Category Archives: Defence and Disarmament

Abbottabad revisited

Defence and Disarmament, Education, Politics, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE dust raised by the Abbottabad Commission’s report took long to settle. Each time it seemed the matter was settled, some new issue would emerge to stir ripples of excitement.

Now it is time to sit back and reflect calmly on what happened. The fact that the report was leaked and Al Jazeera posted it on its website is nothing unusual in this age of whistleblowers and hackers. After WikiLeaks, Abbottabad seemed child’s play in this context.

Since it has been claimed that the leaked draft is not the final and authentic one, I shall not go into the nitty-gritty of who was responsible for the intelligence failure in not detecting Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad and not stopping the American helicopters’ incursion into Pakistani territory in May 2011. The leaked version of the report calls on the country’s leadership — “political, military intelligence and bureaucratic” — to formally apologise to the people of Pakistan for “their dereliction of duty”. This in all probability must have been retained in one form or another in the final version. Continue reading Abbottabad revisited →

Bomb or bread?

Children and Youth, Defence and Disarmament, Economy, Education, Health

By Zubeida Mustafa

ON May 28, an email was circulating on the web from Dr Shershah Syed, whose services to women’s reproductive health are widely acclaimed.

Doctor Sahib wrote, “Today we are celebrating the atom bomb day when we are a country where millions of children are not going to school — where millions of kids start their morning without food and will work in factories.…”

How true. While chasing the bomb, we have destroyed our people. What Dr Shershah can add is that this is also a country where one cannot escape the heart-wrenching sight of little rag-pickers rummaging through the garbage for food leftovers to ease their hunger pangs. Their emaciated bodies taunt our bomb-makers with misplaced priorities. Defence spending is expected to increase in the budget to be presented later this month. At this rate, though, there will be no one left to protect. The data given out by the health authorities of the prevalence of malnutrition and stunting in Pakistan are not exaggerated. Continue reading Bomb or bread? →

Weapons and information

Constitution, Defence and Disarmament, Human Rights, Information, Justice, Law & Order, Terrorism and Violence, War and Peace

By Zubeida Mustafa

IT is exactly 12 weeks to the day when Perween Rahman, director of the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) Research and Training Institute, was gunned down in Orangi when she was returning home from work.

Two months later, another activist of the OPP who ran a school, Abdul Wahid Khan, was killed outside his home. A few days later on May 18, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf leader Zahra Shahid Husain was assassinated by armed men.

These were not the only people who were victims of target killing in Karachi. Approximately 259 other people met a violent death in the city in the same period. We mourn them all. Above all, we mourn our own helplessness to save these precious lives.

Zohra Yusuf, the chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, was spot on when she once commented that in Karachi a person championing a human rights cause, who dies a natural death, is indeed lucky. Continue reading Weapons and information →

Trying presidents

Constitution, Defence and Disarmament, Guest Contributor, Justice, Politics

By Rifaat Hamid Ghani

ONE could well say Pakistan’s democracy suffers from a president problem. Ghulam Ishaq was adept at dismissing Parliaments. Farooq Leghari, popularly doubted for the party status he enjoyed till assuming office, let down the party, if not the public. Tarrar, unofficially renowned for carrying a briefcase, drifted through the crosscurrents of a countercoup without a hiccup. Presidents Musharraf and Zardari though are in a class by themselves; and who would you send to the top of the class? If one posed a conceptual challenge as a COAS president, the other posed a more empirical one as an active party promoter and controller.

And now, perhaps the thorniest nettle the incoming premier, Mian Nawaz Sharif, will have to grasp: Should the government he is to lead press treason charges on the former President Musharraf? Continue reading Trying presidents →

2008-2013 Democratic Annals

Balochistan, Constitution, Defence and Disarmament, Guest Contributor, Justice, Politics

by Rifaat Hamid Ghani

The government and the Parliament of 2008 completed a full term: a democratic first. But it could be more because interventionists have matured than because politicians demonstrated a reassuring capacity to learn on the job.

If we step outside the trite paradigm of democracy and dictatorship and the polarities of the civil and military public political interest, we might not see any polarities: Both want power and there is a competition for it. For most Pakistanis Pakistan is home, not a cow to be milked dry. They need and want their country. The touchstone for legitimacy then becomes pragmatic for them: How is the power of government being used?

guest-contributorIf asked about the 2008-onwards use of democratically mandated power there would be more than carping complaints about law and order and safety in daily life. The common perception is the state itself is increasingly endangered by the vice and folly of the politically empowered. In 2013 despite democratic freedom a question is suppressed: Is it a myth, which local democratic experience exposes each time, that democracy is invariably the better formula? As soon as there was no self-perpetuating incentive in maintaining or reaching a consensus, political rivals needed arbitration on the caretaker PM. When mainstream parties so evidently mistrust each other’s motives and nominees they also need unusually skilled spin masters to tell the electorate why it may place faith in their candidatures and avowals. Continue reading 2008-2013 Democratic Annals →