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India-Pakistan

Benazir Bhutto killed in suicide bombing: More

2007-12-27

Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader and former Prime Minister, has been killed in a suicide bombing on her political rally today. Murder most foul... Ms Bhutto had been addressing crowds at the garrison city of Rawalpindi, ahead of Pakistan's general election next month, when the bomber detonated his explosives, killing around 20 people. She was taken to hospital, but could not be saved. "At 6:16 p.m. she expired," said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Ms Bhutto’s party who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital. Rehman Malik, a security adviser for her Pakistan People's Party, suggested that the killer opened fire as she left the rally, hitting her in the neck and chest, before blowing himself up. He blamed the government for failing to protect Ms Bhutto. "We repeatedly informed the government to provide her proper security and appropriate equipment including jammers, but they paid no heed to our requests," said Mr Malik. The exact nature of the attack remained unclear, however. "It may have been pellets packed into the suicide bomber’s vest that hit her," Javed Cheema, an interior ministry spokesman said. Russia and the United States both swiftly issued condemnations of the atrocity, which was being blamed on Islamic militants. A Russian foreign ministry spokesman predicted that it would bring fresh instability to the region, and trigger a fresh round of terrorist attacks. "The attack shows that there are still those in Pakistan trying to undermine reconciliation and democratic development in Pakistan," said an official from the US State Department. Wow. No kidding? Perhaps if a considerable part of "Pakistain" wasn't under the control of al-Qaeda or Taliban warlords the country might have some remote chance of missing failure, if only by a hair. But probably not, since the remainder of the country spends its time bumping each other off over matters religious and ethnic almost as much as do the primitives of NWFP and FATA. As news of her death filtered out, Ms Bhutto's supporters at the hospital began chanting "Dog, Musharraf, dog," referring to Pakistan’s President, Pervez Musharraf. Some of them smashed the glass door at the main entrance of the emergency unit, others burst into tears. Breaking things is almost as characteristic of Pak political discourse as killing people. Islamic militants have vowed to kill Ms Bhutto, a secular politician and a proponent of women's rights who returned to Pakistan in October to contest parliamentary elections. Today's bombing is the second major attack on her since her return. Only took one to succeed, didn't it? A suicide bomber killed nearly 150 people on October 18 as Ms Bhutto paraded in an open-topped bus through the southern city of Karachi after returning home from eight years in self-imposed exile. On that occasion she missed injury by seconds after leaving the top deck of her bus to give an interview. The latest bombing was the second outbreak of political violence in Pakistan today. Earlier, gunmen inside the offices of a political party that supports Mr Musharraf opened fire on supporters of another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, killing four. Earlier, gunmen inside the offices of a political party that supports Mr Musharraf opened fire on supporters of another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, killing four, police said. Mr Sharif was several kilometres away from the shooting and was on his way to Rawalpindi after attending a rally. Ms Bhutto, 54, served twice as Pakistan’s prime minister between 1988 and 1996. She was born on June 21, 1953, into a wealthy landowning family. Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founded the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and was president and later prime minister of Pakistan from 1971-77. After gaining degrees in politics at Harvard and Oxford universities, she returned to Pakistan in 1977, just before the military seized power from her father. She inherited the leadership of the PPP after her father’s execution in 1979 under military ruler General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq. First voted in as prime minister in 1988 - the first woman ever to serve as prime minister of a Muslim country - Ms Bhutto was sacked by the then-president on corruption charges in 1990. She took power again in 1993 after her successor, Mr Sharif, was forced to resign after a row with the president. But Ms Bhutto was no more successful in her second spell as prime minister, and Mr Sharif was back in power by 1996. In 1999, both she and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, were sentenced to five years in jail and fined $8.6 million on charges of taking bribes from a Swiss company hired to fight customs fraud. A higher court later overturned the conviction as biased. Ms Bhutto, who had made her husband investment minister during her period in office from 1993 to 1996, was abroad at the time of her conviction and chose not to return to Pakistan. Mr Sharif meanwhile was deposed by General Pervez Musharraf in a military coup, and went into exile from which he too only returned in the last few weeks. In 2006 Ms Bhutto joined an Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy with her arch-rival Mr Sharif, but the two disagreed over strategy for dealing with President Musharraf. Ms Bhutto decided it was better to negotiate with him, while Mr Sharif refused to have any dealings with the general. Both had recently thrown themselves into campaigning for the multi-party parliamentary elections due to be held in Pakistan on January 8. Global stock markets fell on news of the killing, and the price of gold and government bonds rose.

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India-Pakistan

APDM decides to resign from assemblies on 29th

2007-09-22

Raja Zafarul Haq, the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM) Joint Action Committee convener, announced en bloc resignations from the assemblies on September 29 and nationwide demonstrations from September 30 to protest President General Pervez Musharraf’s re-election, after an emergency APDM meeting on Friday. I believe the APDM is son of the ARD (Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy), which was pretty much the MMA with the PML-N and occasionally pieces of the PPP. Haq said legislators would hand in resignations to their respective speakers on September 26. He said the APDM would launch protests against the recent changes in the presidential election rules. The APDM also denounced “threats” of martial law and emergency in case the Supreme Court blocked the president’s re-election. The APDM held protests throughout the country on Friday against their issues with the government and Nawaz Sharif’s deportation, which were low in attendance and all but fizzled out. Apparently the voters aren't as fired up as the big turbans are. Islamabad was the strongest venue, where around 1,000 protesters showed up and demonstrated outside the Supreme Court, Reuters reported. Around 400 protesters showed up and demonstrated in Multan, and several were arrested in Karachi, where around 300 people demonstrated. There were small protests in Peshawar as well.

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India-Pakistan

More PML members defect to PPP

2007-07-21

Three more senior leaders of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) have defected from the party and announced joining the Pakistan People’s Party. They brought along with them 15 nazims, naib nazims and social figures from Muzaffargarh and Kasur. PML Muzaffargarh vice president Makhdoom Muzaffar Ali Shah and 15 nazims and naib nazims announced joining the PPP along with PML Kasur vice president Ashfaq Kamboh, PML Chunian secretary general Advocate Muhammad Sharif. Chaudhry Arif Sandhu, a National Alliance candidate for NA-138 also joined the party. Addressing a press conference on Friday at his Punjab Assembly chamber, Opposition Leader Qasim Zia told reporters that the party had approved Shah’s joining of the party after consultations with divisional and district PPP presidents and the local party organisation. He said the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) was in tact and both Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto will sit together and resolve all issues between them.

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India-Pakistan

Madrassas no longer safe from govt action: MMA

2007-07-11

Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) Chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad and Secretary General Maulana Fazlur Rehman chaired a meeting of the heads of religious parties in London on Tuesday to review the security forces’ operation at Lal Masjid. The meeting decided that other madrassas in Pakistan were no longer above the law safe after the military operation, and action might be taken against religious institutions on the pretext of terrorism. Syed Munawar Hassan, Prof Sajid Mir, Pir Nobajar Shah, Qari Zawar Bahadur and Pir Ejaz Hashmi said the government’s operation against Lal Masjid was a conspiracy against religious entities and that the main purpose of the operation was to defame the clerics at the national and international level. They said that in the current circumstances it would be difficult for religious parties to participate in the general elections. The government’s propaganda against clerics and madrassas would affect the voters, they said, especially in Sindh and Punjab. It was decided that the clerics would protest in the meeting of the heads of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) and other political parties scheduled to be held on July 11 in London at former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s residence. They said that participants of the all-parties conference (APC) must cooperate with the religious parties to prevent further action against madrassas.

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India-Pakistan

PPP not striking deal, Fahim tells Sharif

2007-04-23

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is not striking a deal with the government, Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) Chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim told former prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif on Sunday. A four-member PPP delegation led by Fahim called on Sharif in London and delivered PPP Chairwoman Benazir Bhutto’s message to him that reports of the PPP striking a deal with the government were baseless, a TV channel reported. Fahim said the PPP and the PML-N were united on the ARD platform. “We want restoration of democracy and supremacy of the constitution,” he added. “We also support lawyers struggling for the independence of the judiciary. We will continue our struggle from the ARD platform to achieve our target,” the ARD chief said.

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India-Pakistan

Over 70 political activists held in Rawalpindi

2007-03-25

The police on Saturday arrested over 70 political activists belonging to various opposition parties during raids on their houses. These activists belong to the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Tehrik-e-Insaaf. It has been learnt that police have detained them under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance to stop them from taking part in the March 26 strike called by the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy. The strike has been called to denounce Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry’s suspension by President Pervez Musharraf.

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India-Pakistan

MMA lawmaker and 14 activists released

2007-03-24

The administration of the federal capital on Friday released 15 activists of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), including National Assembly Member Mian Muhammad Aslam. Police arrested these activists from various parts of the city under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order on March 16 when they were trying to reach the Supreme Court building to express solidarity with suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The administration held an emergency meeting on Friday, with Islamabad Chief Commissioner Khalid Pervez in the chair. The meeting, which was also attended by Police Inspector General Chaudhry Iftikhar Ahmed, Deputy Commissioner Chaudhry Muhammad Ali and other high-ranking officials, decided that extra police would be deployed in various markets of the city to stop those who would force shopkeepers to close their shops on March 26, sources told Daily Times. It also decided that police and Rangers would be deployed at key places in the city to maintain law and order. However, the district administration of Rawalpindi hasn’t yet released MNA Muhammad Hanif Abbasi and 150 other activists of the MMA and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. The administration reportedly fears that these people might create problems during a strike called by the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy on March 26 to protest against Mr Chaudhry’s suspension. However, the people belonging to other political parties, who were arrested on March 21, have been released.

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India-Pakistan

Nawaz retracts election boycott

2007-01-15

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has decided after consulting with senior leaders and members of parliament of his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party to withdraw his decision to boycott the next general elections. Sources in the PML-N told Online that most party leaders, including the exiled former prime minister’s brother Shahbaz Sharif, who is also president of the Muslim League-Nawaz, were against the boycott decision. Nawaz had said his party would not take part in the elections if they were held under President Gen Pervez Musharraf, but his decision was criticised by other opposition parties, especially the PML-N’s main partner in the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, the Pakistan People’s Party.

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India-Pakistan

How the Death of a Leader Creates a Bigger Problem for Pakistan

2006-08-31

When Nawab Akbar Bugti was killed in a military operation in Pakistan's restive Baluchistan province on Saturday, Pakistan's security forces may have thought they were ridding themselves of a particularly annoying problem that has plagued Islamabad for the past two years. As it turns out, they only made things worse. Bugti, 79, was one of three Baluch tribal leaders leading an armed uprising against the central government that has seen more than 400 officials and military personnel dead in recent months. The violence has led to the displacement of thousands of ethnic Baluch, the interruption of vital gas supplies (Pakistan's principal gas pipeline runs through the center of the province), and the diversion of President Pervez Musharraf's already overstretched army. The fight is about resources. The province of Baluchistan, which is rich in oil and gas, is also home to a fiercely independent and distinct ethnic group that spans parts of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. The largely impoverished Baluch see little benefit from those resources, and Bugti had long demanded royalties from the central government for development of the neglected region. But Bugti was not simply the leader of a 300,000-strong tribe of alienated Baluch. He was also a former provincial governor, a former chief minister and the moderate leader of a well-recognized political party. Not since the Supreme Court-ordered hanging of former Prime Minister and President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto following a military coup in 1977 has such a mainstream political leader been killed at the behest of the Pakistani government. As the spontaneous riots spreading across the country can attest, Bugti was not just a local, or even a Baluch hero, but a nationally respected politician whose cause resonated throughout the country. In using force to take out the small problem of an avowedly secular and anti-Taliban insurgent group (with reasonable demands, if not reasonable means), the military-led government of President Pervez Musharraf may find that it has simply highlighted the larger issue of military rule on the day before Musharraf's hand-picked Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz faces a vote of no-confidence in Parliament. As an editorial in Dawn, a highly respected English-language newspaper points out, Bugti's death will only lead to a sharp deterioration in the already heated government-opposition relations: "It doesn't do the state any good to be remembered as an executioner of former prime ministers and chief ministers." Pakistani security forces may have thought that in killing Bugti they could curtail growing anti-government sentiment in Baluch areas indifferent to his cause. Instead, many Baluch will see his death as proof that the federal government will never give them the fair treatment they feel they are owed. Around 500 people have been detained in riots throughout the province, and schools have been ordered closed for three days in anticipation of more unrest. Train service in and out of the area has been restricted. More alarmingly, Baluch protestors in Quetta, the provincial capital, and Karachi, the capital of neighboring Sindh province, have been targeting Punjabi-owned properties and businesses, exacerbating already volatile ethnic divisions throughout country. Large segments of Pakistan's army come from Punjab, home to the nation's capital, Islamabad, and other groups in Pakistan often resent Punjabis for the perceived benefits of government preference. A coalition of opposition groups, the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD), has called the attack on Bugti a tragedy, saying that General Musharraf's choice of a military operation over dialogue only proves that the military dictator has become a security risk for the country. Not only that, says Samina Ahmed, South Asia Director of the International Crisis Group, the government's military response to the question of states' rights comes at a very delicate moment. For the past several years, Musharraf has been struggling to bring the historically autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas under central control. The notoriously lawless region, running along the mountainous border with Afghanistan, is said to shelter Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership and militant training camps, though the Pakistani government denies this. Local tribal leaders have been fiercely resistant to calls to join the Pakistani federation; Bugti's death and the accompanying military action will only strengthen that resolve. At an ARD press conference Sunday attended by Pakistani journalists, a member of deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's PML-N party said: "Bullets don't solve problems; they create problems," pointing out that a "martyred" leader will only strengthen the insurgency's cause. Bugti was prepared for just that. This past May Bugti spoke with TIME by satellite phone from the mountain refuge that eventually became his tomb. "It's better to die — as the Americans say — with your spurs on," he said. "Instead of a slow death in bed, I'd rather death come to me while I'm fighting for a purpose." Bugti got his wish. And President Musharraf now has a much bigger problem on his hands.

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India-Pakistan

Anti-govt drive decided by MMA Supreme Council

2006-07-04

LAHORE: The decision to launch a movement against the government was taken in by the Supreme Council of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, MMA President President Qazi Hussain Ahmed said on Monday. Mr Ahmed told a press conference here that Qari Gul Rehman, an MNA of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Samiul Haq) had handed his resignation to the MMA president along with all Jamaat-e-Islami parliamentarians, and these would be sent to the National Assembly speaker "at an appropriate time". Mr Ahmed said that the MMA's anti-government drive aimed to restore true democracy. Public gatherings would be held all over the country to pressure the government, he said. If the army uses force to suppress the movement, "I will be the first to take a bullet in my chest," he said. He said Gen Musharraf was an unconstitutional president, and it was also unconstitutional for the present assemblies to elect him for a second term. He said the MMA would support the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD)'s no-confidence move against the prime minister, adding that he would meet Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto if he visits London. "President Musharraf should resign from both his offices and hand over power to the real representative of the people," Mr Ahmed said.

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India-Pakistan

MMA will continue supporting Taliban

2006-06-10

This is one of those rare public admissions of what everybody knows but nobody mentions... The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) pledged on Friday that it would continue supporting a Taliban government in Afghanistan, as it did in the past. Support includes cannon fodder, cash, support facilities, and safe havens. “We have been supporting the Taliban government and will continue doing so. Those (treasury members) who are opposing them now will also support them in future but they will not be in power by that time,” said Dr Attaur Rehman, an MMA member in his speech in the National Assembly. He was responding to a challenge by Sheikh Waqas, a treasury member, who in his speech asked opposition parties to publicly announce if they can support Taliban. "Support them? Hell, we are them!" MMA President Qazi Hussain Ahmed, in his speech, criticised government policies and said that the rights of the smaller provinces were being usurped. He said the concentration of power in one hand was the root cause of all problems the country was facing. “We can join hands with any political force to bring a genuine democracy to the country. We can work with the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy for this purpose,” Qazi said. He dispelled the impression that the MMA was facing a rift, claiming that the religious parties alliance was intact. He claimed that he had no differences with Maulana Fazalur Rehman, the chief of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl. "No, no! No differences at all!" Qazi said that despite the government’s policy to act as a frontline state for the United States’ war on terrorism, the US administration did not trust Pakistan. “It is unfortunate that US officials are now giving computer training to Pakistani parliamentarians,” he added. I have no idea what that has to do with anything. Qazi might not, either. He said that corruption and commission-culture was posing a serious threat to the country’s economy. “Despite a verdict by the Supreme Court, the interest system has not been abolished,” he said. He added that the implementation of an interest-free financial system was imperative for real economic progress. He said that accelerated efforts were required to overcome poverty and improve socio-economic condition of the common man.

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India-Pakistan

MMA split over anti-govt campaign

2006-05-08

The component parties of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) have expressed reservations about the decision by alliance president Qazi Hussain Ahmed and General Secretary Maulana Fazlur Rehman to launch an anti-government movement. They have accused the two leaders of taking a “confused” decision without consulting the components of the six-party alliance. Sources said that that the Jamiat Ahle Hadith Pakistan (JAHP), the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Sami (JUI-S) and the Millat-e-Jafferia said that the MMA president and general secretary were negotiating with the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy to launch a joint struggle against the government, and had announced an anti-administration drive at the same time. Such a move would damage the opposition’s objective of toppling the government by the end of 2006, they said. Sources said that the Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan-Noorani (JUP-N) had also protested against the decision to launch an anti government drive “in the hottest spell of summer and without proper planning”. Party chief Anas Noorani was of the view that the Jamaat-e-Islami and the JUI-Fazl, the parent parties of the MMA president and general secretary, wanted to launch their membership campaigns “under the guise” of an anti-government movement, JUP-N leaders said.

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