Helping Pakistan's acid attack victims

When Bushra goes out, she wears the full niqab. It covers her face. She says it stops people staring. If they do catch a sight of her, the Pakistani woman has a story prepared.

She tells them her injuries were caused by hot milk being spilled. It is not true. Bushra looks the way she does because of greed, because of anger, because of the evil in some people's hearts.

Fifteen years ago, she went to the wedding of her brother. It was a happy occasion. There was music and laughter. When she returned to her husband, her in-laws demanded money.They told her it was tradition to bring money back after a wedding.

They wanted 50,000 rupees – almost $600. She told them "I don't have that kind of money. My brothers don't have this kind of money either." It was not what they wanted to hear.

They called her a liar. They beat her repeatedly. Then they tied her up. Her mother-in law grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. "I was terrified," said Bushra.

Her voice quivers, remembering the moment. She gulps hard, chocking back the tears. "Then they put a cloth on a stick, soaked it in acid and her husband rubbed it over the side of my face".

She remembers the pain, but this is not where her ordeal ended. "His uncle snatched the stick and rubbed it across the other side of my face. He forced open my mouth and dripped it on my tongue. It burned".

Bushra does not remember what happened next. She passed out from the pain. She only knows what happened next from what people tell her. Her family tied her body to a ceiling fan and set the house on fire.

They told people in the village on the outskirts of Lahore that Bushra had tried to commit suicide. But people did not just stand around. They burst their way into the house and grabbed her limp body. They took her to hospital.

For a year, she stayed in hospital. She drifted in and out of consciousness. She could not see, could not open her eyes, but she could hear. And she heard people express their disgust at how she looked and run away. And those who stayed made her worried and tense.

She went to live with her sister. When some of her family saw her they fainted. Her body was skinny, but her head was massive. She heard them say, "This is a woman but it doesn't look like a woman because she has no face". And she cried.

That was fifteen years ago. Bushra has gone through 28 operations. "Slowly my face has got better" she tells me. "Maybe if they could fix my nose it would be better".

She would like to be a beautician. And now she is training in a salon in Lahore. It is run by Musarat Misbah. This elegant, articulate woman decided to help Pakistan’s acid burns victims after a chance encounter five and a half years ago.

A woman walked into her office late one evening and demanded her help. She asked her to return in the morning.

"The woman was very insistent and said no, you must help me now. She removed her scarf and I saw a woman without a face. I saw a girl, there was no nose, eyes are gone, she had a contraction from his chin to her chest which meant she could not move her neck. And I sat down. There was no life in my legs. I asked her 'What happened?'"

"She told me acid had been thrown at her by her own family members, her husband, her in-laws. She said she wanted me to help her look beautiful. And no make up could change her features or bring back the eyes, so I told her 'I will help you'".

And Misbah did. Using her own money, she paid for surgery. Word spread and now, almost 400 women and girls have asked Misbah and her Smile Again Foundation for help.

Doctors from Italy and the UK have given their services to help with medical treatment. And she tries to direct many of the women into jobs.

"Employers say, 'We can't have someone who looks like that working in our place, it is too upsetting for everyone else', so I tell them - use them as telephone operators".

Her pushiness and determination means 98 have found work.

Each case brings new heartache, a story worse than the last. There is 17-year-old Naseera with her flawless skin and long blonde hair. He took revenge because she rejected his proposal.

She says "It was like burning in hell." Acid burned through her upper body melting away the skin.

Then there is Shamim who was verbally abused by a street gang. When she rejected their advances, they kidnapped her, raped her and poured acid on her face, trying to silence her forever. She was just 17.

Bushra does not preach forgiveness. Her pain has been too long and too great.

"People are cruel towards young girls and the innocent. Divorce is one thing. If someone does not get along with someone else then its fine, get a divorce and move on.

"But to ruin someone's face, to set fire to someone or to pour acid on someone's face, people who do this, 20 or 25 of them should be hanged in public at once to strike fear into the hearts of people so that men realise that you cannot do this to a woman.

"I've even learned how to drive so that if I see my husband walking on the street I can kill him with my car".

There are no accurate figures for the number of acid attacks in Pakistan each year, but it is thought only a handful are actually reported to police. Even those cases are sometimes hard to pursue.

Misbah tells me: "I took one girl who had been attacked to the police station. The first question the officer asked was 'What did you do to deserve this?'"’

She continues to try to help the victims, and also change the way of thinking.

Al Jazeera

120 Al Qaeda Suspects Held in Turkey

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish police on Friday rounded up 120 people suspected of links to the Al Qaeda terror network in simultaneous pre-dawn raids in 16 provinces, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.

It was not clear if Friday's detentions would amount to a major blow to homegrown Islamic militants allegedly affiliated with Al Qaeda. Turkey has carried out similar raids against alleged Al Qaeda suspects in the past year.

The arrests follows another raid on suspected militants in the cities Ankara and Adana last week in which police rounded up and interrogated some 40 people and reportedly seized documents detailing Al Qaeda activities. Twenty-five of them were charged with membership in a terrorist organization while the rest were released.

"Each operation against Al Qaeda leads to new information and widens the net," said Nihat Ali Ozcan, a terrorism expert at the Economic Policy Research Institute in Ankara. He said the operations were likely to continue.

Those detained Friday include a faculty member of the Yuzunci Yil University in the eastern city of Van, who is suspected of recruiting students at the campus and other people through the Internet and of sending them to Afghanistan for training, Anatolia reported, citing unnamed police officials. The suspect was identified by his initials M.E.Y. only.

Anatolia said other suspects included some local leaders, university students, and people believed to be spreading Al Qaeda propaganda.

Police seized documents and computer hard-disks during Friday's raids, it said.

Police would not comment on the arrests Friday.

Homegrown Islamic militants tied to the Al Qaeda carried out suicide bombings in Istanbul, killing 58 people in 2003.

The targets were the British consulate, a British bank and two Jewish synagogues. In 2008, an attack blamed on Al Qaeda-affiliated militants outside the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul left three assailants and three policemen dead.

Turkish authorities have said dozens of Islamic militants have received training in Afghanistan.

However, Al Qaeda's austere and violent interpretation of Islam receives little public backing in Turkey.

Several other radical Islamic groups are active in Turkey, a predominantly Muslim but officially secular country.

In June, Turkey's court of appeals upheld life sentences for six militants accused in the 2003 deadly bombings, including Syrian Loa'i Mohammad Haj Bakr al-Saqa, who was charged with masterminding the bombings. The court sentenced 33 others to between three years nine months and 18 years.

It acquitted 15 of the suspects, citing a lack of evidence.

Hundreds of other suspected militants are on trial for membership in a terror organization.

FoxNews

Recovering Aceh bites Western hand that fed it

HERE'S a provocative thought: if it weren't for the 2004 tsunami, Western aid workers in Banda Aceh city would not be the target of politically motivated drive-by shootings, and women in West Aceh regency would be free to wear trousers.

As of Friday, any Muslim woman in the regency will be forced to change into a government-supplied long skirt if she dares step outside in tight pants.

And after she takes the trousers off - and dons a jilbab, or Muslim head scarf - they will be publicly shredded.

The new laws will add to recently enacted provincial legislation prescribing stoning as punishment for adultery or homosexual relations.

The laws have attracted scorn and support in equal measure in Indonesia, but even they are mere pointers to a climate of uncertainty far outweighing simple questions of how Aceh has gone about rebuilding since December 26, 2004, when 170,000 of the 230,000 lives lost in the tsunami were from Aceh.

Billions of dollars in foreign aid were quickly pledged from across the world, a great deal of it directly to the Indonesian province. Most of those billions were well spent. A reasonable amount, including from Australia, was squandered in mismanagement and corruption.

Major agencies including AusAid and the International Organisation for Migration, were humiliated when it was discovered that reconstruction projects they managed had used asbestos-laden building materials.

In Banda Aceh, emergency barracks built to house the homeless are still inhabited - not by refugees, but by hopefuls from the sticks who want to try their luck at work in the capital. For government and aid agency workers, these grifters have stories of sorrow and official bungling keeping them from homes they claim are rightfully theirs.

A good number of people, especially Indonesians and particularly Acehnese with strong business connections, profited handsomely from the aid contract money. Much of this profit was through legitimate dealings. But plenty of it was not.

Critics of this have sometimes had a hard time accepting that while capitalism and democracy - the latter having only had its birth in Indonesia with the fall of Suharto in 1998 - go hand-in-hand, they often do so in opaque ways, and it was never going to be a simple matter of overlaying foreign business practices on an Indonesian system. Tensions over the expectations for aid money and the reality were inevitable.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in one of the early astute appointments of his presidency, directed former mining tzar Kuntoro Mangkusubroto to oversee a new cabinet-level body, the Aceh and Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency.

The aim was not only to reduce corruption in the rebuilding effort but also to streamline the inefficient relationships between Indonesian government agencies. Dr Yudhoyono and his then-deputy, businessman Jusuf Kalla, also saw a grand political opportunity. They intervened in the civil war that had blighted Aceh for three decades.

Dr Yudhoyono and Mr Kalla put themselves in serious consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize after an agreement to end the conflict was signed in Helsinki in 2005, leading to a self-governance deal for Aceh enjoyed by no other Indonesian province.

This peace, and the political arrangements that flowed from it, would not have been possible without the tsunami.

Indeed, the man elected governor in historic 2006 elections, former rebel fighter Irwandi Yusuf, was a political prisoner who escaped when the tsunami destroyed cell walls in the central Banda Aceh jail where he was held. The future leader's epic flight set him on a course that is only now being fully played out. The no-trousers edict is one of its manifestations.

Sharia has become a watchword for Acehnese identity, even if, as Singapore-based analyst Farish A. Noor warns, its gradual imposition from within is in many ways a result of Jakarta's "complex and at times clumsy attempt to domesticate the forces of Acehnese resistance by playing the religious card".

The shooting attacks on foreign aid workers are another manifestation of the contradictory tsunami recovery experience.

Erhard Bauer, 50, the chief of the German Red Cross in Indonesia, was hit three times in the stomach and arm by two motorcycle-riding gunmen as he was being driven to the airport in early November. He survived after being flown to Singapore.

Soon afterwards, the home of the European Union chief in Aceh, John Penny, was shot up while he and his wife were inside.

And just a month ago gunmen opened fire on the home of two Americans who lecture in English literature at Banda Aceh's Syiah Kuala University.

Mr Irwandi is furious, demanding privately that the Indonesian military, or TNI, pull its head in even as he knows full well he cannot accuse its leaders publicly.

There is no direct proof that TNI elements are paying former Acehnese rebels - many now unemployed, and looking for new direction in their lives - to mount the attacks on foreign aid workers.

There is no proof at all; but in the view of those from the well-informed Banda Aceh intelligentsia down to taxi drivers, there is little doubt that this is the TNI taking revenge on the former rebel party's almost clean sweep of power in the provincial elections, and showing its determination to steal things back.

"The police believe it's the military, based on ballistics tests from the bullets used," political analyst Fajran Zein, from private policy think tank the Aceh Institute, told The Australian.

"The assumption is it's intended to accelerate the departure of foreigners from Aceh."

Indonesia's police and military have long been at each others' throats, of course, especially since the former were hived off from the military establishment in the immediate post-Suharto reforms.

"All three attacks against foreigners are linked," spokesman Farid Ahmad Saleh said after the third shooting.

"They were conducted by trained professionals . . . they want to terrorise foreigners working to heal Aceh."

The rebuilding might be almost over, but by any political and civic measure, the building of Aceh has barely begun.

The Australian

Bishop urges praise for the fanaticism that kills

We must admire a fanaticism that inevitably leads to the demonisation and destruction of its foes:

The Taliban can be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to one another, the new Bishop for the Armed Forces has claimed.

The Rt Rev Stephen Venner called for a more sympathetic approach to the Islamic fundamentalists that recognises their humanity…

“There’s a large number of things that the Taliban say and stand for which none of us in the west could approve, but simply to say therefore that everything they do is bad is not helping the situation because it’s not honest really.

”The Taliban can perhaps be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other.”

Venner is, of course, just channelling Lyse Doucet, a BBC apologist for the Taliban:

A BBC presenter has attacked coverage of Afghanistan’s ongoing war, claiming TV reporters are not covering the humanity of the Taliban.

AP today reports on what the admirable and humane Taliban is up to at the moment in Pakistan:

The Taliban has routinely attacked schools, particularly ones attended by girls....

In one month in Peshawar, 221 people were killed and nearly 500 wounded in bombings. A single truck bomb in a market that sells mostly women’s clothes and children’s toys killed more than 100. The latest attack was Monday when a bomb went off outside the courthouse in Peshawar, killing 10 people…

Dr. Arif Attaullah says he does not cry easily. But when the truck bomb killed 112 people in Peshawar’s Mena Bazaar he could not stop the tears.

“A father came in and he was holding a small boy. The boy’s body was burned black and his father was crying: `I sent you to school to learn, not to die,’” Attaullah says. “That made me cry. I am a tough person — a surgeon — but day after day we are seeing these things that are too horrible.”

Praise the fanaticism that can inspire such barbarity. So the bishop of Britain’s armed forces instructs.

Andrew Bolt

Obama reaches out to Philippine jihadists

As Weasel Zippers says: "What a disgrace. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has been responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Christians in the areas it controls, beheadings, numerous terrorist attacks etc. not that this would bother Obama...."

"Obama sends letter to Philippine Muslim rebel leader," from Deutsche Presse Agentur, November 14

Manila - US President Barack Obama has sent a letter to the leader of the main Muslim rebel group in the Philippines, a guerrilla official said Saturday.

The letter to Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chairman Murad Ibrahim was delivered to rebel peace negotiators by Deputy Assistant State Secretary Scot Marciel, according to Muhammad Ameen, chairman of the MILF secretariat.

Ameen said Marciel and two other US diplomats met MILF peace negotiators headed by Mohagher Iqbal on November 6.

Ameen did not disclose the contents of the letter but said it was a response to a letter Murad sent to Obama after he won the election last year.

On Friday, US State Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton urged the Philippine government and the MILF to conclude a peace deal before the end of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's term next year....

With thanks to JihadWatch

Many die in string of Iraq attacks

At least 13 members of an Iraqi tribe who took up arms against al-Qaeda have been killed by armed men in Iraqi army uniforms in execution-style attacks west of Baghdad, the capital.

Mohammed al-Zoubai, a resident, said on Monday that the attackers raided Saidan district of Zouba, 20km from Baghdad, overnight and took six residents from their homes, lined them up in a field and shot them dead.

The killers then stormed the home of Attala Ouda al-Shuker, a leader in the Sahwa (Awakening) movement of Sunni tribesmen who joined US forces in 2006, and shot dead three of his sons and four other relatives, al-Zoubai said.

"They killed three of his sons and four cousins," he said, adding that all those killed were members of the Zouba tribe.

The attackers then dumped the bodies at the local cemetery, he added.

"It was an al-Qaeda group and they were wearing Iraqi army uniforms," Zoubai said.

Major-General Qassim Atta, a spokesman for the army's Baghdad operation, confirmed the toll, but gave a different account.

"The first indications we have is that 13 people were killed in a tribal conflict," he said.

Iraqi police and hospital sources said another deadly attack occurred in northern Kirkuk, where a car bomb exploded in a crowded market place, killing at least six people and wounding 10 others.

"Many cars were set ablaze and many shops heavily damaged due to the powerful explosion," said Major-General Torhan Abdul-Rahman, deputy police chief for the city.

The death toll is expected to rise, police said.

In a third attack, a bomb planted under a car parked near an Iraqi army checkpoint exploded, killing two soldiers and wounding six civilians in Baghdad's Mansour district, police said.

And a roadside bomb wounded three children on Sunday in a small town near Mosul, 390km north of Baghdad, according to police.

More at Al Jazeera (English)

Bangladesh: Acid Attacks - A Brave Face

Bangladeshi women scarred by acid attacks are refusing to withdraw from society.

Fozila was attacked because she refused a marriage proposal. Hasina was set upon after an argument over a bucket of water. Two women in the seething Bangladesh capital Dhaka whose lives changed in a blinding flash. They were attacked with acid.

Last year in Bangladesh there were 179 recorded cases of acid attacks. Hydrochloric and nitric acid are cheap and readily available - used by the gallon in the grimy jewellery workshops in the backstreets of the city. In the wrong hands though, it can be devastating. Eating quickly through skin and bone and doing irreparable damage. The victims are targeted usually over land disputes or spurned advances.

And while women are the main targets of a despicable crime, children – even babies – are also often in the line of fire, attacked for being born female or boys splashed with acid because of petty inter-family jealousy.

In a powerful and confronting report South Asia correspondent Sally Sara investigates acid attacks in Bangladesh and asks what’s being done to arrest this shameful phenomenon.

Sara discovers Bangladesh is trying to reform itself. Police have been told to crack down on the acid throwers, and the death penalty has been introduced. The message is that these attacks should no longer be considered just family business.

‘Our face is our identity. When it is changed our whole identity is changed.
Women and girls are so cheap in this society, so men can destroy them’.

MONIRA RAHMAN, ACID SURVIVORS FOUNDATION

In a society that shuns people with disabilities it would appear impossible for some of these women to survive let alone prosper but some do through remarkable strength and determination. They have landed good jobs and now can afford to live independently in the city, building a new life they may have only dreamed of in their villages.

They’re sustained by a new self belief, drawing courage and confidence from an inner beauty.

‘Beautiful is what’s inside, what’s there in your heart. My heart is beautiful. I can feel that.’

HASINA AKTER, ACID SURVIVOR

Read and watch more here: ABC Online

H/T: Women Against Sharia

UK: Muslims denounce antisemitic acts, warn foreign policy could lead to extremism

Prominent British Muslims have denounced anti-Semitic attacks amid fears of a backlash against Jewish communities in Britain over Gaza.

The leaders said that British Jews "should not be held responsible" for Israel's actions in Gaza.

Jewish groups say there has been a record rise in anti-Semitic incidents since the crisis began.

A letter to mosques comes as Muslim leaders urge ministers to do more to stop extremists recruiting young men.

In that letter, a broad range of scholars and progressive thinkers appeal to British Muslims to stand by British Jews, rather than allowing extremists to attack them.

The letter's signatories say they condemn "attacks on innocent British citizens and the desecration of places of worship".

"The ongoing killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza by Israeli forces angered us all. However, this does not, and cannot, justify attacks on our fellow citizens of Jewish faith and background here in Britain.

"Most Muslims are completely against such behaviour," it continues. "British Jews should not be held responsible for the actions of the Israeli government."

The CST says half of incidents where the perpetrator is identifiable have been carried out by people described by the victim as either Muslim or Arab - higher than previously recorded.

Muslim community leaders met cabinet ministers for the second time in a week on Thursday amid fears that the conflict could derail government efforts to combat extremism.

The BBC understands that during the latest meeting, ministers were urged to do more to distance themselves from both Israel and US policy.

Many of the Muslims present said youngsters angry over the plight of Palestinians needed to hear clearer messages about British foreign policy, amid attempts by extremists to groom potential recruits.

Usama Hasan, an East London imam and community activist, said that he had seen a rise in extremist rhetoric, including new posters calling for violent jihad.

"The level of anger is so great over Gaza - nothing I have ever seen before, much higher than over Afghanistan," he said.

Source: Islam in Europe

Anti-Semitic attack on teenage girl in Paris

Adam Sage, in Paris

Fears that the conflict in Gaza could spark violence between Jews and Muslims in France have been heightened as three teenagers were arrested yesterday for an alleged anti-Semitic attack on a 15-year-old girl.

An inquiry was launched after the victim said she was insulted, knocked to the ground, kicked and punched by a gang of 10 youths as she left Leon Blum school in Villiers-le-Bel north of Paris.

Three of her alleged attackers - aged between 13 and 15 and all from her own school - were arrested on suspicion of 'aggravated violence and anti-Semitic insults’, according to a police source.

The girl said they had told her they were seeking to avenge Palestinians in Gaza as they set upon her on Monday.

Although she escaped with only minor injuries, the incident has fuelled claims by Jewish community leaders that radical Muslims are seeking to ’import the Middle East conflict’.

Richard Prasquier, the chairman of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, said: ’All over France, people are reporting more and more anti-Semitic attacks. I am worried.’

The National Bureau of Vigilance against Anti-Semitism, said it had received about 100 reports of anti-Semitic insults and threats since the start of the conflict in Gaza. On Monday a stolen car was driven at high speed into the front gate of a synagogue in Toulouse, south west France, and set on fire.

Police said they were seeking three suspects in connection with the attack, which was denounced by Michele Alliot-Marie, the Interior Minister, as ’totally stupid and revolting.’ In a separate incident, anti-Semitic graffiti was scrawled onto a synagogue in Lingolsheim, eastern France.

A demonstration against the Israeli intervention in Gaza ended in clashes between police and protestors, who also ransacked shops in Paris on Saturday.

With 4 million Muslims, 700,000 Jews, tense relations between two communities and a long history of urban riots, France is the European country most exposed to an outbreak of violence linked to the Middle East, according to many observers.

Amid official concern that France’s tinderbox suburbs could explode as a result of Gaza, Mrs Alliot-Marie has ordered police chiefs to ’stop any attempt to transfer the Middle Eastern conflict to France.

A certain number of facts...show that groups or individuals may try to exploit the situation,’ she told them in a letter this week. Everything must be done to avoid this risk and guarantee the principles which ensure national unity.’

Source: Times Online
H/T: Weasel Zippers

Gallery attacked over 'insulting' artworks

By Arifa Akbar

A gallery showing inflammatory images of veiled Muslims, including a bare-breasted woman partially clad in a burqa, is under police surveillance after being attacked earlier this week.

Windows and doors at the SaLon Gallery in west London were smashed after a series of abusive, anonymous phone calls and angry protests about the images from Muslims. The gallery has complained to police.

The solo exhibition of paintings by Sarah Maple includes a veiled woman holding a pig, which is interpreted as a flagrant disregard of the Islamic ban on eating pork. The show – entitled "This Artist Blows" – also includes two self-portraits: one of Maple wearing a headscarf has an image of Kate Moss's naked breast attached to it; another shows Maple in a T-shirt bearing the slogan "I love jihad". In another, a veiled Muslim woman wears a badge that says "I love orgasms". Read more ...

Source: The Independent