Justice Sabih’s legacy

Posted on May 7, 2009 by beenasarwar

Karachi, April 28:

Justice Sabih: Upholder of human rights

Justice Sabih: Upholder of human rights

The newspapers on the PIA flight back from New Delhi on April 20 reported the shocking news about Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed’s death. Various thoughts jostled with sadness at his untimely departure. I remembered him as a lawyer, one of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s founder members in 1986 and HRCP’s first Vice Chairperson for Sindh. My first term on the HRCP Council coincided with his last as he resigned in 1997, after being appointed as a judge of the Sindh High Court to the jubilation of human rights activists. Colleagues, activists and professionals revered him as a lawyer and later as a brilliant judge for his consistently compassionate and principled stands.

Twenty years ago, as a lawyer, he drafted a groundbreaking legislation regarding organ donations. His colleague and fellow advocate Syed Iqbal Haider twice presented the draft law as a private members’ bill before the Senate. The powerful vested interests of the commercial transplantation lobby kept getting it shelved. Eventually, years of hard work and lobbying by dedicated visionaries like Dr Adeebul Hasan Rizvi and his colleagues got the bill through as a presidential ordinance in October 2007. The commercial transplantation lobby appealed against it on the grounds that it was against Islam. On April 18, 2009, after extensive deliberations, the Federal Shariat Court ruled that organ donations are compatible with Islam, and outlawed commercial transplantations. That was also the day that Justice Sabih breathed his last.

His judgments strengthened human rights principles and gave relief to the aggrieved. His ruling of 1997 ordering the payment of monetary compensation to a detenu in a habeas corpus petition made judicial history in Pakistan. As chief justice of the Sindh High Court he encouraged out-of-the-box thinking, like allowing a judge of the Sindh High Court to take up appeals in interior Sindh as an experiment in 2007. Sitting at the Sukkur High Court, the judge (Justice Rehmat Shah Jafri) found that people had been in prison for 25-30 years on average. Refusing adjournments, he dealt with 300 appeals and disposed of 70 per cent of the murder cases in two months.

Women’s rights organisations always found Justice Sabih sympathetic. In one instance, he got the hearings of two rape cases transferred to Karachi from interior Sindh where the rape survivors felt threatened by the accused.

He was among the judges who refused to take oath under Musharraf’s PCO following the Emergency declaration of Nov 3, 2007. His steadfastness was an example to his brother judges. At one of the judge’s homes in Karachi, where civil society activists presented flowers to the dissenting judges, Justice Sabihuddin succinctly explained why they should be supported even if they had taken oath under an earlier PCO.

The military twice displaced civil power after the promulgation of the 1973 Constitution and took extra-constitutional judicial action through a PCO that required judges to take fresh oath: 1981 (under General Zia) and 2000 (under General Musharraf). After Musharraf seized power (Oct 1999) several judges refused to take oath under the PCO of 2000. The Supreme Court gave the military regime de facto recognition on condition that the judicial organ of the state remained uninterrupted. It also declared that independence of the judiciary was part of the basic structure of the Constitution, which the parliament could not amend. The self-styled chief executive was given power to amend, but not alter, the basic features of the Constitution. Also, extra-constitutional measures would be permissible only when the Constitution did not provide a remedy and the action taken was proportionate to the emergency situation.

In November 2007, an unprecedented 59 out of nearly 94 judges in the higher judiciary refused to take oath under the PCO. They stuck to their guns until after the elections. Over the past year, most ‘deposed’ judges returned to the courts, some like Justice Sabih in elevated positions. Many among civil society who had been active in the movement for the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry saw this as a great betrayal.

One of them was on the PIA flight from New Delhi with me, anguished at Justice Sabih’s death. We talked about the lawyers’ movement and the divergent strands within civil society.

An early division within ‘civil society’ was over the general elections. Dominant opinion in discussions over the Internet and on television talk shows advocated boycotting forthcoming polls, with no answer to the question ‘and then what?’ (One Islamabad-based activist told me that his organisation planned to stop people from voting, and he himself planned to pour ink into ballot boxes on election day. If he wanted to boycott the polls that was his right, I responded, but he had no right to spoil other people’s votes.)

Another dominant civil society stand was that the new government should straightaway restore the judges through executive order. The government’s waffling on the issue notwithstanding, those who thought that the judges’ restoration should not be the be-all and end-all of the movement and that it should be debated and decided in parliament were dismissed as government apologists.

When many judges went back into the fold, this dominant civil society opinion saw it as a betrayal of the cause for the restoration of the chief justice, even terming them as ‘PCO judges’. Given the track records of people like Justice Sabihuddin an attempt to understand their move would have been in order, even if people disagreed.

So great was the divide that some virtually ostracised them socially. “I last met him at the Boat Club some months ago,” said my grieving activist friend on the flight, who had known the late judge for over forty years. “He asked me to come and see him but I was too angry. He asked me a couple of times again through someone to see him … I didn’t. I will always regret that.”

When he finally did go, it was too late. Justice Sabihuddin was unconscious in an intensive care unit. I could feel his pain at not having made his peace in time. Many also felt similar ‘too late’ anguish when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, having pilloried and castigated her for making a ‘deal’ with a military dictator and then contesting elections.

“I have learnt a lesson from this. I will never take such a rigid position again,” he added.

Maybe somewhere, somehow, Justice Sabihuddin understands. Certainly he would forgive. This can be but of small comfort to those who wish they had given him a hearing, as he gave so many others.

Filed under: Lawyers movement, Politics | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

Remembering Victor Kiernan

Posted on May 5, 2009 by beenasarwar

kiernanWhen Victor Gordon Kiernan passed away in February this year aged 95, the Pakistani media took surprisingly little notice (or perhaps not so surprising, given what we’re grappling with) of the death of the Scottish Marxist professor famous for his translations of Faiz and Iqbal, and whose “immense contributions to the post-war flowering of British Marxist historiography …transformed the understanding of social history,” as John Trumpbour (Jack) put it in his obituary for India’s Frontline magazine.

kiernan-new-imperialism-cover

I remain grateful to Jack – one of the few relics of the ‘left’ left at Harvard – for his kindness to me while I was in Cambridge, MA (and to the documentary filmmaker B.J. Bullert in Seattle who introduced us – see http://www.fishermensterminal.net/). I was particularly thrilled when Jack gave me a copy of ‘America: The New Imperialism: From White Settlement to World Hegemony’ (Verso, 2005) when it was just hot off the press.

Jack mentioned at the time that Kiernan had got him to write the epilogue (which I read later and really liked). That, in fact, is how I learnt that V.G. Kiernan was in fact at that point very much alive and kicking in Edinburgh.

On hearing of his death, I wrote a note of condolence to Jack. He replied that Frontline magazine in India had given him 3000 words to discuss Victor Kiernan’s life and work. “So India came through. Both Tariq Ali and Eric Hobsbawm have done articles in the UK. Sadly that outpost of liberal humanitarian imperialism The New York Times seems determined to refuse to do an obituary.”

His article, ‘Ideological warrior against Empire’, is up at http://tinyurl.com/ddcvph

I responded commenting on the strange silence in Pakistan, thinking I’d take it up with someone. Never got around to it. So I was happy to see Hassan Gardezi’s belated but much needed profile of the great man in last week’s Books & Letters section of Dawn – “PROFILE: Remembering Victor Kiernan”, 03 May, 2009 – http://tinyurl.com/cen66z.

Prof Gardezi is co-editor, with Prof. Jamil Rashid of the seminal publication, ‘Pakistan, the roots of dictatorship : the political economy of a praetorian state’ (Zed Press, 1983). Both are based in Canada.

Filed under: History, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

The Taliban are coming….??? Myths and other realities

Posted on May 4, 2009 by beenasarwar

The Swat flogging video led to an alarmist, emotional, knee jerk response devoid of any political and historical context among the `bloggeratti’ (to borrow a term from Dr Omar Ali of Asiapeace), sms’ing crowd and TV talk shows. Those who are now calling for decisive action were not so long ago justifying the Taliban’s actions as an `anti-imperialist’ force.

Other `civil society’ attempts at countering Talibanisation include
demonstrations and even a signature campaign to the President against
Talibanisation initiated by a friend in Karachi and picked up all over the
country – a well meaning effort available at http://www.sacw.net (direct link
http://tinyurl.com/c6yj4d).

Women’s Action Forum is planning a broad-based meeting on May 8 at Karachi Press Club, 5 pm, on `Women to Reclaim Our Public Spaces’. WAF stands for:
– One constitution and one set of laws for all of Pakistan
– The writ of the government must prevail on the basis of moral authority
premised on protection, health, education, livelihood and security of all
persons equally
– Urgent de-weaponisation of society
– No special accords compromising the rights of one group of citizens of
Pakistan over others

In the end, however, `Talibanisation’ is a political problem that has taken
decades to develop. It calls for long term political solutions. There are no
short cuts. Recognising this, I.A. Rehman advocates two immediate steps in
`Pakistan’s neo-Taliban’ (Dawn, Apr 30) – http://tinyurl.com/ctyl3l – the
government must reduce its trust deficit with the people, and people must see evidence that the army is able and willing to earn its keep.

Also see Dr Hassan Abbas’ report on police reforms in Pakistan as an urgent measure to counter terrorism.  A PDF is available at his excellent blog watandost.blogspot.com
Direct link to the pdf file – http://tinyurl.com/codh8d

Also, three other articles that provide another perspective:

– THE ROVING EYE, The myth of Talibanistan, By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, May 1, 2009 – http://tinyurl.com/cp8zdr
Sent by S.M. Naseem with the note: “To reassure you that Islamabad is not going to fall to the Talibans any time soon. The rumours are about as credible as those about the USA becoming a socialist state during Obama’s presidency.”

– How Pakistan Is Countering the Taliban – The pacification model that worked in Iraq can work in the Swat Valley, By Husain Haqqani, WSJ, April 30 2009 –
http://tinyurl.com/dmk6py

– Between two fundamentalists, By Dr Mubashir Hasan, The Nation (Pakistan) April 30, 2009 – http://tinyurl.com/da8syr

Finally, a widely circulated article `I want my country back’ by Sehar Tariq, a development studies student, published in The News on April 17 –
http://tinyurl.com/dg2nwn

Below, Seerat Hazir’s response to Sehar Tariq’s article (minus some distracting personal barbs):

“I am curious to find out which Pakistan she wants back. The one created by the British with the help of wealthy and influential feudals and nawabs as a gift to the Americans to serve as a pawn in the cold-war games after the 2nd world war? The one ruled successively by military dictators, aided and abetted by a conniving nexus of corrupt bureaucrats, politicians, industrialists, and devious feudals that many of us were privileged enough to be related to, getting our passports and driving licences made without standing in sweaty queues? The one that created a two-class system: the haves and the have-nots?

“…We are being over-simplistic by focusing just on the Taliban phenomenon, conveniently just mentioning in passing – almost as an after-thought, almost as something you pick up from a souvenir shop at the end of a trip to tell friends back home that you had been there – the real problem stemming from the imperialist greed – the fountain-head of all this violence and self-destructive frenzy which seems to have taken over the  dispossessed of the world. It doesn’t take much intelligence… to understand what’s happening here in Pakistan at the moment. Here is how it goes, more or less:

“The US and allies decide to cut the Pak army and ISI down to size (re-read
Washington Post, since Obama). Obama admin decides to deal directly with the civilian govt and bully the army into playing second fiddle. Aid is made
conditional. Transparency is demanded. Pak Army tells the US, well, then let the civi govt take care of the war on terror. Within weeks things begin to happen:
Taliban blow up 200 Nato trucks, and practically force the Nato command into looking for alternative supply routes into Afghanistan. They can’t be stopped for some mysterious reason. Taliban take over Swat and are seen patrolling cities and towns with impunity, and they can’t be stopped for some reason. FM radio stations start spewing out extremist propaganda and they can’t be jammed for some odd reason. Girl schools are burnt down, video of a young girl being flogged ruthlessly by frothing fanatics pops up to remind everyone what Taliban are capable of. Rumours are sown in diplomatic circles in Islamabad that Taliban are just behind the peaceful Margallas, a mere 100 km from the diplomatic enclave, and, more disturbingly, Kahuta. Nazam-e-adl is given the nod. All this is stage-managed by the Army in connivance with a puppet parliament, to remind
the Americans and their allies how things will look if the army is not supported and financed the way they want it. This was a trailer shown to the men on the Capitol Hill who already have their ears cocked for such news from Pakiland. Officials and generals scurry back and forth. A deal is struck. and Hallelujah! General Kayani appears on the front pages on April 25, reiterating his resolve to fight the war on terror to the bitter end. The Taliban Tide begins to ebb back to its mysterious origins. Thanks be to Allah, the All Merciful.

“Pakistan (read pak army) again points the gun to its head and gets its demands. Only someone with eyes misted over by April showers can fail to see that Taliban of Swat is the other side of the ruling elite led by the army: the side that will flip into broad view once the US decides to take on Pakistan a la Afghanistan and Iraq. I don’t know whether it’s misguided sincerity or plain escapist ideology that defines the activism of most of our more enlightened academics here and abroad. I only wish if all that painstakingly acquired scholarly wisdom were focused on unmasking the real culprits and their local and foreign cohorts, and identifying ways and means to move towards some kind of a  solution, rather than joining the popular chorus written and directed by the western media. and which is sure to bring the crowd to its feet. The only solution lies in paving the way, through word and deed, for greater provincial autonomy and breaking the colossus of a corrupt federation controlled and manipulated by a greedy, all-powerful army.
“You and I are a sorry, confused product of a somewhat privileged class which directly or indirectly benefitted from the elitist culture cultivated by the establishment in cahoots with their foreign masters; a product of the unjust system which gave us an unfair advantage over the marginalized masses. Time now, if there’s still any left, to look back at all the injustices we had partnered in silence; raising our voice only where and when it suited us, as long as we could scamper back to our privileged existence, to the 6 O’clock appointment with the dentist after the 4 sweaty hours spent in robust activism at Regal chowk. The real question is not what we should do about Talibanisation: it’s what we should be doing to challenge and change the system which serves as a nursery for such carnivorous flora. But, sadly, we can’t tear ourselves away from our `qatil’ (killer) that Faiz wrote about, because he is our ‘hamdam’, our benefactor, too: Better blame a bunch of misguided, bearded fanatics with their shalwars hitched up above the ankles, sporting a Gotcha jacket, and be done with it.

“Wake up and smell the shit in our own pyjamas, and don’t be fooled by the
Taliban Cafe smell that the western machinery and its vendors in Pakistan so eagerly want us to wake up to.”

Filed under: 'War on terror', Politics | Tagged: , , , | 3 Comments »

Arundhati ‘Pakistani’ and right-wingers ‘patriotic’

Posted on May 2, 2009 by beenasarwar
The FMP panel in Delhi, April 15, 2009

The FMP panel in Delhi, April 15, 2009. Photo: FMP

Panel members Arundhati Roy & Aniruddha Bahal. Photo: B. Sarwar

Panel members Arundhati Roy & Aniruddha Bahal. Photo: B. Sarwar

PERSONAL POLITICAL

Beena Sarwar

“Shouldn’t Arundhati Roy come from Pakistan?” sarcastically asked a Delhi freelance journalist, commenting on the Facebook posting about a panel discussion, ‘Does Media Jingoism Fan India Pakistan Tensions?’ The cynical remark stemmed from his annoyance, shared by many, at Roy’s consistent exposure of India’s ‘warts’.

The panel, organised by the recently formed Forum of Media Professionals (www.fmp.org.in ), included four journalists from India besides the celebrated writer and activist Arundhati Roy as well as four Pakistani journalists and The Hindu’s Islamabad correspondent Nirupama Subramanian.

Delhi is far cleaner and greener since I was last there nearly five years go, thanks to laws (that are actually implemented) banning diesel and making CNG compulsory. On a more intangible level, another kind of pollution remains, reminiscent of a phenomenon we face in Pakistan: right-wing jingoism fuelled by emotional appeals to religion and nationalism.

The jibe about Arundhati Roy, disguised under an urbane sarcasm, is just one aspect of bigoted nationalism. Going by that logic, those in Pakistan who fight for justice — a struggle that necessitates exposing wrongdoings, or ‘washing dirty linen in public’ according to our critics — should represent India. Another aspect of such thinking is evident in the comments back home when I show my documentary ‘Mukhtiar Mai: The Struggle for Justice’, in Pakistan: “Why don’t you make such films about violence against women in India? Women there have these problems too.”

I wonder at this competitiveness that makes us feel self-congratulatory when we can point out how much worse the other is in some way.

Thankfully, not everyone takes this myopic view. In Allahabad, at a crowded meeting of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD), there was none of this one-upmanship or finger pointing. The audience immediately saw the commonalities of the issues raised in the films I showed, on Pakistan’s flawed and discriminatory Hudood Laws and Mukhtiar Mai. They understood that the phenomenon in Pakistan of Taliban ‘punishing’ women for alleged transgressions is not much different from those who rape, kill or lynch women and couples for the sake of ‘honour’ in India itself or indeed in traditional communities in Pakistan.

The difference is that most of these ‘honour crimes’ are committed by relatives of the women who ‘transgress’, as opposed to the Taliban who are taking it upon themselves to enact these punishments as part of the imposition of their own criminal justice system that flouts the writ of the state.

Another difference is that the family in Haryana who hanged their daughter and the man she eloped with (in their own home) will be charged, tried and probably punished. In Pakistan, the ostensibly Islamic Qisas and Diyat (retribution and blood money) laws imposed by a military dictator in the 1980s allow the murder victim’s family members to ‘forgive’ the perpetrators who are often their own relatives.

As for the Taliban and their sympathisers, none have ever been charged for their criminal transgressions, ranging from blackening women’s faces on billboards, to disrupting public events in that involve women (remember the Gujranwala marathon?), to blowing up schools, killing teachers and dragging women out of their homes and murdering them for alleged ‘immorality’.

At the Allahabad meeting, the tone was set by senior advocate Ravi Kiran Jain in his introduction when he stressed on the need for a stable government in Pakistan, and the desire to remove misunderstandings. His words reminded me of Nirupama Subramanian’s appeal at the panel discussion in Delhi urging Indians to “be sensitive to Pakistan as a country that has problems and show moderation in we respond to these problems.”

Many Indians already understand this, but we don’t hear their voices in the media very often. For instance, Utpala, a women’s rights activist during the discussion in Allahabad talked about the need for Indians and Pakistanis to be allowed to visit each other’s countries. Her own visit to Pakistan many years ago, she said had expanded her ‘angan’ (literally, courtyard). She ended by asking, “How can we in India be happy until there is a pro-people, pro-women government in Pakistan?”

The Delhi panel was disrupted for a minute or so by one man at the back of the auditorium who stood up and shouted anti-Pakistan, pro-war slogans. The organisers threw him out. He turned out to be from the Sri Ram Sene, one of the faces of India’s right-wing ‘Sangh Parivar’, who . Three or four others were outside, whom the organisers had refused to allow entry as they were not signing their names in the register. The SRS, which does not otherwise have much presence in Delhi, later claimed it had sent ‘thirty’ men to disrupt the meeting.

True to form, illustrating the very issues we had been discussing, most media hyped up the disruption which then overshadowed the discussion itself. Pakistani journalists were ‘roughed up’, ‘attacked’, the meeting disrupted for ’15-20 minutes’ and so on. The incident set off a chain reaction across the border, giving right-wing forces in Pakistan the opportunity to condemn the ‘anti-Pakistan feelings in India’. A ‘human rights’ organisation held a demonstration against the ‘attack’. Jamat-e-Islami’s recently elected chief Munawwar Hasan promptly issued a statement saying that it should serve as an eye-opener to those who talk of friendship with India and they should refrain from visiting India (‘ba’az ajana chahiye’).

For such people, obviously the anti-Pakistan slogans raised by one miscreant are paramount over the dozens of people in the IIC auditorium who listened respectfully to the discussion and engaged in a dialogue with the speakers later. The people in Allahabad and at the Delhi Press Club a few days later who came to hear a Pakistani journalist and express their support for a democratic order in Pakistan also don’t count, even if some of them were prepared for a rough time, like Zafar Bakht in Allahabad who had lent his school’s auditorium for the event. “After hearing of the Delhi incident, we rolled up our sleeves and were prepared,” he said later.

In the end, the anti-Pakistan slogans raised by one miscreant hogged the media limelight rather than those who filled the auditorium, heard the speakers respectfully and engaged in dialogue later. This is the nature of the media beast. Who is going to tame it?

Filed under: Media, Pakistan-India | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Some thoughts on ‘Swat flogging video’

Posted on April 8, 2009 by beenasarwar

Girl being flogged: Still from the cell phone video circulated on the Internet and broadcast (repeatedly) on the private channels

Girl being flogged: Still from the cell phone video circulated on the Internet and broadcast (repeatedly) on the private channels

The ‘Swat flogging video’ has made headlines all over. Zubeida Mustafa in her excellent article in Dawn today, ‘A catalyst for change? analyses the reasons why

This para jumped out at me: “The Swat flogging video has brought people face to face with the reality of the emergence of extremism in the name of Islam. It has brought to the surface the paradoxes that had until now been swept under the carpet for expediency’s sake. The video has forced difficult choices on the people compelling them to at least think about issues that affect them very personally.”

Zia’s children, by Ayesha Siddiqa in The News, April 05, 2009 highlights the issue of ‘Islamic law’ or ‘Sharia’. She references the recent book by Tahir Wasti ‘Application of Islamic Criminal Law in Pakistan: Sharia in Practice’. Wasti, as she points out, has experience of both Islamic law and British common law. “This is the first detailed research enlisting the ramifications of the application of sharia law in Pakistan. tracing the historical roots of this phenomenon”.

For those who haven’t followed the issue or seen the video (warning, it’s graphic) check out Declan Walsh’s initial report on the issue in The Guardian, April 2, 2009 (two days before TV channels in Pakistan picked it up):

http://tinyurl.com/ck9wf9

Re: my own take – I’ve been swamped with the final editing of another documentary I’m making, but wrote something on the issue the other day that I will share after publication.

Filed under: Gender | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Chicago, Shahidul and ‘Three Cups of Tea’

Posted on April 2, 2009 by beenasarwar

Three Cups of Tea_Mech.indd

Published in Hardnews, New Delhi,April 2, 2009

PERSONAL POLITICAL

Beena Sarwar

I love how connections sometimes just ‘happen’, criss-crossing the world, spanning generations, borders and continents. This particular stream traverses Pakistan’s early progressive struggle to Chicago, an inspiring book by an American who recently received Pakistan’s highest civilian honour, and a Bangladeshi photographer who came to Pakistan to document that moment.

In Chicago for a seminar in May 2007, I stayed with Danial Noorani. He is active with Apna Ghar, a domestic violence shelter for immigrant, primarily South Asian women. His late parents Malik and Mumtaz Noorani were close friends of my parents, active in the Communist Party and city goings-on. Tall jovial Malik Uncle ran a publishing house. ‘Jan-e-Man Phuphi’ (as we called the bright-eyed Mumtaz Noorani because of the endearment she used for us children) was active with Anjuman Jamhooriat Pasand Khawateen (Democratic Women’s Association, headed by Tahira Mazhar Ali, still going strong in Lahore).

There is some symbolism about meeting their son in Chicago. I remembered hearing of Dr Eqbal Ahmad’s disappointment when he found a monument to a policeman rather than the Chicago workers demonstrating for the eight hour day were killed by police fire in 1886. Ironically, the US does not observe May 1 as Labour Day.

Before I left, Danial gave me a paperback titled ‘Three Cups of Tea’ by someone I had vaguely heard of, Greg Mortenson. I couldn’t put it down. It is mandatory reading for anyone interested in education, Pakistan and the ‘war on terror’.

Mortenson builds schools in Pakistan’s remotest areas. The book, co-authored by David Oliver Relin, is sub-titled ‘One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time’– a mission as endangered by the ‘taliban’ as by the militaristic policies of the US and Pakistani governments operating without a political roadmap.

It started in 1993, when Mortenson was recuperating in atiny, unmapped village, Korphe, after being injured while climbing the world’s second highest mountain K2 in the Karakorams. Shocked that the village ‘school’ was a patch of land where children sat in the open scratching their lessons with sticks on the ground, he vowed to build them a school.

Back in the US, he saved rent by sleeping in his car and not taking his girlfriend out to dinner. Not surprisingly, they broke up. Mortenson kept trying to raise funds, manually typing letters to seek help. Two years later he was back at Korphe with a truck-load of building materials.

But he was in for a shock. The villagers told him that they first needed a bridge across the ravine that isolated them. Mortenson nearly went off in a huff. Then he thought about it and realised they were right. An important lesson for aid organizations: ask people what they want and need instead of giving them what you think they should have.

Besides making Korphe more accessible to the world, the bridge enabled the village women to make short trips to visit family on the other side rather than investing days as they used to. And yes, the school was also built. Mortenson has since helped to build some 78 schools in Pakistan (and Afghanistan), providing education to over 28,000 children, including 18,000 girls.

The second part of the book tells a grimmer story: the impact of the mushrooming Wahabi madrassahs and the ‘war on terror’ following ‘9-11’. Mortenson recalls an invitation to the Pentagon to talk about his work, only to realise that they’re not really interested. If they listened to him, perhaps the world would be in less of a mess.

Last August, the Pakistan government announced that Pakistan’s highest civil award, Sitara-e-Pakistan (“Star of Pakistan”) would go to Mortenson for his courage and humanitarian effort to promote education, and literacy in rural areas. The Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam mentioned it when we met last month in Kathmandu. He flew in from Bangladesh especially to record the moment. On March 23rd, 2009, he was in Islamabad with friends of Mortenson watching the awards ceremony live on television.

These are, as Salma Hasan Ali wrote on Shahidul’s blog, “kernels of hope that remind us that all will not be lost to violence and a distorted mindset.”

(ends)

Filed under: Education, Gender, Pakistan northern areas, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

PAKISTAN: Another Terror Attack For TV Cameras

Posted on April 1, 2009 by beenasarwar
beena-22

A Taliban militant, part of the group that attacked a police academy near Lahore, being led away by troops. Photo: Rahat Dar

KARACHI, Mar 31 (IPS) – The brazen armed attack on a police academy near Lahore on Monday underlines the danger that the Pakistani state faces from militancy linked to the ‘war on terror’, but with historic roots in the earlier Afghan war of liberation from Soviet occupation, that was converted into a ‘jihad’ against ‘God-less communists’.

The incident is also part of a chain of such attacks that highlight the need for out-of-the-box thinking to a regional, political approach and regional cooperation in this global, border-less conflict.

Eyewitnesses to Monday’s drama said that the gunmen scaled the six-foot high boundary walls of the academy soon after 7 am. They lobbed hand grenades at the 700 or so recruits on parade and ran at them, firing automatic weapons.

Police and paramilitary troops fired aerial bursts in jubilation and shouted ‘Allah-o-Akbar’ (God is great) after they re-gained control of the Academy premises a tense eight hours later.

The final death toll was far lower than the 28 or so initially reported by television channels: eight policemen, one civilian, and four militants who blew themselves up with suicide vests.

Television channels showed heart-rending scenes of distraught relatives at various hospitals where the dead and injured were taken.

The role of the electronic media while covering such incidents has come in for much criticism. In their rush to be first with the news, channels often provide incorrect information – or “lies”, as a press photographer who was at the scene of the Mar 30 drama put it more bluntly.

The al- Qaeda-linked Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, based in Waziristan Agency in Pakistan’s north-west tribal areas, claimed responsibility for the latest attack, the second this month in Lahore, capital of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous and powerful province.

On Mar. 3, some dozen gunmen ambushed the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in uptown Lahore, injuring several cricketers and killing six policemen and a driver. The gunmen disappeared after the shooting spree and have yet to be apprehended.

On Mar. 27 a suicide bomber killed dozens of worshippers at a crowded mosque near the north-western town of Jamrud on the highway to Afghanistan. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the motive may have been related to money as criminal elements operate freely in the area.

However, the Lahore attacks, taking place in an urban metropolis with dozens of television channels, were far more spectacular and effective, as Asha’ar Rehman, Resident Editor of daily Dawn in Lahore commented.

“A suicide bombing, in the eye of the terrorist perhaps, is too fleeting a moment in the life of a people who have become so used to the occurrence,” said Rehman.

“It is obvious that the terrorist is looking for more than momentary fame. He now wants to stretch the harrowing experience for as long as he possibly can, to the chagrin of onlookers who cannot keep their eyes off the television.”

The attack on the three-storey police school on the outskirts of Lahore a few kilometres from the Wagah checkpoint on Pakistan’s eastern border with India also bore other similarities with the ambush on the cricketers.

Underlining huge security lapses and intelligence failures, both took place in the early morning hours, with well-equipped, well-trained militants attacking supposedly well-protected targets. The Sri Lankan cricketers should have been extended presidential level security while the police school was peopled with – well, policemen, under training though they were.

Their commonalities include the possibility of local support that must have existed in order to facilitate them.

Both attacks drew comparisons to the Nov 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India. Some commentators accused India of being behind them in retaliation for the Pakistani link that emerged in the Mumbai tragedy.

The Mumbai attacks were in turn compared with the suicide attack on Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad on Sept 20, 2008. The attack was heavily symbolic given its high-security status and proximity to the corridors of power.

Earlier, militants had eliminated a much more symbolic and high value target – former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi on Dec 27, 2007.

Other high-profile attacks, in the recent past, include the suicide car bombing at a police checkpoint in Peshawar that kills 35 and injured about 80 people last September.

In August 2008 twin suicide bombings at the gates of a weapons factory in the town of Wah near Islamabad left 67 dead. Earlier in March 2008, suicide bombers targeted a police headquarters in Lahore, leaving some 24 dead.

But Monday’s attack was so far “the biggest and potentially the most dangerous attack on a state facility in Pakistan,” noted Asha’ar Rehman.

“There were hundreds of trainee policemen inside the compound – trainees among a police force that, according to adviser on interior Rehman Malik, lacks basic training to combat terrorism. They were ill-equipped to stop the advance of a handful of visibly skilled gunmen. It could have been far worse.”

The drama ended with an unexpected twist, again a throwback to Mumbai, when security forces captured some militants alive.

One of them, a bearded man with an expressionless face, was nabbed while heading towards the helipad in the fields behind the Police Academy. He was carrying hand-grenades apparently to attack the helicopters with.

News photographer Rahat Dar told IPS that he was perched along with other media persons on the rooftop of a nearby building watching events unfold at the academy in front of them. “We turned around towards the back when we heard shouts of ‘Got him, got him!’” he said.

Security personnel yanked off the man’s shalwar, baggy trousers to ensure that he was not armed. They also beat him up, prompting Islamabad-based journalist Mariana Baabar to question whether police are actually trained to capture a live terrorist.

“It was the Punjab police in action – doing what comes to them naturally. Obviously, they cannot differentiate between a rare live person who could give them tons of information and an ordinary criminal,” she wrote in a front page comment in daily The News. “Nothing amazing or new except that this was a rare chance to see it live on our screen”.

Police repeatedly kicked the man, apparently having “decided that they would keep kicking him with their boots till he was no more…,” wrote Baabar. “It took an army guy… to stop the angry and out of control police from this brutal kicking. At least someone realised that it was essential to get this suspect alive.”

Identified as an Afghan named Hijratullah, the encircled man presented a pathetic sight as he struggled to cover himself with his shirt.

The other three suspected militants in custody have not yet been identified. They were captured when trying to escape from the premises wearing police uniforms.

Political analysts have long been warning that there are no easy military solutions to the ‘war on terror’. The al- Qaeda and Taliban now appear to have converged with Pakistan’s ‘home-grown’ militancy that American and Saudi dollars cultivated during the Afghan war against Soviet occupation.

Analysts hope that the interactions between global leaders at the high-powered meetings in Europe this week will help initiate a change in the global approach to these issues.

The U.N.-backed conference at the Hague on Mar. 31 to discuss the future of Afghanistan, participated in by about 80 countries including Iran and the United States, is expected to also discuss a regional approach to the issue, says Marjan Lucas of the Dutch Peace Organisation (IKV).

“It is important that America understands what they’ve done to the region and develop partners with civil society and elected representatives rather than the army as they have been doing,” she told IPS in Karachi, having arrived from Lahore the day before the police academy was attacked.

The Hague conference will be followed by the G20 and NATO Summits where U.S. President Barrack Obama is expected to hold bilateral meetings with several world leaders.

What is certain is that there are no easy answers, and that there are likely to be more such links in the terrorist chain before things get any better.

Filed under: 'War on terror', Pakistan northern areas, Pakistan-India, Politics | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

‘From Pakistan with Love: Saneeya Hussain’

Posted on March 28, 2009 by beenasarwar

‘Celebrating Saneeya’ – feminist, activist, environmentalist, my former editor, and dear friend. Made this 5-min documentary after she died in Brazil in 2005… Saneeya, we will always miss you and be inspired by you and your infectious laughter… See also Saneeya Hussain Trust
http://saneeyahussaintrust.com/

Filed under: Education, Environment, Gender, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Five days that changed Pakistan

Posted on March 16, 2009 by beenasarwar

Analysis by Beena Sarwar

KARACHI, Mar 16 (IPS) – A late night meeting between Pakistan’s army chief, President and Prime Minister led to the dramatic announcement in the wee hours of Monday morning that Iftikhar Mohammed Choudhry would be restored as Chief Justice.

The announcement, made by Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani, has been widely welcomed for having broken the political impasse that was threatening to plunge the country into chaos and possible army intervention.

For the past few days, hectic efforts had been underway domestically and at the international level to break the impasse, including by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and British foreign minister David Miliband.

Former president Gen. Pervez Musharraf initially suspended Choudhry from office in March 2007, sparking off a nation-wide lawyers’ movement joined by civil society and political activists. When a Supreme Court order restored Choudhry to office, Musharraf imposed Emergency rule on Nov 3, 2007 that many saw as imposition of martial law.

Superior court judges who refused to take oath under the Emergency orders were sent packing. For the first time in the country’s history, the majority of judges refused to take this oath, leading to hopes that the days of the judiciary’s connivance with the establishment were over.

The elections of Feb 18, 2008 brought in a democratically elected government. But lawyers were unhappy with the way it dealt with the judges’ issue.

The government restored the judges who took a new oath under the constitution.

Choudhry and a few other judges refused on the grounds that this legitimised Musharraf’s illegal executive order that had sent them packing in the first place and that the restoration should take place through another executive order.

Leaders of the lawyers’ movement announced a ‘long march’ starting on Mar.12 to converge on the capital Islamabad on Mar. 16 for a ‘dharna’ or sit-in until the Chief Justice was restored.

As the long march kicked off, the beleaguered government appeared to be at odds with itself. Prime Minister Gillani asserted that the marchers would be allowed to converge on Islamabad even as his Interior Minister Rehman Malik, known to be close to President Asif Ali Zardari, took measures to prevent this from happening.

The resulting scenes of police beating and arresting people, in many cases from their houses, drew comparison to Musharraf’s last months in power, particularly during the Emergency of 2007.

In his early morning announcement, Gillani said that Choudhry would be restored to office “according to my government’s promise” on Mar. 21 when the incumbent Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar, a Zardari appointee, is due to retire.

He confirmed the decision reported a day earlier, that his government would file a review petition in the Supreme Court against the disqualification from elected office of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif and his younger brother Shahbaz Sharif.

A controversial court decision of Feb 25 that dislodged the younger Sharif from office of chief minister of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province had led to the Sharifs coming out with no holds barred against the man they saw as behind the judgement, President Zardari.

Many felt the disqualification judgement was timed to remove the Sharifs from power ahead of the ‘long march’. Several city mayors loyal to the PPP whom the Sharifs had removed from office were brought back to aid the federal government in its attempts to block the long march.

Police arrested hundreds of activists across the country and commandeered buses and containers to barricade roads and prevent the protestors from marching – except in Balochistan province where the provincial government remained neutral and allowed the marchers to demonstrate.

However, people defied police barricades and tear gas to converge in large numbers at key points like the Lahore High Court.

Matters climaxed as Nawaz Sharif defied a detention order confining him to his estate at Raiwind near Lahore, and headed a motorcade towards the city centre where hundreds of charged up activists had already converged.

As the momentum gathered the police in some places avoided confrontation and watched from the sidelines, making no attempt to stop the marchers. In other places, protestors armed with sticks attacked the buses blocking the roads, smashing windshields and denting carriages.

Television footage showed a policeman fleeing from a group of protestors only to be caught by others and beaten up even as some demonstrators tried to prevent the mob action.

“The public is taking their revenge,” commented one viewer in Peshawar, glued like many others to his television set since early morning.

Some activists occupied the grand old colonial building of the General Post Office in Lahore, on the roof of which they planted a Jamat-e-Islami flag next to the Pakistan flag. Some hurled red bricks at policemen, severely injuring some who had to be rushed to hospital.

The government had already drawn sharp criticism for holding Islamabad-based women’s rights activist Tahira Abdullah in preventive detention on the day the long march started.

At 4 am on Mar. 15, Peshawar police without search or arrest warrants raided the home of prominent lawyer Musarrat Hilali, who is also vice-chairperson of the respected Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). As she tried to escape, she fell, fracturing her leg in three places.

“I did not want to be arrested,” Hilali told IPS from her bed in Peshawar. According to law, police cannot detain a woman between sunset and sunrise. Hilali said that the provincial Awami National Party (ANP) government had denied sending the police and that the orders had come from the federal level.

“After I fell and was injured, the police left, but they placed me under house arrest,” she said, recalling her ordeal.

Her house arrest is now over following Gillani’s speech, in which he announced that those arrested or placed under house arrest over the past few days would be immediately released. He also announced the lifting of prohibitory orders that barred public gatherings.

Gillani’s televised speech led to jubilation in city streets across Pakistan. Lawyers and activists danced to drum beats and distributed sweets as Sharif called off the long march.

However, some sound a word of caution.

Zahid Abdullah, programme manager, Transparency and Right to Information Programme, Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives, Pakistan suggests that Chaudhry now needs to ponder over “whether he should be joining the judiciary or remain a symbol of independent judiciary by working from the outside for a truly independent judiciary at its all levels.”

“He has won the moral victory through his tenacity and that of the lawyers. His personal restoration is not an end itself but a means to an end. If he joins the judiciary, he is likely to be bogged down by the practicalities and the compulsions of the judiciary as it stands today,” he wrote in an email circular.

“It would be better if he stays outside and helps political forces by exerting his pressure and influence to suggest and implement the modalities of putting in place independent judges in the courts and carrying out judicial reforms.”

Others are suspicious of the government’s move. Jamat-e-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed expressed doubts about the move, complaining of not having been taking into confidence about it. “Who knows what pressures were placed on the Chief Justice and what he has been made to agree to,” he told a television anchor.

“Duped again by Mr Zee,” text-messaged a Karachi-based lawyer caustically, referring to Zardari whom he had been hoping the crisis would dislodge.

However, advocate Asad Jamal in Lahore sees the restoration as a success of civil society that has struggled for this cause for the past two years. “It shows the resilience of democracy and the ability of the present rulers to submit to the people’s demand, even if belatedly,” he told IPS.

“I think it would be unfortunate if my fellow citizens, who like to be part of progressive civil society, do not give Zardari credit for this retreat, howsoever belatedly it may have come.”

(END/2009)

Filed under: Lawyers movement, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

More on women – and Rahman Baba

Posted on March 12, 2009 by beenasarwar
Sangota Girls Public School, Swat, destroyed by militants. Photo by Kamran Arif

Sangota Girls Public School, Swat, destroyed by militants. Photo by Kamran Arif

Forgot to include the following in my posting focusing on women

AMMU JOSEPH’s article ‘Our freedom is at stake’ is linked to the issues Kalpana Sharma identified in her article on the attacks women in India are facing, which as I wrote, looks like an Indian version of the Vice & Virtue dept of the Taliban that we are facing here in Pakistan. Ammu’s Bangalore Mirror article of Feb 12 (but still very relevant) at

– http://tinyurl.com/clhdzy

And now to RAHMAN BABA: As the political confrontation heats up in Pakistan ahead of the lawyers’ long march, joined by the Sharifs who were disqualified from politics recently, before all this reaches a stage where it overtakes all other discourse (which it already seems to have, to an extent), wanted to post a few items related to the disturbing attack on Rahman Baba’s shrine near Peshawar on March 5. The attack caused widespread outrage and practically every paper took it up. The incident took place just two days after the March 3 attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore that led to a knee-jerk reaction among many Pakistanis blaming India for the attack.

Countering the culture of blame-counter blame, Siddharth Varadarajan, Associate Editor The Hindu, wrote on March 4 that finding ways to “encourage Pakistani cooperation and, more generally, to stabilise that country, are the most important challenges facing Indian diplomacy”. See his article ‘Lahore attack shows urgency of joint action on terror’ – Forget the conspiracies, the threat to Pakistan and India is the same – http://tinyurl.com/au8xhy

I thought he was spot on, on the whole and had a comment to add to his statement that “Cricket is the most visible icon of secular Pakistan, and perhaps the only competitor militant Islam faces in its struggle to tame the wayward Pakistani mind.”

I wrote: “There is another, even more deep-rooted competitor militant Islam faces – the widespread adherence to Sufi Islam and values, superstition, taweez dhaga (tying threads, getting amulets) etc. I fear (hope hope hope I am wrong) a major attack on any urs (birthday celebrations of Sufi saints) taking place at any of the major shrines any time soon…”

The following day, militants bombed the shrine of the 17th century Sufi poet Rahman Baba. An AP report in the Independent commented that the attack highlighted “the gulf between hard-line Muslims and many in the region who follow a traditional, mystical brand of Islam… A professor at Peshawar University told a local TV station that in many Pashtun homes, Baba’s poems are kept alongside the Islamic holy book, the Quran.” http://tinyurl.com/b45yo5

The caretaker of the shrine said he had got a letter three days before the attack warning against the perpetration of this “shrine culture” and objecting to the fact that women were coming to pray at the shrine. Militants used remote control bombs that destroyed the outer wall of the Mausoleum and partially damaged the building one month ahead of Baba’s urs, scheduled for April 5.

According to Pashtun Post <www.pashtunpost.com/>, Yousaf Ali Dilsoz, President of Rahman Baba Adabi Jirga says that Rahman Baba is the icon of Pashtuns spirituality and their love for peace and tolerance. “Saidu Baba, a revered saint from Swat valley, is known to have said that if the Pashtuns were ever asked to pray on a book other than the Koran, they would undoubtedly go for Rahman Baba’s work.”

Pashtun Post contains translations of some of Baba’s verses – http://tinyurl.com/c6neqy

Some excerpts:

Sow flowers so your surroundings become a garden
Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet

If you shoot arrows at others,
Know that the same arrow will come back to hit you.

Humans are all one body,
Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.

(ends)

Filed under: Gender, Lawyers movement, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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