PPP, Thar, Death & Hunger

In the second week of October it was revealed that around 300,000 bottles of mineral water, meant for the drought victims in Thar had expired in a government warehouse. Earlier in the year, wheat meant for the victims had met the same fate. At least 31 lives were lost there in October and 234, mostly children, in the preceding episode.

A reporter revealed that the district administration of Thar at that time was in the hands of Makhdom Amin Fahim’s offspring. He is the senior vice chairman of the PPP. Meanwhile an inquiry commission formed to probe the handling of the drought back in April determined that the Sindh Health Department and elected representatives of the area were to be blamed. They belong to the PPP.

In between the deaths in Thar was of course the PPP’s jalsa in Karachi. Where Bilawal, and the rest of the PPP leadership, failed to elaborate on their plans for dealing with the situation in Thar. After all, death in Thar is hardly new. In fact, it’s been here for a while. Over 1000 people died there in the last couple of years. Just because the media made some noise this time doesn’t mean priorities should change.

What was worth mentioning then? Well, Bhuttos for one. Bhuttoism for another. Shahadat. Jamhoriat. & Bhuttoism. Sprinkle some “causes” that you never did anything about when in power on top and glorious leadership is born.

Unfair perhaps, they did do something about them. In his speech that day Bilawal took credit for the PPP responding to the Hazara-Shia sit-ins in Quetta & sacrificing their government. Hmph.

Syed Nasir Ali Shah, the Hazara MNA from Quetta staged a sit in at the entrance of Parliament house in October of 2011. He belonged to the PPP & resorted to protesting against his own party after 14 Hazaras were gunned down in Quetta, and no action was taken by the government. 2011.

Why didn’t the PPP government in the province take any action? Nawab Aslam Raisani was the Chief Minister of the province, the tribal head  of Raisani tribe, influential in Mastung. Mastung, coincidentally, houses the biggest ASWJ seminary in Balochistan and witnessed numerous attacks on Shia pilgrims.

One of the first acts of Nawab Raisani after taking over as CM Balochistan was to appoint Nawabzada Humayun Jogezai as chief of police in Quetta. Jogezai, often accused of having links to the LeJ, in the past had ordered police to open fire on Hazara protesters killing 25. He is Nawab Raisani’s son-in-law. Coincidentally, Hazara killings picked up after he was appointed.

The sacrifice of the PPP government, for two whole months, wasn’t the first course of action either. Initially the PPP CM had proposed to settle the Hazara mourners issue by sending them truckloads of tissue papers. The PPP’s tissue paper strategy worked for a couple of years. Finally protests broke out throughout the country & tissue papers ran short. Hence the PM descended upon Quetta. Where Hazaras were reminded that there would be no dialogue with him, prompting one to ask;

“Kyun PM viceroy hain ya hum jaisay insaan nahin hain?”

Once the PPP made the ultimate sacrifice and removed its government, a couple of peculiar incidents took place. One PPP minister, Ali Madad Jattak, was arrested with 15 guards because Hazaras had complained he had ties to a “defunct militant group”. Chatter was that the guards were LeJ men.

Alamdar road had witnessed two blasts, one a suicide blast inside a snooker club and then a more deadly one from an explosive laden car. In February the Hazaras were targeted again, this time an explosive filled water tanker was used.

Later in the year, FC recovered 104,480 KGs of explosives from a warehouse in Quetta, the largest such find in the country’s history. The officials described the warehouse as a “car-bomb factory” complete with mixers, detonators, remote controls and of course lots of explosives to fit into vehicles. Coincidentally, the car-bomb factory belonged to a PPP leader who was later arrested.

Clearly the PPP, contrary to popular opinion, did a lot to the Hazaras.

Where did the bright speech come from any way? One influence clearly was the party old guard, who themselves spent the night recounting medical benefits of Bhuttoism. The other is the group of supposedly neutral journalists, intellectuals & NGO workers who were more excited by the PPP rally than the actual participants bused-in from around Sindh.

Is it a coincidence that almost everyone losing their shit about how many pressing issues Bilawal mentioned in his speech has been totally oblivious to the drought & the deaths in Thar? ALL of them didn’t read the last week?

Having party loyalists embedded in the media cannot possibly be a disadvantage, but the PPP is well versed in the impossible. Propagandists are a valuable resource but for external consumption, not for internal evaluation. It was just silly how Bilawal lifted his arguments from PPP apologists ever present in the media, & social media.

Sindh is underdeveloped since partition and because we had no resources. Everyone wants the blockades around Bilawal House removed because they want me to be killed. Corruption allegations are just an excuse to malign us. Governance isn’t that better elsewhere either.

Finger on the pulse.

This I am not making up; in his first interview after the 18^th October jalsa in Karachi, chairman of the PPP Bilawal claimed that 60% of Pakistan’s population is young, and so is he. Therefore, he can relate to them more than any other leader in Pakistan.

Just like Justin Bieber can.

Yes, a billionaire kid who has lived most of his life outside Pakistan, doesn’t even know the language, believes he can relate to a country where, according to World Bank, 60% of the population lives under the international poverty line, more than anyone else; because he is young.

The level of delusion is staggering, breath-taking.

So while the young prince lives in his bubble, relating to his darbaris in the party & the media, where does that leave the people? After all, it is the Pakistan “Peoples” Party.

Among death & hunger, of course. Those are the gifts the party has brought them. Thar & the Hazaras are but just a glimpse.

Consider that all over Pakistan 6,126 lives have been claimed by suicide bombings, in our history. By just 2011, the PPP had lorded over, and participated in, the killing of over 7,000 people in Karachi alone. The figure must be over 10,000 now, as the killing hasn’t stopped.

Hunger is the bigger hallmark though. Shortage of food & malnourishment is not just an issue in Thar, it persists throughout Sindh to a disgraceful extent. In Ethiopia the stunting rate for children is 51%, in Eritrea it is 44%, in Sudan 40%. In Sindh it is 56.7% and in the loyal PPP stronghold of rural Sindh, it’s 63.3%.

63.3% in 2014.

Death & hunger.

Working Paper On Political Implications Of Disease In Journalism

A strange cosmic event occurred yesterday. I saw a number of people criticising MQM for putting someone’s life in danger. The someone being Khursheed Shah of the PPP, the number of people being the many past & present PPP loyalists in the media. 

This shouldn’t be a surprise then should it? If PPP were threatened, PPP would come to the rescue. Not exactly. Over the last 6 or so years, the MQM have not only threatened, they have killed plenty of PPP people. It hasn’t really bothered the gents in question. Of course the lives of low level party workers or caught in cross fire innocents are less dear to intellectuals than the lives of venerated meter readers/leaders, but that’s not the complete story.

A closer look at the situation reveals that the enlightened people are angry not because of the destination, but because of the route MQM have chosen to get there. Blasphemy allegation. Thou shall not mix religion with politics, lest bad things happen. 

Or a wonderful thing. For the last 6 years, the same people have been so quiet about the MQM that you would think they were too busy shitting their pants, or that their drugs were being held hostage, or that they were just plain incapable of sight or comprehension when it came to the party. Because the party that has somewhere between 10-to-35 thousand armed combatants at its command, which it uses to kill political opponents, to kidnap and to extort, (when they are not secularizing the environment) never had to hear any complains about its conduct from our friends.

Yet they have now found their voice. As soon as MQM played the blasphemy card, it became evident that the avowedly liberal are capable of not only witnessing MQM’s activities, but also adept at speaking up to the Namaloom among us. 

Which is why we must perhaps rethink the label of PPP loyalists, for these are men, and women, persons, loyal not to any political party, but only to ideology. So much so, that they do not see anything outside of an ideological context. 

For example. Killing people in the name of religion.  *Blood boiling*. 

See, religion is a no go, religion based politics, religious violence. So killing people in the name of religion is wrong. Their definition of any title they grant each other is simply “one who opposes any ills that befall us because of religion & religion alone”. Hence the blasphemy outrage. 

Once you take the religion part out of it, they become placated.

For example. Killing people.  *crickets chirping*

Nothing. This is why as MQM, PPP & ANP have murdered thousands upon thousands in Karachi, to go along with extortion and other minor offences, our friends with ideological clarity have remained at peace with these parties. The reasons for killing and extortion by these parties are strictly secular, so it’s ok. 

Consider that in the many, many, many decades between 2007 and 2011 around 7,000 people were shot dead in Karachi. Also consider that in the short while between 1947 and 2014, around 6,123 people have been killed in the whole of Pakistan via suicide bombings. Now contrast the outrage.

Again, here’s why; they simply do not see a murder if it is not a murder in the name of religion. In fact the concept of crime as a whole is lost to these folk. Whether it be money laundering, stealing, kidnapping, extortion, land grabbing & of course killing, it simply does not register as a crime unless it is done in the name of religion or done by religious outfits (because they do it in the name of religion, duuhhh).

People who suffer from this condition are called Non-Facetious Peeplyas or NFPs for short. The condition is called NFPtitis. And its discovery helps explain many aspects of the, much talked about yet hitherto unexplained, political deadlock at the journo-worker level.

See, NFPtitis has political choice implications and it renders the moral, legal and magnetic compass of a patient obsolete. This in turn leads to a lot of confusion & anger when NFPs are dealing with political opponents. A great example to consider would be their interaction with PTI folk.

The new party on the block is largely fuelled by affluent upper middle class types from urban areas. These are largely non-ideological individuals who stayed away from politics until half a decade ago. Their view of crime is not shaped by an ideological leaning.

That is to say; they consider killing people a crime, and this is important, even if it is not done in the name of religion. This holds true also for stealing, kidnapping, extortion & other offences. Also worth noting is that they harbour  disdain for the excesses committed by political elite & can’t shake of a sense of injustice borne from the old guard parties, metaphorically speaking,  literally getting away with murder.

So when they interact with an NFP who’s propagating the case for, say, PPP or MQM they would have a certain aloofness or aggression. The aloofness because they have not, & the aggression because the PPP has, been involved in killings, corruption & other such stuff.

On their part, an NFP believes that PPP has done no killing & corruption because, as explained earlier, the NFP is programmed to register a crime only when it’s done in the name of religion. NFPs are thus, in their mind, presenting the case not of criminals, but normal politicians. The NFPs also tend to believe that middle class focused politics is not the best way to go. They constantly hallucinate about a young feudal billionaire prince as the messiah who can shout the lower classes into prosperity.

Encounters between the two thus leave the PTI folk amazed that there are people asinine enough to defend such criminals. While the NFPs are left wondering how people can be so self-righteous & vicious, not to mention who mock Marx’s vision of dynastic rule by billionaire capitalists to empower the lower classes. Crazy talk comrade.

This is a genuine problem which has gone unaddressed for too long. The PTI folk, unable to comprehend how seemingly educated people in media can openly support criminals & murderers, conclude that NFPs are on the party payroll. The NFPs, impervious to crime committed by a PPP type party because of NFPtitis, are unable to comprehend how seemingly educated people on social media can be so hateful. They conclude that the PTI folk are intolerant trolls. Fascist, say those in terminal stages of NFPtitis.

All the hate because they don't understand each other, and that because of one silly disease. Sigh. 

This chasm greatly pains me, and needs urgent redress. So people can live in peace & harmony. And Karachi. However, great challenges mar this endeavour. On the one hand, cleansing lifelong ideology from the NFPs is too much to ask for. On the other hand, indoctrination of all middle class urbanites is too tedious a task. 

What to do? Have no fear, for my suggestion to resolve the issue at hand is both, like me, brilliant and simple. Legalize marijuana. 

I mean crime. Legalize crime. It solves everything.

The NFPs’ worldview comes in line with the rest of the country, AND the urban middle classes lose their sense of injustice & hate towards parties that NFPs love. We can thus live in an ideological utopia where nonsense concepts like crime & law won’t hamper us from siding with the thief of our choice. And you know there won’t be murder in such a society, because we won’t admit that anyone was murdered. Like Murtaza. 

You’re all welcome.

Corrupt Over The Murderous

“I will take the ‘corrupt’ over the ‘murderous’ every day, all year.”

That’s the line that pushed a certain segment of our educated (in the basic formal sense) populace to orgasm Sunday morning. Saroop Ijaz giving words to their frustration built up, especially during the last month or so, but generally, over years. Oh how they have waited for this, and how indeed have I.

First though, Imran Khan. The man is a liar, also condescending, ignorant and sinister. It’s hypocritical, deceitful and stuff of him to even pretend to honour our martyred soldiers. It’s silly that he would know better than Saroop just because he has been to the tribal areas. Saroop knows all. Hail.

The counterweight is of course the ANP. ANP good, know tribal land better, Imran bad, idiot.

Thus the future government will, in Saroop’s view, yearn for a “reconciliatory embrace with the terrorists over dead bodies”. This will be different from when ANP-PPP thrashed out a peace agreement with the same foes, or as they pledge to do again in the future, because they went, and will in the future go, ‘around’ the dead bodies.

Going ‘over’ dead bodies is what’s really bad. Everyone knows that, stupid.

Now let’s come back to the real issue here.

The murderous, vs. the corrupt. The animalistic vs. the humane. The people who believe
in dialogue, just as you do, vs. the people who take out a gun, shoot someone repeatedly, cut them into pieces and dump them in a gunny bag.

Which ones are the murderous again?

Yes, the guys who aren’t being killed, and/or a perceived to be quiet, are murderers. The guys actually, physically, killing people aren’t.

It’s confusing, yes. Little bit. But there is a reason why such marvellous logic has graced a newspaper near you.

Let me explain with the help of two pictures.





See. One of these guys is a terrorist responsible for the killing of a former Governor. The other pumped 27 bullets into the back of Salman Taseer.

That though isn’t how the ‘Saroopish’ folks see it. They are seeing one very charismatic leader of a liberal-secular last hope for sanity party and a guy who pumped 27 bullets into the back of Salman Taseer.

Notice how “terrorist responsible for the killing of a former governor” translates into “very charismatic leader of a liberal-secular last hope for sanity party”.

Now you cannot be blamed for wondering if these guys have horse-shit injected directly into their brain, because, well, they do. The consequence of injecting horse-shit directly into your brain is a mental disorder called Secularitis.

Secularitis is a serious condition not to be taken lightly and it has fascinating effects on one’s vision, among other things. Like, for example, the basic understanding of phenomenon such as terrorism.

A quick Google search could tell you that terrorism is defined as “The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.”



That though isn’t how a patient of secularitis sees it.



For them, it shows "The use of violence and intimidation by bearded man. (Except Zulfiqar Mirza.)"

Although this explains why patients such as Saroop cannot define what the MQM-PPP-ANP do as terrorism, it still does not explain how they don’t even perceive it as murder.

That is a most interesting matter and one that has confused doctors for a long time. The most credible theory was that Secularitis patients see the people killed by their beloved parties as dogs. This theory though has been rejected on the basis that, since many patients are dog lovers and pretty concerned about animal rights in general, they would have reacted at the killing of around 9000 dogs.

Thus it is still unclear how Secularitis patients view people murdered by ANP-PPP-MQM. All that we do know is that they are not viewed as humans. Or dogs.

Even our limited knowledge of the disease though explains many phenomenons that would otherwise seem absurd.

For example, that the sudden talk of “funerals in other Pakistan” has burst out after around 55 deaths in a month while it didn’t happen after 100 deaths in 4 days can only be explained with reference to Secularitis.

Similarly, the belief that we are anti-militancy with Zulfi Mirza’s wife as the Speaker of National assembly can again only be attributed to Secularitis. The same goes for condemnation of terrorism with a career target killer as governor.

The examples, as you can imagine, are many and implications are wide. The most peculiar among them though has to be:

“I will take the ‘corrupt’ over the ‘murderous’ every day, all year.”

When the slimy fuck will actually take the murderous corrupt every day, all year.

The Elusive Last Straw

I am such an idiot. I thought we should get that out of the way early.

Remember September?

When the whole blasphemy video thing happened? When the PPP “capitulated” to the religious right?

I remember certain people, who hold sway in the media, people who claim to be on the left, being deeply scarred by all of it. I remember their anger and outrage, and I remember them finally running out of patience with their beloved party.

I remember it being “the last straw”. And I remember believing them.

See. Idiot.

Corruption, poverty and just plain slaughter that goes on in Karachi everyday is not of much concern for the intellectually gifted. It’s the pandering to the religious right, the targeting of minorities and the evil machinations of the military that fuel their fury.

Admirable. And perhaps why September seemed like a turning point; a last straw. It was and it wasn’t.

September was a last straw that came after many last straws, and many last straws have come after it. Many will come. What will change? Nada.

There might be some noise made when the circumstances don’t allow otherwise, like in September, but most last straws don’t even register. The camel quite obviously is on steroids and the last straw is but a myth.

Proof, you ask me?

Well, what do you know about the Sunni Ittehad Council? Forget that religious parties are inherently against the “we want a secular state” brigade, the SIC also openly supported Mumtaz Qadri. Mumtaz Qadri, in case you have trouble recalling, is the man who killed Salman Taseer. Salman Taseer, in case you have more trouble recalling, is the man certain people remember every day as the hero who fought darkness, the knight in shining armour and other stuff in that category.

Now, there’s been an alliance involving the SIC and a “liberal” party Salman Taseer called his own. Et tu, anyone? Well, no one, at least no one in the “independent” media and hence; no last straw.

Moving on we observe that the independent media doesn’t only exercise its independence by giving the PPP a free pass. Enter Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, hail Nawaz Sharif, the lord and owner of Punjab. There’s a strange kind of love for his highness Nawaz Sharif in our “leftist” press, despite his very Zia-ish roots.

I first noted that last year and asked Mr. Nadeem F Paracha about this most peculiar phenomenon. A reply has not been forthcoming.

It so happens that the saviours of our Shia community never question PMLNs shady links with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, past or present. And whilst PMLN might have entered into a declared alliance with ASWJ again, during the by-polls, chances are Sana Bucha will talk about the weather when Mr. Sharif graces her show.

Here too the last straw, needless to say, remains unattainable.

What about the military then?

Military = Evil. So, Military+PMLN+PPP = Outrage. This is just simple math, right?

Not quite.

All of you will be pleased to know that in light of Supreme Court’s Asghar Khan case judgement, which stated that military was indeed involved in rigging elections, PPP have done the honourable thing.

The party proudly announced that they will not be probing Punjab owner Nawaz Sharif for taking ISI money and the Asghar Khan case was, their words not mine; buried.

The military interference and the ISI money and the stealing of the people’s mandate; all forgiven. Surely this is the bloody last straw?

In your horny dreams.

So to recap, in the space of a half a week, the PPP and PMLN have combined to

1) Protect election rigging, the famed will of the people.
2) Give cover to military interference and protect culprits in this regard.
3) Form alliances with sectarian outfits blamed for much of the violence against Shias in the country.
4) Form alliances with religious outfits supporting the murder of a sitting governor over the blasphemy law.

And yet no last straw. Actually, no straw at all.

Since 3rd December, when SIC-PPP alliance came to light, till today, 9th, here’s how the honest and upright, the “dissenters”, have reacted:

Express Tribune, famous for their knack of spotting ASWJ flags, did not have an editorial on ASWJ-PMLN, nor did these teary-eyed Taseer fans give space to PPP-SIC. The newspaper also abstained from commenting on PPPs general amnesty for military interference.

Not a single one of Tribune’s “always excellent” op-ed writers was bothered by these trivial happenings. In fact the folks in this “newspaper”, God bless their unbiased heart, did not even report the SIC-PPP alliance.

Dawn News did not see it fit to write an editorial on ASWJ-PMLN, PPP-SIC or Amry-PPP-PMLN. They did not publish a single op-ed column on these developments as well.

Zero editorials or op-eds by The Nation. I could go on.

Beyond pathetic isn’t it. Depressing even.

All is not lost though, for these people will find their voices again once the PPP and PMLN are not in the picture.

Now when that happens, and it will happen, I would be thankful if everyone, respectfully, tells them to take their appreciation for Taseer, their concern for the Shias, their disdain for the deep state, alongside that elusive last straw, and shove it up their ass.

Plight Of The Left

The last week and a half was not the best time to be a liberal in Pakistan.

First, the so called capitulation of the Pakistan People’s Party Government to the religious right in the shape of that holiday. Really went down well that decision.

A more severe blow came as ANP stalwart and porn king Ghulam Bilour announced a $100,000 bounty for the filmmaker behind “Innocence of Muslims”. Not only that, he asked his “brothers” from Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to help.

Raja Pervez Ashraf has since distanced the Pakistan government from Bilour’s statement and views, as have the ANP. Talk of Ghulam Bilour being disciplined by the government or party has quickly died down.

The usual “betrayal by the PPP” line has been picked up by many in the liberal press and on social media, regards to their latest so called appeasement of the religious right. Granted there’s some genuine anger, but it will subside by next weekend and liberals will return to “their” party.

Until next time. And the time after that, and so on and so forth. Never realizing that PPP is not “their” party and it hasn’t been for a long time. But hey, better denial than anger, right?

As much as everyone wants to forget, this is a party whose lawmaker believes they have a right to corruption and defended that right on TV. That’s their ideology: corruption. They genuinely believe that they have the right to loot and steal and make money in all imaginable and unimaginable ways. Co-Chairman of PPP and President of Pakistan Asif Zardari - of course - wrote the book on said ideology and the exploits of Prime Minister Gillani are well known now.

Is there anything liberal or leftist about those two? The son of a tribal chief and a “Gaddi Nasheen”. Or about Rehman Malik? Or Raja Pervez Ashraf?

Truth is PPP doesn’t resemble a leftist party at all. Mian Mithu cancels more than Raza Rabbani, shut up. It is an apolitical entity at best and a criminal empire at worst.

Meanwhile everyone in the “party” wants a piece of the pie, which happens to be Pakistan. The ministers, the MNAs and the MPAs, down to the “jiyalas”. While MNAs get ephedrine quotas, the Jiyalas are rewarded with governmental jobs and paid bundled salaries as per the reinstatement policy. This is their politics, this is how loyalties are bought and/or strengthened.

Add to it the cult status in Sindh and new voter hiring through Benazir Income Support Program and you have a robust machine that doesn’t need to care about the left, or the right. They can afford to just do nothing, and that’s actually what they do; nothing.

So whoever shouts the loudest at them, or whoever cuts a deal, gets what they want.

Therefore, this talk of a betrayal just sounds desperate.

Liberals are a non factor for the PPP. They are useful for painting a good picture in the press, and maybe in front of Washington. So the PPP uses them, gets the columns in, gets two wise old men on TV to sing their praises and then settles to the right of Jamaat-e-Islami on Friday.

Why do the liberals go back? Well, partly because many are deeply invested in the PPP, either financially or emotionally, and partly because seemingly there’s nowhere else to go.

ANP, although staunchly secular, is more a regional party and would never be able to press ahead liberal agendas nationally. The worry now is that ANP have not only fallen prey to the disease of corruption, they have also taken up arms in Karachi. And once you cross those lines, there’s not much reason for you to shy away from anything else.

That’s where Bilour’s statement came from. Expect more of the same from ANP in an election year with anti-Americanism rife in KPK.

So what do the liberals do? The worst thing possible, of course.

The advance guard of PPP propagandists has already set foot in the MQM camp. Apparently, Altaf Hussain is the new benchmark for progressive and secular ideals and must be championed for his bravery and other assorted bullshit.

Make no mistake - the MQM is one of the biggest most lethal terrorist organizations in the world. According to Wikileaks the US believes MQM have 10,000 active fighters and 25,000 reserves in their ranks and draw funding through an extortion racket which is one of the most effective and punishing in the world. Granted MQM does have a political wing but that hasn’t made the killing or extortion go away.

Needless to say, this is a death-trap. MQM has the blood of thousands on its hands, and as other ethnic groups in Karachi start to fight for a share of the spoils, represented by yours liberally PPP and ANP of course, the violence will only increase.

I know that the propagandists have to earn bread and have already killed their conscience. They know all of the above better than me, and are not in the slightest bit bothered. The rest of you lot need to realize that this will not work, and it is not working.

The liberal cause has only suffered in the hands of the PPP, ANP and MQM the last 5 years and space for the right has expanded. These are people who do not care about any law and they don’t care about human life, what to speak of an ideology.

Pakistan needs all the liberals and progressives it can get, but their continued indulgence with the PPP and now MQM renders them indefensible and takes away any moral authority. Calls for introspection are raised regularly by the left. They would do well to know charity begins at home.

If a day’s mayhem in Islamabad shook your confidence in the Pakistan People’s Party while four years of slaughter in Karachi did not, you need to take a hard look in the mirror.

Please stop prioritizing ideology over humanity. It is time to start over.

A Different Pakistan

By this time most papers have stated the obvious about what went wrong on Friday along with the perceived causes. Subjects dealt with included freedom of speech vs. hate speech, Terry Jones and background of filmmaker Nakoula Bassey Nakoula, provocation and our stupid response, and to top it all off, shock and disgust at the violent nature of protests.

The analysis of what went down and why, at least in most of the English press, confirmed my long standing suspicion. I live in a different Pakistan.

In the Pakistan that I inhabit, violent protests erupted just a few months ago due to loadshedding and people actively hunted for MNAs. It resulted in many deaths along with damage to property. In recent memory mobs have burned people for blasphemy, while earlier the fate of two brothers in Sialkot was even harsher.

Needless to say, if the people catch you while committing a crime, real or perceived, you will be lucky to make it to the cops.

What about the learned people? Those who are above the masses, the ones not only setting standards but also enforcing them?

Our police, one of the most brutal and vicious in the world, kill the odd chap via torture in custody, and are generally very macho. Our lawyers beat down anyone they can get their hands on. Our politicians torture kids. Hell, even our doctors don’t mind a scuffle!

That’s the lighter side of my Pakistan. Wasn’t it pleasant?

The rough side is actually a little disturbing. Insurgencies plague Balochistan and KPK-FATA, terrorism at large, sectarian killings in Gilgit and Quetta. Our right wing political parties are the bad guys, while the three supposedly liberal parties slaughter over a thousand people every year.

My Pakistan is one where violence isn’t widespread; it’s a part of daily life, with or without religion.

Now, can you imagine what would happen if these Pakistanis were invited en masse onto the streets by say, the government of the time? Given a full day off to vent their frustration? And what if the government and the many political/religious leaders who invited these guys to protest didn’t show up themselves?

Piling angry young people onto the streets without anyone to lead them, without any direction, without any indication whatsoever of what exactly are they supposed to do. What would that lead to?

Enough of my Pakistan though.

Let us come back to your Pakistan. I have to say I am as appalled as you are over what happened on Friday. How dare those lovely, peaceful, content people come out, uninvited, on the streets like headless chicken and cause such unheard of mayhem. Not to mention the harm done to our good reputation in front of the whole world.
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Viewing these events in isolation from the daily life in Pakistan is intellectually dishonest at worst and lazy at best.

Viewing the reaction of the Muslim world to that video as a whole is just wrong. It was violent in some countries, peaceful in others. How they reacted had to do with the makeup of those particular societies and the guidance received from political, religious leaders and media.

In our society violence has pretty much been institutionalized, it is the rule here and not the exception. It is what we do, it is who we are. The less said about the political and religious leaders the better, and the media feeds off sensationalism and Bahria Town adverts.

Therefore, I could find nothing shocking about Friday. A violent people, with a nasty bout of anti-Americanism and deadly disdain for blasphemy, let loose on the streets. How many ways could that have turned out? Also, the fact that PPP are an incompetent shameless lot of opportunists who find new ways to hurt the country is the least surprising of all things imaginable.

This was not an anomaly. It wasn’t an ugly episode in our otherwise peaceful national life. It was just another day, albeit made worse by a chaotic, utterly useless government.

So the elite should stop reacting with such marvellous shock. And please, please stop mocking the damn mob, on Twitter no less. If you are privileged enough to have a voice, use it to address the larger disease, not selective symptoms.

The ones responsible for law and order and the ones who claim to be our leaders, they are responsible for not just the violence on Friday, but the daily horrors Pakistanis outside the Red Zone have to deal with.

Friends Like These

Is safeguarding the life and rights of religious minorities a responsibility of the government? In the context of Pakistan, present or past, it appears not to be the case.

So is the targeted killing and persecution of religious minorities actually a credit to the government?

If you follow a certain Mr. Faisal Raza Abidi, it would seem so. For wherever Faisal Raza goes these days, he wears the badge of minority rights with great pride and greater pompousness. It’s quite mesmerizing actually.

For instance, I was dumbfounded when I saw him invoking the names of dead Shia leaders, at the top of his voice, to batter an anchor into submission. The fact that these leaders had been killed on the watch of a PPP government that seemed not in the least bit interested, or bothered, about their life or death, was lost on Abidi.

I mean we have seen a lot in the last 4 years or so, granted. But vying for political mileage over dead bodies? That too of people you were sworn to and failed to, or didn’t want to, protect. I really cannot come up with an analogy.

You may ask what allows Abidi and company to get away this. How can they stand by and watch as their citizens are butchered and then shout about it on TV? Well, it’s the media. Or a certain section of the media.

This is the section that lays claim to the moral high ground more often than WAPDA cuts your power. They are the champions of free speech, of tolerance and are great friends of the minorities in Pakistan. They are also great friends of the PPP, but don’t say that out loud.

It’s peculiar how these mild mannered folk, who believe in tolerance and abhor abusive trolls, love the slightly less mild mannered Faisal Raza. It’s also peculiar how they oversee, everyday, what the PPP has done to minorities in Pakistan.

How? The “Deep State”. It remains the refuge of the PPP apologist. They hide behind it, pleading that their liberal party is helpless. They say the party’s hands are tied.

Yet there is much they don’t say.

They don’t say how there is more sectarian strife in the country today than when the military was directly in power, under Musharraf. They don’t say how the siege of Shia-Hazaras in Balochistan intensified under the current regime or how the PPP Chief Minister can’t even feign pity for them. Let alone the President.

They don’t say how this government has failed to control growth of sectarian outfits throughout the country, from Sindh to Gilgit to Balochistan. They don’t say that the PPP has failed to introduce stricter anti-terrorism legislation either. Apparently the Deep State wanted to do away with the third time prime minister clause instead? It also demanded public office holders be granted immunity from contempt proceedings.

It’s not that these people don’t have a voice. They speak ferociously enough, just not when the “secular” parties are involved. Suppose one “Sheeda Tully”, classy btw, was involved in forceful conversion of Hindu girls. Nusrat Javed might have spontaneously combusted on TV. It was though a PPP MNA, so he's safe. Similarly, imagine if an Imran Khan government were to incarcerate an 11 year old Christian girl on blasphemy charges. Now imagine Sana Bucha. Exactly.

The fact is, an ulema council has actually come out to support the girl. In the meantime former Prime Minister, upholder of the constitution and champion of the masses, Yousaf Raza Gillani has claimed credit for Bhutto’s Ahmedi achievement.

Still there is scant chance Muhammad Hanif will find himself in a seat next to the former PM on one of his travels.

None of these champions of minority rights will ask the PPP why they have been this inhuman, this unmoved and this complicit in the atrocities committed. They will instead write one harrowing tale after the other, each ending before the victims can lodge a complaint against their government. A government that not only abandoned them, it persecuted them as well.

It is however a PPP government, so that must not make it to the papers. It doesn’t need to, man. You wrote a vague story from a distant land, such bravery would put a lion to shame. You outdid yourself sire. Your best article ever, for the third time this week! Bla bla bla.

Young “jiyalas” don’t grow up to be unbiased commentators. A Radio only broadcasts its feed. Institutes don’t fund themselves.

There is so much this county has given to minorities isn’t there. And prominent among our many gifts - are friends like these.

Liberals Gone Wild

No, this isn’t about TheRealWTF in a wet T-shirt contest, this is something even wilder. A couple of days ago I was witness to a very impassioned tweet sermon by a very impassionate - I am not supposed to take names here, so we shall just call him Mr. Mehrumi.

Mr. Mehrumi is known for being a liberal voice among us backward folk, and his stances on minority rights are a particularly admirable trait. Imagine my surprise then that the moving tweets were actually directed against people taking up a minority cause.

Yes, those darned Rohingyas in Burma/Myanmar. They have not only caused much suffering there - to themselves, by existing - but also masterminded some serious turbulence in Pakistan. I don’t know what it exactly is, but the Pakistani liberalese don’t like them Burmese. I suspect it’s because of the rumoured Arab descent. Our liberals don’t take kindly to the Arabs, although they do take kindly to their American friends. Reasonable people.

So, Mr. Mehrumi didn't turn out to be the only wild one. In fact, there is plenty of outrage found amongst the Pakistani NGO running humanitarian community against the outrage against the persecution of Rohingyas. Geddit?

The liberals are angry that you give a shit about massacres in Burma. Yes.

That is not all. If you give a shit about the massacres in Burma, you are inherently bigoted AND you are against every minority cause inside Pakistan. Like Ahmedi persecution, the Shia killings, etc.

I am all for outrage, I really am, but I have got to point something out to our more enlightened brethren.

Here goes.

You are full of bullshit.


Allow me to explain.

Nobody made you the judge of my morality, or anyone else’s and nobody made you the "Thaykedaar" of our conscience. Speaking up for the cause of Muslims, and let’s face it that’s the only problem you have with all of this, does not make me insensitive to minority causes at home.

It certainly does not make it fit for you to say, or in any way imply, that I am against the cause of a Shia or an Ahmedi or a Baloch.

This “let’s call everyone out on selective outrage” thing that you have going, stop it.

Seriously. You avoid MENTIONING the daily Karachi killings by “secular” political parties, which is naked terrorism, as resolutely as Rehman Malik avoids making sense, and you have the audacity to call people out on selective outrage?

And what do you really do about the Ahmedis and the Shias of this country? They are under siege and you continue to support the PPP government which has simply turned its back on them. The Hazara MNA Syed Nasir Ali Shah staged a protest sit-in in front of Parliament House against the Government, and what do you do?

Clap when Zardari gives one meaningless statement after the other! Look up the meaning of shameless. Please.

Discuss at length the TDKR shooting and the freaking gun laws in America but talking about Rohingya massacres diverts attention from important causes? I mean. Wow. WOW.

I have to say.. Well I don’t. It won’t matter; I don’t have grants to hand out.

So. As I said. You are full of bullshit.

Karachi Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned

For 2 days now Karachi is at a standstill. Life as we know it has stopped; there are no teenagers making movie plans, no families heading out to the beach, even the “Mailla” motorcycle gymnasts have dismounted their rides and put on the helmets, at least for the time being.

Instead, the roads are littered with burning vehicles, the streets echo with cries and gunshots, and many a corpse lies unattended by the pavement. Children and adults alike have been taken by fear, dread and naked panic, all because of the dastardly Wives. And girlfriends.

Yes, the Wives & GFs of Karachi are on the loose once again. These fashionable terror machines have been largely uncontrollable for the past 4 years and, after a brief lull, are back on the scene.

The Gov of Pakistan has taken steps to pacify the Wives & GFs in the past, to varying success. However to control them, we must first understand the phenomenon of savage Wives & GFs. Unfortunately, intellectual circles are divided over why the Wives & GFs continue to sabotage the city. The most widely accepted view is that of cultural critic and human trafficking enthusiast Nadeem F. Paracha.

“The Wives & GFs have always been a leftist entity, and were prosperous under the reign of King Zulfiqar Bhutto, and in that of his daddy, Gen Ayub Khan. These secularist forces however were put under duress with the arrival of Gen Zia. Years of oppression only strengthened the intrinsic liberal tendencies of Wives & GFs.” Mr. Paracha writes.

“After Zia’s demise, the PPP government was not given enough time, thus making the Wives & GFs bitchier. In the late 90s these women decided to take household matters into their own hands, and this secular movement soon translated onto the political spectrum in Karachi. As the Wives & GFs gained more power, they developed a sense of entitlement which, as I pointed out at the time, was a dangerous step.”

“Now that they have entrenched themselves into the system thanks to backing of rightwing forces, they have turned violent and taken the city hostage. They have also fractioned into different groups, just as the powers that be had planned for them to.” He concludes.

This brings us to the present, with tension flaring up once again between different factions of Wives & GFs. As is often the case when women fight; man paid the price, and in Karachi, prices are sky high.

It is believed that a in a “mushaira”, one Wife caught her husband attending without her permission. She, naturally, shot him dead. Said husband had a girlfriend, who then killed two of the wife’s, who was now a self made widow, lovers.

The next day all hell broke loose. Wives & GFs all over the city went into frenzy. For months they had sat in their homes; silently texting away during the day and calling strangers for some adulterous talk in the night, not anymore. Their many concerns, like the lack of quality lipsticks or the costlier gifts their BFF was receiving, drove them into a rage that the city just couldn’t handle. Girls gone wild, not the good kind.

In fact, many Wives & GFs have admitted to different reasons for killing their husbands or boyfriends or just about anyone else. One Zafira Baloch from Lyari quipped:

“I wanted a microwave oven and my husband bought it for me, but with all the load-shedding I naturally needed a UPS to go with it. I asked my second boyfriend to get me one and he refused. So you see my hands were tied, actually *hehehe* his hands were, if you know what I mean” she said with an inviting smile.

A famous “GF” of the posh Defence area, known amongst her friends as Babra “Goori”, also had a fascinating tale.

“I have been going out with this Industrialist for a year now. He is much older than me, but we have fun together. We connect, you know, he understands me. Anyway, I wanted his seaside bungalow but it was registered in his son’s name. I shot him thrice, in the head. I really love the view from that place, you should come some time.”

Aapa Syeda Shaheen is a regular housewife. She explained how she wasn’t at fault over what had happened.

“I have been loyal to my “marad” for 15 years. Esa figure hota tha mera, log marte they. Now look at me, I am a cow. For him, I sacrificed everything, and the other day I caught him with that skinny slut model from Clifton. Rage came over me and I blacked out. When I regained consciousness, he was lying in pool of blood and I had a frying pan in my hand.”

Despite the open admissions of these, and many more, Wives & GFs to their crimes, the law enforcement agencies seem helpless to apprehend them.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik sat down with me for a candid interview to explain why.

“Cekurity is not easy thing to provide. I have tried my level best and I think done a fantastical job so far. However, we cannot be everywhere all the time.” The Minister said, fondly stroking his shocking pink tie, with green unicorns emblazoned on it.

Sir, but what about those Wives & GFs that have been arrested?

“They will be released very soon. As you know, I think of even enemies’ sisters as my sisters. So how can I take action against my sisters? It is ridiculas, cekurity is good. The Wives & GFs are peaceful”

Then why do they keep killing people?

“It is the weather. As you know, the summers are approaching and the temperature is rising. From today I have banned all spicy food in the city of Karachi. Once there is no spicy food, you will see the violence will vanish. President Zardari has already taken notice of the spicy food.”

Sir, will there be any relief packages for the victims?

“The victims are already dead. What do they need relief from? We have a package for the Wives & GFs of the city, so that they remain peaceful and do not complain again. We will be giving all of them discounts on Lawn. 50% off. The money will be provided through BISP.”

“Another promise of BB Shaheed will be fulfilled; Roti, Kapra aur Lawn.”

The Minister looked very confident saying that last part, and there was a twinkle in his eye, warmth in his smile; the look of a man who knew what he was doing. As I walked out of the interview, I knew that the future of the City Of Lights was about to get even brighter.