The Humiliation of Kaliwal (villager) on Kaliwal Day (Villagers` day)

Pashto as a language and Pashtoon culture as a whole are on the verge of retreat. Scholars are lamenting the fact that there are millions of Pashto speakers in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Province and the adjoining tribal areas but out of these millions hardly few hundred can write what they speak. It`s so gloomy that we announce for funeral and weddings in Pashto but when it comes to writing the same announcement, we display it in Urdu or English not because no one will understand it if we wrote in our mother tongue but the fact that we can`t write it.

It seems now a capricious desire to introduce Pashto as the medium of instruction in educational institutions in pashtoon majority areas and it sounds babbling, something illogical and a conspiracy to drag us back to the stone-age. Credit must be given to the education system and the perpetual brainwashing of our young lot over the years. It has been computed in our mind that if we started writing Pashto or start reading it, we will be tagged backwards, orthodox and off the trend people.

Ignorance about our language in the written form (literature) has led us to face many repercussions. We have slowly forgotten what are our actual values, norms, traditions and dress codes. Scholar says that culture and traditions are not static and they should change for a good reason but not humiliated.  We observed a practical experience of this on the occasion of “ Kaliwal Day 20^th February 2014” at the Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, (Photos).

There is no doubt that it was an honest idea to hold such an event to revitalize our dress codes specifically and show our fellows what and how do we look in our rural areas. The organizer- Sajid Khan Salaar -must be applauded for coming up with it and putting an untiring effort to give it practical shape and holding it successfully. Organizing an event like this require a lot of energy and dedication and he and his team delivered it.

But as the saying goes “Kam Qaam Ta Che Khapala Jaba Spaka shi Hagha Qaam spak Shi, Ao Kam Qaam Na Che Khapala Jaba Wraka Shi Hagha Qaam Wrak Shi” ( The nation who humiliate their mother tongue, gets humiliated as a nation in the end and the nation who have lost their mother tongue are lost from the globe). There were attempts that hurt the feelings of our rural students-Those hailing from villages and that too showed that we pashtoon as a nation are lost. I will try to mention few of them.

Girl Dressed as Guy

What kind of villages has that tradition? A girl who was dressed in men`s clothes, had a French cut and was wearing chitrali Pakol (guy hat). I was told by my friend that she is a girl and that she is not even a Pashtoon. There were mixed feelings; has someone in our pashtoon students told this girl that pashtoon girls in villages dress like that? Who is she humiliating, herself or that it is a deliberate concoction that pashtoon women`s beauty has lost the feather over time? I don`t know may be in her village women would dress up like pashtoon men to scare their men.

The Burqa Guy

Pashtoon consider their honour and dignity supreme to everything. They never want their women to be humiliated and insulted openly. Every pashtoon is strictly vigilant to his family honor and neither does he interfere in the affairs of others. Rural Pashtoons have been Islamized since the Afghan war starting in the 80s, the imposition of Deobandi narrative of Islam in Pukhtunkhwa and FATA in particular, caged women in the walled houses and if they had to go out they were asked to wear shuttlecock Burqa. Since then it has become part of our women dress. But when they go out despite that they are covered from head to toe, men have to bow their heads and not even come closer to them-something our Pakhutnwali teaches us.

So coming to this guy who has come in the disguise of a woman (wearing a shuttlecock Burqa), there were many shameful  and vulgar scenes where she (he) was surrounded by her (his) male friends and were teasing her (him). Imagine if that happened to a woman in village and then think of the aftermaths. Well, kid! Hundred will die and the families of the boys would carry that shame from generations to generations.

This does not mean that I support the notion that women should wear shuttlecock Burqa. It is neither our cultural dress nor an accurate way of Islamic Pardah but those wearing it do not deserve the treatment you showed us.

There were many other things like having tails of antimony (surma) as long as the border of the ears, wearing Shalwar as short as skirts, wearing waskat (waist coat) as short as to the armpits and so on. These idiosyncratic and evasive steps ruined and sabotaged the positive aspects of the event and hence less attention was paid to the actual cultural dresses.

I would like to suggest few things to the management of the event and administration of institute of management Sciences.

(1)   Change the name of the event from Kaliwal Day to Cultural exhibition. Because the word Kaliwal is too much stereotypical to the urban masses. Commit something foolish, say or do something which is off the trend and you will be tagged as Kaliwal “Mara Da Sa Kaliwal Harkatona Kay”. So this Kaliwal term has many implied and implicit meanings which are derogatory mainly.

(2)   Poetic symposium (Mushaira) and essay competition on social topics in Pashto and Hindko should be held at the premises as language is the soul probably for every culture. Young poets and writers must be encouraged to participate in order to keep alive our regional languages.

(3)   The organizers and administration should ensure that no such attempts are put forth as mentioned above by having a pre-Cultural Exhibition seminar, where students must be shown what their dresses used to be, how dresses of one district/division are different from the other. This would definitely help the urban students who have moved to the cities from villages decades ago and never looked back since then.

(4)   Demos, Drama and video competitions should be arranged to highlight both positive and negative aspects of the non-written tradition life style of the indigenous pashtoon people which include Melamstiya( hospitality), Badal (revenge), Turah( Bravery), Ghairat ( Respect, honor and courage), Nang ( honor), Namus (Protection of women) and Nanawatay (Sanctuary).

Salute to all the tribal students specifically those hailing from Waziristan who were dressed elegantly.

Note: We discussed this whole thing in friends` circles, in class rooms and the decision was to give a written response. Please don`t get offended and consider it a humble request instead.

Thanks to Sajjad Shinwari, Sombre Khan and Raza khan Safi  for their valuable suggestions.

Conspiracy theories about the shooting of Malala Yousafzai

As pashto poet  Masoom hurmaz puts it in his words:
 Tareekh da Pukhtun gora che ye peghly tal jangegi
Yao Malala da Maiwand wa bala paas pa Swat osegi 
( History has consistently witnessed female Pashtun warriors
There was once a Malalai of Maiwand, and now there is one who lives in Swat)

There have been a lot of gossip and rants about the shooting of Malala Yousafzai. When she was shot in the head by the Taliban and they openly claimed responsibility for the attack last year, the electronic media and the Pakistani political parties gave a lot of attention to Malala and condemned the attack on the fourteen year old school girl. But the stand of Pakistani Islamist parties on this incident was ambiguous from the beginning. According to an AFP report, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the pro-Taliban head of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, told a rally in Peshawar that the attack on the 14 year old in the nearby Swat Valley was fake. ". "Pictures shown on social media have shown the whole character as suspicious because there was no sign of injury after the dressing was removed. It shows that the bullet did not hit her in the head”, he said.

Facebook was the  social media to which Maulana  referred and below are some of the pictures which, according to the admin of the page are real.

In this picture they have tried to show her healthy after the dressing has been removed and then mocked it.

When I saw such pictures on Facebook I was shocked, and instantly got in touch with a friend- a doctor who attended her at the hospital in Swat. He was angry when he came to know that such pictures had gone viral and swore that he was an eye-witness that she was severely bleeding when arrived at the hospital. The reality is that all of the doctors who saw her in Saidu Hospital Swat and CMH Peshawar denied the claims that the attack on Malala was fake and confirmed that she had been shot.

The pictures of Malala not getting hit went viral through different sources and in today’s world of Photoshop and other photo-editing softwares, there still people exist who would believe those pictures and not Malala and her father themselves. But, in the end of the day, facts remain facts.

There was an organised campaign against Malala Yousafzai’s mission and to stop people from believing that there did not exist any “good Taliban”. Telling lies about Malala and showing her fake pictures to the masses is only one part of this campaign; others include beheading more than 1000 tribal elders (the people-loving and sincere Tribal elders), blowing up schools, killing human rights activists and baring media organizations to report the realities from FATA and Swat. This is a pre-planned campaign against the Pakhtuns living on this side of the Durand line.

They didn`t stop here but went on comparing Malala’s work with that of social philanthropists, such as Abdul Sattar Edhi’s when the campaign for nominating her for  the Nobel Peace Prize started in the form of signing a petition..

Any person with a sound mind would instantly think  that, although Abdul Sattar Edhi is an honorable Philanthropist and his contributions should be recognized, awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to Malala is not demeaning his and the works of his alikes’. . He has received a number of such International recognitions. Below is the list of his awards:

International awards

1.      Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service (1986)

2.      Lenin Peace Prize (1988)

3.      Paul Harris Fellow from Rotatory International Foundation, (1993)

4.      Peace Prize from (USSR former) for services in the American earthquake disaster, (1998)

5.      Largest Voluntary Ambulance Organization of the World - Guinness Book of World Records (2000)

6.      Hamdan Award for volunteers in Humanitarian Medical Services (2000) UAE

7.      International Balzan Prize (2000) for Humanity, Peace and Brotherhood, Italy

8.      Peace and Harmony Award (Delhi), 2001

9.      Peace Award (Mumbai), 2004

10.  Peace Award (Hyderabad Deccan), 2005

11.  Wolf of Bhogio Peace Award (Italy), 2005

12.  Gandhi Peace Award (Delhi),2007

13.  UNESCO Madan jeet sing Peace Award (Paris),2007

14.  Peace Award Seoul (South Korea), 2008

15.  Honorary Doctorate degree from the Institute of Business Administration Karachi (2006).[1]

16.  UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize (2009)

17.  Ahmadiyya Muslim Peace Prize (2010)

18.  Peace Award (London), 2011

The Facebook pages (see the link in the second last para) also compared some pictures they portrayed as victims of drone strikes with those of Malala’s. The page viewers are asked  why people don`t talk about victims of drones. They also blame the media of being biased towards the “American Malala” and of ignoring other innocent kids.. The pictures which are shown to be of victims of drone strikes are not of such people, in fact. The first picture is of Barra Khyber Agency operation by Pakistani army. This picture was taken in Lady Reading hospital Peshawar and the kid was not a drone victim, instead he was injured when a misfired mortar was dropped on his house. Half of his family members died in that strike and the rest  were seriously injured. The second picture is of Damadola Mamund Tehsil of Bajaur Agency. This was way before the Taliban explicit insurgency in that area. A  madrassa was attacked in 2006 by the Pakistani Army jets and director of Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Shaukat Sultan accepted the responsibility for killing 80 people in the attack. My intent here is not to blame the Pakistani army but to show that the pictures used by such Facebook pages were from the above two incidents and not of the victims of drone strikes. The first picture is one of the hundreds of collateral damages of the Pakistani army’s war on terror and the second is, according to Mr. Shaukat , of a militant training school. 

The above picture was the most disturbing but there were  people who responded to them with some research about the realities about Afia Sadiqui.  The below picture states some suspicious activities Sadiqui was involved in.  

There are  pictures of Malala, like the one in which she is shown with deceased US envoy Richard Halbroke, claiming that it was a meeting with agents from the CIA. That picture was taken in Islamabad when Malala was awarded with National Peace Award and many foreign diplomats and other officials including Richard Halbroke were present. Shad Begum, an NGO worker and a women’s rights activist, is shown as Malala’s mother by the conspiracy theorists. In another picture the deceased technology expert Arfa Karim has been compared with Malala. Arfa no doubt was a child genius but she did not contribute to peace and a Taliban stricken society.

Malala Yousafzai is one brave girl and I do not feel any shame to reckon that she was way braver than many of us. I couldn`t dare to speak against the Taliban but she did. No one out of fear could raise their voice for education, not even for male education, yet she fought for female education. As for reference to her diaries is concerned where  she has expressed her fears of seeing the men with long beards and long hair, everyone of the area has almost the same feelings about the Taliban. Once my 9 year old brother Khalid rushed in the house, he nearly fainted because he had seen some men with long hair and beards which he took for the Taliban.

The Taliban will go to any extent to keep Pakhtuns deprived of education. They will kill liberals and those who speak for their basic rights. But the students have a role to play and can contribute by making the parents of kids, who are deprived of education, understand.

If Malala was a CIA agent, she would not have used a local school bus as a means of transport to and from her school. If she was an American agent, she would have not lived in an old house without any security. She was just another normalchild, but a child with guts. . We, the Pakhtuns, are proud of her and will continue her mission of educating our sisters and daughters. We won`t let ourselves and others fall into the conspiracies of some hypocrites. It is time to realize our miseries and speak against those who have pushed us into these miseries slowly over the decades.

Please refer to the link here, which  is the video of Malala after her successful surgery and here  are the photos in which this whole propaganda was launched against her.

I believe that if Malala was from any other part of Pakistan (not a Pakhtun) she would not have been  criticized so harshly.

Majority of the anti-Malala gang on facebook are girls and majority of these girls are non-Pahstoons.

So these non-pashtoon girls who are anti-Malala, would like for them to spend a day in the shoes of a village pukhtanu and live through her daily struggles before throwing out their opinions."

Their (Anti-Malala girls) problem is “if Malala is a daughter of the Nation, who we are then?” Exactly girls who are you? Show your guts, educate yourselves and fight for girl’s education in the areas where all girls’ schools have been blown up e.g. the two Waziristans ( north and south) and Bajaur, Aurakzai , Mohmand and |kurram Agencies.

The article has appeared on www.pashtunwomenvp.com Here

Future of FATA (FATA in KPK or a separate province)

The current status of FATA has been criticized worldwide and so is its law FCR (Frontier Crime Regulations) . Attempts have been made by the current government to amend FCR and include sections which could possibly be implemented on HUMANS living in FATA . They say chances of improvements exist everywhere but the FCR which is a regulation that deals with controlling crimes only cannot be improved at all. The only solution for it is to abolish it completely. But then an important question comes to our mind that what would be the status of these 7 Tribal Agencies and 6 Regions if FCR is replaced by the 1973 constitution of Pakistan ? where will these areas go?

 There are two most debated options for FATA if and only if FCR ( which i don`t think it will happen so quickly because of the strong stockholders of FCR opposing any challenge which comes in its way)  was abolished , one is merging it into Khyber Pukhtunkhwa and the other is making a separate province of these 7 agencies and 6 FR regions. The later has been supported by a sound majority of FATA parliamentarians  while the first -merging FATA and KPK- has been supported mainly by Awami National Party (ANP). I will discuss why merging is a better option and not a separate.

FATA being A Separate Province

We should first look at the geography of FATA, start it from Bajaur Agency which borders Lower Dir, Malakand and Chitral ( settled districts of KPK) and is bordering the only FATA region i.e. Mohmand Agency through Nawagai Chamarkand. Mohmand  Agency is then connected to khyber Agency through a very narrow and non-passable strip so if you want to travel from Bajaur Agency to Khbyer Agency you will have to pass through Dist Charsada and Peshawar which is also not even the route followed by the majority to and from Peshawar,they follow the Mardan-Malakand-Dir route. As you can see in the map same is the case with North and south waziristan and Orakzai and Kurram Agencies and all the FR regions. Practically there is not a single Tribal Agency which could be declared as Capital of FATA  if it becomes a province.
Peace and Infrastructure are literally touching the baseline of the graph which is another reason why the capital of FATA should be Peshawar if it becomes a province.

The second argument which is largely given in favor of FATA -The Province- is that the people living there are all pashto speakers and they share the same cultural values. But lets not forget that the two Waziristans are more similar to Bannu and Lakki Marwat than to Bajaur and Mohmand. Mohamand and Bajaur are similiar in traditions to people living in the north-eastern districts of KPK i.e. Dir, Malakand and Charsada.
A close friend of MNA and Federal minister Shaukatullah khan was telling us that there was a meeting of FATA lawmakers and they were discussing future of FATA. Some of them proposed that we should demand a separate province but before seeking the opinions of others members the Waziristani contingent started fighting over the issue of its capital(one arguing that North waziristan should be its capital and the other from South Waziristan was favoring South Waziristan).
Moreover there is not a single university in FATA and the only proposed medical college in Bajaur was made controversial because other agencies decision makers wanted it to be in their locality despite the fact that the Agency Head Quarter Hospital Bajaur is the only developed hospital in FATA which might afford medical teaching. So if FATA becomes a province, it will become more obvious that the students of FATA seeking admissions in different universities of KPK will be treated like those coming from other provinces and they will then face severe hardships.
Many students from FATA don`t like the proposed name Qabailistan for FATA, it sounds so weird. The historical name of Khuber Agency has already been given to the previous NWFP as Khyber Pukhtunkhwa.

FATA merged in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa

I do not belong to ANP but their proposal of merging FATA and Khyber Pukhtunkhwa seems rational and is in the favor of vast interests of people of FATA. It will not only  extend the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and High Court to tribal regions, abolishing the newly constituted Frontier Crimes Regulation tribunal, and deletion of clause (7) of Article 247 of the Constitution, which violates the fundamental rights of the citizens of the area but also KPK will become the 2nd largest province of the country. It will receive a higher share in the NFC award which will be used in the development of the backward FATA. Also the possible problems to students and business community in peshawar will be eliminated.
This proposal is no way an intention to establish Greater Pukhtunistan because the ANP government has not shown any intentions of doing so in their ruling term of five years. A sound majority of Pukhtuns live in Balochistan and there are Hindko and Sariki Speakers inhabiting Hazara divison and Dist Dera Ismail Khan which reflects why Greater Pukhtunistan is not possible practically.

Perceptions of Paradise-By Ajmal Khattak Baba

Paradise

I asked a mullah, what do you think is Paradise like?
He ran his fingers through his beard and said
“Fresh fruits and rivers of milk”

A talib (student) was sitting nearby
I asked him, what do you say?
He put aside the book of Zulekha he was reading, and said
“Beautiful women with (tattooed) green dots on their cheeks”

A shaikh stood nearby, rolling his tasbeeh (rosary)
He stroked his beard and said (questioning the talib):
“No, it’s not like that!”
“Paradise is beautiful servant boys and heavenly music.”

A khan raised his head from a lengthy sajda (prostration in prayer)
What is your opinion, Khan Sahib? I asked
He adjusted his turban and said
“The luxuriously furnished and perfumed mansions”

Nearby, a labourer stood in his tattered clothes
I asked him, do you know what Paradise is?
He wiped the sweat from his brow and said
“It’s a full stomach and deep slumber”

A man, in dishevelled hair, passed by, lost in his thoughts
I asked, what do you say, philosopher?
Smoothing his hair, he said:
“It’s nothing but dreams conjured up to please man”

(Confused) I looked down into my heart and then looked up into the blue sky; and heard a murmur in reply:

“Paradise is your home where you are the master, and at liberty;
and if you cannot attain the freedom, then sacrifice on the path to freedom, as an ideal, is Paradise;
Be it hellfire or the gallows.
janat

Here is the song Da Yao mulla ne me Tapos oko sang by Sardar Ali Takkar.

Another attempt to hurt us or want us to react -The Blasphemous Film

 when those cartoons were published in Denmark I remember people in Pakistan burnt their own trains and buses to condemn it. Some people lost their lives too in the wild protests across the country and then everybody was regretting that ( Burning trains and damaging Govt and public property) should have not happened. The same happened in Afghanistan too last year. It`s good that Pakistanis learned a lesson from it and they didn't repeat it this time when the uncivilized, full of hatred Blasphemous Film has been released. Though the people of Libya responded in a different way by killing US ambassador to their country and burning the embassy building.

Being a Muslim I too have the feelings of anger and was hurt to hear it. This should not happen at all. The People of west should respect the Muslims faith and the government and general public should have played their role. They all knew it and it was intentional there is no doubt in it.

Why they do so by the way? Many people have many interpretations and most of them sound logical. Like "It may be an attempt to just hurt and humiliate Muslims Or They are afraid and jealous of Islam and Its Divine teachings since its spreading and thousands of people are converting into it, Or they want us (Muslims ) to react violently like i said we did in the past, or Its just their freedom of expression and are fully allowed to say anything by any means against any one ( I heard from one of my teacher Sir Imran Wazir that you cannot praise Hitler and the holocaust on social networks because its a violation).

So what should be our response to such things or How can we stop it? One cool and really appreciated way to react is to spread the true face of Islam and the adorable teachings of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Let the world know how much we love our Prophet and what is Islam all about. But How? See the next para.

In response to the abusive film by the Israeli-American person, the organization named "Discover Islam UK" distributed around 110,000 free copies of Quranic translation and text about the life of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) for the citizens of London. A very smart and far better approach than the violent protests that are currently going on around the world. May God bless them.



Courtesy I Love Peshawar Facebook Page.


Whatever the reason behind these failed attempts of disgracing us are, we the Muslim should focus more on ourselves. How much we are obeying the teachings of Quran? We have forgotten the sole aim of our lives -to worship Allah. We have wrapped  our Quran in clean clothes and we remember its worth when we have to swear by it or when the INFIDELS try to humiliate it. We don`t bother ourselves to read it with translation. We have left it to some Mullahs who at times narrate things which are neither from Quran nor from Hadith but are meant to either spread hatred amongst ourselves so that we consult him every time or because he is paid for it(FATWAS).

The point is we cannot do anything practically to stop them doing so. The only way is to preach it. By the way after 9/11 more people in US converted into islam. why? Because they started reading it that " is it really the teaching of Islam and Jihad to kill innocent people like this ?" They started to find it in Hadith and Quran which was not there at all. But the true, powerful and logical verses of God forced them to accept Islam.

I wish we were capable of making an international standard movie in which we could have showed how much we love the then their Prophet Jesus( whom they believe is the son of God).

FCR in FATA

What is wrong with the Frontier Crimes Regulation?

Officially enacted in 1901, Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) has its origins in laws that were enacted by the British Raj in the Pashtun-inhabited tribal areas in the Northwest of British India. They were specifically devised to counter the opposition of the Pashtuns to British rule. The main objective of the FCR was to protect the interests of the British Empire. More than a century later, this law continues to be applied to FATA residents by the Government of Pakistan.

It is well known, however, that the tribal agencies (FATA) were not originally under the British rule. The FCR was initially implemented in the so-called settled areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that were under the control of the British Raj. FCR was only implemented in FATA after the birth of Pakistan.

FCR MAIN POINTS & CONCERNS

(1) Citizens are deprived of appeal, wakeel and daleel (respectively, the right to appeal detention, the right to legal representation, and the right to present reasoned evidence).

(2) One of the worst aberrations of the FCR is the collective punishment clause (No. 21), which is imposed on anyone in the tribal areas for a crime committed by him or her relative, spouse, or even any other person from the same tribe and area (Amnesty International 2008).

(3) Under the draconian FCR, the political agent or his deputy, the assistant political agent, enjoys unbridled powers – both executive and judicial. There is no regulatory mechanism to check misuse of power by the political agent which often results in serious human rights violations.

(4) Under the FCR, suspects are tried by a tribal jirga or council which submits its recommendations regarding conviction or acquittal to the political agent. The political agent makes a decision regarding conviction or acquittal and is not bound by the jirga’s recommendations. The orders of the political agent cannot be challenged before the higher courts. In effect, there is virtually no separation of the judiciary from the executive in the FATA.

(5) Among the most damaging provisions in the FCR is the clause permitting the “seizure/confiscation of property and arrest and detention of an individual without due process, and/or barring a person in the tribal areas from entering the settled districts”. This provision also falls under section 21 of the FCR, which is known as the ‘Collective Responsibility Clause’. Under this clause, if an offence is committed by one person, his or her whole family/tribe is made responsible for the act, can be arrested or have their property seized. Moreover, the FCR states that arrested persons will not be permitted to contact the Government of Pakistan and that no one in Pakistan may contact or trade with any arrested person in FATA.

(6) Under section 23 of the FCR, all the members of a village are considered responsible for a murder if a dead body is found in their village. Under section 22 and 23, fines are imposed on the entire community for the crimes of a single person. In section 56, if fines are not paid by relatives, then the property of an offender is sold to realize the amount due.

While the Constitution has virtually put the entire populace of the FATA region at the mercy of the President of Pakistan for any reform or development in the region, the political agent has been ruling the tribal region with absolute authority with the help of the FCR and other black laws. The political agent is beyond the reach of the law; he is above the law.

An example: On 29 June 2007, the Peshawar High Court ordered the Kurram Agency administration to immediately release 11 tribal maliks (elders) who were arrested on the order of Assistant political agent of Lower Kurram, Dost Mohammad on 17 February 2007 under the FCR and threatened the administration to initiate contempt of court proceedings if it failed to release the tribal maliks. Earlier in May 2007, the High Court had directed the Kurram Agency administration but the authorities failed to release the detainees.

FCR REPERCUSSIONS

Late Supreme Court Chief Justice Alvin Robert Cornelius, said that the 1901 Frontier Crimes Regulation is “obnoxious to all recognized modern principles governing the dispensation of justice” (Sumunder vs State, PLD 1954 FC 228).

The FCR has been characterized as “draconian”, a “black law”, “illegal”, “unconstitutional” and “un-Islamic” by the people and the courts. The FCR was enacted by the British colonialists as an instrument to subjugate the local people and to stop any rebellion by the Pashtuns.

According to the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) annual report, 14 children were detained under the FCR in 2009. In 2004, the SPARC annual report indicated that more than 70 children had been detained under the same law. During a visit to Haripur Central Prison in 2004, the SPARC team met with 21 women and children who were members of a fugitive’s family. The women and children had been convicted under section 40 of the FCR. They were arrested after the wanted man had escaped arrest.

In 1979, the Baluchistan High Court (the Shariat bench) held that the FCR is “discriminatory and un-Islamic”. On 29 July 2002, the Lahore High Court ruled that the Frontier Crimes Regulation had ceased to exist following the Baluchistan High Court judgment and hence, detention under the FCR is “illegal”.

In the same order, the Lahore High Court directed the release of Qimat Gul of the FATA who had been detained for two-and-a-half years without any right to a defense. The political agent of Bajaur Agency had implicated him under the FCR and had detained him when he protested against forcibly conviscating his land by influential persons in the village.

BIASED FEDERATION OF PAKISTAN

The major fault lies in the “step-motherly treatment of the federation towards the tribal areas” by way of the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan, which provides the space needed for the FCR to violate the fundamental rights of citizens of Pakistan living in FATA.

In Article 1 of the Constitution, FATA is named as part of Pakistan. Article 247 describes the manner and methods by which the tribal areas should be administered. Under Article 247 (3) of the Constitution of 1973, “no act of Parliament is applicable to FATA or any part thereof unless the President of Pakistan so directs”.

INSUFFICIENT AMENDMENTS

(1) The extension of the Political Parties Order has not yet been seen on the ground in FATA. A few months back, Pakistan Tehreek e Insaaf local leaders were arrested and tortured for holding a normal jalsa. Even Imran Khan couldn’t do anything against the authorities responsible for it.

(2) The right to appeal has not been implemented yet. See the case of Kurram Agency and the Peshawar High Court for more on this point.

THE ROLE OF FATA MNAS

In the history of FATA, all elected members of the National Assembly (MNAs) are either from the family of the bureaucrats ruling and exploiting the tribals with both hands or from the family of Maliks who are benefiting from autocratic decisions of the bureaucrats.

How can one expect that these interested stakeholders will abolish the FCR or amend the parts which are in violation of basic human rights?

After independence and the birth of a sovereign Pakistan, it was hoped that the Constitution of 1973 would herald a new era of freedom for the people of this country to flourish and progress. However, unlike the rest of Pakistan, the Constitution was not applied to the tribal areas, whose people continue to suffer the indignities and cruelties of the archaic British legal code under the Frontier Crimes Regulation.

There is a need to support the complete abolition and repeal of the FCR, so that FATA may be brought under the purview of the Constitution of Pakistan in the same manner as it applies to all Pakistan. The people of FATA deserve the same fundamental rights that the rest of Pakistan enjoys.

IM|Sciences and its exams` culture

Recently my friend called me and asked if I could visit him. It sounded a bit cliché when I said NO cause I have to appear in an exam starting next week. His judgment was not wrong too because it was happening the third time in last THREE months. But thats IM|Sciences you have to be ready for it both mentally and physically.

 Each week we have three days long weekend but there will be so much work load that at the end you will utter oh gosh the weekend is over. Then at the start of fifth week or at the end of Fourth week we have an exam. And what can I say how much different this exam is? Sir Shah Nawaz once himself said in a lecture that teachers of IM|Sciences will teach you how to cook rice but in exam they will ask you how to cook biryani and what are the factors which has increased the demand of biryani and substituted Kabali polao :D
 We are now in preps of our comprehensive exam i.e. final exam of the semester after having two hectic weeks of presentations and assignments.  You cannot just copy assignments from Wikipedia and paste it there, they will check for plagiarism.  While during presentations it is not considered sufficient if you merely read out from the slides, besides you will have to explain it, else you will lose marks.

People of other universities specifically IM|studies of Peshawar university presume our institute as a DamKhana but they really don`t know what is the criterion of surviving in IM|sciences. You have to keep your marks above 62% otherwise you will get "dropped out" no matter in which semester you are. This 62% minimum marks requirement of staying here serves as  First division in Peshawar University and those who get it are really proud of it.

On one hand IM|sciences allows you to practice LIBERAL things like singing, dances, concerts, parties, funfair , festivals, events like kaliwal days but on the other hand they have the toughest schedule of exams and once your result is displayed on the notice board you just can’t change it by hook or crook. They have the most honest, strict and never compromising staff over there to monitor everything is in the line of rules.

I am sorry my friends I might not receive your calls or visit you till 24th of this month. We are in the season of hibernation.

Good luck to my class fellas and all other university mates.

Extremism and its forms in Pukhtoons

There is no doubt that we pukhtoons lack the trait of moderation whether it is religious extremism or secularism, being honest or hypocrites, educationist or completely illiterate. We are not in the middle of anything. I have always wondered why this is so. Once I asked my friend Dr.Attaullah khan about it and he came up with some physiological evidences of pukhtoons. That Pukhtoon are mostly residing in mountainous regions. There is a deficiency of iodine in their diet and this deficiency leads to hyper activity of thyroid gland which ultimately causes emotional instability and thus they practice every ideology to its extreme and hence extremism.

Among these extremisms the two which are mostly discussed now-a-days are liberal extremism and religious extremism. If we compare the destructions these two have brought, obviously religious extremism has been more dangerous and has brought nothing but miseries. It has been used both by indigenous and foreign groups for their own so called strategic interests.
In my view here in Pukhtunkhwa there is no liberal extremism. The ones who are perceived as liberal extremists are actually secular because a liberal extremist is a person who might restrict you not to practice your religion as opposite to religious extremism. There has been no incident of violence reported where liberals have forced people to follow their ideas. The known liberals are reluctant to make their views public out of fear of backlash from the radicals. There is no militant liberal organization existing. Who are the liberal extremists?

For being a religious extremist one has to go as far as committing MURDER, for the sake of your spirituality. For being a liberal extremist, it is just enough to reject the above mentioned murderous point of view. Or worse, if you come out openly, and question the inconsistencies of Mullah, you are liberal fascist.

The word secular means “of this world” in Latin and is usually used to describe any philosophy which promotes the development of the physical, moral, and intellectual nature of man , without reference to religious dogmas .Secularism means both religious tolerance as well as religious freedom. There are no liberal extremist, only religious extremists are playing havoc with this unfortunate race.


Now a secular extremist will be one who does not offer his Namaz ( prayer) and doesn’t even call it his weakness or a sin, he will be sarcastic against the one who offer his prayer five times a day. He will probably start fighting if requested to recite the Quran. I have come across such secular many times. He will be a Muslim but will call himself a comrade and follower of Karl Marx. She will be sure that Islam has given rights to women what they needed and deserved, has empowered her and that the violations of women rights is just because of misinterpretation of some portions of Quran and hadith or because of cultural values, but will still call herself a feminist.