We want Growing pakistan........

Great View of Aabshaar AbdullahPur Faisalabad.....

KARACHI: President Asif Ali Zardari said on Tuesday that Pakistan People’s Party was striving for a better future for the poor in concert with the coalition partners, and will go into the next elections on the basis of its performance.

Mr Zardari said the NFC award would be announced this year and decision about the future of the local bodies would also be taken shortly.

President Zardari expressed these views during exchanges with the media at Bilawal House.

He emphasised the need for giving more time to the government for clearing the mess of the past.

Responding to queries, Mr Zardari said the government had taken long-term measures for promoting trade and reducing reliance on aid.

He said that during his foreign tours and interaction with their representatives he had made it clear that his government believed in trade. He claimed the country was moving in the right direction.

About the federal budget, he said had the government not invoked the IMF option the meltdown effect would have been unbearable.

The president said that there was a lot of room to raise exports from a meagre 24 billion dollars to 200 billion dollars.

President Zardari said that democracy had been fostered in the country and Benazir Bhutto gave her life for the cause of democracy and he also went to jail for the cause of democracy.

He claimed that during 10 months public opinion around the world was swinging in favour of Pakistan especially after a consensus had been developed with regard to the war on terror and the people had started owning this war.

He said that with good wheat support price the government had managed to enhance its yield, but emphasised the need for adopting techniques to obtain higher per acre yield with less use of water.

In this context, he referred to deal with China for obtaining high yield seeds.

With regard to electricity, he pointed out that Benazir Bhutto during her government had come up with a good IPP policy for generating 14,000MW and out of that 4,000MW was installed as well however, the subsequent governments did not take advantage of this and there was a gap of electricity supply in the country.

About the performance of KESC, he said that during his previous visit he had held a meeting and that we were trying out and if it did not deliver then we would have no other choice but to take it over.

President Zardari said that he would announce a package for Lyari from where he was also elected in the past.

He said that after the budget session the prime minister would hold a meeting with the local government ministers of the provinces to decide about the local bodies system.

He said the PPP government was under pressure as the expectations of the people were so high who wanted jobs.

He said people did not expect the other political parties and that’s why the PPP was under pressure and we were trying our best to fulfil their expectations.

Political activist with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

1977-84 Repeatedly imprisoned and kept under house arrest by the Pakistani government; political exile in London, England.

1988 She became Prime Minister

1990 Her government was illegally dismissed in August.

1993 She again came to power after her party won a majority in elections held in October...

1984 Returned to Pakistan in April.


1986 Pakistan Peoples Party, Karachi, Pakistan co-chair.

1988 After elections held November, invited to form .........

Pakistan's principal natural resources are arable land and water. About 25% of Pakistan's total land area is under cultivation and is watered by one of the largest irrigation systems in the world. Pakistan irrigates three times more acres than Russia. Agriculture accounts for about 23% of GDP and employs about 44% of the labor force. Pakistan is one of the world's largest producers and suppliers of the following according to the 2005 Food and Agriculture Organization of The United Nations and FAOSTAT given here with ranking:

Chickpea (2nd)
Apricot (4th)
Cotton (4th)
Sugarcane (4th)
Milk (5th)
Onion (5th)
Date Palm (6th)
Mango (7th)
Tangerines, mandarin orange, clementine (8th)
Rice (8th)
Wheat (9th)
Oranges (10th)

Pakistan ranks fifth in the Muslim world and twentieth worldwide in farm output. It is the world's fifth largest milk producer.

Agriculture is the mainstay of economy in Pakistan. About 50 percent of the population is involved in farming, forestry and fishing that together contribute to 25 percent of the GDP. Barring the regions of north and the west, which are covered by mountains, the rest of the country has fertile plains where crops like wheat, cotton, maize, sugar cane and rice are grown. The areas of Quetta and Kalat are known for their fruits and dates. Pakistan is self-sufficient in wheat, rice and sugar.

The industries of Pakistan, which contribute to 20 percent of GNP, involve 10 percent of the population. Main items that are exported by Pakistan include cotton cloth, tapestries, leather, carpets and rice. In 2001 Pakistan's gross domestic product (GDP) was $58.7 billion. The government budget in 2000 included $9.9 billion in revenues and $13.5 billion in expenditures.

Ayub Khan lost at the negotiation table at Tashkent the war that was won by the Pakistan army supported by the people of Pakistan in 1965. This humiliation enraged the people of Pakistan against the dictator. Mr. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a patriot as he has always been, was left with no choice but to quit the Ayub Government on June 16, 1966. Bhutto was determined to bring down the dictator who had betrayed the nation.


To achieve this goal, he needed a political organization and a political platform. He waited for more than a year before he found both; like so many aggrieved politicians before him, he chose to found his own political party.



The PPP was launched at its founding convention held in Lahore on November 30 - December 01, 1967. At the same meeting, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was elected as its Chairman. Among the express goals for which the party was formed were the establishment of an "egalitarian democracy" and the "application of socialistic ideas to realize economic and social justice". A more immediate task was to struggle against the hated dictatorship of Ayub Khan,who was at the height of his power when the PPP was formed. Basic principles of PPP enshrined:

Islam is our Faith

Democracy is our politics

Socialism is our Economy

All Power to the People



The Party also promised the elimination of feudalism in accordance with the established principles of socialism to protect and advance the interests of peasantry.



Immediately after its formation, the PPP spread its message among the workers, peasants and students throughout Pakistan, who greeted it enthusiastically. While it was still in this process, a mass uprising broke out against Ayub Khan’s dictatorship and the PPP quickly moved to play a leading role in this movement. After Ayub resigned in March 1969, an interim military government took over and announced elections for December 1970. The PPP contested these elections on the slogans of "ROTI, KAPRA AUR MAKAN" (bread, clothing and shelter) and "all power to the people."



The masses responded heavily to it in the polls, where PPP won 81 of 138 seats allocated to West Pakistan in the National Assembly (a total of 300 seats were contested for in both wings of the country ), coming in as the second largest party after East Pakistan - based Awami League. At the provincial level, it won majority in Sindh and Punjab legislatures.

There were not enough means and time to organize and carry the message of PPP to East Pakistan. The PPP, therefore, confined its election activities to West Pakistan and fielded its candidates in that wing.



When Army rulers refused to transfer power to Awami League, which had won an absolute majority in the national legislature, a bloody civil war broke out in East Pakistan leading to Indian Military intervention defeating Pakistani Army. The humiliated army Generals had to step down. Mr. Bhutto took over as Chief Martial Law Administrator and President. Martial Law was lifted on the following April when interim constitution was passed by the National Assembly within a short span of four months after assuming office.



During its Government from Dec. 20, 1971 to July 5,1977, the PPP government made significant social and economic reforms that did much to improve the life of Pakistan's impoverished masses. It also gave the country a new Constitution and took many other steps to promote country's economic and political recovery after the disastrous years of military rule. PPP remained the only concrete hope for a better future of the poor masses. When elections were called by Mr. Bhutto for March 1977 nine opposition parities gathered together to pool their strength and formed Pakistan National Alliance (PNA). Although this alliance had several important centrist parties as its members, it was heavily dominated by the right - wing religious parties such as the fanatical Jamaat-I-Islami. This gave its election campaign a fundamentalist coloring expressed through the slogan for " Nizam-I-Mustafa" (Islamic system). PPP promised in its 1977 manifesto the consolidation of its achievements made during the first term. PNA, because of its obscurantism, failed to attract the broad masses. All independent estimates predicated a PPP victory in March.



However, when the election produced this victory, returning 155 PPP. candidates to the 200 members National Assembly as opposed to only 36 PNA candidates (the 7 seats from Bluchistan were not contested by the PNA), the PNA did not accept the results. (Indeed, in the face of all predictions, it had said before the elections that it would accept nothing but an outright victory for itself). Charging rigging and fraud, it unleashed its campaign of violence and openly called for the military to take over the government. Despite government's offers for compromise and a settlement for fresh general elections having been arrived at between the Government and the opposition, the PNA movement did not let up until the military led by General Zia-ul-Haq staged a coup d'etat and seized power on July 5,1977.



Bhutto was symbol of Reform and Reconstruction. Bhutto master minded Pakistan's first Steel Mill, a second Port and commissioned Pakistan's first hydro electric dam on the mighty Indus at Tarbela. He made Pakistan self sufficient in the filed of fertilizers, sugar, and cement. He nationalized Banks and Life Insurance Companies, he also initiated Pakistan’s Nuclear Programme.

1972 Land Reforms slashed the individual holding to 150 acres of irrigated or 300 acres of un-irrigated land. In 1977 the ceiling was further reduced to 100 acres of irrigated and 200 acres of un-irrigated land.



The Islamic Summit was held in Lahore attended by all the heads of Muslim states. Thus making Pakistan a center of Islamic Unity. To his credit are the Electrical Mechanical Complex at Wah, The Aeronautic Complex at Kamrah, The Kahuta Project for Nuclear Bomb. He made education upto Matric free, provided books free to the students, provided allowances to unemployed graduates and two increments to Science Graduates in their salaries, thousands of Government employees who were not confirmed for over 5 to 15 years were confirmed in their jobs. The system of part time government employees was changed to whole time government employees. First May was declared public holiday.



The economical policies of Z.A. Bhutto were anti-imperialist based on state socialism following the mould of other Third World leaders such as Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Ahmad Soekarno of Indonesia, and his own contemporary Salvador Allende of Chile who was elected, over thrown and assassinated during the same period. The Neo-Colonialists made a "horrible example" of Bhutto for his anti-Imperialistic stance, his efforts to unite Islamic World, and his demarche towards bringing Third World on one Platform apart from the Nuclear issue.



Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was a man of multidimensional qualities. He was a political philosopher and at the same time implemented his political philosophy.



He master minded a political party and made it a mass movement. He was an articulate mass orator and a superb diplomat. Taking the country out of chaos he was the driving force to effectively establish an organized government machinery. He was never vindictive. He faced death bravely.



Immediately following the coup, the Martial Law regime let loose a baseless campaign against the PPP and its leaders. Mr. Bhutto was framed on a murder-conspiracy charge and executed, rather judicially assassinated-on April 4, 1979. While leading a procession in Lahore the police hit Begum Bhutto on her head who had been elected the Acting Chairperson of the Party following the arrest of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in September,1977. Benazir Bhutto who was elected as Co-Chairperson of the party, following the disqualification of Begum Nusrat Bhutto, in February,1978 suffered impairment in hearing during incarceration.



Hundreds of party workers were put to death. Thousands were lashed and tens of thousand suffered long imprisonments and detention in jails and torture cells. Even women were not spared. Not a single PPP. worker betrayed the party despite temptations by Martial Law Authorities.



Despite inexplicable repression, PPP. survived and indeed, gained in strength. Its own activists reaffirmed their resolve to fight against the criminal dictatorship. Segments of masses which had become alienated from it, now rallied to its support. The progressive forces outside the PPP. began to cooperate with it. The leadership of the party was in the hands of Mrs. Nusrat Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto-Bhutto's widow and daughter respectively who gave it a renewed sense of radicalism. The PPP. accepted the challenge of General Zia when Ms. Benazir Bhutto commanded the party workers and supporters that party would fight on all fronts - at the polls as well as in the field demonstrations, public meetings and protests. So the party participated in the non-party local bodies elections. It swept the polls throughout the country from Karachi to Khyber, the urban as well as rural areas, and washed away the impression that PPP. has lost its popularity or mobilization capacity. It paved the way for the political parties to unite.



The proof of the party's centrality to the politics of Pakistan came when nine political parties, including some which had helped in its overthrow as member of the PNA, united with it in the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD). In its first statement issued in February, 1981, the movement demanded the holding of "free, fair, and impartial election". When the government failed to oblige, the MRD, in the summer of 1983, brought out its followers to confront the military in the streets of Sindh.



Benazir Bhutto rescued and rebuilt the party from scratch, leading an epic movement for the restoration of Democracy, her historical welcome in Lahore on 10th 1986 was the turn of the tide. In the meantime Zia was digging his own grave. He dismissed his hand picked protege Muhammad Khan Jonejo and dissolved the National Assembly of Pakistan on May 29, 1988. A few days before his death, while revealing his plans for a presidential system, he told a confidante "I will be around a long time". Fate intervened on l7th August, 1988 when the C-130, carrying him crashed in a ball of fire and Zia went from ashes to ashes and his system from dust to dust.



Public funds running over tens of crores and govt. resources were made available to political parties and individual leaders opposing Pakistan People's Party by the establishment to bar the way of success of PPP. at the polls.



General Zia-ul-Haq's death in August, 1988, changed the scene. While Zia's supporters were in total disarray following his death. The PPP under Benazir Bhutto's dynamic leadership quickly mobilized public support. A number of politicians who supported Zia vied to join PPP. Despite the factors stated above the party did well in the election of November, 1988 but it was not able to repeat the performance of 1970. It emerged as single largest party in the National Assembly with 92 of the 207 seats contested in the elections. It was able to secure majority only in one province: Sindh. It was only with the support of the MQM and some small parties that it was able to form a government at the Center with Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister, the first women in modern history to head a government of a Muslim country. She was not allowed to work independently and her government was dismissed by President Ghulam Ishaque on August 6, 1990. She had to work under the constant shadow of President Ghulam Ishaq Khan.



In the general elections held on 24 October, 1990, the Pakistan People's Party suffered defeat due to massive rigging. The party had formed an electoral alliance with the Tehrik-e-Istiqlal and Tehrik-e-Nafaz Fiqh Jafria (TNFJ), under the name of Pakistan Democratic Alliance (PDA) The PPP won 46 of 107 national assembly seats contested by it. Islamic Jamhoori Itehad (IJI) led by Mian Muhainmad Nawaz Sharif won with majority.



PPP allegations were confirmed by Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, the caretaker Prime Minister in 1990 that the elections were stolen and had been rigged. In Sindh a reign of terror was let loose. So much so that Asif Ali Zardari was involved in 12 criminal cases including a case of murder of 5 persons. Despite Jam Sadiq and Muzaffar's personal supervision he was acquitted in all the cases,. Jam Sadiq said had I been instructed by the President I would have managed to defeat Benazir.

After the dismissal of Nawaz Sharif’s Government in 1973, Benazir Bhutto returned to office, following long March on Nov. 18, 1992 when Benazir Bhutto was baton charged and arrested. Many PPP. leaders and workers were beaten and arrested by Sharif Government. Benazir Bhutto once again returned to the office of Prime Minister.Benazir Bhutto had redefined the Party programme at the Silver Jubilee of the Party at Lahore in November, 1992. The New Social contract envisaged a social market economy, Privatization of the means of production, downsizing of the government, devolution of power and decentralization to the level of Local Government. So Benazir Bhutto's government was dismissed for the second time on November 5,1996 by her hand picked President Farooq Leghari, who betrayed her as General Zia-ul-Haq had betrayed her father. In the aftermath of the 1997, engineered elections, Pakistan fell into the grip of a civilian dictatorship and the Muslim League into the clutches of Sharif family. Sharif's, a protege of Zia, amended the constitution. Taking advantage of the nuclear tests of May 28, the government proclaimed an Emergency which enabled the Federal government to impose a unitary form of Government by arrogating powers of provincial governments to itself. In the province of Sindh, the country's second largest Province, where the Muslim League was a Minority party with less than a fifth of the seats in the Provincial Assembly maneuvered to form government. A similar threat loomed large on the North West Frontier Province where the Muslim League minority Government had parted ways with the traditionally strong Awami National Party. The government of the Baluchistan National Party led by Akhtar Mengal was over thrown. In a bid to concentrate powers in their family, the Sharif brothers maneuvered the passage of the Shariat Bill i.e. the l5th Amendment (AC 15) in the National Assembly which was however stalled in the Senate.



Benazir Bhutto is in forced exile these days and her husband Asif Ali Zardari is in jail since November, 1996 facing bravely a number of cases engineered by Sharif Govt. as process of victimization, spurred by political vendetta.General Pervaiz Musharraf took over on Oct. 12, 1999 by removing corrupt and inept Government of Nawaz Sharif. In reply to a petition by Nawaz Sharif in the Supreme Court of Pakistan challenging Army's action of Oct. 12, 1999, the present regime stated that 1997 election were manipulated by Muslim League, thus vindicating the specific allegation by PPP. Today almost all political parties and leaders including some Nawaz Sharif Muslim Leaguers are anxiously awaiting a move by Ms. Benazir Bhutto and PPP. for the restoration of democracy. It is Benazir Bhutto and PPP who can put the economy and social and organizational structure of Pakistan on rail again and ensure masses food, shelter, education and health care and open avenues for job opportunities to the young men of Pakistan. She will choose her own timing for forcing the Military Junta to retreat and hand over power back to the people of Pakistan.

TEHRAN: Iran's interior minister on Wednesday accused U.S. spy agency the CIA of helping to fund "rioters", stepping up accusations of Western involvement in street unrest following the country's disputed election.

"Britain, America and the Zionist regime (Israel) were behind the recent unrest in Tehran," Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli was quoted as saying by a local news agency.

"Many of the rioters were in contact with America, CIA and the MKO and are being fed by their financial resources," he said. The MKO (Mujahideen Khalq Organisation) is an exiled Iranian opposition group.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said today the regime will not "back down" in the face of protests which have rocked Tehran over the disputed presidential election.

"In the recent incidents concerning the election, I have been insisting on the implementation of the law and I will be (insisting). Neither the system, nor the people will back down under force," state television quoted him as saying at a meeting with lawmakers.

Khamenei also urged MPs to cooperate with the government.

"Don't be hard on the government -- deal with the government in a friendly and nice manner," Khamenei said. "Executive affairs are difficult and on this rocky and exhausting path, the government should be helped."

TEHRAN: Iran faced mounting international pressure on Wednesday after US President Barack Obama raised ‘significant questions’ about the legitimacy of the presidential election and expressed outrage over the crackdown on opposition protesters, AFP reported.

The leadership also faced a new challenge from calls by reformist clerics for national mourning for dead protesters.

While defiant cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great) were again heard from Tehran rooftops as darkness descended overnight, Iran’s hardline leadership, for now at least, seemed to have gained the upper hand.

Riot police and Basij militia appeared to have largely ended mass protests against the June 12 election, which reformists say was rigged to return President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power and keep out moderate former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi, sources told Reuters.

Iran has refused to overturn the results of the poll that returned hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power, but supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has extended by five days a Wednesday deadline to examine vote complaints.

And one defeated candidate, former Revolutionary Guards chief Mohsen Rezai, has withdrawn his protest about election irregularities, in a blow to the opposition which has staged almost daily demonstrations since the June 12 vote.

‘Iran’s political, social and security situation has entered a sensitive and decisive phase, which is more important than the election,’ Rezai said in a letter on Tuesday to the Guardians Council, the top election body.

In his strongest comments yet, Obama said on Tuesday there were ‘significant questions about the legitimacy’ of the poll.

‘The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days.’

Obama described as ‘heartbreaking’ the shooting on a Tehran street of a young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, whose death featured on an Internet video seen around the world and has become a poignant symbol for the opposition.

Iran has retaliated against the international backlash, accusing western governments, particularly major foes Britain and the United States, of meddling in its internal affairs.

Britain said it was expelling two Iranian diplomats after a similar move by Tehran while a number of other European nations have also hauled in envoys to protest at the election and the repression of protests.

Britain, described by Khameini as the ‘most evil’ of Iran’s enemies, is also pulling out families of embassy staff and, along with some other European nations, has warned its nationals against travel to Iran.

At least 17 people have been killed and many more wounded in the violence that has convulsed the nation since the vote, according to state media. Many hundreds of protesters, prominent reformists and journalists have also been rounded up by the authorities.

The crisis is the worst in Iran since the Islamic revolution 30 years ago and has jolted the pillars of the clerical regime, with even some top officials raising concerns about the vote.

The Guardians Council, a 12-member unelected body of Islamic clerics and jurists, insisted on Tuesday that the results of the election would stand.

‘We witnessed no major fraud or breach,’ spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai said on English-language state television Press TV. ‘Therefore, there is no possibility of an annulment taking place.’ The council has acknowledged more votes were cast than there were eligible voters in 50 of the nation’s 366 constituencies, but denies major irregularities.

However, Ahmadinejad’s main defeated challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi, released a report on ‘electoral fraud and irregularities’ in the election that gave him just 34 per cent of the vote to 63 per cent for the incumbent.

The three-page report on his campaign website called for a ‘commission of truth and justice acceptable to all the parties to examine the entire election process.’ It denounced what it said was ‘large-scale’ official support for Ahmadinejad and spoke of ballot papers being printed on polling day without serial numbers, doubts about whether ballot boxes were empty when they arrived at polling stations and candidates’ representatives being banned from vote centres.

Independent British think tank Chatham House said in a report that the results show ‘irregularities’ in the turnout and ‘highly implausible’ swings to Ahmadinejad.

In Washington, analysts say that although the immediate flashpoint is Ahmadinejad’s disputed victory, the real struggle now is over the authority of Khamenei, who has been the supreme leader for 20 years.

Twenty-five journalists and other staff at a newspaper owned by defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi were arrested, one of its editors told AFP on Wednesday.

The arrests come after the newspaper Kalemeh Sabz (Green Word) was shut down by the authorities in the wake of the disputed election that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to office.

‘Among those arrested on Monday were five or six administrative employees while the rest were journalists,’ Alireza Beheshti said. ‘The agents who came to the newspaper did not show a warrant.’ He said five women among the detainees had been released on Tuesday.

Kalemeh Sabz was only launched in the run-up to June 12 election by Mousavi, a former post-revolution premier who has alleged widespread fraud in the poll.

Tehran’s streets remained tense but quiet on Wednesday, two days after the last opposition rally on Monday was crushed by hundreds of riot police armed with steel clubs and firing tear gas.

The Revolutionary Guards — echoing a call by Khamenei last week — have warned of a ‘decisive and revolutionary’ riposte to any further protests.

Mousavi, prime minister in the post-revolution era, has urged supporters to keep demonstrating but to adopt ‘self-restraint’ to avoid more bloodshed while another defeated candidate Mehdi Karroubi has called for a mourning ceremony on Thursday for slain protesters.

The foreign media is banned from reporting from the streets under tight restrictions imposed since the unrest was unleashed, but images of police brutality have spread worldwide via amateur video over the Internet.

In the latest crackdown on the media, Iran arrested a British-Greek journalist working for the Washington Times. —Agencies

Afridi devotes T20 victory to Swat people

KARACHI: The hero from Pakistan cricket team in the ICC Twenty20 World Cup Shahid Khan Afridi has said our ambitions were to relieve the restive nation by winning the world cup and I devote our victory to the people of Swat.

Talking to Geo news on his return to country, he said the prayers of the people set the ways for our victory, my seniors kept my moral high and boosted my confidence as the tournament progressed.

He advised political leaders to get united as our national team is and they must learn lesson from our commitment, he added.

On Monday, April 4, veteran journalist Ahmed Rashid addressed a select crowd at Karachi’s Mohatta Palace Museum. Not surprisingly, the subject of his talk was ‘Afghanistan and Pakistan: Quest for Peace or Recipe for War?’ He argued that Pakistan was facing a major existential crisis: ‘I no longer say that there’s a creeping Talibanisation in Pakistan, it’s a galloping Talibanisation.’ Here, Dawn.com’s Huma Yusuf presents the salient points from Mr. Rashid’s presentation. (Photograph: Fahim Siddiqi/White Star)

Where did the Taliban come from?

The myths about the Taliban need to be clarified. They are not an extension of an external threat, they are not being funded by Russia or India. In the 1990s, the Taliban in Afghanistan were fighting the Northern Alliance, and thousands of Pashtuns went to fight as foot soldiers on behalf of the Taliban. In 2001, the Afghan Taliban fled to Pakistan. Pakistani Taliban, who previously had little clout, became hosts of the Afghan Taliban and earned much money for their assistance. From 2001 to 2004, the Pakistani Taliban grew in numbers and influence and became radicalized because of their proximity to the Afghan Taliban. They planned and mobilized to establish a Taliban ‘emirate’ or state in Fata and the expansion of that idea of statehood is what we see happening today.

Pakistani Taliban expanding

The leadership of the Taliban is now in Pakistan and they have stated their intention of overthrowing the government here. The Taliban are linking up with groups in Pakistan and the Pakistani Taliban movement is turning into a multiethnic movement. Groups cultivated to fight in Kashmir have joined up with the Pakistani Taliban, and include Punjabis with organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkatul Mujahideen. Now, some 40 groups in Pakistan are loosely affiliated with the Pakistan – the several years of progressive diplomacy with India exacerbated the rise of different Taliban-affiliated factions. For that reason, Pakistan faces a more dangerous situation than Afghanistan, where Tajik and Uzbek fighters were not permitted to join the Afghan Taliban movement.

Issues in Pakistani governance

Pakistan is also weaker because of a raging economic crisis, the ongoing insurgency in Balochistan, and a political crisis. The PPP government has wasted one year vying with the PML-N for power rather than tackling the Taliban threat. Meanwhile, ANP, which was supposed to serve as secular face of Frontier province, has collapsed (ANP officials are being targeted by Taliban in northern areas).

Before 2008, the Musharraf government allowed the Taliban to resettle in Pakistan from Afghanistan. Musharraf wanted to maintain the jihadi nexus as a force against the Indians. Also, the emphasis then was on getting rid of Al Qaeda, the Taliban were not seen as a major threat.

After 2004/2005, when military operations did begin in Fata, the government pursued a stop-and-start policy, which involved several peace deals that did not hold. In the meantime, the Pakistan government and army failed to protect the people of the Fata and the traditional tribal hierarchies that were pro-Pakistan. About 300 maliks of tribes were killed and by 2007, there were half a million refugees from Fata in Pakistan. Having lost the goodwill of the population in Fata, the government will find it hard to reenter the area and rebuild traditional tribal structures.

American failures

How did we get from 2001 to where we are today? The Bush government got distracted by Iraq, which provided a diversion of attention and resources from the situation in Afghanistan. Instead of having an on-the-ground plan for capacity building in Afghanistan, the US supported warlords – instead of empowering the centre, regional powers were bolstered. Plus, little was done about the drug trade, which is now the main source of funding for the Taliban (it is estimated at 300 million dollars, but Rashid believes the real figures are triple that amount). Instead of defeating Taliban in Afghanistan, Americans routed them to Pakistan.

Obama policy

US President Barack Obama is now doing what Bush should have done in Afghanistan (troop surge, capacity building, securing the ground to ensure that presidential elections can take place this August). In Pakistan, however, American options are limited. There was a hope that after February 2008 elections, there would be a strong coalition government that could serve as a civilian partner for Obama to partner with. After all, army has proved unreliable ally (especially since it still thinks that India is the main enemy; army officials dislike Indian presence in Afghanistan; and army officials don’t like Karzai and other Afghan leaders). However, there is no one for America to partner with. PM? President? Opposition leader? They have all proved too weak.

As a result, US is asking for aid to help Paksitan, but there is very little trust and faith in Pakistan amongst the Congress. The aid that will be given will be packed with conditionalities that Pakistan won’t be able to accept. Congress is asking, who will we give this aid to?

India question

There is a tit-for-tat game between India and Pakistan whereby they support nationalist insurgencies in each other’s countries (so while India may be giving funds in Balochistan, Pakistan is helping out rebels in Assam). But India is not funding the Taliban. India realizes that the Taliban will be at their border next and they have nothing to gain from supporting the militants.

Regional strategy

New focus of Obama administration is regional policy – get Afghanistan’s six neighbors involved and make them sort out regional stability and set a common agenda. But first, bilateral issues will have to be sorted: Indo-Pak will have to clear the air, Pakistan and Central Asian states will have to reach understandings, and Iran and the US will have to start negotiating. This way, Afghanistan is not only a problem, it becomes a trigger for regional problem solving. This is one of the most doable and productive aspects of the Obama policy for Af-Pak.

Fallacies of Swat deal (Nizam-i-Adl Regulation)

The ANP thought that the deal would be contained within Swat, but that was very misguided thinking. The Taliban have an expansionist agenda. They make deals in one areas so that they can secure it and then move into other areas. There has also been no cessation of their killing of ANP and other government officials and they have not agreed to lay down their arms. Instead of achieving anything, the Swat deal formalises a different form of law and governance for one part of Pakistan, thus weakening the government.

The law in Swat is Taliban law, and it’s nonsense to say that the Swatis have been practicing Sharia for decades. The Taliban law has nothing to do with the mild form of Sufi-influenced Sharia that Swatis have had from 1960s.

Government was definitely taken by surprise by the speed with which Taliban moved on from Swat to Buner, Dir, etc. They will not stop and government should realise their ultimate goal of toppling Islamabad. To that end, the operation in Swat is welcome. But the question is: will it be a sustained offensive?

Also, there are already one million IDPs who have escaped from Fata and northern areas. If the army is seriously going to tackle Taliban menace, it must learn counter-insurgency tactics and get the right equipment to target Taliban without damaging entire villages.

KARACHI, Jun 1 (IPS) - Politics is no rocket science," says Yasmeen Rehman, a woman parliamentarian in Pakistan’s Lower House, adding, "It is not as difficult as it is made out to be."

A new study by Aurat Foundation (AF), a women’s group, that evaluates women MPs’ (member of parliament) performance between 2002 and 2007, is full of praise for female lawmakers.

Rehman led a group of 25 MPs as the most active on the floor of the house in making the most interventions.

"Women parliamentarians have actually excelled in several areas of legislative functioning as compared to their male colleagues," states the report.

Women account for 21.6 percent of MPs in Pakistan’s parliament. In 2002, the figure was slightly lower at 21.1 percent.

But it still compares favourably with the rest of Asia, where female participation in parliament was calculated at 17.8 percent, by the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union. The global average was 18.3 percent in 2008.

The year 2002 was a watershed in women’s political representation in Pakistan. For the first time, they got 17 percent representation in both the national and provincial assemblies based on nominations by their parties.

Rehman, who had been a home-maker living in the shadow of her businessman husband, was nominated by the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). She is the sister of former attorney general, Malik Mohammad Qayyum.

But were these female politicians taken seriously?

In 2006, at a workshop held by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), the women MPs complained of "not being taken seriously", not only by male colleagues but by the speaker of the national assembly, and chairman of the senate.

"Yes we admit that we are children of a lesser god. But once we are there we should be given a chance and not ignored only because we are elected on reserved seats," says Begum Zeb Gohar, a former legislator with the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam).

The Aurat Foundation study titled ‘A five year report on: Performance of Women Parliamentarians in the 12th National Assembly (2002-2007)’ states that women MPs moved 27 percent of the total questions; 30 percent of the total calling attention notices; 24 percent of the total resolutions and 42 percent of the total private member bills in the assembly during the five years of the study.

Women played a key role in raising issues of violence, health, education, and the environment. A bill on karo-kari (so-called honour killing) was enacted by the national assembly in 2004 and a Women’s Rights bill in 2006.

Women may not be calling the shots, but "they are now accepted," says 38-year old Khurram Dastagir Khan of Pakistan Muslim League (N), the party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

Setting aside party differences, women lawmakers joined hands in November 2008 to create a caucus to fight for women’s right under the stewardship of the speaker, Fehmida Mirza. "The formation of the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus is a historic step by women parliamentarians who have collectively taken a bold step to rise above party lines and work together on policy making for women." says MP Nafisa Shah, the general secretary of the caucus, told IPS.

"We’re the only parliament with a women’s caucus in South Asia," boasts Bushra Gohar, MP from the Awami National Party. She envisions a regional women MPs caucus too. "We want to talk about bringing peace in the region, specially after the Mumbai terrorist attack (in December 2008)."

Women’s voices have also got stronger with the presence of a woman speaker, Mirza. Earlier their call attention notices were ignored, and the time allocated them was always less than the male parliamentarians, says Rehman. "You had to have a very thick skin (to be vocal in parliament)," she recalls.

What helped Rehman was a three-month gender mainstreaming, policy planning and development fellowship in the U.K. in 2005. It taught her how to look at issues from a gender angle, she says. "It was an absolutely marvelous mentorship and I came back armed with a newfound enthusiasm and oodles of confidence."

Rehman’s advice: women in parliament have to prove themselves and work twice as hard to be taken seriously.

Many female MPs are "silent spectators" in the house, according to Dastagir Khan of the PML-N. "Their performance is as poor as men."

An assembly staffer, who has observed the working of parliament for 21 years, echoes his views. "They (women) are as good as not being there. They are as ineffective as the opposition," he says on the condition of anonymity.

To prove their mettle, they should contest direct elections, he feels. "Don’t come as a daughter-in-law or wife, win and come on your own right."

Unless political parties set aside seats for women, women will not be able to break into the political process and strengthen their visibility in parliament, according to Gohar.

"Women should be given 33 percent representation in each political party’s key mainstream decision-making structures at all levels and a minimum of 17 percent as chairs of parliamentary committees and other parliamentary offices. This will help gain political expedience, experience, and women will learn to interact with people," says Gohar.

In Pakistan’s rocky political history, seats were reserved for women in the 1985 and 1988 general elections, ensuring an 8.4 percent representation. But the polls of 1990, 1993 and 1997 did not provide for a quota for women. There were no women members in the assembly those years.

Rehman has the last word. "If you need women’s voices in parliament, we need the quota," she says. (END/2009)

Renowned religious scholar and head of Jamia Naeemia Lahore Dr Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi among four others were martyred in a suicide attack at a seminary here Friday, report said. The blast that apparently was a suicide attack occurred following the Jumma prayer in Jamia Naeemia situated at Garhi Shahu area of the metropolis. According to preliminary reports, the blast was occurred in the office of Dr Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi, the principle of one of the largest religious seminary of the city. Naeemi was present in his office at the time of the blast, says an eyewitness. An eyewitness told media that a suicide bomber, 18 to 20, blew himself up inside the office of Dr Naeemi when he arrived after leading Jumma prayer in the seminary’s mosque, of which he was the head. Dr Naeemi was severely injured in the incident and was brought to Mayo Hospital where he succumbed to the injuries. Principle of Jamia Naeemia, Dr Khalil was also among the deceased, it was reported.

It is being reported throughout the city of Karachi that Geo News was suddenly taken off-air during the Capital Talk show where Ansar Abbasi stated that MQM won the election due to massive rigging. This statement apparently aggravated the leadership in Karachi forcing the channel off-air in Karachi. More updates to follow

Pakistan plays a key and highly conflicted--role in the global war on terror. The country is a U.S. ally in the war, but is often accused of supporting Taliban and Al Qaeda presence in its northern provinces. Pakistan also has nuclear ambitions. This timeline of Pakistan's role in the war tells the story of Pakistan's complex relationship to terrorism and the war on terror since 2001.

1990s: Pakistan Supports Taliban
•General Pervez Musharraf overthrows Pakistan government, and installs a military dictatorship.


•Pakistan serves as the primary incubator of the Taliban, a faction of the Afghan mujahideen who took refuge in Pakistan during the Soviet-Afghan war. Pakistan is one of two countries that maintains diplomatic ties with the Taliban regime (1996-2001)(the other is Saudi Arabia)
Read more: Taliban profile | Mujahideen
.2001: Pakistan Joins the War on Terror, Pakistanis Don't
•President Musharraf agrees to join forces with United States as an ally in the Global War on Terror, following the 9/11 attacks. This included realigning domestic political institutions to serve U.S. interests; granting the U.S. access to Pakistan's airfields; and overtly pledging support to the U.S. coalition.


•Pakistanis do not necessarily ally with the U.S.: "According to a gallup poll of Pakistanis in urban areas, 83 percent sympathize with the Taliban rather than the US and 82 percent consider Oslama bin Laden a holy warrior not a terrorist, although 64 percennt also believe the attack on the US was an act of terrorism" (Christopher de Bellaigue, "The Perils of Pakistan," The New York Review of Books, November 15, 2001)
.2002: More Counterterrorism ... and More Terrorism
•Musharraf again condemns terrorism, whether directed against Indian Kashmir or against Westerners. He promises to reduce support for madrasas (religious schools suspected of inculcating extreme views); outlaws a number of militant Pakistani groups; turns over Al Qaeda members to the U.S.; and impounds terrorist assets.


•Anti-Western terrorist attacks are on the rise. A grenade lobbed into a church in March kills five; in May, a car bomb in Karachi kills 14; a bomb set off near U.S. Consulate in June kills 12. Al Qaeda links are suspected. Several attacks in Kashmir are attributed to Pakistan based Lashkar e Tayyiba
Read more: Review of The Journalist and the Jihadi: the Murder of Daniel Pearl (HBO Film) | Al Qaeda Profile
.2003: U.S. & Pakistan Cooperate, but Pakistan "Talibanization" Increases
•Musharraf cooperates with the U.S. to achieve global war on terror objectives, including permitting U.S. military support operations.


•President Bush links U.S. and Pakistan goals. In July, Bush declares: "Both the United States and Pakistan are threatened by global terror, and we're determined to defeat it. Since [the] September 11th [2001] attacks, Pakistan has apprehended more than five-hundred al-Qaida and Taleban terrorists."


•The U.S. presence in Pakistan (coupled with the Iraq invasion) fosters increased anti-Americanism. Taliban members who've fled Afghanistan and Al Qaeda operatives are reportedly "re-Talibanizing" Pakistan, despite Pakistani disavowals.
Read more: Pakistan Strikes at Terrorism (VOA News, July 2003)
.2004-2005: U.S. Aborts Plan to Capture Al Qaeda Heads
•US-Pakistan joint counterterrorism efforts in military and law enforcement spheres continue. The US also says that the Pakistan has not done enough to combat Al Qaeda and the Taliban.


•Terrorist attacks continue. Several target Western interests; others perpetuate the Pakistani-Indian territorial standoff.


•Baluchistan's longstanding insurrectionist operations against the Pakistani government gathers steam, creating complications for Pakistani efforts to pursue Al Qaeda in the province


•The U.S. government scraps a plan to attack to capture top Al Qaeda members in Pakistan's tribal territory, fearing it would endanger delicate relations with Pakistan.
Read more: Commentary on the aborted Al Qaeda capture plan
.2006-2007: Pressures on Musharraf Rises as Pursuit of Taliban Continues
•Terrorist attacks continue, and the Taliban and Al Qaeda gather strength and support in Pakistan's tribal areas.


•The tension between Pakistani military and intelligence support for violent extremists, and popular anti-Anti Americanism begins to strain myth of perfect relationship between Musharraf and the U.S.
Read more: Pakistan and Afghanistan Argue over Who Does Less to Stop Terrorism | "We Are All Al Qaeda Now": How Pakistan Bombings Militarize Pakistanis | The Price of Holding Off Taliban in Afghanistan: Carnage in Pakistan
.2008: Musharraf Departs, Militants Become Focus of U.S. "War on Terror"
•President Musharraf resigns. His resignation is largely under pressure from the United States, although substantial local forces are also at work. His resignation signals his perceived failure to halt the activities of violent extremists in the Northwest provinces bordering Afghanistan. Civilan rule replaces Musharraf's military government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.
•Analysts from the West focus attention on the ISI, Pakistan's Intelligence service. The ISI has long been suspected of supporting jihadist activities against Afghanistan, which would serve Pakistan's strategic interest in quelling potential Afghan power.

Criminal gangs with links to key political parties are terrorising the residents of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, according to officials and victims. The most powerful is the so-called “Land Mafia”, who take over commercial plots, government land and even people’s homes, the officials said.!cid_4.2628388387@web56603.mail.re3The land mafiosi – who work out of legal fronts such as building,
contracting and real estate businesses – derive their strength from
political parties with constituencies in Karachi and other parts of
southern Sindh province such as the MQM, PPP, ANP and
the Quaid [PML-Q] and Functional [PML-F] factions of the [Pakistan]
Muslim League [PML].

“The Land Mafia is so powerful that it can overthrow the government by buying politicians and officials”, said a judge of the Sindh High
Court, who has heard many land dispute cases, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Usually the Mafia’s intention is to rob people of their property, a
typical method being to establish a fake dispute in which the official
land record is falsified so that the litigants – both members of the
Mafia – present fake documentary evidence of ownership of an empty
residence they have paid shanty dwellers to occupy.

“The real owner finds himself excluded from the litigation and unable
to mount a serious legal challenge, because it can only be heard after
the fake dispute is resolved”, the judge said, meaning that the real
owners could wait for years before they get a chance to claim for
their property.

This unlawful occupation of homes has created a lucrative business for some sons of political families, who buy the property with its illegal tenants for a fraction of the home’s value.

One such budding politician, who asked not to be named, was recently on a job in Karachi’s upmarket Defence Housing Society, managed by the military. An expatriate family based in the United States were being extorted by their “tenants” to part with their home for a quarter of its market value.

After a meeting over tea, the young politician magnanimously turned
down the desperate couple’s offer of 30 percent, saying it would be
“unfair” to take any more than half the property’s value.

A deal having been struck, he jumped in his sport utility vehicle and
drove home to pick up four private guards, each bearing an AK-47
assault rifle, and headed to the disputed property.

After the land gangs, gun runners occupy the next rung on Karachi’s
criminal ladder. They differ from the Land Mafia in that most are
allegedly ranking members of the city’s dominant political parties
[MQM, PPP, ANP, PML-Q, PML-F], according to officials.

“They are armed to the teeth and with far better weaponry than the
police. That’s why political violence flares up in a matter of minutes
in Karachi”, said another judge who also sought anonymity.

Police officials said the most powerful gunrunners had access to
specialised urban warfare weaponry, including rocket grenade
launchers, laser-sighted automatic weapons with armour-piercing
bullets and phosphorus grenades – the latter having notoriously been
used two years ago in an attack on the Tahir Plaza, a building next to
the city courts.

While the phosphorus grenade attack of May 2007 was targeting lawyers protesting against the sacking of Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the since-reinstated Chief Justice of Pakistan, the illegal weapons trade usually feeds ethnic tensions between Karachi’s dominant “Mohajir” community of migrants from India represented by the MQM and the smaller Pakhtoon and Baloch communities, represented respectively by the ANP and PPP.

The almost unrestricted flow of weaponry has for three decades
rendered many districts of the city no-go areas for the Sindh police, a senior officer in the police said.

Arguably the most dangerous is Lyari, a Baloch-dominated, impoverished district that has been taken over by the Narcotics Mafia, allegedly led by Rehman “Dakait” whose assumed surname literally means “bandit” [robber, thief, or dakoo].

Having allegedly slain his way to the Lyari drugs throne, he has
developed close relations with the PPP, which considers Lyari a safe
parliamentary constituency that has in the past been represented by
Zardari, now the President of Pakistan.

Mr. Rehman , who was last year acquitted on 28 murder charges
after witnesses refused to testify, now sits on the district peace
committee, which was involved in negotiating an end to recent
outbreaks of violence. He operates independently of the land and gun mafias, but is often involved in conflicts with them, police said.

They pointed to armed clashes in Lyari on April 28 2009 as an
example. An ethnic Mohajir builder had begun construction of a
commercial building when gangsters alleged to be working for Mr.
Rehman turned up demanding “protection” money. Confident of
protection from a powerful Land Mafia armed by gunrunners, he rejected their demands, according to police and residents in the area.

“Ten minutes later, all the construction machinery and workers were
gone – taken by Mr. Rehman’s people. Then Land Mafia people,
announcing their MQM connections, arrived and all hell broke loose”,
said one resident, an ethnic Pashtun who asked not be identified. Eleven people were killed and two-dozen wounded in the ensuing 24-hour gun battle, police said.

With ethnic tensions sparking frequent outbursts of violence in
Karachi, police and judicial officers said the provincial government was reluctant to take any action that could exacerbate the security situation.

Police living in Lyari and other no-go areas said they travelled to
and from their homes in civilian clothing to avoid being targeted by
gunmen. “It is too dangerous for us to patrol the areas. We would only go into an area like Lyari in armoured personnel carriers and that too with support from the Rangers”, said one senior police officer.

This article was sent to Debbie Ducro, an American-Jewish journalist with the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. She published it, and was fired the next day.

Quest for justice

By Judith Stone

I am a Jew. I was a participant in the Rally for the Right of Return to Palestine. It was the right thing to do.

I’ve heard about the European holocaust against the Jews since I was a small child. I’ve visited the memorials in Washington, DC and Jerusalem dedicated to Jewish lives lost and I’ve cried at the recognition to what level of atrocity mankind is capable of sinking.

Where are the Jews of conscience? No righteous malice can be held against the survivors of Hitler’s holocaust. These fragments of humanity were in no position to make choices beyond that of personal survival. We must not forget that being a survivor or a co-religionist of the victims of the European Holocaust does not grant dispensation from abiding by the rules of humanity.

“Never again” as a motto, rings hollow when it means “never again to us alone.” My generation was raised being led to believe that the biblical land was a vast desert inhabited by a handful of impoverished Palestinians living with their camels and eking out a living in the sand. The arrival of the Jews was touted as a tremendous benefit to these desert dwellers. Golda Meir even assured us that there “is no Palestinian problem”.

We know now this picture wasn’t as it was painted. Palestine was a land filled with people who called it home. There were thriving towns and villages, schools and hospitals. There were Jews, Christians and Muslims.

In fact, prior to the occupation, Jews represented a mere seven per cent of the population and owned three per cent of the land.

Taking the blinders off for a moment, I see a second atrocity perpetuated by the very people who should be exquisitely sensitive to the suffering of others. These people knew what it felt like to be ordered out of your home at gun point and forced to march into the night to unknown destinations or face execution on the spot. The people who displaced the Palestinians knew first hand what it means to watch your home in flames, to surrender everything dear to your heart at a moment’s notice. Bulldozers levelled hundreds of villages, along with the remains of the village inhabitants, the old and the young. This was nothing new to the world.

Poland is a vast graveyard of the Jews of Europe. Israel is the final resting place of the massacred Palestinian people. A short distance from the memorial to the Jewish children lost to the holocaust in Europe there is a levelled parking lot. Under this parking lot is what’s left of a once flourishing village and the bodies of men, women and children whose only crime was taking up needed space and not leaving graciously. This particular burial marker reads: “Public Parking”.

I’ve talked with Palestinians. I have yet to meet a Palestinian who hasn’t lost a member of their family to the Israeli Shoah, nor a Palestinian who cannot name a relative or friend languishing under inhumane conditions in an Israeli prison. Time and time again, Israel is cited for human rights violations to no avail. On a recent trip to Israel, I visited the refugee camps inhabited by a people who have waited 52 years in these ‘temporary’ camps to go home. Every Palestinian grandparent can tell you the name of their village, their street, and where the olive trees were planted. Their grandchildren may never have been home, but they can tell you where their great-grandfather lies buried and where the village well stood. The press has fostered the portrait of the Palestinian terrorist. But the victims who rose up against human indignity in the Warsaw Ghetto are called heroes. Those who lost their lives are called martyrs. The Palestinian who tosses a rock in desperation is a terrorist.

Two years ago I drove through Palestine and watched intricate sprinkler systems watering lush green lawns of Zionist settlers in their new condominium complexes, surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire in the midst of a Palestinian community where there was not adequate water to drink and the surrounding fields were sandy and dry. University professor Moshe Zimmerman reported in the Jerusalem Post (30 April, 1995), “The [Jewish] children of Hebron are just like Hitler’s youth.”

We Jews are suing for restitution, lost wages, compensation for homes, land, slave labour and back wages in Europe. Am I a traitor of a Jew for supporting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their birthplace and compensation for what was taken that cannot be returned?

The Jewish dead cannot be brought back to life and neither can the Palestinian massacred be resurrected. David Ben Gurion said, “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves…politically, we are the aggressors and they defend themselves…The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country…”.

Palestine is a land that has been occupied and emptied of its people. Its cultural and physical landmarks have been obliterated and replaced by tidy Hebrew signs. The history of a people was the first thing eradicated by the occupiers. The history of the indigenous people has been all but eradicated as though they never existed. And all this has been hailed by the world as a miraculous act of God. We must recognise that Israel’s existence is not even a question of legality so much as it is an illegal fait accompli realised through the use of force while supported by the Western powers. The UN missions directed at Israel in attempting to correct its violations of have thus far been futile.

In Hertzl’s ‘The Jewish State’ the father of Zionism said: “We must investigate and take possession of the new Jewish country by means of every modern expedient.” I guess I agree with Ehud Barak ( 3 June 1998) when he said, “If I were a Palestinian, I’d also join a terror group.” I’d go a step further perhaps. Rather than throwing little stones in desperation, I’d hurtle a boulder.

Hopefully, somewhere deep inside, every Jew of conscience knows that this was no war; that this was not G-d’s restitution of the holy land to it’s rightful owners. We know that a human atrocity was and continues to be perpetuated against an innocent people who couldn’t come up with the arms and money to defend themselves against the western powers bent upon their demise as a people.

We cannot continue to say, “But what were we to do?” Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism. I wholly support the rally of the right of return of the Palestinian people.

Khalfan Mohammed has long been buffeted by culture shock while staying in five-star hotels. As a devout Muslim he has learned to ask staff to remove the minibar’s alcohol. He loathes lobbies with loud discos and drunken guests. When traveling with his parents, it is the bikinis that rankle most. “It was quite shocking for my mother to sit in a restaurant with undressed people,” the Abu Dhabi-based businessman says. “My mom and dad are not used to seeing people in public wearing their underwear.” To avoid such embarrassment, the Mohammeds took to renting furnished apartments.

No longer. On a trip to Dubai last year, Mohammed stayed in the Villa Rotana, one of a growing number of hotels catering to Muslim travelers. In the lobby — all white leather, brick and glass, with a small waterfall — quiet reigns. Men in dishdashas and veiled women glide by Westerners who are sometimes discreetly reminded to respect local customs. Minibars are stocked not with alcohol, but with Red Bull, Pepsi and the malt drink Barbican.

image001Time was, buying Muslim meant avoiding pork and alcohol and getting your meat from a halal butcher, who slaughtered in accordance with Islamic principles. But the halal food market has exploded in the past decade and is now worth an estimated $632 billion annually, according to the Halal Journal, a Kuala Lumpur-based magazine. That’s about 16% of the entire global food industry. Throw in the fast-growing Islam-friendly finance sector and the myriad other products and services — cosmetics, real estate, hotels, fashion, insurance — that comply with Islamic law and the teachings of the Koran, and the sector is worth well over $1 trillion a year.

One reason for the rise of the halal economy is that the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are younger and, in some places at least, richer than ever. Seeking to tap that huge market, non-Muslim multinationals like Tesco, McDonald’s and Nestlé have expanded their Muslim-friendly offerings and now control an estimated 90% of the global halal market.

At the same time, governments in Asia and the Middle East are pouring millions into efforts to become regional “halal hubs,” providing tailor-made manufacturing centers and “halal logistics” — systems to maintain product purity during shipping and storage. The increased competition is changing manufacturing and supply chains in some unusual places. Most of Saudi Arabia’s chicken is raised in Brazil, which means Brazilian suppliers have built elaborate halal slaughtering facilities. Abattoirs in New Zealand, the world’s biggest exporter of halal lamb, have hosted delegations from Iran and Malaysia. And the Netherlands, keen to maximize Rotterdam’s role as Europe’s biggest port, has built halal warehouses so that imported halal goods aren’t stored next to pork or alcohol.

Such arrangements cost, of course, but since the industry’s anchor is food, business is booming, even in the economic crisis. “What downturn?” asks executive director of the Halal Journal. “You don’t need your Gucci handbag, but you do need your hamburger.”

Not just hamburgers. Drug companies such as the U.K.’s Principle Healthcare and Canada’s Duchesnay now sell halal vitamins free of the gelatins and other animal derivatives that some Islamic scholars say make mainstream products haram, or unlawful. The Malaysia-based company Granulab produces synthetic bone graft material to avoid using animal bone, while Malaysian and Cuban scientists are collaborating on a halal meningitis vaccine.

In the Gulf, the Burooj real estate company is carving out a niche, not just because it deals exclusively with Islamic banks, but because it designs spas and swimming pools that segregate the sexes. For Muslim women concerned about skin-care products containing alcohol or lipsticks that use animal fats, a few cosmetics firms are creating halal makeup lines.

The burgeoning Islamic finance industry is using the global economic crisis to win new non-Muslim customers. Investors are attracted by Islamic banking’s more conservative approach: Islamic law forbids banks from charging interest (though customers pay fees) and many scholars discourage investment in excessively leveraged companies. Though it currently accounts for just 1% of the global market, the Islamic finance industry’s value is growing at around 15% a year, and could reach $4 trillion in five years, up from $500 billion today, according to a 2008 report from Moody’s Investors Service.

Those who define the halal market in the traditional sense — as a matter of meat, and no more — see the industry stopping at Islamic food standards. But the movement’s more bullish advocates envisage Muslim cars and halal furniture built in accordance with Muslim finance, labor and ethical principles. Citing the kosher and organic industries as successful examples of doing well by doing good, some entrepreneurs even see halal products moving into the mainstream and appealing to consumers looking for high-quality, ethical products. A few firms that comply with the Shari’a code — the religious laws that observant Muslims follow — point out that already many of their customers are non-Muslim. At the Jawhara Hotels, an alcohol-free Arabian Gulf chain run by the Islam-compliant Al Lotah conglomerate, 60% of the clientele are non-Muslims, drawn by the hotels’ serenity and family-friendly atmosphere. Dutch-based company Marhaba, which sells cookies and chocolate, says a quarter of its customers are non-Muslims, mostly people concerned not about religious edicts but about food safety. “People are always looking for the next purity thing,” says Mah Hussain-Gambles, founder of Saaf Pure Skincare, which markets halal makeup.

Going Mainstream
Today, though, the big business is in working out how to serve the increasingly sophisticated Muslim consumer. “The question now for companies is: What products and services are you going to provide to help Muslims lead the lifestyle they want to lead?” asks the Halal Journal’s Abdullah. It’s a code worth cracking. A 2007 report from the global ad agency JWT describes the Muslim market thus: “It’s young, it’s big, and it’s getting bigger.” Parts of it are well-educated and wealthy. The buying power of American Muslims alone is estimated at a hefty $170 billion annually. But with few exceptions, American marketers ignore them, says JWT. “Muslims don’t feel that brands are speaking to them,” she says. “When we did the study, it was very difficult to find mainstream companies that were making significant programs geared toward the Muslim population.”

That’s less of a problem elsewhere. Indeed, the most innovative new halal products and services often come out of Europe and Southeast Asia, places where your average food supplier or bank may know little, if anything, about halal. In Europe — the biggest growth region according to the Halal Journal — young devout Muslims are hungry for Islamic versions of mainstream pleasures such as fast food. “The second- and third-generation Muslims are fed up with having rice and lentils every day,” observes CEO of the Malaysia-based International Halal Integrity Alliance. “They’re saying, ‘We want pizzas, we want Big Macs.’ ” Domino’s now sources halal pepperoni from a Malaysian company for the pizzas it sells from Kuala Lumpur to Birmingham; KFC is testing halal-only stores in Muslim areas of the U.K., and the Subway sandwich chain has halal franchises across Britain and Ireland.

Swiss food giant Nestlé is a pioneer in the field. It set up its halal committee way back in the 1980s, and has long had facilities to keep its halal and non-halal products separated. Turnover in halal products was $3.6 billion last year, and 75 of the company’s 456 factories are geared for halal production.

For non-food companies like South Korea’s LG and Finnish cell-phone giant Nokia, targeting Muslims is also big business. LG offers an application to help users find the direction of Mecca, while Nokia has free downloadable recitations from the Koran and maps showing the locations of major mosques in the Middle East. Such offerings increase brand loyalty, according to market research by the Finland-based Muslim lifestyle portal Muxlim.com. “There’s a lot of room out there for mainstream brands to appeal to Muslims without making changes to their products,” says Muxlim.com’s CEO. “It’s just about their marketing messages, about showing that this brand is interested in them as consumers.”

It’s also about understanding the nuances. The hypermarket run by French supermarket giant Carrefour at the Mid Valley Megamall in Kuala Lumpur is overwhelmingly halal, with an elaborate system to keep halal foods separate from the haram ones. Goods that divide scholars on whether they’re halal or haram because they could have trace elements of wine — Balsamic vinegar, say, or Kikkoman Marinade — get slapped with little green stickers to alert customers. More blatantly haram items are confined to La Cave, a glassed-in room at the back of the store for goods containing alcohol, pork or tobacco. Wearing special blue gloves, La Cave’s staff handle haram goods and seal them in airtight pink plastic wrapping after purchase, so as not to contaminate the main store. “I’m so scared,” said a 23-year-old regular Carrefour shopper in a grey-and-white hijab. “It’s difficult for one to know what is halal and what is not, so I’d prefer to go to a shop with labels [to help me].”

It’s Not Just Business
The rising concerns of consumers herald not just a global economic trend, but a cultural one. During the 1980s and ’90s, many Muslims in Egypt, Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries expressed their religious principles by voting Islamic. Today, a growing number are doing so by buying Islamic, connecting to their Muslim roots by what they eat, wear and play on their iPods. Rising Muslim consumerism undermines the specious argument often heard after 9/11: that Muslims hate the Western way of life, with its emphasis on choice and consumerism. The growing Muslim market is a sign of a newly confident Islamic identity — one based not on politics but on personal lifestyles. “Muslims will spend their money more readily on halal food and products than on political causes,” says European managing director of the California-based Zabihah.com, an online guide to the global halal marketplace. Like many Muslim Americans, he grew up eating Jewish kosher food in order to conform to Muslim strictures on animal slaughter. But increasingly, there’s no need for Muslims to go kosher. Zabihah offers tens of thousands of reviews of halal restaurants, from fried chicken joints in Dallas to pan-Asian restaurants in Singapore. “We can’t keep up.”

The dazzling range of new products and services also reflects the seismic social changes under way in the Muslim world. One of the reasons why halal frozen food, lunch-box treats and quick-fix dinners are growing in popularity is that many more Muslim women, from Egypt to Malaysia, have full-time jobs.

Western Muslims, whose minority status sharpens their sense of identity, are also helping refine the notion of a Muslim lifestyle. In Britain, advertisers are increasingly embracing the power of the “green” pound (that’s Islamic green, not environmental green), says Sarah Joseph, editor of Emel, a glossy lifestyle monthly for British Muslims. When Emel launched in 2003, the notion of a Muslim lifestyle barely existed. “People were confused that we could present everything from food, fashion, travel and gardening, all from a Muslim perspective,” says Joseph. But Muslims are the fastest-growing segment of the middle class in Britain; they have big families — an average of 3.4 children against the national average of 1.9 — so they buy big cars; they spend money on home decoration and twice-yearly vacations — “not just going back to Pakistan or Bangladesh, like their [immigrant] parents did,” says Joseph. Bucking the current publishing trend, Emel is hiring extra staff and planning new magazines to cater to Muslim readers. Advertisers include British Airways and banking giant HSBC.

To keep growing, halal firms know they can’t simply rely on religion. Ideology does not fit within a consumer mindset. At the end of the day, people will not buy halal simply because it’s halal. They’re going to buy quality food. Ideology doesn’t make a better-tasting burger, a better car, or a better computer.” But it sure makes a powerful marketing pitch.

By the numbers …
16% — Halal’s share of global food industry
$632 billion— Annual halal food market
1.6 billion— Worldwide Muslim population

A Halal Shopping Cart
From fast food to fashion, the sector is thriving

Food
Non-Muslim multi-nationals such as KFC and Nestlé dominate the halal food market. But Muslim-
owned manufacturers such as Dubai-based Al Islami — which sells everything 
 from chicken burgers to packaged ingredients — are growing fast.

Lifestyle
Muslims — many of them young and increasingly middle-class — are buying more magazines, such as U.K.-based Emel, and halal cosmetics made, like these Saaf products, without alcohol or animal fats, which Islam considers haram, or forbidden.

Services
Hotels run along Islamic lines, such as Dubai’s Villa Rotana, offer quieter and more family-friendly places to stay. Banks that operate according to Shari’a law 
 are doing well during 
 the global downturn because they tend to be 
 more conservative.

Prophet Muhammad’s preaching career started in Mecca around 613 C.E., and he seems to have had hopes of drawing Jews and Christians into a common faith. In the Koran — which Muslims consider the word of God as spoken by Muhammad — the Prophet’s followers are told to say to fellow Abrahamics, “Our God and your God is one.“

ATT30493This hope of playing a win-win game shows up in overtures to Jews in particular, made mainly after Muhammad moved to the city of Medina and became its political and religious leader. Muhammad decided his followers should have an annual 24-hour fast, as Jews did on Yom Kippur. He even called it Yom Kippur — at least he used the term some Arabian Jews were using for Yom Kippur.

The Jewish ban on eating pork was mirrored in a Muslim ban.

Muhammad also told his followers to pray facing Jerusalem.

He said God, in his “prescience,” chose “the children of Israel … above all peoples.”

As for Christians: having denounced polytheists who believed Allah had daughters, Muhammad couldn’t now embrace the idea that Jesus was God’s son. But he came close. He said Jesus was “the Messiah … the Messenger of God, and His Word … a Spirit from Him.” God, according to the Koran, gave Jesus the Gospel and “put into the hearts of those who followed him kindness and compassion.”

Muhammad’s ecumenical mission seems to have failed. Certainly, he sensed rejection from Christians and Jews. A Koranic verse captures his disillusionment. “O Believers! Take not the Jews or Christians as friends. They are but one another’s friends.” Once you’re convinced that non-zero-sum collaboration isn’t in the cards, the bonhomie dries up.

In his new, zero-sum mode, Muhammad changed the direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca.

According to Islamic tradition, he expelled three tribes of Jews from Medina — and killed the adult males in the third tribe, which was suspected of collaborating with Meccans in a battle against Medina.

Still, in the end, Christians and Jews get a favored place in Islamic tradition as “people of the Book.” The Koran repeatedly says they’re eligible for salvation.

Within years of Muhammad’s death in 632, Islamic leaders started conquering lands far and wide. This imperial expansion gave birth to the doctrine of jihad, which mandates battle against unbelievers with the aim of conversion.

But once the conquering was done, Muslim leaders found that trying to compel uniform belief in a multinational empire was a lose-lose game. Doctrines granting freedom of worship to Christians and Jews emerged promptly. And later, such freedom would also be granted to Buddhists and polytheists.

Meanwhile, the doctrine of jihad would be dulled through amendment. And the notion of a “greater jihad” — struggle within oneself toward goodness — would arise and be attributed to Muhammad himself. As in Israel after the exile, the Abrahamic God, having found himself in a multiethnic milieu rife with non-zero-sumness, underwent moral growth.

In neither case had the growth been smoothly progressive, and in both cases, there would be backsliding. Still, in both cases, God spent enough time in benevolent mode to leave the Scriptures littered with odes to tolerance and understanding, verses that modern believers can focus on, should they choose.

Will they so choose? Maybe the code embedded in the Scriptures can help. The key, it suggests, is to arrange things so that relations between Muslims and Jews are conspicuously non-zero-sum.

Sometimes this may mean engineering the non-zero-sumness — for example, strengthening commerce between Israel and the Palestinian territories. Other times it will mean highlighting a non-zero-sum dynamic that already exists — emphasizing, for example, that continued strife between Israelis and Palestinians will be lose-lose (as would escalated tensions between the “Muslim world” and the “West” more broadly). Enduring peace would be win-win.

This peace would also have been foretold. Isaiah (first Isaiah, not the Isaiah of the exile) envisioned a day when God “shall arbitrate for many peoples” and “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” And in a Koranic verse dated by scholars to the final years of Muhammad’s life, God tells humankind that he has “made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another.”

This happy ending is hardly assured. It can take time for people, having seen that they are playing a non-zero-sum game, to adjust their attitudes accordingly. And this adaptation may never happen if barriers of mistrust persist.

But at least we can quit talking as if this adaptation were impossible — as if intolerance and violence were inevitable offshoots of monotheism. At least we can quit asking whether Islam — or Judaism or any other religion — is a religion of peace. The answer is no. And yes. It says so in the Bible, and in the Koran.

Similarly, the ancient Israelites got straightforward guidance from Scripture on how to handle people who didn’t worship Israel’s god, Yahweh. “You shall annihilate them — the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites — just as the Lord your God has commanded.”

The point of this exercise, explained the Book of Deuteronomy, was to make sure the “abhorrent” religions of nearby peoples didn’t rub off on Israelites.

Yet sometimes the Israelites were happy to live in peace with neighbors who worshipped alien gods. In the Book of Judges, an Israelite military leader proposes a live-and-let-live arrangement with the Ammonites: “Should you not possess what your god Chemosh gives you to possess? And should we not be the ones to possess everything that our god Yahweh has conquered for our benefit?”

The Bible isn’t the only Scripture with such vacillations between belligerence and tolerance. Muslims, who like Christians and Jews worship the God who revealed himself to Abraham, are counseled in one part of the Koran to “kill the polytheists wherever you find them.” But another part prescribes a different stance toward unbelievers, “To you be your religion; to me my religion.”

You’d think the Abrahamic God would make up his mind — Can he live with other gods or not? What’s with the random mood fluctuations?

But the fluctuations aren’t really random. If you juxtapose the Abrahamic Scriptures with what scholars have learned about the circumstances surrounding their creation, a pattern appears. Certain kinds of situations inspired tolerance, and other kinds inspired the opposite. You might even say this pattern is a kind of code, a code that is hidden in the Scriptures and that, once revealed, unlocks the secret of God’s changing moods.

And maybe this code could unlock more than that. Maybe knowing what circumstances made the authors of Scripture open-minded can help make modern-day believers open-minded. Maybe the hidden code in the Bible and the Koran, the code that links Scriptural content to context, could even help mend the most dangerous of intra-Abrahamic fault lines, the one between Muslims and Jews.

The first step in seeing this code is to look to the world that gave us the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament) and the Koran — the world that embedded the code in them. There we’ll see how consequential God’s mood changes could be — how, indeed, a burst of vengeful intolerance helped give us monotheism itself; we’ll see that the birth of monotheism left us with what you might call a bad God.

But we’ll also see that this God then had bursts of moral growth — within both Judaism and Islam — and that the proven ingredients of that growth are around today, just when another such burst is needed.

A zero-sum, isolationist worldview had moved Israel from polytheism to belligerent monotheism, but now, as Israel’s environment grew less threatening, belligerence was turning out not to be an intrinsic part of monotheism. Between second Isaiah’s angry exilic exclamations and P’s more congenial voice, Israel had segued from an exclusive to an inclusive monotheism.

A millennium later, this same dynamic — swings between zero-sum and non-zero-sum — would have a similar impact on Islamic monotheism, moving it back and forth between belligerence and tolerance.

DUBAI, WEDAD LOOTAH does not look like a sexual activist. A Muslim and a native Emirati, she wears a full-length black niqab — with only her brown eyes showing through narrow slits — and sprinkles her conversation with quotes from the Koran.

Clip_7Yet she is also the author of what for the Middle East is an amazingly frank new book of erotic advice in which she celebrates the female orgasm, confronts taboo topics like homosexuality and urges Arabs to transcend the backward traditions that limit their sexual happiness.

The book, “Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples,” is packed with vivid anecdotes from Ms. Lootah’s eight years as a marital counselor in Dubai’s main courthouse. It became an instant scandal after it was published in Arabic in the Emirates in January, drawing praise from some liberals and death threats from conservatives, who say she is guilty of blasphemy or worse.

Lootah, a strong-willed and talkative 45-year-old, is one of a small but growing number of Arabs pushing for more openness and education about sex. Unlike earlier generations of women who often couched their criticism in a Western language of female emancipation, Lootah and her peers are hard to dismiss as outsiders because they tend to be religious Muslims who root their message in the Koran.

Lootah, for instance, studied Islamic jurisprudence in college, not Western psychology, and her book is studded with religious references. She submitted the text to the Mufti of Dubai before publishing it, and he gave his approval (though he warned her that Arab audiences might not be ready for such a book, especially by a woman). “People have said I was crazy, that I was straying from Islam, that I should be killed,” Lootah said. “Even my family ask why I must talk about this. I say: ‘These problems happen every day and should not be ignored. This is the reality we are living.’ ”

She is not a liberal by Western standards. One of the themes of her book is the danger of anal sex and homosexuality generally, not because of AIDS but because they are banned by the Koran. But her openness about the issue was itself a shock to many here.

In Saudi Arabia and other countries where the genders are rigorously separated, many men have their first sexual experiences with other men, which affects their attitudes toward sex in marriage, Lootah said.

“Many men who had anal sex with men before marriage want the same thing with their wives, because they don’t know anything else,” Lootah said. “This is one reason we need sex education in our schools.”

1She is also emphatic about the importance of female sexual pleasure, and the inequity of many Arab marriages in that respect. One of the cases that impelled her to write the book, she said, was a 52-year-old client who had grandchildren but had never known sexual pleasure with her husband. “Finally, she discovered orgasm!” Lootah said. “Imagine, all that time she did not know.”

Another important theme of the book is infidelity. The prevalence of foreign women in Dubai and the ease of e-mail and text-message communication has made cheating easier (and easier to detect), Ms. Lootah said, helping push the divorce rate to 30 percent.

The Gulf’s oil-fueled modernization in recent decades has also shattered some old Arab social structures. At the same time, the rise of political Islam has undermined traditional authorities, leaving many Arabs confused about moral issues. “Before, people lived in one place and the community was like one big family,” Lootah said. “Now, people have spread to different areas, everything’s mixed up and traditions have changed.”

One result is the Family Guidance section in the Dubai Courthouse, which opened in 2001 with Lootah as its first counselor (there are now six others, all men). Kuwait ’s government has had a similar social-services wing since the 1990s, and other Persian Gulf countries are following suit. Private psychologists and marriage counselors also exist throughout the Arab world, though they are still rare.

“We’re making a lot of progress,” said Heba Kotb, who runs an Islam-oriented sex therapy clinic in Cairo , and ran a satellite television talk show on sexual and marital issues from 2006 until 2008. “Ten years ago we were unable to even mention the subject, and now people are getting used to hearing it.”

There are still formidable obstacles. In a region where “honor killings” of women who have sex outside marriage remain fairly common, sex education is widely viewed as a portal to sin. Genital cutting of women still takes place in Egypt , though it is now illegal. Arab writers and artists have begun to tackle these subjects.

Thirty years ago the Egyptian director Saleh Abu Seif wrote a screenplay called “ Sex School ,” but the censorship bureau had yet to approve it when he died in 1996. His son was finally allowed to direct a modified version of the film, about a sexually dissatisfied couple who go to see a therapist, and it was released in 2002 under the title “The Ostrich and the Peacock.”

Ms. Lootah never expected to become part of this debate. One of nine children born to an illiterate water-seller in Dubai , she married early and taught elementary school for years. Later, she took a job working for an Islamic endowment, where her efforts to introduce education and family-reunion days in prison earned her two government-service awards. W hen Dubai introduced the Family Guidance section of its courthouse, Dubai ’s ruler, Sheik Muhammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, asked her to be the first counselor.

The family guidance section was established in part to comply with Islamic precepts calling for couples who want a divorce to try to work out their problems first. In practice, it has become an all-purpose therapy destination for people with marital problems.

Lootah sees about seven cases a day, individuals and couples. Most of them are native Emiratis, but in the multicultural world of Dubai — where about 90 percent of the population is foreign — she has also counseled some Europeans and Asians. As in the criminal courts next door, a translator sits in on the session, and sometimes even offers advice to bridge cultural gaps.

“Some people are amazed I can work with people with only my eyes showing,” Ms. Lootah said, with a ripple of laughter. “Maybe it’s because of the way I move my hands! But I can tell you that people come here, and they speak very frankly with me.”

She reels off stories from her practice in rapid fire: the Emirati military officer whose wife had an affair because he was away from home too much; the woman who thought fellatio was against Islam (not true at all, Ms. Lootah notes); the wife who discovered her husband dressing up as a woman and going out to gay bars. She seems bent on showing that there is a whole world of sexual confusion that would benefit from open discussion.

Publishing the book, she notes, was a difficult choice. Her father supported her, but other family members sometimes wondered why she had to be so public about it all. After it was published a man called her office phone and threatened to kill her. Other threats appeared on the Internet. She brushes them off, saying she has declined an offer of protection from the government. Besides, she adds, educating the public is worth the risk.

The calls for “Atta” from all quarters of the society are rising to a chorus. Due to the food shortage in Pakistan, the new government of Pakistan Democratic Alliance is all set to become a glutton for punishment and humiliation in very near future. Though it would be unfair to blame them for the looming food crisis in the country, but an empty stomach doesn’t understand logic or argument.

One may ridicule United States in many regards, but when it comes to statistics the auxiliary offshoots of this world body often prove right. United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has predicted that Pakistan is in the grave danger of becoming an acutely food insecure country in the very near future and according to other sources it is expected that food riots would break in the streets.

WFP country director Wolfgang Berbinger has told media that currently 60 million food insecure people are present in the country, the increase of 35 per cent in wheat prices and more for some other food items, did not match the increase in wage rate that was 18 per cent as compared to last year. According to the WFP stats, 38 per cent of Pakistanis are food insecure, and that basically means that they are not able to afford poverty line intake of 2,350 kcal per day. WFP also reveal that approximately 12.5 of wheat is wasted on way from field to the consumer whereas vegetable loss is 30 per cent.

The food insecurity is in every district of Pakistan. In the most populated province of Pakistan, in Punjab, out of 34 district only 9 are almost food secure. In NWFP, out of 16 districts, only five are food secure. In Sindh, out of 15 districts, only 9 are food secure. In Balochistan, out of 25 districts only 4 are food secure.

These statistics are alarming and demand immediate attention from the high-ups. The restoration of judiciary and the matter of war on terror are extremely important, but prolonged hunger can turn any nation into angry animals frantically searching for food to appease their natural instinct.

So it is the need of hour that government should start working on war footings about extending the crop maximization plans to balance food price inflation and improvement in storage and harvesting-thrashing to control wastage of food. Government needs to understand that easy and cheap food availability, access and deliverance to everyone at everyplace is the key to their survival.