CITY GOVT. ACHIEVED MIRACULOUS RESULTS ON EID-UL-AZHA. NAZIM KARACHI

City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal has said that city government has achieved hundred percent targets in the three day operation of disposal of offal on Eid-ul-Azha and the city has been cleaned thoroughly. Achievement of such miraculous results is good news to people of Pakistan that all of their problems could be solved with the available resources providing you have purity of intentions and sincere leadership. Performance of city district government Karachi has now become a role model for other cities of Pakistan.

He expressed these views while addressing a press conference at Civic Center on Tuesday. DCO Karachi Javed Hanif and EDO Municipal Services Masood Alam were also present on this occasion.

City Nazim said that city government has this year performed even better if compared to previous year’s performance which has been appreciated by whole country. One the biggest success we have got this year has been the active involvement of citizens of Karachi in the whole operation who took their time and personally helped us in the swift lifting and disposal of offal.

Nazim Karachi said that the cantonment boards and other municipal agencies working in the city were also taken on board before Eid-ul-Azha and they have also implemented our code of conduct for the disposal of offal. Unlike past not single offal was dumped by cantonment boards and other organizations at the landfill sites.

He said that he had received the phone call of Base Commander Masroor, Base Commander Faisal and Air vice Marshal Arshad Quddus of Southern Air Command who has thanked all city government officials for successful undertaking of the operation.

Nazim Karachi said that we have not procured any new machinery for lifting of offal and only used the available resources. Effects of such a successful operation might have been reached to other cities of Pakistan as the media and people residing there would ask their elected representatives to follow the example of City District Government Karachi.

Replying a question he said that he tried his best to give cash reward to lower grade officials of city government but he could not do it owing to the financial constraints. “Anyway I will try my best to do something for them”, he added.

GHQ Operation successful, 39 hostages released

The General Head Quarters (GHQ) Operation has been completed successfully, Dunya News Sunday reported. The forces got 39 hostages released while four terrorists got killed and three hostages embraced martyrdom in the operation. One hostage was injured. On early morning today, the blast and firing sounds were heard from the security building of the GHQ.

The operation was done from all the four directions while choppers kept monitoring the GHQ building during it. The head of terrorists Aqil alias Dr. Usman has also been arrested in injured condition. ISPR DG Major General Athar Abbas told Dunya News when Dr. Usman was arrested, he blew up the gathered explosives injuring himself and five other security officials. Two SSG commandos also got injured in the operation. He said that 39 detainees had been freed. He told that four terrorists were killed and two of them were wearing suicide jackets.

The Major General informed that hostages were in better condition and had been shifted to the safe location. Some eight to 10 terrorists clad in military uniform attacked the first check post of the GHQ in the most sensitive area of Rawalpindi and threw hand grenades. Six officials including a Brigadier and Lt. Colonel were martyred in the operation. Escaped terrorists were surrounded by the forces near the second check post on the other side of the GHQ where terrorists held 28 people hostage. Careful strategy was adopted during the operation to minimize the loss of lives.

CHIEF JUSTICE DIRECTS PPO SINDH TO RECOVER ABDUCTEE

Hon’ble Chief Justice of Pakistan Mr. Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry took suo moto notice on an application of a lady resident of Gujrawala who is under illegal confinement of an influential in Pano Aqil, Sukkar, Sindh. She alleged in her application that Saifullah S/o Inayatullah Cheema betrayed and raped her. She wanted to lodge FIR against him but his brother Amanat threatened her of dire consequences. He kidnapped and sold her to an influential in Sindh. She further alleged that she was forcibly married with Saifullah against her will and consent and she is still under captivation.

Hon’ble Chief Justice of Pakistan Mr. Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has directed PPO Sindh to recover the abductee and produce her before the Court on 13.10.2009 and has further directed PPO Punjab to explain whether any case of her abduction has been registered in Gujranwala or not and report be sent on 13.10.2009.

Ansar Burney Trust bringing back bodies of 17 Pakistanis

The Ansar Burney Trust contacted the Iran Government on humanitarian grounds to bring back the dead bodies of 17 trafficked Pakistanis died in an accid...ent in Iran on 11th of September, when their vehicle fell off a hill and since their dead bodies are now lying at Imam Reza Hospital, Sham Hospital and two other Hospitals in Tehran.

Mr. Fahad Burney, Vice Chairman of the Ansar Burney Trust is now in contact with the Iran Government to bring these dead bodies to Pakistan so that their family members would be able to see their faces before burrial as per their Islamic traditions in Pakistan.

Fahad Burney said that these all were belongs from Gujrat, Mandi Bahauddin, Gujranwala and other parts of Punjab.

Ansar Burney Trust said that as per reports 43 Pakistanis were going illegally to Turkey via Iran to go to Europe after paying Rs. 600,000 to an Agent in Pakistan. The criminal Agent after taking 600,000 from each Pakistani arranged visa (fake) to take them to Europe on a promise of better future.

The Expert Advisor on Human Rights in the United Nations at Geneva and Chairman of the Ansar Burney Trust, Mr. Ansar Burney has demanded the Government of Pakistan to bring these cruel and criminal Agents to Justice to stop further human trafficking from Pakistan.

The Ansar Burney Trust will bear all the expenses to bring these back to pakistan, purely on humanitarian grounds as these families sent their loved ones for a better future in Europe after taking loans on interest.

In this regard Mr. Fahad Burney is also requested with the family members of the berieved families to contact Ansar Burney Trust at Wassiamal Building, Arambagh Road, Karachi or phone number: (021) 32623382, 32623383 or direct to Mr. Ansar Burney on mobile 0300-8243460

Battle Over a Book

From Jyoti Malhotra in New Delhi

China banned Alice in Wonderland for several years because the animal kingdom was upgraded to human form, England banned D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover until 1960 for its sexually explicit content (E.M. Forster was among those who defended the book at the trial), but India has now gone one step further and allowed the banning of former foreign minister Jaswant Singh’s book Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence in the state of Gujarat.

Turns out that the book is being secretly smuggled into Gujarat from nearby Rajasthan, probably because Gujaratis really want to know what the fuss is about. They’ve watched Jaswant Singh live on television, every muscle and twitch, expressing deep anguish and betrayal at being expelled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – the political party he loved and served ever since it was formed in 1980 – for writing a book on the partition of India in which Mohammed Ali Jinnah plays the lead role.

Singh seeks to right the balance on the pride of place that Jawaharlal Nehru occupies in the Indian pantheon, right there on top along with all the gods, and Jinnah’s somewhat murky positioning as he stormed out of the Hindustani Undivided Family in 1947.

History, which seems to have such a grip on the irony business, records of course that three days before the partition of the subcontinent in which more than a million people died and nearly eight million lost their homes and hearth, Jinnah went to the Constituent Assembly and delivered his now-famous speech on how Pakistan was going to be a secular state, in which Hindus could go back to their temples and Muslims to their mosques and none of it would impact their lives as Pakistani citizens.

But as Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah’s other noted biographer writes, “What was Jinnah thinking of?” Having played a key role in souring and spilling the milk, in splitting the country along communal lines, Jinnah was now turning the other cheek? This is the question that Jaswant Singh seeks to answer in his book.

“It saddens me that I have been expelled on the grounds of writing a book,” Singh told journalists soon after he was told on the phone that the BJP had thrown him out for his attempt at de-demonising Pakistan’s national hero. The party’s attempt at disciplining one of its senior-most members would have been farcical if it wasn’t so serious. By doing what it did, the BJP sent a message to the country that it wasn’t going to brook dissent and allow any deviation from the party line.

But what is the party line? That Sardar Vallabhai Patel, a senior Congress leader and independent India’s first home minister, is a central BJP icon because of his no-nonsense approach towards the country’s Muslims (in opposition to Nehru’s wishy-washy secular nonsense, claims the BJP). But as Jaswant Singh points out, it would be unfair to paint Patel in such colours, not only because he was often “far off the mark” on several occasions, including the division of India, but also because he was first of all a Congress leader and only then a right-wing one.

So when Singh rhetorically asked his now-former party, through the press, what they thought of the fact that it was their beloved Patel, who after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in January 1948, had banned the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) (another banning, this time wholly necessary), the question echoed around the country but found no takers within the RSS family, the mother lode of the BJP.

Clearly, Jaswant Singh’s writing of Jinnah, the banning of the book and the subsequent unrest within the BJP – another ideologue and close confidante of senior leader L.K. Advani, Sudheendra Kulkarni has quit and journalist-turned-BJP member and former telecom minister Arun Shourie has dubbed the party, ‘Alice in Blunderland’ – marks its gravest crisis in years.

It reflects the party’s lack of introspection over its recent debacles and its refusal to ask why it lost India both in the 2004 and the 2009 elections. The obvious answer to that is the party’s unwillingness to find a moderate leader who can represent all of the country, somewhat along the lines of former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Jaswant Singh, with his refusal to become a primary member of the RSS (believing that his stint in the Indian army was good enough to make him a patriot) and his studied lack of hypocrisy (his enjoys his daily evening drink, a mixture of wine and soda), was one such option, even though his refusal to be a fellow-traveller of the RSS ultimately made him a political lightweight.

On the other, the BJP book ban on Jinnah underlines that the debate around the idea of India still continues, 62 years after partition. Is India, then, the largest democracy in the world with its attendant ideals of free speech and expression, or is it an incoherent state that remains unable to fulfill its own promises despite elections every five years?

Considering that it was the BJP under Vajpayee which repeatedly extended its hand of peace to Pakistan – despite Kargil in 1999, the attack against parliament in 2001, the attack against the Kaluchak army camp in 2002 and Operation Parakram in 2003, when both armies were eyeball-to-eyeball for nine months along the border – Jaswant Singh’s long eye on history has fallen on rough soil.

There’s a third irony in this continuing story: the book is doing brisk business, the controversy ultimately helping it to sell even more widely than the author could have hoped. In a few weeks he will wend his way to Pakistan – to more stories on the front pages of newspapers. (Newsline)

More than 25 People killed, several injured in Kohat suicide blast

The death toll in a suicide attack at a market in Kohat town has hit 25 while the casualties were feared to be increased further, a private TV reported. The attack occurred at Kacha Paka bazaar at Hangu road on Friday where a suicide bomber on foot detonated explosives next to a small hotel, leaving at least 25 dead and 35 others wounded. A suicide car bomb tore through a Pakistan market, killing up to 14 people and gutting shops on Friday as families stocked up on supplies for a major religious festival, police said.

The explosion destroyed vehicles and shops near a bus stop in Ustarzai, a small mountain town in the northwest which lies between the garrison city of Kohat and Hangu, another Shiite-dominant town with a history of sectarian violence, police said. The area was packed with shoppers buying food and delicacies for the weekend and the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which Pakistanis expect to start on Monday with the sighting of the new moon after the fasting month of Ramadan. "A suicide bomber blew up a car filled with explosives in the market. Ten people were killed and many wounded," said Ali Hasan, a local police officer on the ground in Ustazai. Police spokesman Fazal Naeem in nearby Kohat said: "We have recovered 14 dead bodies. Many people were wounded.

The suicide bomber was sitting in a car." Police said the attack occurred near a bus stop where passenger buses and coaches arrive and depart from other towns across northwest Pakistan, where the United States has branded Islamist militants an existential threat. Police said the explosion caused heavy damage and officers were frantically organising efforts to rescue the dead and wounded. The attack was the second in two days in Kohat, a rough town in the region bordering Afghanistan with a history of sectarian and other militant violence. A bomb wounded six people Thursday.

Heavy contingent of police arrived at the scene soon after the incident and cordoned off the site. Near 32 shops at the market caved in due to the blast's impact and the rescuers put hard efforts to pull victims from the rubble, a news agency said citing a local police official. The agency quoted local area nazim Syed Mehtabul Hassan as saying that the death have reached 25 while several others were also wounded. He says that 25 bodies have been pulled out of the rubble of the hotel and nearby shops. Emergency was declared in all the major hospitals of the city while the paramedical teams also carried out emergency relief activities at the attack site. Most of the critically injured were rushed to district hospital Kohat. Hangu Road was blockaded by the forces for all kinds of traffic following the attack. Police were collecting the remains of the bomber for DNA test. (Nation)

Osama bin Laden requested meetings with former Pakistan PM

A former official of Pakistan’s intelligence service has claimed former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif met Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden five times.

The claim, which has been hotly denied by Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, was made on the “Eleventh Hour” TV program by Khalid Khwaja, the former ISI official and now chairman of the Defence of Human Rights organisation.

Khwaja told the interviewer he arranged meetings between bin Laden and Nawaz Sharif at bin Laden’s request and would provide solid evidence if necessary, saying he was hopeful Nawaz Sharif would not tell any lies about the meetings.

He told ARY News in Pakistan he had personally met the Al Qaeda chief many times prior to the 9/11 incident, but had not seen him since.

Nawaz Sharif’s political party, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, has accused Khwaja of making baseless claims.