A GALLUP Pakistan poll released on Feb. 15, 2013 shows 92 percent of Pakistanis disapprove of US leadership. Similarly, a recent report by the Pew Research Centre said roughly three out of four Pakistanis consider the United States an enemy — up from 69 percent last year and 64 percent three years ago.
If polls and perceptions are to be believed, Pakistan and the United States seem worlds apart when it comes to how to tackle the question of war and peace because a trust deficit dominates their tense bilateral ties. However, when ordinary Pakistanis and Americans meet, they bring down many stereotypes about each other, narrating stories that are different than the popular perceptions. This is also the story of Arasalan Asad, a senior producer and reporter with Pakistan Television (PTV).
When Asad applied to “study and take an active part in journalism as practiced in the US,” he was clear how he wanted to spend his four weeks. He wanted to explore the opportunity of working in a Western media outlet to understand the different facets of American life and how they relate to the question of Pakistan.
Under the program for Journalists, announced by the United States Educational Foundation in Pakistan and implemented by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), more than 74 journalists across Pakistan spent four weeks in US newsrooms in 2011 and 2012. Set to continue for another two years, a total of 160 Pakistani journalists will have the opportunity to work in the United States.
Similarly, American journalists visited Pakistan for a two-week program to “learn the realities of Pakistani journalism and national life,” according to ICFJ.
Today when Asad narrates his work and impressions during the one-month stint with Bloomberg TV in New York, he sometimes feels like an odd man out. Though his friends jokingly call him an “American agent,” he understands that his narration of American life, completely at odds with popular anti-American impressions in Pakistan, is the reason for the unwelcoming sobriquet.
“The first shock was that ordinary Americans are not worried about Pakistan. Most didn’t know where the country was on the map and those who made a guess placed it in Middle East,” says Asad. “They are more concerned and worried about their local issues.”
He remembers the day he worked alongside with American journalists at Wall Street wearing traditional Pakistani dress, Shalwar Kameez, with a small replica of the green and white Pakistani flag on his chest. “A number of people inquired about the flag’s colors. When I told them that white represented minorities of Pakistan, they were pleasantly surprised.” By interacting, Americans came to know a Pakistan beyond the headlines.
After a few days in the Bloomberg TV studio, Asad made a beeline for Coney Island to explore the lives of Pakistani Americans. “It is rightly called a mini Pakistan. With restaurants serving traditional Pakistani meals, billboards in Urdu, women with head scarves; you feel you are roaming in Rawalpindi or Lahore.” It was quite different from the perception that Pakistanis have difficulty living in the United States.
Narrating these impressions, Asad encounters naysayers who point to the United States’ “policy of expansion” — Iraq, Pakistan, and the so-called “endgame” in Afghanistan as American troops plan a pullout.
“Relations between states are complex and driven by a number of varying economic and geographical interests. But when people meet people, they understand life is not all about ‘them versus us’,” says Asad.
He adds when American journalists visit Pakistan, they also go through a learning curve. “They come to know that Pakistan is much more than terrorism and fundamentalism.
They are fascinated by its diversity of culture, its natural beauty and the hospitality of the people.”
When he had an opportunity, Asad frankly discussed with American officials where their policies went wrong in “our part of world and how people in Pakistan and Afghanistan have suffered.” For him this may not be a game changer when it comes to US policy, but at least a different view was conveyed.
Knowing that the uneasy relations between Pakistan and the United States will continue to ebb and flow as American troops prepare to leave Afghanistan, he thinks that people-to-people contact is the only way out of the practice of demonizing each other.
US-Pakistan ties: Need to plug trust deficit
US-Pakistan ties: Need to plug trust deficit
Trump administration reinstating 24,500 fired workers after court order
The court filings are the first full accounting of the terminations by the administration
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration in court filings has for the first time acknowledged that it fired nearly 25,000 recently hired workers, and said agencies were working to bring all of them back after a judge ruled that their terminations were likely illegal.
The filings made in Baltimore, Maryland, federal court late Monday include statements from officials at 18 agencies, all of whom said the reinstated probationary workers were being placed on administrative leave at least temporarily.
The mass firings, part of President Donald Trump’s broader purge of the federal workforce, were widely reported, but the court filings are the first full accounting of the terminations by the administration.
Most of the agencies said they had fired a few hundred workers. The Treasury Department terminated about 7,600 people, the Department of Agriculture about 5,700 and the Department of Health and Human Services more than 3,200, according to the filings.
US District Judge James Bredar on March 13 said the mass firings of probationary workers that began last month violated regulations governing the mass layoffs of federal employees, and ordered them to be reinstated pending further litigation.
Probationary workers typically have less than one year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal employees.
Bredar’s ruling came in a lawsuit by 19 Democrat-led states and Washington, D.C., who said the mass firings would trigger a spike in unemployment claims and greater demand for social services provided by states.
The office of Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, which is spearheading the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The Trump administration has appealed Bredar’s decision and on Monday asked a Richmond, Virginia-based appeals court to pause the ruling pending the outcome of the case.
Hours before Bredar issued his ruling, a federal judge in San Francisco had ordered that probationary workers be reinstated at six agencies, including five also covered by Bredar’s order and the US Department of Defense. The administration has also appealed that decision.
In the filings late Monday, agency officials said they had either reinstated all of the fired employees or were working to do so, but warned that bringing back large numbers of workers had imposed significant burdens and caused confusion and turmoil.
The officials also noted that an appeals court ruling reversing Bredar’s order would allow agencies to again fire the workers, subjecting them to multiple changes in their employment status in a matter of weeks.
“The tremendous uncertainty associated with this confusion and these administrative burdens impede supervisors from appropriately managing their workforce,” Mark Green, deputy assistant secretary at the US Department of the Interior, wrote in one of the filings. “Work schedules and assignments are effectively being tied to hearing and briefing schedules set by the courts.”
Bredar has scheduled a hearing for March 26 on whether to keep his ruling in place pending the outcome of the lawsuit, which could take months or longer to resolve.
Saudi Arabia condemns Israeli strikes on Gaza
- Kingdom stressed the importance of an immediate halt to Israeli killing, violence, and destruction, and the protection of Palestinian civilians
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia on Tuesday condemned and denounced renewed violence in Gaza after Israel unleashed its most intense strikes overnight since a ceasefire was established two months ago.
The health ministry in Gaza said more than 400 people were killed after the strikes that took place during the fasting month of Ramadan.
The Kingdom stressed the importance of an immediate halt to Israeli killing, violence, and destruction, and the protection of Palestinian civilians.
Saudi Arabia also said it was important that the international community fulfilled its responsibilities by intervening immediately to put an end to Israeli crimes and stop the severe humanitarian suffering endured by the Palestinian people.
Gaza’s health ministry said the bodies of 413 people had been received by the territory’s hospitals, adding “a number of victims are still under the rubble.”
Netanyahu coalition jeopardized over ultra-Orthodox exemption from army
- The government must pass the budget by the end of the month or call snap elections
- United Torah Judaism holds seven seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament
BNEI BRAK, Israel: One of Israel’s most divisive domestic issues has reared itself again to challenge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after a group in the ruling coalition said it would bring the government down unless it exempts ultra-Orthodox Jews from army service.
Some members of United Torah Judaism, one of two ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties in the coalition, said in a letter that they would vote against the budget if the government did not pass a new law formalising exemptions for religious students.
“If this matter is once again sidelined or delayed for any reason, we will not be able to continue as partners in the coalition,” said the March 6 letter signed by Housing Minister and party chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf and two others.
The government must pass the budget by the end of the month or call snap elections. United Torah Judaism holds seven seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
It is too early to predict the consequences. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is a proven master at smoothing over disagreements in his coalitions. An ultra-nationalist group that quit the government over the ceasefire in Gaza in January announced on Tuesday it was returning.
But pollster Mitchell Barak, who worked for Netanyahu in the 1990s, said this time ultra-Orthodox politicians appeared unwilling to compromise, and the prime minister might have to look outside the coalition for support to pass the budget, an extraordinary step.
“He’s going to look for someone who can compromise, save him, and be that ‘freyer’,” he said, speaking before the ultra-nationalists announced their return to the coalition and using a Yiddish word for someone who lets others take advantage of him. “That’s how he operates.”
The prime minister’s office declined to comment on the ultra-Orthodox ultimatum and whether he believed the budget could pass without their support.
MILITARY STRAINED
In Israel, military service is mandatory at age 18, after which Israelis become reservists liable to be called up for training or deployment.
But dating back to Israel’s founding in 1948 it made an exemption for ultra-Orthodox communities, known as Haredim, whose young men mainly dedicate their lives to studying religious texts in academies known as yeshivot.
Those communities were initially small but have grown rapidly in the following decades. According to government data, there are now 1.4 million Haredim, accounting for about 14 percent of the population, deepening resentment among other Israelis who are conscripted.
In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that the exemption was unconstitutional, and last year it ordered the military to conscript yeshiva students. Legal experts say the only way to restore the exemption would be to pass a new law enshrining it.
Members of the Haredi community say they would resist any attempt to conscript their children.
“They can put us in prison,” said Yehoshua Menuchin at his home in Bnei Brak, a densely populated city close to Tel Aviv where many Haredim live.
Menuchin, who has a 19-year-old son who is not serving, said the debate was driven by politics, rather than by genuine military need.
“If it’s a matter of survival, like an Arab invasion, then the Haredim will be the first to volunteer in order to save lives. But as long as it is political, it won’t ever happen.”
But 18 months into war in Gaza and major military operations in the West Bank and Lebanon, resentment is growing, and many lawmakers say the exemption is unjustifiable.
“They don’t know what 30 days of reserve duty a year is, and they don’t know what it is to dread that knock on the door,” centrist opposition lawmaker Elazar Stern, a former general, told Reuters, referring to the moment a parent learns of a child’s death in service.
DIVINE INTERVENTION
The Haredim live in insular neighborhoods centered around strict religious observance, with their own schools that largely eschew math and science. They have twice as many children as the national average, rely heavily on state welfare and charity, and those who work are often in low-paying jobs.
They believe that sending their children to the military is an existential threat, fearing that exposure to secular Israelis and outside influences could undermine their way of life.
“I know one thing: we must go the way the Torah instructs us,” said Meir Zvi Bergman, one of Israel’s most widely followed Haredi rabbis. “God does not want us to go, so we won’t go.”
The army says it is working to create conditions to make it easier for more Haredim to serve, such as dedicated battalions with strict religious practices, including regular prayer and gender segregation.
“The responsibility to defend the country must be shared fairly,” Eyal Zamir, Israel’s new chief of the military staff, said in a speech this month taking up his post. (Reporting by Alexander Cornwell, additional reporting by Maayan Lubell and Steven Scheer)
At least 18 killed in airstrike on market in northern Mali, separatist group says
- The army said it had mounted an attack targeting armed militants.
- Mali, along with its neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger, has for more than a decade battled an insurgency fought by armed groups
BAMAKO: At least 18 people have been killed in an airstrike in northern Mali, a separatist group said. The army said it had mounted an attack targeting armed militants.
The Collective for the Defense of the Rights of the Azawad People, which is part of a Tuareg separatist coalition, said Monday the Malian army bombed a market 50 km (30 miles) north of Lerneb, in the Timbuktu region.
Seven people were also injured in the strike on Sunday, the group said in a statement, denouncing a “barbaric act from another age” and a “flagrant human rights violation.”
Mali’s army said Monday in a statement on X it carried out air strikes on a “refuge” in the same area cited by the separatist group, killing 11 “terrorists.”
Mali, along with its neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger, has for more than a decade battled an insurgency fought by armed groups, including some allied with Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group.
Following military coups in all three nations in recent years, the ruling juntas have expelled French forces and turned to Russian mercenary units for security assistance instead.
Since seizing power in 2021, Col. Assimi Goita has struggled to curb violence in central and northern Mali, while the army has been accused of targeting civilians.
Last month, the Front for the Liberation of Azawad, the coalition of Tuareg separatist groups, accused the Malian army and Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group of “coldly executing” at least 24 people in northern Mali.
Last year, the rights group Human Rights Watch said in a report the army and Russian mercenaries killed at least 32 civilians, including seven in a drone strike, kidnapped four others, and burned at least 100 homes in towns and villages in central and northern Mali between May and December.
Pakistan shuts universities in southwest province over ‘security concerns’
- Security across the provincial capital has been heightened, with an increased number of security forces on the streets
- The decision to reopen the campuses will be made after the Muslim festival of Eid, just two weeks away, an official says
QUETTA: Pakistan’s volatile Balochistan province has ordered the closure of three universities in recent weeks due to “security concerns,” an official told AFP on Tuesday, as separatist attacks surge in the region.
Two universities in the provincial capital of Quetta were ordered to close for an “indefinite period” last week, while on Tuesday, a third was instructed to switch to virtual learning, a provincial administration official told AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
“The decision was made after reviewing the overall security situation,” the official said
“It was decided to switch to virtual learning until further notice due to security concerns.”
The decision to reopen the campuses, which will impact thousands of students, will be made after the Muslim festival of Eid, just two weeks away, the official said.
Security across the provincial capital has been heightened, with an increased number of security forces on the streets and additional checkpoints set up throughout the city following the recent surge in separatist violence.
Last week, ethnic Baloch separatists attacked a train with 450 passengers on board, sparking a two-day siege during which dozens of people were killed.
And on Sunday, at least five paramilitaries were killed in a vehicle-borne suicide attack.
The assaults were claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), one of a number of separatist groups that accuse outsiders of plundering natural resources in Balochistan near the borders with Afghanistan and Iran.
