pakistan

"The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s (HRCP) report, “Caught in the Crossfire: Civilians, Security and the Crisis of Justice in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Merged Districts” (Lahore: HRCP, 2025), reads like a tragic script for a play the state insists on performing over and over again. The title, “Caught in the Crossfire,” is apt: civilians are literally and figuratively trapped between militants who kill in the name of religion and a government that kills in the name of security. The statistics alone are chilling. In July 2025, 82 militant attacks nationwide—two-thirds of them in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. By September, 45 attacks in the province killed 54 people, while “security forces reportedly carried out 22 operations… killing 88 militants” but also 24 civilians. The arithmetic of counterterrorism in Pakistan has always been brutal: militants dead, civilians dead, justice dead."

"…blasphemy allegations are increasingly employed as avenues for extortion. Organized entities often manufacture charges to extract financial gain or seize property, leaving both Muslim and non-Muslim victims with limited avenues for recourse, as defending against such allegations frequently invites further persecution."

"There is a new business in Pakistan, and it plays with the life and death of innocent people. It goes like this: hackers post online contents blaspheming Islam in the name of persons who do not even know what is going on. Then they report their victims to the police, who arrest them based on the fabricated blasphemy charges. At this stage, the hackers offer to retract the allegations and tell the police they were based on a “mistake” if the victim pays a significant sum of money. If [the] victims do not pay, [then the] cases go on and they face blasphemy charges which may lead to the death penalty under Pakistani law."

"Confronted with criticism by the United Nations and other international bodies, Pakistan vowed to prevent kidnapping for the purpose of converting members of religious minorities to Islam and to regard conversions of minors forcibly separated from their parents as legally invalid. The Shahdadpur verdict goes in a different direction."

"For example, in Peshawar and other cities, newspapers offices are often trashed by madrassa trained youth in retaliation for some perceived transgression. Also when Nawaz Sharief was prime minister, he ordered the arrest of Najam Sethi, the editor of Lahore newsweekly. The Friday Times, simply for being critical of the ruling party, the Muslim League. Sethi's arrest and detention caused an international uproar."

"What is peculiar to Pakistan, …as a few independent voices have bravely noted, is that art and culture are not free, no matter how high is their quality and [no matter] how respectful they are of Islam (as the film ['] is). Groups such as Tehreek-e-Labbaik are officially condemned, yet in fact they keep an entire country hostage, and the government is too weak to resist them."

"We do not deny the rights given to the minority communities in Islamic laws and the laws of the country, but denying the rights to the majority community too was not fair... The minority community in the country has complete freedom."

"There is a Muslim family living in front of a temple in Hyderabad. The area also housed some Hindu families and they filed a complaint to the authorities that sacrificing [a] cow in front of the temple should not be allowed... The majority too has rights ..."

"Another significant statement was made in this regard by Maj. Gen. Rao Barman Ali, Adviser to the Governor of East Pakistan namely: "Harrowing tales of rape, loot, arson, harassment, and of insulting and degrading behaviour were narrated in general terms.... I wrote out an instruction to act as a guide for decent behaviour and recommended action required to be taken to win over the hearts of the people. This instruction under General Tikka Khan's signature was sent to Eastern Command. I found that General Tikka's position was also deliberately undermined and his instructions ignored...excesses were explained away by false and concocted stories and figures.""

"15. Lt Col. Mansoorul Hag, GSO-I, Division, appearing as Witness No 260, has made detailed and specific allegations as follows: "A Bengali, who was alleged to be a Mukti Bahini or Awami Leaguer, was being sent to Bangladesh-a code name for death without trial, without detailed investigations and without any written order by any authorised authority." Indiscriminate killing and looting could only serve the cause of the enemies of Pakistan. In the harshness, we lost the support of the silent majority of the people of East Pakistan.... The Comilla Cantt massacre (on 27th/28th of March, 1971) under the orders of CO 53 Field Regiment, Lt. Gen. Yakub Malik, in which 17 Bengali Officers and 915 men were just slain by a flick of one Officer's fingers should suffice as an example. There was a general feeling of hatred against Bengalis amongst the soldiers and officers including Generals. There were verbal instructions to eliminate Hindus."

"The statements appearing in the evidence of Lt. Col. Aziz Ahmed Khan (Witness no 276) who was Commanding Officer 8 Baluch and then CO 86 Mujahid Battalion are also directly relevant. "Brigadier Arbbab also told me to destroy all houses in Joydepur. To a great extent I executed this order. General Niazi visited my unit at Thakargaon and Bogra. He asked us how many Hindus we had killed. In May, there was an order in writing to kill Hindus. This order was from Brigadier Abdullah Malik of 23 Brigade.""

"The use of excessive force during the military action and the conduct of some of the officers and men of the Pakistan Army during the sweep operations had only served to alienate the sympathies of the people of East Pakistan. The practice of the troops living off the land, in the absence of a proper organisation of their own logistic arrangements during their operations in the country-side, encouraged the troops to indulge in looting. The arbitrary methods adopted by the Martial Law administration in dealing with respectable East Pakistanis, and then sudden disappearances by a process euphemistically called "being sent to Bangladesh" made matters worse. The attitude of the Army authorities towards the Hindu minority also resulted in large-scale exodus to India. The avowed intention of India to disember Pakistan was only too well known, but even then the need for an early political settlement was not realised by General Yahya Khan."

"Days after the shooting stopped, Bhutto set up a judicial commission to investigate the battlefield defeat in East Pakistan. Led by Pakistan’s chief justice as well as two other eminent judges, it produced a scathing official record condemning the military for corruption, turpitude, and brutality, and demanding courts-martial for Yahya, Niazi, and other disgraced military leaders. While the report concentrates on military defeats, it includes frank testimony on the atrocities from senior army officers and civilian officials. This judicial commission, convinced that “there can be no doubt that a very large number of unprovoked and vindictive atrocities did in fact take place,” urged Pakistan’s government to set up a “high-powered court or commission of inquiry” to “hold trials of those who indulged in these atrocities, brought a bad name to the Pakistan Army and alienated the sympathies of the local population by their acts of wanton cruelty and immorality against our own people.” But nothing happened. The report was so harsh on the military that it was suppressed..."

"The Pakistanis are a different breed. The Pakistanis are straightforward—and sometimes extremely stupid."

"Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas."

"I remember vividly being called a 'Paki bastard' in the school playground. Like Sayeeda, and so many others, I know what it's like to face prejudice – as a child, in the workplace and in politics. I pay tribute to all those calling out discrimination wherever they see it. We will only defeat racism by working together."

"In attempting to forge an identity that defies language, geography, culture, clothing, and cuisine, many Pakistanis, especially the second generation in the West, have become easy pickings for Islamist extremist radicals who fill their empty ethnic vessels with false identities that deny them their own ethnic heritage. I am hoping that potential recruits from the diaspora of Pakistani youth will realize they are being taken for a ride by the Islamists and are nothing more than gun fodder for the supremacist cults that use Islam as a political tool to further its goals."

"Here I may add an interesting footnote to the sociological history of modern Muslim India and Pakistan. Almost every Muslim of any importance claimed, and still claims today, in his autobiography reminiscences, memoirs, journal and bio data, that his ancestors had come from Yemen, Hejaz, Central Asia, Iran, Ghazni, or some other foreign territory. In most cases, this is a false claim for its arithmetic reduces the hordes of local converts (to Islam) to an insignificant number. Actually, it is an aftermath and confirmation of Afghan and Mughal exclusiveness. It is also a declaration of disaffiliation from the soil on which the shammers have lived for centuries, and to which in all probability, they have belonged since history began. If all the Siddiquis, Qureshis, Faruqis, ... have foreign origins and their forefathers accompanied the invading armies, or followed them, what happens to the solemn averment that Islam spread peacefully in India? Are we expected to believe that local converts, whose number must have been formidable, were all nincompoops and the wretched of the earth—incapable over long centuries of producing any leaders, thinkers, or scholars?"

"Pakistanis are the custodians of the ancient civilization of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, not Madain Saleh in Saudi Arabia or Giza in Egypt. When Pakistanis deny their Indianness, it is equivalent to the French denying their Europeanness."

"I tell you, the Pakistanis are fine people, but they are primitive in their mental structure. They just don’t have the subtlety of the Indians."

"You know, Biafra stirred up a few Catholics. But you know, I think Biafra stirred people up more than Pakistan, because Pakistan they’re just a bunch of brown goddamn Moslems."

"It is commonly and, I believe, accurately said of Pakistan that her women are much more impressive than her men."

"Our country's healthcare spending is less than one per cent of GDP, even though the WHO recommends 6pc. And only 4pc of Pakistani children receive a 'minimally acceptable diet'. These poor healthcare and standards expose the flaws of the prime minister's reasoning that our youthful demography will protect us against the worst of the pandemic; malnourishment can hardly boost immunity."

"My dream is for my land and my people to cease fighting and allow our children to reach their full potential regardless of sex, status, or belief."

"In actual life, it is impossible to separate us into two nations. We are not two nations. Every Moslem will have a Hindu name if he goes back far enough in his family history. Every Moslem is merely a Hindu who has accepted Islam. That does not create nationality. … We in India have a common culture. In the North, Hindi and Urdu are understood by both Hindus and Moslems. In Madras, Hindus and Moslems speak Tamil, and in Bengal, they both speak Bengali and neither Hindi nor Urdu. When communal riots take place, they are always provoked by incidents over cows and by religious processions. That means that it is our superstitions that create the trouble and not our separate nationalities."

"I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India."

"It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religious in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, literature. They neither intermarry nor interdine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspect on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Muslims derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different ethics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built for the government of such a state.""

"“In the North-West and North-East zones of India which are our homeland and where we are in a majority of 70% we say we want a separate State of our own. There we can live according to our own notions of life. The differences between Hindus and Muslims are so fundamental that there is nothing that matters in life upon which we agree. “It is well known to any student of History that our heroes, our culture, our language, our music, our architecture, our jurisprudence, our social life are absolutely different and distinct. We are told that the so-called one India is British-made. It was by the sword. It can only be held as it has been held. Do not be misled by anyone saying that India is one and why, therefore, should it not continue to be one. What do we want? I tell you, Pakistan. Pakistan presupposes that Hindustan should also be a free State. “What would Hindus lose? Look at the map. They would have three-quarters of India. They would have the best parts. They have a population of nearly 200,000,000. Pakistan “is certainly not the best part of India. We should have a population of 100,000,000, all Muslims. “On July the 27th, we decided to change our policy and to resort to “Direct Action”-a big change of policy-and we decided to tell our people this on August the 16th. “Reviewing the whole position, there is no other way but to divide India. Give Muslims their homeland and give Hindus Hindustan.”"

"The Muslim League, therefore, had this two-pronged thrust to make in its assault on the non-Muslims of the Muslim majority areas. In the first place it was preaching its two-nation theory and its uncompromising opposition to the Hindus, and in the Punjab, to the Sikhs as well. It tried to write off all such things as a common Indian Culture and an Indian Nationhood. In the name of self-determination for the Muslims of India, it inculcated in them the creed of intolerance, arrogance and hate. All this made any compromise with Hindu India an impossibility for the Muslims; they must fight against the Hindus to enforce their extreme demands."

"But wasn't this what Pakistan was supposed to be? After all, it came into being on the basis of the two-nation theory, that Hindus and Muslims were two separate states, that Hindus and Muslims could not live together. That was Pakistan's raison d'être. Supposing by some black magic they converted to another way of thinking... Pakistan would collapse. Therefore one of the planks of Pakistani statecraft was to keep reminding its people and the world at large of that mantra of survival: we are because we cannot live with them."

"A recent examination of school textbooks in Pakistan has uncovered that problematic content persists in the curriculum, leading to the marginalization of religious minorities from the nation’s social fabric and historical narrative. Conducted by the Lahore-based research and advocacy group Center for Social Justice (CSJ), the study, titled “What Are We Teaching at School?”, evaluated 145 textbooks across mandatory subjects for Grades 1 to 10. The Evangelical Christian Daily International reviewed and praised the report."

"We will, hopefully by next year, introduce a core syllabus for all schools that will be mandatory for students apart from the additional subjects each institution chooses to teach. This is how you create a nation. This is how you end rival cultures from developing. The that just happened… a different culture was visible in it. this is a cultural issue and this comes from the schooling system."

"... And if we are keen to make so many allowances for foreign women to experiment in the public space in Pakistan, why do we come down so hard on the local female organisers of the ?..."

"Aurat March is a sham...Khalilur Rehman Qamar sahab is a modern day philosopher and I don’t think she (:w:Marvi Sirmed) should have used women’s rights to further her own agendas.."

"“The Aurat March is the need of the hour because it is a voice against extremism....It showed the men in power back then that you cannot trample over women,..”"

"[T]he present-day linguistic affinities of different Indian populations per se are perhaps among the most ambiguous and even potentially controversial lines of evidence in the reconstruction of prehistoric demographic processes in India."

"In reading the genetics literature on South Asia, it is very clear that many of the studies actually start out with some assumptions that are clearly problematic, if not in some cases completely untenable. Perhaps the single most serious problem concerns the assumption, which many studies actually start with as a basic premise, that the Indo-Aryan invasions are a well-established (pre)historical reality. The studies confirm such invasions in large part because they actually assume them to begin with."

"Most genetic studies are built on unstated, unproven (and often unwitting) assumptions: not only that migration is the supreme mechanism to account for the spread of genes and languages, but also that, in India’s case, the said genes could only have spread unidirectionally. The studies then proceed to marshal evidence to ‘prove’ the assumption, in a classic case of circularity."

"In other parts of the world, conservative Islamists clamour for population growth. In Sunni societies, they continue to castigate family planning. Pakistan is a prime example. There, Abu Ala Mawdudi, founder of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Party, in his The Birth Control (1937) savaged contraception as a Western plot against Islam. Family planning, he maintained, would introduce Western promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases and women’s liberation to Muslim lands. Mawdudi’s opposition to abortion derives from a Qur’anic verse which instructs families not to kill children during times of want. He also quotes verses and hadiths extolling the virtue of children and marriage. Taking their cue from him, fundamentalists have attacked Pakistan’s family planning policies as a Western import linked to decadence, painting it as an imperialist attempt to control Islam. In stark contrast to Iran, no Islamist scholars have come out in support of family planning. In the words of Abdul Hakim, ‘the family planning programme in Pakistan works under a severe threat from religiosity … people are afraid lest they are considered irreligious for advocating family planning … whereas in Indonesia and Bangladesh the approach has been to convince religious leaders of the importance of this [family planning] programme and its compatibility with religion.’"

"In Pakistan, family planning is a joke. The responsible ministry is at present headed by a fundamentalist Muslim, Saddar Niazi, who boasts of being one of fifteen children. He has declared that the pressure for family planning was a holdover from the liberal secularism of Benazir Bhutto, and that he did not intend to implement the policies of a woman charged with corruption and overwhelmingly voted out in the 1990 election.265 His stand is not exceptional, rather it is the rule among Muslim governments. At any rate, Pakistan's birth rate stands at 3.2%, almost the doubt of India's."

"The contrast between Pakistan and poorer Bangladesh is stark. Pakistan’s religious authorities resisted family planning far longer than their counterparts in Bangladesh, who are much less influenced by Mawdudi and the fundamentalist theology of the Deobandis.17 There was also a close link between Mawdudi and Pakistani military ruler Zia ul-Haq. Zia admired Mawdudi, and co-opted Mawdudi’s JI into his administration. Mawdudi was a willing partner, and Zia’s long reign between 1977 and 1988 oversaw the progressive implementation of sharia in Pakistan. Nourished by the fat of American aid in support of the Afghan mujahidin, Zia gave the Salafists a free hand in social policy and diverted funds from social services to Deobandi madrasas. The result was sharia in all its glory: education and the economy were Islamised and a new Islamic penal code became law. This included the usual raft of medieval punishments known as hudud, such as cutting off the limbs of thieves, stoning women for adultery and whipping drinkers of alcoholic beverages. Though Zia was assassinated in 1988, his Islamisation policies rolled on –driven by popular demand from Salafists, the devout middle class and Islamised rural migrants... Next door in Afghanistan, and in north-west Pakistan’s tribal areas, local religious leaders exercise enormous influence over people’s perceptions of contraception. In Taliban-dominated southern Afghanistan, locals tend to accept the prohibitionist views of their conservative imams.21 Tragically, Taliban insurgents have taken Islamist opposition to family planning to new heights, or rather depths. A favoured tactic is to assassinate clinicians. Threats, kidnappings and assassinations have brought family planning to its knees in disputed areas."

"South Asia has indeed been at the crossroads for much of modern human prehistory."

"The unspoken fact of Pakistani demography is rivalry with India. The Pakistani atom bomb is only one symptom among others, and per- haps not the most important one. Questioned about their view of their country’s demography, Pakistani authorities tirelessly repeat that they fi nd the fertility rate too high. This is a well-rehearsed refrain, composed and sung to satisfy the suppliers of funds: the World Bank, the IMF, and USAID. It is indeed worth asking whether the high fertility rate does not refl ect the deep aspirations of leaders who are at bottom more concerned with geopolitical power relations in the subcontinent than with the well-being of their population. In the Sunni Arab world, the fertility rate fl oor below which the most patrilineal countries have not been able to fall is 3 children per woman. In Pakistan it is not yet certain that it will go below 4, even if it is too soon to assert that Pakistan is going to devi- ate from a trajectory matching its level of development. The situation is in fact worrying, whatever the scenario."

"Pakistan is supposed to be homogeneous because 97 percent of the population is Muslim. It is in fact shot through with lines of division that aggravate the destabilizing effects of its demographic growth. Islam is not a sufficiently unifying force to silence identity politics in a country that came out of two secessions. In these circumstances, the ideal of pu- rity expressed in the name of the country might seem to be a dangerous defiance of reality. The fertility rate in the peripheral provinces and groups—Baluchis, Siraikis, Pashtuns—is higher than that among the central ethnic groups—Punjabis, Sindhis, and Urdu-speaking Muhajirs driven out of India after the 1947 partition. The taboo is so powerful in the “country of the pure” that, without apparent reason, the govern- ment postponed a census scheduled for 1981 to 1991, and finally carried it out in 1998. It was a matter of putting off delicate questions about the representation of ethnic groups in parliament and the resulting budget allocations, the resolution of which traditionally favored the central provinces. All of this oddly recalls the situation in Lebanon."

"The Pakistani fertility rate is slowly declining: In 1988 it was at 5.56 children, and since then it has lost only 0.9 percent annually. With 4.6 children in 2005, 6 the Pakistani fertility rate, the highest in this group, is far above that of the Arab world, except for Yemen. One cannot fail to be impressed by the alignment of the fertility of the Muslims of northern India with that of Pakistan: In 1998 –1999, it was 4.8 in Uttar Pradesh, 4.9 in Rajasthan, and 4 in Bihar. One might suggest a slight boost from the combined effect of minority status and the fact that Muslims in these states belong to the least privileged strata in social and educational terms. The minority effect must play the leading role, because elsewhere in India, in states where Muslims enjoy higher than average educational status, in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, they also have a higher fertility rate than their Hindu neighbors."

"Confusing language movements with demographic movements was a childhood disease of Indo-European linguistics before 1945. Especially after Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), race thinking came to dominate the Humanities. There were warnings from Indo-Europeanists, including the much-maligned Friedrich Max Müller, to maintain the distinction, but the public and many professionals started speaking of “the Aryan race”, not in the vague sense common earlier (race = any group of hereditary belonging, from family to nation and race to humanity, Sanskrit jāti), but in the biological sense. After 1945, this went completely out of fashion in the West, but in India, not encumbered with the guilt about Nazi racism, time has stood still."

"At the time of partition in 1947, almost 23 percent of Pakistan’s population was comprised of non-Muslim citizens. Today, the proportion of non-Muslims has declined to approximately 3 percent."

"Pakis­tan is Asia's­ fastest­-growing non-Arab count­­­ry,­ doubling its popu­lat­ion every 24 yea­rs."

"Genetic variation in contemporary South Asian populations follows a northwest to southeast decreasing cline of shared West Eurasian ancestry."

"For me and for Toomas Kivisild, South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find the highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia, but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a ‘male Aryan invasion’ of India. One average estimate for the origin of this line in India is as much as 51,000 years. All this suggests that M17 could have found his way initially from India or Pakistan, through Kashmir, then via Central Asia and Russia, before finally coming into Europe."