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January 28th, 2008 Source: Dawn Op-Ed by Shahzad Roy When I was 10 years old, I saw on the nine o'clock news on PTV a woman with a dupatta draped round her head saying, "Pakistan tareekh kay aik naazuk mor say guzar raha hai." Then I turned 20 and again saw a woman, this time not wearing a dupatta on her head, saying with eloquence on the nine o'clock news, "Pakistan tareekh kay aik naazuk mor say guzar raha hai". Déjà vu… why? I tried to analyse the situation to find out how come Pakistan is still stuck at the naazuk mor even after the passage of many long years. I reached the conclusion that 50 per cent of our knowledge lies in asking the right question. Government functionaries, intelligentsia, armed forces, critics, human rights activists and, for that matter, all stakeholders ask questions. But they end up slinging mud at each other, for the simple reason that the questions they ask are never right in the first place. The question usually asked is:...

PARIS May 04, 2009 The worldly French and British who are taught history and read books are looking with wry amusement and some pity on the Americans who are now gripped by a renewed bout of Taliban terror. About ten days ago, a bunch of lightly-armed Pashtun tribesmen rode down from the Malakand region on motorbikes and pickup trucks and briefly swaggered around Buner, only 100 km from Pakistan's capitol, Islamabad. Hysteria erupted in Washington. `The Taliban are coming. The Taliban are coming!' Hillary Clinton, still struggling through foreign affairs 101, warned the scruffy Taliban tribesmen were a global threat. Pakistan's generals dutifully followed Washington's orders by attacking the tribal miscreants in Buner who failed to obey the American Raj. Over a hundred people were killed, almost all innocent civilians, and thousands of refuges fled the government bombing and gunfire. It would have been helpful had the anguished Mrs. Clinton read page 30 of my bo...

Mr. Obama used a domestic event to 'accidentally' declare war on Pakistan. Now his team is trying to encourage the Pakistani military to seize power. The Americans destroyed Pakistan's stability through the Benazir-Musharraf deal in 2007. They are doing it again. Here is the easiest way of telling the Americans to: Lay off, stop lecturing us on India, stop supporting separatism, and mend your ways in Afghanistan. By AHMED QURAISHI Friday, 1 May 2009. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan —There is not a single towering personality in the Pakistani landscape today, with enough credibility, strong personality and effective communication skills, to stand up and tell U.S. President Barack Obama: You are a liar. It is not difficult to respond to the entire American psy-ops on Pakistan, which are built on half-truths, disinformation and in some cases outright lies. This campaign is successful mainly because of the broad influence of the U.S. media in setting the world news agenda. Before listing t...

o The manufacturing and deployment in Peshawar was done in a record time, one of the shortest time lines in the history of aviation. o Now the Sri Lankans can have as many planes they want to fight the Indian sponsored Tamil terrorists. And the Middle Eastern Air Forces can begin flying the JF-17 Thunders without begging the U.S. And the small countries of Africa can own their own JF-17 Thunders without selling their souls to the Europeans. o And it's not just the JF-17 Thunder. The success story of Pakistani ingenuity and the will to survive repeated American arms embargos and Indian aggression goes far beyond this single feat. Since the uncertain days of Independence in 1947, no other country has come so far in defense production in such a short period of time. By MOIN ANSARI Tuesday, 28 April 2009. WASHINGTON, D.C.—The impact of the JF-17 Thunder deployment can be heard far beyond Islamabad and Peshawar. Pakistan has now joined the ranks of the very few count...

The Pakistani intelligence report released by The News confirms two things: It is time for Pakistan to take punitive measures against India and stop allowing India the use of Pakistani transit and air routes pending the Lahore probe and, two, that the U.S.-installed government in Islamabad facilitated the attack on the Sri Lankan team first by ignoring the intelligence warnings and then by trying to protect India after the attack. Considering that Pakistan is supporting Sri Lanka against the Indian-sponsored insurgency in that country, the actions by the PPP government raise disturbing questions . By AHMED QURAISHI Thursday, 5 March 2009. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—The intelligence report released by The News raises some disturbing questions about the role of Pakistan's pro-U.S. government in letting the Indian attack on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore happen despite the advance warning by Pakistani intelligence officials. Despite knowing that RAW, India's spy outfit, has ...

The Indian fingerprints in the attack on the Sri Lanksn cannot be ignored. New Delhi has been at war with both Islamabad and Colombo for decades. Hitting both in one place is a masterstroke. Indian military and its agents should brace for retaliation. By AHMED QURAISHI Tuesday, 3 March 2009. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—You can't ignore the symbolism: Commando-style trained young men with backpacks, carrying automatic machine guns and armed with grenades and rocket launchers, bearing a shocking resemblance to the video footage released by the Indian government of the Mumbai attackers in November. The Indian connection, even if indirect and unintentional, cannot be ignored: 1. Lahore is the same city where Pakistani antiterrorism police arrested several Indian citizens and their Pakistani accomplices in the past few weeks and paraded them in public with evidence linking them to India's spy agency Research & Analysis Wing, or RAW. Lahore lies a few kilometers away f...

Two public officials – the Navy chief and a deputy attorney general – together have destroyed Rehman Malik ' s case of ' admission of guilt ' in Mumbai attacks. The government has fired the deputy attorney general for taking a stand, but no one in the Pakistani media noticed since it is busy in the latest Pakistani political circus. But it is this story that could unravel this staunchly pro-U.S. setup. By AHMED QURAISHI Saturday, 28 February 2009. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Two developments in Pakistan have thwarted the deliberate effort of Pakistan's pro-U.S. government to take the Mumbai investigations on a path that leads to placing the blame on the Pakistani military and intelligence. Figure 1: Mr. Malik, with a broad smile, triumphantly declaring Pakistan's responsibility in Mumbai attacks. The two developments, one by a public prosecutor and the other by the Pakistani military, confirms that the Zardari government, and especially his confidant and interior advis...

An old article published in CNN on Jan 18, 2002 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan's president says he thinks Osama bin Laden is most likely dead because the suspected terrorist has been unable to get treatment for his kidney disease. "I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a ... kidney patient," Gen. Pervez Musharraf said on Friday in an interview with CNN. Musharraf said Pakistan knew bin Laden took two dialysis machines into Afghanistan. "One was specifically for his own personal use," he said. "I don't know if he has been getting all that treatment in Afghanistan now. And the photographs that have been shown of him on television show him extremely weak. ... I would give the first priority that he is dead and the second priority that he is alive somewhere in Afghanistan." U.S. officials skeptical In Washington, a senior Bush administration official said Musharraf reached "reasonable conclusion" but warned it is only...

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 Claims most reports in the local media are false, suspects his two 'missing' children are in Karachi By Aroosa Masroor KARACHI: After six years of silence, Dr Muhammad Amjad Khan, ex-husband of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, has finally spoken up and says that most of the press reports that relate to his former wife as well as his children are false. In an exclusive talk with The News, he said that most claims are being propagated to garner public support and sympathy for Dr Aafia but are one-sided and in most instances untrue. Dr Aafia Siddiqui, suspected of having links to terrorist organizations, has been charged in a criminal complaint filed in a court of New York on account of attempting to kill US personnel during interrogation and on a charge of assaulting US officers and employees in Kabul, Afghanistan, on July 17, 2008. Subsequently Dr Aafia was imprisoned in Bagram for 18 days before being taken to the US for a trial. Due to pressure from Aafia Siddiq...

Instead of behaving like a villain in some third-rated Indian movie, the Indian army chief can learn a lesson or two from Pakistan army chief's studied calm under immense pressure. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Indian Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor has once again come up with a highly irresponsible and rather humorous statement when he stated that Indian Army was ready for surgical strikes, missile and infantry attack inside Pakistan. This statement of the Indian Army Chief came when Pakistan government and Pakistani authorities were conducting a high profile probe into the Mumbai attacks on the basis of what should be termed as a rather shady dossier provided by the Indian government. The statement came when the Pakistan government was doing the job with all sincerity and when the Indian government itself had agreed to wait for the outcome. In such a situation, when Pakistan and the entire global community was making an all out effort to ease tensions between the nuclear archrivals,...

They have announced their arrival with a bang. The police checkpost in Mianwali, a border town near restive NWFP, is a grim reminder that Pakistani society is facing the worst scenario of civil unrest that it has seen for decades. The two story building was reduced to rubble when the militants destroyed it with powerful explosives. They attacked the post around 3 am, killed the constables on guard and then killed 6 police personnel inside before blowing up the building. Militants have come to Punjab with an attitude. So how is it different this time around? I mean, suicide attacks have taken place before in Lahore and Rawalpindi. Yes indeed Punjab has been struck with tragedy of suicide bombings on various occasions but this attack on post signals the fact that militants will now increase their sphere of influence outside the frontier province and tribal belt. Swat is already under Taliban's control, Peshawar is closed from 3 sides, Dir - hitherto untouched- is falling to their con...

There is no doubt left that we are fast approaching a point where some form of military intervention will become a necessity, in a way that is diametrically different from the past. We, the civilians, will need to borrow the organizational capabilities of the Pakistani military to help civilians in power reshape the Pakistani state domestically and in terms of foreign policy. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan— There is not a single Pakistani political party with an organized strategic research and analysis activity that could tell the new U.S. government in an intelligent way what Pakistan wants from the United States . Outside powers come in, blackmail our dictators and democrats, and disturb our stability in the name of democracy and freedom and there is no one to stop them. Today we have a government in power thanks to an arrangement brokered by a third-tier Washington bureaucrat, Richard Boucher. And now, the United States is determined to bring the Afghan and the Iraq mess to Pakistan and we ha...