The high cost of ignorance

Dawn.com
DESPITE its lush forests, golden beaches and ancient temples, for me the most inspiring sight in Sri Lanka are the thousands of boys and girls in crisp uniforms walking to and from their schools across the island twice a day.

I never fail to be impressed by the fact that apart from uniforms, the government supplies children with textbooks and meals. Even during the height of the civil war, the Tamil Tigers were provided with funds from Colombo to run the schools in the area under their control.

Being a regular visitor to the country for many years now, I have never seen a child begging, cleaning car windshields at traffic lights, selling newspapers or working in any menial jobs. These are, of course, common sights in Pakistan. The result of this concerted, non-partisan effort in education over the years is that Sri Lanka has a literacy rate of 92 per cent.

Even though it has a significantly higher GDP per capita than Pakistan, Sri Lanka is very much a developing country. In addition, it has just ended a civil war that raged for over 25 years. Nevertheless, it has found the resources to finance a system that gives access to education to all its children.

Pakistan, by contrast, has seen spending on education drop from 2.5 per cent of GDP to 1.5 per cent last year. This is less than the subsidies given to Pakistan Steel, PIA and Pepco. As this newspaper wrote in an editorial recently, we spend seven times more on defence than we do on primary education. Needless to say, our bloated defence budget has not made us any more secure. On the other hand, even a year`s education for girls would result in a 10 per cent drop in fecundity. This would translate into a proportional fall in our frighteningly high population growth rate.

Even among the children who are lucky enough to go to school, the level of academic attainment is depressingly low: only 34 per cent of kids between six and 16 can read a story, while 50 per cent can read a sentence. Part of the reason for this dismal performance is that on any given day, 10-15 per cent of the teachers are absent. Thirty thousand school buildings pose a hazard to the students who are forced to study there, while 21,000 schools have no buildings at all. Education Emergency Pakistan

Many of these facts are available in the report .

But over the years, we — rulers and ruled alike — have been aware of the dire state of education in Pakistan. What has been lacking is not money, but political will. Indeed, provincial governments are generally unable to spend their meagre educational budgets. Bureaucratic inefficiency is as rife here as it is across the government. Provincial education departments are manned by some of the least efficient civil servants in the land. Education Emergency EE

Education ministers in the provinces are alleged to routinely demand a bribe for hiring teachers, and thus we end up getting the dregs of the product of a dilapidated system. Hence the rotten quality of the education our children receive. To dispel the notion that our school teachers are underpaid, () informs us that they receive more than teachers of low-cost private schools get. EE

Another urban myth demolished by is that a considerable proportion of Pakistani kids go to madressahs: only six per cent are educated — if we can call it that — at religious schools. Nevertheless, one out of 10 children not going to school around the world is a Pakistani.

Having a largely uneducated population imposes a huge cost, dragging the economy down and locking us into a spiral of low growth and unending poverty. The economic cost of ignorance and illiteracy is equivalent to a disastrous flood every year. Even Bangladesh, a much poorer country than Pakistan, is improving twice as fast as we are.

What makes our elites so blind to the obvious? In a word, selfishness. Their kids go to private schools and, if they can afford it, universities abroad. If they can`t, they are educated at one of Pakistan`s private colleges and universities. So they just don`t care how bad the state system is. Similarly, they get medical care at private clinics and hospitals, and have therefore allowed government institutions to deteriorate to the point of collapse. The problem with this `I`m OK, Jack` approach is that no society can develop without an educated population. With only a tiny percentage of children getting a decent education, there is no way Pakistan can progress and prosper. While even our dysfunctional elites see the problem, they are unwilling to do anything about it.

While a few of them support NGOs and charities that provide education to the needy, the magnitude of the task is such that only the state can provide the resources and the policies to achieve universal education. Thus far, it has shown no sign of either wanting, or being able, to bring about this revolution.

And yet, we aren`t asking the government to do anything it isn`t required to: constitutionally, all children between six and 16 are supposed to be provided an education. This pledge is reiterated in the 18th Amendment. Indeed, a citizen could, in theory, take the government to court for dereliction of duty. Suo moto action, Mr Chief Justice?

Perhaps we need to face up to the fact that our state machinery simply isn`t up to the task of running our educational system. Even if by some miracle, enough resources were made available tomorrow, it just cannot get the school buildings (the responsibility of provincial Public Works Departments, a byword for corruption), recruit good teachers, modernise the curricula, or monitor the system for quality. So what`s the answer? One possibility is that private schools could be paid directly by the state for each child on their rolls. Textbooks would be provided by a central agency, while another sets exams, and checks for standards before schools can get their funding. True, this system would be open to misuse and corruption. But anything might be better than the abysmal state education we have now.

Balochistan issue

Fida Bazai
The Balochistan problem is spinning out of Pakistan’s control. Islamabad does not have any clear long-sighted strategy to tackle the Balochistan crisis. It still relies on a myopic military plan. The situation is getting worst and exacerbating with every passing day as Islamabad couldn’t come out with a tangible policy to access Baloch nationalists. This situation of increasing uncertainty has profoundly affected trade and business in Quetta. Pakistan civilian government has given up on the Balochistan issue and left it at the mercy of intelligence and military. The track record of these two institutions on conflict resolution is not impressive. All sections of Pakistan’s domestic or foreign policies under the auspices of army and intelligence have always been counter-productive. International pressure Pakistan’s financial and emotional investment in Kashmir and Afghanistan for the last three decades has resulted in chaos and anarchy in Pakistan. Both dimensions of Pakistan’s foreign policy were undisputedly under army control. Pakistan doesn’t only face a mounted international pressure on both issues, but also suffering from an insurmountable series of religious and nationalist insurgencies. It shows that our armed forces don’t have any prudent approach to political problems. Unfortunately, Balochistan, which is the largest poverty stricken province with abundant resources, is falling in the domain of military. If Pakistan’s civilian government doesn’t come out with a comprehensive political solution to the Balochistan issue, it will reach to an irreconcilable position. It is time to confess publicly and deliver practically to reduce the misery of the people of Balochistan. They have been deliberately kept backwards and at the disposal of Nawabs and Sardars. The Government has neither established good institutions nor provided any health facilities. The ratio of poverty is exceedingly high and chances of employment are extremely low. If there is any position, it is filled by any candidates from outside of Balochistan. Even the ordinary jobs of clerks, peons and drivers are allocated to non-local people. The young section of the population, who is graduating now or graduated within the last few years, has increasingly felt these severe discriminations. It is significant to understand that the current insurgency is driven by the youth force of Baloch. The University of Balochistan is the epicentre of all anti-state activities. Insurgency The present insurgency is led by Berhamdagh Bugti, who is the source of eminent aspiration for young Baloch. Another important dimension of the movement is the participation of female youngsters. This is the first time that Baloch girls are actively participating in the movement and wholeheartedly supporting a nationalist demand of independence. The central government has to approach Baloch nationalist parties before it become very difficult to reconcile them. As a confidence building measure the government should stop intelligence operations, release missing people, announce new packages for Balochistan and execute them fairly. It is the government’s last chance to sincerely approach Baloch leaders and take them in confidence as well as award them some extra advantages to reduce their sense of deprivation. It is politically important and strategically significant to understand the composition of Balochistan. The eastern part of Balochistan is inhabited by Baloch people, but Quetta and the West of Balochistan exclusively consist of Pakhtun population. The award of extra favours to the Baloch should not be at the expense of the Pakhtuns in the province, who are currently peaceful and religiously abiding law and order. The packages and jobs should be announced from Islamabad and particularly for the backward areas of Baloch. There should not be any extra-leverage in the present setup to disturb other peaceful segments of society. For instance, Islamabad can announce the establishment of colleges and universities in the Baloch area and then preferably recruit Baloch people for most of the positions. Similarly, more hospitals and health institutions should be established and then staffed by local people. It is, however, extremely unfair to other nationalities, particularly Pakhtuns, who constitute a big chunk of the province population, to be ignored or marginalised at the expense of the Baloch people. It is the federal government’s responsibility to avoid any clash among the resident ethnic groups in Balochistan and bring deprived Baloch youth in the mainstream national politics.

Education Emergency Pakistan

Only 35 per cent of school children, aged 6-16, can read a story, while 50 per cent cannot read a sentence
Today, Pakistan is crippled by an education emergency that threatens tens of millions of children.

No country can thrive in the modern world without educated citizens.

But the emergency has disastrous human, social and economic consequences, and threatens the security of the country.

2011 is Pakistan’s Year of Education.

It’s time to think again about Pakistan’s most pressing long-term challenge.

The economic cost of not educating Pakistan is the equivalent of one flood every year. The only difference is that this is a self-inflicted disaster.

One in ten of the world’s out-of-school children is a Pakistani. That is the equivalent of the entire population of Lahore.

There is a zero per cent chance that the government will reach the millennium development goals by 2015 on education. On the other hand, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are all on their way to achieving the same goals. India’s improvement rate is ten times that of Pakistan, Bangladesh’s is twice that of Pakistan.

But, despite this gloomy situation, determined efforts can show results in only two years. What is required is an additional spending of Rs.100 billion, a 50 per cent increase over current spending.

Pakistanis have a constitutional right to universal education, a little discussed or known fact of the law. What has been overlooked in the discourse on the 18th Amendment is that education has now become a right and no longer a privilege as it was previously. Article 25A sets up a possible scenario where a citizen can take the government to court for not providing them access, or even be the grounds for a suo moto action.

At current rates of progress, no person alive today will see a Pakistan with universal education as defined in our constitution. Balochistan would see it in 2100 or later.

Just one year of education for women in Pakistan can help reduce fertility by 10 per cent, controlling the other resource emergency this country faces.

There are 26 countries poorer than Pakistan but send more of their children to school, demonstrating the issue is not about finances, but will and articulating demand effectively. It is too easy, and incorrect, to believe that Pakistan is too poor to provide this basic right.

Pakistan spent 2.5 per cent of its budget on schooling in 2005/2006. It now spends just 1.5 per cent in the areas that need it most. That is less than the subsidies given to PIA, PEPCO and Pakistan Steel. Provinces are allocated funds for education but fail to spend the money.

We presume the public school system is doing poorly because teachers are poorly paid, this is untrue. Public school teachers get paid 2/3rds more than their equivalent private low cost school counterparts; they earn four times that of the average parent of a child in their school. Despite this, on any given day 10-15 per cent of teachers will be absent from their duties teaching.

There is demand for education that is partly being addressed by low cost private schools, even one third of all rural children go to these schools (public schools can cost Rs.150 per month, low cost private schools the same or up to Rs.250). Despite the large presumption of the media, both domestic and international, this gap is not actually being addressed by Madrassahs. Only six per cent of students go to Madrassahs.

Only 35 per cent of school children, aged 6-16, can read a story, while 50 per cent cannot read a sentence. Their performance is only slightly better than that of out-of-school children, of whom 24 per cent can read a story. This alarmingly demonstrates the ineffectiveness of schooling.

30,000 school buildings are in dangerous condition, posting a threat to the well being of children. Whereas 21,000 schools have no building whatsoever.

Donors are not the solution, while they grab headlines regarding their development work, government spending remains the majority by an overwhelming margin.

Arab regimes must change or face revolt

Within less than a month, popular uprisings toppled the long-time presidents of Egypt and Tunisia, and revolts could spread to other Arab countries if they do not implement reforms quickly, analysts say.
"The Arab leaders are in a race against time: either they quickly adopt liberal changes, or they suffer the same fate as (the leaders) of Tunisia and Egypt," said Anwar Eshki, the director of the Middle East Institute for Strategic Studies in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak, who resigned after being in power since 1981, and Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who departed after ruling for 23 years on January 14, both bowed to unprecedented waves of popular protests.
Angered by injustice, unemployment and corruption, "the Arab citizen is not the same as he was two months ago" and "has proven he can bring down an Arab head of state after two or three weeks of demonstrations," said Paul Salem, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre.
Various Arab leaders, some of whom, such as Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, have been in power for over 40 years while many of those who have ruled with an iron fist have suddenly announced social security measures and political reforms.
The popular uprisings in those two countries "will have repercussions throughout the region" and the United States, which encouraged change in Tunisia and Egypt, will try to do the same in other Arab countries, said Saleh al-Qallab, a former Jordanian information minister.
"Who is next? No one can predict," he said, adding that this excludes Saudi Arabia, where "the process of reforms initiated by King Abdullah is moving slowly due to the weight of tradition and religion."
Eshki echoed that assessment, saying that "the United States will seek to avoid sudden change in the Gulf monarchies that could disrupt oil supplies to the world economy," but Washington "will advise them to engage in reforms and accelerate their implementation."
But he added that "the winds of change will blow on these (Gulf) countries. And if the leaders do not take the initiative, their people will."
The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, which were initiated and led by young people using the social networking site Facebook and micro-blogging site Twitter, have showed the limits of Islamist activism, which Arab regimes have used as a scarecrow to ward off calls for reform, Salem said.
"Without adhering to an ideology," the uprisings have succeeded where Islamist movements have failed for decades, during which "they were presented or presented themselves as the only alternative to repressive Arab regimes," he said.
Salem added however that Mubarak's fall, in the eyes of Riyadh, "exacerbates the imbalance of power in the favour of Iran," which wants "an Islamic Middle East," and sees the departure of the Egyptian president as "the failure of the United States and Zionism in the region."
"The alliance of the Arab countries and the United States will weaken in favour of a degree of autonomy on the Turkish model, but these countries have no choice but to remain in the American fold," Salem said.

Saudi Arabia... Money cannot solve everything

EDITORIAL:Daily Times
It looks as if the richest monarchy in the Arab world and the largest global oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, may be getting jittery at the history-changing events developing across the Middle East. The ouster of decades’ long autocratic rule in Tunisia and Egypt and the wave of protests sweeping across Bahrain, Yemen and Libya have prodded Saudi Arabia into action to placate an ever-increasing disillusioned public. Returning home after three months spent abroad for medical treatment, King Abdullah announced an extravagant aid package — to the tune of $ 35 billion — aimed at benefiting lower and middle income groups and unemployed youth, and addressing housing problems and high-inflation rates besetting the Saudi economy. This is an attempt by the Saudi monarchy to throw money at the problem as though that is all that is required. The Saudi monarchy is watching closely the rising stem of revolts in the Arab world, deeming it necessary to address issues before the people take to the streets of Saudi Arabia. As most of the reforms in the package aim to address the woes of the youth, it is quite obvious that the Saudi rulers have taken note of the fact that it is the tech-savvy youth demographic that is most active and passionate in the Arab protests.

The Libyan uprising has been reduced to an isolated, hate-spewing dictator watching his iron-clad grip quickly loosening in the face of angry protests and Yemen is seeing nine ministers resign from public office. Inspired by Tunisia and Egypt, the Arab public has finally decided that it has had enough of autocratic regimes, and no place epitomises a seemingly unshakeable monarchy like Saudi Arabia.

There have long been opponents of the Saudi regime but they have always been silenced by the kingdom’s repressive laws and policies. Many political opponents and underground groups have long demanded more gender equality, free elections to municipal councils, etc. However, for a theocracy like Saudi Arabia, introducing reforms that endanger the political-religious status quo will be out of the question. While this aid package is a premeditated move to curb any rising dissent within the kingdom, it must be asked: how far will doling out money go if it is not accompanied by freedom? Money can only go so far when the inhabitants of an oil-wealthy country are boiling over with frustration over the denial of their political, civil, human and gender rights. *

SALUTE TO VEENA MALIK !!!

''SALUTE''

A Pakistani actress castigated for appearing to cuddle with an Indian actor on a reality show lashed out at a Muslim cleric who had criticized her during a widely watched television exchange this week.

The unusual outburst, punctuated by tears, came at a sensitive time in a country where Islamic fundamentalism is spreading and liberals are increasingly afraid to express their views.

Pakistan's Leadership crisis

The Frontier Post
Muhammad Idrees

Nothing is hunky-dory in Pakistan these days. Terrorism, sectarianism, rape, murder and kidnapping for ransom are order of the day. The politicians are continuously busy in playing politics with one another on petty matters. When their personal interests are threatened, they start talking about public interests. Recent somersaults of JUI(F) and MQM are a case in point. Maulana Fazlur Rehman immediately quit the government when the minister of his party Azam Swati was sacked by Prime Minister. The good maulana announced in a press conference that he would start agitation on blasphemy issue. It again shows how religious parties use religion to galvanize people. MQM also left the government after Sindh Home Minister’s outrageous remarks against it. PPP government is extremely fragile after all these gimmicks by its coalition partners and the Prime Minister is ready to do everything to appease them. Nawaz Sharif quickly joined the bandwagon and announced his 10-point agenda and gave the government 72 hours to respond to it. If response is positive he will give government 45 days to fulfill his demands. As a first step the government appointed Sardar Latif Khosa as new governor of Punjab and PML(N) welcomed it. A big irony starts here. On the one hand Nawaz Sharif demands that government must root out corruption in 45 days; but on the other he accepted, with open arms, a governor who was previously sacked twice on corruption charges, first as attorney general and second as adviser to Prime Minister. These topsy-turvy moves have completely perplexed the poor masses and shaken their faith in democratic system. Unfortunately, democratic process failed to deliver in the last three years. Pakistan is facing enormous problems these days and there seems no sense of urgency on the part of the leadership. They are busy accusing each other and questioning each other’s mental state of affairs. In chilling cold weather load shedding of gas and electricity has made life miserable for common man. The gap between the rich and the poor has increased manifold in the last two decades. The rich have the alternative of every problem whether it is electricity or gas load shedding, while the poor continue suffering. There is no link between the problems of rulers and hapless ruled. The rulers have only one goal - how to grab more power and wealth, while the poor people have all sorts of problems, from inflation to unemployment and from health to justice. This country is now hostage to cement, sugar and oil cartels etc. The voices against these mafias are so feeble that no one cares to listen to them. They are plundering the country with the connivance of politicians and bureaucrats. Pakistani nation is one of the most resilient nations in the world. More than 6,000 people were killed in terror-related attacks in 2010 alone. In such testing times, people still try to lead their normal lives. People want a massive change in the system. This need for change is much more visible in the middle and lower middle classes. The middle class in Pakistan is quite passive politically. If they yearn for real change they must wake up from their slumber now and be active politically. Middle class must organise itself politically thus becoming a force to reckon with. People of Pakistan badly need a sincere, committed, honest and dedicated leadership. Our major political parties are more prone to dynastic politics and it is foolhardy to expect that they will ever be willing to change the status quo. What we require at this critical juncture of our history is a dynamic leadership that is fearless and truly represents the sentiments of ordinary people. I think before the next general elections in 2013 the government should bring about reforms in the election commission. First, the election commission must be independent, impartial and strong enough to hold free and fair elections. Second, it must be ensured by the election commission that in all political parties, the candidates who want to contest the next elections, should declare their assets and give details of their income tax. In case of any irregularities they should be disqualified forthwith. Third, the election commission must limit the expenditure on election campaigns for National and provincial assemblies so that people of middle class may think of contesting the election. Fourth, government must strictly adhere to its promise that in next elections voting list will be made according to NADRA identity cards. Without reforming our electoral process the future of democracy in Pakistan will remain bleak.

Bacha Khan's Message In Pakistan And Afghanistan

By shaheenbuneri
http://www.rferl.org/content/gandhara_bacha_khan_passing_buneri_pakistan/2283067.html

Followers of the nonviolent Pashtun movement known as Khudai Khidmatgar Movement (Servants of God) are marking 23 years since the death of their legendary leader, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. In addition to celebrations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, peace gatherings, discussions, and seminars are being held in Europe, United States, and the Middle East to pay tribute to a beloved leader who admirers say dedicated his life to social, political, economic, and cultural emancipation for Pashtuns.

These days, the region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border garners international headlines mostly with images of war, destruction, and violence. From the rugged and mountainous Waziristan tribal region to the picturesque Swat Valley, the conflict between Pakistani security forces and Taliban militants has displaced millions of people, left thousands dead or wounded, and destroyed health and educational infrastructure in the region.

Many outside observers in the West do not know that peace-loving Pashtuns living in the violence-marred border regions once struggled under the banner of an epoch-making nonviolent movement. In the 1930s, Khan (1890-1988), also known as Bacha Khan (King Khan), launched his nonviolent movement to reform the stagnant Pashtun society and to mobilize Pashtuns to struggle for their rights against British imperial rule in the Indian subcontinent through peaceful agitation.

"Very rarely does the world see leaders who raise their society from the ignominious depths of ignorance and obscurity to the heights of enlightenment and glory. Abdul Ghaffar Khan was one of this rare breed of leaders," writes Sher Zaman Taizi, an eminent Pashtun scholar.

Himself the son of a feudal lord, Abdul Ghafar Khan advocated land reforms, equal economic opportunities, social justice, change through education, and peaceful coexistence of all communities irrespective of their ethnic and religious affiliations.Despite high claims and yearning for lasting peace and stability in the region by the international community, the fact remains that we have failed to revive Bacha Khan’s philosophy of non-violence. The perpetrators of violence have seized the upper hand by popularizing characters like Mullah Omar and Baitullah Mehsud and marginalizing true heroic figures like Bacha Khan -- who is not very well known to the younger generations either inside or outside of the Pashtun heartlands.

"I was shocked at how we in the West know nothing about Bacha Khan," says Human Rights Watch's Peter Bouckaert. "We learned about Gandhi in school. Almost everybody in the United States and Europe has seen the movies about Gandhi and the role he played in the nonviolence movement and then as an inspiration for Martin Luther King and others."

Bouckaert tells RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal that he first learned about Bacha Khan in 2001, when, while sifting through some pictures in the home of a friend, he saw a photo of Gandhi standing next to a bearded man. His host then told him the story of Khan and his importance in the Pashtun community.

"As I learned more about Bacha Khan, I realized he was as important and as courageous a figure as Gandhi was," Bouckaert says. "He played an important role not only in the struggle for nonviolence, but also in the struggle against extremism."

Bacha Khan was a true visionary who believed that world peace is not possible without healthy debate on all outstanding issues between nations. He was a person who thought beyond the narrow interest of Pakistan, or India, or Afghanistan and pursued an agenda that sought to ensure peace in the region.Khan paid a very high price for his activism. He spent almost half of his life in prison.

"I think if his message of peace and co-existence had been embraced by more people in the region, we would not be faced with the very difficult condition that we continue to see in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Bouckaert says.

Unlike in Pakistan, Bacha Khan is both well-known and looked upon with great respect in India, where he is known as "the Frontier Gandhi." The Indian government even bestowed two prestigious awards on Khan, the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1969, and the Bharat Ratna Award in 1987.

B.R. Singh, a former senior Indian civil servant, told RFE/RL of a visit by Gandhi to the frontier regions where he met with the leaders of Khan's Khudai Khidmatgar Movement.

"Gandhi asked them, 'What would you do if tomorrow Bacha Khan turns violent?' Now such was the impact that Bacha Khan had created, that they replied, 'We would remain nonviolent.'

"Certainly the Pashtuns had a reputation for violence, yet it is remarkable that Bacha Khan was able to bring about a peaceful transformation, and the Pashtun people followed him. He made them commit themselves to nonviolence," Singh recalls.

After struggling against social evils, superstition, and suppression for 70 years, Bacha Khan breathed his last at the age of 98 on January 20, 1988, at Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar. Pashtuns -- indeed, all the people of the world -- would do well to recall Khan's message of nonviolence and peace. Today, we remember him.

Tunisian uprising fires a warning

Tunisia's revolution has been closely watched in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Syria and Libya.

Egypt:

Elation has been met with trepidation in Egypt, where Tunisia's uprising is being seen as a rare chance to break the shackles of autocratic rule that could plunge the country into the unknown.

As demonstrations raged in Tunis, and the stock market fell, Egypt's security police were deployed in larger than usual numbers throughout Cairo, where the capital's youth have been speaking optimistically of a second popular revolt in the Maghreb.

Social media sites have been popular, both as a mobiliser and messenger. Themes have included the perils of Arab dictators losing touch with their charges and the demonstrated ability of dissent to force change.

There has so far been no galvanising event. A cafe owner who attempted to self-immolate outside the People's Assembly today did not cause any discernible momentum for change.

Hosni Mubarak seems well aware of the potential for street unrest to escalate into the biggest threat to his 30 year rule. Sensing the presence of European provocateurs who may wish to push the issue, the foreign minister, Ahmed Abul Gheit, warned western powers to stay out of Egypt's affairs. He also described fears that the Tunisian revolt could mushroom into other Arab states as "nonsense". The president's office was forced to deny TV reports that the supreme defence council had been called for an emergency meeting, highlighting the jittery mood in the country.

Some analysts cautioned that Egyptians should be careful what they wished for. "There is a [divergence] between hopes and the actual situation," said Professor Abdullah al-Ashaal of the international law and political science faculty at the American University in Cairo. He said radical change was necessary in Egypt, but not in the manner seen this week. "I hope that Egypt does not repeat what we have seen in Tunisia, because it would result in clashes between Christians and Muslims, the rich and poor, the authority would collapse and the society would erode.

"The lack of political freedom and the corruption infuriated the Tunisian people and left no loophole for dialogue. It made the confrontation between the street and the government a vertical confrontation and this is most peculiar. This may take some time, but it is coming."

Others spoke of the Tunisian crisis having a more short-term revolutionary effect in the Arab world. Taalat Rumaiah, the editor of Egypt's al-Distoor newspaper, said the situation on the streets of the capital was controlled but would not take much to ignite. "Everyone knows the unemployment here and the disastrous economy. So we can expect things to replicate in Egypt. It's possible that two or three other Arab regimes could fall this year because of popular uprisings."

Hassan Nafaa, a professor of political science at Cairo University, said that at the very least, the Tunisian revolt would likely be a death knell for Mubarak's mooted plan to nominate his son, Gamal, as successor. "This will be very much rejected," he said. "It may trigger a wave of anger. There is a mood for change, but the opposition here is not unified. It needs to be a revolution from below, from the young, the workers. The workers could be the trigger for this, but I am not sure that people will draw from the lessons." Martin Chulov

Algeria

Algeria is captivated by the crisis enveloping its near neighbour and is being monitored more closely than elsewhere in the Maghreb for signs that Tunisia's uprising may spread.

At least four people are reported to have set fire to themselves in the five days since the autocratic regime in Tunisia began unravelling. Demonstrations have taken place in many Algerian cities, in parallel with those happening across the border. High food prices and unemployment have been key themes of the protests, just as they were before Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali's 23-year regime fell.

Protests over civic services and a lack of government services have mushroomed on the streets of the capital, Algiers, but are so far more town hall gatherings than violent rampages. Some observers say that could soon change.

"There is a simmering rage here that could explode at any moment," said Faisal Mattawi, editor of the newspaper al-Watan. "Opposition and dissent is being suppressed in aggressive ways. The situation here is similar to Tunisia and it could become identical. The interior ministry is using the internet and text messages to comment on the crisis in Tunisia, but they are also doing all they can to suppress dissent and the use of media to be a conduit for an uprising."

There are differences in the respective societies that have led other analysts to suggest Tunisia's uprising won't fully capture Algerians' imaginations. Hugh Robert, of the International Crisis Group, said: "There is no doubt that Algerian public opinion has become detached from the government on many levels. But it is mainly on the level of sentiment. The regime is very concerned, but I don't see a simple domino effect.

"In many ways the respective situations are quite different. In Algeria things haven't linked up with the trade union movement. [Protests] haven't had the support of the middle classes. There is an element of common ground though – an experience of tyranny. The sociology of the protests is less coherent and therefore less of a challenge to the regime in Algeria."

Algeria's government is battling a 10-year-old Islamic insurgency. Its army remains strong – by many measures stronger than the president. Tunisia's Ben Ali was a one-man rule. The Algerian leader's power is shared between the military and other institutions and he has not been the lightning rod for hate that his counterpart was. Martin Chulov

Morocco

In the royal enclosure of King Mohammed VI in Rabat, the Mechouar, the rebellion against Tunisian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali has provoked serious concern. "I think all the Arab regimes are shaking and Morocco especially," said Aboubakr Jamai, editor of the now defunct Casablanca independent newspaper, Le Journal.

Morocco officially expressed "profound solidarity" with the people of Tunisia while saying that "the stability of this country is essential and fundamental to regional security and stability, particularly in the Maghreb".

Authorities have watched events nervously, banning pro-change demonstrations outside the Tunisian embassy while Ben Ali was in power but allowing celebrations to mark his fall. State television kept coverage to a minimum, but many Moroccans watched events live on al-Jazeera. The country's semi-democracy is run from within the palace walls, where a clique of advisers interpret the will of King Mohammed VI while an elected parliament presents a democratic face to the world.

The reforms and democratic optimism that Mohammed VI brought with him when he took over from his father in 1999 have gone into reverse in recent years.

Ben Ali was a dangerous model for Morocco, proving that authoritarian rule could work as long as there was economic growth and the west was kept happy, according to Jamai. "Fortunately the process of Ben Ali-zation has not gone too far, so there are still escape valves," he said. "But this is a very, very strong wake-up call. My hope is that the elites and others will realise that we had better have a serious democratisation process because if this sort of thing happens in Morocco it will be hell."

Cables from the US embassy in Rabat reveal that corruption is rife while "palace interference" in municipal elections last year to keep moderate islamists out of power in major cities.

Moroccan businessmen complained the palace used state institutions to "coerce and solicit bribes" from real estate investors and that "major investment decisions were in reality made by three individuals" named as King Mohammed, the head of his private secretariat Mohamed Mounir al-Majidi and Fouad el-Himma, heads of the Party of Authenticity and Modernity. The army was deemed "plagued by corruption". Giles Tremlett

Syria

Tunisia's Jasmine revolution has been keenly watched in Syria, one of the most repressive of the Arab regimes, though the chances of a re-run of Tunis in Damascus are slim. Syria's benchmark experience for dealing with serious unrest remains the Hama events of 1982, when the security forces killed thousands in crushing an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood. Syrian Islamists are largely behind bars or in exile, and liberal and democratic activists neutralised by surveillance and repression.

The Syrian military and security services are dominated by the ruling Alawite minority, which would see a sectarian or clan interest in defending the presidency and the state against the Sunni majority, especially after the lessons of Iraq's internecine struggle and communal fissures in Lebanon next door. "The fear of civil war based on religious affiliation is the greatest legitimiser or bulwark of authoritarianism in Syria," commented Syria watcher Joshua Landis. It is relatively easy for the state to change direction, since critical comment is unlikely. On Sunday the government raised a heating oil subsidy it had previously cut - an apparent response to economically-driven unrest in neighbouring Jordan, Tunisia and elsewhere. On Monday the government announced a plan to help 420,000 impoverished families. Official Syrian comment has been confined to lecturing Tunisia sternly on the perils of relying on fair-weather foreign allies. Events there, said the pro-government daily al-Watan, were "a lesson that no Arab regime should ignore, especially those following Tunisia's political approach of relying on 'friends' to protect them." Ian Black

Libya

Libya's most striking official reaction to the Tunisian drama has been Muammar Gaddafi's expression of "pain" that Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was forced to flee suddenly when he had belatedly offered to stand down in 2014. But solidarity was perhaps to be expected from the Arab world's longest-serving leader – in power for a record 42 years in September. Libya too has a young population and high unemployment. But its oil resources mean it is a far wealthier country than its north-western neighbour. Its creaking system of peoples committees is less sophisticated than Tunisia's "managed democracy" complete with real opposition parties and highly-developed rights for women. Recent Libyan engagement with the wider world since giving up the terrorism associated with the Lockerbie case means it is more open than in the pastto outside influences and anxious to attract western investment. Still, Gaddafi's reformist-minded son and presumed heir, Seif al-Islam, has had to back down in the face of opposition from the old guard in the security services and revolutionary committees.

Libya is also extremely corruptby international standards, though there is less of the flaunting of wealth by the elite than in Tunisia. Libya's army and security services, based on still strong tribal loyalties, would almost certainly step in with force in the event of serious political upheaval and possibly take over the country completely.

Gaddafi's al-Fateh revolution in 1969 was typical of such events in the Arab world in the 20th century – a military coup modelled on Egypt's Nasser and his "free officers", and not a mass phenomenon. The extraordinary images from Tunisia will be deeply unsettling in Tripoli. Ian Black

Sudan

A leading Sudanese opposition figure who called for a "popular revolution" if the government did not reverse price rises was said to have been arrested yesterday as the ruling regime in the Arab world's largest country grew even more jittery over the prospect of a Tunisian-style uprising. Baton-wielding police firing teargas had already quelled protests last week after Khartoum cut subsidies on petroleum products and sugar.

Last night's reported arrest of Hassan al-Turabi came a day after the Islamist leader's party threatened to take to the streets if the government did not remove its finance minister and dismantle parliament over the decision to raise prices on a range of goods.

The foreign ministry of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's government released a tentative statement at the weekend saying it welcomed the political change in Tunisia and respected the political will and social aspiration of the Tunisian people to choose their political future. Ben Quinn

• This article has been amended. The original claimed that Tunisia is Libya's north-eastern neighbour. This has been changed.

Why China Does Capitalism Better Than the U.S.

One of the great ironies revealed by the global recession that began in 2008 is that Communist Party-ruled China may be doing a better job managing capitalism's crisis than the democratically elected U.S. government. Beijing's stimulus spending was larger, infinitely more effective at overcoming the slowdown, and directed at laying the infrastructural tracks for further economic expansion.
As Western democracies shuffle wheezily forward, China's economy roars along at a steady clip, having lifted some half a billion people out of poverty over the past three decades and rapidly creating the world's largest middle class to provide an engine for long-term domestic consumer demand. Sure, there's massive social inequality, but there always is in a capitalist system. (Income inequality rates in the U.S. are some of the worst in the industrialized world, and here more people are falling into poverty than are being raised out of it - the 43 million Americans officially designated as living in poverty in 2009 was the highest number in the 51 years that records have been kept.)
Beijing is also doing a far more effective job than Washington is of tooling its economy to meet future challenges - at least according to historian Francis Fukuyama, erstwhile neoconservative intellectual heavyweight. "President Hu Jintao's rare state visit to Washington this week comes at a time when many Chinese see their weathering of the financial crisis as a vindication of their own system, and the beginning of an era in which U.S.-style liberal ideas will no longer be dominant," wrote Fukukyama in Tuesday's Financial Times under a headline stating that the U.S. had nothing to teach China. "State-owned enterprises are back in vogue, and were the chosen mechanism through which Beijing administered its massive stimulus."
Chinese leaders are more inclined today to scold the U.S. - its debtor to the tune of close to a trillion dollars - than to emulate it, and Fukuyama notes that polls show a larger percentage of Chinese people believing their country is headed in the right direction compared to Americans. China's success in navigating the economic crisis, says Fukuyama, was based on the ability of its authoritarian political system to "make large, complex decisions quickly, and ... make them relatively well, at least in economic policy."
These are startling observations from a writer who, 19 years ago, famously proclaimed that the collapse of the Soviet Union heralded "the end of history as such... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
Fukuyama has had the good grace and intellectual honesty to admit he was wrong. And he's no apologist for Chinese authoritarianism, calling out its abuses and corruption, and making clear that he believes the absence of democracy will eventually hobble China's progress. Still, he notes, while they don't hold elections, China's Communist leaders are nonetheless responsive to public opinion. (Of course they are! A Party brought to power by a peasant rebellion knows full well the destructive potential of the rage of working people.) But the regime claims solid support from the Chinese middle class, and hedges against social explosion by directing resources and investment to more marginal parts of the country.
China's leaders, of course, never subscribed to Fukuyama's "end of history" maxim; the Marxism on which they were reared would have taught them that there is no contingent relationship between capitalism and democracy, and they only had to look at neighbors such as Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore to see economic success stories under authoritarian rule - although the prosperity thus achieved played a major role in transforming Taiwan and South Korea into the noisy democracies they are today. Nor were Beijing's leaders under any illusions that the free market could take care of such basic needs as education, health care and infrastructure necessary to keep the system as a whole growing.
But Fukuyama is also making a point about the comparative inability of the U.S. system to respond decisively to a long-term crisis. "China adapts quickly, making difficult decisions and implementing them effectively," Fukuyama writes. "Americans pride themselves on constitutional checks and balances, based on a political culture that distrusts centralised government. This system has ensured individual liberty and a vibrant private sector, but it has now become polarised and ideologically rigid. At present it shows little appetite for dealing with the long-term fiscal challenges the U.S. faces. Democracy in America may have an inherent legitimacy that the Chinese system lacks, but it will not be much of a model to anyone if the government is divided against itself and cannot govern."
Money has emerged as the electoral trump card in the U.S. political system, and corporations have a Supreme Court-recognized right to use their considerable financial muscle to promote candidates and policies favorable to their business operations and to resist policies and shut out candidates deemed inimical to their business interests. So, whether it's health reform or the stimulus package, the power of special interests in the U.S. system invariably produces either gridlock, or mish-mash legislation crafted to please the narrow interests of a variety of competing interests rather than the aggregated interests of the economy and society as a whole. Efficient and rational decision-making it's not. Nor does it appear capable of tackling long-term problems. (Comment on this story.)
China is the extreme opposite, of course: It can ride roughshod over the lives of its citizens. For example, building a dam that requires the forced relocation of 1.5 million people who have no channels through which to protest. But China's system is unlikely to give individual corporations the power to veto or shape government decision making to suit their own bottom line at the expense of the needs of the system as a whole in the way that, to choose but one example, U.S. pharmaceutical companies are able to wield political influence to deny the government the right to negotiate drug prices for the public health system. Fukuyama seems to be warning that in Darwinian terms, the Chinese system may currently be more adaptive than the Land of the Free.

Clerics on the march

The News
Ayaz Amir

This is not about blasphemy or the honour of the Holy Prophet. This is now all about politics, about the forces of the clergy, routed in the last elections, discovering a cause on whose bandwagon they have mounted with a vengeance.

The blasphemy issue ignited by Aasia Bibi’s conviction was virtually over in November, the government making it plain that it had not the slightest intention of amending the blasphemy law, and no government figure of any consequence stepping forward to support Salmaan Taseer on the stand he had taken.

There the matter should have rested if Pakistan’s clerical armies were not masters of manipulation and cold-blooded calculation. They whipped up a storm in December, when the issue was no longer an issue, and fanned such an atmosphere of intolerance and hatred that it would have been strange if nothing terrible had happened.

There’s a danger of moaning too much. But what with the lionising of Salmaan Taseer’s killer and hailing him as a ghazi and defender of the faith, the impression is hard to shake off that what we are witnessing are the last burial rites of what remains of sanity in a Republic not particularly famous for any striking monuments to reason.

No cleric worth the name has refrained from adding fuel to the fires thus lit across the country. But if a prize has to be given to anyone, the honours will go to Pakistan’s path-breaking contributor to political gymnastics, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, and the Amir of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Professor Munawar Hasan (professor of what?...one is tempted to ask).

The Professor is a study in contrasts: soft-spoken, even beguilingly so, and possessing a keen sense of humour but, at the same time, a master of virulence and of confusion spread in the name of the faith. The 2008 elections had laid the Jamaat low. It had made the mistake of boycotting those elections and its performance in bye-elections since then has furnished further proof of its dwindling political relevance. The Jamaat’s exploitation of the blasphemy issue is an attempt to engineer a political comeback, although there’s no altering the fact that its vote-getting ability comes nowhere near its high nuisance value.

But the issue has to be faced squarely. The clerics are on the march not because they are strong but because those on the other side of the divide – the non-clerical forces – are weak, directionless and devoid of vision...without any strategy and plan of battle.

Zardari’s vision is to stay in power and further enrich his person and his family. End of story. The common belief is he has enough but, by all accounts, we are dealing with insatiable appetites. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s vision is to enrich his family. If a tenth of the stories doing the rounds are to be even tentatively believed, they are doing pretty well for themselves. Names close to the army high command are also the subject of lurid rumours.

But the problem is greater than a few names. Pakistan’s governing class as a whole has earned the distinction of being rotten and corrupt. Everyone rightly-placed is on the take. Those not so fortunate are less emblems of virtue than martyrs to opportunities absent or lost.

A leadership thus tainted, compromised by ineptitude and greed, can neither initiate reform nor reverse the tide of obscurantism now washing against the walls of the Republic.

Lest we forget, the armies of the faithful – with their fearsome beards and shaven moustaches, shalwars pulled up over ankles – have never been in power in Pakistan (the MMA’s stint as Musharraf’s co-travellers in the Frontier not really counting in this equation). What Pakistan is today, the depths it has plumbed, the failures courted, the follies assiduously pursued, have been the handiwork of its English-speaking elite classes – who wouldn’t be caught dead calling themselves secular but who, for all practical purposes, represent a secularist point of view.

The mullahs have not been responsible for our various alliances with the United States; our entry into Cento and Seato; our militarist adventures vis-à-vis India; and the honing of ‘jihad’ as an instrument of strategic fallacies. This last piece of brilliance came from the army as commanded by Gen Ziaul Haq. Religious elements became willing accessories in this game but were not its inventors.

If the first Constituent Assembly lavished attention on a piece of rhetoric of no practical benefit to anyone, the Objectives Resolution, instead of writing a constitution which was its chief duty, the fault lay not so much with the clerical fathers as with the Muslim League leadership. The phrase ‘ideology of Pakistan’ was an invention of Gen Yahya Khan’s information minister, Maj Gen Nawabzada Sher Ali Khan. The central tenet of our security doctrine which sees India as an implacable foe out to undo Pakistan was woven in no madrassah or mosque but in General Headquarters, and a mindset which has been a distinguishing feature of the Punjabi elite.

Our fractured education system is a gift, paradoxically, of our English-speaking classes which have never felt the slightest need for framing a common education policy – the same books and curriculum, the same medium of education – for the entire country.

The army, a secular institution to begin with, has ruled Pakistan. The mainstream parties have been in power. Pakistan’s failures are their failures. The religious parties have been the hyenas and jackals of the hunt, yelping from the sides and helping themselves to the morsels that came their way. Lords of the hunt, lions of the pack, have been Pakistan’s generals and politicians, assisted ably at all times by a powerful and equally short-sighted mandarin class.

If the misuse of religion, the exploitation of religion for less-than-holy ends, the yoking of religion to unworthy causes – such as our never-ending adventures in Afghanistan – has poisoned the national atmosphere and narrowed the space for reasoned debate, the principal responsibility for that too lies with those who have held the reins of power in their hands. Why could they not have reversed the course of events, especially when it lay in their power to do so?

True, Gen Zia’s rule amounted to a visitation from the outer reaches of purgatory. We say he distorted Pakistan, which of course he did. But it is 22 years since his departure, time enough to have healed the wounds he caused and dismantle his legacy. But if the many temples to hypocrisy he erected survive, who is to blame? The Pakistan of today is Zia’s Pakistan not Jinnah’s. But if we have been unable to go back to our founding principles the fault lies not with the zealous armies of the bearded but Pakistan’s secular rulers, in mufti and khaki.

It is not the mullahs who frighten the ruling classes. These classes are afraid of their own shadows. And they have lost the ability, if they ever had it in the first place, to think for themselves. They live on imported ideas and the power of their own fantasies.

It is not a question of the English-speaking classes – our so-called civil society with its small candle-light vigils, usually in some upscale market – standing up to the clerical armies. This is to get the whole picture wrong. It is a question of the Pakistani state – its various institutions, its defence establishment and the creeds and fallacies held dear as articles of faith by this establishment – getting its direction right and then creating a new consensus enabling it to retreat from the paths of folly.

If the Pakistani establishment continues to see India as the enemy, keeps pouring money into an arms race it cannot afford, is afflicted by delusions of grandeur relative to Afghanistan, and remains unmindful of the economic disaster into which the country is fast slipping, we will never get a grip on the challenges we face.

The raging cleric, frothing at the mouth, is thus not the problem. He is merely a symptom of something larger. Pakistan’s problem is the delusional general and the incompetent politician and as long as this is not fixed, the holy armies of bigotry will remain on the march.

Pakistan falling apart?

By Patrick Cockburn
www.independent.co.uk

It has suffered disaster after disaster. Its people have lived through crisis upon crisis. Its leaders are unwilling or unable to act. But is it really the failed state that many believe?
Is Pakistan disintegrating? Are the state and society coming apart under the impact of successive political and natural disasters? The country swirls with rumours about the fall of the civilian government or even a military coup. The great Indus flood has disappeared from the headlines at home and abroad, though millions of farmers are squatting in the ruins of their villages. The US is launching its heaviest-ever drone attacks on targets in the west of the country, and Pakistan closed the main US and Nato supply route through the Khyber Pass after US helicopters crossed the border and killed Pakistani soldiers.

Pakistan is undoubtedly in a bad way, but it is also a country with more than 170 million people, a population greater than Russia's, and is capable of absorbing a lot of punishment. It is a place of lop-sided development. It possesses nuclear weapons but children were suffering from malnutrition even before the floods. Electricity supply is intermittent so industrialists owning textile mills in Punjab complain that they have to use their own generators to stay in business. Highways linking cities are impressive, but the driver who turns off the road may soon find himself bumping along a farmer's track. The 617,000-strong army is one of the strongest in the world, but the government has failed to eliminate polio or malaria. Everybody agrees that higher education must be improved if Pakistan is to compete in the modern world, but the universities have been on strike because their budgets had been cut and they could not pay their staff.

The problem for Pakistan is not that the country is going to implode or sink into anarchy, but that successive crises do not produce revolutionary or radical change. A dysfunctional and corrupt state, part-controlled by the army, staggers on and continues to misgovern the country. The merry-go-round of open or veiled military rule alternates with feeble civilian governments. But power stays in the hands of an English-speaking élite that inherited from the British rulers of the Raj a sense of superiority over the rest of the population.

The present government might just squeak through the post-flood crisis because of its weakness rather than its strength. The military has no reason to replace it formally since the generals already control security policy at home and abroad, as well as foreign policy and anything else they deem important to their interests. The ambition of the Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, in the next few weeks is to try to fight off the demand by the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, that the legal immunity of President Asif Ali Zardari should be lifted. Mr Zardari, who owes his position to having been the husband of Benazir Bhutto, assassinated in 2007, has a well-established (though unproven) reputation for corruption during his pre-presidential days. Whatever the outcome of the struggle with the Supreme Court, Mr Zardari is scarcely in a position to stand up to the military leaders who may find it convenient to have such a discredited civilian leader nominally in power.

The military have ruled Pakistan for more than half the time since independence in 1947, but their control has never been quite absolute. The soldiers have never managed to put the politicians and the political parties permanently out of business, so the balance between military and non-military still counts. But there is no doubt about which way the struggle is going. A decisive moment came on 24 July this year when General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief of staff, was reappointed for another three-year term. The US embassy in Islamabad is said by foreign diplomats and Pakistani officials to have protested vigorously but unavailingly to Washington. It said that keeping General Kayani in place would inflict a fatal wound on democracy and demonstrate that the civilian government could not get rid of its own army commander. In the event, Washington, always a crucial influence in Islamabad, decided that it would prefer to deal with a single powerful figure able to deliver in negotiations over Afghanistan. This was in keeping with US policy towards Pakistan since the 1950s. "We were put under intense pressure to keep Kayani,"� said an aide of President Zardari's. "We were left with no choice."�

In one sense, the army never really left power after the fall of General Pervez Musharraf in 2008. It has continued to allocate to itself an extraordinarily high proportion of Pakistan's limited resources. Military bases all over the country look spruce and well cared-for, while just outside their razor-wire defences are broken roads and slum housing. At the entrance of a base just west of Islamabad last week was an elderly but effective-looking tank as a monument, the ground around it parade-ground clean. A few hundred yards away, a yellow bulldozer was driving through thick mud to make a flood-damaged road passable two months after the deluge, while a side street nearby was closed by a pool of stagnant grey-coloured water. At the other end of the country in northern Sindh, a local leader, who like many critics of the Pakistani military did not want his name published, pointed to a wide canal. He said: "This canal is not meant to be taking water from the Indus, but it is allowed to operate because it irrigates land owned by army officers."�

The army projects a messianic image of itself in which it selflessly takes power to save the nation. It likes to contrast its soldierly virtues of incorruptibility and efficiency with the crookedness and ineptitude of civilians. "The army is very good at claiming to be the solution to problems which it has itself created,"� complained a local politician in Punjab. "It is also good at ascribing all failures to civilian governments, which cannot act because the army monopolises resources." He added caustically that in his area, the floods had arrived on 6 August and the first army assistance on 26 August.

Politicians and journalists criticising the army often employ code words where more is implied than stated. But last month, a government minister made a pungent attack on the army that astonished listening journalists. The minister for defence production, Abdul Qayyum Jatoi, directly accused the army of being behind the killing of the opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, in 2007, and the revered Baluchi leader Nawab Bugti, a year earlier.

"We did not provide the army with uniforms and boots to kill their own countrymen,"� Mr Jatoi said bluntly, suggesting that the army leaders do their duty by going to defend Pakistan's frontiers and end rumours of a coup. He added: "Not only politicians should be blamed for corruption, rather [army] generals and judges should be held responsible."�

Mr Jatoi's words reflect what Pakistanis say about the army in private, but seldom dare do so in public. He paid a price for his forthrightness, since Mr Gilani promptly sacked him and he is being accused of high treason in a petition before the courts. He says he does not miss his job very much because all the important decisions in his ministry were in any case taken by the military. Pakistanis are unhappy because every week seems to bring another piece of bad news. The country is highly politicised with millions of people observing with acute interest the struggles for power at the central and local level. Taxi drivers discuss the make-up of the Supreme Court and its future composition. When it comes to open and lively political disputes, Pakistan is more like Lebanon, with its tradition of weak government but free expression of opinion, than Russia or Egypt with their supine and intimidated populations. Political parties in Pakistan are powerful and, given an ineffectual and corrupt administrative apparatus, everybody believes he or she needs somebody of influence to protect their interests. The army likes to denigrate civilian politicians as "feudalists", but in practice, big landowners have limited political power. Politicians gain influence through helping "clients" who need their support and that of their parties. "All politics here is really about jobs,"� says National Assembly member Mir Dost Muhammad Mazari.

Pakistan may not be falling apart, but the floods and the economic crisis – the government is bankrupt and inflation is at 18-20 per cent – means that every Pakistani I meet, be they small farmers, generals, industrialists or tribal leaders, is gloomy about the future. Each negative incident is interpreted as a sign of Pakistan's decline and a menacing omen of worse to come. Two recent scandals, both filmed as they happened and shown on as many as 26 cable television news channels, appear to confirm that the country is saturated with corruption and violence. This explosion of news channels has happened only in the past few years and makes it far more difficult to censor information.

One scandal was the notorious allegation of match-fixing in return for bribes made against Pakistani cricketers touring England. Commentators noted acidly that it was typical of the political system that the highly unpopular head of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Ijaz Butt, could not be dismissed by the defence minister, Ahmad Mukhtar, because he is the latter's brother-in-law. The scandal was peculiarly damaging because it broke in August just as the government was trying to persuade the world to give it large sums of money for flood relief.

A second scandal, which may have horrified Pakistanis even more than the bribery case in England, took place a few days earlier. News out of Pakistan at the time was all about the devastating floods and it received little international attention, but the gory events were again played endlessly on television. They took place on 15 August in the city of Sialkot, north of Lahore, where two wholly innocent teenagers called Hafiz Sajjad, 18, and Mohammed Muneeb Sajjad, 15, were misidentified as robbers and lynched by a crowd in the middle of a city street. Uniformed police stood nonchalantly by as men with iron rods and sticks took turns over a period of hours to beat the boys to death. Their mangled bodies were finally hung upside down in the market and the case only became know because a courageous television reporter had accidentally witnessed and secretly filmed what happened.

The Sialkot lynching shows Pakistani society at its worst. It also illustrates what happens when there is a breakdown in the administration of justice. In this case, the local police are reported to have routinely killed alleged criminals or handed them over to lynch mobs. This breakdown in the administration of justice is general. I asked Pashtun tribal elders in a town near Lakki Marwat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province what they most needed. They all said governance: some form of effective local government administration. In south Punjab I went to a tribal court where 100 tough-looking Baluchi tribesmen had submitted a land dispute to a respected leader of their tribe. It was a complicated case involving a grandfather's will written in 1985 that left 12 acres of land unequally to the sons of his two marriages. The will was not very precise but nobody cared at first because the land was in the desert. But then one member of the family started to irrigate it and made it productive, leading to a rancorous dispute about ownership. The claimants to the land had chosen binding arbitration by a respected local leader, because a decision would be swift and free. They said that if they went through the state courts, the case could take years and the judges and police could be bribed.

But incidents such as the Sialkot lynching do not mean that the country is slipping into primal anarchy like Somalia. The Western world looks at Pakistan primarily in relation to Afghanistan, the Taliban, extreme jihadi Islam and the "war on terror". In a country of 170 million people there are always episodes that can be used as evidence to illustrate any trend, such as the belief that Pakistan is filled with bloodthirsty Islamic militants bent on holy war. Earlier this year, Foreign Policy magazine in Washington, which compiles an annual list of failed states, placed Pakistan 10th on the list, claiming that it showed more signs of state failure than Haiti and Yemen, and is only slightly more stable than Somalia and Yemen.

The country's high ranking in the survey tells one more about the paranoid state of mind of Washington post-9/11 than what is actually happening. There is no incentive to play down the "Islamic threat to Pakistan" on the part of any journalist who wants his or her story to be published, think-tankers who need a grant, or diplomats who seek promotion. The influence and prospects for growth of small jihadi organisations are systematically exaggerated. Over-attentive reading of the Koran is seen as the first step on the road to Islamic terrorism. Overstated claims about their activities by fundamentalist Islamic groups are happily lapped up and repeated.

Stories acquire a life of their own, regardless of their factual basis. During the recent floods, the foreign media reported on how militant Islamic groups were prominent and energetic in distributing aid to victims, the suggestion being that they will use their enhanced status to recruit more young men for holy war. This is supposedly what they did during the Kashmir earthquake of 2005, which killed 75,000 people whom it was difficult to reach because they lived high in the mountains. Christine Fair, an expert on Pakistan at Georgetown University in Washington, eloquently demolishes this and other spurious stories about the growth of militant Islam in Pakistan. She cites a survey of 28,000 households in 126 villages in Kashmir in which one-quarter of the inhabitants said they had received aid from international agencies, 7 per cent from non-militant Islamic charities, and just 1 per cent from the Islamic militant groups. Of course, the militantly religious of all kinds are likely to be to the front in helping survivors of any disaster, because most faiths adjure their adherents to help others in a crisis. The only person I met during a visit to flooded areas who could in any way be described as a religious militant engaged in relief work was an amiable German Pentecostalist waiting for a flight in Lahore airport.

Another hardy-perennial story about Pakistan claims that because of the undoubted inadequacy of the Pakistani public education system, madrasahs, or religious schools, provide free education to the needy. Once enrolled, the children are supposedly brainwashed to turn them into the future foot soldiers of jihadi Islam. In reality, Pakistani educational specialists say that just 1.3 per cent of children in school go the madrasahs, 65 per cent to public schools, and 34 per cent to non-religious private schools. In recent years, it is the small and affordable private schools that have expanded fastest, mainly because jobs in them are open to educated women prepared to accept low pay. Most jihadis turn out to have been educated at public schools.

Extreme Islamists have seldom done well in elections in Pakistan. Widespread popular support for the Afghan Taliban stems primarily from the conviction that they are essentially a Pashtun national liberation movement fighting a foreign occupation. The Pakistani Taliban was once said to be "60 miles from Islamabad", but such scaremongering ignored the fact that there were three mountain ranges and one of the world's most powerful armies in between the Taliban's rag-tag fighters and the capital. The Pakistani state may not function very well but it is not failing, and – a pity – current crises may not even change it very much.

Sept. 11, 2010: The Right Way to Remember

EDITORIAL:NEW YORK TIMES
Barack Obama: US remains one nation
Barack Obama has called on Americans to observe religious tolerance and make sure "we don't start turning on each other".

Nine years after terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, a memorial and a transportation hub are taking recognizable shape and skyscrapers are finally starting to rise from the ashes of ground zero.

That physical rebirth is cause for celebration on this anniversary. It is a far more fitting way to defy the hate-filled extremists who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and to honor their victims, than to wallow in the intolerance and fear that have mushroomed across the nation. They are fed by the kind of bigotry exhibited by the would-be book burner in Florida, and, sadly, nurtured by people in positions of real power, including prominent members of the Republican Party.

The most important sight at ground zero now is Michael Arad’s emerging memorial. The shells of two giant pools are 30 feet deep and are set almost exactly in the places where the towers once were.

The huge waterfalls around the sides, the inscribed names of victims and the plaza are promised by the 10th anniversary next year. But two 70-foot tridents that were once at the base of the twin towers were installed last week. The museum will be built around them by 2012. And the first 16 of 416 white swamp oaks were planted on the eight-acre surface.

Surrounding that memorial will be a ring of commercial towers — eventually to be filled with workers, commuters, shoppers, tourists, the full cacophony of New York City. The tallest skyscraper is now a third of the way up. The developer Larry Silverstein has one of his skyscrapers taking shape — this one by the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. The bases of two more are finally beyond the planning stage.

The first outlines of Santiago Calatrava’s elegant PATH station are visible. Giant white ribs and other structures that will support the birdlike hall are moving into place. The temporary PATH station shuttles 70,000 commuters a day through the construction site.

After years of political lassitude and financial squabbling, rebuilding at the site began in earnest two years ago. That was when Mayor Michael Bloomberg exerted his considerable muscle to make sure the memorial is finished by 2011. At about the same time, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey established more control of the site. The authority and the mayor turned out to be a good team.

That cooperation and the visible progress are such a contrast with the way some political figures have been trying to use the Sept. 11 attacks to generate antipathy toward all Muslims. For weeks, politicians — mostly but definitely not all on the right — have been fanning the public controversy over plans to build an Islamic community center two blocks away from ground zero.

Then, Terry Jones, a minor preacher in Florida, managed to create a major furor by scheduling a ritual burning of the Koran for Sept. 11. Alarmed by hyperbolic news coverage, the top general in Afghanistan, the secretary of defense, the State Department and the president warned that such a bonfire would endanger Americans and American troops around the world.

It was bad enough to see a fringe figure acting out for cable news and Web sites, but it was deeply disturbing to hear John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House, equate Mr. Jones’s antics with the Muslim center.

In both cases, he told ABC News, “Just because you have a right to do something in America does not mean it is the right thing to do.” The Constitution does, indeed, protect both, but they are not morally equivalent. In New York City, a group of Muslims is trying to build something. Mr. Jones and his supporters are trying to tear down more than two centuries of religious tolerance.

It is a good time to remember what President Obama said on Friday, echoing the words of President George W. Bush after the attacks: “We’re not at war with Islam. We’re at war with terrorist organizations.”

PAKISTAN FLOOD. HOW TO HELP !!!!

In its Flood Response Plan, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) identified nearly $460,000,000 of funding needs for the humanitarian response. According to OneResponse, a humanitarian tracking website run by OCHA, 55 percent of those funding needs are still unmet.
How You Can Help
In the U.S. text SWAT to 50555 to make a $10 donation to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) or donate online from international locations.

Aid Agencies Taking Donations

ICRC
CARE
UNICEF
Save the Children
Islamic Relief USA
Relief International
American Red Cross
MERLIN USA
ACTED
OXFAM
International Rescue Committee
More...
Other Ways to Help

Google Person Finder
Report missing or found persons
Sahana Eden
Help enter data into Sahana's response coordination database
Pakistan Flood Incident Reporting
Contribute to a crowdsourced map tracking flood-related incidents.



Pakistan's government estimates some 15.4 million people have been affected by massive flooding this summer, making it the country's worst-ever natural disaster.

« Click to see a U.N. infographic on how the floods compare to other natural disasters in Pakistan (PDF)

In its Flood Response Plan, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) identified nearly $460,000,000 of funding needs for the humanitarian response. According to OneResponse, a humanitarian tracking website run by OCHA, 55 percent of those funding needs are still unmet.

How You Can Help
In the U.S. text SWAT to 50555 to make a $10 donation to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) or donate online from international locations.

Aid Agencies Taking Donations

ICRC
CARE
UNICEF
Save the Children
Islamic Relief USA
Relief International
American Red Cross
MERLIN USA
ACTED
OXFAM
International Rescue Committee
More...
Other Ways to Help

Google Person Finder
Report missing or found persons
Sahana Eden
Help enter data into Sahana's response coordination database
Pakistan Flood Incident Reporting

Pakistan: A Lifetime, Washed Away

New York Times
By DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN



A few days ago, I stood atop a 30-foot-high levee in Pakistan’s south Punjab, looking out as the waters from the greatest Indus River flood in memory flowed past, through orchards, swirling around a village on higher ground half a mile out. Twenty miles wide, the flood was almost dreamlike, the speeding water, as it streamed through the upper branches of trees, carrying along bits of brightly colored plastic and clumps of grass.

Many of the displaced people had left the area in the past few days, driving whatever was left of their herds, carrying whatever they were able to rescue. In Pakistan, your primary loyalty is to your biraderi, an untranslatable word, something like clan, but more visceral and entailing greater responsibility and connection. You marry among your biraderi, you must travel and be present when a member of your biraderi is married or buried and, in times of trouble, you stand by your biraderi. In Frost’s words, they are the people who, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

The hundreds of people camped on the levee were those who had no biraderi outside the flooded area, or who couldn’t afford to make the journey to them. Each family had claimed a little spot, made it home, rigged up some sort of shelter like a blanket on a frame of branches. Many had rescued a bag or two of grain, and they sat combing this out in the dirt, trying to dry it. As I walked past, I could smell that much of the grain had spoiled, a bitter loamy odor.

These families’ poverty and loss shone in the little piles of their belongings, the things they had carried with them when the water came: two or three cheap tin plates, a kettle. In one family’s encampment, discordantly, sat a dresser with a mirrored door — how did the man who had brought that through the floodwater think it would be useful?

I found most pitiful a family gathered around a prostrate brown-and-white brindled cow. The father told me that the cow had been lost in the water for four days, and the previous night it had clambered up on another section of the levee, a mile away. The people of this area recognize their cattle as easily as you or I recognize a cousin or neighbor — they sleep with their animals around them at night, and graze them all day; their animals are born and die near them. Someone passing by told the family that their cow had been found, and the father went and got it and led it to their little encampment.

In the early morning the cow had collapsed, and I could see it would soon be dead. Its eyes were beginning to dull, as the owner squatted next to it, sprinkling water into its mouth, as if it were possible to revive it. Its legs were swollen from standing in water, and its chest and torso were covered with deep cuts and scrapes, sheets of raw flesh where branches rushing past must have hit it.

The rest of the family sat nearby on a string bed, resigned, waiting for the end. This was their wealth, but when it died they would tip it into the water and let it float away to the south. Through the past few days they had seen it all, houses collapsed, trees uprooted, grain spoiled, and this was just one more blow.

Driving back to my farm, which has (so far) been spared from the flood, an image of the cow’s ordeal kept coming to me: splashing through the flood for hours and hours, at dusk or in the blank overcast night, with nothing around it but a vast expanse of water stretching away, an image of perfect loneliness. It must have found high ground, waited there as the water rose, then set off again, driven by hunger. In the immensity of the unfolding tragedy, this littler one, this moment of its death, seemed comprehensible to me, significant.

It is difficult to convey the scope of what was lost by those who had labored with ax and shovel to bring this land under cultivation. Fifty years ago, the area was all savanna, waving fields of reeds and elephant grass running for a thousand miles on both sides of the river. As a boy, I hunted there for partridge, walking among a line of beaters, the tall grasses so dense that I was invisible to the next man only 10 feet away. This was wild country.

But in the years since, these people tamed the land, leveling it by hand, expanding their plots acre by acre, until they had conquered it all. Last year, from where I stood on the levee, one would have seen orderly fields proceeding all the way to the river on the horizon. These lands had not been flooded in living memory, and so people built solid houses and granaries, planted trees, raised mosques. This was their life’s work.

Now all that has been swept away. In this area, the best-paying crop by far is sugar cane, which was to be cut in November but now stands submerged, except for the tips of the fronds, dead and rusty gray on the surface. When the water recedes, the people will, if they are lucky enough to have any, sell their cattle and their wives’ ornaments, their dowry gold, to rebuild the watercourses and to level the fields. Some will plant winter wheat, but it will be sown late and will not pay, not enough to cover the costs of reclaiming the land.

Others may plant another crop of cane, which will be sown in February and harvested the following October, 14 months away. Before that, they will have no income whatsoever. The generosity of these people’s relatives, their biraderi, cannot possibly carry them through. They are ruined, and there are millions of them.

This disaster is not like an earthquake or a tsunami. In the 2005 earthquake in northern Pakistan, 80,000 people died more or less at one blow; whereas the immediate death toll from this flood is likely to be in the low thousands. The loss of property, however, is catastrophic. It is as if a neutron bomb exploded overhead, but instead of killing the people and leaving their houses intact, it piled trees upon the houses and swept away the villages and crops and animals, leaving the people alive.

For months and even years, the people of the Indus Valley will not have sufficient income for food or clothing. They will rebuild, if they can afford it, by inches. The corrupt and impoverished Pakistani government cannot possibly make these people’s lives whole again. It’s not hard to imagine the potential for radicalization in a country already rapidly turning to extremist political views, to envision the anarchy that may be unleashed if wealthier nations do not find a way to provide sufficient relief. This is not a problem that will go away, and it is the entire world’s problem. It is said, the most violent revolutions are the revolutions of the stomach.
Daniyal Mueenuddin, a mango farmer, is the author of the story collection “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.”

Pakistan floods: victims not receiving aid quickly enough

Imran Khan: a Taliban Goebbels?

By —Dr Mohammad Taqi
Daily times

The PTI and its leader are perhaps politically insignificant, but conceding space to such Ziaist propaganda has the potential to radicalise the nation, especially our youth. Fortunately, Mr Khan is not perceived as an American stooge — he is seen as a Taliban apologist

“The lowest form of popular culture — lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives — has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage” — Carl Bernstein, US journalist.



Perhaps ordinary Pakistanis are not much better off either. But it is not just the journalists embedded with the jihadists who are peddling nonsense. Among the politicians, Mr Imran Khan keeps outdoing himself in the craft of black propaganda. He has been stuffing people with this Goebbels-speak for years and, unfortunately, the western print media is one such avenue he uses to push his outlandish assertions.

While the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman, Muslim Khan, had the dubious courage to clearly own up to the savagery of his outfit, Mr Imran Khan, who is the head and de facto chief spokesman of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, stoops to the lowest levels of skulduggery in defending Taliban atrocities. Sheer disinformation, misinformation, contempt for truth, and an utter disregard for the realities of people’s lives, particularly of the Pashtuns, are what Mr Khan’s spoken and written words are all about.

He seems to have perfected the art of repeating half-truths and quite often just plain lies over and over again. In his article ‘Don’t blame Pakistan for the failure of the war’ (The Times, UK, July 27, 2010), he has some real gems to share. He writes: “Before the West invaded Afghanistan, my country had no suicide bombers, no jihad and no Talibanisation.”

Perhaps Mr Khan had been too busy playing cricket to take note of al Qaeda’s activities in the early 1990s at Abdullah Azzam’s Maktab-al-Khidmat — a base camp in Peshawar for Arab jihadists. Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden met each other in Peshawar courtesy Professor Azzam. Suicide bombings were not a norm then, but Azzam himself was killed in a car bombing in November 1989, allegedly orchestrated by his more extremist friends. He disagreed with their concept of takfir, i.e. declaring people who did not meet their definition of Muslim as infidels, who they believed deserved to be murdered. Benazir Bhutto, Dr Najibullah, several Arab rulers and Muslim minorities were placed in this category.

The early 1990s were the formative years of world jihadism and these men in Peshawar were not confined to just Afghanistan. The Afghan-Arabs, as they became known, worked hand in glove with all varieties of Pakistani jihadists and after 1992, Afghan territory was used for their cause. For example, training and sanctuary were provided at the Al-Badr camp in Khost to terrorists who unleashed havoc in Pakistan and around the world.

Mr Khan has completely glossed over the terrorist acts of the jihadists trained in the Pak-Afghan border regions. Riaz Basra of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was one such figure who was involved in over 300 acts of terror on Pakistani soil, including an attempt on Mian Nawaz Sharif’s life, way before the US forces had set foot in Afghanistan. Along with Akram Lahori and Malik Ishaq, Basra had used the training facilities in Sarobi (near Jalalabad). This was the beginning of Talibanisation in Pakistan.

While the terrorist cadres were trained in Afghanistan, their leadership was groomed at various madrassas in Pakistan. However, Mr Imran Khan is either ignorant of this fact or is protecting such nefarious characters when he writes, “Until that point [army action in FATA in 2004], we had no militant Taliban in Pakistan. We had militant groups, but our own military establishment was able to control them. We had madrassas, but none of them produced militants intent on jihad until we became a frontline state in the war on terror.”

Only two entities from what is literally the Ivy League of the jihadist network need a mention to refute Mr Khan’s claim. Karachi’s Jamia Islamia aka Binori Mosque has produced hundreds of jihadist leaders that include Maulana Azam Tariq of Sipah-e-Sahaba, Qari Saifullah Akhtar and Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil, the leaders of Harkatul Jihad Al-Islami, and the founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, Maulana Masood Azhar. The association of this madrassa’s patron (Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai) with the Afghan Taliban, especially Mullah Omar, is well known.

It might not have dawned on Mr Imran Khan but Jalaluddin Haqqani carries the title Haqqani for a reason — he had spent six years at Darul-Uloom Haqqaniah in Akora Khattak. Among the top 32 officials in Mullah Omar’s government, 11 — including six top ministers — were educated in madrassas in Pakistan. Out of these 11, seven were students at the Haqqaniah seminary. The US was nowhere in the picture when the alumni of these madrassas were on a killing spree in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Mr Khan betters himself still when he claims, “After the WikiLeaks revelations yesterday, reports are being floated that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is aiding the Afghan militancy. The fact is that the ISI is not that powerful, but certainly in an environment of chaos and uncertainty Pakistan will need to protect its interests through all means necessary.” Even the ISI may take serious offence to this, as it is positioning itself as the power that can deliver the Taliban, especially the Haqqani network, provided the new set-up in Kabul is to its liking.

These assertions by Mr Khan might even be amusing if he was not capable of even worse assertions. Blaming the US for all ills is one thing, but he has as easily blamed the victims of terrorism. Writing about the Karsaz bombing in ‘Benazir Bhutto has only herself to blame’ (The Telegraph, UK, October 21, 2007), he noted, “I am sorry to say this, but the bombing of Benazir Bhutto’s cavalcade as she paraded through Karachi on Thursday night was a tragedy almost waiting to happen. You could argue it was inevitable...it is different for me campaigning in public, even in the frontier region, because I am not perceived as an American stooge, or a supporter of the war on terror.” Benazir and not the takfiris were to be blamed as per Mr Khan’s views!

The PTI and its leader are perhaps politically insignificant, but conceding space to such Ziaist propaganda has the potential to radicalise the nation, especially our youth. Fortunately, Mr Khan is not perceived as an American stooge — he is seen as a Taliban apologist.