Rupani donates for Attaabad disaster relief fund

Press release
HUNZA, Altit, Aliabad, Jan. 26: According to a press release, delegation led by Wazir Baig, speakerof GBLA, a member board of trustee of Rupani Rupani Foundation and other officials called on officials of Ismaili Regional Council for Hunza on at Baltit where they offered the invoice of donation for the disaster hit population of Attaabad village. Masaidullah Baig,assistant Cheif Executive Officer and Tika Khan, secretary Ismaili regional council for Hunza, Mutabiat Shah, technocrat member GBLA and others. were also present on the occasion. Dr. Khuwaja Khan, president Ismail Regional council thanked Rupani for their contribution of Rs. 0.2 million to the Attaabad Disaster Relief Fund. Delegation also visited temporary camps at Altit and Aliabad and recited Fatiha for deceased.
Coutesy: VoH

PYF stages protest against official emphathy;

immediate efforts for release of water demanded

GBE Watch
ISLAMABAD, Jan.25 :(Shamsuddin Muhammad) Progressive Youth Front, Hunza chapter staged a demonstration against negligance and empathy of government for release of water from aftificially formed lake on Hunza river following the land sliding incident that claimed many lives and left many injured critically. Parotestor holding playcards and banners chanted slogans against the slow pace of work on release of bocked water and clearance of Karakorum High Way (KKH).
Baba Jan, Chief organizer, Progressive Youth Front, Hunza speaking to the occassion said that not only many precious lives have been lost in the disaster but also threatened the population of more than twenty five thousand people on both sides of the blocked water. He criticised the newly elected representation saying they prefered their party matters on welfare of people." Natural disaster coupled with government's neglegance has further increased the difficulties of the people in upper Hunza," he added. Sami Barcha, Nisar Shah adovocate and other also addressed the gathering.
Speakers demanded of government to provide better equipment and funds to release water to save the population under threat. Courtesy: Voice of Hunza

Artificial lake started submerging Aeenabad, Shishkat and Lower parts of Gojal

GBE Monitoring desk




Movie by: Senior journalist Zulfiqar Ali Khan and Abdul Majeed

Pak should have been picked for IPL: Shahrukh Khan

GBE Watch dog
KARACHI: As a perceived snub to Pakistani players by the Indian Premier League sparks a spat between the neighbouring countries, superstar Shah Rukh Khan, an IPL franchisee himself, believes the world champions should have been picked, a private channel reports. “I truly believe Pakistan players should have been chosen,” Khan, co-owner of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), said. Khan, however, said that since “some issues” were involved the matter could have been handled by the IPL “respectfully”. No Pakistani player was bought by the eight Indian clubs during an auction on
Tuesday for the third edition of the glitzy IPL despite the Pakistan team being the reigningworld champions in the Twenty20 format of the cricket tournament. Rooting for the Pakistani players, Khan said they are the best T20 players in the world. “They are the champions, they are wonderful but somewhere down the line there is an issue and we can’t deny it,” he told a news channel. 111Breaking news, Dawn.

Honouring SC verdicts vital for democracy: Nawaz

GBE Monitor
LAHORE, Jan. 25: Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif on Monday said that democracy could survive only if the Supreme Court’s orders would be honoured. Speaking to newsmen after condoling Shazia’s family here, he said the nation’s sacrifices would go waster if the verdicts made by the Supreme Court were not honoured.The PML-N chief said that Feb 18 polls had given us an opportunity to create a new Pakistan as all the parties were united. Allah Almighty awarded us a good opportunity in the form of democracy, but it was wasted, he remarked.The former premier stressed that democracy must look different from dictatorship, Voice of Hunza reported.

CM vows to right off the loans of afftectees

Bureau Report
ISLAMABAD, Jan.24: (Agencies) Syed Mehdi Shah, newly chief minister Syed Mehdi Shah has said that people of disaster hit areas like Attaabad, Sarat, Ayeenabad and other low lying areas who are affected in either form will be given absolution to the agricultural, small-medium business and national bank loans in order to implement the announcement made by Qamar Zaman Kaira, governor Gilgit-Baltistan during his recent visit to the region.He said the loans alogn with their respective mark ups will be written off through recommendation of legislative assembly as an additional relief by the government. He expressed these views during a meeting with Raja Shehbaz Khan,former member district council here in capital on Friday.Mr. Shehbaz briefed Chief Minister about the dire situation and threat of sinking of many low lying settlements like Ayeen Abad,Shishkat, Hussani due to blocked of Hunza river. Mr. Shehbaz said that in response to his letter to Chinese government, who has given approval of about 13 million rupees. Mr. Mehdi ensured his complete cooperation to facilitate payment from Chinese authorities.

Courtesy: Voice of Hunza

Govt ready to deal with emergency: Mehdi Shah

GBE Monitoring Report
HUNZA, Shishkat, Jan.24:(W.B) The local as well as federal governments are ready to meet the crisis emerging in the cut-off Gojal tehsil due to blockade of the Hunza River and Karakorum Highway. "All out efforts would be made to manage the situation arising due to the blockade of the river after the Atabad landslide," said Gilgit-Baltistan chief minister Mehdi Shah while addressing a public gathering at Shishkat village on Wednesday. Mr Shah said his government was in close contact with the Center as well as the affected communities to deal with any emergency.
He announced setting up of a basic health unit under the People's Primary Health Initiative Programme at Shishkat. Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly speaker Wazir Baig, famous mountaineer Nazir Sabir and government officials were accompanying him during his visit to the village facing threat from the blocked river water.
The chief minister also met with the people of Ayeenabad having immediate threat from formation of the lake. The people urged the chief minister to save the houses and properties of the 30 families of the village from inundation, weekly Baang reports.

Chinese engineers reach as the Khujerab border opens;

additional equipment and personnel to due soon
VoH Report
HUNZA, Sost,Shiskat,Jan. 23: (Rahmet Amin) As many as thirty Chinese engineer reached Sost on Friday to release water blocked on Hunza river following land slide menace that inundated the Karakorum High Way (KKH) the only mean to connect both Upper and Central Hunza and the sole land trade route Pakistan and china. The engineers who are mostly experts of Chinese Bridge and Road Constructions (CBRC), a private Chinese firm working on expansion of Karakorum High Way.

Gates acknowledge presence of black water in the country;

US to provide unarmed Shadow drones to cater need of Pakistan
GBE Watch dog
ISLAMABAD, Jan.24:(Shamsuddin Muhammad) Robert Gates, US
Defence Secretary, during his visit has acknowledged presence of black water in the country. He said this while an interview on a private TV channel on Friday evening, here in Islamabad. Mr. Gates said that US will provide unarmed Shadow drones to cater need of Pakistan. He said such equipments are indispensable for Pakistan for intelligence and reconnaissance purposes in order to counter terrorism. He said there was no
such proposal under consideration for Afghan forces’ training by India. Talking on Indo-Pak relations, he said the countries should deal with issues bilaterally. “I have raised Pakistani concerns over Indian involvement in Pakistan’s internal affairs," he added.

Re-emergence of Drama of conventional hatred

GB Echo
www.gbecho.blogspot.com
By: Shamsuddin Muhammad
India and Pakistan has a peculiar history based on the pattern of dog and cat fight as a response to Kotiliyan Paradigm, an eminent Indian ancient policy expert followed by former against the later right from the first day of independence. Some of the eminent psychologists like E.F.M. Durban and John Bowlby have agree on hypothesis that human beings are inherently violent. This aggressiveness is incited by displacement and projection where a person translates his grievance into bias and hatred against other races, religions, nations or ideologies. Such is happening in case of both countries if applied on state level. Both countries have fought more than tree limited wars to settle the account of border disputes caused to nourish a sense of animosity, jealousy and mutual hatred with no reason except to degrade each other on every forum directly or indirectly . Most of the problems in the time of separation were caused by the haphazard, fast and unplanned withdrawal of British from the India-subcontinent. The major problems were geographical location of East and West Pakistan separated 1,600 kilometers by Indian territory, rehabilitation of hundreds of thousands of those migrated from other side and to build institutions of all types including a vigilant army. Despite of financial instability due to lack of payment of amount pledged by India , Pakistan managed to get out of trouble in a decade gradually. While the crisis on trade reached climax in 1949 when Britain devalued the pound, to which both the Pakistani rupee and the Indian rupee were pegged. India followed Britain's lead, but Pakistan did not, so India severed trade relations with Pakistan. This was a formal beginning of confrontation between both countries on every level. Besides economic hurdles Pakistan experienced political instability as it was run without a constitution and intervention of administrative organ into legislative in early days of independence that transformed into military with the cope diet of General Ayub Khan vanished any hope of nourishment of democratic values. The country's remained about four decades under dictator's rule with turmoil on borders as three out of four wars were fought with India in this period that brought nothing but penury, starvation, mutual trust deficit, atrocity and Burden on national economy as a large portion of budget directly went into defence sector-to facilitate unending war on terror and law and order situation. The negligence of other sectors like education, public welfare, health,, strategic human resource management, rising inflation, liberal mindset, gender violation, misuse of blasphemy laws ,scientific research and application, industrial growth, sustainable development, disaster preventions measures and effective Confidence building measures (CBMs) to reduce sense of jealousy and hatred to each other.Many historians explains an interesting feature when talking about the bilateral relations. With the commencement of winter season when statements from the top brass leader ship from either side, mostly from India every year as crate panic aims to justify additional quota on defence and necessity of large number of forces. Despite of a paradigm shift from use of hard to soft power patterns to handle issues globally, both still rely on use of the farmer to response any move against so-called national interest. Amidst such a state of warfare a third party mostly USA or UK or any other country appears the scene to act as an arbitrator having its own axe to grind. Consequently, the situation goes toward normalization and heading towards dialogue sessions without any tangible outcome. Some of the analyst termed it a tactic to keep more emphasis of expenditure in the arm race that has benefit none. No one can deny expenditure on the security of state when faced with numerous challenges but that should be backed by a growing national economies. Many times, irresponsible attitude and remarks of both Indian army and national governments served to divert attention on other issues of importance like socio-ecnomic, geo-political issues on one hand and extremism on the other during the first decade of the new millinium. The recent anti Pakistan statement published recently in an Indian news paper as quoted by Geo Tv has further intensified the situation. The news Indian paper quotes Indian Chief of staff General Deepak Kapoor saying that his country is preparing for a possible two-front limited war with Pakistan and China ,simultaneously; revising its last five years old strategy to effectively meet the challenges of war with both countries; deal with asymmetric and fourth generation warfare , enhance strategy reach and joint operations with Indian Navy and air forces. The strategy he further says, "aims to boost the capability to fight under the veil of recognition of threat perceptions and security challenges through Shimla based military training command headed by General A.S.Lamba"." India apparently may intervene from Afghanistan to create nuances for Pakistan. The paper further quotes Mr. Kapoor saying India has identified some areas including professional preparation for conventional wars, create capability to counter both military and non-military facets of asymmetric and sub-conventional threats like terrorism, enhance reach strategy and out of area capabilities to protect their interests; interdependence and operational synergy among air and naval forces and to achieve technological edge over its adversities to gain adventage for integrated network certainty,decision support system, information warfare are under the way to achieve the ends, simultaneously. This can be a military tactic to shift the focus of Pakistan on North-Western borders to get double benefit: to engage on East and intervene from Afghanistan both in FATA and Baluchistan.What realy painful is growing gulf between both countries headed on different lines.
The main concern in this scenario is on the nature of immature economies of both countries still rely on foreign aids especially that of Pakistan hit by terrorism menace, problems of balance of payments, devaluing currency rate against foreign exchange and rising debt being borrowed from IMF on higher interest rates than before and hardly able to function without the aid of such profit oriented international giant organizations backed by a specific agenda. In other words India in pride of sustainable growth rate compared to Pakistan, willing to pressurized through propaganda. There are no two opinion as far as Mumbai attacks are concerned-no one can justify it but mudslinging on Pakistan will be unfair. Pakistan, is on war with its own nurtured dilemma that can not repeat the policy to support Jihadist elements. Extremism in any form is fatal for humanity. Indian media created a hype that atomic programme of Pakistan is unsafe and can be overtake by militants despite the fact that Pakistani atomic programme is much more safer than that of India-evident from fire incidents, leakages and kidnapping and murder of a top nuclear scientist last year.The brutalities done by India in Jamu is also a kind of extremism as it aims to keep the masses quite against aggression.One of the important component of emerging global soft power structure is the evolution of relationship between three Asian another American namely between China and US, China and India, Pakistan and China, India and Us and Pakistan and India and Pakistan and the US on certain dynamics. The recent developments: Obama's election as a US president, plan attack plot in Yaman and unrest in Afghanistan will bring a new pattern of the policy paradigm. Similarly, China which has gained a sustainable development may over take Japan in next two years-thus emerging as a main player to challenge US monopoly as super power in uni polar structure.Both countries whether it is Pakistan or India should avoid such statements that generates tense between both that neither benefit masses of Pakistan nor of India except to the ego of few monarchical minds. There are host of outstanding issues to be tackle to avoid any future conflict. We hope the two countries realizing their real issues would make efforts to diminish tense to use the potentials in the welfare of their masses.






The writer is the editor of weekly VoH. GBEcho and Alshams and can be reached at:jaashams@gmail.com

People of Gojal demand urgent action for releasing water from disaster lake
Monitoring Report
by Ghulam Nasir
GILGIT, January 19:(PT) People of Gojal living in Gilgit city have criticized the government for delaying work on releasing water from the lake formed on Hunza river.
Addressing a press conference at a local hotel here in Gilgit the speakers said that the government is only offering lip service to the people of Ayeen Abad, Shishkat and Gulmit, the three villages endangered by the fast expanding lake.
“More than eight thousand people living in these three villages, their houses, field and property are under immediate threat due to the increasing water level but the government is yet to come up with a strategy to release water from the lake”, said a speaker. The lake formation had started on January 4, 2010, after a devastating landslide.
“It is unfortunate that our representatives are silent about their future strategy or just giving vague statements about the lake’s fate”, another speaker said.Pamirtimes.net

The Newly formed lake on Hunza river that has endangered lives on both sides

GBE Watch
HUNZA, Attaabad, January 21: The newly formed lake due to blockade of river water followed by massive landslide has endanged lives on both sides. Choopers are only means to ensure supply of basic necessisaties of lives. Yet, due to sever shortage of food items people are risking their lives as they walk for miles on land slide area. Humanitarian organizations and government officials are doing their best to tackle the situation and take initatiatives like re-opening of Khujerab border.
The following movie shows alarming level of water rose in last three weeks.
VOH

Courtesy: Hunza Online

DC orders immediate re-opening of Khujrab border

Army to release water within a week: Waqar Taj
GBE Watch
HUNZA, Jan.20: (Sahib Khan Hunzai) According to a media source,Zafar Waqar Taj, deputy commissioner Hunza-Nagar has ordered for immediate re-opening of Khujrab border to facilitate local community to avoid human criis.
This was announced during a press briefing at Karimabad in presence of Assistant commissioner Hunza Engineer Abbas and other officials. He said that Pakistan Army will make efforts on release of water and is expected to be accomplished with in a week keeping in view study reports by some organizations. According to the experts the hight of rubble is about 290 feet high from the river level.

Four die as the vehicle plunged into a goarge;

a man, wife and two children among dead
GBE Monitoring Report
DASU, Jan. 20: (Rehmat Karim) At least four people have been reported died in a road mishape near Dasu on Karakorum High Way (KKH), on Tuesday. According to NATCO sources, a Baltistan bound vehicle coming from Skardu to Rawalpindi lost its way and fell into a horrible goarge leaving four dead on spot. Locals shifted bodies where doctors confirmed their death. The victims have been identified as Ghulam Nabi, former member Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly, his wife and two children.
Source:voiceofhunza.blogspot.com

Relief work under way for the affectees of Attaabad, Sarat and Aeenabad

HUNZA, Aliabad, Altit, January19: Relief work is continue for the affectees of disaster hit villages: Attaabad, Sarat and Aeenabad.
HUNZA, Aliabad, Altit, Jan. 18: PRCS playing an active role in relief activities along with other NGOs in Hunza. Photos by APP