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Posts Tagged Feudals

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd) Pakistan Army: Free & Fair Elections vs Clean Contestants

LETTER TO EDITOR

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February 18th, 2013

 

Free & Fair Elections vs Clean Contestants

 

The CEC has once again assured the public to hold a free and fair elections and this is probably the umpteenth assurance coming from him.  What I am longing to hear from him at least once is that he will ensure that only the clean and honest politicians will be allowed to context the elections.  What is the use of the elections how so ever free and fair those may be if we have to elect from the same corrupt and dishonest lot of the politicians?! Mr. Justice CEC please assure us that only the clean and honest contestants would be there for us to elect from as we do not repeat do not want to elect the same rotten lot of politicians once again.

 

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)
30 Westridge 1
Rawalpindi 46000
Pakistan
Tel: (051) 5158033
E.mail: [email protected]

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Dr.Tahir-ul-Qadri: “The Canary in a Coal Mine” and the Raiwind Rats

Dr.Tahir-ul-Qadri, “The Canary in a Coal Mine” and the Raiwind Rats

 

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Early coal mines did not feature ventilation systems, so legend has it that miners would bring a caged canary into new coal seams. Canaries are especially sensitive to methane and carbon monoxide, which made them ideal for detecting any dangerous gas build-ups. As long as the bird kept singing, the miners knew their air supply was safe. A dead canary signaled an immediate evacuation.  Dr.Tahir-ul Qadri is like a canary in a coal mine. He is not dead, but, his message is dead as far as the  so-called malevolent “democratic,” ruling junta of Pakistan led by Asif Zardari, PPP, and their cohorts, Nawaz Shariff, PML(N), and the rest of the stinking and malodorously corrupt, menagerie of Pakistan’s ruling elite and obnoxiously rich feudals.

EinsteinTahir-ul-Qadri is a man of the masses. He is well tuned to their dreams, desires, and needs.  Unlike, Imran Khan, his following comes from both rural and urban masses of Pakistan. He is a man of vision and has dreamt the same dream, which most Pakistanis would like their nation to be. But, unfortunately, an honest and sincere person can be duped very easily. In Tahir-ul-Qadri’s case he fell into a pool of crocodiles, the “mugger-mutch,” called status quo politicians. When they found that their franchise of 65 years was being threatened, they quickly closed ranks, and went into a long huddle in Raiwind. When they came out, they had a plan to de-neutralize Dr.Qadri. First, they formed a circle of unity around him and played on his sincerity and agreed to all his demands, while they kept their best strategist Asif Zardari, tune into their Anti-Qadri Huddle and Strategy Sessions, via remote control. Finally, they came out of the Raiwind Rat Hole and poor Qadri Sahib fell right into their trap. Every great leader has a certain amount of narcissism and Qadri Sahib is no exception. Therefore, the Raiwind Rats started eulogizing the great vision of Allama Qadri. They even signed the Long March Agreement, which they had no intention of honoring from the get go. The Islamabad Long March ended without firing a shot. All was hunky dory and Allama Qadri felt vindicated. But, little did he know, that the whole government rapprochement psychology was just a charade, a mere mirage, to de-fang the cobra, which would have ended 65 years of tyranny of the feudal oligarch. In doing so, these Denizens of Hades, destroyed the only Ray of Hope, the long suffering 180 million politically, socially, and economically abused people of Pakistan. But, be warned, warts and all, Tahir-ul-Qadri tried to bring about a peace change in a 200 years old Colonialists established feudalistic society. He was masterfully neutralized by a cancerous gang of thugs called Pakistan’s political elite, made-up of crooked politicians, like Asif Zardari, Chaudhrys of Gujrat, Asfandyar Wali, Mulla Fazlur Rahman a.k.a “Mulla Diesel, and JI.

You may ask what the future holds for Pakistan?  The answer is that the current status quo may continue till the elections. But, once they start all hell will break lose if the same cabal of political Mafiosi retain power. Pakistan has been reduced to the level of chaotic Somalia. The country is armed to the teeth and the masses of people are hungry. There will come a time, when Pakistani politicians will get religion. They will pray for another mortal messiah, like Qadri.  Allah sends warners to all nations.

The Glorious Qur’an mentions in Surah Fatir, chapter 35 verse 24 “ . . . And there never was a people, without a Warner having lived among them (in the past).” [Al-Qur’an 35:24].

The Warners came in the shape of Prophets or Allah’s messengers.  The Last Prophet was Muhammad (SAW), who was sent to All Mankind, to give the Last Message of Allah, the Lord and Creator of All Universes, Rab- il-Alameen.  Muhammad (SAW) was the Seal of the Prophets (No Prophet will succeed him). However, Allah continues to send warners, who are not Prophets, but ordinary human beings, who do extraordinary things. They come deliver their people from bondage and misery of tyrannical rulers and societies. Among the notables of our time are Mr. Abdus Sattar Edhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, and Cesar Chavez.

If there is no heed paid to the modern day “warners,” the results can be disastrous. Case in point, Quaid-e-Azam had warned the British about the machinations of Hindus, including Gandhi, Nehru, and Patel, in grabbing major portion of the then British Sub-Continent. The British paid no heed, because, they were in a hurry to cut their losses and make a quick exit, thus leaving a flaming sub-continent. Millions of poor and indigent people paid with their lives. Demonic ethnic and religious forces unleashed and the sub continent was left in shambles.

Dr.Tahir ul Qadri is nothing but a warner, to a nation of errant ruling elite. They have made a mockery of not only his ideas, but incessantly, ridiculed his personality and his visage. Third rate individuals like Qamar-uz-Zaman Kaira, a bucolic yokel, tried comedic impersonation of the Islamic Jurisprudence Scholar. Others cast a doubt on his motives and made sinister allegations about his character and motives, without providing a verifiable argument. Low IQ individuals, like the former cowardly PM Nawaz Shariff denigrated Allama Qadri’s organization and his mission. Long story short, without paying attention to his message, they figuratively shot the messenger.

 

So what comes next may not be a peaceful transition, rather a Bloody Revolution is on the horizon in Pakistan.  The 180 million Pakistan are FEd-UP and will NOT take it anymore. The posh houses of DHA in Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad, may end up in a flaming inferno instigated by the rampaging hordes of starving Pakistanis. The Pakistan Military may not be able to control, a total descent of society into chaos.  Qadri is a canary

 

History tends to repeat itself, although, the circumstances or locale may be different, but economic repression and penury of the masses lead to bloody revolutions. In France, Bastille was a cultural paradigm and a case study on the history of French political culture. Its storming and subsequent fall of the Bastille in Paris on July 14, 1789 and how it came to represent the cornerstone of the French Revolution, becoming a symbol of the repression of the Old Regime.  Similarly, the Islamabad is a cultural icon and a center of Pakistan’s political cross currents. It is unlike any other city in Pakistan and during Dr.Qadri’s Long March the have-nots of Pakistan in their thousands if not millions, saw, how the elite of Pakistan lives in the lap of luxury, while, they cannot afford one square meal a day.  They have long memories and their first target will be the Presidency and the Prime Minister’s House.  Mr. Zardari and Raja “Rental” Pervez, be well advised to start practicing their escape routes. Dubai, may not be a good option, if that’s their Plan B. It has thousands of Pakistanis, who come from the economically deprived classes of Pakistan.  They may make both their lives hell or even cause them harm to them. So, as they say, “People Stay Tuned,” the canary in the mine has died, next comes…

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WILLIAM DALRYMPLE: BENAZIR BHUTTO:PAKISTAN’S FLAWED AND FEUDAL “PRINCESS”

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It’s wrong for the West simply to mourn Benazir Bhutto as a martyred democrat, says this acclaimed south Asia expert. Her legacy is far murkier and more complex

One of Benazir Bhutto’s more dubious legacies to Pakistan is the Prime Minister’s house in the middle of Islamabad. The building is a giddy, pseudo-Mexican ranch house with white walls and a red tile roof. There is nothing remotely Islamic about the building which, as my minder said when I went there to interview the then Prime Minister Bhutto, was ‘PM’s own design’. Inside, it was the same story. Crystal chandeliers dangled sometimes two or three to a room; oils of sunflowers and tumbling kittens that would have looked at home on the Hyde Park railings hung below garishly gilt cornices.

The place felt as though it might be the weekend retreat of a particularly flamboyant Latin-American industrialist, but, in fact, it could have been anywhere. Had you been shown pictures of the place on one of those TV game-shows where you are taken around a house and then have to guess who lives there, you may have awarded this hacienda to virtually anyone except, perhaps, to the Prime Minister of an impoverished Islamic republic situated next door to Iran.

Which is, of course, exactly why the West always had a soft spot for Benazir Bhutto. Her neighbouring heads of state may have been figures as unpredictable and potentially alarming as President Ahmadinejad of Iran and a clutch of opium-trading Afghan warlords, but Bhutto has always seemed reassuringly familiar to Western governments – one of us. She spoke English fluently because it was her first language. She had an English governess, went to a convent run by Irish nuns and rounded off her education with degrees from Harvard and Oxford.

‘London is like a second home for me,’ she once told me. ‘I know London well. I know where the theatres are, I know where the shops are, I know where the hairdressers are. I love to browse through Harrods and WH Smith in Sloane Square. I know all my favourite ice cream parlours. I used to particularly love going to the one at Marble Arch: Baskin Robbins. Sometimes, I used to drive all the way up from Oxford just for an ice cream and then drive back again. That was my idea of sin.’

It was difficult to imagine any of her neighbouring heads of state, even India’s earnest Sikh economist, Manmohan Singh, talking like this.

For the Americans, what Benazir Bhutto wasn’t was possibly more attractive even than what she was. She wasn’t a religious fundamentalist, she didn’t have a beard, she didn’t organise rallies where everyone shouts: ‘Death to America’ and she didn’t issue fatwas against Booker-winning authors, even though Salman Rushdie ridiculed her as the Virgin Ironpants in his novel Shame.

However, the very reasons that made the West love Benazir Bhutto are the same that gave many Pakistanis second thoughts. Her English might have been fluent, but you couldn’t say the same about her Urdu which she spoke like a well-groomed foreigner: fluently, but ungrammatically. Her Sindhi was even worse; apart from a few imperatives, she was completely at sea.

English friends who knew Benazir at Oxford remember a bubbly babe who drove to lectures in a yellow MG, wintered in Gstaad and who to used to talk of the thrill of walking through Cannes with her hunky younger brother and being ‘the centre of envy; wherever Shahnawaz went, women would be bowled over’.

This Benazir, known to her friends as Bibi or Pinky, adored royal biographies and slushy romances: in her old Karachi bedroom, I found stacks of well-thumbed Mills and Boons including An Affair to Forget, Sweet Imposter and two copies of The Butterfly and the Baron. This same Benazir also had a weakness for dodgy Seventies easy listening – ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree’ was apparently at the top of her playlist. This is also the Benazir who had an enviable line in red-rimmed fashion specs and who went weak at the sight of marrons glace.

But there was something much more majestic, even imperial, about the Benazir I met when she was Prime Minister. She walked and talked in a deliberately measured and regal manner and frequently used the royal ‘we’. At my interview, she took a full three minutes to float down the 100 yards of lawns separating the Prime Minister’s house from the chairs where I had been told to wait for her. There followed an interlude when Benazir found the sun was not shining in quite the way she wanted it to. ‘The sun is in the wrong direction,’ she announced. Her hair was arranged in a sort of baroque beehive topped by a white gauze dupatta. The whole painted vision reminded me of one of those aristocratic Roman princesses in Caligula

This Benazir was a very different figure from that remembered by her Oxford contemporaries. This one was renowned throughout Islamabad for chairing 12-hour cabinet meetings and for surviving on four hours’ sleep. This was the Benazir who continued campaigning after the suicide bomber attacked her convoy the very day of her return to Pakistan in October, and who blithely disregarded the mortal threat to her life in order to continue fighting. This other Benazir Bhutto, in other words, was fearless, sometimes heroically so, and as hard as nails.

More than anything, perhaps, Benazir was a feudal princess with the aristocratic sense of entitlement that came with owning great tracts of the country and the Western-leaning tastes that such a background tends to give. It was this that gave her the sophisticated gloss and the feudal grit that distinguished her political style. In this, she was typical of many Pakistani politicians. Real democracy has never thrived in Pakistan, in part because landowning remains the principle social base from which politicians emerge.

The educated middle class is in Pakistan still largely excluded from the political process. As a result, in many of the more backward parts of Pakistan, the feudal landowner expects his people to vote for his chosen candidate. As writer Ahmed Rashid put it: ‘In some constituencies, if the feudals put up their dog as a candidate, that dog would get elected with 99 per cent of the vote.’

Today, Benazir is being hailed as a martyr for freedom and democracy, but far from being a natural democrat, in many ways, Benazir was the person who brought Pakistan’s strange variety of democracy, really a form of ‘elective feudalism’, into disrepute and who helped fuel the current, apparently unstoppable, growth of the Islamists. For Bhutto was no Aung San Suu Kyi. During her first 20-month premiership, astonishingly, she failed to pass a single piece of major legislation. Amnesty International accused her government of having one of the world’s worst records of custodial deaths, killings and torture.

Within her party, she declared herself the lifetime president of the PPP and refused to let her brother Murtaza challenge her. When he persisted in doing so, he ended up shot dead in highly suspicious circumstances outside the family home. Murtaza’s wife Ghinwa and his daughter Fatima, as well as Benazir’s mother, all firmly believed that Benazir gave the order to have him killed.

As recently as the autumn, Benazir did and said nothing to stop President Musharraf ordering the US and UK-brokered ‘rendition’ of her rival, Nawaz Sharif, to Saudi Arabia and so remove from the election her most formidable rival. Many of her supporters regarded her deal with Musharraf as a betrayal of all her party stood for.

Behind Pakistan’s endless swings between military government and democracy lies a surprising continuity of elitist interests: to some extent, Pakistan’s industrial, military and landowning classes are all interrelated and they look after each other. They do not, however, do much to look after the poor. The government education system barely functions in Pakistan and for the poor, justice is almost impossible to come by. According to political scientist Ayesha Siddiqa: ‘Both the military and the political parties have all failed to create an environment where the poor can get what they need from the state. So the poor have begun to look to alternatives for justice. In the long term, flaws in the system will create more room for the fundamentalists.’

In the West, many right-wing commentators on the Islamic world tend to see the march of political Islam as the triumph of an anti-liberal and irrational ‘Islamo-fascism’. Yet much of the success of the Islamists in countries such as Pakistan comes from the Islamists’ ability to portray themselves as champions of social justice, fighting people such as Benazir Bhutto from the Islamic elite that rules most of the Muslim world from Karachi to Beirut, Ramallah and Cairo.

This elite the Islamists successfully depict as rich, corrupt, decadent and Westernised. Benazir had a reputation for massive corruption. During her government, the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International named Pakistan one of the three most corrupt countries in the world.

Bhutto and her husband, Asif Zardari, widely known as ‘Mr 10 Per Cent’, faced allegations of plundering the country. Charges were filed in Pakistan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States to investigate their various bank accounts.

When I interviewed Abdul Rashid Ghazi in the Islamabad Red Mosque shortly before his death in the storming of the complex in July, he kept returning to the issue of social justice: ‘We want our rulers to be honest people,’ he said. ‘But now the rulers are living a life of luxury while thousands of innocent children have empty stomachs and can’t even get basic necessities.’ This is the reason for the rise of the Islamists in Pakistan and why so many people support them: they are the only force capable of taking on the country’s landowners and their military cousins.

This is why in all recent elections, the Islamist parties have hugely increased their share of the vote, why they now already control both the North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan and why it is they who are most likely to gain from the current crisis.

Benazir Bhutto was a courageous, secular and liberal woman. But sadness at the demise of this courageous fighter should not mask the fact that as a pro-Western feudal leader who did little for the poor, she was as much a central part of Pakistan’s problems as the solution to them.

· William Dalrymple’s latest book, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857, published by Bloomsbury, recently won the Duff Cooper Prize for History

 

Feudalism in Pakistan

 

I sometimes wonder if what Pakistan doesn’t really need is a good dose of land reform to break up feudal power. The extraordinary inequities in Pakistan seem not only unjust but also an impediment to both economic growth and national consensus.

For those who haven’t been to Pakistan, you should know that in remote areas you periodically run into vast estates — comparable to medieval Europe — in which the landowner runs the town, perhaps operates a private prison in which enemies are placed, and sometimes pretty much enslaves local people through debt bondage, generation after generation. This feudal elite has migrated into politics, where it exerts huge influence. And just as the heartlessness of feudal and capitalist barons in the 19th century created space for Communists, so in Pakistan this same lack of compassion for ordinary people seems to create space for Islamic extremists. There are other answers, of course, such as education, civil society, and the lawyers’ movement. But I wonder if land reform wouldn’t be a big help.

Dwight Perkins, the great Harvard economist of development, argued that a crucial factor in the rise of East Asia was the land reform and division in countries like Japan and South Korea after World War II, creating a more equal society. (In Japan, this was done under U.S. auspices: we were much more socialist outside our country than in it.) Likewise, India had its own land reform in 1953, but Pakistan was left out.

I’ve often focused on education as the greatest need for Pakistan, but even there the feudal structure is replicated. There are first-rate schools in English for the elite, second-rate schools for the strivers, and execrable schools for the masses. At the bad schools, teachers don’t even bother to show up. This highly stratified system tends to perpetuate an ossified economic and social structure, and creates less room for the country to innovate and build or use human capital.

But I’m a novice here. Those of you who know Pakistan much better than I — what do you think? Is the feudal land structure a major part of the problem? And if so, is it so entrenched that it’s not even worth dreaming of land reform? Is it more feasible to chip away at the feudal structure by broadening education? I’m all ears. Let me know what you think

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DESTROY SHAHRUKH JATOI, THE POSTER BOY OF FEUDAL COBRAS WHO HAVE BITTEN MILLIONS OF PAKISTANIS FOR 60 YEARS

 

POSTER BOY OF PAKISTANI FEUDALS

 

 

 

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 To Defeat The Taliban, Pakistani Feudalism and Their Perpetrators Must Die: Like Shahzeb, the Pakistani Feudals Will Murder All Pakistanis Through Starvation, Disease, Illiteracy, Joblessness, Crime, and Sexual Exploitation of Women and Gender Bias.  .

 

On December 25, Shahzeb Khan was shot dead in Karachi. Since his death, Shahzeb has become a symbol in Pakistan, with his picture spreading across social media platforms. Ordinary Pakistanis want his death to be the end of Pakistani feudal class, who live above the law in the South Asian country.The alleged killers, Siraj Talpur and Shahrukh Jatoi, are the member of two powerful feudal families. Pakistan’s political and social systems are still rife with corruption, leaving families like the Talpur and Jatoi outside of the reach of the law for many ordinary Pakistanis.

  

Shahzeb’s murder should be the final nail in the coffin of Pakistan’s feudalism. Shahzeb’s murder is a crime against a nation of 180 million people. It has to be avenged with the Biblical punishment of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Several hundred thousand Pakistani poor have died at the hands of the feudals, who control, not only large tracts of land, but also, have used their power to gain 75 percent of seats in the parliament and provincial assembly.  It is about time; Pakistanis came up with a Hitlerian final solution to the curse of feudalism in the nation. These feudals should be pulled out of their lavish homes, cars, and planes and tried.  Pakistani people need to have summary trial courts and, if found guilty of suppression of tenants, murder, rape, and tax evasion, they should be summarily executed not by the Army, but by Pakistan Police Firing Squads. Feudals are the root cause of all of the problems, which Pakistan has suffered for the last 60 years. Once, this plague on Pakistan is removed, the nation will start to flourish and their will be thousand points of light to economic freedom, abolition of hunger, penury, servitude, and unacknowledged slavery. Feudal exploitation breeds poverty, which in turn breed terrorism, crime, and corruption. Wake up Pakistanis! Today it is Shahzeb, tomorrow it will be you. Abolish land holdings and revert all land to the state, which would then distribute to Muzaras. Punjab and Sindh are two provinces, where feudalism is rampant. In the last sixty years, all power has rested with feudals. Pakistan are working under the tutelage of the feudal class.

 FEUDAL MAFIAS & THE COBRAS OF FEUDALISM

  1. Khattar (Hayat) family
  2. Bhutto family
  3. Sharif family
  4. Tareen (Tarin) clan or family of Haripur, Hazara
  5. Jadoon Family
  6. Soomro family
  7. Chaudhrys of Gujrat
  8. Gabol family
  9. Khattaks
  10.  Marwats
  11. Junejo family
  12. Badshah Khan family
  13. Kundi family
  14. Rana & Rao family
  15. Zia-ul-Haq family
  16. Noon family
  17. Leghari family
  18. Qazi family
  19. Zardari family
  20.  Daultana family
  21. Khakhwani family

 

Khattar (Hayat) family

 

Sikandar Hayat Khan (Punjabi politician), KB, KCSI

Shaukat Hayat Khan, Shaukat i Punjab

Mazhar Ali Khan

Tariq Ali Khan

Begum Mahmooda Salim Khan

Bhutto family

 

The members of Bhutto family (Urdu: خاندان بھٹو‎) in politics:

 

Shah Nawaz Bhutto – The Dewan of Junagadh and the Father of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (Member Bombay Council).

Wahid Baksh Bhutto – (1898 – 1931) was a landowner of Sindh, an elected representative to the Central Legislative Assembly and an educational philanthropist.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, son of Shah Nawaz (President (1970–1973); Prime Minister (1973–1977))

Mumtaz Bhutto, cousin of Zulfikar, (chief of Bhutto tribe, former chief minister and Governor of Sindh, Federal Minister of Pakistan)

Nusrat Bhutto, wife of Zulfikar (former minister without portfolio)

Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfikar (Prime Minister, 1988–1990 and 1993–1996), assassinated December 27, 2007.

Murtaza Bhutto, elder son of former Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the brother of former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto. He was usually known as Murtaza Bhutto and was assassinated under mysterious circumstances.

Shahnawaz Bhutto, Shahnawaz was studying in Switzerland when Zia ul Haq’s military regime executed his father in 1979. Prior to the execution On July 18, 1985, the 27 year old Shahnawaz was found dead in Nice, France. He died under mysterious circumstances.

Fatima Bhutto, Fatima was born in Kabul, Afghanistan while her father Murtaza Bhutto was in exile during the military regime of General Zia ul Haq. Murtaza Bhutto, was son of former Pakistan’s President and Prime Minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

Ameer Bux Bhutto, currently Vice President of Sindh National Front and also ex-Member of Sindh Assembly. He is son of Mumtaz Bhutto.

 

Sharif family

Nawaz Sharif, Former Prime Minister of Pakistan

Shahbaz Sharif, Chief Minister of Punjab

Hamza Shahbaz Sharif, Son of Shahbaz Shareef, (Member of National Assembly of Pakistan)

Maryam Nawaz, daughter of Nawaz Sharif

Tareen (Tarin) clan or family of Haripur, Hazara

Khan Sahib Abdul Majid Khan Tarin, OBE

Field-Marshal General Ayub Khan, President of Pakistan

Begum Mahmooda Salim Khan (see also Wah/Hayat Khattar Family, above)

Gohar Ayub Khan

Omar Ayub Khan

Jehangir Khan Tareen

Jadoon Family

 

Prominent figures of the Jadoon family

 

Khan Sultan Muhammad khan Jadoon,Chief of Jadoon,Ruler of Hazara

Amanullah Khan Jadoon (Minister of Petroleum and Gas during 2002 to 2007)

Iqbal Khan Jadoon,Former Chief Minister,NWFP

Akhtar Jadoon (MPA,KARACHI.)

 

Soomro family

 

Members of Soomro family (Urdu: خاندان سومرو‎) in politics are:

Khan Bahadur Allah Bux Soomro, Twice Chief Minister of Sindh

Elahi Bux Soomro, remained Member of National Assembly of Pakistan, Speaker National Assembly of Pakistan, Federal Minister

Rahim Bux Soomro, Minister Sindh

Mohammad Mian Soomro, remained President of Pakistan, Prime Minister of Pakistan, Senate of Pakistan and Governor of Sindh

 

Chaudhrys of Gujrat

 

Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi (A parliamentarian who played a major role in restoration of democracy and human rights in Pakistan)

Chaudhry Shujat Hussain (Prime Minister of Pakistan – June – August 2004)

Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi (Chief Minister of Punjab – October – 2002 to October 2007)

Chaudhry Shafaat Hussain (Younger brother of Chaudhry Shujat Hussain and the District Nazim of Gujrat since 2001)

Moonis Elahi (Son of Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, Member of Punjab Assembly)

 

Gabol family

 

Allah Bakhsh Gabol, Member Bombay Legislative Assembly 1928, Member Sindh Legislative Assembly 1937 and Mayor of Karachi for two terms.

Nabil Gabol (Grandson of Khan Bahadur Allah Bakhsh and son of Ahmed Khan Gabol), Member Sindh Assembly 1988, 1993, 1997; Member National Assembly 2002, 2008 and Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping.

 

 

Khattaks

 

Habibullah Khan Khattak, The son of Khan Bahadur Kuli Khan Khattak, his son Ali Kuli Khan Khattak also rose to the rank of Lt Gen and retired as the Chief of General Staff (CGS) in 1998.After his premature retirement from the Army, Khattak became closely involved in the private idunstry sector through his company Bibojee Group. He also served as a federal minister during Zia-ul Haq’s time and made an abortive attempt to contest elections from his home constituency of Karak.

Ali Kuli Khan Khattak,Lieutenant General Ali Kuli Khan Khattak, is senior retired three-star general and military strategist who was a former Chief of General Staff (CGS), Commander X Corps (Rawalpindi) and Director General Military Intelligence (DGMI) of the Pakistan Army.

Ghulam Faruque,The late Khan Bahadur Ghulam Faruque Khan Khattak(1899–1992) was a politician and industrialist of Pakistan. He belonged to the village Shaidu in Nowshera District, Nowshera is the home of the famous Pashtun Tribe the Khattak of the NWFP Province in Pakistan. Because of his contribution to Pakistan’s Industrial development he is sometimes described as “The Goliath who Industrialized Pakistan”.

 

Marwats

 

Habibullah Khan Marwat, Justice of the West Pakistan High Court, first & second Chairman of the Senate of Pakistan, acting President of Pakistan, when the President Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry went abroad, Pakistan’s Interior Minister and also Chief Minister of West Pakistan. Was elected to the first ever Legislative Council of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (then North-West Frontier Province NWFP), first as a member and later Deputy Speaker.

Shah Nawaz Khan, ex-Chief Justice of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Judge on the Supreme Court of Pakistan. He was also Governor of NWFP.

Muhammad Akram Khan, MPA, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, Minister for Excise and Taxation in Arbab Jahangir, Cabinet Member (1985–88)

Salim Saifullah Khan, Senator of Pakistan, [[President Pakistan Muslim League {Like minded group}]]

Anwar Saifullah Khan, MPA, Federal Minister under the Premiership of Benazir Bhutto

 

Junejo family

 

The members of Junejo family (Urdu: خاندان جونیجو‎) in politics:

 

Raees-Ul-Muhajireen Barrister Jan Muhammad Junejo – Leader of the Khilafat Tehreek.

Mohammad Khan Junejo Former Prime Minister of Pakistan

Jam Sadiq Ali – Former Chief Minister Sindh

Chakar Ali Khan Junejo – Former Ambassador MPA

 

Badshah Khan family

The members of Badshah Khan’s family (Urdu: خاندان بادشاه خان‎) in politics:

 

Khan Mohammad Abbas Khan (Former member of Indian National Congress,served as the Interim Mister for Industries, Freedom fighter and an Active Member of Pakistan Muslim League) (cousin of Haroon Khan Badshah)

Haroon Khan Badshah (Member of Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, ex-provincial Minister for Agriculture Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa)

 

Kundi family

 

Abdul Quayyum Khan Kundi, former President Pakistan Chamber of Commerce-USA and member Advisory Committee of Pakistan Tehrike Insaf (PTI)

 

Rana & Rao family

 

Rao Mohammad Hashim Khan,(Member of National Assembly, Ex-Chairman Public Accounts Committee)

Rana Tanveer Hussain,(Member of National Assembly)(Ex.Federal Minister)

Rao Sikandar Iqbal,(Ex.Federal Minister)

 

Zia-ul-Haq family

 

The members of Zia-ul-Haq’s family (Urdu: خاندان ضياءالحق‎) in politics:

Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (President of Pakistan, 1978–1988)

Muhammad Ijaz-ul-Haq (Federal Minister for Religious Affairs & Minorities: January 2004 – November 2007)

Noon family

 

Noon family (Urdu: خاندان نون‎) is major political family of Pakistan.

 Members of Noon family

Malik Adnan Hayat Noon Ex-MNA

Malik Amjad Ali Noon .Ex-ambassador, Ex-chairman

Malik Anwar Ali Noon. PPP leader in Sargodha

Malik Feroz Khan Noon Ex-Prime minister of Pakistan.

 

Leghari family 

The members of Leghari family (Urdu: خاندان لغاری‎), in politics:

Farooq Leghari (ex President of Pakistan)

Awais Leghari (MPA, MNA, Federal Minister)

Rafique Haider Khan Leghari (MPA “Punjab”, Minister, Chairman District Council RY Khan,

 

Qazi family

Members of Qazi family (Urdu: خاندان قاضی‎), of Sindh in politics:

Qazi Abdul Majeed Abid (Qazi Abid), a four-time Federal Minister, Sindh Provincial Minister, and son of Qazi Abdul Qayyum

Fahmida Mirza, current Speaker of the National Assembly, former Acting President of Pakistan, three-time Member of the National Assembly, and daughter of Qazi Abid

Qazi Asad Abid, a former Member of the National Assembly and son of Qazi Abid

Zulfiqar Mirza, current Sindh Provincial Home Minister, former Member of the National Assembly, and nephew of Qazi Abid, Qazi Azam, and Qazi Akbar.

Pir Mazhar Ul Haq, current Senior Minister and Education Minister in the Sindh Provincial Cabinet, a three-time Sindh Provincial Minister, and grandson of Qazi Muhammad Akbar

Marvi Mazhar, a former Member of the Provincial Assembly in Sindh and daughter of Pir Mazhar Ul Haq

 

Zardari family

 

The members of Zardari family (Urdu: خاندان زرداری‎), in politics:

 

Hakim Ali Zardari, the patriarch of Zardari family.

Asif Ali Zardari, son of Hakim Ali Zardari and husband of Benazir Bhutto, President of Pakistan

Azra Peechoho, daughter of Hakim Ali Zardari

Faryal Talpur, daughter of Hakim Ali Zardari, Former Nazima Nawabshah District, MNA

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of Asif Ali Zardari and Benazir Bhutto, Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party

 

 

 

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My heart bleeds for Pakistan. It deserves better than this grotesque feudal charade

hina-rabbani-bilawal-compromising-position-5-300x225Six hours before she was executed, Mary, Queen of Scots wrote to her brother-in-law, Henry III of France: “…As for my son, I commend him to you in so far as he deserves, for I cannot answer for him.” The year was 1587.

On 30 December 2007, a conclave of feudal potentates gathered in the home of the slain Benazir Bhutto to hear her last will and testament being read out and its contents subsequently announced to the world media. Where Mary was tentative, her modern-day equivalent left no room for doubt. She could certainly answer for her son.

A triumvirate consisting of her husband, Asif Zardari (one of the most venal and discredited politicians in the country and still facing corruption charges in three European courts) and two ciphers will run the party till Benazir’s 19-year-old son, Bilawal, comes of age. He will then become chairperson-for-life and, no doubt, pass it on to his children. The fact that this is now official does not make it any less grotesque. The Pakistan People’s Party is being treated as a family heirloom, a property to be disposed of at the will of its leader.

Nothing more, nothing less. Poor Pakistan. Poor People’s Party supporters. Both deserve better than this disgusting, medieval charade.

Benazir’s last decision was in the same autocratic mode as its predecessors, an approach that would cost her tragically her own life. Had she heeded the advice of some party leaders and not agreed to the Washington-brokered deal with Pervez Musharraf or, even later, decided to boycott his parliamentary election she might still have been alive. Her last gift to the country does not augur well for its future.

How can Western-backed politicians be taken seriously if they treat their party as a fiefdom and their supporters as serfs, while their courtiers abroad mouth sycophantic niceties concerning the young prince and his future.

That most of the PPP inner circle consists of spineless timeservers leading frustrated and melancholy lives is no excuse. All this could be transformed if inner-party democracy was implemented. There is a tiny layer of incorruptible and principled politicians inside the party, but they have been sidelined. Dynastic politics is a sign of weakness, not strength. Benazir was fond of comparing her family to the Kennedys, but chose to ignore that the Democratic Party, despite an addiction to big money, was not the instrument of any one family.

The issue of democracy is enormously important in a country that has been governed by the military for over half of its life. Pakistan is not a “failed state” in the sense of the Congo or Rwanda. It is a dysfunctional state and has been in this situation for almost four decades.

At the heart of this dysfunctionality is the domination by the army and each period of military rule has made things worse. It is this that has prevented political stability and the emergence of stable institutions. Here the US bears direct responsibility, since it has always regarded the military as the only institution it can do business with and, unfortunately, still does so. This is the rock that has focused choppy waters into a headlong torrent.

The military’s weaknesses are well known and have been amply documented. But the politicians are not in a position to cast stones. After all, Mr Musharraf did not pioneer the assault on the judiciary so conveniently overlooked by the US Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, and the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. The first attack on the Supreme Court was mounted by Nawaz Sharif’s goons who physically assaulted judges because they were angered by a decision that ran counter to their master’s interests when he was prime minister.

Some of us had hoped that, with her death, the People’s Party might start a new chapter. After all, one of its main leaders, Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Bar Association, played a heroic role in the popular movement against the dismissal of the chief justice. Mr Ahsan was arrested during the emergency and kept in solitary confinement. He is still under house arrest in Lahore. Had Benazir been capable of thinking beyond family and faction she should have appointed him chairperson pending elections within the party. No such luck.

The result almost certainly will be a split in the party sooner rather than later. Mr Zardari was loathed by many activists and held responsible for his wife’s downfall. Once emotions have subsided, the horror of the succession will hit the many traditional PPP followers except for its most reactionary segment: bandwagon careerists desperate to make a fortune.

All this could have been avoided, but the deadly angel who guided her when she was alive was, alas, not too concerned with democracy. And now he is in effect leader of the party.

Meanwhile there is a country in crisis. Having succeeded in saving his own political skin by imposing a state of emergency, Mr Musharraf still lacks legitimacy. Even a rigged election is no longer possible on 8 January despite the stern admonitions of President George Bush and his unconvincing Downing Street adjutant. What is clear is that the official consensus on who killed Benazir is breaking down, except on BBC television. It has now been made public that, when Benazir asked the US for a Karzai-style phalanx of privately contracted former US Marine bodyguards, the suggestion was contemptuously rejected by the Pakistan government, which saw it as a breach of sovereignty.

Now both Hillary Clinton and Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, are pinning the convict’s badge on Mr Musharraf and not al-Qa’ida for the murder, a sure sign that sections of the US establishment are thinking of dumping the President.

Their problem is that, with Benazir dead, the only other alternative for them is General Ashraf Kiyani, head of the army. Nawaz Sharif is seen as a Saudi poodle and hence unreliable, though, given the US-Saudi alliance, poor Mr Sharif is puzzled as to why this should be the case. For his part, he is ready to do Washiongton’s bidding but would prefer the Saudi King rather than Mr Musharraf to be the imperial message-boy.

A solution to the crisis is available. This would require Mr Musharraf’s replacement by a less contentious figure, an all-party government of unity to prepare the basis for genuine elections within six months, and the reinstatement of the sacked Supreme Court judges to investigate Benazir’s murder without fear or favour. It would be a start.

 

MONDAY 31 DECEMBER 2007

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