Maulana Ram Das

Its poverty forcing poor Hindu families in India to send their children to Muslim-run Madrassahs? That appears to be the case. Read the following story from Daily Times that appeared on September 30.

Over 100 Hindus pass Indian madrassa exam

NEW DELHI: Over 100 Hindu students have graduated from the Madrassa Board in India's western state of Bihar, set up few years ago to conduct examinations for madrassas.

The board declared results for the maulvi (intermediate), wastania (middle) and fauqania (matric) classes on Monday. Amongst the students who passed examinations were 100 Hindu students, enrolled at the Madrassa Islamia, Sandalpur in Araria district. Educationists believe since many of the madrassas have included mainstream subjects, poor Hindu parents send their children to madrassas, as they provide meals and in some cases, lodging facilities as well.

 

Scores die chasing flour in Pakistan

BBC is reporting 14 women and three young girls hailing from low-income households died in Pakistan trying to get free flour. Just last week five young girls died in a stampede at a school in New Delhi.

Food and power shortages in Pakistan have brought the nation to its knees and have caused death and destruction for the most vulnerable.

In a matter of decades Pakistan has descended from being a rising economic power in the sixties to an almost bankrupt state and a fragmented society.

What is even worse is the fact that this occurred when a philanthropist was trying to distribute free flour to the needy. A good deed turned ugly because of lack of civic sense. The organizers turned off the power to disperse the huge crowd. With no light in the congested street, panic ensued soon and the results were catastrophic. Other reports state that the security guard baton charged women to force a queue that caused the stampede.

For additional coverage from Daily Dawn about other stampedes in Pakistan, please click HERE.

Source: Dawn.com, September 14, 2009

Support for Bin Laden falling amongst Muslims

The Globe and Mail in Canada today reported that Pakistanis are increasingly becoming hostile toward the United States. While this may be true, what is more interesting to note is that the support for Al Qaeda amongst Pakistanis has also been declining.

The latest poll released this week by the Pew Research Center in the US suggests that the support for Osama bin Laden among Pakistanis has declined from 46% in 2003 to merely 18% in 2009. Furthermore, while 33% Pakistanis supported suicide bombings in 2002, the support for violence has declined to merely 5% in 2009, which is the second lowest amongst the Muslim countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center. The support for suicide bombings in Jordan (12%) and Egypt (15%), which are often considered moderate Muslim countries, has been significantly higher than that in Pakistan.

The precipitous decline in the support for Osama bin Laden and the rise in hostility against the US among Pakistanis have one thing in common. Pakistanis hold both Bin Laden and the United States responsible for violence in their homeland where the former is orchestrating suicide bombings while the latter is dropping bombs from unmanned drones.

Dars-e-Nizami

BBC is reporting that the editor of The Nation, Arif Nizami (nephew) has been sacked by the owner Majeed Nizami (uncle) to create space for Rameeza Nizami (Majeed’s daughter).

Meanwhile, Dr. Shireen Mazari is taking over the editorship of The Nation while she writes a new chapter in opportunism in Pakistani journalism. Now she and Maleeha Lodhi are partially even. The next on Mazari’s to do list would be the ambassadorship (High Commissioner) in London (following Maleeha), should Shamsul Hassan Sahab (current high commissioner) falls ill or out of favour with the powers to be.

Our prayers and thoughts are with the Nizami family!

The picture shows from left Arif Nizami, Yousaf Raza Gilani, Majeed Nizami, and Rameeza Nizami.

At the same time some naive working class journalists (the editorial staff) have tendered resignation in protest. As the Urdu idiom states, this is more like the battle of elephants. The journalists should rather let the family fight it out. If The Nation's journalists need a cause to resign, how about asking for the wage board to be implemented.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/2009/09/090908_arif_nizami.shtml

Taliban kill Shia children in Pakistan

In yet another brazen attack on Shiites in Pakistan, the Taliban have relentlessly demonstrated their brutality and intolerance. This is not the first time that the Taliban have attacked Shiite children in Pakistan. A few months earlier, the Taliban attacked a school bus in the NWFP province killing many children.

What surprises me the most is that despite the overwhelming evidence of the brutality and savagery demonstrated by the Taliban against the ordinary citizens in Pakistan, the Taliban remain popular amongst some Muslims in Europe and North America, who think of the Taliban as the harbingers of a Muslim Caliphate!

What kind of a caliphate would these ignorant, illiterate, and savage tribesmen from NWFP and Afghanistan would establish that has in its foundations the blood of thousands of innocents.

From Dawn.com on September 8, 2009

PESHAWAR: Taliban militants attacked a group of boys on their way to school in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, killing four and wounding three, a government official said.

The high school students were apparently attacked because they were minority Shia Muslims. Taliban militants are from the majority Sunni community and attack Shias as part of their strategy to fight the government.

'They opened...fire on the students and we have reports of four deaths,' said Khaista Gul, an official in the administration of the Orakzai ethnic Pashtun tribal region, where the attack took place.

Tribesmen retaliated after the attack and killed at least two militants and wounded several, said residents of the area near the region's main town of Kalaya.

Government aircraft attacked militants in a village, 30 km east of Kalaya, killing six of them and destroying four hideouts, said another government official, Sajjad Khan.

Pakistani Taliban have stepped up attacks across the northwest since mid-2007, raising concern about country's stability.

Militants in northwest Pakistan also support the Afghan Taliban and many cross over the largely unguarded border to fight US-led foreign forces there.

Pakistani security forces have had some success against the Taliban in parts of the northwest this year and the chief of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a US missile strike early last month.

Orakzai is a stronghold of Hakimullah Mehsud who has been appointed the new Pakistani Taliban chief.

Pakistani and US officials said the militants were in disarray after Baitullah was killed and attacks appeared to tail off though they have been picking up again.

Twenty-two Pakistani border guards were killed in a suicide bomb attack at the main border crossing with Afghanistan in the Khyber region, another Hakimullah stronghold, on August 27.

Pakistani security forces launched an offensive against militants in Khyber last week and nearly 120 insurgents have been killed, according to officials. Independent casualty figures are not available.

Slumdog millionaire orphaned

The child actor who acted in the movie Slumdog Millionaire lost his father to tuberculosis on September 4, 2009, according to BBC. Azaharuddin Ismail, 10, until very recently lived in a makeshift shack in an informal settlement in Mumbai.

Even after being a star of an Oscar winning movie, Azharuddin saw his family's shelter demolished by the municipal authorities because it violated some zoning bylaws. Danny Boyle, the director of Slumdog Millionaire, came to the rescue of Azharuddin and the other child star Rubina Ali, and relocated them to more settled housing in Mumbai.

Azharuddin's father was beaten up by the police when he resisted the municipal workers busy demolishing his family's shelter. He died of TB leaving Azharuddin and the rest of the family financially vulnerable.

Azharuddin and Rubina Ali may escape the ills of poverty as there is talk of another movie in which they may act along with Anthony Hopkins. This will help the two households improve their finances.

But can you imagine the perils this child would have faced had Azharduuduin was just another 10-year old resident of Dharvi, Mumbai, who just lost his father, the sole bread-winner of the family, to TB.

There is a need to think of assisting all Azharuddins and Rubinas in a sustainable manner. We risk leaving millions behind in South Asia if we were to abandon Azharduddins and Rubinas in our quest to succeed.

Canada and NATO

Writing in the Globe and Mail, Stephen Saideman, the former Pentagon intern and a current McGill University professor, argued that it was in Canada's interest to play second fiddle to the United States in its international misadventures. I disagree. Canadian soldiers and tax payers have paid the ultimate price in Afghanistan, which has slid further into chaos, poverty, and misery since 2001.

Mr. Saideman believes that the Canadian willingness to lead and bleed in Afghanistan has earned her "power, influence, and stature." While Canada may have earned the bragging rights in the big boys club (read: NATO), there is no denying the fact that the war in Afghanistan has pushed South Asia further into chaos.

To date, 125 Canadians have laid down their lives in Afghanistan. Scores others have been injured or maimed. Canada's Parliamentary Budget Office estimates that by 2011 the Canadian taxpayers will spend up to $18 billion on a war, which according to an EKOS poll in July 09, only 34% of Canadians support.

All of this would have been worthwhile had there been real progress on the ground. Sonia Verma, also in today's Globe, reports that corruption has worsened in Afghanistan, drug production has doubled, and law and order has completely deteriorated in the past few years.

The lack of adequate infrastructure in Afghanistan has left most Afghans without potable water, electricity, sanitation, and education. Add to this the insurgency, and the chaos in Afghanistan appears to make sense.

While Canada has spent billions in military intervention, it has done little in supporting sustainable development in Afghanistan. Canadian imports from Afghanistan stand at a piddly $800,000.

Afghanistan can use more of Canada's generosity in re-establishing its institutions and infrastructure. Billions spent on guns and bombs are unlikely to earn respect for Canada in Afghanistan even when it may buy Canada some power and influence with NATO.

A hero's welcome for the convicted Libyan bomber

President Baraka Obama and numerous others have expressed their disgust at the hero's welcome for Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, who was convicted of bombing the Pan Am flight that crashed in Lockerbie in 1988.  While the U.S. is critical of Libyans, the American government also extended a hero's welcome to William C. Rogers III, who while being the second commanding officer of USS Vincennes in July 1988, shot down an Iranian Airbus near the Strait of Hormuz killing 290 civilians on board.  

Independent inquiries, including evidence from commanding officers of other American ships in the Middle East at that time, revealed that the William C. Rogers III was a trigger happy naval commander, who violated many rules of engagement by shooting down a civilian plane. 

When USS Vincennes returned to the United States after active duty in the Middle East, the U.S. government also extended a hero's welcome to William C. Rogers III and awarded him Combat Action Ribbon.  To date, the U.S. government has not apologized to the families of the 290 victims, and despite paying monetary compensation, the American government admits no wrongdoing.

The Libyans are merely mimicking Americans by celebrating al-Megrahi's return, who to this day protests his innocence. 

What were Canadian politicians thinking?

Eugene Lang and Eric Morse, writing in the Globe and Mail, take issue with the new NATO's secretary general who wants Canada to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2011. Messrs Lang and Morse argue that the Canadian politicians and generals did not anticipate an "out-of-control insurgency" or a five-year long commitment in Afghanistan when they committed the Canadian Forces in 2005.

Historically, marching into Afghanistan has not been a problem. Marching out of Afghanistan, however, has been the real challenge. The British learnt this lesson almost a hundred years earlier. The Soviet Union concluded the same in the mid-eighties, and the Pakistan's ISI has reluctantly acknowledged the same since 2001. No wonder then that the incoming head of the British Army, Gen Sir David Richards, warns of a 40-year long British commitment in Afghanistan.

Canadian soldiers were committed to Operation ATHENA in July 2003 with the tall objectives of suppressing insurgency, building capacity, and supporting infrastructure projects in Afghanistan. These objectives remain largely unmet today due to an insurgency that the Canadian leadership could not anticipate! This begs the question: what were the Canadian politicians and generals thinking when they committed soldiers to Afghanistan?

NATO Chief wants to talk with the moderate Taliban

The incoming chief of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, mentioned his support for dialogue with the "moderates within the Taliban." This is rather interesting. NATO allies have criticised Pakistan for negotiating with the Taliban within Pakistan. However, NATO would like to do the same. Should Pakistan now accuse NATO of dancing with the terrorists?

The reality is that NATO has been holding talks with the Taliban since summer of 2008. These talks were sponsored and hosted by Saudi Arabia at the behest of the United States. What good may come out of this is any body's guess.