Durrani Confirms That Kasab Is Pakistani, Mayhem Follows
The Pakistani government is in panic mode with no one quite sure about what's happening. First, Maj. Gen. (R) Mahmud A. Durrani, the Prime Minister's National Security Advisor, told CNN that:
"I think it probably would be true now that for example [Ajmal Kasab] had Pakistani connections."
"What the dossier is, is not something solid,... But I would also say, some of the leads we got from India through other countries, that has been very helpful to our investigation."
This was followed by Information Minister Sherry Rehman telling BBC that:
"We are confirming that Qasab is Pakistani but investigations are still ongoing."
Then, according to Kamran Khan on Geo, the Prime Minister personally called GEO, he was extremely angry and complained that Mr. Durrani had given the statement without consulting him and had been fired. He also stated that the statement was irresonsible and had tarnished the image of the country.
According to some reports, President Zardari, who is on a trip (yet again) to Afghanistan had also confirmed the veracity of the statements made by Mr. Durrani and Ms. Rehman.
Geo being Geo is showing an interview of the PM from Nov. 25, 2007 in which he had claimed that he was assembling the best team of advisers. And now, at 10.50 p.m., they have just called Imran Khan for his 'expert views.' I've put the television on mute.
This does not bode well for the PPP government. A couple of weeks ago Ahsan and I were reading the Gup Shup column in the back page of the Friday Times wherein it was reported that the PM was running out of time. I feel that his performance tonightis only going to hasten the exit - who the hell, apart from Imran Khan, calls Geo personally? Has he not heard of spokespersons or engineered leaks.
The whole episode again highlights the clear lack of protocol and problems in the communication structure within the government - remember the 'fake phone call' to Zardari?
"I think it probably would be true now that for example [Ajmal Kasab] had Pakistani connections."
"What the dossier is, is not something solid,... But I would also say, some of the leads we got from India through other countries, that has been very helpful to our investigation."
This was followed by Information Minister Sherry Rehman telling BBC that:
"We are confirming that Qasab is Pakistani but investigations are still ongoing."
Then, according to Kamran Khan on Geo, the Prime Minister personally called GEO, he was extremely angry and complained that Mr. Durrani had given the statement without consulting him and had been fired. He also stated that the statement was irresonsible and had tarnished the image of the country.
According to some reports, President Zardari, who is on a trip (yet again) to Afghanistan had also confirmed the veracity of the statements made by Mr. Durrani and Ms. Rehman.
Geo being Geo is showing an interview of the PM from Nov. 25, 2007 in which he had claimed that he was assembling the best team of advisers. And now, at 10.50 p.m., they have just called Imran Khan for his 'expert views.' I've put the television on mute.
This does not bode well for the PPP government. A couple of weeks ago Ahsan and I were reading the Gup Shup column in the back page of the Friday Times wherein it was reported that the PM was running out of time. I feel that his performance tonightis only going to hasten the exit - who the hell, apart from Imran Khan, calls Geo personally? Has he not heard of spokespersons or engineered leaks.
The whole episode again highlights the clear lack of protocol and problems in the communication structure within the government - remember the 'fake phone call' to Zardari?
Labels:
Minority Reports,
Pakistan
30 comments:
someones on a roll
He should have fired that bitch as well.
Exactly why should they have been fired? For telling the truth.
They have just fired the man who has been actively trying to keep between India and Pakistan
and had also been coveriing the countries ass for two years in Washington
that's another own goal for pakistan. way to go durrani & rehman! he was rightly fired, truth or not, if only these people would learn to gas with a bit of responsibility. this kind of cockup is a godsend to the indian govt. and media.
Actually, firing Mr Durrani does nothing to restore Pakistan's credibility in the international arena which is already in bloody tatters.
Durrani deserved the sack for not taking his boss into confidence.
But I'm not convinced that he spoke without informing his superiors - the timing of his and Sherry Rehman's interview would suggest as much. Unfortunately, he seems to have forgotten that his boss is the Prime Minister and not the President.
The office of the Prime Minister has been stripped of it power over the last ten years.
The PM is perhaps right to feel aggrieved, but his reaction to the whole situation raises serious questions regarding his adequacy to continue as PM. He should never, ever have called Geo, especially as late in the evening as he did, it showed an administration in disarray.
Geo has lost it totally - amongnst the non-state actors geo is on it's way of becoming the top notch one. I hate the way they are gloating over the stupid fareedkot documentry yet again - Know for a fact that the old man spweing stories about Kasab's jahadi trickery was bribed.
And yeah, Sherry should have been fired too - it is not a matter of telling the truth , it is simply a matter of following a proper protocol to say whatever you have to say.
comeon you can choose to be indignant and hurt and ashamed and outraged...
or you can sit back and marvel at a government that has gone ahead and broken all records for being the most hilarious government of all time... hahahaha... its absolutely insane how they pulled this one off, especially since the kasab pakistani link had been broken at 6 pm, and kamran khan airs at 10. so it took them four hours to come up with a strategy, which was - gillani sahib, aap geo keh daftar phone milayain... hahahaha
COME ON!!!
"which was - gillani sahib, aap geo keh daftar phone milayain.."
lol. see, that's the only convincing argument to me against the idea that Mumbai was Zardari & co.'s Kargil. They DON'T NEED A KARGIL, they can do it by themselves.
"or you can sit back and marvel at a government that has gone ahead and broken all records for being the most hilarious government of all time"
True dat.
*grin*
Really, it is time the Pak government focuses on protecting its own citizens. There is a virtual nightmare that is going on in the Swat valley :
The main town of Swat, Mingora, has now virtually fallen to the militants. The police are escorted by army officials and come out from their ‘hide-outs’ only for a couple of hours. One of the busiest squares, Grain chowk, was renamed by the shopkeepers as ‘Khooni chowk’ because when they come to their shops in the morning on each day they find four or five dead bodies hung over the poles or the trees. They see dead bodies scattered along the foot path in the morning. The bodies are usually headless. The practice goes thus with an average of four deaths daily in the square. Similarly on each morning there are found bodies with their throats slit in Qambar, Kabal, Matta, Khawza Khela and Charbagh. This practice has been going on for weeks; and unfortunately does not seem to stop.
Jan 15 is the deadline set by the militants to close all schools, especially those of girls. As the deadline approaches people are getting more and more terrified. The government’s writ is all but absent. Nazims have been killed, women are not allowed to visit bazaars (which are deserted), NGOs have stopped working and children play a ‘Fauji Taliban’ game. The people live a miserable life in the cold. Most bridges have been damaged and beyond the main town phones have been dead for months. Most people live in darkness at night because the fighting has badly affected the power infrastructure as well.
Curfew is imposed constraining the people inside for days on end. And security forces personnel sometimes fire indiscriminately. The residents can do nothing – they cannot protest against the high-handedness of the military or stand up to the militants. The Taliban gain from strength to strength, partly aided by the use of FM radio. Various checkposts set up by the security forces seem to be no little use. Scores of militants entered Kalam last week in spite of six checkposts set up from from Bagh Dahri to Bahrain. It is quite clear that for now the victors in the war are the Taliban – and the losers the people of Swat.
But who cares about that in the rest of the country. The government seems too busy dealing with the aftermath of the Mumbai carnage. That said, the predicament of the people of Swat is worse than even of the people of Gaza. In Gaza the enemy is well known but in Swat the people know not who the enemy is and whom to hold responsible.
The civil society of any country is regarded as a great force to mobilize the general public against the violation of civil rights and liberty. It is considered as a bulwark against the violation of human rights. It is deemed as the upholder of people’s rights where the state fails to deliver. Its mettle was tested in the lawyers’ movement but we in Swat wonder why it is silent now? We hear no voice raise against the atrocities committed in Swat. No civil society organization has its voice against the plight of the women and children in Swat. We have not seen a single demonstration in the big cities against the monster of militancy in Swat, or in FATA for that matter. The media also seems apathetic about the plight. The print media does well to some extent but their scope is limited.
The people of Swat ask you to come out on their behalf and mobilize the general public against the war tearing the valley. We implore you to come out of your drawing rooms and stage protests so that the government does something about our plight.
well nowthey are considering reinstating him.
Well mr durrani has made it clear to me he will resign immediately
Urrgh
Just when you think it cannot get any more professional than this, Zardari & co. take it down another notch.
Ibteda,
You should start writing an expose column about the media shenanigans in Pakistan.
"What kind of a god is it that's upset by a cartoon in Danish?"
Salman Rushdie
Prologue: The Muslim Fury and its Impotence
From the ghettos of Bombay to the alleys of Beirut, from the tall minarets of Chittagong to the imposing domes of Birmingham, Islam is scaring the world like a terrifying dinosaur — its fiery tongue lashing out, its eyes red with tears of victimhood, its mind ravaged with the visions of the glories of the past, its whole body seething with rage at its wretched defeated present.
Islam is furious and the entire world is being seared by the flames of its outrage.
Why is Islam Angry?
Mussalmaans have one book. Koran. They should have another, too, detailing all the new legends, stories, and facts which have come to lay siege to the barren landscape of their closed minds.
The brutal stories are too many: Heads still hung down in mourning over the fall of Andalusia. Fists are frustratingly tightened over the unsuccessful Turkish sieges of Vienna. The decadence and fall of the Ottomans hurt like a rotten tooth.
Then there are shameful episodes of the near centuries: The fabled Mughal Empire of Hindustan compressed to present-day pathetic bubbles of Pakistan and Bangladesh, Jerusalem lost, Palestinians dumped, fellow Muslims massacred in periodic Indian riots, myths of Muslim blood coloring the Kashmiri and Chechnya mountainsides red, ungodly Amreekans camping over the holy sands of Mecca-Medina...
The Way They Were
Islam is a religion that once shined in innovation and dazzled the world with its scientific inventions and mathematical discoveries. Remember, algebra derived its name from the Arabic al-jabr, meaning 'the reunion of broken parts'. The great Muslim astronomer Nasir ad-Din at-Tusi wrote the Book of the Transversal Figure, which was the first treatment of plane and spherical trigonometry as independent mathematical sciences.
Edward Gibbons in his fifth volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire had written that the science of chemistry owes its origin and improvements to the Muslims. The legendary Al Azhar University was founded in Cairo in 970 AD, making it older than Oxford — the oldest institution of higher learning in the English-speaking world.
Islam as a Beggar King
Today Islam resembles the last Mughal emperor of India - Bahadur Shah Zafar - whose writ was not obeyed even with the walls of his own palace in Delhi. He was thin, old, and dying. His skeleton figure, wrapped in unwashed, smelly, but royal kaftans and gowns, was exiled to Rangoon by the British in a buffalo cart!
This is what Islam has evolved itself into - the memories of the golden grandeur of the Past haunting the shameful poverty of the Present. The Muslims know it. They are grieving. They are hurt. They are ashamed.
They blame everybody but themselves for their state.
The Intellectual Retardation of Muhammad's Children
Islam has plummeted to depths of ignorance and backwardness. The first word revealed to Muhamamd was 'read'. Today they just read Koran. There are no great universities any longer in the world of Muslims. There are no invigorating publishing houses. There are no great authors coming from a religion which literally worships a book.
Incidentally, there are no good book shops in Pakistan, Bahrain or Saudia!
The few Islamic countries which are rich owe their wealth to the drilling of oil holes, not because of their people. The despots and kings of those lands waste their easy money in building more palaces and acquiring more jet planes. In the true traditions of the nouveau riche who lapped up fortunes by winning a lottery rather than doing hard work, the money is spent insensibly in a seriously flamboyant fashion.
This oil wealth, apart from being burned in pursuing private pleasures, is generously used to fund uneducated village mullahs to churn out atrocious fatwas, to build ugly tiled minarets in South Asia, to arm mad frenzied minds with bombs and missiles, to supply Korans, more Korans, more and more Korans for children to mug them up in the grimy madrasas of Xingjiang, Abuja, and Bukhara.
The early brilliance of Islam is gone and forgotten. What is left resembles a dog's two-day-old rotting corpse that stinks up an entire neighborhood.
The Complete Muslim Dictionary - Fatwas, Kafirs, and Jehads
The apologists plead that these Koranic terms have been hijacked by people who have no religion. They reason that Jihad does not mean killing people but actually it is all about struggling against evil inside oneself. It is about trying to become a better person.
The endnote being that terrorism has no religion.
No. Terrorism has a religion. People are killed, raped, and burned alive because they belong to this religion or that. The verses, quotes, stories, and legends are selectively lifted by modern day prophets to justify the killings of the people belonging to a different religion.
This is a crisis faced by every religion in the world but Islam, thanks to a surplus of weapons and combustible substances that are amply stockpiled and easily accessible in the regions where it dominates, the murderous frenzy of this faith has become the most damaging and visible.
Islam — A No-Tolerance Zone
The non-Islamic world sees Islam as a group of followers with no tolerance.
They ask why the problem areas of the world chiefly consist of Muslim-populated regions. They ask why Muslims could not live in harmony alongside people not following their faith.
Why did Salman Rushdie have a death fatwa issued against him? Why couldn't he freely roam the streets of Bombay - a city he loves and which has formed the backdrop of almost all his novels?
Why was there such intense fury against the Danish cartoons of Muhammad? Why does Allah seem so angry and his followers so violent?
The Rigidity and Hypocrisy
Do the Islamic societies exploit the free democracies of the rest of the world?
The Muslims happily leave their undemocratic, oil-rich, or oil-poor lands, to pursue happiness and wealth in free liberal countries. They make money, get educated, and are also free to recite Koran and perform five prayers a day. They have their own Friday mosques in their own neighborhoods in these foreign cities.
But their dictators and Imams do not allow the same benefits to non-Muslims in their own societies. There are no churches in Saudia. A non-Muslim cannot visit and attempt to understand the pull and magic of Allah in the al-Haram mosque of Mecca.
Saudia can send missionaries to India, fund Islamic societies there, but Hindus or Sikhs or Christians or Buddhists or Jains or Jews or Parsees in India cannot receive permission to propagate their respective faiths in Medina.
Islam appears to be a religion that has no qualms about using and exploiting other societies but remains reluctant to let it be equally open to outside influences.
Epilogue: Crib Crib Blame Blame
George Bush, Tony Blair, Commie China, Hindoo India
Red Sea, Ariel Sharon, Bloody Serbia
Hezbollah, Hamas, Mujahideen, Jehad
Kashmir, Chechenya, Abu Gharib
Al Sauds, H Bomb, bin Laden, Taliban
Bamiyan, The Koran and I, and The Satanic Verses
Allah, Medina, Muslims get a new Ummah
Hindus, Jews, Christians goodbye
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
THE END
ray lightning;
that what you've posted here about swat, thanks for sharing it. i knew it was bad but the thought of dead bodies strewn around the street is like something out of a gory horror flick, not something out of the once known as picture-postcard-heaven-on-earth swat valley.
i think we have officially died as a nation to let things like this go on, and i heavily blame america (as well as very fashionably wanting to kick pakistan's govt in the teeth). what the f**k have american/brit troops being doing all of those 8 years they've been in that region??
all they do is occasionally threaten pak with plans to 'invade the country' which entails killing civilians and a whole lot of hot air, but they've not eliminated any threat, it's all one big fat B.S. soap opera (one that is costing lives).
unless of course i believe what a lot of people of nwfp and swat are saying; that sometimes it's the american troops themselves masquerading as al qaeda and taliban? who knows?
whoever the real villian is, the fact remains, these people are dying and they are innocent and we're possibly treating it like it's perfectly normal?
Ray Lightning,
While what is happening in NWFP is extremely unfortunate, the problems can hardly be blamed on any one government.
Maybe a more federal structure would help those regions. I say this because these regions have always been a source of unrest for central government that tried to control them--it hardly mattered whether those central government were based in Agra, New Delhi or Islamabad.
I hope I've caused to offense with my statements. Just my two pence, or should I say five rupees?
Btw, nice blog.
Regards,
Hades
Oops, a bit of a boo-boo:
I hope I've caused to offense with my statements.
Should read: "I hope I've caused no offense with my statements."
here's something - if the most educated people in a country (people commenting here) refuse to blame an insurgency on a national identity crisis, and instead keep ONLY harping about foreigners ruining their lives, then i suppose you would expect their elected representatives to pull off world class acts of idiocy such as kasabgate.
@ Ray Lightening
I'm still grappling with the fact that in a matter of two years we've lost Swat, one of Pakistan's premier tourist (honeymoon) destination. The number of Pakistanis who have been conceived in Swat must run in the millions! And there's no way we're getting Swat back for a long time to come.
@ Kuldip Singh Chauhan
I'm not sure I get your central argument.
To you, does the problem lie with Islam itself? Or do you have a problem with the Islam promoted by the Gulf states?
And where do Muslim countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Senegal, etc., fit in?
While Muslims must stop solely blaming others for the state of their affairs and must get their own houses in order, is it unjust to apportion some blame to other forces?
Your comment appears to be most critical of Wahabiism, if so, is it unfair for us to lay some blame on the U.S. under whose patronage the fascist Saudi dictators have flourished?
@ Hades
Trust me you've not offended us. And in any case, we're usually the ones doing the offending so there's nothing to worry about.
If by federal structure you mean that these trial areas be given greater autonomy and then be directly governed by the central government rather than the provincial government, then I'm sorry to tell you that's exactly what's been doing for decades.
The problem isn't with the structure, it's with the attitude of successive Pakistani governments who have chosen to utterly neglect large swathes of the country.
I recently sat in on a client meeting where the client, a man with significant ties to the ruling party, mentioned his recent visit to Naudero, in commemoration of Benazir's first death anniversary.
The sight of poor farmers with their hungry children had shaken this urban man and he despondently said: "the government has failed these people."
We said nothing but we all thought, and later discussed: who the fuck has been in power in Naudero? It's been this man and his connections in the ruling party that have always been in power in Naudero. If the people of Naudero suffer, it's because of these assholes and yet they fail to see this.
@ Karachi Khatmal
Hasn't the identity crisis existed as long as Pakistan has? Haven't we been debating, for decades, the questions:
Is Pakistan an Islamic country or a country of majority Muslim population?
Are we descended from the great warrior Muhammad Bin Qasim who spread the flag of Islam? Or, are we descended from the great Sindhi ruler Raja Dahir who fought valiantly against foreign invaders?
You're absolutely right in stating that we need to stop blaming foreign forces for the insurgency. There is a grave issue of national identity. Can we ever be a nation state, should we even continue trying this? Wouldn't it be better if we instead tried to create a state of many nations, which values freedom, equality and justice.
karachi khatmal;
hi, i can't tell whether your comment was directed at my comment above or not but i'm going to respond anyway.
firstly, i'm no politician, i'm admittedly not the most clued up person on this stuff, maybe i don't have room to comment BUT i just wanted to relay a few thoughts (and you certainly don't have to agree)... here goes;
i understand blaming 'foreigners' is so passe (so imran khan of the 1990s)but that notion isn't something just plucked out from thin air, it has a basis. just think zia, cold war, the ongoing war in afghanistan which has tipped over into pakistan, rocky indo-pak relations - those are the worst things that have hit pakistan in its history, did the nation do all that to themselves? i don't think so, there were always outside forces at play, to some degree.
i'm not speaking for myself here as much as i am for the 'not-so-educated' people of pakistan, the majority seem to hold an innate fear of certain 'foreigners', and the latter haven't really done much good marketing to come across any more pleasing to these 'uneducated' masses.
as someone somewhat 'educated' i do have a lot of 'foreigner' pals and personally have no reason to hate them, it's not personal, it's sheer politics. i just empathise with certain people of pakistan and can understand why some of them would feel bitter towards certain foreigner govts (as well as their own). if these superpower govts ever acted with even an iota of responsibility things wouldn't be half bad today.
but that does not justify the actions of extremists, and what the taliban are doing, i cannot despise them enough and the sad truth is they are homegrown!
i am not naive enough to believe pakistani govt officials are innocent, ofcourse it takes two to tango, but then the wretchedness of being a developing and debt-ridden country means our leaders will continue to depend on the 'foreigners' for as long as necessary, which means the pak govts have always had that unfair disadvantage to begin with.
but hey, even if the lines were not so blurred on who should take the blame for cases like swat's downfall, we'd still not be able to a thing about it. not to say we can't keep trying though. :)
Re. Kasab Gate.
Me and my fellow Pakistanis here in Toronto, Canada are convinced that
1. All the butchers of Bombay originated/had links in PAKISTAN.
2. There handlers/masters were PAKISTANIS and had support from one of the powerhouses in PAKISTAN such as ISI or one of its sister organisations.
3. These agencies will destroy any evidence of any links with the terrorists and it is unfair to expect Indians to provide evidence.
4. These agencies have botched up as they didn't have Plan B as they thought no terrorist will survive and sing like Kasab did.
I am ashamed to be a Pakistani. Lets own up the whole thing and get rid of this poo in our back yard.
supersizeme,
While I do agree with you that the Soviet invasion was an event out of Pakistan's control, Naseerullah Babar and the ISI created the Taliban all by themselves. Actually you should read Steve Coll's Ghost Wars -- and you will realize just how much control Zia and his ISI chief Gen. Akhar Abdul Rahman maintained over the anti-Soviet resistance. Obviously Coll has a US bias, but this does seem to be backed up by other sources too.
who the hell, apart from Imran Khan, calls Geo personally? Has he not heard of spokespersons or engineered leaks.
Hahahhahaha! Awesome analysis!
We're such idiots. All of us.
hey rabia, nope, not a fan of zia, i've never read up on this guy but from what little i have learnt i believe he was capable of anything.
and no i wouldn't be caught dead reading american literature, i totally watch geo news (wink-wink).
seriously though, maybe it's because i've spent time around snooty brits for too long where american psuedo-intellectualism is generally seen as a big, fat joke, would you take a nation who votes people like bush into power for two consecutive terms seriously? me neither.
eek.. maybe that sounded a bit bitchy, i only meant it lightheartedly.
on a serious note though; i don't like this whole ''zaroor koi amreeka ki saazish ho gi'' mentality in pakistanis as much as the rest of you, but honestly not all the pakistani public feel that way.
and i like how people seem to be combating that blame mentality on this blog but then i feel in some cases it's tipping into the extreme. i can't tell whether we people here have become more open minded or close minded, all i want to see is a little honesty and less ignorance, not this one-sidedness that is beginning to come across unfair and unbalanced.
To my pakistani friends who replied to me (supersizeme, aks, hades) :
Do you think the Taliban could capture the Swat valley all by itself ? Just a bunch of trolley drivers and clerics could terrorize an entire valley ?
More importantly, take a look at the people getting murdered : secular politicians (particularly of the ruling ANP), journalists and artists. The local leaders have asked multiple times for the army to be given weapons so as to defend against the Taliban, they were refused. The provincial government has requested more authority in dealing with the Taliban - they are refused.
The recent elections in NWFP are a testimony to how much power the Taliban actually has amongst the people in the valley : nil. It is being sustained by an external force.
Everybody under the sun knows that it was the ISI that created the Taliban. Why would the Pak army fight it now ?
In all probability, the pak army is aiding and abetting the Taliban to attain certain sinister ends. The murder of innocent people (pakistani citizens) not withstanding.
Kudos to Aks for having such great thoughts.He deserves all our praise and respect for posting this
"Are we descended from the great warrior Muhammad Bin Qasim who spread the flag of Islam? Or, are we descended from the great Sindhi ruler Raja Dahir who fought valiantly against foreign invaders?".Great post dude.
this country needs to be taught a lesson and who better to teach it than its homegrown taliban.
ever since its pathetic inception pakistanis have paid lip service to islam whilst engaging in the most unislamic behaviour. and then they wonder why the country doesnt function... ever. you've let every corrupt, senile, west-loving, india-hating, power hungry, stealing s.o.b's run the country. might as well let the taliban have their turn - who knows, like in afghanistan, some might reminesce positively about the days of taliban rule. lol.
ppl i suggest you read this article
http://shobhaade.blogspot.com/2009/01/come-on-guys-wake-up-its-showtime.html
I do not understand y the whole indo-pak imbroglio is being fought all over the media. It never seems to be based on actual facts.
Having said that I firmly beleive that the educated pakistanis would want to weed out the terrorists from their camps. I think that is what the sensible elites in India are trying to echo - the mass obviously wants a Sunny Deol movie-ish sort of war.
The truth is this : http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=sDkhzHQO7jY
Enjoy :-)
To read more about developments in Pakistan and areas around it, please go to
http://real-politique.blogspot.com
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