Suicide strikes, Hazara woes and fishy stories

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

Woe-begone residents of the garrison town of Kohat had not yet blinked off Saturday's disturbing images of the Kacha Pukha food distribution centre suicide attacks when at 7-15 on Sunday morning another desperate bomber rocked the eastern part of the city by ramming his explosives-laden double-cabin pick-up van into a tractor parked at the back of police station Saddar in the famous Balli Tang area on Rawalpindi Road thus initially killing seven and injuring 32 persons.

Looking visibly sleepless and slightly confused, DIG police Abdullah Khan looked to his left and right to consult the equally disoriented aides and confirmed to the inquisitive media that statistics about the casualties were correct.

Ruling out the chances of a security lapse, the top police officer was of the opinion that the law enforcing agencies had not shown any negligence in duty. All the same if suicide bombers had struck for the third time in less than 24 hours, it was not amazing especially when the internally displaced persons (IDPs) of all descriptions and shades had been converging on the city from Kurram Agency, Darra Adamkhel and Orakzai Agency. To top it all, the home-grown saboteurs had an easy access to explosive material.

As the coincidence would have it, the road on which the car bomb explosion occurred had on one side the police station while a school on the other. This being Sunday, the school stood closed due the weekly off or the casualties would have been far greater in number and the loss of life far more extensive. Resorting to customary security measures, police cordoned off the area, banned pillion riding and closed the busy Kohat-Rawalpindi Road to all kinds of vehicular traffic for rest of the weekend, which amounted to punishing the men and women doing jobs in Islamabad but liked to spend Sundays with their near and dear ones in Kohat and its suburbs.

As holiday makers think over the implications of the sporadic suicide bombings, the stage is set today (Monday) for President Asif Ali Zardari to formally put his signatures to the unanimously approved landmark 18th amendment to the constitution. After a request by telephone from the Presidency, PML-N leader Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif has also agreed to attend the ceremony. A sense of jubilation attends the occasion in all provincial capitals including Peshawar, where the natural allies of the ruling party are in power. In a statement, eminent lawyer and senior member of PPP, Barrister Aitzaz Hussain, said that if the Supreme Court tried to strike down the 18th amendment, it might lead to a dangerous confrontation between judiciary and the parliament.

Meanwhile, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Qazi Mohammad Anwar, defended the apex court's right to review the new amendment. Describing Aitzaz Ahsan's statement to browbeat the SC, he said that lawyers' community reserved the right to challenge the amendment after President Zardari made it a part of the constitution. Qazi said that the SC had the power and the right to review and interpret any legislation. Earlier, addressing various bar councils at the district and provincial levels, Qazi was on record to have said that politicians sitting in both the houses of the parliament had colluded to 'usurp' the SC powers.

In politics, some individuals usurp while others surrender powers. Former NWFP chief minister Sardar Mehtab Ahmad Khan Abbasi, for instance, offered to surrender his powers by sending his resignation to PML-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif, who gave Abbasi the party ticket to become an MNA. Abbasi tendered his resignation after the backlash of the non-Pukhtun residents of Mansehra, Abbottabad and Haripur over the renaming of the province.

Reacting to Abbasi's apparent estrangement with his party, head of the Movement for Hazara Province Sardar Haider Zaman said that by first giving approval to Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa and later showing fake repentance over his act, Abbasi was fooling around with the people of Hazara with his familiar political gimmicks. Reports indicated that other MNAs from Hazara division belonging to PML-N such as Murtaza Javed Abbasi, Sardar Mushtaq and Pir Sabir Shah also felt unhappy over the way their party had let down the people of Hazara and they might slap their resignations on the party. On his part, Nawaz Sharif did not accept Abbasi's resignation and directed his party men in Abbottabad to persuade him to revise his decision.

While the interesting game of dispatching and returning the copies of resignations is being enacted by some of the opposition leaders, the others are flaying the PPP over futilely squandering money on UN probe of Benazir Bhutto's assassination. However, UN probe is not the only task on which money has been squandered. Seraiki-speaking investigative reporter Rauf Klasra, for instance, contends that corruption is rampant in the country. Political circles in the City are obliquely referring to recently-published collection of Klasra's newspaper columns titled 'Akhir Kyon?'

Regardless of the fact whether newspaper columns had any resale value, the author of the book appeared on the talk show aired by a private television channel to provide the readers with a background to the new publication. Klasra claimed that three to four federal ministers known to him had constructed palatial houses in Islamabad at the minimum cost of Rs100 to 120 million. He alleged that wives, aunts and even the sisters-in-law of the highly placed officials were conniving at bribery and graft.

Klasra said that he moved to Islamabad in 1998 and did investigative journalism first for Dawn and later for the News. He personally felt that the level of corruption had sharply risen in the present set-up. Citing a few instances, he claimed that quite a few overseas Pakistanis on a visit home came to him with a request to make a phone call to some bureaucrat or a minister who had allegedly accepted money but was not obliging them. Klasra may or may not be a re-born Azhar Sohail but the tales of corruption, nepotism and money-grabbing are not so well-hidden.