Nirupama Subramanian: Murdered Pashtun belonged to Pakistan’s only party that openly challenges the Army

By Dilip -
The PTM describes itself as a non-violent movement that demands to be treated equally with other citizens within the framework of Pakistan’s constitution. The PTM anthem Da Sanga Azadi Da zawana mo katal kegi (of what use is this freedom) has resonated among the Pashtun. The party wants accountability from the most powerful institution in Pakistan for putting FATA in the eye of a storm that continues to rage in Afghanistan, for disappearances and the killings of civilians in targeted operations or as collateral, and other violation of rights
Sardar Muhammed Arif Wazir murder
On May 1, Sardar Muhammed Arif Wazir, a Pashtun political leader in Pakistan, was fatally wounded in a drive-by shooting by unidentified men as he stood outside his house in South Waziristan. With gunshot wounds in the head and neck, Wazir was moved to a hospital in Islamabad, where he succumbed to his injuries. Hhis death triggered an outpouring of grief and anger among the Pashtun in the North-West Frontier areas of Pakistan.

 #StateKilledArifWazir

‘Dawn’ newspaper said thousands gathered for his funeral in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan, on May 4, despite COVID-19. On May 5, there was another large gathering to protest the killing, and protests in other towns. Wazir was part of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a group with wide support in what used to be the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, in particular in South and North Waziristan, the geographical centre of Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy. Though the identity of Wazir’s killers is not known, the PTM and its supporters blame the Pakistan Army and the ISI.

 Mohsin Dawar, a prominent leader of the PTM, and a member of Pakistan’s Parliament, tweeted upon Wazir’s death that “Arif Wazir was murdered by ‘good terrorists’. Our struggle against their masters will continue.” The hashtag #StateKilledArifWazir began trending on social media soon after. The PTM is a strident critic of the Pakistan Army’s proxy war policy through jihadist groups and its extension, the shadow wars within the country. Just two years old as a political party, it is the only organised political force that now challenges the Pakistan Army openly.

Wazir, a 38-year-old who had a large support base in South Waziristan, was an outspoken and vocal critic of the security establishment. Just four days before he was shot, he had been released on bail after being arrested on April 17 on hate speech charges for allegedly making an “anti-Pakistan” speech on a visit to Afghanistan earlier in the month.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Wazir had spoken in Afghanistan about the impact of war on the lives of Pashtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the need for unity in the Pashtun community. Over the last two years, according to HRCP, he was arrested six times and in all, had spent 13 months in detention....
https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/sardar-muhammed-arif-wazir-murder-pashtun-tahafuz-movement-pakistan-army-6401803/

Posts on Balochistan
Mukulika Banerjee - Remembering 'Frontier Gandhi'– Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
Bangladesh and the recovery of history 
Famous article by Anthony Mascarenhas, former Assistant Editor, Morning News, Karachi: 
GENOCIDE: Why the Refugees Fled (Sunday Times, London, June 13, 1971)
The Blood Telegram
Bangladesh 1971: the forgotten template of 20th century war - by Gita Sahgal
The UN & War Crimes Trials for Pakistani Soldiers in Bangladesh 1971–1974
The Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals: Written by Benedetto Croce (1925)

Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the ...
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227...
Read more

Albert Camus's lecture 'The Human Crisis', New York, March 1946. 'No cause justifies the murder of innocents'

By Dilip -
The morning after a great historical crisis, you feel as sad and sick as after a heavy night. But there is no aspirin for historical hangovers .. The world is no longer divided into the just or unjust, but into masters and slaves. He who is right is he who enslaves.  Albert Camus     La crise de l'homme : THE HUMAN CRISIS   (Text read by Viggo Mortensen on March 28 2016)   Ladies and Gentlemen: when I was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States of America, I felt some doubt and hesitation. I am really not old enough to give lectures, and I am more at ease with the process of thinking than I am making categorical statements... since I don't feel I have any claim on what is generally called the truth. I shared this reservation and was very politely told that my personal opinion didn't matter. What mattered was that I'd be able to offer some facts about France so that my listeners could form their own opinions. It was then suggested...
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certai...
Read more

Etel Adnan - To Be In A Time Of War

By Dilip -
NB: Etel Adnan, writer, poet, artist and musician was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. This prose poem is the final chapter of her book  In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country .  Read more about her here  - DS To Be In A Time Of War To say nothing, do nothing, mark time, to bend, to straighten up, to blame oneself, to stand, to go toward the window, to change one’s mind in the process, to return to one’s chair, to stand again, to go to the bathroom, to close the door, to then open the door, to go to the kitchen, to not eat nor drink, to return to the table, to be bored, to take a few steps on the rug, to come close to the chimney, to look at it, to find it dull, to turn left until the main door, to come back to the room, to hesitate, to go on, just a bit, a trifle, to stop, to pull the right side of the curtain, then the other side, ...
Read more

After the Truth Shower

By Dilip -
Dear Readers Thank you for reading my blog for the past eleven years. (This is a link to the new one) During this time it has had nearly 1.7 million hits; and I have posted over 9500 posts covering a variety of themes. From July 11 to 19, 2022, my blog was withdrawn by the Blogger administration on account of what its machinery suspected to be 'Impersonation'. It took over a week and the efforts of several well-wishers to get it back online I thank them all for their kindness and goodwill  My blog has always been - and remains - non-commercial. I have used it for academic purposes; and to foster a culture of debate and informed commentary in civil society. Because it contains a large amount of material gathered and collated for over a decade, I cannot afford to lose its contents. I hope it will remain undisturbed now and function as an archive. However, I have decided to use a new blog on WordPress as a platform for my newest comments and posts The new blog is titled After the...
Read more

James Gilligan on Shame, Guilt and Violence

By Dilip -
Shame, Guilt, and Violence / James Gilligan During the past 35 years I have used prisons and prison mental hospitals as "laboratories" in which to investigate the causes and prevention of the various forms of violence and the relationships between these forms and to what I will call (with a nod to William James) "the varieties of moral experience." In the course of that work, I have been struck by the frequency with which I received the same answer when I asked prisoners, or mental patients, why they assaulted or even killed someone. Time after time, they would reply "because he disrespected me" or "he disrespected my visitor [or wife, mother, sister, girl-friend, daughter, etc.]." In fact, they used that phrase so often that they abbreviated it into the slang phrase, "He dis'ed me." Whenever people use a word so often that they abbreviate it, it is clearly central to their moral and emotional vocabulary. But even when they did n...
Read more