Category: Notes from Pakistan

A wealthy family’s arrogant young man kills another young fellow. The killer’s family is able to buy every instrument of the state which otherwise exists to protect life and property, and liberty, of the citizens without any discrimination. They do buy: they send their son abroad making travesty of every requirement, formality and legality of traveling abroad; though the father of the deceased is a high-ranking in-service police officer, registering a report of the murder with the police remains in doldrums.

Somehow, friends of the deceased bring out the cause of justice to the social media. Then the print and electronic media get hold of the case. An unprecedentedly independent and judicially active Supreme Court goes for a suo moto and oversees that the murder case proceeds according to the dictates of the law.

Overcoming all the obstacles and distractions money can create in Pakistan, the murder case reaches its

“A senior serving intelligence agency officer, who also led operations in which wanted al Qaeda figures Ahmad Khalfan Ghalani and Naeem Noor Khan alias Abu Talha were arrested, told The Express Tribune that JI (Jamat-e-Islami) has been directly and indirectly involved in providing accommodation to al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan.

“Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, supposedly No 3 in the al-Qaeda hierarchy was arrested in March 2004, from the house of a women’s wing leader of the JI in Rawalpindi, while another al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida was arrested in the same year from Faisalabad, and was given shelter by Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).”

[From The Express Tribune]

See the story which published in The Express Tribune on September 11, 2013:

See this cartoon by Sabir Nazar carried by The Express Tribune on September 11, 2013.

Any guess: what’s the book all the parties are on the same page of!

Is it the Constitution of Pakistan! Or what else!

See this article which appeared in The New York Times on September 11, 2013:

The news from Egypt confirms Plato’s dark forecast about democracy. Early this month the ruling junta in Cairo arrested a labor lawyer and a journalist, raising concerns that the regime’s repression now targets not just Islamists but also secular critics.

As Plato warned, extreme freedom risks extreme slavery. He predicted that democracy — “people rule” — will quickly be dominated by demagogues. Chaos will ensue. To reestablish order, the people will welcome a tyrant. Tyranny will give birth to other evils.

One of America’s leading specialists on the Arab world, the late Ambassador Hermann F. Eilts, agreed with Plato. Having helped mediate the

Re Shahzeb murder case

Today’s tweet:

Pakistan is fast turning into a state of the murderers, for the murderers, by the murderers! Where and how the 66 years were wasted!

Now see this news item:

KARACHI: Important revelations have come to light regarding the Shahzeb murder case. It was revealed that the Sindh government had sent a summary to the Aiwan-e-Sadr to quash the death sentence of Shahrukh Jatoi. 

According to the information received by Geo News, the home minister Sindh had sent the summary to the president by bypassing the Interior Ministry. The Aiwan-e-Sadr sent this summary back to the Interior Ministry. Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali had rejected the summary. 

The Sindh government had sent this summary to governor Sindh on July 19 and sent the same to the Aiwan-e-Sadr on August 6. The Sindh government

What’s happening at this time in Pakistani media has no precedent! It’s desperately trying to transform Dust into Gold using its science of alchemy and its alchemists.

As Asif Ali Zardari leaves the Presidency, Pakistani media slides into a frenzy to be all praise for him, forgetting all the names it has been calling him with. Probably all the television (may be radio also, do not listen to any) channels and almost all the English and Urdu newspapers are making a seer out of him. As is said in Urdu and Punjabi:

It may be translated into English as: a thief’s turning into a (sufi) saint

So the Pakistani media’s alchemy is transforming Asif Ali Zardari into a Great Democrat!

Today is the day when the five-year term of President Asif Ali Zardari has come to an end (writing this blog in the evening).

See the today’s newspapers. I guess almost in every paper there is a full-page ad. I saw 4 newspapers: Jang, Express, The News, The Express Tribune. The ad has been given by the Sindh Government, where Peoples Party is the ruling party.

In the ad with a photo of Asif Ali Zardari is printed:

I translate: “The trustee / preserver of democratic traditions”

Then the “achievements and the accomplishments” of this “trustee / preserver” has been counted.

In the end is printed: 

Sharjeel Inaam Memon

Minister for Information and Archives, Commerce and Industries

Government of Sindh

Obviously, Sharjeel Memon did not pay for these ads eulogizing his mentor. Nor the Peoples Party! This was done at the cost of taxpayers of the Sindh province.

I think

It’s just inhuman, against the very norms of the human world, that anyone be killed for his / her ideas. 

Everyone has ideas, good or bad, and nobody knows whose ideas are good and whose ideas are bad. 

Ideas are extensions of thinking beings. And, it’s ideas which have built this human world. It’s ideas which protect us in an unknown universe. Hence, killing human beings for their ideas amounts to killing this human world, our abode!

“Kabuliwala’s Bengali wife” was living inside the camp of the enemy and fighting the killers of this human world and her weapons were but Ideas!

See the full story carried by The New York Times:

Be informed that I have decided to separate the Urdu postings from English ones and put them together into another blog. 

For the Urdu posts, I am setting up, CivilPakistan: Urdu Blog. As the setting up of the Urdu Blog finishes, all the Urdu postings will be shifted there. 

This will let the Blog: NotesFromPakistan.combe available wholly for English posts.

By Huzaima Bukhari & Dr Ikramul Haq

All is set for the executive board of the International Monetary Fund (MF) to consider Pakistan’s request for a fresh bailout package on September 4, 2013 after Islamabad has purportedly “fulfilled all prior requirements” — the IMF has already circulated amongst members the Letter of Intent (LoI) it received from Islamabad. Reportedly, though the IMF has agreed to provide $6.6 billion under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), Islamabad is insisting on $7.3 billion confirming its insatiable ‘debt addiction’.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, in a news conference on August 26, 2013, revealed that “in the first year, the IMF will give $2.2 billion while we have to pay back over $3 billion.” He conceded that Pakistan had no option but to borrow $12 billion “to retire its previous debts”. Dar said the “most vital precondition of the IMF for broadening of