Another death foretold? By Kamran Shafi

Considering how very incensed the Deep State gets the more you hold a mirror to it; and being conscious of the sudden torrent of vile abuse and, worse, dastardly and outlandish allegations presently being heaped upon yours truly, I wanted to write about dog shows and fat Labradors this week. However, this is the Land of the Pure, where ever newer horrors are visited upon us every single minute of every single day, some couched in words. All of them, you can be sure, spoken from on high: as if the sermonisers were standing on some particularly elevated moral ground, with us mortals crawling somewhere down there.

To come straight to the point, the following words in Lt.-Gen. Asad Durrani’s article “The second oldest profession” in this newspaper of May 29 sent a very, very cold chill down my spine. Said the general: “I do not know if Afridi should have been tried by a jirga or in a court of law, under tribal decree or under the country’s penal code, but I do know that for him, it is not yet all over.” And as if that was not disturbing enough: “I think Dr Afridi will get another chance to administer a polio vaccine; the next time in the Promised Land.” I ask you.

Who does not know that Dr Shakil Afridi, the man who helped our ally in the War on Terror find Osama bin Laden a few hundred metres from the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul, Abbottabad Cantonment, is a ‘Dead Man Walking’? He is in Peshawar Jail, which is as vulnerable to attack by the mighty Taliban as Bannu Jail where they first bribed their way in; then garlanded and honoured General Musharraf’s convicted attacker, Adnan Rasheed (who was sentenced to death) with a dastarbandi (adorning him with a turban), and then made video recordings of their great feat, rehearsed firing and all. We have to note that not a single person was even injured in that Great Escape in which nearly 400 prisoners, some of them dangerous terrorists, escaped. So, where’s the problem in ‘rubbing out’ Shakil Afridi in Peshawar Jail?

However, for a former head of the ISI to say almost gleefully what he said, Durrani certainly deserves mention. Specially, and I say this as someone who lauded his stand on the Mehrangate scandal: admitting that as a Pakistan army general he should not have done what he did, being such a senior person. Indeed, what he said about Afridi is way out of court.

And now to the jailbreak. There is not a squeak out of the leaders and the spokesmen of the Ghairat Brigades about that catastrophe. Remember that we know that Adnan Rasheed worked for Amjad Farooqi, who in turn worked for Abu Faraj al Libi and is also known to have been a member of these extremist organisations at various times: Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan; Harkatul Ansar; Harkatul Mujahideen; Harkatul Jihad-al-Islami in which he is said to have been this group’s pointman with al Qaeda’s International Islamic Front. Quite a beauty, what? Yet, not a word about the jailbreak and its links with al Qaeda, especially when one of the prisoners who escaped was accused of plotting to kill the then chief of army staff himself!

Another Pakistan

Pakistan Aslant: the two-hour version

by Chris Lydon

We’ve just put the finishing touches on a two-hour distillation of our long-running series of late summer and early fall, “Another Pakistan.”

The first hour explores the living history and swirling, murky present of “the country that could kill the world …” In the second, I’m probing the “Roots of Resilience,” the vital cultural and intellectual currents that we don’t hear about in the standard coverage, but that still run strong under the fractured state.

There’s nearly a month’s worth of strong conversation here illuminating for me the judgment that (1) Pakistan is not about to destroy itself, much less go away and (2) that Pakistan’s mutually-abusive marriage with the United States is not about to end, either. When our Pentagon accuses the Pakistan’s army intelligence of targeting American troops, and when Secretary of State Clinton is openly torn between war and peace initiatives in the tribal areas, count on it that the contradictions of the Pakistan story are with us for a while. But what’s the history unfolding here? How did it come to this? What do Pakistanis say?

So here is a start at the answers to these questions, gleanings from the artists, writers and thinkers who so often point the way through confusing and disturbing times.

Read more » Radio Open Source

Past glory? What past glory?

– by Harris bin Munawar

We need to reconsider our notions of Islam’s lost glory. What kind of glory was it? Of the four people we consider the rightly guided caliphs, three were brutally murdered. The murder of one was indirectly blamed on another, and that led to a civil war between revered figures of Islam that ended in the brutal murder of the Prophet’s (P.B.U.H) Grandson …..

Read more → View Point

ISI Chief Lt. General Pasha gets another extension! Will Supreme Court Intervene?

By Aijaz Ahmed

Excerpt:

Islamabad: Director General Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) gets another two years extension in his service, thus all four civilian and the uniformed top brass will remain in the office till 2013, sources in the power corridors revealed to Indus Herald today. However, whether the extension will be taken as a violation of the Supreme Court orders or the extension will bring the political stability in the country is yet to be determined.

Sources placed in the government have confirmed that Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani sent a summary along with his advice for the two years extension in the service of DG ISI Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, which is duly accepted by the president yesterday and thus his present tenure is again extended.

The second extension will start at the end of his first extension tenure that was awarded last year when he was about to retire, but first extension under the law was given for one year.

It may be mentioned that general Kayani, the COAS was also given an extension in his service and also in his tenure as army Chief, ….

…. However, the critical aspect of the extension will be reaction of the Supreme Court on the decision as it has already terminated number of high-ranking police officers including DG FIA, Waseem Ahmed whom the government of the day considers critical in the war on terror. ‘In fact every institution shall work within its limits, and should not intervene in the jurisdiction of any other institution’, said Faisal Raza Abidi.

‘We follow double standards as the registrar Supreme Court is already given two years’ extension by the CJ himself, while army chief is also enjoying an extension, but the civilian government is not allowed to give extension to any civilian officer because of certain other reasons’, commented a senior PPP leader. ‘It is the time now for the Supreme Court to take notice of this extension and set an example’, he added.

Read more : Indus Herald