Two invitations (Jamal Naqvi, Hamza Alavi events) and some uploads

Posted on December 11, 2009 by beenasarwar

Armed police confronting unarmed students (Students' Herald, Jan 19 1953)

New uploads & pix at Dr Sarwar blog
* Those killed on Jan 7 & 8, 1953 – martyrs’ to the students’ cause
* Article by Saghir Ahmed, High School Students Federation (Students Herald ’53)
* Article by Shahid Husain on the student movement, Editor’s Choice in PKonweb.com

INVITATIONS

An evening with PROF. JAMAL NAQVI
“Defend and Strengthen Democracy”

Fri, Dec 11, 2009, 4:00 p.m., Karachi Press Club
Contact: Nasir Arain, Ph: 0300 8200718

8th Annual HAMZA ALAVI Distinguished Memorial Lecture, “Pakistan and the Nature of the State: Revisionism, Jihad and Governance” by Khaled Ahmed, Consulting Editor, The Friday Times, Lahore.
Wed, Dec 16, 2009, at 5 pm, Jinnah Medical College, Shaheed Millat Road, Karachi.
Contact: Iqbal Alavi, Irtiqa Institute of Social Sciences
0300-927-6504 & 021-3583-1807

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The curse of living in ‘interesting times’

Posted on December 6, 2009 by beenasarwar

My recent column, published in Hardnews, India and The News on Sunday, Pakistan

PERSONAL POLITICAL

The curse of living in ‘interesting times’

Beena Sarwar

Visiting newspaper offices in Sweden some years ago, I was struck by the relative ease and routine manner in which journalists obtained information. Any envy was overtaken by the comforting thought that at least it’s never boring to be a journalist in Pakistan. Someone obviously threw the proverbial Chinese curse at us: “May you live in interesting times” and added, for good measure, “not just interesting, but downright dangerous”.

The roller coaster ride of Pakistan continues, with many passengers unsure whether the seat belts and the mechanisms are in working order. As I write this, speculations are rife about the ‘expected’ change of face in government. But then, if one were to believe the forecasts of newspaper and television pundits, this would have happened months after the first elected government in 12 years took over power in March 2008. Continue reading →

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TED and Compassion, India-Pakistan joint defence, Zardari and conspiracies

Posted on December 2, 2009 by beenasarwar

Several links and news items I’ve been wanting to share and finally managed to compile – as well as a belated bit of good news and congratulations to Dr Hassan Abbas, a journalist and then police officer in Lahore before becoming an academic and blogger at Watandost. He has been selected for the QAU Chair at Columbia U, well deserved. He has for years been stressing the need to deal with many of the problems in Pakistan as regular law and order issues, rather than blanketed under the ‘war on terror’, and has suggested reforms to the police sector including better training, pay and equipment – see his recent police reforms paper at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU)

Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists are having a field day in Pakistan, with much unease at how some journalists are (mis) conducting themselves. I say let them fulminate and froth. We’ve had fighting words from Zardari in his latest speech, and he has come out swinging (to use Bilal Qureshi’s term) in his interview to Express TV, posted at Pkonweb

The bottom line is that Pakistan army does not want to be under civilian control – see report by Saeed Shah: ‘Pakistan’s military seen moving to undercut Zardari over his close U.S. ties‘

One of Zardari’s ‘faults’ in the ‘establishment’s’ eyes is his insistence that India is not the enemy. Continue reading →

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