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Media under siege in Pakistan

Mazhar Mazhar May 13, 2007

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#99 Posted by HisExcellency on May 16, 2007 11:57:40 am
re: rf786

{{Lets get one thing straight, it was not the Mohajirs who divided Pakistan}}

That`s a fairy tale that Mohajir elders tell their children just to wash their own guilt. Mohajir military officers were right up there with their fellow Pakistani faujis in East Pakistan. Musharraf, Moinuddin Haider, Khalid Mehmud Arif, Aslam Baig and Usmani didn`t join the army after `71.

The man who sentenced Mujib to death in the Faisalabad sedition case was a Mohajir, a certain Lt.Gen.Rahimuddin Khan who later became Zia`s all powerful governor of Baluchistan.


Get your facts straight.
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#98 Posted by rf786 on May 16, 2007 11:24:17 am
Re: # 96

{you keep making all kinds of accusations about panjabis and at the same time claim you dont consider panjabis your enemies!! if this is how you address friends and people you consider to be one of your own, then i can only wonder what you have to say about your enemies.}

Plenty.

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#97 Posted by khamy1 on May 16, 2007 10:38:24 am
...not one urdu speaker has denied or admitted to #64...posted below...got cold feet?

#64 by khamy1 on May 15, 2007 4:31pm PT
... how many mohajirs on chowk believe in dismantling pakistan and getting back to the fold of bharat mata...salim chauhan has been dreaming of that day. let`s see how many more mohajirs think like him...
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#96 Posted by tahmed32 on May 16, 2007 10:29:10 am
rf #95 you keep making all kinds of accusations about panjabis and at the same time claim you dont consider panjabis your enemies!! if this is how you address friends and people you consider to be one of your own, then i can only wonder what you have to say about your enemies.

as for your specific claims (e.g. blaming panjabis for bangladesh), please try to be fair so you dont start believing your self. things are not so simple or black and white - and merely blaming panjabis and ignoring other factors which i think you know as well as i do will not do anyone any good.

i am glad you dont want karachi to form a separate state. but then you need to take a step forward and see yourself as a part of a bigger nation than your ethnic group. and as you yourself say, you are a ``muhajir and a secularist``. shouldnt you be saying you are a ``pakistani`` who wishes to see a peace and prosperity and basic freedoms (including freedom of religion) for all pakistanis? the latter is what the rest of the nation (other than the religious and ethnic fascists) is struggling for.

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#95 Posted by rf786 on May 16, 2007 10:02:24 am
Re: # 94

{If you think altaf hussain and musharaff missed the boat on this one, why are you so determined to do the same? you are without thinking treating panjabis as your enemies, when in fact panjab has always been divided on ideological issues (right wing vs socialist) and not on ethnic or provincial lines. ethnic politics are played only by primitive mindsets that do not understand the dynamics of todays world.}

Here u go again, I do not treat or think of Poonjabis as enemies. Yes, there is an element of Punjabi chauvinism that rears its ugly head once in a while to the detriment of the country, case in point East Pakistan. When u have such a large population, fertile lands and rich history there will be such tendencies, it will be unnatural to expect otherwise given the level of education and still very tribal based value system of the society in general.

Issue is not about Punjabis or Mohajirs, its about the ideological frontiers of Pakistan unfortunately Mqm has made a grave mistake thus the entire debate has shifted to mqm and anti-mqm which basically degenerates into provincial and ethnic suppositions.

Being an ethnic minority and then being accused of acting like a separate state, doesnt that sound gibberish? What is not practically concievable is being politically engineered by Mqm opponents knowing very well that it is not possible or concievable, unless of course something happens on the macro level that changes the big picture.
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#94 Posted by tahmed32 on May 16, 2007 9:44:47 am
rf #92 you write Agreed. Being a mohajir and secularist this was extremely disappointing, Altaf Hussein has probably made his biggest political mistake and the same goes for Musharraf. For me this is a point of extreme disappointment and pessimism whereas for the Fundos and traditionalist politicians a moment to rejoice, for them it means back to their ways of running Pakistan. Same old Taliban style of religious indoctrination, mohajirs are once again disfranchised from the political process that leaves the Tablighees an open political arena.

If you think altaf hussain and musharaff missed the boat on this one, why are you so determined to do the same? you are without thinking treating panjabis as your enemies, when in fact panjab has always been divided on ideological issues (right wing vs socialist) and not on ethnic or provincial lines. ethnic politics are played only by primitive mindsets that do not understand the dynamics of todays world.

as for the idea of karachiites needed visas to get out of their enclave seeming like gibberish to you - perhaps it is sounds like gibberish only because you think you can have your cake and eat it too. that is, act like a separate nation while having the benefits of being the same nation.
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#93 Posted by Folio on May 16, 2007 9:38:23 am
Altaf shot himslef in the foot!

Musharraf played footsie with MQM (Mush`s blood brothers). Punjab saw its first (?) anti-Mush protests & effigy burning. Punjabis at last saw Mush as a Mohajir. It`s like the climax scene in Sarfarosh where the willing Naseeruddin was ticked-off as a mohajir by the ISI officer.

The of-late bonhomie MQM found with the native Sindhis and Punjabis was floundered by Altaf. Despite what MQM site tries to propagate the video footage shows the local police were looking away when the flag-bearing MQM fellas shooting. This is a replay of Gujarat to me.

Punjab and MQM wud never meet except when a mohajir is the dictator (Musharraf roped in the lackeys in the form of Chowdharies for legitamacy as the ruler of Pakistan).

MQM can now forget abt contesting in Punjab, NWFP and other provinces.

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#92 Posted by rf786 on May 16, 2007 9:26:54 am
Re: # 88

{rf: just to add to what HE #85 writes, dont think you will achieve anything by making karachi a mohajir-city:}

I have no intentions niether ever suggested otherwise, this is an absurd, baseless allegation concocted to demonize ideas that contrast with a preconcieved notion.

{1. the same fascism that mqm is inflicting on non-mohajirs in karachi today will be applied to mohajirs. by attacking those calling for the rule of law and siding with an individual who is obsessed with staying in power by hook or by crook, mqm leadership has demonstrated a complete lack of vision or respect for democratic traditions.}

Agreed. No sane, civilized person supports fascist tendencies no matter where they are applied, Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad or Wana.

{2. karachi will be reduced to an enclave, and incur losses even greater than the ones resulting from mqm`s lawlessness. pakistanis will simply switch to gwadur as their port city, and karachi will lose its entire hinterland. it will be overshadowed by mumbai to the east, dubai and (with time) gwadur to the west.}

Gwadar vs Karachi? Simplistic and flawed assumption. Karachi is a well established, thriving port whereas Gwadar u guys cannot even find property rights and are facing stiff Baloch opposition. In any case, as they say in the investment business, if its beyond five years, then its not worth discussing. Your investment outlook exceeds 10years at the best.

{3. karachiites trying to come to pakistan will require visas, and will lose the free access they have to settle wherever they like (as, per HEs post, more and more mohajirs have done in recent years in lahore and pindi in the face of political turmoil brought about by mqm in recent years.}

What kind of gibberish is that? Karachiites coming to Pakistan will require a visa!! Better change the name to Punjabistan, then I wud agree with your thesis. Using your argument Poonjabis and Pukhtoons may require visas to enter Sindh and Balochistan! Absurd to say the least.

{4. pakistan on the other hand will retain its strategic position - adjoining one of india`s richest provinces, the panjab, and sitting at the cross-roads between south asia, central asia, china and the middle east.}

Keep living in your wet dreams of Indus river strategic position, what u basically mean is that Poonjab will continue to retain its strategic position. Why not, its quite possible, but there u go again, its always about Poonjab then Pakistan.

{mqm would have been much better off if it had truly acted like the nation-wide party it had been seeking to become the past 15 years, and instead of merely jumping to help out a ``fellow muhajir`` had advised musharraf to drop his obsession with clinging to power and permit proper elections next year. it could then have called for greater devolution of state functions to local governments, and had the best of both worlds. but all that the mqm leadership seems capable of seeing is somehow becoming the chief ghoondas of karachi where no one can enter without mqm permission.}

Agreed. Being a mohajir and secularist this was extremely disappointing, Altaf Hussein has probably made his biggest political mistake and the same goes for Musharraf. For me this is a point of extreme disappointment and pessimism whereas for the Fundos and traditionalist politicians a moment to rejoice, for them it means back to their ways of running Pakistan. Same old Taliban style of religious indoctrination, mohajirs are once again disfranchised from the political process that leaves the Tablighees an open political arena.
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#91 Posted by rf786 on May 16, 2007 9:04:14 am
Re: # 85

{There are plenty of Sindhis and Mohajirs settled in Lahore, thanks to the ethnic violence sparked by MQM in the late 80s. You stand alone and exposed. Spare your ethnic hate speech for your fellow MQM supporters. Rest of Pakistan stands united on this and will not provide mohajirs of your variety with an excuse to divide and rule Pakistan.}

At partition, Lahore was 60% Muslim and 40% non-Muslim, today that ratio is 99% Muslim and 1 % Non-Muslim. Lahore became home for immigrants across the border and still is home for many non-Punjabi speaking people. But u missed the point. Karachi, SIndh and now Balochistan is home to migrating popoluations from Punjab and Frontier for economic reasons. These populations have now reached critical mass, large enough to help the economy yet create ethnic tensions. Compare that to the migrants in Lahore or Peshawar, none of these minorities can challenge the indigenous population.

If you do not comprehend this reality then you are either deliberately ignoring reality which makes u intellectually dishonest or you are the usual ignoramus that has always emphasized the majority view for personal gains at the cost of truth, fairness and provinical harmony.

Lets get one thing straight, it was not the Mohajirs who divided Pakistan, it was the Punjab army and its supporters ie JI that contributed to the breakup of Pakistan in 1971 and once again are pushing the country to another point of no return. If there is an element that still clings to Jinnah`s Pakistan it is the well wishers of secularism ie Mohajirs.
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#90 Posted by HisExcellency on May 16, 2007 8:47:56 am

I guess this gentlemen didn`t like the ``India Shining`` extended DVD version...

End Of A Love Affair With India

By Luke Harding

The Guardian
16 September, 2003

I can identify the moment I fell out of love with India quite precisely. It happened at the end of last February. Riots had just broken out in the western state of Gujarat, after a group of Muslims attacked a train full of Hindu pilgrims, killing 59 of them. In Gujarat`s main city, Ahmedabad, trouble was brewing. Hindu mobs had begun taking revenge on their Muslim neighbours - there were stories of murder, looting and arson. Arriving in Ahmedabad from Delhi, I found it impossible to hire a car or driver: nobody wanted to drive into the riots.

But the trouble was not difficult to find: smoke billowed from above Ahmedabad`s old city; and I set off towards it on foot. There were rumours that a mob had hacked to death Ahsan Jafri - a distinguished Indian former MP, and a Muslim - whose Muslim housing estate was surrounded by a sea of Hindu houses. A team from Reuters gave me a lift. Driving through streets full of burned-out shops and broken glass we arrived half an hour later outside his compound, surrounded by thousands of people. Jafri had been dead for several hours, it emerged. A Hindu mob had tipped kerosene through his front door; a few hours later they had dragged him out into the street, chopped off his fingers, and set him on fire. They also set light to several other members of his family, including two small boys. There wasn`t much left of Jafri`s Gulbarg Housing Society by the time we got there: at the bottom of his stairs I discovered a pyre of human remains - hair and the tiny blackened arm of a child, its fist clenched.

Two police officers in khaki told us the situation was dangerous, and that we should leave; they seemed resigned or indifferent to the horror around them, an emotion I had encountered before during what would turn out to be more than three years of reporting on India for the Guardian. Later that afternoon, in the suburb of Naroda Patiya, we watched as a Hindu crowd armed with machetes and iron bars attacked their Muslim neighbours on the other side of the street. All of the shops on the Muslim side of the road were ablaze; smoke blotted out the sky; gas cylinders exploded and boomed; we were, it seemed, in some part of hell. ``We are being killed. Please get us out,`` one Muslim resident, Dishu Banashek, told me. ``They are firing at us. Several of our women have been raped. You must help.``

When we asked a senior policeman to intervene he merely smirked. ``Don`t worry, madam. Everything will be done,`` he told a colleague from the Times mendaciously. We left. It was too dangerous to stay.

The causes of the rioting - India`s worst communal violence for a decade - became clearer the next morning, when I returned to Naroda Patiya - now a ruin of abandoned homes and smouldering rickshaws. Virtually all of the Muslims had fled: I found only a solitary survivor, Narinder Bhai, standing by the charred interior of his home. ``Everything is finished,`` he said, showing off his ruined fridge. ``Many people have been killed here. My wife and children have disappeared.``

Just round the corner, down an alley, I spotted a neat bungalow that had apparently escaped the chaos. It was only on closer inspection that I saw its owner: the charred and mutilated remains of a Muslim woman had been laid out in the front garden and framed by a charpoy. Round the back I found an address book - which identified the woman as Mrs Rochomal; next to it, the Nokia phone she had used in a doomed attempt to summon help. Her son`s washing was hanging on the line, in the morning sunshine; inside there was a neat kitchen and black-and-white family photos. Mrs Rochomal`s flip-flops were still by the front door, next to a swing-seat.

Five minutes later, her mobile phone rang. I didn`t answer it. Her body was less than 60 metres away from the local police station. The police had not, it was obvious, bothered to rescue her: they had, I was forced to conclude, been complicit in her death.

Fifteen years earlier I had visited India for the first time as a backpacker, only dimly aware of the country`s inflammable religious politics. I knew that India was a Hindu-dominated, though officially secular country. I also knew it had a large Muslim minority, which had failed to migrate to Pakistan at the time of partition. But the charming aid workers I spent four months with in the cool hills of Tamil Nadu, Madam Preetha and Babu Isaac Daniel, were eccentric and devout Christians; while the family friends I visited in Bombay were wealthy Parsis. It seemed also that India`s Congress party - led by the secular Rajiv Gandhi - was destined to stay in power for a long time; the party had, after all, governed India for most of the period since Britain left the subcontinent.

Two years later, however, an arms corruption scandal forced Gandhi out of office and a new ideological movement began to dominate the political landscape - the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or India People`s Party. The BJP rejected the idea that India should be secular; its more extreme supporters wanted to turn the country into a Hindu state, a sort of Indian version of Pakistan, an India-stan. By the time I arrived in New Delhi for the Guardian, the BJP was firmly established in power; and the multi-faith India of Mahatma Gandhi and Jarwarharlal Nehru, India`s first prime minister, was, it seemed, in big trouble.

Mahatma Gandhi still appeared on India`s banknotes, of course. But nobody seemed to talk about him any more, and his vision of an inclusive India was under threat from something darker and arguably fascist. Driving last year around Ahmedabad, in Gandhi`s home state, I found a group of Hindu men standing jubilantly around the ruins of a small brick tomb. They had just demolished it. The tomb had belonged to Vali Gujarati - Muslim India`s answer to Geoffrey Chaucer, and the grandfather of Urdu poetry. In its place, the Hindu youths had erected a tiny petal-strewn shrine to the Hindu monkey god, Hanuman. ``We have broken the mosque and made a temple,`` one of them, Mahesh Patel, told me. What should be done with India`s Muslims, I wondered? ``They should not live in India. They should go and live in Pakistan,`` he told me. This is clearly a tricky proposition: India has 140 million Muslims, out of a population of more than a billion. It is, paradoxically, the world`s second-largest Muslim country after Indonesia. The Muslims I talked to during the Gujarat riots pointed out that they were Indian. They said that they didn`t want to go anywhere.

Returning to Delhi after a harrowing week in dry Gujarat, where it is almost impossible to get a drink, I found dozens of emails from incensed BJP supporters in Britain and elsewhere. Like most commentators I had heaped blame for the riots on Gujarat`s BJP government, and its chief minister, Narendra Modi. I wrote that Modi had condoned and encouraged what was in effect an anti-Muslim pogrom by instructing his Hindu police force to do nothing. The hate mail came flooding in. One email accused me of ``anti-Hindu sentiment``, and announced that dozens of demonstrators would gather outside my flat in the leafy Delhi colony of Nizamuddin the following day.

They didn`t show up. Another pointed out, correctly, that Britain had chopped the subcontinent in half and looted ``trillions of dollars in goodies from India`` - including the Kohinoor diamond. He signed off: ``I piss on your dead whore Queen Mother.`` More ominously, though, I was summoned to meet Mr Kulkarni, a special adviser to India`s ostensibly moderate BJP prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. As dusk fell, we sat on wicker chairs in the garden of Kulkarni`s government flat, just opposite the prime minister`s bungalow in Race Course Road. I had failed to understand the nature of Hindu society, he politely suggested over a cup of tea.

It would, perhaps, be an exaggeration to say that the worsening Hindu-Muslim divide in India threatens to tear the country apart, but certainly relations between the country`s two major communities are as bad as they have ever been. Indian Muslims are now in the unenviable position of being cast as fifth columnists for Pakistan, India`s Muslim neighbour and - for most of the time - its enemy. Nehru`s India appears to be dead. Islamic extremists inside India, meanwhile, are taking their own form of bloody revenge - killing more than 50 people, for example, last month in two gruesome car bombings in Bombay.

The origins of the violence ultimately go back to Ayodhya, a small, sleepy temple town in north India, where cannabis grows in the ditches, and sadhus, or Hindu holy men, mingle with large gangs of monkeys. It was here in 1992 that Hindu zealots tore down a mosque on a site they claimed was the birthplace of Lord Ram, Hinduism`s most important deity. The episode propelled the BJP to power, provoked widespread communal riots and severely damaged India`s secular credentials.

The issue of whether a temple should be built on the disputed site - and India`s hostile relationship with Pakistan - continue to dominate Indian public life. In the meantime, little attention is paid to the plight of the country`s 400 million poor. Late last year I travelled to Baran, an impoverished district in Rajasthan, where dozens of low-caste tribal people had reportedly starved to death. I found plenty of villagers who were still eating grass; the rumours of starvation were true. There was, it transpired, plenty of food in government warehouses - it was merely that corrupt local officials had taken it for themselves.

In his latest book, India in Slow Motion, Mark Tully blames India`s problems on the ``neta-babu raj`` - the alliance between politicians and bureaucrats to hang on to power. Tully is probably right. But it is not just in rural India that the pace of change has been slow. Faced with bankruptcy in the early 90s, India embarked on a programme of economic liberalisation. Delhi now boasts Marks & Spencer and Pizza Express. The biggest change in Delhi during my tenure in India has been the arrival of the coffee bar, and the admirable coffee chain Barista. It is now possible to buy a latte or espresso in India`s big metros - in a country famous for its tea. But in general, India`s infrastructure is as creaking and run-down as ever. During the monsoon, the phone lines crack up; and in the infernal summer months, the power fails. Maintaining electrical appliances - fax machine, water purifier, back-up power supply - is a full-time job. In the quiet periods after last year`s Gujarat riots I thought often of Mrs Rochomal, lying burned and mutilated in her neat front garden, and of the horror of her last few minutes. Did her children stumble on her body? Did the people who killed her feel any remorse? I shall return to India, but not for a while.
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#89 Posted by HisExcellency on May 16, 2007 8:41:25 am

With `liberated` Bangladeshis shutting out Tata and feasting Pakistan`s Dawood Group instead, and New Delhi too busy fighting a losing battle in Kashmir, India looks like a country in desperate need of real victories...

India`s Naxalites: A spectre haunting India

GANESH UEIKE, secretary of the West Bastar Divisional Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), seems a gentle, rather academic, man, who does not suit his green combat fatigues or clenched-fist “red salute”. He shuffles dog-eared bits of paper from a shabby file in his knapsack and writes down the questions he is asked. He answers them in slogans that he gives every appearance of believing. He wants to “liberate India from the clutches of feudalism and imperialism”.

...His party, he said, was facing renewed suppression, because “the resources of finance capitalism are facing sluggishness in their development, and are looking for new routes,” such as the mineral riches of this forest.

Mr Ueike did not mention that, just a few hours beforehand, at the edge of the forest, in a place called Errabore, his comrades had fought back. Several hundred had mounted a co-ordinated attack on a police station, a paramilitary base and a relief camp for displaced people. They killed more than 30 of the camp`s residents, mostly by hacking them to death with axes. The scholarly Mr Ueike did boast that his army relied on “low-tech weapons”.

This was the latest battle in a year-long civil war in Dantewada district, in which more than 350 people have been killed, and nearly 50,000 moved into camps such as the one at Errabore...

On August 15th, in his National Day speech in Delhi, India`s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, linked Naxalism with terrorism as the two big threats to India`s internal security...

P.V. Ramana, of the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi, estimates the Naxalites now have 9,000-10,000 armed fighters, with access to about 6,500 firearms. There are perhaps a further 40,000 full-time cadres.

In nearly 1,600 violent incidents involving Naxalites last year, 669 people died. There have been spectacular attacks across a big area: a train hold-up last month involving 250 armed fighters, a jailbreak freeing 350 prisoners, a near-miss assassination attempt in 2004 against a leading politician. “Naxalism” now affects some 170 of India`s 602 districts—a “red corridor” down a swathe of central India from the border with Nepal in the north to Karnataka in the south and covering more than a quarter of India`s land mass.


This statistic overstates Naxalite power, since in most places they are an underground, hit-and-run force. But in the Bastar forest they are well-entrenched, controlling a large chunk of territory and staging operations across state borders into Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. In the tiny, dirt-poor villages scattered through the forest, the Indian state is almost invisible.

Naxalite attacks are not random...Their leaders are thinking far into the future, taking a 20- to 25-year view of their struggle. “Liberated” areas, such as their part of Dantewada, would be expanded until they pose a threat even to India`s cities.

Nepal`s Maoists, with whom the Indian party has “fraternal” links, are a model of how such a strategy can work
. Having managed to exclude the state from virtually all the countryside, and waged war for a decade, the Maoists in Nepal are now negotiating, from a position of some strength, their share in government—a decision their Indian comrades quietly deplore, despite a pretence of solidarity.

...The tribal peoples among whom they find most of their new recruits are among India`s poorest: “the most exploited, the bottom rung”, according to Ajit Jogi, a tribal leader and former chief minister of Chhattisgarh. Typically, they live in forests and have no rights to their land. A law to remedy this is under consideration, but resisted by conservationists. According to the 2001 census, about three-quarters of Dantewada`s 1,220 villages are almost wholly tribal; 1,161 have no medical facilities; 214 have no primary school; the literacy rate is 29% for men and 14% for women.

Brigadier Ponwar, who joined the Indian army as it went to war in Bangladesh in 1971, says he spent the rest of his career fighting terrorists at home. After fighting low-intensity wars on its periphery for a generation, India risks having to endure another, in its very core, for the next.





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#88 Posted by tahmed32 on May 16, 2007 8:38:07 am
rf: just to add to what HE #85 writes, dont think you will achieve anything by making karachi a mohajir-city:

1. the same fascism that mqm is inflicting on non-mohajirs in karachi today will be applied to mohajirs. by attacking those calling for the rule of law and siding with an individual who is obsessed with staying in power by hook or by crook, mqm leadership has demonstrated a complete lack of vision or respect for democratic traditions.

2. karachi will be reduced to an enclave, and incur losses even greater than the ones resulting from mqm`s lawlessness. pakistanis will simply switch to gwadur as their port city, and karachi will lose its entire hinterland. it will be overshadowed by mumbai to the east, dubai and (with time) gwadur to the west.

3. karachiites trying to come to pakistan will require visas, and will lose the free access they have to settle wherever they like (as, per HEs post, more and more mohajirs have done in recent years in lahore and pindi in the face of political turmoil brought about by mqm in recent years).

4. pakistan on the other hand will retain its strategic position - adjoining one of india`s richest provinces, the panjab, and sitting at the cross-roads between south asia, central asia, china and the middle east.

mqm would have been much better off if it had truly acted like the nation-wide party it had been seeking to become the past 15 years, and instead of merely jumping to help out a ``fellow muhajir`` had advised musharraf to drop his obsession with clinging to power and permit proper elections next year. it could then have called for greater devolution of state functions to local governments, and had the best of both worlds. but all that the mqm leadership seems capable of seeing is somehow becoming the chief ghoondas of karachi where no one can enter without mqm permission.
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#87 Posted by HisExcellency on May 16, 2007 8:19:20 am

Hi-tech terrorists baffle Indian Army

Terrorists sneaking into India from across the border are increasingly using global positioning system devices in their ventures, posing problems to the army, which has no equipment to track them.

According to the soldiers manning the Line of Control in north Kashmir`s Kupwara sector, terrorists now depend on the satellite-based GPS instead of human guides to infiltrate into the Valley.

``Terrorists have gone hi-tech as they are using sophisticated devices to find their way into our side of the Valley,`` said a top army official, adding, ``The incidents, where militants rely on GPS to sneak into the Valley, have increased in the recent past.``

A GPS device can be as small as a mobile phone and is available as little as Rs 3,000-5,000. It can be used by anyone with a little technical knowledge.

Earlier infiltrators relied mostly on `not always trustworthy` human guides who used to take hefty sums in crossing the border but now the hi-tech equipment has taken over as it can easily remain untraced.

``Earlier we used to track mobile conversations between infiltrators and their guides but now we do not have any resources to track GPS signals,`` said another official.

``A person sitting kilometers away can easily guide the infiltrators and we cannot trace the signals,`` he added.

Sources in the army told PTI that training in GPS equipment have been made mandatory for terrorists operating on the other side of the LoC.

``We have apprehended some militants with these devices and subsequent interrogation revealed that it was mandatory for them to train in the use of these equipments. Every group that prepares to cross the LoC has an expert to handle these devices,`` they said.
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#86 Posted by HisExcellency on May 16, 2007 8:14:13 am
#79

why, has the hindu army returned from kashmir?... next stop jharkand anyway... 18 years and still bleeding... now thats a real haemorrage unless you`re an hindian in which case ``india is rising``.
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#85 Posted by HisExcellency on May 16, 2007 7:57:58 am
re: #83

There are plenty of Sindhis and Mohajirs settled in Lahore, thanks to the ethnic violence sparked by MQM in the late 80s. You stand alone and exposed. Spare your ethnic hate speech for your fellow MQM supporters. Rest of Pakistan stands united on this and will not provide mohajirs of your variety with an excuse to divide and rule Pakistan.
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#84 Posted by khamy1 on May 16, 2007 7:43:29 am
Re: # 77
thank you for your kindness...now tell that to your champion salim chauhan...
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