7 May 2009
Speaker Baloch protests Zardari arrival at White House
The DC-based American Friends of Baluchistan has congratulated the brotherly Baloch International League for the rally in front of the White House on Wednesday to expose Pakistan army brutalities against Baluchistan."Former Speaker Waheed Baloch, government minister Dr. Tara Chand and Waja Razzaq Baloch, must be commended for their decision to bring the Baluch issue to the attention of the world. The A.F.B. will side with Speaker Waheed Baloch or any other secular Baluch organization through thick and thin," AFB presiding council members Mohammed Ali Baloch and Waja Karim Bakhsh, formerly of Qatar,said in a statement on Thursday.Speaker Baloch had planned the rally at the UN headquarters in New York against the killing of his close friend Waja Ghulam Mohammed Baloch by Pakistan's secret services, but shifted the venue to Washington DC in view of Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari's arrival, along with the chief of the infamous Inter Services Intelligence Lt. Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, in Washington D.C. for talks with President Barack Obama.Ghulam Mohammed Baloch, 45, was abducted along with Lala Munir Baloch, 50, and Sher Mohammed Baloch, 35, by Pakistan's infamous Inter Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence, shot in the head and their bodies dropped from a military helicopter in the outskirts of Turbat last month.Speaker Waheed Baloch and Dr. Tara Chand were close friends of the slain leader Ghulam Mohammed and had worked with him in the secular and progressive Baloch Students Organization, the main voice of Baluch youths and students. The BSO has thousands of supporters."Passers-by showed great interest in the rally," said Professor Jawaid Bhutto, a friend of Baluchistan in Washington DC, who attended the rally.Bhutto said Afghan President Hamid Karzai turned around to look at the protesters curiously.The two A.F.B. leaders said the Baluch have to be vigilant against paid agents who try to erect a fifth column in the Baluch international movement for their personal gain. "The A.F.B. vows to unmask the faces of such elements," the two leaders said.The A.F.B. also thanked Munnawar Laghari, former director of the World Sindhi Institute, for his help, attendance and speech at the Baloch International League rally.The A.F.B. has a simple two-point agenda: right of national self determination for the Baluch people and ending Pakistani and Iranian military occupation of Baluchistan.
5 May 2009
Please, join the protest outside White house on 6 May 2009
Washington, DC: On May 06th, 2009, Baloch International League for Peace & Freedom and Baloch Sindhi Front of United States will hold a demonstration at Lafayette Park in front of the White House and lodge their protest and handover a memorandum to officials at the White House against:- The genocide of Baloch people in Balochistan- Disappearances of Baloch youth, women, intellectuals, and political activists by the notorious Inter Services Intelligence- Cold blooded killings of Baloch leadership, and gross human rights violations- Against the plundering of natural resources of Sindh and Balochistan.The protest will coincide with President Barak Obama's meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.The Baloch International League for Peace & Freedom and Baloch Sindhi Front appeal to all concerned citizens of the world to join their voices to ours and protest against state terrorism in Balochistan and for a peaceful and nuclear free South Asia.This is an updated version of earlier press releases concerning the planned May 6, 2009 demonstration and rally in front of the
White House.Program venueWhen:
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Time: 1:00 PM
Where: Lafayette Park1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC
White House.Program venueWhen:
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Time: 1:00 PM
Where: Lafayette Park1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC
2 May 2009
People, not arsenal, to ensure country’s survival: Sen Raisani
Pakistan People’s Party Balochistan chapter President and Senator Nawabzada Lashkari Raisani on Friday linked the survival of a country to the well-being of its people and not in building heaps of arms and ammunition. Talking to The News here, before leaving for Quetta, he said the formula of a survival and thriving of a nation was very simple, just take care of your people, their well-being and give them justice. “Today is May Day and let me say here that Pakistan, the land of opportunities, can only be saved by the labourers and workers,” the senator from Balochistan maintained. He strongly advocated a sustained dialogue backed by a series of confidence-building measures to defuse the very dangerous situation Balochistan was facing today. Referring to the disturbing reports emanating from Pakistan’s largest but the poorest province, Raisani said it was hunger, which had led to the break-up of the USSR, which possessed a huge arsenal of nuclear warheads and the largest army. “In the disintegration of the USSR, there is a lesson for all of us: Feed your people and count on them. If you are internally strong, no power on the earth can harm you,” the senator emphasised. Raisani did not resign as a senator and as the provincial chief of the PPP, following persuasion by the party’s top leadership, including President Asif Ali Zardari, who promised to give good news upon his return from the United States. Raisani, who is the younger brother of Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani, agreed to continue as a member of the upper house of parliament for a month. He is not expected to attend a session during this period. Among others who met him and tried to convince him not to resign as senator included Minister for Labour and Manpower Syed Khurshid Ahmad Shah, PPP Secretary General Senator Jehangir Badr and Interior Minister Rehman Malik, PPP sources said when approached for comments. They claimed that Raisani was among a very few party people who had not expressed their desire or talked to the top PPP leadership to become a senator. Raisani during his first speech in the session, after being elected as a senator in March, had raised his voice against the interior minister’s giving a clean chit to the intelligence agencies on the murder of Baloch leaders. He said President Zardari had promised him to give the nation good news with reference to Balochistan after his return from the United States. “I feel strongly for my people. When I found myself unable to play any role in mitigating their miseries, I decided to step down,” he said.
Pakistan's Self Defeating Army
Rather than serve as a bulwark against chaos, the Army has helped destabilize Pakistan. For far too long, the myth that Pakistan's army is the only thing holding the country together-and keeping the terrorists at bay-has held sway in Washington. Now two bills making their way through Congress suggest the United States is finally starting to reconsider these assumptions. Both bills would set benchmarks that Pakistan has to meet in order to keep qualifying for U.S. economic and military assistance. But the two measures don't go far enough. Pakistan will never be saved from the threat of religious extremists until it fundamentally restructures its deeply dysfunctional government. And that will require addressing the overwhelming influence of the military on Pakistani politics.
In four critical ways, the Army has undermined constitutional governance in Pakistan ever since Mohammed Ali Jinnah led it to independence some 60 years ago. First, repeated coups have ensured that civilian governments never developed firm roots. Second, successive military rulers, in attempts to boost their legitimacy, have promoted religious radicalism, either directly (as in the case of Zia ul Haq, who did this over the span of a decade) or by marginalizing mainstream political parties and allowing the religious right to fill the vacuum (Pervez Musharraf's strategy before his ouster last year). Third, the Army became and remains a parasite feeding on the body politic by extracting "rent" in the form of land, bureaucratic appointments and other spoils of office in exchange for supposedly keeping Pakistan safe.
Finally, in a misbegotten quest for "strategic depth" against India, the Army has promoted the radicalization of Afghanistan, which has now spilled back onto its own territory and spun out of control. All of these missteps point to the same conclusion: rather than serve as a bulwark against chaos, the Army has helped to destabilize Pakistan. There's only one way to turn things around today: demilitarize Pakistani politics.
Doing so won't be easy. While there is significant popular support for democracy in Pakistan, the country's mainstream civilian parties have hardly distinguished themselves in their brief periods at the helm, and the current government of Asif Ali Zardari is no exception. Still, the military bears most of the blame for blocking the evolution of a true democratic process. And such a process-for all its inevitable flaws and inefficiencies-is the only way Pakistan will ever get a government truly responsive to the needs of its ordinary citizens, and one likely to crack down on the Taliban, which most Pakistanis disdain.
So how can Pakistan's government be "civilianized"? Useful lessons can be drawn from the democratization of other Praetorian states. The first thing to recognize is that depoliticizing the Army won't mean weakening it. Pakistan's senior officers must know that they have never been less popular than they are today; returning to their barracks for good would be the best way to revive their prestige.
This process has in fact already begun. It was started by the Army itself in early 2008, when the new chief of staff General Ashfaq Kayani forbade officers from holding civilian posts in government. But much more needs to be done. Parliament and the prime minister must steadily assert themselves to limit the Army's involvement in internal affairs. The military will resist. But the recent victory of the lawyers' movement-which forced the government to restore the Supreme Court's former chief justice, who'd been deposed by Musharraf-shows that civilians can take on the generals and win. Over time, the civilian government must shift national-intelligence functions from the military to a civilian organization, curb the reach of the infamous Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and strip the military of its responsibilities for maintaining security inside Pakistan, giving that duty to a paramilitary force governed by the ministry of Interior (as in neighboring India). Such a step was critical to the transitions from military to civilian government in Chile in 1990 and Indonesia in 1998.
Pakistan's nuclear infrastructure, meanwhile, should be split into military and civilian components, both under civilian authority. And most important, civilians must begin making critical national-security policy decisions. Implementation should still fall to the military, which should also retain a voice in defense policy-but not the final one.
While some of the generals are likely to object to any reduction in their powers, it's in their own interests to accept a fundamental change. Letting the Army maintain a degree of autonomy regarding its internal functions should also help bring it around. And Washington can contribute by demanding reforms of the sort outlined above. Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. has a great deal of leverage over Pakistan thanks to the enormous amounts of aid Washington disburses (likely to total $7.5 billion over the next five years). Making these changes may still seem like a tall order. It is. But Pakistan's problems at this point are massive in scope-and so must be the solution.
Basrur is associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Ganguly is a professor of political science and is director of research at the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/195094
In four critical ways, the Army has undermined constitutional governance in Pakistan ever since Mohammed Ali Jinnah led it to independence some 60 years ago. First, repeated coups have ensured that civilian governments never developed firm roots. Second, successive military rulers, in attempts to boost their legitimacy, have promoted religious radicalism, either directly (as in the case of Zia ul Haq, who did this over the span of a decade) or by marginalizing mainstream political parties and allowing the religious right to fill the vacuum (Pervez Musharraf's strategy before his ouster last year). Third, the Army became and remains a parasite feeding on the body politic by extracting "rent" in the form of land, bureaucratic appointments and other spoils of office in exchange for supposedly keeping Pakistan safe.
Finally, in a misbegotten quest for "strategic depth" against India, the Army has promoted the radicalization of Afghanistan, which has now spilled back onto its own territory and spun out of control. All of these missteps point to the same conclusion: rather than serve as a bulwark against chaos, the Army has helped to destabilize Pakistan. There's only one way to turn things around today: demilitarize Pakistani politics.
Doing so won't be easy. While there is significant popular support for democracy in Pakistan, the country's mainstream civilian parties have hardly distinguished themselves in their brief periods at the helm, and the current government of Asif Ali Zardari is no exception. Still, the military bears most of the blame for blocking the evolution of a true democratic process. And such a process-for all its inevitable flaws and inefficiencies-is the only way Pakistan will ever get a government truly responsive to the needs of its ordinary citizens, and one likely to crack down on the Taliban, which most Pakistanis disdain.
So how can Pakistan's government be "civilianized"? Useful lessons can be drawn from the democratization of other Praetorian states. The first thing to recognize is that depoliticizing the Army won't mean weakening it. Pakistan's senior officers must know that they have never been less popular than they are today; returning to their barracks for good would be the best way to revive their prestige.
This process has in fact already begun. It was started by the Army itself in early 2008, when the new chief of staff General Ashfaq Kayani forbade officers from holding civilian posts in government. But much more needs to be done. Parliament and the prime minister must steadily assert themselves to limit the Army's involvement in internal affairs. The military will resist. But the recent victory of the lawyers' movement-which forced the government to restore the Supreme Court's former chief justice, who'd been deposed by Musharraf-shows that civilians can take on the generals and win. Over time, the civilian government must shift national-intelligence functions from the military to a civilian organization, curb the reach of the infamous Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and strip the military of its responsibilities for maintaining security inside Pakistan, giving that duty to a paramilitary force governed by the ministry of Interior (as in neighboring India). Such a step was critical to the transitions from military to civilian government in Chile in 1990 and Indonesia in 1998.
Pakistan's nuclear infrastructure, meanwhile, should be split into military and civilian components, both under civilian authority. And most important, civilians must begin making critical national-security policy decisions. Implementation should still fall to the military, which should also retain a voice in defense policy-but not the final one.
While some of the generals are likely to object to any reduction in their powers, it's in their own interests to accept a fundamental change. Letting the Army maintain a degree of autonomy regarding its internal functions should also help bring it around. And Washington can contribute by demanding reforms of the sort outlined above. Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. has a great deal of leverage over Pakistan thanks to the enormous amounts of aid Washington disburses (likely to total $7.5 billion over the next five years). Making these changes may still seem like a tall order. It is. But Pakistan's problems at this point are massive in scope-and so must be the solution.
Basrur is associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Ganguly is a professor of political science and is director of research at the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/195094
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