by Editor | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Washington : The US military has announced that it was cancelling $300 million in aid to Pakistan over what it calls Islamabad’s failure to take action against militant groups, a new blow to worsening bilateral ties between the two countries.
“Due to a lack of Pakistani decisive actions in support of the South Asia Strategy, the remaining $300 million was reprogrammed,” Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Kone Faulkner said in a statement on Saturday.
“We continue to press Pakistan to indiscriminately target all terrorist groups,” Faulkner said, adding that the $300 million aid, which had earlier been suspended, would be now aimed at spending on other “urgent priorities” due to “a lack of Pakistani decisive actions” in tackling the issue.
The move, which needs to be approved by US Congress, is part of a broader suspension announced in January when Washington had announced that it was cutting almost all security aid to the Islamabad, reports the BBC.
Saturday’s announcement comes before US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s scheduled visit to Pakistan this week and meet the country’s newly-elected Prime Minister, Imran Khan.
The US State Department has criticised Pakistan for failing to deal with terrorist networks operating on its soil, including the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban with President Donald Trump also accusing Islamabad of deceiving Washington while receiving billions of dollars.
Washington has long complained that Pakistan provides a safe haven to militant groups, including the Afghan Taliban, Haqqani Network and Al Qaeda, allowing them to carry out cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has denied these claims.
Since 2002, Pakistan has received over $33 billion in US assistance, including $14 billion in Coalition Support Funds, a US Defence Department programme to reimburse allies that have incurred costs in supporting counter-insurgency operations.
—IANS
by Editor | May 25, 2021 | Business, Emerging Businesses, Investing, Muslim World
Islamabad : Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and his Bahraini counterpart Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa on Tuesday agreed to reinvigorate economic and investment relations between their countries to boost the current bilateral trade volume of $310 million.
The two sides expressed the commitment as Sheikh Khalid telephoned Shah Qureshi to congratulate him on assuming the office of foreign minister. They agreed to revive institutional mechanisms of Joint Ministerial Commission and Bilateral Political Consultations to explore fresh avenues of bilateral cooperation.
Foreign Minister Qureshi congratulated Sheikh Khaild on achieving the Tier One status on anti-human trafficking efforts and termed it as a remarkable achievement that made the entire Muslim world proud. He expressed gratitude for Bahrain’s assistance in setting up Hamad University in Islamabad and for hosting more than 100,000 Pakistani workers in Bahrain.
—AB/UNA-OIC
by Editor | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Muslim World, Women Entrepreneur
Malala Yousafzai
By Hardev Sanotra,
Las Vegas : Taliban’s efforts to keep girls away from education in Pakistan was defeated by their very action of shooting her, says Malala Yousafzai, the world’s youngest Nobel laureate.
“The result is that today millions of people all over the world are speaking out” and taking action against keeping young girls away from the liberating influence of education, she told an audience of several thousand techies here on Tuesday.
She was invited by VMware for their VMworld 2018 conference to talk about her rising from the near-death experience to become a leading voice in the world on educating young girls.
Malala was shot in the head by a Taliban member in 2012 when she defied the diktat of the Sunni Islamic fundamentalist movement, which was entrenched in Afghanistan.
She was interviewed on the stage by Sanjay Poonen, Chief Operating Officer of VMware.
Born in Swat Valley of Pakistan, Malala said her life was as normal as could be and she was lucky to have a father who believed in her and in educating girls.
“We could not then believe that something like the Taliban could happen, as you cannot today, here, that someone would come with guns and take away your right to education.”
She was repeatedly greeted with applause from an appreciative audience as she told her story of defiance.
She said she had to fight against the mindset of people — manifested by the Taliban men — who were against educating girls, or even allowing them to move out of their homes alone.
“They were against education because they knew that it would empower women to be independent.”
Men with guns first banned music, then they stopped women from going out and finally prevented the girls from being educated.
Malala did not remember the incident leading up to her shooting in the Swat Valley as she recalled the moment when she woke up in a hospital in Birmingham, UK, where she stayed for two and a half months.
She was conferred the Nobel Prize for her courage and became an activist and a symbol of defiance against the Taliban’s brand of politics.
Poonen sought to know why she had forgiven the person who sought to kill her. She said he was a young Taliban follower who was told that he had to kill a “blasphemous” person. He thought he was a doing good in a twisted thinking about Islam — a religion, she said, which spreads the message of kindness, tolerance and peace.
She said she hoped that the person gets education and realises the true meaning of the religion he was following. She also did not want to hold on to the anger. “Hate and anger is a waste of energy and I did not want to waste my energy”, and so she moved on to “forgive” the person who had attacked her.
She told the audience that she was named after Malalai of Maiwand who had defied the British troops in the 1880 Battle of Maiwand in Afghanistan, who was one of the few women known in history from the area, because traditionally women “did not have names”, as they were confined behind burkhas or head-to-toe-covering.
“They were called either someone’s daughter or sister,” not having a name of her own.
Talking on a lighter note at the conference, she said she was overwhelmed by “too many acronyms” used by the techies, bringing the house down. She spoke about her love of cricket and how she tried to explain to Westerners that it “was okay” to play a game for five days which was exciting and not boring as many thought.
She spoke about the need for India and Pakistan to have good relations, “but when it comes to cricket we are rivals”. She said it did not matter who got the cricketing World Cup as long as Pakistan won against India.
Poonen, of Indian origin, and who is responsible for worldwide sales, services, alliances, marketing and communication at VMware said that the two nations were united in their love for the game.
Malala also spoke about doing everything to ensure that girls get educated since 150 million of them worldwide did not get the “liberating influence” which would give them freedom and independence.
She works to raise money for her foundation which works in several countries towards that goal.
She told the 100 students invited to the conference from two schools that they should “believe in themselves” and speak up about things they believe in.
“There is no such thing as young age for taking up causes,” she told a student who posed a question on behalf of the others, pointing to her own age of 10 or 11 when she took up the fight against the Taliban.
Poonen announced Dell Technologies’ – VMware’s parent company – plan to provide the invited students’ school with computers, and he urged his colleagues (some 23,000 of them) to donate to Malala’s foundation for which the company would provide matching funds.
(Hardev Sanotra is in Las Vegas at the invitation of VMware for its VMworld 2018 conference. He can be reached at hardev.sanotra@ians.in)
—IANS
by Editor | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Islamabad : Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan was elected Pakistan’s 22nd Prime Minister by the country’s National Assembly on Friday, three weeks after his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party won the highest number of seats in the general election.
Khan, 65, secured 176 votes out of the total 272 cast in polling in the lower house, while his opponent Shehbaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) got 96 votes, according to National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser.
The PTI chairman will be sworn in as Prime Minister on Saturday by President Mamnoon Hussain.
The announcement of Khan’s election came amid protests from opposition lawmakers who shouted slogans denouncing alleged electoral fraud during the July 25 election.
Addressing the house amid a ruckus by PML-N members and cheering by PTI legislators, a charged Khan said: “I promise my nation today that we will bring the tabdeeli (change) that this nation was starving for.
“We have to hold strict accountability in this country; the people who looted this country, I promise that I will work against them.”
“I did not climb on any dictator’s shoulders; I reached this place after struggling for 22 years. Only one leader struggled more than me and that was my hero, Jinnah.
“The money that was laundered, I will bring it back – the money that should have gone towards health, education, and water, went into people’s pockets,” said Khan, moving on to allegations of vote rigging. “I want to ask the people who are yelling here why they didn’t investigate the four constituencies that I asked for.”
“Why didn’t they investigate then? Why didn’t they hold people accountable? Why didn’t the (PML-N) government take action?”
The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the third largest party in the house that joined the PML-N and others in an opposition alliance, withdrew its support for Shehbaz Sharif’s candidature as Premier, days before the election and abstained from voting, Dawn online reported.
One member of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), which contested elections under the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) banner, also abstained from voting for either candidate.
According to Geo News, among the first steps the PTI-led government aims to take is a reshuffling of the top federal and provincial bureaucracy under its first 100-day plan. The strategy was finalized in a top-level huddle attended by Khan and the senior party leadership on Thursday.
The reshuffle includes changing the chiefs of federal and provincial state institutions and officers previously appointed under political pressure.
Geo News cited sources as saying that Khan has also decided to change the heads of the Federal Board of Revenue, Railways, Pakistan International Airlines and a few other institutions.
Earlier, PTI leaders spoke about the merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the creation of South Punjab province and giving greater authority to the government in Balochistan, as a part of their plan.
—IANS
by Editor | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Archana Sharma,
Jodhpur : At a time when the world is battling one of its biggest refugee crises, India has its own share of the problem — thousands of Hindu migrants from Pakistan remain stranded at this Rajasthan transit hub. They have been awaiting their citizenship papers for years, despite submitting their passports, documents and hard-earned money too.
Although the world observed International Refugee Day in June, these migrants continue to run from pillar to post to check their status as a callous Indian bureaucracy works at its own inefficient pace unmoved by their plight.
Wandering like a nomad, one of these migrants, Anumaal, told IANS: “Our lives have become deplorable since the time we came to India. The longing to be a part of this country forced me to come here. But since then, from the year 2000 in April, we have been making untiring efforts to get citizenship, but to no avail.”
“My son has completed his 12th, but he couldn’t get admission in any college as the authorities demand domicile certificates and other identity proof. Eventually, he started working as a labourer to ensure we don’t die of hunger. His future has become dark and the same will be the case with my other son who is pursuing his 12th. Eighteen years of running from here to there has failed to bring any result for us,” he lamented.
“In a camp organised in the year 2005, we missed submitting our certificate by a day. The officials asked us to come with a certificate but it being a Saturday, we reached on Monday and since then, our grievances remain unheard,” Anumaal added.
“We surrendered our passports, our forms were duly filled, and they asked us to come along with a certificate. However, when we reached on Monday, we were informed that we can’t be given citizenship as they had received fresh instructions from the government. Since then, we have been meeting district collectors… the home secretary too, but to no avail. We have exhausted all our savings to pay these officials. We have even borrowed money, which has now exhausted. Now we are asked to fill in fresh forms and deposit fresh fees. When asked about the money we had already deposited, the officials said its gone, so forget about it and make a fresh start.
“There are many people like me who are running around in distress. We were doing agriculture in Pakistan but here we are forced to work as labourers. Initially, during partition, we lost our ancestral land which was seized by residents of Pakistan. Most of the Hindus lost their lands at that time. Now this is the second time we are losing a lot. We were initially in Jaisalmer. However, we left the place a long time back because of the water crisis. It is an irony that people consider us as Pakistanis now, which is quite sad to hear,” he added.
Then there is Dr Rajkumar Sharma, who practises medicine and was whose citizenship was confirmed on June 17. He said, “We came to Jodhpur in 2004. Since then, we have been working hard to make a decent living. There are thousands like me who have come here, their passports have been submitted, but they are yet to get their citizenship. The major challenge for them is getting a long-term visa (LTV) which gets stuck in red tapism,” he added.
Sharma said that he, being educated, managed to earn his bread and butter. “But when I think of other people like me who have migrated, I have tears in my eyes. They are really suffering. People refuse to give them a house on rent or a job to earn considering them as Pakistanis. More than 1,000 people are awaiting their long-term visas,” he informed.
“I belonged to Sindh and came here as Muslims were not so kind to Hindus in Pakistan. Radicalism was growing and so was their influence. Although we had land there, we preferred coming here leaving everything as we knew that things might become challenging in the coming days for Hindus,” he said, adding: “Now, when I have got citizenship, I will try to clear the Medical Council of India examination so that I can start my practice here.”
Dr Hindu Singh Soda, an activist for Pakistani minorities living in India, said that the number of Total Registered Migrants (TRMs) at various FROs in Rajasthan is 13,623. Of them, 12,253 are at FRO Jodhpur alone. Of them, 3,408 were granted LTVs in 2017 while rest of the applications are still under process.
On paper, an LTV is supposed to be granted within 120 days of applying; but in almost all cases, these are not granted for many years, he said, adding that 965 migrants were permanently sent back to Pakistan in 2016 and 2017.
Soda said red-tapism is to be blamed for this situation. Also, the processing of LTVs needs to be hastened to ensure the migrants get justice in India — a land for which they have left everything in Pakistan, he added.
(Archana Sharma can be contacted at archana.s@ians.in)
—IANS
