Pakistan army should butt out of politics: Asma Jahangir says it like it is

Clip from Crossfire in which Asma Jahangir, the indomitable Chairperson Emeritus of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and President of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan, says it like it about the Pakistan armed forces, in a talk show with the  ever sensationalist Meher Bokhari, on Dunya TV on May 26, 2011. View the [...]

“We Refuse to Be Held to Ransom By Terrorism”: Veena Masud, Pakistan Women’s Swimming Association

Pakistani female swimmers are making a splash despite the hurdles, which include “little government support” and social conservatism, says Veena Masud, one of the small group who started women’s competitive swimming in Pakistan

Target killing of doctors; my article of 2002; Dr Sarwar on censoring Jinnah, 1991

It is significant that while the doctors’ killings are labeled as sectarian because those targeted mostly belong to a particular sect, there is no sectarianism or religious intolerance at the grassroots level. ‘‘The incidents of apparently religiously-motivated violence, like the attack on the Islamabad church or the murder of Daniel Pearl, are planned and executed by individual miscreants with no popular support or public sanction,’’ says The News editorial. (excerpt from article of 2002)

Zardari: two articles and a comment

“…Zardari said he thought that the militants and extremists had emerged on the national scene not because the civil bureaucracy was weak. In fact, they had been deliberately created and nurtured with the help of the international community as an instrument of policy in the 1980s. He then went on to advise the former bureaucrats to be “truthful to ourselves and make a candid admission of the realities”.”

`Pakistan: Chaos unto Order?’ and ‘syllabus of hate’

Cutting through the fog of confusion, Haris Gazdar comments in EPW on the Pakistan military having finally appeared to have embraced the war against jihadi militancy as its own – although past experience demands caution before coming to any hasty conclusions. And in The Hindu, Nirupama Subramaniam comments on the ‘syllabus of hate’ that Pakistan needs to deal with urgently if it is to win this fight

PAKISTAN’S INTERNALLY DISPLACED: Distribution is key. Plus: Women’s voices from camps in Mardan

In this post: Update by Naeem Sadiq,report from Mardan camps by Bushra Khaliq and an appeal by the Muslim Canadian Congress

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.

The Taliban are coming….??? Myths and other realities

A collection of articles and comments related to the alarm being raised over the Taliban’s advances in Pakistan… not to minimise the threat but to put it in perspective – I.A. Rehman, Pepe Escobar, Dr Mubashir Hasan, Husain Haqqani, Hassan Abbas. Plus Seerat Hazir from Lahore in response to Sehar Tariq’s widely circulated ‘I want my country back’

‘Talibanisation’: Backwards, forward, twisted around

For the bulk of the population, the primary concerns remain how to feed, clothe and house themselves and their families, educate their children, get clean drinking water and adequate medical help. This is unlikely to change for the better anytime soon, no matter which way the political winds blow. But a sustained political process, at least, offers a chance for positive change – eventually. The alternative is too grim to contemplate.
http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2009/04/2877

Arundhati ‘Pakistani’ and right-wingers ‘patriotic’

Delhi is far cleaner and greener since I was last there nearly five years go, thanks to laws (that are actually implemented) banning diesel and making CNG compulsory. On a more intangible level, another kind of pollution remains, reminiscent of a phenomenon we face in Pakistan: right-wing jingoism fuelled by emotional appeals to religion and nationalism
(slightly revised version of article published in HardNews – http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2009/05/2888
See also ‘April 15, 2009: Is media jingoism fanning Indo-Pak tensions?’
http://www.fmp.org.in/index.php?page_id=593)