Pakistan looks the other way as extremists glory in murder

Syed Fazl-e-Haider
Dec 9, 2012

The surge in sectarian violence in Pakistan is a symptom of the growing influence of the Taliban across the country. It has been a consistent strategy of Taliban groups: when they target an area, they first attack sectarian minorities.

Taliban militants have stepped up attacks against Shiites across the country from Gilgit-Baltistan in the north to Balochistan in the south-west. In particular, in Balochistan the violence against the Hazara Shiite community has been intensive and indiscriminate. All of the sectarian attacks on Hazaras in recent weeks have been claimed by Sunni militant outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has officially been banned by Islamabad.

The group is part of a loose-knit extremist network, including the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. Hakimullah Mehsud, the TTP's leader, maintains ties to Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and Sunni extremist groups including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The US has offered $5 million (Dh18.4 million) reward for information leading to the arrest of Mehsud, who has survived several US drone attacks since 2010.

Before the September 11 attacks in 2001, Pakistan's military had extensive ties with religious extremist groups, including organisations such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammed. For the most part, however, security forces severed relations with the extremists after September 11 and took a U-turn in Afghan policy.

Under pressure from the US, then-president Pervez Musharraf announced that lashkars (armed forces) would be banned, including extremist organisations such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

But what we see on the ground today reflects on the state's de facto tolerance of these banned extremist groups. Although Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has officially been outlawed, it is fully operational and carrying out its terrorist operations across the country. The government has so far failed to protect Shia communities, particularly those of the Hazara, which have been labelled as infidels by the Sunni extremists...Continue Reading.... 

Dr. Sima Samar's Speech after receiving Right Livelihood Award

NY Times ; Pakistan Reels With Violence Against Shiites

Declan Walsh/The New York Times

Many members of the Hazara Shiite community killed by Sunni extremists are buried in a graveyard in Quetta, Pakistan.
By DECLAN WALSH
Published: December 3, 2012 2 Comments

QUETTA, Pakistan — Calligraphers linger at the gates of an ancient graveyard in this brooding city in western Pakistan, charged with a macabre and increasingly in-demand task: inscribing the tombstones of the latest victims of the sectarian death squads that openly roam these streets.

For at least a year now, Sunni extremist gunmen have been methodically attacking members of the Hazara community, a Persian-speaking Shiite minority that emigrated here from Afghanistan more than a century ago. The killers strike with chilling abandon, apparently fearless of the law: shop owners are gunned down at their counters, students as they play cricket, pilgrims dragged from buses and executed on the roadside.

The latest victim, a mechanic named Hussain Ali, was killed Wednesday, shot inside his workshop. He joined the list of more than 100 Hazaras who have been killed this year, many in broad daylight. As often as not, the gunmen do not even bother to cover their faces.

The bloodshed is part of a wider surge in sectarian violence across Pakistan in which at least 375 Shiites have died this year — the worst toll since the 1990s, human rights workers say. But as their graveyard fills, Hazaras say the mystery lies not in the identity of their attackers, who are well known, but in a simpler question: why the Pakistani state cannot — or will not — protect them.

“After every killing, there are no arrests,” said Muzaffar Ali Changezi, a retired Hazara engineer. “So if the government is not supporting these killers, it must be at least protecting them. That’s the only way to explain how they operate so openly.”.... Continue Reading...

کمک حمید رحیمی به کارمندان تنظیف شهرداری کابل

'Why not love' Afghan and American Vigil

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