Z.A.BHUTTO !!!!!

Mwaqar
ON this spring day, when flowers bloom and sparrows sing, all of nature joins in celebrating creation. For the multitudes of this stricken nation, though, April 4 is a sad reminder of the day when the shadows lengthened and darkness set in forever. Z.A Bhutto was hanged by a military dictator General Zia-Ul Haq by orchestrating a judicial trial to get rid of a popular leader. When the light was put off in one of the most brilliant shining stars in the galaxy in that dark night of April 4, 1979 Bhutto had already made indelible imprints on the sand of time, which no dictator could erase. When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took the reins of a truncated Pakistan in December 1971, a new state was taking shape, not through gaining liberty , it had come into being because it had been decapitated and dismembered. Unlike 1947, there was no hope, no anticipation, no dreams, only distress and dejection. In 1947, Pakistan had to be built from the physical building blocks. In 1971, it had to be rebuilt psychologically. If Jinnah got a moth-eaten Pakistan, Bhutto got a truncated and traumatized Pakistan. He had to carry his charge forward through its first steps in a mocking world. He bore the pain and the passion of a new Pakistan. It was like the first chapter of Genesis. Myriad problems and challenges confronted Pakistan, both at home and abroad. Over 5,000 square miles of territory lay under enemy occupation and 90,000 prisoners of war, 20,000 of them civilians, were languishing in Indian jails. Not a day passed without the anguished cry of thousands of sisters, mothers and relatives reverberating across the country. The humiliating vision of Pakistani soldiers surrendering to General Aurora at the Dhaka Race Course haunted our people. An empty treasury, a tottering economy, an all-pervading sense of gloom - it seemed we were set to collapse in a slow dance of death. Globally, Pakistan had become a pariah. Indira Ghandi threatened and taunted us from across the border while Mujibur Rehman ranted and raved about war trials and demanded a share from our empty coffers. There was a mountain to climb and soon the mountain would become an Everest. But ZAB moved with amazing alacrity in all directions. "We have to pick up the pieces, very small pieces," he declared in his opening address to the nation.
Brick by brick, the edifice of a shattered Pakistan was rebuilt from the debris of defeat and dismemberment. An ailing economy was nursed back to health. In line with the PPP manifesto, agricultural reforms were introduced and land distributed amongst the landless peasants. Labour unions were allowed and the minimum wage for labour was fixed. He gave Pakistan its first constitution, nuclear programme, held peace talks with India and brought 90,000 POW who were in Indian prison and were going to face war crimes.
ZAB opened the doors for Pakistani labour to work in the Arab Gulf states, thus alleviating unemployment and providing the base for foreign remittances. The honor and morale of the demoralized armed forces was restored and they were equipped with some of the most sophisticated weapons the world had to offer. From the ashes of defeat was emerging a new Pakistan. In no time at all, the engines of government were rolling. "If you think FDR had an amazing first 100 days, watch us," he prophetically declared. ZAB possessed a vital magnetism which he transmitted to the people. He could touch the raw nerve of their emotion. He could tap the emotional wellsprings of the nation. He knew the pulse of the people, their heartbeat. They would laugh with him and cry with him. There was a compelling chemistry, an electrical charge that has not dulled with time. It was, in is own words, his greatest romance. He gave to the poor a future and he gave them a voice. He gave them consciousness and dignity which no tank, no dictator can take away. That bond has been frozen into doctrine. He liberated the small farmers and peasants from the repression and cruelty of big landlords and banished the jagirdari and sardari system declaring that all citizens are born equal and must live with equal rights. Z.A Bhutto was a Legend, who lived and died like a hero with courage, determination and devotion to his principles, when cruel dictator Zia was going to kill him, Z.A Bhutto could sign few papers and could live in exile but he was a real man, he was not a coward. He too could have made a deal and lived to fight another day; but only great men with principles sacrifice their life for their cause. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto earned everlasting fame in the pantheon of leaders from the Third World in the struggle against colonialism and imperialism. He had the privilege of interacting with many of those leaders who played a great role in the epic struggle for national independence in the 20th Century including Mao Tse Tung, Soekarno, Chou-en Lai, and Gamal Abdel Nasser. He belonged to a category of anti-imperialist leaders who included Jamal Nasir of Egypt and Jawahir Lal Nehru of India. Life in Pakistan has never been the same again following the judicial murder of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by General Ziaul Haq in April 1979. Bhutto had crash-landed in Pakistan’s politics in 1958 as the youngest minister in the government of Ayub Khan. He was all together a different person in a cabinet that had generals and senior bureaucrats who had been in cahoots with each other to put their claim to power as the legal heirs to the British Raj. As opposed to them Bhutto was driven by his romance with democracy and freedom for the people as envisaged by his leader Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Having found a place for himself on a platform that was not favorable to politicians, Bhutto chartered himself on a course that would give a new sense of direction to the country and a fresh meaning to politics.
In no time Bhutto had made a tremendous impact all around. As Minister for Fuel and Power, he had diverse explorers tapping into Pakistan’s underground hidden energy resources. For the first time Russians were involved in oil and gas exploration. His time as Minister for Science and Technology was well spent. He could measure the advancements made by India in the atomic field. He gave a proper sense of direction to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, set it on the mission to have a sound infrastructure and to educate and train a whole army of nuclear scientists and engineers. It was he who had convinced Ayub to seek enriched uranium course for acquiring nuclear wherewithal. From his death cell he wrote to his "dearest daughter" Benazir Bhutto, "There is personal bitterness no doubt [against Zia regime] but the impersonal hurt predominates over my personal feelings. These [ruling] individuals have taken Pakistan back to 1947. In the process they have robbed the nation of the high ideals and spirit of fraternity the people shared and demonstrated in 1947". He reflects further in the letter: "It is worst than saying we are back to square one or that we are right back to where we started from. Nations do not fall back to square one, nations progress or they deteriorate explosively or decompose silently". Bhutto had believed that the country's sound defense was dependent on a solid industrial base. Pakistan owes not only its nuclear arsenal - now inching towards a fold up - to Bhutto but to him goes the credit of establishing Pakistan Steel Mills, aeronautical and heavy machine tool complexes, shipyard, Karachi Nuclear Power Plant and its automobile industry. His daughter Benazir Bhutto picked up from where her father had left and the combined efforts of the two made Pakistan cover a long way in becoming self-sufficient in missile technology and arms manufacturing including exports. For Pakistan Bhutto was the harbinger of colossal changes. He harnessed socio-economic forces for challenging the status quo, unshackling the masses and their empowerment. His sense of direction not only gave him the strength but also a popular support to consolidate the edifice of the state on an egalitarian program seeking for his people roti, kapra and makkan. Besides, he awakened the masses, making them realized they were the legitimate fountainhead of political power. He deeply cherished democracy and viewed military rule as a negation of the very genesis of the country that came into being as a result of a democratic process and a vote. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had the courage of his conviction to decide to lay down his life rather than compromise or seek appeasement. The last chapter of his life is a glorious example of martyrdom for the cause of resurrection of democracy. At the time of his over throw, Bhutto was emerging as a spokesman of the World of Islam and the leader of the Third World. The age of Bhutto was an Age of Revolution. Although his life and career were cruelly terminated, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto will forever shine in history as one of the Great leaders who took part in the liberation of the Third World from the yoke of Imperialism and Neo Colonialism during the Twentieth Century.  Zulfikar Ali Bhutto used to say that, "courage is in our blood, we are the children of a rich heritage. We shall succeed in our dream of an Islamic association since destiny demands it, political reality justifies it, posterity awaits it".
He laid the foundation for his dream fortress of Islam in Lahore's Islamic Summit in 1974. The rest is then a chapter of blood in history--the blood shed of the Quaid and of his young followers. He was hanged by his own general who once said that the amount of attention Pakistan army received from Prime Minister Bhutto had "no parallel in the history of Pakistan army prior to 1971."
Bhutto pushed politics out of the posh drawing rooms into real Pakistan-into the muddy lanes and villages of the poor.  ZAB was a principled friend to the poor, downtrodden and oppressed. He was fearless in his beliefs and refused to bow before any man or power other than the Almighty. ZAB’S contributions to an impregnable Pakistan are seen in the Kamra Aeronautical factory, Heavy Mechanical Complex at Taxila, modernisation of Karachi Shipyard, creation of precision engineering works, Pakistan Steel Mills, Port Qasim, Pakistan Automobile Corporation to name a few. By signing the Simla Accord of 1972 he negotiated longest peace between India and Pakistan. His social reforms laid the foundation of an egalitarian society, his non-aligned foreign policy earned Pakistan respect in the comity of nations. He lifted the nation drowning in a sea of despair to Himalayan heights.
Bhutto's inspiring leadership filled Pakistanis with hope, energy and strength. There was a sense of purpose and direction in the country in pursuit of peace and prosperity. The economic growth rate increased and money poured in from expatriates who got the universal right to passport. The Muslim countries donated roughly $500 million annually to Pakistan, freeing it of international financial institutions. The people got jobs and opportunities. Women of the country were emancipated entering the police force, Foreign, Civil Service and subordinate judiciary for the first time in the country's history. He was a modernizer and saw nationalism as the key to unity. He rejected fanaticism. He gave pride to the poor. As leader of the Third World he spoke boldly against racism, colonialism and imperialism. He fearlessly defended the right of nations to independence.  He was true to his values. When the time came he sacrificed his life but refused to compromise on his lofty ideals. He was fond of saying; "It is better to live like a lion for one day than to live like a jackal for a thousand." He lived with the courage of a lion, defying death in embracing martyrdom. He said he would show "how a leader of the people lives and dies," and he did. The world pleaded for his life wanting to save a man whose intellect and contribution to peace and progress was vital to the world community. But a frightened dictator, ignoring the unanimous call of the Supreme Court of Pakistan to spare the Quaid's life, ordered the execution in the middle of the night. He was true to his values. Prime Minister Bhutto went bravely to the gallows as the world learnt in shock that it had lost its most beloved son. There was widespread national and international condemnation. Bhutto left his world to enter the pantheon of history where he stands today with other towering personalities who shaped the course of history. His martyrdom sparked freedom movements in many countries as people gathered in capitals across the world to condemn his murder. As a student of history, he knew that eternal life remains in sacrificing oneself for a cause that is larger than an individual. And the noblest of all causes is the cause of the liberation of humanity from tyranny and oppression.. Z A BHUTTO was indeed a great leader, a leader we must salute today. Education was nationalized and made available to every child. Scores of Universities were built to turn the children of the discriminated and downtrodden into lawyers, doctors and engineers liberating them from a destiny of backwardness. Quaid-i-Awam was born in 1928. He was martyred in 1979. Yet he lives in the hearts and minds of the people still shining like a star that brightens the sky motivating those caught in the prisons of oppression. He was the one who converted that static and decayed dictatorial polity into a vibrant and dynamic democratic society; the cost of which he paid with his own life. He who gave his blood, and the blood of his sons and daughter, Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, knew that there can be no sacrifice greater than the sacrifice for the people whose respect, honor and dignity is the respect and dignity of the Nation. Quaid e Awam made the people proud of themselves and of their Nation. The 20th century has seen many great leaders, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is one of them. Due to his glorious achievements, Mr. Bhutto rules the hearts of the Pakistani people from his grave. He was not only the leader of Pakistan, he was the leader of an Islamic world, the leader of Third World. He will forever be remembered by his countrymen as Quaid-e-Awam. ZAB's detractors have distorted history and tampered with the written word. They killed Plato's philosopher-king and filled the space with charlatans. But he has written his own history in blood and the legend has been nourished by the tears and the sweat of those who work in the fields and the factories. Bhutto belonged to the sweat and sorrow of this soil. His soul has mingled with the soul of the multitudes who cry out in their sorrow and in their pain, ZAB gave the people of Pakistan the foundation on which to build an inspired dream palace of their national thoughts. Today, we have surrendered ourselves to the momentum of mediocrity. In Plato's words, "what is honored in a country will be cultivated there." But we are not a nation given to honoring our heroes. Today, let us rise above narrow considerations and interests and acknowledge a man who was a brilliant beacon on the highway of history. As his followers say, "Zinda Hai Bhutto, Zinda Hai"--Bhutto lives, he lives. Indeed he does, in the hearts of all those who dream of a better tomorrow. Long Live Bhuttoism…. 

Can Pakistan Be Governed?

TO ENTER the office where Asif Ali Zardari, the president of Pakistan, conducts his business, you head down a long corridor toward two wax statues of exceptionally tall soldiers, each in a long, white tunic with a glittering column of buttons. On closer inspection, these turn out to be actual humans who have been trained in the arts of immobility. The office they guard, though large, is not especially opulent or stupefying by the standards of such places. President Zardari met me just inside the doorway, then seated himself facing a widescreen TV displaying an image of fish swimming in a deep blue sea. His party spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, and his presidential spokesman, Farahnaz Ispahani, sat facing him, almost as rigid as the soldiers. Zardari is famous for straying off message and saying odd things or jumbling facts and figures. He is also famous for blaming his aides when things go wrong — and things have been going wrong quite a lot lately. Zardari’s aides didn’t want him to talk to me. Now they were tensely waiting for a mishap.

The president himself, natty in a navy suit, his black hair brilliantined to a sheen, was the very picture of ease. Zardari beamed when we talked about New York, where he often lived between 2004, when he was released from prison after eight years, and late 2007, when he returned to Pakistan not long after his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated by terrorists. For all that painful recent history, Zardari is a suave and charming man with a sly grin, and he gives the impression of thoroughly enjoying what must be among the world’s least desirable jobs. Zardari had just been through the most dangerous weeks of his six months in office. He dissolved the government in Punjab, Pakistan’s dominant state, and called out the police to stop the country’s lawyers and leading opposition party from holding a “long march” to demand the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who had been sacked, along with most of the high judiciary, by Zardari’s predecessor, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Zardari defused the situation only by allowing Chaudhry’s return to office and giving in to other demands that he had previously and repeatedly rejected.

Yet, despite this spectacular reversal, the president was not in a remotely penitent state of mind over his handling of the protests against him. “Whoever killed my wife was seeking the Balkanization of Pakistan,” he told me. “There is a view that I saved Pakistan then” — by calling for calm at a perilous moment — “and there is a view that by making this decision I saved Pakistan again.” There had been, he said, a very real threat of a terrorist attack on the marchers on their way to Islamabad. That is why his government invoked a statute dating back to the British raj in order to authorize the police to arrest protesters and prevent the march from forming. I pointed out that Benazir Bhutto faced a far more specific threat and was outraged when General Musharraf kept her from speaking on the pretext of protecting her. The president didn’t miss a beat. “And therefore,” he rejoined, “we moved to the other side”: that is, he reversed his order to the police, and permitted the protesters’ march, just before giving in to their demands altogether.

Zardari has a special talent for maneuvering himself out of the tight spots he gets himself into. But the Pakistani people have grown weary of his artful dodging. Zardari’s poll numbers are dreadful. More important, he has given little sustained attention to the country’s overwhelming problems — including, of course, the Islamist extremism that, for the Obama administration, has made Pakistan quite possibly the most important, and worrisome, country in the world. Zardari has bought himself more time, but for Pakistan itself, the clock is ticking louder and louder.

When I arrived in Islamabad on March 10, the long march was set to begin in two days and had come to feel like a storm gathering force at sea — one that might peter out before it hit land or turn into a Category 4 hurricane. In a country where democracy feels as flimsy as a wooden shack, the foreboding was very real. “Our condition is much more fragile than it was in the 1990s,” Samina Ahmed, the International Crisis Group’s longtime Pakistan analyst, told me. (The I.C.G. is a sponsor of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, where I am the policy director.) The Taliban and other extremists had, she estimated, placed half the country beyond the control of security forces. The government had recently ceded control over the Swat Valley, 100 miles from the nation’s capital, to the extremists.

Pakistan feels as if it’s falling apart. Last fall the country barely avoided bankruptcy. The tribal areas, which border on Afghanistan, remain a vast Taliban sanctuary and redoubt. The giant province of Baluchistan, though far more accessible, is racked by a Baluchi separatist rebellion, while American officials view Quetta, Baluchistan’s capital, as Taliban HQ. American policy has arguably made the situation even worse, for the Predator-drone attacks along the border, though effective, drive the Taliban eastward, deeper into Pakistan. And the strategy has been only reinforcing hostility to the United States among ordinary Pakistanis.

Pakistan has made itself the supreme conundrum of American foreign policy. During the campaign, Obama often said that the heart of the terrorist threat was not Iraq but Afghanistan and Pakistan, and once in office he had senior policy makers undertake an array of reviews designed to coordinate policy in the region. They seem to have narrowed the target area even further, to the Pakistani frontier. “For the American people,” Obama announced on March 27, “this border region has become the most dangerous place in the world.” Some officials see Pakistan as a volcano that, should it blow, would send an inconceivable amount of poisonous ash raining down on the world around it. David Kilcullen, a key adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, the Centcom commander, recently asserted that “within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state,” a calamity that, given the country’s size, strategic location and nuclear stockpile, would “dwarf” all other current crises.

And amid all that, Pakistan’s president appeared to be playing with fire. Zardari was setting his security forces on peaceful demonstrators, just as his authoritarian predecessor, General Musharraf, did — against members of Zardari’s own political party — several years earlier. The government crackdown, designed to prevent the marchers from reaching the capital, began on March 11. The police swept through the homes of opposition-party leaders, lawmakers, activists, “miscreants” and ordinary party workers. Many leading officials were already underground, but hundreds of arrests were made. By the 12th, the first day of the march, much of the country was glued to the television, where swarms of heavily armed policemen could be seen knocking down protesters and dragging them off to the paddy wagons. Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the main opposition party, saw the protests as the “prelude to a revolution,” while Rehman Malik, a key Zardari adviser, accused Sharif of “sedition.”

The posturing and hyperbole would have been comical if the stakes weren’t so high. Although in Pakistan, it’s true, the stakes always feel high.

FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS, Pakistan has been living through a dangerous and thrilling era of popular agitation and spasmodic crackdown. In March 2007, General Musharraf made the colossal miscalculation of insisting that Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, whose activism on the bench had threatened the military’s invulnerability to legal prosecution, step down. In decades past, judges quietly acceded under such duress, and Musharraf may be excused for calculating that Chaudhry, an unassuming figure, would do likewise. Instead, the chief justice stood up to the president, who then fired him, creating a national hero of resistance. Tens of thousands of people lined the roads and cheered as Chaudhry barnstormed across the country — an astonishing sign of Pakistanis’ craving, after years of repression, for democracy and the liberal principles established in Pakistan’s Constitution.

That October, under intense domestic and American pressure, Mu sharraf agreed to permit Benazir Bhutto, who had been living in Dubai, to return. Bhutto and her chief rival, Nawaz Sharif, had been exiled from Pakistan since their respective terms as prime minister. But their political parties — Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) — continued to operate under Musharraf, and their partisans waited for the return of their leaders to revive the nation’s democratic politics.

TWO MONTHS AFTER HER ARRIVAL, Bhutto was killed in an attack in Rawalpindi. Her death was experienced as a national calamity — both a terrifying proof of the growing reach of terrorism inside Pakistan and a grave blow to the country’s democratic hopes. Three days later, the PPP — an arm of the Bhutto family since its founding by her father 40 years earlier — chose her widower, Zardari, and their 19-year-old son as co-chairmen, the elder acting in effect as regent for the younger. In elections seven weeks later, the PPP, buoyed by sympathy over Bhutto’s death and vowing to take up the cause of the deposed judges, won. It formed a coalition government that included regional allies and Sharif’s PML-N. Here, at last, was a chance for a new beginning.

In May 2006, Bhutto and Sharif met in London to sign a document known as the Charter of Democracy. The two vowed to rescind a raft of amendments that military rulers had added to the Constitution, including several that empowered the president at the expense of the prime minister, and to establish a merit-based system for picking judges (a practice neither Bhutto nor Sharif even remotely favored while in office). But Zardari seemed much less interested in these constitutional questions than Sharif, who made the restitution of judges a centerpiece of his campaign. (He compelled all of his party’s parliamentary candidates to swear an oath before him demanding that the judges be restored.)

In May 2008, less than three months after the government was formed, Sharif pulled his ministers from the cabinet. But he continued pressing Zardari to abide by the spirit of the Charter of Democracy. On Aug. 7, Zardari signed a document pledging that a “nonpartisan” figure would assume the presidency and that this person would restore the judges shortly after taking office. When it became clear, in late August, that Zardari himself would become president, an irate Sharif withdrew from the coalition altogether.

On Sept. 9, Zardari became president of Pakistan and proceeded to ignore his promise to restore the judges. I asked Zardari how he could have done so. He explained that since General Musharraf had agreed to resign rather than face impeachment proceedings, “everybody goes back to start fresh.” Apparently this was, in Zardari’s mind, a special kind of pact that ceased to be binding when one party concluded that the circumstances under which it had been accepted had changed. Zar dari kept nibbling away at this perplexing concept. The document he had signed was “an agreement by consent,” not “an agreement by law.” It was like a marriage. It was like a merger. I said that I wondered if Sharif would agree; he may well have thought that Zardari had, in fact, bound himself to act with dispatch. “Maybe that might be the interpretation assumed by him,” the president conceded.

Zardari did win a partial victory: he persuaded 57 of the remaining 63 High Court judges to take a new oath in order to be restored to office. But the other six, including Chaudhry, refused to do so, on the grounds that, as they had been unconstitutionally deprived of office, the oaths they swore earlier remained in force. Early this year, the lawyers began planning their march, which was to terminate with a sit-in in Islamabad. The government would be able to dismiss a sit-in among lawyers as a nuisance; only with the active involvement of the PML-N, with its vast rank and file and its control over the Punjab state apparatus, would the protest truly pose a threat to Zardari. In mid-February, the PML-N agreed to join the lawyers not only for the planned march but also for the sit-in, which held far greater potential for confrontation.

Ten days later, on Feb. 25, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar — whom Musharraf had elevated to replace Chaudhry, and whom Zardari had consistently supported (rumors abound of late-night conversations between them in the president’s house) — abruptly issued a decision on a case that had been pending for eight months, finding that Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz, the chief minister of Punjab, could not hold elective office because they had previously been convicted of crimes. It was widely assumed that Zardari engineered this outcome to end PML-N control over Punjab. That very evening he gave substance to these suspicions by suspending Punjab’s elected government in favor of rule by the governor, a federal appointee. This combination of moves had the appearance of a coup. It caused outrage in the Punjab, in the ranks of the PML-N and throughout the country.

When I asked Zardari why he had imposed governor’s rule, he embarked on another adventure in logic. “No democratic party would like to do governor’s rule,” he said. “It’s in the Constitution; it’s part of necessity. The government advised me to put governor’s rule, and I took their advice, as I am bound by the Constitution to accept the advice from the government.” The official line is that, with the local government dissolved and no single party in the majority and thus able to form a new government, Islamabad had to step in. In fact, in such situations the Constitution requires the governor to ask the largest party to seek to form a majority — as the PML-N surely would have done — although the president does have the right to impose governor’s rule if he judges the province to be unstable.

Zardari is, as all acknowledge, a very shrewd operator, but he seems to have little feel for public opinion: by overturning the Punjab government, he had sown a whirlwind. One leader of the planned march pointed out to me that the government could have completely taken the breeze out of the lawyers’ sails by pushing the Supreme Court to decide in favor of the Sharifs rather than against them; such an act might well have made Chaudhry’s restoration seem unnecessary. But Zardari, who traffics heavily in metaphors of combat, seems to prefer either guile or trials of strength.

Zardari’s critics were divided over the wisdom of the planned march and sit-in. “Zardari is not the issue,” Samina Ahmed told me. “It’s the institutions and processes that matter a lot. If the government is to be replaced, it has to be replaced by the people, who vote for a new government.” No democratic government in the history of Pakistan has been replaced by an orderly transition through a regularly scheduled election; Ahmed said she believed that democracy would never truly take hold until such transitions became the norm.

But others said that Zardari was very much the problem — that he was himself the chief obstacle to democratic change. Nasim Zehra, a journalist who runs the current-affairs bureau of Dunya News, a new, private Urdu-language TV station, viewed Zardari as every bit as willing to manipulate the Constitution as Musharraf had been. The real problem, she said, “is the culture of the exercise of power.” The only way to change this culture was from the outside. In her view, a new “Pakistani narrative” arose with the lawyers movement of 2007 — the narrative of “movement politics” rather than party politics, a grass-roots movement of the street, buoyed by the growth of new media, which demands systemic change rather than yet another partisan shift.

THE QUESTION, AT BOTTOM, is not, Why is Pakistan such a mess? but, Why is Pakistan still such a mess? After all, in the 1960s, Ayub Khan, the country’s generalissimo-philosopher, was celebrated, along with Park Chung-hee of South Korea and Chiang Kai-shek of Taiwan, as the very type of the market-oriented autocrat third-world nations were said to need if they were to pull themselves out of poverty. Pakistan was favorably contrasted with India: a socialist democracy with a carnivalesque political scene, an asphyxiating bureaucracy and a “Hindu rate of growth” apparently fixed at 3 percent of G.D.P. Of course, that was then. Only more recently has it become clear that India’s democracy allowed the country’s innumerable religious, ethnic, caste and language groups to find places for themselves through the ballot and to build an economy as freewheeling as its politics. Pakistan, meanwhile, has stagnated.

Histories of Pakistan often point to the original sin of its founding in 1947. The very word “Pakistan” was an artifice, coined mainly from the first letters of the provinces that Muslim leaders in India had dreamed of forging into a separate Muslim state. “India’s Muslims demanded Pakistan without really knowing the results of that demand,” wrote Husain Haqqani in “Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military.” (Haqqani is now Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States.) And when Pakistan’s hero-founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, died one year after independence, and his chief lieutenant, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated three years later, Pakistan’s leadership fell to bureaucrats and soldiers. Neither held democracy in high regard. This new establishment did have a clear idea of Pakistan’s identity: it was a refuge for South Asian Muslims from an India bent on subsuming the new country back into the “Hindu raj.” Pakistan understood itself, and organized itself, as a national-security state with strong cold-war ties to the United States. Ayub Khan put an end to civilian government with a military coup in 1958. Pakistan’s identity and ideology were to be dictated from the top down, without the bother of elections.

The army remained firmly in control of Pakistan’s destinies for 30 years, with an interval for the turbulent era of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who inherited power from an army discredited by its inept handling of the 1971 war with the breakaway province of East Pakistan (which then became Bangladesh). Several years earlier, Bhutto founded the PPP, whose slogan was simplicity itself — “Roti, Kapra aur Makan” — “Bread, Clothing and Shelter.” The mere act of speaking directly to the aspirations of ordinary citizens constituted a radical challenge to Pakistan’s model of “guided development.” The fact that this worldly, witty scion of an old, wealthy Sindhi landowning family was himself a charter member of Pakistan’s establishment made his challenge to the system all the more electrifying, and dangerous. The military, and indeed much of official Washington, viewed Bhutto as a dangerous rabble-rouser; he was overthrown in 1977.

Bhutto’s army chief of staff, Zia ul-Haq, not only deposed the prime minister but had him tried and executed two years later on a trumped-up charge. Zia crushed all opposition and introduced into the country’s public life, especially into the military, a quite new element of austere and evangelical piety. Previous rulers, themselves religiously moderate, found Islam convenient, in much the same way that they found India convenient. Zia, a true believer, empowered religious societies and political parties in a bid to foster a new national ideology. His tenure coincided with the C.I.A.’s war on the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; Zia’s military and intelligence officials were the ones who controlled the Afghan mujahedeen, doled out their American funds and sometimes came to share their worldview.

By the time of Zia’s death in a plane crash in 1988, his harsh reign was coming unglued in the face of a democratic challenge led by Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir. A new era began in which all the forces born over the previous four decades contended for supremacy: the military sense of right and obligation to rule; populist and democratic politics; Islamic mobilization; and, increasingly, blatant, rampant corruption. Bhutto was twice elected prime minister, and she was twice removed by the country’s president, acting at the behest of the military, “for corruption and incompetence.” The chief source of corruption, according to many analysts, was her husband. Zardari was jailed on a series of charges — none of which he was ultimately convicted of — from 1990 until Bhutto returned to power in 1993.

Each time Bhutto fell, a new election was held, and she was replaced by Nawaz Sharif, a protégé of General Zia and a voice for the citizens of Punjab, as well as for those uncomfortable with the “liberalism” — or secularism — of the PPP. Like Benazir Bhutto, Sharif ruled with the sufferance of the military and the intelligence apparatus. And like her, he ultimately fell afoul of his overseers. The era of democratic rule came to a crashing end in 1999, when General Musharraf led yet another coup.

THE GENERALS HAD CREATED a self-fulfilling prophecy: by infantilizing Pakistan’s democracy, they proved that civilians were unfit to rule. Indeed, as Zardari sagely observed in our conversation: “If you look at your own history, American history, and then you see, How does democracy become the best formula of the world to govern? Democracy becomes the best formula of the world because it learns from its mistakes.” The generals had never given civilian rule the chance. Of course, that was precisely the precious opportunity that Zardari’s critics said he was so recklessly putting at risk.

As a young man in Karachi, Asif Ali Zardari had a distinctly raffish reputation. A contemporary of Zardari’s from those days told me that his family had warned him away from Zardari, who was said to run in a bad crowd. His father had been a middling landowner — a feudal, in Pakistani terms — who had urbanized and owned the Bambina Cinema, which showed American movies. As a kid, Zardari hung around the theater and got into scrapes. He went to London, where, according to his wife — in her autobiography, “Daughter of the East” — he attended the “London Centre of Economic and Political Studies.” Zardari now says he studied at something called the London School of Business Studies. Young Zardari seemed much more interested in spending money than in making it. He had a disco in his house — very much the rage in Karachi at the time — and he drank and chased women. He was an ardent polo player with his own squad, known as the Zardari Four. He was handsome, trim in his polo outfit, with a flourishing mustache.

Zardari pretends — but just barely — to be stumped by accounts of his former exploits. When I asked about the fabulous jewelry he bought and the great wine he drank once he came into real money, he waggled his eyebrows, Groucho-wise, in mute acknowledgment of past delights. “I will not comment on those things,” he said gravely, “because Islam forbids drinking.” What’s more, he added, with a show of indignation, “this description you give — who is fun-loving, who is easygoing, who is consumption of Scotching and wining and dining and dancing — why would that kind of man opt for a life that he knows for sure that he will have to go through a lot of trouble and tribulation?” Why, in short, would he marry Benazir Bhutto — besides the fact that she was the most dazzling woman in Pakistan, beautiful, rich and famous? Zardari says that he wooed Bhutto because “she was the ultimate hope for Pakistan.” O.K. He also said, rather mysteriously, “Benazir and myself are related.” This, if true, was news to even very knowledgeable observers. Whatever the case, Zardari pursued Bhutto tirelessly, while his stepmother worked on Bhutto’s female relatives, in the time-honored fashion. Bhutto writes that she found him gallant, gracious and charming. In December 1987, they married. One year later, she won a resounding electoral victory and became prime minister.

Over the course of the next seven years, while his wife was in and out of power, he appears to have spent his time making himself immensely wealthy. He bought a 355-acre estate south of London and an apartment in London, among other properties. Investigators once found an account at Citibank with more than $40 million in it. The revenue for all this is widely believed to have come from bribes; Zardari became known as “Mr. 10 Percent.” He came to be seen as well as something of a thug: among the notorious tales from that time that Pakistanis love repeating to one another was one from 1990, when Zardari supposedly strapped a bomb to a man’s leg and forced him to withdraw millions of rupees from his bank account. Saeed Minhas, the Islamabad editor of Daily Aajkal, first met Zardari at this time and was shocked to discover, upon being hugged by him, that Zardari had a pistol tucked into his salwar kameez.

Among the many court cases mounted against Zardari and his wife were one in Switzerland claiming that he had received illegal commissions in exchange for awarding contracts to two Swiss companies and another for supposedly taking bribes from a Dubai-based gold-bullion dealership. Pakistani investigative officials claimed that the Bhutto family and associates took in more than $1.5 billion through various questionable schemes during this period. Nevertheless, Zardari can rightly assert that he has never been convicted, though in large part because Musharraf passed an ordinance wiping out pending cases against senior officials (himself included).

Zardari was imprisoned once again after Bhutto’s second tenure ended in 1996, and he remained in jail until 2004. He was an “A Class” prisoner, enjoying fine meals delivered from the Bhutto mansion, but he also says he was tortured, including having his tongue ripped open. The injustice and the suffering he endured — and endured with excellent humor and composure — provided him with a moral currency, which he otherwise altogether lacked, in the culture of the PPP. Indeed, when I asked Farhatullah Babar, the party spokesman, why the PPP chose Zardari to lead it, he said, “One factor was this” — and pulled down from the wall a framed copy of a letter Bhutto wrote out by hand. Babar read aloud the crucial passage: “I would like my husband Asif Ali Zar dari to lead you in the interim period until you and he decide what is best. I say this because he is a man of courage and honor. He spent more than 11 1/2 years in prison without bending despite torture.” This document is dismissed as a transparent forgery by the many people who loathe Zardari. As with practically everything else about him, the truth is very difficult to determine.

Zardari does seem to have exhausted much of the deep well of loyalty from which Benazir Bhutto and her father drew. I met any number of people who told me that they had been party members practically since birth, that the Bhuttos had stayed at their parents’ homes — and that while they would never, ever abandon the party, they had given up on Zardari. Safdar Abbasi, who had worked with Benazir since 1983 and was with her when she died, said to me: “Mr. Zardari had the opportunity of continuing with the legacy of both the Bhuttos and going on with the populist line. Instead, he opted for power politics.”

The issue that comes up again and again is Zardari’s supplanting of competent figures in favor of a tight, and isolating, circle of loyalists, friends from prison days and family members. Rehmat Shah Afridi, the publisher of The Frontier Post, a former boon companion of Zardari and still, he says, a confidant, speaks much more fondly of Pakistan’s president than do many others. “He is a very good friend,” Afridi says. “He never thinks, You are a small man, or a poor man, and I am a big man.” But even Afridi says that Zardari’s fatal weakness is his habit of trusting his friends — or the wrong friends. He recalls visiting Zardari last spring and saying: “Please, Asif, who is on your left and right? If they did some good for you when you were in prison, give them some portfolio, but don’t put them in your kitchen cabinet.” Zardari, he says, “is surrounded by the most corrupt people, from Karachi and Khyber.” I asked Afridi why Zardari consorts with these characters. “Because,” he said, “they know how to butter him.”

Government-by-crony is scarcely unheard-of in Pakistan — or elsewhere. But the urgency of Pakistan’s problems make clubhouse rule seem like a dangerous anachronism. One morning I met with Ahmad Mukhtar, the minister of defense. I asked an aide why we were meeting in the office of Pakistan International Airlines. “Oh,” he said, “Mr. Mukhtar is also chairman of P.I.A.” — another government post. Mukhtar offered a series of extremely stilted explanations for his party’s behavior in the current political crisis as well as for the president’s accumulation of wealth — “Anyone who has land will become very rich in this country” — and spoke of military matters with surprising vagueness. I asked if he had a background in either the military or aviation. “No,” he said, “I’m a businessman. We’re into shoes.” His family had 400 shoe stores. More important, he was a PPP veteran and a Zardari loyalist who spent time with him in jail.

BY MARCH 12, THE FIRST DAY of the long march, Pakistanis were watching the narrative of “movement politics” unfold — live, on television — as policemen in riot gear lobbed tear-gas canisters at lawyers in black suits, ladies in high heels, PML-N workers and the more battle-hardened rank and file of the Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami. By the following day, the “AA,” as the Pakistanis say — the army and the Americans, the twin bogeys of civilian government — had swung into action. The army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, had met several times with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and with Zardari. He was said to be urging compromise with the marchers, though the meetings themselves awakened fears from Pakistan’s not-very-distant past. Anne Patterson, the American ambassador, met with both Zardari and Nawaz Sharif. Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s special envoy for the region, spoke with Zardari; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a 25-minute conversation with Zardari and spoke with Sharif as well.

For perhaps the first time in the history of Pakistan, these feared forces, the AA, were trying to protect democracy rather than curtail it — though you could argue that all this meddling only confirmed, and perpetuated, the country’s political immaturity. In any case, neither side was prepared to buckle under outside pressure: Zardari offered to reopen the Supreme Court case against the Sharifs, but not to restore the judges; Sharif refused to call off the march. The confrontation moved toward its climax.

It was very easy to forget, amid all the hullabaloo, exactly why it was that Pakistan, the world’s sixth most populous nation, with 170 million people, so desperately needs effective governance. It’s the threat of extremism, of course, that accounts for all those phone calls from high-ranking American officials. But the exigencies of daily life come first for most Pakistani citizens. I received a sobering account of economic failure from Shaukat Tarin, the minister of finance. A former Citibank executive with an old-fashioned banker’s girth, Tarin is one of the very few technocrats in a cabinet consisting largely of loyalists. It was Tarin who steered Pakistan away from the shoals of bankruptcy last fall by negotiating a $7.6 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. Now he is trying to make long-term plans — which, he added, the president had given him a free hand to do. Tarin ticked off Pakistan’s dismal current indicators: the growth rate of agricultural production has dropped every decade, and the country is now importing wheat; real income growth has been concentrated among the urban middle class, while rural poverty has increased; manufacturing is in decline; the information- technology sector booming in India barely exists. Only remittances from Pakistanis working abroad have staved off disaster.

Everybody’s favorite front-line state, Pakistan has suffered the “foreign-aid curse” as other nations suffer “the resource curse.” As Tarin put it, “We have avoided the tough decisions, and we just keep hoping that something will happen, and we will get this infusion of foreign aid.” Tax-collection rates are dismal, and the country spends paltry sums on education and health. Little serious planning has been done on either agriculture or manufacturing. Infrastructure remains primitive. And the bureaucratic culture sedates the entrepreneurial spirit. “There’s no performance management,” Tarin said, “no merit, a lot of nepotism.”

I asked Tarin if he worried that Pakistan’s political melodrama would diffuse the intense focus the country’s problems require. He laughed uneasily. The country’s chaotic politics “could have wrecked the very democracy we were talking about,” he said. “You cannot achieve economic stability without political stability.” But when I asked Tarin if any of his cabinet colleagues shared his sense of urgency and of the need for systemic change, he maintained a prudent silence. “This is the long-term history of Pakistan,” he said. “This is not one government.”

Zardari maintains that while Pakistan imported grain last year — when he wasn’t in office — it had a bumper crop this year. He seemed to share Tarin’s view of the dangers of aid dependence. “The world philosophers,” he asserted, “have come to the conclusion that aid has never been one of the best ways of developing countries.” But then he scrambled his talking points and said that when he first spoke with Bush administration officials, he called for a “Marshall Plan” for Pakistan.

The civilian government does at least exercise control over the economy, but national security and defense remain the domain of the military. Early in his tenure, Zardari made several bold efforts to assert civilian authority over the military. He sought to transfer control over the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the feared military-intelligence service, from the army to the Ministry of the Interior; the military simply refused. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, carried out by Pakistanis apparently operating from a Pakistani base, Prime Minister Gilani said that Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of the ISI, would go to India to coordinate the investigation; instead, a lower-level official was dispatched. After these episodes, Zardari backed off.

The relationship between the military and the civilian government is thoroughly opaque, and you can hear wildly different views about the ambitions of the military from Pakistani analysts. Rifaat Hussain, a military analyst at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, says flatly, “I can assure you that General Kayani has absolutely no political ambitions.” I heard the same view from retired military officials and diplomats. Others are not nearly so persuaded. Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group worries that American military officials are far too inclined to accept Kayani’s insistence that he wishes to return the military to the barracks. She points out that he previously served as director-general of the ISI, which is notorious for playing by its own rules — and elements of which, according to American officials cited in a recent New York Times account, continue to work with terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, which appears to have planned the November attack in Mumbai. During the crisis of the long march, Ahmed said, the military “would have been given a pretext to intervene,” if only by forcing the antagonists to settle on terms of its own devising. No one I spoke with said he believed that the military wanted to seize power, but many argued that it seeks to expand its own space at the expense of civilian government.

There is, of course, a reciprocal relationship between weak civilian governance and military supremacy. Lt. Gen. Talat Masood, a retired officer and a leading military analyst, pointed out that so long as party hacks serve in the most sensitive positions, the military will feel justified in preserving its position. Another example of weak governance, according to Masood, was Zardari’s statement in a speech that Pakistan would not be the first to use nuclear weapons against India — a break with Pakistani doctrine hailed by many as a significant breakthrough. Not Masood: “I would have been very happy if he had seriously said, ‘No first use.’ But the way he did it was irrelevant. It wasn’t part of a larger strategic rethinking. He didn’t discuss it with the military” — which controls nuclear policy. “He doesn’t even understand the vocabulary.”

Zardari actually seems less encumbered by the obsession with India, and less equivocal about the need to take on terrorists, than most of his predecessors, including his wife. Precisely because he is an outsider, he was not immersed in the culture of Pakistan’s security services. And yet the widespread perception that he has tacitly approved the Americans’ drone strikes, as well as occasional hot-pursuit violation of Pakistan’s border, has damaged him politically. And in any case, his failure to formulate a coherent security policy, much less to articulate it in public, has reduced his views almost to a curiosity. Masood, an avowed foe of military supremacy, is biting on the subject. “The only way to counter the rising force of extremism in Pakistan today is through the strengthening of civil society,” he told me. “Zardari is doing just the opposite.”

Underneath all of Pakistan’s problems is the failure to provide decent governance. Extremism flourishes in the absence of legitimate state authority. This is patent in the self-governing tribal areas along the Afghan border, but the most striking current example is the Swat Valley, once a honeymooners’ paradise and now a militant statelet within Pakistan’s formal jurisdiction. The army actually succeeded in pushing militants out of the area in 2006 and 2007. But the government of the North-West Frontier Province, which Musharraf had given as a sort of prize to his more moderate Islamist allies, made little attempt to field a police presence, or to provide the services, above all functioning courts, that residents of the area demanded. These are the same demands Pakistanis elsewhere have made; the difference was that in Swat the extremists offered themselves as an alternative.

The new provincial government elected in 2008 promised to negotiate with the extremists rather than fight them. And that is precisely what has happened. The forces of Sufi Muhammad, the militant leader, have laid down their arms in exchange for a pledge to create Shariah courts. But other militants have an agenda of their own, including closing down girls’ schools. Most analysts were appalled by the deal. “It was an act of capitulation,” says Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. “And there’s no assurance that this will be the final domino.” Zardari, to his credit, has so far refused to sign off on the deal. But there’s little he can do to affect the outcome.

Meanwhile, American policy is coming down the road like a monster truck. With the strategic reviews now complete, the Obama administration is planning an enormous increase in development aid to Pakistan, reaching $1.5 billion a year over five years, as well as an increase in military aid, to be directed to counterinsurgency warfare. The administration’s increasing receptivity to negotiating with some elements of the Taliban and fighting others puts it far more in line with Pakistani thinking than the Bush administration ever was. But as President Obama said on March 27, “after years of mixed results” from military aid to Pakistan, “we will not provide a blank check.” Obama emphasized that extremists “are a grave and urgent danger to the people of Pakistan.” Someone in Pakistan must make that case, and it can’t be the army chief of staff. As Ambassador Lodhi told me: “Pakistan needs strong leaders who can stand up and say, ‘Here is the extremist threat that Pakistan faces, and this is what we must do.’ We have a democratic government, but they haven’t used that status to go to the people and articulate a policy.”

SUNDAY, MARCH 15, turned out to be one of the most extraordinary, and exciting, days in the recent history of Pakistan. That morning, a spokesman for the PML-N reported that more than 3,000 party workers had been arrested. Hundreds of police officers surrounded the home of Nawaz Sharif, and officials announced that he would be detained there for the next 72 hours. The lawyers’ leader, Aitzaz Ahsan, was detained and then escaped. In Lahore, cadres of the Jamaat-e-Islami Party threw rocks at advancing officers; the officers flung the rocks back and fired hundreds of rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets. The roads to Islamabad were sealed off with trucks, containers and steel barriers. The Zardari government appeared to have successfully squelched the long march, even if at real cost to its standing.

And then it hadn’t. Around 4:30 that afternoon, the Lahore police district coordinating officer announced his resignation from the force — live, on television. Other officers followed. Sharif left his home in a caravan of cars — and as the caravan inched forward, the police fell back and then melted away. The government continued to take a hard line, but plainly, something had happened. Around midnight, reports began to circulate that Prime Minister Gilani would speak. The cabinet was meeting; General Kayani was once again on the scene. Pakistanis, a late-night people in any case, waited hour by hour in front of the television. Finally, at 5 in the morning, Gilani delivered a brief address in which he announced that the government had agreed to reinstate Chief Justice Chaudhry the following Saturday, when Chief Justice Dogar was scheduled to retire from the bench. Sharif and the lawyers agreed to call off the long march.

THE NEXT DAY, EVERYONE was jubilant, save PPP officials. The whole nail-biting drama had provided a tremendous boon to Sharif, to the lawyers and to the judiciary, to General Kayani and perhaps to the prime minister — to everyone, in short, save Asif Ali Zardari. Sheik Mansour Ahmed, a PPP loyalist who earlier solemnly explained to me that the march was a ploy by Islamists to pressure President Zardari into easing up on the militants, now said Gilani was “not playing a positive role.” The official line, implausible though it sounded, was that Zar dari had orchestrated the whole affair. Waqar Khan, a recently minted Zardari insider now serving as minister of investments, told me: “I think the president has done a phenomenal job by returning the chief justice, and they’ve done it at the right time. They’ve accepted the wishes of the people.”

It’s not clear what in fact happened that afternoon. Najam Sethi, editor of The Daily Times and one of Pakistan’s leading political analysts, says he believes that General Kayani played the decisive role behind the scenes, and that the army thus not only “re-established its credibility in the eyes of the people” but also managed to “cut the president down to size.” That is not, of course, the way Zardari recounts the events of that day. He says that his government ordered the police to fall back out of concern that “aggressive parties” associated with the Sharif brothers might use a confrontation to commit acts of violence. In any case, he said, his law minister had advised him that he could not have two sitting chief justices and so would have to wait for Dogar’s retirement to restore Chaudhry. I asked him, frankly incredulous, if he was saying that he had always intended to reinstate Chaudhry but had held off saying so until that moment.

“No,” Zardari said. “I’m not saying that. I’m saying that different positions existed given by the law.” And he apparently had to wait for a clear ruling among his advisers.

But there’s no getting around the damage the president did to his own standing. He tried to strike a blow at Nawaz Sharif, his chief adversary, and it was Sharif who emerged the stronger. American officials, increasingly convinced both that Zardari is not the interlocutor they had hoped for and that his days in power may be numbered, have begun to pay more attention to Sharif, long considered dangerously close to Islamist forces. Leading PML-N officials say they have learned from past mistakes. They have learned, for example, to accept an independent media and an independent judiciary. It’s not clear if Sharif himself has profited from experience. In the course of a phone conversation last week, he passed up all opportunities for self-scrutiny and advocated a response to terrorism that combined dialogue with tribal elders and economic and social development; military force was apparently not part of the equation.

And what about President Zardari? I asked him if he had learned any lessons from the previous week. He pondered. “Every day,” he said, “man is growing and learning. What you were yesterday, you are probably not today, because today’s you is yesterday’s experience. One is always learning.” Indeed, one is.

Integrating the tribal youth into national mainstream

By Dr. Raja Muhammad Khan

It is a considered fact that youth of a nation is the basic driving force in the social uplift and national development. The Tribal youth, mostly aging between 12 to 35 years constitutes over 53 % of the total FATA population. The existing youth of FATA has been brought up in an environment which is marked by militancy either in the form of promoting the US agenda through global Jihad against Soviet invasion of Afghanistan throughout during 1980s or the ongoing global war against terrorism, following the incident of 9/11. Majority of the youth became either victim or part of militancy under unavoidable circumstances existed ever since once used by the local as well as by the foreign militants for their vested interests. Their retrieval and putting them back on the right track would require a gigantic exertion. Because of unemployment and the so-called religious motivation, a majority of them became hard-core militants and still a vast number might be looking for an opportunity to fall on either side. The opportunity must be ceased to bring them back, before they became party to militants. Irrespective of the wherewithal, there are inveterate indications that these militants have plethora of capital to take into service the unemployed youth of FATA. Inopportunely, over the past few years, there has been a gradual increase and spread of militancy with a worsening law and order situation in the Tribal region. It is feared that if appropriate measures are not taken, the current adolescent generation will also get into the control of cantankerous in the days to come. The situation may be manageable today but if we allow this crisis to linger on without taking due cognizance of upcoming generation, it might get shoddier, compelling us to play in the hands of militants. Thus, there is a pressing need for the concurrent engagement of tribal youth aging from 6-35 years in three broad clusters as mentioned below. The critical cluster of the youth having age from 6-12 years, requires instant consideration. In order to exonerate from Madrassa culture, there is a need to provide an alternative option of education to this group of the youth. Although there exists 5,344 educational institutions in the tribal areas, but owing to the inauspicious law and order situation, majority of them remain close. In order to ensure a smooth conduct of formal educational process, a group of volunteer youth from the area; preferably one per family ought to be chosen with the consent of their parents and educated in the good public schools located elsewhere in the country with boarding and lodging amenities to be borne by the Federal Government. Such an experience has met success in the recent past, once a limited group of youth was put through the basic education in Army Public schools at Peshawar, Bannu and Kohat. While majority of these students might be put through the normal and technical education, the glowing students may be segregated and provided an opportunity to go for higher professional education like engineering, medical or information technology. Though it is a long-term investment, however if tailored correctly, this class can change the fortune of FATA in the future. Following the basic group, the next category of the youth is of the age bracket from 13-18 years. There is a need that youth of this crucial age bracket from all over FATA may be registered and given technical training in various fields. This is the most susceptible age group available to be exploited by terrorists and militants. This group may be trained for a small duration, to have basic know how or to obtain diploma in various technical trades, followed by on job training. At government level, there must be made sufficient funds available for extending services to this class of youth either through already available technical institutions or else mobile technical institutions may be established temporarily in the settled areas. The arrangement must cater for their boarding and lodging as well. Even small stipend as an incentive for the duration of training may also be provided to the trainees. Progressively this provision may be converted into permanent feature. In order to bring a consistency in this effort, necessary arrangements must be made for quick employment of the qualified youth, so that they are not drifted back. The likely areas in technical education may include; agriculture, transport, provision of civic services, small, medium and heavy industry, etc. Depending upon the level of skills, some of the qualified individuals could also be inducted in technical branches of law enforcement agencies. Quite a number of them could be given interest free loans to purchase tractors, etc. and also to run their independent small setups. Better-qualified youth may also be considered for nursing and teaching in their areas of expertise. Unfortunately, owing to successive oversights and being out of work, a number of the mature class of tribal youth, now aging from 18-35 years, has become party to the militants. Nonetheless, it is not impracticable to convert this category into a productive class, but surely more time would be needed to change the perception of this mentally hardened cadre through inducement packages and provisioning of alternative means of earning. Upon their segregation from militants they can be given loans to setup their small business. They may be employed for building of communication infrastructure, civics facilities and establishment of other resource bases alongside the skilled manpower. In this way they would be engaged mentally as well as physically towards a positive input, rather becoming available for exploitation by militants. Besides the proposed stratagem for revitalization and assimilation of tribal youth into national mainstream, there is an urgent need that the existing educational institutions should be rejuvenated with enabling environment for the youth to fearlessly resume their educational sessions. Parents should be convinced to send their children to schools. Shortages of teachers should be made-up from settled areas of the NWFP or other parts of the country. A similar effort is required for basic health services and civic facilities. Besides, an enormous strength of tribal youth otherwise peripatetic without any job should be gradually inducted into Frontier Corps, local police or Khasadar forces. It will serve double purpose; one, Pakistan Army would be relieved of the extra yoke and two; a lot of local youth would be able to get decent jobs, which will curtail the youth's unemployment dilemma. The quandary likely to be confronted is, whether these militants would let this integration of youth to go on by government functionaries under the prevailing flimsy situation. It is appreciated that a lot of spadework would be required to undertake this gigantic task of integration of youth into the national main stream. Hard core militant organizations would go all out to obstruct this integration. Moreover a lot of protective measures would have to be taken in selection and moving the youth to the pre-designated institutions or to human resource bases. To take care of this aspect, initially there would be requirement of dedicated security arrangements for the families of all those youth, who voluntarily opt to be integrated into the national main stream. The current presence of security forces in the region will be helpful in this regard. However the khasadar force and Frontier Corps may be considered to cater for this aspect on the long run. drmk_edu@yahoo.com
Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=ar&nid=824&ad=28-03-200
Dated: Saturday,March 28, 2009, Rabi-ul-Awwal 30, 1430 A.H.

Nawaz Sharif, a reliable partner?

BY M WAQAR
It will be disastrous for Obama administration if ,Washington thinks that Pakistani opposition leader, Nawaz Shrif can be a reliable partner of Washington in fighting Taliban. Nawaz Sharif is not only a corrupt politician he has sympathies with Osama bin laden, Alquida and Taliban. According to a former ISI official , Nawaz Sharif met OSAMA BIN LADEN and received funds from him, he met OSAMA three times and desperately asked for financial assistance. Bin Laden, who had offered him money to topple the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government of BENAZIR BHUTTO in 1990. Al Qaeda head wanted the “secular” PPP government overthrown to ensure that Pakistan continued supporting the Afghan “jihad” and LADEN was against a woman ruling Pakistan. . Nawaz met Osama thrice in Saudi Arabia ,this meeting was arranged by former ISI official Khalid Khawaja . Nawaz sharif was hoping for a grant of Rs 500 million. Although Bin Laden gave a smaller amount, Khawaja said that he arranged for Sharif to meet the Saudi royal family, which pledged political support for him and kept its word until he was dislodged by President Pervez Musharraf in 1999 . Nawaz has been an ardent supporter of Taliban. I am afraid that his coming to power at this critical juncture will be bad news for Pakistan, because Pak is already facing Taliban mutiny. Sharif is on record stating he would prefer Pakistan to be run like the Taleban ran Afghanistan, and we all know how well that turned out. Sharif's reckless embrace of religious extremism led him to try and impose Sharia (Islamic law) on Pakistan in 1998 and declare himself "Amirul Momineen" (Leader of the Faithful/Believers). Sharif has a long history of aligning with extremist religious groups, jihadists, and the Taliban. Sharif's desire for power is even greater than his respect for innocent life. Convicted for hijacking, he put the lives of 198 people on a plane in jeopardy by refusing to allow it to land. Also, Sharif funneled terrorist gunmen into disputed areas of Kashmir in 1997, risking not only the lives of innocent civilians there, but open war with its larger neighbor, India.  Beyond the blood on Sharif's hands, his corruption and that of his brother are on a vast scale. At the time of his removal from office, Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shabaz had looted approximately $60 million from people of Pakistan, via their personally owned companies. Pakistan, a developing nation, struggling to bring economic growth, education, and basic services to tens of millions of poverty stricken citizens, cannot afford the greed and avarice of Nawaz Sharif. The March 25, 2009 piece in the NY Times, Nawaz Sharif is portrayed as someone the U.S. and Pakistan can possible reconsider as a leader that can guide Pakistan through a challenging period. In reality, nothing could be farther from the truth. In the 03-25-09 NY Times article, two important questions are asked: Can Mr. Sharif, 59, a populist politician close to Islamic parties, be a reliable partner? Or will he use his popular support to blunt the military's already fitful campaign against the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding NO. History has shown where Nawaz Sharif stands on these issues, he stands for religious extremism, alliances with terrorists, and the undermining of secular rule in Pakistan, to the detriment of its citizenry and the country's neighbors near and far. With the Taliban and Al-Queda taking active refuge in Pakistan, engaging in recruitment there, and basing attacks in Pakistan and across the border into Afghanistan, Nawaz Sharif is the last person that can be relied upon to control or eliminate these destabilizing and dangerous groups. Sharif's support for these extremists goes beyond admiration and rhetoric, he as personally assisted them in their quest for power, At the end of the 1990's, under the leadership of Sharif, the economy of Pakistan suffered immensely. In regards to Afghanistan, Sharif's support of the Taliban within Afghanistan, and allowing them to draw operate and draw support from area's within Pakistan itself, thus adding their destabilizing influence to an already fragile political environment. Sharif's lust of power, and his willingness to damage Pakistan's future, area toxic mix for the people of Pakistan, and for it's neighbors. There is a  long tale of Nawaz’ corruption ranging from Yellow Cab scheme, to Motorway project and from Raiwind palace to LDA plots. As a protege of Zia ul Haq, the dictator who controlled Pakistan in the 1980's, Sharif's anti-democratic tendencies were already in bloom. Sharif's own power base in Punjab was built by bribery and favoritism along with pandering to religious extremists .  The greatest outrage, in retrospect, is Sharif's alliance with Osama Bin Laden. In Sharif's battle against Benazair Bhutto, Bin Laden's funds helped orchestrate the removal of Bhutto from power. Bin Laden knew he needed to secure at least neutrality if not outright support from Pakistan in his goal to turn Afghanistan into his own personal terrorist training camp. Sharif was Bin Laden's man for this mission, at once corrupt enough to take the money, and oblivious enough to not grasp the horror he helped unleash on the world. By the time Sharif was forced from power, it was too late. Bin Laden's network had struck. He used Lawyers movement for his political gain, Nawaz Sharif’s reason for supporting Iftikhar Chaudhry was to get back at Musharraf, a glorified version of kindergarten revenge. Nothing more. Mr. Sharif’s purpose is to grab the federal government. He believes his right to rule Pakistan was snatched away from him in 1999 and he wants it back.  Lawyers’ movement was hijacked for dirty political tricks by Nawaz and other opportunist politicians in Pakistan. The lawyers’ movement managed to get quite a bit of the attention of the educated class and the media, because of its high claims of standing by principles and reinstating an independent judiciary and people from all walks of life supported that while politicians like NAWAZ,IMRAN,QAZI were just creating chaos. Whether it is Zardari or Sharif, both are incompetent . Both are products of dynasty politics, and neither of them deserves any share in the running of anything…be it the party, or the country. The only thing they can do for the country is to leave it alone, but that is too much to ask. So those who think that Mr. Sharif is a ray of hope … think again. He offers nothing different. He is a part of the same dirty system that brought us here in the first place. President Obama will make an even greater mistake (than George Bush’s Iraq adventure) if he sides with NAWAZ SHARIF.

Analysis: Democracy within parties

—Rasul Bakhsh Rais

Hybridism is an important feature of Pakistani politics, and largely explains the ability of military and civilian rulers to stay in power and justify their rule. They combine elements of democracy and authoritarianism, and present that hybrid as ‘genuine’ democracy

Family-based politics is one of main features of the political system of Pakistan, and also one of the factors adding to its political crises. It is this aspect of Pakistani politics that makes it dysfunctional and causes imbalance between the various institutions of the state. It is also a major source of political confrontations, the likes of which we are witnessing today, as it is the personal interests of the party boss or his vision for his party and the country that determine the party line and its policy orientations. Above all, this affects how politicians understand democracy and rule of law.

All political parties have a dynastic character. This includes the mainstream national parties as well as the ethnic-regional parties. Other, smaller parties that may appear free of the domination of a single family were, and are being, run by individuals in a dictatorial manner.

Pakistan cannot make the transition to democracy without a competitive party system, which fortunately started to develop in the colonial days. Parties are indispensable to how we translate the idea of popular sovereignty into representative governance. It is also true that the political parties of Pakistan, whatever their ideological and policy leanings, have a certain support base without which they could not have survived repeated attempts by the military to fragment and destroy them.

Each Pakistani party has a unique political identity as well as a recognisable ideological orientation, regardless of the degree to which it has faded. The country can be rightly proud of the multiparty structure of its politics, which is also a reflection of the multicultural character of Pakistani society.

However, these parties have not been able to meet the public’s expectations. Students and analysts of Pakistan’s politics generally refer to feudal culture, and family- and caste-based politics to explain political instability, confrontation and the failure of democracy in the country. The main weakness, thus, is the absence of democratic culture within the political parties of Pakistan. Regular military interventions for various reasons are another reason for the country’s enduring political crises, as they disrupted civilian rule and also caused decay of institutions and the political process.

Developing a party system with a good degree of internal democracy could repair the damage caused by military interventions. It is unfortunate that periods of civilian rule in the country under the main political parties have not been very different in attitude and behaviour from the military rulers. Both demonstrated two common traits: personalised rule and hybridism. First, party leaders in power have acted within the party like dictators, taking arbitrary decisions based on their own whims rather than the collective wisdom and opinion of the party rank and file.

Hybridism is an important feature of Pakistani politics, and largely explains the ability of military and civilian rulers to stay in power and justify their rule. They combine elements of democracy and authoritarianism, and present that hybrid as ‘genuine’ democracy. One the one hand, there is freedom of expression, open politics and protection of fundamental rights; and on the other, these freedoms have a marginal influence on decision making, policy formulation and administration. Party leaders of the PPP, the PMLN and the PMLQ have formed governments in the past without embracing democratic principles in running their parties or their governments, and the experience of the ethnic/religious parties is no different.

Parties in Pakistan are thus like family businesses, with the dominant families protecting their interests. This dynastic party system could transform itself like the Congress party in India; this could only happen if leaders felt secure enough to share power at different levels within the party structure and in the different tiers of their governments.

Beyond the party, personal/family domination damages governance, rule of law and democratic culture by reducing the country’s politics to a clash between egos and party interests. If any coalitions do get formed, they are based on political convenience rather than any ideological or policy compatibility. This leads to further destabilisation of the political system.

There are two other important dimensions of the undemocratic political party culture of Pakistan that foment political crisis: regular reneging on political commitments; and betraying pledges made to the electorate. Party leaders behave this way thinking that they can get away with it, since neither state institutions nor the electorate hold them accountable for their failures or misdemeanours.

The present crisis, too, is due to this traditional mindset of the supreme political bosses of the parties, especially those in power at the centre today. The harbour the delusion that they can keep the judiciary subordinate, pack the courts with party loyalists, then use these courts as instruments of political manoeuvring, and attack rival parties’ interests with impunity. This is what has resulted in the ongoing clash between the PMLN and the PPP in Punjab, in particular.

Traditional leaders like the PPP’s Asif Ali Zardari and his non-political advisors fail to recognise that Pakistani society has changed. There is, in fact, a generational change reflected in the vision and aspirations of the younger generation and the vastly expanded professional and middle classes; they now see themselves as real stakeholders in the affairs of state and society in Pakistan.

There is now a big gap in the cultural orientation and worldviews of the new Pakistani classes and the old-fashioned political leaders. Rooted in new social realities, there is an emerging democratic coalition that cuts across ethnic, regional and party lines. This movement simply wants a government subservient to the law; whosoever is in power should be constrained by and held accountable under the Constitution.

Victory of this non-partisan social movement may resolve the long-running crises of Pakistani politics, as party leaders may be forced to respect the law and accept constitutional restraints on the exercise of political power, and may realise that running parties like despots and manipulating the political system will only perpetuate confrontations.

Pakistan has entered a decisive phase in its politics, with a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. There is hope, however, that counter-authoritarian forces are stronger than ever before and have gained enough momentum to overcome the old order and the authoritarian party bosses.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk

PESHAWAR THROUGH THE AGES...

The Peshawar, capital city of the NWFP(PUKHTUNKHWA) province, is believed to have existed two thousand years prior to the birth of Jesus Christ. Peshawar derives its name from Sanskrit word Pushpapura meaning city of flowers, since the valley abounds in flowers and orchards.
Apart from the Got Khuttree's ruins, ancient religious scriptures as well as the writings of famous travellers including Herodotus (5th century BC), throw ample light on the profile of Peshawar city as well as its surrounding valley. The city and its surrounding valley was invaded by scores of invaders from across the Hindu Kush mountains range, mostly through the world famed Khyber Pass.

In the Peshawar valley near the town of Charsda, about 30 KMs north-east of Peshawar city, a cluster of imposing mounds, have been found which are considered to be the most important archaeological sites. The site which has been identified as Pushkalavati, the Pre-Kushan capital of Gandhara, was overrun by Alexander's troops after a siege of 30 fsyd.

Similarly is the Peshawar valley, Shahbaz Garhi, the small village of the Peshawar valley is believed to be the site of ancient city of Varusha. On the Southern side of the village at the edge of a hill are Ashoka's rock edicts 14 in number on two large boulders, in Kharoshti scripts of Gandhara urging people to follow the code of religion as well as instill tolerance, non-violence and respect to the monarchy.

Another important historical place in Peshawar valley is Chanako Dheri which means glazing mound. The site houses, a hall, a lake and a base of a stupa. The valley also has in its fold the World Heritage Site of "Takhti-i-Bhai" which is located over 80 KM north-east of Peshawar. The site's fame is due to the existence of remains of monastery on top of a 160 meter high hill dating back to 2nd century AD, with fragmentary sculptures in stone and stucco indicating highly developed sculptural art of the era. Further 20 km north of Mardan city, the 2nd biggest town of Peshawar Valley, is a small village at an elevation of 122 meters which houses a big complex containing a beautiful monastery and the main stupa, round in shape, surrounded by closely packed chapels. The complex also has a meeting hall, monks' quarters as well as visiting monks and scholars quarters. According to renowned archaeologist, John Marshell, the circular stupa is one of the earliest from the Gandhara period.

At the periphery of Peshawar valley, the site of Hind, pronounced as Wai-hind and Udak Bandapura in ancient history is a village located 22 KM north of Attock in the Swabi district. The village, within, the ruined walls of old fortification is thought to have been the resting place of victorious army of Alexander. Excavation for ancient sites in Peshawar valley is still going on with many thousands artifacts representing ancient civilization have been shifted to 100 years old Peshawar Museum for better preservation.

The tribes inhabiting in the Peshawar and its surrounding valley are thought to have embraced Islam in late 7th and early 8th century AD. An Arab missionary Khalid Bin Abudllah who settled in the area is thought to be the first to have spread the message of Islam among the valley's inhabitants. The Zenith of the Muslim era in the valley is mainly attributed to be Mughal period. At the downfall of the Mughal dynasty the Peshawar and its surrounding valley remained under the control of Afghan Kings from 1744 to 1826 AD when the Sikh ruler of Punjab from the east captured it in 1826. However, eventful short lived rule of the Sikhs and in 1840, British under the command of Sir Walter Gilbert took over and ruled the valley until the independence in 1947. Ghanta Ghar: City's gates: Chowk Yadgar: Bala Hisar Fort: Mahabat Khan Mosque: and Gurdwari Bhai Jogian Shah are some important historical places of their rule.

Qiswa Khawani Bazar: Qisawa Khawani (the street of story tellers) was called by Sir Herbert Edwards, as picadilly of central Asia. In ancient times, it was a throbbing market when travellers and traders of yore regaled each other with tales of incredible journeys. While telling stories, they shared a bubbling Hukah or sipped tea in the shade of bazaar shop fronts.

In a nutshell, the city of Peshawar and its surrounding valley's uninterrupted glory and fame had never receded into oblivion. The city with unique architecture, sprawling streets, lush green parks, modern communication network and historical buildings, is considered to be the gate way to Afghanistan and Central Asia as well as transit point to the snow capped valleys of Chitral and northern Pakistan.

Brutal ancestor inspires prince to be the next iron man of Afghanistan

The great grandson of Afghanistan's legendary Iron Amir – who once forced an adulterous man to eat his mistress – has joined the race to be the country's next president. Prince Abdul Ali Seraj, who opened Afghanistan's first nightclub in the 1970s, says it is time to launch "psychological warfare" against the Taliban and reclaim Islamic law from the extremists. He insists Afghanistan needs a "change candidate" because President Hamid Karzai has failed.

His great grandfather Abdur Rahman Khan ruled from 1880 to 1901, massacring tens of thousands on the battlefield, while executing and torturing hundreds more who he suspected of dissent. He made slaves of an entire province, yet he is fondly remembered inside Afghanistan as one of the few rulers in the last 250 years to unite the country's tribes.

Prince Ali fled Afghanistan in 1978 after a communist coup, disguised as a hippy. He returned in 2002 after the Taliban regime collapsed, and says Abdur Rahman is his hero. "Afghan-istan needs a strong leader," he said. "Afghan people have never rallied around policies; they have rallied around people."

He owes his life to a bunch of stoned Australian hippies who smuggled him out of the country in their bus. They even gave him a guitar, as a disguise, when secret police boarded close to the Pakistan border. "I had no idea how to play a guitar," he said. "But they just told me to strum it whenever they did, so I did." He left behind a string of businesses including Kabul's first disco, called 25 Hours, a bowling alley and a Chinese restaurant.

Echoing his great grandfather's nickname, he said the president needs an "iron fist". "Afghanistan needs a ruler with two heads," he said. "He needs compassion for 95 per cent of the people, and an iron fist for the other five per cent – the terrorists, al-Qa'ida and corrupt officials."

The Amir was famous for the ruthless punishments meted out to anyone who disobeyed him. He claimed he was chosen by Allah and allegedly strangled a mullah who accused him of betraying Islam by accepting British subsidies.

The Taliban make similar claims about Hamid Karzai's government, which is largely dependent on foreign aid.

The Amir kept the sons of his provincial governors hostage in Kabul, to guarantee their fathers' loyalty. If tribal chiefs erred, his army dragged them back to Kabul in chains.

Today, President Karzai is often accused for failing to rein in his own brother Ahmed Wali, who is a tribal leader in Kandahar and head of the provincial council. He is widely suspected of controlling a billion dollar heroin trade. "Karzai is weak," fumed Prince Ali. "He can't even control his own brother, how can he control a whole country?"

Abdur Rahman's worst punishments were saved for adulterous couples, according to the specialist historian Bijan Omrani. "In one case a woman was boiled to a broth which was then fed to the man before his execution. Cannibals, according to Islam, are incapable of entering Paradise," he wrote.

Prince Ali insists he is a reluctant candidate, pressured into running by the tribal elders who support him. He is president of the National Coalition for Dialogue with Tribes of Afghanistan. A report he issued warned: "At the current rate of decline, support for the coalition forces is likely to have evaporated by early 2010. We could then be faced with the prospects of a nationwide jihad."

His uncle was the modernising King Amanullah who introduced girls' schools, outlawed torture, and let women unveil in Kabul. He fled Afghanistan in 1929 amid a conservative revolt. Prince Ali is also a distant cousin of the late King Zahir Shah, who tried to turn Afghanistan into a democracy. He was exiled in 1973, amid a conservative coup.

"Trying to force fit Afghanistan into a Western template is likely to arouse resistance and risk failure," Prince Ali warned. "Afghan history has plenty of examples where reforming zeal has foundered on the rocks of conservatism."

PRESIDENT OBAMA ON JAY LENO