PESHAWAR: A magazine published by a regional branch of Al Qaeda said that retired Pakistani General Shahid Aziz-- whose voluntary disappearance in 2016 has been mired in mystery-- had died some years ago in its February edition, while alleging he had close ties with the militant organization.
Aziz, formerly a top general in the country, retired in 2005 after serving with the Pakistan army for 37 years. While Pervez Musharraf was military chief, Aziz was promoted to director general of military operations among other key posts. After his retirement, Aziz authored a book in 2013 that criticized the policies of the former army chief.
When rumors of his disappearance and death began circulating widely in 2018, Aziz’s relatives rejected widespread reports that claimed he had died fighting alongside anti-American forces in Afghanistan or Syria. Aziz’s son denounced the reports in an interview to Voice of America, and said the General lived a ‘very private life’ of religious preaching.
Reports of his death have never been confirmed, with the latest claim by Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent’s (AQIS) Urdu language magazine, ‘Nawa-e-Afghan Jihad,’ (Voice of Afghan Jihad) the most recent in a series of rumored accounts over the last two years.
AQIS was formed by Al-Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri in 2014, and aims to fight the governments of Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Bangladesh. It has attempted to posture itself as a rival group to Daesh in the region, but has met with little success in inciting attacks. Last year, Afghanistan announced it had killed the group’s leader in a joint US-Afghan military raid in Helmand province.
The February edition of the AQIS magazine also claimed Aziz had close ties with members of the militant organization and that the former general wrote a damning, never-before-seen manuscript for a book which was sent to AQIS in 2015, and would be published in the Urdu magazine in the coming months.
Saleem Mehsud, a senior journalist, told Arab News: “For the first time, an organization has stated that Aziz had any sort of contacts with any entity, and now the magazine will publish his alleged articles from his book, which is expected to make startling revelations.”
Al-Qaeda alleges retired Pakistani general had militant links, died in 2018
https://arab.news/9ee2d
Al-Qaeda alleges retired Pakistani general had militant links, died in 2018
- Former general Shahid Aziz’s voluntary disappearance in 2016 has been mired in mystery
- Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) was formed in 2014 after an announcement by Ayman Al-Zawahiri
Pakistan condemns use of force against Muharram procession in Indian-controlled Kashmir
- Indian police fired tear gas to break up a Muharram gathering in Srinagar
- Footage showed security forces using batons to beat those participating and journalists covering the event
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday condemned the use of force by Indian police in Kashmir against a procession marking the Muslim month of Muharram.
Police in Sirnagar, the main city of Indian-controlled Kashmir, fired tear gas on Tuesday to disperse hundreds of Shiite Muslims who attempted to participate in the traditional procession to mourn the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) grandson.
Media reports and video footage showed steel barricades to block the procession and Indian security forces using batons to beat those participating and journalists covering the event.
“Pakistan strongly condemns use of tear gas shells and firing of warning shots on Muslims taking part in peaceful Muharram procession in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK),” the Pakistani foreign office said in a statement. “Dozens of Kashmiris have reportedly been detained and journalists have also been subjected to baton charge.”
The foreign office reiterated its call on the international community to see India’s rights violations in the Muslim-majority region.
“Imposition of restrictions on Muharram processions represents complete disrespect and deep-rooted prejudice by the Indian government for the sentiments of the Muslims in IIOJK,” the Pakistani foreign office said. “It is also a flagrant violation of Kashmiris’ fundamental right of freedom of religion.”
Main Muharram processions have been banned by India in Kashmir since an armed insurgency broke out in 1989 demanding the region’s independence or merger with Pakistan.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, which both claim it in full and rule in part. The nuclear-armed neighbors have fought two of their three wars over control of Kashmiri territory.
Pakistani expats in Gulf seek revival of overseas students' quota at medical colleges
- Children of overseas Pakistanis were earlier able to avail quotas at 73 private and 44 public medical colleges in Pakistan
- Government last year abolished the quota system for overseas students saying all candidates should be selected on merit
ISLAMABAD: Pakistanis in Gulf countries are calling on the government to reinstate a college admission quota for overseas nationals who want to study medicine back home, with an association for parents of overseas Pakistanis saying thousands may lose their chance at education due to the new rule.
Children of overseas Pakistanis were previously able to enroll at 73 private and 44 public medical colleges in Pakistan based on admission quotas — 15 percent at private institutes and 76 seats at government-run ones.
But the government last year abolished the private school quota and reduced the one for public colleges to 66 spots, saying all candidates should be selected on merit.
In the run up to the reduction being enforced from the current academic year 2021-22, the Overseas Pakistani Parents Association in Gulf, which represents expats in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain, this week requested the National Assembly Standing Committee on Education to reverse its decision.
Citing the future of thousands of expat children and the contributions of overseas Pakistanis to the country's economy, the association, in a letter dated August 16, asked the parliamentary commission to help reintroduce the quota system.
"It is unfortunate the government is creating hurdles for our children instead of facilitating them in getting admissions in the private and public medical colleges," Muhammad Azam, a representative of the association in Al-Ain, UAE, told Arab News over the phone on Wednesday.
"We are contributing over 60 percent in annual remittances to Pakistan, but in return the government isn’t willing even to facilitate admissions to our children in the medical colleges."
Azam said the removal of quotas coupled with the coronavirus pandemic situation could upend the future of some 2,000 Pakistani students in the Gulf region — 800 in the UAE alone — as they may not even be able to participate in entrance exams.
The Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC), he said, had established only two exam centers, in Dubai and Riyadh.
"It will be difficult for students in Oman, Qatar and Bahrain to travel to Dubai or Riyadh for the tests given travel restrictions due to COVID-19 situation," Azam said.
Upon the association's complaints, Pakistan's consulate general in Dubai wrote to the education ministry earlier this week asking it to review its decision. While a response is still awaited from the ministry, the Pakistan Medical Commission, the relevant regulatory body, says reversing the decision would be against the constitution.
"The Supreme Court has declared the admission quota against the constitution in one of its judgments," PMC vice president Muhammad Ali Raza told Arab News, adding that the commission had already removed a discriminatory fee system under which overseas Pakistanis had to pay tuition in US dollars.
"We have abolished discrimination in fee structure for the overseas students as they will now be paying the same fee as the local students," he said. "Overseas students should compete with all other students to get in on merit."
In Pakistan, shock and horror as TikToker publicly assaulted by 'hundreds of men'
- Punjab Police are working with the National Database and Registration Authority to identify the suspects
- Woman says she was filming video with friends when 400 people attacked the group, says her clothes were torn off
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has taken notice of the assault of a young woman by a mob at the Minar-e-Pakistan monument in Lahore city and spoken with the police chief of Punjab province, a senior member of Khan’s party said on Wednesday about a case that has caused a major public outcry.
The assault, which took place on August 14, Pakistan’s independence day, came to the surface after videos were circulated on social media on Tuesday showing a woman being attacked and sexually assaulted by a mob comprising hundreds of men at the Greater Iqbal Park. The woman is reportedly a TikToker and was shooting videos in the park when she was attacked.
Greater Iqbal Park is home to Minar-e-Pakistan, a national monument built to commemorate where the first official call for a separate and independent homeland for the Muslims of British India was made by the All-India Muslim League Party in 1940. Pakistan became an independent country seven years later, on August 14. Each year, thousands of people flock to the monument to mark independence day.
“PM @ImranKhanPTI personally spoke to IGPunjab, police is catching all culprits involved in manhandling of female tiktoker in Lahore,” Sayed Zulfikar Bukhari, a member of Khan’s ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, said on Twitter. “These are gross violations of laws & social norms, govt won’t spare a single person involved.”
In an interview with Daily Pakistan, the woman, whom the media outlet did not name, said she was filming a video with some friends when a mob of around 400 people attacked the group.
"I wasn't wearing any indecent clothes," the woman said. "I had a new dress stitched for August 14, but I was stripped of everything."
Little is known about the victim, including her name or age.
Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar has also ordered that all culprits involved in the attack be arrested, his focal person Azhar Mashwani said on Twitter.
"Police is analyzing the video clips and available CCTV footages to identify the culprits and arrest them," he said, confirming that non-bailable clauses have been added to the police first information report.
Punjab Police said they are working with the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to identify the suspects.
"The NADRA staff are busy in identification of the suspects even on a holiday," the police said in a statement. "Case has been registered against the suspects under section 354-A that carries life imprisonment or death penalty. All efforts will be made to bring the culprits to justice."
Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari said her ministry was in touch with authorities in Punjab to ensure that strict action was taken against the perpetrators of the attack, adding that “we need to try and change such violent behavioral patterns in our people.”
"We have awareness programmes, laws etc. Certainly, effective implementation of our laws will have some deterrent effect but mindsets also have to change to stop crimes against all vulnerable members of our society."
Opposition politicians Shehbaz Sharif and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari also condemned the attack:
Escorted by Taliban: India’s midnight evacuation from Afghanistan
- Taliban fighters outside the Indian embassy weren’t there to extract revenge, but rather to escort Indians to
- Embassy decision to ask for Taliban help was made when fighters closed access to the once heavily fortified neighborhood
KABUL: Outside the main iron gate of the Indian embassy in Kabul, a group of Taliban fighters waited — armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
Inside the compound were 150 Indian diplomats and nationals — growing increasingly nervous as they watched news of the Taliban tightening their grip on the capital, which they took a day earlier without a fight.
Their position was a precarious one.
Pakistan has long been a Taliban supporter, and has been accused of using the country for so-called strategic depth in never-ending battles — real and diplomatic — with arch-rival India. Islamabad denies the charge. India has also strongly backed the government that took over when the Taliban were ousted in 2001, earning them hatred and enmity from the hard-line group.
But the Taliban fighters outside the Indian embassy weren’t there to extract revenge, but rather to escort them to Kabul airport, where a military aircraft was on standby to evacuate them after New Delhi decided to shut its mission.
As the first of nearly two dozen vehicles drove out of the embassy late on Monday, some of the fighters waved and smiled at the passengers — an AFP correspondent among them.
One guided them toward the street leading out of the city’s green zone and on the main road to the airport.
The embassy’s decision to ask the Taliban to shepherd the Indians out was made when the fighters closed access to the once heavily fortified neighborhood after capturing Kabul the previous day.
A quarter of the 200 or so people who had gathered at the foreign mission had already been flown out of Afghanistan before the country’s new leaders took full control of the city.
“When we were evacuating the second group... we faced the Taliban, who refused to allow us to exit the green zone,” said an official who left with Monday’s group.
“We then decided to contact the Taliban and ask them to escort our convoy out.”
Two separate pledges of an escort failed to materialize during the day, unnerving the large group bunkered down at the embassy, with one diplomat likening the experience to “house arrest.”
It had been dark for several hours when the cars finally left the compound and embarked on the five-kilometer (three-mile) journey to the airport.
The snail-paced journey took five hours, with passengers passing each minute in constant fear of a potential attack.
- ‘I immediately knew it was time to leave’ -
Unfamiliar checkpoints had been set up and thousands of people displaced by the war were along the road.
At intervals, the Taliban fighters accompanying the Indian convoy jumped out of their own vehicles and aimed their guns at the crowds, forcing them to step back.
One man who appeared to be commanding the troops fired a few rounds in the air to scare back a large group gathered around one intersection.
The escort departed once the convoy reached the airport, where American soldiers had taken up positions and were coordinating flights.
After a wait of another two hours, the group boarded a C-17 Indian military transport plane that took off at dawn, landing at an air force base in the west Indian state of Gujarat later that morning.
“I’m so happy to be back,” Shirin Pathare, an Air India employee flown out of Kabul, told AFP as he stepped off the aircraft. “India is paradise.”
Another Indian citizen, cradling his two-year-old daughter, recalled the chaos and anxiety of his hasty departure from his office and the city.
“They were polite but when they went, they took two of our vehicles.
“I immediately knew it was time for me and my family to leave,” he added.
Braving stigma, one woman builds community of female bikers in Pakistan’s Karachi
- Marina Syed set up motorcycling school Rowdy Riders in 2018 to help hundreds of women learn how to ride bikes
- Social norms limit women’s mobility across Pakistan, travel activity is estimated to be 80 percent dominated by men
KARACHI: Marina Syed first started thinking about learning to ride a motorbike in 2014 when she regularly had to stand on deserted Karachi street corners after work, waiting to catch buses or rickshaws to her house more than an hour away.
Eventually, she would almost always have to call her brother to pick her up, all the while nervous about being out alone in a city that in 2014 was ranked the sixth highest in the world for crime rates.
Social norms and safety concerns limit women’s mobility across Pakistan, where general commuting and travel activity is estimated to be 80 percent dominated by men, according to a 2016 London School of Economics study on gender inequality in transportation.
And given that Karachi has one of the worst transportation systems in the world, Syed knew that it was up to her, and only her, to figure out how to cover long distances in the teeming port city.
In a conservative nation where women are conspicuously absent in public spaces, and the sight of a woman on a bike is a rarity, the journey to becoming an expert bike rider and trainer has not been an easy one.
From fighting opposition from her Afghan-origin family members to braving stigma on the male-dominated roads of Pakistan’s largest city, today, Syed doesn’t just ride herself, she also runs Rowdy Riders, a biking school and a community of women riders in Karachi.
“When my family heard about this [desire to learn to ride a bike], there was a lot of social shunning as relatives complained to my parents,” Syed told Arab News. “‘She’s a girl, how can she do this in our society?’ they would say.”
Syed was undeterred. She borrowed a bike from a friend and began to ride secretly. After weeks of crashing into bushes, skidding on muddy playgrounds and bruising her arms and legs, Syed became confident enough to ride herself to university and eventually to work.
The first time she drove a few kilometers away from her house alone, Syed said she felt “awesome.”
It was almost two years later, in 2016, that she used savings to buy her own bike — a used 70cc motorbike. Even then, she had to hide her bike from her parents and park it at least two blocks from her house.
Then came a turning point, in 2017, when Syed decided to take part in a bike rally from Karachi to Kashmir.
“It was a 1,627-kilometer sponsored tour on a 250cc motorbike,’ she said. “For the first time, I rode out of Karachi and realized my mistakes and my skills improved.”
After the tour ended, Syed decided to launch Rowdy Riders, which she now runs with her brother Syed Ghazanfar Shah on a dusty ground in a lower middle-class neighborhood of Karachi. A three-month course at the club costs Rs10,000 and classes run every day from 5-7pm. Those who can’t afford to pay the fees get free classes.
Students start by learning to follow traffic rules, wear appropriate biking gear and be mindful of others on the road. Then the bike riding begins.
Today, over 400 women have passed out of Rowdy Riders, Syed said, saying the school had become a sorority of sorts, with many bikers coming to visit even after graduating and groups getting together for weekend rides across the city.
Most are grateful for the gift of self-reliance.
“Learning how to ride a bike has helped me save a lot of money,” Farkhunda Feroz, a public servant, said about her experience at the school. “There was no one at home to take me [to work] and a rickshaw would charge too much.”
Syed said while she has had all kinds of clients, one memorable one was the wife of a cleric who arrived at the school in a burqa.
“She was fully covered, and I could only see her eyes,” Syed said. “He [the husband] wanted me to teach her to ride so that she could pick and drop their kids [from school].”
“I was so happy when after completing her training, she came riding on a scooter to meet me one day,” Syed said.
Another “inspiring example” was of an elderly man who enrolled his two daughters.
“An uncle who didn’t know how to ride a bike himself asked me to train his daughter,” Syed said. “Later, his younger daughter joined too.”
When asked what her advice was for first-time riders, Syed said:
“Take it slow. Perfect is not the one who rides fast but one who can ride slowly and with balance.”










