Well sometimes, steam rolling has to be done to make road smooth isn't it???=heheh
Pakistan: General Developments - Musharraf warns of new military coup in Pakistan
- Thread starter DaRk WaVe
- Start date
Lok Virsa plans activities to celebrate Mothers' Day
ISLAMABAD: Lok Virsa (LV) and National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage, in collaboration with Wonder World Theatre, are organising a series of activities today (May 9) at LV premises in connection with 'Mothers' Day'. LV Executive Director (ED) Khalid Javaid said that a number of special programmes had been planned for the occasion including magic show, jugglers' show, puppet show, live performances by comedian Masood Khawaja and Jimmy Athray (grandson of famous musician Rasheed Athray), painting exhibition and several other attractions. He said that TV actress Laila Zuberi as mother brand ambassador and young singer Khadija Haider would also be present on the occasion. Organisers said that special invitations had been extended to students of schools and colleges of the twin cities to attend the event along with their families, particularly mothers. "About 10,000 children are expected to attend the function," they said. They said prizes would also be given to the children, who stand out in the painting competition and 'Best Messages for the Day' category. The programmes will start at 12:00 in the afternoon and conclude at 11pm. This is the first time in the history of Islamabad that a cultural organisation like LV has planned to celebrate Mother's Day by entertaining children and their families. staff report
ISLAMABAD: Lok Virsa (LV) and National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage, in collaboration with Wonder World Theatre, are organising a series of activities today (May 9) at LV premises in connection with 'Mothers' Day'. LV Executive Director (ED) Khalid Javaid said that a number of special programmes had been planned for the occasion including magic show, jugglers' show, puppet show, live performances by comedian Masood Khawaja and Jimmy Athray (grandson of famous musician Rasheed Athray), painting exhibition and several other attractions. He said that TV actress Laila Zuberi as mother brand ambassador and young singer Khadija Haider would also be present on the occasion. Organisers said that special invitations had been extended to students of schools and colleges of the twin cities to attend the event along with their families, particularly mothers. "About 10,000 children are expected to attend the function," they said. They said prizes would also be given to the children, who stand out in the painting competition and 'Best Messages for the Day' category. The programmes will start at 12:00 in the afternoon and conclude at 11pm. This is the first time in the history of Islamabad that a cultural organisation like LV has planned to celebrate Mother's Day by entertaining children and their families. staff report
Agantrope
Senior Member
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2009
- Messages
- 1,247
- Likes
- 77
Well. I have witnessed i the many forums of the west neighbouring country stating that India as Hindu Radical element, But when seeing the number of the terrorist organisation there and it is clear that pakistan is playing a dangerous religious radicalism card and it may not afford to withheld the backfire and it is evident in the first video itself.
Twin cities to observe Mother's Day today
By Mahtab Bashir
ISLAMABAD: Mother's Day is being observed today (Sunday). Children and their families across the country will express in their own unique ways the importance of mothers in their lives. Some will shower their mothers with flowers and gifts; others will lavish hugs on them as a token of affection.
Mother's Day was established due to the efforts made by Julia Ward Howe and Anna Jarvis. The resolution for having a day dedicated as Mother's Day was signed by US President Woodrow Wilson on May 8, 1914. Since then, people across the world have been celebrating Mother's Day on second Sunday of May with joy and devotion.
The day was initiated to observe peace, and not support consumerism. Julia Ward Howe first designated the Mother's Day for Peace in the civil war-hit America that left countless mothers mourning for their sons and families.
Through Mother's Day, this acknowledgement for mothers' role is celebrated to bring peace for people. "Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of mercy, charity and patience," she said along with thousands of US mothers who had witnessed first-hand the terrible bloodshed during the Civil War in America and the Franco-Prussian War in Europe.
This event led mothers to play their role in helping end the strife. The powerful maternal desire for security could shape world events, and she called on mothers of the world to unite against war.
Today, mothers of Pakistan are facing similar problems of violence, war and unrest and killing in the country, as they are worried about the lives of their beloved sons, daughters and families.
Many mothers said they feel that it's time all Pakistani mothers stood up for peace in the country, as Howe did. For this, they suggested educated mothers to give guidance to other mothers and acknowledge their role in ensuring peace in the country.
Nudrat Aftab, a mother of two, on this occasion said, "We need to join hands to promote the cause of motherhood to spread peace, whether it is in Balochistan or in the Khyber-pakhtunkhwa in Karachi, or any part of the country and the world," she said, "we, the mothers, need peace for our sons and daughters and for our families."
Others called upon the government to acknowledge the role of mothers and take some time out to guide mothers as to how they would be efficient in restoring peace to the country.
Despite signing several international commitments regarding the health and human rights of women and girls, Pakistan has an alarmingly high Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), as one Pakistani woman loses life every 30 minutes due to reproductive health complications.
According to health experts, every year, more than one million children are left motherless and vulnerable because of maternal deaths. "Children who have lost their mothers are 10 times as much likely to die prematurely as those who have not," they pointed out.
Dr Farzana, a gynecologist, said factors resulting in maternal deaths include women's poor health before pregnancy, and inadequate, inaccessible or unaffordable healthcare and poor hygiene and care during childbirth. "Socio-economic and cultural realities such as literacy, poverty, unequal access to recourses and lack of involvement in decision making process in families and societies add to the challenges faced by women," she said.
According to a Ministry of Health report, 350 out of 100,000 women, and 76 out of 1,000 infants die at the stage of birth.
By Mahtab Bashir
ISLAMABAD: Mother's Day is being observed today (Sunday). Children and their families across the country will express in their own unique ways the importance of mothers in their lives. Some will shower their mothers with flowers and gifts; others will lavish hugs on them as a token of affection.
Mother's Day was established due to the efforts made by Julia Ward Howe and Anna Jarvis. The resolution for having a day dedicated as Mother's Day was signed by US President Woodrow Wilson on May 8, 1914. Since then, people across the world have been celebrating Mother's Day on second Sunday of May with joy and devotion.
The day was initiated to observe peace, and not support consumerism. Julia Ward Howe first designated the Mother's Day for Peace in the civil war-hit America that left countless mothers mourning for their sons and families.
Through Mother's Day, this acknowledgement for mothers' role is celebrated to bring peace for people. "Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of mercy, charity and patience," she said along with thousands of US mothers who had witnessed first-hand the terrible bloodshed during the Civil War in America and the Franco-Prussian War in Europe.
This event led mothers to play their role in helping end the strife. The powerful maternal desire for security could shape world events, and she called on mothers of the world to unite against war.
Today, mothers of Pakistan are facing similar problems of violence, war and unrest and killing in the country, as they are worried about the lives of their beloved sons, daughters and families.
Many mothers said they feel that it's time all Pakistani mothers stood up for peace in the country, as Howe did. For this, they suggested educated mothers to give guidance to other mothers and acknowledge their role in ensuring peace in the country.
Nudrat Aftab, a mother of two, on this occasion said, "We need to join hands to promote the cause of motherhood to spread peace, whether it is in Balochistan or in the Khyber-pakhtunkhwa in Karachi, or any part of the country and the world," she said, "we, the mothers, need peace for our sons and daughters and for our families."
Others called upon the government to acknowledge the role of mothers and take some time out to guide mothers as to how they would be efficient in restoring peace to the country.
Despite signing several international commitments regarding the health and human rights of women and girls, Pakistan has an alarmingly high Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), as one Pakistani woman loses life every 30 minutes due to reproductive health complications.
According to health experts, every year, more than one million children are left motherless and vulnerable because of maternal deaths. "Children who have lost their mothers are 10 times as much likely to die prematurely as those who have not," they pointed out.
Dr Farzana, a gynecologist, said factors resulting in maternal deaths include women's poor health before pregnancy, and inadequate, inaccessible or unaffordable healthcare and poor hygiene and care during childbirth. "Socio-economic and cultural realities such as literacy, poverty, unequal access to recourses and lack of involvement in decision making process in families and societies add to the challenges faced by women," she said.
According to a Ministry of Health report, 350 out of 100,000 women, and 76 out of 1,000 infants die at the stage of birth.
'Black & White' at JI Gallery of Fine Arts
Text and photos by Ameer H Ahmad
KARACHI: A group exhibition titled 'Black & White' is being held at the JI Gallery of Fine Arts. It features the works of Abrar Ahmed, Farrukh Shahab, Jamal Ahmed (from Bangladesh) and AQ Arif.
Abrar is a self-taught artist whose eternal muse is women with sharp features and who are heavily adorned with jewellery. He used refined and strong lines to depict his women on the simple monochrome canvas. Utilising elaborate patterns, he attempts to show frustrated souls who, despite their prosperity and luxury, are mere dolls, living without reason or hope. Their confused existence riddled with consumerism and life in a cosmopolitan city is reflected on their sorrowful faces.
Shahab's pieces revealed a cubist approach. He dissected human figures and crows, fracturing them into geometrical entities, compressing his subjects into cube-like compositions to depict limitations and lack of freedom. For the artist, lines are of the utmost importance as his lines connect to form pathways, each linked to numerous other pathways, ultimately heading in a common direction.
Arif painted the beauty of architecture, contrasting its complexities with its simplicity, utilising minimum colours so that the attention of the viewer does not divert from his objective. His work allowed the viewer to bask in the serene and harmonious setting, while time, seemingly, stood still as kites flew through the Lahori sky among the old buildings that rise up from the earth.
Jamal's pieces were portraits - moving, lyrical and poised, almost life-like. Though the pieces were monochrome, the excessive blacks and greys were not depressing, but the soft lines and simple subjects created a mysterious and delightful blend of optimism and hope. One of his pieces where pigeons were painted with delicate feathers captured one's imagination as the lines and hues combined. This show would continue until May 17.
Text and photos by Ameer H Ahmad
KARACHI: A group exhibition titled 'Black & White' is being held at the JI Gallery of Fine Arts. It features the works of Abrar Ahmed, Farrukh Shahab, Jamal Ahmed (from Bangladesh) and AQ Arif.
Abrar is a self-taught artist whose eternal muse is women with sharp features and who are heavily adorned with jewellery. He used refined and strong lines to depict his women on the simple monochrome canvas. Utilising elaborate patterns, he attempts to show frustrated souls who, despite their prosperity and luxury, are mere dolls, living without reason or hope. Their confused existence riddled with consumerism and life in a cosmopolitan city is reflected on their sorrowful faces.
Shahab's pieces revealed a cubist approach. He dissected human figures and crows, fracturing them into geometrical entities, compressing his subjects into cube-like compositions to depict limitations and lack of freedom. For the artist, lines are of the utmost importance as his lines connect to form pathways, each linked to numerous other pathways, ultimately heading in a common direction.
Arif painted the beauty of architecture, contrasting its complexities with its simplicity, utilising minimum colours so that the attention of the viewer does not divert from his objective. His work allowed the viewer to bask in the serene and harmonious setting, while time, seemingly, stood still as kites flew through the Lahori sky among the old buildings that rise up from the earth.
Jamal's pieces were portraits - moving, lyrical and poised, almost life-like. Though the pieces were monochrome, the excessive blacks and greys were not depressing, but the soft lines and simple subjects created a mysterious and delightful blend of optimism and hope. One of his pieces where pigeons were painted with delicate feathers captured one's imagination as the lines and hues combined. This show would continue until May 17.
World Thalassaemia Day observed
Thalassaemia most common global genetic disorder: Munnoo Bhai
* Raja Riaz says govt will release funds for awareness campaigns and provision of better facilities to patients
* Thalassaemia Society of Pakistan president says every 7th citizen a Thalassaemia gene carrier
Staff Report
LAHORE: Thalassaemia is the most common genetic disorder in the world, with around 250 million people, 4.5 percent of the world population, affected by the fatal disease, senior journalist and Sundus Foundation Chairman Munnoo Bhai said on Saturday.
He said this during a seminar organised by the Sundus Foundation and the Pakistan Medical Society to mark World Thalassaemia Day. Munnoo Bhai said the disease was more common in people who were originals of the Thalassaemia belt, which are Mediterranean countries like Cyprus, Sardinia, Greece, the Middle East, Pakistan, India, Burma and Thailand.
Addressing the seminar, he said the purpose of the event was to provide an opportunity to doctors, patients and families suffering from the disease make a positive contact with others facing the same situation. He said Thalassaemia occurs when a child inherits two Thalassaemia genes, one from each parent. "Both parents must have Thalassaemia minor, when both partners are Thalassaemia carriers, there are 25 percent chances of having a Thalassaemia major child. If only one or none of the parents are a carrier, the child will not be a Thalassaemia major. Hence legislation for an obligatory pre-marital health test is required for the prevention of the disease," Munnoo Bhai added.
The chief guest on the occasion, Punjab Senior Minister Raja Riaz, said the government would release funds for the awareness campaign and to provide better treatment facilities to Thalassaemia patients. Pakistan Medical Society Chairman Dr Masood Akhtar Sheikh said lack of awareness and treatment facilities are major causes of the disease. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Egypt and India are among the few countries that have controlled the disease through legislation and public awareness, he said.
All unmarried persons and married couples planning to have a child should get themselves tested for Thalassaemia, Sheikh added. "Thalassaemia is 100 percent preventable," the chairman said, adding that pre-marital, pre-conceptual or early pregnancy screening followed by marriage counselling and antenatal diagnosis (if required) can easily prevent Thalassaemia. He further added that a Thalassaemia carrier could marry a person of his/her own choice, however, if a Thalassaemia carrier marries another carrier, then after the 8th to 10th week of pregnancy, the female should go for an antenatal diagnosis of Thalassaemia. If the foetus is a Thalassaemia major, the couple has the option to go for abortion. "The general public can play a major role in helping Thalassemics to live a normal life by voluntary blood donations once or twice a year and regular financial assistance to meet the expense of the costly treatment," Sheikh said, adding that Thalassaemia can be cured by bone marrow transplantation, a highly risky procedure, which costs around Rs 1 million. Awareness campaigns, and introducing free screening tests to prevent hereditary conditions is a good way of preventing Thalassaemia, he said.
Separately, the Thalassaemia Society of Pakistan organised an event at the Fatima Jinnah Medical College to show solidarity with Thalassaemia infected children. Speaking on the occasion, Thalassaemia Society of Pakistan President Dr Javeria Manan said every 7th citizen of Pakistan was a Thalassaemia gene carrier and the disease was on the rise due to lack of proper screening facilities in the country. She said intermarriages were also a major cause for the rapid increase in the fatal disease.
Thalassaemia Society of Pakistan General Secretary Dr Yasmeen Rashid said if infected children were given proper treatment and attention, they could perform equally in any field of life. She said the government would soon launch a Thalassaemia Prevention Programme across the province, in the first phase of which, prevention centres will be set up in selected hospitals in Multan, Bahawalpur, Rawalpindi and Lahore.
Thalassaemia most common global genetic disorder: Munnoo Bhai
* Raja Riaz says govt will release funds for awareness campaigns and provision of better facilities to patients
* Thalassaemia Society of Pakistan president says every 7th citizen a Thalassaemia gene carrier
Staff Report
LAHORE: Thalassaemia is the most common genetic disorder in the world, with around 250 million people, 4.5 percent of the world population, affected by the fatal disease, senior journalist and Sundus Foundation Chairman Munnoo Bhai said on Saturday.
He said this during a seminar organised by the Sundus Foundation and the Pakistan Medical Society to mark World Thalassaemia Day. Munnoo Bhai said the disease was more common in people who were originals of the Thalassaemia belt, which are Mediterranean countries like Cyprus, Sardinia, Greece, the Middle East, Pakistan, India, Burma and Thailand.
Addressing the seminar, he said the purpose of the event was to provide an opportunity to doctors, patients and families suffering from the disease make a positive contact with others facing the same situation. He said Thalassaemia occurs when a child inherits two Thalassaemia genes, one from each parent. "Both parents must have Thalassaemia minor, when both partners are Thalassaemia carriers, there are 25 percent chances of having a Thalassaemia major child. If only one or none of the parents are a carrier, the child will not be a Thalassaemia major. Hence legislation for an obligatory pre-marital health test is required for the prevention of the disease," Munnoo Bhai added.
The chief guest on the occasion, Punjab Senior Minister Raja Riaz, said the government would release funds for the awareness campaign and to provide better treatment facilities to Thalassaemia patients. Pakistan Medical Society Chairman Dr Masood Akhtar Sheikh said lack of awareness and treatment facilities are major causes of the disease. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Egypt and India are among the few countries that have controlled the disease through legislation and public awareness, he said.
All unmarried persons and married couples planning to have a child should get themselves tested for Thalassaemia, Sheikh added. "Thalassaemia is 100 percent preventable," the chairman said, adding that pre-marital, pre-conceptual or early pregnancy screening followed by marriage counselling and antenatal diagnosis (if required) can easily prevent Thalassaemia. He further added that a Thalassaemia carrier could marry a person of his/her own choice, however, if a Thalassaemia carrier marries another carrier, then after the 8th to 10th week of pregnancy, the female should go for an antenatal diagnosis of Thalassaemia. If the foetus is a Thalassaemia major, the couple has the option to go for abortion. "The general public can play a major role in helping Thalassemics to live a normal life by voluntary blood donations once or twice a year and regular financial assistance to meet the expense of the costly treatment," Sheikh said, adding that Thalassaemia can be cured by bone marrow transplantation, a highly risky procedure, which costs around Rs 1 million. Awareness campaigns, and introducing free screening tests to prevent hereditary conditions is a good way of preventing Thalassaemia, he said.
Separately, the Thalassaemia Society of Pakistan organised an event at the Fatima Jinnah Medical College to show solidarity with Thalassaemia infected children. Speaking on the occasion, Thalassaemia Society of Pakistan President Dr Javeria Manan said every 7th citizen of Pakistan was a Thalassaemia gene carrier and the disease was on the rise due to lack of proper screening facilities in the country. She said intermarriages were also a major cause for the rapid increase in the fatal disease.
Thalassaemia Society of Pakistan General Secretary Dr Yasmeen Rashid said if infected children were given proper treatment and attention, they could perform equally in any field of life. She said the government would soon launch a Thalassaemia Prevention Programme across the province, in the first phase of which, prevention centres will be set up in selected hospitals in Multan, Bahawalpur, Rawalpindi and Lahore.
Smokers' Corner: Honourable lies
"In the wake of Pakistan's more aggressive involvement in the US-run 'war on terror', the narrative began being tampered with by talk show 'guests' — mainly from the Jamat-i-Islami, certain retired generals who still seem nostalgically stuck in the 1980s' Afghan Jihad and the likes of Imran Khan."
After basking in the sudden spat of freedom provided during the early 2000s, private news channels emerged treading as close to 'objectivity' as possible — until they discovered the commercial wonders of what is called a political talk show. But it wasn't until 2005 (especially during the Lal Masjid episode) that many of such talk shows started mutating into the kind of anarchic ogres that they are today.
They took on the noble idea of missionary journalism, and instead of focussing it on objective middle ground, they began moving it way towards the populist right. And what's more, once their bosses decided that this new trajectory was actually generating better monetary results, the channels never looked back, sloganeering all the way to the bank.
Today the most popular talk show anchors across the privately owned TV channels have all emerged from this kind of scenario. Also part of this largely reactionary phenomenon is the transformation of certain non-media personalities into regular TV feasts.
These include men and women who have become mainstays on talk shows as 'guests': retired generals, small-time politicians and urban clerics whose job it is to maintain the duration of their individual 15 minutes of fame by adding rhetorical colour to the talk show hosts' flammable innuendos.
TV talk shows have thrived on building whole 'debates' on what almost entirely belongs to the demagogic conspiracy theory sphere. The topics of shows may have a ring of intellectualism but it does not take much time for the so-called 'debate' to spiral down into populist sloganeering, wild theory casting (by the 'guests') and self-righteous preaching (by the hosts).
The electronic media has never been in the kind of free-floating situation it is today. Though the Musharraf regime blundered by putting an old-fashioned authoritarian cap on it in 2007 — not for entirely wrong reasons, mind you — the current coalition government, led by Pakistan People's Party, is actually the one finding its democratic credentials taken hostage by a hostile electronic media. And, ironically, the media does so in the name of democracy.
So what is that narrative echoing in the corridors of the news channels that is making some of us suspect the ideological disposition of so many of the talk show hosts? One way to find out is to track this narrative's evolution, especially in regard to matters of terrorism.
Till 2003, when, comparatively speaking, suicide bombings were a rare occurrence, they were reported by the newly inaugurated private TV channels as bombings undertaken by Al Qaeda in reaction to the United States' post-9/11 action in Afghanistan. However, in the wake of Pakistan's more aggressive involvement in the US-run 'war on terror', the narrative began being tampered with by talk show 'guests' — mainly from the Jamat-i-Islami, certain retired generals who still seem nostalgically stuck in the 1980s' Afghan Jihad and the likes of Imran Khan.
As one started seeing talk show hosts and their guests now condemn Pakistan's involvement against what are clearly monsters, one was left baffled when reasons for terrorists' outrage were explained as having to do with 'tribal Pathans' great sense of honour and the tradition of revenge. I wonder how much of the manic and rabid reactionary sparks that one saw flying around TV studios at the time of, say, the Lal Masjid episode, contributed to the construction of minds seeking violent revenge in the shape of suicide bombings against the ordinary citizens of Pakistan.
The entirely lopsided and irresponsible coverage of the Lal Masjid event was clearly the electronic media's darkest hour. Nonetheless, with the rise in terrorist attacks on civilians, the 'justified revenge' narrative forwarded by the likes of Imran Khan and Qazi Hussain Ahmad began weakening, until the sudden appearance of the likes of Zaid Hamid and others of his varying ilk.
Consequently conspiratorial conjectures about Mossad/ RAW/ CIA involvement, or theories that were once restricted to obscure crackpot websites suddenly exploded on the mainstream media scene. Some suggest this was done to justify the Pakistan Army's operation in the north-west, making it look like a fight against infidels (as opposed to it being a civil war against monsters created and ignorantly tolerated by the state).
So the following has become the new narrative: 'Those conducting suicide attacks against ordinary Pakistanis cannot be Muslims. They have to be infidel foreigners, most probably funded by enemy governments. These agencies want to take over Pakistan's nuclear assets and control the rise of Islam.'
Much psychosomatic gibberish like this emerges from this highly unsubstantiated narrative peddled everyday on talk shows. And if this is the only answer that these 'experts' have for the besieged people of Pakistan, then, I'm afraid, we truly have become a wretched nation that has decided to hold on to half-truths, myths, and fantastical stories as a means to safeguard our 'honour,' instead of depending more on reason.
But, alas, there is no bigger honour than saying and respecting the truth, no matter how disturbing it might be.
DaRk WaVe
Regular Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2009
- Messages
- 809
- Likes
- 97
& some people are so ignorant that they are unable to get simple jokes lol
even if it is on Prithvi Raj, why are you people obsessed with names, you people must give a damn to it
Last edited:
DaRk WaVe
Regular Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2009
- Messages
- 809
- Likes
- 97
why? your INSAS 5,56mm bullets have insurgent recognition sensors huh
I am sorry but NYT is disagreeing with you
& the point still is even the names hurt ya people proving the memories are still haunting you
so killing of around 1000 civilians was akin to genocide, where was the definition of genocide at that time when you people went on 25 pages to prove the rant that misguided strikes are equivalent to genocide, at least you proved that BS wrong yourself
what issue, you people are extracting pleasure as usual...
Last edited:
DaRk WaVe
Regular Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2009
- Messages
- 809
- Likes
- 97
Ajtr is back with his usual copy paste tactic, huh
BTW when i said 'kasab is history' i meant that he will be executed now, why keep dragging him, you people yet to prove the full involvement of Hafiz Saeed & ISI plus why you people ignore the Indian connection of 26/11 why is no one ready to talk about it?
despite of been so called 'root cause of terror', why ain't the international community getting Pakistan declared a 'terrorist state', is Pakistan so good at avoiding & manipulating things, I dont think so...
BTW when i said 'kasab is history' i meant that he will be executed now, why keep dragging him, you people yet to prove the full involvement of Hafiz Saeed & ISI plus why you people ignore the Indian connection of 26/11 why is no one ready to talk about it?
despite of been so called 'root cause of terror', why ain't the international community getting Pakistan declared a 'terrorist state', is Pakistan so good at avoiding & manipulating things, I dont think so...
Last edited:
You are missing the simple point! A 5.56 will be used for the battles with the terrorists not for indiscriminately shelling or bombing an entire region. So any innocent casualties will be lower.
IA doesn't use these big weapons of war within the country, PA does.
LOL. That is the imagination of the identity crisis stricken Pakistani converts. The names are just worthy of contempt for us. They were another set of filthy criminals in a long line in world's history. No one cares, except for being ready for the next set from the same badlands.
they show the state of a society that considers such people heroes. Then you wonder why Pakistan produces the bulk of the world's terrorists!
You are not making sense. Try again.
That the PA surrendered en masse as lambs to a few Taliban terrorist.
DaRk WaVe
Regular Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2009
- Messages
- 809
- Likes
- 97
seems the only word you learnt in English classes was Pakistani Delusion & you keep repeating it as if Indians are free of lies, they were all thrown out of the skies on the earth & everything Indian is a revelation & a divine truth, why are in that delusion?I rest my case, this is exactly what I have been trying to prove, pakistanis will never accept fallacies and their Failed State Behavior! Thanks for fortifying what I have mentioned in my earlier posts, repeated dementia won't make delusion a Truth!
This is pakistan for us, they are Wolves in sheep's skin! We have to be very careful in dealing with these fanatic jingoists, it does not matter they are islamists or not, what matters is that they have an inherent pathological hate mongerering, everything backed by delusional conspiracy theories and fake machismo.
Peace talks arel to make pakistan happy for US.
I stand by my opinion of disintegration of pakistan again, this time in many pieces, which is achievable easily by Funding BLA, TTP, Sipah-e-Sahaba, Jundullah, TNSM etc etc
End of Pakjabi genocide, beggary and jingoism will have ever lasting Peace on Planet Earth.
if Pakistan is such a terror monger get it declared a terrorist state, becuase right now Indians are only acting as 'complaining looser' with nothing effective & practical in their laps
BTW do you people really care about happiness of USA, strange isn't it?
enen copy paste speaks volumes most of the times in terms of accumulated data not like throwing some wild guesses and tantrums here and there as was in case of indus water stealing accusation.remember i had to open full new thread on thats subject just for your simple one line accusation.well some more of it for you if you care to ponder over.
On the Frontier of Apocalypse by Christopher Hitchens
PESHAWAR, NORTH-WEST FRONTIER PROVINCE, OCTOBER 20, 2001. I used to love the city of Peshawar, which lies near the Pakistani-Afghan border and commands the superb approaches to the Khyber Pass. Its name derives from the Sanskrit for "city of flowers," and, combined with its frontiertown status, this conveys a sense of openness and spaciousness: a vast crossroads under a great vault of sky. But this trip was different. In the first few weeks of the "coalition war"-just as it was becoming plain that the war would not be brief-Peshawar felt enclosed, brooding, almost hermetic. It was partly because the frontier was shut to all but a few smugglers and nomads and Taliban infiltrators. It was also because the city was choked with people: exiles and refugees whose camps ringed the city. These huddled masses cook with wood-further denuding Pakistan's already poorly husbanded forestry-and at evening the normally pristine air was heavy with acrid smoke, catching at the tear ducts and the back of the throat. To this element of stifling atmosphere was added another: the air of menace that now accompanies the close of evening prayers. All male crowds, with no outlet for their emotions after listening to inflammatory sermons from the mullahs or the Jamaat-Ulema-i-Islami Party demagogues, spilled out of the mosques and displayed what I can only call an attitude. (In a town once famed for its latitude and tolerance, prudent women are wearing the hideous and enveloping burka in the Afghan neighborhoods.) I chose this devotional moment, one choking evening at dusk, to get out of my car in an Afghan bazaar and approach a vendor of Osama bin Laden T-shirts. I wanted half a dozen for friends, and though I normally will pay rather than haggle, I was not going to part with the 200 rupees that the startled tradesman demanded for each item. Fifty was my limit, and I was prepared to be British about it.
I have never been so swiftly and completely surrounded. It was as if, in this formerly cosmopolitan city, they had never seen a foreigner before. "Why you want these?" Faces right in mine, fingers and hands prodding and pushing me. "You like Osama?" "Of course. He is my brother." "He is your brother?" "All men are my brothers." Much jeering and sneering, and then: "Why you not scared? Why you show money here?" "Why should I be scared? Muslims do not steal from guests." I experienced a peripheral vision of writhing, baffled beards and mustaches. As a rule, I resent reading feverish journalistic accounts of swarthy locations; I avoid usin2 nonhuman terms such as "teeming" or "seething," and I have often been received with exquisite hospitality in the poorest parts of the Islamic world, but this was different. As elsewhere in Pakistan, there was a miasma of self-pity mingled with self-righteousness, It takes hysterical and contradictory forms: thus one is instructed loudly that "evervbody knows" the Jews blew up the Worfd Trade Center-even though bin Laden is praised in the very same heated breath for doing it himself. The mullahs tell people that the Tahban are correct to ban all pictures and photographs and television and film, because the representation of the human form is profane. But the T-shirts displaying bin Ladeins oddly epicene features are on sale right outside the mosque ... In the English-language papers you can read well-written denunciations of this foul and vicious mood, in articles composed by brave Pakistani dissidents and secularists. But the press reaches only a fraction of the population of 145 million, 57 percent of whom are illiterate.
It was a few miles from here, at the border post in Torkham, at the head of the Khyber Pass, that my old friend Ahmed Rashid, Pakistan's best and bravest reporter, actually witnessed the birth moment of our current world crisis. He had just been covering the Soviet, withdrawal from Afghanistan in April 1989 and was lying on a patch of grass waiting for the border post to open when suddenly, along the road behind me, a truck full of Mujaheddin roared up and stopped. But those on board were not Afghans.... The group was made up of Filipino Moros, Uzbeks from Soviet Central Asia, Arabs from Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Uighurs from Yinjiang in China.... Under training at a camp near the border they were going on weekend leave to Peshawar.... They had come to fight the jihad with the Mujaheddin and to train in weapons, bomb-making and military tactics so they could take the jihad back home.
That evening, Ahmed met Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, then head of Pakistan's now notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and a dedicated Islamic ideologue. "I asked him if he was not playing with fire by inviting Muslim radicals from Islamic countries, who were ostensibly allies of Pakistan. Would these radicals not create dissension in their own countries, endangering Pakistaws foreign policy?" Gul's reply is worth giving: "We are fighting a jihad and this is the first Islamic international brigade in the modem era. The communists have their international brigades, the West has NATO, why caet the Muslims unite and form a common front?"
I disagree slightly with Ahmed's emphasis; it would be more accurate to say "Muslim reactionaries" than "radicals." (The historic essence of Fascism is the most retrograde people using the most revolutionary rhetoric.) And I wish that those in the West who harbor softhearted illusions about Muslim grievances could see and hear General Gul (rhymes with "ghoul"). He is not an oppressed peasant. He is Pakistans Pinochet: a militaristic and privileged thug, fattened for many years on American subsidies. He was much in evidence around Islamabad during my recent stay, calling for an end to the American intervention in Afghanistan. Too many people, he said, had already died. This must have been the first time in his career that he had expressed the smallest concern about civilian casualties.
But then, there is a certain hypocrisy inscribed in the very origins and nature of "Pakistan".. The name is no more than an acronym, confected in the 1930s at Cambridge University by a NW Muslim propagandist named Chaudhri Rahmat Ali. It stands for Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, and Indus-Sind, plus the suffix "-stan," meaning "land." In the Urdu tongue, the resulting word means "Land of the Pure." The country is a cobbling together of regional, religious, and ethnic nationalisms, and its founding, in 1947, resulted in Pakistan's becoming, along with Israel, one of the two "faith-based" states to emerge from the partitionist policy of a dying British colonialism. You may notice that there is no b in the acronym, even though for the first two decades of its existence Pa kistan forcibly enclosed East Bengal (now Bangladesh) and still includes the restive and reluctant province of Baluchistan. The P comes first because Pakistan is still the property of the Punjabi military and feudal elite, but the thing might as easily be rendered as "Akpistan" or "Kapistan," depending on whether the battle to take over Afghanistan or Kashmir is to the fore.
Unlike India, which fought tenaciously for independence for many decades (until 1947), Pakistan cannot claim any glorious history of struggle as its birthright. It is the product -of a carve-up, against the wishes of a majority of the subcontinent's population. The carve-up was a hasty improvised.
The carve-up was a hasty improvisation, designed to cover the retreat of the exhausted British, and achieved largely behind closed doors between the last viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the ambitious exclusivist leader of the subcontinent's Muslim minority. Jinnah is still revered, Eastern European-style, as the great teacher and leader and unquestionable founder of the state. Fifty-four years later, there are almost as many Muslims in India as in Pakistan; the battle over the status of Kashmir is one of the deadliest and most volatile on the planet, and the resulting arms race,which now includes nuclear weaponry, consumes the budgets of two poverty-racked countries. Meanwhile, Pakistan is in a state of perpetual strife among its different regions and their rival Sunni and Shiite Islamic populations, while the 1971 Bangladesh war-in which a Muslim army put a Muslim population to the sword-is still memorable as one of the great horrors of the post 1945 period. Far from being a "Land of the Pure," Pakistan is one of the clearest demonstrations of the futility of defining a nation by religion, and one of the textbook failures of a state and a society. But the fanatics by definition do not learn from their mistakes. (Santayana was correct in describing a fanatic as one who re-doubles his efforts when he has lost sight of his aims.) The battle is now on to mutate Pakistan one stage further, and to set up a totally Muslim state where once there was just a state for Muslims. It is this lethal tussle between Muslims-to impose Koranic, or Shari'a, law by force across the Islamic world-that has already claimed terrible casualties in two major American cities.
The Pakistani capital, Islamabad, is an architectural expression of the state's artificiality. Not even built until after 1947, it is an Asian Brasilia, with wide and impersonal boulevards connecting great palaces of bureaucracy. Its street names are ciphers of numbers and letters. It is also very handy to Rawalpindi, the headquarters garrison town of the Pakistani armed forces. Anyone wanting to mount a coup has only to drive his tanks a few blocks. Pakistan has been a fiefdom of the military for most of its short existence: as was once said of Prussia, it is not a country that has an army but an army that has a country. (On roadsides and at traffic circles, the typical monuments are tanks or fighter planes set in concrete, or replicas of the mountain under which Pakistan's first nuclear device was detonated.) In Rawalpindi itself, the genial regimental atmosphere of the British dayssymbolized by the aptly named Flashmans Hotel-is now somewhat overlaid by the signs of influence from West Point and Langley. The ISI, originally set up in 1948 by a British officer named Major General Cawthorne, who "stayed on" after partition, has more recently become an expensively Americanized apparatus. But the big subject of whispered conversation during my stay was this: Did the United States still call the shots? Who was the client and who was the puppet? What if the shadowy "enemy we can't see" is made up partly of our supposed friends?
The atmosphere of intrigue and bad faith, in the hotel lobbies of Islamabad and in the discreet and luxurious villas of the city's fat cats, was even more nauseating and obfuscating than the hot fumes of Peshawar. An average day in this sterile, furtive town would consist of a morning spent in the Marriott Hotel's corridors (and in its "deniable" rip-off basement bar), followed by a briefing at the Foreign Ministry, the regular farce of the press conference at the Taliban embassy, and then a soiree at some private palazzo (where at least the scotch was free, and imported, rather than emitted from some diesel-engine off-the-record distillery in Quetta. One morning I encountered not just one but two representatives of the muchballyhooed King of Afghanistan, the octogenarian potentate who has not set foot in his country for 29 years and who doesn't really speak its main language. (He pronounces in a Persian dialect favored by the elite.) One of these monarchical envoys, Rahim Sherzoy, gave me a business card inscribed with an address in Fremont, California. His cohort, the oft televised and wordlessly suave Hedayat Amin-Arsala, looked like Sidney Greenstreet with a goatee and exuded all the charm of pre-war Monte Carlo. Bringing the fissile elements of Afghan tribalism together is at the best of times like herding cats (and feral cats too, if I may say so without disrespect). The idea of the tribes rallying to this brace of eight-piece suits seemed like a pipe dream, and a dream from one of those aromatic pipes in Peshawar at that. Serious forces, such as the heroines of FAWA (the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, which actually defies the Taliban in Kabul and Kandahar), are not encouraged to join the discussion, because the Pakistani Army really, really doesn't like them.
From this Casablanca moment I proceed to the torpid, scrofulous building that still housed the Taliban embassy. Not wishing to be too polite to the bored and turbaned character who oversaw visa requests, I made myself difficult over the application form. Iyt says here , after the space for my name, 'Son of' He confirmed that this was so. "What if I was a daughter? Is there another form for women?" I wish I had a Polaroid of the spite and contempt on his face at hearing this question (to which the answer was "No"). At a later Taliban embassy press conference, their ambassador, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, was at pains to ridicule Secretary of State Colin Powell's mention of "broad-based" and "moderate" Taliban elements. There were, said this sneering envoy, no broad-based people in his party's ranks. 1, for one, was ready to believe him. The Taliban were asking for large cash bribes to take reporters on shepherded tours across to Kandahar, and I didn't feel like paying up that day. So it was off to the Foreign Ministry briefing, given by a sharkskin smoothy named Riaz Mohammad Khan, who, I must say, had better English than his daily-briefing counterparts in Washington. I had a rude question for him too. That morning's Dawn newspaper had carried a small item about wounded Taliban fighters' being brought across the Pakistani frontier for medical treatment a-nd then returned fit for duty. Was this the act of an ally, and if they could cross, why could not journalists cross as well, rather than have to depend on the Taliban's purchased hospitality? Mr. Khan would not be drawn out on part two of my question, but he replied to the first part, saying that Pakistan had always recognized whatever government was in power in Kabul, even the one installed by the Red Army. Yes, but Pakistan hadn't invited wounded Russian soldiers for medical treatment and then sent them tenderly back to the front line ... Later that week, Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of the Taliban's military commandersappeared in Islamabad honored and unmolested, and announced matter-of-factly that his "guest" Osama bin Laden was still "living in complete safety." He met with high Pakistani officials and repeated his assertion, and then returned home contentedly. If the United States Embassy felt impotent while watching this insufferable display, it was at pains to conceal the fact. In the evening, at a sumptuous dinner in the home of a local tycoon, I met the even smoother if not ultimately smooth Shaukat Aziz, who is Pakistan's finance minister and a longtime grandfromage at Citibank. He was newly returned from Washington, where it did not hurt that as a friend of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's he could effectively negotiate Pakistan's enormous foreign debt out of existence. Mr. Aziz is used to this kind of thing-he was on hand for former prime minister Benazir Bhutto at a time when her husband was convicted of stuffing Swiss banks with chunks of the Pakistani treasury-but, even so, he must have felt on this occasion that all his birthdays had come at once. In the 1980s, Pakistan got a blank check from the U.S. to combat the Russians, and spent much of the check in building up the Taliban. Now it is getting another check and a brand-new interest-free mortgage in order to pretend that the Taliban are its enemy. It just doesn't get any better than this.
I think the roots of the all-pervasive anti-Americanism spring exactly from this mendicant's-begging-bowl arrangement. Pakistanis know that they are bought and paid for, and so the way to assert.pride is to spit in the face of those who have owned and used them. (Something of the same pathology applies in the case of our former Afghan mercenaries.) Thus to selfrighteousness and self-pity is added the third charm of self-hatred. An especially toxic example of this degraded relationship was the subtext of conversation at the very ·same dinner. For years during the Cold War, the United States had pretended in public that Pakistan had not manufactured its own nuclear weapons. This had permitted a lavish military-aid budget to continue to be approved by Congress. But now we know all about the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. We just don't quite know who controls it. What if the next short march from Rawalpindi to Islamabad were to bring the missiles and the warheads into the itchy hands of General Gul? Nobody at the table was sure that the president, General Pervez Musharraf, had insurance he trusted against this contingency. And, indeed, a few days later I learned that three of Pakistan's top nuclear scientists had been discovered to have quite close connections with the Taliban. The sinister trio-Sultan Bashi-ruddin Mahmood, Mirza Yusuf Baig, and Chaudhry Abdul Majid-were taken in for "questioning." I would dearly like to know what the questions-and the answers-were. This may be the great unintended consequence of Osama bin Laden's world shaking fanaticism. His intense need to something immediate and apocalyptic has quite possibly saved us, at least for now, from the takeover of Pakistan by the cadres of the ISI and its cloneswhich are the Taliban, the Pakistani religious parties, and al-Qaeda. Until a few months ago, these factions stood a sporting chance of winning power, with Musharraf as their front man. But he turned out to be so much of a front man that he is now willing to be stroked and "turned, and to act as a front man for Washington instead. "He's such a simple guy," it we said by the Pakistani elitists at this dinner. "He likes to drink, and he has an eye for the wives of brother officers. The hard-liners thought he was a pliable puppet, and they were right; he's anybody's pliable puppet."
The danger of an al- Qaeda nuke has passed, for now. But if you want to write your congressman about anything, write him and ask what's being done to neutralize that arsenal for good.
Tiring of the provincial and surreptitious mood in the capital, and having already exposed myself to the Afghan, or "Akpistan," frontier, I decided to try to see "Kapistan' as well. You need military permission to visit the Pakistani-held part of Kashmir, and the army eventually agreed to take me to what is the near-certain flash point of a coming war that could well become an Asian Armageddon. (In one of his most recent broadcasts, bin Ladens noisy deputy Sulaiman Abu Ghaith put Kashmir in the top four a]-Qaeda causes, right after Afghanistan, Palestine, and the U.S. presence in the Arabian peninsula. They want a holy war against "the Hindus" as well as the Christians, and the Jews, and the secularists. This is one of the many ways that the gang re-pays years of Pakistani support and protection,)
Look at any atlas and you can see that Kashmir is the keystone in the arch of Indo-Pakistani confrontation. Its frontier is long and arduous, and extends allthe way through the Himalayas, touching Afghanistan and nearly Tajikistan before reaching China. A good stretch of this frontier is known as "the Line of Control" and is a heavily armed militai@y demarcation, drawn at the cease-fire point of the last Indo-Pakistani war. In 1990 there was almost another war, when Pakistan became convinced of an impending attack and readied a nuclear strike to offset New Delhi's vast superiority in men and armor. Officials in Washington who were involved in the crisis still turn pale when they recall that the preemptive strike was aborted with frighteningly little time on the clock. Things have, you will be relieved to know, gotten much, much worse since then. For one thing, the Kashmiri militants who contest Indias rule over a Muslim-majority province have abandoned nationalist rhetoric and tactics and opted instead for jihad. A few days before I arrived-on October 1, to be precise-they had blown up the Kashmiri State Assembly in Srinagar, the capital city of Indian Kashmir, killing almost 40 people in a suicide car-bomb attack. Discovering alQaeda supporters among the plotters, the Indians had responded by shelling Islamist camps across the Line of Control, and so the Pakistani Army was eager to show me the consequences of Indian "aggression."
Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, is a hill town of surpassing beauty and one of the settings for Paul Scott's marvelous "Raj Quartet." Here one finds that the same Raj still breathes, because the only subject of conversation is the still-unfinished business of the partition of 1947. It isn't resolved yet! It's gone nuclear instead. I cursed the ghost of Lord Mountbatten once again as I sat and interviewed Sardar Sikander Hayat Khan, the Buddha-bellied and white-mustachioed old lion who is prime minister of the Pakistanirun statelet. He, like his father before him, has been at it ever since the waning days of the Empire. The issue was stale when the United Nations was founded. Almost in a trance of repetition, he recited the litany of ancient woes, and pretended not to speak proper English only when he was asked a pointed question. The question he wouldn't answer was whether he knew how the bin Laden forces managed to make their way across the border to India.
This very same topic struck the Pakistani military commander in the sector as a mystery of Elmore Leonard or Agatha Christie proportions. How do these blighters do it? The Pakistani Army has stern and consistent control over the whole area and doesn't allow tourists or joumalists to make unauthorized visits. Martial law is effectively in force. Carrying weapons is forbidden. The terrain is very mountainous and thickly forested and seamed with gullees and ravines. In fact ... ah, yes, that must be it. These unauthorized elements are obviously dragging their rocket launchers and heavy weapons across unmonitored bits of the border at night. That's if they are doing it at all, which is not officially admitted. A problem, sit, indeed. A real enigma. So I am assured, in British-military English, by Brigadier General Muhammad Yaqub, commander of "the Mujahid Battalion," also known as "the Shaheen," or falcons, in the Chakoti sector of the front. He and his men have taken me by jeep as far as a jeep wifl go, and then on foot through some trenches and dugouts that remind me of the Somme, to a position where I can wave at the Indian soldiers who are dug in hard behind embrasures and entrenchments on the opposite hill. Marks of shellfire on the walls of Chakoti tell their own story.
Tea and biscuits are served and I am given a highly tendentious briefing. "Look, in 1970 the Indians helped the Bangladeshis to rebel against Pakistan," Yaqub says. "So we would be morally justified in helping the Kashmiris to revolt against India." Well, are you doing so? "Not exactly; their freedom struggle is internally generated." But no fewer than 64 medals were awarded to Pakistani soldiers after they were found in highly suspicious company on the other side of the Line of Control in May 1999, just after a summit meeting had taken place between India and Pakistan. To this the brigadier prefers to give no reply. And what about bin Laden's infiltrators, who throw acid in the faces of unveiled Kashmiri women and mount suicide attacks in Srinagar? "It is India's responsibility to stop them crossing the frontier, if indeed they do cross it," says Yaqub. (Back in Islamabad, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Riaz Mohammad Khan, had managed to insinuate that the Indians were actually behind the October I bombings in Srinagar, in an effort to win the sympathy of Colin Powell for their cause.) It's true that India has long been a backer of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, and it's also the case that Indian policy in Kashmir is semi-colonial, but once again it is Pakistani hypocrisy that is truly breathcatching.
From "Akpistan" to "Kapistan": the Pakistanis tried to make Afghanistan into a province or a colony so they could have "strategic depth," as they called it, for the real confrontation in Kashmir. The result is the near Talibanization of Pakistan and the spillover of the fundamentalists into Kashmir itself. Standing on this remote and lovely hilltop I feel certain that I am getting a curtain-raiser preview of the terrain on which the world's first nuclear exchange will inevitably occur. Every other British-sponsored divide-and-quit partition has led either to another partition or to another war, or both. This will be both, and on a scale of grand opera. It's not a cheerful thought to be taking back to Islamabad. But Islamabad is not a cheerful place to which to return. There was a warning of all this, as far back as 1983, when Salman Rushdie published the best-ever novel about Pakistan, Shame. Many readers remember the dense paragraph in which he tried to delineate a wounded civilization, striving to write about the bandits on the trunk roads who are condemned for doing, as private enterprise, what the government does as public policy; or about genocide in Baluchistan; or about the recent preferential awards of State scholarships, to pay for postgraduate studies abroad, to members of the fanatical. Jamaat party; or about the attempt to declare the sari an obscene garment; or about the extra hangings-the first for twenty years-that were ordered purely to legitimize the execution of Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto or about why Bhutto's hangman has vanished into thin air, just like the many street urchins who are being stolen every day in daylight; or about anti-Semitism, an interesting phenomenon, under whose influence people who have never met a Jew vilify all Jews for the sake of maintaining solidarity with the Arab states which offer Pakistan workers, these days, employment and much-needed foreign exchange; or about smuggling, the boom in heroin exports, military dictators, venal civilians, corrupt civil servants, bought judges ...
In 1989 it was the Pakistani fundamentalist fringe which first shed blood in the streets over the publication of The Satanic Verses, igniting a chain of violence that transmitted the neurotic energy of Muslim fundamentalism from Eastern territories to Western capitals. That, I felt at the time, was also a warning. Now there is another Pakistani Islamist party, even more extreme than its predecessor. There is also the Sepahi-Sahaba militia ("Soldiers of the Companions of the Prophet"), a Sunni Muslim Kalashnikov gang that does battle with its Shiite rival, the Sepah-i-Mohammad ("Soldiers of Mohammad"). As ever with the faithful-rather like the Christians in Northern Ireland-just come see how the believers love one another. One of these goon squads then turned the Kalashnikovs on Pakistan's Christian minority, drowning a whole congregation in blood on October 28. So it goes. An 800-page biography of Pakistan's founder, the aforementioned Mohammed Ali Jinnah, is too careful to make any mention of the way he always spoke with his unveiled sister at mass meetings, or of the fact that his second wife was a non-Muslim. A movie producer who tried to make a feature film stressing the same facts was accused of having Salman Rushdie as his scriptwriter, and was subjected to chilling threats. From a state merely for Muslims to a full-on theocratic state is a bigger change than most Westerners can yet appreciate.
As I was making ready to leave Peshawar, I went along the old Jamrud Road and paid to unlock its Christian cemetery, which is where the dead of British times are interred behind a brick wall and under a canopy of shade trees. The place is much dilapidated, but one can still see the regimental symbols and the sad old grave markers from lost campaigns. I truly wanted to be the first writer to visit Peshawar and not quote Rudyard Kipling, but as I walked alone through the marble memorals I remembered some long-forgotten lines and couldn't help myself: And the end of the fight is a tombstone 'white with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East." And of course from that it's only a step to the imperishable verses of Kipting's "Arithmetic on the Frontier." The gates of memory swung open fully: my father's father had been a soldier in pre-partition India. A scrimmage in a Border Station Canter down some dark defile Two thousand pounds of education Drops to a ten-rupee jezail
With its unconsoling conclusion, about the military proportions between locals and intruders: Strike hard who cares-shoot straight who can- The odds are on the cheaper man. All week, within a few miles of where I was standing, American warplanes had been wheeling and diving over Afghani stan in an effort to disprove that very arithmetic. The equivalents of the old single-shot jezail rifles were powerless against the swift, silvery F-16s. The cheaper men could make no impression on the lancing, laserguided missiles and bombs. And two of the pflots, I learned from a man who had just come to Islamabad from the deck of the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, were females. I felt a momentary need to go to the Taliban embassy and say, "It's your worst nightmare, you *******s. She's ****ed, she's packing, and she's headed for you." But the United States government, in exaggerated deference to its Islamic "allies" in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, took its time making public boasts about its women fliers. Whereas among the faded British graves there were many affecting headstones recording the deaths of wives and children. The British may have used some Sikhs and other local troops, but they came to stay, and they did a lot of their own fighting and dyiong. What is to become of an empire that relies on relies on mercenaries to take its risks on the ground ?
Still more sobering was the thought: What if some of those hirelings secretly want you to lose? In every silky statement from General Musharraf about the need for a short-in other words: limited-war and in every nuance of the Pakistani official posture, I was sure I detected the local version of Schadenfreude. An American humiliation would preserve the assets built up by General Gul, and keep the pressure off Kashmir. It would also mean further subsidies and debt forgiveness, because an "ally" cannot be abandoned after so many presidential pledges have been made. The tail could wag the dog indefinitely. But the only people I met who really hoped for an American success against the taliban were local secular leftists who had relatives in Britain or America.
As I arrived at Islamabad airport to take my leave, a huge bomb had just on the been found and detonated in the parking lot. Who knows who put it there, or why? On Pakistan International Airlines it is still permitted to smoke, but not to order a drink. And there are now obligatory muslim prayers played on takeoff. So I may have been in a sour mood is I quit the - country. An artificial nation, born out of manipulation and middleman tactics, had. managed to switch sides twice, first to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and then with undignified haste to the Anglo-American. coalition. In both cases, its oligarchy had - used and misused the money of the too trusting American taxpayer.
At every stage of the counterattack against the Taliban,. General Musharraf had intensified his unhelpful demands: dont fight during Ramadan, don't let the Northerners take Kabul ... Oh, and give us some costly hardware after all we've done for you. (Nobody I spoke to was in any doubt that it was "rogue" Pakistani intelligence agents who had tipped off the Taliban to capture and murder the legendary Abdul Haq, as he slipped across the Afghan border to try and coordinate the resistance.) Meanwhile, the failing Pakistani state had been revived to prosecute another war in Kashmir. Unfortunately, this could not be described as an untended consequence of the emancipation of Afghanistan. I slumped in my airline seat, uttered a secular prayer for the victory of the coalition, and realized that we'd all be back here again before long. Christopher Hitchens
DaRk WaVe
Regular Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2009
- Messages
- 809
- Likes
- 97
the usual rant 'use of heavy weapons' has been explained countless times by me
the NYT is saying you people kill them all by labeling them insurgents & when bodies are exhumed they turn out to be innocents, read it again please
ney no imagination, the name thingy was brought in by you not me, turn the pages & why are you all worked up with the word 'converts', what you all think about the 200 million converts in your country
yet Pakistan is never declared a terrorist state, tsk tsk
of course, now thats going to happen, clapping please...
ohh no one's clapping let me clap alone
sayareakd
Mod
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2009
- Messages
- 17,734
- Likes
- 18,952
Prithavi missile is named after earth, it is pakistani like you who want to imagine that it is named after Prithvi Raj, your post prove this.
DaRk WaVe
Regular Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2009
- Messages
- 809
- Likes
- 97
Last edited:
you tell me is there is any need for international community to declare pakistan terrorist state when it can invade pakistan with complaint pak govt.declaration of terrorist sate was done in case of iraq and the ir afghanistan coz regime is not so compliant so those were over thrown by invaison.Does pak deserve any invasion when its alway willing to invade itself.And declaration is just play of words with every other day some or the other country leader declare pakistan as international migraine or the terror capital or the terror tourist place and wats not.here is something more to ponder about.....
Ethnic Cleansing in Pakistan during Partition: A Preliminary Statistical Analysis
Sridhar N.
Introduction
The partition of India into the two countries of India and Pakistan in 1947 is a topic that has been much studied and written about.[1] In particular, there have been a number of scholarly studies, books and films on the human tragedy that accompanied partition. A very large number of people lost their lives in the orchestrated violence that took place for sustained periods of times and an even larger number of people were uprooted from their ancestral homelands and forced to migrate to new and unfamiliar places. Researchers, authors and filmmakers have explored a variety of issues related to this tragic period of our history.
Of particular interest to us in this article is the issue of ethnic cleansing of minorities – specifically the Hindu and Sikh communities – in the newly formed country of Pakistan. From the very beginning of the movement to create Pakistan, the proponents of this movement espoused a blatantly communalist ideology – the two nation theory. The ethnic cleansing of the minorities with active participation of the rulers of the new state was but a logical extension of the theory that said that Hindus and Muslims had irreconcilable differences and could not live together.
The topic of ethnic cleansing in Pakistan has received a lot of attention over the years.[2] Yet, there seems to be a surprising paucity of hard data on the extent of this ethnic cleansing except in the academic literature.[3] There seems to be a wide diversity of numbers on how many people were killed or forced to migrate from their homelands.[4] [5] Many authors state that approximately 0.5-2 million people were killed and 10-17 million forced to migrate to either India or Pakistan.[6] However, authors rarely give a breakup of these numbers by country. Further, blame for ethnic cleansing is often equally assigned to both countries.[7] Often, no sources are quoted to substantiate these claims.
The need for this article flows from this paucity of data on the partition of India and particularly in non-academic articles easily accessible on the internet. The objectives of this analysis would be modest but it would hopefully serve as a source of credible data on the topic. The specific questions that this statistical analysis would attempt to answer are:
What was the extent of ethnic cleansing of minorities in Pakistan
What does this mean in relative terms (i.e. proportions of populations) and in absolute terms (i.e. the actual number of people)
Were there regional differences in the extent of ethnic cleansing of minorities in Pakistan?
How did the situation in this respect compare with that in India?
The main source of data for conducting this analysis would be the census reports of undivided India in 1941 and the data from the censuses of India and Pakistan in 1951. The reason for using these data is that these are credible and cannot be accused of bias.
Data Description
The data used in this analysis is the set of population counts for the different communities in the two countries – India and Pakistan - in the years 1941 and 1951. These numbers were obtained from the census report of undivided India in 1941 and the two censuses of India and Pakistan in 1951. The census reports themselves are fairly easy to obtain, but the data involves a complication. The 1941 census data is available only for the undivided provinces of Punjab, Bengal and Assam and not for the units that became a part of India and Pakistan (the other provinces did not pose a problem since entire provinces went to one or the other country). Thus, district-level and even tehsil-level data would have to be obtained and tabulated to separate the 1941 data for these provinces for the two parts that respectively went to India and Pakistan. Fortunately, the Census of Pakistan 1951 has already done this tabulation for the 1941 census data for the different religious communities in territories comprising Pakistan then. The corresponding numbers for India are then just the difference of the respective numbers for undivided India and Pakistan.
The 1951 census in India as well as Pakistan were conducted in the last three weeks of February of 1951. This, combined with the fact that the 1941 census for undivided India took place at the same time in the territories that were to later comprise India and Pakistan, allows us the opportunity for comparisons without the need for statistical adjustments. Thus, these data provide us a sound basis for preliminary analysis.
The raw census data used in this study are given in Appendix I.
Proportions of Minorities
In order to investigate whether there was ethnic cleansing at all in Pakistan or not, it would be useful to compare the proportions of minorities in the territories that comprised Pakistan in the years 1941 and 1951. A drastic reduction in the proportions of minorities gives prima facie evidence that there was ethnic cleansing. It would not be conclusive and other pieces of evidence would be required to show that it was an organized campaign to drive out the minorities from the country. However, it would be a good starting point.
Figures 1 and 2 show the relative proportions of minorities in the territories that comprised West Pakistan and East Pakistan respectively in the years 1941 and 1951. Figure 3 shows the relative proportions of minorities in the whole of Pakistan in 1941 and 1951. We have aggregated all the non-Muslim minorities together for this analysis. Some patterns are clear from this analysis. West Pakistan shows prima facie evidence for ethnic cleansing. The proportions of minorities reduced from over 1/5th of the population in 1941 to a negligible level in 1951. The pattern for East Pakistan is somewhat different. While there was a substantial reduction in the proportion of minorities between 1941 and 1951, it does not demonstrate evidence for ethnic cleansing at least in this period. We shall investigate these differences and possible reasons for these differences in subsequent sections of this article.
Figure 1: Comparison of Ethnic Mix - 1941 and 1951
West Pakistan
Figure 2: Comparison of Ethnic Mix - 1941 and 1951
East Pakistan
Figure 3: Comparison of Ethnic Mix - 1941 and 1951
Pakistan (West Pakistan + East Pakistan)
The numbers in Figures 1 through 3 also constitute a credible and indisputable source for the proportions of minorities in 1941 and 1951 in Pakistan and in the two wings of the country. This, in my view, is an important contribution of this article since existing articles on the subject quote a wide variety of numbers for the proportions of minorities, usually without backing them with any credible source.
To investigate these numbers further, we now compare the proportions of Muslims and non-Muslims in the different provinces of West Pakistan (with East Pakistan constituting a province by itself). The current configuration of provinces in present-day Pakistan is used for the purpose of this analysis. The four provinces (with the configuration in 1951 in parenthesis) are Punjab (Punjab + the princely state of Bahawalpur), Sind (Sind + the princely state of Khairpur + Karachi federal area), NWFP[8] (NWFP Settled Districts + NWFP States) and Baluchistan (Baluchistan Districts + Baluchistan States). Currently, there is also an area called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). These areas were part of the 'NWFP States' in 1951 and hence are included in the NWFP numbers in our analysis. Figures 4 through 7 present the analysis for these four provinces respectively.
Figure 4: Comparison of Ethnic Mix - 1941 and 1951
Punjab Province (Punjab + Bahawalpur)
Figure 5: Comparison of Ethnic Mix - 1941 and 1951
Sind Province (Sind + Khairpur + Karachi Federal Area)
Figure 6: Comparison of Ethnic Mix - 1941 and 1951
NWFP (NWFP Settled Districts + NWFP States)
Figure 7: Comparison of Ethnic Mix - 1941 and 1951
Baluchistan (Baluchistan Districts + Baluchistan States)
Last edited:
The analysis of the minority proportions for the provinces of erstwhile West Pakistan reveal that there is prima facie evidence for ethnic cleansing in all the four provinces, though its degree differs by province. NWFP had the worst degree of ethnic cleansing – while its minority population was the smallest amongst the four provinces in 1941, it managed to almost completely rid itself of all minorities living there. Punjab came close to NWFP in the scale of ethnic cleansing and in some senses it was worse since it had the largest minority populations amongst the four provinces – the minorities in Punjab constituted 71.28% of all minorities in Pakistan. Baluchistan also reduced its minority population from about 8.5% to about 1.5% of its population. The best situation was in Sind, where the minorities continued to constitute about 8.5% of the population in 1951. However, there is evidence for ethnic cleansing even in this province since it had a high 28.6% minority proportion in 1941. Also, a study that ends in 1951 does not tell the complete story since ethnic cleansing in Sind continued after 1951.
To summarize the discussion in this section, that there is evidence for ethnic cleansing of minorities and particularly of Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan and particularly in West Pakistan. This seems to have happened in all four provinces of West Pakistan, though its degree was the greater in NWFP, Punjab and Baluchistan than in Sind.
Absolute Population Numbers for Ethnic Cleansing
The analysis till now was based on proportions of minority populations in Pakistan in 1941 and 1951. However, this does not give us a picture of how many people are likely to have been killed or forced to migrate from Pakistan to India during partition. The main problem that we run up against when trying to estimate these numbers is that we do not have any numbers for 1947 – immediately before the killings and migration began. There were special censuses conducted in India in 1948 and 1949 but none in Pakistan. Additionally, the 1948 and 1949 numbers only give a picture of the situation after partition. We do not have numbers for the situation before partition. Thus, we have no way of separating the numbers for killings and migration from those for natural growth of population of the various communities.
Another way to analyze this is to derive estimates for the populations of each ethnic community in Pakistan in 1951 under the hypothetical scenario that there had been no ethnic cleansing. Comparing this hypothetical population with the actual populations in 1951 would give us estimates of the gap. This estimation needs to be done using extrapolations of 1941 populations. We run into another difficulty in this extrapolation. We have no way of knowing the growth rates of different communities in Pakistan because the growth rate is confounded with movements of large masses of people in both directions. Therefore, we compute the growth rate of each community for undivided India as a whole. For 1951, we add the populations of each community in both India and Pakistan and compare them with their respective populations in 1941 to obtain the growth rates for each community for undivided India. We make the assumption that the growth rates were the same in the two countries in order to project the population for each community in 1951 in both the countries.
A more sophisticated analysis could be done if we had data on populations of different communities for Pakistan and India in the censuses before 1941 and those after 1951. This would have allowed us to use time-series methods or other statistical techniques to more accurately estimate the populations of the various communities in the two countries under the above-mentioned hypothetical scenario. This involves a large amount of data collection (district level data would need to be aggregated for every census before 1941). That is a topic for future research. However, in the absence of these data, the assumption of equal growth rates in the two countries is reasonable.
Figures 8 through 10 show the results of this analysis for West Pakistan, East Pakistan and Pakistan. The two numbers compared in each of these graphs are the hypothetical population of non-Muslims in 1951 if there were no ethnic cleansing and the actual numbers according to the 1951 census. The difference between these two numbers would constitute those who were killed or forced to migrate to India. A limitation of this analysis is that it cannot separate out the numbers of those killed but can only look at the sum total of these two. Also, it must be borne in mind that these numbers critically depend on the assumption on growth rates. Yet, they give an approximate picture for the extent of ethnic cleansing.
Figure 8: Comparison of Hypothetical vs. Actual Minority Populations in 1951
West Pakistan
Figure 9: Comparison of Hypothetical vs. Actual Minority Populations in 1951
East Pakistan
Figure 10: Comparison of Hypothetical vs. Actual Minority Populations in 1951
Pakistan (West Pakistan + East Pakistan)
The key number of importance for this analysis is the difference between the hypothetical and actual populations of non-Muslims in 1951. As seen in figures 8 through 10, this difference is about 7.76 million for West Pakistan, 6.93 million for East Pakistan and about 14.69 million for Pakistan as a whole. This number is considerably different from the statistics that have been used till now. The 1951 census for India reported 4.699 million displaced people from West Pakistan and 2.549 million people from East Pakistan and a further 0.047 million who were displaced people from an unspecified location (i.e. they did not indicate whether they came from East Pakistan or from West Pakistan).[9] These numbers for displaced people are vastly different from our numbers of the difference between hypothetical and actual populations in 1941 . Some potential reasons for this difference come to mind. One number that the difference between hypothetical and actual populations includes but the census count of displaced people does not include is the number of people who were killed in the violence during partition. In addition, there were reports of conversions of large number of minorities (particularly Hindus and Sikhs) to Islam,[10] [11] though there are no reliable estimates for how many conversions took place. Thus, the difference could represent the numbers killed or converted. The numbers in our analysis constitute relatively reliable estimates for these numbers. If we take these numbers at face value, it would seem that about 7.46 million people were either killed or converted into Islam in Pakistan as a whole during partition. The numbers for West Pakistan and East Pakistan are respectively 4.69 million and 2.54 million. Table 1 depicts these numbers in detail. Since the typical numbers for those killed in Pakistan during partition range from half a million to a million people, these numbers might suggest that a very large number of people were forced to convert to Islam due to the circumstances they found themselves in. While there has been anecdotal evidence[12] as well as popular writings[13] for this, we are not aware of attempts to quantify this. It must be noted however, further research is required to rule out alternative explanations for the difference between our estimated numbers and the number of displaced persons reported in the Census of 1951.
To summarize the discussion in this section, that there is evidence for ethnic cleansing of minorities and particularly of Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan and particularly in West Pakistan. This seems to have happened in all four provinces of West Pakistan, though its degree was the greater in NWFP, Punjab and Baluchistan than in Sind.
Absolute Population Numbers for Ethnic Cleansing
The analysis till now was based on proportions of minority populations in Pakistan in 1941 and 1951. However, this does not give us a picture of how many people are likely to have been killed or forced to migrate from Pakistan to India during partition. The main problem that we run up against when trying to estimate these numbers is that we do not have any numbers for 1947 – immediately before the killings and migration began. There were special censuses conducted in India in 1948 and 1949 but none in Pakistan. Additionally, the 1948 and 1949 numbers only give a picture of the situation after partition. We do not have numbers for the situation before partition. Thus, we have no way of separating the numbers for killings and migration from those for natural growth of population of the various communities.
Another way to analyze this is to derive estimates for the populations of each ethnic community in Pakistan in 1951 under the hypothetical scenario that there had been no ethnic cleansing. Comparing this hypothetical population with the actual populations in 1951 would give us estimates of the gap. This estimation needs to be done using extrapolations of 1941 populations. We run into another difficulty in this extrapolation. We have no way of knowing the growth rates of different communities in Pakistan because the growth rate is confounded with movements of large masses of people in both directions. Therefore, we compute the growth rate of each community for undivided India as a whole. For 1951, we add the populations of each community in both India and Pakistan and compare them with their respective populations in 1941 to obtain the growth rates for each community for undivided India. We make the assumption that the growth rates were the same in the two countries in order to project the population for each community in 1951 in both the countries.
A more sophisticated analysis could be done if we had data on populations of different communities for Pakistan and India in the censuses before 1941 and those after 1951. This would have allowed us to use time-series methods or other statistical techniques to more accurately estimate the populations of the various communities in the two countries under the above-mentioned hypothetical scenario. This involves a large amount of data collection (district level data would need to be aggregated for every census before 1941). That is a topic for future research. However, in the absence of these data, the assumption of equal growth rates in the two countries is reasonable.
Figures 8 through 10 show the results of this analysis for West Pakistan, East Pakistan and Pakistan. The two numbers compared in each of these graphs are the hypothetical population of non-Muslims in 1951 if there were no ethnic cleansing and the actual numbers according to the 1951 census. The difference between these two numbers would constitute those who were killed or forced to migrate to India. A limitation of this analysis is that it cannot separate out the numbers of those killed but can only look at the sum total of these two. Also, it must be borne in mind that these numbers critically depend on the assumption on growth rates. Yet, they give an approximate picture for the extent of ethnic cleansing.
Figure 8: Comparison of Hypothetical vs. Actual Minority Populations in 1951
West Pakistan
Figure 9: Comparison of Hypothetical vs. Actual Minority Populations in 1951
East Pakistan
Figure 10: Comparison of Hypothetical vs. Actual Minority Populations in 1951
Pakistan (West Pakistan + East Pakistan)
The key number of importance for this analysis is the difference between the hypothetical and actual populations of non-Muslims in 1951. As seen in figures 8 through 10, this difference is about 7.76 million for West Pakistan, 6.93 million for East Pakistan and about 14.69 million for Pakistan as a whole. This number is considerably different from the statistics that have been used till now. The 1951 census for India reported 4.699 million displaced people from West Pakistan and 2.549 million people from East Pakistan and a further 0.047 million who were displaced people from an unspecified location (i.e. they did not indicate whether they came from East Pakistan or from West Pakistan).[9] These numbers for displaced people are vastly different from our numbers of the difference between hypothetical and actual populations in 1941 . Some potential reasons for this difference come to mind. One number that the difference between hypothetical and actual populations includes but the census count of displaced people does not include is the number of people who were killed in the violence during partition. In addition, there were reports of conversions of large number of minorities (particularly Hindus and Sikhs) to Islam,[10] [11] though there are no reliable estimates for how many conversions took place. Thus, the difference could represent the numbers killed or converted. The numbers in our analysis constitute relatively reliable estimates for these numbers. If we take these numbers at face value, it would seem that about 7.46 million people were either killed or converted into Islam in Pakistan as a whole during partition. The numbers for West Pakistan and East Pakistan are respectively 4.69 million and 2.54 million. Table 1 depicts these numbers in detail. Since the typical numbers for those killed in Pakistan during partition range from half a million to a million people, these numbers might suggest that a very large number of people were forced to convert to Islam due to the circumstances they found themselves in. While there has been anecdotal evidence[12] as well as popular writings[13] for this, we are not aware of attempts to quantify this. It must be noted however, further research is required to rule out alternative explanations for the difference between our estimated numbers and the number of displaced persons reported in the Census of 1951.
DaRk WaVe
Regular Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2009
- Messages
- 809
- Likes
- 97
what kinda pathetic reader are you? read it again.
who was telling me that Zion Hamid has no following in India
somebody tell him that I am not a fan of Zion Haimd & at the same time RAW isn't innocent at all
