Rethinking Foreign Policy -- Can Pakistan and India Agree?

India has nothing to do with Pakistan. Rather, Pakistan is seen as problem for the entire civilised world. China is using Pakistan as pet dog against India, as it is in troubled waters regarding Tibbet. Islamic problem in India is also problem for other countries. It is not isolation ( Burma, Thailand, Philipines, UK, Germany, Spain, Britain, France...).

Pakistan Army unfairly blamed for the Jessore Massacre: CALCUTTA TELEGRAPH







http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060319/asp/look/story_5969733.asp

The truth about the Jessore massacre
The massacre may have been genocide, but it wasn’t committed by the Pakistan army. The dead men were non-Bengali residents of Jessore, butchered in broad daylight by Bengali nationalists, reports Sarmila Bose

BITTER TRUTH: Civilians massacred in Jessore in 1971 — but by whom?

RECOGNITION DENIED: Father and son killed in Dhaka in 1971
The bodies lie strewn on the ground. All are adult men, in civilian clothes. A uniformed man with a rifle slung on his back is seen on the right. A smattering of onlookers stand around, a few appear to be working, perhaps to remove the bodies.

The caption of the photo is just as grim as its content: ‘April 2, 1971: Genocide by the Pakistan Occupation Force at Jessore.’ It is in a book printed by Bangladeshis trying to commemorate the victims of their liberation war.

It is a familiar scene. There are many grisly photographs of dead bodies from 1971, published in books, newspapers and websites.

Reading another book on the 1971 war, there was that photograph again — taken from a slightly different angle, but the bodies and the scene of the massacre were the same. But wait a minute! The caption here reads: ‘The bodies of businessmen murdered by rebels in Jessore city.’

The alternative caption is in The East Pakistan Tragedy, by L.F. Rushbrook Williams, written in 1971 before the independence of Bangladesh. Rushbrook Williams is strongly in favour of the Pakistan government and highly critical of the Awami League. However, he was a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, had served in academia and government in India, and with the BBC and The Times. There was no reason to think he would willfully mislabel a photo of a massacre.

And so, in a bitter war where so many bodies had remained unclaimed, here is a set of murdered men whose bodies are claimed by both sides of the conflict! Who were these men? And who killed them?

It turns out that the massacre in Jessore may have been genocide, but it wasn’t committed by the Pakistan army. The dead men were non-Bengali residents of Jessore, butchered in broad daylight by Bengali nationalists.

It is but one incident, but illustrative of the emerging reality that the conflict in 1971 in East Pakistan was a lot messier than most have been led to believe. Pakistan’s military regime did try to crush the Bengali rebellion by force, and many Bengalis did die for the cause of Bangladesh’s independence. Yet, not every allegation hurled against the Pakistan army was true, while many crimes committed in the name of Bengali nationalism remain concealed.

Once one took a second look, some of the Jessore bodies are dressed in salwar kameez — an indication that they were either West Pakistanis or ‘Biharis’, the non-Bengali East Pakistanis who had migrated from northern India.

As accounts from the involved parties — Pakistan, Bangladesh and India — tend to be highly partisan, it was best to search for foreign eye witnesses, if any. My search took me to newspaper archives from 35 years ago. The New York Times carried the photo on April 3, 1971, captioned: ‘East Pakistani civilians, said to have been slain by government soldiers, lie in Jessore square before burial.’ The Washington Post carried it too, right under its masthead: ‘The bodies of civilians who East Pakistani sources said were massacred by the Pakistani army lie in the streets of Jessore.’ “East Pakistani sources said”, and without further investigation, these august newspapers printed the photo.

In fact, if the Americans had read The Times of London of April 2 and Sunday Times of April 4 or talked to their British colleagues, they would have had a better idea of what was happening in Jessore. In a front-page lead article on April 2 entitled ‘Mass Slaughter of Punjabis in East Bengal,’ The Times war correspondent Nicholas Tomalin wrote an eye-witness account of how he and a team from the BBC programme Panorama saw Bengali troops and civilians march 11 Punjabi civilians to the market place in Jessore where they were then massacred. “Before we were forced to leave by threatening supporters of Shaikh Mujib,” wrote Tomalin, “we saw another 40 Punjabi “spies” being taken towards the killing ground…”

Tomalin followed up on April 4 in Sunday Times with a detailed description of the “mid-day murder” of Punjabis by Bengalis, along with two photos — one of the Punjabi civilians with their hands bound at the Jessore headquarters of the East Pakistan Rifles (a Bengal formation which had mutinied and was fighting on the side of the rebels), and another of their dead bodies lying in the square. He wrote how the Bengali perpetrators tried to deceive them and threatened them, forcing them to leave. As other accounts also testify, the Bengali “irregulars” were the only ones in central Jessore that day, as the Pakistan government forces had retired to their cantonment.

Though the military action had started in Dhaka on March 25 night, most of East Pakistan was still out of the government’s control. Like many other places, “local followers of Sheikh Mujib were in control” in Jessore at that time. Many foreign media reported the killings and counter-killings unleashed by the bloody civil war, in which the army tried to crush the Bengali rebels and Bengali nationalists murdered non-Bengali civilians.

Tomalin records the local Bengalis’ claim that the government soldiers had been shooting earlier and he was shown other bodies of people allegedly killed by army firing. But the massacre of the Punjabi civilians by Bengalis was an event he witnessed himself. Tomalin was killed while covering the Yom Kippur war of 1973, but his eye-witness accounts solve the mystery of the bodies of Jessore.

There were, of course, genuine Bengali civilian victims of the Pakistan army during 1971. Chandhan Sur and his infant son were killed on March 26 along with a dozen other men in Shankharipara, a Hindu area in Dhaka. The surviving members of the Sur family and other residents of Shankharipara recounted to me the dreadful events of that day. Amar, the elder son of the dead man, gave me a photo of his father and brother’s bodies, which he said he had come upon at a Calcutta studio while a refugee in India. The photo shows a man’s body lying on his back, clad in a lungi, with the infant near his feet.

Amar Sur’s anguish about the death of his father and brother (he lost a sister in another shooting incident) at the hands of the Pakistan army is matched by his bitterness about their plight in independent Bangladesh. They may be the children of a ‘shaheed,’ but their home was declared ‘vested property’ by the Bangladesh government, he said, in spite of documents showing that it belonged to his father. Even the Awami League — support for whom had cost this Hindu locality so many lives in 1971 — did nothing to redress this when they formed the government.

In the book 1971: documents on crimes against humanity committed by Pakistan army and their agents in Bangladesh during 1971, published by the Liberation War Museum, Dhaka, I came across the same photo of the Sur father and son’s dead bodies. It is printed twice, one a close-up of the child only, with the caption: ‘Innocent women were raped and then killed along with their children by the barbarous Pakistan Army’. Foreigners might just have mistaken the ‘lungi’ worn by Sur for a ‘saree’, but surely Bangladeshis can tell a man in a ‘lungi’ when they see one! And why present the same ‘body’ twice?

The contradictory claims on the photos of the dead of 1971 reveal in part the difficulty of recording a messy war, but also illustrate vividly what happens when political motives corrupt the cause of justice and humanity. The political need to spin a neat story of Pakistani attackers and Bengali victims made the Bengali perpetrators of the massacre of Punjabi civilians in Jessore conceal their crime and blame the army. The New York Times and The Washington Post “bought” that story too. The media’s reputation is salvaged in this case by the even-handed eye-witness reports of Tomalin in The Times and Sunday Times.

As for the hapless Chandhan Sur and his infant son, the political temptation to smear the enemy to the maximum by accusing him of raping and killing women led to Bangladeshi nationalists denying their own martyrs their rightful recognition. In both cases, the true victims —Punjabis and Bengalis, Hindus and Muslims — were cast aside, their suffering hijacked, by political motivations of others that victimised them a second time around.

Since Injuns here are always looking for their Amrikan masters` approval :


http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11902379/site/newsweek/

PROMISE IN PAKISTAN

By Ron Moreau
Newsweek International
March 27, 2006 issue - In the late 1990s Lahore-based businessman Iqbal Ahmed was depressed. Pakistan was isolated internationally and in the grip of a deep recession, and his modest, liquefied-petroleum-gas operation didn`t seem to be going anywhere. ``I used to get up and say, `What the hell, it`s another day`,`` he recalls. ``Now I can`t wait for the day to begin. I see a very bright future

Ahmed has good reason to be optimistic. Two years ago he signed a deal with Houston`s Hanover Energy Co. that has helped transform his LPG extraction plant into the largest and most efficient in Pakistan, with revenues last year of $130 million. Backed by several international investors, Ahmed has bid some $400 million to buy a controlling interest in Southern Sui Gas, one of two state-owned gas production and distribution companies that are being privatized. And he recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Excelerate Energy of Houston to import liquefied natural gas into Pakistan in supertankers. ``We`re enjoying a sea change in economic conditions and opportunities,`` says Ahmed, 60. ``Pakistan is open for business.``

The proof is in the numbers. Last year the country`s GDP growth rate hit 8.4 percent, the world`s second highest behind China, following two years of solid 6 percent growth. This year the economy is predicted to expand by nearly 7 percent. After years of instability, with the government and military trying to distract people from their economic woes by waging jihad in Kashmir and railing against neighboring India, a true middle class is now developing. Economic reforms have given the government money to invest in health and education, and foreign investors are eying Pakistan for the first time. In many ways the country has become the world`s most surprising economic success story.

It`s a heady turnaround for a nation that, in the late 1990s, was practically a failed state with near-zero GDP growth. Because of its headlong pursuit of nuclear weapons, Pakistan had become the world`s most sanctioned nation after Libya. International aid had dried up. The government was forced to borrow at exorbitant short-term rates, burdening the country with a crushing $38 billion debt. ``We were in a real soup when [Gen. Pervez] Musharraf took over,`` says Ziauddin (he uses only one name), the Islamabad editor of the Dawn newspaper.

One of Musharraf`s first and smartest moves after his 1999 coup was to appoint Shaukat Aziz, a dapper and urbane international banker, as his economic czar, and to give him a free hand to revive the economy. But what really turned the country`s fortunes around was September 11. ``The 9/11 attack was the best thing that ever happened to Pakistan,`` says Lahore-based businessman Salmaan Taseer. The United States and Europe immediately lifted all sanctions; Washington gave Pakistan $600 million outright to meet urgent debt payments, and forgave another $1.5 billion in debt. Working with Aziz, America and other creditor nations also rescheduled Pakistan`s heavy debt over a manageable 30 to 35 years. In 2004, the United States pledged $3 billion in economic and military assistance over the next five years, in addition to $100 million for education reform. The EU pitched in, lifting quota restrictions on Pakistan`s main export, textiles.


RELATED ARTICLE
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Restoring Pakistan`s Economy



At the same time, Aziz, who is now prime minister, began enacting a series of common-sense economic reforms. They focused on boosting fiscal discipline, government transparency and accountability. He quickly cut the budget deficit from 8 percent to 4 percent by slashing spending, and lowered interest rates. Since 2002, he has increased tax revenues by 20 percent. He also instituted a sweeping privatization program that has won kudos from both domestic and foreign investors. State-owned companies in numerous industries¡ªbanking, cement, fertilizer, utilities¡ªhave been sold off, as has a chunk of the state`s inefficient telecom giant, PTCL.


The newly privatized and cash-flush banks have been on a lending spree, extending loans to capital-starved domestic businessmen and to the Pakistani middle class, which until 2002 had little access to consumer credit. People have snapped up credit cards, and are buying cars and other big-ticket products with easy-credit bank loans. ``This is the best government we`ve had in the past 30 years,`` says prominent Lahore businessman Syed Babar Ali, who heads some of the country`s biggest joint-venture companies, including Coca-Cola and Nestl¨¦.

Story continues below ¡ý

---

advertisement

---

Foreign investors have been flocking to Pakistan to bid on privatizations and on licenses in the newly opened telecom sector. The sale of two cellular-phone licenses (won by U.A.E. and Norwegian companies) netted the government nearly $600 million. It`s a good investment as Pakistan, with 24 million cell-phone users, is now the world`s fastest-growing wireless market after China. Indeed, Pakistan is expected to receive upwards of $3 billion in foreign investment this year, largely in telecom and gas and oil exploration. The Karachi Stock Exchange recently hit a record high.

Bullish domestic investors, too, are snapping up telecom licenses and state assets. Businessman Taseer raised $40 million from Pakistani banks and $25 million from a U.S. venture-capital company in two months as part of his successful bid for a wireless license. He is also building a 350-room Hyatt hotel and shopping-mall complex in Lahore with $40 million in debt and equity that he organized from domestic banks and investors in just six weeks. ``This would have been inconceivable before,`` says Taseer, 50, a cigar-smoking tycoon who publishes the Daily Times newspaper and is constructing Lahore`s tallest office building. ``Not long ago, we would have waited at least three years to get a loan from an international bank. In the last two years there has been more economic activity in Pakistan than in the past 50.``

Even Pakistan`s nascent technology sector¡ªdwarfed by India`s¡ªseems to be taking off. Salim Ghauri, the CEO of Lahore-based NetSol Technologies, says his company`s software revenues this year are expected to jump to $19 million, compared with last year`s $11 million. DaimlerChrysler uses Ghauri`s LeaseSoft auto-leasing and financing software in its operations in eight Asian countries, and Toyota uses it in Thailand and China. ``We are competing with the best in the world, and we are coming out on top,`` says Ghauri, 51, who set up NetSol in 1996 after he returned from working as an IT consultant in Australia.

Still, all is not rosy. Pakistan must modernize its creaky infrastructure, further improve tax collection and, most important, normalize economic relations with India. Government critics say the current boom is not benefiting the country`s poorest citizens, who make up more than one third of its 160 million people. ``The rich have become very rich since 9/11, and the middle class is better off, but not the mass of Pakistanis,`` says Dawn`s Ziauddin. Aziz counters that a recent government-sponsored survey indicates that the country`s heady growth has reduced the number of Pakistanis living below the poverty line from one third to a quarter of the population (interview).

Some bankers and economists warn that the economy is dangerously overheating, due to unsustainable consumer demand and easy credit to both industrialists and consumers. Aziz and the government dismiss the concern¡ªbut consumers and the private sector have borrowed more money from the banks in the past two years than they had in the previous 12. Critics argue that growth-spawned inflation, which hit a high of 11 percent one year ago and is running this year at 8.5 percent, is a big reason the poor are not benefiting from the boom. ``Inflation is clearly eroding the purchasing power of the poor,`` says a foreign banker in Islamabad. This year the price of sugar is up by 26 percent; wheat and potatoes, by 15 percent.


RELATED ARTICLE
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Restoring Pakistan`s Economy



According to the foreign banker, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of his comments, ``The government is running the [economy] like it`s heading for elections.`` True: President Musharraf and Aziz areeying the crucial 2007 parliamentary elections. Organized political opposition to Musharraf is rising, and he and Aziz are hoping that an economic resurgence will persuade average voters to return them to power for another five years. That`s what most businessmen are hoping for, too. But if the rewards of the boom don`t start trickling down, the country`s runaway growth could ironically prove to be the government`s undoing.

inbred retard: happy navroz..

Looks like your homeboy is doing a lot in India..

Dell to Double Workforce in India

Article Tools Sponsored By
By SARITHA RAI
Published: March 20, 2006

BANGALORE, India, Mar. 20 — Dell, the world`s largest maker of personal computers, plans to double its employee strength in India to 20,000, and is scouting for a site to set up a manufacturing unit in the country, its chairman, Michael Dell, said today.

YOU PEOPLE SERIOUSLY THINK THAT BEHRAM IS BASED IN AUSTIN, TEXAS. HE IS A FAKE,
HE IS BASED IN PAKISTAN AND BY A CAREFULL LOOK AT ALL HIS POSTS YOU WILL BE ABLE TO MAKE OUT WHO HE IS.

A man went into a cafe, ordered a milkshake and then realised he had to go to the bathroom. Worried that someone might steal his drink, he took a paper napkin and wrote on it, “World’s Strongest Weightlifter.”

Leaving the warning under the glass he disappeared into the men’s room. When he returned a few minutes later, the glass was empty and under it was a new napkin with a new message that said, “World’s Fastest Runner.”

I wish Pakistan also had runners and athletes like that, for our team at the ongoing Commonwealth Games is being badly beaten. Only yesterday alone, we lost every event of the day and with “flying colours’, I mean the colour flew off the face of our team manager every time the results were announced. The loosing spree of our helpless warriors seems to continue to the end, and I foresee a Doomsday scenario when it eventually comes to the final award distribution.

Having already bagged quite a bulk of gold, our Indian neighbours as usual stand out victorious and a million times better than us. It is not just the Commonwealth Games that India has successfully managed to eclipse our image of “born sportsmen” as we once used to be, it has outplayed us on almost every count. See diplomacy for instance. Do we stand a chance against India on any issue, leave alone Kashmir?

More...

Behram sahib,

Some sugarcane to chew on. A white Texan who likes the horrible creatures who have their brains between their legs.

http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/mar/20dell.htm

Computer maker Dell expects to double the company`s headcount in India to 20,000 over the next three years, its Founder and Chairman Michael S Dell said on Monday.

Happy chewing.

Regards

RE:#640

Khamkhwa Sahib

ps: pakistan whips india 4-1...in the commonwealth hockey match...

Congratulations.

Medals tally till today

India 8 G, 6S, 1B
Pakistan 0G, OS, 1B

Regards

for americans, paki = terrorist..

Father and son removed from flight

By Our Correspondent

WASHINGTON, March 19: A Pakistani and his son have filed a complaint with US federal officials claiming they were removed from a flight because of their appearance. Fazal Khan, 59, and Mohammed Khan, 28, boarded a SkyWest Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Oakland, California, on Jan 31, 2006, wearing white skullcaps, tunics and loose trousers. Both men also have long beards.

Attorney Shirin Sinnar of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco said the men had been told to leave their seats before the flight took off and escorted back to the terminal.

“They were essentially told, ‘You can’t take this flight because the flight attendant is uncomfortable’,” the lawyer said.

The men took a later flight to San Francisco International Airport. SkyWest, a regional feeder airline, operates some flights booked with the United Express service of United Airlines.

United Airlines spokesman Jeff Green said the company was investigating the complaint. Utah-based SkyWest is responsible for staff on the aircraft, he said.

Re: # 661

Beharam:

Is the following your answer to my questions: {Yes I do want to challenge your authenticity. While at it please explain for everyone`s benefits:

(a) to what kind of leadership you had provided to Pakistani-Hindus?;

(b) is there a public access of the city hall records of your public oratory on immirgation issues, and issues concerning other minorities?}


``Kapoora brains, if you want to politics, then do play politics till your heart desires. My City is the bastion of democrats, and you will have no problem in getting your kind over here. Gays and lesbians are in abundance and you can even find a home to live in.

All hindoos have known is gaali and budmashi and I can dish out the same. Your hindooland is corrupt and the whole world knows that.

Now ya`ll can kiss my @ss.``


Regarding your ardent support of Bush and his policy in Iraq.
Do you believe ``Jinnah, woould have supported Bush`s Iraq policy?``

Thank you,
Anil Kapuria

Re: # 661

Beharam:

Is the following your answer to my questions: {Yes I do want to challenge your authenticity. While at it please explain for everyone`s benefits:

(a) to what kind of leadership you had provided to Pakistani-Hindus?;

(b) is there a public access of the city hall records of your public oratory on immirgation issues, and issues concerning other minorities?}


``Kapoora brains, if you want to politics, then do play politics till your heart desires. My City is the bastion of democrats, and you will have no problem in getting your kind over here. Gays and lesbians are in abundance and you can even find a home to live in.

All hindoos have known is gaali and budmashi and I can dish out the same. Your hindooland is corrupt and the whole world knows that.

Now ya`ll can kiss my @ss.``


Regarding your ardent support of Bush and his policy in Iraq.
Do you believe ``Jinnah, woould have supported Bush`s Iraq policy?``

Thank you,
Anil Kapuria

#664 by ballukhan on March 19, 2006 9:03am PT

No..words on the internet have a way of coming back and biting people in the rear..

consider the case of Joseph Steffen..

He said some things about the mayor of baltimore on what he thought was an anonymous website. That series of event will now follow him wherever he goes.

I am sure the real Behram would deny all the besharami of the fictitious Behram1.......

If anyone needs behram`s home address and telephone number, you can go to the following site, and type in his name - Behram Atashband, and the city - Austin, TX.

You can even get a list of his immediate neighbours and their addresses and phone numbers.

I think this is one way to find out if this piece of garbage is that Behram Atashband or not.

Re:#658 by rsridhar on March 18, 2006 8:38pm PT

{re:#644 by behram1
Ma@adar chowdh,
You cannot be with USA if u are full of racial hatred and hate black people.
Your a$$ needs to be whipped into shape.
Sridhar}

O! this is exactly how your nani used to talk in the chakla where your mother was sold. You h@r@@mi ki aulad.

{#657 by rsridhar on March 18, 2006 8:36pm PT
re:#642 by behram1
I am going to forward all your hate mails to everyone of any standing in your area. Let us see how u can face the Indian community.
Sridhar}

And please do. See if you can make a difference in this hate mongering community to hate somebody, just like your Gandhi started his politics of hate.

Hindoos are only used to hate something and not want something. And that is what ya`ll are all about.

Trying to terrorize me and you think that there is no law and order in this country. Terrorists of all kinds are being carefully watched, including hindoo terrorists. And you are a hindoo terrorist.

All the hindoo sperm eaters are at it again. What rubbish are these hate mongers spreading? Hindoos have nothing else to do but to gather on this Chowk and spew hate one after the other, and when it comes to working for the American people we see none of them. All these hindoos in the US do is collect money and send home for the RSS to kill innocent muslims and christians, and other minorities.

None of the original argument presented has been argued upon by the hindoos, except for hate and more hate. That is what hindoos from India are doing. They say why are they referred to as Hindoos of India. The reason being only Hindoos from India were unscrupolously brought here on H1-B visas. Most (nay all) of the tech code coolies are hindoos. The US has been infested with hindoos. These creatures are hard for enlightened humans to understand.

And they are the ones who are spreading hatred in the US against the Muslims and Pakistanis.

Kapoora brains, if you want to politics, then do play politics till your heart desires. My City is the bastion of democrats, and you will have no problem in getting your kind over here. Gays and lesbians are in abundance and you can even find a home to live in.

All hindoos have known is gaali and budmashi and I can dish out the same. Your hindooland is corrupt and the whole world knows that.

Now ya`ll can kiss my @ss.