Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and world's first 'Flying Palace'

In a space normally given to 600 passengers, the owner and his guests will enjoy five-star treatment from the moment of arrival.

After driving up to his plane, he will have the car parked in the onboard garage.

A lift drops to the tarmac and a red carpet unfurls, with downlights to 'give the impression of turning up at the Oscars', according to Design Q's co-founder Gary Doy. The belly of the A380 has been turned into a relaxation zone, including a Turkish bath lined with marble only two millimetres thick to keep the weight down.

Next door is a wellbeing room, with the floor and walls turned into a giant screen showing the ground down below. Guests can stand on a 'magic carpet' and watch the journey, a scented breeze blowing into the room.

If work really is unavoidable, the boardroom is on hand with iTouch screens and live share prices projected on to the tables. For conference calls, a business partner on the ground can be virtually projected on to the table to 'join' a meeting.

The five suites which form the owner's private quarters have king- size beds, entertainment systems and a prayer room featuring computergenerated prayer mats which always face Mecca. A lift shuttles between the plane's three floors, from the private quarters upstairs, down to the concert hall, featuring a baby grand piano and seating for ten, and to the garage below.

There are around 20 'sleepers' - the equivalent of First Class seats - for extra guests. According to the designers, the style is elegant curves and swirls of Arabic writing.

Al-Waleed Spends $176 Million to Outfit His A380
After dropping close to $320 million on his new Airbus A380 jet, Prince Al-Waleed of Saudi Arabia is spending another $176 million on ultra-lavish modifications, including a $60 million gold leaf paintjob. An unnamed German company is customizing the interior of the plane to include:

• A lounge to seat a traveling entourage of 25 trusted aides;
• A marble-paneled dining room with seating for 14;
• A bar with curtains to mimic tents of the Arabian Desert;
• A fiber-optic mosaic that will depict a shifting desert scene;
• A movie theatre with plush leather seats the color of sand dunes;
• A series of bedrooms linked to stewardesses by intercom;
• A gym with Nautilus equipment and running machines; and
• A large silk bed designed to resemble a Bedouin tent that will be the centerpiece of the plane’s interior.

Reports speak of the decor as being “Lawrence of Arabia meets Star Wars.” Al-Waleed’s A380 will be completed in twoyears.

The continual killing of physicians —Dr Mahjabeen Islam

There is something seriously wrong with a society that harasses those who stand for justice. If I protest the killing of Ahmedis, then I am labelled as one. And now watch me metamorphose into a Shia
What do you do with a nation that has been killing its physicians for the last 10 years? Not in the name of vigilantism and avenging malpractice or the egregious deaths of patients but for insane ideologies that fault a physician for being Shia. Or worse: Ahmedi.
The spectrum of consent is vast: on the one end are those who do not know or care and on the other those who actively orchestrate the targeted murders. And the government versus the people ping-pong continues. No photo-ops are sacrificed and the promises are nauseating in their emptiness.
It all began 25 years ago as extremism, a la Ziaul Haq, permeated the Pakistani psyche. When slowly but surely the Arabisation of Pakistan began. When we found it blasphemous to say Khuda hafiz and substituted it with Allah hafiz. When the colourful and totally modest shalwar-kameez- dupatta combo had to be substituted with the austere, frequently grey or brown, jilbab-hijab- niqab trio. Harassment of Shias, and especially Shia physicians, had begun, and then, as now, the government had better things to do.

About 80 doctors were murdered in a crescendo of target killing in 2000, and the majority were Shias. Many worked in the underserved and overpopulated areas of Karachi. It seems to me that there may not have been a subsequent reprieve, just an exodus of Shia physicians.

Ahmedi is, of course, almost an expletive in Pakistan. In the recent past, in Punjab, Ahmedi physicians have been murdered in broad daylight. And, for all the legal recourse that the return of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry allegedly brought, no suo motus occurred, no one was apprehended and no trials were set.
Pakistan was built on the doctrine of Islam, an ideology that is based most fundamentally on justice. There is something seriously wrong with a society that harasses those who stand for justice. If I protest the killing of Ahmedis, then I am labelled as one. And now watch me metamorphose into a Shia.
The second wave of target killings is sadly now. There have been days in which six have been killed. A press release of the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) on June 8, 2010 is very telling.

“A meeting was held at PMA House, Karachi, which was attended by CCPO Mr Waseem Ahmed, Mr Raja Umer Khattak, SSP Investigation, senior leadership of PMA, doctors of the city, members of the PMA Karachi, PMA Centre and Pakistan Islamic Medical Association (PIMA). The CCPO informed the doctors that the police department knew which groups were involved in the killings and the people behind the killers. He further said that he and his men were going to apprehend them in the next 24hours. He further committed that if he were unable to protect the lives of the citizens and the doctors he would proudly resign from the post and go home.

“He elaborated in detail the motives of these target killings and the proliferation of unlicensed arms in the city. Mentioning this, he said every day more than 10 search arrests are made but due to pressure and ill implementation of specific laws such criminals go free, though he assured that despite all this he would deliver positive results soon.
“In his statement, Dr Idrees Adhi, the President PMA, was agitated and saddened on the apathy of government officials. He added that there are so many doctors in the government holding important portfolios, for example, the governor of Sindh, interior minister and health minister of Sindh but none of them had taken notice of the situation and issued a statement in this regard.”
Now, for the CCPO Mr Waseem Ahmed to make brazen statements such as having prior knowledge of the criminals and the inability to apprehend them due to ‘pressure’ baffles the mind and defies response. Considering the continuance of the murders and his lofty promises, it seems it is resignation time.
In this meeting to protest the repeated murders of physicians, it is to be noted, though euphemistically omitted in the press release, that all 20 doctors participated. The fear and panic that grips the nation has permeated physician minds and the “discretion is the better part of valour” paranoid copout has taken hold.
Governor Ishratul Ibad and Dr Farooq Sattar, in a meeting with President Zardari, appeared appropriately grim. Cocooned in his mansions and Mercedes, Mr Zardari smiled and smiled. Is a smile his version of the infamous Pakistani prescription of ‘sub theek ho jaye ga’?
Thirty-year- old Dr Babar Mannan was working in Hussaini Health Home in the Irani Camp locality of Orangi Town when two young men barged in and emptied their guns on him. In another recent episode, motorbike gunmen intercepted Dr Haider Abbas near Metroville III, killing him on the spot. In the same wave of madness, Dr Junaid Shakir and Dr Hasan Haider were killed in New Karachi and Railway Colony respectively.
Sad, and seemingly powerless, physicians on the Dow Medical College alumni list mourn the victims. Dr Tariq Chundrigar writes poignantly: “A childhood friend of mine used to run a dental clinic in Nazimabad. He shared the clinic with a GP. This tireless, never out of temper gentleman had a following of patients that warmed one’s heart. One day, in 1989, someone walked into the GP’s clinic, pretending to be a doctor, put a gun to his head and shot him twice. And calmly walked out, to a waiting motorcycle, and rode off. Closer to home and heart, I am sure you all remember Raza Jafri. A more brilliant mind I have not seen. I spoke to a fellow surgeon and was shocked when he told me that he actually identified Raza’s remains on the stretcher in a small private hospital in Gulshan. This was late 2000.”
The Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America (APPNA) is also busy preparing for its summer extravaganza. No time for condemnations.
The US constitution guarantees the right to bear arms; Pakistan’s does not. De-weaponisation must be immediate, without ifs, ands, buts, smiles and promises. Perhaps the Supreme Court needs to step in for a government that is as usual ineffective, unwilling and incapable of protecting its citizens.
Pakistan’s literacy rate is abysmal as it is. And no society is in a position to destroy its greatest asset: intellectual capital.
Mahjabeen Islam is a columnist, family physician and addictionist with a practice in Toledo, Ohio. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@ gmail.com

Zardari a criminal, claims Benazir Bhutto's niece Fatima

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari is corrupt and plotted his brother-in-law's death, claimed Fatima Bhutto, the niece of Zardari's late wife, Benazir Bhutto, in an interview on a visit to Paris Saturday.
Fatima Bhutto doesn’t mince words when it comes to Asif Ali Zardari, widower of her aunt Benazir Bhutto and the current president of Pakistan.
“It’s not the first time that criminals have come to lead nations but it is distressing to watch the White House, 10 Downing Street [the UK], the European Union support a man who before he became the president was fighting corruption cases in Switzerland and Spain and England and four charges of murder in Pakistan,” she says.
Well, at least she’s not satirising the president, an offence which, she has just told the audience at Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Co’s literary festival, now carries a sentence of six to 13 years in jail.
Bhutto holds Zardari responsible for the 1996 murder of her father, Murtaza, the subject of her book Songs of  Blood and Sword, from which she has just read to the festival audience.
The futre president served time from 1997 to 2004 on corruption and murder charges relating to that case and others. He was freed by a judge who declared the charges false and Zardari and his supporters claim that the charges were politically motivated.
The current Pakistani president has served two other terms in jail, having won the nickname “Mr Ten Per Cent” for his alleged propensity for corruption when serving as a minister in his wife’s first government from 1987-1990. As Fatima Bhutto points out, both Benazir and Zardari have faced corruption cases outside Pakistan. The Swiss case was dropped in 2008, on the request of the Pakistani government, but corruption officials have now asked for it to be reopened.
Fatima Bhutto tends to believe all the accusations against her uncle by marriage, who became president after the fall of General-President Pervez Musharraf and the assassination of Benazir on her return from exile in 2007.
She doesn’t seem to believe that he has changed his ways once in office, either, even if she can cite no evidence at the moment.

“Unfortunately, the information comes after they tend to leave power but, you know, certainly the corruption seems to be carrying on unhindered,” she says.
“It’s a country that’s facing 20-hour electricity cuts in the winter and 23-hour cuts in the summer. There’s intense censorship in the country … So I think, unfortunately, we don’t have any evidence to the contrary.”
Zardari inherited his political legitimacy – and thus the presidency – from his wife. She was prime minister twice and led of the People’s Party (PPP), a position she in turn inherited from her father and Fatima’s grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. His premiership in the 1970s was brought to an end by a military coup and his own execution, allegedly on the orders of military dictator Muhammad Zia ul-Haq.
Two of Fatima’s uncles have also been killed, so it is a dangerous business being a Bhutto. But it also means that you are part of one of the five families which have a stranglehold on Pakistan’s politics.
The PPP clearly intends the dynasty to continue. Before her death, Benazir made it clear that her son, Bilawal, should succeed her. Despite the fact that he is currently studying at Britain’s Oxford University and has limited political experience, the party dutifully appointed him joint chairman along with his father after his mother’s death.
Fatima Bhutto did not go into politics. She chose writing, inspired, she says, by books like Malcolm X’s autobiography, British journalist Robert Fisk’s book on Lebanon Pity the Nationand the novels The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird.
And, although her mother heads a breakaway faction of the PPP, she lambasts the control of the country’s economy by 27 families and its politics by five.
“I think absolutely it’s time for all the dynasties to butt out and it’s time for the field to be opened up beyond five families or six families.”
So who would take over?
“Well, the people, you know. In a county of 180 million people there have to be more choices than just the usual suspects."
She points to gang-rape victim Mukhtar Mai, who has become a women’s rights campaigner, and the missing persons campaign, started by relatives of people kidnapped by the police and intelligence agencies, as evidence of potential leaders from outside the English-speaking elite.

“Pakistani women, they’ve got guts,” she told the book fanciers’ gathering.

Babar Awan has Rs 877m to give to lawyers

By Tariq Butt

ISLAMABAD: The allocations for bar associations, being doled out these days at top speed by Federal Law Minister Babar Awan in his discretion, went sky-high in the new federal budget compared to last year’s original budgetary allotment of funds for the same purpose. The government increased the allocation under this head by 2,300 per cent (or 23 times) in the recent budget as against last year, documents show.
The documents reveal that in the previous budget 2009-10, the government earmarked just Rs18 million for grants-in-aid to the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) and bar associations. But a whopping sum of Rs420 million has been allocated in new fiscal 2010-11.
Documents disclose that the original allocation of Rs18 million in the 2009-10 budget was hiked to Rs457 million in the revised estimates of the same year, incorporated in the supplementary grants that the National Assembly will possibly approve any time. This points to a 2,400% (or 24 times) increase over the initially budgeted funds.
Howevr, the allocation of Rs420 million in the new budget 2010-11 is Rs37 million less than the revised estimates of Rs457 million of the last fiscal 2009-10. If the allocation for the new year (Rs420 million) and revised estimates of the previous year (Rs457 million) for bar associations are put together, the law ministry has an enormous sum of Rs877 million for one set of professional bodies, clearly indicating that it was politically motivated.
A prominent leader of the People’s Lawyers’ Forum (PLF), the lawyers’ wing of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Abdullah Malik, told The News that his organisation, which has a dominant say among advocates, has nothing to do with the law minister’s trips.
During the first six months of the fiscal 2009-10, the Law Ministry could not distribute any considerable funds among the bar associations as it did not have a full-fledged active minister, an official said.
Babar Awan took over as law minister in December 2009 after the judgment of the Supreme Court against the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), and after that the process of doling out state funds started, which picked up the pace over the past few months.
Informed circles say that the record raise is meant to put a colossal sum at the disposal of the law minister to dish out among the bar associations in a bid to win over the support of the lawyers so that they stand with the government if such a need arises.
The law minister has distributed over Rs200 million among bar associations in the past few months, and made public announcements to the effect during his visits to the PBC offices and different bar associations all over Pakistan. He accelerated this campaign in the last some weeks in view of the fast approaching elections to the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) that the government is determined to get a candidate enjoying its support win.
In the new fiscal, the Law Ministry has been allocated a total of Rs1464 million for spending throughout the year under different heads. The present annual allocation for bar associations, Rs420 million, is 29per cent of the total funds earmarked for the law ministry in 2010-11 financial year.
In the budget 2009-10, the original total allocation for the law ministry was Rs941 million, but it went up to Rs1,406 million in the revised estimates. The increase was simply because of the raise in the funds put aside for the bar associations.
The official said that the Law Ministry would pay to the Pakistan Air Force out of the funds assigned for the bar associations for providing a special plane to the law minister for his recent visits to different cities to announce funds for lawyers’ bodies.
Abdullah Malik said the PLF did not associate itself with Babar Awan. Malik said that Law Secretary Masood Chishti and some deputy attorneys general, who were under Babar Awan and were picked up by him for these official jobs, have been accompanying the law minister during his visits but added that they have no influence among the lawyers.

Who shall come to the Sharifs' rescue: the Royals or the Loyals?By Saeed Minhas

ISLAMABAD: The parliament is a treat to watch these days because after Hafeez Shaikh's budgetary stunt, all the failed rulers of the past are trying to convince the galleries that if they failed because of the incompetence or greed than this government is no different.

No matter how they prove it, everyone from the Zia to Musharraf days have an axe to grind against their former colleagues, or if we may call them partners-in-crime. The issue which remains sizzling, and which even made the cool customer Premier Gilani to summon the intellectually-infected Shahbaz Sharif (SS), was that of the Punjab government's involvement in thrashing Gilani's brother and the police raids at Jamshed Dasti's house in Multan.

Well as for Dasti, we better not discuss in detail his fake degree-case because his verbal and physical blows are becoming all too famous these days – if in doubt, ask the doctors in Multan. But the issue of Mujtaba Gilani's thrashing is something which has raised many alarms in the political circles. Is it the doing of Rana Sanaullah alone or is there some element of passive consent from the Sharifs and the Sardars. This remained the talk at the galleries.
The meeting between Premier Gilani and the `Amirul Punjab' went smooth, with the exception of some bumps and bruises. Though media managers of the former have a liking to leak certain things against the big boss only, yet this time they were seen whispering from under their bush-laden lips about this meeting as well. The tenor of the meeting is reported to have been tense and sources privy to this liaison claim that the premier has not only lost his cool for the black-robes but also for the Punjab rulers. The `custodian of Punjab', who prefers to have himself medically screened by UK physicians but vows to lay down his life for the people of this country, was as remorseful as possible when he came out of the hurriedly-summoned meeting at the GHQ just a few months earlier. Though he is learnt to have put the blame on his pro-jihadi minister but he did not utter anything when asked about the involvement of certain Sardars and Khosas in the beating incident of the premier's brother, Mujtaba Gilani. Since the premier was duly accompanied by his three sons, the ground realities were given quite a detailed look during this discourse.
Accompanying the regretful Sharif was the Dollar-Converter-Senator Ishaq Dar. Sources were of the view that Dar proved quite handy throughout the meeting because after every new accusation from the Gilani family, he was the one who admitted the fault and promised to make it up by taking stern action against all those responsible. The moles inside the N-League, however, claimed that after the meeting, Dar tried to smoothen the worried Sharifs by giving them a counter strategy. It may not sound very well for our Interior Malik, but he is likely to emerge as the next sandbag for the Sharifs, revealed the moles familiar with the Dollar-Converter.
With more than 40 National and provincial assembly seats at stake and instead of mid-term elections, we are likely to venture into a constant spree of by-elections in the coming weeks and months, mostly in the Punjab.
No matter what, the Sharifs will have to put their act together and understand the simple reality that the political rug is being dragged from under their feet, claimed a senior `jiyala' while talking to the pen-pushers. Summing up the debate on the connections and the saviours of the Sharifs, another jiyala said, "No need to stress your guts because we all know who the Sharifs are going to turn to in this hour of need – of course, some royals of the deserts and some loyals of the rugged terrains of the south".
Anyways, feed from the family was so strong that Premier Gilani had to show his malice by standing and delivering a speech on the floor of the House. His sermon to the Sharifs of Punjab was quite loud and clear: let us sail smoothly or get ready for another adventure as the Chaudhrys of Gujrat are waiting in the wings.
Meanwhile, Jamshed Dasti – the iconic parliamentarian who fails miserably on the morality scale, but trails on controversial domains, continued to grip the House proceedings. Here, too, Premier Gilani had to remind the speaker how to protect a fake-degree-holder from arrest.

Reflections on the Flotilla massacre

Israel’s premeditated murder of the Mavi Marmara’s peace activists could become the turning point for the Palestinian struggle. Or, if the wrong conclusions are deduced, there’s a lot more misery ahead for the people of Gaza. A week after the event, it is time to ask some key questions and suggest answers.
Question: The decision to attack the 6-ship flotilla and stop it “at all cost” was a deliberate decision by the Israeli government. Given that international condemnation would surely follow, how can one understand Israel’s decision to go ahead?
Answer: The attack had little to do with “restoring Israel's deterrence” or capping the peashooters in Gaza. To understand Israel’s decision, one must hark back to Moshe Yaalon, then chief of staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, who in 2002 said that “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”
The flotilla attack was aimed to send a clear message: foreign nationals and peace activists will be treated just as violently as the inmates of the Israeli gulag. The Israeli bulldozer that crushed Rachel Corrie, the 23-year old American-Jewish pro-Palestinian activist, stands ever-ready to crush challenges to absolute Israeli supremacy. It scarcely mattered that the world was watching or that on board was a Holocaust survivor, white-as-lilies members of parliament from European countries, and even a six-month baby of unknown color and descent. Discounting those from Muslim countries, including three from Pakistan, the constellation of those calling for an end to Gaza’s blockade was impressive. The hope of a violence-free ending was therefore reasonable. But that did not happen. Israel wanted Gazans to know that even the international community cannot save them. It reasons that a hopeless people would eventually give up fighting.
That the peace flotilla was attacked in international waters, and that a Hamas leader was murdered this year by the Mossad in Dubai, is also noteworthy. Israel, in effect, has declared that it knows no boundaries. It is truly a rogue nation.
Question: Why did the United States refuse to condemn the Israeli action, even though the cost it shall pay will be large?
The cost is indeed huge! Imagine that the US had allowed a meeting of the UN Security Council to criticize Israel, and had called for an open investigation by the International Court of Justice. In a jiffy, the key US interest across the world - that of fighting Al-Qaeda and Islamic extremism - would have been immensely strengthened. This one act may have bought more security for the US than increasing its defense budget by 100 billion dollars. The world would have felt so much better about America. The steam would have gone out of rabid jihadist organizations. Conversely, in refusing to condemn the atrocity, the United States lost an opportunity to rescue its tarnished international image of being a slave of Israel.
It is unprecedented in history for one state to set aside its own security, and that of its allies, in pursuing the interests of another state. So what on earth makes the US behave in this way? This is a fascinating question. Most people think that this is because of shared US-Israeli strategic interests and/or some compelling moral imperative.
But John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, two leading American academics whose book caused a storm, argue that neither is true. Unqualified US support for Israel, they say, is unnatural and unnecessary. Far from being a loyal ally, Israel regularly spies on its principal patron. Moreover, Israel is racist while the US is democratic. Unlike the US, where people enjoy equal legal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state where citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Indeed, even Pakistan’s America-hating ulema think this way - they line up to send their children to the US and pray for grant of their Green Cards.
But, say Mearsheimer and Walt, America’s uncritical support for Israel actually owes to the Israeli lobby in the US. AIPAC (American Israel Public Action Committee) is a hugely influential organization that was ranked second behind the American Association of Retired People, but ahead of the AFL-CIO and the National Rifle Association. Thus, during the bombardment of Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the House of Representatives passed a resolution of total solidarity with Israel by 410 votes to eight. Today the Israeli tail wags the American dog. This is remarkable: Jews belonged to the oppressed people of America until a few decades ago, and only conditionally allowed to set foot on American soil although Hitler was sending them off to be gassed.
Noam Chomsky, my guru and friend, who was turned away from entering the West Bank some weeks ago, has long argued that Israel’s time is running out. Decades ago he wrote that “Israel is deliberately turning itself into perhaps the most hated country in the world, and is also losing the allegiance of the population of the West, including younger American Jews, who are unlikely to tolerate its persistent shocking crimes for long.”
Is Chomsky right? Maybe. America’s formerly unqualified support for Israel is now qualified. Polls show that Democrat voters are unwilling to give Israel a blank check anymore. And, a glance at the Israeli press shows that while President Obama refused to condemn the massacre, his clear disapproval has made him Israel’s enemy number-one. But Obama, like other US presidents, is helpless before a political establishment which has internalized a belief that Israel should never be criticized. The consensus on Israel-can-do-no-wrong is only just beginning to crack.

Question: why are the Palestinians losing so badly when others have won against larger, more powerful, enemies?
The fact is that Vietnam lost a million people but won; Timor finally achieved independence from Indonesia; Cuba has withstood siege for 50 years; and Venezuela under Chavez is resisting America.
The usual excuses for Palestinian failure can be trotted out: grand conspiracies, disunity, and lack of firepower. But surely it’s time to get to the real reasons. The first is that of poor tactics: the weak cannot behave as the strong do. The leadership made disastrous decisions in Lebanon in 1982, then Lebanon again in 2006 (Hasan Nasrallah admitted his mistake), and Gaza in 2009. In arguing Palestine’s case before the Western world, Palestinian leaders and diplomats have performed pathetically, and American Zionists readily shot holes into them. But they viewed men like Edward Said and Eqbal Ahmad with great alarm because, with passion and reason, these stalwarts of secular humanism refuted Israeli propaganda in an idiom that the world could understand. Alas, they are gone.
Human history is a long story of injustice and cruelty. In our times, nothing stands out more vividly than Palestine. But, tragically, this struggle for justice has been turned into a religious cause. When the secular PLO led the Palestinians, it commanded power and respect. After the 1982 debacle in Beirut, Hamas took over. Sending suicide bombers on to Israeli civilian targets decimated international support, heightened Israeli repression, and led to The Wall.
The tragic loss of life notwithstanding, the flotilla episode is a huge moral victory for Palestine and a defeat for Israel . Israel was shown up to be paranoid, dominated by fundamentalist nuclear-armed crazies, and trigger happy. The moral high ground has again turned out to be the Palestinian’s principal weapon. It must not be wasted by firing off a few toy rockets from Gaza . Israelis love war and fear peace. This is why struggle for Palestine must be fought with different tactics.

Question: why are we Pakistanis so hyped-up about what Israel does but blind to what we do to our people and those in neighboring countries?
Let’s face the truth: Israeli crimes are extremely serious but they pale in front of those committed almost daily by religious extremists in Pakistan. Israel murdered nine peace activists of the Mavi Marmara, but just hours earlier jihadists had killed over ninety Ahmadis peacefully praying in a mosque in Lahore. Israel starves Gaza, but the Taliban have imposed an even more brutal blockade of Shias in Parachinar and Kurram. Israel does not amputate the limbs of its enemies or decapitate them, but the Taliban do. Israel has destroyed schools for Palestinians in Gaza, but the Taliban have blown up nearly a thousand schools.
Of course, it is not just the religious extremists but also our state - the Pakistani state and army - that is guilty of atrocities. Israeli forces have never been accused of mass rape, but the Bengalis have never forgiven the Pakistani army for what it did in 1971. Israel is responsible for abductions and disappearances, but does anyone have an estimate for the number of “disappeared persons” in Baluchistan? One could go on. So instead of riding the high horse of moral purity, it is time for us Pakistanis to reflect upon the crimes of those from within us.

Huge mineral riches found in Afghanistan

Huge mineral riches found in Afghanistan

  US geologists have discovered nearly one trillion dollars' worth of untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, including vast reserves of copper and lithium, the New York Times reported Monday.

The deposits, which also include huge veins of iron, gold, niobium and cobalt, are enough to turn the battle-scarred country into one of the world's leading mining exporters, senior US government officials told the Times.

Afghanistan's potential lithium deposits as large of those of Bolivia, which currently has the world's largest known lithium reserves, the Times said.

Lithium is a key mineral used in rechargeable batteries, as well as everything from cell phones and laptops to electric cars.

Afghanistan has so much of it that it could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," according to an internal Pentagon memo quoted by the newspaper.

The iron and copper deposits are large enough to make Afghanistan one of the world's top producers, US officials said.

"There is stunning potential here," General David Petraeus, head of the US Central Command, told the newspaper. "There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant."

"This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy," Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines, told the Times.

A small team of US geologists and Pentagon officials uncovered the mineral wealth with help from charts and data collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Afghan geologists took the charts home to protect them during the chaos that followed the Soviet withdrawal, and produced them again in 2001 with the fall of the Taliban, the Times said.

"There were maps, but the development did not take place, because you had 30 to 35 years of war," Ahmad Hujabre, an Afghan engineer who worked for the Ministry of Mines in the 1970s, told the Times.

President Hamid Karzai was recently briefed on the finding, US officials told the newspaper.

Pakistan ranked fifth most unstable country

This is with reference to the news item "Pakistan ranked fifth most unstable country", (June 10). The Global Peace Index (GPI) released by the US Department of State termed Pakistan as the world's fifth most unstable country, better only than Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Sudan. Pakistan's ranking according to the GPI is 145 on a list of 149 countries. Internal conflicts, the deteriorating law and order situation, bad governance, suicide bombings and large-scale violence in different regions of Pakistan deepened its state of instability and vulnerability to a total breakdown of state apparatus.


One can question the credibility and merit of the index released by the US State Department's GPI, but two things tend to augment the level of alarm and caution as far as Pakistan's prevailing security, economic, socio-political conditions are concerned.

First, instability in Pakistan has reached a dangerous level because two out of four provinces (Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), including the tribal areas, are in the grip of insurgency, militancy, violence and terrorism.


The other two provinces, Sindh and Punjab, are also exposed to acts of terror and breakdown of the rule of law. Second, the human security index in Pakistan has also reached its lowest ebb in view of rampant corruption, deepening of economic divide, the low quality of life and the breakdown of infrastructure.

The state's failure to control prices of essential commodities and to provide good governance also enhances the level of frustration and anger in the vast segments of population.

It is not only the GPI which has warned of serious threats of instability in Pakistan because of the reasons mentioned earlier, other global organisations like Transparency International and the International Crisis Group have also expressed their concern over the collapse of state institutions.
 
It is high time that those who are the stakeholders in the state and society of Pakistan, regardless of their political affiliation, take notice of the chaotic situation in the country and take appropriate steps so that the country is saved from a tragedy. Unfortunately, in the last four or so decades, Pakistan has gone back in terms of development, education, rule of law and work ethics.

PROF DR MOONIS AHMAR

Karachi

Exposed: Pak's secret love affair with Taliban

 
Accusing Pakistan of playing an "astonishing double game," two reports on Sunday said President Asif Ali Zardari had secretly released dozens of Taliban leaders from prison.

The reports — one by a London School of Economics team, the other by The Sunday Times — appearing a day after British Prime Minister David Cameron returned from Afghanistan, showed how Pakistan's continued support to the Taliban was costing the West lives.

"Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude in Afghanistan," said the LSE report, whose findings make a mockery of the West's policy of pouring billions of dollars of aid into Pakistan, while negotiating with what it calls the `good Taliban.'


The report, written by Harvard University academic Matt Waldman, said support for the Taliban, far from being carried out by rogue spies, is "official ISI policy". The Sunday Times report agreed with this view, noting that such support was "officially sanctioned at the highest levels of Pakistan's government."
 
Both reports, denied by Islamabad, said Zardari recently met captured Taliban leaders in Pakistan to assure them of his government's full support.

The Sunday Times said Zardari met 50 high-ranking militants at a prison in Pakistan in April. He told the prisoners he had locked them up only because of American pressure, and they would be out soon. "You are our people, we are friends, and after your release we will support you," Zardari was quoted as saying by a Taliban leader who was in jail at the time and released five days later.

Equally damaging for the Pakistan government were quotes in the Sunday Times report from Taliban members and Western officials saying up to seven of the 15 men who sit on the Taliban war council — the Quetta shura — were ISI agents. Some sources maintained every shura member had ISI links.

More than 1,800 NATO and US-led coalition soldiers have been killed in the Afghan conflict since 2002. Embarrassingly for Western policy-makers, the reports claimed improvised explosive devices responsible for killing most British soldiers in Afghanistan were introduced to Taliban by Pakistani officials.

Sometimes described as a "state within a state", the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate is in fact a tightly-disciplined arm of the Pakistani military, involved in civilian politics, Islamist militancy and foreign affairs.

The ISI was created by a British army officer in 1948, but came to prominence in the 1980s when it was the conduit for at least $6bn in US and Saudi covert funds for mujahideen guerrillas fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

In the 1990s, the ISI turned Islamist fighters into an effective weapon against Indian forces in Kashmir, and interfered heavily in electoral politics, mostly against Benazir Bhutto. It also helped to push the Taliban to power in Afghanistan.

Since 2001, the agency has officially renounced its ties with Islamist militants, but has quietly retained some favorites, including, controversially, Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose militants carried out the 2008 bombings in Mumbai.

But the ISI has also been targeted by some Islamists in recent years, and the spy agency's offices in Lahore and Peshawar have suffered major suicide attacks.

The ISI's current chief, Lieutenant General Shuja Pasha, was due to retire last March, but received a one-year extension – a reflection of his close relationship with the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, who is himself a former head of the spy agency.