Violence at Abbottabad

Protesters burn furniture in a riot in Abbottabad. Hundreds of protesters took to the streets to express anger over the change of the name of their province to Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa. Police fired tear gas and bullets into the crowd after they attacked police stations and burn vehicles, killing seven people, police said

Political violence in Pakistan is difficult to decipher from afar. But what happened in Abbottabad appears to be tied to a struggle between the PML-Q and PML-N in the first instance and the lack of a prompt public-awareness campaign in the Hazara region generally by the ANP-led provincial government.
The renaming of the NWFP as Khyber Pakthunkhwa has gone down badly in the Hazara region and there appears to be genuine grassroots dissent against a name that the non-Pakhtun, Hindko-speaking population of the region does not identify with. Sensing an opportunity, the PML-Q has tried to capitalise on the emergence of the malcontents at the expense of the PML-N.
In the February 2008 elections, the PML-N trounced the PML-Q in the areas which have traditionally been Muslim League strongholds. Now with the PML-N voting in favour of ‘Khyber Pakthunkhwa’, the PML-Q is trying to portray itself as the real defenders of the rights of the people of the Hazara region and perhaps make a comeback in the region. The alacrity with which the PML-Q has grabbed the opportunity can be gauged by the fact that erstwhile rivals, some might say bitter enemies, in the party have come together to stand up for the ‘rights’ of Hazara’s people.
But the main reason the PML-Q has been able exploit the unhappiness in the Hazara region is the negligence of the ANP-led provincial government. Yes, the demand for the ‘Pakhtunkhwa’ name is legitimate and has the support of the majority of the province. But the ANP should have taken more care to reassure the people of the Hazara region, and even the Seraiki-speaking population in southern NWFP, that the name change would not impact the rights of the ‘minority’ ethnicities. The ANP has appeared more obsessed with the renaming issue than the everyday concerns of the people of the province. Identity matters, clearly, but so do things like jobs, reducing inflation and improving public services. So elated has the ANP been at the fulfilment of a century-old demand, that it appears to have forgotten there are more pressing issues that the people of the province care about.

NWFP = Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa

Pakistan's North West Frontier Province was officially renamed as Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on Thursday.
After getting the National Assembly's nod of approval earlier this week, the bill has now been passed by the Senate. Eighty senators voted in favour of the new name, while just 12 opposed it. An amendment which had been moved by the PML-Q against the province's renaming was rejected by the upper house.

NWFP schools’ closure

The shortage of teachers has forced the closure of 367 government-run primary schools for girls and boys across the NWFP, more than 30 of them in Peshawar alone. As a result, over 36,700 students are now out of school, most of them in remote areas where there is no option of taking admission in another school.
The problem lies not in the shortage of teachers per se, but in the fact that the teachers in most of the now-closed schools, which were located in far-flung areas, managed to obtain transfers to other schools of their choice — mainly located in urban areas. Security concerns and transport problems discourage teachers from working in remote areas. Furthermore, teachers in urban areas receive more attractive allowances.
This is an unacceptable state of affairs. The number of educational institutions, primary schools in particular, in the NWFP has always been far from adequate. The situation plummeted in recent years when the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and other militant outfits put schools, particularly those for girls, in their crosshairs. With this threat having been reduced to some extent, it is now essential that schools stay open and, indeed, try to increase the numbers of admissions.
That people want their children to have access to education is evident from the fact that the schools now closed remained functional for many years after their establishment, and were staffed by teachers appointed by the Elementary and Secondary Education department — teachers who have now abandoned their positions and left thousands of students in the lurch. The matter merits urgent attention by the authorities: education is not just a constitutional right but also plays a critical role in lifting people out of poverty and darkness. Proper education is also crucial to ensuring that anarchic elements never, in future, find the province conducive to their activities.

Dismal realities

If anyone remains to be convinced about the truly dismal state of affairs prevailing in the country, they would find ample evidence in a report released on Monday by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. A roundup of the statistics of 2009, the report reads as an indictment of the state’s inability to protect its citizens. Unsurprisingly, terrorist attacks are identified as constituting the greatest threat to fundamental rights. The report estimates that over 3,000 people were killed during the year under review in 2,586 incidents of terrorism across the country, including 108 suicide bombings. Yet the civilian population has not been left unscathed by even the various state-sponsored and state-supported efforts to combat the militants. Meanwhile, the HRCP report refers to complaints about extra-judicial and revenge killings in the aftermath of the Swat operation where in a disturbing trend echoing the Taliban’s tactics, bodies were found strung upside down, bearing warnings that anyone supporting the militants would meet the same fate. Furthermore, the HRCP claims, the principle that military operations against terrorists should be carried out in a manner that does not violate the human rights of combatants and non-combatants was not always followed.
The news is bad in other areas too. As compared to the previous year, 2009 saw a sharp increase in violence against women and religious minorities, while new incidents of ‘enforced disappearances’ continued to be reported from across the country. Crimes such as target killings, kidnapping for ransom, ‘honour’ killings and domestic violence continued to be committed with impunity, with little evidence of success in the state’s efforts to contain them. No one in government appears to recognise that quite apart from terrorism and militancy; there is an urgent need to improve the lot of the people. After years of suffering, the people crave security for their lives, properties, livelihoods and future. The HRCP report estimates that of the 70 million children in the country almost 20.3 million do not go to school. What we will see in future years is an increasingly uneducated and brutalised population that harbours great resentment against the state.

Eradicating polio

Battling the spread of the polio virus and its eventual eradication from the country are among the major public health challenges confronting Pakistan. Though there have been several official polio awareness campaigns and immunisation drives, some lacunae remain which need to be plugged if the virus is to be eliminated.
While discussing anti-polio efforts at the start of the latest eradication campaign in Karachi, the country representative of the World Health Organisation pointed to some of the problems hampering polio eradication efforts, specifically with reference to cases detected in the city. He said that as per available data, most of the cases detected in Karachi were found in people who had come to the metropolis from other parts of the country. He reiterated the need to incorporate the migrant population in the overall anti-polio campaign instead of excluding it from official plans. The WHO official also stressed upon the government to ensure that migrants’ health, education and sanitation needs are met, particularly the provision of drinking water.
Karachi has always been a magnet for migrants from within Pakistan and abroad, primarily due to its status as the country’s economic capital. But ever since the armed forces initiated their operations against militants in the tribal belt and Malakand, a steady trickle of internally displaced persons has also been arriving in the city. It is imperative that those taking refuge in Karachi because of conflict or economic reasons are included in the anti-polio drive. And as Waziristan and Malakand have been relatively pacified, the federal and provincial governments should take the anti-polio drive to these areas, making it a priority to send immunisation teams to far-flung regions. The efficacy of the anti-polio vaccines and drops must also be guaranteed while the authorities should counter the negative propaganda generated by extremist elements regarding the vaccine.
With regard to the tribal areas and Malakand, if the government can prove it holds the welfare of the people dear by immunising their children and looking after their health needs, it may go a long way towards winning hearts and minds.

Load shedding > Nation’s patience

Electricity shortfall rose to a staggering 4,500MW on Wednesday, forcing the Pakistan Electric Power Company to resort to a massive 10-hour unscheduled load shedding across the country.
Karachi suffered eight to 10 hours of power shutdown.
Although figures released by Pepco put the deficit at 3,021MW, the prolonged country-wide load shedding belied those figures.
The company said the total demand was 12,441MW on Wednesday and it generated 9,420MW. Pepco said its thermal units produced 2,550MW, independent power producers contributed 5,535MW and 1,332MW came from the hydel component.
Wapda, however, disputed the figures on hydel generation, saying its peak hour contribution was about 2,500MW, and not 1,332MW as claimed by Pepco.
According to reports reaching , the duration of load shedding was between 12 and 15 hours on Wednesday. This is despite the fact that use of tubewells is at minimum these days as wheat crop has matured in Sindh and the last watering has been completed in Punjab. Had these 200,000 tubewells been operational, rural areas would have been virtually without electricity.
The textile industry called for a strike on Thursday on other accounts, but the situation was not any better than a shutdown on Wednesday either.
“No one now knows when will electricity go and come, and for how long. All this is taxing the industry of its financial promise,” he said.
The Karachi Electric Supply Company suffered a serious blow to its generation capacity as the Pakistan State Oil refused to continue fuel supply to the power utility on loan.
KESC’s shortfall reached 500MW on Wednesday.
While industrial areas faced about six hours of loadshedding, power outages stretched up to 10 hours in residential areas of the city.
The situation drew the attention of Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad who called both the KESC CEO and PSO MD to the Governor’s House and told them that people must not suffer because of an unsettled technical dispute between the two companies.

Growing Suicide Attacks

An additional number of 216 Pakistanis have so far been killed in 15 incidents of suicide bombings across Pakistan in the first 70 days of this year, compared with the first 70 days of 2009 during which 11 such assaults were carried out.
According to available facts and figures, Pakistan has seen an unprecedented rise in the number of suicide attacks and subsequent killings during the first six weeks of 2010, which killed 321 people and injured over 500 in 15 suicide bombings that took place across Pakistan in the first 70 days of 2010 (between January 1 and March 12), showing 216 more deaths compared with the first 70 days of 2009 (between January 1 and March 12) during which 105 people were killed. Therefore, the daily average killing rate for the first 70 days of 2010 comes to four and a half people while the weekly killing rate stands at 10 people. According to the data compiled by the Punjab home department, 145 people were killed in five incidents of suicide bombings in January this year; another 101 people lost their lives in seven such attacks in February while 75 people have so far been killed in the first 12 days of 2010.
At least 45 people lost their lives in the latest suicide attacks in the Cantonment area of Lahore on January 12, killing 45 people, including at least half a dozen Army Jawans. Hardly three days earlier (on March 12),at least 18 people were killed, including nine policemen when a suicide bomber riding a car ripped through rented offices of the Special Intelligence Agency (SIA) in the Model Town Society. However, the deadliest suicide attack of 2010 was carried out on January 1 when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden double cab pickup in the middle of the volleyball ground in Lakki Marwat, killing 105 people. The dead included policemen, Frontier Constabulary personnel as well as volley ball players. Another significant incident of suicide bombing took place on February 4, 2010, when three US military personnel were killed in a suicide car bombing attack on a forces convoy in Koto area of Dir Lower. The dead included three schoolgirls and a Frontier Corps soldier. The blast took place near a girls’ high school that pulled the building down, injuring 130 others.
Before the dawn of 2010, the year 2009 had proved to be the bloodiest one for the people of Pakistan since Islamabad joined hands with Washington in the war on terror. At least 1,217 innocent people were killed and 2,305 injured in 80 bloody attacks carried out by human bombs in 12 months of 2009 (between January and December 2009). The last year had proved to be the bloodiest in terms of the number of suicide attacks and the subsequent death toll since the 9/11 episode, especially after the Lal Masjid operation carried out by the Army in July 2007. Of the 1,217 innocent Pakistanis who lost their lives in suicide bombings in 2009, the number of civilian casualties stood at 863 while the remaining 354 martyred belonged to the security and law-enforcement agencies. Of them, 137 belonged to the police, 102 were Army officers and Jawans, 51 were the FC personnel, 28 were staff members of the Inter-Services Intelligence, 22 belonged to the Khasadar Force, 12 belonged to the Pakistan Rangers and two others were employees of the Pakistan Navy. On average, around 72 civilians and 30 security and law-enforcement agencies’ personnel lost their lives every month in 2009 due to suicide bombings.
Authorities investigating the unending spate of suicide bombings are of the view most of these attacks have been carried out by the Punjabi Taliban belonging to four sectarian-cum-Jihadi groups which are working in tandem with the Pashtun-dominated Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. They believe several South Punjab-based members of the banned Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, who had taken part in the Afghan war, have now tied up with the TTP to carry out suicide attacks across Pakistan, especially targeting key military installations. South Punjab has grabbed the attention of Pakistani authorities over the past few months because of involvement of the Taliban in a spate of Fidayeen-style suicide bombings, including the one targeting the General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi on October 10, 2009