Manto se Miliye depicts irony and humanity

ISLAMABAD: The play, Manto Se Milye, was staged at the National Arts Gallery on Saturday night.

As the play opened with many worded prologue, we found sitting in the audience Prof Sajjad Hyder Malick, who wrote hundreds of critiques about cinema and theatre in the now defunct newspaper, The Muslim, and asked for his reaction. He thought the prologue unnecessary. In his view, Manto’s name was immortal in the annals of Urdu fiction and short stories, and he was known to every person who had come to see the play and the title Manto se Milye was a good introduction.

However, Prof Malick did acknowledge that in one respect the director had made a beginning in presenting an autobiographical play on the life of a Pakistan writer which was a novelty and did not appear with regularity on stage in this country.

More can be said about the character of Manto as presented by Afzaal Nabi. It is in the pure image of Saadat Hasan Manto as we know him from his pictures printed on the back covers of a number of books.

The opening scene shows the writer seated in an awkward position writing his short stories while listening to snatches of Thumri.

Manto gets the inspiration to write stories relating to everyday incidents at home or after having conversation with his wife Safia. The compulsion to write comes because of worsening economic condition at home as well as to meet the costs of best brands of cigarettes and whiskey.

His wife, a noble woman, found these habits of her husband in bad taste but despite trying could not get Manto get rid of them. In the end, the drink gets better of him and he descends so low that he would sip his drink in the toilet. ‘It was a place where he gets all the inspiration to write,’ said the character playing Manto in the drama.

For all that, the drama is a good introduction to serious students of literature who wish to know the epic life of a writer who walked like colossus in the realm of world literature because his irony and humanity, depicted in this play, raise him at par with writers like Gogol.

Move on please, decisively

The forthcoming meetings of the Pakistani and Indian foreign secretaries and prime ministers on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Egypt on July 14 and 15, again raise hopes for a revival of the composite dialogue process, suspended since the Nov 26 2008 attacks in Mumbai.

India accuses Pakistan of not doing enough to contain terrorism. Pakistan counter-accuses India of not cooperating in terms of sharing evidence and translations.

The Mumbai attacks came barely four days after President Asif Ali Zardari’s ground-breaking address to The Hindustan Times Leadership Summit via satellite link from Islamabad. Zardari, Pakistan’s first head of state to offer a ‘no-first nuclear-strike’ policy against India, talked of a common South Asian economic bloc, even a passport-free ‘flexible Indo-Pak visa regime’.

It’s an all-too familiar pattern — goodwill gestures followead by incidents of violence that are used to set back the peace process (Bus yatra — Kargil; talks — Samjhota Express; peace overture — Mumbai). Who benefits? Certainly not the ordinary people but the rightwing, the security apparatuses, military establishments and arms lobbies on either side.

Those who critique the push for peace as an obsession of the ‘liberal elite’ and the ‘Punjabi lobby’ ignore sentiments at the grassroots level: while aware of the problems, people on both sides are keen to live as neighbours in peace.

At a seminar in Karachi recently to honour Nirmala Deshpande (Didi), the peace activist who passed away in May 2008, most audience members were women from low-income localities. Prominent writers, political leaders and activists who addressed the seminar included three Indian delegates (the visas of the other two were ‘pending for clearance’).

Mumtaz, a young Pakhtun mother distracted by a six-year-old and a suckling toddler, said that her husband was a daily-wage labourer. What did she think of the event? ‘I don’t understand everything but I do understand that they want peace between India and Pakistan,’ she replied, adding, ‘We should live in peace with our neighbours. Maybe then our lot will improve. We all want that.’

Jaipur-based Kavita Srivastava of India’s People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), had come with a concrete agenda: to get information about five Indian prisoners incarcerated in Pakistani prisons since 1991.

‘Only two are in touch with their families, we don’t even know if the other three are alive,’ she said. ‘When they heard that I got my visa, their families walked for a whole day to meet me. With tears in their eyes they begged me to bring any information I could.’

Kavita spent an evening in Ranchore Lines with Silawat women, Rajasthanis with families on both sides of the border. Shakeel Silawat of the Youth Progressive Council who helped organise the meeting, says such visits are important to increase contacts. ‘After all, we are one region. We should be able to meet.’

I remember an engineering student I interviewed in 1995 for the Indian magazine Outlook’s launch issue. He hated India’s Kashmir policy and wouldn’t wear Indian-made jeans — but believed that India and Pakistan should cooperate economically even while maintaining separate identities.

A student from Calcutta, who visited Lahore with the Nirmala Deshpande-led women’s peace bus in 2000 following the Kargil conflict, had no partition baggage or ties to Pakistan. Yet she was overcome with emotion on arriving here. She befriended an engineering student who was volunteering with the group ‘out of curiosity’ (having never met an Indian but despising India and Indians). He told me that, despite disagreeing with official policies ‘now at least we can talk about our disagreements’. Young Pakistanis and Indians wept as they said goodbye three days later.

I am reminded of these encounters by Ashutosh Varshney’s essay ‘Founding Myths’ (in The Great Divide) in which he suggests that India-Pakistan rivalry be re-imagined ‘as a thoroughgoing competition, not as a do-or-die conflict’.
‘A distinction needs to be drawn between two terms: adversaries and enemies. Adversaries can be respected, even admired; enemies are killed. India and Pakistan must cease to be enemies; they need to become adversaries competing vigorously to become better than the other.’

The stakes are high for both nuclear-armed neighbours riddled by internal insurgencies and ‘religious’ militancy, endemic poverty and high military budgets that directly and negatively impact development.

Zardari’s talk of a South Asian bloc and easing visa restrictions did not emerge from a vacuum — peace activists have been presenting such out-of-the-box ideas for years. The visiting Indians added more to the previous talk, like twinning press clubs and even dual nationality for Indians and Pakistanis (‘believe me, many would take it,’ asserted award-winning social activist Sandeep Pandey from Lucknow).

These ideas may be ahead of their time — but so then was the Pakistan-India Forum for Peace and Democracy notion first articulated in 1994 that Kashmir is not just a territorial dispute between Pakistan and India, but a matter of the lives and aspirations of the Kashmiri people, who must be included in any dialogue about their future. This formulation has now permeated political discourse.
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When Sandeep Pandey and others participated in a peace march in 2005 from Delhi to Multan, villagers enthusiastically welcomed them along the way (though the urban-based media largely ignored this rural activity) and endorsed their demands: one, resolve all problems through dialogue; two, de-weaponise and remove armies from the borders; three, end visa restrictions.

‘One cyclist stopped and said, ‘Make the third demand your first. Once that happens, the rest will sort out’,’ recalls Pandey.

The Indian delegates have now left with a renewed sense of the urgency Pakistanis feel about the need for peace with India. They also realise the need to go against the tide back home and push the Indian government to go beyond pressurising the Pakistani government to ‘take action’.

There may be no immediate results to any of these initiatives. But the fact that the governments allow them to take place itself speaks for the realisation of the need to at least maintain such contacts. And in the long run, they create a pressure for peace from below, something for the political and bureaucratic establishments to bear in mind when they next meet.

The writer is a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Karachi.

The case for a citizens’ media

Democracy and the media go hand in hand. Democracy cannot flourish without a free and pluralist media and the latter cannot grow and progress in a dictatorial or autocratic environment.

The diversity of ideas is necessary for democracy, just as dictatorship and autocracy strive for uniformity of opinion. In autocratic regimes, dissenting voices are silenced in the name of ‘national interest’ and ‘national cohesion’. These are loaded terms and open to many definitions; but they always come in handy for dictators in times of crisis.

Autocratic governments are not the only threat to a free and pluralist media. A free-market economy and conglomerates, too, have emerged as major threats to the freedom of the press. In many cases, advertisers, who have become the economic lifeline of the media, not only determine what news is to be published but also what qualifies as news. They don’t put direct pressure on the media to publish news in their favour; instead, they use their economic clout to stop the publication of a certain piece of news. Adverts compete with news for the audience’s attention, and at the end of the day, readers get too many adverts and very little news, reminding one of what a Pakistani editor said, ‘we don’t charge for what we publish, we charge for what we don’t.’

Over the years, journalists in Pakistan have developed the tendency of self-censorship. Since the dark days of Gen Ziaul Haq, the Pakistani press has been facing a plethora of enemies apart from the government and state agencies. Political parties and religious groups started targeting newspapers and individual journalists not falling in line with their views. Karachi, hub of the newspaper industry, has been the worst-hit. Time and again militant and other pressure groups have stopped the publication of newspapers that have taken a stand on a certain issue, with the government looking the other way. Journalists have been physically harmed for their writings.

Sadly, certain newspaper managements have entered into deals with such groups instead of standing by the victimised journalists who have felt more threatened as a consequence and have preferred not to take on the demons.

Another outgrowth of the myopic rule of Ziaul Haq was the radicalisation of institutions through the induction of religious activists. Journalism, which until then was the forte of leftist intellectuals, was hijacked by the zealots of religious parties, themselves more of activists than newsmen. This further reinforced self-censorship — but this time not out of fear for one’s life, rather to serve a narrow ideology. Any news story going against the ideology of the parent party of the journalist is ‘killed’.

On to the subject of conglomerates: these are in fact ‘private ministries of information’ that generate their own news and control others. Media conglomerates, an outcome of the free-market economy, encroach on the marketplace of ideas.

Many newspapers have become publishing houses churning out more than one newspaper in more than one language. Every publishing house has a cable TV service as well. With large publishing houses operating like notorious corporations, the same media house through its various organs then presents the news in a way that does not allow for differences of opinion.

Conglomeration is nibbling away at the audience’s choices and resulting in the uniformity of opinion. When diversity of opinion gives way to a uniform worldview, democratic discourse comes to an end. Democracy shorn of diversity of opinion leads to dictatorship where a single individual or institution, instead of leading, drives society to embrace the yoke of slavery in the name of democracy and national interest.

In such a situation the culprit is not the dictator but the corporate media. The media gives news in fragments that makes it difficult for the audience to connect the dots. It becomes difficult for the common people to follow the development of a particular issue over time. This situation promotes apathy and cynicism at the expense of political participation. Common people become mere spectators in a democracy which otherwise should be a participatory business.

No situation is more congenial for hijacking democracy than this. The media becomes one of the power stakeholders along with the bourgeoisie and the army that take the common people for a ride in the name of inculcating real democracy. Thus democracy and a free media are sacrificed at the altar of the free-market economy which is the linchpin of capitalism. In the West, especially in the US, alternative media, which is owned by the community through donations, is trying to counter the monopoly of the mainstream corporate media and project the ‘other’ view.

In the case of Pakistan, the alternative media is no panacea. Not content with the mainstream media and state-run PTV an ‘alternative’ media has emerged. But, unfortunately, this media espouses a narrow and distorted worldview, for instance, the press run by religious and sectarian organisations is practically the only alternative media, but it too pursues an agenda that shuns the free market of ideas.

This downslide of the media can be balanced by the emergence of the citizens’ media which is run by the community instead of a corporation, a family enterprise or a religious/sectarian organisation. In a citizens’ media the common people are part of journalistic activity. This instills in them a sense of belonging.

A citizens’ media does not compete for circulation or for corporate adverts. Its interest lies in the interest of the community which is the true owner of the media. The mainstream press has a larger agenda where smaller communities and their problems find little space. No time is more opportune than now for the emergence of a citizens’ media. The corporate media can be countered by a network of community media with no commercial interests and with strong roots in the people.

The voice of any community should not get lost in the din of the corporate culture.
faiz.jan@gmail.com

Serious plays pushed off the stage in Hyderabad

HYDERABAD: Stage plays with obscene and lewd dances as major attractions have pushed serious story-based dramas with a message for society off the stage.

Artistes, producers and office-bearers of the Hyderabad Stage Council (HSC) blame ‘mafias’ for the destruction of serious stage. ‘People who want to make money by any means have occupied the stage,’ they said.

Stage play, a regular feature of the city’s cultural life, has been on the wane since early 2000 when the mafias stared making inroads into the field and now they rule the roost after forcing serious theatre off the stage.

What the HSC office-bearers said at a news conference last month about harassment of organisers and artistes is only half-truth. They conveniently ignored their own role in the crisis confronting the theatre today.

Stage plays at the renovated Open Air Theatre have always been a great entertainment for people.

Hyderabad stage lagged behind cultural centres of the country in producing artistes of calibre.

The city has produced celebrities like film star Mohammad Ali, Shahnawaz Ghumman, Saqi, Mustafa Qureshi, singer Saleem Javed and compere Sultan Sheikh.

Gone are the days when they used to write script and get artistes rehearse their roles before a play. The pseudo producers of the plays have now thrown genuine producers and scrip writers into oblivion and as a result artistes too have changed their minds and lost interest in rehearsal because the plays are dominated by vulgar dances by ‘girls’ alone.

It gives good monetary returns to the ‘producers’ in the short term but the message, which the plays used to communicate to society, remain largely missing.

Such plays often lead to trouble for organisers themselves when their audiences turn violent or unruly crowds force their entry into the theatre premises.

If they do not find ‘proceedings’ of the show to their expectations they start making catcalls before brandishing weapons or even firing in the air and throwing different things at female artistes performing on stage.

The organisers allegedly sell pictures of known artistes on the cards who actually do not feature in the play to attract the crowds.

‘I won’t perform here (in Hyderabad) ever again. How I and my two colleagues saved honour by taking shelter in the theatre’s washroom is a nightmare for us,’ Ghazala Naz, an artiste, told Dawn referring to a recent incident at the Open Air Theatre. The miscreants had made it difficult for her and colleagues to keep performing on stage.

‘Now people come to see our bodies when we perform. It is too vulgar now not a stage play in any sense. This disease has come here from Lahore. People won’t appreciate if we show a good step in the dance but they will burst into appreciation if they see the dancer’s figure,’ she said bitterly.

An old producer, Malik Yousuf Jamal, forcefully argued that the present kind of theatre should be banned. ‘It is advisable that ongoing plays must be banned and theatre-friendly and sensible people should sit together to revive serious theatre in the city which used to be its hallmark.

‘I firmly believe that it is more of a variety show where girls are made to wear short dresses to entertain the crowd,’ he said.

‘A mafia has destroyed values of theatres to serve their own vested interests. This mafia has made dances the only essential part of the drama,’ a local script writer, Syed Sarwar Nadeem, observed.

The HSC’s own credentials are disputed. People like Jamal believe that the HSC has no credibility because its elections are not held in a proper manner. The HSC office-bearers though reject his claim.

‘A body was nominated and a majority of its office-bearers either have no business with theatre or they don’t have any know-how of stage play,’ Jamal alleged.

Theatre promoter and HSC governing body member Abdullah Khan admits that serious stage play has almost disappeared. ‘People, who believe in orgies, have occupied the stage. Earlier, they were regular visitors of red light area but now stage has all ingredients for their pleasure,’ he said.

He disagreed that differences between organisers and producers could be ironed out. ‘People are interested more in ‘songs’ than story. Script writers are not coming up with new subjects. They tend to repeat old themes,’ he said. HSC senior vice-chairman Sattar Pervez agreed that people without theatre experience had occupied the stage. ‘I have been part of the stage for past 30 years and the situation has deteriorated over the past nine to 10 years when pseudo-organisers invaded the stage,’ he said.

Lack of security is a major problem at the theatre. According to Hyderabad DPO Javed Alam Odho, it is not possible for police to provide man each and every point of the city.
‘Police are already under-strength. We are not watchmen. We have other important jobs to do,’ he said.

From a Delhi kebab stand, lessons in Indian life

NEW DELHI: While the grill man stirred the glowing coals and the bread man rolled balls of dough, Akram Khan, the waiter, watched the traffic rumble down the pocked road.

Soon, crowds would start arriving at this sidewalk kebab stand, families in expensive cars and partygoers fizzy with drink.

Most wolf down their food, sweating over the spicy chutney while they gossip about politics, cricket, and the missing monsoon. But linger on this cracked slab of pavement and you’ll witness the frustrations, hopes, contradictions and pleasures of life in modern India writ small.

Aap Ki Khatir, or At Your Service, is an improvisation, like so much else in India. It’s made up of little more than well-seasoned meat, a grill and a plastic set of table and chairs.

It’s not zoned, licensed or subject to any health codes, so the owners pay a monthly bribe to a local police officer, a government official, and an electrical engineer who keeps the stolen power running. Countless businesses have similar arrangements, including all the kebab stand’s neighbours.

Money can get you far in India. But religion can get you further.

Several years ago, as Akram tells it, the city planned to clear the ramshackle block that’s home to the kebab stand, a shuttered beauty parlour and an auto repair shop.

Overnight, the community built a small Sufi shrine on the pavement and convinced the authorities that it had always been there. Disturbing it would anger the neighbourhood, they said. The government backed down.

Point to the fresh garlands and candles now strewn across the fake shrine, and Akram shrugs.

‘This is India,’ he said. ‘If you put a rock on the ground, people will worship it.’

Another maxim: If you have an open space, someone will fill it. As evidence, he pointed to a rival kebab stand, recently arrived and just steps away.

It was opened by a former customer of Akram who copied the formula. The name Aap Ki Khatir became Sab Ki Khatir — At Everyone’s Service. Both establishments boast creamy chicken malai tikka, as decadent as an ice cream sundae, and kakori rolls made of butter-soft mutton. Though the cooks and owners are all Muslim, they don’t serve beef out of respect for their Hindu customers.

The mechanic’s towers of tires form the border between the grills, a line the rival waiters dare not cross.

‘He is a friend-enemy,’ Akram says of the former customer, a neighbourhood figure he has known for years. ‘We no longer talk. But this is what happens in business.’

Akram, 31, is a pudgy man with spiky hair and a high-pitched laugh. He has lived in Delhi for more than a decade, but the other employees — cooks, waiters, cleaners — are part of the flood of migrants who have left their villages in the poor, northern state of Bihar to work in India’s giant cities.

These men live together in Old Delhi, across town from the kebab stand, inside a single hot room that doubles as the restaurant’s kitchen. Aap Ki Khatir’s sidewalk can fit little more than the grill, so the men shuttle the food across the city every evening.

They spend their days chopping onions and rolling dough amid laundry lines and boiling pots, their mattresses within reach of the mutton marinade. Each hopes to get promoted to the grill, where they can earn tips, but for now they are little more than indentured servants, their pay being their free room and board.

The men of Aap Ki Khatir are not the educated, tech-savvy global Indians who have sparked the country’s remarkable economic boom. But they serve them lunch. And they have ambitions of their own.

Akram wants to open his own restaurant and earn enough to buy a house for the woman he loves, who lives hundreds of miles away in Raipur, a central Indian city. He found her in the most untraditional of ways: on a Web chat room, where he spends nearly as much time as he does at the grill. They have met only once, and she has since broken up with him, but Akram remains smitten.

‘When I am with her,’ he says, ‘I feel like I am in an AC room.’ In a city as sweltering as Delhi, there is perhaps no stronger declaration of love than to liken it to air conditioning.

Though he’s an unabashed romantic, Akram knows too well the obligations that family entails. When his brother lost his job, Akram got him work at the kebab stand even though it meant cutting his own pay. When Akram counts his tips, he puts aside money for his two unmarried sisters, both perilously close to the age when Indian society deems them too old to find husbands. Without them, he says, he would be free; he also says he would be unmoored.

I recently told Akram that after two years in India, I was moving back to the US He shook his head and smiled his wide smile.

‘Brother, you find the location and we will open a USA branch,’ he said. The Indian dreamer still looks West.— AP

IDPs living outside camps allowed to return home

PESHAWAR: With the return of the internally displaced persons living in camps officially beginning on Monday, the NWFP government has also allowed the IDPs living outside the camps to go back to some areas in the district of Swat.

It is learnt that the Emergency Response Unit took the decision after a large number of ‘off-camp IDPs’ met its officials and said they also wanted to return to their homes.

The government had announced that at this stage only the IDPs living in the 11 officially designated camps would be allowed to return.

According to a plan worked out by the ERU at a meeting chaired by its chief Azam Khan, IDPs living in camps will leave in the morning and those outside the camps will be able to go after 1pm. On July 13 and 14, both the ‘in-camp’ and ‘off-camp’ IDPs hailing from Landakai, Kota, Guratai and Barikot areas would be allowed to leave.

People from Ghalagai, Maniar, Udigram and Ballogram would go back on July 15 and 16 in the second phase. In the third phase, from July 17 to 20, the IDPs from Mingora City, Central City, Hajiabad, Malukabad, Gulkada and Saidu Sharif will leave.

For the IDPs leaving the camps transport will be provided by the government. Around 5,760 families will leave camps for their homes on Monday and Tuesday.

Around 3,250 families will leave four of camps in Charssada and Nowshera —Saleem Sugar Mills, Palosa, Familio and Jalozai — on Monday. The government has arranged around 410 buses and 40 trucks for them.

Strict security measures will be made on the road to Swat. Arrangements have been made for scanning the IDPs at Dargai.

Scandal-plagued PML-N tells MPA to resign

LAHORE: Upset at the emergence of one after another scandal involving its parliamentarians, the Pakistan Muslim League-N high command has decided to act strictly against MPA Shumaila Rana who allegedly used some stolen credit cards for shopping.

According to sources, the MPA has been asked by the party leadership to tender her resignation from women reserved seat (W-307) after she failed to turn up at a meeting convened here on Sunday to hear her point of view.

The resignation would, however, be forwarded to the Punjab Assembly speaker after formal announcement of the inquiry report.

‘The incident (of using stolen credit cards) is very unfortunate and legal action will certainly be taken on the issue,’ Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif later told reporters at a function.

Sardar Zulfikar Khosa, who is Punjab chapter president of the party and senior adviser to the chief minister, said what the CCTV had shown and verification of the credit cards had confirmed that these were used without lawful authority.

According to him, Miss Rana will be made to resign. The decision could be different if it was found that the incident was an outcome of some money dispute, etc. He would not explain the ‘different’ decision.

Miss Rana had never been a party activist, said another PML-N leader, adding she was given party ticket in recognition of the services rendered for the party by her mother, Anjum Rana, who was not a graduate.

Estranged from her husband, Hidayatullah, for contracting a second marriage, Anjum along with daughter Shumaila was living in Nadirabad on Bedian Road and would attend party meetings and rallies with difficulty while traveling in vans and buses. Anjum, a committed PML-N activist, was, however, suspended from membership a couple of times for violating party discipline.

To a question, Khosa said the media had done a good job by disclosing to public wrongdoings of elected representatives and that the party had no complaint with the media provided it unfolded scandals after a proper investigation like it did in the recent case.

He said the PML-N leadership acted immediately after any scandal involving party MPs came to its knowledge anywhere.

He recalled that MNA from Rawalpindi, Haji Pervaiz Khan, was made to resign when he was found involved in using unfair means in an examination.

Similarly, the office of political adviser to the chief minister was withdrawn from MPA Munawwar Ali Gill allegedly involved in a rape case, he added.

About pardoning prisons minister Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor in two different incidents, clash with Customs staff at the Lahore airport and physically assaulting a woman opposition member in the Punjab Assembly, he defended that the inquiry report in the airport clash had found the Customs staff misbehaving with the minister.

In the assembly incident, Khosa held the woman MPA (Bushra Gardezi) responsible for provoking the treasury by waving a placard declaring leader of the house (Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif) a traitor. ‘The woman is sitting in the party of traitors (PML-Q) which is not calling a violator of the Constitution (General Pervez Musharraf) a traitor but instead is labelling a man (Punjab chief minister) who has just lent something (water) to a province in the larger national interest.’

Three soldiers, 14 Taliban killed in multiple clashes

PESHAWAR: Three Pakistan soldiers and 14 Taliban fighters were killed as Islamabad pushed its massive assault against militants in the northwest, officials said Sunday.

Eight Taliban were killed when Pakistani jet fighters pounded the militants’ hideouts in South Waziristan tribal district, bordering Afghanistan, two security officials said.

The attacks came as Pakistan prepared to draw a line under the northwest operation.

The destroyed hideouts belonged to members of Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud against whom the military has vowed to open a second front, the officials said.

Separately Pakistani artillery pounded two Taliban hideouts in Lower Dir district’s Kashmor village Sunday, killing five rebels and injuring five others, district coordination officer Ghulam Mohammad told AFP.

The two hideouts were targeted and destroyed based on intelligence reports, the official said.

A daily military statement rounding up developments over the past 24 hours said a militant was killed and another arrested during a search operation in Swat valley where troops destroyed five caves where militants were hiding.

At least 15 other militants were arrested in different parts of Swat and seven soldiers were wounded, it said.

One soldier died in an exchange of fire with militants in South Waziristan, while two others were killed in a bomb blast in a mosque in the northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan, it said.

The death tolls provided could not be verified independently as the areas are under military operation.

The Pakistani army launched a massive offensive in late April in the three northwestern districts of Buner, Lower Dir and Swat to flush out Taliban militants.

The military said last week the operation was almost over and on Thursday Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced that preparations were being made to send home from Monday nearly two million people who fled their homes in the Swat valley.

Paramilitary troops raided militant hideouts in Khyber tribal district’s Shinkoh village and after a gunfight that left two soldiers injured, arrested 11 of the rebels, paramilitary Colonel Mujahid told AFP.

‘Among those who had been arrested, five are from South and North Waziristan tribal districts, four (are) Afghan nationals and two locals,’ said Mujahid, who goes by one name.

The troops also seized hundreds of bullet rounds, rocket launchers, wireless equipment and documents, he said.

Two explosive-filled vehicles meant to be used in suicide attacks were also destroyed.

The Khyber tribal district lies between Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, and landlocked Afghanistan and is a key strategic route for vital civil and military supplies to the war-torn country.

Training centres in Mehsud’s areas bombed

TANK: Military planes continued bombing and shelling suspected Taliban positions in the Mehsud area of South Waziristan on Sunday, killing a number of militants.

Witnesses said planes bombed training centres and other structures in Maulvi Khan Serai, Old Serwekai and Berwand areas considered to be strongholds of Baitullah Mehsud.

Officials and local people said eight militants were killed in an attack on a training centre in Maulvi Khan Serai.

Security officials claimed destroying several training centres. Militants also attacked military installations and security forces in different areas.

It is believed that air force has been engaged to soften Taliban positions before launching a full-scale ground offensive.

A soldier was killed on Saturday in clashes with militants at Dray Neshter post, some 40 km west of Wana.
Sources said that the militants attacked the post near the Afghan border and troops fired back, killing four militants. Sipla Toi Fort also came under attack, but no casualty was reported.

Meanwhile, there are reports of movement of troops in southern districts of the NWFP on Sunday.

Troops backed by tanks were seen heading towards some areas in Bannu district and the adjacent Frontier Region where an operation had been carried out recently.

In a significant development, pro-government militant commander Turkistan Bhittani closed his recruitment office on Saturday and pulled his supporters out of the Tank city and moved towards Jandola.

According to local people, Bhittani’s supporters left the area after the arrival of heavy troops reinforcements. They were patrolling the main bazaars and looking for Baitullah’s people.

‘Tank was practically controlled by Bhittani till Saturday. His people conducted raids in the city and outskirts in search of Baitullah’s people,’ said a resident, adding that Baitullah’s men had either left Tank or gone underground.

‘Soon after the arrival of army in Tank on Saturday, Bhittani’s people disappeared,’ he said.
The government is helping Bhittani who is a strong rival of Baitullah.

Last week, troops carried out their first operation in southern areas of Lakki Marwat and Kulachi area of Dera Ismail Khan which is adjacent to South Waziristan.

Sources said that security forces had set up their base in Kulachi and destroyed eight houses of suspected militants.

Elders of Kulachi, however, are not happy over movement of troops in the area. Some of them are reported to have urged Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti and local military authorities to exercise restraint and resolve the issue through local arrangements.

Staff correspondent Zulfiqar Ali contributed to this report from Peshawar.

APP adds: According to Inter-Services Public Relations, security forces killed one terrorist and arrested 16 others on Saturday and Sunday.

They also attacked a number of caves being used by terrorists as hideouts in various parts of Swat and Malakand.

Security forces carried out a search at a TV booster ridge near Mora Kandoa and arrested 12 suspects. During an operation at Churkhai Talang and Saddo Khan, security forces destroyed five caves.

The oil price imbroglio

The National Assembly should debate and find a way out of the current imbroglio on oil pricing. This requires a critical review of the skewed tax regime.

In the first week of July, fuel prices were raised, cut and raised again. The price of petrol has now been fixed at Rs62.13 a litre, the same as it was after imposition of carbon tax on July1.

Instead of capitalising on the public goodwill to kick-start the sagging economy, the elected government seems to be doing all in its means to loose its most valuable asset — the public support — by accepting what it calls, ‘politically difficult decisions’ to appease foreign lenders.

The imposition of carbon tax in place of petroleum development levy by the Gilani government from July 1, its termination on the order of the Supreme Court on July seven and restoration of petroleum development levy the next day on July eight through a presidential ordinance were extraordinary measures with a direct impact on the wellbeing of the people.

The carbon tax that was projected to raise Rs122 billion this fiscal year for the government hiked the prices of petroleum products by 7-15 per cent when poverty and unemployment are on the rise.

The increase in the transport charges pushed up the cost of production, in some cases by as much as 10 per cent, and energised the price spiral. Post-July 1, market reported increase in price of many consumer and producer items such as edibles and cement.

There was resentment in the public over the government decision. The decision of the Supreme Court pleasantly surprised the public as prices of petroleum products fell back to June 30 level. The Presidential Ordinance ‘restored’ petroleum development levy with an increase equivalent to the raise announced under the garb of carbon tax.

Dr Asim Hussain, advisor to prime minister on petroleum, defended the position of the government. ‘The government needed revenue from petroleum products to cut the Rs722 billion budget deficit.’

‘The government is bogged down with pricing of wheat, sugar cane, power, gas, oil products for the better part. Let the market determine the prices of products and services and the government should focus on improving the fundamentals to create the right economic environment for growth and development,’ a member of the government research team said on the condition of anonymity.

The biggest opposition party — PML(N) — tried to champion the cause of the downtrodden by opposing the carbon tax but for this, it chose the apex court instead of the parliament.

‘They (PML N) sat through the prolonged marathon budget sessions of the assembly and voted for passing the budget with carbon tax. Coming out of the assembly they headed for the court. What is this? Delayed reaction or hypocrisy? Why did they not tear it (carbon tax) down on the floor of the assembly in the full public view? Which democrat would push the Supreme Court to overrule the decision of the parliament?,’ asked a seasoned analyst from Islamabad.

Even if we cut the dramatics out, it would be wise not to drag the Supreme Court on issues that can well be debated and resolved in the assembly. The solution should be acceptable for donors but must not be against the wishes of deprived people.

‘If this is the beginning of another round of animosity between the two key institutions— the executive and the judiciary, only time would tell. This, however, would not fare too well for the country faced with turmoil and recession,’ commented a worried businessman.

A country’s health dependent on net foreign inflows for growth, cannot, perhaps, afford to be indifferent to its balance sheet. It needs to project itself as financially responsible to achieve credit-worthiness to be able to get the support it desperately needs from development partners.

But why should the burden of narrowing fiscal and current account deficit be borne by ordinary citizens in an inequitable society? Indirect taxes on essential commodities such as oil disproportionately burden the poor. It would be apt for the government to focus on enlarging the tax net and making tax administration efficient and corruption-free.

To show a presentable current account position, it may take drastic measures to cut wasteful spending. There is a huge room to reduce the size of government without compromising its capacity to govern. There are scores of departments that have become redundant.

By publicising and honouring members of assemblies who pay most in taxes, examples could be set for others to follow. What FBR has not been able to achieve by hounding high net worth individuals could perhaps be achieved by setting examples.

‘Instead of squeesing more revenues out of a sliding economy through taxation, would it not be better if the government trims its non-development expenditure, drop orders for new cars for ministers’ chief ministers’ MNAs’ and MPAs,’ cut on lavish parties and extended dinners, stop travelling in company of friends and relatives around the world?

It is the typical behaviour of the private sector to internalise gains and externalise pains. The government is expected to reconcile the competing interests in a society that also suit the interests of the majority. It is also supposed to be a custodian of public interest. It is supposed to keep self-serving interests and socially costly practices in check by laying down rules and regulations that promote social justice.

It is inappropriate, in the first place, to rename a tax to cover up the inefficiency of the government in mobilisation of internal resources.

This is not only the government, the attitude of the opposition is equally intriguing. The PML(N) legislators like other members of the National Assembly took little interest in the budget which was passed once the business of grant approval was completed without any meaningful debate.

It, however, opted to file a petition in the Supreme Court against the carbon tax on oil products instead of tearing it down in the assembly with the help of legislators.

Third IMF tranche hangs in the balance

ISLAMABAD: The fate of the $850 million third IMF tranche hangs in the balance following ‘inconclusive’ talks between a Pakistani delegation and Fund’s officials.

‘The International Monetary Fund has linked the release of the third tranche with the performance of the economy and fulfilling of the remaining conditions in the first quarter (July-September) of 2009-10,’ a source told Dawn.

Islamabad has failed to meet the commitments made in the $7.6 billion standby arrangement. It received the first tranche of $3.1 billion in November last year and the second of $840 million in March 2009.

The IMF officials will carry out next review of the country’s economy in September and that would determine the fate of the third tranche.

The third tranche was expected to be released by the end of June or in early July.

The IMF is reviewing Pakistan’s March-June economic indicators and measures taken in the budget 2009-10 ahead of giving a go-ahead for the release of the tranche.

A 23-member delegation led by Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance Shaukat Tarin recently held week-long talks with IMF officials in Istanbul.

According to the source, the delegation accepted further harsh conditions.

Initially, the IMF and World Bank officials were convinced about 17.7 per cent increase in power tariff but later accepted to a 31 per cent raise, the source said.

The talks on the issue would start in Islamabad on Monday,’ the source said, adding that Pakistan was left with no option but to approach the US for some relief.

The IMF rejected long-hours of loadshedding as a reason for not increasing power tariff and advised the team to improve management to avoid public criticism. The Fund also asked the government to clear the Rs60 billion circular debt by the end of July.

‘The payment of circular debt itself will improve power generation,’ the source quoted the IMF officials. The commitments must be honoured, the delegation was bluntly told.

The source said the Fund had also proposed over a 20 per cent increase in the price of diesel as part of resource mobilisation. It also raised objections over the changes made recently in the tax administration reforms and asked for two mainstreams in the taxation system — Customs and Inland Revenue.

The Pakistan team committed to the IMF that a notification establishing the two streams of taxation would be issued in early August and would be implemented from September.

Before the departure of the Pakistan team for Istanbul, the government had made amendments in the tax administration reform project (TARP) to address the concerns of the customs group which was opposing the establishment of the Inland Revenue for the merging of sales tax into income tax.

The government established the Inland Revenue but the customs group challenged the decision in the Islamabad High Court which gave an interim order to maintain the status quo.

A source in the finance ministry told Dawn that the IMF had also raised objections over revenue realisation and expenditure targets. ‘The revenue targets are overstated and expenditures understated,’ the IMF said.

According to the IMF estimates, the budget deficit would not be around 4.9 per cent but would rise to 5.5 per cent to 6 per cent because of the measures taken in the budget, including appointments of over 90 federal ministers and advisers.

The source said that to save the IMF programme, the Pakistan team contacted the president’s secretariat for issuing an ordinance to protect the Rs122 billion collection, otherwise the budget deficit would rise by another one percentage point.

An example of lack of coordination among members of the Pakistan team was on the issue of Value Added Tax (VAT).

An independent economist Hafiz Pasha, who accompanied the delegation, informed the IMF that it would not be possible to implement VAT from next fiscal year because of a possible resistance from the provinces. But, the finance secretary assured the Fund that there would be no problem in introducing the VAT.

Displaced families being transported back to Swat

JALOZAI CAMP: Pakistan on Monday began bussing home dozens of families, among nearly two million people displaced by fighting between the military and Taliban fighters in the northwest.

The government laid on buses and trucks at different camps set up by the local authorities and the UN refugee agency in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), said AFP correspondents.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani last week announced plans to start sending back the displaced from Monday, saying that the military had ‘eliminated’ the extremists during a two-month assault in and around the district of Swat.

‘There are 120 families returning to their hometowns today from Jalozai camp,’ a spokesman for the special support group, set up by the government to handle the displacement crisis, told AFP.

Located in the northwestern town of Nowshera, the camp had hosted nearly 4,000 families, according to the website of the Emergency Response Unit.

‘It’s a very big day for me because I’m returning home today with my family members,’ 29-year-old Shakir Zada told AFP before boarding a bus at Jalozai destined to take him back to the southern Swat town of Barikot.

Pakistan launched an offensive against the Taliban in the northwest districts of Buner, Lower Dir and Swat after militants advanced to within 100 kilometres of Islamabad in defiance of a peace deal.

The offensive sparked a huge evacuation.

Most of the 1.9 million displaced, including about 500,000 who fled an earlier offensive last year, have crowded into relatives’ homes, while others are crammed into hot and dusty refugee camps.

Six militants killed in South Waziristan clashes

WANA: Six militants were killed and 10 injured in a gun battle with security forces at a check post in South Waziristan, DawnNews reported.

According to official sources, the militants attacked the security check post at the Tyarza Gate and the forces retaliated.

Security forces also pounded militant hideouts with heavy artillery in Srwakai, Maula Khan Sarai and Kothki areas.

Earlier, one security man was killed and two injured in an attack on a security check post in South Waziristan’s Daray Nashtar area.

Militants attacked the check post with heavy weapons, resulting in a fierce retaliation by the army after they tracked the militants back to their hideouts. — DawnNews

Blast kills at least nine in Mian Channu

MULTAN: Nine people, including seven children, were killed and dozens wounded Monday in an explosion at the home of a cleric in Pakistan’s Mian Channu village, officials said.

It was not immediately clear why the explosives detonated on the outskirts of Mian Channu, about 90 kilometres east of Multan in the Punjab province.

‘We have received nine dead bodies and 70 injured. Seven of the dead are children while one is a woman,’ Naeem Sadiq, a doctor at the local hospital, told a private television station.

‘Ten seriously injured have been shifted to the main hospital. We have declared an emergency at the hospital,’ he added.

Police said around 25 homes were flattened due to the force of the explosion, which gouged a huge crater out of the ground.

Only the outer walls of buildings were left standing, as rescue workers sifted through the rubble under the burning sun and a rocket launcher was visible sticking out of the debris, according to television footage.

‘The blast took place inside the house of a local cleric. Children used to come to his house for religious education,’ local district police chief Kamran Khan told reporters.

‘Rescue teams have recovered nine dead bodies. Dozens are injured. The blast was apparently due to some type of explosives inside the house,’ Khan added.

‘The blast was so severe that it formed a big crater and around 25 houses collapsed,’ he said.

Rana Sanaullah, a provincial cabinet minister, said an investigation was under way into the cause of the blast.

‘This was not a formal madrassah but children used to come to get a religious education,’ he said. — AFP

Punishment for indecent SMS and emails

ISLAMABAD: The government announced on Sunday that sending indecent, provocative and ill-motivated stories and text messages through e-mails and mobile telephone Short Messaging Service (SMS) was an offence under the Cyber Crime Act (CCA) and its violators could be sent behind bars for 14 years.

An official announcement by the interior ministry said that the government was launching a campaign against circulation of what it called ill-motivated and concocted stories through emails and text messages against civilian leadership and security forces.

The announcement does not elaborate what is meant by ill-motivated e-messages, but it is believed that the ‘civilian leadership’ meant President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, Interior Minister Rehman Malik and other politicians.

A senior official of the ministry said: ‘Sending indecent message is a crime under the Cyber Crime Act and liable to punishment.’

He said that some elements had been trying to malign the political leadership and security forces engaged in a military operation in Malakand and some areas in Fata.

The government has tasked the Federal Investigation Agency’s Cyber Crime Cell to block or trace such emails and mobile telephones’ SMS.

Under the Cyber Crime Act, violators could be jailed for 14 years, besides confiscation of their property. Similarly, any Pakistani living abroad and violating provisions of the act may be charged and will be liable to deportation to Pakistan.

Under the campaign, all Internet Service Providers would be checked physically by the FIA on a daily basis.

The directive said the campaign would also target proscribed organisations which had been using internet for malicious propaganda against security forces.

The Director General of FIA, Mr Tariq Khosa, has been instructed to monitor and check stories and messages and take necessary action under the CCA.

An FIA official said that strict action would be taken against all culprits in the next few days and the agency had already done a lot of work in this regard.

‘Interpol/Lyon has also been requested to identify those email addresses and websites registered abroad which are being used for such stories,’ the official said.