Pakistan agrees Sharia law deal

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7891955.stm

 

Pakistan valley under Sharia law

Pakistan has signed a peace deal with a Taleban group that will lead to the enforcement of the Islamic Sharia law in the restive Swat valley.

Regional officials urged the Taleban, who agreed a 10-day truce on Sunday, to lay down their arms permanently.

Once one of Pakistan’s most popular holiday destinations, the Swat valley is now mostly under Taleban control.

Thousands of people have fled and hundreds of schools have been destroyed since the Taleban insurgency in 2007.

Chief Minister of North West Frontier Province Ameer Hussain Hoti announced a bill had been signed that would implement a new “order of justice” in the Malakand division, which includes Swat.

The bill will create a separate system of justice for the whole region.

The BBC’s M Ilyas Khan, who was recently in Swat, says the Taleban had already set up their own system of Islamic justice, as they understand it.

 

[The deal] was reached after realisation that it was the demand of the people  Ameer Hussain Hoti, NWFP chief minister Diary: ‘End of violence’ Analysis: Will law bring order?

Their campaign against female education has led to tens of thousands of children being denied an education, our correspondent says.

US envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, who is in India, said he needed more information on the deal but that the situation in Swat had “deeply affected the people of Pakistan, not just in Peshawar but in Lahore and in Islamabad”.

Mr Holbrooke said Swat “demonstrates a key point and that is that India, the United States and Pakistan have all a common threat now… [we] all face an enemy which possesses a direct threat to our leadership”.

‘Very positive’

 

The government of North West Frontier Province had been holding talks with local militant leader, Sufi Mohammad, on making amendments to the enforcement of Sharia in Swat.Sufi Mohammad, a pro-Taleban cleric, is the father-in-law of Maulana Fazlullah, who has been waging a violent campaign to impose Sharia in the region.

Mr Hoti said: “An agreement has been reached with Sufi Mohammad’s delegation and this is a great

“The recommendations and proposals have been finalised, but they can only be implemented after peace is achieved.”

Mr Hoti said President Asif Ali Zardari had “in principle… approved this package”.

Mr Hoti said the agreement had not been made “under pressure from anyone” and was not unconstitutional.

“It was reached after realisation that it was the demand of the people.”

The chief minister said the government had done all it could and asked for the Taleban to now lay down their arms.

He said a grand jirga (council) led by Sufi Mohammad would now be going to Swat to get all the factions to comply.

The Taleban have said they will examine the document before ending hostilities permanently.

The Agence France-Presse news agency quoted Sufi Mohammad as saying: “We had been holding negotiations with the government on a 22-point charter of demands for quite some time. There were differences on five points, which were removed in a meeting on Sunday.”

 

Many people have fled Swat to be in safer parts of Pakistan

Sharia law has been in force in Malakand since 1994. But appeal cases are heard in the Peshawar high court, which operates under the civil code.Our correspondent says there will be alterations to the appeals process – a point of contention often cited by the militants for their continued insurgency.

The agreement will bind the provincial government to implement Sharia law in the Malakand division, which comprises Swat and its adjoining areas.

The people of Swat have been caught in the crossfire between the army and the Taleban, our correspondent says.

More than 1,000 civilians have died in shelling by the army or from beheadings sanctioned by the Taleban. Thousands more have been displaced.

The Taleban now control the entire countryside of Swat, limiting army control to parts of the valley’s capital, Mingora.

Many people in Swat now would favour an early exit by the army as they have failed to roll back the Taleban or protect the Taleban’s opponents, says our correspondent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Saudi-ization of Pakistan – Newsline

A stern, unyielding version of Islam is replacing the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis in Pakistan.

By Pervez Hoodbhoy

Back
The common belief in Pakistan is that Islamic radicalism is a problem only in FATA, and that madrassas are the only institutions serving as jihad factories. This is a serious misconception. Extremism is breeding at a ferocious rate in public and private schools within Pakistan’s towns and cities. Left unchallenged, this education will produce a generation incapable of co-existing with anyone except strictly their own kind. The mindset it creates may eventually lead to Pakistan’s demise as a nation state.

For 20 years or more, a few of us have been desperately sending out SOS messages, warning of terrible times to come. In fact, I am surprised at how rapidly these dire predictions have come true.

A full-scale war is being fought in FATA, Swat and other “wild” areas of Pakistan, resulting in thousands of deaths. It is only a matter of time before this fighting shifts to Peshawar and Islamabad (which has already been a witness to the Lal Masjid episode) and engulfs Lahore and Karachi as well. The suicide bomber and the masked abductor have crippled Pakistan’s urban life and shattered its national economy.

Soldiers, policemen, factory and hospital workers, mourners at funerals and ordinary people praying in mosques have all been reduced to globs of flesh and fragments of bones. But, perhaps paradoxically, in spite of the fact that the dead bodies and shattered lives are almost all Muslim ones, few Pakistanis speak out against these atrocities. Nor do they approve of the army operation against the cruel perpetrators of these acts because they believe that they are Islamic warriors fighting for Islam and against American occupation. Political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have no words of solace for those who have suffered at the hands of Islamic extremists. Their tears are reserved exclusively for the victims of Predator drones, even if they are those who committed grave crimes against their own people. Terrorism, by definition, is an act only the Americans can commit.

What explains Pakistan’s collective masochism? To understand this, one needs to study the drastic social and cultural transformations that have rendered this country so completely different from what it was in earlier times.

For three decades, deep tectonic forces have been silently tearing Pakistan away from the Indian subcontinent and driving it towards the Arabian peninsula. This continental drift is not physical but cultural, driven by a belief that Pakistan must exchange its South Asian identity for an Arab-Muslim one. Grain by grain, the desert sands of Saudi Arabia are replacing the rich soil that had nurtured a magnificent Muslim culture in India for a thousand years. This culture produced Mughul architecture, the Taj Mahal, the poetry of Asadullah Khan Ghalib, and much more. Now a stern, unyielding version of Islam (Wahhabism) is replacing the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis and saints who had walked on this land for hundreds of years.

This change is by design. Twenty-five years ago, the Pakistani state used Islam as an instrument of state policy. Prayers in government departments were deemed compulsory, floggings were carried out publicly, punishments were meted out to those who did not fast in Ramadan, selection for academic posts in universities required that the candidate demonstrate a knowledge of Islamic teachings and jihad was declared essential for every Muslim. Today, government intervention is no longer needed because of a spontaneous groundswell of Islamic zeal. The notion of an Islamic state – still in an amorphous and diffused form – is more popular now than ever before as people look desperately for miracles to rescue a failing state.

Villages have changed drastically; this transformation has been driven, in part, by Pakistani workers returning from Arab countries. Many village mosques are now giant madrassas that propagate hard-line Salafi and Deobandi beliefs through oversized loudspeakers. They are bitterly opposed to Barelvis, Shias and other sects, who they do not regard as Muslims. The Punjabis, who were far more liberal towards women than the Pukhtuns, are now beginning to take a line resembling that of the Taliban. Hanafi law has begun to prevail over tradition and civil law, as is evident from the recent decisions of the Lahore High Court.

In Pakistan’s lower-middle and middle classes lurks a grim and humourless Saudi-inspired revivalist movement that frowns on any and every expression of joy and pleasure. Lacking any positive connection to culture and knowledge, it seeks to eliminate “corruption” by regulating cultural life and seizing control of the education system.

“Classical music is on its last legs in Pakistan; the sarangi and vichitraveena are completely dead,” laments Mohammad Shehzad, a music aficionado. Indeed, teaching music in public universities is violently opposed by students of the Islami Jamaat-e-Talaba at Punjab University. So the university has been forced to hold its music classes elsewhere. Religious fundamentalists consider music haram or un-Islamic. Kathak dancing, once popular with the Muslim elite of India, has few teachers left. Pakistan produces no feature films of any consequence. Nevertheless, the Pakistani elite, disconnected from the rest of the population, live their lives in comfort through their vicarious proximity to the West. Alcoholism is a chronic problem of the super rich of Lahore – a curious irony for this deeply religious country.

Islamisation of the state and the polity was supposed to have been in the interest of the ruling class – a classic strategy for preserving it from the wrath of the working class. But the amazing success of the state is turning out to be its own undoing. Today, it is under attack from religious militants, and rival Islamic groups battle each other with heavy weapons. Ironically, the same army – whose men were recruited under the banner of jihad, and which saw itself as the fighting arm of Islam – today stands accused of betrayal and is almost daily targeted by Islamist suicide bombers.

Pakistan’s self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that, like Saudi Arabia’s system, provides an ideological foundation for violence and future jihadists. It demands that Islam be understood as a complete code of life, and creates in the mind of a school-going child a sense of siege and embattlement by stressing that Islam is under threat everywhere.

On the previous page, the reader can view the government-approved curriculum. This is the basic road map for transmitting values and knowledge to the young. By an act of parliament passed in 1976, all government and private schools (except for O-level schools) are required to follow this curriculum. It was prepared by the curriculum wing of the federal ministry of education, government of Pakistan. It sounds like a blueprint for a religious fascist state.

Alongside are scanned pictures from an illustrated primer for the Urdu alphabet. The masthead states that it has been prepared by Iqra Publishers, Rawalpindi, along “Islamic lines.” Although not an officially approved textbook, it is being used currently by some regular schools, as well as madrassas associated with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), an Islamic political party that had allied itself with General Musharraf. These picture scans have been taken from a child’s book, hence the scribbles.

The world of the Pakistani schoolchild remained largely unchanged, even after September 11, 2001, the event that led to Pakistan’s timely desertion of the Taliban and the slackening of the Kashmir jihad. Indeed, for all his hypocritical talk of “enlightened moderation,” General Musharraf’s educational curriculum was far from enlightening. It was a slightly toned down version of the curriculum that existed under Nawaz Sharif which, in turn, was identical to that under Benazir Bhutto who had inherited it from General Zia-ul-Haq. Fearful of taking on the powerful religious forces, every incumbent government has refused to take a position on the curriculum and thus quietly allowed young minds to be moulded by fanatics. What may happen a generation later has always been a secondary issue for a government challenged on so many fronts.

The promotion of militarism in Pakistan’s so-called “secular” public schools, colleges and universities had a profound effect upon young minds. Militant jihad became part of the culture on college and university campuses. Armed groups flourished, they invited students for jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan, set up offices throughout the country, collected funds at Friday prayers and declared a war which knew no borders. Pre-9/11, my university was ablaze with posters inviting students to participate in the Kashmir jihad. Post-2001, this ceased to be done openly.

Still, the primary vehicle for Saudi-ising Pakistan’s education has been the madrassa. In earlier times, these had turned out the occasional Islamic scholar, using a curriculum that essentially dates back to the 11th century, with only minor subsequent revisions. But their principal function had been to produce imams and muezzins for mosques, and those who eked out an existence as ‘maulvi sahibs’ teaching children to read the Quran.

The Afghan jihad changed everything. During the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, madrassas provided the US-Saudi-Pakistani alliance the cannon fodder they needed to fight a holy war. The Americans and Saudis, helped by a more-than-willing General Zia, funded new madrassas across the length and breadth of Pakistan. A detailed picture of the current situation is not available. But according to the national education census, which the ministry of education released in 2006, Punjab has 5,459 madrassas followed by the NWFP with 2,843; Sindh has 1,935; the Federally Administrated Northern Areas (FANA), 1,193; Balochistan, 769; Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), 586; the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA), 135; and the Islamabad capital territory, 77. The ministry estimates that 1.5 million students are acquiring religious education in the 13,000 madrassas.

These figures appear to be way off the mark. Commonly quoted figures range between 18,000 and 22,000 madrassas. The number of students could be correspondingly larger. The free boarding and lodging plus provision of books to the students, is a key part of their appeal. Additionally, parents across the country desire that their children be “disciplined” and given a thorough Islamic education. The madrassas serve this purpose, too, exceedingly well.

Madrassas have deeply impacted the urban environment. Until a few years ago, Islamabad was a quiet, orderly, modern city different from the rest of Pakistan. Also, it had largely been the abode of Pakistan’s elite and foreign diplomats. But the rapid transformation of its demography brought with it hundreds of mosques with multi-barrelled audio-cannons mounted on minarets, as well as scores of madrassas illegally constructed in what used to be public parks and green areas. Now, tens of thousands of their students, sporting little prayer caps, dutifully chant the Quran all day. In the evenings they swarm the city, making women minus the hijab increasingly nervous.

Total segregation of the sexes is a central goal of the Islamists, the consequences of which have been catastrophic. For example, on April 9, 2006, 21 women and eight children were crushed to death and scores injured in a stampede inside a three-storey madrassa in Karachi, where a large number of women were attending a weekly congregation. Male rescuers, who arrived in ambulances, were prevented from moving the injured women to hospitals.

One cannot dismiss this incident as being just one of a kind. In fact, soon after the October 2005 earthquake, as I walked through the destroyed city of Balakot, a student of the Frontier Medical College described to me how he and his male colleagues were stopped by religious elders from digging out injured girl students from under the rubble of their school building. This action was similar to that of Saudi Arabia’s ubiquitous religious ‘mutaween’ (police) who, in March 2002, had stopped school girls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing their abayas – a long robe worn in Saudi Arabia. In a rare departure from the norm, Saudi newspapers had blamed and criticised the mutaween for letting 15 girls burn to death.

The Saudi-isation of a once-vibrant Pakistani culture continues at a relentless pace. The drive to segregate is now also being found among educated women. Vigorous proselytisers carrying this message, such as Mrs Farhat Hashmi, have been catapulted to the heights of fame and fortune. Their success is evident. Two decades back, the fully veiled student was a rarity on Pakistani university and college campuses. The abaya was an unknown word in Urdu. Today, some shops across the country specialise in abayas. At colleges and universities across Pakistan, the female student is seeking the anonymity of the burqa. And in some parts of the country she seems to outnumber her sisters who still “dare” to show their faces.

I have observed the veil profoundly affect habits and attitudes. Many of my veiled female students have largely become silent note-takers, are increasingly timid and seem less inclined to ask questions or take part in discussions. They lack the confidence of a young university student.

While social conservatism does not necessarily lead to violent extremism, it does shorten the distance. The socially conservative are more easily convinced that Muslims are being demonised by the rest of the world. The real problem, they say, is the plight of the Palestinians, the decadent and discriminatory West, the Jews, the Christians, the Hindus, the Kashmir issue, the Bush doctrine – the list runs on. They vehemently deny that those committing terrorist acts are Muslims, and if presented with incontrovertible evidence, say it is a mere reaction to oppression.

The immediate future does not appear hopeful: increasing numbers of mullahs are creating cults around themselves and seizing control of the minds of worshippers. In the tribal areas, a string of new Islamist leaders have suddenly emerged: Baitullah Mehsud, Maulana Fazlullah and Mangal Bagh. Poverty, deprivation, lack of justice and extreme differences of wealth provide the perfect environment for these demagogues to recruit people to their cause. Their gruesome acts of terror are still being perceived by large numbers of Pakistanis merely as a war against imperialist America. This could not be further from the truth.

In the long term, we will have to see how the larger political battle works out between those Pakistanis who want an Islamic theocratic state and those who want a modern Islamic republic. It may yet be possible to roll back those Islamist laws and institutions that have corroded Pakistani society for over 30 years and to defeat its hate-driven holy warriors. There is no chance of instant success; perhaps things may have to get worse before they get better. But, in the long term, I am convinced that the forces of irrationality will cancel themselves out because they act at random whereas reason pulls only in one direction. History leads us to believe that reason will triumph over unreason, and the evolution of the humans into a higher and better species will continue. Using ways that we cannot currently anticipate, they will somehow overcome their primal impulses of territoriality, tribalism, religiosity and nationalism. But, for now, this must be just a matter of faith.

The author teaches physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.

E-mail: newsline@cyber.net.pk

Swat diary: ‘Taleban rule now’ BBC NEWS

Swat diary: ‘Taleban rule now’

Militant Taleban sympathisers are fighting for control of Swat Munir (not his real name), an administrator in the Swat region of north-west Pakistan, describes the challenges of daily life in his valley as the Taleban and the army vie for influence. In recent weeks, he says, the Taleban have gained the upper hand and are making their presence felt in brutal fashion.   I know I always say the situation is terrible. And each time I find myself saying it, I am aware it has got worse.Over the last five to six days 13 bodies have been found in our area. In Mingora [capital of Swat] bodies are laid out in the square called Green Chowk. Hundreds come and look at the dead bodies. Sometimes they have been beheaded, sometimes they are just shot. Over the last few months the number of people killed in my village alone is in double digits. Some of them are villagers, others are frontiers corps and sometimes we see total strangers just lying there. But recently there was a terrible death in our village. It happened while I was away. It was a prominent man who spoke against the Taleban and tried to unite people against them. He was shot dead.    Here, nobody really fully knows who belongs to the Taleban. The militants are obvious, the sympathisers are not.  The deadline of 15 January that the Taleban have set for girls schools to close down is a false deadline. Schools have already closed.Dozens have been burned to the ground. My two nieces were going to school and now they just stay at home. Nobody dares to educate girls now. People are very sad about this but they are more sad about the dead bodies. People are really becoming very upset about this problem. ‘Beatings’ And the Taleban are taking power, they are going up in the world. Last night I saw for myself in my village that they had painted on walls signs saying: “Do not smoke” and “do not sell hashish”. It is frightening to see these things painted around your home. In a village close by militants entered people’s homes and broke television sets and beat the owners using terrible force on them. They walk about warning people not to smoke and sell cigarettes or hashish. Some people in our village smoke hashish and opium. The people who were seen smoking during Ramadan were taken by the Taleban, beaten and their mobiles were broken. ‘People leaving’ Most of the Taleban in my area are local villagers, I have come to believe now. Or at least people who were close friends of the Taleban. Things have changed a lot recently as the Taleban have gained more power in this region. They have guns, weapons, they have got everything. So I think this makes people want to become one of them. Some people are leaving. My uncle’s old home has been occupied by the Taleban. They have total control of his village. Many of the homes there were razed to the ground when the Taleban battled the army – but the Taleban are still there, although many villagers have left. Here, nobody really fully knows who belongs to the Taleban. The militants are obvious, the sympathisers are not. There is no trust. The issue becomes complicated when reporters come to the district. Nobody is willing to talk to them. Everyone is scared.

My Charlie Wilson War: By Fatima Bhutto

By Fatima Bhutto

Why is the University of Texas naming a chair of Pakistan Studies after the notorious U.S. congressman who helped destabilize that country? Fatima Bhutto—niece of the late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto—demands an answer.
Pakistan’s new government, the only in the world headed by two former convicts—who have their fingers on the button of a nuclear-armed state, no less—is nothing if not a keen purveyor of irony.
There’s currently an effort underway by the Pakistani diplomatic mission in Texas to raise funds for a chair of Pakistan Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. The chair, a dream of the Pakistani diplomatic community, is to be named after Charlie Wilson. For those who missed the movie, it’s worth noting that of all the people to name a chair of Pakistani Studies after, Charlie Wilson is possibly the stupidest.
Why Pakistan would chose to honor Wilson is beyond everyone, even the Texans.
“Good-Time Charlie,” as Wilson was affectionately known by Afghan warlords and Texan socialites alike, has the dubious reputation of being the godfather of what would later be known as the Taliban in Afghanistan. (He was also buddies with Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza.) In the 1980s, Wilson led Congress into supporting the CIA covert operation aimed at funneling money and arms into Afghanistan through Pakistan’s military and secret services, the ISI. That money, it should be said, did not go to Afghan refugees fleeing the Soviet’s communist invasion. No, it went to the mujahideen in the form of $17 million worth of anti-aircraft weapons, armaments, and other war toys. By the end of 1983, Wilson had managed to siphon $300 million of unused Pentagon cash to the Afghan mujahideen. Before they were the Taliban bad boys of the region, the mujahideen were one of Wilson’s pet projects. And now, Pakistan has decided to honor him by naming a chair of studies after him.
Personally, this is a source of great revulsion for me. My aunt, Benazir, and I never agreed on much, and though she’s no longer alive to debate the point, my guess is that the idea of such a chair would be one more thing we’d not see eye to eye on—she had quite a different relationship with the Taliban than I do.
Why Pakistan would choose to honor Wilson is beyond everyone, even the Texans. According to the university’s newspaper, the Charlie Wilson Chair prompted several professors to send a letter to the dean questioning the naming of the chair. And the Pakistanis? The liberal arts development office at the university said that it “has not heard any concerns from the Pakistani community about the naming of the chair.”
Well if that’s the case, count me as the first. There’s no need to go back in history to find this choice outrageous. Wilson’s legacy remains omnipresent in Pakistan. Inspired by the success of its neighbors, Pakistan now has their very own Taliban (thank you, Charlie), and the ISI continues to exert its might over the country in a distinctly undemocratic way.
Before 2008 was over, Wilson’s boys, the Taliban, had trickled from Pakistan’s northern tribal borders into the heart of the country. They took over Peshawar, once a garden city known for its Buddhist heritage, and in December attacked the Peshawar Model School. The school, which offers co-education to approximately 12,000 of the city’s underprivileged girls and boys, had twelve of its school buses set afire, and a tightly packed set of dynamite detonated in the principal’s office. Several groundskeepers and staff were critically wounded by the explosion and the school was forced to shut down for several days.
But that’s nothing compared to the militants’ hold on the northern city of Swat, the site of a violent civil war that the militants are considered to have won over the past year. The Taliban has set a January 15 deadline in Swat for girls to stop attending school. The choice given to Swat’s parents: take your girls out of school voluntarily, or face Taliban-style justice. Young schoolgirls have already been attacked, a warning of what’s to come should the city continue with its dastardly plan to educate girls.
Wilson’s other pet project, Pakistan’s powerful ISI, also remains a newsmaker. India has been pushing Pakistan to admit that the recent Mumbai attacks were linked to a militant group that was supported by the ISI for years – an accusation Pakistan has not yet accepted, though militants captured in raids earlier this month have supported India’s suspicions. And the Pakistan government would like to hush up the fact that its predecessor, Benazir Bhutto’s administration, aided the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan in 1996, and was one of only three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban government, the others being Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Bhutto’s minister of the interior, Naserullah Babar, a ruthless man who carried a cane walking stick, publicly called the Taliban “my boys.”
My father, an elected member of parliament, was killed while my aunt was prime minister of Pakistan (by her police force, no less). I was always vocally critical of her government’s extra-judicial killings, rife in Karachi at the time. And I spoke out against her corruption and her nepotistically guided politics, which she didn’t like very much. But it’s her role in recognizing the Taliban that is the gift that truly keeps on giving to me.
See, my email address is public—Google it if you’d like—and I get hundreds of emails a day from Pakistanis. Most are kind and supportive, written by frustrated fellow citizens appalled at the state of our country, seeking someone to commiserate with and debate with. But some are from complete loons, fundamentalist types: “Shame on you,” read one recent email. “Yr a disgrace to the veeson (sic) of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto. She has supported the Muslim brothers in Afghanistan and given the blessing of Pakistan to the fighting sons of the mujahideen…Yr a disgrace to our women, your hairs are uncovered and your arms are bare, dressing in western clothes. You’ll see wat we’ll do to you when inshallah we are the powerful. Cover yr breasts.”
It was a charming email, a sign of how far Charlie Wilson’s Taliban has come in Pakistan.
Senator John McCain, unable to focus on what should be a not-so-early retirement, is busy swinging back and forth between India and Pakistan, coddling one country and scolding the other, all the while warning us all that Pakistan is within an inch of being aerially attacked by India. Maybe the Pakistani diplomatic mission can get cracking on funding a chair of Pakistan Studies named after McCain and Condi Rice, who very kindly eased tensions between India and Pakistan and dropped discreet hints that Pakistan may want to rein in Wilson’s chums at the ISI.
So, why not? Maybe one Charlie Wilson Chair of Pakistan Studies simply isn’t enough. Maybe Pakistani diplomatic missions the world over can corral their efforts and set up a whole Charlie Wilson syllabus: Funding Fundamentalists 101; Intro to Training Third-World Secret Services; Right-Wing Dictatorships: Where Have They Gone?
I’d love to sign up for a few classes. Too bad I’m a girl.
Fatima Bhutto is a graduate of Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She is currently at work on a book to be published by Jonathan Cape in 2010 and writes regularly for the New Statesman among other publications. Fatima lives and works in Karachi, Pakistan.

Richard Boucher receiving the highest Civilian award in Pakistan

boy…I am in a talkative mood today…. this was something else that happened that I shook my head at and even more dismayed at the fact that not a murmer was heard about this…. till I saw what someone did to this photograph and I smiled to myself….ah ….. so it did bother some people out there…. well done…. so I post this picture up for you to get your comments and thoughts on this… I wonder what kind of conversation took place before this action was taken…. absolutely unbelievable…but then again…given what’s been going on in Pakistan… I shouldn’t be so surprised

Reading the writing on the wall

A world apart from us... can we survive together as a country? (Photography by Author)

So this evening I went to the American club with some friends….for some of us its an interesting place to go because one can chill…buy drinks at a bar like one would anywhere in the world where that kind of thing is normal …maybe make some new friends…good fun. Of course getting in to the club is a trial of patience as there are security checks in case we represent any kind of hazard to the community there…which is understandable given the current situation and Karachi’s track record. Once we were in and our friends had started warming up…. some Americans came in…the real kind…u know…gora chita type…and we all got talking. I was telling one of them about how much they were missing out on because they hadn’t had a chance to get out and really experience the country…to meet real people and develop relationships with just the average joe out there. I was asked what kept me here and as I broke off into a monologue of how much I loved the country it was a good reminder to myself. I think we forget….for the most part…the things we do love about Pakistan. Its so easy to get caught up in the fact that now Asif Zardari is our President…or that electricity is even more scarce now than 10 years ago….or that the Taliban have installed Sharia Law in Hangu and who knows if they will finally come to my neck of the woods and not allow me to listen to music…or drive or even be seen out in the bazaar…. 

Yes that’s what I said…I don’t know if many Pakistani’s read that newspaper item in the paper this morning and if it caused any alarm for anyone. Or are we going to have the same laissez faire attitude of “if it doesn’t affect me I don’t care”.  I haven’t seen anyone making a fuss over this…least of all the government….who should be concerned considering we now have a state within a state….isn’t that a threat to our National Security ? Is anyone paying attention?? I remember when the Swat situation was erupting and I had my show on Dawn tv… it was the same thing… every two days there would be reports of strange things happening and no one paid attention… was too far away and secluded from “us” who mattered to really worry about that. Today Swat cannot be accessed without serious threat to our lives…. We are losing bits of Pakistan piece by piece . We are witnessing it happen and nothing can be done about it… and soon…. pleasant bar conversations about my country will be limited to memories of a more pleasant time in what used to be Pakistan if we are not careful

Enter the PM

Don’t know about you but I know there was a lot of nervousness before the announcement of the Prime Minister of Pakistan…fears ofAsif Ali Zardari actually throwing all caution to the winds and taking over the coveted slot… .then we got the news that it is Yusuf Raza Gillani. Then there were speculations about is he a seat warmer…. for Zardari… is here to stay? So far the right noises seem to be coming out from the PM Chair…. your thoughts and impressions?? anyone up for sharing them ?

Courts have quashed Zardari cases

sigh…don’t know how many of you saw or heard of this news or are even surprised by it… what does surprise me is those clamouring for an independant judiciary didn’t raise an eyebrow or make a comment…..nothing… civil society…lawyers… does anyone have any comment for this development?

why the silence

if you’re wondering where I got off to…I just decided that rather than debate over issues that have been beated to death…was better to just wait and see what the elections brought us and take it from there…so despite all the critics saying elections wouldn’t happen …they did… they said emergency wouldn’t be lifted…it was….they said uniform would never come off…it did…they were all wrong…

There is a great saying…be careful what you ask for …as you may just get it… and today Pakistan has gotten Asif Ali Zardari as the man leading Pakistan into the future… I wonder what you are all thinking about that?

My reaction is … well… we’re here.. and we are going to have to deal with it…but this is the real time for civil society to be diligent and alert so as repetitions of the man’s history do not occur. Nawaz Sharif is still whining like a baby about what he wants and to me as a normal citizen…all i want to say is “oh for crying out loud…just get on with the business of dealing with the problems that ordinary Pakistanis have to deal with” If that means working with whoever you need to …then do it….just get the job done.

Comments??

Don’t let a tragedy…no matter how great… blur the truth

Bhutto killed then trashed on Fox News.. Assassinated

let me know what you think…I’m not a fan of Fox TV but here is something that makes interesting points