Mission & Justice

Mary Jordan; 28/6/08

Helen Rawlins climbed into her Toyota Land Cruiser at 7.30am, off to rescue another woman. As the baking bustle of the Pakistani countryside whizzed by, the British diplomat knew a tense confrontation awaited. Lately, she had been making a trip such as this once a week — to help British women of Pakistani descent lured to this country and forced, sometimes at gunpoint, into marriage. The British Government views forced marriages as a human rights abuse, far different from arranged marriages to which bride and groom consent. It is Ms Rawlins’ job to stop them. On this June day, the victim was 21. After exchanging clandestine text messages and calls, Ms Rawlins was on her way to rescue her.

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Stephen Graham; 14/6/08

The top elected official in north-west Pakistan said the country should rethink its relationship with America after a US air strike reportedly killed 11 Pakistani troops. The US and Pakistan remained at odds yesterday in their versions of Tuesday night’s skirmish on the Afghan border. US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said it was still not exactly clear what happened and so far US officials “have not been able to corroborate” that Pakistani troops died. The US “would be very saddened” if that were true, Mr Hadley told reporters travelling with US President George Bush in Europe. The US-led coalition in Afghanistan yesterday released video of a bombardment aimed at militants to support its account. The excerpts, however, do not show the Gorparai border post where Pakistan said its troops died, and one explosion occurs off-screen, without explanation.

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11/6/08

The US was acting in “self defence” when it launched an air raid that Pakistan says killed 11 of its troops, according to the Pentagon. US officials in Afghanistan have released a video they say shows they were attacking “anti-Afghan forces” on the border with Pakistan in the raid which Islamabad has condemned as an “unprovoked and cowardly” attack on its own troops. The Pakistani soldiers were killed on Tuesday at a border post in Gora Prai, in the volatile Mohmand province, a tribal region in Pakistan opposite Afghanistan’s Kunar province. Geoff Morrell, the US department of defence spokesperson, said at a news conference on Wednesday: “Every indication we have is that this was a legitimate strike against forces that had attacked members of the coalition.”

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11/6/08

Pakistan has blamed US-led forces in Afghanistan for an “unprovoked and cowardly” air raid near the border that killed at least 11 Pakistani soldiers. However, the US military on Wednesday has said that the air and artillery assault was aimed at Taliban fighte s and had been co-ordinated with Islamabad. “…Coalition forces informed the Pakistan army that they were being engaged by anti-Afghan forces,” the US military said in a statement. It said the operation “had been previously co-ordinated with Pakistan”.

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Pakistan; 4/6/08; http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23808204-12335,00.html

Five children died when a mortar shell they were playing with exploded in the southeastern city of Quetta, while a landmine killed four people in Pakistan’s Kurram tribal region today, officials said Aside from the five children killed, five others were wounded. They all belonged to an Afghan family living in Quetta. Police said they found three more mortars in the children’s home. “We’re investigating where they got them from,” senior police officer Rematullah Niazi said. Children were also killed when a passenger van hit a landmine on a road about 60 km (37 miles) east of Parachinar, Kurram’s main town. “We have a confirmed report of four dead, including two children,” Ahsanullah Khan, a government officer in Parachinar, said.
Pakistan, Landmines

Hassna’a Mokhtar; 26/5/08

Court bureaucracy has further impeded the case of five Pakistani mechanics, who for five years have not been paid their salaries and are living destitute in a rundown defunct factory in south Jeddah. In order to get their case moving, the five men need a Power of Attorney (POA) to enable their lawyer to act on their behalf. However, of-ficials at the Jeddah Court refused to issue a POA, as some of the men do not have iqamas.

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23/5/08

After almost three years of a hunger strike and force-feeding at Guantanamo, a Saudi detainee said he will persist with his protest until he sets foot in his native land. Legal papers obtained last week give the first detailed look at Ahmad Zaid Salem Zuhair since he was captured in Pakistan and taken to Guantanamo in 2002. The US military calls him an enemy combatant, an allegation he denies.

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Bruce Loudon; 20/5/08

The spectre of suicide bombings returned to Pakistan yesterday after a lull of almost three months, only hours after Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani personally confronted US President George W. Bush over “provocative” cross-border raids aimed at al-Qa’ida targets. The raids - in particular last week’s CIA missile attack on an al-Qa’ida compound at Damadola, in the Bajaur Tribal Agency - are blamed by Pakistani officials for sparking a suicide bombing on Sunday in a market at the Punjab Regiment garrison in Mardan, a town in North West Frontier Province. Thirteen people, including five soldiers, were killed and 23 injured - the biggest such attack since Pakistan’s elections in February, and one that casts a shadow over the Government’s attempts to negotiate peace deals with extremist groups linked to al-Qa’ida and the Taliban.

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18/5/08

The Pakistan army has taken issue with coalition forces in Afghanistan over a missile attack launched by a US drone aircraft that killed 14 people, an army spokesman said yesterday. Two missiles hit a house on Wednesday in the village of Damadola in Bajaur, a Pakistani tribal region where al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamist militant groups are active, a security official said. “We have informed the coalition headquarters in Afghanistan … we have raised this issue in tripartite commission,” army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said. The commission comprises the military commanders from the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan and the Afghan and Pakistani armies.

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14/5/08

The grey gates of Doctor Robin Sardar’s residence now bear a sign that says in red Urdu letters, “This is the house of a blasphemer.” The place has been deserted since police arrested Sardar, a Protestant, on May 5, after an angry mob of 200 armed Muslims, some carrying kerosene, sought him out for allegedly uttering derogatory remarks against Prophet Muhammad. The scene was one that the late Bishop John Joseph of Faisalabad had fought hard to keep from happening before he shot himself dead on the steps of the court building in Sahiwal a decade earlier on May 6, 1998. The bishop’s “self-sacrifice,” as local people refer to it, was a desperate plea for Pakistan to rid itself of blasphemy laws he and others charge have been widely abused since the late President Zia ul-Haq amended them in 1986. The prelate pulled the trigger in protest after a Christian was sentenced to death for blaspheming the Prophet.

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