Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Balochistan: four Baloch youth whisked away from different areas
Pakistan security forces have abducted at least four Baloch youth in past weeks from Balochistan’s district Kech and Kharan.
According to details, on 22, June 2020, the state-sponsored death squads raided the house of Manzoor in Pedrark, district Kech and forcibly abducted his son Waqar Manzoor.
Separately, Pakistani forces abducted two Baloch youth from Lajje area of district Kharan and transferred them to an unknown location.
The victims have been named a Din Mohammad son of Kashmir Mohammad Hasani and Liaqat son of Wadera Mohammad Karim Sasoli.
Moreover, the family of another Baloch youth named Abdul Quddos informed media outlets that he was abducted on his way to Dasht from Turbat a week ago and has been missing since.
The families of the above-named men have appealed for their loved ones immediate and safe release.
It is pertinent to mention that Balochistan has been plagued with enforced-disappearances since early 2000 and Baloch pro-freedom political party claim that more than 40,000 Baloch men, women and children are currently in the custody of Pakistani forces.
The enforced-disappeared persons are also called ‘missing persons’ because even though they have been abducted by Pakistani forces, they kept incommunicado at secret places and have no access to any legal representation nor their families are allowed to visit them.
Baloch have long been urging the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other Humanitarian groups to take notice of Pakistani state atrocities, especially the enforced-disappearances, in Balochistan.
#Pakistan - #PPP - President Asif Ali Zardari asks workers to be united as good times ahead
Former President of Pakistan and President Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians Asif Ali Zardari has said that the people in federal government do not have the political realisation and further aggravate crises which the country is faced with. He said that a year ago he had warned of the locust problem but the people in federal government did not understand.
President Zardari said this while talking on phone to President PPP Punjab and General Secretary PPP Punjab Qamar Zaman Kaira and Chaudhry Manzoor respectively.
President Zardari said that despite two floods during PPP government (2008-2013) we did not let any food shortage in the country. Today food security is under real threat and the loss due to locust would last for many years to come.
Asif Ali Zardari discussed the current situation in the country and party issues in detail with the PPP Punjab. He asked jiyalas in Punjab to be united as the good times are not far. Talking to PPP Punjab leaders, he said that he does not fear the cases initiated against him whether old or new as he has faced them in courts before and will also face them now.
President Zardari warned the government of dangerous situation if it does not give relief to the people. The PPP supported labourers, growers and poor people of Pakistan during 2008 economic crisis in the world and brought the economy of the country back to progress with the support of labourers and growers.
President PPPP said that the federal government is weakening the provinces instead of making them strong. The PPP united the federation with the help of strong provinces by 18th amendment and the NFC further strengthened the federation. The current rulers neither believe in the constitution nor any federal principle. President Zardari said that he had apologised to Balochistan despite the fact that he had not done anything bad to them personally because he thought that it was his responsibility to bring back Balochistan back in the main stream. If Akhtar Mengal has some demands then we should consider them. Akhtar Mengal is in the Parliament. The PPP is ready to play its role in resolving Balochistan’s issues. We have only one condition that the Baloch should come back in the mainstream politics of the country and give up armed struggle.
President Zardari said that the state needs to be more careful now than before regarding Balochistan. God forbid, if Akbar Bugti like incident is repeated then it will be very difficult to control the situation, he said.
https://www.ppp.org.pk/2020/06/23/president-asif-ali-zardari-asks-workers-to-be-united-as-good-times-ahead/
President Zardari said this while talking on phone to President PPP Punjab and General Secretary PPP Punjab Qamar Zaman Kaira and Chaudhry Manzoor respectively.
President Zardari said that despite two floods during PPP government (2008-2013) we did not let any food shortage in the country. Today food security is under real threat and the loss due to locust would last for many years to come.
Asif Ali Zardari discussed the current situation in the country and party issues in detail with the PPP Punjab. He asked jiyalas in Punjab to be united as the good times are not far. Talking to PPP Punjab leaders, he said that he does not fear the cases initiated against him whether old or new as he has faced them in courts before and will also face them now.
President Zardari warned the government of dangerous situation if it does not give relief to the people. The PPP supported labourers, growers and poor people of Pakistan during 2008 economic crisis in the world and brought the economy of the country back to progress with the support of labourers and growers.
President PPPP said that the federal government is weakening the provinces instead of making them strong. The PPP united the federation with the help of strong provinces by 18th amendment and the NFC further strengthened the federation. The current rulers neither believe in the constitution nor any federal principle. President Zardari said that he had apologised to Balochistan despite the fact that he had not done anything bad to them personally because he thought that it was his responsibility to bring back Balochistan back in the main stream. If Akhtar Mengal has some demands then we should consider them. Akhtar Mengal is in the Parliament. The PPP is ready to play its role in resolving Balochistan’s issues. We have only one condition that the Baloch should come back in the mainstream politics of the country and give up armed struggle.
President Zardari said that the state needs to be more careful now than before regarding Balochistan. God forbid, if Akbar Bugti like incident is repeated then it will be very difficult to control the situation, he said.
https://www.ppp.org.pk/2020/06/23/president-asif-ali-zardari-asks-workers-to-be-united-as-good-times-ahead/
Pakistan's first Sheedi lawmaker targets 'scourge of racism'
Zofeen T. Ebrahim
“Being penalized for something that is beyond our control - our black skin - is a reality all Black people face every day in big and small measures in every country,” said Tanzeela Ume Habiba Qambrani, a member of the Sindh provincial legislature.“The majority brown skin community considers itself the white community of America and superior to us,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from the southern Badin district, where many Sheedis live.Many of Pakistan’s Sheedi people - whose numbers are unclear due to widely differing estimates - are descendants of East Africans who were brought to South Asia as slaves or soldiers by Arab traders.Qambrani, 41, who traces her own roots back to Tanzania, lodged a protest resolution in the provincial assembly against a “wave of racism”, condemning last month’s killing of Black American George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
“This House strives to nip the scourge of racism in the bud through this resolution and aims at seeing our society free of such inhuman tendencies,” her letter read.
Persistent negative stereotypes about the Sheedis in Pakistan limit the community’s educational and employment prospects, keeping many in poverty, Qambrani said.
“We are considered ‘jahil’ (ignorant) and ‘jungli’ (wild) and assumed to be involved in criminal activity. This stereotype has kept our community from progressing,” she said, and called for educational funds to be allocated for young Sheedis.
“Education is our way out of poverty,” she said, noting the prejudice that many young Sheedis face at school.
“Most young people from our community are bullied and ridiculed in school, not just by their peers, but teachers as well, who tell them they are good for nothing,” said Qambrani, daughter of a lawyer and a headteacher.
The mother-of-three said Sheedi women often face double discrimination due to South Asian beauty ideals that make it harder for them to find a spouse.
“The (Sheedi) men want to marry outside to dilute the skin tone of their offspring, leaving Sheedi women with no option as the wider Pakistani community is also looking for fairer skins for their spouses,” she said.
Qambrani’s appointment to the Sindh parliament in 2018, by Bilawal Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and son of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was hailed as a huge victory by Pakistan’s marginalised communities.Now a well-known voice for her community, Qambrani said for many years her comfortable middle-class upbringing had shielded her from deep-seated prejudice against Sheedi people.
“I lived in a bubble and never realized what all my community suffered,” she said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-race-sheedi-trfn/pakistans-first-sheedi-lawmaker-targets-scourge-of-racism-idUSKBN23U2VF
Pakistan Covid-19 doctors witness black market deals in blood plasma
Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Shah Meer Baloch
Patients are looking for a cure as the healthcare system is on brink of collapse, say doctors.
As coronavirus chaos has enveloped Pakistan, with hospitals overflowing, doctors dying and infections escalating at an unmanageable rate, a dangerous black market in blood plasma has emerged.
The blood plasma of recovered coronavirus patients is now being sold for upwards of £3,000 to those who are desperately looking for a cure, at a time when doctors say Pakistan’s healthcare system is on the brink of collapse.
Convalescent plasma is being trialled around the world as a possible treatment for the disease. It contains antibodies generated by the immune systems of people who have fought off the virus.
Doctors in government hospitals in Islamabad said they had witnessed transactions between patients and intermediaries. The Guardian has also seen multiple text messages between people across Pakistan who are buying and selling the plasma of recovered patients.
“The hospitals are not involved but I have seen deals happen in front of me,” said a doctor at a government hospital in Islamabad, who asked not to be named. “Usually a patient’s attendants or family will approach someone who has recovered, asking them to donate blood. When a certain amount is agreed as payment, usually between 200,000 and 800,000 rupees (£950-£3,800), they go to a private lab and extract the plasma, which is then ‘donated’ to the patients.”
He added: “I know a family of five who became Covid-19 positive and spent 3.5m rupees on blood plasma on the black market. They believe it’s a miracle cure.”
Sources at the federal investigation agency confirmed they were aware of the unregulated black market sales of blood plasma but that it was up to the police to investigate individual cases.
Doctors said that hospitals in Islamabad had also run out of vital drugs, such as dexamethasone which was recently proven to help in Covid-19 recovery, as well oxygen cylinders, because they had been stolen and were now being sold for 25 times the market price on the black market.
Pakistan now has one of the fastest infection rates in the world, with 185,000 confirmed cases and upwards of 5,000 new infections a day. The planning minister, Asad Umar, has said cases could multiply eightfold by the end of July and hit 1.2 million.
Lockdown restrictions were lifted in Pakistan on 18 May by the supreme court when it said the virus was “not a pandemic in Pakistan” and questioned why the fight to contain it was “swallowing so much money”.
The situation in Pakistan got so bad that the World Health Organization took the unusual step of writing to the government, instructing it to reimpose lockdown as the country had met none of the conditions for safely lifting it. Temporary lockdowns have since been imposed in the capital, Islamabad, as well as Lahore and Peshawar but only for a few days, owing to fears about the possible the impact on the already near-collapsed economy.
The despair among doctors is palpable. A doctor at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), the largest government hospital in Islamabad, said not only had he not been paid for four months, but rife misinformation meant doctors were being accused of being part of a conspiracy to allow patients to die, so more money would be given to the Pakistan government by international health organisations like the WHO. Many doctors had been physically assaulted as a result.
“We have run out of beds, resources, manpower, energy and above all our efficiency has been greatly marred by our disappointment in our system,” he said.
“People blame us when a patient dies, claiming that we killed them for dollars from the WHO. A woman spat on me in the emergency room when I couldn’t revive her 16-year-old boy who died of respiratory failure due to covid. She shouted, ‘You sold your soul and killed my boy.’ You cannot imagine the pain it caused.”
Dr Fazal Rabbi, registrar at the Covid-19 ICU in PIMS said the hospital had run out of beds in both the intensive care and isolation wards, meaning critical patients were being turned away.
“This is a very alarming and frustrating situation for us, we are depressed due to the excessive stress and because so many of us are falling ill from the virus,” said Rabbi, who is also president of the Young Doctors Association (YDA) in Islamabad. More than 170 doctors and nurses in PIMS have been infected with the virus and the YDA has threatened to strike if conditions are not improved.
“So far, there are more than 7,000 doctors and paramedics from all around Pakistan who are diagnosed with Covid-19. We are all concerned that if we get infected with the virus there might not even be a bed or ventilator for us in our own hospital. I know a doctor in Lahore who died because no bed could be found for him.”
Dr Faisal Zeeshan Ranjha, who runs Razia Shafi hospital in the Punjab city of Gujranwala, said: “Covid-19 was mishandled and underestimated by the authorities in Pakistan. There are 185,000 positive cases but the actual figure must be in the millions. Every third patient is having symptoms.” He said there was “no testing, no data and no plan. We don’t even know when the peak will hit.”
Ranjha confirmed that hospitals were running out of oxygen cylinders, oxygen refill equipment and monitors to measure oxygen levels in the blood because they were being stolen and sold on the black market. “The health system has collapsed, the economy has collapsed as well,” he said. “It will be worse for us than polio.”
Pakistan to Philippines, Covid surge is threatening poor nations exiting lockdown
K. OANH HA, CLAIRE JIAO and PAULINE BAX
Soaring unemployment and starvation are forcing countries to end their lockdowns before being able to stymie the virus-like Europe and China have managed.
Developing countries face an explosion in coronavirus infections as they exit lockdowns amid worsening outbreaks because the economic cost of remaining shuttered is too great.
From Pakistan to the Philippines, Brazil to South Africa, governments have been choosing to end orders confining people to their homes even as the global pandemic envelops the developing world. Researchers at the University of Michigan predict India’s infections could almost double from current levels to more than 750,000 by mid-July, while Brazil just hit 1 million cases — the second-highest tally globally – with more increases forecast for this month.
Soaring unemployment and even starvation are forcing many countries to end sometimes months-long lockdowns that largely failed to stymie the virus like they did in Europe and China. With a coronavirus vaccine still months — maybe even years — away, these escalating outbreaks risk fueling the wider pandemic just as richer countries start to open up their economies and nations including China and the U.S. see resurgences.
Policy makers in poorer countries are now left with few potent tools to combat a virus that has the potential to overwhelm their health-care systems. In many places, those systems remain fragile despite efforts to add hospital beds and testing facilities when citizens were compelled to stay at home.
“There’s a de-facto realization that we’re going to have to live with this virus at infection levels that up to this point had been seen as dangerous and unacceptable, and couple it with a different strategy,” said Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “The lockdown and social distancing practices don’t work or have limited utility in so many developing countries.”
With more than 2.3 million cases, the U.S. remains the nation with the world’s largest number of infections. But data compiled by Bloomberg show that the U.S. and U.K. now account for about 29% of global cases, down from 37% two months ago.
Meanwhile, Latin American and South Asia are emerging as hotspots. The 10 countries from those regions with the most number of infections accounted for 29% of infections globally as of Sunday. Two months ago, they comprised only 5% of the world’s cases.
In the U.S., some states have also come out of lockdown while the virus has been spreading, but the challenges of managing widespread shutdowns are particularly severe in poorer nations.In the Philippines, the experience of house cleaner Yolanda, who didn’t want to be publicly identified by her full name, shows why lockdowns weren’t as effective in halting the virus in developing countries. When the stay-at-home order came down in March, her husband, three children and five grandchildren all depended on her to put food on the table.Staying home would have put the entire family at risk of starvation. Yolanda said she applied for aid to a local government center, but even though her neighbors received packages of canned sardines, noodles and rice, she got none and was given no explanation.
“I can’t afford not to work,” said the 52-year-old, who is among the millions that make up the informal workforce in metropolitan Manila. “I couldn’t have stayed at home. Bills were mounting. We can’t rely on the government for aid.”
The government of President Rodrigo Duterte has allowed businesses and transportation to resume and eased other restrictions since June 1.
Since then, infections have surged. The University of the Philippines forecasts cases will rise 50% to top 40,000 by the end of June. While that is substantially lower than the hundreds of thousands in the U.S., Brazil and India, the increases are substantial for the Philippines which has a population of 108 million and has tested about 0.5% of its residents, based on estimates from its health department.
Shutting down businesses, telling people to stay at home and enforcing lockdowns helped prevent half a billion infections in China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France, and the U.S., according to a recent study published in the journal Nature. But such steps aren’t as effective in poorer countries because housing is typically much denser, a challenge to social distancing. Also, much more of their workforce are employed in informal labor, reliant on daily wages.
India imposed its lockdown almost three months ago, and some restrictions like bans on international flights remain in place. While the country has ramped up manufacturing of face masks, ventilators and testing kits, and sports stadiums and railway cars have been set up as isolation centers, it still may not be enough.
“The public and government almost had an expectation that the lockdown was going to eradicate the disease,” said Bhramar Mukherjee, an epidemiologist and biostatistics chair at Michigan University’s School of Public Health that’s part of the team modeling India’s epidemic. “It is becoming evident that the virus is not going away. This pandemic is like a wave and when one cascade of waves subside, others emerge.”
Mega-cities like New Delhi and Mumbai are already showing signs of being overwhelmed, with bodies piling up in hospital corridors and patients turned away for lack of beds. India currently has about 425,000 cases and 13,699 deaths, for a fatality rate of 3%. That compares to 5% in the U.S., which Indian officials say shows their approach is paying off.
India’s health ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment. But officials in India and Indonesia, which has the highest case tally in Southeast Asia, have said that people may have to learn to live with the virus. Countries like India and the Philippines are now relying on other tactics such as using lockdowns only in specific communities where the virus is spreading vociferously.
A study on São Paulo, home to about 45 million Brazilians, conducted by the Solidary Research Network, a group of researchers from institutions including Universidade de São Paulo, found that if the state had kept the same social distancing rules that were in place in May for another 30 days, deaths would have risen at a slower pace to about 14,600 by July 8.
But these restrictions — which included closing businesses, schools and many public places — were eased in June. The research group now estimates deaths could reach nearly 25,000 by July 8.
While Brazil did not have a nationwide lockdown, various states imposed restrictions on people’s movements and some have now begun to ease quarantine orders. But there are a confluence of factors working against countries like Brazil, beyond a president who has been criticized for dismissing the seriousness of the pandemic. In the slums of São Paulo and elsewhere, extended families share one-room shanties and social distancing is a nearly impossible task. Lack of reliable clean water and sanitation systems also allowed the virus to take root.
Estimates from PUC University in Rio de Janeiro show Brazil’s infections will likely surpass 1.4 million by late June, with more than 60,000 deaths.
“We have epidemics at different stages now depending on the location,” said epidemiologist Gulnar Azevedo e Silva of the Institute of Social Medicine at Rio de Janeiro State University. “We need to solve the problem of the first wave still.”
Emerging economies have already been among the hardest-hit from lockdowns, and worsening outbreaks could see further pressure on consumer spending and growth. The Philippines’ gross domestic product will likely contract as much as 3.4% this year, while India is facing its first economic contraction in 40 years.The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development sees Brazil’s GDP contracting 7.4% this year, though it could shrink by as much as 9.1% if there’s a resurgence of the virus as the country reopens, the OECD says.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the region is reeling from its first recession in 25 years, according to the World Bank.
Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal have all seen virus cases spike over the past month. South Africa has more than 101,000 confirmed coronavirus infections and 1,990 fatalities.South Africa’s government has also eased restrictions to salvage its economy. A court in the country also ruled that some lockdown regulations were unconstitutional. The case was filed by a human-rights group that said millions of already impoverished people were being deprived of an income by the curbs.
“Governments are faced with choosing between potential surges in infections and the potential starvation and deprivation of their population,” said Kobi Annan, an analyst at risk consultancy Songhai Advisory, based in Ghana and the U.K. “Longer-term lockdowns in developing countries are just not an option — we don’t have social safety nets.”- Bloomberg
https://theprint.in/world/pakistan-to-philippines-covid-surge-is-threatening-poor-nations-exiting-lockdown/446952/
Monday, June 22, 2020
U.S. Commission Recommends “Binding Agreement” to Protect Religious Minorities in Pakistan
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended a “binding agreement’ between the United States and Pakistan, with the goal of improving the treatment of Pakistan’s religious minorities.
Pakistan’s state religion is Islam and 97% of the population is Muslim. Laws against blasphemy in Pakistan have led to both attacks and death sentences for members of Pakistan’s religious minority communities. Extrajudicial killings of at least 65 victims accused of blasphemy have also been reported from Pakistan.
Pakistan have been designated as a “Country of Particular Concern” by the U.S. State Department since 2018 for ongoing abuses of religious freedom. The blasphemy laws, introduced in the 1980s, are frequently abused to settle personal scores or to persecute religious minorities.
A recent USCIRF report recommended eliminating the practice of listing a person’s religion on their identification cards which have led to strong discrimination against Christians and other religious minorities. Also, USCIRF urged Pakistan to expedite the review of all blasphemy cases and enforce proper handling of blasphemy accusations. USCIRF went on to call for the humane treatment of those accused of blasphemy and the removal of materials from educational curricula that denigrate religious minorities.
Religious leaders in the country have repeatedly spoken out against the country’s treatment of minorities and have signed a joint resolution urging the Pakistani government to adopt policies to protect religious minorities from persecution.
Pakistan’s ‘Occupied Balochistan’
By Kunwar Khuldune Shahid
Drawing parallels with Bosnia, Palestine, and Kashmir, the Balochistan National Party chief accused the state of colonizing the region.In a scathing speech in the National Assembly on Wednesday, Balochistan National Party (BNP-M) Chief Akhtar Mengal asked that the province that he represents be declared “occupied Balochistan” if the state wants to continue its abuses in what is currently a “no-go area” spearheaded by “death squads.”
Announcing his party’s departure from the federal government coalition led by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Mengal underlined that the currently ruling party is the latest in a long list of culprits to have backtracked on its vows for Balochistan since 1948.
Without naming the military, Mengal castigated the crackdown in Balochistan, and the growing number of missing persons, which has reduced the locals to mere “bloody civilians.” Drawing parallels with Bosnia, Palestine, and Kashmir, the BNP chief accused the state of colonizing Balochistan, rendering the blood of the Baloch “less worthy than tomatoes.”
“You can think about Kashmir when you get it, what you have in hand is slipping away,” Mengal said, alluding to the separatist movement in Balochistan.
Mengal’s speech came during National Assembly deliberations on the federal budget, which saw Balochistan’s provincial share slashed in the National Finance Commission transfer.
Balochistan’s seven-decade-old grievances with Pakistan range from being denied a fair share in the province’s own resources to a continuum of military operations. Baloch nationalists maintain that the province was militarily usurped in March 1948, against the will of the locals. The growing ethno-nationalism in Balochistan saw insurgencies in the late 1950s and 1960s.
The 1973–1977 conflict, launched under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, reaffirmed control over the province’s riches, and reinstated centralized political control in the aftermath of the separation of East Pakistan in 1971 – which, like Balochistan, saw an ethno-separatist movement against misappropriation of resources and military occupation.
The ongoing dirty war in Balochistan exploded following the turn of the century under Pakistan’s military ruler Pervez Musharraf, with the 2006 killing of nationalist leader Akbar Bugti sparking the most gruesome wave of Baloch insurgency.
Over the past decade and a half, thousands of Balochs have gone missing, if not tens of thousands. The exact numbers are unknown owing to complete control over information exercised by the state.
On Saturday, two senior journalists became the latest to go missing in Balochistan. In April, the dead body of Sajid Hussain Baloch, editor-in-chief of Balochistan Times, was found near Uppsala, Sweden, with Reporters Without Borders (RSF) maintaining that his death could be linked to his work.
Between 2007 and 2015, 29 journalists were killed in Balochistan. Meanwhile, the mainstream media is only allowed to run the military’s press releases as part of its coverage on Balochistan.
As a result, one story that wasn’t covered last week was that of a Baloch woman, a mother of three, who killed herself after giving up on the protracted fight to find her missing brother.Similarly, many other families – most of them unheard and unseen – await the return of their loved ones, dead or alive. The state, however, continues to either deny the existence of many missing persons, or lumps them in an undefined category of “terrorists.”Mama Qadeer, the activist who initiated Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) and launched a 2,800 kilometer march from Quetta to Islamabad five years ago, leads regular protests in front of the local press club. Qadeer says that at least 47,000 Balochs have gone missing since 2000, the figure also quoted by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in its latest report.Parallel to the military abuses, resulting in the growing number of missing persons, is the center’s unabated stranglehold over Balochistan’s resources. This is exemplified by the Balochistan town Sui, which has supplied gas to the entire country over the decades, but is still not getting any of the daily 800 million standard cubic feet of natural gas that it produces.
Balochistan, which still supplies almost a quarter of Pakistan’s total gas, this year faced the worst gas shortfall in history amid plummeting winter temperatures. After decades of the center’s control over their gas, the Baloch now have similar apprehensions vis-à-vis the Reko Diq gold and copper reserves.
After long having raised alarm bells over “Punjabi” hegemony, Baloch nationalists are deeming the growing influence of Beijing in the area as bona fide “Chinese colonization.”
With Beijing calling the shots on the much touted $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the nationalists maintain that one occupier is being replaced with another looking to exploit Balochistan’s rich resources and its geopolitical significance. The deep-water port at Gwadar holds the geostrategic key to CPEC, connecting Eurasia, South East Asia, South Asia, and Africa with the much peddled Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
It is poetic injustice that CPEC is wrapped around a corridor of estrangement that connects Xinjiang and Balochistan. To the native populations, CPEC might as well be a multibillion-dollar graveyard for the aspirations of the two subjugated territories.Baloch nationalists are now issuing stern warnings over growing Chinese influence in Balochistan. Local militant outfits like the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) are targeting Chinese consulates and luxurious hotels in Gwadar.Instead of managing to curb the growing Baloch militancy, which has also targeted civilians, the Pakistan Army has long used Balochistan’s volatility to serve its strategic interests, with the large swathes of uninhabited land bordering Afghanistan and Iran providing havens to many jihadist groups. It is similar to the military’s duplicitous security policies in the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on the Afghan border.The military has also historically kept check on Baloch separatists by deploying groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which have now overlapped with the Islamic State’s (IS) South Asia factions. The LeJ and IS, meanwhile, have collaborated to devastate the religious minorities in Balochistan, especially the local Shia Hazara and Christian populations.
In his meeting with the Hazara protestors in 2018, Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa conceded that sections within the military have collaborated with jihadist outfits in Balochistan in the past, owing to a “mindset that has existed” for decades.
As far as Balochistan is concerned, the colonialist mindset of the military, and its selected band of politicians, remains well and truly there. And now with Baloch insurgency intensifying in recent weeks, and echoes of “occupied Balochistan” resonating in the National Assembly, Islamabad and Beijing have to consider giving locals due right to their own resources – or spend a significant chunk of Balochistan’s riches just on continuing the military occupation.
https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/pakistans-occupied-balochistan/
India-Pakistan Balakot tensions were never really a crisis ‘in substance’: Ex-US NSA Bolton
NAYANIMA BASU
John Bolton’s memoir ‘The Room Where It Happened’, which releases Tuesday, recounts incidents of 26 February 2019, when President Trump was in Vietnam to meet Kim Jong-un.Tensions between India and Pakistan peaked in February 2019 after the Balakot airstrikes. However, former US National Security Advisor John Bolton has written in his tell-all memoir, The Room Where It Happened, that the tensions “never really had been” a crisis “in substance”, though his country chose not to ignore it.
The Indian Air Force conducted the airstrikes on Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camps in Balakot, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in the early hours of 26 February. This was India’s retaliation to the killing of 40 CRPF personnel 12 days earlier in a suicide attack in Pulwama, Jammu, and Kashmir.
Trump & officials were in Vietnam
Bolton’s memoir, which will be released Tuesday, states that US President Donald Trump was engrossed in dealing with North Korean supremo Kim Jong-un on that day. Trump and his senior officials were touring Vietnam at the time for a summit meeting with Kim, their second after a bilateral meeting in Singapore in 2018.
According to Bolton, it was “the big day”, and the meeting was aimed at launching diplomatic talks between Trump and Kim in an effort to deter North Korea away from its secret nuclear and missiles program.
“I thought that was it for the evening, but word soon came that Shanahan (Patrick Shanahan, then Acting Secretary of Defense) and Dunford (Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) wanted to talk to (Mike) Pompeo (US Secretary of State) and me about a ballooning crisis between India and Pakistan,” Bolton writes.
“After hours of phone calls, the crisis passed, perhaps because, in substance, there never really had been one,” he stresses.
“But when two nuclear powers spin up their military capabilities, it is best not to ignore it. No one else cared at the time, but the point was clear to me: This was what happened when people didn’t take nuclear proliferation from the likes of Iran and North Korea seriously,” he says.
Trump said Modi ‘will be OK’ while cutting Iran oil
In his scathing memoir, Bolton, who was fired by Trump as the US NSA on 10 September 2019, also talks about how some US bureaucrats were in favour of extending India a “waiver”, so that it could import oil from Iran, on which the Trump administration had imposed stringent economic sanctions.
“(State Department) bureaucrats found endless reasons to extend the other waivers, as ‘clientitis’ took hold. ‘But India is so important’, or ‘Japan is so important’, said officials, arguing the interests of ‘their’ countries rather than the US interests at stake,” Bolton writes.
“One of the worst cases involved India, which, like the others, was buying Iranian oil at prices well below the global market because Iran was so desperate to make sales,” he says, adding that India “complained” about being disadvantaged not only because of having to find new suppliers, but also because the new sources would insist on prevailing market prices.
“India’s making this argument was understandable, but it was incomprehensible that US bureaucrats echoed it sympathetically,” he writes.
Bolton goes on to describe a phone call between Trump and Pompeo where they were discussing asking India to bring its oil imports from Iran down to zero.
“In a phone call with Pompeo, Trump had not been sympathetic to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying, ‘He’ll be okay’,” the former US NSA writes.
India completely stopped importing oil from Iran in May last year under US pressure.
Bolton also adds in his memoir that Trump was concerned over news reports emanating from India that New Delhi was planning to buy S-400 air-defense systems from Russia over America’s Patriot defense systems.
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Trump Poses ‘Danger for the Republic’ if Re-elected, John Bolton Charges
President Trump poses a “danger for the republic” and would be an even greater threat if he wins a second term this fall because he would be unconstrained by future electoral considerations, John R. Bolton, his former national security adviser, said in an interview aired on Sunday night.The president’s former national security adviser, in a TV interview, called the November election the “last guardrail” against a second term in which “there’s no telling what will happen.”
In one of the most scathing public assessments of a sitting president by such a high-ranking former aide in modern times, Mr. Bolton depicted Mr. Trump as an “erratic and impulsive” leader who cares only about his own needs, does not fully understand democracy or the Constitution, is played “like a fiddle” by Russia and is not “fit for office.”“The concern I have, speaking as a conservative Republican, is that once the election is over, if the president wins, the political constraint is gone,” Mr. Bolton told Martha Raddatz of ABC News in his first television interview publicizing his memoir of 17 months as Mr. Trump’s top security adviser. “And because he has no philosophical grounding, there’s no telling what will happen in a second term.”
Mr. Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened,” has become the talk of Washington even before its scheduled publication on Tuesday. The Trump administration went to court to try to block its publication, only to be rejected by a federal judge, and the president has been railing about what he considers Mr. Bolton’s betrayal. But the beginning of the book tour means that Mr. Trump will be confronted with the portrait laid out in the volume for days or weeks to come.
Mr. Bolton, a veteran of three previous Republican administrations, says in the book that the House should have investigated Mr. Trump for impeachment not just for his Ukraine scheme but for his willingness to intervene in criminal investigations on behalf of dictators and otherwise seeking foreign help for his re-election campaign.
In the interview with ABC, he went even further by accusing Mr. Trump of lying when the president denied linking American security aid to his demand that Ukraine incriminate his Democratic political rivals, and Mr. Bolton dismissed the White House defense at the Senate impeachment trial as “utter nonsense.”
Rather than being deterred by the impeachment trial, he added, Mr. Trump became emboldened by his acquittal by the Senate almost entirely along party lines. “He didn’t learn lessons from it, other than that he could get away with it, which leaves only the last guardrail — is the election this November,” Mr. Bolton said.
But even as Mr. Bolton said Mr. Trump had adopted “obstruction of justice as a way of life,” as he put it in the book, House Democrats on Sunday eschewed interest in opening new impeachment proceedings against him. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said it would be a waste of time because Senate Republicans were too “corrupt” to consider Mr. Bolton’s statements.
“The Senate Republicans were not interested in any evidence,” the chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, said on the CNN program “State of the Union.” “They were corrupt in that respect.”
The book’s revelations have been met with frustration from Capitol Hill Democrats, who were angry that the former national security adviser waited until the release of his book — for which he was reportedly paid $2 million — to accuse Mr. Trump of misdeeds that went far beyond those for which he was impeached. At the same time, Republicans dismissed the book as either false or motivated by money.
After Mr. Nadler’s appearance on CNN, Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump’s trade adviser, appeared on the program and disputed several claims in Mr. Bolton’s book. He also said the former national security adviser should be prosecuted.“That guy should be turning in his seersucker suit for an orange jumpsuit,” Mr. Navarro said. “John Bolton has put highly classified information sprinkled throughout a very large book. I predict this: He will not only not get the profits from that book, but he risks a jail sentence.”Democratic leaders expressed some interest on Sunday in calling Mr. Bolton to testify before Congress. Mr. Nadler at first said he was “not interested” in hearing from Mr. Bolton, but later said his committee “may” call him to hear more about allegations that Mr. Trump considered interfering in an investigation of a state-owned Turkish bank.“The president has done a lot of impeachable things, including what Bolton’s talking about,” Mr. Nadler said. “But we have an election coming up. We know the Republicans in the Senate will not entertain an impeachment in any event. That would at this point be a waste of time and effort.”
Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and leader of the House managers who prosecuted the president during the Senate trial, accused Mr. Bolton of “cowardice” and “greed” but said that he, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others in leadership would consider their next steps. “We do need, I think, to expose the length and breadth of this president’s depravity and how much it is endangering the country,” Mr. Schiff said on the NBC program “Meet the Press.” “Those facts are going to need to come out.”
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, another of the impeachment managers, also criticized Mr. Bolton for refusing to testify in the House’s impeachment inquiry.“He is a political opportunist and a profiteer — he had the opportunity to step forward,” Mr. Jeffries said on the ABC program “This Week.” “And he declined.”Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, said on Sunday that Mr. Bolton should have testified under oath in the House’s impeachment inquiry of the president, so that he could have been cross-examined on the explosive details of his memoir.
“I do wish Mr. Bolton would have come into the House, under oath, and testified,” Mr. Scott said on “This Week.” “We would have more information about fact patterns that he suggests are true.”
Mr. Scott, however, was one of the Senate Republicans who voted against calling Mr. Bolton as a witness in the Senate trial. Mr. Bolton did not testify during House proceedings, saying he would wait to see how a judge ruled on White House objections. When the Senate took up the case, Mr. Bolton volunteered to testify if subpoenaed, but Senate Republicans blocked him and any other witnesses.On ABC, Mr. Bolton defended himself, saying House Democrats mishandled the inquiry by moving too fast and focusing too narrowly on Ukraine, turning the issue into a “partisan catfight.”
“The House Democrats built a cliff, they threw themselves off it and halfway down they looked up and saw me and said, ‘Hey, why don’t you come along?’” Mr. Bolton said.
But while he said his testimony would not have made a difference in the outcome, he essentially confirmed the main elements of the Democrats’ case, saying that Mr. Trump explicitly linked the security aid to his demand that Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats. Asked if Mr. Trump was lying when he denied such a linkage, Mr. Bolton said: “Yes, he is. And it’s not the first time either.”
Mr. Bolton said other officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Attorney General William P. Barr all understood what the president was really doing with Ukraine. And he said the defense team’s assertion that Mr. Trump was only concerned about corruption in Ukraine was ludicrous.
“He wanted a probe of Joe Biden in exchange for delivering the security assistance that was part of the congressional legislation that had been passed several years before,” Mr. Bolton said. “So that in his mind, he was bargaining to get the investigation, using the resources of the federal government, which I found very disturbing, and I found it using national security to advance his own political position.”
Mr. Bolton said he considered Mr. Biden unacceptable and would write in “a conservative Republican” in November but made clear he hoped Mr. Trump would lose. Asked how history will remember Mr. Trump, he said: “I hope it will remember him as a one-term president who didn’t plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can’t recall from. We can get over one term.” He added, “Two terms I’m more troubled about.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/us/bolton-trump.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
#BenazirBhutto - The way BB was, The Boss is gone | By Murtaza Solangi
By: Murtaza Solangi
She would have been 67 this year if her glorious life was not put to an abrupt end. We lost her twelve years ago.As my country floats in the historical arena like a ship in high waters with a lost compass and no captain, we think of her how she would have led us today.
We think of her as a leader, stateswoman, mother, wife, sister, and a human being.
I bumped into her first in a diplomatic reception in Karachi in 1991 as a young diplomatic correspondent. She was darling of the media. Everybody will be eyes and ears when she entered the events. Zia Ispahani used to be her diplomatic liaison then.
One day in 1992, as I entered Reporters’ Room of daily, The News International, at the fifth floor, a letter from her awaited me. It was about “Suicide Wave in Sindh”, a cover story for the WE magazine of The News, edited by late Najma Sadique. The story was about a dozen educated young men of her home province Sindh who had committed suicide due to joblessness. She had waved the magazine on the National Assembly floor urging the government to look into the problem. The letter thanked me for bringing up the issue to the fore and telling me that Nisar Khuhro will be in touch with me about the story. This was my first formal introduction to the first Muslim and the first woman Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Next year she would be the Prime Minister again.
I met her after many years in Washington D.C during Musharraf government when she was in exile again. She would come every year to US, meet people at the Hill, think tanks, journalists, visit media houses, and her party supporter. She would visit VOA every year when she would come to the US. That is where we met out of the country as I worked there.
After 9/11, the security got really tightened in the US. One day, as I entered the Cohen Building where VOA is housed, I saw her entering the security gate. She was asked to put her things including her handbag in the tray. Finally she had to take her shoes off and put them in the tray as well. She walked barefooted through the gate without a grin on her face. I was hit a by a storm of conflicting feelings. Till day, I can’t figure out what went through me. However, I did convey my protest to VOA authorities NOT to treat her like that in future.
She would keep me posted about her major engagements, as I would interview her more often just like Nawaz Sharif who was living in Jeddah then. She told me in early January of 2006 that by the month end she would be in DC. I and Farah Ispahani, who used to head VOA Urdu TV, suggested it to her to have a major press conference at VOA involving not only 44 languages it broadcasts but also inviting major US and international media outlets to cover it. The date was fixed. Thursday, January 26, 2006. David Jackson, the then VOA Director was in the loop and everybody was excited for a major event.
Then out of the blue, Shaukat Aziz, the then Prime Minister of Gen Musharraf visits US and meets President Bush on Tuesday January 24. All hell breaks loose. The State Department put a tremendous pressure on VOA to cancel Benazir Bhutto’s event scheduled two days later. The rationale was that it would send conflicting signals to Pakistan government that two days after the Prime Minister visits White House, VOA was inviting Benazir Bhutto who would blast the Pakistan government on more than one issues including harbouring terrorism and getting paid for it by Washington. Pakistan Embassy too was putting pressure via the State Deptt. David Jackson stood the ground and didn’t cancel the event. Benazir Bhutto later in her email told me that she really thought that the VOA might cancel the event but they did not. The compromise decision at VOA happened to be that she would not be received by Director Jackson but by the head of the Urdu Service Dr. Brian Silver.
Few days prior to her visit to the event we organized, a story was doing rounds that her marriage was on the rocks and she and Asif Zardari were living separate lives.
Interpol was pressured by Musharraf govt to issue Red Notices to her and Asif Zardari. Washington was rife with rumours that she might be arrested as she lands for the press conference. Journalists we had invited, kept calling me asking if she would really show up. She is more familiar with handcuffs than the bangles she wears, I told an anxious journo, the day before the event.
Thursday afternoon on January 26, Cohen Building opened its Independence Avenue gates after a long time, a practice reserved only for the heads of states and very very high profile visitors. As her car pulled up and the doors were opened, she and Asif Zardari alighted from the car. Holding hands, they walked into the building.
We had put just one chair on the podium for her but she insisted a second chair for Asif Zardari. We had to scramble in the last minute to put another chair for him. Only then she would address the presser blasting Musharraf regime about Interpol notices. “ Show me the court that wants me in Pakistan, I will catch the next flight and be there”, she roared from the podium while taking questions from the international media. They way she brought Asif Zardari into the limelight rejecting the rumours was novel and powerful.
Although I and Asif Zardari hail from the same area of Sindh but we never met till 2006 when she brought him to VOA after she introduced me to him. I will call him on his New York Cell number or he would call me. We would barely talk politics. Mostly we would talk about poetry and music, specially Sindhi poetry and music. There is a lot of propaganda that he would be disrespectful of BB but mine observation was on the opposite. When BB would be in New York, he would always say, “Boss is in town!” Who commanded whom too has been talked about a lot but two encounters, explained later in this piece would direct the readers as to who was really the Incharge.
People usually talk about her great father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his photogenic memory but Benazir probably inherited that from her dad too. In my years at VOA, hardly there was a month that she would not be interviewed. One day in her interview that was to be aired later, she was too harsh against Iftikhar Chaudhry. An hour later, her staffer Mr. Narejo called from Dubai and said BB wants to talk to you. “ Answering your question number 7, I was too harsh about Iftikhar Chaudhry. Can you please edit it out?”, that was Benazir.
In the summer of 2006, I went to her New York apartment where Asif Zardari resided. It was a hot afternoon. The lights were on and the interview progressed. In the middle of the interview as she finished answering one of my questions, she said, “ Can you please turn off the camera?” I thought she was annoyed by any of my questions but she said she would be right back.
She just moved to a side, pulled her cell phone and called a doctor, giving the doctor the details about Aseefa who needed some treatment. After a few minutes conversation she was back in the interview mode. “ I had told the doctor that I will call him at 3.30, so I had to”, she said. On my way back sitting in Acela Express train going back to Washington, DC, I kept thinking how she would smoothly move from her role as a politician to a mother.
On Thursday, August, 9, 2007, I came back after doing my show around 11. 30 AM in my office as my work phone rang. The caller ID had 212 area code telling me the call was from New York. As I picked up the phone, it was she on the line.
“This is BB calling”, she said. When did you get here, I asked as I had no prior information about this visit. I am here, she said. How can I help you, I asked. “ Come over tomorrow, Amaranth restaurant in Manhattan, 5 PM. I will be waiting”, she almost summoned me. I said it was a working day for me, but she just repeated what she already told me. I said, OK, I will be there.
Next day, I was back on Acela Express to New York. As I entered the restaurant, I saw Asif Zardari sitting right by the entrance. I met him and asked him where she was. He pointed me to the back of the restaurant, as she was busy talking to somebody while having ice cream. Many would confirm that she had a sweet tooth.
In a little while Bilawal, Bakhtawar and Aseefa too came in holding bags of the shopping they had done. That was the day when she told me about her plans to return to Pakistan on October 18.
“ I am going back. Asif will look after my mom, kids and his business and stay in Dubai. Tell me if you want to go with me. I will ask FB ( Farhatullah Babar) to put your seat on the plane. My party needs me for elections. We will win. I will be the Prime Minister. You have to return and help us”, she said.
Asif Zardari asked to me to persuade her not to go as there were serious threats to her life. I said I agreed on the threats but the void was too big to be filled by anybody else other than her. At that point BB intervened and said Murtaza is right about it and poked him further by saying, you had gone back to Lahore with much fanfare. What happened?, she said. Zardari was silenced after her final punch. She signed me her second edition of her book “Daughter of the East” and that was it.
My last meeting with her was exactly three months before her assassination. On September 27, 2007, she texted me to come to Ritz Carlton Hotel at 2 PM. When I got there, Senator Akbar Khwaja, Shuja Nawaz, Asif Zardari and few other people were sitting there. They were discussing the details of her return. Refusal by Musharraf to get international security did figure in the conversation and so did the conversation with Condoleezza Rice. She did mention the obstructions created by Musharraf who did not want her to travel to Pakistan on October 18. She was adamant. With everything announced, I can’t renege on my commitment, already announced and it is vital for my party to be there, she stressed. The environment was a bit tense.
Little did I know that she had a rough conversation with Musharraf on the phone. All those details came out after he assassination.
During the discussion, she asked me a question. As I started to answer, a phone rang. That was Asif Zardari’s small Motorolla flip phone. He picked up the call and started talking. I never saw BB so angry. “Pinky” she already was but in anger she got almost red. “Do you know that I asked Murtaza a question? It is important for me to listen to his answer. If you have to take care of your personal business, please go outside, finish your call and come back”, said BB. Asif Zardari got up, went out and came back. That again showed to me who was calling the shots and who was the real boss.
She remained in contact with me by phone and email till her last weeks of life. One day, Ahmed Rashid, a mutual friend and one of the top Afghanistan experts, said she was busy talking to many people including himself when I called from Washington, she took the phone call. Rashid later cracked the joke with her that it might be a Sindhi connection from Washington. She would be very kind and accommodative. One time, she was in town but didn’t meet me, so I shot an email about it. Her confidante Senator Akbar Khwaja called me and gave me the time to see her at 6.30 AM for breakfast. I was shocked but that is the time she had and she did come and had breakfast with me while apologizing at the same time.
The Thursday morning of December 27, 2007, didn’t start too bad. Woke up by the purring of my Coffeemaker set for 3 AM. As the coffee was brewing, I went down from my apartment to the parking lot to turn my car on to warm it up. By the time I come down, it would be nice and warm.
Brrr. It was below zero outside.
In my apartment, it was back to my daily routine. Quick glance at the Pakistani news websites, email check, breakfast, wore warm clothes, filled my tall coffee tumbler and I was out. The show I hosted LIVE at 8 PM Pakistan time, the time in Washington, DC was 10 AM. I had to be in my office at 5 AM five days a week (Monday thru Frdiay) to prepare for the show. It was just a two member team. I and my producer Shehnaz Nafees, a Pakhtoon young lady, who was not much liked by most snobbish staffers of the Urdu Service who didn’t like her Urdu accent. She would come by 8 AM and help me with some of the work.
That day too there was barely any traffic on I-395 and in 20 minutes I was in my office.
As I passed the red eyed security guards, I went straight to the studio. In the studio I had small TV monitors with audio on the mute. We had Geo TV on one of the monitors, to keep us updated on what was happening in the country where our broadcasts were beaming to.
The first call was of course to Ayaz Gul whose numbers I had memorized. So what is new Ayaz, I asked. He gave me a rundown of the major stories and events taking place that day. He did tell me about the rally of Benazir Bhutto in Liaquat Bagh Rawalpindi.
Political heat was on as both former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were back. Both were supposed to address rallies in Rawalpindi area that day. Nawaz Sharif was coming to town via GT Road and mobilize the city to support Javed Hashmi and Hanif Abbasi who were contesting against Sheikh Rasheed.
I started calling different politicians and analysts to record short interviews that I would later use during my show. Then I called Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Benazir’s close confidante in London. As I started recording him, I also kept an eye on the TV monitors to keep me abreast of what was going on.
As I was recording the interview, I saw a ticker on Geo saying that there was a blast outside Liaquat Bagh after the rally but it did say, Benazir was safe. Later I saw a news ticker quoting her Chief of Security Rehman Malik saying she was alright. As I was talking to “Wajid Bhai”, we used to call him, I saw a missed call on my cell phone, that I would always take inside the studio but would keep it on Vibrating mode. It was Asif Zardari’s UAE cell number ending on*** 835.
I apologized to Wajid Shamsulhasan and told him that I missed a call from Asif Zardari. Let me call him back and then I will call you, I told him.
As I called Asif Zardari back on his cell phone, he said, “she has been hit. Pray for her life”. I told him that Rehman Malik had said she was OK and so was the media. He used some profanity and told me in Sindhi if I would believe them or him. I kept quiet. After a little while, the news was out. She was no more.
I still remember that day a call from prominent Op Ed writer Ayaz Amir leaving me a voice message on my work phone. “ My heart is torn apart. Please call me and take me online”, the message said. For days we cried. People in Washington would stop and ask if we were Pakistanis and then would say that they were sorry for our loss.
One wonders if she was alive how she would have dealt the issues Pakistan, the region and the world faces today. I can say with a bit of confidence that she was on top of her maturity and would have provided much better alternative than provided by others, her party government included.
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