Whispers & Screams

2014-07-26T09:02:00.002-07:00

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Irrational thoughts: Malala wants us to draw the line!

2012-10-10T04:00:00.000-07:00

Hasan Mansoor

   Sometime one cannot think rational - rather wishes to be irrational. Sometime a person with dry brain prefer to allow his sleepy heart to converse, to agitate and go beyond the limit of sanity. It is hard to stay rational - even hard to vent one's emotions to speak.
   It is this time when we are seriously thinking of a war against those whom many of us never took seriously in the past, whom everyone branded to be touts of one or another security establishments operating at home and away.
   But, now when a rare resolute child has been attacked in Swat the apologists should not take it as a blast from the past but take this child as the whole country put on the ventilator.
   It is time for the apologists to express their heart at least as openly as their beloved Taliban do when they spew venom on the remnants of our liberal posturing and take responsibility when they kill innocent people.
   It is time to clearly draw the line, fill the grey areas and go for a final battle. When one tells the apologists they would not be spared either when the extremists would shun every saner voice, one certainly tells the truth.
   The attackers who shot Malala in her forehead had to ask her classmates to recognise her before pointing the gun on her, but Malala, despite her tender age, knew her enemies long before - a sin she committed and was condemned to be eliminated by the dark forces.
   Malala joined a rare group of individuals who stood for a small cause that ultimately became the mother of all causes, the greatest of all struggles. She just wanted to see her school open and succeeded. She contributed to revive Swat's liberal culture and got everyone reminded that most Pashtuns are still as liberal and human-loving as they had been since time immemorial.
   She might have not known about Bacha Khan but she proved herself as his stout follower. In Malala even Awami National Party, Ghulam Mohammad Bilour and his clones in particular, should dig up to find its core identity.
   Everyone should decide whether they are with Malala or with theTaliban. They should not enjoy poetic licence in drone attacks and religious connotations. Malala is one of thousands who have been killed and wounded in attacks planned by the dark forces based in shiny, scenic valleys and mountains. The apologists should also consider them Pakistanis.
   Imran Khan says he would shoot down a U.S. drone if his party wins elections. He has no fear of United States, but at the same time he is afraid of Taliban when he told Talat Hussain in a TV show, his negative assertions against Taliban could risk the lives of his party cadres in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa and tribal agencies.
   Shahbaz Sharif once requested Taliban not to attack Punjab while some of his party's leaders have cordial relations with the banned extremist outfits. When Shah Mehmood Qureshi tows his party's line, Ayaz Amir is the rare free spirit.
   "Why don't you denounce those who attack Malala. Condemn them openly, they have killed thousands of Pakistanis," Amir advised Qureshi in a TV talk show.
   We should give the devil his due. You are free to hate Rehman Malik, Altaf Hussain and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, but they are at par with Ayaz Amir in their stance.
   "I ask to religious scholars to condemn Taliban in their Friday prayers, condemn them openly. Why don't they condemn Taliban? Are they afraid of them....everyone should condemn these terrorists openly."
   Everyone buys the above statement as positive and daring if it is not attributed to a speaker whom most detract and despise. So, let it be, we should move forward with positives.

October 10, 2012

Prices take shine off Pakistan weddings

2012-10-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor
   Pakistan’s traditionally lavish weddings have lost their sparkle this matrimonial season thanks to rising prices of gold and festive essentials in a limping economy overshadowed by Taliban attacks.
   The colourful celebrations normally span three to five days and attract 500 to 1,000 guests, pushing the cost for the hard-hit lower middle class to between 300,000 and one million rupees (3,400-11,000 dollars).
   “It has become too expensive. Everything is expensive. Even a simple wedding could break the back of poor people like me,” said Mohammad Aslam, 62, a retired government employee.
    Aslam spent most of his pension on marrying off his elder daughter, forcing him to borrow 200,000 rupees to help fund his second daughter’s wedding.
   A large part of the spending goes on gold jewellery, as in other South Asian countries, but sales are down partly because of rising global gold prices, businessmen say.
   Gold surged to a new record high of 1,780 dollars an ounce during international trading in October 2012.
   “Four years ago there was a demand for 7,700 ounces of gold daily, only for making jewellery in Pakistan. But now it has substantially decreased,” said Haroon Chand, a leading member of the country’s jewellers’ association.
   Imports of gold through Dubai, which was Pakistan’s main source of the metal, have fallen significantly, he said.
   “Affluent and middle class people have halved their spending on jewellery.”
   Poor families usually have their old jewellery redesigned for the weddings of their children, he noted.
   “I tried to skip some of our customs to reduce the cost of my son’s marriage, but I couldn’t because of family pressure,” Ahmed Ali, a car mechanic, said at his son’s wedding in Karachi’s Ranchore Lane.
   “My wife wanted all that because he’s her only son. My son is also a mechanic and we have decided to repay the loans jointly as soon as possible.”
   Pakistani families spend lavishly on gifts for the happy couple, food for guests at wedding events that drag on for days, or on a sumptuous dinner offered by the groom’s family at a wedding hall.
   “What disturbs me most is that my daughters have also reached adulthood and their marriages will only be possible by taking more loans,” said Ali.
   “Like me, the bride’s family has also taken loans for the marriage. We are all prisoners of our customs,” he added.
   Chand blamed deteriorating law and order, increased taxes on gold imports, the weakening purchasing power of ordinary people and higher global gold prices for dealing the business “a big blow”.
   Falling gold sales have seen people like Mohammad Akram, 33, laid off.
   Until recently he worked as an artisan at a leading jewellery shop in an upscale neighbourhood of the teeming financial capital Karachi, a city of 18 million people that sprawls by the Arabian Sea.
   “I am a skilled worker but am forced to ply a rickshaw to support my children,” Akram said.
   But Nauman Ahmed says business has boomed at his costume jewellery shop during this year’s wedding season, between the Muslim feasts of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, because its fashionable designs are “cheap and affordable”.
   Instead of gold, people are increasingly opting to buy silver and costume jewellery, mostly imported from China and India, Chand and shopkeepers said.
   Escalating food prices have multiplied the cost of wedding banquets, with economists blaming Pakistan’s general economic downturn and militant attacks.
   Independent economist A.B. Shahid said such hurdles, including ineffective government policies, may prevent Pakistan from meeting the official 4 percent growth target this fiscal year, which ends June 30.
   Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked extremists have carried out a five-year campaign of attacks that have killed more than 5,000 people in Pakistan, a country of around 170 million people.
   “Terrorism in our country has highly affected our economy. Our people cannot spend much and this situation could persist until we succeed in curbing militancy,” Shahid said.
   Pakistan’s economy grew by two percent last fiscal year, the lowest rate in a decade, but even that level may not be attainable this year, Shahid said.

Pakistan dancers take traditional form alive

2012-10-03T04:44:00.000-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor
   In a posh Karachi home, a dozen girls struggle to maintain their balance as they are put through their paces by Sadia Khan, a skilled performer of Pakistan’s traditional Kathak dance.
   Khan is one of a handful of instructors who are trying to keep the classical dance form alive in this conservative Muslim country, where some clerics have branded its fast, twirling footwork and expressive storytelling “un-Islamic”.
   “In Pakistan, depictions of women dancing has never been stopped in movies or on stage,” Khan, 38, said in an interview at her home studio, emphasising the difference between the popular and traditional forms.
   “I have never heard a cleric speak out against those vulgar dances which have run rampant in our society on film, but they oppose our dance, which is pure art with no vulgarity whatsoever.”
   Dancing was a regular part of life in Pakistan until the rise in 1977 of military ruler Zia ul-Haq, who used religion to suppress cultural traditions and only permitted women to appear on state television wearing veils.
   He banned classical dance performances from the airwaves and cracked down on popular Kathak performers.
   Today, Kathak has gone virtually underground, with only a few qualified instructors and few public performances. Radical clerics have also led a campaign to ban public dancing all together.

In the restive northwestern Swat valley, a female dancer was murdered by suspected Taliban militants who said she did not heed warnings to abandon her profession, local officials said.

   “I believe that in our religion there is nothing written against dance, but the Islamists claim that dance is forbidden,” said Sheema Kirmani, 59, a celebrated Kathak performer who still teaches in Karachi.
   “I argue that some of our greatest Sufi saints were dancers themselves,” she said.
   “Those who do not like this art form do not have to come to see it. We are not imposing ourselves on anyone and we do not want anyone to force their ideas on us.”
   Sakina, 14, is a student in Khan’s evening class and says learning the complicated manoeuvres is her favourite part of the day.
   “My father has encouraged me to learn about this art form, as it has the potential to teach people to be tolerant and sensitive to the miseries and joys of others, while still entertaining them,” Sakina said.
   “It’s true that most people don’t like dance and think it’s strange, but to me, it’s my whole life.”
   Eight-year-old Bisma agreed. “I’m really happy when I’m dancing,” she said.
   Both Kirmani and Khan said they believe that while Kathak dance may never regain its former popularity in Pakistan, it could serve another purpose — to help bring peace with India.
   The dance form has its roots in northern India and is still widely performed across that country.
   With ties between the nuclear-armed neighbours strained in the wake of the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, the dance teachers said art could help bridge the gap.
   “Pakistan and India have inherited the same culture, which could not be changed in just 50 or 60 years. Culture does not change with the redrawing of boundaries,” said Khan, who studied with Kirmani and later spent four years studying in New Delhi.
   Kirmani added: “If we celebrate what we share then we bring ourselves closer and nearer and develop a better understanding.”
   While peace through dance is their lofty dream, the two instructors said that for now they hope the art form will live on in their students, and perhaps someday once again become part of everyday life in Pakistan.
   “I have never seen a single common Pakistani who hates dance. We are prisoners of our norms, which should change to enjoy something which is true beauty and not an evil. It has been misinterpreted,” Khan said.
   “We should follow the precedent set by Iran, where culture is still alive and kicking alongside religion. We should not mix the two things.”

News sources: Revealing the undisclosed

2012-10-02T02:44:00.000-07:00

Hasan Mansoor
It is always enthralling for a cub reporter to hunt the first sources of one's career and be able to cultivate them. The problem starts from the outset: In most cases, the 'sources' cultivate such reporters instead. A naive soul could only save himself from such situation if he finds an able senior who accepts him as his protege. He should be someone whom a youngster could find invariably on his back whenever he turns to him to get solace and guidance.

Unfortunately, the bond between senior and young journalists is fading spectacularly, especially after the advent of TV journalism. TV journalism in Pakistan heavily relies on breaking news; authenticity and correctness always takes the backseat. A young reporter's surging adrenaline always gets him to jump on the top of a top story; which suits to his owners and hierarchy in beating the competition.
What most of times happens on Pakistani TV could have been a real reason for a newspaper to lose its authenticity and become a subject for the media teachers in telling their students what they should not do.
I repeat, Pakistani news channels heavily rely on 'breaking news', which often break within! It could be the horror for a BBC viewer to watch a breaking news about a donkey that falls from a bridge and dies, but for the viewers of local Urdu channels it is as important as a U.S. drone hits a Taliban hideout in North Waziristan.
TV reporters have been given the poetic licence to send a ticker about an explosion in a town with same zeal and audacity as they normally do in case of a bomb blast. Pakistani TV stations will broadcast an explosion's story without confirming that it is caused by a bomb or a pole-mounted power transformer that exploded due to some technical fault. They instill enormous fear factor with the blatant use of Google Earth visuals and traumatic sound effects to confound millions of viewers.
A director news of one of many of our TV channels known for their desultory functioning, does not shy to brag about such practice; calling it a tool of the present corporate culture.
"Look," he enlightens me, "It is all about competition. If an explosion is later proved to be a bomb blast, it gives us a reason to beat the competition, which is what pushes our ratings uphill. Sometimes, our information gets a bit wrong, so we conveniently play the news down."
A TV showman says TV business is all about how adamant one is. "If we start apologising to our viewers on every wrong information we have passed to them, then most of our bulletins would be full of corrigenda," he quips.
Most of our TV reporters who cover violence, terrorism and hostage situations are young, thus with little courage to resist the harrowing orders from the top. The hierarchy in a private TV station largely consists of the professionals who have little to do with journalism. Very few of TV professionals have difficult journalistic years on their back, which leave fewer of them realising the perils and difficulties of a reporter that one counters while working in violent situations.
"My job is to inform the desk about what has happened during my duty hours in quickest possible time; else my job is at stake," a young reporter says.
One will encounter a common story our young colleagues narrate. TV is admittedly far powerful than a newspaper. So, reporting in TV helps them establishing their sources quite conveniently, but TV prowess seldom assist them how to cultivate the sources. Someone truly says 'experience has no shortcut!'
Pakistan is one of the worst countries plagued with terrorist incidents. Every now and then, TV stations flash breaking news about political violence, targeted killings and bomb explosions. This has left our reporters more fragile flailing around in the hunt of information when a situation develops and supply anything they deem it worthy of people's interest to their channels.
During the course of their dig, they often use a single source. In journalism, using a single source is always considered a curse, which could end one's profession in the bud or worse, can put innocent lives in immense danger. There are incidents in which innocent girls or their parents have attempted to commit suicide because of one-sided single-sourced reporting accusing them to have violated social mores.
The hate-mongering by anchors and televangelists is non-educational for public viewing and corrupting minds. Salmaan Taaseer is one of many casualties caused by the preaching of hate by the TV hosts, majority of whom have nothing to do with journalism.
The visible hazard of using a single source in your story is that it goes in a single direction; it takes one side -- the side which suits your single source. No source in journalism can be reckoned as neutral, because you are dealing with a human being who, like every human, has inner prejudices, biases and vested interests within. A single-sourced story is bound to go in the interest of an individual or a group. By doing this you are taking sides with your single source. Taking sides is a human nature as even spectators take sides when gladiators fight in the arena. A reporter could opt for it in one's news analysis; while reporting one has to go for angelic demeanour. You have to report the version of the accused as well no matter how you deem it despicable on your standards.
It is not just a story, which determines your objectivity. Your professional demeanour makes it all. I have just seen a picture posted by a TV reporter who is thought to be one of the leading crime reporters in Karachi. The picture was taken during a failed weeklong police operation in Lyari, which is considered to be Pakistan's Columbia for it is infested with powerful drug mafias. The operation was led by police officer Aslam Khan, popularly called as the Chaudhry whom the 'other side' calls 'the butcher'.
Our reporter was there to cover the tiresome operation along with several other colleagues. The picture shows him posing as driving an auto-rickshaw while the Chaudhry and another reporter are sitting cosily on the passenger's seat smiling.
For someone there is nothing wrong in the picture. It depicts a moment of leisure for both the reporters, who have taken time to relax from their tiring job and one of them thought it appropriate to post it on his wall to bring smiles on his friends' weary faces. But, the picture loudly tells others about the reporter's bias. It could be the case that drives humans to the levels of naivety, but such excuses are unacceptable from vastly experienced journalists. The picture derives he takes sides with the Chaudhry, which he should have not while performing his professional duty. One can wonder why should we not side with a cop and despise a criminal? The answer is simple, we are journalists and our job is not to pass judgments. Though, now our judges as well satiate their desire to become poets in their judgments!
A journalist is always at the risk of being exploited by his/her sources. Publishing press releases ditto is biased, showing ambulances painted with the logo of a particular charity or political group is promotional corruption; inviting a set of analysts in a talk show is intellectually prejudiced etc.
A few years ago, a newspaper had formed its teams of reporters tasked to raid private properties in its boasted quest of eradicating corruption from the society. The newspaper owner gave a licence to the reporters to invade any factory, lab or restaurant and report about their wrongdoings in the paper. The precedent was followed by the competition as well. The raiding parties blatantly trespassed the legal guarantees given to the private proprietors and made people's lives a hell. Gradually they saw their reports were not being published in newspapers, but the owners remained demanding incessantly. They had been made tool for their owners to get people blackmailed. Some reporters were audacious enough to resist the owners and lost their jobs.
The newspaper raids continued up to the hilt, until TV channels took over. Anyone could see at least one programme on every news channel, which raids anywhere in town in the name of the greater interest of the public. For me, it is vigilante journalism and is as bad as the infamous morning show in which a host with the coterie of her female colleagues catches couples in Karachi's parks. Public interest is the cliched jargon, which is as vague as the national interest. Coated with religious insinuations and patriotic jingles, reporters raid any private property; something which cost nothing in Pakistan but in the West even Rupert Murdoch could find him in the jail.
Hitting a scoop is every reporter's dream, it takes reporters to the zenith elsewhere who independently investigate great deceptions and not just write articles but books littered with evidences. In Pakistan reporters are highly inclined to make a scoop on the investigations of their sources or interested quarters instead. Some high-profile reporters are even alleged of filing so-called investigative stories without writing them down personally!
This is the worst incidence of being exploited at the hands of your sources. But, wait! Not every reporter is unaware about his exploitation. Unfortunately, we have many of those who do it with great consent for equal reciprocation from their sources in terms of all kinds of favours. Covering a typical field creates opportunities for opportunists, which can be seen at times when reporters resist when their beats are changed. I don't call all those as opportunists and corrupt. There are reporters who feel them cosseted in a particular beat for the reason a switchover would force them to traverse new skies and go for new hunt -- a labour most don't like.
But, some reporters resist to dissociate from their sources, with whom they have developed a bond of affection and fortune. In the past, our seniors would frequently change the reporters' beats for the reasons that could save the youngsters from being corrupt and getting stale.
It is quite hard for us to save us from being used by our sources. But, there is a simple remedy to mostly avoid it. Don't rely on a single source -- Never! Even one is offering you a story of your life! Always go for a variety of sources before writing a story. Magnetism is always bipolar, though, both poles repel each other! A hunt for the sources who push each other away is always good for a reporter. The reporter may not develop friendship with his sources, but his stories will always attract admirers and even keep the accused happy!
A young reporter could be justified in his compulsion that drives him to rely on a single source to save his job, but we lack an authority that provides mandatory training of professional ethics to journalists. A check on the hate and biased content on TV and newspapers is lacking as well, though it is quite a fragile issue and be dealt with responsibility so that it does not hurt freedom of the Press.
(Written for Media-Agenda conference May 2012 in Karachi)

Pakistan rock renaissance defies dwindling concerts

2012-09-28T05:01:00.000-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor
   Gumby, a diminutive pony-tailed drummer, believes Pakistani rock music is vibrant enough to withstand pockets of extremism and shield society at large from Western fears of the Taliban.
   “I’ve been in the industry more than two decades and have seen Pakistani music rise, fall and rise again. Our culture is resilient, which won’t allow the Taliban to take over our society,” says the 34-year-old.
   Louis John Pinto, better known as Gumby, launched himself on the rock circuit as a drummer and percussionist while a teenager and has played as a session musician with all the major cult bands in the country.
   Pakistan has seen creeping religious conservatism for years. Its military is fighting to put down Taliban militants in the northwest and lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border, albeit far from cities populated by the moderate elite.
   Extremists have blown up hundreds of music and DVD shops in the northwest, branding them against Islam and forcing traders to display pro-Taliban tirades against the United States to gruesome clips of beheadings and bomb attacks.

   But hundreds of miles away in his compact studio in a multi-storey building in Clifton, Karachi’s poshest address, Gumby says the future of music is promising, with money and passion being injected afresh into the industry.
   “Making music one’s livelihood was thought to be a taboo for people here, but now parents themselves encourage their children to learn music, which shows we have a brighter future,” he said.
   At a concert at an open-air amphitheatre in Islamabad, young middle-class Pakistanis dressed in tight jeans braved a chilly night to cheer bands introduced by two young women teetering on high heels.
   In the more-expensive stalls, parents brought young children, even babies and grandparents to listen to the music.
   Successive governments have encouraged culture by relaxing curbs on artists and intellectuals. The explosion of independent television and radio in the last decade has also fostered musical talent.
   “It is the one thing which comforts our people who are sick of terror attacks and political instability in the country,” said Gumby.
   Hamza Jafri agrees. Last year he opened the Guitar School in Lahore, Pakistan’s relatively liberal and wealthy cultural capital in the east, which now teaches rock guitar to dozens of girls and boys aged seven to 20.
   “Students are forming bands and the youngest one consists of three seven year olds,” said Abid Khan, one of the founders of the school.
   Most pupils come from wealthy families and are actively encouraged by their parents. Some dream of going professional. “I want to become a rock star,” gushed a shy 10-year-old who gave his name only as Kashan.
   Hasan Zaidi, a film producer and director who has chronicled Pakistani music, sees a renaissance in underground contemporary pop.
   “Pakistani pop is beginning to discover its own voice moving beyond bubblegum songs about love, by creating fusion with indigenous folk and singing songs about what is happening around us,” he said.
   But others warn that shows and concerts are declining because of economic woes and fears of bomb attacks — hammering musicians’ main source of income, which rampant piracy deprives them from in sales of DVDs and CDs.
   “Terrorism and a weak economy have affected the music industry dearly,” says Ali Azmat, one of the most famous contemporary rock stars in Pakistan.
   “There has been a 50 to 60 percent decline in shows and concerts and overall earnings since 2005,” he said.
   He accuses “Western powers and their intelligence agencies” of harbouring an agenda against Pakistan. Instead his latest album “Kalashnifolk” focuses on the agonies of social problems that he feels are Pakistan’s real plague.
   But seven years ago Junaid Jamshed, Pakistan’s most famous frontman — lead singer with Vital Signs, the country’s first rock band that emerged in 1986, renounced music and his playboy-image to turn to religion.
   Today he owns designer outlets specialising in conservative dress, keeps his beard long and joined preaching organisation Tablighi Jamaat.
   Critics hold General Zia-ul-Haq and his 11 years of military rule from 1977 to 1988 responsible for infringing the country’s pluralistic tolerant culture and initially driving rock music underground.
   “The early 1980s also saw the rise of political pop, whose lyrics explicitly dealt with issues of freedom and repression,” Hasan Zaidi said.
   Certainly for band Laal, which means Red in Urdu, their music is all about politics and Marxism.
   One of their songs became an anthem for the lawyer’s protest movement that resulted in 2009 in the government restoring the independent judiciary after a two-year hiatus.
   “We are interested in playing music of resistance, struggle and emancipation,” says lead guitarist Taimur Rehman, who is studying for a doctoral degree in London.
   The band’s most popular song is based on popular poems of Habib Jalib, a renowned Pakistani poet who opposed military rule and state oppression in the 1960s, although followers believe his words are as relevant today as ever.
   “You are the truth; they are an illusion, My prayer is that You remain president forever!” is one of their lyrics, which resonates today with critics of President Asif Ali Zardari, who want him to resign over graft allegations.

Lakshmi building – Stands tall amid falling historic structures

2012-09-27T03:43:00.000-07:00

By Hasan Mansoor
Lakshmi Building, once an enchanting five-storey edifice every Karachian was proud to behold and now a smoke-ridden facade on MA Jinnah Road (Bunder Road), was the tallest structure of the city till partition. It was in the mid-fifties when it lost its stature to Qamar House. It stands tall, nonetheless, at times when most historic structures are succumbing to the builders’ ruthless greed.
Then the city saw many high-rises built and got each other replaced. Qamar House succumbed to the height of Mohammadi House for a while until Habib Bank Plaza’s 311-feet high building literally concluded the race in 1963. The Plaza reigned for around four decades as the largest manmade structure in the country until 27-storey MCB Towers finally eclipsed its height, but, undoubtedly, the white and round building is still the most beautiful post-1947 structure of Karachi.

Lakshmi Building, one of Lakshmi Insurance Company’s properties, was huge news for the inhabitants of a small and beautiful town called Karachi over eight decades ago. Its red bricks were not the big deal for the people because the city’s every second or third building was made of that stuff mostly coming from Jaipur. But, what Karachians admired the most was its height, its state-of-the art clock-tower, its location (then) in the middle of the city and, of course, its iron elevator, which was the rare facility then offered by the city’s skyscrapers.

“It was a great sight to visit Lakshmi Building and people would love it like a property of their own,” octogenarian Mohammad Ali, who still lives in a worn-out apartment house along Outram Road in Mithadar, reminisces.
He has some loving memories about good old history pertaining to Lakshmi Building and the rest of Karachi that now sound as fairytales and

myths. “The city roads used actually to be washed every morning, and the great buildings like Lakshmi Towers and the (City) Courts used to be watered down every year by the hoses of the fire department,” says Ali.

But the municipal authorities have forgotten their old schedules and have not washed these buildings for a very long time, which have actually been the hallmarks of Karachi, for around six decades now.
Despite being subjected to fire several times, the latest was two years ago after a blast on an Ashura procession, Lakshmi Building still gives a great look and stands like a king surrounded by the new and shabby structures that are even not worthy of being called as pawns. Its façade still gives a great look but the interiors have seen huge changes.
Its original colour inside the offices and along the corridors of the five storeys has turned asymmetrical and lost its originality. On the fifth storey one finds the door to the roof locked.
“It remains locked most of the time because there is nothing worth witnessing upstairs except refuse and waste items,” says Karim, a peon at one of the offices situated in the building.
The historic escalator still serves its visitors but most of the time it remains out of order due to lack of maintenance. The old manual bells (shaped like teacups) had been fixed beside the escalator’s door at every floor and one would use it to notify to the lift-operator. Some of these bells could still be used but they have become rusty and lost their grandeur now. In fact, the entire iron escalator-mechanism has become rusty and complains of huge neglect it has been meted out.
But, it still houses dozens of shops selling toys, watches, wholesale items etc and is able to gather a great buzz around despite decades-long apathy towards it. In fact, this structure still offers ample lakshmi (wealth) to many.

Pakistan’s blind dolphins face hazardous existence

2012-09-26T03:51:00.001-07:00

By Hasan Mansoor

INDUS RIVER: Nazir Mirani, 47, is the third generation of a humble family committed to saving Pakistan’s blind dolphins, an endangered species swimming against a tide of man-made hazards.

“I treat them as my children and do everything whenever a dolphin is trapped in shallow waters,” said Mirani, once a fisherman and now among a handful of people officially assigned to protect the dolphins.

“No one can know them as meticulously as me. I was born in a boat and have been living with these fish ever since,” said the lanky Mirani, his complexion darkened by years under the burning sun and his chest puffed up with pride.

   “Look at my eyes,” he said. “Aren’t they shaped like the fish?”
   Indus dolphins — Platanista gangetica minor or “bulhan” in the Sindhi language — are listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union.
   According to local folklore, a lactating woman once refused to give milk to a saint, who cursed her and pushed her into the Indus. The woman turned into a dolphin and the freshwater species was born.
   Females are bigger than males, weighing up to 110 kilograms (243 pounds) and growing up to 2.5 metres (eight foot) long.
   The brownish-pink mammals have lived alongside humans for time immemorial. Their long, pointed snouts thicken at the end, and the upper and lower teeth are visible even when the mouth is closed.
   Their numbers are declining as fishermen deplete their stock of food, pollution worsens, and a network of barrages restricts their movements. Falling water levels due to declining rain and snowfall are another peril.
   The Worldwide Fund For Nature Pakistan estimated in 2006 there were around 1,200 Indus dolphins left — 900 at a sanctuary near Sukkur in the southern province of Sindh and another 300 further upstream in Punjab.
   The dolphin is blind because it lacks eye lenses and so hunts for catfish and shrimp using sophisticated sonar, said Hussain Bux Bhagat, a senior official in the Sindh wildlife department.
   Dolphins swam freely in the Indus until about 100 years ago when engineers under British rule started slicing up the river with irrigation projects in the dry hinterland.
   The barrages pose a critical threat to the dolphins, dividing their natural habitat into five separate segments of the snaking river.
   “This species used to roam across 3,500 kilometres (2,190 miles) of the Indus but are now confined to 900 kilometres (560 miles),” Bhagat said.
   As a result the risk of inbreeding “could lead to infertility and then extinction,” Bhagat added.
   An alarming increase in pollution from untreated sewage dumps, illegal pesticides, and industrial and agricultural waste also threaten their survival.
   The dolphins swim on their sides, trailing a flipper along the river bottom, and can move in water as shallow as 30 centimetres (12 inches).
   But each year up to 50 dolphins get trapped in the thousands of kilometres (miles) of irrigation channels, which are closed and left to dry out.
   Fishermen used to kill them but awareness campaigns have improved to the extent that they now inform wildlife officials who come to their rescue.
   “People were so uneducated they used to shoot the dolphins dead until a few years ago,” said Bhagat.
   The trouble is that wildlife services have limited resources. Rescuers have just one van with a water tub, which they use to keep the dolphins alive for a few hours while they take them back to the river.
   “We have successfully rescued 50 dolphins this season but we could do it more efficiently if we get a helicopter,” Bhagat said.
   Dolphins also stray into narrow channels during monsoon season when sluice gates are opened to maintain the water flow at the barrages.
   Experts who did a 2006 survey for the environment ministry said the needs of Pakistan’s dolphins are the same as its people — both need a clean, reliable source of water to survive.
   Mirani — whose father worked with Swiss specialist Giorgio Pilleri who conducted pioneering research into the mammal — said his family tradition of helping conserve the dolphins will continue.
   “My son Nadir Ali is ready to assist me,” he said, gesturing towards a teenager holding an oar as he steers a boat along the river.
   “After me, he and his six younger brothers will try to protect dolphins,” he said, before cheering loudly as a dolphin emerged to swim alongside their boat.

Private security booms in violent Pakistan

2012-09-20T04:23:00.000-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor
   Karachi, Pakistan’s buzzing port city, is a hub of beaches, malls, restaurants — and the odd shooting range where an army of private security guards train to protect the well-heeled.
   As growing insecurity grips the nuclear-armed nation, with the military battling Taliban rebels in swathes of the northwest, deadly bombs hitting key cities and crime on the rise, the security industry in quietly booming.
   Rashid Malik, who owns the firm Security 2000, has his men carry out target practice in the basement of a bungalow in an upscale Karachi neighbourhood, but even with 10,000 employees, he is struggling to keep up with demand.
   “I have to turn down many requests from people and businesses because I still have not enough capacity to provide security to all the people,” said Malik, a retired army brigadier.
   “After the army and police, private security guards are the third largest force in Pakistan — we are just a few years away from outnumbering the police force in the country,” he adds.
   There are 600 security firms in Pakistan, according to figures from the All Pakistan Security Agencies Association (APSAA), with 200 of them operating in Karachi, protecting businesses big and small, as well as the homes of wealthy clients.
   Karachi — Pakistan’s biggest city with a population of about 17 million — was once known as the City of Lights and is the country’s economic engine, but has been plagued by sectarian and ethnic tensions for years.
   Clashes among mafias and ethnic groups left at least 1,200 people this year.
   Now, the threat of terrorism also grips the city, with attacks by Islamist extremists gathering pace after US-led forces ousted the Taliban regime from Afghanistan in late 2001.
   More than 5,000 people in Pakistan have been killed in less than two years in attacks linked to Taliban and other extremist groups, and Karachi has not been spared.
   In January 2002, Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in the city while researching Islamist militancy in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. A video showing him being beheaded was delivered to the US consulate in Karachi nearly a month later.
   The city has also seen a string of other incidents, including suicide attacks on French engineers, the US consulate and a bomb targeting late politician Benazir Bhutto in October 2007 which killed 139 people.
   Series of attacks on naval assets, including a 17-hour seige of its airbase — the country’s nukes were not far-off — by Taliban militants before attack on a top counterterrorism cop are just a few to mention.
   “Our business witnessed huge prospects after the 9/11 attacks,” said Malik, who also heads the APSAA.
   The city is also seeing rising crime, including robberies and kidnappings.
   “There is a serious law and order situation in the whole country, which has left us with no other option but to buy security to secure our lives and our huge investments,” Mohammad Ali, a steel importer, told AFP.
   For 170 million Pakistanis, there is just a 383,000-strong police force. In Sindh that figure is 99,000 police, while there are 100,000 security guards patrolling the streets of Karachi and the rest of the province.
   Most officers are ill-trained, poorly educated and badly paid — a regular constable’s monthly salary is just 100 dollars, and his family receives a lump sum of 6,000 dollars if he is killed in the line of duty.
   “We have hired security guards for our safety because police have failed to stop criminals from robbing and killing people,” said Mohammad Waseem, a resident of the city’s central Gulberg neighbourhood.
   On his street, private security guards man a kiosk at the corner, letting only those living in the area pass through.
   “You can see this arrangement in most areas of Karachi,” Waseem said.
   Malik said one problem was getting trained guards.
   “Most of our guards are ex-military soldiers but that does not meet our increasing demand so we have to go to Punjab and North West Frontier Province (NWFP) where people acquainted with weapons could be found easily,” he said.
   The country’s lawless tribal areas and several other NWFP districts are currently plagued by a Taliban insurgency.
   The Pakistani army is engaged in an operation to quell an uprising across the tribal badlands, and the Taliban have vowed to avenge the onslaught with attacks on major cities.
   Sociologist Fateh Mohammad Burfat said that in uncertain times, residents take comfort from the presence of uniformed security guards standing on street corners of the cosmopolitan city.
   “Insecurity among the people has increased. They obviously need to do something to feel secure,” said Burfat, who teaches at Karachi University.
Little money, risks aplenty!
Abdul Hakim, a 35-year-old man, is one of around 30,000 security guards employed with a security agency operating in Karachi, and gets a paltry 4,200 rupees after exposing himself to dangers for full 30 days.
“I have to support my family of four and this amount is just nothing to run a house,” Hakim says.
He says he is in search of a relatively better job because the earnings are far too little to stick with the business.
“It is a better job for young bachelors, but not for married men who have to support their families,” he says.
Hakim’s wife is good at embroidery and works at a vocational institute as a teacher. Her earnings enable the couple to send their two children to school and ensure a proper living.
Hakim was originally a carpenter but his employer wound up the business and then he started his own business without opening an outlet. He could get some orders in the beginning from his old clients at home, but soon his source of income dried up.
“A time came when I could get an order after many months, and then I realised that I had virtually become jobless,” he says.
Hakim says most people now prefer readymade furniture and do not take the trouble to visit carpenters.
“I did contact some manufacturers for the job, but they offered little money and demanded full day work, which I did not accept,” he says.
Hakim then saw an advertisement of a security agency in a newspaper and got a job there. He spent some time with trainers and then joined his colleagues to roam around and guard one or another client.
“Initially, I thought it would have been too simple a job, but now I realise it gives great tension and pays almost nothing,” he says.
All the security agencies have identical harsh terms and conditions for their employees. The guards have to perform 12-hour duty daily instead of the set standard of eight hours a day.
The owner of a security company insists the agencies pay ‘handsome’ money to their employees.
“We know they do a tough job, but we compensate them by paying them Rs 4,000 or more as monthly salary, which is more than the minimum daily wage as mentioned in the labour laws,” an owner says.
He says the minimum wage set in the labour laws for a worker is Rs 4,000. Besides, security companies also pay overtime equal to the daily wage.
Given a 12-hour daily duty if a guard wants to venture into overtime, he has to perform 36-hour continuous duty to add Rs 130 to his monthly salary.
“It is very difficult and only some young and daring people could brave it,” Hakim says.

Pakistan factory fire highlights risks for workers

2012-09-16T08:44:00.000-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor
   KARACHI, Sept 14, 2012 (AFP) - The death of 289 workers in a devastating factory fire has highlighted Pakistan's dismal approach to industrial safety and raised fears for the clothing sector vital to the nation's struggling economy.
   Western companies buying Pakistani garments and textiles are likely to scrutinise their suppliers' working practices more closely after Tuesday's disaster and there have been promises of a clampdown from officials in Karachi.
   But in a fiercely competitive global market, analysts warn factory owners face a difficult dilemma, as higher safety standards means higher production costs.
   Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and commercial heart, has around 10,000 factories on seven industrial estates, according to the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI).
   On top of that, there are at least 50,000 cottage and small industries in the informal sector based in residential areas.
   Fahim Zaman Khan, Karachi's former top administrative official, told AFP that Ali Enterprises, the factory destroyed in Tuesday's blaze, was typical of many units in the city.
   "There is not a single factory in Karachi, which is different in shape and facilities as the one gutted by the fire. Everyone, including our rulers, could see similar factories nearby the gutted one but avoid to take action," he said.
   Police records show Ali Enterprises exported ready-made garments to North America and Western Europe, though it is not clear which brands or chains were supplied.
   Nasir Mansoor of the National Trade Union Federation said safety measures were ignored at the factory.
   "At Ali Enterprises there was only one exit point for more than 500 workers at the time of the emergency, all the windows had iron grills and doorways and stairs were stuffed with finished merchandise," he said.
   Karachi is a vast, seething metropolis home to some 18 million people, but its emergency planning is woefully underprepared, according to Khan -- he said the city had only "a few dozen buildings" with proper emergency exits.
   "We have a fire brigade which has just 35 fire tenders in working condition, but the city has hundreds of thousands of dangerous buildings. Our disaster management is totally inadequate," he said.
   Mohammad Hussain Syed, the city's municipal head agreed that "very few establishments are in Karachi which have been built on proper building plans.
   "Safety exits are duly mentioned in the plans approved by the authorities but the owners got away with it only to save money and extra land thus risking precious lives," he said.
   A crafty two-step of corruption and political manoeuvring allows factory owners to skip around the rules and focus on making money, said analyst Hasan Askari.
   The garment trade is vital to Pakistan's shaky economy, particularly the export sector.
   According to central bank data, the textiles industry contributed 7.4 percent to Pakistan's GDP in 2011 and employed 38 percent of the manufacturing workforce. But it accounted for 55.6 percent of total exports -- around $11 billion.
   Irfan Moton, chairman of the Sindh Industrial Trading Estate, said the Ali Enterprises tragedy would damage Pakistani exports.
   "Anybody who is planning to import something from Pakistan, will now think for a while about our safety standards.
   "He will consider other options like India and Bangladesh and may book an order from such countries even if he is buying it a few cents higher than our price."
   Aziz said it was vital that Pakistan responded to the disaster in the right way.
   "There would be clarion calls from Western buyers for an immediate review of safety systems in units that supply goods to them," he said.
   "A lot of damage control would be required immediately by the owners and more importantly from (the government)."
   But introducing better safety measures -- fire hydrants, sprinkler systems, better escape routes -- means higher costs, giving the factory owners a dilemma.
   "The choice is to make maximum foreign exchange at the risk of workers' lives or to earn less and make their life safe," prominent Pakistani economist Kaiser Bengali said.
   Trade unionist Mansoor said most of the workers at Ali Enterprises were on third party contracts and none had appointment letters, so they were not entitled to social security benefits.
   Workers at Ali Enterprises said they earned between 5,000 and 10,000 rupees ($52 to $104) a month for their labour.
   For the lucky ones who survived Tuesday's inferno, like 33-year-old Mohammad Khan who broke an arm jumping from the burning factory, braving frightening working conditions is just a fact of life.
   "I am the only bread earner for my three children, wife and parents and have no choice. I am going to search for a job in another factory once my arm gets fixed," he said with gloomy smile.
September 2012

Pakistan factory fires kill 310

2012-09-13T04:22:00.002-07:00

By Hasan Mansoor
KARACHI: More than 310 Pakistanis perished in horrific fires that destroyed two factories in Pakistan, an unprecedented industrial tragedy that prompted calls Wednesday for an overhaul of poor safety standards.
   At least 289 people died at a garment factory in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city and the capital of Sindh province, just hours after 21 died at a shoe factory in Lahore, close to the Indian border.
   In scenes of horror, relatives watched as loved ones jumped from windows of the four-storey building in Karachi where hundreds were working in a bid to escape the blaze, which began late Tuesday.
   Karachi fire chief Ehtesham Salim said rescue workers were facing problems retrieving more bodies from the basement as it was filled with hot water after efforts to extinguish fire.
   "There are places in the basement which are still smouldering. Water we used to extinguish the fire has made a pool of hot water in the large area of basement and we are trying to cool it down."
   "There is no electricity in the factory. Our operation has slowed down but we have not suspended our effort."
   Karachi's top administration official, Karachi Roshan Shaikh, told AFP that more victims were being recovered and that he expected the toll to rise.
   The toll rose rapidly during the day as firefighters extinguished smouldering embers and found dozens of dead huddled together in the basement and ground floor of the factory, where they suspect that the fire began.
   "We didn't find bodies in ones or twos, but in the dozens, which is why the death toll is increasing so alarmingly," said Salim.
   Many of those on the upper floors of the building were rescued or jumped to escape the inferno, although dozens broke limbs on impact with the street.
   Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said he had ordered an inquiry into both fires. Officials said the factory in Karachi in particular was in poor condition and lacked emergency exits.
   "The building has developed cracks and there is a danger it can collapse any time," Shaikh told Pakistan's private Geo TV channel. "Owners of the factory have been absconding and raids are being conducted for their arrest," he said.
   Officials said two brothers who owned the company had been barred from leaving the country. "Their names have been put on exit control list," a senior government official told AFP.
   Irfan Moton, chairman of the Sindh Industrial Trading Estate, told AFP he believed there were 600 to 700 people in the factory when the fire broke out. "We believe many people have come out, but still there are fears the final toll could be higher," he said.
   In January 2009, 40 people were killed, more than half of them children, when a fire engulfed dozens of wooden homes in Karachi's impoverished Baldia neighbourhood, but Tuesday's tragedy was considered the deadliest in Pakistani industry.
   "It was terrible, suddenly the entire floor filled with fire and smoke and the heat was so intense that we rushed towards the windows, broke its steel grille and glass and jumped out," said Mohammad Saleem, 32, who broke a leg after jumping out of the second floor.
   "I saw many people jumping out of windows and crying in pain for help," he said.
   According to workers, the factory produced underwear and plastic utensils.
   The garment trade is vital to Pakistan's shaky economy.
   According to central bank data, the textiles industry contributed 7.4 percent to Pakistan's GDP in 2011 and employed 38 percent of the manufacturing sector workforce. It accounted for 55.6 percent of total exports.
   Noman Ahmed, from the NED University of Engineering and Technology in Karachi, said few industries and businesses implement the law on safety and fire exits, finding it easy to avoid because of lack of effective monitoring.
   "Most of our shopping centres and markets too have no safety mechanism, which the authorities should review seriously, otherwise it could cause graver tragedies in future," he said.
   Officials said the cause of the fire was unknown but Sindh industry minister Rauf Siddiqi said the owner could face negligence charges.
   "We have ordered an inquiry into how the fire erupted and why proper emergency exits were not provided at the factory so that the workers could escape," Siddiqi said.
   In Lahore, flames also trapped dozens of workers in a shoe-making factory, killing 21 and injuring 14 others, where Tariq Zaman, a government official, blamed a faulty generator.
   The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan expressed "grave concern" over the fires and demanded immediate attention to ensuring safe working conditions for factory workers.
   It called on the government to initiate criminal proceedings against the factory owners and also initiate effective monitoring of workplaces to prevent such tragic incidents in the future.
AFP September 12, 2012

Rains kill at least 40 people in Sindh

2012-09-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

By Hasan Mansoor
   The latest widespread rains have badly devastated the northern districts of Sindh - killed people, perished cash crops and destroyed houses and other establishments.
   The provincial disaster management authority (PDMA) is too shy to unveil the actual figures of the losses of human lives and infrastructure, yet it confirms the number of deaths is not less than 40.
   "At least 40 people have died, according to the figures our PDMA (provincial disaster management authority of Sindh) has compiled so far," Sindh minister Muzaffar Shujrah, who heads the PDMA, says.
   "The number of the dead could be more once the rains stop permitting us a fully-fledged survey of the losses."
   He said the rains "have destroyed hundreds of houses or even more. We are compiling the figures."
   According to him, at least 3,000 people have left their homes in the northern Sindh so far and got shelter in the relief camps "we have set up in the government buildings."
   The advisor to the Sindh chief minister for relief, Haleem Adil Shaikh, however, is too vocal about narrating the facts.
   "We are in the field to assess the losses and provide relief to the people. I have seen immense destruction in both northern and southern districts of Sindh. Sindh is facing another natural calamity third year running," he told me.
   Shaikh said the number of deaths could not be less than 70.
   "We had reports of 50 deaths on Monday and by now the number of people died because of electrocution, falling roofs and drowning is more than 70," he said.
   A senior PDMA official said the fresh details of deaths and infrastructure and agricultural losses have been sent to Islamabad, where the government was preparing for a national strategy to cope with the situation.
   The rain-related incidents and localised floods have affected many parts of the South Asian nuclear-armed country, from Himalyan north down to Thatta, the southern most coastal district.
   The federal government puts the number of deaths less than 100 across the country, which is in sharp contrast to what the independent sources and local media say.
   Expressing "deep concern" over the havoc caused across the country by the recent rains, President Asif Ali Zardari has directed national and provincial disaster management authorities to gear up their efforts in providing relief to the affected people.
   Weather officials predict heavy rain in the next 24 hours in southern Sindh and Balochistan provinces and rescue teams are closely monitoring the situation, officials said.
   "It is not comparable to what we saw last year. We hope the current spell will end over the next two days and water will start receding in affected areas," said an official.
   Last summer's floods killed more than 340 people and affected almost six million, killing livestock, destroying crops, homes and infrastructure as the nation struggled to recover from record inundations the previous year.
   In 2010, unprecedented monsoon rainfall triggered catastrophic flooding across the country, killing almost 1800 people and affecting 21 million.
September 2012

Pakistan blighted by Afghan drugs in transit

2012-09-11T02:55:00.002-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor

Cheap Pakistani heroin is the curse of Rubina Naz’s life. Her marriage to a violent and abusive addict, during which she had to work to feed their four children, ended when he died of AIDS — but not before he infected her with the HIV virus.
“Such a huge punishment without doing anything wrong crushed me,” said 28-year-old Naz as she sat in a Karachi hospital.
She was 16 years old when her labourer father married her off to Ghulam Punjtan, then an apparently respectable driver for the Pakistani government.
“A few months after the marriage I discovered Ghulam was a heroin user. I tried to help him kick the habit but all I got were beatings and abuse,” she said.
Pakistan has more than four million drug addicts in its population of 170 million, according to figures compiled by the country’s Anti-Narcotics Force, which is responsible for investigating and prosecuting drug offences.
Opium poppy is grown on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, a region infamous as a hideout for Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists and branded the most dangerous place in the world for Americans by US President Barack Obama.
Pakistan shares a 2,500-kilometre (1,560-mile) porous border with Afghanistan, which supplies 90 percent of the opium used to make heroin worldwide.
As such, the largely lawless region is the key transit point for heroin, morphine and hashish heading west to Iran, Turkey, the Balkans and Europe, and east to China.
As it passes through what has become the central theatre of the “war on terror,” cheap supplies are left behind for the locals, with one gram costing as little as 80 rupees (one dollar) in Karachi, the southern port on the Arabian Sea and Pakistan’s commercial hub.
Here anyone can afford a hit. And many, like Rubina Naz’s husband, do.
Her life lurched from bad to worse as her husband’s addiction spun out of control. When he lost his job, she took factory work to ensure the family had an income.
“My husband fell seriously ill three years ago. His father took him to a hospital where tests confirmed him HIV positive,” she said.
But her in-laws didn’t tell Rubina about the disease, and she continued to have sex with her husband. Weeks after he died, she fell ill and was diagnosed HIV positive.
Pakistan’s chronically underfunded and crumbling health system offers little help for drug users to conquer addiction — let alone deal with its devastating consequences.
Because of the enormous quantities of drugs that pass through the country, abuse and addiction are on the rise, without the health services and anti-drugs squads needed to adequately combat the scourge.
Pakistan’s understaffed and under-equipped Anti-Narcotics Force has around 2,000 personnel policing the snaking mountainous border with Afghanistan and the 900 kilometres (563 miles) it shares with Iran, the main smuggling routes.
Border control duties are shared with paramilitary troops already struggling with a deadly counter-insurgency campaign in the tribal belt.
“Even though the challenges facing a transit country like Pakistan are increasing with every passing day, the resources available to counter the threat of narcotics continue to remain meager,” the Force said in a report.
The majority of drug users in Pakistan smoke hashish, experts say. Heroin, alcohol, tranquillisers and pain killers are the other most common drugs.
A joint study released last year by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the Paris Pact Initiative, an international partnership to counter trafficking and consumption of Afghan opiates, found that trafficking of Afghan opiates through Pakistan towards lucrative markets abroad is on the rise.
Seizures are also on the rise, it said — but both figures just reflect an increase in the cultivate of poppy in Afghanistan.
“Trafficking of opiates into and through Pakistan increased dramatically during the period 2001-2006 corresponding roughly to the increase in opium production in Afghanistan from 185 metric tons in 2001 to 6,100 metric tons in 2006,” the report said.
In 2005, Pakistan seized 24 tonnes of heroin and morphine, accounting for 27 percent of total seizures worldwide, it said, adding that in 2006, that figure leapt to a record 35 tonnes.
UN experts have said that the easy availability of narcotics is compounded by general ignorance among Pakistanis about the consequences of taking them.
A report earlier this decade found that more than 80 percent of Pakistanis did not believe narcotics to be harmful, and that many addicts were introduced to drugs by friends and relatives.
One of those who learnt the hard way was 25-year-old Shabana.
Introduced to heroin by classmates, she thought it was fantastic, she said.
It quickly took over her life as she graduated from smoking to sniffing and, finally, injecting. She lost weight, dropped out of college, and her family abandoned her.
“I began to take drugs with my friends for fun, but as time passed it became a matter of life and death,” she said, refusing to give her full name.
A photograph of her a few years ago shows a tall girl with fair skin and striking features — barely recognisable as the girl now lying on a bed in a Karachi rehabilitation centre.
“I started smoking heroin-filled cigarettes and found myself in heaven,” she said.
Only an older brother saved her from the hell that addiction can leads to.
“My brother brought me here for rehabilitation. For me he is more than my father. I will not take drugs again, I will not let him down,” she said.

Filed October 2011

Pakistan frees 48 Indian prisoners as 'goodwill gesture'

2012-09-11T02:02:00.000-07:00

By Hasan Mansoor, Karachi
Pakistan on Monday released 48 Indian fishermen, 10 of them teenagers, as a "goodwill gesture" following a visit by the Indian foreign minister S. M. Krishna.
    In a sign of thawing relations, Krishna and his Pakistani counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar last week inked an historic agreement to ease visa restrictions between the two countries.
   The release of fishermen is part of an understanding between the nuclear-armed rivals to free citizens who mistakenly stray into each other's waters.
   "We have released 48 Indian fishermen from Malir jail in Karachi as a goodwill gesture," deputy inspector-general prisons of southern Sindh province, Nusrat Mangan, told AFP.
   He said 32 Indian fishermen were still in Pakistani prisons."They will also be released after our authorities receive a clearance from the Indian government," he said.
   Nazeer Husain Shah, superintendent of the jail, said the released prisoners included 10 teenage boys.
   The Indians were presented with flowers and gifts, then bussed to the eastern city of Lahore, from where they would cross the Wagah border.
   Officials said they expect India would reciprocate the Pakistani gesture by releasing more than 200 Pakistani fishermen languishing in Indian jails.
   "We expect our neighbours will show the similar spirit and release the Pakistani prisoners from their jails," Ayaz Soomro, law minister of the Sindh province said.
   Pakistan and India frequently seize each other's fishermen, accusing them of violating their respective maritime boundaries in the Arabian Sea.
   India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947, two of them over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is divided by a heavily militarised Line of Control and which both countries claim in full.
   Last year they resumed their tentative peace process, which collapsed after Islamist gunmen from Pakistan killed 166 people in Mumbai in November 2008.
AFP September, 2012

Imran: a ‘saint’ in the land of ‘sinners’!

2012-09-07T02:14:00.001-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor
   It took 15 years to Imran Khan to become an instant hero in the heart of Punjab — the slowest of his predecessors Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif — who conquered Lahore instantly — Bhutto with his inherent charisma and Sharif with sheer satellite credentials!
   Altaf Hussain — without commenting on the style of politics his party practices — historically joins the elite club of the country’s most popular political leaders along with Mujibur Rehman and Bhutto who proved instant hits on arrival.
   Why it took 15 years to tens of thousands of Lahoris to realise that Imran Khan is the messiah — the god-sent saviour.
   The ex-cricketer had stumbled upon a favourable pitch when he pinned all his hopes to the military dictator whom now he calls the greatest curse on Pakistan.
   Yet, he does not leave the ex-general alone in his list of devils and equates him with the ‘bloody civilian’ Asif Zardari whose credentials to be an elected president are just not enough for the Punjabi powerbase to include him in the ruling list of the pure.
   The day Imran Khan started to think himself the only saint in the land of sinners, he turned his back on civilian political leaders, called all of them corrupt and made hay while the sun shone.
   Pakistan’s inherent dementia sometimes make wonders. Like the top judge who took oath on Musharraf’s first PCO now declares a curse to be one, Imran was among the first polticians who affirmed his allegiance to the General and now declares anyone who supports his ‘first love’ as a curse.
   The numbers of people who attended his rallies were notwithstanding impressive, but, as independent observers say, on many occasions, a large number of attendants belonged to the organisations, which are officially banned in Pakistan.
   Besides, a predominantly millieu of a concert in the landmark Lahore rally of last year attracted even those who witnessed the so-called Sharif revolutionary in Bhaati Gate, to enjoy Pakistan’s rock stars thrilling to the pop tunes for free.
   Critics say it took a decade to the ex-cricketer to play on a friendly pitch as he had intended to do so when Musharraf was in charge but left in a hurry when he did not see him inside the Prime Minister’s House as he was expecting.
   During those days just before 2002 elections, insiders say, Khan had been invited to Musharraf’s cozy palace, which chuffed him into bits and he saw himself in his wild dreams inside the place which was offered to the Fatty Jamali, Chaudhry Ambiguously Naught Hussain and Shortcut Aziz instead.
   But to his wildest nightmares he was told by Mushy that he had invited Im-ran just to get him meeting an elderly in the Mush family who was happened to be a fan of the I-con cricketer.
   He had never been a favourite of the voters, albeit a great televangelist and blue-eyed boy for the members of the Taliban Union of Anchorpersons. He had to hold his nerves against his very nature to make a comeback when he sees a heavenly nod, which, it seems, has just happened.
   The ultimate game masters have changed their faces, but even friendly pitches do not always offer winning results until one got to have deadly combination. This time, it seems, he has got the umpires of his own choosing, although he has been championing for the neutral umpires in cricket!
   It seems the power consortium has divided – the dominant part is still aligned with the ones, whom Taliban anchors call the representatives of the ‘liberal fascists’; the rest patronise the right-wing angels.
   The “liberal fascists” at least know each other’s status in the power hierarchy so they have no wars for turf unlike the angels where the slot of senior partner is still undecided.
   The Sharifs and Khan are justified to hit their adversaries – PPP and the MQM – hard, but at the same time they are hitting each other as well. Both know Punjab rules Pakistan; so Sharifs’ bad governance brings an excellent opportunity for Imran. The game is on!
   Both classfellows have their own strengths and weaknesses. Imran’s following swells because of all known and clendestine factors; but he has no leadership except for himself. He needs time to consolidate his strengths and makes for a strategy for next elections.
   Sharifs have a situation which demands the inverse variables altogether. They want an immediate election to materialise the most before their dwindling support base is further eroded by Khan.
   The situation has certainly get the sychophants bewildered, who are weighing options to move forward without knowing what are opportune timelines.
   Imran’s acceptance of spent cartridges in politics, his religious nuances during most of his fiery speech and presence of large numbers of religious zealots clearly show his party will have more resemblence to Nawaz League and not the PPP or the MQM.
   PML-N still fears for an exodus of ‘powerful candidates’ towards Imran, which it certainly does not want to.
   Whatever the odds, the Taliban anchors, for sure, will be the ultimate beneficiary of the situation. It makes no odds to them who loses the battle. They’ll certainly find them on the side of the winner!

Seperate prisons for jihadis

2012-09-07T00:47:00.000-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor
Experts involved in operations against Islamist militants and sectarian terrorists have suggested that the government should set up a separate jail for hardcore militants of banned outfits. They want to establish at least one prison in each of the four provinces where such elements could be kept under the watch of professional jailers.
“We need to make special arrangements to keep these elements separate from other inmates,” one of the few investigating officers in the Sindh Police, who has been attacked a number of times by militants of the banned organisations, told me.
He says jihadi and sectarian militants have long memories and carry out revenge killings whenever they find an opportunity and that “our normal jails offer such opportunities in abundance.”
There are many instances in the recent past in which these prisoners attacked jailers while their comrades outside the jail made numerous attempts to get their arrested colleagues released by attacking custody vans on the way to or from the courts.
“It is time to establish a high-security prison for such hardened elements,” ex-chief of the prisons in the Sindh province, Nisar Maher, had suggested during his tenure years ago.
Maher had said his department did not have sufficient funds to establish a detention centre exclusively for jihadi and sectarian militants but was of the opinion that the government should do something in this regard. “At least we should have some place where these inmates could be kept separate from other prisoners,” he had then told me in an interview.
Sources in the interior ministry in Islamabad say due to certain ‘disturbing facts’ the central government is seriously contemplating the matter. American FBI officials had also suggested separate detention centres for Islamist militants after its experiences in Pakistan.
During an operation to track down Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan when the War on Terror became a rage, FBI and CIA officials while monitoring and scanning air and satellite signals detected some unusual signals from a Pakistani city. After intercepting the message, the cell started tracking down the place from where the coded call had been made via a satellite phone. The Americans passed on the information to their Pakistani counterparts who found that the signals were emanating from a prison. The prison authorities discovered that some jihadis were using a phone in their barracks.
According to sources, using a mobile or satellite phone inside a Pakistani jail is not a big deal. “It is a routine matter. I have raided various jails in my province and each time we recovered mobile phones from one prisoner or the other,” a senior prison official says. However, he would not specify whether these prisoners included jihadi militants or not.
“We are living in an era of communication technology and it is easy to get hold of such devices inside the jail because of corrupt officials,” he says adding that his department has planned to introduce ‘public call offices’ inside every major prison in Sindh.
“It is a two-pronged project,” he says, “we will be providing our inmates an opportunity to remain in touch with their families and at the same time leaving those who claim that they keep phones secretly to stay in touch with friends and families outside with no excuse to do so.”
Experts in the investigation wing of the police department, however, are not satisfied with such plans. “Introducing public call offices sounds like a good idea and would certainly benefit ordinary prisoners but it is not going to tame the hardened elements or control their present activities,” a senior investigator says.
“It is not possible to restrict their activities inside the barracks and isolate such terrorists from their comrades until they are placed in special detention centres supervised by reasonably paid professionals whose chances of succumbing to bribery would be minimal,” he says.
Corruption is a major problem in jails. There have been various incidents in which imprisoned hardened criminals were caught with weapons and liquor in their possession. In one of the ugliest incidents that has come to light so far, imprisoned criminals were found with 50 juvenile prisoners in Hyderabed jail. The children had been provided to the inmates with the connivance of the prison caretakers.
According to sources, the presence of corrupt jailers does not preclude such incidents from being repeated. What is to prevent something similar to the Sialkot incident, in which four judges were kidnapped and killed by armed prisoners, from taking place again? “Those were ordinary criminals. If these rogue elements are treated like the ordinary prisoners, the result could be catastrophic,” another investigator says.
Sources say the investigators have found clues leading them to believe that sectarian killings were masterminded by hardcore terrorists in the custody of the authorities. Insiders say the jihadis and sectarian militants have arranged to be held in one barracks where they hold meetings that are out of bounds for jail officials. “In such a situation everything is possible because the jail supervisors are not professionals,” a source said.
I have also learnt that the government has ordered that jail officials be thoroughly checked to ensure that they do not have any past or present links with sectarian or religious outfits. These orders have been issued after it came to light that authorities busted some law enforcement officials with connections to jihadi organisations.
The provincial governments of the Punjab and Sindh are reluctant to take custody of many ‘blacklisted’ prisoners from Haripur jail despite reminders from the NWFP government. According to senior officials, they are wary of taking custody of these prisoners due to security concerns. “Such prisoners are fit to be confined in places where they have no access to corrupt officials or those who have links with religious outfits. We have proposed that the government establish such places,” an official said.

Sindh’s secularism fights for survival!

2012-09-06T00:46:00.001-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor

Sindh is rich in minerals, energy resources, forests, desert and sea, having a few high altitude places offering chilling temperatures. All these treasures merit a greedy stare from the suppressing centre, yet they are merely appendages – there re
mains a prized asset!

Holi celebrations in Sindh

   Unlike other assets this one is something that the right-wing establishment religiously despises and reckons as Sindh’s greatest sin and calls its inhabitants infidels and Indian agents.
   Sindh has seen little calm and rare self-rule on its soil since time immemorial, but it has been resilient enough so far to protect its most enviable treasure trove – something widely defined as secularism, the art of peaceful co-existence.
   Unlike the most of Pakistan, Sindh is still largely a pluralistic, secular and liberal society. People here too kill others on trivial reasons but at least politically aware Sindhis are not yet convinced to kill each other on religious grounds.
   That tradition goes on; but will it continue hopping like it did in the past centuries? There are serious doubts and concerns as well-laid grand plans are there to create smaller Taliban havens in parts of this land of Sufis – if not possible to fully convert it.
   The planners – well entrenched in the country’s ruling machine and their spare parts in apparently non-state junk – have particularly targeted Sindh’s upper districts, infested with tribal customs largely forced by the migrants from neighbouring provinces, the victims of blatant corruption and negligence by the parties they vote for and abject poverty which is increasingly reaching the tipping point.
   Past events show a disturbing increase in the migration of Sindh’s Hindus to India and elsewhere because of their systematic kidnapping for ransom and abductions and forced conversions of their girls by influential mullahs and feudal lords who blatantly preside over hordes of gangs of robbers in the region.
   Rights activists say hundreds of cases of kidnappings and forced conversions of Hindus and their girls have been committed in the past four years in the northern districts of Sindh, most of which have gone unreported and attracted little attention from the so-called national media, which itself boasted to be centre-right and custodian of the country’s ambiguous ideological borders.
   The events have forced Hindus to migrate in flocks from their soil, a further dent in Sindh’s pluralistic society, which had already suffered a great deal because of migration of its entire middle class – happened to be Hindus – to India in 1947 after the partition of the Subcontinent.
   The dilemma of Sindhi Hindus is that they are often ignored by the world in the times of distress. Pakistani Christians suffer religious indiscrimination and persecution as well, but fortunately the Mighty West follows the same faith and often raises voice for their rights. Our Hindus are already labeled by the patriots in the establishment and media as the Indian agents, thus find no brotherly support from anywhere except for sporadic faint voices from rights organisations and individuals having little influence in bigger arena to change their fate.
   The killing of three Hindu men in the town of Chak in Shikarpur district is considered as the worst incident in decades. Media reports splash several contradictory facts, ranging from personal enmity to the possibility of a victim’s affair with a girl of an influential tribe, but the fact remains that it is bound to accelerate Hindus’ migration. The fact is that this migration will further erode Sindh’s claim to be the country’s only hope for minorities; the land which has always soft spot for minority faiths.
   Whatever the reasons are claimed to have caused the tragedy; the ultimate beneficiaries will remain right-wing mullahs and feudal hypocrites – in terms of their influence and the booty they would ultimately own and share as they did during the mass migration of Hindus 64 years ago.
   These killings should be taken in line with several attacks on NATO trucks in the same district – Shikarpur – as was a suicide blast on Ashura at a Shiite mosque there last year, which fortunately killed just the attacker.
   Being optimistic helps lessening the intensity but pain remains until it is fully cured. The reaction against the Shikarpur killings shows a distinct majority still sides with Sindh’s pluralistic history with intentions to safeguard it. Several demonstrations in scores of towns against the killings are because people don’t want the land to be deprived of its habit to remain peaceful.
   But fear still remains inward as being liberal is something that deep state has little desire to let it go. Pakistan is the land where designs often mirror opposite to the desire of majority; where a tiny minority decides about the national interests and everyone has to follow the suit to remain a patriot – thus alive!

Karachi musical makes song and dance of gang wars

2012-09-05T02:45:00.000-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor
A hit musical about gangland violence in Pakistan’s largest metropolis is bidding to revive Karachi’s once-rich stage culture while shedding light on its grim addiction to violence.
Fierce sectarian and ethnic conflicts have been responsible for the deaths of more than 1,000 people this year alone and are an all-too-familiar tale to Karachi’s 18 million residents.
But the gritty realism portrayed in “Karachi — The Musical” has nevertheless provoked a huge response, playing to large audiences since it began in October for a month-long run due to finish on November 13.
It tells the story of a rookie boxer from the eastern city of Multan who comes to train at a boxing club in Karachi’s notorious Lyari neighbourhood — better known for its mafias than its sporting talent.
The ambitions of the protagonist, Saif Salaam, spark tensions between his coach and Daud Islam, a mafia don who controls the local gambling, drugs and prostitution rings and wants to thwart the boxer’s success.
With many twists and turns in the story set to a dozen songs, Daud attempts to kill Salaam, just as he had murdered another rising star 20 years earlier.
Mirroring grim realities on Karachi’s streets, the mafioso Daud is only stopped from killing the boy thanks to the intervention of another bad man — a more powerful don whose influence reaches higher into the corridors of power.
“It depicts the situation which we are facing nowadays,” said one theatre-goer, Aleem Akhtar.
“We are infested with mafias and gangs of killers and every mafia is well protected, so we can survive only with the blessings of some good bad men.”
The director of the first original musical to grace the city said that the show represented a defence against the very harshness it was based on.
“Today, art needs more support than ever in Pakistan because it is not only a reflection of the times we live in, but also of a brighter future we can create,” said Nida Butt.
“Theatre is not for the faint-hearted — it’s a labour of love, long hours and hard work that often results in more (money) spent than earned,” she added.
The once-thriving stage scene in Karachi, which was known for its opera before the partition of British India to create Pakistan in 1947, was lost largely due to the growing Islamisation of the country, say artists.
They particularly point the finger at military dictator General Zia-ul Haq, blaming him for worsening the gun and drug culture, encouraging sectarian and ethnic parties and crushing liberal forces during his 1977-1988 rule.
Art began losing its way under Zia’s predecessor Ayub Khan, they say, but it crumbled as culture became an early casualty of Zia’s regime, which nurtured religious fanaticism.
Syed Ahmed Shah, who heads the Karachi Arts Council and whose theatre is staging the production, says his organisation is the only one with a dedicated auditorium for plays and theatrical performances in Pakistan’s biggest city.
“Our resolve is to fully revive the city’s old cultural status so that it is here to stay,” he said.
“Particularly in a situation where fear and anxiety are the order of the day. Culture is the only remedy to rely on,” he said.
Hamza Jafri, who composed the original scores, said that “Karachi – The Musical” drew on the various strands of the city’s musical culture — a mix of rock opera, indigenous beats and big band jazz.
“The music is edgy, contemporary and completely inspired by our research into Lyari and the boxing gangs there. The songs talk about us, about Karachi and our lives in this city today,” he said.
But those living among the conditions depicted on stage complain they cannot see it because they are priced out of the market, with tickets costing 1,500 rupees (18 dollars) each — five times as much as a first-class cinema seat.
“I would love to watch such plays but it is getting too tough to enjoy theatre and cinema nowadays,” said Maula Bakhsh, 35, a fruit vendor in Lyari.
“We hardly feed our families because of price hikes. How can we spare money to spend on that luxury?” said Bakhsh — adding that he had to abandon his own boxing career to support his family.

AFP

Pakistani Hindus seek safety in India

2012-09-03T00:36:00.000-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor

Preetam Das is a good doctor with a hospital job and a thriving private clinic, yet all he thinks about is leaving Pakistan, terrified about a rise in killings and kidnappings targeting Hindus.
   A successful professional, he lives in megacity Karachi with his wife and two children, but comes from Kashmore, a district in the north of Pakistan's southern province of Sindh.
   His family has lived there for centuries and in 1947 when the sub-continent split between India, a majority Hindu state, and Pakistan, a homeland for Muslims, Das' grandparents chose to stay with the Muslims.
   They fervently believed the promise of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah that religious minorities would be protected. Sixty years later, their grandson says life in Kashmore has become unbearable.
   "The situation is getting worse every day," he says.
   Two of his uncles have been kidnapped and affluent Hindus are at particular risk from abduction gangs looking for ransom, he says.
   Rights activists say the climate is indicative of progressive Islamisation over the last 30 years that has fuelled an increasing lack of tolerance to religious minorities, too often considered second class citizens.
   Das says the only thing keeping him in Pakistan is his mother.
   "She has flatly refused to migrate, which hinders my plans. I can't go without her," he said.
   Hindus make up 2.5 percent of the 174 million people living in the nuclear-armed Muslim nation. Over 90 percent live in Sindh, where they are generally wealthy and enterprising, making them easy prey for criminal gangs.
   An official at the ministry of external affairs in New Delhi who declined to be named said: "Every month about eight to 10 Hindu families migrate from Pakistan. Most of them are well-off."
   He had no comment on whether the number was on the rise, but Hindu community groups in Pakistan say more people are leaving because of kidnappings, killings and even forced conversions of girls to Islam.
   "Two of my brothers have migrated to India and an uncle to the UAE," said Jay Ram, a farmer in Sindh's northern district of Ghotki.
   "It's becoming too difficult to live here. Sindhis are the most tolerant community in the country vis-a-vis religious harmony, but deteriorating law and order is forcing them to move unwillingly," he added.
   Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, chief of the Pakistan Hindu Council and a former lawmaker for Sindh province, said Hindus are picked on by kidnappers and that their daughters are subject to forced conversions to Islam.
   "Every now and then we get reports of families migrating. It's getting worse now. People are extremely harassed and are forced to leave their homeland but our rulers are shamelessly idle," he told AFP.
   Rights activists also say Hindus in Sindh are discriminated against.
   "Recently 37 members of five Hindu families migrated to India from Thul town owing to discrimination while three Hindus, including a doctor, were murdered in Shikarpur district," said Rubab Jafri, who heads Sindh's Human Rights Forum.
   "Lots of violent incidents are happening daily. Most go unreported, which shows vested interests are trying to force Hindus to leave Pakistan."
   According to the Pakistan Hindu Seva, a community welfare organisation, at least 10 families have migrated from Sindh every month since 2008, mostly to India, but in the last 10 months, 400 families have left.
   Another survey last year by the local Scheduled Caste Rights Movement said more than 80 percent of Hindu families complained that Muslims discriminated against them by using different utensils when serving them at food stalls.
   "Hindu migration is a brain-drain for Pakistan as most of them are doctors, engineers, agriculturists, businessmen and intellectuals," Jafri said.
   But the provincial authorities are reluctant to recognise a problem.
   "I do admit that law and order in some districts of Sindh is quite bad, but it is bad for everyone and not just my community, the Hindus," Mukesh Kumar Chawla, provincial minister for excise and taxation, told AFP.
   "Hindus do not migrate in flocks as has been claimed and those who migrate are going abroad for a better fortune," he said.
Ends

NATO attacks fuel American flag business in Pakistan

2012-09-01T04:56:00.000-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor
   In Pakistan a row about American attack on the country’s vague and much-trumpeted sovereighnty means booming demand for replica American, Indian and Israeli flags to go up in flames at protest rallies.
   That means one thing for 31-year-old Mamoon ur Rasheed — business — and he is working long into the night to churn out the paraphernalia beloved of Islamic activists taking to the streets.
   “I have nothing to do with any political party, but it is really enjoyable when you see your work on TV screens,” a laughing Rasheed said.
   “I’m busy every day making banners and placards for different religious and political parties, but work gets a boost — especially when international controversy concerning Muslims breaks out,” he said.
   Two years ago, when a Facebook user decided to organise an “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day” competition to promote “freedom of expression”, it sparked a major backlash among Islamic activists in the South Asian country of 170 million.
   Islam strictly prohibits the depiction of any prophet as blasphemous and the row sparked comparison with protests across the Muslim world over the publication of satirical cartoons of Mohammed in European newspapers in 2006.
   Several hundreds Pakistanis have taken to the streets at the behest of right-wing religious groups, who turn to Rasheed when they need flags to burn and banners to write.
   “Generally, we receive orders for banners for a couple of demonstrations a day, but due to the NATO attacks on Pakistani soldiers and blasphemous drawings issue, which causes spark time to time, the number of orders for flags and banners increases manifold a day,” said Rasheed.
   “Flags are made for burning. They symbolise what our clients want to express and we are paid for it, so I’m happy to see our work go up in flames.”
   Rasheed owns a workshop where he employs four craftsmen to paint flags and write calligraphy, and a small printing press.
   “We have received continuous orders for American and Israeli flags. Normally we paint them but when demand surges into the hundreds we print these flags to get them to our clients in time,” he said.
In the wake of the controversy caused by the NATO attack inside Pakistan, have blocked supplies for NATO forces to Afghanistan through its territory and mulls over to expel Americans from its Shamsi airbase.
   Although none of the protests has mobilised the masses, sporadic demonstrators have continued to vent anger in Karachi and other cities.
   Rasheed runs his business on times of stress. Different periods mean demand for the flags of India — Pakistan’s deepest rival with whom the country has fought three wars — Norway and Sweden, and former colonial ruler Britain.
   Five years ago, widespread protests broke out in the conservative Muslim nation over satirical cartoons of Mohammed that were published by a Danish newspaper and then reprinted in other European countries.
   Then in 2008, thousands of Pakistani Islamists rallied against an anti-Koran film made by a far-right Dutch lawmaker. Another focal point for anger has been Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who etched a blasphemous caricature.
   Whenever elections approach or protests start, wholesalers stock huge quantities of cheap cloth and reap handsome rewards.
   “We are getting bigger orders from scores of painters and printers nowadays,” cloth merchant Mohammad Siddique said.
   “Pakistan is the country of protests and for this Karachi is undoubtedly its capital and our business gets a boost in such circumstances,” Siddique said.
   Waqar Ahmed, owner of a printing press in Karachi’s southern neighbourhood Pakistan Chowk, says orders are flooding in for posters, pamphlets and placards, temporarily overtaking his main business in books and wedding cards.
   “I get orders for pamphlets and posters in the event of controversies or elections,” Waqar says.
   “I have got some orders to print flags of United States – in hundreds – during the ongoing rallies. We have also sold many American and Swedish flags during the protests against Facebook,” Ahmed said.

Ends

‘Father of Mangroves’ fights for Pakistan’s forests

2012-08-31T06:34:00.000-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor
It was a brutal kidnap that turned him into an eco-warrior, and 27 years later Pakistan’s “Father of the Mangroves” still lets nothing get in the way of fighting against timber “mafia” and deforestation.
“This is my life. I am very happy with it. The cause is worth living such a life,” Tahir Qureshi told AFP, walking around the sanctuary that he set up in his spare time when he still worked full-time with the forestry commission.
He was captured by a kidnap-for-ransom gang in 1984 while working in the southern district of Dadu, now devastated by floods for two consecutive years.
“They kept me for a couple of days in captivity. But when they knew I was a forest officer they released me without further argument. That inspired me to dedicate my whole life for the rehabilitation of our ecosystem,” he said.
“The robbers released me as they respect those who respect forests. Trees provide them best hideouts.
“Besides, they are among many people who consider chopping trees as a sin because trees provide us livelihood and help better the environment.”
For years, it was a lonely if mighty cause, for apart from Afghanistan, in the grip of a 10-year war between Taliban insurgents and American troops, no other country in Asia suffers from a faster rate of deforestation than Pakistan.
In 2010, it was declared a forest-deficient country because just 2.2 percent or about 1.7 million hectares (4.2 million acres) of its land mass is forested.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Pakistan lost an average of 42,000 hectares of forest a year between 1990 and 2010.
At the current rate, Pakistan could lose half its remaining forest cover over the next decade or so, says the FAO. The trend has been exacerbated by recent floods, the worst in the country’s history in 2010 and a repeated bout this monsoon season.
Qureshi has helped rehabilitate 30,000 hectares of mangrove along the southern coast on the Arabian Sea, including in Baluchistan, one of Pakistan’s most violent and inhospitable areas, home to Taliban militants and a separatist uprising.
Today he is a senior advisor on coastal ecosystems with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
He starts almost every day with a visit to the mangroves, which he calls his kids, on Karachi’s Sandspit Beach. Wearing a khaki shirt and trousers, he wades into the swamp up to his waist to see how they’re getting on.
“We are historically a forestry-deficient country, but with the course of time the ratio has reduced alarmingly,” said the 65-year-old Qureshi.
So who is to blame? There are the timber “mafia” who hack away at mangroves and trees, trucking wood off to market by donkey and vehicle to sell as fuel, while the military and government officials are also accused of involvement.
“The current rate of deforestation is very alarming. We could lose our timber completely in two to three decades if not effectively checked,” an environment ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Hussain Bux Bhagat, a conservationist associated with the Sindh provincial wildlife department, says wildlife in the riverine forest, including birds, reptiles and mammals, also suffered severely because of deforestation.
“Particularly high numbers of grey partridge, which nest on trees and don’t leave its habitat have died because of continuing deforestation and last year’s floods,” Bhagat told AFP.
In 1947, when Pakistan was created from the ashes of British colonialism, riverine forests lined the banks of the Indus River.
They were the first line of defence against floods that have deluged the plains annually for thousands of years, as well as against shoreline erosion. Instead, the deforested areas are prone to flooding and landslides.
But riverine and mangrove forest represent only 20 percent of the forest cover in Pakistan — the rest is concentrated in the mountains of the northern provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit and Baltistan and Kashmir.
There, officials, aid workers and residents accuse the authorities and the Taliban of being hand in glove with mafias cutting down trees.
The Swat valley was once the most popular tourist destination of the country before a Taliban insurgency began in 2007. After a major operation, the army declared the area back under control in July 2009.
But conservationists say tens of thousands of pine trees have been cut down, both during the Taliban years and under the military.
A former Forest Development Corporation (FDC) official, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, said timber felling was one of the main causes of the devastation witnessed in Swat during the floods of 2010.
“Three kinds of actors participated in that: the FDC working for timber mafia, local people and the Taliban, who cut a lot to buy weapons,” he said.
“There are two kinds of timber mafias: the big ones, with a licence, and the local ones, people with no licence who bribe guards.
Numerous local residents said army trucks are seen transporting timber, but army spokesman Colonel Arif Mehmood in Swat told AFP he was “not aware” of the practice.
Others say the rate of deforestation has improved since the army restored control over the valley in July 2009. No department can provide statistics.
The Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy, a think tank, has also pointed to links between the timber mafia and Islamist militancy.
“Being shrewd investors, the timber mafia is believed to have spent part of its dividends to sponsor militancy. Huge sums are involved in the business, which has expanded to the hills bordering Afghanistan,” it said in a 2009 report.
“They invest money and energy in Talibanisation, that is how they protect their illegal businesses at the expense of the state’s writ.”

AFP November 2011

They dance in Sindh to capture Punjab!

2012-08-30T01:02:00.003-07:00

By Hasan Mansoor

(Written in November 2011)

Shah Mehmood Qureshi can conveniently be regarded as the greatest of all hypocrites and power-hungry individuals who are jumping on Imran Khan’s bandwagon.
   His hypocrisy is evident from the religious allegories he had associated in his speech in Ghotki, where he finally ended his role as the fence-sitter and joined Imran’s Tehrik-e-Insaaf.
   A show in Ghotki can never be applied on the whole Sindh. Ghotki is the smallest of Sindh’s border districts, taken hostage by the influential tribes, whose chiefs are as opportunist and corrupt as elsewhere. They boast on honour killing of women and harbour and nurture criminals to keep people in distress and manipulate election results to their own advantage.
   Local people confirm that majority of the participants of Qureshi’s rally were unknown to them. They had been transported in trucks and lorries from the bordering southern Punjab’s towns.
   “Some of the participants were provided by the influential Mahers of the district, while the rest might form the total supporters of Qureshi who revere him because of his being a gaddi-nasheen of a shrine,” a local political observer told me.
   This rally cannot be regarded as something, which reflects a change in the mood of Sindhis. Both Qureshi and Imran Khan stick to their guns against the government. They spoke of the so-called corrupt practices being committed by Zardari’s government, bragged about their being the clean entities and hit hard against the Sharifs.
   Actually, they discussed Punjab’s politics in Sindh. Both the PTI leaders have stakes in Punjab and they see little prospects in Sindh, the question remains why they chose a place elsewhere to fight for Punjab? Qureshi wanted to show his popularity on trans-provincial scale while Imran was keen to see his bag gets fully stuffed.
   But, none of them spoke about the worst miseries of Sindh caused by the floods the second year running. They talked about the ambiguous NRO controversy, war on terror, United States, Pakistan’s vague sovereignty and Afghanistan and Iraq but deemed it inappropriate to talk on the real problems of Sindh.
   Qureshi, on the occasion, went on to the religious allegories in his speech, which hardly impress Sindhis’ secular minds. Spectacular of all was when he put himself in the shoes of Central Asian warrior Mehmood Ghaznavi by saying he would attack on Somnaath’s temple. He said his rally’s day coincided with the advent of the holy Islamic month of Muharram which, according to him, was a good omen to the country’s secured fate.
   Qureshi received an immediate bashing from across the southern province’s intelligentsia who condemn him for his desire to attack a temple no matter that was a clichéd symbolic notion.
   “Sindhis have always respected the worship places of all faiths and cannot tolerate or appreciate such clichés, which have been created and safeguarded by the powerful establishment,” said one of several statements published in the Sindhi newspapers.
   Sindhis have the history not to support the religious bigots. They still keep their religion and routine life separate despite the deep state’s repeated attempts to corrupt it through the kidnapping and persecution of minority Hindus and their girls’ forced conversion by the mullahs whose sanctuaries are being expanded systematically.
   Imran might take time to keep his finger on the pulse of Sindh, but why Qureshi went so aggressive in his panegyric to his brand-new leader, though he is well accustomed to the Sindhi environs. He is in the process of changing his posture that suits his new party’s right-wing propensities. He wants the people to forget his popular images with Secretary Hillary Clinton showing him sharing broad smiles with his then counterpart whom now he strategically despises.

   One should admire Zardari for his prudent decision in 2008 not to select Qureshi as party’s nominee for the country’s next prime minister. Zardari must have foreseen Qureshi’s hypocoristic leanings that many critics did not.
   But, haven’t Imran started sipping hypocrisy when he gives a clean chit as the foreign minister to Qureshi in Ghotki, an individual whom he had criticised him in his book “Pakistan A Personal History”.
   He writes: “These loans, along with US and European aid money, are like bribes to the Pakistani political elite to keep fighting America’s war for them. This was painfully evident when in October 2010 Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told the European parliament: ‘If you want to help us fight extremism and terrorism, one way of doing that is making Pakistan economically stable.’ Pakistan’s ruling elite threatens the West with fears about Islamic militancy to extract more money out of them.”
   We should still admire Imran Khan, after all, he is the saviour we the poor souls have been waiting for the salvation!
Ends

Pakistan’s shunned HIV victims fight pariah status

2012-08-30T00:34:00.002-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor
KARACHI, Dec 1, 2011 (AFP) – Shunned by their families and society, Rubina and Iqbal are a Pakistani couple who have struggled for years to win their lives back and spread a message of respect for fellow victims of HIV/AIDS.
Rubina Naz, 33, one of 12 children born to a labourer, was diagnosed with HIV four years ago, a year after her drug-addicted husband passed away.
“I didn’t know what it was until I was tested positive. I was afflicted with this horrible disease by my first husband, who was an AIDS victim,” said Rubina.
They married when she was 16 years old and had two daughters and two sons together, but Rubina was unaware of her husband’s illness until she read his medical tests after his death and friends advised her to take her own.
Finding out she was HIV positive ruined her life.
“My in-laws threw me out and took my kids. Even most of my own family treated me like a sinner and stayed away when I was desperate to be helped. Those days were horrible,” she said.
Pakistan, the second-largest country in South Asia, stands a few steps behind India and Nepal in terms of the extent of the HIV epidemic.
The National AIDS Control Programme says Pakistan is a “low prevalence, high risk” country, with low rates of the virus across the general population but a high concentration among risk groups such as injecting drug users.
UN figures from 2009 show that there are an estimated 97,400 cases of HIV/AIDS in Pakistan.
Rubina’s meals were always served separately to the rest of her family, who were fearful of contracting the disease, but with her mother’s support she says she has overcome prejudice.
She now works as a kitchen assistant at charity Pakistan Society, dedicated to helping HIV positive people, which is where she met her new husband Mohammad Iqbal, 35, who is HIV positive and recovering from drug addiction.
Iqbal was a tailor in his teens when he was introduced to heroin by friends. He contracted the virus 10 years ago by sharing needles to inject the drug.
“My addiction shocked my parents, who both died early, then my brothers threw me out of home and I was forced to live on the streets,” he said.
A charity gave him the tests that led to his diagnosis. But it was another three years before he decided to get well.
“Continuous hatred towards me wore me out. I decided to live a meaningful life or end it. I opted to live and agreed to get rehabilitated,” he said.
Rubina and Iqbal found each other in the kitchen, which serves food to patients and visitors at the charity’s medical centre.
The charity also goes into communities to help drug addicts across the southern city of Karachi and the wider Sindh province, where it spreads the message that HIV victims can live a normal life and should not be cast out.
“Now I don’t hesitate to see myself in the mirror. I am regaining my lost respect in the world,” Iqbal said.
Rubina’s in-laws have agreed to allow her children to see her regularly and Iqbal’s brothers have permitted him to rejoin the family.
Anti-retroviral drugs that treat the illness are provided free of charge at state-run hospitals, clinics and health centres across Pakistan, meaning that those diagnosed have the chance of a relatively normal life.
So long as Rubina and Iqbal continue to take their daily medication and maintain a healthy lifestyle, Pakistan Society head Saleem Azam said their prognosis is good and their life expectancy should not be affected.
Azam said that women are the least documented victims.
The 2009 survey revealed that 15 percent of wives of injecting drug users in just one district, Larkana, where Pakistan’s political dynasty the Bhuttos have their ancestral seat, are HIV sufferers.
But Azam said the actual incidence may be much higher as many cases go undetected and there could be many women “who die of the disease without even knowing what happened to them.”
“In our male dominant society women have fewer choices to save themselves from their HIV positive husbands. The majority have not heard of the disease and if they do they cannot stop their husbands from afflicting them.”
Rubina and Iqbal have taught their families to respect HIV-positive people but say they will continue their quest to educate the rest.
“It is not over yet as the rest of society is still there to be educated,” said Rubina.

Ends

Illegal lives: Karachi’s two million immigrants face a government crackdown

2012-08-30T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Hasan Mansoor
My 2002 report for Himal South Asian Magazine
When Pakistan launched its National Alien Registration Authority (NARA) in January 2002 to address the perceived problem of illegal immigration, an estimated 3.3 million non-citizens were residing unlawfully in the country, close to two million in the southern city of Karachi alone. NARA received a mandate of three years to document illegal residents in Pakistan, specifically those in Karachi, and to issue work permits to non-citizens “who will get themselves registered”. But, perhaps not surprisingly, 18 months into its mission and halfway to its deadline of December 2004, NARA has registered only 35,000 people, just one percent of the estimated total.
The reasons for NARA’s poor performance to date are numerous, though many relate to difficulties inherent in differentiating ‘real’ Pakistanis from non-citizen ‘impostors’. Immigrants and their children have blended into Karachi’s bustling urban life, and many have secured government-issued National Identity Cards (NICs), often with the help of other non-citizens elected (illegally) to local administrative bodies. More broadly, they have created their own patronage networks and ensconced themselves into Karachi’s existing ones, gaining access to jobs, political connections and social services that make them as much residents of the city as any native-born citizen.
Owing to the scale and diversity of the immigrant population, estimates of its size and composition remain rough. In Karachi, the largest segment – about 1.3 million – hails from Bangladesh, while totals from Africa, Burma and India reach into the hundreds of thousands. Most Bangladeshi migrants travel overland to Pakistan via India, where they are sometimes able to make arrangements in advance for work in Karachi, where supposedly pays are higher than anywhere else in South Asia. Karachi is also home to 80,000 Afghans, who are counted as refugees rather than as aliens on the assumption that they will return to their native country once conditions improve.
In a sprawling city of 12 million-plus people, Karachi’s non-citizen residents represent about 15 percent of the total population, and because many of them have secured voting rights, they constitute a significant electoral block. A report prepared by NARA’s Karachi office states that at least 80 unnaturalised immigrants have been elected to a cluster of 20 union councils in the city, six of which are led by non-citizens, though local government officials put the number of elected immigrants at closer to 130. Another three dozen such candidates are believed to have gained office in
the interior of Sindh. And while about half of the non-citizen population in Karachi is concentrated in the city’s western district, it has spread effectively throughout the entire metropolis, often in small squatter settlements, making identification of ‘illegals’ all the more difficult.
On the whole, NARA officials’ efforts to register immigrants appear thwarted at nearly every turn, sometimes violently. Non-citizen residents in the Karachi localities of Machchar colony, Ibrahim Hyderi and Mauripur recently turned back visiting NARA officials with force, and NARA’s efforts outside of the metropolis enjoy no greater success. Attempts to register international migrants in the southern cities of Nooriabad and Thatta, in Sindh, and Hub, in Balochistan, have failed, casualties of patronage networks and organised resistance to the campaign. “The problem is that aliens have got powers to resist and help their other fellows to become Pakistanis”, an officer explains, noting that he and his colleagues are ill-equipped to overcome such tactics. NARA also suffers from more banal organisational woes, in particular cash shortage that prevents it from acquiring a fleet of vehicles or expanding its staff beyond its present four-dozen employees.
Patronage politics
Owing to its size and uncertain legal status, Karachi’s non-citizen community has enmeshed itself in the patronage networks of politicians and political parties, trading votes for political protection. The millions of non-citizen residents living in Karachi have proven to be a valuable vote bank for political parties, particularly for those with weak roots in the metropolis.
Mazhar Shaikh, an additional director general of NARA, expresses dismay at the nearly impossible task of registering non-citizen residents, the fault for which he says rests in large measure with their political connections. “A number of them have become elected nazims [mayors] and councillors, who stop their community members from getting registered”. He says that once elected, these officials push through NIC applications for other non-citizens to help them evade detection by NARA. Shaikh says that he has notified the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA), which issues NICs, about the difficulties NARA faces with identity card evasion tactics. A solution is yet to be found. “A joint line of action is under consideration”, says Shaikh, adding that the powers of some councillors to attest NIC applications may be suspended while discreet investigations are carried out. For its part, NADRA says that it is reviewing candidate filings in an attempt to root out politicians who lack citizenship.
Ejaz Shafi, a former MP who lost an election last year standing from Karachi as a candidate of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), has championed the cause of Bangladeshi migrants for more than a decade. In return he has received support from the thousands of immigrants for whom he has helped secure NICs and space on voter rolls. Though he lost last year’s race to a candidate of the religious parties alliance, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, Shafi received strong support from the estimated 20,000 Bangla-speakers in his constituency. As a strong supporter of the community, he refuses to use to the term ‘alien’ to designate persons of Bangladeshi origin living in Pakistan. “They are Pakistanis in all respects, by all conditions universally accepted for citizenship”, he says.
Other parties, such as cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf, Allama Tahir-ul-Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehrik, and former president Farooq Leghari’s Millat Party, have made concerted attempts to
cultivate Bangla speaking voters. Many political aspirants seek support from residents of Machchar colony, a squatter settlement inhabited by 50,000 Bangla-speakers on land owned by the Karachi Port Trust (KPT). The KPT has made several attempts to evict residents, but each time influential politicians come to the aid of the slum-dwellers. “When I was an MP from this area, I did not allow the KPT to evacuate them”, Shafi says, adding that he suggested instead that the port reclaim land from the upscale Clifton locality.
However, not all political parties cultivate the foreign-born vote – indeed, some doubt the calculations on immigrant electoral strength, and others have tapped into local resentment of the large Bengali community to mobilise support. A leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), an offshoot of a partition-era north Indian organisation of Urdu-speakers, argues that patronage networks have not worked to the advantage of immigrants, as despite being included on voter rolls, the government “cautiously sliced them out of Karachi’s population” when it came to distributing resources.
However, this has not stopped parties from pandering to non-citizens at election time, he says, and he accuses several of illegally registering non-citizens as voters. “Even rightwing Jamaat-i-Islami activists have put many Afghan voters on rolls in the city’s central district to harm the MQM”, he says. Another political mobiliser, this one from the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), perhaps the most powerful political force in Sindh, says that his group does not register non-citizens, as doing so would harm the interests of Pakistanis.
Controversy surrounding immigrants extends to the job market, where local resentment is perhaps more acute than in the field of politics. For non-citizens who find work, it is typically as domestic servants, as low-wage employees in the garment or fishing industries, or in jobs such as sugarcane pressing. Because they are usually willing to work for less pay
than native-born Pakistanis, they attract the ire of locals as well as muffled praise from employers, who tend to be exploitative.
Many ethnic and nationalist political organisations, as well as labor groups, regularly carry out campaigns against immigrant employment on the ground that recent arrivals damage the economic prospects of the native-born. Along with the MQM, the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM) opposes the growing presence of non-citizen workers in Sindh’s economy. The parties’ election manifestoes accuse immigrants of depressing local wages, and promise improved job prospects for native-born (Urdu-speaking) Pakistanis once they are able to prevent migrants from participating in the economy. “These aliens are a burden on Sindh”, JSQM chairman Bashir Qureshi says, adding that it is the government’s responsibility to solve the problem.
Searching for ‘solutions’
The MQM’s Kunwar Khalid Younus argues that the government should settle the illegal immigration problem once and for all. “What we need is just the political will to do that”, he says. As far back as 1993, intelligence agencies considered competing proposals to ‘solve’ the problem, one being a massive repatriation scheme, primarily of Bangladeshis. This was deemed impractical, however, as for its part, Pakistan refuses to take in the ‘Biharis’ – the nearly 300,000 Urdu-speakers who have languished in 66 Bangladeshi urban refugee camps since the early 1970s. In any event, the ‘exporting’ countries are unlikely to cooperate with Islamabad’s repatriation schemes; in August 1996, Dhaka refused to accept 70 Bangladeshis deported from Karachi because they carried Pakistani NICs and passports.
What ‘solutions’, if any, can be found to the non-citizen resident question is a matter of pressing concern in Islamabad. In addition to launching NARA and debating the repatriation scheme, Islamabad has investigated other methods of regulating immigrants’ existence and bringing them within the scope of the law. There is a process by which non-citizens can secure legal residence and work status, but its costs are prohibitively expensive for most immigrants: until recently, PKR 10,000 (USD 180) and PKR 1000, respectively, for registration and work permit cards. Even after reductions to PKR 2500 and PKR 500, most non-citizens lack the finances to take advantage of these options, particularly when becoming ‘legal’ is not viewed as a pressing concern. “We often spend much less than this to get [forged] Pakistani documents”, a Bangladeshi migrant living in Federal B Area explains. For citizens of Bangladesh and Burma, there is also the option of formally applying for Pakistani citizenship under Rule 13/A of the Citizenship Act, though Islamabad has approved less than 1000 of such naturalisation applications till now.
Another idea is to provide migrants with transit back to their countries of origin on non-citizen Pakistani passports. A committee convened by the federal government, which included two Bangla speakers as ex-officio members, recommended the issuing of so-called ‘white passports’ to migrants from Bangladesh and Burma so that they may visit their countries of origin and migrate back, if so inclined. But to receive a white passport, migrants would first have to register with NARA and fill out Form E-I under the Citizenship Act, a step most non-citizen residents are hesitant to take. However, this plan possesses the advantage of offering an avenue for migrants to return to their birth countries, if they so desire, and some NGOs have expressed interest in facilitating such a process and providing financial support to
returnees.
While many Bangla speakers in Pakistan arrived relatively recently, there is also the challenge of adjudicating the citizenship claims of Bengalis whose residence dates to the 24 years between the 1947 partition and Bangladeshi
independence. The same federal committee that issued the recommendation about white passports also proposed granting Pakistani citizenship to Bengalis – not Bangladeshis – living in (West) Pakistan before the Bengali nationalist capture of Dhaka on 16 December 1971. After Bangladesh’s war of independence, fewer than 25,000 Bengalis opted to remain in Pakistan, according to NARA director general Shaikh, while most of the rest migrated to the former eastern wing. A 1978 amendment to the Citizenship Act nullified the Pakistani citizenship of those domiciled in erstwhile East
Pakistan. Bengalis remaining in Pakistan were required to submit a Form E-I to the home department of their province of residence and apply for citizenship, although according to the Sindh home department, no Bengalis submitted such forms in that province after the war. Many of these people have led a precarious legal existence for the past three decades.
The government committee also held meetings with Bengali community representatives and, in response to concerns that they lack documentary proof of residence, proposed that local police officials be empowered to recommend the granting of citizenship after verification. Critics, however, say that this proposal would only lead to massive corruption among police officers. Another widely shared concern among non-citizen residents is the suspicion that the entire government registration process is merely a plot to launch deportation proceedings once particulars are known to authorities. Interior ministry officials dismiss this claim, and note that none of the 35,000 migrants registered to date have been deported. “On the contrary, we are trying to resolve their civic and social problems, including extending
them educational, health and other facilities”, says one official. He also discloses that the government committee has been asked to review other countries’ immigration and citizenship policies in order to suggest improvements in Pakistan’s system.
13 kg of bad publicity
Debates about the role of ethnic-minority non-citizens in Pakistani society and politics, and the proposed methods of dealing with the concerns of and about them, are also coloured by anxieties about the supposedly dangerous and illegal practices of some elements of the immigrant population. Statements from Pakistan’s interior ministry indicate that there is increased official concern about non-citizen residents’ involvement with religious schools accused of fueling sectarian hatred, and with criminal activities ranging from burglaries and murder to international drug trafficking. A recent interior ministry socio-economic survey showed that non-citizens are concentrated in 22 localities of Karachi, many in ‘sensitive’ places near sea, oil and power installations and army cantonments, prompting the police to recommend mass evictions in these areas.
Concerns about links to religious violence are heightened given Karachi’s experience with sectarian violence. NARA research shows that the migrant community is making concentrated use of 29 government schools and nine hospitals, and operates 44 madrasas, about five percent of the city’s 869 Islamic schools. Regarding those schools, authorities say that, despite it being a small proportion of the city’s total, they are nevertheless worried about an influx of students into these largely unregulated institutions.
Today, most foreign students in the madrasas come from Afghan, Burmese or Bangladeshi backgrounds, although until two years ago there were also large numbers of African and Southeast Asian students. With the opening of the US military campaign in Afghanistan in October 2001, however, overseas enrolment in Karachi’s madrasas plummeted, and now foreign-born students represent only four percent of the 264,169 madrasa student total for Sindh, 85 percent of which is concentrated in Karachi, according to a recent police report.
The already precarious position of foreign-born residents in Karachi vis-à-vis the police is further complicated by military and law enforcement efforts associated with the US ‘war on terror’. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), with the help of Pakistani authorities, is closely monitoring mobile phone conversations in Pakistan, and has arrested hundreds of foreigners suspected of links to Al Qaeda and other militant outfits. The FBI conducts operations in the country with the blessings and assistance of Pakistani officials, who have toed the US line since September 2001. Among the several thousand people arrested to date in these operations, officials say that about 700 are non-Pakistanis, mostly Afghans and Arabs, but there are also some Africans, Bangladeshis and Burmese.
The police also highlight migrants’ participation in local crime, in particular their connections to robbery, kidnapping, narcotics smuggling, human trafficking and murder. “We have evidence of their involvement in serious offences, and we have recommended that the government take the issue seriously”, the inspector general of Sindh police, Syed Kamal Shah, alleges. According to a police report, non-citizens are implicated in a widespread network of trafficking girls from Bangladesh and Pakistan to the United Arab Emirates. Police also suspect that immigrants have worked as hired killers
in Karachi’s recent spate of high-profile murders.
These concerns came to the surface in late spring with the high-profile arrests of three Bengali drug smugglers. On 21 May, Bangladeshi airport authorities arrested three women traveling on Pakistani passports for possession of 13 kilograms of heroin valued at USD 2.25 million, one of the largest drug hauls ever in Dhaka. Pakistani authorities had tipped off their Bangladeshi counterparts, who discovered the contraband in paste tubes hidden in the women’s luggage. A preliminary investigation into the case by Pakistani officials uncovered that the traffickers were Karachi-based
Bengalis who had bribed officials to receive documents attesting Pakistani citizenship. According to Pakistani authorities, travel on forged or falsely issued Pakistani documents is quite common, though it is ‘real’ Pakistani citizens who receive a bad reputation for such practices. Several Afghans have also been caught committing similar crimes, though Bengalis are believed to be more frequent offenders.
The Dhaka drug bust, extensively covered in the Pakistani media, led to hand wringing and accusation-leveling in Karachi. An official of the PPP cites the heroin arrests as evidence of the negative consequences of migrants participating in the political process. Others point to the implications of the incident for the entire bureaucracy. A thorough investigation into the Dhaka case, if and when it occurs, could raise troubling questions about the efficiency and integrity of NARA, which issues NICs and prepares voting registers, as well as other departments in the internal affairs ministry, such as the passport-issuing authority. Precisely how long corrupt practices have been occurring, and the extent to which bribery permeates the system, are difficult to assess, although anecdotal evidence paints a worrying
picture.
The heroin arrests prompted great interest at least in part because they touched on another widely held concern about non-citizen residents – their alleged widespread drug use. According to a United Nations Development Programme report, drug abuse among immigrants in Pakistan is rampant, and because of needle-sharing authorities suspect that HIV is on the rise in the community. Even so, such drug use is both a cause of concern and a symptom of their perilous condition, as many take up the expensive indulgence to alleviate the psychological stress and general frustration of leading a quasi-legal existence.
Yet, whether it concerns illegal activities or dangerous habits, official and popular scrutiny of Bangla speakers is greater than that of native-born, Urdu-speaking Pakistanis, and there are concerns that allegations of criminal activity are being exaggerated to malign the community. An October 2001 report in the Dawn of Karachi on immigrants in Pakistan states, quoting police sources, that “the over-all involvement of Bengalis in crime is negligible”, and that “contrary to a general perception”, at most 200 Bengalis are involved in crime in Karachi. This appears to contradict some of NARA’s positions, such as the claim that non-citizen residents are “adding to the crime rate”. Given that persons who lack clear legal status will likely seek to avoid activities provoking the interest of law enforcement officials, there appear to be grounds for doubting some of NARA’ s more sweeping charges of mass criminality in the migrant community.

Ends

Bomb attack on Pakistan train kills two

2012-08-29T23:17:00.001-07:00

Two people were killed and a further 10 injured when a bomb exploded on railway tracks in southern Pakistan early Wednesday, police officials said.
   The explosion, which caused two of the train's cars to derail, occurred in the town of Thul at around 2:00 am, police official Murtaza Mirani told AFP.
   Thul is some 500 kilometres (300 miles) north of Karachi, the region's main city, while the train was headed for the northwestern city of Peshawar.
   "Fortunately, the bogies did not overturn as the train was slow, thus averting a bigger catastrophe," Mirani said.
   Ashraf Soomro, a local railway official, said that the injured had been taken to a hospital, while the other passengers were being looked after.
   "We are busy repairing the damaged tracks and will send the passengers to Peshawar as soon as possible," he said.
   Mirani said so far no terrorist groups had claimed responsibility for the attack, adding: "We can't comment right now until our investigation is complete."
   Thul lies in the Jacobabad district of the southern Sindh province. Terrorist attacks blamed on Islamist militants are less frequent in the south than in the country's restive northwestern border area with Afghanistan.
Ends August, 2012