"The Shameful Slapping"

Pakistan, a nation of approximately 180 million plus people, as a society stands on crossroads of change. Not just in attitudes but also in terms of correcting many ills that its people have developed over the years which are numerous, countless and priceless in all respects! One such ill was witnessed by millions of people via television, and those who were present there; on the scene. The incident happened at Tando Muhammad Khan on Saturday (24^th February 2012, the By-election day), Polling Station No 16 at Government Girls High School, where Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) candidate Waheeda Shah lost her temper  at a polling station of PS-53, and beat the female polling staff in the face with policemen and voters among the onlookers. The two victims of this incident were; Incharge presiding officer; Habiba Memon and Assistant presiding officer, Shagufta Memon.  Publically assaulting and humiliating the polling officers, who, by profession are teachers at the local school. Teaching faculty is usually called upon by the Election Commission to cover and monitor the polls of the day, it is a formal request that teachers of that certain area put up with.  
Teachers play a cardinal role in the character building of a nation along with the parents, sharing the task of formulating a personality of future. No other entity can have an influence more profound than that of a teacher. Students are intensely affected by a teacher’s love & affection, his/her grace, character, competence, and their moral commitment.  Children take them as their ideals, in manners, costumes, etiquettes, style of conversation and his/her aura. Teachers cultivate and nurture in their students: Promotion of punctuality, truth, hard work, honesty, simplicity, hygiene, patriotism, mutual love/harmony, self-control, sincerity, civic sense, obedience to law, tolerance, in short, cultivate human virtues, grooming with tremendous excellence. Young generation can never forget their teachers ever, in every phase of life, a teacher’s guidance at that tender age, becomes a lineament till he/she is alive.
The shame, anger, humiliation and embarrassment that teacher or polling staff suffered that day is irreparable. A personal attack like that by the female PPP candidate; must have left the victims with low self worth, defeated and defective. Since shame is related to a person’s “self” this becomes a part of victim’s identity, and it follows into affecting everything that he/she does. Victimization done in such an audacious manner is despicable. 

A case has been registered against Waheeda Shah, on the directives of the Provincial Election Commissioner, Returning Officer Ali Asghar went to the police station in Tando Mohammad Khan and after an investigation the case was registered against Waheeda Shah. According to the police the case was filed under 86/3 b. Under this clause Shah will be tried for interfering with official affairs and can face a prison sentence of three months. Chief Election Commissioner Justice (r) Hamid Ali Mirza on Monday directed to take action against Sindh Assembly candidate Waheeda Shah for slapping the polling official as well as the police personnel for negligence of duty. He took serious notice of the incident and directed the Provincial Election Commissioner, Sindh to take necessary action under the law.

One wonders where the leadership of PPP is on this. Why there has been no collective admonishment by the party authority? Why did they not issue a show cause notice to their party candidate?  Would the PPP take onus for this or would it pass it on the ECP to decide?  What is holding them back? Who will correct this? Is thuggish behavior pivotal to remain in power for them? Where are the human rights activists? Do they not think this was an issue worth voicing for?
The most interesting thing is:: This was not the first time Ms. Shah had assaulted polling officers. A widow now while her husband Mr.Mohsin Shah (late) was alive, for his election she stormed into men’s polling station and slapped a male polling officer. No charges were put against her then too. Her husband passed away a month ago, and on her request the PPP issued a ticket. After the mayhem on Saturday, Waheeda Shah got hold of humiliated officer to speak in her favor of her in front of media. Influential Ms. Shah, a big landlord of the area, and a feudal attitude to back up her actions, forced the poor teacher Shagufta to give a statement against herself and in the former's defence. Residents from Waheeda Shah's constituency commented that the woman in Burqa was not the one who was slapped and humiliated yesterday. For the sake of argument if one does believe the woman in Burqa was Shagufta, the assaulted victim, defending the wrongdoer may lay bare the helplessness of the officer but it cannot give Ms. Shah a clean tab.

  The lady aspires to become a parliamentarian; she would have been in assembly to legislate bills for the future of Pakistan. One wonders, with such short fuse in candidates, would they be fit enough to sit in the highest house of the land? Pakistan has suffered enough, the echo of such ruthless slaps are still evident on the ailing body of the country. Politicians should have a heart and stop these hypocritical ways otherwise; the citizens of this country are on the tipping point, they will do what they have never done before: Stand up and Fight!!
 
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The above article got published on the following links:
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=142965

http://www.dailyausaf.com/edi_detail.php?id=5620&art_id=64 

 

"The Bagram Burning"

The US want to hold the reigns in these countries through tales of mischief & secrets, allowing a labyrinth of hidden mistakes that become thrillers of real life!
Supremacy of God is indisputable, so is the case of all Holy Scriptures. Unfortunately, in case of Quran, Bible, Torah, Bhagwat Gita and Guru Granth or the Buddhist statues this isn’t the first time desecration happened, there have been numerous reports before and in the decade of 2000 about such incidents. Tuesday 21^st February 2012 was one of those days when such a “mistake” happened.

Afghan workers at the main American military base, Bagram Air Field, saw soldiers dumping books in a pit where garbage is burned and noticed numerous Qurans and other religious material among the trash. The Afghan laborers found charred copies of the Quran while collecting rubbish at the sprawling Bagram Airbase about an hour's drive north of Kabul.
In retaliation to this, thousands of Afghans took to the streets again, chanting anti-American slogans; protests erupted in Logar (province east of the Capital), Parwan where dozens were left wounded and almost  18 Afghans have been killed along with two US soldiers since Tuesday in protests over the burning of the Quran copies. Twenty-one people, including 11 policemen, were wounded in the capital, said Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul police's crimes unit.The American Embassy in Afghanistan said its staff were in "lockdown" and travel had been suspended as thousands of people expressed fury over the burning, a public relations disaster for U.S.-led NATO forces fighting Taliban militants ahead of the withdrawal of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

 In April 2011, after Terry Jones, a Florida pastor oversaw the burning of a Quran, angry demonstrators in northern Afghanistan stormed a United Nations compound following Friday prayers, killing seven foreigners.
To further establish an understanding of how things would be: There are always two angles to any story. The first could be what the official statement has come out saying it was a mere mistake. The said manuscripts were being burnt since some of them had secret messages between prisoners and a decision was made without clear analysis obviously, to destroy them so that they could not be used in future.       

On the other hand there are some who believe that the
The Quran was of course intentionally burned and its desecration advertised to keep the hatred, the hostilities, the WARS going on; after all the US economy depends on it,  a possibility of this act being deliberate to cause more confusion, hatred, division between the West and East. With tens and thousands of foreign troops in Afghanistan, a withdrawal of troops announced for 2014, this could be a treasure trove for the Military Industrial Complex, so rightly indicated & warned by then US President Eisenhower ( in his address of January 17^th 1961). According to SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), total world spending on military expenses in 2009 was $1.531 trillion US dollars. 46.5% of this total, roughly $712 billion US dollars, was spent by the United States. The lion's share of the spending was $708 billion which was allocated to the war in Iraq since the U.S. led invasion there in 2003, according to CBO. Former President George Bush launched the Iraq war in a search for weapons of mass destruction, which never were found!

CBO said $345 billion has gone to Afghanistan, where the United States invaded to fight al Qaeda and topple the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. About $22 billion went for war-related activities in other countries, it said.

The current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, is the first year that more money has been allocated to Afghanistan ($72.3 billion) than Iraq ($64.5 billion), according to the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan budget research group that has a running tally of the wars' costs on its Website.

The group included some U.S. homeland security spending in those 2010 cost tallies. According to the Associated Press, since 2001, the death toll of US and Coalition forces is 2628. While the young American soldiers were dying, and the civilian population was being brutally murdered, in this time period they managed to drain oil from Iraq for ten years and a thriving narcotics trade from Afghanistan. Which the future will tell could amount to maybe in trillions of dollars. So what they spent on these wars in terms of figures and facts have, in reality, been drained out from these countries very smoothly.
 Grass roots truth is quite the opposite of what is propagated of War on Terror in mainstream media. In reality, US and its allies have panicked, and in these “Panic Saigon” moments, dejected and defeated super power will do all those acts that can be considered in-human.  It is an eye-opener for the whole world that poor people of this region have brought down the might of the Super power. So what can the Super power do in return: Spit on their graves, Urinate on their dead bodies or burn their Holy Books? That’s the extent of hatred, frustration and inability which depicts in their behavior.

They wanted to rule the land of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran but they have been badly punished, killing, maiming hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians who had peaceful lives before the US-Invasions happened. US’s route to democracy in this part of the region has been a blood bath for the occupants of this area and its troops.
 Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires was never conquered as we all know, either by the British or the Russians. Such sparks in a terrain like that is foolishness on the part of occupying forces or rather quite inept way of winning hearts and minds of local people. Do they not understand a simple philosophy of “disrespectful” behavior to the local customs and traditions? Similar incidents in the past have caused deep divisions and resentment among Afghans towards the tens of thousands of foreign troops in Afghanistan.  Wars based on lies and deceit are being fought by people barely out of their diapers for greedy grey haired corporate political elites hungry for other countries money and resources, military and construction contracts! Painting a picture to the rest of the world that: It’s a legitimate fight for democracy. While aforementioned contracts are doled out, and civil liberties in the US are being reduced to zero.Anyone who has a grain of sense in them knows that Muslim faith is indoctrinated in its followers from birth to death with the tenets of Islam. Any insult to the Prophet or the Quran is a trigger point for the faithful with unbridled rage and violent fury. Live and let live, we could all use a little bit of that golden rule. You know the one that says to; “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This also clarifies that wars in the 21^st century too are not won by sophisticated weapons rather it is the faith in God that gets a sure-shot victory. They are not welcoming you in their country. Please, reserve some left over self-respect and leave.


The above article published on the following link:

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=142078

http://nationalpriorities.org/en/pressroom/articles/2012/02/26/the-bagram-burning/

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"The Baloch Incinerate"

 Honesty today will bring fruits tomorrow. Let’s do a soul check and see what, where and how we went wrong, how come we let our Baloch brothers and sisters become fodder for a burning canon! The unrest in Balochistan is a symptom of deep rooted hatred against the policies of the Central Government and several military operations. Can the strategy of treating symptoms yield fruit in Balochistan?

Kalat joined Pakistan on the agreement that defence, currency, foreign office and finance will be controlled by the federal govt but that the rest the province will control by itself. However, after the death of Mr. Jinnah, formation of one unit changed this situation and it was merged into Pakistan like other areas. After independence in 1947, with the British gone, to this day, Balochistan has not experienced much development. Due to historical poverty as result of its geographic location and royalty’s formula which benefits a handful of few tribal leaders, it has developed at a much slower rate than other parts of Pakistan. Balochistan, a tribal land where freedom does not come easy for a common man, illiteracy is promulgated to keep population under control of the wayward feudal system, and the feudal themselves struggle for recognition by the federal government and other provinces.
The population of this province is approximately eight million, comprising nearly 44 percent of the country’s landmass and is, by far, the richest one in terms of natural resources. Today most of the young and middle age population of this province are deprived of basic necessities of life, namely: Clean drinking water, health units, schools, hospitals, jobs, roads, railways and economic growth. Why is the provincial Government in Balochistan not meeting up with all the above? Why does the army have to do all the above for the people of that area?  If the army has to do the job of maintenance of law and order in Balochistan and do the work of provision of social amenities for the Baloch, what is the job of the provincial government?

It is estimated around 90% of girls in Balochistan are deprived of schooling, a lack of necessary funds, absence of a well defined education policy, lack of girls schools, acute shortage of teaching staff, and poverty are other factors which contribute to the backwardness of the province.  Except for the provincial capital Quetta, educational institutions are non-existent on Baloch dominated areas. One cannot find schools from Mastung to Gwadar, most neglected parts of this province where Baloch girls are not educated are: Buleda (Makran), Kharan, Bolan, Marri and Bugti tribal areas. A primary level school that was established in the remote area of district Khuzdar at Naal (1975-76) is still not upgraded by the provincial government, despite repeated demands of the local people.

Students of Balochistan have been deprived from their basic human right which is education: A lack of educational institutions from school to university. There is only one medical college, only one engineering university. Transferring education to province will make difference if it is implemented with its true sense.

The parallel economy thriving in Balochistan is smuggling in which local tribal heads and numerous politicians have used their backing. It is quantum & earnings particularly from drug trafficking, gun running, contraband goods and cars/vehicles has increased greatly, which is literally crippling the country’s economy. It is mainly due to the long and porous borders that provide a wide choice and flexibility to the smugglers and their goods.
 The role of the police is confined to the municipalities while the rural area is traditionally policed by the Levies.   8 provincial ministers have purchased smuggled bullet-proof vehicles. Which is said that these bullet-proof vehicles were booked from UAE for Afghanistan and after that these were brought to Quetta through the routes which were used for smuggling of goods from Afghan border in Qila Abdullah district. 0.4 to 0.5 million rupees are paid for bringing these vehicles from Afghan border to Quetta, sources said, and added that through this act a huge loss has been inflicted to the national kitty. In 2009, rocket launchers, mortar shells, SMG/Kalashnikovs, RPG-7 rockets, 107mm antiaircraft guns, antitank mines, and antipersonnel mines were seized which belonged to a high-profile official who is a member of the Balochistan cabinet. Balochistan is not only a smuggling destination; it now holds stockpiles of illegal weapons. Border issues are the biggest reason for the growth in arms trafficking. Past governments have made half-hearted efforts to seize illicit arms or regularize the sale of weapons. The Chaman check post is considered to be a hub of smuggling. (Without the involvement of border security forces guns and other merchandize cannot be smuggled into the province, there is something suspicious at upper level)

As the Eid-ul-Azha nears, Balochistan witnesses an unprecedented increase in illegal cattle and flock smuggling to Afghanistan and Iran. Over a hundred trucks loaded with cattle and flocks cross the Iran and Afghan borders with complete impunity. Smugglers can also transport cattle on foot. A driver of single truck load of such animals, pays around Rs 30,000 to personnel concerned, they include; Frontier Corps, Customs and Federal Investigation Agency for backing the illegal smuggling,  and the DCs, Commissioners who issue the permits to the smugglers. If the DCs and Commissioners stop the issue of permits, FC and other agencies will also have no excuse to let these people smuggle the animals or recycle the old permits. A point regarding FC Balochistan: This force has no semblance of a disciplined unit of an armed force. They are involved in all type of grafts and smuggling.

All Pakistani Central governments, especially post-Musharraf, has deserted the province and the army and ISI have an overwhelming role, because of which the insurgency is now getting out of Islamabad's control. It shows why reconciliation efforts, like the 18th Amendment and the NFC awards, have been unable to stop the Baloch from pursuing what they call a nationalist movement. According to the HRCP’s statement in December 2011: This land of extra judicial killings, disappearances, Security forces (SF) high handedness, and repression, as well as a playground for terrorists operating. The Province witnessed 711 fatalities, including 542 civilians, 122 SF personnel and 47 militants in 2011, as against 347 fatalities, comprising of 274 civilians, 59 SF personnel and 14 militants in 2010, Overall fatalities in 2011 thus increased by 104.89 per cent over the preceding year. Incidents of killing rose by 116 per cent, from 150 in 2010 to 321 in 2011. Further, the number of major incidents (each involving three or more fatalities) increased by 152.17 percent, with 58 such incidents recorded in 2011, as against 23 in 2010. Bodies; of at least 225 ‘missing persons’ have been recovered from various parts of the Province since July 2010. The situation is particularly grave for non-Muslims and minority Muslim sects. As many as 80 members of the Shia community have been killed in the Province this year [2011] alone, for no reason other than their religious belief.  HRCP also has serious concern at targeted killing of teachers, intellectuals and non-Baloch ‘settlers’ in Balochistan. The murder of two HRCP activists and three journalists in the Province in 2011 signifies the dangers that those highlighting human rights violations face on a daily basis. It is a matter of grave alarm that 107 new cases of enforced disappearance have been reported in Balochistan in 2011, and the ‘missing persons’ are increasingly turning up dead. It is scandalous that not a single person has been held accountable for these disappearances and killings.
Terrorist violence in Balochistan has had a significant sectarian overlay. Balochistan witnessed 89 fatalities in 12 incidents of sectarian violence in 2011. 11 of these occurred in Quetta alone, with 63 persons killed. The remaining incident occurred in Mastung District. In the worst such attack in 2011, 26 Shia pilgrims were shot dead by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) militants in Taftan, a town that shares border with Iran, in the Ganjidori area of Mastung District, on September 20, 2011.               
Amidst all this mayhem, where there is a will there is a way, provided if we REALLY want to:  There are 2 ways to tackle the issue. First is the Baloch way which is to leave them alone and make them master of their own destiny and let the evolution process take place, may be slow but relatively peaceful. Alternate to that is number of steps: First build road networks in Baloch Area, followed by good school with good teachers, followed by hospitals and homes, create jobs for the youth of the province. All this can be done by generating money right from Baloch land.  Bolan area offers a lot for the generation of economic activity. An irrigation network can be established, cotton can be grown, ginning factories can be established and livestock can be reared to accrue benefits to the local people. There is an urgent need to generate economic activity in Balochistan. Further, instead of giving the army or its allied departments — including the ISI and the FC –the role of the police, IB and CID should be strengthened. Balochistan needs to be administered on civilized terms.  Baloch do not want any development planning done by Islamabad. They liked that Local Government System. We have to respect Baloch People and their wishes. Public is innocent and illiterate they are making ends meet on day to day basis, Sardars want to stay on top, they think they are the owners of all of the resources of Balochistan, they manage militants, they are also responsible for killing non-Balochi’s in the province with the help and money of Afghanistan, Iran, UAE, India, America, China.

The federal government will have to restore the confidence of the Baloch people by undertaking some Confidence Building Measures. These CBMs should include a maximum possible withdrawal of troops from the settled areas. Political and economic empowerment can bring positive social changes not only in the lives of the people of Balochistan but also in their views on the federal government and its agencies. The present democratic government and all the political parties must come out of the mute state, to win the hearts and minds of the Baloch people to save the federation of Pakistan.

Published on the following links:
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=141257#.T0NvfHj2Qtk.facebook

http://www.sarokar.net/2012/02/baloch-incinerate/

http://www.dailyausaf.com/edi_detail.php?id=5562&art_id=64

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"Our Mindset Reviewed"

We are a nation of zealous, highly emotional and spirited people. A lot has been written about our characteristics and how we behave. Numerous writers from home and abroad have commented on how we react on certain happenings. Situation how grave maybe, our outlook remains always the same, couldn’t care less, numb, if it’s not happened to me, everything’s alright. How long can we go on acting this ways? Now is the time we ponder on our behaviour and analyze our weakness, fallbacks, let’s all of us do an inner checkpoint and review our actions.

Our biggest fallback in my view is the blame game we so inherently carry out. Everything bad is associated to India/ United States/ Israeli agenda, active plotting of enemies of Pakistan. Never have we sought to the nearest of all “ourselves” for any bad thing happening to us on daily basis. Outside factors play a more major role in our lives rather than the rule of taking the responsibility individually.

The caste/clan culture that exists so deeply in our society has played a major role in the blame game. The Pakistani mindset is clearly marked by a set of persistent assumptions; personalizing the impersonal! Anything or everything is attributed to someone’s manipulation and malevolent intentions are it:  flood disaster, earthquake rehabilitation, poverty, a child’s truancy, marital problems, electrical failures, broken roads etc. You name the domestic problems and there is always a person to blame, a name to throw the bulk of blame on. Anything positive or worthwhile happening in the lives is always good will!

Ethnicity is another factor in the deteriorating scenario of attitudes. Blaming the ethnic Punjabi’s, Sindhi’s, Pathan’s and Balochi’s over each other is becoming the new “in” thing. Throwing the blame of Punjabi’s not being fair on the rest of the ethnicities are some of the cheap ways our people have adopted to gain popularity, politicians banking on such a slogan.

 Conspiracy as a cause of events is a constant. The theory is packaged in a paradigm that can be slapped on any situation. In other societies conspiracy theories are marginal; in Pakistan they are main stream. Responsible people propound them and school textbooks offer them as historical truths. Then there is the Pakistani doublethink. The West is portrayed as immoral and yet almost everyone wishes to migrate to the West.

Incompetency, contributes 70% and corruption contributes 30% of the 100% failure of the government. Every Government department in the world today needs expertise that are educated and trained in the specific fields….look at us! The worse people who got themselves elected with fake degrees in basic graduation are the sole fathers all the departments today. For example, the federal education minister found asking a student whether A’ levels is before O’ levels because alphabetically A is before O!! If this is competency level of the head of any department be it Education, health, petroleum, water and power etc. what to expect of the juniors. Here God would go hands up too!  

Corruption is at peak level. What elaborate starting from any department and ending on any sector anything and everything is dependent upon give and take of money. The Current government is concentrating for 5 years in power and making as much money as they can, to take care of the next four generations, they know that they will not be elected next time, they are not bothered and as the track record shows maybe after 10 years of cycle they will return to power again. Everyday life is based on ad hoc decisions and personalized dealings.

 Road traffic in Pakistan is another example of doublethink. Drivers’ curse others for breaking the rules, yet routinely cross red lights, drive on the wrong side of the road wrongly park the car, over speed in city limits or tailgate. The archetype of the Holy Warrior is embedded in the Pakistani psyche. Pakistanis also believe that given the right connections, anything can be fixed. The pursuit of the ‘fix’ feeds back on the state, making it all the more arbitrary. The going abroad culture is strong and underscores Pakistani enterprise and the desire to pursue success and advancement in life.

We should as a nation contemplate and do some inner searching to where we are headed, all is still not lost in the storm of being selfish, mean and malicious. There is good out there but concentrated in certain pockets of our society, we need to take that good out and start planning from now on. Our citizens who are into charities and social work should be boasted by us, should be taken as examples of surviving against all odds. We should concentrate in helping those people; for only on self reliance can we survive.

(This article was published in May 2010 by Ausaf Urdu Newspaper)
http://www.dailyausaf.com/edi_detail.php?id=2471&art_id=64

Copyright ©2011-2050 Ayesha Zee Khan. Reproduction: Poetry/articles/stories strictly prohibited.. Watermark template. Template images bymicheldenijs. Powered by Blogger.