Friday Nuggets

The Friday Times carries a section "Nuggets". Here's the latest courtesy BRF:

Ajmal Kasab trained in Mansehra and Muzaffarabad

According to Khabrain, Ajmal Amir Kasab, the one surviving terrorist who was arrested following the Mumbai attacks, said that he left his village in Okara after a fight with his father and was taken by Lashkar-e-Taiba to Muzaffarabad, Mansehra and Muridke and given terrorism training for 132 days. He and his group were given maps and instructions on how to act before being despatched in a boat from Karachi to a ship at sea named Al Husaini.

Hafiz Said is from Silanwali, Sargodha

According to Jang, Hafiz Muhammad Said, chief of the banned Jamatud Dawa, is from Tehsil Silanwali, Janubi Gamonwala village in Sargodha. He was born in 1950, the eldest of the three sons of Kamaluddin, an Ahle Hadith or Wahhabi leader of the village mosque. Said owns 10 acres of land in the village. His visits home once a year, to oversee the tillers, reportedly turn into a circus-like event.

Government is ‘buzdil’!

Quoted in Khabrain ex-interior minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said that after the consensus reached at the APC, the government had acted like a buzdil (coward) by taking action against Jamatud Dawa and Jaish Muhammad. He said it was time to stand up to India and defy the sanctions.

Ajmal Kasab abducted from Nepal

Quoted in daily Pakistan, Lahore lawyer CM Farooq disclosed that the Mumbai attackers were Pakistani Muslims whom the Indian agencies had kidnapped from Kathmandu many years ago. These Muslims had travelled from Pakistan on business visas. They were then used in the Mumbai plot. Later Nepal denied the claim by the Lahore lawyer.

Sher Afgan digs deep

Quoted in Khabrain ex-minister of PMLQ Sher Afgan said that America, India and Israel were after Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and wanted to get hold of them wherever they were kept. He said the war against terrorism was not Pakistan’s war and that Pakistan had to resist America’s pressure and keep its nuclear weapons in its own hands. He said the moment operations ended in the Tribal Areas terrorism, too, would come to an end, after which Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would be considered safe.

Unpleasant findings from Faridkot

Daily Jang reported that its team went to Faridkot in Okara to inquire whether Ajmal Amir Kasab, the terrorist caught in Mumbai, was an inhabitant of the village. At first the team was confronted with nothing but silence. Then more and more people started complaining that intelligence agencies were actively discouraging people from speaking the truth. President of the press club said if Ajmal was not from the village, there was no reason for the secret agencies to put pressure on the village? A villager then disclosed that Ajmal had disappeared only to return to show off his physical prowess and teach karate to the village children. People said the terrorists were not only bothering India but had made life hell for Pakistanis, too.

Jamatud Dawa and education

According to Nawa-e-Waqt, the banning of Jamatud Dawa in Pakistan had deprived several hundred thousand children of education. The Dawa ran 160 schools and 52 madrassas in the country. It also ran four universities and eight hospitals. Al Rashid Trust and Al Akhtar Trust looked after the wounded and martyred in Kashmir and the Afghan wars. The latter had a large number of doctors attached to it.

Wisdom from Aslam Beg!

Quoted in Nawa-e-Waqt ex-army chief Aslam Beg said that the ban on Jamatud Dawa had been imposed to please America. Now the ban would be applied to Hamid Gul, too. The Mumbai attacks were staged to weaken Pakistan. Pakistan is now to be targeted but the country was made by people not by the army. India is telling America we will hit Pakistan with a missile and retreat. The Pakistanis will forget about it because that is the way they react to drone attacks.

Declare nuclear war!

Quoted in Khabrain, clerical leader Engineer Salimullah said that Pakistan should declare nuclear war against India. Fareed Paracha said that India was benefiting from the sharafat (politeness) of Pakistan. Raza Kazimi said that the government’s action against Jamatud Dawa had forced the nation to hang its head in shame.

CIA versus ISI

TV anchor and columnist Talat Hussain wrote in Express that a CIA officer had come to Pakistan with proof that the ISI was in cahoots with the Taliban rather than fighting against them. Earlier an America paper had accused the Pakistani army chief of having planned the attack on the Indian embassy in Afghanistan. The objective of all this is to bring Pakistan under pressure so that all its flaws and internal weaknesses come to the surface.

Nadira’s brother killed by rogue generals

Daily Jang quoted a British newspaper to reveal that one Major General Faisal Alavi was murdered in Islamabad after he wrote a letter to army chief General Ashfaq Kayani in which he named two generals who had cut deals with terrorists, namely, Baitullah Mehsud, after paying substantial amounts of money in return a withdrawal of attacks on Pakistani troops. Alavi was a brother of Nadira, a British Pakistani married to Nobel Laureate novelist VS Naipaul. The British journalist who filed the report was in possession of the letter Mr Faisal Alavi wrote to the Pakistani army chief. Jang asked a retired army officer to comment. He said the story represented nothing but propaganda against the Pakistan Army.

How Bhutto took off bandmaster’s dress

Columnist Tanvir Qaiser Shahid wrote in Express that he was told by celebrated columnist Abdul Qadir Hassan how he had once written a column describing Bhutto’s special party uniform as the dress of a bandmaster. Bhutto never wore the uniform after reading that column.

Ajmal Kasab not Pakistani!

Interior Secretary Kamal Shah was quoted by Nawa-e-Waqt as saying that India had futoor (bad intention) in its mind because it was accusing Ajmal Kasab of being from Pakistan. Yet the captured terrorist was not on the record of NADRA and did not possess a Pakistani ID card. According to Khabrain, India said that if Pakistan accepted Ajmal as its citizen, India could talk to Pakistan.

Pakistan should be brave!

Ex-general Abdul Qayyum who undermined the privatisation of the Karachi Steel Mill and brought down the Musharraf regime told Nawa-e-Waqt that China had not supported Pakistan over allegations of its involvement in the Mumbai attacks. In future, Iran and Saudi Arabia, too, are not expected to help. Hence Pakistan should be brave and fight alone. He said Benazir was killed because she had supported the lawyers’ movement.

Who is Qaafa?

According to Jang, when the terrorists were in Nariman House in Mumbai, they were constantly being exhorted by one Qaafa by telephone. The conversation was intercepted by the Indians who say Qaafa repeatedly told the attackers to stay awake. Had Qaafa not kept up their morale they would have given themselves up instead of giving themselves up to death. Qaafa’s calls were traced to a city in Sindh named Azizabad. Qaafa is a deputy of Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi who, in turn, is the deputy of Hafiz Said.

PM’s car stolen?

Columnist Javed Chaudhry wrote in Express that a special car in which the PM travels when he comes to Lahore was stolen while it was parked in the city’s most secure zone after transporting the PM’s wife to the airport. He said the car was stolen and the police baghlain jhankti rahi (kept looking at the hair in its armpits).