Why don’t students spend their time doing something more useful than politics?

I have faced that question twice in the last 2 days as we tried to convince students get involved in Pakistan’s political affairs, to realize the catastrophe that imposition of martial law is and the installation of a pseudo-democracy is about to be in the days to come.

These people, the age of our parents and more experienced, want us to spend our time collecting money for the poor, organize charity melas and spend our time in clinics in katchi aabadis instead of worrying about the politics of the country and its future and the stupid traitors who are in control. Perhaps, they are just being parents. Perhaps, they are disillusioned that nothing will ever change or perhaps, they have simply got their priorities wrong.

When some one with an acute heart attack walks into the emergency room, what do you do? Do you counsel them about their headache or their malnutrition? Do you give pain killers so that their headache will get relieved or do you give them laxatives so that their constipation would get better? Do you tell them they need to get audiometry done to figure out more about their hearing loss? Absolutely NOT!! The first thing you do is give them IV streptokinase with mere hope that it will reverse the pathology to some extent, at least. And then, sometimes, its simply too late for that as well. But you definitely don’t worry about his hearing loss because you can take care of it if he will actually survive, RIGHT?

Talking about needy patients and social work and ethics awareness right now is exactly that. Pakistan is suffering for a condition analogous to a heart attack. If we don’t take care of that right now, there will be irreversible damage done to the heart of this country. Forget the constipation and headache for a while, we need to worry about the heart right now. Teachers and professors, leaders and parents, PLEASE GET YOUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT. We need an acute intervention to save this country!!

Murtaza Bhutto’s daughter speaks out against Musharraf-Benazir deal

The false promises of lady democracy

By Fatima Bhutto, LA Times

We Pakistanis live in uncertain times. Emergency rule has been imposed for the 13th time in our short 60-year history.

Thousands of lawyers have been arrested, some charged with sedition and treason; the chief justice has been deposed; and a draconian media law — shutting down all private news channels — has been drafted.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of this circus has been the hijacking of the democratic cause by my aunt, the twice-disgraced former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. While she was hashing out a deal to share power with Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month, she repeatedly insisted that without her, democracy in Pakistan would be a lost cause. Now that the situation has changed, she’s saying that she wants Musharraf to step down and that she’d like to make a deal with his opponents — but still, she says, she’s the savior of democracy.

The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law. Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her.

She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)

Ms. Bhutto’s political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf’s regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.

It is widely believed that Ms. Bhutto lost both her governments on grounds of massive corruption. She and her husband, a man who came to be known in Pakistan as “Mr. 10%,” have been accused of stealing more than $1 billion from Pakistan’s treasury. She is appealing a money-laundering conviction by the Swiss courts involving about $11 million. Corruption cases in Britain and Spain are ongoing.

It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the streets are now calling her party, the Pakistan People’s Party, the Pervez People’s Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it’s too late.

Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto — my father — returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia’s military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan.

Ms. Bhutto’s repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government — making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so.

And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister’s politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.

My father was Benazir’s younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a “much higher” political authority.

I have personal reasons to fear the danger that Ms. Bhutto’s presence in Pakistan brings, but I am not alone. The Islamists are waiting at the gate. They have been waiting for confirmation that the reforms for which the Pakistani people have been struggling have been a farce, propped up by the White House. Since Musharraf seized power in 1999, there has been an earnest grass-roots movement for democratic reform. The last thing we need is to be tied to a neocon agenda through a puppet “democrat” like Ms. Bhutto.

By supporting Ms. Bhutto, who talks of democracy while asking to be brought to power by a military dictator, the only thing that will be accomplished is the death of the nascent secular democratic movement in my country. Democratization will forever be de-legitimized, and our progress in enacting true reforms will be quashed. We Pakistanis are certain of this.

Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani poet and writer. She is the daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed in 1996 in Karachi when his sister, Benazir, was prime minister.

Imran Khan writes to the students of Pakistan

The good thing about Pakistan’s martial law

It is surprising and perhaps, questionable by many, but I constantly find myself thinking about the many benefits General Musharraf’s martial law will bring to Pakistan in the long run. Don’t get me wrong though: peace, stability, economic growth and roads and infrastructure is not what intend to elaborate on.

Students in protest. For the first time in my (intelligent) life, I have a witnessed a phenomenon I have always wished I could see in Pakistan. Students, that too, from an elite university, have come out to protest infringement of human rights and freedom.

An unprecedented occurrence in today’s Pakistan, this could turn out to be one of the single biggest benefits of imposing martial law in this country. Had it not been for Musharraf’s martial law, these comfy cozy elites would have never woken up. Had it not been for Musharraf’s brute force and wild arrests across the capital, the people of the capital actually didn’t give a damn about the happenings in Swat or down in Dera Bugti or the hunger in a given village in Pakistan.

They are students, they are from the elite class, they are powerful and well read and they are mostly politically neutral: makes them excellent potentials for tomorrow’s leadership. Finally, they are thinking about where Pakistan is headed.

While Lahore is up with its unusual air of protests, Karachi is still asleep. Elite or no elite, students in Karachi have done very little to protest this situation and to taken an initiative to change it. The silence in Karachi yet again makes another point. Student politics in Karachi is largely dominated by student wings of mainstream political organizations. You can see how little they care about the future of this country their greedy minds are intoxicated with political power. Qasim Moini wrote about Karachi and its silence in DAWN here.

Why should we protest, you may ask? A student from Lahore answers here .

There is a LONG way to go. At least I don’t want to be part of the crowd that remained silent and engrossed in mundane activities while I country was thrown into a well of darkness.

Updates on Civil Society Activism in Pakistan

check out the updates from LUMS here and a press release from the LUMS administration here.

SMS revolution in Pakistan, GEO is still available

A GEO news report shows on November 4, 2007, an average of 10 SMSs were exchanged per cell phone. This is a record in Pakistan’s Telecom industry.. Yes Musharraf, are you going to block all these cell phones?

Perhaps a speculation but GEO also said 90% of these SMSs were anti-state.

Also, GEO TV audio stream is available here and the video stream here.

Academics and Human Rights Activists are being arrested and harassed in Musharraf’s Pakistan

Two emails circulated on Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) network need our attention. The first one below is about the arrests of around 50-60 people outside Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) building including prominent members of the society, academics and journalists:

This afternoon, a group of 50 or 60 peaceful protestors – including some prominent journalists, lawyers, academics and human rights activists – gathered outside the HRCP building to protest against Musharraf and his emergency declaration. The protestors were surrounded by the police and arrested. The latest information I have received is that detention orders are expected to be issued soon for all those arrested, which means that they may be put in jail indefinitely. Mr. Bilal Minto (adjunct faculty, Law & Policy) and Professor Ali Cheema (Economics) are also amongst the
arrested individuals.

In another VERY encouraging email that I quote here, a faculty member at LUMS appeals its students to peacefully protest the imposition of martial law in our country.

Dear all. As I write to you many members of society are actively protesting against the travesty that has plunged us once again into the dark ages. The hrcp building has been surrounded by police and peaceful protesters including some of our faculty members are about to be arrested. In islamabad and elsewhere the top judiciary of the country remains under house arrest and similar arrests are being made. The press has been completely muffled. This is the time to peacefully but unequivocally express our very strong dismay and protest against yet another martial law. Howvever as we unite in this please ensure that nothing happens that in any way undermines our institutional norms. Please introspect and gauge whether continuing silence makes sense any more. Please speak up, stand together and be counted. And be careful. Regards. Osama siddique

This appeal applies to all students across Pakistan, it is encouraging that someone is ready to make the move. We wanted leaders right, well we got our leaders. Let Musharraf make more of his mistakes and very soon, we will have such leaders across the whole country.

See this as well

Musharraf, this time, you HAVE to go!!

another 8 killed

8 people died in the last 2 days when part of a recently built bridge in Karachi collapsed on Saturday. Several are injured and in hospitals. It has not even been a month yet since the bridge was officially opened by none other than the General himself, not even a month!! It is not Minnesota’s bridge that was several years old, it is one that was built hardly 3 weeks back and collapsed to kill 8 people, yes, I said: 8 people killed.

It doesn’t matter whether the bridge collapsed because of the 50 feet deep and 30 feet wide hole that was being dug in the ground or because some idiot some where decided to pretend he never saw the under quality material being used or because of the simple negligence of an engineer. I fail to believe that these deaths were not preventable and hence they were KILLED. This is not an accident, these innocent people were murdered.

I know about one of them distantly, a young guy in his 30s perhaps, father of 3 kids, killed when his car collapsed.

Who is responsible? City District Government? National Highway Authority or that excuse of a General? I suggest those responsible be hanged. After all, this is murder!! Give one a befitting punishment and they’ll all think before they ask for money against their death warrant..

doctor kill, doctor die

Dirty politics at medical institutions showed a refreshing surge in the last 3 weeks with 2 people from one student political outfit killed and several injured. The latest was an exchange of fire outside Karachi’s Jinnah Hospital between “doctors”, mind you, from opposing political groups. Lets be more specific, two people who died were students of the department of Physiotherapy at Jinnah Hospital.

Perhaps time to look back at the dirty leaders of politics in this country, empty of character with stomachs full of stolen money and thousands of murders under their belts, what more can be expected of our youth when their very role models are so enchanting.

When a dog inhabits a new territory, it first surveys the area and if the area is found suitable, it poos in the area to mark it as its own. When another dog strays into the area, it smells the dung and evaluates the strength of the current inhabitant and then decides if its worth picking up a fight.

Incidents of the sort above sometimes force me to talk more about animal instincts. Perhaps, that will be more beneficial in helping us understand humans of the sort.

A perspective on Kashmir

While Kashmir continues to see phases of war and those of silence for 60 years now, I came across a different perspective of the situation in Kashmir in this news article below. A similar survey of people could now also be carried out in the Pakistani part of Kashmir. Post traumatic stress is even more common in the earthquake-struck areas.

India/Pakistan: Legacy of terror

By Alistair Scrutton

PANZU, India, May 21 (Reuters) – Six months have passed since masked gunmen knocked on the door one night and shot Sarwa’s husband, a Muslim faith healer, six times in the chest at point-blank range.

The Kashmiri villager still can’t shake off the despair. She complained of sleeplessness, mysterious pains, flashbacks, and nightmares. Her children sat near her in a courtyard of her house. They were quiet, unsmiling, with suspicious eyes.

They are the survivors of Kashmir’s 18-year-old separatist war against Indian rule — and have the mental scars to show it.

“I’d commit suicide but I’m just living for my children,” said the middle-aged woman, her dark eyes often staring into space.

“I feel very sad all the time, thinking of my husband,”

Officials say more than 42,000 people have been killed since the revolt. Rights groups put the toll at about 60,000 dead.

But behind those headlines, stories from survivors like Sarwa are repeated across Kashmir where doctors say thousands of people — witnesses to killings, rape and torture by both sides in the dispute — suffer traumas. Violence has subsided since a tentative peace process started in 2004, with only three deaths a day on average last year compared with ten a day a few years ago.

But there is little evidence the impact of war has diminished.

“Wherever you look in Kashmir, you’ll find the mental scars of war,” said Arjimand Hussain Talib, project manager for Actionaid, which runs a counselling service for people suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental problems.

A survey in rural Kashmir published last year by medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres showed one in six respondents had been detained by security forces. Of these, more than three-quarters said they were tortured.

The survey, based on interviews with 510 people, showed one in ten respondents had lost one or more members of their nuclear family. A third said they had lost one or more of their extended family members.

LIFE UNDER CONSTANT THREAT

Chats with Kashmiris quickly throw up stories of the war — accounts of relatives killed or tortured, of near misses in bomb attacks and of life under constant threat from anonymous phone calls.

Trauma does not spare the troops either, and many of the 500,000 soldiers stationed in Kashmir face psychological problems.

“Lots of security officers come here, there are lots of suicide attempts,” said Abinah Syed, a doctor at Srinagar’s run-down psychiatry hospital said.

“They miss their families, they fear attacks. Many have seen a colleague dying.”

Sarwa, who did not want to give her full name, said she did not know who killed her husband. But she talked about how he was “martyred” — a way of saying in Kashmir that troops had killed him.

“My eldest son is much quieter since his father died,” Sarwa added. “And my neighbour also suffers from the same symptoms as me, sleeplessness, headaches.”

In the nearby town of Pulwama, Actionaid has some 1,200 cases on its counselling files. Most are women.

“The violence may go down, but it is shocking to see there is no fall in the people coming for help,” said Saudia Qutab, who works on the counselling project.

Qutab recently faced a mother suffering from uncontrolled weeping, sleeplessness and outbursts of aggression. Her 16-year-old son went to school seven years ago. He never returned, one of an estimated 10,000 “disappearances” in Kashmir.

“It is the disappeared cases that are often worse, because families have no closure,” Qutab said.

LIVING WITH TRAUMA

In the psychiatric hospital in Srinagar, doctors had registered 63,000 patients last year, compared with 1,500 patients in 1989.

Despite the stigma in Kashmir of entering a “mental hospital”, many villagers had travelled miles.

Most recount nothing. They just ask for medicine.

“The fear of authority is so great, traumas often don’t even come out in the chamber of the doctor,” said Dr. Arshad Hussain, a consultant at the hospital.

“There is no trust for anybody. There is a community paranoia,” he said, the door to his office constantly opened by patients pleading for his signature.

Some leaders worry how the trauma will affect the next generation.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Kashmir’s chief cleric and head of the moderate separatist alliance All Parties Hurriyat Conference, said he saw at his Friday prayer meetings that more younger people were drawn to radical Islam.

“The psychological trauma has made people a lot angrier,” said Farooq, whose father was killed by unknown gunmen.

“With politics, we are seeing more radical approaches, linked to the trauma of 18 years of violence. We preach to an audience that has a lot of anger. That makes our job more difficult”.