Pakistan Link - December 19, 2014 by PL PUBLICATIONS

Pakistan Link

VOL. 24/51 - 27 Safar 1436 H PAGE 12

Musharraf Backs Imran Khan’s Campaign We Stand with People of Pakistan: President Obama Wa s h i n g t o n , DC: US President Barack Obama condemned the deadly Taliban raid on a Pakistani school Tuesday and promised that America would stand by the country in its struggle against violent extremism. “By targeting students and teachers in this heinous attack, terrorists have once again shown their depravity,” he said, after the attack on the army-run facility in Peshawar left at 130 people dead. “We stand with the people of Pakistan, and reiterate the commitment of the United States to support the government of Pakistan in its efforts to combat terrorism and extremism and to promote peace and stability in the region.” Kerry devastated at ‘gut-wrenching’ images of attack: US Secretary of State John Kerry, in London to OBAMA, P29

Nawaz Removes Moratorium on Death Penalty

The Largest Circulated Pakistani-American Newspaper in North America

Friday, December 19, 2014

PAGE 13

Maleeha Lodhi Appointed Envoy to UN

PAGE 13

LHC Dismisses NA Speaker’s Writ Petition

Pakistan Mourns after School Massacre

A mother mourns the loss of her child who was among the 141 students and teachers killed by the Taliban in Peshawar

Peshawar: Pakistan began three days of mourning Wednesday for the 132 children and nine school staff massacred by the Taliban in the country’s deadliest ever terror attack, as the world united in revulsion.

The 141 people were killed when insurgents stormed an army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Tuesday and systematically went from room to room, shooting children during an eight-hour killing spree. US Secretary of State John Kerry

telephoned Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and condemned the barbaric massacre carried out by militants in Peshawar a day earlier. He told Premier Sharif that the people of the United States stand by the Pakistani publlic and that US MASSACRE, P29

Need of the Hour: Imran Calls off PTI Protest

Islamabad: Prime Minister Nawaz

Sharif on Wednesday approved the removal of moratorium on death penalty after the carnage in Peshawar killed 141 people. Addressing an All Parties Conference (APC) in Peshawar, the premier announced that the moratorium on death penalty, which was imposed under international pressure, had been lifted. “The prime minister has abolished the moratorium on death penalty in terrorism-related cases,” an official from Nawaz’s office said. Soon after resuming office, the newly-elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had said it wanted to reinstate the death penalty in a bid to crack down on criminals and militants. In this regard the government had decided to hang four convicts on death row in August last year. However, a MORATORIUM, P29

US & Canada $1.00

For news, updated round the clock, visit

www.PakistanLink.com No Cause Can Justify Such Brutality: Ban Ki-moon United Nations: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned on Tuesday a Taliban attack on a Pakistani school that left at least 141 dead, most of them students. “It is an act of horror and rank cowardice to attack defenseless children while they learn,” Ban said at the start of a UN Security Council meeting. “The hearts of the world go out to the parents and families who have lost loved ones.” Taliban insurgents stormed the army-run school in Peshawar on Tuesday, going from classroom to classroom shooting children, some as young as 12, in one of Pakistan’s bloodiest ever attacks. Speaking in a solemn tone, Ban began his address to a council meeting on peacekeeping with the UN, P15

Gen Raheel Dashes to Kabul, Seeks Handover of Mullah Fazlullah Islamabad: After Tuesday’s deadly

A soldier escorts two school children after they were rescued (left) and an injured student is taken to hospital after being shot (right)

Islamabad Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan on Wednesday evening said that in the wake of the Peshawar school attack, the need of

the hour was for him to stand with the nation, hence he was calling off his sit-in in Islamabad as well as plans for shutting down the coun-

try on Thursday, Express News reported. Speaking atop his container IMRAN, P13

Periodical postage paid at Newport Beach, CA and additional mailing offices

attack on the school in Peshawar, Army chief General Raheel Sharif on Wednesday made a short trip to Kabul to hold key meetings with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and ISAF commander in Kabul. According to Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), the army chief held separate meetings with the two. “Matters relating to security situation along Pakistan-Afghan border region came under discussion. Vital elements of intelligence were shared with concerned authorities, with regard to the Peshawar incident,” the statement said. Ghani assured General Sharif that Afghan soil will not be allowed for terrorist activities against Pakistan and any signature found in this regard will be immediately eliminated. Separately, the ISAF commander assured the army chief of their RAHEEL, P15

P2 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014

www.PakistanLink.com

ADVERTISEMENT Committed to helping our clients succeed.

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P3

Law Offices of

RAAZIA BOKHARI 714-836-4966

IMMIGRATION Law Offices of Raazia Bokhari Phone:

714-836-4966 Fax:

866-733-0843 www.bokharilaw.com

DIVORCE CHILD CUSTODY CRIMINAL-DUI BANKRUPTCY

www.PakistanLink.com

OPINION

P4 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014

Pakistan Link “Before a Nation Dreams, It Must Be Able to Sleep First Safely” - 2 n By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry

President

Arif Zaffar Mansuri

ArifMansuri@PLpublications.org Editor

Akhtar Mahmud Faruqui afaruqui@pakistanlink.com

Editor Urdu Link & Bureau Chief (Pakistan)

Shabbir Ghori

urdulink@yahoo.com Resident Editor Urdu Link & Director Video Operations

Anwar Khawaja

akhawaja@pakistanlink.com Manager Advertising & Sales (714) 400-3400 sales@pakistanlink.com

Regional Offices YKKB ykkb03@gmail.com Sacramento, CA

Shahid Hussain 530-933-8181

San Fransisco/Bay Area, CA

M. Akhtar Shah 415-756-3664 New York, NY

Jahangir Lodhi 646-696-7126

Jlodhi@pakistanlink.com Houston, TX Houston@Plpublications.org Phoenix, AZ Phoenix@Plpublications.org Ontario, Canada Ontario@Plpublications.org

Letters to the Editor Readers are welcome to express their opinion in these columns. Please keep your letters

brief and to the point. Letters without full name, complete address, and a daytime phone number will not be published. Also, copies of letters sent to other newspapers are not encouraged. Letters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to the Editor at the Pakistan Link Headquarters address listed below. Pakistan Link (ISSN 1074-0406) is published weekly for $65 a year by JAZ LLC, DBA PL Publications, LLC, 1501 North Raymond Avenue, Anaheim, CA 92801. Periodical postage paid at Anaheim, CA and additional mailing offices. POST MASTER: Send address changes to Pakistan Link, P O Box 1238, Anaheim, CA 92815 The management has the right to refuse to print any advertisement, news, article, letter or any other material. In case of any errors in advertisement the management will not be liable for more than the amount paid for the advertisement to the Link. Advertisements in Pakistan Link are placed in good faith. The newspaper is not responsible nor endorses the contents of any advertisement. In case of a frivolous lawsuit, the plaintiff will bear the total cost of the suit, including but not limited to the Link’s costs and the attorney’s fees.

Information for Subscribers The printing of Pakistan Link is unfailingly completed by Wednesday every week and its copies are handed over to the mailing house for prompt dispatch to the subscribers. The Link should reach its destination on time if there is no delay at the post office. If a delay is occasioned it is in no way attributable to the performance of Link’s management. In case of delayed receipt of Pakistan Link or missing issues, please contact your local Post Office and submit a “Publication Watch” form.

PAKISTAN LINK Headquarters

P O Box 1238, Anaheim, CA 92815

Tel: 714-400-3400 Fax: 714-400-3404 E-Mail: Editor@PakistanLink.com

Pakistan Office

504 Noman Tower Marston Road, Off M. A. Jinnah Road Karachi-74400, Pakistan

“

Pittsburg, CA

When viewed agreed born, and

Warren Bennis intergreat leaders, “They all leaders are made, not made more by themselves than by any external means…I believe… that everyone, of whatever age and circumstances, is capable of self-transformation.” - Carol S. Dweck in “Mindset”

Corruption is a social cocoon in developing countries. Alexander Lebedev and Vladislav Inozemtsev state that corruption “wreaks havoc on the societies of developing countries, fuels social unrest and violence, and increasingly undermines the stability of the West.” This last part of the statement is very meaningful. Developing countries like Pakistan and India confuse corruption with bribery. While the former is like a huge corporation, the latter is a mere corner grocery shop in comparison. Bribery is a local phenomenon, a low-level problem, neither systemic nor organized. Those petty local officials who indulge in it “do not act within organized networks and wield little influence over broader societal institutions,” say Lebedev and Vladislav; corruption, on the other hand, is labeled as “high-level systematic phenomenon and is vastly more destructive.” Those who indulge in it are often the rulers, who “not only abuse rules but set them.” Pakistan could not bridle bribery, a local disease, how could it handle corruption which became a second nature of its rulers. It is corruption and its compulsions, (not the spirit of service), that keeps the former and present rulers in the saddle of power. Power and corruption supplement each other; the one keeps the other alive. According to the two authors, and as we have seen in Pakistan, corruption inflicts double damage on societies. “It continuously erodes already weak governance as corrupt officials manipulate the legal system in favor of themselves and other elites. On the other hand, it drains away critical resources needed for economic development.” The only way to overcome this endemic curse is to hit it hard. The good thing is that the West also begun feeling its pinch. A global action is being contemplated against these corrupt rulers; a universal anticorruption convention is being envisaged. Soon, it is hoped, it is the looted money of these rulers which shall become a Midas touch for them. They will get petrified by their own avarice. In the 19th century corruption flourished in the West in all the major countries, including the United States of America. It took them a century to curb it. Now its epicenter has shifted to the developing economies, where high social inequality and weak governance fuel the ruling elites’ desire to enrich themselves at any cost. So say the authors, and we know it by evidence and for being its victims. Why is the West now getting so sensitive to an issue that had been a rallying cry of the victim people of the developing economies? After all, it was the West that let these high-robbers deposit their loot in their coffers; it let them open off-shore firms, and resolve any business disputes in London and New York courts, say both the writers. In the past forty years, a

whole new brand and crop of asset managers, bankers, lawyers and realtors has emerged in the West “dedicated to laundering dirty foreign money and lobbying for laws that make its activities harder to prosecute”. If the developing countries remained victims of bad governance, and stayed vulnerable to sundry crisis, it happened so because the West let that happen. Now it appears, the matter of corruption of foreign rulers, and of their family members, is beginning to over-spill. It is creating social conflicts; it is becoming instrumental in directing hatred towards the West. The corruption of Hosni Mubarak, Suharto, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire amounted to some $5 billion alone. A former senior official of China, Zhou Yongkang, had amassed money to the tune of $14.5 billion. In Russia, the proceeds of corruption touched the $300 billion mark; India emerged as number one in black money, garnered and deposited abroad, and so is Pakistan. The G20 countries in their Summit endorsed India’s stance espoused by Modi on black money. The need for disclosure and transparency by

dians share that dream.” What has Mian Nawaz Sharif done in concrete terms so far? Not even 10% of what the Mexican President had done. One foreign tour after another, often undertaken by both the brothers. The country’s leadership could not agree on a person who could lead the Election Commission, though all cry foul in elections, including Mr Imran Khan. Why? They want their undue share in the cookies that elections bring. There is an element of dishonesty and insincerity lurking behind this delay. Same is true of the local body elections. The country sacrificed over 60 thousand innocent lives in terrorism, and yet it could not establish a robust, bold, a no-nonsense anti-terrorist court. Neither its leadership, nor its courts can dare to condemn the terrorists openly. They can subject the people to torture. Jamaat Islami leader tells the people to choose between Makkah or America? Who allows them to hold such comparisons? Which way are we heading? What do we plan to achieve? The three big ones: the Army Chief, the Supreme Court Chief and

Basic public good, effective system of laws, mechanisms for resolving disputes and dispensing justice, all become meaningless if the Central government loses its teeth sharing tax information, according to the global standards, has been agreed upon. This would make it easy for the victim countries to getting information about the un-accounted for money boarded abroad, and enabling the developing countries to get it expatriated, says Modi. This money accounts for 85 percent of the world GDP. India has taken some bold steps, unlike Pakistan. Its slogan has shifted from “Look East” to “Act East”; and its leader’s faith in the poor people is a positive step. Already some 7.1 crore accounts have been opened by the poor, that brought in 5,000 crore to the banks who had always remained skeptical about the poor people’s honesty. The Indian PM openly declares that India is dirty and needs cleaning. He starts the job of cleaning India by sweeping a street. Pakistan is inhabited by Muslims for whom cleanliness is 50% of Imaan. Muslims once introduced the concept of cleanliness. Now they are the dirtiest, and they hardly notice that they are so. A Special Investigative Team (SIT), headed by a Supreme Court Judge has already been set up to unearth the black money in India. “We did not have the fortune to fight for the country’s independence; we could not die for India; we will live and struggle for India. Today 125 crore In-

www.PakistanLink.com

the Prime Minister, need to meet, and need to talk and need to agree to be on the same page in relation to the wellbeing of the country. What inspired the country’s acting foreign minister to issue a silly statement when over 7 million displaced persons are still living in tents, and its soldiers are fighting a decisive war against terrorism? Why has he not been distanced so far? Who has put such a long and irresponsible tongue in the mouth of the media that keeps generating division among people; keeps injecting poison in the minds of the people with all immunity? It is not permissible even in the most liberal Western countries. A wrong statement made in Singapore can bankrupt a person, and can land him in jail for years. The country’s leadership needs to find better and prevalent ways of holding its political meetings and dharnas. Gathering of crowds and then using them as a public statement of one’s popularity is adversely impacting the people, and their lives, pushing them further into the deep recesses of poverty and ignorance. Effective use of TV, town-hall meetings, indoor gatherings, and the effective use of media, in place of pre-partition day style of gathering crowds, can be made instead of spending over 200-400 crore rupees on one Dharna, through this

physical assemblage of people. Crowds are sending a wrong message to these leaders. No country can survive without strong institutions and no country has fared well without its political institution. Pakistan has not taken even the first step in that direction. According to Mr Imran Khan, the Geo anchor, some 126 billion rupees, approximately one-fourth (22.1%) of the country’s annual budget are being spent on holding Muharram rituals of Sufi, Barelvi and Shia Muslims. Some 70 billion rupees annually are being spent on taking out processions, and making arrangement on Taraweeh during Ramadan. Just for the management of the Muharram processions for ten days, the police often have to ask for 200 million rupees. If the leaders get invoiced for the blockage of business; of streets, and for the employment of police, of the loss of life and property, etc., the meetings would stop overnight. The sickening cliché is that it is the democratic right of a person to hold public meeting, to protest on the streets; it is also the demand of democracy that such a loony has no right to cause any loss to business, to peoples safety, nor has he any right to disturb civic life. Making people and leaders responsible for their actions is a part of good governance in any democratic system. The Political Dharnas, brought in vogue by this new leader, Mr. Imran Khan, have alone cost some 800 billion rupees, excluding the billions of rupees’ damage because the Central Government Secretariat, the Supreme Court and other departments could not function for over 70 days. It is a country where only 5.1 percent of the youth above the age of 25 can make their way to the college; where people stay deprived from fresh water; where they stay doomed to eat contaminated food; where draught and floods come in full velocity to shake up the conscience of these living-dead leaders. The new leadership of Mr. Imran Khan has been the biggest shocker. His style, language and lack of foresight all speak that he is the most pernicious of the lot, to say the least. “Why Nations Fail” is an eyeopening book. Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson highlight the causes that guarantee the failure of a nation if it fails to address them immediately. Most countries fall apart, not with a bang, but with a whimper. Often they meet a slow process of death, and they die inch by inch, moment by moment. Wars, no doubt, weaken them; violence gnaws at them slowly; draughts starve them; corruption makes them hollow and chaotic; loans make them servile and dependent; floods worsen their living DREAMS, P26

Vi e w s and opinions expressed by authors and contributors in articles, letters, opinion pieces, reports, advertisements, etc appearing in Pakistan Link and Urdu Link are their own. The paper neither shares nor endorses them and thus should not be held responsible for the views/opinions of the writers & advertisers.

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P5

S W I M AT H O M E

ENDLESS POOLS

THE TREADMILL FOR SWIMMERS

THE ENDLESS POOL HAS A SMOOTH, ADJUSTABLE CURRENT FOR SWIMMING, EXERCISE, REHAB, AND FAMILY FUN. PLUS, IT’S EASY TO INSTALL, ECONOMICAL TO RUN, AND SIMPLE TO MAINTAIN.

FOR A FREE IDEA KIT, CALL 800-485-3707.

www.PakistanLink.com

P6 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014

Our Responsibility on Minority Killings

n By Syed Kamran Hashmi

Westfield, IN

akistanis hanker for a moment of joy, a reason to celebrate and a piece of good news. But, unfortunately, we do not get much. After suffering through a series of bad news, we may bag one piece of good news, if we are lucky. Recognizing its scarcity, it therefore is treated like the birth of a boy child, celebrated with music, street dances and, of course, desserts. Besides cricket, do we get good news from any other place? Mostly no. Although the entertainment industry contributes to our good fortune sometimes when Rahat Ali Khan or Fawad Khan get recognized in Bollywood, there too the talent of our female lead actors spoils the party. In no way do I want to sound like a typical Pakistani male chauvinist but the talent our female artists promote as the key to their success in India, has less to do with art or performance and more with carnal pleasures.

On the other hand, bad news, as unpleasant as it is, strikes us from every possible direction: political, constitutional, financial, economic, and related to violence. Leaving the ongoing and never-ending political drama aside, amongst all of them, it is the violent bits of news that grab our attention the most. Violence in itself can strike us in innumerable ways. How about the example of a two-year-old girl kidnapped and raped, her body found in the trash, or a 10-year-old child abducted for

ransom, his parents pleading for help, the perpetrators demanding a million dollars from the family? Likewise, there is the case of a young physician shot dead by unknown assassins, the victim’s faith playing a role in his murder. There is the college student gunned down in Karachi, his political affiliation raising suspicion of his being target-killed. How about the bomb blast shaking a whole city, its death toll exceeding 50, the number of injuries scoring above the 100 mark? There is the mob lynching of an innocent couple, the ostensible reason for this brutality being blasphemy. In short, for social activists, journalists, opinion makers and self-appointed reformers, there is sufficient material to write and express their frustrations. On the other hand, there exists sufficient material for the ordinary Pakistani to be depressed. Among the various violent events, not all of them click with Pakistani reformers. In order to be worthy of attention, the event first needs to be picked up by Western organizations. However, once they have reported on it, we lunge at the opportunity to pen down our observations as if the credit for this news belongs to us alone. As a matter of faith we then write articles for weeks in every newspaper and every journal on the issue. Our efforts are not limited to just Pakistani media houses. We, in an attempt to be heard across the globe, also jot down our opinions in international publications. Our stories may lack accuracy but they sure run high on emotions.

F m

And they may set the bar a tad bit lower on objectivity but they, by all means, seize the top slot on passion and verbosity. No matter who reported the incident first and no matter how accurately it is written, nothing changes on the ground. Turning a blind eye

more. Consumed by protecting their own interests and to avoid a religious backlash, they never try to tackle extremism. It is too risky. The media too, after its initial outburst, does not question the actions of religious forces, even at the cost of human lives.

How about the bomb blast shaking a whole city, its death toll exceeding 50, the number of injuries scoring above the 100 mark? There is the mob lynching of an innocent couple, the ostensible reason for this brutality being blasphemy to the incident as if nothing has happened, the administration literally sleeps on it. No one amongst them musters up any courage to challenge the blasphemy law or stand up for the victims belonging to the minority communities. Yes, they perform some lip service in order to score some political points but nothing

Friends Of Humanity www.PakistanLink.com

As a consequence, two or three weeks down the road life returns to normal. All the reformists who wrote a series of intense articles turn their attention towards the political battlefield. This fight between the two parties never ends just as the quarrel between a mother and her daughterin-law never concludes in television

OPINION soaps. The point is that we the people, carrying the camera or the pen, shouldering a responsibility to impel the government to ensure the security of every citizen, including the minorities, cannot lose focus. Hopping from one incident to another, we have failed to serve the meek, the vulnerable and the poor. With our emotional write-ups we only serve ourselves, promoting our intellect and not theirs. This is why it is time for introspection and we should ask ourselves why we could not pen down as many articles on the cleric than the Christian? You must have come across the pictures of the children or parents of the slain husband and wife. Did someone inform you of the sect of that individual? Where did he get his education? What was he taught? I did not think so. Learning from our own mistakes, we as a community, from now on, must focus on the perpetrators of the crime. This can help Pakistan identify the evil that lurks behind a pious face. No, I do not consider it the job of the administration alone. You and I both know very well that any government, present or future, democratic or authoritative, left or right, will not venture onto that road. The backlash can be severe and the government may lose its grip on power. To get the job done we must uncover the dark side of those who incite such violence. They all have one. And we should instill a fear of accountability in them through our public exposé. Let us ask them questions and let us treat them like we treat politicians. Let them think twice before they abuse religion for personal gains.

OPINION

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P7

Trains for Terror

n By Dr Mohammad Taqi

Florida

t is like clockwork: with an uptick in relations between the US and the Pakistani military, an al Qaeda member is either apprehended or killed in Pakistan. Almost all al Qaeda men captured in Pakistan thus far were nabbed in ostensibly joint Pak-US operations but the information invariably had come from the US side. Similarly, almost all the al Qaeda men killed on Pakistani soil were taken out by US drones or, in the case of their head honcho Osama bin Laden, by US special forces. In a first, the Pakistan military recently killed a major al Qaeda figure, Adnan el Shukrijumah, in an airborne raid at his hideout in Shinwarsak, South Waziristan.

Shukrijumah was al Qaeda’s external operations chief and was wanted by the US for plotting to blow up the New York subway system in 2009. Apparently, Shukrijumah had been in and out of North and South Waziristan at least since March 2004. The US may be delighted to have one less terrorist to worry about but the key question remains how it is possible that terrorist legions from around the world zip in and out of Pakistan without any problem. Dozens of them have lived in Pakistani cities like Karachi, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and even the outskirts of the capital Islamabad. A dual national Pakistani cannot get in or out of Pakistan without appropriate travel documents but international terrorists like Shukrijumah, who apparently had dual nationality, breeze through layers of security. He, after all, would not

have airdropped into Waziristan but, in all probability, was given a visa by some Pakistani embassy and entered through one of the country’s airports. And it is not like his presence was unknown to Pakistani authorities. The Pakistan military ruler at the time of the March 2004 ‘terrorist summit’ in Waziristan, General Pervez Musharraf, had conceded to Time magazine: “The personalities involved, the operations, the fact that a major explosives expert came here and went back was extremely significant.” Shukrijumah was the explosives expert that Musharraf was alluding to. But did he ever go back as Musharraf implied? We may never know. Musharraf, incidentally, had also repeatedly denied bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan. Thankfully, Shukrijumah was not able to attack the US again. It is highly likely though that Shukrijumah’s Taliban cohorts used his expertise to unleash havoc on both sides of the Durand Line. Better 10 years late than never to begin, but is Shukrijumah’s killing really a paradigm shift in the Pakistani establishment’s thinking? Happenings inside Pakistan suggest otherwise. The Pakistani national monument Minar-e-Pakistan and Iqbal Park (formerly Minto Park) were turned into a Hyde Park Corner for the last couple of weeks. First, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) conducted its national convention at the monument where its ex-emir, Munawwar Hassan, called not just for jihad and qitaal (armed slaughter) outside Pakistan but also inside the country. On the heels of the JI’s convention came the congregation of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the parent outfit of the banned terrorist group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba

(LeT). The Pakistan Railways ran two special trains to ferry the JuD men to the terror playground. Thousands of police and security personnel were deployed by the administration to protect the mammoth JuD gathering. But that was not all of it. Hundreds of JuD men in militarystyle camouflage spread around their ijtima (convention) to provide security. The chief of the JuD, Hafiz Muham-

visaged such a dreadful culmination of communal politics. Hafiz Saeed declared that Ghazwa-e-Hind (holy war against India) was “inevitable”, justified jihadist infiltration into Indian-administered Kashmir and called to take up arms against India there for “Kashmir’s independence”. Chances are slim to none that an outfit openly calling for cross-border terrorism could have pulled off a show

mad Saeed, then made a dramatic entrance mounted on a horse. One did not know whether to laugh or cry seeing the jihadist ‘knight’ perched on his noble steed right in front of the Minare-Pakistan, where the Pakistan Declaration was adopted in 1940 by a session of the All India Muslim League (AIML). Perhaps even AIML leaders had not en-

at a national monument in the heart of Lahore without a nod from some elements of the security establishment. Ironically, both the JI and JuD remain the organizations blamed widely for harboring al Qaeda operatives. The 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was arrested from the Rawalpindi house of ex-Major Adil Abdul Qudoos,

The Pakistani national monument Minar-e-Pakistan and Iqbal Park (formerly Minto Park) were turned into a Hyde Park Corner for the last couple of weeks. First, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) conducted its national convention at the monument

www.PakistanLink.com

a local JI man. Major Qudoos was killed last month in a US drone strike. Another Osama bin Laden confidant Abd-urRehman Sareehi was a brother-in-law of the LeT’s operational chief, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi. The al Qaeda ringleader, Abu Zubaydah, who conceived the so-called millennium bombing plan, was captured from a LeT safe house in Faisalabad in 2002. The just-released US Senate report on the CIA torturing its captives mentions both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah having been interrogated brutally. The report not only raises serious human rights and ethical issues but also puts a big question mark on the US’s policy and strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia. Global jihadists have not been hiding in plain sight. In fact, they are not hiding at all but rather yelling their intentions out loud from national monuments. Still, the US has consistently chosen to ignore these outfits — the rap on the knuckle bounties notwithstanding — and the elements that protect and nurture them. The handing over of the Tehreek-e-Taliban man Lateef Mehsud to Pakistan’s security agencies without Afghan officials knowing is the latest in a series of actions that the US administration seems to have taken, bypassing both the Afghan and Pakistani civilian leadership, in its dealings with the Pakistani military. According to the author Arif Jamal, after the 2006 Mumbai train bombings, US Ambassador Ryan Crocker asked India not to blame Pakistan and to solve the issue through direct contact. A similar pressure appears to be being applied on the new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani. Both current and former Afghan officials have expressed deep resentment over these US actions and have TAINS, P10

OPINION

P8 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014 n By Dr Syed Amir

Bethesda, MD

Budapest, the Beautiful City on the Danube

ravelling by luxurious, highspeed trainjet, it took me less than three hours to reach Budapest, the capital of Hungary, from Vienna. The train sped through sleepy peaceful countryside, traversing green fields and racing by columns of power-generating windmills. Although moving at a speed of 143 miles/hr, it hardly generated any sense of motion.

There were no discernible indications of when the train crossed from Austrian into Hungarian territory. No official appeared to check our passport or collect custom declarations, an experience very different from those, one might imagine, who travelled by the storied Orient Express on a similar route from Paris to Vienna and Istanbul at the end of the nineteenth century. That was an era when travel used to be an exotic adventure, and countries jealously guarded their boundaries. Since the advent of the European Union (EU) in 1993, the national borders in Europe have become largely invisible and there is free movement of people and goods across member countries. The main Budapest station building is imposing and its exterior showcases the glorious bygone era when trains were the foremost means of travel in Europe. I encountered a new problem as I stepped out of the train and tried to hire a taxi. Hungary, although a member of the EU, is not a member of the European economic union and has its own currency, Forint. The European currency, the Euro, is generally not accepted here and prices are quoted in hundreds or thousands of Forints, making it a challenging exercise to translate them into either Euros or US dollars for comparison. The cost of living in Budapest, one of the world’s most beautiful cities, is no higher than in Vienna, and may even be a little lower. The Hungarian language is very different from German and is only distantly related to Finnish and Estonian languages. It does not belong to

the family of Indo-European languages as most European languages do to varying degrees. Most young people, however, are able to communicate in English. The Danube River was only a few minutes of walk away from my hotel. The 1,777-miles long waterway originates in the German Black Forest and empties in the Black Sea. In ancient times, it formed the northern boundary of the Roman Empire and the Romans considered it the demarcation line separating the civilized world from the barbarians. Today, it separates the twin cities of Buda and Pest which were united as a single city in 1873 and are now connected by a dozen bridges, most of which were destroyed by the Nazis as they retreated from Budapest during the Second World War. The scenic view from either bank of the Danube River is absolutely stunning, offering spectacular sights of pleasure boats plying the river with music and dinner parties going on onboard. Pest is the eastern, flat half of Budapest where the majestic parliament building on the bank of the Danube, designed on the pattern of the British Parliament, is located. It was built from 1884-1902, but was much damaged during

the Second World War. The date of my visit, October 23, coincided with the anniversary of the start of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 against the Soviet-backed communist regime. It was a national holiday and a number of parades and patriotic speeches were going on in and around the parliament house. Not many seemed to be paying attention to them. Buda in contrast to Pest is mountainous and very picturesque. In the olden days, according to legend, people were afraid to build houses and live there. They believed that the region was the abode of witches and demons and whoever lived there would come to grief; the frequent howling mountain winds lent such fantasies some credibility. Yet, these horror stories did not discourage the victors, the Mongol warlords, Soviet Generals and Turkish Pashas from building luxurious villas and palaces with a magnificent view of the Danube. Perhaps, the most impressive historic site in Buda is the royal palace or Buda Castle, the residence of the former Hungarian monarchs. It is a vast complex (1.8 sq. miles) that has undergone cycles of destruction and renewal from medieval to modern times. It was built around

the 14th century and was destroyed during various regional wars. In 1526, when Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the magnificent conquered Hungary, he briefly stayed in the castle. The royal palace was spared, but the victorious Turks carted away many bronze statues and valuable volumes from the national library. Buda became the capital city of the Ottoman territories in Hungary, and a Turkish Pasha used to rule over what was known as Eyalet of Budin. When Austria and Hungary united in 1867 to become Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Castle received new attention from the Hapsburg Emperor Francis Joseph and Empress Maria Teresa. They were crowned in the castle with great pomp and ceremony. The present structure was rebuilt, following its most recent destruction after the Second World War. Some parts of the castle date back to medieval times and have been excavated by archaeologists. The rebuilt castle now houses three museums and a national library. The view from the castle which is on a hill across the river is dazzling. It was declared a world heritage site in 1987. Yet, I found few visitors at the castle and no guides to explain its history, though written details on plaques in English at each site were somewhat helpful. Few vestiges of the 150-years of Ottoman rule in Budapest have survived. I was especially intrigued and curious about the mausoleum of Gul Baba, the Turkish Sufi-Durvesh of the Bektashi order whose tomb is located in Buda. According to legend, Gul Baba came in the wake of the conquest of the city by Sultan Suleiman in 1526. He is credited by some historians for introducing roses to Hungary, and appropriately his tomb is situated in the midst of a beautiful rose garden. He died in 1541 and was revered by both Christians and Muslims. It was a cold, blustery day when I visited Gul Baba mausoleum, built on a steep hill accessible through several sets of stairs on the Mecset (Mosque) Street built of cobblestones. A lone Turkish caretaker was working on his BUDAPEST, P24

$195,000 FOR SALE!!!

GREAT BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY!!

Italian & Persian Cuisine Restaurant serving the South Bay and surrounding areas for over 28 years.

X-OR Real Estate Services Presents Features Include: This marvelous place is in 3200sqft space counts with 3 Kitchens, Walk In Cooler, 6 Layers Pizza Oven, Open Grill for Kababs, High Tech Registers and computer system, new AC & Surveillance System...it would take a fortune to duplicate this one of the kind place!!!

Additional Information: Motivated seller; bring reasonable offers for consideration…Please do not speak with employees or customers for a private viewing & financial info contact agent Adriana Santoyo @ (562)299 -4400 santoyo06@yahoo.com

For a private viewing contact agent Adriana Santoyo @ (562)299-4400 BRE # 01819490

www.PakistanLink.com

OPINION n By Karamatullah K. Ghori Toronto, Canada

hat name would you give a government that subscribes to terrorising its people as its principal priority with the help of street-smart goons?

Nawaz Sharif was never known for his brains or imagination befitting the leader of a country of 180 million. It’s no less a national calamity for Pakistan to be ruled, for an unprecedented third time, by a man of such pedestrian intelligence as Nawaz. But the tragedy has, lately, been worse compounding because of his thuggish style of governance. It was a national humiliation and shame when a peaceful bunch of blind protestors was savagely manhandled and roughed up in Lahore last week by the lawless Punjab police. Every decent Pakistani—at home or abroad— was made to squirm in utter disgust seeing those poor souls being treated like pack animals by a police force that has gone completely berserk with crass connivance of the rulers. Lo and behold—but not surprising at all—not a word of condemnation of police brutality, or apology over the ghastly incident, was uttered by any one of those minions of Nawaz and that loose cannon Shehbaz Sharif, who otherwise never tire of pontificating over the most trifle of affairs. Like the Mafioso keeping their lips sealed because that’s the way their Don wanted it, silence reigns to a deafening crescendo in both Islamabad and Lahore on this issue. But the Lahore incident was just a dry run for the bloody episode that unfolded in Faisalabad on December 8—the D-Day of PTI’s previously-announced agitation. At least one—and possibly two—of PTI’s young workers was murdered in cold blood on the streets of that city. The episode was captured live on television. Anyone could see that gun-toting goon of PML-N unsheathing his gun in full view of the police posse supposedly stationed there to keep law and order; he wasn’t stopped by any of the law enforcers from committing murder in broad daylight of an innocent PTI aficionado. That the crime in Faisalabad was committed under the canopy of supposed law-enforcers isn’t surprising, given the track-record of a trigger-happy Nawaz government. What transpired in Faisalabad is reminiscent of what had happened, earlier on a much larger scale, in Lahore when 14 workers of Tahir-ul-Qadri’s PAT were murdered by the government-commissioned goons—its so-called Gulloo Butts licensed to kill. It took a wave of nation-wide condemnation of the Lahore mayhem before an unrepenting government cabal would agree to register its FIR. It took six weeks for the paper work to get started; take your pick how long would it take for justice to be dispensed. As a token of bending to the popular uproar, Rana Sanaullah, the irascible and garrulous Law Minister of Punjab—and a close confidant of both Nawaz and Shehbaz—was made the fall-guy and forced to resign. But that was out of sheer expediency—just a sop to an irate people of Pakistan clamouring for justice—that the wicked Rana was sidelined to hoodwink the people. The rogue otherwise remains the main hatchet man of the Sharifs. A goon to boot, Rana was given the license to ‘teach a lesson’ to PTI and its leader, Imran Khan, in Faisalabad. Apparently, he didn’t disappoint his mentors one little bit and performed to their highest expectations; he wouldn’t be the fiend he’s if he didn’t. With a permanent scowl on his face and his drooping moustache dyed jet-black, Rana Sanaullah looks more like the vintage villain of a Punjabi movie than the leader he feigns to be. He’s a goon par excellence; a rogue and scoundrel of a special type who has been lording over Punjab with his retinue of Gulloo Butts and adding exponentially to its culture of feudal terrorism in politics. If he’d any spark of intelligence, or awareness of how to govern a country as diverse

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P9

A Government of Goons Has Pakistan to Ransom

cabal of robber-barons is by heeding the people’s rising call for him to go. Go, Nawaz, go. For God’s sake get the hell out of Pakistan and allow its people to move on with the leadership they crave and deserve. You’ve had your day. But for Pete’s sake go. This country of 180 million souls deserves better than you and your rogues and scoundrels. (The author is a retired ambassador and career diplomat) - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

The Purple Mantle

Cartoon courtesy Daily Times, Lahore

and problem-infested as Pakistan, Nawaz should’ve fired Sanaullah, and other louts of his ilk, a long time ago. But Nawaz seems to be getting duller and more insensitive than ever by the day. He looks like a man sleep-walking with no idea where he may be heading for or to which side his government of nincompoops is taking the star-struck country condemned to be ruled by a man of his puny intellect. It’s clear as daylight that Nawaz is unnerved by the increasing popularity and mass approbation of Imran Khan and his PTI’s relentless agitation against the ruling clique’s plundering of the country. He needed sane and sensible advice from intelligent people. But his tragedy—and that of Pakistan’s—is that he’s surrounded by a cabal of clowns, and knaves. Added to their abysmal IQs is their collective instinct of criminality. Their counsel to Nawaz is to brandish the stick and use its thicker part in silencing the agitation. These rogues from Nawaz’ ‘kitchen cabinet’ are the same goons who’d invaded the Supreme Court of Pakistan in his second stint

ing them because they were smart enough to have filched the elections last year. The Pakistani people have been saying in many different ways that they will no longer tolerate this highway robbery to go on unchallenged. The people of Pakistan have become intolerant of their robber-barons because they can now see light at the end of the tunnel; the light shining for them is Imran Khan’s call for accountability and transparency—something they hadn’t heard in a long, long time. Imran’s singular contribution to what was, before he landed on the scene, a moribund political culture is the alternative his PTI offers the people of Pakistan: it is clean governance geared to the larger interest of the people in place of a moth-eaten system of spoils feeding the corrupt and making them richer and ever more powerful by the day. Nawaz and his bunch of bumbling cronies may refuse to heed the writing on the wall but they know, as well as any pundit peering down his crystal ball, that the day of judgment in the court of the people of Pakistan is nigh

for them. They may at best buy some more time and delay their tryst with it but can’t avoid it in the end. All these so-called icons of yesterday’s politics—Nawaz, Zardari, Altaf, Isfandyar et al.—are in the path of the people’s march to destiny and will be dislodged from their pedestals, sooner than later. The status quo in Pakistan must give way to the people’s inexorable hankering for a revolutionary change in their political fortunes, or else there would be deluge and tumult. Any attempt to block the people’s relentless march to change—with the kind of thuggish crimes committed in Lahore, Gujranwala and, latest, in Faisalabad—would add to their frustrations and unblock the flood gates of a bloody civil war and revolution. A blood-soaked denouement of the ongoing battle of wits between the law-abiding followers of Imran and the rogues masquerading as minions of Nawaz is still voidable if only the rulers of the day wouldn’t lose their dwindling stocks of sanity. A thug like Rana Sanaullah is no longer the choice of the people of Pakistan to lead them. They would rather have a mature, dignified and sensible man like Imran as their leader. Sanaullah is a symbol of the status quo that the people of Pakistan want to get done with—warts and all. The greatest service Nawaz could still do to a Pakistan held to ransom by him and his

www.PakistanLink.com

n By Yasmeen Aftab Ali

here is a tug of war going on between PML-N and PTI with both vying to swing peoples’ support in their favour. The PML-N in a desperate attempt to woo the masses has announced a further decrease of Rs9.66 in oil prices. According to a news report, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has also announced reduction in the prices of high octane by Rs10.18, kerosene by Rs4, high speed diesel by Rs7.12 and light diesel oil by Rs5.39. Plus, of course, his love for mega projects is reflected in the launch of the Hazara Motorway project.

Is it because of the disenchantment with ongoing governance, the flagrant violation of law, increasing inflation etc that is attracting more and more people to the PTI bandwagon or is it the promise of change offered by the Kaptaan? Imtiaz Gul, writing on the PTI phenomenon in a local daily, writes, “What does Imran Khan want — is it just power or a revolution? This question kept resonating at a recent conference in the UK. Most vocal among the enquirers were at least five foreign diplomats who are familiar with Pakistan because of their assignments in Islamabad. They all sounded sympathetic to the narrative that Khan peddles today i.e., rule of law, accountability, and peoples’ empowerment through district governments and autonomous national institutions. But they clearly differed with the PTI methodology (ouster of the government through sit-ins). Lots of critics at home, too, have had a similar contention with the PTI and its leadership, which have been oscillating between legitimate aspirations (mentioned above) and paradoxical approaches to fulfill those aspirations.”(Published December 3, 2014) I cannot disagree with the point raised here by Gul. The Kaptaan’s base demand was a recount of results at four constituencies with verification of votes with fingerprints. According to a local daily, “Protesters in Karachi and Lahore have been demonstrating since May 12 against the results of the General Elections. The protesters allege that rigging took place and polling at some stations was purposely delayed.”(May 15, 2013) To their credit, PTI has tried to resolve the issue legally before taking to the streets. Long dharnas have been an outcome of the countrywide protests. These protests have delivered the message forcefully that people want a change for the better at every level. The fact that this has forced the government’s hand in reducing costs of petrol, diesel etc substantially cannot be denied. However, having taken this excellent measure the government must focus on ensuring a corresponding reduction in prices of goods and commodities to maximize the impact of the reduction on a broad based consumer level. Without this necessary follow up, the full impact will not trickle down to the common man. Coming back to the Kaptaan, whereas the Representation of Peoples Act offers provisions to contest election results, what he has done is to call in question the whole election process. Ideally, this should lead to electoral reforms. This may not happen immediately but it has a good chance of happening now with better transparency as compared to MANTLE, P29

OPINION

P10 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014

Another Life Lost to the Insanity of Gun Violence n By Azher Quader Chicago, IL

e was a student at Loyola, he came from New York, he was a body builder and he was a Muslim who hailed from Pakistan.

It was a botched armed robbery on a street near the campus of Loyola in Chicago’s north side Rogers Park neighborhood. Mutahir Rauf ‘s name will now be written with his blood on the sacred alter of gun rights in America. Our insatiable appetite for guns feeds a culture of violence that permeates every aspect of our lives, from the imagery of video games to the painful realities of killings in our streets. Every year 30,000 lives are lost to gun violence in America. 1,000 here in Illinois. When DC banned handguns for a period of time (1976 -2008) the homicide death rate from guns fell 25 percent and the suicide death rate from guns fell 23 percent. Defying the logic of these numbers the Supreme Court repealed the ban in 2008 declaring it to be unconstitutional.

n By Salahuddin Haider

No longer is this violence an occurrence in the south side or the west side but this one occurred in the north side, a stone throw from Devon and it takes away one of our own. This one clearly hits home. We can march, we can light a candle, we can hold hands and we can pray. We have done so before for the ones we knew and the ones we didn’t. Then we pull ourselves together and move on as if life has to go on as it must and death should not matter. We remain arrogantly proud of our civility and mock the savagery of others in distant societies plagued with violence and lawlessness. After all this debate has raged for years in our nation that pits rights over reason, interests over logic. Why should it be any different today? Our faith reminds us to accept such tragedies with patience. We are allowed to grieve and express our

sorrow. But we are also told to strive for justice. To be silent is to be indifferent. To be indifferent is to be insensitive, perhaps even less moral. The argument against guns cannot be more obvious. Guns are meant to do one thing and one thing alone - to kill. They belong not in the hands of ordinary citizens but in the hands of those who fight our enemies in military engagements or those who are charged with securing the peace in our neighborhoods. Let those who wish to hunt take their guns and hunt where the animals roam, not bring their weapons to kill where humans live. This argument needs to be made again and again, by raising our voices and casting our votes. This madness must end before more lives are lost. Sadly there is very little we can offer to comfort the family and loved ones of Mutahir Rauf. In one fleeting moment, gun violence ended his youthful life with all its hopes and dreams wiped out for ever, all its possibilities never to be realized. May God give patience to the bereaved and guide our policy makers to see beyond their ideological blinders the vision of a more peaceful society. (The author is President, Community Builders Council, Chicago)

Sin Grows with Doing Good n By Shakeel Syed Los Angeles, CA

“

Sin grows with doing good,” wrote T.S. Eliot, the major twentieth-century poet who was born in St. Louis, the city of which Ferguson is an outgrowth.

“My conscience is clear,” said Darren Wilson, the Ferguson officer, after the grand jury verdict and before resigning with full benefits. “I did not mean to hurt Mr Garner,” said Daniel Pantaleo, the New York cop, after the grand jury verdict and while remaining on job with full benefits. Both officers firmly believed they were doing good. Both grand juries believed that the deceased— Michael Brown and Eric Garner— were in the wrong. A large number of Americans, mostly people of color, agree with T. S. Eliot. They believe that the cops sinned in imagining they were somehow doing good. As investigations of particular incidents continue, America must ask itself:

Are the Bhutto Dynasty Days over?

Karachi, Pakistan

wo questions are haunting the masses and political analysts in Pakistan: Are the days of the Bhutto dynasty over? What is the future of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) under the leadership of Asif Ali Zardari?

The rumor making the rounds in political circles is that Bilawal has been sent out either for good or till the time he matures enough to take up the huge responsibility of the party like his grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had founded the PPP in 1967. It is difficult to ascertain the veracity of the reports about Bilawal’s departure from the political scene. However, there are confirmed reports about the closure of the secretariat established for Bilawal by Asif Ali Zardari at their Karachi residence. The secretariat employees have also been sent packing. This clearly signals a change in Zardari’s strategy to draw maximum mileage from the legacy of a family, which has left deep imprints on the country’s political history. Since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Zardari has been making every possible attempt to maintain his grip on the party. Keeping in view the debatable system of political dynasties, Zardari added the surname “Bhutto” to all his children’s names to attract the masses, who are still under the spell of the dynamic personality of the PPP founder Z.A.Bhutto. Zardari’s attempt to portray Bilawal as the true successor to Benazir and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has miserably failed. Bilawal is not even half the politician that his illustrious mother and grandfather used to be. Many argue that he has the poten-

. Why does the nation prefer to remain in slumber? . Who will wake up the nation? When will America begin to see itself from the eyes of a widow or a wailing mother? Unless we seek answers to these questions, the bullets and the chokeholds will kill more people and sin will keep on growing. Preachers will keep on preaching. Pundits will keep on barking. Politicians will keep on pacifying. There is only one way to stop America from sinning. America’s redemption lies in the words of a black man, spoken nearly five decades ago: “We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” We must become a person-centered society in which all persons are valued and respected. (Shakeel Syed is Executive Director, Islamic Shura Council of Southern California)

tial but needs some time to better understand the political dynamics of the country. Whatever the reason might be, there is no denying the fact that despite trying hard to copy the mannerism of Z.A.Bhutto, Bilawal has failed to attract the masses. Coming back to the unconfirmed reports about Bilawal’s de-

was disenchanted with the way his Oxford-educated son behaved in his new role as a young politician. Zardari’s hopes to rely on Bilawal to rebuild the party’s image, which he himself had destroyed as the president of Pakistan and the party’s co-chairman, appear to have been dashed sooner than anticipated.

sensions within the rank and file of the PPP. Seeing the collapse of the castle, sharp and sly Zardari has been busy building during the past few years; he was apparently left with no choice but to take over the control of the party once again. Whether or not this move will

Insiders claim that Zardari was disenchanted with the way his Oxford-educated son behaved in his new role as a young politician. Zardari’s hopes to rely on Bilawal to rebuild the party’s image, which he himself had destroyed as the president of Pakistan and the party’s co-chairman, appear to have been dashed sooner than anticipated parture— permanent or temporary —from the political scene, it remains a mystery as to what led to such drastic measures after spending millions of rupees “from the public exchequer” on the “launching ceremony” of Bilawal recently in Karachi. Insiders claim that Zardari

Instead of gaining ground, the party was completely knocked out in Punjab in last year’s elections. Now being branded rightly as a regional party of Sindh, the young man of 26, created controversies through his public utterances, which not only embarrassed Zardari but also caused deep dis-

www.PakistanLink.com

work in the long run remains to be seen. Interestingly, the immediate results are not very encouraging as evident from Zardari’s recent public appearances in Lahore and Gujranwala. The public response to his rallies and speeches remained somewhat lukewarm. Bhutto watchers insist that Bilawal, trained by her

mother, was cast entirely in the mold of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and pursued policies of his mother, assassinated in a bomb attack barely two months after her return from exile in 2007. That obviously meant differences with the father’s thinking and policy. Bilawal wanted the old guards to return to the party, whereas Zardari had often been accused of sidelining all those who were once considered close to Benazir. Bilawal’s mother and grandfather, both were fiery speakers and aggressive in their approach. So is Bilawal, but Zardari has a different approach to politics. The gulf between father and son, therefore, is the natural corollary of circumstances. The future of the PPP as a party truly representing the federation is now at stake. It remains to be seen if Bilawal would return to lead the party and follow the principles pursued by his mother. (The writer is a former Sindh Minister and senior journalist) TRAINS FROM P7

termed them “appeasement, waste of time and futile”. So far, there is no sign that the US will induce Pakistan to handover Taliban leader Mullah Ghani Baradar, who is in its custody, and Mullah Omar, who by most accounts has sanctuary in southern Pakistan. The US has to introspect whether torturing terrorist pawns and night raids on Afghan villages is the solution to global jihadism. The US can feel happy about the Shukrijumah-style lollypops sent its way but there cannot be lasting peace in the region without addressing the gloating global jihadists who harbor such characters and have national railways running trains for their terror galas. (The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com and he tweets @mazdaki)

PAKISTAN

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P11

Imran Threatens to Launch ‘Next Plan’ if JC Not Constituted within 48 Hours

Our Plan-D Is for Development, Not Destruction: Nawaz

Imran Khan accused the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) candidates of hiding behind stay orders as “they were scared of vote recount”. “If the candidates of PML-N have really won the election why do they appear so threatened at the mention of vote recount?” he asked

“What kind of culture the protestors are exhibiting and teaching the new generation?” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asked

Lahore: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Monday said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was left with only two choices: either to constitute the proposed judicial commission or brace himself to face a situation where it will be impossible for him to run the government. Addressing a public gathering at Chairing Cross in Lahore the PTI chief said, “My next plan is ready if Nawaz Sharif doesn’t come on the negotiating table.”. He said that the PTI was not ready to accept rigged elections. “The judicial commission can be set up within 48 hours,” he added. Imran Khan accused the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) candidates of hiding behind stay orders as “they were scared of vote recount”. “If the candidates of PMLN have really won the election why do they appear so threatened at the mention of vote recount?” he asked. The PTI leader said that had anyone stood up against the rigging in elections 30 years ago, it would have saved him the effort he was making today to get the system right. “Our protest will pave the way

Balkasar: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Monday that demonstrations and negotiations cannot go hand-in-hand and no one would be allowed to create hurdles in the way of progress and development of the country. He expressed these views while addressing a gathering present at the foundation stone-laying ceremony for the renovation of the 357km-long Islamabad-Lahore M-2 Motorway. As Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has already announced its Plan-D to shut down the entire country on December 18, PM Nawaz has come up with his own version of Plan-D and spelling out D for ‘development’. He said the word ‘D’ can mean both: development and destruction. However, he believes in development unlike those who are bent upon ‘destruction’. “No one would be allowed to create any hurdle in the way of progress and development of Pakistan,” the prime minister maintained as he unveiled his development plans for construction of roads, infrastructure and power plants. “The people of Pakistan have already rejected those who are trying to push the country over the edge,” he said while addressing a large gathering at the Balkasar Interchange. The prime minister said hurdles against his government were not new and those who hold protests and demonstrations against him regularly travel on the same road they criticize. He said a lot of hue and cry was raised when work on Lahore-Islamabad Motorway was initiated. However, the whole project was completed with honesty, transparency and devotion. Despite the efforts of opponents, no one could find even a shred of evidence of any malpractice in the execution of the project. Without naming PTI, he said “they are damaging entire Pakistan as they damaged one province,” he said. He mentioned that the modernization of the M-2 Motorway would jointly be undertaken by the Frontier Works Organization (FWO) and National Highway Authority (NHA) within the stipulated time period of three years. Minister for Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage Senator Pervaiz Rashid on Monday said that the Plan C of Pak-

for a transparent democracy in future,” he added. Without the media coverage, he said, the PTI cannot achieve its goal. “There should be no disrespect of any woman. We have to protect the media,” he added. He pledged that he would bring back the looted money and demanded that Rana Sanaullah be sent to jail for the murder of PTI worker Haq Nawaz. Earlier report: “Today Mian sb, I give you a clear message, if you are serious in not damaging the country and if you are sincere in talks then the matter can end in 48 hours,” the PTI chairman said, while addressing his workers in Lahore, ahead of his shutdown on December 15 as part of his “Plan C.” Imran pointed out that if the government was “serious” about negotiations, dialogue would have started by now. After successfully shutting down Faisalabad and Karachi, the PTI chairman had called for a shutdown in Lahore on Monday. “Our shutdown in Karachi was peaceful, we did not pressure anyone and people shutdown their businesses voluntarily,” he said,

adding, “We want the same to happen in Lahore.” Explaining his workers the plan of action for the shutdown, Imran said, “You should talk to traders and give them my message that if they want revolution, they should shutdown but if they are happy with the system, they should keep their businesses running.” “Through peaceful protests like the one in Karachi, we are making a new system and not shutting down at gunpoint or under pressure.” Admitting he made a mistake during his shutdown in Karachi, he said, “I am not sure whether they were our people or not but some people misbehaved with media and that is not acceptable.” “I urge the Lahore team to take care of the media and make way for ambulances to pass,” he said. Further, he warned the PMLN against repeating the Faisalabad tragedy, when PML-N and PTI workers clashed, resulting in the death of a PTI activist. “If you unleash your gullus on us, PTI workers will respond befittingly and you will be responsible for it,” he said.

Complete Lahore Shut down on Imran Khan’s Call Lahore: Charing Cross – the cen-

tral point of protest for the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf – was shut down as early as 7:30am on Monday. The crowd swelled at around 5pm when PTI chief Imran Khan arrived at Charing Cross to deliver a speech. Most shops and markets, including the one on Hall Road, opened early but shuttered down once PTI workers closed the main roads. Burning tyres, stones, barbed wire and barricades were placed on all main traffic arteries of the city. Members of Insaf Students Federation, Insaf Youth Wing and PTI supporters held 28 focal points in the city where they chanted slogans and danced to popular PTI tunes. Heavy deployment of police was observed. Most of the shops on The Mall shuttered down as protesters blocked Charing Cross and roads leading to The Mall. PTI Punjab’s general secretary Yasmin Rashid and information secretary Andleeb Abbas monitored the preparations at Charing Cross. Abbas said the call for a shutdown was a demand for justice with regards to alleged rigging in the 2013 general elections. She said they had not forced shops to close.

DCO Captain (retd) Muhammad Usman visited The Mall in the morning. He said the city government had reached an understanding with the PTI that they would not use force. Dozens of lawyers and members of the Sunni Tehreek, led by Sardar Muhammad Tahir Dogar, joined the protest in the evening. The provincial assembly’s Monday session was postponed in view of the call for a picket at Charing Cross. Fire brigades and ambulances lined the length of The Mall. Addressing the rally at GPO Chowk, Yasmeen Rashid said Pakistan was founded by a lawyer and “the new Pakistan will be led by lawyers”. Around 500 members of the Insaf Lawyers’ Forum at the chowk shouted Go Nawaz Go and Go Corrupt System Go. Rashid said the PTI’s war for justice will continue till they had created a new Pakistan in which the poor got justice at their doorstep. “We closed Musharraf ’s chapter and will now end Sharif ’s,” the lawyers shouted. Mardan Shah, a resident of Shafiqabad, lay on the road at GPO Chowk with five bricks on his belly as

a mark of protest. He said he would not get up till Khan visited him. Two men from the Special Branch and DCO’s office, carrying cameras, were briefly detained and harassed by PTI workers. The main markets in Shahdara remained open during the day. PTI workers had blocked Shahdara Chowk for traffic early in the morning. Traffic from Faisalabad, Sheikhupura and GT Road was not allowed to enter the city till the evening. Workers also blocked Saggian Bridge for traffic. The protesters did not let ambulances to pass in Shahdara. Adviser to Chief Minister on Health Khawaja Salman Rafique said two patients had died in ambulances on the way to Children’s Hospital after protesters refused to let them cross Shahdara Chowk. Sidra Riaz, a 17-day-old baby, was one of the children who died. Traffic in Shahdara resumed at around 5pm. Babu Sabu Interchange and Thokar Niaz Beg, two of the eight entrances to the city, were blocked for traffic early in the day. Commuters travelling to Lahore on buses were seen lugging their bags on the roads. Ambulances were, however, allowed to pass at this picket.

www.PakistanLink.com

istan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan was not aimed at promoting chaos and anarchy but causing casualties of the common people. Talking to the journalist here, he said that he took back his earlier words of C for chaos as the plan was to have casualties. Four people lost their lives in Lahore on Monday due to Imran’s politics of agitation and violence, he claimed. He expressed grief and sorrow over the loss of lives. He also expressed condolences with the bereaved families. “Indeed, the moment Imran leaves his Bani Gala residence, he tramples over the corpses of people,” Pervaiz said. He said that the people of Lahore had totally rejected the politics of agitation and sit-ins introduced by the PTI. He said that the Punjab government fully facilitated the PTI but it violated its promise by resorting to violence, closure of roads and shops, and blocking ambulances. “We have seen at the Multan rally that people were dying but Imran continued his speech. The same was repeated in Faisalabad and DChowk Islamabad and today four more people fell victim,” to the callous attitude, he said. “The tigers of the PTI are in fact wolves. Even the PTI workers did not spare media workers. They attacked media teams and misbehaved with Sana Mirza and fellow journalists, which is highly condemnable.” He said that not a single person had died in the movement for the restoration of judiciary and the political movements of other leaders. The PTI, he claimed, was promoting intolerance and violence in Pakistan. It was not the PTI’s right to decide which TV channel was good or bad. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, workers of a political party were attacking journalists. He questioned as to whether locking down of cities was part of a ‘New Pakistan’. He said that the confidence of the people of Lahore in the PTI had been shattered. Today’s agitation annoyed them. That was why they chanted “Go Imran Go”, which has become the popular slogan in Lahore today. He said that commuters, including children and women, faced difficulties as the PTI workers forcibly blocked roads and attacked the Metro Bus service. He said that even close friends and associates of Imran had rejected his call of civil disobedience.

PAKISTAN

P12 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014

Rare Show of Unity: Leaders Vow to Avenge Peshawar Massacre

Peace with Taliban: Kabul Wants Islamabad to Play Visible Role

Peshawar: Setting aside their po-

litical differences, Pakistan’s political leadership on Wednesday vowed to avenge the dastardly massacre of 148 people at the Peshawar school and eliminate every single terrorist ‘without discrimination’. “We have decided to draft a national plan of action against terrorists and act upon it immediately,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said while reading out decisions taken at a meeting of heads of all parliamentary parties at the Governor’s House in Peshawar. “We have unanimously decided that a committee under Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan will prepare a national plan of action against terrorism and present its report to the national leadership within seven days,” he announced. “This plan will be presented before the people of Pakistan after the approval of the political leadership.” The committee will comprise members from all parliamentary parties and representatives from the armed forces and intelligence agencies. “We announce that there will be no differentiation between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban. We also resolve to continue the war against terrorism till the last terrorist is eliminated from the country,” the premier added. Prime Minister Nawaz termed the murder of students and staffers at the Army Public School and College in Peshawar as “a cowardly move by

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is seen addressing a press conference after the All-Parties Conference. PTI chief Imran Khan is seated next to him

terrorists on the run as a result of Operation Zarb-e-Azb.” “We express deep grief over the Peshawar tragedy. This violence has no match in the history of Pakistan,” he said. Backing the decision to launch full-scale offensives against militants in North Waziristan and Khyber Agency, the prime minister said, “We have all seen the results of dialogue with the Taliban. We could not achieve anything through dialogue and then the Karachi airport was attacked.” He reiterated his government’s resolve to carry out the ongoing operations against terrorists with ‘a clear mind and determination’. Nawaz, Imran shake hands: At the news briefing held after the meeting of heads of all parliamentary par-

More Women Recruited as NATO Forces Pull out of Afghanistan

ties, Premier Nawaz and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan engaged in a rare handshake as a gesture of unity following the Peshawar tragedy. The prime minister, who was sitting next to the PTI chief, thanked the latter for attending the meeting. “I’m thankful to Imran Khan for attending this meeting and I’ve invited him over for tea,” he said, adding that “all issues can be resolved through dialogue in a democracy.” Nawaz also said that he had written to the chief justice of Pakistan regarding the formation of a judicial commission. In response to this, however, Imran said, “Our differences are not about our egos, they are about poll rigging.” “The nation has to unite because the military cannot win this war alone,” he said, adding that he would fully back the government in the fight against terrorism. The PTI chief added that he would go directly to his container from his conference to offer funeral prayers in absentia for the victims. At that point, Nawaz remarked in a lighter vein that he had to “visit the injured children at the hospital otherwise I would have gone to the container with Imran.” the US has also started to appease Pakistan. A former top Pakistani Taliban commander, arrested by US forces in Afghanistan last year, was repatriated to Pakistan. It has since handed over a further three Pakistani Taliban, including former second-in-command, Latif Mehsud.

Policewomen holding kalashnikovs during commando training in Hakimabad district of Nowshera, Pakistan

Islamabad: Running through the arid desert in the searing heat armed with AK-47s, this picture shows the grueling workout undertaken by Pakistan’s female volunteers. They have been put through their paces in an intense commando training to help combat the Taliban. After the training - which took place in the Hakimabad district of Nowshera in northern Pakistan - the policewomen will take charge in police raids within anti-terror operations. More women are being recruited to fight the Taliban as NATO forces withdraw from neighboring Afghanistan this month. They also have the advantage of being able to perform jobs that men cannot - in the segregated and strictly

religious world of Pakistan - women can only be searched by women. Their training also comes in the wake of signs of greater co-operation between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US in the last week. But this week, for the first time in nearly 10 years, the Pakistan army killed a high-level leader of al-Qaeda, Adnan el Shukrijuma, who had planned several failed attacks in the US and Britain. He was killed during a raid by Pakistani forces close to the Afghan border in the South Waziristan tribal agency. The next day it was reported a US drone had killed nine suspected Pakistani Taliban including a senior commander Umer Farooq. In a sign of improving relations,

A Pakistan official dismissed the perception that Pakistani security apparatus enjoyed the level of influence that it once had over the Afghan Taliban

Islamabad: Afghanistan has asked

Pakistan to play a more ‘visible’ role in persuading the Afghan Taliban to come to the negotiation table in a move suggesting that Kabul continues to believe that Islamabad still holds the key to an elusive peace deal. The request for Pakistan’s proactive role in a possible peace deal, comes from the new administration in Afghanistan led by President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Officer Dr Abullah Abdullah, diplomatic sources told The Express Tribune. The change of government in Kabul, after a decade of rule by former president Hamid Karzai, is seen as a new beginning for both neighbors to move away from an acrimonious relationship of mistrust to one built on mutual cooperation. But that cooperation appears to be hinged on Pakistan’s role in brokering a deal between Afghanistan and insurgents. The Afghan president during his recent visit to Islamabad sought Pakistan’s help in bringing the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table. His request for help stems from the widely held perception that Pakistan’s security establishment, because of its historic ties with the Taliban, can still push insurgents to make peace with the Ghani administration. “There is a strong perception in Afghanistan that Pakistan’s security establishment still controls the Taliban, despite denial by Pakistan,” commented a Western diplomat, who is engaged with both Islamabad and Kabul. “I think reality lies between the two extremes,” the diplomat added

saying that clear Pakistan support for peace talks in Afghanistan backed by practical steps could go a long away in addressing the longstanding misgivings between the two neighbors. Despite the recent flurry of diplomatic initiatives aimed at generating a better appreciation of Pakistan’s limited influence in Afghanistan and its willingness to facilitate the peace process, Western diplomats continue to hold the view that fears of a possible ‘proxy war’ between Pakistan and India in post-2014 Afghanistan might compel authorities in Islamabad to keep their options open. Islamabad has publicly insisted that it cannot lead the peace process in Afghanistan and has repeatedly said that it is ready to play the role of a facilitator. A senior Pakistani official contended that the country was doing whatever it could to help facilitate an Afghan-led and Afghanowned peace process. The official, who wished not to be identified, also dismissed the perception that Pakistani security apparatus enjoyed the level of influence that it once had over the Afghan Taliban. The ongoing military offensive in North Waziristan Agency, where fighters from the deadliest Afghan insurgent network – the Haqqanis – have also been targeted in a ‘clear manifestation of our policy to act against all groups without any discrimination,’ the official argued. Army Chief General Raheel Sharif during his two-week long trip to the United States earlier this month, tried to convince his American interlocutors that Pakistan had no favorites in Afghanistan.

Musharraf Backs Imran’s Anti-government Campaign Karachi: Endorsing Imran Khan’s anti-government movement, former President General (retd.) Pervez Musharraf said that he would invite PTI Chairman to join his political alliance. In an exclusive chat with SAMAA’s anchor person Gharidah Farooqui on Tuesday, Musharraf said he supports Imran Khan’s ongoing movement against the government. “I will also welcome Tahir ul Qadri if he is willing to join our alliance,” he said. Musharraf announced last week that he would unite the Muslim League factions under one platform. The former military ruler opined that an “empowered government” should be formed to pull the

www.PakistanLink.com

country out of crisis. Musharraf, who is being tried for high treason, said that the army

should be given a constitutional role in government under the National Security Council. The military should also put check and balance on governance, he suggested. The former strongman, however, opposed the role of prime intelligence agency ISI in politics. He accused former Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry of involvement in rigging the May 2013 polls. “All the governments which came into being after the 2013 elections are illegal,” he said. Responding to a question, he said that governments use ISI for political objectives. “Although I am a product of martial law, but I am not (a) supporter of the martial law,” he added.

PAKISTAN

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P13

LHC Dismisses Ayaz’s Writ Petition against Recounting Lahore: The Lahore High Court on Tuesday rejected two petitions filed by National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq against an election tribunal’s decision pertaining to vote recount in NA-122 constituency. Sadiq, in his petition, had also accused tribunal judge Kazim Ali Malik of committing contempt of court. Justice Ijazul Hassan of the LHC said Sadiq’s petitions were non-maintainable as decisions of election tribunals could not be challenged before high courts. Commenting on the LHC’s decision, Sadiq said the ruling was contrary to the law and added that he would now approach the Supreme Court in this regard. An election tribunal on December 8 had accepted Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan’s request for opening ballot bags in NA-122 to investigate allegations of rigging. A single-member commission had been ordered to check the records after opening ballot bags for the said constituency. Moreover, on Dec 15, the LHC had admitted for hearing petitions

Dr Maleeha Lodhi Appointed Permanent Representative to UN

Islamabad: Prime Minister Nawaz

Sharif on Monday appointed journalist-turned-diplomat Dr Maleeha Lodhi as Permanent Representative of Pakistan at the United Nations. “Dr Lodhi will assume her responsibilities in February 2015,” a Foreign Office statement said. The job is based in New York and she will assume her responsibilities in February 2015. Lodhi has previously twice served as Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States (1993-1996 and 1999-2002) and as Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom (2003-2008). She has also served as a member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Affairs (2001-2005). She has taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science, been a fellow at the Institute of Politics, Harvard University, and an international scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC. Lodhi is also a member of the National Defense University’s Senate, and a member of the advisory council of the London-based International Institute of Strategic Affairs. A recipient of the Presidential award of Hilal-e-Imtiaz for public service, Lodhi has also been editor of leading English newspapers in the country.

filed by National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq in which he had challenged the election tribunal’s decision. Sadiq had also accused tribunal judge Kazim Ali Malik of committing contempt of court. Sadiq had said that Imran’s appeal for vote recount was illegal and requested the LHC to reject his plea. In his petitions, the NA speaker had also said that the tribunal’s decision was in violation of the Supreme Court’s order which stated that the

tribunal should first determine the maintainability of the petition filed by Imran and then take the case forward. He claimed the tribunal judge had heard Imran and his six witnesses but had not heard the speaker and his witnesses. Earlier, Sadiq had filed an appeal with the tribunal against the opening of ballot bags which was rejected by the tribunal judge.

Girl from Dadu Meets Girl from Swat in Oslo

Karachi: Last week, two girls from Pakistan met in Oslo, Norway. They hugged each other so tight that it looked like they were best friends meeting each other after decades. These girls weren’t just any girls – they were Malala Yousufzai and Kainat Soomro. The world’s youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient met Kainat, a rape survivor, on December 9, the day before the peace prize was given to Malala. “It did not feel like I was meeting her for the first time. I felt like we had known each other for a while,” she said. “We hugged each other like two friends meeting after a long break.” Their meeting which took place at a hotel in Norway was covered by the media. The two teenagers sat together and discussed serious issues. Back in Karachi: Kainat returned to Karachi early morning on Monday. As she sat in her modest apartment on Garden Road, she said meeting Malala was like a dream come true. “Maybe next year, I can also win the award if I do good work,” she said. “Malala is a sweet girl. If she likes someone she will consider them family.” The 19-year-old who was gangraped in 2007 by four men in Dadu, wasn’t allowed to spend too much time with Malala due to security is-

sues. A day after the ceremony, the two girls and their families met officials for lunch. “Malala told me not to eat the strange white fish. We both had the chicken and French fries,” she said. “She also tried to teach me some words in English and told me to keep repeating them so I would learn faster.” The day Malala received the award, Kainat sat in the crowd along with two of Malala’s friends from Swat who had also been shot – Kainat Riaz and Shazia Ramzan. The girls first spoke to each other on October 18, when Malala called her up to ask if she was studying. “I told her I wasn’t going to school as I was afraid for my life,” she said. “Malala told me to hire a tutor who could come and teach me at home. She said she would support me.” A week later, Malala called Kainat again. This time she asked if Kainat had her passport handy. “She invited me to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo and I said yes,” she informed. “The travelling expenses were paid by Malala and I left with my father for Norway on December 8.” Despite living in two different continents with different time zones, the girls stay in touch with each other via email.

www.PakistanLink.com

‘I Saw Death So Close’

An injured student receives medical treatment at hospital

teenage survivor of Tuesday’s Taliban attack on a Pakistan school described how he played dead after being shot in both legs by insurgents hunting down students to kill.

Militants rampaged through an army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar and killed at least 141 people, almost all of them children, in the bloodiest ever terror attack in Pakistan. Speaking from his bed in the trauma ward of the city’s Lady Reading Hospital, Shahrukh Khan, 16, said he and his classmates were in a careers guidance session in the school auditorium when four gunmen wearing paramilitary uniforms burst in. “Someone screamed at us to get down and hide below the desks,” he said, adding that the gunmen shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) before opening fire. “Then one of them shouted: ‘There are so many children beneath the benches, go and get them’,” Khan told AFP. “I saw a pair of big black boots coming towards me, this guy was probably hunting for students hiding beneath the benches.” Khan said he felt searing pain as he was shot in both his legs just below the knee. He decided to play dead, adding: “I folded my tie and pushed it into my mouth so that I wouldn’t scream. “The man with big boots kept on looking for students and pumping bullets into their bodies. I lay as still as I could and closed my eyes, waiting to get shot again. “My body was shivering. I saw death so close and I will never forget the black boots approaching me -- I felt as though it was death that was approaching me.” The Army Public School is attended by boys and girls from both military and civilian backgrounds. As his father, a shopkeeper, comforted him in his blood-soaked bed, Khan recalled: “The men left after some time and I stayed there for a few minutes. Then I tried to get up but fell to the ground because of my wounds. “When I crawled to the next room, it was horrible. I saw the dead body of our office assistant on fire,” he said. “She was sitting on the chair with blood dripping from her body as she burned.” It was not immediately clear how the female employee’s body caught fire, though her remains were also later seen by an AFP reporter in a hospital mortuary. Khan, who said he also saw the body of a soldier who worked at the school, crawled behind a door to hide and then lost consciousness. “When I woke up I was lying on the hospital bed,” he added.

Another student at the hospital, Hammad Ahmed, added: “I was with my friends in the corridor in front of my class when we heard gunshots. “We rushed inside the classroom, our teacher closed the door, she was trying to lock it when the terrorists kicked on the door and forced it open,” he continued. “All 10 of my classmates and our teacher died, only I survived,” he said. But like Khan, he survived despite being shot in the feet because his attackers assumed he was already dead and moved on. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan have claimed responsibility for the attack as retaliation for a major military offensive in the region, saying its militants had been ordered to shoot older students. IMRAN FROM P1

at D-Chowk in Islamabad, Imran said that after being briefed by the Peshawar Corps Commander, he sat down with his party and deliberated on what they should do next. “I came to the conclusion that given the situation today, we must end our protest.” “What is the demand right now, and that is to stand united and to together tackle the perpetrators of this attack,” he said adding that it was not the time for the party to show opposition. “We had vowed that we will remain here till elections are probed and Nawaz Sharif resigns. We relaxed our demands that he should not resign till the investigations are completed. As a last resort we shut down three cities. If anyone has the street power to shut cities down, it is PTI.” “We expect you [Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif] to immediately form a judicial commission based on what we have discussed, to investigate the elections within the set timeframe. If the elections were not rigged we will accept you as prime minister. “If an impartial judicial commission determines that the elections were rigged and those responsible are punished, a new Pakistan will be formed.” Nawaz welcomes decision: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has welcomed Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan’s decision to call off his protest sitin in Islamabad. Reacting to Imran’s announcement on Wednesday, Nawaz said that the PTI’s reservations regarding last year general elections will be addressed. He was of the opinion that Imran’s announcement will boost the morale of the nation to fight the war against terrorism.

PAKISTAN

P14 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014

“No Cause Can Justify Such Brutality, No Grievance Can Excuse Such Horror”: Ban Ki-moon

www.PakistanLink.com

PAKISTAN

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P15

Pak-China Industrial Corridor to Boost Pakistan’s Manufacturing Sector

n By Riaz Haq

ndustrial parks and special economic zones are part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor memoranda of understanding recently agreed between the leaders of the two countries. The key pre-requisite for the establishment of these zones are resolution of the energy crisis and building of a competitive infrastructure in Pakistan.

The first phase of the economic corridor is focused on $45.6 billion worth of energy and infrastructure projects. China’s stateowned banks will finance Chinese companies to fund, build and operate $45.6 billion worth of energy and infrastructure projects in Pakistan over the next six years, according to Reuters. Major Chinese companies investing in Pakistan’s energy sector will include Three Gorges Corp which built the world’s biggest hydro power project, and China Power International Development Ltd. Under the agreement signed by Chinese and Pakistani leaders at a Beijing summit recently, $15.5 billion worth of coal, wind, solar and hydro energy projects will come online by 2017 and add 10,400 megawatts of energy to the national grid. An additional 6,120 megawatts will be added to the national grid at a cost of $18.2 billion by 2021. The transport and communication infrastructure—roads, railways, cable, and oil and gas pipelines— will stretch 2,700 kilometers from Gwadar on the Arabian Sea to the Khunjerab Pass at the China-Pakistan border in the Karakorams. Starting in 2015, the Chinese companies will invest an average of over $7 billion a year until 2021, a

figure exceeding the previous record of $5.5 billion foreign direct investment in 2007 in Pakistan. Special Economic Zones Beyond the initial phase, there are plans to establish special economic zones in the Corridor where Chinese companies will locate factories. Extensive manufacturing collaboration between the two neighbors will include a wide range of products from cheap toys and textiles to consumer electronics and supersonic fighter planes. The basic idea of an industrial corridor is to develop a sound industrial base, served by competitive infrastructure as a prerequisite for attracting investments into export-oriented industries and manufacturing. Such industries have helped a succession of countries like Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, China and now even Vietnam rise from lowcost manufacturing base to more advanced, high-end exports. As a country’s labor

gets too expensive to be used to produce low-value products, some poorer country takes over and starts the climb to prosperity. Once completed, the Pak-China industrial corridor with a sound industrial base and competitive infrastructure combined with low labor costs is expected to draw growing FDI from manufacturers in many other countries looking for a low-cost location to build products for exports to rich OECD nations. Key challenges While the commitment is there on both sides to make the corridor a reality, there are many challenges that need to be overcome. The key ones are maintaining security and political stability, ensuring transparency, good governance and quality of execution. These challenges are not un-surmountable but overcoming them does require serious effort on the part of both sides, particularly on the Pakistani side. Let’s hope Pakistani leaders are up to these challenges.

Summary Pak-China economic corridor is a very ambitious effort by the two countries that will lead to greater investment and rapid industrialization of Pakistan. Its successful implementation will be a game-changer for the people of Pakistan in terms of new economic opportunities leading to higher incomes and significant improvements in the living standards for ordinary Pakistanis. It will be in t h e best i nte rest of all of them to set their differences aside a n d work for its success.

www.PakistanLink.com

‘We Are Protecting Children from Polio at the Cost of Our Lives’ Quetta: In their struggle to protect children from the crippling disease, female immunisation workers have faced the brunt of attacks aimed at polio teams in Balochistan. Threats and intimidation have been a constant in their lives and the recent killings of polio workers in the southwestern province have invoked a deep sense of insecurity among the female volunteers and lady health workers. “We are protecting children from polio at the cost of our lives,” Sabeeha Begum, 38, a lady health worker in Quetta told Dawn. Sabeeha has participated in almost all anti-polio campaigns in Quetta and has been engaged in the campaign for over a decade. On November 26, gunmen killed four polio workers, including three women, in the Eastern Bypass area of Quetta. The attack took place in the provincial capital in broad daylight and despite tall claims of tight security on part of the government. “Our lives are at risk because it is an extremely dangerous job,” Sabeeha Begum said. Polio teams have been attacked in the Quetta, Pishin and Loralai districts of Balochistan in the recent past. And while eradication of polio appears to be a challenge for the concerned quarters, women remain at the forefront in the battle against the crippling disease. The latest murders of polio workers in Quetta were followed soon after by an announcement of a boycott of the anti-polio campaign in Balochistan by Lady Health Workers

(LHW). The LHWs staged a protest demonstration outside the Quetta Press Club and chanted slogans against the assailants and against the law enforcement agencies for their failure to provide protection. RAHEEL FROM P1

support in eliminating terrorists in his areas of responsibility. A security source told The Express Tribune that Pakistan would want immediate action against TTP hideouts. “If Afghan authorities fail to act this time, we will explore all options, including hot pursuit,” cautioned the source. During his visit, General Raheel Sharif is reported to have sought the handover of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan chief Mullah Fazalullah who is wanted for terrorism cases in Pakistan. The army chief shared classified intelligence details with the Afghan officials and revealed to them that the mastermind behind the Peshawar attack, who was from Afghanistan, was giving directives to terrorists. UN FROM P1

statement condemning what he termed the “blood-curdling attack” in Pakistan. “I condemn this heinous attack in the strongest possible terms,” he said. “No cause can justify such brutality. No grievance can excuse such horror. Schools must be safe and secure learning spaces. Getting an education is every child’s right. Going to school should not be an act of bravery.”

P16 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014

GO SOLAR and Eliminate your Electric Bills! Old Bill:

PANY

IC COM

LECTR

CITY E

$225

inquires, service k ng and ys a wee For billi day, 7 da a s ur ho call 24 21 Date of

bruary

pared Fe

Bill Pre

HOMEOWNERS!

0 $225.0 0 $225.0

ary

Summ ccount

) bill an (LLP you l pay pl Your A – thank last leve b 04 12 of your Fe nt ou on m A ceived re e w t Paymen PANY unpaid ECTRIC COM Balance CI nt TY EL arch 09 12 P amou on M e Your LL ow u ount yo Total am

.$0 0 $225.0 0 $225.0

New Bill:

-$3.84

service inquires, For billing and ek day, 7 days a we call 24 hours a pared April 21

Date of Bill Pre

ary

t Summ Your Accoun

-$28.90 -$28.90

ing

m previous bill

fro Amount owed e Credit balanc

IF YOU PAY $100+/mo. YOU CAN SAVE BIG!

$3.84 $11.84 $228.84

rges e Your new cha a credit balanc r account has Do not pay. You s Total Saving

.84

GS: $228 TOTAL SAVIN

Sample savings only. Actual rates and savings will vary by customer.

ASK ABOUT

THE 1-YEAR NO PAYMENT OPTION!

AS SEEN ON

FREE EVALUATION!

800-951-1452 *Offer valid for qualified customers upon credit approval. Restrictions may apply. Offer details may vary by location. Call for details.

Lifetime Warranty with Soothing Hydrotherapy

GET $1,000 OFF & A FREE TOILET FOR A LIMITED TIME

WALK-IN TUBS & SHOWERS BY Bathe safely, comfortably & independently with a walk-in bath or shower from American Standard. Handcrafted in the USA by a company you know and trust. Call now to learn more PLUS receive $1,000 off.

1.800.894.9635

www.PakistanLink.com

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P17

Advertisement space donated by PL Publications, publishers of Pakistan Link and Urdu Link www.PakistanLink.com

WOMEN

WOMENS WORLD P18 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; PAKISTAN LINK â&#x20AC;&#x201C; DECEMBER 19, 2014

DECEMBER 19, 2014 - PAKISTAN LINK

By Moiz Kazmi Makeup trends his year there was a twist! The highlight of Fashion Pakistan Week (FPW) was the Millennial Fashion Show by Maybelline New York that was held a few days before the fashion week. This show, choreographed by supermodel, Fayezah Ansari, was not only on trend fashion-wise but it was in sync with powerful beauty looks. The show highlighted fashion collections from young guns of fashion, Nitasha Yaqub, Abel Emmanuel, Aalish, Sameer Sain and Madiha Raza, and also joined hands with stylist Raana Khan to introduce trendsetting makeup looks this season. Urban Gold Abel's collection was all about fall and its dark hues, reds and blacks. His ensembles were screen printed with Hebrew and henna prints on rich fabrics, giving the whole thing an exuberant and glamorous feel. The look for this segment by Raana was 'Urban Gold'. Dark fuchsia lips, silver and grey smokey eye makeup and side partitioned hair, a look perfect for evening soirees. You can try this look with your favourite saree, especially if it's from your mother's wardrobe! Classic Glam Nitasha Yaqub's collection was about Anglo Indians and maintained around that period with the same silhouettes and short to long British inspired dresses. For her segment Raana Khan went 'Classic Glam' on the models. Red lips, winged eyes and contoured cheeks, a look perfect to be

carried on with your white outfits this winter season! Rustic Coral Aalish's soccer-inspired collection was a mixture of soft and hard silhouettes, with interesting twists on the waistline. The look given to models for this segment was 'Rustic Coral'. Popsicle orange lips, clear dewy skin with pink cheeks for a fresh look and thick mascara. This look is not only simple but is really good for everyday life. You can even go to work and impress your colleagues with this. Try it. Exotic Chic Madiha's 'Flight of Birds' was colourful, bold and beautiful. For this segment Raana went 'Exotic Chic'. Dramatic eyes with feathery eyelashes, elaborate eye shadows, nude lips and a finely finished foundation set base for this look. Warning: this is not for the faint hearted. It is for all those who are young (or young at heart). FASHION ALERT! Fashion Pakistan Week's seventh season was definitely a leap forward. The Autumn/Winter offering by Fashion Pakistan Council's FPWAW14 was not only unexpected

since there was buzz of no funds and no oomph in the young council, also it was definitely one of the strongest season ever. I almost loved everything that made it to the ramp. The three-day event was styled by Nabila's teams at N-Gents and N-Pro with show direction and choreography by Hassan Shehryar Yasin. Though, FPW did have its happysad moments - Maheen Khan's farewell to her Maheen line and her finale collection which was an ode to her favourite city, Karachi. Sheer fabrics, simple silhouettes, crisp necklines and minimalism reflected through her last public collection, which was homage to the City of Lights. FPW proteges, menswear designer brand Deepak and Fahad, primarily a menswear designer, came of age with a powerful risque women's wear collection. The love for monochrome and edginess not only made them shine but for me they were definitely the youngest and the bravest of the lot. Madiha Raza, who won the Millennial Fashion, gave me goose bumps with her Flight of Birds collection, she was not only complete in her

www.Pakistanlink.com www.PakistanLink.com

approach but I am totally looking forward to her debut at the main event next season. Amna Aqeel was another collection that I loved, firstly it was monochrome, secondly it had that right share of colour, for that extra oomph we all need. Aqeel added zing to her velvet and raw silk ensembles with embellishments like nalki-work and diamantes and used kora and dabka embroideries to accentuate the essence of a woman who is not only fierce but knows how to prowl as a prowess. Sadaf Malaterre's Parisian glamour in her signature chiffon and silks were all monochrome separates and must haves this ongoing socializing season. Sanam Chaudhry's Bano put out some serious capes on the ramp. They were not only gorgeous winter must-haves, they truly reflected Sanam's love for fashion and her Kashmir connection with those motifs and embroideries. Maheen Karim showcased some fun evening wear with elaborate details, while Ayesha Farook Hashwani came back with a bang and shone out like a reigning red carpet queen. Kimonoisc silhouettes,

crop jackets, gold chunky embroideries, use of belts to bring that twist to the silhouette, her signature tassels and chunky embellishments on velvets were some of the key elements from Ayesha's collection. Sana Safinaz (SS), for the first time, had two slots in a fashion week: Ather Ali Hafeez for SS and Mohsin Ali for SS. Ather Ali Hafeez showed what he is good at, fabric and colour play, the aesthetics of Sana Safinaz brand amalgamated with the creativity of a genius at draping like Ather Ali Hafeez and everyone was floored. The collection titled, Venue: French Beach, Karachi, was colourful, energetic, summery and yet had all those layers apt for a cold winter day. Mohsin Ali's collection on the other hand, was grand and wild, though unexpected. Let's see how this gets translated into pret for the Sana Safinaz stores. This was paired with a jewellery collection from world renowned Indian brand, OutHouse Jewellery. Zaheer Abbas's neo-nude was fun but the black pieces didn't work, Ishtiaq Afzal's aurora had its strongest pieces in morning orange, this is one colour which is going to be the new black for the next few years. Adnan Pardesy's Labyrinth, for me, gave Adnan a new life. I not only loved it but I would recommend all of you to go get some pieces, which are perfect for your night outs as well as hi-teas. This was another monochromatic collection and one of my personal favourites. Shehla Chatoor's Misaki is for all the girls out there who love fashion and carry this rockstar attitude of ruling the world. A week after the show, we saw the gorgeous Aamina Sheikh sporting a Misaki leather weave top with a voluminous digital print floorlength skirt. FnkAsia is every young girl's favourite and a must-have item in their wardrobes. This season FnkAsia mixed its fusion ethos with rich embroideries and folk accents. Nida Azwer went renaissance with her collection this season, her colour palette was dark, keeping the winters in mind - red maroons, blacks and rusts ruled her collection. Courtesy The News

COMMUNITY

Community Link

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P19

Friday, December 19, 2014

VOL. 24/51 PAGE 20

PAGE PAGE30 17

egum PAGE 21

Senator Tony Mendoza Takes Oath of Office

27 Safar 1436 H

Community Leader Tashie Zaheer Honored

“I Have Presence, People See Me!”

For news, updated round the clock, visit

www.PakistanLink.com

Pakistani American Cultural Center Celebrates Iqbal Day

The program, which was open to all without any charge, was attended by a large number of people and was very much appreciated by everyone

n ByDr Waheed Siddiqee Milpitas, CA: Pakistani American Cultural Center celebrated Iqbal Day on Saturday, December 6. The invited guest speaker was Mrs Sabahat Rafiq Sherwani, an ardent lover of Iqbal’s poetry. She has studied Iqbal’s poetry, both Urdu and Persian, for many years. The program started with the recitation of a few verses of Iqbal from Shikwa and Jawab-Shikwa by Tasadduq Attari. This was followed by a brief but very insightful talk by Muhammad Ashraf on Iqbal’s poem titled Bilal.

He gave an excellent historical background of the contents of the poem while reciting couplets. The Chief Guest Mrs. Sabahat Sherwani presented a very well-researched paper explaining in detail the intricacies and depth of Iqbal’s ideas contained in Javed Nama. She covered such aspects as Iqbal’s mythical journey to various stations of heaven along with Maulana Roomi, his encounters with several historical figures including Saints, Sufis , Kings, Traitors, The Devil, and many more. In some of these encounters, Iqbal expresses his own views about love, intellect, Khudi (Selfhood),

Man’s relationship with God, Man’s role in this world, the superiority of Ishq over intellect. Javed Nama, written in Persian, is considered as one of the best works of Iqbal and has been translated in many languages including English, Japanese, and German. At the end, Mrs Atiya Hai and Mrs Talat Qadeer Khan beautifully recited four poems of Iqbal with tarannum. The program, which was open to all without any charge, was attended by more than 60 people and was very much appreciated by everyone. Tea and snacks were served at the end of the program.

www.PakistanLink.com

COMMUNITY

P20 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014

n By C. Naseer Ahmad

warm “Assalamo Alaikum” greeted the visitors and then “Apni Kaymo nachin?” - how are you - the sweet words of Mohammad Siddiq kept ringing in the ears as the conversation of the staff in Bengali began flowing with the morning tea. Dhaka and Chittagong might be a thousand miles away from Lahori Gate of the old city but you can walk to Bangladesh territory in perhaps few hundred steps from Pakistan that exists in the Embassy on International Court in Washington. The morning tea becomes more delicious with a beautiful view of the Pakistan Embassy from the second floor of the Bangladesh Embassy. The relaxed atmosphere harkens back memories of days gone by when the people were united by humanity and common purpose. One realizes that the arc of history has bends in many directions and interests sometimes diverge but in the long run they converge. “Bangladesh Beckons” is a coffee table book that proved very useful for coordinating an international correspondents meeting at the Bangladesh Embassy recently. It is a very useful book for travelers and takes you

Attack on Peshawar Army Public School Condemned

Friendship in Bangladesh Beckons

through a wonderful journey through time and space. Readers will be able to appreciate the natural beauty of riverine Bangladesh and its six seasons. The Shimul-Polash flowers invite you to spring in Bangladesh and the golden luster. Enchanting pictures of the longest unbroken natural sandy beaches of Cox’s Bazar and coastal island of Bangladesh please still awakening eyes. You get the view of tea plucking in the tea gardens of Srimongol, which is known for hosting the largest tea

gardens in the world. Chittagong, located in picturesque hinterland of large forested hills and lakes, was a name heard often on Pakistan Radio. The serene beauty of Foy’s Lake in the hills of Chittagong is depicted well in the book which takes you through the lush green hills of Bandarban – a place considered ideal for trekking through this tribal area. The Sundarbans, designated as a UNESCO world Heritage Site – a refuge for wildlife like the graceful spotted deer, the majestic

royal Bengal tigers and it has the world’s largest mangrove forest. Numerous rivers and canals crisscross the Sundarbans. The section on the Islamic Architectural Heritage brings home the commonalities between Pakistani people and Bangladesh. The historic Sahit Gombuj (sixty domed mosque) built in 1459 in Bagerhat is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The Tara Mosjid (Star Mosque) in the old part of Dhaka has some breathtaking views as does the Shat Gombuj Mosjid (Seven Domed Mosque). The shrines of Hazrat Shah Jalal (RA) and Hazrat Shah Paran (RA) are among the most revered places. “Hazrat Shah Jalal (RA) is credited with the help extended to the Muslim army, which conquered Sylhet in 1303,” says the book. The historic Lalbagh Fort in Dhaka built by the Mughal Rulers is highlighted in the book and it is an inviting picture. Just as inviting was the warm reception by H.E. the Ambassador of Bangladesh to the USA Mr Mohammad Ziauddin. He spoke at a special gathering of more than 50 representatives from the Press including Washington Post, BBC, Associated Press, Voice of America as well as members and leadership of National Press Club in Washington.

Senator Tony Mendoza Takes Community Oath of Office

Los Angeles, CA: “Council of Paki-

stan American Affairs condemns in the strongest possible terms the horrific attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, Pakistan,” says a COPAA message. It adds: Uniformed militants attacked a school, killing at least 126 people and taking hostages on Tuesday, an official said - an atrocity condemned by the White House as “heinous” and “horrific.” “The gunmen entered class by class and shot some kids one by one,” a student who was in the school at the time told local media. Provincial official Bahramand Khan said at least 126 people were killed and 122 injured. More than 100 of the dead were school children, he added. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault, which appeared to be targeting the children of senior military officials. Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims, their families, and loved ones. Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai Washington, DC: These cowardly contemptible murders of 141 people, including 132 children, mostly under 16, in Peshawar, Pakistan are condemnable no matter what the motivation of the terrorists. This massacres is unmitigated evil, an earmark of barbarism contemptuous of civilization. We must understand that terrorism is never acceptable no matter how seemingly urgent the political objective or how evil the opposition. Terrorism at anytime, anyplace, and by anyone can never be and must not be tolerated in a civilized society. Terrorism invariably corrupts the culprits and the common human rights of mankind. Terrorists must recognize that a nation’s sovereignty gained by terrorism is not worth having. And a life that indulges terrorism is not worth living. That must be our shining creed for today, tomorrow, and forever. We share President Obama’s CONDEMNATION, P29

LA Consulate General to Organize Consular Camps in Northern California and Seattle he Consulate General of Pakistan, Los Angeles is organizing a Consular Camp on Sunday December 21, 2014 in Northern California. The Consul General and Consul/Head of Chancery would attend the Camp to interact with the community and to facilitate them.

Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles May-

or Eric Garcetti administered the community oath of office to Senator Tony Mendoza on Saturday at the Norwalk City Hall Civic Lawn. The ceremony featured community leaders and local dignitaries.Senator Mendoza was elected as Senator for the newly-drawn 32nd Senate District on November 4, 2014. “I was honored to administer the oath of office to my friend Tony Mendoza at his community oath of office event on Saturday in Norwalk. I look forward to working with him to create jobs and strengthen neighborhoods across Southern California,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. “It was an honor to have Mayor Garcetti administer my oath of office. I am humbled to be elected by the voters of the new 32nd Senate District,” said Senator Tony Mendoza. “I will work hard for my constituents and the State of California. There is a lot to do, but I am ready for the challenge.” Tony Mendoza, a Los Angeles native and former school teacher was elected on November 4, 2014 to represent the 1.1 million residents of the newly-drawn 32nd Senate District. Senator Mendoza previously served in the State Assembly from 2006 to 2012 representing the 56th District. Senator Mendoza grew up in South Central Los Angeles. He is the first in his family of nine children to graduate from college. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree from California State University, Long Beach and his teaching credential at

California State University, Los Angeles. He also obtained his Executive Masters in Leadership from the University of Southern California. For more than 10 years, Mendoza taught elementary school in East Los Angeles. In 1997, he was elected to the Artesia City Council, becoming the first Latino councilmember. A year later, he became the youngest to serve as Artesia’s mayor at the age of 26. Mendoza served three successful terms on the Artesia City Council before running for the State Assembly in 2006. While serving in the State Assembly, he authored significant legislation signed into law: Under AB 97, California became the first state in the nation to ban the use of Trans Fats in food preparation in all restaurants; AB 1291 allows judges to sentence the parents of children with first-time gang offenses to anti-

www.PakistanLink.com

gang parenting education classes; and AB 22 prohibits the use of consumer credit reports in the hiring process. Senator Mendoza lives in Artesia with his wife, Leticia, their three daughters and son. The 32nd Senate District includes the cities and communities of Artesia, Bellflower, Buena Park, Cerritos, Commerce, Downey, Hacienda Heights, Hawaiian Gardens, La Habra Heights, La Mirada, Lakewood, Los Nietos, Montebello, Norwalk, Pico Rivera, Rose Hills, Santa Fe Springs, South Whittier and Whittier. Senator Tony Mendoza, 43, a Los Angeles native and former elementary school teacher in East Los Angeles, represents the 32nd Senate District in Los Angeles County. For more information about Senator Mendoza visit his website or follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

The Camp aims at providing Consular Services, including issuance of Pakistani visas, attestation of Power of Attorneys and other documents, receiving NICOP applications and processing cases of registration of US-born children of Pakistani origin. The Camp is being established with the active support of the Pakistani-American Community with a view to facilitating the PakistaniAmerican community of Northern California. Venue: Mehran Restaurant - 5774 Mowry School Road, Balentine Dr & Cedar Blvd., Newark, Telephone – 510 668 1111, Time of Service: 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Community Members/Organizations desirous of volunteering to assist at the Consular Camp may contact the Consulate General by December 15, 2014 at the following email: Consularassistant@pakconsulatela.org Seattle: The Consulate General of Pakistan, Los Angeles is also organizing a Consular Camp at Seattle, Washington on February 15, 2015. Venue: 4723 University Way N.E., Seattle, Wa-98105, Tel: 206527-3579, Time of Service: 10:00 A.M. to 3.30 P.M. For any information and coordination please contact Munir Rizvi Tel: 206-356-0870; Email: m.rizvi@comcast.net. Community members/organizations desirous of volunteering to assist at the Consular Camp may contact the Consulate General by February 10, 2014 at the following email: Consularassistant@pakconsulatela.org

COMMUNITY

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P21

SF Bay Area Community Leader Tashie Zaheer Honored

Many speakers recalled their first encounter with Tashie and how his help and guidance led to success in their life and excellence in profession. And how he inspired the people. John Quincy Adams, the 8th US President once said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader”

n By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

he South Asian community held a colorful cultural event on December 5, 2014 to honor the services of Tashie Zaheer, a distinguished and prominent community leader. The event, held at the Chandni Restaurant Fremont/Newark, attracted a large crowd of Tashie’ friends and wellwishers, from far and near. The multi-colored program included a thrilling performance by an acclaimed Kathak dancer Farah Yasmeen Shaikh and musical renditions by prominent Bay Area singers. A host of speakers paid rich tributes to Tashie’s services to the community in various fields. His most visible community service seems to be the Urdu Academy of North America’s regular monthly literary sessions at the Chandni Restaurant which are attended by 60 to 100 people but the speakers unveiled his other leadership qualities. The speakers included Dr Agha Seed, President of American Muslim Alliance; Corelia Camacho (CEO Tap Reality), Dena Lawless (Strategy Business Consultant), Imran Jaffar

(CEO Total Wealth Solution), and Summan Dhamija (banker). Other speakers were: Ali Hasan Cemendtaur, Jafar Shah, Abdus Sattar Ghazali, Nagesh Avadhani, Khalid Rana, M. Naazir Khan, Falak Singh, Neelofer Khan and Amar Zaheer. Arshad Rashid was MC of the program. Many speakers recalled their first encounter with Tashie and how his help and guidance led to success in their life and excellence in profession. And how he inspired the people. John Quincy Adams, the 8th US President once said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” For Brian Moran, leadership consultant, at least four traits are required for a leadership role: Character, Credibility, Integrity and Vision. Perhaps Tashie has all these qualities that attracted a large crowd of his admirers and got rich tribute from the speakers hailing from different walks of life. His wife, Naheed Zaheer, ended the string of speakers with her reflections on their 39-year relationship. “To me, Tashie’s life is much like his poetry. He is a humanitarian and his respect for human relations, ad-

hering to traditions and values, and his deep compassion for people, is a gift, a value deeply ingrained in him,” she said adding, Tashie has this gift of spreading love and peace around him; he has this innate ability and a deep desire to console the hurt souls. Recently, Professor Abdul Jabbar Sahib introduced Tashie as a “Community Healer,” at the Kamran Educational Foundation fund raiser. Musical Renditions: Tashie Zaheer is the founding President of the Urdu Academy of North America. He is a well-known poet with one published Diwaan (anthology of poetry) Shaam Kii Ahat. The musical renditions of the event were dedicated to his poetry singing. Among those who presented Tashie’s popular ghazals were: Syed Sarwat, Tina Mann, Talat Khan, Nagesh Avadhany, Atiya Hai and Almas Shabwani. Interestingly Tashie had composed musical tunes for his ghazals. Ali Shahab Uddin on keyboard and the young Mr Singh on tabla provided superb support to the singers. Vijey was on the sound system. Earlier Khalid Rana, the spirit behind the colorful and vibrant program, welcomed the guests on

www.PakistanLink.com

behalf of the Bay Area South Asian Community. A plaque was presented to Tashie Zaheer on behalf of the Community to acknowledge his services. The Bay Area Cricket Alliance (BACA) also presented a plaque. Abrar Ahmed, Iftekhar Khan and Yasir Farooqui of the BACA presented the plaque. Tashie Zaheer, in his concluding remarks, thanked all the guests for sparing some of their precious time to grace the occasion. He particularly thanked Syed Sarwat, the owner of Chandni Restaurant, and Muzna Sarwat for their services to the community and taking personal interest in this event. He also thanked Sameera Sarwat who arranged the beautiful decoration of the stage. Tashie Zaheer also thanked Amjad Noorani and Najma Noorani for arranging the fascinating Kathak dance of their beloved daughter Farah. He also thanked Farah to perform despite her clashing commitment. The program, which began at around 8.00 pm, continued till 1.45 am. Kathak dance: Kathak dancer-choreographer Farah Yasmeen Shaikh, stole the show with her

breathtaking performance. She transported her audience to the 16th century Mughal India with her performance of “The Twentieth Wife,” the acclaimed novel by Indian American writer Indu Sundaresan. Fara’s 45-minute Kathak rendition brought to life the epic story of Mehrunnisa, famously known as Noor Jahan, the wife of India’s Mughal emperor Jahangir. While playing several characters, both masculine and feminine, Farah transformed herself into the embodiment of the struggles and triumphs Mehrunnisa faced during her life, before she became the Mughal Empress of India. The dancer was accompanied by Salar Nader on tabla, Ben Kunin on sarod and Pankaj Mishra on sarangi. Based in the Bay Area, Farah is one of the best-known soloists in the Kathak tradition, which has an ancient and rich history of storytelling through dance.She spent nearly two decades training under her guru, the renowned Pandit Chitresh Das. In 1998 she joined the Chitresh Das Dance Company and toured internationally. Later, she began her current successful career as a soloist. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her exceptional performances.

COMMENTARY

P22 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014 n By Kevin Sullivan Chicago: Mohammed Hamzah Khan, 19, rose before dawn on Oct. 4 to pray with his father and 16-year-old brother at their neighborhood mosque in a Chicago suburb. When they returned home just before 6 a.m., the father went back to bed and the Khan teens secretly launched a plan they had been hatching for months: to abandon their family and country and travel to Syria to join the Islamic State. While his parents slept, Khan gathered three newly issued US passports and $2,600 worth of airline tickets to Turkey that he had gotten for himself, his brother and their 17-year-old sister. The three teens slipped out of the house, called a taxi and rode to O’Hare International Airport. Khan was due at work at 6:30 a.m. at a local home-supply store, so he knew his parents wouldn’t miss him when they woke up. The two younger siblings bunched up comforters under their sheets to make it look like they were asleep in their beds. Their plan was to fly to Istanbul, then drive into Syria to live in the Islamic homeland, or caliphate, established by the Islamic State, the militant group that has massacred civilians in Iraq and Syria and beheaded Western journalists and aid workers. The Khan teens, U.S.-born children of Indian immigrants, each left letters for their parents explaining their motives. “An Islamic State has been established and it is thus obligatory upon every able-bodied male and female to migrate there,” Khan wrote. “Muslims have been crushed for too long. This nation is openly against Islam and Muslims. I do not want my progeny to be raised in a filthy environment like this.” His sister wrote: “Death is inevitable, and all of the times we enjoyed will not matter as we lay on our death beds. Death is an appointment, and we cannot delay or postpone, and what we did to prepare for our death is what will matter.” In their letters, all three teens, who had grown up playing basketball and watching “Dragon Tales” and “Batman,” told their parents how much they loved them and asked them to join them in Syria, but made it clear they would probably never see them again, except in the afterlife. They begged them not to call the police. In the afternoon, FBI agents knocked on the Khans’ front door, armed with a search warrant. “For what?” asked the teens’ shocked father, Shafi Khan. “Your kids have been detained at the airport, trying to go to Turkey,” an agent said. “We were stunned,” said Zarine Khan, their mother. “More like frozen. We were just frozen.” Slick propaganda The Khan teens are part of a growing number of young Americans who are joining or attempting to travel to Syria or Iraq to join the Islamic State. This year alone, officials have detained at least 15 U.S. citizens - nine of them female - who were trying to travel to Syria to join the militants. Almost all of them were Muslims in their teens or early 20s, and almost all were arrested at airports waiting to board flights. A senior U.S. official said the government anticipates more arrests. Authorities are closely monitoring Twitter, Facebook and other social media networks, where recruiters from the Islamic State aggressively target youths as young as 14. “Their propaganda is unusually slick. They are broadcasting their poison in something like 23 languages,” FBI Director James B. Comey said in arecent speech, adding that the terrorist group is trying to attract “both fighters and people who would be the spouses to their warped world.” When the Khan teens reached the airport, FBI officials were waiting for them. A U.S. law enforcement official said authorities had been monitoring the communications of at least one of the teens, although the FBI has not disclosed how they initially became aware of them. Hamzah Khan has been charged with providing material support to a designated terrorist

Three American Teens, Recruited Online, Are Caught Trying to Join the Islamic State organization and faces up to 15 years in prison. At a federal court hearing last month, a judge ordered him held without bail, calling him a flight risk and a danger to the community. His two siblings, minors whose names have not been made public, were released to their parents but are under investigation and could face charges. The Justice Department is not eager to prosecute juveniles, but it will do so when they are so radicalized that they pose a potential threat, a senior U.S. official said. “There are not a lot of good options,” the official said. “You will see more young and juvenile cases in the future.” In court last month, Assistant U.S. Attorney R. Matthew Hiller said Khan and his two siblings “believe they are religiously obliged to support violent jihad.” “This was not a spur-of-the-moment trip but rather a carefully calculated plan to abandon their family, to abandon their community, and abandon their country and join a foreign terrorist organization,” Hiller told the judge. He said Hamzah Khan was “attempting to join an organization that has called for attacks against the United States and has already killed U.S. citizens and is dedicated to genocide.” But Khan’s lawyer, Thomas Anthony Durkin, told the judge that the government was prosecuting Khan for what amounted to the “thought crime” of rejecting America and supporting the establishment of an Islamic homeland. He said the Khan teens wanted to go live in that homeland but not become fighters, a desire that he said was naive and misguided but not criminal. Durkin cited a speech President Obama gave in September at the United Nations, where he said the Islamic State’s “propaganda has coerced young people to travel abroad to fight their wars and turned young people full of potential into suicide bombers. We must offer an alternative vision.” “This is the alternative vision we’re getting today: jail,” Durkin told the judge. “If we want to solve this problem, we are not going to solve it by threatening to lock people up forever. We have to find a solution, because these are American children. They are not barbarians. They are our children.” ‘Those are not our teachings’ Khan’s parents, in an interview at Durkin’s Chicago law office one recent evening, said they were bewildered by what their children tried to do. “What they wrote in those letters is not from us,” Zarine Khan said, her voice rising behind a colorful veil that covered her face, except for her eyes. “Those are not our teachings. That’s not what we believe in. This didn’t even come from our family, friends, neighbors - nobody.” “We tried to be the best parents we could,” she said. “That’s all I can say - we tried our best. And they are good kids. This thing came out of the blue. We are still trying to figure it out.” Hamzah Khan grew up in a suburban American home with pretty shrubs out front and a basketball hoop in the back yard. He earned a Presidential Physical Fitness Award in the eighth grade and loved Naruto, the Japanese manga. He volunteered at his local mosque and represented Argentina in the National Model United Nations. He graduated from a local Islamic high school in 2013 and enrolled last year at Benedictine University, a Roman Catholic school about 10 miles from his home, where he studied engineering and computer science. Shafi Khan, who came to Chicago from India almost 30 years ago, and Zarine Khan, who followed her husband 20 years ago, said they consider themselves “average” Muslims, no more or less religious than any of their friends and neighbors in Bolingbrook, Ill., a suburb of about 73,000 people southwest of Chicago. They try to pray five times a day but said they often don’t. Shafi Khan wears a bushy beard and a white knit skullcap, which he said is an attempt to follow the example of the prophet

Muhammad. Zarine Khan covers her head and most of her face, which she considers a sign of modesty, not extreme piety. Like millions of American Muslims, the Khans, who are both U.S. citizens, said they have raised their children to love their country and their religion. Asked if he felt more Muslim or American, Shafi Khan said, “Both.” Shafi Khan, 48, earned a degree in environmental science from Northeastern Illinois University and has worked for many years as an event planner for a humanitarian aid organization. Zarine Khan, 41, studied genetics and microbiology at an Indian university but gave it up to move to Chicago with her new husband. They have four children - the three who were arrested, plus a 3-year-old girl - and Zarine Khan has worked for many years as a teacher at a local Islamic school. The Khans tried to shield their children from unwanted influences. They had a TV when the children were younger, but they had no cable service. The TV was used solely for showing DVDs - mainly cartoons and educational JumpStart programs from the public library. When Hamzah Khan was about 8 years old, the family got rid of the TV, because by then they had a computer with Internet access, which the parents carefully monitored. The children were allowed to watch cartoons and read news online, but they were not allowed to browse the Internet by themselves. “We didn’t want to expose them to adult stuff,” Zarine Khan said. “We wanted to preserve their innocence. We wanted to channel their intelligence into their studies and to becoming good human beings.” The children studied at a local Islamic school, which offered a standard U.S. curriculum of English, math and science - but also classes on Islam.The Khans’ daughter, who turned 18 shortly after her arrest, was being home-schooled by her mother so she could graduate early from high school and begin studies to become a physician. All three Khan children also became Hafiz, which means they completely memorized the Koran in Arabic. Each went to Islamic school through the fourth grade, then spent the next 2 1/2 years immersed in all-day memorization classes, augmented by evening programs to keep up with basics such as English and math. The memorization process is common among Muslims and is not considered a sign of religious extremism, said Habeeb Quadri, who is principal of the Islamic school Hamzah Khan attended until the fourth grade and who frequently writes and lectures on Muslim youth. Zarine Khan said the family took many vacations together, driving to Niagara Falls and Connecticut. She said they shopped at WalMart and acted “like any other normal American family.” “We tried to have them grounded and exposed to everything,” Zarine Khan said. “We tried to give them good morals. But it was not just Islam, Islam, Islam. We tried to expose them to different ideas as well.” Omer Mozaffar, a Muslim community leader who teaches theology at Loyola University Chicago and the University of Chicago, said many Muslim families appear to have sheltered their children from the culture around them. He said that since the 1991 Persian Gulf War and especially since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, some Muslims have felt “under siege” in the U.S. communities where they live. “There’s a defensiveness that compels parents to pull their kids out of everything,” Mozaffar said. “A lot of parents feel overwhelmed and don’t know what to do, so they try to isolate their children.” The process is often called “cocooning” - shielding children from as much American culture as possible by banning TV, the Internet and newspapers and sending them to Islamic schools. “Parents send them less for the Islamic tutelage and more for the sense of protecting them,” Mozaffar said. “They think ‘American’ equals ‘immoral,’ and there’s a common belief that if it’s more strict, it’s more pious. This is

www.PakistanLink.com

something I have to preach against all the time.” The result is often that American Muslim children find themselves caught between two worlds. They are American, but they feel their parents and their religious leaders trying to steer them away from American culture. That can leave them vulnerable to those who promise something better, a place where they are celebrated for their religion. And, recently, that message has often come in the form of the network of anonymous, persuasive recruiters on social media who lure youth to join the Islamic State. Quadri calls them “Sheik Google.” Letters full of rhetoric: According to Shafi and Zarine Khan and court documents, the Khan children’s “Sheik Google” appears to have been a man with the nom du guerre Abu Qa’qa, whom they met on Twitter. Hamzah Khan and his sister both had Twitter accounts, which they accessed on their cellphones because their parents closely controlled their Internet use on their home computer. In court, Hiller, the prosecutor, said the Khan teens intended to meet with Abu Qa’qa when they arrived in Turkey and then travel with him to Syria. Notes found by FBI agents searching the Khan house suggested the teens were ultimately headed for Raqqah, an Islamic State stronghold in Syria. Khan’s sister went by the Twitter name “Umm Bara” and signed her tweets with@ deathisvnear. Prosecutors said that in May, she tweeted about watching an hour-long Islamic State propaganda video called “Saleel Sawarim,” which features photos and videos of beheadings and other gruesome violence. Hiller told the judge that apparently after watching the video, she tweeted that she had reached “The end of Saleel Sawarim,” followed by emoticons of a heart and a smiley face. Hiller described her reaction to the video as “twisted delight,” which he presented as evidence that the Khan teens supported the Islamic State’s violence and intended to participate in it. Durkin said it was “inflammatory nonsense to say somehow, because somebody downloaded that video, that somehow they’re dangerous to the community.” He said the young woman wrote that her role in the caliphate would probably be to marry a fighter, not become one herself. The letters the three teens left behind were filled with rhetoric their parents said was so out of character it could only have come from Islamic State recruiters. “I am obliged to pay taxes to the [U.S.] government,” Hamzah Khan wrote. “This in turn will be used automatically to kill my Muslim brothers and sisters. I simply cannot sit here and let my brothers and sisters get killed, with my own hard-earned money. I cannot live under a law in which I’m afraid to speak my beliefs. I want to be ruled by the Sharia [Islamic law]. Me living in comfort with my family while my other family are getting killed is plain selfish.” He continued: “We are all witness that the western societies are getting more immoral day by day. I extend an invitation to my family to join me in the Islamic States. True, it is getting bombed, but let us not forget that we didn’t come to this world for comfort.” Sitting in Durkin’s office while their two younger teens worked on homework in the other room, Shafi and Zarine Khan said they are struggling to understand how their children could write such things. Durkin would not permit interviews with the younger siblings. The Khans knew that their kids were on Twitter and Kik, a messaging service, but they said they didn’t know they were communicating with strangers overseas. The evening before the teens tried to fly away forever, Zarine Khan said, she and her daughter sat together putting henna dye on each other in celebration of the upcoming Eid al-Adha holiday. “I think they were completely brainwashed by whatever online things they were reading,” she said. “I wouldn’t want any parent to go through what we are going through; it’s a nightmare. We just thank God that our kids are with us here, and not over there.” Adam Goldman in Washington contributed to this report. - Courtesy Washington Post

COMMENTARY

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P23

Defeating ISIS

n By Nayyer Ali MD

ince its lightning takeover of northwestern Iraq last summer, ISIS has seen its military situation stall. It wants to be seen as a legitimate Islamic state, but it remains a band of Sunni fighters that have managed to take control of a large stretch of Syria and Iraq, but have not been able to establish a real state, and have no prospect of doing so. Instead, the entire Arab Middle East and the Europeans and Americans view ISIS as a grave threat that must be neutralized. How will that come about though?

ISIS currently controls a stretch of land running from Aleppo in northwestern Syria to Mosul in northern Iraq and reaching south to the vicinity of Baghdad. It basically overlays the Sunni regions of both countries. But the dynamics are quite different. In Iraq, the Sunnis are 20% of the population, and have no chance of taking over the state, while in Syria they are 70% of the population and are fighting to overthrow the Alawite-based regime of Bashar Assad. The Syrian Sunnis are split into rival groups and factions, with ISIS made up of the most extreme religious fanatics who also happen to be rather effective on the battlefield taking the lead position for now. So how will ISIS be beaten back? It is actually two connected problems: how to beat ISIS in Iraq, and how to defeat it in Syria. Of the two, Iraq is much easier. When ISIS seized northwestern Iraq in the summer, it did so by exposing the hollowness of the official Iraqi army, built at great expense by the US, but shown to be a sham force that was incapable of actual fighting and which rapidly melted away. Its generals were mainly engaged in corruption, and many of its soldiers had no interest

n By Zubeida Mustafa

ast week, the Society for the Advance¬ment of Education launched its report on English-language learning in Sindh schools. The ambiguity that marks parents’ and educators’ understanding of the role of language — especially English — in school education was evident on this occasion.

SAHE’s executive director, Abbas Rashid, however, was spot on when he identified his concerns: does the early introduction of Eng¬lish in school help or hinder learning? What happens to the learning of English itself? A common misconception in Pakistan is that those who speak of teaching children in their mother tongue are opposed to English. That is not true. In my opinion, children must learn English if their education is to be complete. But I also believe that learning English does not mean that they must be taught all the subjects they are required to study through the medium of English. Expecting children to start their schooling in English — that too poor English — amounts to insulting their intelligence. The learning process in children begins even before they are enrolled in school. From infancy till the age of two, children acquire proficiency in their home language and use it to think and communicate. These little philosophers have a mind of their own albeit the language they use is not English in most cases — not in Pakistan. A child learns best if she is taught in her mother tongue: Yet educators are pleading for a switchover

other than getting a steady paycheck. In fact, over 50,000 soldiers were phantoms, collecting checks pocketed by their commanders but not actually existing in real life. What saved the rest of Iraq was that the official army was not the only fighting force. In the north, the regional Kurdish government had

combination, of US air power, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Shia militia, and some regular Iraqi army, is too strong for ISIS to resist. It will be gradually worn down over the next few months, and once dislodged from Mosul, will collapse within Iraq. The key question will be what the Iraqi government makes of their vic-

This combination, of US air power, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Shia militia, and some regular Iraqi army, is too strong for ISIS to resist. It will be gradually worn down over the next few months its own troops, called Peshmerga, that stopped ISIS from advancing, and to the south, the Shia recreated militias that were willing to fight and defend Shia areas from ISIS. Since then, Obama has sent several thousand advisors back to Iraq to help fight ISIS and reorganize the army. In addition, Obama has unleashed the US Air Force and drone strikes on ISIS targets. This

tory. A vengeful, vindictive Shia government in Iraq will simply replicate the errors of the last Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki in alienating the Iraqi Sunnis. They will see the defeat of ISIS not as liberation but as occupation by Kurds and Shia. This is a political problem that the Iraqis, particularly the Iraqi Shia leadership, needs to seriously address and solve. The Sunnis must

Pitfalls of English

to English when schooling begins. In effect, the message conveyed to the child is: ‘Forget what you know to start again — in English. Rote learn if need be.’ As Abbas Rashid pointed out, we have to determine the optimal time to introduce English and other

language acquisition. A century ago, Dr Maria Montessori, Italy’s first female physician, opened a school in a poor Rome neighborhood. She was assigned the task of teaching ‘backward’ children and keeping them off the streets when their parents were at work. She developed her unique

be treated fairly for Iraq to move forward as a unified country. In Syria, ISIS is a much tougher nut to crack. The US has three goals it wants to pursue in Syria: first to defeat ISIS, second to support the Sunni rebellion against Assad, and third to remove Assad from power. These goals are shared by the Saudis and Turks, but they both want the US to focus more on defeating Assad than ISIS. The other major players in Syria, Iran and Russia, who support Assad, also want ISIS defeated, but they do not want Assad to lose. So how to reconcile these conflicting agendas? So far, Obama has limited US air strikes in Syria to ISIS targets, but has avoided attacking Assad’s forces. Turkey and Saudi Arabia want the US to use airstrikes against Assad. Obama has committed to training and arming Syrian rebels that are opposed to both Assad and ISIS, but these are smaller groups with little battlefield presence currently. It is not clear if defeating ISIS in Syria will have the net effect of giving Assad victory in the Syrian civil war, an outcome the US does not want. One option would be to go over Assad’s head and negotiate directly with Russia and Iran. A new settlement in Syria that is agreeable to all parties must be fashioned. It would have to include the defeat of ISIS, a goal all agree on, a cease-fire and end to the Syrian Civil War, and an end to the rule of Bashar Assad. The regime as a whole can stay intact, but Assad personally would resign and be replaced by a figure more acceptable to all. The only problem with this is that any resolution that creates a democratic Syria will result in a Sunni takeover, as they are the majority, and if it does not create a path to democracy but just perpetuates the Assad regime without Assad personally, what chance is there of the Syrian Sunni community living with that in the long run? For now, the Turks and Saudis are pressuring Obama to directly strike Assad, but Obama remains cautious and careful in his approach. There are no good choices in Syria.

grated in the child’s cognitive development and is basic to the communication that takes place among children and between them and adults. In The Absorbent Mind, she describes what she terms the “language mechanism” comprising nerve cen-

It is time our educators educated themselves in the basics of language acquisition. A century ago, Dr Maria Montessori, Italy’s first female physician, opened a school in a poor Rome neighborhood. She was assigned the task of teaching ‘backward’ children and keeping them off the streets when their parents were at work. She developed her unique method of educating the young child and her students did better than the ‘normal’ children of the rich languages after education has begun in the mother tongue. If there are parents who do not understand this basic fact, it means not enough has been done to educate them on the issue. Leaving them in the dark and lowering standards is a grave disservice to them. It is time our educators educated themselves in the basics of

method of educating the young child and her students did better than the ‘normal’ children of the rich. According to Montessori “children placed in an environment where activities were designed to support their natural development had the power to educate themselves”. Montessori placed immense emphasis on language that is inte-

www.PakistanLink.com

ters in the brain. The hearing center picks up the sound of human speech from the environment to form a stratum of sounds in the subconscious, which feed the center for speech. That should explain why the language of the environment is so crucial to a child’s mental growth. Generally this language is the mother tongue as communities tend

to cluster together. Montessori terms the child’s acquisition of language as a natural miracle complete by the time she is two years. If these views were outdated — which is unlikely as human biology has not changed in the history of evolution of the last century — we would not have Prof Noam Chomsky, the renowned linguist, reaffirming Montessori’s theory in a video interview posted on the Eqbal Ahmed Centre for Public Education website. Prof Chomsky is emphatic about a child being taught in her own language. How little we know about the language acquisition process is obvious from our language in education policies. The problem is that ours is not a child-centric society. The focus in education is at the adolescent level when children are about to leave school. It is forgotten that what goes into children’s primary school experience determines their learning skills in adulthood. Yet our educationists insist that English should be the medium of instruction from the start. Punjab tried this experiment in 2013 and had to rescind its decision with the SAHE report confirming its failure. Now KP has plunged into the same foolish experiment. Hopefully SAHE will venture into that province too. Worse still, the language factor entrenches the class divide which blights our society. As the ‘language of power’ — to use Pakistan’s leading linguist Dr Tariq Rahman’s words — English serves to exclude the underprivileged from the circle of privilege. It determines social attitudes and limits economic opportunities. This phenomenon is replicated at the international level where English is pushed to the detriment of the poor. Prof Chomsky, who champions the case of the underdog, would be able to confirm that.

COMMENTARY

P24 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014

The Tragedy of Salim Raza

n By Dr Asif Javed

Williamsport, PA

he other day, this writer came across a piece in Pakistan Link about the Lollywood Tragedies. The article had some information about the famous actors, Sultan Rahi, Waheed Murad and Nanha among others, who died relatively young. While reading that article, I started to reminisce about Salim Raza who was one of the most popular playback singers in the 60’s when I was growing up.

Salim Raza, whose voice had an uncanny resemblance to that of Talat Mahmood, then suddenly vanished from Pakistan. I recall that my late brother had once heard Salim Raza in an interview on Radio Pakistan; Salim Raza said that he was fed up with the film industry and that he was considering going abroad. Despite my intense curiosity at the time, I was not able to figure out exactly what drove him away from Pakistan. And then, I got busy with life and almost forgot about him; that is until late Qatil Shifai’s autobiography solved this mystery for me. For the music lovers who have been wondering about this over the years, herein lies the answer: In the early fifties, while struggling to be noticed by music directors, Salim Raza had sought help from Qatil Shifai who was then the leading poet in the Lahore film industry. Qatil introduced Salim Raza to Madam Noor Jahan and also wrote favorable remarks about him in Adakar, a popular weekly film magazine of its day that Qatil Shifai used to edit. Salim Raza had a good voice, was trained in classical music and became popular in a short time. And then, sometime in the 70’s, he left Pakistan for good. So what drove him away? I tried to google Salim Raza the other day and saw the same old story written all over: Salim Raza could not compete with new singers; he could not adjust to the new recording techniques; his voice was not suited to the new trends in music and stuff like that. But the real reason was something else. It turns out that Salim Raza who hailed from Amratsar, was not a Muslim: he was of Christian faith. His real name was Noel Dias. He moved to Pakistan after Partition. In Pakistan, his religion created no difficulty for him in his chosen profession of playback singing until he crossed the line. Qatil reports that Salim Raza had developed a relationship with Kausar Perveen, a female playback singer of the time. Kausar Perveen was a Muslim. Salim Raza’s Christian faith then suddenly became a liability for him. Most of the music directors were Muslim and took offense at the Christian singer who was trying to woo a Muslim woman. They started to boycott Salim Raza. “I have hardly any work,” he told Qatil Shifai who found him back at the radio station one day. Almost overnight, one of the most popular singers became a persona non grata in the film industry. In desperation, Salim Raza turned back to

n By Nausheen Zaidi

Chandler, Arizona

nvision this scene:

A young girl, trembling with uncertainty, carries a tray of chai into the living room and places it gently on the coffee table. Her mother croons over what a delightful and domesticated child she has raised. The girl proceeds to pour the tea into small porcelain cups, adding just the right amount of sugar and milk, while her crinkled chiffon dupatta frames her delicate features like a halo. There is a sudden hush as she passes her first cup to a man sitting on the chair right opposite her mother. The man is at least ten years older, confident, perhaps even cocky, as he watches the girl with his penetrating eyes. The auntie sitting next to him smiles and nods her approval. This one may do. Is this a scene from a Bollywood soap opera? Yes and no. The ancient art of arranged marriage is not dead, by any means. Update the styles and the background — so instead of a crinkled chiffon dupatta, the girl may be wearing a GAP shirt and jeans — but this scenario is still one that is embraced and dreaded by numerous families of South Asian girls in the US. What is the secret to a good marriage? Any full-fledged American will tell you that the answer is love and

Radio Pakistan. But the die had been cast: Salim Raza knew full well that he had no future in the film industry. Kausar Perveen in the meantime, was coaxed into marriage with music director Akhtar Hussain Akhian and resurrected her career but not Salim Raza. It must be during this lean

It turned out that Salim Raza who hailed from Amratsar, was not a Muslim: he was of Christian faith. His real name was Noel Dias. He moved to Pakistan after Partition. In Pakistan, his religion created no difficulty for him in his chosen profession of playback singing until he crossed the line patch that my brother, who was a fan of Salim Raza, heard the above mentioned statement in that interview. Salim Raza was forced out of his profession and livelihood in Pakistan, a

country founded by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a non-practicing Muslim who himself had married a Parsi’s daughter. Salim Raza moved to Vancouver in Canada. Sometime later, Qatil Shifai, while on a visit to Canada, met him. Salim Raza had not forgotten the favor that Qatil had done to him years earlier. He received his benefactor warmly and went out of the way to help Qatil and his fellow poets in Canada. Qatil was shocked to find Salim Raza in poor health: he had developed kidney failure by then and was already on dialysis. Despite poor health, he was trying to run a music school to survive financially. Soon afterwards, in 1983, Salim Raza died, thousands of miles away from Pakistan, almost forgotten and abandoned by the notoriously treacherous and cutthroat film industry. Understandably, he was a bitter man: his last years in this world were marred by poor health and financial problems. He was only fifty-one at the time of his death. And so it came to pass that the singer of Shah-e-Madina, Yasrab kay walee, arguably the most popular filmi naats of my generation, was almost hounded out of Jinnah’s Pakistan. The bigots who had forced him out of Jinnah’s Pakistan had perhaps forgotten the commitment given to the religious minorities by the founding father. In 1947, Jinnah had given them reassurance that they were free to practice their religion and go to their temples. Salim Raza was an unfortunate victim of the religious fanaticism that was always lurking under the surface that has since become a menace and a shame for our country. Salim Raza’s contemporary singer, Talat Mahmood, also had a sad and unexpected exit from Bollywood; the reasons were somewhat different. But that is a story for another time. (The writer is a physician in Williamsport, PA and may be reached at asifjaved@comcast.net) BUDAPEST FROM P8

computer as I entered the compound, saw me, hurriedly unlocked the door to the octagonal mausoleum and went back without uttering a word. The sarcophagus inside was draped with expensive coverings on which verses from the Qur’an were inscribed in golden letters and the walls were adorned with costly carpets and Turkish flags. When the Ottomans were forced out of Hungary by the combined Christian forces in 1686, most Turkish monuments were destroyed, but the tomb was not disturbed. The complex is owned by the Government of Turkey. I offered my Fateha and left. Apart from Baba Gul’s mausoleum, the other surviving relics of Ottoman-Muslim rule are the Turkish baths. Hungary is endowed with natural hot springs, with boiling hot water surging from the ground. The water has a high mineral content and is reputed to have therapeutic properties against illnesses. The Turkish Pashas founded many spas in their days and patronized them enthusiastically. Four of the baths, built in the 16th century with thermal pools still survive, are in use and are marvelous showpiece of Ottoman architecture.

A Day at the Marriage Market communication. So, how do you meet your future mate? That can be a bit trickier. Since most South Asian Muslim girls will probably not be searching for their future spouse at the local singles bar, the connections that are made through family and friends will most likely be a safer bet. But not fool proof. So, what are the requirements for the perfect wife? This, of course, depends on the families involved. Even though many of us would like to think that we have evolved beyond the search for the youngest, prettiest and fairest of them all, reality can bite. In an arranged marriage scenario, family reputation seems to be the key. Once research on both sides indicates that the family name is clear, the spotlight turns to the prospective bride-to-be. I will go out on a limb here and say that most South Asian parents in the US today will not want a bride that is thirteen years old — if for no other reason than the fear of societal and judicial repercussions. However, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year olds seem to work just fine for some families. We couldn’t pass up a good rishta. This, of course, propagates a new generation of young girls with little prospects of higher education and few marketable skills outside the home. At the other extreme, there are the families who pooh-pooh any thought of marriage for their daugh-

ters until they have graduated from college and established themselves in their chosen career. These girls study feverishly, take the MCATs, the LSATs, the GMATs, obtain numerous degrees and work in high-powered positions. They may be in their thirties, independent, prosperous, with many letters at the end of their names, yet little prospects of becoming a MRS. Since women in the world outnumber men, at the end of the day, we all seem to walk through the marriage market in one role or another and very few of us emerge unscathed. But of course, women are not the only ones that are dissected in this process. Taking the old adage, “A good man is hard to find,” imagine how much more difficult it can be when the field is narrowed even further by social factors such as education level, occupation, ethnic background, religion, and the greatest mystery of all, compatibility. A woman’s emergence in the marriage market comes at an earlier age than a man’s. This is purely economic. Men are still expected to be the main providers for the family and thus, their marketability increases with age and income level. No matter how many degrees a woman possesses or how much money she earns, she is still expected to be the “domestic engineer” in the family. This dichotomy crosses over the boundaries of cul-

www.PakistanLink.com

ture and perpetuates the image of the Supermom that women in today’s society try to attain on a daily basis with varying degrees of success. As unfair as it may seem, a South Asian woman’s marketability reaches a peak around the age of 25, whereas a South Asian man may still be a good catch in his forties. So, should parents of teenage girls jump at the first good rishta that comes along? Or should they teach their daughters to be independent and career-minded and leave marriage on the back burner? It’s a tough call and one that needs to be made at the individual family level. But there are some things we can all keep in mind as we trudge through the maze of family politics, shuffling through photos and bio-data to find that perfect match. Make a list of all the requirements that you want in your mate. Then list all the requirements that are important to your family. Now that you’ve created Superspouse, start crossing out the elements that are less important or outright unrealistic. Then circle the elements that are important, but still negotiable. Remember, at the end of the day, marriage is a contract. There will be compromises. It’s better to know within yourself where your flexibilities lie and which elements are non-negotiable. Look within your social circle. This may seem like a no-brainer. As South Asian parents, as soon as

a child is born, we start looking for his or her potential mate. How many times have two friends with children of opposite genders made plans to pair their children in holy matrimony at some in-descript time in the future? Of course, as soon as adolescence arrives, these same children are divided into gender-specific groups to avoid any possible interaction within their social environment for fear of impropriety. Muslim youth need to learn to interact respectfully with each other in an adult-monitored social context. This not only increases their chances of finding a compatible mate, but helps them understand the value of decency and izzat. If your own social circle does not provide enough leads, there are various websites and marriage brokers that specialize in bringing people together. Of course, this scenario requires a great deal of personal reflection and a heavy-duty flair for researching the background of potential mates that may live on opposite sides of the country or globe. So, where does love fit into all of this? I’m not as young as I used to be, and I’ve come to realize that the definition of love changes as we grow. An arranged marriage can be just as successful as a love marriage, or just as disastrous. The lasting kind of love is not made of the desperate fireworks that we see in the movies. It is the daily dose of support that we give each other in marriage. It is on this notion of companionship that the marriage market thrives today.

SPORTS SPORTS

DECEMBER PAKISTAN DECEMBER19, 19, 2014 2014 â&#x20AC;&#x201C;-PAKISTAN LINKLINK â&#x20AC;&#x201C; P25

Pakistan Finally Back on The Global Hockey Map

Former hockey stars, including Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) officials, praised the team's second-place finish at the tournament and hoped that the achievement is a step forward towards the revival of the national sport's lost glory.

NEW DELHI: Pakistan hockey's long-awaited resurgence may finally be realised as the Greenshirts clinched silver at the Champions Trophy after 16 years. Former hockey stars, including Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) officials, praised the team's secondplace finish at the tournament and hoped that the achievement is a step forward towards the revival of the national sport's lost glory. The Greenshirts had not faced a European side for 18 months, but reached the final after 16 years, having last done so in 1998 in Lahore. Muhammad Irfan, Muhammad Arsalan Qadir and captain Muhammad Imran were the topscorers for Pakistan; scoring four, three and two respectively. "For us, this is like a gold medal because it's been such a long time since we contested in the final of the

Champions Trophy and especially after we were out of international hockey for a long time," said Irfan. "Winning against India [in the semifinal] makes it even more special." Olympian and chief selector Islahuddin Siddiqui said a medal in the tournament was great news for the sport in the country. "It's a step forward for the team," Siddiqui told The Express Tribune. "They have shown that they have the ability to revive the glory of the past." However, Siddiqui also warned the team against complacency as the second-placed finish has increased the responsibilities on the team. "It is good progress but we shouldn't forget that other teams did a lot of experiments by including their young players," he added. "Our target is the 2016 Rio Olympics and we have a tough qualification round." PHF secretary Rana Mujahid

also termed the silver medal a huge achievement. "Pakistan lost the final against India at the Asian Games and finishing second at the tournament, which is a huge boost," said Mujahid. "This team consists of junior players, who came under pressure in the group matches but recovered well in the knockout stages, which shows the team's future is bright," he added. The head coach of the Pakistan Team, Olympian Shahnaz Sheikh, was also content with the results and added that he was happy to repeat the feat of 1998, when he also was the coach. "It was their best performance in recent years," Sheikh told The Express Tribune from India. "The best thing was that we adopted our old style of play, which is attacking hockey and our new plan - 9-11 worked well against India." J

Not Getting Carried Away: Waqar Looking for Further Improvement KARACHI: Head coach Waqar Younis has remained grounded despite Pakistan's emphatic 147-run win against New Zealand in the third ODI, stating that the team did well but there are several areas where improvement is still needed. Apart from Umar Akmal, all of Pakistan's batsmen performed and thrashed the inexperienced Kiwi bowling attack. It had seemed a more difficult proposition in the second ODI when Pakistan's batting unit was exposed against the short-pitched stuff - a problem which could be exploited by teams on the bouncy pitches of New Zealand and Australia in 2015 World Cup. Waqar said that they did not improve overnight against the shortpitched stuff but the team had a better plan of action going into the third match. "When you do well, your mistakes get covered but there are still problems in the team," said Waqar in his post-match comments. "It would

be wrong to say that we did a lot of work on the short-pitched stuff instantly. But we spoke about it and had a long meeting after the second ODI about how the New Zealand pacers have been bowling and that helped our batsmen." The former skipper added that the team management is trying to improve their options by turning a batsman into a part-time bowler and getting allrounder Muhammad Hafeez cleared before the mega event. He said that the likes of Asad Shafiq, Ahmed Shehzad and Haris Sohail have been asked to roll their arms over and Haris has been able to do a good job for the team so far. However, the former pacer admitted that Pakistan's bowling attack is not perfect at the moment. "Hafeez is a big loss and we've lost Saeed Ajmal as well so we are rebuilding. We are trying to develop some bowlers out of our batsmen," he added. J

Pakistan Cruise Into Kabaddi World Cup Semis

KARACHI: Pakistan men's team cruised into the semi-finals of the Kabaddi World Cup being held in India after a convincing 45-35 victory over Canada . According to the information made available here, skipper Shafiq Ahmed Chishti led from the front and made several successful raids for his team in the match in Patiala. Chishti was ably supported by team-mates Akmal Shahzad Dogar, Musharraf Javed Janjua, Irfan Mana and Ali Shan. Victory was the team's third in a row in pool 'B' of the event with their game against Sweden, which was washed out recently, to be played on Tuesday in Jalalabad. Pakistan face Argentina in their last pool match in Amritsar. The women's team had already booked their place in the semis. According to the schedule, both men's and women's semi-finals will be played recently. J

Ahmed Shehzad, Shahid Afridi Quell New Zealand SHARJAH: The personality of Pakistan's batting line-up is a gripping study and the chapter that was added in Sharjah could well be a blueprint of how to build an ODI innings. The primary ingredient was a firm century from Ahmed Shehzad and it was supplemented by a strokefilled fifty from stand-in captain Shahid Afridi as Pakistan rocketed to 364 for 7 - their third-highest total in 50-over cricket and the highest in Sharjah in 218 matches. New Zealand slipped and slid and finally succumbed for 217, beaten with almost 12 overs left. Pakistan's batsmen were intent on warding off those loose shots that frustrate them and their fans so badly. There was a determined effort to collect singles, which hindered the bowlers' chances of building pressure. Each of the first three partnerships added more than 50 runs to the score with Shehzad being the common denominator. But whatever Pakistan do, there just has to be a see-sawing of fortunes. Birthday boy Matt Henry took out Shehzad for 113 and Asad Shafiq the very next ball with the score on 210 in the 38th over, but Pakistan managed to circumvent those setbacks thanks to an enterprising partnership between Afridi and Haris Sohail. They added 89 runs in 46 balls and on that steam Pakistan

Shahid Afridi congratulates Ahmed Shehzad on the latter's hundred, Pakistan v New Zealand, 3rd ODI, Sharjah.

www.PakistanLink.com www.Pakistanlink.com

made 125 runs in the last 10 overs. The only period of play when New Zealand managed to threaten the target was when Ross Taylor and Kane Williamson were together. Both batsmen seemed highly conscious of not letting scoreboard pressure dictate their strokeplay and they trusted their strength - Taylor his power and Williamson his footwork - to collect their runs. But the end of their union was rather symbolic of how things had been for New Zealand all day. Taylor, who had showed immense skill cutting from the stumps, was bowled while attempted to do so by an Afridi slider. Tom Latham, too, added to the imagery when his beloved slog sweep found deep square leg to gift Shehzad his first ODI wicket. Pakistan gambled with Sohail's part-time left-arm spin and got three wickets, including Williamson. No batsman could reach fifty. No partnership could reach fifty. New Zealand had been run over by a stampede in the first innings and just could not recover. Afridi could not hide his smile as it became apparent that victory was only a matter of time. He barely put a foot wrong, right from the toss which he won and watched his batsmen take full advantage. Having been ruffled by pace previously in the series, Pakistan's strategy was to take on the short ball and

an easy-paced pitched helped their endeavor. They also did not need to deal with Adam Milne, the fastest of New Zealand's bowlers and also one of the more injury-prone, rested. Every batsman was keen to pull and Shehzad managed to find the middle of bat even off front foot. Midwicket was his most productive area and the pull, his most productive shot. Shehzad's poise at the crease was striking, so much that at times he was able to hit a selection of his 14 boundaries without much footwork. The four he drilled through point to reach his fifty was set up by shifting his weight onto a rather stationary back foot. He showed off his balance when he ran down the pitch as well, and on one such occasion he heaved a length ball clean out of the stadium in the 20th over. Nathan McCullum, who was brought in place of Daniel Vettori, could only watch. His constant search for singles he found 41 of them - facilitated a strike rate just under a-run-a-ball. At times, he wanted a single where there wasn't one and did have a couple of run-out scares. On other occasions he would question his partner when they refused. It almost seemed like he would not accept anything less than a century, judging by how he stole two runs to a dab that barely went past the 30-yard circle at midwicket to move to 99. J

COMMENTARY

P26 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014

Factories Show Increased Bullish Hiring n By Saghir Aslam Rawalpindi, Pakistan

(The following information is provided solely to educate the Muslim community about investing and financial planning. It is hoped that the Ummah will benefit from this effort through greater financial empowerment, enabling the community to live in security and dignity and fulfill their religious and moral obligations towards charitable activities) The acceleration in US hiring was surprisingly sharp and broadbased, a sector that has had a particularly rough 21st century-manufacturing-offered one of the biggest signals. US factories added 28,000 jobs in November, the most in a year. Manufacturers also raised the average work week for their production workers to 42.2 hours, returning to levels reached earlier in 2014 that were the highest since the end of World War Two. We are definitely in growth mode. After hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of jobs during the first decade of this century, the US factory sector is now an example of America’s economic upswing even as a slowing global economy and a stronger dollar clouds the outlook for exporters. Employers added 321,000 workers to their payrolls last month, with strong gains in most sectors, from construction and retail to finance. In manufacturing, the rise in hours worked was particularly illustrative because it could signal further hiring. Manufacturers are getting just about all they can out of their current workforce. An economist at Ameriprise Financial in Troy, Michigan. “As long as they see new orders come in the door, they are going to hire more employees to satisfy those orders.” While part-time employment has climbed significantly since the 2007-09 recession, a brisker pace DREAMS FROM P4

conditions, but they still keep on floating. They sink only and get destroyed only when they “fail to take advantage of their society’s huge potential for growth, condemning their citizens to a lifetime of poverty”. As one unknown author says, “God’s biggest gift to us is our potential; and our gift to God is its growth”. This type of slow and grinding failure has left many subSaharan African, Asian and Latin American countries as failed states. Pakistan unfortunately is undergoing this kind of slow, grinding and gradual failure. Where people remain subjected to exploitative and “Extractive” economic institutions and to a political leadership that discourages and destroys incentives, and innovation, and that fails to adjust and change itself as per the new demands of the age; and compromises on justice and equal opportunity to all; such people get marked for total destruction. Dictatorial democracies; family/dynasty rule; elitism and cronyism constitute such governments. Countries fail when institutions become dysfunctional.

of businesses across the economy to give their workers more hours as well. While a top Federal Reserve official said this week that faster wage growth could be around the corner, Friday’s data suggested that manufacturers and other firms still had leverage in setting wages even as they expanded their payrolls. Across the private sector as a whole, average hourly earnings were up just 2.1 percent over the past year. It is the season of abundance, but sometimes abundance is the last thing financial markets need. Shares fell on Monday as two stories troubled investors; the low and falling price of oil and the disappointing retail taking-over the Black Friday shopping weekend. Both in their own way were stories about the risks of abundance. Brent crude fell to its lowest in five years, down as astounding 34 percent since June. While the immediate cause of a spectacular fall last week was the failure of oil-producing nations to agree on production cuts, the fundamental story is one of the new supplies coming online. Similarly, news that shoppers spent 11.3percent less this year over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend sent a chill through investors, perhaps contributing to a rapid fall in the value of Apple shares. Cyber Monday, a day in which many retailers try to spark online shopping with sales, also looked slightly disappointing, according to industry projections. There is an old adage of investing: Never bet against human ingenuity. Don’t take risks based on the idea that a given commodity will remain just as scarce, or a given business model just as defensible against competition. Good effective government has no substitute; economic reforms without good politics are meaningless. Both writers cite dozens of examples of such failed states. North Korea remained poor while South Korea prospered just because of people’s deprivation of property rights, and lack of participation in the government. Uzbekistan remained poor due to forced labor. Slavery and serfdom got replaced by forced labor. From Ancient Rome to the US South, one cause that has kept these areas and places technologically less developed was the practice of forced labor. Millions in Pakistan and India are bonded laborers, and are victims of forced labor even in the 21st century. The Uzbek society has been the biggest loser due to its 2.7 million children and teachers during the cotton season who, instead of gaining knowledge, are sent to cotton fields to pick cotton. Main beneficiaries of cotton remain the President Islam Karimov and his cronies. South Africa remained a titled playing field even after its independence, because its rulers introduced a “caste system for jobs”. Native people remained

Now to be clear, all of these surfeits are very good things if you want to heat your house or order olive oil over the Internet. But they are just not very helpful to those who already have made investments in the way crude and extra virgin have traditionally been obtained or distributed. Retail has seen its own revolution, one which is far from finished, as bricks and mortar give way to the bits and bytes of the Internet. While this has spawned all sorts of strategies among retailers, the common denominator is that it has made times continually tough, with tight margins and omnipresent competitors and fair-improved price transparency. Investors have reacted to this new landscape by assuming it is just a replacement for the old, run on the same lines. Poor Black Friday sales are a reminder that this may be a mistake. Any kid with a new idea has a much better chance of putting it in place. Some might compete directly with Facebook or Amazon, but some indirectly, by attracting attention. We as investors have a historic psychological bias towards expecting advantages to be persistent. We look at Facebook now just a bit like we foolishly looked at Barnes and Noble or Sears 30 years ago. We look at a business and we get excited by its growth and revenues without truly comprehending how different the world has become. Abundance is justly celebrated, but can be dangerous to your wealth. (Saghir A. Aslam only explains strategies and formulas that he has been using. He is merely providing information, and NO ADVICE is given. Mr Aslam does not endorse or recommend any broker, brokerage firm, or any investment at all, nor does he suggest that anyone will earn a profit when or if they purchase stocks, bonds or any other investments. All stocks or investment vehicles mentioned are for illustrative purposes only. Mr Aslam is not an attorney, accountant, real estate broker, stockbroker, investment advisor, or certified financial planner. Mr Aslam does not have anything for sale.) marked good for mining and digging and ploughing only; the rulers stayed good for managing, and for the skilled jobs. Egypt and Pakistan remained in the grip of greedy and selfish elites. All sugar mills, cement factories and chemical and fertilizer plants belong to the current or former ruling class of politicians. Banks and foreign loans work for this elite class. They being rulers protect the system and watch over their interest. Sometimes, even good intentions produce unintended consequences. Military created its own foundations, and joined the rat-race of exploitation. Somalia and Columbia became stateless states just due to lack of law and order. Pakistan is following in the foot-steps of Somalia. An effective centralized State whose power is felt by those who violate its laws is utterly essential. Basic public good, effective system of laws, mechanisms for resolving disputes and dispensing justice, all become meaningless if the Central government loses its teeth. The biggest tragedy in Pakistan like that of the above DREAMS, P29

www.PakistanLink.com

Marriage Support Hidaya Foundation supports impoverished families who are trying to get their daughters married by providing basic items necessary for newlywed girls, including dresses, shoes, utensils, bedding, fans, sewing machines, and more, along with some financial assistance to offset marriage expenses. Depending on the region, it costs approximately $200 to $300 to support the marriage of one young woman.

Donate Zakat & Sadaqah for Marriage Support.

Hidaya Foundation 866.2.HIDAYA | www.hidaya.org Hidaya Foundation is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) charitable organization with Tax ID # 77-0502583

Exchange Rates for Currency Notes* Countries

USA S.Arabia UK Japan Euro UAE

Buying Rs. 100.10 26.67 157.40 0.855 125.03 27.25

Selling Rs. 100.30 26.72 157.72 0.8567 125.28 27.31

(*December 17, 2014)

US VISA AVAILABILITY DECEMBER, 2014 For Pakistan, Bangladesh and India Compiled by Hasan Chishti FAMILY SPONSORED PREFERENCES

Pakistan/Bangladesh

1st Unmarried sons & daughters of U.S. Citizens

June 22, 2007

2-A Spouses and unmarried children of permanent residents

March 22, 2013

2-B Unmarried sons & daughters (21 years of age or older) of permanent residents

Feb., 22, 2008

Married sons & daughters of US citizens Dec., 15, 2003

Dec., 15, 2003

4th Brothers & sisters of adult U.S. citizens

Feb., 22, 2002

India June 22, 2007

Feb., 22, 2002

EMPLOYMENT BASED CATEGORY 1st Priority workers

Current

Feb., 15, 2005

3rd Skilled workers Other workers

Nov., 1, 2012 Nov., 1, 2012

Dec., 1, 2003 Dec., 1, 2003

4th Certain special immigrants Certain religious workers

Current Current

Members of the professions holding advanced degree or persons of exceptional ability

5th Employment creation Targeted Employment Areas/ Regional Centers and Pilot Programs

Current

UNLIMITED FAMILY-BASED Immediate Relatives of U.S. Citizens (IR): The spouse, widow(er) and unmarried children under 21 of a U.S citizen, and the parent of a U.S. citizen who is 21 or older. Returning Residents (SB): Immigrants who lived in the United States previously as lawful permanent residents and are returning to live in the U.S. after a temporary visit of more than one year abroad.

RELIGION n By Dr Muzammil H. Siddiqi (Address at the St. Michael’s and All Angels Episcopalian Church in Corona del Mar, California on September 11, 2011) Peace be unto all of you! In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Compassionate All praise and thanks are for God. Peace and blessings be upon His prophets and messengers, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace be upon them and upon their followers. It is an honor to be with you at this sanctuary and to speak to you on this day. I am grateful to Rev. Peter Haynes for his kind invitation. On this 10th anniversary of the September 11 th attack, I join you and our whole nation in remembering the victims of this national tragedy. I also join you in honoring the first responders who risked and some gave their lives to save others. The victims of the 9/11 tragedy were innocent people of many religions, races and nationalities. In my own community of the Islamic Society of Orange County in Garden Grove, we lost one of our members’ daughter who worked at the World Trade Center. Those who died on that day were people of diverse faiths, races and nationalities. From every faith community some people died. The first people who responded to the tragedy and tried to save lives, and some of them even died in saving others, were also the people of diverse faiths and ethnicities. It is important to remember all the dead and express our love and sympathy for those who lost their dear ones. Every human life is precious and every loss of innocent life is painful. Our hearts go for the families of the victims. We pray that God give them comfort and bless them. As American Muslims we are together with our fellow Americans in these serious moments of learning and reflection. We must continue working together toward building good relations and maintaining security and peace for all people. We are living in a country that has brought together people of diverse backgrounds. It is the duty of all of us to keep it safe and strong and keep it as a model of freedom and justice. During the last ten years, we have also been emphasizing our total rejection and condemnation of terrorism and of terrorist attacks. When the tragedy struck on September 11, 2001, it affected us all. Our Muslim organizations were among the first who came out to express grief for the victims and to condemn those who attacked. American Muslims participated in the national prayer in Washington after the attacks and in similar gatherings around the country. We joined the nation in raising the US flag all over as an expression of our solidarity. We donated our blood for the wounded and donated generously for the

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P27

9/11 - Some Reflections

firefighters and for the families of the victims. There was no question that this was a common American tragedy and we all stood together. We thank God that we worked together as one nation. We have to keep this spirit of unity and harmony among us. I want to emphasize to you and to others that our religion Islam teaches respect of all human life. Islam does not allow terrorism. Those who commit acts of terrorism are a small group of people who have their own ideology of violence, and who abuse and exploit Islam in an attempt to rationalize their agenda. Let me repeat what I said on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, “Those who perpetrated the attacks defied all Islamic teachings and are the enemies of Islam, not its representatives. They cannot speak in our name; they are not our representatives.” We must realize that perpetrators of violence come from varying backgrounds; we all have to work together to fight this evil. It is wrong to single out any community or faith group with blame of guilt by association. It is wrong to generalize about any race, color or creed. I appreciate what our Attorney General Mr Eric Holder recently said, “Some hate mongers have adopted the twisted logic that an attack on innocents can somehow be avenged by another attack on innocents. We should resolve to come together as Americans and resist those who would seek to divide us along ethnic and religious lines, and stand united against hate-fueled violence and discrimination.” Several years ago, a Fatwa (religious ruling) against terrorism was issued by the Islamic Law Council of North America, a body

that represents many Muslim religious scholars and experts on Islamic law in the United States and Canada and of which I have served as Chairman for the past eight years. In our ruling we emphasized that it is strictly forbidden in Islam to engage in any act of terrorism or to support any individual and group that is involved in any act of terrorism. Furthermore we emphasized that it is the duty of Muslims to report to the authorities if they know of any person or group engaged in such subversive activities in order to protect the life of other human beings. We referenced many texts of authority from our religion to support our position. Islam like other faiths mandates the protection of life of all people. Life is a gift of God and it must be preserved, protected and promoted. Our religion prohibits homicide, suicide and abortion or the killing of the unborn. The Qur’an recognizes and reaffirms the principle mentioned in Jewish literature and in Christian tradition that ‘killing one innocent person is like killing the whole humanity and saving one life is like saving the whole humanity.’ (See Qur’an 5:32). Preserving and protecting life is one of the most important values and objectives of Islamic law. During the last ten years American Muslims have built good relations with our neighbors and with people of other faiths. Our mosques and our organizations have been open to all. We welcome our American neighbors to our homes and to our places of worship. Today, Muslims are more involved in interfaith dialogues with Jews and Christians. We are more active in social work and services. We believe that this community engagement is very important. In this way we can help ourselves and others and remove suspicion and doubts from the minds of our fellow citizens. There is a serious misunderstanding of the concept of Jihad in Islam. Jihad does not mean ‘holy war’; it means ‘struggle and effort.’ The purpose of Jihad is not to convert people by force or to kill others. Islam forbids the use of force in the propagation of religion (See the Qur’an 2:256). The purpose of Jihad is also not to take over other people’s lands and resources by force or to dominate and colonize others’ lands and countries. The purpose of Jihad is to struggle against evil and sin in one’s life and to protect one’s own as well as others’ rights of life, liberty, faith, family and possession. It is true that some Muslims have abused the concept or practice of Jihad, just as some Christians have abused the concept of ‘crusade.’ The great majority of Muslims, just as the great majority of Christians, live and want to live in peace with their neighbors of other faiths and want to work together for the betterment of life and society. There is also much fear created about

www.PakistanLink.com

Shari’ah law. Shari’ah is the religious law of Islam. The Shari’ah is not against the United States Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Muslims have no desire to impose Shari’ah on nonMuslims. Shari’ah is like the Halakhic law of the Jewish people or the Canon law of Catholics. The same prejudices that people had at one time against the Jewish people and their laws or against the Catholics and their traditions are now being perpetrated against Islam and Muslims. Many innocent Americans who do not know much about Islam are now being victimized by this propaganda. The problem has reached to such a proportion that a Jewish columnist wrote in New York Times on September 2, 2011: “More than a dozen American states are considering outlawing aspects of Shariah law… A bill recently passed by the Tennessee General Assembly equates Shariah with a set of rules that promote ‘the destruction of the national existence of the United States.’ The same author further says, “The suggestion that Shariah threatens American security is disturbingly reminiscent of the accusation, in 19th-century Europe, that Jewish religious law was seditious. Most Americans today would be appalled if Muslims suffered from legally sanctioned discrimination as Jews once did in Europe. Still, there are signs that many Americans view Muslims in this country as disloyal. A recent Gallup poll found that only 56 percent of Protestants think that Muslims are loyal Americans.” (Eliyahu Stern) We need to work together to change these misconceptions and apprehensions. America is a country of many people of diverse colors, races and religions. The strength of America is in its basic values of ‘One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and Justice for all.’ This is part of our Pledge of Allegiance and this should be our way of life. As Americans we should be free to worship and practice our religions the way we believe, but we must be together in defending our land and freedom. We must transcend our narrow vision of race, color, ethnicities or religions to promote a healthy and happy society for all people of this land. The world today is rightly called ‘a global village.’ In this global village we cannot survive with prejudices and hate of others. To be religious today also means to be inter-religious. We must acknowledge the commonalities among us and must learn to appreciate our differences as long as we treat each other with respect. We must promote our American values of ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’ for all people. Protection of civil rights and civil liberties of all people is of paramount importance and we must work together to preserve this important cornerstone of our democracy. I want to assure you that my faith emphasizes ‘cooperation in all that is good and forbids cooperation in evil and aggression.’ (The Qur’an 5:2) This is the mandate on all Muslims, not secular Muslims, moderate Muslims or Westernized Muslims, but all Muslims who love their faith and live by the principles of their faith. Let us turn now from the last ten years to an outlook on the future: a time when we commit to work together to move our country to find more jobs, better education and better health services, with safety and security for all. Recent polls show that American Muslims in general are positive about America. They are confident that the good American spirit will prevail over all the other odds and difficulties, Insha’Allah. The credit for this Muslim optimism goes to our Islamic teachings that say, “Do not despair the mercy of God.” (Qur’an 39:53) The credit also goes to many of our neighbors and co-workers of other faiths who have been good to us and have shown the American spirit of understanding and openness under difficult circumstances. We thank them for their support and extend our hands of friendship to all those who uphold the values of justice and fairness always. I pray to God, the Lord of the Worlds, to continue His blessings on America and its people and to continue to guide us to do what is right and most pleasing in His eyes. Amen. (Repeated)

CLASSIFIED & MATRIMONIAL

P28 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014

Classified Section Personal Assistant We are seeking an intelligent and dependable PT Personal Assistant. Suitable candidate must be willing to learn, hard-working, computer literate, able to do shopping & run errands. For more information, contact Michael Gilbert at: michaelgilbert197@yahoo.com

Household work, cooking, for a senior at: Villa Anaheim 3303 West Lincoln Avenue Apt. 150 City of Anaheim, CA 92801. Call Abdul-Ghani 714/995-8610 with Social Security, California ID.

LOCATION AVAILABLE

Place Your Classified Ad Today Buy 3 Get 1 FREE! call: 714-400-3400 or Email: Sales@pakistanlink.com

IN ARTESIA, CA Best location available for fast food restaurant - in the heart of Indian and Pakistani community - on Pioneer Blvd. in Artesia, CA. For more info please call 562-205-5880.

Support the Community by Supporting Pakistan Link. To Advertise or Subscribe in the most popular Pakistani-American newspaper “Pakistan Link” Call 714-400-3400

Matrimonial Link Mother invites proposals for her son, 40 years, 6’-2”, handsome and very healthy, MBA from UC Irvine, owns very successful health care business - seeking attractive, fair color, minimum 5’-3”, educated, Muslim girl. Please leave message at 714-963-1604. We are looking for a suitable match for our 35 year old MD daughter. She is born/raised/ educated in USA. Works as a clinical faculty at a prestigious university on East Coast. She is slim, fair complexioned and moderately religious. Never married. Serious inquiries from US residents only. Please contact us with personal, professional and family details in full confidence at

smasian2014@gmail.com

Seeking suitable match for 35 years old educated

sister. US National of Pakistani descent who took khula/divorce. Looking for an honest and God fearing divorced/ widowed 35-47 years old Pakistani sunni man (with or without kids). Please contact : sciencetolearn11@gmail.com Asslam U Alakum, looking for a good match for our sister. Our sister is from Pakistan, 34 years old, Sunni Muslim, 5 ft 5”, never been married, Associate in Arts/Vocational Nursing, US Permanent resident. Family oriented, practicing Muslim, good family values. Please contact us at: marriage916@gmail.com or 214-699-9430

Place Your Matrimonial Ad Today Buy 3 Get 1 FREE! call: 714-400-3400 or

Email: Sales@pakistanlink.com Pakistani Sunni Muslim Male, 32, US. Seeking Simple Sunni Muslim woman to get married in sunnah way who follows the basic Islamic rules eats halal pray. 5 Times a day, Send Bio-data with recent photos. age 21 to 35 US Residents/ Citizens only Please contact sunnahwaynikah@yahoo.com

Urdu-speaking sunni Muslim parents seeking compatible match for their US born daughter, 25, 5’7”, slim/fair, 4 year college graduate, professional. Applicant must be educated and professional with sound family background & religious/ cultural values. Reply at 54musafir@gmail.com Sunni Muslim, Urduspeaking, Indian parents, from religious family, seek alliance for their daughter Pharm.D from USA, 5’-3’’, 38 years, performed Hajj/Umrah, never married, good natured, beautiful, seeking educated professional from similar background. Pediatric Pharmacist in a prestigious hospital in Maryland. Contact: 91- 7498662856 -or- 443-858-2605(MD)

Read Pakistan Link and Urdu Link online at www.pakistanlink.com www.PakistanLink.com

PAKISTAN MANTLE FROM P9

before. The question is what exactly are the dharnas achieving on an ongoing basis? Quoting Rasul Bakhs Rais from Pique Magazine, “Khan’s protest will land the country in confusion and chaos.” He said it was the legal duty of tribunals to dispose of petitions at the earliest. Mr Rais said that the PTI and all political parties should go for electoral reforms instead of long marches, something for which a parliamentary committee has also been constituted. (August 1, 2014) On one point, I agree with Rais. Chaos is the ending note of massive ongoing dharnas. The life of a common person is disrupted, economy has taken a nosedive and investors have run away, presuming there were takers in the first place. Both Sri Lankan President and the Chinese Head of State have cancelled their visits because of the sitins. The Chinese President’s visit in particular was a setback leading to non-creation of many defence and economic agreements/pacts that were on the anvil. According to a report, “The government has so far estimated overall losses to the economy at Rs547 billion. Out of the total, Rs228 billion have been estimated on account of 4.3% depreciation in the value of Pakistani rupee against the US dollar. Another Rs319 billion was estimated due to decline witnessed in the stock market. However, the Karachi Stock Exchange has now entered the recovery mode on the back of reports suggesting that the contesting parties have agreed to resolve the issue through dialogue.” It goes on to state, “Pakistan has been negotiating a deal to acquire four submarines besides purchasing two squadrons of JF-17 Thunder multi-role aircraft, which is the joint production of Pakistan and China. Additionally, agreements were expected to be signed for 14 power sector projects that would have the potential to generate 10,400 megawatts of electricity with active Chinese assistance. At a time of a severe power crisis, the deals are priceless.”(Published September 8, 2014) Protest, yes. But through media, social media, court cases etc. The point the Kaptaan wanted to make has been scored. Time has come to score another point. This time by focusing on good governance in KP, by improving institutions and their workings in KP, by providing speedy justice to the people there and with time making KP a model for other provinces to follow. But going on with the sit-ins will lead to two things: a) Repeating a message too often loses impact, and b) If the message conveyed causes a cascading negative effect, it sets people to question the strategy. It may also bring into question the motive leading to a continued pursuit of a strategy obviously damaging to the larger economic interests of Pakistan. This, I am sure, the Kaptaan would not want. My sincere advice as a bystander to the PTI leadership is: You have done a fine job driving your point home. Now get to work in KP. Build upon the goodwill created, do not work to bring it down. The purple mantle can wait. (The writer is a political analyst and author of “A Comparative Analysis of Media & Media Laws in Pakistan.” She may be reached at yasmeenali62@gmail.com and tweets at: @yasmeen_9)

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P29 DREAMS FROM P26

mentioned countries is that they begin to take failure as a work of their fate. Experiments show that even animals after repeated failures just give up making any efforts. Such failures, like the one Pakistan is facing, is by design; it is an engineered one. There is a method in it. It is well-calculated, and well-calibrated. It can neither be uprooted by the hollow, meaningless and rather harmful harangue of Imran Khan; nor by the incumbent and former politicians. New leadership is not in sight; the old one is well-entrenched; the army and the Supreme Court are the only two institutions that can play an effective role. They do not have to step in; they just need to be honest and bold. Which means, some leaders need to be shown the exit door leading to the prison on charges that cannot be disputed. The country is not short of good people. If India can import its State Bank governor from abroad, if Bangladesh could reverse its downfall through technocrats, so can Pakistan. There is a whole lot of exceedingly good, honest and efficient retired bureaucrats, armygenerals, engineers, economists of world fame, young and enlightened lawyers and judges, waiting for a call. But who can help the country get rid of these self-righteous politicians? That is an issue. By the way, when was it the last time that the poor people of Pakistan slept well, dreaming of stars and skies, and not of lizards and reptiles crawling over their bodies! CONDEMNATION FROM P20

vision, “to fight extremism and promote peace” in all parts of the world. The world powers, including the United States must cooperate with the Pakistani authorities in capturing, prosecuting, and punishing not only the villains who killed these innocent children, but every terrorist at all times and in all places. Punishment should be unforgiving, sufficient to deter would-be imitators. OBAMA FROM P1

speak about a Palestinian bid at the United Nations to force Israel to withdraw from Palestinian land, said images of the attack were “gutwrenching”. “Mothers and fathers send their kids to school to learn and to be safe and to dream and find opportunity,” Kerry told reporters. “Instead today they are gone, wiped away by Taliban assassins who serve a dark and almost medieval vision, the opposite of everything that those mothers and fathers wanted for their children.” MORATORIUM FROM P1

temporary stay was ordered on these executions following objections from Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and human rights groups. In a related development, President Mamnoon Hussain turned down mercy petitions of eight convicted terrorists after the government lifted moratorium on death sentence for convicted terrorists. The petitions were pending in the presidency since 2012 and on Wednesday the president rejected these mercy petitions by exercising his powers, a presidential source told Dawn. Following the rejection of appeals, orders of execution have been passed on to various prisons for hanging of the convicted terrorists.

MASSACRE FROM P1

was with Pakistan in the war against terrorism. The attack, claimed by the Tehreeki-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as revenge for a major military offensive in the region, sparked condemnation worldwide and led the Pakistani government and military to reaffirm their determination to defeat a group that has killed thousands since it began its insurgency in 2007. Teenage survivor Salman Khan, who ducked below his desk with classmates when four gunmen burst into their room, described how he played dead after being shot in both legs, stuffing his tie into his mouth to stifle his screams. “I saw a pair of big black boots coming towards me, this guy was probably hunting for students hiding beneath the benches,” the 16-year-old told AFP from the trauma ward of the city’s Lady Reading Hospital. “The man with big boots kept on looking for students and pumping bullets into their bodies. I lay as still as I could and closed my eyes, waiting to get shot again,” he said. “My body was shivering. I saw death so close and I will never forget the black boots approaching me -- I felt as though it was death that was approaching me.“ Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced three days of national mourning and described the attack as a “national tragedy unleashed by savages”. “These were my children. This is my loss. This is the nation’s loss,” said Sharif, who was later hosted a meeting of all parliamentary parties in Peshawar. Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousufzai, herself shot by the Taliban in 2012, said she was “heartbroken” by “the senseless and cold-blooded” killings. US President Barack Obama condemned the attack as “heinous” and said America would stand by Pakistan in its struggle against violent extremism. Leaders in Europe echoed the condemnation. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott offered his own sympathy to Pakistan, as his government deals with the fallout from a cafe siege by a deranged Islamist gunman. Narendra Modi, the prime minister of Pakistan’s neighbor and rival India, said he had called Sharif to offer condolences. “Told PM Sharif we are ready to provide all assistance during this hour of grief,” Modi tweeted. ‘Indiscriminate firing’: Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (DG ISPR) Major-General Asim Bajwa said that 125 people had been wounded in the assault. The death toll exceeded the 139 killed in blasts targeting former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in Karachi in 2007. There were around 500 students in the school when the attack started, and Bajwa said the attackers, equipped with ammunition and food to last “days”, only wanted to kill. “The terrorists started indiscriminate firing as they entered the auditorium so they had no intention of taking any hostages,” he told reporters. A senior security official told AFP authorities were investigating the nationality of the attackers since

www.PakistanLink.com

some were speaking in Arabic. Funerals of many of the victims had taken place by Tuesday evening, with the rest taking place on Wednesday. The Lady Reading Hospital was thronged with distraught parents weeping uncontrollably as children’s bodies arrived, their school uniforms drenched in blood. Irshadah Bibi, 40, whose 12-yearold son was among the dead, beat her face in grief, throwing herself against an ambulance. “O God, why did you snatch away my son? What is the sin of my child and all these children?” she wept. ‘Soft target’: The school on Peshawar’s Warsak Road is part of the Army Public Schools and Colleges System, which runs schools nationwide. Its students range in age from around 10 to 18. Tuesday’s attack was shocking even by the standards of Pakistan, which has suffered thousands of deaths in bomb and gun attacks since the TTP rose up in 2007. TTP spokesman Muhammad Khorasani said Tuesday’s assault was carried out to avenge Taliban fighters and their families killed in the army’s offensive against militant strongholds in North Waziristan. The military has hailed the offensive as a major success in disrupting the TTP’s insurgency. More than 1,600 militants have been killed since the launch of operation Zarb-i-Azb in June, according to data compiled by AFP from military statements. “The militants know they won’t be able to strike at the heart of the military, they don’t have the capacity. So they are going for soft targets,“ Talat Masood, a retired general and security analyst, told AFP.

New Zealand Level ODI Series with Pakistan Abu Dhabi: Kane Williamson hit

a brilliant hundred as New Zealand won the fourth day-night international against Pakistan by seven runs in an exciting finish in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday. Pakistan went ahead with the match despite calls to postpone it after the Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Tuesday which left at least 145 people dead, 132 of them students. Both teams observed a two-minute silence and wore black armbands as a tribute to the victims. Williamson’s 105-ball 123 steered New Zealand to an imposing 299-5 before Younis Khan’s first one-day hundred in six years got Pakistan agonizingly close as they finished on 292-8 in 50 overs. That left the five-match series all square at 2-2 setting up a winners takes all final game also in Abdu Dhabi on Friday. Younis’s 117-ball 103 ended a drought of 74 innings as he capitalized on being dropped by Ross Taylor off Adam Milne when only on two. Shahid Afridi helped Younis add a quick 66 for the sixth wicket, hitting five fours and two sixes in his 25-ball 49 but his fall, followed shortly afterwards by that of Younis, saw the match swing back New Zealand’s way. Younis, whose last hundred came against the West Indies at the same venue in 2008, put on 49 with Nasir Jamshed (30) for the second wicket and another 90 for the fifth with Umar Akmal who made 29. In all Younis hit four boundaries and two sixes.

ENTERTAINMENT & LIFESTYLE

DECEMBER 19, 2014 - PAKISTAN LINK

ENTERTAINMENT

P30 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014

he is ambitious, has her head firmly on her shoulders and knows what she wants - the prime requisites for success. After her debut in fashion just a few years ago, Saima Azhar says she has learnt to play her cards really well and her formula for combating cutthroat competition remains clear and simple: "Negative and positive vibes are present in every work environment, what is important is how you deal with it. I keep a healthy environment by not allowing bad feelings to develop. Only the fittest survive in this profession so mentally and physically you have to remain strong." "Hard work never hurt anybody and is the key to success," says Saima. "PR helps, looks can be improved by botox and make-up, but the main thing is how to take the pressure. I don't rely on artificial things to help me through, I rely on my strength, thinking and my true nature." Power, she emphasises, comes with money and if one is a beginner it is wits that count. "I'm a sensible person who can judge the true nature of a person. I'm really quite smart that way and I also plan ahead," she adds. So it all comes as a shocker when Saima says she had never planned on becoming a fashion model. In 2011, a friend sent her photos to Frieha Altaf for a contest without her knowledge. Saima was selected and was declared the most photogenic. "That was my first contact with the fashion world. I was told to lose weight to look like a model. My first bridal shoot was done by Saba Ansari of Sabs Salon who saw me at the Veet Miss Supermodel contest and said she wanted to do a shoot with me. I was paired with Aaminah Shaikh." It's not enough that she is now a bona fide celebrity, her obsessions include achieving goals and realising her dreams The shoot opened doors for her and modeling assignments followed. "I have presence and people see me. I also love my work and I'm crazy and passionate about it. My MSc degree in Physiology from Karachi University is presently on hold as I'm totally into modeling and serials right now, and have also signed on for Gidh with Shaan and Shamoon Abbasi. The cast also includes Sara Loren and work starts in November." Rivalry and chivalry Saima concedes that there are a lot of rivalries and senior models get jealous of newcomers who make it big. "When I become a senior model I will pamper my juniors. You have to give space so that others get a chance and that's how the industry grows. The main problem is that showstopper models don't allow others to come up easily or quickly. But how long can you really stop it from happening," the budding model questions, cocking her head to one side meaningfully. The fashion industry, she says, is divided into many lobbies and Saima has taken a calculated step, preferring to work with everyone. "I can go to any salon without being pressurised or brainwashed against the other. I was in a lobby in the beginning but I got out of it soon enough. "It is a cut-throat place where a new model will not get any money because the coordinators make sure they get all the money from the designer, from the shoots and salons.

"We have good models such as Iraj, Nadia Hussain, Vinnie and Faiza Ansari, and I have learnt a lot from them as they have personally helped me in my grooming. We do have recognition in India and Dubai, but that's as far as it goes. We can't compete with the international models due to our culture and setup. Perhaps in a few years when we are less inhibited." Saima won the Lux Style Award in 2013 for Best Emerging Talent, and got the Most Promising Model of the Year title at the Veet contest in 2013, was nominated for Best Model of the Year at the Pakistan Media Awards in 2013 but lost to Ayyan. "I am not looking for any awards in modeling anymore. I want to earn money and also get good work and have now set my eyes on getting awards for my acting assignments. I have to prove my worth here." Courtesy Dawn

So a model struggles in the beginning to get recognised. That is unless you are sought after right from the beginning, which happens rarely and most girls get desperate for fame and are ready to do anything." Growth of the industry The fashion industry, she says, is growing but not at a pace that is encouraging. There should be public awareness that the industry is not as bad as it is portrayed but it definitely needs to get out of grouping which is unhealthy and hinders growth. The designers also play an important role as creativity gets attention internationally. "We are far ahead in fashion designing compared to India as we have more creative sense and are coming out with new things. We have wearable clothes in prêt which are seasonal. "I love Sania Maskatiya's prêt and semi-formals, Deepak Perwani for his bridals, gowns and sherwanis. I also like Fahad Hussain for his draping style and Neelofar Shahid for her formal bridal clothes; Umar Saeed's embroidery and meena kari; Nida Azwer's formal, bridal clothing and rich colours, and Iman Ahmed Body Focus' clothes which are creatively designed." A tale of two careers Tackling two demanding careers - drama serials and the fashion run-

way - is not easy and Saima says she has had to make sacrifices such as declining lawn campaigns, fashion covers and a bridal couture week to accomodate a TV serial. "I plan to leave the catwalk totally after a few years and get into acting as there is more fame in it. I want to expand my career through expressions, it is more enriching." She says one particular serial for ARY Digital, Meray Khwab Lauta Do, with Aijazz Aslam was an experience she absolutely loved. "You get groomed through acting as there is teamwork and working with seniors who have families, whereas modeling makes a person ruthless and self-centered in a struggle to be at the top, and is limited in scope as well. People have noticed me in this serial and now I would love to do play the role of a print journalist." Friends, fitness and staying focused Saima has high regards for some professionals in the fashion industry, "One such person is Umer Mushtaq as he gets people who don't like each other to work together. Then there are also Nabila and Saba who are friendly and helpful and my colleagues - but at the end of the day I'm here to work and not to make friends.

www.PakistanLink.com www.Pakistanlink.com

DECEMBER 19, 2014 – PAKISTAN LINK – P31

monitorin

g starting

around

per week

*with $99 customer purchase of alarm insm tallation charge and onitoring services.

• A home without a security system is • A burglary occurs every 14.6 seconds. 3 times more likely to be burglarized. • 1 out of every 5 homes will experience • 85% of Police Officials surveyed believe 1

a break-in or home invasion.2

home alarms deter burglary attempts. 4

1. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2008 National Crime Report http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2009/june/ucr_stats060109 2. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/contentpub/press/vdhbpr.cfm 3. FBI, 2008 National Crime Report http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2009/june/ucr_stats060109 4. http://www.beyondidentitytheft.com/home-security-statistics.html

Call Today, Protect Tomorrow!

1-800-441-0758 Mon-Fri 8am - 11pm • Sat 9am - 8pm • Sun 10am - 6pm EST

$99.00 Customer Installation Charge. 36-Month Monitoring Agreement required at $36.99 per month ($1,331.64). Form of payment must be by credit card or electronic charge to your checking or savings account. Offer applies to homeowners only. Local permit fees may be required. Satisfactory credit history required. Certain restrictions may apply. Offer valid for new ADT Authorized Dealer customers only and not on purchases from ADT LLC. Other rate plans available. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Licenses: AL-12-1104, AK-35221, AR-E08-014, AZ-ROC217517, CA-ACO6320, CT-ELC.0193944-L5, DE-07-212, FL-EC13003427, EC13003401, GA-LVA205395, HI-CT30946, IA-AC-0036, ID-39131, IL-127.001042, IN-City of Indianapolis: 80988, KY-City of Louisville: 483, LA-F1082, MA-1355C, MD-107-1626, ME-LM50017382, MI-3601205773, MN-TS01807, MO-City of St. Louis: CC354, St. Louis County: 53328, MS-15007958, MT-247, NC-25310-SP-FA/LV, NC-1622-CSA, NE-14451, NJ-34BF00021800, NM-353366, NV-68518, City of Las Vegas: B14-00075-6-121756, C11-11262-L-121756, NY-Licensed by the N.Y.S. Department of State UID#12000286451, OH-53891446, City of Cincinnati: AC86, OK-1048, OR-170997, Pennsylvania Home Improvement Contractor Registration Number: PA22999, RI-3582, SC-BAC5630, TN-C1520, TX-B13734, ACR-3492, UT-6422596-6501, VA-115120, VT-ES-2382, WA-602588694/PROTEYH934RS, WI-City of Milwaukee: 0001697, WV-042433, WY-LV-G-21499. 3750 Priority Way South Dr. Suite 200 Indianapolis, IN 46240 For full list of licenses visit our website www.protectyourhome.com. Protect Your Home – 3750 Priority Way South Dr., Ste 200, Indianapolis, IN 46240.

OF E PEAC D IS MIN CELESS PRI KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR SECURITY, MONITOR YOUR

DETER THEFT, STAFF, CHECK TO SEE IF YOUR FAMILY IS SAFE VIA INTERNET FROM ANY WHERE IN THE WORLD.

Importers, Whole Sellers and Retailers of High Resolution CCTV, Full D1 DVR and CCTV Accessories. FOR YOUR NO OBLIGATION INSTALLATION

QUOTE CALL 714-356-8674

E SECURITY U VAT NI RI

P R I VAT E S E C U R I T Y

D TIER EF

SE EN

FRON

FRONTIER DEFENSE SERVICES INC. RVI CES IN

PPO 17115

1180 Olympic Drive, Suite 106 Corona, CA 92881 Ph: (714) 356-8674 • Fax: (714) 242-1488 info@frontierdefenseservices.com

SAM AWAN

www.PakistanLink.com

P32 – PAKISTAN LINK – DECEMBER 19, 2014

Faster, easier ways to save. Welcome to the modern world. Call 1-800-409-3644 to see how much you could save on car insurance.

Not available in all states. Savings may vary. www.PakistanLink.com