To Fight India, We Fought Ourselves

By MOHSIN HAMID

LAHORE, Pakistan

ON Monday, my mother's and sister's eye doctor was assassinated. He
was a Shiite. He was shot six times while driving to drop his son off
at school. His son, age 12, was executed with a single shot to the
head.

Tuesday, I attended a protest in front of the Governor's House in
Lahore demanding that more be done to protect Pakistan's Shiites from
sectarian extremists. These extremists are responsible for
increasingly frequent attacks, including bombings this year that
killed more than 200 people, most of them Hazara Shiites, in the city
of Quetta.

As I stood in the anguished crowd in Lahore, similar protests were
being held throughout Pakistan. Roads were shut. Demonstrators blocked
access to airports. My father was trapped in one for the evening, yet
he said most of his fellow travelers bore the delay without anger.
They sympathized with the protesters' objectives.

Minority persecution is a common notion around the world, bringing to
mind the treatment of African-Americans in the United States, for
example, or Arab immigrants in Europe. In Pakistan, though, the
situation is more unusual: those persecuted as minorities collectively
constitute a vast majority.

A filmmaker I know who has relatives in the Ahmadi sect told me that
her family's graves in Lahore had been defaced, because Ahmadis are
regarded as apostates. A Baluch friend said it was difficult to take
Punjabi visitors with him to Baluchistan, because there is so much
local anger there at violence toward the Baluch. An acquaintance of
mine, a Pakistani Hindu, once got angry when I answered the question
"how are things?" with the word "fine" — because things so obviously
aren't. And Pakistani Christians have borne the brunt of arrests under
the country's blasphemy law; a governor of my province was
assassinated for trying to repeal it.

What then is the status of the country's majority? In Pakistan, there
is no such thing. Punjab is the most populous province, but its
roughly 100 million people are divided by language, religious sect,
outlook and gender. Sunni Muslims represent Pakistan's most populous
faith, but it's dangerous to be the wrong kind of Sunni. Sunnis are
regularly killed for being open to the new ways of the West, or for
adhering to the old traditions of the Indian subcontinent, for being
liberal, for being mystical, for being in politics, the army or the
police, or for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At the heart of Pakistan's troubles is the celebration of the
militant. Whether fighting in Afghanistan, or Kashmir, or at home,
this deadly figure has been elevated to heroic status: willing to make
the ultimate sacrifice, able to win the ultimate victory, selfless,
noble. Yet as tens of thousands of Pakistanis die at the hands of such
heroes, as tens of millions of Pakistanis go about their lives in
daily fear of them, a recalibration is being demanded. The need of the
hour, of the year, of the generation, is peace.

Pakistan is in the grips of militancy because of its fraught
relationship with India, with which it has fought three wars and
innumerable skirmishes since the countries separated in 1947.
Militants were cultivated as an equalizer, to make Pakistan safer
against a much larger foe. But they have done the opposite, killing
Pakistanis at home and increasing the likelihood of catastrophic
conflicts abroad.

Normalizing relations with India could help starve Pakistani militancy
of oxygen. So it is significant that the prospects for peace between
the two nuclear-armed countries look better than they have in some
time.

India and Pakistan share a lengthy land border, but they might as well
be on separate continents, so limited is their trade with each other
and the commingling of their people. Visas, traditionally hard to get,
restricted to specific cities and burdened with onerous requirements
to report to the local police, are becoming more flexible for business
travelers and older citizens. Trade is also picking up. A pulp
manufacturer in Pakistani Punjab, for example, told me he had
identified a paper mill in Indian Punjab that could purchase his
factory's entire output.

These openings could be the first cracks in a dam that holds back a
flood of interaction. Whenever I go to New Delhi, many I meet are
eager to visit Lahore. Home to roughly a combined 25 million people,
the cities are not much more than half an hour apart by plane, and yet
they are linked by only two flights a week.

Cultural connections are increasing, too. Indian films dominate at
Pakistani cinemas, and Indian songs play at Pakistani weddings. Now
Pakistanis are making inroads in the opposite direction. Pakistani
actors have appeared as Bollywood leads and on Indian reality TV.
Pakistani contemporary art is being snapped up by Indian buyers. And
New Delhi is the publishing center for the current crop of Pakistani
English-language fiction.

A major constraint the two countries have faced in normalizing
relations has been the power of security hawks on both sides, and
especially in Pakistan. But even in this domain we might be seeing an
improvement. The new official doctrine of the Pakistani Army for the
first time identifies internal militants, rather than India, as the
country's No. 1 threat. And Pakistan has just completed an
unprecedented five years under a single elected government. This year,
it will be holding elections in which the largest parties all agree
that peace with India is essential.

Peace with India or, rather, increasingly normal neighborly relations,
offers the best chance for Pakistan to succeed in dismantling its cult
of militancy. Pakistan's extremists, of course, understand this, and
so we can expect to see, as we have in the past, attempts to scupper
progress through cross-border violence. They will try to goad India
into retaliating and thereby giving them what serves them best: a
state of frozen, impermeable hostility.

They may well succeed. For there is a disturbing rise of hyperbolic
nationalism among India's prickly emerging middle class, and the
Indian media is quick to stoke the fires. The explosion of popular
rage in India after a recent military exchange, in which soldiers on
both sides of the border were killed, is an indicator of the danger.

So it is important now to prepare the public in both countries for an
extremist outrage, which may well originate in Pakistan, and for the
self-defeating calls for an extreme response, which are likely to be
heard in India. Such confrontations have always derailed peace in the
past. They must not be allowed to do so again. In the tricky months
ahead, as India and Pakistan reconnect after decades of virtual
embargo, those of us who believe in peace should regard extremist
provocations not as barriers to our success but, perversely, as signs
that we are succeeding.

Mohsin Hamid is the author of the novels "The Reluctant
Fundamentalist" and the forthcoming "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising
Asia."
NYT

26/11 accused Lakhvi enjoys VVIP treatment in Pak jail

NEW DELHI: It's not only the Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT) top boss Hafiz Saeed who roams freely in Pakistan, but even his next-in-command Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, imprisoned at Rawalpindi's Adiala Jail for his role in the 26/11 attacks, moves out of the prison from time to time to visit his family and friends. Lakhvi, who is treated as a VVIP within the confines of the high-security prison, enjoys these outings under a thick security cover facilitated by the jail authorities, sources in the Indian security establishment have told TOI.

Lakhvi, who was the prime motivator of the 26/11 attack module, monitoring the carnage from the LeT control room in Karachi and giving blow-by-blow instructions to the terrorists, is using as many as five different cellphones inside the jail to communicate with LeT commanders and cadres. According to intelligence sources, he freely makes calls to keep tab on the outfit's operations and gives pep-talks to his terror associates.

According to a senior official of the security establishment, Lakhvi's detention in Adiala Jail is even better than a house arrest. While a person under house arrest cannot leave the premises of his detention or receive any visitors unless authorized by the detaining authority, Lakhvi not only has a smooth traffic of visitors — most of them terror commanders seeking his guidance and advice — but is also allowed to use vehicles and security for meeting his family and terror associates outside the jail premises.

It is suspected that the child that Lakhvi reportedly fathered during his incarceration was thanks to these "outings". Abu Jundal, the 26/11 handler who was deported last year and is on trial here, had told his interrogators here that Lakhvi, during one of their meetings in Adiala Jail, had informed him that the prison authorities had allowed his wife to visit him in prison in 2010 to perform conjugal rights, following which their son was born.

The secretly-arranged "paroles" notwithstanding, Lakhvi's stay at the jail is no less comfortable. His "cell" in Adiala Jail is really a well-appointed suite with all modern facilities, including a television set. He has access to newspapers and moves within the jail without any restrictions. "He is kept in good humour by the jailors and prison staff, under what the security agencies believe are standing instructions from Pakistani state agencies like the ISI," a senior intelligence officer told TOI.

In fact, the jail authorities even arranged a birthday celebration for their most-coveted prisoner sometime last year.

Agencies here believe that Lakhvi was arrested as Pakistan was under pressure from the Western nations to bring the 26/11 masterminds to book. Arresting Saeed, who enjoys the confidence of both the Pakistani Army and the ISI, was not an option. So, a convenient arrangement was worked out to showcase Lakhvi's arrest as Pakistan's commitment to bring 26/11 perpetrators to book, while ensuring that he was not isolated from his family or his 'work' as a terror commander.

The Indian agencies are worried over the "loose" evidence allegedly submitted by Pakistani agencies in the 26/11 charge sheet filed in the Adiala court. Sources said Pakistani investigators have not bothered to corroborate Lakhvi's stay at the addresses cited in the Indian dossier to link him to the 26/11 conspiracy. "The investigators found that it was not Lakhvi, but another person, who was staying at the said locations. But in reality, Lakhvi may have stayed there under an alias," an official said adding that this may be a ploy by Islamabad to dilute the case against him.
TOI

Why Pakistan’s Prime Minister Is Still Free

Pakistan's Supreme Court last month ordered the arrest of Prime
Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf within 24 hours on allegations of his
involvement in corruption involving power-generation equipment.

But three weeks later Mr. Ashraf remains in office as Pakistan heads
toward general elections due by May.The arrest order was widely seen
as the latest round of a five-year-long battle for power between the
court, which plays an activist role in local politics, and the
Pakistan People's Party-led government.

So what gives?

A major reason the arrest has not been carried out is the National
Accountability Bureau, a state body charged with investigating
corruption and carrying out arrests, has refused to play ball with the
Supreme Court.

On Jan. 17, two days after the court issued the arrest order for Mr.
Ashraf and 15 others, Fasih Bokhari, NAB's chairman, told the court he
could not make the arrests as the bureau had not yet built a solid
case.

Mr. Bokhari told Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry that NAB
needed more time to investigate allegations Mr. Ashraf accepted bribes
for approving power generation projects in 2010 during his tenure as
power minister. The court had ordered NAB to investigate the matter in
2010. Attempts to reach Mr. Ashraf were unsuccessful but he has
previously denied any wrongdoing.

Relations between NAB and the court have deteriorated since then.

A day later, on Jan. 18, a NAB investigator involved in investigating
Mr. Ashraf and the others was found dead in his apartment in
Islamabad, the capital. Police are investigating the cause of the
death. Mr. Bokhari said he was suspending NAB's probe until police
carried out its investigation of the death.

Then, at the end of January, Mr. Bokhari wrote Pakistan President Asif
Ali Zardari to complain about continued pressure from the Supreme
Court to push ahead with the graft probe – pressure which he said
constituted an infringement of NAB's independence. Mr. Zardari
appointed Mr. Bokhari, a retired navy admiral, to his post in 2011.

In turn, Mr. Chaudhury issued a contempt of court order against Mr.
Bokhari. The NAB chairman is due in court Tuesday to answer this
charge.

NAB's refusal to arrest Mr. Ashraf shows the three-way power struggle
that has gripped Pakistan in recent years. On one side is the court,
which played a front-line role in the ouster in 2008 of former
military-backed President Pervez Musharraf, and has played an
increasingly activist part in politics since then.

The court scored a hit last summer when it forced out Mr. Ashraf's
predecessor as prime minister over his refusal to launch a graft
probe into Mr. Zardari.

But the court has been unable to unseat Mr. Zardari, who is close to
becoming the first democratically-elected leader in Pakistan's 66-year
history as an independent nation to complete a full five-year term.

Pakistan's military, the third player in Pakistan's political
landscape, has not stepped in to take over power, despite repeated
rumors of a coup. It remains powerful, setting domestic security and
foreign policy.

Mr. Chaudhury, in the past, has defended the court's actions, saying
it is trying to stamp out graft in politics. A Supreme Court spokesman
declined to comment on the current struggle with NAB or the order to
arrest the prime minister.

Pakistan's government, which has filed a petition to the court to
review its January arrest order, has regularly claimed the court is
overstepping the bounds of its authority.

A member of the prime minister's legal counsel, Faisal Chaudhry, said
there is insufficient evidence against Mr. Ashraf. He claimed the
Supreme Court is playing the role of a political party.

A spokesman for NAB, Zafar Iqbal, said the bureau should to left alone
to do its work. "The chairman acts in accordance with the law of the
land not under the influence of who is who nor who is who's friend,"
Mr. Iqbal said.

He acknowledged the investigations into the alleged corruption has
been slow because NAB lacks adequate personnel to push ahead. "It is
likely that the Supreme Court is unaware of how understaffed NAB is,"
he added.

The Supreme Court has set Feb. 18 as the next hearing into its arrest
order, when it will summon NAB officials and police involved in the
probe of the death of the bureau's investigator.

WSJ