Submitted by NK on October 10, 2011 – 12:32 pm
We know Pakistan is important. Every day headlines raise questions about Pakistan’s stability: its military’s alleged ties to terrorism, the security of its nuclear weapons and its long-standing conflict with India.
But some of the real threats to the country are largely absent from Western media. More conventional domestic issues may define Pakistan’s stability, and in doing so define regional and global security.
From electricity shortages to a looming fiscal deficit, here are four of Pakistan’s biggest problems you might not be hearing about.
A Dire Power Shortage
If you were to stop a Pakistani at random on the street and ask what his or her biggest concern is, there’s a good chance you’d hear about the country’s dire electricity shortage.
Because it cannot produce enough electricity to meet demand, the government shuts off power for extended periods of time. These chronic blackouts, called load-shedding, sometimes last up to 18 hours a day and hamper economic activity, particularly affecting the country’s textile industry, and leave people across a wide socio-economic spectrum in sweltering heat.
And the shortage is at an all-time high.
Protesters upset over the shortages took to the streets in cities across the country for the second day in a row, even clashing with police and turning to violence in the industrial city of Gujranwala.
Though such riots have become routine, a solution is far from near. This summer the government announced it would take seven years to develop the power generating capacity to end the pervasive blackouts.
Relentless, Devastating Floods
More than a year after monsoons ravaged the country in 2010, months of torrential rains have forced 2 million Pakistanis to flee their homes, some of them for the second year in a row.
On Monday the United Nations warned that the international community’s failure to respond to the latest flooding crisis has left 3 million people in urgent need of food. The floods have primarily hit the southern Sindh province, wiping out valuable cash crops, destroying 600,000 acres of agricultural land and leaving 2 million people at risk of contracting hepatitis, malaria and other sanitation-related diseases.
The government has been criticized for failing to apply lessons from last year’s floods, but climate experts warn that seasonal flooding will not only continue, but intensify in years to come. In fact, some analysts project the country’s structural vulnerability to flood hazard, its poor drainage capabilities and changing climate patters will contribute to Pakistan being designated a “water-scarce state” as early as 2020.
Minorities Under Attack
While much of the world’s focus on Pakistan hones in on the Taliban, sectarian terrorist groups that have been systematically attacking minority communities are overlooked.
This morning gunmen in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan stopped and evacuated a bus filled with day laborers of the Shia ethnic Hazara minority, forced them to stand in a line and then opened fire. Thirteen people were killed. Last month 26 Hazaras were killed in similar sectarian attacks, for which the terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi took credit. These aren’t isolated incidents, but are part of a systematic campaign against the country’s Shia, which make up a quarter of the population, that has escalated in recent years. Citing the failure of Pakistani authorities to prevent them, Amnesty International has documented 15 such attacks in the last year alone.
There has also been an upsurge in attacks in recent years against the country’s Christian communities and members of the Ahmadi minority sect. Critics argue these attacks are in part implicitly sanctioned by the country’s controversial blasphemy laws, which enforce the death sentence on anyone found guilty of insulting the Prophet or Islam. Human Rights Watch reported that in 2009, “at least 37 Ahmadis were charged under the general provisions of the Blasphemy Law and over 50 were charged under Ahmadi-specific provisions.”
There has been nationwide resistance to attempts to reform the laws.
A Looming Fiscal Crisis
Last financial year, Pakistan’s fiscal deficit was its highest in history.
But recent moves, including its decision to end a $11.3 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan program, have some wondering how it will dig itself out of the hole.
Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh said Pakistan was not seeking another IMF loan because it could not meet some of its conditions and was “strong enough” to live without it. But critics say the move will hinder development loans from other financial institutions and that the country is choosing short-term gains in favor of long-term economic stability.
PKKH
Monday, October 10, 2011
Hazara community starts migrating
Peshawar—The Hazara community members started migrating to Peshawar due to the increase in target killing incidents in Balochistan.
At least 54 Hazara people from Quetta, Pashin and different areas of Balochistan shifted to Peshawar as the target killings of Hazara have increased in the province.
The Hazara community members hired houses on rent in different localities of Peshawar city. It merits to mention here that people from different walk of life hailing from Hazara divisions were moved to Quetta in search of jobs and business.—Online
PAKISTAN OBSERVER
At least 54 Hazara people from Quetta, Pashin and different areas of Balochistan shifted to Peshawar as the target killings of Hazara have increased in the province.
The Hazara community members hired houses on rent in different localities of Peshawar city. It merits to mention here that people from different walk of life hailing from Hazara divisions were moved to Quetta in search of jobs and business.—Online
PAKISTAN OBSERVER
Sunday, October 9, 2011
In Pakistan, 40 dead Shi’ites is no big deal
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 9, 2011/Troy Media/ – Hundreds of Afghan civil society and human rights activists held a demonstration in Kabul on Friday protesting against the ethnic cleansing of the Hazara ethnic and sectarian minority group in Pakistan.
According to Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, more than 600 members of the Hazara minority have been slaughtered in the last couple of years by the Al-Qaeda-linked sectarian militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
The latest attack was reported on October 4. According to the New York Times, “. . . attackers riding in a pickup truck intercepted the bus carrying mostly Shiite day laborers traveling to a market. The gunmen forced non-Hazara passengers to get off the bus, then opened fire on the people remaining inside.”
Fourteen people – all vegetable vendors going to a market – were killed. Just a week before that attack, another bus on the way to Quetta-Taftan was targeted. According to a statement by the Human Rights Watch, “On September 19, near the town of Mastung, gunmen forced about 40 Hazara who had been traveling by bus to Iran to visit Shia holy sites to disembark, shot 26 dead, and wounded six. Although some Hazara managed to escape, another three were killed as they tried to bring victims to a hospital in Quetta. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni militant group, claimed responsibility for the . . . attack.”
Barbaric attempts at ethnic cleansing
The Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, Brad Adams said that “these targeted attacks are a barbaric attempt at sectarian and ethnic cleansing. The government’s failure to break up the extremist groups that carry out these attacks calls into question its commitment to protect all of its citizens.”
In reaction to the October 4 attack, a statement from Amnesty International said, “Sadly, this is only the latest in a long line of brazen attacks against Quetta’s Shi’a population. Sectarian violence has been a feature of the general breakdown in law and order in Pakistan, but these recent attacks seem to indicate a new targeting of the ethnic Hazara community”.
According to Pakistani media reports, more than 600 members of this ethnic and sectarian minority have been killed in Quetta since 2001. Though the targeted-killing of Hazara Shias in Quetta started in 1997, about a hundred have been killed execution-style in 2011 alone.
All the attacks since 1997 have been claimed by the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant outfit and breakaway faction of the Sipah e Sahaba Pakistan, founded by Haq Nawaz Jhangvi in Punjab in 1996. The banned group is a lethal sectarian outfit active in anti-Shiite attacks in Pakistan, whose government has failed to crack down against its members. In fact, known LeJ leader Malik Ishaq was released by a Pakistani court in July. Since his release, the attacks on the Hazaras in Quetta have increased.
Pakistani journalist Amir Mir, LeJ, in a report for Asia Times Online, translated a letter warning that it is time to “purify Pakistan” of the Hazaras. His translation read:
“All Shi’ites are worthy of killing. We will rid Pakistan of unclean people. Pakistan means land of the pure and the Shi’ites have no right to live in this country. We have the edict and signatures of revered scholars, declaring Shi’ites infidels. Just as our fighters have waged a successful jihad against the Shi’ite Hazaras in Afghanistan, our mission in Pakistan is the abolition of this impure sect and its followers from every city, every village and every nook and corner of Pakistan.
“Like in the past, our successful jihad against the Hazaras in Pakistan and, in particular, in Quetta, is ongoing and will continue in the future. We will make Pakistan the graveyard of the Shi’ite Hazaras and their houses will be destroyed by bombs and suicide bombers. We will only rest when we will be able to fly the flag of true Islam on this land of the pure. Jihad against the Shi’ite Hazaras has now become our duty.”
Why did Pakistan law enforcement agencies fail to crack down on Lashkar-e-Jhangvi? Because Pakistan’s all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence and its military are more focused on the Baloch separatists in Balochistan, while Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, operate freely in the province.
40 dead no big deal
Prominent Pakistani journalists such as Najam Sethi, Mushtaq Minhas, Javed Nusrat and others are now calling the continuous attacks on Hazaras ethnic genocide. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in a statement last week called upon President Zardari and Prime Minister Gillani “to take immediate, direct and personal initiative to prevent the killing of members of the Hazara community in Quetta and ensure action against all those who have failed to protect citizens’ lives.”
Despite the continuous attacks, and calls by rights groups, the Government of Pakistan and its security establishment have turned a blind eye and deaf ear. Shamefully, the Chief Minister of Balochistan and member of the Executive Committee of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, Nawab Aslam Raisani, was making jokes out of the massacre in Quetta. In a statement referring to the attack in Mastung that killed 40 Hazaras, he said, “of the millions living in Balochistan, 40 dead is not a big deal. I will send a truckload of tissue papers to the bereaved families. I would have sent tobacco if I was not a politician.”
Abbas Daiyar writes for Daily Outlook Afghanistan as well as Troy Media. He can be reached at Abbas.daiyar@gmail.com.
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