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Posted by Dr. Manzer Durrani in Corruption on February 23rd, 2012
ISLAMABAD – Some three corruption references and almost half a dozen inquiries were pending with National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and Accountability Courts against former Premier and PML-N President Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and his other family members, but the same could not be reopened as the Division Bench of Lahore High Court Rawalpindi Bench had barred the NAB to proceed against Sharif family.
Officials in the National Accountability Bureau informed The Nation that the Division Bench of Lahore High Court Rawalpindi Bench consisting of Justice Ijazul Hasan and Justice Wahid Khan, an appellate forum of Accountability Courts, had barred the Accountability Courts to proceed against Mian Nawaz Sharif and other family members in these three cases in October last year. The preemptive move was made in the Division Bench of LHC Rawalpindi after the incumbent Chairman NAB Admiral (Retd) Fasih Bokhari was appointed despite the objection on his appointment was made through a letter written to President Asif Ali Zardari by Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Ch. Nisar Ali Khan.
Sources in the PML-N informed that they had secured stay order against reopening of these cases from the Appellate Court only to prevent the PPP-led coalition government to use these cases for arm twisting of the PML-N leadership though NAB.
So an application for early hearing of their petition, pending with the court for past several months, was initiated and the very next day of moving of the application by Akram Sheikh Advocate stay against the opening of these cases was secured from the Division Bench of LHC Rawalpindi.
All the three cases-Hudaybia Paper Mills,Ittefaq Foundries and Assets reference—were framed against Mian Nawaz Sharif and his family members after dislodging of his elected government in 1999 and during year 2000 and initially all the three cases had been fixed for trial at Accountability Court Attock where Mian Nawaz Sharif and his brother Mian Shahbaz Sharif were kept after the dislodging of their government. All these cases were adjourned sine die under some clandestine deal when Mian Nawaz Sharif and his family was exiled to Saudi Arabia.
These cases were reopened in year 2007 when the Supreme Court allowed Mian Nawaz Sharif to return back to Pakistan but once again he was sent back to Saudi Arabia moments after he landed here at Islamabad Airport.
The request for the reopening of these cases was again made in year 2010 when the then Prosecutor General NAB Dr Danishwar Malik had moved an application seeking reopening of these cases on the plea that as the accused in these cases had returned back to the country so the cases against them should be reopened. But the matter once again went into limbo when the Accountability Court Rawalpindi No. 1 judge directed the Prosecutor General to furnish the request for reopening of these cased duly signed by Chairman NAB but as the slot of Chairman NAB was vacant and once again the court had adjourned these cases sine die. In State vs Hudaybia Paper Mills (Pvt) Ltd-nine members of the Sharif family were accused of committing a corruption of Rs 642.743 million.
As per NAB allegations the accused had secured loan against the Hudaybia Paper Mills and later used this money to pay off the loans of other companies owned by the Sharif family. Mian Muhammad Sharif, Mian Nawaz Sharif, Mian Shahbaz Sharif, Mian Abbas Sharif, Hussain Nawaz, Hamza Shahbaz Sharif, Mrs Shamim Akhtar (Mother to Nawaz Sharif), Mrs Sabiha Abbas, Mrs Maryam Safdar and former Federal Minister Ishaq Dar were the accused in this reference.
In State Vs Ittefaq Foundries etc, Mian Nawaz Sharif, his brother Mian Abbas Sharif and Kamal Qureshi were charged with the willful default of Rs 1.06 billion.
The main allegation against the accused in this case was that M/s Ittefaq Foundries Ltd obtained cash finance from National Bank. As per NAB allegations, the company willfully defaulted to pay back the amount in 1994. In State vs Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif etc is about the Raiwind assets.
Main allegation in this reference is that the accused had acquired vast tracts of land on which a number of palatial houses and mansions were constructed with less resources, which appeared to be grossly disproportionate to their known sources of income. As per NAB allegations, there involved an amount Rs 247.352 million that is under question. Apart from Mian Nawaz Sharif, his mother was also an accused in this case.
There are six investigations against Sharif pending before the NAB following Chairman NAB’s order. These pending investigations included; case of illegal appointments in the FIA against Mian Nawaz Sharif; misuse of authority by Nawaz Sharif as ex-Chief Minister Punjab in the construction of road from Raiwind to Sharif family house causing loss of Rs 125 million; Sharif Trust case against Nawaz Sharif/Sharif Trust involving allegation of money laundering, misappropriation of trust funds and acquisition of benami assets in the name of Sharif Trust; London properties case against Nawaz Sharif and others regarding owning of Aven Field properties in London; Illegal appointments in PIA allegedly by Mian Nawaz Sharif, and corruption in the allotment of Lahore Development Authority (LDA) plots involving ex-CM Nawaz Sharif, ex-DG LDA Brig (Retd) Manzoor Malik, ex-Director Estate and Shahid Rafi.
Two pending inquiries against Sharifs in the NAB included a complaint of allotment of LDA plots and another complaint about alleged misappropriation of government property by allotting 12 plots to Mian Attaullah instead of one in Gulshan Ravi Scheme ,thereby, causing loss of Rs 20 million to the State.
It is pertinent to mention here that Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and other accused in plane hijacking and helicopter case were acquitted.
Posted by Dr. Manzer Durrani in Pakistan's Hall of Shame on February 23rd, 2012
In May 2011, about one in five Pakistanis said they would like to move permanently to another country if they had the opportunity, rather than continue living in Pakistan. This measure has shown a steady increase since June 2008 when 6% of Pakistanis expressed a desire to move abroad permanently.
Pakistanis’ views on their country’s governance help explain the dramatic increase in people wanting to leave permanently.
Unquestionably, Pakistan faces many challenges: poverty, illiteracy, terrorist attacks, and a level of gender inequality that has limited women’s contributions. For several consecutive years, Pakistan has appeared on the Failed States Index, an annual ranking compiled by the Fund for Peace, a nonprofit research institution, and Foreign Policy magazine. Twelve factors determine whether a country is a “failed state” – including severe economic decline, deterioration of public services, and a country’s security apparatus operating as a state within a state.
This report focuses on Gallup’s findings in detail, including how attitudes differ with regard to demographics: male or female, educated or uneducated, urban or rural.
Military Retains People’s Confidence; Several Other Institutions Do Not
Pakistanis continue to profess more confidence in the military than in any other institution. The military has protected the country through three wars with India and has long dominated Pakistan’s national budget and domestic politics. However, it is also an institution many people would hesitate to criticize for fear of reprisal.
It is likely that the reputation of Pakistan’s military suffered somewhat after reports that its leaders had no prior knowledge of the May raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed. In the most recent flash Gallup poll conducted May 9-12, 78% of Pakistanis expressed confidence in the military, down from 86% (reflected in the graph on the following page) in a poll conducted mostly before the raid.
Despite this recent drop, the percentage of Pakistanis saying they have confidence in the military remains considerably higher than the percentage saying they have confidence in any other institution. After the military, Pakistanis express the most confidence in the judicial system and financial institutions, at roughly 60% each. The judicial system saw an increase in confidence after the two-year Lawyer’s Movement ended with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, being restored to his post in March 2009.
Other institutions in Pakistan – including the national government, local police, and elections – have the confidence of less than one-third of the population, and those numbers have declined over the last six years. The proportion of people with confidence in the honesty of elections was already low in 2005 – 4 in 10. Now, at roughly 2 in 10, it is half the previous level.
When it comes to confidence in institutions, men in Pakistan are more likely than women to express their views, either favorable or unfavorable, while a higher percentage of women say they do not know the answers to these questions. For instance, Pakistani men are more likely to say they have confidence in the judicial system (71% of men vs. 40% of women), whereas 19% of women say they do not know (compared with 4% of men). Similar patterns can be seen in men’s and women’s opinions of various institutions.
This pattern is not limited to gender; the “don’t know” response is also common among rural and less educated Pakistanis. Urban Pakistanis are far more likely than those in rural areas to express their opinions about their government’s institutions. The same is true for more educated Pakistanis with a secondary- or some tertiary-level education, compared with those who have only a primary-level education. Higher percentages of both urban Pakistanis and more educated Pakistanis, versus Pakistanis as a whole, say they do not have confidence in the national government and the honesty of elections.
Eight in 10 Pakistanis See Government as Corrupt – Big Jump From 2005
Pakistanis have become increasingly likely to view the government as corrupt over the last six years and during the past year in particular. Eighty-one percent of Pakistanis now see corruption as widespread in the government, versus 68% in the fall of 2005. This perceived rise in corruption may indirectly result from the large increase in U.S. military aid that began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. That aid – some $20 billion so far – was to go to the dismantling of “networks of nuclear proliferation” and was contingent on Pakistan’s “sustained commitment to significant efforts in combating terrorist groups,” according to the U.S. lawmakers who approved it. Instead, Pakistani army and intelligence services officials have used at least some of the money to enrich themselves or to fund militant groups that they regard as strategic in other ways, such as the Haqqani network and the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Such misappropriation of funds has likely contributed to the U.S. government’s recent suspension or cancelation of various forms of military aid to the country.
Few Pakistanis Rate Political Leaders Highly; Striking Difference From Military
Pakistanis have doubts about their leaders as well as their institutions. One in three Pakistanis say they approve of the local leaders in the city or area where they live, and one in five say they approve of Pakistan’s leadership at a national level. This is especially striking in comparison with the high confidence rating enjoyed by the military (based on the most recent Gallup flash poll, still close to 80%), despite the skepticism some Pakistanis have expressed about the military’s not knowing in advance about the bin Laden raid. The public opinion gap between confidence in the military and leadership approval is a reminder of the imbalance of strength and control between Pakistan’s military generals and elected politicians.
Small but Growing Number of Pakistanis Aspire to Leave Country Permanently
The severity of Pakistan’s challenges is evident in Pakistanis’ migration desires.
The rise in the number of Pakistanis aspiring to migrate – from 6% in June 2008 to 19% in May 2011 – coincides with a decline in the percentage of Pakistanis who are “thriving” in terms of how they rate their current lives and their optimism about their future. Gallup asks respondents to rate their current life and their life as they suspect it will be in five years on a 0-to-10 ladder scale based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. It then classifies respondents as “thriving,” “struggling,” or “suffering,” based on those ratings. Between spring 2007 and spring 2011, the percentage of Pakistanis who were thriving dipped by 11 percentage points, as more Pakistanis fell into the struggling or suffering categories. In line with the volatility on the ground in the country, the life evaluation numbers have fluctuated during that period.
IMPLICATIONS
In a late May trip to Islamabad, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that America’s policy goal is to “…ensure a secure, stable, democratic, prosperous future for Pakistan.”
Even so, some lawmakers in Washington have called to cut off U.S. aid to the country. Based on Gallup’s analysis, this approach seems misguided. Instead, it is recommended that the U.S. continue to provide economic aid to Pakistan. It is imperative that the appropriation of these funds be transparent and monitored so that they are spent bolstering those institutions that are in line with the vision Clinton asserted in Islamabad.
Britain may be on the verge of showing the way in this regard; Prime Minister David Cameron recently pledged to nearly triple the aid his country provides to Pakistan’s education system, which has some of the lowest primary school enrollment rates in South Asia.
Cameron has acknowledged that it will be a challenge to make sure his country’s aid money all reaches Pakistan’s schools. But the payoff – reducing illiteracy and poor schooling – is worth the risk, he has said, and will help not just Pakistan but other countries in the region and the world threatened by its instability.
Pakistan’s geopolitical importance and the tension that has surrounded its relationship with the U.S. in recent months make it easy for outside observers to overlook the very real problems facing Pakistanis. Those problems are evident in the waning confidence many Pakistanis have in local and national leaders and in their government institutions.
Within Pakistan and in the international community, the focus must shift. This is not to discount the extremism and militancy that exist in the country, or to suggest a strong military is not sometimes needed to hold these dangerous forces in check. But in the long run, the only way Pakistan can move in the direction of becoming more democratic, peaceful, and stable – and making itself inhospitable to extremists – is by shoring up its civilian institutions. As Aqil Shah, a Harvard-based expert on Pakistan has written, civilian institutions, including law enforcement agencies, all “share Washington’s interest in rooting out extremism and militancy in Pakistan. . . .”
Survey Methods
Gallup is entirely responsible for the management, design, and control of this study. For the past 70 years, Gallup has been committed to the principle that accurately collecting and disseminating the opinions and aspirations of people around the globe is vital to understanding our world. Gallup’s mission is to provide information in an objective, reliable, and scientifically grounded manner. Gallup is not associated with any political orientation, party, or advocacy group and does not accept partisan entities as clients.
Results are based on face-to-face interviews in Pakistan with approximately 10,139 adults, aged 18 and older in 2005, and 15 and older from 2007 through 2011. Surveys in 2005 were conducted in September; in 2007, surveys were conducted in June; surveys in 2008 were conducted May 14-June 26, Oct. 11-29, and Dec. 18-30; in 2009, surveys were conducted May 1-17, May 1-June 30, and Nov. 14-Dec. 7; in 2010, surveys were conducted May 5-25- and in 2011, surveys were conducted from April 25-May 14. The regions of FATA and AJK were excluded from the polling from June 2007 to May 2009. The areas of FATA and FANA were excluded from polling from May 2009 through May 2011. The excluded regions represent less than 5% of the population. In Pakistan, gender-matched sampling was used during the final stage of selection.
For results based on the total sample of adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4.2 percentage points. The margin of error reflects the influence of data weighting. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
The questionnaire was translated into Urdu. The translation process starts with an English version. A translator who is proficient in the English and Urdu languages translates the survey into the target language. A second translator reviews the language version against the original version and recommends refinements.
Abu Dhabi Gallup Center
The Abu Dhabi Gallup Center is a Gallup research hub based in the capital of the United Arab Emirates. It is the product of a partnership between Gallup, the world’s leading public opinion research firm, and the Crown Prince Court of Abu Dhabi.
Building on Gallup’s seminal work in the field of Muslim studies, the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center (ADGC) offers unmatched research on the attitudes and aspirations of Muslims around the word. In addition to its worldwide scope, the ADGC focuses on the specific priorities of its regional base and presents innovative analysis and insights on the most important challenges facing the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
Posted by Dr. Manzer Durrani in Defense on February 21st, 2012
Pakistan and US have a love-hate relationship. US in its new found love for chicanery riddled India had started growling at Pakistan. But, over 60 years of trust between Pentagon and GHQ, cannot be ignored. Trust is like blood, it is thicker than water. Despite, its policy tilt towards India, US is well aware of Indian back-stabbing and double dealing. As they say in US, they knew where their bread is buttered. In Pakistani colloqialism, US is not a Phuddho Phatta. On the other hand, Pakistanis have felt a deep sense of anger and betrayal by the US. The killing of our 24 young lions cannot be forgotten or covered by such gestures. This gesture will be appreciated and will go a long way to repair the tattered relationship. However, let us not dance till the fat lady sings. Pakistan needs to see more of such gestures, including release of all items in FMS pipeline, especially, the F16 D Fighter jets. Pakistani people starve but pay for these weaponary with hard cash. This brings jobs to US workers suffering almost 10-11 percent unemployment. So, this gesture will be win-win for both the nations.
ISLAMABAD — The Pakistani navy took delivery Tuesday of two state-of-the-art, US-made surveillance aircraft nine months after Islamist militants destroyed two similar planes, officials said.
Pakistan said the P3C aircraft, modified with the latest avionics, are designed to improve surveillance in the North Arabian sea, one of the world’s most important shipping routes deeply troubled by Somali piracy.
“The two aircraft have been delivered to the Pakistan navy. These aircraft have been provided under the foreign military funding programme,” a spokesman for the US embassy in Islamabad, told AFP.
Relations between Pakistan and the United States were severely damaged last year by a covert American raid that killed Osama bin Laden and air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, and the alliance remains tense.
The navy said the aircraft would help “maintain requisite vigil in our vital area of interest in the North Arabian Sea”, which it said was “home to intense maritime activity both legal and illegal and thus warrants continuous guard”.
Pakistan is to receive six P3C aircraft from the United States in three batches. The first two, received in 2010, were destroyed during a 17-hour siege of a key naval base in Karachi last May blamed on the Taliban.
The attack killed 10 personnel and deeply embarrassed the military, just three weeks after bin Laden was killed in the garrison town of Abbottabad.
Posted by Dr. Manzer Durrani in India on February 20th, 2012
Foundation Day of UNLF
The Unlf observed its foundation day today. A statement of UNLF said, November 24, 2011 marks the 47th birth anniversary of the United National Liberation Front (UNLF), Manipur. On this day, the Central Committee of the UNLF salutes our compatriots who have supported the armed struggle spearheaded by the UNLF for the liberation of Manipur from Indian colonial occupation. The Central Committee also takes this opportunity to place the Annual Report for 2011 for your deliberation. Our motherland Manipur has been one of the independent and sovereign countries in Western South East Asia for thousands of years. After World War II, the British began to let free, one after another, many countries it had colonized. Manipur, too, had regained its independence in 1947 and embarked on a democratic journey by holding an election in July, 1948, under a newly drafted Constitution. But this experiment was abruptly cut short in 1949 when India occupied Manipur through force and duplicity. Post 1949, when India annexed Manipur, the image and idea of Manipur have been chipped away bit by bit. During the British rule, the unity of Manipur had been prised open by placing the hill areas under a separate administrative regime. The trend has been continued by India till today. Under the influence of this „divide and rule policy, the long tradition of peaceful interdependence between and among the communities have given way to suspicion and hostility. This has discouraged solidarity and peaceful coexistence amongst the communities as well as stood athwart against the historical evolution of a united armed struggle for forging a new sense of nationhood. After India occupied Manipur, the principle contradiction has been the national contradiction between India, on one hand, and the people of Manipur as a whole, on the other hand. The only way to resolve this Annual Statement – 2011 irreconcilable contradiction is to forge an armed struggle cutting across ethnic affiliations to wrest independence from India. UNLF reiterates solemnly that it will continue to abide by its declared policy of “Autonomy at all levels” that respects and fosters languages, cultures, religion, economic development and identities of the communities, irrespective of their size, to ensure a life of dignity. In consonance with this principle, the UNLF condemns bigger entities trying to forcibly assimilate smaller ones. It is the firm belief of the UNLF that different communities with diverse cultures rubbing shoulders with one another under a regime that respects and promotes co-existence and co-prosperity of communities is a precondition for the birth of a larger national culture as well as a collective national identity. The regime of impunity sought to be justified in the name of containing armed struggle combined with India s policy of economic exploitation have tended to choke off the drive and creativity of the people and society. India s education policy which has no synergy with the tradition, heritage and lifeworld of the affinal groups inhabiting Manipur is deliberately promoting an environment and value system averse to questioning the hegemonic policies that India practices in Manipur and adjoining areas. Those who conform are rewarded suitably; those that resist are intimidated by use of force, including arbitrary arrests and death in “staged encounters”. The colonial system has alienated each of us, individually as well as collectively, from the geography and history that we have co-habited together through centuries and from each other to the extent that collectives are unable to acknowledge and accept the spirit forged through mutual association through centuries.
Posted by Dr. Manzer Durrani in India on February 20th, 2012
The Maoist or Naxalite insurgency in India is gnawing away India’s roots and has become a cause of major concern of its administration.
Let us briefly examine this uprising. The term ‘Naxalite’ draws its origin from an organized armed peasant resistance against the landlords that began in March 1967 in a small village called Naxalbari in the state of West Bengal. It signaled the birth of a new movement and since then, all forms of armed struggle with socio-economic development of the downtrodden as the cause have come to be termed ‘Naxalite’. Other terms that are used to describe the movement are ‘leftwing extremism’ and ‘radical Maoism’.
Naxalites are backed by the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). According to Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, Naxalites’ extremism today constitutes the single most important internal security threat to India. The Naxal groups have spread their activities to as many as 22 out of 28 states in the country. In East Bengal the Naxal movement was immensely popular with not only the radical sections of the students movement in Calcutta, but the whole student body of Bengal undeniably were sympathetic about them since the mainstream Communist ideology had proved itself to be hypocritical and farcical in practice, as they stand to this day. The state machinery of India systematically annihilated this student support baseline from the whole movement as international human rights watchdog bodies picked up frantic calls of disappearances of students and intellectuals. Between 1969 and 1979 an estimated 5000 students and intellectuals disappeared or were killed under mysterious conditions. The West Bengal Left Front maintains that these students and intellectuals left their education to join violent activities of the Naxalites. Charu Majumdar progressively changed the tactics of CPI (ML), and declared that revolutionary warfare was to take place not only in the rural areas but everywhere and spontaneously. Thus Majumdar’s ‘annihilation line’, a dictum that Naxalites should assassinate individual “class enemies” as a part of the insurrection, was exploited by state media and the Bengal Left Front to infuse a sense of demonic identity into Naxals and over thirty years portrayed them as a social evil.
Naxalites
Whereas the statistical data refers to the theory being only practiced against such elements in civil society who were deemed to be “class enemies”: the police, landlords, and corrupt politicians cutting across mainstream party lines. Throughout Calcutta, schools were shut down. The strategy of individual terrorism soon proved counterproductive. Eventually, the Chief Minister, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, began to institute counter-measures against the Naxalites. The West Bengal police and the state sponsored CPI (Marxist) cadres fought back to stop the advancement of Naxalites. 
The student part of the movement was cruelly repressed by numerous disappearing s, staged encounters, and a doldrum of state sponsored media allegations tarnishing the image of the Naxalite movement and this massive and relentless public brain washing campaign was partly successful in hijacking public opinion sympathetic of the Naxalite ideology to that of misinformed ‘fear’. The human rights violations on the West Bengal police went unabated for decades after this to attain the demonic proportions of the eighties and nineties where they have been appropriately termed as the ‘uniformed mafia’. Buddhadev Bhattacharya tactically led from the front line as the police and home minister of West Bengal during the same period to turn the evil nexus of CPIM and the West Bengal Police into a feared repressive regime which was the most effective counteractive agent against the onslaught of Naxalites.
Significantly, aside from the internal dynamics of the Maoist/ Naxal insurgency India also perceives an external element to it. Indian security and intelligence agencies maintain that the Maoists are receiving weapons from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and China through illegal channels So far Indian security forces have tried to suppress the rebellion with brute force; there is an increasing need of a serious dialogue with all the groups involved in the Maoist/Naxal insurgency. The dialogue which has taken place so far with the Maoists is deemed to be a mere ploy by the government to buy time before launching a stronger offensive against the Maoists for which a number of internal security measures have been taken recently which include: trawling the international arms market to upgrade the country’s counter-insurgency capabilities by India’s security agencies; floating global tenders for more than 800 bulletproof vehicles by the Indian military, which are likely to be given to security agencies involved in counter-insurgency operations in Moist effected areas; allocating an additional 10 billion dollars by the Indian government to upgrade its homeland security by 2016. This upgrade envisages affordable technology comprising laser-guided armaments, light vehicles and drones as priority purchases. India has also drawn up a multi-pronged strategy that will target top leaders, win people through a propaganda war and offer cadres a surrender-and-rehabilitation policy while launching an extensive armed operation in Maoist strongholds across the country.
The Indian Central government has also asked the State governments to speed up development works and employment generation programmes in the Naxal-affected areas so as to counter left wing extremism with development. A military advisor has been appointed to prepare an action plan for dealing with Maoists. Indian Central Government is actively considering setting up brigade headquarters or Army cantonments in interior areas of Naxal affected states.
India’s Red Army — Naxals/Maoists
If Indian media reports are credible, the Indian government is preparing to launch full-fledged anti-Naxal operations at three different areas, considered tri-junctions of worst Naxal-affected states. The tri-junctions identified for the offensive are Andhra Pradesh-Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh; Orissa-Jharkhand-Chhattisgarh and West Bengal-Jharkhand- Orissa. The Maoists are enjoying popular support in the poorer area of rural, central and eastern India. Any full fledged anti-Naxal operation will be a great challenge to the Indian Security establishment.
India is hosting the 2010 Commonwealth games for the first time and in the backdrop of acute threats from the Naxalites, its security forces face a major challenge. Unless it can curb or pacify the Naxalites in the meanwhile, it may be nigh impossible to host the games without exposing the participants from 71 nations to extreme danger.
—Sultan M Hali
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