-
The SIUT Story
Recent Posts in Archive
Join our mailing list
Free updates by emailCategories
- Administration (1)
- Archive Edition (17)
- Balochistan (10)
- Book Reviews (26)
- Books (22)
- Books by ZM (8)
- Children and Youth (40)
- Constitution (8)
- Culture and the Arts (16)
- Defence and Disarmament (26)
- Development and Poverty (53)
- Economy (63)
- Education (136)
- Environment (1)
- Foreign Policy of Pakistan (44)
- General (2)
- Guest Contributor (15)
- Health (63)
- History (2)
- Housing (4)
- Human Rights (38)
- Information (4)
- International Politics (25)
- Islamisation (23)
- Justice (11)
- Kashmir (5)
- Labour (9)
- Language (28)
- Law & Order (2)
- Library (5)
- Media (39)
- Mental health (5)
- Natural Disasters (14)
- New (13)
- Notable Personalities (26)
- Nuclear weapons (8)
- Organ Trade and Donation (12)
- Politics (75)
- Population (20)
- SIUT (2)
- Social Issues (126)
- Terrorism and Violence (41)
- View from Abroad (1)
- War and Peace (51)
- Water (2)
- Women (107)
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Zubeida on The SIUT Story
- Sarfaraz Ahmed on The SIUT Story
- arshad durrani on Bomb or bread?
- ahmed41 on Bomb or bread?
- safia on Bomb or bread?
- MFJ on Weapons and information
- Nafisa Hoodbhoy on Weapons and information
- MFJ on Weapons and information
- arshad durrani on Weapons and information
- Nasim Ahmed on Trying presidents
Archives
Category Archives: Defence and Disarmament
Bomb or bread?
By Zubeida Mustafa
ON May 28, an email was circulating on the web from Dr Shershah Syed, whose services to women’s reproductive health are widely acclaimed.
Doctor Sahib wrote, “Today we are celebrating the atom bomb day when we are a country where millions of children are not going to school — where millions of kids start their morning without food and will work in factories.…”
How true. While chasing the bomb, we have destroyed our people. What Dr Shershah can add is that this is also a country where one cannot escape the heart-wrenching sight of little rag-pickers rummaging through the garbage for food leftovers to ease their hunger pangs. Their emaciated bodies taunt our bomb-makers with misplaced priorities. Defence spending is expected to increase in the budget to be presented later this month. At this rate, though, there will be no one left to protect. The data given out by the health authorities of the prevalence of malnutrition and stunting in Pakistan are not exaggerated. Continue reading
Weapons and information
By Zubeida Mustafa
IT is exactly 12 weeks to the day when Perween Rahman, director of the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) Research and Training Institute, was gunned down in Orangi when she was returning home from work.
Two months later, another activist of the OPP who ran a school, Abdul Wahid Khan, was killed outside his home. A few days later on May 18, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf leader Zahra Shahid Husain was assassinated by armed men.
These were not the only people who were victims of target killing in Karachi. Approximately 259 other people met a violent death in the city in the same period. We mourn them all. Above all, we mourn our own helplessness to save these precious lives.
Zohra Yusuf, the chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, was spot on when she once commented that in Karachi a person championing a human rights cause, who dies a natural death, is indeed lucky. Continue reading
Trying presidents
By Rifaat Hamid Ghani
ONE could well say Pakistan’s democracy suffers from a president problem. Ghulam Ishaq was adept at dismissing Parliaments. Farooq Leghari, popularly doubted for the party status he enjoyed till assuming office, let down the party, if not the public. Tarrar, unofficially renowned for carrying a briefcase, drifted through the crosscurrents of a countercoup without a hiccup. Presidents Musharraf and Zardari though are in a class by themselves; and who would you send to the top of the class? If one posed a conceptual challenge as a COAS president, the other posed a more empirical one as an active party promoter and controller.
And now, perhaps the thorniest nettle the incoming premier, Mian Nawaz Sharif, will have to grasp: Should the government he is to lead press treason charges on the former President Musharraf? Continue reading
2008-2013 Democratic Annals
by Rifaat Hamid Ghani
The government and the Parliament of 2008 completed a full term: a democratic first. But it could be more because interventionists have matured than because politicians demonstrated a reassuring capacity to learn on the job.
If we step outside the trite paradigm of democracy and dictatorship and the polarities of the civil and military public political interest, we might not see any polarities: Both want power and there is a competition for it. For most Pakistanis Pakistan is home, not a cow to be milked dry. They need and want their country. The touchstone for legitimacy then becomes pragmatic for them: How is the power of government being used?
If asked about the 2008-onwards use of democratically mandated power there would be more than carping complaints about law and order and safety in daily life. The common perception is the state itself is increasingly endangered by the vice and folly of the politically empowered. In 2013 despite democratic freedom a question is suppressed: Is it a myth, which local democratic experience exposes each time, that democracy is invariably the better formula? As soon as there was no self-perpetuating incentive in maintaining or reaching a consensus, political rivals needed arbitration on the caretaker PM. When mainstream parties so evidently mistrust each other’s motives and nominees they also need unusually skilled spin masters to tell the electorate why it may place faith in their candidatures and avowals. Continue reading
A weapon-free Karachi?
By Zubeida Mustafa
ACCORDING to media reports 2,500-3,000 people fell victim to violence in Karachi in 2012.Ironically, the same year in September UN member states adopted a treaty pledging to rid the world of the scourge brought upon it by the illicit manufacture, transfer and circulation of small arms and light weapons, and their excessive accumulation in many parts of the world.
They also committed to mobilising the necessary political will and resources to implement this programme. By not working for the deweaponisation of Karachi, Pakistan is moving in the opposite direction. Have we resigned ourselves to living on the edge with bullets flying around us?
The scale of violence is stunning. But what is more astounding is that the killings continue to take place in brazen disregard of the concern expressed by the Supreme Court which had taken suo motu notice of the crisis in Sept-Oct 2011. Declaring the violence to be “not ethnic alone” but “a turf war between different groups having economic, socio-politico interests to strengthen their position/aggrandisement, based on the phenomenon of tit-for-tat with political, moral and financial support or endorsement of the political parties”, the court had specified some measures to end the violence in the city. Continue reading
Sense of deja vu
By Zubeida Mustafa
IS history repeating itself? It appears to be. Look carefully at the accord between Islamabad and Washington reached earlier this month that broke the seven-month impasse between them. Observers and critics have speculated about what led to the breakthrough.
The US said sorry for the Salala incident. Pakistan softened its stance on the price demanded for reopening Nato supply routes to Afghanistan. Drone attacks have been quietly ignored. But what is strange is that in the flurry of articles on this issue there has been no mention of the event that in all likelihood jolted Washington into action. It was the announcement in May that Russian president Vladimir Putin will be visiting Islamabad in September. He will be the first Russian head of state to do so. Continue reading
Take away the guns, please
By Zubeida Mustafa
KARACHI is burning again. Almost 40 people were killed in the last week or so of March. Three strike calls disrupted life in the city and the loss to production is estimated by industrialists and traders to be Rs20bn.
Those believed to be provoking violence are not outlaws operating outside the political system. They are parties that were elected by the people whose life and property they are expected to safeguard.
Continue reading
Is the army truly on board?
By Zubeida Mustafa
OF late, the on-again-off-again India-Pakistan relationship has entered one of its constructive phases. This comes as a happy development at a time when Pakistan’s partnership with the US is in the doldrums and Afghanistan continues to pose a dilemma. Continue reading
Performance and the image
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
A CORPS commanders’ conference held recently in Islamabad noted that some quarters are trying to deliberately “run down the armed forces”. What the generals found to be most disconcerting was that this “slandering” would hurt its image.
Coming soon after three events in quick succession — the Raymond Davis fiasco, the sting operation in Abbottabad and the PNS Mehran siege — the commanders’ statement is intriguing. It appears that those who head our armed forces draw a clear line between image and performance, as though the former is not created by the latter. ISPR is responsible for creating the shining image that is supposed to help.
Continue reading
Crushing the working class
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
THE power crisis in Karachi has now begun to paralyse life in this metropolis. The immediate factor responsible is the KESC management’s failure — or is it unwillingness? — to negotiate an agreement with its workers.
I will not go into the details — 4,500 workers were recently put in the surplus pool while 6,000 untrained men were reportedly recruited on contract. KESC’s troubles are symptomatic of the bleak state of the labour sector in the country. With the national economy in the doldrums (having recorded a growth of less than three per cent this year) expectations are not high. We know who is being hit by this economic catastrophe.
Continue reading
16 Comments
Posted in Defence and Disarmament, Economy, Labour
Tagged defence budget, social security