Pakistan's leader returns home amid scandal

   by Hasan Mansoor

   KARACHI, Dec 19, 2011 (AFP) - Pakistan's beleaguered President Asif Ali Zardari returned suddenly on Monday from two weeks of medical treatment abroad, seeking to dispel rumours that scandal and illness could force him from office.

   He returned, under the cover of darkness on a chartered plane, as the Supreme Court decided whether to order an inquiry into allegations that one of his aides sought American help in limiting the power of the military.
   The head of the army, General Ashfaq Kayani, last week called for an investigation into a memo allegedly written because Zardari feared he could be ousted in a coup after a covert US raid killed Osama bin Laden on May 2.
   Kayani said the memo had impacted national security. The scandal has inflamed tensions between Zardari's weak government and the military, which has staged four coups in Pakistan and remains the chief arbiter of power.
   But aides denied Monday that Zardari's return had anything to do with the Supreme Court, saying he would meet leaders from his Pakistan People's Party in Karachi for business as usual before returning to the capital Islamabad.
   "The doctors told him he was fit to travel... and he left for Pakistan. There is no other reason for this," a senior member of the party told AFP.
   "The speculation and controversies are over. He is here and will face all controversies," added Qamar Zaman Kaira, a leader in Pakistan's main ruling party.
   Zardari will attend the fourth anniversary commemorations for the assassination of his wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, on December 27 and then return to the capital, spokesman Aijaz Durrani said.
   The 56-year-old president flew to Dubai on December 6 and was kept in the American Hospital until December 14 for an illness that has not been officially disclosed, but which aides have likened to a "mini stroke".
   His sudden departure, at a time of the developing scandal and a major crisis in relations with Washington over NATO's killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers on November 26, fanned frenzied speculation that he may resign.
   On Monday, the Supreme Court met to examine a petition from the political opposition demanding to know who was responsible for the May 10 memo sent to then US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen.
   American businessman Mansoor Ijaz has claimed that Zardari feared the military might overthrow his government and accused Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, of crafting the memo with Zardari's support.
   Haqqani, who was forced to resign last month, denied any involvement but he has already been restricted from leaving Pakistan.
   Retired general Talat Masood said that by returning, Zardari sent a message that he was unconcerned by the court proceedings, but that it was clear the military was expanding its influence at the expense of the government.
   "But this does not mean that the military does not understand its own limitations. It knows it cannot possibly dislocate or displace a civilian, constitutionally elected government and replace it," Masood told AFP.

Pakistan urchins swap streets for art

by Hasan Mansoor
Tanvir Ahmed was 11 years old when he ran away from home and got drawn into life as a sex worker on the streets of Karachi. Now he takes art lessons and dreams of a better future.
"The four years I spent here were the worst. It was abuse. I never knew what would happen," said Ahmed, sitting in an art studio tucked away in a backstreet in Pakistan's teeming metropolis of 16 million on the south coast.
"I left because of continuous irritation from my relatives. I wanted to study, but they forced me to work."
Tanvir lived rough before he met Rana Asif Habib who runs a charity that rehabilitates street children and has slowly reunited with his family.
"I do painting and photography now, study at evening school and work in the day at a shop," said Ahmed.
"I'm happy with my parents and three younger siblings, who are happy to see me with a better life."
 Although Ahmed limits public talk of his past to "abuse", Habib said he was one of many dragged into the horrors of the sex trade.
"A large number of street children have been thrown to this trade... Tanvir is one of few boys who has accepted our counselling, many others do not leave so easily. In the end, he proved to be a very creative person," he said.
"Street children are the victims of unplanned economic growth, war, poverty, domestic violence and violence at schools and madrassas."
Karachi is home to Pakistan's biggest community of street children -- an estimated 20,000 youngsters who are victims of domestic violence and broken homes, a life of drugs and crime in the steamy port city on the Arabian sea.
Illiterate, uneducated and without family, the children can grow into seasoned criminals, drug addicts or fall prey to Islamist militancy. Ahmed comes from southern Punjab, which has become a Taliban recruitment ground.
He is one of 15 children who take painting and photography lessons at Habib's Initiator Human Development Foundation (IHDF). 
"I love to paint. I love to take pictures. I think I was born for it but a difficult life never allowed me to express my talent before." 
Salman Mukhtar, secretary of the charity, says the point of rehab is to get children off the streets and into work.
 "We provide cameras to some children who are interested and arrange photo exhibitions from time to time. Many of these kids are immensely talented but have little opportunity to express themselves.
 "We have an artist with us who teaches some kids sketching and painting. We also teach them candle making so kids can earn a living," he told AFP. But picking them up is the hardest part.
The loss of one or both parents makes them "suspicious about everything and everyone," said Mukhtar.
 The centre offers books, lessons, food and a place to sleep. "We have contacts with shopkeepers, automobile workshops and private firms where we get the kids employed after judging a behavioural change and according to their abilities."
 Surveys conducted by various organisationsre unanimous that the majority of street children use drugs, smoke and sniff glue. Some become heroin addicts.
 "They use drugs because of depression. Most of them self-harm, cut themselves and even burn themselves," said Habib.
Some 20,000 runaways live in Karachi and 150,000 across Pakistan, he believes. Rights activists say tuberculosis and other diseases are common among the children because of physical and sexual abuse, exposure to the elements and sleeping in filthy sewage pipes, open parks, footpaths or bus stations.
 "They are unprotected and vulnerable to all imaginable risks and all forms of exploitation. They are at risk for harassment, sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse, violence, injury and even death," Habib said.
The literacy rate in Pakistan is 57 percent. Officially 46 percent of children are enrolled in primary school -- the lowest rate in South Asia. The drop out rate is 50 percent, one of highest in the world. About 30 percent of the population are believed to live below the poverty line, earning a dollar a day or less.
 Mohammad Zahid came to Karachi when he was 10 to escape poverty in the northwestern Mansehra district, where suspected Islamist militants attacked a Christian charity in March, killing six aid workers.
 He begged, stole and snatched mobile phones at gunpoint. He was one of hundreds of children who looted shops in the chaos after the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
 "I have learnt one thing by living an independent life in Karachi, no one but your own family, no matter how poor they are, can protect you. "It was too depressing," Zahid said. "I never knew when I would be thrown in a lockup or someone would sexually assault me."

Nusrat Bhutto: From Wife of a dictator’s apprentice to mother of democracy

by Hasan Mansoor

How many Iranians one knows who are revered religiously in Pakistan without having any religious reasons! Begum Nusrat Bhutto is the only person whose name comes in the minds of all and sundry.
She was a dashing and gorgeous women whom people saw with utter admiration in sarees and modern outfits until her husband was hanged by General Zia, the sorcerer of darkness.
Zia’s policies to convert a pluralistic and tolerant society into a mob of fanatics forced the Bhutto ladies as well to compromise on their liberal outlook to stay with the people, the nest where party’s Phoenix is to be reborn.
That was the first sacrifice the Bhutto ladies rendered — the smallest of all, which started with Bhutto’s hanging and continued with the murders of Shahnawaz and Murtaza.
Benazir had to sacrifice her own life later, so miseries for Nusrat remained unbound and never stopping. Even, now when she has breathed her last, her death has further divided the estranged royal family.
Nusrat Ispahani was an Iranian from Kurdistan Province, daughter of a businessman who settled in Karachi, British India before its partition. Nusrat met Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Karachi where she became his second wife – in fact second to none as the events unfolded later proved.
A loving mother and perfect host had to enter the practical politics when her husband was opposed to Ayub Khan. He was jailed and persecuted that brought the first test of his wife’s skill to play as a capable alternative. This was her first stint as a politician, which most chroniclers forget.
She became the most powerful and charming First Lady till mid-1970s but that was just the beginning of a Shakespearian tragedy.
A tragedy allows one to find the strength within. She found it after General Zia’s coup, which was bloodless at the outset but proved to be the bloodiest of all dictatorial rules Pakistan was inflicted with by the men with the long boots.
She saw her husband tortured to death in a dark and filthy cell before being herself jailed along with daughter Benazir.

She received a head injury in the baton charge by Zia’s cronies at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore . That wound was not timely treated and most party elders said its lasting injurious effect on her gradually disabled her.

Young Shahnawaz Bhutto was found dead in an apartment in France, the reason of whose death is still a mystery.
She wanted to make elder son Murtaza Bhutto, the male heir of Bhutto dynasty, his husband’s political successor while Benazir was already the party’s co-chairperson, the party’s de facto chief.
The later events showed Murtaza’s political acumen was in huge contradistinction to his elder sister. Besides, Benazir had shown herself a national popular leader, while Murtaza had been unaware of how Pakistani politics had changed its nomenclature.
Quite spectacularly, the male-dominant Pakistani society loved Benazir the most, although Murtaza was Bhutto’s son – a man who is supposed to take charge of family affairs in this conservative Muslim country.
Nusrat Bhutto had proved herself a loving wife, a great political leader when the husband was judicially murdered, but now when the things had eased out a bit she turned herself what she originally was — a mother, who wanted to see her son touching the heights of glory.
She was the emotional force, besides other well known factors, which brought Mir Murtaza to Pakistan after 18 years of exile. Murtaza remained estranged to his sister after the homecoming and formed his own Peoples Party.
He hardly secured a seat for himself from Larkana, which, most voters and party cadres said, was a gift from his mother, who in person had gone all out to beg votes for him.
On Murtaza’s first visit to his father’s grave, she escaped a firing incident near Bhutto’s house in Larkana, Al-Murtaza, as Shahid Rind, a party jiyala, sustained bullets while covering her and died on the spot.
Nusrat Bhutto was pronounced physically dead on October 23, but she was emotionally and clinically dead on September 20, 1996, when Murtaza had been gunned down in a police encounter staged by the deep state. She lost everything she loved; her consciousness was the last asset she got deprived of. Alzheimer preyed on her in predetory proportions till she breathed her last.
Murtaza’s family blamed Benazir and then her spouse President Zardari of taking the old lady hostage — a blame the accused have always denied.
Insiders said even a known rights activist had tried to mediate between the two sides to allow Nusrat to live with the whole family, but to no avail.

Nusrat Bhutto was the last of Bhuttos who will be remembered for her close liaison with enthusiastic party workers, labourers, peasants and other poor segments of society. On many occasions she escaped narrowly from rains of bullets while taking part in workers’ rallies.

Workers of Musawat and Hilal-e-Pakistan newspapers — the former an Urdu and the latter a Sindhi newspaper and party’s erstwhile mouth organs — still recall fond memories of her who never rejected a demand made by the workers.
“The Bhuttos had always helped the poor and workers. They had always saved the institutions that benefited the poor,” a worker said.
She lived a vibrant life and died a passive death. Her death in remote environs, for sure, has enlivened the forgotten tracts that made a dictator’s apprentice the people’s darling and his grave the ultimate headquarters for the rulers to come.

October 2011