Posts Tagged ‘General Zia-ul-Haq’

The Supreme Court of Pakistan has just convicted an elected Prime Minister for following an explicit Constitutional clause (Article 248 (2)) – on the basis of an Ordinance passed by a military dictator, General Musharaf (Contempt of Court Ordinance 2004) – who in turn was empowered to subvert the Constitution by this very same [...]

دھائیوں کا نشانہ پانچ جولائی 1977، چھ اگست 1990، پانچ نومبر 1996 اور اب 2012 کی کوئی وارد کی ھوئی تاریخ کونسی ھوتی ھے اسکا انتظار کرنا پڑیگا یا پھر موجودہ گورنمنٹ کی دی ھوئی تاریخ کو معجزے سے کم نہیں [...]

The Pakistan army as an institution is a curious creature. A self-absorbed bulky white elephant, it can suddenly transform into becoming a raging bull in a china shop every time it feels the vast political and economic space it needs to move around in is being shrunken with the help of fences and boundary walls. Though it has lost almost all [...]

Source: Pakistan Blogzine A Shia Muslim scholar Allama Jawad Naqvi exposes the Saudi-ISI plan to revive a repackaged version of General Zia-ul-Haq Group (Religio-political fascists) in Pakistan In this post, we present a thought provoking analysis by a Shia scholar on the re-emergence of Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) with the [...]

Kab ho gi paida phir aik aur Benazir: A Tribute to Shaheed Benazir Bhutto (1953 - 2007) Note: I wrote the following tribute last year in memory of Benazir Bhutto. I am posting it again this year for my new friends and for countless admirers of BB to mark the 4th Anniversay of her martyrdom. This time, in both Urdu and Roman script and with [...]

The military eliminated all Bhuttos because Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto, Murtaza and Shah Nawaz Bhutto did not accept dictation but Asif Zardari, a non-Bhutto, is no different than Bhuttos and this is the reason of generals’ annoyance with Zardari. Generals are desperate to remove President Zardari through the Supreme Court as they [...]

Editor's Note: We would like to recommend to our readers this excellent article by Kashif N. Chaudhry, which was originally published in the Huffington Post. It is a succinct analysis of how our fellow Ahmadi countrymen are being persecuted in Pakistan on a daily basis.  In Pakistan today, the Jihadist factory created by the dictator [...]

Khamosh Pani is a film about a widowed mother, Ayesha, and her teenage son, Saleem, based in Charkhi, Punjab, which is coming under radical influence. The story begins in 1979. President Zia-ul-Haq has imposed martial law, & manipulated the interpretation of Islam, misguiding a whole generation of uneducated young people, needed by the [...]

Editor's note: We are pleased to post four excellent articles about Begum Nusrat Bhutto, her relentless struggle against tyranny and oppression, and sacrifices for the cause of democracy in Pakistan. While Begum Bhutto was mentally and physically tortured by Pakistan's military establishment and its right wing (e.g., Mujibur Rehman Shami in 1977) [...]

Ninety-nine percent of Pakistani (electronic and print) media (Urdu as well as English) is right wing, and 100 percent of it has run amok in fury over an honorary doctorate awarded to Interior Minister Rehman Malik by Governor Sindh Ishratul Ebad Khan. A newspaper editorialised its anger thus: “The huge smile on ‘Dr’ Malik’s face as he [...]

Kisi aur des ki or ko, suna hai Faraz chala gaya. sabhi dukh samet ke she’hr ke, sabhi qarz utaar ke she’hr ka. (They say that Faraz has left for some other land, Taking with him all the sorrows of the city, paying away all its debt.) The long history of political turbulence in Pakistan produced a long list of writers, poets and [...]

What is Federalism John Kincaid, Professor at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and director of the College's Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government gave a useful definition of federalism: Federalism is essentially a system of voluntary self-rule and shared rule. This is implied in the derivation of the word 'federal', [...]

  PART TWO Neither blindness nor ignorance corrupts people and governments. They soon realize where the path they have taken is leading them. But, there is an impulse within them, favored by their natures and reinforced by their habits which they do not resist; it continues to propel them forward as long as they have a remnant of strength. He [...]

One word that comes to your mind with intrigue. Qadiyani, doesn't come easy for its existential uncertainty in Pakistan. Yet, despite what the constitution says about them in derogatory terms, they are determined to stay in this country that has dogmatic laws made to appease the Saudi-funded and military promoted religious might. Irrespective [...]

The Saudis as well as their Gulf Arab cousins are arming the Taliban. This influx of foreign money and religious ideology is causing irreparable damage to the national identity and integrity as well as the centuries old cultural heritage of Pakistan Since its birth as an independent state, the Pakistani military establishment has focused [...]

The Supreme Court of Pakistan on July 15 released on bail Malik Ishaq, leader and founder of Al Qaeda-linked Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, on grounds of “lack of evidence.” The man had been facing a number of cases at the antiterrorism court in Lahore charging him with hundreds of murders. He remained in jail for 14 years while evidence against him [...]

In some ways the military follows the same occupant/conqueror mindset that was followed before 1947 and the British concept of ‘us’ and ‘them’ is still followed — only now it has been replaced with the ‘civilian and non-civilian’ binary The series of events that unfolded in Pakistan since the Raymond Davis incident in Lahore have [...]

You might be angry at Munawar Hassan of Jamat-e-Islami for saying that in order to avoid jail time, victims of rape should stay quiet.  I feel sorry for him.  He reminds me of Nana Jee. He looks like Nana jee.  Nana Jee was in habit of  using Islam to make his point, or to shut everyone up. I remember when mamoo (Nana jee's son, my mother’s [...]

Today, most leaders say they would have stood up defiantly (dutt jata) in the face of the American request to join its war on terror. Former president Pervez Musharraf is being abominated for kowtowing to the Americans; and General Parvez Kayani is trying to make amends by going dutt and teaching the Americans a lesson 10 years later. The truth [...]

Balochistan is quite fashionable these days, especially amongst the establishment wallahs, some of whom have been visiting the place, writing about it or even getting research grants to figure out ways to make the Baloch patriotic. There are two state-friendly narratives available. The first is, that all violence in Balochistan is a foreign [...]

“Bhutto” is no longer the name of an individual or of a family, but it is the name of a birthright and is the crest of a crusade, which always elevated its influence against despotism and prejudice, against paucity and bigotry - and against disarray and restiveness. To this day, the BHUTTO has become the name of that family, which stood [...]

For the first time the only leader of subcontinent Muhammad Ali Jinnah took decision to make a independent homeland for Muslims of subcontinent and waged a battle for their rights, He faced taunts of "British agent" from forefathers of same school of thought of today's mullahs; those mullahs called him British agent and character assassination of [...]

As US prepares troop withdrawal, Taliban's strong hold on border regions reveals Pakistan's vulnerability. "] By Mujib Mashal Parachinar, in Pakistan's tribal north west, remains under siege. The only road connecting this district bordering Afghanistan to the rest of Pakistan has been blocked by Taliban fighters since 2007. The blockade [...]

President Zardari called Nawaz maulana, with multiple innuendos: that he was the illicit political offspring of General Zia, that he was a covert abettor of jihadi elements in Punjab, and that he was aligning with Jamaat Islami in the AJK polls The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has finally decided that familiar is safe and to hell with [...]

پنجاب یونیورسٹی میں خواتین سے بد سلوکی کب تک؟ فلاسفی ڈیپارٹمنٹ پنجاب یونیورسٹی کی لکچرار سہرین بخاری کے ساتھ اسلامی جمعیت طلبہ کے غنڈوں نے اس وقت بد سلوکی کی جب وہ نوٹس بورڈ پرایک احتجاج کا [...]

The Pakistan army has extended an investigation into officers with links to the Hizb-ul-Tahrir, a spokesman said on Wednesday, in what analysts said was a long overdue move to root out sympathizers of the banned Islamist group. The military, which said on Tuesday it had detained a brigadier -- the highest-ranking serving officer arrested in a [...]

BENAZIR – I screech out to top of the volume, as much as my larynx could afford. Engraving the name “Benazir” – it fills my eyes with tears & breaks my heart into trillions. I ramble here and there, oblivious, hopeless and comatose in the boulevards packed with blood. Where is my Benazir?? I bellow, but there wasn’t anyone to [...]

The courts should remain defenders of fundamental rights and personal liberties. When the Facebook ban was issued, the court appeared to be playing to the gallery of populist radicals A long time ago, when I was a college student in the jihadi era of Ziaul Haq, I had a sitting with late Dr Eqbal Ahmad along with a few friends. We asked a very [...]

The piece examines the TTP's media productions and the movement's shift toward having its media distributed to jihadi-takfiri Internet forums via the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), a long-established jihadi-takfiri media and translation network. The writer argues that this shift toward GIMF distribution is further evidence of the TTP's [...]

A number of interrogations about the causes of extreme radicalism & terrorism in Pakistan occupy every psyche – from a lay man to the ruler of the state, no one considers his life secure in this country. Indeed, that is a genuine concern. However, rolling the folios of the precedent enables one to grasp some facts about its underpinning, and [...]

Editor's Note: We highly recommend this superb and comprehensive article by award-winning author, Mohammed Hanif.  In this in-depth article, Hanif has traced the roots of religious extremism and underlined the institutional support for this tragic phenomena. How Pakistan’s Generals turned the country into an international jihadi tourist [...]

It is difficult to argue with the inference that the purpose behind the creation and development of human life is essentially the march of human society towards high pedestals of civilization, through a continuing process. Human history thus far testifies that knowledge is the key driver of human development, enabling it to add value to civilized [...]

Originally published in the 'Daily AajKal'.

Originally published in 'Daily Aajkal'.

Takes a look at incidents of support for terrorists from within the armed forces and police Despite Gen Zia’s Islamisation, the promotion of piety in the barracks, and the support for puritanical movements that were allowed to organise sermons, the armed forces have still essentially retained a secular outlook. Institutionally, religion might [...]

Asia Times Pakistan Bureau Chief and TRNN contributor Syed Saleem Shahzad was found murdered in Islamabad on Tuesday. In a recent report for Asia Times and a TRNN interview, Shahzad reported on splits in the Pakistan military over support for al Qaeda. Collected here are his interviews for TRNN. Pakistan Post Bin Laden Saleem Shahzad: [...]

One book that many people in Pakistan must be reading is Anatol Lieven’s Pakistan a Hard Country (Allen Lane 1011). Lieven is a sympathetic observer of Pakistan, visits it repeatedly and painstakingly interviews all stakeholders of the state. He doesn’t believe that Pakistan is a failed or failing state. Therefore, when he points to our flaws [...]

عمران خان کا کنسرٹ نما دھرنا اور مشترکہ اعلامیہ عمران خان کے کنسرٹ نما دھرنے کے آخر میں تمام مذہبی جماعتوں ،طالبان ، چلڈرن آف ضیاء اسوسیشن پاکستان فور مودودی اور میڈیا میں شامل [...]

The United States and Pakistan are engaged in a billing dispute, with Washington rejecting over 40% of the claims submitted by Islamabad as expenses to fight al-Qaeda and other terrorists along the Afghanistan border. According to internal Pentagon documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the US is increasingly suspicious of what it sees [...]