(Tragic Incident) Slain Salman Taseer’s son kidnapped: DAWN NEWS

LAHORE: Footage of closed-circuit television (CCTV) appeared to be their best lead as police searched on Friday for Shahbaz Taseer, son of slain Punjab governor Salman Taseer, who was kidnapped in the morning near his company’s head office.

Shahbaz Taseer was driving towards the offices of the First Capital Group off M.M. Alam Road in Gulberg when he was intercepted in what had the hallmarks of a well-coordinated abduction plan.

The abductors who, according to witnesses, used a Prado jeep and a motorcycle, bundled the young Taseer into the four-wheeler and rushed away unimpeded.

Later, a gun supposed to have been thrown away by the abductors was found near a plaza not far from Firdous Market and police said his captors had probably driven Taseer towards the Defence Housing Authority.

A high alert was declared, internal routes and highways were sealed amid calls for swift action by both the federal and Punjab governments.

The Federal Investigation Agency joined the Punjab police in their search for Shahbaz Taseer, yet, as precious minutes passed, his whereabouts remained untraced.The police could not identify the motive behind the crime and nobody had claimed responsibility till late on Friday.

This was the second high-profile abduction within a few kilometres of each other in Lahore over the past two weeks. An American aid worker abducted on Aug 13 remains untraced.

Fahad Rasheed Butt, a police driver assigned security duty with Shahbaz Taseer’s mother, Amena Taseer, informed the Rescue 15 about the abduction at around 10.45am after he was alerted by the staff at the First Capital.

Some eyewitnesses had reportedly told the staffers that unknown men had taken away at gunpoint the occupant of the now abandoned car.

Model Town SP (Investigation) Shoaib Khurram told reporters there were four abductors.

As they took away Shahbaz Taseer, they left his cellphones and laptop and some papers that he had on him behind.

It appeared that there was a 25-minute gap between the abduction and when the police were informed about it.

Footage from a CCTV installed close to Shahbaz Taseer’s offices, which was later aired by a television channel, showed him approaching the spot from where he was kidnapped at around 10.19am. It captured Shahbaz Taseer’s sports car turning a corner and entering the street where his offices are located.

The camera was focussed on that particular spot and the scene of the crime was out of its scope. But it did show another vehicle coming close on the heels of the Taseer car and then hastily backing off. These images created an impression as if the abductors had been waiting for him.

Police said Shahbaz Taseer left his home in Cavalry Grounds for his office in his sports car on Friday morning. He was not accompanied by any of the two Elite Force guards he had been provided. One of the guards was quoted as saying that Shahbaz Taseer

Two arrested in Imran Farooq murder case: DAWN News

ISLAMABAD: Two men were arrested at Karachi airport a few days ago in connection with the killing of MQM leader Imran Farooq in London in September last year.

The suspects are said to be affiliated to a political party.

Officials privy to details told this correspondent that the arrested men had travelled to UK on student visa, stabbed Dr Farooq to death and then flown to Sri Lanka.

They were apprehended soon after they came out of the airport in Karachi after having travelled from Colombo.

It is learnt that they were arrested on a tip from British intelligence and other sources.

Their names have not been disclosed but the sources said that the president, prime minister and security establishment had been informed about the matter.

The sources said the arrests were made by personnel of the country`s elite intelligence agency with the help of photographs and videos provided by the British authorities.

The arrested persons have been kept in Karachi and investigation is in progress.

The accused had flown to London in August 2010 and the murder took place on September 16.

London`s Metropolitan Police and Scotland Yard had launched an investigation and arrested a suspect who was released later for lack of evidence.

Dr Farooq had co-founded the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organisation (APMSO), the parent organisation of Muttahida Qaumi Movement, with Altaf Hussain. He was deputy convener of the party, technically next to the MQM chief.

But he left the party in 2009 after developing differences over organisational matters.

As the tiger awakens: Mohsin Hafeez on Chinese Power over and Stakes in the US Economy

TOO much of a good thing is bad. So is the case with the kind of democracy espoused by the political structure in America these days. The recent debt ceiling debate in the power corridors of Capitol Hill smacked of the worst kind of politics one has witnessed in the history of the developed world.

The Tea Party thought it fit to bring the country to the brink of the most disastrous scenario that was averted at the eleventh hour. The looming threat of the largest economy failing to keep its obligations was just as unfathomable to us here as it was spooky to the rest of the world. Notwithstanding the deal, and more because of the process that preceded the ‘signed, sealed and delivered’ moment, the debt rating of the US was lowered a notch to AA+ from its premium AAA rating.

In the last over 50 years, the debt limit has been raised at an average frequency of one and a half times every year, without as much as an eyelid being batted. Why it had to unravel the worst form of political showdown in the process this time is beyond comprehension and it does not hold up the high values of the greatest nation on earth, of American exceptionalism.

The US has borrowed with reckless abandon over the last several years.

The bubble finally burst in 2007, bringing with it the Great Recession. Even the brightest minds in the country missed the depth of the issue. Those who got it were snubbed, being labelled as ‘Keynesian’ as if it were a dirty word not fit for public utterance. The stimulus during the first few months of the Obama administration was cut down to size, with the result that it became only a half-baked effort. The Federal Reserve kept lowering the interest rates, and then deployed the silver bullet in the way of buying in billions, a combination of mortgage-backed and other US treasuries, to keep the interest rates from rising.

China is the largest creditor of the US, with about $1.3tr in US treasuries and agency securities. The Chinese found the US to be a safe haven, and holding US treasuries in large amounts also helped them mai ntain a tight relationship between the yuan and the US dollar. With the economic structure of China moving towards consumption, partially to cater to the rising middle class, at the expense of savings,

Pakistan origin woman shot dead in US

BOONTON (New Jersey), Aug 17: 

A young couple of Pakistani descent was fired upon while walking their son in a stroller on a quiet street in New Jersey. The woman died, and her husband, a Harvard PhD student, was wounded.

Authorities said on Wednesday that the incident on Tuesday night was not random. The 3-year-old child remained unhurt.

Nazish Noorani and her husband, Kashif Pervaiz, were walking the few blocks from her sister’s home to her father’s house in this small suburban town when gunfire erupted on a dark street, authorities said.

Case for privatisation: By Shahid Kardar in Dawn Op-ed

IN an earlier column in this newspaper this writer had made a case for rearranging the politico-economic building blocks of the Pakistani state.

The article had argued for an early closure or privatisation of either management or ownership of not just the commercial entities in the public sector but also those mandated to provide ostensibly social services like education.

The latter plea was driven by concerns about the fiscal burden of these resource guzzlers on already strained government budgets and how they were becoming a potential source of systemic risk for the financial sector. This article will present the case for speedy privatisation, not on some theoretical principles but on the basis of irrefutable evidence to support its adoption as a key element of policy and structural reform.

One particularly bad example of privatisation, the KESC (a subject that requires a separate treatment and discussion), is repeatedly brought up not just by vested groups but also the general public to oppose the divestment of a host of poorly managed, loss-making enterprises.

This perception persists and continues to find supporters despite overwhelming information on outcomes following privatisation or the opening up of economic sectors like telecom, banking, etc that were hitherto closed to private entities. An array of stakeholders has latched on to this outlier example (the KESC), contrary to all available proof of the immense contribution of privatisation towards bolstering Pakistan’s economy.To start with, take the case of the banks. The lessons learnt from the recent experience with the Bank of Punjab and that of banks like MCB, Habib, UBL and Allied (the last three with huge holes at the time of their privatisation) until their privatisation began in the early 1990s should be a sobering reminder on the need to protect the interests of depositors and to maintain the soundness and stability of the banking system

Devolution the saviour – I

By Tanwir Naqvi in Dawn Op-Ed
The writer was the founding chairman of the National Reconstruction Bureau and pioneered the reconstruction of the institutions of state during the period 2000-2002.

A TUMULTUOUS month ago, Sindh was pushed back a century and a half to a system of bureaucratic rule through antiquated laws that the British had used for ruling their colonies for two centuries.

The motive of Sindh’s politico-bureaucratic elite for taking this regressive action obviously was to facilitate and perpetuate arbitrary rule over their own people. The Police Act 1861 remaining intact makes it evident that this remains the motive, despite the misleading impression being given that by disbanding the divisions and their commissioners the local government system under the SLGO has replaced the so-called commissionerate system introduced a month ago. This makes it imperative for people to acquire a clear awareness of what had necessitated its replacement a decade ago with the Police Order 2002 and its integration with the Local Government Ordinances 2001.

The colonial system was built around extreme centralisation of authority under six separate laws in one officer who had four titles — collector (of land revenue), district magistrate, deputy commissioner, and controller of local governments — and the concentration of 10 management functions spread across the political, administrative and criminal justice spectrum of governance.

The system’s colonial character was founded on the empowerment of a single officer, the district magistrate, with administrative authority along with the judicial authority to even hold trials in his criminal court, thus making him the arraigner and the prosecution, as well as the judge and the jury in his court. The 1973 constitution did away with this anti-people monstrosity, but allowed five years for the judicial function to be withdrawn from the executive magistracy.

However, it took nearly three decades to get implemented through the Local Government Ordinances 2001 and the Police Order 2002. Violations of the constitution inherent in restoring this executive magistracy, partially or wholly today, pose a stark challenge to our independent judiciary.

The police, headed by the superintendent of police of the district, functioned under the Police Act 1861 for performing three core functions: maintenance of public order; investigation of crime; and prosecution of criminals in courts of law. The ethos of the police under this law was not of policing the district as a service to the people; instead, the police was meant for protecting the colonial state and pro-state people against opponents of the state. Selective justice through tyrannical behaviour was thus inherent to the system.

The Police Rules 1934 placed the police under the ‘general supervision and control’ of the district magistrate. Yet when police excess called for judicial enquiry, the provincial government deputed the district magistrate to conduct it, despite the latter being a party to it as the boss of the police. This, in essence, is the conflict-of-interest ridden

Devolution the saviour — II Devolution the stabiliser

THIS second article focuses on highlighting the essence of the people-serving local government system that has (fortunately for the people of Sindh) been reintroduced, as well as how governance will be seriously hampered when this pro-people governance system will inevitably clash with the authoritarian anti-people colonial Police Act 1861.

The DC-SP based governance system discussed in the first article had evoked in the people the feeling of being left out from governance. The British therefore introduced powerless local ‘bodies’ in 1909, 1919 and 1924 responsible only for municipal functions in just the large urban areas.

These laws were cloaked in superficial national façades in the Ayub and Ziaul Haq eras up to 1979. And yet, even these municipal entities remained subordinated to the deputy commissioner or commissioner empowered as controller of local governments to countermand any executive order, resolution, byelaw, or budget of the local ‘bodies’.

The local government system devolved the deputy commissioner’s latent political power formally to elected leaders of the people. It de-concentrated the functions of most provincial departments, as well as the 10 functions of the deputy commissioner.

It decentralised these functions to officers of the district, tehsils and unions, who were empowered with the authority to enforce laws within the sphere of their respective responsibilities, and placed them under elected heads of their local governments. It created a system of formula-based transfer of financial resources to each local government along with mechanisms for both internal and external audit.

The law embodied a potent system of dual control over the local governments — the first by the people through their local councils empowered to legislate as well as to monitor their governments; and the second by the province through its local government commission and the provincial assembly.

The local government system thus empowered three-tier local governments, headed by approachable elected leaders, mandated to deliver or face censure or dismissal; and thus trained in wielding political and legislative power coupled with administrative and financial authority for shouldering higher leadership responsibilities.

Under the principle of subsidiarity, the service delivery function of the provincial government was decentralised to local governments, thus freeing the provincial governments to perform five major functions: interacting with the federal and other

How UK police lost control during riots

By Paul Lewis and Ben Quinn

LONDON: The Metropolitan police`s embattled public order unit, CO11, once prided itself on being the world leader in containing disorder. At 3am on Monday, its exhausted officers slept in police vans lined up in Enfield town centre, bruised, exhausted and, for the second night running, entirely out-manoeuvred.

For hours they had been chasing groups of youths around Enfield, Ponders End and Edmonton, in north London, using dogs and batons to disperse anyone seen looting shops.

Any doubt that police were unable to control the violence was dispelled hours later, around 5pm on Monday, amid further outbreaks of looting in Hackney and other areas of the capital in broad daylight.

The home secretary [UK minister of the interior], Theresa May, who flew home from holiday to deal with the fallout from the riots, will have asked commanders of the UK`s largest police force: how did you lose control of London?

For the third day running, CO11`s territorial support group (TSG), nicknamed the “Muscle of the Met”, suffered the humiliation of requiring support from colleagues in neighbouring forces.

Some will rightly claim police cannot hope to contend with hundreds of roaming youths intent on causing destruction and breaking into unprotected properties in the middle of the night.

That challenge has been exacerbated since disturbances started on Saturday, initially limited to one street in Tottenham and, later in the night, Wood Green.

The contagion that saw looting spread across a 16km stretch of London in the early hours of Monday poses obvious resource issues. Analysts argued the Met suffered from a combination of bad luck, poor intelligence and overstretched forces. But there may be more long-standing and tactical reasons for its failure to quell the violence.

In Tottenham on Saturday police were accused of failing to open dialogue with protesters who had gathered outside the police station following the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan.

“Years ago there would have been a lot of dialogue,” said David Gilbertson, formerly a Metropolitan police division chief superintendent at Tottenham. “We would have gone out of our way to ensure that the organisers of a protest group would have been brought into a station like that even if others were stood outside.”

It took hours for police to change from regular uniforms to riot gear, and even longer for them to begin almost half-hearted attempts at preventing looting.

By Larry Elliott: Guardian London

A trader at the New York stock exchange. The last four years have seen five key stages of the global financial crisis, with more likely to come.

From sub-prime to downgrade, there have been five stages of the most serious crisis to hit the global economy since the Great Depression.

Phase one on August 9, 2007 began with the seizure in the banking system precipitated by BNP Paribas announcing that it was ceasing activity in three hedge funds that specialised in US mortgage debt.

This was the moment it became clear that there were tens of trillions of dollars worth of dodgy derivatives swilling round which were worth a lot less than the bankers had previously imagined. Nobody knew how big the losses were or how great the exposure of individual banks actually was, so trust evaporated overnight and banks stopped doing business with each other.

It took a year for the financial crisis to come to a head but it did so on Sept 15, 2008 when the US government allowed the investment bank Lehman Brothers to go bankrupt. Up to that point, it had been assumed that governments would always step in to bail out any bank that got into serious trouble: the US had done so by finding a buyer for Bear Stearns while the UK had nationalised Northern Rock.

When Lehman Brothers went down, the notion that all banks were ‘too big to fail’ no longer held true, with the result that every bank was deemed to be risky. Within a month,

Kashgar Must Not Mar Ties

Pakistan China Relationships are strongly bonded and must not be allowed to mar: Mushahid Hussain, Chairman Pakistan China Institute writes on the subject

By Mushahid Hussain, Chairman Pakistan China Institute

The recent events in the ancient Chinese city of Kashgar and their possible fallout need to be examined in three broad contexts: China’s concerns, Pakistan’s track record in combating anti-China terrorists and extremists, and the emerging ‘Great Game’ in a region in which the strategically located, mineral-rich province of Xinjiang is a geopolitical centre of gravity.

Xinjiang, bordering Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics, has 17 per cent of China’s land mass producing roughly 40 per cent of its oil, coal and gas. The province’s economic underdevelopment has been reinforced by a cultural chasm between the Muslim Uighurs of Turkic origin and the Han Chinese population. Xinjiang saw the first signs of organised armed groups emerging soon after the end of the Afghan jihad in 1990. The biggest outbreak of violence was in July 2009 when rioting in the provincial capital, Urumqi, led to over 200 deaths and some 1,700 were injured.

Following the Urumqi riots, in May 2010, the Chinese central government announced the launching of a major modernisation and development plan for Xinjiang, with plans to pump in almost $100bn over a five-year period, with its centrepiece being the Special Economic Zone for Kashgar (similar to the one in Shenzhen, close to Hong Kong) to link the province economically closer to Pakistan and the seven other neighbouring countries that border Xinjiang. The Chinese initiative for Xinjiang also has two interrelated objectives: development and stability.

After the recent violence in Kashgar, local authorities referred to a leader of this terror group having been trained in Pakistan, a claim echoed in the semi-official English-language China Daily

One Province Leads To Many

By Asha'ar Rehman: Dawn Op-ed August 9, 2011

THE wish has been expressed, the slogans raised. The people have set off on the road to a new province, which will take some travelling and entail quite a lot of discomfort, not to speak of the pain of those who must view this as a parting.

All historical tours of Pakistan must begin in India. Indian examples abound in all our discussions. It is no surprise then that the new province debate is in part sustained by how the Indians divided their provinces. They divided them in the wake of Partition, chastened by Partition. It was in a way logical for the people of India to demarcate the boundaries when a partition had just happened.

The movements for division — or as it were, a coming together of small British-period states — on a linguistic basis was strong even in the early 1950s, and following the creation of a Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh just six years after Partition, a number of new states emerged on the Indian map in 1956. The principles set and constitutional cover given, it later led to the creation of more states. Pakistan, meanwhile, decided to go its own way in nation-building.

Religion was a given, and it used Urdu, in the name of unity of the people who lived in its five provinces. East Pakistan was told by none other than the Quaid himself that Urdu

World fails to create stable Afghanistan: International Crisis Group Report reveals

KABUL: The global community has failed to create a politically stable and economically viable Afghanistan despite pouring billions of dollars into the South Asian nation during a decade-long war against the Taliban, says the International Crisis Group.

The Brussels-based think tank said the United States and its allies still lacked a coherent policy to strengthen Afghanistan ahead of a planned withdrawal of foreign combat troops from the unpopular war by the end of 2014.

“Despite billions of dollars in aid, state institutions remain fragile and unable to provide good governance, deliver basic services to the majority of the population or guarantee human security,” it said in a report released this week.

Violence is at its worst in Afghanistan since US-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban government in late 2001, with high levels of foreign troop deaths, and record civilian casualties during the first six months of 2011.

Afghanistan relies on foreign aid for around 90 per cent of its spending, but many international donors are reluctant to channel aid through the country`s ministries because of a lack of capacity and rampant corruption.

Public sector corruption is seen as worse than in any other country except Somalia, and equal to Myanmar, according to Transparency International. President Hamid Karzai has acknowledged

‘He hit me first’: Article by Ardeshir Cowasjee

SUBTITLED ‘When brothers and sisters fight’, Louise Bates Arnes wrote He Hit Me First in 1982 on selected dos and don’ts for parents of children caught up in sibling rivalry.

The don’ts include “…act as a referee … encourage tattling … compare your children to each other … allow your children to play you against your spouse … take the blame for the way your children behave”. And the dos “…keep in mind that most children fight (a lot) … try and find out why they fight … separate your children more than you may be doing … use rules, keep them simple and specific, … do what you can to make each child feel special”.

This parental guide could well have been aimed at Karachi dwellers, who, in a manner of speaking, attained puberty in the 1970-80s and are now slowly moving through the adolescent stages. The ‘sibling’ rivalry of the communities of the metropolis, despite sharing a common destiny, has reached epidemic proportions, destroying the fabric of society and strangling the economic pulse of the city at a point when the overall financial situation of the country has bottomed. Each ‘sibling’ blames the others for the violence (he hit me first…) and excuses his own community’s retaliation as natural.

The MQM feels that Karachi voted for them. A study of the 2008 election results shows that despite receiving 34 (76 per cent) of the 42 Karachi seats in the Sindh Assembly, only 48 per cent of the registered voters of the city turned out. The MQM managed 69 per cent of the votes cast. In any case, ethical and committed assemblymen are bound to look after the legitimate interests of all citizens in their constituency, not only those who voted them in.

When Altaf Hussain directed his party members to stop

With some Arab autocrats, the goodbyes are longer

WASHINGTON: At a press conference on Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at length about the Syrian government`s brutal crackdown on protesters.
But she was suddenly reticent when a reporter asked directly whether Syria`s leader should leave power.
“I think I`ve said all I can say,” Clinton said. “I come from the school that actions speak louder than words.”

Syrian President Bashar Assad is under pressure, but Washington Might not want to see him immediately ousted, as hinted in Hillary Clinton's recent remarks

There have been words aplenty on Syria from the podia at the White House and State Department in recent weeks, as the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has intensified efforts to snuff out a dogged anti-government movement.
But a demand that Assad immediately leave power in Damascus has not been among them — in stark contrast to the position Washington adopted with other embattled Arab autocrats, namely Egypt`s Hosni Mubarak (toppled in February) and Libya`s Moammar Gaddafi (still there).
The Obama administration`s cautious use of language is more than a rhetorical curiosity.
It has left some observers questioning where Washington really stands on Assad, dashed for now the hopes of Syria`s still-nascent opposition, and highlighted how all Arab revolutions are not equal — at least in US policymakers`

Thai PM Yingluck emerges from Thaksin’s shadow

By Martin Petty | From the Newspaper

Yingluck Shinwatra; the new Thai Prime Minister, rose from obscurity to being such a popular leader that she snatched the PM post despite strong political opposition

BANGKOK: With her stunning leap from the boardroom to head of government in less than three months, Yingluck Shinawatra has shaken up Thai politics with a revival of the populist legacy of her exiled brother and former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
The 44-year-old businesswoman was catapulted from relative obscurity to stardom in a matter of days, and, with her good looks and down-to-earth approach, she quickly won over the poor who elected Thaksin twice and saw Yingluck as their best hope of bringing him home.
A political novice who shied away from the spotlight in the past, Yingluck’s grace and modesty while taking on her brother’s enemies earned her widespread respect, even among opponents eager to score points but wary of disparaging her.
Just 48 days before the July 3 election, Thaksin’s Puea Thai Party was in disarray. Thaksin was trying to organise the campaign from his villa in Dubai, unable to come home because a two-year prison sentence for abuse of power awaits him.
His decision to thrust his barely known sister into the spotlight looked baffling at first but

Hina Rabbani Khar Offers Hope to Pakistan

Shehrbano Taseer writes in Guardian UK

Indian foreign minister, SM Krishna, and his Pakistan counterpart, Hina Rabbani Khar, arrive for talks in New Delhi, India.

As soon as Hina Rabbani Khar touched down in New Delhi last week to meet SM Krishna, her Indian counterpart, #HRK and #Birkin – her initials and the name of her handbag – began trending worldwide on Twitter.

Across the border, reactions to Khar – who, at 34, is Pakistan's youngest foreign minister – were surprising. The Indian media gushed ("First they sent bombs, now they send bombshells"), while Pakistan's was less enamoured ("Does this expensively dressed minister represent a country which is under hefty debt?"). But Khar – Hermes purse, Roberto Cavalli sunglasses and all – very much represents Pakistan. And especially Pakistani political culture.

The rich-poor disconnect in Pakistan is increasing. A 2010 study estimated that 32% of Pakistan's 180 million population subsists below the poverty line. According to the Human Development Index, 60.3% live on under $2 a day. Wealth distribution in Pakistan is highly uneven and the richest pay little in taxes; Khar only paid Rs8,000 (less than £60) in taxes last year. So her ability to accessorise while millions in her country are homeless jobless and malnourished is hardly surprising. It is indicative of the gulf between the haves

China far west attacks expose violence’s homegrown roots

China said ringleaders of the separatist “East Turkestan Islamic Movement” (ETIM) who trained in Pakistan orchestrated the assault on Sunday that killed six in Kashgar city, Xinjiang region, where many Muslim Uighurs resent the presence of Han Chinese people.

Reuters

BEIJING: The biggest threat to China’s grip on its ethnically divided far western frontier comes from homegrown anger exploding in violence, not from Pakistan-based terrorists officials have blamed for the latest bloodshed.

China said ringleaders of the separatist “East Turkestan Islamic Movement” (ETIM) who trained in Pakistan orchestrated the assault on Sunday that killed six in Kashgar city, Xinjiang region, where many Muslim Uighurs resent the presence of Han Chinese people.

The Uighur (pronounced “Wee-gur”) are a Turkic-speaking people who form a minority in Xinjiang, and are culturally closer to ethnic groups across central Asia and Turkey than the Han Chinese who make the vast majority of China’s population.

Still, many observers doubt the attack was a blow from abroad by ETIM, which they said was struggling, in disarray, and even outright defunct.

Instead, the causes of – and possibly the cure for – ethnic conflict lie mainly within China, they said.

“All conversations I have had with people from China and Pakistan suggests a high degree of skepticism about the real viability of ETIM,” said Andrew Small, a researcher at the German Marshall Fund think tank in Brussels who studies China’s ties with

Asia’s top women keep it in the family — for now

This combo shows file photos of Pakistan's then-People's Party (PPP) leader and candidate Benazir Bhutto (L) casting her ballot during the general elections on November 16, 1988, in Naudero, Sindh province; Thailand's next leader Yingluck Shinawatra (C) gesturing during a press conference at the Puea Thai Party headquarters in Bangkok on July 8, 2011; and Philippine President Corazon Aquino (R) saluting as 1986 graduates of the elite Philippine Military Academy pass in review at a commencement exercise in Baguio, north of Manila, in March, 1986. — Photo by AFP

Thailand’s first female prime minister will this week join a long list of Asian women leaders whose power stems from family ties, with analysts saying the trend is a mixed blessing for equality.

Political novice Yingluck Shinawatra went from virtual unknown to election victor in a matter of weeks after her brother, fugitive former leader Thaksin, endorsed her Puea Thai party’s candidacy, assuring voters she was his “clone”.

Her stellar rise, set to be formally completed this week, mirrors stories from across Asia, with a collection of women whose family names — and often the death of a

male predecessor — propelled them to power.

The assassination of a husband saw Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike become the world’s first female premier in 1960 and, more than two decades later, thrust Filipino housewife Corazon “Cory” Aquino into the limelight.

In India, Indira Gandhi inherited leadership from her father, Jawaharlal Nehru —

The land between KRH and HRK (Hina Rabbani Khar)

By : Asha' Rehman
The Indian audiences have been treated to many Pakistani images between Hina Rabbani Khar (already considered worthy of the ‘HRK’ acronym) and Raj Kapoor’s Khush Rang Heena (KRH). I wouldn’t say that they represent two opposite sides of Pakistan. Only to my mind they do signify two opposing Indian approaches to locating the lost Pakistani cousin.
Pakistani perceptions of India are hard to change. Two years after I made my last trip to India, many Pakistanis I meet still wonder if I am speaking the truth when I tell them about the ready friends I found myself surrounded by across the Wagha.

Between Raj Kapoor’s Khush Rang Hina and Hina Rabbani Khar, my Indian friends have essentially been busy in showing off parts of Pakistan that sell to the Indian market - AP Photo

I can see that some of these Pakistanis find it hard to believe how a Pundit who wore a pleasant smile and sported Jeetendra-white patent shoes could take us on a trip through my grandfather’s village. The Pakistanis are perplexed – should I say a wee bit disappointed? – that I never ran into the standard notorious enemy in India. And yes they are amused and patriotically pleased when I relate to them how my little son’s inborn prejudice for the Pakistani flag gave his grownup minders a few anxious moments during that trip.
Since we live in Lahore and away from the flag-infested life in a Kati Pahari or Lyari or an Azizabad, the only flags my younger son, now 5, is familiar with happens to be the national flag of Pakistan. To his uncluttered mind that is the only flag that exists in the world, the result being that over time he has developed this little habit of greeting all flags with the chant of “Pakistan zindabad”.
Pakistan zindabad — This is precisely how he reacted at one instance in India, his inspiration a few flags fluttering atop a Hindu mandir.  Back home, there have been occasions where I as a proud father have been made to feel as if, short of installing the Pakistani flag on Laal Qila in Dilli,

A bureaucracy trampled

By Cyril Almeida


MEMORIES can be tricky sometimes, so let’s take a trip down memory lane.
“The chief minister was in a strident mood. He made it clear that the agitation launched by the MRD but actually spearheaded by the PPP would not be allowed to succeed. He reminded us (Punjab commissioners) that there was a long queue of officers waiting to become commissioners, DIGs, deputy commissioners and SPs and that anyone found less than enthusiastic about the ‘political’ dimension of his work would be shunted out.”
The chief minister in question? Nawaz Sharif.
Yep, the same Sharif who has been urging bureaucrats to follow their conscience and the letter of the law in recent days wasn’t quite so charitable back when he was chief minister of Punjab in 1986.
Aminullah Chaudhry, a bureaucrat who joined the Civil Service of Pakistan in 1967 and rose to the senior ranks of the
bureaucracy until his arrest as one of the ‘hijackers’ of the Musharraf plane in 1999 before turning approver and helping secure a conviction against his patron, Nawaz Sharif, has done all of us a favour by putting in black and white how the bureaucracy has, over the decades, been used and abused by politicians and by cunning and conniving bureaucrats to enhance their wealth and status.
At times, it’s difficult to decide whether Chaudhry’s book, Political Administrators (OUP 2011), makes for prosaic or wretched reading.
“Despite my (Chaudhry’s) best efforts to humour him, the behaviour of Chaudhry Sher Ali, mayor of Faisalabad, became increasingly unbearable … I finally had a detailed talk with him in order to ascertain what his problem was … He was quite frank in admitting that he had ‘invested’ considerable sums of money in the process of getting elected as mayor and he now wished to ‘recoup’ his losses by taking a number of administrative initiatives. He made it a point to highlight his family relationship with the chief minister (Nawaz Sharif) and the fact that he meant to exploit it, if I stood in the way,” writes Chaudhry, who was then commissioner of

IMP: US, Pakistan heading towards confrontation over N-arms issues

WASHINGTON: The United States and Pakistan are heading towards yet another confrontation, perhaps consequentially more devastating than all previous disputes, as the Obama administration prepares to persuade Islamabad to halt the production of nuclear bomb materials.
Recent reports in the US media suggest that the UN General Assembly in New York next month will be the venue for this new push and the US has the blessings of four declared nuclear powers for its move.
Also on Wednesday, the NBC News channel reported that the US was preparing for “the worst-case scenario of attempting to snatch Pakistan`s 100-plus nuclear weapons if it feared they were about to fall into the wrong hands”.
The channel quoted former president Pervez Musharraf as warning that this “would be a disastrous miscalculation, as such an incursion would lead to `total confrontation` between the United States and Pakistan”.
Current and former US officials, however, told NBC News that “ensuring the security of Pakistan`s nuclear weapons has long been a high national security priority, even before the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, and that plans have been drawn up for dealing with worst-case scenarios in Pakistan”.
But the expected confrontation in New York has nothing to do with any secret plan to snatch Pakistan`s nukes. The United States will launch an open move with support from other powers to force Pakistan to sign the Fissile Material Cutoff
Treaty.
The US media reported that the Obama administration had won China`s support for finalising the FMCT. At a recent conference in Paris, Russia, France and Britain all declared nuclear powers like China – also supported the US plan.
It is, however, not clear if China would back the move to cap Pakistan`s nuclear capability and thus allow India to become the sole nuclear power in South Asia.
The US and its allies are seeking an agreement by September and then go to the UN General Assembly with a joint plan for starting talks on the

Pakistan And The FMCT By Ikram Sehgal

On December 16, 1993, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for the “negotiations of ‘a non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”. Since then, negotiations for the fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT) continue to be stalled on various issues.
The US contributed to the stalemate by refusing to accept international mechanisms for verification and insisting that National Technical Means (NTMs) were adequate to ensure compliance. The Obama Administration broke the impasse last year by its pledge to support international verification.
Fundamental differences between the 65 members of the Conference on Disarmament (CD) on the purpose and scope of the FMCT have failed to evolve its final draft. Every member has the right of veto, countries have the right to halt negotiations; if the national interests of any member country is targeted the next stage is not possible. Many members question whether it would be a measure of nuclear non-proliferation or would it address the

Court martial of three high ranking officials underway in Mehran base attack case

August 4, 2011; Express Tribune

KARACHI: A 10 member naval panel has started the court martial of three high ranking naval officers over the PNS Mehran base attack following the submission of an investigation report.

According to Express 24/7 correspondent Sabin Agha, the court martial had been ordered a week ago against former PNS Mehran base commander, Commodore Raja Tahir, Commander Ibrar and Lt. Commander Israr in based upon the findings of the investigation report.

13 people – including 11 navy and one Rangers personnel were killed in the most brazen terrorist assault on the naval headquarters on May 22. Four terrorists who had attacked the base and managed to destroy two P-3C Orion surveillance aircraft, were also killed in the ensuing operation.

The investigation team led by Rear Admiral Tehseenullah Khan, had looked into various aspects of the attack at PNS Mehran and had submitted its findings to the Naval high command.

Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/223818/court-martial-of-three-high-ranking-officials-underway-in-mehran-base-attack-case/

IMP: CIA ignored ambassador’s plea on drone attack timings: DAWN Report

People of Pakistan protesting American Drone Strikes in Pakistan's territory, here they are especially enraged by a strike the next day of releasing Raymond Davis

ISLAMABAD: The American ambassador to Islamabad phoned Washington with an urgent plea: Stop an imminent CIA drone strike against militants on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border. He feared the timing of the attack would further damage ties with Islamabad, coming only a day after the government grudgingly freed a CIA contractor held for weeks for killing two Pakistanis.

Ambassador Cameron Munter’s rare request—disclosed to The Associated Press by several US officials—was forwarded to the head of the CIA, who dismissed it. US officials said Leon Panetta’s decision was driven by anger at Pakistan for imprisoning Raymond Davis for so long and a belief that the militants being targeted were too important to pass up.

The deadly March 17 attack helped send the US-Pakistan relationship into a tailspin from which it has not recovered. The timing of the strike—and others that followed—outraged Pakistani officials, complicating US efforts to win Pakistani cooperation on the Afghan war and retain support for the drone programme.

Newly revealed details of the drone raids were provided by US and Pakistani officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the programme.

Among them were attacks that followed an April visit by Pakistan’s spy chief to Washington as well as trips here by Sen. John Kerry and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton after the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani military town in May.

Seven years into a secret programme that has killed scores of Al Qaeda and

'Hina Charms Indian Papers'

New Delhi: A flurry of flattering headlines yesterday greeted Pakistan's 34-year-old first woman foreign minister.

Hina Rabbani Khar, the news and youngest, 34 years old, Pakistani Foreign Minister, with her 79 years old Indian counterpart SM Krishna 

Hina Rabbani Khar's picture adorned the front pages of most Indian newspapers.

‘Pak Puts On Its Best Face', said The Times of India, the biggest-selling English-language daily, while mass circulation Hindi newspaper Navbharat Times said India was 'sweating over the model-like minister'.

 

‘Pak bomb lands in India', joked the Mumbai Mirror.

The Mail Today tabloid devoted space to Khar's choice of outfit and her fashion sense.

'Tasteful accessories — Roberto Cavalli sunglasses, oversized Hermes Birkin bag and classic pearl jewellery — added a hint of glamour to her look,' it said.

The Telegraph drew comparisons between Khar and her 79-year-old counterpart S.M. Krishna.

'In the unkind world of adjectives, the odds are stacked against SMK and in favour of HRK,' it said, using the ministers' initials. 'Khar carries with ease descriptions such as ‘stunning' and ‘petite'.'

India's style mavens estimate that her accessories alone -- a pearl necklace, Birkin bag and Cavalli sunglasses among them -- probably cost her upwards of $30,000,

The edge of reason: HM

By Hajra Mumtaz

THE way the Pakistani hive mind works can often leave you with the feeling that either you yourself are mad, or everybody else is.

Consider the word that has recently been doing the rounds: that the army must somehow, constitutionally and without initiating a coup, save the country. Are we crazy? True, there are a formidable number of challenges facing us — not that that is anything new.

From an unwieldy and seemingly escalating war with the obscurantists variously labelled as ‘terrorists’, ‘militants’ and ‘insurgents’ to a tanking economy, power shortages and the crisis of the flood-affected and the internally displaced, Pakistan is facing a host of issues of the sort that would deflate the optimist wearing even the rosiest of rose-tinted spectacles.

But what is the army, with its boots and guns and with its hands full, meant to do about this? Ask someone making this suggestion and they tend to do the metaphorical equivalent of shuffling their feet in embarrassment, grumbling about extraordinary times dictating extraordinary measures and how “somebody has to do something”. Such murmurings recently came to a head in certain sections of the media but they’re nothing new, really.

Since this phase of Pakistan’s flirtation with democracy began, sections of a shadowy ‘civil society’ have been mumbling about Pakistan being unfit for civilian rule — i.e. this country’s people need the stick, not the carrot — and about the ruling parties being unfit to rule. This is the same ‘civil society’, incidentally, that historically has refused to vote or participate much in politics and, most ironically, heaved itself out of its armchair only to boo the most recent of Pakistan’s civic-minded military rulers.

The basic trouble with a number of Pakistanis is that their memories are too

---

short. Disconnected from the past, having learnt few lessons and even fewer truths, we float in an endless present, severed from history or context and therefore living in a present shorn of meaning.

We treat every crisis as a stand-alone affront, refusing to look at its roots and flailing ineffectively instead at its fruit, and then being flummoxed by the fact that a new shoot has sprung up elsewhere. As a society, generally, we try to understand the present through lots of single-frame ‘nows’, and become frustrated when the meaning that looking at the whole reel would produce is not forthcoming.

It seems that four crippling bouts of military takeovers have not been enough to make it clear to us, once and for all, that the tin hats’ exit leaves us worse off, and with even more systemic issues than we had before. Forget history, even the memory of events in our own lifetimes, just a few years ago, tends to evaporate from our minds.

Take the power crisis that is the first thing on everybody’s minds these days. If I had a rupee for each time I’ve heard someone, from drawing-room activists to people in shops and on the streets or being interviewed on television, say that we had electricity during the Musharraf years — well, I’d be quite rich by now, even while factoring in inflation. The implication is that Musharraf gave us electricity, the present government took it away.

Yes, there was far less loadshedding then. But did the present government start its time in office by shutting down power plants and thereby creating the crisis?

Rationally, we have no electricity now because for nearly a decade, nobody did much to cater to the future needs of a growing population, expanding industry and increasing urbanisation. There was little investment in the power-generation infrastructure and next to no planning. The result, which anybody could have guessed, is that now there is simply not enough to go around.

While bemoaning their fate today, how many people bother to remember that back in the 1990s, Pakistan had a surfeit of electricity and there was talk of selling it to India?

Pakistan’s tragedy is, and always has been, the tendency to reset to a baseline mode of existence which involves perpetually taking two steps back for each one forward, and that too with a unique variety of muddled thinking in which anything that is not a quick-fix solution is not worth considering.

That explains why there is such a widespread tendency to view democracy as some sort of magic wand which, if waved even once, will without further ado solve all our problems. And that, in turn, is the reason that a lot of people are especially critical of this government and the mess that it is overseeing.

Democracy has failed us, goes the line of thinking, because, see, we have it and yet our problems are only multiplying.

Obviously, democracy doesn’t work. Bring on the tin hats.

But democracy is not a goal in and of itself, obviously, and neither is it the sacred cow that many people view it as. It is incredible that one has to explain the fact that it is a process, but one does. Democracy allows you to vote in the people of your choice, and if the choice is only between the devil and the deep blue sea, then so be it.

They can carry on doing the damage that they do and in five years’ time, we’ll be wiser and can refuse to vote for them.

Dictatorships, on the other hand, you’re stuck with. Demand of any general in the presidency, ‘You and whose army?’, and all

he has to do is point out of the window.

Many of us Pakistanis, with our short memories and desire for instant solutions, do not see this. And because we fail to learn from history, we live in an endless cycle of making the same mistakes over and over again.

Source: Dawn Aug 1, 2011 http://www.dawn.com/2011/08/01/the-edge-of-reason.html