The Change in command.

v Background: -

It has been a year since the dilution of Article 370 and Kashmir has been made a union territory and the Modi Government has made a new move by changing the LG (Lieutenant governor) of Kashmir, but The people are thinking that what is new because only the man has been changed and still all the things will be controlled by the home ministry in Delhi as it is always done, but there is a big difference and the difference is that this new LG is a Politician. Kashmir has a peculiar history and since 1947 it is only for 14 months as yet that Kashmir has had a full time politician as Governor and that was as recently as in 2018 and 2019 that was Satyapal malik who was governor for only 14 months and then as status changed to LG for few months but he then came back to India and now he serving as the CM of Goa since October 2019 and then GC Murmu (a civil servant) was made LG who has now resigned exactly one year after abolition of Article 370. If we go back to history of Kashmir since 1947 it is quite amazing that how a politician has not been given the charge of Kashmir whether there had been an elected Government in Kashmir or not. The million-dollar question here is that why Kashmir has not been handled well since 1947? It is because no Indian central leader has been chosen to handle it and always the agencies and bureaucracy had been involved in controlling it. This all is because Kashmir has never been treated in political way. India has always seen Kashmir as military issue, intelligence issue, India -Pakistan issue or Territorial issue and politicians whether people like or not but they are flexible which is opposite in case of military or bureaucracy as the have moral integrity and they are trained like this.

v The new LG: -

Manoj Sinha was born in 1959 in Ghazipur, UP. He is an M.Tech in civil engineering  from the institute of Technology ,BHU . In 1982 while was just 23 Sinha stepped into politics by becoming the president of the student’s union at BHU.In 1996 he made his big political leap by joining BJP and winning his first LOK Sabha poll from his Ghazipur constituency.The “ vikas Purush” of Ghazipur repeated his win in 1999 and won the seat third time in 2014. He served as Minister of state for Railways and Minister of state for communication during the Modi Government. After the BJP won UP Elections in 2017 Sinha was seen as the Modi’s pick for CM but je Lost to RSS choice Yogi Adityanath. He lost the 2019 Lok sabha seat to BSP’S Afzal Ansari. Now the interesting thing here is that Sinha is very close to Modi and has great ties with him and it it seems that this post of LG has been given to Sinha as compensatory post due to his defeat at CM elections and 2019 elections defeat. With Sinha’s appointment it would mean a political touch and a closer watch ON J&K by PM Modi and many believe that Sinha might stir the political wind in J&K after a troubled year post the dilution of article 370. Will Manoj Sinha prove to be political Game changer in the tumultuous Valley????

 

The Real Tabdeeli.

The frequent changes in the key bureaucratic positions particularly in the center and in Punjab is hurting the governance. It is a “musical chair” like situation for the bureaucracy as the Punjab government do frequent changes on key positions that has made the concept of performance and accountability totally redundant. Let’s have a look on the changes which the Punjab and federal government has made since coming into after July 2018 election.

•   The health sector after the Covid- 19 pandemic has become all important, Dr Allah baksh was removed in march when the corona had just struck. He was replaced by Dr  syed Tauqir shah (PAS) officer who had served as PS to ex CM Shehbaz Sharif during the PMLN tenure and he successfully managed the epidemic in Punjab in 2011,but however he was removed just after one week. Dr Tanveer who was replaced by Tauqir shah was also changed after some months and Amir Ashraf khwaja has been posted the health secretary last month.
•  Chief secretary Punjab Azam suleman who was posted last year amid the pronouncements of depoliticizing the administration was changed after 4 months. The officers who were sidelined by Azam suleman has again staged a comeback once Azam was removed.Former commissioner DG Khan Tahir Khurshid, ex secretary to CM Dr shoaib and SSp Amir taimoor Uzdar (uncle of Cm Usman Buzdar) were removed by Azam suleman but now all have come back with full force.

• The most hilarious and blatant example of this bureaucratic musical chair is the position of Punjab secretary in HEC.  9 secretaries has been changes since September 2018.

•  The irrigation department is perhaps the worst hit as it has seen 11 secretaries since the arrival of Usman Buzdar

•  Rawalpindi division which is the most sensitive one has seen 4 commissioners since PTI came      into power.
•       The food secretaries of Punjab has been changed five times and this was also the reason behind      the wheat crisis.
•        The federal government has so far changed 5 IG police and four chief secretaries.
•      The board of investment also saw four chairmans Since the PTI government came into power.
•        The last but not the least in DG Khan which is also the home town of Punjab CM Usman          Buzdar has got six commissioners and five deputy commissioners so far.

v  The civil administration and the police postings in the province has become a joke.

The situation on one hand is hurting the governance and on other it has seriously demoralized the civilian bureaucracy and no one is sur about his tenure. PTI in its manifesto had promised the civil service reforms and respect for the bureaucrats but the bureaucrats have become a rolling stone like never before.

Father Of Taliban.

Introduction:-

Brigadier Amir Sultan Tarar widely known as COL Imam was born on 4 july 1944 in Chattal district Chakwal.In 1966 he joined Pakistan Army and was commissioned in 15 FF Regt. In 1974 he was sent to USA where he joined the joint special forces school and successfully passed all the combat courses, after returning to Pakistan he joined Special services Group (SSG).

Role in Afghan jihad:-
In 1980 he actively played role in the Afghan Jihad , where he met and cemented very good relations with Gulbaddin Hekmatyar , Ahmed Shah Massoud , Burhanuddin Rabbani , jalaluddin Haqqani and many other Afghan warlords. In a TV interview Col Imam also confessed that Pakistan Army trained and provide weapons to the Afghan Mujaheddin.it also widely believed that Col imam  had even trained Mullah Umar.

in 1986 Col Imam and charlie Wilson (a US representative) visited a camp where the mujaheddin were being trained. He was very happy to see the mujaheddin getting a best training.He called a local commander (Ameer Pacha Gul) and asked him "Are you guys happy"?.The commander answered "we are not happy because the weapon is good for Surface to surface but it is not good for surface to air .The weapon provided to us are not capable of bringing down air craft or helicopter. Charlie was shocked by the answer he said "colonel he has given me a big slap on my face I will go back and get him a stinger". The Americans then provided about 2000 stinger missiles to mujaheddin.
Col Imam also took part in the famous Jalalabad Operation where he met Osama Bin Laden.

in 1994 col Imam got retirement  and was then made the consul general of Pakistan in Herat.

Meanwhile in Pakistan Benazir Bhutto came to power and called back all officers from Afghanistan but Col Imam remained in Afghanistan till 9/11.

Post 9/11:-

After the advent of Taliban in pakistan in 2007 Col Imam Was against The TTP and its other all splinter groups but supported the Afghan Taliban. In march 2010 Col imam , Asad Qureshi (journalist) and Khalid khwaja (an ex officer of ISI) were kidnapped from Islamabad and brought to Miranshah but Asad Qureshi was freed after some days while khalid khwaja was killed .Col Imam remained in captivity for a long time during which some videos also surfaced in media in which Col imam appealed to Government to accept the demands of TTP or he will be killed but sadly after months long of captivity Col Imam was also killed. 

The Silent Fighter.

Introduction.

He was born in 1961 in the Panjwayi  ,district Kandahar, Afghanistan. He belongs to the Noorzai tribe.His father, Mullah Mohammad Akhund, was a religious scholar as well as the imam of their village mosque. Not owning any land or orchards of their own, the family depended on what the congregation paid his father in cash or in a portion of their crops. He studied under his father. The family migrated to Quetta after the Soviet Invasion and  continued his education at one of the first seminaries established in the Sarnan neighborhood.

Role in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

When the Afghan Taliban captured the capital Kabul in 1996. His first job  was in Farah  Province as a member of the Department of the promotion  of Virtue and the Prevention of vice paramilitary enforcers. He later moved to Kandahar and was made an instructor at  the seminary of about 100,000 students that Mullah Omar personally looked after.

He was later appointed as Chief Justice of the Shariah Courts of the Islamic Courts  of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Rather than a warlord or military commander, he has a reputation as a religious leader who was responsible for issuing most of the Taliban's fatwas and settling religious issues among members of the Taliban. Mullah Omar  is known to have consulted by him on matters of fatwa.Unlike his predecessors who were educated in Pakistan and who were also believed to have moved permanently east across the Durand line after the US invasion in 2001.

After his promotion to deputy leader of the Taliban in 2015, he put in place a system under which a commission were formed under the shadow governor in every province that could investigate abusive commanders or fighters, according to Mullah Abdul Bari, a Taliban commander in Helmand.

2012 assassination attempt.

According to Mullah Ibrahim, a student of him who was interviewed by The New York Times,He was the subject of an attempted assassination in Quetta which the Taliban blamed on the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency. "'During one of his lectures in Quetta one day about four years ago, a man stood among the students and pointed a pistol at him from a close range, but the pistol stuck,' Mullah Ibrahim recalled. 'He was trying to shoot him, but he failed, and the Taliban rushed to tackle' the man, he said, adding that he  did not move even in the chaos.

As new chief of Taliban.

He was appointed as the Taliban supreme commander on 25 May 2016 as the replacement for Mullah Akhtar Mansour. Mansour and a second militant were killed when munitions fired from a drone hit the vehicle in which they were riding. The strike was approved by U.S. President Barack Obama. Akhundzada was previously a deputy for Mansour. According to sources from the Taliban, Mansour had already named him as his successor in his will.

He has sustained a neutral identity among the Taliban rank and file. To avoid conflict upon choosing him as chief, the Taliban agreed that Mullah Yaqoob and Sirajuddin Haqqani will both work as his deputies.

Conclusion.

I think that now few of you would have guessed this "He" in this entire blog. Yes people i am talking about the current head of Afghan Taliban, Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada. He should be given the credit along with Mullah Abdul ghani Biradar ,as both have worked for the success of the Taliban-US talks.

Crisis Master.

Introduction.

He was Born on 23 September 1950.His father was an upper-middle-class businessman and industrialist whose family had emigrated from Anantnag in Kashmir for business, and eventually settled in the village of Jati Umra in Amritsar.

Political career.

This man then began his political career after getting elected to the Provincial Assembly of Punjab from Constituency PP-122 (Lahore-VII) as a candidate of Islami Jamhoori Ittehad   in 1988 general election.He was re-elected to the Provincial Assembly of Punjab from Constituency PP-124 (Lahore-IX) as a candidate of IJI. He was re-elected to the Provincial Assembly of Punjab from Constituency PP-125 (Lahore-X) as a candidate of (PML-N) in 1993 general election .He was also he was elected to the National Assembly from Constituency NA-96. His term as Member of the Punjab Assembly and the Leader of the Opposition prematurely ended in November 1996 , when the assemblies were dissolved.

He was elected as the Chief Minister of Punjab for the first time and was sworn in as 13th Chief Minister of Punjab on 20 February 1997. During his tenure as Chief Minister of Punjab, he was praised for his good governance in the province because of his focus on health, education, agriculture and industrial sectors. He undertook several development projects in Lahore and launched a crackdown on criminals across the province to maintain law and order in the province.

He held his office until 12 October 1999 when was removed from the post of Chief Minister in the 1999 coup of General Pervaiz Musharraf, following the coup he was imprisoned.

He was not allowed to take part in the 2008 general election due to the charges of murder but  In 2008, he was acquitted in the 1998 extrajudicial killings case.

He then won the BY-polls held in June 2008. He was re-elected as the Chief Minister of Punjab unopposed after securing 265 votes. His second term as Chief Minister lasted until 25 February 2009, when the Supreme Court of Pakistan declared him ineligible to hold public office which took away his seat in the Punjab Assembly, and thereby removed him from office as Chief Minister. On 1 April 2009, a five-member larger bench of the Supreme Court overturned an earlier decision of the apex court, in which he was disqualified from holding public office. As a result, he returned to office as Chief Minister.

In 2013 general elections he was re-elected to the Provincial Assembly of Punjab from three Constituencies PP-159 (Lahore-XXIII), PP-161 (Lahore-XXV) and PP-247 (Rajanpur-I) - as a candidate of PML-N in 2013 . In the same election, he was re-elected to the National Assembly from Constituency NA-129 (Lahore-XII) as candidate of PML-N. but he opted to retain his Provincial Assembly seat PP-159 (Lahore-XXIII) and was re-elected as the Chief Minister of Punjab for the third time unopposed after securing 300 votes in the 371-members Provincial Assembly.

Crisis management.

1.  In early 2009 Punjab met one of the worst flour crisis. It was him who eventually defeated the crisis by making timely policies and by having a good team which stood by him ,whenever he was in tough situations.

2.  In 2010 and 2012 Punjab met with one of the most deadliest and devastating floods of all time many people were killed and many were displaced. Millions of acres of land were destroyed which resulted in food shortage but even in this  tough situation this man stood with  people of his province irrespective of their political and regional identity. He himself went to the affected areas and inspected all the sites

3. The Punjab government led by this man made a herculean effort to fight dengue epidemic in 2011 and managed to control it. He worked on the problem day and night and eventually his team introduced a smart phone app which could insert the picture of any site and GPs location of it to determine from where the picture was taken.

This project was started in 2011 and till 2016, 17 million such pictures were taken.

Conclusion.

Now I think every one would have correctly guessed this man who has been referred as "He" in this entire article.Yes people I am talking about the three time chief minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif.

I think that in the last 20 years Pakistan has never got any man like Shahbaz Sharif whose timely and wise decisions had saved the country from crisis which could have changed the country's map in term of health ,food etc. 

On the other hand we have the current PTI government in Punjab and Federal, but they lack the ability of crisis management as we saw in 2018 faizabad dharna or the flour crisis which emerged in the start of 202o or the current Corona Virus.