The Londoner

Huffington Post | Stuart Whatley | March 30, 2009 05:05 PM The current 'Miss Universe' Dayana Mendoza (formerly Miss Venezuela) and 'Miss America' Crystal Stewart visited US troops stationed in Guantanamo Bay on March 20th, the New York Times reports. Here's Mendoza's account of the visit from her pageant blog last Friday. She says the trip "was a loooot of fun!" This week, Guantánamo!!! It was an incredible experience...All the guys from the Army were amazing with us. We visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books. It was very interesting. We took a ride with the Marines around the land to see the division of Gitmo and Cuba while they were informed us with a little bit of history. To Read the Full Story please visit The Huffington Post

By MARK LANDLER Published: March 31, 2009 THE HAGUE — The United States will commit $40 million to underwrite the cost of holding elections in Afghanistan this summer, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday, as she began selling the Obama administration’s new Afghanistan policy to friends and foes. “We do not support or oppose any candidate,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters on her way to an international conference on Afghanistan that begins on Tuesday in the Netherlands. “We want to ensure the elections themselves are going to have legitimacy and credibility.” For Full Article please visit New York Times

LAHORE: Pakistan on Tuesday questioned four suspects, including an Afghan, captured during a police academy siege on the outskirts of Lahore. Attackers armed with guns, grenades and suicide vests stormed the training centre in Manawan, unleashing eight hours of gun battles until they were overpowered by security forces. Seven police cadets, a civilian and four attackers died in the second gun assault in Lahore this month, sparking fears that violence is seeping out of the tribal badlands on the Afghan border and into the heart of Pakistan. 'Police and other intelligence agencies are interrogating the suspects. We cannot say anything for now about which group is involved,' Lahore city police chief Habibur Rehman told AFP. Read the full article at The Dawn

By Sikander Hayat Supreme Court of Pakistan has reinstated Mr Shahbaz Sharif, who is the brother of Nawaz Sharif and memeber of Pakistan Muslim League ( Nawaz) as the Chief Minister of Punjab. This is a very good development as it will bring much needed stabilty to the law and order situation in Punjab especially in the light of yesterday's attack in Lahore. Governor rule in Punjab was a mistake and I have said that in my previous posts as well. During this governor rule in Punjab, there were two major attacks on Lahore which dealt a major blow to law and order situation in the province. Transfers of senior security officers from their posts were partially responsible for the above mentioned security lapses. I do hope that now Salman Taseer will be removed from his post or at least he will be told to shut up in future for the stability of the country. There is a need now to focus on the enemies of Pakistan both on the eastern front, the western front and those enemies which are amo...

Jon Boone in Kabul The Guardian, Tuesday 31 March 2009 Hamid Karzai has been accused of trying to win votes in Afghanistan's presidential election by backing a law the UN says legalises rape within marriage and bans wives from stepping outside their homes without their husbands' permission. The Afghan president signed the law earlier this month, despite condemnation by human rights activists and some MPs that it flouts the constitution's equal rights provisions. The final document has not been published, but the law is believed to contain articles that rule women cannot leave the house without their husbands' permission, that they can only seek work, education or visit the doctor with their husbands' permission, and that they cannot refuse their husband sex.

Saeed Shah in Lahore The Guardian, Tuesday 31 March 2009 It had started as an ordinary day at the police school in Lahore, with a parade of the cadets at the front of the facility. But, at around 7.30am, the gunmen jumped over the low perimeter wall, throwing grenades at the recruits and firing indiscriminately. The 800 cadets, all unarmed, scattered. "They came over [the wall] like guerrillas, wearing scarves over their faces. They came from three different points. It was a heavy attack, with grenades," said trainee Omar Butt, 22. "We crawled out [of the compound] on our elbows." Others, who could not get out of the school, hid on the roof, in the laundry room, anywhere they could find refuge. On the first floor, in the sleeping quarters, Gul Hussain, 21, simply lay on a mattress, and covered himself with a sheet, for about two hours, until he was rescued. Read The full article at The Guardian

By AP / BABAR DOGAR Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009 LAHORE, Pakistan — The militant group that claimed responsibility for the assault on a police academy said Tuesday it will carry out more attacks unless Pakistani troops withdraw from tribal areas near the Afghan border and the U.S. stops drone attacks against militants in the country. Read the full article at The Time

How do you end a conflict when everybody fighting thinks that God is on his side? It's impossible, especially when the line between faith and superstition wobbles and breaks apart. Shortly before I came to Jerusalem, Israel's seemingly indestructible Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fell into a coma. Many Israelis are convinced that Sharon was struck down because rabbis put a curse on him for pulling out of Gaza. That was three years ago, and Sharon –-lying in a hospital bed, half-man, half-machine-- still languishes in a coma. Want more proof of divine intervention? During the Gaza war, Israeli newspapers solemnly reported that Rachel from the Bible appeared to warn a platoon of soldiers to stay away from a booby-tapped house. I cite two Jewish examples. But there are plenty among Muslims and Christians, too. Take the Spiders of Allah. James Hider, the Middle East correspondent for the London Times and a self-confessed arachnophobe, was covering the U.S. Marines' campaign in ...

By Sikander Hayat To all Pakistanis, please wake up and call this atrocity what it is. Please stop trying to find a foreign hand; please understand that this is our war. We are under attack from our own. These people, who in Waziristan and SWAT leave hanging from the trees the bodies of their victims, are our own callous murderers. The frequent nature of these attacks does not make them any less reprehensible. These people who on one day blow a mosque full of worshippers in Pakhtunkhwa and the next day attack the very heart of Pakistan are our own people. Please admit our faults, please look at the events with open eyes, please call spade a spade and stop tying to hide behind the bulls**t of “Muslims can’t do this kind of thing”. Well, they can and they are. It is no longer possible to stay silent and see that amongst our own, the people we know, there are those who come up with conspiracy theories for everything, look for American hand in everything, and look for excuses for our own f...

By Sikander Hayat In an attack in Lahore, Pakistan , terrorists have killed atleast 20 police officers in training and injured many others. This is a serious escalation and security situation will further worson due to this brazen and callous attack.

by: Jon Soltz Fri Mar 27, 2009 at 11:19:46 AM EDT For those of us who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was extremely important that the new President get the situation in Afghanistan right. Not just for America's security, but for those troops still in Afghanistan, and those heading to Afghanistan to put their lives on the line in the war. With today's announcement, President Obama has shown that he "gets it." There's a lot to like about the plan. But, there are three key things I'm particularly focused on, that represent a stark departure from the previous administration. They show that this President not only has reasonable goals in the region, but a good idea of what it will take to get there. Point One: The Military Can't Do It All The President recognizes that the war against terrorists requires much more than just throwing troops at the problem. That alone will go a long way towards setting policies that make America safer, and taking the bu...

Mar 26th 2009 | KABUL From The Economist print edition IN A recent interview with the New York Times, President Barack Obama argued that “part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists but who were willing to work with us,” and suggested “there may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region.” Amid the various reviews of Western policy in Afghanistan now under way (see article), one theme has been constant: if a military solution to the insurgency is unlikely, it may be necessary to talk to the insurgents. But is that really possible? And are there “moderate” Taliban who would be willing to talk to the NATO-led alliance? Read the Full Story: The Economist

Mar 26th 2009 | WASHINGTON, DC From The Economist print edition AFTER nigh on three decades of abuse-filled estrangement, two spouses mull a reconciliation. Bitter memories of insults and humiliation linger. Mutual acquaintances, fearing more broken crockery, offer to mediate. The initial exchanges have been held at high volume. But at least the sulky silence has been broken. President Barack Obama was a teenager when America severed ties with its former ally, Iran, after Islamist revolutionaries occupied America’s embassy in Tehran in 1979. Since then, mutual enmity, expressed in military confrontations, acts of sabotage and a steady stream of invective, has ripened into a broader strategic rivalry. But on March 20th, in a televised address on the day Persians mark their new year, Mr Obama proffered a new vision, promising to resolve differences by diplomacy and inviting the “Islamic Republic of Iran”, as he politely called it, to “take its rightful place in the community of nations.”...

New Yorker: When the Israelis' controversial twenty-two-day military campaign in Gaza ended, on January 18th, it also seemed to end the promising peace talks between Israel and Syria. The two countries had been engaged for almost a year in negotiations through intermediaries in Istanbul. Many complicated technical matters had been resolved, and there were agreements in principle on the normalization of diplomatic relations. The consensus, as an ambassador now serving in Tel Aviv put it, was that the two sides had been "a lot closer than you might think." At an Arab summit in Qatar in mid-January, however, Bashar Assad, the President of Syria, angrily declared that Israel's bombing of Gaza and the resulting civilian deaths showed that the Israelis spoke only "the language of blood." He called on the Arab world to boycott Israel, close any Israeli embassies in the region, and sever all "direct or indirect ties with Israel." Syria, Assad said, had end...

New York Times By SALMAN MASOOD Published: March 28, 2009 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — At a Supreme Court hearing on Thursday in a property dispute, the defendant, Gul Zameen, insisted that Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry personally take his case rather than assign it to other justices, as his opponent requested. “Please, I want you to hear the case,” said Mr. Zameen, 55, who has been fighting over a house in North-West Frontier Province since 1991. Much to his relief, Mr. Chaudhry agreed. “We hope he will do justice,” Mr. Zameen’s son, Shahid Rafiq, said later. “Not only with us but with everybody.” Since returning to the bench last week for the first time since he was ousted two years ago by Pervez Musharraf, then Pakistan’s president, Mr. Chaudhry has faced a groundswell of expectations from people like Mr. Zameen and from the politicians and lawyers who struggled to get him reinstated. Just as his ouster became a national symbol of political interference in the judiciary, million...

By Sikander Hayat This cartoon in The Time magazine gives an apt fiscal conservative's view in United States of America on Obama economic plan. They believe that Obama is mortgaging the future generations by putting forward this bill. Personally I believe that they have a point but what other options does Obama have is a very important question. If no steps are taken very soon, this recession will become a prolonged depression like that of 1920's and early 1930's.

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By Sikander Hayat President Asif Ali Zardari has declared the end of governer rule in Punjab. It is a very good development as it will lead to political stabilty in the largest province of Punjab. It will also lead to political reconciliation in Pakistan between Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and the Pakistan Peoples Party.

By Sikander Hayat Barack Obama declared that Afghan National Army will be increased from 80000 to 134000 and according to The Economist: “Central to the review is the idea of increasing the size of Afghan security forces. The additional 4,000 soldiers will come from the 82nd Airborne Division to southern Afghanistan, in part to support the Afghan army and in part to offer more training. The local army is due to grow from 80,000 to 134,000 by 2011, and some of the proposals speak of expanding it to 250,000. The police, too, would be boosted. The cost will certainly run into billions of dollars. But this is probably cheaper than continuing to fight the Taliban with Western troops”. This is a welcome development as a strong Afghan army is the key to the future of strong and peaceful Afghanistan which will be free of ‘cancer’ of Al-Qaida. This newly expanded army should represent the ethnic mix of the country and give Pashtuns a majority in the personnel and officer class. Then and only th...

President Asif Ali Zardari is adressing the joint session of Pakistani legislature today and big expectations have been associated with this address.

By Sikander Hayat New York Times reported recently that Pakistani spies are tacitly supporting the insurgent elements in Afghanistan to destabilise the current government. This reports highlights a very important factor which has been ignored so far. We are currently witnessing a bitter cold war between India and Pakistan in Afghanistan and until we have a resolution to this issue no amount of American or NATO effort will stabilise Afghanistan. Americans must understand that their efforts are destined to fail if they do not take into account the considerations of the Pakistanis regarding Indian meddling in that country. For ages, Pakistan has considered Afghanistan as a friend who will defend it in case there was an invasion from the East. The greatest testament to this notion is the Azad Kashmir which was captured from India by the Afghan tribal army in 1948. Any Indian involvement in Afghanistan is viewed with suspicion in Pakistan and relatively recent development of diplomatic post...

By Sikander Hayat It has emerged courtesy of various news reports that Israel attacked Sudan during the Gaza conflict to allegedly stop weapons from Sudan to be shipped to Gaza through Egypt. Sudan has called this an act of genocide in which more than 100 people died. US sources put the death figure at around 39. The underlying question is this; did Israel attack Sudan under the US tutelage to punish it for not complying with US demands regarding Darfur and South Sudan or was it an act by the Israeli government to tell Iran that it can be attacked anytime if it does not comply with the demands by Israel and the West to abandon its nuclear programme. Under what international law, a sovereign country was attached and was this an illegal act of war. The legal dimension is important because Omar Al Bashir of Sudan is facing a charge by the internal courts and there are international arrest warrants in his name. Why is international law silent about this blatant violation and what sort of ...

By Sikander Hayat It seems that New York Times knows more about Taliban than even the Taliban know about themselves. The reports from New York Times about AfPak region always cite anonymous sources for their stories and there is a rising suspicion that these stories are usually based in rumours and not facts. Granted Taliban are a menace and needs to be dealt with but reconfiguring the truth to support an argument does not make for a good strategy. There may be a need for a reputed publication like New York Times to start giving some evidence as well for their reports so that truth does not become a casualty of this war.

By Sikander Hayat United States has decided to work with Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan. I believe it will be a good move by United States to acknowledge that it needs to take into account all the major political opinions in Pakistan. At the moment, Nawaz Sharif does not need America but America needs him as he can not only help in devising an exit strategy for US from Afghanistan but also help America improve her image in Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif represents a majority of Pakistanis who believe that US has used Pakistan for its own war and in the process destroyed Pakistani economy and wreaked its political stability. It is high time that US starts to let Pakistan make its own decision and stop trying to micromanage this country of 170 million people. US has for too long helped install dictators in Pakistan and in the process showed a myopic view of extreme nature as that policy has resulted in radicalising Pakistani people. It would also help if US government to aided the process of democrac...

By Sikander Hayat Pakistani nukes are safe or unsafe is another matter but hearing it from a Russian is hilarious indeed. Anyone care to remember the 1990’s when American agents with bags full of dollars were sent all over the central Asian republics and Baltic states to buy back the nuclear material from rogue scientists and KGB agents. Our memories are not so short as to forget that episode in Russian history. Currently Russia is selling nuclear know how to Iran which could turn out to be biggest danger to US, Europe and Israel.

By Sikander Hayat This is just a harmless rendition of what is becoming a really serious problem in Pakistan. Electronic media is emerging as another institution in Pakistan which does not know its own boundaries. By constantly telling an elected government on finer points of running a country, channels like Geo are crossing the fine line between responsible and reckless journalism. It is true that media has played a role in some good events in recent Pakistani history but by playing a partisan role for too long, it will lose all credibility that it has built with a lot of hard work and perseverance. There is a need for it to devise a self regulation mechanism for a continued support of all people of Pakistan.

By Sikander Hayat The whole world is sitting at China’s door in Afghanistan so it is only logical for the Chinese to take notice. Chinese consider Pakistan & Afghanistan as a single territory and have undertaken vast projects in the mutual border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This areas is inhabited by Pashtun and Baloch ethnic groups on both sides of the border and Chinese do not want any geographical instability in this region. Chinese engineers have been kidnapped in Pakistan at the behest of other foreign powers to drive China out of this region but until now this tactic has not been successful.

By Sikander Hayat The only viable solution to this issue is a single state comprising of Palestinians and the Israelis between the Mediterranean and the river Jordan . Palestinian areas have been crisscrossed by so many Jewish settlements that a viable Palestinian state is now impossible . Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of the new stat e and apartheid regime must end for peace to prevail in the land David and Solomon.

By Sikander Hayat When America attacked Afghanistan it displaced a Pashtun government ( Pashtun make up the majority of population in Afghanistan) and replaced it with a government dominated by Tajiks, Uzbeks and other proxies of Iran. Never in the history of Afghanistan ( apart from very short periods of foreign occupation), the country has been run by non Pashtuns. American government must understand that the problem of Afghanistan has much more to do with the ethnic dimension than the religious one. The sooner it is understood that levers of powers should be in Pashtun hands, the sooner we shall see the end of Al-Qaida and the like. Taliban are just a name for a myriad number of Pashtun groups fighting to get the government back from the people whom they believe to be usurpers of Pashtun’s rightful rule. Has anyone considered that people at the forefront of insurgency like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaludin Haqqani are the veterans of Soviet war and have very lose connections with t...

By Sikander Hayat I was very greatly offended by Sky’s choice of guest to represent Muslims in UK. Anjum Chaudhry’s place in not on the sky’s panel desk but in a high security jail because him representing Muslims is like Klu Klux Klan representing Christians. I would like to say to Mr Tim Marshall that what this man (Anjum Chaudhry) preaches is not Islam but his own perverted view of some cult which is anything but Islam. I would like to convey my anger and disgust to sky team for showing this man as a Muslim.

By Sikander Hayat This is the question that comes to mind when one looks at the difficulties America is facing at the moment. United States is currently going through the deepest recession at any time in last 70 years and there is a danger that this recession and Obama’s name will become synonymous as that of 1920’s depression and Herbert Hoover’s. As with Hoover, this recession is not Obama’s making and to be honest, he is taking all the right steps to stem the rot but my fear is that by the time his actions against downturn will start to take hold, his term will already be near completion and due to that late recovery he might lose the next lection. The parallels between his and Hoover’s government are striking to say the least. According to Wikipedia “Hoover deeply believed in the Efficiency Movement (a major component of the Progressive Era), arguing that a technical solution existed for every social and economic problem. That position was challenged by the stock market crash of ...

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By Sikander Hayat In the last few days elections fever is starting to grip the land of India and political parties of all colours are trying to win votes by presenting their ideologies and agendas in front of the masses. India after all claims to be the largest democracy in the world and does provide its people a right to vote after every five years. Some parties like BJP are trying to stoke up anti Muslim sentiment in the poles and a manifestation of that was the call by Varun Gandhi to all Muslims of India to leave India and go to Pakistan. Now one can call this a one off by a young politician but it seems that India is full of these bigots who have nothing but hate on their minds. I must qualify this by saying that majority of Indians are not bigots but some are and BJP, Sangh Pariwar, Shiv Sena and countless other Hindu extremist parties have gained enough votes during the last few elections to testify that a large block of voters in India is xenophobic and cast their votes on the ...

By Sikander Hayat Today when we celebrate Pakistan day, we must not forget Balochistan and its grievances. For far too long we have tried to establish a state based on religion but it must be said that this experiment has not been an unqualified success. In the process we have created monsters like Taliban and now these our very own creations are making life difficult for average Pakistanis. Pakistan must revisit the national question at its very core and turn itself into a country which does not require any religion to survive but love of people for their land which is far stronger and long lasting than a religion which has no national boundaries. The new Pakistan should be based on the principles of equality and justice for all, be they the people or the federal components. There must not be a perception that Punjab is having more than its fair share as we all know that not only the act of justice is important but the perception of justice being done is as important as well. Here a...

By Sikander Hayat Indians were laughing when they gave security as a reason for not visiting Pakistan but with the shifting of Indian Premier League (IPL) out of India on security grounds must shown them the fickle nature of these things. There is a chance that IPL will be staged in England, where Pakistan will play their series against Australia. If this is not irony than what is? This may also affect India's chances of hosting foreign teams in India for the foreseeable future. This BBC Report shows how it will affect India.

By Sikander Hayat Pakistan had obtained its independence from the British Raj on 14th of August 1947. The 23rd March (Pakistan Day) remembers the day when the Lahore Resolution which cemented the idea of a new Muslim nation in the sub-continent was passed. It must be said that Pakistan Republic Day 2009 has acquired an extra significance as this is the being celebrated amidst the current spell of goodwill all over the country. Restoration of judiciary has reignited the same hope that people of Pakistan had at the time of independence. They know that there are numerous problems but they also believe that they can resolve them now as though they have the power to change their future. Outside world is very much behind when it comes to gauging the mood in Pakistan and it became evident to me when a respected news channel was talking about the disintegration of Pakistan. To those ignorant foreign friends I must say that that mood in Pakistan is very much belligerent against these kind of as...

By Sikander Hayat It seems that PPP has still not learnt the lesson and it is acting as if nothing happened on 15th March on the streets of Pakistan. The party will be wise to learn from its mistakes and salvage some pride by requisitioning the Punjab assembly and asking the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) to form the government as the largest party in the house. Salman Taseer should be asked to resign and a new governor should be appointed by the federal government. It must be said that Salman Taseer has on his own delivered a fatal blow to chances of PPP winning elections in Punjab in the short to medium term. Whatever credibility PPP had before 15th March is no longer there and people of Pakistan are sick of being treated as ignorant fools. PPP must respect PML (N) mandate in Punjab and PML (N) must respect PPP’s mandate at the federal level to make sure that the present assemblies complete their term in office and the after five years, let the people decide who they want as their r...

By Sikander Hayat Long March was an unmitigated success for all Pakistanis from Khyber to Karachi and it showed in their reaction to the speech made by the prime minister Yusuf Raza Gillani. At the same time some people like Fazal-Ur-Rehman tried to give the impression that a party from Punjab (PML(N)) is trying to force the hand of a party from Sindh. We all know that it was a vile accusation as this was a movement started by lawyers from all parts of the country and PML ( N) was just one of many parties which were part of the Long March. Keeping that in mind, I still think that enemies of Pakistan can utilise this lack of a party ( which has a universal appeal in all parts of the country and which contest elections on issues not the ethnicity) and harm us in future. We need a party which has an equal influence in all four provinces of Pakistan because currently PPP has become a party of Sindh and PML(N) has become a party of Punjab. Imran Khan looks promising but he is good at ag...