پاکستان دنیا میں بچوں کے حقوق کے حوالے سے موجود بین الاقوامی معاہدوں کا دستخطی ہے مگر جب ان پر عمل درآمد کی بات آتی ہے تو پاکستان کا نام سب سے آخر میں آتا ہے
Akram Javed
بچے ۔۔۔ ہمارے معاشرے کا ایک مظلوم طبقہ
Obscuring Empire
Amnesty’s approach seeks to surgically extract the conflict in Pakistan from its broader geopolitical context. Back in April 2012, Pakistan’s Parliament unanimously called on the United States to end its drone strikes in the country. The resolution was backed by the country’s powerful military apparatus. Nevertheless, the US has continued its drone strikes in Pakistan. In effect, the US and Pakistan are in a state of war. But, it is a lopsided war, one where Pakistan’s people die in the thousands and Americans do not. It is also a rather strange war, because Pakistan’s military continues to aid the US war in what are called the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA). Though drone strikes have gained the most attention in the media, the ground operations being conducted by the Pakistani Army are perhaps far more significant. There is very little information coming out of FATA, and it is very difficult for outsiders to get into the area. In my own experience, I have had to speak to so-called ‘internally displaced persons’ (IDPs), of whom there are millions in Pakistan, in order to get some sense of the conditions in the tribal areas. Last year, I spoke to IDPs from Orakzai […]
Drone strikes, factory fires and imperialism in Pakistan
The factory fire in Karachi is no less an outcome of imperialism in its neoliberal capitalist face, than drone strikes are the outcome of imperialism in its armed warfare face. Let’s talk a little bit about what imperialism looks like. Pakistanis and Muslims in general talk a lot about imperialism—mainly about American imperialism—but we do it in a pretty narrow way. We tend to focus on American military interventions, as in Afghanistan and Pakistan: their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and their constant military operations in Pakistan, the tip of which are the drone strikes. For some reason, we don’t tend to point to General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and other Pakistani military brass as “American agents,” even though they have secret meetings, plan out military operations, and agree on drone attacks. They come out every few weeks to condemn the drone attacks, but the Defence Secretary Lieutenant-General (Retd.) Asif Yasin Malik recently pointed out that drone attacks are carried out with the permission of the Pakistan government. We may note that America goes around the world oppressing Muslims, and once in a while some of us might even make connections with America’s oppression of non-Muslims. But, is the American military […]
