Women are responsible for providing water for their families. Many spend hours travelling to the wells and back home every day, carrying heavy clay pots on their heads. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS

By Irfan Ahmed
MITHI, Pakistan, Jan 16 2015 (IPS)

The main entrance to the Civil Hospital in Mithi, headquarters of the Tharparkar district in Pakistan’s southern Sindh Province, is blocked by a couple of men clad in traditional dress and turbans. They are trying to console a woman who is sobbing so heavily she has to gasp for breath.

She lost her two-year-old son just moments ago and these men, both relations of hers, were the ones to carry the child into the hospital where doctors tried – and failed – to save him.

The death toll hit 650 at the close of 2014, but continues to rise in the New Year as scant food stocks wither away and cattle belonging to herding communities perish under the blistering sun.

Among the dead are three-week-old Ramesh; four-month-old twin girls named Resham and Razia; and the yet-unnamed sons of a couple who are inconsolable after the passing of their newborn children.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Red flags symbolising the Awami National Party (ANP) strung across the street in Karachi a day ahead of the May 11 elections. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI , May 11 2013 (IPS)

The road leading to the office of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) wears a forlorn look. The same deserted air hangs over the Awami National Party (ANP) headquarters here in Karachi, just hours before voting begins on Saturday in Pakistan’s long-awaited general elections.

Today marks the first democratic elections held here since 1962, but Pakistanis have not had much cause to celebrate. The weeks leading up to Election Day have seen much blood spilled: as campaigning came to a grinding halt on May 9, 48 hours before the polling stations opened, the death toll stood at 121, including candidates, with 496 injured.

Most of the attacks were carried out by the Taliban, which had issued numerous warnings to avowedly secular parties like the MQM, the Pakhtun-dominated ANP and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to put a stop to their campaigning.

The militants issued an official communiqué on May 1, signed by Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, instructing members to carry out suicide bomb attacks across the country on Saturday. “We don’t accept the system of infidels, which is called democracy,” the letter said.

Refusing to be moved by the Taliban’s terror tactics, political parties resorted to clandestine meetings, television talks shows and the Internet to spread the word to their respective electorates.

The ANP has borne the brunt of the Taliban’s wrath. Senator Shahi Syed informed IPS that in Karachi alone the party has “lost over 35 office-bearers in the last six months.” A ghastly sense of déjà-vu has accompanied their election campaign, which has largely consisted of picking up the dead, marching in funeral processions or rushing the wounded to hospitals, according to ANP Leader Asfandyar Wali Khan.

The group has lost 700 workers in bomb and suicide attacks since 2001, when the United States named Pakistan an ally in its War on Terror.

The MQM also elicited the ire of the Taliban when it drew attention to the latter’s infiltration of Pakhtun-dominated areas of Karachi, after a massive army operation in 2009 destroyed the militants’ stronghold in Swat, a district in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, and sent thousands of displaced fighters fleeing into urban centres.

Back then, according to MQM Spokesman Haider Abbas Rizvi, his party was “made a mockery of” for expressing such concerns. Today, all of Karachi’s 18 million residents are intimately aware of the threat posed by the Taliban.

Rizvi told IPS his party has paid dearly for taking a stand against the militants. An explosion close to the party’s headquarters killed 18 people last week. Rizvi, a resident of Sohrab Goth, a Karachi suburb thought to be a Taliban stronghold, has so far survived five attempts on his life.

But he fears less for his safety than for the safety of his supporters, whom the Taliban have threatened to attack if they defy the group’s so-called “election ban”.

The PPP, meanwhile, has relied on eulogising its former premier Benazir Bhutto who was assassinated in 2007. Her son and heir to the PPP dynasty, 24-year-old Bilawal Zardari Bhutto, fled the country and spent a good part of the election campaign in Dubai.

As election day dawned there was still no word on the whereabouts of Ali Haider Gilani, PPP member and son of former Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, who was kidnapped by gunmen at an election rally in the central Punjabi city of Multan, also known as the City of Sufis, on May 9.

The landowning Gilani family is among the most powerful in the country. Police suspect that the banned militant groups Sipah-e-Sahaba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi are behind the kidnapping.

In the face of endless warnings, all parties have been forced to innovate new and creative ways of electioneering. Rizvi says the MQM turned to the Internet, using Twitter and Facebook to reach supporters, while the ANP, unable to afford official advertisements on the radio and television, held what they called “drawing room meetings,” went door to door distributing pamphlets, and used Skype.

With much of the country’s attention focused on the Taliban’s actions, little thought has been given to possible skirmishes between official political parties.

Tensions were running high on Thursday night as former cricket-star-turned-politician Imran Khan, currently heading the opposition Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) party, addressed his supporters from a hospital bed in Lahore, after falling 15 feet from a mechanical lift trying to reach a stage at an election rally just two days earlier.

His loud criticism of U.S. drones strikes in tribal areas and his long campaign against corruption have won Khan the support of scores of young, urban Pakistanis.

But Rizvi dismissed Khan’s supporters as “young people from posh localities and the affluent class who know nothing of the ground realities or the problems faced by the common man; they form just five percent of the youth and will not be able to take away our youth vote bank.”

Mehmood Y. Mandviwalla, the law minister of the Sindh’s caretaker government, told IPS on May 10 that the situation could “get ugly” if rival parties clash at the ballot box.

Still, opinion polls taken ahead of May 11 indicated that, despite a prevailing climate of terror, turnout this year would exceed the 44 percent voter participation of 2008. Just a day ahead of the election Rizvi predicted that people would come “in droves” to cast their ballots.

“It’s worth giving your life to eliminate the terrorists,” he said.

On Mar. 9, 2013, Muslim mobs torched the Christian neighbourhood known as Joseph Colony in Lahore. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS

By Irfan Ahmed
LAHORE, Apr 28 2013 (IPS)

Younas Gill, a self-employed tax accountant, sits on the pavement in Joseph Colony, Lahore, staring at the place where, until about a month ago, his home had stood.

It was burnt to ashes on Mar. 9, when a mob of Muslims tore through this Christian neighbourhood in the Badami Bagh district of Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city, torching homes and displacing over 150 families.

Gill and his family now rely on government support and charitable contributions while they struggle to piece their lives back together. On Apr. 22, the Lahore diocese of the Church of Pakistan distributed a fridge, ceiling fans, pedestal fan, a two-burner stove, bicycle and iron to each of the affected families.

“The provincial government helped with the reconstruction of our house and NGOs and relief organisations are constantly supporting the locals since the tragedy occurred,” Gill told IPS.

But the passage of time, and the return of a sense of normalcy, has not replaced the fear that swept through this settlement just over a month ago. Gill says residents “fear reprisal from accused arsonists who have won bail from the courts.”

They are now back on the streets, “some of them with vengeance”, Gill said.

Men like Gill, and his fellow community members, represent the precariousness of life for Pakistan’s 2.8 million Christian residents, a tiny minority in a country of 170 million people, who have borne the brunt of so-called blasphemy laws that prescribe the death penalty for defamation of the Prophet Muhammad and life imprisonment for those who desecrate the Holy Quran.

New clauses introduced between 1980 and 1986 during the reign of former president Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq opened the door to broad interpretation of the law: between 1986 and 2013 1,100 cases of blasphemy have been brought to the courts, a significant number of which are against Christians, says Peter Jacob, secretary of the National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCPJ), formed by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Pakistan.

Jacob and other experts say these allegations are often trumped up and fabricated, and used by clerics and other religious leaders to incite mobs to attack Christian communities.

Joseph Colony, a three-acre settlement, was caught in the line of fire of one such blasphemy charge when a resident named Sawan Masi was accused of making “objectionable” remarks about the Prophet Muhammad.

Christian residents from the colony told IPS that the fateful day began with police instructing them to vacate the area for their “security” and not to worry about their properties.  The locals complied – and returned the next day only to find their homes burnt to ashes by a mob of 3,000 Muslims.

As information trickled in, it became clear that the police had been expecting the attack on the colony, yet failed to prevent it.

Just hours after the police chief of Badmi Bagh vowed to bring his police force to heel, and ensure the protection and security of all Pakistan’s citizens, a violent mob attacked the Christian colony of Francis Abad in the northeastern city of Gujranwala.

The incident began when a quarrel between clerics and a Christian youth accused of playing loud music outside a mosque erupted into a full-fledged street brawl between members of the two communities, which the police once again failed to prevent or halt.

Haroon Suleman, a Lahore-based lawyer who often appears in court over blasphemy-related issues, told IPS, “Most of such cases have been filed… to take over prime real estimate that Christian minorities inhabit.”

Many Christians who came to the cities as menial labourers settled on vacant state land decades ago.

As Pakistan’s cities expanded and businesses sprouted around these informal settlements, the land became highly lucrative, selling for millions of dollars per acre and quickly attracting the attention of Pakistan’s notorious urban land mafia. In Joseph Colony, the site of the Mar. 9 attack, an acre of land costs 2.4 million dollars due to its location in the heart of a highly commercialised wholesale steel scrap market.

The first step of land acquisition involves middlemen bargaining with residents for compensation of the entire settlement in order to set up godowns (warehouses).

“When the settlers refuse to accept cash offers and vacate their properties, tactics like (violence and intimidation) are use to get the desired results,” Suleman told IPS.

The political leadership of the country is well aware of the issue, but fear of reprisals from religious extremist groups prompts many to remain silent. None of the major political parties, including the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), have raised the issue in their manifestos ahead of the May 11 parliamentary polls, knowing that those who dared in the past to speak up paid a fatal price.

For instance, former Punjab Governor Salman Taseer was shot dead by his own security guard Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri in January 2011 for supporting a Christian Pakistani woman, Asia Bibi, sentenced on blasphemy charges.

Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian leader and then-federal minister for minorities, was killed the same year for his vocal opposition to the misuse of blasphemy laws.

With elections approaching in just a few weeks, the Christian community is calling attention to their total lack of representation in parliament, with some leading minority parties calling for a boycott of the 2013 polls.

The national assembly has 10 reserved seats for minorities, among 272 elected members. Under the current system, Christians and other minorities vote for Muslim candidates from various political parties and the reserved minority seats are then awarded to those parties in proportion to the seats they have won. The parties, in turn, award that seat to their “loyalist”.

Dr. Nazir S. Bhatti, founder of the Pakistan Christian Congress (PCC), told IPS his party is against this practice, saying his constituency wants to elect their own representatives on a one-person one-vote basis.

On Monday, Apr. 15, Bhatti submitted a letter to the election commissioner of Pakistan, urging the official to ensure the safety of minorities – Christians, Hindus and Ahmedis – who choose to stay away from the voting stations.

(END)

Students at the NED Engineering University in Karachi, Pakistan, argue about “conservative” versus “secular” dress. Credit: Adil Siddiqi/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Apr 19 2013 (IPS)

From the local butcher, to the pavement fruit vendor, to the cobbler sitting beside his tools on Elphinstone Road, a busy street in the heart of Karachi, one question is on everyone’s lips: Who will win the upcoming elections on May 11?

In Pakistan, a country that is reeling from the Taliban’s militancy in the north, rampant corruption in the government and an armed force that has a life of its own, few have the answer to this question.

But one thing is certain: for the first time in Pakistan’s history, young people between the ages of 18 and 29 – who currently comprise well over half of the country’s population of 170 million people — will play a pivotal role in determining the election outcome.

"Sharia law comes closest to the socialist values to which I subscribe"
Of the registered 85 million voters, 25 million fall into the “youth” category; 13 million of these will be first-time voters.

A nationwide survey of 4,450 young people, carried out by the Islamabad-based Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen) back in January, showed that only 48 percent of voters aged 18 to 25 intend to vote, putting them far behind other age groups: in contrast 68 percent of those between 26 and 35, and 84 percent of those above 55, said they would cast their ballots.

Many young people, like filmmaker Abida Sharafat, are jaded. “I don’t want to elect people who will come (into power) for five years to oppress and exploit us,” she told IPS, referring to the number of politicians who have been exposed as major loan defaulters and tax evaders.

Mohammad Shafi, a barely literate 27-year-old domestic helper working in an upscale Karachi neighbourhood, says the government of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) “emptied our pockets and increased violence” over the last five years.

A recent poll conducted by the British Council (BC) on Pakistani youth found that more than half of 5,000 respondents between 18 and 29 years believed that “democracy” – a term that has been bandied about by the centre-left PPP – has not been a good form of governance here.

Sixty-four percent of male responders and 75 percent of female responders described themselves as “conservative” or religious.

Echoing what appears to be a growing trend among the youth, Shafi told IPS he would “prefer the country to be governed by Sharia law”, adding quickly: “But not the Sharia the Taliban wanted imposed in Swat (an administrative district of the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province) but one which promotes equity and justice.”

Sharafat insists that the tenets of religious law come “closest to the socialist values to which I subscribe”. For instance, Zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam, prescribes the giving of a percentage of one’s wealth as “tax” to the government or the needy.

The widespread existence of similar opinions among the youth is borne out in the BC study, whose findings, according to Lahore-based senior defence and political analyst Dr. Hasan Askari Rizvi, come as “no surprise”.

“The Pakistani youth’s conservative and Islamic orientation can easily be detected (in) their idiom and historical references,” he told IPS, adding that Arabic phrases like “Allah Hafiz” (“may God protect you”) have come to replace Persian-language expressions like “Khuda Hafiz” in the daily spoken language.

Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist and renowned peace activist with over three decades of teaching experience, blames this shift on the Islamisation of Pakistan’s education system, which was imposed by former dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s.

Over the generations, he says, students have “forgotten how to sing, dance, or act – the fear of having their heads cracked open by violent fundamentalists has worked well”.

Few of his students at the Quaid e Azam University in Islamabad have a thorough command of any language and few read anything beyond newspapers. Today’s texts are devoid of references to early recorded history, the Nile Valley Civilisation and Greek and Hindu mythology, he added.

Even when the government has tried to offset religious extremists in the education sector, they have been forced to make a U-turn. When the government of Punjab commissioned a new Urdu language textbook for the 10^th grade a few months ago the conservative media relentlessly attacked the book for having “expunged” Islamic teachings.

To the contrary, Hoodbhoy found that the very first chapter in the offending book was a “hamd” (a poem in praise of God) and the second was a “naat” (a poem in praise of Prophet Muhammad).  Also included were letters from Ghalib (a famous Urdu poet), and a fairytale.

But under intense pressure from right-wingers, the state “retreated and promised to reinsert essays on jihad and Islam”, Rizvi said.

This Islamised education has tipped young people towards a “pro-militant” and “anti-U.S.” mindset, he added.

“They tend to see themselves more as Muslims than as Pakistanis; most see the West as being responsible for their problems.”

Clothing has now begun to reflect the increasingly conservative values of the youth. Sharafat, who wears traditional Pakistani dress but does not cover her head, noted, “The number of long, untrimmed beards and black abayas (robes) have multiplied enormously among young people.”

“I feel I am now among the minority,” said Sharafat, adding that her decision to leave her head uncovered “graphically” exposes her secular and liberal thoughts. “I often have to explain to my friends that I am as much a practising Muslim in my private life as they are in their public ones.”

But not everyone is convinced this trend is so easily quantifiable. Mohammad Shehzad, an Islamabad-based writer and researcher, believes the BC survey was conducted with certain objectives in mind, which might have compromised its objectivity.

“The survey has been used by Islamists to support their outrageous claim that the majority needs Sharia,” Shehzad told IPS.

Salima Hashmi, an artist and interim minister in the Punjab caretaker government, is inclined to agree. A former principal of the National College of Arts in Lahore, she insists that “free thinking and liberal aspirations” among fine art students have not completely been quashed, adding that the “spirit of inquiry” is alive and well.

However, she fears that when institutions are left rudderless, like the NCA has been over the last four years, with no governing body, the “chaos” prevailing outside is all the more likely to creep in.