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Posts Tagged Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

 Elections in the Merged Tribal Districts Show Historical Change  By Sajjad Shaukat


 Elections in the Merged Tribal Districts Show Historical Change

 By

Sajjad Shaukat

 

This is the first time in the history of Pakistan that polling was held for elections of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP)

 

Map of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

 

 

Assembly in the merged tribal districts of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on July 20, this year and the counting of votes is underway, with the unofficial results have started pouring in.

 

Sixteen seats have been contested in seven districts. Of the 285 candidates standing for the elections, 202 are independent candidates. There are over 2.8 million registered voters in the area, of which 1.13 million are women.

 

At 16, the PTI has the most candidates who contested the elections from the ruling political party. The JUI-F has 15 candidates, ANP has 14, PPP and JI both have 13 and the PML-N has five candidates. Two women have also contested the election–the ANP’s Naheed Afridi in PK-106 Khyber and JI’s Malasa Bibi in PK-108 Kurram.

 

A total of 1,897 polling stations have been set up across the merged districts. Of these, 482 have been reserved for men, 376 for women, and 1,049 are combined. Pakistan Army, police and Frontier Constabulary personnel have been deployed at polling stations across the seven districts. In this regard, Spokesperson of Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) Nadeem Qasim said it may take a day for the official results to be announced in ex-FATA elections. He elaborated: “Polling has completed peacefully in the region. He appreciated the role of all institutions, including the Army for making a peaceful election happen”.

 

According to reports, voter turnout remained decent.

 

In fact, the Pakistan Army played a key role in restoring peace in the tribal regions. Hence, almost all political parties nominated their candidates for the constituencies, as the political activities have gained peace. The army made strenuous efforts to bring the people of FATA in the mainstream of the country.

 

The government has expressed resolve to spend billions of rupees in the next 10 years for the development of FATA and the uplift of the local population in order to bring them at par with the citizens of the other areas of the country and to remove any sense of deprivation among them.

 

The tribal regions remained troubled for over a decade ever since the US-led so-called war on terror started. Pakistan’s Armed Forces and especially Army have successfully broken the backbone of the foreign-backed terrorists by the military operations Zarb-e-Azb and Radd-ul-Fasaad, while country’s primary intelligence agency ISI has broken the network of these terrorist groups by capturing several militants and thwarting a number of terror attempts. Besides other provinces, peace has been restored in the KP.

 

In this respect, thousands of terrorists were killed and a huge quantity of explosives seized during the operations of the security agencies.

So as to sustain the hard-earned peace, Pakistan Army has also started the fencing of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. It would stop preventing illegal cross-border movement—including those of terrorists who enter Pakistan from Afghanistan’s side and bring the drug-weapon trade to a halt. The fencing of the Pak-Afghan border which is 2,611-kilometre is expected to be completed by 2020 whereas 643 kilometres–462 kilometres in KP and 181 kilometres in Balochistan have been covered so far. 843 border posts are planned, out of which 233 have been completed, while the construction of 140 posts is underway.

 

It is due to the huge sacrifices of Army and other law-enforcement agencies that improvement in the security situation in the tribal areas became possible. The number of check posts has also decreased by 31 percent in the past three years, resulting in growing trade activities. Roads have been improved for connectivity with other areas of the country, including FATA. In this regard, more than 800-kilometres of roads have been constructed in the tribal districts as part of the communication network, thus reducing the time to one-thirds.

 

However, with the assistance of the security forces, Pakistan held the epoch-making elections in the tribal districts and thus, gave a strong message to the international community that peace has returned in the conflict zone.

 

It is notable that external powers which have been supporting the Baloch Sub-Nationalists (BSNs) are also behind the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) as part of their unfinished agenda against Pakistan. They leave no stone unturned in misguiding the people of the Balochistan and particularly those of the KP by creating one after another issue. In this respect, the emergence of the PTM at a crucial time, which is being paid by anti-Pakistan hostile elements and countries, aims at accentuating the ethnic cleavages of the country, influence Pashtun population in pursuance of strategic objectives of the foreign powers. PTM which is actually a veritable political entity of the Afghanistan-based Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and wants to accomplish its nefarious designs against Pakistan and its Army has opposed the amalgamation of FATA/PATA with KP province.

 

Nevertheless, it is because of the Amry’s development-works in the tribal areas that the PTM has failed in instigating the public against the federation of the country. While the amalgamation of FATA/PATA with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province will result in multiple benefits for the people by overcoming their multi-faceted problems. Therefore, the merger of FATA/PATA with the KP was welcomed by the tribal people—the tribal people will get representation in the KP Assembly and the National Assembly.

 

Earlier, the proceedings for the merger have witnessed intense activities in shape of meetings, debate etc. High-powered National Implementation Committee (NIC) on FATA Reforms had earlier endorsed the merger of tribal regions with KP in a meeting attended by the prime minister, chief of army staff, and others, including the Chief Minister of the KP and Chairman of the Cabinet Committee on FATA Reforms Sartaj Aziz. Later, in May 2018, the National Security Committee (NSC) in its 23rd meeting endorsed the merger of FATA with KP, while noting the regional and global security situation.

The credit for making the merger a reality has been attributed to Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who continued to push the political leadership for requisite activism on the issue. The role of opposition parties also remained positive and appreciable. 

 

The merger of FATA/PATA with the KP province has been a long-awaited move, as there has been too much suffering in the tribal areas. FATA was administered through Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), and political agent acted as a justice along with other executive tasks. FCR was a set of laws under which joint territorial duties and penalties were imposed. Since America’s attack on Afghanistan, FATA arose as a zone of trouble and proxy warfare. It also became a security risk for the region and put Pakistan into many hardships.

 

FCR which was officially enacted in 1901 has its origins in laws which were enacted by the British colonialists in the Pashtun-inhabited tribal areas in the Northwest of British India. They were specifically devised to counter the opposition of the Pashtuns to British rule. The main objective of the FCR was to protect the interests of the British Empire. More than a century later, this law continued to be applied to FATA residents by the Government of Pakistan.  Not only did the FCR deprived the people of FATA their fundamental rights, but also had taken away their basic legal rights like ‘Appeal, Wakeel and Daleel’.

 

So, it is a positive dimension for the tribal people, as they have got rid of colonialism which continued after the partition of the Sub-continent. The tribal Sardars (Lords) who continued British practices were in favour of the division of FATA/PATA and KP. Now, this merger is likely to upset sub-nationalist tendencies, being exploited by Pakistan’s foreign enemies and some internal entities.

 

At present, FATA is the most deprived and least-developed area in Pakistan. With the lowest per capita income in the country, two-third of its population simply lives below the poverty line. The literacy rate is as low as only 17% among males and only 3% among females. And, almost half the population has no access to clean drinking water. No substantial endeavour had been made to promote the socio-economic wellbeing of the people in FATA.

 

It is worth mentioning that since the occupation of Afghanistan by the US-led NATO forces, Pakistan has become center of the intelligence agencies such as American CIA, Indian RAW and Israeli Mossad which are in collusion with Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) to obtain the covert designs of the their countries and some Western countries against Russia, China and Pakistan, including Iran.

 

Under the cover of fighting terrorism, these secret agencies support the militants of Islamic State group (Also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh) and Afghanistan-based TTP, including their linked outfits which have been conducting terror-assaults in Afghanistan and Pakistan as part of the double game of the US-led countries. And CIA and RAW which are in collaboration with NDS are clandestinely assisting the Afghan National Unity Government (NUG) to manipulate the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), as these external entities are behind this movement.

 

Nonetheless, we can conclude that the nation, especially the people of FATA are thankful to the Pakistan Army which played a major role in the integration of the tribal regions with the mainstream of the country. Therefore, during the polling-day, people were raising slogans in favour of Pakistan Army, while elections in the merged tribal districts show historical change.

 

Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is the author of the book: The US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations

 

Email: sajjad_logic@yahoo.com

 

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Carrying on up the Khyber Imran Khan’s party improves services in Pakistan’s (KPK) – The Economist

The PTI now wants to see locals flocking to use public services. It has certainly made schools more appealing: the party has appointed 40,000 more teachers, rebuilt institutions blown up by the Taliban and furnished others with toilets and electricity. Teacher absenteeism has fallen. But the PTI’s claim that about 100,000 students have chosen to switch from private to public schools is based on dodgy data. There are other bones to pick. In 2013 the PTI allowed its coalition partner, the Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist group, to remove pictures in textbooks of women without a veil, among other measures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The diagnosis is less mixed when it comes to health care. The PTI has employed many more medical staff, raising the ratio of doctors per 1,000 people from 0.16 to 0.24. It has also begun, albeit far from smoothly, to roll out a comprehensive health-insurance card for poor families. All this has had an effect. The number of operations in public hospitals has doubled since 2013; inpatient cases have risen by half as much again. Such change comes despite objections from special interests that lose out from reforms. Pharmacists broke the shelves of a new drug dispensary at one Peshawar hospital, so incensed were they by its offering medicine at the wholesale price.

Yet the PTI may struggle to win a second term in 2018. One problem is excessive promises. Mr Khan, who broke into politics after a stellar career as a cricketer, pledged a “tsunami” of change. But it took his inexperienced party two years to get a handle on government, and many of its reforms so far, according to Faisal Bari of LUMS university, need much longer to get entrenched. Some of its more notable improvements are hardly photogenic. It is one thing for people gleefully to take selfies in front of a new flyover in Peshawar, another to do the same in front of new toilets in a rural girls’ school.

That Mr Khan himself appears to have lost interest in the province does not help. He aspires to national office and spends much of his time heckling the prime minister, who is under investigation for corruption. The PTI is starting to look more like the established parties. Having long mocked rapid-transit bus lanes, a favourite pork-barrel project of such parties, as a costly distraction from public-sector reform, the PTI is now building one of its own in Peshawar. It is said to be the country’s most expensive, per kilometre, yet.

 

The Economist

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Emergency treatment”

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Rs1Billion Food Security Initiative Launched in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Rs1bn food security initiative launched

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa agriculture department on Wednesday launched a Rs1 billion Insaf Food Security programme to provide free authenticated wheat seeds to the farmers across the province.
The programme was launched at a ceremony at the Tarnab Farms here, according to a statement.
The programme would run for three years, benefitting about 1,068,000 farmers having land holdings of one to three acres.

imgres-1

 

 
 
 
Speaking on the occasion, Minister for Agriculture Ikramullah Gandapur termed the programme as a landmark achievement of the PTI-led provincial government.
He said the initiative would enhance wheat yield of the province by 186,000 tonnes adding Rs5 billion to the province’s kitty.
Mr Gandapur said the programme would help meet food requirements of the province as well as ensuring prosperity of the farmers. “It would also help minimize expenditure on import of wheat from other provinces,” he added.
On the occasion, Minister for Public Health Engineering, Shah Farman, said the programme would help farmers turn to cultivating high profit earning crops thus ushering the province into materialising its dream of agricultural prosperity. He said mushrooms and olive crops could be introduced in the province for prosperity of the farmers.
Free wheat seeds were distributed to the farmers of the Peshawar district.
 

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BATTLE FOR PAKISTAN: Beware Pakistan; TTP terrorists and Baloch insurgents are India’s KAO-Boys….

balochistan-unrest-foreign-powers-operatives-creating-mess

The research reveals that soon after the formation of RAW, Rameshwar Nath Kao’s first priority was to form a team of professionals at the top level of agency; well trusted guys of Kao as majority of them was known as gays and thus were very commonly called the Kao-boys of RAW, not within the agency but also in the media across India and those officials who were not inducted in RAW by Kao, despite being falling on merit were the main sources of such leaks to the media and also to the young RAW officers. The research reveals that RAW launched the Bangla plan soon after its inception.

The basic features of Kao plan were to:

  • launch a Psychological Warfare operation in East Pakistan;
  • to communicate with East Pakistani politicians, mainly those belonging to Awami League;
  • to get on board all the East Pakistani civil servants working in East and West Pakistan and also in Pakistani embassies across the world;
  • to launch extensive media campaign against Pakistan army’s actions in East Pakistan and to project a highly exaggerated plight of the people of East Pakistan in the world media and to organize moots and conferences across the world to highlight the sham miseries of the people of Pakistan;
  • to establish a sense of deprivation amongst the general public in East Pakistan;
  • to create a feeling of hatred amongst the people of East Pakistan and West Pakistan through social circles etc.

While the training of militants of Mukti Bahni goons at training camps inside Indian territory, at West Bengal, Assam and Tripura and to arm them for an ultimate civil war was decided to be organized with the help and assistance of Indian army, headed by General Manekshaw and IndianBorder Security Force (BSF), headed by K.F. Rustomji while the IB was also kept engaged for other covert operations. According to a veteran journalist Qutubuddine Aziz , who was stationed in former East Pakistan during the execution of India Kao plan for creating Bangladesh and the gentlemen who wrote the famous book Blood and Tears, India trained Mukti Bahini militants massacred at least one million non-Bengalis in former East Pakistan.

After the RAW got immense success in East Pakistan and due to the lack of abilities on part of Pakistani leadership to handle the crises in Eastern part of the country, a new country was created with name of Bangladesh in 1971, just within some 30 months of the inception of RAW, Rameshwar Nath Kao sought Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s permission to launch KBP-II for the separation of Balochistan from Pakistan.

However, due to a possible resistance from the then Shah of Iran, China and also from CIA, the plan to separate Balochistan was put on hold by Indira Gandhi. But the Kao-boys had already started contacting Baloch leaders through social activities in foreign countries and a PSYWAR was launched amongst the Balochistan people with a crystal clear reference to what happened in East Pakistan and how India helped East Pakistanis to have a spate, independent country. In the meantime RAW also sought agency-to-agency help from its counterpart in former Soviet Union and KGB replied in a positive manner to help RAW implement its Kao plan for Balochistan. However, it was realized at some time that India had no advantage of having a road link in Balochistan that they had in East Pakistan and secondly the disadvantage was that Pakistani army had total control and very strong road link to any part of Balochistan, something that it lacked in case of East Pakistan. The only encouraging point for RAW while starting the Balochistan game was that here they did not had to launch and fund the movement at the grassroots level like in case of the East Pakistan but in fact in Balochistan, they just needed to lure a handful of Baloch tribal leaders, especially young ones who were very much attracted towards fun life of West, and rest was to be done by these tribal leaders. After making this assessment, RAW decided to go-ahead with the KPB-II. Just when Indira Gandhi was about to order full-fledged launching of the Kao plan for Balochistan to divert the national and international criticism from operation Blue Star, she was assassinated by some religiously motivate Sikh Guards of her own security detail.

Indira Gandhi’s assassination brought in her elder son Rajiv Gandhi to the scene and he took over as Indian Prime Minister. Rajiv always had serious doubts that her mother lost her life due to completely misleading reports and advices of RAW and thus had special anger and hatred for RAW and its top policy makers. He had to lose his life at the hands of Raw-assisted Tamil terrorists. Finally, Sonia approved the Kao plan in 2004-2005 as it was found out to be the best time to launch the Kao plan as Pakistan was already surrounded with multiple dangers and conspiracies and for the first time it did not have a friendly government in adjoining Afghanistan. The Kao plan was initiated in Balochistan formally in 2004-2005 and within one year of its formal launching things got drastically changed across the province. The Kao plan made veteran Baloch leader Akbar Bugti and his like-minded tribal leaders of the province defiant towards the federal government and they bent upon initiating an insurgency movement in the province and even brought a name for the new Independent country as Islamic Emirates of Balochistan.

Kao plan for Balochistan had just a few amendments if compared with the Kao plan for East Pakistan. The basics remained the same. What was that? Launch a psychological war amongst the general public of the area; generate a feeling of deprivation and hatred amongst the local against the rest of the people of the country; fund and arm the tribal leaders; launch motivated media campaigns and seminars across the world to highlight a sham plight of the locals; generate feeling of hatred against the country’s army and Armed Forces; motivate locals to assault the Armed forces and portray security forces as some occupying troops amongst the locals as well to the global audience; create fake as well real clashes between country’s security Forces and the paid militants; train and arm the militants; organize seminars and conferences at major Capitals of the world and motivate a global opinion in favor of the militants by portraying them as freedom fighters and oppressed nation; do the media buying in the local country as well in the international market; create caucuses at different parliamentary forums across the world to plead and support the view point of the fighting militants etc; equate Baluchistan issue with the freedom movement in Indian Occupied Kashmir etc.

This plan is very clearly unleashed in Balochistan at the moment and this plan is titled “RAW’s Kao Plan for Balochistan” in the clandestine community of India and the West. The study indicates that the game is just the same that it was in 1971 in East Pakistan, just the players and the rules of the game have changed a bit.

The Daily Mail’s also findings indicate that the latest move in the US Congress to support the cause of Balochistan’s militants and to call for right of self-determination for the people of Balochistan is nothing new. RAW has been organizing similar move at many occasions in the past as well by getting the paid services of certain politicians and so called intellectuals as well as NGOs across the world. They have done it in England, in India and at many other places across the world while the Capitol Hill is the latest venue for the purpose.

In this backdrop, let us have a fresh look at the role of politicians of the mainstream parties, the media and even the judiciary. They all seem to be working in unison for success of at least one objective of the plan; tarnishing the image of the armed forces. They may not be aware of the fact that they are all strengthening the hands of RAW and its associates to carve out an independent state of Balochistan and disintegrate Pakistan’s unity. Similarly, the holy warriors of TTP and other criminal outfits are foot soldiers employed for Kao plan execution. Politicians, as ever, are not siding with Pakistan. They are siding with Kao-boys. They are disturbed at the drone attacks but they do not feel disturbed at killing of innocent civilians at the hands of Kao-boys.

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