Air Marshal (Retd) Asghar Khan history.blogspot.comISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Monday fixed February 29 to hear the petition filed by Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) leader Asghar Khan 16 years ago pertaining to Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) distributing money among politicians.
Meanwhile, the former ISI chief Gen. (Retd) Durrani submitted an affidavit confirming the accusation.
The petition has called upon the apex court to punish the politicians and political groups who have been receiving pots of money from the agency.
Various politicians had demanded the petition to be heard.
Air Marshal (retd) Asghar Khan, in 1996, wrote a letter to then chief justice Nasim Hasan Shah against former army chief Mirza Aslam Baig, former ISI chief Lt-General (retd) Asad Durrani and Younis Habib of Habib and Mehran Banks, relating to the disbursement of public money and its misuse for political purposes.
Aboard the Democracy Train Excerpt (P. 27)
Elections Were the Tip of the Iceberg
As a guest of the interim Prime Minister Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, I had witnessed how state funds and propaganda were used to defeat Benazir. But I was still an onlooker, without inside knowledge of what had transpired in the inner circles. Then still an inexperienced reporter, I couldn’t guess how the establishment defeated the PPP, which, right or wrong, had the support of the masses.
In 1996, some clues emerged. Retired Air Marshal Asghar Khan filed a case in the Supreme Court, alleging that the powerful secret service wing of the army – the ISI – had rigged the 1990 election. Based on Asghar Khan’s petition, former ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Asad Durrani took the stand in the Supreme Court and provided an affidavit that the army had indeed distributed Pkr 140 million (USD 1.6 million) to anti-PPP candidates, only a few months before the October 1990 election.
The anti-PPP candidates banded in the IJI comprised feudal, Islamic and ethnic parties that resolutely opposed Benazir’s populist rule. Subsequently, we learnt that the care-taker President Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, who had stayed mum while Chip probed him – had actually taken PKR 5 million (USD 59,000) from the ISI. Meanwhile, Nawaz Sharif – who was ushered in by the military to succeed Benazir as prime minister – was revealed to have received PKR 3.5 million (USD 41,000) from the spy agencies.
Apparently, the army was so scared that Benazir would be elected back into power that their IJI coalition distributed state funds among various interest groups to prevent her return.
As I covered national politics, Asghar Khan talked to me in earnest, as though I was a player rather than a reporter. Then in coalition with the PPP, he told me that Benazir and Nawaz ought to unite to repeal Article 58-2(b). This was the constitutional clause introduced by Gen. Zia ul Haq that allowed presidents like Ghulam Ishaq Khan to dissolve the assembly.
Although, I shared Asghar Khan’s desire for principled politics, it surprised me that he seemed clueless about Benazir’s approach of doing whatever it took to return to power.
KARACHI, Jan. 17: Pakistan received $386.6 million in foreign direct and portfolio investment in the last six months of 2011, a fall of 64 percent from one year earlier, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said on Tuesday.
In the July-December 2010 period, investment totalled $1.06 billion, a statement from State Bank of Pakistan said.
During 2011, violence in Pakistan’s biggest city and commercial hub Karachi, a Taliban insurgency in the country’s northwest and chronic power shortages have put off long-term investors, analysts say.
“A combination of security and economic issues have put off investors from investing in Pakistan,” said Mohammed Sohail, chief executive at Topline Securities Ltd.
Out of the total investment, foreign direct investment fell 37 percent in July-December 2011 to $531.2 million from $839.6 million in the final six months of 2010, the State Bank of Pakistan said.
During the last six months of 2011, there was a net investment outflow of $144.6 million, compared with a net inflow of $221.5 million in July-December 2010, the central bank said.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 — Online protests on Wednesday quickly cut into Congressional support for online antipiracy measures as lawmakers abandoned and rethought their backing for legislation that pitted new media interests against some of the most powerful old-line commercial interests in Washington.
A freshman senator, Marco Rubio of Florida, a rising Republican star, was first Wednesday morning with his announcement that he would no longer back antipiracy legislation he had co-sponsored. Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who heads the campaign operation for his party, quickly followed suit and urged Congress to take more time to study the measure, which had been set for a test vote next week.
By Wednesday afternoon, Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and one of the Senate bill’s original co-sponsors, called it “simply not ready for prime time” and withdrew his support.
Their decisions came after some Web pages shut down Wednesday to protest two separate bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act. The Stop Online Piracy Act was written by Representative Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, drafted the Protect Intellectual Property Act.
Protests organized in the real world drew far less attention. A rally convened in Midtown Manhattan outside the offices of Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten E. Gillibrand, who co-sponsored some of the proposed legislation, drew a few hundred protesters.
Members of Congress, many of whom are grappling with the issues posed by the explosion in new media and social Web sites, appeared caught off guard by the enmity toward what had been a relatively obscure piece of legislation to many of them. The Senate’s high-tech expertise was mocked in 2006 after the chairman of the Commerce Committee, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, called the Internet “not a big truck” but a “series of tubes” — an observation enshrined in the Net Hall of Shame.
In reaction to the pending legislation, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia went dark. Google’s home page had a black banner across it that led to information blasting the bills.
Such new-media lobbying was having an impact.
“As a senator from Florida, a state with a large presence of artists, creators and businesses connected to the creation of intellectual property, I have a strong interest in stopping online piracy that costs Florida jobs,” Mr. Rubio wrote on his Facebook page. “However, we must do this while simultaneously promoting an open, dynamic Internet environment that is ripe for innovation and promotes new technologies.”
Mr. Rubio has outsize influence for a junior senator entering his second year in Congress. He is considered a top contender for the vice presidential ticket of his party’s White House nominee this year, and is being groomed by the Republican leadership to be the face of his party with Hispanics and beyond.
Mr. Cornyn posted on his Facebook page that it was “better to get this done right rather than fast and wrong. Stealing content is theft, plain and simple, but concerns about unintended damage to the Internet and innovation in the tech sector require a more thoughtful balance, which will take more time.”
“While we believe that online piracy by foreign Web sites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet,” White House officials said.
With the growing reservations, a bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously and without controversy may be in serious trouble. Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader and Democrat of Nevada, has scheduled a procedural vote on the Leahy version for early next week, but unless negotiators can alter it to satisfy the outraged online world, no one expects it to get 60 votes.
“I encourage Senator Reid to abandon his plan to rush the bill to the floor,” Mr. Rubio wrote on Facebook. “Instead, we should take more time to address the concerns raised by all sides, and come up with new legislation that addresses Internet piracy while protecting free and open access to the Internet.”
Indeed, a senior Senate Republican leadership aide said the Senate version of the bill was dead in its current form, and bipartisan negotiations had begun to revise it considerably. Senators from both parties want to address the Internet piracy issue, but they acknowledged that concerns raised by Google and its online partners would have to be addressed.
At issue is how the bills deal with “DNS filtering.” Web site addresses are converted by the Internet’s domain name server system from typed words into computer language to bring a user to a specific Web site.
The Congressional bills would allow the Justice Department to seek injunctions to prevent domestic Internet service providers from translating the names of suspected pirate sites; the legislation would also require search engines such as Google not to display suspected sites on search results. In effect, the bills would make search engines the enforcers of a law they oppose.
Congressional negotiators are looking at radical revisions to the DNS provisions, but lawmakers may decide the resulting legislation is too neutered to pursue, aides from both parties say.
Support for the legislation on Capitol Hill eroded throughout the day. Another Republican co-sponsor of the Senate bill, Roy Blunt of Missouri, withdrew his support in the early afternoon. Other senators who issued concerns about the legislation as written included Republican Senators Mark Kirk of Illinois and Jim DeMint of South Carolina. Senator Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, had said on Tuesday that he would vote against the measure.
Mr. DeMint called the proposed legislation “misguided bills that will cause more harm than good.”
“In seeking to protect intellectual property rights, we must ensure that we do not undermine free speech, threaten economic growth, or impose burdensome regulations,” he said in a statement.
The media industry has been pushing for a legislative response to online piracy for some time. Groups like the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, as well as giants like News Corporation, are practiced at old-time lobbying — hiring big-name Washington personalities like the former senator Christopher J. Dodd and contributing to campaign funds.
“Only days after the White House and chief sponsors of the legislation responded to the major concern expressed by opponents and then called for all parties to work cooperatively together, some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging,” he said.
In the Tea Party era of grass-roots muscle, though, the old school was taken to school, Congressional aides and media lobbyists agree.
“The problem for the content industry is they just don’t know how to mobilize people,” said John P. Feehery, a former Republican leadership aide and executive at the motion picture lobby. “They have a small group of content makers, a few unions, whereas the Internet world, the social media world especially, has a tremendous reach. They can reach people in ways we never dreamed of before.
“This has been a real learning experience for the content world,” Mr. Feehery added.
Karachi, Jan 14: That the judicial commission’s report on Saleem Shahzad’s murder is inconclusive should not be surprising, experts say. Its shortcoming lies in its very foundation – the formation of a ‘judicial panel’ to investigate a murder.
The judicial commission’s failure to point out the murderers of journalist Saleem Shahzad was expected, said Coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Asia Programme Bob Dietz.
“I know a lot of journalists had pressed for the judicial panel, but the report now clearly shows that it hasn’t been able to serve its purpose of pointing out the murderers,” Dietz said while speaking to The Express Tribune via phone.
The judicial panel shouldn’t have been tasked with uncovering the murderers of Saleem, simply because this required expertise that they didn’t possess to begin with, Dietz said.
“This is basically the job of the police who are trained to investigate murder cases. In fact it is only because of the inability of the police and the government to uncover the truth that the panel was entrusted with this job,” he said.
Dietz suggested the case should have been investigated by a panel similar to the one that had been formed in the aftermath of Daniel Pearl’s murder in Karachi. “In Daniel’s case, real police work was done by experts in their fields. This led to the arrest of several suspects and eventually some of them were sentenced and sent to jails.”
When asked what was the way forward if the police investigators were vary of probing into a case that allegedly involved senior intelligence agency officials, Dietz proposed that then the media itself would have to do the job of exposing the murderers.
Senior Analyst Mazhar Abbas said he found the report “interesting” and recommended all journalists to go through it “from an academic point of view.”
Abbas pointed out a number of missing links in the commission’s report. For example, he says, the IGP Islamabad’s testimony has not been included in the report to clarify the important point about how Saleem’s vehicle was able to move out of Islamabad all the way to Jhelum without anyone in the police taking notice: “When Saleem was reported kidnapped, did the police pass on a message on their wireless control system about the disappearance?”
Also, he said, that while the commission leaves the door open about the motive and people involved in the incident, it is clear that normally militant groups claim responsibility for their attacks.
“If even for the sake of argument we assume that the Ilyas Kashmiri group was behind the murder [as stated as one of possibilities in the report], then what was stopping them from claiming the attack on Saleem,” he asked.
Pulitzer prize winning author Dexter Filkins, who had written an article in The New Yorker about Shahzad’s death titled “The Journalist and the Spies”, stood by the revelations he had made in his article.
In his piece, Filkins not only connected the dots between Shehzad’s death and militant commander Ilyas Kashmiri’s killing in a drone attack, but also spoke of senior American officials, who alleged that the orders to kill Shahzad came directly from the top army brass.
When asked to comment on the commission’s report, Dexter said in an email: “I’m going to let my article speak for itself.”
ISI’s Brigadier Zahid Mehmood Khan, in his written testimony to the commission mentioned in the report, had lambasted Filkins for his piece.
Published in The Express Tribune with the International Herald Tribune, January 14th, 2012.
(Credit: indiatoday.com)
It was Saleem Shahzad’s dedication to investigative reporting and his fascination for the crime-beat that foremost stands out in my memory. Come evening and the slender young man, then working for the affiliate Star newspaper, would enter the Dawn reporters room to compare notes with the crime reporter. His style was single-minded and purposeful – rechecking facts to supplement hours of news gathering for the next day’s paper.
Some 20 years later I saw him again on television. To my shock and horror, his face was mutilated and eyes punched in. It was a stark message, made even more brutal because of its bold display by the electronic media. Investigative journalists who dared report on the murky links of militant outfits in Pakistan, would meet the same fate. The intrepid journalist was not unaware of the dangers. Human rights groups told that for the two days he went missing last May, he had informed them of threats received from the state agencies.
It was a time of flared tempers in Pakistan. On May 1, US Navy Seals had secretly descended in Abbotabad to pick up Al Qaeda’s number one, Osama Bin Laden – found living near a military academy. Unruffled by the international embarrassment caused to Pakistan by that incident, Saleem went on to report on the attack carried out on Mehran Naval base in Karachi – naming ex naval officials for their alleged links to the militants.
His professional development had taken him from being a crime reporter to an international expert on proliferating militant outfits in the region. He had inside information on how Uzbek war lord Tahir Yuldeshev had grown influential within Pakistan – acting on behalf of Al Qaeda to cement the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. It was material that Saleem gathered for his book `Inside Al Qaeda and the Taliban,’ – which would provide encyclopedic knowledge on the post 9/11 scenario in the region.
Being an insider, Saleem hobnobbed with militants in a manner that invited real dangers. In 2006, he was kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan and almost killed on charges of being a spy. When he returned and told me why he had been incommunicado, I called out to him to be careful. He laughed and said, “nothing will happen.”
Saleem’s murder would have a palpable effect on colleagues. As news came in that his tortured body had washed up on the banks of Mandi Bahauddin (some 80 miles from Islamabad) my colleagues told me in hushed tones about an incident that had clearly hurt close to home.
Then, Pakistan’s vibrant media went into action, mobilizing a Tsunami of support to demand that Saleem’s killers be exposed. They held a sit-down strike in Islamabad – dispersing only until the government promised to set up a commission to get to the bottom of who kiled Saleem Shahzad
Eight months later the commission, led by a Supreme Court judge has delivered its verdict. But, despite 41 witnesses, hundreds of e-mail and phone messages, the 146 page report says it was unable to identify the perpetrators of the crime. Instead, it has called on the Islamabad and Punjab police to continue searching for those responsible.
While the similarities between slain US journalist Daniel Pearl and Saleem Shahzad are unmistakable, the differences have grown even more stark. While Pearl’s killers were exposed and some brought to trial, in Saleem’s case no one has even been identified – let alone punished.
Indeed, no sooner had the commission failed to pinpoint to the accused, when a reporter working for US media – Mukarram Khan Atif – was shot and killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It gave ammunition to journalist bodies to criticize the commission for its failure to name names in Saleem’s murder.
Bottom line. The commission’s recommendation that there should be “greater oversight of secret service agencies,” is as current as the clash between military and civilian institutions being played out today… and as age-old as the problems that have plagued Pakistan from its inception.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani fired his defense secretary, a retired general and confidant of Pakistan’s army chief, on Wednesday as the civilian government appeared headed for a collision with the country’s powerful military leadership.
Mr. Gilani accused the dismissed secretary of defense, Naeem Khalid Lodhi, a former general and corps commander, of “gross misconduct and illegal action” and of “creating misunderstanding between the state institutions.” He replaced Mr. Lodhi with a civilian aide, Nargis Sethi.
Military officials warned on Wednesday evening that the army would be likely to refuse to work with Ms. Sethi, signaling the possibility of a serious rupture between the army and the civilian government. “The army will not react violently, but it will not cooperate with the new secretary of defense,” said a military officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the situation.
Tensions between the government of President Asif Ali Zardari and the army leadership have grown worse since the publication of a controversial memo purportedly drafted by the government shortly after an American raid last year killed Osama bin Laden. The memo appeared to solicit help in stopping a possible coup by the humiliated Pakistani military.
Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief, called an emergency meeting of his top commanders for Thursday.
Ordinarily, the defense secretary here is appointed with the consent of the army chief and acts as a bridge between the government and the military. The role is more powerful than that of the defense minister, a position filled by a politician from the governing party.
The military has warned the prime minister that his recent statements against General Kayani would have “serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences for the country.” Mr. Gilani had accused General Kayani and Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director general of Pakistan’s intelligence service, of acting as a “state within a state” and reminded them that they were accountable to the Parliament. Those statements were seen as suggesting that they could be removed from power.
The defense secretary’s signature is required for any appointment, or termination, of a member of the military leadership. By installing a defense secretary of his own choice, Mr. Gilani appeared to be seeking greater leverage for his government in dealing with the military.
Speculation about the government’s intentions to dismiss the two commanders was fueled by news reports in the stridently anti-American press in Pakistan, where many people view the United States as an arrogant adversary instead of an ally. That view has spread in the months since the Bin Laden raid last May and the deaths of 26 Pakistani soldiers in an American airstrike near the border with Afghanistan in November.
Pakistani analysts said the firing of Mr. Lodhi might signal that the festering conflict between the army and the government was reaching a critical stage.
“It is a desperate measure,” said Ikram Sehgal, a defense analyst and a former army officer. “They want the army to react and to make a coup.”
Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a military and political analyst, said the firing would only exacerbate the situation for the civilian government. “If the prime minister now tries to fire the army chief, it will have very dangerous consequences,” Mr. Rizvi said.
Mr. Lodhi, who retired from the army last March and became defense secretary in November, became embroiled in a controversy last month after he submitted a statement in the Supreme Court on behalf of the Defense Ministry, saying that the civilian government had no operational control over the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, Pakistan’s powerful spy agency. Saying that Mr. Lodhi had overstepping his authority, Mr. Gilani objected to the blunt statement, a public acknowledgment that while the intelligence services are technically answerable to the prime minister, they are widely perceived to act independently of civilian control.
A military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly said that the relationship between Mr. Lodhi and Mr. Gilani broke down after the prime minister’s staff pressed Mr. Lodhi to contradict statements about the controversial memo by the army and intelligence chiefs, Generals Kayani and Pasha. The two told the Supreme Court last month that the memo — said to have been orchestrated by a former ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani — was authentic, and pointed to a conspiracy against the military. The government and Mr. Haqqani have said that they had nothing to do with the memo, which came to light in October.
“The government had prepared a draft that stated that the Ministry of Defense does not agree with General Kayani and Genera Pasha’s opinions about the veracity of the memo,” said the military official, who was present during the discussions. “General Lodhi refused to sign the document, saying those were not his words.”
J. David Goodman contributed reporting from New York.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 11, 2012
An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely the writing of a memo, which solicited help in stopping a possible coup in Pakistan. The facts of its creation are in dispute, with some accusing the former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, of orchestrating the controversial memo, a charge he has denied. Also, a summary for this story on the global edition home page incorrectly stated that Mr. Gilani had fired General Kayani. In fact, as the article correctly stated, Mr. Gilani fired his secretary of defense, Naeem Khalid Lodhi.
Jan 6, Islamabad: Pakistan is fulfilling more than 80% of its resources through imports although there are a variety of minerals, metals, coal mines.
Thar coal desert is the world’s third largest coal reserve. Energy crisis in Pakistan is increasing and with the passage of time it will worsen, as its requirements increase. With the decrease in energy production and its unavailability, the industries will have to face difficulty in future; therefore, it is important that the energy demands should be met to decrease power shortages and to save industries from facing any crisis.
The current power supply in Pakistan is around 1400 MW whereas the demand will increase by 100,000 MW by 2030. Considering this increase of power demand in 15-25 years, it is important that such policies should be made which not only take care of the current power demand, but also consider future power demand.
Pakistan is a self-sufficient country in minerals and coal reserves. The distribution of coal reserves in different provinces is as following.
Sindh has about 186.560 billion tonnes of coal reserves, Punjab 235 million tonnes, Balochistan 217 million tonnes, KP 90 million tonnes and Azad Kashmir 9 million tonnes of coal reserves. The total coal reserve in Thar is equal to 50 billion tonnes of oil reserve which is more than Iran and Saudi Arabia combined oil reserves or over 200 TCF of gas which is 42 times greater than total gas reserves discovered in Pakistan so far.
Considering the future energy demands, it is important that Pakistan should move towards coal reserves for electricity production as already many countries are doing so. Iran and china are producing electricity from coal. China is producing 75% electricity with coal. Poland and Germany produce around 80% of electricity from coal. South Africa 93%, India 78.3%, Australia 77%, America 49%, Denmark 47.3% and UK 32.9% produce energy from coal. Whereas Pakistan only produces 7% of total energy production while the energy production should be up to 25%.
The energy crisis in Pakistan is increasing day by day due to political hindrances and short reserves. Industries, agriculture sector, hospitals, schools several institutions demand power supply in order to operate and dwindling sources of energy are causing problems everywhere. This is also due to global energy crisis as fossil fuel reserves around the world are decreasing. Many scientists have predicted that energy reserves will end by the late twentieth century. That is several countries around the world have moved on towards alternative sources of energy.
It is time Pakistan moved on towards alternative energy sources as well. Wind and solar energy are alternative sources of energy. Germany is producing 18000 MW from wind. USA is producing 7000 MW and Spain is producing around 8000 MW from wind. Pakistan has points in the coastal areas of Karachi, Thatta, Jiwani, Balochistan and other areas situated in Northern Area and Kashmir from where wind energy can be generated. Solar energy is another source through which 90% of rural areas can be provided with electricity easily.
Energy has a direct link to economy of any country, as economic development relies heavily on industrial development which in turn relies on energy supply and demand. Economy is the backbone of any country. Pakistan should meet its current energy demands in order to reduce price hike and dwindling supply of gas which is currently creating problems for the people as well as for the current government which has not been able to meet the people’s demands.
There is an urgent need for starting up these alternative sources of energy for without resolving the energy crisis Pakistan cannot move towards economical development.
Swat operation rfi.fr.comBy the time Zardari took over as president, the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariati- Mohammedi (TNSM) had established a parallel Taliban state in parts of Malakand division where it ostensibly practiced Nizam-i-Adl (Order of Justice: essentially Sharia law). Awami National Party’s Senator Afrasiab Khattak told me that his new government was taken aback to find it had inherited an ill-trained, ill-equipped police force that was no match for an increasingly ferocious Taliban militancy, which, in Swat, was headed by Maulana Fazlullah.
In Khattak’s words, the situation had deteriorated so rapidly because “Musharraf’s duplicity had suited the Bush administration.”
Toward the end of 2008, a massive suicide bomb attack at the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad had destroyed the myth that parliamentarians, diplomats or even armed personnel were safe. Islamabad grew even more strongly fortified. A wide cordon was thrown around the parliament buildings and cars were investigated at checkpoints set up at every few yards. The besieged political leadership traveled in groups and only to fortified locations.
In Swat, residents were too terrified to speak up against the Taliban militants after the group had burnt down hundreds of girls’ schools and beheaded the law enforcement personnel they had kidnapped. While TSNM chief Sufi Mohammed was imprisoned for fighting against the US forces that invaded Afghanistan in 2001, his son-in-law Fazlullah had joined hands with TTP chief Baitullah Mehsud to eliminate hundreds of tribesmen and political opponents in FATA.
Fazlullah’s spokesman Muslim Khan told me with aplomb that it had become necessary to behead political opponents and that the practise fell well within the dictates of Islam.
Under these circumstances, the Zardari government was relieved when TNSM chief, Sufi Mohammed pledged to follow the pacifist road and confine the enforcement of Shariah law to Malakand division in return for a ceasefire and release of Taliban prisoners. It was ostensibly a throwback to 1994 when Sufi Mohammed and his tribesmen had blocked the Swat Mingora road for one week to demand the enforcement of Sharia. Then, Benazir’s government had buckled into supporting the TSNM chief’s demands for a superficial enforcement of Islamic law.
In February 2009, the ANP government signed the controversial Swat peace deal with Sufi Mohammed, pledging to release 300 Taliban prisoners in return for Fazlullah’s promise to disengage from the Tehrik-i-Taliban militancy.
But the TTP promise turned out to be an exercise in duplicity. Fazlullah’s militants, already engaged in shady trade activities in Malakand took advantage of the ceasefire to deploy Taliban militants to take over government owned emerald mines in Mingora and spread out in FATA to demand jaziya (tax for non-Muslims).
As Washington watched with alarm, Pakistan’s civil society was the first to speak out against the Swat peace deal. Talk show hosts in television and radio, print journalists and bloggers expressed alarm as a video surfaced of a girl who was flogged on suspicion of marital infidelity. Fazlullah’s spokesman Muslim Khan defended the flogging as he told incredulous television anchors, “It is the girl’s good fortune that Qazi courts had not been set up, otherwise she would have been stoned to death.”
In April 2009 the Taliban advanced to nearby Bunair, where they sealed the civil courts and announced they would be converted to Islamic courts. Sufi Mohammed issued a fatwa against Pakistan’s courts, embarrassing even for the Jamaat-i-Islami, who admitted the Taliban had gone too far. As the Taliban forces rampaged through the Margalla hills, the ousted leader of the opposition and JUI (F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman told the National Assembly with the confidence of an insider that the Taliban would soon be knocking on Islamabad’s doors.
For the incoming Obama administration the situation in Pakistan was a rude awakening to Bush’s failed foreign policy. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill that Pakistan posed a “mortal threat” to the rest of the world, Congress authorized a flurry of diplomatic activities to Pakistan to convince the new army chief Gen. Asfaque Pervaiz Kiyani, that the Taliban could take over the government in Pakistan.
In May 2009, the Pakistan army sent thousands of forces to battle Taliban fighters in Swat. It triggered the largest and swiftest exodus in recent history. As the army imposed curfew and flushed out the Swat militants, the UN set up tented communities in Mardan and Swabi to support over 1.5 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Still, as the numbers of the displaced grew dramatically over half the IDPs stayed with their relatives – with the generous hospitality provided by locals to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa proving to be the saving grace for the government.
Balochistan after Jan. 11 killing of FC officers (Credit: tribune.com.pk)The 11 percent downturn in overall incidents of violence and terrorism in 2010 does not suggest that the security situation in Pakistan has improved. This declining trend in violence would be short-lived in absence of a comprehensive, all-inclusive and long-term counter-terrorism strategy. It is imperative that the government also takes into account the political, socio-cultural and developmental initiatives in addition to use of force against the militants.
These views were expressed by the participants in the launching ceremony of Pakistan Security Report 2010 held on January 17, 2011 in Islamabad. Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS) prepared and published the report.
PIPS Director Muhammad Amir Rana noted in his opening remarks that the said decrease in violence could be attributed mainly to three factors: military campaigns in Pakistan’s tribal agencies, increased surveillance by the law enforcement agencies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, and killing of some important militant commanders in US drone strikes.
Despite this decrease in number of incidents of violence in 2010 compared to the previous year, the level of violence in Pakistan during the year was still higher than in Afghanistan and Iraq. Research Analyst at PIPS Abdul Basit presented a summary of Pakistan Security Report 2010, which revealed that the militant landscape of Pakistan had become more complex over the past year. He underlined that the overall downturn in violence in 2010 was visible due to significant decrease in incidents of violence and terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – 60 percent to be precise – compared to 2009.
Such incidents nonetheless had increased considerably in Sindh, Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan during the year. Karachi remained the most critical area, where combination of ethno-political, sectarian and criminal violence had caused more than 288 percent increase in the incidents of violence and terrorism in 2010.
Farhat Asif, editor of the Diplomatic Insight, questioned the credibility of the data which was used to prepare the report particularly number of incidents and the casualties. Responding to her, Abdul Basit explained the constraints in collecting and counter-checking the data on incidents of violence and terrorism in Pakistan in particular and in the world in general.
In absence of some officially maintained database of such incidents and lack of access to conflict zones, PIPS has been relying on a wide range of regional and national newspapers along with field resources, available official records, regional correspondents, and strict cross-checking processes with reports of other local and foreign institutes. Amir Rana added that there was relatively more margin of error in the data on military operations and drone strikes while this margin of error for other areas was somewhat between 2 to 3 percent.
John Mottam of CCBLE raised a question about Al-Qaeda’s role in funding the militant organizations in Pakistan. Khuram Iqbal, a researcher at PIPS, argued that Al-Qaeda had more ideological influence among the Pakistani militant groups to resort to its agenda of global ‘Jihad’. Pakistani militant groups have nonetheless developed their indigenous and diverse funding sources such as extortion of money, charities, kidnapping for ransom and nexuses with criminal groups etc.
Navid Shinwari, executive director of Community Appraisal and Motivation Program (CAMP) validated that revival of tribal Lashkars without systematic and sustained support by the government could lead towards civil war in the country. Manzar Abbas Zaidi, a counter-terrorism expert, opined that low number of terrorist attacks in southern Punjab is not suggestive of absence of militant infrastructure in that region. Rather, militant outfits are using those areas as a recruiting ground.
AS an Internet user you would have experienced the Nigerian lottery scam. But you may not have heard of the academic scam of the African Journal of Business Management (AJBM) — unless you are in one of the countless management schools that have sprung up in Pakistan since the 1980s.
There it tops the popularity chart. The Higher Education Commission (HEC)-approved supervisors for PhD students in management sciences have published nearly 50 articles in it.
Should one be proud of the four Pakistanis who are on its long editorial board? No! This is so even though the AJBM appears in the (previously reliable) Thomson Reuters listing of journals.
Why? To understand this let’s see how this and similarly dubious business journals work. Its reviewers are recommended by authors. It does not check the relationship between the reviewers and the authors, nor verify the reputation of the reviewers.
If submitting a paper, you can create a fake email, nominate Prof X who does not exist and use the email address you created, where the paper is sent for reviewing, if at all. The journal gets $500 for an ‘accepted’ paper.
The mechanism ought to be clear by now. AJBM, a member of a large family of similarly dubious publications headquartered in Nairobi with over 100 such journals, sends out spam mail to academics globally enticing contributions from writers.
Friends of friends join their editorial board. Members of these boards probably can publish their own articles for free or at a discount, while recommending the journals to others.
Africa is not the only continent maligned by such operations. Down under is the Australian Journal of Business and Management Research on whose board is a Pakistani assistant professor — let’s call him Prof A. (For all we know this journal may have its offices in Faisalabad, which is the hub of many such dubious publications, and of which the HEC was told eight years ago by the writer. But it decided to pay no attention.)
Our Prof A does not operate in isolation. I learned this after informing Prof Susan Taylor, chair of Human Resource Management and Organisational Change, University of Maryland, whose name was displayed as editor of the International Journal of Business and Social Research without her knowledge. Her university’s attorney got its website squashed.
This journal had another Pakistani on its board — let’s call him Prof B — a prolific paper-producer who churned out 20 international publications in 18 months in such dubious journals. What’s even more interesting is that these two professors, A and B, did their PhD under the same supervisor, Prof C.
Prof C clearly practises what he preaches; he is a prolific contributor to such unsavoury journals. In recognition of his work, the HEC gave him, with 56 others, the 2010 Best University Teacher Award.
Such gross violation of academic etiquette prompted me to download the résumés of all 71 HEC-recognised PhD supervisors in management sciences to carry out a rough analysis of their publishing work in HEC-recognised journals. The result is mind-boggling.
These academics fall into two categories: 21 did their PhD in Pakistan; 50 went abroad (to largely second- or third-rate universities).
Of these 71 academics 39 (18 with PhDs from Pakistan and 21 from foreign universities) published 180 articles in dubious journals. Eighty per cent of those with Pakistani PhDs contributed to such journals. Having relatively better training and having learnt higher research ethics the overseas-trained academics contributed less to such publications: 40 per cent.
Overall, the 39 academics involved in such padding of their résumés bagged 4.6 publications each on average.
Undergraduates and postgraduates students trained by such academics are unlikely to learn the high ethics of research, and honest business practices. Surely this ought to agitate the business community and universities. Information about such fake dubious has been provided to the HEC and the documents are available to the reader by writing to the author of this piece.
