The Long Road to Freedom: New Age Islam's Selection, 17 May 2016
New Age
Islam Edit Bureau
17 May 2016
• The Long Road to Freedom
By Shahbaz Taseer
• Daring…Missing Link in the Pakistani Character
By Ayaz Amir
• Let the Girls Learn
By Zubair Torwali
• Pak-US Relations under Stress
By Mohammad Jamil
• Project Karachi
By Dr Noman Ahmed
• Another Christian under Attack in Pakistan
By Kaleem Dean
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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The Long Road to Freedom
By Shahbaz Taseer
17-May-16
August 26, 2011, an ordinary day. I was driving to work on the same road in Lahore that I took every day and my mind was busy with the mundane. A car blocked the road, but I didn’t give it much thought. Five masked men pulled me out with a gun to my head, and my world spun horribly out of control.
Mine was no ordinary kidnapping. My kidnappers had gained tactical leverage by abducting the son of an assassinated governor. Just seven months earlier, my father, Salmaan Taseer, had been shot dead by his guard for criticising Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, after a Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, was sentenced to death for allegedly committing blasphemy. With my kidnapping, there was more at stake than just money. My captors wanted the release of their “Muslim brothers” being held in jails across Pakistan. I knew that was going to be difficult, and that because of their ludicrous demands, my release would take time. In such dark moments it is easy to sink into despair. But I clung to my faith and the Quran, the memory of my courageous father, and the love of my family.
The torture started in my fourth month of captivity. The people who kidnapped me were from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan -- the men most feared among Pakistan’s many militant groups. The Uzbeks are young, ruthless, illogical and raised to kill. They found perverse pleasure in torturing me. I found solace in prayer. I prayed for the fortitude to bear as much pain as my torturers could inflict until they broke from inflicting it. I often thought of my father who had suffered political persecution in the 1980s under the dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq. He would say physical pain could only touch the surface; you must never let it break your spirit.
It is difficult to say which was worse, the psychical torture or the excruciating tricks they played on my mind. My abductors showed me printouts of Twitter posts to convince me that I had been forgotten. They shared agonising details of how easy it was to target my mother, and how vulnerable my family really was. They showed me a picture of my wife on pilgrimage in Mecca and claimed she was a hypocrite feigning piety. They showed me my sister’s tweet on Nelson Mandela’s death, and said it represented fealty to an infidel. My brother’s photograph at a social event was proof of my family’s errant ways. But this “evidence” gave me strength. I knew that my family was well, and that they, along with many others around the world, were thinking of me and praying for my safety and release.
Solitary confinement, loneliness, doubt and anxiety can do strange things to your mind. You start questioning your own sanity. The faces that you have loved so much recede into darkness; voices that you heard so often begin to fade into obscurity. But memory has its own magic. I could not go home, but I could bring my home to me. In my mind I visited familiar places. I conjured up my boisterous friends back home, one by one, and imagined myself to be a stand-up comedian and developed comedy routines for each friend. Those practised routines are now coming in handy.
In all these years there were some 30-odd months when I had brief, unmonitored, almost surreal contact with the outside world. One of my guards, like myself, was a Manchester United fan, and every other week he would steal a radio into my cell and we would listen to soccer games together. For him, this was an illicit pleasure. He believed that playing or even listening to soccer was a sin. For me, it was a window into the outside world. Getting football news kept me sane. “You must surely be the only United fan in this position,” I would tell myself. “They are playing and winning for you.”
Looking back, I can see that I was always free. No one can imprison you except yourself. My abductors could make my life intolerable, but as long as I held onto my sanity, I was liberated. I was in God’s hands, not theirs, and I knew that He would protect me and take me home. And He did. Look at the miracles He worked. I survived drone strikes and war. I lived through multiple illnesses without treatment. I was shot. I was mentally and physically tortured. I lived in abysmal living conditions, and survived the rout of the Uzbeks by the Afghan Taliban in November 2015.
I could spend a lifetime being bitter and questioning why this happened to me. Surely some of the bad that befalls us is not our fault, but is merely the function of someone else’s greed, malice or cruelty. But there is a higher purpose, a cosmic design. I know that how you react to what happens to you, with what grace you handle misfortune, and the strength and bravery with which you tackle hardship, are the things that matter. I am sure that this is what God sees and judges. We must always celebrate the freedom of the human spirit.
There was something divine in what happened on February 29, 2016. At the crack of dawn that day, at perhaps the exact moment that a Taliban elder was opening my prison door to set me free, hundreds of miles away, a cell door in Rawalpindi was opening and the executioner was readying the gallows to hang my father’s assassin.
Then, March 8, 2016, an extraordinary day. It had taken me eight days and several stories to hitchhike my way from Rozgan, Afghanistan, to Pakistan's Balochistan province through rain, hail and sun. The motorbike I was riding hit a highway and I knew this one led to freedom. As I turned onto the road taking me home, I thought of the moment I had spoken to my mother and wife after my first six months in captivity. I had been told that I was going to be shot after the phone call, and that I should say farewell to my family. I told them with finality in my voice, the same words my father once wrote to my mother from jail: that I was not made from a wood that burns easily. Having said this to them gave me peace, and this peace was my strength for four and a half years. It had taken a long time, but here I was, coming back to change that ‘goodbye’ into a ‘hello.’
Shahbaz Taseer is a businessman, and the son of former governor Salmaan Taseer.
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/17-May-16/the-long-road-to-freedom
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Daring…Missing Link in the Pakistani Character
By Ayaz Amir
May 17, 2016
We are a timid people and our governing class – from where come our leaders – is likewise timid, incapable of the grand or sweeping gesture. Iqbal exhorts us to emulate the eagle in the swoop and dash of its flight. For all the effect his words have had on the making of our national character he could have been preaching to the dead.
Jinnah was a great man but was he of us? He was another thing, cut from a different cloth, his outlook, his manners, his deportment completely different. In the politics of today he would not have survived.
Panamagate is a chance for us to make amends for the failures and wrongdoings of the past, a chance to clean the stables and make a fresh beginning. Why should whining voices in the media – our den of lions – take this to be an attack on democracy? Democracy is bigger than Nawaz Sharif or Imran Khan. If the Panama leaks shed light on murky corners democracy is strengthened not weakened.
We should have our eye on the main thing and not be distracted by side issues. When even our worthy president known more for his rabri dishes starts saying that the Panama revelations are “God-sent” you can sense where this whole thing is headed.
Tumbrils were the carts used to convey the condemned of the French Revolution to the guillotine. The question is who will set the tumbrils rolling in Pakistan? Who will start the process of accountability, fire the first shots? Not the ruling party whose members dare not open their lips. Not parliament which lacks singleness of purpose. Not the army because in our bitter school of experience we have known the selective and one-sided process that army-led accountability all too easily becomes.
This leaves My Lord the Chief Justice. History knocks at his door, and why should it not? Of what good is his suo motu jurisdiction if it does not come into play now? Is this not a matter of public interest?
Imagine if instead of Nawaz Sharif’s party the PPP had been in power and My Lord Chaudhry had been CJ. What drama would we not have witnessed by now? The tumbrils would have rolled and the sky would have been overcast…and doleful words would have come cascading from the bench.
This is not just a legalistic question. The paralysis in government brought on by the Panama leaks is affecting the nation’s business. PM and ruling party are distracted. There is nothing else on their minds. Waking and dreaming moments are taken up by the Panama leaks. Can this go on, last indefinitely? The PM has tried to evade the issue but nothing has worked. It is time now this impasse was broken so that the nation can return to normalcy. God knows there are other issues crying for attention.
Two questions, and not more, have to be asked of the PM. When were the flats bought and with what monies? And were those monies declared, in income tax returns and election declarations? If the PM and his lawyers can satisfy their lordships, that should be the end of the matter. The clouds will part and it should be back to business as usual.
But if wrongdoing and misstatements stand exposed then Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution should come into operation and let the axe of disqualification fall where it may. Parliament will still be there. The ruling party in all its glory will be there. The constitution will not be suspended and 111 Brigade will not have moved.
If Imran Khan’s offshore company – about which he should have made a disclosure sooner – falls within the web of disqualification so be it. If the Aleem Khans and Jahangir Tareens cannot come up with adequate explanations let them suffer the consequences.
Let Asif Zardari, even if sitting far away, not escape his reckoning. There never was any explanation for the 60 million dollars held in Swiss banks and there can be explanation now. Let us be rid of all these kleptocrats – for that is what it is, compulsive amassing.
And since a balance must be kept, this should also be the time to conclude the Asghar Khan case. Under orders of a former army chief money was distributed among a long line of recipients in the 1990 elections. Let the stay orders, if any, be vacated. Let the legalistic rigmarole come to an end. If that former army chief, Gen Beg, and his then spymaster who gave an affidavit about the distributed money are found guilty let them too suffer the consequences. And let the army not raise the banner of institutional interest. This will teach future army chiefs not to tread the same path.
So let the Supreme Court, pushing all other business to one side, take up these two things one after the other, the Panama leaks and the Asghar Khan case and let justice be quick and summary and ruthless. And let those who took money in those elections pay the price. The lancing of diseased boils is always good for the system.
Such an opportunity will not come again, at least not in a hurry. The N League has been adept at judicial politics, at dividing the Supreme Court as in the time of CJ Sajjad Ali Shah. But weakened by Panamagate, the N League is in no position to play that particular card again. Consider how the SC has dealt with the government’s ToRs to investigate the Panama revelations. Could any rebuke be sharper? This tells us of the weak wicket on which the government stands.
We can be sure about another thing. The army will be standing completely behind the SC if it takes up this matter in its suo motu jurisdiction. And there will be no storming of the SC, not in this climate. No one will dare.
So there is history waiting to be written. Will anyone take up this challenge? Everything is ready…the setting, the atmosphere, even the lighting and in the distance the sound of muffled drums. A tattoo is playing because as even the rabri-fame president has reminded us this is not a man-devised crisis. It has fallen from the skies.
The president may have had something else in mind. He may have been thinking of Imran Khan, who knows? But I can bet anything that in the paranoid atmosphere prevailing in the PM House his remarks in Hyderabad would not have been liked. Someone could even have muttered, Et tu Brute? Despite the fact that no distance could be greater than between Brutus and President Mamnoon Hussain.
This is not 1977 when the right wing and religious parties took to the streets against Bhutto. This is closer to 1993 when there was a deadlock between the then president Ishaq and the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, wheels of government grinding to a halt and the country in a state of paralysis. Gen Kakar then intervened to break the deadlock. Their lordships have it in their power to play the role of Gen Kakar, intervention with a judicial twist, in line with the constitution, with the added advantage of taking the first steps to clean the national stables.
I am writing this before the PM’s address to the National Assembly. Here’s a guess: he’ll be himself and won’t rise above his limitations. On TV as the leadership sat discussing the address, depression was writ large on their faces…not a good sign.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/120478-Daringmissing-link-in-the-Pakistani-character
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Let The Girls Learn
By Zubair Torwali
May 17, 2016
Shahbaz Shaheen’s daughter, Fatima, asked him: “Papa, where do I go to continue my education, as I have now passed my 5th grade examination?”. Shahbaz lives in the lush green Peshmal village near Kalam in Swat.
Erum and Humera asked their father, Mujahid Torwali: “We are not allowed to go to the school near our homes, because the school is only for boys. We want to study further but where?”. Mujahid is from the village, Kedam, near Bahrain in Swat.
Fatima’s father (Shahbaz) was speechless. All he could do was post his lament on social media with despair and anger. He addressed me in that post – thinking I am powerful enough to do something for the girls in the area and in his village, all of whom drop out of school. That someone like me, hailing from a marginalised community and a neglected area, can do nothing to move those in power was perhaps unknown to Shahbaz.
I know that this piece, like all those written earlier in these pages, will not have much impact. But I still waste your time, reader, so as to maybe ease my own pain.
The area beyond Bahrain, including the villages on both sides of the Swat River and the valleys of Kalam, Ushu and Utror – with a population of more than two hundred thousand – has no middle or high school for girls. This area stretches over a distance of more than 60 kilometres, with steep slopes to the villages in the hills. There are not enough primary schools for girls there, which is why all the schoolgirls have to opt out of education after passing grade 5.
Swat is where Malala hails from. The Nobel Laureate, who is in her teens now, stood up for her right to education, as she and others were forcibly stopped from going to school. Those open enemies of education are now gone and Malala has received international acclaim and the Nobel Peace Prize for her stand, but thousands of girls her age are still deprived of their right to education in her hometown. Malala had to face the obvious enemies of education when she lived in Swat, but no one sees the concealed enemies of education, behind their file-folders and big tables.
We assumed that the sloganeers of ‘change’ could manage the affairs of the provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and we took their promise seriously and hoped for the best. With a lot of hyperbole, the government started some initiatives to improve education and other sectors. For education, they came forward with a plan to use foreign assistance to regularly monitor education and improve its quality and effectiveness – a mechanism devised by the Independent Monitoring Unit.
In the first few months, teachers’ attendance improved at schools because of fear of punishment. But what is happening now under this programme is unfortunate. The concerned personnel, known as field monitors, are now in collusion with the teachers. They visit each school once a month. Prior to their visit, they let the absentee teachers know that they must be present on the day of the visit.
The monitors have learned these lessons from their higher-ups and from the reporting mechanism. For instance, more than two years back a monitor reported the prolonged absence of a middle school teacher when the said teacher had gone overseas for a better job. More than two years passed, and the teacher was removed just a few days back. The system has almost failed.
New schools, other than the few among the many flood-damaged ones, were constructed; this construction was mostly funded by foreign bilateral agencies. In the three-year period, the government could not add a single school to the hometowns of Fatima, Erum or Humera. Teachers’ attendance at the existing schools, including primary schools for girls, could not be ensured – despite the monitoring strategy.
The government often excuses itself from constructing new schools, on the pretext of a lack of funds. But, according to Syed Jafar Shah, an informed and experienced lawmaker of the KP Assembly, 30 percent of the allocated budget for education in the province was not utilised in the current fiscal year. He further stated that not a penny of the funds allocated for the flood and insurgency damaged schools was utilised in the current fiscal year, which ends by the end of this month.
It seems that the PTI-led government is unhappy with its votes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. That is why it takes revenge of the people of KP and has focused on Punjab instead.
The alleged 30 percent of the education budget that was not utilised could be used to construct schools in areas like Swat-Kohistan, Dir-Kohistan, Indus-Kohistan and other parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
It doesn’t matter whether we admit it or not, but in a rigidly conservative patriarchal society like ours, women and girls are the most disadvantaged. This mindset is not particular to the masses. The governments, too, are apathetic towards the rights and plight of women and girls. As far as parents go, though the majority now approves of education for girls, they are still not very enthusiastic about their daughters’ education.
Things can change if the fathers and brothers of girls like Fatima, Erum and Humera stand up with them for their right to education, which is guaranteed by Article 25-A of Pakistan’s constitution.
Zubair Torwali heads an independent organisation dealing with education and development in Swat.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/120479-Let-the-girls-learn
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Pak-US Relations under Stress
By Mohammad Jamil
17-May-16
For quite some time, the US government and media have been painting Pakistan in the most ignoble colours. What Obama administration could not say it straight it says through its mouthpieces — The New York Times and The Washington Post. Baseless stories are published to mislead the world, and accusations are levelled against Pakistan and its armed forces to denigrate them in the public eye. However, it is not just their hubristic arrogance that is a matter of concern; it is also the imperialistic tone of their outpourings that is perturbing. They talk as if Pakistan is their vassal state, where they are the masters and Pakistanis are the slaves. They do not want Pakistan’s cooperation but total submission and compliance of their orders. But what else one can expect when nation’s elites have, over the years, been genuflecting before American adventurists.
Last week, The New York Times in its editorial captioned “Time to Put the Squeeze on Pakistan” stated: “Nearly 15 years after 9/11, the war in Afghanistan is raging and Pakistan deserves much of the blame. It remains a duplicitous and dangerous partner for the United States and Afghanistan, despite $33 billion in American aid and repeated attempts to reset relations on a more constructive course. American experts say that army has helped engineer the integration of the Haqqanis into the Taliban leadership.” This is a blatant lie, as Haqqanis are ideologically aligned with the Taliban, as both want to enforce Sharia in the country. Secondly, when the Taliban came to power in 1996, Jalaluddin Haqqani was appointed as minister for tribal affairs. Today, his son Sirajuddin Haqqani is deputy leader of the Taliban faction of Akhtar Mansour.
Unfortunately, our foreign office does not seem to be doing a good job countering propaganda campaigns of the US and India. Winding up debate on an adjournment motion, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz recently admitted that relations with the US are under stress for the past three months because of the conditions Washington had attached to the funding of the sale of F-16 vis-à-vis Pakistan’s nuclear programme, Shakil Afridi, and sought evidence about the Haqqani group for taking action against it. Aziz said that Pakistan-US relations had come to a standstill in 2011 because of the unfortunate incidents of WikiLeaks, Raymond Davis, Abbottabad operation and attack on Salala post. He added there could be no compromise on Pakistan’s nuclear programme, which was for Pakistan’s security.
It appears that Aziz has not been keeping track of the events, as there were many instances when relations between Pakistan and the US became strained. In 2009, Americans were quite angry with Pakistan when Pakistan’s intelligence agency put a check on their diplomats moving around with loaded weapons in cars with fake number plates to make video films of sensitive installations. Who will tell the American lords that Pakistan is not their colony? Surely, it would not be this country’s power elite who have surrendered all their dignity and self-respect to Washington to decide their destinies. But not the people of this country, as they remember having at least once a close brush of being bombed back into the Stone Age by an enraged Soviet Union in early 1960s after its military downed an American U-2 reconnaissance plane flying on its Central Asian Republics. After shooting down the plane, the Soviets encircled Peshawar in bold red and threatened Pakistan of severe consequences. And what did Pakistan get in return from the US for imperilling its security for their sake? A snap embargo on all US military supplies including spare parts for Pakistan military predominantly equipped with the American weaponry, the moment Indo-Pak war broke out in 1965.
Furthermore, America’s role in propping India through civil nuclear agreement and its refusal to sign similar agreement with Pakistan had irked Pakistan. Since signing defence pacts with the West and a bilateral agreement with the US in 1950s, Pakistan military and Pentagon had developed a special relationship, which had continued till 1990s despite differences that emerged during Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
Yet, the US has been unfair throughout its relations with Pakistan. After using Pakistan as a pawn in their triumphant proxy war against the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan, Americans repaid Pakistan — their much-trumpeted strategic partners — by slapping nuclear-related sanctions and bequeathing on Pakistan the tinderbox of religious fanaticism. And, of course, stridency out of which we are desperately struggling to get out. Once again the US coerced Pakistan into joining the war on terror and made it a frontline state. They also elevated Pakistan as a non-NATO ally, but despite all cooperation and sacrifices, Americans distrust Pakistan, and are out to weaken it. The US must understand that unless Pashtuns who make more than half of Afghanistan’s population, and who draw the bulk of their fighters and supporters in Afghanistan are given guarantees that they will have their rightful share in power, peace will remain elusive.
As regards the claim that the US gave 33 billion dollars to Pakistan under different heads since 9/11, it has to be mentioned that the figure is 30 billion dollars, which includes 14 billion dollars of Coalition Support Fund. This, in fact, is reimbursement of the expenses incurred in connection with logistics including fuel, ration and other expenses etc., for about 100,000 troops deployed in tribal areas near Pak-Afghan border after joining the war on terror. The balance amount of 16 billion dollars given by the US over a period of 14 years is less than 25 percent of the economic losses of 70 billion dollars Pakistan incurred. It has to be mentioned that in late 1970s, the former USSR’s military landed in Afghanistan under the security agreement between the two governments. The US wanted to capitalise the Afghan resistance to put the Soviet Union on the mat, and in the process the Soviet Union disintegrated.
Mohammad Jamil is a freelance columnist.
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/17-May-16/pak-us-relations-under-stress
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Project Karachi
By Dr Noman Ahmed
16-May-16
THERE’S much hustle and bustle these days in the chambers of bureaucrats and officers working for the Sindh Planning and Development Department and in local institutions eg KMC. The core activity is the preparation of projects for the Annual Development Programme. True, the chief minister has approved Rs2 billion for a few road repair and health projects, but is this enough?
Politically motivated wish lists, recommendations by the influential, and petitions from party henchmen and their ilk usually become the potpourri of development choices. However, there are many important projects that have been long awaiting the attention of provincial decision-makers and bureaucracy — projects which can improve the efficiency and social equity of Karachi as a metropolis.
A comprehensive road repair and maintenance project is the foremost priority; any commuter can testify to the extent to which various categories of roads are in serious disrepair, damaging even large vehicles, from University Road in the east to Mansfield Street in the south of the city. The poor design and quality of construction, lack of regular maintenance, frequent road-cutting and adjustments for other forms of buried infrastructure, overlapping of new development schemes such as the ongoing Bus Rapid Transit project and frequent spilling of fresh and sewage water are just some of the causes of their dilapidated condition. There have been many occurrences of vehicular accidents caused by damaged roads.
Karachi’s developed road length spans more than 9,000km. While extensive repairs and maintenance are necessary for about two-thirds of this, the work can be divided into phases. Firstly, all the major arterial roads should be repaired. Subsequent phases of the project should be to address repairing main roads in commercial locations, neighbourhoods and key industrial areas. The design and specification of such road works should be optimised to last for longer stretches of time. Lessons should be learnt from past projects, such as the ‘long-life road’ development programme undertaken by KMC in the 1990s, to construct roads needing negligible maintenance for up to 20 years or more.
Urban development can improve social equity.
It is also commonly observed that the city is littered with unattended solid waste; from affluent neighbourhoods to low-income settlements. Physicians and healthcare professionals warn that the scale and intensity of infectious diseases has increased manifold in the past few years.
Karachi produces more than 12,000 tonnes of solid waste every day — a figure that continues to rise due to consumerism — but only a tiny portion of this waste is disposed of (that too, improperly). The rest of this vast volume is either left unattended or periodically burnt, contributing to further health hazards. One can observe burning garbage in or near sensitive locations such as beaches and playgrounds, or find healthcare waste in municipal dump sites around the vicinity of large teaching hospitals — for which there is no excuse, given that smart and multipurpose solutions for disposing of municipal solid waste are now commonly available.
A waste-to-energy plant is capable of properly disposing of solid waste while also generating electricity; such plants are common across the world. Another version of this technology, when designed and constructed with appropriate specifications across coastal locations, can also generate potable water through desalination. There was an abortive attempt, made by the Defence Housing Authority, to design such a plant; capable of generating 94 megawatts of electricity and about three million gallons of drinking water per day; the plant did not work due to ‘technical’ issues. However, better technical and procurement input can enable Karachi to benefit from more water, more electricity and a reduction in waste volumes. Incinerators, already installed in many public-sector hospitals, must be overhauled and connected to the waste disposal chain of large and medium healthcare facilities.
The city needs more basic projects. Increasing the number of green buses on city arterial roads can facilitate commuters to a greater extent, as will the rehabilitation of pedestrian paths along major thoroughfares. About 450 million gallons per day of untreated sewage is discharged into the sea; developing small- and medium-scale sewerage treatment plants at the discharging ends of city Nullahs (drains) can safeguard our marine environment, and can also contribute recycled water for horticulture and irrigating our public landscape. A water loss-reduction project is another desperately urgent requirement. It is common knowledge that many of our water mains are past their shelf life and impacted by water leakages and organised thefts, for which appropriate, scientific interventions are required.
While it should be noted that many of the above recommended proposals are already cited, in the Karachi Strategic Development Plan 2020 and other important urban-planning documents, all these projects demand proper budget allocation, appropriate planning and design, and swift implementation.
Dr Noman Ahmed is chairman, Department of Architecture & Planning, NED University, Karachi.
Source: dawn.com/news/1258802/project-karachi
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Another Christian under Attack In Pakistan
By Kaleem Dean
17-May-16
A truly unfortunate incident occurred in Chak 44, Mandi Bahauddin; district Gojra, when Imran Masih, a young Christian man was accused of blasphemy. While he was working with his Muslim colleagues, he showed them pictures of a wedding he had captured on his mobile phone. For a while he left his device with one of his colleagues, who found a video clip of a sermon of a pastor who was they thought was speaking against Islam. This person on viewing the video showed it to another colleague, Bilal, and both of them reacted angrily.
When they saw Imran they started beating him. At the intervention of the senior management of the health clinic where they all worked, the situation was brought under control, but the anger triggered Bilal to report the incident to the local imam of the mosque, Qari Imran. The imam watched the video and announced in the mosque that Imran Masih should be punished to death because he denigrated Islam by keeping such anti-Islam stuff on his mobile phone. Some of the Christian friends of Masih urged him to flee from the area, and he did.
However, last Friday several hundred Muslims assembled, and a fatwa was issued against Masih. A local businessman announced 100,000 rupees bounty on Masih’s head. There are probably only a few dozen houses in that area that belong to Christians. All shopkeepers were ordered by the fatwa-givers not to sell any grocery or eatable to Christians living there. For the past week, Christians are facing an awful situation. The local police tried to calm down Muslim fundamentalists but it is too difficult to control an enraged mob. There is another campaign going on: Christians have been asked to accept Islam or leave the area. This has become the norm that after such incidents, poor Christians are forced to convert or flee.
Many a time, helpless and marginalised Christian community finds nowhere to go but to find refuge in Islam. Every other day, there are reports of conversions from Christianity and Hinduism to Islam. For God, souls are won not forced to convert. Physical control over somebody can make him a slave but spiritual satisfaction comes only through true manifestation of love. In Pakistani hostile society love and tolerance for minorities are becoming rare traits. When we were in school we learned in Islamic studies that 14 centuries before the advent of Islam there was a society whose traits matched that of many in Pakistan today.
This endless persecution of minorities is painting a negative image of the majority population. The darkest aspect of these episodes is that a transient reaction comes from different leaders, which seems like lip service, where empty words of consolation are uttered. The seriousness of the issue is not taken into account. “Might is right” is the classic view of the present day Pakistani society, as the poor and marginalised are being cornered every day. At the time of the independence, the number of minorities was more than 20 percent of the population, which has decreased to a miniscule three percent. And this unending pressure has put downtrodden communities on ventilators. Theologically-trained Muslim clerics have not been brought to the mainstream of country’s socio-religious policy, and no government has ever tried to open public Islamic seminaries where people could receive proper religious education as per the true teachings of the Holy Quran and Prophet Mohammad (pbuh).
Rarely is seen any member of clergy who has proper knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence, Hadith, and Sharia. Some individuals like Javed Ahmed Ghamdi who with their long, hard work of scholarship when started challenging these so-called religious scholars faced harassment. One of the weakest aspects of a multicultural and multi-religious society is the absence of a feasible system, made by social governing bodies, which is acceptable to all individuals living there. For the last 70 years, many cardinal issues were overlooked that in essence are the basic ingredients of an egalitarian society. The social building was not founded according to the teachings of the founder of Pakistan. In the emerging Islamic society at the time of independence, there were two school of thoughts followed or being compelled to follow.
One, religious scholars of the era did not want the continuity of imperialism. Second, the quick shift to Islamic ideology polarised society within the first six months of independence. Unfortunately, the rear-seated leaders took over the driving seat, and where not practically through think tanks and their social influence. The infant state could not bear the pressure and had to bow down before such forces with theocratic ideology against which the founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, said, ” The Constitution of Pakistan has yet to be framed by the Pakistan Constituent Assembly...Islam and its idealism have taught us democracy. It has taught equality of men, justice and fair play to everybody…In any case, Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic State -- to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many non-Muslims – Hindus, Christians, and Parsis -- but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan.”
To convolute the real message of Jinnah, the historical speech of 11th August 1947 that had a clear message of equality and brotherhood remained hidden for several years. Guardians of theocracy never allowed Jinnah’s clear instructions to take roots among masses. On one occasion the Quaid, said, “…no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state.” We have gone too far to break the jaws of forces working day and night bringing inequality and injustice. Once and for all, at this juncture, all forces of tolerance, compassion and brotherhood will have to come together to give an impetus to the nation to walk on the track built by Quaid-e-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Pakistan is for all who live here, and no one is to be made to live like a pariah in his/her homeland on the basis of ideology, ethnicity, or faith.
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/17-May-16/another-christian-under-attack-in-pakistan
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Flogging a Dead Horse
By Khalid Aziz
May 17th, 2016
THE recent closure and subsequent reopening of the Torkham border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan must be seen in the wider of context of the two neighbours’ historical tensions over the Durand Line, the international boundary between the two countries. The Durand Line stretches over some 2,250 kilometres of mountainous and flat terrain. In the northwest it divides Pakistan’s tribal areas and Afghan territory. Here the ‘line’ is about 460 km long.
Its demarcation began in 1893 under Afghan ruler Abdur Rehman and Sir Mortimer Durand, a state official in British India. The Durand agreement was reaffirmed by Abdur Rehman’s successor in April 1905 and then at the conclusion of the third Afghan War in 1919 between Britain and Afghanistan. Further reaffirmation resulted in the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1921. A letter attached to this treaty indicated that the British government, in a gesture of its benevolent feelings for the frontier tribes, undertook to inform the Afghans of any military operation which appeared necessary for the maintenance of order among the frontier tribes, “before the commencement of such operations”.
The main reason for this letter of comfort to the Afghan ruler lay in one peculiarity of the Durand Line — it became possible for the first time after 1893 to refer to a tribal belt as under British control between Afghanistan and the administered border of India. Olaf Caroe writes, “It is true that the agreement did not describe the line as the boundary of India but as the frontier of the amir’s dominions and the line beyond which neither side would exercise interference. This was because the British government did not intend to absorb the tribes into their administrative system, only to extend their own, and exclude the amir’s authority in the territory east and south of the line.”
The Durand Line issue continues to bedevil relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Durand Line’s other effect was that it divided the approximately 50 million Pakhtuns of whom 31 million live in Pakistan and 14 million in Afghanistan. A perusal of Afghan history shows that at its core Afghanistan saw itself as a Pakhtun nation. This position is now strongly contested by the elite of the new Afghan state that was recreated after the 9/11 occupation of Afghanistan and its restructuring under the Bonn-1 formula of 2001.
While the Afghan Pakhtun elite, including Hamid Karzai, look at the new reality through the old lenses of the Durrani Pakhtun elite, much has changed. The Tajiks and other Afghan non-Pakhtun ethnicities think of their new identity in a more composite manner. The Pakhtun in Afghanistan feel marginalised and there is much angst in their depiction of the past 15 years. Meanwhile, other ethnicities of Afghanistan do not wish to return to their previous marginalised position.
Since the US began the war in Afghanistan, first to remove the Afghan Taliban and then to create a modern state, much blame has been attached to Pakistan. The May 12 editorial in the New York Times describing Pakistan as a “duplicitous and dangerous” US ally is based on Pakistan’s perceived failure to end the safe havens in Fata and the presence of Afghan Taliban in the Quetta Shura as well as on the latitude given to the Haqqani group.
Some of the difficulties between the Afghans and Pakistanis regarding the Durand Line arise from the Pakistani state’s wish to have a more regulated border so that it becomes difficult for militants to come and go as they please. In July 2003, Pakistan’s attempts to secure the Pak-Afghan border in Mohmand territory led to a clash between troops of the two countries. Upon recalibration, the border line was pushed back towards Pakistan.
Pakistan again reiterated its resolve to fence the boundary for better border management in 2006, when the army was directed to fence and mine the border with Afghanistan with legitimate entry permitted through designated check points.
In 2007, another clash between Pakistan and Afghan security occurred when the border was being fenced near Angoor Adda in South Waziristan. In 2009, Pakistan discussed measures with the then US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan on how to improve border management.
In 2009, the Frontier Corps in Fata announced it would take measures to end informal crossings on the Durand Line. Work started on a 60-kilometre mud wall along the Pak-Afghan border in Chaman, Balochistan, in May 2016; at the same time, the FC began fencing the Torkham border in Khyber Agency. This led to resistance by the Afghans and the stoppage of all movement along the Torkham border, until the stand-off ended after a meeting between the Afghan ambassador and the Pakistani army chief on May 14.
After Pakistan’s creation in 1947, the Afghans started demanding revisions to the Durand Line, and voted against Pakistan’s entry to the UN. They laid claim to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the tribal areas inside Pakistan. In November 1947, Afghan king Zahir Shah dispatched a special envoy to Pakistan, demanding that a separate state be created out of KP and Fata, demands that Pakistan naturally found unrealistic.
Afghanistan’s claim on parts of Pakistan is based on the annexation of these territories in the 18th-century by Ahmad Shah Abdali, regarded as the father of modern-day Afghanistan. Ahmad Shah obtained sovereignty over modern-day Sindh and parts which compose today’s KP, Fata and Balochistan. But laying claim to territories based on past conquests is impractical. These annexations were short-lived. By the time of Ahmad Shah’s death, control of Punjab passed to the Sikhs, who at their peak, had annexed parts of modern-day KP and Fata.
Former US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman said in an interview in 2012 that the Durand Line was the international border and umbrage was taken to his statement by the Afghans. This position was reiterated by the US State Department in 2015 when its spokesperson declared that the US recognised the Durand Line. Clearly, there is no more capital to be gained through whipping a dead horse. Instead, the emphasis must be on regulating the border to defeat terrorism.
Khalid Aziz is a former political agent and chief secretary, KP
Source: dawn.com/news/1258799/flogging-a-dead-horse
URL: https://newageislam.com/pakistan-press/the-long-road-freedom-new/d/107321