Manoj Mitta speaks at MIT. Credit: Beena Sarwar

By Beena Sarwar
BOSTON, Oct 25 2014 (IPS)

As senior Indian journalist Manoj Mitta was testifying before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. Congress last month about mass violence and impunity in India, President Barack Obama escorted India’s newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Martin Luther King Memorial.

“They were just three miles away,” Mitta told IPS, commenting on the irony of this coincidence, remembering that the United States had banned Modi’s entry on the mass violence on his watch in 2002 leading to the killing of about 1,000 Muslims in Gujarat state.“We can no longer pass off the shielding of mass murderers as the ‘internal affairs’ of any country. " -- Manoj Mitta

“Why should the U.S. Congress hold a hearing on human rights violations in India?” asked one Boston-based Indian expatriate on hearing about this. “By that token, we can have hearings in India about racial killings in the USA.”

“Why not indeed?” responds Mitta, a senior editor with The Times of India in New Delh, speaking to IPS in Boston when he was here for a talk at MIT, one of several book talks at universities around the country.

Focusing on legal and public policy issues, transparency and judicial accountability, both his books dissect judicial inquiries into the deadliest instances of communal violence in India: “When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 carnage and its Aftermath”, co-authored with the eminent lawyer H. S. Phoolka (2007), and “The Fiction of Fact-Finding: Modi and Godhra” (2014).

The Lantos Commission event titled “Thirty Years of Impunity“, in collaboration with the Sikh Coalition, commemorated the 1984 carnage of Sikhs in the aftermath of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards. Over 2,500 Sikhs were massacred in Delhi alone in just three days.

There is also a class-based element to such mass-violence, notes Boston-based writer and poet Sarbpreet Singh, whose long poem “Kultar’s Mime” about the 1984 carnage is currently being performed in the U.S., Canada and India. “Most people who suffered and died were very poor.”

After Boston, New York, Ottawa and Toronto, the compelling show will be performed in India — Delhi (Oct. 30-Nov. 1), Chandigarh (Nov. 2), and Amritsar (Nov. 4), before heading to the U.S. west coast: Los Angeles (Nov. 20-23) and San Francisco Bay Area (Dec. 6-7).

A scene from Kultar’s Mime. Credit: Sikh Research Institute – sikhri.org

“The ongoing struggles for justice in India gain strength from expressions of solidarity from abroad,” said Mitta. “We can no longer pass off the shielding of mass murderers as the ‘internal affairs’ of any country. As Martin Luther King famously put it, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’.”

Mitta quotes an old Sanskrit saying, “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (the world is one family) – which Modi also invoked in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly.

But Modi was speaking “in terms of commerce and business,” says Mitta. “With the world being increasingly globalised on the economic front, more than globalisation of the economy, we need a universalisation of human rights standards and practices.”

Mitta, who also addressed the British Parliament commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 1984 carnage five years ago, says he would like countries to talk about each other’s human rights violations.

“Those violations affect not just the country they take place in. There are also spin-off effects that impact other countries,” he says. “Like, an unstable Pakistan is bad for India, and violations in India are bad for America.”

“Human rights should remain on the agenda,” adds Mitta, who has written extensively on the undermining of the rule of law in India – patterns that are visible in other South Asian nations too.

“Could such a mass crime, in which rampaging mobs fatally attacked hundreds of people, have ever occurred in Washington DC?” he asks. “And could the perpetrators of mass murder have got away with it? Could the security forces in the USA have colluded with the mobs as blatantly as they did in Delhi.”

“Could your president have dared to justify the mass crimes, as Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi did, by declaring that when a big tree had fallen, the earth was bound to shake?” he asked in his presentation to the Lantos Commission.

Such questions would seem equally inconceivable about other leading capital cities too. Whatever the provocation, could there ever have been such massacres, at any rate post-World War II, in London, Paris, Berlin or Tokyo?”

Looking beyond liberal democracies, the scale of the bloodshed in Delhi 1984 is “perhaps comparable to what happened in Beijing five years later, during the Tiananmen Square massacre” – committed by security forces operating in a single-party political system.

In fact, the death toll of Delhi 1984 was similar to that of 9/11 – the big difference being that “9/11 was the result of sudden and unforeseen terror attacks, not mob violence that deliberately remained unchecked for three days. By any standards of the civilised world, Delhi 1984 is one of a kind, a monstrosity without a parallel.”

And yet, it took 23 years for the first book on this subject to be published – Mitta and Phoolka’s, in 2007. It was made possible by a new inquiry commission established in 2000 seeking to undo the damage caused by the earlier one that had held all its findings in secrecy and not given due hearing to survivors.

The new commission, headed by former Supreme Court judge G.T. Nanavati, conducted its proceedings in public and released many old records related to the 1984 carnage.

“India’s appalling lack of documentation culture, especially on human rights issues is clearly a deficiency that is another reason for the impunity,” believes Mitta.

In the case of 1984, there have been about 30 convictions for murder in 30 years. The Gujarat carnage of 2002 has seen some 200 convictions, due to the Supreme Court’s intervention. The SC transferred some high-profile cases out of Gujarat and appointed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into some of the worst cases from 2002.

However, the SIT “balked at asking questions” or challenging Modi on any of his evasive or contradictory replies while examining him. Because of this “fact-fudging rather than fact-finding,” says Mitta, Modi ended up not facing trial, as recommended by the Supreme Court appointed amicus curiae.

It was only after the SIT exonerated him that Modi became the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. “The Supreme Court has yet to pronounce on Modi’s innocence or guilt.”

The Indian prime minister has called for a 10-year moratorium on caste and communal violence, urging Indians to stay focused on the challenges of economic development.

But Modi has taken no action or even condemn those who have since violated this moratorium by stepping up their hate speech. His “strategic silence” and “denial mode, pretending that there’s no escalation of religious tensions under his rule, effectively adds another layer of impunity,” says Mitta.

The bottom line, he adds: If it is allowed to continue, impunity for hate speech and violence in India will eventually impact U.S. corporations seeking to do business with India. Impunity affects all, whether it is for corporate corruption or human rights abuses.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Mujeeb-ur-Rahman (right) speaks at Harvard University. Amjad Mahmood Khan is seated to the left. Credit: Cara Solomon, Harvard Law School

By Beena Sarwar
BOSTON, Oct 20 2014 (IPS)

Two years ago, gunmen shot dead Farooq Kahloun’s newly married son Saad Farooq, 26, in an attack that severely injured Kahloun, his younger son Ummad, and Saad’s father-in-law, Choudhry Nusrat.

Saad died on the spot. In Pakistan after travelling from his home in New York for the wedding, Nusrat died in hospital later. Four bullets remain in Kahloun’s chest and arm. A bullet lodged behind the right eye of Ummad, a student in the UK, was surgically removed months later.“In Karachi, people are being killed every day. Doctors, professors, not just Ahmadis but also Shias and others.” -- Farooq Kahloun

As an Ahmadi leader in his locality, Kahloun knew he was a target for hired assassins in the bustling but lawless metropolis of Karachi. General insecurity in Pakistan is multiplied manifold if you are, like Kahloun, an Ahmadi – a sect of Islam that many orthodox Muslims abhor as heretic.

“I never thought they would target my family,” says Kahloun, 57, a successful businessman who left everything behind, obtained political asylum and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he lives with his wife and daughter.

In 1974, under pressure from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan’s parliament declared Ahmadis as non-Muslim (similarly pressured, the newly independent Bangladesh refused). A decade later, a military dictator made it a criminal offence for them to “pretend” to be Muslims.

These changes, say lawyers and human rights advocates, violate Pakistan’s own Constitutional provisions, specifically Articles 8-27 that are comparable to the U.S. Bill of Rights.

Saad Farooq

“These are shameful laws,” says Kahloun. “If we have no other Prophet or Quran, what can we do?”

‘Takfiri’ ideology (declaring someone a non-Muslim) led to Pakistan’s first Nobel Prize winner Dr. Abdus Salam (Physics, 1979), an Ahmadi, being hounded out of the country, and to the attack on Swat schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai, now Pakistan’s second Nobel Laureate, also forced into exile.

Assailants behind such attacks are rarely caught, tried and punished, creating a culture of impunity that only encourages more attacks, say analysts.

Assailants whom Ahmadi survivors captured and handed over to the police in May 2010 following one of Pakistan’s deadliest terrorist attacks are yet to be punished. The attack targeted an Ahmadi mosque in Lahore, killing over 90 worshippers and injuring many more.

“We could not live in Pakistan anymore. No one would leave if he had a choice, but now, any Ahmadi will go out if given the opportunity,” Kahloun told IPS by telephone. “In Karachi, people are being killed every day. Doctors, professors, not just Ahmadis but also Shias and others.”

Takfiri militants also term Shias as ‘Kafir’ or infidel and have been targeting them in huge numbers.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that 687 people were killed in over 200 sectarian attacks in 2013, 22 per cent more than in 2012, while 1,319 people were injured, 46 per cent more in 2012.

“The number of Ahmadis and religious communities seeking asylum abroad is steadily increasing,” says Qasim Rashid, a Pakistani-born, Virginia-based Ahmadi lawyer and author of ‘The Wrong Kind of Muslim’ (2013) that documents the Ahmadi persecution in Pakistan.

“This goes to show the importance of maintaining freedom of religion and conscience worldwide. It is the failure to uphold these rights that empowers and emboldens groups like Taliban and ISIS,” Rashid told IPS.

Some Pakistani Ahmadis are protected by their prominence, like Mujeeb-ur-Rahman, 83, a senior Supreme Court advocate who lives in Rawalpindi near the capital Islamabad, and has no intention of leaving the country.

“The Thurgood Marshall of Pakistan”, he is currently in the U.S., invited by the newly organised 52-member Ahmadi Muslim Lawyers Association (AMLA) to address their inaugural conference in Silver Spring, Maryland, last month and “pass on the torch”.

“All participants came at their own expense because they have a deep love and admiration for Mr. Rahman’s extraordinary career and advocacy,” says AMLA President Amjad Mahmood Khan, a Pakistani-origin American born in California.

AMLA has organised talks by Rahman at various universities, starting with Khan’s alma mater Harvard Law School. He spoke at Princeton University Oct. 17, and will appear at Columbia University, Oct. 23; New York University Law School, Oct. 27; University of California, Irvine, Oct. 30; and Stanford University, Nov. 4.

A lively and humorous speaker despite his age, Rahman peppers his talks with references to U.S. case law and pioneers like Martin Luther King — “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere” — besides Pakistan’s Constitution and legal cases.

He began his Harvard talk with the Muslim greeting “As-Salam-Alaikum” (peace be with you) — “almost a reflex greeting for any Pakistani, whether Christian or Muslim or from any religion”.

In Pakistan, the greeting could send him to jail for three years, he reminded the audience. So could saying the ‘Kalima’, the first prayer of Islam, “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet.”

“The first departure from the secular concept of Pakistan,” says Rahman, was Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly’s passage of the 1949 Objectives Resolution. Overriding the strong objections by some members, it declared Islam to be the state religion. “The clerics gained an inch”.

The Second Constitutional Amendment of 1974 that termed Ahmadis as non-Muslim is a “usurpation of constitutional authority, not a valid piece of law,” said Rahman. “The state cannot call into question anyone’s faith.”

In 1993, he argued a landmark case against restrictions on the Ahmadis’ right to freely practice their faith, consolidating eight appeals by Ahmadis, imprisoned for saying the ‘kalima’.

Zaheeruddin v. State is also known as the “trademark” or the “Coca Cola judgement” because the Supreme Court dismissed it on the grounds that Ahmadis by professing to be Muslims were violating the “trademarks” of Islam.

“As if religion is a merchandise, saleable commodity with financial interests attached,” scoffs Rahman, who carries with him two books that he adheres to: the Quran and Pakistan’s Constitution.

Lawyers in Pakistani courts cite hundreds of U.S. cases, but in the Zaheeruddin case, “American laws were wrongly cited and misapplied to give the colour of fairness to the case,” asserts Rahman.

Legal experts elsewhere have taken apart the Zaheeruddin judgement, like Martin Lau in a report for the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and Karen Parker, J.D. in a study for the Humanitarian Law Project of the International Educational Development, USA.

Rahman pins his hopes on “intelligence of a future day” along the lines of what the U.S. witnessed when a U.S. Supreme Court bench overturned a case that earlier restricted the right of the Jehovah’s Witnesses to propagate their faith.

“The ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] was active in overturning the case,” says Rahman, noting that one of the judges who had been on the earlier bench admitted to having been wrong the first time.

Pakistan is the only country where it is a criminal offense for Ahmadis to profess and practice their faith as Muslims, but state-sanctioned discrimination and persecution of Ahmadis elsewhere are increasing.

“Pakistani laws are the most aggressive,” notes the advocate Qasim Rashid. “But other countries have started following Pakistan’s example. The onslaught is led not by locals but by Pakistani mullahs.”

Bangladesh has banned Ahmadi books on religion, Ahmadis are under attack in Malaysia, and Indonesia has started sealing Ahmadi mosques.

Khalida Jamilah, 21, lived in West Java in Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population. She says Ahmadi families like hers were free to practice their faith as Muslims until 2005 when hard-line Muslims attacked an Ahmadi convention in West Java that her family was attending.

In 2008, they sought political asylum in the U.S., and moved to Los Angeles, where Jamilah’s father drives a cab.

“Here [in America] we can express our faith freely,” says Jamilah, now a journalism student at the University of California, Berkeley. “The U.S. government values freedom of religion and there is separation of church and state. I hope the Indonesian government does that too.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Many women in Pakistan qualify to become doctors, and then do not practice. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS.

By Beena Sarwar
BOSTON, United States, Mar 8 2014 (IPS)

On one of her many visits to Pakistan recently, Sarah Peck, director of the US-Pakistan Women’s Council, spent some time talking to young women medical students in Pakistan. She was struck by their passion and commitment — and by the hurdles they face.

Left to right, medical student Saima Firdous, Dr Jamila Khalil, Sarah Peck, Dr Khalil Khatri Credit: Beena Sarwar

The US-Pakistan Women’s Council is working with expatriate Pakistani doctors to find ways to encourage women qualifying as doctors in Pakistan to practice medicine.

Women outnumber male students in medical colleges across Pakistan, forming up to 85 percent of the student body in private universities and 65 percent in the public sector.

But only about half of them end up working as doctors. There are no nationwide figures for this estimate, but the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council’s records show the discrepancy between the number of women medical students and women doctors in Pakistan.

Less than half the 138,789 doctors registered with this nationwide body are women, 62,315. For specialists, the numbers are even lower – of the total 29,914 specialists registered with PMDC, only 8,056 are women.

The pattern is also visible in doctors from Pakistan coming to the United States.

“When doctor couples come here, the husband starts to work, the wife takes care of the family,” says Dr Jamila Khalil, president of APPNE, the New England chapter of APPNA, the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America.

“I grew up here, I was already a dentist by the time I got married,” she told IPS. A Pashtun from Pakistan’s northwest region bordering Afghanistan, she is a dentist and mother of two teens.

“It was very hard,” she added, her New England twang evident in her pronunciation of the last word, ‘haahd’.

The hurdles women doctors face in Pakistan and how to support them came under discussion at a lunch meeting that Sarah Peck attended recently in Somerville, Massachusetts convened by APPNE.

One of the organisers, Dr Khalil Khatri, a dermatologist and former president of APPNE, was also present at the APPNA winter session in Karachi last December where Peck met women medical students.

At the Karachi meeting women medical students had identified many different factors behind the difficulties they face in practicing medicine.

There are social pressures and lack of support, with mothers, mothers-in-law, and husbands often not wanting women to work. Families may help young couples with household matters and childcare but they also pressure them to conform to traditional gender roles.

Then, those who don’t go into ob-gyn or pediatrics have to deal with male patients, frowned upon in that highly gender segregated society – although the women medical students at the Karachi meeting said they had no issues seeing male patients.

What was hard, they said, is the harassment they face, like finding the locks broken on their changing room doors, making it difficult for them to strip and scrub down. Male peers and supervisors don’t take this seriously. In fact, those who complain face further problems.

Transport issues and security concerns, especially for those working late night shifts, are also daunting.

“One way to tackle the security and transport problem would be to arrange shuttles for women medical students especially after hours,” suggested Dr Nasar Quraishi, a pathologist visiting from New Jersey.

One of Dr Khatri’s nieces in Karachi recently started working as a doctor there. “When she has to work late nights, her parents are constantly worried. Two of my other nieces are in medical school there, but they also have every intention of practicing.”

Saima Firdous, 32, a medical student from Pakistan who finished her post-doc at Harvard University last year and is a board member of APPNE, says there is a need for “more women-only medical colleges in Pakistan, so that more people allow girls to study medicine.”

“Coming from a conservative, rural family, I found it really hard,” she told IPS. “Our culture doesn’t allow girls to live or travel alone. I’ve had to fight a lot.”

Her brother didn’t want her to attend the co-ed medical school in their city, Rawalpindi, but he also didn’t want her to go to the only women’s medical college in Pakistan, in Lahore, where she would have to live in a hostel.

“It was my three older sisters, who themselves have never been to school, who stood by me and supported me,” said Firdous, who for two years conducted a television show on the state-run Pakistan Television aiming to educate rural dwellers about basic health issues.

She received a major blow when the man she was in love with and about to marry, a U.S.-qualified physician who had encouraged her in her studies, told her that she could finish medical school, but he didn’t want her working as a doctor.

“I refused,” she said. “I hadn’t studied all those years to sit at home.”

Traveling alone to the United States, where she initially stayed with family friends, was another hurdle. “When I’m done, in another two or three years, I want to return to Pakistan and work, motivate other girls,” added Firdous.

“Women doctors are already respected role models in Pakistan, in all fields. Women have a loud voice in media and society in general,” said Dr Naheed Usmani, a paediatric oncologist from Pakistan who lives and works in the Boston area, and has also worked in Pakistan for several years.

The Council should train women doctors from the Pakistani diaspora to mentor and help students problem-solve, she told Peck.

The Council could also use its network to identify and train mentors based in Pakistan.

In the long term, there is a need to “increase motivation among women medical students and support them to not give up,”  Dr Khatri told IPS. “Secondly, educate society to develop a system where medical students are enabled to carry on their work after graduating.”

The Council’s partnership with U.S. doctors of Pakistani origin provides no quick-fix solutions to these myriad problems, but it is a step in the right direction.

Erum Sattar, a law student from Karachi and president of the Harvard Pakistan Student Group who was present at the lunch, said that the Pakistani students at Harvard would help in any way, perhaps by facilitating video conferencing for mentors and connecting people.

Tom Salamone of Minisink, New York addresses a rally in front of the Federal Energy Regulation Commission on Nov 15, opposing a natural gas compressor station being built in Minisink. Credit: Asha Canalos

By Beena Sarwar
BOSTON, Massachusetts, Nov 27 2012 (IPS)

Efforts to promote the use of hydraulic fracturing, a controversial method of obtaining oil and natural gas, face stiff opposition from researchers and citizens who say that in its present form, the technology’s risks far outweigh its worth.

Proponents argue that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, as it is known, could make the United States energy independent, or perhaps even become an exporter. But critics voice serious concerns about water contamination, air and noise pollution, and other hazards associated with the process.

Pollutants involved in fracking include known carcinogens and neurotoxins. Accidents are also risks.

On Nov. 20, a gas pipeline explosion at a natural gas compressor station run by Bill Barrett Corporation in Nine Mile Canyon in Utah consumed several buildings on site and seriously injured two employees, one of whom remains in critical condition.

Leading the fight against fracking-related infrastructure being built in residential communities is the small town of Minisink in Orange County in upstate New York. Since July 2011 they have vigorously opposed a natural gas compressor station being established there.

Most of the 200 homes in this rural community, including several organic farms, are within half a mile of the 43-million-dollar project, a gas compressor station owned and operated by Millennium Pipeline, a division of the billion-dollar energy company, NiSource.

By approving the project, say residents, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has failed to follow not only its own guidelines but also federal law. They allege that FERC is hindering their due process rights by refusing to issue a final decision so they can go to federal court. A FERC official told IPS that “the commission does not comment on ongoing cases”.

Residents fear that the station, which would compress gas derived from the Marcellus shale region of Pennsylvania, will emit over 100,000 tonnes of pollutants (including known carcinogens) per year into the community.

“The project just doesn’t belong in a residential community,” says Leanne Baum, mother of four young children, whose front porch looks across at the proposed site where construction has begun.

In response to these concerns, Millennium Pipeline spokesman Steve Sullivan told IPS that the Utah accident occurred in a station running a gathering system very different from the one being set up at Minisink. Accidents at the 1,500 or so compressor stations in the United States are “very rare”.

He said that Millennium has “gone to extreme measures to safeguard against accidents” as well as noise and other pollutants. Meanwhile the high demand for cleaner energy in the northeastern part of the United States has led to a visible reduction of emissions.

The Minisink plant “has been a boon to the local economy” by employing dozens of locals, Sullivan said.

Locals like Baum remain unconvinced, however. On Nov. 15, she and 80 other Minisink activists travelled to Washington DC to protest outside the FERC office – their sixth such trip.

“There is no one protecting the public,” Pramilla Malick, a Minisink resident and one of the organisers of the town’s opposition to the project, told IPS.

“Our environmental laws may as well not exist because, right now, no one is enforcing them,” she said. “Foreign companies are rushing in to buy drilling leases and the regulatory agencies are handing out permits like candy,” at Americans’ expense.

In Minisink, the citizens who suffer the costs include 9/11 first responder Nick Russo, who lives down the road from the upcoming gas project.

Already suffering from respiratory problems since 9/11, the retired New York Police Department (NYPD) sergeant is “worried sick” about what the project will do to his health.  Many other retired NYPD and Fire Department of New York (FDNY) officers, including first responders on 9/11, live in Minisink.

John Feal of the Fealgood Foundation, a 9/11 advocacy group, has written to the FERC asking it to reverse the order allowing the project.

As the pushback gathers momentum, the gas industry is finding new ways to get its message across. A report on Truthout.org exposed how search engines like Google were placing “pro-fracking propaganda” and advertisements at the top of search results to discredit research that exposes the risks posed by fracking.

The Truthout report said that the top result of a search for Robert Howarth, a Cornell University ecology professor whose research concludes that fracking has an even greater carbon footprint than coal, yielded an ad against him by America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA).  Since then, the ad placement has been removed..

New York has a moratorium on fracking, which Governor Andrew Cuomo has considered lifting, although he backed off under pressure from anti-fracking activists.

Meanwhile, companies in Pennsylvania are aggressively extracting “fracked” gas that the United States hopes to export.

New York-based Angela Monti Fox, founder of The Mothers Project, which supports a sustainable energy future, warns of a large-scale, peaceful civil disobedience movement if the gas industry continues to ride roughshod over communities like Minisink.

If companies continue to build infrastructure in residential areas, “it builds a groundswell of individuals and communities that will ultimately rise up against them”, she told IPS in an email.

Minisink’s spirited campaign includes residents filing over 800 objections against the project with FERC. Attending the FERC meeting earlier this month, they occupied the entire FERC chamber, forcing industry insiders to stand in the back.

“This is the first time in FERC’s history that industry has had to take a back seat to the America people,” said Carolyn Petschler, a spokesperson for the group. “If our town does not get a fair outcome, no town has a chance.”

What is a journalist to do when simply providing information is not enough to bring about the desired change? Why, turn to art, of course.

Untitled photo, evoking water torture. Credit: Courtesy of Shahidul Alam

“The information is clearly in the public domain, but when it doesn’t do what you’d hoped it would do, you need to re-think your strategy,” Alam told IPS in New York where he had come for the exhibition launch last month, in an attempt to highlight the urgency of internationalising the issue.

“I didn’t know how effective this show would be, but I wanted the issue to be seen in a different context,” he said.

The result is a series of beautifully lit, symbolic images in a show titled “Crossfire”, which just concluded a run at the Queens Museum in New York– “a physical experience that aims to evoke rather than inform,” as Alam puts it in the exhibition brochure.

In so doing, the show raises a human rights issue that is relevant to any state that allows extra-judicial murders to take place with impunity.

“Through Wikileaks, we learnt that the U.S. and UK have been involved in training RAB. Hopefully this exhibition will provide food for thought about U.S. special training being provided to Bangladesh security forces,” says Alam, a pioneering photojournalist and activist, founder of the multimedia Drik Picture Library and the not- for-profit photo agency Majority World.

“Water-boarding was a new concept for us in Bangladesh,” he added.

In addition to training, the U.S. and Britain have also been providing arms to RAB. The issue has been raised in the British Parliament, but not in the U.S., something Alam hopes will change.

When it was first launched in Dhaka in March 2010, the Bangladesh government sent riot police to shut “Crossfire” down, on its opening day – an action seen around the world as the organisers strategically live-streamed the event. Alam recalls that he was in fact on a Skype call with the Reporters Without Borders secretary general when the riot police surrounded the gallery.

The widespread negative publicity and protests at the exhibition being shut down highlighted the issue and led to an initial decline in “crossfire” killings. However, since then, disappearances as well as killings have risen.

Although symbolic rather than literal, the photographs evoke a dark, sinister feel. An underwater photo with bubbles, a cycle rickshaw on a deserted university road, a rice paddy field, a ‘gamcha’ (sarong) on the ground…

Combine these images with the word “crossfire” in the context of Bangladesh, and you have a clear political statement about extra- judicial killings in that country.

“This one’s clearly about water-boarding,” commented Pramilla Malick of Manhattan, stopping in front of the water bubbles photograph at Alam’s show. “It gives me the chills.”

“The idea of the concept of ‘crossfire’ rather than showing bodies is very potent,” said documentary filmmaker Brian Palmer, who has been to Bangladesh and worked with students at Alam’s Drik institute. “We’re so bombarded by an avalanche of images that it can be more powerful to interrupt and pause.”

Each photograph represents an actual case, based on solid research about every known case of crossfire death.

Each photo was taken in the middle of the night, lit by torchlight, “because that’s how survivors and victims’ families recall these incidents,” says Alam. “They take place in the dead of night, people wake up to torchlight shining in their faces, and then they’re taken away.”

“Even a child knows what ‘crossfire’ means,” comments a passer-by, whom Alam video-interviewed outside the gallery after the government shut down the show in Dhaka.

“You use these images with that word, everyone will know that that’s where a crossfire happened,” comments a policeman.

One passerby angrily says that “those putting on this show are the ones who should be ‘cross-fired'”, because the police are “only trying to make the country safer for the citizens by getting rid of criminals”.

However, most passers-by commended the organisers for bringing this issue to the public. “Those who are killed are not just criminals,” said one young man. “Some are just ordinary people on their way to work, their families never even get their bodies back.”

The interviews, playing on a subtitled video, are part of the Crossfire show at Queens Museum.

The exhibition in Dhaka and in New York is supported by the Open Society Institute, which also funded a series of posters based on the images that human rights organisations in Bangladesh had agreed to exhibit.

However, NGOs all backed out at the last minute, says Alam, perhaps due to fears that the Bangladesh government would not renew their licenses to operate as non-profit organisations.

Drik, an independent media organisation that is not subject to such restrictions, has persisted with the exhibition. “We’re also risk- takers,” grins Alam.

In a country where the risks of speaking out include being “cross- fired”, taking such chances is no laughing matter. But for activists like Alam, staying silent is not an option.

By Beena Sarwar and - -
BOSTON, U.S., Mar 8 2012 (IPS)

When the Oscar-nominated film “Saving Face” won an Academy Award in Hollywood for Best Documentary (Short Subject), it was the triumph of several “firsts”: the first time ever that a Pakistani filmmaker had won an Oscar; Pakistan’s first Oscar winner was a woman; and it was the first time that an American and a Pakistani had co-directed an Oscar-winning film.

The film follows Dr. Jawad and two of his patients, 39-year-old Zakia and 23-year-old Rukhsana, both disfigured by their husbands. Credit: Courtesy of "Saving Face"

The 40-minute film was showcased at the Women+Film Voices Film Festival at Junge’s hometown of Denver, Colorado on Mar. 7. And on Mar. 8, International Women’s Day, “Saving Face” premiers on the U.S. television channel HBO (at 8.30 pm ET), which funded it, and which broadcasts to millions in the country and around the world.

The film is particularly relevant to Women’s Day because of its focus on a particularly vicious form of gender violence, acid attacks, and its stress on the strength and struggle of acid attack survivors fighting back.

Although it is set in Pakistan, the film is also relevant to other countries where such attacks take place, most notably, Bangladesh, India and Afghanistan. But such attacks are not limited to “developing countries”. It was in Britain in March 2008 that 33-year- old Danny Lynch orchestrated an acid attack on vivacious 24-year-old aspiring model Katie Piper, who had begun dating him just two weeks earlier and broken up with him.

Piper’s story is now legend, but then, horribly disfigured and in great pain, she thought she would never live a normal life again. The man behind her miraculous rehabilitation was the burns specialist at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Pakistan-born Dr Mohammad Jawad, who used an innovative reconstruction technique to treat her.

The procedure involved removing all the skin from her face, before rebuilding it with a skin substitute from her back, and then a skin graft.

“That was the first such case in the world,” Dr. Jawad told IPS by telephone from London. “The results were very good. The best anyone had ever seen.”

Later, visiting Pakistan, he mentioned the case to his former professor Maqsood Noorani at Dow Medical College in Karachi.

“He told me that there were such cases in Pakistan too. I didn’t know about it,” said Dr. Jawad. “He put me in touch with his sister-in-law Sultana Siddiqui, who runs Hum TV (a private Pakistani channel), and they had me come over for a morning show interview. The host put me on the spot, saying why don’t you come back to Pakistan and look after your own people. I promised her I would.”

Since then he has been regularly returning to Pakistan, where he has assembled a team of specialists at the Indus Hospital, an acclaimed state-of-the-art, free hospital in Karachi that serves disadvantaged communities.

“Each case is premeditated,” says Dr. Jawad. “And it happens to young, pretty women, taking away their faces. Your face and your hands are your portals of expression and communication. When someone is deprived of those, it’s more difficult to restore them to normalcy.”

When Britain’s Channel 4 broadcast its documentary “Katie: My Beautiful Face” about the Katie Piper case in October 2009, Dr. Jawad found himself invited to more television shows (“Katie gave me a lot of acknowledgement”) – including on the BBC World Service Radio.

“They have an audience of over 120 million. And guess who was listening on the other side of the pond? Daniel Junge. He called me and asked, do you know anything about acid attacks in Pakistan?” laughed Dr. Jawad.

Speaking at the Asia Society in New York on Mar. 6, Junge said he “knew about the phenomenon of acid attacks in South Asia and much of the Muslim world – and indeed, it’s a global phenomenon. But of course I wasn’t about to pack my bags and start this film. You always need an entry point as a filmmaker.

“I heard an extended version of Katie Piper’s story in which she credited her surgeon Dr. Jawad, and I thought to myself, does that sound very… Anglo? I called him up at Chelsea Hospital and asked him if he was aware of this phenomenon, he said indeed I am, I’m Pakistani, and I’ve been going back to work there.”

They met in Islamabad in March 2010, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“But it became absolutely apparent on my first trip (to Pakistan) that I needed a partner on the ground, preferably a woman,” said Junge, “and as it happened, Pakistan’s finest filmmaker is a woman, and was available.”

That is how he and Obaid Chinoy (who won an Emmy award in 2010 for her documentary “Pakistan: Children of the Taliban”) came to work together.

She had not looked into this issue before but when she saw the footage that Junge had shot, she felt “compelled to be part of this project more so because I’m a product of Pakistan, I was born and raised there. Pakistan can produce women like myself – and produce women like Zakia and Ruksana (acid attack survivors who feature in the film).

“There’s a great schizophrenia that goes on in the nation and it’s important for the educated women to be the voice of those who are not able to voice what’s happening to them,” she said, speaking at the Asia Society event.

“Saving Face” follows the story of Dr. Jawad and two of his patients, 39-year-old Zakia and 23-year-old Rukhsana, both disfigured by their husbands, and their arduous attempts to get justice.

“This film is a very powerful lesson to those men, by the women, that we are not going to give up, we are waking up, and we are strong,” said Dr. Jawad. “They’ve changed the destiny of lots of other women by giving them courage. They risk speaking out for a better tomorrow.”

Excerpt:

“Imagine you have dual nationality, say Haiti and the United States. You go to apply for a visa at a foreign embassy in Washington, but are told that you can’t use your U.S. passport unless you renounce your Haitian nationality. If you don’t, you must apply and travel using your Haitian passport.”

Salman Noman, a 34-year-old American based in Chicago, uses this hypothetical scenario to illustrate the reality that he and an estimated 500,000 other dual American- Pakistani citizens face when it comes to applying for an Indian visa.

India and Pakistan have agreed to ease mutual visa restrictions, but until they actually do so, American citizens with dual Pakistani nationality will continue to face what they allege is discrimination by the Indian visa authorities.

“To top it all,” Noman told IPS, “Your adopted country, where you live, vote and pay taxes, doesn’t take up your case with the country that is so blatantly discriminating against you.”

Noman, a Georgetown University alumnus who runs his own software company, was naturalised as an American citizen in 2007. He is frustrated with India’s visa policies, as well as with the U.S. Department of State, which he contends does not take up this issue with sufficient vigor.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Noel Clay told IPS the State Department is aware that the Indian government “imposes different policies and requirements” when issuing visas to U.S. citizens of Pakistani ancestry.

He said that the department “has raised its concerns with the Embassy of India in Washington” and that the U.S. Embassy has also discussed the issue with Indian government officials in New Delhi.

“Unfortunately, the State Department is limited in its influence on foreign government visa and immigration actions,” he said. “Visas for travel to India are issued only by Indian authorities and are entirely under the purview of Indian laws, regulations, and procedures.”

This answer was exactly the same as a response Noman had received on Facebook from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs in response to a question regarding Indian visas.

Frustrated by Washington’s “non-committal stand”, Noman initiated a petition entitled, “Ask India to End Discrimination Against U.S. Citizens/Businesses”.

“If U.S. nationals of Pakistan origin, cannot use their U.S. passports while traveling to India, they lose their privileges as U.S. citizens, including U.S. consular access, trade treaties with India, business opportunities, when traveling in India,” the petition points out.

Such restrictions, imposed after the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks facilitated by David Headley, an American citizen of Pakistani origin, affect more than just Americans with Pakistani connections.

A new visa rule imposed in May 2010 requires American citizens of Indian origin to produce a Renunciation Certificate to demonstrate that they are no longer citizens of India.

In addition, all travelers with multiple entry tourist visas are allowed “re-entry to India only after a period of two months between visits” – a curb that appears to be aimed at preventing more Headleys from going in and out of India as the terrorist did several times while on reconnaissance for the Mumbai attacks.

“India has every right to secure its borders from people like Headley,” argues Noman, “but let’s remember that it was lack of background checks and inefficiency in vetting visa applicants that led to his falsified visa application being accepted.”

Headley should not be used as an excuse to generalise about all U.S. citizens of Pakistani origin, he adds. “It feels terrible to be flagged without any reason,” he told IPS, “just because someone who shared similar background as you did something terrible.”

India and Pakistan have mutually restrictive visa policies, reminiscent more of a cold war situation than of two neighbours with so much cultural and linguistic affinity.

Both countries grant visas to each other’s citizens usually after drawn out processes. The visas are usually single-entry permits valid for a few weeks at most, and also for a limited number of cities. Visitors must enter and exit from the same points, using the same mode of transport, and report to the police within 24 hours of arrival and departure.

Until 2009, expatriate Indians and Pakistanis with foreign passports were exempt from these restrictions, even though their visa applications often took longer. American citizens of Pakistani descent had the same rights and privileges as other American travelers.

The new restrictions are based more on “bureaucratic processes” than on security concerns, believes Ibrahim Sajid Malick, a New York-based technologist and former journalist of Pakistani origin, married to a woman of Indian origin.

He calls on India to “streamline the process” and “identify the individuals who may pose a threat”, pointedly asking, “If the Western Union can check up on an individual within minutes, why can’t embassy officials?”

Malick, who is familiar with ‘know your customer’ information gathering tools, told IPS, “The only people who can fool the system are those who are part of the system,” as was Headley, who was a paid informer for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

He questions whether India is trying improve security or simply keep Pakistanis and people of Pakistani origin out of the country, although he also points out that Pakistanis are received in the “most heartwarming way when they do visit India, and vice versa”.

“And yet both countries try their best to keep the people apart.”

The Indian Embassy in Washington did not respond to repeated phone calls and emails from IPS regarding questions raised by these issues.

Recent news does offer some hope, however. India and Pakistan have both agreed to a newly finalised draft that revises a bilateral visa agreement from 1974. The proposed easing of visa rules is aimed at normalising trade ties by the end of the year.

Until that actually happens, however, American Pakistanis wanting to visit India will just have to put up with the inconvenience of being dealt with by the Indian Embassy as Pakistanis, not Americans.

By Beena Sarwar
KARACHI, Oct 28 2009 (IPS)

Karachi-based, Trinidad-born and educated Veena Masud is a school principal who wants to see Pakistani women shine in the international sports arena.

Veena Masud with some of Pakistan's top swimmers Credit: Beena Sarwar/IPS

Honorary Secretary of the Pakistan Women’s Swimming Association, president of the Sindh Women’s Swimming Association, and executive committee member of the Pakistan Olympic Association, she has cheered Pakistani swimmers as they returned to the Olympics after 40 years.

In 2004, Rubab Raza was just 13 when she won a wild card entry to Athens along with a male swimmer (Mumtaz Ahmed). She was the first female swimmer to represent Pakistan at the Olympics. Four years later at the Beijing Olympics, Kiran Khan – another wild card entrant, from Lahore – swam for her country.

Pakistani female swimmers are making a splash despite the hurdles, which include “little government support” and social conservatism, Masud tells IPS. Excerpts from an interview.

IPS: Last weekend, after schools countrywide were closed following the suicide bombing at the Islamic University in Islamabad (Oct. 20) there was a major swimming competition in Karachi. How does the ongoing violence affect sport? VEENA MASUD: Yes, that was the 18th Sindh Women’s Swimming Championship organised by the Karachi Women’s Swimming Association. The club where the event was being held told us categorically to cancel. But our sponsor said it’s up to us. We decided to go ahead. We are not afraid, we refuse to be held to ransom by this terrorism.

IPS: You were born and educated in the West Indies. How did you come to Pakistan? VM: I came back to my roots – my grandfather (in Trinidad) told me that one of my forefathers was from Sindh; he went on a ship to the West Indies as indentured labour.

My husband (a Pakistani) and I were in London when our son was born in 1979. We moved back to Pakistan because we wanted to bring him up here. I love it; the culture is so rich, and there is so much to offer.

IPS: You are not a swimmer, how did you get involved? A. You don’t have to be a swimmer to be a coach, or a technical official. I coached my son (Kamal Salman Masud, now 30) in swimming. Until then, the army, navy and air force swimmers won all the competitions. My son set several national records. We’d be at the pool and his (girl) friends wanted to swim competitively too. That’s how it started.

Four of us (mothers) started the Karachi Women’s Swimming Association in 1991, mindful of the confines of Islamic culture. We had great difficulty getting sponsors for the First Sindh Women’s Swimming Championship – but 75 girl swimmers competed, representing local clubs and schools.

In 1994, the then Benazir Bhutto government agreed to host the Second Islamic Women’s Solidarity Games. Iran, the initiators of these games, insisted that swimming be included. The Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) and the Pakistan Swimming Federation (PSF) asked us to form the Pakistan Women’s Swimming Association.

The games went back to Iran when Pakistan couldn’t conform to standards but we encouraged the formation of women’s swimming associations. Sindh and Punjab (provinces) did that.

Before long women swimmers from the Pakistan Navy, Pakistan Army, Wapda (Water and Power Development Authority) and NWFP (North West Frontier Province) began participating. The Balochistan Women’s Swimming Association was recently formed.

Now, we have over 300 swimmers from 30 schools and clubs around the country.

IPS: How have Pakistan’s women swimmers fared internationally? VM: They’re improving all the time. Now a lot of our swimmers are doing ‘American A’ timings (coached by my daughter-in-law Melanie Masud, herself an ‘American A’ swimmer). They’re very tenacious and they have their parents’ support.

Fourteen of our swimmers at the Fourth Islamic Women’s Games (Tehran, September 2005), won 10 of Pakistan’s 19 medals. They came second in the swimming events and seventh among the 45 participating countries.

The introduction of the longer “fast-skin” swimming costumes made it possible for our girl swimmers to participate in international competitions. For the first time, Pakistan sent two women swimmers (Sana Wahid and Kiran Khan) to the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, July 2001.

When we convinced the Pakistan government to include women’s swimming in the 9th SAF (South Asian Federation) Games in Islamabad 2004, our girls took 14 medals, competing in the open arena on home ground for the first time.

Our swimmers returned to the Olympics after 40 years in 2004.

IPS: What about technical officials? VM: This was initially one of our biggest drawbacks, not having any female technical officials. We have now trained up to 60 female technical officials to international standards and they are lauded everywhere. I’m really proud of our female technical officials.

Pakistan is the only South Asian country to have two female technical officials on the Asian list, and one on the international list.

All over the world women get the rough end of the stick, but we have four women out of 10 members in the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA). I was in fact the first woman inducted into the POA when the International Olympic Committee in 1992 stipulated that all national committees must have women.

IPS: What hurdles do Pakistan’s women swimmers face? VM: First of all, there is little government support or funding. Also, swimming is still an elite sport for women, because you have to be a member of a private club to participate.

We need to push for the government to build infrastructure for swimming all over the country and take women’s swimming to the corners of Pakistan, so that Pakistani women have the opportunity to be at par with women all over the world. Then there’s the conservative mindset – many people don’t want their daughters participating in sports, or in public events.

Still, I believe that being determined and strong and tenacious will in the end bring you medals.

Excerpt:

‘Give peace a chance’ may just be another cliché for many, but for women who have suffered the ravages of war, endless strife and other forms of conflict, joining hands to find meaningful solutions to their collective aspiration lends it a whole new meaning.

Within the South Asian region, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan have for decades been torn by internal and external conflicts that have cried out for, but have not quite found, a lasting resolution.

“We waited for a long time to see what the men would do for peace,” Zahira Khattak, a member the think-tank formed by Pakistan’s Awami National Party (ANP), told IPS.

For Khattak and scores of other women in this region, not only has peace proved elusive, they have also been left out of much of the peace efforts by their respective states.

“Why should this be so?” argued Khattak. “For 5,000 years women have been sitting in ‘jirgas’ (tribal councils), at least in Afghanistan. We have ‘jirgas’ all over Pakistan’s tribal areas also, and we thought why not introduce this concept?”

Aware of the repercussions of remaining silent on a host of issues, including peace and security, that affect them as much as men, women today are increasingly raising their voice in a bid to be heard in the corridors of power and at the policymaking levels.

For months now, women from the three states have been strengthening their alliances, which they hope will be a vital bridge to peace in their region. Khattak said that since so many women in these three countries have similar views on peace, “we thought why not get together and make our voices heard by the people in power?”

“There are many suspicions and mistrust between our three countries,” she added, “but sitting together and talking, we find we have so much more in common.”

Their first trialogue in April 2009 in New Delhi was an auspicious start of their collective peace efforts. It followed an all-women peace meeting that activists in Peshawar, capital of Pakistan’s beleaguered North West Frontier Province, convened on Women’s Day, March 8, 2009 – a day they celebrated as ‘Peace Day’, explained Khattak.

Inspired by the results of these meetings, delegates from the three South Asian countries gathered anew early this month for their second peace trialogue. The battered city of Kabul hosted the unusual gathering of women activists, politicians and journalists.

“We are aware we have so many internal problems,” said Indian journalist Jyoti Malhotra in an interview with IPS. “Our armies are conducting operations against their own people. . . . I’m not saying we’ve resolved all the questions or found their answers, but this (trialogue) is a very good start, and it is very necessary to take it forward.”

Ongoing tensions in Afghanistan, worsened by the contentious outcome of its recent elections, are a constant reminder of the need to work together to achieve the elusive dream of a just peace.

“We Afghans are in need of peace,” Afghan parliamentarian Shinkai Karokhel told the gathering. “We suffer from insurgency under the banner of religion or liberation war… We lose our lives, our heritage, our honour, our children, our schools…”

Dr Radha Kumar, director of Peace and Conflict Programme of the Delhi Policy Group, which convened the unconventional ‘aman jirga’ (peace council), summed up the aims of the meeting: to “foster and sustain peace, deal with conflict and post-conflict situations, fight for women’s rights and human rights, ensure women’s greater political participation and make women visible at decision making especially peace negotiation tables.”

The meeting stressed the inclusion of women in peace negotiations, particularly given the threats they face from warring groups and the constant need to assert their rights in the face of repressive laws targeted at them. Speaking at the conference, Afghan activist Nargis Nehan noted that “most of the laws and regulations are drafted by (male-dominated) political parties and government.”

Gatherings like this provide participants with the opportunity to learn from one another. “Afghan women have been bearing this conflict for 30 years,” Pakistani parliamentarian Bushra Gohar of the ANP told IPS. “It is inspiring to hear how they have dealt with it.”

Besides sharing experiences, participants focused on trying to find solutions to their common concerns. Their draft plan of action included working towards a Women’s Peace Commission comprising 15 women from the region, setting up a multi-lingual website to facilitate further exchange of ideas and experiences, and holding a follow-up trialogue in Pakistan some time next year.

“Women can be influential if empowered; we represent not just women but also the men in our lives – colleagues, friends, husbands, brothers, sons,” said federal minister Aneesa Zeb Tahirkheli of the breakaway Pakistan People’s Party (Sherpao Group).

While women in the three neighbouring states are slowly building alliances towards peace, they still have to constantly fight for their right to be heard and treated as equals in their male-dominated societies.

Tahirkheli and Afghan parliamentarian Shukriya Barakzai were among the hundred or so women who took part in the first Afghanistan-Pakistan peace ‘jirga’ of August 2007 in Kabul, attended by over 600 chieftains, tribal elders and politicians.

It remains to be seen, however, whether such gatherings will continue to include women. The Aug 2007 ‘jirga’ was supposed to be followed up by a ‘jirga gai’ (executive council) with 25 representatives from both states and held in Pakistan. Although it has yet to be convened, several members have been nominated to it – but without women, noted Tahirkheli.

“Women should be included like they were in the main ‘jirga’,” Tahirkheli told IPS. “Moreover, it should be a continuous process. Regular meetings will bring contentious issues to the table and help us move forward.”

But whether they are included in the planned ‘jirga gai’ or not, the women who trooped to the Kabul trialogue are determined to forge ahead with plans to meet in Peshawar for their third such gathering next year.

Many have stayed in touch with one another, strengthening ties and forging a common bond built on their collective desire for peace. It is also a bond that transcends their differences.

Parliamentarian Nafisa Shah of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party said that women engaged in Pakistan’s Parliamentary Women’s Caucus, which she chairs, “have reconciled with our past and … made our differences far smaller than our common goals.” The caucus brings together women across the party divide.

Such alliances are manifestly no longer confined to Pakistan’s parliament. Within the region, at least among women, broader alliances are taking shape.

The process may not yield any immediate results, but the very fact that it is continuing bodes well for the prospects of genuine and lasting peace in the region.

The brazen armed attack on a police academy near Lahore on Monday underlines the danger that the Pakistani state faces from militancy linked to the ‘war on terror’, but with historic roots in the earlier Afghan war of liberation from Soviet occupation, or ‘jihad’ against ‘God-less communists’.

A Taliban militant, part of the group that attacked a police academy near Lahore, being led away by troops. Credit: Rahat Dar/IPS

The incident is also part of a chain of such attacks that highlight the need for out-of-the-box thinking to a regional, political approach and regional cooperation in this global, border-less conflict.

Eyewitnesses to Monday’s drama said that the gunmen scaled the six-foot high boundary walls of the academy soon after 7 am. They lobbed hand grenades at the 700 or so recruits on parade and ran at them, firing automatic weapons.

Police and paramilitary troops fired aerial bursts in jubilation and shouted ‘Allah-o-Akbar’ (God is great) after they re-gained control of the Academy premises a tense eight hours later.

The final death toll was far lower than the 28 or so initially reported by television channels: eight policemen, one civilian, and four militants who blew themselves up with suicide vests.

Television channels showed heart-rending scenes of distraught relatives at various hospitals where the dead and injured were taken.

The role of the electronic media while covering such incidents has come in for much criticism. In their rush to be first with the news, channels often provide incorrect information – or “lies”, as a press photographer who was at the scene of the Mar 30 drama put it more bluntly.

The al- Qaeda-linked Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, based in Waziristan Agency in Pakistan’s north-west tribal areas, claimed responsibility for the latest attack, the second this month in Lahore, capital of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous and powerful province.

On Mar. 3, some dozen gunmen ambushed the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in uptown Lahore, injuring several cricketers and killing six policemen and a driver. The gunmen disappeared after the shooting spree and have yet to be apprehended.

On Mar. 27 a suicide bomber killed dozens of worshippers at a crowded mosque near the north-western town of Jamrud on the highway to Afghanistan. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the motive may have been related to money as criminal elements operate freely in the area.

However, the Lahore attacks, taking place in an urban metropolis with dozens of television channels, were far more spectacular and effective, as Asha’ar Rehman, Resident Editor of daily Dawn in Lahore commented.

“A suicide bombing, in the eye of the terrorist perhaps, is too fleeting a moment in the life of a people who have become so used to the occurrence,” said Rehman.

“It is obvious that the terrorist is looking for more than momentary fame. He now wants to stretch the harrowing experience for as long as he possibly can, to the chagrin of onlookers who cannot keep their eyes off the television.”

The attack on the three-storey police school on the outskirts of Lahore a few kilometres from the Wagah checkpoint on Pakistan’s eastern border with India also bore other similarities with the ambush on the cricketers.

Underlining huge security lapses and intelligence failures, both took place in the early morning hours, with well-equipped, well-trained militants attacking supposedly well-protected targets. The Sri Lankan cricketers should have been extended presidential level security while the police school was peopled with – well, policemen, under training though they were.

Their commonalities include the possibility of local support that must have existed in order to facilitate them.

Both attacks drew comparisons to the Nov 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India. Some commentators accused India of being behind them in retaliation for the Pakistani link that emerged in the Mumbai tragedy.

The Mumbai attacks were in turn compared with the suicide attack on Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad on Sept 20, 2008. The attack was heavily symbolic given its high-security status and proximity to the corridors of power.

Earlier, militants had eliminated a much more symbolic and high value target – former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi on Dec 27, 2007.

Other high-profile attacks, in the recent past, include the suicide car bombing at a police checkpoint in Peshawar that kills 35 and injured about 80 people last September.

In August 2008 twin suicide bombings at the gates of a weapons factory in the town of Wah near Islamabad left 67 dead. Earlier in March 2008, suicide bombers targeted a police headquarters in Lahore, leaving some 24 dead.

But Monday’s attack was so far “the biggest and potentially the most dangerous attack on a state facility in Pakistan,” noted Asha’ar Rehman.

“There were hundreds of trainee policemen inside the compound – trainees among a police force that, according to adviser on interior Rehman Malik, lacks basic training to combat terrorism. They were ill-equipped to stop the advance of a handful of visibly skilled gunmen. It could have been far worse.”

The drama ended with an unexpected twist, again a throwback to Mumbai, when security forces captured some militants alive.

One of them, a bearded man with an expressionless face, was nabbed while heading towards the helipad in the fields behind the Police Academy. He was carrying hand-grenades apparently to attack the helicopters with.

News photographer Rahat Dar told IPS that he was perched along with other media persons on the rooftop of a nearby building watching events unfold at the academy in front of them. “We turned around towards the back when we heard shouts of ‘Got him, got him!'” he said.

Security personnel yanked off the man’s shalwar, baggy trousers to ensure that he was not armed. They also beat him up, prompting Islamabad-based journalist Mariana Baabar to question whether police are actually trained to capture a live terrorist.

“It was the Punjab police in action – doing what comes to them naturally. Obviously, they cannot differentiate between a rare live person who could give them tons of information and an ordinary criminal,” she wrote in a front page comment in daily The News. “Nothing amazing or new except that this was a rare chance to see it live on our screen”.

Police repeatedly kicked the man, apparently having “decided that they would keep kicking him with their boots till he was no more…,” wrote Baabar. “It took an army guy… to stop the angry and out of control police from this brutal kicking. At least someone realised that it was essential to get this suspect alive.”

Identified as an Afghan named Hijratullah, the encircled man presented a pathetic sight as he struggled to cover himself with his shirt.

The other three suspected militants in custody have not yet been identified. They were captured when trying to escape from the premises wearing police uniforms.

Political analysts have long been warning that there are no easy military solutions to the ‘war on terror’. The al- Qaeda and Taliban now appear to have converged with Pakistan’s ‘home-grown’ militancy that American and Saudi dollars cultivated during the Afghan war against Soviet occupation.

Analysts hope that the interactions between global leaders at the high-powered meetings in Europe this week will help initiate a change in the global approach to these issues.

The U.N.-backed conference at the Hague on Mar. 31 to discuss the future of Afghanistan, participated in by about 80 countries including Iran and the United States, is expected to also discuss a regional approach to the issue, says Marjan Lucas of the Dutch Peace Organisation (IKV).

“It is important that America understands what they’ve done to the region and develop partners with civil society and elected representatives rather than the army as they have been doing,” she told IPS in Karachi, having arrived from Lahore the day before the police academy was attacked.

The Hague conference will be followed by the G20 and NATO Summits where U.S. President Barrack Obama is expected to hold bilateral meetings with several world leaders.

What is certain is that there are no easy answers, and that there are likely to be more such links in the terrorist chain before things get any better.

A late night meeting between Pakistan’s army chief, President and Prime Minister led to the dramatic announcement in the wee hours of Monday morning that Iftikhar Mohammed Choudhry would be restored as Chief Justice.

Despite tight security in Lahore the marchers prevailed. Credit: Rahat Dar/IPS

The announcement, made by Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani, has been widely welcomed for having broken the political impasse that was threatening to plunge the country into chaos and possible army intervention.

For the past few days, hectic efforts had been underway domestically and at the international level to break the impasse, including by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and British foreign minister David Miliband.

Former president Gen. Pervez Musharraf initially suspended Choudhry from office in March 2007, sparking off a nation-wide lawyers’ movement joined by civil society and political activists. When a Supreme Court order restored Choudhry to office, Musharraf imposed Emergency rule on Nov 3, 2007 that many saw as imposition of martial law.

Superior court judges who refused to take oath under the Emergency orders were sent packing. For the first time in the country’s history, the majority of judges refused to take this oath, leading to hopes that the days of the judiciary’s connivance with the establishment were over.

The elections of Feb 18, 2008 brought in a democratically elected government. But lawyers were unhappy with the way it dealt with the judges’ issue.

The government restored the judges who took a new oath under the constitution.

Choudhry and a few other judges refused on the grounds that this legitimised Musharraf’s illegal executive order that had sent them packing in the first place and that the restoration should take place through another executive order.

Leaders of the lawyers’ movement announced a ‘long march’ starting on Mar.12 to converge on the capital Islamabad on Mar. 16 for a ‘dharna’ or sit-in until the Chief Justice was restored.

As the long march kicked off, the beleaguered government appeared to be at odds with itself. Prime Minister Gillani asserted that the marchers would be allowed to converge on Islamabad even as his Interior Minister Rehman Malik, known to be close to President Asif Ali Zardari, took measures to prevent this from happening.

The resulting scenes of police beating and arresting people, in many cases from their houses, drew comparison to Musharraf’s last months in power, particularly during the Emergency of 2007.

In his early morning announcement, Gillani said that Choudhry would be restored to office “according to my government’s promise” on Mar. 21 when the incumbent Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar, a Musharraf appointee, is due to retire.

He confirmed the decision reported a day earlier, that his government would file a review petition in the Supreme Court against the disqualification from elected office of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif and his younger brother Shahbaz Sharif.

A controversial court decision of Feb 25 that dislodged the younger Sharif from office of chief minister of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province had led to the Sharifs coming out with no holds barred against the man they saw as behind the judgement, President Zardari.

Many felt the disqualification judgement was timed to remove the Sharifs from power ahead of the ‘long march’. Several city mayors loyal to the PPP whom the Sharifs had removed from office were brought back to aid the federal government in its attempts to block the long march.

Police arrested hundreds of activists across the country and commandeered buses and containers to barricade roads and prevent the protestors from marching – except in Balochistan province where the provincial government remained neutral and allowed the marchers to demonstrate.

However, people defied police barricades and tear gas to converge in large numbers at key points like the Lahore High Court.

Matters climaxed as Nawaz Sharif defied a detention order confining him to his estate at Raiwind near Lahore, and headed a motorcade towards the city centre where hundreds of charged up activists had already converged.

As the momentum gathered the police in some places avoided confrontation and watched from the sidelines, making no attempt to stop the marchers. In other places, protestors armed with sticks attacked the buses blocking the roads, smashing windshields and denting carriages.

Television footage showed a policeman fleeing from a group of protestors only to be caught by others and beaten up even as some demonstrators tried to prevent the mob action.

“The public is taking their revenge,” commented one viewer in Peshawar, glued like many others to his television set since early morning.

Some activists occupied the grand old colonial building of the General Post Office in Lahore, on the roof of which they planted a Jamat-e-Islami flag next to the Pakistan flag. Some hurled red bricks at policemen, severely injuring some who had to be rushed to hospital.

The government had already drawn sharp criticism for holding Islamabad-based women’s rights activist Tahira Abdullah in preventive detention on the day the long march started.

At 4 am on Mar. 15, Peshawar police without search or arrest warrants raided the home of prominent lawyer Musarrat Hilali, who is also vice-chairperson of the respected Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). As she tried to escape, she fell, fracturing her leg in three places.

“I did not want to be arrested,” Hilali told IPS from her bed in Peshawar. According to law, police cannot detain a woman between sunset and sunrise. Hilali said that the provincial Awami National Party (ANP) government had denied sending the police and that the orders had come from the federal level.

“After I fell and was injured, the police left, but they placed me under house arrest,” she said, recalling her ordeal.

Her house arrest is now over following Gillani’s speech, in which he announced that those arrested or placed under house arrest over the past few days would be immediately released. He also announced the lifting of prohibitory orders that barred public gatherings.

Gillani’s televised speech led to jubilation in city streets across Pakistan. Lawyers and activists danced to drum beats and distributed sweets as Sharif called off the long march.

However, some sound a word of caution.

Zahid Abdullah, programme manager, Transparency and Right to Information Programme, Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives, Pakistan suggests that Chaudhry now needs to ponder over “whether he should be joining the judiciary or remain a symbol of independent judiciary by working from the outside for a truly independent judiciary at its all levels.”

“He has won the moral victory through his tenacity and that of the lawyers. His personal restoration is not an end itself but a means to an end. If he joins the judiciary, he is likely to be bogged down by the practicalities and the compulsions of the judiciary as it stands today,” he wrote in an email circular.

“It would be better if he stays outside and helps political forces by exerting his pressure and influence to suggest and implement the modalities of putting in place independent judges in the courts and carrying out judicial reforms.”

Others are suspicious of the government’s move. Jamat-e-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed expressed doubts about the move, complaining of not having been taking into confidence about it. “Who knows what pressures were placed on the Chief Justice and what he has been made to agree to,” he told a television anchor.

“Duped again by Mr Zee,” text-messaged a Karachi-based lawyer caustically, referring to Zardari whom he had been hoping the crisis would dislodge.

However, advocate Asad Jamal in Lahore sees the restoration as a success of civil society that has struggled for this cause for the past two years. “It shows the resilience of democracy and the ability of the present rulers to submit to the people’s demand, even if belatedly,” he told IPS.

“I think it would be unfortunate if my fellow citizens, who like to be part of progressive civil society, do not give Zardari credit for this retreat, howsoever belatedly it may have come.”

Barely a year after being elected, the Pakistan government faces a political storm involving a street agitation spearheaded by lawyers and opposition political parties allied with religious parties.

On the 'Long March' to Islamabad. Credit: Rahat Dar/IPS

Lurking on the sidelines is an army unused to civilian command even as religious militants create havoc around the country.

None of this is new to Pakistan but many find it all the more painful given the hopes built up by last year’s general elections. On Feb 18, 2008, Pakistani voters overwhelmingly supported non-religious parties and rejected those that had been propped up by the army.

The electorate’s rejection of the religious parties and the joining hands of the late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and her former rival Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) raised expectations of an end to political confrontation and religion-based politics – and the army moving away from politics.

These expectations followed decades of misrule and exploitation of religion for political purposes. The Pakistani establishment, at Washington’s behest, strengthened armed militancy, exploiting religious sentiments to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan during the 1980s. In the process they created ‘Jihad International’, as the late scholar Dr Eqbal Ahmad termed it.

This may now be the biggest threat facing Pakistan – and the world – since the attack on the World Trade Center on Sep. 11 2001. Since then Washington has pushed Islamabad to fight the very forces of militant Islam that both together had fostered and strengthened.

Resultantly, this country has, as Pakistanis point out, suffered the most from militant attacks.

In this situation, political instability is distracting at best and dangerous at worst. The ‘long march’ demanding the reinstatement of chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Choudhry, spearheaded by the legal fraternity and sections of civil society, has ready allies among the right-wing political opposition.

This includes Sharif’s PML-N and the Jamaat-e-Islami, a mainstream religious party sympathetic to militant Islam, as well as others sympathetic to the Taliban, like ex-chief Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and anti-India hawk Gen. (retd.) Hamid Gul, retired bureaucrat Roedad Khan who brutally quashed political opposition during the Zia years, and cricket hero-turned politician Imran Khan, chief of the Tehrik-e-Insaaf (Movement for Justice).

All these forces boycotted the 2008 polls, except Sharif who rescinded his boycott decision after Bhutto convinced him that elections were the only way forward.

Long-festering tensions between the PPP and PML-N came to a head with a Supreme Court ruling of Feb 25 barring Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif from holding elected office. Bhutto’s widower, President Asif Ali Zardari is widely believed to be behind this controversial ruling.

The disgruntled Sharifs, already pushing for the reinstatement of Choudhry, have flung themselves wholeheartedly into the long march – a move that observers do not see as entirely altruistic since their stated aims include effecting regime change.

“Sharif’s attempts to paint himself as a radical, grassroots activist are at odds with his political origins,” commented former lawyer and Australia-based analyst Mustafa Qadri, writing about the opportunity Pakistan’s politicians of all hues have wasted in their “refusal to look beyond personal power games and provincialism to develop the nation’s still embryonic democracy”.

The Sharifs gained prominence as businessmen patronised by Gen. Zia -ul-Haq who was behind Pakistan’s “transformation from majority-Muslim nation to Islamic state with more conservative religious seminaries per capita than any other country in the world,” as Qadri put it (‘Long march to nowhere’, The Guardian, Mar 10, 2009).

The current imbroglio comes on the heels of loaded statements by Gen.(retd) Pervez Musharraf who during a visit to India last week, gave several talks and interviews in which he hinted at a possible political comeback.

Curiously Musharraf, who stepped down as president in August 2008, urged New Delhi to stop ‘bashing’ the Pakistan army and the shadowy ISI since, according to him, they were the best defence against the growth of the Taliban and militancy in Pakistan.

President Zardari has invited comparisons to Musharraf because of his government’s use of police force and mass arrests to prevent the long march, as Musharraf did after suspending Choudhry in March 2007 and imposing Emergency rule in Nov 2007.

The irony is illustrated by the recent three-hour detention of the firebrand women’s rights and political activist, Tahira Abdullah, who has been mobilising the lawyers’ movement from her home in Islamabad.

She faced police batons and tear gas in the Zia and Musharraf eras. A day before the long march began, a police contingent arrived at her house and virtually broke down her kitchen door.

However, her arrest attracted media attention, embarrassing the government into quickly ordering her release. An undeterred Abdullah immediately resumed mobilising for the agitation.

“It is sad and ironic that the PPP government has come to this,” she told IPS. “They said it was preventive detention. They can’t catch people like (Taliban leaders) Baitullah Mehsud and Maulvi Fazlullah but they send police after me, a very ordinary person.”

There is also irony in progressive, secular activists like Abdullah joining hands with the emerging right-wing coalition to achieve a shared goal, the restoration of Choudhry.

Civil society activists privately admit that otherwise their numbers are too small to reach the critical mass needed to effect political change.

“There are only a handful of us,” one of them told IPS. “And there are no more than 100,000 lawyers in the country. So we have to join hands with political forces who agree with us on this matter even if we don’t agree on other matters. We know they are using us, but we are also using them.”

Observers like the political economist and former student activist S.M. Naseem fear that this kind of mutual ‘using’ could push Pakistan further towards right-wing forces.

Disappointed by the performance of the government as well as the opposition, he holds that the lawyers’ movement has missed the opportunity of creating a new polity in the country. “They should have broadened the agenda to create a new political system,” he told IPS. “Two years for the restoration of one person (Choudhry), however, honest and bold, is a bit too much.”

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani has said that he cannot, in all conscience, oppose the long march. “We have also participated in street agitations and long marches,” he said. “How can we stop anyone else from exercising their democratic right to do so?”

This stand appears to pit him against President Zardari, holding an office strengthened by past military dictators. The President’s powers include being able to dismiss the prime minister and dissolve government – as several presidents before him have done. This is unlikely to happen now. For Zardari to take such a step would mean dismissing his own government.

Having recently obtained a majority in the Senate, the PPP can conceivably push through the constitutional amendments it proposed in May 2008 for which a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly and the Senate is required. These amendments include the removal of the 17th amendment that allows the President to dismiss government.

Moves towards reconciliation between the PPP and the PML-N continue behind the scenes, even as the long march kicks off with lawyers and political activists from various cities heading towards Islamabad to converge by Mar. 16 for a dharna (or sit-in) ‘until the Chief Justice is restored’.

Observers fear a breakout of violence even though the long march leaders have promised to keep matters peaceful.

South Asia seems to be caught in a vortex of violence as the countries that form this region – from Sri Lanka at the southern-most tip, Bangladesh to the east, Nepal crowning the north, Pakistan along the west and India in the middle – deal with internal nightmares that their governments routinely blame on neighbours.

Video grab of two of the gunmen who sprayed a bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team with automatic fire in Lahore. Credit: Aaj TV

Tuesday’s armed attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in the historic city of Lahore in Pakistan has sent shockwaves through a country already racked by regular suicide and other attacks.

Eight Pakistani policemen died and several were injured saving the Sri Lankan cricketers, six of whom were wounded in the attack.

At the other end of the sub-continent, Bangladesh is still reeling from the shock of a border guards’ mutiny over pay and working conditions, resulting in soldiers massacring over 70 officers, including some of their wives.

Some analysts fear that the horrific incident might elicit copycat responses elsewhere too, where soldiers are unhappy with the tasks they are made to do.

Meanwhile, India has yet to recover from the horror of the attacks in Mumbai that claimed some 180 lives. New Delhi had, as a direct result of the attacks, called off participation of the Indian cricket team in the Pakistan tests.

Sri Lanka, in the last stages of a heavy-handed army operation against the Tamil separatists who have been fighting a guerrilla war against the state for over two decades, could hardly have imagined that its cricket team would come under fire in Pakistan, a friendly country.

Still, as the Sri Lankans told journalists after the Lahore attack, they had come here “well aware of the risks”.

Analysts point out that Tamil separatists are unlikely to be responsible for the attack, given the back foot that they are operating from.

The Sri Lankan team, in Lahore for a five-day test match where they already played for the first two days, were en route from their hotel to the stadium early in the morning on Mar. 3 when the gunmen attacked.

The firing reportedly began from three directions as the van slowed down near a roundabout close to the red-brick cricket stadium. Shaky television footage showed men with guns and backpacks taking position and firing. Their first target was the police escort.

According to the van driver, one of them flung a hand grenade which rolled under the van without damaging it. He said that the cricketers flung themselves to the floor of the van as he accelerated to escape the gunfire, managing to get the bullet-riddled van with the cricketers to the stadium.

There is universal condemnation for an act which many believe is an attempt to further discredit and isolate Pakistan. Many are praying for the quick recovery of the injured cricketers who were airlifted to Sri Lanka.

“They were our guests, they came to Pakistan when most people were not willing to come,” one man in Peshawar told a television journalist.

“We are a friendly and cricket-loving nation,” said another passer-by. “Now no cricket team will want to play here.”

The incident has more or less put paid to Pakistan’s aspirations of hosting the next World Cup in 2011, say observers.

The attackers struck at a sport that is hugely popular across South Asia, a quick throwback to a common colonial past (for all the countries except Nepal which was never under British rule), a legacy that includes the English language, administrative systems and railways.

In normal times, India and Pakistan’s cricket teams on the wicket pitch elicit responses akin to surrogate battlefields. A Pakistan-India game is referred to in parts of India as ‘Qayamat’ (doomsday).

Despite the keen rivalry, love of the sport is a unifier. ‘Cricket diplomacy’ has featured among the permissible people-to-people contacts that have grown immensely over the past decade or so.

“Cricket is not the bone of discord between the two countries,” Gul Hameed Bhatti, group editor sports of the country’s largest media group, Jang told IPS. “Basically the problem is the tensions between both countries, and cricket becomes the casualty. This incident has thrown cricket and other sports back into the dark ages. I don’t see anyone agreeing to come and play here now.”

Bhatti added that he had long “feared that this was a disaster waiting to happen because the situation in the rest of the country is so volatile. It was unrealistic to think that sportsmen could remain isolated from it”.

Nor, say analysts, can other areas of society, like culture. In early November, explosions on the penultimate night of a major international performing arts festival in Lahore caused panic. There were no casualties although some people sustained minor injuries. Artists, foreign and local, defiantly rallied around to make the festival’s last day a resounding success.

Ironically, the festival was held in the cultural complex next to the Gaddafi cricket stadium where the Sri Lankans were headed when they were attacked.

Most people, said Bhatti, “had become complacent, thinking they would never target sportsmen.”

They included Pakistani cricket hero turned politician Imran Khan who shortly after the Mumbai attacks categorically told an Indian newspaper, “There is no problem about the security of cricketers in Pakistan. The terrorists will never target cricketers knowing that they will then lose the battle of hearts and minds of the people. Cricketers are safe in Pakistan.”

The audacious attack in an upmarket Lahore locality is now being compared to the Mumbai attacks, where ten gunmen targeted symbols of national strength. Police are saying that about a dozen gunmen were involved in the Lahore attacks.

Cricket is an area where Pakistan has traditionally shone as a global power with a huge fan following around the world.

Security fears have, however, massively dented enjoyment of the sport as many foreign teams have over the past years cancelled tours, including India after the Mumbai attacks that similarly cast a shadow over ‘India shining’, raising doubts about internal security.

Pakistan, already beset by multiple political problems, has for some time been facing a deadly threat from the ‘jehadi’ forces – regional players like the Taliban (from Afghanistan and Pakistan), the international al-Qaeda, and local militant outfits like the banned Laskhar-e-Tayyaba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, many of whom with roots in the southern Punjab and links to Pakistan’s intelligence agencies that nurtured them during the Afghan war of the 1980s.

Following the events of 9/11, these forces have converged, to emerge as a greater threat than ever before, not just for Pakistan, but for world peace, say analysts.

Their agenda is not just to enforce what they consider to be an Islamic system, but to overrun and destabilise the state itself. Pakistanis have suffered heavily under this agenda, paying a heavy price for the policies of military rulers – who have run the country for more than half its 60 years of existence – that civilian governments have been unable to change.

These policies include cultivating ‘Islamic warriors’ to fight against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan during the 1980s, supporting the Taliban in order to create ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan (citing the threat of a hostile India on the eastern border), and using some of these elements to bleed India in the disputed region of Kashmir.

No elected government in Pakistan has ever completed its tenure. They are routinely overthrown either by the army or dismissed by various Presidents using the powers invested in that office by the military dictator Gen. Ziaul Haq who also got himself appointed as President.

The current elected government, say analysts, is the first that is actually serious about fighting the jehadi threat which it recognises as endangering the country’s very existence. “But it appears that various elements within the establishment are still bogged down in the old policies and are unwilling to give democracy a chance,” said an observer.

Just as enraged Indians had “jumped on the blame Pakistan bandwagon” immediately following the Mumbai attacks of November, “some here are now blaming the Indian hand,” says Bhatti.

Many see the attack on the Sri Lankan team as an attempt to take ‘revenge’ for Mumbai and an attempt to isolate Pakistan internationally.

Lt. Gen. (retd.) Hameed Gul, former head of Pakistan’s shadowy Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and a known hawk, was on television saying that “India wants to declare Pakistan a terrorist state”. The attack on the Sri Lankan team, he declared, “is related to that conspiracy.”

The Pakistan government itself has been more circumspect as have other analysts, including retired army officers like Maj. Gen. (retd) Jamshed Ayaz Khan who cautioned against such accusations “without a full investigation”.

The Sri Lankan government’s response has been conciliatory. “Pakistan’s cricket team was willing to visit our country when others weren’t because of security worries,” said Palitha T.B. Kohona, Sri Lanka’s foreign secretary, “and his government was pleased to reciprocate. The game must not be affected by a lunatic fringe”.

Ironically, media proliferation, particularly the 24/7 television news channels, has increased the intensity and probability of such dramatic high-profile attacks, say analysts. Terrorism thrives in the media spotlight which terrorists successfully attracted in Mumbai last November and now with the Lahore attack.

Ultimately, those who suffer the most after such incidents are ordinary people in India and Pakistan, say observers. The Lahore attack is bound to generate further tension between the two countries which have still not resumed the composite dialogue process stalled after the Mumbai attacks in November.

Rather than cooperating to solve a common problem, India and Pakistan remain prisoners of their hostile pasts. The ultimate winners in this game, note analysts, will only be the terrorists whose aim is destablisation and creation of tension around the world.

The political chasm in crisis-riddled Pakistan has deepened after a Supreme Court ruling barred from political office opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and his younger brother Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab – the country’s most populous and powerful province.

'Nawaz Sharif disqualified,' reads the headline on this special supplement. Credit: Beena Sarwar/IPS

The Sharifs’ Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) party had joined hands with President Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to defeat political parties supporting former president Pervez Musharraf in elections last February, and force his resignation six months later.

But the alliance between Pakistan’s two main political parties fell apart, mainly over the restoration to office of chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Choudhry – whose dismissal by Musharraf in 2007 sparked unrest led by the legal fraternity.

“The move [Wednesday’s apex court ruling] plunges Pakistan back into familiar territory,” said PML-N parliamentarian Ayaz Amir, talking to IPS on the phone from the capital Islamabad. “Another crisis, another round of turbulence… We seem to be cursed with the Chinese saying, ‘may you live in interesting times’.”

For most, the Supreme Court ruling – which upheld a lower court verdict, last June, that made Nawaz Sharif ineligible to stand for elections on airplane hijacking charges – has come “like a bolt from the blue,” as Asha’ar Rehman, resident editor of the daily ‘Dawn’ in Lahore put it.

“The political repercussions will be horrific. We were hoping they would show some maturity and let a reconciliation happen,” added Rehman, talking to IPS from Lahore, capital of the Punjab and the stronghold of the Sharifs.

Iqbal Haider, advocate and chairman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, termed the decision as being “against democracy, not against the Sharif brothers”.

In a no-holds barred press conference at his Lahore residence, shortly after the court ruling, a belligerent Nawaz Sharif said he had no problems with the PPP, but held the party head, Zardari, directly responsible for the contentious judgement.

Sharif, a former prime minister, also accused Zardari of offering a “business deal” to Shahbaz Sharif, asking him to support the government in extending the tenure of the current chief justice in return for which the court would provide the brothers with relief.

Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar dismissed these charges as a knee-jerk response. “The allegations that PML-N chief has levelled against President Zardari are far from reality and are based on ill intention,” he told a press conference in Islamabad later that evening.

Information Minister Sherry Rehman called for examining the court ruling dispassionately while admitting it had created a problem for the government in its efforts for reconciliation.

Many PPP parliamentarians, although unhappy about the decision, say there is unfortunately nothing the party can do in this regard.

The ruling is seen a “technical knockout” for the Sharif brothers who now also stand barred from contesting elections.

“More than anything, it undermines the democratic legitimacy of the government,” political analyst and economist Asad Sayeed told IPS. “Nawaz Sharif is a popular political leader. This decision will push him to the wall and perhaps further towards the religious parties.”

Within hours, President Asif Ali Zardari imposed direct central rule in the Punjab for two months. Defending the decision, a PPP spokesperson cited potential “anarchy” as angry activists took to the streets after Sharif in a press conference exhorted people to come out in protest.

The government wisely refrained from using police force to prevent the protests, as angry activists in various cities burned tyres, blocked traffic, and attacked property. In Rawalpindi, some even destroyed posters of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and damaged the memorial at the public park where she was assassinated on Dec. 27, 2008.

‘Religious militants’ are widely believed to be behind her murder, barely two weeks before the scheduled polls which Bhutto had convinced her former rival Nawaz Sharif to contest, instead of boycotting them as he was planning to do.

Both twice-elected and twice-removed prime ministers had then returned from several years of exile abroad. During this time, army chief Pervez Musharraf headed Pakistan, after ousting Nawaz Sharif from the prime ministership in 1999.

Sharif had tried to replace the army chief and prevent the civilian flight bearing Musharraf back from an official visit to Sri Lanka, from landing in Pakistan. This was the ‘hijacking’ case for which Sharif was convicted, grounds now for his disqualification from public office or contesting elections.

Bhutto’s return to politics in Pakistan in October 2007 was widely seen as part of a ‘deal’ brokered by Washington to restore civilian rule in Pakistan in order to better handle the ‘war on terror’ – for which policy makers were by now prescribing a political rather than a military solution.

The widespread secular movement led by lawyers to restore chief justice Choudhry had also presented the possibility of progressive political change in Pakistan.

After the general elections of Feb. 18, 2008, the PPP and PML-N had agreed to form government as well as to restore the judges whom Musharraf had removed when he imposed emergency rule on Nov. 3, 2007.

“What people forget about the agreement was that it was also about government formation – the other two clauses were how the federal and the provincial governments were going to be formed,” said Asad Sayeed.

“Nawaz Sharif insisted on the judges’ restoration in order to undermine the PPP. They could not have moved towards forming government if Zardari had not agreed on this clause because Sharif was not willing to talk about it.”

Sharif continued to push for the restoration of chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Choudhry. Most of the other judges ousted after Musharraf’s November 2007 emergency have since been reinstated after taking fresh oath of office.

The country was bracing for a lawyers’ ‘long march’ to restore Choudhry, scheduled to kick off on Mar. 12 and ending with a sit-in or ‘dharna’ in Islamabad. The PML-N has enthusiastically supported the move.

Ayaz Amir, who has warned against making the restoration of Choudhry the “be all and end all” of politics, told IPS he felt his PML-N party had “stuck its horns too much into this one issue”.

The planned long march, Amir predicted, ”will get more momentum now, but it won’t restore the judges. There will be more instability and tumult, with politicians being further discredited in the public eye”.

More ominously, widespread unrest could also leave the army with “no choice” but to step in – something it is, at this point, clearly reluctant to do.

Amir hopes it will not come to that. “We’re not at that point yet. We have to wait and see what happens when the situation plays itself out.”

Bitter political acrimony is not new in Pakistan. However, so far both the PPP and PML-N have kept their main shared goal before them -to keep the army out of politics and let the political process continue. Observers hope that this long view will prevail.

Since being elected to office five months ago, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has often declared that Pakistan’s single biggest challenge stems from ‘religious’ militants.

Taliban cloud moves to Pakistan. Credit: Muhammad Zahoor, 'Daily Times', Peshawar

These include the Taliban, the international al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s own home-grown ‘holy warriors’, cultivated during the 1980s Afghan war against the occupying Soviets.

The approach taken by Zardari, Pakistan’s first popularly elected president in over a decade, differs markedly from the Pakistani establishment’s long-held stand that the country’s real enemy is India.

Since gaining independence from colonial rule and partition on religious grounds, in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought four wars, counting the Kargil ‘war-like situation’ of 1999 – a year after both countries tested nuclear weapons.

“India,” Zardari has said categorically, “is not our enemy.”

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik recently took many by surprise with his belated public acknowledgement that the Mumbai attacks of Nov. 2008 in which 180 people died were partly plotted in Pakistan. He also announced criminal proceedings against eight suspects, including three alleged ringleaders.

“I want to assure the international community, I want to assure all those who have been victims of terrorism, that we mean business,” said Malik said at a news conference on Feb. 12 in Islamabad, showing journalists a copy of Pakistan’s findings that were later handed over to India.

This was, as Indian journalist Siddharth Varadarajan wrote, “the first time the Pakistani state has ever publicly acknowledged that specific individuals and organisations based on its territory were actively involved in staging a terrorist attack on India” (‘Time for India to think of carrots too, not just sticks’, The Hindu, Feb. 13, 2009).

Pakistan’s admission appears to have confounded critics in India who had been certain that Pakistan would never admit to India’s allegations that the conspiracy was hatched in Pakistan or that the attackers were Pakistani nationals.

The admission “raised suspicion in New Delhi’s paranoid security establishment,” commented Sanjay Kapoor in the ‘Hardnew’s magazine, New Delhi, “The obvious questions that are being asked are: why did Pakistan do a volte-face and where will this new trajectory of their probe lead to?”

There is a widespread perception that Pakistan’s admission was due to pressure from Washington, which has repeatedly voiced concern that tensions between the two countries would distract Pakistan from the ‘war on terror’ against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Both Washington and New Delhi have welcomed the move. So have peace activists.

“They should have made this admission much earlier,” said Musarrat Hilali, a former (and first woman) additional advocate general of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) that borders Pakistan’s tribal areas next to Afghanistan, and vice chairperson of the NWFP chapter of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

“Everyone knew that the attackers came from Pakistan,” she added. “What was the point of denying it for so long? It would have built up confidence if they had said it earlier. Perhaps the rift between the two countries will decrease if Pakistan takes an honest stance to what is an international level problem, so that we stop being seen as liars around the world.”

Even so, the “dramatic reversal of Islamabad’s long-standing policy of denial and its significance ought not to be minimised in any way… The international political cost to the establishment of turning back from here has risen dramatically,” said Varadarajan, writing that this was possibly the main reason behind the delay in Pakistan’s admission.

The Indian government must now “resist the temptation to gloat or to pick quick holes in what the Pakistani investigation into Mumbai has revealed”, and it must take “a constructive approach” to sharing information and evidence, he urged.

Analysts hope that such information sharing can lead to the possibility of starting a joint-terror mechanism or reviving one that exists under the largely toothless South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

Varadarajan wisely suggests communicating responses “directly to Pakistan rather than through piecemeal, or even misleading, leaks to the media” and an urgent “moratorium on hostile rhetoric and accusatory statements”.

However, nothing will really change as long as Pakistan continues to invest heavily in Afghanistan in a bid to develop what policy makers term as ‘strategic depth’ and counter the growing Indian influence across Pakistan’s western border, says lawyer Kamran Arif, speaking to IPS over the phone from Peshawar, capital of the North-West Frontier Province NWFP, where he is based.

“If Pakistan continues this policy, things will just continue as they are,” Arif said. “Afghanistan, India and Pakistan – it’s all linked.”

The United States includes itself in this loop, as special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke acknowledged during his recent visit to India.

“For the first time in 60 years, your country, Pakistan and the U.S. all face an enemy (the Taliban) that poses direct threats to our leaderships, our capitals and our people,” Holbrooke told reporters in New Delhi after meeting with top-level Indian ministers.

Hilali and Arif were both among the high-profile 24-member delegation that recently visited India under the aegis of South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR), a non-government organization started, among others, by the prominent lawyer and HRCP Chairperson Asma Jahangir.

“Everyone we talked to agreed that war is not an option,” said Arif. “But there was great anger among ordinary people who saw continuous coverage of the Mumbai attacks on numerous television channels for three days straight. There was also anger about how the Pakistan government and some journalists handled matters.”

Arif noted two positive aspects. One was that in the state elections just after the Mumbai attacks, people did not vote for the right-wing parties which tried to whip up war hysteria.

Secondly, public anger was not directed against India’s sizeable Muslim minority (150 million) as has happened in previous cases of tension between India and Pakistan.

Pakistan and India have also maintained diplomatic ties – although the composite dialogue process remains on hold – despite pressure from the hawks.

Still, either due to disorganisation or reluctance to give Pakistan a face other than the stereotypes popularized in the media, the Indian media largely ignored the delegation, according to Jawed Naqvi, a senior Indian journalist who works as New Delhi-correspondent for the Pakistani daily Dawn.

Naqvi criticised the Indian media for its self-absorbed, blinkered view of Pakistan, “happy to show repeated looped shots of a mullah on a Pakistani channel ranting that India be destroyed, if necessary with nuclear weapons” (‘Peace activists are great folks, so why are we still in trouble?’, Dawn, Jan. 26, 2009).

The security establishments of both India and Pakistan rely on stereotypes about each other, reinforced through the school curricula, popular media and entertainment industries of both countries, to build up an image of ‘the enemy’ populated by ‘the other’ to buttress nationalism.

Peace activists in both countries reject these stereotypes at the risk of being labeled ‘traitors’ and ‘anti-national agents’.

Hilali told IPS that an Indian delegation is due to arrive in the near future in a bid to continue the “people to people links between the two countries, which is so important”.

Only two Indians attended the recently concluded Kara Film Festival in Karachi, the prominent director Mahesh Bhatt and the actor Nandita Das whose directorial debut ‘Firaaq’ (Separation) made its Pakistan premiere at the international festival.

Das, the only Indian on the flight to Karachi she took, told the audience that people were surprised she was making the trip. “It is when times are difficult that there is more of a need to speak out,” she said.

By Beena Sarwar
KARACHI, Feb 15 2009 (IPS)

Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist Hina Jilani is a member of the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counter-terrorism and Human Rights, convened by the International Commission of Jurists (www.icj.org) to investigate counter-terrorism practices and human rights standards.

Hina Jilani Credit: International Commission of Jurists

The panel, chaired by Arthur Chaskalson, former chief justice of South Africa, comprises several prominent figures in international law and includes former Irish president and United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson.

It is the first group to undertake an investigation of this scope with 16 hearings covering 40 countries over the past three years.

The group will launch its report ‘Assessing Damage, Urging Action’ at a press conference in Geneva on Feb. 16, followed by a high-level presentation at the U.N. The report provides guidance to combat terrorism and urges states and international bodies to restore the primacy of international law.

Jilani, along with the late justice Dorab Patel and lawyer Asma Jahangir, is among the founders of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (www.hrcp-web.org) in 1986. She was appointed to the U.N. international fact-finding commission on Darfur in 2006, and was the U.N. special representative of the secretary-general on human rights defenders, 2000-2008.

IPS correspondent Beena Sarwar spoke with Hina Jilani in Lahore, over the phone, just before she left for Geneva.

IPS: What are the most significant findings of the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counter-terrorism and Human Rights? Hina Jilani: I think one of the most important points to underscore is how much damage has been done and will be done when states deviate from the law and human rights principles in the name of terrorism. At the same time, we recognise that actual armed conflicts are arising from terrorism.

Another important point to make is that we looked at the political history of countries that have been dealing with this problem and resolving it through the regular criminal justice system, like Northern Ireland and Latin American countries like Chile and Argentina.

IPS: So you are saying that the regular criminal justice systems are adequate to deal with the issue of terrorism? HJ: Yes. We found that the regular criminal justice system, with some adjustments to ensure that intelligence is converted to credible evidence, has worked in many countries. The repercussions of not following the criminal justice system, taking extra-judicial measures and disregarding human rights conventions have been very negative. They have not been able to counter terrorism. At the same time they have resulted in eroding human rights values.

Firstly, there is the issue of the right to a fair trial. Secondly, we are very aware of the reality of the terrorism threat but the way governments have reacted – bypassing the criminal justice system – has clearly failed to be the right strategy.

There is a need to follow the due process of law and it is also absolutely necessary to have a successful prosecution of terrorist crimes. Because when you try a crime through the regular criminal justice system you strip the crime of its ideology, and the criminals can’t confuse the public mind and influence public opinion with the righteousness of their cause.

IPS: So the terrorist act itself gets shorn of ideology? HJ: What this does is that it highlights the crime itself. The victims get a face and become visible during a trial, and public opinion becomes realistic. This incidentally is also the reason you don’t ‘disappear’ people.

So we have taken a very victim-oriented approach so that the victims are seen as human beings, given reparation and compensation. There is the question of non-state actors also – in most cases, it is non-state actors who are involved in acts of terrorism, very few governments are.

IPS: What are the other highlights of your report? HJ: We’ve underlined the need to back cases with proper intelligence. The lack of proper oversight and accountability of intelligence agencies is a big problem. Of course a certain amount of secrecy is necessary, but without proper oversight and an accountability process we find that intelligence agencies go out of their way to make a case. This contributes to creating a situation of lawlessness.

We also found that intelligence agencies in different countries collude with each other in such situations. And then intelligence seeps into other areas, like immigration laws. So you have situations where people crossing the border illegally are apprehended as terrorist suspects.

Intelligence agencies collude to maintain secrecy and cover up when they step outside the law. We are saying they should do that to create better intelligence and mechanisms for cooperating in other ways.

Basically, the most significant thing that we highlight is the importance of due process, the right of every accused to know what evidence is being used against them – which doesn’t happen when secret evidence is brought into play. Because of this, several hundred people are detained without charge because there’s no evidence or intelligence against them, in Guantanamo and other places.

IPS: So the bottom line is that governments need to operate within the existing human rights and legal frameworks? HJ: Absolutely. All the internationally recognised human rights conventions already cater to dealing with the restriction of rights. Where limitations are necessary they prescribe the process and time limits etc. What we are saying is that you can control terrorism while applying the human rights frameworks and guarding human rights at the same time.

When force must be used, the predominant concern has to be due diligence to safeguard human lives. In Pakistan, for example, if force has to be applied, it must be proportionate and responsible, there has to be transparency and accountability to the elected parliament. It must conform to international human rights laws. There must be a definite and precise authority through which the force is ordered.

Excerpt:

Outraged by an attack by right-wing Hindu militants on women emerging from a pub in Mangalore, Karnataka state, activists in India have initiated a ‘Pink Chaddi’ (underwear) campaign in which they are sending pink panties to members of the Sri Ram Sena (Army of Lord Ram) on Valentines’ Day.

Credit: Pink Chaddi Campaign

Television cameras caught the attack, on Jan 24, in which a group of men chased and beat up women as they came out of a pub, kicking some of the women who tripped and fell. Some 30 men, including the SRS chief Pramod Muthalik were later arrested.

But, apparently emboldened by the fact that Karnataka state is ruled by the pro-Hindu, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), SRS leaders have announced that the group will attack anyone caught celebrating Valentine’s Day.

The Pink Chaddi campaign has defiantly called for a Pub Bharo (fill-the-pubs) action on Valentines Day.

“Go to a pub wherever you are. From Kabul to Chennai to Guwahati to Singapore to LA women have signed up. It does not matter if you are actually not a pub-goer or not even much of a drinker. Let us raise a toast (it can be juice) to Indian women,” Delhi-based journalist Nisha Susan, who started the campaign on Feb 5, wrote in the blog http://thepinkchaddicampaign.blogspot.com/ .

The move has resonated in pub-less Pakistan, where women are equally threatened by right-wing militants who claim to have Islamic sanction for curbing women’s visibility and movements in the public sphere.

Muslim extremists in Pakistan oppose the celebration of New Year and Valentine’s Day with as much fervor as their Hindu counterparts in India.

However, shops in all major Pakistani cities were reported stocking Valentine Day cards and other red and pink paraphernalia while street vendors were doing brisk business selling red roses and heart-shaped balloons.

This is far removed from Saudi Arabia’s Ministry for the Protection of Virtue and Prevention of Vice which, last year, banned the sale of Valentine’s Day material with officials from the ministry seen scouring shops in Riyadh and ordering removal from shelves of anything in pink or red, including roses.

Commenting on the Pink Chaddi campaign, Pakistani filmmaker Aisha Gazdar who recently joined the Pakistani Facebook group ‘Fashionistas Against Talibanisation’ told IPS it was a great idea. “But since we don’t have pubs in Pakistan, we need to find some other way to respond.”

Several people from Pakistan have contacted Susan, says Aniruddha Shankar, also a journalist in Delhi. He told IPS via the internet that Pakistanis have been calling Susan and saying, “Why don’t you send pink underwear to our mullahs (Muslim priests) also?”

“The reason why we picked ‘chaddi’, underwear, is because it’s also the slang word for a right-wing person,” Susan explained in an audio interview to the BBC.

Regarding Muthalik’s response – he has said he will respond by sending pink ‘khaddi’ (homespun) saris to “all of us, thereby shaming us into modesty,” Susan added, “that was an excellent action. It works because we’ve been non-violent, maybe we can get him to be non-violent too.”

“There is of course a point to being light-hearted about this,” she said. “They seem to take Valentine’s Day extremely seriously. For most people, Valentine’s Day doesn’t matter, going to pubs doesn’t matter. We’re not promoting high-consumption lifestyles… What we do object to is people using a certain dislike of high consumption lifestyles to control women’s actions.

“This group has attacked Christians before, they’ve attacked Muslims before, we’re only the latest constituency.”

Some 30,000 people, including older men and women in their 50s, have so far joined the Facebook group ‘Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women’ that Susan started against religious extremists in India.

“We’ve been crazily busy since but it’s quite an exhilarating experience,” said Shankar. “Thousands of pink chaddis are on their way to Muthalik (the chief) of the Sri Ram Sena.

“What’s so awesome is that so many Hindus who are teetotalers and vegetarians and quite religious are speaking out and saying this is not on, from teenagers to grandmothers, they have all sent bright gulabi (pink) chaddis to the Sri Ram Sena.”

The Pink Chaddi movement has no relation to the Gulabi Gang in India, Shankar told IPS when asked.

The Gulabi Gang http://www.gulabigang.org/ is a movement of some 60,000 stick-wielding pink-sari clad rural women in India’s Uttar Pradesh, mostly poor and illiterate, led by the 47-year old gadaria (cowherd) Sampat Devi Pal. Her aim is to educate the women and empower them to fight against injustice.

They had actively participated in the first Ahimsa (non-violence) Day on Jan. 30 this year in New Delhi, aimed at reviving the spirit of non-violence popularised around the world by the assassinated, independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.

Ridicule and humour of the Pink Chaddi type were also weapons in Gandhi’s armoury. He handspun his own clothes – mostly a simple loincloth – which he wore to a 1931 audience given him by King George V at the Buckingham Palace. ‘’His Majesty had on enough clothes for the both of us,’’ he famously said, when asked about his disregard for dress protocol.

Paris-based, peace activist Akshay Bakaya, who initiated Ahimsa Day, has roped the Gulabi Gang into the event.

In an email to IPS at the time, he said he had been in close contact with Sampat Devi since being her French-Hindi interpreter in Paris when her autobiography ‘Moi, Sampat Pal: Chef de gang en sari rose’ (I, Sampat Pal: Warrior in a pink sari) was published last October.

Bakaya now likens the Pink Chaddi movement’s call to fill the pubs on Valentine’s Day to Gandhi’s non-violent ‘Jail Bharo’ (fill-the-prisons) call as part of peaceful resistance against British colonial rule.

In this case, said Bakaya, it “marks determination not to be cowed down by ‘Hindu’ movements that take British khaki shorts to be symbols of Indian culture!”

Many ‘Hindutva’ (Hindu right-wing) organisations in India wear uniforms of khaki shorts.

“They would just as soon burn the Vedas and most Sanskrit literature as ‘pornographic’ and smash Hindu temples from Konarak to Khajuraho, rather than – more creatively – suggesting that the ‘Vatican conspiracy’ of Valentine’s Day be countered with a true-blue Krishna-Gopi festival on a more suitable Hindu day like Holi, India’s very own festival of love,” said Bakaya.

“If the mostly-urban Pink-Chaddi campaign and the rural Pink-Sari gang joined forces, they could easily take the khaki shorts off the Hindutva goons.”

An email from Nisha Susan doing the rounds invites people to join the Pink Chaddi Campaign. “Be imaginative, have fun and fight back!”

“It does not matter that many of us have not thought about Valentine’s Day since we were 13. If ever,” says one email. “This year let us send the Sri Ram Sene some love. Let us send them some PINK CHADDIS.”

The post provides an alternative to those who don’t want to mail it themselves: “you can drop it off at the Chaddi Collection Points” detailed on the Pink Chaddi Campaign blog.

However, because “we should not colour-discriminate”, those who “really, really can’t send pink chaddis, send those in other colours,” says the blog, providing the Karnataka address of Muthalik.

The last step after Valentine’s Day, is to “get some of our elected leaders to agree that beating up women is ummm… AGAINST INDIAN CULTURE.’’

“For right now, ask not what Dr V.S. Acharya, Home Minister of Karnataka can do for you. Ask what you can do for him. Here is his blog. http://drvsacharya.blogspot.com. Send him some love.”

The release of Pakistani rogue nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, underlines major issues confronting Pakistan -and indeed the world – ranging from nuclear proliferation to governance, corruption, hypocrisy, and how public opinion is shaped by falsehoods.

Generally referred to, even by the international media, as ‘the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb’, A.Q. Khan’s role is in fact rather different from this popular perception.

It was the late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who, while foreign minister, famously declared in 1965 that “Pakistan will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, in order to develop a (nuclear) programme of its own”.

As minister for mineral resources Bhutto got the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC, founded in 1954) to set up the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Sciences and Technology in 1960, sending hundreds of students abroad to study physics and other nuclear-related science disciplines.

“After the Chinese nuclear test in 1964, he concluded that if India would go nuclear Pakistan would have to follow the suit,” commented the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in a 2007 dossier on the Pakistan nuclear programme.

Pakistan’s traumatic military defeat in December 1971 – when the country’s eastern wing, aided by India, gained liberation to become Bangladesh – prompted Bhutto, by then president and chief martial law administrator, to prioritise the nuclear weapons programme.

In January 1972, Bhutto flew the country’s top scientists to Multan city in southern Punjab, tasking them with completing the project in three years.

Pakistan’s well-regarded monthly ‘Defence Journal’ detailed Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme in its cover story of May 2004, ‘Remembering Unsung Heroes: Munir Ahmed Khan’. The report terms Bhutto, the ‘political’ father, and A.Q. Khan’s boss, Munir Ahmed Khan, the ‘technical’ father of the bomb.

“Munir’s 40-year association with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna – as a member of its scientific staff, and later its board of governors, which he also chaired – was seen by his enemies as evidence of his questionable loyalty” to Pakistan, wrote the Independent, London in its obituary after Munir’s death in Vienna, in 1999.

These enemies included Khan who went out of his way to malign Munir, who kept an enigmatic silence.

“In truth, Munir and AQ represent two strands of thinking in Pakistan’s defence and foreign policy. Munir represented a dying generation who live in the hope that Pakistan will one day play an influential role in world affairs by maintaining friendships and alliances with the West. AQ, on the other hand, represents a growing constituency, which believes that the security interests of Western countries are incompatible with those of the Muslim world,” reads the obituary.

The obituary described Munir as a ‘’a patriot, a voice of reason who was committed to international safeguards for Pakistan’s nuclear technology, and who would despair whenever politicians reached for the nuclear card. But others in Pakistan’s nuclear establishment believe that he was against Pakistan acquiring bomb-making technology”.

The Defence Journal article notes that Munir and PAEC “followed the path of silently pursuing the nuclear goal for Pakistan in line with the country’s stated policy of nuclear ambiguity… and insisted… that Pakistan’s nuclear programme was strictly for peaceful purposes”.

Secondly, “because it was indeed a covert period, Qadeer was encouraged to pose as the Father of the Bomb, even though he was responsible for just one of 24 steps, each crucial to making nuclear weapons… Qadeer was used as a decoy to divert attention from the PAEC, where the real work was being done.”

The government used Khan, says the report, at the time of the India’s massive ‘Brasstacks’ military exercises of 1986-87 to declare “that Pakistan had the bomb and would use it against India if its security was endangered.”

“The West made him a villain, and the people, especially the media, and the government, went out of the way to portray him as hero, and at a time when the nation was in dire need of heroes,” comments the report.

Khan headed the Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL) tasked with fast-tracking the nuclear enrichment programme. “He went into contracts, went rogue in cahoots with elements in the army,” said a political observer speaking on condition of anonymity.

In January 2004 the ‘hero’ took a fall. “The Iranians and Libyans were furious with him for trying to sell them outdated enrichment models,” commented the observer.

Khan appeared on the state-run Pakistan Television (PTV), confessed to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea and sought the nation’s forgiveness.

A month later, then president and army chief Pervez Musharraf magnanimously “forgave” him but had him placed under house arrest, barring him from access to the outside world.

Pakistan has consistently denied foreign powers permission to question Khan on his alleged proliferation activities, even after the civilian government elected in Feb 2008 eased restrictions on him.

In his first public appearance after four years, in May 2008, Khan denied having sold nuclear technology illegally. He said he was innocent but had signed the confession that the authorities handed him and read it out on national television in the nation’s “best interest”.

He was released from house arrest on Feb. 7, after the Islamabad High Court, giving a verdict on several petitions filed against his detention, ruled that the charges against Khan could not be substantiated and declared him a “free man”.

The Federal Minister for Defence, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, has confirmed that Khan was released “under an agreement”, the details of which he did not divulge.

However, Syed Ali Zafar, the scientist’s lawyer, mentioned at the time of the court verdict that according to this deal, the state “will provide my client (A.Q. Khan) security and will release him from house arrest”.

“It is obviously an out-of-court settlement between the government and A.Q. Khan,” prominent physicist A.H. Nayyar, currently a research fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad, told IPS. “The government was finding it difficult to pursue the court case, and released him with conditions of confidentiality.”

The U.S. State Department has called Khan’s release “extremely regrettable” and “unfortunate”. Washington has sought assurances that he will not get involved in nuclear proliferation again while Britain has asked Pakistan to allow the IAEA access to the scientist.

“I don’t think there is anything to get so worried about,” said Nayyar. “He has no access to the nuclear establishment anymore.”

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has categorically stated that Khan stands relieved of his duties and had nothing to do with the country’s nuclear-related policies.

“We have successfully broken the network that he had set up and today he has no say and has no access to any sensitive areas of Pakistan,” Qureshi said. “A.Q. Khan is history.”

“In fact, his release may be a good thing,” added Nayyar, an anti-nuclear activist. “He likes talking to the press, and may blurt out some useful information. Plus, if he is allowed to travel abroad, people can accost him and get him to confess. They should be happy they have more access to him.”

Many Pakistanis still regard Khan as a hero for making the country a nuclear state, but others are more sceptical.

“The disinformation is so extreme, it is shocking how the private television channels celebrated his release,” one Karachi-based observer told IPS, asking not to be named. “How come people are not curious about how he made so much money and brought international disgrace upon the country? He should be in jail and tried for treason.”

That is unlikely to happen, say observers, because at least some elements of the Pakistan army must have been involved in Khan’s deals, without which they would not have been possible.

Khan in an interview of July 2008, said that a shipment of centrifuges from Pakistan to North Korea in 2000 was “supervised by the army during the rule of President Pervez Musharraf… the army had complete knowledge about it and the equipment.”

Releasing Khan now, says an analyst, “will either expose all who were involved, or it is plain foolishness.”

The pattern is all too familiar. Every time India and Pakistan head towards dialogue and detente, something explosive happens that pushes peace to the backburner and drags them back to the familiar old tense relationship, worsened by sabre-rattling war cries from both sides.

The relationship between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours has been marked by tentative ups and plunging downs, particularly over the past decade. This decade is also marked by increasingly vocal voices for peace on both sides of the border who openly criticise their countries’ political and security establishments.

The fallout from the Mumbai mayhem is no different, if all the more ominous for having taken place in the midst of the global ‘war on terror’ with its ‘us versus them’ rhetoric that has contributed to escalated violence around the world and pushed fence-sitters onto one or other side.

On Wednesday a ten-man squad of Islamist warriors armed with assault rifles and hand grenades landed in the port city Mumbai and, after going on shooting spree, seized control of two of its finest luxury hotels and a Jewish centre. By the time commandos neutralised the attackers and lifted the sieges Friday, 200 people lay dead -including 22 foreign hostages.

Pakistan and India are part of the Indian sub-continent. They share a landmass, mountain ranges, rivers and seas, ancient cultures, history, languages and religions. Yet they have fought three wars since gaining independence from the British in 1947, after the bloody partition of the sub-continent into two countries – largely Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan.

The fourth major conflict between the two countries was the Kargil conflict of 1999 that the political leadership on both sides referred to as a ‘war-like situation’. The nuclear threat that underlined this situation drew the world’s attention to India-Pakistan relations, and the festering issue of the disputed state of Kashmir, as never before.

A year earlier, India and Pakistan’s nuclear tests of May 1998 had plunged the region into an unprecedented state of tension. The governments celebrated their nuclear capability, feeding rivalry, jingoism and nationalism on both sides that the media played up. There was far less coverage of those who condemned the tests and the governments’ encouragement of reactionary forces that equated religion with nationhood.

Those who protested were swimming against the tide, labelled as traitors and anti-nationals, and ‘agents’ of the other country, like Islamabad-based physicist A.H. Nayyar who has been active in the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy since the organisation was launched in 1995.

As Nayyar and pro-peace activists addressed a press conference condemning the nuclearisation of the region, charged-up young men who supported Pakistan’s nuclear tests physically attacked them with chairs.

Now, expressing his shock at the “mindless, horrible event” in Mumbai, he told IPS: “There are people in both countries who don’t like efforts towards rapprochement. They take the first opportunity to start blowing the bugles of war and instigate hostility.”

The nuclear tests were followed by the historic Lahore Declaration of Feb. 1999, when Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif invited his Indian counterpart A. B. Vajpayee to Lahore.

Two months later, the Kargil conflict dashed all hopes for rapprochement as it transpired that while the governments talked peace, infiltrators from Pakistan were busy grabbing positions in Kargil on the Indian-administered side of the disputed state of Kashmir.

Sharif denied knowledge of the operation, but his army chief Pervez Musharraf insisted that Sharif had been briefed. It took the intervention of then U.S. president Bill Clinton to de-escalate the tension and comple the Pakistani army into making the infiltrators withdraw by July 1999, pulling the countries back from the brink of a nuclear war.

In October, Musharraf ousted Sharif in a military coup. The present composite dialogue process began in 2004 during the Musharraf regime, but India is now dealing with a democratically elected government for the first time in a decade, note observers. They also point out that it is for the first time that a Pakistani government appears to be genuinely attempting to undo the damage done by past policies.

These policies, linked to Washington’s need to pull down the former Soviet Union and drive the Soviet army out of Afghanistan, nurtured religious extremism and armed militancy. Later, these armed, indoctrinated forces, supported by the Pakistani establishment, fuelled the insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir and led to the worst sectarian violence in Pakistan.

The third phase came after ‘9/11’ when Pakistan officially rejected these ‘Islamic warriors’.

As the Pakistan government now tries to formulate new security paradigms while also combating the terror menace at home, it needs support, say observers. “For the first time, it feels like we are at war,” says a Karachi-based analyst asking not to be named. “Under Musharraf, it was a game to show the Americans that we are taking action but actually continuing to nurture some militant elements against India.”

“With the threat of global communism gone, and the need for Middle East energy primary, America suddenly recognises India as an ally against Islamism, and Pakistan becomes a buffer to be squeezed relentlessly,” commented Vithal Rajan in Hyderabad, India who works with several civil society organizations. “The Indian government in relief at winning American friendship has fallen in with this ploy, further distancing itself from the fledgling democracy of Pakistan, and leaving no real solution in sight.”

Mumbai was still burning when Rajan wrote to civil society activists in Pakistan and India on Nov. 28 urging them not to “just be reactive like the popular press” but take a more thoughtful view of the situation.

Angry condemnations “lead us nowhere; political demands (may) make vote-catching politicians rethink strategies, but these might remain ineffectual. (We) should create space… to think things out in the long term…

“…[Lal Krishna] Advani has called this attack in Mumbai by a few terrorists as ‘a war.’ This is dangerous stuff and nonsense. A war is fought between sovereign countries, not between the police and criminals. It is in India’s interest and in Pakistan’s interest to have stable, progressive governments.”

Advani, who is opposition leader in Indian parliament and represents the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has repeatedly accused the ruling Congress party, which professes to be secular, of allowing India to turn into a ‘soft state’ in the face of a series of deadly bombings in Indian cities, this year, that have been attributed to Islamist groups.

Pakistan’s new civilian government has, however, been making attempts to step out of the familiar well-worn grooves, note observers. President Asif Ali Zardari, for example, has signalled major policy shifts by terming the militants in Kashmir as “terrorists”, stating that India is not Pakistan’s enemy, and then declaring that Pakistan had adopted a “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons.

Participating via satellite link in the prestigious ‘Leadership Summit’ conducted by India’s prestigious ‘Hindustan Times’ newspaper, on Nov. 22, four days before the attack on Mumbai, Zardari quoted his late wife Benazir Bhutto to say that there is a ‘’little bit of India in every Pakistani and a little bit of Pakistan in every Indian’’. Bhutto was assassinated by suicide bombers, last year, while on election campaign.

The religious right in Pakistan – and its supporters within the establishment – is clearly unhappy at Zardari’s peace overtures towards India. Militants involved in fighting the state on Pakistan’s north-west border have announced a stepping up of efforts to assassinate Pakistan’s political leadership.

Pakistan and India’s fights against extremism “will founder if fought alone,” noted the young Britain-based Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid in a recent op-ed in the Guardian, London, warning that India’s rush to implicate Pakistan is a “dangerous mistake”. “The impulse to implicate Pakistan is of course understandable: the past is replete with examples of Pakistani and Indian intelligence agencies working to destabilise the historical enemy across the border.”

Many analysts believe it is too soon to pin the blame on anyone. “To take on the government of a country of 1.2 billion just like that is unbelievably stupid,” says Nayyar in Islamabad, referring to the handful of youngsters who held Mumbai hostage for three days. “If it is the work of a fringe group then it is very alarming that the states are getting worked up to this extent.

“But if the perpetrators were part of an organised group, then it is also very alarming. We need to sit down and do our homework all over again and see how such groups can be contained, or we will all perish.”

Beyond India and Pakistan, the global activist group Avaaz.org is launching a message calling for unity following the attacks in Mumbai, to be published in newspapers across India and Pakistan and delivered to political leaders within one week.

“The message is that these tactics have failed and we are more united than ever. And we are determined to work together to stop violent extremism, and call on our political and religious leaders to so the same. If these attacks cause us to turn on each other in hatred and conflict, the terrorists will have won.”

The terrorist attacks unleashed in the Indian port city and financial hub of Mumbai continue to reverberate through Pakistan at a personal level and on the media.

The crisis, that began Wednesday night and lasted through Friday, dominates conversation, newspaper headlines, television coverage and Internet chatter on indigenous websites and e-mail lists run by Pakistanis at home and abroad.

As a frontline state in United States’ global ‘war on terror’ Pakistan is only too well acquainted with the effects of terrorism, with such attacks in the country having more than doubled and the number of deaths quadrupling from 2006 to 2007, according to a report released in May by the U.S. State Department.

However, even the most high profile attack in Pakistan which destroyed the Marriott Hotel in the capital Islamabad on Sep. 20, that some analysts termed Pakistan’s ‘9/11’, pales in comparison to the events in Mumbai that have claimed over 155 lives already, that many are now calling India’s ‘9/11’.

A group of at least 25 men armed with assault rifles and handgrenades attacked 10 sites in Mumbai and then barricaded themselves inside two of the city’s finest luxury hotels, the heritage Taj Mahal and the Oberoi Trident, as well as a building housing a Jewish centre.

By the time commando squads flushed out the buildings, 155 people lay dead, among them eight foreigners. The final death toll may well reach 200, according to officials.

There has been widespread condemnation in Pakistan against the violence in Mumbai, from ordinary people and non-government organisations as well as from the Pakistan government which has offered “complete cooperation” and support to India to fight the menace.

The Mumbai attacks, hitting in the midst of the fifth round of the ongoing composite dialogue between India and Pakistan, are likely to have wide-ranging repercussions for India and Pakistan relations and for the international community at large.

Analysts note that such attacks tend to take place whenever the South Asian neighbours are engaged in talks and peace initiatives. Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had barely started his four-day visit to New Delhi to review the dialogue process when the attacks took place.

Pakistan and India tend to blame each other for terrorist activities within their borders, although over the past year they have been less quick to point fingers. This time too, New Delhi did not immediately blame Pakistan, but later claimed to have arrested a militant with Pakistani links. The Pakistan government has strongly denied involvement.

Commentators in Pakistan point to the huge intelligence failure in India to detect the amassing of arms and training that have enabled such a large number of militants to hold Mumbai hostage for over two days now. They also criticise New Delhi’s apparent reluctance to look within India’s own borders at its various indigenous insurgencies.

“All of India’s intelligence agencies have failed,” comments Farrukh Saleem, who heads the Centre for Research and Security Studies, an independent think tank in Islamabad, “The most critical element in their collective failure is their overwhelming focus on Pakistan-based militant groups.”

He believes that the intensity of this focus has allowed India’s home-grown militant entities “to spread like wildfire” that, according to South Asia Terrorism Portal, afflicts at least 231 of India’s 608 districts.

These insurgent and terrorist movements include three distinct types, “left-wing extremist, separatist and religious”, wrote Saleem in a front page analysis in daily The News on Nov. 28. “In 2006, a total of 2,765 Indians died in terrorism-related violence (that same year, 1,471 Pakistanis died similarly).”

Another analyst, who declining to be named, suggests that South Asian countries band together for joint military operations in the areas known to be breeding grounds for militancy against the guerrilla groups operating in different areas in the region.

In New Delhi, Qureshi stressed that India and Pakistan are both victims of terrorism. He said there was a need to strengthen the Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism and “revisit our strategies for peace and security of the region.”

“Terrorism is a global phenomenon. We in Pakistan deal with it on a daily basis,” Qureshi said. “We will have to join all our resources to fight the menace.”

In an unprecedented gesture, Islamabad agreed to send its intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shujaa Pasha, the new director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to India at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s request.

Pakistan’s civilian government in another groundbreaking move has recently disbanded the political wing of the ISI, often blamed for fomenting political trouble in the country and abroad.

“I feel a great fear that (the Mumbai violence) will adversely affect Pakistan and India relations,” prominent Karachi-based feminist poet and writer Attiya Dawood told IPS. “I can’t say whether Pakistan is involved or not, but whoever is involved, it is not the ordinary people of Pakistan, like myself, or my daughters. We are with our Indian brothers and sisters in their pain and sorrow.”

Dawood said she is still in shock from the events in Mumbai, a city she has often visited. “Such a beautiful city, so many people’s livelihoods and so much art and culture associated with it… It is so painful to see what is happening there. I watch the television coverage and remember standing at one of those spots watching street theatre…”

Others, like Karachi-based businessman Tahir Siddiqui, believe that events in Mumbai will force greater cooperation not only between India and Pakistan but also between other countries engaged in combating terrorism.

“Pakistan can’t afford to open any more fronts,” Siddiqui told IPS. “We have to cooperate in this fight. I think any support within Pakistan to militants will decrease significantly now, including in Kashmir.”

He added that the situation in Mumbai is “basically the symptom of a larger problem – the imperialist world’s continuing support to dictatorial regimes across the Muslim world, from Indonesia to Morocco. This lack of democracy marginalises people and holds back development. This is a wake-up call to address these issues.”

On a personal level, what can citizens do? ‘Resist fear!’ advocated Islamabad-based peace activist Shahid Fiaz in an email to friends in India and Pakistan. “I know how it feels when your cities are attacked. After the Marriot Hotel bombing and continued suicide bombings around the country, people go out less – markets and restaurants have a deserted look.”

Fiaz, who is on the National Council of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD), the largest people-to-people initiative between the two countries, told IPS that fear is what the terrorists want to achieve. “We need to come out and resist and tell terrorists that these are our cities, we own our cities and we are not scared!”

“We in Pakistan understand and share the pain, anger and grief of the people of India, as we are also victims of terrorism including daily suicide bombings in one part of the country or the other,” said Iqbal Haider, co-chairman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and a former federal minister for law and human rights.

“Instead of accusing each other, which will only help the real terrorists, the need of the hour is unity and understanding among the people of our region. We need to make concerted efforts to defeat the nefarious aims of these terrorists and eradicate these extremist religious militants or mafias from every nook and corner of South Asia.”

In the final analysis, what is certain is that there will be no progress towards peace without determined political will.

Benazir Bhutto has paid the heaviest price possible for her insistence on engaging in participatory, democratic politics in Pakistan.

Benazir Bhutto at a Karachi rally in October. Credit: Beena Sarwar/IPS

Bhutto, twice prime minister and leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), was killed Thursday evening in what was apparently a suicide attack following gunshots that injured her as she was leaving an election rally in the garrison town of Rawalpindi.

Just 54 years old, and a mother of three children, she died in hospital in Rawalpindi, close to the Pakistani capital Islamabad, at about 6:15 pm local time – barely an hour after an unidentified man fired shots at her as she left the rally venue, a fenced off park, before blowing himself up. Some 20 others were killed and dozens more injured.

“She feared something like this would happen, but she was so brave,” said PPP spokesperson Farhatullah Babar, who was with Bhutto at the rally. Speaking to IPS from Rawalpindi, shortly before the slain leader’s body was transferred to her hometown Larkana on a military C-130 plane, Babar added: “She waved at the people, and then there was firing and the blast.”

“I don’t think people realise this, but she was one of the last hopes we had in Pakistan for a peaceful transition to democracy,” said Karachi-based economist Haris Gazdar, who supported Bhutto’s much-criticised “deal” with the military government that allowed her to return to the country and participate in politics.

Under the National Reconciliation Ordinance promulgated on Oct. 5, Pervez Musharraf, president and chief of army staff, gave Bhutto immunity against corruption charges brought against her after she was ousted from power in 1996 (none of these charges were proved in court). In return, her party, which is Pakistan’s biggest, supported his presidential bid.

“The Americans think we are a dangerous state, and they want to come and sort things out here. This was our chance to do it peacefully,” Gazdar told IPS. “Make no mistake about it, the state is responsible for her death. They may think that by removing the vehicle for a peaceful change, they can stop the change. But that will not happen. Now that the peaceful mediator has been killed, they (U.S.) will use armed force.”

Bhutto’s father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (ZAB), a former prime minister, and two brothers had been killed. In 1979, ZAB, who was overthrown by the military regime of Gen. Ziaul Haq, was hanged. “I was nine when ZAB was killed by a general. Now my son is nine and another general has killed his daughter. I grew up with Benazir. It’s a personal loss. I want to cry forever,” text-messaged a lawyer in Lahore.

Bhutto’s death ignited violence all over the country, particularly in Sindh, her home province. “They’ve shut down all the shops, and there is firing all around,” said Abdul Jabbar, who works as a driver in Karachi, the Sindh capital and Pakistan’s business capital. “People are just overcome with grief.”

By 9 pm, violence had claimed at least five lives in Karachi. Protesters in Sindh evacuated two trains and set them on fire. Angry mobs attacked police stations and other symbols of state authority. Commuters were reported to be stranded in towns and cities all over the province.

Bhutto had chosen to return to Pakistan on Oct. 18, after nearly nine years in exile in London and Dubai, defying warnings by Musharraf to delay her arrival due to the danger of suicide attacks.

“This is why I am here,” she said at the time, radiant atop her armoured truck soon after her arrival from Dubai. Waving to a sea of people who surrounded her truck in Karachi, she told this correspondent: “These people are the reason I am here.”

But hours later, her slow-moving convoy bogged down by thousands of exuberant supporters on foot, her truck was struck by two bombs struck soon after midnight. At first, the blasts were thought to be a suicide attack. At least 130 people were killed and 500 injured.

Addressing a press conference the following day, a defiant Bhutto had pointed to the involvement of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies in the attacks by mentioning three anonymous men whom she said she had named in a letter to Musharraf on Oct. 16. “I said that if something happens to me, I will hold them responsible rather than militant groups like the Taliban, al Qaeda or the Pakistani Taliban.”

The PPP also demanded the removal of Intelligence Bureau chief, Ijaz Shah, hinting at its links with militancy. Bhutto’s later claim that the Oct. 18 blasts were remote-controlled further implied the involvement of forces other than the “religious militants” who are traditionally held responsible for such acts.

Despite the life threats, Bhutto hit the campaign trail after the polls were announced by the Election Commission on Nov. 20. With barely two weeks to go before voting on Jan. 8, Bhutto was criss-crossing the country, holding rallies.

Also on the campaign trail was Nawaz Sharif, another twice-elected former prime minister who like Bhutto has recently returned from several years in exile. In Sharif’s words, over the last two years, Bhutto and he as leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), had sunk their political differences to build a “rapport”.

In London in May 2006, the two exiled leaders signed a Charter of Democracy aimed at pushing the military out of Pakistani politics.

Talking to the media at the hospital in Rawalpindi where he had arrived on hearing of Bhutto’s death, Sharif described the tragedy as a “lapse in security” and said that the government should have taken greater measures to protect her.

Barely three hours before the blast that killed Bhutto, on Dec. 27, four PML-N supporters were killed by gun fire at a poll rally for Sharif outside Islamabad.

Bhutto’s assassination “sends a very frightening signal to those who aim to pursue liberal politics in Pakistan,” commented Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan-based South Asia Researcher for Human Rights Watch.

“This will leave a huge vacuum at the heard of Pakistani politics. It is the most significant political event to happen in Pakistan since the death of Gen. Zia,” he added. Gen. Zia’s death in 1988 had paved the way for fresh elections that brought Bhutto to power as the world’s first Muslim woman prime minister.

Condoling with Bhutto’s family and other affected people in a brief, televised address, President Musharraf announced a three-day mourning period during which the Pakistani flag will be flown at half-mast.

“It is important now for Asif Ali Zardari (Bhutto’s husband) to call for peace, and to give Benazir Bhutto a decent burial that she deserves,” said Nusrat Javeed, the banned head of current affairs for Aaj Television who appeared in a special transmission along with another banned host, Talat Hussain. “We need to sit and think, and transform the grief and the anger into strength.”

They are kidnapped, “married” off to agents by unsuspecting parents, or enticed by prospects of a better life — but these Bangladeshi and Burmese women end up in the brothels of Pakistan.

After making the perilous journey, often on foot across India, they would probably be luckier if sold into domestic slavery along with their children. But more likely, they are forced into abject prostitution by brothel owners.

The numbers involved in the trafficking of this human cargo are staggering: between 100 to 150 women are estimated to enter Pakistan illegally very day. Few ever return to their homes in remote poverty-stricken areas which are the favourite hunting ground of the ‘dalals’ or agent.

Karachi-based advocate Zia Ahmed Awan, who is with the Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid (LHRLA), estimates that there are over 200,000 undocumented Bangladeshi women in Pakistan, including some 2,000 in jails and shelters across the country.

A Sindh police report in 1993 found that Bangladeshis comprise 80 percent, and Burmese 14 percent, of Karachi’s undocumented immigrants. The report indicates that border police and other law enforcement agencies are well aware of the trafficking through entry points into Pakistan like Lahore, Kasur, Bahawalpur, Chhor and Badin.

“Yet no constructive, affirmative steps are taken by law enforcement agencies to prosecute traffickers and stop the exploitation of women and children at the hands of both police, agents and other individuals,” Awan said.

Big money is involved in the trafficking of humans. In 1988, posing as a potential client, this correspondent found that the going price for a Bengali or Burmese woman was between 1,500 to 2,500 U.S. dollars — depending on age, looks, docility and virginity.

The price has remained steady, as has the momentum of the “trade”, thanks to the connivance of those tasked to prevent it. For each child or woman sold, the police is reported to claim a 15 to 20 percent commission.

In 1991, a reporter from the “Jang” newspaper, posing as a buyer, was assured that the police would not interfere and would even escort him back home with his purchase. “Where do you want to go? Rawalpindi, Gujrat, Lahore. . . . Wherever you go, it is my responsibility. The police will not say anything,” the reporter was told.

Media exposure has made the dalals slightly more wary, prompting them to closely check the credentials of “clients”. The risks may even have contributed to a slight hike in prices. But the trade continues unabated and as openly as ever.

Every once in a while, the police make token raids into the dens and brothels of Karachi’s notorious ‘Bengali paras’, or slums. If arrests are made, they are, ironically, of women and children, and never the agents who brought them there.

“The victims are further victimised by the police and the legal system, which treat them as criminals,” said Zia Awan. The women are booked under Pakistan’s controversial ‘Hudood Ordinances’, promulgated in 1981 by the late military dictator Gen Zia ul Haq.

The Zina Ordinance, which comes under the supposedly Islamic Hudood Ordinance, makes adultery or sex outside marriage a crime against the state. And because the women and girls recovered are usually prostitutes, they are often charged with Zina.

Sometimes, they are booked under the Passport Act. Either way, they have to spend long periods in prison. If released on bail, often through the efforts of lawyers like Awan, they are sent to government-run shelters for women such as the Darul Aman.

Privately-run homes such as that of the philanthropist Abdus Sattar Edhi “Apna Ghar” also exist, but are equally depressing and regimented.

“Some of the women in prison have to stay there way past expiry of their sentences because of the problems in repatriating them,” said lawyer Nausheen Ahmed. “For illegal immigration, the sentence is four years, but many women end up serving three or four years extra, either waiting for trial or to clear immigration formalities,” she added.

“A major problem arises from the fact that the Bangladeshi government does not want to get involved,” she explained. “It does not accept these undocumented people as citizens, since they have no legally recognised proof of citizenship.”

Many are totally unlettered and unable to provide addresses back home. For those who are able to give such details, repatriation is hampered by government apathy and difficulty in tracing the addresses in remote rural areas.

“This is basically an economic problem,” commented the Chief Justice of the Sindh High Court, Justice Wajiuddin Ahmed, at a regional seminar on the issue, organised here last week by the LHRLA in collaboration with the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Justice Wajiuddin noted the problem was related to the overall status of women in male-dominated South Asia, where women are often perceived as commodities or male property.

“As a Pakistani citizen, I am not worried about the numbers of women that arrive here — there should be free movement and a free mixture of people,” said the Chief Justice. “What is worrying is their plight, the difficulties they face, and how they are treated.”

Justice Wajiuddin also noted the unfortunate role played by the police. “How many traffickers are caught and punished? “This trade will not end unless police and border officials do their duty instead of parading as thugs in police uniforms.”

Participants at the workshop sought a more humane approach to curbing the problem of trafficking, calling for a change in law and terminology in order to de-criminalise undocumented rather than “illegal” migrants, and affected persons rather than “victims”.

“We can’t achieve anything unless the governments accept that it is their primary responsibility to stop the exploitation of women and children, and act upon this realisation,” said Mohini Giri, the dynamic director of the Women’s Commission, headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India.

“NGOs must act as a pressure group to make the government take this action,” she said. “What is needed is salvation from sexual exploitation, a transformation of attitudes, a change in laws, and quick measures of rehabilitation and prevention.”

Four-year-old laws banning bonded labour in Pakistan have secured the freedom of only a few hundred farm labourers and their families.

The centuries-old practice of treating farm workers like virtual slaves still flourishes on the huge farms in feudal Sindh province that are owned by just a few wealthy and politically influential families.

The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act was announced in 1992, but never strictly enforced by government’s since. A majority of Sindh assembly members are themselves big farmers.

The legislation though has proved a catalyst of change, providing legal cover to non-governmental groups working to free bonded agricultural workers, who are locally called ‘haris’. However, in many cases their freedom has spelt further problems.

Paid in kind and not wages, and forced to borrow from landowners for weddings, deaths and other social occasions, they are trapped in the cycle of indebtedness from which there is no hope of release for even future generations. Debts keep mounting, and are passed on from father to son, while unscrupulous landlords take advantage of their workers' illiteracy to fiddle with accounts.

NGOs have not been able to solve the problem of re-employment: where and how are people who have been traditionally dependent for everything on landowners expected to go, and how are they to earn their living?

At the same time, furious at the loss of cheap sources of labour, landowners have been lashing out at rights activists, accusing them of being part of a conspiracy to sabotage the economic interests of Sindh and defame Pakistan abroad.

After all, say the landlords, the system has been running smoothly for centuries. Why disturb it now? They contend that in return for their labour, the ‘haris’ are provided food, shelter and clothing.

Rights groups say the truth though is that bonded workers are exploited: entire families live in shabby one-room hovels, eating and living poorly. Their children are malnourished, do not go to school and have no access to even basic health care.

Paid in kind and not wages, and forced to borrow from landowners for weddings, deaths and other social occasions, they are trapped in the cycle of indebtedness from which there is no hope of release for even future generations.

Debts keep mounting, and are passed on from father to son, while unscrupulous landlords take advantage of their workers’ illiteracy to fiddle with accounts. “If the peasant is given wheat worth Rs 200 (roughly four dollars), the rate noted in the register will be Rs 300,” says Jam Saqi, ex-left-party activist, now adviser to the Sindh chief minister on labour affairs.

Tales of cruelty, beating and rape are common. There have even been cases of farm workers being shackled by landlords to prevent them from escaping.

A hari family can leave his employer only if he repays his debt or if the new employer is willing to repay the loan. Apologists of the system like Agha Saleem, a well-known writer and editor of the Sindhi language paper ‘Jago’ (awaken) opines: “if the hari suddenly decides to leave and join another employer without paying his dues, is it justified?”

But I.A. Rehman, director of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) which has been in the forefront of the campaign against bonded labour, retorts: “We are talking about haris in slavery, which is banned in the Constitution.”

“Landlords are in the habit of buying and selling the families of peasants, like vegetables,” maintains Dr Qadir Magsi of the Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party (Sind Progressive Party), which has rescued some 300 bonded peasants.

Most of these freed workers have been resettled in Sindh on government land. A roughly 1,000 others rescued by HRCP are living on land owned by a Christian missionary group in a village called Matli.

“Here, we can live the way we want, marry our children according to our own wishes, celebrate how we like,” says Jima, a middle-aged woman.

“Even a caged bird, which is provided with food, water and other necessities of life, yearns for freedom,” says an old woman who claims to be 80. Her youngest grandson is attending school for the first time, she declares with pride.

The boy’s mother, Alloo, who earns extra money doing ‘rilli’ or traditional patchwork, says, “My daughters and grand- daughters will be spared the landlords’ cruelty.”

Many of the rescue operations were carried out in the stealth of the night, and at great personal risk to HRCP activists who say they have received death threats in person and by telephone.

The church organisation which has given temporary shelter to the freed farm labour has been warned of a bomb assault. And the powerful landlords’ lobby is accusing it of proselytising, a serious crime in Pakistan.

“By projecting the issue as a religious one, the landlords are trying to break the power of those fighting for the oppressed haris,” says Rev. Joseph Coutts, Bishop of Hyderabad who helped find the shelter at Matli. “The landlords don’t want to lose their cheap labour force. Freeing bonded labourers from their ‘private’ jails goesagainst the feudal system which is dominant in Sindh.”

Under pressure from the agriculturists’ lobby, the government has retreated on the issue of freeing bonded labour, even postponing a series of seminars it had organised on the issue. The backlash indicates the battle has only begun, say rights activists in Pakistan.

Liquor is banned in Islamic Pakistan, but that hasn’t stopped its consumption in high society or prevented the outbreak of a virtual brewery war to retain hold over lucrative markets.

Former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto slapped a prohibitory order on the sale of alcoholic beverages in 1977. The ‘Islamisation’ drive by his successor General Zia ul Haq to legitimise his military regime, reinforced the ban.

“All the restrictions did was drive drinking underground and create a bootlegging mafia,” says a doctor in Karachi, among the many who insists on three pegs of whiskey every night before dinner.

His bootlegger is a government clerk who happens to be Hindu, and keeps him well-supplied in ordinary circumstances. Since the Prohibition Order, only non-Muslims (three percent of Pakistan’s 140 million population) with a liquor permit can legally purchase alcohol in Pakistan.

Sociologists believe that prohibition has led to an increase in the culture of hard drinking as an act of defiance. Liquor consumption has been on the upswing in Pakistan.

Matters came to a head last autumn in a highly publicised court case. The 135-year-old Murree Brewery based in Rawalpindi in the Punjab province was stopped from selling beer, vodka, gin and whiskey in the Sindh province.

Until some months ago, it enjoyed a virtual monopoly over the manufacture and distribution of alcoholic products in Pakistan, along with the equally ancient Quetta Distillery in Balochistan province.

Murree Brewery used to supply 70 per cent of its alcoholic products to Sindh which, with its bon vivant feudal lords and the high-flying business class of the swinging city of Karachi, accounted for more than the collective demand in the other three provinces of the country. Murree was the sole supplier.

The ban effectively opened up a thirsty market for a new company called Beach Brewery, which had quietly been granted a license to operate in Sindh.

But, Beach Brewery is owned by Byram D. Avari, a former member of the National Assembly (MNA) and a close friend of Pakistan’s powerful first husband, Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s spouse. Allegations of connivance grew thick and furious.

By establishing Beach Brewery, Avari, a hotelier and a keen competitive yatchsman, was entering a profitable market: Murree Brewery’s gross profit for 1993 was a neat 5.33 million rupees (156,764 dollars approx.), 33 per cent more than the previous year.

This, despite the fact that since the 1977 Prohibition Act, the production of both the Quetta and Murree distilleries had been reduced to 20 per cent to cater only to the minorities.

Subsequently, production dropped following a ban on the export of alcoholic goods and even on non-alcoholic beer, on the advice of the Council of Islamic Ideology.

Today, 70 per cent of Pakistan’s total liquor sales are in Sindh, which has 65 retail liquor shops, compared to seven in the Punjab, three in the North West Frontier Province and three in Balochistan.

The unofficial ban on the sale of Murree Brewery’s alcoholic products in Sindh was estimated to cost the Sindh government a revenue loss of at least one million rupees (29,500 dollars approx.) a day.

Avari’s supporters contended that by breaking a monopoly, he was doing a good thing. Murree Brewery’s chief executive, Minoo Bhandara, also a former MNA, on the other hand, alleged discrimination and went to court for redressal.

In a front-page appeal printed in the country’s leading newspapers, he asked President Farooq Leghari for an impartial inquiry and demanded compensation.

Even after a court order in his favour, Bhandara complained his supplies were not being allowed into Sindh. He went to court again to prevent Beach Brewery from functioning in Karachi. “I am not against the establishment of another brewery, all I ask for is a level playing field,” he said.

In response to his plea, a Sindh High Court order stopped both breweries from selling their products in the province, much to the consternation of the city’s tipplers. They had to depend on the elusive and exorbitantly priced alcohol smuggled in from India or Dubai. It was only in December that the ban on both

breweries was lifted.

Sindh has always been more lax in implementing the Prohibition Act. Whereas even small towns in Sindh have liquor shops, there are none in several large Punjabi towns with substantial non-Muslim populations, like Gujranwala, Multan and Sialkot.

In Karachi anyone can walk into one of the city’s several liquor shops and buy, regardless of religious identification or a liquor permit. In the other provinces, prohibition is far more strictly enforced.

Although the more orthodox Islamic view forbids alcoholic consumption completely, this does nothing to deter Muslims in Pakistan from imbibing – and justifying it.

They point out that drinking is not forbidden by Islam, but simply not sanctioned, since believers have been forbidden to go to prayer in an unclean or intoxicated state. Thus, by default, they argue it is allowed ‘in moderation’.

Many, like a certain religious-minded but heavy drinking golfer in Lahore, make token gestures like giving up drinking only during the holy month of Ramzan as a way to “cleanse the system”.