Sunday, August 31, 2008

Asif Ali Zardari as the President of Pakistan

President Zardari?
The News, August 31, 2008
Dr Farrukh Saleem

Can anyone name a Pakistani soul who has more votes in our presidential electoral college than does Mr Asif Ali Zardari? To be certain, presidential-hopeful Zardari is a product of a process – a process called elections. He is also a product of a system of governance – a system called democracy. We have had generals Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf as our presidents and none of them were products of a legitimate electoral process (didn't they broke into the presidency led by the Triple-One Brigade?). Ayub, Zia and Pervez all descended as guardian angels but faded away as Lucifers-in-uniform.

Our most recent messiah-in-uniform, General Pervez Musharraf, managed to attract $12.277 billion in overt aid from the US. Then there was a 5-year-long Saudi Oil Facility (under which the Kingdom gave us up to 100,000 barrels of oil every day). Additionally, during Musharraf's 8-year rule Pakistanis working abroad sent in a wholesome $33.277 billion. That's a colossal $45.554 billion, but look at where we stand now: we are begging the US for flour; we are begging the Saudis for oil; we are begging everyone else for dollars. We have no atta, no electricity and no dollars.

Mr Asif Ali Zardari, no messiah he is. He surely has his share of flaws, perhaps more than his share of stains. More recently, he has added another hefty log – breaking another written promise – to the already backbreaking baggage he has been carrying around. But, let him who is without any flaw throw the first stone.

President-to-be Zardari is certainly no angel – remember, angels don't breathe. So far, Co-chairman Zardari has taken us all on a rough, bumpy, treacherous, a rather deceptive ride. Not too long ago, I had asked my readers if they had ever experienced a desert safari in Dubai. When the desert ranger comes to pick you up from your hotel he isn't really the type you would normally trust. You discover he is a rash driver. You soon discover he goes back on his words. Then he, unexpectedly, jumps the red light. Is he a lawbreaker too! As the sun descends into the horizon, you find yourself in the middle of a dune field; crescentic sand dunes, linear and parabolic, moving dunes, reversing dunes and dunes interacting with the wind (that's present-day Pakistan). The ranger, unexpectedly, speeds the 4X4 to the top of a dune and you feel elated (that's the Bhurban Declaration). The ranger then lets the vehicle into a freefall and you feel you are in the middle of Death Valley National Park (Zardari goes back on his written commitment). When would this roller coaster end? Where would this crafty charade take us? Seems like eternity but your ranger finally stops the vehicle. You realise that you are still in one piece and that there's barbecue, henna painting and belly dancing. You stare back at your ranger but this time in a different light.

Mr Zardari has the political right as well as the legal right to occupy the presidency. Does he have the moral right? Again, let him who hasn't sinned throw the first stone…

We can talk about individuals, along with their flaws, and what they have delivered. We can talk about presidents Iskander Mirza, Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Fazal Elahi Chaudhry, Zia-ul-Haq, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Farooq Ahmad Leghari, Rafiq Tarar and Pervez Musharraf. On the other hand, we can talk of due electoral processes and how these processes have delivered in countries around the world.

We have had our share of messiahs – uniformed and otherwise – perhaps more than our share. We need no more messiahs. Processes is what we need because processes deliver, individual don't. Systems deliver, individuals don't. Let us, for once, put processes in place, a system of governance in place. Once we have a strong system it shall on its own throw all the bad apples out.

Postscript: A month ago, US Carrier Strike Group (CSG) led by USS Abraham Lincoln was ordered to move from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. If that wasn't enough, another U.S. Carrier Strike Group led by USS Ronald Reagan has now moved in the 5th Fleet Area of Responsibility (AOR).

The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist. Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com

Also See:
Profile: Asif Ali Zardari - BBC

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Indian civil society calls for international intervention in Kashmir: Daily Times

Indian civil society calls for international intervention in Kashmir
* Indian troops beat up ambulance drivers, two pregnant women die without medical attention
* Hundreds of injured left without healthcare
* Severe shortage of food, medicine
Daily Times, August 30, 2008

SRINAGAR: Indian intellectuals and civil society activists called for international intervention to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Indian-held Kashmir, after a stern curfew led to a shortage of medicine, baby milk and essentials, and left hundreds of injured without healthcare.

Two pregnant women have died since Tuesday as Indian troops refused to allow them to go to maternity hospitals, according to a statement sent out on Wednesday, and ambulance drivers were beaten up as dozens of dead bodies and hundreds of injured along with their attendants were stranded at hospitals. Medical personnel were not able to attend their duties as hostile Indian troops deployed on the streets were not honouring identity cards and curfew passes.

“In view of the deteriorating humanitarian situation and the media blackout of the events in Kashmir, we call upon the international humanitarian agencies, particularly the United Nations bodies and the world press, to intervene immediately to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Kashmir,” said the statement, signed by a number of noted social activists and civil society organistions.

“Owing to the strict curfew, hundreds of the injured lying in various hospitals of Kashmir are not able to get critical medicines and the attendants are without food. . . The sick and the injured are not able to reach hospitals, resulting in deaths. Attendants of dozens of dead in various hospitals in Kashmir are awaiting transport for the final rites.” The Indian government has indiscriminately banned all newspapers, short message services on mobile phones, and all news and current affairs programmes on local cable TV channels as part of an information blackout. “The flow of information has completely stopped for the first time in the history of Kashmir and no newspaper has been able to publish in last 3 days,” according to the civil society statement. “Such communications blockade is resulting in loss of news about the unfolding events, blackout of significant happenings in Kashmir’s countryside – where currently media has no access – and which is tightly controlled by the army. We call upon the international community to call upon the government of India to lift the communications blockade without any delay.”

The Indian civil society condemned the use of heavy force to thwart peaceful protests, resulting in the killing of 50 civilians. They also condemned an alleged attack by militants that resulted in three civilian deaths. “In view of the four days of stringent restrictions on people’s movement and heavy clampdown by the state forces across the 10 districts of Kashmir, including Srinagar city, we appeal the international community to ask the government of India to immediately ease curfew restrictions so that people are able to access basic essentials.” daily times monitor

Also See:
Summer of discontent - ANANYA JAHANARA KABIR - The Hindu
Kashmir press muzzled, overtly and covertly - Greater Kashmir.com

Burying Women Alive in Baluchistan

‘Burying women alive for honour is tribal tradition’* Baloch senator Israrullah Zehri says members should not politicise issue
Daily Times, August 30, 2008

ISLAMABAD: The killing of women for honour is a demand of the tribal traditions, Balochistan Senator Israrullah Zehri informed the Senate on Friday.

Zehri was responding to Senator Yasmeen Shah’s statement in which she had drawn the House’s attention towards reports that five women had been buried alive in Balochistan in the name of honour. She called it a sheer violation of human rights.

Zehri asked the members not to politicise the issue, as it was a matter of safeguarding the tribal traditions.

Leader of the Opposition in Senate Kamil Ali Agha condemned the killing of women in the name of honour and demanded the issue should be referred to the Human Rights Standing Committee of the House.

Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid Senator Nisar Memon drew the attention of the Senate to a research article written by Michael Chossugovsky published in “Global Research of Canada”. He said that the article warns how some foreign elements were planning economic, political and military disruptions to declare Pakistan a failed state.

Memon said the article stated how certain foreign powers were first planning to create chaos in the country through economic crisis followed by an unprecedented price-hike, and an eventual intervention of the International Monetary Fund in the economic affairs of the country.

“The ultimate objective of all these conspiracy theories is a territorial break-up and dismemberment of the country,” Memon warned.

A disintegration of the country on racial and linguistic lines would be another tool against the country, followed by a military disruption similar to that of Yugoslavia, Memon feared.

Senate Chairman Jan Muhammad Jamali said that it was a serious matter and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani should brief the House on national security and territorial and strategic threats faced by the nation.

Leader of the House Raza Rabbani said the government would not allow anyone to harm the integrity of Pakistan. tahir niaz

Also See:
Senator Israrullah Zehri’s remarks trigger protest in Senate - Paktribune.com

Barack Obama vows to finish fight against Taliban, Al Qaeda


Obama vows to finish fight against Taliban, Al Qaeda
By Anwar Iqbal, Dawn, August 30, 2008

WASHINGTON, Aug 29: Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has pledged to finish the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and end the war in Iraq ‘responsibly’.

His acceptance speech on Thursday focused mainly on domestic issues like health care but Senator Obama did mention the two international issues that worry the Americans most: the war in Iraq and the situation along the Afghan border.

“I will end this war in Iraq responsibly and finish the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan,” he declared.

The situation in Fata, along with the war in Iraq, has become an election issue in the 2008 race for the White House with both Republican and Democratic candidates taking strong positions on how to root out terrorists from the area.

The Democrats, however, have given the portfolio of foreign affairs to their vice-presidential candidate John Biden. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Mr Biden not only has first-hand experience of dealing with such issues but also has travelled across the world and personally knows key world leaders.

In his acceptance speech on Wednesday, Senator Biden warned that “the resurgence of fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan (is) the real central front against terrorism.”

Senator Biden’s speech focused almost entirely on international disputes, freeing Senator Obama to concentrate on domestic issues.

Although Mr Obama arranged for Mr Biden to devote his speech to international issues, he did not hesitate to challenge his Republican rival Senator John McCain to debate him on these issues.

“These are the policies I will pursue. And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain,” said Mr Obama while briefly outlining his policies on major world issues.

“When John McCain said we could just muddle through in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11,” he said. “And I made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights.”

Senator Obama also blamed Mr McCain for not being clear on how to pursue those responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

“John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell, but he won’t even follow him to the cave where he lives,” said Senator Obama, reaffirming his earlier statements that he would not hesitate to launch direct military strikes at suspected terrorist targets inside Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mr Obama also criticised Mr McCain for refusing to give a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

“And today, as my call for a timeframe to remove our troops from Iraq has been echoed by the Iraqi government and even the Bush administration, even after we learned that Iraq has $79 billion in surplus while we are wallowing in deficit, John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war,” he said.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Muslims Positive About Globalization, Trade: World Public Opinion.org Study


Muslims Positive About Globalization, Trade
World Public Opinion.org; August 29, 2008

Contrary to the common assumption that Muslims view globalization as a threat to their society, a new poll of Muslim countries finds that globalization is generally viewed positively. The poll was conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org in six nations with predominantly Muslim populations in different regions of the world including Egypt, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Indonesia, and the Palestinian Territories, plus the Muslim population of Nigeria.

Asked about "globalization, especially the increasing connections of our economy with others around the world," majorities in six of the seven nations polled say that it is "mostly good" for their country. Approval is highest among Egyptians and Nigerian Muslims (79% and 78% saying mostly good, respectively). Sixty-three percent of Azerbaijanis, 61 percent of both Iranians and Indonesians, and 58 percent of Palestinians see globalization as mostly good. While support in Turkey does not reach a majority, a plurality still calls globalization mostly good (39% to 28%). On average across all seven publics, 63 percent say that globalization is good for their own countries. Only 25 percent think it is mostly bad.

For complete article, click here

Maliki picks a date with destiny: Asia Times

Maliki picks a date with destiny
By Sami Moubayed, Asia Times, August 29, 2008

DAMASCUS - Generations of Iraqi leaders have succumbed to the "Iraqi curse" - dying violent deaths while in office or soon after leaving it. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's date with destiny could well be determined by his present fixation on another date - when United States troops should permanently leave his country.

This week, Maliki reiterated that he had agreed with the United States that all 145,000 American troops would withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2010. The negotiations are for a Status of Forces Agreement to govern relations between American troops and the Iraqis after the United Nations mandate expires this December.

For complete article, click here

Also See:
Iraqi PM demands 'specific' U.S. pullout timeline - CNN
Iraqi PM changes team negotiating U.S. troops pact - Reuters

Now or Never?

Now, or perhaps never
By Javed Hasan Aly, Dawn, August 29, 2008

FOR the last three decades the establishment has flirted with brinkmanship in exploiting religious passions to fuel a controlled delivery of exported political trouble. First it was in the form of mercenary support for one superpower. Then, using the residual, but battle-hardened firepower it perpetuated a simmering bilateral dispute heating it up to destructive temperatures. It is another matter that we then witnessed a complete somersault by surrendering the initiative and acquiescing to diplomatic browbeating.

Historically, controlled delivery agents have always grown larger and more powerful than their handlers in the cobweb-weaving agencies. As a result, Pakistan is being taken for a ride by some so-called Islamists, thriving on a conviction founded in ignorance and funded by domestic and foreign agents who fear the establishment of democracy in the country.

Ziaul Haq and his legacy of generals — autonomously wise, exclusively patriotic and entirely independent of the state — allowed a perverted perception of Islam to be owned and proliferated by a sizeable part of the gullibly unintelligent and economically vulnerable population. The perception grew out of dogma, ingrained in a past irrelevant to the present-day world. It was an attempted recall of days of yore, but without the accompanying political and material strength. This worldview was the creation of self-styled ideologues in the military and could be superimposed upon a corrupt political outfit.

The intention is now to inflict a perverted perception of Islam at gunpoint. We can be cajoled, blackmailed and coerced into a kind of social behaviour that may be a declaration of defiance, but that has nothing to do with real Islam. For decades, since Islamists, with poor intellectual content, acquired political clout, the agencies’ intelligentsia and their brilliant ideologues reposed their trust in these controlled agents of destruction within or outside Pakistan. Islamic knowledge was being measured according to the cut, size and extent of the dishevelled growth of facial hair.

It is an insult to intelligent and educated people that the interpretation of Muslim philosophy and Islamic behaviour is squarely the domain of the least intellectually equipped, and whose Islamic interpretation of political responses is entirely out of sync with the Quran and Sunnah. It is a shame that we are condemned to be led into social and religious behaviour which is condemnable in true Islam; merely because the brute force of the gun trained on Muslims prevents us from exercising the courage to defy the untruth. The brilliant strategists and thinkers of the agencies consider it a right to impose their wish on the will of the people.

What are the recent-day neo-Taliban of the NWFP doing now? Coercing fellow Muslims, abducting fellow Muslims, killing fellow Muslims — all in the name of an authority, discretion and privilege that do not vest in them! And the clergy that derives political influence from such pockets of indefensible insurgencies, does not have the courage to disown these irreligious, immoral activities.

Recently, scholars of the calibre of Muftis Munib-ur-Rahman and Rafi Usmani (only conditionally) and the rationalist scholar Javed Ahmed Ghamidi have distanced themselves from such untenable interpretations of Muslim behaviour. But the saddest part is that leaders of the religious political parties have not had the courage to demonstrate the knowledge and conviction to denounce such utterly un-Islamic acts and are unwilling to state the truth for the sake of political convenience.

Because the so-called religious political parties, averse to the cause of Pakistan before 1947, derive their strength from these bigots, these parties refuse to condemn what is obviously and outright un-Islamic. Every time there is a discussion on terrorism their favourite refrain is the cause of such terrorism. Its consequences are either lost on them, or are irrelevant to their politics.

We all know where the roots of Muslim defiance and mistrust of western capitalist hegemony lie. But can we forget the partners of the West in the destruction and denial of the Palestinian cause — Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, et al? And why should ordinary Islam-loving, practising Muslims pay a price under the hammer of illiterate Pakistani bigots with ill-begotten military hardware?

We know that even Maulana Maudoodi refused to sanctify the Kashmir jihad of 1948. Now his political progenies are unconcerned with the tenets of religion and are more mindful of political gains; and, therefore, refuse to make proactive pronouncements on the legitimacy of what insurgents in the NWFP are doing in the name of religion. At best, they offer reactive responses.

Religion is unfortunately becoming the proprietary domain of those who espouse a particular physical appearance. Without regard to any intellectual content they are willing to impose a particular social conduct upon the people, at the point of pain, in a perverted display of irreligious thuggery in the name of religion.

Whatever the causes of this terrible conduct damaging the noble concept of jihad, we must be mindful of the outcome of such pervasively destructive socio-political movements. The fair name of Islam cannot be allowed to be soiled by these negatively motivated and poorly educated exponents of Islamic militancy. More than others, it is the duty of the true scholars of Islam to proactively condemn such pursuits and help purge these victims of the indoctrination of untrue Islam.

Importantly, the leaders of religious political parties should rise above short-term political advantages and denounce these un-Islamic acts in a forthright manner. The time to do so is now. Later perhaps sanity may become unredeemable and the delirium now being demonstrated may become uncontrollable. Religious political leaders owe it to Islam and to posterity to act before it is too late.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Top Muslim cop of UK decries ‘discrimination’



Top Muslim cop of UK decries ‘discrimination’
Dawn, August 29, 2008

LONDON, Aug 28: Britain’s most senior Muslim policeman launched a stinging attack on Thursday on the controversial head of London’s police, against whom he has launched a discrimination claim.

Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur said it was with “deep regret” that he was taking Sir Ian Blair of the Metropolitan Police to an employment tribunal and denied the move was linked to unhappiness at not being promoted.

“My current case is essentially to do with my treatment at the highest levels of the Met, in particular the discrimination I have been subjected to over a long period by the present Commissioner Sir Ian Blair,” Ghaffur said.

He added it also covered treatment he had faced in his current role as security coordinator for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Sitting alongside his client at a news conference in London, Ghaffur’s lawyer Shahrokh Mireskandari suggested that his case might not be an isolated one.

Asked whether he thought Blair or the Metropolitan Police was racist, Mireskandari told reporters: “When there’s so (many) discrimination cases coming out by ethnic minorities, that speaks for itself...’’—AFP

Also See:
Biography of Tarique Ghaffur - UK Metropolitan Police website
Race row police told to 'shut up' - BBC

Lawyers stage sit-ins throughout Pakistan

Lawyers stage sit-ins
The News, August 29, 2008
By Sohail Khan

ISLAMABAD: The lawyers on Thursday staged two-hour sit-ins and took out protest rallies across the country to put pressure on the government for the early restoration of the deposed judges, including Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

The sit-ins were staged on the call of National Coordination Council (NCC) as well as Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) President Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan. In the federal capital, the lawyers brought out a protest rally from Islamabad District Court headed by its President Haroon-ur-Rashid and marched towards the Zero Point. On reaching there, the lawyers staged two-hour sit-in from 12-2 pm, headed by Athar Minallah, spokesperson for deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

For complete article, click here

Also See:
Peaceful sit-in sends strong signal of intact lawyers’ movement - Daily Times
Scores of women participate in lawyers' sit-in - The Nation

Adm. Mike Mullen Meets General Kayani over Indian Ocean: NYT


U.S.-Pakistani Brainstorming on Border Violence
By ERIC SCHMITT, New York Times, August 28, 2008

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff secretly convened a highly unusual meeting of senior American and Pakistani commanders on an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday to discuss how to combat the escalating violence along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

While officials from the two allies offered few details on Wednesday about what was decided or even discussed at the meeting — including any new strategies, tactics, weapons or troop deployments — the star-studded list of participants and the extreme secrecy surrounding the talks underscored how gravely both nations regard the growing militant threat.

The leading actors in the daylong conference were Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of staff of the Pakistani Army.

Joining them aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln were Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, who will soon become the senior officer in the Middle East; Gen. David D. McKiernan, NATO’s top officer in Afghanistan; Adm. Eric T. Olson, head of the Special Operations Command; Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, acting commander of American forces in the Middle East; and Rear Adm. Michael A. LeFever, the senior American military liaison to Pakistan. General Kayani was accompanied by ranking officers from Pakistan.

The meeting was prompted by a series of ominous developments: continuing political turmoil in Pakistan, increasingly deadly attacks against Afghan and Western targets in Afghanistan and American complaints that the Pakistani military has been ineffective in stemming the flow of militants who launch attacks in Afghanistan from Pakistani havens.

American officials pointed to two major Taliban attacks in Afghanistan last week — a coordinated assault by at least 10 suicide bombers against one of the largest American military bases and another by about 100 insurgents who ambushed and killed 10 elite French paratroopers.

“The meeting was mainly to continue to discuss ongoing operations against extremists in the border region and to work together to find better ways to solve those problems,” said one American military official who was briefed on the talks.

Admiral Mullen met with General Kayani just a month ago in Islamabad, Pakistan. It was then that this week’s meeting was scheduled, the military official said. In Islamabad, he said, Admiral Mullen had bluntly warned General Kayani that Pakistan had to do more to combat militants in the restive tribal areas.

The gathering aboard the Abraham Lincoln was less confrontational in tone, aides said. “It was one of those meetings to help clear up the situation, get an understanding of the issues, and look for a way forward,” said a senior Pakistani officer briefed on the discussions.

For complete report, click here

Also See:
Pakistan terror war focus finally on target, says US: Kayani attends secret talks with American military chief on aircraft carrier - Anwar Iqbal, Dawn, August 29, 2008

Price of Morality?: Dawn Editorial

Price of morality?
Editorial, Dawn, August 28, 2008

AN enemy who speaks an altogether different language with unforgiving conviction is at best a dark dead-end. A research by the Asian Human Rights Commission clearly states that there has been negligible change in the incidents of violence against women after the Women Protection Bill 2006 came into force. A local NGO’s research supports this claim with astounding figures — 1317 women endured violence in 2007, including over 210 victims of honour killing. Take recent shockers, such as the woman in Sukkur who was axed to death by her cousin over ‘suspicions’ of illicit relations and another victim of domestic violence in Ranjhapur village who sought asylum at Thull police station. These came soon after two bullet-riddled bodies of women were discovered in Gulli Garhi village with a note that declared them of ‘loose character’. It also stated that the victims had been killed for defying warnings by the Jaish-i-Islami. With the treacherous recesses of the NWFP having been turned into a minefield of extremism and the rural areas nursing their gender prejudices it is not strange that violence against women is on the rise. Moreover, the parameters of a ‘loose character’ or ‘illicit relations’ remain undefined and anything is enough to trigger the wrath of the custodians of morality. The question is how long will regressive elements enforce a parallel ‘legal’ system that challenges the writ of the state and perpetrates outright murders in the name of virtue?

Despite the fact that women in Fata continue to cry foul, citing the reion's 'special status' as the root of these ‘murders’, Frontier Crime Regulation persists and jirgas have yet to be replaced by courts of law. Regrettably, the ‘edicts’ ordained by jirgas and militants remain loaded against women and are in open violation of the laws of the land. Perhaps, aside from the establishment of a judicial system, far-flung areas are in dire need of empowered, sensitised women’s police stations. As experts have pointed out in the past, the National Commission on the Status of Women must also become more independent, aggressive and, above all, relevant in such areas. Lastly, the security of our womenfolk is a national investment and education and employment are surefire tools to thwart patriarchy and brutality.

Ghosts of the past

Ghosts of the past
By Dr Rubina Saigol, Dawn, August 28, 2008

CONTEMPORARY Pakistan finds itself at the nexus of a number of intersecting conflicts that have generated unbridled violence across the length and breadth of the country.

The suicide bombing at the Pakistan Ordnance Factory was the continuation of a series of attacks on state institutions including the ISI, the SSG unit, the air force as well as civilian law-enforcement agencies such as the FIA building in Lahore.

News of bloodshed is splashed across the front pages of dailies from attacks on utility installations such as Sui gas pipelines in Balochistan to the regular bombing and torching of girls’ schools in Mingora, Swat, and other areas of Pakhtunkhwa. Added to these horrific news items are the almost daily attacks by Nato forces on the innocent people of Bajaur and other Fata areas from where populations are forced to flee and become displaced.

There is a virtual civil war going on between the security forces and militants, and among militants themselves, in Waziristan. A number of outfits such as Lashkar-i-Islam of Mangal Bagh and Amr Bil Maroof Wal Nahi Al-Munkar of the slain Haji Namdar have sprung up. Among all religio-militant contraptions, the biggest and most deadly by far are the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan led by Baitullah Mehsud and Maulvi Omar and the revitalised Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi.

Nobody knows which ones have been spawned by the spymasters themselves and which ones sprung up in resistance to US and Pakistani siege of the areas. Similarly, one hears whispers of the Balochistan National Army being active in the province with the backing of some powerful actors.

We need to understand our plight in a historical perspective. What we see all around us today is not a sudden or recent uprising but goes way back into the very process of the formation of our state in a communal split and the subsequent festering of wounds inflicted over years of insensitivity exhibited by a highly centralised state. As Pakistan emerged in the context of the divisive two-nation paradigm, the state came to be defined in religious terms early on in our history.

There were two major consequences of the birth of the country within a primarily religious idiom: 1) The state acquired a communal, religious and sectarian character which generated sectarian and religious violence; and 2) the overemphasis on religious identity excluded and denied the existence of older and more entrenched ethnic, linguistic and regional identities which were suppressed in the name of religious homogenisation.

Let us take the communalisation of the state first. As early as 1949 the Objectives Resolution was adopted which declared that sovereignty belongs to Allah and the religious and social system of Islam would be fully observed. In spite of serious objections raised by the minority members of the constituent assembly, the resolution was passed on the insistence of the Muslim members who took their cue from the two-nation concept.

In 1985, during Gen Zia’s Islamisation drive, Article 2-A was inserted into the constitution and the Objectives Resolution was made a substantive part of the constitution thereby making its provisions justiciable. At that time the minorities were deprived of the right to practise their religions freely as the word ‘freely’ was deleted.

The Afghan jihad, coupled with the Islamisation measures designed to legitimise Zia’s illegal rule, provided enormous impetus for the growth of madressahs supported by Saudi, US and Iranian funds. The greatest increase in religious parties was recorded between 1979 and 1990, and this is accounted for by the staggering rise in the number of sectarian outfits.

While jihad-related organisations doubled, there was a 90 per cent increase in sectarian parties. In the same period, religious seminaries began to proliferate in Pakistan. Prior to 1980, there were 700 religious schools in Pakistan and the annual rate of increase was three per cent.

By the end of 1986, the rate of increase of deeni madaris reached a phenomenal 136 per cent. By 2002, Pakistan had 7,000 institutions awarding higher degrees in religious teaching. The new schools were mostly set up in the Frontier province, southern Punjab and Karachi. Religious leaders were provided with economic incentives to create militants for the Afghan war.

The situation was now rife for sectarian conflict as arguments and interpretations of the ‘true’ meaning of an Islamic state became ubiquitous. In Punjab, 1994 was one of the worst years in terms of sectarian killing when 73 people were killed and many more wounded. In the latter half of 1996, sectarian violence in Parachinar and part of the Kurrram Agency claimed hundreds of lives. In March 2004, unidentified gunmen opened fire on an Ashura procession in Quetta killing over 40 people and injuring scores of others. Sectarian violence escalated in Oct 2004 when on Oct 1 29 people were killed in an imambargah in Sialkot. On Oct 7, a bomb explosion in Multan killed 40 people in a mosque while three days later a blast ripped through a Shia mosque in Lahore killing four people. The latest was in Dera Ismail Khan where a hospital full of Shia mourners was attacked.

Another major consequence of a state emerging within a religious theory was that Pakistan failed to evolve a viable federal structure. Religious nationalism became a centralising force and the unique identities of ethnic minorities came to be denied or erased because of the promotion of an overriding religious identity. As early as 1963 Ayub Khan declared that “I do hope that in a few decades, which is not a long time in the history and progress of nations, our people will forget to think in terms of Punjabi, Pathan, Sindhi, Balochi and Bengali and think of themselves as Pakistanis only … our religion, our ideology, our common background, our aims and ambitions unite us more firmly than any geographical boundaries could have.”

The denial of the rights of smaller provinces in recognition of language, NFC award, royalties or water share led to various conflicts one after another which culminated in East Pakistan’s secession and ensuing resistance movements in Balochistan, Fata and Sindh. In 1970-71 the state was locked in a power struggle against the Bengalis, in the mid-1970s against the Baloch, in the 1980s against the Sindhis during the MRD movement and in the early 1990s against Urdu-speaking migrants from India.

An over-centralised state, dominated by one ethnic group along with a powerful army and bureaucracy drawn primarily from one or two ethnic groups, drew its ideological inspiration from religious nationalism to create a false sense of unity. The foundational paradigm of the state’s emergence ironically created existential crises for it, as the founding theory blew up in its face and its repressive response simply added fuel to the fire of ethnic disaffection. Today its own policies have come back to haunt the state.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Be Patient with Pakistan

AprĆØs Musharraf, patience
By Hassan Abbas; International Herald Tribune, August 27, 2008
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts:

Western governments clearly have mixed feelings about the legacy of Pervez Musharraf and are trying to grasp what is in store for a nuclear-armed state whose writ is diminishing within its territories.

The concern is legitimate, but it underestimates Pakistan's potential. The notion that somehow developing countries, and especially Muslim-majority states, cannot adjust to democratic model is a flawed assessment. The track record of democratic governments in Pakistan is indeed mixed, but it is also true that democracy takes time to develop.

In fact, Pakistan was created out of a democratic movement led by a constitutional lawyer, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who aspired to make Pakistan a pluralistic, democratic state. Pakistan was also the first Muslim state to elect a woman as prime minister in 1988, the late Benazir Bhutto.

Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, also a former prime minister, went to the gallows in 1977 rather than submit to a military dictator. The daughter returned to Pakistan in 2007 after a long exile to lead the democracy movement, knowing fully well that she was a prime target of anti-democratic forces.

Despite such courageous acts, Western governments, primarily the United States and Britain, have shown far more patience with dictators than with elected leaders. Periods of military rule in Pakistan - 1958-69; 1977-88; 1999-2008 - lasted an average of 10 years, while democratic phases lasted an average of less than three years and were often declared to be unstable, corrupt and weak. Foreign aid also declined during the democratic periods.

This is not to say that the reemergence of democracy will resolve everything quickly and amicably. History shows that dictatorships destroy the social fabric of societies and diminish the capacity of state institutions to function effectively.

Musharraf, though a liberal person at heart, was no different. He did contribute positively in certain areas - for instance in initiating a peace process with India - but overall his policies proved to be divisive and haphazard. The humiliating way in which he dealt with the judiciary in Pakistan cannot be defended on any grounds.

Musharraf's autocratic decisions did not go unchallenged in Pakistan. An energetic lawyers' movement emerged in response. In its early days, it failed to attract Western support, perhaps because the West did not expect people of a "backward Muslim country" to go into the streets to demand rule of law.

Still, it must be acknowledged that the United States and Britain did push Musharraf to allow Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan and hold free elections.

With Musharraf's departure, Pakistanis have gained a new opportunity to put their house in order. Similarly, the Western world has a fresh opening to support democratic forces.

The challenges are huge, but not insurmountable. Without a doubt, religious bigotry is ascendant in Pakistan's tribal areas and violence in the shape of suicide bombings and attacks on girls' schools and music shops are on the rise.

To reverse this trend, a new counter-terrorism policy focused on isolating the terrorists, politically as well as physically, along with increased economic opportunities should be a priority for the new government.

Restoration of the deposed judges, as promised by major coalition parties, and a smooth election of the new president in coming weeks will set the stage for serious policy making and consensus developing on critical issues.

Despite the recent breakup of the coalition, the government is not going to fall. Such developments are part of a democratic process.

Pakistan can indeed be rescued from a further slide into chaos, and its democratic institutions are better placed to tackle this situation than any dictatorship. But this can only happen if the West supports democracy and patience.

Hassan Abbas, a former Pakistani government official who served in the Bhutto and Musharraf administrations, is a research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. He is the author of "Pakistan's Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America's War on Terror."

A Jihad Grows in Kashmir By Pankaj Mishra

A Jihad Grows in Kashmir
By PANKAJ MISHRA, New York Times, August 27, 2008
New Delhi

FOR more than a week now, hundreds of thousands of Muslims have filled the streets of Srinagar, the capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir, shouting “azadi” (freedom) and raising the green flag of Islam. These demonstrations, the largest in nearly two decades, remind many of us why in 2000 President Bill Clinton described Kashmir, the Himalayan region claimed by both India and Pakistan, as “the most dangerous place on earth.”

Mr. Clinton sounded a bit hyperbolic back then. Dangerous, you wanted to ask, to whom? Though more than a decade old, the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir, which Pakistan’s rogue intelligence agency had infiltrated with jihadi terrorists, was not much known outside South Asia. But then the Clinton administration had found itself compelled to intervene in 1999 when India and Pakistan fought a limited but brutal war near the so-called line of control that divides Indian Kashmir from the Pakistani-held portion of the formerly independent state. Pakistan’s withdrawal of its soldiers from high peaks in Indian Kashmir set off the series of destabilizing events that culminated in Pervez Musharraf assuming power in a military coup.

After 9/11, Mr. Musharraf quickly became the Bush administration’s ally. Seen through the fog of the “war on terror” and the Indian government’s own cynical propaganda, the problem in Kashmir seemed entirely to do with jihadist terrorists. President Musharraf could even claim credit for fighting extremism by reducing his intelligence service’s commitment to jihad in Kashmir — indeed, he did help bring down the level of violence, which has claimed an estimated 80,000 lives.

Since then Pakistan has developed its own troubles with Muslim extremists. Conventional wisdom now has Pakistan down as the most dangerous place on earth. Meanwhile, India is usually tagged as a “rising superpower” or “capitalist success story” — clichĆ©s so pervasive that they persuaded even so shrewd an observer as Fareed Zakaria to claim in his new book “The Post-American World” that India since 1997 has been “stable, peaceful and prosperous.”

It is true that India’s relations with Pakistan have improved lately. But more than half a million Indian soldiers still pursue a few thousand insurgents in Kashmir. While periodically holding bilateral talks with Pakistan, India has taken for granted those most affected by the so-called Kashmir dispute: the four million Kashmiri Muslims who suffer every day the misery and degradation of a full-fledged military occupation.

The Indian government’s insistence that peace is spreading in Kashmir is at odds with a report by Human Rights Watch in 2006 that described a steady pattern of arbitrary arrest, torture and extrajudicial execution by Indian security forces — excesses that make the events at Abu Ghraib seem like a case of high spirits. A survey by Doctors Without Borders in 2005 found that Muslim women in Kashmir, prey to the Indian troops and paramilitaries, suffered some of the most pervasive sexual violence in the world.

Over the last two decades, most ordinary Kashmiri Muslims have wavered between active insurrection and sullen rage. They fear, justifiably or not, the possibility of Israeli-style settlements by Hindus; reports two months ago of a government move to grant 92 acres of Kashmiri land to a Hindu religious group are what provoked the younger generation into the public defiance expressed of late.

For complete article, click here

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

A Door Opens for Reform in Pakistan

A Door Opens for Reform in Pakistan – Part I
Helping Islamabad take care of inequality and injustice would be the best approach the world could take

Paula R. Newberg; YaleGlobal, 21 August 2008

WASHINGTON: Before the ink was dry on President Pervez Musharraf's resignation letter, and before Pakistanis could celebrate the end of his nine-year rule, remorse filled the air. Washington and New Delhi, both crucial to Pakistan's stability, quickly lamented the end of one-stop diplomacy, prefacing their official statements with "let's wait and see what democracy brings." With strife threatening Pakistan's borders and its economy limping, the danger is not that India and the US have lost a comfortable relationship with Musharraf, but that nostalgia will blind them to the opportunities that political change might bring.

Self-fulfilling prophecy is a familiar handmaiden to failed policies in this corner of Asia. Although the false promise of clean and efficient military rule has all too frequently disappointed Pakistanis and their patrons, pliant donors have often invested the military with the attributes they want and hope to see. After 2001, Musharraf was expediently billed as the savior who could save the economy, align Pakistan with the West, stop terrorism and rid the country of tainted politics. This was myth masquerading as fact in a place where everything, including nuclear technology, was for sale.

For complete article, click here

FATA Reforms

A Door Opens for Reform in Pakistan – Part II
Political and legal reforms in the tribal belt are key to preventing extremists from filling the vacuum
Ziad Haider; YaleGlobal, 25 August 2008

LAHORE: With a revived Taliban and Al Qaeda operating out of Pakistan’s federally administered tribal areas (FATA), the region has assumed center stage in the US-led “war on terror.” To secure these areas, Pakistan’s civilian government seeks to negotiate with tribesmen who end combat, withdraw the army and only use it on last resort, while promoting economic development.Yet this strategy will fail unless Pakistan fully addresses FATA’s regressive and shrinking governance system. Political and legal reforms are essential to extend the state’s writ, uphold constitutional rights, prevent a popular drift to the Taliban, and mainstream and secure the region in the long-term.

For complete article, click here

Also See:
Why we failed in FATA - Rustam Shah Mohmand, The News

Karachi in the Eye of the storm?

KARACHI: Sectarian organisations regrouping in city
By Azfar-ul-Ashfaque, Dawn, August 26, 2008

KARACHI, Aug 24: The re-emergence of two banned militant outfits in the city has posed a serious threat to the security situation amid growing fears of sectarian violence, Dawn has learnt.

Background interviews with various police and intelligence officials revealed that militants of two banned outfits — Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) and Sipah-i-Muhammad Pakistan (SMP) — have returned to the city and are now busy in regrouping and expanding their network.

Former president Pervez Musharraf had slapped a ban on the two sectarian outfits, along with several others, in 2001 and launched a countrywide crackdown. Scores of militants of the two banned parties were arrested but there were many who had managed to evade the crackdown and fled to the country’s tribal areas.

Police and intelligence agencies have credible reports about the presence of militants of the two sectarian outfits in the city. Also, the graffiti that appeared in many city localities regarding the two banned parties has sent alarm bells ringing with the quarters concerned.

‘Proxy war’

An intelligence official told Dawn that the gravity of the situation could be gauged from the fact that the two outlawed organisations were planning attacks on important personalities of their rival sects, including certain politicians. “Basically, both the SMP and LJ are set to launch a proxy war against each other in Karachi to avenge whatever has been going on in Parachinar, Dera Ismail Khan or the tribal areas,” he observed.

He said that while the LJ militants have links with some religious parties, some local leaders of a major political party were allegedly patronising the SMP militants.

Quoting information that had been gleaned from some suspects, sources said that a wanted militant, Ali Mustehsan, is reportedly operating the network of the SMP in the city and is acting on the directives of Zulqarnain Haider, who had recently returned to Karachi and succeeded in reuniting the two factions of the SMP, Baqiatullah and Pasban-i-Islam.

They said that other SMP militants including Muhib alias Yawar Abbas, Mohsin Mehdi, Hashim Raza, Asim Zaidi, Rashid alias Hasan, Sarfaraz and Azhar, are also in the city and planning a major strike.

The sources said that various groups of LJ militants are operating in the city and one of them was allegedly behind last month’s killings of three persons, including a prosecution witness of the 2001 Imambargah Ali Murtaza firing case against Akram Lahori and other LJ militants.

On July 7, Dr Mohsin Raza Rizvi, the secretary-general of the Shia Ulema Council, was shot dead by unknown motorcyclists outside his clinic in the Mehmoodabad police limits.

The sources said that he was targeted owing to the fact that he had testified against four LJ militants — Akram Lahori, Tasadduq Hussain, Mohammad Azam and Attaullah — during the trial of the Imambargah Ali Murtaza firing case, in which six worshippers were shot dead. All the four were convicted in 2003 but in 2006, the Sindh High Court had set aside their conviction.

A senior police official told Dawn that during the last three weeks, the CID police and an intelligence outfit had jointly conducted raids on several places to nab a wanted LJ militant, Qari Jamil Burmi, but failed.

They said that Burmi recently re-organised his group in the city and was in touch with his other comrades through one Qari Rizwan.

The sources said that the law enforcing agencies have specific information about five other LJ militants — Basit, Irfan, Saleem, Mohammad Ali and Amjad Bhatti — and they were trying hard to arrest them before they carry out any subversive activity.

Compared to the SMP, the sources termed the LJ militants more dangerous because of their links with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Safe havens

They said that even though a neighbouring country and militants fighting in the Kurram Agency are supporting the SMP activists, the LJ has safe havens in the rest of the tribal areas, particularly in Waziristan.

There are reports that some LJ militants were busy in enticing youths to strengthen their cadre.

There are also reports that sectarian terrorists may strike in the city before Ramazan in order to destabilise the new government, which is already busy in fighting militants in the troubled tribal areas.

“In order to divert the government’s attention, the terrorists may turn Karachi into a battlefield. We are alert to face such challenges,” said an intelligence official.

Battlelines...

U.N. Envoy’s Ties to Pakistani Are Questioned
By HELENE COOPER and MARK MAZZETTI, New York Times, August 26, 2008

WASHINGTON — Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to the United Nations, is facing angry questions from other senior Bush administration officials over what they describe as unauthorized contacts with Asif Ali Zardari, a contender to succeed Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan.

Mr. Khalilzad had spoken by telephone with Mr. Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, several times a week for the past month until he was confronted about the unauthorized contacts, a senior United States official said. Other officials said Mr. Khalilzad had planned to meet with Mr. Zardari privately next Tuesday while on vacation in Dubai, in a session that was canceled only after Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, learned from Mr. Zardari himself that the ambassador was providing “advice and help.”

“Can I ask what sort of ‘advice and help’ you are providing?” Mr. Boucher wrote in an angry e-mail message to Mr. Khalilzad. “What sort of channel is this? Governmental, private, personnel?” Copies of the message were sent to others at the highest levels of the State Department; the message was provided to The New York Times by an administration official who had received a copy.

For complete article, click here

Manifest Destiny of Pakistan

Analysis: Manifest Destiny — Tanvir Ahmad Khan
Daily Times, August 25, 2008

Readers of Tolstoy’s War and Peace are all too familiar with passages in which the great master breaks away from his grand narrative to brood over the meaning and essence of history. He was not content with the heroic mode which doubtless had been revived by Napoleon’s mighty sweeps across Europe. The genius Napoleon, he noted wryly, had “suddenly been discovered to be an outlaw” and exiled to die “a slow death on a rock”.

Scientific sociology that the Russian chattering classes applied to movements of history did not satisfy Tolstoy either partly because he felt that available facts were not usually sufficient to arrive at truth and partly because they would not apprehend a higher will at work in human affairs.

The new history, Tolstoy wrote, is like a deaf man replying to questions which nobody puts to him. In Pakistan, today, new history is being written less by professional historians and more by instant interpreters — not all of them are journalists — that dominate the print and the electronic media. One may be forgiven for being reminded by many of them of Tolstoy’s devastating judgement. They would become more relevant and credible if they were to spend less time on the minutiae of political tactics by which various stakeholders seek advantage over one another and focus more sharply on reading the forces that shape destinies of people.

The nation of Pakistan is lost in a maze because its political class is finding it difficult to offer a vision of its manifest destiny. Faced with a deep national crisis, admittedly not of its making, this class is haunted by fears, many of which are nameless; it is, therefore, unable to put together a programme of national revival. General Musharraf’s long overdue resignation should have been a triumphal moment to raise the spirit of the people and set them on the road to recovery. This moment is getting dissipated in minor details of manoeuvres by which some illusory mileage may be gained at a future date.

In the several weeks prior to his resignation, Musharraf had systematically trivialised the new political set up by portraying it as incapable of providing effective governance. This was a characteristic Musharraf ploy of transferring responsibility for the grave consequences of his long misrule to some other shoulders. The impeachment move may well have been triggered by the perception that this campaign could be a prelude to something far more reckless. In the ensuing confrontation Musharraf banked heavily on the knowledge that he did not face a revolutionary situation or even radical opponents. In political terms, the overwhelmingly anti-Musharraf verdict handed down by the assemblies of all the federating provinces was a brilliant initiative in wrapping up the remnants of his power.

But even in this dismal hour he was able to write part of the requiem. More than the guard of honour that has upset many people, Musharraf got written into it an obligation to give him complete indemnity. He may well have been uncanny in saddling the government as, indeed, the parliament with an agenda that would not be easy to address.

This is the essence of the Musharraf legacy. We have a battered and fragmented polity marred by deep distrust and misperception. Balochistan is alienated as never before. Violence is the defining feature of groups that have no interest in the survival of a progressive and democratic state that the founding fathers had dreamt of. Once the economic bubble burst, the state started losing control and has yet to come up with a resolute plan of action. More importantly, it cannot deal with international friends and foes with any degree of assurance.

In common parlance, the sovereignty that Musharraf compromised over a decade can hardly be restored to full measure by Mr Asif Zardari overnight, particularly when there is no consensus on how to deal with the debris of the Musharraf era.

Talking of nameless fears, one need not despair of the international community. Looked at from inside, Musharraf’s departure is nothing short of deliverance. For the view from outside, things were blurry for a long time but, perhaps, not anymore.

Hussain Haqqani, our new man in Washington, is innovative if nothing else. A piece written by him for the Wall Street Journal (August 21) has the engaging title “America is Better off Without Musharraf”. George Bush may or may not agree but his successor would have little hesitation in sharing Haqqani’s little incursion into the national interest of the United States. There is time and space for defining things afresh and there is no justification for exaggerating our fears.

The mainstream political parties can transform the domestic scene today by agreeing to work together to overcome the imminent political, economic and social threats. This is what a minimum common programme is all about. They can do so for an agreed period of time and then press their respective claims on the attention of our people in a general election.

A continuing coalition now will help but it will not be a disaster as and when its components seek a fresh mandate. What can be disastrous is a policy of paralysing governance at a time when an autocratic regime has unravelled to throw up issues that should never have been allowed to assume such dangerous proportions. The business of government needs a lot more substance; it also needs time.

The manifest destiny of the people of Pakistan is a state that Jinnah visualised but did not have the time to create. It is a state that would order its affairs through an elected parliament that, in turn, would enshrine the diversity of the land and its people in a free federation of provinces endowed with a high measure of autonomy.

Over a thousand years, its people, once part of a Muslim empire embracing much of South Asia, have struggled to find the right balance between religion and politics. They found that balance in tolerance, innovation, respect for tradition and ceaseless engagement with modernity. Pakistan has no alternative.

The writer is a former foreign secretary. He can be contacted at tanvir.a.khan@gmail.com

Monday, August 25, 2008

Tehrik-i-Taliban Finally Banned in Pakistan

Pakistan Bans Taliban Outfit Amidst Mailitary Campaign
Christian Science Monitor, August 26, 2008
Huma Yusuf

The Pakistani government on Monday banned the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a militant group that has been responsible for many suicide attacks across the country since 2007. The ban, which may end the government's policy of sometimes negotiating with militants, comes as the government struggles to accommodate more than 300,000 people who have been displaced amidst fighting between security forces and militants in Bajaur Agency, a haven for Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters near the border with Afghanistan.

According to the BBC, the Interior Ministry chief claimed the ban was implemented because the Taliban has "created mayhem against the public life." The Interior Ministry has also asked the state bank to freeze any accounts that the TTP may have.

"They themselves have claimed responsibility of several suicide attacks and the government cannot engage in a dialogue with such people," [Mr. Malik] said.

For complete story, click here

For a profile of Tehrik -i-Taliban Pakistan, click here

Lawyers' Movement Reactivates...



Aitzaz threatens to jam traffic on Thursday
The News, August 26, 2008
By Sohail Khan

ISLAMABAD: Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) President Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan on Monday threatened to jam traffic in the entire country on August 28 if the Murree Declaration was not implemented in letter and spirit.

Addressing a press conference here at his residence, Aitzaz said the legal fraternity, along with the entire nation, would be staging countrywide sit-ins on August 28 to protest the delaying tactics of the government in the reinstatement of the deposed judges of the superior judiciary.

He said the lawyers were forced to resume their movement as the government had failed to honour its commitments. He reiterated the lawyers’ demand for the early implementation of the Murree Declaration in letter and spirit.

The SCBA president said the legal community had removed black flags from the bars after the Islamabad Declaration on August 7, but the failure of the deceleration had compelled them to hoist the flags again, which was unfortunate.

He said that the slain prime minister Benazir Bhutto had herself said that Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was her chief justice and that she had vowed to reinstate him. He said parliament was the only hurdle in judges’ restoration.

He said the strength of the lawyers should not be underestimated, saying they would jam the whole country on August 28 for two hours to press the government for the restoration of the judges.

Aitzaz Ahsan said that the legal fraternity had shown flexibility and extended the deadline for judges’ restoration at many times but now it had resolved to resume its countrywide protests until the judiciary was restored.

He said the lawyers would now follow the decisions of the National Coordination Council (NCC) instead of the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC). He said that the civil society, political workers, professional bodies, trade unions, students’ unions, women organizations and traders would participate in the protests, adding that the sit-ins would completely be peaceful and non-violent.

He said they were assured of cooperation by different trade unions and by the business community, hoping they would observe a complete shutter-down strike on August 28. He said the lawyers’ representatives from all the bar associations of the country would also stage a peaceful sit-in in front of the Parliament House on September 4 to record their protest.

Aitzaz apologised in advance to the general public and the school owners for any inconvenience during their protests. However, he assured that they would try their best to let the school vans and the ambulances ply on the roads. He also appealed for the closure of the educational institutions on August 28.

Ahmed Faraz Departs



Ahmed Faraz: poet of love and defiance
By Khalid Hasan, Daily Times, August 26, 2008

WASHINGTON: Ahmed Faraz, who died in Islamabad on Monday night after a long struggle with a host of ailments, having taken ill in the first week of July while on a visit to the United States, was a classicist like Faiz Ahmed Faiz who, like him, produced poetry of great lyrical beauty and who, like his mentor, never hesitated to stand up against oppression and never was afraid of suffering for his beliefs.

Faraz, steeped in the classical tradition, was the true inheritor of Faiz’s mantle. Like Faiz, he suffered prison and lived in exile during the dark days of military rule in the 1980s. Like Faiz, he was loved by the people, especially the young, and nobody wrote with more intensity about love than Faraz. He gained fame as a young man – he was teaching at Peshawar University at the time - and while much in the way of comfort and the easy life forsook him on more occasions than one, his fame and his popularity never languished. Few poets have had more of their work set to music and performed by the great singers of the age than Faraz. Almost always, he found himself on the wrong side of the government of the day. From Ayub, through Yahya, through Bhutto and down to Musharraf, Faraz was always viewed by the establishment as the rebel he was. He was never afraid to write what others only whispered about and he never let adversity stray him from the path he had chosen for himself. More of his poetry is remembered and recited by his admirers in his own country, in India and wherever Urdu is loved and spoken, than that of any other poet of modern times.

The journalist Iftikhar Ali recalled in New York as the news of Faraz’s death broke, “Faraz was a year senior to me when I joined the Islamia College Peshawar, in 1954. He was remarkably handsome, full of life but very much into poetry. He would gather students around him and read out his mostly romantic poems. There was no open mixing of male and female students in those days. But somehow his poems managed to reach girl students who felt greatly attracted to him. He would receive dozens of hand written letters from them, not only those at the university but from a women’s college in the city as well. The well-to-do ones would have their servants deliver their letters while others would drop them in front of Faraz at bus stops. At that time, he loved to watch hockey and would lead slogans at the annual match between the two old rivals -- Islamia College and Edwards Collge.”

During Bhutto’s days, Faraz was sent home by Maulana Kausar Niazi for writing a couplet that some considered heretical, a misstep that was soon rectified. He lost his job under the Zia regime and he spent many years in exile in Europe and America, quite a few of them in London. His great poem Mohasra (The Siege) remains one of the most powerful indictments of military rule. Faraz told the BBC in a recent interview that he would never like to leave Pakistan because he wanted to live in the country, which was his home, because it was there that he would want to continue his struggle against dictatorship. “I am against dictatorship and military rule. The time has not yet arrived when I should escape from the country out of fear. I will stay home and fight.” He was actively involved in the movement that has built itself around the ousted chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Faraz used his influence to urge writers and poets to join the protest.

Few people know that in 1947 when the uprising in Kashmir against the Maharaja’s rule began, among the volunteers who went in to fight on the side of the Kashmiris was the teenager Ahmed Faraz from Kohat. He said in a recent conversation that his heart bleeds at the military aggression to which the people of Waziristan and Balochistan have been subjected. He said what we know today as Azad Kashmir was not liberated by the army but by Wazir tribes who went into the state to fight the Maharaja’s forces. Faraz, asked why he had returned the Hilal-i-Imtiaz conferred on him by the Musharraf regime, felt that he could not keep the award because it was given to him by a military regime, although many people had told him that it was an honour conferred on him by the people of Pakistan. He said whenever the country has come under an army rule, it has suffered grievously, to the extent of being rent asunder, as in 1971. Ask why he had not written another poem like Mohasra, he replied, “Because I do not want to write the same poem again. In Pakistan, things do not change and, consequently, the poems I wrote in the past have not become dated."

Also See:
A graceful innings - KISHWAR NAHEED - The Hindu

Girls' School Blown up in Peshawar - A first

Militants blow up girls’ school in Peshawar
Daily Times, August 26, 2008

PESHAWAR: After Swat, militants have started attacking girls’ school in the provincial metropolis as they blew up a government girls high school in Badaber on Monday, officials said. Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Nasirul Mulk Bangash told Daily Times that the militants had planted explosives in the school building, located near Speen Jumat. All the 26 rooms were destroyed along with 16 computers and office record when the militants detonated the explosives, the SSP said. He said it was the first school to be destroyed by the militants in Peshawar. akhtar amin

Coalition falls but there is no threat to the government

Pakistan's Ruling Coalition Collapses Amid Dissent
By Candace Rondeaux
Washington Post Foreign Service, , August 25, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 25 -- Pakistan plunged deeper into political chaos Monday as a top party in the country's coalition government vowed to quit the coalition and support an opposition candidate for the presidency.

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N party, said he plans to vigorously oppose his one-time political partner, Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistan People's Party and widower of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. The announcement, which came a week after Pervez Musharraf resigned as Pakistan's president, set off a heated race for the presidency and raised questions about the future of the shaky alliance between the United States and Pakistan's top political leaders.

Sharif said he decided to quit the coalition government after Zardari, who assumed leadership of his party after Bhutto's assassination in December, announced plans to run for president on Saturday and reneged on a promise to reinstate dozens of judges deposed by Musharraf.

"We have been forced to take this decision, which we take with great regret," Sharif said during a nationally televised news conference in Islamabad on Monday. "Zardari pledged in writing to reinstate the judges within one day of Musharraf leaving."

For complete story, click here

Also See:
Coalition of the Unwilling - Newsweek
Fractious Coalition in Pakistan Breaks Apart - New York Times
Chronology: whirlwind coalition comes to an end - Daily Times

Nuclear Espionage Etc...

In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER, New York Times, August 24, 2008

The president of Switzerland stepped to a podium in Bern last May and read a statement confirming rumors that had swirled through the capital for months. The government, he acknowledged, had indeed destroyed a huge trove of computer files and other material documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers suspected of helping smuggle nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.

The files were of particular interest not only to Swiss prosecutors but to international atomic inspectors working to unwind the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani bomb pioneer-turned-nuclear black marketeer. The Swiss engineers, Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, were accused of having deep associations with Dr. Khan, acting as middlemen in his dealings with rogue nations seeking nuclear equipment and expertise.

For complete story, click here

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Inside Kashmir Today


Land and freedom

Kashmir is in crisis: the region's Muslims are mounting huge non-violent protests against the Indian government's rule. But, asks Arundhati Roy, what would independence for the territory mean for its people?

Arundhati Roy, The Guardian, August 22 2008

For the past 60 days or so, since about the end of June, the people of Kashmir have been free. Free in the most profound sense. They have shrugged off the terror of living their lives in the gun-sights of half a million heavily armed soldiers, in the most densely militarised zone in the world.

After 18 years of administering a military occupation, the Indian government's worst nightmare has come true. Having declared that the militant movement has been crushed, it is now faced with a non-violent mass protest, but not the kind it knows how to manage. This one is nourished by people's memory of years of repression in which tens of thousands have been killed, thousands have been "disappeared", hundreds of thousands tortured, injured, and humiliated. That kind of rage, once it finds utterance, cannot easily be tamed, rebottled and sent back to where it came from.

For complete article, click here

Sectarianism in Baghdad and the US Policy

Fear Keeps Iraqis Out of Their Baghdad Homes
By SABRINA TAVERNISE, New York, August 24, 2008

BAGHDAD — When Jabbar, an elderly Shiite man, stormed out of his house here in June wanting to know where all his furniture had gone, the sharp look of the young Sunni standing guard on his street stopped him cold.

The young man said nothing, but his expression made things clear: Jabbar had no home here anymore.

After Iraq’s sectarian earthquake settled, his neighborhood had become a mostly Sunni area. Instead of moving back, he is trying to sell the house while staying in a rented one less than a mile away in an area that is mostly Shiite.

It is not an unusual decision. Out of the more than 151,000 families who had fled their houses in Baghdad, just 7,112 had returned to them by mid-July, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Migration. Many of the displaced remain in Baghdad, just in different areas. In one neighborhood alone, Amiriya, in western Baghdad, there are 8,350 displaced families, more than the total number of families who have returned to their houses in all of Baghdad.

Stop thinking of Pakistan as a client state: The Observer (UK)

Stop thinking of Pakistan as a client state
Editorial, The Observer, Sunday August 24 2008

The good news from Pakistan is that last week Pervez Musharraf, the general who seized power in a military coup in 1999, resigned. Better still, it was civilian political pressure and not an assassin's bullet that terminated his presidency. That, for a country sometimes described as the most dangerous on Earth, looks encouragingly democratic.

The bad news is that Mr Musharraf's departure does not make Pakistan much less dangerous. Hostility to the unpopular President was perhaps the only unifying force in a fractious coalition government. With Mr Musharraf gone, the stage is clear for a ruthless power struggle between the Pakistan People's party, vehicle for the family ambitions of the late Benazir Bhutto, and the Pakistan Muslim League of former premier Nawaz Sharif.

Since Pakistan is a nuclear power and host, along its lawless border with Afghanistan, to Taliban and al-Qaeda bases, the country's political turmoil is an obvious source of anxiety in the West. Mr Musharraf's rule was undemocratic, but, viewed from Washington, it offered strategic clarity. The general was an ally in the 'War on Terror'. The promise to purge his country of jihadi militants earned Mr Musharraf billions of dollars in aid.

But Mr Musharraf failed, not least because he looked like a White House client. Pakistan is not in any sense a 'Western' country. It is a militarily powerful but economically under-developed state, born of anti-colonial struggle and home to the world's second largest Muslim population. Mr Musharraf's apparent subordination of the national interest to serve American policy was always going to provoke a backlash that was part nationalist, part Islamic in character. That backlash made Mr Musharraf's regime more reliant on Washington and more repressive. Not surprisingly, many Pakistanis do not now associate domestic political freedom with US foreign policy.

That does not mean that Pakistan is a hot- bed of Taliban-style radicalism. Extremist parties struggle to get even 10 per cent of the national vote. Even without Mr Musharraf, Islamabad hardly needs persuading that jihadi terrorism is a threat. More Pakistanis were murdered by Islamic militants last year than were killed in the 9/11 attacks on the US.

But Pakistan struggles to reconcile civilian political determination to keep extremists at bay with military strategic preoccupations that predate the US 'War on Terror'. In particular, the country's military and intelligence establishment has historically seen collaboration with the Taliban as a weapon against India. Those forces are increasingly alarmed by a nascent alliance between Delhi and Nato-sustained Afghanistan. Pakistan felt safer from its oldest enemy when Afghanistan was a primitive buffer zone, controlled by Muslim fanatics. India blames Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency for a recent bomb attack on its Kabul embassy.

Meanwhile, the ability of Taliban fighters to seek refuge in Pakistan is a source of constant frustration for Nato commanders in Afghanistan. But even if Pakistan were capable of expelling the Taliban and al-Qaeda from its ungovernable tribal regions (which it currently is not), it would need some incentive greater than kudos and cash from Western capitals before it tried.

When Mr Musharraf was in power, Western leaders avoided engaging with the nuances of Pakistan's strategic perspective. His departure makes that task essential. The West, which essentially means Washington, must spend much more diplomatic energy smoothing relations between Islamabad and Delhi. The case must be made to both of South Asia's nuclear-armed Cold Warriors that detente would deliver substantial security and economic benefits across the region.

That, of course, is a long-term goal; the West has little control over events in Pakistan in the short term. Recognising that limitation would also be a smart move. Mr Musharraf's image as 'pro-Western' helped turn Pakistanis anti-Musharraf. A sensible new diplomatic strategy would focus not on fashioning Pakistan into a Western client, but on promoting a stable and democratic Pakistan which would ultimately be more likely to see its own interests and those of the West coinciding.

Parachinar is burning: Dr. Ghayur Ayub (Frontier Post)



Parachinar is burning
Dr Ghayur Ayub
Frontier Post, August 22, 2008

Sarwan Ali-an honest man, is a retired Lance Naik from the village Malana in the outskirt of Parachinar and has been living with his wife in a single room. Not any more. Now, he is fighting for his life in Agency HQ Hospital, Parachinar, from a gunshot wound.

Wounds inflicted from bombs, snipers, splinters and guns have become part of daily life in Kurrum agency mostly linked to sectarian strife. But his wound is different. He was not shot by the opposing group for his affiliation to any sect. His is a self inflicted wound. Reason? Before the sectarian conflict, he would go to Parachinar and work on ‘Dhiari’ (daily wages) to earn enough to sustain himself and his wife. After the escalation in war, situation has changed dramatically. In a short span, the death toll has reached hundreds and the injured thousands. The prices of daily commodities have rocketed sky-high as the only road linking Parachinar with mainland Pakistan remains closed. This has paralysed the life in Parachinar, closing the markets and stopping the construction work. As a consequence, the poor are suffering the most. The days of ‘Dhiari’ are over and they, like Sarwan Ali, are jobless and with no income.

Many mornings, he went to the town expecting to earn a few rupees and every evening he came back empty handed with shattered hopes. Many nights he and his wife went to bed without proper food with bellyful of boiled leaves from the nearby ShahTut tree. He was too proud to beg and too honest to steel. He sold all their possessions, except for his rifle. In the Pukhtun culture, rifle is considered to be a man’s honour; he couldn’t sell his honour. He returned home one evening feeling low and disheartened after another fruitless day and found his grief stricken wife shivering like a leaf. He knew it was Malaria as he saw her in that state before. But still, he put his trembling hand on her forehead; she was burning hot. He also knew she needed medicine to bring the temperature down and to treat the Malaria but this time, unlike the previous time; he didn’t have money to buy the needed medicine. The feeling of desperation hit him hard and the sense of worthlessness stabbed him deep. He couldn’t bear to see the pain on her pale face. He knew she was not only sick but also weak from lack of food. Filled with despondency, he moved to one corner, picked up his gun, loaded it and turned around to face her. Tears were rolling down her face. She knew what he was about to do. “You’re an honourable man Sarwan Ali. Do what you have to do.”

She closed her eyes waiting for the end. He pointed the gun at her but could not bring himself to shoot her. He started crying like a child and for a long time, the two caring souls broke the silence with their agonising sobs. Then slowly, he eased the pressure on the trigger and started walking towards the door. He decided to sell his honour, his gun, in Parachinar to buy medicine for his dear wife. He went to a chemist shop and offered to sell his gun and get medicine out of the price. He was told that there was no medicine because none was coming through the blocked roads from Peshawar. Sarwan pleaded with him and told him about his wife’s condition. The man felt sorry for him and handed him over two Paracetamols.

Back in the room, he gave the tablets to his wife and after a while she stopped shivering and went to sleep. He watched her sleep for a long time, then got up slowly, performed Wazu as if he was preparing for prayer; picked up his gun and without a second thought shot himself. The bullet passed through his chest.

This is the life in the war-torn Parachinar, where death is as cheap as sipping water from a stream; a town, which was known for pleasant weather and natural beauty. A town, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto fell in love with and wanted to turn it into a settlement like Switzerland. That was the time when Shah of Iran had friendly relation with Saudi King. That was the time when Sunni-Shia misunderstandings did not change into hate. That was the time when skirmishes between Sunni and Shais remained local and were settled amicably by the administration. That was the time when Afghanistan was not taken over by Taliban. And that was the time when general Zia was still serving as army chief under ZAB.

Things changed when Shah was deposed in Iran, when Zia took over in Pakistan, when Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviets, when America supported fanatic Sunni Arabs against Soviets, and when it helped Sunni Pukhtuns against Iran. Things changed radically. What people didn’t realise was that America was using Muslim religious sentiments for its own gains. It poured money into the pockets of Afghan Warlords with the help of general Zia and turned American war into ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ with tremendous consequences to Pakistan. It took advantage of Zia’s sectarian leanings and put Pakistan on the road to political and religious vulnerability. It was then, when Parachinar was caught in the middle of sectarian strife.

Iranian clergy started supporting the Shias in Parachinar through prominent local Syeds, and the Saudi Wahabis pumped money to the local Sunni Mullahs. Sunnis fought Afghan war to please Saudis and Shias safeguarded Iranian interests. Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan; American won the ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ and left the spoils in the hands of fanatics. The spill over was bound to effect Parachinar. And it did in a big way.

The beautiful town has never since returned to its previous grace. The time rolled on. The strong corporations in America required an enemy to replace the dismembered Soviets. They found one in the garb of ‘terrorism’ creeping out of Afghanistan. It was moulded in the same outfit as their Jihadi friends in the not so distant past. Now, they needed the change of guards in Afghanistan to target it. They got lucky; the history favoured them twice; once when Musharaf sacked a democratic government in Pakistan; again, when the Towers were brought down by the terrorists. The White House didn’t need much persuasion to seek help from ‘moderate’ Musharaf who made a U-turn in Afghan policy. With change of policy the enemies changed. Now, the Americans were not fighting the communists; they were fighting the terrorists who happened to be Muslims; and Musharaf was not fighting the infidels, he was fighting the same Muslims.

In this way, the moderate Musharaf surpassed those barriers which even zealous Zia dared to tread, exposing Pakistan to massive internal turmoil. Today, Parachinar is burning in a fire lit by fanatic Zia and spread by moderate Musharaf; a fire which is different from the one seen in rest of the tribal area. It is not linked to sentiments against Pakistan army or even America. It is based on emotions against Taliban. Majority in upper Kurrum are Shia and they despise Taliban. Taliban in return, reciprocate their sentiments by sending decapitated bodies of Shias captured during their journeys to Peshawar. The Internet is full of grotesque footages. The Shia-dominated upper Kurrum is sealed by the surrounding Sunni-belt having a strong influence of Taliban. In the middle of it, Parachinar is in virtual siege with no food items, no daily commodities and no medicines.

In desperation, the Shias are turning to Afghan government for help after seeing apparent apathy from Pakistan. This is a bizarre situation, the like of which was once historically seen in early 20th century, when a Shia Turi tribal Chief, Noor Khan (alias Dur Khan) sought British help when he found Shias under siege in identical circumstance. Today they are asking Afghan government to help them against the Taliban. In the middle of this bizarre turn around, the poor people of Parachinar from both sects are slaughtered like animals in sectarian hate and others like Sarwan Ali are killing themselves for reasons other than that hate. This is Parachinar burning in a fire not lit by the locals but by those whose political and religious interests lay outside Pakistan.

For More info on Parachinar, see the following links:
http://parachinar.com ; Mayhem in Kurram - The News Editorial

Saturday, August 23, 2008

How Joe Biden Views Pakistan - Opinion expressed in November 2007


A New Approach to Pakistan By Joe Biden
Huffington Post, November 8, 2007

Today, I delivered a major foreign policy address to the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. The events of the last week serve as a reminder of what is at stake if we do not take immediate steps to change the way we interact with the world. On Tuesday, I wrote about my broad goals for a new policy towards Pakistan. Today, I want to explain my new approach to Pakistan in greater detail.

I've been saying for some time that Pakistan is the most complex country we deal with -- and that a crisis was just waiting to happen. On Saturday night, it did.

President Musharraf staged a coup against his own government. He suspended the constitution, imposed de-facto martial law, postponed elections indefinitely, and arrested hundreds of lawyers, journalists, and human rights activists. He took these steps the day after Secretary Rice and the commander of all American forces in the region appealed to Musharraf not to take them.

America has a huge stake in the outcome of this crisis -- and in the path Pakistan follows in the months and years to come. Pakistan has strong democratic traditions and a large, moderate majority. But that moderate majority must have a voice in the system and an outlet with elections. If not, moderates may find that they have no choice but to make common cause with extremists, just as the Shah's opponents did in Iran three decades ago.

But unlike Iran, Pakistan already has nuclear weapons.

It is hard to imagine a greater nightmare for America than the world's second-largest Muslim nation becoming a failed state in fundamentalist hands, with an arsenal of nuclear weapons and a population larger than those of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea combined.

To prevent that nightmare from becoming a reality, I believe we need to do three things:

First, deal pro-actively with the current crisis.

Second, and for the longer term, move from a Musharraf policy to a Pakistan policy that gives the moderate majority a chance to succeed.

And third, help create conditions in the region that maximize the chances of success, and minimize the prospects for failure.

Resolving the Crisis

To help defuse the current political crisis, we must be far more pro-active, not reactive and make it clear to Pakistan that actions have consequences. President Bush's first reaction was to call on President Musharraf to reverse course. Given the stakes, I thought it was important to actually call him -- which is exactly what I did. I also spoke to opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. President Musharraf and I had a very direct and detailed discussion. I told him how critical it is that elections go forward as planned in January, that he follow through on his commitment to take off his uniform, and that he restore the rule of law to Pakistan.

It was clear to me that President Musharraf understands the consequences for his country and for relations with the United States if he does not return Pakistan to the path of democracy. Now, President Bush finally got around to calling Musharraf yesterday. As a few of you may know, I'm running for president and I can tell you this: if I'm elected, I won't wait five days to pick up the phone or delegate matters of this magnitude to my secretary of state or to my ambassador. There is too much at stake to leave this kind of conversation to others.

If President Musharraf does not restore his nation to the democratic path, U.S. military aid will be in great jeopardy. I would look hard at big-ticket weapons systems intended primarily to maintain the balance of power with India, not to combat the Taliban or Al Qaeda: hardware like F-16 jets and P-3 maritime surveillance aircraft. President Musharraf doesn't want this aid suspension -- and neither does the military establishment whose support he needs. Nor can they afford for this crisis to undermine confidence in Pakistan's economy, which has already taken a hard hit. So I believe there is incentive for cooler heads in Pakistan to prevail. But if they don't and if President Bush does not act, Congress almost certainly will.

Building a New Relationship

Beyond the current crisis lurks a far deeper problem. The relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan is largely transactional -- and this transaction isn't working for either party. From America's perspective, we've spent billions of dollars on a bet that Pakistan's government would take the fight to the Taliban and Al Qaeda while putting the country back on the path to democracy. It has done neither.

From Pakistan's perspective, America is an unreliable ally that will abandon Pakistan the moment it's convenient to do so, and whose support has done little more than bolster unrepresentative rulers.

It is time for a new approach.

We've got to move from a transactional relationship -- the exchange of aid for services -- to the normal, functional relationship we enjoy with all of our other military allies and friendly nations. We've got to move from a policy concentrated on one man -- President Musharraf -- to a policy centered on an entire people... the people of Pakistan. Like any major policy shift, to gain long-term benefits we'll have to shoulder short term costs. But given the stakes, those costs are worth it.

Here are the four elements of this new strategy.

First, triple non-security aid, to $1.5 billion annually. For at least a decade. This aid would be unconditioned: it's our pledge to the Pakistani people. Instead of funding military hardware, it would build schools, clinics, and roads.

Second, condition security aid on performance. We should base our security aid on clear results. We're now spending well over $1 billion annually, and it's not clear we're getting our money's worth. I'd spend more if we get better returns -- and less if we don't.

Third, help Pakistan enjoy a "democracy dividend." The first year of democratic rule should bring an additional $1 billion -- above the $1.5 billion non-security aid baseline. And I would tie future non-security aid -- again, above the guaranteed baseline -- to Pakistan's progress in developing democratic institutions and meeting good-governance norms.

Fourth, engage the Pakistani people, not just their rulers. This will involve everything from improved public diplomacy and educational exchanges to high impact projects that actually change people's lives.

This plan would fundamentally and positively shift the dynamic between the U.S. and Pakistan. Here's how:

A drastic increase in non-security aid, guaranteed for a long period, would help persuade Pakistan's people that America is an all-weather friend -- and Pakistan's leaders that America is a reliable ally. Pakistanis suspect our support is purely tactical. They point to the aid cut-off that followed the fall of the Soviet Union to our refusal to deliver or refund purchased jets in the 1990s and to our blossoming relationship with rival India. Many Pakistanis believe that the moment Osama bin Laden is gone, U.S. interest will go with him.

When U.S. aid makes a real difference in people's lives, the results are powerful. In October 2005, after a devastating earthquake, American military helicopters delivering relief did far more to improve relations than any amount of arms sales or debt rescheduling. And the Mobile Army Surgery Hospital we left behind is a daily reminder that America cares.

To have a real impact on a nation of 165 million, we'll have to raise our spending dramatically. A baseline of $1.5 billion annually, for a decade, is a reasonable place to start. That might sound like a lot -- but it's about what we spend every week in Iraq. Conditioning security aid -- now about three-quarters of our package -- would help push the Pakistani military to finally crush Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Aid to the Pakistani people should be unconditioned -- that is, not subject to the ups and downs of a particular government in Islamabad or Washington. But aid to the Pakistani military and intelligence service should be closely conditioned -- that is, carefully calibrated to results. Like it or not, the Pakistani security services will remain vital players -- and our best shot at finding Bin Laden and shutting down the Taliban. Their performance has been decidedly mixed: we've caught more terrorists in Pakistan than in any other country -- but $10 billion later, Pakistan remains the central base of Al Qaeda operations. We must strike a much better bargain.

A "democracy dividend" - additional assistance in the first year after democratic rule is restored -- would empower Pakistan's moderate mainstream. The Bush administration's Musharraf First policy was understandable -- at first. Musharraf had broad support, and in the wake of 9/11 he seemed committed to the fight against Al Qaeda. Six years later, the General is diverting his military, his police, and his intelligence assets from the fight against the terrorists to a crackdown on his political opponents.

The Pakistani people have moved on. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest Musharraf's unconstitutional rule -- and hundreds have been killed or gravely injured in the process. The Democracy Dividend would help restore the moral currency this administration has squandered with empty rhetoric about democracy. And it would enable the secular, democratic, civilian political leaders to prove that they -- more than the generals or the radical Islamists -- can bring real improvement to the lives of their constituents.

Last, we've got to engage the Pakistani people directly, and address issues important to them, not just to us. On Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinians, Kashmir, Pakistanis want a respectful hearing. We owe them that at least that much.

Ask an ordinary Pakistani to list his top concerns about America and you may get answers unrelated to international grand strategy: our visa policy and textile quotas.

Or she might raise Abu Ghraib and Gitmo or water-boarding and other forms of torture the Bush administration still refuses to renounce. Pakistanis don't see these as mere "issues." They see these things as a moral stain on the soul of our nation. In my judgment, so should we.

Creating the Conditions for Success

This new Pakistan policy cannot succeed in isolation. Conditions in the region and in the broader Muslim world -- conditions that the United States can affect -- will make a huge difference, for good or for bad. We've got to connect the dots -- to be, as I suggested at the outset, smart as well as strong.

First, there's what we should do. To increase the prospects that Pakistan will take the lead in the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, we should rededicate ourselves to a forgotten war: Afghanistan. When we shifted resources away from Afghanistan to Iraq, Musharraf concluded the Taliban would rebound, so he cut a deal with them.

Redoubling our efforts in Afghanistan -- not just with more troops but with the right kind and with a reconstruction effort that matches President Bush's Marshall Plan rhetoric -- would embolden Pakistan's government to take a harder line on the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Second, there's what we should not do. Consider all this talk of war with Iran. It is totally counter-productive to achieving our ends in Iran but also in Pakistan. In Iran, it allows President Ahmadinejad to distract the Iranian people from the failures of his leadership and adds a huge security premium to the price of oil, with the proceeds going from our consumers to Iran's government. And in Pakistan and also Afghanistan, anything the fuels the sense of an American crusade against Islam puts moderates on the defensive and empowers extremists. It is hard to think of a more self-defeating policy.

History's Verdict

History may describe today's Pakistan as a repeat of 1979 Iran or 2001 Afghanistan. Or history may write a very different story: that of Pakistan as a stable, democratic, secular Muslim state. Which future unfolds will be strongly influenced -- if not determined -- by the actions of the United States.

I believe that Pakistan can be a bridge between the West and the global Islamic community. Most Pakistanis want a lasting friendship with America. They respect and admire our society. But they are mystified over what they see as our failure to live up to our ideals.

The current crisis in Pakistan is also an opportunity to start anew -- to build a relationship between Pakistan and the United States upon which both our peoples can depend -- and be proud.

Also See: