Dissecting 'The Musharraf Letter'

A few days ago a group of retired generals (including two former ISI chiefs), sitting and former parliamentarians and academics wrote a letter to General Musharraf.

A similar letter was also sent to Shaukat Aziz and copies were forwarded to former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, as well as to the leaders of all political parties represented in parliament.

The letter asked for the following:

• Disengagement of military from political power
• A separation between the offices of President and Army Chief.
• As the 2007 elections ‘would not be credible without neutral and impartial caretaker governments, both at the centre and in the provinces’, a genuine empowerment of the Chief Election Commissioner and the Election Commission of Pakistan was a prerequisite for the holding of transparent elections. For this purpose, it is necessary for the district administrations to be placed under the control of the CEC during the 2007 polls.
• All the political parties of the country learn from their past mistakes and commit themselves to strengthening democratic institutions and traditions so as to ensure the rule of law and good governance at all levels.
• All the political parties exercise restraint and respond positively to any offer of dialogue to make free and fair elections possible. As a sustained dialogue between the leadership of principal institutions and organisations was a vital prerequisite to ensure a peaceful, orderly transition to complete and authentic democracy.”
• All power groups refrain from taking extremist positions and hurling threats and charges against each other.
• Pakistan to be a decentralized federal state, by the granting of genuine political, financial and administrative autonomy to the provinces.

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Now the question that occurred to me (and to most people I would imagine) is: Why did these gentlemen, many of whom were or have been close associates of Musharraf, take this rather drastic and very public step?

After giving it some thought I came to the conclusion that it was because these people are genuinely convinced that the current mood in Islamabad is to rig the 2007 elections on lines similar to what took place in 2002.

What these people, I believe, seriously fear is that the rigging of the 2007 elections will backfire and set off a protest movement that will quickly get out of the control of the democratic forces and pass into the hands of organized extremists. And woe betide Pakistan then.

As a thought-provoking op-ed in The News (which your Blogger recommends as a 'must' read) points out today:

Given the Talibanisation of tribal areas, and extension of Taliban’s influence in the adjoining settled districts, continuing military operation and insurgency in the Baloch areas, deepening alienation of Sindhis, sustenance of jihadi and sectarian outfits, overall exclusion and sufferings of the general masses and increasing isolation of and resentment against the military rule, Pakistan presents a volcanic situation that can potentially burst out in many directions and at numerous levels. In most essential terms, the country closely fits the bill of a failing state, if not a failed state already. Despite joining the war against terrorism, the menace of terrorism is still so powerful that the security institutions have failed to stem their nefarious designs not only within the country, but also on both international fronts, i. e., on our borders with Afghanistan and India.

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Now the problem is that most of Musharraf’s current list of ‘loyal’ supporters (Ch. Shujaat, Shaukat Aziz et al) have much to lose if the 2007 elections are genuinely transparent. They will therefore vociferously insist, for the sake of their own political survival, that he hang on to his uniform and engineer the elections their way.

I believe it was simply to counter these ‘heroes’ of PML (Q) that this group of people decided to write the letter to Musharraf, as well as, perhaps open it for public discussion.

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Here is an American news take on the letter:

The latest shot came from a prestigious grouping of retired generals, diplomats, academics and ex-intelligence chiefs who had told Musharraf that it was time to disengage the military in politics.

Democracy will only be authentic, their letter said, when there is a "real separation" of powers.

Musharraf might be forgiven for seeming too preoccupied to bother with democracy. These days it seems there's trouble everywhere he turns.

He's stationed 70,000 Pakistani soldiers in the restive tribal belt, but that hasn't stopped militants loyal to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden from taking control of four of its seven districts.

They've imposed their rigid brand of Sharia Law: holding public executions, forcing men to grow beards, and openly recruiting soldiers to fight U.S. troops next door in Afghanistan, where suicide attacks and roadside bombs have become an almost daily occurrence

An additional 40,000 or so Pakistani troops are tied down in western Baluchistan, fighting a separate rebellion by ethnic Baluch tribesmen.

Then there's archrival India to the east, still bristling after a terrorist attack on the Mumbai rail network that killed more than 200.

If that isn't enough, Pakistan's stock market has crashed, monsoons have flooded major cities, and power shortages have thousands rioting on the streets of southern Karachi.

"I predict tremendous instability in the coming year," one Western diplomat said. "And there will be more violence."

Pakistan

I Keep on Wondering...

Some days ago I was listening to a discussion between some elderly Pakistanis, many of whom have held senior position in the country’s affairs – they included a Pathan, a Sindhi, a Baloch, and several Punjabis, thus covering a reasonably broad spectrum of views.

The Pathan expressed disquiet at the absence of concern shown by the country at large at the deaths of hundred of civilians in Waziristan and Balochistan. The Sindhi ventured that the same had been the case when Karachi had been burning in the mid-90s and Sindh in the mid-80s. Then a Punjabi, looking thoughtful for a moment, said that this was so because ‘Pakistan is a country but still not a nation’; in other words we are only concerned about our own neighbourhood patches and are not really bothered about difficulties that beset Pakistanis elsewhere.

One might add that this is an awful state of affairs for all Pakistanis, if we all really thought hard about it the reality is there for all to see.

Therefore your Blogger feels it incumbent to buck the trend and hopes to encourage others to do the same. Please remember, that whatever occurring in any part of Pakistan today carries the distinct possibility of a nasty ‘blowback’ at some future date.

To me the insurgency Balochistan and the religious tumult in Waziristan are major issues that will have a considerable bearing on our future as a nation state - no matter what line Musharraf and his minions wish to feed us.

Let us look at Balochistan once again.

In recent days the print, radio and television media have been engulfed with scenes of hundreds of Bugti tribesmen laying down their weapons.

After months of news suppression, as the latest edition of the Friday Times noted:

‘Finally, the government is opening up in Balochistan. Only, the objective seems to be to push government-friendly stories.’

The journalist filing the Friday Times story (no link) on Balochistan also reported the following:

Having filed a story about the surrender of 600 Bugti tribesmen on July 15, a journalist from a private news channel who was taken to Dera Buti said the total number of people gathered there to surrender arms was less than 50. But he reported the surrender of 600 tribesmen which is the number the media managers wanted pushed out’.

And now after over a year of barefaced denials one reads on the BBC website:

The Pakistani Air Force chief has acknowledged that fighter jets have been used in Balochistan province against tribal rebels and militants.

Air Chief Tanwir Mahmood Ahmed told a news conference that the air force would continue to be used whenever and wherever the government desired.

Tribal leaders have claimed that in the past few months civilians have been targeted by the air force.

But the government had always rejected such claims in the past.

This begs the question: What and who should we believe?

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Last Thursday Musharraf himself came on television and this is how Dawn reported his take on Balochistan:

The president paid glowing tribute to security and intelligence agencies for establishing peace to carry out development works in the province.

He criticised the media for ‘misrepresenting the facts’. “But the bottom line is that the writ of the state will have to be established in Balochistan, Wana, etc. And I assure you that soon there will be peace in that province,” he promised.

The president said that for 40 years three Baloch sardars, who were opposed to development and perpetrating atrocities on their tribes, had been pampered unjustifiably in the name of political settlement, “but no more”.

He insisted that the operation against the ‘rebellious’ sardars was being conducted by the Levies and Frontier Constabulary and not by the army, though some 1,000 armymen were assisting the security forces.

He said all the Bugti commanders had surrendered and the so-called Nawab Akbar Bugti was on the run, adding that of the total 77 sardars in Balochistan only three — Bugti, Marri and Mengal — were opposing the government.

Gen Musharraf said over 16,000 sub-tribes of Bugti — Rahejas, Kalpars, Masouri — had returned to Dera Bugti after years of repression by sardars led by Nawab Bugti. “But I would not call him a Nawab as he is on the run”.

First Bugti was ‘a pygmy’ and now he is a ‘non-Nawab’ – these sneering asides indicate that Musharraf seems to be engaged in some sort of playground grudge match.

Anyway here is the counter version as reported in today’s Daily Times :

Talking to Daily Times from an undisclosed location on a satellite phone, Wadera Alam Khan said that Loop and Far Loop localities of Dera Bugti had come under severe bombardment from two jet aircraft and four cobra helicopters for two consecutive days. The government, he said, was targeting “innocent civilians and obliterating their houses”.“

If the government is correct in its claims that all loyalists of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti have given up arms and sided with the government, then why are the residences of poor tribesmen still being targeted with sophisticated and modern US weapons?” he asked.

Khan refuted official claims that Nawab Akbar Bugti had been deserted by his commanders and loyalists. “This is a false claim made in the midst of utter frustration. The Nawab still enjoys the full support of his tribesmen. Those whom the government contends have left him and joined the official team comprise completely unknown waderas.

They are so unpopular that even the local people do not know them,” he said. Khan said there was no truth to official statements that Nawab Bugti had taken refuge in Kahan, the hometown of Nawab Khair Baksh Marri. He said the government had made similar false claims in past by saying that the Nawab had fled his hideout and taken refuge in Iran and Afghanistan.

What the reality is, is anybody’s guess.

Pakistan

Cadging $ 25 Million

In recent times there has been much concern in the US about the wave of anti-Americanism which has swept the Muslim world.

One method of countering this ‘menace’, the sages in Washington DC decided, was to broadcast television programmes presenting a softer and more benign image of the US.

And so about six months ago Voice of America (VOA) began telecasting a 30-minute TV programme "Beyond the Headlines" (Khabron se Aage) on GEO television with the intention of persuading young, urban Pakistanis that most Americans were nice people - i.e. not all of them were raving nutters like Bush jr, Rumsfeld and Cheney.

Now, journalist circles suggest, all this fascinated a well known newspaper editor from Lahore. Insisting that he could come up with a better and more subtle way of Pak-USA communication, he approached the US State Department with his own eighty-page proposal.

And what was his pitch?

That he set up a television channel which would purely broadcast a US/Western-orientated viewpoint to counter the increasing extremism found in Pakistan.

And the setting-up cost? Just a cool $ 25 million.

Apparently, so far the US State Department has remained mum and it looks like the proposal will die a quiet death. However, as seen from the editor’s perspective, there was no harm at all in trying to scrounge a completely cost-free TV channel for himself.

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Perhaps it's time I submitted my own proposal:

Yo, State Department readers!
I know there are one or two of you out there (or at least that is what my website tracker tells me).

So how about funding this Blogger as well? Okay, I’ll promise not to rubbish Condi in future. Here is my email address: EverHopeful@GreedyPakistani.Com

Pakistan
State Department
VOA

A Good Man under Siege?

Ever since the former chairman of SECP, Dr Tariq Hassan, presented a ‘white paper’ to the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance about the stock market March 2005 crash - saying that top government functionaries were interfering in SECP affairs and were involved in market manipulation – he has become a target on the government’s notorious ‘hit list’.

(See previous Blog: Shortcut & Co. Facing Serious Sleaze Allegations)

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To make matters worse for Dr Tariq Hassan, the Head Chowkidar has taken it upon himself to protect his ‘loyal’ functionaries. As The News reported today:

President Musharraf said in an interview that he held Dr Hassan “personally responsible for the March 2005 crash and that it was his (Dr Hassan’s) responsibility to prevent such things from happening.”

President Musharraf said that the PM was not involved in any form of corruption involving the Karachi Stock Exchange. Despite this clean chit from the president, the Prime Minister spent time with members of the ruling party in Islamabad behind closed doors explaining his role, or lack of it, in the Tariq Hassan affair.

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And today Daily Times reveals that Tariq Hassan is now being hounded by the Secret agency personnel for his ‘sins’.

Intelligence agents are bugging the phone calls and monitoring the movement of Dr Tariq Hassan, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), Daily Times has learnt.

A senior official told Daily Times Islamabad police had been told to deploy plainclothes officers around Dr Hassan’s residence. The intelligence operation began after President Musharraf appeared on television blaming Dr Hassan for the stock market crash of March 2005, the official said.

“The monitoring was tightened after Dr Hassan’s resignation from the office of commissioner and member of the SECP this week. His incoming and outgoing calls are being bugged.” The official said that the government had started an inquiry into Dr Hassan’s alleged involvement in the stock market crash and would later frame a charge sheet against him.

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We are now also told not to expect the US forensic team to find the real causes behind the March 2005 crash. Apparently the Government wishes the Americans to aim for Tariq Hassan and at the same time prevent them from prying too deeply into the real causes of the stock market crash. As Dawn tells us:

A source privy to the forensic investigations said that the first briefing the US forensic investigators had received was on how the former SECP chief had failed to avert the crisis, instead of Badla financing (carry-over transaction) or brokers and their suspected activities.

“The US team now knows more about Dr Hassan than (about) the powerful brokers nominated in the task force’s report on the market crash,” he said.

The sources said that the SECP was also trying to restrict the US investigators’ sphere of operations in the commission’s head office.

The SECP chairman, Mr Raziur Rehman, refused to share any information about the number of officials involved in the probe or the team’s composition.

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The idea, it appears, is to heap all the blame on Tariq Hassan, who now seems destined to play the role of the scapegoat for the whole debacle. Meanwhile, it will be business as usual at the Karachi Stock Exchange and the shady billionaire brokers and the badla providers will undoubtedly continue with their destructive practices.



Pakistan
Tariq Hassan
Karachi Stock Exchange

Praising Military Regimes

At times I get somewhat allergic to unsolicited advice given by Pakistanis who have left the country for better pastures abroad.

Most of these people are enjoying all the freedoms that come with living in democracies, nevertheless some of them insist on advocating a continuation of the dictatorial rule in Pakistan; perhaps the worst of these are retired international bureaucrats from the Bretton Woods institutions residing comfortably in suburbs near their city of former employment, Washington DC.

The faceless bureaucrats of World Bank and the IMF, who followed instructions from the U.S. Treasury Department, are indeed responsible for making a complete botch of developing world economies. Their mindless obsession with sweeping free market reforms is directly responsible for destroying the livelihood of millions of the poorest citizens of the world.

If you don’t believe me then please Google and look up what 2001 Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist at the World Bank, has to say. Stiglitz resigned his job after becoming completely disillusioned with the incompetence and irresponsible practices indulged at the IMF and the World Bank.

And please don’t think that all the people who get into these Bretton Woods institutions get there purely on merit; like the United Nations favouritism and cronyism goes a long way. Many of the Pakistanis working at the World Bank are believed to have got there because of Moin Qureshi. (In the late 80s there was ‘some chatter in the international banking world of a Qureshi-created Pakistani ‘mafia’ at the World Bank).

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So with the World Bank high on my personal list of odium, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that my bête noire of the day happens to be an ex-World Banker by the name of Shahid Javed Burki, who took it upon himself to write a rejoinder to The Economist’s political survey on Pakistan.

See my previous Blogs:
The Economist : Pakistan Desperately Needs Democracy
The Economist: Problem in Pakistan is Musharraf

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Here are some excerpts from Shahid Javed Burki’s op-ed piece

Is Pakistan in a mess?

Burki wrote:

Let me begin with the state of politics. That the military has intervened four times in Pakistan’s nearly 60 years of existence is a fact of history. The first time the military ventured into politics was in October 1958. It came in because of both conviction as well as personal ambition. At that time most observers of the Pakistani scene recognised that the politicians had created a big mess — they had practised putrid politics. They had struggled for almost 10 years before giving the country a constitution, they continued to play “palace politics” even after the constitution was promulgated.

Wrong, the military was involved in politics soon after the pushy Ayub Khan took over as the C-in-C.

For instance in October 1954 when Prime Minister Bogra returned to Pakistan from Washington he was, according to newspapers, ‘met by the largest crowd since those that had greeted the popular Liaquat Ali Khan’. But then, as the British High Commissioner informed the UK Foreign Office, Bogra ‘was hustled into a car by a couple of Pakistani generals and taken straight to the governor-general’s house’.

The autocratic governor-general, with Ayub Khan at his side, then dismissed the National (Constituent) Assembly, declared a ban on public meetings and imposed press censorship. Shortly afterwards he announced a new government which effectively handed over real authority to just two men: Major-General Iskander Mirza, the interior minister and General Ayub Khan, the new defence minister.

Burki lashes out at the politicians of the 1950s, whom he accuses of practicing ‘putrid politics’. On taking a closer look at the late 1950s when prime ministers came and went like bowling pins, one soon discovers that the political chaos was largely orchestrated by Iskander Mirza and Ayub Khan’s backroom shenanigans. These two did not want anyone to threaten their grip on power. With the press already in shackles the uninformed public of the new country could only blame the figures squabbling on the political stage, quite unaware of the puppeteers manipulating the strings from behind and creating the ‘putrid’ scene for their own personal benefit.

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Extolling the virtues of military rule Burki then writes:

While this is not the space to write a paean to the performance of the first military government,Ayub Khan’s 11 years in office still represent a golden era in Pakistan’s history.

While Mr Burki will find more space one day to write paeans to Ayub Khan, it should not be forgotten the plagues of corruption and nepotism were given birth by the self-inflated Field Marshal. Since then these twin cankers of national destruction have spread, spread and spread.

And one should not forget the substantial economic disparities between the East and West wings that were created during this so-called 'golden era' of Ayub Khan, which would then lead to rebelion in East Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh.

It should also be remembered that it was this fatuous ‘Field marshal’ who recklessly embarked on the ‘65 war with India, in the childish belief that ‘one Muslim soldier was equivalent to ten Hindu ones’. This was a war that destroyed Pakistan’s bid for prosperity seemingly for good. (Being an economist, it might do Mr Burki some good to re-examine the 1965 war and its economic after-effects).

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Then eulogizing Musharraf, Burki writes:

I continue to maintain — as I have done on a number of occasions in these columns — that of the four military men who have gone on to become president, General Pervez Musharraf is the only one who does not seem to have been propelled by personal ambition. He didn’t carry out the coup that placed him in power; it was done on his behalf by a group of senior generals who were not prepared to accept the manner in which the prime minister sought to change the military leader.

A dose of cold hard reality would insist that an operational plan for the coup was already in place - after all that is how any army operates – in the event Nawaz Sharif opted to sack Musharraf. I am sure if Musharraf had been present in Pakistan he would have led the coup personally. And a nervous Nawaz Sharif, who was already anticipating a military takeover (and had privately complained to the US President seeking his help), then tried to pre-empt the coup by sacking Musharraf while he was mid-air between Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

So Burki by purposefully splitting hairs lauds Musharraf for not being ‘propelled by personal ambition’ just because he was not in place to carry out the coup himself. Obviously, if Musharraf had been present in Pakistan he would have led the coup that helped him retain his job. The fact of the matter is that he wasn’t physically present in Pakistan, so his subordinate generals simply carried out his set of instructions in his absence.
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Coincidently I was at lunch yesterday where a senior and well known ex-federal bureaucrat was holding forth to the assembled company in a manner common to most retired officials. Then out of the blue he began quoting Burki’s eulogy to Musharraf, especially the bit about him not being a ‘propelled by personal ambition’ – obviously this statement seems to have got other people’s goat as well.

When I asked the ex-bureaucrat why he thought Burki had praised military regimes and Musharraf in particular, the former bureaucrat snappily replied, ‘He was a caretaker minister a number of years ago, and right now he appears to be looking for a job with the current military regime’.

I guess it must be tough to be a superannuated has-been in the wilderness of surburban District Columbia.

Celebrating Dunces

With Iraq caught in throes of possible disintegration it is time to look at what some notable dunces once forecasted:

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“The greatest thing to come out of [invading Iraq] for the world economy ... would be $20 a barrel for oil.” Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation (which owns Fox News), February 2003

“Oil Touches Record $78 on Mideast Conflict.” Headline on www.foxnews.com, July 14, 2006

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“My fellow citizens, not only can we win the war in Iraq, we are winning the war in Iraq.” President Bush, Dec. 18, 2005

“I think I would answer that by telling you I don’t think we’re losing.” Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, when asked whether we’re winning in Iraq, July 14, 2006

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“Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits for the region. ...Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart, and our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced.” Vice President Dick Cheney, Aug. 26, 2002

“Bush — The world is coming unglued before his eyes. His naïve dreams are a Wilsonian disaster.” Newsweek Conventional Wisdom Watch, July 24, 2006 edition

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“Peacekeeping requirements in Iraq might be much lower than historical experience in the Balkans suggests. There’s been none of the record in Iraq of ethnic militias fighting one another that produced so much bloodshed and permanent scars in Bosnia.” Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and now president of the World Bank, Feb. 27, 2003

“West Baghdad is no stranger to bombings and killings, but in the past few days all restraint has vanished in an orgy of ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Shia gunmen are seeking to drive out the once-dominant Sunni minority and the Sunnis are forming neighborhood posses to retaliate. Mosques are being attacked. Scores of innocent civilians have been killed, their bodies left lying in the streets.” The Times of London, July 14, 2006

(Courtesy: Paul Krugman, NYT columnist)

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Right now large sections of the Middle East are exploding before our very eyes. Would that have been the case if the US not launched its pre-emptive war against Iraq?

And now following the US’s disastrous example Israel’s has opted to do the same in Lebanon…

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Seeing as we are on the topic of dunces, I wonder how many of you are aware of George W. Bush’s recent utterances which were caught on a live microphone. On this occasion he happened to be talking to his acolyte Tony Blair at the latest G8 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The most 'enlightened' comment was Bush's solution to settling the current violence in Lebanon:

Bush: You see, the ... thing is what they need to do is to get Syria, to get Hizbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over.

Other revealing moments include Bush greeting the UK prime minister with the words "Yo Blair!" and calling Bashir Assad, the Syrian dictator, "Bashad".

(You can read the full transcript at this Sky News blogsite )

Bush
Rupert Murdoch
Cheney

What Exactly is Going On?

News reports and a conversation or two with journalists reveal that in the past two or so days virtually anyone with the surname Bugti in the main urban centres who can read or write (and thereby having the potential to contradict the official viewpoint) has been picked by ‘anonymous’ officials.

That is the heavy-handed approach that Mush and his boys have chosen to adopt.

Once these guys go into action they have a propensity to let slip their true intentions by inadvertent acts of usual incompetence.

How did they do this?

Well by blockading the Press for instance. Online News reports: “Quetta Press club has also been besieged” by security forces.

Bravo!


pakistan
Censorship
free press

A War Hero Lacerates Mush and his PML supporters

Pakistan still has a few upright men left, and one of them is the hero of the 1965 air war - Air Marshal Nur Khan – a man widely respected not only for his integrity but also for his sharp intelligence and outstanding management abilities.

On Saturday he was interviewed by the Lahore daily The Nation. While he harshly criticizes the current so-called leaders of Punjab (and Islamabad) it must be noted that the Air Marshal is a Punjabi-speaker himself and therefore can hardly be accused of provincial bias.

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Nur Khan for early end to army rule

Former Air Chief, Air Marshal (Retd) Nur Khan Friday demanded an immediate end to Musharraf rule while asking the Punjab’s political leadership to steer the country out of present political quagmire by withdrawing support to the military ruler.

In an interview here with The Nation, the former Air Chief and Ex-PIA boss castigated the leadership of PML-Q for supporting the military rule of President Musharraf as he talked about the political problems being faced by the country.

Khan said the President of ruling party, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and his cousin Pervez Ellahi, the Chief Minister of Punjab, were equally responsible for the grave political crisis confronting the country, as they were all out to support a military ruler who has proven to be the weakest administrator Pakistan has ever seen.

He added that he had no love for the PML-Q leadership as it had indulged in practices contrary to the teachings of country’s founder, Quaid-e-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

He said Punjab and especially Lahore could steer the nation out of the present political quagmire, as the provincial capital was the intellectual and cultural hub of this country and whatever happened here mattered the most.

He cautioned if Punjab failed to lead the country in these difficult times it would be blamed for the disaster that would be the natural outcome of flawed policies being pursued by the incumbent rulers.

He said the sense of deprivation among the small provinces is getting stronger with each passing day and things have worsened due to the military operations in Balochistan and tribal belt of Waziristan.

He added that the people there have already started saying that the Punjab’s army was carrying out atrocities against them.

He said Punjab ought to belie this impression and do what was the need of hour. He added that unless and until Punjab played its due role in the national progress people would continue to talk about the false notions like the alleged plans for “Greater Punjab” etc.

He said the current ruling elite of Punjab had an old desire of forging ties of love with Indian Punjab and that’s the main reason behind the current exchange of visits across the border.

He said if the Chaudhry brothers could receive the Indians in Lahore how could they object to the visits by Pushtun leaders like Asfandyar Wali Khan to New Delhi.

He said the seven-year rule of President Musharraf has given nothing to the nation adding that the country would have been much better off had the General done whatever he had announced to do at the onset of his rule.

Former Air Chief said it seems that the present regime has learnt nothing from the mistakes made by the past military governments.

Moreover, he said it had an inactive political arm in the form of PML-Q adding that the Musharraf regime was only supported by Chaudhry brothers for their own interests whereas the common people have no more confidence in its governance.

He said the credibility of President Musharraf is the same as that of US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He added that all the three leaders have done little for their country in terms of progress and development.

He said today law and order situation is at its lowest ebb and right from Gilgit to Gwadar a deep sense of insecurity prevails among the people.

He asked the Punjab’s ruling elite to withdraw what he said their ‘unblinking support’ to Musharraf regime. He added that he was not against Pervez Musharraf, Chaudhry Shujaat or Pervez Ellahi, saying personally they would be good people but whatever he said was in the broad national interests.

He said what worried him the most was the fact that the political system might completely collapse and that would have catastrophic repercussions for the country.

He said any such development would have a negative impact on army as well adding that it was high time that the military withdrew itself from politics and went back to the barracks.

He said only by restoring genuine democratic order, Pakistan could be put back on the path of progress and development. The real democracy, he added would come to this country when it has independent judiciary and election commission followed by concrete measures to improve the law and order situation.

He said our goal must be to raise the living standards of the people adding if we overtook India in this regard we would be far better off as compared to Indian people.

However, he added that we needed a strong political resolve instead of indulging in useless arms race with India. He lamented that in a futile exercise, huge amount from national exchequer was being spent on the purchase of fighter planes and other military hardware.

He said the government should focus on improving economy rather than overspending on country’s defence. He cited the examples of South Korea and Singapore, the two strong nations which achieved distinct global standing only by dint of their economic prowess.

He said unfortunately, every military ruler, be it Ayub, Yahya, Ziaul Haq or Musharraf, made serious mistake of involving army in politics.

He said the lack of acumen on their part also confronted the nation with repeated crises such as Indo-Pak war of 1965, East Pakistan debacle and Kargil fiasco etc.

He went on to assert that it was the follies of the military rulers that led the country to the war more than once adding that the Indians were wrongly blamed for the wars of 65 and 71 etc.

He said the problem did not lie with the soldiers in Pakistan army who were always willing to lay down their lives for the motherland but it was the top military cadre that needed to put itself in order.

Ex-Air Chief recalled that late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto got a chance to rectify the irreparable loss of country’s dismemberment by blocking the future military coups as he was in a strong position but even he failed to publish Humood-ur-Rehman Commission report let alone the implementation upon its recommendations.
He said the same happened with Kargil as the Prime Minister and Army started blaming each other instead of setting up a judicial inquiry.

He was of the view that the East Pakistan debacle would not have occurred if General Yahya had delegated powers to Sheikh Mujeebur Rehman.

He added that Mujeeb and Bhutto would have sorted out the things and reached some agreement but unfortunately, the advice given by him in this regard to the then military rulers fell on deaf ears.He said one major flaw with our army chiefs was their tendency to hold on to power for unnecessarily long periods. He added that none of them had left the power corridors in a year or two by holding free, fair and impartial elections.

Nur Khan also came down heavily on the government for its failed foreign policy. He added that owing to these faulty policies Pakistan has got nothing despite giving several concessions to India and a U-turn on Kashmir.

He said India is still asking Pakistan to dismantle the so-called terror network whereas the United States is also demanding for more in war on terror. All this, he added, is being said despite a key role played by Pakistan in global war against terrorism.

He said full credit went to Pakistani nation that had shown resilience despite weak rulers and they had done a lot for the economic betterment of this country.

Talking about the PIA performance, he said the recent Fokker crash had raised many questions in this regard adding if it were the fault on the part of airlines’ administration the present PIA boss should resign from his office.

He said that PIA had a full-fledged maintenance body in the form of Civil Aviation Authority but still its performance is poor which is a matter of grave concern.

He asked for impartial inquiry into the Multan air crash as delay in the probe and punishment to the real culprits would bring bad name to the national flag carrier.

He said only by teamwork PIA could be taken to the heights again adding that the newly born carriers like Emirates had proven that well coordinated efforts and hard work could yield the desired results.

Khan observed that one major reason of the decline of state institutions was the fact that the heads of these bodies have got only one concern and that was how to please the President or the Prime Minister and they were least concerned about the improvement of their organizations.

He said the serious problems confronting the country could be overcome only by spreading education. He added an educated society would be strong enough to halt the military take over in future and avert marshal law.

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Pakistan

Lebanon Ablaze

The ongoing devastation of Lebanon is …
(I’m trying to grope for a suitable word here – shocking and horrific have sadly become a bit prosaic when applied to recent Israeli actions)
...beyond belief.

Over 100 civilians have died so far and toll continues to rise with the passing of each day.

Robert Fisk, the UK Independent’s correspondent has been living in Lebanon since the 1970s, here is how he describes the massacre that took place in the village of Marwaheen:

All the civilians killed by the Israelis had been ordered to abandon their homes in the border village by the Israelis themselves a few hours earlier. Leave, they were told by loudspeaker; and leave they did, 20 of them in a convoy of civilian cars. That's when the Israeli jets arrived to bomb them, killing 20 Lebanese, at least nine of them children. The local fire brigade could not put out the fires as they all burned alive in the inferno. Another "terrorist" target had been eliminated.

A splendid ‘terrorist target!


The Hizbollah have not been caught napping. Apparently there missiles have been targeting Israel's top-secret military air traffic control centre in Miron. According to Fisk:

Codenamed "Apollo", Israeli military scientists work deep inside mountain caves and bunkers at Miron, guarded by watchtowers, guard-dogs and barbed wire, watching all air traffic moving in and out of Beirut, Damascus, Amman and other Arab cities. The mountain is surmounted by clusters of antennae which Hizbollah quickly identified as a military tracking centre. Before they fired rockets at Haifa, they therefore sent a cluster of missiles towards Miron. The caves are untouchable but the targeting of such a secret location by Hizbollah deeply shocked Israel's military planners. The "centre of world terror" - or whatever they imagine Lebanon to be - could not only breach their frontier and capture their soldiers but attack the nerve-centre of the Israeli northern military command.

Then came the successful attack on the gunboat:

Once the Hetz-class boats appeared, Hizbollah positioned a missile crew on the coast of west Beirut not far from Jnah, a crew trained over many weeks for just such an attack. It took less than 30 seconds for the Iranian-made missile to leave Beirut and hit the vessel square amidships, setting it on fire and killing the sailors.Ironically, the Israelis themselves had invited journalists on an "embedded" trip with their navy only hours earlier - they were allowed to film the ships' guns firing on Lebanon - and the moment Hizbollah hit the warship on Friday, Hizbollah's television station, Al-Manar, began showing the "embedded" film. It was a slick piece of propaganda.

In parting Fisk notes a piece of savage irony:

The Israelis were yesterday trumpeting the fact that the missile was made in Iran as proof of Iran's involvement in the Lebanon war. This was odd reasoning. Since almost all the missiles used to kill the civilians of Lebanon over the past four days were made in Seattle, Duluth and Miami in the United States, their use already suggests to millions of Lebanese that America is behind the bombardment of their country.

Lebanon
Robert Fisk

Musharraf & 'National Confidentiality'

In an interview with Business Plus Channel aired last night Musharraf said a great many things (as per usual) but what struck me was his use of a uniquely new concept, which he referred to as ‘national confidentiality’.

This is what Business Plus Channel’s sister newspaper the Daily Times had to say:

Sounding a note of warning, he said issues relating to Kargil were extremely confidential and of paramount national importance, and these should not be publicised in the way in which the former prime minister [Nawaz Sharif] was doing so consistently.

“I would advise him to talk economically on this issue because it is an issue of great national confidentiality,” he said.

Okay, since the onset of dictatorial power in Pakistan in the 1950s we, the uniformless civilians, have become accustomed to two commonly used words:

• ‘National Interest’ – which we can broadly translate as something specifically in the interest of the government of the day (this applies to both civilian and military regimes).
• ‘National Security’, are two words which encompass a whole host of Khaki matters, stretching from our nuclear hardware to more prosaic things like the military purchase of paper clips under our completely unscrutinisable Defence budget.

Having said that, your Blogger now wishes come to some sort understanding of this new term.

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As Musharraf openly linked ‘national confidentiality’ to Kargil, let us briefly attempt to re-examine the Kargil conflict from a distantly neutral perspective – so here is what Wikipedia says about it (with links to its sources and footnotes):

According to India's then army chief Ved Prakash Malik, the infiltration was code named "Operation Badr",[8] and much of the background planning, including construction of logistical supply routes, had been undertaken much earlier. On more than one occasion, the army had given past Pakistani leaders (namely Zia ul Haq and Benazir Bhutto) similar proposals for an infiltration in the Kargil region in the 1980s and 1990s. However the plans had been shelved for fear of drawing the nations into all-out war.[9] [10]

Some analysts believe that the blueprint of attack was reactivated when Pervez Musharraf was appointed chief of army staff in October 1998. In a recent disclosure made by Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, he states that he was unaware of the preparation of the intrusion, and it was an urgent phone call from Atal Bihari Vajpayee, his counterpart in India, that informed him about the situation.[11] Sharif has attributed the plan on Musharraf and "just two or three of his cronies".[11]

According to Hassan Abbas (in his book - Pakistan's Drift Into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America's War on Terror) the Kargil operation was planned and managed by the Army led by General Musharraf who led a “Gang of Four [generals]” and quotes Pakistan High Commissioner to UK, Maleeha Lodhi as saying: “Even corps commanders and other service chiefs were excluded from the decision-making process.”

It is most likely that Musharraf and his generals, knowing that Nawaz Sharif wasn’t the brightest bulb on the planet, led the then prime minister down the garden path without letting him what really was in store.

Once the Pakistani forces commanded the heights of Kargil the Indians took heavy losses in futile frontal ground assaults. Logic dictated that the only way to deal with the Pakistani forces was for the Indian Military to blockade their supply route. Such a move would have involved the Indian troops crossing the LOC as well as initiating aerial attacks on Pakistan soil – in other words all out war with Pakistan.

As Wikipedia then informs us:

Meanwhile, the Indian Navy also readied itself for an attempted blockade of Pakistani ports to cut off supply routes. Later, the-then Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif disclosed that Pakistan was left with just six days of fuel to sustain itself if a full-fledged war had broken out. As Pakistan found itself entwined in a prickly position, the army had covertly planned a nuclear strike on India, the news of which alarmed U.S. President Bill Clinton, resulting in a stern warning to Nawaz Sharif.[13]

Now here is a pertinent quote from US journalist Mary Anne Weaver’s book Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan (Author - Mary Anne Weaver) regarding General Zinni who, then as the head of US Central Command, had been rushed to Pakistan by the Clinton Administration to arrange a ceasefire during the clash at Kargil. Zinni told the author:

…‘the danger of the situation was not fully appreciated, even in Washington. But certainly was on the ground. I think one of the reasons that Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif were glad to see me come was that they had really scared themselves to death’.

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When the Kargil conflict is fully documented by future historians I am certain that they will lay the blame for the debacle squarely at Musharraf’s doorstep. Obviously the previous army chiefs who had rejected the plan as being potentially calamitous lacked Musharraf’s action-oriented commando mindset.

Having delved a bit into the Kargil conflict it becomes easier to understand Musharraf's extreme reticence in allowing anyone to re-hash the finer details of the fiasco.

So there you have it, ‘National Confidentiality’ in a nutshell.

Pakistan
Kargil
Musharraf

A Gutsier Newspaper?

For a number of years I have come to have little regard for the daily ‘Dawn’. Under editors such as Ahmed Ali Khan, Saleem Asmi and Tahir Mirza the newspaper seemed to have been living on its past glories and lacked the willpower to confront any military regime or civilian ‘dictatorship’ that came in its way.

In May 2006 the octogenarian Tahir Mirza made way for the 46 year-old Abbas Nasir. The Karachi-born Nasir previously held the position of Executive Editor for the Asia and the Pacific Region with the BBC World Service at London. Prior to joining BBC in 1994 he worked in Pakistan with publications such as Dawn, The Muslim and The Herald.

Having routinely derided ‘Dawn’ as the toothless of old grandmother of Pakistani newspapers, suddenly I am beginning to sense a change.

Here are two items from today’s edition for starters. And if Abbas Nasir and his newspaper keeps it up, more will surely follow.

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Item 1

In recent times, in the local press, we have been fed fictitious gunk about Balochistan originating from Islamabad.

Remember for months we heard the same line parroted by regime appointees such as Sheikh Rashid and Aftab Sherpao, subsequently from ISPR’s Major general Shaukat Sultan and finally from the Head Chowkidar himself; the line being: There is no military action underway in Balochistan.

What these blatant liars actually meant was: Yes, we are using Cobra gunships and F-16s to bomb the hell out of a bunch of Pakistani civilians in Balochistan but as we are your superiors it is none of your bloody business what we get up to.

Today Dawn published the first of a series of reports on Balochistan. This first report basically sums up what Musharraf and his Khakis are doing to the ordinary tribesmen and where the loyalties of those tribesmen lie.

Here is a core excerpt:

When pride stands in the way of tears

DEH KHALIAN (District Jafarabad): Fifty-something Fateh Ali says he is too proud a Baloch to cry over the death of a child in public. Yet he struggles to hold back his tears as he recalls how his young daughter was killed when army helicopter gunships strafed the suburbs of Dera Bugti one chilly night last December in an operation that was ostensibly meant to target militants engaged in anti-state guerilla warfare.

“My girl had just had her evening meal when she was hit by shrapnel from one of the many bombs dropped by the army helicopters that hovered over our mud-brick huts near Haft Wali for hours that night. The troops who took part in the operation must have known full well that they were attacking a civilian settlement unable to return fire,” he says, clenching his fists in helpless anger. “I wish I had the means to take revenge.”

Ali now lives with hundred-odd Bugti tribesmen on desolate farmland irrigated by the Pat Feeder canal, lined with eucalyptus and acacia trees, in Jafarabad.

With womenfolk confined to an improvised thatched hut, the men, with long-barreled rifles slung over their shoulders, lazily take turns to graze whatever cattle they are left with.

“The army helicopters destroyed our standing wheat crops. They also destroyed the grain stored from last year’s crop.

We fled the area in such haste that we left behind the bodies of our near and dear ones unburied. Our children are not going to school anymore and young, able-bodied members of our tribe, who were previously employed, are constantly harried by law-enforcement agencies,” says Ali Nawaz.

Showing remarkable courage in the face of adversity, these displaced tribesmen say they still look up to Nawab Akbar Bugti with unimpaired loyalty.

Asked how they would have felt if the Nawab had mended fences with the establishment through negotiations and they would not have been dislodged from their ancestral towns, they give incensed looks and a curt reply: “No, the Nawab is a fighter.

“Like us, he is also suffering. And we will go back to Dera Bugti only when he returns to his house. We will win our war,” says Nawaz with the resolution of an armed warrior, although, by his own admission, his only worldly possession is a worn-out sheepskin water-container, known as the “khalli” in the vernacular.

It is unclear how many Bugti displaced people (DPs) actually poured into neighbouring cities and towns following the outbreak of hostilities between the warring tribesmen and the law-enforcement agencies in the early summer of last year.

The Dera Bugti Nazim, Kazim Bugti, puts the number of DPs at over a hundred thousand. His assertions about the involvement of army helicopters in Dera Bugti military operations lend credence to the claims of the DPs. The accusation is stoutly denied by the government, however.

And by the way, I don’t completely buy the Islamabdi spin about numerous Bugtis laying down their weapons and cursing Akbar Bugti. I suspect most of it is largely a PR arranged exercise with the express purpose of trying to downgrade and weaken Akbar Bugti in the eyes of the Baloch who now commonly regard him as their unalloyed national hero.

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Item 2

As all of us ought to know there are a large number of people missing in Pakistan. Kidnapping is a crime punishable by death in Pakistan, but as the prime suspects in these cases are none other than our own intelligence agencies the law becomes the customary ass - and has to take a necessary step backwards.

Having saidthat, however, recently some brave relatives of a few of these ‘missing’ citizens ventured to approach the Sindh High Court under the ancient and sanctified law of habeus corpus.

The High Court proceeded on logic and requested the Ministry of Defence to ascertain if the intelligence agencies were holding any of these ‘missing’ people.

On Tuesday Lt. Col. Khalid Iqbal Sahoo, Assistant Judge Advocate General of the Pakistan Army admitted before the court that the Ministry of Defence has no operational control over the ISI or the MI.

The defence ministry official submitted that the task of locating and recovering missing persons did not fall within their purview and they did not have the mandate for the ground-check in such cases.

However, the court was assured that as and when any information regarding the whereabouts of the detainees came into their knowledge, it would be submitted before the court.

In reply to this sheepish admission Dawn took the ISI to task in an editorial todayl.

ISI’s pervasive role

THE court proceedings in the case of missing persons should focus the nation’s attention on the invisible but pervasive entity that the Inter-Services Intelligence is. On Tuesday, the Assistant Judge Advocate-General of the Pakistan Army told the Sindh High Court that the defence ministry could only pass on the court’s order to the ISI and the Military Intelligence because it had no operational control over the two agencies. Whether the ISI is or is not involved in the case of the missing persons is for the court to determine, for any opinion on this may amount to contempt of court, but a comment on the ISI and the role it has arrogated to itself would be in order and indeed is called for. Every country has intelligence agencies whose duty it is to collect intelligence of interest to the government from a security point of view. This job includes intelligence and counter-espionage, the latter concentrating on the enemy’s spying and subversive activities within the country. But under no circumstances does the latter part of the duties involve hounding the regime’s political enemies and running torture chambers. While the latter phenomenon is the scourge of all dictatorships, men like Saddam Hussein or Hafez al-Assad would not allow their intelligence operatives to interfere with foreign policy. But in Pakistan the ISI has over-stepped all limits.

During the weak political governments (1988-1999), the ISI refused to give up the position and privileges it had acquired during the Zia regime and pursued its own policy in Afghanistan. This had disastrous consequences. It had access to unlimited financial resources and it perpetuated the military’s alliance with religious parties forged by Ziaul Haq. An example of the misuse of funds was the Mehran Bank money used by the ISI to create the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad, an anti-PPP alliance. Even though Gen Mirza Aslam Beg, the then army chief, went public with this scam, it is a measure of the ISI’s hold over the state apparatus that the National Accountability Bureau has not found the Mehran Bank case fit enough for a probe. Until the ISI is reined in and its activities are made strictly professional, its conduct will continue to militate against the growth of democratic institutions in Pakistan.

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It does appear that Dawn is becoming a gutsy newspaper, for that credit has to be given to Abbas Nasir.

Now I just hope he copes well with the official pressure that will be brought to bear on him.

Only time will tell…

Pakistan
Balochistan
Daily Dawn

PIA Crash: A Much Avoidable Tragedy

Yesterday yet another tragedy struck Pakistan when a PIA plane crashed minutes after taking off from Multan airport killing forty-five people.

Many believe this disaster could have been avoided if PIA had stopped using its ancient fleet of Fokker F-27 Friendships.

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The first prototype of the Fokker F27 Friendship made its maiden flight on 24 November 1955. Production soon got underway and the first commercially-made plane entered service with Aer Lingus in November 1958. Less than two years later, in 1960 PIA obtained its first of the five F-27s it had ordered for its fleet.

After producing a record number of F-27 (786 in total) Fokker halted production of this aircraft in 1986. Unable to repeat the success of the F-27, 1996 Fokker NV, the Dutch aviation company went bankrupt.

The halt in production of the F-27 followed by bankruptcy of Fokker ten years greatly impacted on the availability of spare parts of this now obsolete aircraft.

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Officials have already discounted the possibility of sabotage. All current speculation revolves around the possibility of a technical failure.

The control tower at Multan airport lost contact with the plane approximately two minutes after takeoff. Local witnesses reported the plane plummeting down, with a fire visible on its left side.

While local air crash investigators have recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of the plane, Civil Aviation Authority has indicated that help of foreign experts could be sought to examine the recorders might be sought and it would take at least a month to complete the investigation into the air crash.

Your Blogger has over the years had the unfortunate experience of flying on F-27 on more than several occasions. There was no other option. In Pakistan if one wishes to travel to smaller cities such as Bahawalpur, Gwadar, Rahimyar Khan, Mohenjodaro, etc or catch a last minute flight from Islamabad to Lahore or to Sukkur, at times one had little choice but take the Fokker-27.

A friend who once worked as a senior engineer in PIA once rather sardonically warned me by saying: ‘The Fokkers are well past their crash-by dates”. Not only were spare parts unavailable but he wasn’t impressed by the engineering skills of the newer staff, which he believed were only worsened by the management's attitude to fly planes at all costs; according to him, rushed jobs were rapidly becoming the worrying norm.

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So old is PIA’s Fokker fleet?

Here are the facts:

PIA F27 – Reg: AP-BDR - Manufactured in 1959 - bought in 1979 from Brazil
PIA F27 – Reg: AP-BAO - Manufactured in 1963 - bought in 1979 from France
PIA F27 – Reg: AP-BAL - Manufactured in 1964 - bought in 1979 from France
PIA F27 – Reg: AP-BDQ - Manufactured in 1964 - bought in 1989 from Brazil
PIA F27 – Reg: AP-BCZ - Manufactured in 1966 – bought in 1987 from Australia
PIA F27 – Reg: AP-BDB - Manufactured in 1966 – bought in 1988 from Australia
PIA F27 – Reg: AP-BHF - Manufactured in 1982 - bought in 2005 from Sri Lanka

According to news reports the crashed plane had been manufactured in 1964, which would mean that it was either AP-BAL or AP-BDQ.
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Interviewed on GEO TV the president of the Pakistan Pilot Captain Khalid Hamza made it clear that he blamed PIA management for taking an inordinately long time to replace these obsolete planes. Hamza’s statement was even carried in New York Times which quoted him saying :

“We had been complaining for long with the management of Pakistan International Airlines that these planes have outlived their age”

Furthering the debate this morning’s newspapers added further fuel to the fire.

The Nation reported the following:

Details obtained by The Nation revealed that on May 16, 2005, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Major (r) Tanveer Hussain had raised alarm in the National Assembly over the critical condition of Fokkers and asked the government to ground the entire fleet immediately.

Mr Hussain had also disclosed on the floor of the House that most of the Fokkers have completed more than 200,000 hours flights against their recommended life of 90,000 hours flights.

It is on the record of the National Assembly that instead of taking action on the bewailing of his Parliamentary Secretary, the then Minister of State for Defence Zahid Hamid, now Privatisation and Investment Minister, ardently defended that out of a fleet of 14, eight Fokkers were still fit for flight.

He, however, did not support the idea of his Parliamentary Secretary regarding the ground of the entire fleet of Fokkers.

“Had the government taken the hue and cry of Parliamentary Secretary on Defence, who knew the bitter facts about the health of Fokkers, serious in May last year, the bloody crash of Fokker in Multan on Monday could have been averted,” said an official of National Assembly.

However the The News placed the blame squarely on the Musharraf regime saying that while PIA had realized in 2004 the urgent need to replace the Fokkers, the request for funds for purchase substitute aircrafts went unanswered by the government.

The Pakistan International Airlines had moved a summary way back in 2004, requesting the government to grant funds for the replacement of the Fokkers but little or no attention was paid towards this demand. After a poor response from the government, the PIA authorities persisted with the planes, spending millions of rupees on their repair and maintenance, the sources said.

“The average age of a plane with the Singapore Airlines is five to seven years, while our Fokkers had completed their life span some 20 years back,” the sources said, adding that almost entire PIA fleet had completed its flying hours and needed immediate replacement.

The PIA officials had also tried to pursue the private airlines either to purchase or take on lease these Fokkers so that it could replace them but to no avail. “The private airlines had flatly refused to include these over-aged Fokkers in their fleets,” the sources said.

They said that the PIA had been running into losses for spending huge amount on repair and maintenance of the Fokkers but even then the authorities did not ground them. The sources added the aviation experts had also recommended the grounding of the PIA Fokkers.

And Dawn went on to expose the shortcoming in PIA’s engineering proficiency:

Aviation experts say PIA’s Fokker fleet had already flown far too many hours than what was supposed to be safe.

Sources in the national airline blame a shortage of technical staff for the fleet’s poor maintenance.

“At least 30 senior engineers have left PIA since January this year for better jobs,” they said.An aviation engineer told Dawn that a number of senior aircraft technicians had recently left PIA for a Gulf-based airline.

“The PIA engineering department’s current chief is a retired air force official who does not have any experience of commercial airliners,” he said.

However your Blogger believes the majority of the blame lies with PIA’s senior management. Their first duty is to ensure passenger safety and in my books they were clearly negligent for not grounding these obsolete aircraft ages ago – whether the replacements were there or not.

After PIA, the blame lies clearly with the government. It should not have ignored PIA’s request for funding. As the Nation editorial thundered:

The tragedy sent a shock wave across the nation and set the people wondering why the ageing fleet of Fokkers had still been in operation, especially when for quite some time there has been talk of replacing it with modern, safer and more comfortable aircraft. Yesterday’s was the sixth crash of the F-27 aircraft since it was inducted into service in the country. The February 2003 accident near Kohat took the lives of Air Chief Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, Chief of the Air Staff, and 17 other PAF officers.

That all except the Kohat crash, which is supposed to have taken place on account of bad weather, occurred because of engine failure, should have warned the PIA engineering staff about the aircraft’s inherent weakness. A strong feeling developed among experts that Fokker planes had become obsolete and were not entirely safe for travel. This perception gained strength, particularly after the death of Air Chief Marshal Mir and it was proposed to replace them immediately. Somehow, the plan was shelved and it was decided to ground them by the end of 2006, which proves that official circles acknowledged the risk of travel abroad them; otherwise, there was no point in retiring them. However, last year, when some MNAs contended in the Parliament that the planes had flown far more than the recommended flight hours, the Defence Ministry officials maintained that they were fit for flying. It is unfortunate that the fleet has been kept in service at the risk of passengers’ lives for over three years after it was decided to replace them ‘immediately’. It is a great pity that the country has been buying expensive planes for VIP use, while the safety of ordinary passengers should have received the first priority and adequate finances should have been spared for this purpose.

Pakistan
PIA

The Undoing of A Genuine War Hero

Until 1987 the military award Sitara-i-Jur'at was second only to the Nishan-e-Haider ‘for acts of gallantry in the face of the enemy’. As Nishan-e-Haider is traditionally awarded to those fallen in battle, one can logically say that it was the highest award for bravery among those that survived their acts of valour in the wars of 1965 and 1971.

Among the bravest in the annals of Pakistan military history is one Brigadier Muhammad Taj (now retired) who was first awarded the Sitara-i-Jur'at as a Major in the 1965 war for showing valour beyond the call of duty when he, along with just 16 men in his command, routed two Indian rifle companies and destroyed two enemy tanks thereby forcing them to withdraw.

Then once again in 1971 Muhammad Taj, then Lt Colonel, was awarded the Sitara-e-Jurat for showing exceptional courage and ability in countering enemy forces in Dacca and Rajshahi.

The twice-decorated officer (in military parlance “Sitara-e-Jurat and Bar”), now an 80 year-old, was living peacefully in at his house in Islamabad until the night of 1 July 2006. That night, the frail old Brigadier’s house was stormed by a rowdy group of gun-totting army men.

This is how the victim, Brigadier Muhammad Taj, described it :

“Last night, an ISI Major in plainclothes, who called himself Tipu, with at least 10 men in plainclothes armed with automatic weapons entered my house and beat me, my daughter-in-law and two grandsons.

“They kidnapped us and took us away to a deserted location where they threatened us with death if my grandson did not cooperate with them in identifying the children, who had been involved in a playground incident with the relatives of a senior ISI official.

“I told them that I was not aware of the incident but could ask the people in the neighbourhood to identify the children involved. We were brought to Faizabad in a convoy of at least five vehicles where the Major proceeded to threaten the residents, and beat up and kidnapped another two boys. My daughter-in-law and grandsons were sent away to an undisclosed location by the Major. In the meantime, a crowd of local residents gathered, freed me and took the Major into custody. The Islamabad Police, who had been called by the residents, arrived and took the Major away.“

I proceeded to the I-9 Police Station, Islamabad, and met the DSP and SHO and informed them of the situation. Another ISI officer appeared at the police station in plainclothes and identified himself as Col Nisar. He was accompanied by several other officers in plain clothes.

“I explained the situation to him and he ordered the release of my daughter-in-law and grandsons aged 18 and 16. They were dropped at a deserted location near my house in I-8/4 about an hour later. My daughter-in-law’s clothes had been torn, and the boys also had their clothes torn and had been severely beaten.

“I have lodged an FIR at the I-9 police station, Islamabad, but I find the police powerless to take any action in this situation. In fact the police staff are fearful for their own safety.”

Yesterday Ardeshir Cowasjee wrote in his Sunday column:

There were many witnesses to the incident that took place on the night of July 1. Three houses on Street 86, I-8/4 were targeted by armed men in two separate cavalcades of double-cabined vehicles. From one house, an ailing teenager awaiting heart surgery was dragged out of his house, thrown on to the street, beaten and then thrown into one of the vehicles. His mother tried to come to his aid but she was pushed aside, her clothes torn, and she also was loaded into a vehicle. Brigadier Taj was slapped, pushed, roughed up, and pushed into one of the double cabins, and the cavalcades sped away.

The mother and her sons were taken to the G-9 office of the ISI while Brigadier Taj was taken to Faizabad to identify the other teenagers involved. Two other boys were picked up and sent to an agency ‘safe house.’

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And why did this obscene abuse of power take place?

According to The News: Some boys ‘had beaten [a] General’s son in a playground fight’.

The general according to a subsequent The News report was revealed to be a senior ‘official of an intelligence agency’.

If this is the kind of treatment dished out to one of its own true heroes under our current military regime, spare a thought for the rest of us - 170 million uniformless civilians. What sort of justice can we expect under this current misrule of law?

I can’t help but ask who the real 21st century feudals of this country are? Obviously, they must be the ones who happen to be completely above the law and answerable to no one.

Pakistan

Shortcut & Co. Facing Serious Sleaze Allegations

Over the past year or more many Chundrigar Road–Wallas have been alleging Shortcut’s involvement in share market profiteering. Mostly they cited his burgeoning friendships with two of the biggest Stock Exchange operators as evidence of the ex-Citibanker’s alleged financial misdemeanors. Some even maintained that Shortcut’s pal ‘Mota’ acts as his middleman in Karachi.

These could have been dismissed as colourful Chundriar Road'side' gossip - just loud whispers and unproven allegations - but when the former Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) openly joins in the fray the proverbial excrement has to hit the fan ( your Blogger's comment: Not that it will change anything!)

Today’s newspapers are filled with stories covering public statements made by Dr Tariq Hassan (former chairman SECP). These statements were made in Islamabad during and after a meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue which is investigating the US$ 13 billion crash in the stock market in March 2005.

Here are some interesting excerpts:

Daily Times: Special observers’ to keep ex-SECP chief on back foot

National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue Chairman Anwer Ali Cheema invited “special observers” at the committee’s meeting on Friday on the directives of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, to keep former Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) chief Dr Tariq Hassan “on the back foot”, sources told Daily Times.Sources said that the special observers had been invited to provide “some room” to the committee chairman during the proceedings.

… Sources said that during the meeting, the committee chairman repeatedly interrupted Dr Hassan while hearing his testimony. However, he was eventually allowed to read his letter to the KSE Policy Board after “hectic efforts” by Members of the National Assembly (MNAs) Kashmala Tariq and Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, sources said. Dr Hassan said in his testimony that he had put some questions to top government officials and wanted answers, they said.

The News: State minister, adviser accused of links to brokers

ISLAMABAD: Former chairman of Securities Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) Tariq Hassan alleged during an NA bodymeeting on finance and revenue on Friday that the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Finance, Salman Shah and Minister of State Omar Ayub Khan, had links to powerful brokers, who were involved in the multibillion rupees scams in the stock exchanges

.…Sources said the situation became tense when Salman Shah and Tariq Hassan allegedly exchanged hot words, when the latter told the meeting how he was pressurised by these top guns to help the brokers mint money and finally he was ousted from the office.

However, both Shah and Omar denied the charges, terming it merely Hassan’s ‘personal opinion’ as there was no authentic proof available against them. Hassan did not mince his words when he said that he was under pressure even from Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to keep close contacts with top guns of stock markets, who were actually involved in the whole scam.

Dawn: ‘Big fish’ allowed to escape net: Tariq: Ex-chief of SECP issues‘white paper’

Former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) Dr Tariq Hassan on Friday issued a ‘white paper’ on the March 2005 stock exchange crash, and claimed he had reached close to a ‘few big fish” when he was shown the door.

“The last orders on my table, when I was removed from my post on Eid day, was the appointment of forensic investigators to probe the few big brokers held responsible by the task force (for the crash),” Mr Hassan told reporters after presenting the so-called white paper to the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue.

..“They (the government) have no other option but to continue with the reforms I had initiated but was not allowed to complete. The moral pressure on them is building and compelling them to get hold of the big fish. Otherwise, I fear form will prevail over substance,” said Mr Hassan while commenting on the committee’s decision to proceed with the probe.

MNAs from the ruling party and opposition quoted Mr Hassan as saying in the meeting that he would never retreat from his stand that he had not been allowed to go ahead with reforms.

The former SECP chairman asked how could he get hold of those powerful brokers who, he alleged, had access to the prime minister.

During the nine-hour meeting, Dr Hassan faced tough questions from the Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub Khan and Prime Minister’s Adviser Dr Salman Shah, apparently because he had mentioned their names in letters he had sent to the prime minister and accused them of pressurising him not to replace Carry-over Transaction with margin financing, one of the main causes of the crash.

When Dr Hassan was busy answering journalists’ questions after the meeting in the committee room, a government official approached him and asked him to leave as Dr Salman Shah, Omar Ayub and incumbent SECP chairman Raziur Rehman were to hold a news conference.

“Dear, you people have invited me to this meeting,” said Dr Hassan to the official while leaving the room.

Ruling party MNA Kashmala Tariq told reporters that there was a threat to Dr Hassan’s life because he had taken on some powerful people.

For the first 50 minutes of the meeting, Dr Hassan was not allowed to speak and it was only after a protest by opposition MNAs that he was given an opportunity to do so.

Starting his presentation, Dr Hassan quoted from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.”

SECP chairman Raziur Rehman was asked by Dr Hassan and Ms Tariq why had the reform process had been stopped and why task force’s recommendations had not been implemented, which resulted in another market crash.

Finally it appears that Dr Tariq Hassan’s replacement as Chairman SECP Raziur Rehman has not been spared either. According to Dawn Raziur Rehman has had to make a rather embarrassing denial against “allegations that he had been one of the AKD consultants”.

For those not familiar with the initials AKD, they stand for Aqueel Kareem Dehdi – one of the biggest players on the Karachi Stock Exchange.

Your Blogger once again doesn’t expect any truth to emerge from this scandal.

Our Head Chowkidar is apparently completely preoccupied with sheltering his façade of a civilian government in preparation for forthcoming the election, or should we call it a uniformed ‘re-election'?

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You may well ask: Who is this Dr. Tariq Hassan?

This is a ‘Googled’ bio of Tariq Hassan prior to being personally selected and appointed in 1999 as ‘Adviser to the finance minister of Pakistan’ by Shaukat Aziz, then Finance Minister:

*obtained his Masters and Doctorate degrees from Harvard Law School
* worked as a lawyer in both private and public sectors internationally.
*in addition to private practice in London, New York and Pakistan, he worked for the World Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
* taught law and has been teaching law and lectured at different institutions in Pakistan and the US in addition
*lectured on international banking law at the National Law Centre, George Washington University, Washington, DC from 1995 to 1999.
*has written and published extensively on issues relating to international law, law and economics, law and politics in various journals, magazines and newspapers in Pakistan, UK and US.

In August 2003 Shaukat Aziz appointed him as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP).

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Five months after offering to resign Dr Tariq Hassan Shaukat Aziz opted to sack him instead. On 21 June 2006 the Daily Times reported:

ISLAMABAD: Former Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) chairman Dr Tariq Hassan offered to resign five months before he was forced out, saying that the advisor to the prime minister on finance and the minister of state for finance were hindering the implementation of stock market reforms, Daily Times has learnt.

According to documents seen by Daily Times, Hassan wrote to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on August 4 offering his resignation because “interventions” from the two officials were making it difficult for him to reform the stock exchanges and maintain direct contact with the main players of the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE).

The prime minister did not accept his resignation at the time and pledged him his full support, but just five months later on January 9, 2006, himself asked Hassan to resign because he (Hassan) had not been able to maintain a good relationship with market players. However, this time Hassan refused to resign and also turned down an offer to become the PM’s legal adviser.

The Finance Division then appointed Raziur Rehman Khan as new chairman of the SECP during the Eid holidays with immediate effect.

Hassan was once a trusted friend of Aziz and it was in fact Aziz who summoned him to Pakistan from abroad to implement the market reforms and regulations prepared by a commission headed by retired Supreme Court chief justice Ajmal Mian.

In his letter of August 4, Hassan said: “Recent market interventions by senior government officials have resulted in delay of certain reform initiatives. This is likely to not only impede the overall reform process but may also have a negative impact on the reform programme itself. Therefore, I seek your permission to resign.”

“I had agreed to your suggestion of a temporary freeze and limited roll-back (on the phasing out of Badla financing) in the larger interest of the country’s economy. What I am now being asked to do additionally by your advisor is not only excessive but would also be detrimental to capital market reforms,” he wrote.

He wrote his second letter to Aziz on January 9 after a meeting with the prime minister’s principal secretary Javed Sadiq Malik in which he was offered the slot of legal advisor and asked to resign as SECP chief. Hassan refused, saying this was a crucial time because stock market players were again pressing the SECP not to carry out its reforms. “I … request you to either reconsider your suggestion or at least give me an opportunity of presenting my case,” he wrote.

He turned down the offer of becoming the prime minister’s legal advisor.

In a separate note to Aziz on capital market reforms on July 20, 2005, Hassan wrote: “Direct interventions in respect of Badla financing on the part of the minister of state for finance and advisor to the prime minister on finance and revenue have gravely undermined not only the hard work of the SECP but also the avowed policies of the ministry and the specific statements made by the prime minister in this regard,” he stated.

He said as a result of distortions created in large part by ministerial interventions in phasing out Badla financing, the SECP had no option but to suspend the phase-out process recently. “At that stage, the SECP was and remains appreciative of your firm resolve not to roll-back the phase-out of Badla financing, despite suggestions to the contrary made by the advisor on finance and revenue and the minister of state for finance, more so because it represented a clear understanding of the menace that Badla financing poses and the importance of its phase-out for eliminating manipulation from the market.”

Hassan wrote to his board members on January 30, 2006, saying he had been removed for introducing new regulations phasing out the Badla system, introducing forensic auditing, electing a new chairman from outside the brokers community, and fining some 100 brokers for the March 2005 market crash.

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Pakistan

The Economist : Pakistan Desperately Needs Democracy

Having already blogged The Economist’s leader on Pakistan, I feel I should also provide the background political survey by James Astill upon which the magazine’s editorial was more or less based.
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The Economist - Survey
Too much for one man to do
James Astill
Jul 6th 2006


Pakistan needs more democracy to make it a less dangerous place


THINK about Pakistan, and you might get terrified. Few countries have so much potential to cause trouble, regionally and worldwide. One-third of its 165m people live in poverty, and only half of them are literate. The country's politics yo-yo between weak civilian governments and unrepresentative military ones—the sort currently on offer under Pervez Musharraf, the president and army chief, albeit with some democratic wallpapering. The state is weak. Islamabad and the better bits of Karachi and Lahore are orderly and, for the moment, booming. Most of the rest is a mess. In the western province of Baluchistan, which takes up almost half of Pakistan's land mass, an insurgency is simmering. In the never-tamed tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, the army is waging war against Islamic fanatics.

Nor is that all. Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and until recently was selling their secrets to North Korea, Iran, Libya and maybe others. During its most recent big stand-off with India, in 2002, Pakistan gave warning that, if attacked, it might nuke its neighbour. Mostly, however, in Kashmir, Afghanistan and its own unruly cities, Pakistan has used, and perhaps still uses, Islamist militants to fight its wars—including the confused lot it is fighting, at America's request, in the tribal areas. Several thousand armed extremists are swilling around the country. Thousands more youths are being prepared for holy war at radical Islamic schools. Osama bin Laden is widely believed to be in Pakistan.

When General Musharraf launched his coup in 1999, it was not—or not principally—to clean up this mess. Instead, he wanted to save his career, having been sacked as army chief by Nawaz Sharif, then the prime minister. Mr Sharif had tried to subordinate the army—which in Pakistan is a parallel state, some say the only state—to civilian rule. But however unpromising his start, General Musharraf has generally proved much better at running the country than either Mr Sharif or Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's other elected leader in recent times. He also remains more popular than either of them, though his support has recently been slipping.

General Musharraf's shopping list

General Musharraf inherited an economy in crisis. Shackled by sanctions and parched of capital, Pakistan had defaulted on foreign debts. He ensured that the country did what the IMF told it to do, and ended the crisis. Thanks partly to continued fiscal prudence and some sensible reforms, Pakistan has notched up average growth of 7% over the past three years, about the same as India.

It also helped that after the attacks on America on September 11th 2001, General Musharraf decided to stop supporting the Taliban government in next-door Afghanistan and grant America access to airbases from which to fight it. The benefits have not been confined to a surge of American aid dollars that boosted the growth figures. Having joined the “war on terror”, the general reined in Islamist militants fighting India in the disputed Kashmir region. He then surprised many by throwing himself into peacemaking with India. Peace on the subcontinent is still hard to imagine, but it may be more possible than at any time since British India's bloody partition.

This is encouraging. But a bigger concern for most Pakistanis is the state of their broken and predatory institutions, which have helped to make Pakistan unstable and prone to extremism. General Musharraf pledged to fix them, and to promote liberal values, or “enlightened moderation”. If he were to make serious progress towards either of those goals, history would smile on his coup.

But this survey will argue that General Musharraf is unlikely to deliver on these crucial promises. He has introduced many sensible reforms, such as making the lowest level of the judiciary independent. But they have almost all been implemented only partially and corruptly. Part of the problem is that General Musharraf does not rule Pakistan by fiat, though he often seems to think otherwise. He rules behind a façade of democracy. Thus, for example, he has rewritten the constitution in his favour, allowing him to sack the government and impose martial law; but he needed political allies to vote through those changes. Such alliances have led to paralysing compromise.

To sideline the mainstream parties, whose leaders he fears, General Musharraf has sought support from religious conservatives, so his liberal reforms have gone nowhere. With the same intent, he pandered to Taliban-friendly Islamic parties, helping them win unprecedented power. Moreover, General Musharraf has clung on to his job by the same undemocratic measures as his predecessors: by manipulating the institutions he had vowed to clean up. Only, unlike any civilian leader, he has the army behind him, which means he can do that much more damage. Whereas Mr Sharif and Ms Bhutto packed the supreme court with their supporters, General Musharraf sacked half its judges for refusing to swear allegiance to him.

Pakistan is too big, too fractious and too complicated to be ruled so overwhelmingly by one man. General Musharraf has been lucky to survive three assassination attempts, and his succession is unclear. He has, moreover, limited time at his disposal to get to grips with an unlimited number of problems. His period in office has been littered with initiatives—a diplomatic proposal to India here, a promise to reduce the army there—that never got off the ground or fizzled to nothing for want of the general's attention.

And even if he had unlimited time, he has limited understanding. In army fashion, he considers Pakistan's problems to be mostly practical. But they are invariably political. To deal with a mounting water crisis, for example, General Musharraf has decreed that three long-stalled dams will be built in Punjab and North-West Frontier Province. In Sindh province, the lower riparian, this has caused uproar. Sindhis say their water supply will be diminished by the dams; General Musharraf says it will not. He has no patience for the Sindhis' distrust of the Pakistani state. They complain, with good reason, that it is dominated by Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province, where most of the army is raised. Sindhis make up about a quarter of Pakistan's population, but hold only a couple of the top 50 jobs in the water ministry. If General Musharraf wants the dams built, he should start by increasing that number.

Pakistan is torn by such grievances. Where people feel unprotected by their government, regional strife and Islamic militancy have bred. The longer they are allowed to fester, the more unstable Pakistan will become. Neither General Musharraf nor his obvious rivals for the leadership, Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif, could heal these rifts. But then Pakistan does not need a saviour to become stable and well. It needs a sustainable political system, representing the majority of its people. General Musharraf has had some successes. But by sabotaging Pakistan's fragile democracy, he may well have made the country even more dangerous.

Pakistan

The Economist: Problem in Pakistan is Musharraf

The Economist is possibly the most prestigious news magazine in the English language.

Curiously for a British weekly over 60% of its subscribers reside in the USA. As the magazine is considered somewhat highbrow (in comparison to Time and Newsweek) its readership encompasses much of the US power elite - US Senate, Think Tanks, leading Universities and other academia, and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

More often than not, The Economist’s viewpoint – found in its leaders or editorials - provokes debate and influences the thoughts of many powerful individuals.

So when this magazine takes up cudgels against Musharraf, one can say safely say that its views will carry weight.

In a nutshell The Economist's harsh verdict on our Head Chowkidar is:

the most damning criticism of General Musharraf is that he continues to do grave damage to the long-term political health of Pakistan In his seven long years in office, he has insinuated the army into every nook and cranny of Pakistani public life, weakening institutions that were feeble already, emasculating its political parties and reducing parliament to a squabbling irrelevance. He has sacked judges when it suited him, created and dismembered parties at his own convenience, rigged a referendum on his presidency and used Pakistan's constitution to write his own job description…

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Read the Leader in full

The Economist - Leaders
Security in Asia - The trouble with Pakistan
Jul 6th 2006

TERRORISM has many sources and claimed justifications, but if it can be said to have a centre, it lies in the training camps, madrassas and battlefields of northern Pakistan and south-eastern Afghanistan. There the Taliban and their ally, al-Qaeda, were both formed. From there, in hellish diaspora, jihadis have fanned out across the globe. Add to that Afghanistan's lawlessness and ability to produce vast amounts of opium, not to mention Pakistan's wretched history of venal democrats and clumsy dictators, and its lamentable record on nuclear proliferation, and it is clear why what happens in those two places is of huge importance to the rest of the world. From neither place is there much good news.

The West has invested a huge amount in Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in October 1999. This newspaper was prepared to give him a chance on condition that he acted swiftly and firmly to rein in extremism and sort out the economy, and then returned to barracks. He failed to do any of that. After September 11th 2001, however, he was recast as a provider of relative stability in a dangerous neighbourhood, and an essential ally in the “war on terror”. Money was showered upon him; he was feted in Washington, DC, and London. Only gradually has it started to dawn on his admirers that, in the past five years, he has not done very much to make Pakistan a less dangerous place.


A destroyer of democracy

True, the economy has improved quite a bit since 2001—and not just because of all that donor money. But promises, made even before September 11th, to bring the country's most radical madrassas under control have not been kept. The training camps that Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has long tolerated because of their usefulness against India and in Afghanistan still exist, though they have been told not to mount any operations for now. The most dangerous outfits, such as Lashkar-e-Toiba (the Army of the Pure), have been banned, only to reappear under new guises. Not until 2004 and under the most intense American pressure did Pakistan arrest Abdul Qadeer Khan, the scientist who had cheerfully sold nuclear secrets to anyone prepared to pay.

But perhaps the most damning criticism of General Musharraf is that he continues to do grave damage to the long-term political health of Pakistan (see our survey). In his seven long years in office, he has insinuated the army into every nook and cranny of Pakistani public life, weakening institutions that were feeble already, emasculating its political parties and reducing parliament to a squabbling irrelevance. He has sacked judges when it suited him, created and dismembered parties at his own convenience, rigged a referendum on his presidency and used Pakistan's constitution to write his own job description. None of this bodes well for a post-Musharraf future—which could arrive at any moment given the enthusiasm of his enemies for trying to kill him.

Like a previous “caretaker” dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, who held power for 11 years before being killed, General Musharraf has been unable to resist the temptation to play politics with Islam, even if, unlike Zia, he has also had some success at purging fundamentalists from the top ranks of the army. He has forged a disparate group of Islamic political parties into a block that has helped him outmanoeuvre the democratic opposition; these Islamists are pushing hard for the extension of sharia law.

And then there's Afghanistan

It would not be fair to blame Pakistan for everything that is going wrong in Afghanistan. The government of Hamid Karzai is weak and corrupt; because of the West's continued failure to live up to its promises, much of the country, outside the big cities, is in the grip of bandits and warlords. But Pakistan's contribution to Afghanistan's chronic insecurity should not be underestimated. Both the Taliban and the remnants of al-Qaeda are able to take refuge on Pakistani soil, which makes the job of the soldiers from Western countries who have been struggling to eliminate them for the past five years much more difficult. The Taliban, after all, were in part a creation of Pakistan's ISI, which saw in them a way to establish a friendly state on their western flank, a vital strategic consideration for an organisation that sees itself as locked in perpetual conflict with India to its east.

General Musharraf, by contrast, contends he is doing all he can to root out Taliban fighters from their sanctuaries in the tribal areas, and Pakistan has lost more than 600 soldiers fighting there. Even so, say the critics, it could try much harder, especially given the size of its army. And as for al-Qaeda, none of General Musharraf's protestations can hide the fact that Osama bin Laden is generally reckoned to be holed up on Pakistani soil. Lesser terrorists such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the planner of the September 11th attacks, have been caught and handed over by the general, but Mr bin Laden goes on evading capture.

The danger is that Afghanistan may now, thanks to Pakistani meddling and Western neglect, gradually revert to what it was before September 2001: a state partly captured by the most dangerous Islamists. Belatedly waking up to this threat (see article), Britain is leading NATO into risky action in Afghanistan's southern provinces, a swathe of territory where the Kabul government's writ is ignored and where a record-breaking crop of poppies was recently harvested. With a remit that has been altered to war-fighting at short notice, inadequate numbers and an apparent lack of enough helicopters and armoured support, these soldiers are taking politically painful casualties. There is a risk that the will of the politicians back home to go on fighting will swiftly fade.

An unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan, intertwined with a chaotic and Taliban-dominated Afghanistan: it is not a settling prospect. It has all happened before, of course. The result was September 11th, swiftly followed by a terrorist outrage in Delhi that came close to provoking full-scale war between Pakistan and also-nuclear India. What will happen next time?

Pakistan
Musharraf

Top Secret Election Plan for Mush Supporters

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I borrowed this pic from Zakintosh who is encouraging everyone to "Become a Sales Agent and earn points." He insists that the earned points are "Redeemable for everything, from Government posts to Umra trips."

My message to Zakintosh:

Forget Govt. posts, Umra trips, etc. I am a keen supporter of all successful coup "plotters". So just tell me how many plots I will get and where? And how soon?

Pakistan

The Mental Twins – Mush & Bush

Musharraf and Bush seem to be twinned mentally as their mouths tend to wander where other brains fear to tread.

Simply recall 1 May 2003 when international news channels showed Bush flamboyantly stepping off a naval jet on the US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and enthusiastically announcing a US victory in Iraq.

Well then move three years forward to 19 June 2006 one finds Musharraf brazenly announcing: 'all terrorists have been wiped off from Balochistan’ and declaring “the Baloch rebellion over”.

Hang on a moment, if the insurgency is truly over in Balochistan, then the following news items must a load of codswallop:

26 June, 2006 – Daily Times : Dera Bugti pipeline blown up

26 June, 2006 – Dawn : Rocket hits hotel on main road in Quetta

1 July, 2006 – Daily Times : Violence intensifies in Balochistan

2 July, 2006 – Gulf News : Baloch rebels blow up railway track to Iran

5 July, 2006- Dawn : Two large pylons blown up in the Kohlu/Barkhan area

5 July, 2006 – Daily Times : 110 Rockets fired at check posts as violence escalates in Balochistan

5 July, 2006 – Daily Times : Tribesmen claim 45 soldiers killed in Dera Bugti

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Despite Musharraf’s tall claims the Balochistan insurgency is still searingly hot. Latest reports indicate that a dozen plus Cobra gunships are currently engaged in stifling the insurgent activity in the Dera Bugti area, and for once they are targeting Akbar Bugti directly. The will the first time they have attempted to kill the Bugti chieftain since their unsuccessful attempt in early 2005.

One may conclude from this that Musharraf has lost all semblance of tolerance and is now determined to crush the rebellion. Perhaps the rising international interest in Balochistan has pressurized him to act even more impetuously. In any event Pakistan will end up paying a heavy price for this example of unintelligent commando-mentality.

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Seeing we are on the topic of Balochistan, here is a UK viewpoint of the crisis given by one of their foreign affairs academics published today on UK Guardian’s website. The British are obviously worried about their 3,000 troops in Helmand and it is written with that perspective in mind.

Why Baluchistan matters

This lawless province is key to understanding what British troops will face in southern Afghanistan.
July 4, 2006
Alex Bigham

There is an awkward pause when you mention Baluchistan to someone for the first time. Even members of staff in Britain's leading think tank on global affairs, the Foreign Policy Centre think they may have misheard. As Margaret Beckett might have put it, "Where the f**k is Baluchistan?"

But you shouldn't confuse ignorance with irrelevance. There are many reasons why Baluchistan warrants more than an occasional reference in an article on Pakistan. As the British Army prepares to send hundreds of extra troops to southern Afghanistan, we need to understand what is happening in Baluchistan in Pakistan - this lawless province, desperate for autonomy from Islamabad.

Some brief background: Baluchistan is effectively the "Kurdistan of Central Asia" - the Baluchsprincipally live in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan so are divided by what they see as arbitraryborders implemented by colonial powers.

Pakistani Baluchistan occupies over 40% of Pakistan's landmass as the largest province in the country. The Baluchi people are distinct from the Panjabi elite that dominate Pakistani politics - they are Muslims but more secular in their outlook (in a similar fashion to the Kurds) with their own distinct language and culture. The Baluchi people believe they have been oppressed in many ways by the Pakistani government. Feudal systems of government, corruption and incompetence have lead to socio-economic backwardness and extreme poverty. In addition, the army has led many incursions into the region, with the latest in 2005 coming after an assassination attempt on President Musharraf. Baluchis are desperate to be recognised as autonomous people, and to gain self-determination. They feel that Baluchistan existed as a nation, and has merely been occupied by Pakistan, a situation that the international community continues to ignore, focusing its relations with Pakistan on the war on terror, and the vexed issue of Kashmir.But why should the UK and the rest of the international community care about what happens in Baluchistan?

Firstly, it is the frontline in the war on terror. Quetta, the capital of the province is a known Al-Qaeda stronghold, as Colonel Chris Vernon, a Senior British Army Officer in southern Afghanistan and President Hamid Karzai have said. The Taleban use Baluchistan and Waziristan as a chance to rest, rearm, regroup and recruit for the battles across the border in Helmand in Afghanistan. Mullah Omar is believed by some to be in Baluchistan, and Bin Laden has travelled through Quetta. The province is mountainous, dangerous, and remote, so provides an ideal hiding place for a guerrilla army. Those who've visited lawless provinces such as Helmand, report seeing more Pakistani fighters under the black and white flag of the Taliban than Afghans.

The Baluchs have no links with Al Qaeda, but their suspicion and mistrust means they are less likely to help in the battle against the Taliban, while their situation is so uncertain. As Tarique Niazi of the Jamestown Foundation puts it, "The Baluch insurgency and Pakistan's restive western borders with Afghanistan are absorbing almost one-third of Pakistan's military resources, which relieve some pressure from al-Qaeda and the Taliban."

The 700 military checkpoints in the region are used to intimidate Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) fighters rather than stop the Taliban soldiers clad in black salwar kameezes and turbans. In the 1970s and 80s the Pakistan government encouraged thousands of Pashtun refugees to settle in the area as a bulwark between the Baluchs and Afghanistan, who they suspected of supporting the BLA. Islamabad armed and supported the Taliban, backing the mullahs of Jama'at -i-Islami and Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam. Some of the Pashtuns continue to provide support and cover for Al Qaeda operatives crossing the border.

The Durand line which supposedly separates Pakistan and Afghanistan, has still not been officially recognised, and was considered to have lapsed in 1996. Durand was the product of an agreement in 1893 between the then ruler of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Shah, and Sir Mortimer Durand, the foreign secretary of the colonial government of India. But Pashtun tribal leaders won't acknowledge the border, and it has been a constant source of tension between the two governments. As such, the Taliban are free to cross a border so porous it is said to be 'marked out on water'.

Baluchistan was never really part of the Great Game between Britain and Russia - it was too far South and seem to contain little of any interest. That mindset changed in 1952, when gas was discovered in the Sui area. The Baluchs believe that they have been robbed of some of their fair share of this natural wealth, receiving insufficient royalties, and a low development budget, which is allocated by population rather than need, holding back a sparsely populated but poor region.

The Chinese and the Iranians have realised the potential there. The possible Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline was opposed by the Bush administration, but is making slow progress. Resource-hungry China has gained a foothold in the province, by sending engineers and security officials to construct a port at Gwadar for a possible oil/gas pipeline connecting Gwadar with Xinjiang. The Chinese are accused of using Gwadar as a listening post for monitoring US military activities in the Persian Gulf. In return, the Chinese are giving $350 million for an upgrade to the Karakoram Highway and providing assistance to Pakistan's nuclear industry. In 1998, Pakistan escalated the regional arms race by detonating 6 nuclear weapons near Chagai, also in the province of Baluchistan.

In addition to these major geo-political and security concerns, the international community should be aware of human rights abuses in Baluchistan. The Pakistani army is accused of killing civilians. Human Rights Watch has raised concerns of political incarceration and torture of Baluchi political activists such as Rasheed Azam. The military dictatorship in Islamabad are not alone, there are also human rights violations committed by the Shi'a theocracy in Iran.

These facts and claims make a compelling case that Baluchistan should at the very least be on the radar of the international community, and some countries should even reconsider their stance towards the Pakistani government, due to hold elections in 2007. This should stem not just from empathy toward the Baluchs, but out of a self-interested security dilemma. It is now up to Baluchi leaders to express what that stance should be.

Pakistan
Balochistan
Baluchistan

Hunger Ad banned by Bush & Co.

Apparently this is one of three hard-hitting MTV ads recently banned by the US government.

For the other two pics visit
Koolstuffs.net

Picture courtesy Koolstuff.net (posted on Bloggers.Pakistan)

Bush
censorship

A US-Pak Journalist Lashes Out at Mush

Hasan Jafri is a Pakistani-born journalist who began his career in Karachi. He is currently based in the US. Yesterday he wrote this piece for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

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Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Pakistan has to earn U.S. aid
Tuesday, July 4, 2006

By HASAN JAFRI

Congress has proposed to reduce aid to military-ruled Pakistan by $150 million for not carrying out overdue democratic reforms. But President Bush's Pakistani allies say they want all, not some of the money, $3 billion over five years.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad, has reassured Pakistan, saying, "We are a democracy, Congress has its views, but I would like to make very clear that this administration is totally committed to providing the full amount."

Make no mistake: this would be a misstep. Gen. Pervez Musharraf's military regime should be made to offer specific concessions, not just for democratic change, but with respect also to nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

There are compelling reasons why. Pakistan helps the United States in the war on terrorism but not nearly enough. The leaders of Pakistan's two largest political parties, which also happen to be moderate politically, are barred from contesting elections. And Dr. A. Q. Khan's nuclear parts bazaar welcomed shoppers from Iran and al-Qaida.

Enforcing congressional cuts and spelling out what the United States expects will tell Pakistan's military regime unequivocally to clean up its act.

For starters, the U.S. could tell Pakistan to apprehend more top terrorists. Second, Pakistan should allow the world community meaningful access to Khan. Third, Pakistan must let Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, civilian opposition leaders languishing in exile, to come home with guarantees they will not be arrested or harassed in the country's Wild West court system. Musharraf is promising elections in October.

Bhutto and Sharif should be allowed to contest.

The United States' Pakistani critics will assail those demands as imperious, but the U.S. has little choice. The hands-off-Pakistan policy initiated following 9/11 is failing. Islamic radicals and Taliban are a dangerous and growing threat in Pakistan.

To build a power base independent of Bhutto and Sharif, Musharraf has appeased radical Islamists. This is the genesis of news stories about Pakistan's leader walking a U.S. tightrope as he tries calming bloodthirsty clerics gathered below. It is also the reason why Pakistan has been so distracted from its international commitments.

After 9/11, Musharraf promised to find Osama bin Laden but the search for bin Laden has turned into the search for Jimmy Hoffa.

All signs point to northern Pakistan as the al-Qaida leader's hideout, yet bin Laden is free. A scalpel put to Pakistan's military budget may induce the country's once prolifically productive secret police to rediscover its knack for finding people.

Khan merely needs to be delivered to the world community. Even Pakistanis, who overwhelmingly support their country's nuclear program, are stunned Khan has not been questioned at length by a neutral government or by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Musharraf says no way -- Khan is a national hero. Yet Pakistan has not been shy about rendering its heroes before. Many of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are Pakistanis, and before Islamabad turned away from the Taliban they, too, were feted as great icons. Today's terrorists were yesterday's mujahedeen.

Aid cuts and clear conditions for resumption will help Islamabad become a responsible ally. Pakistan is the world's sixth-largest nation, and it must not nurture Taliban sympathizers or hide the sales records of a nuclear Macy's.

Bush should support cuts proposed by Congress and tie future assistance to concrete reform.

Pakistan

Some Interesting Titbits

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Shortcut Aziz’s weird examples of ‘Good Governance and Transparency’
Much is being made of the Supreme Court’s cancellation of the sale of Pakistan Steel Mills Corporation on the grounds that state functionaries violated ‘by acts of omissions and commissions’ mandatory provisions of law concerning sales of state assets in pursuance of its declared privatization policy.

After the courts decision leading Chundrigar Road-wallas, such as Khadim Ali Shah Buhkari & Co told Reuters that the court’s decision raised questions about the credibility of the privatisation process – "The court decision revealed that the privatisation process, as claimed by the government, is not at all transparent".

Just to prove these views last week’s Friday Times (no link available) had this to say:

Anyone ever heard of conflict of interest or conduct unbecoming in this land of the Pure? If so, it ain’t Shortcut [Aziz] who was spied dining with the man in the eye of the Steel Mills storm. The two sauntered into [Islamabad’s] up market Lebanese restaurant with not a care about the propriety of such a public get-together. And this while the case was before the Supreme Court pending a verdict…

And the ‘the man in the eye of the Steel Mills storm’ can be none other than Arif Habib of Arif Habib Securities, one of the leading members of the consortium that originally won the $362 million (Rs21.68 billion) bid to acquire 75 per cent stake and management control of Pakistan Steel Mills.

Apparently Shaukat Aziz can’t resist being buddies with Karachi billionaires. His other close pal is Aqeel Dedi, who together with Arif Habib are the goliaths of the Karachi Stock Exchange, both are believed to be the richest two people in Karachi these days. Rumour has it that they both make mega-money in the stock exchange, whether it goes shooting up or crashing down (but not when it stays still).

After last month’s stock market it appears that members from both sides of the political divide in the national Assembly were seemingly convinced of one ‘fact’. As the Business Recorder reported:

Members from both sides of the divide alleged four or five brokers, including Arif Habib and Aqeel Dedi were behind the stock market fluctuations.

It is wishful thinking but isn’t it time someone asked old Shortcut to ‘unsleaze’ his act?
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Musharraf’s consistent inconsistency

On Tuesday 27 June the Pakistan government publicly announced, in the presence of visiting US Secretary of State, Condi Rice, that it would deploy a further 10,000 troops along the border with Afghanistan to control cross-border infiltration.

As the Daily Times reported on its front page the following day:

At a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said Pakistan would deploy another 10,000 troops to dispel the impression that it is not doing enough against terrorism.

Then three days later came a complete volte-face. As Dawn reported:

Pakistan would not deploy additional security forces along the Pakistan-Afghan border as already deployed 80,000 troops were sufficient to check the cross-border movement of terrorists, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Sherpao said on Friday.

One is free to wonder at the contradictory mindset that seems to be prevailing in Islamabad these days. But then again what else is new?
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Imran Khan begins to hit the target

Imran Khan appears to be battling on and finally winning some brownie points from the ordinary joe citizen. Here is an excerpt from an interview he gave UK’s Sunday newspaper The Observer:

When [Imran Khan] stood at the last election in 2003, he says, 'the government stuffed the ballots. One guy who was against me was the biggest drug mafia guy in the area. They let him out of jail to run in the election because they thought he controlled the area. But still I got record votes. In most of Pakistan it is a feudal country. People are very scared and oppressed by authority. But when you move to these wilder areas, they are not so easily suppressed.'

Did he think, despite the fears people have, he would have more seats in parliament by now?

'Well,' he says, crisply, 'It is not easy to win against a military dictator in an election that is being run by the security services.'

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The Islamabad Pugilist is at it again

Musharraf’s Minister of Law (and ironically – Human Rights) who has already achieved notoriety for punching up PIA passengers and restaurant waiters has hit the headlines once again. This time for illegally dishing out funds to his constituents (local political chumchas would possibly be the apt word here).

Here is a report from Geo TV

Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) has revealed that the ministry of law and justice has illegally disbursed lacs of rupees from human rights funds among the voters of the federal minister for law and on refusal of releasing more funds, a joint secretary of the ministry was confronted with the dismissal process. AGP report said that this amount from the human rights funds was disbursed in 2005 among the 305 voters of the Federal Minister, Wasi Zafar.

In fact, this amount was meant for the victims of abduction, excesses, police highhandedness, police encounters, arrested women and extra-judicial killings, but most of the amount from this fund was distributed among persons of Tehsil Jaranawala of Faisalabad, which happened to be federal minister’s constituency on the directives of the law minister.

Overall 83 percent of this fund went for patronization of such persons in this particular constituency, while the remaining 17 percent only was given to persons living in other areas of the country.

The report further divulged that the ministry’s joint secretary Saira Karim refused to pay to some more 560 persons of Jaranawala from thehuman rights funds, for which, she was facing a dismissal process.

A subsequent editorial in The News commented:

It found that of 360 people who received funds from the ministry, 305 happened to be voters from the constituency of the law minister himself. The minister (whose son physically assaulted a passenger at Karachi airport last year, while he looked on and did nothing to intervene) is then said to have initiated an inquiry against a senior bureaucrat who had raised objections to funds being given allegedly to another 560 voters from his constituency. While the minister initially denied on the floor of the National Assembly that he did any such thing, the contents of the auditor-general's reports will be difficult to deny. Such instances show an utter lack of accountability among senior government officials, especially those at the ministerial level.

Obviously nothing is going to happen to Wasi Zafar as he is one of Musharraf’s most loyal flatterers, one who regularly gives press statements such as “Musharraf can contest election of president in uniform”.
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Heavy PR Drive in Dera Bugti

It appears that our Khakis are doing a major PR exercise on Balochistan. Reading between the lines a large number of foreign journos were flown into Dera Bugti and given a work over. It was effective as can be seen by BBC Barbara Plett’s sugary piece but The Economist was a bit less gullible. Here are some excerpts:

In the past few years, 400 Pakistani soldiers have been killed in the [Balochistan] conflict, as well as several hundred people in army attacks. Pakistan's Human Rights Commission has documented government atrocities, including a massacre of 12 civilians in January.

For General Musharraf, this has become a serious headache. Gas supplies to Pakistan's main towns have been interrupted by attacks on Baluchistan's pipelines and gasfields. Construction of a vast new port, at the Baluch village of Gwadar, has been occasionally disrupted. Across Pakistan, meanwhile, for reasons including rising inflation and his pro-America policies, the general is fast becoming unpopular; and the Baluch insurgents have drawn sympathy.

While clearly not partial to the Buti Chief the Economist further opined:

Mr Bugti has a dreadful history of oppressing his people, yet the grievances he claims to be fighting for are real.

… If only General Musharraf would listen to the aggrieved Baluch, his more level-headed critics say, worse violence could be averted. But that looks unlikely. In May 2005, a parliamentary committee proposed 32 sensible ways to placate them, including increased development spending and a local stake in the port at Gwadar. None of these has been taken up. And General Musharraf's hand is growing heavier. Across Baluchistan, thousands have been arrested, often merely because of their alleged nationalist opinions. An alliance between feudal tribes, like the Bugtis, and more enlightened nationalists, who despise the sardari system, has been forged by shared suffering.

…[General Musharraf] seems convinced that to end its insurgency, he has only to crush the bothersome sardars. In that…he is wrong.

Pakistan

May the Farce be with you! (Part 1)

The frantic attempts at face saving continue.

A few days ago it was Shaukat Aziz’s turn. As Dawn reported:

Shaukat Aziz has said that Pakistan has all the essential elements of democracy. Speaking at the inaugural session of an envoys’ conference at the Foreign Office, he said the country had a functioning and sovereign parliament, an active opposition, unrestricted political activity, free press and independent judiciary. He said good governance had been provided through transparency and accountability.

As we know reality is glaringly otherwise. For today I will pick only two of the above tall claims: ‘a functioning and sovereign parliament’ and ‘a free press’ (reserving the remainder hopefully for a future Blog).

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As for the claim of ‘a sovereign parliament’, most of us are aware that we have been inflicted with a rubber-stamp parliament, which helps prop up a farcical government made of extremely dubious characters, many – if not most - of whom were elected courtesy of our intelligence agencies.

As columnist Ayaz Amir points out in his latest column:

…there are two governments in Pakistan — one nominal represented by prime minister and parliament, the other real represented by the president-in-uniform — there are two election commissions in Pakistan: one headed by the chief election commissioner, the other in ISI. The first makes all the sound and fury. The real ballot-counting takes place in the second.

According to Ayaz Amir even the ‘dapper Khurshid Kasuri, stern guardian of the national interest’ would not have got elected to the National Assembly without ISI’s help.

Your Blogger himself is witness to how an MNA with a patently fake internet degree (which was passed by two high court judges who are believed to have received a forceful push from ‘high up above’) got elected by pre-stuffed ballot boxes placed at his rival’s polling booths. And the reason behind his ‘miraculous’ success? Soon after his political rival challenged his fake degree in court the MNA-hopeful made a surreptitious visit to Islamabad where he met with Lieutenant General Ehsan ul Haq, then chief of ISI, and pledged his loyal allegiance to Musharraf.

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And Shaukat Aziz’s claim that we have a free press is just as preposterous.

How’s this report for starters:

Reporters Without Borders has registered at least 21 cases of Pakistani and foreign journalists being kidnapped by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) since Gen. Musharraf became president in October 1999

Recent happenings only add further grist to the mill. The outrageous kidnapping and cold-blooded execution of Waziristan journalist Hayatullah Khan has scandalised most newspaper readers in Pakistan.

Much before the discovery of Hayatullah’s handcuffed body the following had already appeared in the international media:

Amnesty International reported in April:

Local journalists have repeatedly expressed their conviction that intelligence agencies were holding Hayatullah Khan. This was further confirmed when the North West Frontier Province Governor's secretary [Arbab Shahzad] told a delegation of the Khyber Union of Journalists in mid-December that Hayatullah Khan would be "held longer" if they continued their protests.

It would appear that NWFP’s governor’s secretary knew exactly who had detained Hayatullah.

Then there is the current case of Geo TV and The News correspondent Mukesh Rupeta and assistant cameraman Sanjay Kumar. Rupeta and Kumar ‘disappeared’ on March 6 this year. Sadly it took their employer, Jang Media Group, an unbelievable period of three and half months before going public about their missing employees (but then the Jang Group is known for being rather spineless vis-à-vis Islamabad).

As The News editorial belatedly commented:

...the detention incommunicado for over three months of Mukesh Rupeta, a correspondent of this newspaper and Geo TV, severely undermines the claims often made by the president and the prime minister that the press is free. Mr Rupeta had been missing since early March and it was only after his disappearance was disclosed by his employers that he was presented before a court. Till then, the government -- as per what seems to have become the 'standard operating procedure' in such cases -- had been denying any knowledge of his whereabouts. However, the day the national press reported that he had been missing for over three months, and that he might have been taken into custody by the intelligence agencies for filming a military installation, he was produced before a court and the police filed charges against him under the Official Secrets Act.

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Shaukat Aziz was an extremely successful private banker. His speciality in Citibank was to raise mega-million deposits from third world individuals – including many corrupt heads of governments and their family members. To obtain these kinds of funds one needs a dazzling smile, tons of charm and guile, and a lot of bull-dust.

However, as yet another stuffed-ballot-boxes elected-MNA Shaukat Aziz should be more than well aware of the reality of our ‘democracy’. So when he sprouts such unbelievable absurdities all I can say to him is (with apologies to all potential Jedi warriors): May the Farce be with you!

Pakistan