The Marriott Bombing: ‘Pakistan’s 9/11’? Re: # 59
Mwaqar, thanks for the additional information. You correctly point out a lot of the factors behind the current situation, including the 'separate electorate'. However, one of the few things to Musharraf's credit is the restoration of the joint electorate. Hopefully, if the democratic process continues, many of the problems will sort themselves out.

Re: #60 _arjun24 - All I can say is that many of 'us pakis' are critical of our government policies and have long opposed the 'the plan to bleed india'. Neither do we want Kashmir falling in our lap - and I don't think many Ksshmiris want that either.

The Marriott Bombing: ‘Pakistan’s 9/11’? Re: # 42
Khyber, thanks for bringing up this point. The governor's point is echoed in the comment of a retired brigader I quoted in a piece for IPS the previous day:

[snip] The Marriott strike bears all the signatures of a ‘home-grown insurgency’, and was carried out "by the same people who attacked the FIA (Federal Investigation Agency) building in Lahore last year and killed Benazir", a retired army brigadier and defence analyst told IPS, asking not to be named. "The tribal agency people don’t have this kind of expertise, unless they have received outside help."

If this is the case, then clearly a convergence has taken place, or is taking place, between these different forces [end snip]

Full story at http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43963
For those who can't access it - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/beena-issues/message/995

Let's not, however, make it into an 'ethnic' issue as some people on this forum are doing - that will only serve to divide and weaken the fight against such violence.

The Marriott Bombing: ‘Pakistan’s 9/11’? Re: # 46
Thanks Ras. I actually made this point in the revised article I sent to Volkskrant the following day (the piece was published on Sept 23). This is the revised intro:

"Days after a suicide attacker rammed a truck laden with over 600 kg of high quality explosives into the high-security Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad many are still reeling with shock. It’s not that Pakistan is any stranger to bombings. Since the first suicide attack took place in 2002, the number of such attacks, and their casualties, has only risen.

"The first six months of this year alone have witnessed over sixty bomb blasts, about half of them suicide attacks. The year 2007 saw over fifty bomb blasts that took the heaviest toll of lives ever, including the over 150 who died after bomb blasts targeting the late former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s welcome procession of October 18 2007. The year ended with the attack that claimed some thirty lives and killed Bhutto herself as she exited an election rally on December 27.

"But it is the Marriott attack of September 20, 2008, striking as it did this heavily guarded building in the heart of Pakistan’s capital that is being termed “Pakistan’s 9/11�. "

Delhi Under Fright, Innocent Targeted Email from a reader in Delhi: "i was right there when the bomb blasts happened. i was in central park c.p and boom went the bomb. everywhere i saw bodies of women and children. what is becoming of the world? even the purpose of scaring the shit out of people that the so called terrorists are trying to do is going in vain because the very next day life goes back to completely normal! people have become numb. only those people are affected whose loved ones die in the blasts.
i am kind of shaken with the numbness."

The Prejudices Pakistan’s New President Faces Re: # 1 - Thanks Ras. I agree but it's not a question of expecting anything from AAZ. I was trying to unpack the reasons why he is so widely reviled.

See also 'Giving Democracy a Chance' IPS, Sept 1, 2008 (also on http://www.chowk.com/ilogs/edit/68651)

Why Zardari Should Be President! I am not a Zardari fan but I believe that we need to exercise some patience and restraint at this crucial juncture. Here's the link to a piece I wrote for IPS (also posted on my Chowk blog)
PAKISTAN: Giving Democracy a Chance - http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43742

Also see:
'Democracy, warts and all' By Saad Shafqat, http://www.dawn.com/2008/09/01/op.htm#1

'Why this fuss over Zardari?', by Farhatullah Babar
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=133670

There is no ‘honour’ in killing ‘Buried alive’ women were hit by blunt instruments - http://www.dawn.com/2008/09/04/top7.htm - the bodies of two victims have been found & exhumed. Apparently they were already dead when buried, and also they were not shot but hit with stones and sticks. But as stated in my article, these are details in the larger picture.

Free to Breed Great piece NFP, thanks for saying it like it is.

Pakistan and the Death Penalty: Time to Call it Quits Re: # 7 - It is not that Pakistan has a law against sentencing women to death - courts here have pronounced such sentences, condemning women to death by hanging and 'rajm' (stoning). It is another matter that such judgements have been overturned on appeal.

The Dragon’s Teeth Correction: It was Jason and Cadmus who sowed the dragon's teeth, not Ulyesses, although the reference is still Greek mythology.

Why not hang Surabjit Singh? Re: # 46
See "Criminals - or victims of an unjust system" - http://www.chowk.com/articles/7273
We all do what we can. Unfortunately, I did not hear about the Zahid Masih case until after the poor man was hanged. The case only strengthens the arguments against the death penalty.

Why not hang Surabjit Singh? Excellent piece by Farhatullah Babar, PPP spokesman and former senator, in The News, March 21, 2008 -
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=102396

He notes that Sarabjit’s family located him in 2000 (ten years after the arrest) and that the convict said that the prosecution had forced him to admit to a wrong identity. "The Supreme Court dismissed his appeal in August 2005. Unfortunately, our record of convictions on the basis of confessions alone is not very remarkable," says Babar, listing several such cases & pointing out that execution on the basis of confession alone (as in Surabjit's case) can turn out to be a national embarrassment and cast shadows on relations between the two countries.

Babar also notes the strangeness of the timing of Surabjit's execution date announcement "after nearly three years of limbo, and just when a democratic government is to enter office. Let it not be said that it was cynically timed to warn the new government against pursuing its vision of peace in the region. It is one thing when issues of peace are decided behind the scenes by those who want to hang every Indian crossing into Pakistan but quite another when public representatives are asked to pay the political wages for it by making it look like their decision."

Student Politics in Pakistan: A Profile Re: # 126
NFP,
Just because 'history' has 'recorded' something does not mean that the record should not be set straight.
There was no DSF in India. The CPI student wing was called the All India Students Federation.
Re: Dr Haroon, maybe re-check with him.
best, beena

Student Politics in Pakistan: A Profile Re: # 119 & #120
Thanks NFP & HP - I was talking specifically about 1951-54. Student leaders in Karachi colleges started DSF. It was not a student wing of the Communist Part although most DSF members had socialist leanings and some were members of the CP. However, some also belonged to other parties, & the Muslim League leadership was very cooperative with them. DSF had office bearers like Maulana Ehtishamul Haq Thanvi's nephew Habibul Haq (an anesthetist at Lady Dufferin Hospital, Karachi). However, the DSF leadership was careful to keep party politics out of the student body and to keep their demands linked to improving the educational system and student life.
DSF was banned in 1954 and some students who had been part of it formed NSF. It was after this that it began getting linked with one or other political party. What I've said is easily verifiable through people like S.M. Naseem in Islamabad, Dr Haroon Ahmed in Karachi (who was never with NSF), and of course newspaper files of that time. Anwar Sen Roy (now with BBC in London) did a detailed interview of Dr Sarwar in Jan 2007, in which he raised all these issues.

Student Politics in Pakistan: A Profile Re: # 122
Sorry, it was the River Volga (Danube is in Europe). Yes, my father knew him but not very well. Mushirul Hasan in Germany is in contact with his brother Shoaib Naqvi in Karachi.

Student Politics in Pakistan: A Profile Re: # 117
For the record - the ‘Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case’ was in 1951. Hassan Nasir and Zuhair Naqvi were two separate people. Zuhair Naqvi’s brother of Zoheb Naqvi, a retired businessman, lives in Karachi. Hassan Nasir came to Pakistan from Hyderabad, India. DSF in Lahore did not last long.

Zuhair Naqvi died very young, in Moscow -- he was drowned in the Danube, according to Dr Mohammad Sarwar (my father) who knew him.

I wish NFP had also written something about the DSF, which was not, as he writes, the student wing of the Communist Party of Pakistan, but was definitely a left-wing, progressive organisation says Dr Sarwar.

Sarwar was elected as DSF's first Secretary General in Karachi 1951 (he was then President of the Dow Medical Union President), and the following year he was elected President of the DSF. In December 1953, the All Pakistan Students Organisation (APSO) was formed, of which Dr Sarwar was elected Secretary General. Soon afterwards, APSO was banned, and my father along with other student leaders, were arrested. NSF was formed after that.

Re: #112
Hassan Nasir's mother was a remarkable woman, says Dr Sarwar. She came from Hyderabad to identify his body. She refused to accept the body she was shown as that of her son, and moved Lahore High Court for the production of her son's body. She eventually went back to India without ever being shown his body.