New Delhi. Dassault Aviation has selected Reliance Industries Limited
(RIL) as its private sector partner to manufacture the Rafale Combat
jets in India.

Details are not known but Dassault confirmed the agreement with the
Mumbai-based Mukesh Ambani-led Indian conglomerate. It was signed a week
or so after the Government announced the Rafale as the winner in the
Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) fray Jan 31.

In a statement, the French company said: Dassault Aviation, a major
player in the global aerospace industry has entered into an MoU with
Reliance Industries Ltd., India’s largest private sector company, for
pursuing in strategic opportunities of collaboration in the area of
complex manufacturing and support in India.

Dassault manufactures Rafale combat jets and Falcon business jets, and
the proposed venture should foray into both these sectors.

Company sources also pointed out that much of the tooling and weapons of
IAF’s Mirage 2000, which are being upgraded to Mirage 2000-5 standards,
are common with those of the Rafale, and therefore it would be easier
to absorb the new generation technologies, both in manufacturing and
operations.

READ MORE

Many of us already know about the spectrum auction curruption case in India. A year back we did a post on the lessons we can learn from the case India. Now when the PTA are all set to kick the specturm launch in March end the Supreme Court accros the border has given its rulling, cancelling 122 Telecom Licenses of worlds second larget mobile subscirber market.

This is a big setback for international investers, let’s see how this will effect the upcoming license auctions in Pakistan.

More from Reuters below:

India’s Supreme Court on Thursday revoked all 122 telecoms licences issued under a scandal-tainted 2008 sale, a fresh embarrassment for the government and plunging the mobile network market of Asia’s third-largest economy into uncertainty.

The ruling is a setback for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government, which oversaw the sale of the licenses at below-market prices, costing the exchequer up to $36 billion in lost revenues.

The licences affected by Thursday’s ruling include all of those held by Unitech Wireless, the Indian joint venture of Norway’s Telenor and Unitech.

“We have been unfairly treated as we simply followed the government process we were asked to,” the Telenor joint venture said in a statement. “We are shocked to see that Uninor is being penalised for faults the court has found in the government process.”

The telecoms scandal is the biggest of several that have emerged during Singh’s second term and triggered massive street protests last year. Two ministers, including former telecoms minister Andimuthu Raja, who presided over the 2008 grant process, have resigned. Raja is in jail awaiting trial.

“This country is no longer willing to allow these corrupt corporations and these corrupt public officials to retain the benefits of their illegal and corrupt actions,” said Prashant Bhushan, a lawyer and petitioner in the case.

India is the second-largest cellular market in the world by subscribers, with 894 million at the end of December, although the market is crowded with more than a dozen operators, making call rates among the lowest in the world and squeezing margins.

Investors and operators have long been calling for consolidation in the crowded industry, and Thursday’s ruling stands to benefit the country’s biggest operators, including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone.

“Players like Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular with popular brands and strong balance sheets will be clear beneficiaries because they can take advantage of this situation and increase market share,” said Jagannadham Thunuguntla, Head of Research, SMC Investments and Advisors, Mumbai.

Stocks in telecoms companies including Reliance Communications and Unitech fell after the verdict, but shares in Bharti Airtel jumped.

“For foreign investors, it is a very bad news. What mistake did they do? They partnered with Indian companies, invested lots of money and followed the process of that time,” said Rishi Sahai, director at consultancy firm Cogence Advisors in New Delhi.

The Supreme Court said the current licenses will remain in place for four months, in which time the government should decide fresh norms for issuing licenses, a lawyer involved in the case said.

India’s image as an investment destination was dented over the past year as the economy slowed, government reforms stalled and the telecoms scandals along with other high profile graft cases heightened concerns about government policies.

“This is a collective failure of the government of India, said S ubramanian Swamy, an opposition politician who brought the petition to revoke the license. ” The court has said that the government must now get the market value of these licenses .”

Loop Telecom Pvt Ltd and Videcon Telecommunications, part of India’s Videocon group are also affected, along with Etisalat DB, the joint venture between Abu Dhabi’s Etisalat and India’s DB group; and S-Tel.

Thirteen licences held by Idea Cellular and three held by Tata Teleservices are also affected.

via Reuters

http://www.awaztoday.com/playshow/19453/Islamabad-Tonight-25h-January-2012.aspx
http://www.zemtv.com/2012/01/25/islamabad-tonight-mohammad-hafiz-25th-january-2012/
http://www.friendskorner.com/forum/f247/video-islamabad-tonight-nadeem-malik-25th-january-2011-hafiz-muhammad-saeed-261629/
http://www.pakistanherald.com/Program/Islamabad-Tonight-January-25-2012-Nadeem-Malik-9483

ISLAMABAD TONIGHT

WITH NADEEM MALIK

25-01-2012

TOPIC- JIHADI GROUPS IN PAKISTAN

GUEST- HAFIZ SAEED AHMED

HAFIZ SAEED AHMED OF JAMAT DAWA was the only guest on the show he said that the situation of the world has been changed but the reality is unchanged. He said that West is even targeting Islamic welfare organizations of their propaganda. He said that America is trying to control the world with might after 9/11. He said that Jamat-e- dawa helped people in earth quake hit areas. He said that even UNO handed over aid goods to Jamat-e-Dawa to deliver in earthquake hit areas. He said that his organization has been banned despite its outstanding social and welfare work for people.

He said that SC and LHC have given their verdict that his organization is not involved in Mumbai attacks. He said that India always continues its propaganda against his organization. He said that Ajmal Qasab has changed his statement many times. He said that he has offered to India that if they do not trust Pakistani courts let take the matter to international court.

He said that he condemns the killing of innocent people in suicide attacks. He said that India accused his organization for Mumbai attacks just after two hours of the incident. He said that his organization is only operating inside Pakistan only and not out side of the country.

He said that his organization is helping refugees and doing welfare work in Afghanistan. He said that he met Abdullah Izam only once in his life. He said that he has delivered edict against suicide attacks that they are against the Sharia law.

He said that the strategy of drone attacks was to pave the way for suicide attacks. He said that tribal people are lured in to suicide attacks saying that Pakistani government and military is helping America to attack on them. He said that if drone attacks stop suicide attacks stop with it. He said that drone attacks are going on at a well though strategy. He said that vast majority of seventy thousand people killed in drone attacks in tribal areas is common people. He said that people who attacked on GHQ and Mehran base are not the friends of Pakistan.

He said that his organization has a regular movement to educate people against suicide attacks.

He said that state is responsible for defense of the country but our government is helpless. He said that our roads have been used to transport American ammunition used against Afghanistan. He said that it is a torment of Allah that same ammunition is being used against our own country now.

He said that any terrorist attack takes place Taliban are accused for that with out confirmation. He said that it is commandment of Allah that confirm before telling any thing to others. He said that India is involved in terrorist attacks against Pakistan and that is why Indian terrorist Sarbasjeet Singh is in jail in Pakistan. He said that our interior minister accuses Lashker-e-Jhangvi for terrorism and later on release their accused people from jail.

He said that he admits that negligence on human rights is being committed. He said that he admits that religious Madrassa are getting foreign aid but he does not believe that the Madrassa are involved in terrorism. He said that India is giving training to the people for terrorist attacks against Pakistan inside Afghanistan. He said that he has been accused for many things but none has been proved against him.

He said that America malign same people it work with. He said that America is working in our area with the help of ISI and at the same time maligning it in the name of his organization.

He said that people who earned dollars during the war against Russia to train people were wrong and people making dollars today are wrong too. He said that he meets general (R) Hammed Gul pretty much every day now a days but he never met him when he was DGISI.

He said that it is a right of Afghan people to fight for their freedom. He said that Afghan Mujahideen do not need the help of Pakistani people and it is the propaganda against our country. He said that the terms of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and Punjabi Taliban are different forms of propaganda against Pakistan.

He said that he advises America to quit attacks against Pakistan and Afghanistan and go back. He said that America must stop to try to give a role to India to play in Afghanistan. He said that peace can not be restored in our region as long America is present here. He said that America should go back and India should stay within its limits and do not interfere in Afghanistan. He said that Pakistani people should not get involved in militancy but both sides have to share responsibility.

–

Filed under: CURRENT AFFAIRS

Foremost among these is the raging controversy surrounding Salman Rushdie’s scheduled appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival, a saga that neatly encapsulates both the virtues and vices of the Indian polity. The gathering has fast emerged as the largest and most prestigious literary event in Asia, and it is a fine example of the soft power strengths India brings to the competition with China for influence in the region. This year’s installment attracted some 250 writers from South Asia and beyond (including talk show maven Oprah Winfrey, new age guru Deepak Chopra and Joseph Lelyveld, whose book on Mahatma Gandhi was greeted with a blast of invective from the Indian political class last year) as well as 70,000 visitors. Yet the imbroglio over Rushdie, who was supposed to be the main attraction at this year’s festival, has tarnished India’s credentials as emerging Asia’s brightest exemplar of democratic freedoms.

Rushdie, who was born in Mumbai to a Muslim family of Kashmiri descent, is the author of the 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, which inflamed Muslim sentiment throughout the world and lead Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader, to issue a notorious fatwa against his life. Concerned about the potential for upheaval among its sizeable Muslim population, the Indian government quickly banned the book, part of its familiar but disgraceful ritual of proscribing books that touch on sensitive issues or arouse passions in certain quarters. Rushdie, who continues to live under the threat of death, has traveled to India without incident numerous times in the years since, including an unannounced 2007 visit to the Jaipur gathering that is credited with putting it on the world’s cultural map.

But his headline participation at this year’s event brought forth a torrent of umbrage and threats. Muslim clerics started things off, including those at Darul Uloom Deoband, an influential Islamic seminary in Uttar Predesh, India’s most populous state which will hold legislative elections next month that many believe are critical to the survival of the Congress Party-led national government in New Delhi. Another seminary issued a fatwa calling for protests against the visit and a number of Muslim groups warned of “unprecedented protests” and burned Rushdie’s effigy.

Predictably enough, politicians soon took up the cudgels, many of them Congress Party leaders fearful of losing the allegiance of Uttar Pradesh’s large bloc of Muslim voters, who formed about a fifth of the state’s electorate. Ashok Gehlot, chief minister of Rajasthan, the northwestern state where the festival takes place, and a former general secretary of the All India Congress Committee, reportedly pressed the organizers to rescind their invitation to Rushdie and appeared indifferent to the threats being made against Rushdie’s safety. Chandrabhan Singh, head of the Congress Party’s Rajasthan unit, declared that “Rushdie has hurt the sentiments of many Indians. He must not be allowed to come to India.” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, the party’s national leader, maintained a studious silence, while one of Singh’s Cabinet members pronounced that Rushdie’s “presence is not desirable.”

In contrast to the poltroon instincts of the political class, India’s boisterous media leapt to Rushdie’s defense. The Times of India accused the Congress Party of playing identity politics and argued that “by catering to such intolerance, the Congress has further contributed to creating an increasingly illiberal atmosphere in the country.” The Hindu called the affair “a national shame” and charged that “India has again betrayed its heritage of providing sanctuary to persecuted individuals and ideas, not to speak of its Constitution.”

If the saga had ended at this point, it would have amounted to an embarassment to the country’s reputation. Instead it unexpectedly morphed into an outrage against free expression. On the eve of the festival’s opening, Rushdie suddenly withdrew when the Rajasthan police warned him of an assassination plot being hatched by a Mumbai underworld boss who has close ties to the Pakistani security establishment. Media outlets, however, soon reported that the death threat was concocted by authorities to scare him away. When Rushdie made plans to address the gathering via video link, Rajasthan officials attempted to throw up new impediments. In the end, the video conference was abruptly cancelled by the venue’s owner following police warnings about violent protests.

In solidarity with Rushdie, four Indian writers at the gathering staged an impromptu reading of passages from The Satanic Verses, a prohibited act that drew quick police notice. Advised by legal counsel that they had unwittingly opened themselves up to criminal charges, the writers hastily departed Jaipur and, in some cases, the country.

Unfortunately, the Rushdie affair stands out for its prominence but not its singularity. Currently, the Delhi High Court is considering a petition that seeks to hold Google and Facebook liable for not censoring content that might offend the sensibilities of Hindus, Muslims and Christians. The judge overseeing the matter ominously warned that if the companies could not police their own sites, “like China we may be forced to pass orders banning all such websites.” Prime Minister Singh’s government has lent its imprimatur to the petitioner’s cause.

Late last year, Kapil Sibal, a Harvard-educated lawyer who serves as Mr. Singh’s telecommunications minister, likewise threatened to censor social networking sites for objectionable content (here and here).  Similar to the rhetoric directed at Rushdie, he argued that “religious sentiments of many communities and of any reasonable person is [sic] being hurt because of content which is on the sites.” Last June’s death of M. F. Husain, the most acclaimed painter of modern India, also recalled how he had been hounded into self-exile by Hindu nationalist groups incensed at his nude depictions of Hindu deities. Prime Minister Singh called Husain’s passing in a London hospital “a national loss” but he did nothing to dampen the mob culture that caused Husain to spend the last years of his life outside of India.

Indeed, over the last two years, India’s illiberal tendencies have been in particular bloom:

• A fictionalized biography of Congress Party supreme Sonia Gandhi was banned;
• Government officials helped put the kibosh on plans to make a movie based on Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire, a non-fiction book that sheds light on Jawaharlal Nehru’s furtive relationship with the wife of the British Raj’s last viceroy;
• An outcry organized by the family of Bal Thackeray, a Hindu nationalist politician, forced the University of Mumbai to drop Rohinton Mistry’s novel, Such a Long Journey, a finalist for the prestigious Man Booker Prize, from its English-language syllabus;
• And Arundhati Roy, a perennial bete noire to the political establishment and a Man Booker Prize-winner for her 1997 novel, The God of Small Things, was charged with sedition for her remarks on the Kashmir dispute.

All democracies are continuous works in progress. But this year’s Republic Day reveals just how far India still remains from the ideals of free expression.

Last week, I discussed the breaking news of an emerging strain of “totally drug resistant” tuberculosis (TDR-TB)* in Mumbai.  This week, the Indian government denied the findings, arguing that the twelve cases were in fact extensively drug resistant (XDR, not “extremely,” as I wrote previously).  The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare stated that nine of the twelve patients were responding to treatment, while the other three had died.  Furthermore, the Ministry said that the diagnostics lab at the Hinduja National Hospital, where the twelve patients were treated, was not accredited to diagnose XDR or TDR cases.

The Ministry also pointed out that the World Health Organization (WHO) does not recognize the classification of “TDR” at this time.  In an article written this month, the WHO explains that current drug susceptibility tests cannot determine with enough certainty whether a strain is XDR or TDR to make a solid conclusion.  The WHO will meet in March to discuss TB drug susceptibility diagnostics and whether, or how, to define TDR-TB.  The author of the study claiming the emergence of TDR in India, Dr. Zarir Udwadia, argued that this was not the time to parse words, saying: “Let them call it what they want.  For physician and patient, it’s not just a question of semantics–it’s a question of survival and mortality.”  In more concerning news, Business Week published an article today detailing that ten more possible cases of TDR (or XDR) TB have emerged 250 miles (400 kilometers) south of Mumbai.  Indian and WHO officials are meeting to discuss what to do, including the possibility of mandatory quarantines.

Whether or not it’s fair to use the TDR moniker, drug resistance is a serious, emerging issue that may very well define the next stage of global health.  The appearance of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and XDR TB, MRSA strains, and other drug resistant pathogens in the past couple of decades or so, has shown that despite the great strides we have made since the discovery of penicillin in the last century, life will find a way around the miracle drugs we have developed (about which I wrote in September 2011, including Dr. Fleming’s concerns in 1945).  More aggressive quarantine protocols and drug adherence strategies must be discussed, for a start.  This in itself is a fraught notion, as it raises questions about patients’ rights and freedoms, stigma of and discrimination against people diagnosed with drug resistant pathogens, and similar issues.  Better diagnostic tools must be developed and rolled out globally, with particular attention paid to developing nations, where need, disease burdens, and non-adherence are often greatest.  More efforts must be made to strengthen overburdened and underfunded health systems, particularly in the developing world, and to effectively train health care workers to diagnose, treat, and support patients with pathogens that may become, or are, drug resistant.  Finally, pharmaceutical companies must make new drugs more widely available and affordable, while stepping up development of new drugs.  These last three points, of course, have been sticking points for almost every global health issue for a long time and continue to plague disease prevention, treatment, and eradication efforts worldwide.  We are reaching a turning point, one at which some drug resistant pathogens are on the cusp of shifting from a handful of cases, an endemic, to a bigger, epidemic or even pandemic problem.  Now is the time to initiate discussions on what the global community will do to stem drug resistance.

*If you want a bit more information on TDR-TB, take a look at the WHO’s page on TDR, or check out The Los Angeles Times‘ interview with Dr. Otto Yang of the UCLA medical school.  Discussions of (and mild panic about) drug resistance, especially for TB, have been around for years–check out John Le Carré’s novel The Constant Gardener or its excellent film adaptation for a little MDR-TB/Big Pharma/international conspiracy thriller on the topic.  

Header photo of hand-stitched lung art available here, by Spec-ta-cles, CC BY 2.0.

Indian fishermen released from Pakistani prisons, waiting to go back

Below, my article on the India-Pakistan prisoners issue published in Aman ki Asha on Jan 11, 2012, followed by a correction from Sen. Iqbal Haider and further clarification from B.M. Kutty. Also please do read Shivam Vij’s thought-provoking and thorough report ‘Why is Gopal Das free and not Dr Chishty?‘, published in Aman ki Asha, and Anahita Mukherji’s report in The Sunday Times of India about how the Indian prisoners were treated in Pakistan (surprisingly well) - Warm memories of time in Pak jail.

Looking a New Year gift horse in the mouth

Pakistan’s release of 183 Indian prisoners on Jan 7, 2012 is a welcome step but it also highlights the ongoing issues faced by cross-border prisoners

By Beena Sarwar

On January 8, 2012, 183 Indians crossed the Wagah border from Lahore, bundled up against the bitter cold, many in shawls gifted to them in Pakistan, eager to return home after being released from Pakistani prisons.

Much hard work, persistence and the humanitarian view taken by the Lahore High Court lie behind their release, termed “a New Year gift” from Pakistan to India.

The story of this particular prisoner repatriation started in October 2011, when advocate Awais Sheikh filed a writ petition before the Lahore High Court seeking the release of two Indians, Satinder Paul and Karale Bhanudas, who remained in Pakistani prisons despite having completed their sentence.

On the Lahore High Court’s order to provide details on foreign nationals held in Pakistani prisons, Superintendent Jail submitted a list of 74 foreign nationals in prison, including 33 Indians, who had completed their terms of imprisonment.

Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court Ijaz Ahmed Choudry in his order of Nov 14, 2011, directed the release the two prisoners on whose case the petition was based, as well as all foreign prisoners who had completed their terms.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign affairs cleared six Indian civilian prisoners for release. However, two of them, Sakhi Muhammad and Bhavesh Kanti Parmar, were not released for “unknown reasons”, says Awais Sheikh.

Released Indian prisoners waiting to complete formalities at Wagah. Photo: TOI

On Jan 7, 2012, Pakistan released 183 Indian prisoners, including Satinder Paul Singh, Sanjeet Kumar, Nasim and Sama Yousaf, and 179 Indian fishermen. They were brought to Wagah border on Jan 8th morning. The First Secretary of Indian High Commission along with three other ICH officers and an officer of Pakistan’s Interior Ministry, Islamabad, were also present.

It took them five hours at Wagah to complete the legal formalities at Customs, during which time advocate Awais Sheikh also remained with them. They finally crossed the border at 6.00 p.m.

“It was an unforgettable scene,” says Sheikh. “I bid them a hearty farewell with my best wishes. My apologies to them all for being kept in jails even after the completion of awarded sentence. I wish that sanity would prevail and I pray that my voice reaches the governments of both countries”.

Justice delayed

There are still 276 Indian fishermen in Pakistani jails. “Of these, 83 have already served their sentence but cannot be released because Indian authorities have not confirmed their nationality,” explains Justice Zahid. Foreign prisoners can only be freed after respective embassies confirm their identity.

This is also the case in India, which currently has 440 Pakistani fishermen in custody, according to former Pakistan law minister Iqbal Haider. He says that the nationalities of 285 of these prisoners have been determined, but “no assistance can be provided to the remaining 164 until their citizenship is established.”

Officials at India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) say that India and Pakistan don’t want to detain fishermen from the other country. “Once they cross the border, the legal process begins. The process of verifying nationalities involves visiting a fisherman’s village to confirm his identity. Often the addresses given are incomplete or very remote. It may take a long time to get there,” said an MEA official.

But rights activists say that this verification process, which takes six months to a year, only starts after the prisoners have completed their terms.

The process of verifying a prisoner’s nationality should begin the moment he is arrested by India or Pakistan. “The process should be complete at the time of a prisoner’s release so he does not remain in jail after serving his sentence,” says Jatin Desai.

Justice Zahid blames both countries for the delay in releasing innocent fishermen who inadvertently cross national borders while fishing. “These fishermen are usually given a six-month to a year’s jail sentence. By the time they are sentenced, they have already served the term,” he maintains. “If both governments show interest, the process could be completed in less than a month.”

Both the Indian and the Pakistani Supreme Courts have ruled that keeping a prisoner even for a day after he completes his jail term is illegal.

Iqbal Haider has appealed to the Pakistani and Indian governments to release all foreign prisoners over 60 years of age, and to expedite their respective trials by providing them with legal facilities.

Until such steps are not implemented, the issue of cross-border prisoners will remain unresolved. In humanity’s name, if not to gain the goodwill of thousands of affected people, both governments must cut the bureaucratic red tape and existing, outdated protocols – the sooner the better.

Fishy business

Indian fishermen at Wagah border, bundled up against the cold they're unused to, in their native Gujarat. Photo: Times of India

Both countries routinely arrest each other’s fishermen for transgressing maritime boundaries. Released fishermen are routinely repatriated via Wagah border, from where they have to make the tedious overland journey home.

“Gujarat and Karachi are so close to each other, and yet Gujarati fishermen released in Karachi have to travel all the way to Wagah border, and then from Amritsar to Gujarat. Many are from remote villages, and it takes even longer to reach,” says senior Mumbai-based journalist Jatin Desai, who is joint secretary, Pakistan India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy. “Why should they not be sent back by sea, along with their boats?”

Around 481 Indian fishing boats lie rotting in Karachi harbour. “Each boat costs around 30-40 lakh Indian rupees. Most fishermen are very poor and an entire fishing village chips in to buy a boat,” observes retired Supreme Court of Pakistan Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid.

Justice Zahid, chairman of the Committee for Welfare of Prisoners and a member of the Indo-Pak Joint Judicial Committee comprising eight retired judges – four each from India and Pakistan examining the issue of cross-border prisoners – points out that “even if both countries release all the captive fisherfolk, others will continue to be arrested.”

He suggests setting up a joint committee of officials from India and Pakistan stationed aboard a ship between the two countries to decide cases of fishermen accidentally straying across the maritime border. “The matter can be settled in the sea itself.”

Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum President Muhammad Ali Shah, hoping that India will also release the Pakistani fishermen in Indian jails, suggests that both countries should allow each other’s fishermen to catch fish at a small scale in 50 nautical miles in other’s waters, rather than criminalising this transgression.

A year ago, India and Pakistan agreed to set up a task force with two members each from Pakistan and India to improve the situation. “Pakistan has already nominated its members but India is yet to do so,” says Jatin Desai.

Indian and Pakistani peace activists in a joint press statement of October 2011 had urged their governments to release the fishermen and their boats. Both governments “need to recognise the fact that these traditional fishermen go to the mid-sea for their livelihood. Arresting them and confiscating their boats means depriving their families from the livelihood, and causing them extreme distress,” said the statement… “The issue of fishermen needs to be seen from the humanitarian, not security angle.”

The POWS issue

Not included in the list of prisoners to be released were the two Sikh prisoners. One of them is Sarabjit Singh convicted for bomb blasts in Pakistan in 1990 even though the FIR does not mention his name but that of a Manjeet Singh (Surjit Singh says he is the victim of a mistaken identity; see report ‘Why is Gopal Das free and not Dr Chishty?’ by Shivam Vij). The other prisoner, who has languished for four decadese, is Surjit Singh, a jawan of India’s Border Security Force (BSF), taken prisoner of war in 1971 and given up for dead in 1974. In April 2011, he was found to be alive, in Kot Lakhpat Jail, Lahore, after Khushi Mohammad, an Indian prisoner released by Pakistan on his return mentioned the names of some of his compatriots still in Pakistani prisons.

Both Sarabjit and Surjit have now spent decades in prison, far beyond life imprisonment terms. Pakistan must repatriate them immediately, as human rights activists and lawyers on both sides are demanding.

In addition, both countries must look into the issue of the ‘forgotten’ prisoners of war.

In June 2011, Brian MacMahon, a former master mariner from India, now based in Australia, appealed to the Presidents of India and Pakistan to make efforts to locate and release the POWs on either side, and if they were no longer living, to provide information and their remains to their families in order to get some closure on their missing loved ones.

He cited the example of Australia, which has brought home the remains of every one of its servicemen missing in action 38 years after the conflict in Vietnam (which ended in 1971).

‘Missing’ Indian POWs who have been ‘sighted’ in Pakistan over the years include Major S. P. S. Waraich , Capt Kamal Bakshi, Subedar Assa Singh, and Wing Commander H. S. Gill. The ‘discovery’ of Surjit Singh ignites hope that they and their other colleagues may similarly be alive and undocumented in a Pakistani prison.

In September 2004, then Defence Minister of India, Pranab Mukherjee told reporters that an estimated “17 army officers, two junior commissioned officers and 19 other rank officers are currently in Pakistani jails.”

There are Pakistani POWs in India too. In June 2010, The Daily Mail Today, New Delhi, reported that 18 Pakistan Army personnel taken as prisoners of war in 1965 and 1971 were still in Indian custody, as confirmed by the Indian Ministry of Defence. This is “contrary to all norms of humanity as well in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention… these POWs also include two Majors who went missing during the wars” (June 24, 2010).

Given the number of cases where missing presumed dead armed forces personnel have been found alive in one prison or another, isn’t it time for both countries to make concerted efforts to get these men back – if for no other reason, then in the name of humanity?

Update – with apologies for the oversight, which was entirely inadvertent – I wrote the piece using the most recent accounts  at hand.

Jan 14, 2012: From Senator (R) Iqbal Haider, Senior Advocate Supreme Court

Dear Beena,

I hope you would not mind, my adding to your information that it was in pursuance of the Orders passed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in the Constitution Petition No.48/2010 filed and conducted by me, “pro bono”, on or about 30th July 2010, on behalf of Pakistan Fisherfolks Forum and PILER that the Supreme Court had ordered that all cases of fishermen crossing the border should be heard expeditiously, preferably within a period of six weeks and that all the prisoners under the Foreigners Act should be released and repatriated forthwith, if they have completed their sentences. In pursuance of these Orders of the Supreme Court more than 442 Indian fishermen prisoners were released and repatriated in one go.

This has started the process of further release of large number of Indian prisoners from Pakistan and Pakistani prisoners from India.

When our delegation comprising Mr. Kuldip Nayar, Mr. Mahesh Bhatt and Mr. Jatin Desai from India and Mr. Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, Mr. Karamat Ali and the undersigned from Pakistan were received by Mrs. Soniya Gandhi, the Head of Ruling Congress Party, on or about 9th September 2010, to reciprocate our efforts for release of Indian fishermen, Mrs. Gandhi was kind enough to immediately order release of all Pakistani Prisoners who have completed their sentences and if their nationalities have been identified. As a result hundreds of more prisoners of the two countries have been released since then.

The recent release of 179 Indian Fishermen from Malir Jail Karachi was consistently pursued with Pakistani authorities by our team of Mr. Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, Mr. Karamat Ali, Mr. Mohammad Ali Shah of Fisherfolk and the undersigned. It was due to the consistent efforts of this team that these prisoners were finally released on 7th January’ 12 from Malir Jail Karachi. Any proceedings in the Lahore High Court were not instrumental in release of these Indian Fishermen from Malir Jail Karachi.

I do sincerely appreciate and admire efforts of all members of the Bar or members of the civil society for putting hard work persistently for release of the prisoners as well as for much needed improvements in the relations between our two countries. Warm, cordial, peaceful and open border relations between Pakistan and India is the need of the people of this subcontinent.

The aforesaid is just to put the record straight.

Jan 14, 2012: From B.M.Kutty, Secretary General, Pakistan Peace Coalition (PPC), PILER Center, Karachi:

Dear Iqbal Haider Saheb,

Thank you very much for clarifying how the process of release of India-Pakistan fishermen by the two governments started and how it is still going on, thanks to the untiring efforts of rights activsts like you, Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, Muhammad Ali Shah, Karamat Ali and others. . Let us also remind ourselves of the fact that  PILER and PFF had been involved in it since 1997 when the first batch of about 500 plus fishermen were released from both sides. Unfortunately, the seemingly unstoppable exercise of arrest and release of poor fishermen on both sides goes on and on. God save the fishermen!!

He had no doubt of  his place in literary history and left behind the following epitaph for himself: “Here lies Saadat Hasan Manto. With him lie buried the arts of short-story telling. Here he lies underneath tons of mud still wondering if he was a better short-story writer than God.”

Saadat Hasan Manto died in Lahore in 1955. He was forty-three years old. The life of  one of our greatest short-story writers had been prematurely truncated. I was eleven years old at the time. I never met him. I wish I had. One can visualise him easily enough. In later photographs the melancholy is visible. He appears exhausted as if his heart were entrenched with sadness. In these his face displays all the consequences of a ravaged liver. But there are others. Here his eyes sparkle with intelligence, the impudence almost bursting through the thick glass of his 1940’s spectacles, mocking the custodians of morality, the practitioners of confessional politics or the commissariat of the Progressive Writers. ‘Do your worst’, he appears to be telling them. ‘I don’t care. I will write to please myself. Not you.’   Manto’s battles with the literary establishment of his time became a central feature of his biography. Charged with obscenity and brought to trial on a number of occasions he remained defiant and unapologetic.

It was the Partition of India in 1947 along religious lines formed his own attitudes and those of his numerous detractors. The episodes associated with the senseless carnage that accompanied the withdrawal of the British from India loom large in Manto’s short stories. A few words of  necessary explanation might help the reader to understand the corrosive impact of  Manto on the reading public.

The horrors of 1947 were well known, but few liked to talk about them. A collective trauma appeared to have silenced most people. Not Manto. In his stories of that period he recovered the dignity of all the victims without fear or favour. Even the perpetrators of crimes were victims of a political process that had gone out of control.

In these bad times when the fashion is to worship accomplished facts real history tends to be treated as an irritant, something to be swatted out of existence like mosquitoes in summer, it is worth recalling that something terrible happened fifty years ago today when India was divided.  It is time to recognise it and see if it can be understood and transcended. The survivors owe it to those who perished. At least a million men, women and children lost their lives during the carnage of ‘ethnic cleansing’ that overcame Northern and Eastern India as the Punjab and Bengal were divided along religious lines.

In the months that preceded Partition,  Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other glared into each other’s hate-filled eyes before embarking on  frenzied blood-baths. The character and scale of the butchery was unprecedented in Indian history. In fact even Jinnah, as late as June 1946, was prepared to consider a federal solution as proposed by the Cabinet Mission sent to India by the Labour Government. It was the Congress Party which made that particular solution impossible.

This failure meant that exactly one year before Partition, the Hindu-Muslim riots started in Eastern India. During four days in August 1946, nearly 5000 people were killed and three times that number wounded in Bengal. The mood in the Punjab became edgy. Fear overcame rationality.

My mother, an active member of the Communist Party, often recalls how in April 1947, heavily pregnant with my sister and alone at home, she was disturbed by a loud knock on the front door. As she opened the door  she was overcome by anxiety. In front of her stood the giant figure of a Sikh. He saw the fear on her face, understood and spoke in a soft, reassuring voice. All he wanted to know was the location of a particular house on a nearby road. My mother gave him the directions. He thanked her warmly and left. She was overpowered by shame. How could she, of all people, without a trace of prejudice, have reacted in that fashion. Nor was she the  only one. Manto’s stories help us to understand the madness that grippped [everyone].

Trains became moving graveyards as they arrived at stations on both sides of the new divide, packed with corpses of fleeing refugees. As always, it was  the poor of town and country who were the main victims and they were buried or burnt in  hastily dug pits. Neither the song of the nightingale nor lamps or flowers would ever grace their graves. They are the forgotten victims of that year. No memorial in India or Pakistan marks the killings. The Partition of India was a tragedy and a crime. It was neither inevitable nor necessary and  its traces are only too visible in the unending anguish of the great  sub-continent. Faiz Ahmed Faiz,  one of the greatest of 20th century Urdu poets,  born in what  became Pakistan, spoke for many  in his poem Freedom’s Dawn on August ‘47:

This leprous daybreak, dawn night’s fangs have mangled—
This is not that long -looked-for break of day,
Not that clear dawn in quest of which those comrades
Set out, believing that in heaven’s wide void
Somewhere must be the star’s last halting place,
Somewhere the verge of night’s slow-washing tide,
Somewhere an anchorage for the ship of heartache.

But now, word goes, the birth of day from darkness
Is finished, wandering feet stand at their goal;
Our leaders’ ways are altering, festive looks
Are all the fashion, discontent reproved;–
And yet this physic still on unslaked eye
Or heart fevered by severance works no cure.
Where did that fine breeze, that the wayside lamp
Has not once felt, blow from—where has it fled?
Night’s heaviness is unlessened still, the hour
Of mind and spirit’s ransom has not struck;
Let us go on, our goal is not reached yet.

A year later, another poet Sahir Ludhianvi, who crossed the border and came to Pakistan could not bear the atmosphere and returned to India. He sent an explanation in the form of a dirge addressed to fellow-writers in Pakistan:

Friends, for long years
I have spun dreams of the moon and stars and spring for you,
Today my tattered garments hold nothing
But the dust of the road that we have travelled.
The music in my harp has been strangled
Its tunes buried by wails and screams
Peace and civilization are the alms I crave
So that my lips can learn how to sing again.

Saadat Hasan Manto, was moved to write ‘Toba Tek Singh’. Manto wrote sparsely, each word carefully chosen. His diamond-hard prose was in polar contrast to the flowery language of many  contemporaries. He wrote about sexual frustration and its consequences, of jealousy and how it often led to murder. One of his stories, ‘Behind the Screen’, describes a wife’s revenge once she discovers her husband has a secret mistress. The wife takes the husband to his lover’s apartment and in his presence has her body chopped into tiny pieces. The story was based on an accrual event that took place in the North West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan. Manto spared his readers the real life ending: the wife had her rival’s flesh cooked and forced her husband to eat the cooked flesh, a striking demonstration of the saying that truth is stranger than fiction (1).

‘Toba Tek Singh’  is a masterpiece set in the lunatic asylum in Lahore at the time of Partition.  When whole cities are being ethnically cleansed, how can the asylums escape? The Hindu and Sikh lunatics are told by bureaucrats organising the transfer of power that they will be forcibly transferred to  institutions in India.  The inmates rebel. They embrace each other and weep. They will not be parted willingly. They have to be forced on to the trucks. One of them, a Sikh, is so overcome by rage that he dies on the demarcation line which divides Pakistan from India. Confronted by so much insanity in the real world, Manto discovered normality in the asylum. The ‘lunatics’ have a better understanding of the crime that is being perpetrated than the politicians who have agreed to Partition.

Few politicians on either side had foreseen the results. Jawaharlal Nehru’s romantic nationalism portrayed independence as a long-delayed “tryst with destiny”. He never imagined that the tryst would be bathed in countless gallons of Indian blood. This was partially the result of a failure by the Congress High Command to make the large Muslim minority an offer it could not refuse.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was a second-rate politician, but with a first-class lawyer’s brain. Initially he had used separatism as a bargaining ploy. Even later, he genuinely believed that the new state would simply be a smaller version of secular India, with one difference. Here Muslims would be the largest community. He really believed that he would still be able to spend some time every winter at his mansion in Bombay, the only city where he had found love and happiness.

Jinnah conceived of Pakistan as an amalgamation of an undivided Punjab, an undivided Bengal together with Sind, Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province. This would have meant that forty percent of the Punjab would have consisted of Hindus and Sikhs and forty-nine percent of Bengal would have consisted of Hindus. It was, alas, a utopian nonsense. Once confessional passions had been aroused and neighbours were massacring each other (as in the former Yugoslavia during the last decade of the 20th century) it was difficult to keep the two provinces united.
“I do not care how little you give me,” Jinnah is reported as saying in March 1947 to the last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, “as long as you give it to me completely.”

A dying old man in a hurry, who could have been a willing collaborator in establishing a single state with important safeguards for the minority, had the Congress been capable of strategic insights, but now he wanted his own statelet, however small and awkward it might appear on the map.
India had come a long way in 1947. All previous rulers had attempted to govern with the consent of the ruling elites of whatever religion. The Mughal Emperors, themselves Muslims, had learnt this lesson very quickly and Akbar had unsuccessfully attempted to create a new religion synthesising Hinduism and Islam. Even the last of the great Mughals, the religious-minded Aurungzeb did not attempt any Islamisation of his army:  his ablest Generals were Hindu chiefs!

The British, when confronted with the nightmare of actually governing India, realised that, despite their more advanced technology, they would not last too long without serious alliances. They could only govern India with the consent of its traditional rulers.  The raj was maintained by a very tiny British presence: in 1805 the pink-cheeked conquerors numbered 31,000; in 1911 they had grown to 164,000 and in 1931 there were 168,000. In other words the British in India never comprised more than 0.05 of the local population.

It was this fact that concentrated the finest minds of the raj on politics and strategy. The civil servants trained by Haileybury and other imperialist nurseries in Britain to govern a mighty sub-continent were political administrators, often of the highest order. They learned to speak Urdu and Bengali so that they could, when necessary, communicate directly with peasants and administer justice. They also learned how to divide local rulers from each other and how to fan religious prejudices. The birth of modern Sikhism and Hinduism owes a great deal to the British presence in India. In return, local potentates were permitted to learn English and taught the etiquette of nibbling cucumber sandwiches with His Excellency at Government House.

If the British had granted India self-government on the Canadian and Australian pattern after the First World War it is unlikely that the sub-continent would have been divided. Partition was not a planned conspiracy by either the British or Jinnah. It came about because of a combination of circumstance during the Forties, including the Second World War. Jinnah backed the war effort, the Congress demanded Independence. Some scores had to be settled. Pakistan was imperialism’s rap on the knuckle for Indian nationalism.

Nehru and Jinnah were both shaken by the orgy of barbarism. It offended all their instincts.  But it was Mahatama Gandhi who paid the ultimate price. For defending the right to live of innocent Muslims in post-Partition India he was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a fundamentalist Hindu fanatic. Godse was hanged, but two decades later, Godse’s brother told Channel Four that he regretted nothing. What happened had to happen.
That past now rots in the present and threatens to further poison the future.  The political heirs of the hanged Godse are shoving aside the children of Nehru and Gandhi. The poisonous fog of the religious world has enveloped politics. History, unlike the poets and writers of the sub-continent, is not usually prone to sentiment.

Partition was a disaster, adjacent to which there lurked another. The two parts of Pakistan were divided by a thousand miles of India, culture, language and political tradition. The predominantly Punjabi military-bureaucratic elite belonged to West Pakistan, while the Bengali majority of the population (60%) lived in East Pakistan. The refusal of the military rulers to permit democracy led to a successful uprising in 1968. A dictator was toppled. In the elections that followed the Bengalis of East Pakistan won a big majority. They were not permitted to take office. The Army invaded the Eastern part of its own country.  There was a massacre of intellectuals and mass rape (Punjabi soldiers had been told to ‘change the genes’ of Bengalis forever) followed by a civil war. Bangladesh was born. One partition had led to another.

India, too, was severely damaged by Partition. The Nehru years (1947-64) disguised the processes underneath, but now the Furies are out into the open. Bombay, once the centre of cosmopolitanism is now Mumbai and under the sway of a neo-fascist Hindu organisation. In their absurd search for a new Indian identity, the scoundrel parties have re-discovered Hinduism and sections of the ‘secular’ Congress have fallen into line.  Communal riots have claimed tens of thousands of lives over the last fifty years.

Manto was amongst the few who observed the bloodbaths of Partition with a detached eye.  He had remained in Bombay in 1947, where he worked for the film industry, but was accused of  favouring Muslims and was subjected to endless communal taunts, even from those who had hitherto imagined to be like him, but the secular core in many people did not survive the fire.  Manto came to Lahore in 1948, but was never happy. He turned the tragedies he had witness or heard into great literature. He wrote of the common people, regardless of ethnic, religious or caste identities and he discovered contradictions and passions and irrationality in each of them. In his work we see how normally decent people can, in extreme conditions, commit the most appalling atrocities. ‘Cold Meat’ is one such story. In 1952 he wrote: “My heart is heavy with grief today. A strange listlessness has enveloped me. More than four years ago when I said farewell to my other home, Bombay, I experienced the same kind of sadness…”

Years later he was still trying to come to grips with what had happened:

“Still, what my mind could not resolve was the question: what country did we belong to now, India or Pakistan? And whose blood was it that was being so mercilessly shed every day? And the bones of the dead, stripped of the flesh of religion, were they being burned or buried? Now that we were free who was to be our subject? When we were not free, we used to dream about freedom. Now that freedom had come, how would we perceive our past state?

“The question was: were we really free? Both Hindus and Muslims were being massacred. Why were they being massacred? There were different answers to the question; the Indian answer, the Pakistani answer, the British answer. Every question had an answer, but when you tried to unravel the truth, you were left groping.

“Everyone seemed to be regressing. Only death and carnage seemed to be proceeding ahead. A terrible chapter of blood and tears was being added to history, a chapter without precedent.

“India was free. Pakistan was free from the moment of its birth, but in both states, man’s enslavement continued: by prejudice, by religious fanaticism, by savagery.”

In a series of Open Letters to Uncle Sam he marked his displeasure at the state of world politics and Pakistan’s Security Pact with the US. Hedisplayed a remarkable prescience as expressed in this extract from his ‘Third Letter to uncle Sam’, written shortly before his death:

“Another thing I would want from you would be a tiny, teeny weeny atom bomb because for long I have wished to perform a certain good deed. You will naturally want to know what.

You have done many good deeds yourself and continue to do them. You decimated Hiroshima, you turned Nagasaki into smoke and dust and you caused several thousand children to be born in Japan. Each to his own. All I want you to do is to dispatch me some dry cleaners. It is like this. Out there, many Mullah types after urinating pick up a stone and with one hand inside their untied shalwar, use the stone to absorb the after-drops of urine as they resume their walk. This they do in full public view. All I want is that the moment such a person appears, I should be able to pull out that atom bomb you will send me and lob it at the Mullah so that he turns into smoke along with the stone he was holding.

As for your military pact with us, it is remarkable and should be maintained. You should sign something similar with India. Sell all your old condemned arms to the two of us, the ones you used in the last war. This junk will thus be off your hands and your armament factories will no longer remain idle.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is a Kashmiri, so you should send him a gun which should go off when it is placed in the sun. I am a Kashmiri too, but a Muslim which is why I have asked for a tiny atom bomb for myself.

One more thing. We can’t seem able to draft a constitution. Do kindly ship us some experts because while a nation can manage without a national anthem, it cannot do without a constitution, unless such is your wish.

One more thing. As soon as you get this letter, send me a shipload of American matchsticks. The matchsticks manufactured here have to be lit with the help of Iranian-made matchsticks. And after you have used half the box, the rest are unusable unless you take help from matches made in Russia which behave more like firecrackers than matches.”

Given the circumstances it is hardly surprising that he sought solace in alcohol and drank himself to death. He had written over 200 short stories and had no doubt of  his place in literary history and left behind the following epitaph for himself:

“Here lies Saadat Hasan Manto. With him lie buried the arts of short-story telling. Here he lies underneath tons of mud still wondering if he was a better short-story writer than God.”

Notes:

Khalid Hasan, ‘Sadat Hasan Manto: Not of Blessed Memory’, Annual of Urdu Studies, 4, 1984, P.85

(From Viewpoint Online)

© 2012, Tariq Ali. This article may not be reproduced in any form without providing an active attribution link/ reference to The Pakistan Forum. All attribution links within the article must also be retained.

oh.em.gee i cannot even deal. deepika padukone churns out a show-stopping look at the screen awards held a few days ago. the statuesque actress looked like a kabillion bucks in this structured emerald green gauri and nainika gown. the dress … Continue reading →



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One of the thrills of life is following Pakistani politics. Never a dull moment in this comedy or farce or tragedy, depending on your sentiments towards the motherland. As far as I am concerned our national politics functions somewhat on the pattern of a merry-go-round. The riders may get a feeling of moving fast but they always remain equidistant from the central pole.

This has now been going on for ages. Whether things are hectic or slow, a lull or a storm, there are only two guaranteed facts. One, all participants of the process, some of them can also be politicians, will come of the ride slightly dizzy, and two, that nothing is going to move the central pole. For the central pole please read the Pakistan armed forces and the allegory will make even more sense.

I am sure the whole world must be watching the latest comic episode that we have managed to conjure up, or should I say the ISI has managed to produce, the Memogate.

Running to packed houses we have a world class show on display. Have to hand it to our intelligence spooks, they have managed to come up with a plot which even Spielberg would be hard pressed to match.

The storyline is amazing. Our ambassador to USA, Mr. Haqqani, who was previously regularly accused of being USA’s ambassador to Pakistan, was allotted a particularly impossible mission by our President. He was to pass a message to the President Barak Obama that the Pakistan military would likely overthrow the civilian government in the aftermath of the Osama Bin Laden episode !!!

Amazing plot to jolt you wide awake, isn’t it? This at a time when our army was the laughing stock of the whole of Pakistan, Kiyani was running around addressing open army durbars in order to avoid a mutiny, and our chief spook Pasha was actually offering to resign. What else would a good soldier think of at this time but to indulge in the time honored pastime of staging a coup. Makes perfect sense.

But wait, this is not all. Mr. Haqqani then goes and sleeps over this momentous task, has a Bram Stoker like nightmare and comes up with a perfect solution. Have to hand it to our dear James Bond in making, never do simply which you can complicate infinitely. Not for him the simple matter of calling up the White House or the Pentagon, no sir, our man had class . He contacts the most reliable person in the world, a certified CIA double agent, Mr. Mansoor Ijaz, who he then texts various self incriminating messages.

Mansoor Ijaz’s background makes for very interesting reading indeed. Crooks in the UK of the old favored running supermarkets or car maintenance garages as both provided ample opportunities for processing large amounts of money. Modern gentlemen of this ilk prefer to be investment bankers which Mansoor Ijaz is. He also has the dubious honor of having ties with ex CIA director James Woolsey and retired General James Abrahamson, former director of the Strategic Defense Initiative of President Regan. And he appears on FOX channel.

With a background like this, Mansoor Ijaz would have had difficulty getting credit from his neighborhood grocery store, but apparently had the fullest trust of Hussain Haqani.

The real nice piece in this whole saga is that our President, who has a direct line to the White House, allegedly goes on to make commitments to USA in the memo which would have Barak Obama rolling about in tears. It promises among others US oversight of our nuclear programme, handing over of jihadi’s sponsored by ISI, cooperation with our western neighbors on Mumbai attacks, disbanding of section “S” of ISI etc.

Oh, by the way, the memo is written on behalf of the National Security Team. Something which simply does not exist. But then when have facts stopped our spooks from spinning a real good yarn.

But the real fun is in the manner our Army has responded to all of this. General Pasha flew off to London to interview Mansoor Ijaz. The meeting naturally enough took place in the Intercontinental, Park Lane, London, where the good General had thankfully rented out a one bedroom suite at the very reasonable rate of £ 715 per night. This trip was off course undertaken without the unnecessary waste of time in getting any government approval. The army then went around expressing great indignation at this threat to national security.

This matter would have died a natural death, because of its sheer absurdity, but for one of our most well meaning, but severely mentally challenged, politician, if that’s the word, Mr. Nawaz Sharif. Our ex prime minister (twice) is one of those rare people who has an immaculate sense of timing. He always manages to do the right thing at the wrong time.

So what does Nawaz Sharif do, but go and petition the Supreme Court. Poor guy, he had hoped to get rid of Zardari and Kiyani at one go. This, as his other grand designs in the near past, will however remain a dream. All that he has managed to do is give the Army a perfect launch pad for a propaganda war against our elected leaders.

One goes weary looking at all this. But then we Pakistanis seem to have been marked out to have these tamashas on a regular basis. The bad news for the politicians, and us poor civilians, is that the Faujis are again going to have the last laugh on our expense. I fear the future is not looking too bright for the present political setup. The enthusiasm of the masses for the political process seems to have unnerved the military who have consistently bad mouthed politics and politicians for decades.

The latest on the court case is that the council for the defense. Ms. Asma Jehangir has withdrawn from the case, alleging undue influence on the honorable justices from the establishment. The establishment being an oblique reference to our dear friends in the uniform. Mr. Haqqani in the meantime remains holed up with the President or the Prime Minister claiming that his life is in danger if he ventures out.

Whatever happens in this saga next, one thing is sure. The merry-go-round is unlikely to slow down anytime soon.

by Sunil Sharan

CELEBRATED Prussian military analyst Carl von Clausewitz described how the `fog of war` causes facts to be fudged. Indian army chief Gen V.K. Singh has surely studied von Clausewitz.

How then has he allowed himself and his force to become embroiled in fuzzy mathematics over the churlish matter of his age, that too in peacetime? V.K.`s predicament stems from three sources: (a) the contentious circumstances of his appointment as chief in 2010, (b) the resentment that many army personnel feel towards the neta-babu nexus, and perhaps most significantly, (c) V.K.`s tendency to shoot from the lip.

V.K. became chief against the wish of his immediate predecessor, Gen Deepak Kapoor. As Kapoor`s subordinate, he had recommended probing the alleged corruption of one of Kapoor`s pet staff officers, effrontery that would have stymied most military careers. Fortunately for him, Defence Minister A.K. Antony took his side, and what is more, got him the top job.

At this time, the discrepancy in his age records was noticed, but the matter was seemingly laid to rest. Kapoor`s tenure had been controversial enough, and the government wanted to move on. The handing-taking over ceremony between Kapoor and V.K. Singh, normally a bear-hugging affair between an outgoing chief and an incoming one, was so frigid, it might as well have occurred on the Siachen glacier. `War of the generals` shrieked the headlines.

Shortly afterwards, Kapoor was accused of misappropriating prime property in Mumbai when he was still chief. V.K. proclaimed on national television that Kapoor`s behaviour had shamed the army. Quick to implicate, V.K. forgot about the principle of presumption of innocence. Another cardinal rule, of a serving chief refraining from publicly condemning his predecessors, too was violated. Kapoor met Antony to clear his name, and while V.K. threatened to court-martial Kapoor, the government let the matter die.

If 2010 was bad for Manmohan Singh, 2011 was annus horribilis. Anna Hazare galvanised the nation`s anti-corruption rage into a gale, leaving Manmohan Singh teetering. Anna became afour-letter word for the government. V.K., unable to contain himself, came out in public support of Anna. Little did he realise then that he had just cooked his own goose.

If Indira Gandhi had been prime minister, loose lips as his would have been sealed quickly. Manmohan Singh is more deliberate. Behind wispy facial hair though, there are some fangs for sure, to be bared only every few years, as he did while pushing for India`s nuclear deal, or when he thwarted a nation baying for Pakistani blood after 26/11.

After becoming chief, V.K. sought a correction, from 1950 to 1951, to his date of birth. If granted, he would have secured an additional 10 months of service. But even his benefactor, A.K. Antony, was becoming wary. V.K.`s request was turned down.

He filed a formal complaint, which too was rejected. By now, the soap opera of age, starring birth certificates, enrolment forms, claims, counter-claims, had become all the rage.

Two camps pitted heads. On the one side were the retired army officers, who, almost to a man, supported V.K. A question of izzat, they fumed through their handlebar moustaches.

Ranged against them were the pot-bellied politicians and Indian Administrative Service bureaucrats, who cited chapter and verse ofrules andlines of succession.

Many in India`s military chafe at what they consider as shackles imposed upon them by the `bloody civilians`. It galls them that the army chief, head of the world`s second-largest army, is ranked 12 in the order of precedence of Indian officialdom, all the way down from two in pre-Independence India.

It rankles them when they see the coveted privileges enjoyed by armies to their west (Pakistan), north (China), east (Bangladesh, Myanmar), or south (Sri Lanka). Pakistan`s `womb to tomb` army culture is markedly absent in India, with officers often put to pasture in the prime of their lives, ill-equipped to cope with civilian life`s wheeling and dealing. So unattractive has the career become that India`s army faces a lacuna of over 10,000 officers, almost a quarter of the desired strength.

Since Nehru`s time, the government, fearful of a coup, has kept the army on a tight leash. Once in a while a charismatic army chief comes along, as was the case with K. Sundarji. His over-exuberance though almost precipitated a war with Pakistan, as well as nudged Rajiv Gandhi into a catastrophic misadventure in Sri Lanka, for which the latter paid for with his life subsequently. Even as India`s military seeks to break free, many abroad hail how assiduously the civilian government has tethered it.

`Don`t treat me as if I am Pakistan`s army chief,` V.K. has reportedly wailed to his government. Rumours abound that Manmohan Singh talks directly to Gen Kayani. Surely he accords him due courtesy! Jokes apart, Manmohan Singh promises a makeover this year. He has issued an unprecedented New Year`s resolution, and has visited the Golden Temple to steel himself.

Neither he, nor his patron, Sonia Gandhi, will allow an uppity general to waylay their plan for 2012, which is to ensure an orderly ascension to premiership for Rahul Gandhi. Successors to V.K. have already been short-listed, five months before his tenure is to end, rendering him a virtual lame duck.

Instead of making veiled threats of going to court, which step would in all likelihood invite the sack, or resigning in a huff, it would be best if he were to declare the matter as closed, and treat it as so. And if, to sweeten the pill, the government offers him an ambassadorship or state governorship, he should decline. He took charge promising to restore the army’s morale.

Climbing down and bowing to his political masters is the only way out now.

sunil_sharan@yahoo.com

By Salman Masood and Ismail Khan for The New York Times

The political and legal crisis in Pakistan took a new turn on Tuesday when the Supreme Court threatened to dismiss Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani for failing to comply with court orders to reopen corruption cases against his political boss: President Asif Ali Zardari.

The latest pressure from the court compounds the problems of the governing Pakistan Peoples Party, already facing a political crisis over a controversial memo that sought United States support in thwarting a feared military coup.

Adding to the government’s troubles is a steep increase in terrorist attacks. Another attack occurred early Tuesday, a truck bombing that the authorities said killed more than 25 people, including women and children, in northwestern Pakistan. A senior government official said the bombing appeared to be in retaliation for the recent killing of a militant leader.

Since December 2009, when the Supreme Court struck down an amnesty that nullified corruption charges against thousands of politicians, the court has insisted that the government reopen corruption cases against Mr. Zardari.

But the government has resisted court orders, and Mr. Zardari said last week that, “come what may,” officials from his party would not reopen the graft cases filed against him and his wife, Benazir Bhutto, in Switzerland. Ms. Bhutto was assassinated in 2007.

On Tuesday, a five-member panel of the Supreme Court, led by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, ruled that the government was guilty of “willful disobedience” and said that Mr. Gilani was “dishonest” for failing to carry out the earlier court orders.

The judges laid out six options — including initiating contempt of court charges, dismissing the prime minister, forming a judicial commission and taking action against the president for violating his constitutional oath — and ordered the attorney general to explain the government’s position in court on Monday.

A three-member judicial commission that is investigating the controversial memo is scheduled to resume its hearing the same day. Apart from having an acrimonious relationship with the judiciary, the government has an uneasy relationship with the country’s top generals.

Mr. Zardari, who spent 11 years in prison on unproved corruption charges, says the corruption cases against him and Ms. Bhutto that date to the 1990s were politically motivated.

In an interview last week with GEO TV, a news network, Mr. Zardari said reopening those cases would be tantamount to “a trial of the grave” of his wife.

Mr. Zardari also claims immunity as president, but the judiciary, led by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, has resisted that claim and has aggressively pursued cases against Mr. Zardari’s party, leading many government officials to speculate that the judiciary was being used by the country’s powerful military to dismiss the government before the March elections for the Senate, in which the Pakistan Peoples Party is expected to win a majority.

Political analysts said the fate of Mr. Gilani, the prime minister, was in peril.

Mr. Zardari called a meeting of his party officials and coalition partners on Tuesday evening to chart strategy, and he was expected to get a statement of support from his allies.

“The situation is fast moving towards a head-on confrontation,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political and military analyst based in Lahore. “It depends on what options are exercised by the Supreme Court.”

According to the Pakistani Constitution, a prime minister can be removed only by the Parliament, and the Supreme Court can disqualify the prime minister only indirectly, Mr. Rizvi said.

“If the court disqualifies the prime minister and the prime minister continues to enjoy the support of the Parliament, then the stage is set for a very dangerous confrontation,” he said.

The legal standoff is forcing the government to defer issues of greater importance, like rescuing a failing economy and fighting Taliban insurgents, as it focuses on its political survival, Mr. Rizvi said.

“The court, the military and the executive are trying to assert themselves,” he said. “It has become a free-for-all.”

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the bombing on Tuesday, but it appeared to have been carried out by Tehrik-i-Taliban, an umbrella organization of Pakistani militant groups, against the Zakhakhel tribe, which has formed a militia in support of the government, said Mutahir Zeb, administrator for the Khyber tribal region.

Mr. Zeb said the Tehrik-i-Taliban sought to avenge the killing of Qari Kamran, a local Taliban commander, by security forces last week in an area occupied by the Zakhakhel.

Mr. Zeb said a pickup truck exploded in the middle of a bus terminal used by the Zakhakhel in the town of Jamrud.

The bomb destroyed several vehicles, damaged a nearby gasoline pump and shattered windows in the area. In addition to those killed, 27 people were reported wounded in the bombing and were taken to hospitals in Peshawar.

“I was on duty at the nearby checkpoint when I heard a big bang,” said Mir Gul, a security guard. “I rushed toward the spot and saw bodies lying around while the injured cried for help. It was devastating. There was blood everywhere.”

Pakistanis for Peace Editor’s Note- The Pakistani people deserve better than this. The only solution to EVERYTHING that ails Pakistan is a true and long lasting peace with India. The sooner this dream becomes a reality, the sooner grim news of extremism and its grip on Pakistan will go away~