3.Army, agencies ‘not cooperating in terror attacks probe’
By Umar Cheema in The News, July 7
ISLAMABAD: The Punjab government has made a damning indictment of the Pakistan Army and intelligence agencies, holding them mainly responsible for court acquittals of those accused in suicide attacks on Lt-Gen Mushtaq Baig and on an Army bus, and said the Army “neither assisted nor showed any interest in the trial of the accused”.
The intelligence agencies have been accused of overstepping their mandate and also of not sharing information with the police, as the accused remained in their custody for a year though they don’t have any legal power to keep any person in detention.
 “The role of the complainant department (Army) and the investigation agencies was deplorable,” said an inquiry report. The prosecution department of the Punjab has furnished this report, a rare official document of its nature charge-sheeting the security outfits. Although the report has also blamed the police and prosecution for poor performance, the Army and intelligence agencies have largely been accused of misconduct.
The inquiry related to two terrorist attacks: first hit an Army bus carrying trainees of the Armed Forces Post-Graduate Medical Institute (AFPGMI) killing a lieutenant-colonel, a major and six others on February 4, 2008; second, a suicide attack which killed surgeon general, Mushtaq Baig, his guard, driver and three pedestrians on February 24, 2008.
In both cases, FIRs were registered by the police through its own officials, and from backdates when the accused were handed over by the intelligence agencies after one-year detention. The Army neither registered the FIRs nor its officials volunteered to stand in witness box and this job too was done by the police. No one from the Army represented the department in the court. “No one from any agency facilitated nor any liaison was made from any person to pursue the prosecution in the court of law.”
The report has proposed action against all those responsible for negligence, no matter which department they belong to. The ISPR didn’t offer any comment to a list questions sent to it late Saturday.

Rana Maqbool, secretary prosecution, confirmed having furnished the report fixing responsibility on all concerned but declined to discuss its contents point-wise. A reading of 52-page inquiry report and background discussions with officials in Lahore and Rawalpindi reveal how the law is overstepped in the absence of any strict mechanism and suspected terrorists managed to secure release due to internal conflicts of the department and distortion of evidence.
“Neither the complainants (Army officials) appeared or have any contact with them (police) nor any representative of department (Army) ever assisted them (police) or showed any interest in the trial of the accused,” said the inquiry report quoting the statement of a police official, ASI Bostan Khan of RA Bazaar Police Station, who was deputed as inquiry officer. The report says: “They (Army) remained aloof throughout, from the day one of the charge sheet to the accused till the conclusion of the trial.”

Nine accused, believed to have carried out the two attacks, were picked up, seven without any evidence. “Without an iota of evidence, seven accused were challaned out of nine,” the report said, and the remaining two were challaned on the statements of the police officials “whose statements were recorded after the lapse of one year”. The police officials privy to the matter told The News the accused were handed over to them after one year, the FIRs number 75 and 114 from February diary, were reserved to be filled on the receipt of the accused and hence it was done in backdate a year later. As none from the Army was ready to become a witness, two police officials were listed as witnesses. There is no provision in law empowering the intelligence agencies to detain any accused or keep him in custody. In case of suspicion, it can be done by keeping them in police custody and after the passage of 24 hours, court’s permission is required for remand, say the police and prosecution officials.

4.Sharif urges Pakistan neutrality on Afghanistan
 The Washington Post, July 6
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan should stop trying to influence affairs in Afghanistan, the opposition leader said Tuesday, while admitting that the pro-Afghan Taliban policy he pursued when he was prime minister in the 1990s was a failure.
Nawaz Sharif’s comments come as he tries to gain political traction and deflect criticism that his party is beholden to extremist elements. Just last week, he pushed the government to open talks with elements of the Pakistani Taliban, and the ruling party agreed to his proposal to hold a national conference on stopping terrorism.
In an interview with Pakistan’s Dunya TV that aired Monday and Tuesday, Sharif appeared to renounce a policy he pursued with vigour while twice prime minister in the 1990s. Back then, Pakistan openly supported the Afghan Taliban movement as it pushed out other armed factions such as the Northern Alliance and gained control of Kabul.
"Pakistan should abandon this thinking that Pakistan has to keep influence in Afghanistan," said Sharif, who heads the Pakistan Muslim League-N party. "Neither will they accept influence, nor should the pro-influence-minded people here insist on it."

"Our policy in the past has failed. Neither will such a policy work in future. We have a centuries-old relationship, and we can maintain this relationship only when we remain neutral and support the government elected there with the desire of the Afghan people."

It was unclear where Sharif would stand on the reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan. The role Pakistan would play will likely fall primarily to its military, which operates largely independent of the civilian government anyway and which could be instrumental in bringing some armed Afghan factions to the table.
Sharif’s party, which controls the government of Punjab province but sits in opposition in the federal government, is considered more conservative and aligned with pro-Taliban parties than the national ruling Pakistan People’s Party.
During Sharif’s tenure as prime minister, he not only supported the Taliban regime in Afghanistan but also tried to vastly increase the powers of his office while pushing aside Pakistan’s penal code in favor of an Islamic justice system. Many saw these ill-fated moves as an attempt to "Talibanise" Pakistan, and they eroded his popularity further.
Sharif was overthrown in a 1999 coup by then-Gen. Pervez Musharraf. As the leader of the opposition now, Sharif has tried to walk a careful line, making it hard to pin him down as being either pro- or anti-Taliban or pro- or anti-American.

In April, the 29-year-old boyish-faced Pakistani found his father, brother and uncle slumped over in the seats of their car, their faces and chests riddled with more than 60 bullets. All of them were dead, victims of what Ahmadis in their Faisalabad enclave say was a deadly warning from extremists: Renounce your sect or leave the city.

No Pakistani minority is as victimized as the country’s 4 million Ahmadis, who believe in Islam but are viewed by the rest of the country as heretics. Because they revere another prophet as well as the prophet Muhammad, the Pakistani government has declared Ahmadis "non-Muslims," made it a crime for members to refer to their places of worship as mosques and even barred them from extending the common Muslim greeting, salaam aleykum.

The Ahmadi community’s vulnerability was evident May 28, when Pakistani Taliban gunmen stormed two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city, and killed more than 90 people caught in a maelstrom of gunfire, grenades and suicide bombings.

Though Pakistan is a multiethnic and multilingual society, it has a long history of marginalizing minority groups. Shiite Muslims have been the target of radical Sunni Muslim groups for years. Last year, in the central Punjab city of Gojra, a mob of 1,000 angry Muslims set more than 40 Christian homes ablaze, killing seven people.

The plight of the Ahmadi community, however, provides a window onto the intolerance that permeates Pakistani society. Ahmadis say the risk they face is heightened by the fact that, in a society where hard-line religious parties wield unchallenged clout, they are viewed as traitors to Islam.

Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims but believe that their late-19th century founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was a prophet of God, a belief viewed as heresy by Pakistani Muslims who regard Muhammad as Islam’s final prophet.

The sect’s marginalization was set into motion in 1974 when Pakistan’s parliament enacted the law branding Ahmadis as non-Muslims. The crackdown on the Ahmadis intensified in the 1980s during the rule of Gen. Zia ul-Haq, who ordered a maximum three-year prison term for any Ahmadi who called himself a Muslim, carried out the Muslim call to prayer or referred to an Ahmadi place of worship as a mosque.

"As a result of Zia’s decrees, the state facilitated the mullahs who were already against us," said Syed Mehmood, spokesman for the Ahmadi community in Faisalabad. "That’s when the persecution started. Hundreds of Ahmadis were jailed just because they said Salaam aleykum."

Mehmood said the persecution continues today, forcing Ahmadis in Faisalabad to find creative ways to survive. As a result of the killings of the three Ahmadi businessmen in April, along with recent kidnappings and other acts of violence against Ahmadis, community members routinely change their routes to and from home, vary the time of day they arrive and leave work, and lie when asked on the phone about their whereabouts. Many of them have put their social lives — going to parties, meeting friends for lunch or tea — on hold.

At Zaheer Malik’s Toyota dealership, a gleaming glass and silver-paneled building out of place amid the cinder-block merchant stalls on the outskirts of Faisalabad, tall, broad-shouldered armed guards stand watch in the parking lot as well as at the foot of the stairs leading to Malik’s second-floor office.

Malik, a wealthy Pakistani Ahmadi in his mid-30s, says he has received several threats recently, including one in May in which a man came to the showroom and urged his driver to quit. "They told him, ‘Your boss is not a Muslim and we might do something to him,’ " Malik said. " ‘It’ll be better if you leave the job. We don’t want you to die with him.’

"For last the month, I can’t go to the gym, I can’t go anywhere to have dinner, can’t go to parties, I just stay home," Malik said. "Every day I’m changing schedules, changing cars. Every day I’m telling someone I’m in Lahore when I’m really in Faisalabad, or I’m in Dubai when I’m actually in Karachi."

Omar Ahmed, 27, keeps a pistol with him at all times and stations armed guards outside his jewelry store. Ahmed took over the shop after his father, Ashraf Pervaiz, was killed in the same hail of bullets that killed Masood’s father, Masood Javed, and his brother, Asif Masood. Ahmed says that if he could leave Pakistan, he would. But his predicament is the same as Naeem Masood’s: As elder sons, they have to stay for the sake of their families and the family businesses.

"We’re in a battlefield every day," Ahmed said. "We have to live with the fact that we are Ahmadis."

Ahmadis say they don’t expect much help from city police, who they say have shown little interest in solving crimes committed against their community. Masood said he recently visited police headquarters to ask whether investigators had made any progress finding the killers of his father, brother and uncle.

"They said, ‘You tell us the names of the gunmen, and we will go and capture them,’ " Masood said.

Rao Sardar, a top Faisalabad police official, said it’s not a question of police indifference but a simple matter of manpower. The Faisalabad district has a police force of 7,000 officers charged with securing a population of 8 million, he said.

"That’s a very low ratio, and that’s the problem," Sardar said. "We’re doing all we can do."

Ahmadis say police indifference is only part of the problem. Laws that brand Ahmadis, a minority regarded elsewhere in the world as a Muslim sect, as non-Muslims only serve to breed intolerance within Pakistani society, large segments of which are illiterate and easily swayed by radical imams and the country’s powerful patchwork of religious parties.

A neighborhood’s lack of reaction to an act of persecution against an Ahmadi often provides an example of that intolerance. A year ago, Laeeq Ahmed was driving home from work when, a few hundred yards from his house, gunmen sprayed his car with bullets. Ahmed’s wife, Nuzhat Laeeq, rushed to her husband, who was still alive but unconscious, and pleaded with bystanders to help. The crowd ignored her, she said.

Ahmed died the next day in a hospital. Later, witnesses of the slaying described to Laeeq what had happened, how the gunmen had celebrated afterward by chanting, "We have killed an infidel!" Despite the presence of witnesses, however, the crime remains unsolved.

"We believe that the government, its legal system and the people here won’t help us," Laeeq said, speaking in a hushed, quavering voice behind a black veil. "The police won’t give us any kind of investigation. We have left our fate, and this case, up to God."