Musharraf’s trial and Pakistan

Posted on January 25, 2014 by beenasarwar
Musharraf and the famous fist. Photo T. Mughal/EPA

Musharraf and the famous fist. Photo T. Mughal/EPA

Below, my (un-populist) take on the Musharraf treason trial, in an opinion piece published in International Business Times, London, Jan 23, 2014. N.B. The recent attack on the bus in Mastung, Balochistan, that killed some 30  Hazara Shia Muslims, including women and children returning from pilgrimage in Iran is an example of the result of Musharraf’s policies of letting the home-grown ‘jihadis’ function. Plus I forgot to mention his role in the murder of Akbar Bugti… Continue reading →

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‘Pro-jihadi, anti-India’ policy #fail

Posted on May 30, 2011 by beenasarwar

“’Pro-jihadi, anti-India’ policy #fail” – my column Personal Political published in Hardnews, India, and in The News on Sunday. Many in Pakistan have been saying this for a long time, and been attacked and branded as traitors, Indian agents and kafirs for going against ‘the establishment’. Now, for the first time, this argument is in the public domain, being discussed on live television. Recently, Asma Jahangir Chairperson Emeritus of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and President of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan, lashed out at the Pakistan army’s self serving policies and demanded that they stay out of politics – in words that one would never have heard on television before. Her view reinforces what I wrote a few days earlier, below (predictably, efforts are afoot to portray her as ‘anti-national, pro-Hindu, pro-India’. These efforts too, will #fail). Continue reading →

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‘Making windows into men’s souls’

Posted on January 4, 2010 by beenasarwar

Benazir Bhutto on arrival in Karachi, Oct 2007. Photo: Beena Sarwar

Slightly revised version of my column in Hardnews January issue, published in The News on Sunday, Jan 3, 2010, written on Dec 25 with a recent postscript.

PERSONAL POLITICAL: Making windows into men’s souls

Beena Sarwar

Writing this on Dec 25, 2009, two words come to mind – ‘morality’ and ‘terrorism’.

Flashback to the first Al Qaeda arrest, Feb, 1995: Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) picks up Ramzi Yousaf, the Kuwaiti-Pakistani behind the 1993 World Trade Center car bomb that killed six people (the target was thousands). His arrest is credited among others to then FIA additional director Rehman Malik (current Minister for the Interior).

June 1997: Then opposition leader Benazir Bhutto mentions Malik in her diary series for Slate, A Week in the Life of Benazir Bhutto, writing in her entry of June 21, 1997 about a prison visit to Wajid Shamsul Hasan (currently Pakistan’s High Commissioner in London): Continue reading →

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