Category — NWFP

By Ikramullah
The writer is the president of the Pakistan Nation Forum.
There was a bomb blast in Peshawar on Friday killing more than 50 innocent people and injuring over 100. This was followed on Saturday by another blast near GHQ in Rawalpindi killing some security personnel, besides injuring a number of civilians in the most sensitive security zone of Rawalpindi. What follows when and where is anybody’s guess. After the defeat of the Taliban in Swat, it is clear that the stage has already been set for a military operation in FATA to put a final end to their strategic design, which was to destabilise Pakistan.
It is significant that at this critical juncture when the armed forces need total and undivided support of the whole nation, so vital for the success of the critical impending operations in South Waziristan, the political horizon in the country seems muddled with the haze of confusion and uncertainty in the shape of deep divisions amongst the four provinces on every major issue. The law and order situation has resulted in the postponement of the by-elections in two national and two provincial constituencies of the Punjab. If this continues, the holding of general or even mid-term elections, is a far cry. This does not augur well for democracy taking roots in Pakistan, much less any indicators of its forward march under the so-called Charter of Democracy (COD). According to independent political observers, the COD lost its spirit with the assassination of PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto and which is no more than a piece of paper.
Right at this moment when the nation is at its most critical crossroads, appears the ghost of Prince Hamlet on the horizon of Pakistan in the shape of the Kerry-Lugar Bill (KLB) as a bolt from the blue, shattering the nation as if by a storm.
I have never seen this nation so deeply divided. Without going into the merits/demerits of this so-called Enhanced Aid Package to Pakistan tripling the present assistance by USA in the civilian sector with the conditions attached it has become a major bone of contention.
The recent core commanders’ meeting held under the chairmanship of the COAS found it necessary to express their deep concern over the clauses included in KLB connected with Pakistan’s national security. This indicates that the defence forces, responsible for the territorial integrity of Pakistan and even more important the command and control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, were not taken on board during the processing of the bill which has taken more than a year in preparing the final draft for approval by the US Senate and the House of Representatives. It is now awaiting the formal signature of the US president before it becomes a law, as a result of the bill resuming the new title of a US Act of Congress. It is no secret that the incumbent leadership as well as our ambassador in Washington were involved in the preparation of various drafts that were amended several times with joint consultations. Therefore, let us not kid ourselves with the claim that KLB is a purely US Congress Legislation which has nothing to do with Islamabad. No one will buy that.
In a meeting with Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani in Lahore the other day, I pointed out that it is not just out of fear of the bill impinging upon the nation’s sovereignty, but primarily because it imposes strong checks on the country’s security and nuclear capability. I, therefore, strongly recommended to the prime minister that the bill should be placed before Parliament for scrutiny, so that the Congress is apprised of the sentiments of the Pakistani nation with regard to the implications of the three certifications that Secretary Clinton is required to provide to the Congressional Committees. The Parliament is the only and best possible democratic forum to finally decide the fate of the Bill. And also fix responsibility for the role and influence exercised by some major players during its preparation. This is a defining moment for Parliament upon which may depend the future course of our democratic journey towards the goal of a modern, independent, democratic and Islamic welfare state.www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Columns/11-Oct-2009/A-defining-moment-for-Pakistan

Terrorism’s endless cycle: edit in The Nation
YET another suicide blast, in a busy commercial area, has devastated Peshawar, causing the deaths of precious innocent lives and destruction of property. This attack has come barely a fortnight after an earlier suicide blast, also in a busy commercial area. The attack reflects the growing concentration of terrorists in the areas around the urban capital of the NWFP. Military actions in Swat and Malakand have only moved the terrorists to other areas since no effort was made to prevent their escape during the course of the action. Even more reckless has been the absence of the civilian law and order and administrative structures to ensure that criminal elements and militants do not escape and merge into the population. That is precisely what has happened and what is required is a strong civil-law enforcement approach to dealing with the terrorists in and around the urban centres of the NWFP.
Unfortunately, the interior minister has jumped on the latest Peshawar tragedy to seek a pretext for a full-fledged military operation in South Waziristan. This is what the US has been demanding of the Pakistan military but the latter has sensibly sought to delay this while it adopts indirect strategies which combine targeted attacks along with covert destabilisation from within of the militant organisations. Military operations of themselves will never resolve the terrorism issue, but it is a “quick fix” – albeit a temporary one – the Americans are so fond of. But the costs of such a policy in isolation are tremendous. Already, new issues are arising relating to death and destruction in Swat. Bullet-ridden bodies are being found and corpses dumped on the roadside are being discovered, undermining claims of normalcy having returned to the area. Clashes between the military and militants also continue and the PAF continues to bomb hideouts in the peripheral areas of FATA. In all this, the central question also continues to persist: How will the state know when “all the Taliban” are finished?
The reality is that the military operation has not ended the terrorism, merely shifted its location. In the process, more and more innocent Pakistani lives are being lost all around. There is a need, as has continuously been reiterated in this space, for seeking to dialogue with the militants who are prepared to lay down their arms and accept the writ of the state – now that they are seeing the military’s resolve to strike against them decisively. Negotiations backed by force are still the only way to move if recent global examples are a guide – from Ireland to Indonesia. Meanwhile, the government should also realize that the increasing belligerency of the US towards Pakistan is a source of creating more space for militants. With US failure in Afghanistan writ large, the continuing terrorism in Pakistan and Iraq, it boggles the mind to discover President Obama being awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Where is the peace he has fashioned?

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Editorials/10-Oct-2009/Terrorisms-endless-cycle

Peshawar bleeds: edit in The News
There was a depressing, appalling, familiarity about the news that a car bomb had exploded in the busy Khyber bazaar area of Peshawar around noon on Friday. Friday; a time of prayer and peaceful reflection and celebration of the Muslim faith across the country, but seems to be the favourite day for those whose deadly business is to terrorise us. At the time of writing there are at least 42 dead and 54 injured with an estimated twenty of those injured being in critical condition. The numbers of dead and injured will inevitably rise. Rescue services are calling it the ‘worst blast we have ever seen’. Interior Minister Rehman Malik was swift to condemn the atrocity and said that the long-promised operation in Waziristan was ‘imminent’. Local business men speaking on private TV channels spoke of their frustration and anger at the way in which their lives and livelihoods were being destroyed and of their desire to leave the city as attempting to carry on business was pointless – and carried with it an unacceptable level of risk. There is understandable confusion about the type of device that caused this carnage, but the opinion seems to be that it was a suicide bomb, probably carried in a car which may have been moving at the time of the blast and the Khyber bazaar may not have been the intended target.

There will be entirely predictable statements that there has been a security lapse or failure and this that or the other agency has failed in its duty to protect the public. The bombers should have been spotted at any one of the numerous checkpoints that ring the city. Intelligence should have been better. CCTV cameras should have recorded them…all will be cited as a failure of the systems set up to protect the citizenry. All will miss the point that NWFP is a war-zone, not merely the site of what may euphemistically be termed an ‘insurgency’ – but an area where a fully-fledged war is being fought. It is a war fought by combatants who in one case may have signed the Geneva Convention on the conduct of warfare but have little care for it; and in the other the Geneva Convention is something they have never heard of. Civilian casualties are as much a part of the war in NWFP as were the thousands of refugees who died when the Allies firebombed Dresden in the Second World War or the civilians who were fried to a crisp in Hiroshima.

This is a war being fought with a ferocity that is increasing by the day and short of putting the entire city on lock-down there is probably little the civil or military authorities can do to stop the carnage. Realistically, there will be intelligence successes that we may not hear about, and operations that net the bombers and terrorists, but there will always be one that gets through. Such is the nature of warfare. This is a war that we cannot afford to lose no matter the attrition. It is our war, no matter how it gets ‘dressed up’ for political purposes. Ours to win and ours to lose. Now is the time for us to stand against the bombers and the gunmen, to expose them, reveal their dark plots and evil designs. More of us will die doing so, but stand we must. http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=202514

Lahore: A suicide car bomb exploded in a crowded market in the northwestern city of Peshawar yesterday, killing at least 49 people — an attack that the Government said could bring forward a planned army assault on the militant stronghold of South Waziristan.
The bomber detonated a car packed full of explosives and artillery shells around midday in the Khyber Bazaar commercial neighbourhood.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Rehman Malik, the Interior Minister, blamed the Pakistani Taleban, who have repeatedly threatened to take revenge for the killing of Baitullah Mehsud, their leader, in a US drone strike in August. “We will take a decision on the operation against terrorists over the next few days,” he said.
However, analysts say that the army is unlikely to bring forward the operation because of a single bombing: this was the sixth in Peshawar in four months. There are, though, fears that the timing and the scope of the operation could be affected by the Pakistani military’s objections to conditions attached to a new $7.5 billion (£4.7bn) US aid bill. The United States wants the army to attack not only the Pakistani Taleban but also other militants in the area who cross the Afghan border to attack Nato and US troops. www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6867649.ece

By Anna Husarska
( the author is senior policy advisor at the International Rescue Committee).
Writing From Mingora, Pakistan: The drawing shows three boys in traditional Pakistani long shirts, shalwar kameez, crying and holding banners that read “We want peace,” “Not the peaces [sic] of human bodies” and, in Arabic script, “Aman” — Pashto for “peace.” On the left of the group, two hooded men (members of the Taliban, one presumes) carry swords; on the right, two figures in uniform carry guns (Pakistani army, one guesses). In the foreground, a hooded figure holds down a person who is pleading, “Please let me go; I have small children.”

This was a drawing by a schoolgirl named Sheema for an end-of-Ramadan competition in Mingora, the main town of Pakistan’s Swat Valley in the North-West Frontier Province. The scene depicting her hometown this spring — civilians caught between the militants and the army — illustrates the huge human cost of the operation by the Pakistan army against the Taliban. And the suffering is far from over. After a week of talking to people living in the Swat Valley, displaced from Swat or working in Swat, I can attest that Sheema got it exactly right.

The tragedy of more than 2 million people being displaced in less than two months may have vanished from the headlines, but the civilian drama continues. If there is less attention to their needs, it’s partly because it’s still hard for anyone other than the armed forces or a native Swati to reach most of the district north of Mingora. The army can take foreign journalists on periodic tours of the “cleared” areas in the south but rarely in the north, where the situation remains uncertain. One thing is obvious: Beyond Mingora, the Swat Valley is still an insecure place.

The Pakistanis themselves have concerns for the collateral damage that the offensive has caused: A visit by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan resulted in a strongly worded report about mass graves and extrajudicial “revenge” killings. And last week, the Pakistani daily Dawn and others reported that a 10-minute video apparently showing Pakistani soldiers beating men detained in anti-militant operations had surfaced on the Internet. The army is investigating.

If the restrictions caused by emergency army administration — such as curfews and checkpoints — are a nuisance and add risks for civilians, anger against the militants is rising too. The displaced return to areas promised to be “cleared” of militants, only to find it may not be so. People fear that if they are seen during daytime (from the hills where the militants tend to hide) having contact with any army or government personnel, the Taliban will come down at night to exact a heavy price on them.

Close to Peshawar, in Mardan, I met with some of the displaced people who have found temporary shelter there — they number more than 1,000. Fourteen of the families are redisplaced — i.e. they tried to return home and found it impossible to live there. What 35-year-old Selma mentions is typical: Before the army’s action, her daughters could not go to school because of Taliban-imposed rules, and one brother’s shop was judged un-Islamic — for selling clothes catering to women — and destroyed. Now the daughters cannot go to school because of the army-imposed curfew, and the army told her brothers to dismantle the homes of suspected militants (which exposes them to revenge). So after one month spent back in Charbagh, a former Taliban stronghold, the family opted to flee yet again.

The situation in other parts of the North-West Frontier Province remains unstable. Reporting about a militant attack in a market last month in Kohat, a local Pakistani newspaper wrote that for several hours after the blast, “an enraged crowd did not allow the bomb-disposal squad to enter the market.” How huge must be the people’s grief, and animosity toward those responsible for the mayhem, for them to shoo away Samaritans coming to rescue their loved ones.

The message in Sheema’s drawing gets confirmed with every conversation I have with those who fled the Swat Valley. It resonates across the troubled province, where another major anti-Taliban assault by the army is brewing, this time on the militant stronghold of South Waziristan. Hundreds of thousands more civilians may be forced to flee, caught between the army and the Taliban.

However, in Mingora and the territory just south of it, ringed by army checkpoints and crawling with street patrols, many wish for a civilian administration — a sign that things could be genuinely stabilizing. The army is beginning to draw back in Mingora and hand over security to the police. There too I find a beaming principal of a private girls school, Ziauddin Yousafzai, whose enthusiasm over the “clearance” of Mingora is contagious. And his pupil, Sheema, has another, more hopeful drawing showing her high school reopened and boys and girls holding hands and smiling. Were it that the rest of the Swat Valley could hold hands and smile. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-husarska7-2009oct07,0,2648217,print.story

The Indian Express, Sept 26
NEW DELHI: One reason why Pakistan doesn’t appear to be sincere in its against t Lashkar-eToiba founder and Jamaatud-Dawa chief Hafiz Sayeed is slowly emerging.
It’s been learnt here that some of the LeT’s top commanders, spearheading its violent campaign in India, have now joined the Pak Army’s campaign against the Taliban.
Sources said they have been moved from Punjab in Pakistan to set up and lead Army-sponsored armed “vil- i lage defence committees” in the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP).
Sources said LeT commanders Sad Baba, Asad Khan, Bilal, Gazi Sultan and Huzefa have moved to NWFP where the Pak Army is encouraging local tribesmen and their el- i ders to form armed groups to fight the Taliban. l Local tribesmen are said to have told the Pak Army not to deploy its forces because their presence helps build support for the Taliban. Hence, the committees.
This anti-Taliban resistance has a parallel with the “Sunni awakening” in Iraq, where tribesmen took on al-Qaeda militants in Anbar province and elsewhere.
The village defence groups rely on tribal customs and i widespread ownership of guns to raise traditional private armies — interestingly, these are also called Lashkars — each with hundreds of volunteers from local tribes.
These armies, launched last autumn, are not aimed at preventing individual acts of terrorism — suicide bombings etc — but to create a local defence system that prevents the Taliban from setting up an “extremist mini-state” in the lawless north-west.
Such Lashkars have already been established in Bajaur, Dir and Buner in NWFP .
The biggest anti-Taliban Lashkar had been set up by Sulthankeil tribe in Khall town with 10,000 local recruits who came along with their weapons.
Sources reveal that the LeT’s support for setting up and leading these tribal groups has two main reasons.
One, the LeT belongs to a different ideological sect, theologically opposed to the Taliban and an armed rebellion against the Pak army.
Two, LeT’s commanders are experienced in guerilla warfare and most of them have been operating in Kashmir or directing terror acts in various cities across India.
Security agencies monitoring Lashkar operations have found that the geographical location of many of these LeT commanders is being concealed via “spoofing” of their satphones.
“When a satellite phone is spoofed, it means its Lat (latitude)-Long (Longitude) is misrepresented by highly sophisticated sensors thus preventing surveillance,” a senior official told The Indian Express.
The official alleged that there were instances where the service provider was “giving inaccurate information.”
“We worked on two numbers, one belonging to an LeT commander and another used by a Hizbul man. Both were spoofed and in both cases we knew the actual location of the users. The service provider gave us the correct information about the Hizbul man while it misled us on information about the phone used by the LeT.” http://epaper.indianexpress.com/IE/IEH/2009/09/26/ArticleHtmls/26_09_2009_001_007.shtml?Mode=1

By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI
The New York Times, Sept 24
WASHINGTON — Senior Taliban leaders, showing a surprising level of sophistication and organization, are using their sanctuary in Pakistan to stoke a widening campaign of violence in northern and western Afghanistan, senior American military and intelligence officials say.
The Taliban’s expansion into parts of Afghanistan that it once had little influence over comes as the Obama administration is struggling to settle on a new military strategy for Afghanistan, and as the White House renews its efforts to get Pakistan’s government to be more aggressive about killing or capturing Taliban leaders inside Pakistan.
American military and intelligence officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were discussing classified information, said the Taliban’s leadership council, led by Mullah Muhammad Omar and operating around the southern Pakistani city of Quetta, was directly responsible for a wave of violence in once relatively placid parts of northern and western Afghanistan. A recent string of attacks killed troops from Italy and Germany, pivotal American allies that are facing strong opposition to the Afghan war at home.
These assessments echo a recent report by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top military commander in Afghanistan, in portraying the Taliban as an increasingly sophisticated shadow government that sees itself on the cusp of victory in the war-ravaged nation.
General McChrystal’s report describes how Mullah Omar’s insurgency has appointed shadow governors in most provinces of Afghanistan, levies taxes, establishes Islamic courts there and conducts a formal review of its military campaign each winter.
American officials say they believe that the Taliban leadership in Pakistan still gets support from parts of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s military spy service. The ISI has been the Taliban’s off-again-on-again benefactor for more than a decade, and some of its senior officials see Mullah Omar as a valuable asset should the United States leave Afghanistan and the Taliban regain power.
The issue of the Taliban leadership council, or shura, in Quetta is now at the top of the Obama administration’s agenda in its meetings with Pakistani officials.
At the same time, American officials face a frustrating paradox: the more the administration wrestles publicly with how substantial and lasting a military commitment to make to Afghanistan, the more the ISI is likely to strengthen bonds to the Taliban as Pakistan hedges its bets.
American officials have long complained that senior Taliban leaders operating from Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province, provide money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to the Taliban in the south of Afghanistan, where most of the nearly 68,000 American forces are deployed.
But since NATO’s offensive into the Taliban-dominated south this spring, the insurgents have surprised American commanders by stepping up attacks against allied troops elsewhere in the country to throw NATO off balance and create the perception of spreading violence that neither the allied military nor the civilian Afghan government in Kabul can control.
“The Taliban is trying to create trouble elsewhere to alleviate pressure” in the south, said one senior American intelligence official. “They’ve outmaneuvered us time and time again.”
The issue has opened fresh rifts between the United States and Pakistan over how to combat the Taliban leadership council in Quetta. American officials have voiced new and unusually public criticism of Pakistan’s role in abetting the growing Afghan insurgency, reviving tensions that seemed to have eased after the two countries worked closely to track and kill Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, in an American missile strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas last month.
General McChrystal said in his assessment, which was made public on Monday, “Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan, are linked with Al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups,” and are reportedly aided by “some elements” of the ISI.
The United States ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, said in a recent interview with the McClatchy newspapers that the Pakistani government was “certainly reluctant to take action” against the leadership of the Afghan insurgency.
Pakistani officials take issue with that, adding that the United States overstates the threat posed by the Quetta shura, possibly because the American understanding of the situation is distorted by vague and self-serving intelligence provided by Afghanistan’s spy service.
A senior Pakistani official said that the United States had asked Pakistan in recent years to round up 10 Taliban leaders in Quetta. Of those 10, 6 were killed or captured by the Pakistanis, 2 were probably in Afghanistan and the remaining 2 presented no threat.
“Pakistan has said it’s willing to act when given actionable intelligence,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “We have made substantial progress in the last year or so against the Quetta shura.”
Pakistani officials also said that a move against militant leaders in Quetta risked inciting public anger throughout Baluchistan, a region that has long had a tense relationship with Pakistan’s government in Islamabad.
Mullah Omar, a reclusive cleric, recently rallied his troops with a boastful message timed for the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr.
In the message, he taunted his American adversaries for ignoring the lessons of past military failures in Afghanistan, including the invasion of Alexander the Great’s army.
And he bragged that the Taliban had emerged as a nationalistic movement that “is approaching the edge of victory.”
A half-dozen American military, intelligence and diplomatic officials said in interviews that the Taliban leadership in Baluchistan, which abuts the portion of southern Afghanistan where most of the fighting is taking place, is increasing its strategic direction over the insurgency.
“The Taliban inner shura in Baluchistan is certainly trying to exercise greater command and control over the Taliban in Afghanistan,” said one American official in Afghanistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his assessment involved classified intelligence.
The official said that Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a former inmate at the American military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who is now a top Taliban lieutenant, was involved in replacing Taliban shadow governors and commanders, as well as reorganizing the Taliban throughout the country. “The Quetta shura — you can’t knock on their clubhouse door,” a Western diplomat said. “It’s much more of an amorphous group that as best we can tell moves around. They go to Karachi, they go to Quetta, they go across the border.”
American officials grudgingly acknowledge the Taliban’s skill at using guerrilla-style attacks to manipulate public impressions of the insurgency. “We assess that the primary focus of attacks in northern provinces such as Kunduz is to create a perception that the insurgency is spreading like wildfire,” the American official in Afghanistan said. “But I think it’s more of an ‘information operations’ success than a substantive one of holding any territory.”
Another American intelligence official who follows Pakistan closely said the insurgents had sought to exploit allied countries’ political vulnerabilities, like elections in Germany on Sunday. “The Taliban have proven themselves capable of strategic planning,” the official said.
General McChrystal said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that he had been surprised by “the growth of the shadow government, the growth of its coercion and its growth into the north and west.”
Germany, which has suffered 33 combat deaths in Afghanistan, has remained committed to the Afghan mission, although it has placed strict limits on where its soldiers can serve, refusing to send them to the south.
But that commitment is now being hotly debated in the coming parliamentary elections, after an airstrike called in by a German commander this month. The NATO airstrike, directed at two tanker trucks carrying alliance fuel that had been hijacked by the Taliban, killed scores of people; the number of dead civilians remains unclear.
Other allies are also rethinking their presence in Afghanistan. A bomb that killed six Italian soldiers in Kabul last Thursday prompted Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy to declare that his nation had begun planning to “bring our young men home as soon as possible.” Italy has 3,100 troops in Afghanistan. www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/world/asia/24military.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

The Daily Times, Sept 10
PESHAWAR: Awami National Party (ANP) said on Wednesday there was no justification for holding a referendum on the NWFP renaming issue as demanded by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and thus the ANP rejected it, saying only the constitutional committee of the parliament could decide the issue.

The ANP said the Nawaz League’s criticism of the ANP and its attitude towards Pakhtuns was condemnable. “Nawaz League is the enemy of Pakhtuns and still following the policies of Ranjeet Singh,” said ANP Provincial President Afrasiab Khattak while addressing a press conference along with party leaders Arbab Tahir Khalil, Arbab Najeebullah, Arbab Tajuddin and others.

Khattak said the renaming of the province was an important issue and the provincial assembly had already unanimously passed a resolution demanding the province be renamed Pakhtunkhwa.

The ANP leader said the issue was under consideration in the parliament’s constitutional committee working for constitutional reforms. However, he added, the PML-N leaders made the issue public instead of solving it within the constitutional committee and started giving public statements on issue.

Khattak said NWFP, FATA and PATA were no names. “It’s only Pakhtunkhwa but attempts are being made to make it controversial,” he said. Khattak said the PML-N made a demand for a referendum on the issue. “I propose referendums be also held on the name issue in Punjab and Sindh as only one language is not spoken in a province,” he said. He said there are a large number of Seraiki speaking people in Punjab and therefore referendum should also be held there.

Khattak said no referendum was held when Lyallpur was renamed to Faisalabad and Montgomery to Sahiwal.

The ANP leader said the largest political parties had also acknowledged the name Pakhtunkhwa and the name is no longer controversial. Khattak said the people of the province supporting the Nawaz League should review their party affiliation as “PML-N is the enemy of Pakhtuns.” He said the name Pakhtunkhwa was the demand of the people of the province.

Khattak said the name Afghania was also acceptable as it was given to this region by the founders of Pakistan. The ANP leader said Abasin was the name of a river and Khyber the name of an area and therefore could not be accepted as name of the province.

“We can only accept Pakhtunkhwa or Afghania,” he said. Khattak said the ANP is cooperating with the parliament’s constitutional committee and wants to solve the problem within this constitutional body. “And if it could not solve the issue, we’ll stick to our stand and demand,” said the ANP provincial president. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\09\10\story_10-9-2009_pg7_11

PESHAWAR: NWFP Assembly’s former deputy speaker Ikramullah Shahid has challenged the use of name ‘Pakhtunkhwa’ instead of NWFP by government officials in the Peshawar High Court (PHC) and requested the court to declare that such name should not be used for the province till amendment was made in the Constitution.

Advocate Ikramullah Shahid filed a writ petition some three days back in the PHC, wherein he cited various advertisements that appeared in local newspapers in which different government departments had used ‘Pakhtunkhwa’ as name of the province. Referring to advertisements that appeared on the occasion of Independence Day, the petitioner stated that the secretaries and high-level officials of the departments concerned had committed gross violation of the Constitution, which not only fell under the abuse of the official authority but was also an example of misconduct by the public servants. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\09\10\story_10-9-2009_pg7_12

REIGNITING what lately had appeared to be a settled issue, Nawaz Sharif has demanded that a referendum be held in the NWFP on the renaming of the province. Mr Sharif’s demand flies in the face of an overwhelming majority in the NWFP Assembly, which has passed a resolution endorsing the name Pakhtunkhwa. Moreover, while a constitutional amendment has yet to be passed, the nomenclature has already been amended at the centre informally with everyone from the president to the prime minister to federal ministers referring to the NWFP as Pakhtunkhwa. Overlooking the near unanimity, Mr Sharif has instead apparently opted to focus on shoring up support for his own party in the Hazara region, a traditional PML-N stronghold that is Hindko-speaking. But even on that count, the PML-N leader may be misguided. The 1998 census shows that Mansehra is evenly divided between Pushto- and Hindko-speakers, while in other districts such as Haripur and Abbottabad a significant Pushto-speaking population too now resides. Moreover, there is the fact that in the NWFP generally Pushto is the mother tongue of three-fourths of the population. Why then should the people of the NWFP continue to live under a colonial-era name? Names matter to identity, something we have seen very recently with Gilgit-Baltistan, an appellation that has been hailed by the people of the erstwhile Northern Areas. Looking at the other federating units — Balochistan, Punjab and Sindh — there is also the question of why the NWFP alone should have a name with no regional identity.

The problem, then, isn’t about a referendum — Pakhtunkhwa is supported by the majority and the people’s elected representatives — but why Mr Sharif would want to impede the process of changing the name of the NWFP at all. Since his return to the country, Mr Sharif and his party have done a fair bit to challenge the perception that the PML-N is a one-province party, most noticeably by reaching out to Balochistan and sounding a conciliatory note to the smaller provinces during the ongoing NFC discussions. By digging in his heels on Pakhtunkhwa, however, Mr Sharif is unnecessarily reinforcing old perceptions and needlessly alienating a province. http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/editorial/renaming-nwfp-999