I love Shafqat Mahmood. He is most principled politician on this planet.

such complicated world. Earning from criticism. Blade of grass brought so close to eye that whole blue sky disappears. Can’t prove anything, can’t deny anything. Fuzzy and confusing.

How can you print this crap, even if its sarcasm. I am going to have to sue Mr. Malik for libel. If he ever mentions my name in any of his pieces again I am taking him to court.

Please make sure this message gets to him.

Meera, does this mean that you no longer oppose drones and Riaz bhai is lying when he calls you an anti-drone activist? Are you not the same Meera Ghani who wrote this anti-drone article?

Please don’t change your stance; your article is a big hit with my friends from Jamaat-e-Islami as it provides them with the intellectual tools to take on the liberal fascists
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Violence and Justice

August 12th, 2011 | 8 Comments

Meera Ghani

Lately I find myself losing hope. It seems as if we all are so caught up in our mundane day to day lives that we’ve stopped caring about what’s going on around us. I much rather believe that it is for this reason that not many decided to come out to condemn the recent illegal use of power and violence by our security forces because the other prospect is much too horrifying. I can’t fathom that our people actually agree with what’s being carried out in the name of justice. I can’t let myself believe that we as a nation endorse state terrorism and do not believe in due process anymore. But that certainly seems to be the case.

The culture of violence especially against women is growing in Pakistan and those who are meant to enforce law and order are doing the very opposite. The recent aggression against the curator at Nairang Art
Gallery and the harassment of devotees at Bahauddin Zakariya darbar just show how women are always the first to suffer during difficult times. Our strange notions of “honour” and “decency” make men treat women like possession rather than people. While many artists and civil society organisations are getting together to protest against police brutality this weekend there are many who thought the actions of the police officers were justified because the women weren’t behaving “properly”- like they are expect to. People choose to over look the fact that these women were illegally beaten by a policeman instead they choose to focus on what they wore and whether their dress and behaviour was Islamic or not. And because of that their assault becomes justified even though they had done nothing wrong.

Similarly I was appalled to hear some of my friends justify Sarfaraz Shah’s brutal murder by the Sindh Rangers. They felt no empathy for the young boy who was left to bleed to death in spite of his consistent pleas for mercy and to be taken to the hospital. They thought that the alleged criminal deserved the on-spot punishment that was dispensed in less than 10 seconds. Why, because they felt “criminals” like Sarfaraz Shah were responsible for making their lives in Karachi hell. They were being robbed at gunpoint for items such as cell-phones.

While I can understand why they are fearful for their lives and are frustrated about the rampant lawlessness in the city I don’t think we can let our emotions guide our response. We can’t forgo the basic principles and tools that democracy provides us. How can we allow the enforcers of law- the so-called guardians and protectors of society to disregard the laws of the land and deny citizens their rights? How can we as a society allow them to do the very opposite of what they pledge under their oath? How can we be okay with violence and extra-judicial killings that too in the most inhumane and gruesome of forms?

Similar apathy is responsible for many of our citizens considering drones to be the only viable option for dealing with the militants based in the FATA region. Sadly, the citizens of FATA have been condemned to become “collateral damage” in order to ensure safety and security for the rest of Pakistan. Neither do many care about what the citizens in Balochistan have been subjected to for years in the name of “national unity”. Their calls for freedom and right to self-determination are constantly ignored. There is a massacre taking
place under our very noses but we can’t seem to find to time to speak up. Their rights are not important because some are considered more equal than others. What concerns me is that life itself seems to have no value anymore.

How can we expect justice to be served when we deny others of it??? How about putting oneself in their shoes. What if you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? What if the security forces decided you deserved to be punished? There was no arrest, no trial just death by bullet. Would you not care about due process then? Would your loved ones not want to come out and demand justice be served? Would they not want your fellow citizens to come and protest your unwarranted and unjustified murder?

Sadly, we seem to have landed back in medieval times where brutality and violence seems to be the only laws of the land. We seem to agree with on the spot justice whether it be state endorsed or vigilante. I see
more people around me applauding moral policing and justifying violence than people calling for law and order. Our sense of right and wrong is so intertwined with our skewed sense of the “greater good” and “majority sentiment” that we seem to care very little about the violation of individual rights. We’re so obsessed with piety, religion, morality and other people’s sins that we forget the injustices that may lead to.

If we want to see things change we need to exercise and demand our rights and use democracy to our advantage. We need to hold the establishment responsible. We have to make sure that our voices against these insane injustices are heard by those that are responsible for law and order, those who prosecute and those who ensure justice is served. So please join the citizens who will come out on the streets in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad on the 13th of August to demand an end to police instigated violence through various performances and street art. Let’s stop playing the blame game, the solutions to our problems lie with us.

http://pakteahouse.net/2011/08/12/violence-and-justice/

I am so sick and tired of reading this rubbish by Jamaat apologists like Riaz Malik, Javed Khan and Meera Ghani. Don’t they have any shame in equating drone attacks against terrorists with the death of nearly 40,000 Pakistanis by those whom the drones are targetting. What other options are there to take on terrorists who are being supported by the military establishment and who are using innocent Pashtuns as human shields. To present this conflict as an extra judicial killing of Al Qaeda killers makes no sense. Here is a Newsline Blog that presents a more honest picture on drones:

Hiding Behind the Drones

By Kashif N Chaudhry 20 May 2011 21 Comments

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Down with the drones: Imran Khan has waged a war against drone attacks, and it seems to be resonating with Pakistani citizens.

Imran Khan promises to free Pakistan of injustice, poverty, homelessness, illiteracy and unemployment while empowering women and securing equal rights for religious minorities. But Khan’s critics label him a Taliban sympathiser who garners support by using the anti-US card when anti-US sentiments already are high. Whereas Khan staunchly opposes the drone strikes in Pakistan and repeatedly blames them for rising terrorism in the country, critics feel he has not been vocal enough in condemning religious fanatics across Pakistan. And while he has not protested against suicide attacks on the civilian population, he is on his way to lead a second sit-in against CIA-operated Predator drones, this time in the country’s financial capital, Karachi. His claim: the menace of terrorism (which the US claims the drones contain) can be uprooted within 90 days under his leadership if the drones stopped raining ‘hellfire.’

Is the US really the reason for growing terrorism in Pakistani society? Are drones targeting innocent civilians? Would terrorism be contained if the drones were to stop?

Drone attacks began in 2004. Only nine strikes occurred in the first four years of the program. Since January of 2008, however, there have been over 230 incidents of drone attacks in Pakistan’s north. But the history of terrorism in Pakistan precedes these events by decades.

From the 1986 Pan Am hijacking in Karachi to the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Pakistan has been implicated in many acts of global terrorism. Even foreigners have found Pakistan a fertile haven for terror. As such, many international terrorists in recent history have been proven to either have trained in Pakistan or been arrested on its soil. Here are a few of those names: Waleed bin Attash of Yemen who killed 17 people in the 2000 USS Cole attack; Ahmed Ghailani of Tanzania who was responsible for the death of over 200 people in the twin US embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania; Khalid Sheikh Mohammad of Kuwait who masterminded the 9/11 tragedy; Umar Patek of Indonesia who killed hundreds in Bali; senior Al-Qaeda operative Abu Faraj al-Libbi of Libya; and now Saudi-born Osama bin Laden.

Drone attacks motivated none of these people or events. The underlying sentiment was hatred of the West and US foreign policy elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world, as well as a strong desire to cause harm. It was also the extremist belief that non-Muslim countries are Dar-ul-Harb and the world should be in a constant state of war until the domination of Islam. Even though Islam forbids suicide, some radical influential scholars have justified suicide bombings to meet this end. These suicide attacks, which Imran Khan believes are the result of drone attacks, had been sanctioned by extremist clerics in Pakistan much before the drones visited us.

As shown in the graph below, not only can we not deduce a cause-effect relationship between drones and suicide bombings, we can clearly see that the latter have been far more deadly. (Text continues after the graphic).

Is there a link? The number of deaths in Pakistan caused by suicide blasts and those due to drone attacks, from 2002-2010. Sources: The New America Foundation, CPOST and the South Asia Terrorism Portal.

With an escalation of the war on terror, suicide bombings have risen but the real motivation for these attacks remains a radical interpretation of faith and the prevailing anti-American sentiment. And while drone attacks may have contributed to rising anti-US sentiment in some quarters, they alone do not represent the entire source of anger towards the superpower. Besides, it is safe to say that some political parties have used drone attacks to stir up anti-US sentiment to use as a weapon against the sitting PPP government.

Further, we cannot ignore the fact that hundreds of madrassas in the south of Punjab and in other parts of the country continuously indoctrinate children in this ideology, even recruiting them to become suicide bombers, promising paradise as the reward. Nor can we ignore that a spike in suicide attacks occurred in 2007 after the military operation at Lal Masjid in Islamabad – an operation that was carried out by Pakistani forces not US forces.

In Jihad in Islam, Maulana Abul Ala Maududi writes, “Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam, regardless of the country or the nation which rules it.” Fanatics take inspiration from such passages. Multiple terrorist outfits operating in the country also claim to find support for their actions in distorted interpretations of Islam. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the SSP, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jaish-e-Muhammad and many more have been active for decades in Pakistan spreading violence within the country and exporting it abroad. Extremist ideology continues to be preached in seminaries such as the Darul Uloom Haqqania (aka the “University of Jihad”), the same seminary Imran Khan visited for support on his way to a sit-in in Peshawar a few days ago. The senior vice-president of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf was also recently seen with Hafiz Saeed, the head of Jamaat-ud-Dawaa, the political and charitable arm of the banned LeT, condemning Osama’s murder. Osama was named a “Martyr of Islam” in the same rally.

Imran Khan does condemn all forms of terror, but why does he fail to protest against these terrorist organisations and against their distorted teachings with the same vigour he employs when railing against US drones? And, ironically, why does he instead seek support from them? Where were the sit-ins against the ideology that led to the assassination of Salmaan Taseer or Shahbaz Bhatti? What if there were no drone attacks, would Taseer and Bhatti have been saved? Would the thousands that celebrated their death and forbade prayers at their death suddenly have become champions of interfaith harmony and preachers of pacifism? Would stopping drone attacks and fighting the war on our own stop extremism?

The destruction from drones, as opposed to the thousands that have died at the hands of the militants, is considerably less. According to the New America Foundation, drones have killed a high estimate of 2,350 people, 1,880 being militants. Thirty-three of those were militant leaders. According to the Long War Journal, 1,879 leaders and operatives from Taliban, Al Qaeda and allied extremist groups have so far been killed with 138 civilian casualties. So, while not trivialising the tragic deaths of civilians, drone attacks have helped to eliminate hundreds of terrorists and prevent them from further tarnishing the image of Pakistan and Islam.

The Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy (AIRRA) interviewed locals from the areas hit by drone missiles. Their results showed that most locals saw the drones as liberators from the militants operating in the area. Farhat Taj, a member of AIRRA, challenged American and Pakistani media to provide verifiable evidence of their exaggerated claims of civilian casualties and argued that since the areas were inaccessible to the government and media, the Taliban exaggerated numbers as part of a propaganda war to win the hearts of the citizens. Her challenge remains to be taken up.

Contrary to the surgical strikes of the drones, military combat on the ground has caused a higher percentage of civilian casualties. Moreover, the drones that fly over Pakistani airspace once took off from Shamsi Air Base in Balochistan (though, there are reports that most now depart from Jalalabad, Afghanistan). As such, it would be more appropriate for Imran Khan to shift the sit-in to the GHQ headquarters in Rawalpindi. It would be even more appropriate to shift them to Jamia Haqqania, or Mansoora for that matter, places that have long endorsed extremism and spread it around the country.

Imran Khan claims he can end the decades-long menace of terrorism by bringing an end to drone attacks. To that, I respond: if the aim of your sit-in really is to end terrorism and not just garner political support, Mr Khan, then I suggest a shift in site… that’s all.

http://www.newslinemagazine.com/2011/05/hiding-behind-the-drones/

Meera, so this is how you deal with facts; hide behind an Islamist judiciary to do your dirty work for you and suppress any criticism against your hypocritical position. Shame on you!

How can you be such a hypocrite.

First you write against drones that are killing dangerous foreign terrorists who have held our Pashtun Pakistanis hostage – the same Pashtuns who have been deliberately abandoned by the army that was signing peace deals and funding these Taliban since much before the drones.

Then you take out a token petition for Ahmadiyas.

And then you belatedly add Shias to that petition.

Have you no shame when you treat killers and their victims equally- nay, the for the victims, you present some belated tokenism.