Here’s the evidence on Hafiz Saeed
The US has been generous enough to announce a hefty $10 million bounty for information leading to Hafiz Saeed’s conviction. After the embarrassment the Americans faced by announcing a reward for collecting information about someone who lives like any free human being without any court-admissible evidence, I felt the need to enlighten them with some hard-hitting, and much needed, evidence. Listed below is what I found after a great deal of research. Some of the figures quoted are mentioned in media reports while a great deal of the record has been shared by JuD themselves, which they claim can be independently verified. Education Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) runs 140 ...
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Revelry for relief: Fiddling while Sindh sinks
The sensitivity of young people today should ideally never be gauged by the first question that comes to their minds when a bomb goes off in Karachi: Will there be school tomorrow? Instead, Karachi’s generation-next should be assessed on how much hard work, effort and time its members put into relief camps and charity distribution, placard holding and general running around they did in an effort to contribute to alleviating the pain of the people hit by the flooding this summer. There was a definite perception that young privileged girls and boys just live in their bubble on that side ...
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Fashion could save Pakistan!
In the year 2010, several things have gone wrong in our country and our beloved city Karachi. We’ve had our fair share of bomb blasts, floods, robberies and murders. Let’s face it; this hasn’t exactly stopped us from having our fun. Karachiites, are strong, determined individuals who tend to have a “c’est la vie” kind of mentality, which is not likely to change in the near future. Of course, it is likely that we will donate to a good cause and proceed to the Karachi Press Club several times a year to be involved in a safeguard of human rights campaign, but ...
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A US pilot’s tale: The gauntlet of goodwill
I’m a UH-60 Black Hawk pilot with Task Force Denali, a US Army aviation battalion sent from Alaska to provide flood relief to Northern Pakistan. I blogged about my first impressions of Pakistan nearly two months ago, and I’d like to share some more thoughts about my new friends here. Surrounding our barracks and the control tower, hangars, airfield, and base itself are Pakistani military guards and commandos – tough, well-trained men armed with assault rifles and pistols tasked with maintaining security 24 hours a day. I didn’t know what to make of these guys when I first saw them. Take, ...
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Sexy people need to care about Pakistan
I must admit that the number of flood awareness related display pictures, events and links shared on Facebook have significantly decreased even though the problem, itself, has not. Display pictures have changed from victims submerged in water or looking up at helicopters for food or to be rescued to people joyfully posing at weddings and parties. My events page, once full of requests from charity organisers, is now dominated by clothes exhibitions. This gradual change left me with slight grief as I realised that we had hit a saturation point – done what we felt we could and now wanted to ...
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Survivors, not killers
Pakistan is a brave nation. It takes a lot of guts for a people to continue on after a year that can only be called the year of death: 8,000 people have died in Pakistan this year – devastating floods, a dumbfounding air crash, deplorable target killings and decimating suicide bombings. And the year hasn’t even ended yet. Those from northern Pakistan have had it the worst. The year opened with a deadly blast that killed 94 people who had gathered to watch a volleyball match in Lakki Marwat in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, quashing all hopes that Pakistanis had had that this ...
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Flood tax: Leave us alone, go catch tax evaders
So far Pakistan’s economic loss due to the massive flooding is calculated to be$43 billion. This is equivalent to one fourth of the total GDP which today stands at $170 billion. For Pakistan, where financing the state, military and debt costs more than what we earn, such an enormous loss to the country’s economy has left everyones mouth agape. And it seems that due to the recent economic losses incurred, the dream of increased spending on human development is far from materializing. There is a dire need of funds to finance the relief and rehabilitation work keeping in view that the tax-to-GDP ratio ...
Read Full PostFlood relief: A US helicopter pilot’s tale
I am an American helicopter pilot in Pakistan. My colleagues and I came because Pakistan and its people are enduring the aftermath of a devastating flood. We were ordered to be here, and we miss our homes, but most of us are glad to help because we believe it’s the right thing to do. I did not know much about Pakistan before I arrived here. I knew of the food. I knew of monsoons and Mohenjo Daro, Karachi and the Khyber Pass, but I had no concept of what Pakistan looked, felt, or sounded like. I even thought many Pakistanis ...
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What really happened at Nasdaq?
A recent popular story concerning Pakistan’s Consul General in New York, Mr Babar Hashmi, is circulating on news channels, newspapers and internet blogs. According to the story on August 25, 2010, the Nasdaq Stock Market, an American stock exchange, offered the consul general an hour of free-of-charge use of its seven-storey tall MarketSite Tower, a massive video display in Times Square in New York, to broadcast an appeal for Pakistan’s flood victims. Given the high visibility of the display, it was expected that this would garner at least one million dollars in donations. Hashmi, allegedly squandered the opportunity by ...
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When desperation knocks
Delivering flood relief is half the job. The other half should be the restoration of human dignity. Flood victims look hopefully at each relief truck that passes by willing to run for miles until it stops. The people have genuine grievances too. They want to know when they will find their 7-year-old child who went missing 3 weeks ago. They want to know why their NIC reads that they have been born 5 years ago due to a typing error and thus are deprived from getting rations in lines that demand to see identification. They want to have clean ...
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