Banned Books & Butchered Bodies

By Amir Zia
The News
October 29, 2013

The key to many of the thorny issues is not with Dr Abdul Malik and his National Party. He will have to perform a high-wire balancing act to snatch a fair deal for Balochistan and its people from the hawks within the establishment and the separatist Baloch nationalists.
Jinnah Road - Quetta’s main commercial hub - and its nearby areas boast nearly half-a-dozen bookstores, but not one has put Malala Yousafzai’s biography on sale. The reason: warnings – direct and indirect – from shadowy Taliban militants, who see this teenage activist as a potent challenge to their political and religious narrative and mindset. “Even the police officially advised us not to sell her book for our own safety”, said a veteran bookseller with a wary smile on his face.

The cautious approach of booksellers in Quetta is understandable. It often proves a deadly bargain to defy the local or Afghan Taliban and their allied groups in Balochistan’s capital where suicide bombings, target killings and kidnapping for ransom cases remain a routine. Religious extremists belonging to various groups make their ever-lurking presence felt in more than one ways in the political and social fabric of this garrison city.

From the large-scale sectarian killings – mainly of the ethnic Shia Hazaras in recent times – to the bitter opposition to the vaccination drive against polio, the extremists are challenging and defying the state at every level.

And in this overall scheme of things, booksellers’ inability to keep the Taliban-banned book, ‘I am Malala’, on their shelves is just another small, but glaring, sign of the weakening writ of the state and its institutions. All the pickets, iron-spikes, barbed wires and alert soldiers and policemen on the roads of Quetta underline the abnormality of the times and the gravity of the situation rather than inspiring confidence.

These heavy fortifications and snap-checking of vehicles and citizens alike hardly stop militants from kidnapping their targets and getting out of the city to the safe-havens of Afghanistan from where they demand and negotiate millions of rupees in ransom with victims’ families, the authorities or their employers. The list of kidnapped victims includes politicians, tribal elders, aid workers, doctors, businesspeople etc.

Similarly, the death squads of militants also manage to carry out assassinations and terrorist attacks at will, though the provincial authorities say that such cases have been on the decline since the coalition government of the moderate Baloch nationalist leader Dr Abdul Malik came into power in June this year. But a period of barely five months, which witnessed a number of bombings, killings and kidnappings, is not enough to underscore a trend in the mid- to long-term.

However, in the overall scheme of things, it is the religious extremists who are on the offensive all over the country, including Quetta, while the state and its institutions appear as mere sitting ducks – in their defensive posture. Guarding every important building and employing a wait-and-see approach is certainly not a winning strategy.

Just like Peshawar’s proximity to the Afghan border makes it more prone to lawlessness and terrorism in the north-western part of the country, Quetta’s closeness to the Afghan city of Kandahar – the birthplace of the Taliban movement in the mid-1990s – contributes to the serious, but particular, law-and-order challenge in south-western Pakistan. But then who can fight the dictates of geography – especially when the federal government’s chosen path for now remains appeasement of these non-state actors rather than establishing the writ of the state?

Whatever the spin doctors of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the security establishment would like us to believe, the existence of the Quetta council (shura) of the Afghan Taliban is not a fantasy made up by imaginative minds. The Afghan Taliban remain embedded in the vast network of Islamic seminaries and mosques of this volatile region and often it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish the local from the foreign element.

For many of the local militants, the Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda remain the main motivating force. They both support and supplement one another. The common wisdom on the streets of Quetta is that our security establishment wants to run with its ‘favourite’ hare and hunt with the hounds – a tactic that is only making the situation more complex.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government’s keenness and desperation to hold talks with the Taliban have emboldened the militants and put the state institutions further on the back foot.

Although all the major Pakistani cities have borne the brunt of terrorism and extremism during the last one decade or so, Quetta’s case is distinctive. Here along with foreign and local religious militants, the small, but heavily-armed and financed active cells of the Baloch separatists are also putting in their bit to keep the kettle on the boil. And compared to the challenge of religious extremism, the security establishment apparently appears more focused on taking them on.

The tortured bodies and the long list of missing persons underline this raging conflict which is hardly showing any signs of abatement. Balochistan Chief Minister Malik does not seem to have control over this issue, though he says that the incidents of ‘extrajudicial’ killings have declined considerably. But it is the fate of the missing persons that has become a test case for Dr Malik’s government.

Will he be able to persuade the federal government and, more importantly, the security establishment to play by the book on this issue? Will Dr Malik be able to bring the disgruntled Baloch separatist leaders onto the negotiation table and pave the way for their return to mainstream politics? This is easier said than done.

The key to many of the thorny issues is not with Dr Malik and his National Party. He will have to perform a high-wire balancing act to snatch a fair deal for Balochistan and its people from the hawks within the establishment and the separatist Baloch nationalists.

With many foreign players – from India to Afghanistan and even some of our friends in western democracies – having a direct and indirect share in the problem of Balochistan, the stakes in this game could never have been higher given the fact that many of the moderate Baloch nationalist leaders, who wanted to work within the framework of Pakistan’s constitution, have systematically been killed by the separatists. The list includes some of the veterans of the Baloch nationalist movement – from Raziq Bugti to Habib Jalib Baloch – who were murdered for defying the small, but hard-line separatist element.

While the Sharif government may opt for the policy of appeasement of the local and Afghan Taliban and other Islamic hard-liners, it is showing a slightly changed attitude towards Balochistan – which should give hope to Dr Malik and all his moderate nationalist friends.

Attempts to bring separatists on to the negotiating table sometime in 2014 and halting extrajudicial executions and other high-handed actions against activists by the security forces could be the first necessary steps on the way to achieving the goal of lasting peace in Balochistan. The bigger challenge, though, would be to ensure the economic and political rights of the people of the province.

Dr Malik has a long, long way to go to do the undoable for his people – not just by snatching peace from the Islamic and nationalist militants, but by creating an environment where booksellers can keep book titles that are available in the rest of the country. Is that too much to ask for?

Book Review: What’s Wrong With Pakistan?

By Amir Zia

October 2013

Monthly Newsline 

What’s Wrong With Pakistan? is a bold, candid and sincere effort to identify the festering ills of today’s Pakistan and suggests some urgent solutions to prevent the country from what Ayaz calls “sinking inch by inch, day by day” in a quagmire.

Attempting to find the ‘genetic defect’ of Pakistan – the world’s lone nuclear-armed, Muslim nation – is bound to trigger controversy and ruffle many sacred feathers, especially at a time when the country seems to be imploding under religiously-motivated terrorism, the expanding tentacles of Islamic extremism and the ever-decreasing writ of the state. Pakistan’s sure and fast slide into anarchy and chaos, and the inability of state institutions to deal with the crisis, raises some fundamental questions: Why has Pakistani soil become so conducive for religious extremists? Why has political Islam become such a divisive force? Why are the worst forms of atrocities and injustices being committed in the name of Islam? Why is the ‘mighty’ state unable to confront the existentialist threat to its unity? Why are the concepts of an inclusive democracy, pluralism and modernity viewed with such hostility and suspicion? What are the factors that prevent the country from building a consensus on key issues such as the role of religion in society, democracy and the constitution?

Veteran journalist and media person Babar Ayaz has tried to find answers to these questions and many more in his first book titled: What’s Wrong with Pakistan? One may agree or disagree with his thesis, but he has boldly challenged the popular historical narrative about the origin of Pakistan and painstakingly pointed out the internal contradictions of the freedom movement, that are responsible for pushing the country into the vortex of Islamic extremism, violence and terrorism. The author argues that the way successive rulers – be they civilian or military – ran the affairs of the country after Independence, supported a string of fundamentalist causes and non-state actors and used religion to achieve short-term domestic and regional goals, has only added to the woes of the country.

The author has backed his case with meticulous research as well as personally conducted interviews and anecdotes that make the book highly engaging, readable, provocative and, at times, shocking. It offers a different perspective, which one does not find in official history and academic books taught at our educational institutions as Pakistan Studies.

Some of the conclusions drawn by the author remain subject to debate and further discussion – such as the portrayal of the Pakistan Movement totally as a communal movement, discounting the role of Congress leaders in preventing any understanding with the All-India Muslim League. But, perhaps, that was not the ambit of this book. Ayaz remains more focused on trying to find the answer to how the use of Islam as a slogan for the creation of a state and the two-nation theory impacted the post-Independence politics and social order of this nascent state. The overt and covert religiosity of the Pakistan Movement, led by a secular leader like Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, according to the author, proved to be the fundamental flaw of the country, which he describes as a “genetic defect.”

“The religious extremism and terrorism that Pakistan suffers from are a logical outcome of the communal politics of the pre-independence movement,” says the author in the opening pages of the book.

“What most politicians, who usually have short-term gains in sight, do not understand is that the ‘end’ does not always justify the ‘means’; the same ‘means’ that are used to achieve an ‘end’ mostly tend to dictate the subsequent ‘end.’ Pakistan is today being consumed by the religiosity that was whipped as a ‘means’ to achieve a separate homeland,” he further writes.

The thesis might be seen as a direct assault on the country’s ideological foundations by most Islamists and conservative elements who are battling to convert Pakistan into a theocratic state through the imposition of their own, harsher brands of Islam. The author’s argument that the two-nation theory and the war-cry of Islam eventually allowed the conservative elements to dominate the popular narrative in Pakistani politics, rather than the liberal and educated Muslims, who initially served as the backbone of this movement that aimed to ensure the political and economic rights of the Muslim-majority provinces of United India. Ironically, as the author has rightly pointed out, the Pakistan Movement garnered its initial and most ardent foot soldiers from those provinces where Muslims were in a minority. That was only one among the many internal and inherent contradictions of the Pakistan Movement.

In retrospect, history is a discipline which is open to interpretation and reinterpretation. None of the arguments can be deemed as final as often, in hindsight, one may gain a fresh perspective as new facts come to light. But, more importantly, one can witness the outcome of those make or break decisions in a constantly, evolving and changing society.

Part II of the book delves into the post-Partition world of Pakistan in which the dream turned sour in the initial days of Independence. It is a sorry tale of the abuse and exploitation of East Bengal, the confrontation of the centre with Baloch and Pakhtun nationalists, and the benefit which Punjab’s ruling classes reaped in the first two decades of Independence.

“The total government expenditure in 20 years (1950-70) in Pakistan was US $30.95 billion, out of which West Pakistan extracted the lion’s share of US $21.49 billion meaning over 69 per cent, while East Pakistan, despite having 55 per cent population, was doled out only US $9.45 billion, which was just 30.45 per cent of the total,” writes Ayaz.

With his vast experience of economic journalism, spanning over four decades, Ayaz weaves political and economic aspects while narrating the story of Pakistan.

“East Pakistan was their undisputed market of over 50 million people. It was because of the loss of this colony that Pakistan had to devalue its currency by 135 per cent in 1972, and as a result its textile and consumer industry had a great fall,” he writes on page 63 of the book.

Balochistan – the country’s most mineral-rich but underdeveloped province – has also been transformed into a festering wound due to what the author describes as the colonial mindset of successive Pakistani governments – be they civilian or military.

Sindh and the North West Frontier Province, which finally got its new identity as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under the Pakistan Peoples’ Party’s recent rule, also remained at loggerheads with the centre, which is dominated by the elite of Punjab with Urdu-speaking immigrants as their junior partners in the initial days of post-Independence Pakistan, Ayaz argues.

But after the dismemberment of East Pakistan, the real threat to Pakistan, according to the author, came more from political Islam rather than the challenges posed by the nationalists, who gradually lost the momentum or were absorbed in the power structure of the country.

Part III of the book deals with issues of exploitation of Islam for narrow political ends, especially under the dark days of General Zia-ul-Haq’s martial law which witnessed an unbridled growth of mosques, madrassahs, fundamentalist organisations and extremists who were dubbed as “holy warriors,” that not only waged wars in Afghanistan and Indian-administered Kashmir, but also targeted Shia Muslims, Ahmedis and other religious minorities including Christians and Hindus. A whole chapter is devoted to the draconian laws, branded as “Islamic laws” under General Zia, underlining their strong anti-women bias – from the Hudood Ordinances to the Law of Evidence and the Islamic inheritance laws. The controversial Qisas and Diyat laws, which allow murderers to go scot free against compensation or forgiveness granted by the heirs of the victims, introduced a dichotomy in the country’s legal system.

While discussing the growth of seminaries, the author points out that “even if 50 per cent of the madrassah graduates adopt the above-mentioned profession, and the rest go back to join their parents’ farms or businesses, the system is producing one mullah for every 225 Pakistanis every year. It is in sharp contrast to one nurse for over 3,600 persons, and one doctor for some 3,400 persons.”

The equally important Part IV of the book discusses the dominance of the army in Pakistan’s politics and the pivotal role it has played in patronising and harbouring Islamic fundamentalists and extremists as its proxies for both domestic and international politics. This controversial policy has boomeraned as the Al-Qaeda-inspired local and foreign militants have taken on the very institution which nurtured them for decades.

“No civilised country breeds and nurtures militant groups within its own boundaries. Pakistan has been doing it as an extension of its national security policy. Once non-state militant groups are allowed to grow and used against any other country in the name of religion, these private armies are bound to dictate the policies of the state,” writes Ayaz.

The heavy price Pakistan is currently paying at the hands of these militants of different hues and shades because of this flawed and ill-conceived policy is an unpleasant, truth.

While Part V of the book analyses Pakistan’s foreign relations, arguing that they have been tailored to fit the national security fears, the final part of the book builds a case for a secular Pakistan as the only step forward for the country.

“Pakistan is not early twentieth-century Turkey, where a Kemal Ataturk could rise to abolish the ‘caliphate’, which was a symbol of a temporal and divine world. But it can take a break from its stated religious national narrative and move towards the secularisation of society based on reason and a scientific life stance – the process that has been started by Bangladesh,” Ayaz writes in one of the closing chapters.

However, the author has refrained from calling Pakistan a failed state, as many analysts would like us to believe. Instead, Ayaz says that it is a ‘borderline case’ and is not yet a failed state. The only recipe to treat its ills according to the author, “is to separate religion and politics” to prevent the impending catastrophe. For this to happen, the state has to reinvent itself and fight and defeat its many self-created demons – the topmost among them remains religious extremism. Are the ruling classes listening? This remains a key question as the country struggles to keep on track its fragile democracy, which offers a glimmer of hope, according to the author.

What’s Wrong with Pakistan? is a bold, candid and sincere effort to identify the festering ills of today’s Pakistan and suggests some urgent solutions to prevent the country from what Ayaz calls “sinking inch by inch, day by day” in a quagmire.

The book is an important addition to the raging debate about the past, present and future of the country as it struggles against its own self-created nemesis – the Islamic extremists and militants.

No Child’s Play

By Amir Zia
Monday, October 21, 2013
The News
 
Those looking for a statesman-like speech from young Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari must adjust their great expectations with today’s reality of the Asif Ali Zardari-led PPP.... The civilian leadership has yet to offer a knight in shining armour, who can fight the case for a progressive, modern and stable Pakistan
 
The October 18 speech of Pakistan People’s Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has raised a lot of eyebrows and brought frowns on many faces. The way the young Bhutto-Zardari scoffed at his party’s traditional and not-so-traditional political rivals has been seen to be in bad taste by many of the ardent critics of the PPP and its leadership. While the diehard PPP supporters looked for glimpses of their slain leader Benazir Bhutto’s charisma, traits and flair in Bilawal as he spoke at Karachi’s Karsaz traffic junction where the convoy of his mother was hit by twin bombings that killed 176 people the same day six years ago, the hair-splitters focused on the content, message and tone of the speech. And in a way, Bilawal provided fuel to the imaginations of both his critics and admirers.
The PPP chairman’s metaphors of hunting down the lion, freeing the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from the destructive hold of the tsunami and snapping the string of the kite hovering over Karachi skies by telephone from London could indeed sound provocative and a bit rash to the ruling Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, but they resonate in the hearts and minds of the core PPP supporters who stood loyal to the tricolour flag of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s party, particularly in rural Sindh, through thick and thin – regardless of how it performed when in power. 
Bilawal – as many other Pakistani politicians remains so fond of doing – not just dabbled in verbosity but deliberately tried to stoke up controversy in this first major speech after turning 25 last month; this makes him eligible to contest elections. In the game of politics, attempts to grab attention by being controversial remain a fair deal. Let’s think of a major name in Pakistani politics who has not committed this ‘sin’. So let’s shun ‘holier-than-thou’ approach.
Those looking for a statesman-like speech from this youngster must also adjust their great expectations with today’s reality of the Asif Ali Zardari-led PPP. The former ruling party has a long, long way to go if it wants to revive its deeply eroded political fortunes. The process involves an intellectually honest review and criticism of the party’s past five-year performance. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be on the agenda of its young or old leadership.
However, if one must grab and cling to some straws then Bilawal’s assertion of declaring jihad (holy war) against the “hijackers of the faith” and fighting the extremist forces should offer some hope to the PPP’s traditional liberal and secular vote bank. These were brave words from a youngster who lost his mother under tragic circumstances at the hands of these misguided hard-line Islamists with whom the entire civilian leadership, including the PPP which attended the government-sponsored APC of September 9, appeared willing and desperate to talk.
Should we now expect the PPP to take a clearer and bolder stand on confronting the challenge of extremism and terrorism that plagues the country and has claimed more than 50,000 lives since the US-led war on terror started in neighbouring Afghanistan in late 2001? Let’s hope that Bilawal, with the blessings and permission of his father Asif Ali Zardari, manages to bring clarity on this make-or-break issue for the country – a clarity that was found lacking during his party’s last stint in power.
Bilawal must ponder hard over why his party failed to provide a counter narrative to that of the Al-Qaeda-inspired and linked local extremists, who killed his mother and some top leaders of the party. Why did the PPP fail to lead and take ownership of the war on terror despite the army’s willingness to do so when it was in power? Many Pakistanis expected this from the PPP along with relatively clean and efficient governance. But the PPP failed on both these counts.
Will the PPP in opposition manage to put the challenge of extremism and terrorism in the right perspective and snatch the initiative from apologists of the local Taliban including Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Munawar Hasan? So far, the PPP has not been able to do so or come up with a counter narrative to that of hard-line Islamists and their backers.
If Bilawal manages to pursue his ‘holy war’ against those who, in his own words, ‘abuse Islam’ it could prove a watershed in Pakistani politics. This issue alone would define both the future of Pakistan and PPP’s politics. Since all the major centre and right-wing political parties – the PML-N, the PTI, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and the Jamaat-e-Islami – are for the outright appeasement of terrorists and extremists, any firmer and bolder stance against these forces could prove to be a game-changer and fill the political void against the backdrop of the one-sided pro-talks and pro-Taliban narrative.
Imran Khan and his like appear hell-bent to undermine the state and its institutions when they beg and plead for talks with the local Taliban after every fresh incident of terrorism. They want the state institutions to allow these non-state actors to open offices as they urge these terrorists and murderers to stop bombings on humanitarian grounds. Yes, the PTI refuses to learn and correct itself despite the killing of its three lawmakers, including the latest assassination of provincial law minister Israrullah Gandapur in a suicide attack on the occasion of Eidul Azha.
The PPP can lead this fight on ideological grounds. It has all the right ingredients to do so and will find many allies in the vast civil society, anti-Taliban political parties and even the armed forces. The only thing the party lacks is leadership and vision. Should Bilawal, at the politically tender age of 25, be able to pull it off? Are we expecting and asking too much from him and a party that failed to do this when it was in power? There are reasons for us to be sceptical.
Even if the PPP leadership turns over a new leaf (can this miracle happen?), becomes slightly honest, and ready to address some of its past mistakes, throwing down a gauntlet to extremists and terrorists and their cheerleaders in the mainstream political parties won’t prove to be child’s play. This conflict is not for the faint-hearted. It requires courageous, upright, committed and visionary leadership – qualities which appear lacking in PPP’s current top- and first-tier leaders.
Bilawal has giant challenges and internal dilemmas weighing on his inexperienced and young shoulders. The hereditary democracy of South Asia – where the right to lead and rule is often passed from one generation to another, or from husband to widow or wife to husband – itself often proves the biggest obstacle for the political parties in providing competent, efficient and honest leadership. 
Yet, South Asia, including Pakistan, remains far from being out of the clutches of hereditary politics in which personalities overshadow most issues including ideology. Therefore, Bilawal appears all set to rule one of Pakistan’s major political parties and represent the most dynamic political dynasties. It would be largely up to him how he grows or diminishes in this job. The choices he makes and the roads he takes will not just define his own politics, but will also impact the country. Let’s keep our fingers crossed…Let’s hope that Bilawal makes a difference for the better for this wretched country that is in the throes of a make-or-break conflict with extremists. The only irony is that the civilian leadership has yet to offer a knight in shining armour who can fight the case for a progressive, modern and stable Pakistan that remains at peace with itself, its neighbours and the world.

 

Defining Two Drops

By Amir Zia
Monday, October 14, 2013
The News

Narratives – undermining science, developments in medical research and rational thinking – from the pulpit and some prominent Islamic seminaries resonate deeply in the hearts and minds of many believers, who refuse to give the polio vaccine to their children, thinking that abstaining to do so is in conformity with Islamic teachings.

 

Since December 2012, Pakistani authorities have stopped announcing dates for the national anti-polio vaccination drives. Instead, these regular exercises are now being carried in a hush-hush manner at the district level to prevent any attacks -- on volunteers administrating polio drops to children aged five years and below – by al-Qaeda-inspired local Taliban militants and other extremist groups.

The government’s concerns are understandable. Since mid-July 2012 to date, 17 health workers and five policemen involved in anti-polio campaigns have been killed and 14 others wounded by militants in 25 attacks in various parts of Pakistan. This list of victims doesn’t include those seven NGO workers who were killed in Swabi on January 2 or the two victims killed in a roadside bomb explosion outside the Basic Health Unit in Peshawar’s suburbs on October 7 as it is still being investigated whether these attacks were also targeted at the polio campaign.

Nonetheless the string of killings has transformed the anti-polio efforts into a high-stakes game in the Islamic Republic. Now all polio vaccination teams have to be accompanied by police or paramilitary troops underlining the ever-deepening divide and conflict among moderates and hardliners in society and the eroding writ of the state. The simple and innocent exercise of administrating polio drops to children becoming a deadly affair is also a sign of the deep ideological confusion and intellectual bankruptcy of hard-line Islamists.

Many of the clerics sympathetic to al-Qaeda and local militant groups simply see the two drops of anti-polio vaccine as a western conspiracy against Muslims to make their future generations ‘infertile’ and ‘sexually impotent’ rather than an effort to keep them healthy and free from the lifelong crippling effects of this virus.

Even some of those clerics who keep away from militancy and unlawful activities have become part of propaganda against polio vaccination – from the rugged mountains in the north to Pakistan’s biggest city of Karachi. A case in point is of the monthly Haq Nawa-e-Ihtasham, Karachi, which in its March 2013 issue carried an article saying that the anti-polio drive being run by Unicef “is basically a conspiracy to make the nation infertile.” The five-page article titled ‘Polio vaccine drive’s secret agenda’ discusses the so-called investigations conducted by a Nigerian scientist claiming that the polio vaccine is damaging for health and causes impotency among its users.

Nawa-e-Ihtasham is published by Maulana Tanveer-ul Haq Thanvi in memory of his father, the late-Maulana Ihtasham-ul Thanvi – considered one of the most highly respected and leading Islamic clerics belonging to the Deobandi school of thought. Both Maulana Ihtasham and Maulana Tanveer are known for their moderate views not just by their followers but by experts and clerics of other Islamic sects as well.

Such narratives – undermining science, developments in medical research and rational thinking – from the pulpit and some prominent Islamic seminaries resonate deeply in the hearts and minds of many believers, who refuse to give the polio vaccine to their children, thinking that abstaining to do so is in conformity with Islamic teachings.

No wonder Pakistan remains among the only three countries of the world – along with Afghanistan and Nigeria – which have failed to eradicate this virus. According to Unicef figures, so far 43 polio cases have been reported in Pakistan in 2013 – against six in the war-wrecked Afghanistan. In Nigeria, 49 such cases have been reported this year.

All our other South Asian neighbours – India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal and Maldives – have now become part of the polio-free world. But in Pakistan, a small minority of hard-line clerics and pro al-Qaeda local militants successfully managed to scuttle all efforts to make the country polio free.

In most parts of the conflict-ridden Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (Fata), authorities have not been able to run polio vaccination campaigns for the last two years in a row. The polio teams are being attacked not just in Fata, but various parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and even Karachi. Unicef data shows that nine out of 25 attacks targeting anti-polio teams have occurred in Karachi – one of Pakistan’s most developed cities.

The situation is in stark contrast to Afghanistan where Afghan Taliban and Nato troops even halt fighting to allow polio vaccination campaigns. This explains the low number of polio victims in Afghanistan compared to Pakistan. However, militants in Pakistan have no such love or care for children. They have no rules of engagement. For these ‘brave-hearts’ and ‘virtuous souls’ every target is kosher – be it worshippers, medical teams, unsuspecting women, men and children in markets and bazaars. They are the same local Taliban and allies with whom our elected government and the entire civilian leadership – from Imran Khan to Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Munawar Hasan – are willing and desperate to talk for what they call peace.

The elected ones do not care about the consequences of appeasing extremists. They can’t see all the blood on the hands of these false champions of Islam. They do not want to define the ambit of their talks with militants. In fact, they hardly seem to understand the agenda and ideology of these forces bent upon destroying Pakistan. But yet they want to talk. Should this sleep walk towards disaster give any hope to Pakistanis that our tomorrow will be better than today?

The obstacles created in the way of the anti-polio drive demonstrate that how an organised minority is exploiting the sacred name of Islam and holding the entire country hostage on gun-point and suicide bombs. They have managed to do this despite the fact that most leading clerics have issued edicts that polio vaccination is not forbidden in Islam.

The government, Unicef and the World Health Organisation have jointly printed a booklet carrying 20 edicts from leading Islamic scholars and seminaries from Pakistan, Egypt, Malaysia, India, China and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference underlying that the polio vaccine remains safe to use and is permissible in Islam. Opposing polio vaccination is not Islam, but it is extremism.

However, hardliners are in no mood to listen and misguide a section of population through their flawed interpretation of Islam or the outright use of force. The authorities, despite all the awareness campaigns, have failed to contain these elements simply because of the state’s inability to launch a decisive crackdown against them.

Pakistan’s failure to eradicate polio has resulted in the enactment of discriminatory regulations specific to Pakistani travellers by many countries. The reason: our country has, along with terrorism, also become a net exporter of the polio virus. Even Saudi Arabia has made it mandatory for Pakistani Hajj and Umra pilgrims to take polio drops on arrival on its territory.

Polio in Pakistan is now a legitimate international concern. For we are one of the few countries left in the world where the curse of this virus still exists and can be transported to other far-flung countries. This has already happened a few times in recent years and has made the world wary of Pakistani visitors. Eradicating the polio virus in Pakistan remains within grasp, but the goal cannot be achieved until the small mindset opposed to its vaccination gets defeated first. Even one new case of polio or one percent of the population refusing to take the vaccine won’t let us achieve the goal of a polio-free Pakistan.

Therefore, the narrative that every Pakistani child should get vaccinated must win. But are the elected ones prepared to take the bull by its horns? Right now, they appear to be in the mood to just talk.

Victory For The Condemned

By Amir Zia 
The News

Monday, October 7, 2013

The continuing of moratorium on death penalty is another step to appease terrorists and criminals... Our tiger Nawaz Sharif turns into a pussycat

Three sets of people must be jubilant following Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government’s decision to continue with the moratorium on the death penalty. First and foremost; all the death-row prisoners convicted for religiously and politically motivated killings, mass murders, terrorism, cold-blooded assassinations and raping and slaughtering innocent children or women. They must be singing praises for Sharif and his team for sparing their lives in one big, bold act of compassion and generosity.

The second set delighted on this development comprises all the alleged criminals and terrorists, who are currently defending cases in the lower and superior courts in any of those 27 heinous crimes for which death sentence is given under the constitution of this Islamic Republic. They can relax and breathe easy now. No harm will come to them even if they stand guilty of these offences. Let’s also include in this second set all the would-be killers, terrorists, child rapists and kidnappers. Now they can commit all their black deeds without fear of any noose around their necks.

Last but not the least in the lot of happy ones remains those ‘politically correct’, high-flying individuals who work for the European Union-funded rights and non-government organisations. They have been campaigning for the scrapping of the death penalty for long at the behest of their donors. Without taking into account Pakistan’s objective conditions or the level of its social, political and economic development – or lack of it – they have been demanding the abolishment of capital punishment by giving examples of those western or westernised nations which abandoned executions in the natural course of their historical progress and evolution.

While these three sets of people have a solid reason to wave victory signs, there is one vast group of those unfortunate Pakistanis who have another reason to feel more pessimistic, vulnerable and threatened the way successive rulers are trying to appease condemned convicts, their foreign-funded supporters and the EU, which leads the anti-death campaign. The victims, their families and all the ordinary, law-abiding Pakistanis should know that justice is one thing they won’t get whether it is the rule of the PPP or the PML-N.

Yes, we know that the original sin of placing a moratorium on the death sentence was committed by the PPP when it came to power in early 2008. The PPP made no serious attempt to constitutionally ban the death sentence because of the fear of popular backlash. It settled for a presidential moratorium, thus introducing a contradiction, a dichotomy in Pakistan’s legal system. The courts continued handing down death sentences, but the executive kept sitting on them. As a result, we now have around 8,000 death-row convicts in Pakistani prisons. Only one person was hanged to death during this period – and that too on the Pakistan Army’s intervention.

However, the former PPP government at least had the veneer of an ideological position on the issue – no matter how flimsy or controversial one may call it. Being a liberal party, which witnessed its founding leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto hanged to death under a controversial judgement, it opposed executions as a matter of policy.

But what about the centre right and pro-Shariah Sharif’s Muslim League, which had been opposing the ban on the death penalty all through the PPP’s previous five-year rule. When in opposition, the PML-N announced several times to end this moratorium once in power. But the tiger transformed into a pussycat after receiving just one public threat from an extremist group, which has its key members on the death row.

The group warned the PML-N government to get ready to face its wrath if even one of its members were to be executed in line with the court orders. The Sharif government immediately obliged by extending the ban till its own man entered the President House. Now we hear that the moratorium on the death sentence has been extended as the government remains mindful of its international obligations and commitments.

Should one laugh or cry? That depends on which side of the fence you are; among the first three sets celebrating the government’s retreat or the vast group of those helpless Pakistanis who remain at the receiving end – both from the criminals and terrorists as well as the government.

In meeting its so-called ‘international obligations’, the Sharif government completely ignored the repeated advice given by the superior judiciary that the hanging of convicts must resume to establish the rule of law in the country.

Should we now expect the Sharif government to be bold enough and move a constitutional amendment in parliament to abolish the death sentence? This should be the logical next step, as demanded by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, while welcoming the government’s decision of maintaining the moratorium on hanging.

But Sharif can’t dare to take this path because of the fear of the powerful religious lobbies and the uproar such a move will create among the general masses, which overwhelmingly demand dispensation of justice to the people involved in heinous offences. Therefore, the Sharif government seems all set to follow the PPP’s path by continuing with the contradiction in Pakistani law and practice.

This myopic policy would benefit criminals, terrorists and the so-called rights campaigners, but prove disastrous for the society. It will only embolden and encourage killers and could force many people to take the law into their own hands. It means that there will be more cases of vigilante and street justice and more and more people would turn to non-state actors for protection and quick settlement of disputes. This has already been happening not just in the tribal areas, but also in major cities like Karachi where the Taliban-like jirga and justice system is fast becoming a vogue in various neighbourhoods.

This is also an indication of the crumbling writ of the state and the weakness of the state and its institutions, which now always yield when faced with any external or internal pressure.

The opening spell of the Sharif government has indeed been disappointing – especially on those vital issues that are to make or break this country. Top among these is the challenge of lawlessness, terrorism and crime. In a country, where more than 50,000 people have been killed by al Qaeda and its inspired local militants and in wave after wave of sectarian and religiously-motivated violence, it is shameful that the rulers on one hand are desperate for talks with lawbreakers, terrorists and insurgents and on the other trying to appease them by undermining the law by failing to punish the guilty.

The Sharif government seems confused, overwhelmed by the challenges at hand and is on the retreat. It is wavering under pressure at the very start of its innings on tackling the core issues of terrorism, lawlessness and crime which pose an existentialist threat to Pakistan’s unity and sovereignty. It is wasting time in trying to hold dialogues with militants, who are setting preconditions, dictating terms of engagement and almost daily giving a bloody nose to the security forces and killing ordinary Pakistanis in a string of terrorist attacks.

Yet, the government’s mantra is talks. The continuing of moratorium on death penalty is another step to appease these very terrorists and criminals. The price will be borne only by the ordinary Pakistanis, who don’t have any armoured personnel carriers, bullet-proof vehicles and high walls at their disposal to protect them.

Our rulers have failed us in the past. They are failing us again. Pakistanis, we must pity ourselves, for those in power continue to trample the law, the constitution and justice under their feet by favouring the convicted and the condemned. And in doing this, they are dishonouring and disgracing all the victims, their families and ordinary Pakistanis. And all this is being done after just one threat from militants… in the name of human rights, or the pressure of the European Union. This is the worst insult traumatised Pakistanis can suffer from our elected government. We should all cry in unison – shame on thee.