Zia Ur Rehman Writes

Category: New York Times

• Suicide Bombing Kills Pakistani Insurgent Wanted for Attack on Chinese

  Posted at 3:48 pm by ziaurrehman, on December 31, 2018

  

  

  By Taimoor Shah, Mujib Mashal and Zia ur-Rehman

  December 27, 2018

  KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — After the Chinese Consulate in a major Pakistani city was attacked by a squad of suicide bombers last month, Pakistani officials pointed fingers at the commander of a separatist group waging an insurgency in the southwestern province of Baluchistan.

  On Tuesday, a suicide bomber killed that commander, Aslam Baluch, along with five associates in an upscale neighborhood of Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan.

  No group claimed responsibility for the latest Kandahar bombing. But it is widely believed to be an act of revenge for November’s consulate assault, highlighting the cross-border trading of insurgents and attacks by proxy that remains at the heart of relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

  To Afghan officials, Tuesday’s attack bore the hallmarks of an operation directed by Pakistan’s military intelligence service, the I.S.I.

  “The bomber was sent and guided by the I.S.I.,” Maj. Gen. Tadin Khan, the police chief of Kandahar, said on Thursday.

  Though not specifically named by the authorities, the Taliban, many of whose leaders are believed to live in Pakistan, have carried out suicide bombings in southern Afghanistan in the past. Afghan and Western officials have long accused the Pakistani military, particularly its intelligence service, the I.S.I., of providing covert aid and direction to the Taliban as a way to wield influence in Afghanistan.

  A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, denied the group’s involvement, saying: “The incident in Kandahar and the killing of any Baluch has nothing to do with us.”

  In October, General Khan’s brother, Gen. Abdul Raziq, the powerful police chief of Kandahar, was killed by a teenage infiltrator who authorities said had trained in Pakistan. General Raziq was a staunch critic of Pakistan for harboring Taliban leaders.

  Pakistani officials, in turn, had accused General Raziq, who had a large network of informants and vast wealth, of stirring trouble in Baluchistan and assisting the Baluch separatists. Afghan officials confirmed that General Raziq had housed Baluch separatist leaders in Kandahar for years.

  The Baluchistan Liberation Army, of which Mr. Baluch was a major commander, has waged armed resistance against the Pakistani state for more than a decade, protesting discriminatory treatment and demanding autonomy for the province.

  The group has recently stepped up attacks against Pakistani military targets and Chinese targets. It sees China as an “oppressor” that is supporting the Pakistani government and plundering resources in Baluchistan. China is investing hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a port and an economic zone in the town of Gwadar in Baluchistan.

  The rebel group has established a brigade to carry out suicide attacks, named after a Baluch militant who carried out a failed attack on a Pakistani prime minister in the 1970s. In one of its first operations, last August, Aslam Baluch sent his own son to target a bus carrying Chinese engineers.

  Mr. Baluch arrived in Kandahar last week, according to some reports. He emerged from a meeting at a friend’s home in Aino Mina township on Tuesday, and as the participants walked to their cars, a suicide bomber approached and detonated his explosives.

  “The explosion was powerful and close to us,” said Nida Mohammad, a shopkeeper near the house in Aino Mena. “We thought that a rocket landed from somewhere.”

  Posted in New York Times | 0 Comments | Tagged Aslam Acchu, Balochistan Liberation Army

• How Record Heat Wreaked Havoc on Four Continents

  Posted at 1:38 pm by ziaurrehman, on July 30, 2018

  

  

  By Somini Sengupta, Tiffany May and Zia ur-Rehman

  July 30, 2018

  Expect more. That’s the verdict of climate scientists to the record-high temperatures this spring and summer in vastly different climate zones.

  The contiguous United States had its hottest month of May and the third-hottest month of June. Japan was walloped by record triple-digit temperatures, killing at least 86 people in what its meteorological agency bluntly called a “disaster.” And weather stations logged record-high temperatures on the edge of the Sahara and above the Arctic Circle.

  Is it because of climate change? Scientists with the World Weather Attribution project concluded in a study released Friday that the likelihood of the heat wave currently baking Northern Europe is “more than two times higher today than if human activities had not altered climate.”

  While attribution studies are not yet available for other record-heat episodes this year, scientists say there’s little doubt that the ratcheting up of global greenhouse gases makes heat waves more frequent and more intense.

  Elena Manaenkova, deputy head of the World Meteorological Organization, said this year was “shaping up to be one of the hottest years on record” and that the extreme heat recorded so far was not surprising in light of climate change.

  “This is not a future scenario,” she said. “It is happening now.”

  What was it like to be in these really different places on these really hot days? We asked people. Here’s what we learned.

  Ouargla, Algeria: 124°F on July 5

  At 3 p.m. on the first Thursday of July, on the edge of the vast Sahara, the Algerian oil town of Ouargla recorded a high of 124 degrees Fahrenheit. Even for this hot country, it was a record, according to Algeria’s national meteorological service.

  Abdelmalek Ibek Ag Sahli was at work in a petroleum plant on the outskirts of Ouargla that day. He and the rest of his crew had heard it would be hot. They had to be at work by 7 a.m., part of a regular 12-hour daily shift.

  “We couldn’t keep up,” he recalled. “It was impossible to do the work. It was hell.”

  By 11 a.m., he and his colleagues walked off the job.

  But when they got back to the workers’ dorms, things weren’t much better. The power had gone out. There was no air conditioning, no fans. He dunked his blue cotton scarf in water, wrung it out, and wrapped it around his head. He drank water. He bathed 5 times. “At the end of the day I had a headache,” he said by phone. “I was tired.”

  Ouargla’s older residents told him they’d never seen a day so hot.

  Hong Kong: Over 91°F for 16 straight days

  In this city of skyscrapers on the edge of the South China Sea, temperatures soared past 91 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 consecutive days in the second half of May.

  Not since Hong Kong started keeping track in 1884 had a heat wave of that intensity lasted so long in May.

  Swimming pools overflowed with people. Office air-conditioners purred. But from morning to night, some of the city’s most essential laborers went about their outdoor work, hauling goods, guarding construction sites, picking up trash.

  One blistering morning, a 55-year-old woman named Lin gripped the hot metal handles of her handcart. She pushed it up a busy road, glancing over her shoulder for oncoming cars. She had fresh leafy greens to deliver to neighborhood restaurants in the morning, trash to haul in the evening. Some days, she had a headache. Other days, she vomited.

  “It’s very hot and I sweat a lot,” said Lin, who would only give her first name before rushing off on her rounds. “But there’s no choice, I have to make a living.”

  Poon Siu-sing, a 58 year-old trash collector, tossed garbage bags into a mounting pile. Sweat plastered the shirt onto his back. “I don’t feel anything,” he maintained. “I’m a robot used to the heat of the sun and rain.”

  Nawabshah, Pakistan: 122°F on April 30

  Nawabshah is in the heart of Pakistan’s cotton country. But no amount of cotton could provide comfort on the last day of April, when temperatures soared past 122 degrees Fahrenheit, or 50 degrees Celsius. Even by the standards of this blisteringly hot place, it was a record.

  The streets were deserted that day, a local journalist named Zulfiqar Kaskheli said. Shops didn’t bother to open. Taxi drivers kept off the streets to avoid the blazing sun.

  And so, Riaz Soomro had to scour his neighborhood for a cab that could take his ailing 62-year-old father to a clinic.The government hospital was packed. In the hallways sat worn-out heatstroke victims like his father. Many of them had been working outdoors as day laborers, Mr. Soomro said.

  Throughout the area, hospitals and clinics were swamped. There weren’t enough beds. There weren’t enough medical staff. The power failed repeatedly throughout the day, adding to the chaos.

  “We tried our best to provide medical treatment,” said Raees Jamali, a paramedic in Daur, a village on the outskirts of Nawabshah. “But because of severity of the heat, there was unexpected rush and it was really difficult for us to deal with all patients.”

  Every day that week, the high temperature in Nawabshah was no less than 113 degrees, according to AccuWeather.

  Oslo: Over 86°F for 16 consecutive days

  “Warning! We remind you about the total ban on fires and barbecuing near the forest and on the islands.”

  This was the text message that Oslo residents got from city officials on a Friday afternoon in June.

  May had been the warmest in 100 years. June was hot, too. By mid-July, a village south of Oslo recorded 19 days when the temperature shot up past 86 degrees Fahrenheit, or 30 Celsius, according to MET Norway.

  Spring rains were paltry, which meant that grass had turned brown dry and farmers were having trouble feeding their livestock. Forests had turned to tinder. And city officials put a stop to one of the most popular Norwegian summer pastimes: heading out to the woods with a disposable barbecue.

  “People not being used to this heat, they’re used to leaving a barbecue and nothing happens, Marianne Kjosnes, a spokeswoman for the Oslo Fire Department, said. “Now if a little spark catches the grass, you have a grass fire going.”

  Public parks are off limits to barbecuing. So are the islands in the nearby fjord. The Oslo Fire Department’s Facebook page is trying to get the word out.

  Per Evenson, a fire watchman posted in the tower on Linnekleppen, a rocky hill southeast of Oslo, counted 11 separate forest fires in one day in early July. Here and there, white smoke rose in the distance. By July 19, the civil protection department had tallied 1,551 forest fires, more than the numbers of fires in all of 2016 and 2017. The department said 22 helicopters were simultaneously fighting fires.

  Wildfires were also erupting in Sweden. And one Swedish village just above the Arctic Circle, hit an all time record high, peaking above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

  “This is really frightening if this is the new normal,” Thina Margrethe Saltvedt, an energy industry analyst who lives in Oslo, wrote in an email.

  Los Angeles: 108°F on July 6

  At least Marina Zurkow had air conditioning.

  Ms. Zurkow, an artist, has long been grappling with climate change in her work. But she was still surprised when a day of extreme weather impacted one of her projects in a big way.

  The name of that project, which was designed to make people think about the impact of climate change on how we eat, is “Making the Best of It.” It is only half in jest.

  “It’s both trying to make the best of a bad situation,” she said, “and in another way it’s a commitment to making things as delicious as possible.”

  The latest iteration of that project was to host a dinner for a new era of dry, hot weather in California. Less Mediterranean, more Mojave Desert.

  Ms. Zurkow’s partners, a team of two private chefs called Hank and Bean, prepared an elaborate meal designed to make their guests chew on the impact of climate change. The menu included sage fritters, stuffed rabbit, flatbreads made of cricket and mealworm, and jellyfish. Lots of jellyfish.

  There was jellyfish crudo with a Greek salad at the top of the meal. There was a jellyfish jelly, with redwood tip infusion and pine syrup at the end of the meal.

  Why jellyfish? Because it’s considered invasive and therefore plentiful, Ms. Zurkow reasoned. It’s also zero fat and good protein. “American dream food,” she added, also only half in jest.

  They had planned to serve dinner al fresco in the courtyard of a downtown Los Angeles test kitchen.

  But nature had other ideas.

  That day, the first Friday of July, air from the Mojave blew westward and stalled, compressed and extra hot, over Los Angeles. Downtown hit a high of 108 degrees. It was too hot to eat outside.

  “Even if you’re talking about climate change, you can’t torture invited guests,” Ms. Zurkow said. “We had to move the dinner into the kitchen.”

  Somini Sengupta reported from New York and Los Angeles, Tiffany May from Hong Kong, and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi, Pakistan. 

  Posted in New York Times, Published in | 0 Comments | Tagged Heatwave in Nawabshah, Heatwave in Pakistan

• Violence Is Down in Pakistan’s Premier City. So Why Are Its Voters So Angry?

  Posted at 12:17 am by ziaurrehman, on July 25, 2018

  

  

  By Maria Abi-Habib and Zia Ur-Rehman

  July 23, 2018

  8KARACHI, Pakistan — Karachi’s residents will go to the polls angry this week.

  The city, Pakistan’s economic powerhouse, is in shambles, roads crumbling, slums expanding, deprived of basic government services although it provides the country with about 40 percent of its revenue. And its political landscape has been profoundly jumbled.

  Across the country, Pakistani voters will be making choices on Wednesdaythat have been heavily winnowed by the military establishment, which through intimidation and a sympathetic judiciary has repressed its unfavored candidates — and even entire political movements — in recent months.

  Nowhere have the results of the military’s manipulation of politics been more evident than in Karachi, both for worse and for better.

  For the first time in three decades, Karachi residents will vote without much of the threat of street violence and poll manipulation that kept the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, or M.Q.M., as the city’s dominant force for so long.

  Pakistan’s military launched an operation in 2013 to break the M.Q.M.’s hold on power in Karachi and combat the gangs that had cropped up to challenge it — bulldozing the party’s offices, arresting its leaders — that many credit as restoring some stability. Before then, waking up to dozens of dead bodies dumped on the streets by those gang wars was not an unusual morning.

  But the changes to the city did not stop there. A census last year undercounted the city’s population, according to politicians, who say Karachi is home to about five million more people than the 15 million reported. Karachi politicians from several parties say the national election commission used those census results to gerrymander the constituencies for this election in an effort to ensure that the city would never again be under the stranglehold of a single party.

  These moves, politicians say, were pursued by the military with the support of the country’s courts. Soldiers even went door to door with census workers to count each household, illustrating the military’s unusual interest in the count.

  One result of Karachi’s new relative stability has been an upwelling of long-repressed dissent and complaints about the state of the city.

  “There’s a lot of anger among voters asking what has been done for them,” said Omar Shahid Hamid, a senior police officer in Karachi. “Candidates can’t even campaign without being mobbed by angry residents. But they must now face this anger without the fist of street violence.”

  A microcosm of Pakistan, Karachi represents the country’s diverse ethnic and sectarian makeup, the grievances of each group and the harassment or perversion of the institutions meant to protect them: the news media, security services and the courts.

  As the military cracked down on the M.Q.M., the Taliban and the city’s other militant factions in recent years, it was accused of human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. Law enforcement officials said Pakistan’s weak judicial system had left them little choice but to act on their own.

  But as rogue militancy waned and police and military abuses continued, Karachi’s residents began to question if they were merely trading one despotic regime for another.

  When Naqeebullah Mehsud, an ethnic Pashtun shopkeeper and aspiring model with a large social media following, was killed by the police in January, officials said he had militant ties. His family and supporters disputed that claim, as did an internal police inquiry.

  Mr. Mehsud’s killing helped set off a Pashtun civil rights movement that spread across Pakistan. The movement — known by the initials P.T.M., from words that translate as Pashtun Protection Movement — has openly defied the military in ways the country has seldom seen.

  Its leaders say innocent Pashtuns have been killed or abducted by security forces searching for militants, and that the judicial system has failed to stop them.

  “When those people who are supposed to maintain law and order and ensure people’s safety instead pursue unlawful activities, it only increases the anarchy. It gives a signal to society that everything is broken,” said Asad Iqbal Butt, vice chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent group. “Where does this country stand? Where should citizens go for justice or protection?”

  Missing persons cases in particular have been a central election topic, despite the military’s efforts to keep them out of the national discourse. Still, national parties fearful of the military’s power have been reluctant to publicize the issue.

  Mr. Butt’s organization estimates there are some 4,000 missing people across Pakistan.

  That number includes people from smaller religious and ethnic minorities, like the Shia, Baloch and Sindhi, which have been buoyed by the Pashtun movement.

  Pashtuns are the largest minority in Pakistan, making up about 15 percent of the country’s 200 million people and filling the ranks of the military and government, which activists say gives them some protection. Although the census did not provide an ethnic breakdown, by some estimates, about four million Pashtuns live in Karachi.

  The unity among Pakistan’s array of minorities over a single issue — their missing — has undermined the military’s strategy of stoking tensions among them, candidates say.

  “What the P.T.M. has done is make this a mainstream issue, and that’s because the Pashtuns have the numbers,” said Mohammed Jibran Nasir, 31, who is running as an independent for a seat in Karachi.

  Mr. Nasir is not Pashtun but has campaigned against police brutality.

  “The P.T.M.’s mainstreaming this issue has taken away the narrative of the state,” he said, referring to the official version of events in cases like Mr. Mehsud’s.

  That newfound boldness and unity was on display in Karachi late last month during a visit by Pakistan’s chief justice, Mian Saqib Nisar. He was confronted by dozens of people demanding to know whether loved ones were alive or dead, accusing security forces of grabbing them months or years ago.

  The families tussled with the police at Karachi’s Supreme Court, leaving Justice Nisar visibly stunned, unaccustomed to civilians openly challenging Pakistan’s security forces.

  A Shia woman slipped through the security cordon, ran up to the chief justice and slammed her fists on his dais, demanding to know the fate of her brother, missing since November 2016. The justice said coolly that if she hadn’t been a woman, he would have had her locked up.

  Sensing how momentous the Pashtun movement could become, Pakistan’s media outlets began reporting on it earlier this year, only to be threatened by the military themselves.

   

  Journalists from a number of newspapers and television stations say they have been called by security forces and told not to report on the movement, in an effort to stop it from spreading. Most complied.

  Two influential news outlets that did not — the Karachi newspaper Dawn and the television channel Geo News — were censored by the military and lost advertisers who cited military pressure.

  Zaffar Abbas, the editor of Dawn, said the last time the intimidation against his newspaper was this severe was in 1991, when he was a reporter covering fissures within the M.Q.M. party. Members of the group surrounded Dawn’s headquarters and burned the newspapers stacked inside delivery vans, as the government stood by and did nothing.

  “The violence that has consumed Karachi is the result of how the city has been ignored nationally,” Mr. Abbas said, before contemplating the recent attempts to suppress grievances against security forces. “And it will return.”

  End

   

  Posted in New York Times, Published in | 0 Comments | Tagged Karachi, Missing person, PTM

• Violent Extremist or Political Candidate? In Pakistan Election, You Can Be Both

  Posted at 6:38 pm by ziaurrehman, on July 23, 2018

  

  By Maria Abi-Habib, Shah Meer Baloch and Zia ur-Rehman

  KARACHI, Pakistan — Aurangzeb Farooqi is a leader of a political party that is banned in Pakistan for espousing sectarian violence. He faces charges of spreading religious hatred that was linked to the murders of several Shiite activists.

  He is also a candidate for national political office, running with the blessing of Pakistani courts.

  Mr. Farooqi is among several candidates with ties to Islamist extremist groups who were the subject of last-ditch petitions by activists seeking to bar them from contesting elections this month. An election tribunal threw out those petitions last month, claiming there were not enough valid complaints to justify barring the candidates.

  Despite publicly proclaimed campaigns against religious extremism, the ability of candidates like Mr. Farooqi to campaign suggests that far from being curbed, extremists are being encouraged.

  This month, a new party called Tehreek-e-Labbaik was approved to run on a platform of punishing those who blaspheme Islam, an issue that has been abused to terrorize the country’s minorities.

  Mr. Farooqi and several others running in the July 25 elections are on Pakistan’s terrorism watch list, known as the “fourth schedule.” While that list prevents them from interacting with crowds in public, traveling outside certain areas and using their bank accounts, it does not say whether they can run for office. But activists and antiterrorism law enforcement officers say the restrictions — like organizing public rallies — would prevent them from campaigning.

  Their candidacies are all the more remarkable because Pakistan was just returned to a “gray list” by the Financial Action Task Force, a global body based in Paris that fights terrorism financing, for not doing enough to counter terrorists’ ability to operate from Pakistani territory. The country had been off the list since 2015.

  To prevent being blacklisted by the task force, which could lead to international sanctions, Pakistan agreed last month to an action plan to crack down on terrorism at home.

  But almost simultaneously, Pakistan’s electoral commission was paving the way for candidates with extremist ties to run for office.

  Some of the petitioners were victims of the terrorism they say was inflicted upon their communities by candidates like Mr. Farooqi. He is a leader of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, a banned radical group that incites hatred and violence against Pakistan’s minority Shiite population. A.S.W.J. is widely believed to be the political front for Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an even deadlier sectarian militant group with ties to Al Qaeda. The party denies any link.

  With all obstacles to his candidacy removed, Mr. Farooqi is running for a parliamentary seat representing Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, and has a good chance of winning after losing the last election in 2013 by 202 votes.

  “Why are these terrorists now allowed to become our parliamentarians?” demanded Asad Gokal, 20, in an interview in Karachi. Mr. Gokal was one of the activists petitioning against Mr. Farooqi’s candidacy. His voice shook with anger as he described the Karachi crowds Mr. Farooqi has agitated in recent years, preaching anti-Shiite sermons that Mr. Gokal believes led to the murder of his uncle and friend. In video clips of Mr. Farooqi’s speeches, he can be seen shouting, “Shia are infidels!”

  “I’m a university student,” Mr. Gokal said. “This shouldn’t be my duty — the Election Commission of Pakistan should be monitoring these groups.” Instead, he said, the government is giving them legitimacy.

  Muhammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, a Sunni cleric who runs the A.S.W.J. with Mr. Farooqi as his deputy, was quietly taken off the so-called fourth schedule, or terrorism watch list, last month, just as Mr. Ludhianvi announced his candidacy. Yet the party remains on a watch list issued by Pakistan’s National Counter Terrorism Authority.

  Military pressure is thought to be behind Mr. Ludhianvi’s removal from the fourth schedule. He was taken off the list by the country’s caretaker government, which forms during every election to ensure that the vote is fair but is not supposed to make these kinds of decisions.

  Altaf Khan, spokesman for Pakistan’s permanent election commission, said the commission simply followed court orders. But activists and politicians say the courts are influenced by the military, which has undertaken numerous coups in the country’s modern history.

  The military has denied it influences the courts.

  “The international community will have to respect the sovereignty and laws of my country,” Mr. Khan said in an interview. If anyone has a complaint against a candidate supported by evidence, he said, “they should let us know.”

  Omar Shahid Hamid, the senior police superintendent for Karachi’s southern district, used to conduct regular check-ins with Mr. Farooqi as a member of the police counterterrorism unit. He said he was surprised that Mr. Farooqi’s nomination papers were not rejected, but not that he was running.

  “Farooqi has always had an interest in electoral politics and a desire to get mainstreamed, to be accepted as a political force and get rid of his baggage as a militant,” Mr. Hamid said. “They see this as the future, the only way forward with the establishment.”

  In Pakistan, “the establishment” is code for the military, which is accused by both Pakistan’s former government and the international community of supporting extremist groups to achieve its defense and foreign policy objectives.

  The military in recent years has discussed plans to “mainstream” extremists, allowing them to shed their violent pasts and become politicians, according to cabinet members of the previous government who were involved in those discussions. It is a plan opposed by the incumbent government and activists across the country.

  Noticeably absent from the list of eligible election candidates are several from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. The PML-N formed the previous government and saw its prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, ousted by the Supreme Court last July for failing to disclose assets abroad in his 2013 election application.

  This month, a Pakistani court convicted Mr. Sharif of corruption and sentenced him in absentia to 10 years in prison.

  Mr. Sharif says the military pressed the courts to disqualify him as prime minister and bar him from future electoral bids.

  During his tenure, Mr. Sharif tried to reassert his civilian government’s control of Pakistan’s defense and foreign policy, which the military has had in its firm grip for decades. He also openly challenged the military’s support for terrorist groups and opposed its plans to mainstream radicals.

  In the current election, a court decision disqualifying Mr. Sharif’s replacement as prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, was reversed at the last minute, leaving him barely a month to campaign.

  By that time, Mr. Farooqi was already campaigning with confidence in his impoverished Karachi neighborhood, greeting and shaking the hands of dozens one night while sidestepping open gutters clogged with garbage.

  “Teacher! Teacher!” young voters cried out to Mr. Farooqi, asking to take photographs with him.

  “We believe in democratic process,” said Mr. Farooqi, who denies that he is behind sectarian violence. “I am from the area. If I am elected, I will be representative of the people and try to resolve their civic issues.”

  In the Khuzdar district of Baluchistan, a neglected northwestern province that has long faced a separatist insurgency, another notorious militant, Shafiq Mengal, is preparing his parliamentary bid.

  Though Mr. Mengal is not on the fourth schedule, a militant group that he founded, Baloch Musalla Difa Tanzeem, was banned by the government in 2010. Law enforcement officials say he then joined Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the outfit tied to Al Qaeda.

  Mr. Mengal has been accused by the provincial government and others of running violent campaigns against Baloch insurgents and Hazara Shiites, including the deaths of eight security officials in 2014. In recent years, Mr. Mengal’s sectarian violence has spilled over into neighboring Sindh Province, prompting the counterterrorism chief of police there to ask the federal government to arrest him.

  “It is easy to be registered as a candidate, but it was made difficult for me by my political opponents,” Mr. Mengal said in an interview at his home. “They made false accusations against me.”

  “I have never supported violence on the basis of ideological differences,” he added. “This is propaganda.”

  His opponent, Akhtar Mengal — no relation — disputes this.

  Akhtar Mengal, a provincial lawmaker and former chief minister of Baluchistan, said Shafiq Mengal was responsible for the killing of dozens of civilians in the province and had worked with the country’s security forces to quell anti-military dissent. He also accused his opponent of running a kidnap-for-ransom scheme and extortion operations, an accusation supported by Mr. Hamid, Karachi’s police superintendent.

  “Wherever you find missing persons in Baluchistan, you find Shafiq Mengal,” Akhtar Mengal said in an interview.

  But officials have still found such candidates acceptable, he said, and even desirable.

  “The establishment,” he said — referring to the military — “wants to wash them and dry clean them and push them into power.”

  Maria Abi-Habib and Zia ur-Rehman reported from Karachi, and Shah Meer Baloch from Khuzdar, Pakistan.

  Posted in New York Times, Published in | 0 Comments | Tagged ASWJ, Election 2018, Pakistan

• Pakistan’s Taliban Names New Leader After U.S. Drone Strike

  Posted at 7:36 pm by ziaurrehman, on June 26, 2018

   

   

  By Zia Ur-Rehman and Maria Abi-Habib

  June 24, 2018

  KARACHI, Pakistan — Pakistan’s Taliban has named as its new leader, a religious scholar known for running brutal extortion rackets and opposing polio vaccination campaigns, promoting violence against health workers across the country.

  The elevation of the leader, Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud, comes after a United States drone strike in Afghanistan killed the group’s previous leader, Mullah Fazlullah, this month. In a statement on Saturday, Pakistan’s Taliban confirmed Mr. Fazlullah’s death and said it was a “matter of pride” that its leadership had been “martyred by infidels.”

  The group’s deputy leader, Khan Sayed, who also went by the name Khalid Sajna, was killed by an American drone strike in February.

  In the statement, Muhammad Khurasani, a spokesman for the group, said its executive council had appointed Mr. Mehsud, who also goes by Abu Mansoor Asim, as its new chief. It named Mufti Hazarat, a relatively unknown militant, as his deputy.

  Analysts believe that the militant group, known formally as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, cannot regain its past position of strength, as military operations against the group have weakened it and created internal divisions.

  “The terror outfit has been weakened significantly because of security operations across the country, especially in the tribal region,” said Muhammad Amir Rana, the director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, a security think tank in Islamabad.

  “For its newly appointed chief, overcoming the internal differences within the group and increasing its operational capabilities will be greater challenges,” he said, adding that Mr. Mehsud has never been seen as a central Taliban commander.

  But the threat of violence by the group has not diminished.

  In Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, the news spooked many residents, as Mr. Mehsud’s name is synonymous with one of the urban center’s bloodiest chapters of terrorism. The group extended its influence to Karachi in 2012, at the height of its reach in the country, having spread from its base in the sprawling, isolated border region that Pakistan shares with Afghanistan.

  By 2013, Mr. Mehsud had risen up the Taliban ranks to oversee Karachi, where he waged a bloody campaign of extortion and kidnapping against Pashtun traders and affluent residents, money that funded the militants’ activities across Pakistan. Pashtuns, who make up a large portion of Karachi’s population of more than 16 million, have traditionally fed the ranks of the Taliban.

  Mr. Mehsud commanded his extortion racket in Karachi from his base in Miram Shah, a town in North Waziristan, on the border with Afghanistan, and visited the city infrequently. The militant leader forced Pashtuns from Karachi to resolve their business disputes through Taliban courts in Miram Shah, summoning civilians to make the long journey for hearings.

  For those who did not heed the calls, Mr. Mehsud ensured that the Taliban meted out vengeance in Karachi, intimidating family members or threatening their businesses.

  In Karachi, Muhammad Ibrahim, an owner of a small transportation company, was one of dozens summoned to Mr. Mehsud’s court in Miram Shah to resolve a dispute he had with a relative.

  “During that time, our community was getting regular calls from Wali’s office, threatening people that they will target them or their families if they failed to pay extortion money,” Mr. Ibrahim said, using Mr. Mehsud’s middle name.

  After a weeklong court case, Mr. Ibrahim was ordered to pay his relative about $1,600 — a small fortune in Pakistan — with a portion of that money taken by the Taliban.

  A book released by Mr. Mehsud in January, called “Mehsud Revolution,” discusses the Taliban’s campaign against polio immunization, which the Taliban claims was used by the C.I.A. to spy on them.

  The militants frequently attack vaccination teams — leading to a brief rise of the epidemic in Pakistan — and have spread propaganda that the vaccines are part of a Western conspiracy to make Muslims impotent or stunt the growth of their children.

  Posted in New York Times, Published in | 0 Comments | Tagged Fazlullah, Mufti Noor Wali, Taliban, TTP

• New Karachi Mayor Gets Daytrip From Prison to Be Sworn In

  Posted at 3:29 pm by ziaurrehman, on September 6, 2016

  

   

  

  By Zia Ur-Rehman and Salman Masood

  September 6, 2016

  The yellow-walled, colonial-era central prison in Karachi houses some of the city’s hardened criminals, but one of its inmates, Waseem Akhtar, still has a day job: He’s the mayor of Pakistan’s biggest and most tumultuous city.

  Mr. Akhtar won election here on Aug. 24, a victory that was largely symbolic.

  Mr. Akhtar belongs to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, or M.Q.M., a political group that led this chaotic, violent city for decades through a combination of political guile, violence and intimidation. Now, the party is struggling in the face of a crackdown by the military, which has put Mr. Akhtar’s electoral victory in the cross hairs. The mayor continues to languish behind bars, and it remains unclear when he might be able to perform his official duties.

  Mr. Akhtar took the oath in a park last Tuesday, transported there from his prison cell for the occasion.

  “There are a lot of issues in the city, but with full determination and motivation, we will resolve all of them,” he said at his inauguration. “I will seek my freedom from the court. Otherwise, I will run the city by setting up an office in my prison cell.”

  After the ceremony, he was returned to his prison barracks.

  Mr. Akhtar, who was arrested in July, faces at least 22 charges, including that he ordered citywide riots in May 2007, when he was home minister of Sindh Province, and that he arranged medical care for wanted terrorists.

  The judiciary has observed that a jailed official cannot perform official duties. Moreover, the military does not want Mr. Akhtar to take charge of Karachi, Pakistan’s economic hub.

  Years ago, Mr. Akhtar developed a reputation as an aggressive leader, and he was chosen to defend the party and its exiled leader, Altaf Hussain, on news channels, and then to supervise municipal elections in the city’s two boroughs, where a splinter group challenged the party. When the party won a resounding majority last December, Mr. Hussain tapped Mr. Akhtar to be its nominee for mayor.

  Karachi had last had a mayor in 2010. Elections were not held again until late last year because of wrangling over power sharing.

  The sprawling port city’s residents, unofficially estimated to number 22 million, badly need a mayor to address civic problems.

  Water is scarce; it is mostly delivered through tankers, with delivery ensured only by bribes. Gigantic piles of garbage are a common sight. Roads are in poor condition. Vast areas of the city look like slums, interspersed with high-rises and affluent gated communities. Worst of all, lawlessness, rampant street crime and a vicious circle of political violence have crippled the city for decades.

  Mr. Akhtar, 60, a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair and mustache, has promised to solve Karachi’s immense problems. But for now, he is the butt of jokes. One widely circulated quip: “Waseem Akhtar said he would take everyone along. And then he went to prison.”

  Since 2013, a crackdown by the Sindh Rangers, a paramilitary force answerable to the military, has targeted M.Q.M., portraying the party as the main obstacle to bringing peace to the city.

  Mr. Hussain, the party’s leader, lives in self-imposed exile in London, where he was said to control this city through phone calls, with the help of loyal armed gangs on the ground. Of late, however, he has been weakened. Besides having problems with the military, Mr. Hussain has been the focus of corruption and murder inquiries by Scotland Yard.

  The M.Q.M. headquarters building in Karachi, widely known here as Nine Zero, was raided twice in 2015 by the Rangers. Several of the movement’s local leaders are behind bars, and some have bolted to the Pak Sarzameen party, a new political group led by Mustafa Kamal, who was the mayor until 2010.

  Mr. Kamal parted with Mr. Hussain in March, a move widely believed to have the support of the paramilitary Rangers.

  Mr. Hussain’s shrinking control over the city has frustrated him. On Aug. 22, he made an incendiary speech, urging followers to attack television news networks that do not cover him. Within minutes, enraged protesters ransacked the offices of one of the networks, and ensuing violence left one person dead. Afterward, the leadership of M.Q.M. moved to sever the movement from him.

  The Rangers have kept increasing the pressure. Since Aug. 22, law enforcement authorities have demolished at least 68 M.Q.M. party offices and sealed 180 more, citing allegations that they were illegally constructed.

  Farooq Sattar, an M.Q.M. member of Parliament, has condemned the move and accused the authorities of a vendetta. He said in an interview that the crackdowns, coming after the party’s earlier severing of links with the London-based leadership, “compel us to presume that authorities’ agenda is beyond Hussain and his anti-Pakistan speeches.”

  Analysts say the military’s campaign has seriously damaged the M.Q.M.

  “The M.Q.M. has been dead for a while. Its vote bank remains, but the party has lost its aura,” Laurent Gayer, a French scholar and the author of the book “Karachi: Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City,” said in an interview.

  For now, the new mayor is in legal limbo, spending his time much as any other inmate does.

  Mr. Akhtar is not allowed meetings with the public or the news media, though his family members and some party leaders are allowed to see him.

  As a political prisoner, he has access to a few amenities: a refrigerator, a television and a stove, according to reports in the local news media. He is allowed to use them until 6:30 p.m., when he must retire to his cell.

  Many residents and commentators say M.Q.M. should have chosen a different candidate after the military establishment showed resistance to Mr. Akhtar.

  “We are pessimistic that the new mayor will resolve the civic issues,” said Zahid Farooq, an official at the Urban Resource Center, a nonprofit organization in the city. “It will make matters worse.”

  He added: “Obviously, the mayor should be on the ground to do his work. How will an imprisoned mayor run the city?”

   
  Posted in New York Times | 0 Comments | Tagged MQM Mayor Karachi, Waseem Akhtar

• Amjad Sabri, Famed Sufi Singer, Is Gunned Down in Pakistan

  Posted at 1:43 pm by ziaurrehman, on July 22, 2016

  

  

  By Zia ur-Rehman and Salman Masood

  June 22, 2016

  KARACHI, Pakistan — One of the most prominent Pakistani singers of Sufi devotional songs, Amjad Sabri, was killed by gunmen who fired into his car in Karachi on Wednesday, raising a new outcry over sectarian and extremist violence in Pakistan.

  A faction of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, accusing Mr. Sabri of being a blasphemer, but officials said they were investigating the authenticity of the claim.

  Two attackers riding a motorcycle intercepted Mr. Sabri’s vehicle in the busy Liaquatabad neighborhood of Karachi and sprayed it with bullets, then escaped. Mr. Sabri was headed to the studios of a private television news network to record a show related to Ramadan, the holy Muslim month, officials said, and he died on the way to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. At least one other person in the car, possibly a relative of Mr. Sabri’s, according to some reports, was reported hurt.

  “It was a targeted attack,” said Muqaddas Haider, a senior police officer in Karachi’s Central District, who noted that Mr. Sabri had been hit by three bullets. “We are investigating who could be behind the killing.”

  Mr. Sabri, 45, was one of the foremost singers of qawwali music — the devotional songs of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam — and was part of a family of noted performers. In 2014, Mr. Sabri was embroiled in controversy after a morning news program played his version of a traditional qawwali song that referred to the Prophet Muhammad. A blasphemy case was registered against the show hosts and the television network, Geo, and Mr. Sabri was named in the complaint.

  Mr. Sabri’s death sent shock waves throughout the country on Wednesday as condemnation poured in and people expressed anger over the killing of a beloved singer.

  “For so many in Pakistan, Amjad Sabri was an iconic cultural ambassador of Pakistan just like his ancestors were for our previous generations,” said Shezreh Mirza, a prominent legal consultant. “I am at an utter loss to understand this senseless killing of a legend at the prime of his life. Pakistan’s soul stands tormented yet again today.”

  As violent sectarian groups have continued to attack religious minorities and other groups in Pakistan with seeming impunity, revered Sufi shrines and gatherings have been targeted in recent years, despite a respected tradition of Sufi tolerance and art. In 2010, the shrine for the Sufi saint Abdullah Shah Ghazi came under attack in Karachi, and the same year, one of the most important and largest shrines in the eastern city of Lahore was targeted in a bombing that left 42 people dead. Sufi shrines and mosques have been repeatedly targeted in the country’s northwest.

  Blasphemy has been another red line for extremist violence, with mere accusations of blasphemous speech frequently leading to vigilante attacks, even if the case had not been taken up in court under Pakistan’s widely criticized blasphemy laws.

  The killing of Mr. Sabri has also put the spotlight back on violence in Karachi, where, just on Monday, unidentified gunmen kidnapped the son of the Sindh High Court’s chief justice. Karachi, the country’s biggest city and commercial hub, has also long been known for extremist and political violence.

  The Sindh Rangers, a provincial paramilitary force under the direction of the Pakistani military, has been conducting a campaign against armed political groups and militants in the city. But the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a political party that has traditionally controlled the city, has accused the Rangers of extrajudicial killings and intimidation. Rangers and rights activists say the party has used violence and political assassinations to control the port city in the past few decades.

  Soon after Mr. Sabri’s killing, Farooq Sattar, a senior party leader, questioned the effectiveness of the Rangers’ presence and said Mr. Sabri had expressed security concerns to him. But Mr. Sattar stopped short of naming who he thought was behind the killing, using the vague term “extremist elements.”

  Another party leader, Mustafa Azizabadi, said on Twitter that Mr. Sabri was being pressured to join a new political party, Pak Sar Zameen, that was formed by breakaway Muttahida Qaumi Movement leaders and is believed to have the backing of the country’s powerful military establishment. He said Mr. Sabri’s refusal to join had led to threats.

  The Muttahida Qaumi Movement has announced a three-day mourning for Mr. Sabri in Karachi.

  Outside Mr. Sabri’s house in Liaquatabad, residents congregated to offer condolences to the singer’s family. Shopping areas and businesses were shut down in the neighborhood.

  “I cannot believe it,” Aashiq Hussain, a student at the University of Karachi, said, standing outside Mr. Sabri’s residence. “Yesterday night, I listened his song live on a TV channel.”

  Zia ur-Rehman reported from Karachi, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.

  Posted in New York Times, Published in | 0 Comments | Tagged Amjad Sabri, Killing of Amjad Sabri

• Pakistani Rights Activist, Khurram Zaki, Is Fatally Shot in Karachi

  Posted at 1:47 pm by ziaurrehman, on May 8, 2016

  

  

  By Zia ur-Rehman and Salman Masood

  May 8, 2016

  KARACHI, Pakistan — Unidentified gunmen have killed a Pakistani rights activist known for campaigning against both religious extremism and the head cleric of a radical Sunni mosque, police officials said.

  The drive-by shooting took place late Saturday in the southern port city of Karachi. Four men, riding two motorbikes, sprayed bullets at the activist, Khurram Zaki, said Muqadas Haider, a senior Karachi police official. Mr. Zaki was having dinner at a roadside cafe with a journalist friend, Rao Khalid. Mr. Khalid and a bystander were wounded.

  There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

  This was the third high-profile killing of a rights activist in Karachi since 2013 and pointed to the immense dangers faced by activists in a country troubled by religious extremism and intolerance. Last year, Sabeen Mahmud, the director of a popular arts center in Karachi, was gunned down in the city after she hosted an event on human rights abuses in southwestern Baluchistan Province. Parween Rahman, a social justice activist, was killed in 2013. A suspect in her killing, Raheem Swati, was arrested in Karachi on Saturday.

  Mr. Zaki, 40, a blogger, rose to prominence after he campaigned with other activists against Maulana Abdul Aziz, the head cleric of the Red Mosque, a bastion of Sunni extremists in Islamabad that was the scene of a military operation in 2007.

  After Mr. Aziz refused to condemn the killings of schoolchildren in an attack in Peshawar in 2014, rights activists gathered outside the mosque and demanded his arrest.

  Apart from his opposition to Mr. Aziz, Mr. Zaki, a Shiite, had also campaigned against Sunni extremists in Karachi, particularly against the banned extremist group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan.

  In a post on Sunday on Let Us Build Pakistan, a blog where Mr. Zaki was an editor, Ali Abbas Taj, the editor in chief, said Mr. Zaki had been killed because of his unwavering campaign against the Taliban and their Sunni extremist allies. The Pakistani authorities have occasionally blocked the blog because of its staunch pro-Shiite content.

  Mr. Zaki’s death is a grim reminder, Mr. Taj wrote, that whoever raises a voice against Sunni extremists will not be spared. “As and when they have to murder, they never fail,” he said.

  Funeral prayers for Mr. Zaki were said on Sunday afternoon, and members of his family and protesters staged a demonstration outside the chief minister’s residence in Karachi, urging the government to bring the culprits to justice.

  Human rights groups strongly condemned the killing.

  “Zaki was running a campaign against religious intolerance and social injustice on social media by peaceful protests,” said Asad Iqbal Butt of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent rights group.

  Mr. Butt said militant groups had started singling out activists who had been campaigning on social media against injustice and religious intolerance.

  Raza Rumi, a Pakistani political analyst and activist who moved to the United States after an assassination attempt in 2014, said the murder had sent a chilling message.

  “Being an activist in Pakistan is highly risky, as the state has yet to eliminate the sectarian militias that kill with impunity,” he said.

  Zia ur-Rehman reported from Karachi, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.

  Posted in New York Times, Published in | 0 Comments | Tagged Khurram Zaki

• Crime Down in Karachi, Paramilitary in Pakistan Shifts Focus

  Posted at 1:34 am by ziaurrehman, on November 13, 2015

  

  By Zia ur-Rehman

  NOV. 7, 2015

  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/world/asia/crime-down-in-karachi-paramilitary-in-pakistan-shifts-focus.html?ref=asia&_r=1

  KARACHI, Pakistan — Paramilitary troops have become ubiquitous around this sprawling Pakistani port city. They watch over police officers at traffic circles, their convoys patrol thoroughfares, their raids drive daily headlines.

  After years of crime and militancy that had made Karachi a byword for violence, an extended operation by the paramilitary force — the Sindh Rangers, who are ultimately answerable to the powerful Pakistani military command — has been working. Officials and residents report that crime is notably down across the city.

  But in the name of security, the force in recent months has also begun upending the city’s political order. The crackdown has expanded to target two powerful political parties that have long been at odds with the military establishment. And it has left a broad trail of human rights violations — including accusations of extrajudicial killings, in which officers shoot suspects after taking them into unlawful detention, according to rights advocates and members of those parties.

  

  Security forces, above last month in Karachi, Pakistan, have been accused of rights violations.

  The crackdown, which began two years ago, was initially limited to the slums and outskirts of the city, where Taliban militants and gangsters wielded influence. But this year, the military ordered that the dragnet be thrown wider, especially targeting the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, or M.Q.M. The political party has controlled the city for decades through the powerful combination of a large ethnic support base, political acumen and armed gangs.

  And in August, the Sindh Rangers arrested and brought charges of financing terrorism against Dr. Asim Hussain, a close aide to former President Asif Ali Zardari, who heads the Pakistan Peoples Party, or P.P.P. Several top leaders of the party, which in addition to its national profile controls the government of surrounding Sindh Province, have left the country, fearing arrest.

  “We have dismantled the network of Taliban and criminal gangs of Lyari,” said one senior paramilitary security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the news media. (Lyari is the name of a poor Karachi neighborhood infamous for gang wars.) “Now, it is the turn of militant wings of political parties and those who provided finances to armed groups.”

  The leaders of both the parties say they are being targeted for political reasons and accuse the Rangers, and their military masters, of overstepping their mandate and meddling in civilian politics. Interviews with the police and paramilitary officials and political leaders reveal that even among those who support the military, there is a growing sense that the country’s generals have made a concerted decision to wrest Karachi from the M.Q.M.’s control.

  The intervention comes as the Pakistani military — and particularly its popular top commander, Gen. Raheel Sharif — has been ascendant in the nation’s affairs over the past year, sidelining the elected government on the most critical points of foreign policy and security questions.

  In Karachi, the military’s main publicity tack in justifying its crackdown on the M.Q.M. has been to challenge the conventional wisdom about the party’s methods. Rather than treating it as a political party that employs gang violence, as most analysts describe it, the military is in effect categorizing it as a militant group with a political wing.

  “The party has a strong and well-organized militant group who has been involved in every sort of terrorism,” said one intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing operation. “Our main target is the M.Q.M.’s militant wing, not its political wing.”

  The Rangers have staged raid after raid against the party’s interests over the past few months, including arresting senior party officials at Nine Zero, the nickname of the party’s headquarters in Karachi, long seen as above any police intervention.

  Other kinds of pressure have been brought to bear as well.

  Some in the local media sector say that Karachi news channels have been warned by the authorities not to cover the live speeches of Altaf Hussain, the leader of M.Q.M., who lives in London. He and his inner circle have also been the focus of a corruption and murder investigation by Scotland Yard; he is free on bail after being arrested in June.

  Beyond that, there has been a rash of news reports linking the party to interests within India, adding the suggestion of treason to the other accusations against the party. The drumbeat has grown so intense that in late September, some M.Q.M. party leaders publicly urged clemency from the military and sought to dissociate the party from allegations of Indian ties.

  “The M.Q.M. is a patriotic political party, and it will continue to be loyal to Pakistan without any condition,” the party said in a statement.

  One result of the campaign has been a visible decline in the party’s ability to command loyalty on the street. It has long held the trump card of being able to shut down the city with protests. But on Sept. 12, a call to stage huge protests over the alleged extrajudicial killings of its workers by the Rangers failed to have much effect.

  “Now, the M.Q.M. cannot close the city,” said one gas station manager. “It seems the armed workers have gone underground due to the ongoing operation.”

  The M.Q.M. said that since the start of the Rangers crackdown, at least 54 of its workers have been killed in extrajudicial killings and the whereabouts of 231 activists are not known. The police and officials with the Rangers have denied those accusations.

  In one case, a 40-year-old M.Q.M. activist and city employee named Sanaullah was arrested by law enforcement agencies on March 31 last year. His body was found the next day in a nearby town, and his widow, Nida Fatima, is convinced that he was summarily killed by the authorities. “If my husband was involved in any crime, he should’ve been presented in front of the court,” she said in an interview.

  Although overall killings have gone down significantly in Karachi, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent rights monitoring group, says there has been a large increase in the number of killings by the police and paramilitary force — and that not all can be explained away as shootouts with determined militants. The group says that at least 430 people were killed in shootouts with the law enforcement agencies in the first nine months of 2015.

  Asad Iqbal Butt, an official with the human rights group, said that given the vast increase in detention and investigation powers given to the security agencies by recent legal changes, the killings are even more inexplicable. “After being empowered to keep a suspect in custody for 90 days for interrogation, there is no excuse for such killings,” Mr. Butt said.

  Several law enforcement officials, however, insist that the majority of such so-called encounter killings have been with the Taliban and other militant or criminal syndicates that have no compunction against shooting at the police or the Rangers.

  “We are fighting with well-organized militant groups that have killed more than 65 law enforcers only this year in ongoing operations,” one senior police official said.

  Even as the party has come under immense pressure, political analysts say any talk of the M.Q.M.’s total disintegration is premature. That is in part because the party still maintains a vast support base among Karachi’s large ethnic Mohajir minority, which has not shown any signs of mass defection to any other party despite the recent upheaval.

  Some analysts believe the politician Imran Khan and his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, have the most potential of any group to cut into the M.Q.M.’s influence in Karachi, especially given the widespread image of the party as being acceptable to the military.

  But Talat Aslam, a senior editor at The News International in Karachi, said that Mr. Khan’s party, known as P.T.I., had not yet had much electoral success in the city and that at times it had misplayed its hand here.

  “Very often, the P.T.I. gives the impression of being a force of outsiders that could arrive out of the blue to ‘liberate’ the captive and enslaved Mohajirs from the M.Q.M., which rules over them by force alone — a description that does not always go down well with the electorate,” Mr. Aslam said.

  Political observers say the most likely consequence of the continuing paramilitary crackdown will be that no single political party will now be able to control the city. But for some here, particularly within the business sector, the improvement in overall violence has been worth the political upheaval.

  “We do not care about the politicians,” said Atiq Mir, a leader of the local merchants’ community. “Peace is returning to Karachi because of the steps taken by the Rangers.”

  Posted in New York Times, Published in | 0 Comments | Tagged Extrajudicial killing in Karachi, Karachi operation, New York Times report on Karachi, Rangers in Karachi

• Anger at Charlie Hebdo Turns Violent in Pakistan

  Posted at 11:14 am by ziaurrehman, on January 25, 2015

  

  by Zia ur-Rehman and Salman Masood

  January 16, 2015

  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/world/asia/4-shot-during-protest-against-charlie-hebdo-in-pakistan.html

  KARACHI, Pakistan — Clashes between the police and protesters outside the French Consulate in Karachi on Friday left four people, including two journalists, with gunshot wounds as demonstrations erupted across Pakistan against the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and its publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

  The Karachi protest was led by the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest religious party. The demonstrators threw stones at riot police officers, who responded with tear gas, water cannons and gunfire.

  A photographer for Agence France-Presse, Asif Hassan, was shot in the chest and was “out of danger” after emergency surgery, said Dr. Seemi Jamali, head of the emergency ward at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center in Karachi. The news agency said it was trying to determine whether Mr. Hassan had been specifically targeted.

  Photo

  

  On Thursday, the Pakistani Parliament passed a resolution condemning the cartoon as hate speech and calling on the international community to “take a decisive step to stop such practice.”

  “Freedom of expression should not be misused as a means to attack or hurt public sentiments and religious beliefs,” said the resolution, which was passed with cross-party support.

  In Islam, visual depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are widely considered to be forbidden and deeply offensive. Irreverent Western depictions of Muhammad have set off violent protests several times in recent years, and that was the case again in several countries on Friday. In Niger, at least four were reported dead when a protest march turned violent, and many were reported injured when riot policemen clashed with protesters in Algeria, Reuters reported.

  The public reaction in Pakistan to the Charlie Hebdo shootings was initially muted, but it started to heat up on Tuesday when a cleric in the northern city of Peshawar led a small crowd that praised the killers, Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, for having “defended the honor of the prophet of Islam.”

  On Friday, lawyers boycotted the courts in Peshawar and Multan, instead taking to the streets to protest. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, founder of the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, addressed a large rally in Lahore.

  “It is time for us Muslims to unite,” he said. “Otherwise, the West will continue with such acts.”

  The most serious violence occurred in Karachi, the country’s commercial capital, where protesters yelled slogans calling for the expulsion of the French ambassador and the severing of diplomatic ties with France.

  In an apparent bid to enter the consulate, protesters pelted police officers with stones. The police responded with baton charges and water cannons, and tried to disperse the crowd by firing gunshots in the air. The police said some protesters wore motorcycle helmets and had guns. “They want to harm the consulate building,” one officer said at the scene of the protest.

  It was not immediately clear whether the injured journalists had been shot by the police or by protesters. “When protesters tried to use force, police did the same,” said Abdul Khaliq Shaikh, a senior police official.

  Salman Khan, a protest leader, said 15 people had been arrested. “Protesting insults against the prophet is our Islamic and democratic right,” he said.

  A few streets from the French Consulate, a group of civil society activists and members of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party held a separate demonstration against terrorism and Islamist militancy to commemorate the one-month anniversary of a Pakistani Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar that killed 150 people, most of them children.

  Demonstrators brandished placards that read, “Silence is criminal,” and, “Hey Taliban leave our kids alone.” Similar protests took place in Islamabad and Lahore.

  “The people gathered here could be bombed, shot or stoned,” said Sharmila Farooqi, a minister in the Sindh provincial government. “But their courage shows that they are frustrated with militancy and want the elimination of the Taliban.”

  Posted in New York Times, Published in | 1 Comment

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  Zia Ur Rehman is an award-winning journalist and researcher and has been working as a senior reporter with The News International, one of the Pakistan’s leading English newspapers. He has also been writing for New York Times.

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