CHARSADDA/ISLAMABAD – Stuck with 15 of his students on a third floor balcony of a campus building as gunmen came up the stairs, university director Mohammad Shakil urged Pakistani police arriving at the scene to toss him up a gun so he could shoot back.
“We were hiding … but were unarmed,” Shakil told Reuters, speaking after four Islamist militants attacked Bacha Khan University in Pakistan’s troubled northwest on Wednesday, killing more than 20 people.
“I was worried about the students, and then one of the militants came after us,” Shakil added. “After repeated requests, the police threw me a pistol and I fired some shots at the terrorists.”
As more details of Wednesday’s assault emerged, attention focused on at least two members of staff who took up arms to resist attackers bent on killing them and their students.
Some hailed them as heroes, as the country digested an attack which bore similarities to the massacre, in late 2014, of 134 pupils at an army-run school in Peshawar, about 30 km (19 miles) from where this week’s violence occurred.
Others questioned whether teachers should be armed, as many are, because it goes against the ideals of the profession.
Such a dilemma may have been far from the mind of chemistry professor Hamid Hussain, as he locked himself inside a room with colleagues after gunmen stormed an accommodation block on the university campus.
When the assailants broke down the door, Hussain fired several rounds from his pistol, according to Shabir Ahmad Khan, an English department lecturer taking cover in an adjacent washroom.
“They carried on heavy shooting and I was preparing myself for death, but then they did not enter the washroom and left,” Khan recalled.
Later on in the same building, Hussain fired again at the militants to allow some of his students to get away, surviving pupils told local media. Hussain was subsequently shot and later died from his wounds.
“Kudos to professor Dr Hamid Hussain. Our hero fought bravely n saved many,” Asma Shirazi, a popular talk show host, said on Twitter.
TEACHERS’ DILEMMA
Others, too, have credited the actions of Hussain and Shakil with helping to prevent the gunmen, armed with assault rifles and hand grenades, from spilling more blood.
Bacha Khan University also employed around 50 of its own guards who, witnesses said, fought for close to an hour to keep the gunmen isolated and prevent them from entering the girl’s hostel as the police and army arrived.
Pakistan army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said the security guards responded “very well” to the attack before reinforcements reached them.
In the wake of the 2014 school massacre, teachers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Peshawar is located, were offered weapons training. Yet some are wary of arming teachers and encouraging them to engage in battle.
Gun ownership is common in Pakistan, owing to liberal licensing laws, and particularly so in the semi-autonomous tribal belt near the Afghan border where the threat of militant violence is high.
Jamil Chitrali, president of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa University Teaching Staff Association, said more teachers were now carrying personal weapons, as security had worsened.
“Arms are against the norms of my profession,” he said. “I am teaching principles and morality in the class. How I can carry a gun?”
WHO IS TO BLAME?
Four gunmen, all since killed, were involved in Wednesday’s attack, officials said. They used the cover of thick fog to scale the campus’ rear walls, before storming student dormitories and classrooms and executing people at will.
Some 3,000 students were enrolled at the university, many living on campus, while hundreds of visitors had arrived to hear a poetry recital to commemorate the life of local Pashtun nationalist hero and pacifist Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, after whom the university is named.
The provincial government declared a day of mourning on Thursday as grieving families buried their dead and survivors recalled their ordeal.
Who was to blame remains a mystery. A senior commander of the Pakistan Taliban, Umar Mansoor, on Wednesday claimed responsibility, but an official spokesman for the group later denied involvement, calling the attack “un-Islamic”.
The hardline Islamist movement was believed to be behind the school massacre just over a year ago, and educational institutions are an increasingly common target for militants wanting to frighten the public.
Pakistan has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected Taliban militants in the last year under a major crackdown against a group fighting to overthrow the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law.
The army said on Thursday the attack in Charsadda, near Peshawar, was coordinated from across the border inside Afghanistan, according to its investigations.
Army chief General Raheel Sharif has called Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the U.S. commander of international forces in Afghanistan to ask their help in locating those it holds responsible for the assault, army spokesman Bajwa said on Twitter.
The band of stranglers engaged in ‘thuggee’ in India during the 18th and 19th centuries is estimated to have killed between 50,000 and 100,000 people. In a strikingly similar occupational pursuit, the band of assailants engaged in ‘mugging’ on the streets of Karachi appears to have done far better.
Zubair Habib, the newly appointed chief of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), confirmed that in 2015 alone, 37,390 incidents of mugging at gunpoint were reported in Karachi. What he did not reveal was the fact that only one out of five victims ever bothers to lodge an FIR.
Today, ‘mugging’ is a far more sophisticated and efficient version of its forerunner – ‘thuggee’. While ‘thugs’ looped a ‘rumaal’ or an handkerchief around a victim’s neck, ‘muggers’ use sophisticated weapons. The use of weapons expedites the decision-making process and the deal is clinched within a matter of seconds.
The arrival of the British and their rigorous methods to fight crime meant that ‘thugs’ had met their match. A ‘Thuggee and Dacoity’ Department was established in 1835 and William Henry Sleeman was appointed as its first superintendent. Using simple techniques and plenty of common sense, Sleeman began to meticulously map each attack site and profile ‘thuggee’ gangs and their techniques. His specially trained police officers, disguised as merchants and travellers would infiltrate gangs and take preemptive actions to capture gangsters. The captured ‘thugs’ were given the incentive to save themselves if they informed on their accomplices. Special trial courts were set up and more than 3,700 ‘thugs’ were either hanged or ‘transported for life’. In a short span of about 10 years, Sleeman succeeded in eradicating what had plagued the Subcontinent for over two hundred years.
The Sindh police had only to follow the recipe of William Sleeman to eradicate the modern version of ‘thuggee’ in Karachi. The process can be started by identifying 10-20 intersections notorious for mugging incidents, installing cameras to cover these locations, stationing four armed policemen (in plain clothes) at each of these intersections in a manner that they have a full view of the location and by closely monitoring each intersection from a central control room. The police on duty can be alerted as soon as a mugging incident is observed (if the event has not already been detected). The police can use stun (or real) guns to disable and arrest culprits. The camera evidence should be enough to prosecute them. The element of surprise is a key factor in combating this crime. Finally, close-circuited cameras are discreetly relocated at different potential mugging sites so that muggers are never sure of when and what location is being actively monitored. It is most likely that the police would reject these simple methods and instead opt for more complex, cost-intensive and externally-funded options.
Why is the police hesitating to handle a localised version of the task that Sleeman could accomplish 200 years ago? Why has a dedicated ‘Mugging and Dacoity’ Department not been set up thus far? Why is a major part of the Sindh police employed to protect some 1,000 VIPs in the province, leaving people at the mercy of muggers and target-killers?
Along with the specially designed ‘mugger traps’, a number of other steps ought to be taken in parallel. A nationwide hotline for reporting the loss of cell phones should be advertised and implemented. Cancellation of SIM and IMEI should be made obligatory on mobile companies and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) as soon as information is received about a phone theft/snatching. Phones with missing or fudged IMEIs should not be allowed to operate and the PTA should assume the overall responsibility to ensure compliance. A national database of cancelled IMEIs should be maintained on the PTA’s website. The sale and purchase of phones (new and second-hand) must be traceable to equipment IMEI and the CNIC of the customer. If in the 19thcentury, William Sleeman could single-handedly eliminate ‘thuggee’ throughout India, how can a 21st century nuclear state not stop mugging in Karachi?
The writer is a management systems consultant and a freelance writer on social issues
ISLAMABAD, Dec 30: An unassuming and calm-looking Aslam Azhar, once he was off his job, led a peaceful life in a serene (rented) house off the Margalla Road in Islamabad, away from the glamour and gabble of the city. The octogenarian exuded a strange satisfaction, eyes beaming and face aglow with a faint smile when I met him for an interview (which lasted for about an hour) in November 2014. “Looking back, I am pretty pleased with myself,” he stated, his deep voice echoing across the room.
Aslam passed away on Tuesday, after undergoing prostate surgery last month. The 83-year-old leaves behind two sons, Usama Azhar, Arieb Azhar and a daughter Umaima Azhar. His wife Nasreen Azhar is a renowned human and women’s rights activist.
A recluse that he was, after spending an eventful life in the world of broadcast he had retreated to his favourite world of books. He was an avid reader of the history of civilisations and anthropology. He owed his love for words and books to his father AD Azhar who was a government servant in British India. Those who knew Aslam, told me he does not meet people unless it becomes extremely unavoidable. True it was; he seldom spoke to the media.
Born in September of 1932, in his early 30s the legendary broadcaster was heading the nascent PTV. He well deservedly had many firsts to his name in the history of broadcasting in the country. Throughout his career, Aslam remained associated with radio and television in coveted positions till the end of Benazir Bhutto’s first government in 1990, except for the 10 years when Ziaul Haq ruled. Yet he had no wish to pen any memoirs. He was content with the recordings conducted by PTV for its archives and sundry interviews by the print media. Think what you will.
Azhar did his Bachelors from Government College University, Lahore. He for a brief period after completing his Masters from Cambridge University in 1954 served with Burma Oil Company. A man of many talents who soon realised his muse lay elsewhere; he joined the government’s department of films and publications.
Around that time the then president Ayub Khan and his information secretary Altaf Gauhar were exploring options to bring the ‘magic box’ to Pakistan to propagate the agenda of the government. For this purpose, they were in negotiations with various international companies.
It was November 26, 1964 when the Japanese Nippon Electric Company (NEC) started a three-month pilot project in the lawns of Radio Pakistan, Lahore. Aslam, the man who had experience of both theatre and broadcasting, was the first choice to helm the project. The government being apprehensive of the success of the project asked NEC to bear all the expenses, which it would reimburse only if the project turns out to be a success. With Aslam and his team in charge, the government soon had to write a cheque for the Japanese.
Former federal secretary I A Imtiazi in the book This is PTV: Another Day, Another World, writes that Aslam “was the real founding father of PTV who gathered a team of raw persons and taught them to write, present and produce programmes skillfully.”
For Aslam, surprisingly enough, the governments of Ayub and Yahya Khan were less interfering. Advertisements were rolling in at a steady pace and he had reasonable amount of editorial independence. He made a conscious effort to introduce folk singers like Tufail Niazi and Saeen Akhter, in his own words, to bridge the gap between the urban and rural population, and started shows for the youth.
He also remembered the time when Ayub was obsessed with celebrating the “so-called decade of development”. He had admitted he was compelled to do a series of propaganda programmes but was quite happy to see the people, despite all the propaganda, “throw him out eventually”.
People were absolutely delighted to see the faces of those they had heard on radio, Aslam had recalled during the interview. He established television stations in Karachi, Lahore and Quetta, bringing quality programming and latest equipment. He had to his credit, among other initiatives, the first PTV award ceremony, 1982-83’s Music 89, marathon transmissions on 1970 elections and the Islamic Summit held in Lahore.
When BBC’s David Frost visited Pakistan in 1970, Aslam along with Yasmin Shahid Hasan and Shoaib Hashmi interviewed him. Frost was famous for his show Face to Face. Aslam produced a similar program named Roobaroo, hosted by Mohsin Sherazi, which became quite popular. Khuda ki Basti and many other plays got a new lease of life under his able leadership.
As the first professional managing director of PTV between 1971 and 1976, he established the Peshawar and Quetta centres in a record three-month time. Before the 1977 elections, realising that Aslam would not do his bidding; Zulfikar Ali Bhutto transferred him to the less lucrative PTV Training Academy.
Later with Zia on the saddle, Aslam had to move to Karachi where he started Dastak Theatre group to highlight issues of the working classes. Short plays on social themes relating to workers, students and women were adapted, translated and performed for the workers’ communities.
During the first government of Benazir, Aslam was appointed chairman of both Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) and PTV. During the chairmanship he gave clear instructions to all stations to be impartial and unbiased, supported unionism and encouraged programming in regional languages. Benazir was soon sent packing and so was Aslam; he was accused of bringing back liberalism to broadcasting. That was curtains for his professional career.
The soldier’s soldier
He sided with the left, at least ideologically if not practically. “My father always stood for and worked towards the ideals of the left,” said Arieb. In the early days of PTV, Arieb recalled, he was much respected by the workers’ union because he always considered himself a man of people. He refused to have an AC installed in his room until the whole building was provided with adequate air conditioning.
He who established television in Pakistan, did not watch it during his last years. “In television everything is there whereas in a book a reader can use his imagination. With a book the brain grows; with television it just becomes stale.” Aslam had said mediocrity is built into the medium. “It is severely limited due to its dependence on money. A writer only needs a pen, a painter a brush but TV needs money,” he had said.
However, in the same breath, he defended the broadcasting of today, saying a comparison with old times is not fair as in those times people only bought what was needed whereas today’s is more of a consumer society. “He who pays the piper, calls the tune. Why worry about it?”
In recognition for his services, the government conferred upon him Tamgha-e-Imtiaz in 1968.
Renowned playwright Munnu Bhai reminisced the day he wrote his first play for the 1965 war on the insistence of Aslam, saying he had finished writing it in half an hour.
He said Aslam was a man of vision and the right temperament needed to undertake such a big project. “He in a very short time established the Pakistani drama. India showed our plays from those times in their acting academies. He used to tell us that drama is about reaction and not action. Elaborating further, he would say a joke becomes a joke only if people laugh. Merely telling a joke does not make it so,” recalled Munnu Bhai.
Long ago, on an email group condoling someone’s death, Aslam had written, “The world is rich that she has lived.” Something, that aptly applies to the gentleman himself.
Former STAR reporter Saleem Shahzad (Credit: thenews.com)In a protest to mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists (2 November), international organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Monday renamed 12 streets in Paris after journalists who have been murdered, tortured or disappeared.
One of the streets has been named after Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in Islamabad four years ago.
Shahzad wrote about terrorism and security for the Asia Times Online and other publications. The 40-year-old reporter’s body bore signs of torture when it was found two days after he had gone missing in May 2011.
“The cases of impunity that we are presenting are terrible symbols of passivity or deliberate inaction on the part of certain governments,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.
“This International Day is an occasion for paying homage to the victims and for reminding governments of their obligation to protect journalists and to combat impunity. Those who target journalists will one day be held to account for their actions,” he said.
The United Nations marks November 2 as the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, to reaffirm its commitment to advocate for the safety of journalists throughout the world.
The day serves to remind us of unresolved crimes against journalists, and draws attention to unsolved cases where violence has been used against journalists who are simply exercising their freedom of expression and duty of reporting.
According to RSF, nearly 800 journalists have been killed in connection with their work in the past ten years, 48 of whom were killed since the start of 2015. The organisation is calling for the appointment of a special representative to the UN secretary-general on the safety of journalists.
Women in Education (Credit: article.wn.com)IN 2013, Pakistan ranked 135th out of 136 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index Report of the World Economic Forum. In 2014, eight more countries were included in the report, but Pakistan remained second last at 141 out of 142 countries. It is significant that Pakistan ranked at 112 in 2006, the first year of the report, and since then, its position has been steadily deteriorating every year.
Even in the ‘Political Empowerment’ sub-index of the GGGI report, Pakistan had slipped from 64th place in 2013 to 85th in 2014 due to the weakening of women’s position in parliament. In comparison, Bangladesh was at 68th position, while Rwanda and Burundi ranked as seventh and 17th respectively. These three are low-income countries, while Pakistan is rated as a low middle-income country.
The main purpose of the GGGI is to provide a framework for measuring gender-based disparities in different countries and tracking their progress in four key areas: access to economic opportunities, political representation, education facilities and health services. Since the first global gender gap index in 2006, about 80pc of countries have managed to reduce their gender gaps. On the other hand, there are a few countries that have either made no progress, or are even falling behind their previous rankings.
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The situation in the country is steadily deteriorating for women who continue to be sidelined in mainstream economic activities.
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In Pakistan, the situation is steadily deteriorating: women remain sidelined from mainstream economic activities mainly due to the dominant religious and patriarchal ideology that continues to confine, subjugate and violate their space despite their having equal rights under the Constitution. The percentage of female employment in the non-agricultural sector in Pakistan was last measured at 13.2pc in 2013 by the World Bank. Needless to say, this percentage is abysmally low. It is also one of the 10 lowest-performing countries on the GGGI sub-index of ‘Economic Participation’ and one of the three countries with the lowest percentage of firms with female participation in ownership.
Before the 18th Amendment, the ministry of women development, social welfare and special education used to work on issues related to the improvement of women’s status in society, and implemented the global agenda of CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) and the Beijing Platform for Action in conjunction with forums such as the UN Commission on the Status of Women, the Commonwealth, UNIFEM and UNDP.
During its existence from 1979 to 2010, the ministry took many initiatives designed to improve women’s access to education, health and legal services, and enhance their participation in the political economy of the country.
For example, it was on the recommendations of this ministry that the principle of reservation of seats for women in the National Assembly and the provincial assemblies was revived and their representation ensured in the local bodies. The First Women Bank Ltd was established with the ministry providing credit lines for micro-credit facilities for women to set up bakeries, boutiques, beauty parlours, catering centres, tuition centres, grocery stores, and poultry, dairy and fish farming. Women study centres were established at various universities, while skill development centres, women’s polytechnics, computer centres, literacy centres, crisis centres for women in distress, child care centres and working women’s hostels were set up in different parts of the country.
Subsequent to devolution, the ministry was dissolved and its functions transferred to the provinces which do not appear to have the capacity or political will to develop an alternative narrative to the rampant obscurantism proliferating throughout the country. The state needs to emerge from its stupor to stop this shameful slide of half of its population into the dark ages, keeping in view not only global requirements, but also its own economic imperatives.
In order to improve outcomes for the women of Pakistan, the government needs to create a new organisational mechanism on the pattern of World Economic Forum’s gender parity task forces for Turkey, Japan and Mexico to reduce national gender gaps in three years. These task forces comprise members of the government from the relevant ministries of gender, human rights, law or population welfare in each country, and representatives of private-sector organisations and corporations. This composition allows for greater dialogue between the government and the private sector to discuss the rationale behind reducing gender disparity, developing a common vision and aligning all stakeholders in a well-articulated policy framework, so that realistic targets can be set, strategies chalked out, and benchmarks introduced for mobilisation, accountability and impact.
The recommendations of the Gender Parity Group are available for any country that wishes to improve the status of women in their own national interest. These are based on best practices such as women-focused education and health initiatives, mentoring and training women for high-level professional positions, flexible working hours, salary parity, career planning, etc that can be implemented through government policy, legislation and private-sector support. Top-down approaches towards promoting women’s leadership have also been very successful. For example, in Norway, public-listed companies are required to have 40pc women on their boards.
Some top-down policy measures can be taken immediately by the government in Pakistan, such as announcing high job quotas in the civil service, accelerated promotions, nominations to high-profile positions in the public sector, and making it mandatory that women are represented in greater numbers on the boards of private-sector companies, banks, chambers of commerce and industry and other similar institutions. The private sector should also be urged to ensure that women are adequately represented in the employment force, including the supply and distribution chains of manufacturing companies.
These measures, though only skimming the surface, will nevertheless increase women’s visibility, generate confidence, create role models and provide increased space for leveraging their access to education and health, the other sub-indices which are critical prerequisites for inclusive and sustainable economic growth.
Sabeen with mother (Credit: nylive.nytimes.com)It was a 9mm gun, probably a Stoeger. Before Saad Aziz got this “samaan” through an associate, by his own admission, he had already plotted a murder. On the evening of Friday, April 24, 2015, he met four other young men, all well-educated like him, somewhere on Karachi’s Tariq Road to finalise and carry out the plot. As dusk deepened into night, they set off towards Defence Housing Society Phase II Extension on three motorcycles. Their destination: a café-cum-communal space – The Second Floor or T2F – where an event, Unsilencing Balochistan: take two, was under way. Their target: Sabeen Mahmud, 40, the founder and director of T2F.
Two of Aziz’s associates, he says, “were just roaming around in the vicinity of T2F”. A third was keeping an eye on the street outside. Aziz himself was riding a motorcycle driven by one Aliur Rehman, also mentioned as Tony in the police record. When he received the message that Mahmud had left T2F, he says, he followed her. “Suzuki Swift, AWH 541,” he repeats her car’s make and registration number.
As the car stopped at a signal less than 500 metres to the north of T2F, “Tony rode up alongside it.” Mahmud was in the driving seat, Aziz says. “Next to her was her mother, I think. That is what we found out from the news later. There was a man sitting in the back. I fired the gun four or five times at her.”
“There wasn’t one particular reason to target her; she was generally promoting liberal, secular values. There were those campaigns of hers, the demonstration outside Lal Masjid [in Islamabad], Pyaar ho jaane do (let there be love) on Valentine’s Day and so on.”
Sitting in a sparsely furnished room within Karachi Police’s Crime Investigation Department (CID), Aziz appears at ease even in blindfold. Recounting the events of that evening, he never sounds hurried or under duress.
After shooting Mahmud, he says he and Tony turned left from the signal towards Punjab Chowrangi and reached Sharae-e-Faisal, crossing Teen Talwar in Clifton on their way. While still on the motorcycle, he messaged others to get back to Tariq Road. Once there, he just picked up his motorcycle and they all dispersed. “We only got confirmation of her death later from the news,” he says. “At that moment [of shooting], there is no way of confirming if the person is dead. You just do it and get out of there.”
It was on February 13, 2015, when he says he decided that Mahmud had to die. That evening, he was at T2F, attending an event, The Karachi “Situation”: Exploring Responses. “It was something she said during the talk,” he recalls. “That we shouldn’t be afraid of the Taliban, we should stand up to them, demonstrate against them, something like that. That is when we made up our minds.” Later in the conversation, though, he adds, “There wasn’t one particular reason to target her: she was generally promoting liberal, secular values. There were those campaigns of hers, the demonstration outside Lal Masjid [in Islamabad], Pyaar ho jaane do (let there be love) on Valentine’s Day and so on.” He laughs softly, almost bashfully, as he mentions the last.
Aziz remembers visiting The Karachi “Situation” seminar with Tony who, the police say, remains on the run. Pictures and video footage of the event show Aziz sitting at the end of a row, close to the entrance. Next to him is Tony, a round-faced young man with a dark complexion. The police say he is an engineering graduate from the National University of Sciences and Technology, Rawalpindi campus. “Tony had a Twitter account under a fake name and he used to follow Sabeen’s tweets very closely,” says Aziz. He also mentions another source of information. “About four weeks [after the discussion on Karachi], when I got emails about events being held there, I sent Tony there a few times to check if her car was there. It wasn’t.”
On April 24, 2015, Aziz says, he told Tony to go there again. “When he confirmed her car was there, we made the plan there and then.”
By that time, he confesses, he had taken part in 20 major and minor “operations” in Karachi. These include an attack – just eight days before Mahmud’s assassination – on American academic Debra Lobo, who taught at a college in Karachi, bank heists to put together money for their hit-and-run activities, multiple attempts to target the police and the Rangers and grenade attacks on co-education schools in Gulshan-e-Iqbal (on February 3, 2015) and North Nazimabad (on March 18, 2015).
Nineteen days after Mahmud’s murder, Aziz says he took part in an attack that elicited worldwide shock and condemnation: the assassination of 43 members of the Ismaili Shia community, including women and children, travelling in a bus in the Safoora Goth area on the outskirts of Karachi.
Aziz appears as a mild-mannered young man of medium height and build, with a trimmed beard. He makes a little joke about how he can instantly tell which law enforcement or intelligence agency the person asking him questions belongs to. “The first thing the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] want to know is whether there are any links with RAW [the Indian intelligence agency]; CID is interested in the funding aspect; and the police keep hammering on about what other wardaat (hits) we’ve been involved in.”
Aziz calls himself a Salafi, though his father says the family follows Sunni, not Salafi, Islam. When an interrogator asks him why he and his associates targeted Ismaili Shias, he cites their sectarian affiliation as the reason. “It is perfectly acceptable to take the lives of women and children for that reason.”
Aziz’s radicalisation began in 2009, following a visit to Saudi Arabia for umrah with his family. Upon his return to Pakistan, he decided to read translations of the Quran. “Until then I had only read it once in Arabic.” (One investigator, however, reports that Aziz could not recite certain Quranic verses that every practising Muslim recites at least once a day during Isha prayers.)
For a while, he joined the Tableeghi Jamaat. Then, he took to attending lectures by a scholar, Shaykh Kamaluddin Ahmed, a professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums) at the time, whose Sufi interpretation of Islam is distinct from what the Tableeghi Jamaat stands for. “But neither [Ahmed] nor Tableeghi Jamaat even discussed jihad,” he says. “It was over time, primarily through reading the Quran, that I developed an inclination towards jihad.”
Aziz then met Tony, whom he suspected had contacts with militants. Tony made him wait for some time before introducing him to one Haris, an al-Qaeda operative. “[Haris] was heading al-Qaeda’s daawati (recruitment) wing for Pakistan at the time. I joined this wing at the end of 2010,” says Aziz.
In September 2013, Haris, whose real name is said to be Abu Zar, was arrested from a hostel of the Punjab University in Lahore, along with two others, for alleged links with al-Qaeda. In the last 22 months, the authorities have not produced him in any court of law for a trial. Police sources in Lahore say Haris and his associates are in ISI’s custody. This information, however, could not be confirmed through other sources.
In 2011, Aziz went to Waziristan for training where, he says, he was attached to a group headed by Ahmad Farooq, deputy head of al-Qaeda in the subcontinent and a former student of Punjab University. (Farooq was killed in an American drone strike in January 2015 in North Waziristan.)
By 2013, Aziz says he was disillusioned and frustrated. Instead of allowing him take part in terrorist operations, his handler Haris limited him to media duties — such as managing online jihadist publications. “In mid-2013, I met Haider Abbas,” says Aziz. Abbas introduced him to Tahir Minhas alias Saeen, identified by the police as a member of al-Qaeda.
As a senior, experienced commander, Minhas set the ground rules for the group that Aziz joined. “We all used aliases; I only know Tony by his real name,” says Aziz. He got his own alias — Tin Tin. “None of us would ask for the members’ real names, addresses or anything that could identify them in case one of us was arrested. That was on Minhas’s instructions.”
The cell had no designated ‘safe house’ to meet. Minhas often called its members for meetings to Jan Japan Motors, a car auction site on the Super Highway. He also selected the targets. The attack on Mahmud, though, was different. Aziz says it was on his own initiative. “Tahir wasn’t even there that day.”
In 2014, the sudden ascendancy of the Islamic State (IS) and its territorial gains in Iraq and Syria became a lightning rod for militants across the globe. In January this year, IS announced its expansion into Khorasan, a historical region comprising parts of present-day Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and some Central Asian countries. Several factions of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) immediately joined it.
“We just finished a 16-day joint investigation but we have not established any direct or indirect link between him and Daesh. Al-Qaeda’s tentacles, however, touch him in multiple ways. We are sure he is with al-Qaeda.”
“Among my acquaintances there was already a lot of discussion about the merits of al-Qaeda and Daesh [the Arabic acronym for IS]. Many of us felt that al-Qaeda was reduced to mainly talk and little action,” Aziz says. “We were in Waziristan when the creation of the [IS’s] Khorasan [chapter] was announced, and we pledged loyalty to its emir, [former TTP commander] Hafiz Saeed Khan.” (A senior official of the Intelligence Bureau in Peshawar says Khan was “in Tor Dara area in Khyber Agency’s Tirah valley in January 2015”, the time period to which Aziz refers.)
Subsequently, he says, some of his associates did pro-IS wall chalking and left propaganda pamphlets in parts of Karachi, especially at the scenes of some of the attacks they carried out. Some of the people working with him, he claims, have gone to Syria as part of an effort to strengthen their connection with the IS leadership there.
Weeks after Mahmud’s murder, Jaadu, her white Persian cat, would sit expectantly by the door of her house for hours every evening, waiting for a familiar footfall on the steps outside. Inside, her mother, Mahenaz Mahmud, sits on a chair looking like her daughter might have 20 years in the future — had she had that much time. The mother also exudes the same warmth, intelligence and artlessness as the daughter — and, since Mahmud’s death, a stoicism that would move a stone to tears.
“On April 24, Sabeen made breakfast for us (Mahenaz and Mahenaz’s mother) as usual. That was her routine. She would switch on the kettle, run to her computer, then she would put the bread in the toaster,” Mahenaz recalls with a chuckle. “She didn’t want me to have a cold slice, so she would toast the second slice only after I had finished the first.” They would usually chat away during breakfasts. “We would talk about all kinds of things.” Sometimes, Mahmud would seek her mother’s advice. “She would ask me what I thought of something being done at T2F. Sometimes we would flog some philosophical concept. We would share articles, then discuss them… there was lots that we talked about.”
That day, though, Mahenaz sensed something unusual. “I don’t know whether it was anxiety but there was some element about this Baloch missing people event, especially because of the talk that was cancelled at LUMS [under orders from the ISI],” she says. Mahmud was not moderating the session; she hadn’t even organised it. “Someone else wanted to do it and she had agreed to provide the space,” says Mahenaz. “But she talked to some people about it and then said to me “It’ll be ok, Amma””.
After breakfast, the mother went to work – she is an academic programmes advisor at a teacher training institute – but planned to attend the talk on the Baloch missing persons. “I hadn’t been to any event for a long time because I get quite exhausted by the evening but that day I had a very strong feeling that I must be around her.”
Following the event, around 9pm, Mahmud was planning to drop her mother home, pick up a friend and go to another friend’s place for dinner. “When Sabeen came out [of T2F], I remember she was in a hurry, and she told the driver to sit in the back. I got in the seat next to her and we drove off.”
A short distance away, the Sunset Boulevard traffic signal turned red and their car came to a stop. “It is impossible for me to process those five, 10 seconds,” Mahenaz says quietly. “I was talking to Sabeen, and my face was turned towards her. She was looking in front. A motorcycle came up along the side she was sitting, much too close for comfort. My eyes became riveted on a gun in someone’s hand. I said to Sabeen, “What do you think he wants? He’s got a gun.” I thought it was a mugging. All this must have taken only three or four seconds. Then the window shattered, and Sabeen’s head just tilted to one side; her eyes were open. There was not a moan, not a groan, not a whimper. Then pandemonium broke out around us.”
Mahmud was shot five times. Her mother also took two bullets: one in her back and another that, after going through Mahmud’s body, went into her arm and out again. She says she remembers feeling there was something “happening with my body but I wasn’t sure what.” She was too focussed on her daughter to be sure of anything else. “I was saying ‘Sabeen talk to me, give me some indication that you can hear what I am saying.’ Even though I knew that she had gone, somewhere there was a glimmer of hope.”
She herself was taken to the Aga Khan University Hospital for treatment. “Next morning, I started demanding that I wanted to go home. I was told that Sabeen’s body was being kept in a morgue and I thought she should be put on the way to her last journey immediately.” With a bullet still lodged in her back, she left the hospital to bury her only child.
When Mahenaz Mahmud learnt that the police had arrested some educated young men for carrying out the murder, it was a shock to her, almost a betrayal of some of her most closely held convictions. “I felt terrified. I am a person who teaches my students that we all have our biases and that we put people into boxes because we don’t have time to find out about each and every person.”
In the third week of June, T2F organised a qawwali session to celebrate her daughter’s birthday posthumously. While observing the audience from the back of the room, she couldn’t shake off a nagging thought. “I was looking at the young boys in the audience and wondering, ‘So what are they thinking? What is really going on in their head?’ Normally I wouldn’t have thought that about young people. I would be happy that all kinds of young people come to T2F. Now I am really scared about how these young men’s minds can be messed with.”
The senselessness of the murder is difficult for her to process. “I want to ask them, why? What happened to you? What was it that bothered you about Sabeen? Was it something she stood for? Did you just want to make an example out of her? Did you think that taking a human life is such a small matter? But then I realise that these people think very differently. Their paradigms are different. Their schemas are different.”
In another part of Karachi, sitting in her home studio, architect Marvi Mazhar, one of Mahmud’s closest friends, says: “I always knew. I always thought that if someone gets to her, it’ll be someone educated. Sabeen had to deal with a lot of hate speech, and from people who were all educated. They used to write, they used to tweet, they were all very tech-savvy. Every time she’d complain that these young bachas, I wish I could have chai with them, talk to them.”
Mazhar recalls an incident from last November. At the Creative Karachi Festival organised by T2F, the azan went unnoticed for a few moments in the hubbub and a young man angrily demanded that the music be stopped instantly. “Sabeen went up to the guy, took him aside and spoke to him for a while; a little later, he actually brought flowers for her by way of apology. There was this strange magic about her,” she says with a wistful smile.
In the days leading up to her death, Mahmud was particularly restless, says Mazhar. On Tuesday, April 21, there was a get-together of friends at Mazhar’s place where Mahmud was “a little agitated”. Mazhar heard her saying to someone on the phone, “If we are not going to do it now, then we won’t do it because after that I am leaving for London and I don’t have time.” She assumes this was about the talk on Baloch missing persons. “Her heart was not into this talk, mainly because she had so much going on otherwise. She believed in it, she believed that the Baloch must be given a platform. But, I felt, judging from the conversations I have had with her, she was waiting for a signal, waiting for someone to tell her not to do this.”
A sturdy metal barrier bars entry into a rough stretch at the end of Beaumont Road in Karachi’s Civil Lines. Only a few street lights illuminate the area; that, along with the dilapidated condition of the road, is perhaps deliberate, designed to make things a little more difficult for terrorists looking to target the CID headquarters that looms up on the right, after the barrier. They did exactly that on November 10, 2010, killing at least 17 people and injuring over 100 in a massive truck bombing. Access inside the CID premises now lies behind a raft of concrete barriers, designed to minimise the possibility of another attack.
Raja Umar Khattab, Senior Superintendent Police, strides into his office at around 10.30pm after taraweeh prayers. A stocky, barrel-chested man, he is wearing a bright yellow T-shirt with khaki pants, rolled up at the bottom and rubber slippers. He speaks in rapid-fire sentences; names of terrorists roll off his tongue like those of old acquaintances. Several phone calls interrupt conversation; a senior official has misplaced his cell phone and Khattab is trying to get it traced. “Sir, don’t worry. I’ll make sure it is back with you soon,” he says reassuringly.
As the CID’s lead investigator, Khattab is flushed with pride over the recent arrest of what he calls a major terrorist cell. He has no doubt the police under him have the men who killed Mahmud and committed the Safoora Goth massacre, apart from various other crimes.
Khattab believes it was a failed romantic relationship that sowed the seed for Aziz’s radicalisation.
The Sindh Rangers, too, have made a separate claim of arresting a mastermind of the attack on Ismaili Shias. “He has nothing to do with Safoora Goth incident; he never did,” says Khattab, shaking his head vigorously, when asked about the man arrested by the Rangers and reportedly linked to the detained office-bearers of the Fishermen’s Co-Operative Society. “When you go to a court to seek remand, you put in extra things. Otherwise it can get difficult to get a remand,” is how he explains the reason for the claim made by the Rangers.
More importantly, Aziz’s claim about his allegiance with IS meets with a similarly dismissive response. “We just finished a 16-day joint investigation but we have not established any direct or indirect link between him and Daesh. Al-Qaeda’s tentacles, however, touch him in multiple ways. We are sure he is with al-Qaeda,” says Khattab.
“And why should it be so surprising that these terrorists are so educated? There were always educated people in al-Qaeda. Educated people don’t join TTP. It is the madrasa-educated ones who join TTP. They have the desire for jihad but these [educated jihadis] are ideologues. They envision grander things,” he adds. And for that reason, Khattab states, they are far more dangerous: They can be anywhere — the shopping mall, the university, saying their prayers beside you.
Khattab believes it was a failed romantic relationship that sowed the seed for Aziz’s radicalisation. “He became disillusioned with worldly pursuits,” says the police officer. “When he joined Unilever for an internship [in the second half of 2010], he met Aliur Rehman – alias Tony – who was also working there.” Tony, a member of Dr Israr Ahmed’s Lahore-based Islamic movement, Tanzeem-e-Islami, was to play a vital role in Aziz’s radicalisation, inspiring him to fight for a Muslim caliphate, says the police officer.
But it was Minhas, the police claim, who turned Aziz into what he has become. In Khattab’s words: “Saad says Tahir motivated him so much that he no longer has any fear of killing people. His role in targeted killings was that of the shooter; by my reckoning, he has killed about 20 people.”
CID officials maintain that the terrorist group of which Aziz was a member had split from a larger al-Qaeda formation eight to 10 months ago. “While Tahir is its askari (militant) commander, he in turn answers to Abdullah Yousuf, who is in Helmand, Afghanistan. The other group formed by this rupture is led by Haji Sahib, Ramzi Yousef’s older brother,” says Khattab. He believes the crime spree by Aziz’s group, which hadn’t yet given itself a name, was aimed at raising its profile within the terrorist fraternity so that someone “owned” it.
Tracking down the group, he says, was not easy. They operated under aliases, did not use mobile phones and, instead, employed a Wi-Fi-based application called Talkray to communicate. The CID first picked up their trail sometime in 2014 through some men who were in prison, Khattab says. Based on the information obtained from them – he does not quite elaborate how but only says “we did some working on them” – the police picked up two former Karachi University students who had joined al-Qaeda through contacts at the campus and whose job was to maintain the organisation’s website. “We soon figured out that there is a network of educated al-Qaeda members in Gulistan-e-Jauhar, Gulshan-e-Iqbal and other areas around Karachi University,” he says.
The clues led the police to a sports teacher at Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology, who had set up a laboratory in his house in Gulshan-e-Iqbal where, along with his son and nephew, he used to teach young men to assemble Improvised Explosive Devices. The police also found a lot of written material that led them to conclude that a large al-Qaeda group was active in Karachi. “We found out it had two wings — one askari and one daawati.” The police do not divulge whether or not they have arrested and interrogated the teacher or, for that matter, any other details about his identity and whereabouts.
While investigating the people arrested earlier, the police learnt that Minhas was the group’s commander. Born in a village in the Jhelum district of Punjab, Minhas is a resident of Kotri, near Hyderabad, and has been in and out of police’s hands since 2007. According to an official source, one looking very closely into the massacre of Ismaili Shias, Minhas, (a matriculate, according to this source), had a thriving poultry business in Kotri at one point. He is also, says the same source, rabidly anti-Shia and has been a member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a banned organisation involved in hundreds of acts of sectarian and religious terrorism.
Khattab and his team of investigators describe Minhas as a highly sophisticated militant, with his own signature style. They claim to have discovered important similarities in the terrorist activities he has carried out: in all of these, silencer-fitted imported Glock, Caracal and Stoeger pistols are used; he and his associates always hit their targets in the head. “By the time the Safoora Goth massacre happened, we had gathered lots of little clues,” says Khattab.
Some other clues materialised in September 2014 after a suspect named Amir Abbas managed to escape during an encounter with the police but his wife was injured and arrested. “We found plenty of incriminating material at his house and worked on it quietly from September [2014] to April [2015], matching and cross matching the evidence,” says Khattab.
This finally led to the arrest of Minhas and his associates, including Aziz. “When we recovered their laptops, their browsing history helped us connect them to other cases. “Had we been even one day late, all these boys would have left Karachi for Quetta, Waziristan etc.”
The CID officers also show what they call a hit list. These are A-4 size prints, carrying no information about their senders and receivers, but complete with photos and addresses of the targets, which include naval officers, intelligence agency personnel, police officers, showbiz personalities, journalists, workers of non-government organisations and three fashion designers. In some cases, the prints also carry details of the targets’ daily routine. When asked why the group wanted to target fashion designers, Aziz is quoted by Khattab to have said, “You kill three. No one will design sleeveless clothes again.”
At a distance from the police’s neatly tied narration, events take a rather mysterious turn. A former academic at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) who once taught Aziz, and who has since moved to Europe, recalls his student as “being extremely close to [an intelligence agency]”. In April 2014, this academic needed a police clearance report for some work. Having tried unsuccessfully for a week to obtain it, he asked Aziz for help. “He told me it was no problem, and that he could get it for me in 10 minutes. He was wrong; it took him an hour.” This alleged link, however, could not be verified through any other source.
Aziz’s purported reasons for having targeted Mahmud are also rather mystifying. Many Pakistanis, weary of having their lives held to ransom by rampant militancy, make anti-Taliban statements the way she made at the talk on the Karachi situation. And on February 14 this year, Aziz’s restaurant had a promotional offer targeted at customers and their “loved ones” — complete with the image of two hearts placed right next to each other. Isn’t this just another way of saying pyaar ho jaane do? His account of planning her murder also mixes up a few details. He states that Tony was unable to spot Mahmud’s car outside T2F between the February 13 talk on Karachi and the April 24 discussion on Baloch missing persons. (Mahmud did leave Karachi on February 19 for an overseas trip and returned on March 5. She briefly went out of the country again from March 25 to April 5.) Between her arrival from abroad and her assassination, there were at least five events at T2F and she was also attending to her office work at T2F every day during this period. Can, then, her murder precisely on the day of Unsilencing Balochistan: Take Two be seen as purely a coincidence?
Whatever the motivation behind his actions – whether he is serving the ends of as-yet unknown masters or assuaging his own desire to ‘right’ society’s moral compass – his confession suggests that he is part of a cell carrying out orders issued by a central command structure. This is particularly evident in the Safoora Goth incident: an attack of that size and precision cannot be carried out by a motley group of like-minded individuals.
While Aziz has been singing in police custody, his confession may not stand the test of a trial in a court of law. Confessions before the police or a JIT, or any executive authority for that matter, have no legal standing. “[Only] a confession before a judicial magistrate has legal sanctity because a judge is an independent authority,” says Karachi-based lawyer Faisal Siddiqi. “A judge is not part of the investigation so he has no vested interest [in its outcome].”
Without independently verifiable evidence, it is virtually impossible to successfully prosecute any accused on the basis of their confessions alone. Ajmal Pahari, an alleged target killer, for instance, was acquitted in 2011 notwithstanding his on-camera confession of having committed over 100 murders. (He was soon re-arrested on additional murder charges, however, and is currently behind bars.) Aziz shows little concern about his trial and punishment when asked about his future. “What are my plans now?” he says completely unfazed, and laughing slowly. “We’ll go to prison, but we’ll break out of there. Then, we’ll make plans.”
THERE is a point at which legitimate national security concerns tip over into paranoia, xenophobia and insularity. The Pakistani state, including the civilian government, appears to be dangerously close to that point.
Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan’s ongoing war on INGOs and local NGOs with external funding and links increasingly appears to be about some misguided sense of nationalism as opposed to anything to do with genuine security. Thousands — thousands — of foreigners have over the years come to Pakistan in the guise of NGO workers to undermine the national interest and harm the country’s security, the interior minister told the Senate on Thursday.
That is preposterous. The interior minister’s aggressive rhetoric has deliberately and very provocatively equated virtually anyone in the NGO sector, though especially those linked to the West, with a threat to this country.
The NGO community may well be wondering if Chaudhry Nisar’s rhetoric has crossed the line into incitement — after all, NGOs often operate in insecure areas at great personal threat to their employees from all manner of violent elements in society. Should the interior minister not feel a sense of responsibility towards the many good, decent, hardworking and honourable men and women who have dedicated their professional lives to improving the lot of Pakistan’s most vulnerable citizens?
The problem though goes far beyond the interior minister and his crusade. A narrow, security-centric worldview was once upon a time something that mostly existed in the security establishment. Over the years, however, politicians have increasingly begun to mimic their military counterparts in terms of viewing the Western world with suspicion. The public at large too appears to have increasingly conspiratorial views about an international plot, devised by the West of course, to undermine the security and stability of Pakistan. Anyone who hails from a Western country is viewed as a potential enemy out to destabilise the state.
Contrast that with the regional experience — whether in South Asia or the Gulf. Foreigners are welcomed, indeed eagerly recruited, for their productivity and skill sets. Those countries have security concerns of their own, but they aren’t allowed to overwhelm all other considerations.
Why is Pakistan so bent on being the exception? The political leadership could have tried to shape public opinion in a responsible way. Instead, it appears to be content with pandering to fear and paranoia — and maligning a sector that fills many of the gaps left by the state.
The Balochistan government has offered general amnesty to the warring youth in the province. Cash rewards were offered to entice those who are ready to renounce violence. This generous offer reminds us of an even rosier package of Aghaz-e-Huqooq-e-Balochistan a few years ago. Hardly anybody knows any tangible outcome of the much trumpeted package.
Amnesty and appeasement packages will not yield results until a multidimensional course correction approach is adopted. Violence in Balochistan has refused to subside. The provincial government led by a nationalist party has taken pains to fetch militants from the mountains to the negotiating table but without any significant fruition.
Sporadic news of capitulation by a few beleaguered commanders could not drastically alter the overall security landscape of the province.
The current spell of insurgency is now almost a decade old. No one has accurate figures of fatalities and disappearances. Inflated figures are a norm in such situations. However, the severity can easily be gauged even without digits. In fact, numbers only partly narrate the convulsion and gravity of the situation on ground.
Balochistan is no more a local or national issue. It has become a chessboard of regional game players.
Involvement of foreign hands is not a mere canard that can be debunked as rhetoric. In a country that has remained a surrogate battlefield for decades to serve interests of global powers, any conflict of this ferocity cannot be a purely localised phenomenon. However, it would be equally inept to dismiss the deplorable local realities. Use of force can be a double-edged sword. If triggers of conflict are not addressed, suppression by gun power will prove ephemeral. This is not the first insurgency in the province. Each time triggers of the insurgency were ignored amid the euphoria of triumph, the conflict resurrected after a brief hiatus of few years.
Foreign hand is not the only factor shaping the current state of affairs. It is rather an accumulated indignation of several decades that has ostracised the local population from the mainstream business of the state. Bringing them back to the national fold needs remedial and not repressive measures.
The province had been an energy basket of the country since early 1950s that spurred industrialisation in the country, but regrettably people in the province continued to live in primitive ages.
In May 2014, a startling disclosure was made in the upper house of the parliament. The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources revealed that out of the 32 district headquarters of Balochistan, only 13 towns had the natural gas facility and 59 per cent of the urban population in the province was without the basic energy commodity. Successive governments have failed to divert a fraction of accruing benefits to the province from where these precious resources were being extracted.
For decades, the province has been deprived of basic necessities like education, health and drinking water. The state abdicated its responsibility and the people were left to toil in an anachronistic tribal society.
The vacuum created by state institutes was occupied by tribal chiefs. Eventually musketeer sardars became janitors of the society and people of the provinces were virtually made subservient to them. A protracted colonial treatment with the province resulted in complete alienation in the ensuing years.
Rather than understanding and addressing the root causes of disgruntlement among the Baloch, almost every government resorted to contemptuous measures that enraged the aggrieved people. Had the province been treated with a modicum of sagacity and had the local population been given judicious treatment of compatriots, no foreign hand would ever have found foothold in Balochistan.
One important role of a responsible state is to act as an equalizer and provide level playing field to all citizens. Balochistan is trailing behind on all development indicators and people find little reason to own the system that has failed to fulfill their genuine constitutional rights as a citizen. It would be outrageous to blithely shrug it off by just accusing a handful of sardars. A state that claims to squash insurgency with its insurmountable might should have veered a minuscule of its muscle for the benefit of dejected masses.
According to the national report on Millennium Development Goals-2013, the country has performed poorly on vital targets of human development — Balochistan’s indicators are even grimmer. Net enrollment ratio in the province is 53 per cent against the national average of 57 per cent.
The mother mortality rate in the country is 276 (per 100,000 live births), whereas Balochistan’s mother mortality rate is 758 which is alarmingly high. 78 per cent children are fully immunised in Pakistan compared to only 43 per cent in Balochistan.
Pakistan Demographic Health Survey reveals that an estimated 111 children of every 1,000 births are dying before their fifth birthday in the province. Ninety-seven of these children do not make it to the age of one year. Additionally, Unicef found that there is no vaccination centre in 39 per cent of union councils in the province. Developing Balochistan would have cost much lesser than a series of military operations.
Balochistan deserves a legitimate share in provincial as well as federal array of power web. Sindh and Balochistan have been continuously underrepresented in the federal government departments and institutions. Many instances can be cited to substantiate this argument.
According to a newspaper report in December 2012, Balochistan was grossly underrepresented in postings at foreign missions. 209 officials were assigned for diplomatic missions since the government came into power and Haji Mira Jan was the only official from Balochistan who was serving as a driver at the Pakistan High Commission in London. Quoting an official document, the scribe claimed that that out of 209 in foreign mission postings by the current government, 130 people were appointed only from Punjab.
According to another newspaper report in January 2014, over 4,000 posts reserved for Balochistan in 52 departments were lying vacant. A special committee tasked to deal with issues pertaining to Balochistan also identified that around 272 of these vacancies were BPS-17 to BPS-21 positions.
In March 2014, the provincial government approached the federal government to fill the vacancies as per the share allocated to the province. In response to the request, joint secretary (Admin) informed the principal secretary to the chief minister that as of September 12, 2013 a total of 3,692 positions were vacant in the federal ministries/divisions/autonomous bodies/corporation against the provincial quota, however the government has imposed a ban on all recruitments.
Simple measures like ensuring due recruitment from Balochistan would enhance the province’s representation in the federal government and create a reasonable amount of goodwill among the people.
More importantly, the provincial government has little say in the strategic matters of the province. In February 2013, the Balochistan government in a statement said that ports and shipping the subjects handled by the federal government and the provincial government has no role in the award of Gwadar Port contract to China. Gwadar Port is purportedly a game-changer project in the region. Apprehensions of the local population are not mere refrains.
The Baloch expect visible and measureable measures and not mere statements. They expect that history of Sui gas will not be repeated in Gwadar. People in power ought to adopt saner means to address this anxiety which has roots in bitter experiences. An enhanced role of provincial government to safeguard local interests would be a right beginning.
Law and disorder is a major challenge that has imperiled stability in the province. Inexorable violence is impeding strategic development initiatives including trans-boundary gas pipelines, economic corridor and the Gwadar Port. Only an inclusive political solution can guarantee sustainable peace and prosperity.
Missing people, extra-judicial killings and targeted ethnic murders of non-local communities are major stumbling blocks in resolving the conflict. Since the provincial government is not at the steering, credibility of the ongoing operation is murky. Law enforcement agencies are operating without any oversight of the provincial government.
On January 30, 2014, the Balochistan government conceded before the Supreme Court about its handicap in recovering Baloch missing people saying it has no effective control over the Frontier Corps which is accused of detaining people. The provincial government should be given an enhanced role in handling security challenges and taking responsibility of local affairs.
The establishment needs to revisit its strategy of solving the Balochistan conundrum. Kill and dump tactics may trounce militants but cannot win back people. Empathy would be better than apathy to salvage the bleeding Balochistan.
The parliament should play a meaningful role to resolve this protracted conflict. An all-party parliamentary committee should be constituted to develop and execute a comprehensive healing plan of political, administrative and developmental measures to bring back Balochistan into the national fold. Credible representation and swift implementation of the healing plan can create space for a political dialogue — to end insurgency and restore peace in the province. A peaceful and harmonious Balochistan will open up new vistas of economic development and stability for the country.
Demonstration against silencing Sabeen Mahmud (Credit: opencanada.org)Drastic measures followed the tragedy of Army Public School Peshawar. The incident was one of the series of macabre events of our recent history. The scale of barbarity was outrageous and shocking beyond imagination. Yet the equanimity of a society is best judged at such testing times.
Half a year past while the wound still bleeds, it would be pertinent to take a stock of the much touted actions and the promised results. Tragedies are not meant to mourn only; learning lessons and realigning strategies should be the prime outcome. National Plan of Action was the key outcome of the brainstorming by mavericks of the country. The plan enumerated a list of stringent actions to fight extremism.
Citizens were expecting to witness a fundamental shift from the past practices that caused terrorism. Epicentres of extremism and violence are abundantly known to the guardians of peace. Dismantling the citadels of extremism was expected to be an imminent action. However, half year down the road things have been further obfuscated. Proscribed outfits still operate with a reasonable degree of impunity and safe havens of hate stuff are fully intact. It is not just the matter of capacity; it is more because of confused policies that allow the haze to prevail.
Soon after the action plan was launched with great fanfare, soft and relatively innocuous targets such as non-governmental organisations and civil society were targeted. A vilification campaign is on full throttle to prove that civil society organisations comprise foreign agents and their personnel are quislings who are busy round-the-clock in hatching conspiracies against the country. All funded non-governmental organisations are tarred with the same brush rather than isolating exceptions with solid evidences.
Holding civil society accountable and seeking transparency of its business is a legitimate right of the state but one wonders why the similar gusto is not demonstrated in case of those elements who flaunt gruesome fratricide of peaceful compatriots.
Rights-based organisations are demonised because they strive for fundamental rights of citizens, fortification of democracy, emancipation of women and rule of law.
Like every sector, there might be some scoundrel elements within the ranks of non-governmental organisations, yet it would be unfair to bracket all of them as anti-state and stooges of the West. Sifting venal elements require a meticulous screening system and not slander campaigns and a witch-hunt spree. Ironically, the informants’ web becomes hyper efficient when they have to keep a tab on politicians, civil society workers and human rights activists. Human radars become enviably efficient when it comes to document life and activities of peaceful civil society activists. Offices of registered and professionally reporting non-governmental organisations are stalked assiduously. However, stockpiles of lethal weapons in the middle of cities remain unnoticed and the mass-murderers often go unscathed. The state has enough muscle to control law-abiding entities but conspicuously absent while handling law-squashing outfits.
Rights-based organisations and individuals are particularly demonised because they strive for fundamental rights of citizens, fortification of democracy, emancipation of women, rule of law, protection of minorities and combating extremism in all its forms. Since these organisations mobilise people to demand their constitutional rights and hold all institutions accountable through peaceful democratic means, they invite ire of hegemonic and parasitic elements that are deeply embedded in various power centres.
A similar contemporary example is despotic regime of Russia, where a craven parliament capitulated before President Viladimir Putin’s desire to pass a law on “undesirable organisations”. A revered charity of Russia “Dynasty Foundation” has recently been proscribed. The foundation runs research and education projects and had been labeled as “foreign agent”, a metonymy of “enemy of state” in the contemporary Russian parlance.
The term “foreign agent” has recently been coined in Russia to depict any foreign funded organisation engaged in any political activity. Pulverising every sign of dissent is a relic of cold war, which is jealously guarded by Putin for expediency of his power. In a marked resemblance, groups and individuals striving for civil liberties and human rights are stigmatised as western agents in Pakistan. The government machinery avidly sift their accounts and documents but cringes to choke financial conduits of militant groups.
Since civil society has been maligned out-of-proportion, its valuable contribution for citizens has been eclipsed. Apart from its struggle for democracy and rule of law, some of the civil society organisations have produced valuable research in various sectors that works as a compass for the policy architects.
In a country where research produced by formal institutions is often disconnected from public life arena, some of the non-governmental organisations have produced remarkable research work that underlines the complexity and gravity of development deficit. With a yawning deficit of service delivery specially among the marginalised groups and communities living in inaccessible areas, the non-governmental organisations have been shouldering the burden of government agencies.
The prevailing magnitude of human development deficit dwarfs the capacity and resources of public sector and it essentially requires collaborative initiatives with social sector outfits. The country is set to miss critical targets of MDGs and the country is consistently ranked poorly on human development index.
Civil society has enormous potential to assist the government in bridging the social sector gap. Pakistani civil society’s outstanding contribution during the recent natural disasters e.g. earthquake of 2005 and tormenting floods of 2010 and 2011 have been widely appreciated. The role of non-governmental organisations in assuaging miseries of millions of disaster-affectees has been acknowledged by the government and international community.
The Pakistani civil society has been acting as a bulwark against proliferation of extremism. Gallant human rights defenders and civil society activists have laid down their lives while confronting obscurantist elements in the society. In fact the war against terrorism cannot be won without a strategic engagement of civil society. Extremists might have bastions in mountains but extremism has infused every vein of the society that cannot be eradicated only through military measures.
Those in power might despise civil society organisations for their views and opinions but certainly no one can blame civil society groups for involvement in any act of terrorism. On the contrary the civil society remained on the forefront during the struggle for salvaging democracy and restoring rule of law when the country was enveloped by the dark clouds of predatory dictatorships.
The civil society of Pakistan has made remarkable contribution towards civil liberties and a fledgling democracy. Pakistan’s legal framework is amply robust to ensure transparency of civil society affairs. Under the established legal framework no civil society organisation can operate without proper registration and compliance to legal code of the country.
The eligibility to seek foreign funding for development objectives requires civil society organisations to pass through a number of fine sieves. No local or foreign funding can flow into any national civil society account without fulfillment of procedural requirements. There is no dichotomy of opinions that the country is passing through a nerve-breaking turmoil where a deeper scrutiny of matters is need of the hour.
Civil society is fully cognizant of these realities and would endorse every genuine initiative through a consultative process. The current regime of regulation of civil society organisations is not too porous and can serve the purpose through little more vigilant and efficient institutional performance. In fact it does not require any new set of strangulating rules unless intimidation of civil society is the underlying objective. If any loopholes still exist or further fortification of the systems is desirable, a dialogue can be initiated to amicably improvise the rules of business rather than resorting to arm-twisting approach.
The new law under contemplation is aimed more at repression than regulation of national civil society. Steps to stifle civil society will do nothing but a sheer disservice to a juvenile civil society and a fragile democracy in the country.
By attempting to muzzle civil society, an elected regime would be shooting in its own feet. Civil society is a logical extension of any democratic dispensation and no democracy can survive and thrive in absence of a dynamic and vibrant civil society.
Pakistan’s democratic future is contingent upon potency and vibrancy of its civil society. In the contemporary world, civil society is considered a critical pillar of the state. Debilitating civil society would not only plunge society into an autocratic order but would also further besmirch Pakistan’s image in the international community.
Parween Rehman (Credit: zubeidamustafa.com)KARACHI, June 4: With no effective measures taken by the authorities to check growing threats against the Orangi Pilot Project whose team was recently forced to stop work and relocate, the perpetrators have taken a step forward by visiting the house of slain OPP director Parween Rahman and threatening her sister and mother besides terrorising the caretaker, it emerged on Wednesday.
Threats with impunity, which have surged in recent times since the murder of OPP director Rahman in March 2013, brought together representatives of civil society organizations to the Karachi Press Club to publicly take a stand against Sindh government inaction and warn of public mobilization and moving court if security was not provided to the family of Ms Rahman and those currently associated with the project.
The press conference was addressed by chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Zohra Yusuf, executive director of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) Karamat Ali, architect Arif Hasan besides representatives of the Women’s Action Forum and other civil society organisations.
Speaking about how the OPP was left in the lurch with a constant barrage of attacks on its leadership causing the current director, Anwar Rashid, and over two dozen members of staff associated with the project to relocate, Piler executive director Karamat Ali said two men visited Parween’s house last week.
They threatened her sister, Aquila Ismail, and their 80-year-old mother, and also terrorised the caretaker, he said.
“This is an unacceptable situation,” he added.
“Previously, police officers in plain clothes had come to the OPP office in Orangi and asked workers to shut down the project and leave the country. Repeatedly, we have had senior police officials forcing us to take back the case against Parween’s killers,” said Mr Ali.
The state, specifically the Sindh government, was criticised for “failing to solve the question as to who murdered Parween Rehman and for what purpose.”
The civil society representatives also shared their frustration about how the threats were not being taken seriously by the authorities, “which has virtually brought the work of OPP to a halt.”
With the case finally making some headway in the Supreme Court (SC), the threats are a means to derail this progress, according to Mr Ali.
“We demand that the state fulfil its constitutional obligation to provide security to all family members of Parween Rahman, to Anwar Rashid and to the members of the OPP.”
Petitioners of the case against Parween’s killers, some of whom were present at the press conference, laid down other demands that included uncovering Parween’s killers, launch of an investigation into the coercion by the police officials who asked them to withdraw the case, as well as prosecuting all those who have broken the law and not carried out their duties with regard to the case.
“The SC’s binding instructions to provide foolproof security cannot be ignored any longer, and if action is not taken by the necessary authorities, we will file a complaint in court,” said Mr Ali.
“Also, we will have to resort to public mobilisation against the intimidation of OPP.”
HRCP chairperson Zohra Yusuf said that none of the petitioners would succumb to this intimidation by taking back the case.
“We have lost three great women working for society — Parween, Zahra Shahid and Sabeen Mahmud. We are no longer afraid and will take this matter to the court if justice is not upheld and the loss of lives not prevented,” she said.
Architect Arif Hasan said the mapping section of OPP, which is at the centre of all these threats, had to be relocated. “We had planned to return to Orangi but due to the severity of these threats, we are unable to do so.”
Of the many projects OPP was working on, the regularisation of goth land garnered the most controversy. Working alongside the PPP government, Parween had helped facilitate this process by establishing the existence of more than 2,000 goths. Around the time of her death, 1,063 goths had been regularised with more than 1,000 others pending. After her murder, not a single goth has been regularised so far.
Threats with impunity have become a regular feature with OPP projects, specifically the one related to goth regularisation. These are, according to those present at the press conference, merely discouraging other community-based organistions from taking up the cause of the poor.
