I came across this video on youtube and well. . . Pakistani films ka koi haal nai hai!
Blaze with anger, burn with shame...
The little boy ran back into the house after spying on a man, standing outside smoking. Being brought up in Chicago but having to spend a few days, every now and then in Lahore posed quite a dilemma: The rules of the game were surprisingly different here.
“Dad a bald man is smoking a cigarette in the garden!” said the boy, looking scandalized. Smokers were given a really tough time in America, and the boy was raised almost exclusively in the new anti-smoking lifestyle.
“Oye donkey! That is not a bald man; that is Mushtaak Chachoo!” the boy’s father reproached him in case he called Mushtaak ’bald’ in front of him; the poor man had lost his hair far too early and felt really conscious of his appearance. He picked his son up in his arms and took him out to introduce him to his as of yet unknown- ‘Chachoo’.
Meanwhile, inside the living room, the environment was more sober: Sidra baji had come back from the hospital and sat with her sister, Marwa. Marwa’s three-year old daughter kept herself busy in a comer, playing with a half-chewed dinosaur and a fake mobile phone for children: every time she pressed a button, a barely decipherable recording of an Indian song issued forth from the tiny speaker. Sidra baji spoke in fragments and scarcely meant to be heard. She seemed tired and distant and as she spoke she watched the little girl play in the corner.
“The doctor said everything was fine: that’s what they kept telling me except when the last time I went: blood pressure had shot up …too high.” she said with much regret. “They said the baby’s heart-beat was down to sixty, an emergency operation was the only chance.” Sidra baji fell silent. staring at a spot in the air, thinking. Marwa could not really come up with much to say but she knew she did not really how to say anything al all. “What does one do when there is no one to blame?” asked Sidra baji: her question posed more to herself than to Marwa.
“Say Salaam to your Chachoo, boy,” said the father as he stood with his son in his arms, next to the smoking bald man. Mushtaak Chachoo smiled at the little boy but the smile died before it reached his eyes and the boy sensed an odd multiplicity of emotions lurking behind Mushtaak Chachoo’s sad eyes. The boy said ‘hello’ rather awkwardly and then squirmed and struggled to be let go of. His father set him free on his feet and the boy ran away farther into the little garden, jumping around in the grass for a bit before settling down to inspect an ants’ nest in one of the flower beds.
Mushtaak looked at his friend who was looking at his son- before he spoke: “Javed, do you remember that time when Gohar Sial’s sister died? Back when we were in school’? We used to be such idiots back then. Professor Salim had organized a Quran Khwani in the common room?”
“Yes I remember. It was a sad time then. Gohar was a mess. His sister was very young right?”
“He saw me laughing outside the common room. He looked away when I caught his eye. Yaar. . .I felt like a complete heel. a traitor …”
“Oh come on, you were a kid back then … ” said Javed. trying to comfort his friend.
“Yes … well so was he.” said Mushtaak and lit another cigarette.
The little girl threw the chewed up dinosaur behind a sofa and then climbed into Marwa’s lap ….
“She’s a gentle creature isn’t she?” inquired Sidra baji with much fondness.
“Yes … but only when she wants to be; she knows how to torture me very well.” Answered Marwa affectionately as she pulled her daughter into a soft embrace.
“How is Abba ji? He was too sad. I could tell. Has he said anything?”
“Yes, yes he’s perfectly fine. You know how it is with him; his sorrow is intense but short-lived. He’s fine now …”
“That’s because he becomes too involved; coming up with names, buying diapers for heaven’s sake! All of that, emotional investment…he didn’t even know the gender… just assumed it would be a boy!”
“He’s ok now.” said Marwa and patted her sister’s hand. The little girl slid out of her mother’s lap and ran out. Stepping, as she ran, on the fake mobile phone and immersing the whole room in a fresh wave of unrecognizable Indian music. Sidra baji’s eyes followed her niece out of the room before she spoke again:”Marwa …it was a girl.”
Mushtaak talked in an almost carefree tone now; in his usual way of talking. but something was not quite the same. “You know, a stillborn child doesn’t require a funeral? No name and no funeral. Sinless you see … so it’s unnecessary. Very lucky souls, they say, that leave this place blameless.”
“Yes. ‘how happy is the blameless vestal’s lot…’”
”’The world forgetting by the world forgot.’ indeed. I was thinking of Gohar when went to the graveyard. It was all very strange. I had my child in my hands: such a small child. Very pretty you know, light hair, very fair and proper fingers and toes.” Mushtaak sighed deep. “It felt like so much waste.”
“How’s Sidra?”
“Hmmm … ? She’s doing fine.” he paused for a thought and then continued, “I couldn’t look her in the eyes at first you know? I don’t know why. She was fine initially; I mean, then suddenly they said she had really high blood pressure. The baby died before they could operate. So it had to be removed … naturally, I mean she had to give birth to a dead child. No, I couldn’t look her in the eyes at first. It was just too much. It’s ok now but it’s too much. But at the time I felt ashamed … as if I had wronged her.”
“I’m really sorry Mushtaak … “
“I was thinking of Gohar. Professor Salim had asked a couple of naat khwaan to come. They were really good and all. Perhaps more interested in out doing each other and impressing the ‘audience’ than maintaining a sense of sobriety, befitting the gravity of the situation, but really good. You know how they are …these singers … inside; they don’t really care … just another gig for them to perform at.”
“Well. .. they were kids too … don’t think too much about such things Mushtaak.”
“Yeah you’re right. ..! carried my child in my own hands and then watched as they buried it. nameless. I felt rather odd. My mind had been utterly blank and numb before that. On my way back home, for some reason, I thought of Gohar and how he had seen me laughing. I remembered his face, the look in his eyes a millisecond before he looked away. I felt the shame all over again. That was when I stopped the car and wept for the first time, like a mad child.”
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged guilt | Leave a Comment »
A month ago, a couple of University Town, Peshawar citizen complained to Federal Interior Ministry about mysterious activities of some American’s living in their neighbor. After investigations by Pakistani authorities, they coined that an NGO labeled under “Creative Associative International Inc.” (CAII) rented house, a Washington DC based company. Further, they told that they are working on projects in tribal areas and very astonishing that these projects are linked to US State department and their projects were not relevant with their described work of an NGO.
By the passage of time, they applied to hire security guards for their protection and next step was to demand Black-water World Wide. They were going to use Black-water to conduct a range of covert activities in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which was later on confirmed by daily “New York Times”.
In Peshawar, security officials observed by different reports that Black-water was operating from the office of CAII on Chinar Road, University Town in Peshawar companies in-charge alleged and arrested for maintaining contacts with the adversaries of Pakistan in tribal belt. At last company’s in-charge Mr. Davis expelled from Pakistan Daily “Jang” reported.
One thousand US Marines will be coming to Pakistan and will be deployed at US Mission in Islamabad, Foreign Office Spokesman, Abdul Basit Khan told media in a press briefing on 5th August, 2009 at Press Club, Karachi while replying to a query about increase in the strength of the US personnel at Islamabad Mission. Remember that US is going to establish world’s biggest mission in Islamabad in near future and marines are coming to protect the Islamabad mission.
According to media reports, marines of Black-water already exist here and stepped into Pakistan during the Musharraf era. There are so many worthy scoops which declare that Black-water exists here in Pakistan. First of all, existence of CAII in Peshawar, their suspicious activities then intelligence agencies concerns about their covert activities and presence. Exploring the facts this statement seems 100% true as a foreign newspaper “New York Times” reported recently “the CIA has for several years operated Predator drones out of a remote base in Shamsi, Pakistan but has secretly added a second site at an air base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan” in this report they also mentioned that these Predator drones were fired by the Black-water.
While like CAII, which is considered to be the front line of CIA and was involved in mischievous activities in Peshawar there are several other reports about CIA’s suspicious activities in different nooks of Pakistan, a person can better understand what is the purpose of these activities protecting diplomats or espionage.
For example, wreaking havoc inside Pakistan and recovering American and Israeli manufactured weapons during this havoc, at right of the time when you are flawed to know about the supplier of these kind of weapons inside Pakistan. Thirdly, capturing of a US Woman diplomat convening a secret meeting between Indian diplomats and Pakistani Officials at 152 – Margalla Road, Islamabad and government’s letter to refrain contacts with foreign diplomats, issued in response.
Same like University Town, Peshawar and existence of Black-water marines were exposed in a televised programme of Geo TV, when Hamid Mir questioned to Nawabzada Malik Amaad, Minister for Foreign Affairs about 200 houses are rented to American’s possibly US marines, who are doing cover activities, which compelled residents to report. The most important thing both Pakistani and US authorities denied to confirm about the existence Black-water when it has already been declared by Foreign Office Spokesman.
Knowing all these bullshits, we can not deny the existence of Black-water in Pakistan but a rally of questions blow our minds to make us senseless that why an external security force is here, neglecting our own security agencies? Our agencies are not able to protect foreign diplomats or our regime + US State Department do not want to rely on them? Can they provide services to a sovereign state with having an NOC? If they have NOC? Then why not made it public? And if they have taken NOC from government then isn’t it a hard hit on the sovereignty of Pakistan? If they have not taken NOC then what is the reactions of our state?
Black-water established in 1997 by Mr. Eric D. Prince. It is a completely private owned security company. In 1990’s Mr. Prince purchased 6,000 acres (24 Km2) of the great dismal swamp, at North Carolina / Virginia border, where he established Black-water on the name of peat colored water of the swamp. Black-water World Wide replaced its name with Xe LLC after breaking their contract with Iraqi regime because they killed 17 innocent people without any cause in 2007. Xe’s founder and former CEO Eric Prince was a Navy Seal, he attended Naval Academy and was an intern in George H. W Bush’s White House.
Prince is a major financial supporter of Republic Party causes and candidates, which is the reason that 90% of the companies revenue come from the US State Department. Currently, Xe is the largest US States three private security contractors and 2/3 contracts are NO-BID CONTRACTS.
In continuation, I would like to insert here that Black-water Marines, on September 16, 2007 shoot and killed 17 innocent Iraqis and at least 14 of them were killed without any cause, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation. In November 2008 the US State Department fined million dollars to Black-water for smuggling automatic weapons to Iraq without the necessary permission. Connecting to this information, Pakistan army has already recovered American assembled weapons from terrorists inside Pakistan’s territory with highly trained terrorists came from Afghanistan. Our minds are useless to understand then why they have allowed Black Water to step into Pakistan, even they do not have registered passports.
Jeremy Scahill – an investigative journalist of Daily “The Nation” international’s report added fuel into story about a former employee of Black-water and an ex US-marine, whom made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statement, filed on August 03 in Federal Court in Virginia. One of the most flabbergasted allegations from these persons is “Mr. Eric Prince views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe”.
In addition to this statement these men told to Federal Court that Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, know and wanting them men to take every availability to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the knights of the Templar – the warriors who fought crusades. Remember, that still five persons are waiting for trials on manslaughter in Baghdad and a sixth Jeremy Ridge way has already pleaded guilty to manslaughter and helping the prosecutors.
Reviewing entire facts, our current regime should have to rewind the history that CIA had already attempted to build a spy chain for accessing Pakistan’s nuclear programme, which was broken in 1978 by our intelligence agencies. This news was not made public but issue resolved on diplomatic level at Washington DC, USA. Now, their media and US States Department have already showed their concerns about threat of nuclear weapons accessibility to Taliban. CIA and Black-water’s covert activities could be a signal of another spy chain for gaining access to Pakistan’s nuclear assets but Black-water must have to remember that they have stepped into hot-waters and landed into land of suicider’s and it will not be easy to eat this pill.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged America, blackwater, CIA, pakistan, peshawar, US Marines | Leave a Comment »
Kaneez Fatima’s story is typical of how young women end up in the business of prostitution in Pakistan.
Although they are legally outlawed, the number of sex workers in the country has increased over the past few years.
Growing unemployment and inflation and the resulting rise in poverty have led many down this road.
Increasingly, young women across the country are putting their bodies up for sale in the “flesh markets”.
The daughter of a poor rural farmer from the Punjab province’s sub-district of Chiniot, Kaneez Fatima’s only advantage was that she was able to complete her school education.
Still in her teens, she was married off as is normally the case in Pakistan’s rural heartland.
“Initially it worked fine, but then my husband went out of work,” she told.
“I had two small children to support, and started to work as a maid.”
‘Rapid progress’
Kaneez Fatima says the place where she started work was actually a brothel.
The people there convinced me to join the profession. The money was better than anything I could find and I was desperate.”
“I started out as one of the girls working out of the dera [or den, as a brothel is called by locals."
The girls, as she calls them, work out of it and are handled by a man or more often a woman known simply as "aunty".
Kaneez says she made rapid progress through the ranks due to her education.
"My first dera was in Mandi Bahauddin [a town in central Punjab], where they made me in-charge soon after I joined.”
She says that she kept her profession a secret from her family, but her husband managed to find out.
“He called me to the village and then tried to shoot me.” She escaped with a bullet wound to her leg and never went back.
“I changed my name and moved to Lahore portraying myself as a model.”
She has continued in the business and has now graduated to supplying girls to brothels all over Punjab.
“I get a commission ranging from an average of 5,000 to 10,000 rupees ($60 to $120) per girl. The price varies according to age and beauty.”
Kaneez says she also has to guarantee that the girls will not run away.
While most are forced into the profession due to poverty, there are some who join voluntarily because they can make more money than in a ‘normal’ trade.
According to her, the normal rate for a girl for two to three hours ranges between 1,000 and 1,500 rupees ($12 to $18).
“Of course if a client wants to spend the entire night then the rate rises exponentially, depending on the girl’s age and looks.”
The girls only get a fraction of this money as most of it goes to the aunty, she says.
Rising numbers
“The girl will get 300 rupees ($4) if she spends a few hours, and up to 2,000 rupees ($24) for the entire night.”
Kaneez says the number of girls is rising by the day, and they are often brought in by relatives such as fathers, mothers, brother and even husbands.
“Some of the girls are so young that my heart refuses to agree, but what can one do?”
Nida is a pretty and innocent looking young woman of about 20 and has been a prostitute for six years.
“My first time was when I was 14 years old and I was brought here by my mother as she had to pay off a loan of 10,000 rupees
“I did not even know what to do at the time.”
Nida says that she has continued in the trade as her entire family is now dependent on her for their day-to-day survival.
I don’t want to be here… I have dreams about getting married and having children, but I have no choice.
She says she would leave the trade immediately if the government or some social organisation could ensure food, clothing and shelter for her parents and siblings.
Maria, on the other hand, is very much in the business out of choice.
“My husband was good for nothing, and I wanted my children to get the best of everything,” she says.
Maria says she has worked all over northern Pakistan, specially in Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
She says her best days were in Islamabad where she was able to make up to 100,000 rupees ($1,200) a month plus tips.
“The people were always well behaved and did not mistreat me. The clients never identified themselves, but I could tell some were powerful and important men.
“Quite a few of them were Westerners as well.”
Maria says she eventually left because of the rising attacks on hotels, which were her main operating places.
“I am in Lahore now, and while things are not as lucrative, at least there is more security.”
Maria, however, is one of the luckier ones.
Kaneez Fatima says that there are so many horror stories in the profession that she could relate them for hours.
The most common cases are where a client makes a perverse or strange demand and the girl refuses. They either beat her black and blue, or just kill her and tell us she has run away.
“After all, who cares for another dead prostitute?”
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Acknowledging that there is “an ingress of the ISI in every terrorist group”, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has alleged Afghanistan is under influence of Indian intelligence agencies and he has documentary evidence against it.
Afghan intelligence, Afghan President, Afghan Government, don’t talk of them. I know what they do. They are, by design, they mislead the world. They talk against Pakistan, because they are under the influence of Indian intelligence, all of them
Musharraf told CNN in an interview Sunday. “The Afghan intelligence (is) entirely under the influence of Indian intelligence. We know that,” Musharraf said when asked that Taliban leader Mullah Omar is in the Quetta city of Pakistan.“I have given documentary evidence to everyone from top to bottom,” the former Pakistan Army chief said. Musharraf denied reports and statements coming from the US leaders that ISI still has contacts with the terrorists.
Meanwhile, Musharraf was very bitter about President Asif Zardari and in an interview with known journalist Seymour Hersh called him a “criminal”, a “fraud” and a “third rater”. Hersh, in a detailed report on Pakistan, wrote:
Musharraf did not spare his successor. ‘Asif Zardari is a criminal and a fraud. He’ll do anything to save himself. He’s not a patriot and he’s got no love for Pakistan. He’s a third-rater’
Musharraf said that he and General Kayani, who had been his nominee for chief of army staff, were still in telephonic contact. He said he didn’t think the Army was capable of mutiny — not the Army he knew. “There are people with fundamentalist ideas in the Army, but I don’t think there is any possibility of these people getting organized and doing an uprising. These ‘fundos’ were disliked and not popular.”
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Starting of this blog with this beautiful song by Haroon
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