Numaan’s Diary

A few days ago local media issued a video of a Girl getting flogged by Taliban in Swat. The brutality in the video has shocked the country. The news of the video spread across the country and people from all walks of the lives has condemned it.

This never happened in Pakistan. For the first time, people in Pakistan are thinking seriously about the Talibanization of their country. This video has shown them the true face of the Taliban. People all over the country are scared and worried that if government talks to Taliban and allows them to impose their Sharia Rule in the Swat region then they will impose such brutal laws on poor people of the region.

There is also question about the legal status of the agreement between the North Western Frontier Province and local fundamentalists. An agreement that establishes a parallel Islamic Sharia judicial system in the Swat district. It is clear that such an agreement is not supported by the constitution of Pakistan. Which gurantees equal rights for all citizens of Pakistan. This agreement hasn’t been presented in the parliament and it has not been signed by President of Pakistan. I am surprised that our national hero Justice Choudhry takes a suo moto action against the flogging of the poor girl in the video but totally ignores NWFP’s government’s illegal negotiations with terrorists and allowing terrorists to run their own brand of judicial system in a district of Pakistan.

Yesterday several human rights organizations protested in all major cities of Pakistan(Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad). People chanted slogans against Taliban, against terrorism, against the so called parallel judicial system, against the criminals who flogged the girl and demanded that Pakistan Army must continue the operation against Taliban.

Today there is an even bigger demonstration in Karachi called by MQM. Last night MQM’s volunteers distributed black flags and palmphlets all over the city requesting people to join the demonstration and raise their voice against Talibanization of Pakistan.

Yesterday, I was listening to Jameel Yousuf founder of Citizens Police Liason Comittee talking on Geo news during the terror attack at the Police training center in Lahore. He pointed out immensely huge flaws in our country’s anti-terror security practices. First of all he pointed out that the building of this current terror attack had no security at all. He also pointed out that in our country security means ill-equipped policemen guarding installations or VVIPs. We do not have lack of technology to fight terrorism in fact we have total absence of technology in all our security measures.

He bitterly described how foreign aid to train Pakistani police is wasted due to corruption. How government has always failed to control arms trade from tribal regions. How government failed to fight against kidnappings for ransom in all major cities of Pakistan. According to him these kidnappings for ransom are a major source of funding for local terrorist organisations. According to Mr. Yousuf, implementing the police order 2002 (Police Order 2002 PDF) is a good starting point to improve law and order situation.

Meanwhile US government has claimed that elements inside Pakistani intelligence agencies are helping terrorists. Apart from US concern, we must think ourselves that how we can fight terrorism in these conditions? The world has taken immense security measures to fight terrorism. Now these terrorists have very limited chances of attacking United States or allies, or India, or Zionists. So this leaves us the only easily accessible target to terrorists all over the world. Whether it is Al-Qaeda, or Baitullah Mehsud or any other so called Jihadi organization. They all have their base camps in Pakistan and they can easily target people of Pakistan whenever they want.

The picture Jameel Yousuf draw during this talk on television is so horrible but it described things very clearly that how come Pakistan is so easily targetted nearly twice a month by these terrorist organizations. The government must implement police reforms, improve co-ordination among law enforcing agencies and take strict actions to block funding for terrorists.

I was sitting in the waiting room of a clinic at OMI hospital. The waiting rooms are all the same every where in the world. You can imagine the scene. There are not-so-comfortable sofas with a coffee table in the center and some magazines lying on it, a few elderly ladies accompanied by their daughters or sons, an elderly man looking at me preparing to start a conversation, doctor’s secretary on her desk wearing lots of make up and consistently chatting with her boyfriend on the phone. And me, checking the magazines that I would normally never read. My eyes dropped on an Urdu newspaper, it had the photo of a man with a stupid smile. I recognized him, He is Javed Chodhry a famous Urdu columnist who is popular for his emotional columns. He used to write for the Daily Jang the most popular Urdu newspaper but then he left Jang and joined the second most popular Urduy Daily, The Express.

I picked it up and started reading it. At first he talked about Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto that how he understood the US policies and realized that US is not a reliable friend. Then Mr. Chodhry tells us that Russia is giving the money and weapons to Taleban in Afghanistan and since Pakistan was a US ally in both Afghan wars, Russia is also supporting the Talebans in Pakistan. He builds his argument beautifully involves India and Iran in it too and it all makes sense until he writes which I translate below:

Our army has arrested people from tribal areas who are uncirumcised, eat meat of dogs and cats and drink alcohol.

I didn’t know that Russians ate dogs and cats. And how Pakistan army found out that these people eat cats and dogs? Were they having a party when Pakistan Army arrested them? Or these people later requested Pakistani forces to provide them fresh meat of dogs and cats? I don’t think that Hindus, Russians or Afghans eat cats or dogs. Why would they? and why would Javed Chodhry write such a foolish thing?

The world was already worried about Pakistan’s madrassas and tribal areas being used as base camps for Taleban insurgents. But now they are panicked because it seems like the militants has started showing off their power in the capital of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the only muslim country with Nuclear weapons. The controversy revolves around a mosque known as Red Mosque and a madrassa run by the mosque,Jamia Hafsa, an Institute of Islamic studies. Recently the students of this madrassa attacked a house in Islamabad, kidnapped three women who lived in that house and demanded that Adultry cases must be filed against these women or else Jamia would arrange an Islamic court and punish the women itself.

Their Business is Jihad
The Guardian’s Declan Walsh visits Islamabad’s Red Mosque a hotbed of Islamic militancy at the heart of Pakistan’s capital.

Profile: Islamabad’s red madrassa

Trouble brews at Islamabad’s jihad-preaching mosque But their arrest and the seizure of the officers and an alleged manager of a local brothel during a morality dispute is a sideshow to more sinister activity inside the giant complex with 11,000 students.

The Daily Dawn’s Zafar Abbas calls it ‘The creeping coup‘.

ATP’s Adil Najam writes:

The hostage-taking by women students from Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad of the residents of a house that they allege is a brothel is not just another act of vigilantism and a breakdown of governance; it is also a manifestation of a nation divided against itself.

Below is a video showing Maulana Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, the head of madrassah and the mosque administration, telling about the Mosque, the Madrassa and the ideology that he and the madrassa students believe in.

When Lahore is celebrating Basant, there is a man, Shaukat who entered the city with the dead bodies of his five children, injured and exhausted wife, and his now only child a baby girl.

The Supereme Court of Pakistan ordered a ban over kite flying in Punjab to combat the side effects of Basant. Government of Punjab, removed the ban for two days to celebrate Basant in Lahore. Strict measures are taken to protect innocent lives and infrastructure, and to maintain law and order during Basant. But how could you expect the wild masses to abide the law when the wild government itself has teared it up into pieces.

This, the country of contrasts is full of conflicting stories. In another city, Peshawar, schools were threatened to be attacked by suicide bombers if they do not end up their co eduction school system.

A provincial minister gets killed by a lunatic, who is crazy about saving the Islamic identity of Pakistani women. This is the country where one province is moving fast towards Talebanization and another province trying hard to depict liberalization and freedom by breaking the law.

A woman mourning over the dead body of her relative who died during the terrorist attack on Samjhota Express.

Women in Lahore wearing smiles and buying kites to celebrate Basant.

School girls in Islamabad running during the inter school competitions.

Principle of Girl’s school in Mardan, a city in Pakistani province NWFP. Wearing Burqa and telling media about the threat letters she has recieved from Taleban to follow the strict Islamic burqa guidelines.

Barbers get threat in Pakistan, Suspected Islamic radicals have issued a warning to barbers in a Pakistani border town not to shave off or cut their customers’ beards, saying it offends Islam.

Pakistani newspaper, The Daily times has more on this issue.

Residents of Khar said that local barbers decided not to shave their customers following threats by militants that the practice was un-Islamic and violators would be punished.

Some 80 percent of customers visit barber shops to shave their beard and the militants’ threat will hurt the barbers economically.

The political administration has confirmed that the barbers were threatened, but it appears “helpless” in providing security to the barbers.

Security analysts, asking not to be named, said that militants would use Bajaur as a base to expand their “brand of Islam” to the northern districts of the NWFP after the southern districts “are increasingly influenced by the spread of Talibanisation”.

Meanwhile, US keeps pressurizing Pakistan to curb down on Taliban hideouts in Pakistan. A senior US Army General Karl W. Eikenberry testified before the House Armed Services Committee:

Al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership presence inside of Pakistan remains a very significant problem, He told the Committee.

A steady, direct attack against the command and control in Pakistan in sanctuary areas is essential for us to achieve success,

The Taliban resurgence has been supported by a strengthened command-and-control structure that moved across the border into Pakistan after U.S. forces toppled the Taliban government in 2001. Today, Eikenberry said, senior Taliban leaders from the ousted regime are collaborating with al-Qaeda leaders, as well as with other groups led by the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Haqqani clan of an ethnically Pashtun tribe.

Most Pakistanis are angry on Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s blame the Pakistan game. Me too, I felt personally hurt when he said that Pakistan wants to enslave Afghan people. May be there was some truth in his accusations about Taliban incursions but his anger irritates average Pakistani who thinks that we have always supported Afghanistan in troubled times. We have the world’s largest refugee population, we suffered from heroine and Kalashnikov culture for the better future and stability of Afghanistan.

In response to Hamid Karzai’s accusations, Pakistan’s decision to fence the border and use of mines to stop cross border infiltration would be considered the right choice by many Pakistanis. What they do not understand is why Afghanistan doesn’t like this solution?

In 1893, Afghans and British made a treaty to divide the Pashtun territory of Southeast Afghanistan (now North-West Frontier Province (N.W.F.P.), Federally Administered Tribal Areas (F.A.T.A.) and Balochistan provinces of Pakistan). Named after Sir Mortimer Durand, the Durand Line is still poorly marked 2,640 kilometer (1,610 mile) border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghanistan does not recognize the Durand Line as international border. In 1947, Afghanistan’s Loya Jirga declared the Durand Line invalid as they saw it as ex parte on their side (since British India ceased to exist in 1947 with the independence of Pakistan). Since then Pakistan has failed to get any Afghan government declaring Durand Line as the permanent border between the two countries.

Pakistani Pashtun tribes and Afghan government see the fencing as a dirty trick to change the status of the Durand line.

Also it is doubtful that Pakistan would succeed to control infiltration that way, BBC quotes Awami National Party’s Afrasayab Khattak, claiming:

“The Soviet Union, with more than 100,000 troops and massive air power, failed to prevent the infiltration of mujahideen that were sent in by Pakistan with international help,”

The international community continuously demanding Pakistan to curb down on Taliban hideouts and stop them crossing the border to destabilize Afghanistan. But no one, not even the United States is willing to support Pakistan’s fencing solution. It is also difficult for Pakistan to fence a 2640 KM poorly marked border with no other party to fund it.

Pakistan’s proposal to use land mines is also a cause of concern among tribes and International community. Hundreds of local tribesmen cross Pak-Afghan border each day for work, business and to meet families on the other side of the border. Even though Pakistan has not signed Anti-Mine Ban treaty but Afghanistan had and they still have a large population of handicapped and orphan mine victims. Few days ago, visiting Canadian foreign Minister Peter Gordon MacKay supported Pakistan’s fencing and has successfully compelled Pakistan to reconsider the mining by offering better alternatives.

Right now, fencing the Durand Line is a golden opportunity for Pakistan to change the status of the line and get a better control on the territory. But fencing is not a solution to stop Taliban. Ahmed Rashid, an analyst of Afghan issues, a journalist and author of “Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia” offers the solution:

“The essential thing that Pakistan needs to do is arrest the Taliban leaders living in Quetta,” he said, referring to the southwestern Pakistani city where Afghanistan and its allies say the Taliban have found refuge.

“As long as the Taliban organisational structure has a base in Pakistan this conflict is going to continue.”