Peace in Bamyan from Michael McCool on Vimeo.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Birth and Death: Afghanistan's Struggles with Maternal Mortality
By JOANNA KAKISSIS / KABUL Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2011
Salamudin, 36, center, waits at a pharmacy in the Afghan town of Bamiyan on May, 30, 2011, with his wife Bakhtawar, 22, and their 1-year-old son Surodin. Salamudin allowed his wife to give birth in a hospital
Ted Richardson
When Fawzia went into labor with her fifth child, she knew something was wrong. She felt like her insides were being ripped apart by knives. She bled so much that her clothes were soaked. "I did not want to die," recalls Fawzia, 25, who, like many rural Afghans, only uses one name. "I prayed and hoped the pain would go away. But when it didn't, I asked to go to a hospital."
Fawzia, an ethnic Hazara from Jaghori district in the volatile center-east province of Ghazni, had never been to a hospital, and says she had no idea where to find one. She had given birth to her other children at home, and the closest clinic is a two-hour drive away. When she got there, the staff said they couldn't help her. Go to Kabul, they said. It took another 10 hours to drive to Rabia Balkhi, a women's hospital in central Kabul that offers free services to impoverished women.
By then, Fawzia had lost so much blood that doctors were worried she wouldn't make it. Dr. Taiba Motaqi, 30, a resident in obstetrics, knew right away that the young woman had a ruptured uterus. The complication is rare among pregnant women in the developed world, but it kills many Afghan women each year. Fawzia underwent an emergency C-section, a common procedure at Rabia Balkhi Hospital. "Women come here with problems like this at the very last minute," Dr. Motaqi says. "We have to work quickly to save them."
When Fawzia got married 10 years ago, the Taliban were still running Afghanistan, and women's rights were at a nadir. Most women gave birth at home, and the few who managed to venture to hospitals often discovered that the facilities were understaffed and lacked equipment and medicine. In late 2001, the U.S.-led military campaign pushed the Taliban out of power, and since then, millions of dollars in U.S. and foreign aid have gone to help build clinics and hospitals and train health workers. It was supposed to be a new beginning for Afghan women marginalized by the Taliban's brutal and theocratic rule. But a decade later, Afghanistan still ranks as the worst country in the world to be a mother.
About 18,000 Afghan women die during childbirth every year, says the Afghan Health Ministry. According to a recent report by the NGO Save the Children, Afghanistan ranked as the worst place to give birth, followed by Niger and Chad. In these countries, 60% of all births are not attended to by skilled health professionals. On average, about 1 in 23 mothers are expected to die from pregnancy-related causes. Children also die young and suffer from malnutrition, and education for girls is poor.
Often the challenge is just getting women to hospitals. Rural Afghans, even in relatively progressive provinces like Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, are suspicious or dismissive of doctors. In the town of Bamiyan, the main hospital has a new maternity ward. But head midwife Sediqa Hosseini says many of the 25 beds in the ward are often empty. On a recent summer afternoon, Hosseini, a tiny, serious woman in a baby blue headscarf, greets the 12 women who have checked in. One is Fatima, a 25-year-old farmer's wife. "When Fatima arrived, her baby was coming out shoulder first," Hosseini says. "She had to have a C-section. Without help, both of them would have died."
Fatima says her husband took her to the hospital when her labor became so painful that she was doubled over. Hosseini says few husbands would have done the same. Many rural men prefer to pray with a mullah to cure illnesses, she says. "They believe this is more reliable than medicine." As she breast-feeds her newborn daughter, Fatima says she wouldn't have gone if it had not been for a community-health worker who told her hospitals are safe and free.
Adding to the problem is that rural Afghan women are also conservative, and some are ashamed of being pregnant because it's a public acknowledgement of sex with their spouses, says Gulpari, a midwife in Bamiyan's remote Sayghan district. Sayghan is a dusty, wind-lashed stretch of bare mountains, cratered dirt roads and some 60-odd villages of compact mud huts. Gulpari lives in the village of Khudadadkhel, where she works at the small, understaffed Sayghan clinic that mostly treats stomach ailments and lung diseases.
Most of Sayghan district's residents are Tajiks who are Sunni and far more conservative than Bamiyan's main ethnic group, the Shi'ite Hazara. Hazara women were liberated enough to take up arms against the Taliban in the 1990s. The Tajik women rarely leave their homes, Gulpari says, but she's managed to convince some of them to let her help them when they give birth at home. "In 15 years, I've never lost a mother," she says.
Gulpari says she decided to do this work when she was a girl and watched a relative who was a midwife help a scared young woman give birth to her first child. She began apprenticing while the Taliban was running Afghanistan, and many men threatened her for doing what they deemed "dirty work." Now she says even conservative men in her village accept the value of what she does. The Community Midwife Education Program, financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, has trained thousands of rural Afghan women to work as midwives, according to a recent report by the Council of Foreign Relations think tank.
But in many rural areas, there is still a shortage of midwives — Gulpari says she's only one of four midwives for at least 40,000 people in the area. "I'm not fooling myself," she says. "There are so many women, probably thousands, that I don't see. That I will never see. Some live in ravines deep in the mountains that take days to get to because you can only go by foot or donkey. I'll never know what happens to them."
Even women like Fawzia, the young mother from Ghazni, who are determined enough to get to urban hospitals, face other problems. Many hospitals don't have the money to stock medicine and instead send patients to street markets to buy drugs that are often fake or mislabeled, says Dr. Faizullah Kakar, an epidemiologist and special adviser on health to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. "Even if they are the right drugs, it wastes time to go out and buy them," says the doctor, who has worked with U.S. doctors who trained staff at Kabul's Rabia Balkhi Hospital. The Afghan Safe Birth Project, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has helped reduce deaths during C-sections at the hospital by 80% between 2008 and '10 by providing medicines as well as good training, says Dr. Kakar. The project at Rabia Balkhi was supposed to be a model for other Afghan women's hospitals to follow. But in April, the U.S. government cut the program's $5.8 million annual funding, and Dr. Kakar says the Afghan government doesn't have the money to keep it going. By October, the hospital will no longer be able to buy medicine. "I'm worried we will once again have an epidemic of mothers dying here," he says.
The doctor is also worried about what the budget cuts will mean for Afghan infants. In 2008, UNICEF reported that 52 out of every 1,000 Afghan infants died within the first two weeks of birth. That's a rate 10 times higher than in the U.S.
More than 22,000 babies are born in Rabia Balkhi Hospital every year. Dr Motaqi, the resident in obstetrics, isn't married and doesn't have children of her own, but the shy, intense doctor often visits the hospital's neonatal unit, which smells like rubbing alcohol and powder. There are healthy babies there, but on a recent afternoon she stops near a boy who is tiny and almost still. His skin is tinged blue, and he flutters his eyelids, which are crusty with dried tears. Dr. Motaqi clasps his miniature hand between her thumb and forefinger. "He was born too soon, and he came out the wrong way," she sighs. "He's going to die."
The doctor walks back to Fawzia, the mother from Ghazni province, who lost her son on the drive to the hospital. "I felt him stop moving," Fawzia says, curled up in her hospital bed. She's sleepy from the anesthesia. Dr. Motaqi sits on the edge of Fawzia's bed and tries to manage a smile.
— With reporting by Karim Sharifi / Kabul; Moneer Nyazi / Bamiyan
TIME MAGAZINE
Ted Richardson
When Fawzia went into labor with her fifth child, she knew something was wrong. She felt like her insides were being ripped apart by knives. She bled so much that her clothes were soaked. "I did not want to die," recalls Fawzia, 25, who, like many rural Afghans, only uses one name. "I prayed and hoped the pain would go away. But when it didn't, I asked to go to a hospital."
Fawzia, an ethnic Hazara from Jaghori district in the volatile center-east province of Ghazni, had never been to a hospital, and says she had no idea where to find one. She had given birth to her other children at home, and the closest clinic is a two-hour drive away. When she got there, the staff said they couldn't help her. Go to Kabul, they said. It took another 10 hours to drive to Rabia Balkhi, a women's hospital in central Kabul that offers free services to impoverished women.
By then, Fawzia had lost so much blood that doctors were worried she wouldn't make it. Dr. Taiba Motaqi, 30, a resident in obstetrics, knew right away that the young woman had a ruptured uterus. The complication is rare among pregnant women in the developed world, but it kills many Afghan women each year. Fawzia underwent an emergency C-section, a common procedure at Rabia Balkhi Hospital. "Women come here with problems like this at the very last minute," Dr. Motaqi says. "We have to work quickly to save them."
When Fawzia got married 10 years ago, the Taliban were still running Afghanistan, and women's rights were at a nadir. Most women gave birth at home, and the few who managed to venture to hospitals often discovered that the facilities were understaffed and lacked equipment and medicine. In late 2001, the U.S.-led military campaign pushed the Taliban out of power, and since then, millions of dollars in U.S. and foreign aid have gone to help build clinics and hospitals and train health workers. It was supposed to be a new beginning for Afghan women marginalized by the Taliban's brutal and theocratic rule. But a decade later, Afghanistan still ranks as the worst country in the world to be a mother.
About 18,000 Afghan women die during childbirth every year, says the Afghan Health Ministry. According to a recent report by the NGO Save the Children, Afghanistan ranked as the worst place to give birth, followed by Niger and Chad. In these countries, 60% of all births are not attended to by skilled health professionals. On average, about 1 in 23 mothers are expected to die from pregnancy-related causes. Children also die young and suffer from malnutrition, and education for girls is poor.
Often the challenge is just getting women to hospitals. Rural Afghans, even in relatively progressive provinces like Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, are suspicious or dismissive of doctors. In the town of Bamiyan, the main hospital has a new maternity ward. But head midwife Sediqa Hosseini says many of the 25 beds in the ward are often empty. On a recent summer afternoon, Hosseini, a tiny, serious woman in a baby blue headscarf, greets the 12 women who have checked in. One is Fatima, a 25-year-old farmer's wife. "When Fatima arrived, her baby was coming out shoulder first," Hosseini says. "She had to have a C-section. Without help, both of them would have died."
Fatima says her husband took her to the hospital when her labor became so painful that she was doubled over. Hosseini says few husbands would have done the same. Many rural men prefer to pray with a mullah to cure illnesses, she says. "They believe this is more reliable than medicine." As she breast-feeds her newborn daughter, Fatima says she wouldn't have gone if it had not been for a community-health worker who told her hospitals are safe and free.
Adding to the problem is that rural Afghan women are also conservative, and some are ashamed of being pregnant because it's a public acknowledgement of sex with their spouses, says Gulpari, a midwife in Bamiyan's remote Sayghan district. Sayghan is a dusty, wind-lashed stretch of bare mountains, cratered dirt roads and some 60-odd villages of compact mud huts. Gulpari lives in the village of Khudadadkhel, where she works at the small, understaffed Sayghan clinic that mostly treats stomach ailments and lung diseases.
Most of Sayghan district's residents are Tajiks who are Sunni and far more conservative than Bamiyan's main ethnic group, the Shi'ite Hazara. Hazara women were liberated enough to take up arms against the Taliban in the 1990s. The Tajik women rarely leave their homes, Gulpari says, but she's managed to convince some of them to let her help them when they give birth at home. "In 15 years, I've never lost a mother," she says.
Gulpari says she decided to do this work when she was a girl and watched a relative who was a midwife help a scared young woman give birth to her first child. She began apprenticing while the Taliban was running Afghanistan, and many men threatened her for doing what they deemed "dirty work." Now she says even conservative men in her village accept the value of what she does. The Community Midwife Education Program, financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, has trained thousands of rural Afghan women to work as midwives, according to a recent report by the Council of Foreign Relations think tank.
But in many rural areas, there is still a shortage of midwives — Gulpari says she's only one of four midwives for at least 40,000 people in the area. "I'm not fooling myself," she says. "There are so many women, probably thousands, that I don't see. That I will never see. Some live in ravines deep in the mountains that take days to get to because you can only go by foot or donkey. I'll never know what happens to them."
Even women like Fawzia, the young mother from Ghazni, who are determined enough to get to urban hospitals, face other problems. Many hospitals don't have the money to stock medicine and instead send patients to street markets to buy drugs that are often fake or mislabeled, says Dr. Faizullah Kakar, an epidemiologist and special adviser on health to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. "Even if they are the right drugs, it wastes time to go out and buy them," says the doctor, who has worked with U.S. doctors who trained staff at Kabul's Rabia Balkhi Hospital. The Afghan Safe Birth Project, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has helped reduce deaths during C-sections at the hospital by 80% between 2008 and '10 by providing medicines as well as good training, says Dr. Kakar. The project at Rabia Balkhi was supposed to be a model for other Afghan women's hospitals to follow. But in April, the U.S. government cut the program's $5.8 million annual funding, and Dr. Kakar says the Afghan government doesn't have the money to keep it going. By October, the hospital will no longer be able to buy medicine. "I'm worried we will once again have an epidemic of mothers dying here," he says.
The doctor is also worried about what the budget cuts will mean for Afghan infants. In 2008, UNICEF reported that 52 out of every 1,000 Afghan infants died within the first two weeks of birth. That's a rate 10 times higher than in the U.S.
More than 22,000 babies are born in Rabia Balkhi Hospital every year. Dr Motaqi, the resident in obstetrics, isn't married and doesn't have children of her own, but the shy, intense doctor often visits the hospital's neonatal unit, which smells like rubbing alcohol and powder. There are healthy babies there, but on a recent afternoon she stops near a boy who is tiny and almost still. His skin is tinged blue, and he flutters his eyelids, which are crusty with dried tears. Dr. Motaqi clasps his miniature hand between her thumb and forefinger. "He was born too soon, and he came out the wrong way," she sighs. "He's going to die."
The doctor walks back to Fawzia, the mother from Ghazni province, who lost her son on the drive to the hospital. "I felt him stop moving," Fawzia says, curled up in her hospital bed. She's sleepy from the anesthesia. Dr. Motaqi sits on the edge of Fawzia's bed and tries to manage a smile.
— With reporting by Karim Sharifi / Kabul; Moneer Nyazi / Bamiyan
TIME MAGAZINE
HRCP concerned over violation of right to life
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) on Monday expressed concerns over the violation of the right to life across Pakistan. The HRCP demanded that the impunity for killing people should be addressed and efforts to protect human rights, particularly the right to life, should be made.
A statement issued as the conclusion of the HRCP Council meeting said it was of serious concern that the targeted killings of Hazaras in Balochistan continued. It said victims of enforced disappearance continued to be recovered as dead bodies and large-scale killings in tribal areas continued and efforts to get to the truth had not been made despite the discovery of a mass grave in Mohmand Agency months ago. The statement said that targeted killings in Karachi had become routine.
Violence against women was increasing, it added. The statement proposed that to restore law and order and respect for right to life, the government needed to take responsibility and the challenges it faced could not be overcome alone. All political parties needed to aid the state in achieving peace, it added. The statement also proposed that the government needed to interact with the civil society in a meaningful way and eradicate the law and order issues as well as the society’s complex notions of honour, the statement added.
Pakistan Today
A statement issued as the conclusion of the HRCP Council meeting said it was of serious concern that the targeted killings of Hazaras in Balochistan continued. It said victims of enforced disappearance continued to be recovered as dead bodies and large-scale killings in tribal areas continued and efforts to get to the truth had not been made despite the discovery of a mass grave in Mohmand Agency months ago. The statement said that targeted killings in Karachi had become routine.
Violence against women was increasing, it added. The statement proposed that to restore law and order and respect for right to life, the government needed to take responsibility and the challenges it faced could not be overcome alone. All political parties needed to aid the state in achieving peace, it added. The statement also proposed that the government needed to interact with the civil society in a meaningful way and eradicate the law and order issues as well as the society’s complex notions of honour, the statement added.
Pakistan Today
“If you speak up for Ahmadis, Hazaras, you are Anti-Pakistan”
October 11, 2011
by Kashif Chaudary
Does speaking for oppressed Pakistanis make one anti-Pakistan?
“I think its natural for Pakistanis in USA to speak ill of this country.. Kashif , your hate for Pakistan is admirable .. Didnt you get your Medical training from that country??? you dont love Pakistan… lets admit this.. Look at your posts”
Ajnabi Rastay
These were the accusations levied against me recently on a Facebook forum. I was labeled anti-Pakistan. What had I done? Did I curse Pakistan? Did I burn its flag? Did I take out a “Go Pakistan! Go!” procession in the centre of downtown Manhattan?
None of the above.
All I had done was share news items on the persecution of the Hazara Shia Muslims and the Ahmadi Muslim community in Pakistan. This included The Express Tribune coverage of the latest massacre in Quetta that left 13 Shias dead and the expulsion of 10 Ahmadi students from a school in Hafizabad on the basis of faith. I also started a social media group condemning the genocide of Hazara Shias at the hands of SSP and LeJ militants.
It is no secret that hatred is openly spewed against minority groups in Pakistan. Such a hate conference was recently held in Dharianwala wherein religious clerics encouraged villagers to force all Ahmadi children out of their schools and all deceased Ahmadis out of their graveyards. Soon after this conference, Ahmadi students enrolled in public schools in the area were rusticated. The government, that had earlier this year declared an educational emergency, took no notice of this disgraceful incident. No one seems to care about the plight of oppressed. And when you care, your loyalty is quickly put to question.
Does speaking for oppressed Pakistanis make one anti-Pakistan?
I take serious offence to this view for two main reasons:
Firstly, the Hazara Shia and Ahmadi Muslims persecuted in Pakistan are our fellow countrymen. They are equal Pakistanis. So are the Christians and the Hindus. Therefore, voicing their concerns is being the voice of Pakistan and not otherwise. The belief that standing up for the rights of disadvantaged Pakistanis is being anti-Pakistan and unpatriotic is ridiculous. Where this notion assumes that these persecuted groups are not Pakistani enough to deserve the voice of the rest of us, it also assumes that the extremists who cause them pain are true representatives of Pakistan. As a Jinnah’s Pakistani, I take exception to this.
Second, the majority of Pakistanis are hospitable peace-loving people. The minority extremists do not represent our ideals. It is very unfortunate, then, that we have allowed the two to be associated in recent times. Our deafening silence has not helped before and is not going to help now. It merely proves to the world that we are content with being associated with extremism. It portrays intolerance as an accepted norm in Pakistan. On the other hand, fiercely denouncing extremism projects our values of tolerance and peace to the world. It shows that true Pakistanis do not accept intolerance as normal. They reject it, vehemently oppose it and disown it.
Preventing one from speaking against intolerance and extremism in Pakistan, therefore, implies that intolerance is very much Pakistani – that Pakistan and extremism are names one of another. As a Jinnah’s Pakistani true to its founding ideals, I again take offense to that.
Pakistan was founded on the ideals of religious freedom. Islam and my basic humanity compel me to speak for all oppressed peoples anywhere on earth irrespective of faith or color. As a Pakistani, however, I feel obliged to focus on my motherland. Charity, as I have learnt it, begins at home. As such, a Shia Muslim killed in Quetta or an Ahmadi Muslim martyred in the Punjab should at least create the same outcry as a Palestinian man injured in an Israeli air strike. Oppression is all condemnable, but we can only worry about our tenth-door neighbor if we have our home in order.
When early Muslims were persecuted in Makkah, a group took refuge in Abyssinia. Did their outcry before King Najash – on the persecution at the hand of the Makkans- signify hatred for Makkah? The Holy Prophet (pbuh) himself had to migrate to Medina. His condemnation of the oppression in Makkah and his eventual emigration did not mean that he did not love Makkah. He longed to return to his motherland. Even while he was in Makkah, he condemned all injustice openly, not because he hated Makkah but because he loved it, and wanted to see a positive change.
And here we are, people content with the continued persecution of our own. You might choose to love Pakistan by remaining silent witness to its exploitation at the hands of its enemies. I, on the contrary, will continue to express my love for Pakistan by speaking up against its opponents, against those who tarnish its image globally and those who do not exemplify its true values.
Pakistan was meant to be a great nation. However, thanks to your silence, it is only moving backwards. Jinnah’s Pakistan has been hijacked by his enemies. As a patriotic Pakistani, it is my duty to continue to let everyone know that I disown extremism and intolerance that has plagued the nation. Like me, there are many others who chose to do whatever much (or little) they can to prevent our nation’s downfall at the hands of this menace.
If you chose to remain silent, therefore, by all means do.
But I’d very much prefer if you shed your self-righteous attitude and join me in being a patriotic Pakistani.
Will you?
EXPRESS TRIBUNE BLOG
“I think its natural for Pakistanis in USA to speak ill of this country.. Kashif , your hate for Pakistan is admirable .. Didnt you get your Medical training from that country??? you dont love Pakistan… lets admit this.. Look at your posts”
Ajnabi Rastay
These were the accusations levied against me recently on a Facebook forum. I was labeled anti-Pakistan. What had I done? Did I curse Pakistan? Did I burn its flag? Did I take out a “Go Pakistan! Go!” procession in the centre of downtown Manhattan?
None of the above.
All I had done was share news items on the persecution of the Hazara Shia Muslims and the Ahmadi Muslim community in Pakistan. This included The Express Tribune coverage of the latest massacre in Quetta that left 13 Shias dead and the expulsion of 10 Ahmadi students from a school in Hafizabad on the basis of faith. I also started a social media group condemning the genocide of Hazara Shias at the hands of SSP and LeJ militants.
It is no secret that hatred is openly spewed against minority groups in Pakistan. Such a hate conference was recently held in Dharianwala wherein religious clerics encouraged villagers to force all Ahmadi children out of their schools and all deceased Ahmadis out of their graveyards. Soon after this conference, Ahmadi students enrolled in public schools in the area were rusticated. The government, that had earlier this year declared an educational emergency, took no notice of this disgraceful incident. No one seems to care about the plight of oppressed. And when you care, your loyalty is quickly put to question.
Does speaking for oppressed Pakistanis make one anti-Pakistan?
I take serious offence to this view for two main reasons:
Firstly, the Hazara Shia and Ahmadi Muslims persecuted in Pakistan are our fellow countrymen. They are equal Pakistanis. So are the Christians and the Hindus. Therefore, voicing their concerns is being the voice of Pakistan and not otherwise. The belief that standing up for the rights of disadvantaged Pakistanis is being anti-Pakistan and unpatriotic is ridiculous. Where this notion assumes that these persecuted groups are not Pakistani enough to deserve the voice of the rest of us, it also assumes that the extremists who cause them pain are true representatives of Pakistan. As a Jinnah’s Pakistani, I take exception to this.
Second, the majority of Pakistanis are hospitable peace-loving people. The minority extremists do not represent our ideals. It is very unfortunate, then, that we have allowed the two to be associated in recent times. Our deafening silence has not helped before and is not going to help now. It merely proves to the world that we are content with being associated with extremism. It portrays intolerance as an accepted norm in Pakistan. On the other hand, fiercely denouncing extremism projects our values of tolerance and peace to the world. It shows that true Pakistanis do not accept intolerance as normal. They reject it, vehemently oppose it and disown it.
Preventing one from speaking against intolerance and extremism in Pakistan, therefore, implies that intolerance is very much Pakistani – that Pakistan and extremism are names one of another. As a Jinnah’s Pakistani true to its founding ideals, I again take offense to that.
Pakistan was founded on the ideals of religious freedom. Islam and my basic humanity compel me to speak for all oppressed peoples anywhere on earth irrespective of faith or color. As a Pakistani, however, I feel obliged to focus on my motherland. Charity, as I have learnt it, begins at home. As such, a Shia Muslim killed in Quetta or an Ahmadi Muslim martyred in the Punjab should at least create the same outcry as a Palestinian man injured in an Israeli air strike. Oppression is all condemnable, but we can only worry about our tenth-door neighbor if we have our home in order.
When early Muslims were persecuted in Makkah, a group took refuge in Abyssinia. Did their outcry before King Najash – on the persecution at the hand of the Makkans- signify hatred for Makkah? The Holy Prophet (pbuh) himself had to migrate to Medina. His condemnation of the oppression in Makkah and his eventual emigration did not mean that he did not love Makkah. He longed to return to his motherland. Even while he was in Makkah, he condemned all injustice openly, not because he hated Makkah but because he loved it, and wanted to see a positive change.
And here we are, people content with the continued persecution of our own. You might choose to love Pakistan by remaining silent witness to its exploitation at the hands of its enemies. I, on the contrary, will continue to express my love for Pakistan by speaking up against its opponents, against those who tarnish its image globally and those who do not exemplify its true values.
Pakistan was meant to be a great nation. However, thanks to your silence, it is only moving backwards. Jinnah’s Pakistan has been hijacked by his enemies. As a patriotic Pakistani, it is my duty to continue to let everyone know that I disown extremism and intolerance that has plagued the nation. Like me, there are many others who chose to do whatever much (or little) they can to prevent our nation’s downfall at the hands of this menace.
If you chose to remain silent, therefore, by all means do.
But I’d very much prefer if you shed your self-righteous attitude and join me in being a patriotic Pakistani.
Will you?
EXPRESS TRIBUNE BLOG
Sectarian killings in Quetta
HUMAN rights activists have urged Pakistani security forces to take action against extremist sectarian outfits which have once again targeted Hazara-Shia Muslims killing 13 people.
According to media reports, the assassinated people were poor labourers headed for work at the local vegetable market in the morning of Oct 4, when targeted.
On Sept 19, some 29 Hazara-Shia people were killed in Quetta while travelling in a bus.
Using the same procedure as two weeks ago, the attackers forced the people off the bus, made them stand in a row and then opened fire killing 13 people on the spot.
Sectarian killings against the Hazara community have sharply increased after the release of Lashkar-i-Jhangvi chief Malik Ishaq from prison on bail. Ishaq has been reported to restart inflammatory speeches in Punjab soon after his release.
Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi said: “These are not random killings but demonstrate the deliberate targeting of the Shia by armed groups.”
He added that “recent attacks have predominantly targeted unarmed Shia Muslims in their homes, shops or while travelling, and even in their places of worship.”
Amnesty International has also reported that Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, a banned militant organisation, is operating openly in Punjab and Karachi and striking their victims at will in Balochistan and other parts of the country.
Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said: “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.”
Human Rights Watch has also mentioned that Laskar-i-Jhangvi operates with impunity even in areas where state authority is well-established, such as Punjab and Karachi. Human Rights Watch added that law-enforcement officials have been seen to look the other way during attacks on Shia and other vulnerable groups.
Human Rights Watch has urged the Pakistan government to direct the military and the Frontier Corps to protect those facing attack from extremist groups.
The holy month of Muharram will start towards the end of November and the potential for sectarian violence is very high, according to human rights groups. Continued failure to address the problem of sectarian violence will only exacerbate the general breakdown in law and order in Pakistan.
IRFAN HUSSAIN
London
DAWN
According to media reports, the assassinated people were poor labourers headed for work at the local vegetable market in the morning of Oct 4, when targeted.
On Sept 19, some 29 Hazara-Shia people were killed in Quetta while travelling in a bus.
Using the same procedure as two weeks ago, the attackers forced the people off the bus, made them stand in a row and then opened fire killing 13 people on the spot.
Sectarian killings against the Hazara community have sharply increased after the release of Lashkar-i-Jhangvi chief Malik Ishaq from prison on bail. Ishaq has been reported to restart inflammatory speeches in Punjab soon after his release.
Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi said: “These are not random killings but demonstrate the deliberate targeting of the Shia by armed groups.”
He added that “recent attacks have predominantly targeted unarmed Shia Muslims in their homes, shops or while travelling, and even in their places of worship.”
Amnesty International has also reported that Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, a banned militant organisation, is operating openly in Punjab and Karachi and striking their victims at will in Balochistan and other parts of the country.
Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said: “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.”
Human Rights Watch has also mentioned that Laskar-i-Jhangvi operates with impunity even in areas where state authority is well-established, such as Punjab and Karachi. Human Rights Watch added that law-enforcement officials have been seen to look the other way during attacks on Shia and other vulnerable groups.
Human Rights Watch has urged the Pakistan government to direct the military and the Frontier Corps to protect those facing attack from extremist groups.
The holy month of Muharram will start towards the end of November and the potential for sectarian violence is very high, according to human rights groups. Continued failure to address the problem of sectarian violence will only exacerbate the general breakdown in law and order in Pakistan.
IRFAN HUSSAIN
London
DAWN
Monday, October 10, 2011
If I Speak Out, 'They Will Kill Me'
Pakistan's Shiite founder wanted it to be a home to all creeds. Now criticizing its blasphemy laws could cost you your life.
By STEVE INSKEEP
Karachi, Pakistan
On Feb. 5, 2010, a bomb exploded in Karachi, killing members of a Shiite Muslim religious procession. Extremists often target Shiites, a minority in Pakistan. Ambulances rushed survivors to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, and the victims' families followed. Many were outside the entrance to this hospital when a second bomb exploded there.
The carnage changed the life of Bisharat Rehmat, who had nothing to do with the Shiite procession. His daughter was giving birth to a baby that day, and he was inside the hospital visiting the mother and newborn child. His relatives, however, were on the hospital grounds. The bomb killed six of them, including Mr. Rehmat's wife and 7-year-old daughter.
AFP/Getty Images
Two Pakistani Shiite Muslims mourn the day after the Karachi bombings in February 2010.
Mr. Rehmat, like his family, is Christian. I visited him earlier this month while many Pakistanis were thinking about intolerance and religious minorities—though not talking much about them. People spoke carefully after a judge ordered the death sentence for a bodyguard who murdered his charge, Salman Taseer, governor of the vast province of Punjab.
Taseer, a Muslim, had criticized Pakistan's blasphemy law, which he said was being used to persecute a Christian woman. For this he was shot in the back. Conservative lawyers showered the killer with rose petals. Just as the discovery of Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan raised questions about Pakistan's military, the public celebration of a murderer raised questions about where Pakistani society is drifting.
"It made me sick," Taseer's daughter, Shehrbano Taseer, told me in June. "If you have your lawyers, who are your supposed vanguards of justice, taking these kinds of stands, then it means your justice system is a sham."
Yet the justice system delivered. On Oct. 1 the judge in Rawalpindi declared that "no one can be given a license to kill." As if to say that even the death penalty was too lenient, the judge added a $2,300 fine.
Pakistan's moderate and liberal voices approved but spoke cautiously. Their muted reaction was partly out of skepticism that the sentence will be carried out, and partly out of prudence: The governor's son was kidnapped during the trial, and supporters worried that the wrong words could harm his chances of survival.
There is also fear. When I asked one elected official to comment, he said that if he spoke out, "they will kill me."
Bisharat Rehmat didn't talk about the sentence either. And he stays clear of the blasphemy law. "If I have an argument with anyone, I walk away," he said. He fears that someone might invent a claim that he insulted Islam.
The struggles of people like Mr. Rehmat can seem like a sideshow in a country where so much else has gone wrong. It is not a sideshow. While Pakistan is believed to be 95% Muslim, religious minorities are woven into the country. Moreover, the Muslim majority includes its own minority sects, like the 20% of Pakistanis who are Shiites. Just last week gunmen in Quetta shot up a busload of ethnic Hazaras, who are predominantly Shiite, killing 14. People who follow Sufi Muslim beliefs are also frequent targets of violence
Mr. Rehmat, a laborer in a textile mill, lives off a narrow dirt lane in a simple white house with a Christmas wreath painted on an interior wall. His family has lived in Karachi for generations, a reminder of the city's diversity. When Pakistan became independent in 1947, Karachi was majority Hindu. Most Hindus were soon driven away, though some still worship at temples in the heart of the metropolis.
Zoroastrians, followers of an ancient Persian faith, have been merchants in the city for generations. And the departing British colonial rulers left behind Christian institutions that remain part of the local culture. At the heart of the city is the white-domed tomb of Pakistan's founder, Karachi native Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who was Shiite. Jinnah gave a famous speech in Karachi in 1947, calling on his people to live as equal citizens, without regard to "color, caste or creed." Jinnah died a year later, however, and intolerance has intensified since the 1980s.
Despite the bombing that slaughtered so much of his family—an attack blamed on an al Qaeda-linked group called Jundallah—Mr. Rehmat told me he loves Karachi. "We are Pakistanis," Mr. Rehmat explained simply.
Karachi's minorities could be a tremendous asset to Pakistan. This city is a seaport and financial center, enjoying wide contact with the outside world. If minorities were fully welcomed into civic and business life as Pakistan's founder proposed, they would effectively become ambassadors. Their mere presence in places of greater prominence would compel people in Pakistan's arch-rival India, or in the West, to think differently of Pakistan.
But that is hard to imagine when it's dangerous even to talk about Pakistan's blasphemy law.
Even so, many minorities find quiet ways to contribute. When the bomb struck the Jinnah hospital in 2010, some of Bisharat Rehmat's children survived. His 13-year-old daughter Maralyn recovered from her wounds.
She had been attending a school where, she told me, teachers treated her differently than Muslim students. But after the bombing, sympathetic relatives found her a slot at St. Patrick's High School, an elite Catholic institution that has operated since 1861 and taught students of all faiths. St. Patrick's has produced Muslim politicians such as current President Asif Ali Zardari, former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, and even Pervez Musharraf, the most recent military ruler.
"I want to be a doctor," Maralyn Rehmat told me in English, smiling as she made the announcement. Becoming a doctor was her late mother's dream for Maralyn. If she makes it, she could end up treating patients at the hospital where her mother was killed.
Mr. Inskeep is co-host of NPR's "Morning Edition" and author of "Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi," published by Penguin this week.
THE WALLSTREET JOURNAL
By STEVE INSKEEP
Karachi, Pakistan
On Feb. 5, 2010, a bomb exploded in Karachi, killing members of a Shiite Muslim religious procession. Extremists often target Shiites, a minority in Pakistan. Ambulances rushed survivors to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, and the victims' families followed. Many were outside the entrance to this hospital when a second bomb exploded there.
The carnage changed the life of Bisharat Rehmat, who had nothing to do with the Shiite procession. His daughter was giving birth to a baby that day, and he was inside the hospital visiting the mother and newborn child. His relatives, however, were on the hospital grounds. The bomb killed six of them, including Mr. Rehmat's wife and 7-year-old daughter.
Two Pakistani Shiite Muslims mourn the day after the Karachi bombings in February 2010.
Mr. Rehmat, like his family, is Christian. I visited him earlier this month while many Pakistanis were thinking about intolerance and religious minorities—though not talking much about them. People spoke carefully after a judge ordered the death sentence for a bodyguard who murdered his charge, Salman Taseer, governor of the vast province of Punjab.
Taseer, a Muslim, had criticized Pakistan's blasphemy law, which he said was being used to persecute a Christian woman. For this he was shot in the back. Conservative lawyers showered the killer with rose petals. Just as the discovery of Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan raised questions about Pakistan's military, the public celebration of a murderer raised questions about where Pakistani society is drifting.
"It made me sick," Taseer's daughter, Shehrbano Taseer, told me in June. "If you have your lawyers, who are your supposed vanguards of justice, taking these kinds of stands, then it means your justice system is a sham."
Yet the justice system delivered. On Oct. 1 the judge in Rawalpindi declared that "no one can be given a license to kill." As if to say that even the death penalty was too lenient, the judge added a $2,300 fine.
Pakistan's moderate and liberal voices approved but spoke cautiously. Their muted reaction was partly out of skepticism that the sentence will be carried out, and partly out of prudence: The governor's son was kidnapped during the trial, and supporters worried that the wrong words could harm his chances of survival.
There is also fear. When I asked one elected official to comment, he said that if he spoke out, "they will kill me."
Bisharat Rehmat didn't talk about the sentence either. And he stays clear of the blasphemy law. "If I have an argument with anyone, I walk away," he said. He fears that someone might invent a claim that he insulted Islam.
The struggles of people like Mr. Rehmat can seem like a sideshow in a country where so much else has gone wrong. It is not a sideshow. While Pakistan is believed to be 95% Muslim, religious minorities are woven into the country. Moreover, the Muslim majority includes its own minority sects, like the 20% of Pakistanis who are Shiites. Just last week gunmen in Quetta shot up a busload of ethnic Hazaras, who are predominantly Shiite, killing 14. People who follow Sufi Muslim beliefs are also frequent targets of violence
Mr. Rehmat, a laborer in a textile mill, lives off a narrow dirt lane in a simple white house with a Christmas wreath painted on an interior wall. His family has lived in Karachi for generations, a reminder of the city's diversity. When Pakistan became independent in 1947, Karachi was majority Hindu. Most Hindus were soon driven away, though some still worship at temples in the heart of the metropolis.
Zoroastrians, followers of an ancient Persian faith, have been merchants in the city for generations. And the departing British colonial rulers left behind Christian institutions that remain part of the local culture. At the heart of the city is the white-domed tomb of Pakistan's founder, Karachi native Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who was Shiite. Jinnah gave a famous speech in Karachi in 1947, calling on his people to live as equal citizens, without regard to "color, caste or creed." Jinnah died a year later, however, and intolerance has intensified since the 1980s.
Despite the bombing that slaughtered so much of his family—an attack blamed on an al Qaeda-linked group called Jundallah—Mr. Rehmat told me he loves Karachi. "We are Pakistanis," Mr. Rehmat explained simply.
Karachi's minorities could be a tremendous asset to Pakistan. This city is a seaport and financial center, enjoying wide contact with the outside world. If minorities were fully welcomed into civic and business life as Pakistan's founder proposed, they would effectively become ambassadors. Their mere presence in places of greater prominence would compel people in Pakistan's arch-rival India, or in the West, to think differently of Pakistan.
But that is hard to imagine when it's dangerous even to talk about Pakistan's blasphemy law.
Even so, many minorities find quiet ways to contribute. When the bomb struck the Jinnah hospital in 2010, some of Bisharat Rehmat's children survived. His 13-year-old daughter Maralyn recovered from her wounds.
She had been attending a school where, she told me, teachers treated her differently than Muslim students. But after the bombing, sympathetic relatives found her a slot at St. Patrick's High School, an elite Catholic institution that has operated since 1861 and taught students of all faiths. St. Patrick's has produced Muslim politicians such as current President Asif Ali Zardari, former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, and even Pervez Musharraf, the most recent military ruler.
"I want to be a doctor," Maralyn Rehmat told me in English, smiling as she made the announcement. Becoming a doctor was her late mother's dream for Maralyn. If she makes it, she could end up treating patients at the hospital where her mother was killed.
Mr. Inskeep is co-host of NPR's "Morning Edition" and author of "Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi," published by Penguin this week.
THE WALLSTREET JOURNAL
The curse of the minorities
By Yaqoob Khan Bangash
Published: October 10, 2011
The writer is a historian at Keble College, University of Oxford
Everyone in this world is a minority in one way or the other. In a society, men are either the majority or the dominant sex, one religion outnumbers another, one sect has more followers than the other, or one ethnicity overwhelms another smaller one numerically. In civilised societies and mature democracies, the emphasis for the last few decades has been to recognise such differences and to take steps to offer equal opportunities to everyone. Belgium, for example, has developed a complex federal system where the three linguistic communities have maximum autonomy within the Belgian constitution. Obviously, these systems do not make everyone happy, but their evolution exhibits attempts by countries to evolve in ways so that no one feels like a minority — everyone feels, and is effectively, a full citizen of the country.
Pakistan is the creation of a minority complex. The Muslims in India were fearful of the numerical majority of the Hindus, post the British departure, and therefore wanted a separate homeland for themselves so that they could safeguard their interests. So, in the words of the Muslim League, India was inhabited by only two communities: Muslim and Hindu, where both needed separation.
What the Muslim League forgot in this ‘Two Nation’ theory was the fact that the Muslims were not a homogenous community. There were a lot of internal fissures amongst the Muslims and several sections of the Muslim community were oppressed and discriminated against. Differentiation on the basis of caste, sect and ethnicity ran deep amongst the Muslims of South Asia.
When Pakistan was created, only people belonging to non-Muslim religions were considered minorities. Therefore, Christians and Hindus became easy targets for anti-western and anti-India attacks respectively. They were also clearly discriminated against in the constitution, the civil services, education and in general. Hence, when human rights groups focused on ‘minority persecution’, the gaze easily centred on these embattled communities.
But in the supposed ‘one’ Muslim nation there were, and still continue to be, several other minorities too. They might be Muslim, but they too were discriminated against. The Hazaras of Balochistan (and Afghanistan) are one such community. They are Muslim, but they are Shia. They are Pakistanis, but they are of Mongol descent. These simple, yet critical sect and ethnic descent disparities have made them an easy target of Taliban’s attack, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are nearly a million Hazaras living in Pakistan who are easily recognisable because of their Central Asian features. However, their religious sect has made them liable for extermination in the eyes of some co-religionists.
Always a poor and oppressed community, rampant attacks on the Hazaras have become increasingly common in Balochistan. In an environment overrun by military and para-military personnel, the cold blooded killings of Hazaras just because of their religious affiliation has showed either the connivance of the government or their utter inability to control such acts — but most probably both.
The need for the immediate protection of the Hazara community is self-evident. However, what is of long-term importance is the recognition of the plight of the Hazaras, who live in constant fear, and for concrete steps to be taken to bring them into the mainstream of Pakistan.
Pakistan is a country which does not like to accommodate difference, and cannot tolerate diversity. Tolerating difference, of any kind, is unknown in Pakistan, and immediately one is labelled as the ‘other.’
Pakistan can only hope to climb out of this quagmire if we begin to accept everyone who lives, works in, and loves this country, as a full Pakistani citizen — or else most of us will only remain as embattled minorities and never full citizens.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 11th, 2011.
Published: October 10, 2011
Everyone in this world is a minority in one way or the other. In a society, men are either the majority or the dominant sex, one religion outnumbers another, one sect has more followers than the other, or one ethnicity overwhelms another smaller one numerically. In civilised societies and mature democracies, the emphasis for the last few decades has been to recognise such differences and to take steps to offer equal opportunities to everyone. Belgium, for example, has developed a complex federal system where the three linguistic communities have maximum autonomy within the Belgian constitution. Obviously, these systems do not make everyone happy, but their evolution exhibits attempts by countries to evolve in ways so that no one feels like a minority — everyone feels, and is effectively, a full citizen of the country.
Pakistan is the creation of a minority complex. The Muslims in India were fearful of the numerical majority of the Hindus, post the British departure, and therefore wanted a separate homeland for themselves so that they could safeguard their interests. So, in the words of the Muslim League, India was inhabited by only two communities: Muslim and Hindu, where both needed separation.
What the Muslim League forgot in this ‘Two Nation’ theory was the fact that the Muslims were not a homogenous community. There were a lot of internal fissures amongst the Muslims and several sections of the Muslim community were oppressed and discriminated against. Differentiation on the basis of caste, sect and ethnicity ran deep amongst the Muslims of South Asia.
When Pakistan was created, only people belonging to non-Muslim religions were considered minorities. Therefore, Christians and Hindus became easy targets for anti-western and anti-India attacks respectively. They were also clearly discriminated against in the constitution, the civil services, education and in general. Hence, when human rights groups focused on ‘minority persecution’, the gaze easily centred on these embattled communities.
But in the supposed ‘one’ Muslim nation there were, and still continue to be, several other minorities too. They might be Muslim, but they too were discriminated against. The Hazaras of Balochistan (and Afghanistan) are one such community. They are Muslim, but they are Shia. They are Pakistanis, but they are of Mongol descent. These simple, yet critical sect and ethnic descent disparities have made them an easy target of Taliban’s attack, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are nearly a million Hazaras living in Pakistan who are easily recognisable because of their Central Asian features. However, their religious sect has made them liable for extermination in the eyes of some co-religionists.
Always a poor and oppressed community, rampant attacks on the Hazaras have become increasingly common in Balochistan. In an environment overrun by military and para-military personnel, the cold blooded killings of Hazaras just because of their religious affiliation has showed either the connivance of the government or their utter inability to control such acts — but most probably both.
The need for the immediate protection of the Hazara community is self-evident. However, what is of long-term importance is the recognition of the plight of the Hazaras, who live in constant fear, and for concrete steps to be taken to bring them into the mainstream of Pakistan.
Pakistan is a country which does not like to accommodate difference, and cannot tolerate diversity. Tolerating difference, of any kind, is unknown in Pakistan, and immediately one is labelled as the ‘other.’
Pakistan can only hope to climb out of this quagmire if we begin to accept everyone who lives, works in, and loves this country, as a full Pakistani citizen — or else most of us will only remain as embattled minorities and never full citizens.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 11th, 2011.
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