Bomb attack in north-west Pakistan kills three policemen

Islamabad - Suspected Islamic militants killed three policemen Friday in north-west Pakistan by targeting their vehicle with a remote-control bomb, a police official said. The early morning attack in the Dera Ismail Khan district of the volatile North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), where Islamic militancy is rife, also injured two officers, said Hamza Masud, the district police chief. He said the area's deputy police superintendent, Javed Iqbal, was among those killed. "He was leaving for the office from his residence when suspected militants targeted his vehicle with a remote control roadside bomb," Masud said. "The vehicle was completely destroyed."Dera Ismail Khan lies close to Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, from where Taliban, al-Qaeda and other armed militant groups frequently target security forces across the province as well as other parts of the country with suicide bombers and roadside bombs. Meanwhile, a British-based non-governmental organization has resumed work in Pakistan following an attack Monday by armed men on its offices in the NWFP that killed four local staff. Plan International, which works to help children in developing nations, reopened its offices in Islamabad and Punjab province, but continued a suspension on work in the NWFP's Mansehra district until an investigation into the attack was completed, a statement released Friday said. Several men armed with rifles attacked the Mansehra office without warning on Monday afternoon, setting off explosive devices that burned the building to the ground. The motive in the attack remained unclear, the statement said.

Pakistan, a Different Country!

Benazir selling Benazir Chai or Benazir paan massalla!

The Army crime syndicate in Pakistan is down but not out by any means. City after city and village after village, as I traveled through the heart of Pakistan, I got one overwhelming message…people can’t stand the army anymore but also are realistic enough to understand that it will take a lot to get rid of the army from the politics and break the power structure the army has created over the years. My impression was that this structure has been damaged and is deeply hurt in Pakistan.

The night before Benazir’s chehlum in Larkana, a young man, barely in his early twenties, challenged me to describe the mood in Sindh and on hearing my take claimed that I have lost touch with Sindh after living away for so many years. Driving with a candidate to attend election rallies and public meetings, the slogans I heard were against the army and listened to the speeches that would have had intelligence agencies declare people anti-state when I lived in Sindh. I knew of many friends who suffered years in jail for saying a lot less. Larkana has become a crowded city after her death. There were people everywhere. Benazir is now remembered as a Rani, a princess and soon will turn in to the first woman Saint in Pakistan.

While kidding with many young Sindhis Turks, I blamed them for Benazir’s death as they had taken a hard-line on her arrival which caused her breakup with the army. The kids just laughed. I then asked them how are they going to treat Asif Zardari? Mostly the answer was: he better listen to us or he too will take the Liaquat Bagh route!

I was told the Sindhi nationalism as I knew it has since died its natural death but the Peoples Party in Sindh is really the Sindhi Nationalist Party. Young Sindhis believe in Pakistan but would not hesitate to break away if they felt the need for it. No one thinks about joining with India as the old Sindhi Nationalists used to dream of but an independent Sindh would be a much preferred option. Young Sindhis are now joining the army and some are climbing the ranks pretty fast.

Lahore and Pindi were in full election mould. Pictures of candidates and the leaders were on pretty much every space that was available on walls and hoardings. Benazir was so prominently displayed in so many different poses that often I felt she was the only movie star in town. Knowing the Punjabi penchant for hero worshipping and taking it to the extreme, I felt that soon they will have Benazir selling Benazir Chai or Benazir paan massalla to her followers in Punjab.

While Pindi is bursting through the seams, Islamabad looked its best from the margalla hills and the Manal restaurant where I had lunch with an old flame. We had problems keeping our hands to ourselves despite couple of grown kids on both sides.

Peshawar is just another story. I have some great memories of that city which I last visited in 1987 for just a few hours. This time around, I barely had a few hours to spend in Peshawar again. I asked my friends to drive me around the city while we talked. I was unable to recognize the city. New shopping malls in Saddar, my old hang out hotel Deans now a shopping mall and office complex. The Green hotel looked different. The cinema in Saddar where I used to smoke charas during the shows was gone too. The great shopping areas in Hayatabad with Sikh shop owners and Sikh Hakims just belied all the storylines about Peshawar and Peshawaris living in fear of Taliban and the suicide bombers. New six lane roads, a ring road and the Pushtoon car and bus drivers had my heart in my throat almost every time I was on the road. Peshawar is no more a sleepy town it used to be in the 70s and 80s, the life in the city is hectic and the traffic has increased manifolds like in Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore and Islamabad! If someone now tells me that Peshawar is going down to Taliban, I would slap that person hard enough to show fingerprints all over his/her cheeks. Though I must admit the uncertainty of the suicide bombers had surely put some dent on the city’s rep.

Peshawar University looked as beautiful and unspoiled as it was a long time ago. The kids in Islamia College were still wearing sherwanis and the girls in their chadors looked as pretty as ever. Girls were clearly noticeable in pretty much all areas, some did not care very much about chador covering the heads or not. I found many of them walking alone unescorted contrary to the stories that I had heard and believed. Peshawar has extended well beyond Gul Bahar colony on the GT road on the east. Hayatabad on the west, it seems, is as big as Peshawar itself right next to the tribal area. Hayatabad was a small development when I last saw that, this time around I was looking at houses as big and as great looking as one can find in Defense or Clifton, Karachi or some areas in Islamabad and Lahore.

This was just another Pakistan. Things have changed so drastically between my visits that often I was lost in the areas where I grew up in Karachi and Hyderabad. New highways, bright shining roads or just the amount of construction overwhelmed me. The face of Karachi is changing, Hyderabad still lags behind but lots of changes had already made me feel good about that city.

Lahore or at least the parts of Lahore that I saw showed me that it is perhaps the best city to live in Pakistan right now. Lahore looked better than Karachi and Islamabad both and traffic too was a little less crazy. My only long distance drive was from Pindi to Peshawar and back. The Daewoo bus took the GT road which is now a four lane highway. The Bus conductor was a young, petit, pretty, and apparently Pathan/Hazara girl in her 20s. That was a big no-no (especially in NWFP) during the old days but now seemed common. I kept cracking jokes with her to her amusement. I guess age allows one to be a little bold with young girls! The driver turned off the video and the music upon entering NWFP. When I asked the conductor to play it back she said, “Na!na!! mullah ghussa karega!”

My return journey on M1 was just fabulous. M1 is a six lane highway that can leave many highways in the West to dust. I took a Mercedes van on my return journey and the driver followed all the traffic rules for lane changes and passing other traffic. I thanked him for excellent driving and gave him a great tip for just making my life easy on Pakistani roads!

In between, I took a short trip to Taxila museum and the monasteries in the area. My driver cum guide had worked in Taxila for years and knew the area inside out. Still I used professional guides on every site. I was just a teenager when I first visited Taxila and never caught on the significance of the archaeological sites there. Walking in Sirkap, climbing stairs to Jaulian or checking out the monastery in Mohra Moradu just had another feel to it. At Mohra Moradu, I met an interesting man. Throughout the drive from Pindi, my driver kept talking about a Scotsman living in Mohra for the last forty years. The driver thought he was some sort of a saint and took me to his place. This long haired, bearded Scotsman, Luqman called his place a Khanqah! Turned out this Luqman guy was actually a Canadian from the Montréal area. I had visited Montréal just in August-Sept for three weeks so we started talking about the changes in Montréal. He not only had access to the Net but was also connected to his friends in Ohio via skype! He invited me to his Olive Garden just above the Mohra monastery, which I declined citing lack of time.

Driving down from the Taxila museum to Jaulian, I, all of a sudden, found myself on a well paved and well maintained road. I thought the quality of the construction was due to the tourist traffic to Jaulian. But it turned out just above Jaulian, the Pak army maintains a big ammo dump. I had visited some US army dumps in New Mexico and the layout of the area looked very familiar to the missiles/nuke sites in New Mexico. Once I climbed the mountains and in Jaulian, using Binoculars, I tried to spot the entrance and climbed farther than the guide would allow me to take pictures. It appeared that there were two sites both had unmarked cars, buses and trucks parked there. Nothing would disclose that they were military sites. However, it was clear that the army was hiding something there. One can hazard many guesses but hoarding missiles and nukes next to the prime archaeological sites could only be a Pak army idea!

The night after the elections, my old friends got together in a Clifton house of a friend for a party. I had taken two bottles of Chivas with me from the US but these guys were already loaded with all brands of scotch. The eight of us had our last party in a Khairpur rest house sometime in 1983. That night we could only get cheap Indian whiskey but things have changed. All were successful and loaded with money now. In the Khairpur rest house we had four girls serving us and in 2008 in Karachi, eight girls were assigned to the party. The service was good, drinks and food was fabulous. Politics again was the main topic as all of us are still attached to the politics in many different ways. We broke up at about three in the morning and would probably see each other on my next visit, whenever that happens.

Elections

Before the elections the discussions in Larkana and the other places were that there would not be much rigging in Sindh or NWFP but most of the rigging would take place in Punjab and that too against Nawaz Sharif. No one expected Nawaz to bag more than 40 seats and after rigging the number of seats for N league was expected to be around 15-20. On the night of the elections, it became clear that either the pro Mush forces deceived themselves or there was some hidden hand that prevented rigging. Still, the consensus was that the PPP would be forced to form coalition with parties minus Nawaz. This still can happen but right now if the PPP tried to shake hands with Mushraf, expectations are that the PPP would break apart right away! Everyone is now watching the changing situation and they are many a slip!

However, this election would go down in the Pakistan history as the most rigged election ever. In Karachi and in parts of Sindh, people wherever they could have, rigged the whole thing. In Karachi, MQM was unable to bring out its supporters to vote and the motivated PPP voters were showing up at every polling station, on seeing that the MQM high command just decided to take over the polling stations and the results in Karachi are more dubious than any other place in Pakistan!

All other parties contested elections on some program and with some agenda. PPP for democracy, PML(N) for Judges, ANP for provincial autonomy and against the MMA but MQM really had no agenda, no program and offered nothing to its voters and thus its voters stayed away from the polling booths. More on elections later!

(http://chowk.com/articles/13666)

Taliban Facilitated Elections in Waziristan!

In North Waziristan, the government sought the help of the militants to conduct peaceful polls

By Mushtaq Yusufzai

The Taliban in North Waziristan tribal agency facilitated the Feb 18 polling, where the tribespeople, unlike the rest of the tribal regions, evinced a keen interest in exercising their right to vote.

Almost a day earlier, in the militants-dominated North Waziristan Agency, the government had struck another peace deal with militants with the hope of restoring peace to the militancy-stricken tribal region.

In the peace deal, the government and tribal militants, who prefer to be called Taliban, had pledged to work together in future for maintenance of peace and resolving disputes.
The militants, on Dec 17, 2007, had announced a unilateral ceasefire and then extended it almost five times when the government reciprocated accordingly.

A senior militant commander on condition of anonymity said that the peace truce was signed in the grand 'jirga' where the militant commanders, tribal elders as well as government officials were present. He said that it was almost the same agreement which had been signed on Sep 5, 2006, between them and the government.

The government had almost made up its mind to reschedule polls in the adjacent North Waziristan after postponing the election on NA-42 in South Waziristan due to the mass migration of the Mahsud tribespeople to distant Tank, Dera Ismail Khan and other parts of the country as a result of clashes between security forces and Baitullah Mahsud-led militants.
Later, the government announced to conduct elections in North Waziristan but declared all the polling stations there the 'most sensitive' ones and suggested extraordinary security measures for holding free and fair polls.

Keeping in view the security concerns in the region, the government sought the help of the militants in conducting the election in a peaceful manner.

A senior government official said that the task was given to the Taliban after the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) and Khasadar force or tribal police personnel expressed their reluctance to provide security to the polling staff deputed in the remote and the most sensitive areas.
Tribespeople from parts of North Waziristan told TNS that not a single security personnel was sighted in almost all the 10 subdivisions of the volatile tribal region, including Miramshah, Mirali, Shawal, Data Khel, Ghulam Khan, Spinwam, Shawa, Dosali, Razmak and Garyum in the election day. Residents in Miramshah, North Waziristan's regional headquarters, said that militants were the ones who conducted the polls and provided security to the voters.

People felt it was primarily that reason, the presence of Taliban, which encouraged the already terrified tribesmen to come out of their homes and cast their votes.

"It seemed more like jubilation here. The people enthusiastically participated in elections and there were no signs of fear as the well-armed militants were deployed everywhere in and outside the polling stations," said Mohammad Salimullah, a tribesman while talking to the TNS by telephone from Miramshah.

The residents said that they felt a threat from the militants before the elections, but when learnt that they themselves were part of the game then everyone came to the polling station.

"It was the day of the militants and they proved themselves more capable than those who were supposed to do the job," said Haji Gul Halim, a resident of Dande Darpakhel town, near Miramshah.

During the polling, witnesses said, heavily armed militants were seen patrolling the streets and thoroughly searching voters before entering the polling stations.

"In some of the polling stations, militants, even briefly detained people for allegedly violating the Taliban's code of conduct which they had set for the election," said Mohammad Rahman in Mirali town, the second biggest town of the agency.

He, however, added that the Taliban were later seen releasing the detainees and giving them advice to help the people elected a sincere and pious representative. Interestingly, when the polls finished, militants informed the local political authorities that their job was finished and that they should collect the ballot boxes.

"The ballot boxes were then taken in armoured personnel carriers (APCs) to Miramshah and the name of the successful candidate was announced," said a government official, but wished not to be named.

16 candidates were contesting the election for the lone National Assembly seat of North Waziristan Agency (NA-40). Except for a few, like PML-Q's Ajmal Khan, who served as federal minister in the past, and an

independent candidate Abdul Qayyum, the majority of the contestants belonged to Maulana Fazlur Rahman's Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F), but only Maulana Nek Zaman, a former pro-MMA MNA from North Waziristan, was JUI-F nominee on NA-40.

The remaining candidates, including Aurangzeb, Haji Kamran Khan, Fazal Subhan, Mufti Sadeequllah and Nisar Ali were JUI-F dissidents and decided to contest when the party refused their nomination for the election.

Some of them are considered to be very close to the militants, including Abdullah Shah, who belongs to a banned outfit Al-Rashid Trust, Haji Kamran Khan and a few others. Now some of the losing candidates had started raising questions over this unique trend of involving militants to hold elections.

They have accused the government of allowing militants to help elect their blue-eyed candidate, Haji Kamran Khan in the polls.

They said that the militants organised a huge rally in support of the winning candidate and fired shots in the air when Kamran Khan was declared the winner.

(Coutesy The News)

My Comment: This report of cooperation between Taliban and the Government of Pakistan in Waziristan suggests that if there is enough will for peaceful co-existance, peace might not be so elusive an ideal, after all. Indeed, it suggests that while US and Taliban may remain irreconcilable, the same may not be true for Pakistan and Taliban. In the interests of the people, both parties can, and should, arrive at some reconciliation. Pakistani state, on the other hand, would do well to learn from history and keep itself out of that difficult region; above all, it would do well to spill less blood, there and everywhere else.

(http://pakistanmartiallaw.blogspot.com/2008/02/taliban-facilitated-elections-in.html)