ON Feb. 29 – a bad day for anniversaries – Pakistan executed my father’s killer

My father was the governor of Punjab Province from 2008 until his death in 2011. At that time, he was defending a Christian woman who had fallen afoul of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which are used by the Sunni majority to terrorize the country’s few religious minorities. My father spoke out against the laws, and the judgment of television hosts and clerics fell hard on him. He became, in the eyes of many, a blasphemer himself. One January afternoon his bodyguard, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, shot him dead as he was leaving lunch.

Mr. Qadri became a hero in Pakistan. A mosque in Islamabad was named after him. People came to see him in prison to seek his blessings. The course of justice was impeded. The judge who sentenced him to death had to flee the country. I thought my father’s killer would never face justice.

But then, in the past few months, it became possible to see glimmers of a new resolve on the part of the Pakistani state. The Supreme Court upheld Mr. Qadri’s death sentence last October. Earlier this year, the president turned down the convict’s plea for mercy — which, at least as far as the law goes, was Mr. Qadri’s first admission that he had done anything wrong at all. Then on the last day of last month came the news: Pakistan had hanged Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri. How would the country — not the state, but the people — respond?

I spoke to my sister in Lahore and for a moment we dared to hope that Pakistan, which had suffered so much from Islamic terrorism, might turn a corner. A lot had happened in the five years since Mr. Qadri killed our father. There was attack after hideous attack. In December 2014, terrorists struck a school in Peshawar, killing 132 children. Was it possible that Pakistan was tired of blood and radicalism? Had people finally begun to realize that those who kill in the name of a higher law end up becoming a law unto themselves? Had the horrors of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria done nothing to dampen enthusiasm for Islamism? Perhaps. I hoped.

But when a BBC interviewer asked me about this, something made me equivocate. I said it was too early to say and that we should be careful not to confuse the hardening resolve of the Pakistani government with the will of its people. Mr. Qadri’s funeral was the next day. That would give a better indication of the public mood.

And so it did.

An estimated 100,000 people — a crowd larger than the population of Asheville, N.C. — poured into the streets of Rawalpindi to say farewell to Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri. It was among the biggest funerals in Pakistan’s history, alongside those of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the father of the nation, and Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister, who was assassinated in 2007. But this was no state funeral; it was spontaneous and it took place despite a media blackout.

As pictures emerged of the sea of humanity that coalesced around the white ambulance strewn with red rose petals that carried Mr. Qadri’s body, a few thoughts occurred to me: Was this the first funeral on this scale ever given to a convicted murderer? Did the men who took to the street in such great numbers come out of their hatred of my father or their love of his killer? They hardly knew Mr. Qadri. The only thing he had done in all his life, as far as they knew, was kill my father. Before that he was anonymous; after that he was in jail. Was this the first time that mourners had assembled on this scale not out of love but out of hate?

And finally, I wondered, what happens when an ideology of hate is no longer just coming from the mouths of Saudi-funded clerics but has infected the body of the people? What do you do when the madness is not confined to radical mosques and madrasas, but is abroad among a population of nearly 200 million?

The form of Islam that has appeared in our time — and that killed my father and so many others — is not, as some like to claim, medieval. It’s not even traditional. It is modern in the most basic sense: It is utterly new. The men who came to mourn my father’s killer were doing what no one before them had ever done. As I watched this unprecedented funeral, motivated not by love for the man who was dead but by hatred for the man he killed, I recognized that the throng in Rawalpindi was a microcosm of radical Islam’s relationship to our time. It drew its energy from the thing it was reacting against: the modernity that my father, with his condemnation of blasphemy laws and his Western, liberal ideas, represented. Recognizing this doesn’t pardon the 100,000 people who came to grieve for Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, but it reminds us that their existence is tied up with our own.

Trump’s Rally in Chicago Canceled After Violent Scuffles

Trump's Chicago rally (Credit: reuters.com)
Trump’s Chicago rally
(Credit: reuters.com)

CHICAGO, March 11— With thousands of people already packed into stands and music blaring to warm up the crowd, Donald J. Trump’s campaign abruptly canceled his rally here on Friday night over security concerns as protesters clashed with his supporters inside an arena where he was to speak.

Minutes after Mr. Trump was to have taken to a podium on the campus of a large, diverse public university just west of downtown, an announcer suddenly pronounced the event over before it had begun. Hundreds of protesters, who had promised to be a visible presence here and filled several sections of the arena, let out an elated, unstopping cheer. Mr. Trump’s supporters, many of whom had waited hours to see the Republican front-runner, seemed stunned and slowly filed out in anger.

Around the country, protesters have interrupted virtually every Trump rally, but his planned appearance here — in a city run for decades by Democrats and populated by nearly equal thirds of blacks, Latinos and whites — had drawn some particularly incensed responses since it was announced days ago.

The canceled rally came on a day that Mr. Trump sought to move past the primary fight, saying that the party needed to come together behind him.

Elsewhere, Mr. Trump’s security has tried to identify and exclude potential demonstrators before they enter his events, but large groups of protesters had waited in line for seats here, and engaged in tense disputes with Trump supporters even as the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion was still filling up. For more than an hour before the event was to begin, security teams led protesters out, one by one, but many more remained, sparring with Trump supporters.

In a statement, Mr. Trump’s campaign said that he “has determined that for the safety of all of the tens of thousands of people that have gathered in and around the arena, tonight’s rally will be postponed to another date.”

 

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton spar in fierce debate in Flint

 

Democratic debate between Sanders & Clinton (Credit: nytimes.com)
Democratic debate between Sanders & Clinton
(Credit: nytimes.com)

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders held a fierce and substantive debate in Flint, Michigan, on Sunday night, disagreeing over trade, guns and the auto industry bailout while joining forces to call for the resignation of state governor Rick Snyder over the city’s water contamination crisis.

Shortly after they took the stage, the Associated Press announced that Sanders had won the Democratic caucuses in Maine, his eighth victory in the 2016 presidential primary race. In a statement, the leftwing Vermont senator thanked Maine’s voters and claimed momentum heading into Tuesday’s primaries in Michigan and Mississippi.

Onstage he and the former secretary of state had one of their sharpest exchanges yet when they were asked by a member of the audience about trade and job creation, an issue Sanders had been attacking Clinton over in the lead-up to the debate.

“Secretary Clinton supported virtually every one of the disastrous trade agreements written by corporate America,” Sanders said.

“He voted against the money that ended up saving the auto industry,” Clinton replied. “I think that is a pretty big difference.”

“If you are talking about the Wall Street bailout, where some of your friends destroyed this economy … ” Sanders began.

“You know…” Clinton interjected, before Sanders cut her off: “Excuse me, I’m talking,” he said, dismissing her with his hand.

Bernie Sanders scolds Hillary Clinton for interrupting him during a particularly heated exchange on trade and government bailouts

Sanders repeatedly attacked Clinton’s past support for international trade agreements, an issue he is attempting to use against her in Michigan in order to win blue-collar votes in the rust-belt industrial state.

“I am very glad … Secretary Clinton has discovered religion on this issue,” Sanders said, referring to her position on trade. “We’ve lost 60,000 factories since 2001, they’re going to start having to – if I’m president – invest in this country, not in China, not in Mexico.”

The candidates began the debate by addressing the city’s toxic water crisis. Sanders recalled his meetings with residents: “I have to tell you what I heard, and what I saw literally shattered me. And it was beyond belief that children in Flint, Michigan, in the United States of America in the year 2016 are being poisoned.”

Clinton, who spotlighted the issue in an earlier debate, reminded the CNN audience that she had pushed the Democratic National Committee to host a debate in Flint.

“It is raining lead in Flint, and the state is derelict in not coming forward with the money that is required,” Clinton said, joining Sanders for the first time in calling for the governor to “resign or be recalled”.

Sanders and Clinton have both been campaigning hard in Michigan, which holds its primary on Tuesday.

Sanders has work to do if he hopes to win the state; Clinton is leading him by a double digit margin, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

Just before the debate, Sanders earned the endorsement of former Michigan Senator Don Riegle, a native of Flint. During an impromptu press conference, Riegle said the Clintons’ support for the Nafta trade agreement “destroyed the Flint I loved”.

Clinton and Sanders also tussled over whether gun manufacturers should be legal liable when their weapons are used in crimes.

Clinton said that giving immunity to gun makers and sellers “was a terrible mistake” and noted that she and Sanders were on opposing sides of the debate.

Sanders has said his support for the 2005 law was in part an effort to protect small gun shops in his home state of Vermont. He told the audience in Flint that Clinton’s approach could amount to “ending gun manufacturing in America”.

Clinton referred in emotional terms to the Sandy Hook massacre and told Sanders: “You talk about corporate greed. The gun manufacturers sell guns to make as much money as they can.”

At turns during the debate, Sanders sharply cut Clinton off or seemed to reprimand her for interrupting. Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communication director, called his tone and behaviour “desperate and disrespectful” and said it was a sign of his campaign’s mounting frustration at the current dynamic of the primary race.

“It was quite mild compared to Republicans, and I also think it was really substantive. It’s not even in the same universe as the Republican debate, but he does seem to be frustrated and that was apparent,” she told the Guardian after the debate.

When asked if the senator’s tone was too harsh, Jeff Weaver, his campaign manager, said it was not, and said he hoped the analysis of the debate remained on the issues.

“He made a lot of forceful points tonight, there were a lot of forceful points to make, frankly on issues like trade and the economy, and he made those points and [laid] out the differences between them,” Weaver said in the spin room after the debate.

Weaver dismissed Sanders’s heavy losses on Super Tuesday and said the campaign was making progress among African American voters, seen as crucial to winning the Democratic nomination.

“It’s not about margins, it’s about making progress,” Weaver said. “There’s a long campaign to go. We are making substantial progress … At this point, in many ways, what we’re confronting is not by race but by age.”

Weaver called Clinton a “regional candidate” despite the fact that she has claimed three states outside of the South, including a narrow victory in Massachusetts, where Sanders had hoped to win.

There were also moments of levity during the debate. “We are, if elected president, going to invest a lot into mental health, and if you watch these Republican debates, you’re going to know why,” Sanders said.

“He’s called you a communist,” host Anderson Cooper told Sanders of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

“That’s one of the nice things he’s called me,” Sanders replied.

Clinton said she had won more votes than Trump in the primaries so far, and predicted that his “bigotry, his bullying, his bluster are not going to wear well on the American people”.

Sanders declared: “I would love to run against Donald Trump,” adding that polls showed “Sanders v Trump does a lot better than Clinton v Trump”.

Perhaps the most powerful moment came when Sanders was asked about his Judaism, which he has been accused of downplaying on the campaign trail.

“I am very proud to be Jewish, and being Jewish is so much of who I am,” Sanders said.

“Look, my father’s family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust. I know about what crazy and radical, and extremist politics mean. I learned that lesson as a tiny, tiny child when my mother would take me shopping, and we would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms because they were in Hitler’s concentration camp.”

He concluded: “I’m very proud of being Jewish and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being.”

Actor Mark Ruffalo briefly joined reporters in the spin room to discuss Sanders’ performance.

“The message that Bernie is giving us is one of imagination,” said Ruffalo, who has campaigned on the senator’s behalf. “It’s one of great ideas and one that takes America to its greatest potential … and early on that message really captured the minds and the hearts of feeling people.”

Thousands at funeral of Pakistani executed for murdering governor

Qadri funeral (Credit: theguardian.com)
Qadri funeral
(Credit: theguardian.com)

Rawalpindi, March 1: An estimated crowd of more than 100,000 people have attended the funeral of Mumtaz Qadri, in a massive show of support for the convicted murderer of a leading politician who had criticised Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

The vast gathering on Tuesday centred on Liaquat Park in Rawalpindi, where a succession of clerics made fiery speeches bitterly condemning the government for giving the go-ahead for Monday’s execution of Qadri, a former police bodyguard who became a hero to many of his countrymen after he shot and killed Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab province, in 2011.

Fearing violence, authorities closed schools and beefed up security in both the garrison city of Rawalpindi and neighbouring Islamabad, the capital. Key roads were closed to traffic and the “red zone” near important government buildings was sealed.

Many people had travelled from around the country to attend the funeral, and crowds spilled out of the park on to the adjacent thoroughfare where throngs crushed around the flower-strewn ambulance that eventually brought Qadri’s body to the event.

Some of the all-male crowd wore “I am Qadri” signs around their necks while others held up the front page of the Ummat newspaper for bypassers to kiss, which was entirely covered with a photo of Qadri’s dead and garlanded body.

Many in the crowd were furious with the courts for convicting Qadri, with the governing faction of prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League for not ordering a presidential pardon, and with the media for agreeing to a strict news blackout on the protests.

Despite the huge numbers of mourners, none of the fleet of satellite trucks representing Pakistan’s numerous television stations were in attendance.

Sajjad Akhtar Abassi, a lawyer wearing the black suit and tie of his trade, condemned the supreme court for upholding Qadri’s death sentence last year.

“It is a court of law, not a court of justice,” he said. “Islam is a religion of peace and harmony but it does not allow anybody to use wrong words against the prophet or any other holy character.”

Qadri’s supporters believe he was justified in killing Taseer as he left a restaurant in Islamabad in 2011 because he had called for the pardoning of a poor Christian woman who had been convicted under blasphemy laws, which he also condemned.

The blasphemy laws are much criticised by human rights groups who say hundreds of people, mostly members of religious minorities, have been convicted for insulting Islam, often on flimsy evidence.

“The government can never change the blasphemy law because we are a nation of Muslims and the constitution already protects the position of minorities,” said Abassi.

The extreme sensitivity of the issue was reflected in the silence of Pakistan’s usually voluble politicians on the decision to execute Qadri.

On Monday night, video footage appeared online showing the information minister, Pervaiz Rasheed, being heckled by passengers in the departure lounge of Karachi airport.

One politician who did comment was the minister for religious affairs, Pir Muhammad Amin Ul Hasnat Shah, who released a statement that described Qadri as a martyr and urged people to participate peacefully in his funeral.

Karachi’s ex mayor Mustafa Kamal Picks Fight with MQM chief

Altaf embraces Mustafa (Credit: changingpakistan.com)
Altaf embraces Mustafa
(Credit: changingpakistan.com)
KARACHI, March 3 – After a prolonged absence from the local political scene, former city nazim of Karachi Syed Mustafa Kamal was holding a press conference in Karachi on Thursday.

The joint press conference with his former fellow Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Anees Qaim khani was being held in DHA phase 6 area of Karachi. Kamal had said that he would apprise the media over key matters.

Addressing the media, Kamal lashed out sharply at MQM chief Altaf Hussain, with whom the former Karachi mayor has had a falling out since years. Kamal said that his press conference would be divided into three parts. “First part will be about why I and Anees left the party. Second, why we have cameback, and what we will do next.”

Kamal said that Altaf had insulted workers several times in public meetings, especially once in May 2013 when he changed the party set up overnight. “How can a commander insult his sepoys other than to serve him?”

“We have returned today because every child of Pakistan, every party, the establishment of Pakistan as well as the present and past government’s know, that Altaf Hussain has links with the Indian intelligence agency RAW,” he alleged.

He recalled that during his time in the MQM, the Rabita Committee would be degraded and insulted by Altaf Hussain within weeks and months but recently the situation became such that the Rabita Committee would be insulted every few minutes.

What was first done in private settings was being done in public through media channels, he said. He recalled how the MQM Rabita Committee was manhandled by people when the PTI secured 800,000 votes.

He also revealed that a time came when former interior minister Rehman Malik would dictate the press releases for MQM, adding that Malik had access to the MQM chief even more than MQM leaders.

Syed Mustafa Kamal served as a city nazim of Karachi from 2005 to 2009. Both the leaders were appearing before the media after almost three years of absence from the political scene in Karachi.

Senior journalist Talat Hussain said that the two leaders, who have been estranged from the MQM for years, might provide an alternate leadership to voters of the MQM.

Sources told that the MQM leadership has called its workers and top activists to the party’s secretariat in London, where party chief Altaf Hussain is based.

According to the sources, Altaf is also expected to be present at the meeting. But MQM senior leader Wasay Jalil rejected the news of the emergency meeting. “Neither any meeting has been summoned nor workers have been called in London,” said the leader in a message posted on Twitter.

The MQM leadership has remained tight lipped about the press conference stating that it will only comment after the press conference takes place.

Former CIA director: Military may refuse to follow Trump’s orders if he becomes president

Gen. Michael Hayden (Credit: nydailynews.com)
Gen. Michael Hayden
(Credit: nydailynews.com)

Former CIA director Michael Hayden believes there is a legitimate possibility that the U.S. military would refuse to follow orders given by Donald Trump if the Republican front-runner becomes president and decides to make good on certain campaign pledges.

Hayden, who also headed the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005, made the provocative statement on Friday during an appearance on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” Trump, fresh off a string of primary victories, has yet to secure his party’s nomination, but Hayden said the candidate’s rhetoric already raises troubling questions.

“I would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way that was consistent with the language that candidate Trump expressed during the campaign,” Hayden said during the interview with Maher.

Earlier this month, Trump told a South Carolina retirement community that he supports waterboarding and similar interrogation techniques because “torture works” when it comes to extracting vital information from terrorists.

Deeming waterboarding “torture,” President Obama’s administration discontinued its use during his first term in office. Proponents of the controversial practice, as The Washington Posts Jenna Johnson noted, avoid labeling it as torture, which would violate various international laws and treaties. Trump, meanwhile, has not only pledged to reinstate waterboarding, but also introduce other methods of interrogation that are “so much worse” and “much stronger.”

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t work — torture works,” Trump told the Sun City retirement community. “Okay, folks? Torture — you know, half these guys [say]: ‘Torture doesn’t work.’ Believe me, it works. Okay?”

Trump has also said on multiple occasions that the United States should kill the family members of terrorists.

“That will make people think. Because they do not care very much about their lives, but they do care, believe it or not, about their family’s lives,” Trump said during a debate of Republican presidential candidates in December.

Politifact has pointed out that targeting terrorists’ family members is barred by the Geneva Conventions.

During his appearance on “Real Time,” Hayden cited Trump’s pledge to kill family members as being among his most troubling campaign statements.

“That never even occurred to you, right?” Maher asked.

“God, no!” Hayden replied. “Let me give you a punchline: If he were to order that once in government, the American armed forces would refuse to act.”

“That’s quite a statement, sir,” Maher said.

“You are required not to follow an unlawful order,” Hayden added. “That would be in violation of all the international laws of armed conflict.”

“You’ve given us a great reason not to support Trump. There would be a coup in this country,” Maher joked.

Hayden said he didn’t mean to imply that the military would provoke “a coup.”

“I think it’s a coup that you said it,” Maher added.

Facing the Taliban and His Past, an Afghan Leader Aims for a Different Ending

Facing Taliban (Credit: cyrusreporter.com)
Facing Taliban
(Credit: cyrusreporter.com)

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — When mujahedeen guerrillas captured this southern provincial capital in 1993, Gen. Abdul Jabar Qahraman was the Afghan government commander on the last flight out, surrendering the city.

In a resonant twist more than two decades later, Mr. Qahraman is again the face of the Afghan government here as an insurgency threatens to overrun his post.

This time, it is the Taliban at the city gates. The insurgents are firmly entrenched in a suburb of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, and separated from the seat of government by only the calm waters of the Helmand River. They control or contest at least 10 of the 14 districts in Helmand Province, Afghanistan’s largest in both size and opium production.

Mr. Qahraman came to Helmand last month as President Ashraf Ghani’s representative, taking charge of efforts to hold the province against the Taliban. But insisting that military measures alone are not the government’s best chance, the former general has also been trying to engage Taliban commanders in negotiations.

“Back then, too, I believed that the solution to the problem of this nation is not in fighting, and I believe that today,” Mr. Qahraman said in an interview last week at his command center here, in between aides’ frequently handing him the phone with military commanders, local officials and elders on the line. “Artillery, tanks and warplanes are failed instruments and should only be used very rarely, only when you think you will be destroyed.”

“Our first attempt is to slow the fighting, to quiet the fighting,” he added.

In some places, however, that has looked like retreat.

The army recently abandoned its last bases in the districts of Musa Qala and Now Zad, pulling out as many as 1,500 soldiers in an apparent move to strengthen a security belt around Lashkar Gah. American Special Operations forces have been drawn into the fight, recently moving to help clear roads to the provincial capital and getting involved in planning its defense.

Mr. Qahraman, 58, has been here before. His command was the last bastion of the Russian-backed Communist government in southern Afghanistan, and he became personally identified with its collapse here in 1993, when he withdrew his forces and turned Lashkar Gah over to the C.I.A.-backed mujahedeen. He went into exile in Moscow for a decade afterward.

He returned to Afghanistan after the United States invasion in 2001 and the fall of the Taliban, and became a member of Parliament. His views on how to engage the resurgent Taliban are a sympathetic fit with those of Mr. Ghani, who has tried to open talks with the insurgency’s leaders in an effort to reach a political end to the long war.

But in the immediate crisis, tribal elders here see his efforts as impractical and hopeless — the desperate acts of a nostalgic commander. The Taliban, instead of responding to his peace calls, have challenged him to a “face-to-face” fight, and they do not like the government’s chances.

“I think Mr. Qahraman is in daydreaming mode,” said Hajji Mohammad Tahir, an elder from Sangin District who recently attended discussions with Mr. Qahraman. “Right now, the Taliban have the upper hand, the government is beneath. Once you bring them down militarily, then it would be possible for local Taliban to put their weapons down and join the peace process — not now.”

Mullah Abdul Rahman Ehsan, a Taliban commander in Sangin, said Mr. Qahraman had clearly returned to Helmand to make up for past humiliations.

“Let’s fight first, and forget about peace and laying weapons down,” Mullah Ehsan said. “First we need to fight, then work on the peace process.”

Others even saw cynical motives in the recent events in Helmand, particularly after the surrender of the army bases. After a disastrous year militarily, the government might be striking deals with the Taliban in the districts to keep them away from the city, just as the Communist government did in its final days in southern Afghanistan.

The suspicion is furthered by the fact that the man in charge of Helmand operations is talking peace, and that the minister at the helm of national defense, Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, was until last year effectively in charge of the national peace process.

“The question that is going through my head, after they just retreated from Musa Qala, is what if they are saying we won’t resist in the districts and you don’t attack the city?” said Abdul Majid Akhundzada, the deputy head of Helmand’s provincial council, whose father was a leading rebel commander against Mr. Qahraman in the 1980s. “If that is not the case, why are they leaving without a fight?”

Mr. Qahraman, who said the recent retreats were necessary and not part of any deal, admitted to facing an uphill task.

In Helmand, the government has lost to the Taliban not just most of its districts, but also, over the course of the past few years, much of its public support and any semblance of corruption fighting. The allure of opium profits has ensnared Taliban and government officials alike.

Deep in the deserts that are supposedly Taliban territory, officials and local elders report nighttime drug raids by security forces. Bodies are left behind, but lucrative bags of opium end up disappearing.

“If you send me out in the whole of Helmand right now and say, ‘Jabar, find me a couple good district governors, a few good district police chiefs, a few good directors,’ I can’t find you one in the whole of Helmand. I absolutely can’t,” Mr. Qahraman said. “Even if you appoint these men closest to me, they will turn into wolves — the mentality has turned like that. The bad has become good in the perceptions.”

After a few disastrous months of fighting in Helmand, with the government territory shrinking, a delegation of senior officials recently dispatched by Mr. Ghani found that only about half of the Afghan Army force there on paper was actually on duty. Many troops were missing because of desertion, casualties or corruption, one member of the delegation said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss delicate information.

While acknowledging such problems, Mr. Qahraman said there should be enough forces in Helmand to fight an insurgency that he believes does not number more than 2,000 fighters. The Afghan forces are well supplied, he insisted, calling the modern army’s NATO support “a genetically modified cow that gives good milk” compared with the Soviet support a generation ago, which he called “a skinny cow.”

The problems lie in how the forces are managed, he said, and in corrupt leadership eating up supplies before they reach the units.

“Their only art is that they are mobile,” Mr. Qahraman said about the Taliban. “For us, on the other hand, even preparing the convoys takes days. They have an upper hand — they are locals, they know the terrain, and their load is smaller.”

Still, Mr. Qahraman said he hoped to make a difference in Helmand. He recited a Pashto poem:

“If you keep swimming after it, it will come to your hand / Who says there are no pearls in the sea?”

But Hajji Sharafuddin, 53, a mujahedeen fighter who battled Mr. Qahraman in the 1980s, fears that the former general’s history in Lashkar Gah will continue to repeat itself.

“Tomorrow, you will have another plane come for you,” Hajji Sharafuddin said, “and we will be left here watching.”

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan

Powers meeting on Afghanistan see Taliban talks by March

Peace talks on Afghanistan (Credit: abcnews.go.com)
Peace talks on Afghanistan
(Credit: abcnews.go.com)
KABUL, Feb 23: Afghan government and Taliban representatives are expected to meet in Islamabad by the first week of March for their first direct talks since a previous round of the peace process broke down last year, officials said on Tuesday.

Following a meeting in Kabul, the so-called Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG), made up of officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China, “expressed strong support for the upcoming direct talks between the Government of Afghanistan and authorized representatives of the Taliban and other groups.”

In a joint statement released by the Afghan foreign ministry, they said the first round of direct peace talks is expected to take place by the first week of March in the Pakistani capital.

On Monday, the powerful chief of the Pakistan army, Gen. Raheel Sharif met officials from Qatar, where the Taliban maintains a political office, to prepare the way for Tuesday’s meeting, the fourth in a series of quadrilateral encounters aimed at laying the ground for full peace talks.

However the Taliban has been riven by factional infighting since last year’s announcement of the death of the movement’s founder Mullah Mohammad Omar some two years earlier. The Taliban has not yet clearly indicated whether it will take part in any talks with the Western-backed government in Kabul.

New leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour has laid down preconditions for taking part in any talks, including the withdrawal of all foreign forces, while a breakaway faction that opposes him has rejected any negotiations.
But officials in Kabul have expressed hopes that at least some parts of the movement and other insurgent groups affiliated with it can be persuaded to join.

“I think there’s a lot of Taliban that want to come,” the outgoing commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan Gen. John Campbell said earlier this month. “That’s what’s going to be hard, to get all the right people to the table.”

Tuesday’s four-way talks in Kabul came against a backdrop of continuing violence and increasing military pressure from the Taliban, which has stepped up its insurgency since the withdrawal of most international troops from combat in 2014.

Over the weekend, Afghan officials confirmed that troops had pulled out of two key districts in Helmand, leaving the entire northern half of the volatile province in the hands of the insurgents.

Insurgents have also kept up their suicide bombing campaign, with 14 people killed in an attack on a clinic in Parwan province north of Kabul on Monday.

Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Michael Perry and Katharine Houreld

Parliament Watch: Beyond the PM’s threat to fix NAB

Nawaz Sharif Press Conference (Credit: pkshafaqna.com)
Nawaz Sharif Press Conference
(Credit: pkshafaqna.com)
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s uncharacteristic outburst against the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) this week resounded more than it astounded political circles and commentators.

People did not miss Imran Khan much, who has been holidaying in the Maldives, as television channels and newspapers continued to analyse the reasons and consequences of the sudden hard feelings of the otherwise cool elder Sharif.

If frustration was behind it, as some say, it would be understandable.

After all, the prime minister and his party were expecting acclaim over their achievements – standing his ground against PIA strikers and closing the multi-billion dollar LNG deal with Qatar – instead of being hounded by the talk of a NAB probe into the deal and other pet projects such as the Metro Bus, Orange Train, LDA City.

Even worse was the talk that old cases against Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif might be reopened, even though they have obtained stay orders from the courts.

In his attack on NAB, the prime minister broadly suggested that the PML-N could cut NAB down to size, or form a commission to watch over its activities.

That would be politically incorrect, since today’s NAB and its chairman, Qamar Zaman Chaudhry, are the product of a bipartisan consensus. Not only would the PML-N be doing what it had loudly criticised the PPP for doing in Sindh – reining in the powers of the Rangers – but would also lend weight to PPP charges that the PML-N government used NAB and other federal agencies to carry out ‘selective accountability’ and a ‘witch-hunt’ in Sindh.
Indeed, the situation looks much more ominous to political observers and analysts, who wonder what made the prime minister take on NAB personally, when a lesser figure in the cabinet or party could have fired the warning shot just as easily.
In background discussions, lawmakers from different political parties and government officials privy to the development, provided no direct clue and yet, expected more fireworks.

Some thought that the PML-N leadership would want to smother any activity that paints it black in the run up to the next elections, even if they are far away.

It would like to enter the battle in the shining armour of progress and with state-of-the-art edifices firmly in the ground.

It was Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif who prodded his elder brother “to be tough”, according to a ruling party parliamentarian. “NAB had turned its eyes on Punjab and was in the process of going ahead with a few important arrests from within the ruling party on the charges of corruption. That would have stained the party’s clean image in the public eye,” he said.

Others added that the arrests would have had knock-on effect on the bureaucracy, the mainstay of the PML-N’s governance. “In the event, government officers will think twice before doing the bidding of their political masters, and that will directly affect our party’s development projects,” explained one.

A PTI lawmaker said the prime minister’s harsh remarks against the NAB reflected the frustrations of the PML-N leaders both at the centre and in Punjab. “Instead of improving the life of the common man, their hopes to hanging on to power hang on building roads and flyovers and metro bus,” he said.

To him PML-N was “habitual of picking up fights with institutions, mainly to divert attention from the failures of their government. I will not be surprised if the duo blasts other institutions in the coming weeks,” said the PTI lawmaker.

A PPP MNA from Sindh did not agree that the PM’s attack on the NAB put the PML-N and the PPP on the same side. “Just wait and watch how things unfold,” he advised. “A little retrospection would reveal that whenever the PML-N leadership throws the gauntlet against a state institution something serious is brewing.”

Meanwhile, sources close to the NAB and the security establishment say no one should expect them to back off from their campaign against corrupt elements and banned outfits hiding in the southern districts of Punjab.

Whatever may have led the prime minister to attack the NAB, “we will spare no suspect whatever his party affiliation,” said a senior NAB official.

A security official was even more forthcoming. “A contingency plan is already in place to go after the activists of the militant banned outfits. Soon action will start against them,” he said.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2016

Pakistan’s parliament becomes first in world to run entirely on solar power

Solar panels on Pak parliament (Credit: mag.com)
Solar panels on Pak parliament
(Credit: mag.com)

Pakistan’s parliament has become the first in the world to run entirely on solar power.

Known as the Majlis-e-Shoora, the seat of the government in the country’s capital, Islamabad, is now wholly powered by the sun.

First announced in 2014, the venture has been funded by the Chinese government as an act of friendship, with the solar power plant costing around £36.5 million.

The project was officially launched during Chinese president Xi Jinping’s visit last year.

Now complete, it produces 80 megawatts of electricity, 62 of which are consumed by the national assembly with the remainder going to the national grid, according to Pakistani newspaper Dawn.

Members met in the house for the first time on February 12 as it was being powered by sunshine.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is expected to formally ‘switch on’ the program later this month.

Special secretary at the National Assembly, Munawar Abbas Shah, previously commented: “This is the first project of its kind [in a public building] in Pakistan, and later more public buildings will be converted to solar power to overcome the energy crisis.”

“The consumption of electricity in the parliament even jumps over two megawatts in summers when the house is in session.”

The move is expected to save around £689,369 ($1million) a year in bills.

India enjoys on average eight hours of sunshine 320 days a year, providing ample opportunity to harness the sun’s power.

The current electricity infrastructure is inadequate across the whole country, with an estimated 44 per cent of households not connected to the national grid.

The sub-continent suffers rolling blackouts and power outages, and solar home systems have been mooted as a possible solution to the problem.

Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, generates 10 per cent of its electricity from solar power.