Muhammad Khurshid's Posts - iPeace.us2024-03-29T12:36:01ZMuhammad Khurshidhttps://ipeace.us/profile/MuhammadKhurshidhttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/63625290?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://ipeace.us/profiles/blog/feed?user=0ksp1e9p4kstd&xn_auth=noGive Us The Peace And Take The Whole Worldtag:ipeace.us,2009-06-24:2217368:BlogPost:17881402009-06-24T06:50:13.000ZMuhammad Khurshidhttps://ipeace.us/profile/MuhammadKhurshid
The people may accept it or not, but this is the fact that peace is the requirement of all creatures living in this world. All the things are meaningless without peace. So I am making a request from the rulers of this world to please take this world, but give us just peace. We have been needing nothing. We are not needing any resources. We are not needing any money. Please keep all the things with yourself. Take the whole world and control its resources, but just give us the peace. Millions of…
The people may accept it or not, but this is the fact that peace is the requirement of all creatures living in this world. All the things are meaningless without peace. So I am making a request from the rulers of this world to please take this world, but give us just peace. We have been needing nothing. We are not needing any resources. We are not needing any money. Please keep all the things with yourself. Take the whole world and control its resources, but just give us the peace. Millions of people mostly women and children have been running for their lives. Enough blood has been shed. Now there must be some ease. Please give us the peace.<br />
Situation in Pakistan and tribal areas is needing immediate attention. Some three and half million people have been forced to leave their homes and now they have been living in the refugees camps in their own country. According to a newspaper comment, one of the most unusual features of the displacement in Pakistan that has been described by the UN as the most rapid, and the most massive, ever seen, has been the generosity extended to the IDPs by ordinary people. Villagers in Mardan district and elsewhere have contributed what they could from their own often meagre reserves, people everywhere have handed over donations in cash and kind, and many people have opened homes to the IDPs. In some cases these people are relatives, but in others they are total strangers. According to humanitarian agencies working for the IDPs, over 3.7 million remain based outside camps. According to the UN, a number of these live in cramped, congested conditions with almost no access to help. While hubs to distribute aid have been set up to cater to IDPs out camps, these are insufficient to meet all needs. Indeed the UK-based Islamic Relief NGO has warned of an outbreak of diarrhoea in some communities due to overcrowding and poor sanitation.<br />
There are also indications that now, over six weeks after the displacement crisis began, many host families are beginning to feel the strain. The UNHCR has reported some IDPs who have recently moved to camps report their hosts were facing financial hardship. This is unsurprising given that impoverished families often supported by a single wage-earner found themselves in many cases supporting up to ten additional people. While the situation at camps has improved and giant organizations such as the Islamabad-based Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) have begun skills-training schemes at camps, the IDP crisis has still to be fully brought under control. Even at camps, there are still many needs that have not been met. We also continue to hear varying accounts of how long the IDP crisis is expected to continue. Regardless of what happens on that front, the IDP need to be taken better care of. Many among them are said already to be disillusioned and depressed. This will have serious repercussions for the future.<br />
The EndIDPs Really Needing The Helptag:ipeace.us,2009-05-23:2217368:BlogPost:16525012009-05-23T15:31:50.000ZMuhammad Khurshidhttps://ipeace.us/profile/MuhammadKhurshid
Internally displaced persons have been needing the help as at the moment they have been passing through a very critical. The IDPs have been leading very miserable life in the camps established for them. There are reports that other provinces of Pakistan has barred the IDPs on the plea that they will creat problems for them.<br />
According to a newspaper comment, AS thousands of people continue to flee the battle zones of Malakand division, apprehensions have been expressed by some about the…
Internally displaced persons have been needing the help as at the moment they have been passing through a very critical. The IDPs have been leading very miserable life in the camps established for them. There are reports that other provinces of Pakistan has barred the IDPs on the plea that they will creat problems for them.<br />
According to a newspaper comment, AS thousands of people continue to flee the battle zones of Malakand division, apprehensions have been expressed by some about the resettlement of IDPs in other parts of the country. This underscores the intensifying tragedy of the IDPs, who are caught between a rock and a hard place with little hope of rescue by either the state or society. The over two million evacuees are not cross-border refugees but people displaced internally as a result of the Taliban-led insurgency and the military response. Indeed, the exodus began in earnest only after residents were told to evacuate in anticipation of the military offensive. Given that this call went out from the government, it was incumbent upon the state to plan for an eventuality of the sort and divert resources towards the protection and rehabilitation of IDPs. Lessons could have been extrapolated from the relief effort in the wake of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, and bodies such as the National Crisis Management Cell put on standby.<br />
It must also be noted that the insurgency and the need for a military response did not materialise unexpectedly. The interlinked issues of the Taliban and militancy had been festering even before the current government took charge. The matter was repeatedly mishandled by both the state and the army: where the former resorted to ill-advised concessions such as the Nizam-i-Adl Regulation, the latter failed to take decisive action in its earlier attempts to secure the area and, indeed, allowed the operations of persons such as Maulana Fazlullah to continue unchecked until matters reached a crisis point.<br />
Meanwhile, other than in areas close to the conflict zone such as Mardan which received the first flood of evacuees, the response of the citizenry has been sluggish. In Karachi and Hyderabad, the issue has been clouded by ethnicity-based politics, while a glaring lack of empathy is evident in much of the country. This is a factor that could further alienate the IDPs, and prove disastrous in the long term. It is imperative that the IDP crisis not only be understood in its full perspective but that the affectees’ rehabilitation and return to their hometowns become the country’s foremost priority.<br />
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/11-rejection-of-idps--il--03Pakistan facing worst humanitarian crisistag:ipeace.us,2009-05-20:2217368:BlogPost:16368852009-05-20T11:53:09.000ZMuhammad Khurshidhttps://ipeace.us/profile/MuhammadKhurshid
There will be no denying the fact that Pakistan has been facing worst humatarian crisis as more than 2 million people have been forced to leave their homes. Thousands of people have been killed in the fighting. There are still questions which can be asked from someone as who is responsible for this worst crisis. Actually rulers were just playing the game for earning dollars, but now the situation is worst.<br />
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S.M. Naseem wrote in his article published in Dawn newspaper that the Pakistan Army’s…
There will be no denying the fact that Pakistan has been facing worst humatarian crisis as more than 2 million people have been forced to leave their homes. Thousands of people have been killed in the fighting. There are still questions which can be asked from someone as who is responsible for this worst crisis. Actually rulers were just playing the game for earning dollars, but now the situation is worst.<br />
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S.M. Naseem wrote in his article published in Dawn newspaper that the Pakistan Army’s sudden escalation of hostilities against the Taliban in the last two weeks, without prior preparation to prevent or minimise collateral damage, has landed the country, even if unintentionally, in its worst humanitarian crisis since its inception.<br />
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Back then, people were willing to pay any price to secure their freedom and new home. No one then had any doubts that the war for which they were laying down their lives and for which millions were abandoning their hearths and homes, even as old inhabitants ecstatically welcomed the refugees, was their own and that they were fully prepared to face and share its consequences.<br />
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A similar, if contextually different, response was witnessed during the 2005 earthquake when hundreds of thousands of refugees were forced to seek shelter, albeit temporarily, in various urban centres in the country until their homes and communities were rebuilt with government help — a task that is yet to be completed. Successive governments seem to accumulate unfinished agendas as new ones are thrust on them either by the vagaries of nature or their own follies.<br />
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The early 1980s brought us another humanitarian disaster in the form of the influx of Afghan refugees. This influx — thought to be temporary — was welcomed as a Pashtunwali gesture. It came with the safe haven we provided to Afghan warlords, militant religious extremism and the drug and Kalashnikov culture.<br />
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Things are different today as we face the second largest internal migration in our history since 1947. Although many, especially among the elite, call it the result of Pakistan’s ‘existentialist war,’ others, even among those directly affected by the war, refuse to accept its ownership, attributing its illegitimate paternity to the US and Pakistani military establishments. The reality is, of course, much more complex than either of the two oversimplified versions, although both have some truth to them.<br />
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The fact is that large swathes of our country are today beyond the writ of the state and various insurgencies, representing legitimate and contrived grievances, dominate certain parts. Of these, the Taliban and the Baloch nationalists’ issues have acquired urgency. Although the latter has much greater political significance as an ‘existentialist threat’ for Pakistan, as well as being a secular struggle which could transform into an Intifada of sorts, the focus currently is on the former because of US involvement and the inducement of billions of aid being promised to fight that menace. To that extent, it is, at least partly, an American war, or at best an American-army war.<br />
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Regardless of the differences regarding their genesis and motivation, there is considerable unanimity now — although differences on a common strategy still remain — that the Taliban have become a formidable threat to the integrity, progress and prosperity of the Pakistani nation and that they can’t be allowed to impose their despicable version of religion by force, as they have attempted to in Swat.<br />
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Whether it was wise on the part of the political class to allow them political space by accepting an indigenous legal system and whether the Taliban succeeded in hoodwinking the people that they wanted to dismantle an unjust socioeconomic order is now moot. Their reneging on the agreement to lay down arms and accept the writ of the constitution, which Sufi Mohammad, the Taliban intermediary, rejected as un-Islamic, and their armed intrusion into Dir and Buner, have gone against them.<br />
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True much of the blame for the fiasco lies at the door of those who negotiated and canvassed for the Nizam-i-Adl. But the army and intelligence agencies can’t be absolved of not nipping the insurgency in the bud and, more importantly, not being prepared with a plan for well-thought-through army action that would include the evacuation of civilians from the targeted area in advance. The pace and timing of the army’s action seems to have been dictated more by the need of getting financial support from Washington than by meeting the challenges in Pakistan.<br />
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If military sources are to be believed, the delayed fast-track action in Buner, Dir and Swat has already killed about a quarter of the 4,000 Taliban insurgents facing about 10,000 Pakistani troops during the last two weeks. Whether or not the tide of Taliban insurgency has been stemmed significantly, will become evident only when at least some of the trapped insurgents begin to surrender and people in the affected areas begin to trek back to their homes in sufficient numbers. However, the ISPR has been reticent about collateral damage, which independent reports indicate are high, since the techniques adopted are similar to those used by American forces in Iraq.<br />
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Currently, the second front of the battle against the Taliban — that for hearts and minds, rather than hearths and homes — is being fought in a score of refugee camps set up in the adjacent Pakhtunkhwa areas and in the countless temporary shelters all over the country and in the homes of friends and relatives. Up to two million people have been displaced and the arrangements in the refugee camps are inadequate and their management far from satisfactory — far below the standards, by no means spectacular, achieved during the 2005 earthquake. The private relief effort is stated to have exceeded the official effort by a margin of three to one.<br />
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If military action continues for much longer, citizens will get weary and the refugees will get restless and may even succumb to the lure of the Taliban’s agenda. There is, therefore, the need to upscale and remove imperfections in the public relief effort, along with increasing the intensity of military action while keeping collateral damage to a minimum. Otherwise, the Taliban will gain ground as modern-day Robin Hoods.<br />
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The management of the relief effort is far more haphazard and half-hearted than in the case of the 2005 earthquake, which unravelled without prior warning, unlike the present disaster. It is regrettable that the disaster relief lessons learnt and institutions created after the 2005 earthquake have not been invoked in the present situation.<br />
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The Pakistani Army today faces its biggest challenge in redeeming itself in the eyes of the nation since 1971 when it lost half the country and later when it got itself involved in two prolonged periods of ruling the nation, destroying democracy in the process. It has a chance to prove that it is on the same page as the civilian government to save the integrity of the nation and restore peace.Accepting Truth Is The Solution To All Problemstag:ipeace.us,2009-04-27:2217368:BlogPost:15445582009-04-27T11:40:42.000ZMuhammad Khurshidhttps://ipeace.us/profile/MuhammadKhurshid
Hillary Clinton has for the first time spoke the truth when she stated that the United States has played a role in creation of terrorism in Pakistan. Her confession before Congress committee is a clear indication that now the US wants to clear the mess in Pakistan. Though the US has played a role in creation of terrorists, but now she does not how to clear the mess in Pakistan. Some 4000 people have been killed only in Bajaur Agency during last seven months and the fighting is still going in…
Hillary Clinton has for the first time spoke the truth when she stated that the United States has played a role in creation of terrorism in Pakistan. Her confession before Congress committee is a clear indication that now the US wants to clear the mess in Pakistan. Though the US has played a role in creation of terrorists, but now she does not how to clear the mess in Pakistan. Some 4000 people have been killed only in Bajaur Agency during last seven months and the fighting is still going in the areas. Thousands of people mostly women and children have been killed since the beginning of this mad war on terrorism.<br />
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According to a newspaper comment, an apocryphal story has it that Winston Churchill once remarked that America does the right thing after exhausting every other option. That may be the case with Hillary Clinton’s remarks before Congress this week.<br />
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On Thursday, Ms Clinton caused a diplomatic furore by asking Pakistanis to speak out forcefully against what she suggested was the state’s abdication of its responsibilities in the face of the Taliban threat. But on Friday, Ms Clinton struck a more reflective, bigger-picture note. She did not back off from her original demand (‘it’s merited because we are wondering why [government officials] don’t go out there and deal with [the militants’]), but did acknowledge that the US is to blame for its bad past policies.<br />
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‘The problems we face now to some extent we have to take responsibility for, having contributed to it,’ Secretary Clinton conceded, and went on to state that the militants the US is fighting in the region today were funded by the US 20 years ago.<br />
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The secretary’s remarks are important not because ascertaining blame will fix the problem of militancy today, but because they are a sine qua non for understanding the fears of the Pakistani security establishment when it comes to the Americans. The scars still run deep from what happened after the Soviet empire was defeated in Afghanistan. As Ms Clinton stated: ‘So we then left Pakistan … we don’t want to have anything to do with you … in fact we’re sanctioning you.’<br />
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In essence, Secretary Clinton identified the disastrous ‘transactional’ attitude of the Americans towards Pakistan, an attitude the present administration had vowed to abandon but has not appeared to have done so as yet. It is no surprise then that the increasingly exasperated, alarmist and demanding tones of American officials in recent weeks have caused a deterioration in ties with Pakistan. The reality is, there exists a trust deficit built on decades of bitterness and suspicion and it will take the softest of hands to coax more cooperation from the security establishment here. But Ms Clinton’s history lesson is not of relevance to the Americans alone.<br />
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According to conventional wisdom in Pakistan, we won a great victory for Islam by backing the victorious jihadis in the 1980s. But as Ms Clinton remarked, the first Afghan war was essentially a fight between two superpowers: ‘[The Soviets] invaded Afghanistan and we did not want to see them control Central Asia and we went to work’.<br />
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By getting involved in that fight the Pakistan state exposed its own society to a pernicious jihadi culture. Looking back, should we have got ourselves involved in the first place? Were the disastrous consequences really that hard to imagine? More than the Americans, it is us who need to revisit our own history and acknowledge our own mistake.Peace is still in danger in the world and Pakistantag:ipeace.us,2009-04-20:2217368:BlogPost:15164332009-04-20T10:21:01.000ZMuhammad Khurshidhttps://ipeace.us/profile/MuhammadKhurshid
At the moment Pakistan is the center of war on terrorism. Now there are reports that terrorists have been marching towards Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. On the way to Islamabad, the terrorists have played a havoc with the lives of innocent people. They have destroyed villages. More than 4000 people have been killed in the fighting only in Bajaur Agency, tribal areas situated on Pak-Afghan border. The situation is still critical.<br />
According to newspaper report, US special envoy for Pakistan…
At the moment Pakistan is the center of war on terrorism. Now there are reports that terrorists have been marching towards Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. On the way to Islamabad, the terrorists have played a havoc with the lives of innocent people. They have destroyed villages. More than 4000 people have been killed in the fighting only in Bajaur Agency, tribal areas situated on Pak-Afghan border. The situation is still critical.<br />
According to newspaper report, US special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke warned on Sunday that no other place in the world today faced a more dangerous situation than Pakistan.<br />
In an interview to CNN, Holbrooke said that Pakistan also faced a ‘very difficult economic situation’ and needed immediate help.<br />
‘This is a really dangerous situation in Pakistan today and we are focused on this very heavily,’ said Holbrooke.<br />
Asked if the terrorist threat could cause Pakistan to collapse, the US envoy said that President Asif Ali Zardari and other Pakistani leaders too conceded that it was a very dangerous situation.<br />
‘Swat is not in the tribal areas. It is only 100 miles from Islamabad … it is like East Hampton and Manhattan … people from Islamabad went to Swat for holidays … it is really an extraordinary situation.’<br />
‘Pakistan mattered to the national security of the United States; ‘These are the people who can attack Mumbai, who attack Islamabad, Holbrooke said.<br />
David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Obama, told ‘CBS Face the Nation’ that Pakistan needed to ‘really focus in on what is a threat to their own stability and what is a threat to the security of the world.’<br />
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, however, told ABC News that the Obama administration had put ‘in place a policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan area that will change that area’ and bring stability to the region.<br />
Axelrod said the biggest threat confronting Pakistan was the ‘growing hegemony of the Taliban and allies of Al Qaeda’ and urged Pakistanis to realise how serious this threat was.<br />
Ambassador Holbrooke termed the current situation in Pakistan as ‘very perilous’ and claimed that the militants operating from Swat and Fata had already increased their reach to Punjab. ‘There can be more terrorist attacks in cities like Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi,’ he warned.<br />
According to an editorial comment, if anyone was ever focused on the developments in Hangu, a town within the administrative jurisdiction of the NWFP, he/she could have predicted the latest violence committed there by the TTP warlord Baitullah Mehsud. The violence against the Shia of Hangu had gone on but without moving the conscience of anyone in Pakistan. On Saturday, a suicide bomber drove a van full of explosives into a security checkpost in Doaba on the outskirts of Hangu, killing 27 security personnel.<br />
Mr Baitullah Mehsud is angry at Pakistan for fighting the American war against his Tehreek-e Taliban in general, and for not stopping the American drones from attacking his area in particular. He says he can do more. He has already threatened Lahore and Karachi and doesn’t have to boast about hitting Islamabad because he can do it easily without offending the population there, a large chunk of which follows the spiritual message of Maulana Abdul Aziz, the custodian of the Red Mosque who has just been released on bail by the Supreme Court on grounds of “insufficient evidence”.<br />
In fact, Mr Baitullah Mehsud doesn’t have to mount a campaign to win the hearts and minds of the people of Pakistan. He has already won most of them and is now challenging the establishment to “follow the people” and not the Americans. The ANP government in the NWFP has sued for peace and won a kind of “reprieve of the defeated” while confronting the “liberal” community with the reality of what is happening on the ground. The government in Islamabad wants to fight the war against terror but has told the international community that its perception of threat is different from theirs.<br />
Islamabad described its position on the threat of terrorism quite clearly when it told the Americans recently that it can actually reject economic assistance if it comes with conditions that are not in line with its “national interest”. There is also a gradual streamlining of the perception of threat between the ruling party and the army on the one hand and the opposition and the army on the other. The opposition has its ears close to the ground, anticipating political trouble before the incumbent government completes its five-year term. There is, unfortunately, a large section of opinion on how not to fight terrorism. And terrorism here doesn’t simply mean confronting Mr Mehsud.<br />
This gelling opinion is based on the threat coming first from India and then from America. There is a lot of incomprehensible mishmash of thinking here but this is how the scene is set. Baitullah Mehsud is asking Pakistan to abandon the Americans or at least get them to stop the drone attacks on him. In Pakistan, it is increasingly being said that Baitullah Mehsud is being paid by both America and India to mount terrorist attacks inside Pakistan. To what end, one may ask? The conspiracy-theorists’ answer is apparently simple, “to destabilise Pakistan”. And why is the US doing it? Because, say the conspiracy theorists, the US is ganged up with India to reduce Pakistan to the position of a lackey of hegemonic India. And, of course, all that anticipates the conversion of South Asia into a pro-American bastion against China, according to these people.Deadliest earthquake in Italy saddens me and otherstag:ipeace.us,2009-04-07:2217368:BlogPost:14608952009-04-07T09:30:43.000ZMuhammad Khurshidhttps://ipeace.us/profile/MuhammadKhurshid
The deadliest earthquake in Italy, the country of my dear friend has saddened me and many others in tribal areas situated on Pak-Afghan border. This is really a bad news for me as Italy is the country of my dearest friend, who always cared for other.<br />
I want to sympathise with all those families who suffered losses in the earthquake. According to report, rescuers worked frantically in this central Italian city early Tuesday, scooping through piles of rubble with their hands in the search for…
The deadliest earthquake in Italy, the country of my dear friend has saddened me and many others in tribal areas situated on Pak-Afghan border. This is really a bad news for me as Italy is the country of my dearest friend, who always cared for other.<br />
I want to sympathise with all those families who suffered losses in the earthquake. According to report, rescuers worked frantically in this central Italian city early Tuesday, scooping through piles of rubble with their hands in the search for survivors after the country's deadliest earthquake in nearly three decades.<br />
Tens of thousands of people left homeless by the powerful 5.8-magnitude quake slept in makeshift tents that provided little protection against the chilly mountain air; scores of survivors lined up early Tuesday for a hot cup of coffee.<br />
Workers dug through the night under powerful lights even as aftershocks continued to spook survivors. Mounting piles of rubble contained evidence of shattered lives: torn clothing, ripped stuffed animals and broken furniture.<br />
Entire blocks were flattened in the mountain city of L'Aquila and nearby villages by Monday's temblor that killed at least 179 people and injured 1,500. More than 70 people were still missing. Firefighters said they had pulled 100 people alive from rubble in the area.<br />
"All of a sudden I heard a boom, and all the books and knickknacks fell down," said Lucia Ferro, a 57-year-old resident who rushed out of her third-floor apartment wearing only her pajamas. "I saw the walls shake, and the table moved by itself."<br />
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090407/ap_on_re_eu/eu_italy_earthquake<br />
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My dear friends in Italy, we are with you in this hour of trial. At the moment we cannot help you practically, but we are praying for your well-beings. We are praying that God the Great may show mercy on us. Please accept my heartfelt condolence with you. We have suffered a lot during the war and know the suffering of other people. May God the Great give you the courage to bear this loss with fortitude and patience. May God the Great bless you.