Christian Man Raped, Murdered for Refusing to Convert to Islam, Family Says

By Nora Zimmett

A young Christian man was raped and brutally murdered in Pakistan for refusing to convert to Islam, and police are doing nothing about it, the victim's brother and minister told FOXNews.com.

Pakistani police reportedly found the body of Tariq "Litto" Mashi Ghauri — a 28-year-old university student in Sargodha, Pakistan — lying dead in a canal outside a rural village in Punjab Province on May 15. He had been raped and stabbed at least five times.

"They have sexually abuse him, torture him with a knife on his testicle and genitals," Ghauri's brother, 24-year-old Salman Nabil Ghauri, said. "They have tortured him very badly, and after that they have stabbed five times with a knife and killed him."

The family believes Litto Ghauri was murdered by the brothers of his Muslim girlfriend, Shazi Cheema, after they found him in a compromising sexual position with their sister.

The Rev. Haroon Bhatti, a Christian clergyman in the village and a friend of the Ghauri family, said Cheema's three brothers came to Litto Ghauri's house on May 11 and gave him an ultimatum: Marry their sister and convert to Islam.

Ghauri agreed to the marriage but refused to accept Islam, and the brothers kidnapped him at gunpoint and drove him to a remote farmhouse, where they tortured and murdered him, the minister said.

"On that farmhouse — four days there — we all, Christians and family, were searching for him," the Rev. Bhatti said. "I was with him. I was searching for him."

After police discovered the body, Ghauri's death was declared a homicide and the family filed paperwork with the Atta Shaheed police station in their small village, Adda 44SB. But Ghauri's brother said police still have not arrested the alleged killers and have refused to meet with his family.

"They don't want to meet us, and the three of them who are murderers are outside," Salman Nabil Ghauri told FOXNews.com. "They are free. Nothing is happening to them. No investigation is running."

The Pakistani Embassy in Washington, D.C., told FOXNews.com that they knew nothing of the incident but were looking into it.

But one embassy official questioned the truth of the report.

"On the face of it, this appears to be exaggerated," said the Pakistani official who asked not to be named. "This does not happen over there."

The official said that minorities are very well represented in the Pakistani Parliament, and if someone in fact were murdered for not converting to Islam, "it would have been reported hugely."

The embassy official added, "if an incident of that nature happened over there, there would have to be an investigation."

Yet human rights watchdog groups say that what happened to Litto Ghauri is not uncommon because Christians in Pakistan are looked upon as the dregs of society. Pakistan's population is 97 percent Muslim, and Christians are only a very small part of the remaining 3 percent.

"What the Muslim society has done in Pakistan is just associate low caste with being Christian," said Jeremy Sewall, Advocacy Director of the International Christian Concern, which first reported the killing. "Many of these people, they clean human waste and that's their job, and that's what Christians are known for in Pakistan."

The Rev. Bhatti says that radical Muslims frequently try to trap Christian men into converting to Islam by using a woman as bait — and Ghauri suspects the involvement of his dead brother's girlfriend in trying to entrap him.

"It's common to offer things — money, women — to Christians to convert," Bhatti said.

Pakistan is one of the most hostile countries in the world for minority religions. The country still has blasphemy laws on the books that forbid saying or writing anything against Islam or the Koran. Punishment can include death.

"You basically have a situation where people can kind of act with impunity in the public," said Paula Schriefer, advocacy director at Freedom House, a human rights group. "They use these laws to sort of settle scores ... or, in situations like this, actually engage in kind of forced conversions."

The U.S. State Department's 2008 International Religious Freedom Report on Pakistan says, "Government policies do not afford equal protection to members of majority and minority religious groups."

The Ministry of Religious Affairs, which is supposed to protect religious freedom, has a verse from the Koran on its masthead, the report said: "Islam is the only religion acceptable to God."

While the U.S. government has provided millions of dollars in public outreach programs to help teach religious tolerance in Pakistan, human rights watchers say it's not sufficient.

"There's probably not enough that the U.S. government is doing to really talk about this issue because it's such an important issue in Pakistan because faith is so important to them," said Sewall.

The small Christian community is hoping that Ghauri's death will bring attention to the plight of minority religious groups in Pakistan.

"Several incidents of Christian persecution go unnoticed in Pakistan because they occur in the furthest parts of Pakistan," the Rev. Bhatti said. "This is Pakistan — predominantly Muslim. So they're the rulers. They rule us."

For Christian families like the Ghauris, living in a remote village in Pakistan, options are few. Because of their poverty they can neither leave nor help secure their own safety.

"We have very little family," said Salman Nabil Ghauri, whose mother died years ago and whose father worked as a day laborer until the killing. "My father was a daily worker. Now he is earning nothing. He is fully mad now. He cannot understand anything — he is still in the shock of death.

"My elder son is dead, and I am only one person. Where can I run? I cannot start my studies or run after my case. What should I do?"

(With thanks from FOXNews)

Parcel bomb critically injures Christians in Pakistan

By: Rahul Benjamin

A Christian colony was the subject of a parcel bomb blast in Pakistan in the latest of a series of incidents targeting the minuscule community.

According to a source, at least 10 Christians were injured when a parcel bomb exploded in Hasilpur, Bahawalpur district.

The injured, including four women and two children are said to be in a very critical condition.

Nazir S Bhatti, chief of Pakistan Christian Congress (PCC), condemned the heinous incident and said, "the news was not highlighted in media due to Christians being targets".

He said the Pakistan government censors such incidents to avoid international pressure and mounting human rights violations.

Even the presence of Christian internally displaced persons (IDPs) in refugee camps, he said, were not revealed for the same reason.

The incident comes close on the heels of a Christian man hacked to death for using a cup designated for Muslims.

According to the International Christian Concern (ICC), Muslim radicals May 9 attacked Ishtiaq Masih who ordered tea at a roadside stall in Machharkay village.

"When Ishtiaq went to pay for his tea, the owner noticed that he was wearing a necklace with a cross and grabbed him, calling for his employees to bring anything available to beat him for violating a sign posted on the stall warning non-Muslims to declare their religion before being served," the ICC reported.

The owner and 14 of his employees, said the human rights organisation, beat Ishtiaq with stones, iron rods and clubs, and stabbed him multiple times with kitchen knives even as Ishtiaq pleaded for mercy.

A correspondent from the ICC confirmed that he saw a warning posted outside the tea stall, which read: "All non-Muslims should introduce their faith prior to ordering tea. This tea stall serves Muslims only."

Recently, after the military offensive against the Taliban, the country has also witnessed spiraling violence targeting minorities.

Pastor Salim Sadiq of Holy Spirit Church in Karachi earlier told Christian Today that homes belonging to the community were pounded by the Islamic extremists who have vowed to avenge for "the suffering of their brotherhood in NWFP area."

(With thanks to Christian Today)

Christian Murdered for Drinking Tea From a Muslim Cup

WASHINGTON -- International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that radical Muslims running a tea stall beat a Christian man to death for using a cup designated for Muslims on May 9. The young man, Ishtiaq Masih, had ordered tea at a roadside stall in Machharkay village, Punjab, Pakistan, after his bus stopped to allow passengers to relieve themselves.

When Ishtiaq went to pay for his tea, the owner noticed that he was wearing a necklace with a cross and grabbed him, calling for his employees to bring anything available to beat him for violating a sign posted on the stall warning non-Muslims to declare their religion before being served. Ishtiaq had not noticed the warning sign before ordering his tea, as he ordered with a group of his fellow passengers.

The owner and 14 of his employees beat Ishtiaq with stones, iron rods and clubs, and stabbed him multiple times with kitchen knives as Ishtiaq pleaded for mercy.

The other bus passengers and other passers-by finally intervened and took Ishtiaq to the Rural Health Center in the village. There Ishtiaq died as a result of spinal, head, and chest injuries. The doctor who took Ishtiaq's case told ICC that Ishtiaq had excessive internal and external bleeding, a fractured skull, and brain injuries.

Makah Tea Stall is located on the Sukheki-Lahore highway and is owned by Mubarak Ali, a 42-year-old radical Muslim. ICC's correspondent visited the tea stall and observed that a large red warning sign with a death's head symbol was posted which read, "All non-Muslims should introduce their faith prior to ordering tea. This tea stall serves Muslims only." The warning also threatened anyone who violated the rule with "dire consequences."

A neighboring shopkeeper told ICC on condition of anonymity that Ali is a fundamentalist Muslim and all his employees are former students of radical Muslim madrassas (seminaries). Ali kept separate sets of cooking-ware for Muslims and non-Muslims at his stall.

Ishtiaq's family said that they immediately reported the incident to the police and filed a case against Ali. Though the police registered their case, no action has been taken to apprehend Ali or his employees.

When ICC asked the Pindi Bhatian Saddar police station about the murder, the police chief said that investigations were underway and they are treating it as a faith-based murder by biased Muslims. When asked about Ali's warning sign, police chief Muhammad Iftikhar Bajwa claimed that he could not take it down.

However, the constitution of Pakistan explicitly prohibits such discrimination, and the police could take strong action against the warning sign. But because the police are also Muslim, Ishtiaq's father claims that they are being derelict in their duties to prosecute the murderers who are still freely operating the tea stall.

(International Christian Concern)

Muslims Attack Pakistani Pastor’s Home, Relatives

After shooting into air, assailants strike mother, sister-in-law with rifle butts.

LAHORE, Pakistan, June 12 (Compass Direct News) – In a growing culture of violence here, a traffic incident in Punjab Province this month led to Muslim assailants later mounting an attack on the home of a Christian pastor they have increasingly resented for his evangelism and justice ministries. The attackers threatened more violence if the pastor does not drop assault charges.

A few of the 17 assailants struck the mother and sister-in-law of pastor Riaz Masih with rifle butts after the pastor’s brother, who lives at the same multi-housing complex as Masih in Kila Sardar Shah, Sheikhupura district, on June 1 complained to a local councilor about the official nearly driving into his sons. Christian leaders said the roadside incident was only the fuse igniting hostilities that have grown due to meetings held by Christ for All Nations Ministries (CANM).

The meetings have attracted many youths, including some Muslims. Pastor Masih is national coordinator of CANM, a self-supported church-planting ministry. Saqib Munawar, chairman of CANM, said the attack on the pastor’s home in the remote village is an indication that as Islamic extremism rises amid a military attempt to flush Islamic militants from the Swat Valley in the country’s northwest, a growing culture of violence means minor incidents more easily erupt into attacks.

“As the Swat operation is going on, hostilities against Christians are on the rise,” Munawar said. “Extremism, which has flourished in the last few decades, is now creating problems for all Pakistanis. This attitude has promoted violence in the country.”

Pakistanis are becoming more violent, he said, and extremism has increased partially in response to evangelism efforts by Christians, he said.

In the triggering incident, pastor Masih’s 17- and 18-year-old nephews were standing on the side of a road with their backs to traffic in Kila Sardar Shah when Malik Younus, a village councilor, passed in a vehicle that nearly struck them. The teenagers immediately complained to Younus that he should have at least honked to warn them to step aside.

Younus got out of his vehicle and beat them, Munawar said. They complained to their father, Mushtaq Masih, who then called Younus. Younus threatened to beat them again, and Mushtaq Masih responded that he would have no choice but to call police. Younus became furious, according to Munawar.

Within an hour Younus, his brother Malik Falak Sher and 15 other men armed with automatic weapons and wooden clubs arrived at the multi-family complex where Pastor Masih and his brothers live with their families. The pastor was some distance from home when his 12-year-old daughter called and told him that the Muslim attackers were outside firing into the air.
Rushing to the scene, Masih approached the house from the backyard as the assailants were breaking down the main gate. The pastor managed to lock himself with members of his family inside a room, but his sister-in-law – wife of his younger brother Ilias Masih – and his mother were outside at the time.

Having broken down the main gate and wall and had entered the courtyard, the assailants struck the two women with rifle butts and demanded to know where the boys and their father were. Pastor’s Masih’s brother, Mushtaq Masih, had also locked himself and his family in a room. The attackers were trying to break down the doors of rooms in pastor Masih’s home when one of them called off the assault and they left.

The family reported the assault to police, but officers have done nothing as they have close ties with the attackers – and the assailants also have links with various local government leaders, Munawar said. The intruding Muslims warned pastor Masih and his family that if they contacted police and media, they would face “retribution.”

The Station House Officer told Compass that Younus and his cohorts had been released on bail; he would not comment further.

Munawar said the Masih families will likely seek a settlement instead of jail terms.
“The family will probably go for an out-of-court settlement, as they have to live,” he said. “However, fears are that such flare-ups may hit back, which would certainly hamper our evangelical efforts.”

Rumors spread that a former member of the Punjab Assembly, Agha Gull, was involved in the traffic incident, but Gull told Compass that he was in Iraq at the time of the incident and had nothing to do with it. Gull said someone told him that a clash took place on the road, but that “none of the parties came to me.”

Justice Ministry

Certain that the remote village Muslims would not have access to Compass news, pastor Masih told Compass that the antagonists were upset with him also over his efforts to take back lands stolen from Christian families. There are four Christian families in the village of 40 to 50 families.
The Christian villagers had paid for land they have lived on since 1989, but they never received documents for the transfer, leaving the real estate in the hands of Muslim businessman Syed Izhar Shah – whom villagers say is involved in land theft in collaboration with those who instigated the June 1 attack, Younus and his brother Sher.

Last year pastor Masih offered 20,000 rupees (US$250) to the landowner to legally transfer the property with proper documentation, but the owner declined. Pastor Masih’s father has also paid some 10,000 rupees for his share of the land. Additionally, Akram Masih, who heads one of the four Christian families in the area, has paid an additional 27,000 rupees (US$335) in an effort to legally obtain his share of the land, but the landowner forbid him to take possession as well.

Younus and Sher are behind a land-grab designed to drive the few Christian families from the area, pastor Masih said. They have illegally taken over a nearby, eight-acre tract of land zoned for a housing tract called Royal Town. Christian villagers had paid for this land also in 1989 – and also without receiving documentation – and the legal land owner, Syed Izhar Shah, is pressuring them to either pay the current price or leave the village, pastor Masih said.

“The attack has been unleashed on the weakest, because there are only four Christian families living in this village,” said pastor Masih. “They are vexing us so that we leave the area.”
Pastor Munawar said that anti-Christian hostilities resulted in the cancellation of CANM’s youth program, which was scheduled for last Monday (June 8).

“The fate of our next program, scheduled on June 21, is also hanging in balance,” he said.
Munawar added that last year’s annual youth program, held in May, had been secured by armed Christians after an area Muslim tipped them off that their worship could be targeted. The guards were provided licensed .222 Remington rifles.

(Compass Direct)

Peshawar diocese continues support of displaced persons following terrorist surge

[Episcopal News Service] The Diocese of Peshawar's ongoing relief efforts in Pakistan continued this week with a coordinated evacuation of Christian families from Malakand following a surge in terrorist activity and the intense military operation against the Taliban in the Swat valley and neighboring districts.

The evacuation was led by a diocesan survey team that visited St. George's Church in Malakand, located in the north of Peshawar, to assess the needs of local Christians. It is the most recent example of the diocese's commitment to embrace internally displaced persons (IDPs) and its concern for the wellbeing of a terrorized community.

"The area is under curfew, shops are closed, medical services are not available, and there is no transportation," said a news release from the Diocese of Peshawar, which forms part of the Church of Pakistan, a united ecumenical church and one of 38 provinces in the Anglican Communion.

The evacuees in Malakand were 18 Christian families that had been granted special travel permission by the Pakistan armed forces. They were transported by bus from Malakand to Mardan, where they have joined a further 43 families that are being provided with food, shelter and medical care in the Diocesan Relief Camp at the Christian Vocational Training Center.

USAID estimates that more than two million people have been forced out of their homes since the fighting intensified in early May.

Many of the displaced have similar horrifying stories to that of 45-year-old Shamoun Masih, a resident of Malakand who now lives with his family at the Diocesan Relief Camp. After the Taliban enforced Shariah Islamic law in Malakand, Masih succumbed to their authority for the safety of his family, according to the diocese's newsletter. He pulled his children out of school and forced his wife to stay at home. With the support of the diocesan development and relief team, Masih and his family were able to leave the war-torn area.

According to reports, Pakistani security forces have announced that more than 1,300 militants and 100 soldiers have been killed during a six-week operation to drive insurgents from the Swat Valley and neighboring districts.

The military operation commenced only two months after a peace deal was signed between the Pakistan Government and Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law), a Pakistani militant group in Swat. Despite the peace deal, the incursion of the Taliban in the Buner district caused the situation to deteriorate.

Within 24 hours on June 10-11, 66 terrorists were killed and nine apprehended in the Malakand, Bunnu and South Waziristan districts, according to a statement on Pakistan's Inter Services Public Relations website.

Meanwhile, United Nations aid workers were evacuated from Peshawar on June 10 after a terrorist bomb attack on one of the city's top hotels killed 11 people and wounded 70. Two U.N. staff members were among the dead.

In addition to the diocese's relief work with the IDPs, free medical care services are being arranged through the Diocesan Mission Hospital in Peshawar. Episcopal Relief and Development is partnering with the Diocese of Peshawar in its relief efforts.
-- Matthew Davies is editor of Episcopal Life Online and international correspondent of the Episcopal News Service.

(Episcopal Life)

Christian Man Raped and Murdered for Refusing Islam

WASHINGTON -- International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that a young Christian man from Pakistan was caught in a compromising situation with the daughter of a radical Muslim family but refused to convert to Islam despite her insistence and the threats of her three brothers. On May 15, the young man's father found his dead body near a canal in a rural Punjab village, after he had been missing for three days.

The young Christian, Litto, was studying for a Masters Degree in English when he met and fell in love with a Muslim girl from his village. During their courtship, she repeatedly attempted to entice him into becoming a Muslim.

Litto's father, Amjad Masih Ghauri, told ICC, "On May 10th, while my son and that Muslim girl, Shazia Cheema, were making love in a lonely part of the fields, her two elder Muslim brothers found them in an objectionable posture and this enraged them." Litto managed to escape the scene and ran home, telling his father everything.

The next day Shazia's three brothers arrived at Litto's house, where they demanded that Litto convert to Islam and marry their sister. Litto said he would marry her, but that he would not convert to Islam. This infuriated the brothers, who kidnapped him at gunpoint and threw him into their car.

Ghauri immediately reported to the police what had happened. In response, the officer on duty said, "How dare you Choohra (derogatory term for Christian) cast malicious eyes on a Muslim girl."

Denied help by the police, Ghauri gathered some of his relatives and searched the countryside for his son for three days until finding his body on May 15. The autopsy revealed that Litto had been sodomized, flogged, clubbed, and stabbed five times in the stomach and genitals. He died from the stab wounds. It is almost certain that during ! the four days Litto was kidnapped, he was offered land, wealth, and his girlfriend if he were to convert to Islam. It was his refusal to become a Muslim that spelled his death sentence in the eyes of these radical Muslims.
Police have filed a court case against the three brothers, but have taken no action. The three young men are roaming freely in the village and telling everyone that they have "taught a good lesson to the Choohras (derogatory term for Christians)."

It is likely that Shazia was operating at the command of her brothers to catch Litto in a compromising situation. It is common in Pakistan for Muslims to use their sisters or daughters to entice Christians to convert to Islam.

(International Christian Concern)

Jemima Khan's broken country

In Pakistan, refugee children live with the trauma of having witnessed beheadings, yet she still finds much to beguile her

Jemima Khan

The day I’m leaving for Pakistan a round-robin e-mail pings into my inbox from an address I don’t recognise, Wise Pakistan. The message reads: “It is important you watch this to see what’s coming.”

Ten men are lined up and each one is filmed talking inaudibly to camera. The first man is pinned to the ground by four others. His throat is slit like a goat at Eid and his head held aloft by his hair. The Urdu subtitle reads: “This is what happens to spies.” It's a Taliban home video — to jaunty music — of serial beheadings. There are plenty of these doing the rounds nowadays.

I’m off to Pakistan for the children’s half-term. They visit their father there every holiday. I lived in Pakistan throughout my twenties. Now it’s a different place — the most dangerous country on Earth, some say — and my friends and family are worried.

For my last four years in Pakistan we lived at the quaintly named House 10, Street 1, E7. Two months ago a bomb exploded 100 yards from the house, killing four people; about 1,500 have been killed this year in terrorist attacks.

It’s hardly a tourist destination these days so I’m surprised to find that the flights are all full. I am an aerophobe; my real fear is getting there. The only direct flight is on PIA, otherwise known as Please Inform Allah. British Airways stopped flying there after the Marriott bomb attack in Islamabad last September.

As I’m packing, my London neighbour, the comedian Patrick Kielty, drops off a parcel containing The Complete Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook with a note pointing out the pages on how to escape when tied up, how to take a bullet and how to survive if you wake up next to someone whose name you don’t remember.

I arrive in Islamabad at 3am on a Sunday. With everything that’s going on in Pakistan these days — violent civil war in the northwest, 2.5m internally displaced people, a separatist uprising in Baluchistan, a hostile neighbour, corruption, recession, inflation, unemployment — I’m surprised anyone has the energy for swine flu paranoia, particularly as Pakistan is strictly a pork-free zone.

Yet before disembarking we are obliged to fill out two forms. Recent proximity to pigs and/or Mexicans will result in an obligatory spell in quarantine. It must be the name of the virus that’s causing alarm. Pakistanis dislike pigs. Until quite recently my children thought the word for pig was “gunda-pig” (dirty pig). The wild boar in Lahore zoo is squished into a cage so minute it can’t scratch its own back and people throw stones at it.

I’m staying with Imran, my ex-husband, and our children in the house I helped to design but which we never lived in together. It's on top of a hill outside Islamabad. The courtyard fountain is a reminder of the insanity of political life in Pakistan, even on the periphery. It’s covered in the exquisite blue and white Multani tiles that almost landed me in jail in 1999. I bought them as a present for my mother but, before they reached the port to be shipped to England, they were impounded and I was charged with smuggling antiques (they weren’t, according to Bonhams and other experts here), a non-bailable offence.

I was pregnant and scarpered to England until there was a military coup six months later by the then friendly dictator, General Musharraf. The case was dropped, the tiles were released and I returned to Pakistan with an extra child in tow.

Had I been an aspiring politician, I’d have stayed put in Pakistan. A spell in jail is a prerequisite for anyone wanting to be taken seriously in politics. My ex-husband, who heads a political party, was jailed two years ago for treason and his popularity soared, according to Gallup polls. I should have considered this when campaigning vigorously for his release.

Islamabad was once considered an ideal family posting for foreign diplomats, green and clean and offering an easy life, if a little dull. Now, to get to my friend Asma’s house in an affluent area of the city, I have to go through four security checkpoints manned by armed police. We drink chai, feast on samosas and gupchup (gossip); but we mostly discuss the political situation and how dire it all is.

The next day I set off for the refugee camps close to the Swat valley, where the army is fighting the Taliban. Before I leave, Imran’s chowkidar (watchman) tells me that the newspapers in Pakistan are all funded by Yehudis (Jews). His Kalashnikov-toting commando — it’s the first time Imran has felt the need to have security — nods, adding that there are no Taliban. They are a fabrication by Jews and Hindus to destabilise Pakistan. He adjusts his belt of bullets.

Pakistan pulsates with conspiracy theories. One, which has made it into the local newspapers, is that the Taliban when caught and stripped were revealed to have been “intact, not Muslims”, a euphemism for uncircumcised. (Pakistanis are big on euphemisms.) Their beards were stuck on with glue. “Foreign elements” (India) are suspected.

Jalala camp between Mardan and Mingora is the first point of refuge for those escaping the military operation in Swat. It’s full to capacity: 80% of internally displaced persons are children. Thousands have been separated from their parents when fleeing their homes.

Two children are fighting over coloured crayons when I arrive. A girl with blistered burns on her face from the sun shouts at a small boy who turns out to be her brother: “If you don’t give them back to me I’ll tell the Taliban and they’ll cut your throat.”

According to the teacher in the camp, every child has witnessed public beheadings. Eight-year-old Amina explains quietly from behind her teacher how she saw her uncle’s stomach gouged out by the Taliban. Another girl’s mother was shot for not being in purdah. And another was shot at with her family when she was walking outside during the curfew. Seven-year-old Bisma, I’m told, has seen all the male members of her family hanged in what has become known as Bloody Square. She doesn’t speak.

The children are equally afraid of the army. There’s a joke going round: “What’s worse than being ruled by the Taliban? Being saved by the Pakistani army.” When the chief minister landed in a helicopter next to the camp a few days ago, I’m told, the children fled screaming in terror to their tents.

A group of small children are drawing pictures, part of an art therapy programme run by Unicef in its child-friendly spaces within the camps. Here traumatised children can play volleyball, sing songs and be read stories in shaded safety.

A boy called Salman hands me a precisely drawn and signed picture of a Kalashnikov. A shy eight-year-old girl sitting cross-legged next to him, with her grubby green dupatta half obscuring her smile, offers me hers of a helicopter shelling a village. “That’s my house,” she says, pointing to some scribbled rubble.

Their schools and homes have been destroyed. All have had relatives killed. An orphanage in Mingora was caught in the crossfire when soldiers based themselves on the roof of the building with 200 children trapped inside.

After an hour and a half in the camp we are asked to leave for security reasons. Apparently the Taliban have been infiltrating, trying to recruit supporters.

There’s certainly support for the Taliban in the camps. They represent, for many, an opposing force to an army that “drones” (it's now a verb here) its own people. America’s war on terror, supported by the Pakistani army, is unanimously viewed here as a war on Islam. Newborn twins have been named Sufi Mohammad and Fazlullah after the two militant leaders in Swat.

The following day I drive to Lahore. We take the M2 motorway. (There is no M1.) It’s expensive to take this route and lorries are banned. As a result it must be the most underused motorway in the world.

The following day I drive to Lahore. We take the M2 motorway. (There is no M1.) It’s expensive to take this route and lorries are banned. As a result it must be the most underused motorway in the world.

As I approach Lahore I get a text from Imran: “Don’t panic. There’s been a big bomb blast just now.” The Pakistani Taliban claim responsibility for the deaths of 30 people. The next call is from my mother who has converted worry into crossness.

Compared with the tranquillity and solitude of Imran’s mountain-top idyll, Lahore is mayhem. The sky is a tangled mess of electrical wires, the buildings are half built or half falling down. There is no respite from the 42C heat or the incessant traffic noise, which worsens at night. My mobile phone stops working and I complain that it has melted, but everyone laughs at me. Lahoris are the most telephonically dependent people I’ve met.

It’s the first time I’ve been to Lahore since I left Pakistan six years ago; and it’s where I shared a house for the first five years of my marriage with Imran’s father, his two sisters, their husbands and their children, 16 of us in total.

It’s the first time I’ve been to Lahore since I left Pakistan six years ago; and it’s where I shared a house for the first five years of my marriage with Imran’s father, his two sisters, their husbands and their children, 16 of us in total.

Imran’s father died last year and I’m here to offer condolences, a cultural imperative. It involves visiting the bereaved, in this case my former sisters-in-law, and offering a formal prayer in Arabic, arms extended, palms open, for the deceased.

I’m nervous as I haven’t had any contact with them — bar my Facebook friendship with the children — since getting divorced, but everyone is exceptionally warm and welcoming. I cry when I hug Imran’s niece, who was 13 when I first arrived in Lahore but is now married with a baby.

I’m staying at the haveli (mansion) of Imran’s old schoolfriend, Yousaf Salahuddin, in Lahore’s old city. He is known mostly by reputation, although that’s not necessarily an exclusive club in this conservative city.

You need only to read Salman Rushdie’s Shame to understand how important honour (izzat) and reputation are — although I shouldn’t really write that. The last time I admitted to having read Rushdie (for my university dissertation on post-colonial literature), I had a thousand placard-waving beards outside my door and adverts in the papers, calling me an apostate and demanding that my citizenship be revoked.

Yousaf is Lahore’s best host, tirelessly generous and entertaining. His house is a dusty jewel hidden in a tiny alleyway in what was once Lahore’s red-light district, known as the Heera Mandi. It is now inhabited mostly by cobblers and paan sellers. The haveli is one of the few existing traditional houses built in red brick around a central courtyard. Cherie Blair, Mick Jagger and Elizabeth Hurley have all been guests here.

Once a politician in Benazir Bhutto’s government, Yousaf is now a music producer and fashion aficionado. He has girlfriends — plenty and young — he smokes, he serves alcohol in his home, he loves music and models and he parties with Lollywood’s glitterati. He also has a deep knowledge of Sufism and is a passionate supporter of restoration work in the old city.

Like everyone here he likes to opine: where Pakistan has gone wrong, where politicians have gone wrong, where the interpreters of Islam have gone wrong, where Imran has gone wrong and, by the end of our stay, where I’ve gone wrong. He also loves to eat, usually after midnight.

JP, a film-maker friend, is here to research a film about Pakistan. We head for tea with Iqbal Hussein, who paints dancing girls from the red-light district for a living. His mother was a prostitute.

As we arrive he is packing up his paints. His models, two gypsy sisters, one clutching a baby, are sitting quietly motionless on a mattress in a dark, windowless back room in his studio. Every half an hour in Pakistan there’s “load shedding”, when the electricity cuts out

We sit in candlelight in the thick, still heat and the girls sing classical songs, using upturned metal cups as instruments. Chewing betel nut, they giggle and reveal red-stained teeth. We cheer and clap and chuck rupees in appreciation.

I’m starting to feel sick and dizzy from the heat. Everyone’s face is coated in sweat, strands of hair stick to the girls’ faces as they sing, but nobody else seems bothered. Finally they take pity on me and we retreat prematurely to the dark, fabric-swathed, air-conditioned inner sanctum of Yousaf’s haveli and stay there until nightfall when the old city begins to wake up.

Yousaf has invited a qawwali singer, Ustad Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, a huge star, to perform privately for us in his smoky underground music chamber.

Rahat’s family have been qawwali singers for 600 years, the skill passed down from generation to generation. He shows me a video on his mobile phone of his five-year-old son performing qawwali. He has been training the child since he was two. The little boy sits cross-legged on a chintzy sofa, raises his tiny palms to heaven imploringly, closes his eyes and starts to sing, smashing his hands back down on make-believe tublas and throwing his head back in mock ecstasy with all the passion and panache of his ancestors.

We’re joined by Iman Ali — or “monster” as Yousaf calls her — one of Pakistan’s most famous models/actresses. She’s dressed in tight jeans, a sleeveless top and kitten heels. I’m in what I’d always thought was the obligatory billowing white cotton.

She’s extremely opinionated even for this ready-steady-rant society, prefacing each pronouncement with, “Well what would I know? I’m just a dumb model but . . .” She’s very bold and at times perspicacious, especially about religion.

She tells us that Indians are all “cry babies” and Muslims would do better to be cry babies, too, and that way gain equal levels of sympathy abroad. I like her forthrightness. She says things others wouldn’t dare to say here, albeit euphemistically.

She questions how it is that she is the most successful celebrity in Pakistan and yet the poorest. Then she answers herself: “They must have other sources of income.” JP looks perplexed. “Illegit,” she enlightens. Pakistani actresses and models have traditionally emerged from the red-light area. They must have “friends”, she adds for good measure. Dosti (friendship) is a euphemism for client, while shadi (marriage) means sex with a client.

I return to the calm of the capital, scoop up my cricket-fatigued boys at 2.30am and head to Islamabad airport — now renamed Benazir Bhutto International by her widower, the president. We join the end of a 20-coil queue that snakes from the car park towards the distant terminal.

The airport was the first glimpse I had of Pakistan all those years ago. It’s the country I feel I grew up in and was a part of, arriving at 20 and emerging a decade later a more questioning and conflicted person. I am still maddened by its faults but I bristle and become defensive if others criticise.

As we’re jostled along towards the check-in area, I think about Pakistani society. It is an endless contradiction — hostile and hospitable, euphemistic and unambiguous, spiritual and prescriptive, aggressor and victim. Nothing sums up its topsy-turvy nature quite like the Heera Mandi in Lahore, one of the most conservative cities, where the prostitutes wear burqas and girls with honour dress like Wags.

(Times Online)

Jemima's this article has been given coverage in most of Pakistani newspapers published on June 9. However, they all have been selective.

Pakistan: Christian leaders denounce Islamic tax

The 'jizya' - an Islamic tax on non-Muslims - is a threat that violates human rights, say Christian leaders in Pakistan. The Religious Minorities minister of Pakistan strongly condemned the Taliban-imposed tax.

by Qaiser Felix

The National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) has condemned the imposition of the Jizya, the poll tax for non-Muslims, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on the border with Afghanistan because of its discriminatory nature and because it constitutes a direct threat to basic human rights. Mgr John Saldanha, archbishop of Lahore, and Peter Jacob, NCJP executive secretary, have urged the federal and provincial governments in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) to do something to alleviate the plight of non-Muslim families forced to “hand over their hard earned bread and butter to the extremists.”

Lashkar-e-Islam, a militant Islamist organisation based in Bara, about 10 kilometres south-west of Peshawar, is responsible for applying the tax.

Local sources said that more than 700 non-Muslim families have had to pay the tax.

NCJP leaders have complained about the lack of security among religious minorities in Orkazai and Khyber agency areas and that they are victims of harassment, religious taxation and expulsion.

The tax also is a threat to the country’s “democratic credentials and political system”. For this reason the government “should make it clear that Pakistan is a democratic country that cannot allow religious minorities to be subjected to such discrimination and economic injustice because they are equal citizens and not a conquered people.” These principles, the NCJP statement said, “are still part of the Constitution and the political system.”

Religious Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti reacted to the appeals of Catholic leaders by strongly condemning the demand on non-Muslims to pay the jizya.

Speaking to AsiaNews, the minister, who is Catholic, said that the tax “is illegal, unethical and against the Constitution of Pakistan.”

Moreover, in condemning those who perpetrate violence in the name of religion, he insisted that the protection of non-Muslims “is our constitutional obligation and moral duty”. The government, he reiterated, “will not let the Taliban threat and harm the minorities.”

(Enerpub)

PAKISTAN: MUSLIM FORCES 12-YEAR-OLD GIRL TO CONVERT, MARRY HIM

Police ridicule Christian mother for kidnapping complaint; others demand money, labor.

LAHORE, Pakistan, June 4 (Compass Direct News) – The Christian mother of a 12-year-old girl in Punjab Province who was kidnapped, coerced into converting to Islam and forcibly married to a 37-year-old Muslim hopes to recover her daughter at a court hearing next week.

The reaction of Pakistani law enforcement authorities to Sajida Masih’s complaint so far – ridiculing her and asserting that there is nothing she can do because her daughter is now a Muslim – does not encourage her hopes of recovering her daughter Huma at next Thursday’s (June 11) hearing.

Masih said that Muhammad Imran abducted Huma at gunpoint on Feb. 23 from Hanif Kot village in Gujranwala district, forcibly converted her and then married her. Imran has since disappeared along with his first wife, three children and new child-bride.

Masih, who worked alongside Imran as a farmhand, said the kidnapping occurred on her son’s wedding day. Masih said that when she sent Huma and the child’s aunt out of their home to see if transportation had arrived for the wedding party, Imran – who had helped in preparing for the ceremony – was waiting and told her to sit on his motorbike.

Huma did not understand and, with her concerned aunt tightly holding her hand, she refused.

Masih’s attorney, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said Imran took out a pistol and told Huma that he would shoot her as well as her parents if she did not obey; he also pointed the weapon at her aunt and said that he would kill her. Huma got onto the bike with him; her family has not seen her since.

Masih immediately ran to the owner of the farm where she and Imran work, Khan Buhadur, who told her to first finish the wedding and then see him in the evening. Masih’s attorney said that when she and relatives went to Buhadur after the ceremony, however, he said only that Imran had fled with his family along with the girl, and that he did not know where they were.

Suspecting that Buhadur was complicit in the kidnapping, Masih went to Sadar police station in Gujranwala. Police officers first ridiculed her, the attorney said, and then told her to go back to Buhadur because “only he could do something.” For several days officers and Buhadur shuttled her back and forth between them.

Unable to get police to register the case, Masih submitted a report with the help of a lawyer and took it to the police station, where officers consigned it to the dustbin.

Three days after the kidnapping, police finally registered a First Information Report (FIR) on Feb. 26 – but changed the age of the kidnapped girl from 12, as her mother reported, to 16. Moreover, Investigating Officer Niaz Khan told Masih that the FIR was useless since she was too poor to hire a lawyer, and that she should try to reach an out-of-court agreement with Buhadur – implying that he knew of the child’s whereabouts.

The Masih family learned from a friend of Imran, identified only as Javed, that Huma had converted to Islam and had married the fugitive father of three. Javed further said that Imran had told him police would do nothing as he had paid them 50,000 rupees (US$620).

The family subsequently received a court notice, the attorney said, stating that Imran had requested nullification of the FIR on Huma’s abduction, claiming she was an “adult” and had “willfully” converted to Islam and married him.

According to Huma’s birth certificate, issued by St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Gujranwala, she was born on Oct. 22, 1996. The attorney said that Imran had submitted a fake birth certificate stating she was born on Dec. 23, 1990, which would make her 18 years old. The legal marriage age for girls in Pakistan is 16.

Only then did Masih obtain the services of the lawyer now handling the case, who is supported by the American Center for Law & Justice.

A hearing on the case had been scheduled for May 6, but because of a change of judge a new date was set for June 11. Unwilling to wait, the family and their lawyer went with a court bailiff to a factory owned by Buhadur in Gujranwala on May 14, hoping to get help in recovering Huma, but Buhadur did not cooperate.

Buhadur had been demanding that Masih pay him 100,000 rupees (US$1,240) that she had supposedly borrowed from him, but this demand only surfaced after the kidnapping – an implied attempt to extort money from her in exchange for information on the whereabouts of her daughter, according to the lawyer. Buhadur withdrew this pressure on Masih after the visit from the court bailiff and efforts by the attorney.

At a meeting of villagers on May 16 at the Sadar police station, Buhadur said that Imran owed him money and that he would inform officers if he learned anything of his whereabouts.

Another land owner, Karamat Ali Saroyya, subsequently called Masih saying that Huma was in Muridke, near Lahore, but when Masih and her lawyer set out again and met with Muridke police, they were unable to find her.

Saroyya later demanded that Masih work his fields for one year in order to get her daughter back.

Masih’s lawyer and other legal representatives said police and officials at the Municipal Corporation’s office, which keeps birth and death records, have been reluctant to help, saying that Huma had converted and that therefore there was no reason that she should be returned to non-Muslim parents.

(Compass Direct)

Khyber Agency not issuing domiciles to tribal Christians

* Landikotal APA says Christians not issued certificates because they are not permanent tribal residents
* Agency MNA says he will discuss issue with Zardari soon

By Sami Ullah

LANDIKOTAL: The Khyber Agency political administration is not issuing domicile certificates to Christian inhabitants, tribal Christians told Daily Times on Wednesday.

Khyber Agency Christian Community Chairman Arshad Masih said, “We have contacted the political agent, the (NWFP) governor and (Federal) Minorities Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti for issuance of domicile certificates, but no action has been taken so far. We cannot apply for jobs without our domiciles.”

Permanent: Landikotal Assistant Political Agent (APA) Azam Jan Khalil said, “The Christians are not permanent residents of the Tribal Areas. That is why we have not issued them domicile certificates. The tribal people were also against the issuance of the certificates to the Christians, he added.

A senior member of the community said the government had given permanent residential rights to the Sikh community of the agency, but the Christians had been denied the same right.

There were a total 180 Christian families in the agency, a tribal Christian, Manzoor Masih, said.

The Christians said they had supported the Khyber Agency Member National Assembly (MNA) Noorul Haq Qadri in the February 18, 2008 polls.

Qadri said, “I am trying my best to provide alternative residence to the Christians. I discussed the domicile issue with the former political agent and former NWFP governor Ali Muhammad Jan Orakzai but no one has given a solution. I will discuss the issue with President Asif Zardari soon.”

(Daily Times)

SCENARIOS: Potential outcomes in Pakistan's war with Taliban

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's military is pressing ahead with an offensive to try to crush the Taliban, following warnings from Washington that the militants pose an existential threat. Following are some scenarios of how events could unfold:

WEAK PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT STRUGGLES TO PUSH BACK TALIBAN

Even if Taliban fighters melt away from their strongholds in Swat in the face of the latest army offensive, they can regroup. Militants could stealthily widen and consolidate their territorial grip as long as they were careful not to overreach and provoke another major army offensive.

"The Pakistan Taliban are effectively taking advantage of the lack of governance and development. Neither appeasement nor military assault is likely to prove effective for handling the long-term threat posed by these groups," said Maria Kuusisto, Pakistan analyst at Eurasia Group in London.

The outlook would be more of the same -- instability, a continued terrorist threat, and a divided Pakistani leadership. But this relatively negative outlook is already priced in, analysts say, meaning local markets will largely ignore the poor security situation and focus on the brighter economic picture. There would be room for gains by local stocks, and the rupee would stabilize, seeing an orderly depreciation over time due to exchange rate reforms. There would be little or no impact on global markets.

MILITARY OFFENSIVE DEALS SIGNIFICANT BLOW TO TALIBAN

The Pakistani government and army so far retain considerable public support for their offensive against the Taliban in Swat. If they can press home their advantage and deal a significant military blow to the Taliban, stocks could see strong gains.

"We reiterate that investors keep an eye on the bigger picture and any progress on the political and military front should be taken as a bullish signal," Credit Suisse said last week. Analysts said the stock market upside could be 25 percent.
The military has also shown success in dealing with militants in tribal areas earlier this year. But crushing an insurgency is notoriously difficult.

"Pakistani military forces already are privately expressing their concerns that many of the Taliban have blended in with the refugees fleeing the district, likely making it a matter of time before Taliban forces are able to reconstitute themselves in the area," risk consultancy Stratfor said in an analysis.
Furthermore, a sustained campaign against the Taliban would worsen an already severe refugee crisis and send the civilian death toll sharply higher, undermining popular support. "If the war against militants becomes a prolonged one, and with heavy civilian casualties (as can be expected), public resentments against the government may well serve to break up the unity, laying the groundwork for both social and political unrest," said Jan Zalewski, analyst at IHS Global Insight.

TALIBAN MAKES DRAMATIC TERRITORIAL GAINS

If the Taliban was able to make significant inroads into the key provinces of Punjab and Sindh, the implications would be highly bearish for local stocks and the rupee, and global markets could be rattled by the rising risk that Pakistan could implode. But the chances of this happening are minimal.

The Taliban remains a loose coalition of disparate militia groups, able to muster at most up to 10,000 fighters who are expert at insurgency warfare in their tribal strongholds but would be quickly crushed in a conventional war with the army. Their popular support in Punjab and Sindh is minimal.

"We may see pockets of Talibanization -- parts of Karachi are vulnerable," said Chietigj Bajpaee at Control Risks. "But the whole country falling under Taliban rule is an exaggeration."

MILITARY TAKES POWER AGAIN

Given the increased popular resentment that forced former President Pervez Musharraf to relinquish power, analysts say the Pakistani military has little appetite for another coup. But if the situation deteriorates badly, that could change.

"Over the six months or a year, another military intervention is unlikely, given the backlash against the Musharraf government," Bajpaee said. "But if there is seen to be significant political gridlock, and the government is not seen to be taking action, then there is a possibility."

Analysts say that given the unpopularity of President Asif Ali Zardari, a coup would be positive for markets. "Given Pakistan's unfortunate history of coups, it would be a very unwise person indeed whoever ruled out a coup in Pakistan," said Nomura senior political analyst Alastair Newton. "But I don't see that as a bad thing in terms of market perceptions."

STRONGER GOVERNMENT EMERGES

Zardari's approval ratings have tanked and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif enjoys far higher popularity -- a poll this week gave him 75 percent approval versus Zardari's 19 percent.

Sharif appeals to a religious conservative constituency, and was a "bete noire for Washington" in the past, Newton said. But there are signs that the United States, exasperated by Zardari, is starting to make overtures to Sharif.
Analysts say that if a way can be found to bring Sharif and his supporters back into the government fold, either through an accommodation with Zardari or by removing him probably with the army's help, this would be positive for stability and markets.
(Editing by Sugita Katyal)

(Reuters)

Sikhs & others sccumb to militants Jazia demand

Our correspondent

LANDIKOTAL: The non-Muslim communities — including Sikhs, Hindus and Christians living in Khyber Agency — have agreed to pay tax to the Bara-based Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) in exchange for ensuring their security in the area.

Sources said LI had asked the non-Muslim communities in Bara, Chora, Karamna, Bazaar Zakhakhel and Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency to pay tax or leave the agency.The sources said the warning came from LI two days back following which the community agreed to pay the tax instead of leaving the area, where they are living for decades.

Several jirgas were held to settle the issue and finally a jirga attended by the leaders and elders of the Sikh, Hindu and Christian community at Tirah Valley decided to pay tax to LI.

Under the decision, only women, children and handicapped persons had been exempted from paying the tax, while other members of the communities would be bound to pay Rs1,000 per head annually.

(The News International, June 3)

Jazia tax imposed on Sikhs of Khyber Agency

BARA: Lashkar-i-Islam (Army of Islam) has imposed Jazia tax on non-Muslims at the rate of Rs1,000 per year per person on Sikhs living in Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency.

The decision was taken at a meeting between Lashkar-i-Islam chief Mangal Bagh and a delegation of the Sikh community held in Speen Qabar on Tuesday.

Lashkar Islam chief assured the delegation that if they paid the tax they would be fully protected from any threat.

About 7,000 Sikhs live in the Khyber Agency.

(More than 300 Sikhs were among those who fled fighting in the districts of Swat and Buner after the Pakistan army launched an operation in those areas.—AP/File)

(Dawn, June 3)

Taliban recruits teenage suicide bombers for revenge attacks

Video films made by the Taliban in Pakistan's troubled Swat valley show teenage boys being groomed as suicide bombers for revenge attacks against local security forces.

By Nick Meo in Peshawar


After the army began an operation to clear Taliban from the valley in May, fighters went from house to house demanding a boy or young man from each family, with recruits encouraged to volunteer for martyrdom missions.

Last week 24 people died and more than 300 were wounded when a suicide car bomb exploded outside a secret police headquarters in Lahore, and six policemen were killed when an attacker detonated explosives at a checkpoint in Peshawar.

Taliban spokesmen said the attacks inside Pakistan's main cities were revenge for the army's assault.

Propaganda films obtained by The Sunday Telegraph in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, show boys of 14 or 15 recording farewell messages before climbing into vehicles filled with explosives.

Suicide bombings were extremely rare in Pakistan but have increased dramatically since the Taliban took control of Swat in the aftermath of a bungled government crackdown on extremists launched in 2007.

One film which Pakistanis have been watching with horrified fascination shows a boy of about 15, named in the video as Arshad Ali from Swat, who attacked a polling station after the Taliban banned voting last year.

Sitting with an AK-47 cradled in his lap and fiddling with prayer beads, he stares into the camera. Speaking calmly, he said that the people of Swat were living in evil times and that sacrifice was called for.

"Some hypocrites say that we are doing this for money - or because of brainwashing - but we are told by Allah to target these pagans," he said, in a reference to government claims that the families of suicide bombers were paid after the attacks.

He said: "I invite my fellows to sacrifice themselves".

His final message was for his father, who he urged to stop working in a bank which paid interest, a practice which extremists consider to be usury and unIslamic.

The film then switched to the scene of devastation after the attack, with demolished buildings and piles of rubble-strewn with corpses. The two-minute clip has become the latest hit in a craze for jihadi videos that has swept Pakistan's north-west. DVDs and CDs are openly sold in bazaars, replacing Bollywood films which the extremists have banned.

Films are also swapped between mobile phones or on social networking sites.

Many of them feature the last messages of young suicide bombers, and footage shot of their attacks from a distance – with the cameraman heard chanting "Allah Akbar" (God is great) after each explosion.

The films also show gruesome "trials" and beheadings of alleged spies and captured policemen, whippings of criminals, the aftermath of attacks by guerrillas, and scenes of young jihadis preparing for holy war in training camps.

Another boy, who looks even younger than Arshad Ali, tells the camera: "If I die, do not cry for me. I will be in Heaven waiting for you."

Soon afterwards he killed himself in an attack in which dozens of security personnel died or were wounded.

Sermons from firebrand leaders, jihadi songs about revenge, or chanting of Koranic verses are played as a soundtrack over the footage.

In one sermon, Maulana Fazlulla, one of the movement's leaders in Swat, who is also known as Maulana Radio from his liking for broadcasting, said that the Taliban has set up their own media wing because Pakistani journalists were biased against them.

Maulana Fazlulla is believed to be the commander chiefly responsible for the Taliban's strategy of using young suicide bombers. Last year he told Pakistani journalists: "I am so proud that our boys use their flesh and bones as a weapon for Islam".

On one of the videos he is heard to say: "A lot of people have given us everything for jihad, their homes, their money, their children too."

Another video showed Pakistani planes bombing villages. Such bombardments have killed large numbers of civilians. As the pictures of burned victims and charred villages are played, the maulana says: "To revenge our children we will send out regiments of suicide bombers."

The suicide attacks, which seem to be modelled on al-Qaeda's tactics in Iraq, have spread fear through the ranks of the military and silenced many of the tribal leaders who oppose the Taliban.

"They have ruined our Pushtun culture," one Peshawar businessman said. "They attack mosques at prayer times, murder elders, and recruit boys to kill themselves. All of this is forbidden in Islam."

The man did not want to give his name for fear of falling victim to the Taliban's assassination campaign.

"Not even in the bloodiest battles in the past have we seen this. It is the Arab al-Qaeda way of jihad. It is poisoning our lands."

One of the few leaders from Swat who is prepared to speak out against the Taliban is Riaz Khan, a political worker for the PML-N opposition party who described how the Taliban had taken over the valley. "The Taliban says to people, if you want to live here you will have to support us with money or give us one person from your family.

"They brainwash boys in madrassas. They prepare them mentally for suicide bombing. There has never been anything like this in Swat before – before this the people of Swat were religious but peaceful."

The British government is so worried about the spread of radicalisation among young people in NWFP that in April it announced the quadrupling of spending on development in Pakistan to more than £600 million over four years

The government has been so concerned about propaganda videos that Pakistani television stations have been forbidden from showing them.

But they can also backfire on the groups who make them. When ordinary Pakistanis watched the films that they can buy in bazaars, they see what life under Taliban rule is like.

"I always had a soft corner of my heart for the Taliban because I thought that they were good Muslims and they were fighting against government injustice," said Mohammed Khan, a shopkeeper who lives in Islamabad.

"But when I saw men being slaughtered like beasts in executions, and boys going to kill themselves, I was shocked."

There have been growing signs in the past week of a new bitterness in the battle between the Taliban and the Pakistan government. The price on the head of Maulana Fazlulla was increased to 50 million rupees (£372,000) alive or dead, ten times the original bounty that was offered for him. In return, the Taliban have threatened new revenge attacks.

A telephone intercept of Muslim Khan, a Taliban spokesman in Swat, was released in which he urged attacks on the families of soldiers. "Strikes should be carried out on their homes so their kids get killed and then they'll realise," he was quoted as saying.

The army appears to have been successful in driving Taliban back in large areas, and it claimed yesterday that it had regained control of Mingora, the capital of Swat. However, the battles have resulted in an exodus of 2.4 million refugees. In turn this has created a new security problem - hundreds of terrorists are feared to be hiding among those who have fled.

Police have so far arrested more than 30 suspected Taliban in refugee camps, but there was concern that many more may have used the chaos to slip into Pakistan's cities. Fears of suicide bombers striking crowds are running so high in Peshawar that gatherings of more than 10 people have been banned.

See the Taliban's film of Arshad Ali on Telegraph TV

(Courtesy Daily Times, Telegraph)

Suicide blast in Lahore

Pakistani Roman Catholic nuns visit the site of the suicide car bomb a day after the attack in Lahore. Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in Lahore to avenge a military offensive in the northwest and vowed further deadly strikes. A van carrying high-intensity explosives hit a police checkpost outside the offices of the Rescue-15 and the Inter-Services Intelligence on Lawrence Road killing 26 people and leaving more than 251 injured.-AFP Photo/ Arif Ali.

(Dawn, Pakistan)

Analysis: Why attack Lahore?

By Syed Shoaib Hasan

BBC News, Islamabad



Lahore - Pakistan's cultural capital - has faced its share of militant attacks, but it has not had to put up with the kind of sustained campaign it now appears to be facing.

Wednesday's suicide bombing of the police emergency response headquarters on a heavily guarded section of Lahore's Mall road underlines the fact that the cultural heart of Pakistan is a city under siege.

It is a clear statement from the militants seen to be under siege in Swat and elsewhere - they are alive and can strike back.

A raid on the police training centre near the city in March - along with an attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team in the same month - brought home the fact that the city is now in the frontline of Pakistan's struggle against militancy.

According to security officials, part of the reason Lahore is now under threat may be because it has previously been seen as stable.

"Lahore is the only city in Pakistan which has remained relatively peaceful since the 9/11 attacks," says a security official.

"It has been Pakistan's saving grace, and whoever wants to destabilise the country or the government, would go after Lahore," the official says.

Suspects

There are a number of reasons why Lahore could be the centre of such attacks.
Many people suspect Taliban militants in Pakistan's north-west. Almost all major attacks inside Pakistan in recent years have been traced back to the tribal areas near the Afghan border.

Taliban militants fighting the Pakistani army have openly admitted planning and carrying out many of the attacks.

They recently issued a propaganda video which took responsibility for carrying out a number of suicide bombings on security forces over the last two years. At least two of them were carried out in Lahore.

Fingers have also been pointed at the Lashkar-e-Taiba, as they were after the attack on the Sri Lanka team.

Some experts say the attacks could be retaliation by elements within the group for the crackdown on it following the attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) last November.

Others, like Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik, accuse another militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which the US believes has close ties with al-Qaeda.

"Almost all the recent major terror attacks have either been claimed or traced back to the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi," he told reporters in Lahore in March.


India, too, is blamed by many Pakistani government and security officials, who suspect retaliation for the Mumbai attacks. This was also a view voiced after the attack on Sri Lanka's cricketers.

Many analysts are quick to point out the change in tactics, and believe that the attacks are the handiwork of a new militant group.

'Assault tactics'

But what many seem to have forgotten is how it all began. Pakistani militants only started using suicide attacks in a co-ordinated manner in 2004. The first target was Karachi, where a series of bomb attack in May of that year left more than 100 people dead.

Since then, they have become increasingly popular, and now a suicide bombing is almost a daily occurrence in North West Frontier Province.

While experts have suggested a number of theories for this change of tactics, the militants themselves say there was one clear reason.

"We started using the suicide bomber because we were under siege at the time," a militant leader told me in 2006.

"We were short of trained men as many had been arrested or killed in the crackdown following 9/11. "The places where we could set-up training camps were also declared out of bounds.

"The easiest way to fight back was to use a bomb and the easiest way to ensure its success was to use someone to manually detonate the device. Little training was needed, and the younger the bomber the easier it was to convince them," the militant said.

But he added that the suicide bomber was not always effective, especially if the target was spread over a large area. "We will eventually start using assault tactics again, when we have regained our strength in men," he concluded. That increasingly appears to be the case, as the militants deploy a variety of different tactics in the field.

'Next Taliban state'

More than anything, this means that whatever Pakistan's government says, the power of the militants has increased substantially over the last two years. Political instability has given them encouragement, and they have thrived as they once did during the 1990s under state patronage.

Whether Pakistan's current government is up to the task of taking them on remains to be seen. Whether Pakistan's current government is up to the task of taking them on remains to be seen.

President Asif Zardari's government certainly has the desire to go after the militants. But whether it has the required backing from the military is an open question.

Pakistan's military has always seen the country's "strategic interests" through a different lens from the civilian governments. In the past the military has acted as godfather to the militants. But never has the country faced as great an internal threat as it does now. Experts say the situation can still be remedied if both parties agree that eliminating the militants is in Pakistan's best interests. If that does not happen, there appears little to prevent Pakistan from becoming the next Taliban state.

MAJOR ATTACKS IN PAKISTAN

• 27 May 09: At least 23 people are killed and 200 injured in Lahore
• 27 March 09: Suicide bomber demolishes crowded mosque near the north-western town of Jamrud, killing dozens
• 3 March 09: Six policemen and a driver killed, and several cricketers injured, in ambush on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Lahore
• 20 Sept 08: 54 die in an attack on the Marriott hotel in Islamabad
• 6 Sept 08: Suicide car bombing kills 35 and wounds 80 at a police checkpoint in Peshawar
• Aug 08: Twin suicide bombings at gates of a weapons factory in town of Wah leave 67 dead
• March 08: Suicide bombs hit police headquarters and suburban house in Lahore, killing 24

(BBC)

Blasts Rock Peshawar, Pakistan

By Catherine Maddux

Terrorists have struck again in Pakistan, with two bombs killing at least 10 people and wounding more than 70 others at an outdoor market in Peshawar. Meanwhile, the Taliban has taken responsibility for a car bombing that killed at least 23 people Wednesday in Lahore, calling it a revenge attack.

Senior Taliban commander Hakimullah Mehsud told news agencies militants had been planning to target Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, for a long time.

Hakimullah Mehsud is deputy to Taliban leader Baitullah Mesud, believed to have masterminded the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007. He said Wednesday's attack in Lahore was retaliation and to expect more.

Security lapse

Former military official and defense analyst Talat Masood says the magnitude of the Lahore attack illustrates a serious lapse in security and a lack good intelligence.

"The security culture is not at all compatible with the type of threats that Pakistan is facing in the sense that the police and the security agencies are not truly trained to handle such incidents," he said. "I think it is a question of training, it is a question of equipment, it is a question of culture and mindset."

Masood says the area where the militants struck, outside a police emergency-response unit on one of Lahore's busiest streets, could have been better cordoned off with multiple zones of security. He says multiple rings of security would not have allowed a vehicle to park so close to the building, which was flattened by the explosion.

Response criticized

Masood says another clue that shows how unprepared Pakistan's security forces are is how they respond after an attack.

"The response after an event, you can see, is extremely chaotic," he said. "Immediately those places must be cordoned off. No outsiders must be allowed. All forensic evidence must be preserved."

Masood adds the public rarely hears or is informed of the perpetrators of such attacks being caught or brought to justice. With the threat of more attacks looming, the Pakistani army says it is up to the task of protecting the nation's cities and is ready to ward off any future terrorist attacks.

Shortly after Wednesday's attack, the government announced rewards for information leading to the capture of 21 Taliban-linked militant leaders, dead or alive.

(Voice of America)

Nearly Two Million Pakistanis Displaced by Offensive Against Taliban

By Ravi Khanna

Pakistan's military says its troops have recaptured a large swath of territory in and around the northwestern Swat Valley, destroying terrorist bases and killing hundreds of Taliban militants. A regional commander dismissed reports that many civilians are dying or that homes have been destroyed in the fighting.

Pakistan says it has stepped up its offensive to flush out Taliban militants from the northwestern Swat valley. The army is claiming major gains, which cannot be independently verified.

The number of Swat valley residents displaced by the fighting has reached more than two million, creating a humanitarian crisis, despite government claims that there has been no collateral damage.

At least 70,000 have found refuge at the Jalozai camp run by the United Nations near the city of Peshawar."I lost two of my sons, Adnan and Noman, during the evacuation from Mingora in the Swat Valley. We don't know where they are," Abdul Qayum said. Qaytum is from Mingora, the main town in the Swat Valley.

In the valley itself, damage from the fighting is evident in the villages. Mohammad Ayaz lost everything.

"I lost my tractor, my bed and all the things in the house," Ayaz said. I don't know who will pay for that."

The offensive is seen as a major test for Pakistan's army and its will to quell the Taliban insurgency. Public opinion so far appears to support the offensive, according to reports.

But some analysts say the mood could quickly turn if the fighting drags on or if the refugee crisis is badly handled.

There have been protests in Islamabad and Karachi against the operation.

Muhammad Hussein Mehanti belongs to the Islamic political party called Jamat-e-Islami. "This operation is not against any Taliban," he explains. "It's against the nation. Our demand is the operation should be stopped and, through talks, solution should be found."

Some experts say the army is used to conventional warfare with India, but is not adept at fighting insurgencies. That's why, they say, so many people have been displaced.

Pakistan built these camps for some four million Afghan refugees who fled the fighting in neighboring Afghanistan, first during the Soviet occupation and later because of the Taliban.

Today, Pakistanis have become refugees in their own country.

(Voice of America)

Swat Taliban pay mercenaries to kill policemen

MINGORA: The Taliban in Swat pay mercenaries for killing police and army jawans, a suspected Afghan terrorist arrested by local police told media on Thursday, adding that he was paid Rs 20,000 to kill a policeman. “I beheaded five policemen in Sitara Chowk,” Ghaniur Rehman told reporters after security forces arrested him from Malukabad area of the city on Wednesday. The suspected Afghan terrorist said he received training at a Taliban training facility in the Charbagh area. staff report

(Daily Times, Pakistan)

‘Provinces will be asked to fix 5% job quota for minorities’

By Zulfiqar Ghuman

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Thursday he would ask the provinces to fix a five percent quota in government jobs for minorities.

“I will ensure the implementation of 5 percent of jobs quota for minorities in the federal government departments in letter and spirit. I will also advise the semi-government departments and provinces to allocate and ensure a five percent quota of jobs for minorities,” while addressing the Minorities’ Solidarity Convention at the Convention Centre.

Gilani on Thursday urged the religious minorities to express solidarity and support the government in defeat terrorists and extremists who wanted to destabilise the country.

“The situation demands the display of unity and solidarity that was displayed at the time of the Partition to defeat the terrorists and extremists and thwart their nefarious designs of destabilising Pakistan,” he said.

The prime minister also announced that August 11 would be observed as the minorities’ day, and that the government would establish an interfaith complex in Islamabad and form a Minorities’ Commission at federal level and committees at provincial level to promote interfaith harmony and protect the rights of the minorities as enshrined in the constitution.

Prime Minister Gilani said the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) led government followed the ideology of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and believe in the equality of all citizens irrespective of cast, colour and creed.

(Daily Times, Pakistan)