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Published: April, 2013
Gwadar Port: Geo-economic and Geostrategic

Dimensions
Gwadar has geostrategic significance as it lies on the conduit of three most
commercially important regions of the world. Gwadar has geostrategic
significance as it lies on the conduit of three most commercially important
regions of the world. The oil rich Middle East, Central Asia bestowed with
natural resources, and South Asia having the potential for growth, for this
century.
Another Test or Another Trap
Monday, April 01, 2013
The awarding of the multi-billion dollar contract for construction and operation of Gwadar Port to
China Overseas Port Holding Company (COPHC), a state-run Chinese firm, in February this year,
has added a new chapter in decades-long Sino-Pak partnership. The project is mutually beneficial
for both countries in the region for it will not only give them a corridor for greater commercial
activity but will also bring closer the Central Asian countries. It is also expected to earn them a
great strategic leverage. The recent agreement is the part of a plan to open up an energy and trade
corridor from the Gulf region, across Pakistan to western China.
The transfer of project operations to China caught attention of the international media and triggered
discourse on the economic and strategic shift that the presence of China tends to induce in one of
the world's major maritime zones. Naturally, it raised concerns of major stakeholders in the Indian
Ocean, particularly Pakistan's eastern neighbour, India, and the United States.
It was March 2002, when the groundbreaking of Gwadar Port marked the execution of the decades-
old plan of Pakistan to build a deepwater seaport (Panamax port) at its coastline in Balochistan
province. Highlighting the paramount geo-economic and geostrategic significance of the port, the
then president Pervez Musharraf said:
The Gwadar port shall provide modern, up-to-date facilities for cargo vessels in line with modern
ports. The coastal highway which is also being constructed simultaneously with the port, will
provide a very healthy linkage between Karachi and Gwadar ports. If we see this whole region, it is
like a funnel. The top of the funnel is this wide area of Central Asia and also China's western region.
And this funnel gets narrowed on through Afghanistan and in Pakistan northern areas into Pakistan
and goes through Pakistan and the end of this funnel is Gwadar port. So this funnel, futuristically, is
the future economic funnel of this whole region. All the top of this funnel, the broad top of the
funnel, anything going into it or out of it, Pakistan and Gwadar port provides the real input, the inlet
and the outlet into it. There is no doubt that Gwadar port, when operational, will play the role of a
regional hub for trade and commercial activity.
The port was established with the help of a Chinese construction company and the first phase of the
project was completed with initial investment of 248 million dollars in a record time of four years.
After completion of the first phase of the project, the operational contract was given to the Port of
Singapore Authority (PSA) through open bidding in 2007. Owing to some unforeseen reasons, the
PSA expressed reservations on investing the agreed amount in five years time. Also, it failed to
operationalize the port as expected and agreed in the contract. Later on, Pakistan offered the
operational contract to China which the latter rejected.
With the changing dynamics of regional politics and the global shift that has taken places during
past couple of years, apparently, three key factors compelled China to opt for taking the operational
command of the Gwadar port. First, the increasing US influence in the Asia-Pacific poses
considerable economic and strategic challenges to China. Second, Gwadar port provides China with
an alternative route and eases its reliance on Strait of Malacca. Third, the expected withdrawal of
the US forces from Afghanistan by 2014 is going to provide other countries a room for economic
ventures Afghanistan as well as the Central Asian Republics.
The expected withdrawal of the US forces from Afghanistan by 2014 is going to provide other
countries a room for economic ventures Afghanistan as well as the Central Asian Republics.
To the US and India, it's quite a perturbing development. The policy analysts in both the countries
are wary of Chinas greater access to the Indian Ocean through Gwadar as it poses a challenge to
the commercial and strategic interests of the US and India. Some quarters in the US referred to
China's entry into Gwadar as part of its string of pearls strategy which refers to Chinese Sea Lines
of Communications (SLOCs) extending from mainland China to Port Sudan straddling over Strait
of Malacca, Strait of Bab-el Mandeb, Strait of Hormuz and run through some significant maritime
centres, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Maldives. It is believed that the array of
ports that China has established in the Indian Ocean region, including a port in Hambantota, Sri
Lanka; a port in Chittagong, Bangladesh and a port and pipeline complex off Myanmar's coast in
Rakhine region; would help the country maximize its control over the commercial and naval
activity across the Indian Ocean.
Indian concerns are no different than the America's. India is apprehensive of Chinese presence in
Indian Ocean. For couple of obvious reasons, India is also flustered on China's control over a port in
Pakistan. Through Gwadar, China would be in a position to invalidate the India-US counter China
strategy. India also fears that China's growing influence may result in harming Indian interests.
Above all, India believes that the port would enable Pakistan to take control of more of the world
energy circulation and interdiction of Indian sea-borne trade. However, India seldom mentions its
plans to invest profusely in Port of Chabahar in southeastern Iran. The port was partially built by
India in 1990s and is located on the flanks of Indian Ocean and Oman Sea.
Criticism and apprehensions apart, economically, the port is expected to be the hub of trade and
commerce in the region as it holds tremendous opportunities to boost economic prospects and
activity in Pakistan. Pakistan has a coastline of about 1100 km along the shores of Arabian Sea.
Total annual trade of Pakistan is about 38 million tonnes out of which 95 per cent takes place
through sea. According to projected estimates, Gwadar port will exponentially increase the shipping
activity in other ports (Karachi port and Ports Qasim) as well. However, Baloch nationalists have
expressed reservations and has severely criticised the decision to provide China access to the
Gwadar port. They view it as an unlawful exploitation of the resources and depriving people of
Balochistan of their own economic asset. Also, they are sceptical of China's plans believing it would
lead to further militarization of the region.
While analysing the future of Balochistan with reference to Gwadar port, Robert D. Kaplan, an
American Geopolitical analyst stated:
One key to its (Balochistan) fate is the future of Gwadar, a strategic port whose development will
either unlock the riches of Central Asia, or plunge Pakistan into a savage, and potentially terminal,
civil war.
From a geostrategic perspective, Pakistan will have a strategic depth and access to the finest naval
facilities. It may also enjoy greater maritime interaction with the Middle East countries as well. The
Chinese naval presence may also meliorate Pakistan's coastal defence. It will also give Pakistan an
edge over India, economically and strategically.
China heavily relies on the Middle East for energy resources and hence the country is involved in
trade, exploitation and development here and in African region. The Gwadar port can provide the
Chinese with a listening post to observe the naval activities of US in the Persian Gulf 460 km
further west of Karachi and away from Indian naval bases. In military and strategic terms, Gwadar
port can help China to monitor the SLOCs from the Persian Gulf. Gwadar has strategic importance
for China as about 60 per cent of its crude supply comes from Gulf countries that are close to
Gwadar. Besides, owing to historical affiliations with Indian Ocean region, China considers it its
right to be associated with every activity in the Indian Ocean.
Along with opportunities, a number of challenges and risks are also involved in the Gwadar port
project for both Pakistan and China. Baloch nationalists' stance towards the project and the
continued unrest in Balochistan needs to be dealt with carefully and sensitively. China, while
expanding its influence in the Indian Ocean, may also come across the problem of distance for
shipping activity. The unrest in Balochistan may also pose some security-related risks and
challenges to development activity in Gwadar. Moreover, China needs to be cautious and conscious
of its internal economic and political weaknesses which, at certain point, may cause trouble to its
greater interests in the Indian Ocean.
As the Gwadar port project will require time to be fully functional, speculations and predictions will
keep circulating and resonating in the media and policy circles of major stakeholders. Nevertheless,
the port is destined to change the future course of commercial activity in the region.
The writer is an IR analyst and a visiting faculty at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Shaheed Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST), Karachi.
Email: coldpath1@gmail.com
Nabiha Gul
IRAN GAS PIPELINE POLITICS
Long-awaited Gas Pipeline agreement has been finally inked by Iran and
Pakistan. Both countries signed historic deal partly out of feeling of Islamic
solidarity, to take Pakistan out of energy crisis, and partly to frustrate Western
countries imposed isolation on Iran in the name of nuclear programme.
The gas pipeline is not the only one that will limit to Pakistan and it is not the only pipeline which is
threatened by the US sanctions. In 1992, Tehran had offered assistance in the construction of a gas
pipeline to carry Turkmen gas to Turkey and Western Europe through Iran. The idea of such a
pipeline, costing $ 3 billion, upset Washington, which tried to sabotage it. Thus under the US
pressure, it was announced that the plan was being held in abeyance since international bankers
were unwilling to finance a project involving Iran. A fear was also expressed that Iran, for political
reasons could turn off energy supplies to Turkey and Europe, thus playing with the future of the
two.
In 1995, a reversal for America occurred when Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan signed a
$ 20 billion natural gas deal with Iran. This deal was scheduled to run for twenty-five years. A
pipeline was to be laid to carry initially 3 billion cubic meters of Iranian gas annually, rising to 10
billion cubic meters in 2005.
Confident of their oil and gas wealth, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan continued to defy Washington's
policy of economic boycott of Iran. In December 1997, Iranian President Muhammad Khatami and
Turkmen President Niyazov inaugurated a pipeline to carry natural gas from Turkmenistan's
Korpeje gasfield to Kord-Kui in northeast Iran. Further to that, in June 1998, the National Iranian
Oil Company invited bids for a $ 400 million contract for a 400-kilometer (250 miles) pipeline
between the Caspian port of Babol Sar and Tehran, to carry oil supplied by tankers to Kazakhstan
and Turkmenistan. The pipeline was designed to handle 200,000 bpd, with Iran exporting the same
amount from its Gulf ports to the customers of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
In July 2007, Iranian and Turkish energy ministers signed a memorandum of understanding under
which Turkmen and Iranian gas would be exported to Europe through Turkey. Moreover, Turkey
would also develop three later phases of Iran's giant South Pars gas field of Tehran's buyback
scheme. This MoU was 'a dream come' true for Turkey as she was a pivotal country for the transfer
of energy from one part of the world to the other. However, the document drew a quick
condemnation from the US State Department. Like his predecessor Erbakan, Turkish Prime
Minister Erdogan rebuffed Washington.
Iran-Pakistan (IP) Gas Pipeline is one of the projects in Iranian historical perspective. However, in
this project, Pakistan is keeping high ambitions for the resolution of its energy crisis and as a result
political stability. Pakistan is short of 4000 MW electricity which has impaired its already shabby
economy. Power breakdowns have badly blighted the country's economy by dawdling industrial
production, deteriorating the country's agricultural capacity and having a detrimental brunt on
business. In a cyclical manner, laying off has resulted in declining purchasing power resulting in
reduction of daily- wagers. Hence the poverty level is on the rise. The growing dependence on
costly furnace oil, with $ 1 billion per year import, for the production of thermal power continues to
raise electricity charges.
Pakistan is keeping high ambitions for the resolution of its energy crisis and as a result political
stability.
Once the shortfall is compensated, Pakistan will regain political stability which will be supported
by the strengthening of its political economy, enhanced industrial output, bringing back laid off
workers, foreign investment and over and above shrink poverty level. The imported gas from Iran
would allow the generation of additional 4,123 megawatts of electricity at cheaper rate. It will also
restore the 2,232 megawatts of idle thermal power generation capacity that will help, in addition to
the domestic gas, for other uses such as manufacturing fertilizer and supplying gas to domestic
consumers. While Pakistan would pay Iran $3 billion a year, it would reduce its oil imports by $5.3
billion, resulting in a net annual reduction in energy imports by about $2.3 billion.
The energy crisis in Pakistan has become a question of life and death for the survival of the state.
Hence success of the IP project is the dire need for the survival of the country. Once, successful,
India which is already facing energy crisis, will give a second thought to rejoin the project what was
originally called Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) Pipeline. After an exchange of MFN status, it will be
another milestone in providing the two arch-rivals to resolve their mutual suspicions and conflicts
via economic means. Thus it would be another Confidence Building Measure (CBM) that will result
in true sense of A Peace Pipeline. No doubt, a successful project attracts the attention of every
country interested in cashing the booty of a ready-made venture. China can join the project via
Pakistan which will in turn bring significant economic benefits from the deal for Pakistan.
The US threat of sanctions against Pakistan is a definite bluff. However, The US can use Saudi
Arabia and Qatar to exert pressure on Pakistan to abandon the IP project.
However, there are serious hurdles in the way of IP becoming functional, the most important being
a stiff opposition from the US. The US wants to strangulate the Iranian economy through sanctions
and imposed isolation on Tehran. While brandishing the threat of sanctions against Pakistan, we
need to gingerly weigh their possible effects. At the moment, the US is about to withdraw its troops
from Afghanistan and the cheapest way out is via Pakistan. Secondly, peace and reconstruction of/in
Afghanistan is in its absolute embryonic stage. Pakistan- being a frontline ally of the US during the
war on terror in Afghanistan played a pivotal role in the execution of the US objectives in the
region. Be it a Bonn Conference in 2011 or negotiations with the Taliban, it has always been seen
that any effort in Afghanistan minus Pakistan is doomed to fail. Therefore, Pakistan's help is a
prerequisite in restoring long-lasting peace in the post-2014 Afghanistan. Thirdly, in Pakistan, pro-
American sentiments are extremely rare. The US sanctions will add fuel to the fire. Hence, the US
threat of sanctions against Pakistan is a definite bluff. However, the US can use Saudi Arabia and
Qatar to exert pressure on Pakistan to abandon the IP project. Still, this will depend on what they
offer in reciprocation to an already pursued and half completed project.
Gone are the days when the extra-territorial major powers' Cold Wars used to take place in this
region. The animosity between Iran and the US is a bilateral issue which must not hinder the
development process of other regional countries. Pakistan and India are arch-rivals. But the US
ignored this fact and signed a nuclear deal with India. Similarly, any pressure by the US on Pakistan
for the IP project will tantamount to the negation of its own trend of bilateralism that she set in this
region. For an animosity between Iran and the US, Pakistan must not bear the brunt. Everybody for
oneself and God for us all.
The writer teaches at the Department of International Relations, University of Peshawar.

syedshaheed@hotmail.co.uk
Dr Syed Hussain Shaheed Soherwordi
NATO's Thorny Prison Dilemma

As the majority of coalition forces prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan at the
close of 2014, concerns are growing for the future of the detainees they must
leave behind.
During the course of the twelve-year war, NATO troops have apprehended thousands of suspected
insurgents, most of whom have been released or transferred to the Afghan authorities. However,
renewed fears regarding the prevalence of torture in Afghan custody have compelled ISAF forces to
halt the process of handing prisoners over to the Afghan authorities.
In a damning report, released in February, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan
(UNAMA) concluded that torture is an "institutional policy or practice" in at least ten of the
country's detention facilities. The methods include beatings, suspension from the ceiling and electric
shocks. Transferring prisoners to face such conditions is a breach of international law. But as ISAF
remains tied to a fixed timetable for military withdrawal, the need to find a legal solution to
prisoner transfer, by getting rid of institutional mistreatment, grows ever more pressing.
For the British government, the issue is a particularly thorny one, and its approach to transfers has
drawn sharp criticism, both from human rights groups and lawyers acting on behalf of prisoners
who faced mistreatment after being transferred from British custody.
On 29 November 2012, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was forced to re-impose a third
moratorium on the transfer of UK-detained prisoners to the Afghan intelligence service (NDS). As
of October 2010, the UK had detained 1,399 individuals, of whom at least 487 were transferred to
the Afghan authorities. Today, the number remaining in British custody is believed to stand around
70.
Hammond's decision to ban transfers came after two years spent defending the practice of releasing
detainees into a penal system where abuse has been described as widespread. The day before a high
court hearing into the legality of a previous transfer that had resulted in allegations of sustained
abuse, the Defence Secretary obtained new (as yet undisclosed) evidence suggesting that prisoners
transferred to Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) were indeed at "real risk of
serious mistreatment or a flagrant denial of justice".
The ban on prisoner transfer appears to have been vindicated by the new UNAMA report. After
interviewing 635 inmates held across 89 detention facilities, UN representatives concluded that the
culture of abuse was most prevalent within NDS Kandahar, a key destination for UK-detained
prisoners once they have been transferred.
So far, the British government has aimed to minimise the risks facing detainees by using a two-
pronged strategy. This strategy involved 'diplomatic assurances' from the Afghan security services
that the individuals in question will remain free from harm, while at the same time, monitoring and
encouraging the use of surveillance within detention centres.
The practice of striking diplomatic deals regarding torture has long been controversial. Amnesty
International has condemned the practice as a dereliction of both states' duty to take the overall
threat of torture seriously. The specific focus on the treatment of individual detainees, Amnesty
argues, ignores a wider picture of abuse in which confessions are regularly extracted through
mistreatment. Amnesty has also pointed out that diplomatic assurances are not legally binding and
not only that, but they have no enforcement mechanisms. This leaves the governments involved to
voluntarily assume responsibility for investigating breaches and holding perpetrators to account. In
the case of Afghanistan, levels of accountability for mistreatment remain very low. According to the
recent UNAMA report, over the last 18 months, NATO representatives have reported 80 allegations
of detainee abuse to Afghan authorities. To date, Afghan officials have only taken action over one
case.
After ISAF nations resumed transfers to these facilities and reduced its monitoring, incidents of
torture appeared to rise once again.
Britain's latest agreement with Afghanistan regarding the treatment of prisoners was signed in a
low-key meeting between Asadullah Khalid, head of the NDS, and a representative from the British
Foreign Office. To say that Khalid is seen by many to be a deeply flawed interlocutor is putting it
lightly: he has been described by Canadian diplomats as someone 'known to personally torture
people' in a 'dungeon under his guest house'.
The worth of Khalid's assurances against the use of torture is monitored by a team of British
military personnel. They conduct interviews with UK-transferred prisoners, questioning them about
their detention experience and giving them an opportunity to register any allegations of
mistreatment. However, critics argue that British monitoring efforts are at best ineffective, and at
worst, lead to a systematic cover-up of abuse. The human rights charity Reprieve has documented
examples of British monitors finding torture equipment in interrogation rooms, but saying nothing
out of fear of 'causing a scene'. More concerning still is that UNAMA this week reported receiving
"sufficiently reliable and credible information that officials hid detainees from international
observers and held them in underground or other locations"
This is not to say that monitoring does not have an impact. UNAMA observed that some NDS
facilities saw a decrease in allegations of torture during the one-year period in which the interviews
took place. This corresponded with a decrease in transfers by international military forces and
increased monitoring. However, after ISAF nations resumed transfers to these facilities and reduced
its monitoring, incidents of torture appeared to rise once again. Monitoring is a useful and necessary
stage in the quest to eradicate torture in Afghan detention facilities. It is not, however, a silver
bullet.
Britain's repeated bans on prisoner transfer to the Afghan authorities have led to a shift in
strategy when it comes to detentions. Military operations are usually conducted in conjunction with
Afghan forces, and it is now the latter that is expected to take charge of any arrests.
But this does not solve the problem of what to do with the prisoners who remain in British custody.
Speaking at a press conference in Kabul on Monday, Georgette Gagnon, UNAMA's Director of
Human Rights, emphasised the need for the ISAF governments to focus on "deterrents and
disincentives to use torture, including a robust, independent, investigation process, criminal
prosecutions and courts' consistent refusal to accept confessions gained through torture". Without
such deterrents, she said, Afghan officials will have no incentive to cease the practice of torture.
As the date for NATO's withdrawal from Afghanistan draws ever closer, the imperative for coalition
governments to encourage such deterrents will grow ever stronger.
(Courtesy: Foreign Policy Magazine)

JWT Desk
A conversation with Urdu Spokesperson of the

US State Department,
Nayyera Haq
Nayyera Haq, Urdu Spokesperson of the US State Department, comes from a family of Punjabi
descent with roots in Multan and Lahore. She holds a Master's degree from Georgetown University
where she served as a Fellow of Journalism and Law. She has been the student of history in
University of Michigan, one of the top universities of the world. In her recent visit to Pakistan,
Jahangir's World Times had an exclusive interview with her.
Q: - Very warm welcome to Pakistan Ms Haq! It's a privilege to have an interview with the
spokesperson of the US State Department who is of Pakistan origin. Kindly tell us a little bit
about yourself?
Ans: - Thank you for giving me an opportunity to interact with people of Pakistan through your
prestigious magazine. As you know, I am currently serving as the US State Department's Urdu
spokesperson. At that position, I am a Senior Advisor to the State Department focusing on
communicating issues important to South Asia, especially Pakistan. Previously, I have served as a
media advisor to Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides, Ambassador Holbrooke, former
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Congressional Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Q: - What are your responsibilities as US State Department's Urdu spokesperson, and why
the need was felt to appoint an Urdu spokesperson at the State Department?
Ans:- No doubt, my roots are in Pakistan but I grew up and completed my studies in the United
States. As a spokesperson of the State Department, I have to enhance the relations between
American and the Pakistani people. You would be aware of the fact that there is hardly any
American voice in Pakistani media. Even if there are some, those are not in Urdu.
At the State Department, we want that relationship with Pakistan should not only be with the
government but also with the people of Pakistan so that we can understand each other in a better
way and foster our relationship.
Q: So you are designated to enhance people to people contacts and establish communication
channel. What's the message you have brought for the people of Pakistan?
Ans: - I have brought the message from the people of the United States that America's relationship
with Pakistan is very important. It's a historical relationship and its continuation is in the interest of
both the nations.
Q: - The extremists and terrorists have tarnished Pakistan's image abroad. The foreign
visitors frankly admit of having a negative perception of Pakistan in their respective
countries. How would you improve Pakistan's image, especially in USA?
Ans: - There are some serious misperceptions on both sides. A lot is stated and aired by Pakistani
TV channels against the United States. Contrarily, the American people's thinking about Pakistan is
quite different. The common people in the United States aspire to whatever can be desired by a
common human being. They also want progress of their children along with good health and
economic development of the family to ensure a brighter future. We can improve our understanding
level by forging cooperation between the people of two countries.
Q:- If that be the planning, what areas you have identified for enhancing this mutual
cooperation?
Ans: - The United States provides fair amount of humanitarian assistance. The government and the
people of United States want to focus on the projects of human interest. Our cooperation is not
limited or restricted to War on Terror. We have also been providing assistance in other sectors like
energy, education, health, etc. For instance, electricity shortfall is a grave problem in Pakistan. In
this very sector, the US has helped Pakistan in adding hundreds of megawatts of electricity in the
national grid.
Last year, we provided aid to electrify nearly six hundred thousand (600,000) homes. With active
US cooperation, Pakistan will be able to provide electricity to about 2 million more homes. This is
just one example. If the two sides work together on the projects, focusing on the well-being of
common people in Pakistan, there will, surely, be an enhanced understanding between the two
countries.
Q:- Pakistan has suffered a great deal in the ongoing war against terrorism. We have also
suffered in economic terms. Our foreign trade has been destroyed. What is the thinking back
in Washington?
Ans;- Everyone in the United States acknowledges that no other country has sacrificed so much as
Pakistan. Pakistan has been severely affected by terrorism. The menace of terror has hit this entire
region. In fact, extremism is increasing in the world despite relentless efforts to curb it. The United
States came under such attack in 2001 that gave birth to this crisis. Now, it is in the interest of all of
us to join hands against the rising extremism and terrorism across the globe. We have not forgotten
prosperity and development of Pakistani people at all. For this purpose, immediate steps like
promotion of trade and provision of energy are necessary.
Q;- President Obama has been re-elected. The Secretary of State, Secretary Defense, Director
of CIA, etc. are newcomers. What are the policy perspectives of President Obama, in his
second term, on Pakistan?
Ans:- The Pak-US relations are spread over many decades. Our philosophy behind the bilateral
relations with Pakistan is very clear. We think that these relations are important and must continue.
The new Secretary of State, Senator John Kerry, is a great friend of Pakistan. He is the one who
started human assistance programme for Pakistan. Hopefully, under his leadership at the State
Department, the bilateral relations will be strengthened. I want to tell you from the US perspective
that Pakistani people have sacrificed a lot and we acknowledge this fact. Elimination of terrorism is
in mutual interest of Pakistan and the United States. I say it again that these relations must be based
on the mutual interests. The US government rarely finds an opportunity to communicate its message
directly to the people of Pakistan. There should be a transparency in it so that the people can assess
themselves whether the United States has done something for them or not.
Q;- A reconciliation process is going on inside Afghanistan. Whether the United States is
holding talks with the Taliban?
Ans:- The objective of the United States has always been to encourage an Afghan-led and Afghan-
owned peace process. Afghanistan is the homeland of Afghans and only they have to decide about
the fate of their country. As far as the talks between various Afghan groups are concerned, I would
just say that the United State always supports reconciliation.
JWT Desk
Papal Conclave The Election of 266th

Successor of St. Peter
The retirement of Benedict XVI on Feb 28 was the first time in nearly 600 years
that a pope stepped down.
This situation forced the Roman Catholic Church to begin the ancient election process known as
Conclave. For centuries, the procedure of electing a new pope was simply called a papal
election. That was, until 1274, when the word conclave started being used instead.
The voting by cardinals to elect the next pope takes place behind the locked doors of the Sistine
Chapel, following a highly-detailed procedure, last revised by Pope John Paul II.
Under the rules, secret ballots can be cast once on the first day of the conclave, then normally twice
during each subsequent morning and evening session. Except for periodic pauses, the voting
continues until a new pontiff is elected.
Only cardinals under the age of 80 can vote in the conclave; older cardinals do not enter the Sistine
Chapel. In theory, any baptized male Catholic can be elected pope, but current church law says that
he must become a bishop before taking office; since the 15th century, the electors always have
chosen a fellow cardinal.
Each vote begins with the preparation and distribution of paper ballots by two masters of
ceremonies, who are among a handful of non-cardinals allowed into the Chapel at the start of the
session.
Then the names of nine voting cardinals are chosen at random: three to serve as "scrutineers," or
voting judges; three to collect the votes of any sick cardinals who remain in their quarters at the
Domus Sanctae Marthae; and three "revisers" who check the work of the scrutineers.
The paper ballot is rectangular. On the top half is printed the Latin phrase ("Eligo in Summum
Pontificem") ("I elect as the most high pontiff"), and the lower half is blank for the writing of the
name of the person chosen.
After all the non-cardinals have left the Chapel, the cardinals fill out their ballots secretly, legibly
and fold them twice. Meanwhile, any ballots from sick cardinals are collected and brought back to
the Chapel.
Each cardinal then walks to the altar, holding up his folded ballot so it can be seen, and says aloud:
"I call as my witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge that my vote is given to the one who
before God I think should be elected."
He places his ballot on a plate, or paten, and then slides it into a receptacle, traditionally a large
chalice.
When all the ballots have been cast, the first scrutineer shakes the receptacle to mix them. He then
transfers the ballots to a new urn, counting them to make sure they correspond to the number of
electors.
The ballots are read out. Each of the three scrutineers examines each ballot one-by-one, with the last
scrutineer calling out the name on the ballot, so all the cardinals can record the tally. The last
scrutineer pierces each ballot with a needle through the word "Eligo" and places it on a thread, so
they can be secured.
After the names have been read out, the votes are counted to see if someone has obtained a two-
thirds majority needed for election -- or a simple majority if the rules are changed later in the
conclave. The revisers then double-check the work of the scrutineers for possible mistakes.
At this point, any handwritten notes made by the cardinals during the vote are collected for burning
with the ballots. If the first vote of the morning or evening session is inconclusive, a second vote
normally follows immediately, and the ballots from both votes are burned together at the end.
When a pope is elected, the ballots are burned immediately. By tradition, the ballots are burned dry
-- or with chemical additives -- to produce white smoke when a pope has been elected; they are
burned with damp straw or other chemicals to produce black smoke when the voting has been
inconclusive.
The most notable change introduced by Pope John Paul II into the voting process was to increase
the opportunity of electing a pope by simple majority instead of two-thirds majority, after a series of
ballots. The two-thirds majority rule holds in the first phase of the conclave: three days of voting,
then a pause of up to one day, followed by seven ballots and a pause, then seven more ballots and a
pause, and seven more ballots.
At that point -- about 12 or 13 days into the conclave -- the cardinals can decide to move to a simple
majority for papal election and can limit the voting to the top two vote-getters. In earlier conclaves,
switching to a simple majority required approval of two-thirds of the cardinals, but now that
decision can be made by simple majority, too.
JWT Desk
On Ties with India

Historically speaking, Pak-India bilateral relations have predictably been
unpredictable. The more both countries seem to make headway the more pitfalls
they have to contend with in trying to negotiate this fragile and volatile
relationship.
Just at a time when all was set for the third round of composite dialogue between Islamabad and
New Delhi, the incidents at the Line of Control (LoC) upset the applecart. Using these incidents as
justification to delay his planned visit to Pakistan, Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh was
quick to opine that it was not possible for the Congress-led coalition government to have 'business
as usual' with Pakistan.
While the Pakistani leaders, foreign office, media and opinion-makers showed maturity in dealing
with the ensuing crisis at the LoC, their counterparts in India resorted to their usual tricks of playing
to gallery. Though the composite dialogue process was not halted, which has been the usual practice
when faced with spanners in the normalization works, a visible slowdown in the bilateral relations
was clearly discernible. New Delhi cancelled the Secretary-level talks to discuss Wullar Barrage
issue and put a stopper on making operational the new visa regime. It also ordered Pakistani hockey
players to leave the Indian soil immediately.
As a reaction, Islamabad, which was all set to grant the status of Most Favoured Nation to India by
December 2012 had to defer its decision.
Before leaving office near the end of tenure, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar threw light on the
main highlights of the PPP-led government's handling of foreign policy at a press conference. On
her government's policy towards India during five years in office, she had this much to say:
There is level of mistrust even in the Indian media. I am disappointed but would not call it a
strategic failure. We have walked the talk. We can only conduct our own policy and wait for them to
come to us. We need to lead domestic opinion rather than follow. Both countries have invested in
improving relations so let us take away ammunition from the naysayer.
This nicely sums up the situation.
A review of Pakistan's India policy reveals that New Delhi has failed to make good use of
extraordinary consensus among the stakeholders in the country on the need of improving relations
with its eastern archrival. The following is instructive in this regard:
It was in June 1997 that the composite dialogue framework, which had eight points including
Jammu & Kashmir, was launched. Pakistan made progress on composite dialogue framework
conditional to the resolution of the core issue of Jammu & Kashmir, while India favoured a
simultaneous progress on all issues contained in the dialogue process. Both countries stuck to their
traditional stands through the following years till 9/11 happened and changed the regional and
global geostrategic landscape.
As global terrorism became a major concern, India joined the bandwagon and tried to portray the
indigenous freedom struggle as terrorism, allegedly aided by the safe havens located in Pakistan.
The emerging international consensus against terrorism and policy shifts forced Pakistan to review
its India-policy. It was for the first time in Pakistan's history since 1947 that Islamabad backtracked
from its historic stand on Kashmir during incumbency of General Pervez Musharaf.
Instead of echoing its usual mantra of the UN resolutions being the key to acceptable solution, it
accepted the Indian downgrading of the Kashmir issue as bilateral one between New Delhi and
Islamabad. The various formulae proposed by Musharraf reflected the country's departure from its
traditional stand much to the ire of rightist political and religious parties. The rest is history.
All along the succeeding years, India pegged dialogue with Pakistan with the latter's progress on
dismantling terrorist network, it accused Islamabad of harbouring. Each time when both countries
picked up the thread where it was broken either it was in January 2004 or 2010, the leaderships of
both countries made tall claims of 'opening a new chapter' in bilateral relations. But each time, as
history goes by, one minor incident has the potential of derailing the whole process with both
countries going back to their earlier positions.
The various formulae proposed by Musharraf reflected the country's departure from its traditional
stand much to the ire of rightist political and religious parties.
India's Pakistan policy shows that it has allowed itself to be dictated by past by refusing to
visualize the dividends that normalization and peace with Pakistan would bring. It failed to discern
a sea change in all elements of national opinion vis--vis India. Pakistan's powerful military, whose
strategic orientation has historically been anti-India, favoured normalization of ties with New Delhi.
General Musharraf's peace overtures reflected a strong desire within the establishment to think out
of box to improve ties with their eastern neighbour. Recently, the military identified home-gown
terrorism as the biggest threat to national security.
Previously, this 'coveted slot' has been occupied by India. This is a major policy shift, which has
taken years to come about starting with Islamabad's fight against terrorism from 2001 onwards.
Secondly, there is a rare consensus among all key political parties in Pakistan to improve relations
with India. PML-N, PPP and PTI, which otherwise have deep fissures on political plain, are on the
same page and the leaderships of these parties have conveyed their willingness to engage India in
productive and result-oriented dialogue. The religious parties that feed on anti-India rhetoric have
not been able to get the kind of acceptance they would get in the past. There is a greater realization
among the masses as well that improved relations with New Delhi are in Pakistan's interest as it will
save precious resources for usage on the uplift of society. It will also give greater space to the armed
forces to deal with the menace of terrorism, which has assumed dangerous proportions for the
country's stability and security.
In failing to render this consensus into a basis for improved ties on sustainable basis, the Indian
leadership has proven to be reactive, lacking depth of vision and courage to put the region on a
trajectory of socioeconomic development. A lot depends on the approach of new governments,
which would be voted into power in Pakistan in 2013 and in India in 2014 following parliamentary
elections, as how they take up the bilateral agenda. Armed with fresh mandate, they would have the
political support to begin afresh. What they need to understand is that continued and meaningful
engagement is no more a luxury but a strategic need. But only time will tell whether they learn
lessons from history or insist on repeating previous mistakes.
The writer is a civil servant and can be reached at amanatchpk@gmail.com

Amanat Ali Chaudhry
Why Obama's Israel Trip Is One Big Mistake

Netanyahu insulted the president, backed Romney, and hasn't moved the peace
process. Now, White House should not reward behavior like that, not even from
an ally.
Iran is accelerating its nuclear program, Syria's gruesome civil war is beginning to bleed across its
borders, Two years after Hosni Mubarak's ouster, Egypt's political transition is, at best, dicey and
yet according to deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, more important than all of that in
some respects is that President Obama take this opportunity to speak directly to the Israeli
people.''
I get the logic of whoever dreamed up the president's trip to Israel this week: Send Obama to
reassure the Israelis he's got their back on Iran. Demonstrate he doesn't prefer the Arabsan
impression left in his first term when he visited Cairo but didn't stop by Tel Aviv. Pay his respects at
the graves of Israel's fallen and acknowledge the historical artefacts that show Jews' ties to the land.
Let them know he really admires their technological prowess. Then maybe Israelis will feel more
inclined to make peace with the Palestinians knowing the relationship with their most important ally
is solid.
But this tripthe timing and the scriptmakes no sense. And even more than simply being a big
waste of Obama's time at a moment when he has little time to waste, it's burning crucial American
political capital that ought to be reserved for moments that truly warrant it.
The White House says the president is going to hear out what the newly appointed Israeli
government has planned. Here's a quick preview: Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon wants to bomb
Iran and Housing Minister Uri Ariel wants to build new settlements. If Obama wants to talk about
drafting ultra-Orthodox Jews intothe Israel Defense Forces or the price of apartments in Tel Aviv,
he'll find an audience. Those relatively marginal issues are what dominated Israel's recent election,
not the future with the Palestinians.
Three years ago, Vice President Joe Biden went to Israel tasked with a similar missionreassure
Israelis that Obama loves them. Biden hit all the right notes, saying that the bond between Israel and
the United States was unshakeable and unbreakable so many times that we reporters, who
covered that trip, started keeping a running tally. Then as the vice-presidential motorcade was
leaving the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, news that Israel's Interior Ministry had authorized
1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem destroyed what should have been a pure celebration of
American-Israeli ties. Biden returned to his hotel to consult with the White House on what to say,
leaving Netanyahu waiting awkwardly at his residence for an hour and a half for dinner. When
Biden arrived, he issued an unprecedented rebuke that embarrassed the Israeli prime minister, as
they sat down to eat.
American-Israeli ties remained sour. Two months after Biden's visit, Obama refused to hold a photo
op with Netanyahu when he visited the White House. The next year, when the president agreed to
share the stage with Israel's prime minister, Netanyahu lectured him before the cameras in the Oval
Office on why Obama's (hardly original) idea that the 1967 borders could be a baseline for peace
negotiations with the Palestinians was bunk. In 2012, Netanyahufrustrated that he couldn't goad
Obama into saying when the U.S. would bomb Iranpublicly suggested the president had no
moral right to stop Israel from taking action itself. All the while, Netanyahu, over the past few
years, did nothing to further peace with the Palestinians. He floated via surrogates that he thought
Obama was nave on the Middle East. And he left the strong impression last year that he was
rooting for Mitt Romney to win the U.S. presidential election.
In spite of all this, the president is headed to Tel Aviv. The anti-Obama peace-process sceptics can't
help but gloat. As Barry Rubin, a conservative, pro-Israel American pundit put it on his Facebook
page: I think we have just won a huge victory Obama has admitted defeat on trying to bully,
manipulate, or pressure Israel.
The White House doesn't want this trip to be about Netanyahu or his new government. That's why
Obama will address Israeli college students in a convention hall rather than speak to politicians in
the Knesset. But when it comes to how this trip will be perceived in Israel, it will be all about
Netanyahu and his political fortunes. Netanyahu will be seen as the victor in his battle with Obama,
rewarded not only for defyingor standing strongly against, depending on one's political
perspectivean American president. And Netanyahu will learn one powerful lesson from Obama's
visit: I don't have to do anything on the Palestinian issue. I can continue to expand settlements,
focus solely on Iran, and insult the U.S. president, and he will still come and thank me with a two-
day dog-and-pony show.
It's clear why the White House wants to avoid the thorny Israeli-Palestinian disputes of Jerusalem,
settlements, and refugees. Past presidents have expended enormous time and energy on the matter
and failed miserably. The last time Obama tried to articulate some guiding principles on borders, he
got shouted down by Bibi. The United States will always continue to be engaged in this process in
terms of trying to move it forward,'' Rhodes told reporters in a pretrip briefing that illustrated just
how radically Obama has scaled back his ambitions since September 2010, when he said he thought
peace could be achieved within a year.
If Obama wants to talk about drafting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the Israel Defense Forces or the
price of apartments in Tel Aviv, he'll find an audience.
So why is Obama going? Is it really an attempt at repairing relations with America's primary
Middle East ally as the Washington Post's Scott Wilson wrote? Or as Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in a
column for Bloomberg, to reintroduce himself to Israelis and convey to them that he understands
their situation? Perhaps! But if it is, then this is truly a waste of time. Just as Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagelwhose nomination was held up by those who worried he wasn't pro-Israel enough
wasn't running for Israeli defense minister, Obama isn't running for Israeli office (or any office for
that matter). And anyone who knows Israelis and their current mindset on the Palestinians
(Palestinians, who?) knows that a little ego stroking isn't going to get that population behind a peace
deal.
That doesn't mean the trip couldn't do some good. While the president is there ostensibly repairing
the relationship with Israelis who've felt jilted, Obama may be sending an important signal to
Tehran. The message: Just because I can't stand Bibi doesn't mean I won't stand with him in
preventing you from getting a nuclear weapon.
Since Obama is making the 12-hour flight, there's one important thing he can accomplish if he
wants to achieve something beyond simply making Israelis feel good. When he delivers his speech
in Jerusalem, he can remind Israelis that if they want their nation to be a nation like all othersone
with internationally accepted borders, no longer targeted by divestment campaigns, and not facing a
possible third Intifadathey need to stop saying they have no partner and make peace with
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas before it is too late. And if they can do that, he looks forward
to coming back a second time as presidentwhen they have a peace deal to sign.
JWT Desk
History of Elections in Pakistan
Pakistan is inching closer to the new elections and people of Pakistan will soon
elect their representatives for the next five years. At this point, let's take a look
at the past elections held in Pakistan.
ELECTIONS OF 1970
In the General Elections 1970, twenty-four political parties contested for 300 National Assembly
seats; 13 were reserved for women. Parties were allowed to begin their election campaigns from
January 1, 1970.
A total of 1,957 candidates filed nomination papers for 300 National Assembly seats, however,
1,579 eventually contested the elections. Awami League ran 170 candidates, of which 162 were for
constituencies in East Pakistan. Jamaat-i-Islami fielded 151 candidates. The Pakistan Peoples Party
ran only 120 candidates, of which 103 were from constituencies in the Punjab and Sindh. The
Pakistan Peoples Party had no candidates in East Pakistan. The Convention Muslim League ran 124
candidates, the Council Muslim League 119 and the Qayyum Muslim League 133.
RESULTS
Awami League emerged as the single largest party in East Pakistan capturing 160 seats in the
National Assembly. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) emerged as the largest party in West
Pakistan, capturing 81 seats. The PML (Qayyum), PML (Council), PML (Convention), Jamiat
Ulema-e-Islam, Jamiyat Ulema-e-Pakistan and Jamaat-e-Islami won only 37 National Assembly
seats.
PARTY POSITION
In the provincial elections, the Awami League won 288 of the 300 seats in the East Pakistan
Assembly, but none in any of the four West Pakistan assemblies. The Pakistan Peoples Party did
well in the Punjab and Sindh Assemblies but failed to win any seats in East Pakistan.
The Assemblies of the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan were dominated by the more
conservative National Awami Party (Wali) and the PML (Qayyum).
ELECTIONS OF 1985
Elections of the National and Provincial Assemblies were scheduled to be held in February 1985 on
non-party basis. To contest the elections, a precondition was that a candidate must be supported by
at least 50 people to be eligible.
POLLING AND RESULTS

The elections were held on February 25 and 28, 1985 for national and provincial assemblies
respectively. More than 800 important political personalities were arrested in a pre-election
crackdown; election campaigns were not allowed and a ban was imposed on political parties,
processions, rallies and even loudspeakers.
DISPOSITION OF THE HOUSE

The National Assembly continued to be dominated by the rural landlords. The only change was that
the younger generation of landlords had taken over from their elders. The social background of the
new members of parliament can be judged from the following figures:
Nearly 75 per cent of the 847 members of these bodies were big landlords.
ELECTIONS OF 1988
On August 17, 1988, General Zia along with 31 other notables died in a C-130 plane crash near
Bahawalpur. Under the constitution, the Chairman Senate, Ghulam Ishaq Khan became the acting
president. On October 2, 1988, the Supreme Court of Pakistan ruled that political parties would be
allowed to participate in the upcoming elections.
CONTESTING PARTIES
The elections proved, mainly, a two-party race between Pakistan People's Party and a coalition of
right-leaning parties called the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI). Pakistan People's Party (PPP), led by
Ms. Benazir Bhutto and the conservative Islamic Democratic Alliance (IJI), headed by Mr Nawaz
Sharif, as well as a multitude of other groups, fielded some 1,370 candidates for the Assembly's 217
popularly-chosen seats.
POLLS
Elections for the National Assembly were held on 16 November, 1988. PPP emerged as the single
largest party by receiving 38.52% votes. It captured 93 of the 207 directly-contested seats in
parliament, which has 237 members. IJI was able to grab 30.16% of the votes, but only 55 seats.
After the women's seats were apportioned, the Pakistan People's Party controlled 105 of the 237
seats. The PPP formed a coalition-government with the MQM. On December 2, 1988 Benazir
Bhutto was sworn in as the prime minister of Pakistan.
The provincial elections, held on November 19, initially resulted in PPP governments in three out of
four provinces. However, in Punjab, JI leader Nawaz Sharif became Chief Minister.
ELECTIONS OF 1990
On August 6, 1990, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed Benazir government and announced
new elections on 24 October, 1990. He chose the leader of the opposition in the former National
Assembly, Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, as the new caretaker Prime Minister of Pakistan.
CONTENDER PARTIES
1. Pakistan Democratic Alliance, established by PPP together with Asghar Khan's Tehrik-i-Istiqlal,
and two smaller parties.
2. IJI, the coalition that had also competed with the PPP in the 1988 elections.
3. Altaf Hussain's MQM, Khan Abdul Wali Khan's Awami National Party, Jamiat-ul-Ulama-e-Islam
and the Jamhoori Watan Party.
The results showed that IJI secured a booming victory, winning 106 of the 217 general seats. The
PDA could win only forty-five seats. Candidates of small ethnic parties and independents captured
the remainder.
Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif was elected Prime Minister by the National Assembly on
November 1, 1990.
President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dissolved the assemblies on 18th April 1993 on corruption and other
serious charges. General Elections were scheduled to be held on July 14, 1993.
The President appointed Balakh Sher Mazari as the interim Prime Minister. On May 26, 1993, the
Supreme Court revoked the Presidential Order and reinstated Nawaz Sharif as the Prime Minister.
However, both the prime minister and the President resigned on 18 July 1993. Moeen Qureshi, a top
World Bank official, became the next caretaker PM.
ELECTIONS OF 1993
Elections for National Assembly and Provincial assemblies were scheduled for October 6 and 9
respectively.
CONTESTING PARTIES
1,485 candidates, in all, contested polls for the National Assembly. None of the main parties gained
a controlling majority; PPP obtaining 86 seats to PML's 72.
The first session was held on 15th October 1993. Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani took oath of the office of
the Speaker National Assembly on 17th October 1993. Ms. Bhutto was sworn in on 19 October
after she defeated Mian Nawaz Sharif with 121-71 margin for the Leader of the House slot. On 14
November, former PPP Foreign Minister Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari was elected President.
On November 5, 1996, President Leghari dismissed Ms Bhutto's Government and appointed Malik
Meraj Khalid, Rector of the International Islamic University, as caretaker Prime Minister. The next
elections were scheduled to be held on February 3, 1997.
Benazir Bhutto filed a petition with the Supreme Court but on January 29, 1997, only six days
before the general elections, the Supreme Court rejected her petition.
ELECTIONS OF 1997
After the dissolution of Benazir Government, the elections for eleventh National Assembly were
held on 3rd February 1997. Besides PPP, main contenders were: Pakistan Muslim League (PML)
Nawaz, Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM); and Jamaat-e-Islami. A total of 6,289 candidates
contested the election.
The first session was held on 15th February 1997 whereas Mr Illahi Bukhsh Soomro took oath of
the office of the Speaker National Assembly on 16th February 1997. Mian Muhammad Nawaz
Sharif took oath as Prime Minister of Pakistan on 17th February 1997.
On 12 October 1999, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ordered Musharraf's dismissal. However, senior
Army generals refused to accept it and in a coup, the Generals ousted Sharif administration. Chief
of Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf assumed the title of Chief Executive. Through Provisional
Constitutional Order (PCO) issued on October 14th 1999, he held the Constitution in abeyance,
suspended the Senate, National and Provincial Assemblies, Chairman and Deputy Chairman Senate,
Speaker, Deputy Speaker National and Provincial Assemblies and dismissed the Federal and
Provincial governments.
ELECTIONS OF 2002
On 12 May 2000, the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered Pervez Musharraf to hold general
elections by 12 October 2002. On 11 July 2002, the President and Chief Executive of Pakistan,
General Pervez Musharraf, announced that general elections for the National Assembly and four
Provincial Assemblies would be held on 10 October 2002.
The National and Provincial elections were held on the same day. More than 72 million registered
voters aged 18 and above from a population of 140 million, elected members for the 342 National
Assembly seats and 728 seats of the four Provincial Assemblies. A total of 2,098 candidates
contested for 272 general seats of the National Assembly. The remaining 60 seats were reserved for
women and 10 for non-Muslims.
Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-i-Azam (PML-Q), a faction of the former Pakistan Muslim League
(PML) obtained the largest share of seats, 77, but fell short of majority. The Pakistan People's Party
Parliamentarians (PPP-P) came second with 63 seats. Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), an alliance
of six Islamist parties, won 45 seats.
On November 19, 2002, Chaudhry Amir Hussain was elected the new Speaker of the National
Assembly while on November 21, 2002, Mir Zafarullah Jamali was elected as the 21st Prime
Minister of Pakistan by securing 172 votes out of 329 votes. However, he resigned on 26 June 2004
and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain replaced him as the interim Prime Minister who was later replaced
by Shaukat Aziz.
Elections 2008
On 8 November 2007, Musharraf announced that the election would be held by 15 February 2008.
Later the election date was changed to occur on or before 9 January 2008. Even later, he suggested
8 January 2008 as the election date. On 15 November, 2007, Mohammad Mian Soomro was
appointed as caretaker prime minister at the expiry of the term of the previous government.
The year 2007 saw numerous political crises culminating in the December 27 assassination of
former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Five main parties who contested these elections were:

(1) Pakistan People's Party
(2) Pakistan Muslim League- Q
(3) Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz
(4) Awami National Party
(5) Mutahidda Qaumi Movement
ELECTIONS OF 2013
Now, Pakistanis have another opportunity to send their elected representatives to the parliament
through their votes. This time apart from PML (N), PPP, MQM and PML (Q), Imran Khan's
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf is among the major parties that are going to contest the polls. Imran Khan
is focusing the youth and is expected to make a major upset in the results.
Adeel Niaz
Sindh
The Land of Endless Opportunities
The gateway of Islam in the Indo-Pak Subcontinent, Sindh is the second largest province of
Pakistan. It is home to the Indus Valley Civilization that is one of the earliest urban civilizations in
the world.
Geography
East Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan
West Indus River and Balochistan
North Punjab
South Arabian Sea
Sindh forms the lower Indus basin and lies between 23 to 35 degree and 28-30, north latitude and
66-42 and 71-1 degree east longitude. It is about 579 kms in length from north to south and nearly
442 kms in its extreme breadth (281 kms average). It covers 140,914 square kms and is about as
large as England.
The biggest international airport of Pakistan is situated in Karachi and is known as Qaid-e-Azam
International Airport.
Districts
There are 27 districts in Sindh. Karachi consists of 5 districts. A list of these districts with their
respective areas is as follows:
Total area of Karachi is 1485 sq. Km.
District Thar covering a total area of 19637 sq. km. is the largest district in Sindh.
Did You Know?

Sindh has two gigantic seaports and both are located in Karachi
Natural Resources
Sindh is the richest province in natural resources of gas, petrol and coal. Here is a brief account of
Sindhs natural resources.
Coal
99% coal reserves of Pakistan are in Sindh. These are located in Lakhra, Soondha, Thar, Meeting-
Jhampeer and Badin. Among these, Thar coal reserves are the largest in the world. Thar region is
endowed with mammoth coal (lignite) reserves estimated to be 175 billion tonnes which can
produce 100,000MW of electricity for next 300 years and can be a key to energy security and
economic prosperity. Major coalfields in Sindh are:
Thar Coalfield
Total Area 9,100 sq. Km
Coal Reserves 175b tonnes
Badin Coalfield
Total Area 1,110 sq. km
Coal Reserves 1.36b tonnes
Sonda Coalfield
Lakhra Coalfield
(Source: Sindh Coal Authority)
Did You Know?

If all the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia & Iran are put together, these are approximately 375 billion
barrels, but a single Thar coal reserve of Sindh is about 850 Trillion Cubic Feet, Which is more than
oil reserves of Saudi Arabia & Iran.
Natural Gas
Sindh produces 48% of natural gas of Pakistan. There are 10 gasfields in Sindh from where natural
gas is extracted. These are: Kandhkoat, Khairpur, Mari (The largest gasfield where 20% gas is
stored and 18% gas is produced/used), Suri/Hundi, Golarchi, Khaskheli and Leghari.
Note:
The Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) daily extracts nearly 986 MMCF of
natural gas, 368 tonnes of LPG and 71 tonnes of sulphur.
On 18th September, 2012, Italian energy major ENI discovered a major reserve of between 300
billion and 400 billion cubic feet of gas some 350 kilometres north of Karachi in Pakistan.
On October 27, 2012, OGDCL announced the discovery of 400 billion cubic feet from Bhadra Gas
Field situated in Dadu district of Sindh.
Crude Oil/Petrol
Sindh produces 62% of the total oil production of Pakistan.
Major Oilfields of Sindh

Tando Alam, Lashari, Thora, Sono, Missan, Pasakhi and Kunnar
Politics
Karachi is the capital of Sindh. Provincial Assembly of the province is based in Karachi while
Sindh Public Service Commission is headquartered at Hyderabad. The provincial Assembly consists
of 168 members including 130 general seats, 29 seats reserved for women and 9 seats for Non-
Muslims.
The foundation stone of the building was laid by Sir Lancelot Graham, the Governor of Sindh, on
11 March 1940. The construction of the building declared open by Sir Hugh Dow, the Governor
of Sindh, on 4 March 1942 was completed within a span of two years.
In 1971, after a lapse of about 24 years, it was again declared as the Sindh Assembly building. Since
then it has been used as such.
Important
Khan Bahadur Muhammed Ayub Khoro is the only person in the history of Sindh since 1947 who
has served thrice as the Chief Minister of the province.
Mr. Mahmood A. Haroon has been the Governor of Sindh for two terms.
Did You Know?

The 30th Governor of Sindh, Dr Ishrat Ul Ebad Khan, took up the post on December 27, 2002,
becoming the youngest governor to hold the office. He now holds also the record of longest-serving
Governor of any province of Pakistan since its inception in 1947.
Culture
The culture of Sindh has its roots in the Indus Valley Civilization.
Poets
Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai and Sachal Sarmast are the two most revered sufi poets of Sindh. Some
famous regional poets are Shaikh Ayaz, Ustaad Bhukhari, Ahmed Khan Madhoosh, Adal Soomro,
Ayaz Gul, Abdul Ghaffar Tabasum, G.N.Qureshi, Rukhsana Preet, Waseem Soomro.
Folktales
Famous folktales of Sindh include Sassuee Punhoon, Moomal Rano, Umar Marvi, Noori Jaam
Tamachi, Suhni Mehar and Sorath - Rai - Diyach Leela Chanesar.
Language
Besides Urdu, Sindhi with its dialects Kutchi, Lasi, Parkari, Memoni, Lari, Vicholi, Utradi,
Macharia, Dukslinu (spoken by Hindu Sindhis) and Siraiki are two main languages.
Sports
The most famous regional sports include Malakhiro, Wanjh Wati, Kodi Kodi, Beelarhoo, Thipai
Rand, Notinn and Biloor.
Music
Famous Sindhi singers include the great Abida Parveen, Ustad Muhammad Juman, Ustad Manzoor
Ali Khan, Zarina Baloch, Shaman Ali Meerali, Mai Bhaghi, Allan Faqir, Sohrab Fakir and many
other singers who prefer singing Sindhi songs.
Pakistan's Prime Ministers born in Sindh

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Muhammad Khan Junejo, Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi,
Shaukat Aziz, Muhammad Mian Soomro and Raja Pervaiz Ashraf were born in Sindh.
Places to Visit
Moenjodaro, Kot Diji Fort, Gorakh Hill, Runnikot Fort, Naukot Fort, Thatta and Makli Graveyard,
Banbhore, Keenjhar Lake, Hyderabad Fort (Pakko Qilo), Haleji Lake,
Did You Know?

1.The Gorakh hill station is 5,866 feet above sea level and is part of the Khirthar mountain range.
With pleasant weather and a beautiful landscape, it is the only place in Sindh where it snows in
winter.
2. Makli Graveyard is one of the largest necropolises in the world, with a diameter of approximately
8 kilometers, Makli Hill is supposed to be the burial place of some 125,000 Sufi saints.
Twin Cities
Karachi
Port Louis, Mauritius since 1 May 2007
Shanghai, China since 15 February 1984
Puttalam, Sri Lanka November 2012
Hong Kong
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Istanbul, Turkey
Beirut, Lebanon
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Izmir, Turkey, since 1985
Houston, United States since 8 May 2008
Manama, Bahrain
Pristina, Kosovo since 24 July 2008
Dubai, U.A.E
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 1 June 2008
Moscow, Russia 28 August 2011
Mashad, Iran, 11 May 2012
Chicago, USA
Hyderabad
Toledo, Ohio, USA
Sindh & Pakistan Movement

Sindh was an important centre of activities during the Khilafat Movement. The Hijrat Tehrik also
started in Sindh
Under the Government of India Act of 1935, Sindh was made a province with its own Legislative
Assembly on April 1, 1936.
The Sindh Provincial Muslim League Conference held its first session at Karachi in October 1938
under the presidentship of Quaid-i-Azam.
A Muslim League Assembly party was established in Sindh ,of which Ghulam Hussain
Hidayatullah was elected leader and Mir Bandeh Ali Talpur deputy leader.
It was only the Sindh Assembly, amongst all the provinces of undivided India, which passed a
resolution on March 3, 1943, presented by the late G.M. Syed on the lines of the Lahore Resolution,
in support of Pakistan.
On June 26, 1947 the Sindh Assembly, at a special session, decided to join the new Pakistan
Constituent Assembly. Thus, Sindh became the first province to opt for Pakistan.
Islands in Sindh
Churna: The second-largest island of Pakistan
Manora: A tiny peninsula located south of the port of Karachi Others
Baba Bhit Island, Buddo Island, Bundal Island, Khiprianwala Island, Shams Pir and Clifton Oyster
Rocks - small islets
Lakes in Sindh
Drigh Lake Qambar Shahdadkot
Hadero Lake Thatta
Haleji Lake Thatta
Hamal Lake Qamber Shahdadkot
Keenjhar Lake Thatta
Manchar Lake Dadu
Artificial Lakes and Reservoirs

Chotiari Lake Sanghar District
Hub Lake Karachi and Lasbela District on Sindh and Balochistan border
Famous Shrines
Syed Qutub Ali Shah: Tando Jahania, Hyderabad
Abdul Wahab Faruqi (Sachal Sarmast): Khairpur
Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai: Bhit Shah, Matiari
Syed Usman Marwandi (Lal Shahbaz Qalandar): Sehwan
Syed Abdullah Shah Ghazi: Karachi
Sakhi Sultan: Mangho Pir, Karachi
Qutbe-Alam Shah Bukhari: Karachi
Abdullah Shah As'habi: Thatta
Some Random Facts

Indus, the largest river of Pakistan, originates from Tibetan Plateau and after covering the total
distance of 3180 kilometres, it falls into the Arabian Sea near Thatta in Sindh.
Blind River Dolphin, also called Indus Susu, found in the Indus River is one of four river dolphin
species and subspecies in the world that spend all their lives in freshwater.
Sir Cowasji Jehangir Institute of Psychiatry Mental Hospital, commonly known as Gidu Bander, is
the biggest mental hospital in Pakistan.
The territory of Sindh was annexed to the Bombay Presidency in 1843.
Pir Sibghatullah Shah Rashdi, Pir Pagara, launched a militant revolt known as "Hur Movement"
against the British Raj.
Muhammad Usman Butt
Venezuela's 'Comandante' Hugo Chvez An

iconic leader who raised Venezuela's profile
Venezuelan President Hugo Rafael Chvez Frias, who died on March 7, was a
charismatic and prograessive leader, whose idiosyncratic brand of socialism
gave hope to the poorest people in the Latin American country.
Mr Chvez was born on July 28, 1954 in the state of Barinas. The Chvez family were of
Amerindian, Afro-Venezuelan, and Spanish descent. His parents, Hugo de los Reyes Chvez and
Elena Fras de Chvez, were working-lower middle class schoolteachers who lived in the small
village of Los Rastrojos.
He attended the Daniel O'Leary High School in Barinas city. At age seventeen, Chvez studied at
the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences in Caracas. At the Academy, he was a member of the
first class that was following a restructured curriculum known as the Andrs Bello Plan. He later
said, I found my true vocation there.
Living in Caracas, he saw more of the endemic poverty faced by working class Venezuelans,
something that echoed the poverty he had experienced growing up, and he maintained that this
experience only made him further committed to achieving social justice.
In the Academy, he found time to study the lives of the 19th Century South American revolutionary
leader Simon Bolivar and Che Guevara. In 1974, he was selected to be a representative in the
commemorations for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Ayacucho in Peru, the conflict in which
Simon Bolvar's lieutenant, Antonio Jos de Sucre, defeated royalist forces during the Peruvian War
of Independence.
He graduated in 1975 and had already begun to form political ideas that he would later put into
practice as president, including the belief that the military had a duty to step in if a civilian
government was deemed to have failed to protect the poorest in society.
In 1977, he founded a revolutionary movement within the armed forces, in the hope that he could
one day introduce a leftist government to Venezuela: the Venezuelan People's Liberation Army
(Ejrcito de Liberacin del Pueblo de Venezuela, or ELPV), was a secretive cell within the military
that consisted of him and a handful of his fellow soldiers.
In 1989, Carlos Andrs Prez was elected President after promising to oppose the United States
government's Washington Consensus and financial policies recommended by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF). Nevertheless, he did neither once he got into office. Disturbed by his
policies, Chvez began preparing for a coup d'tat, known as Operation Zamora. Initially planned
for December, Chvez delayed the MBR-200 coup until the early twilight hours of 4 February 1992.
On that date, five army units under Chvez's command moved into urban Caracas with the mission
of overwhelming key military and communications installations. Chvez's immediate goal was to
intercept and take custody of Prez, who was returning from an overseas trip. Despite years of
planning, the coup quickly encountered trouble.
A revolt by members of the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement claimed 18 lives before Colonel
Chvez surrendered.
He was languishing in a military jail when his associates tried again to seize power nine months
later. The second coup attempt in November 1992 was crushed as well.
Chvez spent two years in prison before relaunching his party as the Movement of the Fifth
Republic, making the transition from a soldier to a politician.
In his television and radio shows, Chvez answered calls from citizens, discussed his latest
policies, sung songs and told jokes, making it unique not only in Latin America but the entire world.
He spent time canvassing and found strong support and friendship from Cuba's revolutionary
president, Fidel Castro to whom he has a father-son relation.
Chvez believed in overthrowing the government by force but was persuaded to change his mind
and instead became a candidate in the 1998 presidential elections.
Venezuela had enjoyed an unbroken period of democratic government since 1958, but the two main
parties, which had alternated in power, stood accused of presiding over a corrupt system and
squandering the country's vast oil wealth.
Chvez promised revolutionary social policies, and constantly abused the predatory oligarchs
of the establishment as corrupt servants of international capital.
Chvez's promises of widespread social and economic reforms won the trust and favor of a
primarily poor and working class following. Chvez won the election with 56.20% of the vote and
on 2 February 1999, he was officially inaugurated as the President of Venezuela.
Whilst he was remaining fiscally conservative, he introduced measures in an attempt to alleviate the
poverty of the Venezuelan working class. Chvez immediately set into motion a social welfare
programme called Plan Bolvar 2000, which he organised to begin on 27 February 1999, the tenth
anniversary of the Caracazo massacre.
In his television and radio shows, Chvez answered calls from citizens, discussed his latest policies,
sung songs and told jokes, making it unique not only in Latin America but the entire world.
Chvez held a referendum to form a constitutional assembly to frame a new constitution. Under the
new constitution, presidential election was held in July 2000.
Chvez was re-elected with 59.76% of the vote.
In the presidential election of December 2006 Chvez was once again elected. On 7 October 2012,
Chvez won election as president for a fourth time, and for the third time he won a six-year term.
The inauguration of Chvez's new term was scheduled for 10 January 2013, but he was undergoing
medical treatment at the time in Cuba from where he left for the eternal abode.
On his death, a prestigious British newspaper The Guardian wrote:
Chvez was a democratically elected champion of the poor. His policies lifted millions out of abject
poverty and misery. He represented a break from years of corrupt regimes with often dire human
rights records. His achievements were won in the face of an attempted military coup, an
aggressively hostile media, and bitter foreign critics. He demonstrated that it is possible to resist the
neo-liberal dogma that holds sway over much of humanity. He will be mourned by millions of
Venezuelans and understandably so.
Muhammad Usman Butt
Will Capitalism Destroy Civilization?

An economic system based on a free market, open competition, profit motive
and private ownership is called capitalism.
There is capitalism and then there is really existing capitalism.
The term capitalism is commonly used to refer to the U.S. economic system, with substantial state
intervention ranging from subsidies for creative innovation to the too-big-to-fail government
insurance policy for banks.
The system is highly monopolized, further limiting reliance on the market, and increasingly so: In
the past 20 years the share of profits of the 200 largest enterprises has risen sharply, reports scholar
Robert W. McChesney in his new book Digital Disconnect.
Capitalism is a term now commonly used to describe systems in which there are no capitalists: for
example, the worker-owned Mondragon conglomerate in the Basque region of Spain, or the worker-
owned enterprises expanding in northern Ohio, often with conservative support both are discussed
in important work by the scholar Gar Alperovitz.
Some might even use the term capitalism to refer to the industrial democracy advocated by John
Dewey, America's leading social philosopher, in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Dewey called for workers to be masters of their own industrial fate and for all institutions to be
brought under public control, including the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation
and communication. Short of this, Dewey argued, politics will remain the shadow cast on society
by big business.
The truncated democracy that Dewey condemned has been left in tatters in recent years. Now
control of government is narrowly concentrated at the peak of the income scale, while the large
majority down below has been virtually disenfranchised. The current political-economic system is
a form of plutocracy, diverging sharply from democracy, if by that concept we mean political
arrangements in which policy is significantly influenced by the public will.
There have been serious debates over the years about whether capitalism is compatible with
democracy. If we keep to really existing capitalist democracy RECD for short the question is
effectively answered: They are radically incompatible.
It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive RECD and the sharply attenuated democracy
that goes along with it. But could functioning democracy make a difference?
Let's keep to the most critical immediate problem that civilization faces: environmental catastrophe.
Policies and public attitudes diverge sharply, as is often the case under RECD. The nature of the gap
is examined in several articles in the current issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Researcher Kelly Sims Gallagher finds that One hundred and nine countries have enacted some
form of policy regarding renewable power, and 118 countries have set targets for renewable energy.
In contrast, the United States has not adopted any consistent and stable set of policies at the national
level to foster the use of renewable energy.
It is not public opinion that drives American policy off the international spectrum. Quite the
opposite. Opinion is much closer to the global norm than the U.S. government's policies reflect, and
much more supportive of actions needed to confront the likely environmental disaster predicted by
an overwhelming scientific consensus and one that's not too far off; affecting the lives of our
grandchildren, very likely.
One hundred and nine countries have enacted some form of policy regarding renewable power, and
118 countries have set targets for renewable energy
As Jon A. Krosnick and Bo MacInnis report in Daedalus: Huge majorities have favored steps by
the federal government to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated when utilities
produce electricity. In 2006, 86 percent of respondents favored requiring utilities, or encouraging
them with tax breaks, to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit. Also in that year, 87
percent favored tax breaks for utilities that produce more electricity from water, wind or sunlight.
These majorities were maintained between 2006 and 2010 and shrank somewhat after that.
The fact that the public is influenced by science is deeply troubling to those who dominate the
economy and state policy.
One current illustration of their concern is the Environmental Literacy Improvement Act proposed
to state legislatures by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded
lobby that designs legislation to serve the needs of the corporate sector and extreme wealth.
The ALEC Act mandates balanced teaching of climate science in K-12 classrooms. Balanced
teaching is a code phrase that refers to teaching climate-change denial, to balance mainstream
climate science. It is analogous to the balanced teaching advocated by creationists to enable the
teaching of creation science in public schools. Legislation based on ALEC models has already
been introduced in several states.
Of course, all of this is dressed up in rhetoric about teaching critical thinking a fine idea, no
doubt, but it's easy to think up far better examples than an issue that threatens our survival and has
been selected because of its importance in terms of corporate profits.
Media reports commonly present a controversy between two sides on climate change.
One side consists of the overwhelming majority of scientists, the world's major national academies
of science, the professional science journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
They agree that global warming is taking place, that there is a substantial human component, that
the situation is serious and perhaps dire, and that very soon, maybe within decades, the world might
reach a tipping point where the process will escalate sharply and will be irreversible, with severe
social and economic effects. It is rare to find such consensus on complex scientific issues.
The other side consists of skeptics, including a few respected scientists who caution that much is
unknown which means that things might not be as bad as thought, or they might be worse.
Omitted from the contrived debate is a much larger group of skeptics: highly regarded climate
scientists who see the IPCC's regular reports as much too conservative. And these scientists have
repeatedly been proven correct, unfortunately.
The propaganda campaign has apparently had some effect on U.S. public opinion, which is more
skeptical than the global norm. But the effect is not significant enough to satisfy the masters. That is
presumably why sectors of the corporate world are launching their attack on the educational system,
in an effort to counter the public's dangerous tendency to pay attention to the conclusions of
scientific research.
For the first time in human history, humans are facing the significant prospect of severe calamity
as a result of their actions actions that are battering our prospects of decent survival.
At the Republican National Committee's Winter Meeting a few weeks ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby
Jindal warned the leadership that We must stop being the stupid party. We must stop insulting the
intelligence of voters.
Within the RECD system it is of extreme importance that we become the stupid nation, not misled
by science and rationality, in the interests of the short-term gains of the masters of the economy and
political system, and damn the consequences.
These commitments are deeply rooted in the fundamentalist market doctrines that are preached
within RECD, though observed in a highly selective manner, so as to sustain a powerful state that
serves wealth and power.
The official doctrines suffer from a number of familiar market inefficiencies, among them the
failure to take into account the effects on others in market transactions. The consequences of these
externalities can be substantial. The current financial crisis is an illustration. It is partly traceable
to the major banks and investment firms' ignoring systemic risk the possibility that the whole
system would collapse when they undertook risky transactions.
Environmental catastrophe is far more serious: The externality that is being ignored is the fate of the
species. And there is nowhere to run, cap in hand, for a bailout.
In future, historians (if there are any) will look back on this curious spectacle taking shape in the
early 21st century. For the first time in human history, humans are facing the significant prospect of
severe calamity as a result of their actions actions that are battering our prospects of decent
survival.
Those historians will observe that the richest and most powerful country in history, which enjoys
incomparable advantages, is leading the effort to intensify the likely disaster. Leading the effort to
preserve conditions in which our immediate descendants might have a decent life are the so-called
primitive societies: First Nations, tribal, indigenous, aboriginal.
The countries with large and influential indigenous populations are well in the lead in seeking to
preserve the planet. The countries that have driven indigenous populations to extinction or extreme
marginalization are racing toward destruction.
Thus Ecuador, with its large indigenous population, is seeking aid from the rich countries to allow it
to keep its substantial oil reserves underground, where they should be.
Meanwhile the U.S. and Canada are seeking to burn fossil fuels, including the extremely dangerous
Canadian tar sands, and to do so as quickly and fully as possible, while they hail the wonders of a
century of (largely meaningless) energy independence without a side glance at what the world
might look like after this extravagant commitment to self-destruction.
This observation generalizes: Throughout the world, indigenous societies are struggling to protect
what they sometimes call the rights of nature, while the civilized and sophisticated scoff at this
silliness. is all exactly the opposite of what rationality would predict unless it is the skewed form
of reason that passes through the filter of RECD.
JWT Desk
IRAN IN WORLDWIDE THREAT

ASSESSMENT
On 12 March 2013, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
presented to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence the worldwide
threat Assessment of the US intelligence community. The text below is the
excerpts of the statement of the record which relates to the Iranian regime.
TERRORISM AND TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZED CRIME
TERRORISM
IRAN AND LEBANESE HIZBALLAH

The failed 2011 plot against the Saudi Ambassador in Washington shows that Iran may be more
willing to seize opportunities to attack in the United States in response to perceived offenses against
the regime. Iran is also an emerging and increasingly aggressive cyber actor. However, we have not
changed our assessment that Iran prefers to avoid direct confrontation with the United States
because regime preservation is its top priority.
WMD PROLIFERATION
IRAN AND NORTH KOREA DEVELOPING WMD-APPLICABLE CAPABILITIES
We assess Iran is developing nuclear capabilities to enhance its security, prestige, and regional
influence and give it the ability to develop nuclear weapons, should a decision be made to do so. We
do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.
Tehran has developed technical expertise in a number of areasincluding uranium enrichment,

nuclear reactors, and ballistic missiles from which it could draw if it decided to build missile-
deliverable nuclear weapons. These technical advancements strengthen our assessment that Iran has
the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity to eventually produce nuclear weapons. This makes
the central issue its political will to do so.
Of particular note, Iran has made progress during the past year that better positions it to produce
weapons-grade uranium (WGU) using its declared facilities and uranium stockpiles, should it
choose to do so. Despite this progress, we assess Iran could not divert safeguarded material and
produce a weapon-worth of WGU before this activity is discovered.
We judge Iran's nuclear decision-making is guided by a cost-benefit approach, which offers the
international community opportunities to influence Tehran. Iranian leaders undoubtedly consider
Iran's security, prestige and influence, as well as the international political and security
environment, when making decisions about its nuclear program. In this context, we judge that Iran
is trying to balance conflicting objectives. It wants to advance its nuclear and missile capabilities
and avoid severe repercussionssuch as a military strike or regime threatening sanctions.
We judge Iran would likely choose a ballistic missile as its preferred method of delivering a nuclear
weapon, if one is ever fielded. Iran's ballistic missiles are capable of delivering WMD. In addition,
Iran has demonstrated an ability to launch small satellites, and we grow increasingly concerned that
these technical stepsalong with a regime hostile toward the United States and our alliesprovide
Tehran with the means and motivation to develop larger space-launch vehicles and longer-range
missiles, including an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
Iran already has the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East, and it is expanding the
scale, reach, and sophistication of its ballistic missile arsenal. Iran's growing ballistic missile
inventory and its domestic production of anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM) and development of its
first long-range land attack cruise missile provide capabilities to enhance its power projection.
Tehran views its conventionally armed missiles as an integral part of its strategy to deterand if
necessary retaliate againstforces in the region, including US forces.
REGIONAL THREATS
IRAN
Iran is growing more autocratic at home and more assertive abroad as it faces elite and popular
grievances, a deteriorating economy, and an uncertain regional dynamic. Supreme Leader
Khamenei's power and authority are now virtually unchecked, and security institutions, particularly
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have greater influence at the expense of popularly
elected and clerical institutions. Khamenei and his allies will have to weigh carefully their desire to
control the 14 June Iranian presidential election, while boosting voter turnout to increase the
appearance of regime legitimacy and avoid a repeat of the disputed 2009 election. Meanwhile, the
regime is adopting more oppressive social policies to increase its control over the population, such
as further limiting educational and career choices for women.
Iran's financial outlook has worsened since the 2012 implementation of sanctions on its oil exports
and Central Bank. Iran's economy contracted in 2012 for the first time in more than two decades.
Iran's access to foreign exchange reserves held overseas has diminished, and preliminary data
suggest that it suffered its first trade deficit in 14 years. Meanwhile, the rial reached an all-time low
in late January, with the exchange rate falling from about 15,000 rials per dollar at the beginning of
2012 to nearly 40,000 rials per dollar, and inflation and unemployment are growing.
Growing public frustration with the government's socioeconomic policies has not led to widespread
political unrest because of Iranians' pervasive fear of the security services and the lack of effective
opposition organization and leadership. To buoy the regime's popularity and forestall widespread
civil unrest, Iranian leaders are trying to soften the economic hardships on the poorer segments of
the population. Khamenei has publicly called on the population to pursue a resistance economy,
reminiscent of the hardships that Iran suffered immediately after the Iranian Revolution and during
the Iran-Iraq war. However, the willingness of contemporary Iranians to withstand additional
economic austerity is unclear because most Iranians do not remember those times; 60 percent of the
population was born after 1980 and 40 percent after 1988.
In its efforts to spread influence abroad and undermine the United States and our allies, Iran is
trying to exploit the fighting and unrest in the Arab world. It supports surrogates, including
Palestinian militants engaged in the recent conflict with Israel. To take advantage of the US
withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, it will continue efforts to strengthen political and economic
ties with central and local governments, while providing select militants with lethal assistance.
Iran's efforts to secure regional hegemony, however, have achieved limited results, and the fall of
the Asad regime in Syria would be a major strategic loss for Tehran.
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

Iran has been reaching out to Latin America and the Caribbean to decrease its international
isolation. President Ahmadinejad travelled to the region twice in 2012. Tehran has cultivated ties to
leaders of the Venezuelan-led Alliance for the Peoples of our Americas (ALBA) in Bolivia, Cuba,
Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and maintains cordial relations with Cuba and Nicaragua.
Relations with Tehran offer these governments a way to stake out independent positions on the
international issue of Iran, while extracting financial aid and investment for economic and social
projects.
JWT Desk
JWT Desk
Waiting for the Chop

The economy has survived austerity thus far this year thanks to housing, but the
sequester could change that.
What is Sequester?
Sequester is a procedure in United States law that limits the size of the federal budget. It involves
setting a hard cap on the amount of government spending within broadly-defined categories; if
Congress enacts annual appropriations legislation that exceeds these caps, an across-the-board
spending cut is automatically imposed on these categories, affecting all departments and programs
by an equal percentage. This part of the fiscal cliff became effective on January 1, 2013, but the
American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 delayed it until March 1.
When Barack Obama and the Republicans in Congress agreed on January 1st to let a payroll tax cut
expire and tax rates rise on the rich, they rolled the dice with the economy. They, in effect, bet that
America's recovery was solid enough to withstand higher taxes and spending cuts, including a
sequester that took effect on March 1st. At 1.9% of gross domestic product, that is a contraction
second only to that of Greece among rich countries this year.
At America's biggest retailer, it looked at first like the gamble had not paid off. Where are all the
customers? And where's their money?, one executive at Walmart said in an e-mail dated February
1st. February sales to date are a total disaster, another wrote on February 12th.
But the company painted a less dire picture on February 21st, when it reported its earnings. While
sales had indeed flattened out, the culprit was not, it appeared, the tax increases, but delayed tax
refunds (also a result of the January 1st legislation). Customers last year cashed $4 billion worth of
income tax refunds at Walmart's shops, but so far this year had cashed only about $1.7 billion.
Presumably when the refunds come through in March, so will the usual spending they bring.
For now, the economy seems to have shrugged off austerity. GDP, which stalled at the end of 2012
because of one-off factors including Hurricane Sandy, now seems to be growing at about a 2%
annual rate, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, said on February 26th; that is the same,
uninspiring pace it averaged throughout 2012. In effect, the economy is caught between headwinds
and tailwinds that have roughly cancelled each other out. The headwinds, besides the government's
austerity, include a rise in petrol prices that could trim 0.2% off this year's GDP by depressing
consumption.
Rising home prices and a stock market at near-record levels added $4.8 trillion to household
wealth last year
On the positive side is the spreading recovery in the housing market. In January, sales of new
homes shot up to their highest level since 2008. The inventory now equals just 4.1 months' sales, an
eight-year low and a powerful spur to new construction. The economic benefits go well beyond
bricks and nails. Rising home prices and a stock market at near-record levels added $4.8 trillion to
household wealth last year, reckons Paul Dales of Capital Economics, bringing it to around $65
trillion, close to its pre-crisis peak. He figures the wealth effect of stable stocks and modestly
higher home prices should lift consumer spending enough to add 0.7% to GDP this year.
Rising home prices should also loosen the supply of mortgage credit by making default, foreclosure
and litigation less likely. John Williams, president of the San Francisco Fed, recently spoke of a
virtuous circle, with sales volumes growing, home prices increasing, and foreclosures coming
down.
Yet it is far too soon to declare the experiment with austerity a success. The sequester still looms,
and its effects are unpredictable. Mr Obama and Republicans agreed to sequester in 2011 purely as
a spur to negotiate a more rational plan for reducing the deficit.
The sequester was originally designed to slice $1.2 trillion from spending over a decade. The initial
installment is a cut of $85 billion for the seven months until the end of September, though that will
reduce actual spending by only $42 billion since some money approved in one fiscal year is spent in
the next. Most entitlements, such as pensions and health-care, are excluded, which makes the
reduction in the rest more severe: 13% in defence spending for the next seven months and a 9% cut
to other domestic discretionary programmes.
After long insisting that the sequester was too horrible even to contemplate, the Obama
administration has finally begun to give details of its implementation. The cuts will come primarily
through reduced grants, such as for Head Start, an anti-poverty programme for preschoolers, and
staff furloughs (unpaid days off). Since the government must give at least 30 days notice of
furloughs, and most agencies have not yet done so, the public may see no impact until April. With
luck, the sequester may have been unpicked by then.
In a survey of its members, the National Treasury Employees Union found that 63% expected to
eat into retirement savings and 57% would take on additional debt. Regionally, Maryland, Virginia
and Washington D, C, will be hit hardest, as they are home to the highest concentration of federal
workers and contractors.
The most directly affected will be federal employees. Marcherie Williams, who works for the
Internal Revenue Service in Philadelphia, complained about the uncertainty the sequester is
causing for her and her co-workers. In a survey of its members, the National Treasury Employees
Union found that 63% expected to eat into retirement savings and 57% would take on additional
debt. Regionally, Maryland, Virginia and Washington D, C, will be hit hardest, as they are home to
the highest concentration of federal workers and contractors.
The most damaging effects may come from cutting back on federal services. The Aerospace
Industries Association, a trade group, reckons the Federal Aviation Administration's plan to furlough
most of its 47,000 employees by one day per pay period could cut air traffic by 5% to 10%. This
would reduce the fees paid to the FAA by airlines, negating most of the beneficial impact on the
deficit. Cargo flights, often made at night, could be hurt the worst.
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association claims the furloughing of meat, poultry and egg safety
inspectors will affect 6,300 establishments and cause $10 billion in lost production. Likewise, the
furlough of customs officers could result in huge delays at border crossings, crippling the supply
chains that are crucial to the automobile industry, says one trade group.
Such predictions must be taken with a grain of salt since it is in each industry's interest to sound the
alarm. But the underlying point is correct. If you wanted to cut the deficit in the most damaging
way, you'd choose the
sequester.
JWT Desk
Media Power & Responsibility

In an unlettered society where one rarely comes across people genuinely into
writing or reading and where books are sold not by content but by weight as a
waste paper commodity and where bookstores are disappearing fast, getting
converted into video shops or burger stands, the arrival of every single new book
by a Pakistani author is freshening expression of a resolve not to give up the
book culture.
Yasmeen Aftab Ali's A Comparative Analysis of Media and Media Laws in Pakistan is, indeed, a
welcome arrival focusing as it does on a subject that is of great relevance to our society where not
only the media laws, if there are any, but also all other laws are of no practical consequence. The
author, a prolific writer in social media, a well-known lawyer and prominent academic in mass
communication, has very ably used her practitioner's experience in opening an insightful window
into an otherwise untraversed area in our written literature.
This book is, perhaps, the first study of its own kind encompassing all media-related issues in our
country and generating awareness of the vast legal framework available to the people as well as the
media community on the rights and obligations of all in handling this important vehicle of public
opinion and information. The author not only traces the historical evolution of this institution in
Pakistan, but also brings out, with specific instances, the growing tendency for abuse of media-
related freedoms.
Besides putting the media's role in its perspective as the 'fourth pillar' of a democratic state, she has
tried to clarify in common man's language the much misunderstood concepts of freedom of speech,
freedom of expression, defamation, contempt of court, cyber law, electronic media and social
responsibility with comparative analyses of the laws on these issues in our own country and those in
other countries.
Now, as in any other country in today's world, our media is playing a pivotal role as a source of
information on almost every aspect of our national life as also on issues and developments of
national, regional and global importance across the globe in the context of their relevance to
Pakistan. In many respects, information has never been so free presenting new challenges to the
society as a whole and helping people discover new facts and hidden realities, while making
governments more accountable.
All societies now recognise that free expression has its limits. The foremost challenge thus remains
how the free media itself is using its newfound freedom in meeting its own obligations towards
respecting the freedom of the public as individuals or even as groups or society as a whole. This
book makes the case for the media's responsibility in remaining within the limits of legal, moral,
cultural and ethical norms of the society and also the need for promoting diversity, transparency,
accessibility and accountability among fast-growing media corporations and the government
agencies that regulate the media.
With more and more corporate conglomerates buying up independent news outlets, broadcasters are
becoming less and less accountable to the public and as a consequence, fewer voices and
perspectives are to be heard. An increasingly concentrated media ownership system in our own
country has had a negative impact on the quality of news and information that we receive about the
nation and the world. There are instances, globally as well as in our own country, of growing abuse
of media power to influence the political and cultural scenes.
Those of us who remember the classic fairytale movie, The Wizard of Oz, might see in it some
allegorical resemblances with the world of media in our times today. Its main character, Dorothy
Gale, is a young, helpless, good-natured adopted orphan girl snatched up by a Kansas tornado and
deposited in a fantasy land of witches. When she and her companions finally reach the palace of the
Wizard, and in the main hall, a huge head faces them talking and breathing fire and smoke, and
holding the terrorised but rapt attention of anyone who looks upon his face.
An increasingly concentrated media ownership system in our own country has had a negative
impact on the quality of news and information that we receive about the nation and the world.
That is until a curtain is moved and we find that the Wizard is actually a little wimpy old man, who
just works levers and pushes buttons to make the huge head talk and move. Pay no attention to the
man behind the curtain, the Wizard yells into a microphone, hoping the huge talking head will
make Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow ignore the facts and concentrate
on the illusion.
As in the Wizard of Oz, the people in our world today are transfixed on our own talking heads
that come from our own Wizard boxes every day and night in regular news bulletins, including
frequent breaking news every now and then. And the news media, especially the electronic media
understands completely how much power they have over the minds of the masses, even those who
say they can't trust the media. By using graphic images, focusing on everything they want you to
see and hear, shaping events by reporting only on those that they choose, they control an empire that
is actually a fourth pillar of the state. And, no wonder, they control our minds.
The media exercises influence and authority over us. And there is no doubt that money and muscle
power are getting control over the media, which is becoming a commercial enterprise rather than
being driven by public good, and if recent developments in the country are an eye opener, our media
is no longer immune to corruption. Vested foreign as well as local interests are also pouring in
money with ulterior motives. They say, lawlessness is the son of anarchy and brother of violence
and corruption and this broken family lives happily in Pakistan. These renegade companions
flourish only in societies where common purposes and collective good lose out to vested interests.
Though we have a voluntary code of ethics adopted since 1972, the performance of media in our
country has yet to rise to the globally recognised standards of reporting with responsibility. Since
2002, we also have a statutory body, the Press Council of Pakistan, to ensure freedom of press in the
country consistent with universally acclaimed professional and ethical standards relating to
newspapers, news agencies, editors and journalists. There are reports that instead of seeking to
reinforce the laws and ethical codes on such issues as morality, cultural propriety, plagiarism,
fairness, etc, the Council, under pressure from newspapers, is seeking the repeal of defamation
laws. That sounds odd for any democratic society where the press has to be both free and
responsible.
By using graphic images, focusing on everything they want you to see and hear, shaping events by
reporting only on those that they choose, they control an empire that is actually a fourth pillar of the
state.
Lately, there have been attempts at distorting our history and even questioning the very raison
d'tre of Pakistan under the nose of those who have vowed to protect and preserve Pakistan's
'ideology' in total breach of Article 19 of the Constitution and violation of items 4 and 9 of the
PCP's Code of Ethics. It is time our media owned its national responsibility by shielding the glory
of Islam and our country's independence and national integrity. A recent case in point was the
prominent op-ed space given by a major newspaper claiming 'guardianship' of our ideology to an
Indian maverick's viewpoint questioning the very raison d'tre of Pakistan.
No doubt, the reach of the media and its impact on general public is increasing and in a country
where there is no rule of law, too much of freedom also has its own hazards. Too much of
commercialism that is going beyond the prescribed codifying limits is unhealthy and must be reined
in. Yasmeen Ali's book is a timely rejoinder on all these issues so that media's freedom is an asset,
rather than a liability for our society. To be so, it must remain within an obligatory framework of
legal, social, moral, cultural and ethical standards in keeping with Pakistan's value system.
The writer is a former foreign secretary

Shamshad Ahmad
The writer is a former foreign secretary.
THE ANTI-TERRORISM (AMENDMENT)

ACT, 2013:
Nationalizing the International Law on Counter Terrorism Financing The
debate that the recent wave of terrorism is a byproduct of international politics
is not new in Pakistan; though many tend to disagree with this point of view.
If the legislation of a country is any measure, the recent Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Act, 2013
(ATA) and Anti-Terrorism (second amendment) Bill 2013, passed by the Senate on 5th and 14th
March 2013 respectively, testify that the legislation is an outcome of succumbing to international
pressure, and not of indigenous and domestic circumstances. The 'internationalized' aspect of the
new amendments to Anti-terrorism Law shows that legislature and executive in Pakistan are more
responsive to international pressure than to local needs and national aspirations.
A report issued by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), on

this issue, suggests that the 'Financial Action Task Force' (FATF), an intergovernmental organization
established in 1989 and tasked, inter alia, to develop international standards in form of its
recommendations to safeguard international financial system, repeatedly urged Pakistan to amend
its anti-terrorism laws to tighten the asset seizure and counterterrorism regimes. Consequently, a
draft of twenty-five amendments to ATA was proposed by Interior Minister Rehman Malik in 2010.
The bill was sent to the Senate Standing Committee on Interior on July 27, 2010. The bill remained
pending with the Committee for two years after which it was reportedly withdrawn in 2012. In the
meanwhile, in October, 2011, FATF pressed upon the government to pass the law by February,
2012. However, Pakistan missed the deadline and resultantly, was blacklisted. The recent ATA
amendments are a fruition of the government's earlier commitments at international level. Given
this background and noting the 'external' element in the legisla tion, it is now appropriate to outline
some characteristic points of the new amendments.
In present form, there are, in all, twelve amendments in the Act. For conceptual clarity, these
amendments may be divided into two broad categories:
A. Definitional Amendments
B. Counter-Terrorism Financing (CTF) Amend ments
A. Definitional Amendments:
In Common Law countries, legislations are drafted to express the will of the masses through the
legislature. The will is expressed in legal jargon and with the help of drafting techniques. One such
technique is to come up with a definitional clause. The definitional clause generally addresses the
issues of capturing the abstract ideas of parliamentarians in Black Letter Law form. In ATA 1997,
Section 2 deals with definitions, while Section 6 explains, at great length, the terrorism.
The recent ATA amendments are a fruition of the government's earlier commitments at international
level.
The ATA (Amendment) Act 2013 amends both Sections 2 and 6. It amends Section 2 to redefine the
concepts of 'money' and 'property' with the effect of widening the connotations and resulting in
international applicability of the ATA. It also amends Section 6 to include application of all the
offences defined in eight international conventions (outlined in Fifth Schedule to ATA 1997 read
with its Section 34) relating to Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft, International Persons, Diplomatic
Agents, Taking of Hostages, Violence at Airports, Safety of Maritime Navigation, Safety of Fined
Platforms on Continental Shelf and Terrorist Bombings. The importation and nationalization of
international law into ATA is the characteristic of this set of amendments. An important point worth
noting is that the newly-added Fifth Schedule has a clause which enables the Federal Government
to specify through 'notification' any other convention or international treaty to be included for
application in Pakistan through ATA law. The delegation of power for incorporating the
international law to the executive must be minutely examined as the domain is predominantly
reserved for the legislature.
A. Counter Terrorism Financing Amendments:

Counter Terrorism Financing (CTF) Regime of Pakistan's terrorism law is embedded in Section 11
and twenty-four of its clauses (from 11A to 11X). The new amendments introduce minor changes in
Sections 11A, E, F, H, P, R, S, T. Section 11O attempts to simplify and empower both provincial
and federal governments to effect seizure, freezing and detention of person and property involved in
terrorism.
In the previous form, only the provincial government had the power to affect seizure of property.
The seizure and freezing of accounts is a tricky subject in Pakistan. Interestingly, the new
amendments make no references towards Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2010, and by not addressing
the extant legislation on the point, two regimes have become operational. One is under the AML
Act, 2010 and the other under the new amendments. The primary law enforcement agency (i.e.
Police), as usual, has been kept out of business and no trust has been reposed in it. The exclusionary
approach towards police and a multiagency environment for CTF is counterproductive: as in every
case, the fragmentation of powers of counterterrorism agencies results in benefit to criminals who
exploit the legal and administrative lacunae in courts.
Charles H. Kennedy, in his article, 'The Creation and Development of Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism
Regime, 1997-2002, noted:
If the purposes of establishing an anti-terrorism regime are to lessen terrorism, punish terrorists,
improve the efficiency of the legal system, and dispense speedy justice, Pakistan's anti-terrorism
regime has been a complete failure. Conversely, if the purposes of an anti-terrorism regime are to
improve one's position relative to one's domestic political opponents, or to improve public relations,
or to rehabilitate one's standing with the international community, then Pakistan's antiterrorism
regime has generally been a success.
The writer has done LLB (Hons.) Shariah and Law from International Islamic University,
Islamabad, and BCL from the
University of Oxford
(kamranadil@yahoo.com)
Kamran Adil
Psychological Assessment & Interview Guide I

Highlights
Interviews
Preparing Interview Questions
Competitive Exams (CSS, PMS, PCS) Interviews
Psychological Examination
The Panel Interview
Study Material for Interview
Dos and Don'ts for an Interview
Tips by Toppers
Mock Interviews
CSS, PMS and PCS are the most prestigious competitive exams in Pakistan. Every year, thousands
of candidates appear in them to make their dream of a brighter and enviable future come true. But,
only a few pass the exams and most of them remain unable to get through due to lack of sufficient
and proper guidance. The paucity of quality books is another key factor in this regard.
But, Psychological Assessment and Interview Guide penned by Dr Waheed Asghar, an officer in
PAS group, is the best book that addresses this problem and provides invaluable material which is
imperative for success in psychological assessment and interview. I have combed through the book
and found it extremely helpful as it presents the most relevant material in a novel way. The author
has provided effective techniques along with illustrations so that the readers may comprehend the
rudiments.
Besides guidance on how to prepare, the book also features mock interviews and tips by toppers.
Another striking feature is the presence of material comprising questions that are frequently asked.
It equips the readers with great confidence when they actually appear before the interview
panellists.
Adeel Niaz
Editor Jahangir's World times
Former Project Head Institute of Public Administration & Policy Studies
Superior University, Lahore.
Adeel Niaz
Can PTI Win the Elections - 2013
In Pakistan's political history, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is the only
political party that has gone through dramatic ups and downs in terms of
popularity.
Some recent polls suggest that its popularity is at all-time low since the massive political gathering
of 30th October. After Imran Khan's phenomenal success in attracting the masses, a tsunami of
scathing criticism was directed at him and his party that PTI is gathering traditional politicians
around him; voting for PTI would mean right wing vote division which would ultimately help PPP
and Zardari in coming back to power, etc. But, here the question arises that whether this entire
brickbat is logical and based on valid arguments or it is just propaganda against him? Another
pertinent question is that is PTI really a symbol of change or it is only a political sloganeering
like of other parties?
Some analysts have talked a lot about the right-wing vote division. While discussing this point, they
rely mainly on previous elections' results that whenever the traditional right wingcomprising
Jamaat-e-Islami , PML(N) and some other partiesis divided, PPP being the main beneficiary this
chasm came to power. But these analysts forget two fundamental things about PTI. Firstly, PTI has
attracted not only the right-wing but also the left-wing votes because it represents change for all
the Pakistanis irrespective of their being the right wingers or the leftists. For instance, Makhdoom
Javed Hashmi who has been the backbone of PML (N) and PPP's former diehard follower Shah
Mehmood Qureshi are on the same page in PTI. In addition, innumerable individuals with rightist
or leftist political affiliations are now the steel frame of the PTI at the grassroots level.
The second, and perhaps the most crucial, fact is that this time 40 % of the voters are newly-
registered young men and women who have never voted before and who aspire to bring change in
this filthy system of dynastic politics. Given the popularity of PTI and Imran Khan in the youth of
Pakistan, it is expected that they will vote for PTI. If it happens, it would be a huge success in the
history of Pakistan.
The second criticism is about the inclusion of same 'old and traditional' faces in the party. It's quite
tricky, as some parties while raising the slogans of change and criticizing others, forget their own
deeds. It is important to mention that there is a huge difference between Pakistan's rural and urban
social fabric. The rural fabric, or we can say the constituency politics, is mostly caste-and-biradari-
based. Here, the loyalties are towards biradari as in times of trouble, they will come to help. So, in
these circumstances, personalities become far more important than the parties. That's why every
political party in Pakistan had to include these electables if it wants to come into power and
without power, you cannot bring change. Even Quaid-e-Azam, whose vision and purpose of
change was above and beyond any doubt, and whose will and steadfastness to his ideals gave us this
country, had to accept these electables coming from the Unionist Party of Punjab into his folds.
Even majority of the Muslim League belonged to the Unionist Party of Punjab and had the Muslim
League not got the Majority in Punjab, Pakistan would have been a dream yet.
Some also allege Imran Khan of criticising Nawaz Sharif and his party only while sparing PPP
despite its ineptness in running the country which implies that PPP is bucking up PTI. This is just
ridiculous. Imran Khan repeatedly said in his public meetings that everyone knows about the
endemic corruption, plunder and loot of PPP but PML (N) has equal role in bringing Pakistan at the
brink of disaster and he thinks befitting to tear their veil of chastity apart. Imran Khan has
consistently maintained that people should not consider PML (N) an option as there is no difference
between the two. Both are equally corrupt, though, the method is different.
PTI has attracted not only the right-wing but also the left-wing votes because it represents change
for all the Pakistanis
Undoubtedly, the upcoming general election is the most important for our country as it would
decide the future course of Pakistan. Some analysts predict them to be similar to the elections of
1946 and 1970 which proved milestones in the political destiny of the nation. At this juncture of our
political history, when the whole country is smouldering and there is acute energy crisis, a sagging
economy and continuing war on terror; change has become inevitable for our country.
PTI followers say that it is the only party and Imran Khan is the only leader who can bring real
change in Pakistan. It is so because Pakistan needs someone who neither can only handle all these
issues but introduce some institutional changes in our body politic and socioeconomic fabric along
with reshaping the state structure which will lead us to prosperity and development on a sustainable
basis. It is the need of the hour to build institutions and Imran Khan has proved his mastery in this
skill. A glowing example of his abilities is in front of everyone in form of Shaukat Khanum Cancer
Hospital that is also reflective of his love and devotion for the oppressed and downtrodden
Pakistanis and, at the same time, his ability and vision for change.
Secondly, the recent intra-party elections also show his determination towards changing the
outdated political system and turning the state enterprises into institutions where policies rather
than personalities matter.
Thirdly, PTI is the only party which has announced 20 % tickets for Youth which is indicative of its
seriousness towards including the infantry of change in the parliamentary process.
Fourthly, PTI is the most innovative party in the political domain of Pakistan and it is the innovation
which leads a nation towards progress.
All these features and merits are an omen that Pakistan will have a better government after the next
elections if PTI wins.
In the end, it is necessary to advise that do use your right to vote and play your part in giving the
future direction to our dear homeland. This is the only way you can change the direction of the
nation's destiny. If you don't vote, you will have no one to blame for if the next government does
not solve your problems.
The writer is a social and political activist and a businessman. He can be reached at
sheikh_tayyab_narula@hotmail.com.
Tayyab Tariq
Pakistan Votes 2013

For the very first time in its history, Pakistan is on the verge of transition as
PPPP-led government has completed its full 5-year term and soon the elections
will be held to choose their successors. Keeping in view the full-throttle
electioneering, parties' luring manifestos and youth's role in bringing about the
much-trumpeted 'CHANGE', Jahangir's World Times is going to publish the
expert opinions of renowned political analysts, journalists and TV anchors.
Q.1: Slogan of 'Change' is going to be the focal point of coming elections or it is just rhetoric?
Yes, there is an urge among the masses to embrace a change because they are fed up of the politics
of exploitation only. In fact, the slogan of change has become the focal point of general elections-
2013.
Exactly a change is not going to happen in Pakistan in future. Because the slogan of change is
raised by PTI but they are not in a position to get majority presently it seems PML (N) will be in the
lead.
Political numbers game tells us clearly that there would not be any substantial change. But if we see
from the angle of nature and direction of Pakistani politics there will be change.
No doubt, people want Change and they will vote for any party who can assure them a real
Change in the system. But, Im not foreseeing any revolutionary or big change in the coming
elections.
We do need change but that will come only through a surgical operation rooting out its systemic
perversities and structural fault lines. To deal with our current malaise, papering the cracks will not
do.
Well, a lot of change has already occurred; we have an independent judiciary, a vibrant media, an
assertive ECP and new electoral rolls made by NADRA. I am not saying it will change our political
scene altogether but we will go ahead in a positive direction.
Q. 2. Is youth going to be a decisive factor in the upcoming general elections 2013?
Yes, the youth can emerge as a decisive factor in the election-2013 because there are nearly 300
million young voters enrolled in the new electoral rolls. Their role will be ultimately decisive if they
come up to cast their vote.
Only two political parties PTI and PML (N) took major steps to attract youth. But I cannot say
decisively that there wont be any role of youth but one thing is sure that now the era of ideological
politics is over.
Youth, as a political factor, will be determined by how many young men and women actually come
out to vote. If they go to the polling stations big numbers will come out and begin to vote then I
think PTI is going to have the first advantage.
No doubt, people want Change and they will vote for any party who can assure them a real
Change in the system. But, Im not foreseeing any revolutionary or big change in the coming
elections.
We do need change but that will come only through a surgical operation rooting out its systemic
perversities and structural fault lines. To deal with our current malaise, papering the cracks will not
do.
Yes, the youth would be a decisive factor this time because they have a strong will to bring a real
change. They are trying to convince their families that they vote to fulfil this fevered dream.
Q. 3: If the elections result in a hung parliament, how the next government deal with major
issues like energy crisis, ailing economy and troubled foreign relations?
No, I think it would be premature to say so. In fact, it depends, largely, on the public participation in
the election process. If we have a high turnout then one party may get majority.
I think a single party or an alliance will get the majority and the next government will not be as
dependent on coalition as PPP has been throughout their tenure. I hope the new government will
tackle these issues successfully.
Yes, I think there would be a hung parliament. This time, Imran Khans PTI is the only new
element. From the numbers angle, no big changes will take place. But, surely, the next parliament
would not be dysfunctional.
Yes, it seems that we will have a hung parliament. I agree that the coalition government has weak
decision making capabilities but it cannot be so all the time. Coalition governments are successful
in many countries.
I hope not. We need one party in control of the country. For decades, we have had a parliamentary
system without our parliament ever functioning as a full sovereign body.
Presently, it seems that the elections will result in a hung parliament but we cant rule out anything
out of the box; it can happen.
Q. 4: How would the nationalists influence the results especially after joining hands with PML
(N)?
In my opinion, they will influence the results but only if they successfully capitalise the anti-PPP
sentiments in Balochistan and Sindh. So PML (N) and nationalists need to work on that.
Yes, it will influence the results in few constituencies. For instance, Mumtaz Bhutto and Raisanis
can bring some seats for PML (N).
We must see why nationalist parties are inclined to PML (N). Actually, Sindhi and Baloch
nationalists have been deeply disappointed by President Zardari. So, they consider PML (N) a better
option. Definitely, its a setback to PPP.
Better wait and see. Nationalism itself is fast becoming a rare commodity. Like the rulers, the
subjects too are becoming money-minded. Elections will be decided by money pumped in the
process by hook and crook.
Yes, to some extent it would. But PML (N) and nationalists alliance should be seen in a broader
perspective. These traditionally anti-centre forces are now joining hands with a mainstream party
i.e. PML (N). So, its going to be their victory too.
Can PTI be a surprise factor in these elections?
I think people do trust and Imran Khan and believe in his slogan of change. But, the ground realities
and constituency-based politics suggest otherwise. He will not be in a position to bring about a real
change.
I dont think that PTI will be a surprise package. We must understand that ideological politics is
irrelevant nowadays and people are more concerned about their urgent needs. So, PTI would be
unable to surprise in the electoral results.
Well, Pakistan is a country of surprises. But the rules of political science suggest otherwise. PTI
may muster vote and get seats but this is not the election where any party is going to sweep.
I dont think so. In my opinion, PTI will not be able to give any surprise. It would be wrong to
assume that all the newly-registered voters will vote for go to PTI.
The people are looking for a surprise. But are they themselves going to give surprise? They must
come out of their drawing rooms and make the difference.
Yes, PTI can give the surprise. Actually, PTI is focusing on becoming symbol of change. They are
trying for active participation of the people in the election especially of youth. If it happens, we may
have a surprise.
Waqas Iqbal
Evolution or Revolution; What Pakistan
Needs?
Long marches have failed to unfold the untold and unseen in Pakistan. Things
are same; poor governance, illiteracy, health issues, inflated prices, deteriorated
law and order, human trafficking, rampant unemployment and acute energy
crisis are still haunting the nation.
Prologue
The honeyed words do not bring out substantial changes; there is Herculean effort behind
everything existing and surviving at its best. In Pakistan, alarmingly, the social fabric has been
tearing apart with every passing moment. Societies are built through their mantle and approach
towards life. Though, international economic system and political compulsions have affected
Pakistan a great deal, things could have been better had the society behaved differently. Institutions
are the pillars of state. They take years, perhaps, decades, of strenuous efforts and consistent hard
work to be stable and strengthened. This evolution makes them so strong and effective that they can
tackle any unforeseen problem(s). The other way to achieve this ambitious goal is 'revolution'.
But the question arises that is revolution the only solution to bring Pakistan out of the quagmire and
direct it toward a track that may lead it to prosperity? Probably not!
Revolutionary changes in Pakistan
Let us peep into the past and see what the revolutions have done to Pakistan.
In 2001, General Musharraf promulgated the Local Government Ordinance with an aim to transfer
power and authority to the elected representatives the grassroots level. Whole administrative system
in the country faced sea changes. Police reforms of 2002, also, introduced a new culture in police
ranks. This was unprecedented in Pakistan's history that a huge effort was made in the name of
separation of judiciary from executive and was by no means less than a revolution.
But, after a decade or so, of this revolution, the current happenings are perturbing rather
disappointing. Local Bodies' elections have not been held since 2009 despite repetitive Supreme
Court directions. In federal capital, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Azad Jammu & Kashmir LGO 2001 was
never implemented, Balochistan tried to revert it in 2010 but Balochistan High Court foiled the bid,
Khyber Pakhunkhwa government introduced The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government Act,
2012 that resembles the 1979 system and what we have seen in Sindh, promulgation and then
repeal of the SLGPO, is seriously perplexing and flabbergasting. Police department, since the
beginning of war on terror, has suffered more than army. The objective realities speak volumes
about failure of executive. The main reason behind this debacle is that the changes in administrative
setup, in the name of devolution of administrative and financial powers, and in police system, were
a hasty decision made without any prior planning and homework.
Today, Pakistan, the only Muslim nuclear power, is perceived as haven of terrorists, the most
dangerous nation, and the most untrustworthy neighbour.
In a society that has an extremely centralized system of governance, devolving powers to the level
of union councils in one go proved futile.
Next example of the major policy shift was that of U-turn on Taliban and Kashmir issues. This issue
has been a subject of intense debates since last many years. Whether the government actions were
right or wrong, is not the only issue; the major cause of frustration is that when all the governments
in past kept on pursuing a particular policy, how that policy could be changed overnight without
realizing the repercussions of it? Today, Pakistan, the only Muslim nuclear power, is perceived as
haven of terrorists, the most dangerous nation, and the most untrustworthy neighbour. Neither the
Kashmir issue has been resolved nor have the water disputes been settled rather we further got our
image tarnished by the actions like hosting Osama bin Laden and also were accused of sending
Ajmal Qasab to India to carry out the brutal acts of 26/11. End to drone attacks and suicide
bombings is still out of sight. This all resulted due to the imprudent policy shift.
Pakistan witnessed another 'revolutionary' change in form of 'freedom of media'. PEMRA was
established in 2002 and, in no time, influx of private channels changed everything. Where there was
only one PTV, the state-owned channel, to provide people with information and entertainment and
to highlight only the official version of every issue, there came around 100 channels, loaded with
infotainment. In civilized societies, media is independent and plays a crucial role to project the
nation's image. But Pakistani media, unfortunately, failed to develop a unanimous national policy.
Except a few issues of national importance, where media played a positive role in bringing them to
light, most channels have been playing Russian roulette with Pakistan. Media has failed to provide
healthy and productive contents to the masses at large. Regrettably, it has become a source of
cultural erosion and ultimately moral and social ills. At the same time, cellular companies expanded
their web across Pakistan and made communication easy and instant like never before. But, alas, the
way our youth has made, and is making, use of this facility is certainly not productive.
Lastly, there is one of the most important revolutions in Pakistan's chequered history and that is of
movement for the independence of judiciary that proved last nail in the coffin of General
Musharraf. Soon, the new government was installed comprising mainly the anti-Musharraf political
parties. Whole nation firmly believed that this is the dawn of new era and it will bring the light of
justice for the poor in Pakistan. Traditionally, the judiciary had been pro- establishment but now, it
was quite opposite and expected to be very healthy and positive. However, after 5 years of the
democratic government, ground realities are absolutely against the aspirations of the nation.
Judiciary and executive have been at daggers drawn. This isn't what the people of Pakistan have
aspired to.
Roots of political system need proper nutrition to get stronger and political institutions grow with
the passage of time.
History proves that sometimes, one has to pick the gun up to put the gun down. Occasionally, the
tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. But it can only be done when
external threats and internal loyalties are clear and goal is one. People live the way they behave and
react.
Democracy is a behaviour that requires evolution as it doesn't come overnight. Roots of political
system need proper nutrition to get stronger and political institutions grow with the passage of time.
But when roots are dug into time and again, the tree i.e., the institutions, tumbles and withers and
society deteriorates. Pakistan is at crossroads at the moment. So-called 'revolutionary changes' have
given us nothing but dehshat gardi, media gardi and wakeel gardi.
Pakistanis are indulged in religious and sectarian conflicts, killing of polio workers, and even
questioning ideology of Pakistan. This is flabbergasting and is an outcome of extremist behaviour,
dictatorial approach, dogmatic minds and stagnant society.
Pakistan needs only evolution and it begins with thinking, rationally, by the mature minds who
ponder over problems around them. Minds become mature when mental growth takes place and it
comes only with education, enlightenment and freedom of thought. Educated and visionary minds
will lead to the prosperous and developed Pakistan.
If Pakistan goes, successfully, through the peaceful transition from one elected government to the
next it will be a massive behavioural change. This is what the evolution means in the truest sense of
the word. If this process goes on, soon Pakistan will be in a position to rebuild itself and stand head
and shoulders high among the comity of nations.
The writer is a PAS officer
For comments: sik_khawaja@yahoo.com

Sikander Zishan
The Appalling Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh

"The incident in Jallian Wala Bagh was 'an extraordinary event, a monstrous
event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation" ...Winston
Churchill
On April 13, 1919, Brigadier-General Reginald E.H. Dyer opened fire on an unarmed gathering in
Jallianwala Bagh. Official sources place the casualties at 379, private sources say that the number
was over 1000 and Civil Surgeon Dr Smith indicated that they were over 1800.
Background
In the spring of 1919, British India was at a crossroads of history. The First World War was over,
and soldiers were returning to discover an India more impoverished and less free than it was when
they left. News of the Russian Revolution had fired the imagination of thousands of young Indian.
The trial and martyrdom of the Ghadar Party leadership in the Lahore Conspiracy trial, and the
internment of some 1,500 of the emigrants in India, proved an abiding symbol for a younger
generation of radicals.
Moreover, after the Lucknow Pact of 1916 both Hindus and Muslims initiated joint struggle for the
self-rule.
Rowlatt Report
This Hindu-Muslim unity was unfavourable to the British Raj. Government formed a committee to
probe into their secret activities. This was headed by Justice Sidney Rowlatt who presented his
report on 30th April, 1918. In the light of this report, the Government introduced the 'Rowlatt Bill'
in the Imperial Legislative Council, of which Quaid-e-Azam was also a member. This bill gave
unlimited powers to the administration and the police. The accused had no right to appeal or employ
a lawyer for his defence. The Government was authorized to put any individual under house arrest
without assigning any reason.
This added fuel to the already blazing flames of hatred, among the masses, against British Raj.
Indian Reaction
Quaid-e-Azam resigned from the Imperial Legislative Council after the passage of this bill. Gandhi
also launched his Non-Violence Movement against this statute. Nation-wide strikes became a
routine. In the wake of growing discontent, Sir Michael O' Dwyer - the Governor of Punjab -
banned all public meetings, processions and protests in the province. The Government also put a
ban on two well-known leaders of Amritsar, the Cambridge-educated allopath Dr Saifuddin
Kitchlew and his homeopath colleague Dr Satyapal, from making speeches. Later on, they were
arrested and sent to Dharamsala. Their arrest fuelled the protests and left India in panic.
Events
On 9th April, 1919, a large crowd gathered in a park demanding the release of their leaders but the
police dispersed them by resorting to firing on them. On 10th April, General Dyer received orders
to leave Jalundhar for Amritsar. He reached Amritsar with 475 English and 710 Indian soldiers and
two armoured vehicles.
On the morning of April 13, Baisakhi day, Dyer's troops marched through Amritsar, proclaiming
that all assemblies would be "dispersed by force if necessary." A public announcement was being
made that a rally will be held at 4:30 p.m. at Jallianwala Bagh. By afternoon, a peaceful gathering
of over 20,000 people was in place, hearing a succession of speeches condemning the Rowlatt Act
and the recent arrests and firings.
When General Dyer was told that a meeting was being held at Jallianwala Bagh, he reached with 90
troops there instantly and ordered them to open fire on the unarmed gathering. The firing continued
for fifteen minutes and left 379 people dead on the spot and more than 1200 critically injured.
Back in his headquarters Dyer reported to his superiors that he had been confronted by a
revolutionary army, and had been obliged to teach a moral lesson to the Punjab.
In a telegram sent to Dyer, British Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, Sir Michael O'Dwyer wrote:
"Your action is correct. Lieutenant Governor approves."
Aftermath
O'Dwyer requested higher authorities that the martial law be imposed upon Amritsar and other
areas. This was granted by the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, after the massacre. Following the public
outcry against the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, the government was compelled to appoint a
committee of enquiry with Sir John Hunter as the chairman. The Congress appointed its own
committee with Motilal Nehru as chairman and Gandhi as one of its members.
Deposing before the Hunter Commission, inquiring into the shooting, General Dyer said his action
was meant to punish the people if they disobeyed his orders. However, what was more damning was
his statement,
''I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed the crowd without firing but they would have
come back again and laughed, and I would have made, what I consider, a fool of myself.''
The Hunter Committee split down the middle, with its three Indian members, Jagat Narayan, C.H.
Setalvad and Sultan Ahmad, authoring a dissent. The majority condemned Dyer, arguing that in
"continuing firing as long as he did, it appears to us that General Dyer committed a grave error," but
broadly endorsed other acts of violent repression. The dissenting members, understandably, argued
that the martial law regime's use of force was wholly unjustified.
British Reaction
The public opinion in England stood divided regarding the brutal tactics used by General Dyer.
Some considered his acts a timely action to teach a lesson to the Indians whereas others felt that this
tragedy played a vital role in arousing the nationalistic feelings among the Indians.
Conclusion
On the whole, the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh shattered into pieces once for all the tradition of
loyalty to the British Crown. And within a period of 27 years, it was proved that the brutal acts of
General Dyer and Lt. Governor O'Dwyer could not suppress the passion for independence that
flared up after the above episode.
Note:
On 13th March, 1940, an Indian revolutionary from Sunam, named Udham Singh (a.k.a.
Mohammad Singh Azad), who had witnessed the events in Amritsar and was himself wounded, shot
dead Sir Michael O'Dwyer, believed to be the chief planner of the massacre (Dyer having died years
earlier) at the Caxton Hall in London.
JWT Desk
Study in England
Britain has long attracted and welcomed high caliber students from all corners
of the world. In the recent UK Visa Policy, Tier 4 is the points-based system that
mainly deals with the students.
Can You Apply?

As a Tier 4 (General) student, you must have 40 points in the points-assessment. You can score:
30 points for having a valid confirmation of acceptance for studies at an acceptable level with an
approved education provider; and
10 points for having enough money to cover your course fees and living costs.
What Course You Should Study?

You must study a course at an acceptable level. There are additional requirements for certain types
of courses.
You may be able to do a work placement as part of your course, and a short preparatory course
before the main course.
Your course must be provided by an education licensed Tier 4 (General) sponsor.
What Should I Apply for?

You must be applying to:
1. study full-time in the UK on a course that meets the additional requirements; or
2. undertake a recognised Foundation Programme as a postgraduate doctor or dentist in the UK; or
If you will be studying full-time on a course other than a Foundation
Programme, the course must also:

lead to a qualification at or above level 6 on the revised National Qualifications Framework (NQF)
or its equivalents; or
be a short-term 'study abroad' programme as part of your higher education course at an overseas
institution; or
be an English language course at or above level B2 of the Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages (CEFR); or
be an English language course at any level, if you are a government-sponsored student or if the
course is a pre-sessional course; or
involve at least 15 hours per week of organised daytime study. 'Daytime' is 08:00 to 18:00, Monday
to Friday.
Note: If you are studying English as a foreign language, this qualifies as 'an English language
course'.
If the course is below revised NQF level 6 or equivalent and is not an English language course or a
study abroad programme, it must:
be approved at or above level 3 on the NQF or Qualifications and Credits Framework (QCF), or
accredited at or above level 6 in the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF; or
be approved at or above level 4 on the NQF or QCF, or accredited at or above level 7 in the SCQF;
or
be a pre-sessional course to prepare you for your main course of study.
Note: Level 3 of the NQF is equivalent to a UK 'A level'. Level 6 of the revised NQF is equivalent
to a UK bachelor's degree.
Money Required
The money you will need depends on the length of your course and the location where you will
study.
To score 10 points in points assessment, you must show that you can pay your course fees for your
first period of study and your living costs for up to nine months.
Course Fees
If you are applying to start a new course, you must show that you have enough money to pay your
course fees for the first year of your course or for the entire course.
Your confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) tells the amount of money you need to show to
pay your course fees. If you do not know what this amount is, you must ask your Tier 4 sponsor.
Money to Cover Your Living Costs
The amount of money you must show to cover your living costs will depend on:
where you will be studying in the UK; and
whether you have recently been studying in the UK if you are a current or recent student, it may
be considered that you have an 'established presence' as a student in the UK.
Where are You Studying?

Normally living costs are calculated as follows:
1,000 a month if you are spending more than half of your study time in inner London; or
800 a month if you are spending more than half of your study time outside inner London.
Note: 'Inner London' is defined as any of the following London boroughs: Camden, City of
London, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea,
Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth, Westminster.
How much money do you need?

If you have an established presence, you must show that you have enough money to cover your
living costs for:
2 months; or
the length of your course, if this is less than 2 months.
If you do not have an established presence, you must show that you have enough money to cover
your living costs for:
9 months; or
the length of your course, if this is less than 9 months.
If the length of your course includes a part of a month, the time will be rounded up to the next
month.
JWT Desk
JWT Desk
World Health Day - 7 April 2013

In 1948, the World Health Organization held the First World Health Assembly.
The Assembly decided to celebrate 7 April of each year, with effect from 1950, as
the World Health Day. The theme for 2013 is high blood pressure.
World Health Day is celebrated on 7 April to mark the anniversary of the founding of World Health
Organization in 1948. Each year a theme is selected for World Health Day that highlights a priority
area of public health concern in the world.
About High Blood Pressure

High blood pressure also known as raised blood pressure or hypertension increases the risk of
heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure. If left uncontrolled, high blood pressure can also cause
blindness, irregularities of the heartbeat and even heart failure. The risk of developing these
complications is higher in the presence of other cardiovascular risk factors such as diabetes. One in
three adults worldwide has high blood pressure. The proportion increases with age, from 1 in 10
people in their 20s and 30s to 5 in 10 people in their 50s. Prevalence of high blood pressure is
highest in some low-income countries in Africa, with over 40 per cent of adults in many African
countries thought to be affected.
However, high blood pressure is both preventable and treatable. In some developed countries,
prevention and treatment of the condition, together with other cardiovascular risk factors, has
brought about a considerable reduction in deaths from heart disease.
Reducing Blood Pressure

High blood pressure contributes to an alarming number of deaths each year. Although it may not
have apparent symptoms, high blood pressure leads to heart attacks and strokes aside from also
causing kidney failure. You can reduce your blood pressure by reducing your weight (if you're
obese) and making a few small changes in your life, say doctors. Here are some suggestions that
doctors usually give in this regard:
- Walk it out Walking at a brisk pace can help lower your blood pressure. A good workout will
ensure the heart uses oxygen more efficiently. Getting a rigorous cardio workout 4 to 5 times a
week can make a huge difference. Start by incorporating about 15 minutes of exercise in your daily
routine and slowly increase the time and difficulty level.
- Deep Breathing Learning some slow breathing and meditation techniques can do wonders. It
will help reduce stress and keep your blood pressure in check. Try taking out 10 minutes every
morning and at night. Inhale and exhale deeply. You can also join a yoga class for some time to
learn the proper method.
- Go for potassium-rich foods You have probably heard of the negative effects of sodium on the
body, and potassium is an essential mineral to counter the effects of sodium on blood pressure.
Fruits and vegetables are rich in potassium. Try adding sweet potatoes, tomatoes, orange juice,
potatoes, bananas, peas and prunes and raisins to your regular diet.
Important World Days in April

2 April World Autism Awareness Day
4 April International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action
7 April Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide
7 April World Health Day [WHO]
12 April International Day of Human Space Flight
22 April International Mother Earth Day
23 April World Book and Copyright Day [UNESCO]
25 April World Malaria Day [WHO]
26 April World Intellectual Property Day [WIPO]
28 April World Day for Safety and Health at Work [ILO]
29 April Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare
30 April International Jazz Day
- Go slow on the salt Whether you have a family history of high blood pressure or not, reducing
your intake of salt can make a huge difference to your health. Before adding that extra pinch of salt
to your food, think if you really need it. Try substituting salt with lime, garlic, pepper or other herbs
and spices. Go slow on processed and packaged foods. Potato chips, frozen chicken nuggets, bacon,
etc. are high in sodium. Try calculating your daily sodium consumption. Keep a food diary and you
may be surprised at how much you're taking in.
- Dark chocolate benefits The darker variety of chocolate has flavonols that make blood vessels
more elastic. Choose one that has at least 70 per cent cocoa to really reap the benefits.
- Dont smoke Smokers are at higher risk of hypertension. But even though tobacco and nicotine
in cigarettes can cause temporary spikes in blood pressure, smoking itself is not thought to cause
chronic hypertension .Nevertheless, quitting smoking may help you lower your blood pressure a bit,
says Dr. Fletcher. And, of course, the other health benefits are countless.
- Tea benefits Herbal teas are the way to go. In a study conducted, those who sipped on hibiscus
tea daily lowered their blood pressure. Many herbal teas contain hibiscus or you can always opt for
green tea. The effects of caffeine are still debatable. Drinking caffeinated beverages can temporarily
increase blood pressure. The solution is to check your blood pressure within 30 minutes of drinking
a cup of coffee to determine if it works for your body.
World Health Days in 2000s

2013: High Blood Pressure
2012: Good Health adds life to years
2011: Antimicrobial resistance: no action today no cure tomorrow
2010: Urbanization and health
2009: Save lives. Make hospitals safe in emergencies
2008: Protecting health from climate change
2007: International health security
2006: Working together for health
2005: Make every mother and child count
2004: Road safety
2003: Shape the future of life
2002: Move for health
2001: Mental health: stop exclusion, dare to care
JWT Desk
Rights of Minorities in Islam

Islam is a religion that exhorts its followers to be humane with their fellow-
humans. There seems to be no such tenet that allows humiliation of a human
being, rather in an Islamic society, minorities enjoy more rights than in any
other society.
Shariah enunciates explicitly and makes it binding that minorities, too, will be entitled to rights as
granted to Muslims, while living in an Islamic society. Indeed, Islam urges allegiance to providence,
but neither puts pressure on one's changing articles of faith nor resorts to coercion in the matters of
religion. As for the preaching of the Divine message, the Holy Qur'an says:
There is no compulsion in religion; no doubt the virtuous path has become clearly distinct from the
erring; then whoso does not accept devil and believes in Allah, he grasped a very firm knot which is
never to open and Allah Hears and Knows. (Baqarah: 256)
At another point, preaching that hurts one's religious sentiments is barred by saying:
O Muhammad (PBUH)! Invite mankind to the way of your Lord with wisdom and fair preaching,
and argue with them in a way that is better. Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone astray from
His path, and He is the Best Aware of those who are guided. (Nahl: 125)
The rights that Islam has bestowed on minorities can best be adjudged from the sayings of Prophet
Muhammad (PBUH). He said, The violators of agreements who tend to usurpation of others' rights
or those who take anything without lawful authority or against the will of the possessors, will be
pointed out on the Day of Judgement, and they would be cornered on behalf of the complainant.
The Holy Prophet (PBUH) always warned Muslims against any violation or infringement of the
minorities' rights. According to a hadith, the Prophet said, Whosoever murders a zimmi will not
enter the folds of Heaven, not even the fragrance which can be smelt at a distance of forty years (of
travelling). In fact, Islam has given a directions, every now and then, for the protection of rights of
minorities.
Once a Christian delegation came to meet the Holy Prophet (PBUH) He (PBUH) made
arrangements for their stay in the Masjid-e-Nabwi. Even they were allowed to worship over there
according to their religion. And they did so as graciously allowed by the Prophet.
(Ibne Sa'ad Al-Tabqaat al-Kubr)
At another occasion, when a delegation of Christians from Habsha called on the Holy Prophet
(PBUH), he offered them to stay in Masjid-e-Nabwi. He provided them a warm hospitality and
ensured their safety. He said, These people are considered distinguished and, hence, are held in
high esteem. This is why I have deemed it fit to become their host, and given them due respect that
they deserve.
It may be recalled that in his lifetime, Muslims and Non-Muslims (minorities) were treated as
equals.
The Holy Prophet (PBUH) once said, The protection of rights of Non-Muslims (dhimmis) is my
foremost responsibility.
Al-Masnad.
Whosoever murders a zimmi will not enter the folds of Heaven, not even the fragrance which can
be smelt at a distance of forty years (of travelling).
Numerous examples can be quoted from Islamic history during the era of Khilafat-e-Rashida (The
Pious Caliphate). Islam enjoins upon everybody (even a Non-Muslim) the right to personal liberty
and right of confidentiality, as enjoyed by Muslims.
Islam allows all the Non-Muslims to follow their religion with full freedom. Thus, an Islamic State
does not object to their creed and doesn't even criticise their faith in any way. Obviously, the Non-
Muslims can perform their religious rites and rituals within the limits of their places of worship.
The Non-Muslims have the same freedom of religion and worship in their own way, as have the
Muslims. Use of force or pressure for the propagation of Islam is strongly prohibited by the Quran.
However, if the religion of a Non-Muslim comes into a direct clash with Islam, then Islamic law
will take precedence.
For instance, it is not permissible for Christians to go around preaching their faith in an Islamic
country even though they believe that it is compulsory for them to do so. The reason is because this
directly clashes with Islam that forbids such a thing. One may ask "Why don't you just let the non-
Muslims preach their faith and let the people freely accept or reject? It is their personal choice".
Well then using the same logic, we could then argue "Why don't you just let the drugdealers sell
their drugs and let the people freely accept or reject? It is their personal choice".
In the eyes of Islam, the Non-Muslim who preaches his faith is worse than a drugdealer selling
drugs. If the drugdealer happens to convince someone to buy his drugs then the most harm that
could possibly be inflicted on the person is that his carnal body dies from an overdose.
Islamic State doesn't bar Non-Muslims to adopt any profession to earn their livelihood through fair
means save that can prove detrimental to the state. In short, except for participating in the state
affairs, they should be given all the rights which are sanctioned by the norms of justice and fairness
for people in a civilised society, and in this regard, all dealings should be done in a befitting manner
because Allah likes people who adopt this attitude.
The writer is a religious scholar.

Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq Naqshbandi
I believe Luck is what happens when

preparation meets opportunity
Javed Nabi Khoso 3rd in Sindh (Rural) CSS-2011
Jahangir's World Times (JWT): Kindly tell us about your educational background and
achievements, especially your success in CSS.
Javed Nabi Khoso (JNK): I did Masters in Business Administration, with distinction, from
University of Sindh, Jamshoro. Before joining Civil Service, I have been serving as Patrol Officer
in National Highways and Motorways Police. By the grace of Allah Almighty, I passed the CSS
exam in second attempt and stood third in Sindh (Rural). I have opted for the Pakistan
Administrative Service (PAS) Group.
JWT: Please share the experience of your first attempt, and also tell how did you secure this
prestigious position?
JNK: I attempted for the first time in 2010 but couldn't get enough marks to make the required
aggregate. The main cause of my failure, I believe, was the selection of optional subjects (like
History of India and Pakistan) along with imprudent time management. I couldn't give proper time
to studies mainly due to my job. Nevertheless, I achieved the ultimate goal of my life by strong
determination, dedication, hard work and last but not the least, prayers of my parents.
JWT: What is so special in PAS and why did you prefer it over other groups?
JNK: Well, I believe all the groups have their own importance and prestige but, PAS is a general
management cadre. It was my dream to join this finest service of Pakistan. PAS gives you full
opportunity to deliver your best for the well-being of the marginalized segments of the society
while reaching the grassroots level. Besides, PAS has a tremendous scope of mobility and easy
access to public while at the same time, gives you an opportunity to provide timely assistance to the
needy as well.
JWT: In the light of your experience, what strategy the aspirants should follow to score high
in CSS?
JNK: I believe that securing good marks in different subjects is a key factor to realize the dream of
a brighter future in Civil Service. There is no shortcut to success, at all; this is the first thing one
should keep in mind. Therefore, one has to work hard, grasp the subject with thorough
understanding of the key concepts. He must be able to present a discourse on the given topic.
Solving the past papers and choosing the productive material can be helpful in this regard. For
instance, I acquired good marks in Everyday Science, Islamiyat, Journalism, Sociology and Current
Affairs. The reason behind it was that for all the subjects, I divided the time properly and devised
effective strategy coupled with consistent practice. I think the aspirants should avoid reading too
lengthy study material rather they should stay focused, composed and write legible and attractive
material while attempting the questions. In addition, I would say that do write clearly and avoid
writing irrelevant and ambiguous information. Solve past papers and get your work checked by
seniors or seasoned teachers.
JWT: Should the students consult books or they should rely on already prepared notes.
JNK: One may find countless books, available on almost each and every subject, and every book
has its own importance and utility. I think careful selection is necessary in this regard as books play
a vital role in organizing, developing and channelling your knowledge. The best practice while
preparing for the written part of the exam is to go through the books especially those suggested by
the FPSC. Reading books is extremely helpful to enhance and improve your writing skills along
with developing thorough understanding of the subjects. However, making notes to secure good
marks is also important, but, notes should be brief yet comprehensive.
JWT: What strategy one should follow to make a difference in the final result?
JNK: I think the best strategy to make a difference is the effective time management and three P's
i.e. preparation, practice and precision. Careful selection of optional subjects, constant evaluation of
writing standard, guidance and suggestions from seniors and determination coupled with self-
confidence are imperative as well. Just focus on your goal and don't care of the competition.
JWT: Most candidates fail Essay and English Prcis and Composition papers. What steps
would you suggest to pass these?
JNK: I think the main cause behind failure, in these papers, is the lack of practice and weak writing
skills. The best way to pass them is to write, write and write, because more you write more
improvement will be in skills, and ultimately, it will ensure your success. One can improve English
by regularly reading newspapers like Dawn and reputed magazines like Jahangir's World Times.
While attempting the Essay paper, choose the topic over which you have full command. Avoid
spelling mistakes and grammatical errors because both of these are the main causes of low scores or
failure in the said papers.
JWT: Seeking guidance prior to exams is a prerequisite of CSS. What sort of guidance is
required for the fresh aspirants and how do you see Jahangir's World Times (JWT) as far as
guidance for CSS-exam is concerned?
JNK: I think guidance plays a pivotal role in CSS preparation. The fresh aspirants should seek
guidance for matters like selection of subjects, attempting the paper, do's and don'ts of solving the
paper, allocating time to different subjects, and last but not the least, I would say again, effective
writing skills. I think Jahangir's World Times is the best and most resourceful magazine for CSS
aspirants. It defines and covers all areas and dimensions which are of fundamental importance in
passing this prestigious exam. JWT abounds in information and guidelines with defined parameters.
So, I recommend it to all the aspirants to better understand the course of success. JWT helped me
a lot during my preparation especially for interview.
JWT: Do you believe in luck factor in CSS? We notice so often that many average students
get allocated while talented and brilliant students, at times, are unable to make it?
JNK: I believe luck is when hard work meets opportunity. So, without thorough and elaborate
preparation, there is no luck especially in case of competitive exams like CSS. The main reason
behind allocation of average students is the way they present their ideas which exhibit simplicity
and brevity and, at the same time, are centred on objectivity.
Any Message:
Have faith in yourself and unwavering belief in Almighty Allah. Never give up and always do your
best to achieve your goal.
For feedback: waqasiqbal083@gmail.com

Waqas Iqbal
QUERIES of CSS, PMS, PCS Aspirants

Jahangir's World Times is the only magazine that caters for the needs of the
candidates of the prestigious competitive exams including CSS, PMS and PCS.
Candidates often face difficulties in selection of subjects, choosing the right
books, preparing for the interviews and so on. JWT's CSS GURU is an initiative
to provide the guidance candidates may need at any stage. Our guru will answer
all your queries. If you want to ask something and need guidance, please write to
us or email at the following address: Jahangir's World Times 121-D, Gulberg II,
Lahore. email: cssguru@jworldtimes.com
Q1: Sir, I took Psychology and Sociology as optional subjects because they regularly have
been scoring subjects. But the CSS-2013 psychology paper is quite different. So can we
assume now that psychology is no more a scoring subject?
Do appreciate the fact that over the years, the number of candidates appearing in CSS has
substantially increased. Thus it has provided your examiners with a fair number of candidates to
work on. He tests their knowledge as well as understanding of the issues by judging their abilities to
apply that knowledge on situations/issues put forth by the examiner. Only those candidates who
demonstrate better reasoning and analytical skills will obtain good marks while crammers will be
filtered out. Make an in-depth analysis of questions set in CE-2013, then review your study material
or notes. Trends have changed now, so should your approach. Remember, it's a competitive exam
and you need to outshine others. So, adapt yourself to the new approaches of the examiner.
Q2: Should one take Indo-Pak History to secure good marks in Pakistan Affairs as the 2013
paper of Pakistan Affairs was more about the Indo-Pak history?
A fair knowledge of Indo-Pak History is a prerequisite for securing good marks in CSS. The 2013
PA paper focused mostly on the pre-independence part as most questions related to the historical
perspective. In addition, the questions required comprehensive explanations. It depicts an
interesting shift in FPSC policy as this paper contained, traditionally, the questions that required
simple narration of facts/factors and candidates didn't bother to consult anything except the study
material prepared specifically for those questions. This year, it was entirely a different case. For
instance, the question Critically examine the Muslim shift from militancy to education with a
special reference to the educational movements launched during the 19th century in South Asia.
required a comparison of methodology and results of Armed Movements against Educational
movements. Similarly, Compare the socio-economic and political conditions of the Muslims and
non-Muslims at the advent of British rule in South Asia, Muslim society in mid-19th century was
required to be compared with the Non-Muslim Indian society. The topics are same but the approach
has changed. Going for Indo-Pak History is at your own will but a sound knowledge of Pakistan
History is essential.
Q3: Many papers in CE-2013 were quite different. Has CE-2013 gone against the previous
trend?
I would say it has carried forward the trend of past couple of years. I have suggested, time and
again, in these pages that the candidates should focus on topics rather than questions. Gone are the
days when few pages of handy notes on Geography or Islamiyat would do the trick for you. The
competition has increased manifold and you should be abreast of it. CE-2013 is an eye-opener for
those who still rely on obsolete methods.
Q4: How can I learn the way to analyse an issue critically?
Dear aspirant, it requires a changed approach. Most candidates go after descriptive study as they
learn the basic facts and figures related to any topic. For critical analysis, they rely on references
of renowned theorists and historians. But simply mentioning work of others also comes under
descriptive technique. Critical analysis is subjective writing because it expresses your opinion on or
evaluation of a particular issue. You are expected to challenge the established views and claims on
any issue. You need to test the veracity of those claims with arguments. Don't take things on their
face value, just try to evaluate the truth, worth and significance of the thing under analysis
especially focusing on the currency of the issue and any controversies related to it.
For analytical study, divide your preparation in three parts: information, interpretation, and
evaluation. The information part introduces the topic. The interpretation makes you understand the
topic in detail while the evaluation part makes you build your opinion on the issue based on strong
argumentations and justifications. Proper referencing is an essential part of evaluation.
Q5: Why British History is preferred over Indo-Pak History when the latter helps in Pak
Affairs paper as well?
Each subject has its own significance. British History is preferred for it has generally been more
scoring than Indo-Pak History. Whereas the candidates of IPH are many and all of them rely on
same and limited books available, BH is opted for by fewer candidates and there are only a few
good books available on it. Moreover, BH syllabus introduces to the candidates the political
developments in world history of last four centuries. The candidates understand the evolution and
foundations of modern institutions of world including democracy, capitalism, cabinet, parliament
and local government. The history of key world events that transformed the world the two World
Wars, French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Imperialism, Capitalism, Socialism, Decolonization,
Industrial and Agrarian Revolutions, Cold War, War on Terror, UN, etc. broaden their knowledge
base and help them in handling Current Affairs paper as well.
Q6: How to write a short autobiography in CSS Psychological part?
A short autobiography, like the one in CSS, may contain four aspects. You may write them in
separate paragraphs or may combine one or two of these.
The first paragraph contains your introduction and usually starts with your name and other basic
information like parentage, place and date of birth. It may also include the city or cities where you
have been living. Profession of parents and any significant aspect of first few years of your life may
also be mentioned.
The second paragraph may include any significant event(s) that shaped your life. You can mention
any specific incident(s) where you overcame obstacles in your way.
The third paragraph contains your rsum. Here, you mention your educational qualifications and
any skills and credentials that make you head and shoulders high among other candidates. It may
include your traits that make you suitable for this job. Moreover, you should describe how these
skills and traits helped you so far in your professional life.
In fourth paragraph, conclude with current information about you. Your responsibilities in your
organization should find a place here. You can also mention your place of living and family.
You can mention your goals or any motivating philosophy in last one or two lines.
Q7: Is it necessary to give references of Quranic verses in Arabic in the Islamiat paper to get
good marks?
It is preferable to quote original text of Quranic verses if you can reproduce exactly. For that, you
must prepare each topic with 3-4 most relevant verses in original Arabic text as well as their
translations. But always remember that it's only your discourse that fetches you good scores.
Quoting references and relevant verses supports your arguments. So, it doesn't really make big
difference.
JWT Editorial Board
POTA SELECTED YOUNG GLOBAL

LEADER 2013
After months of deliberation and a rigorous selection process, Dubais Vikas
Pota has been selected the Young Global Leader.
With multi-billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and co-founder and CEO of Google
Larry Page, noted as some of the titles past winners, Pota pipped hundreds of other nominees, from
around the world, to the post, with his vision championing a better education system proving winner
worthy to the World Economic Forum (WEF) judging panel.
The YGL 2013 included four nominations from Pakistan. They were Maryam Nawaz, Sharmeen
Obaid-Chinoy, Athar Osama and Shehrbano Taseer.
Maryam Nawaz is the daughter of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and is currently pursuing a
PhD in practical politics. She has been managing her family-owned Sharif Trust for the last 15
years, which includes a hospital, schools and colleges.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is an Emmy and Oscar award-winning Pakistani-Canadian journalist and

documentary film-maker who works towards raising awareness about womens issues and rights in
Pakistan. Her documentary, Saving Face received global recognition since its release in 2012.
Athar Osama is a scholar who launched Muslim-Science.Com, an online journal discussing the
issues of Science, Technology, Innovation and Policy mainly concerned with Muslim countries. He
is the first Pakistani who was honoured with the World Technology Network award in 2011. He is
also the founder of Pakistan Innovation Foundation.
Shehrbano Taseer is the daughter of assassinated former Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer. She
works to raise awareness about the rights of the disadvantaged, more specifically women and
minorities.
Upon receiving the honour, Chief Executive of the Varkey GEMS Foundation Pota said:
I am absolutely thrilled to have been nominated and selected to join the World Economic Forums
Forum of Young Global Leaders.
Recognising the most distinguished leaders from around the world, under the age of 40, the Young
Global Leader title is handed out each year, with the winner given an exceptional opportunity to
work together with the WEF on issues that currently impact on the state of the world.
Past Young Global Leaders

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook
Larry Page, co-founder and CEO of Google, USA
Abdulla Bin Ali Al Thani, VP of the Qatar Foundation
Salman Khan, founder and executive director of Khan Academy
Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo! Inc
Enrique Pena Nieto, President of Mexico
David Cameron, UK PM
JWT Desk
Would the U.S. Nuke North Korea?

If the North aims nuclear missiles at the South, would the U.S. immediately
retaliate with nuclear weapons?
The uproar over North Korea's third nuclear test has died down to some extent. Vehement
condemnation and outcries toward unruly North Korea - as if it was ready to start a nuclear war -
have simmered down. But the advances in the North's nuclear armament have become alarmingly
dangerous and demand quick resolute actions because it poses the first major task for the new Park
Geun-hye administration.
In her inaugural address, Park sent a solemn message to Pyongyang, warning that it will end up as
the biggest victim from the nuclear test and urging it to put down nuclear weaponry to join the path
of peace and co-prosperity. However, she repeated her campaign promise of a different approach
from the hardline Lee Myung-bak administration, reiterating that she will strive to build mutual
trust with the North - despite its nuclear threat and based on irrefutable deterrence. A new storm
in a teacup may be brewing.
What does she mean by irrefutable deterrence? North Korea is armed with more than 1,000
ballistic missiles that can reach South Korea, Japan and Guam. If it actually succeeded in building a
smaller and lighter bomb as it claimed, it is closer to turning out miniaturized nuclear warheads
small enough to fit atop its long-range missiles. The country is estimated to be near developing
inter-continental ballistic missiles that can even strike the U.S. mainland within a few years.
North Korea also supposedly has more than a hundred mobile launchers that can evade preemptive
strikes from the U.S. and South Korea.
Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Jung Seung-jo said South Korea could make preemptive strikes
upon signs of attack movement in the North. The military will establish a so-called kill chain that
can detect alarming movement in North Korea, identify a target and strike it in less than a half hour.
But we cannot entirely believe in a perfect system that could completely intercept North Korean
missiles. Does the military mean it can deliver full protection from nuclear bombs flying from
North Korea? The military is currently working on a Korean Air and Missile Defense System. But
so far, its endeavours are more of a showpiece. Even when completed, it cannot guarantee an
impeccable kill chain and irrefutable deterrence that the government has been promising.
In tactics, we cannot effectively defend ourselves from the North's nuclear attack. The next choice
should be a strategic approach. The United States promises a so-called nuclear umbrella - a
rhetorical term it now defines as extended deterrence - and is working with South Korea on joint
strategies against North Korea's nuclear attack. When the situation reaches a certain contingency
stage, the U.S. is expected to automatically deploy submarines or B-2 or B-52 bombers - all
equipped with nuclear bombs - to the surrounding area of Korea.
The United States promises a so-called nuclear umbrella - a rhetorical term it now defines as
extended deterrence - and is working with South Korea on joint strategies against North Korea's
nuclear attack.
Whether these capabilities are sufficient, however, remains questionable. If the North aims nuclear
missiles at the South, would the U.S. immediately retaliate with nuclear weapons? It is a
hypothetical question that can be answered in several ways. Security chiefs in Washington would
debate and weigh what the U.S. would gain from nuclear involvement. Given the risk of a nuclear
war with China, a U.S. nuclear retaliation cannot be completely assured. Some hawks are
demanding that South Korea arm itself with nuclear weapons, although the idea is unfeasible as the
country is bound as a member of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
The remaining realistic option would be strengthening our strategic leverage in the U.S. alliance.
South Korea could positively consider joining the U.S.-led missile defense system. If it opts to join
the planned buildup of defensive posture in the Asia-Pacific arena, South Korea's strategic
importance to the U.S. would increase.
In a similar context, we could also negotiate delaying the timetable for the U.S. transfer of wartime
operational control set for 2015. These arrangements could heighten the possibility of full
commitment and retaliatory response from the U.S. against a North Korean attack.
Beijing would likely strongly oppose Seoul's joining the U.S. missile shield program in Northeast
Asia that it claims is intended to contain China. But Beijing cannot step in as South Koreans now
live in imminent danger of a nuclear threat from the North because of its lukewarm attitude about
impending danger.
Deterrence alone cannot be a fundamental solution to the North's nuclear threat. At the same time,
we cannot make a preemptive strike to destroy North Korea's nuclear weapons as it could trigger a
full-blown war. The buildup of mutual trust on the Korean Peninsula - as suggested by President
Park - may be a better solution than that. There is no guarantee on how long and how well it will
work. But that way would prevent a war and save millions of lives.
JWT Desk
JWT Desk
COUNTRY LIFE IS BETTER THAN URBAN

LIFE
1. Introduction
2. Urban life emerged as civilizations flourished
3. Urban life blessed man with the comforts of life
4. Life in countryside
a. Serenity and tranquility

b. Clean environment and healthy surroundings
c. Rich culture and simple lifestyles
d. Sincere and trustworthy people
e. Lesser crimes
f. Stronger social bonding
g. Agricultural self-sufficiency
5. Country life lacks basic amenities

6. Concept of suburbs
7. Conclusion
Introduction
Man is a social animal by nature and he cannot live in isolation. Throughout history, human beings
have gathered to form civilizations some of which flourished in such a way that they reached the
zenith of development. All these civilizations were characterized by their peculiar and unique
settlements and culture patterns. Human settlements form a feature that has been a defining element
between the two distinct forms of societies rural and urban. The debate on country life versus
urban life" is as old as the hills. Whereas country life presents the very basic form of living, urban
life is blessed with more comforts and facilities. Urban settlements emerged as civilizations
progressed and people required a closer interaction for their economic, social and political needs.
Urban life comforted man with basic amenities as well as sheer luxuries of life and has become a
hallmark of prosperity and growth. Country life, on the other hand, offers a natural setting,
impossible to be found in urban dwellings. The serene beauty and absolute purity of country
environment, its traditional and rich culture and simple lifestyle, stronger social bonding and
sincerity among people and remarkably fewer rates of crimes make country life a preferable form of
living. Though country life, in many cases, lacks access to the civic amenities that are indispensable
for a trouble-free living, most people still prefer to live in rural areas.
As mentioned above, man cannot afford to live alone. No child can be brought up normally in
isolation. The essential characteristics of a human being that turn him into a 'social man' from a
'social animal' are developed through interactions in society. A child acquires the qualities of
learning, reasoning, socializing and communicating with others from the society. Human
settlements are the defining feature of societies. Thus, the two basic forms of societies rural and
urban are defined by human preferences of socialization. It is their desire for stronger political and
social interactions that drives them to form urban settlements. Even the earliest civilizations of
human history Sumerians, Egyptians, Babylonians and Indians, to name a few, were centred on
one or more cities. In fact, the word 'civilization' itself means living in cities or urban areas. Urban
settlements serve not only as political power-centres; they also provide opportunities for greater
prosperity of civilizations.
The maximum comforts of life are available only in urban environments. Modern facilities of
health, education and civic amenities are the most striking feature of urban areas. Country folks can
only dream of these facilities. Parks, recreational activities, better employment opportunities,
modern banking and financial services, communication networks are provided in urban areas
though some of them are available, to some extent, in villages as well. From universities to security
arrangements, and from hospitals to shopping-malls, all these facilities are found in urban areas.
Despite all these modern services and facilities, urban centres fail to cater the needs of human
beings that can be fulfilled by villages only. The modern facilities in cities come at the cost of peace
of mind and true and sincere relationships. Today, people are fed up of the fast and artificial life in
cities. They travel hundreds of kilometres to enjoy the scenic beauty of nature that is an essential
feature of countryside. Living in countryside still offers many attractions for the human beings.
The most important and foremost among them are the serenity and tranquillity found there.
The extreme overcrowding of cities is nowhere to be found in villages where one lives absolutely
free of such irritating disturbances. The refreshing atmosphere of countryside ensures calmness and
peace of mind which urban dwellers cannot even think of.
Environment in rural areas is pure and clean. The fresh air, cleaner water, lush green fields, fresh
fruits and vegetables are some benefits of countryside. Unlike urbanites, country folks do not face
the problems like air and noise pollution, filthy gutters, and menacing traffic jams. They do not
suffer from diseases and epidemics that are caused by contaminated water and overcrowded
dwellings.
The rich culture and simple lifestyle also at tract those who aspire to have a serene living. There is a
high regard for culture and traditions in countryside. The culture, in its purest form, is celebrated
only in villages. People are proud of their traditions and each social event is celebrated with great
ardour and fervour.
Another important feature of country life is its sincere and true people who are always there to help
each other. Show-offs and exhibitionists are seldom found there and people know each other
personally and very well. Frauds, forgeries and deceits that are rampant in urban societies, find little
space in the fabric of rural society.
As people know each other, these settlements have a tight community which results in strong social
bonding. They share work in fields, take care of each other and are together through thick and thin.
This creates a stronger sense of community unlike urban life where one may not know even his
next-door neighbour for years.
This close social bonding ensures lesser nuisance and crime rate in countryside. Urbanites are
victims of street crimes, land-grabbing, extortion and even murders. In countryside, the conflicts are
resolved through social control. The verdicts of elders are accepted and respected by everyone and
disputes are settled amicably. This is in total contrast with the urban society where litigations and
complaints are common.
Another benefit of countryside is self-sufficiency in food as most people are involved in agriculture.
The issues of food security or grains shortage are not known to them. Moreover, the cost of living is
fairly lesser there. Contrarily, it is too high in urban areas. Accommodations are hard to find even at
exorbitant prices. The standard of living is also low. Squatters are common in cities and people are
forced to live in unhygienic and congested environment.
The benefits of living in countryside are countless. However, everything has its price. The cost of
enjoying pure and natural environment is the lack of basic amenities of life. The modern systems of
sanitation, solid waste management and supply of drinking water supply are found in cities only.
Urban dwellers enjoy modern facilities of health and education at their doorstep.
The concept of suburbs is getting common as it offers a mixture of simplicity and purity of
countryside and modern facilities of urban life. Suburbs are the hamlets or neighbourhoods that are
outside of but reliant on nearby large city. Nowadays, people prefer living in such areas where they
can enjoy natural beauty along with availing the modern facilities.
To conclude, it's purely a matter of choice which way one wants to live. Countryside and urban
areas are two distinct societies offering peculiar benefits and facilities. Country folks aspire to have
a reach to the modern civic amenities whereas urban dwellers long to live in serene and peaceful
atmosphere of countryside. Many a people find ways to enjoy benefits of both and believe that the
principle in Chinese adage 'making money in big cities and retirement in the country' is the best
choice. However, country life serves as an attraction to most people fed up of the busy lives in noisy
and turbulent cities.
drwaheed.asghar@gmail.com
Dr Waheed Asghar (CSP)
Vocabulary in News
sequester: (n) segregation, cut, a general cut in government spending.
If the sequester is allowed to go forward, thousands of Americans are likely to become jobless.
conclave: (n) secret or private meeting, council, congress, parley

The conclave of 115 "cardinal electors" elected the new Pope.
scorching: (adj.) burning, roasting, sweltering, unbearably hot

At least three athletes fell unconscious due to scorching heat.
unprecedented: (adj.) unheard-of, novel, unusual, ground-breaking, unexampled

Rebels unleashed an unprecedented barrage of mortar fire against troops in Aleppo.
emphatic: (adj.) absolute, certain, cogent, explicit, vigorous

Nasir Jamshed led Pakistan to an emphatic win over India at Eden Gardens, Kolkata.
fiery: (adj.) choleric, febrile, hot-tempered, irascible, vehement

The killing of Shias in Karachi ignited fiery speeches in Senate.
panacea: (n) cure-all, catholicon, elixir, nostrum, remedy

Reconciliation is a panacea for national ills.
frolic: (n) fun, gaiety, gambol, joviality, merriment, romp

Indian cinema's frolic with sports, especially cricket goes back a long way.
deft: (adj.) adept, adroit, apt, dexterous, ingenious, proficient, skilful

Deft handling of revolution and love made Faiz Ahmad Faiz a great poet.
acquiesces: (v) accede, adapt, approve, conform, reconcile, yield
WikiLeaks cables showed that the government privately acquiesces in the drone strikes.
adamant: (adj.) unyielding, hard-nosed, inexorable, intransigent, obdurate, stubborn

Pakistanis are adamant that Isaf should apologise for the Salala incident.
alter ego: (n) doppelganger, second self Superman's alter ego was Clark Kent.
angst: (n) anxiety, distress, torment, malaise, perturbation, vexation
Many kids suffer from acne and angst.
antecedent: (adj.) preceding, earlier, former, prior, foregoing, precursory

They were allowed to take account of antecedent legislation.
tryst: (n) appointment, engagement, meeting, rendezvous
Anupam Kher spoke minutes after his tryst with Hollywood A-listers at the Oscars.
apoplectic: (adj.) furious, raging, fuming, frenzied, incensed, livid

Obama's comments provoked an apoplectic reaction from Russia`s interior ministry
apostate: (n) deserter, renegade, defector, turncoat, backslider,

Mumtaz Qadri told the court that he had taught a lesson to an apostate, Salman Taseer.
rudderless: (adj.) adrift, aimless, directionless, purposeless, undirected

When Dr Qadri left for Canada, his party was rudderless.
falter: (v) hesitate, waver, vacillate

I have not faltered in my quest for a new future.
behemoth: (n) giant, mammoth, titan, leviathan

NBP is a banking behemoth in the Pakistani context.
belligerence: (n) hostility, animosity, antagonism, pugnacity, unfriendliness

North Korea should halt its provocations and its policy of belligerence towards its neighbours.
bibliophile: (n) booklover, intellectual, reader, savant

Lahore International book fair was a pure delight for the bibliophiles.
brimming: (adj.) overflowing, awash, chock-full, jammed, loaded,

We will not take anything for granted against Indians who are brimming with confidence.
broadside: (n) criticism, censure, denunciation, diatribe, philippic

She defiantly replied with a broadside.
bunk: (n) nonsense, applesauce, balderdash, claptrap, flimflam, twaddle

Now we've got the original sources of the article saying this whole thing is bunk.
cacophony: (n) discord, dissonance, disharmony, stridency

As we entered the farmyard, we were met with a cacophony of animal sounds.
PHR V
play down: belittle, derogate, underrate
Food safety experts played down the risk of mad cow disease entering the USA.
shrug off: dismiss, disregard, ignore, minimize
Government shrugged off controversy over Sharia enforcement in Malakand.
atone for: expiate, amend, appease, compensate, rectify
The PML-N should atone for its contacts with the terrorist outfit and capture them.
Idioms
play Russian roulette: take big risks, skate on thin ice, gamble
President Zardari and his team continued to play Russian roulette with their government's future.
flex muscles: use or increase your influence or power
Candidates flexed muscles before polls in Hafizabad constituency.
blue-eyed boy: preferred, favoured, chosen, recommended, pet, best-liked,
Hina Rabbani Khar said that Haqqani group was once CIA's blue-eyed boy.
Muhammad Usman Butt
WORLD IN FOCUS
News From National & International Press Feb 2013- March 2013
National
Feb 16: A massive bomb devastated a residential area in Quetta, killing at least 67 Shia Hazaras.
Feb 16: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement announced to quit the federal and provincial
governments in protest against 'negative attitude' of the People's Party.
Feb 17: Pakistan and Palestine agreed to form a joint commission comprising foreign ministers of
the two states to expand bilateral ties in economic, agricultural, banking, social and cultural sectors.
Feb 18: In a partial award announced in the Kishanganga dispute, the Hague-based Court of
Arbitration allowed India to divert only a minimum flow of water from Neelum/Kishanganga River
for power generation.
Feb 18: A Pakistani student of Myers College Chakwal, Muhammad Shujaat Mirza, topped the
world in O Level International Cambridge Examinations.
Feb 18: President Asif Ali Zardari confirmed nomination of Justice Nisar Muhammad Shaikh,
Justice Nadeem Akhtar and Justice Muhammad Shafi Siddiqui as permanent judges of the Sindh
High Court.
Feb 18: The government of Sindh appointed Mirza Omair Baig as Justice of Peace for District
South Karachi. He will perform as Honorary Magistrate within the territorial limit of the District.
Feb 19: Abdul Hafeez Shaikh stepped down as federal Minister for Finance and Revenue. Minister
of state for finance, Saleem H. Mandviwalla, replaced him.
Feb 19: President Asif Ali Zardari approved addition of 27 symbols to and omission of 'cat' from
the existing list of election symbols, taking the total number of approved symbols to 197.
Feb 19: The International Chamber of Commerce International Court of Arbitration (ICC ICA)
denied Tethyan Copper Company (TCC) any relief and supported the arguments of the government
of Balochistan.
Feb 21: The Sindh Assembly repealed the 'Sindh People's Local Government Act, 2012' and
revived the 'Sindh Local Government Ordinance, 1979'.
Feb 21: The National Assembly passed the Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University
(PIMS), Islamabad Bill, 2013.
Feb 21: Oscar and Emmy award winner Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy was appointed as a SAARC
Goodwill Ambassador for HIV and AIDS for the year 2013 and 2014.
Feb 22: President Asif Zardari accorded his assent to the Pakistan Academy of Letters Bill 2013
and also signed the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan Bill 2013.
Feb 22: The government replaced Secretary Water and Power Nargis Sethi with Rai Sikander, a
Grade-21 officer. Ms Sethi will continue to serve as the cabinet secretary.
Feb 22: Former Kinnaird College principal Dr Mira Phailbus was appointed Punjab
Ombudswoman. This is the first time that a woman has been given this slot in Pakistan.
Feb 23: The president appointed Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman as a judge of the Supreme Court
(SC) of Pakistan, and Justice Muhammad Anwar Khan Kasi as the Chief Justice of Islamabad High
Court (IHC).
Feb 24: Pakistan's Envoy to the United States Sherry Rehman was awarded the Smith College
Medal for her outstanding dedication to the women's rights. Sherry graduated in 1985 from the
institution.
Feb 24: A massive power breakdown plunged major parts of the country into darkness. From
Islamabad to Karachi, most major cities faced power outage because of a major fault in the National
Power Control Centre (NPCC) system.
Feb 25: According to the Global Terrorism Index, that profiles data on terrorism from across the
world, Pakistan is the second most affected country in the world by terrorism, after Iraq.
Feb 25: The National Assembly unanimously passed the 'Defence Housing Authority, Islamabad,
2013' bill.
Feb 26: Board of directors of Pakistan Steel Mills approved appointment of Maj Gen (R)
Muhammad Javed as chief executive officer of Pakistan Steel under the Pakistan Steel Companies
Ordinance 1984.
Feb 26: The government approved a record Rs.100 billion bailout package for the ever-bleeding
Pakistan International Airlines.
Feb 26: President Asif Ali Zardari signed the Instrument of Ratification for Pakistan to become a
member of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
Feb 28: At least 352 people were killed and 699 were injured in 27 bomb blasts that ripped through
various areas across Pakistan during the first two months of 2013.
According to official figures, in January, 16 blasts which took place in different parts of the country
caused 199 casualties and left 380 wounded while in the month of February 11 explosions took
place killing 153 and injuring another 319.
Feb 28: Mainstream political and religious parties and civil society groups agreed to negotiate
peace with militant elements through a broadened tribal jirga earlier formed by Jamiat Ulema-i-
Islam-F. The parties attending an All Parties Conference (APC), hosted by the JUI-F, agreed on a
five-point declaration.
Feb 28: The Punjab government and the Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) signed a
memorandum of understanding (MoU) to unearth corruption, if any, in three mega projects in the
Laptop Scheme, Ujala Programme and the Metro Bus Project.
Feb 28: A Congressional resolution was introduced in the US House of Representatives to

recognise Dr Shakil Afridi, who helped CIA trace Osama bin Laden, as an American hero.
Mar 01: A Pakistan-born 17-year-old student in California, Shayan Ahmad, launched SheFacebook,
a new Facebook for women.
Mar 01: Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf appointed Ghulam Nabi Mangrio as Managing
Director of Pakistan Security Printing Press, Karachi.
Mar 01: The government appointed Abdul Wadood Shah, a grade-22 officer of the Police Service
of Pakistan (PSP) group, DG Intelligence Bureau, replacing Akhtar Gorchani,
Mar 01: The Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) decided to start inviting applications for
'general recruitment' online from April.
Mar 01: The Election Commission of Pakistan appointed key electoral officers and made public an
updated electoral roll containing 85.42 million entries.
Mar 01: The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) signed a financing package of $227 million with
Pakistan to fund polio eradication activities in the country. The Gates Foundation will provide
support for the administrative costs.
Mar 01: The Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif announced regularisation of services of all
contract employees from grade 1 to 16 in the province.
Mar 01: The Lahore High Court Green Bench directed the Punjab government to constitute a Fire
Safety Commission to devise a mechanism in order to curtail the loss in fire incidents.
Mar 02: The Punjab government issued policy for the regularisation of contract employees under
which those in BS-16 and above will be appointed through the Punjab Public Service Commission
(PPSC) and those in lower grades by the departments concerned.
Mar 03: Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif inaugurated Kalma Chowk Underpass, the largest
underpass in the history of the Pakistan.
Mar 04: Promotion of Education in Pakistan (PEP), a US-based non-profit organisation agreed to
donate Rs.22 million for the establishment of Student Advancement Endowment Fund (SAFE) in
Pakistan.
Mar 05: The Senate unanimously passed the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill 2013 allowing
the government to impose bars on leaders of banned outfits.
Mar 05: President Federation of Pakistan Chamber of commerce & Industry Senator Haji Fazal
Kadir Khan Sherani appointed Dr Mirza Ikhtiar Baig as Chairman Pak-UAE Business Council of
FPCCI for the year 2013.
Mar 05: The cabinet committee for educational reforms in Punjab recommended maintaining
national language, Urdu, as medium of instructions at primary and elementary school level because
of its significance as a tool of national integration while English should be a compulsory subject
instead of medium of instructions at primary and elementary level.
Mar 06: Punjab's largest dialysis centre was set up at the Lahore General Hospital.
Mar 06: The Senate passed the bill seeking creation of a new province in Punjab.
Mar 06: The provincial government transferred IGP Sindh, Fayyaz Ahmed Leghari, to the centre
and one of the deputy inspectors general (DIGs) was relieved of his posting following a Supreme
Court order.
Mar 06: The National Assembly unanimously passed a resolution demanding that television
channels remove anchors airing unverified programmes against parliamentarians.
Mar 07: The federal cabinet provided a subsidy of Rs.16 billion on tube-wells and extended
provincial quotas in federal jobs for another 20 years.
Mar 08: Bangladesh Premier Sheikh Hasina Wajid nominated Prof Waris Mir, former head of
Journalism Department of the Punjab University, for the highest civil award of the country.
Mar 08: PML(N) Chief Mian Nawaz Sharif reopened the Pak-Tea House, the historical hangout of
legendary men and women of letters of the subcontinent, after a long closure of 16 years.
Mar 08: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) again rejected government interim committee
and reconfirmed Pakistan Olympic Association (POA), headed by Lt Gen (rtd) Arif Hassan, as
legitimate body.
Mar 08: The National Assembly marked the International Women's Day by passing a key anti-
terror law that seeks to establish a National Counter Terrorism Authority as a focal institution to
integrate the country's effort against terrorism and extremism.
Mar 08: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly unanimously passed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Press, Newspapers, News Agencies and Books Registration Act, 2013 binding the owners of press,
newspapers, news agencies and books registration to submit a declaration of paying salaries to
employees as per Wage Board Award.
Mar 09: A mob enraged over alleged blasphemy set on fire a number of houses belonging to
Christians in Badami Bagh.
Mar 09: Dr Abdul Qayoom Soomro was elected senator on a seat reserved for technocrats in Sindh.
Mar 09: The Bangladesh government honoured poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz and rights activist Asma
Jahangir's father Malik Ghulam Jilani.
Mar 09: Imran Khan laid foundation stone for the second Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer
Hospital of the country in Peshawar.
Mar 10: A 220-page book in English entitled My Debut in Journalism comprising letters and
articles written by founder of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto was published.
Mar 10: President Asif Ali Zardari approved, on the advice of prime minister, conferment of Sitara-
i-Imtiaz on Sarmad Ali, the managing director of the Jang Media Group and president of All
Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS).
Mar 10: Federal Tax Ombudsman and former Inspector General of Police (IGP) Dr Shoaib Suddle
and SSP Mirwaiz Niaz were elected President and General Secretary respectively of the
International Police Association (IPA), Pakistan Section.
Mar 11: US real estate tycoon Thomas Kramer and CEO Bahria Town Ahmad Ali Riaz Malik
signed a $20 billion agreement for Pakistan's first-ever Island City, Bundal & Buddo Islands,
Karachi.
Mar 12: The National Assembly unanimously passed The Prohibition of Corporal Punishment Bill
2013 which says that any person who is guilty of inflicting corporal punishment on a child shall be
punishable with imprisonment extending up to a maximum period of one year of fine up to
Rs.50,000/- or both.
Mar 12: A two-member division bench of Islamabad High Court (IHC) suspended the order of a
single bench against collection of the gas infrastructure development cess (GIDC) from industrial
and commercial consumers.
Mar 12: The National Assembly exempted politicians from personally delivering their nomination
papers to returning officers.
Mar 12: The governor of Balochistan issued an ordinance under which primary and secondary
school education was declared compulsory and free.
Mar 12: Former Punjab chief secretary Javaid Mehmood was appointed new provincial
ombudsman. The recently-appointed Mira Phailbus would hear complaints filed by women.
Mar 13: The Senate passed two important bills paving the way for setting up an anti-terror body for
coordinating and interacting with law enforcement agencies to curb rising terrorism and another for
removing the restriction on election candidates to appear in person before returning officer for
submission of their nomination papers.
Mar 13: The federal cabinet approved the Investment Policy, 2013, and Foreign Direct Investment
Strategy, 2013-17.
Mar 13: With the four successful GWR attempts Pakistan's count of records in the Punjab Youth
Festival rose to 21 World Records.
Mar 14: On the final day of the Punjab Youth Festival, the country was graced with another two
Guinness World Records.
Mar 14: The Supreme Court upheld the Election Commission of Pakistan's right to get its new
nomination forms printed by saying that the nomination paper was strictly in accordance with the
law and the Constitution and there should be no objection to it.
Mar 14: The Sindh Assembly regularised services of thousands of government employees working
on a contract or ad hoc basis by adopting a bill (No. 24 2013).
Mar 14: A division bench of the BHC reinstated Mir Tariq Magsi as Leader of Opposition in the
Balochistan Assembly after annulling a ruling of Speaker Syed Matiullah Agha.
Mar 14: Asian Development Bank (ADB) decided to provide BISP with a further financial support
of $200 million.
Mar 14: The historic 'Federal Ombudsmen Institutional Reforms Bill 2013' became part of the book
as the president inked it. The law will further ensure expeditious disposal of complaints of the
citizens. The two houses of the Parliament had earlier adopted the bill unanimously.
Mar 15: Three out of four countries in Asia and the Pacific are facing a serious shortage of water.
The Asian Water Development Outlook 2013 found that 37 out of 49 nations did not have enough
water, the worst being India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Cambodia, Kiribati, Nauru and
Tuvalu.
Mar 15: According to a report revealed by United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP),
Pakistan ranks 123 on the gender inequality index of the 2013 Human Development Report.
Mar 15: United Nations' special rapporteur, Mr Ben Emmerson, on human rights and
counterterrorism said that US drone strikes violate Pakistan's sovereignty and called for their
immediate cessation.
Mar 15: The Sindh Assembly passed by a majority vote four government bills increasing by up to
660 per cent the salaries/honoraria, fringe benefits, perks and allowances of the speaker, deputy
speaker, ministers, special assistants and lawmakers with a retrospective effect from July 1, 2011.
Mar 15: Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf issued an order for an unprecedented security
protocol
for himself and former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. The special security protocol would be
provided to five former prime ministers.
Mar 15: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's ruling and opposition parties nominated a former chief justice of
Peshawar High Court (PHC), Justice (retd) Tariq Pervez Khan, as caretaker chief minister of the
province.
Mar 15: The Punjab government appointed three new members of the Punjab Public Service
Commission. They included former capital city police officer Aslam Tareen, Sohail Ahmad and
Shaukat Hayat Durrani.
Mar 16: The National Assembly of Pakistan completed its full-term of five years for the first time
in the democratic interludes of Pakistan. The National Assembly held 50 sessions during last five
years.
International
Feb 18: The CIA thrillers Argo and Zero Dark Thirty won top screenplay honours from the
Writers Guild of America.
Feb 18: European Union foreign ministers approved the launch of a 500-strong EU military
mission to train the Malian army as Brussels also announced the holding of a major international
conference on the country's future.
Feb 19: Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah swore in the country's first female members of the Shura
Council, an appointed body that advises on new laws.
Feb 20: British Prime Minister David Cameron visited the site of Jallianwala Bagh massacre in
India, describing the episode as deeply shameful while stopping short of a public apology.
Feb 21: Sri Lanka banned the sale of land to foreigners, charging that prime properties bought by
outsiders had been neglected and that the country was not reaping the full benefits of their tourism
potential.
Feb 22: The US State Department warned Pakistan against any oil deals with Iran.
Feb 23: Facebook's and Google's founders set aside their rivalries to create the Breakthrough
Prize for science that's worth more than double the value of the Nobel Prize.
Feb 24: African leaders signed the UN-mediated deal at ending two decades of conflict in the east
of the Democratic Republic of Congo and paving the way for the deployment of a new military
brigade to take on rebel groups.
Feb 24: Rightwing leader Nicos Anastasiades won presidential election in Cyprus.
Feb 25: India's aviation ministry withdrew international flying rights and domestic slots from debt-
laden Kingfisher Airlines, making more seats available for rival carriers.
Feb 25: Argo stormed to Best Picture victory at the Oscars. The most overall wins four went
to Life of Pi. Lincoln failed to win in any major category but Daniel Day-Lewis took a record
third prize for best actor.
Feb 25: Philippine President Benigno Aquino signed a landmark law compensating human rights
victims of dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
The billion pesos ($244 million) will be distributed to potentially thousands of people who were
tortured, raped or detained, as well as relatives of those who were killed, by Marcos's security
forces during his 20-year rule.
Feb 25: Israel and the United States staged the first test flight of the latest generation of their Arrow
missile defence system, the Arrow 3.
Feb 25: Pope Benedict XVI issued a decree allowing cardinals to bring forward a conclave to elect
his successor.
Feb 25: Park Geun-hye became South Korea's first female president, vowing zero tolerance with
North Korean provocation and demanding Pyongyang abandon its nuclear ambitions
immediately.
Feb 26: A UN Security Council committee removed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from its
sanctions list almost two years after his death.
Feb 26: United States Secretary of Defence nominee Chuck Hagel suggested in a previously
unreleased speech that India had for many years been using Afghanistan to fight a proxy war against
Pakistan by sponsoring terror attacks inside it.
Feb 27: America's first black President Barack Obama unveiled a full-length statue of civil rights
icon Rosa Parks inside the US Congress.
Feb 27: Chuck Hagel was sworn-in as US Defence Secretary, a day after the Senate confirmed him.
Feb 28: Pope Benedict XVI ended his eight-year reign, becoming the first pontiff in six centuries to
resign instead of ruling for life.
The papacy became officially vacant at 1900 GMT.
Feb 28: At least 34 people were killed in Bangladesh in a wave of violence after Delwar Hossain
Sayedee, the Jamaat-e-Islami party's vice president, was found guilty of war crimes, including
murder, arson and rape. Sayedee is the third person to be convicted by the controversial domestic
tribunal.
Feb 28: In a stunning reversal, UN appeals judges acquitted the former chief of the Yugoslav
National Army, Gen Momcilo Perisic, of aiding and abetting atrocities by rebel Serbs, including the
Srebrenica massacre, by providing them with military aid during the Balkan wars.
Mar 02: Drastic budget cuts, sequester, became effective in the United States, hours after
President Barack Obama signed an order initiating $85 billion in reductions.
Mar 03: President Barack Obama appointed Phillip Gordon as new coordinator for the Middle
East, North Africa and the Gulf.
Mar 05: Taiwan presented a special medal to a 102-year-old former general, Lee Hsueh-yen, for
leading his squadron of aircraft against Japan on the Chinese mainland during World War II.
Mar 06: The UN atomic agency's board of governors approved giving Japanese director general
Yukiya Amano a new four-year term.
Mar 06: One million Syrians have fled their homeland since a revolt erupted two years ago, the UN
reported.
Mar 07: The UN Security Council voted to tighten financial restrictions on Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (DPRK) and crackdown on its attempts to ship and receive banned cargo in
violations of UN sanctions.
Mar 08: Former Argentine president Carlos Menem was convicted of orchestrating arms smuggling
while in office.
Mar 08: John Brennan took oath of office as the new director for the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA).
Mar 08: Iran's Mahmoud Ahmdinjead and Cuba's Raul Castro joined about 30 other heads of states
at the funeral of Hugo Chvez in an emotional farewell to the charismatic Venezuelan leader who
changed the face of politics in South America.
Mar 08: Tunisian politicians formed a new government, with Ali Larayedh as the new prime
minister.
Mar 09: Uhuru Kenyatta narrowly won Kenya's presidential election, but his main rival, Raila
Odinga, refused to concede. Kenyatta is the son of Kenya's founding president and one of Africa's
richest men.
Mar 10: Aung San Suu Kyi was selected to continue as head of Myanmar's main opposition party.
The Nobel laureate was named chairwoman of the National League for Democracy's new executive
board.
Mar 10: The world's biggest religious festival concluded with nearly two million pilgrims attending
it. The two-month-long Kumbh Mela ended on the occasion of Mahashivratri, a major Hindu
festival celebrated across India and Nepal.
Mar 12: A Japanese energy explorer said that it extracted gas from offshore methane hydrate
deposits for the first time in the world.
Mar 12: The United States and Russia clashed in the UN Security Council over a response to the
latest agreements between Sudan and South Sudan on restarting the flow of oil and pulling troops
back from their tense border.
Mar 12: For the first time, India test-fired its indigenously-developed medium range subsonic
cruise missile, Nirbhay from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur.
Mar 13: Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected to be the new leader of the Roman
Catholic Church, and said he would take the name Francis I.
Pope Francis, 76, appeared on the central balcony of St Peter's Basilica just over an hour after white
smoke poured from a chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel to signal he had been chosen to lead
the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.
Mar 14: China's parliament named Xi Jinping as president, four months after he took charge of the
Communist Party with pledges of reform.
Mar 14: Author Tan Twang Eng became the first Malaysian author to win Asia's top literary prize,
the $30,000 Man Asian Literary Prize, for his novel The Garden of Evening Mists set during the
aftermath of the Japanese occupation of Malaya.
Mar 14: History will remember President Hugo Chvez, a charismatic leader whose progressive
policies brought Venezuela's poverty rate down from over 70 per cent at the close of the 20th
century to around 20 per cent today, said Vuk Jeremic, president of the 193-member UN General
Assembly.
Mar. 14: Nepal's chief justice, Khilraj Regmi, was sworn-in as head of an interim government
tasked with steering the country towards elections by June.
Mar 15: China's parliament installed bureaucrat Li Keqiang as premier, putting him in charge of
running the world's second-largest economy.
Everyday Science
Feb 21: Astronomers announced the discovery of the smallest known planet. Dubbed Kepler-37b,
the planet, roughly the size of Earth's moon, was discovered outside of our solar system and is the
smallest ever found in space.
Feb 21: The meteor that rocked Russia on February 15, 2013, was the nbiggest since 1908, at 55
feet in diameter, estimated NASA.
Feb 24: Scientists said they had found traces of a micro-continent hidden underneath the Indian
Ocean island of Mauritius.
Feb 26: Scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) identified a
physical mechanism behind the extreme weather that has plagued many parts of the world in recent
years and that it is tied to climate change.
Feb 26: A Royal Navy ship discovered and mapped a 'Grand Canyon' beneath the waves using
state-of-the-art technology. HMS enterprise discovered the 250 metre-deep (820ft) canyon beneath
the Red Sea.
Feb 28: An international team of scientists at Belgium's Antarctica research station found the largest
meteorite in nearly 25 years, helping them to unlock the secrets of our solar system.
Mar 12: An analysis of a Mars rock sample by the Curiosity rover has unveiled minerals, including
hydrogen, carbon and oxygen, that are the building blocks of life, NASA said.
Mar 04: Building on earlier pioneering work by researchers at the University of California, San
Diego, international consortium of university researchers has produced the most comprehensive
virtual reconstruction of human metabolism to date.
Scientists could use the model, known as Recon 2, to identify causes of and new treatments for
diseases like cancer, diabetes and even psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.
Mar 13: The world's largest ground-based observatory, the ALMA space observatory, opened for
business in the desert of northern Chile.
Mar. 14: Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield took the helm of the International Space Station (ISS),
marking only the second time in the outpost's 12-year history that command has been turned over to
someone who is not American or Russian.
Economy
Feb 18: The United Arab Emirates signed 17 defence contracts to purchase military equipment
worth $1.4 billion including US-manufactured Predator drones.
Feb 20: Bangladesh signed a loan deal with a Japanese development agency for construction of the
country's first-ever metro rail system, costing $2.8 billion.
Feb 20: Iran agreed to set up a $4 billion oil refinery in Gwadar with an estimated capacity of about
400,000 barrels per day.
Feb 20: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) slapped a heavy penalty of
Rs.50 million on BMA Capital Management Limited, a broker of the Karachi Stock Exchange
(KSE).
Feb 21: The board of ICI Pakistan Limited announced the appointment of Asif Jooma as chief
executive of the company, effective February 25, 2013.
Feb 24: China's Huawei, the number three smartphone maker behind giants Samsung and Apple,
unveiled a new mobile, the Ascend P2, which, it claims, is the fastest in the world.
Feb 26: Pakistan State Oil was declared defaulter by the world market due to delay in payments
under the LC head.
Feb 26: The US Senate Finance Committee approved President Barack Obama's nominee Jack Lew
to be the new Treasury secretary, replacing Timothy Geithner.
Feb 27: The federal government appointed five new directors on the central board of directors of
the State Bank of Pakistan for a period of three years with immediate effect.
Mar 01: The Federal Board of Revenue issued three notifications to revise duty to various products
to yield additional revenue for achieving its collection target.
Mar 01: The SECP directed the Pak-Qatar Family Takaful and its CEO to pay Rs.800,000 and
Rs.200,000 respectively, in fines to the regulator for running advertisements containing deceptive
and/or misleading information. Bank Islami Pakistan published an advertisement in Dawn on
October 27 last year that promoted three Takaful products of Pak-Qatar Family Takaful.
Mar 02: The Committee on Transport of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for
Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has found all the 12 dry ports in Pakistan as having 'little potential'.
The Committee also found that out the Asia and the Pacific region has a total of 234 dry ports, out
of which only 109 have the potential. Dry ports of eight regional countries, including34 in India,
were also found to be not `potential`. All the 17 dry ports in China, 8 dry ports in Myanmar, 5 in the
Philippines, and 2 in Sri Lanka have been described as "potential'.
Out of 19, Turkey has 17 potential dry ports; Russia has 10 potential out of 15 dry ports; Iran 5 out
of 9; Bhutan 5 out of 6; Bangladesh 9 out of 17 and Azerbaijan 10 out of 18.
Mar 06: The federal government appointed Ashraf Mahmood Wathra as Deputy Governor, State
Bank of Pakistan (SBP) for a period of three years.
Mar 07: Bushra Naz Malik, director on the board of the Lahore Stock Exchange (LSE), was
appointed as a member of the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP).
Mar 08: Justice Noorul Haq Qureshi of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) ruled against various prize
schemes offered by cellular companies in the country and declared them against the interest of
consumers.
Mar 09: Taiwan's top smartphone maker HTC said a German court had dismissed two patent
infringement complaints brought against the company by Finnish phone giant Nokia.
Mar 14: The Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC) and Government of Sindh broke
ground to mark the beginning of coal extraction project at Thar Coal block II.
Mar 14: China has overtaken Japan as the world's second biggest economy while lifting hundreds
of millions of its people out of poverty, a United Nations report said.
Sports
Feb 16: The 15-time Grand Slam winner, Serena Williams, replaced top ranked Victoria Azarenka
after beating Petra Kvitova in the quarter-finals of the Qatar Open. She is now the oldest female to
hold the coveted position.
Feb 17: The head of the international wrestling federation resigned in the wake of the decision to
remove the sport from the list of guaranteed Olympic events.
Feb 17: Outgoing world number one Victoria Azarenka outclassed Serena Williams to win the
Qatar Open.
Feb 17: Australia clinched the women's World Cup for the sixth time with a 114-run win over the
West Indies in the final.
Feb 19: FIFA announced that goal-line technology will be used at the 2014 World Cup and two
more systems could be considered in addition to the existing pair.
Feb 21: Army lifted the title after beating Police in the final of the 11th National Men's Netball
Championship.
Feb 24: 101-year-old Fauja Singh, believed to be the world's oldest distance runner, retired after
ending his last race in Hong Kong.
Feb 25: Hosts Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) won the 60th National Cycling Championship
held at the National Cycling Velodrome in Lahore while Pakistan Army bagged the second position.
Feb 28: Karachi Blues were crowned the inaugural Super Eight champions of the Faysal Bank
Quaid-i-Azam Trophy National Cricket Championship after clinching an emphatic nine-wicket
victory against Sialkot in the final.
Feb 28: National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), in compliance with the direction of Prime Minister Raja
Pervaiz Ashraf, hired services of Muhammad Asif, World Snooker Champion 2012.
Mar 01: Liechtenstein's Tina Weirather earned the first World Cup win of her career in Super-G as
overall leader Tina Maze edged closer to Hermann Maier's points record.
Mar 03: Denzaro of Gul Zareen Khan clinched the country's most prestigious race the Pakistan
Derby here at the Lahore Race Club course.
Mar 03: A fourth system of goal-line technology has been approved and granted a licence, soccer's
governing body FIFA said.
Mar 03: Fancied bay colt Denzaro etched his name in the annals of the Pakistan Derby after
producing a majestic burst of speed to outclass his rivals to win the country's premier classic race.
Mar 03: Olympic champion Jenn Suhr lit up the US indoor athletics championships by leaping 5.02
metres to set a new women's pole vault world record, while throwing down the gauntlet to Russian
great Yelena Isin bayeva.
Mar 03: Fast bowler Umar Gul took five wickets for only six runs and captain Mohammad Hafeez
smashed a career best 86 off 51 balls as Pakistan annihilated South Africa in the decisive second
Twenty20 International.
Mar 03: Opener Murali Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara broke the record of 224 runs for the second-
wicket partnership against Australia, set by Sunil Gavaskar and Mohinder Amarnath in 1986 at
Sydney by scoring 294 runs.
Mar 03: Rafael Nadal destroyed David Ferrer to win the Mexican Open, losing just two games as
he claimed his second title in three events since returning from a lengthy injury lay-off.
Mar 04: Football superstar David Beckham was named an ambassador for the Chinese Super
League.
Mar 04: American Michael Thompson birdied the final hole to hold off Australian Geoff Ogilvy
and capture his first PGA title, winning the $6 million Honda Classic by two strokes.
Mar 04: Muhammad Hafeez became the first Pakistani and eighth batsman overall to score 1000
runs in Twenty-20 cricket.
Mar 07: The strong ZTBL women's cricket team outplayed the Punjab outfit in the final to win the
second Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Women Cricket Challenge Trophy at the Gaddafi
Stadium.
Mar 08: Asian No.1 Nofil Kaleem lived up to his billing when he won the Qatar under-14 tennis
championship at Doha's Khalifa Tennis Centre.
Mar 10: Mohammad Ashraful and Mushfigur Rahim smashed impressive centuries, 189 and 152
respectively, in a record stand.
Their 261-run unbroken stand was Bangladesh's highest for any wicket in Tests, the previous best
being 200 for the second wicket between Tamim Iqbal and Junaid Siddique against India in Dhaka
in 2010. Bangladesh also surpassed their previous highest total of 413 against Sri Lanka in Tests.
Mar 10: Team Sky rider Richie Porte became the first winner of Paris-Nice as he won the final
stage 9.6km time-trial to hold off the challenge of American Andrew Talan-sky.
Mar 11: Former world number one Tiger Woods picked up his biggest victory since 2009 after
winning the WGC-Cadillac Championship in Miami.
Mar 11: Mushfiqur Rahim became the first Bangladeshi to crack a double-century while Nasir
Hossain hit a maiden ton as the tourists gained a 68-run lead in the first Test against Sri Lanka.
Mar 12: The Sports Board Punjab (SBP) went for six successful Guinness World Records (GWR).
Mar 12: Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt and British heptathlete Jessica Ennis won the Laureus World
Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year Awards following their success at the 2012 London
Olympic Games.
Mar. 13: Cricket Australia and New Zealand Cricket appointed Ralph Waters as chairman of the
organising committee for the 2015 World Cup after the death of James Strong.
Obituaries
Feb 17: Keiko Fukuda, the Japanese-born granddaughter of a samurai who learned judo from its
founder and became the highest-ranked woman in the martial art, died at age 99.
Feb 19: Former Czechoslovakia star Zdenek Zikn, who memorably scored four goals at the 1958
World Cup died at the age of 75.
Feb 19: Donald Richie, one of the most prominent American writers on Japan and on expatriate
life, best known for introducing the English-speaking world to the golden age of Japanese cinema,
died. He was 88.
Feb 24: Renowned Educationist, scholar and writer Dr Nazir Qaiser passed away. He was 87.
Feb 27: French resistance hero and Holocaust survivor Stephane Hessel, whose 2010 manifesto
Time for Outrage sold millions of copies, died at the age of 95.
Feb 28: Former Lahore High Court chief justice Abdul Shakoor Salam died.
Feb 28: The mastermind of Britain's 1963 Great Train Robbery, Bruce Reynolds, died, at aged 81.
Reynolds was a petty criminal who was responsible for planning the world-famous robbery of the
post office train which ran between Glasgow and London on August 7, 1963.
Mar 02: Poet, writer, intellectual and academician, Shabnam Shakeel, died in Karachi.
Mar 03: Sammy Guillen, one of a handful of players to have played Test cricket for two countries,
has died in Christchurch aged 88. He represented West Indies and New Zealand during an eight-Test
career in the 1950s.
Mar 04: Prominent Australian businessman James Strong, the chairman of the organising
committee for the 2015 cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, has died aged 68.
Mar 04: The former provincial president of women wing of Pakistan People's Party, MNA Malik
Mehrun Nisa Afridi, died. She was 65.
Mar 06: President Hugo Chvez died after a two-year battle with cancer, ending 14 years of his rule
that won him passionate support among the poor.
Mar 08: Former Pakistan Test cricketer and chief selector Haseeb Ahsan passed away. He was 73.
Mar 09: Film star Aasia passed away in Canada. She was 61.
Mar 11: Flags flew at half-mast across Sweden as the country mourned the death of Princess Lilian,
a Welsh-born commoner who stole Swedes' hearts by waiting three decades to marry her lifelong
love Prince Bertil.
Mar 13: Parveen Rehman, the Director of the Orangi Pilot Project, was shot dead in Orangi Town.
Mar 14: Ieng Sary, one of three elderly Khmer Rouge leaders on trial for atrocities that took the
lives of as much as one-fourth of the Cambodian population in the 1970s, died in Phnom Penh. He
was 87.
Mar 15: Pakistan's most celebrated news photographer F.E. Chaudhry passed away, the day he was
to celebrate his 105th birthday.
Muhammad Usman Butt
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Jahangir World Times

Gwadar Port: Geo-economic and Geostrategic

The writer teaches at the Department of International Relations, University of Peshawar.

NATO's Thorny Prison Dilemma

(Courtesy: Foreign Policy Magazine)

A conversation with Urdu Spokesperson of the

Papal Conclave The Election of 266th

On Ties with India

The writer is a civil servant and can be reached at amanatchpk@gmail.com

Why Obama's Israel Trip Is One Big Mistake

POLLING AND RESULTS

DISPOSITION OF THE HOUSE

Five main parties who contested these elections were:

Did You Know?

(Source: Sindh Coal Authority)

Did You Know?

Major Oilfields of Sindh

Did You Know?

Pakistan's Prime Ministers born in Sindh

Did You Know?

Sindh & Pakistan Movement

Artificial Lakes and Reservoirs

Abdul Wahab Faruqi (Sachal Sarmast): Khairpur

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai: Bhit Shah, Matiari

Syed Usman Marwandi (Lal Shahbaz Qalandar): Sehwan

Syed Abdullah Shah Ghazi: Karachi

Sakhi Sultan: Mangho Pir, Karachi

Qutbe-Alam Shah Bukhari: Karachi

Abdullah Shah As'habi: Thatta

Some Random Facts

The territory of Sindh was annexed to the Bombay Presidency in 1843.

Venezuela's 'Comandante' Hugo Chvez An

On his death, a prestigious British newspaper The Guardian wrote:

Will Capitalism Destroy Civilization?

IRAN IN WORLDWIDE THREAT

IRAN AND LEBANESE HIZBALLAH

Tehran has developed technical expertise in a number of areasincluding uranium enrichment,

LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

Waiting for the Chop

Media Power & Responsibility

The writer is a former foreign secretary

THE ANTI-TERRORISM (AMENDMENT)

A report issued by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), on

A. Counter Terrorism Financing Amendments:

Psychological Assessment & Interview Guide I

Pakistan Votes 2013

Q. 2. Is youth going to be a decisive factor in the upcoming general elections 2013?

Can PTI be a surprise factor in these elections?

Revolutionary changes in Pakistan

For comments: sik_khawaja@yahoo.com

The Appalling Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh

Can You Apply?

What Course You Should Study?

What Should I Apply for?

Programme, the course must also:

Where are You Studying?

How much money do you need?

World Health Day - 7 April 2013

About High Blood Pressure

Reducing Blood Pressure

Important World Days in April

World Health Days in 2000s