A Failing State in a State of Denial

#183 by hamesha

Re:#183

Dear Afghani Writer

{{{Lastly, that many attribute my comments to my ethnic and national origin, again I am profoundly disappointed.}}}

You are disappointed.........What for?

You are the one who started this irrelevant , false , insulting, and delusional article against Pakistan(my ethnic and national origin) by calling Pakistan a failed state and by calling Pakistanis as in complete denial................

What exactly do you think, I will take your insult with smile at my face..........No, never.
And specially coming from an Afghan whose ethnicity and nation is all dependent upon Pakistan for their decent living.

Whose nation is a burden on Pakistan`s economy, which is already a poor country with standing all these burdens............

You are stabbing me on my chest with an Afghani biased and poisonous dagger and still you expect words of praise from my side.................Wonderful!!

You instead of being thankful to Pakistan, telling me that I am in denial that my country is failed state............What a big slap on my kind heart!!!

This shows , you are still in a state of DENIAL...............you are out of reality and with lack of insight to judge your biased article.....................

You instead of being SORRY and instead of being apologetic to all Pakistanis, saying that we attacked your ethinicity..............hahahahah

You OWE an APOLOGY to all Pakistanis for INSULTING our ethnicity and national origin in this derogatory article of your`s....................

Think about it with some insight and you`ll realize where you went wrong????

HP, 186

Husain Haqqani is quite tough on Pakistan, but, as much as I care for Pakistan, I cannot deny the fact that I like his writings. He makes a lot of sense.

You are right. I don’t know his background, or that if he has an agenda.

HP #186 {``The purpose of this article is to badmouth Pakistan and I am afraid the Chowk editors are complicit in that. It was the editor’s responsibility to make sure that the readers have access to the factors quoted here.``}

HP,
You are accusing the author of ethnic bias, deliberate tantrums and are now dragging in the esteemed editors of Chowk into highlighting your personal discomfort. First of all, HP, have you heard of the 19th Amendment? Mr. Zeerak has every right to express his views in this article. His ethnicity and national origin should have no bearing on how we criticize his effort. Personally, I do not totally agree with the Afghans that everything that ails their unfortunate land is the result of Paki conspiracies and misdeeds. Having said that, I have to admit that ever since the Russian invasion, Pakistan has played a meddlesome role, almost to the point of satanic mischief, at the expense of the poor people of Afghanistan. The irony is that the influx of Afghan refugees and the accompanying environment of guns and posies have nearly destroyed Pakistan. No one can deny the origins, development, and supply lines of the Tally Ban misadventure. Now please be a patient and take your medicine responsibly. Listening to the grievances of injured parties is the first step to contrition. Maybe Pakistan can avoid becoming a failed state if we acknowledge our mistakes and learn from them.

Re: # 189

No?... please enlighten us...

``unless Pakistan`s military government is replaced with a democracy.``

Pakistan`s interest in Afghanistan (and vice-versa) did not begin in military head-quarters.

Here is something from WSJ

COMMENTARY

What Ails Afghanistan? The answer is Pakistan.

By CHRIS PATTEN
May 10, 2006; Page A18

Four and a half years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan is still highly unstable. And it seems to be getting worse rather than better. Every few days now, the resurgent Taliban carry out another deadly attack on school children, aid workers, or local or international security forces. It is a grim return on the outside world`s huge investment in Afghanistan. Yet while the international community has done an enormous amount to help the country recover from its failed-state condition, it has resisted tackling the problem at its very root -- Islamabad. Truth is, Afghanistan will never be stable unless Pakistan`s military government is replaced with a democracy.

#174 by hamesha

“On the brighter side of things, Pakistan won a seat on the newly formed UN Human Rights Council (alongside Cuba, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia, among others.)”

Does this post show any good faith on your part to believe that you are an impartial analyst?

I can give you a primer on the afghan war and what happened in Afghanistan but I will refrain from it as you are still a student and would learn things by yourself someday.

Just remember that when your parents left Afghanistan, it was ruled by some liberal and secular people. You family supported Jihadis and now you check with your parents before you talk abt Taliban as taliban were what your parents were looking for when they refused to support the liberal and secular afghans and left the country.

There is another article out there by wajid Shamsulhassan which is probably as hard-hitting as the one by Haqqani…But when you quote them to support your arguments you bed with some really strange fellows…And yes we know what their background is...

#186 by HP

I also wanna apologize to the chowk editors. “Complicit” was a harsh word and I should not have used it.

#183 by hamesha

Long post read carefully…

While it is in bad taste to bring in your ethnicity in to this article, but unfortunately your article reeks of ethnic dissing. Afghanistan is not way above Pakistan on this chart but you chose to write an article about Pakistan and not abt Afghanistan. Isn’t it kind of strange that you ignore what is happening in your country and come down here and take a swipe at Pakistan?

The best thing would have been to discuss the findings or the results of this study in its full context but you chose to pick a few things and preferred to write these gems and then you expect that people don’t bring in your ethnicity in to this?

There are only a few lines that were perhaps written by you and they are studded with nuggets like this:

“While the bitterness is understandable in light of the injury to the Pakistani national pride”

Does this seem like some scholarly statement with some profound knowledge? Is it not just a simple put down?

“The bitter truth that many Pakistanis cannot bear to stomach is that their country has fared ill in recent times.”

Does this line show some compassionate understanding of the issues that resulted in Pakistan’s rating?

“All things considered, the state of the Pakistani federation does not look good in 2006.”

And what is so scholarly in the statement above. So one study from one of many think tanks in the US is enough to predict a doomsday scenario?



I was not going to comment on this childish article but your tantrums here have made me come out and put you in place. Let us look at your scholarly endeavored from a scholarly pov.

When you write article like this, the first thing is to provide the readers access to the statistic or the criteria used to determine the results or finding. You have not provided any such material. You have quoted something that average reader on this site has no access to. The first thing you should have done was to get permission from the Carnegie Institute to post not only the results but how they arrived at findings. Just taking a number out of ten is not enough as your readers need to know what that number ten is made up of.
Before any serious discussion on this article can even take place readers must have access to the information that you are using.

The purpose of this article is to badmouth Pakistan and I am afraid the Chowk editors are complicit in that. It was the editor’s responsibility to make sure that the readers have access to the factors quoted here.

In view of that, your ethnicity becomes and important factor. I can put together articles badmouthing any country without providing any reference to the material I have used. And sure I would not be doing that in good faith.

After badmouthing Pakistan in the article, you are posting articles after articles completely disregarding the copyright restriction to prove that Pakistan will not exist beyond 2006. But you did not violate one copyright where it was absolutely necessary and was incumbent upon you to provide us the information that was needed to discuss the article in full.

I have another post coming in response to some of your other posts but I would like to make it clear that there are millions of news reporters in this world and thousands of analysts who churn out lots of stuff everyday. If we had believed in every thing they write, Pakistan would have been buried in the arabian sea some twenty five years.

One this site people have been cutting and pasting these doomsday news reports and article everyday for more than five year. What difference has that made to any thing that Pakistanis do?

Now there are problems in Pakistan like in many third world countries. But it is still not occupied by foreign forces and still has writ over 90% of its area unlike the country you come from which has not been able to take its 3.5 million people back in more than 5 years of economic prosperity under the occupancy of the richest country in the world.

Godot,

Hussain Haqqani, if offered a job in the Pak government would switch his position is a jiffy…I guess you don’t know the man…

Zeena #167, {``Don`t forget ``Biharis`` are real Pakistanis. They have every right to be in Pakistan. God knows I am all with my Bihari brothers and sisters. ``}

Zeena,
I always knew that you were a kind, compassionate, just, and decent person. Thank you for expressing your views on this subject so clearly and with such conviction. As long as there are Pakistanis like you alive, we can avoid becoming a failed state. Thanks.

BJKumar #164 {`` Salim_Chauhan,
I have been watching you!

In fairness, it must be acknowledged that the quality of your interacts has improved over the past few weeks ..I sincerely hope that it is not a put-on act and that you keep it up. I wish you the best.

You realize it, of course, that if you stay the course you will soon be left with no alternative except at some point to sincerely apologize to those decent individuals that you earlier may have insulted and alienated (no, not me!) and win them over using the same God-given gifts gift-wrapped with a certain wrapping of humility! ...I am sure of that - don`t try any protestations on me! I wish the ``Biharis`` the best of luck - in spite of the anger I feel at their long-ago forefathers` abandoning of their homeland! If I had my way, I would gladly take them back in Bihar...``}


BJKumar Sahib,
Thanks for putting me on the spot and making me so self-conscious. Reminds me of a song that was just popular as a remix:

``Bach ke rahna re baba tujh pe nazar he
Bach ke rahna re baba tujh pe nazar he
...
Mujhko apne fun pe ab bhi fukhur he
...
Sambhal ke chalna teri rahoN meN heN kaaNTey
Maali ne to phool bas apnoN hi meN baaNTey``}

Seriously, I appreciate your acknowledgement of my improved behavior. Speaking of failed states, I have gone from a state of constant rebuttal profanity to one of polite, beneficial, and satisfying interactions. I give all of the credit for this transformation to the Farzana Versey Rehab Center. It strives to transform Tourette Syndrome victims to Stockholm Syndrome Mother Teresas. Yes, the two day incarceration at the Chowk Swedish Spa with daily lumi lumi sessions has made a kinder gentler person out of me. It appears that many of my colleagues are taking the same route. :)

As for making amends to those I may have ever offended in any way in the past, I offer my most sincere apologies to all, including Pakistani Punjabis. As a further act of papal humility, I intend to wash the feet of all the insulted female people under a peepal tree next to Mr. Popli`s peepa factory. I just wish to request the Pakistani Punjabis to soak their feet in ammonia the night before.

Thank you for your kind gesture in wishing to take the ``stranded`` Biharis back. In fact, in the 70s the Government of Bihar wanted to do such a thing, but the Indian Government dismissed the charitable action. BJ Sahib, if the Hindu Biharis had not been so violent against these unfortunate people, they would not have trekked all the way to Bengal. Nevertheless, it is still very compassionate of you to express positive feelings for them.

No sir, my improved behavior is not an act - it is sincere, genuine, and the real Salim. The only real difference is that there is a just, objective, and decent administration at Chowk and I am not frustrated by one-sided and arbitrary actions. Chowk Zindabad.

@ bjkumar & mantolives (& rest)

Although the cynic in me thinks your kind words are a bit overdue after three days and nearly 200 comments, and that they follow far too closely on the heels of H. Haqqani`s excellent essay confirming precisely that ``The Failing State in a State of Denial`` was not a hateful polemic by an ungrateful Afghani, I thank you for them.

Frankly -and I hope I did not have the occasion to use this over-used diatribe- after a while I did not care to dignify the comments to which you reffered by replying, or for that matter by reading.

I do however share your disappointment with the level to which debate sinks in these forums at times, and with the lax moderation that lets such things pass. I assure you however that Chowk is not a singular tragedy in this regard- or by far the most egregious. I have been most disappointed by an Afghan forum (where one of the latest polls was aiming at determining ``the language of hell``! I am sure you know what this sort of thing aims at in an Afghan forum.)

Lastly, that many attribute my comments to my ethnic and national origin, again I am profoundly disappointed. As somebody who has lived in both Afghanistan and Pakistan (and has remained connected in intimate ways with India and would love to go there) I primarily self identify as a South Asian. Why can`t we take this transcending identity more seriously and carry it beyond just some feel-good cosmopolitanism? For darn`s sake we are in Chowk!

Mean time, I have to look into some biryani for lunch today, and yes, I will keep everyone posted about my findings regarding the Afghan ancestry of both H. Haqqani and P. Preston.

Hamesha,

I agree with my friend BJkumar very rarely but I agree that your ethnic origin or nationality should not be used to impeach the credibility of your arguments. Too bad his sense of fairness has only been awoken in your case.

I hope that all on this board would take issue with merits of the arguments that you have presented - and they are generally unbiased- and not with the fact that you are indeed of Afghan, Indian or Pakistani origin.

#Various Hamesha

Javaid,

Since the chowk staff does not seem to be able to muster the courage to say it, let me do this.

Your ethnic background and the personal insults directed against you and your community - which are not related to this article even in the remotest manner, ought to have been considered off-topic at least and highly inflammatory, in fact. If chowk had even an iota of integrity, they would have deleted such interacts without letting those see even the light of the day!

But the ``sensitive`` chowk staff have a HIGHER threshold of tolerance which remains untriggered until they run into something which they find absolutely unpalatable!

Gandhi pictures, for example!

The harsh truth

HUSAIN HAQQANI

Official Pakistan has reacted angrily, as it always does, to two recent suggestions that the situation in the country might not be as rosy as painted by General Musharraf and his aides. Pakistan was rated as ninth on the 2006 Failed States Index developed by the US Non-governmental Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine. Instead of understanding the index, and why Pakistan`s rating on it was high, several Pakistanis responded with patriotic indignation.

The Failed States Index was pooh-poohed as yet another attempt to denigrate Pakistan, a project attributed to the nation`s real and imaginary enemies around the world. More recently, comments in Kabul by the US State Department Coordinator for counter-terrorism Henry Crumpton suggesting that Pakistan was not doing enough in the search for Osama bin Laden has invited the ire of those who see criticism as a part of sinister conspiracies.

The Failed States Index (FIS) is an academic exercise that started last year and will probably go on to become an annual feature. Like many other similar academic exercises in the United States, it is not Pakistan-specific and is designed as an analytical tool rather than as simplistic political commentary. It is not the case that someone set out to insult Pakistan by describing it as a potentially failing state. An academic, in this case Dr Pauline H Baker, devised a general criteria for what causes a state to fail and after applying it to 148 countries listed those that scored higher than others on the basis of the criteria.

One possible analogy is a medical doctor`s list of risk factors for an individual`s health. Based on objective criteria, a doctor might say that someone who overeats, drinks heavily and smokes regularly is most likely to get a heart attack. There are always some people who survive the risk factors better or longer than others. But the doctors would not be wrong in listing threats to a person`s health and saying that someone more exposed to the risk factors is in danger. The response that things in Pakistan are not as bad as they have been made to seem by the Failed States Index is a bit like someone citing his 70-year old uncle who continues to live despite obesity and heavy smoking as proof that the criteria for determining health risks is wrong. Not everyone who smokes gets emphysema or heart disease but that does not mean smoking should not be construed as a major cause for these diseases.

According to the Fund for Peace website, the FIS is based on the Conflict Assessment System Tool (CAST) - ``a comprehensive methodology for early warning and assessment of internal conflicts.`` The purpose of CAST and FIS is to rate ``indicators of state failure that drive conflict.`` Using social, economic and political indicators, CAST provides ``a rating system for trend analysis that can track a conflict over time.``

In other words, the Index tries to quantify the factors that lead to state failure. It warns, ahead of time, of the perils of collapse and points out the likelihood of a country becoming a breeding ground for terrorism or other international problems. According to the Fund for Peace, the FSI ``assesses the factors that can help recovery, and measures the effectiveness of policies and practices that are adopted to promote sustainable security.``

The social indicators that determine the Failed States Index are mounting demographic pressures; massive movement of refugees or internally displaced persons creating complex humanitarian emergencies; legacy of vengeance-seeking group grievance or group paranoia and chronic and sustained human flight. The economic indicators are uneven economic development along group lines and sharp and/or severe economic decline.

The Index`s political indicators are where Pakistan`s score rose enough to merit a higher rating as a potentially failed state. These indicators include criminalization and/or delegitimization of the state; progressive deterioration of public services; suspension or arbitrary application of the rule of law and widespread violation of human rights; security apparatus operates as a ``state within a state``; rise of factionalized elites and intervention of other states or external political actors.

Instead of rejecting the Failed States Index as an attack on Pakistan, government officials and Pakistani analysts alike should pay attention to its message. Pakistan`s uneven economic development, coupled with absence of rule of law and a risky political culture pose a danger to the country`s long-term stability. External political actors have considerable influence over Pakistan`s course of events. Even when Pakistan is superficially stable it is consistently uncertain and often unpredictable. Threats to the country`s long-term health should not be dismissed out of a desire for feeling good that all is well.

Outside observers and researchers have warned of Pakistan`s multiple crises in the past and the country has survived many predictions of doom. In that sense, the country is like the lucky uncle who has managed to avoid cancer or heart disease despite smoking heavily. But good luck is not a substitute for good policy. A doctor would not be wrong in telling the aging smoker that he is at risk for a heart attack simply because after years of smoking a heart attack has not yet come. Similarly, one ignores the findings of scholars applying a risk assessment and warning model to Pakistan at the country`s peril.

Official Pakistan is used to rejecting out of hand scholarly research such as the Failed States Index. It is remarks such as those by State Department Coordinator for counter-terrorism Henry Crumpton that particularly irk Islamabad. Since 9/11, the present regime has sought legitimacy in the eyes of international public opinion on grounds of its usefulness in the US-led war against terrorism. When an American official deviates from the script, the regime feels particularly embarrassed. It feels its source of international legitimacy is under attack.

US officials have, so far, gone out of their way to publicly praise this government even when there have been private causes for concern about specific policies in Pakistan`s anti-terrorism effort. Mr Crumpton, an intelligence operations` man who is new to the world of international diplomacy, strayed from the path defined by the Bush White House by saying publicly what many American officials say almost every day off the record. Americans are not convinced that official Pakistan has given up its plans of installing a client regime in Kabul even if that means accepting a return to power of the Taliban. Mr Crumpton voiced that perception. In the days to come, better-trained US spokespersons will probably make reassuring statements that will calm the nerves rattled in Rawalpindi-Islamabad. But General Musharraf and his associates, or their successors will some day have to deal with the substantive threats to Pakistan.

Taking the smoking and health risk analogy one step further, one can be dismissive of smoker`s cough but the health risks remain, whether or not someone talks about them.

#173 Hamesha

[Who helped invent the Taliban, for paradise`s sake? Who fears India`s increasing influence in Kabul and resents the way America cuddles closer to New Delhi? Whose sabres rattle loudest in Kashmir? There are no each-way bets on men in braid. There is no substitute for freedom relentlessly championed. You want the big picture seen clear, you say? Then this - in success or failure - is it.]

Jo kahi gayi na chowk se
Wo zamaana keh raha hai

Ke fasaana
Ke fasaana ban gayi hai
Meri baat chalte chalte

Wahin thamke reh gayi hai
Ye raat dhalte dhalte….