NON STATE ACTORS

Mwaqar



In Pakistan Democracy has severely been threatened by Taliban and religious fanatics and militant activities. These militants are not merely the sudden attackers to any vulnerable area. They are very competent and bearing high intelligence and power of innovation in taking decision timely in fulfilling their target. What a great commitment they possess overall? Most of these militant are from poor background and have no education. These militants are inter-connected globally and aided by opportunist weapon traders, drug mafia and opportunist politicians and sometimes they have been well supported as well as guarded by rival countries. Pakistan’s internal administration ,police department and intelligence agency would require to be upgraded and more efficient to intercept the militants action with greater accuracy. Terrorist activities have been appeared as a common problem to every nation and should be tackled in coordinating manner by a compact relationship between every nation in the world and it might be rival or friendly country. Militants are global enemy. Blaming someone is not wise rather than finding own fault. When I was in Pakistan, We used to hear bomb blasts in Beirut, middle east, Africa ,violence in Somalia etc and used to say thank God we are not living there, used to love peaceful streets of Peshawar, but now I hear it’s a night mare living in Peshawar ;where mostly our puckhtoons are target of barbarian ignorant Taliban; my heart and feelings go for all those innocent people who were recently target of this barbarian act of violence just before Eid in Peshawar.

I am surprised that there are so many religious groups in Pakistan, mostly operating from Punjab , who are using name of Islam and are involve in terrorism, few months ago Governor of pukhtoonistan mentioned that terrorists have roots in Punjab; killing not only their own citizens but spreading hate and killings everywhere, Islam or any other religion does not allow killing of innocent people whether they are in Khyber or Mumbai. we all know that how this happened, it starts from Zia era when these so called religious groups were given money and weapons to fight against Soviets in Afghanistan with the help of CIA and other Western powers, when Soviets left Afghanistan, everyone forgot about their so called freedom fighters, those freedom fighters used to get red carpet reception at White House. when these so called freedom fighters turned into monsters, now they are called Taliban . One can feel sympathy for Zardari's plight. He and his new civilian government did not train or a ssist the Pakistani terrorist organizations that probably carried out attacks in Mumbai. Nor is it his fault that al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other dangerous groups operate in Waziristan and the FATA Areas of western Pakistan, from which they launch attacks . For that we can thank elements of the Pakistani military, Pakistani intelligence and the late military dictatorship of Zia and Pervez Musharraf. Reversing decades-old policies of support for these groups may be impossible for any Pakistani leader, especially when the only forces capable of rooting them out are the same forces that created them and sustain them. So if the world is indeed not to be held hostage by non-state actors operating from Pakistan, what can be done? In my previous letters on this forum I said several times that Pakistani nation and Govt needs to end and stop supporting these terror groups before we see foreign troops walking on Pakistani streets, after Mumbai attacks it is very much clear that entire world is loosing patience with Pakistan, A clear vision to sanitize the terror camps and the mullah power in Pakistan should be discouraged. It is very much necessary to do this to protect the world from terror and protect innocent citizens in Pakistan itself who are getting killed by suicide attacks of these barbarians who are called Taliban . I hate to say this but lets admit that Pakistan has become the training ground for the terrorists. We have to start now to see the end of this may be in 3 to 5 years time. That would mean cleaning up the mess in the political, military, intelligence and administration in Pakistan .Senseless killing of innocent human beings in the name of Islam is wrong and Islam doe not allow such actions. It is an act which is destroying a noble faith. The real sufferers are the God fearing true Muslims. It is a culture that is supported by some mullahs, for whatever reason. They have been able to create a feeling of hate in the hearts of Muslims against others w ho are non-believers. The result of this that everybody is suffering.
Can't the majority of Muslims who do not support terrorism rise and throw such barbarians out of Islam. It is an internal problem of Islam and my request to my Muslim brothers and sisters is that it time they wake up and save Islam. The mullahs, media and politicians all seem to be living in denial and misleading its own people. Pakistanis should stand up and wage the true "jihad" against the terrorists. Pakistan is a great nation but dark clouds loom over Pakistan. If people don’t start taking action against these terrorists, this great country would be destroyed in no time. Today its Mumbai and Pukhtoonistan, tomorrow it will be Karachi. There are no doubts that these dirty worms of LeT did the act in Mumbai , Taliban in Pukhtoonistan , these men should be castrated and be-headed publicly. Terrorism has no religion. A terrorist can neither be a Hindu nor a Musalman nor a Christian. No religion preaches viole nce and hatred.
While Pakistan itself is fighting a big war against terrorism and losing a lot of lives in the cowardly acts of terrorism, it is in the greater interest of Pakistan and to that extent India also, that we jointly make an exercise to flush out terrorists and their breeding grounds. Where are the fatwas against these terrorists. It is time for people of Pakistan to come out from illusion that India or America is the biggest threat to them. People of Pakistan have to realize that today's war cannot be won with arms and terror, but only with economy, peace and stability. Provide employment and right education to all citizens to avoid them to become terrorists. How long the population of Pakistan will sit back and allow the fragmentation of the country? People took to the streets to reinstate a judge, but no one is showing up, when the militants are taking the country apart. In a true democracy, people will be on the street demanding action and letting the militants know that they are not welcome. Instead of blaming others for the situation look inward and be proactive. What will take to make Pakistanis understand that Taliban and Al Qaeda do not have their interests at heart, but their goal is to take Muslim countries back to their perception of 7th century, and to pursue that goal they disregard the Quran and are willing to destroy hard built assets. These assets will not be easy to replace. World looks at the silence of the majority of Pakistanis as tacitly supporting the destructive force. Don't blame each other for terrorism instead try to reach the roots of terrorism. If there is peace in the country, then India or any other country can't dare to threaten Pakistan. These countries know our weak point, we don't have unity, all the political parties quarreling with each other, every one blames others, nobody accepts his mistakes, so try to be united, fare with the nation, give them some rel ief. Once everything is controlled in the country, then India will not dare to even blame on Pakistan.
Present Pakistani regime and Military needs to think seriously and sincerely before its too late and I repeat one more time, before someone else send tanks, army and turn Pakistan into stone age, we must get rid of these fanatics. Get rid of the bloody trash, the potential suicide bombers, kidnappers of ambassadors and Chinese engineers, murderers of innocent men women and children, get rid of ignorant in this country who authorized rapists of women, the dishonorable honor killers of daughters, sisters the unwashed barbarians, who bury girls alive and their immoral apologists, who become then education ministers , these assorted vermin that have infested Pakistan for decades and have multiplied like rabbits need not be tolerated any more ,it is time to ship this garbage abroad to undertakers around the world who want them. They are not Muslims ,they are anti- Islam , they are the biggest enemy of Islam and its billion Muslims followers all over the world. They are hell bent on demeaning the Muslims diminishing them, putting them on defensive everywhere making them unwelcome suspicious characters wherever they reside. They are a bloody dark blot on the otherwise shining forehead of the Muslim community from Africa to Europe from Asia to Americas. These rabid dogs of religious extremism, communalism and sectarianism with their foaming mouths spouting nothing but poisons of pure hatred and bigotry against other communities, other sects of their own communities, against other's ethnicity, other religions and other countries , are not only the biggest danger to world peace and democracy , they pose a very mortal, a very urgent threat to Pakistan's very own existence. It is absolutely wrong for the world to accuse the government of Pakistan for the carnage in Bombay -- the government of Pakistan led by peace makers like Zardaris, Gilanis, Qur eishis, Asfandiyaris and others of Pakistan can be accused neither of the crime of commission, nor of the crime of omission because the government is only a few months old infant and the plague Jihadi terrorism is decades old. It is a golden opportunity for the Government of Pakistan to redeem itself -- to absolve itself of the stigma of harboring terrorism , the government and its army should restore the good name of Pakistan by throwing away all its stinking bad eggs to whoever wants to take them home to make omelets of them -- send them to India if the Indians want them -- to USA if the Americans want them -- to England if the Brits want them to Russia if the Russians want them or of course to China if the Chinese want them get rid of them one and all , or arrest them and kill them and hang their bodies in public places.. Its time for Pakistanis to stand behind present Govt, you can’t afford another martial law or war with anyone ,India provides solid proofs of Mumbai terror or not, we must admit that there are elements in Pakistan who are involve in suicide bombings and other barbarian activities. Pakistan needs to replace the social services provided by terror groups and their fronts like the Jamaât-ud Dawa if it is to seriously root out terrorism. Pakistani Govt should ban all these so called religious groups to form charity etc work, it’s the responsibility of the Govt to help poor citizens not those groups who help and then misuse poor people. Pakistan is not responsible for all this mess and I do agree to some extend with the critics who blame other foreign powers in supporting so called Pakistani terror groups but lets admit that we are also responsible to some extend of this mess, lets confess that our hands are not clean either. President Zardari should disclose names or groups of those ‘’NON STATE ACTORS’’ and people involve in terrorism; those people should be arrested and punished. Its also media’s responsibility to start programs on Radio/TV and educate people about the dangers of terrorism. When extremist distort and totally misinterpret the Prophet Mohammad's teachings, they act like a bunch of crazed teen-agers high on Ecstasy with loaded weapons, It's a shame .Its not ‘’jihad’’ to kill innocent people, There are many levels of Jihad: Struggling to remove poverty; fighting against material and corruption; struggling against all kinds of social, political, and economic injustices; struggling to restore basic human rights; fighting against tyranny and oppression; constantly exerting to advance human knowledge; fighting against environmental pollution. No covert operations are allowed in Islam. Above all, Jihad must be done for the good of humanity which, in Islam, is referred to as fighting in the cause of God. Under no circumstances, are they allowed to exploit the weak and the vulnerable. Suicide attacks are horrific acts of genocide similar in psychotic madness as to what surged through the veins of Hitler.

Pakistani general’s killers,Shocking Report.....

From The Sunday TimesDecember 14, 2008

UK may help find Pakistani general’s killers
Carey Schofield The brother-in-law of VS Naipaul, the British novelist and Nobel laureate, was murdered last month after threatening to expose Pakistani army generals who had made deals with Taliban militants.

Major-General Faisal Alavi, a former head of Pakistan’s special forces, whose sister Nadira is Lady Naipaul, named two generals in a letter to the head of the army. He warned that he would “furnish all relevant proof”.

Aware that he was risking his life, he gave a copy to me and asked me to publish it if he was killed. Soon afterwards he told me that he had received no reply.

“It hasn’t worked,” he said. “They’ll shoot me.”

Four days later, he was driving through Islamabad when his car was halted by another vehicle. At least two gunmen opened fire from either side, shooting him eight times. His driver was also killed.

This weekend, as demands grew for a full investigation into Alavi’s murder on November 18, Lady Naipaul described her brother as “a soldier to his toes”. She said: “He was an honourable man and the world was a better place when he was in it.”

It was in Talkingfish, his favourite Islamabad restaurant, that the general handed me his letter two months ago. “Read this,” he said.

Alavi had been his usual flamboyant self until that moment, smoking half a dozen cigarettes as he rattled off jokes and gossip and fielded calls on two mobile phones.

Three years earlier this feted general, who was highly regarded by the SAS, had been mysteriously sacked as head of its Pakistani equivalent, the Special Services Group, for “conduct unbecoming”. The letter, addressed to General Ashfaq Kayani, the chief of army staff, was a final attempt to have his honour restored. Alavi believed he had been forced out because he was openly critical of deals that senior generals had done with the Taliban. He disparaged them for their failure to fight the war on terror wholeheartedly and for allowing Taliban forces based in Pakistan to operate with impunity against British and other Nato troops across the border in Afghanistan.
Alavi, who had dual British and Pakistani nationality, named the generals he accused. He told Kayani that the men had cooked up a “mischievous and deceitful plot” to have him sacked because they knew he would expose them. “The entire purpose of this plot by these general officers was to hide their own involvement in a matter they knew I was privy to,” he wrote. He wanted an inquiry, at which “I will furnish all relevant proof/ information, which is readily available with me”.
I folded up the letter and handed it back to him. “Don’t send it,” I said. He replied that he had known I would talk him out of it so he had sent it already. “But”, he added, “I want you to keep this and publish it if anything happens to me.”
I told him he was a fool to have sent the letter: it would force his enemies into a corner. He said he had to act and could not leave it any longer: “I want justice. And I want my honour restored. And you know what? I [don’t] give a damn what they do to me now. They did their worst three years ago.”
We agreed soon afterwards that it would be prudent for him to avoid mountain roads and driving late at night. He knew the letter might prove to be his death warrant.
Four days after I last saw him, I was in South Waziristan, a region bordering Afghanistan, to see a unit from the Punjab Regiment. It was early evening when I returned to divisional headquarters and switched on the television. It took me a moment to absorb the horror of the breaking news running across the screen: “Retired Major General Faisal Alavi and driver shot dead on way to work.”
The reports blamed militants, although the gunmen used 9mm pistols, a standard army issue, and the killings were far more clinical than a normal militant attack.
The scene at the army graveyard in Rawalpindi a few days after that was grim. Soldiers had come from all over the country to bury the general with military honours. Their grief was palpable. Wreaths were laid on behalf of Kayani and most of the country’s military leadership.
Friends and family members were taken aback to be told by serving and retired officers alike that “this was not the militants; this was the army”. A great many people believed the general had been murdered to shut him up.
I first met Alavi in April 2005 at the Pakistan special forces’ mountain home at Cherat, in the North West Frontier Province, while working on a book about the Pakistani army.
He told me he had been born British in Kenya, and that his older brother had fought against the Mau Mau. His affection for Britain was touching and his patriotism striking.
In August 2005 he was visiting Hereford, the home of the SAS, keen to revive the SSG’s relationship with British special forces and deeply unhappy about the way some elements of Pakistan’s army were behaving. He told me how one general had done an astonishing deal with Baitullah Mehsud, the 35-year-old Taliban leader, now seen by many analysts as an even greater terrorist threat than Osama Bin Laden.
Mehsud, the main suspect in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto late last year, is also believed to have been behind a plot to bomb transport networks in several European countries including Britain, which came to light earlier this year when 14 alleged conspirators were arrested in Barcelona. Yet, according to Alavi, a senior Pakistani general came to an arrangement with Mehsud “whereby – in return for a large sum of money – Mehsud’s 3,000 armed fighters would not attack the army”.
The two senior generals named in Alavi’s letter to Kayani were in effect complicit in giving the militants free rein in return for refraining from attacks on the Pakistani army, he said. At Hereford, Alavi was brutally frank about the situation, said the commanding officer of the SAS at that time.
“Alavi was a straight-talking soldier and some pretty robust conversations took place in the mess,” he said. “He wanted kit, skills and training from the UK. But he was asked, pretty bluntly, why the Pakistani army should be given all this help if nothing came of it in terms of getting the Al-Qaeda leadership.”
Alavi’s response was typically candid, the SAS commander said: “He knew that Pakistan was not pulling its weight in the war on terror.”
It seemed to Alavi that, with the SAS on his side, he might win the battle, but he was about to lose everything. His enemies were weaving a Byzantine plot, using an affair with a divorced Pakistani woman to discredit him.
Challenged on the issue, Alavi made a remark considered disrespectful to General Pervez Musharraf, then the president. His enemies playeda recording of it to Musharraf and Alavi was instantly sacked.
His efforts to clear his name began with a request that he be awarded the Crescent of Excellence, a medal he would have been given had he not been dismissed. Only after this was denied did he write the letter that appears to many to have sealed his fate.
It was an action that the SAS chief understands: “Every soldier, in the moment before death, craves to be recognised. It seems reasonable to me that he staked everything on his honour. The idea that it is better to be dead than dishonoured does run deep in soldiers.”
Alavi’s loyalty to Musharraf never faltered. Until his dying day he wanted his old boss to understand that. He also trusted Kayani implicitly, believing him to be a straight and honourable officer.
If investigations eventually prove that Alavi was murdered at the behest of those he feared within the military, it may prove a fatal blow to the integrity of the army he loved.
Britain and the United States need to know where Pakistan stands. Will its army and intelligence agencies ever be dependable partners in the war against men such as Mehsud?
James Arbuthnot, chairman of the defence select committee, and Lord Guthrie, former chief of the defence staff, were among those who expressed support this weekend for British help to be offered in the murder investigation.
Inside the Pakistan Army by Carey Schofield will be published next year by Soap Box Books.

Why the families of traitors?

Why the families of traitors?
M Waqar New York
I agree with Mr. M. K. Bangash's letter of December, 6. He has made a good point about sons and families of past dictators and traitors on national TV, although I can't keep up with Mr. Bangash letters in Frontier Post, I always admire his views. It seems like not only the media but entire nation does not have any criteria of politicians in this country. It is true that there are hundreds of intellectuals in Pakistan and when I was a student at Islamia College, I came across my professors who were more educated and talented than any Pakistani politician. What citizens of this country needs to do is to get rid of old generation of politicians and Mr Bangash is right in saying that media has always ignored well educated and devoted intellectuals, I think media can play a great role by inviting progressive, well educated, liberal minded people, who can teach and train new generation of Pakistan for their future. I was in my very early years of life when Zia took over the reigns of power in Pakistan back in the 1970s. However, I do remember vividly the days when and how the ugly change was brought about. Yet another elected government was toppled by the military, thanks to the mullahs conniving with Zia.. During Zia's reign, Pakistan got AK 47, heroin, Afghans, sectarian rifts. His appointment was controversial, so was his rule. A dictator who halted the democratic process, publicly hanged, flogged political opponents, implicated and murdered the country's greatest mainstream politician. He misused name of Islam for his greed and power, actually he was not interested in Islam but he was aiding imperialists. Why do we need new generation of politicians who are not family members of past hypocrites, dictators and traitors Pakistani political parties never developed into viable institutions capable of generating leadership. There are talented emerging politicians in some political parties of Pakistan but they stand no chance of occupying their party top slots. In this elitist political system of Pakistan, party office is a lifetime prerogative passed from father to son. None of them is willing to make way for fresh leadership to emerge. There are deep structural and constitutional problems within Pakistani politics that necessitate the presence of Pakistani military in civil affairs for the time being. Only the educated people can help break the choking grip of wealthy, autocratic feudal politicians. In Pakistan the military has been part of the problem because it has been encouraging the monopoly of a handful of politicians in the country, perpetuating a troubled system and never encouraging its replacement with a better one. The Election Commission must introduce the requirement of a verifiable, free and secret ballot for the top slots within Pakistani political parties as a precondition to contesting general elections. This will rid us of stagnating lifetime party leaderships, giving a larger number of Pakistanis a chance to serve the public and pave the way for a better class of politicians to emerge. Drastic changes in the Pakistani constitution, the political system and the composition of Pakistani politics hold the only key to ensure a strong, emerging Pakistan in the 21st century. Islamabad has already wasted too much time. Except Afghanistan, almost all of Pakistan's neighbours Iran, the Gulf, China, and India are well on their way to strong economic growth. The political systems in these nations, despite being different, do not offer loopholes that allow for domestic instability or foreign interference. The objective of a major overhaul of the Pakistani state is to create a government that is able to project its interests while maintaining a robust internal political system that creates and breeds leadership and focuses on the future. Tough reforms will have to target the existing and future political parties. Regular and transparent internal party election has to become a prerequisite for the party to qualify for participating in national elections. This will end leadership rot and allow fresh leaders to emerge. New legislation will have to be introduced to control party finances and expenditure. Today's politicians who only know how to bring people on streets to protest and spread hate can't be a model politician. Main reason for Pakistan's vulnerability is weak leadership and a flawed political system that breeds instability. To get over this, a strong federal government will have to be introduced in Islamabad. This government cannot be drawn from the existing failed political class and cannot be a repeat of past military governments. Cleaning the slate in Pakistan will require some creative thinking. The prevalent feudal system of Pakistan is the main obstacle in the progress of the country and the prosperity of the people. Since the creation of Pakistan the Pakistani people are left at distant from the corridor of power so that the ruling elite can do what they wanted to do in favour of their interest, leaving the Pakistani people at the mercy of circumstances. As this policy is denial of right of Pakistani people to rule their country according to their aspiration and desire to build this country, which can provide equal opportunity to all without any discrimination for the establishment of welfare society. Only the society base on tolerance, equality and justice can be the real guarantee for the prosperous and strong Pakistan therefore your attention is invited to the crucial movement which could be the point of distraction or disaster. Because of corrupt politician of Pakistan the army was tempted again and again place, for one after another military rule. It would be wrong to blame Pakistan army alone for having usurped power for more than half of its life. It was in fact feudal corrupt politicians that facilitated first martial law in Pakistan and again in 1999. How long shall we suffer? How long the future of our coming generation will be at stake. With a population of over 160 million, Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world and the second most populous country with a Muslim majority. However, the country faces significant development challenges, with one in 10 children dying before their fifth birthday, and 50% of adults classed as illiterate, no clean drinking water, load shedding and so many other countless problems Pakistanis face everyday.




Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=le&nid=892&ad=14-12-200
Dated: Sunday, December 14, 2008, Zil Hajj 15, 1429 A.H.

US moves to declare former Pakistani officers international terrorists

Time to arrest General (R) Hamid Gul, Brigadier (R) Ijaz Shah and other rogue elements in Pakistan's intelligence agencies'Who killed Benazir Bhutto? Foot-soldiers of Al-Qaeda/Taliban/Sipah-e-Sahaba. Who were the masterminds? General Hamid Gul, Brigadier Ijaz Shah, other rogue elements in Pakistan's ISI and other intelligence agencies.Who are their mouth-pieces in the Pakistani media? Irfan Siddiqi, Ansar Abbasi, Kashif Abbasi, Mushtaq Minhas, Hamid Mir, Roedad Khan, Orya Maqbool Jan
Who are their political supporters?Ijazul-Huq, Pervez Elahi, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Imran Khan, Hafiz Saeed, and other pro-jihadi, pro-Taliban and sectarian elements.
Hamid Gul and other ISI former officers are on pay roll of ALQUIDA.What Pakistan Government needs to do,is to arrest and punish former army generals of ISI like HAMID GUL ETC,HAMID GUL was ISI cheif once and is supporter of Osama and fanatic religious groups,he should be arrested by NATO forces and they should investigate him,he is invole in terrorism and supports all those mullahs who spread hate.Presnt Pakistani Govt is afraid of its generals and BHUTTO family was killed by these fanatic army and ISI generals like HAMID GUL.Terrorists are using poor people for their crimes,killing anyone any where is a crime aginst humanity.

Written by Bill Roggio on December 4, 2008 2:20 PM to The Long War Journal
Available online at: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/12/us_moves_to_declare.php


The US government is seeking to add several former Pakistani intelligence officers to the United Nations’ list of international terrorists, The News reported. A senior US intelligence official familiar with the effort to reign in Pakistan’s intelligence service confirmed to The Long War Journal the US wants to get the United Nations Security Council to designate several senior former officers of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency as international terrorists.

Included on the list of former Pakistani intelligence officers being submitted to the UNSC are Hamid Gul, Javid Nasir, and Zahirul Islam Abbasi, as well as Aslam Beg, a senior Army officer, the intelligence official said.

The placement of the former Pakistani officers on the United Nations list would open their international accounts up to scrutiny and eventual seizure, the US official said. "We could do some major damage" to the officers' "slush funds" in international bank accounts. The US will also seek to place the officers on INTERPOL's wanted list.

News of the US move broke after Gul spoke to the Pakistani press about being added to the list. Gul "was informed of this by a highly responsible person, who had personally seen the written US request," The News reported.

The US intelligence official expressed concern that Gul still has access to such sensitive information. Gul's knowledge of the effort "is indicative that he still has friends in very high places."

According to The News, Gul said "the government should immediately move to protect the ISI from this indirect attack from Washington. He said the United States and some other Western nations were against him for the simple reason that he did not support their war on terror which, he said, was based on Washington’s greed for energy."

Gul's message is calculated to rally support within Pakistan's intelligence community, the US official said. "He is playing to a very particular crowd there, to convince people in the ISI that those against him are also against them."

Both the United States and India have accused the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based terror group backed by the ISI, of conducting last week's 62 hour assault on Mumbai that resulted in more than 180 Indians and foreigners killed and more than 300 wounded. Indian police captured a terrorist who admitted to training inside camps Pakistan and to being a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

While there have been no direct links between the Mumbai attackers and the Pakistani government, India has accused the Pakistani government of allowing numerous groups to operate on its soil. India has demanded the Pakistani government hand over about 20 wanted terror leaders and operatives, including Hafiz Saeed, the leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Elements of the Pakistani state may have aided in the training of the Mumbai terrorists and the execution of the operation. The captured terrorist claimed members from Pakistani Navy aiding in his training, while Dawood Ibrahim, the ISI-backed mafia don, provided logistical support. Indian intelligence sources told PTI that the country has "proof that the Inter Services Intelligence was involved in planning the Mumbai terror attacks and training the terrorists." The unconfirmed report stated "the names of trainers and the places where meticulous training took place are also known to the government." US intelligence has additional information, according to the report.

Just this year, the ISI was directly implicated in the suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. Fifty-four people, including an Indian defense attaché, were killed in the July 7 bombing. The Indian embassy bombing was carried out by the Haqqani Network, with the direct backing of the ISI, The US confronted the Paksitani government with evidence of the ISI's involvement in August. Within two months after the US confrontation with Pakistan, Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj, the Director of the ISI, was relieved of his command,

Background on Gul, Nasir, Abbasi, and Beg

The four senior retired Pakistani officers put forth to be sanctioned by the United Nations have a long history of dealing with extremist groups, and particularly al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Kashmiri terror groups.

Lieutenant General (Retired) Hamid Gul served as the chief of the ISI from 1987 to 1989. Gul is known as the Godfather of the Taliban for his efforts to organize the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, and the helping to facilitate the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s. Gul supports the terrorist insurgency in India-occupied Kashmir and opposes the US-led effort to defeat Islamic extremism.

"God will destroy the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and wherever it will try to go from there," Gul said in August 2003. "The Muslim world must stand united to confront the U.S. in its so-called War on Terrorism, which is in reality a war against Muslims. Let's destroy America wherever its troops are trapped." Gul openly admits he maintains contacts with the Taliban and other extremist groups.

Lieutenant General (Retired) Javid Nasir commanded the ISI from 1992 to May 1993. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Nasir helped unite the warring mujahideen factions and establish a government. Nasir, and avowed Islamist, provide support to terrorist movements throughout South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Nasir, along with Gul, kept in close contact with Osama bin Laden in the 1990s.

Major General (Retired) Zahirul Islam Abbasi was a senior officer in the ISI during the Afghan war and served as a senior military commander. In 1995, he led a failed coup against Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. He planned to kill the entire senior leadership of the Army command. Abbasi was implicated in the plot along with Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the leader of the radical Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, an al Qaeda and Taliban-linked group. Akhtar later testified against Abbasi, who was then sentenced to seven year in prison. He was released by Pervez Musharraf after serving just four.

General (Retired) Mirza Aslam Beg served as Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistan Army after the mysterious death of General Muhammad Zia ul Haq in 1998. Beg is known to profess sympathy for the Taliban, al Qaeda, and Kashmir terror groups. He has openly bragged that foreigners train in Afghanistan and fight in Kashmir. Beg, along with Gul, purportedly met with Osama bin Laden and more than 300 jihadi leaders at Darul Uloom Haqqania Islamic conference held in Peshawar in

OBAMA: INSPIRATIONAL LEADER !!!!

Slavery is a bitter history that many would prefer to forget, but it continues to cast a dark shadow over a nation not only in America that was founded on the promise that “all men are created equal” and endowed with the “unalienable rights” to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Though it may seem like a phenomenon of an impossibly distant past, slavery is only just outside living memory. Slavery also reminds many in third world countries who were forced to become colonies of so called great Britain. In America, before the victory of the Civil Rights Movement black people were banned from using the same toilets, water fountains, schools and even bus stations as their white counterparts. The last anti miscegenation laws, which barred marriage between blacks and whites, were overturned by the Supreme Court only in 1967, and in 2000 Alabama became the last state to remove language prohibiting inter-racial marriage from its state constitution. Before this remarkable year, almost no African-Americans expected a black man to become President of the United States. Over almost four centuries, countless Africans were chained in slave ships for the dreaded “Middle Passage” across the Atlantic. Although there is no definitive total, Unesco estimates that 14,270,000 Africans were sold into slavery in the New World. By the time of the American Revolution, one out of five people in the Colonies was a slave. Olderr black Americans who lived through segregation in public institutions until the mid-1960s and who were alive when barriers to voting were finally removed in 1965 were filled with emotion when Sen. Barack Obama was declared the president-elect of the United States. They never thought they would live to see the day a nation of people who had enslaved each other, who had segregated schools to keep their children apart and who had grudgingly come together in the past would vote in masses, waiting in lines for hours, to elect the first bi-racial man to govern the country. Today, when historians will write new chapters, they will add BARAK OBAMA name in their books, they will record story of a kid, whose father was from Kenya, mother was white American, was raised by white grand parents ,a kid who struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage ,he was not son of a famous politician, wealthy landlord or was born with golden spoon in his mouth, he is not like many other US politicians is from feudal society, he struggled, worked hard, Challenged seasoned politicians of American politics, he raised slogan of change, broke barriers of race and color and became first Afro-American President of America. He proved America is a country of great opportunity. Obama overcame prejudice is not only a tribute to his campaign, but also to the hope that, given a chance, ordinary people can overcome injustice to create a more humane world. The Election of Barack Obama as the 44th US President is a real tribute to Martin Luther King , whose dream is fulfilled. Americans put aside their racial prejudices on Tuesday Nov 4 and picked the best son of the land for the job, Obama's election does not suggest racism is wiped out once and for all, but it does signal that a sizable majority of voters believe America is the land of equal opportunity where anyone born in that land, irrespective of race, ethnicity or religion, can become its president. contest and win at the White House, by abolishing slavery. He seems to be pro-poor and has promised to reduce the difference between the ultra-rich and abject poor. Most of the time, he spoke with his personal convictions, not bothering whether his comment would bring or lose votes for him. And I think in the end, this streak of honesty won him the presidency. When TV screens were reporting that Obama won, people danced in the streets, wept, lifted their voices in prayer and brought traffic to a standstill. From Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles to all over the world, Americans celebrated Barack Obama's victory and marveled that they lived to see the day that a black man was elected president. His election speaks volumes for a bunch of people," Children of single mothers, people who put themselves through college. It says, you can do it, you can do it. Change has come to America." With this statement, Barack Obama encapsulated the feelings of hundreds of millions of his supporters around the globe. Obama's thumping electoral win will go down as one of the most transformational events in political history as he becomes the 44th U.S. president his victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place .
Pakistani politicians can learn a lot from Obama and changing of guards in Washington, Obama and his team is busy to provide best cabinet to the nation so they can develop better life for American citizens, while in Pakistan, politicians love to travel all over the world, in just past eight months Zardari and PM made more then one foreign trips and members of parliament in Pakistan have no clue what to do with so many problems in Pakistan, In Pakistan you haven’t even started fighting corruption. Indeed, leaders are still at the lip-service stage. The Pakistani politics is like Pakistani movies where the same old story repeated endlessly with the change of faces but in politics, even the faces remain the same with repeated role, which proves that while the world may have moved on we remain stuck in the same grooves. In Pakistan ,the painful dilemma in the political fête is that the politicians who always cry for democracy are unable to produce democracy in their own parties. When the national political figureheads could not maintain fair and clean election within their parties how can they provide or maintain the true democracy in the country. When the power greedy politicians are ready to split their parties to retain the headship of the party or not allow the other person to contest for party leadership, how can one expect from them to run a true democracy in Pakistan. When the leaders of a country start buying properties outside the country and their children get educated and stay abroad then the people of the country should know that there is something seriously wrong with the country which the leaders know but are not telling the people of the
country. Since the creation of Pakistan the Pakistani people are left at distant from the corridor of power so that the ruling elite can do what they wanted to do in favor of their interest, leaving the Pakistani people at the mercy of circumstances. As this policy is denial of right of Pakistani people to rule their country according to their aspiration and desire to built this country, which can provide equal opportunity to all without any discrimination for the establishment of welfare society. Only the society base on tolerance, equality and justice can be the real guarantee for the prosperous and strong Pakistan there for your intention is invited to the crucial movement which could be the point of distraction or disaster. The question is can we expect from them to provide solution to burning issue and will they allow the oppressed people of Pakistan to share decision making process and enjoy fruit of democracy in Pakistan with transparency and accountability. The dominant feudal and corrupt politician in Pakistan, since last 60 years are like a cursed and they have gifted Pakistan many evil like, unchecked corruption, religious and ethnic divisions, religious extremism, feudalism, social disparity, frequent military rules, corrupt bureaucracy, and the worst most generation of corrupt politicians. The only way out of these crucial circumstances is to empower the common Pakistani at grass route level i.e. the change of system. This change is inevitable for the prosperous Pakistan . Along with basic guarantees for the creation of welfare state, where in public representative and institution shall be answerable and accountable to the masses. Every country in the world has a army, Pakistan is the only country where army has a country, The army of Pakistan has been and is a major force in the politics which has always been interfering and intervening time and again in the system of governance. They are not just military-men now. They have become real-estate agents, bankers, educators, etc. The Army has built up a far-flung empire of economic enterprises in all parts of Pakistan with assets in the tens of billions, and can best protect its interests by defusing the escalating conflict with the minorities.
The poor people of Pakistan need free schools, free hospitals, and a decent future for their children. American People expect high standards both morally and integrity from their politicians. Elitism in everything is alienating the people of Pakistan. Pakistani public used to seeing its corrupt elite sending their kids to exclusive English medium schools, eating and drinking imported food, wearing foreign made clothes, driving foreign made cars. Pakistan has experienced three decades of corruption, drugs, military rule, rising Islamist extremism and a general decline in education and health standards. Who is responsible for this ?
Pakistan‘s future looks quite uncertain and a fundamentalist revolution is likely to follow if the wealthy, self-indulgent elites don’t clean up their act and provide proper leadership. Pakistan’s condition in more then 60 years of its ‘independence.' is one of tragedy; it is a country which has lost its way and whose politicians care little for its reputation. it is not sufficient to change from military leaders to political leaders without changing the underlying political system. It will not work now, nor has it ever worked in the past. There is no check and balance in Pakistan. What Pakistan therefore needs is clear, a comprehensive change of system not a return to the failed politics of the past and another set of cosmetic leadership changes. PAKISTAN'S democracy hasn't suffered because of the illiterate but because of the literate, because of abuses by the privileged who went to Oxford and Cambridge. Ninety percent of Pakistan's politicians are feudal. We have to break the hold of tribal leaders who won't permit development. India got it right when it broke up the great landholdings after independence .Pakistani politicians lack moral values, they have no principals, for the last 60 years they are neglecting education, health, justice and other basic needs of citizens. Pakistan’s endless disputes between army and politicians have turned the country’s governing apparatus from one big feudal calculus to one big military calculation. In 2005 Pakistan ranked 34 in the list of “Top Failed States of the world”, when the list was first published. Pakistan is now ranking at position 12 in the same list, Even countries like North Korea, Bangladesh and Uganda are ranking better than Pakistan in the list. Who is responsible for this??? the answer is military/civilian beau racy, bourgeois and elite class of Pakistan. How can we solve this??? The common man has to come out on the streets, take over the government, form a true democracy, reject all forms of religious intolerance and extremism, reject all these selfish and greedy politicians and develop the country. The common man till to date has been a silent voice in Pakistan. It is the opportunistic politicians, greedy mullahs , military, ISI that have been playing the cards to decide the Pakistani future. It is high time that the common man in the streets of Pakistan takes charge of the country. Unless this happens, there is little hope for Pakistan. Pakitsan needs new faces, educated people in political life of this country . Its up to people in Pakistan to vote for their selfish politicians or reject them. In pakiistan, political parties are family business, this has to be change. Pakistani politicians never had any agenda for development of the country, listen to your members of parliament what they are talking about??? Where is the discussion about the higher education in Pakistan? How are the top notch scientists, engineers and doctors going to be trained? When will govt start pouring funds into these fields? I don’t really understand whether Pakistan and Pakistanis wants to become a peaceful and hopeful country or not.
It is pointless to debate whether the army or the politicians have been responsible for Pakistan.s stillborn democracy. The fact is that democracy would not have failed without their partnership. When Lincoln called democracy the government of the people, by the people and for the people, he basically meant a system of government that empowered the people. But unfortunately, .democracy. in Pakistan, whether of political lineage or genetically modified by the army, has only empowered the already empowered. And it has become a government of them, by them and for them. The challenges that Pakistan faces such as ethno-linguistic divisions, sectarian conflicts, competing visions of national identity, cultural wars, existential struggles between extremism and moderation, civil-military tensions and tussle between the centre and provinces, and above all, the stranglehold of feudalism and the civil-military bureaucracy are not susceptible to resolution by prosperity. So what is the solution? What we need is a reform movement not a political party that should address the fundamental issues confronting Pakistan. What is required is a national re-awakening like the ones that brought about the Meiji Restoration in Japan and launched the Chinese reform movement around the beginning of the 20th century.
The problem is Pakistani society as a whole does not know what Democracy is, this includes the media, public and politicians. Pakistan needs stability, economic vibrancy, poverty alleviation, more education. Its really amazing to observe political developments and politicians in Pakistan, it seems like Pakistani politicians does not have any agenda for the welfare of their voters. I don’t see anyone talking and discussing how to solve crisis like load shedding, clean water to all citizens, health benefits for people, education etc.. Pakistan can never be a true democratic nation, unless the illiteracy is reduced, the judiciary is clean, bureaucracy is defeated and every Pakistani from cities, rural areas develops the political acumen. Barack Obama's victory is a clear message for the oppressed people of those societies and countries of the world who are suffering a lot because of injustice, outdated socio-economic system, and varieties of slavery. Now the time has come that people of Pakistan should stand up for their genuine rights and protest against all social and economic ills and discriminations and search out their own OBAMA.

Peshawar trembling

The Frontier Post
Commitment to Journalism




Not long ago, Peshawar was such a wonderful place to live in; a pleasantly peaceful, tranquil and lovely metropolis it then was. Even on the atrocious watch of the holy fathers, this capital city of the Frontier Province wasn’t as scary a place as has it become now in just a few months of the ANP-led rule. Rampaging lawlessness has become this beleaguered metropolis’s saddening watchword. Just in the past two days, this seat of the Pakhtun pride and honour was a witness to two ignoble criminal acts. In one, an American aid worker was murdered by gunmen along with his local driver. In the other, an Iranian diplomat was kidnapped by armed thugs, who gunned down his guard. Earlier, the Afghan ambassador-designate was similarly seized in the city two months ago and till-date he remains untraced. All these criminal acts were, notably, perpetrated in the provincial capital’s posh quarters, having a greater measure of security. Yet, no feather seems this criminality to have ruffled in any niche of the ruling ANP tribe and its subordinate official hierarchy. Indeed, while criminals of every type and of every category are having a field day, not just in Peshawar but all over the province, the ANP troupes are just entertaining the folks with lullabies, of which they have had enough by now. The ANP tribe talks big but acts small. It makes a brave talk but walks not this talk. It speaks of great Pakhtun traditions but practises these not. It sings of non-violence creed of its great leaders but shows itself to be no worthy followers of theirs. The people are really bored and fed with its incessant hymns and songs. And now they want this ANP tribe, for a change, to do some administrating, instead of keep tormenting them with its intermittent haranguing, hectoring, sermonising and pious vowing. And that is where the tribe is, so far, coming a cropper. The Tuesday’s suicide bombing of the metropolis’s sports stadium could give it an excuse, even as slim. But it can have no excuse at all for failing in averting and stopping the incidence of kidnapping, abductions, robberies, thefts, and street murders and crimes. There obviously is a culpable flaw with its policing and governance. Its top hierarchy’s oft-repeated assertion that it had struck peace deals with the extremists but those were aborted by some third party doesn’t wash. To come convincing, it must specifically identify that third party, which it does not, giving the sense that it is just lying. In any case, the popular perception is that it went for those deals expediently, without doing the proper homework and without making adequate preparations, just to accumulate a few brownie, but uncertain, points. In tatters is thus its peace deal in Swat where Fazlullah in effect used the accord to regroup his mauled thugs. And its Malakand deal with Sufi Mohammad too is in deep troubles, with that old ogre camping out with his fanatical flocks now for over a month to have the accord executed the way he wills. The ANP tribe must understand that governance is very serious, tedious and complex business. It admits of no shallowness, no populism, no bunk talk. It requires mature thinking, creative ideas, wise counsels, pragmatic approaches and practicable strategies. It needs deeds, not words. And this tribe has to show all this in it if it wants to succeed in overcoming what is troubling the province so horrendously. Hitherto, this ANP tribe had been figuring up, at best, as a junior partner in ruling coalitions in the province. It is for the first time that it is in the vanguard of a rainbow governing coalition. And it shouldn’t let this opportunity to earn it good name in annals go waste with its shallowness, inaction, inertia and opportunism that it is presently putting on display.




Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=ed&nid=184&ad=15-11-200
Dated: Saturday, November 15, 2008, Zi'qad 16, 1429 A.H.

Abdul Ghaffar Khan is 'The Frontier Gandhi'

Abdul Ghaffar Khan is 'The Frontier Gandhi'
The devout Muslim leader preached passive resistance and opposed violence.

NEW YORK -- BLOOD-DRENCHED stories about suicide bombings, armed clashes and assassinations that pour from Pakistan's tribal belt these days, while stressing the eruption of Taliban-Al Qaeda-related conflict, often also define the regional culture as one steeped in violence for centuries. But what rarely gets told is how the people of the wild west of Pakistan also share the modern history of radical nonviolence.

Little known in the West is a figure named Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who argued that religiously justified violence was "not God's religion." Known as Badshah (also spelled Baacha) Khan to his followers, the devoutly Muslim leader was called "The Frontier Gandhi" and built an Islamic parallel to Gandhi's violence-eschewing ideals of compassion for one's enemies and peaceful resistance to oppression as a means of overcoming it.


Khan, a Pashtun tribal leader who died at 98 in 1988 in Peshawar, also founded the Awami National Party, which today fights against enormous odds to organize tribal aspirations in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan and nearby areas away from the Taliban. The ANP website -- awaminationalparty.org -- carries an image of Khan's long-nosed, serene face at the top. On Oct. 2, Asfandyar Wali Khan, Khan's grandson and the president of the ANP, survived a suicide bomb attack outside Peshawar that killed four others.

On Nov. 8, the first full filmic account of Badshah Khan's exceptional life will get its American premiere in New York at the Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival, an art film showcase mounted by a group that includes novelist Salman Rushdie on its advisory board. The documentary, titled "The Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan, a Torch for Peace," is the work of filmmaker and writer T.C. McLuhan, daughter of the Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who spent 21years to bring the story to the screen.

A restless, determined woman, McLuhan -- she's called Teri -- made numerous trips to Afghanistan and other places where the Badshah Khan story unfolded, even as American bombs fell in Taliban-held Afghanistan after 9/11 and through the dangerous times that followed. She shot the film in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier Province, giving this story of filmmaking persistence a geopolitical dimension not many can match. Just her tale of transporting two canisters of film stock from Los Angeles across several South Asian borders becomes a saga.


She says she made six trips over the winding Khyber Pass. She dug into archives Afghan film officials sheltered from the Taliban. She managed impossibly smooth tracking shots on rutted streets using a makeshift dolly her Indian cinematographer built with skateboard wheels. A warlord became her guide and appears with her in production stills, standing in a rugged Afghan gully. She had her equipment thrown into the street by police. And she kept going back, using her Canadian citizenship and a widening network of connections to make her account of South Asia's least known great man.

For McLuhan, 62, the finished film completes a journey that started in September 1987 in Berkeley, when an acquaintance gave her "Nonviolent Soldier of Islam," a book by the late Eknath Easwaran, who knew Khan.

McLuhan says her long commitment to her project grew from her feeling about Khan's "uncommon greatness. And that was accompanied by, certainly, uncommon courage. I felt a depth of spirit that I simply wanted to know more about."

She's sitting in her Manhattan editing studio with a poster of Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" (her father made a memorable cameo in the movie) on a wall. The slightly built McLuhan speaks of her filmmaking adventure as if it was all somehow fated. She says that, upon receiving Easwaran's book, "I looked at it and thought, 'I don't know anything about this part of the world,' and three weeks later, at about 3 in the morning, I picked it up and felt all the electrons around me shift."

South Asian luminaries she interviewed included Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose memory of meeting Khan as a boy is one of the film's most intimate moments, and former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who makes it clear he doesn't view Khan as a Pakistani patriot (which Khan really was not, given his quasi-nationalistic ideal of a Pashtun homeland).

McLuhan has made two other films, one a fictional tale about twins -- she is a twin -- called "The Third Walker." She also made "The Shadow Catcher," a documentary about photographer Edward S. Curtis, and has written several books. She refers to Khan, whom she never met, as "BK," as if they were close friends.

As a sweeping narrative of a charismatic pilgrim's progress, "The Frontier Gandhi" has both actual history and certain qualities in common with Richard Attenborough's 1982 epic film "Gandhi," in which Khan plays a minor role. McLuhan follows the arc from Khan's start as the member of an aristocratic family in Charsadda, a town in the Peshawar Valley, to the disappointment his universalist ideals met -- as also happened with Gandhi -- with the partition of India.

"As a young boy," Khan once said, "I had violent tendencies. The hot blood of the Pashtuns ran through my veins. We have an abundance of violence in our nature."

McLuhan uses an actor representing a generic (and sinister) British official to recite historical accounts of how the British empire used its military "streamroller" in the tribal areas to play the "great game" for regional influence against Russia. The British ignored the general welfare of the Pashtun people. Like Gandhi, Khan cultivated nationalistic fervor in the soil of deprivations, including poor education and hunger. He convinced villagers that the old ways of feuds and vendettas thwarted collective progress.

At 20, he opened a local school, making education the root of broader reforms. McLuhan says he started to develop his nonviolent philosophy before meeting Gandhi, after a sort of vision that she never quite details. "There is nothing surprising in a Muslim or a Pashtun like me subscribing to the creed of nonviolence," he says, in a line from McLuhan's film (the voice speaking Khan's words throughout the picture belongs to Indian actor Om Puri). "It was followed 1,400 years ago by the Prophet all the time he was in Mecca."

Khan founded a group called the Khudai Khidmatgar, or servants of God, known as the Red Shirts for the red cotton clothing worn by members, who defied ancient local and religious divisions to join. "The more conservative figure for how many there were at their height is the one I say -- more than 100,000," McLuhan says. "Others have said more than 300,000. There were representatives of many different tribes. Muslims, Hindu, Sikh, Christian and Buddhist."

McLuhan recounted how she gathered and filmed 82 former Khudai Khidmatgars, five of them women, many in their 90s: "One of them had saved his complete uniform." In one interview, we hear how Khan taught people from a warrior world that their oppressors "may kill, but we won't. They may harm us, but we won't harm them."

"Do you know the one word BK used when asked to define nonviolence?" McLuhan asks with hushed intensity, eyes wide with a delight that often infuses them when she speaks of her hero. " 'Nonviolence,' he said, 'is patience.'

"Most certainly the heart of the film," she continues, is the "tone poem" she wove of those at-the-camera faces of the Khudai Khidmatgars as they passionately, in six languages, including Urdu and Pashto, speak the oath they learned when they were being jailed and tortured by the British for following Khan, who spent about two-thirds of his life imprisoned by British and then Pakistan authorities who feared his influence.

The oath turns into verbal music, the English translation orchestrated over the still-audible voices. (The music was overseen by composer-performer David Amram.) "I am a Khudai Khidmatgar," it begins. "And as God needs no service, serving his creation is serving him. I promise to serve humanity in the name of God."



Khan, offered the leadership of the Indian National Congress during India's independence fight, rejected it to avoid becoming a purely political figure. It was a larger focus shared by Khan and Gandhi, who were personally close.

Unlike Gandhi, Khan did not leave a large written record or become a media sensation. But McLuhan found photos of them together that are surprising for their glow of mutual warmth. The petite Gandhi is joined by an Islamic sage who stands towering and sinewy in simple cotton clothing, his gentle-fierce aura something like Gandhi's -- only different.

How, one wonders, can Khan be so little known? In the film, M.J. Akbar, one of India's best-known journalists, gives McLuhan an answer: "The market for nonviolence was so used up by Mahatma Gandhi there was no space left for an alternative Gandhi, for a second Gandhi. You know, this is one of the problems of media -- that even history becomes an exercise in brand building. So the brand was built around Gandhi, and not on Badshah Khan."

Pakistan’s Begging Bowl !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mwaqar
Two interesting news of the month:1..India, the population of which exceeds one billion, saying, “We are going to the moon for the first time. China has gone earlier, but today we are trying to catch them. 2...On the other hand Mr. Zardari takes begging bowl to Beijing and asks for financial help, soon this bowl will surf around the Globe, What a sad paradox between a country that is celebrating its mission to the moon and another that is moaning about the pressure of debts and the fear of bankruptcy. what a shame, for a country which has a population of 172 million, with over 40 million people who can’t read and write, who even don’t have clean drinking water in most parts of the country, country where people even can’t enjoy benefits of electricity and facing over 5 hours of load shedding. Who is responsible for this? Lets blame entire world because we are good at that. Three years ago former president General Pervez Musharraf said, “We have broken th e begging bowl,” and Zardari once said that his country would rather tighten its belt than turn to the IMF for help, don’t we love slogans like this??? but today Pakistan finds itself in desperate need of financial aid since there are warnings that its economy is deteriorating sharply, Pakistan’s begging bowl (kachkole) is not new to the world, for the last, more then 60 years that’s what Pakistani leaders doing, Pakistan did get billions of dollars in aid and cash but what happened to all that money??? Gen. Mush received over 10 billions in last 11 years from USA but people in this country were selling their kids or kidneys or committing suicide, while Musharraf traveled to around 40 countries costing the country's exchequer Rs. 1.4 billion. This "begging bowl syndrome" could be avoided long time ago, if Pakistani politicians, generals, bureaucrats, elite and bourgeois were sincere and had some Ego, we talk about China’s development but we ignore that in China they shoot co rrupt officials and politicians. Pakistan should Toss out the begging bowl mentality and all those who stole money from the nation over 60 years bring it BACK to Pakistan, then these politicians ,generals, bureaucrats, elite and bourgeois will be called sincere leaders, but that will never happen. Its time for Pakistani leaders to decide, what they want ? , science, industry and development or just slogans and get aid from world powers and then steal nation’s money? It is obvious that China and other countries are not going to help Pakistan financially and I don’t blame them, because no one trust dishonest leaders who are not sincere with their country but love to steal people’s money. Can Pakistan ever stand up on it’s feet or it will keep running from one master to another master? It will only get used up and discarded by all. All countries look for their own interest and use other countries to further their own ambitions. It is sad that Pakistanis has been let down by its leader s, military, political and religious leaders , If Pakistan wishes to tie its future to china so be it, but unless this country learns to stand on its own two feet it cannot hope to prosper. A crutch is still a crutch be it be of gold. Pakistani citizens realize that they cannot go around looking for dole outs. Nobody want to be friends with a weaker or poorer nation and if they profess to be friends - be sure to read the fine print: a friendship between a strong and weak nation is flawed in its very concept. The stronger nation would always extract a price for its help and Pakistan experienced this for a long time. whenever there is a partnership of unequal, the stronger always knows that it can arm twist the weaker nation ,lets not blame other countries if they are refusing to help you Mr. President,trash your begging bowl and let Pakistan grow on its own. Lets learn from JAPAN, GERMANY, CHINA, MALAYSIA. Pakistan can’t depend on foreign aid forever, its shameful to go t o China or Saudi Arabia and ask for help. The problem is Pakistani leaders never used foreign aid for people welfare, Unfortunately most of this aid has been wasted on strategic weapons to standoff with India or stolen. Shaukat Aziz, frequently likened Pakistan to a "Tiger economy", the former government left an economy on the brink of ruin without any durable base. The situation in Pakistan for ordinary people is indeed tough. Fuel and wheat prices have skyrocketed. Politicians in current Govt should reduce their spending, stop traveling around the world. To inspire investor confidence, please move your offshore foreign accounts back to Pakistan.When you ask someone for money to help your country, the first question they will ask you is what have you done? If you are not able to show loyalty and sincerity to the country that you are hoping to “save,” it makes it difficult for any foreign country or investor to be willing to put money into Pakistan for development or investmen t.To that effect, any member of the Provinicial or National Assembly, Senators, Ministers, Advisors, Chief Ministers, Governors, Prime Minister and President, along with the leadership of each of the “national” political parties should transfer all their forex balances back to bank accounts in Pakistan. move your money back to Pakistan’s banks, it would stabilize the banks and show confidence to potential investors and donors that the elected government BELIEVES that they can “save Pakistan.” No more unneeded foreign visits or tours. Pakistan is a poor country. Elected leaders keep saying and showing with their policy decisions that Pakistan is running out of money and fast. Therefore, Pakistan can no longer afford to pay for trips to Dubai, London or any other country for the different elected offices. Since the global giants that have financed Pakistan in the past are going through their own economic collapses, there is really no reason to go and beg them for money in r eturn for favors. No more stupid domestic visits.In all actuality, no one wants to meet the elected leadership of Pakistan. Partly because of the security risk that they are, being targets of suicide bombers, and partly that there is really no point in talking to an MPA, MNA, Senator, Minister or anyone else. There is no money to be passed around in grafts and gifts, so there is no reason to travel around promising money to different people and organizations. Nor does the nation have money to pay for big meals and fanfare when someone from the government decides to grace their village, town or city. Reduce all other useless spending. Also politicians like NAWAZ SHARIF.IMRAN KHAN,QAZI HUSSIAN ETC should put their money for national cause and make Pakistan strong. Do you think all these politicians would do this???? I don’t think so and that is sad. You may know thousands of ways how to fail, but you don't know even one way to succeed. Politicians in this country know thousands of wa ys of how to fail themselves, their governments, their people and their country, but not even one single of them have known how to empower himself to succeed, enable his people to succeed and manage his government to succeed. This is a country with a long list of failing leaders: both military and civilians, in fact all, without any exception. It is as if it was the fate of this country to never see the good days that it was supposed to bring for the people who were forced to be Pakistanis without other choices. Everybody who has ruled Pakistan had a bad fate. They victimized the country and the people and ultimately, became the victim of their own mistakes. Pakistani politicians, have a long history of failing themselves, failing each other, failing the country, failing the people and giving every opportunity to the army to intervene and rule them, torture them and put them in jail or send them in exile. The leaders of Pakistan have proved in the history of Pakistan that it is not either manageable or they cannot manage it successfully. The people who live in Pakistan must have new options. They cannot live forever in misery and poverty while the rest of the world moves forward and gains more prosperity, stability, security and peace. If they do not gain prosperity and peace in Pakistan, because of Pakistani leaders, then, they must find their own new ways. Politicians have betrayed this country through poor governance, weak capacity and evil intentions. The Pakistani military has practiced politics, as a player or a puppeteer, right since the early fifties and the politicians have eagerly played into its hands satisfied with the lollipops on offer. It plays more politics than its ostensible role, with pliant, selfish politicians playing eager second fiddles. Politics has not been strangled due to lack of opportunity. The mullah as a political force was created by the army and elite and foreign powers, and it flourished on the fertile soil of circumstance. Exploiting illiteracy and blossoming in a greenhouse provided by the military umbrella, obscurantist religious leaders have come to acquire an influence not justified by their personal endowments. They live in an imaginary world, feed on ignorance and are inspired by quixotic and unreal explanations of the world. Islam for them is only a slogan, something to justify an irrational explanation of religiosity. Pakistan as a nation state of tolerant Muslims is not their goal, and betraying it perhaps religious duty for them. If these failed politicians cant solve Country’s problems then they have no right to be in politics, its time for people in this country to get, stand up and raise your voice, you can’t be beggers for all your life, you can’t make your next generation living on super power’s charity and aid.

Jis khait say dehqa’n ko muyassar na ho rozi
us khet kay har khosha-e-gandum ko jala du.

Pakistan’s Tribal Militias Walk a Tightrope in Fight Against Taliban

Source:NYT.COM


PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Two tribal elders lay stretched out in an orthopedic ward here last week, their plastered limbs and winces of pain grim evidence of the slaughter they survived when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the midst of their tribal gathering.

These wounded men, and many others in the hospital, were supposed to be the backbone of a Pakistani government effort to take on the Taliban, and its backers, Al Qaeda, with armies of traditional tribesmen working in consultation with the Pakistani military.

The tribal militias, known as lashkars, have quickly become a crucial tool of Pakistan’s strategy in the tribal belt, where the army has been fighting the Taliban for more than two months in what army generals acknowledge is a tougher and more protracted slog than they had anticipated. And, indeed, the lashkars’ early efforts have been far from promising.

As the strength of the militants in the tribal areas grows, and as the war across the border in Afghanistan worsens, the Pakistanis are casting about for new tactics. The emergence of the lashkars is a sign of the tribesmen’s rising frustration with the ruthlessness of the Taliban, but also of their traditional desire to run their own affairs and keep the Pakistani Army at bay, Pakistani officers and law enforcement officials say.

Some in Washington have pointed to the emergence of the lashkars as a hopeful parallel to the largely successful Sunni Awakening movement in Iraq, which drew on tribes’ frustration with militant jihadis to build an alliance with American troops that helped lessen violence in Iraq. But there are significant differences, a senior American government official acknowledged. In Anbar Province, he said, the Iraqi tribes “woke up to millions of dollars in government assistance, and the support of the Third Infantry Division.”

But the support by the Pakistani Army and civilian government for the tribal militias has been “episodic” and so far “unsustained,” the official said. In addition, tribal structures in Pakistan have been weakened in recent years by the Taliban, unlike the situation in Iraq.

The tribesmen, armed with antiquated weaponry from the 1980s Afghan war, are facing better equipped, highly motivated Taliban fighters who have intimidated and crushed some of the militia.

In the last two months, the Taliban have burned the homes of tribal leaders and assassinated others who have dared to participate in the resistance. They have pulled tribesmen suspected of backing the militia out of buses and cars and used suicide bombers against them as they did in Orakzai, the place where the wounded in the Peshawar hospital were attacked.

“We wanted to form a lashkar,” said Abdul Rehman, 50, a tribal leader of the Orakzai area, as he lay on his crumpled bed in the Lady Reading hospital. “We were pressured by the government to take action because they warned, ‘If you don’t take action you will be bombed.’ ” The lack of consistent Pakistani Army and government support has left some tribesmen feeling betrayed. About 1,000 tribesmen were meeting on Oct. 10 and had just decided to form a lashkar, when the suicide bomber, armed with perfect intelligence for a pre-emptive strike, killed more than 100 tribesmen and wounded many more.

The next day, government forces struck back in Orakzai, but helicopter gunships hit more civilians than militants, forcing a large number of people to leave the area and providing space for the militants to occupy, residents of the area said.

The Pakistani military is counting on the tribal militias to work as localized forces and to pick up some of the burden of the heavy fighting that is now concentrated in the Bajaur part of the tribal belt. “We’re concentrating on the hard core; the lashkars are cleansing their areas, taking people out in their areas,” one general said.

But in the last four years the Taliban have deliberately singled out pro-government tribal elders, killing as many as 500 of them, and have attracted uneducated tribal youth with the lure of good money and stature.

Even in the best of times, there are basic unwritten rules about the tribal militia in Pakistan that limit their impact.

The Pakistani military, for example, can lend moral support but cannot initiate a tribal militia, the generals said. The lashkars come with their own weapons, food and ammunition. They have their own fixed area of responsibility, and they are not permanent.

Great care is taken to make sure the lashkars do not become a threat to the military itself. “We do not want a lashkar to become an offensive force,” said one of the generals, who spoke frankly about the lashkars on the condition of anonymity. For that reason, the military was willing to lend support artillery and helicopters but would not give the militias heavy weapons, he said.

Beyond those rules, the Pakistani Army and government have not been able to inculcate the lashkars with the needed confidence, said Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of the North-West Frontier Province.

“You put these people up front and you will get them chewed up,” Mr. Aziz said. “If you deploy the lashkar on an ad hoc basis they can be an embarrassment.”

The lashkars’ fragility has been most clearly demonstrated in the Charmang area of Bajaur, a stronghold of the Taliban in the foothills of the mountains that border Afghanistan, where the Taliban have been in control for several years, building supply lines and bases.

The Taliban have ruled civilian life in Charmang, imposing taxes, issuing permits for businesses and handing out their form of justice.

Taj Mohammed, 20, a college student in Bajaur who is now a refugee on the outskirts of Peshawar, said that based on promises from the government that they would receive proper backing, his father and some other elders had formed a lashkar in the village of Hilal Khel.

Immediately, he said, the Taliban brought in 600 reinforcements from Afghanistan under the command of Zia ur-Rehman, a well-known Afghan Taliban leader.

“This weakened the resolve of the elders,” Mr. Mohammed said.

Then, the Taliban sowed terror by kidnapping and killing four tribal leaders of the lashkar, leaving their bodies on the roadside, their throats slit.

After the killings, there was fighting between the lashkar and the militants, Mr. Mohammed said. The Taliban, he said, had “very sophisticated weapons,” including rocket launchers and heavy guns. His father had a Kalashnikov.

“The Taliban came to my father as a leader of the lashkar and said, ‘We will slaughter you.’ ”

The Taliban burned houses in several of Charmang’s villages, he said, an act that is considered a particular humiliation.

After the four killings, many of the leaders of the lashkar fled and others surrendered. The Taliban burned dozens of houses in four villages, particularly in Babara. A request by the lashkar for help from the military did not materialize, and unlike the lashkar, the military took no casualties in the episode, said Fazl-e Sadiq, a schoolteacher from Charmang who is also a refugee in the Peshawar area. “The villagers became very demoralized,” he said.

Mr. Mohammed said his father, Mohammed Gul, was betrayed by the elders of the Hanafia Khel tribe, and he fled for his life. “He tried very hard,” Mr. Mohammed said of his father.

“Now he is in a safe place from the Taliban.”

Among the houses that the Taliban burned was his family home, built 15 years ago at great expense, he said. “My home is very beautiful, my home is very clean, a big house with 12 rooms,” he said in broken English. Thirty members of his extended family, including his wife and 6-month-old daughter, lived there.

“Except for my one clothes, and my one hat,” he had little left, he said pointing to a refugee tent with a couple of mattresses but nothing else.

In one area of Bajaur, known as Salarzai, the recently formed tribal militia has proved a success.

But that was largely because the Taliban have never had strong roots there, and the ancient tribal hierarchy of rich landlords presiding over large properties remains intact, tribesmen from Bajaur said.

The people of Salarzai were strongly motivated to keep the Taliban at bay, said Jalal Uddin, the son of one of the prominent local elders. “I felt overjoyed when I was riding with the lashkar because it meant the old tribal system was working,” Mr. Uddin said.

In a reversal of the pattern elsewhere, the lashkar in Salarzai had recently burned about 20 houses belonging to the militants in the village of Baanda, the only place in Salarzai where the militants have strength, according to Sahibzada Bahahuddin, a journalist in Khar, the capital of Bajaur.

But, so far, such successes are rare in the rest of the tribal region.

In the longer term, the defeat of the lashkar in Charmang would make the situation much more difficult for the government, Mr. Mohammed said. His father felt betrayed, he said, and he doubted that his father would take on such a role again. It was now up to the government to win the war on its own, he said.

As he stood at the flap of his tent, cradling his tiny daughter, Soomia, Mr. Mohammed said that despite the let-down by the government, he wanted nothing more than to return to his lands in Charmang.

“But we must have peace in the area,” he said. “When the Taliban are weakened and the roads are safe we will rebuild. All this depends on the government.”

Pakistan Turns to China's Deep Reserves

Pakistan has reached a critical new phase in its long-deteriorating financial situation, as investor flight and bleeding of national reserves force the country to scramble for international funds to shore up its economy. With the global financial crisis draining coffers in the United States and Europe, the key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism is seeking help from an old friend newly flush with cash: China.

President Asif Ali Zardari arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for a four-day state visit as concern has surged over a possible debt default by Pakistan that could cripple its economy and spark more civil unrest. While the amount of money Pakistan needs in the short term is relatively small -- $4 billion to $6 billion -- analysts say the climate of crisis and public anger over domestic bailouts in the United States and Western Europe have made even a modest infusion from its Western allies politically difficult.

Pakistan's bid for Chinese cash underscores the potential of Beijing's $1.9 trillion in foreign reserves, the largest in the world, to boost its global influence. The government is now seeking as much as $3 billion in emergency assistance from China, as well as assistance from oil-rich Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to a senior Pakistani official. Pakistan's central bank governor, Shashad Akhtar, is in Washington this week to review a draft plan for overhauling the country's finances with the International Monetary Fund, potentially paving the way for future aid.

U.S. military and intelligence officials fear that Pakistan's increasingly precarious economy will compound an already unstable political situation and undermine military cooperation. Both al-Qaeda and the Taliban leadership are located in the rugged, economically depressed region along Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan. The Bush administration and Congress have been shaping a long-term economic and military assistance package for Pakistan, but there is no indication the United States is able to step in with a short-term financial lifeline.

Pakistan is going to the Chinese now "because you go to the guys with the money," a senior International Monetary Fund official said. "And right now, the Chinese are the ones with the money."

Securing as much as $6 billion would buy the government the breathing room it needs, analysts say, to begin a desperately needed overhaul of its budget to sustain Pakistan's battered economy in the longer term.

Pakistan's financial problems go back at least a year, with current and past administrations borrowing from the central bank to sustain generous state subsidies on gasoline and diesel. As global oil prices surged, the government of former President Pervez Musharraf curried favor with average Pakistanis by having the state absorb the shocks. Musharraf ousted a democratically elected government in 1999 and ruled until a civilian coalition was voted into office last spring, headed by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani. The government forced Musharraf from the presidency in August, electing Zardari as his replacement in September.

Analysts and IMF officials say the current government has made notable progress in lifting those subsidies in recent weeks to ease the budget. Yet the global credit crunch and concerns over security have worsened investor flight, with as much as $1.2 billion a month fleeing Pakistan during the summer. National reserves over the past year have fallen 67 percent, to $8.3 billion, leaving the country ill-prepared to deal with financial turbulence as more investors pulled out in recent weeks as the U.S. crisis spread globally.

That has fed two major fears. First, that Pakistan may not be able to secure the funds to avoid a debt default early next year. And second, that investor concern over its potential insolvency could grow into a panic in coming weeks, leading to a far broader capital pullout that could jeopardize the country's financial system.

Unprecedented inflation, political instability and the growing threat from Islamist insurgents have all had sharply negative effects on investor confidence, said Sakib Sherani, chief economist at ABN Amro Bank Pakistan.

"It is clear that Pakistan is facing challenges in its balance of payments. Without cash inflows we are losing about $1 billion a month, which is untenable," Sherani said. "On the one hand, you are paying more for imports in Pakistan; on the other, you have less cash inflows."

On Oct. 6, both Standard & Poors and Moody's downgraded Pakistani bonds. "Only Seychelles has a lower rating, and it has already defaulted on its debt," said John Chambers, managing director with Standard & Poors in New York.

To curb losses, Pakistan in recent weeks has set new rules on stock trading aimed at preventing even sharper sell-offs of Pakistani companies. Some analysts are concerned that the new government may resort to freezing foreign capital, a measure Pakistan took in the 1990s after being slapped with global sanctions for conducting a nuclear test.

The Pakistani government is seeking to ease those fears by bolstering its central bank reserves with funds from China and Gulf states. China and Pakistan have a long history of economic cooperation, based partly on decades of weapons sales, and a lifeline now, particularly so small a sum, would not be seen as unusual. "The Pakistanis like to call the Chinese their all-weather ally, and the U.S. their fair-weather friends," said Daniel Markey, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "This kind of loan could be seen as self-serving by the Chinese, and continue that impression."

A senior Pakistani official said the government requested in July that Saudi Arabia chip in with an "oil facility" -- or an agreement that would grant Pakistan concessionary terms and delayed payments and on roughly half the oil it imports. One reason investors are more concerned about Pakistan now is that Saudi Arabia has not yet responded.

Analysts say the Pakistanis may have better luck at a meeting early next month in the United Arab Emirates of the "Friends of Pakistan" -- a group of countries including the United States and Britain that are considered close allies. They are counting, sources close to the talks said, on countries seeing the danger of an economic collapse in Pakistan and the threat that poses to the war on terror as worth the relatively small price of financial assistance.

A last option might be seeking a lifeline from the IMF, though such an agreement is seen as politically difficult for the new government. Pakistan paid off the last of several IMF loans in 2005, with Musharraf hailing the accomplishment as a breaking of the nation's beggar's bowl. By seeking IMF help now, analysts say, the new government may find itself in the difficult position of explaining to the population why it needs to glue that bowl back together.

Pakistani officials, however, are meeting with IMF officials in Washington now, seeking their "seal of approval" on the plan to rein in runaway spending threatening to bankrupt the government. Although IMF officials say the Pakistanis are not seeking a loan, IMF approval of their economic plans could pave the way for other institutions, including the World Bank and Asian Development Banks, to offer lending. It could also make approval of an IMF loan at a later date happen faster.

"What they want is an endorsement in principle," a senior IMF official said, "something that would make financial support go more smoothly if they decide they do need to ask for it."

A new window to Russia

Analysis-Tanvir Ahmad Khan
Daily Times.

Russia is not returning to a classical version of the Cold War. It is today a post-imperialist authoritarian ‘democracy’ with a well-educated ever-expanding middle class determined to find an honourable place in the comity of nations

Conversations with strategic analysts in Peshawar in the third week of September revealed an earnest preoccupation with the role of Russia in regional developments. Geographical proximity to Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics that are likely to be the locus of a renewed Russian interest provides an obvious explanation.

Rumours of Russia being gradually sucked into the Afghan wars — so far largely unsubstantiated — also sweep into the historical gateway city. One noticed frequent extrapolation into the current situation with the Taliban of the American attempts to destroy the Ho Chi Minh trail that turned the fire in Vietnam into a regional inferno. There was also a greater recognition of the fact that the world is witnessing a slow but steady diffusion of power and influence.

I told my interlocutors in the deeply concerned capital of “Pakhtunkhwa” that the sketchy evidence of Russian arms joining supplies from other known sources in the adjacent zone of conflict need not be connected to the Medvedev-Putin order in Russia. During my assignment to Moscow, I became aware of a large network of arms dealers with years of past service in the KGB, the border forces and the regular military engaged in international arms trade. Such networks are quite capable of operating outside Moscow’s official approval.

So far as Afghanistan is concerned, thousands of Russians who served there during the Soviet occupation — the “Afghanis of Russia” — are still trying to come to terms with the pain and humiliation of a failed mission.

While this is politics of war at its outer and wilder fringes, a vastly more important fact is the resurgence of Russia as a power to reckon with. The Russian military intervention that has led South Ossetia and Abkhazia to virtually break away from Georgia needs a fuller comment another day. Nevertheless the allegations of Russian neo-imperialism and Czarist expansion are designed to obscure the Russian side of the story.

Russian history has often witnessed the rise of leaders using autocratic structures and practices to hold together a sprawling multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-faith land in times of troubles. Putin followed Gorbachev and Yeltsin at a time when many Russians felt that western capitalistic giants had duped them into playing a servile role in the political and economic domain alike. Putin did not abolish either democracy or capitalism but imposed a relentless nationalistic discipline on the new institutions embodying them and then, taking advantage of windfall profits from energy sales, re-energised the state and the society.

Russia was, indeed, flattered by a seat at G-8 table and also attracted by the prospect of joining the WTO. It was, however, not mesmerised enough to forget what Putin gradually defined as Russia’s right to ‘spheres of interest’ and zones of ‘privileged interest’. This doctrine has a territorial map implicit in it.

Russia’s erstwhile satellites in Eastern Europe have undergone deep “westernisation” and revived the old concept of Mitteleuropa separating Western Europe from historical Russia. The three Baltic States also drifted away despite sizeable Russian minorities.

The Russians accepted these realities but were profoundly disillusioned when the West tried to seduce Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova into joining NATO. Putin drew a red line in front of these former Soviet States in his famous speech in Munich in 2007. Nor would Russia abandon its interests in energy rich Central Asia where too one western-backed “colour revolution” had taken place in Kyrgyzstan.

Russia is not returning to a classical version of the Cold War. It is today a post-imperialist authoritarian ‘democracy’ with a well-educated ever-expanding middle class determined to find an honourable place in the comity of nations. Even the diehard Russian Atlanticists now realise that Russia should throw its weight behind an accelerated transition to a multi-polar world. This means rekindling old friendships — China and India — and investment in new ones in its neighbourhood and in far away Latin America.

Logically, Pakistan should figure high on the list. But there is past baggage and also the primacy of time-tested Indo-Russian strategic partnership. There is not enough space today to plot the chequered course of Pakistan-Russia bilateral relations during the last sixty years. For much of the time they were less than friendly though punctuated by periodic efforts to put them on an even keel.

The last effort dates back to General Musharraf’s visit to Moscow in February 2003. There was optimism about a new beginning as it was followed by many other exchanges. The two sides differ on how the momentum was once again lost. President Zardari’s visit to China affords a valuable opportunity to explore how far the Chinese leadership would help remove the obstacles in the path of Pakistan-Russia cooperation.

On the Pakistani side, the Yaqub Khan syndrome of looking at Russia invariably through the prism of the hostility of the 1954-71 era has to be finally cast aside. Secondly, the Pakistan Foreign Office needs to be convinced that a world of multiple centres of political, economic and military power has already arrived. Despite huge flights of capital to the West, Russia today has 90,000 dollar millionaires and many of them are looking for increased interaction with markets in Asia.

In my experience, our own captains of trade and industry give up too quickly when confronted with difficulties of dealing with their Russian counterparts. Russian reluctance to sell arms to us because of their fear of losing lucrative contracts with India, some involving Israel as well, may continue for some more time. But as highly sophisticated hardware from the United States flows into India in the wake of the nuclear deal, even this reluctance may diminish.

It is also important to go beyond set piece Soviet-style cultural exchanges and encourage free interaction among universities, think tanks, media establishments and non-government civil society organisations. It is a project worth developing in our long-term national interest.

Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary and a former ambassador to the Russian Federation. He can be contacted at tanvir.a.khan@gmail.com