General Kiyani visits King Abdullah

Pakistan Chief of Army Staff met with the Saudi King Abdullah, according to The News, Islamabad. Why would the Chief of Army Staff of Pakistan call on the Saudi monarch. Isn't there a protocol that should prevent heads of armed forces to meet with the heads of states of other countries, which should be a task left to the elected representatives.

 

From The News,

 

COAS calls on Saudi King

    Updated at: 2200 PST, Sunday, April 12, 2009

    RIYADH: Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani called on Saudi King Abdullah here on Sunday. General Kayani also conveyed President Asif Ali Zardari's goodwill message to Shah Abdullah.

Tit for tat sectarian killings

Daily dawn in Pakistan reports that three Pushtuns have been assassinated in Dera Ismail Khan, a city marred with sectarian violence. The three belonged to the majority Sunni sect of Islam. Two other Sunni Muslims were assassinated weeks earlier.

It appears that the Shias in Dera Ismail Khan are retaliating against suicide attacks by the Sunni extremists that killed dozens in the past year. This tit for tat killing bodes ill for Pakistan.

From dawn.com:

PESHAWAR: Three Sunni Muslims were killed on Thursday in a drive-by shooting in Dera Ismail Khan, police and hospital officials said.

Gunmen riding on a motorbike sprayed bullets on a medical store in Dera Ismail Khan, killing its owner and two relatives, a police official said, requesting anonymity.

Three other men were wounded, he said, adding that the victims came from the tribal South Waziristan district, bordering Afghanistan.

They were Sunni Muslims and members of militant leader Baitullah Mehsud's tribe, he said. 'We are investigating if it was sectarian violence or linked to a suicide attack on Mehsud's opponents earlier in the day.'

Ten people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up at an inn in Jandola, near South Waziristan region.

Confirming the casualties, doctor Ashiq Saleem, head of the local hospital, said that 'six people with bullet wounds were admitted, three of them died later.'

Dera Ismail Khanis a flashpoint for violence between militants from Shia and Sunni communities.

Iran leads in State-sponsored executions

The Amnesty International has recently released figures on executions. While China tops the disgraceful list with 1,718 executions, it is in fact Iran that boasts the highest execution rate of all countries. With 346 executions, Iran carried out over 4.5 executions per million people, followed by Saudi Arabia at nearly 4 executions per million. In fact, Saudi Arabia and Iran are four times more likely to conduct executions than China, the third worst offender.

These bleak statistics should be a source of much-needed introspection in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the self-appointed representatives of the Sunni and Shia Islam respectively. Given the abysmal state of judicial systems and the law enforcement agencies, Iran and Saudi Arabia, along with the remaining 50-odd Muslim majority countries, should indeed suspend, if not abolish, the death penalty.

The statistics are available at The Economist website.

Girls’ school targeted in Urban NWFP

Daily Times of Lahore has reported that militants have bombed a girls' school in Mardan, which is an urban centre in the Frontier province in Pakistan. A few months earlier, militants bombed a boys' school on Warsak Road in Peshawar, the capital of the Frontier Province.

It appears that the militants are getting bold by the day and are now targeting schools in the NWFP's urban centres, where the State should be able to enforce its writ. The decline into chaos in NWFP is a source of personal pain and anguish as well. My family members were involved in setting up the first Women College for higher education in Mardan in the late sixties. Seeing girls' schools being targeted forty years hence suggests the return to a regressive ideology that the State and the citizenry should check employing all moral imperatives.

From Daily Times in Lahore: Girls' school blown up in Mardan

MARDAN: Unidentified men blew up a girls' school in Mardan on Sunday. According to police sources, the men planted explosives near Government Girls High School Hattian, located near the residence of NWFP senior minister Rahim Dad Khan. The sources said the blast caused panic among the residents. However, no casualties were reported.

Singling out Galloway

The Globe and Mail's editorial on March 21 found fault with the British MP, George Galloway, since he, amongst other transgressions, "palled around" with Saddam Hussein.  I recall Governor Sarah Palin in her failed bid for the vice presidency of the United States accused the then candidate Barack Obama of palling around with the terrorists.  While she did not succeed in her political quest; she did, it appears, succeed in influencing Globe and Mail's editorial writers adopt her colloquial style.

If palling around with Saddam Hussein is abhorrent, is George Galloway the only one guilty? What about Canada, when she awarded Iraq the most favoured nation status for trade in 1982 after Iraq had been declared aggressor in the Iran-Iraq war. And what about the automakers in Canada, who negotiated car sales with Iraq even when Iraq had killed thousands of Kurds and Iranian soldiers using chemical weapons. Wasn't GM Canada palling around with Saddam when it negotiated with Iraq's state-owned auto importing agency to sell 10,000 cars months after Iraq was found guilty of using chemical weapons against civilians?

It appears we all have made deals with the devil. Why then single out Galloway?

Law and order improving in Swat

My apologies to those who do not read the Urdu script. In summary, the attached link to the Jang newspaper's Urdu edition is suggesting that the law and order situation is improving in Swat. The statement is from Afrasiab Khattak, President of the NWFP Chapter of the Awami National Party (ANP).

Afrasiab is also the former Secretary General of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and commands respect for his principled stand over the years. I met him last in 1991 at his home in Peshawar after he launched the now defunct Quami Inqualabi Party. He returned to Peshawar in early nineties from a self-imposed exile. Afrasiab had opposed the war against the soviet-backed Afghan government.

While many are concerned about the implementation of a shariah inspired law in Swat, it appears that the left leaning forces in NWFP are not opposed to the interim arrangement.  My reading is that the government will restore law and order and then over time disarm militants before returning the region to the full administrative control of the district governments.

http://www.jang.net/urdu/update_details.asp?nid=57492

Swat's children defiant against militants

The link below is a 28 minute video of a debate held by BBC about addressing insurgency in FATA/Swat. The video is extremely revealing, especially when you hear the incredible and inspiring defiance in the voices of young girls from Swat addressing the Chief Minister of NWFP. Almost 150,000 girls have returned to schools since the peace deal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/multimedia/2009/03/090319_swat_again.shtml

50 armed men attack NATO supplies in Peshawar

Dawn.Com reports

PESHAWAR: Militants in Pakistan set ablaze vehicles bound for Western forces in neighbouring Afghanistan on Monday in the second such attack in two days, police said.

Militants stepped up attacks on the road through northwest Pakistan into land-locked Afghanistan last year, exposing the vulnerability of Western supply links just as the United States was planning a surge of troops to tackle the Taliban.But attacks had tailed off early this year after security forces intensified their efforts against the militants.

In the latest assault, militants barged into a supply depot on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar at around 1:00 am on Monday, overpowered guards and set fire to vehicles, police said.

'About 50 gunmen attacked us ... They first disarmed us and then began setting fire to bulldozers and humvees,' one of he depot's guards, Raza Khan, told Reuters.

'A police team arrived after about an hour and an exchange of fire took place for an hour," he said.

Sixteen bulldozers and humvee patrol vehicles were destroyed, Khan said. Police were assessing the damage, said officer Abdul Rahim.

The US Defense Department says the US military sends 75 per cent of supplies for the Afghan war through or over Pakistan, including 40 per cent of the fuel for its troops.

The United States has been seeking alternative supply routes for its troops in Afghanistan because of the attacks in Pakistan, even though it says those attacks have not had a great impact on the supply flow.

The route from Peshawar up to the border through the Khyber Pass is the most important of two routes through Pakistan, and it is likely to become even more vital as the United States sends thousands more troops to Afghanistan this year.

On Sunday, militants torched 20 trucks carrying Western forces' supplies in an attack on another depot near Peshawar.

The United States said this month it expected soon to finalise an agreement with Tajikistan that would allow the transit of non-lethal supplies to Afghanistan.

Russia gave the go ahead this month for the first cargo of non-lethal supplies to cross its territory. The cargo went by rail across Russia and Kazakhstan and into Uzbekistan, which shares a border with Afghanistan.

Another nine dead in Pindi

It appears that a suicide bomber has hit Rawalpindi killing 9 and injuring dozens.

Reuters reports:

Bomb kills seven in Pakistan - police

Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:21pm IST

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (Reuters) - A bomb exploded near a bus stop in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi on Monday, killing seven people, police said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility. Islamist militants opposed to Pakistani support for the U.S.-led campaign against al Qaeda and the Taliban have been blamed for a string of bomb attacks across the country in recent years.

"A man got out of a van and there was an explosion. It could have been a suicide blast," police officer Nasir Khan Durrani said.

A police officer at the scene, Mohammad Yaar, said seven people had been killed.

The attack took place hours after the government defused a political crisis with the reinstatement of a Supreme Court chief justice but there was no sign the blast was linked to the political controversy.

Zardari capitulates

The people of Pakistan have triumphed in their struggle for an independent judiciary. The lawyers' movement has succeeded in forcing the Pakistan People's Party government to restore judges sacked by the then military dictator general Musharraf.

Ub Raj karey Gi Khalqu-e-Khuda

The journey for an independent judiciary has reached its first milestone in Pakistan.

More on this from BBC World: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7945294.stm