Muhammad Tahir

FAISALABAD, OCT 7 – Philanthropists of Faisalabad are generously donating for the welfare activities and a ward has been dedicated for the free treatment of children in Faisalabad Children Hospital, said Engineer Hafiz Ihtasham Javed Khan, President Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (FCCI).

He visited the children hospital and said that previous Governments had made lofty and hollow slogans to provide free medical facilities and other basic amenities but they failed to honor their commitments.

He appreciated the allocation of free ward and told that the local business community is fully aware of its CSR (Social Corporate Responsibilities) and is bearing its entire expenses. He said that a number of free hospitals and dispensaries are being run by the FCCI members and assured to fulfill his obligations as President FCCI.

He said that he will inspire FCCI members to provide maximum facilities to the poor and needy segments of the society at their doorsteps.

He also planted a sapling in the lawn of Children Hospital and said that extensive plantation is imperative particularly in Hospitals where fresh oxygen is required to the indoor and outdoor patients. He said that people must be encouraged and motivated to protect the saplings planted by the Government and other NGOs during successive tree plantation campaigns.

Later, he also visited various wards of the hospital and appreciated the administrative qualities of the Medical superintendent Doctor Habib Buttar.

DNA

ISLAMABAD, OCT 7 – General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Chief of Army Staff (COAS) and Begum COAS visited family of Colonel Mujeeb Ur Rehman (Shaheed) today at Islamabad who embraced Shahadat during an IBO in Tank. COAS offered Fatheha and prayed for departed soul.

“Sacrifices rendered by our officers and men shall never go waste. our fight against terrorism shall continue till achievement of enduring peace and stability” COAS.

DNA

ISLAMABAD, OCT 7 – Khurshid Barlas, President, UK Pakistan Business Council Pakistan Chapter and Atta-ul-Haq, General Secretary, UK Pakistan Business Council called on Senator Javed Khan in Islamabad.

Abdul Kareem Adia were also present on the occasion. Senator Faisal khan said that the Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan is striving for the promotion of industry and trade for economic stability and economic growth in the country and the UK-Pakistan Business Council platform has a bright prospect to boost bilateral trade between the two countries at all levels.

He said that there is a war of economy in this world and we need to introduce Pakistani brands all over the world. Secretary General UK Pakistan Business Council Ata-ul-Haq said The purpose of his visit to Pakistan is to strengthen public-private partnerships and promote mutual trade cooperation.

M. Nafees

Casualties from Violence in Pakistan

A total of 132 fatalities from violence were recorded during the third quarter of 2020 with 162 people injured. Nearly 58% of the total fatalities were recorded in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KP) (including former FATA)[1], while Balochistan had the next highest number of fatalities (23), followed by Sindh (19), Gilgit Baltistan (GB) (7), Punjab (6), and Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) (1). While Punjab and Islamabad appeared to be the least affected by violence, KP and Balochistan were the worst affected regions of the country.

Most troublingly, reports appeared in the press warning of the resurgence of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the former FATA region and its possible reappearance in Karachi (table 01).

A marginal drop in violence (5%) was observed during this quarter, but the number of wounded persons was higher this quarter compared to the previous one (162 in Q3 versus 46 in Q2, an increase of over 350%). The reasons for this are discussed later in the report (table 2).

Both July and September recorded higher number of fatalities while August witnessed a significant drop on average (table 03).

North Waziristan and Karachi remained atop the list of districts in terms of fatalities from violence.  South Waziristan, Killa Abdullah, Nowshera, Rajanpur, and Awaran experienced a sudden uptick in fatalities from violence. All provincial capital cities except Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab, remained relatively peaceful for both quarters in a row (table 04).

One suicide attack took place during this quarter which caused injuries to three soldiers in the Ladha area of South Waziristan on 12 August 2020, but no intended fatalities. All other forms of violence remained almost as fatal as they were in the last quarter, with the exception of encounters of security personnel with criminals which left 13 outlaws dead as compared to 22 in last quarter. Although the fatalities from bombs, Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), landmines, and hand grenade explosions were 22 persons, the wounded were 138. This is the main reason for the escalation in the number of wounded persons this quarter compared to the previous one (table 05).

Civilians were the largest group affected by violence and counter-violence this quarter, a nearly 43% increase over the last quarter from 40 to 59. Security personnel remained the main target of militant attacks during this quarter with 42 fatalities, showing no major drop when compared with last quarter’s figure of 44. As compared to civilian and security personnel’s fatalities, militants and insurgents witnessed a significant drop in their fatalities during this quarter (table 06).

Sindhudesh Revolutionary Army (SRA), an insurgent group from Sindh, remained active during this quarter and caused two deaths in Karachi – one former Ranger in Sachal and one activist of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in Gulshan-e-Iqbal who was taking part in JI’s rally on Kashmir Day.

Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), an insurgent group from Balochistan, became active during this quarter and targeted three army personnel in Panjgur on 15 July 2020.

Afghan militants from across the border also carried out attacks on security check posts in the Bajaur area of KP.

About 50-60 drug smugglers in the bordering areas of Balochistan, suspected of having links with militant outfits, also carried out armed attacks on Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) in Mashkhel and killed two personnel.

A policeman was gunned down in a targeted attack in Korangi Industrial Area on 19 September 2020 and the TTP claimed responsibility of this attack. All together five policemen were killed in Karachi in target attacks during this quarter and it is suspected that the remaining four attacks were also carried out by TTP. These incidents are considered a sign of TTP’s return to the metropolitan city of Karachi and there is a possibility of more attacks in the future (table 07), especially after the merger of several of their formerly splintered factions.

The number of militants and insurgents that were reported to have been eliminated during security operations were 32 in this quarter. Prominent among them were five insurgents from Balochistan Republican Army (BRA), followed by Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) (4), TTP (4), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) (1), and several others who were not identified.

Among the civilians who lost their lives to violence, several of them belonged to minority religious communities and some of them were affiliated with religious parties and organizations. The army personnel were more frequently targeted during this quarter than the policemen. Of the 42 security personnel, 26 were from Pakistan Army, Frontier Corps (FC), ANF, and Rangers while the remaining were from the police force (table 08).

Sectarian Violence

KP and Sindh had major incidents of sectarian violence during this quarter while Balochistan and Punjab experienced very few incidents (table 09). It was also quite alarming to see hate-filled sectarian rallies in the largest city of the country (Karachi), as well as the federal capital, a few miles from the parliament.

There was a sudden upsurge in sectarian violence in the country. During the last quarter, only one fatality from sectarian violence was reported as compared to 9 fatalities during this quarter. Shia community was hit the hardest. A Christian and an Ahmadi were killed in Peshawar, and one person from the Shia community was killed in D.I. Khan, and two in Kohat. In Karachi, a person belonging to Shia community and another from Shia Ismaili community were targeted while a Hindu doctor was killed in Tando Allahyar. In Khuzdar, Balochistan, one Hindu businessman was the victim of target killing while four people were injured in an IED explosion near a mosque in Quetta (table 10).

[1] FATA has been merged with KP but we still maintain its data separately because it was and still is the main hub of militancy.

DNA

ISLAMABAD, OCT  7 –  A total of 132 fatalities from violence were recorded during the third quarter of 2020 with 162 people injured. Nearly 58% of the total fatalities were recorded in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KP) (including former FATA), while Balochistan had the next highest number of fatalities (23), followed by Sindh (19), Gilgit Baltistan (GB) (7), Punjab (6), and Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) (1). While Punjab and Islamabad appeared to be the least affected by violence, KP, and Balochistan were the worst affected regions of the country.

This is according to the third quarter 2020 security report issued by the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) in Islamabad today.

A marginal drop in violence (5%) was observed during this quarter, but the number of wounded persons was higher this quarter compared to the previous one (162 in Q3 versus 46 in Q2, an increase of over 350%).

North Waziristan and Karachi remained atop the list of districts in terms of fatalities from violence.  South Waziristan, Killa Abdullah, Nowshera, Rajanpur, and Awaran experienced a sudden uptick in fatalities from violence. All provincial capital cities except Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab, remained relatively peaceful for both quarters in a row.

Civilians were the largest group affected by violence and counter-violence this quarter, a nearly 45% increase over the last quarter from 36 to 59. Security personnel remained the main target of militant attacks during this quarter with 42 fatalities, showing no major drop when compared with last quarter’s figure of 43. As compared to civilian and security personnel’s fatalities, militants and insurgents witnessed a significant drop in their fatalities during this quarter.

KP and Sindh had major incidents of sectarian violence during this quarter while Balochistan and Punjab experienced very few incidents (table 09). It was also quite alarming to see hate-filled sectarian rallies in the largest city of the country (Karachi), as well as the federal capital, a few miles from the parliament.

The report is authored by Muhammad Nafees, Senior Research Fellow for CRSS.

ISLAMABAD, Oct 07 (DNA) : Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) during the past two years,  has been striving hard to facilitate its 1.4 million students by incorporating the use of latest technology in carrying out its routine administrative and academic operations.

The use of latest ICT has not only enabled the university to serve the students efficiently but has also proved to be instrumental in ensuring transparency in administrative and financial matters.

The university has conducted online workshops for all of the post graduate programs offered in spring 2020 semester in the milieu of COVID -19 pandemic.

Furthermore, the university has appointed highly qualified and well-trained resources persons through the latest Tutor Allocation System (TAS) from the current data system of e registered tutors.

AIOU administration has taken various key initiatives, during the past two years, for overall progress of the university which include offering admissions in two phases of every semester, provision of online admission facility, transitioning of university’s administrative and academic operations from manual to automation,  centralized marking of examinations’ papers, preparation of annual academic calendar and its implementation,  expansion in regional offices’ network, online availability of PDF course books, professional development of the faculty, 9 scholarship schemes for the needy students, free education for drop out girls, educational reforms for the prisoners, co-curricular activities for the students and various steps taken to promote research culture in the university.

In short, AIOU is gradually bringing technological revolution to provide education to the masses of Pakistan.

DNA

ISLAMABAD, OCT 7 – The UNESCO Regional Office for East Africa has partnered with Huawei Technologies (Kenya) Co., LTD to train faculty members from universities and colleges that are in the early stages of career and eager to formulate and integrate AI into their teaching course as part of their courses in countries in the East Africa region.

Developing countries in East Africa will be able to reap the rewards of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and overcome the skills shortage that hinders their national innovation systems.

Through this initiative, new out-of-the-box education and training techniques that value interdisciplinary skills and creative thinking, in order to produce a technically savvy and innovative workforce, have been developed in countries of ‘East Africa.

They will also adopt what they have learned from this training in their curriculum to bring more young workers into new technologies. Similar Program is launched by Huawei for Pakistan in which Many University graduate took benefit out of it.

UNESCO Regional Office for East Africa and Huawei announced their collaboration to improve digital skills and the application of artificial intelligence (AI) at the HUAWEI CONNECT summit in Shanghai, China in 2019 Ann Therese Ndong-Jatta, Director of UNESCO’s Regional Office for East Africa announced the partnership during her speech at the Summit.

She stressed the importance of building digital skills in Africa and the tremendous opportunities offered by technology to improve the quality and accessibility of education: “I commend Huawei’s TECH4ALL initiative for focusing on technology in benefit people and launch this initiative to ensure that no one is left behind, especially those in the most remote areas. UNESCO East Africa is delighted to work with Huawei on this initiative. The current training program is the second in the series with the Huawei ICT Academy program under this cooperation agreement.

This training program is a one-week program with introduction to Python programming; Foundation of deep learning; image and speech recognition programming with human-machine dialogue programming. The morning sessions are devoted to theoretical sessions and those in the afternoon to online experiments. At the end of the training, there was an online certification exam, where successful trainees received Huawei HCIA-AI certification to becoe certified AI professionals.