Headlines & Comments, Kishwar Naheed, Ayaz Amir, Shaheen Sehbai

Iran, Israel attend secret nuclear meet in Cairo
* Pillow fight?
Profits in the Name of Allah: Sharia Banking Comes to Germany
* Good or bad for local businesses?
Authorities crawl into shell as insecurity mounts
* Where else can they go? The Presidency is already occupied.
Vigilance at Civic Centre tightened & Enhanced safety steps put in place at City Courts
* Try the school treatment. Close them down also
PPP plans to bulldoze NRO through parliament
* And failing which they will strap bombs to Rehman Malik and ....
Pakistanis wary of pro-India US stance, say scholars
* Pehlay kuch ker kay tou dikhao quam ko, phir naraz hona
Inside the mind of a coward terrorist
* Written in the safety of a guarded office
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s book declared best
*Sycophancy alive and well!
Sugar crisis worsens across NWFP
* Wahan jaan kay laalay haiN aur yeh cheeni ka rona ro rahay haiN



The story of Kishwar Naheed is unique in some parts because every individual is unique, specially an artist like her. But it is quite universal for most part because this is the story of a sensitive, emancipated woman from any society. However, the open wounds of Naheed do not let the book become a sheer lamentation of how women have suffered and continue to suffer or how every individual man has to be blamed for all that has gone wrong in history. Naheed has a much deeper understanding of human suffering than just reducing it to a battle of sexes. Any sensitive soul would suffer, whether a woman or a man, at the hands of an insensitive being, whether a woman or a man. She understands it well. Haris Khalique on Kishwar Naheed

That is why this war is so important. Winning it reclaims the idea of Pakistan and creates space for a better future. Losing it leads to possibilities too horrible to contemplate: among them the erosion of national morale and the death of the notion that the army was the first line of national defence. The stakes being so high, there is no choice but to win, and win decisively. Of course it is not going to be easy. South Waziristan's fighters, including the foreign elements, are amongst the most battle-hardened on the planet. They have been fighting for decades -- in Afghanistan, disputed Kashmir, now FATA. Add to this the nature of the Waziristani terrain and it is clear that the army has a job on its hands. Ayaz Amir

His logic fails him when he writes:

3-5,000 Hezbollah fighters defeated the Israeli army in Lebanon in 2006. At the height of the Kashmir uprising (starting from 1989) there could not have been more than 5-10,000 guerrilla fighters in the Valley. But they tied down close to half a million Indian troops, the bulk of which remain in Kashmir. At a conservative guess the Taliban in South Waziristan would be having 10-15,000 fighters, which makes them a formidable foe.

Why? Because he makes the same mistakes the faujis and politician do when reckoning. He overlooks the millions of brainwashed Pakistanis that are willing fodder for the terrorists and that make up the endless supply lines. ~~~t [ He is spot on on the need to educate]

Informed presidential sources say President Zardari is now ready to give up all his powers under the 17th Amendment, including the powers to appoint the Army chief but whether it is too late and too little for Nawaz to accept this bait is not yet clear. What is clear is that Nawaz has been bitten twice or thrice by the same snake hole and he may not like to poke his finger in that hole again. Shaheen Sehbai