Friday, April 10, 2009
by Daud Khattak
PESHAWAR: Urging the president to save the Swat peace deal by signing Nizam-e-Adl Regulation apace, the NWFP government feared there were 80 percent chances of Pakistan becoming another Iraq if the situation continued progressing on the same track.
“Only 20 per cent hope is there for the return of normalcy in the present circumstances,” said a provincial government spokesman, who sought help from political parties, civil society, non-government organisations, media and other stakeholders in bringing peace to the restive Malakand region.
Speaking at a day-long seminar on “Nizam-e-Adl Regulation: A review,” NWFP Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said civil society and the international community must accept the ground realities, without which nothing could be achieved to bring peace to the troubled Swat valley.
The seminar was organised by the Peshawar Press Club (PPC) in collaboration with the provincial Information Department. Besides others, provincial ministers, senior government officials, political leaders and representatives of NGOs and civil society attended the seminar.
Mian Iftikhar said that President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani were taken into confidence ahead of signing deal with Maulana Sufi Muhammad regarding enforcement of the proposed regulation in the Malakand region.
A wide gap was seen in the point of view of the provincial government and representatives of the civil society with both sides presenting arguments and counter-arguments in support of or against the February 16 deal with the banned Tanzeem Nefaz Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) and the enforcement of the proposed Nizam-e-Adl Regulation in Malakand.
“We should not miss this final chance as the country would become another Iraq if the situation was not brought on the track, he said. Condemning the canning of the 17-year-old girl in public, the minister also questioned the time selected for the release of the ‘controversial’ video as well as its validity.
Terming the release of the video a conspiracy against NWFP government’s peace deal, Iftikhar said: “Why the video and reports about Taliban occupation of the emerald reserves were not released before the agreement?”
Opposing the US drone attacks, he said these strikes were creating indirect support for the militants. Pakhtun Awareness Movement chairman Dr Said Alam Mahsud said the NWFP government signed peace agreement with a man who termed democracy through ballot as un-Islamic the very next day of the deal.
He said the deal was neither in line with the Constitution nor the Pakhtunwali (Pakhtun code of life). He opined that the government had surrendered everything to the banned TNSM chief Sufi Muhammad by making him an unannounced Ameerul Momineen (chief of the faithful).
Council member of the provincial chapter of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Kamran Arif called the situation in Swat as a full-fledged insurgency and added that the militants did not want speedy justice rather they wanted to impose their own system of governance in the area.
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