal rights to the citizens that guarantee smooth sailing and the survival of a federation.

https://www.asiatimes.com/2020/01/opinion/arrest-of-pashtun-leader-and-need-for-new-social-contract/

United in Struggle: Social Revolution of the Pashtun Borderlands

By Laura Cesaretti

 There is a struggle that stretches from Afghanistan’s capital Kabul to the southern Pakistani city of Quetta. It is the struggle of the Pashtuns, the largest tribe of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s borderlands.

The area they live in is known as one of the world’s most unstable places, strategically important for the U.S.-led War on Terror. Since 2001, drones, military operations from Pakistani and Afghan government forces, CIA-led night raids, and forced disappearances have been part of Pashtuns’ daily life.

But in contrast to the perception of Pashtun elitism, especially in Afghanistan, the rural tribes of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region have been marginalized by their states, left to their destiny as collateral damage of the international War on Terror.

Global Attention

In 2018, Manzoor Pashteen, a 25-year-old Pakistani activist and founder of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), succeeded for the first time in getting global attention to this condition.

While Pashteen advocates for the protection of Pashtun’s human rights on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line – the disputed 1640-mile border between Afghanistan and Pakistan – his revolutionary words echo across the border, inspiring Pashtuns in both countries to speak out.

The red and black “Pashteen hat,” originally from Northern Afghanistan and worn by Pashteen at public rallies and protests, now covers the heads of youth across Kabul, Jalalabad, Kandahar, and many other Afghan cities. Videos of his speeches are saved in cell phones across the country.

The PTM leader moves elegantly, with gestures from the Islamic social etiquette. He dresses with the simplicity of a Pashtun man but speaks with the verve of a national hero. Pashteen’s public image has become powerful because he provides an alternative image of traditional Pashtun men and society; a representation Pashtuns believe finally does justice to the truth.

PTM’s Diversity and Pashtunwali

For long, Pashtun culture has been misrepresented by the media as radical, violent, and dominated by obtuse and ferocious men. The stories of the region’s women are rarely told, if not for tales of extreme deprivation. Pashtun women are usually portraited as unidentified walking burqas, also partially due to their refusal to be pictured.

But this doesn’t mean that what cannot be seen does not exist. Beyond the PTM’s outspoken Pashtun women, such as Wranga Lunri and Sanna Ejaz, there is a court of females struggling for their rights. Rather than being passive victims, these Pashtun women are an integral part of the ongoing waves of actions, the life and the soul of the Pashtun society.

Behroz Khan@KhanBehroz

Wranga Lunri, sister of the killed PTM activist, Arman Lunri, calls upon the Pashtuns to remain nonviolent & follow the instructions of PTM’s leadership. She says all those struggling for rights, are Arman Lunri to her. She is offering solace to the aggrieved activists. Bravo https://twitter.com/NasirYousafzai0/status/1091782419680763904 …

Nasir yousafzai@NasirYousafzai0

دنیا کی سب سے بہادر لڑکی جو اپنی بھای کی لاش پر بیٹھ کر پورے عزم و حوصلے سے بھای کے مشن کو آگے بڑھانے کی بات کر رہی ہے@a_siab @BushraGohar

Women participating in large crowds and at times even leading protests is indeed unusual for traditional Pashtuns. It breaks the social taboos of females appearing in public. The bravery of those who decide to come out has been received with both fascination and criticism.This is, however, also a sign of the diversity of the PTM. Islamists and secular nationalists have put differences aside and stand together against the injustice and pain they share. This newly awakening recalls the ancient unity of Pashtunwali, the Pashtun people’s traditional set of values and behavioral guidance.The Pashtun way of life, as the code is also known, is shaped throughout the history of an extreme egalitarian society, and melted easily with the form of Islam that characterized the region.Indeed, the Islamization policy that Pakistan’s military dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq enforced in the late 1970s significantly changed the social structure of the Pashtun lands. Zia-ul-Haq tried to implement an Islamic unity against the ethnic bond that unites Pashtuns. While he succeeded in transforming the local approach toward religion, the ties of the Pashtun tribes across the Durand Line remained strong.

Social Resistance Across Borders

Rather than a divide, the porous Afghan-Pakistani border is a space of interactions and exchanges. These territories are characterized by extreme mobility, with ties of love, economic support, and indeed a shared struggle against oppression. However, the motive driving Pashtun’s social resistance on the two sides of the border is different.

In Afghanistan, the struggle against injustice mainly comes from operations conducted by the U.S.-led coalition. Communities bound by centuries of tribal code lost trust among each other, and villages became coves of spies. People sold neighbors for revenge, and thousands of Pashtun men disappeared, were murdered, tortured, or send to secret prisons without trials.

The situation is different in Pakistan. The history of anti-colonialism enforced a strong and structured political consciousness that guided a struggle against both insurgency radicalism and state-imposed violence.

Pakistani material and financial support to Afghanistan’s Soviet resistance, and later the sheltering of the Taliban, forced the perception of local insurgencies as the right hand of the Pakistan establishment. Pakistan’s double agenda of both harboring terrorists and being an ally to Americans in the War on Terror exhausted particularly the Pashtuns of the tribal belt, the main social and economic victims of this unsuccessful strategy.

Now Pakistan’s government fears the current PMT-induced wave of protests among Pashtuns and sees it as a movement of independence that could trigger other minorities to speak out and threaten the nation-state.

The liberal and social circles of Kabul, on the other hand, support the movement in Pakistan with the hope to tactically revive the idea of Pashtunistan, the unification of the Pashtun homeland unjustly divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan by the British Indian government in 1893. Their feelings, however, are far from what has since 2011 moved gatherings within Pashtuns directed affected by the war.

United in Struggle

While Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan are driven by different forces, they are united in their struggle.

In Pakistan, the PTM refuses to react violently despite their leaders being arrested, brutally oppressed, and their demands publicly manipulated. The movement is aware of the power of Pakistan’s military state, and they boldly avoid entering their own martial realm by stressing their struggle is non-violent.

In contrast, the lack of a political structure in Afghanistan keeps the movement there on the edge of spontaneous violence guided by exhaustion rather than tactical aims.

In both cases, it seems that the ultimate aim is not to gain power within the state but to revitalize an idea of a geographical and political space that goes beyond the Westphalian concept of nation-states, and instead recalls the ancient nomadic tradition of the Pashtun lands.

It is in this that Pashtuns find their revolutionary power on both sides of the Durand Line. This social revolution is unique because it is fluid, crossing national borders, and moving a relentless flow of awakened consciences. It aims for the long haul, nothing else.

https://theglobepost.com/2020/01/23/pashtuns-afghanistan-pakistan/