DAWN/The News International, KARACHI 4 February 2008, Monday, 25 Muharram 1429
www.karachipage.com (click on underlined key-words/dates to get more details)
MQM chief assails ‘double standards’
Authorities officially announce suspect Tayyab Daad’s death
2 killed as land grabbers’ groups clash
Kidnapping for ransom: three-member gang held
Devolution gives too much power to local govts: Arif Hasan (more)
‘Militant’ killed in operation (more)
Power pylon blown up near Hub
Clash aftermath: BZU expels nine: IJT nazim’s entry banned (more)
Another suicide attack feared (more)
Security equipment before polls unlikely (more)
Fazl’s would-be suicide attacker held (more)
Nazim’s house damaged in blast (more)
Benazir’s book reveals Osama’s son attacked her (more)
80% Muslim voters take part in US primaries (more)
MQM chief assails ‘double standards’

KARACHI, Feb 3: Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain has criticised the ‘so-called’ rights bodies, lawyers’ associations and civil society for what he termed their ‘criminal silence’ on incidents of violence, loot and plunder in Sindh’ after the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Addressing at a joint meeting of MQM’s Defence Clifton Residents Society, Research and Advisory Council and Muttahida Cultural and Literary Forum, the MQM leader said he did not have words to condemn the double standards of the so-called civil society, human rights organisations which did not utter a single word on the mayhem that followed the Dec 27 tragic incident.

According to an MQM press release issued here on Sunday, he said that 11 people had been burnt alive, houses, shops and factories were torched and people were deprived of their savings in the name of reaction but the silence of the so-called civil society and right bodies on such incidents had unmasked them.

He said it was the duty of the government and its institutions to provide security to the people without any discrimination.

Authorities officially announce suspect Tayyab Daad’s death

Sources close to the interrogation of the captured millitants of (more)Jundullah said that the process of investigation was focusing on the possible involvement of the terrorist group in the October 18, 2007, attack on a PPP rally in Karachi. The twin blasts near the Karsaz area took over 140 lives.

Meanwhile, the Sindh Police Department had officially announced the death of Tayyab Daad, a wanted suspect of Jundullah, who was injured in last week’s fierce Landhi encounter. The suspect was also wanted in Corps Commander and other target killing cases. His name was mentioned in the Red Book of Crime Investigation Department and the government had announced a head money of Rs0.5 million.

On January 29, terrorists, including Daad, travelling in a stolen car, on seeing the police tailing them, opened fire, due to which SP Azad Khan and driver Mohammed Hanif were injured. During the ensuing gunbattle, a hand grenade present in the car blew up resulting in the death of Junaid. The other two passengers of the car, Tayyab Daad and Talha, were recovered and shifted to the hospital.

Later it was discovered that while Talha had sustained minor injuries, Daad sustained three bullets and three splinters of the grenade. Despite getting treatment, Daad was finally put on a ventilator. The doctors had announced his death two days ago, while law-enforcers were still in the hope of keeping him alive. Finally, on Sunday, authorities decided to announce his death.

Sources said that the details regarding Tayyab Daad in Red Book of CID states that his real name was Tayyab Daad Khan and was also known as Saeed alias Kashif alias Sohail and a resident of C-1 area, Landhi No-1, Karachi.

He was a B.Comm graduate and spoke Urdu and English fluently and was an expert in computers and operating software. The sources, citing his profile details, added that he was a very soft spoken person.

2 killed as land grabbers’ groups clash

Two land grabbers were killed while five others were injured when two land grabbers’ groups clashed in Manghopir police area over the possession of land.

A dispute was going on between two land grabbers’ group in Hazratabad of Manghopir police area for the past few months over the possession of a plot. The groups were Aga Kadir Khan Group and Malik Mohammed Group.

On Sunday both the groups confronted in the area over the possession of the plot and took out their weapons, sticks and hammers and started confronting with each other. Later the area police was informed which rushed to the scene with the town police mobiles.

Before the police could reach two people, Abdul Hafeez and Ali Gul, were killed, while Haji Bahadur, Abdul Sattar, Mohammed Javed and Abdullah were lying injured. On seeing the police the main leaders of the land grabbers’ groups fled from the scene leaving behind the dead and injured. However the police was successful in arresting seven land grabbers with a recovery of two 7mm rifles, one repeater, pistols, sticks and hammers. A case was reported at the Manghopir police station.

Kidnapping for ransom: three-member gang held

The staff of Special Investigation Unit (SIU) claimed to have arrested a three-member gang run by a lady that specialised in kidnapping citizens for ransom. It was stated that the group, after taking the ransom amount, killed the abductee.

Last year on October 23, it was reported that a well-known trader and estate agent, Syed Mohsin Ali, was abducted from Liaquatabad area. Later, the family registered his missing complaint and afterwards they received a phone call from a lady who demanded a ransom of Rs1 million and threatened that if the amount was not paid Ali would be killed.

The family then registered a complaint at the Super Market police station on October 24. Syed Zafar Ali, a resident of B-1 Area, Liaquatabad, reported that his brother Syed Mohsin Ali, 40, was running an estate agency at Tooba Apartment situated in Phase-I, DHA, by the name of Maymar Associates.

Narrating what had happened in the lead up to the disappearance, Zafar Ali said that Mohsin had left in his car (AFS-280) saying that he had some important work to do. Late in the night, when he did not return, Mohsin’s spouse called on his cellphone was told that he (Mohsin) had some property deal and would stay in Gulshan-e-Maymar and return in the morning.

Later, Mohsin would contact his loved ones asking them to arrange for one million ruppees. After Mohsin’s wife eventually withdrew the money from his bank account, it was handed it over to one Shariq who met them at a designated place on a motorcycle.

They could have no further discussion with him as his cellphone was then switched off. After searching for him at several places and being unable to locate him, they registered an FIR at the Super Market police station.

On the very next day of the FIR, Mohsin’s dead body was found in a Nullah at Korangi No.4 and shifted to JMPC for autopsy and later to Edhi Morgue’s cold storage at Sohrab Goth as it remained unclaimed till that time.

The family members and friends of the deceased recognised the body with the help of his buck-tooth and clothes. After the passage of several months, the investigation was handed over to SIU Incharge Inspector Taj Mohammed Wasaan.

He approached the bank authorities for videos of the scene and during the course of investigation an informer watching the whole scene approached the police and informed them about the presence of the suspects in Korangi.

Acting on the information the PI Wasaan along with his staff conducted a raid and after some resistance held Mohammed Shahzad Khan, Syed Babar Hussain Zaidi alias Babloo and a lady Syeda Shahdaab.

While interrogating the lady and accused persons it was disclosed that Shahdaab was the leader of their gang and they belonged to Punjab. A few months ago they had contacted deceased Mohsin and called him at their place in Maymar from where they kidnapped him and took him to their hideout in Korangi where they approached the family and demanded the ransom amount.

It was further disclosed that after taking the ransom they refused to release him because Mohsin might inform the police about them and they tied his neck with a cloth scarf and strangled him to death and threw his body in the Nullah. Before doing so, they burnt his body so that he could not be identified.

Inspector Wasaan said that the accused lady was a resident of Hyderabad, and had a Masters degree in English while accused Shahzad was her lover. The other accused Babar Hussain was her brother. The intent of the crime was stated to be monetary and not personal in nature. Further probe is underway.

Devolution gives too much power to local govts: Arif Hasan

KARACHI, Feb 3: Discussing the major changes that have shaped Pakistan since independence, renowned architect and urban planner Arif Hasan criticised President Musharraf’s devolution of power plan, initiated in 2001, saying that it had largely failed and had handed power back to the old elites.

He was speaking at a lecture titled ‘Urbanisation, politics, public and national interests,’ held at the office of an NGO here on Sunday.

“Civil society organisations – in their romanticism – had opted for this,” he said, referring to the devolution plan in his highly informative speech, which was punctuated with statistics and interesting personal anecdotes. “But I had my reservations.” He claimed the devolution of power initiative had given too much money and power to the district governments, with no proper checks in place from the central bureaucracy. “The result is the citizen has to go grovelling to the nazim to get his job done.”

Mr Hasan said one of the few good things witnessed during the Ziaul Haq era was the entry of traders and entrepreneurs at the level of local politics, whereas today power was back in the hands of the feudals and other traditional wielders of authority.

Along with devolution, the six other major factors that he reckoned had shaped the country since partition were the constitution of pre-partition society, the migration from India, Ayub Khan’s ‘Green Revolution,’ urbanization, the Zia era and globalization.

 ‘Militant’ killed in operation

QUETTA, Feb 3: A suspected militant was killed in an operation in the Khal Gari area of Sui Tehsil on Sunday.

According to sources, security forces launched the operation on a tip-off about the presence of militants and their hideouts in the Khal Gari area in Sui Tehsil of Dera Bugti district. They were fired upon when they raided what was said to be a militant hideout.

“An armed man was killed in the exchange of fire,” a senior official told this correspondent on the telephone.

He said that security forces had destroyed the hideout and seized a large quantity of arms and ammunition, including rocket-launchers, rockets, anti-aircraft guns and thousands of bullets.

The sources said that some suspects had been taken into custody for questioning.

The Frontier Corps also claimed recovering a large quantity of arms and ammunition from the Gul Kach area of Zhob, including grenades, mortar bombs, AK-47 rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Meanwhile, an assistant sub-inspector and a constable were injured when armed men opened fire on a police vehicle when it was passing through the Joint Road late on Sunday evening.

“Yes, two police personnel received bullet injuries in the firing,” Rehmatullah Niazi, the DIG Operations, said, adding that the injured were admitted to the Civil Hospital. Some bullets fired also hit the car of a journalist.

Power pylon blown up near Hub

QUETTA, Feb 3: A huge pylon of the high power transmission line near Hub was blown up on Sunday, suspending electricity supply to a vast area.

According to sources, the explosive device was planted around the 500KV transmission line at the northern bypass late in the evening.

“Power supply was suspended to the area adjoining Hub in Sindh province,” Abdullah Afridi, SHO Hub police station said. He added that the power supply to the industrial town of Hub was not affected.

Meanwhile, two powerful explosions were reported from Dera Allahyar late on Sunday evening, causing panic in the small town.

Also, armed men kidnapped a driver of the irrigation department from the Pat Feeder area.

 Clash aftermath: BZU expels nine: IJT nazim’s entry banned

MULTAN, Feb 3: The disciplinary committee of the Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU) has expelled six students forever and three others for one year after a clash between student wings of two political parties left six students injured, a BZU spokesman said in press statement on Sunday.

The spokesman said the university had also banned the entry of Islami Jamiat Tulaba Nazim Luqman Nazir and another activist Bakht Khan to the university.

IJT activists beat six members of the People’s Students Federation (PSF) on Friday for speaking in support of a student who was beaten by them (IJT activists) for sitting with his sister at the university canteen.

 Another suicide attack feared

RAWALPINDI, Feb 3: Police in the twin cities of Rawalpindi- Islamabad have been directed to step up security around the Islamabad international airport, police and military installations, prominent political figures and foreigners in the light of intelligence that militants were planning to target them in retaliation to the ongoing operations in Swat and South Waziristan in very near future, Dawn has learnt.

The city police officer of Rawalpindi and the senior superintendent of police Islamabad have also been intimated that this time the suicide bombers might use cyanide-dipped nails in the explosives which can increase the loss of lives and create panic among the security personnel.

When contacted, a senior security official at the Islamabad airport confirmed that there had been intelligence that a suicide bomber aged between 18 and 20 years might strike within the next two days.

“We are taking no chances. The tightened security will ensure that whoever is intending to carry out such an attack will not do it so easily.

People entering the airport on foot are being strictly checked by the Airport Security Force while CCTV cameras are watching all the activities at the airport,” the official said.

It may be mentioned that on a number of occasions the federal government had intimated the provincial governments and the federal capital territory administration to ensure strict security in the light of intelligence of terrorist attacks. But mostly such reports have turned out to be a hoax.

Rawalpindi and Islamabad, however, were targeted by suicide bombers at least seven times last year in which several people including former prime minister Benazir Bhutto were killed and many injured.

Security equipment before polls unlikely

 ISLAMABAD, Feb 3: The government will not be able to provide advanced security apparatus to security forces before Feb 18 general elections. “We have started the process of acquiring latest equipment which will be completed by the next elected government,” caretaker interior minister Lt-Gen (retd) Hamid Nawaz told Dawn on Sunday.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brig (retd) Javed Iqbal Cheema had said at his weekly press briefing on Tuesday that the advanced equipment, including explosives’ detectors and scanners, were being purchased by the government to foil suicide attacks on politicians during electioneering.

The minister said that the process of selection of equipment was not an easy task and it would take some time.

“Therefore, it is impossible that security forces will have the latest equipment before elections,” he said.

The ministry had said that following the tragic assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27 in Rawalpindi, some other prominent leaders of different political parties were also on the hit-list of terrorists.

The minister claimed that the equipment would help foil suicide bombings because with advanced gadgets, security forces would be able to detect explosives from some distance. “We will have those scanners which can detect explosives even underground,” the minister claimed.

He said that many international firms dealing in security apparatus had sent their brochures to the ministry and the government wanted to invite them for presentations so that good quality and cost-effective equipment could be selected.

 Fazl’s would-be suicide attacker held

PESHAWAR: The Dera Ismail Khan Police on Sunday nabbed another member of the alleged terrorist network that had been task to carry out suicide bombings, sources told The News.

Though it could not be confirmed from senior police officials, some media organisations reported that during interrogation, the terrorist confessed that he had been tasked by his commanders to kill the chief of his own faction of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Maulana Fazlur Rehman.

The 16-year-old boy, according to sources, who made the revelation, has been identified as Inayatullah. The accused disclosed names of three other members of the network, one of whom, Usman, was arrested from Bannu recently.

“Raids were conducted in different parts of Dera Ismail Khan as well as Bannu in the light of the statement of the alleged suicide bomber to bring to book his other accomplices,” the sources said.

Sources in the intelligence agencies believe the teenager was one of the 14 young terrorists who had been tasked to carry out suicide bombings across the country. Police were tipped-off about the large group of bombers on Tuesday last, following which security was intensified in the area.

Law enforcers in the troubled Dera Ismail Khan, bordering Waziristan, had arrested four suicide bombers in two separate raids recently. All these alleged terrorists are teenagers. One of them had disclosed during interrogation that their two accomplices had been tasked to carry out suicide attacks in Bannu district.

It merits a mention here that the federal government had hinted earlier that Maulana Fazlur Rehman was among those few politicians who could be a target of the terrorists. The Maulana’s security had been strengthened following threats of attacks on a number of political leaders.

Three days back, a low-intensity explosive device had gone off outside the residence of the JUI-F chief in Dera Ismail Khan. The JUI Amir and a spokesman for the militants, however, had rejected the government statement, saying it was a conspiracy to create misunderstanding between the militants and leaders of religio-political parties.

Since the arrest of one Aitzaz Shah, a 15-year-old boy who claimed to be a part of the back-up team to kill Benazir Bhutto, the Dera Ismail Khan Police have arrested a number of alleged suicide bombers.

Agencies add: The arrest of the teenager was made in the village of Abdul Khel in Dera Ismail Khan district, home to Maulana Fazlur Rehman, police and intelligence officials said. “Police have arrested a young boy suspected of being a suicide bomber,” senior police official Sarfraz Khan told AFP. “Police are looking for two other suspects.”

A security official later told AFP on condition of anonymity that Fazl was the intended target, adding that a “suicide jacket” rigged with explosives was recovered from the suspect. “The suspect and two others were planning to assassinate Maulana Fazlur Rehman,” the official said, quoting investigators.

Pakistan has been hit by more than 50 suicide bombings in the past year, killing at least 800 people. The government has blamed most of those on Baitullah Mehsud’s network.However, the chief of police in Dera Ismail Khan said the boy had been arrested but denied he was part of a plot to kill Fazl.

 Nazim’s house damaged in blast

SWAT, Feb 3: Unidentified persons blew up the house of Koza Bandai union council nazim Hidayat Ali Khan in Kabal tehsil here on Saturday night, residents said.

Eyewitnesses said that the explosive device was planted near the house, which went off during midnight and destroyed two rooms of the nazim’s residence.

Personnel of security agencies defused another improvised explosive device planted in the fields in Koza Bandai area of the district. The device was detected by security officials when they were collecting evidences of the blast at the nazim’s house.

Meanwhile, the curfew in the Mingora town was relaxed from 6am to 8pm, official sources said. Earlier, the curfew timing was till 7pm, but the authorities decided to relax it further as normality limped back to the major town of the scenic valley.

 Benazir’s book reveals Osama’s son attacked her

LONDON: The assassinated PPP leader Benazir Bhutto has revealed in her new book that Hamza bin Laden, the 16-year-old son of Osama bin Laden, was one of the attackers on her truck in Karachi on Oct 18 besides three men belonging to a rival political party who were paid half-a-million dollars.

She had also informed President Pervez Musharraf about the involvement of Hamza bin Laden’s group in planning her assassination, she says in her book. The book, which will hit the stands here in the second week of February, discloses that a secret meeting had taken place in Lahore where the bomb blasts were planned to assassinate her on October 18, 2007, as three men belonging to a rival political party were hired for $0.5 million in addition to four groups, including that of 16-year-old son of Osama bin Laden, that were sent to assassinate her.

The Sunday Times has published extracts of her new shocking book. The newspaper claimed, “When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated she was putting the final touches to her hard-hitting memoirs in which she made shocking allegations from the grave ñ and urges reconciliation between Islam and the West”.

The extract of her new book once again would fuel fiery debate in Pakistan about who had actually killed Benazir, as there was at least no doubt left in the mind of Benazir Bhutto about the people who were out to kill her and how many times she had informed President Pervez Musharraf about the possible assassins, who were sitting with him in the power corridors. Benazir Bhutto was so concerned about her security that she had also written about some of the details of her meetings with President Musharraf in the book.

The Times says that Benazir Bhutto accuses Osama Bin Laden’s son from the grave as the leader of one of the four gangs of “designated assassins” sent to kill her. The former Pakistan prime minister, who was assassinated as she left a rally in Rawalpindi in December 2007, reveals she was warned by both President Pervez Musharraf and a “friendly Muslim government” that Hamza Bin Laden was planning her murder.

It seems because of some legal reasons and possibly reluctance on the part of the publishers fearing legal complications, Benazir Bhutto did not name the very rival political party in her book, that according to her had hired the three killers in Lahore after paying them $0.5 million. But, when she was alive, she used to openly name those forces that were behind the attempts on her life.

Following are the extracts:

“Like most women in politics, I am especially sensitive to maintaining my composure, to never showing my feelings. A display of emotion by a woman in politics or government can be misconstrued as a manifestation of weakness, reinforcing stereotypes and caricatures.

But when I stepped down onto the tarmac at Quaid-e-Azam international airport in Karachi on October 18 last year, I was overcome with emotion. After eight lonely and difficult years of exile, I could not stop the tears pouring from my eyes. I felt that a terrible weight had been lifted from my shoulders. It was a sense of liberation. I was home at long last. I knew what I had to do.

I had departed three hours earlier from my home in exile, Dubai. My husband Asif was to stay behind with our two daughters, Bakhtawar and Aseefa. Asif and I had made a very calculated, difficult decision. We understood the dangers of my return, and we wanted to make sure that, no matter what happened, our children would have a parent to take care of them.

It was a discussion that few husbands and wives ever have to make, thankfully. But Asif and I had become accustomed to a life of sacrificing our personal happiness and any sense of normality and privacy. The people of Pakistan always come first. My children understood it and not only accepted it but encouraged me. I said farewell not knowing whether I would ever see their faces again.

I told my children: Do not worry. Nothing will happen to me. God will protect me. I wanted to reassure them, but I also told them: Remember, God gives life, and God takes life. I will be safe until my time is up.” The stakes could not have been higher. Pakistan under military dictatorship had become the epicentre of an international terrorist movement with two primary aims.

First, the extremists aim to reconstitute the concept of the caliphate, a political state encompassing the great Ummah (Muslim community) populations of the world, uniting the Middle East, the Persian Gulf states, South Asia, central Asia, east Asia, and parts of Africa. Second, they aim to provoke a clash of civilisations between the West and an interpretation of Islam that rejects pluralism and modernity. The goal, the great hope of the militants, is a collision, an explosion between the values of the West and what the extremists claim to be the values of Islam.

Few on the aeroplane that carried me from Dubai to Karachi knew that in my briefcase I carried with me the manuscript of this book exploring the dual crises confronting the Islamic world ñ both internal and external. Within hours of my reaching Pakistan, some of the pages would be symbolically charred by fire and splattered with blood and flesh of dismembered bodies thrown up by devastating terrorist bombs.

The carnage that accompanied the joyous celebration of my return was a horrific metaphor for the crisis that lies before us and the need for an enlightened renaissance both within Islam and between Islam and the rest of the world. When I returned, I did not know whether I would live or die. I knew that the same elements of Pakistani society that had colluded to destroy my father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and end democracy in Pakistan in 1977 were now arrayed against me for the same purpose exactly 30 years later.

Indeed, many of the same people who had collaborated with an earlier military junta in the judicial murder of my father were now entrenched in power in the Musharraf regime and the intelligence apparatus. There could have been no more dramatic statement to me than General Musharraf’s recent appointment as attorney general of the son of the man who had sent my father to the gallows.

We had, of course, been discouraged from returning. Musharraf had told me in private meetings and conversations that I should come back only after elections he was planning.

When it was clear that I would not postpone my return, he sent messages to my staff that I should have no public demonstration or rally and I should fly directly by helicopter from the airport to Bilawal House, my family home in Karachi.

He said that he was concerned about my security and my safety, but his supporters did very little to provide the necessary protection we needed: jammers that worked, streetlights that worked, roads that had been cleared of empty cars that could carry improvised explosive devices ñ protection to which I was entitled as a former prime minister.

I had become aware, through messages sent by Musharraf, that suicide squads might be sent from the North West Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas to try to assassinate me immediately on my return. I had actually received from a sympathetic Muslim foreign government the names and cell phone numbers of designated assassins.

I was told by both the Musharraf regime and the foreign Muslim government that four suicide bomber squads would attempt to kill me. These included, the reports said, squads sent by the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud; Hamza Bin Laden, a son of Osama Bin Laden; Red Mosque militants; and a Karachi-based militant group.

Musharraf’s regime knew of the specific threats against me, including the names and numbers of those who planned to kill me, and the names of others ñ including those in his own inner circle and in his party ñ whom we believed were conspiring. Despite our request, we received no reports on what actions were taken before my arrival as a follow-up to these warnings.

I wrote a letter to Musharraf. I told him that if I was assassinated by the militants it would be due to their sympathisers in his regime, whom I suspected wanted to eliminate me and remove the threat I posed to their grip on power.

Even as we landed, the general’s people were calling to stop me from returning, stop me from giving a speech at the tomb of the Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to cancel my cavalcade from the airport to the mausoleum. But I knew that those who believed in democracy and my leadership were awaiting me in the streets of Karachi.

As the sky darkened and my armoured campaign truck progressed almost by inches through the growing masses, I noticed that streetlights began to dim and then go off as we approached. The jamming equipment that was supposed to be blocking cell phone signals (that could detonate suicide bombs, or even remote-controlled toy planes filled with explosives) for 200 meters around my truck did not seem to be working.

My husband, watching the live coverage on television in Dubai, begged me not to expose myself directly to the crowd from the top of the truck. I said no, that I must be in front and greet my people.

Sometime after 11pm I saw a man holding up a baby dressed in the colours of my party, the PPP. He gesticulated repeatedly to me to take the baby, which was about one or two years old. I gesticulated to the crowd to make way for him. But when the crowd parted, the man would not come forward. Instead he tried to hand the baby to someone in the crowd. Worried that the baby would fall and be trampled upon or be lost, I gesticulated no, you bring the baby to me.

Finally he pointed to the security guard. I asked the security guard to let him up on the truck. However, by the time he reached the truck, I was going down to my compartment in the vehicle’s interior because my feet hurt. We now suspect the baby’s clothes were lined with plastic explosives.

My feet had swollen after standing in one place for 10 hours, and my sandals were hurting. Downstairs I unstrapped and loosened them. A little while later my political secretary, Naheed Khan, and I went over the speech that I would be delivering later at the tomb ñ one of the most important of my life.

I was saying that perhaps we should mention my petitioning the Supreme Court to allow political parties in the tribal areas to organise as part of our plan to counter extremists politically. As I said the word “extremist”, a terrible explosion rocked the truck. First the sound, then the light, then the glass smashing, then the deadly silence followed by horrible screams. My first thought was: “Oh, God, no.”

A piercing pain tore my ear from the force of the blast. An eerie silence descended. Then a second explosion ñ much louder, larger and more damaging ñ went off. Almost simultaneously, something hit the truck, which rolled from side to side. (Later I saw two dents clearly visible on the left side of the truck, where I had been.)

I looked outside. The dark night was bathed in an orange light, and under it crumpled bodies lay scattered in the most horrific scene.

I now know what happened to the baby. Agha Siraj Durrani, a PPP parliamentarian, was watching the access to my truck. When the man tried to hand the baby up, Agha Siraj told him to get lost. The man then went to a police vehicle to the left of the truck, which also refused to take the baby. The man moved to the police vehicle in front of the first. A woman PPP councillor, Rukhsana Faisal Boloch, was on this vehicle, as was a cameraman.

As the man tried to hand the baby to the second police vehicle, the first police vehicle warned: “Don’t take the baby, don’t take the baby, don’t let the baby up on the truck.” Both these police vehicles were exactly parallel to where I was sitting inside the truck. As the man scuffled with the police to hand the baby over, the first explosion took place. Everyone in that police van was killed, as were those around it.

Within 50 seconds, a 15-kilogram car bomb was detonated, scattering pellets, shrapnel and burning pieces of metal. According to some eyewitnesses, snipers began firing.

There seemed to be some chemical in the air. Although I came out of the truck about eight minutes later, I suffered like others from both a perforated eardrum and a racking dry cough, the likes of which I had never had before. Dr Zulfikar Mirza, who helped take the dead and wounded to hospital, told me of the strange state of the bodies. The clothes of some were totally burnt off. Others were clothed, but when one moved to pick up the body, it would melt and disintegrate. Many with pellet wounds subsequently died, making us suspect that the pellets had been soaked in poison.

I was whisked away through back streets in a jeep. Security boys clung to it, providing a human shield around me. We were unarmed and we wondered whether assassins might have a backup plan to kill us, knowing we had to reach my home.

I entered the house that my husband had built for us after our marriage, which was named in honour of our son Bilawal. Going up the stairs, I saw the pictures of my three children peering back at me, and I realised the absolute terror they must be experiencing, not knowing if I were dead or alive.

I had been traumatised by my father’s arrest, imprisonment and murder, and I know that such mental scars are permanent. I would have done anything to spare my children the same pain that I had undergone ñ and still feel ñ at my father’s death. But this was one thing I couldn’t do; I couldn’t retreat from the party and the platform that I had given so much of my life to. The enormous price paid by my father, brothers, supporters and all those who had been killed, imprisoned and tortured — all the sacrifices had been for the people of Pakistan.

I spoke to my husband and assured him that I was not injured. I could not speak to my children. Thankfully they had gone to bed and had not seen the blast on television. My daughter told me later she went to bed happy thinking of the warm reception I was getting, only to wake to a text message from a friend: “Oh, my God, I am so worried. Is your mother all right?”

With her heart pounding, she ran to the room of her father, who gathered her in his arms, reassuring her, “Your mother is fine.”

When all the bodies had been counted, the number of those killed went up to 179 and nearly 600 wounded, some disabled for life.

Later I was informed of a meeting that had taken place in Lahore where the bomb blasts were planned. According to this report, three men belonging to a rival political faction were hired for half a million dollars. They were, according to my sources, named Ejaz, Sajjad and another whose name I forgot.

One of them died accidentally because he couldn’t get away fast enough before the detonation. Presumably this was the one holding the baby. However, a bomb maker was needed for the bombs.

Enter Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a wanted terrorist who had tried to overthrow my second government. He had been extradited by the United Arab Emirates and was languishing in Karachi central jail. According to my second source, the officials in Lahore had turned to Akhtar for help. His liaison with elements in the government, according to this source, was a radical who was asked to make the bombs and himself asked for a fatwa making it legitimate to oblige. He got one.

The bomb blasts took place in the Army cantonment area in Karachi. When army officials arrived on the scene, the wounded hooted them down. Rightly or wrongly, the perception in Pakistan is that the military is responsible for the rise of militancy and all the horrific consequences that it entails for Pakistan and its people.î

Militancy started with the Zia military dictatorship in the 1970s. Its heirs destabilised democracy until military dictatorship was once again imposed. The Musharraf dictatorship, notwithstanding its public pronouncements, has presided over the mushrooming growth of militant groups and militant acts that have exacted a heavy human toll.

At times I worry whether we as a nation can survive the threat of disintegration. Since the overthrow of my government in 1996, the militants have made many inroads into the very structure of governance of Pakistan through their supporters and sympathisers. Pakistan is a tinder-box that could catch fire quickly.

Sixty years after its creation, the case study of its record with democracy is a sad chronicle of steps forwards and huge steps backwards.

Democracy cannot be sustained in the absence of a stable and growing middle class. The growth of India into a regional and international economic power occurred - not coincidentally - as its middle class exploded into a huge economic and political force.

How can a nation build a middle class? The first key is to build an education system that delivers hope and real opportunity. Good public educational opportunity is the key to the economic and political progress of nations, and it can be so in the Islamic world as well. But in Pakistan $4.5 billion is spent on the military each year - an astounding 1,400% more than on education.

Militant madrasahs did not flourish there because Pakistani citizens suddenly became more religiously orthodox than ever before in our history. The militants took advantage of parents from low-income social classes who wanted a better life for their children. If parents are so poor that they cannot educate, house, clothe, feed and provide healthcare for their children and the state fails to provide such basic human needs through public services, they will seek an alternative. The militant madrasahs have become, over time, an alternative government for millions of Pakistanis.

These political and military training camps invest little time and resources in primary education. Rather, they manipulate religion to brainwash children into becoming soldiers of an irregular army. They teach hatred and violence. They breed terrorists, not scientists. They undermine the very concept of national identity and rule of law.

When I was prime minister, I invested enormous political resources in stopping these paramilitary political madrasahs, but unfortunately, in the years since I left office, as many as 20,000 new ones have been built in Pakistan alone. In the epic debate over the inevitability of a confrontation between Islam and the West, I am a reconciliationist. The notion that the culture of Islam is antithetical to democratic values - put forward by those who believe in the “clash of civilisations” - is not only unsubstantiated by Koranic reference and Islamic clerical interpretation but also plays into Islamic extremists’ views that the West is disrespectful and antagonistic to Islam’s beliefs and history.

And the assertion that social, political and economic interactions between Islam and the West precipitate conflict, as opposed to promoting understanding, is antithetical to what we know about human behaviour and international relations.

Preventing a clash of civilisations, at least in terms of the Islamic world, requires that we put our trust in the power of trade, exchange, technology, education and democratic values to accelerate the process by which Islamic societies can build bonds and trust with western societies. Within the Muslim world, however, there has been and continues to be an internal rift, an often violent confrontation among sects, ideologies and interpretations of the message of Islam.

This destructive tension has set brother against brother, a deadly fratricide that has tortured intra-Islamic relations for 1,300 years. It is most visibly manifest today in a senseless, self-defeating sectarian civil war that is tearing modern Iraq apart and exercising its brutality in other parts of the world, especially in parts of Pakistan.

As the Muslim world simmers internally, extremists have manipulated Islamic dogma to justify and rationalise a so-called jihad against the West. The attacks on September 11, 2001, heralded the vanguard of the caliphate-inspired dream of bloody confrontation: the Crusades in reverse.

The attack was received in two disparate ways in the Muslim world. Much, if not most, reacted with horror, embarrassment and shame when it became clear that this greatest terrorist attack in history had been carried out by Muslims in the name of Allah and jihad. Yet there was another, troubling reaction: some people danced in the streets of Palestine. Sweets were exchanged in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Condemnations were few in the largest Muslim nation, Indonesia.

The hijackers seemed to touch a nerve of Muslim impotence. The burning and then collapsing towers represented, to some, resurgent Muslim power, a perverse Muslim payback for the domination of the West. To others it was a religious epiphany. To still others it combined political, cultural and religious assertiveness.

And now there is Iraq. One billion Muslims around the world seem united in their outrage at the war, damning the deaths of Muslims caused by US military intervention without UN approval. But there has been little if any similar outrage against the sectarian Iraqi civil war, which has led to far more casualties.

Obviously (and embarrassingly), Muslim leaders, masses and even intellectuals are quite comfortable criticising outsiders for the harm inflicted on fellow Muslims. But there is deadly silence when they are confronted with Muslim-on-Muslim violence.

Even in Darfur, where there is an actual genocide being committed against a Muslim population, there has been a remarkable absence of protests, few objections, and no massive coverage on Arab or south Asian television.

We are all familiar with the data that show an increasing contempt for and hostility to the West in Muslim communities from Turkey to Pakistan. The war in Iraq is cited as a reason. The situation in Palestine is given as another reason. So-called decadent western values are often part of the explanation. It is so much easier to blame others for our problems than to accept responsibility ourselves.

The colonial experience has obviously had a major impact on the Muslim psyche. But what outsiders did in the past does not exclusively account for the quality of Muslim life today. There is a rush to condemn foreigners and colonisers, but there is an equally weighty unwillingness within the Muslim world to look inwards and to identify whether we may be going wrong ourselves.

It is uncomfortable but nevertheless essential to true intellectual dialogue to point out that national pride in the Muslim world is rarely derived from economic productivity, technical innovation or intellectual creativity. Those factors seem to have been part of the Persian, Mughal and Ottoman past but not the Muslim present. Now we see Muslim pride always characterised in the negative, derived from notions of “destroying the enemy” and “making the nation invulnerable to western assault”.

Such toxic rhetoric sets the stage for the clash of civilisations between Islam and the West every bit as much as do western military or political policies. It also serves as an opiate that keeps Muslims angry against external enemies and allows them to pay little attention to the internal causes of intellectual and economic decline. Reality and intellectual honesty demand that we should look at both sides of the coin.

The burning twin towers have become a dual metaphor for both the intra-Islamic debate about the political and social values of democracy and modernity and the looming potential for a catastrophic showdown between Islam and the West. And for both of these epic battles, my homeland of Pakistan has become the epicentre - the ground zero, if you will - of either reconciliation or disaster. “

 80% Muslim voters take part in US primaries

WASHINGTON, Feb 3: As many as 80% Muslim voters in the United States are participating in primaries for the 2008 presidential elections, among the highest aggregates by any ethnic or religious group in America.

A survey, released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations shows that Muslim voters remained fully engaged with the political process.

Muslim community leaders interpret this as indicating a strong desire among Muslims to integrate in the American society. They also link this to the events of Sept 11, 2001, which created widespread biases against the Muslims in America, causing the community to make a concentrated effort to stay engaged with other Americans and to play an active role in local politics.

The survey, commissioned by CAIR, a Washington-based Islamic civil rights and advocacy group, asked 1,000 registered Muslim voters about their demographic profiles, political views and levels of social integration. Respondents were randomly drawn from a pool of some 400,000 registered Muslim voters. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus three%.

The survey’s results show a family-oriented, highly-educated and diverse group of voters who condemn terrorism and believe anti-Americanism in the Muslim world is a serious problem.

The poll also shows that “the more devout Muslim voters are also those who are most likely to believe that Islam and modernity are compatible.”

Respondents were asked which issues will most influence their vote. Education was the top pick indicated by 89%, followed by civil rights (86%), health care policy (85%) and the economy (85%).

“Our survey shows that most Muslim voters are still undecided on their preferred presidential candidate, yet are politically engaged and extremely likely to vote,” said CAIR spokeswoman Amina Rubin.

“This means that a potential bloc of Muslim swing voters in several battleground states is ready to support a candidate who will commit to acting on issues that concern America’s Muslims.”

CAIR’s survey also showed that many Muslim voters are concentrated in 10 states: California, 19%; New York, 13%; Illinois, 10%; Texas, 9%; Virginia, 7%; Michigan, 6%; Florida, 6%; Maryland, 5%; Pennsylvania, 4%; and Ohio, 3%.

Many among these states go to vote on Feb 5, known as the Super Tuesday, when as many as 24 states will select their candidates for the 2008 presidential election.

This year, no major Muslim group or organisation is endorsing individual candidates.

YESTERDAY'S NEWS
TODAY'S NEWS, BUT 10 YEARS OLD

© DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2008
© JANG Group, 2008

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