Haider Ali bags Pakistan’s first-ever gold medal at Paralympic Games
Haider Ali bags Pakistan’s first-ever gold medal at Paralympic Games/node/1922136/pakistan
Haider Ali bags Pakistan’s first-ever gold medal at Paralympic Games
Pakistani thrower Haider Ali (center) holding his gold medal after winning gold medal F37 discus throw in Tokyo, Japan on September 3, 2021. (Photo courtesy: PTV)
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani athlete Haider Ali won the country’s first-ever gold medal at the Paralympic Games with a top podium finish in the discus throw event at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics on Friday.
Two decorated Pakistani athletes are in Japan to participate in the 2020 Summer Paralympics which began last week: all-rounder para-athlete Haider Ali, who has cerebral palsy, and discus thrower Anila Izzat Baig, the first female athlete from Pakistan to compete at the games. Baig has an impairment to her leg as a result of polio, which she contracted at age three.
“It’s Gold for #PAK!” the official Twitter handle of the games said. “F37 discus thrower Haider Ali wins his country’s first medal of the Games!”
“His throw of 55.26m is a personal best and almost three meters longer than second place!”
It's #Gold for #PAK! F37 discus thrower Haider Ali wins his country's first medal of the Games!
The Paralympic Games, which began as a small gathering in 1948, have gradually evolved into one of the largest and most inclusive competitions for athletes with disabilities to compete on the world stage.
Organizers of the Paralympic Games have said that the event is more than a sports competition, and repeatedly cast it as a way to draw attention to the 15 percent of the global population with impairments.
Ali, 37, hails from Gujranwala in Pakistan’s Punjab province. He has been participating in international competitions for about 15 years and representing Pakistan since 2006, he told Arab News in an interview last month. His memorable achievements include creating history at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing, China, where he won Pakistan’s first ever Paralympic games medal, a silver, in the F37/38 long jump.
Ali clinched gold in the F38 long jump event and bronze in the T-38 100-meters dash at the 2010 Asian Para Games held in Guangzhou, China. He also won gold for Pakistan in the long jump event at the Far East and South Pacific Games for the Disabled that were held in Malaysia in 2006.
“My family was and continues to be supportive of me both financially and otherwise,” he said. “The National Paralympics Committee of Pakistan is also there.”
Asked about government support, Ali said: “For 15 years, I have faced many hurdles. During this period, I received 30 percent support from the government and 70 percent was my own effort.”
KARACHI: Kamran Faridi, a fallen undercover FBI agent from Karachi who was recently released from a Florida prison on the condition he would surrender his American nationality and deport himself to Pakistan permanently, said on Tuesday it would be “dangerous” for him to return to his home country from where he had escaped a life of crime nearly 30 years ago.
Faridi, 60, worked as an informant and agent for the FBI for nearly 15 years and was the architect of the plan to entrap Karachi businessman Jabir Motiwala, arrested by Scotland Yard in London in 2018 on the request of the United States. After years working for the FBI, he was sentenced to 84 months in jail on Dec. 9, 2022, after he refused to testify against Motiwala.
“It will compromise my well-being, it’s going to be difficult,” Faridi told Arab News in a phone interview from Florida, speaking about the prospect of returning to Karachi after nearly 30 years. “It’s going to be dangerous but what choices do I have?”
The undated photograph shows Kamran Faridi, a fallen undercover FBI agent from Karachi, posing for a picture in front of the ISIS flag. (AN photo via Kamran Faridi)
Faridi, who lives in the US with his American wife, said the judge had reduced one year from his prison sentence on account of a recent law where a first offender gets a two-point sentence reduction.
Good conduct in prison and a verbal agreement with American authorities that he would surrender his nationality and return to Pakistan before August this year further reduced his sentence, Faridi said. Another stipulation of the agreement was that he would not appeal the court’s decision.
VETERAN SPY
Faridi worked for the FBI from 1995 till 2020 and helped the American agency nab several targets associated with transnational terrorist organizations. However, a 25-year relationship with the American agency turned sour in 2020 after Faridi said he refused to testify against Motiwala, allegedly a high-ranking member of the Indian organized crime syndicate D-Company.
Motiwala was arrested in London in August 2018 for conspiring to launder money into the United States and using force to extort funds. Faridi, who played a pivotal role in his arrest, said he later refused to testify against Motiwala after he realized the businessperson had been framed on bogus charges.
Faridi said his FBI colleagues had informed him that FBI was involved in a joint operation with India’s spy agency the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) to establish a link between Motiwala, the D-Company and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) military spy agency.
Faridi was arrested in London in 2020 after FBI agents intercepted his conversations with Motiwala’s lawyers, revealing his intent to testify in Motiwala’s favor. He was apprehended at the London Heathrow Airport while attempting to enter the UK, intending to testify against the FBI’s actions regarding Motiwala.
Charged with being a threat to his former FBI colleagues, Faridi was swiftly extradited back to the US and jailed.
“It’s a very complex case, the FBI wants to punish me for not testifying against D-Company,” Faridi said.
The undated picture shows a fallen undercover FBI agent from Karachi, Kamran Faridi (left). (AN photo via Kamran Faridi)
FROM KARACHI TO ATLANTA
Faridi was a member of the Karachi-based Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) party and subsequently of its rival, the Peoples Student Federation (PSF), in the 1990s. Both groups were widely known to be involved in criminal activities like kidnappings and armed robberies, which Faridi also became linked to. He later went on the run and escaped to Sweden, where he sought asylum almost three decades ago. He was later arrested by authorities after getting into fights with local gangs there, but broke out of prison and managed to escape to the US, where he ran a gas station in Atlanta.
It was there that he came into contact with the Atlanta Police Department after he complained to them about “corrupt” police officers whom Farid said were harassing him. Thus began his work as an informant with Atlanta police, who later introduced him to the FBI. Impressed with his proficiency in the Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi, and Spanish languages, the FBI decided to recruit him as an informant and agent.
“So that’s how I got introduced to FBI and they introduced me to the Drug Enforcement Authority, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and after 9/11 the Central Intelligence Agency, MI6, French intelligence and many others,” Faridi said.
Faridi said he had paid a “hefty” price for refusing to testify against Motiwala but would now return to Karachi with his wife.
“I was a gangster but I am neither a criminal nor a gangster now,” he said. “I am returning to my city as a normal man.”
ISLAMABAD: Director General (DG) Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj-Gen Ahmed Sharif repeated Islamabad’s accusations that militants were launching attacks on Pakistan from Afghanistan and said a recent attack in which five Chinese nationals were killed was also planned in the neighboring country.
A suicide bomber rammed a vehicle into a convoy of Chinese engineers working on a hydropower project at Dasu in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing five Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver on Mar. 26.
The assault was the third major attack in little over a week on China’s interests in the South Asian nation, where Beijing has invested more than $65 billion in infrastructure projects as part of its wider Belt and Road initiative. It came amid a recent surge in militant violence in the country that the government — without providing evidence — has said mostly involved Afghans. The Taliban government in Kabul denies it allows anti-Pakistan militants to operate from its soil.
“The attack [against the Chinese engineers] was planned in Afghanistan,” the spokesperson of the Pakistan army said at a press conference.
“The explosives-laden vehicle used in the attack was also prepared in Afghanistan and sent to Pakistan. The attacker was also an Afghan national. When the network [that carried out the attack] was exposed, its central characters like Adil Shahbaz, Zahid Qureshi, Nazir Hussain and another one of their companions were arrested.”
However, the DG ISPR said the government was working to strengthen the security of Chinese workers and make it “fool-proof,” saying the attacks on Chinese workers were aimed at undermining Pakistan’s economic interests and its strategic relations with longtime ally Beijing.
Sharif said Pakistan had taken up the issue of militant violence with Afghan authorities, who were unhelpful.
“There is solid evidence of TTP terrorists using Afghan soil to launch attacks in Pakistan,” he added.
The Taliban say Pakistan’s security issues are an internal challenge.
The Mar. 26 bombing followed a Mar. 20 attack on a strategic port used by China in the southwestern province of Balochistan, where Beijing has poured billions of dollars into infrastructure projects, and a Mar. 25 assault on a naval air base, also in the southwest. Both attacks were claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most prominent of several separatist groups in Balochistan.
Dasu, the site of a major dam, has been attacked in the past, with a bus blast in 2021 killing 13 people, nine Chinese among them, although no group claimed responsibility, like the Mar. 26 bombing.
Pakistan is home to twin insurgencies, one mounted by religiously-motivated militants like the TTP that Islamabad says operate from Afghanistan, and the other by ethnic separatists who seek secession, blaming the government’s inequitable division of natural resources in southwestern Balochistan province.
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government said on Tuesday it was vital to reform the country’s pension system, including by raising the retirement age, to mitigate expenditure as Islamabad aims to save the system billions of dollars per year, with a committee formed to propose recommendations.
The belt tightening moves come as Islamabad — which is facing a balance of payment crisis — is in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to secure a new long-term bailout deal. In the past, Pakistan has faced the challenges of revenue generation and government expenditure and struggled with high levels of debt, a large fiscal deficit and an ongoing need for structural reforms to improve its fiscal sustainability.
Under the last $3 billion bailout, Pakistan implemented several IMF-mandated reforms, such as budget adjustments, increasing interest rates, and higher energy prices. Among expected reforms under a new program are strengthening public finances through gradual fiscal consolidation, broadening the existing tax base and improving tax administration, and debt sustainability, all while protecting the vulnerable.
An IMF mission is expected in Pakistan in the next ten days to discuss a new loan program that the finance minister has said would be “larger and longer.”
“Age is just a number,” Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said at a press conference in Islamabad, calling for reforms in the pension system and saying pension payments were a “huge liability.”
“Sixty is the new 40. In the [private sector] institution I left before coming here [as finance minister], we raised the retirement age from 60 to 65. These are your most productive years when you have maximum experience.”
He recognized that changes to the service structure could not be carried out overnight but said Pakistan would need to move in this direction to control the pension costs.
Law Minister Azam Nazir Tarar said pension reforms would be held across the board, for which legislation was required.
“A large chunk of yearly revenue is utilized on paying retirement benefits and pensions,” Tarar said at the press conference with Aurangzeb. “Legislation is required for this as civil servants, armed forces, judicial organs, and executive organs are included.”
The law minister said a committee had been formed under the chair of the finance minister to propose recommendations pertaining to pension reforms.
In March this year, Pakistan’s media widely reported that the finance ministry had shared a pension reform program with the IMF to contain growing pension liabilities, with the consolidated federal and provincial pension expenditure projected to increase by over 20 percent from Rs1.252 trillion last year to Rs1.513tn this year.
The reforms scheme shared with the lender reportedly seeks to cut the annual federal pension expense on existing employees by changing the formula for pension calculation, slashing the commutation rate, discouraging early retirement through the imposition of a penalty, restricting the list of beneficiaries of the deceased employees, and ending the current practice of multiple pensions.
In a 2021 report, the State Bank of Pakistan said the federal pension expenditure was increasingly becoming unsustainable:
“When we look at the federal pension bill, there has been a significant rise. Pension bill has increased at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of almost 14pc during 2012-23.”
According to the bank, overall pension spending as a percentage of total budgeted expenditure for FY20 exceeded the federal and provincial health and education spending and was almost half the level of consolidated development expenditures.
The World Bank in 2020 warned that salary and pension costs in Pakistan would persistently grow and crowd out other public expenditures in the coming years.
Rejuvenated Amir back for ‘unfinished work’ at T20 World Cup
Amir was selected at the age of 15 by none other than great left-armer Wasim Akram at a fast-bowling camp
He says his short-term goal is to win World Cup, adds it’s hard to describe the feeling of playing for Pakistan
Updated 07 May 2024
AFP
KARACHI: Rejuvenated fast bowler Mohammad Amir said he has “unfinished work” at next month’s T20 World Cup, 15 years after dazzling as a teenager when Pakistan last lifted the trophy.
The 32-year-old, who was jailed for spot-fixing in 2011, came out of retirement last month and is grateful to have another crack at the World Cup.
“It’s a great feeling to be playing for Pakistan again,” Amir told AFP by phone from Lahore this week ahead of the tournament in the United States and the West Indies beginning on June 2.
“I want to complete the unfinished work and, for me, the short-term goal is to win the World Cup.”
The young Amir impressed in all formats after breaking into the Pakistan side in 2009 and playing at the T20 World Cup.
Within a year he was one of the hottest young talents in cricket, but his precocious career then crashed to an infamous halt in 2010.
Amir was one of three Pakistan players banned from cricket for five years for spot-fixing during a Test match in England after being caught in a newspaper sting. He was later jailed in the UK for six months.
Pakistan captain Salman Butt, who was deemed the ringleader, and fellow quick bowler Mohammad Asif were also banned and the pair were jailed for 30 and 12 months respectively.
Amir returned after his ban to play for Pakistan in 2016 but announced a shock retirement in December 2020 after poor form kept him from being selected.
He will form a potent pace bowling attack with spearhead Shaheen Shah Afridi, Naseem Shah and Haris Rauf that sees Pakistan ranked among the World Cup favorites.
“The Pakistan Cricket Board and the team management have shown trust in me so I have to fulfil that trust,” said Amir.
“I have come back after four years and when you play for your country the feeling cannot be described.”
Amir played three of the four T20 home matches against New Zealand last month, taking three wickets in a 2-2 drawn series, and said he felt part of the attack again.
“To be honest I felt fitter than in 2019 and until you are fit you cannot express yourself, so I am ready to do better and better,” said Amir.
He will be in action when Pakistan travel to Ireland for three T20s in Dublin on May 10, 12 and 14.
Pakistan then move to England to play the defending T20 world champions in Leeds (May 22), Birmingham (May 25), Cardiff (May 28) and London (May 30).
Brought up in Changa Bangial village in Punjab province, some 60 kilometers from the capital Islamabad, Amir was determined to make his name in cricket after his five older brothers introduced him to playing.
He was picked out at the age of 15 by none other than great left-armer Wasim Akram at a fast-bowling camp and within two years grew in height and overcame a stress fracture of the back.
Amir said now he only wanted to remember the good events in his career.
“The 2009 Twenty20 World Cup winning memories are special and excite me to this day,” said Amir, who took six wickets in seven matches in the tournament.
They included the prize dismissal of Sri Lanka opener Tillakaratne Dilshan — the player of the tournament — in Pakistan’s eight-wicket final victory.
“I was selected for the first time and then became part of a champion team.
“When I landed (back) at Rawalpindi airport to go to my village there were so many cars and they were showering flowers on me,” he recalled.
“I am lucky that I am still playing. When I came, I was the youngest in the team, so here I am having another chance to win the World Cup and that is the target for me and my team.”
ISLAMABAD: A senior official of the Indian cricket board this week confirmed that it would send its team next year to Pakistan for the Champions Trophy tournament only if its central government gave it permission to do so.
Pakistan is expected to host the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 tournament from February to March 2025. The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has proposed three venues for the tournament— Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi, according to local and international media reports. However, out of the eight participating teams, a question mark looms over whether the Indian cricket team will travel to Pakistan for the tournament.
The last time an Indian cricket team traveled to Pakistan for a cricket event was in 2008 for the Asia Cup. The Nov. 26 2008 Mumbai attacks caused a severe strain in India-Pakistan relations, forcing both teams to play against each other only during international events and at “neutral venues.”
As hosts of the Asia Cup last year, Pakistan were forced to agree to a hybrid model according to which India played all of their matches, including those against Pakistan, in Sri Lanka. Though Pakistan raised the prospect of a hybrid model for their presence in the ODI World Cup in India last year, they ended up playing all their games in the neighboring country.
“In the case of the Champions Trophy, we will do whatever the government of India will tell us to do,” Rajeev Shukla, vice president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) told Indian news agency ANI on Monday.
“We send our team only when the government of India gives us permission.”
According to cricket website ESPNcricinfo, Pakistan has proposed hosting all of India’s Champions Trophy matches in the eastern city of Lahore. The website reported that hosting all of India’s matches in Lahore would mean less logistical and security headaches around their travel. Additionally, the Wagah border crossing in Lahore allows Indian fans a relatively easier option to visit.
Pakistan are defending champions of the ICC Champions Trophy. The green shirts won the trophy under former captain Sarfaraz Ahmed in 2017 at The Oval in London after thrashing India by 180 runs to win the tournament. Champions Trophy 2017 was thought to be the last edition of the tournament until the ICC brought it back in the new rights cycle (2023-2027) and awarded Pakistan the hosting rights for the 2025 edition.
