Gilani calls Rabbani back from US visit


The ties between United States and Pakistan dipped further with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raja Gilani reportedly called its Foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar back from US on Sunday. Khar was in US to attend United Nations General Assembly. 

The development came after repeated accusations from US that ISI is supporting rogue Haqqani Network.

Gilani described the allegations by US as a "propaganda blitz against Pakistan that vitiates the atmosphere ". Meanwhile, Pakistan’s leadership has welcomed Gilani’s decision as it has badly affected the country’s image. 

Ties between Islamabad and Washington plunged to a new low after US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen stepped up accusations that the ISI was aiding the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network, blamed for an attack on the US Embassy in Kabul last week.

Earlier, Khar said if the US wanted to cut its ties with Pakistan, then Islamabad was also ready to “pay the price”. Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister SM Krishna said, "India always believe that ISI and Haqqani Network are working together.” 

As tension prevails between the United States and Pakistan, Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani summoned Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar back to Islamabad on Sunday for the All Parties Conference (APC). 

Khar’s presence is said to be vital during the APC as she was one of the few members of the civilian leadership to have been directly approached by US officials regarding allegations of Pakistan running a proxy war in Afghanistan via the Haqqani network.

According to the Pakistan embassy in the United States, Khar will be cutting her trip short and likely flying back to Pakistan tonight. She will meet both Gilani and President Zardari on arrival, say sources.

Gilani on Sunday contacted leaders of various political parties to develop a consensus over the US allegations against Pakistani security institutions via the APC.

Talking tough: ‘Pakistan not responsible for security of US forces’

Pakistan cannot be held responsible for the security of US, Nato or Isaf forces in Afghanistan, said Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in a policy statement at a donors’ conference on Saturday.

Condemning the “propaganda blitz against Pakistan,” the premier said that the public recrimination is “most unfortunate … vitiates the atmosphere and is counter-productive.”

The policy statement comes amid increasingly strained ties between Pakistan and the United States, following a volley of accusations vis-à-vis Pakistan’s alleged ties with the Haqqani network.

The blame game tends to ignore the sacrifices by the people of Pakistan and negates all that the country has endeavoured to achieve over the last so many years, the premier said.

Gilani added that the allegations “betray a confusion and policy disarray within the US establishment on the way forward in Afghanistan.”

“While there have been terrorist attacks in Kabul and Wardak, there have also been numerous attacks on Pakistan launched from sanctuaries and safe havens in Nuristan and Kunar in Afghanistan. It is as much the responsibility of the Afghan National Army, Nato and Isaf not to allow such cross-border militancy,” the premier was quoted as saying.

“Let’s be objective and not get carried away by emotions,” the premier bluntly suggested to the United States.

Warning against unilateral action

Pakistan talked tough for a second straight day and warned the United States against any unilateral action on its soil, as head of the US Central Command General James Mattis met Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani here on Saturday.

The US embassy in Islamabad confirmed that the meeting took place but refrained from sharing any details while the military’s media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), initially neither confirmed nor denied the meeting.

“I don’t have full details of the meeting between Gen James and Gen Kiyani but I can confirm that Gen James arrived here on the weekend and has met Gen Kiyani,” said spokesperson for the US embassy in Islamabad Mark Stroh. “It is a regularly scheduled visit,” he added.

Sources said the Haqqani network and overall security situation of the region were discussed during the meeting.

“We have already made clear (to the US) that there will be a strong reaction to any unilateral offensive within our borders,” a Pakistani military official said. Gen Kayani also protested over cross-border attacks on Pakistani territory emanating from the Afghan soil, sources said.

Meanwhile, according to CBS news, cell phones recovered from the killed insurgents who had attacked the US embassy in Kabul last week revealed that the phones were used to call Pakistani intelligence operatives before and during the assault.

It is this evidence that led US Joint Chiefs of Staff chief Admiral Mike Mullen to announce in public that the Haqqani network is a “veritable arm” of Pakistani intelligence, CBS News reported on Saturday.

Khar stays on offensive

Over in the US, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, on Saturday, also warned the United States against sending ground troops to fight the Haqqanis.

Khar said that there are red lines and rules of engagement with America, which should not be broken.

“It opens all kinds of doors and all kinds of options,” she was quoted by the Associated Press as saying. The comment was in response to a question about the possibility of US troops coming to Pakistan.

Khar, however, insisted that Pakistan’s policy was to seek a more intensive engagement with the US and that she would like to discourage any blame game.

“If many of your goals are not achieved, you do not make someone a scapegoat,” she said.

Retaliation possible

“There should be no ambiguity in any one’s mind that we will be unguarded again,” said a military official, referring to a possible unilateral strike like the May 2 operation when US helicopters entered deep inside the Pakistani territory undetected and killed the al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden.

“It will not happen any more … if two bullets are fired from the other side, we have to respond with two. This is standard procedure in such situations,” the official added when asked about the military strategy in case of a ground offensive or an aerial strike, besides drones, by the US forces.

Musical heritage: 

The last of the sitar makers

In a room five feet by 10 feet, Zia, 64, and his son Imran, 25, attach strings to a wooden frame, a meticulously carved structure with white embellishments. Imran works on the body, inlaying diamond-shaped pieces of plastic and polishing it, while Zia fixes and tunes the strings.

“This one is for a collector of classic musical instruments,” says Imran. “He realises this is a disappearing craft.”

Sher Muhammad Sitar Makers, the small shop in Bansanwala Bazaar where Zia and Imran’s family has been making and selling the iconic classical music instrument since 1948, used to compete for customers with Bombay Music, the only other sitar makers in town.

But Bombay Music, also in Bansanwala Bazaar, stopped producing sitars some 20 years ago after the owner and main craftsman died. They now repair various musical instruments.

Zia, who is also a professional sitar player and winner of a Pride of Performance, says business was good until the 1970s. “My son and I are here by ourselves now. But from 1948 to 1970, my two elder brothers, my father, and I worked here with seven other employees. Sometimes we had to delay orders because we were too busy.”

Today, they sell about 15 sitars a year. Most customers come for repairs. “The good players come when they need the jawaari (a part of the instrument) adjusted to improve the sound,” says Imran. “The beginners come when they’ve broken something.”

They make two kinds of sitars, one for beginners and one for professionals. Each sitar takes about four months to make and sells for between Rs10,000 and Rs60,000. Most of them are sent to shops outside Lahore. “They are sold without a sticker or a stamp to vendors who display or resell it,” Imran says.

They make six or seven sitars every year for students of Home Economic College, he says. The National College of Arts and Lahore Art Council have their own stock of sitars for their students.

So the shop doesn’t go the way of Bombay Music, Zia taught his son Imran how to make sitars, and another son – Kashan, 20 – is learning to play and will later learn to make it too. “I think knowing how to play it will make it easier to learn how to make or repair it,” Kashan says.

“The tradition of sitar making is sacred to me. I feel blessed that my sons will continue doing it after I’m gone,” says Zia.

Imran started learning how to make sitars when he was 10. Now 25, he says he still has a lot to learn from his father, such as his incredible ear for tuning the instrument. “My father never asks me to help tune the strings. It takes a lifetime to master the skill,” he says.

To try and improve business, Imran also learned to make harmoniums, tanpuras, guitars and violins, but the shop is still primarily recognised for its sitars.

Zia, the youngest of three brothers, moved to Lahore from Amritsar with his family in 1947. His father Sher Muhammad set up the shop, which Zia has run since the death of his two elder brothers. Zia has three other sons besides Imran and Kashan who are not involved in the business.

Shahzad Khalil, a professional sitar player, gets his sitar maintained at Sher’s. He says like most artists here, he bought his sitar from India because of its wider selection. He says there used to be a few shops selling sitars in the Walled City, but they either closed down or now sold only harmoniums, tablas and anklets.

“Some make replicas for decorative use only,” Imran says.

Sarwat Ali, who heads the musicology department at the National College of Arts, says the shop makes good quality sitars. He said a lack of skilled craftsmen as well as players meant it was unlikely to pick up as a business. “They are export quality instruments. But India has a much bigger and established market,” he said.

Rakae Jamil, a young sitar player and teacher at Aitchison College, said he did not believe there was a strong future for the sitar in Pakistan. “There are few serious players,” he says. “Most beginners quit after a while.

US must not cross ‘red lines’, 

says FM Khar

Pakistan’s foreign minister on Saturday warned the United States against sending ground troops to her country to fight an Afghan militant group that America alleges is used as a proxy by Pakistan’s top intelligence agency for attacks in neighboring Afghanistan.


The warning came as a top US military commander was in Pakistan for talks with the army chief at a time of intense strain between the two countries. The US Embassy said Gen. James Mattis, head of US Central Command, arrived in Pakistan late Friday, and that he will meet the army chief, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

Ties between Islamabad and Washington are in crisis after American officials stepped up accusations that Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence was aiding insurgents in neighboring Afghanistan, including those who took part in an attack on the US Embassy last week in Kabul.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said in an interview Saturday that there are red lines and rules of engagement with America, which should not be broken.

”It opens all kinds of doors and all kinds of options,” she told Pakistan’s private Aaj News TV from New York. The comment was in response to a question about the possibility of US troops coming to Pakistan.
Khar, however, insisted that Pakistan’s policy was to seek a more intensive engagement with the US and that she would like to discourage any blame game.

”If many of your goals are not achieved, you do not make someone a scapegoat,” she said, addressing the US.

The US allegations have seen a strong reaction from Pakistan.

Kayani, the Pakistani army chief, said on Friday that the charges were baseless and part of a public ”blame game” detrimental to peace in Afghanistan. Other Islamabad officials urged Washington to present evidence for such a serious allegation. Khar warned the United States is risking losing an ally in the war on terror.

The row began when Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday accused the ISI agency of supporting Haqqani insurgents in planning and executing last week’s 22-hour assault on the US Embassy and a truck bombing that wounded 77 American soldiers days earlier.

Kayani said the allegations were ”very unfortunate and not based on facts.”

The claims were the most serious yet by an American official against nuclear-armed Pakistan, which Washington has given billions in civilian and military aid over the last 10 years to try to secure its cooperation inside Afghanistan and against al-Qaeda.
The Haqqani insurgent network is widely believed to be based in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal area along the Afghan border. The group has historical ties to Pakistani intelligence, dating back to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The relationship between the two countries has never been smooth, but it took one of its hardest hits when US commandos slipped into Pakistan on May 2 without informing the Pakistanis of their mission and killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in a garrison town not far from Islamabad.

Pakistani scholar nominated for

 “World Technology Network” award

Pakistani scholar Dr. Athar Osama has been nominated for the prestigious World Technology Network (WTN) award and has also been elected as a fellow of the WTN.


In a press briefing released on September 5, WTN recognised www.Muslim-Science.com as an agent of change founded by Dr. Athar Osama and has been named as a finalist for the Science and Innovation Media Journalism category.
The WTN will host this award at the World Technology Summit in association with TIME, Fortune, CNN, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and MIT’s Technology Review.

The WTN awards are widely seen as “Oscars of Science and Technology.” The Previous WTN award winners include Al Gore (US former Vice President), Mohammad Yunus (founder of Grameen Bank), Mark Zuckurberg (Facebook founder), Larry Page (Google) and Tim Berners – Lee (Inventor of Internet), however, no Pakistani has won this award as yet.

The awards to be distributed in the World Technology Summit, to be  held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, USA on October 25 – 26, 2011.

Akhtar shoots at Sachin and Musharraf in new book

Pakistan’s most controversial cricketer Shoaib Akhtar invited a little more drama on the eve of his book launch, tearing into Indian greats Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid while also taking shots at former national captain Wasim Akram and even the country’s former president Pervez Musharraf.


In the book titled “Controversially Yours” Akhtar says, “I think players like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid weren’t exactly match winners to start with, nor did they know the art of finishing the game.”
He then zeroes in on Tendulkar saying, “I bowled (Sachin) a particularly fast ball which he, to my amazement didn’t even touch. He walked away! That was the first time I saw him walk away from me-that, too, on the slow track at Faisalabad.”
Excerpts of the book released to the media have managed to create much hype but it is surprising that the bits about Tendulkar and Dravid were made public considering the fact that the autobiography will be first published in India.
But Akhtar is not one to shy away from such a situation and said in an interview to Times of India, “What I’ve written is my experience, put as honestly for others to know. This is the truth – for the world, it may be a big controversy.”
Akhtar, who called time on his career following the 2011 World Cup, has also shockingly admitted that he tampered with the ball claiming, “everyone tampers with the ball. I did so too. Tampering should be legalised.”
He has also dug deep into the working of the Pakistan cricket- the administration, his early career, former and current players and the class discrimination in the setup.
Taking a dig at Shoaib Malik, Akhtar has stated in his book that the Pakistani all-rounder was PCB’s stooge.
“Shoaib Malik doesn’t deserve to be captain and was made captain because he was a stooge of the PCB Chief Naseem Ashraf,” states Akhtar.
Another shocking revelation is one where he claims Wasim Akram attempted to finish his career.
“Wasim Akram threatened to walk out with half the team if I was included in the team. General Tauqir Zia backed Shoaib against Wasim,” Akhtar says of fissures previously unheard of.
Javed Miandad, Pervez Musharraf, Shah Rukh Khan and Lalit Modi have also come into the crosshairs in the autobiography.
The book is tentatively scheduled to be out today in India.

“Shoaib Malik doesn't deserve to be captain and was made captain because he was a stooge of the PCB Chief Naseem Ashraf,” Akhtar claimed. -File photo

Feel-good facts for bad feeling Pakistanis

BY NADEEM F. PARACHA ON SEPTEMBER 8TH, 2011 | COMMENTS (257)

Furry Factoid #1: Muslims walked on the moon centuries before the Americans did.

How ironic it is that for decades Muslim children have been taught that it was an American astronaut, Neil Armstrong, who was the first man to walk on the moon (in 1969).

Though Armstrong did walk on the moon, he was NOT the first man to do so. Surprised? Of course you are, because after all we have been taught history written by biased Orientalists.

We have forgotten that it was actually a Muslim warrior, Muhammad Bin Qasim, who was the first man to walk on the moon. And he did so in the 8th century AD!

Just before he conquered Sindh in the subcontinent, Qasim was a young camel expert and amateur astronomer (all before he turned five). At age 15, he succeeded in breeding a special kind of Arab camel that could run faster than the speed of light and also fly.

Qasim then told the governor of Baghdad that he was ready to conquer not only the whole world but the moon too. However, the governor was a tad short-sighted and wanted him to stick to just conquering Sindh.

Qasim blasted his camel and men towards Sindh, but overshot it by, say, a few million miles, and ended up on the surface of the moon.

Being a wily astronomer, he had also invented the world’s first ever astronaut suit and helmet made from, yup, you guessed it, camel skin and bones.

Nevertheless, finding the moon to be a somewhat boring place with little gravity and all and absolutely no date palms, Qasim shot back and this time finally landed in Sindh.  Unfortunately his camel died on impact and was buried in what is today Hyderabad in the Qasim Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

After Qasim’s death (from rotten vegetarian food that he was given by Sindh’s scheming Hindus), Muslims lost all the know-how and technology invented by Captain Qasim.

Then in 1960, American CIA agents masquerading as archeologists, dug up the remains of Qasim’s camel in Hyderabad and used its skeleton to build the very rocket (Apollo 11) that took Armstrong to the moon.

Captain Qasim’s miraculous feat was all but forgotten in the mist of Orientalist history, Western propaganda and some bad hip-hop music.  Shame.

Furry Factoid #2: It was the great Mughal king, Aurangzeb, who replaced ‘Khuda-Hafiz’ with ‘Allah-Hafiz.’

It’s good to see so many Pakistani and Indian Muslims now saying ‘Allah-Hafiz’ instead of ‘Khuda-Hafiz.’

Many liberals claim that the practice of saying Allah-Hafiz was invented in the 1980s during Ziaul Haq’s regime and then gained momentum in the 1990s.

Yes, many hard-working and pious scholars, reformers, Islamic evangelists and your reborn posh aunt did a wonderful job campaigning for the eradication of the adulterated quasi-Muslim greeting of Khuda Hafiz – but the truth is, it was the greatest Mughal king, Aurangzeb Alamgir, who was the first Muslim to start saying Allah-Hafiz instead of Khuda Hafiz.

After defeating his brothers (all of whom were Khuda-Hafizians in the mould of the communist Mughal king, Akbar), Aurangzeb got down to correcting the wrongs done to Islam and the subcontinent’s Muslims by Akbar and other such royal wine drinkers.

‘I will crush Khuda Hafizism!’ Aurangzeb is reported to have said (in Arabic). ‘But first, I need to go to the washroom,’ he added (in Persian).

During Aurangzeb’s reign, any Muslim saying Khuda Hafiz was beheaded, and any Hindu saying Allah Hafiz was asked to behead his cow.

The practice of saying Allah Hafiz became widespread but after the tragic death of Aurangzeb at the young age of 90, Muslims reverted back to saying Khuda Hafiz. They also started to drink wine again. 

Now, some four centuries later, mashallah, we are getting back to saying the right thing: Allah-Hafiz!

This will morally cleanse our society, boost up the economy, eradicate poverty, eliminate corruption and make Pakistan win the next cricket World Cup! Yea.

Furry Factoid #3: Jinnah’s August 11 speech never said anything about Pakistan being a liberal Muslim state. He spoke about an Islamic state, something that was erased by some Khuda Hafizians after Jinnah’s death.

Ever seen how excitedly liberals keep quoting Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s speech that he made on August 11 in 1948? How he supposedly wanted religion and the state to be separate and how he saw all Muslim sects and non-Muslims of Pakistan only as Pakistanis with equal rights?

Well, they are lying. Jinnah did make that speech but its text was radically manipulated and changed by some powerful bureaucrats after Jinnah’s death.

Not any more. Here we present to you the original, unchanged contents of that portion of the speech that was drastically altered. This is the real thing: 

 “ … Indeed if you ask me, this (secularism) has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain the freedom and independence and if not for this we would have been free people long, long ago. No power can hold another nation, and especially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you had we stuck to saying Allah-Hafiz instead of Khuda-Hafiz, and not made fun of the ulema, especially the ones with the longest beards. And even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time, if not for this abomination called secularism! Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this. You are free; you are free to go to your mosques, you are free to go to your madressas or to any other place of worship that looks like a mosque or a madressa in this Islamic State of Pakistan. You may not belong to any religion or caste or creed other than just Islam and that has absolutely everything to do with the business of the State, dig?”

Furry Factoid #4: More than American aid and money, it took raw guts to defeat the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan.

So remember all you future citizens of the international Caliphate of the Islamic Republic of the Pakistan the Afghanistan the Hindustan and the Kyrgyzstan, guts and faith will always triumph over the American Dollar just as it did over the Soviet Ruble – even though one couldn’t even buy a decent pair of socks with all those stupid Rubles.

Furry Factoid #5: We have gallons and gallons of oil and tons and tons of coal and gas in the grounds of Balochistan. We can become a rich country but only if the Baloch people stop their occupation of Balochistan.

The Pakistani state and forces have been fighting a bloody war with the occupiers of one of the richest provinces of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan: Balochistan.

This province whose grounds are rumbling with natural wealth and resources has been under the yoke and occupation of the Baloch people.

Some might ask who else this province would be under if not the Baloch people. That’s a valid point. But then do mountains, deserts or cactus have a language or ethnicity? Do oil, coal or gas? No, they don’t. But they do have a religion.

If there can be an ‘Islamic bomb,’ why can’t there be an Islamic coal mine, or an Islamic oil rig or an Islamic gas pipeline, aye? And anything Islamic must have something to do with Pakistan, right? Right.  

Thus, what does this brilliant logic make the Baloch people? It makes them invaders and occupiers!

Once they are driven out, we will drive in and become a rich country – a new Saudi Arabia! *goose bumps*

Furry Factoid #666: Suicide is haraam but only if committed for trivial matters such as a failed love affair, loss of job or loved one, mental illness, etc. However, suicide is okay if committed to obliterate kafirs or would-be-kafirs or sound-like-kafirs or semi-kafirs or kafirs-just-because-you-say-so or kafirs-just-for-the-heck-of-it and so on and so forth.  

Illustrations by Nadeem F. Paracha.

Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.

Pakistan threatens to block Google, YouTube

Popular internet search engine Google and websites like YouTube could be shut down in Pakistan if they did not cooperate with authorities investigating crimes and incidents of terrorism, Interior Minister Rehman Malik has warned.

Malik made the remarks at the headquarters of the Federal Investigation Agency here while interacting with reporters.

He urged the websites to extend help to authorities to exterminate terrorism from the country.

The government would be compelled to block certain websites including YouTube and search engine Google if they did not extend cooperation to authorities, Malik said.

The Taliban and other terrorist organisations were sharing intelligence through the internet and it is imperative to curb these activities, he said.

Malik did not give details of the crimes and incidents of terrorism that the websites could provide information about.

TV news channels also quoted Malik as saying that he had issued an order for a case to be registered against the administrator of Google Pakistan.

The minister has faced criticism and ridicule from civil society and rights groups for several of his recent comments.

Malik had recently claimed that jealous girlfriends and wives, and not political groups or criminals, were responsible for a majority of target killings in the southern port city of Karachi.

Pakistan floods: Two million hit by disease in Sindh
The lessons we never learn

More than two million people in Pakistan are suffering from flood-related diseases following torrential rain in Sindh province, officials say.

More than 7,000 people are being treated for snake bites.

Aid agencies estimate that six million people have been affected by the floods and that cases of malaria and diarrhoea are increasing.

The UN's refugee agency says that the flooding is so bad that some areas will remain submerged for six months.

Almost a year from now, I remember browsing through images of the Pakistan flood victims as I sat alone in the night shift at work. I saw the hopelessness in the faces of the victims, and today I see similar expressions on this year’s flood affectees as a video plays in front of me on the television screen – a troubling reminder of government negligence perhaps?

The 2010 floods were obviously the first of its kind in Pakistan and took every one by surprise. It’s a shame that a year later we haven’t learnt at all and a large number of people are affected again.

According to various government officials, this year at least 270 people have died in Sindh, 5.3 million people and 1.2 million homes have been affected and 1.7 million acres of crops have been destroyed.

In a recent television interview with DawnNews the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD)’s Director Dr Muhammad Hanif confessed negligence in issuing a warning last year, however he said an early warning was issued for the floods to all the stake holders this year. So the question is why didn’t the responsible authorities take preventive measures?

The following image appeared in the Daily Dawn paper. As you can see the major impact of the torrential rain was on the Sindh province. The severely affected cities, this year include Badin, Nawabshah, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar, Umerkot, Tharparkar and Tando Allahyar.

I guess unless people start taking refuge in the President’s house and the dry cosy homes of the high-ups, things won’t change for them! Pakistanis are such a resilient nation, and their resilience is costing them everything.

Majority Pakistanis think separation from India was justified: Gallup poll

By PPI

Published: September 12, 2011

The poll reflects a noticeable change of views, as the figure has grown up from 3% to 8% only in five years. PHOTO: AFP/FILE

ISLAMABAD: An overwhelming majority of Pakistanis believe that separation from India was justified in 1947, revealed a recently released Gilani Poll conducted by Gallup Pakistan.

In a survey, a nationally representative sample of men and women from across the country were asked the following question:

Suppose you were an adult voter in 1947, would you have voted in favour or against the establishment of Pakistan?

The results of the poll revealed that 92% Pakistanis believed the separation from India was justified and they would have voted for Pakistan, while only 8% said they would have voted against it, according to the results of the Gilani Research Foundation survey carried out by Gallup Pakistan on Monday.

The poll reflects a minor but noticeable change of views on the issue, as the figure has gone up from 3% to 8% only in five years.

Responding to a similar survey in 2006, 97% of Pakistanis said they would have voted for Pakistan and only 3% said that they would have voted against Pakistan.

The study was released by the Gilani foundation and carried out by Gallup Pakistan, the Pakistani affiliate of Gallup International.

The recent survey was carried out among a sample of 2694 men and women in rural and urban areas of all four provinces of the country, during August 14 – 20, 2011.

Epidemic: Dengue steadily makes its way across Pakistan

Virus grips the nation, with 4,044 dengue cases reported in Punjab and 211 in Sindh. DESIGN: MOHSIN ALAM

LAHORE: 

With an alarming increase of dengue virus cases being reported in all corners of the country, government authorities are scurrying to control the epidemic from spreading further. Control cells have been established in Punjab, while medicines and fumigation of international standards are being, reportedly, imported.

So far 4,044 cases of dengue have been reported in Punjab, out of which 3,576 cases have been reported in Lahore alone.