Appeal from Zebu Jilani (granddaughter of the last Wali of Swat)

The people of Swat suffered first under the Taliban, than due to army action and now due to floods. Inspiring to see their resilience and efforts to get back on their feet. See article in the Globe & Mail: A princess returns to the Swat Valley, Akbar Ahmed’s Huffington Post article Compassion in Taliban Territory, and [...]

Beating Back the Taliban

Even before the army action, wild bearded turbaned hordes were unlikely to take over Pakistan. This is not Afghanistan where decades of war destroyed all the systems and institutions. Nor is it Iran, where a huge urban-rural divide helped the mullahs to take over. Even conservative Pakistanis are uncomfortable with the Taliban’s brand of Islam – public beheadings, corpse mutilations and floggings. There is wide adherence to Sufi values and anger at the Taliban’s attacks on sufi shrines.

Doc’s blog; Madrassas vs Pvt schools; Hoodbhoy on Pk; Cost of war and more

New blog – www.drsarwar.wordpress.com – with photos and remembrances, including by I.A. Rehman, Salima Hashmi, Dr Badar Siddiqui, S.M. Naseem, Ali Jafari, Mohsin Tejani and others; ‘The Madrasa Myth’ – Foreign Policy op-ed co-authored by Tahir Andrabi, Jishnu Das, C. Christine Fair, and Asim Ijaz Khwaja; Pervez Hoodbhoy’s Pakistan predictions; Swat women and ‘mullah Radio’ – a report; HRCP’s report on the internally displaced and more

The humanitarian crisis of Swat’s Internally Displaced People – Omar Foundation

Further to my earlier note on how to help those forced to become refugees in their own land – the largest internal displacement ever in Pakistan as the army finally takes action against the Taliban – see this appeal by a journalist friend in Karachi.

Swat aid appeals; Pk can defy odds; ‘WoT’ Myths; Binayak Sen; Ashram in Sindh

A lot going on but huge backlog (on the personal front, the ‘Old Fighter’ as his friend Eric Rahim called him still in hospital, fighting on). In this post – Appeals for the internally displaced, Hassan Abbas’ report on How to Rescue a Failing State, and more

Some thoughts on ‘Swat flogging video’

The ‘Swat flogging video’ has made headlines all over. For those who haven’t followed the issue or seen the video (warning, it’s graphic) check out Declan Walsh’s initial report on the issue in The Guardian, April 2, 2009 (two days before TV channels in Pakistan picked it up).

Chicago, Shahidul and ‘Three Cups of Tea’

I love how connections sometimes just ‘happen’, criss-crossing the world, spanning generations, borders and continents. This particular stream traverses Pakistan’s early progressive struggle to Chicago, an inspiring book by an American who recently received Pakistan’s highest civilian honour, and a Bangladeshi photographer who came to Pakistan to document that moment.

Focus on women – Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, a docu on Swat and more

A collection of articles published around March 8, including mine for IPS (‘Women Defy Militancy, Patriarchy’) and The News (‘A new political context for Juliet’), plus articles by Kalpana Sharma, Cassandra Balchin, Zofeen Ebrahim, link to a documentary on a Swat schoolgirl and more.