HALA, SINDH: Lubna Abbas, 22, skillfully molded a piece of clay into a delicate flower with her hands earlier this month as she sat in the courtyard of her house in the heart of Hala, a town in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province known as a “city of artisans.”
For centuries, the intricate art of kashi gari, which involves hand painting ceramics like pottery and tiles in stunning shades of blue and turquoise, has been a male-dominated profession, but one master of the craft, Ghulam Abbas, wants to change that and has trained the women of his family to enter the profession. 
“All the artisans in Hala are only men, women have no role in this, they neither do the work, nor are they taught,” Abbas told Arab News. “No artisan here teaches his daughters but I decided to teach my daughters and even daughters-in-law to do this work.”
Hala, a historic town with a population of around 65,000, has been a leading center of the Suhrawardi sect of Sufism from the 16th century onwards. It is also famous through the Indian subcontinent for art, woodwork, cloth printing, woven and homespun cloth and glazed colored pottery called kashi, hand painted for centuries by male artisans like 72-year-old Abbas. 
“It has been going on for centuries that the son of a kashi gar will become a kashi gar, but my father said that he will also make his daughters kashi gars,” Lubna told Arab News as she and her sister Rida and sister-in-law Kiran rolled dough for pottery in their yard. 
“So, thank God, we are doing this kashi gari work and Insha’Allah we will continue to do it.”
Lubna, who recently enrolled in a BSc program in biology, said she loved working alongside her father and hoped to follow in his footsteps and become a master of kashi gari. 
“Baba, I want to do this work with you, just like you do,” she told her father as she placed a clay flower she had just made in the sunlight to dry. 
“We’ve been doing this work for five years now and our work is no less important than anyone else’s, and neither are we.”
Abbas, who has exhibited his work in and traveled to the UK and Europe, rebuffed the decline in handmade goods due to the advent of machine-work. 
“People say ‘there’s no profit in this work’ but I believe that respect is its true reward,” Abbas added.
“Profits may be fleeting, but people will remember us for being skilled craftsmen who passed on their craft to their children and others.”

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan has made a conditional offer for talks with the army and called on the military to appoint its representatives for the negotiations, his party said in a statement on Wednesday. 
Khan came to power in 2018 and was ousted in 2022 in a parliamentary no-trust vote after what is widely believed to be a falling out with Pakistan’s powerful military, which had helped propel him into office. The army denies political interference. 
Since his ouster, Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party have led a defiant campaign against the army, even blaming senior military officials for an assassination bid on Khan in November 2022 as he was leading a protest caravan to Islamabad.
The PTI’s founder has been in jail since August last year, even though all four convictions handed down to him ahead of a parliamentary election in February have either been suspended or overturned. Khan says all legal cases against him are motivated to keep him out of politics and suppress his party’s popularity.
“We prefer negotiations with the real decision-makers, the military leadership, instead of this puppet government,” Khan said in a statement from prison shared with the media by the PTI. “We have given Mahmood Khan Achakzai the mandate for negotiations. If the military leadership appoints their representative, we will hold conditional talks.”
Achakzai, a Pashtun politician from southwestern Balochistan, is the top leader of a six-party opposition alliance which includes the PTI.
“The first demand for negotiations is to return our stolen mandate,” Khan added, referring to his party’s allegation of widespread rigging of February 8 general elections to deprive the PTI of its actual number of seats. 
“The second demand is the release of prisoners and the dismissal of false cases. The third stage is the conduct of fair and transparent elections, without which the integrity of the country is at risk.”
Khan and his party have complained of an ever-widening crackdown against the party since May 9 last year when alleged supporters of the PTI attacked and damaged government and military installations. Hundreds of PTI supporters and leaders were arrested following the riots and some continue to remain behind bars as they await trial.
The army has also initiated military court trials of at least 103 people accused of involvement in the violence. Many close Khan aides have since deserted him, due to what is widely believed to be pressure from the army, which denies interfering in politics.
Khan and the PTI say the May riots have been used as a ruse by political rivals and the military to crack down on the party, which is arguably the most popular in Pakistan. Khan has also been indicted under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism law in connection with the violence. A section of Pakistan’s 1997 anti-terrorism act prescribes the death penalty as maximum punishment. Khan has denied the charges, saying he was in detention when the violence took place.
Responding to Khan’s latest offer for talks, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar accused the PTI founder of “dragging” state institutions into the country’s politics.
“He does not want state institutions to remain neutral,” Tarar said, “and wants to involve them in politics for his own political benefit.”