Indian awards for Aghan woman and Pakistani teenager

Both chosen for their work in human rights and women’s rights education programmes

By Pamela Raghunath, Correspondent
Published: 17:28 November 27, 2012

Mumbai: She was once considered Taliban’s most wanted woman, but Dr Sima Samar who is recognised internationally for her commitment to human rights, will receive her first Indian award on Wednesday along with Malala Yousufzai, the Pakistani teenage peace activist.

Like Samar, Malala, too, is a symbol of resistance to Taliban’s anti-education stand though Dr Samar has seen for decades the disintegration of her country right from the time Russian paratroopers landed in Kabul in 1979 to the years when the landscape of her homeland was ravaged by war and death.

Born in Jaghori, in the Ghazni province of Afghanistan, on February 3, 1957, the medical degree that Dr Samar obtained in 1982 could not be of any use in her country as she fled to Pakistan with her young son after her husband was arrested and became one of the 500 or more educated people rounded up one night in 1979 never to be of heard again.

Her work as a doctor at a refugee camp and the distress of seeing total lack of health care facilities for Afghan refugee women compelled her to set up the Shuhada Organisation and Clinic in Quetta, Pakistan, to train medical staff and to expand its branches throughout Afghanistan in later years.

The long time human rights advocate and former deputy premier in the interim government of Hamid Karzai is currently the chairwoman of the Independent Afghanistan Human Rights Commission.

“Dr Samar was chosen as the recipient of the 5th Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice 2012 because of her remarkable work in human rights and women’s rights education programmes,” Dr Abraham Mathai, founder, Harmony Foundation, told Gulf News. The Mother Teresa Award was instituted in 2005 to honour commendable work done by individuals and organisations towards social justice.

Mathai also informed that Malala was chosen for a special jury award in recognition of her courage and her determination to fight for girls’ education at such a young age.

“Her father, Ziauddin Yousufzai, wrote us a touching letter to tell us that he and his daughter were pleased to receive the Mother Teresa Award. But, he said, he could not come as his presence was required to be with his daughter who is under treatment and not allowed to meet any one.”

Malala is recovering from serious injuries in a hospital in Britain after a Taliban gunman shot her in the head on October 9. Her award would be sent through the Pakistan High Commission.

Other recipients of the awards include well-known writer Kuldeep Nayyar for his contribution to India-Pakistan peace efforts, Vinay Shetty for furthering the cause of blood donation, Flavia Agnes, a lawyer, for her commitment to women’s rights and fight against domestic violence, police officer from Gujarat Sanjeev Bhatt, for exposing communalism and the Shillong Chamber Choir for promoting national integration through music. The winners also include the Pandita Ramabai Mukti Mission for its work towards empowerment of women and NDTV’s Support My School cause.

Gulf News 

Explosives recovered, 5 held in Quetta

December 02, 2012 - Updated 933 PKT
From Web Edition


QUETTA: Frontier Corp has recovered a huge quantity of explosives from a bus in the outskirts of the provincial city on Sunday here, Geo News reported.

Frontier Corp spokesman said that FC stopped a suspected bus near Akhtarabad in the outskirts of Quetta and on search recovered about 4,000 kilograms of explosives, while five accused were arrested.

FC cordoning off the area has called for the bomb disposal squad.

The News 

India to invest in Bamyan

Posted by wadsam | November 21, 2012

India’s ambassador to Afghanistan has announced his country’s willingness to invest in Bamyan.

Gautam Mukho Padhya said during his visit to Bamyan with local officials that Bamyan is one f the secure places of Afghanistan offering more tourist attractions in the province than other parts of the country.

“I am here to investigate and research investment opportunities and humanitarian assistance to the people of Bamyan.”

The ambassador announced that India’s extraction work on Hajigak iron ore will begin next year.

“Our assistance to Bamyan is based on the mutual agreement between Afghanistan and India. India is determined to aid in the agriculture and education sectors of Bamyan,” said Mr. Padhya.

This is Mr. Padhya’s first visit to Bamyan province where he promised his country will build a school at Band-e-Amir.

President Hamid Karzai on his visit to India earlier this month told a gathering in the capital city of Mumbai that his country is ready for Indian investments in mining and other sectors and that India should not hesitate about coming for investment to Afghanistan, where the Chinese have invested billions of dollars in exploiting the mineral reserves.

The trip to India was aimed at attracting investments to the war-torn country that is relying heavily on its abundant natural resources for economic development.

Indian Commerce Minister, Anand Sharma, assured the Afghan leader that India would consider developing Afghanistan’s infrastructure, including highways, power projects, the Chahbahar port and ensuring energy security.

Wadsam

Two killed, body found in Balochistan

QUETTA: Two people, including a member of the Hazara community, were gunned down in firing incidents in Quetta and Barkhan districts of Balochistan, while a body was found in Machh district, on Wednesday. According to police, unidentified armed men opened fire on a person on Circular Road of Quetta and managed to flee from the scene. As a result, the victim received multiple bullet wounds and died immediately. His body was shifted to Combined Military Hospital for medico-legal formalities where he was identified as Hussain Ali Hazara. Police said the incident appeared to be a case of sectarian killing however, investigations were underway to unearth the real motive behind the killing. No group claimed responsibility of the incident. In another incident, a man, identified as Nadeem Jan, was gunned down in Barkhan by unidentified armed men. Moreover, on a tip-off, police recovered a body from the old bus stop in Machh and shifted it to a state-run hospital for autopsy where it was identified as that of Ejaz. Police quoting hospital officials said there was no injury on the body of deceased. Police have registered separate cases of all incidents and investigations are underway. staff report

Daily Times 

Student Killed in Melee at Afghan University

November 25, 2012 6:05 pm

By AZAM AHMED / The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Sectarian violence erupted on the campus of Kabul University on Saturday, claiming the life of at least one student and wounding eight others as Shiite Muslim students observed a major religious holiday, the police said.

The clash began Saturday evening as Sunni Muslim students tried to prevent their Shiite counterparts from observing Ashura inside a dormitory mosque. The holiday commemorates the martyrdom of Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and a revered figure in Shiite Islam. The confrontation escalated during the night, with students throwing stones at one another. University officials eventually sent in the police to break up the melee.

Some police officers said that as many as three people might have been killed, but only one death was confirmed as of Saturday night. University officials evacuated the school and canceled classes for the next 10 days.

Shiites and Sunnis represent the two main branches of Islam. Some extremist Sunnis view Shiites as heretics.

The government had hoped to avoid violence during Ashura this year after a series of bombings killed more than 60 worshipers in Kabul during last year's holiday. Expanded security measures this year successfully thwarted at least two suicide bombings during Saturday's processions, which drew tens of thousands of Shiites to the streets.

Aside from the melee at Kabul University, there were few other episodes of violence reported across the country.

While the Shiite minority, many of them ethnic Hazaras, suffered violent discrimination under the Taliban before 2001, ethnic violence has been muted in recent years. Last year's Ashura bombings were the work of a Pakistani extremist group known for attacking Shiites for their religious beliefs.

But last month, fighting erupted primarily between ethnic Pashtuns and Tajiks at Kabul Education University after President Hamid Karzai decided to rename the school the Martyr of Peace Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani University. Mr. Rabbani, a former Afghan president who was killed by a suicide bomber last year, was a Tajik.

Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
First Published November 25, 2012 6:01 pm

Post Gazette 

Afghan Clash Raises Sectarian Fears

Melee Between Shiite and Sunni Students Over Religious Custom Adds to Concern Over Coalition's Exit

By MARIA ABI-HABIB And ZIAULHAQ SULTANI

KABUL—Afghanistan's sectarian tensions boiled over this weekend when university students split between the two main Muslim sects attacked each other, leaving one dead and 27 wounded, and stoking fears the violence could reopen old civil-war fault-lines.

Students commemorating Ashura—a Shiite religious day of mourning—were prevented by their Sunni peers from celebrating at dormitories housing students from four of Kabul's major universities, both Shiite and Sunni students said.

The students say they were being discriminated against for their religious beliefs and called in reinforcements from nearby Hazara communities, which are predominantly Shiite. Hundreds of people, not all of them students, were involved in the clashes.

After Saturday's bloodshed, Afghanistan's ministry of higher education suspended classes at all four universities, including Kabul University, for 10 days, to fix the damage at the campus and to wait for tensions between students to cool, interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi said. Students living at the dormitories have been asked to find temporary accommodation....Continue Reading... 

Afghan Shiites fear decline in status

By The Washington Post

Published: Saturday, November 24, 2012, 8:36 p.m.
Updated 18 hours ago

KABUL, Afghanistan — For the past week, the Afghan capital has been draped with black cloth arches and festooned with huge colored banners. Mournful, pounding chants pour from loudspeakers across the city, filling the air with slow martial intensity.

The dramatic display is all part of Muharram, the 10-day Shiite festival that commemorates the slaying of Imam Hussein, a 7th-century holy figure and early champion of Islam. It is also a symbol of the growing religious and political freedom that Afghanistan’s long-ostracized Shiites have had in the past decade.

Now, as Western military forces prepare to leave the country by 2014, Afghan Shiites, most of whom are from the Hazara ethnic minority, fear their window of opportunity may slam shut again, leaving larger rival ethnic groups as well as Taliban insurgents, who are radical Sunni Muslims, dominating power.

“Everything we have achieved, our ability to come out and participate in society, has been in the shade of the international community and forces,” said Mohammed Alizada, a Hazara Shiite who was elected to parliament in 2009. “We are very concerned that once they leave, the fundamentalists will re-emerge, ethnic issues will return, and we will lose what we have gained.”

There are more immediate fears as well. Sectarian violence, historically absent from Afghan society, has been intensifying in next-door Pakistan and spilling across the border.....Continue Reading...