NRO DRAMA !!!

By Mwaqar
I am not Zardari’s fan but its really amazing that people have forgotten Nawaz Shrif’s corruption, to me entire Pakistani elite is corrupt and are bunch of thugs, criminals and thieves. The only thing Pakistan needs is a REVOLUTION and firing squad to get rid of all these criminals. The fact is, No one has any idea how the NRO is going to play out in the courts. But everyone knows that corruption is rampant in Pakistan and there are no effective means to check it. Ousting Zardari will neither fix the system nor validate the continuation of democracy in Pakistan .
Nawaz Sharifs Ehtesab Bureau was basically a Punjabi way of removing all political opposition to primacy of Punjab from Sindh. Corruption was used as a pretext although no one ever asked how Nawaz Sharif became Pakistan’s richest man in between 1985 and 1997? No one asked how Nawaz Sharif awarded the Lahore Islamabad Motorway to Daewoo before last date of award of the project? No one has asked how Shahbaz Sharif awarded NLC 8 Billion Rupees of Lahore Ring Road without bidding and NLC sub contracted the same work to civilians within 7 days without bidding? HOW IS IT THAT ALL THE CRIMES AND CORRUPTION IN PAKISTAN IS IN SINDH,PUKHTUNKHWA,BALUCHISTAN, WHILE THE MAJORITY PUNJAB MUCH LARGER IN POPULATION IS COMPOSED OF ALL ANGELS .
NRO is just a name in the struggle of Pakistan’s so called custodians , also known as establishment , the generals , the Punjab centered political clique to paint all who are outside their group as bad guys.
The question of NRO is of social justice and morality that an elite group of people are allowed keep themselves away from any judicial process for their alleged crimes.
But I don't think our bureaucracy, generals, feudal parties, corrupt capitalists , bhatta khors don't consider them selves as in need of any morality. These thugs and criminals don’t care that ordinary Pakistanis are poor, they are selling kids and kidneys or committing suicides because of poverty ,they don’t have clean drinking water, electricity, proper medical benefits and the list of their miseries goes on in Jinnah’s Pakistan.
One person of the family stands in line for flour, another stands in line to get sugar. When they come home, no electricity, gas, water. Very productive – these politicians have taken money from agencies and steal money. I think these people should be banned from running. These corrupt politicians , rulers, elite and slaves of bourgeois are all power hungry. None of them is truly a leader of public. A public leader only comes in power to help the public. They represent and defend the rights of their community. As long as these political leaders are in the political scene, no real progress can take place. The time has come to start things from scratch; to have the Pakistan "Born Again". This can only accomplish when the Pakistani public, stop believing in this charade of democracy. It is only good for amusement. "Somebody" has to give a sudden halt to this and form a government of technocrats (loyal ordinary citizens of Pakistan) who can rule for good 25-30 years and "build the nation": infrastructure, economy, healthcare and education geared towards making citizens of Pakistan virtuous, compassionate, tolerant and knowledgeable.
The reason I talk about revolution is, because we need to put this country on the right track , to debar all the corrupt politicians or bureaucrats and army generals from ever holding public offices again...otherwise this vicious cycle will continue to play on...also if everybody loves the animal of democracy so much, the least that can be done by all political parties is to first institute democratic norms within their own ranks rather than to operate like dynasties in a kingdom...also they should bring in statutes within their own ranks to debar corrupt leaders, otherwise the monstrous shamble of corruption and destruction would carry on for ever, lets break the vicious circle now... otherwise 3 yrs from now, we will be watching Nawaz or Shahbaz as PM making the same inaugural speech they were making 10 yrs ago... "Aziz humwatanon, pichli hakoomat nay iss mulk ko loot kar deewalaya kar diya. Muslim League phir se taraqqi ka safar shuroo karey gi .
The people should rise up against the system. Because, it is the system that is flawed.

Lets see how other countries have eradicated corruption from their ranks. Some cleaned the top leadership as in Malaysia and some made it a criminal office punishable to death as is the case in China. The death penalty is an effective means of state-driven innovation, especially against entrenched or widespread defective social structures. Its use against corruption is not in itself new, and it is still applied effectively in China. The recent NRO scandal is a quick reminder, that in the heavy population developing countries. Corruption, self-enrichment, and nepotism are part of the political culture in - so much so, that they form a major argument against democracy itself. Though many countries have signed Protocol Six of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits the use of the death penalty in peaceful times, however including china & Pakistan some 59 countries have not signed that protocol. The death penalty is legal in 59 countries and 25 of them used it last year to execute almost 9,000 people and Belarus is the only European country where the death penalty is still used. Pakistan is amongst those 59 who awards death sentence freely but In Pakistan you can hang a poor guy not big thugs and criminals. Pakistani Society continues its descent into Anarchy and lawless. The powerful and the rich remain accountable to no one, free to plunder the national trust. The Corrupt should be hung from telephone and electric poles in the street for all the public to see that Corruption will not be tolerated. These corrupt politicians ARE the reason of Pakistan's downfall. Such a strong blow to Pakistan's prosperity SHOULD ONLY be dealt with IRON HAND: Capital Punishment should be enforced for such chronic criminals.
Pakistani politicians desire to enter in politics is to enhance their personal wealth, powers and ego. They entirely forget main objective of democracy which is to serve the people and the country. From day one they been fighting like dogs and cats, not to serve the nation but to themselves and this is the unfortunate reality.
The military establishment's filthy blood-stained hands need to be kept out of Pakistani politics. Pakistani Generals need to understand that they need to improve their skill in defending the country instead of running it into the ground .
The nation is still at war with the terrorist. Beside terrorists plague Pakistanis have other several major problems such as poverty, IDPs issues, security of people and nation, energy crises, inflation, unemployment, lack of justice for individuals, civil laws etc. All these issues require full attention of all branches of our government.
Away from Pakistan for three decades but still carrying a sympathetic heart, I watch events unfold in Pakistan like a soap opera. Politicians of all persuasions appear on television claiming honesty and virtue, prepared to sacrifice all for the country. Who are they kidding? We all know deep down most of them are corrupt and will not hesitate to further their personal cause before the country’s. You only have to look at the gap between haves and the have nots. People taking their own lives in desperation because they can’t feed their children, while the elite live in palaces, eat well and travel to foreign countries with disproportionate entourage on public funds. These political parties are behaving like the sugar mills owners. They are just after their personal benefits and do not care a bit for the country’s interests. Pretty hopeless people in the present dark situation! Pakistan is cursed with evil politicians. Masses have no choice. Only a Messiah will liberate the oppressed.
We can only hope that one day a revolutionary benevolent leader can steer this nation out of its misery.

Democracy and politicians

Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi
Daily Times

Both the government and the opposition are strong in verbal commitment to democracy but their political discourse and activities are not always helpful to democracy

The current domestic political situation does not promise a secure future for democracy in Pakistan. If anything, the people’s trust in the political institutions and leadership in power is fast eroding, increasing the space for manoeuvre for state-institutions and non-democratic forces.

Pakistan began the current democratic era with a lot of optimism for the future of democracy for understandable reasons. The relatively fair and free general elections in February 2008 brought forward two genuinely popular parties — the PPP and the PML-N. The regional political parties that acquired salience were willing to cooperate with the nationwide political parties.

Twenty months later, the optimism of the earlier days has waned and a large number of political observers are expressing doubts if the present political arrangements at the federal level can stay intact until the second anniversary. The Zardari-Gilani combine may find it extremely difficult to sustain itself without making drastic changes in personnel at the top and policy management.

These threats are not being posed by the Taliban and other extremist Islamic groups. It is ironic that the threat comes primarily from within the political class that is sharply polarised and different political parties and leaders cannot rise above their narrow partisan interests. Both the government and the opposition are strong in verbal commitment to democracy but their political discourse and activities are not always helpful to democracy. The PPP-led government wants to hold on to power on its terms for as long as possible and use state patronage to advance its partisan agenda. The opposition, especially the PML-N, cannot hide its desire to knock out President Asif Ali Zardari from the presidency and force mid-term elections on Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

The PML-N pursues its confrontation with the government in an election campaign style. The general pattern is to pick up a particular issue and launch a massive political offensive in a now-or-never style. The PML-N’s political discourse on the restoration of the Chief Justice after the PML-N Punjab government was replaced with governor’s rule was non-democratic and highly confrontational. Later, the issue of the trial of General Musharraf was taken up. This was replaced with the Kerry-Lugar bill and then the NRO. The opposition to the NRO was based on the hope that its abolition would revive corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari and reopen criminal proceedings against some MQM activists.

The PML-N adopted a highly moral disposition of not condoning corruption through the NRO and maintained that none of its leaders benefited from the NRO. However, the information available on November 12 showed that some PML-N members in Punjab benefitted from the NRO. On the same day the cases were discovered in the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) record going back to the year 2000 that accused Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif of money laundering. Some PML-N leaders have described these charges as political victimisation by NAB. Hopefully, they would now view the NAB cases against the PPP leaders in the same manner.

The political leaders are unable to recognise that their never-ending effort to delegitimise each other undermines the political institutions and processes. The charges they often frame against each other are subsequently used by the military to exclude them from any role in politics.

Another development that adversely affects democracy is the tendency of the opposition to rely more on extra-parliamentary pressures and make only limited use of parliament. For example, the PML-N spearheaded the long march for the restoration of the chief justice but it did not move any resolution or adjournment motion in the National Assembly on this issue. Similarly, its members bitterly criticised the Kerry-Lugar bill (mostly outside parliament) but they never moved a resolution in the National Assembly condemning its provisions or rejecting it altogether.

The main constraint on the capacity of parliament to function as the supreme law-making body and the pivot of power is not necessarily the 17th amendment that enhanced the powers of the president. The constraints are political, which will continue to adversely affect the performance of parliament even if the powers of the president are reduced. The political leaders need to assign primacy to parliament in their political gaming. The National Assembly often faces a quorum problem; its meetings are brief and attendance poor. The National Assembly barely meets the constitutional requirement of minimum working days. The political parties rely more on extra-parliamentary measures, i.e. street protest, press conferences, political talk-shows on private sector television networks, etc, to advance their political agendas.

If the opposition role has not been helpful to democracy, the PPP and its allies have not shown much interest in strengthening the civilian institutions and processes. The political institutions and leaders have lost credibility with the people, mainly because of poor governance and the failure of the government to address their socio-economic problems.

The federal government’s poor management of the key policy issues like the restoration of the chief justice, the sugar crisis, the Kerry-Lugar bill, the NRO, gas load management and two weekly holidays shows that it suffers from poor policy making and management, failure to pre-empt a difficult situation, and a lack of consultation with the stakeholders for policy-making.

The presidency’s constant effort to dominate policymaking and management has exposed the presidency and made it vulnerable to criticism. President Zardari has become more controversial now than was the case when he contested the presidential elections in September 2008.

The presidency appears to rely on the advice of people who have a poor rapport and reputation inside and outside the PPP. The decisions on key issues are taken without paying much attention to the ground political realities. Consequently, the presidency had to backtrack on the restoration of the chief justice and other judges. It was completely out of touch with the domestic political realities when it agreed to the language of some provisions of the Kerry-Lugar bill in the pre-approval stage. The refusal of the coalition partners to support the NRO shows that the presidency did not consult them before sending it to the National Assembly. The unnecessary delay in amending the constitution in the context of the Charter of Democracy has done maximum damage to the credibility of the presidency.

The sugar crisis shows the inability of the presidency and the federal and provincial governments to force the mill owners to bring the sugar to market at a fixed price. The gas load management issue is another example of a self-created problem by not taking the relevant business quarters into confidence.

The opposition and the government need to mend their ways if they want democracy to become viable. Greater responsibility falls on the government, which needs to improve governance relating to the socio-economic problems of the people if it wants to retrieve its credibility at the popular level. The presidency needs to step back from its overstretched role and the prime minister needs to bridge the gap between official rhetoric and performance. The president and the prime minister need to replace some advisers/ministers with people who enjoy better credibility in the PPP and the opposition circles. The political status quo at the federal level has become non-viable.

Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi is a political and defence analyst

Peshawar ruined by unholy mingling of religion, evil

By Dr. S. Amjad Hussain

THE images of dead and dying people keep flashing in my mind as I think of the devastating car bomb that destroyed part of my hometown of Peshawar last week. It left more than 100 dead and twice as many injured. There was no room in the hospitals to deal with the injured and the dying. Carpenters could not keep up with the demand for coffins.
This latest atrocity - an onslaught against civility and decency - hit home for me, figuratively and literally, because it was in that neighborhood within the walled city that I was born and raised.
Peshawar is an ancient city that has stood on the crossroads of Asia for over two millennia. Its reputation as a frontier town on the wild and turbulent western frontier of the Indian subcontinent aside, it has been called the city of flowers and also the city of colors because it took its hues from the rainbow of languages spoken in the bazaars and caravan serais.
There the great Indian plains and the Central Asian steppes converged and gave rise to a unique and fascinating culture that carried the echoes of far away lands. It was in this milieu that I was born, raised, and steeped in the culture and languages of the city. When I left Peshawar in 1963 for America, I shed a few tears as most young men and women do when they leave home. I took with me nothing but a few snapshots and a rich album of memories.
Those vivid and vibrant memories of the people and places and a yearning for the city sustained me during my wanderings, and these are the memories I mourn today.
I am at a loss to understand why a bunch of functionally illiterate religious bigots are destroying the intricate fabric of a society and killing innocent people.
The Taliban, I guess, are driven by a weird and short-sighted philosophy that reinforces their belief that the end justifies the means. The end in this case is to control the country so they can enforce an imported version of Islam that is alien to the people of Pakistan.

These chimeras, the beasts born out of an unholy mingling of religion and evil, are not what we, on the frontier, believe to be religiously inclined and pious. Even the most orthodox of the orthodox would not cross the limits prescribed by Islam.
Those limits restrict the faithful to waging war only in defense. There are injunctions against destroying property and vegetation, killing livestock, or tampering with water supplies. It further lays out that women, children, and old people must not be harmed. The majority of victims in Peshawar were women and children.
The terrorists melt into the community and neighborhoods. They talk the language of religion, which resonates with gullible, ordinary people. They portray American support of the Pakistani government as the cause of all the turmoil. Nowhere in this line of macabre reasoning is any mention of what religion teaches.
Most people do not subscribe to this brand of Islam, but they are afraid to say so in public. Open and public dissent is the quickest way to get into the crosshairs of the Taliban.
On my frequent visits to Peshawar, I found most people to be trapped in that warped and distorted logic. Many deny that a Muslim could ever commit such an atrocity. And others, a growing number of urban youth among them, think the Taliban would cure Pakistani society of all its ills. They seem to have forgotten what the Taliban did in neighboring Afghanistan when they ruled the country from 1996 to 2002.
Eight months ago, the Taliban bombed the tomb of Rahman Baba, a 17th century Sufi Pashtun poet, that is in Peshawar. His devotional and romantic poetry has inspired and given spiritual sustenance to generations of Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns alike.
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban believe only in the austere and harsh Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, and they are committed to destroying anything that gets in their way, including the tomb of an ancient poet-saint, which stood as a symbol of religious tolerance and brotherhood of mankind. I wept when I saw the desecrated tomb.
So as I think of my devastated neighborhood, I can't help but think of people I knew and their children and their children's children, some of who still live along the narrow alleys in nondescript houses. It was a place whose everyday rhythm was accented and punctuated by the five daily calls for prayers from the corner mosque. The mosque, like the people and the houses, was also destroyed in the blast.
I have often profiled the neighborhood of Muslim Meena Bazaar, as the area is called, and the people who lived there, in my articles and books about Peshawar. In my writings, I have celebrated the ordinary lives of my extraordinary neighbors: artisans, traders, shopkeepers, teachers, and the like. I have always considered myself a sum total of all those people.
Last week, a part of me died with them.
Dr. S. Amjad Hussain is a retired Toledo surgeon whose column appears every other week in The Blade.

Misleading statements can end Pakistan’s credibility

www.modernghana.com
If we go by the recent statement of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon, the two most dangerous countries on this planet are Pakistan and Afghanistan. This statement of Moon is neither prejudiced, nor does he belong to any enemy country of Pakistan or Afghanistan rather this statement is the harsh reality of the world today. The question is that who is responsible for notoriety of these two neighbouring countries? This is clear that the decisions of the political bosses of these countries and the misleading statements of Pakistani leadership are behind the current scenario.

The relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan based Taliban is not new. Pakistan was the first country to recognize the Taliban government of Afghanistan, who captured power by ousting the democratic Najeeb government. Since then the Taliban has deepened its roots in Pakistan. The same Taliban is now eyeing power in Pakistan and therefore Pakistan Army has started operation ‘Rah-e-Nijaat’ against them. But the intentions of Tehrik-e-Taliban in Pakistan are not new.

A decade ago, these Talibans had pasted posters in all major cities of Pakistan in which their plans were clearly mentioned. Through these posters, they made it clear that they want to enforce Sharia’h law in Pakistan. Pakistan’s courts would give verdicts based on the holy Quran. Gold coins would be used as currency during the Taliban regime etc.

The question is that when a decade ago, the Taliban sympathizers were launching such campaigns, was the Pakistani administration asleep then? Was India directing this terrorist organization named Tehrik-e-Taliban a decade ago? Or the Pakistani administrators, according to their habit, were doing nothing while these enemies of humanity were prospering in Pakistan?

The entire world knows all these facts that how the former President of Pakistan, Gen. Zia-Ul-Haq encouraged the extremist and Jehadi ideology during his ten year regime. Since then the tradition of patronizing extremist Islamists by the Pakistani rulers has continued. This has today become an incurable disease that the Pakistan Army itself is finding a way out of this trap or in other words ‘Rah-e-Nijaat’ with them .

Ignoring all these facts, the Interior Minister of Pakistan, Rehman Malik recently shocked the entire world by saying that India is helping Taliban for creating disturbance in Pakistan. How much truth is there in his statement, he himself and the Pakistani people better know. What is conveyed by such misleading statement of Malik? Pakistan has previously too accused India for deteriorating situation in Baluchistan. And now a new misinformation campaign is launched by accusing India of supporting the Taliban. The world knows that Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban or any organization sympathizing with Taliban ideology see India as their enemy, and not friend. These organization uses to threaten India from time to time. In these circumstances, how can India ‘help’ these organizations? What the Pakistani Interior Minister wants to tell through such statement, while Pakistan has no such proof through which it can prove India’s involvement in destabilizing Pakistan by helping the Taliban.

On the contrary, there are thousands of evidences which can prove that the terrorists and extremists operated along with the Pakistan administration and the proofs which army and these inhuman organizations are created to created disturbance in India. Ajmal Aamir Kasaab, the only terrorist caught alive in 26/11 is the living example. Kasaab has repeatedly told in his confession how he was sent to Mumbai with the help of Pakistani administration. To clean itself from the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan is now adopting such cheap tactics of misleading statements. The fact is that, the Talibans, so called protectors of Islam, don’t even deserve to be called human beings. It doesn’t seem that there is any other administration than Pakistan, which had ever expressed sympathy with the cruel Talibans. The world still remembers that during the NATO attack on Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11, the Taliban spokesman used to address the world media from Pakistan and even he was arrested from Pakistan. Therefore it is not going to help Pakistan by accusing India. Other countries too can’t digest this. In fact, there is danger of Pakistan losing its own credibility by such absurd statements.

Clergy and intelligence agencies are playing dirty game on the blood of innocent Pashtun

We strongly condemn the inhuman incident of car bomb in Peshawar city in which more than 100 innocent civilian mostly women and children martyred and more than 200 seriously wounded. Pashtun Democratic Council consider it as a genocide of the Pashtun nation by the barbarian negative and anti-Pashtun forces which are bent upon to annihilate this nation but one has to understand that neither Changez khan nor Sikandar have ever succeeded to annihilate this nation. Those terrorists who are playing as agents of the conspirators who are sitting miles away from the pashtun area should try to understand that playing havoc with own nation is treachery. Today Pashtun ask the question as to who are doing this barbarism with them. The answer is simple that only and only Pakistani establishment, military, ISI and their partner militants (Terrorists) are responsible for this enmity against Pashtun. Pakistani religious clerics and religious parties are trying to hoodwink the people and international community about the real situations. In Pakistan mulla-military have formed an alliance to wipe out the pashtun. Mulla has been working for the nefarious designs of the ISI and establishment. ISI and Pakistan never ever want to see a prosperous, developed and peaceful democratic Afghanistan and for this purpose these two forces with the connivance of some hidden forces have joined hands to sabotage the development in the region. Today we hear religious parties in Pakistan asking Americans to go back to America from Afghanistan and at same time they denounce Lugar bill. American forces are sitting in more than 100 countries of the world but no where there happens any violence or opposition to American forces but here in Pakistan clergy is mobilizing people against the Americans and international community. It means that Pakistan through its clergy sees the dream to the capture Afghanistan after the departure of the Americans. All the nationalist and democratic Secular political and tribal Pashtun are being or have been assassinated by the notorious hands of the terrorists. The sole aim of self made insurgency in Pashtun region is the handi work of the intelligence agencies and it is quite foolish to believe that Americans and Indians are doing it. No one except the Pakistani intelligence agencies are responsible. This is just to befool the people and international community and divert the attention from the real players in region. Today we see that a particular religious party Jumati Islami, known as B-team of Pakistani intelligence agency ISI has been protesting Kerry Lugar bill. They both know that the bill in question is meant to develop the social sector in Pashtun areas including FATA and malakand, Swat etc. When this religious party was in government in Musharraf era then there was no hue and cry over such donations. But when Americans made their mind to spend the money on development and for the betterment of the People of Pashtun region then religious parties started hue and cry saying that now the dooms day will fall on them. This is once again a conspiracy against the pashtun and they do not love to see Pashtun be educated and prosperous. They are doing this nefarious job to keep the pashtun backward and ignorant; their sole aim is to use them against foreign forces in Afghanistan. Now international community including Americans should realize the gravity of situations and leave Pashtun be their friends. Americans do know where are the centers of terrorism? They are situated in Punjab. Then what are the hurdles which stop Americans and international community to hit the real centers of terrorism. Only fighting against Pashtun will not prove to be real solution. Unless and until the sources are targeted the problem will not be solved and this process will continue. Pashtin will be dying, American and NATO forces will be martyred in Afghanistan and the real conspirators will get dollars and lead a comfortable life. Oh, Americans and international community for God sake leave Pashtun to lead a peaceful life and go to the real places from where the terrorism originates, I mean Punjab and Islambad. Fault does not lie in Pashtun region rather it is in Islamabad. We once again condemn the attacks on innocent Pashtun and demand of international community to come behind terrorists and annihilate their nests in Punjab and befriend Pashtun which is the only and real solution if interested. We condole the death of all those Pashtun women, children and young who embraced martyrdom in suicide attacks in Peshawar and other parts of the Pashtunkhwa. The clothes of Pashtun women and children were hanging through the walls of high buildings and most of our women were made nude and naked but still Pashtun and international community both are slumbering in ignorance. We Pashtun know our enemy well and enemy is still busy making conspiracies against us.

(The Writer is Chairman Pashtun Democratic Council and can be reached at his email pashtundemocraticcouncil@gmail.com, www.musazai.blogspot.com)

Pakistan Doubles Down Against the Taliban

TIME.COM
The letter was simple and direct. "To the brave and honorable people of the Mehsud tribe," it started, in both Urdu and Pashtu, the two languages of Pakistan's troubled tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. "The operation [by the Pakistan army] is not meant to target the valiant and patriotic Mehsud tribes but [is] aimed at ridding them of the elements who have destroyed peace in the region." Dropped from helicopters above the mountain scrubland of South Waziristan the day before 28,000 Pakistani troops went in to wrest control of a militant stronghold, the letter was signed by General Ashfaq Kayani, chief of the Pakistani military. To drive home the point that Pakistan's most powerful man was speaking directly to a people largely ignored by the country's laws and politics, his photograph, flanked by the Pakistani flag and the crossed-swords insignia of the military, was splashed across the top of the note.

The unprecedented letter, along with an army operation in a part of the country that has seen little of the central government since Pakistan's birth in 1947, signals an extraordinary about-face for the nation's military establishment. For decades, Pakistan's armed forces have been obsessed with India, its foe in four wars, rather than the enemy within. But is the change of heart enough to stop Pakistan's endless death spiral toward becoming a nuclear-armed failed state?

No general wants to take war to his own people. Kayani was forced to do so by a surge of violence radiating from the South Waziristan headquarters of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group of several militant organizations seething with grievances against the state and influenced in part by al-Qaeda. The 10,000-strong TTP, which was led by Baitullah Mehsud until he was killed by a U.S. drone in August, is largely made up of members of his Mehsud tribe, though an increasing number of militants from the Pakistani heartland of Punjab, along with an estimated 1,500 Uzbek and Arab fighters, have joined the force. Since Mehsud's deputy, Hakimullah Mehsud, assumed leadership in August, there has been an escalation of violence throughout the country that has seen dozens of suicide-bomb attacks, lethal raids on security installations — including the army headquarters — and more than 200 deaths.

The attacks, which have targeted an Islamic university, shopping centers and police academies, have done the seemingly impossible: turned Pakistani public opinion against militants who had formerly been considered holy warriors fighting international forces in Afghanistan. That has allowed the army to go in with popular support. "This operation is not against an area or a tribe," says military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas. "The objective is to regain the space lost last year when Baitullah Mehsud declared war on the state of Pakistan."

An Ideal Place for Jihad
Truthfully, Pakistan never had that space to begin with. South Waziristan is part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which are governed by political officers rather than elected officials. The people of FATA have few constitutionally protected rights and privileges. Central government's presence is minimal; so is development. It is the ideal place for a militant group seeking to set up an Islamic caliphate from which to launch a global jihad.

Three times, the army has gone into South Waziristan, only to be forced into ignoble retreat. But Kayani, 57, seems determined to win this time. He is leading his army into a war that is both guerrilla in nature — the militants know the terrain and have local support — and conventional in its goals. "For the military, the goal is limited: to degrade and destroy these elements and not let them use South Waziristan as a sanctuary from which to spread terrorism in the rest of Pakistan," says Rifaat Hussain, of Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University. "But for the TTP, it is a battle for survival. If they lose, the whole movement is finished."
It is not the first time Kayani has led an operation against militants. This summer he fought an offshoot of the TTP in the Swat Valley, where a failed peace accord had encouraged the local Taliban to attempt a takeover of an entire district. That experience proved the turning point for the army. Intelligence operatives revealed the extensive links between the Swat militants and those fighting for Baitullah Mehsud, fueling fears of a nationwide insurgency. The army "realized that the gains they had made in Swat would not be sustainable unless and until they go after these guys in South Waziristan," says Hussain. "The government does not want to be in the position where these guys have made themselves so strong that the Taliban take root in Punjab, because then the game is up."

For all its intentions to root out insurgency, the military has been forced to make risky deals. Most civilians have fled the area of fighting in South Waziristan, enabling the army to use extensive airpower against militants without fear of collateral damage. But there are only 28,000 ground troops in an area the size of Rhode Island, fighting a well-fortified enemy that has bunkers, ammunition depots, land mines and an extensive network of caves. To prevent TTP fighters from escaping over the border to Afghanistan, the army has reached out to what it perceives to be the lesser evil — militant groups that may have fought the government in the past but that detest the TTP more.
As recently as February, the leader of one such group, Maulvi Nazir of the Ahmedzai Wazir tribe, joined forces with Baitullah Mehsud and declared war on Islamabad, Kabul and Washington. The alliance ended with Mehsud's death, and Nazir resumed his tribe's long rivalry with the Mehsuds. Both Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur, another local militant, have entered into nonaggression pacts with the army and have been promised money and reconstruction projects in exchange for their neutrality. The Haqqani network, led by former Afghan warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani — one of the U.S.'s most-wanted militants, whose network has concentrated its efforts on attacking NATO forces in Afghanistan — is also expected to remain passive throughout the operation, military officials tell TIME. Army spokesman Abbas defends these agreements. "If you have to defeat the main serpent, would you like to isolate that from the others or deal with them all at once?" he asks. Hussain thinks the tactic makes sense in the short term but worries that in time, the groups that are neutral now may just become a new threat. Baitullah Mehsud, he points out, was once an ally of the Pakistani military.

The Pakistani army's relationship with its lesser-evil militants is unlikely to please the U.S. These are groups that have trained their guns principally on U.S. and NATO troops across the border in Afghanistan and have assisted Afghan Taliban who have established bases on the Pakistani side of the border. But Shuja Nawaz, director of the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center, says the army is not strong enough to take on the Afghan Taliban based in Pakistan and their friends in the tribal regions. The army, he says, doesn't have "the numbers or the equipment to do that."
It does, actually; it's just that most of Pakistan's army is still based far from its western border with Afghanistan, along its eastern frontier with India. The military establishment has belatedly recognized the threat posed by internal militants, but it is difficult to overestimate Pakistan's continuing paranoia about India. Many commanders serving today cut their teeth during wars with India and remain convinced that the country is bent on destabilizing Pakistan and taking back all the disputed territory of Kashmir. That is why analysts like Nawaz say the only real solution to Pakistan's militancy is a regional détente with India. That, he says, would allow "Pakistan to divert resources — not just troops but monetary resources — to the civil sector for better governance."
Maybe. On the other hand, Pakistan's civilian officials have hardly done much to improve lives when they have had the chance. It was governmental neglect that enabled militants to establish a foothold in the tribal areas in the first place. Unless the government can follow the army's offensive with development, infrastructure, jobs and justice, extremist groups will always thrive in the tribal areas. Taking the battle to the militants in South Waziristan, says Lieut. General Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai, the former governor of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, "is a requirement, but not a solution — a first field dressing to a battle wound." The solution, as is usually the case in regions that breed insurgencies — and not just in Pakistan — is better governance. No sign of that yet.

Clinton's Pakistan visit reveals widespread distrust of U.S.

We don't really trust your country.



No matter how hard Clinton tried to reassure audiences in Lahore and Islamabad with talk of providing economic aid where it's needed most, Pakistanis seized on her visit as the perfect moment to lash out at a U.S. government they perceived as arrogant, domineering and insensitive to their plight.

At a televised town hall meeting in Islamabad on Friday, a woman in a mostly female audience characterized U.S. drone missile strikes on suspected terrorist targets in northwestern Pakistan as de facto acts of terrorism themselves. A day earlier in Lahore, a college student asked Clinton why every student who visits the U.S. is viewed there as a terrorist.

The opinions Clinton heard weren't the strident voices of radical clerics or politicians with anti-American agendas. Some of the most biting criticisms came from well-mannered university youths and respected, seasoned journalists, a reflection of the breadth of dissatisfaction Pakistanis have with U.S. policy toward their country.

In those voices, a sense that Pakistan was paying a heavy price for America's "war on terror" rang clear.

"You had one 9/11, and we are having daily 9/11s in Pakistan," Asma Shirazi, a journalist with Geo TV, told Clinton during the Islamabad town hall meeting.

Clinton's visit came at a time when Pakistanis' suspicions about U.S. intentions in their country were at an all-time high.

A five-year, $7.5-billion aid package to Pakistan recently signed into law by President Obama has stoked much of the animosity. Measures in the legislation aimed at ensuring the money isn't misspent have been perceived by Pakistanis as levers that Washington can use to exert control over their country.

Pakistanis also continue to be incensed by U.S. reliance on drone missile strikes to take out top Al Qaeda and Taliban commanders in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border.

CIA-operated drone strikes have killed at least 13 senior Al Qaeda and Taliban militants in the tribal areas in the last 18 months. But Pakistani government and military leaders say the strikes have also killed hundreds of civilians and amount to violations of Pakistan's sovereignty.

At the Islamabad town hall meeting, a female student from a university in Peshawar, a city shaken by a car bomb blast Wednesday that killed 118 people, summed up the anger over the drone attacks.

"What is actually terrorism in U.S. eyes?" the woman asked. "Is it the killing of innocent people in, let's say, drone attacks? Or is it the killing of innocent people in different parts of Pakistan, like the bomb blast in Peshawar two days ago? Which one is terrorism, do you think?"

Pressed by the forum's moderator whether she thought U.S. drone missile strikes were tantamount to terrorism, Clinton answered, "No, I do not."

On the one occasion when Clinton struck her own assertive tone, the message appeared to get through. Her suggestion to Pakistani journalists in Lahore that elements within the Pakistani government likely were aware of the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leaders but were not acting on the information struck a chord on the opinion pages of major Pakistani newspapers.

"If we are honest, we cannot deny that much of what she said was true," remarked an editorial that appeared today in the News, a major English-language Pakistani daily.

Clinton repeatedly acknowledged the mutual lack of trust that has held back the relationship, and she stressed the Obama administration's commitment to addressing crucial issues for Pakistanis that reach beyond terrorism, such as shoring up Pakistan's beleaguered electricity grid and improving schools and healthcare.

Pakistanis, however, clearly remained unconvinced that Washington was as interested in improving quality of life in Pakistan as it was in tracking down terrorists. And on several occasions during her trip, Clinton was confronted by Pakistanis who blamed the previous U.S. administration's policies in Afghanistan for the militancy now wreaking havoc across Pakistan.

"Look, Madame Secretary, we are fighting a war that is imposed on us," journalist Shirazi told Clinton. "It's not our war. That was your war, and we are fighting that war."

Assessments of Clinton's trip in today's Pakistani newspapers were gloomy.

"One cannot help feeling that [Clinton's trip] was an abortive exercise," remarked an editorial in the Nation, an English-language newspaper, "and she went away fully conscious of that failure."

Waiting for Obama to get down to war

www.theaustralian.news.com.au
THIS past week has seen appalling terrorist violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The bombings in Pakistan were designed in part to coincide with the visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As always, these bombings were designed to kill, but they were also designed for the evening news in every Western country that has troops in Afghanistan and a stake in Pakistan.

The war is going very, very badly in both countries. Meanwhile, the whole world waits for yet another US review of its Afghanistan and Pakistan policy.

To simplify rather drastically, the two possible alternatives are counter-insurgency, which often travels under the acronym COIN, and counter-terrorism, or CT.

COIN is advocated by General Stanley McChrystal, US commander in Afghanistan. He wants 40,000 more US troops. Right now there are 68,000 Americans in Afghanistan, 35,000 from other nations and roughly 170,000 Afghans divided between the police and army.

CT is advocated by US Vice-President Joseph Biden. It is based on the idea of lowering the number of US troops in Afghanistan and concentrating the US effort on killing terrorists as they emerge.

President Barack Obama has a mandate to win in Afghanistan. All through the election campaign he promised to give the Afghanistan campaign the resources it needed.

He then held a policy review after he came into office and declared in March: "To focus on the greatest threat to our people, America must no longer deny resources to Afghanistan because of the war in Iraq."

But as Der Speigel asked, can a Nobel Peace Prize winner wage and win a war in Afghanistan? The Obama administration seems overwhelmed. It is simultaneously dealing with healthcare reform, the fallout from the financial crisis, the Afghanistan/Pakistan disaster and the demand for a global warming agreement.

One response of hard-pressed leaders is to commission further study, so that while that's under way they can concentrate for a time on one of the other pressing issues. But while understandable, that's nowhere near good enough for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

At the moment the allies look, perhaps not entirely accurately, as though they are losing in Afghanistan, while Pakistan increasingly appears caught in a monstrous civil war that will challenge every institution in that fragile, broken-backed society.

To try to understand what's going on, it's helpful to disaggregate the forces at work. In Afghanistan, the US-led coalition, of which Australia is part, in alliance with the government of Hamid Karzai, is fighting the Taliban.

This Taliban is made up of several different forces. There is the central, and profoundly ideological, group led by Mullah Omar, the former head of the Taliban government. There are regional Taliban movements as well, some of which were in government with Omar. Beyond this, smaller tribal groups and clans have made alliances of convenience with the Taliban. Some elements of the Taliban are less ideologically committed than the Mullah Omar group.

The top Taliban leadership base themselves in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

At the same time, there are now Pakistani Taliban, whose leadership is also based in Pakistan's tribal areas. They, too, are increasingly allying themselves with other Islamist movements within Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban were initially sponsored by the Pakistani military, who have also sponsored other Islamist extremist groups, mainly to attack India.

However, the Pakistani state is in danger of being eaten by the monsters it created. The recent wave of attacks against Pakistani military bases shows there is now an all-out war against the Pakistani state by the Pakistani Taliban.

The Pakistani military, having recently retaken control of the Swat Valley, is now involved in a massive, anti-Taliban campaign in Waziristan.

One of the world's foremost experts on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Anthony Cordesmann, told me this week he's sceptical about what the Pakistani military will be able to achieve in Waziristan. "Tactically, they'll be able to smash their way in all right," he said. "But it's another question whether they can clear, hold and build. They are basically a flat-land army designed to deal with India. They have some heavy learning experiences ahead of them.

"Whether they can adapt and learn effectively is the question."

There is some consolation to be had from the fact that the Pakistani military now sees the Pakistani Taliban as unambiguously its enemy, and the enemy of the Pakistani state.

Pakistani soldiers are infinitely more likely to be effective fighting for their own country, than they are in meeting international obligations to police international terrorism, where perhaps they don't see their own interests fundamentally at stake.

However, the Pakistani military has still not severed its links with the Afghan Taliban, which it believes might come back into power in Afghanistan and which might, in Pakistani eyes, rule Afghanistan in a way which is compatible with Pakistani interests.

This is so even though the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban are in broad alliance and frequent contact.

So where is al-Qa'ida in all this? The best intelligence guess is that al-Qa'ida's leadership is also headquartered in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Al-Qa'ida has a symbiotic relationship with the Afghan Taliban. Those who favour the Biden CT approach against the McChrystal COIN approach often argue that it should be possible to detach al-Qa'ida from the Taliban, and fight the former and make a deal with the latter.

The problem is there is very little historical evidence that this can be accomplished. After the 9/11 terror attacks, Washington gave the Taliban government in Afghanistan every chance to give up Osama bin Laden or at least expel him. Even though Mullah Omar knew that sticking with bin Laden could see his government destroyed and his rule over Afghanistan ended, he did stick.

Since then, if anything, the relationship between al-Qa'ida and the Taliban has grown closer. Al-Qa'ida has trained the Taliban in every terror trick they know, so that Taliban insurgent operations have become ever more sophisticated. They also acknowledge the Taliban's leadership. At the same time the Taliban continues to provide hospitality and support to al-Qa'ida. Osama bin Laden may move around a lot, but he almost certainly isn't hiding in caves. He is staying as an honoured guest with old and deep friends.

Stephen Biddle, who was a member of McChrystal's assessment team, has written a devastating critique of the CT approach as a way of lessening the US troop commitment. He summarises McChrystal's COIN approach as being focused on protecting the Afghan population, expanding its army and police, reforming government, providing economic development, weaning Taliban fighters away from Mullah Omar and targeting those who refuse. To do this effectively requires doing it all, and it requires more resources.

Biddle goes through the alternative approaches of CT. One is: train the Afghans, don't fight on their behalf. This won't work, he says, because effective training effectively requires more US troops. The only really effective training involves mentoring by integrating coalition troops with Afghan troops in battle. This requires a lot of coalition troops.

Another suggestion is the greater use of unmanned aircraft to attack al-Qa'ida leaders. But to be effective this requires human intelligence which is only available from a sympathetic government and a large presence on the ground. Yet another is to buy off warlords. This is indeed also part of the COIN strategy, but the warlords won't stay bought if they think the US and its friends are losing or withdrawing. They'll take coalition money and then join the enemy when it turns up in force anyway.

Another line favours sending civilian aid rather than troops, but no aid project survives in contemporary Afghanistan without security protection. The Taliban will never allow civilian aid to prosper if it has the power to obliterate it. The final piece of CT advice is to tread softly, because having too many foreign troops annoys the Afghans and creates a bigger backlash. But tread softly was Donald Rumsfeld's policy and it got Afghanistan into the mess it's in today. There are enough foreign troops already to annoy a lot of Afghans, but not enough to provide security.

The situation has been vastly complicated by the corrupt presidential election and the loss of credibility for Karzai's government. And the polls are bad for the Afghan war in America. But this is exactly when presidential leadership is most needed. A Taliban victory in Afghanistan would put huge pressure on nuclear-armed Pakistan, empower al-Qa'ida terrorists and could well see Taliban-style terror armies replace al-Qa'ida as the jihadist modality of preference, such that similar groups emerge in Central Asia and even other parts of South Asia.

It is overwhelmingly in US, and Australian, interests for this not to happen. Whatever strategy the US adopts must be coherent and resourced to succeed.

The world continues to wait, and wait, for Obama to make up his mind.

It's Pakistan's war too

latimes.com
Editorial
As a car-bomb attack in Peshawar tragically demonstrates, Pakistanis and the U.S. have a common enemy in Islamist extremists.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton set out for Pakistan this week on a charm offensive, hoping to curtail anti-Americanism by speaking directly with students and journalists not simply about fighting terrorism but about economic development and other issues of common interest. Then a car bomb tore though a crowded market in the northwestern city of Peshawar, slaughtering more than 100 men, women and children, instantly drawing attention back to the conflict.

More than anything Clinton can say, a series of assaults that have taken the lives of more than 500 civilians this year should serve to convince typical Pakistanis that this is not just a U.S. war. The United States and Pakistan have a common enemy in Islamist extremists, and the Pakistani state is fighting for its survival.

Militants around the world have cynically targeted marketplaces to weaken support for governments that fail to protect their people, even though killing innocents rarely wins over public opinion in the long run. That's a point the Obama administration also should note. More than 500 civilians have died in U.S. missile strikes against the Taliban by unmanned drone aircraft, Pakistani officials say, which may partly explain why polls show that a majority of Pakistanis regard the United States as an enemy.

The Peshawar bomb appears to be the work of the Pakistani Taliban, which is fighting not for its brethren in Afghanistan but to destabilize the government of President Asif Ali Zardari. Officials regard the bombing as retaliation for a 30,000-troop Pakistani military offensive in the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan. Despite his many shortcomings, Zardari sounds as if he understands that he has no choice but to fight back. We hope that the often-ambivalent Pakistani army is convinced it must continue the offensive and ultimately defeat the Pakistani Taliban. Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif also should speak out against the bombing and help unify the country against radicals who want to control it.

The United States is aiding Pakistan's military with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons, helicopters and surveillance equipment, and U.S. Special Forces soldiers are training Pakistani counterinsurgency troops. All of this is done under the radar, so to speak, to avoid a backlash against the United States. But while it's true that the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, is shoring up the nuclear-armed Pakistani government to protect U.S. interests and those of its allies, it's also time for Pakistanis to acknowledge that it's in their interest as well to keep extremists at bay. This is Pakistan's conflict too.

Pakistan’s war for survival

EDITORIAL:Daily Times

A car stuffed with 150kg of explosive material has been blown up with remote control in a busy bazaar of Peshawar, killing over a hundred innocent citizens and injuring over two hundred. This is the big escalation that should convince the nay-sayers in the war against terrorism in Pakistan. The enemy has clearly defined himself and cannot be interpreted as a “wronged party” whose cause must be “understood” as a part of the process of removing the “roots” of terrorism.

It is too late for that kind of diagnosis. Now it is the survival of Pakistan which is at stake and the lives of the women and children of the NWFP which have to be answered for. The NWFP government has understood what the killers are trying to do. It says, “We may all die in the process but we will not stop fighting the terrorists”. This statement comes from a mind that knows that the war against terrorism has gone beyond the point where “talks” could bring peace. This is the attitude which must prevail in Pakistan so that the country can stand united against the Taliban and their foreign killers.

The terrorists have now turned to killing common people gathered in markets and other public places. This was the second such “blind” attack in Peshawar telling us that now the war is no longer tied to any ideology but is a war to the end. The new strategy has been embraced because the post-Baitullah action from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has not been too effective. There are signs of failure written all over the attacks suffered by Pakistan. In these cases the TTP “success” was limited to creating fright; and in most cases the terrorists have been traced with remarkable ease.

TTP’s new leader Hakimullah has always been reputed to be less scrupulous in his thinking than his predecessor Baitullah. His approach has become more unscrupulous after the scattering of the TTP and the arrest of a large number of second-echelon Taliban leaders. He is reckless and unmindful of the unpopularity the TTP will earn among the people. The new development — as in the case of the GHQ attack — is that intelligence against the elements that assist the TTP has improved. The attacks against the FIA headquarters and the two police centres in Lahore were of weak intent and were thwarted in their objective by the response of the police.

Action by the Pakistan Army has helped in strengthening the resolve of the common man to endure the hardship of war against the Taliban. Where it has operated, local populations have formed their own private militias and begun to hunt elements that killed their women and children. Once intimidated by warlords in Khyber and Malakand, they are now willing to defend the state if the state is willing to fight back. The “normalisation” of the Swat-Malakand region, once predicted to be of long haul, has taken place rapidly because of the support of the people who were subjected to the cruelty of the utopia that people like Sufi Muhammad had promised them over the past quarter century.

The war is going well in South Waziristan but the impression it makes in the rest of the country is mixed because of the lack of unity over the war among our politicians. They are in fact divided over matters other than war and treat war against terrorism as a kind of distraction. Sitting in parliament, the political parties have given the go-ahead to the war against terrorism but continue to differ over its details. The two mainstream parties are locked in a battle for another kind of survival. The PMLN says it supports the war against terrorism but differs in detail when it pleads for a focus on the “root cause”. The truth is that it is already too late to look for the “root cause”.

The root cause of war is in fact clear and present: the terrorists are killing our women and children. They are damaging our economy by scaring away domestic and international investment. They want Pakistan to collapse into a “state of nature” to serve them as the hub of their global terror. Pakistan has to fight them and see to it that the international community is lined up behind it with every kind of support and sympathy.

Frontier CM must resign

FrontierPost.com
A blazing inferno and a heart-rending holocaust it was, with some 92 people, including 11 innocent children and 22 women lying dead on the spot and many more writhing in pain with wounds in this Wednesday's brutal terrorist car-bombing on ladies' shopping bazaar of Peshawar metropolis. Perhaps the deadliest-ever so far, the strike unmasked evil faces of perpetrators, showing them up for what they really are: mercenary murderers who slaughter their own innocent people for money on their foreign paymasters' bidding, wearing deceptive masks of religiosity and jihad. They are, contemptibly, outright infidels and traitors of the worst kind. But couldn't their thuggery be preempted or prevented? The day earlier, local law-enforcement authorities had been issuing warnings that two explosives-laden vehicles had entered the metropolis for terrorism. Then, why had they left undefended this shopping bazaar, always a bustling place, crowded with women shoppers and their accompanying children. The bazaar was potentially a target, needing to be protected impregnably. Yet it was found left totally unsecured, with not even a single duty cop in sight. Why? Had cops been withdrawn from all over to mount redoubled security on ministers, bureaucrats and other VIPs, while ordinary citizens were simply thrown out to be mowed down and devoured up by terrorist wolves? Chief Minister Amir Haidar Hoti must now admit his incompetence and failure and resign, so conclusively has he demonstrated his ineptness and unfitness for the job. The Frontier's residents give a damn to brave talk he and his ministers ooze out so churlishly after every terrorist strike in the province. They have heard him and them churning out the bunk nauseam that terrorist cannot break their resolve to face up to them unbendingly. But seen him they have not doing anything practical to secure their lives and properties. For months, he has been telling them he would recruit tens of thousands cops to beef up the province's police force. But, appalling, he is still to move beyond talk to concretize that recruitment, even as prowling terrorists are on the rampage increasingly bloodily. Maybe, he is awaiting lists from his ANP flocks to recruit political favourites, not right meritorious candidates, to the force. So incompetent has indeed he been that, leave alone the rest of the province, he has spectacularly failed even securing the provincial metropolis. In these very days, terrorists have come again and again, have struck Peshawar lethally and fatally again and again, and he has shown nothing else to confront them except his puerile talk. Verily, he has shown in every manner not be the man capable of steering a troubled province as is the Frontier presently. He must now spare the province's distressed people the atrocity of his inept and incompetent stewardship to make way for some able hand to handle its critical security situation, sparing himself thereby too all the time for dancing and frolicking at wedding parties and other festivities of his kith and kin in garrison clubs and their mansions. He indeed can save some shame to his disgraced face by emulating the example of chief minister of the Indian state of Maharashtra, who owned up moral responsibility and stepped down when terrorists struck his state's capital, Mumbai. Certainly, this Wednesday terrorist assault on Peshawar is no lesser horrific. It indeed was more deadly. The Mumbai terrorism also saw Indian home minister quitting. And this Peshawar carnage must set our interior minister Rehman Malik thinking too of following a precedent that comes natural to responsible people with a sense of honour and dignity in such tragic calamitous events. Heads must also roll in the provincial police hierarchy, particularly for its horrendous failure in averting a thuggish strike when it knew before hand that terrorists had entered the city for their wicked act. The provincial top cop, who holds his court in the city, and Peshawar city police chief have to go forthwith, in any case. Their incompetence in the given conditions is obvious and just indefensible. Punitive actions must also come against the rest found derelict in an inquiry into the carnage, which must be quick so as to prevent recurrence of such an intolerable holocaust. And to hell with CoD, 17th Amendment and all such-like forays, keeping the country's top leadership engrossed. The people can do without these adventures. They need security of life at least, first and foremost. The president and the prime minister must take a pause, sit down earnestly and work vigorously into implementing the action plan that the high-level inter-provincial security meeting had worked out in Islamabad. Terrorist thugs are visibly getting viler, bolder and deadlier. They have to be curbed and crushed quickly and at every cost.

Pukaar by Rahim Shah

U.S.Aid To Pakistan:Where did the funds go?

EDITORIAL:DAILY TIMES

As the Obama Administration focuses more on the social sectors of the Pakistani economy and separates its aid to Pakistan under the Kerry-Lugar Bill from assistance to the Pakistan Army, new information about how the old US funds were utilised by the Musharraf regime has come to light. The revelation is that the army was not given all the aid meant for increasing its capacity to fight terrorism, but that most of it was diverted by the Musharraf regime to prop up the civilian government.

A couple of retired generals have decided to speak out. General Mahmud Durrani (Retd), who was Pakistan’s ambassador to the US under General Musharraf, says: “It went to things like subsidies, which is why everything looked hunky-dory. The military was financing the war on terror out of its own budget.” And how was this made possible? By the fact that General Musharraf was both army chief and de facto “ruling” president of Pakistan.

According to a report, the additional shocking fact is that some sections of the army, faced with the terrorism of the Taliban, received nothing till 2007, the year when Musharraf’s era began to crumble under pressure from the mistakes the general-president made. In these lean years for the army, “helicopters critical to the battle were not available; the limited night-vision equipment was taken away every three months and returned three weeks later; and old equipment fell out of repair and training was lacking.”

There have been rumours about money getting “siphoned off” on Musharraf’s watch. Some US circles thought Pakistan’s military was more obsessed with India and spent what it got not on the war against domestic terrorism, but on its state of preparedness against India. But if, between 2002 and 2008, only $500 million of the $6.6 billion aid actually made it to the Pakistani military, what kind of defence against India was Pakistan able to secretly mount? On the other hand, the PPP leader President Asif Ali Zardari has been talking of the “misuse” of nearly $10 billion in American aid.

Pakistan doesn’t make public its defence budget. So one cannot track what happens to the money that goes into it. Such sectors as intelligence are kept away from public scrutiny although most of what the spooks do affects the civil sector and the economy. We know that General Musharraf “saved” the army some money by inducting a large number of serving officers into civilian jobs. Pakistan already pays its army’s pensions from the civilian budget, but the charge that wasteful subsidies were paid out of the money meant for the army needs investigation. The “circular” debt that General Musharraf’s regime left behind indicates how reckless his government was with the economy he never tired of discussing.

The Americans were willing to fund the Pakistan Army because in comparison with their own troops it was cheap. By 2008, the US paid Pakistan $8.6 billion for the military, and more than $12 billion in all. The army would send in the bills and the US would pay, barring some cases when delays took place till lack of trust began to prevail and the bills remained pending.

General Mahmud Durrani, whose thesis is that Pakistan has disadvantaged itself politically and economically by pursuing India-centric strategies, says money went into buying equipment better suited to fighting India in Afghanistan than to fighting terrorists. It bought armour-piercing TOW missiles, sophisticated surveillance equipment, air-to-air missiles, maritime patrol aircraft, anti-ship missiles and F-16 fighter aircraft. As a result, in 2007, Pakistan had only one working helicopter for use in FATA!

Pakistan was the largest recipient of US assistance under General Musharraf. It is about to receive even more of it under the Kerry-Lugar Bill. Because of what has happened in the past, there is a lack of trust between the donor and the recipient. Also, those who want to fight terrorism in Pakistan without American help — they actually believe Pakistan doesn’t need to fight terrorism — want the American assistance rejected. Until an inquiry is held — and the time for that will come later — we will not know what actually happened. Now is the time to back the army and do whatever it takes to increase its capacity to fight the terrorists.

Quetta question

The rumours about key Taliban leaders lurking in Quetta are not new. They have been around for months, even years. Some claim that at one point big meetings of the Taliban were held quite openly at a set location each week and attended by hundreds if not thousands. Vague claims of the sighting of the one-eyed Mullah Omar have surfaced from time to time. The presence, in the Balochistan capital, of Taliban elements is also borne out by the fact that last year women were barred from certain restaurants whose owners were warned not to serve them. Against this background it is hardly surprising that a brand new controversy has sprung up. The Pakistani government, in response to an interview given to the US media by Anne W Patterson, US ambassador to Pakistan, has insisted there is a disconnect between her and Washington. The ambassador's claim that the Taliban are orchestrating anti-US operations from Quetta has been vehemently denied. Once more Islamabad has emphasized zero-tolerance policy against militancy. This is all very well. We hope it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. However we must point out that a crisis of credibility has existed in the past. Given this, we must ask why so many stories about the Taliban activities in Balochistan persist, if there is no truth to them at all. News reports with no substance tend to wither and die away. It is also a fact that these accounts have appeared in the media from many different sources. It is questionable if they can all be entirely inaccurate.

A point of crisis is now approaching. Washington is adopting an increasingly belligerent tone, combining praise with demands for more action. There has been mention in the media of proposals to send drones to strike targets in Quetta. The city is clearly emerging, as much as Waziristan, as the focal point of attention. Pakistan has every right to be angered by false charges. It must also oppose the strikes over cities with all the force it can muster. The very thought of bombs and missiles dropped over urban centres is just too terrible to contemplate. It must never happen. Washington itself must realize this. We hear there are officials there who have spoken out against the idea. These voices of sanity must prevail. But Pakistan too, while issuing its denials, needs to look into the facts. Its officials need simply to explore the Internet or articles written in past years about Taliban gatherings in Quetta. The reasons for the conviction that key members of the Afghan Taliban are indeed present in Balochistan need to be examined. The province after all neighbours Taliban strongholds and has been used in the past too as a place of refuge by those fleeing Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai was once among the safety-seekers. There may be others who have followed the same route. This possibility must not be ignored. Islamabad must build credibility and persuade the world that it is ready to hunt down the Taliban wherever they are based. In this strategy lies its own future safety and good standing in the international community.

Khyber IDPs just abandoned

Frontier Post
As the military operation is on in the Khyber Agency, thousands of civilians fleeing their homes in fighting zones for safety find themselves left just out in the cold, completely abandoned by an insensitive political administration, showing itself bereft of even a streak of human compassion. Not that the IDPs are experiencing this administrative callousness for the first time. They had had to undergo this ordeal whenever some security operation of sorts was launched in the agency even in the past, as indeed are going through their cousins of Bajaur, Waziristan and the tribal region’s other parts, who now for months on end have been wandering forsaken and unattended, nursing the grouse of being just ignored by their political administrations as much as by the federal government’s hierarchs. Still, one thought it would be different this time round. As the military has launched into a systematic clenched-fisted campaign substantially different from its previous actions to flush out militants from the agency and as its political administration dittoed the official intent of continuing the drive until the last militant was finished off, the civil power was legitimately expected to humanely cater for the imminent civilian exodus from war theatres. But in place is no arrangements whatsoever for the IDPs’ succour. No relief camp has been set up. No organised effort is in evidence for shifting of the displaced to safer places. They have just been left on their own to fend for themselves. And the unfortunate people with their crying infants, hungry children and woebegone women trudging on the rocky terrain are just wandering about for refuge, with some lucky ones crowding up in their relations’, friends’ and acquaintances’ homes, with a few fortunate wealthy ones landing into exorbitantly hired accommodations and the whole lot of the rest just staying under the open sky with their weeping hungry children. And so indifferent is the political administration and its bosses in Peshawar and Islamabad that it has forgotten even to wake up and sensitise the country’s citizenry to the dire distress of its compatriot IDPs of the Khyber Agency. And yet we are still being regaled with the hierarchy’s tiresome talk of combining up political initiatives and the military muscle to snuff out the monstrosities of militancy and terrorism from our land. For its excessive and populist use, winning of hearts and minds has become a trite cliché in this country, though. Yet, it is a decisive make-and-break reality that in effect determines a counter-insurgency campaign’ ultimate success or failure. So does it occur to any of top bureaucrats and their political overlords what a sullen and angry displaced populace means to an anti-militancy operation? Hadn’t they heard what Bajaur’s internally displaced had cried out in complaint when various official quarters were all out working for Malakand IDPs’ wellbeing? With that grouse, some have returned to their homes in Bajaur, while others still staying behind in their places of refuge are living with it. Isn’t it? And doesn’t it occur to any of the hierarchs in the tribal region, Peshawar or Islamabad that FATA is not just a far more sensitive area than Malakand geopolitically and strategically, but it also is in the lap of a militancy, much of it foreign-fuelled, which is far chronic and far entrenched? Doesn’t that underscore imperative need of a far greater effort to keep its residents on the right side of the state and its administration? And is there no one in official quarters to realise this inexorable necessity’s importance in view of a firestorm visibly building up in neighbouring Afghanistan, where the Obama administration had strode in on fancy notions, half-baked ideas and wishful thinking and where it is finding the going tougher than had it visualised? Barring a miracle, the Americans are in for viciously insurmountable turbulent times there. And when the firestorm breaks out in all its fury, they are sure to divert flames to our side. Imagine what predicament in that eventuality we would be in if we have a disgruntled and incensed populace of ours to contend with in the tribal region? Hence the civilian hierarchy from top to bottom must wake up from its stupor and start caring for the internally displaced of the Khyber Agency as also of other agencies, if not for humanitarian ground, for the national security interests at least. The Frontier governor in particular must activate himself energetically as FATA is actually his principal responsibility. He must energise his sloth-ridden political administration to set it on looking after the displaced. And the military must insist on it, no lesser for its own campaign’s success.

Never mind the Taliban – Pakistan's youth put their faith in rock'n'roll

www.guardian.co.uk
Wannabe rock stars have it tough in Pakistan. Last month a new band, Poor Rich Boy (and the toothless winos), took to the stage of a cramped Islamabad cafe for their breakthrough gig. On the first night, one person turned up.


"It was the night of the world cricket finals. Bad timing," said the group's guitarist, Zain Ahsan, ruefully. The second gig was better – 30 people came along – but brought its own dark worries.

"I asked the owner, 'What if a bomb goes off?'" said Ahsan. "She said, 'Don't worry, I'll be with you.'"

Even in a summer of Taliban violence young Pakistanis are rocking on. An underground music scene is quietly thriving in the country's major cities, nourished by the internet and the passion of mostly amateur bands.

In Lahore a pair of unemployed rockers have tapped into that enthusiasm with a new school for rock'n'roll.

"We weren't getting a lot of gigs, and we needed to survive," said co-founder Hamza Jafri. "So we thought we'd try this."

The Guitar School, as it is known, has been surprisingly successful. Around 40 students have signed up, ranging from surly teenagers in drainpipe jeans to more practised musicians such as Ahsan looking to hone their skills. Classes take place in a small room lined with egg boxes; the school's teaching style is reflected in its motto: "Play it like you feel it."

Many come from wealthy families that might once have stigmatised music, Jafri said. "People associated it with the red light district and sexual entertainment." But a popular new television show featuring live performances, Coke Studio, has given rock music a new patina of respectability.

On a recent afternoon a woman brought in two reluctant-looking teenage daughters for lessons. "It will do them good to learn," she said.

But making it to the next stage is difficult and sometimes dangerous. For the past six months virtually all public performances in Lahore have stopped since extremists attacks on a performing arts festival and the Sri Lankan cricket team. The Pakistani music industry itself is disorganised and hamstrung by massive piracy.

But the country's internal chaos is also feeding creativity. Pakistanis have a rich musical tradition, mostly rooted in Sufism, but modern musicians have generally skirted political issues. But the new single from co-VEN, which Jafri fronts, is a sharp parody of Pakistan's controversial alliance with the US.

"There's a lot of foreign pressure on our government to attack people in the tribal areas," he said. "We are taking dictation from you guys."

Others have a playful take on the turmoil. The Islamabad band Bumbu Sauce – the name comes from a Pot Noodles packet – recently brought out Jiggernaut, a single that mixes references to kung fu, talking dogs and the Taliban. Guitarist Shehryar Mufti is not worried the insurgents might take the joke badly.

"Their beef is with the government, not the people," he said. "I think rock music is low on their list of priorities."

Pakistani rock gained traction with the arrival of satellite television in the 1990s. Today the musicians, many self-taught, publicise themselves through networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace, and Pakistan's growing number of FM radio stations. And despite the security concerns, a fresh concert scene is emerging.

On a sultry Saturday night hundreds of young people, mostly dressed in jeans and T-shirts, crowded into a new outdoor auditorium on the edge of Islamabad called the Rock Musicarium. "People are thirsting for music, they want to get out," said the venue's founder, Zeejah Fazli.

When it opens properly in November, the venue will have a recording studio and capacity for 600 people, said Fazli, who estimates there are 20 rock bands in Islamabad alone. But, he admitted, the project depends on a six-month lull in attacks on the capital continuing.

For some well-to-do Pakistanis, rock music represents the cultural tensions of their life, which is divided between western influences and the conservative direction their society is taking. "On one side kids feel like they are in England; on the other this strict Islamic thing is going on. It's not good for people's sanity," said Jafri.

About five years ago Junaid Jamshed, the country's most famous pop star, renounced music and returned to religion. Now he appears on religious chat shows sporting a long, curly beard.

But most aspiring rock stars say they can live with the difference. In the soundproof room at the Lahore guitar school, 17-year-old Danish Khwaja strummed his guitar, long hair flopping over his forehead.

"It's kinda cool doing stuff you love," he said.

The Future of Afghanistan and Pakistan

The international coalition cannot defeat the Taliban without a strengthened Afghan state. It should work through the Afghan government—rather than international agencies—to increase economic opportunity and foster effective political institutions at the district and province level.

http://carnegieendowment.org/

Visiting Washington after Afghanistan, UK Secretary of State for International Development Douglas Alexander told an audience the Carnegie Endowment that Afghans need to see their government, rather than the international coalition or non-governmental organizations—or the Taliban—delivering improvements if the Afghan state is going to be viable in the long-term.

He cited improved security and increased access to justice as the top development priorities, with health, education, and other basic services as critical but secondary. Alexander also called on the international community to support Pakistan’s efforts to combat extremism in the provinces bordering Afghanistan.

Alexander identified concrete ways for the international coalition to reinforce the capacity of the Afghan government to secure the population and provide necessary services, which include:

Reinforce key anti-corruption bodies, such as the High Office for Oversight and the Control and Audit Office.
Channel aid through government systems. Only twenty percent of aid currently goes through the Afghan government.
Support government efforts to provide necessary agricultural supplies, including seeds and fertilizers. The agricultural sector has the potential to create millions of jobs, in addition to providing food security.
Ensure a consistent power structure and progression of responsibility from local councils through to the provincial governors and the central government in Kabul, across all provinces. A clear national framework will reduce inter-governmental squabbling and strengthen the idea of Afghanistan as a nation.
Coordinate aid through the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan. The donor community should also coordinate and clearly communicate its expectations to the Afghan government,
Speed up the transfer of civilian and military institutions to Afghan control after the August elections.
“Security and justice matter as much if not more than the provision of other basic services in the eyes of many ordinary Afghans,” Alexander concluded. “Only a stronger state at local and national level can deliver this basic security. Far from being peripheral to our shared mission, actions to strengthen the capacity of the state to deliver security and basic services to the population—including a stronger economy in which they can make a decent living—are central to our task. Such a comprehensive approach is needed to convince Afghan population to reject the Taliban and embrace a different future for their communities and country.”

Discriminating minorities

THE FRONTIER POST(EDITORIAL)
Christians of Sheikhupra have required the government to protect them from religious militants and extremists who have threatened them to repeat the incidents like that of Gojra if they held their annual religious convention. This threat obviously perturbed the entire people of Pakistan and minister for minorities Shahbaz Bhatti has also sought security for this religious minority which he belongs to. The minister also talked of moving a bill to the National Assembly to ensure protection of religious minorities. The minister may have forgotten the fact that religious intolerance and discrimination on the basis of religion remain the root causes of sectarian and communal conflict and resultant violence because this was inscribed in the 1973 Constitution and a host of other laws by dictator Ziaul Haq between 1979 and 1988 and thus drastically changed the philosophy of the country's basic law giving the bigoted elements a free hand to victimize minorities to the extent of extermination. When the constitution itself has anomalies, a bill is by no means an answer; the only remedy is the repeal all the constitutional amendments and discriminatory laws introduced by the 11-year black rule of the dictator through a constitutional amendment bill and if it is incorporated in the 17th amendment, it will save time and make thiongs easier for all. Gen Zia amended the Constitution as many as seven times in nine of 11-year regime and inserted such provisos as to come clearly in conflict with the basic law as adopted on August 14, 1973. He started with giving a parallel judiciary in 1979 and ended up with the Ninth Amendment to Constitution in 1985 changing the preamble of the Constitution. In between, Ziaul Haq introduced the Enforcement of Shariah Ordinance and changed blasphemy laws to transform Pakistan into a theological state which Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had strictly forbidden in his inaugural speech to the first Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947. These changes gave eminence to sectarian thought and paved way for semi-literate clergymen to rise to the status of judges and 'muftis' (religious scholars authorized to issue decrees) in the superior judiciary. The paradox that followed is that all the four 'civilian governments' and the so-called enlightened democracy of Gen Pervez Musharraf failed to make a review of the Zia regime's constitutional amendments. Even former prime minister and the PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif, who has repeatedly talked about the Charter of Democracy, repealing Article 58 2 (B) and the trial of Gen Pervez Musharraf's for high treason, has not so far considered Zia's laws worthy for review. He even did not hold Gen Zia responsible for the social, constitutional and legal evil although Musharraf did exactly the same as Zia like enforcing emergency, bringing about a provisional constitution order and subjecting judges to take oath afresh. Now that bigoted 'mullahs' have mounted a fresh offensive against minorities, the government and all other conscientious segments of society must plead that all changes made by the Zia regime in the constitution and other laws, should be reviewed by experts and subsequently repealed for their inconsistency with the original 1973. Likewise, if Musharraf is made to stand trial for breaching Article 6 of the Constitution, the period of Gen Ziaul Haq must also be reviewed and judicial stricture passed against him as well.
Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=ed&nid=157&ad=19-08-200
Dated: Wednesday, August 19, 2009, Sha'ban 27, 1430 A.H.

Richard Holbrooke and Nawaz Sharif

M Waqar New York
Once again, Obama’s US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke met Nawaz sharif and made a statement that,’’ Distancing from Nawaz to hamper US interests”... I think it will be disastrous for Obama administration if, Washington thinks that Nawaz Sharif can be a reliable partner of Washington in fighting Taliban. Nawaz Sharif has sympathies with Osama bin laden, al-Quaeda and Taliban. According to a former ISI official, Nawaz Sharif met Osama bin Laden and received funds from him, he met Osama three times and desperately asked for financial assistance. Bin Laden, who had offered him money to topple the Pakistan People’s Party government of Benazir Bhutto in 1990. Al-Qaeda head wanted the “secular” PPP government overthrown to ensure that Pakistan continued supporting the Afghan “jihad” and Laden was against a woman ruling Pakistan. Nawaz met Osama thrice in Saudi Arabia, these meetings were arranged by former ISI official Khalid Khawaja. Nawaz Sharif was hoping for a grant of Rs 500 million. Although Bin Laden gave a smaller amount, Khawaja said that he arranged for Sharif to meet the Saudi royal family, which pledged political support for him and kept its word until he was dislodged by President Pervez Musharraf in 1999. Nawaz has been an ardent supporter of Taliban. I am afraid that his coming to power at this critical juncture will be bad news for Pakistan, because Pakistan is already facing Taliban mutiny. Sharif is on record stating he would prefer Pakistan to be run like the Taliban ran Afghanistan, and we all know how well that turned out. Sharif’s reckless embrace of religious extremism led him to try and impose Sharia (Islamic law) on Pakistan in 1998 and declare himself “Amirul Momineen” (Leader of the Faithful). Sharif’s desire for power is even greater than his respect for innocent life. Convicted for hijacking, he put the lives of 198 people on a plane in jeopardy by refusing to allow it to land. At the time of his removal from office, Nawaz Sharif had looted approximately $60 million from people of Pakistan, via personally owned companies.
Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=le&nid=864&ad=19-08-200
Dated: Wednesday, August 19, 2009, Sha'ban 27, 1430 A.H.

Funding the Pakistani Taliban

Poppies, tobacco and the "timber mafia." But that's not all.
By Shahan Mufti - GlobalPost.COM
MARDAN, Pakistan — Standing in the lush plains of Mardan in the Northwest Frontier Province, the rugged and arid mountains that enclose the Peshawar valley on all sides may appear farther than they actually are. A few dozen miles to the north and west in the mountains, the Pakistan army has been engaged in a bloody battle with Taliban militants for years over the control of territory.
The armed guerrilla fighters have avoided forays onto the flat plains of Mardan, but driving through the main market of the city where vendors sell everything from kebab to Kalashnikovs, or among the cattle in leafy tobacco fields, or the large 16-wheeler trucks on the potholed roads, there are traces of Taliban, even here.
You don't see Taliban foot soldiers — young men with the signature long hair, black turbans and beards — cruising the streets in the backs of pick-up trucks shaking down shop owners like gangsters. But in this bustling town and many others much farther away from the war zones, the Taliban's financial engine is chugging at full force right under the nose of law enforcement.

“The money is coming in from more sources than we know,” said Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, a native of the nearby town of Charsada, who served as the interior minister under former President Pervez Musharraf. Sherpao was the man responsible for organizing civilian law enforcement when the Taliban first emerged on the scene in Pakistan.
Having survived two targeted assassination attempts and no longer serving in the government, he said “if they can dry up their revenues, (the militants) won’t last for long.” But tracking the money, he said "isn’t an easy job.”
And it's not just Sherpao who's worried. Cutting off the revenue streams of the Pakistani Taliban is something that U.S. President Barack Obama’s Af-Pak special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, has linked to the successful completion of the American campaign in Afghanistan.
During his last visit to Pakistan in June, Holbrooke told reporters that in the past the traditional belief in Washington was that all the money came from the drug trade in Afghanistan. “That is simply not true,” he was quoted saying. In a press conference in Islamabad he announced that a member of the U.S. Treasury Department will be added to his staff to find out "where the money really comes from."
Traditionally, guerrilla groups thrive on one large favored revenue stream. For example, the FARC in Colombia has leaned heavily on the trade of coca for three decades and the diamond trade has fueled years of war in Africa. Just over Pakistan's border, the Afghani Taliban have a deep hand in the cultivation and trade of poppy.
While poppy has been largely eradicated from Pakistan, the political leadership and military planners in the country say that a chunk of the Afghan drug money still makes its way to Pakistani Taliban hands — to the tune of $200 million dollars a year, according to Pakistani military estimates.
An official at the Anti-Narcotics Force in Pakistan said that tracking terrorism funds is "far beyond our official mandate." But the force is working closely with the military to "stop drug money from getting into dangerous hands" and is stacked at all levels with retired and serving military generals.

But following this money across borders is especially difficult because much of it moves through the hawala system, which transfers money through unofficial money lending networks. In the hawal system, drug money is thrown in to the same pile as legal expat remittances, making it impossible to fully trace.
The tactics of the Pakistani Taliban suggest though that its needs go beyond a cut from the Afghan poppy industry, which the State Department estimated at $4 billion in 2007. The Pakistani Taliban shares a name with the Afghan group, but when it comes to the
money, Sherpao said the rule is: "live off the land."
Back in 2005, television camera crews in Swat, Pakistan, captured for the first time images of Taliban collecting donations from locals. Then, wooden carts with mounds of cash were parked on the street sides as women were seen dropping their jewelry into bags for masked young men
carrying AK47s.
The Pashtun militancy first grew in the tribal areas of Pakistan when the Pakistan military ventured to the Afghan border for the first time in history. At the time, the American military said that the Taliban had moved its bases into Pakistan and major high profile
ex-Afghan-mujahedeen leaders were traveling freely across the porous Af-Pak border.
But by 2005 groups claiming to be part of the umbrella Taliban Movement of Pakistan (TTP) had started popping up in places like the Swat Valley, which has no border with Afghanistan. In Swat, the leadership of the major Taliban group came from the remnants of an old secessionist movement in the region that dates back to the 1970s, decades before the Taliban existed.
As the Pakistan army moved deeper into the steep green valley to battle these new groups, the Taliban couldn't just rely on the dwindling goodwill of a few poor ideological supporters. Like any good business, it diversified.
A report by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington published in June claims that millions of dollars are also ending up in Pakistani Taliban coffers from its control of the trade in counterfeit cigarettes. The report estimates that profits from the illicit cigarette trade may account for as much as 20 percent of total funding for these terrorist groups.
“After poppy, tobacco is probably the biggest revenue generator,” for the Taliban, said Ikram Sehgal, a former major-general in the Pakistan army who now runs one of the largest private security firms in the country.
Plus, officials constantly identify new Taliban revenue streams. The environmental protection agencies in Pakistan are blaming the “timber mafia” — illegal loggers — for funding the militancy. Last year the Taliban took over a dormant marble mine near the Afghan border, which then reportedly generated tens of thousands of dollars for it every month.
Aftab Sherpao, the former interior minister, said the Taliban also would have made hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past from emerald mining in the Swat Valley.
But nothing, it seems, pays better than good old crime. Rackets, extortion, kidnapping and banks heists are all helping the Pakistani Taliban pay the bills. Earlier this year the Taliban reportedly demanded nearly $1 million from Sikh minorities in their areas as jizya, or “tax.”
A thousand miles away, five men were arrested in June in the city of Karachi, the country's financial hub, for funding Taliban groups. The men were “involved in robbing banks and trailers on highways” and “different crimes” to provide funding to the Pakistani Taliban,
according the city’s police chief. The police also said the suspects were planning to kidnap businessmen in Karachi.
“Kidnapping is a major revenue source for them,” said Gen. Athar Abbas, the central spokesman for the Pakistan Army. “Sometimes we don’t even know how much has been paid to get people released so it’s hard to keep track,” he said. While the official stories mostly recount escapes, ransom is usually paid — “sometimes in the millions of dollars,” said Abbas.

But to Abbas and many others in Pakistan, stopping the drug trade in Afghanistan is still the key to controlling the militancy in Pakistan. “I don’t agree with (Holbrooke’s) assessment,” he said. “The opium trade is still the backbone of the funding” for militants in Pakistan.
Former minister Sherpao said that since the pay-offs in the drug trade in Afghanistan go up to the “highest levels,” “it’s not easy to control it from this side.”
Sherpao's suggestion is echoed frequently by Pakistani officials who say that Afghan officials, including the Afghan president, are involved in the drug trade and thereby complicit in financing the Taliban militancy inside Pakistan.
It's a not a purely academic debate. By hitting such a disparaging note in the funding debate, Pakistan is then able to build political pressure on Afghanistan and the United States to do more on the other side of the border.
The Pakistan government now also routinely points the finger at India for backing the Pashtun and Balochi insurgents in Pakistan through consulates in Afghanistan.
This month, basking in the glory of a fairly successful anti-Taliban offensive in the Swat Valley region, the Pakistani government used U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit as an opportunity to announce that it had presented the Indian Prime Minister with evidence
of his country's involvement in financing and aiding terrorism in Pakistan.
Looking in another direction, Holbrooke has said that the U.S. would look closely at wealthy individuals on the Arabian peninsula who might be funding the Taliban in Pakistan. That might be difficult, however. A 2003 study by the World Bank suggests that drug money transacted between the Middle East and Afghanistan goes through the opaque hawala system.
Before this, for a few years the U.S. had maintained that the Pakistan army and intelligence outfits were themselves funding the insurgency they were fighting. And now the debate has come full circle — a common refrain in Pakistan echoed by many from retired diplomats to retired militants is that the “Taliban are agents of America."
How is the Pakistani Taliban financing its war? There is no easy or singular answer. And in the ensuing confusion everyone is blamed while no one admits to anything. In the end, it might be this blame game that the Taliban profits from most.

Political culture of Pakistan

By Sayeed Hasan Khan and Kurt Jacobsen
Dawn.com
For a democracy to work at full throttle there must be reliable institutions, among them a civil service, a judiciary, political parties, civic associations, the press and a military subordinate to civilian rule. Many a scholarly study has been cranked out to prove this point, but common sense says so too.

To give the urban work force a voice at least one major political party should have trade union links. Pakistan came into existence during the rise of an all-India trade union movement, with one of the strongest components being the Railwaymen’s Federation. Bombay was the bustling centre of the subcontinent’s union movement. The Communist Party exerted the strongest single dynamic presence while the next largest union was run by the Indian National Congress.

At partition the mass of Muslim dock labour from Bombay, along with its leadership, such as M.A. Khatib migrated to Karachi. As they were already organised they became the national labour leaders. As the Karachi docks expanded, however, the owners attracted a supply of docile labour from the north, especially from the Frontier Province, with the intended result of undermining a nascent national labour movement. Instead of trade unions protecting them, labourers were channelled as scabs into the docks and industry by eager Pathan contractors, and that was a heavy blow.

In Lahore, in the largest railway workshops, the union was led by the legendary Mirza Ibrahim, who was also the head of the Pakistan Trade Union Federation. In 1946, before partition, Ibrahim helped win an epochal struggle against a government intent on decimating the railway workforce.

In 1951 Ibrahim formally lost his election to the Punjab legislature because the vote was rigged in the most literally dirty way. Many ballot papers were rejected because they were handled by the soiled hands of his loyal railway workshop workers. After this infamous stunt a Punjabi word ‘jhurlu’ was coined and it is still the common word for outrageous rigging.

Later, Ibrahim spent time in and out of jails — including during the 1967 railway strike — and hospitals and died a poor man. V.V. Giri, who was the president of the federation along with Ibrahim as general secretary before independence, became the president of the Indian republic.

As for the evolution of parties, the Muslim League wiped out competitors in Sindh and Punjab. In 1947-48 in the only province where a vibrant political party — the Red Shirts in the Frontier — was in control, the party was removed through devious bureaucratic means. In provincial elections in the western part of Pakistan the Muslim League came to power through more creative electoral high jinks.

In 1954 in East Pakistan, the Muslim League was defeated outright but, again, bureaucratic manoeuvres reversed the decision so that the ultimate consequence was the discrediting of electoral politics — and a hideous reckoning in 1970-71. Bureaucrats effectively became the political leaders of Pakistan. Ghulam Muhammad and Iskander Mirza styled themselves as chief ideologues. With the connivance of Gen Ayub Khan they abruptly dismissed the parliament in 1958.

A high court ruled against the governor general for dismissing the parliament. The government appealed to the Supreme Court. A British barrister, Lord Diplock, notorious in Northern Ireland later for instituting a non-jury court system there, staunchly defended the government while D.N. Prit offered to fight the case for the opposition free of charge. After the judgment went against him, D.N. Prit told one of us that the decision signalled the end of democracy in Pakistan. Since then, whenever a new dictator popped up, segments of the Muslim League bent over backwards or sideways to accommodate his whims.

In the late 1960s Zulfikar Ali Bhutto named his exciting new political entity — promising honest democratic socialism, which appealed to rising peasant movements — the People’s Party, but the key figures running it were Muslim League relics. The political culture in the upper strata was self-serving, circumspect and cynical. Though Britain had its own purposes in establishing institutions, it bequeathed a first-rate civil administration and judiciary. But every institution that Pakistan inherited, its venal new leaders undermined. India, on the other hand, kept British institutions intact (with minor modifications) and benefited immensely. The only Pakistani institution that retained the British tradition is the army, which nonetheless became contaminated by the periodic intoxication of taking power.

So of the two major political parties today, one was nurtured directly by the army GHQ and headed by Nawaz Sharif during Zia’s reign. The other was eventually embraced by Musharraf. As he said only the other day, Benazir, had she survived, would have been prime minister under his patronage.

Benazir’s father, to no good purpose, nationalised the schools and colleges. These often excellent colleges, built by philanthropists and civic-minded organizations, suffered for it. After Bhutto left, an insistence on teaching Urdu arose and of teaching Islam foremost or exclusively. The poor could go to nationalised schools, if even to those. The middle class attends insulated private schools to sit for British examinations and, afterwards, work abroad or at home for multinationals. So, despite the ritual hailing of democracy, there is a freedom only for the few because of their money.

A vital guardian of civil society should be the press, doing its job of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. But the less said about it the better. Some owners appear quiescent and daring journalists are discouraged, if not repressed.

Corruption over 60 years is up in leaps and bounds. The industrialist long ago developed a knack for sharing profits with ruling bureaucrats rather than with workers. The people feel powerless and are prepared to believe any odious story about their rulers, whether absurd or on the money.

Government legitimacy is, to say the least, shaky. Everybody feels that they are on their own. That despair — far more so than armed militants — is not only a disturbing feeling, but a danger.

State and intolerance

Editorial:
Daily Times

Taking a cue from Gojra, some people on Tuesday killed the owner of a factory in Muridke just outside Lahore. Before killing him they accused him of having “desecrated the Holy Quran”. Ridiculously, they announced an old calendar on the owner’s office wall as the Holy Quran before committing the heinous crime. In Gojra, the announcement from the mosques had alleged that the Christians had defiled the Holy Quran. No evidence was in place.

Many people ask the question: why has intolerance increased after the enactment of the laws against blasphemy and desecration of the Quran? A law is brought in to stop a criminal trend, but why has the opposite happened in the case of Pakistan? No satisfactory answers are given, but that doesn’t mean that there are no answers. One straightforward observation is the weakening of the state in the face of elements that propagate a severe interpretation of the faith.

The next question is: why has the state become weak? The answer should be sought in what the state has done in the last quarter of a century. The state has relied on the military strategy of using non-state actors in covert wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir. The Mujahideen were selected from the seminaries and religious parties who were made to develop their jihadi wings. This empowerment — nursing fully armed warriors within civil society — dictated the negative transformation of Pakistan as a society.

The state that promotes jihad with non-state actors will have to brace itself against change that might come from the jihadi mind. In Pakistan’s case, the state reacted “homoeopathically”; it changed itself through laws that appeased the new tough approach to matters of religion. The blasphemy law was enforced in violation of all norms of law-making. Section 295-C says: “Use of derogatory remarks, etc; in respect of the Holy Prophet. Whoever by words, either spoken or written or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Mohammed (PBUH)...” About the Holy Quran, Section 295-B says: “Defiling, etc, of copy of Holy Quran. Whoever wilfully defiles, damages or desecrates a copy of the Holy Quran or of an extract therefrom or uses it in any derogatory manner or for any unlawful purpose shall be punishable for imprisonment for life”.

The laws are phrased in anger, not in moderation, which is the meaning of justice (adl) in Islam. Some years ago, an angry sitting judge of the Lahore High court spoke out at a public function and said that Muslims should kill a blasphemer on sight and not go to the court of law. Pushed by the ulema empowered in varying degrees by jihad, the laws were kept on the statute book despite clear defects. In most cases any page with Arabic printed on it lying on the ground arouses people to violence which vents itself on public property. The individual victims are mostly poor communities who cannot defend themselves.

In 2006, the Council for Islamic Ideology (CII) thought that the laws had no deterrent value against false accusations and suggested procedural amendments, but the proposal was shot down by the clerical faction inside the CII. The sessions courts that award the death sentence to blasphemers are hardly free agents, intimidated by armed non-state actors besieging the court. Even a high court judge has been killed by a fanatic.

Christians, the most frequent victims, are also the poorest section of the population. It normally takes five to six years for a convicted blasphemer on death row to get relief from the Supreme Court. The state has yet to punish a blasphemer; but hundreds languish in jails falsely accused of blasphemy, including a group of under-age school children from Layyah rotting in a DG Khan jail.

The blasphemy law doesn’t care for evidence, has no concern for “will” behind the act of blasphemy, has set aside the concept of “tauba” (contrition), and is subject to a widespread misuse by criminal elements of society who conflate blasphemy with desecration of the Quran. The state, impotent after its “jihad” phase, extends lame excuses, blaming incidents on the ubiquitous “foreign hand”. Its executive knows that the state is weak-kneed and therefore sides with the empowered jihadi non-state actors as they enter the town with murder on their minds.

GOJRA INCIDENT….SHAME…SHAME

M WAQAR
I have no regret to mention that I am ashamed what had happened in Gojra with the minorities living in Pakistan. I am ashamed of those who did this criminal act for whatever the reason. Shame! Shame on all of us. There are no words to describe this. The government must immediately bring the perpetrators to justice and make a horrible example of them. What may I ask is the Chief Minister of Punjab doing about this? Is he going to remain an idle spectator or is he going to show some backbone and take these fanatics who sully our already muddied name, just paying money to victims cant be end of this horrible incident, money can’t bring love ones who were burnt in front of their families, are we living in 21st century? Is this the message we are sending to the world that we are barbarians, we don’t have any respect for human life, we are a country where we behead innocent people and hang dead bodies to trees, we don’t have any tolerance, ours is an intolerant society, and we are particularly intolerant of those whose faith is not Muslim. That is the message we are sending to the World. Its extremely sad. Sad to know that even in this day and age such extreme level of religious intolerance exists. How can we ever progress with such a mind set?
Where are those champions of Islam like Imran Khan,Nawaz Sharif,Qazi Hussain,Fazal Rehman? Why they are silent? Another shameful blot on our national conscience. The perpetrators of this crime must be punished and we should make an example out of them , on mere allegations (which are later proven baseless) they kill people, destroy houses and then take over property. And everyone in these mobs, from their leaders down to the foot soldiers, is scum of the earth. The police and the district administration should publicly apologize to the Christian community, Any group that targets women and children should be ashamed of themselves. The horrific incident at Gojra has humiliated and shocked the entire nation, and we should hang our heads in shame over the fact that barbaric mobs burned Christians alive as the law enforcement agencies were unable to do anything to protect them. To add to the tragedy, the aggrieved people had to launch a strong protest to get an FIR registered against some 816 perpetrators, including the Toba Tek Singh district coordination officer (DCO) and the district police officer (DPO). A report issued by the Minority Rights Group International in 2007 was a commentary on the dismal state of human rights in Pakistan in respect of its minorities. The document placed Pakistan at number eight among the first ten of some 70 countries that had denied basic rights to their minorities. The grave incident at Gojra comes as a stark reminder for the country’s bleak human rights record .  I am a Muslim but I am ashamed today for the acts done by these killers in the name of My tolerant religion and I couldn’t comprehend that how these so called protectors of Islam and Prophet(pbuh) would face Allah and Prophet (pbhu) on the day of judgment when He would ask them that who gave them the authority? who proved this blasphemy actually occurred? and how they decided that this was done by the same people they killed? Killing innocent people is not Islamic. The animals who are involved in killing and burning innocent people must be severely punished. Christians and Muslims should work together to find out who was the insensitive culprit who did this disrespectful act. Those persons are equally responsible for death of the innocent peoples.
Once again, the incident was provoked by allegations of desecration of the Holy Quran, which were unfounded according to the Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah. Instead of allowing the law enforcement agencies to do their job and respect the decision of the courts, the mobs decided to take matters into their own hands and destroy the homes and lives of the Christian community of the area. This is a shocking incident that must be condemned to the fullest, and the government of Punjab needs to make an example out of the hooligans and barbarians that conducted this massacre. They have shamed the entire nation and must be punished. We must show that we are a nation of laws, not a mob. Further, this is the second high profile incident in less than two months where Christians were targeted by Muslim extremists on baseless allegations of blasphemy. It is clear that the agenda of these mobs is very different from what they claim. Again, the law must reign supreme, not the bloodlust of extremist mobs. Its Muslims duty to not let such bloodthirsty extremists take over our religion. It is time for true Muslims to take back their religion from the violent thugs running amok . Punjab Govt is living in denial, The provincial government is not accepting that a large part of Punjab is suffering from religious intolerance due to the Taliban and religious outfits . The tearful and tragic incidence of Korian Village of Gojra is one of the so many other cruel acts of fundamentalists in Pakistan, till now we could point to Indian Gujrat and say that forming mobs to attack mobs is something that happens only in India. No longer true. Thanks to these animals wearing the mask of Islam. People who form mob and attack others are nothing but blood thirsty thugs. These are criminals waiting for any opportunity to commit most vile criminal acts. This barbaric attack on unarmed and peaceful Christian people of Pakistan must be  condemn . It is a shameful act . Extremism that has been brewing in Pakistan for decades especially after the advent of Zia era. Right wing political parties and state agencies have been busy perpetuating various internal and external hot spots to justify their consolidation of power and to divert attention from the real issues faced by 160 million people of Pakistan. This is not Pakistan of Quaid -e- Azam . This is the country of militants , instead of blaming the culprits, and also the local law enforcement agencies for their criminal negligence, there were some elements who started blaming a “foreign hand”, which is not something new in Pakistan, evidence indicates that local extremists were aided by banned terrorist organizations who were responsible for this crime against humanity, these barbarians are no “foreign hands” they are the ones who have brought us enough grief and shame. Religious fanaticism will eat up the very basis of the country if we do not curb this trend forthwith. The Punjab Government must understand that Punjab is the heartland of the country and Pakistan is on microscopic scrutiny these days. Every news emerging from Pakistan is immediately taken up by International media and what sort of image are we portraying ?Human rights are enshrined in the constitution of Pakistan and religion is often used falsely to suppress the minorities.
Progressive forces in Pakistan and around the world to become a formidable force and rise against the forces of hate and evil. Let us embrace diversity in Pakistan and create an environment where peoples of Pakistan are not judged by their color, nationality, ethnic background or a religious faith passed onto them by their ancestors just like a color of skin or a chattel. Let us make Pakistan an inclusive country - a nation of many nations.
Let us promote brotherhood and sisterhood progressive people to stand like a shield of steel between the forces of pillage and destruction and the noble causes of 160 million innocent peoples of Pakistan who are yearning for peace, prosperity, individual and collective dignity, justice and democracy. The time has come to take politics out of the business of religion and religion out of the business of politics.  We need to be hearing words of conciliation and fraternity from our mosques. It is our religious leaders who are our primary influence, and it is to them that we must look to douse the fires of intolerance and hatred. Would they? Do they have that within them? Or is inclusively and tolerance beyond those who lead our prayers? Its time for progressive, educated Pakistanis to raise your voice against this discrimination and make Pakistan a better place to live for every one. 

Pakistan's power politics

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk
Few things are as oppressive in Pakistan as the summer heat. In colonial times, the British would shift their garrison headquarters from Rawalpindi to the cool peaks of Murree, just north of present day Islamabad. Today, the elite are more likely to skip the country entirely or barricade themselves in the air-conditioned comfort of their cars and homes.

On the streets of Pakistan's vibrant cities, the industrious whir of countless generators is as ubiquitous as the hawkers desperately trying to make ends meet.

With its ever-growing population, Pakistan has always struggled to match energy supplies with demand. Those difficulties have turned violent recently. In Karachi and throughout the Punjab last week angry mobs went on a rampage and assailed power companies in frustration at the long daily power cuts that have brought modern life to a standstill.

The Gilani Research Foundation estimates (pdf) that 53% of Pakistan's population goes without electricity for more than eight hours a day. In fact, the blackouts are even longer in rural and poor urban areas which also lack other basic infrastructure like roads and waste water drainage. The situation has led to a series of annual hikes in energy costs. In the poorest slums of Karachi, for instance, people are forced to clandestinely tap into the electrical grids of rich communities because the retail price is too prohibitive. Power theft in Karachi and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas alone is believed to cost the state £138m in lost revenues.

The government has been under pressure to increase tariffs and reduce subsidies across a broad spectrum of industries including energy ever since agreeing to an IMF loan package last year in desperation as the nation's foreign reserves dwindled. The move has caused much consternation among consumers and local businesses, not just the angry mobs.

The power cuts occur with greater frequency during the long hot summer months. Every time they occur, modern life and business grinds to a halt. This, along with poor employment prospects, and education and health services – and not the Taliban – is the greatest concern for the average Pakistani.

"We have inherited these problems [from the Musharraf regime]. There was no planning done, there was no [energy] policy for the past 3-4 years," Asim Hussain, national adviser for petroleum and natural resources, tells me during a break in a London conference on Pakistan's oil and gas industry.

Just as a gaping hole divides the supply and demand for electricity in Pakistan, the country is heavily reliant on imported fossil fuels: local energy production accounts for only 15% of all usage. Oil and gas make up 80% of all of Pakistan's energy consumption and with 62,000km of pipelines, it has one of the largest networks in the world.

Authorities say they hope to raise national power generation by 4000 megawatts by 2010 but there are concerns the target is unlikely to be met as political intrigues continue to plague the government. Similar intrigues have scuppered attempts at exploiting alternative and renewable energy sources such as hydroelectricity. Among the stalled initiatives is the contentious Kalabagh dam project that proponents say will deliver greater irrigation for agriculture and quench a thirsty nation's energy needs by tapping into the Indus river. The project is opposed by all of Pakistan's provincial governments except the dominant Punjab. Critics cite multiple reasons for opposing the dam's construction including environmental degradation, mass displacement of regional communities, and domination of the project by the Punjab.

The failure to find local energy sources has compelled government and business to look abroad with mixed success. Pakistan recently signed a gas pipeline deal with Iran, but it will be some years before the taps will be turned on. Another proposal is to import LPG across the Persian gulf from Qatar, but such an ambitious venture requires substantial infrastructure still lacking in Pakistan.

With that and the unending energy crisis in mind, the Pakistan government has been wooing multinationals at a series of oil and gas exploration conferences in London, Houston and Calgary last week. With its Petroleum Policy 2009, the current government says it will reinvigorate Pakistan's troubled energy sector primarily through foreign investment.

Pakistan is not just a gateway to mineral resource wealth in Central Asia and the Middle East, it is rich in minerals and fossil fuels. According to government sources, there are believed to be reserves of 27bn barrels of oil and 280trn cubic feet of gas. Yet most of that wealth remains locked away: only 3.4% of oil and 19% of gas resources have been tapped thus far. "Pakistan has significant remaining exploration potential," explains a British geologist at the London conference. That has much to do with the country's "complex geology", and the fact that many of the most promising sites lie in the unstable regions of Balochistan and North West Frontier Province, home to separatists, militants and bandits.

Those obstacles haven't dissuaded some of the largest oil and gas companies – such as British Petroleum and ENI – from investing in large exploration licenses. "With great risks come great rewards," explains one eager executive from another multinational. "We have had years of experience in Iraq," another eager entrepreneur from a private security company assures me. The stakes are indeed high. "There is no doubt that we are dependent on foreign companies to exploit Pakistan's natural resources," senior petroleum ministry bureaucrat GA Sabri. Eighteen out of 20 companies operating ventures in Pakistan are foreign-owned.

For years indigenous and regional communities have complained that their ancestral lands have been damaged by prospecting resource companies, or that they haven't been given a stake in the riches under their feet. In a glossy pamphlet, the state-controlled Pakistan Petroleum Limited claims to be committed to developing these very same communities.

As the government and multinationals divide the spoils, however, the question remains whether the average citizen will get a seat at the table.

Where the Mullahs Are the Upper Crust

NEW YORK TIMES
THE turmoil in the Swat Valley has raised a chilling prospect for Pakistan — that the Taliban’s Islamic takeover in the once-peaceful area was turning into a social revolution, with mullahs leading peasants in the seizure of property from rich landlords who had fled in fear of their lives.

The most worrisome question has been whether the revolution would spread from Swat to the much more populous and strategic province next door, Punjab.

In the logic of revolutions, one might expect it to. This is, after all, a country where more than half the population lives in desperate poverty in the countryside, and the rich live in walled estates, blissfully untouched by ordinary peoples’ problems.

But Pakistan is more complicated than that. Its politics and economics are far more local than national; regional, ethnic and cultural differences are very deep. The mullahs of Swat may be calling for the downtrodden masses to unite, but here in Punjab, religious leaders are still firmly tied to the upper crust.

Pakistan encompasses four provinces — Baluchistan, Sindh, Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province (which includes the Swat Valley) — each with its own languages and culture. The western mountains are tribal and so remote that in some areas, Pakistan’s Constitution does not even apply. It is from those badlands that the Taliban swept outward to neighboring Swat, itself a multi-ethnic patchwork. Baluchistan, another border area, has its own struggle for national autonomy. Sindh is mostly agrarian, with Karachi, an economic hub, at its southern tip.

Punjab, the fourth and most strategic province, is the country’s heart — home to the powerful military as well as much of Pakistan’s governing class; social upheaval here would drag the whole country with it. In my travels in this province, none of the mullahs were talking about revolution. In fact, the social justice discussions that have driven political movements in the wider Islamic world — Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Sadr Army of Iraq’s Moktada al-Sadr, for example — were notably absent.

Instead, I have found a surprisingly comfortable coexistence between the mullahs, the landlords and the political elite (the latter two are often one and the same). Even the harder-line preachers, among the sternly traditional Muslims known as Deobandis, have stuck to a bland, nonconfrontational line.

One leader of a Deobandi seminary in Kabirwala, a town in southern Punjab, told me that the land was distributed as God had intended, and that the only problem with the landlords was that some were insufficiently Islamic, though now that was improving.

History explains much of the feudal outlook of the clerics in Punjab. They tend not to oppose the establishment in part because the state itself made them powerful. In the 1980s, the military dictator Zia ul-Haq gave land and money to Deobandis, a policy the United States supported because it needed both Mr. Zia and fervent jihadists in the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Mr. Zia also crushed social ferment throughout Pakistan, and the debate on class and social justice that went with it, stifling political growth. To this day, Pakistan retains a colonial-style system of patronage: I-will-vote-for you-because-you-are-important-and-I-think-you-might-be-able-to-help-me-in-my-time-of-need.

At the same time, the Zia government elevated the mullahs, once unimportant men seen mostly at weddings and funerals. They became powerful players with their own political space — a kind of middleman between state and populace, not breaking their ties to the elite that had empowered them.

“The mullahs were one of the state’s major allies,” said Aasim Sajjad, a political economy professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences who is part of a small leftist political movement in Pakistan. He argues that in Punjab, the conditions for a revolution simply are not present, in part because the mullahs are still comfortable in their ties with the state.

“I don’t see them being interested in radical social change that really attacks the existing structures of power in the society,” he said.

This is not to say that all are nonviolent, just that their violence does not challenge the state or the social order. The leader of Sipah-e-Sohaba, an ultra-orthodox Sunni political party, whose military wing believes Shiites to be apostates and has been killing them since the 1990s, was allowed to contest an election from a prison cell in 2002. (He won.) Another militant group, Jesh Muhammed, which supports Pakistani claims to Kashmir, operates unhindered in the city of Bahawalpur. And Hafez Saeed, a cleric whose associates are believed to have carried out the attack on Mumbai, India, last year, gives weekly sermons here in Lahore.

There have been acts of terrorism in Punjab, particularly after the government attacked a mosque tied to jihadists in Islamabad in July 2007. Militants here began to attack the state and the police. And though they have joined forces with the Taliban, they remain the minority and have so far not enlisted the same amount of popular support as the Taliban has in the western tribal areas.

Even in Swat, the Taliban’s takeover didn’t happen overnight. At first, some landlords lent tacit (if worried) support, donating food and money to the seminary where Fazlullah, the main Taliban leader, began his political movement. The government itself made peace deals with the Taliban. Only later did conditions worsen, with militants seizing ever more power, and eventually overrunning the landlords. The military has since fought to eject them, but it is not clear how effectively.

Mr. Sajjad, the Lahore University professor, argues, as well, that the Swat takeover was more a spontaneous eruption than a product of organized strategy, certainly different from the way Lenin led the Bolsheviks in 1917. “This was not a well-thought-out clear visionary movement,” he said. “It’s a situation that spiraled out of control in part because the state let it.”

And in any case, it was the small Swat Valley, not the strategic heartland of Pakistan. Few people here believe that the military, which calls Punjab its home, would let the province succumb to a militant takeover.

Still, this is Pakistan, whose society is in flux, and whose government often seems mostly absent.

“This place is ripe for extraordinary situations,” Mr. Sajjad said.

TEEN AGE SUICIDE BOMBERS TRAINED BY CRIMINAL TALIBAN

Editorial: DAILY TIMES
National ‘mind damage’ by Taliban

The NWFP Senior Minister, Mr Bashir Ahmed Bilour, has revealed that 200 “completely brainwashed” children of ages 6 to 13 years have been recovered from Malakand, ready to act as suicide-bombers for the Taliban. Further details are quite unsettling: the children are so completely transformed by their trainers that they refuse to reintegrate into normal society and even threaten their parents with death because they are “non-believers”.

We know that children were increasingly being used by the Taliban for their terrorist attacks in recent times. The pattern even contained the message that the Taliban and Al Qaeda were finding it increasingly difficult to train grown-up individuals to do the job. We also know that a child from Karachi is being prosecuted for being a part of the plot that took the life of Ms Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi in 2007. But new details about the use of suicide-bombing coming to light establish a pattern of employing children rather than men.

Our troops discovered suicide-factories in South Waziristan where children brought in from all over Pakistan were kept and “trained” by men who had become famous for their expertise at “converting” the boys in “half an hour”. A cleric from South Punjab was actually caught as he returned from South Waziristan after delivering the latest batch of child bombs to Baitullah Mehsud. This is the worst mind damage that the Taliban movement has done to Pakistan. It has nothing to do with Islam directly but Islam is certainly being misused as an instrument of brainwash.

The 200 child suicide-bombers now in army custody should be handled with great care. They have to be put through a debriefing with a psychologist who should grade them in accordance with the intensity of their alienation from society. They should not be let out into society after a “corrective” sermon from a cleric. That will not work, as shown again and again by men who suffered punishment in prisons, including Guantanamo Bay, and then went right back to practising terrorism once they were released.

Generally speaking, Pakistani children are ripe for the plucking. Poor and deprived, they are primed with religious instruction, as embodied in our syllabi, and succumb to Taliban trainers willingly because of the orthodox views inculcated in them by our school system. While the instruction in state-owned schools is completely benign, some of its elements are selectively employed by the trainers to fashion a suicide-bomber out of the boy. The idea of “shahadat” and the attainment of paradise are misapplied, and the Muslims that he is supposed to kill through his suicide are first apostatised into kafirs.

Unfortunately, a concordance between the orthodox clergy and the Taliban trainers helps the evil process. For instance, the condemnation of suicide-bombing through a collective fatwa issued by the ulema of Pakistan recognises the phenomenon of suicide-bombers as “fedayeen” and outlaws suicide-bombing only when it targets “innocent Muslims”. From this legal base, the boys are easily convinced that they are dying in the cause of Islam by killing those who have rendered themselves non-believers by their acts.

The national consensus against the Taliban, and effective military operations against them, have turned the tide of grown-up suicide bombers. The conduct of the state too has helped in this. For instance, Jamil and Khalique who tried to kill President Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi in 2003 by ramming their explosive-laden car into his cavalcade, were Jaish-e-Muhammad operatives who once fought the covert war against India and were caught fighting against the Americans in 2001 in Afghanistan. Thinking they would change their ways, the agencies let them off, which was a mistake.

Now, of course, the illusions of covert war have been more or less eliminated and the army is fighting against the jihadis that once were its extended front rank. This has changed the trend. The jihadis offer themselves less and less as suicide-bombers; and if they do, they have proved less and less reliable. The new trend is to get caught and start spilling the beans on their patrons, which is actually a measure of success of the army in its war against the Taliban. Ajmal Kasab had the option of suicide; he did not take it. And he has spilled a lot of beans.

The “mind damage” at the national level is being gradually healed as “intimidation” under the control of Taliban is less and less possible. But those who have been roped into becoming suicide-bombers are a special case. And if they are children they should be kept in quarantine and reintegrated into a society that they should view as benign.

TERROR CZAR AND CRIMINAL SUFI OF SWAT VALLEY

THE FRONTIER POST
EDITORIAL
An act stinking foul
This act of the ANP-led Frontier government stinks repulsively foul, as its arrest drama of TNSM’s Sufi Mohammad raises more questions than it answers. Too slim is the official version put out by Mian Iftikhar, the ANP man bossing over this provincial government’s information activity. Buy this would not even truckers parking their lorries in this ANP Goebbels’ truck adda, so riddled it is with holes. He says the Sufi was arrested as he was planning to destroy the restored peace in Malakand. But why was this old witch roaming free, in the first place? Wasn’t his act as satanic as his thuggish son-in law Fazlullah’s in pushing Malakand to the precipice, to pull the region back from where have cost so many precious lives, such a massive painful displacement of civilian populace and such a colossal human suffering? So why had he been left at large, and that too, yet more intriguingly, to live as a free man in the very provincial metropolis of Peshawar under the very noses of Frontier’s top official hierarchy and its ANP-led political leadership? What kind of an underground could it be that Iftikhar talks of the old hag having slipped into to evade arrest? And when was a hunt launched, by the way, to catch him when Iftikhar himself contradictorily asserts that because of the provincial administration’s preoccupation with relief of the IDPs had “restrained us from his arrest”? Even his very contention of preoccupation with the IDPs is all fraught. The ANP-led administration, at best, showed itself an enumerator of the displaced, and that too of doubtful credentials. Not as a relief provider. On this score, it drew wholesale flak from all around for its unfeeling unconcern for the displaced. In fact, the Punjab government earned much appreciation for relief effort, not a patch which could this ANP-dominated administration muster, so dismal was its performance on this humanitarian front. It badly let down its own people who were cared for more by others. So Iftikhar has trotted out all excuses for not nabbing Sufi earlier, none of which can hold. His versions’ inconvincibility brings to the fore more intriguingly as to where and why was this devilish character ensconced and at whose behest. And this wears on a sinisterly mysterious airs, given the fact that ANP bigwigs were such staunch admirers of this demonstrably wicked man. So much so, they acted his stout apologists when he blurted out unacceptable rebellious refrains and struck patently anti-state postures. Intrinsically innocent and simple man they said he was when the old trickster has his track record replete with abominable wickedness. Yet the ANP bigwigs projected him as a man of peace and partner of peace. And when the people cried they were propping up a Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale in-the-making, they denounced the critics as the enemies of peace and of the people of Swat. And if they are now decrying him, there has to be a method to their madness. But if the Islamabad security establishment keeps sitting idly by, it will simply only be further shooting itself in the foot. For pretty lone, it has been maligned for allegedly having soft corner for Swati extremists, by the ANP hierarchy, most of all. This establishment, for its own credibility, has to bust this contrivance once and for all. It must get actively involved in investigating this cunning Sufi, at least to hold him to account for the murder of its four personnel, including an army captain, at his orders. People want to know the truth about him. But this truth will surely not be told from Peshawar; it will have to be found out by Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

Editorial: What to do with Sufi Muhammad?

Daily Times
SHOOT HIM AND HANG HIS DEAD BODY TO A POLE OR TREE.
The chief of the banned Tehreek-e Nifaz-e Shariat-e Muhammadi (TNSM), Maulana Sufi Muhammad, has been picked up from a Peshawar house by the “security agencies” and taken to an unknown place. He was arrested along with his two sons. He lost one son during the Swat operation by the Pakistan Army and has one youngest son still living in Peshawar. His son-in-law, Fazlullah, is on the run with the Pakistan Army in hot pursuit, with the blood of hundreds of innocent people on his hands, swearing that he will battle on till the “sharia” of Sufi Muhammad is enforced.

The Sufi disappeared when things got rough in Lower Dir to which he had escaped, and he sensed that his sainthood would not save him if he remained in the midst of terrorists. The safest place for him was finally Peshawar, a city not long ago dominated by the Taliban and their disreputable allies among the criminal gangs. The NWFP government seemed unready to analyse what his presence in the city would finally lead to, in a way showing itself willing to share power with him in time to come.

During the days when his whereabouts were unknown — he was probably somewhere in Punjab — the NWFP government was not very perturbed, happy as long as he did not show up somewhere uncomfortably near. It must have known that the Sufi had lodged himself in Peshawar — some sources say he was in the city for the past three weeks — but it pretended that he was not important enough anymore to bother anyone. Now that it has owned up his arrest, it should revamp its views on what Sufi Muhammad stands for and how dangerous he could be.

Letting the saintly-looking agents of chaos go is a pattern of state behaviour. One can hardly forget the example of the cleric of Lal Masjid because the national view, as projected by the media unfortunately, is overwhelmingly in his favour. But popularity should not divert the state from making a cold-blooded assessment of what such people mean to state security. Sufi Muhammad’s case is relevant because his strategy in Swat unfolded in the glare of media publicity and finally created a national consensus against the Taliban when he failed to make it stick.

Sufi Muhammad was a known quantity because of his anarchic adventures in the 1990s but was overlooked because everyone and his uncle was for implementing, on trust, his qazi-based sharia in Malakand, including the people of the region living under the terror of his son-in-law’s routine intimidatory beheadings. Under the agreement signed with the NWFP government, he claimed he would also appoint the qazis of his choice while pretending that he could persuade his son-in-law to stop killing innocent people. But when the crunch came, he denounced the Pakistani Constitution and disclosed his true colours.

By denouncing the Supreme Court of Pakistan and democracy as a system of kufr, Sufi Muhammad cut himself off from the powerful Deobandi consensus too, proving once again that the Deobandis obeyed the Taliban not vice versa. It recalled Maulana Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid in 2007 when he began to reject his Deobandi backers because of what he claimed was their passivity in the face of the challenge to enforce sharia in Islamabad. Do we want to see Sufi Muhammad too winning like Maulana Aziz and making the Deobandi confederacy of madrassas do an about-turn? Or should we bring charges against him based on his culpability in the loss of life and property in Malakand?

Pakistan has been brought back from the brink of state-failure by the national consensus that developed against the Taliban in the wake of Sufi Muhammad’s misdeeds. The military operation is succeeding on all fronts and terrorists are now being caught before they can carry out their attacks. We simply cannot afford to roll back these achievements and allow Sufi Muhammad to restart his campaign from Peshawar where, before long, he would have been surrounded by his armed devotees, rendering his house a no-go area for the police. Taking him out of the DI Khan jail and bestowing on him a status he never deserved has let the country down. That mistake should not be made again.

Stop targeting China’s political system

Editorial..GLOBAL TIMES
No matter how differently Western media outlets reported the March 14 incident in Tibet last year and the recent riots in Urumqi, their comments shared the same judgment toward the Chinese government. China’s political system was often the single target attacked quickly and easily.“One party dictatorship,” “China’s Communist leadership” and “the continued rule of the Communist party” are terms the Western media liked to use while underreporting the severity of the riots and the brutal attacks on innocent people.This stereotypical thinking shows Western media outlets always feel the political system of their particular country is absolutely superior to China’s.Once something bad happens in China, they simply blame China’s political system. In their eyes, it is inevitable for such a “backward and flawed” political system to have problems. With no change in the system, China and its government can never solve these problems.However, every country is distinct and complex. There must be many factors that lead to the occurrence of social and ethnic problems, instead of just one. It is unwise and irresponsible to blame everything on China’s political system.For example, the imbalance of development and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor are universal problems in China’s transition from planned economy to market economy. This problem becomes entangled with ethnic issues in areas where ethnic minorities live.As a result, many Western media outlets criticize China’s problems with its policy toward ethnic minority groups and further attack China’s political system. But these problems have nothing to do with the system.Actually, China’s current political system, in the past decades, has made remarkable achievements in developing the economy, improving the well-being of the Chinese people of all 56 ethnic groups, and promoting the country’s role in the international community. China’s governmental system was the practical choice of the Chinese people and revolutionaries after a long search and struggle.History and reality have proved it to be the right choice, one in keeping with China’s characteristics.The Western media’s prejudice toward and ignorance of China’s political system’s achievements stem from deep-rooted distrust of the system’s capability to survive and to succeed.
Any country, including Western countries, cannot be free of social and ethnic problems in its development. Serious social problems such as racial issues and the high rate of crime are rife in the US and other Western countries.In recent years, social and racial unrests of various scales happened in Western countries such as the US, France and Germany.If Chinese media simply attribute all this to the US’ political system, it will be “nonsense” to Western media and do nothing good to build mutual understanding between the two countries and the two peoples.It is time for the Western media to take an objective approach toward understanding and explaining China’s problems and changes, one which is less simplistic and more open-minded.
Only in this way can they tell the truth and achieve mutual trust.

PESHAWAR'S SORRY TALE

THENEWSPK.COM
Consider this: Shakespeare’s tragic romance Romeo Juliet is on. The auditorium of Peshawar University is the venue, and the university’s English literary society is the organiser. All of a sudden, during one of the high points of the play, an emotional Romeo takes Juliet in arms and hugs her. Only a few conservatives among the audience wink in disapproval, while the rest rise in applause for the spontaneity of the scene, among them “Juliet’s” father as well (eyewitness account by a university veteran).



This was in early 1965.



Fast forward to 2002-2007: (Peshawar reels under the bigots of the opportunistic Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal)
Females cannot appear in billboards. No picture or female depiction in public places. Nishtar Hall, which used to host stage plays and musical concerts, is shut down and famed singers like Gulzar Alam are either in hiding or lie low in profile or leave the city for fear of religious zealots.
Whether the decline in Peshawar, or Malakand’s siege by Taliban zealots, the MMA also carries a great part of the responsibility and owes an apology to the Frontier’s people. It was the MMA that looked the other way and kept silent as Mangal Bagh, Mufti Munir Shakir, Haji Naamdar, and Maulana Fazlullah established their fiefdoms around Peshawar and Swat.
And now comes July 2009: “Baba, will we be able to play in the street and buy ice cream from the market without fear,” one of my nephews asks his father, when told the family is moving to Oman for a new posting.
The fears that Dr Mazhar saw in the eyes of his son and the uncertainty that accompanied the query on ice cream epitomised the socio-political decline that the city has undergone in the past three decades, beginning with the Soviet invasion and subsequent occupation of Afghanistan.
The city has virtually turned into a microcosm of the consequences of a disastrous policy pursued by the ruling establishment – personified first by Gen Ziaul Haq and then Gen Pervez Musharraf, equally assisted by the mutual animosity of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif in the 1990s.
Foreign airlines have suspended to and from the city. Ever more bunkers and road blocks are appearing on vital link roads. The murders of a USAID worker in March and a UNHCR worker on July 16 have more volatility to the socio-political environment, thus creating an air of fear. That most of the markets have lost their teeming crowds is also a direct consequence of the Peshawarites today live in fear and uncertainty, unnerved by a multitude of factors.
Firstly, the string of abductions – mostly of influential and wealthy people – haunts almost every resident of this city that has seen a dramatic surge in criminal activities. Professional criminal gangs, which in many cases enjoy political patronage, operate all around the city, often taking cover of various Taliban groups. The latest surge actually began with the plunder and torching of NATO-cargo parked at various terminals in the periphery of the city in December 2008.
Those attacks and abductions – close to 150 in the first four months of this year – injected fear and uncertainty into the hearts and minds of the locals.
Secondly, an extremely corrupt and arduous judicial system compounded by a thoroughly dishonest police has added to the plight of the hapless people, who every now and then hear of news of justice being dispensed by Mangal Bagh Afridi’s Islamic courts.
Afridi’s associates simply send for people (even living in the city) against whom affectees lodge complaints and seek justice for the simple reason that the existing system doesn’t provide justice to the majority of Pakistanis.
The courts are suffering from insufficient staff, resulting in high pendency which again is complicated by the endemic corruption within a system which at times doesn’t provide justice even to very senior government officials.
Thirdly, the bunkered leadership of the coalition comprising the ANP and the PPP has done little to assuage people’s fears or address fundamental issues of governance. Roads in the city remain potholed, utility services inefficient, and long power outages continue to fuel people’s frustrations. Adding to the outrage are the news and rumours of corruption within the ruling coalition – as valid a perception as was during the MMA government. And certain phrases, attributed to people in the seat of power by word of mouth, are visible on rickshaws or other means of public transport. One of them, for instance, says, “Don’t talk of Easy Load, it annoys baba”. This relates to an important person in the province, who is rumoured to be involved in all lucrative deals and appointments.
Fourthly, the absence of respect for the rule of law among politicians and the bureaucrats as well as the division of administrative powers – governor, chief minister, the corps commander, intelligence outfits – has resulted in insensitivity even to public issues of urgent importance.
Despite being represented in the local government, the provincial assembly and parliament, most people feel disenfranchised just because the contact between the voters and their leaders is minimal. Once voted into power, most MPs launch themselves into the pursuit of lucrative political and financial business. The MMA government did the same. The result; Peshawar, my city, today lives in fear, frustration with the socio-economic structures crumbling in the face of rising crime and the invisible nexus that exists between the world of politics and crime – all under the cover of insurgency.

PESHAWAR : Kala Me Perzo She Pa Bamono Pekhawara

Jihad and the state

Dawn Editorial
Twice this week President Zardari has spoken about the root of Pakistan’s problems with religious extremism and militancy. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the president said that the military’s erstwhile ‘strategic assets’ were the ones against whom military operations were now required. And in a meeting with retired senior bureaucrats in Islamabad on Tuesday, Mr Zardari was reported in this paper to have said that ‘militants and extremists had been deliberately created and nurtured as a policy to achieve some short-term tactical objectives’.

The president is right, and we would add the policy was wrong then and it is wrong now. It cannot be any other way. How is it possible to rationally explain to the people of Pakistan that the heroes of yesteryear are the arch-enemies of today? The militants’ religious justifications remain the same; what’s changed is that the militants were fighting the state’s ‘enemies’ yesterday but have turned their guns on the state and its allies today.

Perhaps more than anything else impeding the defeat of the militants today is the inability of the security establishment to revisit the strategic choices it made in the past and hold up its hand and admit candidly that grave mistakes were made. Should we have ever used jihadi proxies to fight the Russians in Afghanistan? Should we have ever supported the idea of armed jihad in Kashmir? Should we have ever sought to retain our influence in Afghanistan through the Taliban? If any of those choices ever made sense, then we should have no complaints about the rise of Talibanisation in Pakistan because we created the climate and opportunity for them to run amok.

Blaming the US’s invasion of Afghanistan is no good — the first and foremost responsibility of the state is to ensure the security of Pakistan, and allowing an internal threat to create a space for itself is anathema to that idea. Whatever the catalyst, the fact remains that it was because a jihadi network was allowed to flourish inside the country that we were left exposed to its eventual wrath against us.

The fault is of course not ours alone. The US, obsessed with the Soviet enemy, happily colluded in the creation of Muslim warriors. Our Middle Eastern and Gulf allies were happy to create a Sunni army to counter the ‘threat’ from post-revolution Shia Iran. But, at the end of the day, it was Pakistani soil on which they were primarily nurtured. Because they were raised in our midst we should have always been wary of the extreme blowback we are now confronted with.

India's unwise military moves

Peopledaily.com

In the last few days, India has dispatched roughly 60,000 troops to its border with China, the scene of enduring territorial disputes between the two countries.

J.J. Singh, the Indian governor of the controversial area, said the move was intended to "meet future security challenges" from China. Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh claimed, despite cooperative India-China relations, his government would make no concessions to China on territorial disputes.

The tough posture Singh's new government has taken may win some applause among India's domestic nationalists. But it is dangerous if it is based on a false anticipation that China will cave in.

India has long held contradictory views on China. Another big Asian country, India is frustrated that China's rise has captured much of the world's attention. Proud of its "advanced political system," India feels superior to China. However, it faces a disappointing domestic situation which is unstable compared with China's.

India likes to brag about its sustainable development, but worries that it is being left behind by China. China is seen in India as both a potential threat and a competitor to surpass.

But India can't actually compete with China in a number of areas, like international influence, overall national power and economic scale. India apparently has not yet realized this.

Indian politicians these days seem to think their country would be doing China a huge favor simply by not joining the "ring around China" established by the US and Japan.
India's growing power would have a significant impact on the balance of this quation, which has led India to think that fear and gratitude for its restraint will cause China to defer to it on territorial disputes.

But this is wishful thinking, as China won't make any compromises in its border disputes with India. And while China wishes to coexist peacefully with India, this desire isn't born out of fear.

India's current course can only lead to a rivalry between the two countries. India needs

to consider whether or not it can afford the consequences of a potential confrontation with China. It should also be asking itself why it hasn't forged the stable and friendly relationship with China that China enjoys with many of India's neighbors, like Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Any aggressive moves will certainly not aid the development of good relations with China. India should examine its attitude and preconceptions; it will need to adjust if it hopes to cooperate with China and achieve a mutually beneficial outcome.

'King of Pop' Michael Jackson is dead

BY M WAQAR
I am deeply saddened by the death of the most unique talent the world has seen in pop music. Michael Jackson was one of the greatest music icons of the 20th Century. A true star who will never be forgotten. There will never be another Michael Jackson. He was the consumate performer and talented in ways that we have not seen since. His appeal crossed over racial lines. His influence on R&B and Pop will live forever. Thriller is one of a kind. MTV would not be what it is today if it were not for Michael. He was a music legend, an American icon, and a talented Black man. MJ loved so many in his life and was loved by all who heard his music, saw his dancing & acting, or heard him share his heart. Such great loss to so many. Such great loss for us all. Funny thing about Billie Jean...as a kid, I never really knew what it was about. I distinctly remember hearing it as an adult and having an "ah hah!" moment when I realized the underlying theme. I don't know that I have ever been so shocked to hear of a celebrity's death. Madonna, a fellow pop icon, said, “The world has lost one of the greats, but his music will live on forever!”He ruled entire globe through his music. Rest in Peace MJ. You will forever be an icon of music and culture. Jackson was a brilliant talent, and left behind some of the greatest pop music ever made. He was exceptional, artistic and original. He gave the world his heart and soul through his music.

Iran: Four Ways the Crisis May Resolve

TIME.COM
By Tony Karon

Some observers see Iran's courageous protests against a stolen election as a replay of the 1979 revolution that ended the tyranny of the Shah — or of the "velvet revolutions" that ended communism in Eastern Europe. Others fear a repeat of China's 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. But none of these comparisons easily fits the unique combination of discord on the streets and infighting in the corridors of power currently under way in Tehran.

The situation is all the more dangerous and unpredictable because the election and its aftermath appears to have surprised all the major players, forcing them to improvise their responses to a fast-changing situation. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei appear to have been taken aback by the surge in support for the pragmatic conservative candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. The decision to hastily announce what many say was an improbable landslide victory for Ahmadinejad touched off an unprecedented wave of protests that have rocked Khamenei, who has since backtracked by ordering an investigation into claims of voter fraud. Despite violent attacks on demonstrators and arrests of political figures, security forces have in the main refrained from unleashing their repressive might on the demonstrators who are openly defying the law. The partial recount of the vote has bought Khamenei time, but the crisis of legitimacy facing those in power grows by the day.(See pictures of Iran's presidential election and its turbulent aftermath.)

Violence and the threat of violence has not deterred the demonstrators, and Mousavi is showing no inclination to back down just yet. Khamenei appears to be scrambling for a compromise that will persuade Mousavi to end the demonstrations while keeping Ahmadinejad in the presidency. But the outcome of the battle of wills may depend on how the key players read the balance of forces on the street and in the councils of the regime. The situation is delicately poised; what follows are four scenarios that could resolve it.

One: Revolution 2.0?
Despite the Twitter-enabled street scenes and revived slogans of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1979 revolution, a repeat of that successful insurrection remains highly improbable. For one thing, the protest movement is being led by a faction of the Islamic Republic's political establishment, whose members stand to lose a great deal if the regime is brought down and, thus, have to calibrate their dissent. More important, an unarmed popular movement can topple an authoritarian regime only if the security forces switch sides or stay neutral. But Iran's key security forces — the élite Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Basij militia — are bastions of support for Ahmadinejad. And they have hardly used a fraction of their repressive power. Also, while the opposition draws far larger crowds, there are still millions of Iranians strongly backing Ahmadinejad. So even if the government is unable to destroy the opposition, it's unlikely that the opposition will be in a position to destroy the government. (See pictures of the enduring influence of Ayatullah Khomeini.)

Two: A Tehran Tiananmen?
The harsh language used by Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guards to describe opposition protests — and their invoking of the specter of an Eastern European–style "velvet revolution" backed by the West — appeared to be generating a narrative that would justify a bloody crackdown, a massive use of military force that would terrify the opposition into submission. Clearly, the limited violence unleashed by the Ahmadinejad camp thus far has failed to intimidate Mousavi and his supporters. But while it would almost certainly clear the streets, the "nuclear option" of a Tiananmen Square–style crackdown would be a potentially fatal wound to the regime's own sources of legitimacy — its limited but lively democracy and the backing of Shi'ite clergy. Discord among the mullahs is growing, with some senior clerics like the esteemed house-arrested dissident Ayatullah Hossein-Ali Montazeri publicly condemning Khamenei's handling of the election and warning ordinary soldiers and police officers that they would "answer to God" for any violence against the people. A crackdown would risk reducing a regime built on clerical authority and "managed" democracy to a tyranny on par with the Shah. Khamenei will be reluctant to go that route. But his handling of the political crisis thus far will have deepened long-standing skepticism within the clergy about his abilities as Supreme Leader. A harsh crackdown, even if followed by reforms, would solve an immediate crisis, but at the cost of inflicting a possibly fatal long-term wound on the regime.


Three: Khamenei's "Divine" Retreat?
Khamenei blundered when he yoked his own position as Supreme Leader — which is typically above the factional fray of the regime's politics — so closely to Ahmadinejad. He issued a barely disguised public endorsement of the candidate, and then rushed to proclaim Ahmadinejad's "divine victory" and order all Iranians to accept it. But the mounting instability on the streets appears to have sent Khamenei into retreat, ordering the Guardian Council to investigate claims of electoral fraud. If the combination of escalating street demonstrations and the politicking of Mousavi's backers inside the regime's councils prompts Khamenei to conclude that an Ahmadinejad victory is untenable, he could press the Guardian Council to heed the opposition's demand for a new vote — or, more likely, "adjust" the result so that no candidate has a clear majority, forcing a runoff election between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. Such a course would be a bitter pill for the Supreme Leader, dealing a body blow to his efforts to install Ahmadinejad and mocking his authority by forcing him to reverse himself. Whatever its outcome, this crisis has badly damaged Khamenei's credibility within the regime, heralding the onset of a bitter backroom struggle in the coming years to choose his successor. As to whether he'll sound the retreat on the election, however, his own preference and the likely tooth-and-nail resistance to any reversal from Ahmadinejad and the security establishment that backs him mean that Khamenei may be more likely to seek a compromise that keeps the incumbent in place. That may require ...

Four: A "Zimbabwe" Option?
The option that would likely hold the most appeal to Khamenei now would be to broker an agreement similar to the one that has kept Zimbabwe's President, Robert Mugabe, in power despite essentially losing an election — by bludgeoning the opposition into settling for an important yet subordinate role in his government. Already, Khamenei has appealed to a sense of national unity and preserving the regime, hoping to cajole the opposition into accepting the results. And at his first press conference following the announcement of his victory, Ahmadinejad reportedly asked his opponents to submit lists of candidates for membership in his Cabinet. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad may be hoping that standing firm and having the Guardian Council affirm his victory after a 10-day recount will produce enough opposition fatigue, which, combined with the threat of violence, will see the protests peter out. By so doing, Khamenei would hope that the pragmatic conservatives — embodied by Mousavi — can be weaned away from the reformists (led by former President Mohammed Khatami) by giving them a stake in a national unity government and promises to moderate Ahmadinejad's style of governance. However, that scenario would come into play only if Mousavi believed that he was losing the battle and risked disaster by keeping his supporters out on the street. Right now, there are no signs that the opposition feels beaten. (Mugabe's opponents settled for the deal only when they had been so pummeled that they could see no hope of unseating him.) Which is why all four options may remain in play while the various camps test one another's strength in the coming days.

‘’Pekhawar kho Pekhawar de kana‘’

(PESHAWAR IS BEST)
Pekhawar kho Pekhawar de kana ,my favorite song while driving on New York streets but now I have stopped listening to this song, because that Peshawar, where I grew up, where I learned everything, where I had my school, college and university days, that feeling been jinxed in some way ,Peshawar, where I used to enjoy evenings with my friends after college hours, where we used to drink tea and gossip for hours is becoming ghost town as I hear and read about this city, now Peshawar is a place where people are afraid to come out, is now city of fear, where residents, confining to their homes because bunch of criminals took their right to enjoy their time , Grief, fear and terror is now name of Peshawar, when I was growing up, I used to hear about bomb blasts and killings in Beirut, sri lanka etc , now when ever I read and watch news, I see people in my home town getting killed by bombs, today it has become a routine matter in my city which was once famous for the peace and tranquility it had, because of these criminals who are wearing masks of religion ,because of these thugs , people have lost the spirit to enjoy and laugh and even work. The citizens of Peshawar are going through a torrid time.
I ask people of this great city to stand united and be strong to face the menace of terrorism. Peshawar, the  city of flowers will not face this darkness forever. It is time we recognize that what we are experiencing today is also a war, its our war, for our survival. We can hope and pray that its impact would not be as destructive as it was during the world wars or as in recent times in Afghanistan. But, let us not have any doubt; it is going to be a long haul. Our cities and towns and people will pay a price. But, we shall overcome.  While the state has a lot of work to do, the people also have to play an important part. It is not possible that foreign elements and hundreds of tons of explosives are smuggled into an urban centre and no one sees anything or that outsiders are not noticed. It is, but either because of laziness or fear nothing is done. This will have to change. Everything out of the ordinary must be reported. Spirit and morale has also to be kept high in times of adversity. The collaborators would continue to undermine it by calling this America's war. They would also praise the piety and the simplicity of these throat-cutters. And they would attack the political leadership viciously because they dare not attack the army. These people have to be isolated from the national discourse. They confuse and obfuscate and in practice, if not deliberately, aid the enemy. They have their democratic rights and no one is advocating taking them away but their voices should be marginalized even more than they already are. 
Whenever I visit Peshawar, the first thing I do go to a KEBAB place and order kebabs there, I hope when I return next time, I expect people as happy as they were when I was there last time, my heart goes for all those innocent people who are facing this terror by their own people, by the agents of other powers, for making little bit money, they are killing their own people and giving it name of Islam, shame on them, such people who are involved in this barbarian act deserve no mercy. Also shame on those politicians who were forcing Govt to make deals with criminals and killers, shame on Gen. Musharaff who did not take action against these murderers. Shame on those religious parties who when had power, were busy removing billboards with women pictures and encouraged those ignorant Taliban to grow stronger. the six-party religious alliance that ruled over the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) for five years is responsible for all this mess, today their leaders are saying if military stops operation, they will go and talk to Taliban, why did not they do this before military operation, Fazal Rehman, Qazi Hussain, be a man and go to FATA and Swat and tell those lunatics to stop their murder campaign. This disaster could be avoided if Musharaff regime had taken strong action against those who were challenging state writ. Why no one did anything when these thugs were destroying girls schools, bombing music centers and inter net café, No one cared when pukhtuns dead bodies were hanging to poles and trees, no one said anything when Taliban were beheading innocent puktuns. What happen to QAZI HUSSIAN and IMRAN KHAN’s long marches, why don’t they do their so called long march against bombings and killings??? when the Taliban throws acid in the faces of young women, gasses them and bombs their schools there is an eerie silence. There seems to be just more than a small amount of hypocrisy in this regard, doesn't there? But that is what, after all, we have come to expect from these people. Hypocrites all. Can Imran Khan,Qazi, Fazal Rehaman
Organize million man march to support a Swati girl’s right to education and walk all the way up to Mingora from Islamabad? These maniacs are doing what they are doing because they have been given a free hand to do as they please. This is what happens when our leaders make peace deals with barbarians who killed hundreds of people in cold blood and blew up hundreds of schools in Swat. No questions asked, no one convicted. Can the Shrif borthers/ Qazis/Imran Khans for once condemn these elements categorically and forcefully and by name that is the Taliban/ the lashker jhagwi/ the jesh muhammad? If only Sharif could put his weight against these elements . Why I don’t hear that Taliban notorious leaders are being killed or arrested? Why sufi was released? Why LAL MSJID mullah is free and not facing criminal charges??? But these hypocrite leaders will not do anything, This is the time for people to stand up and shout against Taliban in hordes and rallies and scream for their eradication. Look at the lashker in buneer, after the bomb blast in the mosque, they gathered up and attacked Taliban . Pakistan is at war! The Pakistani people should not just sit around and expect the army and police to solve this problem. People need to stand up and be counted. This is yet another reminder for the people of Pakistan in general and the Ulema in particular to make it abundantly clear that where their sympathies lie. A major section of organized religious setup (Ahle-hadith, Deobandi etc) has been bent in accusing our military and the government for all sort of things, yet they do not find the courage to challenge their fellow ‘believers’ for their atrocities. Our media will need to scrutinize the funding of these jehadi establishment more, especially within the country where prominent traders collect money for these people in different guise.
Dr. Naeemi’s murder is also a signal for the society that we must not look other way when challenge knocks at our door steps. We must not allow these people to roam freely among our midst, just because they wears their religion on sleeves. The early we challenge, the better it is, this is not the time to bash leaders of Pakistan in Govt. It is time for Pakistanis to be united, stand behind their civil and military leaders to eliminate the enemies of Pakistan and save Pakistan. When your enemy attacks you and your family with guns and rockets, what choice do you have? Open dialogue with the enemy or kill the enemy? Pakistan army is doing super job. They have no choice but what they are doing to save you and your future generation from ruthless murderers. Those opportunist politicians who are opposing this military operations are also enemies of Pakistan. Security officials have confirmed that the Taliban thugs in Swat are being funded in large part by several foreign charity groups. At a recent NATO meeting, Richard Holbrooke expressed similar concerns about the funds being provided to the taliban by private individuals and groups in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. He estimated that such funding rivals if not exceeds the $200-$300M drug money raised annually by the Taliban.
The media has an obligation to pinpoint these foreign charities and their nefarious anti-Pakistan agenda. Clearly, an organized foreign-based extremist network is providing institutionalized funding, expertise and manpower to the taliban thugs.
Our security agencies must take all necessary measures to hunt down traitors colluding with these charities and shut down their local operations. Importantly, the government must take up this serious matter with the relevant foreign leaders, asking them to do more to prevent such extremist elements from supporting the taliban fascists in our midst.

., ‘Ma darta tol umar da guloono khar wayalay day.... Kala mi perzo shey pa bamoono Pekhawara’ (I have always called you the city of flowers, how can I see you being bombed now).

Pakistan’s IDP Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities

The International Crisis Group
In the wake of a conceptually flawed peace agreement, the Taliban takeover of large parts of Malakand division, subsequent military action in the area, almost three million internally displaced persons (IDPs) have fled to camps, homes, schools and other places of shelter across Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP). The challenge for the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)-led government and international actors is to make relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts responsive to needs and empower local communities in Malakand Division. Failure to do so will reverse any gains on the battlefield and boost radical Islamist groups.
The military’s use of heavy force in the ongoing operations, failure to address the full cost to civilians and refusal to allow full civilian and humanitarian access to the conflict zones has already been counterproductive. The public, particularly those directly affected, is increasingly mistrustful of a military that has, in the past, swung between short-sighted appeasement deals with militants and the use of haphazard force. While there is still broad public and political support for moving against the Taliban, it could erode if civilian casualties are high and the response to IDPs’ needs is inadequate. Indeed, it will not be long before the IDPs demand greater accountability from those responsible for their displacement and assurances of a viable return.
Almost four years after they responded poorly to the October 2005 earthquake in NWFP and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), overly centralised state relief organs remain ill-equipped to deal with large-scale humanitarian crises. Likewise, despite the transition to civilian rule in February 2008, the military continues to dominate key institutions, further undermining civilian capacity. Relief and reconstruction efforts must ultimately reestablish and strengthen the link between Malakand’s citizens and the state, severed by rising militancy and the military-devised accord between the Awami National Party (ANP)-led NWFP government and the Taliban-linked Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Moham madi (TNSM) to impose Sharia (Islamic law) in the Malakand area, through the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation, which President Asif Ali Zardari signed on 13 April 2009.
As they did in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake, religious extremist groups, while opposing the military campaign, are exploiting relief efforts to advance their agenda. Communities displaced by a badly planned war may be especially vulnerable to jihadi indoctrination. The crisis, however, also presents an opportunity to win hearts and minds of millions of Pakistanis in NWFP, and more specifically in Malakand Division, who have suffered at the hands of the Taliban. Many of them fled the area even before the current operations began because of Taliban abuses, including murder and rape.
Mounting opposition from the religious lobby may give the military an opening to again enter into a compromise with the militants, as it has in earlier campaigns. The federal and provincial governments must resist any such efforts and assert civilian control over counter-insurgency policy, relief and reconstruction. Instituting civilian oversight and scrutiny is vital to retaining popular support for the struggle against violent extremism. The international community should help build civilian capacity to respond to the humanitarian crisis and also counsel the military against negotiating another deal that would again allow religious extremists more space to recruit and spread Taliban control.
The Pakistan government should:
devise a blueprint for reconstruction efforts, including revitalising war-shattered agricultural and tourism sectors;
develop mechanisms that will enable IDP communities to hold officials accountable for the distribution of assistance;
prohibit jihadi groups banned under the Anti-Terrorism Law, including those operating under changed names, from participating in relief efforts;
prioritise police training and other mechanisms to enhance the capacity of civilian law enforcement agencies to maintain security after the military operation ends and bring militant and local criminal networks and allied serving or retired district officials to justice;
rescind immediately the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation 2009, reaffirm the jurisdication of Malakand’s civil courts, the Peshawar High Court and the Supreme Court and abolish the Frontier Crimes Regulations and the Nizam-e-Adl 1999; and
build on political and public support for confronting militancy in NWFP by implementing without delay long-term political and constitutional reforms in the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA), of which Malakand is a part, as well as in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), so as to incorporate their districts and tribal agencies, respectively, into NWFP, with full provincial rights.
The international community should:
urge a humanitarian pause in fighting to allow much-needed assistance to non-combatants in conflict zones, to permit them to flee and to account for civilian casualties, with the timeframe dependent on assessment of needs and available logistical and other resources and material support, as determined by the provincial government and international and local humanitarian agencies;
ensure that relief and reconstruction are civilian-led and empower displaced communities to determine their own needs and priorities;
prioritise the relief and rehabilitation of IDPs, particularly those living outside government camps, through cash transfer programs that provide income support, payment of school tuition and paid vocational training;
support Pakistan civilian-led plans for return of IDPs to their communities with reconstruction programs that incorporate support for the provincial government and help build the capacity of civilian police and advance justice reform with new training, equipment and mentors; and
encourage long-term political and constitutional reforms in PATA and FATA through support for comprehensive governance, stabilisation and rural development programs.

How Pakistan Failed Itself

Karachi Club Scene>>>



Thursday, May. 14, 2009
TIME.COM
How Pakistan Failed Itself
By Aryn Baker / Islamabad
In the Himalayan resort town of Nathiagali, a party is under way. Ice clinks in tumblers and corks pop while the conversation — an amalgam of English and Urdu that is the mark of Pakistan's élite — flows from meditation techniques to a heated debate over a U.S. politician's warning that Pakistan is on the brink of collapse. The hostess, Rifat Haye, 54, is one of two female pilots with the national airline and is celebrating her promotion to captain. She wears jeans. Her hair is streaked with blond, and a diamond nose stud glints in the sun, as does the jeweled Allah pendant around her neck. She is frustrated with the image the world has of Pakistan, that of a failing state overrun by Muslim fanatics. Pointing first to herself, then at her guests, she says, "This is Pakistan." Then she waves her hand over the valley beyond the deck of her summer cabin. "But that is also Pakistan."

By that she means all those Pakistanis who do not belong to her class and who have as much to do with the Taliban as she does, which is to say nothing at all. But her sweeping wave inadvertently encompasses a part of Pakistan she has failed to address — the Swat valley, where the army has embarked on a campaign to rout out Islamic insurgents who threaten to destroy the Pakistan Haye knows and cherishes.

Pakistan is a complicated country, one of religious and political diversity, fractured by class and ethnicity. Pakistanis like to quip that they have a population of 170 million — and as many different opinions. Which is why defensiveness sets in when outsiders attempt to reduce the country to a terrorist statistic. The problems in Swat don't define Pakistan, says Haye. It's not that she doesn't care — she does — but that Pakistan has very little to do with her Pakistan. "What is all this talk of Talibanization? Not once have these maulvis [religious leaders] complained that a woman is flying their plane," she says. Guests nod in agreement. "There is no way the Taliban can take over Pakistan," says one. "We are too many, and they are too few."

It is indeed unlikely that Pakistan's Islamic militants can seize power. But to spread fear and insecurity and slow down economic development, they don't need to. Hundreds of terrorist attacks have taken more than 2,500 lives in the past 18 months. Talibanization may not have reached Pakistan's élite, but it is already threatening others. Women in the city of Rawalpindi complain that they are harassed if they don't wear headscarves. In Lahore, a prep school for girls has banned the wearing of blue jeans, for fear of a Taliban attack. In the capital, Islamabad, the Red Mosque's prayer leader, Abdul Aziz, sanctioned vigilante squads of baton-wielding women to go out and threaten video stores, barbershops and massage parlors for being un-Islamic. Two years ago, his followers kidnapped six Chinese masseuses, calling them prostitutes, and held them hostage. The army eventually cracked down, launching a siege and battle that saw the death of nearly 100 militants. Last month, Aziz was released from prison on the condition that he would not preach against the state. But residents in the neighborhood fear that the vigilante squads will soon be back. Talibanization doesn't start with a military takeover. It happens when there is a Red Mosque in every city and citizens are afraid to stand up to its edicts.

The government, at last, seems to be fighting back. On May 7, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced a military operation in Swat. "The armed forces have been called in," he said, "to eliminate the militants and terrorists. We will not bow before extremists." Only weeks before, the government had finalized a peace deal with the militants in which their principal demand — the establishment of Islamic law in the area — was granted in exchange for giving up arms. At first officials defended the deal, even as the militants moved on a neighboring district and their leader announced that democracy was contrary to Islam. But in a move that coincided with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's visit to Washington, the government declared the deal over. "The militants have waged war against all segments of society," Gilani said. "I regret to say that our bona fide intention to prefer reconciliation with them was perceived as a weakness on our part."

The fighting in Swat masks far more serious problems. In Waziristan, a region on the Afghan border, security forces have ceded control to the militants. Outlawed sectarian groups are gaining a foothold in Punjab province. And in the financial capital of Karachi, where Pakistani Taliban insurgents raise funds, ethnic clashes claimed more than 30 lives last month. When U.S. President Barack Obama commented during an April news conference that the Pakistani government did not "seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services — schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of the people," the nation erupted in fury, and effigies of Obama were burned. But privately many Pakistanis agreed with the U.S. President; their nation, for all its people's many talents, has failed to develop the education, economic-development and justice systems that are the bedrock of modernity and stability. "These guys have been in power for more than a year," says lawyer Anees Jillani, speaking of Zardari's government. "What have they done? We still have acute poverty, joblessness and injustice."


A Crisis of Identity
To criticize Pakistan's leaders, however — much though they may deserve it — is to miss the point. It is ordinary people, locked in a series of personal Pakistans, who seem unable or unwilling to unite over the threat to their nation. Pakistanis will point to the oppressive hand of history or the machinations of foreign nations to explain their descent into chaos, and to a certain extent both have played a role. But no one bears more responsibility for a slow collective suicide than Pakistanis themselves. A set of failures has contributed to Pakistan's fall.

Founded as a Muslim nation carved from British-ruled India in 1947, Pakistan has long struggled to unite a population divided by language, culture and ethnicity. It is quite true that Pakistan may never have resolved what Sabahat Ashraf, a Pakistani blogger now living in California, calls its "existential dilemma: Are we an Islamic state, or are we a state of Muslims?" but Islam has always been a common denominator. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the nation rallied under the banner of jihad. Today any attack on Islam, even the perception of one, is akin to an assault on Pakistan's very identity. When the militants say they too are fighting for Islam, just as the mujahedin fought the Soviets, it creates a sense of paralysis.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor at Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University, pulls up on his laptop the pages of a first-grade primer distributed in private religious schools. "A is for Allah," he reads. "B is for bandook, or gun." T, for thakrau, collision, is illustrated with a drawing of the World Trade Center in flames, while Z, for zenoub, the plural of sin, is depicted with alcohol bottles, kites, guitars, drums, a television and a chess set. Any attempt to change the religious curriculum is met with fierce resistance. "Many fear that to be seen protesting against the extremists who are pushing Shari'a [Islamic law] would be seen as protesting against Islam itself," says Hoodbhoy.

The paradox here is that historically, Pakistanis have practiced a syncretic version of Islam that venerates saints and emphasizes a personal relationship with God. But the influx of Arab preachers during the war against the Soviets brought a more austere form of the religion. Shayan Afzal Khan, an Islamic scholar who writes about women and Islam, thinks Pakistanis lack the confidence to defend their moderate beliefs. "People are afraid to take on the mullahs because we can't quote the Koran the way they do," Khan says. "We have to take our religion back," but fear gets in the way. She has decided not to publish her most recent book, about early Muslim women, in Pakistan "because the situation these days is too unstable."

Blaming India
If Pakistanis have defined themselves by their religion, they have also defined themselves by what they are not — Indian. The bloody cleavage that marked the birth of two independent nations began a long enmity cemented by three wars and the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation. The contested territory of Muslim-majority Kashmir is the flame that keeps the pot boiling. In Pakistan every prayer ends with a thought for Kashmir. Pakistanis find it impossible to believe that India, with its booming economy and flourishing democracy, has moved on from the rivalry; India, many believe, still seeks the destruction of its neighbor.

One afternoon in early May, an upscale audience gathered in Karachi to hear veteran journalist Ahmed Rashid speak on the Taliban threat. For years, Rashid has been Pakistan's Cassandra, prophesying an extremist-led doom to deaf ears. Now that the threat has become reality, he is a sought-after speaker. "I no longer say that there's a creeping Talibanization in Pakistan," he warned. "It's a galloping Talibanization." For 45 minutes, he expanded on his theme, explaining how the Pakistan Army's narrow focus on India has allowed the militant threat within the country to fester, how money that should have been spent on helicopters to combat the insurgency was squandered on fighter jets better suited to attacking India. But the message failed to sink in.

After his speech, Rashid was peppered with questions about India's designs to destabilize the country, until he exploded with frustration: "We are still getting told every night on our TVs that these Pakistani Taliban are all getting their money from India, that they are armed by India. Until we recognize the fact that this is a homegrown phenomenon and that the people throwing acid into girls' faces are Pakistani, the problem will continue."

Yet continue it does. Every day, it seems, another police official or politician proclaims that he has definitive proof that a "foreign hand" (read: India) is behind the latest bombing. The proof is never produced. It is enough that it bolsters the delusion that Pakistanis are not responsible for the crisis in their own country and thus are exempted from dealing with it.



Resenting the U.S.
Of late, the U.S. administration has sought to convince Pakistani leadership that the Indian threat on the eastern border has passed and that troops should be moved to the west, where both Pakistani and Afghan Taliban have set up training camps. To many Pakistanis, that message is suspect. The Americans have too long a history of pursuing their own interests in the region, they say. The rapid U.S. withdrawal at the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan left Pakistan in chaos. America's long support for former President Pervez Musharraf's military rule alienated Pakistanis even further. Now it is commonly accepted that every political move in the country conceals an American motive, a belief shared by many Pakistanis living abroad. "It's well known that the present civilian government headed by a corrupt psychopath was conjured up by the U.S. and U.K. to push their agenda," says Dr. Riaz Ahmed, a pediatrician practicing in the U.K. "Pakistan has been helping the Americans with their war, and what do they get in return? Violence, drugs, instability. We Pakistanis think we are being bullied into somebody else's war."

That resentment is fueled by a belief that Pakistan is suffering for Washington's failures. Zardari may say that the war on terrorism is as much Pakistan's as it is the U.S.'s, but that message has yet to take root. The growing militancy in Pakistan's tribal areas "is the price we are paying now for supporting the American war on terror," says Ahsan Iqbal, information secretary for the opposition party Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). "If we stopped supporting the American war [in Afghanistan], we would have peace tomorrow." Iqbal dismisses recent accounts in the Western press of growing Talibanization in the country as "propaganda." Shireen Mazari, a right-wing columnist, sees even more sinister plots afoot. "Is it really in the American interest to have a stable Pakistan right now?" she asks. "Or is it actually pushing us towards instability in order to achieve its agenda of obtaining access and control over our nuclear assets?" Says Rashid: "All of us go by conspiracy theories. We are all blaming somebody else for our mistakes. Why don't we wake up and start blaming ourselves?"
Missed Opportunities
One answer to that question is, because Pakistan's leaders have been so feckless. When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007, her husband Zardari assumed leadership of her political party and then the presidency. Zardari swore to bring his wife's killers to justice. He has not done so, instead wasting an opportunity to rally the nation against terrorism. There is no national media campaign to combat Taliban propaganda and no clerics on TV or radio denouncing suicide bombers.

"What we need is a national change in consciousness," says Supreme Court advocate Aitzaz Ahsan, who led a lawyers' movement that brought about the downfall of Musharraf. "People need to be bombarded with the reality of what the Taliban represent." Ahsan wants to see videos of Taliban atrocities broadcast every night. Only then, he says, will people understand and act against extremism. "The whole nation needs to see what is happening. Not just the floggings by the Taliban but the beheadings, the digging up of the graves of our saints, the burning of our girls' schools."

Instead, says Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group, Zardari's government has muddled the message: rather than punish those who used terrorist tactics, he originally met their demands in Swat. Wajiha Ahmed, a Pakistani-American graduate student at the Fletcher School of Tufts University, hopes that the current chaos holds a "silver lining ... It might put pressure on the military élite and the political oligarchy to finally change the country's outlook so that it focuses on bettering the condition of its people." But for decades, talented exiles — writers, bankers, software engineers and international civil servants — have been devoutly wishing for such a consummation. It hasn't happened yet.

That sad reality is sinking in back home. In a phone call a few days after her party, Haye, the airline pilot, worried that she might have been too dismissive of the threat. "If the Taliban infiltrates Pakistan, of course that affects us. But what can we do?" One part of the answer, for 170 million Pakistanis, is to recognize their shared destiny. Only when the entire nation understands the threat to its existence — and acts accordingly — will its people be able to confront it.

— with reporting by William Lee Adams / London, Ershad Mahmud / Islamabad and Frances Romero / New York

‘’PROTEST AGAINST MILITARY OPERATION’’

M WAQAR
Hypocrites of Pakistani religious parties had a protest against military operation in Swat, its really amazing that leadership of these so called religious parties never made any statement what Taliban did and doing to the nation, country as well as innocent people, where were their protest rallies when cruel , criminals ,thug Taliban were beheading innocent people, hanging dead bodies to trees and poles? While Pakistan Army is locked with Taliban in fierce battle in the Malakand Agency, especially in the Swat region, some of the hypocrites like Imran Khan and religious parties have started raising hell just to demoralize the nation and to show their inner filth and to just blackmail the government to get more attention and the perks and privileges. Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the ex-chief of Jamat-e-Islami has announced a 3-day sit-in in the Melody chowk Islamabad against the military operation in Swat. Where was this idiot and his clowns, when there was no military operation and government was trying to appease the Taliban by dialogues, deals and accords? Not even once Qazi or his idiots went to Swat or talked with the Sufi Muhammad or Fazlullah. They remained silent. Now just to record their attention they are raising hell. This is the time when they should be helping the IDPs and not creating fissures and fuss. But they have always disappointed the nation. Does our religion propagate this type of politics?. No, never…. These religious leaders actions have nothing to do with religion. This is sheer hypocrisy. These people are using religion and their religious attire to fool the masses who are illiterate, religious minded and tend to fall prey to any religious gimmick. We must not allow these people to take control of our lives and affairs of our country. We need a totally different band of able political leaders who are sincere, honest, dedicated and work with a vision. We must look around, pick such people and encourage them to come forward. We must get rid of these stale feudal and moulvis who only play dirty politics for their interest.
Why did not J.I. leadership go to Swat and talk to those ignorant mullahs sufi and company, why J.I. did not say anything when Taliban were destroying schools and harassing girls if they were going to schools. Why did not they protest when Taliban were killing innocent people, sending suicide bombers across the country, destroying music centers and internet café, what Taliban are doing that was encouraged during MMA Govt in pukhtunkhwa, nation should realize that J.I. is supporting Taliban. IMRAN KHAN and J.I leadership is deaf, dumb and blind, IMRAN KHAN has forgotten when he used to party and clubbing in Europe , he forgets about his play boy past but now he talks about Islam and supports Taliban. Jamaat-e-Islami’s Munawar Hasan is criticizing those politicians who are supporting military operation but why did not QAZI HUSSAIN or he himself go to Taliban and ask them to stop there barbarian activities and stop killing innocent people. Extremism is death of Sanity and a tricky shrewd extremist in high place has potential to ruins the nation. Unfortunately in Pakistani Political chess Board still some religious extremists command the events. These are the people who exploit the conflict and benefits from every side. Lets not forget that Mollana Fazlurehman who is Leader of Pakistan's Jamaat e Ulema Islam or JUI is a person who benefits from every situation and every government.  JI also opposed the creation of Pakistan. It supported Gul Badin Hikmatyar during so called Afghan Jihad. Its leader ship is vocal critic of Army operations against extremists and spreading bitter propaganda against Army and forces fighting Taliban menace. Fazlur Rehman is  "ideological mentor" of the Taliban .


JI also opposed the creation of Pakistan. It takes its ideology from Wahabi school of thought and has deep connections with international Islamist Parties like Akhwan ul Muslimeen of Egypt. It supported Gul Badin Hikmatyar during Afghan Jihad. Its leader ship is vocal critic of Army operations against extremists and spreading bitter propaganda against Army and forces fighting Taliban menace. Leaders of these religious parties supported every military dictator in Pakistan. Gen Zia and the so called Afghan war in 1980 played an important role in the growth of religious parties. Several new parties were formed.
One more Political party who is trying to exploit the situation is PML N . Its leadership is trying to gather the sympathies of religious pressure groups by opposing operation on one hand and on other giving one or two statements in favor of Army operations to remain in good books of Americans. One important leader of PML N even created a drama in a program in Geo TV by shedding tears and appealing government to stop Military operation In swat.
These thugs, barbarians, criminals, ignorant Taliban are involve in crimes against humanity and they must be punished, hang their dead bodies to tress and poles, cut their dead bodies in pieces as they did to many, burn them alive. Pak Army and Pak Govt has full support of educated civil society and the gains in Swat will be useless if we don’t act against the real bases of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, especially Waziristan. Better suffer some casualties now, and suffer collateral damage, then see the whole country become Taliban’s play ground. This is the only chance to defeat militants once in for all.. I wish wars could be fought on papers where their would be no civilian casualties.. we should support our army, put all the political difference behind and for once think about Pakistan and its future . The issue at present is that Taliban; have gained extreme strength that they are placing a stiff resistance to our infantry. The question that comes to mind is that who is supplying them with arms and ammunition. Being the case the Talibans are in collaboration with our enemy with malicious intents on Pakistan. They must be dealt with an iron fist and be immediately be eliminated from within.
I support the Pakistan army and hope for their imminent success. Taliban will and must be defeated at any and every cost.
Its time that people of Pakistan be mentally prepared without doubt to fight Taliban menace. Pakistani majority takes their religious ideology from Sufi saints. These Taliban and sympathizers , who are out come of US and western war against Soviets in Afghanistan are not more then 2 to 4 percent of Pakistani Population. This beheading, flogging is not part of Pakistani culture and Islamic ideology. The best strategy to neutralize Taliban is to neutralize their political support. Government should force JI, JUI and PML N and IMRAN KHAN type political groups to act in loyalty to state or ban them. Its only way we can let the unknown heroes of our security forces who sacrificed for Pakistan and world peace to rest in peace.
SALUTE TO Martyrs Of Rah-E-Rast ,and all those Police officials who sacrificed their lives for Pakistan.

China downturn leading to Communist nostalgia

Chinese youths embrace communism

CRUSH TALIBAN !!!!!!!!

‘’CRUSH EM’’







‘’CRUSH EM’’
M Waqar
I am glad that entire nation except QAZI HUSSAIN AND IMRAN KHAN is united on war against ignorant, fanatics, thugs and criminal Taliban. These thugs, criminals and killers are not offering anything positive but only death and damaging name of Islam and Pakistan. I am happy to see broad public and political support for the war. I am glad that people have realized that monster Taliban had to be defeated. They are doing no good to any one. The name of Islam, Pakistan and good kind innocent people have been tarnished all over the world because of them. Pakistan Army should punish em real hard and kill or arrest Taliban leaders and bring them to justice, these so called Taliban leaders are involve in crimes against humanity. They beheaded even children ,destroyed schools and other business which QAZI HUSSAIN and IMRAN KHAN DON’T SEE. It is a real test for Pakistan Army, they must crush these lunatics, nation will be very disappointed if they don’t win this war against Taliban and punish them. The emerging situation in Pakistan needs to be combated now in a very aggressive manner. These Hypocrite Taliban are a shame on Islam. It will be a service to Islam and humanity to bring these animals to a court of law. Pakistan’s civil society must target these lumping elements if they want to clean Pakistan of these rabid fundamentalist elements. Taliban have been destroying or occupying government buildings and blowing up bridges, basic health units and hotels, including the one that looked majestic with clouds often swirling around it at the now deserted Malam Jabba skiing and chairlift resort. Electricity and gas installations have been bombed and road blockades and checkpoints set up to add to the misery of the people. Beheadings of personnel of security forces and police and political rivals is common. Bodies of people slain overnight are dumped in the morning by the roadside everywhere in Swat or at the Greens Chowk, nowadays commonly referred to as "Khooni Chowk" (bloody square), in Mingora city. Taliban never had any genuine demands that could be considered. There actions are genocide of innocent peace loving puktuns . Forgiving them the blood of all those that they have killed just for negotiating "peace" sends a very wrong signal to all the other crooks who want to make money out of suppressing others. These guys need to be made an example off or we are bound to see more episodes in the futures. The only solution of the Taliban problem is an armed solution . The Taliban in Swat is a rag tag bunch of around 2000 fighters, besides being small in number they have alienated the local population with their cruelty. This should not be a big problem for the 500,000 strong Pakistan army IF it is willing to take them on. It is equally important to find and expose those elements, groups or countries supporting & re-sourcing Taliban with money and weapons and parallel efforts be made by all, army as well as local tribes to help close the taps. Otherwise it is going to be a long haul fire fighting and extended collateral miseries for the IDPs. We really need to get rid of these Taliban from Pakistan. Once they are eliminated, we should start educating our citizens in those areas to make sure no Taliban is born into another home anywhere in Pakistan. Today majority of Pakistanis from Khyber to Karachi are with our forces fighting with them to eliminate them. I think the operation started bid late, in fact it should have started earlier. I am happy that our Army is advancing and they(So Called Taleban) are retreating and on the run. I believe Taliban are the enemy of our nation and our people. We must support the families who had to vacate their homes at the hands of these barbarians. The bigger issue here is that these thugs are clearly trying to hide in the mass of refugees exiting the area of operation. So the question that arises for the security agencies is - is there a system in place to screen the whole lot of refugees in order to ensure that the Taliban are weeded out of the influx. Otherwise all the operation would end up achieving is a wider dispersal of these animals, leading to a wider geographic spread of the Taliban phenomenon. What Pakistani citizens can do now is to identify these taliban foxes among them and turn these abusers to the officials. If these barbarians really were Muslims they would never enforce their opinion on other people. Even our beloved Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) never preached Islam by force. Double standards are deeply rooted in their philosophy. The question we must now ask ourselves is that do they really want to spread Islam or do they want to destabilize our country in the name of a peace-loving religion such as Islam. The people of Pakistan will never be forced into the dark ages . These militants are two faced barbarians! Killing people, barring women from education, looting and creating a chaos all in the name of Islam - is this really Islam? It is for people like these that our religion has had a bad press. I really hope and pray that each and every monster/Talib gets killed just as the same way they inflicted torture to people by beheading and disgracing corpses . Taliban and other extremist are savages. We as Pakistanis should do our best to drive them out. It is our failure that we let them in our cities and villages. Now the nation have risen and its time for Taliban and extremist to go where they actually belong and this is in the confinement and prison. They should not be allowed to impose their savagery on rest of the nation. Taliban are not Muslims, they are destroying the peaceful religion.. shame on them.
Pakistani Govt. is taking the right step to once it for all eliminate them, they don’t deserve to be talked about just eliminate them, request to all the parties in Pakistan to be united in this great cause and bring stability to Pakistan and freedom to its people.

Pakistan: Politicking on refugees

EDITORIAL:
Daily Times
As the refugee problem intensified in Malakand Division after the military operation there, PMLN legislators in the National Assembly decided on Wednesday to criticise the government for not consulting parliament before launching the offensive. The answer from the PPP MNAs was that the government had no other option after the failure of the peace deal with the Taliban. Is this the beginning of a policy of isolating the government on a national issue of paramount importance for narrow party political ends?

A PMLN leader delivered a hard-hitting speech favouring the street rumour — and the line adopted by the opposition outside the parliament — that “the government had launched the military operation on the US dictate in order to earn dollars”. Surprisingly, the same leader, at a loss for a solution of his own, insisted that the government should still try “a negotiated settlement of the dispute”.

After that, a very dubious argument was deployed: “The government is trying to fool us. They sought the approval of the parliament for the Nizam-e Adl Regulation when it was not needed, but completely ignored it for the crucial decision of launching the military operation. The parliament has become irrelevant”. But the charge of naiveté on the part of Parliament is not sincere. The truth is that the refugee crisis after the military operation has created an opportunity for the policy of “isolate and oust”.

The PMLN is zeroing in — despite declarations of political piety by its leader Mr Nawaz Sharif. Why was an APC over the post-peace deal situation not called, he wants to know. The prime minister has already said that there was no time for it unless the unintended consequence was to give the Taliban time to consolidate further. However, he has promised to hold the APC now. But the objections have become more fundamental and hark back to the days of the lawyers’ movement and the slogan of “it’s not our war”.

“The Taliban issue has been mishandled. Our army cannot win this war. You (government) cannot win this war. If we continue on the way we are headed, this system will not survive,” said the PMLN leader at the National Assembly. Another said, “This operation will not reach a logical end because the government has zero credibility”. Yet another said the operation was a “drama” — “being staged to roll back Pakistan’s nuclear programme”.

All over the world, politicians go through this charade in times of crisis. In India, for example, after every flooding and displacement of its east coast populations, the opposition goes on the rampage. The only difference is that in Pakistan politicians aim at toppling the government before its tenure is completed. Popular opposition leaders burnish their popularity further by beginning to shine dangerously during crises. But this time it is not a natural calamity that threatens Pakistan, it is an alien terrorist presence that wants to oust democracy and replace it with despotism.

The media highlights the refugee problem, not to dishearten the public, but to spur the government to take a close look at its remediable derelictions. But unfortunately some anchors display an animus that is unworthy and disruptive of the national effort to stand behind our army as it battles with the terrorists and loses its precious manpower as casualties of war. Last time the media adjudged the state as a total failure in the face of the 2005 earthquake, the world turned around and praised the rescue and resettlement efforts made by it and quoted it as an example to the rest of the stricken states.

Pakistan is not fighting for American dollars, and no one is after its nuclear weapons; it is fighting the war of its survival beyond the point of “negotiating” with the terrorists. And the refugee problem is tough like all refugee problems anywhere else in the world. If the politicians stop undermining national unity at this stage, we are sure to win this war.

TALIBAN BARBARIANS.....The final solution

The final solution
Malik Haroon Rashid
ARTICLE FRONTIER POST
It took many years for the government and its majority people to realise what the Americans and the rest of the world had been telling us for so long: that Taliban are agents of destruction, obscurantism and barbarism and that their adventures in the name of Islam will take Pakistan to brink of disaster. Now glorification of the Taliban as holy fighters of Islam among the common people has come to its near end and Taliban stand totally unmasked. Mainstream political parties have reached almost a consensus over the Taliban question. Religious parties and Islamic scholars have distanced themselves from Taliban version of Islam. Punjab and its leadership after having tasted Taliban terrorism has come to its senses and unlike past is showing some sense in their public statements. But there are some differing voices; there are still pockets across the country where Taliban are still considered as the flag-bearers of Islam. Some political and religious leaders, certain educated, influential people, few former civil and military personnel retain a soft corner for the Taliban, provide them moral, monetary support and speak on their behalf on public platform. Overall situation in the country is quite grim, tribal areas are infested with armed, dedicated Taliban. Even in the sprawling urban jungle of Pakistan Taliban and al-Qaeda have their safe heaven, hidden from the eyes of Pakistan security services. But still the general awakening as to true nature of Taliban is an encouraging sign. Let us now at this moment of time destroy the Taliban, for if we don’t, they will destroy us with whatever we have achieved in the last 62 years. If past is any guide then we should learn there can be no negations with the Taliban, we cannot meet them half ways. There exist no moderate Taliban. We have tested all available options. We saw the futility of engaging them in dialogue. We lay prostrate and pandered to their all extravagant demands in the hope that the Taliban will lay down their weapons and areas under their control will see peace. We saw people in Malakand division and Swat firing guns in the air and distributing sweats at the signing of peace deal between the government and Taliban, only to see later their women’s head shaven and their girls flogged publicly. We hoped the Taliban will lay down their weapons but they only hid their lethal weapons from public sight and gave us a sham peace. Then by stealth and deceit, like Milton’s Satan, they moved to neighbouring regions of Buner and lower Dir, began to seduce region’s young one, held its majority people at gunpoint and started enforcing their harsh version of Islam. It is the roughness, and crudity of Taliban mind, which is the real problem. This roughness might have gone unnoticed in the uncivilized, barbaric part of human history, but in the 21st century it only evolves loathing and revulsion. And more tragically Taliban commits their acts of barbarism in the name of Islam, which gives Islam a very bad name in the rest of the world. It is not Islam but a dangerous, lethal ideology, which is the driving passion of Taliban. Only and only after the skull embodying this dangerous ideology is blown up, our country will see lasting peace. There is no other choice. This is the final solution Now the peace deal stands scrapped to all intent and purposes. The Taliban have come out into the open in Malakand Division again, destroying all of government infrastructure, looting and plundering banks, beheading people, using them as human shields. In addition to fighting, the only other skill Taliban know is the skill to destroy. Destroying everything made by state of Pakistan gives Taliban a sadistic pleasure; after all present set up in Pakistan is based on Kufr as their spiritual mentor Maulana Sufi Mohammad stated in a speech. It is ironic that a puny figure like Maulana Sufi whom nobody would ever like to engage in serious discussion gained such a countrywide media attention and assumed such a large stature. This is only because his backers have big guns, and wiled power surpassing that of the state. A question was asked in a TV programme as to why Pashtuns, who believe in revenging upon people who do them wrong, don’t take up arms against the Taliban? It is after all the Taliban who have killed people’s dear one’s, looted their property, have them publicly insulted and had them driven out of their homes. The answer is the Taliban exercise unmatched power and use tactics unwarranted by traditional Pashtun code. If locals decide to hold Jirga to fight them, then Taliban send their suicide bombers, hundreds of tribal elders have been killed thus. After this locals submit and put up no resistance. So traditional Pashtun warlike spirit and their tradition of exacting revenge upon the enemy has basically failed to meet the threat of Taliban. So in this dire and critical condition only Pakistan army has the potential and power to crush and defeat Taliban and rescue Pashtuns, their land and Pakistan. To safely bring the country out of these crises we must own facts and should have a firm grip over the reality. Hold over reality and facts are the exclusive reserve of those who stare reality in the face and are not swayed by cheap emotions. Leaders like Imran khan, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Maulana Fazlur Rahman and some other religious and political figures cannott have a true assessment of the terrible condition in the country. Their opposition to military option and their advocacy of dialogue with the militants is an empty rhetoric totally divorced from the ground realities We shouldn’t care what these dissenting voices say, for their aim is personal at the cost of the country and its vital interests, although they very much claim otherwise. They serve their own vested interests, not truth. If needed during this serious crises and emergency normal political, judicial and civil rights of Taliban, other militants and their sympathizers may be held in suspension. Even a democratic country like US forcibly relocated and interned nearly 110.000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans to “war relocations camps”. If there are people who differ with us in this effort of rooting out this militancy, and their difference only hamper war effort, then they should be silenced by force. Their cheap emotionalism will mislead general public and benefit the extremists. Pakistan needs to be cleansed up of extremists, not only in Swat but the whole tribal belt and the rest of the country. After Swat operation is successfully over, an invasion on Waziristan should follow, in those formidable mountains are hiding the assassins of Benazir Bhutto and the masterminds of various other suicide and terrorist missions against the state and security forces of Pakistan. This looks the most difficult part of the whole effort, but without it the problem of terrorism wouldn’t be resolved. Next in line should be a massive crackdown backed by all intelligence and security forces against the militants and their supporters in rest of the country. Those who survive the military action should be rounded up. We don’t have a Guantanamo Bay, so we should lease a rocky, deserted island in the Pacific oceans where these militants and their supporters should be relocated to serve their sentence. The Taliban, and other militant outfits come from us. They are our blood, and with them we are bound by the bonds of race, language, and religion. But they forsook the very ideals for which this country was founded and instead embraced a blood-soaked, dangerous ideology, which only sowed seeds of chaos and instability in the country. And most importantly they callously imposed their strange version of Islam on helpless people, not realising that attempt to impose their kind of Sharia and their confrontation with Pakistan military will only spell disaster for common people. Taliban’s crime against the state of Pakistan and its people are now unforgivable. We have let them live much long, in misplaced hope they will reform themselves. Now they will have to go down in bloody purge in this Final Solution. Only then Pakistan will rise up again.

Pakistani Americans Stage Anti-Taliban Protest

‘’TALIBAN & PAKISTAN’S DISILLUSIONED ELITE!!!’’

M WAQAR
For more than 60 years after independence, from almost two centuries of British rule, large scale poverty and illiteracy remains the most shameful blot on the face of  Pakistan.By the age of 62, a COUNTRY - like a man - should have achieved a certain maturity. After decades of existence we know, for good and for bad, who we are, what we have done and how we appear to others. But unfortunately, Pakistan remains curiously immature, a Country with less then 50% rate of literacy can’t bring political wisdom that usually accompanies age. But today the country's national narrative of macho victim hood appears to the rest of the world as simply bizarre. Pakistan's rich, bourgeois, feudal minded leaders have failed their country by failing to protect the poor and failing to give them basic educations and security, the people of swat and buner were betrayed by their own elected ANP government. In last election, religious parties were crushed by voters and ANP was elected but unfortunately followers of BACHA KHAN are pussy cat now and like to hide in presidency , Norway or Turkey, instead of facing storm and helping those who are in refugees camps on their own soil. It is shameful that Pakistani elite is living in total denial, they are aware of miseries people facing in SWAT, they don’t care about the reports of people who are beheaded by barbarian Taliban, they don’t hear screams of a girl flogged by ignorant monsters, they don’t care about the dead bodies hanging to trees and poles. This Pakistani elite ruled this nation on ‘’sub acha’’(everything ok) reports from their mansions, these bourgeois never cared about people committing suicide because of poverty or selling kids and kidneys . Today when Jinnah’s Pakistan is at total collapse, these corrupt politicians are still fighting among themselves for political power. They are blaming U.S. drone attacks responsible for Taliban actions but they ignore that Taliban were present before these drone attacks, burning girls schools, destroying internet cafes, music centers or barber shops has nothing to do with drone attacks. I always criticized ALTAF HUSSAIN of MQM but he has emerged as the conscience of the nation  and I don’t blame him by telling ANP leadership to   wear bangles and sit back in their houses . I agree with him as he said that ’’ by entering into Nizam-e-Adl agreement with Taliban, ANP leaders have left the Pakhtoon people of Swat, Buner and Dir as well as the oppressed people of the entire province on the mercy of the barbaric Taliban and they on their own enjoying life living in their palatial houses with their families. ‘’The so called champions of Pukhtuns rights are flying around the Globe while the dead bodies are lying in the bazaars and streets of Swat. Pukhtun kids from Swat and FATA are not going to schools but living in refugees camps. Caught in the crossfire between militants and security forces, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been forced to leave their homes in Bajaur, Darra Adamkhel, Kurram, Mohmand, Orakzai, Swat and Waziristan. This human tragedy, which was years in the making, has now reached critical proportions. It is open to question whether the government foresaw such developments and introduced Nizam-i-Adl to unmask the Taliban as people who will accept nothing short of absolute power. Swat citizens and majority of Pakistanis are convinced that the militants cannot be trusted to keep their word but selfish Pakistani politicians and champions of Pukhtuns rights ignored this and living in denial. Children growing up today in squalid refugee camps may well be the militants of tomorrow but Pakistani elite don’t care about this because they have their palaces in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and London. The basic purpose of the state and its apparatus is to ensure the safety and personal freedoms of the citizens but unfortunately state has been failed to impose its writ .
Five thousand square kilometres of Swat are now under Taliban control. Chitral (14,850 sq km), Dir (5,280 sq km), Shangla (1,586 sq km), Hangu (1,097 sq km), Lakki Marwat (3,164 sq km), Bannu (1,227 sq km), Tank (1,679 sq km), Khyber, Kurram, Bajaur, Mohmand, Orkzai, North Waziristan and South Waziristan are all under Taliban control -- de facto. That's a total of 56,103 square kilometres of Pakistan under Taliban control -- de facto. Six thousand square kilometers of Dera Ismail Khan are being contested. Also under 'contested control' are Karak (3,372 sq km), Kohat (2,545 sq km), Peshawar (2,257 sq km), Charsada (996 sq km) and Mardan (1,632 sq km). That's a total of 16,802 square kilometres of Pakistan under 'contested control' -- de facto. Seven thousand five hundred square kilometres of Kohistan are under 'Taliban influence'. Additionally, Mansehra (4,579 sq km), Battagram (1,301 sq km), Swabi (1,543 sq km) and Nowshera (1,748 sq km) are all under 'Taliban influence'. That's a total of 16,663 square kilometers of Pakistan under 'Taliban influence' -- de facto. All put together, 89,568 square kilometers of Pakistani territory is either under complete 'Taliban control', 'contested control' or 'Taliban influenced'; that's 11 per cent of Pakistan's landmass. Where was Pakistan’s army? ,when thugs, criminals, fanatics were taking control of those areas??? 18,000 troops deployed in Swat for a year and a half deliberately avoided targeting the thugs. All the army did was base itself in pastures and forests populated only by wild animals and livestock. In a small ravine like that of Peuchar in Swat, the mega-thug could hide from our well-fed army. How is that an army of 18,000 - fully equipped and trained - could not fight only about 1,000 ???Many Americans think that certain elements of the Pakistan military would rather have a Taliban/military government than the present one. Many here think the Pakistan is worrying about India while the insects are devouring their house piece by piece. Many Americans are amazed that secular Pakistanis and politicians don't seem to care if the present course could mean them being forced into exile . This is a really disturbing period in the history of Pakistan. It is on the verge of total capitulation. What strikes me as strange is why the people of Pakistan don't stand up? They marched nationally for a judge, but can't rise to oust the Taleban? Where is long march of IMRAN KHAN,NAWAZ,QAZI HUSSAIN against those who are killing innocent people, disturbing lives of thousands and imposing their ignorant views on majority of people who wants to live in peace? Pakistan is on course of self-destruction. Due to decades of corruption, divisive policies and injustice from the leadership; the people of Pakistan lack the pride and loyalty to fight for their homeland. As a Pakistani I find this very shameful.


Now the Taliban are coming south and everyone is wondering why no one did anything. Perhaps these politicians should begin by examining their own behavior. They kept denying the threat despite its gravity to score political points. It was the Nawaz Sharifs and the Fazlur Rehmans of this country that refused to blame the Taliban for the trouble in Pakistan. Why did members of the national assembly stand up and oppose the Nizam-e Adl when it was supposedly under debate in the house? Why did no one criticized the halting of military operations when the army was producing results against the barbarians? That’s the hypocrisy of Pakistani elite, they only worry when their lives are in danger, they only cry blues when they see they are loosing power. Every one of these politicians is responsible for letting the country down. This group should have built the national consensus and will to fight the terrorists and they didn’t. One hopes it is not too late for them to have recognized the threat. Nawaz Sharif’s recent statements, where he has expressed dissatisfaction with the peace deal in Swat. He has also expressed concern that the Taliban are trying to export their version of sharia to other parts of Pakistan. Mr Sharif’s ‘discomfort’ with the situation is welcome, but he has a lot to answer for. What does he have to say about his repeated opposition to the war on terror when these very Taliban were brutally murdering troops and civilians? Why did his party, the second largest in the national assembly, not register its protest and vote against the Nizam-e Adl in parliament when it was sent there by the presidency? . Nawaz Sharif knew the risks of cutting deals with the Taliban, and should have voiced his opposition when the political leadership of this country could have done something about it but he did not because he is pro-Taliban too .
Sufi Muhammad, Fazlullah and Muslim Khan have been slowly but surely revealing their agenda, much as feared by the rest of the world. The invitation to Osama bin Laden and the offer of protection to him are not only a flagrant violation of Pakistani laws but also various United Nations Security Council resolutions. How can the state tolerate such elements and even attempt to deal with them under the guise of establishing peace and conceding the long time demands of the Swatis? Pakistan does not need the services of non-state actors like the Taliban . Many had warned of the dangers of negotiating with this band of terrorists given that the government was negotiating from a position of weakness, and past experience of cutting deals with the terrorists was entirely negative. Instead of surrendering to these terrorists, the state should have intensified the fight and liberated our territory from them. With this capitulation, instead of bringing these areas back under the state’s writ, we have simply given the terrorists greater confidence to extend their nefarious activities to the rest of Pakistan. Despite the many voices in the media confusing the people on this issue, the lines are now absolutely clear. The terrorists are against the people of Pakistan, the state of Pakistan, our judiciary, our democracy and our values. They have vowed to destroy all this. We must vow to protect it, united in the fight to save Pakistan. The government must focus on one point : the Malakand Taliban have to disarm as promised at the earliest. If that doesn’t happen, there ought to be no further discussion of any sort with the militants or their representatives. The government and its security apparatus must not be tricked into halting a military operation that is clearly the need of the hour. Selfish Pakistani politicians should be standing and supporting the Govt instead of opposing action against Taliban, nation expect from these politicians to condemn militants. Lets face reality, these Talibans have ruined the reputation of Islam . These ignorant barbarian Taliban have no moral values, education or respect for Islam and Pakistan’s constitution,  the Talibans are blowing up schools, destroying hospitals and usurping the fundamental rights of the people even right to life but Pakistani elite ignored this for a long time, which is shameful and if anything happens to Pakistan, these politicians and elite will be responsible for that. For a long time Pakistani elite, politicians and their supporters claimed that war on terror is America’s war,  this war on terror is very much Pakistan's own war now, as Taliban are killing innocent pukhtuns, destroying their schools, hospitals ,businesses etc. It used to be America's war when the jihadis were funded by the US to fight the Red Army in Afghanistan.  The Pakistani and international jihadis have now made it Pakistan's war. 
Imran Khan the commander-in-chief of Taliban, supports and advocate Taliban justice so proudly. Is there any difference between Imran Khan and the illutrate man who supports Taliban. He is behaving like the street person who has no knowledge of politics. Can such a man lead a party or a country?
Lets admit that Musharraf government played a double role: on one hand it allowed the jihadis to take control of the tribal area and on the other hand showed the US that the Pakistan army was fighting the terrorists. It was during his regime that the army entered into agreements with the Taliban in FATA – and all of these failed . The Pakhtun are experiencing a genocide-like situation at the hands of Taliban and Al Qaida terrorists and now monster is moving towards Punjab and sindh.
Unfortunately Pakistani elite is not reading the writing on the wall and still living in denial, failed politician like Imran Khan often compares the Taliban militancy with the tribal resistance to the British colonial. This is an insult to the Pakhtun history. Unlike the Taliban no tribal resistance leader ever killed fellow Pakhtun in the name of Islam of fight against the British. Anyone who has lived in Swat would have experienced that people of Swat are the most liberal people among the Pakhtuns due to their dependence on a tourism-driven economy. The Sufi Mohammad-style sharia has never been their choice. They would never want their primary industry ’’ tourism’’ to be destroyed by those who rule over them. The argument of JI amir Munawwar Hasan that people of Swat elected the ANP and the PPP because his party boycotted the February 2008 elections is wrong. If religious right-wingers were so darling to the Swatis, they would have elected the JUI-F which was in the field. How come so many tribal leaders were killed all over FATA and no one has ever been arrested for it? How come officials of the state and its institutions socially meet members of the Taliban? People who say that the Taliban militancy has been engineered to send a message to the US and to extract more and more aid. More ominously, these Pakhtuns feel abandoned by the state. If as obvious, Taliban take control of Islamabad and Lahore or Karachi, what will be the reaction of Pakistani elite ? Seems like they will hide their head in sand or fly to LONDON.NEW YORK,SAUDI ARABIA OR DUBAI and leave poor of the country to face cruel rules of Taliban and I am sure that’s what this elite will do. Pakistan has to do the needful , something that it hasn't done so far. This means giving up the idea once and for all that the jihadis are strategic assets to fight proxy wars in Afghanistan and India. The next step would be to conduct targeted operations based on intelligence to destroy jihadi infrastructures all over Pakistan, eliminate their leadership and retake the territory ceded to the jihadis. Third, all those Pakhtuns who have stood up to the Taliban need to be protected. Disturbing as it may sound, the jihadis could well take over all of Pakistan, just like they have taken over Swat and FATA, unless of course the state chooses to crush them with an iron hand.  This is Pakistan’s war, its survival war, lets stop blaming others for our failures and short comings, lets stop looking for foreign powers to help us , Whether the US offers financial help to Pakistan or not Pakistan has to fight this war to survive as a democratic state in the modern world. The 19 months long military operation did not succeed in capturing or killing Fazlullah, Muslim Khan and other culprits who killed thousands of innocent people. The armed forces only claimed that Taliban were being forced to withdraw and we observed that this policy resulted in spreading the writ of Taliban in surrounding areas. Now it is high time that the security forces should immediately arrest Fazlullah, Muslim Khan and all other killers of innocent people, seize the FM Radio channels and give a message to all. This is the ultimate answer and this should be the first step in the ongoing operation. If it is not done, we shall believe that there is something wrong at the bottom , withdrawal of Taliban from a place means, spreading the evil in more places, kill them No mercy should be shown to Taliban and their leaders. They are a scum of the earth .  It is the rope around their necks or a bullet in their heads or stoning to death that has to be their end, inexcusably and mercilessly. Pakistani elite needs to wake up now, living in denial will destroy everything and that will be too late . The shameless betrayal of the Swat peace deal by the Taliban, invasion of other areas and irresponsible and hateful statements by both Taliban and TNSM spokespeople, the nation has now seen the real face of the Taliban. Sufi Muhammad was simply a front with which they fooled the government and most people of Pakistan. Now that the truth is out there, we must wake up and fight the Taliban. The majority of Pakistanis don’t want to live under Taliban tyranny . Pakistani military is powerful to crush Taliban but  there are a number of extremists within the ranks, its military’s leadership job to arrest those who are helping Taliban .These extremists are bigger threat then India today. If Pakistanis are capable of making the nukes then they are very much in the position to protect themselves as well.  We must win this war against Taliban before they take over and foreign troops marching on Pakistani streets .What happened in Swat was a huge wake up call but unfortunately Pakistani Elite ignored that and decided to live in denial . This is also a wake up call for the 6th largest Army in the world, the army must face up to Taliban ! 3 districts and FATA ! How much will they concede to the Taliban ? ?? Sufi Muhammad was supposed to declare war against the Taliban if they did not abide by the NAR, but he has instead condemned the Constitution of Pakistan as an infidel institution. A kind of jihadi nepotism has overcome him as he refuses to see what his son-in-law Fazlullah is doing in Dir and Buner in violation of the accord. Indeed, the Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan has denounced those who criticize the Sufi’s “verdict” against democracy and insists that his brand of shariat will be applied throughout Pakistan, with jiziya (protection tax) imposed on non-Muslims. The message is clear: the Taliban are linked to Al Qaeda and they are counting on such elements in Punjab to help them take their war down to other parts of Pakistan. When the Swat deal was being sewed up, only the MQM objected, but it was soon isolated in parliament when the National Assembly voted in favor of the NAR. The media-mujahideen acted in the same irresponsible manner in which they had acted during the Lal Masjid affair by siding with the Taliban over the videoed whipping of a 17-year-old girl. The Supreme Court added its bit by releasing the Lal Masjid cleric who immediately announced his resolve to spread the Taliban shariat in Pakistan ,it is the army that has to step forward and face the Taliban. It has baulked so far because of adverse public opinion and an equally lethal media tilt. But now that the politicians are waking up to the danger and the media is increasingly disabused, the army must end its India-driven strategy and try to save Pakistan from becoming the caliphate of Al Qaeda. In fact, Islamabad has to reach an understanding with New Delhi over the matter in order to get the army to mobilize in the numbers required. However, if this is not done, the people will have to fight the war on their own. The MQM is asking the right question: what if the Taliban come and the army is not there to protect us?
Swat is the challenge staring us in the face. If we don’t accept it and fight the Taliban, then the world will have to come and fight it the way it thinks fit.

REBUILDING KANDAHAR

canada.com
ARGHANDAB VALLEY, Afghanistan — Fighting season is fast approaching, but for the time being, Kandahar is preoccupied with water, food and crops.

All along the Arghandab River valley north of Kandahar city lie fields of wheat. Thousands of pomegranate trees are in blossom; their compact orange flowers scent the air. This is Kandahar at its best, and its most traditional.

Insurgent activity has slowed while young men of fighting age work in local orchards and fields.

Further to the west, in the volatile Panjwaii district, people are consumed with the poppy harvest: Scraping pods that ooze dark opium paste.

The poppy economy remains vexing.

Insurgents will buy the opium paste from local farmers, then sell it in underground markets and use the profits to arm themselves and lure the same men who collect it to their fight.

It's a vicious cycle and one that can be broken, people say, if more legal alternatives to the poppy could develop and flourish. Crucial to that solution is the efficient supply and distribution of the world's most precious resource — water.

That's where Canada comes in.

Canada's civilian component to the large NATO-led mission in Kandahar is often overlooked, thanks in part to the much larger, controversial military deployment here. But it's no less important to solving problems on the ground. And it's ramping up.

After two years of planning, Canada's single largest foreign-aid project in a generation is underway in the Arghandab. The $50-million Arghandab Irrigation Rehabilitation Project is revitalizing an ailing, 57-year-old dam and irrigation system that once allowed this desert province to lay claim as Afghanistan's breadbasket.

Kandahar once produced enough wheat to feed the entire country. The Soviet invasion, civil war and drought changed everything.

Rebuilding the agro-economy is an essential but hugely ambitious task. Fixing the water system is key. The 50-metre high Dahla dam is in relatively stable condition, but its reservoir capacity has shrunk by about 30 per cent from the original 480-million cubic metres, thanks to gradual siltification.

The Canadian plan is not to increase the dam's present capacity, since that would require far more money, but rather to enhance existing infrastructure. It's still a significant investment and it demonstrates Canada is punching above its weight; the United States, for example, is to spend $250 million for agriculture projects in all of Afghanistan.

Most of the work along the Arghandab irrigation system is downstream, where a complex, inefficient arrangement of canals, diversions and weirs badly needs an overhaul. Repairing and replacing the broken pieces of irrigation equipment is expected to take three years, well past the 2011 end date for the military component of Canada's mission in Kandahar.

Streamlining the valley's archaic water management system could take longer. Water sharing and distribution among farmers and villages is the source of constant squabbling. Local power brokers and tribal leaders determine who gets what, and when.

"Afghanistan is one of the least efficient countries in terms of water use, despite thousands of years of its history using water in agriculture," says Chantal Ruel, project leader for CIDA's dam and irrigation project.

Afghan bureaucrats and traditional community stakeholders called Mirabs manage water use and water distribution. They determine when irrigation floodgates open and for how long.

"But no one is trained how to measure water flows, or how to really manage it," Ruel says. "They don't have the tools or skills to do it."

"It can be an arbitrary system based on personalities and tribes," adds Jason Schmaltz, a project officer.

Ruel and Schmaltz both work in Kandahar City, from CIDA offices inside the well-fortified Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team headquarters.

CIDA has hired engineering giant SNC-Lavalin and water consultant Hydrosult Inc., both based in Montreal, to conduct the rehabilitation project. Their contracts are signed; work plans are being refined and civilian employees from Canada will start arriving soon.

"Several thousand" local Afghans are expected to be employed along the Arghandab river and canal route, which runs from the dam, down the Arghandab valley, and into Kandahar city itself, a distance of about 40 kilometres.

To demonstrate the seriousness of its intent, CIDA has already funded the construction of a new bridge near the dam site and repairs to the access road.

Afghan crews were busy working on the paved road this week, when a Canadian military convoy travelled through the Arghandab valley and to the top of the dam itself.

It is a remarkable journey — the route follows the wide, earthen canal, now full with water, and past a diversion weir, and then, briefly, the Arghandab River.

Everywhere is normal, productive activity. The fields are lush. The road veers left, and climbs. The landscape changes dramatically, from pastoral and green to dun brown. It's bone dry. Then the earthen dam comes into view. The base of the dam is surrounded by pine forest that somehow survived the woodcutter's axe.

The convoy climbs another road leading to the top of the dam. And there it is: a 3,000-hectare man-made lake, surrounded by craggy mountains. It's a stunning sight. Soldiers clamber out of their vehicles and snap photos.

People are slowly coming back, but the journey remains precarious.

Improvised explosive devices are frequently planted along the access road. A blast occurred this week and took out a few square metres of asphalt. There were no reports of casualties.

The potential for surprise insurgent attacks remains top of mind, but the war stops here — if only for a moment. From this place life begins. From here it is replenished.

The U.S. Plan for Pakistan

The Washington Post
Where do you draw the line between helpful American assistance to Pakistan in fighting the Taliban insurgency and counter-productive American meddling? Obama administration officials are weighing that balance as they prepare for a crucial visit to Washington this week by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

The administration is finalizing an ambitious package of aid measures, ranging from urgent financial assistance to counter-insurgency training for Pakistani troops at a U.S. base in Kuwait.
To relieve political pressure on Zardari, the administration has even discussed the possibility of joint U.S.-Pakistani oversight of the CIA's secret program of Predator strikes on Al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan's tribal areas. But administration officials appear to have decided against any changes in the current approach, in which the Pakistani government privately okays the attacks but publicly criticizes them. Explained one official familiar with the program: "'Jointness' has been tried and it hasn't worked. These operations are designed to save American lives, and who wants to gamble at that table?"

As Washington frets about Zardari's political weakness, and debates a greater role for the opposition, his allies are pushing back--warning that American attempts to meddle in their country's internal politics may backfire.

"The more Americans get in the weeds of Pakistani politics, the less they will accomplish," warned a senior Pakistani official who supports Zardari. He described the growing U.S. pressure against Zardari as an example of "the Diem phenomenon," a reference to the U.S.-supported coup in 1963 against its former darling, South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem. That coup began a series of ultimately disastrous American attempts to steer Saigon politics and suppress the communist insurgency.

Zardari became Pakistan's president last year, with strong U.S. support, after the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto. Since then, despite Zardari's pro-American policies, U.S. enthusiasm for him has waned, to the point that administration officials have urged a greater role for his political rival, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

"There's too much discussion of who can fix the problem, rather than what should be done," complained the pro-Zardari senior Pakistani official.

The sensitivity in the Zardari camp to U.S. criticism illustrates a broader phenomenon in Pakistani politics. Politicians of every stripe are wary of offending Pakistani national pride by appearing too close to Washington--even when they know they need U.S. help. A cartoon on one anti-American website in Pakistan last week showed Zardari talking with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, another former American favorite who now gets low marks. The Afghan is telling his Pakistani counterpart: "The Americans used and ditched me. Now it's your turn to get screwed!"

To show that it's serious about supporting Pakistan, the administration is preparing a series of initiatives for this week's trilateral summit with Karzai and Zardari. According to knowledgeable sources, the list includes:
--quick delivery of $953 million in promised U.S. aid for Pakistan that has been delayed in the pipeline.
--a new Pakistani counter-terrorism strategy, drafted by Zardari's government and the Pakistani military after consultation with counter-insurgency experts on the staff of Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus.
--training for two battalions of Pakistani soldiers a month at a U.S. base in Kuwait that was used to ready American forces for combat in Iraq.
--an expanding Pakistani offensive against the Taliban, including a joint U.S.-Pakistani effort to suppress Taliban radio stations that have been operating in the tribal areas.
--a new agreement on third-country trade that transits Pakistan to Afghanistan. This "transit-trade" agreement would open the way for more shipments to and from India.
--a new framework for sharing information between the Pakistani and Afghan militaries and intelligence services.
--additional joint border posts for monitoring the Afghan-Pakistan frontier.

"We have a plan. We have the will. We are negotiating on getting the means," said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador here and one of the architects of the Islamabad-Washington alliance.

Haqqani argued that if Washington really wants the Pakistani army to move troops from the Indian border to the tribal areas, as U.S. officials often say, then it should get the Indians to reduce their military forces.

"It's time for Obama to put in a call to the Indians telling them, 'If you move some of your troops, they'll move theirs," Haqqani said. According to sources, Pakistani chief of staff Ashfaq Kiyani made just that promise in a recent meeting with U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke

PAKISTAN'S EDUCATION

For Many Pakistani Children , Madrasas Fill a Void

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
NEW YORK TIMES
.....................SLAP ON PAKISTANI ELITE AND BOURGEOIS FACE....................

MOHRI PUR, Pakistan — The elementary school in this poor village is easy to mistake for a barn. It has a dirt floor and no lights, and crows swoop through its glassless windows. Class size recently hit 140, spilling students into the courtyard.

But if the state has forgotten the children here, the mullahs have not. With public education in shambles, Pakistan’s poorest families have turned to madrasas, or Islamic schools, that feed and house the children while pushing a more militant brand of Islam than was traditional here.

The concentration of madrasas here in southern Punjab has become an urgent concern in the face of Pakistan’s expanding insurgency. The schools offer almost no instruction beyond the memorizing of the Koran, creating a widening pool of young minds that are sympathetic to militancy.

In an analysis of the profiles of suicide bombers who have struck in Punjab, the Punjab police said more than two-thirds had attended madrasas.

“We are at the beginning of a great storm that is about to sweep the country,” said Ibn Abduh Rehman, who directs the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent organization. “It’s red alert for Pakistan.”

President Obama said in a news conference last week that he was “gravely concerned” about the situation in Pakistan, not least because the government did not “seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services: schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of the people.”

He has asked Congress to more than triple assistance to Pakistan for nonmilitary purposes, including education. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has given Pakistan a total of $680 million in nonmilitary aid, according to the State Department, far lower than the $1 billion a year for the military.

But education has never been a priority here, and even Pakistan’s current plan to double education spending next year might collapse as have past efforts, which were thwarted by sluggish bureaucracies, unstable governments and a lack of commitment by Pakistan’s governing elite to the poor.

“This is a state that never took education seriously,” said Stephen P. Cohen, a Pakistan expert at the Brookings Institution. “I’m very pessimistic about whether the educational system can or will be reformed.”

Pakistani families have long turned to madrasas, and the religious schools make up a relatively small minority. But even for the majority who attend public school, learning has an Islamic bent. The national curriculum was Islamized during the 1980s under Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, a military ruler who promoted Pakistan’s Islamic identity as a way to bind its patchwork of tribes, ethnicities and languages.

Literacy in Pakistan has grown from barely 20 percent at independence 61 years ago, and the government recently improved the curriculum and reduced its emphasis on Islam.

But even today, only about half of Pakistanis can read and write, far below the proportion in countries with similar per-capita income, like Vietnam. One in three school-age Pakistani children does not attend school, and of those who do, a third drop out by fifth grade, according to Unesco. Girls’ enrollment is among the lowest in the world, lagging behind Ethiopia and Yemen.

“Education in Pakistan was left to the dogs,” said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physics professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad who is an outspoken critic of the government’s failure to stand up to spreading Islamic militancy.

This impoverished expanse of rural southern Punjab, where the Taliban have begun making inroads with the help of local militant groups, has one of the highest concentrations of madrasas in the country.

Of the more than 12,000 madrasas registered in Pakistan, about half are in Punjab. Experts estimate the numbers are higher: when the state tried to count them in 2005, a fifth of the areas in this province refused to register.

Though madrasas make up only about 7 percent of primary schools in Pakistan, their influence is amplified by the inadequacy of public education and the innate religiosity of the countryside, where two-thirds of people live.

The public elementary school for boys in this village is the very picture of the generations of neglect that have left many poor Pakistanis feeling abandoned by their government.

Shaukat Ali, 40, a tall man with an earnest manner who teaches fifth grade, said he had asked everyone for help with financing, including government officials and army officers. A television channel even did a report. “The result,” he said, “was zero.”

A government official responsible for monitoring schools in the area, Muhamed Aijaz Anjum, said he was familiar with the school’s plight. But he has no car or office, and his annual travel allowance is less than $200; he said he was helpless to do anything about it.

With few avenues for advancement in what remains a feudal society, many poor Pakistanis do not believe education will improve their lives. The dropout rate reflects that.

One of Mr. Ali’s best students, Muhamed Arshad Ali, was offered a state scholarship to continue after the fifth grade. His parents would not let him accept. He quit and took up work ironing pants for about 200 rupees a day, or $2.50.

“Many poor people think salaried jobs are only for rich people,” Mr. Ali said. “They don’t believe in the end result of education.”

In Punjab, the country’s most populous province, the despair and neglect have opened a space that religious schools have filled.

“Madrasas have been mushrooming,” said Zobaida Jalal, a member of Parliament and former education minister.

The phenomenon began in the 1980s, when General Zia gave madrasas money and land in an American-supported policy to help Islamic fighters against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

The Islamic schools are also seen as employment opportunities. “When someone doesn’t see a way ahead for himself, he builds a mosque and sits in it,” said Jan Sher, whose village in southwestern Punjab, Shadan Lund, has become a militant stronghold, with madrasas now outnumbering public schools.

Poverty has also helped expand enrollment in madrasas, which serve as a safety net by housing and feeding poor children.

“How can someone who earns 200 rupees a day afford expenses for five children?” asked Hafeezur Rehman, a caretaker in the Jamia Sadiqqia Taleemul Koran madrasa in Multan, the main city in south Punjab. The school houses and feeds 73 boys from poor villages.

Former President Pervez Musharraf tried to regulate the madrasas, offering financial incentives if they would add general subjects. But after taking the money, many refused to allow monitoring. “The madrasa reform project failed,” said Javed Ashraf Qazi, a retired general who served as education minister at the time.

Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab, says he is acutely aware of the problem and is trying a different approach, recently setting aside $75 million to build free model schools in 80 locations close to large madrasas, a tactic General Qazi had also proposed.

In the district that includes Mohri Pur, a mud-walled village of about 6,000 where farmers drive on dirt roads in tractors and donkey carts piled high with sticks and grasses, there are an estimated 200 madrasas, one-third the number of public schools, said Mr. Anjum, the education official.

Nonreligious private schools have also sprouted since the 1990s. They have better student-teacher ratios, but only the most exclusive — out of reach of most middle-class Pakistanis — offer a rigorous, modern education.

Mr. Ali, the fifth-grade teacher, says the madrasas have changed Mohri Pur. They are Deobandi, adherents of an ultraorthodox Sunni school of thought that opposes music and festivals, which are central aspects of Sufism, a tolerant form of Islam that is traditional here.

There were no madrasas in Mohri Pur in the late 1980s, when Mr. Ali began teaching. Now there are at least five. Most are affiliated with a branch in the neighboring town of Kabirwala of Darul Uloom, a powerful Deobandi seminary founded in 1952, and whose leaders in other parts of Pakistan have links to the Taliban.

Several local residents said they believed the Kabirwala seminary was dangerous. Some of its members were involved in sectarian violence against Shiites in the 1990s, they said.

“People seem scared of them,” Mr. Ali said. “We don’t ask questions.”

Even if the madrasas do not make militants, they create a worldview that makes militancy possible. “The mindset wants to stop music, girls’ schools and festivals,” said Salman Abid, a social researcher in southern Punjab. “Their message is that this is not real life. Real life comes later” — after death.

On a recent Thursday, the Kabirwala seminary was buzzing with activity. Officials showed rooms of boys crouched over Korans, reading and rocking. A full kitchen had an industrial-size bread oven. Flowers adorned walkways. The foundation for a new dormitory had been broken.

There was also a girls’ section, with its own entrance, where hundreds of young women chanted in unison after directions from a male voice that came from behind a curtain. “We have a passion for this work,” said Seraj ul-Haq, a computer teacher who is part of the family that founded the seminary.Teachers preach restrictions. February’s newsletter set out a list of taboos: Valentine’s Day. Music. Urban women “wearing imported perfume.” Talking about women’s rights.

Suicide bombings were neither encouraged nor condemned.

The ideology may be rigid, but it offers the promise of respect, a powerful draw for lower-class young men.

Abed Omar, 24, had little religious education before he was inspired by a sermon at the seminary last year. Better educated than most, he began to work in his family’s sweets shop.

Restless and unfulfilled, he joined a conservative Islamic group, paying about $625 to travel with them around the country for four months on a preaching tour.

The group, Tablighi Jamaat, taught him that Islam forbids music and speaking with women. (He would speak to this reporter only through a male colleague.) American officials suspect that the group is a steppingstone to the Taliban. Pakistani officials say it is peaceful.

Now, when Mr. Omar visits his friends, “they turn off their tape players and give me their seat,” he said, a smile lifting his face, which, in the practice of some conservative Islamists, has a bushy beard but no mustache.

He is frustrated by a lack of opportunity and at how much of Pakistan’s bureaucracy requires political connections, which he does not have. “There is no merit,” he said.

His faith gives him hope. “I want to make everyone a preacher of Islam,” Mr. Omar said brightly, eating honey-soaked fritters in his family’s shop.

He knows about 100 people in his town who have done a four-month tour like his. As for those who sign up for less, he said “they are countless.”

Refugees on a wild frontier between army and Taliban

Islamabad's war with its militants is destroying lives and dislocating communities, as civilians flee in rising numbers
Declan Walsh in Totalai, Buner
guardian.co.uk,
Two hours' drive from downtown Islamabad, with its leafy avenues and upmarket restaurants, a chain of jagged mountains in North-West Frontier Province marks the frontline of Pakistan's war with the Taliban.

A flood of refugees spills down from the hills and on to the plains at the edge of war-torn Buner district, bringing tales of bloodshed and destruction. Many are angry at the Pakistani army which, they say, has shelled homes and mistakenly killed civilians.

In Totalai, on the southern edge of Buner, a clutch of angry men piled off an overloaded tractor pulling a trailer filled with burka-clad women clutching cloth sacks and exhausted children.

"At night we are bombarded by the big guns and in the day by the helicopters," said Muhammad Saleh, a farmer, gesticulating wildly. They had come from Nawagai, a village caught in the crossfire, he said, pointing to a teenager with a bandaged leg, injured by army shelling.

"They should use smaller weapons. They are trying to hit a pigeon with a cannon," he said.

On another vehicle, a 30-year-old teacher, Abdul Aziz, said the head of Nawagai secondary school, Bakht Garim Shah, had been shot in his car by a helicopter gunship as he returned from an examination centre. "There were three other people with him and all were killed. And on the television the government was calling them suicide bombers!" he said. "Now we can't even get their corpses."

Last Friday, a day after the alleged incident took place, a military spokesman said the army had destroyed eight "suicide vehicles" and six vehicles containing fleeing militants.

Other refugees backed the operation, despite its heavy toll. Zakir, a 22-year-old computer store clerk, said his village, Swari, was straining under food shortages and a 24-hour curfew. But life under the Taliban had been worse, he said.

After seizing control last month, militants had robbed two banks, closed barber shops, banned music and forced people to disable their satellite television receivers, he said. They had tried to impose a crude form of justice, threatening to flog a man alleged to have made a sexual advance to another. "This is not right. There is no [use of] force in Islam," said Zakir, speaking from the safety of a house where he had taken shelter.

A journalist from the main town, Daggar, said the Taliban stole women's jewellery at gunpoint, occupied several marble factories and looted the homes of tribesmen who had dared to oppose them.

There is no official estimate of the number of refugees, but it is thought to be thousands. Many are being welcomed into Buner by al-Khidmat, the charity wing of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), the country's largest religious party. Volunteers offer food, drink and an Islamist-tinged critique of the situation.

"They should not have launched this operation. The problem could be solved through negotiation," said Ghuluam Mustafa, a JI official and deputy mayor of Buner district.

Further north, along the border, on the edge of the fighting, there were no refugees. In Rustum, the army had set up artillery to fire on Taliban positions in the Ambela pass, scene of the heaviest fighting. On Saturday afternoon the main street was empty and most shops shuttered. But Muhammad Javed, an elderly watch repairman, kept his door open.

The sound of shelling, from a nearby field, was keeping him awake at night, he complained. "Our people are not bad," he said. "It's just our terrible system of governance that has caused all this."

Down the road, Khalid Khan, a teacher and landowner, said the fighting had upset his nightly sessions of online Scrabble. Instead of playing with fellow enthusiasts in England, he said, he used his internet connection to share the sound of battle with them. "Obviously they were pretty shocked," he said.

Khan said the battle was "critical" to Pakistan's future, but US fears of a Taliban takeover in Islamabad, 55 miles to the south, were ill-informed. "The concept that this is an organised army, moving towards the capital, is just wrong," he said.

Last night, though, more fighting loomed as a peace pact in neighbouring Swat hung by a thread. Tensions rose as armed Taliban started patrols in the main town, Mingora. They beheaded two security personnel and blew up a bridge; the government imposed a curfew.

President Asif Ali Zardari, who flies to Washington this week for talks with President Barack Obama, urgently needs a victory. US officials, dangling $400m in aid, have been sharply critical of his government. But it is not just Zardari's fault. Earlier efforts to tackle militancy have been hampered by poor strategy and, sometimes, the ambivalence of those fighting the battles.

Among a small number of refugees in Rustum was a paramilitary soldier with the Frontier Constabulary who said he had surrendered to the Taliban after his platoon was overrun at the Pir Baba sufi shrine last week.

The soldier, who requested anonymity, said the Taliban treated him surprisingly well – offering food, tea, a torch and even a bus fare home. The shalwar kameez he was wearing had been donated by a Talib who took his uniform, he said.

The experience made him develop a certain sympathy for the militants, he said with a shy smile. "From what I heard them say, and what I saw, I feel we are in the wrong," he said.

Pakistan is a US crisis that Islamabad needs to make its own

By David Ignatius
Daily Star
President Barack Obama convened a crisis meeting at the White House last Monday to hear a report from Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had just returned from Pakistan. Mullen described the worrying situation there, with Taliban insurgents moving closer to the capital, Islamabad.

"It had gotten significantly worse than I expected as the Swat deal unraveled," Mullen explained in an interview. He was referring to a truce brokered in February in the Swat Valley, about 100 miles north of Islamabad. The Pakistani military had expected that the ceasefire would subdue Taliban fighters in Swat. Instead, the Muslim militants surged south into the district of Buner, on the doorstep of the capital.

Listening to Mullen's report at the White House were two senior officials - Defense Secretary Robert Gates and special envoy Richard Holbrooke - who were serving in government back in 1979, when a Muslim insurgency toppled the Iranian government, with harmful consequences that persist to this day. The two policy veterans "made the argument that it's worth studying the Iran model," recalls a senior official who took part in the White House meeting.

This was Pakistan week for the administration's foreign-policy team, behind the self-congratulatory hubbub over the first 100 days. At a Wednesday news conference, Obama said he was "gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan." He said his biggest worry was that "the civilian government there right now is very fragile."

The challenge in Pakistan is eerily similar to what the Carter administration faced with Iran: How to encourage the military to take decisive action against a Muslim insurgency without destroying the country's nascent democracy. And there's a deeper psychological factor, too: How to exercise US power effectively without triggering a backlash from a proud and prickly Muslim population that is scarred by what it sees as a history of American meddling.

"My experience is that knocking them hard [the Pakistani government and military] isn't going to work," said Mullen. "The harder we push, the further away they get." For the crackdown on the Taliban to be successful, he said, "It has to be their will, not ours."

What encourages US officials is that recent events have been a wake-up call for a Pakistani elite in denial about the Taliban threat. One top civilian official said he was less worried now than three weeks ago, because the military and civilian leaders in Islamabad have realized the danger they face. The Pakistani military has begun an effort to push back the Taliban, albeit with mixed results. The Taliban responded fiercely to an assault last Tuesday in Buner and seized three police stations, kidnapping dozens of police and paramilitary troops.

"My biggest concern is whether they [the Pakistani government] will sustain it," Mullen said. He has told his Pakistani counterpart, General Ashfaq Kiyani, that "we are prepared to assist whenever they want." During his recent visit, Mullen toured two Pakistani counterinsurgency training camps and came away impressed.

Mullen said he hopes the Pakistanis will adopt a classic three-part counterinsurgency strategy - clearing areas of Taliban control; holding those areas with enough troops so that the local population feels secure; and then building through economic development, with US help.

Politically, the US is looking increasingly to former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose Muslim League dominates the crucial Punjab region. Officials note that 60 percent of the Pakistani population lives in Punjab, and that Sharif has a popularity rating over 80 percent there. President Asif Ali Zardari is far weaker, politically, and that worries the Obama administration. He'll visit Washington this week to discuss the crisis with the US president.

US officials are exploring ways to reduce the political strain on Zardari caused by US drone attacks on Al-Qaeda sanctuaries in the tribal areas. Pakistanis protest these attacks as violations of sovereignty, even though they have been blessed in secret by Zardari's government. This tension could be eased by some public formula for dual control. Explains a senior Obama administration official: "We're looking at how we might find some common way ahead where utilization of the asset could benefit the Pakistanis."

The growing crisis mentality in Washington poses its own threat to a sound Pakistan policy. It could produce red-hot American rhetoric and a corresponding US impatience - and that, in turn, would only make the Pakistanis more uneasy. Success depends on Islamabad's recognition that it's their problem, and that they must act decisively.

Once welcoming, Pakistan city fears Taliban rise

The Associated Press
By KATHY GANNON
At the entrance to Peshawar, a young man on the side of the road offers a prayer, while on the bridge overhead three men videotape him.
They could be friends in Peshawar for the first time, perhaps from a nearby village. But that isn't my first thought.
My first thought is, maybe he is a suicide bomber setting off on a mission.
I make a mental note of his appearance — maybe 5 feet, eight inches, brownish-beige shalwar kameez, mustache, no beard, maybe 20 years old, maybe younger. They say most suicide bombers are 18- and 19-year-olds, poor, disaffected.
I decide to quietly, gently roll down my window, just an inch, thinking that if there's an explosion — from the young lad I just saw or any number of other directions — the opening will reduce the effect of the concussion. It could perhaps prevent the windows from shattering into deadly shards, unless of course the explosion is right next to the car, and then I guess it doesn't matter.
It has been 22 years since I lived in Peshawar, a city of one million people close to the border of Afghanistan. In the early morning traffic, noisy diesel-belching rickshaws weave past screeching buses with people hanging off the side. Horns blare as cars bump up against horse-drawn carts straining under the weight of half a dozen people crammed onto a seat made for three.
But what strikes me most is the palpable fear that now hangs over the city.
The Taliban insurgency is spreading from the wild, ungoverned border region close to Afghanistan into urban Pakistan. Peshawar, the commercial and cultural hub of the frontier province, is on the front line. Some say it is under siege. It has that feel to it.
Bit by bit the militants are creeping farther into Pakistan. Last month they dumped the headless body of a police officer on the road to Peshawar. This month they blew up a mosque frequented by security men who stood guard at a post across the street. The men had just knelt in prayer when the bomb ripped through the building and killed dozens.
That's how they start, with the police and the security officers. Then they go after the people — the businessmen, the musicians, the teachers and children in the schools.
Just last week, a powerful bomb flattened 30 shops on the edge of Peshawar. The owners of theaters and music shops have received letters warning them to close or be destroyed.
Even former friends are frightened. One former Taliban from a small gunmaking town barely 20 miles from Peshawar says he is terrified of his one-time colleagues.
"I don't mind being blown up, but it's the beheadings that scare me," he says. "And no one, not the police, no one can stop them."
Women who used to wear large shawls now rarely emerge without the all-enveloping burqa. Musicians have fled. Schools have been blown up, and young men roam the Peshawar University campus to harass girls seeking education.
In a posh neighborhood of Hayatabad, an Iranian diplomat was kidnapped and the Afghan ambassador-elect taken by armed men. Residents are under self-imposed lockdown after dark. Belligerent young men from nearby religious schools knock on doors at prayer time, telling people to go to the mosque.
Peshawar's people used to be the most hospitable around — they would stop you on the street and invite you into their homes for tea. It doesn't happen today. Foreigners are targeted, and that makes locals nervous to be around them.
Peshawar has always been linked to Afghanistan through trails in the mountains that run like a jagged spine between the two countries. When I first came here in 1986, the trails were used by Afghan mujahedeen fighting the Soviet Red Army that had invaded their country. Then, Russia was the Soviet Union and the mujahedeen were Cold War heroes, helped by U.S. money.
In those days, heavily armed, praying young men, their Kalashnikov rifles slung over their shoulders, weren't looked on with suspicion and fear. No, they were seen with admiration and even a little romanticism, because they were fighting the good fight.
The enemy was the communist Russians. The friends — or, as President Ronald Reagan liked to call them, the freedom fighters — were the religious young men taking up arms. The sight of them praying five times a day was a comforting image, a symbol of a battle between holy warriors and godless communists.
Not any more.
The bearded men with guns have become a nightmare, and now their prayer is a reminder of the terror they are willing to inflict in the name of their harsh brand of Islam.
My thoughts return to the young man praying on the outskirts of Peshawar, his clothes covered in dust from a nearby construction site. And I think, my, how times have changed.

Kabul's new elite live high on West's largesse

By Patrick Cockburn in Kabul
Independent.co.uk
'Gilded cage' lifestyle reveals the ugly truth about foreign aid in Afghanistan

Vast sums of money are being lavished by Western aid agencies on their own officials in Afghanistan at a time when extreme poverty is driving young Afghans to fight for the Taliban. The going rate paid by the Taliban for an attack on a police checkpoint in the west of the country is $4, but foreign consultants in Kabul, who are paid out of overseas aids budgets, can command salaries of $250,000 to $500,000 a year.

The high expenditure on paying, protecting and accommodating Western aid officials in palatial style helps to explain why Afghanistan ranks 174th out of 178th on a UN ranking of countries' wealth. This is despite a vigorous international aid effort with the US alone spending $31bn since 2002 up to the end of last year.

The high degree of wastage of aid money in Afghanistan has long been an open secret. In 2006, Jean Mazurelle, the then country director of the World Bank, calculated that between 35 per cent and 40 per cent of aid was "badly spent". "The wastage of aid is sky-high," he said. "There is real looting going on, mainly by private enterprises. It is a scandal."

The dysfunctional reputation of the US aid effort in Afghanistan is politically crucial because Barack Obama, with strong support from Gordon Brown, has promised that a "civilian surge" of non-military experts will be sent to Afghanistan to strengthen its government and turn the tide against the Taliban. These would number up to 600, including agronomists, economists and legal experts, though Washington admitted this week that it was having difficulty recruiting enough people of the right calibre.

Whole districts of Kabul have already been taken over or rebuilt to accommodate Westerners working for aid agencies or embassies. "I have just rented out this building for $30,000 a month to an aid organisation," said Torialai Bahadery, the director of Property Consulting Afghanistan, which specialises in renting to foreigners. "It was so expensive because it has 24 rooms with en-suite bathrooms as well as armoured doors and bullet-proof windows," he explained, pointing to a picture of a cavernous mansion.

Though 77 per cent of Afghans lack access to clean water, Mr Bahadery said that aid agencies and the foreign contractors who work for them insist that every bedroom should have an en-suite bathroom and this often doubles the cost of accommodation.

In addition to the expensive housing the expatriates in Kabul are invariably protected by high-priced security companies and each house is converted into a fortress. The freedom of movement of foreigners is very limited. "I am not even allowed to go into Kabul's best hotel," complained one woman working for a foreign government aid organisation. She added that to travel to a part of Afghanistan deemed wholly free of Taliban by Afghans, she had to go by helicopter and then be taken to where she wanted to go in an armoured vehicle.

There have been numerous attacks on foreigners in Kabul and suicide bombings have been effective from the Taliban's point of view in driving almost all expatriates into well-defended compounds where living conditions may be luxurious but which are as confining as any prison. This means that many foreigners sent to Afghanistan to help rebuild the country and the state machinery seldom meet Afghans aside from their drivers and a few Afghans with whom they work.

"Risk avoidance is crippling the international aid effort," said one aid expert in Kabul. "If governments are so worried about risk then they really should not be sending people here and having them work under such restricted conditions."

The effectiveness of foreign advisers and experts in Iraq is often further reduced by the very short time they stay in the country. "Many people move on after six months," said one expatriate who did not want to be named. "In addition some embassy employees receive two weeks off work for every six weeks they are in the country, on top of their usual holidays."

Some officials working for non-governmental organisations in Afghanistan are themselves troubled by the amount of money which foreign government officials and their aid agencies spend on staff compared to the poverty of the Afghan government.

"I was in Badakhshan province in northern Afghanistan which has a population of 830,000, most of whom depend on farming," said Matt Waldman, the head of policy and advocacy for Oxfam in Kabul. "The entire budget of the local department of agriculture, irrigation and livestock, which is extremely important for farmers in Badakhshan, is just $40,000. This would be the pay of an expatriate consultant in Kabul for a few months."

Mr Waldman, the author of several highly-detailed papers on the failures of aid in Afghanistan, says that a lot of money is put in at the top in Afghanistan but it is siphoned off before it reaches ordinary Afghans at he bottom. He agrees that the problems faced are horrendous in a country which was always poor and has been ruined by 30 years of war. Some 42 per cent of Afghanistan's 25 million inhabitants live on less than a dollar a day and life expectancy is only 45 years. Overall literacy rate is just 34 per cent and 18 per cent for women.

But much of the aid money goes to foreign companies who then subcontract as many as five times with each subcontractor in turn looking for between 10 per cent and 20 per cent or more profit before any work is done on the project. The biggest donor in Afghanistan is the US, whose overseas aid department USAID channels nearly half of its aid budget for Afghanistan to five large US contractors.

Examples cited in an Oxfam report include the building of a short road between Kabul city centre and the international airport in 2005 which, after the main US contractor had subcontracted it to an Afghan company, cost $2.4m a kilometre – or four times the average cost of road construction in Afghanistan. Often aid is made conditional on spending it in the donor country.

Another consequence of the use of foreign contractors is that construction has failed to make the impact on unemployment among young Afghans which is crucial if the Taliban is to be defeated. In southern provinces such as Farah, Helmand, Uruzgan and Zabul, up to 70 per cent of Taliban fighters are non-ideological unemployed young men given a gun before each attack and paid a pittance according to a report by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. By using these part-time fighters as cannon-fodder, the Taliban can keep down casualties among its own veteran fighters while inflicting losses on government forces.

Some simple and obvious ways of spending money to benefit Afghans have been neglected. Will Beharrell of the Turquoise Mountain charity, which is encouraging traditional Afghan crafts and reconstruction of part of the old city, says tangible and visible improvements are important. He said: "We went in for rubbish clearing because it is simple and provides employment. We brought the street level down by two metres in some places when we had cleared it away."

A striking feature of Kabul is that while the main roads are paved, the side streets are often no more than packed earth with high ridges, deep potholes and grey pools of dirty water. New roads have been built between the cities, such as Kabul and Kandahar, but these are often too dangerous to use because of mobile Taliban checkpoints where anybody connected to the central government is killed on the spot.

The international aid programme is particularly important in Afghanistan because the government has few other sources of revenue. Donations from foreign governments make up 90 per cent of public expenditure. Aid is far more important than in Iraq, where the government has oil revenues. In Afghanistan a policeman's monthly salary is only $70, which is not enough to live on without taking bribes.

Since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2002 the Afghan government has been trying to run a country in which the physical infrastructure has been destroyed. Kabul is now getting electricity from Uzbekistan but 55 per cent of Afghans get no electricity at all and just one in 20 get power all day. Money can be distributed more swiftly by the US military but this may not undercut the political support of the Taliban to the degree expected.

Afghans themselves are unenthusiastic about President Obama's plan for more US military and civilian involvement in Iraq. And the failure of foreign aid to deliver a better life to Afghans also helps explain plummeting support for the Kabul government and its Western allies. Oxfam's Mr Waldman believes better-organised aid could still deliver the benefits Afghans hoped for when the Taliban were overthrown in 2001, but he warns: "It is getting very late in the day to get things right."

Go figure: The West's spending in Afghanistan

$57 The foreign aid per capita to Afghanistan, compared with $580 per capita in the aftermath of the Bosnian conflict.

$250,000 Typical salary of foreign consultants in Afghanistan, including 35 per cent hardship allowance and 35 per cent danger money. Afghan civil servants typically receive less than $1,000 a year.

$22bn The shortfall in donations compared to the international community's estimate of Afghanistan's need – around 48 per cent.

40 per cent Share of international aid budget returned to aid countries in corporate profit and consultant salaries – more than $6bn since 2001.

$7m Daily aid spend in Afghanistan. The daily military spend by the US government is around $100m.

IMRAN KHAN ... A FAILED POLITICIAN

BY M WAQAR
I really don’t want to waist my time on writing about Imran Khan ,but anytime I read his statements he sounds so confuse, first this guy does not have any political wisdom of a politician, he does not have any agenda, he used to criticize Nawaz Sharif but now he is following him, his mentality is like QAZI HUSSAIN and I believe Qazi is his mentor in politics, they both love politics of agitation. He says one thing and does something else, he is a guy who could not keep his marriage but he claims to be a leader and wants to run the country. All of sudden he does not like liberals in Pakistan because liberals are against what Taliban are doing in Pakistan, he forgets that he was married to a western woman and another woman in west claims to be his kid’s mother, anyhow that’s his personal life and I have no right to talk about it but Imran is upset because liberals in Pakistan are criticizing Taliban, so my question to him is that is it ok to blow girls schools, hang dead bodies to poles and trees, is suicide bombing ok? I think he is confuse and thinks like liberals are against religion, but that is not the issue and that is not even Islam of our Holy Prophet Mohammad(PBUH),What Taliban are doing is ignorance but not Islamic. I never been cricket fan but when Imran Khan came into politics, I thought it was the last chance of hope, however after more than 12 years, IK has still not proved his leadership potential and the nation who is waiting for a leader is still in wait. H e does not have any political bone in his body and does not have any political principles, its amazing he called Nawaz Sharif a thief in the beginning of his political career and later moved towards nawaz, on one side he and his X wife wrote hardliner Islamic columns in Pakistani newspapers but at the same time were busy spending the most liberal life in a conservative country like Pakistan , even after 12 years in politics, he is a 1 man show in his own party, he tries to ally with the moderates through his personality and then sits with the hardliner conservatives like Qazi Hussain he bravely talks about Baluchistan and FATA and NWFP but has also failed to visit these areas to prove his actions more than words . If he has an original conviction to change Pakistani society, he should come out of this quagmire of old used up politicians like Qazi Hussian Nawaz etc, That will be surely the onset of his political success. His PTI lacks of internal party democracy and the fact that if something were to happen to IK, the party would completely disintegrate. I do not view the PTI of IMRAN KHAN as a vehicle for change. looking attractive is not required in politics. Politics requires total devotion, honesty, total freedom from racial and ethnic bias and a total commitment to improve the lot of a country's oppressed people .He's failed because he started off as a leader of change but instead came out another dual-faced politician. He has a strange state of mind, he entered in politics with the slogan that he is against corrupt politicians but then chose to get into alliance with the same politicians, as well as the decades old power brokers of the conservative parties. I think Imran needs to quit politics and should coach young cricketers because after 10 years he is riding on other politicians shoulders and does not have any political agenda.It is really surprising that he is highly educated but he doe not have any inspirational qualities .If he was Pakistan’s OBAMA,he could change a lot and like Z.A.BHUTTO he could gather huge crowds around but he does not have any qualities of a politician.

This is indeed our war

Friday, May 01, 2009
Farhat Taj
THE NEWS EDITORIAL

The Pakhtuns do not need enemies when they have self-proclaimed friends like Imran Khan – this is in response to his article published in this newspapers on April 23. The fact of the matter is that this war on terror is very much Pakistan's own war. It used to be America's war when the jihadis were funded by the US to fight the Red Army in Afghanistan. The Pakistani and international jihadis have now made it Pakistan's war. As a responsible state Pakistan cannot allow terrorists crossing over into Afghanistan to attack Afghan civilians (who are usually Pakhtun), the Afghan National Army and US and NATO forces in the country that came there under a UN mandate.

The Musharraf government's decision to send the Pakistan army to Waziristan in 2004 was correct. But the decision came too late, too little and too half-heartedly. Following the US bombing of Al Qaida terrorists in Afghanistan in 2001, the foreign and Pakistani jihadis escaped into Waziristan. They were not welcomed by the people of Waziristan and proof of this also is that they killed more than 200 tribal leaders of Waziristan, after which the region's tribal order collapsed. The state under President Musharraf was guilty of criminal negligence for allowing the jihadis to decimate the tribal order.

Imran Khan may not know it or ignore it for political reasons but the fact is that there is a widespread perception among the Pakhtuns that the Musharraf government played a double role: on one hand it allowed the jihadis to take control of the tribal area and on the other hand showed the US that the Pakistan army was fighting the terrorists. It was during his regime that the army entered into agreements with the Taliban in FATA – and all of these failed. The agreements had two versions: oral and written. The written versions were according to the law of Pakistan. The oral versions implied that the Taliban would not attack Pakistan army and the army would let the Taliban do whatever they liked and this would include them crossing over into Afghanistan.

The Taliban also happen to be sectarian terrorists in that many of their targets are Shias. And in this regard their primary targets are the Pakhtuns of Kurram, Orakzai and Dera Ismail Khan. I think Imran Khan will be hard-pressed to go to Parachinar and tell the Turi tribe that the Taliban are Pakhtun nationalists. The Turis in Parachinar have been besieged by the Taliban for over two yeas now – all their land links to the rest of Pakistan have been blocked and hundreds have died while fighting the Taliban. If one wants to talk of Pakhtun nationalism then instead of looking at the Taliban one should look at what, for instance, the Ali Khel in Orakzai did where the Sunni section of the Ali Khel tribe stood up to the defence of the Shia when the latter came under threat from the Taliban. In addition to this, the Saralzai in Bajaur, the Khelil and Monand in Badabir and all those who stood up to the Taliban are the true embodiment of Pakhtun nationalism, not the Taliban.

The Pakhtun jihadis, together with their non-Pakuthn jihadis, are attacking the very core of Pakhtun nationalism. Almost 90 per cent of those killed, injured and maimed are ordinary Pakhtuns. Moreover, the terrorists' ideology is directly opposed to a nationalist ideology. The Pakhtun Taliban movement has all along been attacking all the symbols of the Pakhtun culture to bring the Pakhtun identity in line with that of the Arab jihadists. To call terrorism a nationalist movement is to create hatred among different nationalities living in the country especially when the people being killed as a result of terrorist activities belong to different nationalities.

The Pakhtun are experiencing a genocide-like situation at the hands of Taliban and Al Qaida terrorists . But people like Shireen Mazari, a member of Imran Khan's party, say that anti-Taliban local lashkars are in fact American sell-outs. This is most disrespectful especially since it is more a case of the brave Pakhtuns taking up arms to defend themselves in the face of a complete absence of state protection.

Imran Khan often compares the Taliban militancy with the tribal resistance to the British colonial. This is an insult to the Pakhtun history. Unlike the Taliban no tribal resistance leader ever killed fellow Pkahtun in the name of Islam of fight against the British. It is difficult to assess the impact the Taliban had in Swat due to the problems people had with the judicial system. A group of people who have never been elected – and probably will never be unless voters are forced to at gunpoint – blocking roads in protest does not automatically mean that there was a wider public support for them or their actions. Sufi Mohammad's TNSM got strength because the state succumbed to it again and again. Do not forget that Sufi Mohammad is the same person that misled thousands of young men of FATA and NWFP to go to Afghanistan to fight against the US and Northern Alliance in 2001. He managed to return safely but most of those who went to fight were either killed or captured – hundreds are still missing. Their families wait for them and they curse Sufi Mohammad every single day. Now thanks to the ANP government, he has been made a hero.

Anyone who has lived in Swat would have experienced that people of Swat are the most liberal people among the Pakhtuns due to their dependence on a tourism-driven economy. The Sufi Mohammad-style sharia has never been their choice. They would never want their primary industry – tourism – to be destroyed by those who rule over them. The argument of JI amir Munawwar Hasan that people of Swat elected the ANP and the PPP because his party boycotted the February 2008 elections is wrong. If religious right-wingers were so darling to the Swatis, they would have elected the JUI-F which was in the field.

How come so many tribal leaders were killed all over FATA and no one has ever been arrested for it? How come officials of the state and its institutions socially meet members of the Taliban? I have often met desperate people who say that the Taliban militancy has been engineered to send a message to the US and to extract more and more aid. More ominously, these Pakhtuns feel abandoned by the state.

Pakistan has to do the needful – something that it hasn't done so far. This means giving up the idea once and for all that the jihadis are strategic assets to fight proxy wars in Afghanistan and India. The next step would be to conduct targeted operations based on intelligence to destroy jihadi infrastructures all over Pakistan, eliminate their leadership and retake the territory ceded to the jihadis. Third, all those Pakhtuns who have stood up to the Taliban need to be protected. Disturbing as it may sound, the jihadis could well take over all of Pakistan, just like they have taken over Swat and FATA, unless of course the state chooses to crush them with an iron hand.

Whether the US offers financial help to Pakistan or not Pakistan has to fight this war to survive as a democratic state in the modern world.



The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy. Email: bergen34@yahoo.com

Show them no mercy

Show them no mercy
Whether it is a military operation, as is generally believed, or whether it is in retaliation of their ambush of a military convoy, as the Frontier's hyper information minister Mian Iftikhar would have it believed, whatever it is, this security operation against militants in Lower Dir must be carried to its logical conclusion. No mercy should be shown to them. They deserve it not; they should get it not. They are a scum of the earth, unquestionably diabolical evil minds calling for total decimation. A bomb in the toy these demons put in unsuspecting children's hands. And when it explodes, and those innocent children lose their lives and limbs, these thugs celebrate. It is the rope around their necks or a bullet in their heads or stoning to death that has to be their end, inexcusably and mercilessly. And yet that monstrosity deceptively called TNSM is rage; so is TTP, a brood of cold-blooded murderers and hatchery of soulless suicide bombers; and so are rightists, their comrades in faith competing with them toughly in religiosity. They all are clamouring this military operation being Swat accord's negation. But what were Swati thug Fazlullah's brigands' conquest of Buner and their intrusion of Dir? And their killing of government officials and civilians there, kidnapping of villagers and state functionaries, burning of homes and shops, and banning local residents from their legitimate businesses and occupations? The accord's abidance? These spiritual imposters' chicanery and their gun-totting touts' thuggery have gone too far. This has to be put paid to, with all the state might, and necessarily as there is too much of a sinister mystery to their evil act. From their plushy parlours, high minds are flooding newspaper pages with their scholarly dissertations on extremism in this country. Sitting in glittering television studios, the nation's leading intellectual lights spotlight a gory past, terming it the breeder of the monstrosity of terrorism blighting the nation nowadays so terribly. They think big; they talk big. And their sublime thinking, frankly, is beyond the comprehension of lowly minds like ours. We are a simple mind and have a simple question. From where do militant commanders get money and weapons, and in mounds, without which they cannot carry on their thuggish activities, without which their hired guns cannot carry out murderous errands, and without snapping this lethal lifeline of these professional murderers the state cannot hope to throw them out of their bloodletting business? After all, money and guns do not sprout in our mountains, nor do these grow on trees in our forests; these do not fall either from sky in these beastly murderers' laps. Surely, our own defence people wouldn't put guns in their hands to come and kill them? Their deadly arsenal's wellsprings obviously lay outside the country, which our state security apparatus definitely knows all about. Then why is this apparatus so shy of speaking it out? Visibly and indisputably, these thugs' almost sole focus is our own people. They kill and maim them in bomb blasts, suicide bombings and terrorist attacks. Not a day goes by without their fatal strike somewhere in the country. Yet, out there are criers, proclaiming noisily this country to be "global" terrorism's epicentre. The American, the Indians, the British and many others are raising this scream in chorus and hence with effect. So what supreme wisdom was it that impelled internal security czar Rehman Malik to disclose in-camera foreign involvement in our country? Wouldn't his open disclosure have unmasked many a face wearing piety's veil but being in reality an evil incarnate? After all, whose man is Fazlullah? Where did he disappear in Afghanistan, after abandoning thousands of Swati youths his charlatan father-in-law Sufi Mohammad had misled and assembled under his command to fight against the invading US-led coalition forces on the Afghan Taliban's side? And with whose munificence had he reappeared in 2004 in Swat laden with truckloads of cash and guns? And who had propped up on Waziristan landscape and from which obscure sanctuary an unknown nonentity Baitullah Mehsud about four years ago to intriguingly remain all through safe from unsparing American drone attacks? Just after Obama administration's mooted proposal for joint ground actions in our tribal region, this man, murderously targeting solely our own people with suicide attacks, promptly threatened America with a terrorist assault. Doesn't it ring a bell somewhere in Islamabad? When indeed will this Islamabad establishment tell our own people and the world at large publicly who is inciting and fuelling terrorism and insurgency in this country? Will it ever?
Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=ed&nid=43&ad=28-04-200
Dated: Tuesday, April 28, 2009, Jamadi-ul-Awwal 02, 1430 A.H.Whether it is a military operation, as is generally believed, or whether it is in retaliation of their ambush of a military convoy, as the Frontier's hyper information minister Mian Iftikhar would have it believed, whatever it is, this security operation against militants in Lower Dir must be carried to its logical conclusion. No mercy should be shown to them. They deserve it not; they should get it not. They are a scum of the earth, unquestionably diabolical evil minds calling for total decimation. A bomb in the toy these demons put in unsuspecting children's hands. And when it explodes, and those innocent children lose their lives and limbs, these thugs celebrate. It is the rope around their necks or a bullet in their heads or stoning to death that has to be their end, inexcusably and mercilessly. And yet that monstrosity deceptively called TNSM is rage; so is TTP, a brood of cold-blooded murderers and hatchery of soulless suicide bombers; and so are rightists, their comrades in faith competing with them toughly in religiosity. They all are clamouring this military operation being Swat accord's negation. But what were Swati thug Fazlullah's brigands' conquest of Buner and their intrusion of Dir? And their killing of government officials and civilians there, kidnapping of villagers and state functionaries, burning of homes and shops, and banning local residents from their legitimate businesses and occupations? The accord's abidance? These spiritual imposters' chicanery and their gun-totting touts' thuggery have gone too far. This has to be put paid to, with all the state might, and necessarily as there is too much of a sinister mystery to their evil act. From their plushy parlours, high minds are flooding newspaper pages with their scholarly dissertations on extremism in this country. Sitting in glittering television studios, the nation's leading intellectual lights spotlight a gory past, terming it the breeder of the monstrosity of terrorism blighting the nation nowadays so terribly. They think big; they talk big. And their sublime thinking, frankly, is beyond the comprehension of lowly minds like ours. We are a simple mind and have a simple question. From where do militant commanders get money and weapons, and in mounds, without which they cannot carry on their thuggish activities, without which their hired guns cannot carry out murderous errands, and without snapping this lethal lifeline of these professional murderers the state cannot hope to throw them out of their bloodletting business? After all, money and guns do not sprout in our mountains, nor do these grow on trees in our forests; these do not fall either from sky in these beastly murderers' laps. Surely, our own defence people wouldn't put guns in their hands to come and kill them? Their deadly arsenal's wellsprings obviously lay outside the country, which our state security apparatus definitely knows all about. Then why is this apparatus so shy of speaking it out? Visibly and indisputably, these thugs' almost sole focus is our own people. They kill and maim them in bomb blasts, suicide bombings and terrorist attacks. Not a day goes by without their fatal strike somewhere in the country. Yet, out there are criers, proclaiming noisily this country to be "global" terrorism's epicentre. The American, the Indians, the British and many others are raising this scream in chorus and hence with effect. So what supreme wisdom was it that impelled internal security czar Rehman Malik to disclose in-camera foreign involvement in our country? Wouldn't his open disclosure have unmasked many a face wearing piety's veil but being in reality an evil incarnate? After all, whose man is Fazlullah? Where did he disappear in Afghanistan, after abandoning thousands of Swati youths his charlatan father-in-law Sufi Mohammad had misled and assembled under his command to fight against the invading US-led coalition forces on the Afghan Taliban's side? And with whose munificence had he reappeared in 2004 in Swat laden with truckloads of cash and guns? And who had propped up on Waziristan landscape and from which obscure sanctuary an unknown nonentity Baitullah Mehsud about four years ago to intriguingly remain all through safe from unsparing American drone attacks? Just after Obama administration's mooted proposal for joint ground actions in our tribal region, this man, murderously targeting solely our own people with suicide attacks, promptly threatened America with a terrorist assault. Doesn't it ring a bell somewhere in Islamabad? When indeed will this Islamabad establishment tell our own people and the world at large publicly who is inciting and fuelling terrorism and insurgency in this country? Will it ever?
Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=ed&nid=43&ad=28-04-200
Dated: Tuesday, April 28, 2009, Jamadi-ul-Awwal 02, 1430 A.H.

Pakistan’s Self-Defeating Army

NEWSWEEK.com
Rather than serve as a bulwark against chaos, the Army has helped destabilize Pakistan. For far too long, the myth that Pakistan's army is the only thing holding the country together—and keeping the terrorists at bay—has held sway in Washington. Now two bills making their way through Congress suggest the United States is finally starting to reconsider these assumptions. Both bills would set benchmarks that Pakistan has to meet in order to keep qualifying for U.S. economic and military assistance. But the two measures don't go far enough. Pakistan will never be saved from the threat of religious extremists until it fundamentally restructures its deeply dysfunctional government. And that will require addressing the overwhelming influence of the military on Pakistani politics.

In four critical ways, the Army has undermined constitutional governance in Pakistan ever since Mohammed Ali Jinnah led it to independence some 60 years ago. First, repeated coups have ensured that civilian governments never developed firm roots. Second, successive military rulers, in attempts to boost their legitimacy, have promoted religious radicalism, either directly (as in the case of Zia ul Haq, who did this over the span of a decade) or by marginalizing mainstream political parties and allowing the religious right to fill the vacuum (Pervez Musharraf's strategy before his ouster last year). Third, the Army became and remains a parasite feeding on the body politic by extracting "rent" in the form of land, bureaucratic appointments and other spoils of office in exchange for supposedly keeping Pakistan safe.

Finally, in a misbegotten quest for "strategic depth" against India, the Army has promoted the radicalization of Afghanistan, which has now spilled back onto its own territory and spun out of control. All of these missteps point to the same conclusion: rather than serve as a bulwark against chaos, the Army has helped to destabilize Pakistan. There's only one way to turn things around today: demilitarize Pakistani politics.

Doing so won't be easy. While there is significant popular support for democracy in Pakistan, the country's mainstream civilian parties have hardly distinguished themselves in their brief periods at the helm, and the current government of Asif Ali Zardari is no exception. Still, the military bears most of the blame for blocking the evolution of a true democratic process. And such a process—for all its inevitable flaws and inefficiencies—is the only way Pakistan will ever get a government truly responsive to the needs of its ordinary citizens, and one likely to crack down on the Taliban, which most Pakistanis disdain.

So how can Pakistan's government be "civilianized"? Useful lessons can be drawn from the democratization of other Praetorian states. The first thing to recognize is that depoliticizing the Army won't mean weakening it. Pakistan's senior officers must know that they have never been less popular than they are today; returning to their barracks for good would be the best way to revive their prestige.

This process has in fact already begun. It was started by the Army itself in early 2008, when the new chief of staff General Ashfaq Kayani forbade officers from holding civilian posts in government. But much more needs to be done. Parliament and the prime minister must steadily assert themselves to limit the Army's involvement in internal affairs. The military will resist. But the recent victory of the lawyers' movement—which forced the government to restore the Supreme Court's former chief justice, who'd been deposed by Musharraf—shows that civilians can take on the generals and win. Over time, the civilian government must shift national-intelligence functions from the military to a civilian organization, curb the reach of the infamous Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and strip the military of its responsibilities for maintaining security inside Pakistan, giving that duty to a paramilitary force governed by the ministry of Interior (as in neighboring India). Such a step was critical to the transitions from military to civilian government in Chile in 1990 and Indonesia in 1998.

Pakistan's nuclear infrastructure, meanwhile, should be split into military and civilian components, both under civilian authority. And most important, civilians must begin making critical national-security policy decisions. Implementation should still fall to the military, which should also retain a voice in defense policy—but not the final one.

While some of the generals are likely to object to any reduction in their powers, it's in their own interests to accept a fundamental change. Letting the Army maintain a degree of autonomy regarding its internal functions should also help bring it around. And Washington can contribute by demanding reforms of the sort outlined above. Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. has a great deal of leverage over Pakistan thanks to the enormous amounts of aid Washington disburses (likely to total $7.5 billion over the next five years). Making these changes may still seem like a tall order. It is. But Pakistan's problems at this point are massive in scope—and so must be the solution.

Basrur is associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Ganguly is a professor of political science and is director of research at the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University.

Does Pakistan's Taliban Surge Raise a Nuclear Threat?

By Mark Thompson / Washington..TIME.COM
When asked last year about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen didn't hesitate: "I'm very comfortable that the nuclear weapons in Pakistan are secure," he said flatly. Asked the same question earlier this month, his answer had changed. "I'm reasonably comfortable," he said, "that the nuclear weapons are secure."

As America's top military officer, Mullen has traveled regularly to Pakistan — twice in just the past two weeks — for talks with his Pakistani counterpart, General Ashfaq Kayani, and others. And like all those who have risen to four-star rank, Mullen chooses his words with extreme care. Replacing "very comfortable" with "reasonably comfortable" is a decidedly discomforting signal of Washington's concern that no matter how well-guarded the nukes may be today, the chaos now enveloping Pakistan doesn't bode well for their status tomorrow or the day after.

The prospect of turmoil in Pakistan sends shivers up the spines of those U.S. officials charged with keeping tabs on foreign nuclear weapons. Pakistan is thought to possess about 100 — the U.S. isn't sure of the total, and may not know where all of them are. Still, if Pakistan collapses, the U.S. military is primed to enter the country and secure as many of those weapons as it can, according to U.S. officials.

The U.S. has been keeping a watchful eye on Pakistan's nukes since it first detonated a series of devices a decade ago. "Pakistan has taken important steps to safeguard its nuclear weapons, although vulnerabilities still exist," Army General Michael Maples, chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month. Then, he immediately turned to the threat posed by al-Qaeda, which, along with the Taliban, is sowing unrest in Pakistan. "Al-Qaeda continues efforts to acquire chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear materials," he said, "and would not hesitate to use such weapons if the group develops sufficient capabilities."

The concern in Washington is less that al-Qaeda or the Taliban would manage to actually seize Pakistan's nuclear weapons, but instead that increasingly-radicalized younger Pakistanis are finding their way into military and research circles where they may begin to play a growing role in the nation's nuclear-weapons program. Pakistani officials insist their personnel safeguards are stringent, but a sleeper cell could cause big trouble, U.S. officials say.

Nowhere in the world is the gap between would-be terror-martyrs and the nuclear weapons they crave as small as it is in Pakistan. Nor is their much comfort in the fact that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal who was recently ordered freed from house arrest by the country's supreme court, was the Johnny Appleseed of nuclear proliferation, dispatching the atomic genie to Iran, Libya and North Korea. But U.S. and Pakistani officials insist it is important to separate Pakistan's poor proliferation record with what is, by all accounts, a modern and multilayered system designed to protect its nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands.

For starters, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials, there is no way a complete nuclear weapon can be plucked from Islamabad's stockpile, which is protected by about 10,000 of the Pakistani military's most elite troops. The guts of the nuclear warhead are kept separate from the rest of the device, and a nuclear detonation is impossible without both pieces. Additionally, the delivery vehicle — plane or missile — is also segregated from the warhead components.

Over the past decade, Pakistan has created the National Command Authority and the Strategic Plans Division to manage the nuclear infrastructure from day to day, and the U.S. has given Pakistan an estimated $100 million since 9/11 to bolster the security of its arsenal. While much of that has been spent on bringing Pakistani nuclear personnel to the U.S. for training, it has also been spent on hardware, including various surveillance and security systems.

Then, there's the touchy area of "permissive action links" — the electronic "locks" on nuclear weapons that must be "opened" for a nuclear detonation to take place. Washington doesn't share its own PALs with other countries for fear of losing control of the technology and surrendering key elements about U.S. weapons design (although installing PALs on another country's nukes — with a secret "kill" capability that could remotely render the weapons impotent — has always been a tempting option). "Permissive action links are custom-made devices based on the design and configuration of the weapons," former senior Pakistani nuclear official Naeem Salik told TIME 16 months ago. Until late 2005, he had served as director of arms control and disarmament affairs at Pakistan's National Command Authority, created in 1999 as the command and control center for Pakistan's nuclear weapons. "Unless one is willing to share the technical configuration of the weapon, a permissive action link cannot be developed. We did not share these secrets, so we never asked for the permissive action links — our people have developed our own."

That may all be well and good, Mullen seemed to suggest to NBC during a Wednesday interview in Afghanistan, just before he headed across the border to Islamabad. But, he cautioned, it may not be good enough, given the turmoil racking Pakistan. "My long-term worry," Mullen said, "is that descent — should it continue — gives us the worst possible outcome there."

Living in wonderland

EDITORIAL:Frontier Post
Is the prime minister living in the real world or in some wonderland, a world of his own make-believe? He says neither the government would permit state within state or parallel courts in the country. Goodness, can you beat it? Is he too ignorant to know or are the hideous ground realities too bitter for him to admit? Leave aside North and South Waziristan and a big chunk of the tribal areas? Leave aside whose writ runs there, the militants’ or the state’s? Hasn’t the ANP-led Frontier government with the Centre’s consent ceded state authority to Sultan Sufi Mohammad’s Malakand caliphate in these very days? Hasn’t it acquiesced to a parallel judicial system’s establishment in Malakand under that spiritual imposter and an unvarnished obscurant’s superintendence? Isn’t that charlatan braying loudly that it is he who alone will appoint Qazi courts’ judges and it is who will vet their judgements? And isn’t it that Swat is now under the rule of his son-in-law Fazlullah’s gun? And haven’t the state functionaries, including security personnel, to abide by the rules of movement laid out by that Swati thug or have to face the consequences, as indeed they have in many an instance? So who is the prime minister kidding and is dishing out such a churlish braggadocio with such a straight face without any inhibition or compunction and without batting even an eyelid? Dos he think our people are so nincompoops and dimwits that they would chew his boast, with no questions asked and with no eyebrow raised, that the government’s writ would be ensured at all costs? Aren’t they seeing with their own eyes the state’s writ shrinking and the militants’ expanding? After establishing their rule in Swat, the Swati thug’s gunmen have conquered Buner and entered into Shangla to bring it too under their sway. And yet the prime minister would have it believed that his government would not let its authority to be tampered with. What a laughable brag is this! There indeed is a terrible hiatus with the present lot of rulers, both at the centre and in the provinces. The non-issues they remain engrossed in; the real issues they just shrug off or give a short shrift to. And none seems to be really any alive at all to the enormity of the existential threat to this country being posed viciously by extremists, militants and terrorists at the behest of their foreign paymasters and masterminds. What needs to be dealt with by a very hard-boiled thinking, incisively farsighted policies, and exceptionally tough decisions and actions is being sought to be tackled playfully with empty sloganeering and foolish populism. On a platter, the ANP has handed over Swat to a spiritual swindler and his wicked son-in-law, and is now watching helplessly as his brigands are fanning out to the neighbouring districts from where, make no mistake about it, they will advance to other territories. And, appallingly, the inexplicably-vain prime minister’s government has as yet not even a strategy to withstand the onslaught of these advancing hordes of vile Fazlullah, nor has it a policy to counter extremism and terrorism, visibly ascendant all over the country. It is not just the tribal areas that are in the militancy’s tight grip; the Frontier province is in flames for the most part. Punjab, too, is coming under its vicious clouds. Karachi is precariously living in its shadows. And Balochistan is in a state of insurgency. Yet, the prime minister is behaving as if it is all hunky-dory throughout the country; and if at all there is a problem, it is mere pinpricks and minor irritants that could be dealt with routinely. He doesn’t give sense if at all he has any measure of the immensity of the existential threat staring the nation in the face. The people are aghast. They are despondent. Their sense of insecurity is spiralling sky-high. And they are feeling utterly hapless and helpless. And they have lost all hope, even in the military to protect them from the wicked terrorists’ and militants’ thuggery. Can you imagine citizens in a functional state asking the military not to intervene and let them to live under the militants’ thumbs, as are the residents of Buner and Shangla, fearing the army would fail to subdue the wild gunmen as it had in Swat, leaving them to face horrific consequences like their Swati cousins at the thugs’ vengeful hands? And yet the prime minister has the gumption to brag his government would come down heavy on the Swati thugs if they violate the ANP-pioneered accord with the devious Sufi. But when? Visibly, not only have they actually trashed that stupid accord in every manner, they are now making its use to spread out near and afar, too. The prime minister must understand critical gigantic issues like the existential threat the nation is presently confronted with cannot by unraveled by mumbling pious vows of “resolves” and “determinations”. They need powerful actions which can come about only by combining up the state’s civil and military powers under a no-nonsense policy and strategy. That should happen right now. Tomorrow will be too late. He must leave aside his pet Punjab project, for the time being. Instead, he must attend to the Pakistan project, in all earnestness.
Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=ed&nid=39&ad=25-04-200
Dated: Saturday, April 25, 2009, Rabi-us-Sani 28, 1430 A.H.

When will they wake up?

The Frontier Post(EDITORIAL)
For how long are the nation’s elites to keep living with silly charades and craps? For how many times has the president to keep harping that militants are using the cover of Islam to capture the government of Pakistan? Does he have a strategy or an action plan to frustrate their design or does he think that just by mumbling this mantra again and again he can defeat them? Now for more than a year his PPP is in rule; and as yet it is all prattle and vows, still having nothing concrete on its plate that could pass for even a semblance of strategy to combat terrorism or militancy. Only the other day, his anointed national security czar Rehman Malik was telling the senators that a national anti-terrorism policy was in the process of formulation. What is this? Why this leisureliness? For heaven’s sake, has nobody in Islamabad an idea of what a vicious monstrosity they are up against? Or, have they given to the thought of parcelling out the country to thuggish warlords to set up their fiefdoms, leaving their Islamabad throne alone for them to pose that it is they who hold the Pakistan government, not the militants? There indeed is a strange kind of pusillanimity, indeed stark craftiness, to these elites’ entire act that simply boggles the mind. Can anyone beat in jiggery-pokery ANP boss Asfandyar Wali Khan who felt no qualms in venting the braggadocio unashamedly that he would let no one disturb peace in Karachi? Has this gladiator wrested out his bastion of the Frontier province from militant brigades’ and criminal gangs’ clutches and made it all such a peaceful place that he felt not the slightest shame in flaunting this tall talk? Leave aside Swat, Buner or Dir, which he has surrendered to Sufi Muhammad’s Sultanate of Malakand and his commander-in-chief Fazlullah. Even the provincial metropolis of Peshawar is no more a peaceful place to live in. The people are fleeing out in droves, even selling their homes and properties at throwaway prices, to settle down in Islamabad and other safer places. But Asfandyar wouldn’t know this. He no more lives there; nor does he visit it. For militant thugs’ fear, he lives mostly outside the country, of which he has become a non-resident national virtually. It indeed is the time that the country’s elites become real, abandon their conceited talk, give up their pet charades and face up to hard realities. Their refrain of dialogue and political initiatives to give a stab to extremism is all right. But for their efficacy, right conditions have to be there. And those conditions can come about only if the state’s civil and military powers combine up to break the militants’ muscle power and wrench away from them their intimidation clout. The state should be in a position to lay down terms, not just be acquiescing, surrendering or retreating. A difficult task it is, no doubt; but that is how a creative and lasting reconciliation can come about. Otherwise, it could only be an agreement between the victor, the militants in this case, and the vanquished, the state in this case, as indeed it has been in Swat and as it was in North and South Waziristan. Way back in 1990s, Chandrika Kumaratunga, outgoing Sri Lankan president, had offered Tamil Tigers a devolution plan, which though short of outright independence was more than autonomy. But they rejected it out of hand. They were then in a triumphal mood. With massive financial and military support coming to them from Tamil diaspora and Indian Tamils and Indian RAW spy agency, they were militarily on ascendancy in the face of a badly bruised Sri Lankan military. They rebuffed her peace pleas disdainfully. But once she hit them hard with a renewed military campaign, they agreed a long ceasefire and also to talks, which couldn’t come to a mutually-acceptable denouement, though no lesser for her own reservations, but primarily for Tamil Tigers’ use of the interregnum only to rebuild their damaged military prowess. They now stand cornered in a narrow patch of their erstwhile northern bastion in a war they have almost lost; and if the island state’s government and its Sinhalese majority wisely let the civil power work humanely to suck the Tamil minority in the mainstream respectably, Sri Lanka may see peace that has eluded it for three decades. But when will our own elites wake up to combine up the state’s civil and military powers to face up to horrid realities on our national landscape, getting increasingly complex and intractable visibly?

The Pakistani dilemma

THE JERUSALEM POST
In the current era of ideological polarization, throughout the West, the Right and the Left diverge on almost every issue. One of the few convictions that still unifies national security strategists across the ideological spectrum is that it would be a global calamity of the first order if al-Qaida gets its hands on nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, due to the rapid demise of nuclear-armed Pakistan as a coherent political unit, this nightmare scenario is looking more possible than ever. Indeed, if events continue to move in their current direction, it is more likely than not that in the near future, the Taliban and al-Qaida will take possession of all or parts of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

This week has been yet another bad week in Pakistan. On Monday Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari officially surrendered the Swat Valley - an immense district in Northwest Pakistan that encompasses seven provinces - to the Taliban when he signed a regulation implementing Islamic Sharia law in the area. Following the government's capitulation in Swat, the Taliban now controls 18 out of Pakistan's 30 provinces in its northwest and Federally Administered Tribal Areas that border Afghanistan. Only two provinces remain under full government control.

With its new territory, the Taliban now controls the lives of some 6.5 million Pakistanis. For their part, the civilians live in a state of constant terror. Since the Taliban took control of Swat in February, executions, public floggings and bombings of girls' schools, restaurants, video and music stores have become routine occurrences. As a merchant in Swat's main village of Mingora told the Wall Street Journal, "We are frightened by this brutality. No one can dare to challenge them."

And with just 60 miles now separating the Taliban from the capital city of Islamabad, the Taliban are well positioned to continue their march across the country. Indeed, the Taliban appear unstoppable.

The Pakistani government, for its part, seems both unwilling and incapable of taking concerted action to destroy Taliban forces. Again according to the Wall Street Journal, Taliban fighters are flooding the Swat Valley with thousands of veteran fighters from Afghanistan and Kashmir and setting up training camps throughout the areas. Moreover, they are recruiting - both through intimidation and persuasion - still more thousands of locals to join their lines.

A further sign of government capitulation came on Tuesday when Pakistan's Supreme Court released Maulana Abdul Aziz, the leader of the Lal Masjid or Red Mosque in Islamabad, from house arrest. In 2007 Aziz used his al-Qaida/Taliban affiliated madrassa to incite an Islamist takeover of the Pakistani capital. It took then-president Pervez Musharraf three months to forcibly take over the Red Mosque. Arguably, Musharraf's actions against Aziz and his followers were the ultimate cause of his political downfall last year.

According to the online Long War Journal, over the past year, the government has signed capitulation agreements with all of Aziz's Taliban and al-Qaida allies and returned control of the mosque/madrassa complex to the jihadists. At the time of Aziz's attempted overthrow of the Musharraf government and since, the Red Mosque became emblematic of the jihadist war to take over the nuclear-armed state. Aziz's release in turn symbolizes the current government's willingness to surrender.

For their part, US strategists appear despondent in their assessments of the situation in Pakistan, and its impact on NATO's capacity to stabilize the security situation in neighboring Afghanistan. US Army General David Petreaus, who is responsible for the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has called the Taliban an "existential threat" to the Pakistani state. David Kilcullen, who advised Petreaus on his successful counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq and now advises the White House, warned last week that Pakistan could fall within six months. The growing consensus in Washington - particularly given the recent unification of command of Taliban forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan under the so-called Council of United Holy Warriors and their open collaboration with al-Qaida - is that Pakistan is a far greater danger than Afghanistan.

THE US'S assessment of the threats emanating from Pakistan and Afghanistan has been largely the same under both the Bush and Obama administrations. In both cases, the US has identified Taliban/al-Qaida acquisition of nuclear weapons as a primary threat to US security that must be prevented. Both have also asserted that the unimpeded operation of al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan/Pakistan is a grave threat to US and global security.

Then too, the US's strategy for contending with these challenges has been similarly focused for much of the past eight years. The US has sought to militarily and politically defeat the Taliban/al-Qaida in Afghanistan by fighting them on the battlefield and cultivating democracy. In Pakistan, the US has sought to defeat the Taliban by strengthening the Pakistani government, mainly through financial assistance to its civilian and military budgets.

In recent years, the US has also worked to decapitate the Taliban/al-Qaida leadership through targeted assassinations inside Pakistan carried out by unmanned aircraft. Under the Obama administration the US has declared its intention to maintain these strategies but expand them by increasing the number of soldiers in Afghanistan and by increasing its civilian assistance to the Pakistani government to $1.5 billion per year.

Unfortunately, the US's efforts in Pakistan to date have failed miserably and there is little cause to believe that expanding them will change the situation in any significant way. Both under Musharraf's military dictatorship and under Zardari's civilian government, the Pakistanis have failed to stem the Taliban's advance.

The Pakistani military and Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI) have refused to divert their resources away from fighting India and toward fighting the Taliban. They have refused to take any concerted action against terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, that openly operate on Pakistani soil. Against the wishes of the US, they have continued to surrender territory to the Taliban in the framework of "peace accords." And still today, the Pakistani government and military openly oppose US military action on Pakistani territory, preferring to allow the Taliban to take over the country to permitting the US to help the Pakistani military defeat them.

What the situation in Pakistan clearly exemplifies is the fact that sometimes there are no good options for contending with international security threats. Once Pakistan became a nuclear power in 1998, the US lost much of its ability to pressure the Pakistani government and military. Washington understood that if it pushed too hard, the Pakistanis could opt to abandon the West and collaborate with the Taliban and al-Qaida, which by then were not only openly operating from Pakistani territory after having taken over Afghanistan with Pakistani support two years earlier. They were also attacking US targets - including the 1998 attacks against the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

SINCE THE September 11 attacks demonstrated just how dangerous jihadists in Pakistan/Afghanistan are to global security, it has been clear that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is a primary threat to global security. For eight years, the US's chosen methods for staving off the threats have effectively served as little more than holding actions because Pakistan's governments have been both unable and unwilling to wage successful military or political campaigns against the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Musharraf believed that he could play a double game of at once helping the US in Afghanistan and sheltering al-Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistan. The Zardari government, which exerts little control over the military and the ISI, has simply expanded and intensified Musharraf's policy of capitulating to the jihadists. Due to the Taliban's current control over the territories bordering Afghanistan, Pakistan is no longer in a position to support NATO operations in Afghanistan. And in the meantime, the advancing Taliban forces in Pakistan itself place Pakistan's nuclear weapons and materials in unprecedented jeopardy.

Given the failure of the US's political strategies of securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal by supporting Pakistan's government, and fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan, it is becoming apparent that the only sure way to prevent the Taliban/al-Qaida from taking control over Pakistan's nuclear weapons is to take those weapons out of commission.

The US has two basic options for accomplishing this goal. It can send in forces to take control of Pakistan's nuclear installations and remove its nuclear arsenal from the country. Or, it can destroy Pakistan's nuclear installations. Both of these options - which are really variations of the same option - are extremely unattractive. It is far from clear that the US military has the capacity to take over Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and it also unclear what the ultimate effect of a military strike against its nuclear arsenal would be in terms of lives lost and areas rendered uninhabitable due to nuclear fallout.

The only other option that is discussed by US strategists today is that India may serve as deux ex machina and destroy Pakistan's nuclear arsenal itself. Reasonably believing that India would be the first target for Pakistan's nuclear weapons - which Pakistan built in order to threaten India - US military strategists do not expect India to sit back and wait for the US to defend it against a Taliban/al-Qaida-ruled nuclear-armed Pakistan.

For India however, the calculation is not as clear as one might assume. New Delhi knows it can expect the US to support the imposition of various political and military sanctions against it if it were to attack Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Consequently, it is possible that Washington's unwillingness to make a tough but necessary call may mean that no one is willing to make it.

THE SITUATION in Pakistan of course is similar to the situation in Iran. There, as Iran moves swiftly towards the nuclear club, the US on the one hand refuses - as it does with Pakistan - to make the hard but essential decision to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. And on the other hand, it warns Israel daily that it opposes any independent Israeli operation to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed state. That is, the Obama administration is forcing Israel to weigh the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran against the threat of an abrogation of its strategic alliance with the US in the event that it prevents Iran from becoming a nuclear power on its own.

In both Pakistan and Iran, the clock is ticking. The US's reluctance to face up to the ugliness of the options at its disposal will not make them any prettier. Indeed, with each passing day the stark choice placed before America and its allies becomes ever more apparent. In both Pakistan and Iran, the choice is and will remain seeing the US and its allies taking swift and decisive action to neutralize nuclear programs that threaten global security, or seeing the world's worst actors successfully arm themselves with the world's most dangerous weapons.

The war on women rages on in Afghanistan

As the presidential election season arrived in Afghanistan, the incumbent Hamid Karzai sprang a nasty surprise on the country's Hazara Shiite women by signing on to a "rape law" that legitimizes non-consensual sex in wedlock. Designed to placate arch conservative Shiite clerics, the law compels women of this sect to "be bound to give a positive response" to the sexual desires of their husbands, illness being the only extenuation. It also legalizes child marriages of Shiite girls and restricts the freedom of the community's women to venture outdoors without "permission of the husband."

Thanks to the mobilization of Afghan activists and their supporters around the world, the Karzai government has now been forced to put the law on "hold." The reason Karzai could not scrap it altogether was fear that it would cost him Shiite votes in the coming elections. The consolidation of votes into different religious and sectarian "banks" whose keys are held by self-appointed custodians of morality (the class of mullahs) is not unique to Afghanistan, but it is a particularly sad commentary of a regime claiming to be fighting the Taliban's religious extremism going down the same path of Islamism for political expediency.

The rape law is not the first instance when Karzai traded the dignity of Afghan people on the question of gender equality with "peace" and "reconciliation" in the war-ridden country. In 2008, a 23-year-old student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh was sentenced to death by a secret court of three mullahs in Balkh province for blasphemy. The charge against him was of circulating an essay on women's rights that questioned verses in the Quran. Kambaksh had merely downloaded the document from the Internet, but it was enough to enrage state-sanctioned clerics, who are no less brutal in their vision of an "Islamic society" than the Taliban.

When an international media campaign to free Kambaksh took off, Karzai promised that justice would be done "in the right way." Typical of the president's "ways," it was a parrying tactic. Kambaksh only managed to get his sentence commuted to 20 years of imprisonment. An appeal to the Afghan Supreme Court yielded no relief as it ruled against him without even hearing his defense. For a relatively new political and judicial system being built haphazardly since the overthrow of the Taliban in late 2001, Karzai could have intervened personally to free Kambaksh and set a bold secular precedent. But the "law" — codified to harass ordinary Afghans and perpetuate super suppression of women in the name of Islam — had to take its course because the regime was afraid of a backlash that strengthens the Taliban.

Even before the sadistic logic of electoral vote "banks" kicked in, Karzai had parceled out power and state patronage to zealous warlords who imposed a reign of sexual terror in their fiefdoms across the country. In 2005, the poetess Nadia Anjuman was beaten to death by her husband in Herat, courtesy the assurance of pro-Kabul warlords who guaranteed the man that he would never be prosecuted. Millions of Afghan women are being battered with no recourse due to the concordat between the Karzai government and the mullahs, which is seen as a bulwark against the cancerous Taliban. Karzai has often spoken about peace and negotiations with "moderate" Taliban to end the war, but his model of national reconciliation perpetuates the war against the women of Afghanistan.

A parallel horror against women is unfolding across the Durand Line in Pakistan, where the "secular" government of President Asif Ali Zardari has been colluding with mullahs and the Pakistani Taliban to brutalize women in Swat Valley. As a demonstration of how Shariah law practically works, a horrifying video has come to light in which Pakistani Taliban enforcers surround a teenage girl, pin her to the ground, and whip her ferociously. Her "crime" was to step out of home with a man who was not her relative.



When Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani ordered an immediate post-hoc inquiry to control the public-relations fiasco, an "Islamic judge" and a local state official prevailed upon the victim to deny the flogging. However, Muslim Khan, the local Pakistani Taliban leader, had no qualms in initially accepting that such incidents are routine in Swat and that it was "necessary" to punish the girl publicly to restore order.

Although the incident propelled thousands of Pakistani women to the streets outside Swat, many protesters had to cover their faces for fear of being identified and persecuted. So Islamized has the civil society in Pakistan become that counter-movements wedded to fundamentalist parties have also occupied public spaces to praise imposition of Shariah in Swat and vow proliferation of kangaroo courts manned by misogynist clerics all over the country. With the military and civilian establishments of Pakistan interdependent on the Pakistani Taliban, pathological forms of policing "misbehavior" of women are burgeoning.

The dictatorship of legalized rape and female servitude is being forced upon people in Pakistan and Afghanistan with the justification that it is prescribed under Shariah and is a prerequisite for "peace." The Bollywood film star Shahrukh Khan recently commented that there is an "Islam of Allah and the Islam of the mullah." In Pakistan and Afghanistan, though, the mullah has ensured that pampering him is the only pathway to Allah and peace. Pending a comprehensive defeat of "mullahcracy," irrespective of whether the U.S. military stays or exits from the region, the war on women will not cease.

Speaking Truth to Muslim Power

Obama does no favors to Islam by ignoring its internal debates.
By REUEL MARC GERECHT
wsj.com
The United States is not at war with Islam and will never be. In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical in rolling back a fringe ideology that people of all faiths reject."So spoke President Barack Hussein Obama in Turkey last week. Following in the footsteps of the Bush administration, Mr. Obama wants to avoid labeling our enemy in religious terms. References to "Islamic terrorism," "Islamic radicalism," or "Islamic extremism" aren't in his speeches. "Jihad," too, has been banished from the official lexicon.But if one visits the religious bookstores near Istanbul's Covered Bazaar, or mosque libraries of Turkish immigrants in Rotterdam, Brussels or Frankfurt, one can still find a cornucopia of radical Islamist literature. Go into the bookstores of Arab and Pakistani immigrant communities in Europe, or into the literary markets of the Arab world and the Indian subcontinent, and you'll find an even richer collection of militant Islamism.Al Qaeda is certainly not a mainstream Muslim group -- if it were, we would have had far more terrorist attacks since 9/11. But the ideology that produced al Qaeda isn't a rivulet in contemporary Muslim thought. It is a wide and deep river. The Obama administration does both Muslims and non-Muslims an enormous disservice by pretending otherwise.
Theologically, Muslims are neither fragile nor frivolous. They have not become suicide bombers because non-Muslims have said something unkind; they have not refrained from becoming holy warriors because Westerners avoided the word "Islamic" in describing Osama bin Laden and his allies. Having an American president who had a Muslim father, carries the name of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, and wants to engage the Muslim world in a spirit of "mutual respect" isn't a "game changer." This hypothesis trivializes Islamic history and the continuing appeal of religious militancy.Above all else, we need to understand clearly our enemies -- to try to understand them as they see themselves, and to see them as devout nonviolent Muslims do. To not talk about Islam when analyzing al Qaeda is like talking about the Crusades without mentioning Christianity. To devise a hearts-and-minds counterterrorist policy for the Islamic world without openly talking about faith is counterproductive. We -- the West -- are the unrivalled agent of change in the Middle East. Modern Islamic history -- including the Bush years -- ought to tell us that questions non-Muslims pose can provoke healthy discussions.The abolition of slavery, rights for religious minorities and women, free speech, or the very idea of civil society -- all of these did not advance without Western pressure and the enormous seductive power that Western values have for Muslims. Although Muslims in the Middle East have been talking about political reform since they were first exposed to Western ideas (and modern military might) in the 18th century, the discussion of individual liberty and equality has been more effective when Westerners have been intimately involved. The Middle East's brief but impressive "Liberal Age" grew from European imperialism and the unsustainable contradiction between the progressive ideals taught by the British and French -- the Egyptian press has never been as free as when the British ruled over the Nile valley -- and the inevitably illiberal and demeaning practices that come with foreign occupation.Although it is now politically incorrect to say so, George W. Bush's democratic rhetoric energized the discussion of representative government and human rights abroad. Democracy advocates and the anti-authoritarian voices in Arab lands have never been so hopeful as they were between 2002, when democracy promotion began to germinate within the White House, and 2006, when the administration gave up on people power in the Middle East (except in Iraq).
The issue of jihadism is little different. It's not a coincidence that the Muslim debate about holy war became most vivid after 9/11, when the U.S. struck back against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Many may have found Mr. Bush's brief use of the term "Islamofascism" to be offensive -- although it recalls well Abul Ala Maududi, a Pakistani founding father of modern Islamic radicalism, who openly admired European fascism as a violent, muscular ideology capable of mobilizing the masses. Yet Mr. Bush's flirtation with the term unquestionably pushed Muslim intellectuals to debate the legitimacy of its use and the cult of martyrdom that had -- and may still have -- a widespread grip on many among the faithful.When Sunni Arab Muslims viewed daily on satellite TV the horrors of the Sunni onslaught against the Iraqi Shiites, and then the vicious Shiite revenge against their former masters, the debate about jihadism, the historic Sunni-Shiite rivalry, and the American occupation intensified. Unfortunately, progress in the Middle East has usually happened when things have gotten ugly, and Muslims debate the mess.Iran's former president Mohammed Khatami, whom Bill Clinton unsuccessfully tried to engage, is a serious believer in the "dialogue of civilizations." In his books, Mr. Khatami does something very rare for an Iranian cleric: He admits that Western civilization can be morally superior to its Islamic counterpart, and that Muslims must borrow culturally as well as technologically from others. On the whole, however, he finds the West -- especially America -- to be an amoral slippery slope of sin. How should one talk to Mr. Khatami or to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the less curious but morally more earnest clerical overlord of Iran; or the Saudi royal family and their influential state-supported clergy, who still preach hatred of the West; or to the faithful of Pakistan, who are in the midst of an increasingly brutal, internecine religious struggle? Messrs. Khatami and Khamenei are flawlessly polite gentlemen. They do not, however, confuse civility with agreement. Neither should we.It's obviously not for non-Muslims to decide what Islam means. Only the faithful can decide whether Islam is a religion of peace or war (historically it has been both). Only the faithful can banish jihad as a beloved weapon against infidels and unbelief. Only Muslims can decide how they balance legislation by men and what the community -- or at least its legal guardians, the ulama -- has historically seen as divine commandments.Westerners can, however, ask probing questions and apply pressure when differing views threaten us. We may not choose to dispatch the U.S. Navy to protect women's rights, as the British once sent men-of-war to put down the Muslim slave trade, but we can underscore clearly our disdain for men who see "child brides" as something vouchsafed by the Almighty. There is probably no issue that angers militants more than women's rights. Advancing this cause in traditional Muslim societies caught in the merciless whirlwind of globalization isn't easy, but no effort is likely to bear more fruit in the long term than having American officials become public champions of women's rights in Muslim lands.Al Qaeda's Islamic radicalism isn't a blip -- a one-time outgrowth of the Soviet-Afghan war -- or a byproduct of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. It's the most recent violent expression of the modernization of the Muslim Middle East. The West's great transformative century -- the 20th -- was soaked in blood. We should hope, pray, and do what we can to ensure that Islam's continuing embrace of modernity in the 21st century -- undoubtedly its pivotal era -- will not be similarly horrific.
We are fooling ourselves if we think we no longer have to be concerned about how Muslims talk among themselves. This is not an issue that we want to push the "reset" button on. Here, at least, George W. Bush didn't go nearly far enough.

Women, Extremism and Two Key States

EDITORIAL
NYT.COM
There have been two recent reminders of the cost of extremism. In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai signed a law that effectively sanctions marital rape. In Pakistan, a video surfaced of the Taliban in the Swat Valley publicly flogging a young woman screaming for mercy. Pakistan’s government compounded the indignity on Monday by giving in to Taliban demands and formally imposing Shariah law on the region.

Such behavior would be intolerable anywhere. But the United States is heavily invested in both countries, fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban and financing multibillion-dollar military and development programs. The cases represent an officially sanctioned brutality that violates American values and international human rights norms. They also sabotage chances of building stable healthy societies in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, particularly venal politics are at work. Mr. Karzai, whose popular support plummeted because of government ineptitude and corruption, is running for re-election in August. The new law, which affects family matters for the Shiite minority, seems a bald, particularly creepy, pander.

It says of Shiite women: Unless she is ill, “a wife is obliged to fulfill the sexual desires of her husband.” That is licensed coercion.

If let stand, we fear such rules — reminiscent of decrees issued when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s — could also have a negative impact on laws affecting the majority Sunni population. Instead of defending the law as he did, Mr. Karzai must ensure that it is rewritten to reflect principles of freedom and dignity for women.

In Pakistan, the video of the woman’s flogging proves the bankrupt nature of the army’s strategy. Failing to defeat the Taliban on the battlefield, the army tried to appease them with a peace deal in February. It ceded the insurgents control of Swat, 100 miles from Islamabad, and allowed free rein for their repressive ways. The woman was beaten after declining a Taliban fighter’s marriage proposal, the head of the Peshawar Bar Association told reporters.

After resisting for weeks, President Asif Ali Zardari capitulated to political pressure and signed a regulation formally imposing Islamic law on Swat as part of the peace deal. We seriously doubt this will bring peace, and it will certainly not make life better for Pakistani women. It is unlikely that Mr. Zardari’s wife — the slain former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto — would have ever consented to such a craven sellout.

The one encouraging sign came last week, when Pakistan’s recently reinstated chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, publicly rebuked the attorney general and other officials at a court hearing for inaction in the flogging case. We hope this was not just grandstanding and that he and his supporters will find a way to make as powerful a case for this victim’s rights as they did for Mr. Chaudhry’s return to the Supreme Court.

Many Pakistanis have wasted their time decrying the video as a conspiracy intended to defame Islam and Pakistan. They should be demanding that the army — Pakistan’s strongest and most functional institution — defend against an insurgency that increasingly threatens the state. Like their military and political leaders, Pakistan’s people are in a pernicious state of denial about where the real danger lies.

PAKISTAN:Journey to the brink

While much of Pakistan’s civil society celebrated a famous victory in the restoration of the judges it continued to display suicidal indifference to the existential threat to itself.President Zardari’s misjudgment and Mian Nawaz Sharif’s ambition brought welcome relief to the jihadi apparatus at the precise moment when the international noose around it appeared to be tightening. The road map to democratic transition was obscured, and the contours of the abyss became a little clearer. Extraordinary acts of leadership are needed. Unfortunately, it is not clear if they will be forthcoming or sufficient.Despite claims of national mobilisation, the long march was a PML-N show and mostly confined to north-central Punjab, a region accounting for a third of the population. Southern Punjab, the NWFP, Balochistan and Sindh were virtually absent and for parties representing voters in these regions the finer distinction between ‘reappointment’ and ‘restoration’ was not a priority in the face of worries such as state collapse and economic survival.The richer segment of the most powerful region had spoken and claimed to speak for the nation. Battle-hardened activists elsewhere were left wondering how long their own mass protests would have lasted before the hard state made an appearance. A minority, no matter how right, had bent the will of the majority’s representatives and jubilant cries of ‘national triumph’ simply rubbed salt in the wounds.This was no people’s revolution. Revolutions are about challenging power and they face real power – not policemen who melt away. Pakistan’s centre of de facto power – the military – was not mentioned except in admiring terms for its help. An elected civilian government reportedly at loggerheads with a recalcitrant military was the main target.In the meanwhile, the real revolution of the jihad variety kept up its march. PPP obituaries are premature, but the battering of the largest secular party with representation across the region cannot be good news. Some saw Sharif’s emergence as grounds for hope. His past connections with extremists and relations with Saudi Arabia and rightwing groups might be assets which could be used to tame the jihadi threat – if taming were possible.The bottom line is that political society collectively lost ground to other forces. The rise of Sharif at the expense of Zardari barely conceals the fact that Pakistan’s de facto centre of power had regained lost ground. The lawyers and the ‘restored’ judges too might feel that they have emerged as an autonomous power centre. But courts by their very nature are loath to challenging de facto power – their resistance to Musharraf was to his abuse of de jure authority.The ‘independent’ electronic media which earned worldwide fame for its post-Mumbai denial chorus emerged as another power centre. Whether the rightwing domination of the media is manufactured or genuine, the effect is the same. A minority opinion, if measured in terms of electoral arithmetic, is projected as the national view. This view is defensive about jihadi militancy, hostile to good relations with Afghanistan and India, and prickly about any discussion of nuclear proliferation – all the elements that led Pakistan to be labelled ‘the world’s migraine’.The long march changed the balance of power precisely at the moment when international focus on jihadi militancy sharpened. US officials said that segments of our military were still connected with the jihadis. This is what many Pakistanis suspected privately all along. Benazir Bhutto was among the few who broke the public silence when in her last book, ignored by many in her own party, she wrote about a jihadi virus infecting the top echelons of our establishment. For all his follies, Zardari, unlike many of his counterparts, is clear about the source of the threat. Meanwhile, unnoticed at home, the federal police won international accolades. The head of Interpol called the police work following Mumbai ‘no less than extraordinary’. He had special praise for Rehman Malik for pursuing leads against jihadi networks. Right or wrong, the same Malik was singled out for attack during the long march and its aftermath. His departure would signal a victory for those threatened by the antivirus – efforts at reforming our intelligence agencies and upgrading civilian-led ones.Despite statements of goodwill, it is unlikely that hostilities between Sharif and Zardari have ended. Sharif may persist with his prime ministerial ambitions – though he cannot prevail without the military’s tacit help. Zardari might continue to nurture his political insecurity, and get trapped into yet another defeat – this time on the issue of reducing presidential powers in the constitution. In a re-run of the 1990s the judges and the media will corner Zardari first before going after Sharif. Most importantly, the apparatus will succeed in stalling the re-orientation of security priority from India to jihadi militancy. Denial will get its own regime.But some things have changed since the 1990s. Political society has become further disarticulated, and as the long march itself proved, fragmentation along regional and ethnic lines is a harsh reality. Moreover, strategic theories that are used to justify keeping alive the jihad option have underestimated the determination of foreign powers this time round.
Retreat from the struggle against jihadi militancy will be fatal for civil and political society, but not without cost for the military either. Unwillingness to act will draw further intrusive responses from foreign powers. In the meanwhile, the social base of the ‘world’s migraine’ is now restricted to a specific region. As the state comes under pressure from external powers others will challenge this region’s claim to speak for ‘the nation’ and cut their own deals. This is what the abyss looks like.Stepping back from the brink will require extraordinary leadership on the part of political society – which unlike other power centres has at least some will and chance of succeeding. Zardari will have to trust his party more, and learn to live with the fact that Benazir’s unquestioned authority died with her. Sharif must understand that he cannot become prime minister without an ultimately suicidal Faustian bargain with the military. He could try to be really brave now and lead the right and north-central Punjab out of denial and into a consensus against jihadi militancy.This would be Plan A, and it is slipping away fast. For their own reasons foreign powers will pressure our leaders as well as the military to rethink their priorities. But foreigners will respond to their own domestic expediencies first and our needs second, which means that even if Plan A is still on, the time needed to see it through will run out sooner than we think.

Pakistanis fear resurgence of violence in Swat Valley

By Betsy Hiel
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The Swat Valley's beleaguered people hoped a deal with extremists would restore peace to their mountainous region, once legendary with tourists as "the Switzerland of the East."Pakistani officials hoped that restoring Islamic law in the once-independent province would steal an issue from the Islamist insurgency, despite condemnation by U.S. officials.Yet the hard-line cleric who brokered the deal, Sufi Mohammed, has packed up and left the valley -- accusing the government of reneging on its promise -- and fear of warfare has returned.A "wave of apprehension has befallen Swat ... people see it as the first step towards the collapse of the deal and back to violence," says Adnan Aurangzeb, a former parliamentarian and grandson of Swat's last ruler when it remained a separate princely state in the 1960s.Swat, some 60 miles from this Pakistani capital, is just one of many burning issues in this nation of 170 million.The world's only Muslim nuclear power is a key U.S. ally against Islamist extremists. It suffers near-daily terrorist attacks in major cities; its army is battling al-Qaida and other Islamist militants along the border with Afghanistan.
A LEGACY OF BRUTALITY
Swat's deal with terrorists, like others before it, has been hotly debated here and in Washington.Sufi Mohammed negotiated it on behalf of militants led by his son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, whose Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws has brutalized Swat since 2007.Mohammed has his own extremist legacy: In 2001 he led 10,000 fighters against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Most of his followers were killed, and he was imprisoned when he returned to Pakistan; he was released in 2008.
Fazlullah's 2,000-strong insurgency attacked military convoys, killed local police, torched girls' schools and seized a highly profitable emerald mine. It beheaded many of its foes in village after village, to enforce "Islamic" rule.The militants initially played on public desire for the "swift justice" of Islamic law that ruled Swat as an independent state, Aurangzeb explains."Two months ago, they announced a list of 47 people," a Swat businessman says, declining to give his name for fear of retaliation. "They said, 'Wherever we find them, we will behead them and their relatives.' Today, one person on that list is alive."People are very scared. They are afraid to speak."When Pakistan's army counter-attacked and cleared Fazlullah's force from the valley in 2007, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a commander in the military-garrison city of Rawalpindi, says, "The public was overwhelmingly supporting us."A truce and Pakistan's parliamentary elections in 2008 allowed the militants to regroup."The first thing they did was target all those who had supported the military," Abbas recalls. A third of the region's 1.5 million residents fled.
'BATTLEGROUND FOR JIHADISTS'
"Swat has become the new battleground for the jihadists from all over the country," says Zahid Hussain, author of "Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam." Foreign fighters and militants from Beitullah Mehsud's insurgency in Waziristan, another Pakistani tribal area, joined Fazlullah.Local people who cooperated with Pakistani troops "were killed ... nobody came to protect their lives," says Hussain. "That is basically the reason why the militants have been able to control the area -- it is the failure of the state."Pakistani officials say they agreed to the latest deal in order to end the bloodshed and to wean the populace from the militants.Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, in an exclusive interview with the Tribune-Review, said the agreement recognized Swat's historic independence and tradition of Islamic law, and was predicated on the insurgency ending."If peace is restored, we have no objections," he said from his Islamabad home. "... This should not be taken as a surrender."Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari had not yet signed the provision on Islamic law -- which Sufi Mohammed condemned as a bad-faith sign. But Islamic judges had set up courts in Swat and an uneasy semblance of normal life had returned, according to locals.But a recent video of Pakistani Taliban flogging a screaming young woman for being in the company of a man caused an outcry in Islamabad; the country's Supreme Court called for an investigation, and newspapers condemned the flogging as barbaric.
'WE ARE IN A BLACK HOLE NOW'
Analysts such as Hussain think any agreement with militants is a government surrender."They virtually have now an area where they have established Taliban rule," the investigative author says. "And it is going to have far-reaching effect, because that has emboldened the militants operating in other parts of Northwestern Pakistan."
Former interior minister Lt. Gen. Hamid Nawaz Khan told Pakistani reporters he fears more extremists will shift from the Afghan-Pakistan border to Swat, making it "the biggest safe haven for al-Qaida and the Taliban."Aurangzeb, whose grandfather once ruled Swat, suspects U.S. pressure stopped President Zardari from signing the Islamic-law regulation, which he describes as "basically toothless" and unlike the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan.But "Zardari is expected to head a progressive, liberal and secular party," he contends, and Islamic law "is a negation of the manifesto of (his) Pakistan Peoples Party, and he cannot become a party to it."So he will back out (of the deal), and the Taliban will say, 'Look -- we told you so.' And they will (enforce) their brand of shariah" -- Islamic law -- "by ... the barrel of a gun."
The region's people are bracing for the worst.
"We are in a black hole now and do know which direction we will come out of it," Aurangzeb says. "But the signs don't look good, and then what credibility does the government have left?"

After Karl Marx, another view of history

After Karl Marx, another view of history
07.04.2009 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107365-After_Karl_Marx-0

By Cage Innoye

Two peoples are at war today in a very interesting and symbolic conflict -- Afghanistan and America, a very tribal culture vs. the most advanced culture on the planet, one culture near the beginning, one very far away. This raises some interesting questions about history.

Karl Marx gave us a perspective on history focusing on class struggle. It was called ‘historical materialism’. Here is offered another thesis that is based on the principle of ‘differentiation’. In the cosmos all things differentiate over time, they become more diverse, more individual, more particular over time. This is a long-term process in the world too, call it ‘historical differentiation’.

In this view, class struggle is incorporated as one type of ‘differentiation’ though it is modified here. The general notion addresses not only classes but all forms of inequality – gender, race and more. The thesis also appends the class issue with problems in the formation of individuality. It addresses the rise of social institutions, the rise of complexity in society, and the war of institutions. It addresses the consequent war of minds within the brain. It addresses the appearance of false ideologies and delusions like consumerism and more.

What is the fundamental theme of history? It is the same as the whole cosmos! It is differentiation -- the creation of difference, individuality, particularity, complexity. Humans are no different than over living organisms or inanimate things. This force produces galaxies, planets, living things, humans, human minds and human society.

This differentiation must begin somewhere. For the cosmos it begins, at least as far we can trace it now, in the Subsume of a singularity and then the ‘big bang’. A Subsume is an origin point where all things are fused and confused, and all future things exist in potential. At some point, there was an earth Subsume for nascent life, though we don’t know yet what it was and when, but it ‘elaborated’ outward into many species and an ecosystem. Then human Subsumes appeared in evolution too. For the purposes here concerning modern history, we begin in another Subsume -- that of the tribal village long before the rise of ‘civilization’.

The village splits into parts, differentiation causes this. Class groups arise at a certain point, classes of all sorts, inequality appears. Institutions arise -- church, economy, government, science and technology, education, art, theatre etc. Affluence, specialization and organization propel this process.

Individuality arises as people become more aware of their unique identity and inner powers. In addition, they are disconnected from the new state; they are now alienated and alone. They either accept the new situation or they band together into new religions of connection or they rebel.

The mind also differentiates; where all was once fused, now a split begins, then comes minds of logic-science vs. spirit vs. subconscious vs. the mind of doing vs. emotions vs. wisdom vs. creativity. All once mixed in a whole mind, all interconnected, now it is shattered; people choose which house to live in and champion it.

Old tribal perspectives are gone. Economics that was supposed to help the whole tribe has vanished, classes get rich. Education that was supposed to be about life has been replaced by new curriculums. A priest replaces the old shaman; religion is removed from community and daily issues of life. Feelings of tribal brotherhood are gone. Intimate connection to Nature is gone. Ancestor religion is gone; no more connection to your family, immortality is redefined. The dreamtime is gone.

New ideologies arise, new religions, emperor worship; in modern times comes consumerism and philosophies of self absorption.

After the tribe, war is everywhere. The war of individuals, war of social classes, institutional war, mental war, and ideologies justifying this war all appear together.

All this happens because of differentiation. But this is a very bad kind of differentiation, not a good kind. This process leads to break up, alienation, conflict, exploitation, manipulation and elitism.

This then leads to some groups abusing other groups or the majority, the ‘people’. Or it leads to neglect of some groups or most groups by elite and controlling people.

This process began thousands of years ago. It first produced city states all over the planet. In the West, this process has been most extreme and most advanced. But by ‘advanced’ it is not meant ‘healthy’.

This break up of the original tribal subsume did not have to happen, it did so because we were ignorant of the process and its consequences. This ‘negative differentiation’ or ‘negative elaboration’ has dominated for some time. Yes, good things have happened too within all of this. Discoveries, inventions, industry and sciences, but much of this came as a super-focus or even obsession -- because some ideology, class or institution ruled and promoted its biased view of the world and one human need against all other.

The ancient Greeks were not like us at all though we like to pretend they were. In China and the East the negative differentiation did not go so far. One can argue that other cultures went in the extreme direction of the religious or imperial. And this is true but the West has outdone them in shear excess.

In Europe there was rise of science, technology and capitalism. England was most advanced in this process however its cousin, America, outdid it. The USA is the most advanced in this kind of destructive elaboration about money, extreme individuality, alienation, consumerism, culture and mind wars, technology obsession and blindness to the environment. America has pioneered its unique form of negative differentiation. At the same time, in the USA are seeds of an escape from this law of history, from this negative process into a healthy differentiation.

The USA beat its competitor the Soviet Union and won. And we must note something about Russia: The socialist revolution in Russia took place precisely because of a proximity to the tribe. Russia was not Western Europe, workers came from communal villages; they spontaneously created the Soviets, the worker’s councils, for self-administration.

Eventually, communism of course undermined the Soviets but the point is that communism was a reaction to history, not history itself. Communism arose as an antidote, partly seeing the process, partly ignorant of so much more of the process. It did not recognize the whole process about evolving individuality, all realms of the mind, all forms of elitism and inequality, the diversity of all institutions.

Terrible abuse and neglect happened in communism too, though its original intentions were to escape this horrible historical progression. It fell. America was able to push further recklessly down its road; in 17 years America accomplished in 2008 a breakdown. The locomotive of the great train of history is off the tracks now.

Offered here is another way of looking at history -- a history of differentiation and elaboration that did not have to be, but occurred because of ignorance, power and wealth.

Where are we then in this long human evolution? In the USA, the program should be to accept individuality as a historical process but promote healthy individuality and limit alienation and selfishness. Individuality should be appended with social activism, caring and building new institutions. Principles and ideals are key -- when your new world does not exist, you need ideas first to drive you to create it. The tribal person did not need ideals of community because the connection was there, they lived it everyday.

Social institutions, principally, business and the economy should not be allowed to control or destroy other institutions like education, government, healthcare and more. Democracy should include a diversity of institutions that should work together. We should promote equality and help the victims of poverty. Negative psychologies and ideologies that come from consumerism and entertainment should be abandoned. And we should change the way we use our brains, we must use all our brains, and learn how to manage our complex minds and emotions.

The general themes here are balance, connection and the whole. Complexity is good, individualization is good, creative development of new things is good, technological advance is good. As long as we stay connected, in balance, and as wholes, this is all very good. We cannot stop evolution and creativity, and we should not try. These are fundamental forces in the cosmos, in Nature, in humans, in society, in our minds. But there are consequences and vigilance is needed.

These are the lessons of the history of differentiation. For human beings the process must be conscious. From a tribal subsume comes elaboration. In our minds we often return to tribal subsumes, we mourn the loss of the days when we were all one, for the current world vexes us. We seek the ‘ideal’ time or ‘dreamtime’.

People right behind the USA in evolution should take pause, make a course correction.

Those further back are closer to the tribal subsume; they may be in the best position. They can avoid the suffering that we know as daily life. They may be in the most creative situation.

Cage Innoye is an American writer. You can contact him at his blog, or at his email. His is working on his upcoming book, “The Axxiad”.

TEEN AGE GIRL FLOGGED....STATE OF DENIAL

M Waqar
Today I congratulate everyone because Gen Zia’a dream has been fulfilled as a teenaged girl was flogged in Swat. Also let me congratulate, Imran Khan, the Jama’at-e-Islami leadership, Lt-Gen Hameed Gul, the ANP government in the NWFP, the majority of Urdu-language columnists, some English ones too as they support making deals with Taliban. Video of a young girl being flogged as ‘punishment’ by the Taliban in Swat has shocked everyone in the civilized World. It is shameful that religious parties appeared reluctant to openly condemn the case of lashing of a 17-year-old girl in Swat while not giving any clear statement regarding the unfortunate incident. What a shameful act these so-called Taliban did. I am also proud of those men who were watching this innocent helpless victim of atrocity, watching the spectacle mutely either in approval or dumbfounded and afraid of uttering a word against it lest it be termed as anti-Islam and they themselves were meted out the same treatment. Hearing that poor girl's cries grown up men stood and watched her being beaten just makes me sick to the stomach. What a message we are sending to the civilized World. Zardari "condemns" (words are cheap); PM "demands" punishment (OK, lets wait and see); CJ uses suo moto to demand girl be produced before court. (OK, lets wait and see). Jamaat-e-Islami says this is a "minor matter" and people should focus on drone attacks by the US (thus demonstrating their hypocrisy and savagery). This was one of the barbaric acts of Taliban, so far we knew that they hang dead bodies to tress but now we have learned that in the past women were punished like this inside rooms. The videotape shown on television and displayed on websites wasn't the only time that a woman was publicly canned by the Taliban. However, no videotape of the other incident, which took place on Oct 20, 2008, is available in which a woman and her father-in-law were flogged in Ser-Taligram village near Manglawar in Charbagh tehsil. It is also sad to read some people's comments who are living in denial. Those who have a serious doubt as immediately after the whipping the "victim" got up and walked away without a limp." Any sane person would laugh at this nonsense if the situation weren’t so dire. If the video was fake, then why did the Taliban accept responsibility and claim they had done the right thing? Everything is a conspiracy to those who are in state of denial. They have lost ability to think, reason and to be logical. Speaking from psychological point of view that innocent girl must be so embarrassed that she did not want to be there, that’s why she got up fast. Those who are living in denial expect from this girl to say thanks to those Taliban and had offered them flowers, that’s what anyone who is denying this incident expects from that girl. That poor girl must have been in agony and I wonder what happened to her once they took her away. Those who are living in denial, those who think this incident was fake, remember Taliban would publicly whip your sisters, mothers, daughters and wives and when you will get out of your state of denial, it will be too late. It is also unfortunate that ANP leadership has abandoned its own people to the Taliban by making deals with them. No one can give justification for such an act. These handful of people have taken the population hostage, and the government is trying to patronize them. If the state surrenders, what will happen next? Those who are thinking that this video is fake should read writing on the wall. It was indeed like a lash on the faces of the chief minister of NWFP, the prime minister, the president, the legislators and most importantly, on the faces of every civilized Pakistani and Pukhtun . Its also true that the monster of terrorism is indeed on the prowl, unhindered and unchecked, targeting at will whatever and whoever it wants. It is obvious that the state has been unable and unwilling to address the threat posed by Al Qaeda and the Taliban. For the most part, the religious lot of the country has quietly and not so quietly supported the terrorists. The people of Pukhtunkhwa have been held hostage by Taliban, Pukhtuns' land is burning. What Taliban are doing is plain barbarism. When a religion is taken over by militants and zealots this is what you get.

Rehman Malik must quit..........

The Frontier Post
Editorial
Interior security czar Rehman Malik says money and arms are coming to extremists from across the border. This indeed he has said again and again over the time. But every time he shies away religiously from being specific. He dodges telling who is or who are funneling these deadly supplies to terrorist to kill and main our people and terrorise them. Is it because the fact is too difficult for him to tell? After all, if murderous stuff is coming to them from Afghan Taliban, Rehman would be the first to cry out and shrilly. Haven't he been accusing Baitullah Mehsud of almost every terrorist act and suicide bombing, horrifically taking place in one part or the other of the country almost every day, exacting a huge toll on our hapless people. And he may be right. That thug has himself owned up many such bloody strikes in the past as also in these times. But the question is who is keeping him supplied intermittently with bundles of cash and mounds of sophisticated weapons. The thug is running no mint mills and no arms factory; nor does he own a diamond mine to bankroll his terrorist activities. Years ago, Taliban leader Mullah Omar had expelled him from his Shura council for fighting the Pakistan army instead of the coalition forces in Afghanistan. Then who has been shipping him wades of dollars to buy recruits and suicide bombers, and truckloads of sophisticated weapons to fight pitched battles with Pakistan security forces? Rehman says suicide bombe