Tuesday, February 28, 2006

China, Pakistan, and the Bomb: The Declassified File on U.S. Policy, 1977-1997



China, Pakistan, and the Bomb:The Declassified File on U.S. Policy, 1977-1997
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 114
March 5, 2004: William Burr, editor

Washington D.C., 5 March 2004 - The recent turnaround in Libya's nuclear policies and the many disclosures of Pakistan's role as a super-proliferator of nuclear weapons technology produced another extraordinary revelation: the discovery by U.S. and British intelligence of Chinese language material among the nuclear weapons design documents that Pakistan had supplied the Libyans. (Note 1) The exact subject matter of the documents remains secret, but the discovery was no surprise to students of nuclear proliferation or to China and Pakistan watchers. China's nuclear relationship with Pakistan was a matter of great concern to U.S. government officials over the course of four presidential administrations. Since the early 1980s, at least, allegations abounded that the Chinese government provided the Pakistanis with nuclear weapons technology, including design information. (Note 2) This assistance may have continued through the mid-1990s, or even later, though much remains conjectural.

Until the revelations from the Libyan files, no evidence had surfaced that conclusively linked China with Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. But the revelation on the Chinese documents is only one piece of the puzzle; questions remain about the nature of the China-Pakistan nuclear relationship--its origins and its extent--that may not be settled for many years. How and why this nuclear relationship emerged can only be a matter of speculation. Certainly, for many years, Beijing's official position was that it would not help other countries acquire nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, during the years after China's first nuclear test in October 1964, its nuclear weapons policy was complex and ambivalent. On the one hand, even as it developed its small nuclear arsenal, Beijing supported a complete ban of nuclear weapons and their ultimate elimination. On the other hand, Beijing railed against the superpower's nuclear monopoly, declaring that non-nuclear states had the right to develop nuclear weapons on their own, just as it had. Moreover, after the signing of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (1968), China treated it as another unequal treaty, allowing the great powers to keep their arsenals while prohibiting sovereign nations from taking self-defense measures. (Note 3)

China's professed opposition to sharing nuclear weapons technology with non-nuclear states may have led to compromise of principle when security and economic interests were at stake. Well before the question of nuclear sharing emerged, China and Pakistan, each having an adversarial relationship with India, had developed a close understanding involving significant military cooperation. When the U.S. cut off sales of weapons to both India and Pakistan because of their 1965 border conflict, China became Pakistan's main supplier of weapons. The close relationship with China became one of the pillars of Pakistani foreign policy. When India held its first nuclear test in 1974, and Pakistan made decisions to acquire its own capability to build nuclear weapons, it may have seemed a matter of course for elements in the Chinese military, which had a powerful voice in Beijing's nuclear establishment, eventually to decide to lend Pakistan a hand. (Note 4)

The interests that propelled Beijing to assist Pakistan's nuclear program became competitive, during the 1980s and 1990s, with other sets of interests pushing for a stronger Chinese role in global nuclear nonproliferation efforts. While reports of Beijing's transfer of nuclear weapons designs and sensitive technologies circulated, the two governments signed a nuclear cooperation agreement and conducted negotiations over the sale of Chinese nuclear reactors. At the same time, Beijing became a full member of the nuclear nonproliferation regime, joining the International Atomic Energy Authority in 1984 and signing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1992 and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1995. Moreover, China began to work closely with Washington and other powers in trying to curb the North Korean nuclear program and in restricting trade in sensitive nuclear technology. As China's market economy developed greater complexity, central authorities could not always control events, which is what may happened when a Chinese firm sold ring magnets used for the production of highly enriched uranium to Pakistan in 1995. (Note 5)

Exactly what the United States government knew (or believed it knew) about Chinese nuclear sharing with Pakistan and when it knew it, remains highly secret. So far no intelligence reports on the issues have been declassified, although during the Clinton years Washington Times correspondent Bill Gertz published highly damaging communications intercepts on Chinese-Pakistan nuclear transactions in 1996. (Note 6) In light of the sensitivities involved--U.S. relations with two highly important partners, Pakistan and China--the relevant details may not be declassified for many years. Moreover, the presidential records that would shed light on how consecutive administrations tried to reconcile the larger goal of engagement with Beijing with specific concerns about nuclear proliferation issues remain secret. Within the limits imposed by the secrecy system, this briefing book sheds light on how U.S. government officials looked at the China-Pakistan nuclear relationship, their persistent efforts to discourage it, the repeated denials by Chinese diplomats, and the evolution of China's nuclear nonproliferation policy. Among the disclosures are:

1. U.S. unease over secret China-Pakistan security and military cooperation during the late 1960s
2. Chinese assistance to Pakistani nuclear-weapons related projects in 1977
3. The refusal by Chinese diplomats in 1982 to give an "unequivocal answer" to queries about nuclear weapons aid to Pakistan
4. The conclusion reached by State Department analysts in 1983 that China was assisting with the production of fissile materials and possibly with the design of weapons
5. The George H. W. Bush administration's concern in 1989 over "reports of Chinese assistance to Pakistan's nuclear weapons program"
6. Denials by Chinese diplomats that same year of reports of Chinese nuclear aid to Pakistan
7. U.S. pressure on China in 1992 to impose full-scope safeguards on the sale of a nuclear reactor to Pakistan because of proliferation concerns
8. More disquiet (late 1992) over China's "continuing activities with Pakistan's nuclear weapons programs"
9. the Clinton administration's 1997 certification of improvements in Beijing's nuclear proliferation policies.

The revelations about the China-Pakistan nuclear connection coincided with Beijing's recent application to join the 30 member Nuclear Suppliers Group that tries to regulate international trade in nuclear materials and technologies in order to check weapons proliferation. (Note 7) It is possible that tensions between non-proliferation, foreign policy, and commercial goals will continue to complicate Beijing's policies as it has that of other nuclear states. Nevertheless, Beijing's decision to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group suggests that it is moving much closer toward full participation in the global nonproliferation regime and away from the narrowly nationalistic approach that characterized its nuclear relationship with Pakistan. To the extent that Chinese government agencies actually transmitted nuclear weapons design information to Pakistan, one can only hope that the spin-off from Pakistan never leaked into private hands.

For Complete text of all documents, click the title heading above.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Militant Training Camps in Pakistan



Daily Times, February 27, 2006
EDITORIAL: The various ‘camps’ in Pakistan

Talking to Doordarshan, the state-run Indian TV channel, President George Bush said on Saturday that on his trip to Pakistan he would talk about “the terrorist activities, the need to dismantle training camps and to protect innocent life”. The question put to him was specifically about the Azad Kashmir ‘training camps’. The same day there was news from Kabul that President Hamid Karzai had shared intelligence with Pakistan indicating that Mullah Mohammed Omar, leader of the Taliban regime, and his key associates were hiding in Pakistan. Afghanistan also allegedly provided information about “the location of terrorist training camps along the border and in Pakistani cities”. The Afghan president also claims to have handed over a list of wanted Afghan men to President Pervez Musharraf and asked for their repatriation to Afghanistan.

Pakistan denies that there are terrorist camps of any kind on Pakistani territory. But there have been sporadic reports in 2005 that “training” could have restarted. In Balochistan, it is virtually impossible for the government to say with certainty that the Taliban are not “present and training”. President Karzai should know this as he was ensconced there before he was taken out and sent to Afghanistan to head the new post-9/11 government. Pakistan too has accused Afghanistan of colluding with India to send weapons to Balochistan, with Kabul vehemently denying it. The situation could be out of the hands of both parties. No one sitting in Kabul can say that weapons are not going across to the “farari” camps in Balochistan.

The Afghans say Mullah Omar could be anywhere in Pakistan; they have no proof of his location. Pakistan is not a small country. Large parts of it are outside the jurisdiction of the state, just like warlord-controlled Afghanistan. President Karzai has asked Islamabad to close down terrorist camps, but has he given documentary proof of where these are located? For that matter, Pakistan is supposed to have told President Karzai that Indian consulates in Afghanistan were sending weapons to Balochistan. But where is the proof? Interestingly there were front-page reports in the Pakistani press that Islamabad had actually done that and that President Karzai had denied involvement despite documentary proof. But then, talking to AAJ TV on February 21, 2006, the interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao, stated clearly that he was present at the Musharraf-Karzai meeting and saw no documentary proof being given to the other side about Indian involvement in Balochistan!

If Pakistan has a credibility problem, it is linked to the jihadi leaders still operating in Pakistan with renamed militias. The world interprets their presence in civil society as the retention of the “jihadi option” by President Musharraf in the event that the world is unable to persuade India to settle the Kashmir dispute. Certainly, in Azad Kashmir and the NWFP not long ago, the world was witness to jihadis busy in the work of rescue and rehabilitation, spending colossal amounts of money in the areas where they have always been known to have training camps. Indeed, a youth on trial in the United States actually confessed last year that he had received “training” recently in a camp run by a jihadi warlord now living safely in Islamabad. In fact, the biggest jihadi warlord of all — with clear links to Kunar in Afghanistan where the Arabs lived during the Taliban rule — is in Lahore publishing his defiant anti-Musharraf message in the Urdu press on a daily basis. And if the Bajaur incident is any indicator, there could be many more “loopholes” in the jurisdictional control of the government in Pakistan than most people realise. Therefore the “camps” are still Pakistan’s number one problem with the international community.

Presidents Bush and Karzai may look to their own interests, but Pakistan should review the policy on “camps” from its own perspective. There is no arguing against the fact that the jihadi camps hurt the state sovereignty of Pakistan more than they hurt either India or the new order in Afghanistan. By being in denial we may actually be ignoring a very significant aspect of reality in Pakistan. Just as the elected prime ministers during the 1990s were unable to control their Kashmir policy in the face of the jihadi warlords, President Musharraf too may have already reached the limit of his operative control of Pakistan in the presence of these “camps”. Thus Pakistan has to come out of this “mercenary” syndrome and learn to be master of its own policies. The camps — jihadi, Taliban, Al Qaeda — must all go in the interest of the people of Pakistan. The cost of retaining them is prohibitive.

Pugwash Islamabad Conference

The News, February 26, 2006
Pugwash Islamabad conference to attract luminaries
By Mariana Baabar

ISLAMABAD: The first three-day Pugwash Conference to be held from March10 to 12 in Islamabad is expected to attract luminaries from Azad Kashmir, Indian Held Kashmir, India and Pakistan. The first such conference on Kashmir was held at Kathmandu.

"The conference will provide a platform for the eminent representatives and facilitate the ongoing peace process. The Pugwash Conference offers no solution but only facilitates all on a common platform. It will also provide an opportunity to Kashmiris on both sides to get together and look at the prospects for self-governance in Jammu and Kashmir.

The conference will dwell on the present status and ways and means to accelerate the process of communication across the LOC while also looking at the prospects for exploring peace," says General (r) Talat Masood, the Chief Coordinator of the Pakistan Chapter of the Pugwash.

Invitations for Pakistanis, who are expected to attend this closed door conference, where no one is allowed to be quoted, are being sent out and some of these are Mushahid Hussain, Sherry Rehman, Samina Ahmed, Dr Shirin Mazari, Amanullah Khan, Sardar Qayyum Khan, Sardar Atiq, Majid Malik, Farooq Rehmani, Barrister Sultan Mehmud, Maulana Fazlurar Rehman, Abdus Sattar, Najmuddin Sheikh and Najam Sehthi.

Of great interest will be Mehbooba Mufti and Omer Abdullah on their maiden visits to Pakistan. They will be joined by Yasin Malik, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, Barrister Majeed Taamboo, Abdul Ghani Bhatt, Ali Gillani, Nabi Fai, Farooq Qatwari and the Lone brothers.

It is as yet undecided whether SK Lamba will attend though there are many in the Pugwash who hope that as he is involved in backdoor diplomacy, he would be present. Besides him Raja Mohan, Wajahat Habibullah and MK Rasgotra are some of the invitees.

The only foreigner to attend will be Pugwash Secretary General Prof Paolocotta Ramusino.

The purpose of the Pugwash Conferences is to bring together, from around the world, influential scholars and public figures concerned with reducing the danger of armed conflict and seeking cooperative solutions for global problems. Meeting in private as individuals, rather than as governments or institutions representatives, Pugwash participants exchange views and explore alternative approaches to arms control and tension reduction with a combination of candour, continuity, and flexibility seldom attained in official East-West and North-South discussions and negotiations.

Yet, because of the stature of many of the Pugwash participants in their own countries (as, for example, science and arms-control advisers to governments, key figures in academies of science and universities, and former and future holders of high government office), insights from Pugwash discussions tend to penetrate quickly to the appropriate levels of official policy-making.

A basic rule is that participation is always by individuals in their private capacity and not as representatives of governments or organizations.

President Bush's Upcoming Visit to Pakistan: Whats on the Agenda?

Daily Times, February 26, 2006
US president to push Pakistan on Kashmir ‘terrorist camps’

WASHINGTON: US President George W Bush said on Friday he would push President Pervez Musharraf during an upcoming visit to Islamabad to close “terrorist training camps”.

“On my trip to Pakistan, I will, of course, talk about the terrorist activities, the need to dismantle terrorist training camps and to protect innocent life,” Bush told Doordarshan state-run television of India, AFP reported. Bush leaves late on February 28 for India, and from there will travel to Pakistan for his first visit to both countries. In a separate interview to PTV, Bush said a democratic Pakistan can set an example for the Muslim world of a religious state that is not extremist.

“President Musharraf, in his democracy initiative, can show the whole Muslim world, and the world itself, that it’s possible to have a religious (state) that is not extreme,” Bush said in the interview, according to a transcript provided by news agency SANA. “And I will, of course, continue to talk to my buddy and my friend (Musharraf) about his goals for a democratic Pakistan.”

The US president said the aim of his visit was to reinforce his good relationship with Gen Musharraf and reach out to the people of Pakistan. “President Musharraf and I can set a tone for the relationship because of our capacity to talk to each other,” he said. “A good relationship between me and the president tends to permeate throughout our governments.”

“Secondly, I want the people of Pakistan to know that the American people care about them, that ours is a relationship that’s much bigger than just the war on terror; that when our Chinooks flew supplies into the rural part of Pakistan … it was out of a sense of care and concern about the individuals ... this (trip) will give me a chance to speak to the people of Pakistan and say, look, we care for you,” he said. Bush said Pakistan and the US could make their relationship more durable through trade and student exchanges. “And we’ll be talking about a bilateral investment treaty,” he added. He said anti-terror cooperation was crucial because Al Qaeda was a threat to Pakistan as well. “Nobody should want foreign fighters in their soil wreaking havoc. And it’s hard for a part of a country to develop if there are people in that part of the country that are willing to kill innocent life to achieve an objective.” Asked what role the US could play in resolving the Kashmir issue, Bush said he had already started to play a role when, in a recent speech to the Asia Society, he encouraged both sides to continue seeking a solution “acceptable to all sides”. “I will use my trip to urge the leadership to continue solving this issue, with the idea that it can be solved,” he said. agencies

Thursday, February 23, 2006

The India Option?

Daily Times, February 24, 2006
VIEW: The India option —Charles Tannock

The world is beginning to notice that India has nearly the same number of people as China, plus a more benign system of government. China hawks in both India and the West dream that “strategic partnership” will link the world’s great democracies. India is as wary of China as some in Europe and America are

French President Jacques Chirac’s visit to India this month to complete the sale of six attack submarines will confirm once more India’s emergence as an economic and diplomatic powerhouse. The “strategic partnership” that both America and the European Union have at times sought with China looks both more plausible and more desirable with democratic India.

With a Muslim president, a Sikh prime minister, a Hindu foreign minister, and a foreign-born Christian president of its ruling party, India is as remarkable a success story as the 20-year boom that China’s Communist Party has delivered. Indeed, since 1991, when a balance-of-payments crisis loomed, India has been shedding its socialist legacies and posting 7.5 percent average annual GDP growth — only marginally slower than China. India has opened up its economy to world trade and started to privatise many of its state-owned industries (albeit often too slowly).

High-tech businesses have helped enormously in this effort by showing that India has more to gain than lose from competing in the global marketplace. Perhaps for the first time since inventing the zero, India has a hot product to sell — and, this time, it can keep the profits for itself. Moreover, a global bidding war has broken out for Indian brains.

The EU is keen to link into India’s boom. The first EU Galileo satellite — intended as an alternative to America’s GPS system — was launched in late December with India as a full partner. Also in December, India became the latest nation to join the EU in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) team, which aims to produce electricity using nuclear fusion, as happens in the sun.

For obvious historical reasons, the United Kingdom has led the way in building EU links with India. Indian businesses naturally chose Britain over other locations in Europe for reasons of language and cultural ties, but even that is changing, as Indian investments spread across the continent.

In a sense, India’s democracy sometimes hinders immediate growth. Unlike in China, India’s government cannot simply ride roughshod over local interests by, say, levelling a village to build a roadway or a dam. But this is a sacrifice that India seems more than willing to make to safeguard its freedoms.

That sacrifice is particularly visible in today’s Congress-led Indian government, which relies on support from the Left Front Communist Party. India’s communists (unlike China’s) remain ideologically driven, and the Left Front is resisting privatisation of state assets, lifting caps on foreign direct investment, and creating a more flexible labour market.

Yet the essential reforms, which date back to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s time as finance minister in 1991 and include liberalisation of external trade and dismantling the “licence raj” remain on track. It is clearly in India’s interests to join forces with the EU in negotiations within the World Trade Organisation to lower protectionist barriers, particularly in services such as accounting, law, and finance, as this will free up trade and generate greater investment flows.

India is already being treated with growing respect in global economic councils. When “new economy” issues such as e-commerce come up at the WTO, India, the EU and the United States often find themselves on the same side. On “old economy” issues, ideological clashes have given way to tough-minded bargaining, as has happened in the Doha round of trade talks. India supports a Millennium Round of trade talks, but rejects any linkage of trade to labour standards. The Indians want faster liberalisation of the textile and clothing trades; the EU wants better enforcement of intellectual-property protection. India is keen to share intelligence with the EU in the fight against international terrorism.

The main problem in pushing this strategic partnership ahead lies mostly within the EU, where there is a split between protectionists and advocates of free trade. In particular the EU must resist calls for higher tariffs from southern European textile manufacturers, as these businesses have failed to restructure, despite ample warnings over the last decade to do so.

Indeed, the EU should regard growth in India not as a competitive threat but as a golden opportunity that will benefit everyone. The global economy is not a zero-sum game, and the challenge for European politicians will be to explain this to EU members, particularly countries like France that are resistant to globalisation and keen on building a “Fortress Europe”. Chirac’s visit provides a perfect moment for India to make it clear that strategic partnerships and protectionism (as seems to be occurring in the French effort to block Mittal’s bid for the Belgian-French steel group Arcelor) don’t mix.

The second point of convergence between Indian and Western interests is one that will probably get no public mention during Chirac’s visit: India can perhaps serve as a counterweight to China. The world is beginning to notice that India has nearly the same number of people as China, plus a more benign system of government and no designs on its neighbours. China hawks in both India and the West dream that “strategic partnership” will link the world’s great democracies.

That will not happen soon. To be sure, India is as wary of China as some in Europe and America are. After all, China supplied much of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons technology and beat India in a 1962 war; their borders remain disputed in places. Yet neither India nor the EU wants their friendship to be part of an anti-China axis. Indeed, India has mostly succeeded in ending the chill that set in after 1998, when it declared China to be the main target of its nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, Europe, India, and America are all aware that today’s friendship could become tomorrow’s alliance if China turns hostile.

Charles Tannock is UK Conservative foreign affairs spokesman in the European Parliament

Bush shares Musharraf’s vision for democracy: The News



Bush shares Musharraf’s vision for democracy
The News, February 23, 2006

US president says Kashmir solution must be acceptable to Pakistan, India and Kashmiris; mourns loss of lives in Bajaur
From Kamran Khan in Washington

US President George W Bush has said that President Musharraf is a courageous man and he appreciates his vision for democracy in Pakistan.

In an interview at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, Bush said, "He (Musharraf) has got a tough assignment. On the one hand people are trying to kill him, while on the other hand he is taking the country further down the road to democracy."

Bush said he keeps referring to his personal relationship with General Musharraf and his courage to side with the "world" in the war against terrorism.

President Bush avoided a direct comment when asked about the Commonwealth demand that President Musharraf must decide about his dual office by 2007.

Visibly impressed by his various discussion with President Musharraf on the future of democracy in Pakistan, Bush said: "I have had discussion with the president about his vision for a democratic Pakistan. I believe he is headed on

the road to reform. He understands the pressure being put on him." President Bush believed that Musharraf was committed to reforms in Pakistan and also to holding of free and fair elections.

The US president said Musharraf is a courageous person. "Al-Qaeda tried to kill him more than one time," he said and went on to further appreciate Musharraf’s resolve against al-Qaeda, "No question the Musharraf government is committed" and is working to get al-Qaeda brought to justice.

Responding to a question on the US offer to India for civilian nuclear cooperation and why a similar deal is not being offered to Pakistan, President Bush said that "It was just the beginning" of a long process, but he didn’t drop any hint to suggest that in future Pakistan may also get a similar offer.

President Bush said that Kashmir would figure in his discussions with the Pakistani and Indian leadership, but as in the past he insisted that he would only try to encourage the leadership, staying away from playing a direct role.

But twice, he underlined that the solution being discussed between Pakistan and India must be acceptable to all and by that he meant "Pakistan, India and the people of Kashmir".

In what appeared to be his first comment on the Bajaur incident, President Bush said there had been coordination between the agencies of the two countries. But when pressed why the United States expressed no remorse on the loss of civilian lives, he said: "Of course, the United States mourns the loss of lives."

Without elaborating on the circumstances that had led to the US strike at a remote village in Bajaur, Bush said: "We are partners in the war against terror, we are allies and we coordinate."

When quizzed why the United States was trying to block the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project, Bush in his first-ever comment on the project said: "India, Pakistan and the US must send a united message to Iran that development of nuclear weapons is unacceptable … Iran must get a unified message from all of us."

Commenting on the blasphemous cartoon controversy, President Bush emphasised the importance of a free press, but without mentioning the violent protest in Pakistan on this issue, he said: "I do not believe that people should use it as a pretext for violence … some are using the cartoons to achieve political ends."

Agencies add: US President George W Bush said on Wednesday he would push the leaders of India and Pakistan to resolve the long-standing Kashmir issue during his maiden visit to the South Asian nations next week.

"I will encourage them to address this important issue," Bush said ahead of his meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Noting that the two nuclear powers were engaged in talks on the border conflict that had sparked two of their three wars, Bush said they "now have an historic opportunity to work toward lasting peace.

"For too long, Kashmir has been a source of violence and distrust between these two countries," Bush said in an address to the US-based Asia Society. "America supports a resolution in Kashmir that is acceptable to both sides."

Bush said good relations with the United States could help both nations in their quest for peace. "Not long ago, there was so much distrust between India and Pakistan that when America had good relations with one, it made the other one nervous.

"Pakistan now understands that it benefits when America has good relations with India. India understands that it benefits when America has good relations with Pakistan," Bush said.

In India, Bush is also expected to discuss with Premier Singh implementation details of a controversial civilian nuclear deal they agreed upon last summer, acknowledging that "it will take time and it will take patience" to implement.

Talks have been mired over Washington's demand that India put more reactors on a list of civilian nuclear facilities to be put under international scrutiny. "I'll continue to encourage India to produce a credible, transparent and defensible plan to separate its civilian and military nuclear programs," President Bush said.

India reportedly wants to exclude its "fast breeder" reactors -- which could be used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons -- from international safeguards. If the deal goes through, energy-starved India would be given access to civilian nuclear technology it has long been denied for conducting nuclear tests and refusing to sign on to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Bush urged India to lift its caps on foreign investment, to make its investment and trading rules and regulations more transparent, and to continue to lower tariffs and open markets to American structural products, industrial goods and services.

In Pakistan, Bush would discuss the "war on terror" with President Musharraf, who is under pressure to step up efforts in flushing out al-Qaeda kingpin Osama bin Laden and other leaders of the terror network from their suspected hideouts along the border with Afghanistan.

He would also prod Musharraf to adopt democratic reforms and ensure that key elections scheduled next year were "open, free and fair." "This will be an important test of Pakistan's commitment to democratic reform," he said.

The US leader acknowledged that his first visit to South Asia since he assumed office in 2001 came at "a sensitive time" amid protests in the region over the publication of controversial cartoons. Some of the protests were violent, targeting Western embassies and businesses.

Bush said "this is a sensitive time in South Asia". "In Pakistan and other countries, images broadcast around the world have inflamed passions, and these passions have been cynically manipulated to incite violence. America believes that people have the right to express themselves in a free press. America also believes that others have the right to disagree with what's printed in the free press, and to respond by organising protests so long as they protest peacefully. And when protests turn violent, governments have an obligation to restore the rule of law, to protect lives and property, and ensure that diplomats who are serving their nations overseas are not harmed. We understand that striking the right balance is difficult, but we must not allow mobs to dictate the future of South Asia."

"In this vital region, the stakes are high and the opportunities are unprecedented." Speaking at a roundtable interview with the press pool aboard Air Force One en route Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, Bush said his coming visit to Pakistan and India "is going to be important".

"It's going to be an important trip, one where we'll work on a variety of issues with both countries -- security, prosperity and trade; working with India, of course, on energy security. It will be an important trip," he said.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Pakistan will stand by China against US ‘siege’: Official Spokesman!

Daily Times, February 23, 2006
Pakistan will stand by China against US ‘siege’, says Rashid

BEIJING: Pakistan will stand by China if the US ever tries to “besiege” it, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad has said. He said this while talking to a private television channel in Beijing on Wednesday.

Rashid said that President Pervez Musharraf’s visit to China will open new avenues of development and cooperation between the two countries in all sectors. Pakistan and China have signed 42 bilateral agreements during the president’s current visit, 13 of which have been reached at the government level and 27 are between the traders and entrepreneurs of both countries.

These accords are aimed at boosting cooperation in economy, defence, trade and the social sector. The information minister said that Pakistan and China are jointly manufacturing an F-17 thunder combat aircraft. He said that the test-flight of a second combat plane, an F-10, is scheduled for today (Thursday).

He said that Musharraf told the Chinese leadership that Pakistan wanted full membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). He said that Russian President Vladimir Putin, due to visit China next month, along with the Chinese leadership will help Pakistan acquire SCO membership. Cooperation of other SCO members – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – will also be sought, he said.

The president also expressed condolences for the killing of three Chinese engineers in Balochistan, he said. agencies

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Musharraf on a Tightrope - Indeed



Pakistan I: Musharraf on a Tightrope
RenƩe Loth The Boston Globe
International Herald Tribune - FEBRUARY 17, 2006

ISLAMABAD The strategic importance of Pakistan is obvious, but it is not exactly a blessing on the land. In an interview here this week, President Pervez Musharraf said the country lies at the nexus of five world concerns: terrorism, democracy, human rights, narcotics and nuclear nonproliferation.

He might have added the widening gap between Islam and the West.

In this planned government city of broad avenues and tight security, a gracious if sterile comity prevails. A Pakistani journalist told us the local joke is that Islamabad is half the size of Arlington National Cemetery and twice as dead.

But nearby Rawalpindi teems with commerce: overladen burros; precarious, wildly painted minivans; old men in beards and robes drinking tea.

There are no women in sight. Banners hang everywhere - right along with those cheering Pakistan in the cricket championships - proclaiming (roughly translated by our guide): "We are defenders of the Prophet Muhammad's respect and prestige, and if by doing this we are called terrorists, so be it." Or, more succinctly, "Death to Denmark."

Their Muslim identity has profound meaning for many Pakistanis. The name of the country, after all, is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, home to 148 million Muslims, 97 percent of the population. The direction of Mecca is carved into the hotel room wall.

An international group of journalists on a study tour of the region was told repeatedly that the list of Muslim grievances with the West is getting longer. There is a strike, boycott, or demonstration against the "blasphemous cartoons" called nearly every day.

The cartoons are merely the most convenient flashpoint. Government officials and opposition party leaders alike complained to us of rampant Islamophobia. They complained of a double standard applied to Iran's nuclear ambitions when North Korea is just as much of a threat. They complained that President George W. Bush is spending five days in India on his visit to South Asia next month and not even an overnight in Pakistan.

The situation is not made any easier by a per capita income of less than $800 and a literacy rate of roughly 50 percent. The devastating earthquake in October actually served to ease some tensions by bringing the international community together in the relief effort, but the reconstruction challenge is huge, and refugee camps in Islamabad are in danger of becoming permanent.

In this volatile landscape, Musharraf, the general who seized power in 1999, walks a fine line. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he made the crucial decision to back the U.S. war against the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. Foreign investment from the United States followed, but the partnership with America is still unpopular in much of the country.

For domestic consumption, Musharraf rails against the United States, condemning January's U.S. drone attacks in the borderland area of Bajaur as a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and calling the Danish cartoons "sad and pathetic."

But he is also keen to show the West that he is slowly restoring the institutions of democracy. He touts a free press, a vigorous civil society and an increasingly vocal Parliament (assertions scoffed at by members of the press and opposition parties we spoke with). He is gingerly reforming the madrassas, or Islamic schools, and promoting free trade and even tourism. His aides say the only thing about him that is not democratic is the fact that he wears a uniform.

In advance of the Bush visit, Musharraf and his cabinet said the United States has a responsibility to resolve the political disputes that prevent the Muslim world from prospering.

Chief among these is Kashmir, the beautiful and beleaguered territory that India and Pakistan have fought over for decades. Musharraf said, "I believe at the moment Kashmir is ripe for a resolution." But he didn't mention the best resolution: Kashmiris themselves deciding their fate in a free referendum that includes the option of independence. And with the United States binding itself more closely to India, it is unlikely Bush will take the Kashmiri bait.

Pakistan's is still a fairly new political system, so the roles of religion, civil society, the military and local governments are still being worked out. But prodemocracy forces are getting impatient, and religious fervor is on the rise.

Musharraf likes to call his strategy of bridging the Muslim world and the West "enlightened moderation." But the metaphor of the earthquake - an unstable land of fault lines bracing for aftershocks - is the more appropriate description.

(RenƩe Loth is editor of the editorial pages of The Boston Globe.)

Also see a related op-ed by Dr. Manzur Ejaz - insightful predictions:

Daily Times - Site Edition Wednesday, February 22, 2006
‘Warriors’ are the winners — Dr Manzur Ejaz

Whoever discovered the utility of cartoons, published months ago in some Denmark newspaper, may be amply satisfied after the death, destruction, looting, burning and pillaging that have resulted. If the purpose of the rioters, however, was to harm the US or the West, then they don’t have a clue about international politics. As a matter of fact, to the dismay of many enlightened people, the cartoon riots may have benefited both the post-9/11 adversaries — the US and the religious fundamentalists. And even if some in the Musharraf regime may be secretly giggling over their cartoon-enhanced importance in the Western world, the controversy has significantly pushed Pakistan back in achieving economic and political goals.

The way President George Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been condemning the violence speaks volumes about their real intent. If the US was worried about the Muslim reaction, Dr Rice may not have continued accusing Iran and Syria, at least for now. On the contrary, she was working overtime to malign these two countries, accusing them of whipping up cartoon violence, without providing any proof. It simply meant that instead of talking to the Muslims, she was telling the Europeans “didn’t we tell you so”. For her, even at the expense of the Muslims, winning European support for a future Middle East venture was essential.

For the US, the Europeans are the most important allies in every venture. The alienation of many West European countries, due to the Iraq war, was considered a major US foreign policy setback. However, the scarf controversy in France and the cartoon violence against the Scandinavians, have helped lessen the widening cross-Atlantic differences. Particularly since differences may have resurfaced in dealing with Hamas.

Most interestingly the cartoon violence broke out after the Hamas victory in Palestine: the Europeans, specifically, Scandinavians, were the ones who would have continued their assistance to the beleaguered Palestinians. Now the chances of European help for entities like Hamas are minimal. They have moved much closer to the US approach to Middle East.

The marvellous discipline shown by the US media, in not reprinting the cartoons, was also very significant. Even Reverend Pat Robertson, the career Muslim hater — who has made inflammatory statements about Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) on his TV channel — has maintained silence. Probably, the entire fundamentalist Christian Evangelist movement — inside and outside the US government — understood the game i.e. let the Europeans fight out the Muslims, for now, while the Americans sit pretty.

There is clearly much more unity between America, Israel, and Europe after the cartoon violence. The US is now in a much better position to put together a broad alliance against Iran. France, a staunch opponent of the Iraq war, is almost spearheading the anti-Iran crusade. The cartoon affair may not have authenticated the ‘War of Civilisations’ but the cultural conflict has assumed much broader dimensions.

In this cultural flare-up, or ‘War of Civilisations’, the Musharraf government may have regained its anti-jihadi credentials. In the last few weeks many in the Washington circles were becoming increasingly sceptical of the Pakistani establishment’s sincerity in combating terrorism. This sentiment was best expressed by Frederic Grare in his report “Pakistan: The Myth of an Islamic Peril”. He argued that “In fact, religious political parties and militant organisations are manipulated by the Pakistan Army to achieve its own objectives, domestically and abroad. The army, not the Islamists, is the real source of insecurity on the subcontinent.”

Pakistani security forces’ kid-gloves approach towards the rioters in the first few days of demonstrations raised suspicions that the Musharraf government was behind the violence or was encouraging it. The critics alleged that, in this cynical game, the Musharraf government’s purpose was to show the US and its Western allies that the extremist forces in Pakistan are not the military’s imaginary creations but real, well and alive.

The critics also compared the security response to the demonstrations with the deployment that made for the arrival of Shahbaz Sharif and Asif Zardari, leaders of mainstream parties. It is alleged that the government is much softer on the religious parties than on Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League PML (N). Even women belonging to the PPP were not spared at the demonstrations. Therefore, Musharraf’s detractors are convinced of the government’s complicity in the present upheaval.

There are equally strong arguments in the government’s defence. The upsurge, argue the government’s supporters, was spontaneous and unanticipated so that the security forces were not prepared for it. However, after the first days the demonstrations were dealt with very sternly. They also ask why the Musharraf government would embitter the atmosphere a few weeks ahead of President Bush’s visit unless it is trying to find an excuse not to receive him?

Whatever the Musharraf government’s strategy in dealing with the crisis and its enhanced anti-terrorist positioning is, no foreign investor is going to think of Pakistan for some time now. The newly demonstrated might of the jihadis is also going to push Musharraf closer to them to safeguard his personal interests. He will further distance himself from the mainstream political parties and the restoration of a genuine democratic process will be severely undermined.

At the end of the day the only beneficiaries of the cartoon controversy will be the ones keen to fight a “War of Civilisations”: European conservatives, US neo-cons/Evangelists and Muslim jihadis.
The writer can be reached at manzurejaz@yahoo.com

New Debate in Pakistan: Religion and State?

Daily Times, January 21, 2006
SECOND OPINION: Who is listening to the ‘new debate’?— Khaled Ahmed’s TV Review

This is the Muslim predicament. The new millennium has not seen the Muslims moving closer to the modern state but revolting against it. The politicians and the people are scared of discussing the problem but they are privately absorbing the debate

The private channels have done a few good things and a few bad ones, always following the market. They have downgraded religion to a mantra by following the istikhara market, but they have also begun discussing religion and its relationship with the state seriously. Is Pakistan being affected by this discourse? Not yet. Significantly, the politicians are staying away from the debate.

GEO (January 1, 2006) discussed Islam and the state in Fifty Minutes, Dr Mubarak Ali said that religion did not mix well with the state. He said talk of ijtihad was meaningless because there was no guarantee that any Muslims would accept it. He said every time someone did ijtihad it gave birth to a new sect. He said the two-nation doctrine was no longer valid in Pakistan. The concept of ummah was equally irrelevant.

He said if the Muslims wanted to get together they should create a bloc of states but not based on religion. Religion must remain in the private domain. The nation-state was the reality in our times. It was no longer possible to discriminate against the non-Muslims on the excuse of Islam. He said before 1947 ideology had no reference in what was later called the Pakistan Movement.

Ahmad Javed observed that Dr Mubarak’s idea of religion was different. He said Dr Mubarak may be right but the question was: could religion be separated from the working of the state? He said the two-nation doctrine could be defended only philosophically and that was the way it should be retained. He held that whoever wanted to subject Islam to ijtihad actually wanted to run away from religion. He said Islam was not law but guided lawmaking.

Aitzaz Ahsan said that Islamic state had to be changed to make the minorities feel secure. He said the question of identity today was not related to religion but to the soil. He said the man in Pakistan was the man of Indus regardless of his religion. Dr Javed Iqbal said states were founded on soil but nations were founded on ideology. In Bosnia a nation of Muslims had come into being while living on a soil where non-Muslim nations too live.

He conceded that the two-nation doctrine was valid only between Pakistan and India but not inside Pakistan. He said Jinnah had Hindus in his cabinet but now Pakistan had a different approach.

Dr Mubarak Ali was on the dot. This is the Muslim predicament. The new millennium has not seen the Muslims moving closer to the modern state but revolting against it. The politicians and the people are scared of discussing the problem but they are privately absorbing the debate. Hence, there is great merit in what Fifty Minutes is doing.

Aitzaz Ahsan is alone among the PPP leadership to take an honest look at what Pakistan has made of the state. If he were to hear what ND Khan has been mouthing on TV — proudly claiming the apostatisation of the Qadianis as his party’s Islamic identity — he would swoon in shock. Raza Rabbani and Amin Fahim have fallen to the clerical bait and the party will choke on the hook in the final count.

The private TV channels are producing their anti-Aitzazes more rapidly through their ‘on-line’ religious kitsch. So far the wrong side is winning. Except for Javed Ghamidi who challenges the clergy from within.

GEO (January 6, 2006) Kamran Khan spoke to a Marri leader Mir Muhammad Khan Bijarani who said that Sardar Khair Baksh Marri had following only among the Gazini branch of the Marri tribe while the Bijaranis had a dispute with him and the Lowarani were in the middle. He said the position in Kohlu was that the Gazini chief and his warriors were involved in terrorism while the other two tribes were no part of this campaign. He said Khair Baksh had employed criminals to do his job.

As for Sardar Ataullah Mengal, he held that Balochistan was not a part of Pakistan in 1947 and was still saying it. He conceded that disaffection in Balochistan was genuine because in the past the Baloch people had not been given their rights. But today Marri’s two sons were inciting terrorism.

He said Harbyar Marri was planning the campaign from London while Balach Marri was leading it from the mountains of Balochistan. He said the farari camps were functional for the last six years.

The sardars have struck at a moment of weakness of the state. To put it precisely, the moment is of the post-ISI-backed jihad that collapsed in Kashmir and Afghanistan. The moment is that of comeuppance and just deserts. The sardars have chosen the right moment. It is the moment of division. But the separatists are more divided than the state they want to separate from. This is what is coming out in the words of Mr Bijarani.

ARY (January 9, 2006) Dr Shahid Masood spoke to Sardar Ataullah Mengal of Balochistan. Dr Masood implied that ‘outsiders’ could be involved in violence as in the case of the killing of three Chinese in Gwadar. Some countries were opposed to Gwadar project. Mengal said why shouldn’t the Baloch bullets kill the Chinese? The Baloch opposed the Gwadar port. Everybody had weapons in Pakistan like the MQM in Karachi; why shouldn’t the Baloch have their weapons and why should these weapons not be capable of killing the Chinese engineers?

He said the Baloch were weak and therefore were defeated repeatedly but they had not lost their determination and sense of honour. He said other Baloch sardars like Jam Yusuf and Jamali were kaassa-lais (sycophants) of the government. He asked why did Musharraf go to Kohlu knowing well that Khair Baksh didn’t want him to go there? It was sheer provocation.

He said the Baloch wanted the following. (1) All natural resources found under ground should go to the provinces. (2) Give all the income of Gwadar Port to Balochistan. (3) Non-Baloch persons should not vote in Balochistan but back in their own provinces. (4) Give the provinces the right to decide what part of the revenue s should be given to the centre. He said ANP was not in PONAM because he had developed differences with Wali Khan after his release from prison under General Zia.

Sardar Mengal is asking for much more than what the Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain-led Parliamentary Committee has recommended. (The state has already balked at it.) He goes beyond autonomy. It is possible to give Balochistan more autonomy even than what was envisaged in the 1973 Constitution, but the rejectionism of the sardars is tied to the crisis of the Pakistani state, not to provincial rights. *

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Points to Ponder - Cartoon Controversy continues...



The New York Times, February 12, 2006
The Islam the Riots Drowned Out
By EMRAN QURESHI
Cambridge, Mass.

IN a world of wrenching change, the Danish cartoon affair has widened a growing fissure between Islam and the West. The controversy comes at a time when many in the Islamic world view the war on terrorism as a war on Islam. They draw on memories of colonization and of the Crusades, when Western invaders ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad as an imposter.

Sadly, the recent polarization obscures a rich humanistic tradition within Islam — one in which cosmopolitanism, pluralism and a spirit of open-minded inquiry once constituted a dominant ethos.

European Muslims for the most part have protested the Danish cartoons but kept their protests peaceful. That is good. Stigmatized European Muslims are often the targets of right-wing attacks and feel increasingly beleaguered. But the lesson many have learned from this affair has not been the utility of freedom of speech so much as that their continued presence is an affront to European identity.

Within the Muslim world, the cartoon imbroglio has given ammunition to the two entrenched forces for censorship — namely, authoritarian regimes and their Islamic fundamentalist opposition. Both would prefer to silence their critics. By evincing outrage over the Danish cartoons, authoritarian regimes seek to divert attention from their own manifold failures and to bolster their religious credentials against the Islamists who seek to unseat them.

Ironies abound. Saudi Arabia leads the protests, yet is systematically destroying its Islamic heritage. The Wahhabis who dominate Saudi Arabia do not believe in honoring Islam's holy men and women or the Prophet Muhammad (they've proscribed the celebration of his birthday). Driven by sectarian zeal, the Saudi authorities have razed and dug up virtually every site in Mecca and Medina linked to Muhammad, members of his family and his companions.

But these acts of disrespect and desecration have failed to arouse any protest from those who now take to the streets to condemn the Danish cartoons.

Elsewhere, Sunni Muslim fundamentalist leaders express anger over the Danish cartoons, but no comparable indignation over suicide bombers who attacked Shiite Muslim mosques during Ramadan in Iraq. In Pakistan, blasphemy laws have been used by fundamentalists to attack Christians and Hindus.

All this is a far cry from the Islamic humanism of Ibn al-Arabi, the Andalusian philosopher and mystic, or of Rumi, the Persian Sufi poet.

Muslim societies have paid a dear price for the militants in their midst. Many of the best and brightest within the Muslim world have had to flee to the West to avoid being silenced or killed. Fazlur Rahman, a brilliant and deeply religious Pakistani scholar of Islam, had to flee his native land for the University of Chicago. Similarly, the Islamic studies scholar Nasr Abu Zayd fled Egyptian Islamists for the Netherlands. Naguib Mahfouz, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was stabbed in the neck in Cairo and barely survived; the Egyptian writer Faraj Foda was not so lucky.

In some Western Muslim quarters, the proposed solution is more censorship — that these cartoons and similar expressions should be banned as hate speech. By that logic, shouldn't Salafist diatribes against Shiites also be banned? Shouldn't the writings of Maulana Abul Ala Maududi and his Jamaat-e-Islami, which were instrumental in persecuting the Ahmadis, a Muslim minority in Pakistan, be banned as well? Maududi's religious writings, best sellers among Muslims in the West, are suffused with an intolerant and anti-Western hue.

No, the answer is not more censorship. But it would be nice if Western champions of freedom of speech didn't trivialize it by deriving pleasure from their ability to gratuitously offend Muslims. They view freedom of speech much as Islamic fundamentalists do — simply as the ability to offend — rather than as the cornerstone of a liberal democratic polity that uses such freedoms wisely and responsibly. Worse, these advocates insist on handing Muslim radicals a platform from which to pose as defenders of the faith against an alleged Western assault on Islam.

Today's Muslim leaders, for their part, seem unable to formulate an ethical response to the challenges of the modern world. Moreover, their actions lead to the stereotyping of Islam. What else is one to conclude from this episode?

The loudest and most murderous forces have chosen to forget the spirit of the Koran, which opens with an invocation of God's mercy and compassion and which repeatedly urges believers to practice patience and kindness. There is something very ugly about the power of the radicals, their recourse to violence, their anti-intellectualism and their ability to trample and blaspheme a more humanistic Islamic tradition.

It is right and proper for Muslims to be offended, to be hurt, to protest. But we should be wary of the authoritarian voices that claim to speak and act in the name of Islam. The answer is not more violence and censorship, but rather peace, mercy and compassion.

Emran Qureshi is a fellow at the Labor and Work Life Program at Harvard Law School.

Intelligence Dossiers: From Karzai to Musharraf with love



Telegraphh, London
Afghan leader confronts Pakistan over terror support
By Ahmed Rashid in Islamabad (Filed: 18/02/2006)

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has handed over extensive intelligence dossiers to Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf detailing how suicide bombers who attack targets in Afghanistan are being recruited, trained and equipped in Pakistan.

Although Mr Karzai stopped short of accusing Pakistan's military regime of perpetrating the attacks, he said the US and Britain would be "stepping up pressure on Islamabad" to take action to stop the attacks, as British troops soon deploy in southern Afghanistan.

Mr Karzai was on a landmark three-day visit to the Pakistani capital Islamabad which ended yesterday.

At least 30 suicide bomb attacks have killed nearly 100 people in Afghanistan, including civilians, over the past three months.

Mr Karzai faces extreme pressure at home where anti-Pakistan sentiment is rising. There have been dozens of demonstrations over allegations that Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence (ISI) is giving support to the Taliban.

"We have provided President Musharraf with a lot of very detailed information on acts of terrorism being carried out in Afghanistan and we discussed in great detail what actions Pakistan could now take," Mr Karzai told The Daily Telegraph.

"Americans are dying, a Canadian diplomat has been killed, our people are suffering, so it is time that action is taken to stop these acts of terrorism and interference in Afghanistan internal affairs.

"After all this information has been given to the Pakistanis, we will see if the bombings will stop or not. We expect results, we expect that terrorist attacks will decrease," he added.

Asked what he would do if the ISI failed to deliver and the perpetrators only went deeper into hiding, Mr Karzai said: "We will uncover them again. We have the abilities to do so and we will come again and again to talk and talk to President Musharraf."

Mr Karzai also made it clear that the US and Britain had increased diplomatic pressure on Pakistan to stop any support to the Taliban. Britain is to deploy 4,000 troops in southern Afghanistan over the next few months, mostly to the province of Helmand, where the Taliban has recently stepped up its activities.

"Britain now has a very special role to play. There will be thousands of British troops deployed in the south against the Taliban and neither Britain nor Afghanistan is in any mood to tolerate any more casualties," said Mr Karzai. "Britain will be piling on the pressure."

The Afghan dossiers include the names and addresses of Pakistani recruiters, trainers and suppliers.

"In places like Karachi, Pakistani extremist groups working on behalf of the Taliban for a fee carry out the recruitment and then bring them to safe houses in Balochistan for training and equipping with the [suicide] vests," said a senior Afghan official who accompanied Mr Karzai.

The official said that all the top Taliban commanders were known to be living in Pakistan with their families and the issue had been repeatedly raised with Pakistan.

Pakistani officials no longer deny that Taliban activity is being co-ordinated from their soil, but they insist that the government has nothing to do with it. After his two-hour meeting with the Afghan leader on Wednesday night, Mr Musharraf called on "all the progressive political elements in Pakistan" to suppress elements who may be abetting the Taliban.

Earlier Mr Musharraf - who usually is vehement in denying any kind of Pakistani involvement - told Mr Karzai that the onus of fighting terrorism "was on both the countries".

He said: "Therefore it is incumbent on both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the governments, the intelligence agencies and the military of both sides, to jointly co-operate, co-ordinate and fight this evil."

Roots of Baluchistan Conflict



PAKISTAN: Roots of the Balochistan conflict run deep
16 Feb 2006: Reuters
Source: IRIN

QUETTA, 16 February (IRIN) - For two years, Faqir Hussain, 26, has been searching for a job. He goes about the task methodically from his tiny flat in the southern Pakistani city of Quetta, cutting out notices that appear each week in the Sunday newspapers and maintaining a meticulous list of the organisations he has already written to.

But so far, this diligence has brought no dividends, and Faqir, a graduate in economics, admits he is increasingly despondent. "It is very difficult to be without work. I get extremely depressed, and sometimes I just spend days sitting at a tiny cafƩ in the bazaar, smoking cigarettes and sipping green tea."

Along with a sense of deep disappointment, Faqir is also intensely angry. He insists that his plight, and that of thousands of others in the vast, southwestern province of Balochistan, has been created by the unjust policies of what he calls the "Punjabi-controlled government" far away in Islamabad.

He cites the security forces, deployed in Quetta, and the reports of new military cantonments cropping up at many places in Balochistan, as evidence that: "The army wishes to take control of Balochistan and suppress the rights of the Baloch people." He also maintains Balochistan's immense energy resources, mainly in the form of natural gas located at Sui, are being "stolen" from it.

Leading activists, Afrasiab Khattak, also an astute political analyst who has recently visited various parts of Balochistan, agrees. "Militarisation is creating many difficulties for local people and resentment is intense," he told IRIN.

The Baloch animosity towards the central government of Pakistan and the country's most populous province, Punjab, which is seen as controlling the military and the administration, has a long history. Divided in the nineteenth century among Iran, Afghanistan, and British India, the Baloch found their aspirations and traditional nomadic life frustrated by the presence of national boundaries and the extension of central administration over their lands.

Many Baloch believe their province was forcibly incorporated into the new state of Pakistan, as the Indian subcontinent was split at the end of British rule in 1947.

The Khan of Kalat, ruler of the Baloch coastal state of Kalat, rose up in revolt at the time, triggering off the first of a series of insurgencies in the province. New uprisings, essentially seeking greater autonomy, led to confrontations between Baloch nationalists and the Pakistan military in 1958 and 1962.

A long-dormant crisis erupted in Balochistan in 1973 into an insurgency that lasted four years and became increasingly bitter. The insurgency was put down by the Pakistani army, which employed brutal methods and equipment, including Huey-Cobra helicopter gunships, provided by Iran.

The current clampdown in Balochistan was triggered by an attempt on President Pervez Musharraf's life in December 2005.

According to a January 2006 statement by Pakistani Senator Sanaullah Baloch, at least 180 people have died in bombings, 122 children have been killed by paramilitary troops and hundreds of people have been arrested since the beginning of the campaign in early 2005. On 8 December 2005, the federal interior minister stated that some 4,000 people had been arrested in Balochistan since the beginning of 2005.

Rights groups are concerned. Amnesty International (AI), in a statement released on 10 January, demanded that "human rights abuses [in Balochistan] be stopped forthwith and that all allegations of violations of human rights, including civil, political and economic rights, be independently and impartially investigated with a view to bringing the perpetrators to justice".

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) recently conducted a fact-finding mission to Balochistan. HRCP chairperson Asma Jehangir said that the commission had received evidence that action by armed forces had led to deaths and injuries among civilians. "The population had also been subjected to indiscriminate bombing", she said.

Contributing to the sense of anger that runs deep beneath the sandy soil of the barren province, comprising almost entirely of desert, scrub and rock, are high levels of poverty and deprivation.

According to the Karachi-based Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC), poverty levels in Balochistan are the highest in the country and nearly double those of the Punjab – the country's most prosperous province.

Every second person in Balochistan lives below the poverty line. Only 50 percent of the province's population of 7 million people have access to clean drinking water, only half the children attend primary schools and only a third of children between 12 and 23 months are immunised, the SPDC maintains.

Figures from the government's Labour Force Survey 2003-2004 show that while urban unemployment is 9.7 percent in Pakistan, it stands at 12.5 percent in Balochistan. Even during periods of economic growth, when employment levels rose elsewhere in the country, joblessness expanded in Balochistan.

So many in Balochistan blame Islamabad for their plight and point out that the benefits derived from the province's natural wealth have not been returned to it.

But others hold that the traditional way of life in the isolated region, where tribal chieftains rule by decree and are sometimes an obstacle to development, also needs to change. Many say these traditional rulers are responsible for retaining a tight grip on wealth in the province and adhering to traditional codes under which education, empowerment and political dialogue are all hampered.

Afrasiab Khattak told IRIN: "It is important that development in Balochistan addresses the needs of the people. Schools, vocational training institutions and other such projects are needed to meet needs, and not just giant infrastructure works, such as road networks or highways."

Ethnic tensions in Balochistan are being tweaked, say some observers. Large non-Baloch ethnic groups, including the Pashtuns, are settled in many parts of the vast province.

Prominent journalist and author Ahmed Rashid has warned that authorities may attempt to "play the ethnic card", as part of their strategy, to weaken the hold of tribal chiefs fiercely opposed to the state.

As has happened in the past, it is the ordinary people of the province who suffer most from the conflict. The tensions, the road blocks, the rockets fired by militants and the threat from landmines, inevitably have an adverse affect on economic activity.

The situation also makes it even harder for people like Faqir to find work. "No big companies come to Quetta. Even NGOs have been frightened away," he said, despondently.

Friday, February 17, 2006

President Clinton's Apt Response to Cartoon Controversy



Daily Times, February 18, 2006
Clinton urges EU to convict publishers of caricatures
Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: Former US president Bill Clinton on Friday condemned the publication of Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) caricatures by European newspapers and urged countries concerned to convict the publishers.

Talking to reporters after meeting Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in Islamabad, Clinton said he disagreed with the caricatures and that the publication was against religious and ethical norms. Clinton said he had no objection to peaceful demonstrations being held worldwide, but this was not the time for violence. He said it was the time to promote inter-faith harmony and stand together on the issue.

He said the people’s religious convictions should be respected at all costs and the media should be disallowed to play with the religious sentiments of other faiths. He said the media could criticise any issue including governments and people, but nobody had the right to play with the sentiments of other faiths.

Clinton said people in the US had also condemned the publication and were deeply concerned over it. He said they respected Islam, as it was the fastest growing religion in the US. Clinton also called on President Pervez Musharraf and both men discussed the India-Pakistan peace process and Afghanistan’s peace and stabilisation process.

Musharraf underlined the centrality of the Kashmir issue in the Indo-Pak peace process and the importance of moving towards the conflict resolution stage. Clinton praised Musharraf’s efforts to promote peace and stability in the region. Musharraf thanked Clinton for the support extended to the Pakistani government by the Clinton Foundation for the HIV/AIDS programme. He also expressed the gratitude of Pakistanis to the relief and reconstruction assistance provided for the earthquake victims by the US.

Earlier, Aziz told Clinton that Pakistan was working towards peace and stability in the region through a strong economy, effective diplomacy, credible defence and promotion of inter-faith harmony. He said Pakistan was also making efforts to ensure peace in the region by settling disputes in an amicable way. He said Islam was a religion of peace and Muslims had been hurt by the publication of the caricatures, which reflected the ignorance and insensitivity of the western media. Clinton praised the role played by Musharraf and Aziz in achieving a high degree economic growth and wide-ranging structural reforms besides pursuing peace in the region and across the globe.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

For Pakistan, American Aid Is All Guns, No Butter



New York Times, February 16, 2006
Editorial Observer
For Pakistan, American Aid Is All Guns, No Butter
By HELENE COOPER

Syed Jawad Ahsan's Valentine's Day this year was a heartbreaking window into the box in which this country is trapped.

Around 10:30 on Tuesday morning, Mr. Ahsan, chief executive of Irfan Textiles Pvt. Ltd., got into his car and headed for the factory just outside town where his workers, some 5,000 of them, stitch and weave underwear for Jockey. As he was leaving Lahore's outskirts, he saw some boys in the middle of the road, setting fire to car tires. A group of Sunni parties had called for yet another of the seemingly never-ending protests against the Danish cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, and the boys had apparently decided that torching tires on their own turf would teach the West a thing or two.

Mr. Ahsan threw his car into reverse and started to back away. But behind him, another group had gathered, throwing rocks at a parked car, breaking its windows and slashing its tires. Frustrated, Mr. Ahsan turned left and made a quick exit, heading back to town. Using his cellphone, he called and left a message that I should meet him at his downtown office for our interview on Pakistan's textile industry. "I think it's safer for us in town today," he said.

An hour later, we were drinking Pepsi and eating crackers in his office in Lahore. Mr. Ahsan was visibly saddened. "Pakistan didn't used to be like this," he said. "All this extremism that you see here now is because of Afghanistan."

He meant the Afghanistan war that started in 1979, not the one that came after Sept. 11. The way Mr. Ahsan sees it, Pakistan before 1979 was a much more open society, with wine bars in the cities and a small measure of freedom. But when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, America responded by arming, and largely creating, the Islamist fighters who drummed up religious fire in their war to drive out the Russians. Next door, Pakistan became a front-line state, and American money flooded to the mujahedeen. Ever since, Pakistan has been home to a growing cadre of fundamentalist Islamists, many of them bent on jihad.

With the huge gap here between rich and poor, militants find young boys with nothing to do easy prey. Mr. Ahsan can't fathom why Americans aren't working on the economic conditions that breed discontent.

"We don't need more of your F-16's," he said. "What we need is trade in textiles. We need a free trade agreement, like the one you're going to give Egypt, like the one you gave Jordan, like the one you gave Morocco."

The United States agreed in 2005 to resume sales of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan. The sales had been suspended for more than a decade because Pakistan began developing nuclear weapons. But Washington has refused to grant a bigger and far more important concession: duty-free access for Pakistani imports.

If there is a stronger case than Pakistan's for duty-free access, it is certainly hard to find. This place is a breeding ground for Muslim extremists, but it also has a population and government that has, by and large, maintained cordial relations with America. Pakistan's biggest industry is textiles, accounting for 45 percent of its manufacturing jobs, and its biggest market is the United States. Pakistani factories make everything from bras to shirts and sheets for companies like Wal-Mart, Polo Ralph Lauren and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

Since Sept. 11, it's been an uphill battle for such Pakistani companies. American buyers have been skittish about trusting their orders to a place that looks like a war zone on TV. Meanwhile, other countries, including China, Bangladesh and India, have been quick to try to woo business away. The overwhelming belief here is that without duty-free access to the U.S. market, the textile and apparel industry here can't compete.

Mr. Ahsan says his knitwear exports are down 17 percent in the past year alone, and he believes that Pakistan's knitwear industry — the staple of its textile industry — is dying. This week, another knitting factory in Lahore became a casualty: 1,000 jobs will be eliminated, although the workers haven't yet been told.

It is the end of our interview, and Mr. Ahsan and I have spent as much time talking about religion and why Muslims are so upset about the cartoons as we have about trade and textiles. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a Muslim prayer book — he said a friend had given it to him to help him get through the difficult times he is facing as he tries to keep his business together.

He said he was waiting to see whether President Bush's visit next month would produce any new American promises to help Pakistan on trade, but he admits that if past is prologue, Pakistan will come away empty-handed on what really counts. "Textile trade, not F-16's, is the only thing the U.S. should do if at all U.S. wanted to mellow extremism here," he said. "It must be employment."

I left him and headed to a Lahore suburb to meet some friends. About a half-hour later, the mob of boys, now thousands strong, reached Lahore's downtown area, which locals call the mall. They ransacked around 500 cars, burned 75 motorcycles and 10 other vehicles, and torched the Punjab Assembly. A bank security guard opened fire and killed two boys. Three others were shot and injured.

The mob then turned to the business district, setting fire to a Norwegian cellphone company's office and a KFC. Nestled between those two buildings was an office belonging to Mr. Ahsan and his brother. It, too, was burned down.

Domestic Violence in Pakistan: Legislation still pending



Domestic Violence in Pakistan : 2006
The Current Proposal
Sherry Rahman

The proposed bill, ‘The Prevention of Domestic Violence Bill, 2005’ is meant to rectify current shortcomings in the law by recognizing domestic violence as a free-standing crime. Modeled with reference to South African, Malaysian and United Kingdom domestic violence legislation the Bill develops an apparatus capable of dealing with domestic violence issues. Most important is to explain the relationship and range of persons covered by the legislation. The Bill provides an exhaustive list of the persons capable of presenting a case for domestic violence. Also defined is the actual ambit of the crime and the range of acts encompassed by domestic violence which ranges from psychological to physical abuse.

The Bill creates an office of ‘Protection Officer’ who has an array of powers to check the occurrence of domestic violence as well as guide the victim. The proposed Bill accounts for socio-cultural norms and understands that it is important to help families resolve differences and problems rather than broker separation agreements. It is meant to help women understand that violence is unacceptable and they have a right to their bodily integrity. To this end, the Bill envisages a Family Conciliatory Council which helps the victim and offender to come together and resolve the underlying problems. The remedy of Protection Order is created to help protect the victim from continued violence. A magistrate has the power to award a Protection Order prohibiting the offender from certain activities that are recognized as violence but the power of prohibition is qualified by considerations pertaining to both the victim and the offender. Contravention of the Protection Order results in a fine or fine and detention both.

‘The Prevention of Domestic Violence Bill, 2005’ represents a careful balance between socio-cultural norms and the victims need for protection. It is also cognizant of the problems faced by the offender and institutes a mechanism for balancing victim-offender needs by encouraging conciliation. The bill also covers the important provision of a mechanism that can cope effectively with covering domestic violence.

At present the Bill has been summarily dismissed by the Speaker of the National Assembly off the agenda, where it was introduced in early 2005. Support is needed by civil society to get it back into the National Assembly where it needs thorough debate and careful consideration.

Social and Cultural Background

Domestic violence implies intra-family violence, or violence that occurs in an intimate setting and results in the control of one person by the other. It is predominantly a feminized crime. To define domestic violence in terms of a singular act is near to impossible because domestic violence is a pattern of behaviour. This pattern of behaviour encompasses a number of acts all of which are capable of constituting domestic violence. This sort of violence refers to both physical and psychological abuse of a person and the following acts which can be identified as domestic violence are not exhaustive:

• Physical violence
• Threatening violence
• Economic abuse
• Emotional abuse
• Controlling behaviour
• Harassment
• Threatening to harm the victims children or extended family
• Forced relations

As far as the nature of violence is concerned, “public” violence has been much easier to address since it is open to scrutiny and public condemnation. “Privacy” is the main impediment to the recognition and consequent action against domestic violence. This is also because women have historically been relegated to the “private” sphere, and the home is viewed as a concealed location. It is necessary to avoid reducing domestic violence to essentialism and recognise that it needs to be viewed through the appropriate cultural lens of the country in question. The western model of domestic abuse looks at the problem through the lens of gender. While the abuse of women in the family continues to depend on structural inequality in the family unit, this inequality cannot be explained away through gender differentials or though the popular, one-word oversimplification that is “patriarchy.” The abuse of female servants in the domestic sphere may be at the hands of upper-class women – and here, the power hierarchy of class cuts through that of gender. Similarly, the burning of brides, for instance, is often perpetrated by the mother-in-law rather than the husband, which gives one the sense that women can be just as complicit in maintaining and perpetuating patriarchal structures as men can.

With a lack of statistical data, compounded by the fact that women do not come forth and report violence against their person it is difficult to estimate the frequency and magnitude of the problem. In Pakistan, problems within the family unit such as economic problems as well as high rates of unemployment and low status of women have aggravated or have been a major causal factor behind violence. Since publishing its 1999 report, Pakistan: Violence against women in the name of honour, Amnesty International has found that while few positive changes have taken place in the area of women's rights, the state in Pakistan still by and large fails to provide adequate protection for women against abuses in the family and the community.

All forms of domestic violence, for a number of reasons, are even harder to tackle than other crimes against women. Stove burning – a popular form of domestic violence in Pakistan – is frequent because this mode of murder is easy to pass off as an accident and can easily go undetected. When it was pointed out that most of the stoves that were being used were of the non-pressure kind that could not “burst”, the stories changed from stove explosions to nylon clothes catching fire. The majority of burn victims succumb to their injuries before they reach hospitals and therefore the police do not get a chance to record their statements. Women who report rape or sexual assault encounter a series of obstacles. These include not only the police, who resist filing their claims and mis-record their statements, but also medico-legal doctors, who focus on their virginity status and lack the training and supplies to conduct adequate examinations. Women who file rape charges open themselves up to the possibility of being prosecuted for illicit sex if they fail to "prove" rape under the 1979 Hudood Ordinances, which criminalize adultery and fornication. As a result, when women victims of violence resort to the judicial system for redress, they are more likely to find further abuse and victimization.

Women victims of domestic violence encounter high levels of unresponsiveness and hostility, as actors at all levels of the criminal justice system typically view domestic violence as a private matter that does not belong in the courts. Police respond to domestic violence charges by trying to reconcile the concerned parties rather than filing a report and arresting the perpetrator, and the few women who are referred to medico-legal doctors for examination are evaluated by skeptical physicians who lack any training in the collection of forensic evidence. When asked about the domestic violence victims who have been examined at his office, the head medico-legal doctor for Karachi explained that "25 percent of such women come with self-inflicted wounds. " Research has further indicated that domestic violence cases are virtually never investigated or prosecuted, which makes it even more difficult to understand from which angle the issue needs to be approached.


Some Facts and Figures

• A study by the Punjab Women Development and Social Welfare Department released in October 2001 said that some 42% of women accepted violence as part of their fate, while over 33% felt too helpless to stand up to it; only 19% protested and only 4% took action against it. The perpetrators of such violence were male relatives (53%), husbands (32%) followed by other women (13%) and other relatives (2%). The report stated that only some five per cent of rape and 'honour' crimes were reported.
• Studies on violence against women estimate that a woman in Pakistan is raped every two hours; approximately 70-90 percent of women suffer from some form of domestic violence; and there were at least 3,296 cases of violence against women in 2002. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) documented 895 cases of abuse against women for the first part of 2003, consisting of 260 murders and 124 cases of gang rape.
• The human rights organisation Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid in Karachi in the year 2000 recorded 736 cases of physical abuse of women; some 600 cases of sexual abuse, including about 400 cases of rape; 490 cases of abuses of children of both genders, including 190 rapes of girls; 540 women's suicides, 482 kidnappings of women and 160 women burned to death. According to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, over 90 per cent of married women report being kicked, slapped, beaten or sexually abused when husbands were dissatisfied by their cooking or cleaning, or when the women had 'failed' to bear a child or had given birth to a 'wrong' gender child, a girl.
• The same organisation reported that ten women on average were physically abused every day during the first eight months of 2004. The report stated 2,367 cases of physical abuse were reported throughout the country of which 1,518 were reported in Punjab, 565 in Sindh, 225 in NWFP and 59 in Balochistan. Of the 2,367 cases, 940 women were murdered, while others had been victims of torture or beatings. In most cases the perpetrator was related to the victim.
• Estimates of the percentage of women who experience spousal abuse alone range from 70 to upwards of 90 percent.
• Further figures from HRCP indicate that 4,101 people had fallen victim to honour killings across the country in the past four years. Out of this number 2,774 were women.
• Stove burning, indigenously known as chula deaths are common in Pakistan. HRCP recorded 91 incidents of burning, 43 of which were stove burning incidents and 48 of women who were set on fire. More alarming is the fact that only 22 of these cases were ever registered while only nine persons were arrested. In 1997, there were only three burn centre hospitals in all of Pakistan, an indication of structural weakness in the face of crisis. The cost of treatment for serious burn cases can be close to Rs.10,000 a day, a sum that most cannot afford.
• Another common form of violence against women in Pakistan is acid burning. The last ten years has seen 15,000 cases of acid burns and in most cases, women who were victims of acid burns had suffered at the hands of their husbands or in- laws.



The Law

The Penal Code has sections mandating liability for causing “hurt” (Sec 319) or “Grevious Hurt” (Sec 320). The latter is defined as including:

- emasculation
- permanent privation of the sight in either eye
- permanent privation of the hearing in either ear
- privation of any member or joint
- destruction or permanent impairing of the power of any member or joint
- permanent disfigurement of head or face
- fracture or dislocation of a bone or tooth
- or any hurt that endangers life or which causes the sufferer to be [sic] during the space of twenty days in severe bodily pain or unable to follow his ordinary pursuits.

The punishment for causing grievous hurt includes imprisonment for up to ten years and a fine. Judging from this description, many cases of domestic violence would fall into the category of having been “grievously hurt.” But the police do not register cases of domestic abuse under this section. In addition, women themselves often do not want to bring charges against their abusers for fear of the repercussions.

Pakistani law not only fails to criminalise domestic violence, but particularly marital rape, which is a common form of violence against women. An earlier provision of the Pakistan Penal Code treated marital rape of girls under the age of 14 as an offence, however, this provision was removed with the introduction of the Hudood Ordinance. All complaints regarding acts of domestic violence that fall within the ambit of the criminal law, such as assault or attempted murder, are routinely ignored or downplayed by the police as a result of biased attitudes, ignorance and lack of training with respect to the scope of the law. Such resistance on the part of the police to recognize domestic violence as a crime allows the battering of women to continue with impunity and contributes to a climate that deters women from reaching out for safety and justice.

The presence of domestic violence is compounded by a lack of specific legal provisions. The Pakistan Penal Code contains provisions regulating the criminal offences against the person, but domestic violence is governed by the provisions of the ‘Qisas and Diyat Ordinance 1990’. This particular Ordinance deals with Islamic criminal laws on bodily harm (intentional and unintentional). Although domestic violence is capable of being covered, the lack of a distinct set of legal principles has encouraged judges to treat the matter as a private family matter or at best, dealt with under the civil jurisdiction. If a case on domestic violence does come forth for prosecution, under the ‘Qisas (retribution) and Diyat (compensation) Ordinance 1990’ the victim or victim’s legal heirs have a right to retribution/compensation or pardoning of the offender. Based on these factors, the Ordinance suffers from manifold problems. Firstly, by vesting the right to remedy/forgiveness in the victim’s hands it makes disempowered victims i.e. women or children vulnerable to more powerful segments in society. In cases of interpersonal violence, it makes the victim more susceptible to pressure to pardon. Where compensation is accepted the results are skewed as the money flows from one nuclear family to the other and the victim herself may not receive any benefit. Consequently, in the absence of explicit criminalization of domestic violence, police and judges have tended to treat it as a non-justiciable, private or family matter or, at best, an issue for civil, rather than criminal, courts. This "privatization" of crimes by the qisas and diyat laws has particularly damaging consequences in cases of intra-family violence, the majority of which involve domestic abuse or spousal murder. As a result of the law, not only are women victims of domestic violence and their heirs susceptible to pressure and intimidation to waive qisas, but the concept of monetary compensation can be meaningless in a situation where payments flow from one member of the nuclear family to another.

When the qisas and diyat laws were first proposed in the early 1980s during General Zia's Islamization campaign, the testimony of women was not accepted in the execution of qisas, which meant that a woman accused of committing an offense requiring retribution was not allowed to testify on her own behalf. Moreover, when the victim was a woman, the amount of diyat was halved. The language of the current law does not distinguish between the sexes with regard to payment of diyat, but both the amount of the diyat and the validity of a woman's testimony have been left to judicial discretion, the former to be decided "subject to the Injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Qur'an and Sunnah." Since traditional interpretations of Islamic law contemplate the diyat for a woman victim to be half of that for a man, the gender-neutral language of the current codified law on diyat is practically meaningless.

In addition to actual legislation, judicial attitudes are also crucial in understanding the never-ending cycle of violence against women. No formal studies have been done on the subject, but a survey conducted in a neighbouring country in which 109 judges were interviewed is revealing. 74% felt that preservation of the family should be a woman’s primary concern even if violence was a problem, 48% felt there were certain occasions when it was alright for a husband to slap his wife, and 90% said that they would not opt for legal redress in case of domestic violence involving their own daughters female relatives. While these statistics are several years old, it is probably safe to assume that attitudes towards women have not changed radically in the past five or six years.

Pakistan’s International Obligations
Pakistan is obliged by its ratification of international treaties to ensure respect for women's human rights and fundamental freedoms. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), to which Pakistan acceded in 1996, requires the government to take action to eliminate violence against women as a form of discrimination that inhibits women's ability to enjoy rights and freedoms on a basis of equality with men. Pakistan's CEDAW obligations extend to the provision of an effective remedy to women victims of violence. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Pakistan is not party even though it is a crucial covenant in international human rights law, requires governments to ensure the rights to life and security of the person of all individuals in their jurisdiction, without distinction of any kind, including sex. Pakistan should not only refrain from, but should also prevent private actors from committing, acts of violence against women. According to Human Rights Watch, rather than responding actively to violations of women's rights to life, to security of the person, the government has acted, through its police, medico-legal, prosecutorial, and judicial systems, to block access to redress and justice for women victims of violence.
The Government’s Response

General Musharraf has acknowledged that women in Pakistan face an uphill task in securing justice, and hence promised a range of commitments to ensure adequate protection. While the government has made statements saying that it is committed to combating the practice of domestic violence practices through administrative instruction ensuring that the due process of law takes place without hindrance, the status of women in Pakistan stays largely the same. According to international organisations, in fact, there has been an alarming increase in the numbers of victims that fall prey to this crime. At present such incidents are usually ignored by government officials, especially in rural or tribal areas, where some culprits are either powerful or well-connected or simply manage to bribe their way out of punishment. The real test of the government's commitment to abolish mistreatment of women in the domestic sphere would lie in the elimination of all possible escape routes for the offenders.


In order to prohibit eventually in law all acts that constitute violence against women, the present government needs to review existing laws, including the zina law and the qisas and diyat law with a view to ensuring their consistency with the UN Women's Convention; laws found to discriminate against women or to allow for or condone violence against women or to hamper legal redress should be removed or suitably amended. It should ensure that legislation prohibiting slavery, debt bondage and the trafficking of women is strengthened and strictly implemented. All law enforcement officers, police personnel and judicial staff should be thoroughly familiarized with the laws protecting women and Pakistan's obligations under the UN Women's Convention. A specific set of laws should be enacted explicitly criminalizing all forms of domestic and familial violence against women, including assault, battery, burns, acid burns, sexual assault, forced abortions, and illegal confinement, at the hands of husbands, in-laws, and other relatives.

A means of measuring the government’s commitment to issues of gender can be gauged through the political activities of the past several years. The presence of 205 women MNAs, MPAs and Senators played a part in generating debate on women’s issues within assemblies. The Hudood Ordinances, the need for laws against Honour Killings and karo-kari and domestic violence were some of the issues that were discussed. A bill against honour killings which increased the sentence for such killings to a minimum of ten years in prison and laid down capital punishment as the maximum penalty, was passed at the end of October. The bill passed amidst opposition and failed to remove the crucial provision for compoundability of “honour killings” cases through compromise and waiver of Qisas. HRCP and Citizens Action Groups Against Honour Killings established a few weeks prior to the campaign against honour killings states that this raised fears ground realities would not change. There was only limited headway in moving forward legislation that could ensure greater safety to women. The PPP-P’s Protection and Empowerment of Women Bill 2004, which sought a repeal of discriminatory laws, met with opposition by the ruling party in March and could not be passed. The efforts to repeal the Hudood Laws were blocked when the Federal Government, under Chuadry Shujaat, decided in July that they would be sent to the Council on Islamic Ideology for comment. A proposed draft by the PPP for a bill against honour killings was thrust aside by the government-sponsored bill, containing many loopholes, hastily passed in October. HRCP held one of the motives behind the bill was to quash the PPP-moved bill. Now, a draft law against domestic violence in the Punjab, sent to a house standing committee in 2003, still awaits final decision on its fate. The second Hudood Repeal Bill moved by the PPPP emerged on the National Assembly agenda by 7 Feb, 2006 and was summarily sent to Committee without debate.It is feared that the legislation will sit there gathering dust, or will be summarily disposed with in the Committee on Women’s Affairs.

A Recent Case Study Illustrating the Problematic Role of the State in Cases of Domestic Violence

Friday, November 25, 2005 – The Daily Times
Agony of Rehana Bibi: From Domestic to State Violence
By Ali Waqar
LAHORE: Despite all the tall claims by the government, getting help against domestic violence for women is still a herculean task in Pakistan as the state does its best to discourage the victims.

Rehana Bibi’s case is a glaring example in this regard. Rehana has tried to get justice against her violent husband for thrashing her and dumping her in front of her parent’s house, but to no avail. Her real ordeal started when she tried to get a case registered against him. Currently, under protection with AGHS Legal Aid Cell, Rehana is now fed up with the state organs that are supposed to get her justice. Belonging to Shahdara Town, Lahore, Rehana married Muhammad Riaz, a factory worker, almost 11 years ago in Murdekey and she has a child. Though her husband abused her regularly her plight increased when she found out that her husband had an affair with a woman named Naveeda. Not tolerating criticism from Rehana for his affair, Riaz thrashed her with a baton on November 10 and then told one of his relatives to leave her at her father’s home in Shahdara. She needed medical treatment when her parents found her lying on their doorstep.

Her father took her to a local hospital but it did not treat her and sent her to a bigger hospital in the city. She was denied emergency treatment at Mayo Hospital on November 11 and Lahore General Hospital (LGH) on November 12 because she did not have a medico-legal certificate. Hospitals still ask for medico-legal certificates before treating violence or accident victims despite the fact that the federal government passed a law in 2004 making emergency treatment compulsory before a medico-legal certificate is necessary. The law also states that female medico-legal officers must deal with cases of women. Also, medico-legal certificates are denied without a police report, which was refused by the local police station to the victim’s father despite repeated requests. Still untreated, she rushed to the Punjab inspector general of police (IG) on November 14. She was not allowed to meet the IG but a guard referred her to the AGHS Legal Aid Cell.

The AGHS Legal Aid Cell received Rehana and on the same day, an AGHS team and the victim went to a women’s police station to lodge a case and seek justice. She was turned away and no legal help was offered by the police station because the case occurred out of their precincts. Later, the team and the victim went to LGH but were denied treatment again. They were told to seek a local magistrate’s help if they were unable to manage a police report for a medico-legal certificate. The team and the victim went to a magistrate for a medico-legal certificate but magistrates sent the case from one to another. Ultimately, the victim succeeded in getting a magistrate’s permission and went to the LGH for a medico-legal certificate.

Although part of the victim’s agony ended here, another began as Rehana was repeatedly received by the male MLO (Medico-Legal Officer) in the LGH. The officer first blamed her for the incident and said that she was framing her husband. Later, he not only humiliated other victims waiting for their turn but also delayed the examination unnecessarily. The AGHS team witnessed that the LGH MLO also hit some victims.
Later, he asked Rehana to recite the Kalma (one of the five tenets of Islam), which had nothing to do with her medico-legal examination. When the AGHS team protested, he unnecessarily delayed the final report of ML certificate till 10.00pm. Finally when the victim went to the LGH additional medical superintendent, he said that doctors had left and that she should return next morning for better treatment. However, Rehana managed to get a prescription late in the night on November 15 and never returned to hospital. Her father is still attempting to lodge an FIR (First Information Report) against domestic abuse.

AGHS Legal Aid Cell member Hina Jillani said the case was a glaring example of the state’s appalling role in assuring women rights. She said Rehana had become a symbol of Pakistani rural women suffering from agony of domestic violence and denied justice.