[DAWN] WHETHER it was a faux pas or stemmed from ignorance, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar's statement that Azad Jammu & Kashmire is part of Pakistain should jolt the old hands at the Foreign Office, for it repudiates the very basis of Islamabad's political, legal and moral stand on the more than six-decade-old dispute. Pakistain's position since 1947, when India occupied the princely state, has been that Kashmire is not real estate, that neither Pakistain nor India has a right to it and that it is the people who should decide by a vote what country they consider to be their own. This Pak position was recognised by the United Nations ...the Oyster Bay money pit... through various resolutions and accepted by colonial and Indian leaders, including governor general Lord Mountbatten, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and New Delhi's representatives at the world body. That Mr Dar should know so little about foreign affairs is rather surprising. Referring to the Indian objections to the China-Pakistain Economic Corridor passing through Gilgit-Baltistan, which is a part of the larger Kashmire dispute, the finance minister said, "What disputed territory? Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu & Kashmire are part of Pakistain."
GB, whose legal status remains in limbo, and AJK are part of the larger dispute that has been pending with the UN. But what Mr Dar failed to mention was that looking after GB's administration and economic development will remain Islamabad's responsibility until the Kashmire issue is finally resolved. His ill-informed claim, therefore, that they are part of Pakistain underlines a regrettable truth: the cabinet does not function as a cohesive policymaking body, and Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... 's retention of the foreign minister's portfolio has caused enormous confusion in the conduct of foreign policy. Odd as it is, there has been no government clarification, not even the usual claims of having been misquoted. That a federal minister should exhibit such disregard towards a sensitive foreign policy issue reflects adversely on the quality of the leadership. It is not too late to have a fulltime foreign minister.
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06/26/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] IT is difficult to comprehend why parents of the APS Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. carnage victims were shown video clips of hard boys' brutality at Wednesday's Supreme Court hearing concerning the establishment of military courts. The families have been through enough, and one wonders why they had to be shown the recordings when all that was apparently required was their opinion on the 21st Amendment. On another note, the hearing was significant because it has once again brought to the fore the issue of the status of 'banned' groups in Pakistain. When Justice Qazi Faez Isa asked if the state had declared Daesh -- as the self-styled Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... is also known -- a proscribed organization, the attorney general replied that he would produce documentation detailing the outfit's proscription in court. This is perhaps indicative of the state's overall method of dealing with the proliferation of militancy. While on paper there are grand plans and designs; when it comes to implementation, the state is largely at sea.
While it is debatable what sort of presence the IS has in Pakistain and how big a threat it poses to the country's security, the nation needs to know whether it has been officially banned or not. The problem is that many hard boy outfits thrive because the state has left a grey area where they can operate. Groups like the IS, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat ...which is the false nose and plastic mustache of the murderous banned extremist group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain, whatcha might call the political wing of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi... and Jamaat-ud-Dawa ...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba... all fall within this category. Are these groups banned? If so, how are they able to organise and how are their leaders able to march in rallies and deliver speeches? Also, while an organization may be banned on paper, its leadership is largely free to carry on business as usual. This dichotomy needs to be addressed. An authentic list of banned ...the word banned seems to have a different meaning in Pakistain than it does in most other places. Or maybe it simply lacks any meaning at all...
organizations needs to be made public and must be updated regularly. Moreover, all individuals associated with proscribed outfits must also be watched and their finances frozen. The Supreme Court would be ideally placed to ask the state for a comprehensive, updated list of proscribed groups in the country, and to inquire what steps the government is taking to prosecute the leaders of these outfits. The face of militancy is constantly changing and taking new forms in Pakistain. Up to now the ad hoc approach has failed to secure the country from the menace of terrorism and if matters continue to remain as they are, it will only provide more space for militancy to thrive.
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06/26/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] PAKISTAN'S blistered soul faces challenges from overlapping factors of ideology, language, ethnicity and multi-denominational belief systems. Within this disparateness, the pulpit is a constant that can unite or divide. Right to citizenship by birth and right to citizenship by blood cohabit awkwardly with religious imperatives.
Denominations plus ethnic, ideological and language groups constantly seek ascendancy through violence. Their power base is usually religion, a balm to the soul that can also be its bane. Mismanaged hybrid ideologies compound the inherent instability of a young nation. Each group claims to uphold untainted ideals of democracy and social equality.
Language itself is not immune to the onslaught of purity. Urdu, English and Arabic are Pakistain's national, official and religious languages, respectively. Four provincial, five regional and the 60-odd minor languages fight hard to claim purity and disclaim cultural sedition. Fear and frustrated ambition can erupt to the surface and seek single-issue political platforms over a perception of purity.
With eight major and seven minor ethnic groups broadly grouped by language, purity rears its ugly head with the threat of ethnic purification lurking over the horizon.
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06/26/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] THE surge of allegations against the MQM continues, this time the BBC chipping in with claims that have been heard before elsewhere though perhaps not in the detail revealed on Wednesday. Two things in particular stand out about the BBC report alleging links between the MQM and the Indian state: one, that the claims were made by members of the MQM themselves; and two, that a list of weapons -- many of the items being of a kind no peaceable political party anywhere could possibly have any interest in -- has been recovered from an MQM property in the UK. The MQM response has been as predictable as it is inadequate: the few party leaders who were willing to brave the cameras and microphones on Wednesday dismissed all allegations and hinted at yet another unspecified plot against the MQM. With more claims and stories almost sure to follow in the days and weeks ahead, perhaps it is time for, first, the federal government to revisit its strategy and second, the MQM to do the same.
Thus far the PML-N government's response to every new twist and turn in the widening and deepening case against the MQM has been either to reiterate its support for government agencies (if the allegations emanate from military-backed quarters) or to pledge to investigate (if they originate in the media or elsewhere). So it is hardly surprising that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... yesterday directed Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan to apparently investigate the claims made in the BBC report. If that is unsurprising, it is also thoroughly unacceptable: the BBC report suggests that at least one unnamed Pak official is aware of the alleged MQM-India nexus -- should therefore the government not be informing the country about what it knows rather than pretending that it is in the dark and committed to finding the truth? Repeatedly in recent weeks and months, the interior minister has hinted at knowledge about the MQM's alleged illegal activities -- but always baulked at revealing what his ministry is aware of for unspecified reasons. Are Paks forever destined to remain a population that its own elected representatives withhold the truth from?
The other aspect to consider here is the MQM's inadequate response to the growing list of allegations against the party. The essential point is that none of the claims are particularly new or surprising: the MQM's connection to violence and militancy; the MQM's foreign linkages to various states; the MQM's economic exploitation of the cities in which it rules -- everything has been alleged over the years and it is commonly accepted that most of the allegations have at least a kernel of truth to them. What the MQM -- which still has a large support base as the April by-polls- in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... showed -- needs is an overhaul of its politics and internal organization. It must clean out the worst elements, admit to a flawed past and lay the ground for a people-oriented future.
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06/26/2015 00:00 ||
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One down, one to go... And another one bites the dust...
A law enforcement source today confirmed to Fox News that escaped convict Richard Matt has been shot and killed by police near Malone, N.Y.
Matt is one of two prison inmates who escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y.
Matt's counterpart David Sweat is still on the run.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[DAWN] PAKISTAN'S blistered soul faces challenges from overlapping factors of ideology, language, ethnicity and multi-denominational belief systems. Within this disparateness, the pulpit is a constant that can unite or divide. Right to citizenship by birth and right to citizenship by blood cohabit awkwardly with religious imperatives.
[DAWN] THE surge of allegations against the MQM continues, this time the BBC chipping in with claims that have been heard before elsewhere though perhaps not in the detail revealed on Wednesday. Two things in particular stand out about the BBC report alleging links between the MQM and the Indian state: one, that the claims were made by members of the MQM themselves; and two, that a list of weapons -- many of the items being of a kind no peaceable political party anywhere could possibly have any interest in -- has been recovered from an MQM property in the UK. The MQM response has been as predictable as it is inadequate: the few party leaders who were willing to brave the cameras and microphones on Wednesday dismissed all allegations and hinted at yet another unspecified plot against the MQM. With more claims and stories almost sure to follow in the days and weeks ahead, perhaps it is time for, first, the federal government to revisit its strategy and second, the MQM to do the same.
