Archive for May, 2009

Brigadier Imtiaz: How a Jilted Woman saved Pak N-programme

May 31, 2009 at 9:55 am · Filed under ISI, Pakistan ·Tagged , ,

May 28, 2009                   Brig Imtiaz reveals 30-year-old secret

By Rauf Klasra

433_2218As the nation celebrates the eleventh anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests today (May 28), a shocking 30-year-old secret has been exposed. It reveals how a young woman college lecturer, feeling betrayed after a romance with a nuclear scientist of the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP), had given a lead to the ISI in 1978, which in turn had led to the dramatic arrest of 12 Pakistani scientists and engineers, planning to sabotage Pakistan’s nuclear sites at the behest of a superpower.

The startling spy ring was exposed by this female college lecturer of a Karachi Memon family to the then head of ISI Sindh Brig Imtiaz Ahmed (Operation Midnight Jackals fame), only because she wanted revenge from her lover for being unfaithful. The expose led to the arrest of Pakistani scientists who were later given death and life imprisonment sentences by the special tribunal set up by the then president General Ziaul Haq.

Brig (retd) Imtiaz Ahmed broke his silence of over 30 years to share this amazing operation with The News on the eve of the 11th annual celebration of Pakistan going nuclear. He said that while many people take credit for saving our nuclear programme, no one actually knows how an unsung jilted girl had actually ended up saving Pakistan’s nuclear project out of sheer vengeance.

Brig (retd) Imtiaz Ahmed served as director in charge Internal Security ISI for several years in Islamabad and later director general Intelligence Bureau (IB) in the first government of Nawaz Sharif. The then prime minister Benazir Bhutto had put him in jail for about three years on charges of being part of the operation to oust her in 1989 during her first government. Later, General Musharraf also put him in jail for four years till his acquittal by the Lahore High Court. He is the only spymaster of Pakistan who was jailed for eight years, after serving 15 years in the ISI and the IB.

Brig Imtiaz recalled that as a lieutenant colonel he was posted as chief ISI Sindh in 1978. One day he received a telephone call from the sister of A K Brohi, who was a psychologist in Karachi. She informed him that she was treating a female young patient who was suffering from a disease called “secret concealment” wherein a patient could not be cured unless he or she shared this secret with someone.

The lady doctor had confessed to Brig Imtiaz that she had failed to make the girl reveal the secret and thought maybe he could help her. He then went to meet the woman at the clinic. She was very beautiful and had done her Masters in English Literature and was teaching at a local college.

After some initial talk, the woman finally told him that she was carrying a very dangerous secret with her but made it clear that she would not share it even if she was killed. She told him that she knew very well that the intelligence people were not trustworthy, as they usually use the people and then don’t care what had happened to them. Brig Imtiaz told her that if she was not ready to trust him, then he was ready to arrange her meetings with the then DG ISI General Riaz Mohammad (uncle of MNA Shahid Khaqan Abbasi). But, she refused. Brig Imtiaz did not lose heart and told her that he could arrange her meeting with General K M Arif who was then chief of staff to Gen Zia. When she refused again, as a last resort Brig Imtiaz offered to take her to meet President Gen Zia to share this strange secret which had made her life a living hell. But, the woman did not agree to any of these names to share her dangerous secret as she feared she might be killed.

According to Brig Imtiaz, he could have easily picked her up and kept her in a safe house for a few days in isolation to make her reveal the secret but he did not adopt this traditional style of the intelligence officers. For a few days, according to his own version, Brig Imtiaz grappled with the dilemma of whether to wait or to just pick her up and try extracting information through traditional methods.

It was during these days that one day while on his way to Clifton and driving by the consulate of a superpower, he saw a red colour Mazda car bearing a private number plate going inside at a very fast speed but he never really gave it another thought. But later, when he was sitting with the man in Clifton whom he had gone to meet, all of a sudden, his mind started working and he thought of the same red Mazda car and how it was allowed inside the consulate within a few seconds. He immediately ordered his men to stay vigilant outside the consulate and keep a tab on the car when it came out. But the red Mazda did not come out of the consulate building till late at night. Next morning, he went to his office and took out the Karachi metropolitan map and divided it into eight sectors. He gave motorcycles and cars to his ISI people with the directions to keep on roaming in these eight sectors all the time and note the registration numbers of all such red Mazda cars which were very few in those days. This exercise continued for a month but there was no big success. He kept on checking the registration numbers of red Mazda cars but no suspect was found.

One day, he got a red Mazda number which was rented out to someone from a Tariq Road showroom. One Rafique Munshi had rented that car. He had also given his address to the showroom. He was living in Garden East in MPA hostel in a suite. When the credentials of Munshi were checked, Brig Imtiaz came to know that he was working in the KANUPP as an engineer. The brigadier was immediately reminded of the female lecturer and went to meet the Memon lady. He again called the sister of Dr A K Brohi and requested her to arrange a meeting with her patient.

During the meeting, he suddenly asked the lady whether she knew Munshi. As he uttered the name, she started weeping. It took her a while to regain her composure but then she started sharing the secret which she was not ready to share earlier. She admitted that she and Munshi had been class fellows at Karachi University. Both had a serious love affair and he had promised to marry her. She said that they had also developed an illicit sexual relationship. But then he suddenly disappeared from Karachi and she could not trace him anywhere.

After four long years, he suddenly resurfaced in Karachi and was a totally changed man. Before going into hiding, he was a poor guy, but now he was loaded with dollars and leading a luxurious life. She also saw the photograph of a very beautiful foreign girl in his wallet. She then admitted to the brigadier that she was still dating Munshi but felt betrayed and cheated as she believed he had spoiled her life. She told Brig Imtiaz that she was thinking to take revenge from him but then she could not dare because it might have also harmed her.

Then the secret broke. The woman told him that one day, when Munshi left for his office, he left his safe open. She looked at the half-open safe and could not resist the temptation to check its contents. She was startled to see piles of dollars inside along with some official secret files. These papers were related to Pakistan’s nuclear sites and installations. This information was enough for Brig Imtiaz to proceed further as he understood the nature of the secret the woman was carrying with her for so many months and becoming sick in the process.

He asked her to help him get a key to Munshi’s suite so that he could himself inspect the stuff. She provided him the alternate key. With the help of a 70-year-old key-making expert Brig Imtiaz managed to open the foreign made safe and made copies of documents which were primarily questions and the answers related to Pakistan’s nuclear sites and the people working there.

Obviously Engineer Munshi was working for the secret agency of a superpower which used to provide him questions and he used to give them the replies to those questions related to the nuclear programme. This was the same man who was seen taking his red Mazda car inside the foreign consulate. Brig Imtiaz did not touch the dollars and kept putting the documents back after making copies. He now wanted to capture the whole gang, as he came to know through the papers that the agents of this secret agency of a superpower were also present in Kahuta and other important installations where the nuclear programme was being executed.

Munshi was simply playing the role of an agent between the foreign secret agency and Pakistani scientists working at those installations. After a labour of ten months and armed with necessary information, the matter was then brought to the notice of DG ISI Riaz Mohammad.

In the meantime, Brig Imtiaz came to know through those secret communications through papers that Munshi was to meet a foreign secret agent at Hawkes Bay Karachi to hand over some documents. He decided to arrest them red handed. He only took his driver along. When the two were exchanging documents, he tried to arrest them; and to his surprise, the agent shot at him but missed. But he, along with his driver, overpowered them and shifted them to a safe house.

Soon they had the names of 12 other officers at Kahuta and other places who were part of this plan to sabotage the nuclear sites. According to the plot, these nuclear scientists and engineers working on the payroll of a secret agency, were to develop huge technical sabotage of the programme to an extent that it could not have been repaired or fixed for some years to come. They all were arrested from various places in the light of information given by Brig Imtiaz.

It was revealed that actually the foreign secret agency had deputed five handlers from Washington to deal with the nuclear programme of Pakistan. These five foreign handlers included two girls, one of whose photos was seen by the heartbroken girlfriend of Munshi which made her jealous and she decided to take revenge.

Brig Imtiaz was immediately called to Islamabad to give a briefing to General Ziaul Haq The five handlers were immediately told to leave Pakistan and General Zia was said to have called the president of this superpower to register a protest that how his country’s secret agency had tried to sabotage Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Zia was said to have expressed extreme displeasure over this espionage of nuclear programme. But, the president of that superpower was said to have requested Zia not to make it a public issue as it might tarnish his country’s image and Zia obliged him.

A special tribunal was set up to try all those Pakistani scientists and engineers on high treasons charges. The ringleader Munshi was sentenced to death while others were awarded life sentences by the court. But one fine morning, much to his shock, Brig Imtiaz learned that President Zia had commuted the death penalty of Munshi on the recommendation of a top Sindhi leader in exchange for his political support to the Zia regime.

After the arrest of Munshi, Brig Imtiaz met the lady lecture whose tip had led to unfold this international conspiracy against Pakistan nuclear programme. She was devastated and feeling very depressed as she told the ISI officer that she loved Munshi dearly but as he had betrayed her she could not spare him.

The woman had managed to take her revenge from her lover while Brig Imtiaz was happy to unearth such a big conspiracy for which he was later decorated with a Tamgha-e-Basalat by the president of Pakistan for his services to the nation.

“Listen, almost 30 years have passed since this incident, but till date I can’t forget how a heartbroken woman’s commitment to herself to take revenge from her lover had led to the unfolding of this secret, which, if not shared, might have deprived Pakistan of its nuclear assets and we might not be celebrating this day,” remarked Brig Imtiaz while lost in the memories of the past.

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The Idiot’s Guide to Pakistan

May 29, 2009 at 6:47 am · Filed under Pakistan ·Tagged , , , , ,

By Nicholas Schmidle

March 2009

MRWTNEveryone in Washington is talking about Pakistan, but few understand it. Here’s how to dazzle the crowd at your next Georgetown cocktail party.

CHEAT SHEET:

After eight years of a White House that often seemed blinkered by the threats posed by Pakistan, the Obama administration seems to grasp the severity of the myriad crises affecting the South Asian state. The media has followed suit and increased its presence and reporting, a trend confirmed by CNN’s decision to set up a bureau in Islamabad last year.

And yet, the uptick in coverage hasn’t necessarily clarified the who’s-doing-what-to-whom confusion in Pakistan. Some commentators continue to confuse the tribal areas with the NWFP. And the word lashkars is used to describe all kinds of otherwise cross-purposed groups, some fighting the Taliban, some fighting India, and some fighting Shiites.

I admit, it’s not easy. I lived in Pakistan throughout all of 2006 and 2007 and only came to understand, say, the tribal breakdown in South Waziristan during my final days. So to save you the trouble of having to live in Pakistan for two years to differentiate between the Wazirs and the Mehsuds, the Frontier Corps and the Rangers, I’ve written an “idiot’s guide” that will hopefully clear some things up.

1. The Troubled Tribals

Bring up the Pakistan-Afghanistan border at a Washington cocktail party and you’re sure to impress. Tick off the name of a Taliban leader or two and make a reference to North Waziristan, and you might be on your way to a lucrative lecture tour. The problem, of course, is that no one knows if you’ll be speaking the truth or not. A map of the border region is crammed with the names of agencies, provinces, frontier regions, and districts, which are sometimes flip-flopped and misused. With only an unselfish interest in making you more-impressive cocktail party material (and thus, getting you booked with a lecture agent during these economic hard times), I want to straighten some things out.

First off, the FATA are not part of the North-West Frontier Province. The two are separate entities in almost every sense of the word. While the NWFP is, well, a province with an elected assembly, the FATA are geographically separate areas governed through “political agents” who are appointed by the president and supported by the governor of NWFP (who is also a presidential appointee). Residents of NWFP technically live according to the laws drafted by the Parliament in Islamabad, while the only nontribal law applicable to residents of FATA is the Frontier Crimes Regulations, a colonial-era dictate sanctioning collective punishment for tribes and subtribes guilty of disrupting the peace.

Within FATA, there are seven “agencies” and six “frontier regions.” The agencies are Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, North Waziristan and South Waziristan; the somewhat more governed frontier regions (FRs) cling like barnacles to the eastern edge of FATA and include FR Peshawar, FR Kohat, FR Bannu, FR Lakki, FR Tank, and FR Dera Ismail Khan, each of them named after the “settled” districts they border.

All residents of FATA and the vast majority of those in NWFP are ethnically Pashtuns. Pashtuns also make up the majority in Baluchistan, the vast province bordering Iran and Afghanistan, which is named after the minority Baluch. Besides NWFP and Baluchistan, there are two other provinces in Pakistan; Punjab is populated mostly by ethnic Punjabis, and Sindh was historically dominated by Sindhis until millions of Muslims migrated from India at the time of Partition and settled in Sindhi cities such as Karachi and Hyderabad. Now, Sindh is composed of ethnic Sindhis and the descendents of these migrants, known as mohajirs.

Foreigners are prohibited from entering FATA without government permission. If you see a newspaper dateline from a town inside FATA, chances are that the Pakistani Army organized a field trip for reporters. Those traveling unaccompanied into, say, South Waziristan have either a death wish or a really good rapport with the Taliban, who effectively run North and South Waziristan and large portions of the other agencies and frontier regions. The recalcitrance of the tribesmen is hardly something new. In the words of Lord Curzon, the former viceroy of India: “No patchwork scheme — and all our present recent schemes, blockade, allowances, etc., are mere patchwork — will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military steamroller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine.”

2. A Taliban Who’s Who

In December 2007, the smattering of bearded, black-turbaned, AK-47-toting gangs in FATA and NWFP announced that they would now answer to a single name, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban Movement. For decades, Pakistani jihadists have used such fancy names to declare splinter groups (many of which go unnoticed), but some analysts latched onto the TTP as gospel and postulated that, overnight, the Talibs had become disciplined and united. In the process, such analysts have overlooked important distinctions and divisions within the pro-Taliban groups operating in Pakistan.

Let’s start with a little history. In 1996, Mullah Mohammed Omar and his band of “Taliban” — defined in Urdu, Pashto, and Arabic as “students” or “seekers” — conquered Afghanistan. Five years later, the United States routed the Taliban government and the al Qaeda henchmen who had been operating under Mullah Omar’s protection. Many of them escaped into FATA, which is of course technically part of Pakistan but truthfully ruled by tribes whose loyalty, in this instance, fell with the Taliban and their foreign guests, al Qaeda. Before long, groups of men from FATA had begun banding together and crossing the border to fight against the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Pashtuns ignore the border separating Afghanistan and Pakistan, named the Durand Line after the Englishman who drew it in 1893; the Pashtun “nation” encompasses wherever Pashtuns may live. Fighting the Americans, therefore, was seen as self-defense, even for the residents of FATA. Meanwhile, al Qaeda was entrenching itself more and more in FATA. These largely Arab and Uzbek outsiders influenced a new Taliban mind-set, one far more aggressive toward the Pakistani military and disruptive toward the local, tribal traditions.

So, back to the cocktail party: Someone mentions Baitullah Mehsud, the man accused by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence of masterminding the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Although Mehsud is the nominal chief of the TTP, he has plenty of rivals, even in his native South Waziristan. Two major tribes populate South Waziristan: the Mehsuds and the Wazirs. The Wazirs dominate Wana, the main city in South Waziristan. But the ranking Taliban leader from the Wazirs, Maulvi Nazir, is a darling of Pakistan’s military establishment.

You’re probably scratching your head right now, a bit confused. You see, Nazir is only interested in fighting U.S., Afghan, and NATO forces across the border. He is not part of the TTP and has not been involved in the wave of violence sweeping Pakistan of late. Therefore, in the minds of Pakistani generals, he is a “good” Taliban versus Baitullah Mehsud, who is, in their mind, unequivocally “bad.” That’s just one example of Talibs living in Pakistan who do not necessarily come under the title “Pakistani Taliban” or the “Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan” moniker.

In Swat Valley, where Islamabad recently signed a peace treaty with the Taliban, the fissures among the militants are more generational. Swat, unlike South Waziristan, is part of NWFP and shares no border with Afghanistan. In the late 1980s, a group calling itself the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, TNSM or the Movement for the Establishment of the Law of Mohammed, launched a drive to impose Islamic law in Swat and its environs. They resorted to violence against the state in the 1990s on numerous occasions, including once taking over the local airport and blocking the main road connecting Pakistan to China.

After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the leader of TNSM, Sufi Mohammed, organized a group of madrasa students and led them across the border to combat the Americans. But only Sufi Mohammed returned. The legions who had followed him were “martyred,” or so he told their parents. Sufi Mohammed was thrown in jail by then president and Army chief Pervez Musharraf, and so he named his son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, to run TNSM in his stead. But Fazlullah had wider ambitions and assembled a several-hundred-man army vowing to fight the Pakistani government. The senior leadership of TNSM soon disowned Fazlullah, who happily embarked on his own and is now Mehsud’s deputy in the TTP. For the past year and a half, Fazlullah’s devotees have bombed, kidnapped, and assassinated anyone who’s dared to challenge their writ in Swat.

By 2008, Sufi Mohammed looked like a moderate in comparison to his son-in-law. So the Pakistani government asked him to mediate. Perhaps he could cool Fazlullah down. The recent treaty you’ve heard about in Swat is between the Pakistani government and Sufi Mohammed, who has pledged to bring Fazlullah on board. So far, the treaty has held, unless you count the soldiers who were killed by Fazlullah’s Talibs for not “informing the Taliban of their movements.”

 3. Kiss My Lashkar

You might have heard the word lashkar of late and wondered what a science fiction character was doing in Pakistan. This past fall, two distinctly different stories featured lashkars carrying out two distinctly different missions. In one, Lashkar-e-Taiba was executing a murderous campaign of violence in Mumbai; in another, lashkars were fighting against the Taliban in FATA. In other words, one was having a terrible effect while the other seemed to be doing some good. (Oh yeah, in another, less read story, Lashkar-e-Janghvi was killing Shiites in the southwestern city of Quetta.) So what gives? What’s a lashkar?

In Arabic, the language of Islam, a lashkar describes an irregular tribal militia. Say you’re a tribesman in South Waziristan who has beef with a member of a rival tribe. You need a posse. So you raise a lashkar. When news broke in October that the Pakistani government was sending Chinese-made AK-47s to tribesmen willing to defy Taliban rule in FATA, the weapons were said to be sent to lashkars. That’s a lashkar in the traditional sense of the word.

But Pakistan’s jihadi groups, to glorify their agendas, have long used the word lashkar in their names. (Other common Arabic names for army include sipah and jaish.) Although Lashkar-e-Taiba is committed to fighting the Indians over Kashmir, Lashkar-e-Janghvi is bent on killing Shiites, and Jaish-e-Mohammed seems ready to attack anyone. The proliferation of these terrorist militias became so bad that in January 2002, Musharraf was obliged to declare, “Our army is the only sipah and lashkar in Pakistan.”

4. Border Guards

If there was so much confusion over who was and wasn’t the real army in Pakistan that the Army chief had to intervene and clarify, perhaps someone from the Pakistani military should set the record straight on who’s fighting whom in FATA. This confusion came to a head last June, when a contingent of Pakistani forces, known as the Frontier Corps, was locked in a gun battle with U.S. soldiers across the border. The U.S. troops were pursuing Talibs attempting to retreat back across the border into Pakistan. The kerfuffle ended — at least the armed one, the diplomatic one was just starting — when a few bombs dropped by U.S. planes landed on the Frontier Corps outposts and killed 11 Pakistani border guards. So what’s the deal with the Frontier Corps? Whose side are they on anyway?

The Frontier Corps (FC) are a paramilitary force composed of roughly 80,000 men tasked with border security, law enforcement, and increasingly, counterinsurgency in FATA, NWFP, and Baluchistan. (Rangers fill similar tasks in Punjab and Sindh, the provinces bordering India.) By almost any definition outlining the ideal counterinsurgent, the FC would be it: They are almost all Pashtuns, more familiar with the language, the people, the tribes, and the terrain than any regular Pakistani soldier or U.S. troop could ever be. But their biggest advantage also happens to be their biggest liability, because Pashtuns are renowned for their sense of community; asking one Pashtun to kill another, especially when it’s seen as being done at the bidding of an “outsider,” be it Punjabi or American, would be like your boss telling you to kill your cousin. Not gonna happen, right?

The Pakistani leadership, and before them, the British, weren’t blind to this issue. To try to limit potential conflicts of interest, they said that Wazirs wouldn’t serve in Waziri areas, Afridis (based in Khyber agency and FR Kohat) wouldn’t serve in Afridi areas, and so on. Questions over ethnic sympathies simply couldn’t be surmounted, but this way at least concerns over clan and family sympathies could.

In the past few years, Washington has realized the significance of the FC and tried to enhance its fighting capability. (Traditionally, an FC corpsman would sport a salwar-kameez — the baggy trousers and tunic get-up — leather sandals, and an AK-47.) But the problems of getting money to the right FC units have been numerous.

First off, the FC falls under the Interior Ministry, not the Defense Ministry, which overseas the half-million-member Army and has received the lion’s share of U.S. aid since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Defense Ministry’s dominance of the aid game means that the money Washington gives Islamabad to reimburse Pakistani security forces for operations against the Taliban and al Qaeda, money known as Coalition Support Funds, hardly, if ever, trickles down to the FC units manning a border post in South Waziristan who are, truly, on the “front lines” of the so-called war on terror.

Second, there is an issue of command structure because the FC is officered by regular Army colonels and generals. And finally, there is the problem that, owing to the widespread anger among Pashtuns toward the United States and the Pakistani establishment, no one can say whether the FC won’t simply hand over night-vision goggles and new weapons to the Taliban, especially when oversight by U.S. officials in FATA, parts of NWFP, and Baluchistan is so scarce.

5. Finger on the Trigger

There is some leeway in the grooming standards and fitness levels expected by the Pakistani Army — especially for officers. Mornings are for praying and sleeping; lunches are for buffets; and evenings are for gallons of tea. Not much time for exercise, is there? And mustaches? The thicker, the better. Beards? The longer, the better. Does that mean that the Pakistani Army is composed of Islamic fundamentalists salivating at the opportunity to fire some nukes? Yes and no.

First a disclaimer: Most Pakistani soldiers consider India to be their mortal enemy and would like nothing more than to incinerate their neighbor. They get that from the grade-school textbooks. And they will usually frame the conflict between them and India as one between Islam and Hinduism. This ground has been pretty well covered by others who write about Pakistan.

But we should realize that anti-Indianism doesn’t translate to Talibanism, what with locking up womenfolk and caning criminals and all. Consider the serving chief of Army staff, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, who is beardless, reportedly enjoys an occasional Scotch and a game of bridge, chain-smokes cigarettes through a long plastic tip, and is a favorite of the Americans. In other words, he’s not likely to declare himself “Commander of the Faithful” anytime soon.

But what about the ISI? We hear so much about the ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence, being manned by al Qaeda sympathizers, sponsoring regional terrorism, and forming the vanguard of Islamism in Pakistan. Aren’t they Islamist?

Let’s complicate matters before we take up this question. The ISI is the intelligence wing of the military. The Army, meanwhile, has its own intelligence wing, confusingly named Military Intelligence (MI). The Interior Ministry has its own: Special Branch. And so on and so forth; there are more intelligence wings in Pakistan than there are varieties of dal. And when Pakistanis on the street suspect that they’re involved in something nefarious, they simply refer to “the agencies.” That way, there’s no need to specify which agency was responsible because no one has any idea who is behind what, frankly.

Are people within the ISI any more Islamist than any of the others? I don’t see why they would be. The ISI draws from the ranks of the regular Army (in addition to some civilians), the same Army that is commanded by Sandhurst-educated, Johnnie Walker Black Label-loving Anglophiles. What makes the ISI different is not so much its personnel as its agenda, an agenda that might, on any given day, include ferrying money to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan or training Lashkar-e-Taiba fighters to wage jihad against India in Kashmir. These programs are considered to serve Pakistan’s national interests, not the religious preferences of its generals.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t have any kind of soft corner for the agencies and certainly don’t want to seem an apologist for them. They kicked me out of the country once via deportation and chased me out another time by planting stories in the local press that I had been kidnapped. I feel no love for the ISI, MI, Special Branch, or any of their shady affiliates. But they’re not all the same. Keep that in mind at your next cocktail party. We should know what we’re talking about when we talk about Pakistan.

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Police on the Run in Malakand Region

May 28, 2009 at 11:35 am · Filed under Talibanization, Terrorism in Pakistan ·Tagged ,

May 26, 2009
Javed Aziz Khan

n1622361248_251391_574576[1]Almost 75 per cent desertion has been reported in Buner district police force while over 40 per cent are staying off the duties in Swat after deterioration in the law and order in Malakand division.

Over 30 per cent of the total strength of Malakand police has either quit jobs or cops are not reporting to their police stations concerned and offices for the past several months. Not only the constabulary but senior officers are also avoiding posting in Malakand for the past two years.

“Almost 310 cops out of the total 400 policemen have reportedly deserted the force in Buner while 820 have quit jobs in Swat. The Swat police comprise of around 2000 policemen,” a source disclosed.

Besides, those, who are not reporting to their respective stations despite repeated orders, include over a 100 cops of the Elite Police Force (EPF) and four platoons, comprising around 136 individuals, of the Frontier Constabulary.

Also, 175 cops have deserted from amongst the 1,300 strength of Dir Lower and over 70 out of the total 800 policemen of Dir Upper districts.

The EPF had already refused to be deployed in Swat when they were tasked to improve the law and order situation there around four months back, saying they would prefer quitting jobs to posting in “the death zone”. The same was the stance of the cops of EPF and policemen of different districts of Frontier when they were directed to report to Buner.

The inspector general of police (IGP) had recently directed the cops of Buner Police migrating along with their families to the IDP camps, to report to their respective police stations and offices. However, the call fell on deaf ear.

Once considered prized posting for senior police officers of the Frontier, Swat valley has lost attraction for the cops as majority has made all-out efforts during the last many months to have their transfer to the volatile district cancelled. Apart from DPOs, SPs, DSPs and SHOs are using all their contacts to put pressure on the Frontier police authorities for transferring them out of the picturesque town. The job is now left to those who are either junior or have no contacts in the power corridors.

Only a couple of years back, a grade-19 officer was serving as DPO in Swat but today the authorities are yet to find any grade 19 DIG to head the entire region.

“Twelve officers have been posted as DPO Swat during the past 21 months, out of which three cops even refused to assume the charge. The rest served for some weeks before getting a better posting in other parts of the province and country,” a source disclosed.

Apart from the DPO of Swat, the posts of DIG of Malakand, additional SP Swat and SP for FRP were also occupied by the officers for brief periods, until they succeeded in getting another lucrative position. The fact is that suicide attacks, ambushes and rocket barrages have made posting in Swat a nightmare for every cop.

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Is RAW Behind the Lahore Blast at the ISI Office?

May 28, 2009 at 11:27 am · Filed under Terrorism in Pakistan ·Tagged , ,

ClipInformation coming in from security officials in Lahore suggests the actual target was the Lahore High Court building where Jama’at-ud-Dawa’s Hafiz Saeed was attending his court hearing at the time of the explosion.

This is the third time in two months when Lahore has been jolted by the notorious Indian Agency RAW. As per the media reports ,the explosive-laden pick up truck failed to reach the ISI building and blew off at a barrier close to the complex. Reports said some suspects, who were detained in connection with the March 3 terror attack on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, were inside the ISI office when the blast took place. The ISI building sustained some damage due to the impact of the explosion. There were also reports of sporadic firing in the vicinity. The various news channels said seven bodies have so far been recovered from the debris. The windowpanes of nearby buildings have also been shattered in the blast and many Rescue15 vehicles have been destroyed. The entire building of Rescue 15 has reportedly collapsed in the blast. Security forces have cordoned off the area and shifted injured and bodies to hospitals. Emergency has been announced in local hospitals.

By Zaheerul Hassan
Read more: http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/lahore-explosion-raw-strikes-again-in-lahore-an-attempt-to-eliminate-hafiz-saeed/

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Pakistan is Getting the Media it Deserves

May 28, 2009 at 6:20 am · Filed under Pakistan ·Tagged ,

by Aryn Baker/ Time

Clip_3A few weeks ago a group of Pakistani journalists and foreign correspondents based in Pakistan gathered to meet visiting representatives of the Washington-based think tank Center for American Progress. Its members were “on a listening tour,” they said, and wanted to hear the journalists’ perspectives on the U.S. and Pakistan. The response was caustic. Correspondents and editors belonging to Pakistan’s top local print and TV outlets let loose with accusations and complaints, particularly about American concerns that Pakistan was failing as a state. “There is no Taliban threat,” said one Pakistani journalist. “Do you really think a bunch of hillbillies from the tribal areas can take on our military?” sneered another. “It’s all propaganda,” said a third, designed “to weaken us, so the U.S. can fulfill its agenda to break Pakistan into pieces.”

In the course of my reporting on Pakistan, I hear conspiracy theories all the time: that the Pakistani Taliban fighting in Swat are funded by Indian intelligence; that the Americans are assisting the Taliban in Afghanistan to justify and secure a Central Asian foothold against China; and the old chestnut that Israel’s Mossad and the CIA were behind the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. While no press in any country is without flaw or bias, I count on fellow journalists everywhere to be more enlightened and sensible than average folk. But in Pakistan’s case, sections of the media are reinforcing the nation’s paranoia at a critical time when it faces a threat to its very existence.

Rumor reported as fact is an epidemic in Pakistan. Very recently the English-language daily the News ran the front-page headline PLANS READY TO TAKE OUT PAK NUCLEAR ARSENAL. The unbylined story, about a secret U.S. commando force tasked with infiltrating Pakistan to secure its nuclear weapons, was based on a Fox News online report describing a worst-case-scenario contingency plan should Pakistan be taken over by extremists. There were no named sources in the News story, and much of the reporting depended on e-mailed comments to the website. Nevertheless, it fueled hysterical discussions on TV chat shows and cemented a national conviction that the Americans want to eliminate Pakistan’s “Islamic bomb.” Another furor erupted over a three-year-old American academic study that posited a greater Middle East divided along ethnic lines — proof, railed the Pakistani press, that the Americans were pursuing a policy of balkanization in the country. On May 18, the Nation published a story that said: “Former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on the orders of the special death squad formed by former US vice-president Dick Cheney … The squad was headed by General Stanley McChrystal, the newly-appointed commander of US army in Afghanistan.” The story was sourced to an interview by an unnamed Arab TV channel with American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. Hersh immediately denounced the report as “complete madness” to another Pakistani paper, the Daily Times, saying, “Vice President Cheney does not have a death squad … I have never suggested that [McChrystal] was involved in political assassinations or death squads.” Yet at a press briefing the same day, Pakistan’s Information Minister Qamar Zaman didn’t rule out the possibility.

In 2002, the then President, General Pervez Musharraf, permitted private TV stations to broadcast news instead of just the state-owned Pakistan Television Corp. At the time, Musharraf’s deregulation was hailed as a significant step for the nascent free-press movement; indeed, today there are more than 30 nongovernment TV stations in the country. As TV stations proliferated, I argued that increased competition would force the emergence of a strong, ethical and responsible media corps. But there simply aren’t enough well-trained and -informed local journalists to supply the dramatically greater number of media outlets. I also assumed that consumers would gravitate toward truth. Instead the bulk of readers and viewers seem comfortable with sensationalism and xenophobia — as reflected by an April poll conducted by Gallup Pakistan revealing that 76% of Pakistanis “believe Pakistani media [are] unbiased to a great or somewhat extent.” In other words, Pakistanis like their media the way they are.

Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy to the region, is working on a media plan for Pakistan. It aims to develop the government’s ability to disseminate information via new technologies such as cell phones. The idea is not to promote propaganda but to facilitate public-service messages, like emergency information or registration for refugees. The plan also allows for training government officials to become more open press officers, and to fund independent radio stations to counter those run by extremists. All this is good, but it’s not enough. Pakistan’s press needs to take a hard look at itself and its level of professionalism. Only then will it live up to its potential, and only then will Pakistan get the media it deserves.

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STOP FUNDING MY FAILING STATE

May 28, 2009 at 6:01 am · Filed under Asif Ali Zardari ·Tagged , , , ,

By FATIMA BHUTTO

In Pakistan, things move at a leisurely South Asian pace. We missed our goals to eradicate polio recently because we, a nuclear nation, could not sustain electricity across the country long enough to refrigerate the vaccines. Garbage disposal is a non-existent concept, and plush neighborhoods in Karachi boast towers of rubbish piled on street corners and alleyways. Prisons and police cells are full of prisoners awaiting trials, and our justice system, despite the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, leaves a lot to be desired in terms of meting out free and fair access to justice.

fatima_bhutto_0Never mind that Pakistan’s Constitution stipulates that no law
contrary to Islam can be passed in the land. The no-goodnik president, who the Wall Street Journal called a “Category 5 disaster,”
went ahead and unilaterally – without a vote granted to the citizens
of Swat – imposed shariah. Meanwhile, President Obama is set to meet
with President Zardari (who locals have now taken to calling
President Ghadari or “traitor” in Urdu) in 10 days’ time. There is, I
would imagine, much to discuss.

The most important question that will come from Pakistan, however, is a familiar one: Can we have some more please? Money, that is, not
“Taliban”. It may surprise some Americans that even in the midst of
this recession, billions of their tax dollars are given directly to
the thievery corporation that is Pakistan’s Government, never to be
seen again. George Bush gave Pakistan a whopping $ 10 billion to fight terror, money that seems to have gone down the drain – or rather, into some pretty deep pockets. And it’s not just the U.S. – last week, international donors from 30 countries met in Tokyo and pledged $ 5 billion to Pakistan to “fight terror.” The IMF has given the country $ 7.6 billion in a bailout deal that boggles the mind. Saudi Arabia has generously pledged $ 700 million over the next four years, and the less-generous European Union an additional $ 640 million over the same period. And then there is Obama’s promise of $ 1.5 billion a year, dependent, the White House says, on results.

It’s phenomenally silly to give that kind of money to a President who, before becoming [PPP] President, was facing corruption cases in Switzerland, Spain and England. Zardari and his wife, the late PM Benazir Bhutto, are estimated to have stolen upwards of $ 3 billion from the Pakistani Treasury – a figure Zardari doesn’t seem desperate to disprove, he placed his personal assets before becoming President at over $ 1 billion.

It’s also dangerous. No amount of money, especially in the hands of a
famously corrupt government, is going to help Pakistan stave off terror, especially when said [PPP] government seems more than willing to capitulate to the militants they are supposed to be using that money to save the world from. Since 2001, Pakistan has been a country in decline. We suffer a suicide-bombing rate that surpasses Iraq’s.

The billions of dollars we have received have not made Pakistan safer, they haven’t made our neighbors safer and they have done nothing in the way of eradicating terror.

The “Taliban” and their ilk, on the other hand, are able to seat
themselves in towns and villages across Pakistan without much
difficulty largely because they do not come empty-handed. In a country that has a literacy rate of around 30 percent, the Islamists set up madrassas and educate local children for free. In districts where government hospitals are not fit for animals, they set up medical camps – in fact, they have been doing medical relief work since the 2005 earthquake hit northern Pakistan. Where there is no electricity, because the local government officials have placed their friends and relatives in charge of local electrical plants, the Islamists bring generators. In short, they fill a vacuum that the state, through political negligence and gross graft, has created. That’s the frightening truth. -

The Daily Beast – 26 April 2009

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The Playboy Running Pakistan

May 28, 2009 at 5:50 am · Filed under Asif Ali Zardari ·Tagged ,

American writer Nicholas Schmidle wrote the
following comments in his article published on 30 April 2009 in The
Daily Beast, a Web publication based in New York

Amid a fresh surge of violence in Pakistan, a Karachi playboy and accused murderer, became our ally, and his days are numbered.

Pakistani President Zardari relishes politics behind closed doors. But as his Army continues to battle in northwest Pakistan with fighter jets, air-dropped commandos and helicopter gunships, Zardari has been keeping an exceptionally low profile.

Even though the military has reclaimed some of the territory
overrun by the last week in Buner district, civilians have been displaced, and there is a nasty ethnic conflict festering in Karachi that has already left dead. If part of a President’s job is to guarantee the
safety of his people, Zardari is having an awful time of it these
days.

But Zardari’s office issued just one vacuous, disingenuous statement,
declaring that military action was only “one aspect of the solution”
and that his government “will not succumb to any pressure from the militants.” On the first part, he is right: Military efforts to crush the are only likely to breathe life into the insurgency. On the second
point, however, he is just bluffing: The fact is that Zardari’s
government – and Musharraf’s before that – have already succumbed in northwest Pakistan.

Zardari is, in many ways, a fluke president. Twenty years ago, he
married Benazir Bhutto and was lifted from relative obscurity into
Pakistan’s most powerful political dynasty. A Karachi socialite and
playboy who had reportedly turned his basement into a disco, Zardari stabled his polo horses at the Prime Minister’s official residence during Bhutto’s first term in office. Meanwhile, he earned
the nickname “Mr Ten Percent” for the kickback he purportedly took on government contracts. Zardari would spend most of
his marriage in prison on charges ranging from corruption to murdering his brother-in-law Murtaza Bhutto. Though never convicted, he has always carried a certain, well, unsavory reputation as a crooked, back-room operator. Zardari wouldn’t remain in the shadows forever.

But Zardari shared something – a certain nemesis – with Musharraf. In
2007, Musharraf had sacked the chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, twice as Chaudhry’s court prepared to declare Musharraf’s re-election bid unconstitutional. Thousands of lawyers, and tens of thousands of their supporters, massed in the streets to demand the rule of law and an independent judiciary. The street protests weakened Musharraf and resulted in his downfall. Zardari took power in September 2008 promising to restore Chaudhry. But he had his own beef with Chaudhry over past corruption cases, so Zardari deliberated. Pakistanis lost any trust in him and the lawyers returned in numbers. This time, they pledged to topple Zardari. In March 2009, Zardari conceded and returned Chaudhry to his bench. But he had already squandered every ounce of popularity that he – or the PPP – once had.

For Pakistan to wage a successful counterinsurgency against the
government needs two things: the support of the people and the Army. A poll conducted in January 2009 showed Zardari’s approval rating at 19 percent. And while cutting deals in the halls of power might have worked for some, the Pakistani military seems less impressed by his connivance. When the PPP-led government tried to exert control over the ISI, the military flat out refused, forcing Zardari and the PPP to back off.

“Some very serious differences at the highest level in Islamabad had
been spectacularly laid bare within the space of a few hours,” said an
editorial the next day in The News. It appeared that there were more
than just divisions between the government and the Army, the lawyers, the “Taliban”, the intelligence agencies, Afghanistan and India. They now existed within the civilian leadership itself.

Critics of Musharraf used to deride him whenever he bombarded the
people, and categorize the operations as part of “Musharraf’s War.” Zardari has fallen into many of the same traps – mainly the public perception of doing America’s bidding – but few people call Zardari’s sporadic operations “Zardari’s war.” That would be almost giving him too much credit and control. When Musharraf was recently asked by a reporter to reflect on his tenure, he confessed to have resigned last summer because he feared being “impotent.” Despite his playboy past, Zardari may find himself proclaiming impotence soon too.

Mr Nicholas Schmidle, who lived in Pakistan from 2006 to 2008, is a
fellow at the New America Foundation (NAF) and author of his book, To Live or to Perish Forever – Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan, which was published in May 2009.presidency1 (3)

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Shameful Military Action

May 26, 2009 at 7:02 am · Filed under Talibanization, Terrorism in Pakistan, War Against Terror ·Tagged ,

refugees-twoIt’s extremely shameful to see the military operation in Malakand, where innocent men, women and children are killed inhumanly and millions are displaced from their homes. Our puppy and puppet civil and military leadership is doing nothing except promoting Zionist agenda to pave the way for the Indo-American control of the region, under the cover of “War on Terror.” Our leadership has proved over and again that they have nothing to do with the interest and integrity of Pakistan, but to please their foreign masters by tearing apart the socio-polotical and econo-religious fabric of the society for their heavy rewards, like Mr Jafar and Mir Sadiq.

We have to believe that the US, as spearheading the Neoconic Jews and Christians, wants to take the control of the whole world and rule as the only superpower, with one secular world, one WTO/IMF-slave economy and puppet rulers in different countries to eliminate all such forces/elements, who cause any barrier to their agenda. As they did in the Middle East, Asia and Africa openly but in Europe, Russia and china covertly. To achieve their  targets, they have strategic partnerships in different regions, as for South Asia, they have India and in the Middle East, Israel as their policemen. To reform the public opinion, they have sponsored media to promote anti-state civil and military leaders, scholars, NGOs, speakers, journalists, etc. And they are perfectly using such infrastructure in case of Pakistan.

They are not foolish to ignore the riches of the Muslim world. As the 76% of the world oil sits in the Middle Eastern belt and all the major trade routes pass through the Muslim states. In our region, specially, Pakistan, Iran and Central Asian states are highly rich of natural resources. Our leadership is not only ignoring our riches and resources but also bargaining our geo-political positioning for the sake of their own foreign rewards. For that our civil leadership in general but military in particular is responsible for the pre-planned econo-political decline of Pakistan. For that they are turning the friends into enemies by inhuman killing in FATA, PATA/NWFP and Baluchistan, as paving the way for Indo-American control in Pakistan.

We didn’t conquer FATA, Swat or Balochistan. Rather they affiliated to Pakistan just for the sake of Islamic brotherhood, on the assurance of Quaid-e-Azam that the forces wouldn’t go into these areas. And when they asked for their due rights as for royalties in Baluchistan and Sharia in FATA, Malakand and NWFP, instead of honouring the commitment, our forces statred barbaric operations against them. India is the worst enemy of Kashmiris, but they never used their forces in such a barbaric way, as we are doing to kill our own Muslim Pakistanis in these areas.

It’s on record that our security forces always dealt with the Pakistanis in a brutal and barbaric manner, right from East Pakistan. Where Bengalis were deprived of their due econo-political rights and when they raised voice, they were not only crushed but also cornered too grave to seek Indian support. They were branded as “Ghaddar” and crushed in a barbaric manner. It’s natural to join hands when your enemy is common. But our leadership doesn’t understand such a little psycho warfare tactic. And then the world witnessed a humiliated surrender by our Army. Who was the winner? 

Similar military operations were conducted against Sindhis, Urdu speakings and Balochis. And finally, the worst American puppy, Gen Musharraf started brutal operations against the Pushtoon, under the cover of War on Terror, on the dictation of his American masters. These all ethnic communities are branded as “Ghaddar.”  Is there any sensible patriotic person, who can tell me as to who is Ghaddar, in our situation?

All Pakistani ethnic communities, like, Pushtoon, Baloch, Sindhis, Urdu, Punjabis and Kashmiris were united to create Pakistan, for nothing but for Islam and social justice. If any of them ask for their constututional rights and in return you deal with them like Halakoo Khan, you may capture their body but not their soul. Now we are cornering and pushing them to wall to shake hands with our enemies, for which nobody else but we remain solely responsible. India has already massed it’s 150,000 troops in Afghanistan, doing military exercises on our Eastern border and fully exploting RAW network in Pakistan to weaken us by all means in collaboration of US, where the Indo-American interest is matching the best.

Our 1400 Km Pak-Afghan border, where we had no expense to keep it safe, a few years ago. Now it’s the biggest risk for our integrity, security, peace and prosperity in the country. It’s the most vulnerable frontier where America wants their permanent strategic military establishment, with the encroachment of Northern areas to Afghan border, in partnership with India. This is not only to control Pakistan but poses a serious threat to China and Russia. And what we are doing is that we are killing our own Muslim brothers in the region, who for us, not only fought against Russia, secured our border but also kept India busy in Kashmir. Now India has nothing to do except bossing Pakistan, where America wants to colonise Pakistan through India by neutralizing our neculear assets and treat us like Nepal and Bhutan. Just imagine, what will be the status of our puppy and puppet civil and military leadership in Pakistan without any nuclear threat to India????

I don’t want to talk about Asif Ali Ghaddari, who publicly declared the Kashmiris and Pushtoon as terrorist but India as his friend. What can you expect from such a world known criminal. But Gen Kiyani should realize the gravity of the geo-political situation and learn from history. As India claims that they exhibited 70,000 trousers in 1971 and the figure will be much higher this time. It’s better to die with honour instead of living as captive.

Nobody else but traitors and black sheep in our society are responsible for our disgrace and decline. I can assure you, the moment we realize that we have to fight for Pakistan, all Pakistanis are brothers and we can save and serve our country without any begging or dictation, the risk for our integrity and sovereignty, I swear to Allah that these conspiring Americans and Indians will flush out like dirty water in drains.

May Allah give us the strength to wakeup and sacrifice our personal & political affiliations, ego and benefits over the interest of the state and it’s people. Amin!

 Shakil Ahmad

President University of W Sydney-ERP Union

Journalist Intl Press Australia

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LTTE: I also mourn for Prabakaran

May 26, 2009 at 6:56 am · Filed under South Asia, War Against Terror ·Tagged , ,

Clip_78Following the killings of the entire LTTE leadership there is a strongly expressed feeling among Sri Lankans, within the country or outside, that their deaths particularly that of the leader, Prabakaran, should not be a matter for mourning. I beg to differ!

That there were the most extreme forms of violence practiced by both the rebels and the state forces is the issue of real concern. That the political and legal systems of Sri Lanka have not developed to an extent that it is possible to deal with any conflict, particularly a conflict between the communities living within the country, is a matter that cannot be separated from the way in which all actors in the present conflict have behaved. The test of civilisation in modern times is the nature of the political and legal institutions within which people live and not their so called traditional cultures. If the situation of Sri Lanka is such that no such civilised political
and legal systems exists, the actors for the state and those citizens
who have taken to violence must be judged within the framework of this total situation.

Moral and legal responsibilities
This does not remove the moral responsibilities of those who have
acted with barbarism either on behalf of the rebel groups or on
behalf of the state. Each must answer morally for their actions
despite the colossal defects of the political and legal systems
within which they have acted. For this each must answer separately.
It is not exculpatory for anyone to claim innocence on the basis that
such actions were done on behalf of the rebel group or the state if
the acts themselves, are immoral or illegal even in the situation of
a ‘war’. However, those who have made moral decisions which are wrong and which may have brought them to the ultimate loss of life due to these very wrongs, do not forfeit their human status and therefore they still deserve to be mourned. Prabakaran was a citizen of Sri Lanka and a human being and there is no way of saying in an ultimate sense that he was not ‘one of us.’

I am a Sinhalese by birth and as I reached my adulthood I told myself that this should in no way affect my judgement on anything. In the latter part of my life in particular, I have lived with many races and nationalities belonging to all continents. At no stage the fact of whatever race or nationality these people belonged to has been a matter affecting any judgement, though the ethnic and cultural differences of people have played an important role in the enjoyment and enrichment of each other. And I have asked myself, if this be the case, why should my judgement regarding the  communities of my own country be any different to this?

Angulimala
In terms of the strongest cultural tradition of Sri Lanka which is
Buddhism, perhaps the story of Angulimala is to the point.
Angulimala, a bright student, was treated badly by his guru because
of a misunderstanding created by jealous and rival students in the
mind of the guru about him. The guru instructed Angulimala to bring
him a chain of fingers. The finger hunt resulted in Angulimala having
the reputation of being the worst murderer in the region because he
killed everyone he met to take their fingers. One day however, the
Buddha confronted him, facing the risk of assassination himself. In
the process Angulimala was brought to his knees, made to understand his predicament and changed his ways. The moral of the story is two-fold. That Angulimala’s behaviour was conditioned and that despite of his atrocious criminal acts he was still a human being to be dealt with.

In the Christian tradition there is the story of the stoning of an
immoral woman where the Christ told the crowd, those who are without sin, throw the first stone.

This does not imply that the moral and legal wrongs done by the LTTE under their leader should be forgotten or forgiven. All the moral and legal issues of atrocious crimes need to remain the top priority of the national discourse until such time as the whole nation
understands the implications of all these issues, so that measures
will be developed in order to avoid their repetition in the future.
In the case of the rebellions of the JVP in 1971 and 1986 to 1991 no
such discussion took place and, in fact, attempts at all such
discussions was deliberately suppressed. Therefore the repetition of
similar and even worse behaviour happened again through the LTTE.

The problem of dealing with moral and legal issues is that no one can
take a holier than thou attitude. It is not possible to discuss and
resolve and the moral and legal issues of rebels without discussing
the legal and political responsibilities of the state. If the state
itself avoids criticism of its own behaviour and has no will at all
to change that behaviour with the improvement of political and legal
institutions, then the criticism of the rebels become a farce. Such a
refusal to discuss state responsibility can only be a ploy to continue
with the defective political and legal systems for the benefit of some
persons.

The threat of more repression on everyone
Thus, out of the fight against rebels there is the real possibility
of the emergence of a state with greater powers of repression which
would be used against the entire population. It was the campaign
against the communists in Germany which was utilised by Hitler to
build one of the world’s worst authoritarian systems. It was the
fight against the bourgeoisie and the internal party groups of the
left opposition lead by Trotsky that was utilised by Joseph Stalin to
create an authoritarian system which was even worse than that of
Hitler.

In the aftermath of Prabakaran’s death the exhibition of his body and
the jubilation that was shown reflect badly on the sort of ‘headhunter
mentality’ of some tribes who kept the heads of their enemies,
captured in battle as trophies of their strength and glory. When the
political and legal institutions fails to live up to required
standards a sub-stream of consciousness that remains from the past
can surface, as Hannah Arendt in her extensive studies of various
authoritarian regimes in the recent past has demonstrated. It was the
surfacing of such tendencies which made even the concentration camps possible. Thus, it is not only in countries with less developed
political and legal systems that this can happen but even stronger
systems can degenerate under certain circumstances. The sub stream of consciousness from the past in south Asian societies, including Sri
Lanka is conditioned by the unwritten laws of the repression of the
caste system in which disproportionate and collective punishment is
an integral part, as amply demonstrated by the recent popular novel,
the White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga.

That there was such violent conflict in our own country is a matter
for regret and sadness. That there are no attempts to improve the
political and legal systems so as to be capable of dealing with the
differences and the conflicts is a matter for even greater sadness.
That the defeat of the LTTE is being manipulated so badly as to
further destroy whatever remains of the political and legal system
evokes even worse premonitions for society. How the workers, farmers, the middle class, those who represent dissent and opposition and those who are engaged in providing public information and creating public opinion through the media will be dealt with in the future in Sri Lanka is even more frightening to think about.

Celebrations of a failure
There is no real victory to celebrate, but instead tremendous
failures to worry about. And if the artificial celebrations that are
organised are meant to fool the people again then these celebrations
will, in fact, be glorifications of failure. The last thing that human beings can rely on is their common humanity and the last thing
that the citizens of a nation can rely on is citizenship. The fallen
rebels as well as fallen soldiers are, in fact, bound by the bond of
humanity and citizenship. They all need to be mourned. That is the
least bit of decency that anyone can demonstrate. I mourn for all of
them, including Prabakaran.

Yours sincerely,
Basil Fernando
Executive Director
Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong

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Video Game in which Players Earn Points by Raping Schoolgirls

May 23, 2009 at 11:24 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged ,

A Japanese software industry body has finally decided to ban computer games in which players simulate sexual violence against females, a spokesman said.

The industry move came after a Japanese computer game maker attracted furious protests from US rights campaigners against the game “RapeLay,” which lets players simulate stalking and raping young girls.

In the game players earn points for acts of sexual violence, including following girls on commuter trains, raping virgins and their mothers, and then forcing them to have abortions.

US online retailer Amazon in February took RapeLay off its websites, but the game’s Yokohama-based maker Illusion brushed off the protests, saying the game was made for the domestic market and abided by laws in Japan.

The Japanese industry group the Ethics Organisation of Computer Software said it had long mulled measures to control such content which it said “deviates extremely from social norms.”

The organisation will now ban all “sexual torture software” and set clear guidelines on what content should be blocked from circulating in the market, the group said in an announcement dated Thursday.

The group says it already screens almost all adult-content computer games made in Japan, and that some 90 percent of products carry its rating stickers.

The ban is a form of industry self-regulation and carries no legal weight, but it is expected to discourage most Japanese retailers from selling such games, said the spokesman.

Japan, often criticised as a major producer of child pornography, in 1999 banned the production, distribution and commercial use of sexually arousing photos, videos and other materials involving those aged under 18.

However, the law did not criminalise possession of such materials, and the ban also failed to cover child porn in animation and computer graphics, often categorised as “hentai” (pervert) content.

[Source: AFP - Agence France Presse]

Japan was under pressure to clamp down on its huge market in child pornography following the launch of a campaign to ban a video game in which players earn points by raping schoolgirls and forcing them to have abortions.

Equality Now, a New York-based human rights group, called on Japan’s government to immediately ban RapeLay, a virtual game that can be played on Windows PCs, and to honor its international commitments to end the sexual exploitation of children.

Amazon, the online retailer, removed RapeLay from its UK and US sites earlier this year after it was discussed at a UN conference on the sexual exploitation of children in Rio de Janeiro last November. Amazon Japan recently followed suit, but the game is widely available on other online shopping sites.

The director of Equality Now’s office in London, said the game was “extremely problematic at many levels”. “The suggestion that the gamer has transformed the violent crime of rape into an act of sex indicates all too well the danger of objectifying and dehumanizing women and normalizing violence against them,” she said.

Equality Now has urged its 30,000 members to write to the PM, Taro Aso, demanding that Japan fulfill its obligations as a signatory to the UN convention against all forms of discrimination against women.

Though Japan is a lucrative market for games depicting sexual violence, RapeLay was spotlighted as a particularly depraved example of the genre.

The games, featuring high-resolution graphics and virtual interaction, are often set in schools or train carriages, with players awarded points for committing acts of sexual violence until the victims start to “enjoy” the experience. The victims are usually dressed in school uniforms, although their age is deliberately kept ambiguous.

The hentai [pervert] theme is common in Japanese comics, animated films and video games, many of which tap into the popular subculture of Lolicon, a Japanese rendering of Lolita complex.

Japanese law bans the production and sale of sexually explicit images of children under 18, but it exempts animated and computer-generated images.

Illusion, the software firm that produces RapeLay, has so far resisted calls to withdraw the game, saying it complies with Japanese child pornography laws. “The game is not intended for sale overseas, so we can’t comment further,” an Illusion spokesman said.

But campaigners challenged the firm’s claim that it was targeting only the Japanese market, where such games are considered “acceptable”.
The age of the internet means it’s impossible to confine anything to a specific market. People in Japan have to realise that what might be acceptable in one culture or context might not be acceptable in another. In any case, many Japanese people have no idea what’s on sale on their own doorstep, and RapeLay is only the tip of the iceberg.

The game is just one of tens of thousands of video games containing explicit sexual content that can be bought online or at stores in Tokyo’s geek district of Akihabara.

Pressure to tighten the law comes amid an alarming increase in demand for child pornography. In 2007, just over 300 children under 18 were identified as victims, according to Japanese police, up more than 20 per cent from 2006 and the highest total since records began in 1999. While police prosecuted 25 child pornography cases in 1999, the figure had risen to 585 cases by 2006.

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