By Eric Pfannier for The New York Times

Many countries censor the Internet, but few spell out their intentions as explicitly as Pakistan.

In an effort to tighten its control over the Internet, the government recently published a public tender for the “development, deployment and operation of a national-level URL filtering and blocking system.”

Technology companies, academic institutions and other interested parties have until March 16 to submit proposals for the $10 million project, but anger about it has been growing both inside and outside Pakistan.

Censorship of the Web is nothing new in Pakistan, which, like other countries in the region, says it wants to uphold public morality, protect national security or prevent blasphemy. The government has blocked access to pornographic sites, as well as, from time to time, mainstream services like Facebook and YouTube.

Until now, however, Pakistan has done so in a makeshift way, demanding that Internet service providers cut off access to specific sites upon request. With Internet use growing rapidly, the censors are struggling to keep up, so the government wants to build an automatic blocking and filtering system, like the so-called Great Firewall of China.

While China and other governments that sanitize the Internet generally do so with little public disclosure, Pakistan is being surprisingly forthcoming about its censorship needs. It published its request for proposals on the Web site of the Information and Communications Technology Ministry’s Research and Development Fund and even took out newspaper advertisements to publicize the project.

“The system would have a central database of undesirable URL’s that would be loaded on the distributed hardware boxes at each POP and updated on daily basis,” the request for proposals says, referring to uniform resource locators, the unique addresses for specific Web pages, and points of presence, or access points.

“The database would be regularly updated through subscription to an international reputed company maintaining and updating such databases,” according to the request, which was published last month.

The tender details a number of technical specifications, including the fact that the technology “should be able to handle a block list of up to 50 million URL’s (concurrent unidirectional filtering capacity) with processing delay of not more than 1 milliseconds.”

Following the Arab Spring, which demonstrated the power of the Internet to help spread political and social change, Pakistan’s move to clamp down has set off a storm of protest among free-speech groups in the country and beyond.

Opponents of censorship say they are doubly appalled because they associated this kind of heavy-handed approach more with the previous regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf than with the current government of President Asif Ali Zardari.

“The authorities here are big fans of China and how it filters the Internet,” said Sana Saleem, chief executive of Bolo Bhi, a group that campaigns against restrictions on the Internet. “They overlook the fact that China is an autocratic regime and we are a democracy.”

“What makes this kind of censorship so insidious is that they always use national security, pornography or blasphemy as an explanation for blocking other kinds of speech,” Ms. Saleem said, adding that her site had been blocked for several months in 2010 when it made reference to a ban on Facebook. Access to the social networking service had been restricted because of a page featuring a competition to draw the prophet Mohammed — something that is considered blasphemous by Muslims.

The Technology Ministry’s Research and Development Fund says in its tender that the Internet filtering and blocking system will be “indigenously developed,” but campaigners like Ms. Saleem say they think it is likely the agency will try to adapt Western technology for the purpose.

To try to prevent this from happening, Ms. Saleem wrote to the chief executives of eight international companies that make Net filtering technology, asking them to make a public commitment not to apply for the Pakistani grant.

On Friday, one of them, Websense, which is based in San Diego, responded, declaring in a statement on its Web site that it would not seek the contract.

“Broad government censorship of citizen access to the Internet is morally wrong,” Websense said. “We further believe that any company whose products are currently being used for government-imposed censorship should remove their technology so that it is not used in this way by oppressive governments.”

Websense had previously withdrawn the use of its technology from Yemen after facing accusations from the OpenNet Initiative, a U.S.-Canadian academic group, and other organizations that it had been used by the government of that country to stifle political expression on the Internet.

Governments around the world buy filtering and blocking technology to root out illegal content like child pornography. Some private companies employ it to restrict access to social networks and other distractions on company computers.

But the use of Western technology to rein in political speech in countries with repressive regimes has come under increasing scrutiny since the Arab Spring. The OpenNet Initiative said in a report last year that at least nine governments in the Middle East or North Africa had used such products, with the Western companies maintaining lists of sites to be blocked, including sites featuring skeptical views of Islam and even dating services.

Even before implementing its new system, Pakistan has been an active censor. The country was 151st, out of 179, on a ranking of media freedom by the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders in 2011.

“Reporters Without Borders urges you to abandon this project, which would reinforce the arsenal of measures for communications surveillance and Internet censorship that have already been put in place by your government,” the group wrote in a letter Friday to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

To free-speech advocates in Pakistan, the government’s seeming insouciance about censorship is a particular cause for alarm.

“This is a case study,” said Ms. Saleem of Bolo Bhi, which is based in Karachi and whose name means “speak up.” “No government has ever done this so publicly.”

Filed under: Arab, blasphemy laws, China, Freedoms, Islam, Pakistan, Pakistanis Tagged: Arab Spring, blasphemy, Censoring in Pakistan, Censors, Censorship, China, Facebook, Great Firewall of China, Internet, Middle East, national-level URL filtering and blocking system, North Korea, Pakistan, Pakistan Censors, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, Reporters Without Borders, URL, URL Blocking, Web Pages, World Wide Web, WWW

By Reza Sayah for CNN

Pakistani authorities vowed Tuesday to use the international police agency Interpol to arrest former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

“The government is moving for his (Musharraf’s) red notice,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said, referring to the Interpol’s international arrest warrant.

“We will get him through Interpol to Pakistan.”

Malik made the announcement as part of a progress report of the four-year-long assassination probe that was presented to provincial lawmakers Tuesday in Bhutto’s home province of Sindh. The briefing lasted several hours and was broadcast live on Pakistani TV.

Bhutto was assassinated in a gun-suicide attack in December 2007, shortly after she came back to Pakistan from self imposed exile to take part in the 2008 general elections.

Malik and the head of the investigation team said former Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud plotted the assassination and paid the equivalent of about $4,500 to a network of Islamist militants to carry out the killing.

Using a Power Point presentation, pictures and video to outline the evidence they had gathered, authorities said Mehsud had Bhutto killed because she supported the west’s war against Islamist militants. Investigators said they collected much of their evidence from the accused plotters’ cell phone records before and after the killing.

Last November a Pakistani court charged five alleged Islamist militants with aiding the suicide attacker and two senior police officers for failing to provide adequate security.

Musharraf has also been accused of failing to protect Bhutto. In February 2011 a judge issued an arrest warrant for Musharraf after he didn’t show up to court for questioning.

Musharraf has been in self-imposed exile ever since he left Paksitan in 2008. Last August authorities confiscated his property in Pakistan and froze his bank account. The former military ruler has denied having anything to do with Bhutto’s killing.

In Tuesday’s briefing Malik and investigators said Musharraf rejected Bhutto’s request to use a western private security contractor for protection when she returned to Pakistan. They suggested Musharraf intentionally left Bhutto vulnerable because he felt politically threatened by her return.

“It was the duty of the government to provide the prime minister with protection,” Malik yelled at one point. “Why did you not give security? What was the problem?”

Filed under: Democracy, England, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, Pakistanis, Taliban Tagged: Asif Ali Zardari, Baitullah Mehsud, Benazir Bhutto, Interpol, Pakistan, Pakistanis, Pervez Musharraf, PPP, Sindh, Taliban

Rehman Malik Relied on Punjab Police Report on Bhutto Murder Briefing Sindh Assembly

NADEEM MALIK

It seems as though not much has been achieved in the Benazir Bhutto murder case as Interior Minister Rehman Malik on Tuesday not only admitted that planners of the murder are still at large, but also insisted that more time is required to collect further evidence.
Malik shared this and other details of the investigation of the former prime minister and Pakistan People’s Party chairperson’s murder case while briefing the Sindh Assembly session. He blamed Baitullah Mehsud, the Haqqani network and the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for planning the murder and said 27 terrorist groups helped in executing the plan. (Dawn)

Reported News Details of the CID Reports
The United Nations Inquiry Commission, headed by Heraldo Munoz, was informed by the CID officials of Punjab Police during the course of its investigations that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto had been masterminded by the slain Ameer of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Commander Baitullah Mehsud and the bomber, who exploded himself outside the Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi, was one Saeed alias Bilal, a resident of South Waziristan Agency.
According to official documents provided to the UN Inquiry Commission by the CID Punjab, a group of 12 militants was actually dispatched to the garrison town of Rawalpindi, a day prior to Benazir Bhutto’s December 27, 2007 election rally, to physically eliminate the PPP leader, who was touring Punjab in connection with her party’s election campaign. The FIR of the Benazir Bhutto murder case was registered by the Rawalpindi police under sections 302/324,435,436,120-B/4/5ESA,7/ATA while investigations were carried out by the Additional Inspector General CID Punjab Chaudhry Abdul Majeed.
According to the CID documents, four of the 12 militants tasked to kill Benazir Bhutto belonged to Madrassa Haqqania in Akora Khattak near Peshawar, which is also referred to as Darul Uloom Haqqania. The Madrassa is being run by Maulana Samiul Haq, the pro-Taliban Ameer of his own faction of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam. Three of the 12 TTP militants have been shown in the CID documents as already killed, including the suicide bomber. Of the remaining nine accused, five have already been arrested by police while the remaining four are still at large.
Additional Inspector General of the CID Punjab, Malik Mohammad Iqbal, when asked if the Punjab CID still owns its findings into the Benazir Bhutto murder case, said the assassination inquiry was actually conducted by a Joint Investigation Team (JIT), which was headed by the then additional DIG CID and representatives of the Rawalpindi police.
He said it was a joint probe on the basis of which the challan of Benazir Bhutto murder case had been submitted with a Rawalpindi anti-terrorism court, which still holds ground and the trial of the arrested accused is still on.
The three accused shown as already dead include the human bomb Saeed alias Bilal (r/o Waziristan), Nadir alias Qari Ismail (r/o Madrassa Haqqania, Akora Khattak) and Nasrullah r/o Madrassa Haqqania, Akora Khattak). Four other accused in the Benazir Bhutto murder, who are still at large and have already been declared proclaimed offenders include Ikramullah r/o South Waziristan, Abdullah alias Saddam r/o Mohmand Agency, Faiz alias Kiskit, an ex-student of Madrassa Haqqania, Akora Khattak and Abdur Rehman alias Noman alias Usman, an ex-student of Madrassa Haqqania.
The remaining five accused already in the custody of the Rawalpindi police and being tried for the Benazir Bhutto murder include Rafaqat, Hasnain Gul, Sher Zaman, Rasheed Ali and Aitzaz Shah.
According to the findings of the CID, Baitullah Mehsud had given Rs 400,000 to one Qari Ismail, who subsequently dispatched a group of suicide bombers and shooters to Rawalpindi to kill Benazir Bhutto.
The UN Commission was told by some senior CID officials that the TTP militants had planned to target Benazir Bhutto in different cities, wherever she was going in connection with her campaign, until she was finally killed.
According to the CID narrative, 15-year-old Aitzaz Shah from the Mansehra district of the NWFP, and his co-accomplice Sher Zaman, reportedly trained at Miramshah, were the first ones to be arrested after the Benazir Bhutto murder from Dera Ismail Khan by a joint investigation team of the Punjab police, headed by Chaudhry Abdul Majeed. Two more suspects, Hasnain Gul and Rafaqat, were later arrested from Rawalpindi. Rasheed Ali was the last one to be nabbed but Aitzaz was the first one to have furnished some vital information to his interrogators pertaining to the Benazir murder.
As the police obtained physical remand of the arrested accused and broadened the scope of investigations, it was learnt that Aitzaz Shah had actually obtained Jihadi training from a well known Deobandi religious school in Karachi — Jamia Binoria, also referred to as Jamia Islamia and known for its pro-Taliban leanings. As per the CID report, after being brainwashed and trained to kill, Aitzaz was sent to South Waziristan from where he had travelled to Darul Uloom Haqqania Madrassa in Akora Khattak. Afterwards, Aitzaz was taken to a Jihadi training centre in Akora Khattak – Wali Mohammad Markaz and tasked with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
According to the CID findings, Baitullah had provided Rs 50,000, a suicide jacket and other necessary items to someone else, but he could not attack Benazir Bhutto. After his suicide bombers’ failure to hunt down the PPP chairperson in Karachi, Peshawar and other places, Baitullah Mehsud had assigned Qari Ismail of Akora Khattak and given him Rs 400,000 to execute the Benazir assassination plan. After reaching the Rawalpindi bus stand on December 26, the assailants had stayed at a Quaid-i-Azam colony house. In the evening, they visited the Liaquat Bagh site in a taxi and decided after surveying the area to hit their target from different directions during or after the public meeting.
As per the assassination plan, Saeed alias Bilal was to carry out the suicide attack in case he failed to shoot down Benazir while Ikramullah was to detonate himself if Saeed failed. Both Saeed and Ikramullah were provided logistics by Hasnain Gul, including an explosive-laden suicide jacket, a pistol and an optical device.
The assailants had reached the Committee Chowk in a taxi and later gone to the Liaquat Bagh via Iqbal Road and College Road. An unarmed militant went inside the Liaquat Bagh to give his accomplices updates about the movement of Benazir Bhutto, especially about her arrival and departure from the venue of the rally. As per the CID claims, the assailants had first attempted to enter the Liaquat Bagh to carry out a suicide attack close to the stage, but they had failed in their designs, chiefly due to foolproof security arrangements.
The UN Commission was further informed that several suicide bombers and sharp shooters were waiting for the PPP leader at the crime scene outside the Liaquat Bagh after their failure to enter the venue. Going by the CID account, the assailants had started chasing Benazir Bhutto as soon as she came out of the Liaquat Bagh and it was none other than the fearless PPP chairperson, who actually provided them with a golden opportunity to target her, when she decided to come out of her bullet proof vehicle Toyota Land Cruiser from its sunroof to wave to her cheerful supporters. That was the time gunshots were fired, aiming at Benazir Bhutto. As Saeed alias Bilal failed to hit Benazir Bhutto, he blew himself up, killing the PPP leader and 23 others, mostly on the spot. However, the Dopatta, which Benazir Bhutto was wearing at the time of the blast, could not be traced despite frantic efforts by the investigators.
Narrating the motivation of the crime, the CID findings say the accused had said during interrogations that they were annoyed over the pro-West approach of Benazir Bhutto who had returned to Pakistan at the behest of some foreign powers and, therefore, they feared a strong government action against the militants if she was allowed to come to power after the elections.
However, the fact remains that much before coming to power after the 2008 general elections; the PPP leadership had rejected the confession made by Aitzaz Shah and his other accomplices about their involvement in the Benazir Bhutto murder.
The then PPP spokesman and now presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar had described Aitzaz’s confession a cock and bull story intended to reduce pressure on the Musharraf regime, saying the arrested youth, who has already been declared a juvenile by the court, had been made to narrate exactly the kind of things the Pakistani authorities wanted to hear, backing up their earlier conclusions reached within hours of the Benazir Bhutto killing.
The trial of the five accused in Benazir Bhutto murder case was deferred on August 22, 2009 by the Rawalpindi anti-terrorism court following a federal government request to transfer the case to the Federal Investigation Agency so as to enable it to arrive at a definitive conclusion. Subsequently, on August 25, 2009, the federal government had formed a high-level team to re-investigate the Benazir murder.
The Special Investigation Group of the FIA was assigned the task to fix criminal liability on the assassins and planners of the gun-and-bomb attack on Benazir Bhutto. It was announced that the SIG’s investigation would be parallel to the probe being carried out by the United Nations Inquiry Commission.
“The main reason for the fresh probe is that the inquiry report to be prepared by the UN Commission can’t be presented before any court of law as desired by the UN. The government requires a separate investigation report for a proper trial against the criminals in the court”, a senior FIA official had said on August 25 in Rawalpindi, adding that the United Nations report would have no legal standing and it could not be used for prosecution.
When this correspondent tried to take version of Jamia Binoria, Karachi, no responsible person was found. However, the person present there termed the Punjab police-CID report malicious and baseless. Expressing similar sentiments, a person in Madrassa Haqqania, Akora Khattak, said this report is part of the campaign to discredit religious schools.

Islamabad Tonight – 27th December 2011 Senator Dr. Safdar Ali Abbasi PPP and Naheed Khan PPP in fresh episode of Islamabad Tonight

Islamabad Tonight – 4th November 2010 :5 Ws of Benazir Bhutto’s Assassination 5 Ws of Benazir Bhutto’s Assassination – such as Who, What, Why, Where, How, When Naheed Khan and Safdar Abbasi in Islamabad Tonight with Nadeem Malik

UN report on Bhutto murder finds Pakistani officials ‘failed profoundly’

15 April 2010
Security arrangements by Pakistan’s federal and local authorities to protect assassinated Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto were “fatally insufficient and ineffective” and subsequent investigations into her death were prejudiced and involved a whitewash, an independent United Nations inquiry reported today.The UN Commission of Inquiry, appointed last year by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the request of the Pakistani Government, reached no conclusion as to the organizers and sponsors behind the attack in which a 15-year-old suicide bomber blew up Ms. Bhutto’s vehicle in the city of Rawalpindi on 27 December 2007.

But it found that the Government was quick to blame local Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud and Al-Qaida although Ms. Bhutto’s foes potentially included elements from the establishment itself.

“A range of Government officials failed profoundly in their efforts first to protect Ms. Bhutto and second to investigate with vigour all those responsible for her murder, not only in the execution of the attack, but also in its conception, planning and financing,” the Commission said.

“Responsibility for Ms. Bhutto’s security on the day of her assassination rested with the federal Government, the Government of Punjab and the Rawalpindi District Police. None of these entities took necessary measures to respond to the extraordinary, fresh and urgent security risks that they knew she faced.”

General Pervez Musharraf was president at the time of the suicide bombing in Rawalpindi. The report said the then federal Government lacked a comprehensive security plan, relying instead on provincial authorities, but then failed to issue to them the necessary instructions.

“Particularly inexcusable was the Government’s failure to direct provincial authorities to provide Ms. Bhutto the same stringent and specific security measures it ordered on 22 October 2007 for two other former prime ministers who belonged to the main political party supporting General Musharraf,” it stated.

“This discriminatory treatment is profoundly troubling given the devastating attempt on her life only three days earlier and the specific threats against her which were being tracked by the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence agency),” it added, stressing that her assassination could have been prevented if the Rawalpindi District Police had taken adequate security measures.

Turning to the immediate aftermath of the attack, the Commission found that police actions and omissions, including the hosing down of the crime scene and failure to collect and preserve evidence, inflicted irreparable damage to the investigation.

“The collection of 23 pieces of evidence was manifestly inadequate in a case that should have resulted in thousands,” it said. “The one instance in which the authorities reviewed these actions, the Punjab (provincial) committee of inquiry into the hosing down of the crime scene was a whitewash. Hosing down the crime scene so soon after the blast goes beyond mere incompetence; it is up to the relevant authorities to determine whether this amounts to criminal responsibility.”

It also found that City Police Officer Saud Aziz impeded investigators from conducting on-site investigations until two full days after the assassination and that the Government’s assertions that Mr. Mehsud and Al-Qaida were responsible were made well before any proper investigation had started, pre-empting, prejudicing and hindering the subsequent investigation.

“Ms. Bhutto faced serious threats in Pakistan from a number of sources,” the Commission said. “These included Al-Qaida, the Taliban and local jihadi groups, and potentially from elements in the Pakistani establishment. Notwithstanding these threats, the investigation into her assassination focused on pursuing lower-level operatives allegedly linked to Baitullah Mehsud.”

It stressed that investigators dismissed the possibility of involvement by elements of the Pakistani establishment, including the three persons identified by Ms. Bhutto as threats to her in her 16 October 2007 letter to General Musharraf. It also noted that investigations were severely hampered by intelligence agencies and other Government officials, which impeded an unfettered search for the truth.

“The Commission believes that the failures of the police and other officials to react effectively to Ms. Bhutto’s assassination were, in most cases, deliberate,” it declared.

The three-member panel, which was headed by Chilean Ambassador to UN Heraldo Muñoz and included Marzuki Darusman, former attorney-general of Indonesia, and Peter Fitzgerald, a veteran official of the Irish National Police, urged the Government to undertake police reform in view of its “deeply flawed performance and conduct.”

It also recommended the establishment of a fully independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate political killings, disappearances and terrorism in Pakistan in recent years in view of the backdrop of a history of political violence carried out with impunity.

Ms. Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, is the current Pakistani President.

In a statement issued by his spokesperson, Mr. Ban commended the commissioners and their staff for completing their challenging nine-and-a-half month-long task “expeditiously and in a professional manner.”

In a later news conference today, Mr. Muñoz stressed that the Commission interviewed more than 250 interviews with Pakistanis and others both inside and outside Pakistan, reviewed hundreds of documents, videos, photographs and other documentary material provided by federal and provincial authorities in Pakistan and others.

In the report, the Commission said it was “by the efforts of certain high-ranking Pakistani Government authorities to obstruct access to military and intelligence sources” but during an extension of its mandate until 31 March it was able eventually to meet with some past and present members of the Pakistani military and intelligence services.

Press Release

8 February 2008

BEGINS

SCOTLAND YARD REPORT INTO ASSASSINATION OF BENAZIR BHUTTO RELEASED

The findings of a Scotland Yard inquiry into how Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto died after being attacked during a political rally in Rawalpindi were presented to the Government of Pakistan today.

The conclusions of the inquiry were outlined in a detailed report handed over to interim Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz by Detective Superintendent John MacBrayne, accompanied by a senior official from the British High Commission, during a meeting in Islamabad.

The text of the executive summary of the report is as follows:

On the 27th December 2007, Mohtarma Benazir BHUTTO, the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), died as a result of being attacked in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

Following discussions between the Prime Minister and President Musharraf, it was agreed that officers from the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command (SO15) should support the investigation into Ms Bhutto’s death. The primary focus of the Scotland Yard team was to assist the Pakistani authorities in establishing the cause and circumstances of Ms Bhutto’s death. The wider investigation to establish culpability has remained entirely a matter for the Pakistani authorities.

The SO15 team was led by a Detective Superintendent Senior Investigating Officer, and comprised two forensic experts, an expert in analysing and assessing video media and an experienced investigating officer. The team arrived in Pakistan on 4th January 2008 and spent two and a half weeks conducting extensive enquiries. During the course of their work, the team were joined by other specialists from the United Kingdom.

The UK team were given extensive support and co-operation by the Pakistani authorities, Ms Bhutto’s family, and senior officials from Ms Bhutto’s party.

The task of establishing exactly what happened was complicated by the lack of an extended and detailed search of the crime scene, the absence of an autopsy, and the absence of recognised body recovery and victim identification processes. Nevertheless, the evidence that is available is sufficient for reliable conclusions to be drawn.

Within the overall objective, a particular focus has been placed on establishing the actual cause of death, and whether there were one or more attackers in the immediate vicinity of Ms Bhutto.

The cause of death

Considerable reliance has been placed upon the X-rays taken at Rawalpindi General Hospital following Ms Bhutto’s death. Given their importance, the x-rays have been independently verified as being of Ms Bhutto by comparison with her dental x-rays. Additionally, a valuable insight was gained from the accounts given by the medical staff involved in her treatment, and from those members of Ms Bhutto’s family who washed her body before burial.

Ms Bhutto’s only apparent injury was a major trauma to the right side of the head. The UK experts all exclude this injury being an entry or exit wound as a result of gunshot. The only X-ray records, taken after her death, were of Ms Bhutto’s head. However, the possibility of a bullet wound to her mid or lower trunk can reasonably be excluded. This is based upon the protection afforded by the armoured vehicle in which she was travelling at the time of the attack, and the accounts of her family and hospital staff who examined her.

The limited X-ray material, the absence of a full post mortem examination and CT scan, have meant that the UK Home Office pathologist, Dr Nathaniel Cary, who has been consulted in this case, is unable categorically to exclude the possibility of there being a gunshot wound to the upper trunk or neck. However when his findings are put alongside the accounts of those who had close contact with Ms Bhutto’s body, the available evidence suggests that there was no gunshot injury. Importantly, Dr Cary excludes the possibility of a bullet to the neck or upper trunk as being a relevant factor in the actual cause of death, when set against the nature and extent of her head injury.

In his report Dr Cary states:

• “the only tenable cause for the rapidly fatal head injury in this case is that it occurred as the result of impact due to the effects of the bomb-blast.”
• “in my opinion Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto died as a result of a severe head injury sustained as a consequence of the bomb-blast and due to head impact somewhere in the escape hatch of the vehicle.”

Given the severity of the injury to Ms Bhutto’s head, the prospect that she inadvertently hit her head whilst ducking down into the vehicle can be excluded as a reasonable possibility.

High explosives of the type typically used in this sort of device, detonate at a velocity between 6000 and 9000 metres per second. This means that when considering the explosive quantities and distances involved, such an explosion would generate significantly more force than would be necessary to provoke the consequences as occurred in this case.

It is also important to comment upon the construction of the vehicle. It was fitted with B6 grade armour and designed to withstand gunfire and bomb-blast. It is an unfortunate and misleading aspect of this case that the roof escape hatch has frequently been referred to as a sunroof. It is not. It is designed and intended to be used solely as a means of escape. It has a solid lip with a depth of 9cm.

Ms Bhutto’s injury is entirely consistent with her head impacting upon the lip of the escape hatch. Detailed analysis of the media footage provides supporting evidence. Ms Bhutto’s head did not completely disappear from view until 0.6 seconds before the blast. She can be seen moving forward and to the right as she ducked down into the vehicle. Whilst her exact head position at the time of the detonation can never be ascertained, the overwhelming conclusion must be that she did not succeed in getting her head entirely below the lip of the escape hatch when the explosion occurred.

How many people were involved in the immediate attack?

There has been speculation that two individuals were directly involved in the attack. The suggestion has been that one suspect fired shots, and a second detonated the bomb. All the available evidence points toward the person who fired shots and the person who detonated the explosives being one and the same person.

• Body parts from only one individual remain unidentified. Expert opinion provides strong evidence that they originate from the suicide bomber.
• Analysis of the media footage places the gunman at the rear of the vehicle and looking down immediately before the explosion. The footage does not show the presence of any other potential bomber.
• This footage when considered alongside the findings of the forensic explosive expert, that the bombing suspect was within 1 to 2 metres of the vehicle towards it rear and with no person or other obstruction between him and the vehicle, strongly suggests that the bomber and gunman were at the same position. It is virtually inconceivable that anyone who was where the gunman can clearly be seen on the media footage, could have survived the blast and escaped.

The inevitable conclusion is that there was one attacker in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle in which Ms Bhutto was travelling.

In essence, all the evidence indicates that one suspect has fired the shots before detonating an improvised explosive device. At the time of the attack this person was standing close to the rear of Ms Bhutto’s vehicle. The blast caused a violent collision between her head and the escape hatch area of the vehicle, causing a severe and fatal head injury.

John MacBrayne QPM

Detective Superintendent

Counter Terrorism Command

1st February 2008

Filed under: CURRENT AFFAIRS

As Reported by CNN

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan is due to appear Monday before the country’s Supreme Court, which plans to charge him with contempt in relation to a long-running struggle over old corruption cases.

Gilani is locked in a standoff with the Supreme Court justices, who are demanding that he ask the Swiss authorities to revive corruption charges from the previous decade against President Asif Ali Zardari and others.

Gilani has refused the court’s demands and could be jailed for six months if the justices find him in contempt. The court on Friday rejected an appeal by Gilani’s lawyers against the summons to face the contempt charge.

The lawyers have argued that the prime minister has not followed the court’s order because Zardari enjoys immunity in Pakistan and abroad as a president in office.

Gilani said in an interview over the weekend with the satellite news network Al Jazeera that he had an “extremely capable” lawyer and didn’t believe the court would jail him on the contempt charges.

If found guilty of contempt, the prime minister could be forced from office. But his lawyers have said he would keep his position unless electoral officials disqualified him.

Gilani served more than five years in prison between 2001 and 2006 on corruption charges brought by the previous military regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf — counts he said were also politically motivated.

The corruption cases that the Supreme Court now wants reopened stem from money-laundering charges against Zardari and his late wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. A Swiss court convicted them in absentia in 2003 of laundering millions of dollars.

After Musharraf granted a controversial amnesty in 2007 to Zardari, Bhutto, and thousands of other politicians and bureaucrats, Pakistan asked the Swiss authorities to drop the case. In 2009, the Pakistani Supreme Court ruled the amnesty was unconstitutional and called on the government to take steps to have the cases reopened.

The government has not done so, and the court apparently lost patience. Since Gilani is the head of the government, the court justices view him as responsible.

Filed under: Democracy, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, Pakistanis Tagged: Benazir Bhutto, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Pakistan, Pakistan Supreme Court, Pervez Musharraf, President Asif Ali Zardari, Swiss Court, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani

By Alee Paul

I never want to criticize anything.  We the people beautifully give a comprehensive solution to the problems, and even the way we identify problem that jolts me. Ask anybody over a cup of tea what is this nation’s biggest problem, everybody will close argument by wrapping it in one word, Education, poverty, bureaucracy and the list goes on. The continuous bombardment of issues from media to the nation’s head has made so many scholars out of us that we even forgot to identify what is the actual issue around here? So what is really the issue here? Question still remains.

Do we have our own opinion? Or what we are talking about is Hamid Mir, Talat Hussain and whosoever banging inside our heads. No we don’t, all is cooked up. We don’t want to think anymore, we don’t want to take a break from news now, we want updates every second, even if they are shocking enough to listen that my neighborhood was targeted by American drones last night while I was having peanuts. The channels are baking every insignificant news to ‘Breaking News’ not just because they want to, but also because what we want to hear is what we want to hear from them. Talking about the latest Maya Khan Fiasco and the drop scene was as I was expecting it to be. She got fired from that channel along with her production crew.

It was not a surprise, not something very new for me in this country, recalling the past I find so many similar stories, whether it’s Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan who was the face of the crime of Nuclear Proliferation and saved millions of lives by confessing or his former president Pervez Musharraf accepting Laal Masjid Operation as a mistake and nobody knows who else were accompanying him on those kinds of misadventures. See everybody is as naked here. Samaa TV stepped forward, apologized, presented disclaimer and did what was required in ‘greater good’ of organization. Thanks but no Thanks Samaa. We never wanted that, what we want is why that kind of thing got on air in the first place.

It’s not about Maya khan, don’t worry I am not playing devil’s advocate here. It’s about stepping out of Maya khan, and let’s contemplate for a millisecond, was firing her the best we wanted from Samaa? Was all that campaigning from Social Media to get her fired or we really want to change something around here at this point of time?

From where I see we don’t want to change our very own collective unconscious here because we believe in hating the sinner (which by the way Maya herself did too), but we don’t want to eliminate the sin and then we make common cognitive errors. We create demons to kill other demons and when the new demon starts messing we market another one more fierce and beasty in nature, and we get stuck in a vicious cycle of demonization. The demon factory created trained militia ‘Taliban’ to fight soviets, Media to encounter society’s deep dark secrets and millions of other examples we can find in our daily lives. Are we going to blame Maya for all this? Because what we do best in a stress or a panic situation is to blame. Blame game is the national game for us. I don’t want to accept at my face that a Lion can be the leader of jackals. We have to cogitate that what we want is a change of face or a change of thought process. If it would not have been Maya, it would have been somebody else. We are in a hurry we want to close the case as soon as possible and wait for another problem to hit us in the head, and that’s what we are best at. Given the problem, thought it for a second and bingo ‘we have the solution’ JUST fire her! We have no time to get hooked up to a single cause for so long.

Finally a sincere apology to Maya for losing her job, we didn’t mean to hurt you either, like you didn’t want somebody to get hurt with your program. With you Maya there are millions of your kind who deserve this or may be worse, but eventually they are not losing their jobs because they are playing it safe. See that’s common between cricket and life, one wrong selection of the shot and you will be directed to pavilion with no mercy.

With Musharraf’s possible return to Pakistani politics on everyone’s minds, Newsline has compiled a photo gallery of the former president and military man from its archives.

By Saeed Shah for The Miami Herald

Pakistan’s political crisis, which pits its president against determined opponents in foes in Parliament, the Supreme Court and the military, is likely to reach fever pitch on Monday with a confidence vote scheduled in Parliament and hearings scheduled in two critical court cases.

The crisis is so intense that President Asif Zardari’s administration may be willing to call elections for as soon as October, according to members of his ruling coalition and its advisers. But that may not be enough to mollify the opposition, which wants earlier elections, or the country’s powerful military establishment, which is believed to be trying to force a so-called “soft coup,” under which Zardari, a critic of the military’s traditional dominance of Pakistan, would be forced out by Parliament or the courts.

The threat of an outright coup also hangs over the crisis, if the politicians cannot find a way out or the court proceedings reach absolute stalemate.

Whether the government can reach agreement with opposition leader Nawaz Sharif is unclear. Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party doesn’t want to announce elections until after voting in March for a new Senate, which the PPP is widely expected to win. But Sharif would like the new elections to be in the summer, perhaps June, which would require an earlier announcement.

“There is no other option for the government to come out of the current crisis without elections,” said an adviser to the PPP leadership, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, as did the other coalition members. “It is in the interests of the PPP to reach an agreement with Nawaz.”

The PPP rules with three major coalition partners, but the alliance is looking shaky. Two of the parties, the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, have distanced themselves somewhat from the government.

A senior member of the coalition said the parties so far have agreed internally only to a general election to be held in October. That would be just a few months before the February 2013 date when Parliament would complete its five-year term and elections would have to be held anyway.

An early election should also placate the courts and the military. A supposedly neutral caretaker government would have to be installed to oversee a three-month electioneering period.

Another coalition member said: “It is 100 percent certain that there will be elections in 2012. The only solution is elections. It doesn’t matter whether they are held in June or October.”

Zardari’s coalition itself brought Monday’s confidence vote resolution to Parliament, cleverly wording it so that it asks for support not for the prime minister or even the government, but for democracy. That makes it difficult to oppose.

But the PPP’s troubles in Parliament are only one of the fronts in its battle for survival. The courts and the military are both maneuvering against the party’s leaders, with two explosive cases coming up for hearings Monday.

The first stems from a 2007 decree by President Pervez Musharraf that granted immunity from prosecution to Zardari and other exiled PPP politicians in an effort to persuade them to return to Pakistan to participate in elections that Musharraf was being pressured by the United States to hold.

The Supreme Court later ruled, however, that the decree was illegal and demanded that the government reopen corruption charges against Zardari stemming from the time when his wife, the assassinated PPP leader Benazir Bhutto, was prime minister.

The government declined, however, and now the court has summoned the government to explain its actions. The court could declare Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in contempt of court, which would in effect remove him from office.

The other case involves the the scandal in which a judicial commission is investigating allegations that Husain Haqqani, a close Zardari adviser and former ambassador to the U.S., wrote a memo that was passed to U.S. officials in May. That memo offered to replace the Pakistan military’s top officials in return for U.S. support should the military attempt to push Zardari aside.

Haqqani, who was forced to resign, says he had nothing to do with the memo, which the military has said amounted to treason.

The judicial commission may take testimony this week from an American businessman, and occasional news commentator, Mansoor Ijaz, who claimed that he had delivered the memo to U.S. officials, in a column that appeared in the British newspaper the Financial Times in October. Ijaz has said he will show up as a witness, though he apparently has yet to receive a visa to enter Pakistan.

Filed under: Afghanistan, American Muslims, Democracy, Freedoms, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, Pakistanis, President Obama, Taliban, United States, US Army Tagged: Asif Ali Zardari, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Imran Khan, Mansoor Ijaz, Memogate, MQM, Muttahida Quami Movement, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan, Pakistan Muslim League-Q, Pakistan Parliment, Pervez Musharraf, PPP, Yousuf Raza Gilani

BY E. Shahid for The Khaleej Times

When Imran Khan is around, there are more jealous husbands than worried batsmen. The famous remark made about the handsome Pathan cricketer, who took the subcontinent by storm in the 1970s and 80s, is symptomatic of the aura of the man that transcended sporting excellence. Despite the fierce cricketing rivalry, Imran was admired both in India and Pakistan, and continues to be a revered figure across the world of cricket.
Intensity and self-belief stood out in his performances on the field and charisma and poise surrounded him off it. Imran added virtues of honesty and missionary zeal to his personality when he single-handedly launched a cancer hospital for the poor and, more recently, a rural university in Pakistan. With his coming of age in the world of politics, it appears that the same set of qualities will hold him in good stead. Or is it?

To an outsider uninformed about the intricacies and conspiracy theories of Pakistani politics, Imran brings a breath of fresh air. He offers a glimmer of hope to an embattled country and a much needed respite from its present set of politicians. He combines neo-liberal political thought with a comprehensive worldview, traditional approach and a clean image in the face of rampant corruption. As a package, he promises a political transformation that can be invested in.

It appears that Imran has managed to bring a fragmented country under one umbrella defying the politics of identity, regionalism, sectarianism and even feudalism. He appears to have appealed to all segments of the society at least across a large swath of urban population, especially the youth who hold key to the future.

Imran has lured into his fold senior statesmen, veteran politicians, some even controversial ones, artists and army men. If the grapevine is to be believed, Imran Khan’s biggest catch is going to be former army general and President Pervez Musharraf, who is also trying to make a comeback into Pakistan politics.

Imran’s political discourse has also matured. In his public speeches, he stresses on programmes and policies and seems to have prescriptions for most ills facing the country, especially its ailing economy. If all this is taken at face value, Imran Khan is a godsend not just for Pakistan but also for the neighbourhood and the region as a whole.

Interestingly, not everyone is willing to label this as genuine transformation. People who matter – namely Pakistanis in and outside the country – often take disparaging positions on the subject. An Abu Dhabi taxi driver who hails from Swat valley paints a completely different picture from that of a Karachiite IT professional working in Dubai Media City.

One such individual says the rise of Imran is ‘escapism’ on a mass scale. Expecting an ‘elitist’ like him to change things is superficial, even idealistic, way of looking at the state of affairs in Pakistan. The argument is that Imran only promises to be a messiah and doesn’t have the wherewithal to become one.

The bottom line is that a lot of Pakistanis still do not see Imran’s upsurge as change, a positive one at that, and unless a majority believes in this change, it is going to be a futile exercise. There are bound to be differences of opinion but stakeholders must see change as a necessity and not necessarily as a means to an end. Pontification apart, outside perspective on Pakistan will always be interesting because it will reflect what the country should be instead of what it really is and is going to be. Unfortunately, the response usually ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous and is seldom a balanced one.

Imran is not making waves as a run-of-the-mill politician. Far from it, he is promising change in Pakistan and change doesn’t come easy. There is a natural resistance to such transformation, especially in a country where change has meant military rule or martial law. Imran is bound to make mistakes in the process but by putting faith in him the country would have at least tried and failed instead of reposing faith in those who breed inequality and deliver squalor.

Filed under: cricket, Democracy, Pakistan, Pakistan Cricket, Pakistanis Tagged: Asif Ali Zardari, cricket, Imran Khan, Pakistan, Pakistan Elections, Pakistani Cricket, Pakistani Politics, Pervez Musharraf, PPP, PTI

  PT Report Chitral, January 8: General (r) Pervez Musharraf said that he would contest the the forthcoming elections from Chitral. He made the announcement today while addressing his supporters gathered in Karachi. He thanked MNA Shahzada Muhiuddin and his son Shahzada Pervez for inviting him to contest the election from Chitral. The former dictator who [...]

By Faisal Aziz KARACHI | Sun Jan 8, 2012 2:47pm EST (Reuters) – Exiled former president Pervez Musharraf said on Sunday he would return to Pakistan later this month to lead his recently formed party in campaigning for a parliamentary election, despite the possibility of his arrest and concern over his security. “There are efforts to scare me, but these [...]

By Nasir Habib for CNN

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf pledged in a speech Sunday to return to his country later this month, despite word from authorities that he will be arrested when he does so.

“I am coming, Pakistan,” Musharraf told thousands of supporters via video link in the southern city of Karachi. “Attempts have been made to scare me, but I am not afraid of anything.”
He pledged to return between January 27 and 30.

When he does, Pakistani officials said, Musharraf will be arrested in connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007. Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, a special public prosecutor in the assassination case, said a Rawalpindi court has already issued an arrest warrant for Musharraf.

“They are bound to execute the order unless a higher court sets aside the orders,” Ali said, adding that Musharraf is accused of conspiring in the assassination.

Musharraf’s attorney, Chaudry Faisal, said the threat of arrest is politically motivated and has no legal bearing. The warrant is being challenged in court, the attorney said.

He described the claim that Musharraf could be arrested at any time upon return as “absurd.” The former president said Sunday that he will return even at the risk of his life.

Musharraf, who resigned in 2008, is expected to fly into Pakistan from the United Arab Emirates later this month, accompanied by up to 500 supporters, said Jawed Siddiqi, spokesman for the former president’s All Pakistan Muslim League party.

“President Musharraf told me that although the possibility of arrest is there — there is no way of knowing what will happen, and how dangerous the situation is, until one jumps into the situation head first,” he said. Elections are set to take place in Pakistan next year; Musharraf intends to run.

On Sunday, he told Pakistanis that other politicians have failed leading the country, but “I succeeded 100%.”

“When I took charge of the country, it was surrounded in huge problems,” he said. “… Today, we have to decide whether we need change or we need the same faces.”

Terrorism in Pakistan, he said, “is at its peak. We are alone in the world.” He said he restored Pakistan’s economic development, increased its global standing and strengthened the armed forces.

Musharraf resigned in 2008 as the country’s ruling coalition began taking steps to impeach him. He was succeeded by Asif Zardari, Bhutto’s widower.
In 2010, the United Nations released a report that said Musharraf’s government had failed to protect Bhutto before her 2007 assassination. Musharraf has rejected such accusations, saying that Bhutto had police protection and took unnecessary risks.

Bhutto’s assassination turned public opinion strongly against Musharraf in 2008 and led to his resignation and self-exile in London. In 2010, Musharraf said the timing of his return to Pakistan would depend on the environment there.

“My going back is dependent, certainly, on an environment to be created in Pakistan and also, I would say, with certainty, that whenever the signs of the next election comes up, I will be there in Pakistan,” he said.

Filed under: Afghanistan, Democracy, Freedoms, Pakistan, Pakistan Army Tagged: All Pakistan Muslim League, Benazir Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Pakistan, Pakistanis, Pervez Musharraf, President Asif Ali Zardari, United Nations

By Duncan Gardham for The Telegraph

Mr Musharraf will announce his intention to return from London where has been living in exile despite facing arrest on treason charges. “His return will be announced by video link at a rally in Karachi on Sunday,” a source close to the former president told the Daily Telegraph.

He is planning to fly back to Pakistan by the end of January, plunging himself into a political crisis amid reports of an early general election and rumors the military is on the brink of mounting a coup.

The government and army are at loggerhead trading allegations over a memo allegedly sent to US military chiefs by senior officials asking for support to reduce military influence. Yusuf Gilani, the country’s prime minister, has said publicly Pakistan’s generals are behaving as though they were a “state within a state”.

As rumours of a coup gathered speed, Asif Zardari, the country’s president, has been forced to fly back to Pakistan from Dubai where he was receiving treatment for “stroke-like symptoms”.

General Ashfaq Kayani, the head of the Pakistan army, rejected coup claims, insisting the army would “continue to support the democratic process”.
However the military distrusts both Mr Zardari and the rival Pakistan Muslim League-N, headed by Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister deposed by Mr Musharraf.

Political analysts believe the army command want to back an outside campaign in the elections but it is unclear if Mr Musharraf fits the bill.
While there has been some support to “bring back the general,” Mr Musharraf was deeply unpopular by the time he was forced out of power four years ago.

In order to stage a return he would need political support from Middle Eastern countries to help persuade the government to drop the charges against
him.

However, there have been reports that the army is backing Imran Khan, the former Pakistan cricket captain who leads Tehreek-e-Insaf [the Movement for Justice] and has staged a series of popular rallies.

Mr Khan is a former supporter of Mr Musharraf who has since become one of his fiercest critics. Ahmed Rashid, a political commentator, said the country was facing a “multi-faceted crisis”, particularly with the economy, but he doubted Mr Musharraf could make a comeback. “I don’t think he has enough people supporting him and he would probably be arrested,” he said.

Mr Musharraf launched his own political party, the All Pakistan Muslim League, in London in June 2010 and told the Daily Telegraph last year: “Pakistan is suffering. The people are extremely alive now that something has to be done in Pakistan. The youth is alive, the educated middle class is alive, they are in a state of shock and dismay over the governance in Pakistan.”

He promised a party that was “capable, viable, honest and deliverable internationally.” “I am a person who believes if I try and if I’m failing, I will quit,” he added. “I have no qualms and no ego. I have governed Pakistan for nine years, very successfully and I have no further ambitions, personal ambitions, my ambition is Pakistan.” But it is unlikely that Mr Musharraf would be able to claim victory on his own and he admitted: “I am trying to create an entity which can be the third political alternative, whether alone or in coalition with some other like-minded parties.” Mr Zardari took over from Mr Musharraf as the country’s first elected leader in nine years following the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.

However his party, the Pakistan People’s Party, has become increasingly unpopular as Pakistan faces a economic depression and copes with one crisis after another. The next government is likely to be decided by smaller parties and Mr Musharraf could play a crucial role in that decision.

Filed under: Democracy, Freedoms, Pakistan, Pakistanis Tagged: Asif Ali Zardari, Imran Khan, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan, Pakistan Muslim League-N, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistanis, Pervez Musharraf, PPP, PTI

According to an apocryphal story, immediately after General Pervez Musharraf launched his infamous Kargil offensive, the Indian Prime Minister contacted Mr. Nawaz Sharif, then Prime Minister of Pakistan.

“Mian Sahib” asked the Indian PM, “What are you doing to us? Why has your army launched an offensive in Kargil?”

“Let me ask my generals and then I will get back to you,” replied Nawaz Sharif

“That is the difference between you and us, Mian sahib; we don’t ask our generals, they ask us before they do anything” is said to have been the Indian PM’s reply.

This story, often repeated in the streets of Pakistan, is also a sort of popular self-awareness of how things stand in Pakistan when it comes to civil-military relationships.

In the military circles, of which I was a part for fourteen years of my life, the civilian administration is always seen as corrupt and inefficient. This view is, of course, partially true especially if one compares the two systems without incorporating their attendant peculiarities. It is easy to be professional and efficient in the military: everyone is trained to do their job and there is an established hierarchy of rank structure buttressed by an uninterrupted history of functionality as an institution. Furthermore, the military leaders only have to deal with highly indoctrinated troops who, being soldiers, have no right to any kind of free will or civic rights. It is easy to command and manage a captive audience.

Our civilian systems, however, neither have a continuous history of functionality nor do they comprise a system in which the hierarchy is clearly established and articulated. Because of various martial laws and other military interventions neither the people nor the so-called leaders have truly learned the ethics and politics of public political life. Resultantly, most of our politicians see their offices as a path to self-agrrandization and have no qualms about using their influence to enrich themselves. Since the system is unstable, the politicians’ psyche is connected to short-term goals. So, instead of refining their message and streamlining a long-term, people-oriented politics, our politicians are more focused on the short-term goals. If the threat of military take-overs had been eliminated, just like the Indians did, then over the last sixty years we would have also developed a more responsive and transparent system of politics and governance.

Pakistan is also still burdened with a medieval system of production in which the large landholders still rely on captive labor to continue reproducing the inequalities that we inherited at the time of the partition. How is the army to blame for this? Quite simply, one look at who did the military mobilize during their regimes will be a good answer: Ayub Khan relied on some heavy weights of Pakistani feudality and Zia-ul-Haq, despite his pseudo-Islamic policies, also worked through the same ”notables” in all regions of Pakistan. Mr. Musharraf, notwithstanding his pronounced liberalism, also worked with cahudries of Gujraat and other such parasites to keep his regime functional. In the entire thirty or so years of the aggregated military rule, not even one of them even hinted at land reforms or tried to disrupt this unjust, unequal system of wealth distribution. In fact, by supporting the zamindars and the waderas, the military has provided them new inroads into the nation’s politics: pretty much all major parties now field feudal candidates from the rural heart of Pakistan, candidates who are basically there to safeguard their own interests and to maintain the status quo.

It is often declared that without the army, Pakistan will disintegrate as a nation. Maybe, that is partially true as a functional national government does need a strong and established armed force to maintain order within its borders, to provide emergency relief, and to also safeguard against foreign aggression. But a deeper look at our system suggests that military itself has become the main cause of Pakistan’s instability and bleak future. This isn’t something new; one look at human history is enough to prove that eventually it is always the high military expenditure that brings nations and empires down. At the height of its power, the Roman Empire relied heavily on the Roman legions for the expansion of empire. But in the end the legions themselves became too expansive to maintain and thus became the cause of the failure of empire. Same happed to the Soviet Union. We are headed the same way. We all know that we cannot afford to spend so much on the military but we must, as our politicians neither have the courage nor the popular support to reign in the military elite.

The civil military relationships in Pakistan, therefore, are a symptom of a nation gone wrong, a nation in which people are still living in squalor while their leaders and their generals live like kings.

It is quite obvious that our politicians are mostly corrupt and probably do not care about the people, but part of this apathy is systemic: if the politicians are in it for the short term and do not have to worry about their long term obligations to their constituents, then the system does not force them to become more receptive to popular demands. The generals, on the other hand, have no reason to pander to the people especially if they can continuously rely on popular distrust of the politicians and a constant invocation of outside threats. The result of this military civilian symbiotic relationship is that Pakistan has increasingly become a dysfunctional state in which might is right and the only way to make ourselves look better is to keep deriding other nations.

Rise of Islamic fundamentalism is a direct result of, among other things, the unequal and unjust society that the army and the politicians have constructed over the years. Think of it this way: if you feel powerless and silenced with no recourse to a functional justice system or a vibrant social system, then you will sign up with anyone who promises to literally restructure the entire socio-economic edifice. The left in Pakistan has never been able to promise such an upheaval: in fact, the Pakistani left, whatever is left of it, has itself become an elitist pursuit by some real and mostly pseudo intellectuals whose political alignment is mostly with the feudal or industrial bourgeoisie. In such a scenario, only the most fundamentalist mullahs can mobilize the people as they can, at the end of the day, at least promise revolutionary change.

In wake of the recent Memogate scandal and other national debacles, it has become evident that the interest of the army and those of our politically elected leaders are on a divergent course. Yes, we need the armed forces: at least, they provide employment for hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis directly and indirectly. But we need an army that knows that it is one tool in the hands of popularly elected governments, an army that enables Pakistan to become a viable, pluralistic democracy.

Our politicians also need to learn that they are servants of their people and unless they internalize this core principle, they will continue the inane and self-serving politics that has now made them a joke in the region as well as in the world.

If the present government finishes its term, ineffective as it maybe as a government, it will be the first popularly elected government to do so in my entire lifetime. So, yes, their corruption and failure notwithstanding, let us aid and help this government so that we can have another and yet another popularly elected government. A functioning system of politics is the only way for Pakistan to become a viable nation and for that to happen, the Pakistan army will have to learn to think of itself as an instrument of Pakistani state and the generals will have to learn to be servants of their people: Yes, the very people whose poverty and suffering underwrites the privileges that our generals enjoy as their rights.

(Also published by Viewpoint Online)

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© 2012, Masood Ashraf Raja. 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.