Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: 9/11, Afghanistan, AfPak, Air Strikes, Al Jazeera, Al-Qaeda, American Imperialism, Asif Ali Zardari, Baitullah Mehsud, Barak Obama, Bill Clinton, bin Ladern, Central Asia, CIA, Colonialism, Congress Government, Drone Attacks, Fata, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Hillary Clinton, Humeira Iqtidar, India, ISI, Malakand, Manmohan Singh, Militants, Mujahedeen, Mullah Omar, New Delhi, NWFP, Obama Administration, Pakistan, Pakistani Army, Pakistani Government, Pakistanis, Partition, Pashtun, Pervez Musharraf, Racism, Ruling Class, South Asia, Soviet Union, Swat Valley, Tehreek Nifaz e Sharia Mohammadi, US interests, US military, US occupation, War on Terror, White Supremacy
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June 2009
Source: Liberation
Even as the US military offensive intensifies in Afghanistan, a parallel offensive by the Pakistani Army, clearly under US pressure, in the country’s autonomous region of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and North West Frontier Province (NWFP), is underway. Estimates suggest that over 10 lakh civilians are being forced to flee the Swat Valley, one of the major theatres of the war, in what is being called the biggest displacement of people since the Partition (1947). While US air strikes recently massacred 150 civilians, mostly women and children, in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s military strikes are said to have killed hundreds of (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Air Strikes, Al-Qaeda, Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto, Bhutto, Bhutto Mazaar, Bhuttos, Chair of Pakistna Studies, Charlie Wilson, Fatima Bhutto, Garhi Khuda Bux, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Inter-Services Intelligence, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Karachi, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Mohammad Azam Khan, Mujahedin, North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, Pakistan Peoples Party, Pakistani President, Pakistani Sovereignty, Pakistani Taliban, Pakistanis, Peshawar Model School, President Pervez Musharraf, President Zardari, Salman Rushdie, Sind, South Waziristan, Sufi Shrine, Taj Mahal, Taliban, Terorism, Terroist, United States, US Drones, Yousuf Raza Gilani
Bhutto family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bux, Sindh Province, Pakistan
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08 January 2009
Source: New Statesman
The old Bhutto mazaar, or graveyard, is in a small town called Garhi Khuda Bux. It is not fair to call it a town; it’s a hamlet really, nestled between swaths of fertile agricultural land and small town centres that cater to travelling traders and produce distributors. When I was younger, I used to know we were close to the mazaar as we drove by the old paan wallah. He was a geriatric who sold betel-leaf paans, conical beedi cigarettes and a pack or two of Gold Leaf extra-strong smokes from the table he sat on. The mazaar itself was hundreds of years old and is where the Bhuttos have been buried since they settled in Sind. Wooden pillars, carved with lattice designs, marked the absence of the four walls that would have enclosed the open-air burial site. It was a sombre resting place: four corners of Sind lay open around you, and the dusty smell of the air in Garhi Khuda Bux’s desert climate surrounded mourners who came to mark death anniversaries and birthdays.
It’s all gone now.
It was torn down by the last member of the family to be buried there, Benazir Bhutto, and rebuilt as a mausoleum. In a country where politics has always orbited around personalities, she was determined that (more…)
