Taal Matol
Sniffles!
By Shoaib Hashmi
It is almost December and it hasn't rained for months. All the trees and all the greenery is covered with flaky dust and all the kids are going round coughing and hacking The grown-ups are going round sniffing and snivelling which means it is open season on home remedies and everyone has a sure fire remedy for the sniffles.

mumbaia
ttacks
In the name of God
A profile of Lashkar-e-Toiba, the group that has been put in the spotlight for its 'involvement' in the Mumbai carnage
By Amir Mir
Dreaded for its guerrilla operations in Occupied Jammu & Kashmir and known for the infamous suicide attack on the Red Fort in New Delhi, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) or the Army of the Pure has once again been put in the spotlight in the wake of the bloody Mumbai attacks.

RIPPLE EFFECT
Mumbai and the Indian media
By Omar R. Quraishi
By the time this comes in print (and this is a problem with a weekly column) much will have been written, analysed, commented, spewed, fulminated and said on the Mumbai attacks. One will not find a single Pakistani who has been annoyed and angered by the reaction of India's mainstream media and there -- in all probability -- will not be a single India who will not be blaming all of Pakistan for culpability in the attacks.

The recent resolve shown by the Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance Shaukat Tareen to impose direct tax on agriculture, real estate and capital gains has triggered an endless debate among stakeholders.

His statement that every one who is making an earning will be brought under the tax net and there will be no sacred cows anymore caused immense panic among the farmers and landowners. Tareen was also condemned widely for trying to please the International Monetary Fund by making such remarks at the cost of the millions associated and dependent on this sector. Though no documentary proof has been produced so far to substantiate it, there is a widespread belief that it's IMF that has been asking for the levy of agriculture tax in the country.

Several members of the national and provincial assemblies with agricultural background have protested against this proposal and warned to go to any extent to foil such attempts. The proposals to levy income tax on agriculture have also been deliberated in the past but the fear that, being pressed to the wall by IMF, this time the government may go on to materialise them despite immense opposition from different quarters.

The situation right now is that the government has changed its stance and even gone to the extent that IMF has not asked for imposition of this tax though it has stressed the need for increasing the overall revenue target to around 15 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The proposal to introduce agriculture tax is in fact a means in view of the government to achieve this end.

Sources in the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) tell TNS that the rationale behind imposing income tax on agriculture is that it has the potential to generate revenues to the tune of more than Rs60 billion a year. This amount can even increase as agriculture sector contributes above 21 percent to the nation's GDP, they add.

They add that the income tax is always imposed on net income; therefore its being an oppressive act as claimed by the farmers is not true. The sources say the problem with people is that they start criticising a proposal from day one without even listening to the original plan. It is yet to be discussed whether the income tax on agriculture should be based on the basis of farm holding or the produce,

they add.

This is not the first time that international donors have asked the Pakistani government to raise revenue through agriculture tax and the latter has taken practical steps in this regard. For example, the Finance Act of 1977 represented a breakthrough as it removed the exemption of agricultural incomes from taxation. But after the military coup of 1977, Gen Zia suspended the Finance Act and restored the tax exemption on agricultural incomes by promulgating an income tax ordinance in 1979 and reintroduced the land revenue with higher rates. The land revenue is collected by the provincial governments and does not fall in the purview of the provincial government.

Even during Gen (r) Musharraf's rule and around general elections an unsuccessful move was made to federalise tax collection on farm income. But due to opposition from different quarters as well as the provinces the idea could not materialise. Under the constitution only the provincial governments are allowed to levy a land tax. The opposition coming from the provinces is another reason quoted by the FBR for the government's failure to impose this tax so far.

The federal revenue officials have also been complaining that "large and prosperous farmers are typically characterised by underutilisation and inefficient use of land resources. Therefore rising and higher tax rates under income tax should force many large farms to use their land more intensively and efficiently." They have also stressed that the introduction of agricultural income tax may prove to be cost effective as tax assessment and collection may be undertaken by income tax department and the services of provincial revenue departments may no longer be needed after repeal of land revenue system. But so far all their assertions have failed to counter the strong opposition to the proposal coming from myriad sources.

Azhar Hussain, a farmer based in Bahawalnagar, tells TNS said that farmers are already paying a number of taxes on water, agriculture, electricity and fertilizer and not in a position to bear the burden of this new tax. He says the income of a farmer and input costs cannot be calculated properly as it is a labour intensive profession where family units spend endless hours to grow food for themselves and the market. "Is there any mechanism to quantify these work hours?" he questions.

Azhar says the government must drop this idea as it hardly facilitates the agriculture sector and has failed miserably to ensure reasonable commodity prices to growers. It's an undeniable fact, he says, that huge amounts of agriculture yield are wasted due to lack of storage facilities, substandard pesticides and adulterated fertilizers. He says the risk factor is too high in this profession and the major profits are made by private money lenders, middlemen, hoarders and so on.

Similarly, the opposition leader in the Punjab Assembly Chaudhry Zaheerud Din says it will be totally unfair to impose this tax on 94 percent farmers who own less than 12.5 acres of land. He says the PML-Q government had set this ceiling and those with landholdings less than this were exempt from provincial tax.

Pakistan introduced extraordinary police reforms in the form of Police Order 2002 on Aug 14, 2004. These reforms were meant to make the police a public service, which is both accountable and transparent, and change the image of the police in the eyes of people.

Experts, however, believe that these reforms, introduced during the regime of General (r) Pervez Musharraf, failed to achieve their objectives because of the lack of political will at the top level.

The governments of Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Shaukat Aziz did not seem interested in implementing the Police Order in letter and spirit. Even Pervez Musharraf, says a senior federal government official who was involved in the drafting of the reforms, could not do much and made more than 100 amendments to the ordinance."The Police Order has been robbed off its essence because of these amendments," the official adds.

According to three consecutive annual reports of the Anti Corruption Establishment, police enjoys the worst reputation among government departments and agencies. One reason for this maybe that it has not been reformed since the subcontinent's partition.

According to a report prepared by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) -- an NGO working in the South Asian region -- the police has not kept with democratic aspirations in post-colonial South Asia. Typically, Commonwealth nations of South Asia either have an outdated police law in place or no law at all.

Pakistan was the first country in South Asia to initiate legislative reform on the issue of policing, when the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) prepared a draft law to reorganise the police in 2001. The Police Order 2002 came into force on Aug 14, 2002. It replaced the Police Act 1861 and provided an updated legal framework for governing the police.

But due to the ensuing backlash from the provinces and certain segments of the police community, the Police Order 2002 was significantly curtailed in its intended scope, because of the more than 100 amendments that were subsequently introduced between 2004 and 2007. These amendments appear to have defeated the very purpose of the reforms. For example, the amendments stipulated that of six elected members of the Provincial Public Safety Commission and Police Complaints Commission, four would be from the Treasury and two from the Opposition. In contrast to the equal representation envisioned by the 2002 Order, this amendment tilts the balance in favour of the government.

The CHRI and Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) held a joint consultation titled Police Reforms in Pakistan: Beyond Analysis to discuss the history and scope of police reforms in Pakistan.

IA Rehman, director, HRCP; Tariq Khosa, director, General National Police Bureau; Jawwad Dogar, additional IGP, Punjab; Sarkar Abbas, member National Public Safety Commission (NPSC); Arshad Abdullah Khan, NWFP minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs; and Sanjay Patil, programme officer, CHRI, were among the prominent discussants. The meeting was also attended by a number of civil society and media representatives.

The consultation had a day long discussion on the police culture, institutionalisation of police, misuse of power in trying to control the police, non-serious attitude of political will in implementing police reforms and accountability that needs to be in place.

Tariq Khosa, the key speaker, termed the case of police reforms a failure of the political will and victory of the vested interests within the police force. "The police order was not implemented. There was no creation of Public Safety Commissions at the federal, provincial and district levels," Khosa tells TNS. "Members of the Public Safety Commission were nominated at the federal and provincial levels, but they have failed to meet as per the rules during the past four years," he adds.

IA Rehman tells TNS that the accountability of the police was not possible without a fair and elected representation in the watchdog authorities, commissions and committees. "We don't know from where people have been suddenly nominated on these commissions." He suggests that the government and political parties should be transparent in making these bodies change the bad image of the police.

Sarkar Abbas raises the issue of non-registration of First Information Report (FIR) and registration of fake FIRs, which are quite common. She says that the NPSC had complained to the then-federal government about its toothless, but no one in the government and the bureaucracy was willing to listen.

The CHRI-HRCP consultation urged the government to establish separate federal, provincial and district level police complaint authorities to make the police accountable. The meeting also suggested a free and fair nomination of members of Public Safety Commissions, besides empowering these bodies. The experts further pressed the government to restore the Police Order 2002 in its original form revoking all amendments. It also called for making arrangements for the capacity building and training of the police and compulsorily link of promotion with training to ensure accountability, transparency and efficiency.

The International Crisis Justice (ICJ) report, published in July, also takes a critical review of the police reforms in Pakistan. It says: "Retaining the Police Order 2002 in its totality, amending it or even scraping it all together, is the prerogative of the democratically-elected government that has now taken power at the Centre and in the provinces. Police opinion should, however, be ascertained first, as must be the views of relevant segments of civil society, including lawyers and the media, so as to evolve a national consensus on how to transform the police into a disciplined, efficient and modern organisation that serves and protects citizens. As an immediate first step, the amendments made to the order in 2004 must be removed.

"Whatever the fate of Police Order 2002, the police will not be reformed merely through changes in legislation; those must be accompanied by a new mindset, most particularly on the part of the political executive. If the system of policing is to be truly reformed, operations must be insulated from political interference. Positing, transfers and recruitments must be made solely on merit, and the best way of ensuring this is to empower Public Safety Commissions. They must be allowed to perform their supervisory role free of political pressures. For that to happen, they should be transparently consulted, with parity between members from ruling and opposition benches," the report adds.

What is yet to be implemented in the Police Order 2002, interestingly, includes reorganisation of police in the devolution context; changes to organisational design; new accountability institutions and processes; relations between district police officer (DPO) and district nazim; and follow up of legal and legislative action.

However, the new government has shown a positive gesture. Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has constituted a special committee to review the Police Order 2002 and the amendments made to it. The committee is supposed to present its report in a couple of months, though it is yet to be seen whether the new government will implement the law.

It is almost December and it hasn't rained for months. All the trees and all the greenery is covered with flaky dust and all the kids are going round coughing and hacking The grown-ups are going round sniffing and snivelling which means it is open season on home remedies and everyone has a sure fire remedy for the sniffles.

It is common knowledge that science knows nothing, or at any rate very little, as it is well known that it has never found a remedy for the common cold. It is much better to rely on our own system of medicine which is older and comes from the system of that great medieval Muslim sage 'Jalinoos' whom westerners know as Galen the great Greek doctor. He was one of many of our sages whom the west passes off as their own like 'Hakim Arastoo' called Aristotle and 'Hakim Aflatoon' called Plato!

The system is based on the premise that everything we eat has an intrinsic nature which is either hot or cold; thus mangoes and dried fruits are all 'hot' while the citruses like oranges are 'cool'. The secret of good health and especially of avoiding the seasonal ailments is to keep the proper balance between the 'hot' and 'cold' humors!

Thus for the cold winter it is traditional for families to prepare Panjiree. This is a concoction of fried rice flour mixed in with myriads of dried fruits which are indigenous to us and unknown in the west, so they have no names. A large pot of it is prepared and kept under the bed to be dished out each evening to the household. It keeps everyone warm and comfortable,and free of minor ailments like the sniffles.

The greater challenge is to keep cool over the long hot summer and for that the basic principle is that anything that swells up when immersed in water is cool! That includes half a dozen seeds with exotic Urdu names whose English equivalents I don't know and Kateera gond a resin which oozes out of trees and which was usually used as a glue -- you soak a glob in water and overnight it swells and fills the whole glass with a gooey mixture which is tasteless but mixed with sugar makes a lovely drink. You drink a glass first thing in the morning and spend the whole summer as cool as a cucumber!

Dreaded for its guerrilla operations in Occupied Jammu & Kashmir and known for the infamous suicide attack on the Red Fort in New Delhi, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) or the Army of the Pure has once again been put in the spotlight in the wake of the bloody Mumbai attacks.

Although the Lashkar-e-Toiba strongly refuted its involvement, and an Indian jihadi group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility, the Indians claim that the sole terrorist captured alive (Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman) has confessed to being a member of the LeT, belonging to the Faridkot village, Dipalpur tehsil of Okara district in Punjab. The Indian authorities say the assault has the fingerprints of a paramilitary-intelligence operation which could only be carried out by a more professional and trained jihadi outfit like the Lashkar-e-Toiba.

The Mumbai tragedy came at a time when significant efforts were being made by the Indian and Pakistan political leadership to foster bilateral relations. However, the diplomatic ties between New Delhi and Islamabad have touched their lowest ebb, amidst fears expressed by the Pakistani authorities of a possible Indian Air Force attack on the Muridke Headquarters of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who had founded the LeT in 1991 at the Kuntar province of Afghanistan. Since then, despite Saeed's having stepped down as the Lashkar in 2001, the group has become one of the most effective jihadi groups operating out of Pakistan and fighting with the Indian troops in Jammu Kashmir.

The Lashkar happens to be an Al Hadith (Wahabi) group which was born as the military wing of Dawatul Irshad (MDI) or Centre for Proselytisation and Preaching. The MDI was set up in 1988 by three Islamic scholars -- Prof. Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Prof. Zafar Iqbal, who were teachers of the Islamic studies at the University of Engineering Technology, Lahore, and Dr Abdullah Azzam, a professor at International Islamic University, Islamabad. Azzam is also described by many as the ideologue for the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, besides being the religio-political mentor of Osama bin Laden. The main purpose of the MDI was to promote the purification of the society, and to build a society on the basis of Quran and Sunnah.

Toward the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the MDI set up an armed wing called Lashkar-e-Toiba. With the launching of the Lashkar in 1991, several military training camps were, reportedly, set up in the eastern Afghanistan provinces of Kantar and Paktia, both of which had a sizable number of Al Hadith (Wahabi)followers of Islam, with the aim of participating in the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The participation of the cadres in Afghan jihad is believed to have helped its leadership gain the trust of the Pakistani intelligence establishment.

Insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir beginning in 1989 is considered to have provided an active battleground for the LeT militants when its top brass was made to turn its attention from Afghanistan and devote itself to waging jihad in Jammu Kashmir. The LeT soon shot to prominence for launching several deadly guerilla operations against the Indian security forces in the Kashmir Valley. Western media reports say the Daawa (JuD) by Hafiz Saeed runs over 3,000 offices across Pakistan as well as dozens of camps for the LeT militants along the Line of Control (LoC).

But Yahya Mujahid, a close aide of Hafiz Saeed as well as his spokesman, insists that the JuD has nothing to do with the LeT. However, the US State Department which had designated the LeT a foreign terrorist organisation in 2002, describes the JuD as the 'front organisation' of the Lashkar.In its recent report on global terrorism, the State Department said that after it was outlawed, the LeT and its leader, Hafiz Saeed, continue to spread ideology advocating terrorism, as well as virulent rhetoric condemning the United States, India, Israel, and other perceived enemies. The report notes, when a senior al-Qaeda member Abu Zubayda was captured in Pakistan in March 2002, he was located at a safe house in Faisalabad. "This suggested that some of the LeT members were facilitating the movement of al-Qaeda members in Pakistan," the US report added.

However, Yahya simply laughs off the State Department findings, saying the Americans are obsessed with al-Qaeda and Osama. The JuD spokesman further refutes the Indian claims that Amir Ajmal Iman, the captured Mumbai attacker, has confessed to having been indoctrinated as the JuD's Muridke complex -- Markaz-e-Toiba.The Indian investigators have been quoted by the media as saying that it was at the Markaz that Iman started getting influenced by films on the Indian atrocities in Jammu & Kashmir and by impassioned speeches the preachers used to make, including Prof Hafiz Saeed.

But Yahya denies that the Markaz is used for any jihad-related activity. "The housing the JuD headquarter actually runs a huge network of social services, including 20 Islamic institutions, 140 secondary schools, several madrassas and a medical mission that includes mobile clinics, ambulance service and blood banks. All the JuD centres across Pakistan either house religious seminaries, schools or welfare centres", he added.

As a matter of fact, the Markaz-e-Toiba compound of the Markaz Dawatul Irshad spread over 200 acres of land and houses both teaching and residential facilities, complete with its own farms, mosques, fish-breeding ponds and stables. Heavily armed men guard the entrance ,which is surrounded by barbed wire and is protected from view by tall trees. Over 5,000 students are presently enrolled there and the teachers insist that all of them are Pakistani nationals. However, the recent western media reports allege the complex is being used for initial indoctrination of the Lashkar recruits before they are dispatched for military training.

Yahya Mujahid insists as usual that the students at the Markaz -- male and female -- only imparted Islamic as well as modern education from the primary to the university level. While defending Lashkar-e-Toiba in the face of the Western allegations, the Daawa spokesman said: "Linking the LeT with the Mumbai strikes was a crude attempt on the part of the Indian establishment to malign the freedom struggle in the Occupied Jammu & Kashmir. The Indian allegations of a Pakistani connection in the Mumbai attacks are only meant to camouflage the internal fissures India is confronted with today. Therefore, the Indian establishment deems it convenient to blame Pakistan for anything that goes wrong in their country."

But international media keep reporting that the students at the Markaz are indoctrinated towards propagating extremist and conservative Islam since the educational curriculum of the JuD-run schools and colleges is guided by Saeed's philosophy of 'jihad against the infidels.' His philosophy is propagated through scores of the group's publications, including a multi-lingual (Urdu, Persian and English) website, an Urdu monthly journal, Al Daawa, an Urdu weekly, Gazwa, a children's monthly, Nanhe Mujahid and an English monthly, Voice of Islam. The Western media reports even say that dozens of thoroughbred horses are being kept at the are used to train students between the ages of eight to twenty who are also given compulsory military training in shooting and swimming.

Interestingly, despite being declared a terrorist outfit by the US State Department and having been placed on the terrorism watch-list of the Pakistan government, the Jamaatul Daawa been enjoying considerable freedom to raise funds and recruit cadre. General Musharraf had declared the LeT a terrorist organisation on Jan 13, 2002 following the attack on the Indian Parliament on Dec 13, 2001. However, hardly a few weeks before Musharraf banned the the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks and the subsequent US pressure, Hafiz Saeed decided to quit as the LeT chief and nominated Maulana Abdul Wahid Kashmiri as his successor. Addressing a press conference in Lahore, he said his action was meant to counter the rising Indian propaganda that Pakistan had been sponsoring the jihad in Kashmir.

The former Lashkar chief then announced he would now lead an Islamic charity, Daawa,which is still believed by many in the West to be a front for the Lashkar e-Toiba.In a bid to prove that the Kashmir insurgency was an indigenous freedom struggle, he further announced that the Lashkar was formally shifting its base from Pakistan to Jammu & Kashmir. The JuD further claimed it was now focused on extending the invitation of Islam. The fact, however, remains that Saeed is still considered to be the ideologue of the Lashkar and hardly anyone in Pakistan knows the name of his successor -- Maulana Abdul Wahid Kashmiri -- who is based in Kashmir.

Therefore, the Indian authorities continue to attribute most of the major terrorist strikes on their soil -- from Kashmir to Delhi and from Gujrat to Mumbai -- to the Lashkar and seeking the extradition of its founder -- Hafiz Saeed. It is not for the first time that the LeT has been accused of carrying out terrorism in Mumbai. The group had already been accused of masterminding the July 11, 2006 deadly Mumbai serial blasts that killed over 200 people, following which Hafiz Saeed was placed under house arrest by the government, only to be released on the court orders.

A cursory glance at Hafiz Saeed's public speeches of the last ten years indicate that India, Israel and the United States -- Hindus, Jews and Americans, in that order, have been his three main targets as he believes they are the main enemies of Islam and Pakistan. A Lashkar-e-Toiba pamphlet titled Why Are We Waging Jihad? clarifies matters further and establishes the Muslim right to revenge in history. "Jihad is obligatory, it pronounces, for taking back Spain where Muslims ruled for 800 years. The same goes for with Nepal and Myanmar. Of course, the whole of India, including Kashmir, Hyderabad, Bihar, Junagadh and Assam, also has [sic] to be retaken."

Prof Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the founder of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and currently the ameer of the Jamaatul Daawa (JuD) wears an easy smile on his face and a Turkish cap on his head. Clad in shalwar kameez, he comes across as a friendly and humble man. His only introduction to the world of cosmetics is the henna that is regularly applied to his long beard -- a regular feature on a regular face in this part of the world. Except that this one shies away from camera as a rule. Because Islam 'forbids the capturing of human images.'

His worldview is straight and simple: "God has ordained every Muslim to fight until His rule is established," he says. "We have no option but to follow God's order." The Professor is following God's order. And the instrument of God's order is jihad. "Jihad has actually been commanded by Allah Almighty," he says authoritatively, "and no one can stop it." The jihad rests in the Professor's hands who happens to be a very pious man.

Prof Hafiz Mohammad Saeed's name is believed to be in the list of 20 wanted people handed over to Pakistan by India. Excerpts of an interview conducted with him in Lahore follow:

TNS: What do you have to say about the Indian allegations of a Pakistani hand in the Mumbai attacks?

Hafiz Mohammad Saeed: Like any other patriotic Pakistani, I strongly refute these allegations. There is a general impression that the Indian leadership is using Pakistan as a punching bag to cover its failures at home. Instead of blaming Pakistan, India should have acted as a responsible country, shown patience and focused on investigation of the attacks to find out the real culprits. It is not the first time that they have blamed Pakistan for their own failures, although none of them have proven true so far. Let me remind you that the Indian leadership was quick to blame Pakistan for masterminding the 2007 Samjhota Express and Malegaon 2008 tragedies. Yet the fact remains that their own security and intelligence agencies have finally arrested an Indian army officer Colonel Purohit as the actual mastermind.

TNS: But the Indian authorities insist that the lone Mumbai attacker they have arrested alive has already confessed to being a Lashkar-e-Toiba militant coming from Pakistan?

HMS: Every time there is a major terrorist activity on the Indian soil, the Indian government officials will come out with such cooked up confessional statements. The fact remains that the Indian authorities are not at all interested in holding proper investigations into the Mumbai episode. They are only interested in blaming Pakistan which is evident from the fact that they had started naming Pakistan while the operation was still on.

TNS: You mean to say Lashkar-e-Toiba is not involved in the Mumbai attacks as being alleged by the Indians?

HMS: Technically speaking, I am not authorised to speak on behalf of Lashkar-e-Toiba. I am the ameer of the Jamaatul Daawa and have nothing to do with the Lashkar. But I can say with authority that the Lashkar does not believe in killing civilians. As far as I know, a Lashkar spokesman in Srinagar has rejected Indian allegations of its involvement in the Mumbai attacks, saying they were actually meant to malign the group and to damage the ongoing freedom struggle in the Kashmir Valley.

TNS: But the Indian authorities still think you are the moving spirit behind the Lashkar and probably that's why they have again demanded your extradition.

HMS: I had stepped down as the Lashkar ameer way back in Dec 2001 and it is now being led by Maulana Abdul Wahid Kashmiri who is based in Srinagar.

TNS: The Indian authorities allege that you are still being backed by the ISI and your group is linked to al-Qaeda?

HMS: They can say anything. I am not bothered about what they say. I will keep spreading the message of Allah Almighty despite all pressures, knowing fully well that the Indians will continue to mislead the world community by linking us with Lashkar-e-Toiba, with the ISI and even with al-Qaeda.

TNS: Any comments about the Indian demand for your extradition on terrorism charges?

HMS: I can't stop them from making any such demand which is actually a crude attempt to divert the attention of the Indian people from the massive security and intelligence failure that led to the Mumbai attacks. The Jamaatul Daawa is all about relief and social work and everyone in Pakistan knows about our activities. Even otherwise, let me make it clear that I have never been convicted either in Pakistan or in India on any charge. On the other hand, a criminal case is still pending in Hyderabad against the BJP leader L.K. Advani for masterminding the murder of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, although Pakistan has never demanded his extradition.

TNS: You must have read about the possibility of an Indian Air Force attack on the Muridke headquarters of the Jamaatul Daawa which they can declare an enemy hide-out. What do you have to say?

HMS: It will be very unfortunate if India resorts to any such attack because the Muridke Markaz is only used for the purpose of educational activities. I strongly refute the Indian allegations that the Markaz contains any jihad-related training facility. The Indian allegations are only aimed at hoodwinking the international community and it should realise the same.

TNS: What will be your response in case the Indians eventually decided to target the Markaz?

HMS: It is up to the Pakistani government and the Pakistan Army to decide as to what to do and how to react to any such misadventure by the Indians. The army is responsible to safeguard Pakistani geographical frontiers against any external aggression. And like any other patriotic Pakistani, we will also stand behind the armed forces if the Indians resorted to any aggression against the sovereignty of Pakistan.

By the time this comes in print (and this is a problem with a weekly column) much will have been written, analysed, commented, spewed, fulminated and said on the Mumbai attacks. One will not find a single Pakistani who has been annoyed and angered by the reaction of India's mainstream media and there -- in all probability -- will not be a single India who will not be blaming all of Pakistan for culpability in the attacks.

From personal experience, as the editor of this newspaper's editorial pages and also in charge of its letters section, over a hundred letters a day were received in the days following the attacks. Most came from Pakistanis and some from Indians. Literally every single letter by each Pakistani said pretty much the same thing -- that India was overreacting, that it was ignoring its own problems and policies against its own Muslims, and that such a reaction was only going to help the enemies of peace between the two countries. A few said that even if for the sake argument it was accepted that the Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad were involved, that did not mean that the government or the state of Pakistan were involved. Many letters also said that the Indian government and Indians should understand that India was no America and that it better think twice before striking Pakistan on its own because unlike America it was not in a position to get away with such an act.

The implication in a handful was that though in the past Pakistani intelligence agencies may have had links to jihadi outfits and may have helped form, train and sustain them, that was no longer the case now, and that was perhaps one reason why the Pakistan Army and its other security forces were being actively targeted by militants and extremists inside Pakistan.

That this link was all but broken now is something that would be understood by most Pakistanis but it seems that it was completely lost on the Indians -- especially the Indian media. For instance, consider a comment -- as pointed out by one of our regular contributors -- Ayesha Ijaz Khan from London -- made by Indian actress and TV personality Simi Garewal who told NDTV that Pakistan should be carpet-bombed to teach it a lesson. Then something outlandish that I saw myself -- a television anchor working for CNN-IBN asking Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi that if India were to provide conclusive evidence to Islamabad linking the attackers to Pakistan, would Pakistan allow India the option of 'hot pursuit'? As a journalist I felt ashamed that a fellow journalist -- or at least he was pretending to be one -- should ask such a ridiculous question. What did he expect Mr Qureshi to say, one can only wonder.

The sorry fact is that those on this side of the border who are now shocked by the Indian media's conduct should not really be all that surprised because in the past as well it has played a most partisan role. As a colleague pointed out, during a show on Dawn News this past week, a senior journalist from CNN-IBN when questioned first said that he did not think that the Indian media had acted in any irresponsible manner and concluded his remarks by saying -- more or less -- that it usually took a cue from the Indian government. This clearly would be shocking for any professional journalist because the news agenda is never set by the government but rather by one's own instincts for the news -- and not least because if it were set by the government how in the world could the media ever play its role of a watchdog in society. In fact, during this show, as Talat Hussain of Aaj TV and Hamid Mir of Geo said repeatedly, that it was the role of the media to always question what the government was saying and not believe it blindly -- a good example of just this was the (mis)conduct of the mainstream US media before and right after the Iraqi invasion with most papers trying to justify the reasons given by the US government (see for instance the case of The New York Times' then-reporter Judith Miller who basically made up stories to push Washington's WMDs-in-Iraq argument -- eventually she was fired --but not before the country had been invaded and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed for its actions.

While I would normally not look too kindly on writers who quote their own previous articles or columns, I am compelled to quote from one I had written for Dawn's Editorial Page on Jan 23, 2006. Titled 'Indian media's blinkered perception', one had written that a "key difference between Pakistani and Indian newspapers is that the latter toe the official line on Kashmir and policy towards Pakistan. In fact, it seems that on many occasions the press is much more hawkish than the Indian government itself on this particular issue. The other is that the print media in India -- unlike its counterpart in Pakistan -- seems to focus on everything good giving the impression to readers that India has no grinding poverty, no hungry mouths to feed, no homeless, to shelter, and that just about everyone is able to purchase a mobile phone, a motorcycle or a car and speaks fluent English.... There also seems to be an obsession that India is the best in everything and many articles are written around this theme. However, sometimes the gloss is broken through as happened via a back-page advertisement in the Times of India announcing the sale of a flat in an upscale part of Mumbai but with the proviso that only vegetarians need to apply. Compared to this, Pakistani newspapers at least have people vigorously debating and discussing the government's policy vis-a-vis India, some saying that the government has ceded too much ground while others saying that more flexibility needs to be shown. In much of the Indian media, one hardly finds any commentator, analyst or opinion-maker expressing the latter kind of view".

During that trip I had also noticed something else which spoke poorly of the Indian print media at least. The venerable Times of India had in fact boasted that it had a "guest editor" for its editorial page. This was made known through an announcement on its front page, with the head of a local business group being given that privilege for the day.

Also, as a measure of its stance towards Pakistan, I got my hands on the Calcutta-based Statesman. In its edition of Jan 11, 2006, it carried an article on its editorial page by Rajinder Puri described as a "veteran journalist". Mr Puri was commenting on then President Musharraf's proposals for improving relations with India, which he had made during an interview with Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN. Mr Puri wrote that Pakistan is "an unnatural state, created artificially following Partition conceived by a departing colonial power which was pursuing its post-war global interests. The Indo-Pakistan boundary delineated by the Radcliffe Award was totally irrational and defied all norms of nationhood. The majority of people inhabiting what is now Pakistan were opposed to Partition." Even the slew of retired ambassadors and generals who write on India-Pakistan relations and on Kashmir in the English print media in Pakistan do not write such hogwash.

It seems that people in India will want to believe what they want to, what the BJP and Sangh Parivar, and their media tell them -- and they want to ignore their own problems, the fact that a serving lieutenant colonel of the Indian Army was arrested by the Mumbai police for alleged involvement in several bombings -- for which the media as well as New Delhi had initially blamed Pakistan. They also don't want to believe that perhaps the Mumbai attackers could be homegrown given that India is not exactly a haven for minorities or that the Indian police and security apparatus is massively communalised (one needn't look farther than Gujarat in 2002 for this and how the killings were allowed to happen for 2-3 days before the Indian army was called in). The problem is that the position taken by the Indian media -- and one cannot call it an editorial position because it doesn't seem to be grounded in any professional kind of journalism -- doesn't at all bode well for the future.