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I was handcuffed and tied but it was worth my fight against One Unit

50 years ago, 4th March, 1967 marked a watershed event in the post-Partition history of Sindh. It was the day when 207 students were arrested en masse at the G.M. Barrage between Jamshoro and Hyderabad as they staged a rally against the One Unit scheme that had been in place in the country since 1955.

The protests were a culmination of the unrest among Sindhi students that had been simmering beneath the surface for a long time against One Unit. Its causes went deep into the humiliations suffered by Sindh and its people on cultural, political, administrative and economic levels.

Sindhi, a 2,500 year-old language, had no official status in what became the province of West Pakistan. It was stripped of all its rights as a medium of instruction, except in primary schools in the rural areas of Sindh. Sindhis were thus deprived of all opportunities of promoting their culture and language.

Politically and administratively, One Unit meant that Sindh disappeared as an entity and was reduced to looking to the capital Lahore for the pettiest matters.
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On the economic level – and this situation continues to this day – it had to concede much of the lands rendered cultivable by the construction of barrages to the higher bureaucracy and military.
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Last but not the least, the demographic changes due to Partition, which saw mass influx of Muslim migrants from India and an outflow of Sindhi Hindus, meant that the major cities of the province, including Karachi, became virtual no-go areas for Sindhis as far as jobs and economic opportunities were concerned.

Final straw
The movement itself was sparked when the Vice Chancellor of Sindh University, Hasan Ali Abdur Rehman, was dismissed in February 1967 by the Governor of West Pakistan, Nawab Amir Mohammad Khan Kalabagh.

Rehman, the first Sindhi Vice Chancellor of the university, was dismissed for his efforts for facilitating the admission of Sindhi students in professional colleges by allotting quotas for the far-flung districts of Sindh. The students agitated and demanded Rehman to be reinstated.

On March 4, a general-body meeting of students of Sindh University, Liaquat Medical College, and Engineering College was planned in Sindh University’s City Campus in Hyderabad. Students were proceeding to the venue in university buses when the police encircled them near the G.M. Barrage. The students were beaten up and all 207 of them were arrested.

The police brutality resulted in mass protests all over the province. Although the dismissal order against the Vice Chancellor was not taken back, this moment, which came to be known as the 4th March Movement and is commemorated every year, gave rise to wide-scale political awakening in Sindh.

My contribution
I was a first-year student at the university’s Hyderabad campus. I remember it was another pleasant evening when the news of the mass arrest spread.

This development was grave not only because students had been targeted, but because the authorities had been trying to divide the students on linguistic basis. In order to counter the unrest against the dismissal of the Vice Chancellor, the Commissioner of Hyderabad, Masroor Ahsan, had attempted to rally those who were regarded as leaders of Urdu-speaking students behind him.

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The outrage felt by the students against the victimisation of the first Sindhi Vice Chancellor of Sindh University, who had dared resist the attempts by the West Pakistan government to undermine the autonomy of the university, was given a parochial colour.
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Given that most Urdu-speaking students seemed to be supportive of government action, a few of us decided that something had to be done, even symbolically, to prevent the cleavage between the students on parochial lines. This could only be done by showing solidarity with the arrested students. A minimum would be to write slogans on walls against the police action.

So me and my comrade Inayat Kashmiri took up a brush to paint slogans against the police and the Ayub dictatorship in the area around Tilak Charri, where most of the education institutions of Hyderabad were located at the time.

While writing on the walls, we had our eyes fixed on the on-coming traffic on the one-way road, ready to slip into the side streets if a police van came. We were too naïve to know that police in this country does not observe basic traffic rules.

A police van came full-speed from the opposite direction and before we could do anything, we received the full brunt of lathis on our backs, were lifted up and thrown inside the van. Direction: Market Thana. There ensued salvos of invectives in Punjabi centred on one’s lower anatomy.

We were handcuffed and remained tied between two chairs in the SHO’s office for four days and nights. This made of us far greater rebels than the books we had lately become fond of: Maxim Gorky’s Mother and, of course, the Communist Manifesto.

Market Thana was located just near the red light area of Chakla. A large part of police activity in this thana consisted of rounding up prostitutes from the bazaar and bringing them in for extortion and entertainment.
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The language of communication in the thana was Punjabi – not its Heer of Waris Shah variant but an outpouring of its filthiest variety. This made us understand all the more the resentment in Sindh against One Unit, the suppression of the smaller provinces and their merger into West Pakistan with its capital in Lahore.
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During this time, we were hardly given any food and we avoided drinking water as we did not want to beg our unworldly hosts to take us to toilet. After four days, Hafeez Qureshi, one of the leading advocates of Hyderabad and a nationalist leader, came looking for us. He asked the SHO for a copy of the FIR so that he could engage legal procedures for our release. But an FIR there was none.

Apparently the SHO hadn’t even cared to inform his higher authorities of our arrest. He panicked and handed us over to the lawyer and even excused himself, saying that if he knew we were students, he would have let us go after admonition. Luckily for us, it was not yet the era of missing persons and kill and dump.

The discovery of Sindh
This small act of solidarity earned us lot of recognition and friends in the university. I already knew Jam Saqi, the great Sindhi nationalist leader whom I held in awe for his dedication and selflessness. He came from a far-off village in Tharparkar. I was a frequent visitor to his small kholi in a building on Tilak Charri.

He used to cook his only meal of the day late in the evening on a small stove. Even then, he used to insist on sharing it with me. I had never come across such a man in my family environment. I realised that life was much deeper and vaster than what family confines could offer. The real human beings were found where I was taught not to look for inspiration.

4th March served me as initiation into the soul of the province that had offered refuge to thousands of Urdu-speaking families like mine when they migrated to this country after Partition. With time, on becoming proficient in Sindhi language and going to the various cities and rural areas of Sindh as an activist, I impregnated myself with the deeply humanistic substrate of the Sindhi civilisation. With Jam Saqi, I came to meet luminaries like Hyder Bakhsh Jatoi, Ibrahim Joyo, Sobho Gianchandani, Usman Diplai and others.

What struck me the most in these people was their simplicity and total absence of pretension of any kind. I became more and more repulsed by the type of hostility that the great majority of educated Urdu-speakers maintained against the people of Sindh at the time.

The importance of 4th March
It will not be wrong to say that 4th March crystallised the defiance of the people of Sindh against the treatment meted out to them by the dominant players of the country. Ground was prepared for it first of all by an unprecedented flourishing of Sindhi literature in all of its genres, especially poetry. Poets like Shaikh Ayaz felt and mirrored the pain of Sindh in their poetry.

No wonder that after 4th March, a recurrent event Sindhi Sham became the main form of assertion of Sindhi identity and pride. Behind an innocuous cultural façade, Sindhi Sham was a forum for voicing dissent against the unjust policies perpetrated in the name of one nation.

Countless literary periodicals burgeoned in Sindh after 4th March. To this day, the most vibrant daily press of the country, closest to the ordinary citizens, is the Sindhi press.

Unfortunately, most historians and political specialists in and outside Pakistani, with some honourable exceptions like Dr Tanvir Ahmed who wrote the Political Dynamics of Sindh, have failed to take due account of the landmark nature of the 4th March Movement.
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The Movement was an important component of the overall democratic upsurge in Pakistan that led to the falling of Ayub Khan’s dictatorship and dismemberment of One Unit. Even the books written on student movements in Pakistan seem to overlook the fact that Sindh, after having been wiped out from the country’s map by virtue of One Unit, struck back hard and reentered the political frame due to the defiance and courage of its students.
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It is 50 years since that fateful evening of 4th March, 1967. It is long ago but so near that it is impossible to forget it. Time has not erased the deep pride I have always felt in making a very small contribution to that great event.

I will finish with a prayer by the inimitable Latif Sain:
سائينم سدائين ڪرين مٿي سنڌ سڪار
دوست مٺا دلدار، عالم سڀ آباد ڪرين
Saim sadaein karein mathan Sindh Sukar
Dost mitha dildaar Aalam subh aabad karein
My Lord keep Sindh always on top
Dear Friend also make prosperous the entire world
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Rumblings of a ‘Deep State’ Undermining Trump? It Was Once a Foreign Concept

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s allegations that former President Barack Obama tapped his phone and his assertions that the bureaucracy is leaking secrets to discredit him are the latest signs of a White House preoccupation with a “deep state” working to thwart the Trump presidency.

The concept of a “deep state” — a shadowy network of agency or military officials who secretly conspire to influence government policy — is more often used to describe countries like Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan, where authoritarian elements band together to undercut democratically elected leaders. But inside the West Wing, Mr. Trump and his inner circle, particularly his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, see the influence of such forces at work within the United States, essentially arguing that their own government is being undermined from within.

It is an extraordinary contention for a sitting president to make. Mr. Trump, who last year angrily dismissed the conclusion of intelligence officials that the Russians interfered in the presidential election to boost his candidacy, has now asked both his staff and a congressional committee investigating Moscow’s influence on the election to turn up evidence that Mr. Obama led an effort to spy on him.

How the White House and its allies see the deep state threat
“What President Trump is discovering is that he has a huge, huge problem underneath him, and I think he’s shocked that the system is as hostile as it is,” said Newt Gingrich, a top adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign who said he has spoken with Mr. Bannon many times about his suspicion of the deep state and what he sees as its pernicious influence.

“We’re up against a permanent bureaucratic structure defending itself and quite willing to break the law to do so,” Mr. Gingrich said.

Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Bannon has used the term “deep state” publicly. But each has argued that there is an orchestrated effort underway, fueled by leaks and enabled by the news media, to cut down the new president and interfere with his agenda.

“Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling,” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said on Sunday.

Mr. Bannon, speaking last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference, said a central element of Mr. Trump’s presidency would be the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” It was his latest articulation of a dim view of federal agencies that he argued had grabbed power at the behest of the “progressive left.”

Breitbart News, the conservative site Mr. Bannon used to run, uses the term deep state frequently in its coverage, including in a story on Sunday headlined “DeepStateGate: Trump Ends the Wiretapping Innuendo Game by Dealing Himself In.” The term has gained currency on other right-leaning websites, conservative talk radio and on social media, where Mr. Trump’s supporters are inflamed by the notion that a powerful secret cabal is plotting his downfall.

Projecting a new role for Obama

Veterans of prior administrations have been alarmed by the charge, arguing that it suggests an undemocratic nation where legal and moral norms are ignored.

“ ‘Deep state’ I would never use,” Michael V. Hayden, the former Central Intelligence Agency director under both Mr. Obama and former President George Bush, said on MSNBC on Monday. “That’s a phrase we’ve used for Turkey and other countries like that, but not the American republic.”

Loren DeJonge Schulman, a former top official in Mr. Obama’s National Security Council who is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said presidents and top White House officials often bristle at what they consider to be a sluggish bureaucracy. But it is jarring for an administration in power to claim that civil servants are actively working to subvert the government.

“A deep state, when you’re talking about Turkey or Egypt or other countries, that’s part of government or people outside of government that are literally controlling the direction of the country no matter who’s actually in charge, and probably engaging in murder and other corrupt practices,” Ms. Schulman said. “It’s shocking to hear that kind of thinking from a president or the people closest to him.”

Yet to Mr. Trump’s allies and supporters, the president is giving voice to a favorite theory.

“We are talking about the emergence of a deep state led by Barack Obama, and that is something that we should prevent,” said Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa. “The person who understands this best is Steve Bannon, and I would think that he’s advocating to make some moves to fix it.”

Mr. King cited as evidence of a thriving deep state Mr. Obama’s decision to stay in Washington after leaving the White House, a decision he said was driven by the former president’s desire to frustrate Mr. Trump’s agenda. (Mr. Obama has said he is remaining in Washington until his younger daughter, Sasha, graduates from high school in 2019.)

Mr. Trump “needs to purge the leftists within the administration that are holdovers from the Obama administration, because it appears that they are undermining his administration and his chances of success,” Mr. King said.

Pakistan, home to military coups, is considered Exhibit A

The deep state is a phrase often heard in countries where there is a history of military coups and where generals often hold power independent of elected leaders.

Pakistan is Exhibit A: The deep state is often invoked in serious discussions about the role of the Pakistani military and its intelligence service, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence.

Wide swaths of the population see the unseen hand of the security services behind major political events and all kinds of everyday happenings, such as random traffic stops.

The views are not without basis — there have been repeated military coups in Pakistan, and the military and the spy service often operate largely independent of the country’s politicians.

“The deep state concept emerges in places where the army and the security apparatus creates boundaries within which the civilian political people are allowed to operate,” said Peter Feaver, a specialist in civil-military issues at Duke University and a national security aide to Mr. Bush. “If they transgress those boundaries, then the deep state interferes to reorder things, often using military force.”

Leaks vs. serious opposition

“There are milder forms of it in healthier democracies,” Mr. Feaver said, arguing that American presidents have often chafed against the constraints of the federal bureaucracy.

“Nixon shared a similar kind of distrust of the government and felt the government was out to get him at points,” Mr. Feaver added. “President Trump’s view seems to be more on the Nixon part of the spectrum, which is far from the Pakistan part.”

In the United States, it is hardly unusual for dissent among warring factions inside the government to burst into public view. Under former President Ronald Reagan, the secretary of state, George P. Shultz, and the secretary of defense, Caspar W. Weinberger, were often at odds and would feud through dueling news reports.

“Just because you see things like leaks and interference and obstruction doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a deep state — that’s something we’ve seen before, historically, and it’s nothing new,” said James Jay Carafano, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation who advised Mr. Trump’s transition. “What would be different is if there were folks from the previous administration that were consciously orchestrating, in a serious way, inside opposition to the president.”

In the absence of evidence one way or the other, Mr. Carafano added, “It’s hard to know: Is this Trump using some strong political rhetoric, or an actual theory?”

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ISIS Hates Our Saint Because He Belongs to Everyone

LONDON — Last Thursday a suicide bomber affiliated with the so-called Islamic State attacked Sehwan Sharif, one of the most revered Sufi shrines, in the southern Sindh Province of Pakistan, killing more than 80 people, including 24 children, and wounding more than 250.

Why the terrorists hate Sehwan is why we love it. The saint and his shrine at Sehwan belong to everyone, to Sunnis and Shiites, to Hindus and Muslims, transgender devotees, to believers and questioners alike. The inclusiveness, the rituals and music born of syncretic roots make shrines like Sehwan Sharif targets in the extremist interpretations of the Islamic State and other radical Wahhabi militants.

As a child in the late 1980s and early ’90s, I would visit the town of Sehwan with my family on our way from Karachi to Larkana, my family’s hometown. After driving along bumpy roads deserted but for palm trees and solitary men standing on the open highways selling lotus flower seeds, we would stop near the western bank of the Indus River to visit the shrine of Sehwan’s patron saint, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, a 13th-century Persian mystic and poet who was a contemporary of Rumi.

Qalandar, whose real name was Syed Mohammad Usman Marwandi, is adored in music and poetry as the Red Falcon. As you drive through the narrow, dusty streets of Sehwan, the air becomes perfumed with the scent of roses, sold in small plastic bags and body-length garlands that devotees lay at his tomb.

I was 7 when I first saw Sehwan during Ashura, when Shiites mourn the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussain, who was killed in 680 by an unjust ruler at Karbala, in what is now Iraq.

I remember thousands of men and women together in collective, ritualized mourning in the courtyard of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine. They walked barefoot over glass and the embers of burning cigarette butts, their black shalwar kameez drenched in sweat, their palms striking their chests rhythmically. Even as a 7-year-old, I found something hypnotic, something fierce, something pure about Sehwan.

Over the years, I kept returning to Sehwan to sit in that courtyard, the shrine illuminated by red and green fairy lights, its golden dome and turquoise minarets soaring above a town of modest roofs.

The cool tiled floor of the shrine is often carpeted with devotees, some carrying tiffins of food on outings with their children, others in fraying and torn shalwar kameez prostrate in prayer. Even wealthy urbanites visit to lay their anxieties at the feet of the buried saint, tiptoeing gingerly through the crowds. In a country built and maintained on immovable divisions of ethnicity, gender, class and belief, the shrine at Sehwan welcomed all. It was an egalitarian oasis formed by the legacies and practice of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism merging into one.
On Thursday evenings people congregate to listen to the religious songs called qawwali and perform a devotional dance, dhamal. They arrive with offerings of bruised rose petals, sugared almonds and what money they can spare. They seek solace from their pain; pray for safety in a harsh, unjust world; beg for an answer to a forgotten prayer. Those who can’t offer anything arrive empty-handed. Sehwan’s shrine promised the weak, the worried and the poor that they would always be safe here.

Every time we visited the shrine, a deaf and mute man named Goonga welcomed my brother, Zulfi, and me. A servant and a guardian of the shrine, Goonga wore his hair in a turban and had a matted beard. On the breast pocket of his shalwar kameez, he sometimes wore a picture of Hussain. Goonga would walk us through the shrine that was his home and refuge.

In the courtyard of the shrine, men in flowing robes and long dreadlocks sing:
Shahbaz Qalandar – Qawwali journey to Sehwan Sharif with Fanna-Fi-Allah Video by Tahir Faridi Qawwal
O laal meri pat rakhio bala Jhoole Laalan,
Sindhri da Sehwan da, sakhi Shahbaaz Qalandar,
Dama dam mast Qalandar,
which translates to:
O red-robed, protect me always, Jhule Lal,
Friend of Sindh, of Sehwan, God-intoxicated Qalandar,
Every breath intoxicated by you, Qalandar.
No matter how far from Sehwan I have traveled, how far from lands where Urdu is spoken and heard, just to hear “Dama dam mast Qalandar” is to be transported home.

My brother called me after the attack on the shrine. “Goonga,” he asked. “Is he alive?” We were trying to find out. But no one had seen Goonga since the blast. We Pakistanis always believed our saints protected us. In Karachi, where we live by the sea, we believe that the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi, overlooking the Arabian Sea shore, saved the city from cyclones and tsunamis.

Before Qalandar arrived here, before Islam came to the subcontinent, Sehwan was known as Shivistan after the Hindu god Shiva. In time, the town’s name was changed, but Sindh has long remained a home to all faiths. At the annual festival of Qalandar, a Hindu and a Muslim family together drape a ceremonial cloth over Qalandar’s grave. A lamp-lighting ceremony reminiscent of Hindu rites is also performed.

The shrine in Sehwan was attacked because it belongs to an open, inclusive tradition that some in Pakistan would rather forget than honor. Though it was founded as a sanctuary for Muslims, in its early incarnation, Pakistan was a home for all those who wished to claim it. Parsis, Sikhs, Christians and Jews remained in Pakistan after the bloody Partition in 1947.

Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan’s brutal military dictator in the 1980s, aided by Saudi money and supported by the United States, destroyed Pakistan’s progressive, syncretic culture. In the 11 years that General Zia presided over Pakistan, our textbooks were rewritten, exclusionary, intolerant laws were passed, and primacy was given to the bearers of a closed, violent worldview. Pakistan never recovered. Only pockets of the country still imbibe the generous welcome once afforded to all faiths. Sehwan is one of them.

After the attack, Pakistan’s military closed the border with Afghanistan and complained that the attackers had been given haven in Afghanistan. In retaliation, 100 people accused of being terrorists have been killed by the military.

Sehwan has no proper hospital, no trauma centers. For all its historical, religious and cultural significance, it was — like so much of this wounded country — abandoned by those who rule the province. There is no real governance here, no justice and no order. For life’s basic necessities, people must supplicate themselves before dead saints.

On the morning after the blast, the caretaker rang the bell, just as he always had. Devotees broke through the police cordons and returned to dance the dhamal on Saturday. Zulfi texted, “Goonga is alive.”

On my last visit to the shrine, after Goonga walked me through the crowded marketplace selling food and offerings, I sat on the floor besides a mother who had brought her son, crippled with polio, in the hopes that her prayers would ease his suffering. I had come to the shrine to see the blue and white floral kashi tiles, to walk around the perimeter and to be in a part of Pakistan that still operated on that rarest of currencies: hope.

Fatima Bhutto is the author of the memoir “Songs of Blood and Sword,” about the Bhutto political family, and the novel “Shadow of the Crescent Moon.”

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Land rush around Gwadar port triggered by Chinese investment

LAHORE, Feb 23: Real estate giant Rafi Group made a ten-fold profit last year from its sale of hundreds of acres of land in the remote fishing town of Gwadar, acquired soon after the government announced plans for a deep-sea port there.

The windfall came after 12 years of waiting patiently for the Gwadar port to emerge as the centrepiece of China’s ambitious plans for a trade and energy corridor stretching from the Persian Gulf, across Pakistan, into western Xinjiang.

“We had anticipated the Chinese would need a route to the Arabian Sea,” Rafi Group Chief Executive Shehriar Rafi told Reuters. “And today, all routes lead back to Gwadar.”

China to build $1.5 billion power line across Pakistan
Gwadar forms the southern Pakistan hub of a $57-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) of infrastructure and energy projects Beijing announced in 2014.

Since then, land prices have skyrocketed as property demand has spiked, and dozens of real estate firms want to cash in.

“Gwadar is a ‘Made in China’ brand and everyone wants a piece,” said realtor Afzal Adil, one of several who shifted operations from the eastern city of Lahore in 2015.

Last year, government welcomed the first large shipment of Chinese goods at Gwadar, where the China Overseas Ports Holding Company Ltd took over operations in 2013. It plans to eventually handle 300 million to 400 million tons of cargo a year.

Forget India, profit from ‘quiet rise’ of Pakistan: Barron’s Asia

It also aims to develop seafood processing plants in a nearby free trade zone sprawled over 923 hectares (2,281 acres).

The route through Gwadar offers China its shortest path to the oil-rich Middle East, Africa, and most of the Western hemisphere, besides promising to open up remote, landlocked Xinjiang.

Last year, the Applied Economics Research Centre estimated the corridor would create 700,000 jobs in Pakistan and a Chinese newspaper recently put the number at more than 2 million.

Authorities have completed an expressway through Gwadar, which has a 350-km (218-mile) road network. A new international airport kicks off next year, to handle an influx of hundreds of Chinese traders and officials expected to live near the port.

The volume of Gwadar property searches surged 14-fold on Pakistan’s largest real estate database, Zameen.com, between 2014 and 2016, up from a prior rate of a few hundred a month.

“It’s like a gold rush,” said Chief Executive Zeeshan Ali Khan. “Anyone who is interested in real estate, be it an investor or a developer, is eyeing Gwadar.”

Prices, which have risen two- to four-fold on average, are climbing “on a weekly basis,” said Saad Arshed, the managing director of online real estate marketplace Lamudi.pk.

Regional fishermen have held strikes during the last two years, to protest against being displaced by the port.
To keep pace with the interest, urban officials are struggling to computerise land management and record-keeping. “We are trying to upgrade as fast as we can,” said Zakir Majeed, an official of the Gwadar Development Authority (GDA).

But Gwadar lacks basic education and health facilities, in contrast to the gleaming towers and piped drinking water of the “smart city” envisioned by the GDA.

“For commercial projects, things are moving fast,” Lamudi’s Arshed said. “But people actually living there, that will take a long time.”

Port officials expect the population to hit 2 million over the next two decades, from about 185,000 now.

Risk
The government commissioned work on the Gwadar port in 2002, but development was held up by chronic instability in the surrounding resource-rich province of Balochistan.

Since China announced the corridor plan in 2014, security has improved, with government setting up a new army division to ensure protection, while hundreds of rebels surrendered arms.

Real estate firms dismiss fears the “Gwadar bubble” might still burst, pointing to China’s enduring interest.

“The risk is always there,” Rafi said. “But our confidence comes from knowing this is not a Pakistani initiative, but a Chinese city on the Arabian Sea coast. And the Chinese will see that it is built.”

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Kabul ready to talk intelligence cooperation with Pakistan ‘at any level’: Afghan official

KABUL, Feb 21: Afghanistan is ready to hold dialogue with Pakistan for intelligence cooperation at ‘any level’, an Afghan security official has told members of the Pak-Afghan track-II dialogue in Kabul.

The Afghan official, speaking informally and off-the-record, said senior security officials of the two countries had planned a ‘interaction’ but three major attacks in Kabul, Kandahar and Helmand on January 10 delayed the process. Nearly 60 people, including five UAE diplomats were killed in the attacks. The UAE ambassador, who was injured in the blast, died of wounds last week.

The remarks by the Afghan security official came amid growing tensions over the recent wave of terrorist attacks in Pakistan last week, which claimed the lives of about 100 people and injured over 300 more.

“We are ready for deep discussions on intelligence cooperation. We need a better environment. We need engagement. But only meetings and shaking hands will not give results. Sincere and effective engagement is a must to remove the mistrust,” the Afghan official told members of the dialogue titled ‘Beyond Boundaries’ which concluded on Monday.

President Ashraf Ghani had put a pause on a memorandum of understanding between the National Directorate of Security (NDS) and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 2015. As the two sides struck the ground-breaking agreement to share intelligence and resources to combat terrorism, it was opposed in Afghanistan and some leaders, including Hamid Karzai, publicly opposed the deal as against the ‘national interests’. Afghan media had also reported then NDS Chief Rahmatullah Nabil had refused to sign the accord.

But the Afghan official said that Kabul is open for talks on intelligence cooperation at any level to explore options how to deal with the security challenges. “We also want Pakistan to extend its counter terrorism strategy to the region,” he said.

“Pakistan may be concerned only about TTP, China has apprehensions about ETIM, Arab states will be worried about Da’ish and al Qaeda, Iran may have fears about Jundullah, Uzbekistan would expect dangers of IMU but Afghanistan is fighting against nearly 30 groups.” He claimed that the Afghan Taliban have provided space to many of these groups as they all have same approach.

The Afghan official said bilateral track for Pakistan and Afghanistan is the best option to deal with the security problems and end violence in both countries as ‘no one will bring stability for us’.
He also renewed Kabul’s suggestion for a third party’s verification of the claims by both countries about the presence of the armed groups on both side of the border. The verification could either be by the US or China, he said.

On peace talks with the Taliban, he said peace dialogue is more important to Afghanistan but “we want action to be taken against the Taliban if they decline the dialogue.”

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Trainer of suicide bombers killed in artillery shelling by Pakistan army

ISLAMABAD, Feb 18: Nearly a dozen training camps and hideouts of terrorist groups have been destroyed and over a dozen terrorists – including a top trainer of suicide bombers – have been killed in two days of artillery shelling by Pakistan’s military, Afghan sources confirmed on Saturday.

The confirmation came hours after Kabul summoned Pakistan’s ambassador to lodge a protest over what it called ‘cross-border rocket firing’. A day earlier, sources said four training compounds of the outlawed Jamaatul Ahrar (JuA) terrorist group had been decimated in the areas opposite Mohmand and Khyber agencies.

According to Afghan sources, 10 to 12 training camps and hideouts of the JuA and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – including that of JuA commander Wali – and ammunition dumps have been destroyed in the blitz. “Fifteen to 20 terrorists, among them Commander Rehman Baba, have been killed and many more injured,” one Afghan source added.

Army decimates four Jamaatul Ahrar camps
Rehman Baba, a high-value target, was responsible for training suicide bombers and young terrorists. Sources said on Friday that four JuA terrorist camps – including one run by the group’s deputy chief Adil Bacha – had been decimated.

The outlawed TTP and its breakaway faction JuA have set up ‘safe havens’ across the border in Afghanistan which they use as a springboard for launching attacks inside Pakistan. The two groups have been behind most terrorist attacks in the country.

The security situation along the Pak-Afghan border in Khyber Agency remains fluid. An official of the local political administration said as many as 4,000 tribesmen living in the Shinpokh and Samsay villages of Shalman have been asked to evacuate. A day earlier 400 households in the Samsai area had been evacuated amid a military operation in the villages near the border with Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, fresh contingents of security forces have reached the bordering areas of Shalman, Rena and Parchao.

Pakistan shuts down border with Afghanistan
Pakistan shut the main Torkham border crossing with Afghanistan following a string of deadly attacks, including Thursday’s suicide bombing at the shrine of Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, in the country last week.
Long queues of container trucks were stranded on both sides of the border as transit trade between the two countries remained suspended due to their strained relations. Movement of people to and from Afghanistan is not allowed. However, border guards and political administration allow the transportation of corpses and bereaved families as a goodwill gesture.

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Piecemeal approach to justice

The National Assembly has passed Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2017, a bill that seeks to address the issues of abuse of blasphemy law, sectarian hate speech, forced marriage of non-Muslim women and the crime of lynching. Therefore, the bill now due to be presented in the Senate, introduces changes to sections; 182 (falsification), 298 (hate speech), 498 B (forced marriage) of the Pakistan Penal Code 1860, Schedule II (defining competent courts) of Code of Criminal Procedure 1898 , sections 23, 27 and 32 (action against and the punishments for proliferation of hate material) Police Act 1861, section 10 of the Qanoon-e-Shahdat 1984, Section 11W (act of lynching to constitute terrorism) of the Anti-terrorism Act 1997.

In essence the bill seeks to add: categories of offenses and procedures, and a form of evidence, though most importantly, the bill seeks to introduce severer punishments for the above-mentioned offences i.e. three to seven years of jail, or more, depending on the gravity of offence and enhanced limits of fine from one hundred thousand to one million rupees for different offences. The treasury seems to have done impressive work by initiating legislation on some of the most disturbing issues concerning suppression of crimes against religious minorities.

Whereas a deeper look into the context shows that the bill may have defied even more crucial questions which will not merely impact implementation of the new measures but also make the viability of these measures questionable. For instance, forced marriage of minority women is usually accompanied by forced conversions which the bill does not criminalise. Hence the near-ineffectiveness of the measure given in the bill is almost predictable.

Similarly, a mere increase of punishment for the offence of falsification is not likely to deter the crime or hold the persons levelling false accusations accountable because the amendment neither addresses the vulnerability of victims of blasphemy laws nor adds procedure to the new measure. Any student of law could tell that section 182 of the Pakistan Penal Code regarding relief against false accusations is a redundant protection against the abuse because people do not want to undergo the agony of another legal proceeding.

The bill seems to have ignored in its entirety, the recommendations of the judicial inquiries held by Justice Tanveer Ahmad Khan in 1997 after the Shanti Nagar incident and by Justice Iqbal Hameeduddin after the Gojra incident in 2009. The bill could have also benefitted from a number of judgments in cases under the blasphemy allegations, findings and discussions of human rights committees in parliament besides the bill that was presented by Sherry Rehman in 2010. The Ministry of Law and Justice owes an explanation as to why the promises made two years ago in NAP regarding criminal justice system reforms, judicial reforms and police reforms are being ignored. Why is a patch work of amendments being considered a substitute whereas a package of reforms is being demanded by all stakeholders, including the superior judiciary? It has been a pattern that amendments to criminal justice are introduced.

in bits and pieces; in 2014 protection of women’s rights, in 2016 protection of child rights and protection of minorities is being imagined in 2017. This approach of administering justice is in need of serious review. The Senate of Pakistan is recommended to introduce a more holistic approach with regard to protection of religious minorities and reforms in the criminal justice system, it is prudent that justice is revisited. The emphasis needs to be on the restorative rather than punitive approach of criminal justice considering that the state has neglected for a long time what was due on its part.

The scope of making a tolerant society and reducing crime obviously goes beyond the role of legislation, jails and courts. The success towards higher purpose of criminal justice is contingent upon a holistic approach as well as matching steps in educational policy and curriculum and other social sector reforms.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 18th, 2017

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Civilian Institutions Need to be Strengthened for Intel Gathering & Prosecution

Lahore, February 17: Strongly condemning the Sehwan Sharif suicide bombing and a series of terrorist attacks in the country over the last few days, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has demanded decisive crackdown on all manifestations of violence, especially in the name of faith.

In a statement issued on Friday, the Commission said: “HRCP is saddened and greatly alarmed by a renewed wave of deadly attacks, the latest of which on Thursday evening took a heavy toll on human life at the Lal Shahbaz Qalander shrine at Sehwan Sharif.

“Unfortunately, we have been at similar junctures in our recent history. Perhaps things would have been different if the pledges made to crack down on all forms of hate speech and violence, on the basis of faith on those previous occasions, had been honoured.

“Irrespective of where the attackers blowing themselves up or pulling the trigger come from, assaults in rapid succession cannot take place without local support and facilitation networks. The people are justified in asking all those tasked with their safety and security what steps had been taken to preempt such violence and why they have not succeeded.

“As we mourn these latest victims of ideologies of hate, we are once again asking our children to undergo security trainings in their schools. No longer must the policy makers remain indifferent to non-implementation or selective pursuit of various aspects of the National Action Plan (NAP) on counter-terrorism. HRCP urges the state to use all the resources at its disposal for across-the-board and decisive action against the perpetrators of these inhuman crimes. It is important that no exception is made while proceeding against those promoting violence or discrimination in the name of faith. While we do not have the expertise to advise on security matters, it is obvious that relying solely on the military and paramilitary forces will not yield results without enhancing the policing and intelligence gathering capabilities of civilian forces.

“If these attacks are concluded to have a cross-border dimension, all efforts must be made to collaborate with neighbouring countries to pursue the mischief makers in order to deny sanctuary to them.”

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Islamic State blast at famed Sufi shrine in Pakistan kills at least 73

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — At least 73 people were reported killed and up to several hundred wounded Thursday when a suicide bomber struck inside a famous Sufi shrine in southeastern Pakistan while devotees were performing a weekly ritual dance, police and medical officials said.

The Islamic State, a Middle East-based militant group with allied outfits in Pakistan and Afghanistan, asserted responsibility for the blast through an affiliated news site.

The attack in the isolated rural town of Sehwan, in Sindh province, was one of the country’s deadliest bombings in a decade of terrorism, and it came after several successive days of violence that claimed 25 lives in all four provinces of Pakistan and two tribal areas.

On Monday, a suicide bombing in a crowded square in the eastern city of Lahore killed 13 people and injured scores. An affiliate of the Islamic State, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, said in an email to journalists that it was the start of an operation targeting government agencies and sites. Pakistan formally complained to next-door Afghanistan on Wednesday, charging that the militants were operating from sanctuaries across the border. Late Thursday, army officials announced that the border crossings between Pakistan and Afghanistan would be closed until further notice for security reasons.

It was not possible to confirm, however, whether the Islamic State or a local affiliate had carried out the Thursday attack at the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine. In August, when a bomb killed more than 70 people in the southwestern city of Quetta, both the Islamic State and an allied group claimed to be behind it. The Islamic State is also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Troops were sent to the shrine and the surrounding areas, and Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, issued a statement appealing to the nation to remain calm. “Your security forces shall not allow hostile powers to succeed,” he said.

“Each drop of the nation’s blood will be avenged, and avenged immediately” he added. “No more restraint for anyone.”

Officials at a local hospital said they had received about 60 bodies and about 250 wounded people, including about 40 in critical condition. The Pakistani navy placed all naval hospitals in Karachi, the provincial capital, on special alert to receive patients. Sehwan has very limited rescue and hospital services.

Pakistan has often been accused of coddling some violent Islamist groups that serve as its proxies in India and at home, while cracking down on others that oppose the Pakistani state and unleash attacks on domestic targets. Recently, though, officials placed an extremist anti-India cleric under house arrest, calling it a policy decision by both civilian and military leaders.

Islamist militants, including the Pakistani Taliban, have attacked numerous Sufi shrines in recent years, deeming them anti-Islamic. In November, a Sufi shrine in Balochistan province was bombed, killing 45 people. Sufism is a more mystical strain of Islam, and many conservative Muslims view it as heretical. Sufi shrines welcome people from all walks of life, and offer free food and other charity to the poor. On Thursdays, the shrines host poetry readings and other gatherings.

On Thursday night, officials said that security had been increased at Sufi shrines across the country and that some had been temporarily closed, Pakistani news channels reported.

In addition to targeting Sufis, violent Sunni groups have often attacked Christians, Shiites and Ahmadis, a community that sees itself as a branch of Islam but is reviled by many Muslims. Political leaders in Punjab province have been accused of appeasing some sectarian groups there.

In Sindh, some political leaders have resisted pressure from security agencies and provincial officials to ban or place more controls on extremist Islamic groups and dozens of seminaries alleged to have ties with terrorist groups. Over the past decade, bombings across the province have targeted shrines, mosques and other sites.

While groups affiliated with the Islamic State, including Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, have become more active in Pakistan, they remain controversial among many local Islamist factions. Some such groups have seen their followers defect to the foreign-affiliated outfits, and others have distanced themselves from admirers linked to the Islamic State.

When Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed the recent Lahore bombing, it named its planned terror operation after the late leader of Islamabad’s famed Red Mosque, the scene of a dramatic army siege in 2007. But this week, leaders of the mosque denounced the ISIS affiliate as an “enemy of Islam” and said its actions were un-Islamic.

Mehdi reported from Karachi, Pakistan.

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Taliban suicide bomber strikes Pakistan rally, killing 13

A suicide bomber struck police escorting a protest rally in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Monday, killing at least 13 people and wounding nearly 60 in an attack claimed by a breakaway Taliban faction.

The blast ripped through the crowd of hundreds of pharmacists, who were protesting new amendments to a law governing drug sales. Six police officers, including a former provincial counterterrorism chief, were among those killed, police said.

Police initially said the attacker was on a motorcycle, but provincial Law Minister Rana Sanaullah later said that closed-circuit footage revealed the bomber was on foot.

Sameer Ahmad, the Lahore deputy commissioner, said at least 13 people were killed and 58 wounded, including nine who were in critical condition.

Live TV registered a loud bang and showed smoke and fire billowing up as people ran away, some of them carrying the wounded.

“We just couldn’t understand what happened,” Tufail Nabi told local Geo News TV. “It was as if some big building collapsed,” he said as he limped away.

A group called Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed the attack in a text message, saying it was revenge for Pakistani military operations against Islamic militants in tribal regions along the Afghan border.

The group, which claimed a number of large attacks last year, is one of several splinter factions from the Pakistani Taliban, which has repeatedly targeted security forces and religious minorities. In recent years, Pakistan has launched several offensives against the Taliban and other Islamic militants in the tribal regions.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to continue fighting terrorism “until we liberate our people of this cancer and avenge those who have laid down their lives for us.”

Washington condemned the Lahore attack and extended condolences to the victims and their families. “We stand with the people of Pakistan in their fight against terrorists and remain committed to the security of the South Asia region,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

Elsewhere in Pakistan, a roadside bomb killed two members of a bomb disposal squad on the outskirts of the southwestern city of Quetta, said police officer Abdur Razzaq Cheema. Another eight people were wounded in the explosion, he said.

A Taliban-linked group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, said it planted the bomb.
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Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad in Islamabad, Matthew Lee in Washington and Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, contributed to this report.