Extremist Encroachment

Pakistan

Extremist Encroachment

The NWFP is swiftly crystallizing at the core of the Islamist militant mobilisation in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region even as radical Islamists rapidly expand their presence across Pakistan's other provinces.

KANCHAN LAKSHMAN

Even as Pakistan was reeling under the impact of the violence and disorders in Karachi, in which at least 45 persons were killed, a suicide-bomber hit the Marhaba Hotel in Peshawar, capital of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), killing 25. No official determination has been made so far regarding the group responsible for the fidayeen attack, although the provincial Law Minister Malik Zafar Azam indicated that it could have been an act of retaliation for the killing of the senior Taliban 'commander' Mullah Dadullah two days earlier in Afghanistan. Most of those killed were Afghans, including the restaurant's owner Sadruddin and his two sons, Uzbeks of Afghan origin related to the anti-Taliban leader General Abdul Rasheed Dostum. A message inscribed in Pashto on the bomber's legs warned that "those spying for America would face the same consequences."............

Slum-dwellers suffering under open Sky

New Age
Rehabilitation plan makes little progress
Evicted slum-dwellers suffering under the open sky
Abul Kalam Azad

The government’s emergency rehabilitation plan has made little headway in three months as the 60,000 people evicted from the capital’s 29 slums continue to suffer, most under the open sky. The concerned officials said it will take months to complete the rehabilitation plan. They pointed out that there are many ministries and institutions involved in the process, which prevents the taking of quick decisions in this regard............

96 Custodial death in 130 days

New Age
Odhikar reports 96 custodial deaths in 130 days since Jan 12
Staff Correspondent

Ninety-six people were killed in custody of various law enforcement agencies and 193,329 were arrested across the country in the anti-crime and anti-corruption drives in the first 130 days of the state of emergency proclaimed on January 11, said a report of the human rights coalition Odhikar...............

No Military Takeover in BD

Daily Star,

No chance for military involvement in politics.

Army subservient to civil authority, Lt Gen Moeen tells editors, asserts press freedomStaff CorrespondentArmy chief Lt Gen Moeen U Ahmed yesterday said power takeover by the military or their getting involved in politics is out of the question as the army is not the "proper institution" to run the government.
Moeen also reiterated the army's full commitment to press freedom and journalists' right to report freely. "The army respects the free press and takes its suggestions very seriously and often acts on them," he told newspaper editors at a meeting at his office yesterday...........

Bangladesh : Extra-Judicial Killings

Govt’s indifference to extra-judicial killings

Ever since the assumption of office by the military-backed interim government, the chief adviser and his colleagues in the council of advisers have severally said that one of their major objectives is to introduce good governance in the country by ensuring accountability and transparency in the affairs of the state. .........

Death by committees

Death by thousand committees
Naeem MohaiemenIn the end, this is what it takes to create an inquest. When a case of torture and murder involves an Adivasi activist it needs two months of sustained national outrage, a petition signed by hundreds, and many alert notices from groups like Human Rights Watch to finally push the government to appoint a one-person committee to probe Choles Ritchil's death. How much headway the investigator can make, with limited resources and mandate, in investigating a volatile case, is still hazy..........

U.S. Pays Pakistan to Fight Terror

U.S. Pays Pakistan to Fight Terror, but Patrols Ebb
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID ROHDE
WASHINGTON, May 19 — The United States is continuing to make large payments of roughly $1 billion a year to Pakistan for what it calls reimbursements to the country’s military for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan, even though Pakistan’s president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active.
The monthly payments, called coalition support funds, are not widely advertised. Buried in public budget numbers, the payments are intended to reimburse Pakistan’s military for the cost of the operations. So far, Pakistan has received more than $5.6 billion under the program over five years, more than half of the total aid the United States has sent to the country since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, not counting covert funds...............

Afsan Chowdhry's four volume: 1971

Daily Star,
Afsan Chowdhury's four-volume history of 1971

Seeing Afsan Chowdhury invariably reminds me of our student days at Dhaka University in the early '70s. All of us 'batchmates' in different departments were habitués of Pedro's, a thatched tea-shack that used to squat where today the modern languages institute sits. It was actually owned by Sharif Miah, but we called it Pedro's in honor of its urchin-boy waiter. Pedro's was our real classroom. It was there that we escaped from lectures for the watery tea, adda, debates and arguments, sitting in a long line by a tree-shaded low wall running alongside.
Afsan of course was a regular there, noticeable not just for his beard and height, but for his laugh, which was frequent and--if somebody had yanked loose Pedro's lungi and exposed his bare butt--very long. Those kinds of things amused him vastly. They still do. But he was also somebody willing to get into a serious exchange, any time. Back then, not having met many who were, I remember being impressed by his bi-linguality, of being at home in both Bengali and English. Given that he could draw on these twin sources, and not just in terms of books and authors, but also with regard to friendships and associations, he tended to be the most informed amongst us on certain things. Huge addas, especially on left politics, were also held at all hours of the day in the drawing room of his house at Magh Bazar, but which I didn't attend since I was more a working class Pedro's line man, not a drawing room kind of guy. Memories of 1971 were still fresh then, and all of us certainly thought and talked about it far more than we do now, but Afsan's thoughts and talk about it, I remember, were qualitatively different than ours. He certainly brooded on it far more. Today, having re-connected with him after a very long gap, I am equally impressed by the fact that he has remained true to that brooding, the fruit of which so many decades later is a four-volume history of our year of grief and liberation.........

US Senators ask for Roadmap

US senators ask CA for prompt withdrawal of emergency

Staff Correspondent

Fifteen influential US senators have urged the caretaker government to announce within the next two months a roadmap towards free and fair elections as soon as possible.
They also urged prompt withdrawal of the state of emergency and restoration of full civic and political rights to all citizens of Bangladesh. "There is a need for a public roadmap outlining reforms, including correcting the voter list, to ensure that the election is free, fair, transparent and credible," the senators said in a letter to Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed on May 14.......