Karachi Could Bleed To Pakistan's Death

RiazHaq: I do agree with you to the extent that you need to have funds to run for elections in the US. But - to get those funds you need to have something going for you. There are fund-raisers from the ground up - where at the grass root level (county council member, e.g.) the fund raisers are literally at the neighborhood level, where the candidate makes himself available of small groups of 10-15 people at a time, listens to their concerns and suggestions and so forth. I attended a few of these myself, and we actually had this candidate who happened to be jewish but sought muslim votes by presenting himself at muslim gatherings and discussing issues of concern. This is an aspect of fund-raising in the US - down at the grass roots level all across the country, that is actually very positive. So - it is too easy to make simplistic and negative judgements of the US, of the kind one finds "experts" in Pakistan presenting on Geo TV e.g.

RiazHaq #576 I do have a very positive view of the US - after all, I have lived here for over 30 years, and during these years benefitted from the professionalism of everyone here from teachers to plumbers to physicians to police to electricians to business managers to office workers of all kinds.

When you say " It is impossible for anyone to get elected in this country until they have substantial amount of money and the goodwill of certain corporate lobbies and special-interest lobbies like AIPAC", you go too far. Obama (the son of a kenyan father and a mother who spent her dying days struggling to pay her medical bills) made it to Harvard and from their to the Presidency on the basis of his undeniable merit. And Obama is only the tip of the iceberg in this respect. I have seen too many successful first generation immigrants - including some who were considered good-for-nothings in Pakistan, and who suddenly came alive once he came to the US - to buy this theory that the US is the devil incarnate that so many people in Pakistan paint it to be (Masadi is just an extreme case).

Pew Research:

You missed the news. China is dumping the treasuries and is buying Pakistani equivalent due to more trust in its future and it's system :)

Pakistan's army: as inept as it is corrupt

The answer to why Pakistan's mighty army seems impotent against Taliban insurgents is that it is more mafia than military

* http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/mustafaqadri
*
o Mustafa Qadri
o guardian.co. uk, Sunday 3 May 2009 17.00 BST

No institution dominates Pakistan like its army. The armed forces account for 20% of Pakistan's national budget, totalling $5bn last year according to official statistics. But the actual figure, already staggering for a country with high levels of illiteracy and malnutrition, is likely to be much higher. The army has been practically unaccountable since the very foundation of the country – last year's figures were the first it has publicly released since 1965.
Those aren't the only imposing figures. It has some 650,000 active soldiers and another half million in reserve, and internal discipline – strict loyalty to the high command among the rank and file – is very high.
Every one of Pakistan's democratically- elected civilian leaders has been forced to abdicate by the army. A general has directly ruled the country for 34 of its 62 years of existence.
With this vice-like grip on power, many are wondering how a rural insurgency armed with basic weapons has managed to overrun so much of the country. The answers have much to do with the Pakistan army itself.
Part of the problem is that the army is equipped for a conventional war against its historical adversary to the east, India, and not the type of insurgency being waged by the Taliban on the frontier to the west. Its operations in the tribal areas have been imprecise, leading to the destruction of many thousands of civilian lives and livelihood. Up to a million are believed to have been displaced by the conflict.
"Collateral damage always strengthens the Taliban, it helps them get more public support," says Abdul Hakim (not his real name), a journalist from Dir, a tribal agency, next to the Swat valley, in which the Taliban are slowly moving.
But there have been only limited, poorly-coordinated attempts to re-engage with communities devastated by armed operations against the Taliban. As a result the Army and government authorities have sheepishly ended up signing peace deals with the Taliban over the past four years. They have all consistently broken down, the Taliban using the lull in hostilities to regroup and rearm.
The most recent peace deal, over the Swat valley, is on the verge of collapse owing to continued Taliban operations in neighbouring areas.
There are lingering doubts about the Army's resolve to combat the Taliban too, as has been suggested when it initially sent up a lightly armed squad of paramilitaries to fight the Taliban in the Buner valley, just below Swat, even though the region is close to the nation's capital.
Another factor is the fact that many of the army's soldiers involved in operations are Pashtun like the Taliban. This has left the high command nervous about tackling the insurgents head-on for fear of causing rifts within the ranks. Although far from a mutiny, many soldiers have refused to fight their fellow tribesman or have surrendered and deserted.
But that has not prevented the army from engaging in operations that have been highly destabilising for tribal Pashtun communities in the affected areas. People fleeing the conflict in Swat and Bajaur, a tribal agency to the west on the border with Afghanistna, told me they felt that the army was, in fact, targeting them and not the Taliban. Some argued this was because the army feared Taliban reprisals. Others insisted they were being targeted because of their support for the Pashtun nationalist Awami National party, which runs the North West Frontier province government.
The truth of rumours such as these, common in Pakistan, are difficult to quantify. But one need not look to rumours to understand why the Pakistan army has failed to defeat the Taliban.
The army has a long history of strategic incompetence stretching back to the very first war the country fought with India in 1948. On that occasion, tribal militants from the regions now in open insurrection against Pakistan flooded into Indian-controlled Kashmir. After overwhelming Indian soldiers there, they promptly went on a binge of rape and looting while the army looked on.
Again at war with India, in 1965, the better-equipped Pakistan army lost more ground, and tanks, than its adversary. But perhaps the army's darkest moment was the 1971 war that lead to the creation of Bangladesh. That conflict saw Pakistan troops involved in widespread acts of extermination against the indigenous Bengali population of what was, at the time, known as East Pakistan.
The Hamoodur Rahman Commission held in Pakistan following that war found large swathes of the high command to be deeply negligent – the commander of Pakistani forces in East Pakistan, the report revealed, was involved in sexual misconduct even as his troops were killing, and being killed, on the battlefield.
In 1999, an ambitious Pakistani general by the name of Pervez Musharraf devised the tactically brilliant, but strategically near-suicidal, plan to invade Kargil, an Indian mountain post in Kashmir. That gamble nearly led to nuclear war, and almost certainly led to a military coup later that year.
How does one explain these failures? There can be no one explanation. But if there is an overriding message from these debacles, it is that the army is ill-equipped to defend the state because it has captured much of the bedrock of the state to which it is totally unaccountable.
According to Ayesha Siddiqua, in her seminal study, "Military Inc", the army's private business assets are worth around £10bn and it owns a handsome share of the country's business and land. The generals, as a result, appear to be more interested in leveraging control over businesses, properties and politics.
Yet, the army's power is such that although Pakistan's private media have a commendable record of criticising the country's civilian politicians, criticism of the men in uniform is rare – save during periods of crisis under direct military rule, like the dismissal of the chief justice in 2007.
It would be unfair, however, to criticise the army without acknowledging the pivotal role played by its greatest patrons – the United States, and, to a lesser extent, China. Since the 1950s, both countries have lavished military and political support on the Pakistan army.
"Nobody has occupied the White House who is friendlier to Pakistan than me," is what US President Richard Nixon told Pakistan's then military dictator, Yahya Khan, at a 1970 dinner in Washington, on the eve of the murderous war in East Pakistan. More recently, former President George Bush's praise for Pervez Musharraf has become the stuff of folklore.
The army has been rewarded by its foreign patrons despite its incompetence and unaccountability. In the process, civilian political life has been grotesquely stunted, leading the democratic process to be replaced by a crude kleptocracy where non-military leaders represent personal dynasties and not the people.
Is it any wonder, then, that the army struggles to find a concerted strategy for defeating the Taliban?

Re: # 576 Riaz

"...I think you have too benevolent a view of US society..."

Allah hu Akbar, brother! You (living in Silicon Valley) will get along famously with Chowk Maulana Urstruly (living in Michigan).

Takbir

Re: # 569 Riaz

Wah! Wah! brother - kya mooh-tor jawab diya hai

Your command of statistics is breathtaking. Have you met Romair/Bulleya (thanks, Shankar for the typecasting) formerly of the Pakistan Air Force and resident Chowk military strategist? You have convincingly proven that my retirement savings should be invested completely in Pakistani government bonds (I don't care what interest rate they bear currently - I am bullish, like you, long term). Romair convinced us in 2001 that Americans would be wearing T-shirts with Pakistani flags soon because of the yeoman service that Musharraf was providing in the GWOT.

Re: # 571 tahmed: "It is more than the "face" - it is the entire body politic, the entire ethos, of the US vs Pakistan that I refer to."

It doesn't make a lot of sense to compare US with Pakistan, or for that matter any other country. Each country has its own unique history and experience, and the way people behave and what they do is very contextual. So I do not favor transplanting the US system to an environment that will not be conducive to it. For example, no European system, not even the British system, is anything like the US system.

That said, I think you have too benevolent a view of US society. I think the US democracy and its capitalist system is under threat today because of the corrupt political-industrial elite that continues to have extraordinary power. It is impossible for anyone to get elected in this country until they have substantial amount of money and the goodwill of certain corporate lobbies and special-interest lobbies like AIPAC. As Nader said about Obama, "Obama is an overly cautious captive of his handlers". He is a product, part and parcel of the same system that produced Bush, Climton, others before him. If he tries to stray too far from it, he will no longer be president.

In a movie I saw about US elections a few years ago, there was a very interesting tongue-in-cheek comment that basically compared the US electoral races to Nascar races where each race car and its driver are adorned by the decals from their corporate sponsors. Each US electoral candidate has similar sponsorship deals...minus the decals. And as expected, they primarily serve their sponsors with lots of our tax dollars and favorable legislation. The current global crisis has been documented by many as the result of such a corrupt system that threatens the very foundations of the political-capitalist system that has been very beneficial to society in spite of iys many ills.
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

#571 tahmed you keep repeating your BS even after it has been answered over these years. Your BS about slavery abolition is garbage. Europe/US started the modern slavery era, perfected it, massed it and then when there was a need for free flowing wage labor went in for abolition using moral excuses. The world is not as dumb as you think it is. There is nothing progressive about the U.S. Its elite, in order to rescue capitalism from collapse have employed in new form the very old feudal relationships of slavery among racial minorities and patriarchy for its women. Get a goddamned education.

Alumni WW you don't need to respond to every BS coming from this moron. Even if you answer him with documentation he will repeat his BS. His nonsense about these points was answered by me multiple times in the past but as a dishonest, spineless moron he keeps repeating this nonsense in order to trap unsuspecting folk.

TNITC masadi

Re: # 567 Shankar

The current aid package in the US Congress is like a grant - no expectation of any repayment.

Alumni WW, these people here the Hindu bigots and the peons of the West have embarked on a strategy to drive you to the loony house and you are dancing to their tunes. Leave Chowk for a few days and get your neurons in order.

TNITC masadi

Re: # 566 Shankar

"He believes the militants are "assets" to be saved against India. "

Ha! Ha! Ha! Does he really believe that? I thought that he was a 'smarter' cookie than Bulleya/Romair who was famous for saying that the Pak Army could 'take them out anytime'!

#570 RiazHaq: It is more than the "face" - it is the entire body politic, the entire ethos, of the US vs Pakistan that I refer to.

No doubt, the US has steadily progressed to where it is today (it is after all a progressive nation!).

But you need to compare the US to where it has been relative to other nations at any GIVEN POINT IN TIME. Compare the US with the "muslim world" e.g., or even with western europe, over the past 5 centuries, and you will see what I mean.

Thus, it took British pressure (generated by anti-abolitionists in UK) in the 19th century to force the ottoman empire to ban slavery. The US abolished slavery on its own - after fighting a bloody internal struggle in the US Civil War.

PS: btw, the maulvis (who rant piously against the US for slavery and oppression today) vigorously opposed this abolishment, singing the same tune about "western pressure" on the caliphate! Saudis, who make millions with their "religious tourism" industry, aka haj, did not abolish slavery till 1962.

Re: # 568 tahmed: "if one is to make such generalizations, then one should look at the over-all ethos and political structure a society, not just take a few odd examples that are easy to find for any naiton."

I agree. But you are confusing the two faces of this nation. It's external face mask is very different from the face it has at home. This new positive face has taken shape after over 200 years of oppression and slavery.

Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

Re: # 562

hamidm: As usual, you are quick to find reasons to be pessimistic. The US spends over $500b on debt servicing, the third biggest expense after social spending and defense. And soon, the US debt service will be the biggest expense in its budget.

The way to look at it is what percent of GDP is the debt.
Most recent figures in 2007 indicate that Pakistan's total debt stands at 56% of GDP (vs 78% for US), significantly lower than the 99% of GDP in 1999. It also compares favorably with India's debt-to-GDP ratio of 59% and Sri Lanka's 85% in 2007. From being the highest debtor nation in South Asia, Pakistan has, in fact, become the lowest debtor nation in its region and achieved economic growth rate of about 7% a year during the last 6 years

Even if Zardari does add a few billion dollars debt and economy slows to 1% growth (pessimistic), it will not fundamentally alter the ratios above.

In India, the lion’s share of the new budget, 63 percent, goes to the military, police, administration, and debt service...in a country with the largest number of poor and hungry people...yet you see a lot of bragging by the Indians on this forum. India does not have a hamidm....this Cassandra is unique to Pakistan.

Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

#563 Riaz: "The US doesn't like any deals other the ones it makes...it demands compliance, not alliance"

it is difficult to argue for or against such generalizations - after all, it is deeply ingrained in human nature to seek compliance where possible, and go for an alliance as a second best solution.

if one is to make such generalizations, then one should look at the over-all ethos and political structure a society, not just take a few odd examples that are easy to find for any naiton.

Thus: compared to other nations, i would argue, the US is a far more pluralistic society (the president has the congress keeping an eye on him, and if that fails, one of the countless non-government actors are there - even Bush had this mother of a soldier killed in iraq park her tent outside his ranch, complete with press cameras). Outside the US, the US reaches out to virtually every country, including past enemies like Germany, Japan as well as possible future enemies like China, Russia.

There has been nothing comparable to this level of nuance and sophistication in Pakistan's relations with the world - the one place where pakistan exercised control over a foreign nation for some time (i.e. during the power vacuum after soviet departure in afghanistan), our government sought nothing but compliance (by foisting their pakistani stooge hekmatyaar, and later the pakistan-created taliban) on them. And pakistan is reaping the whirlwind today.

Riaz ul Haq

Before 911 Pakistan was on the verge of bankruptcy.

The world FORGAVE many of the loans, Saudis have given you billions in subsidized oil.

I dunno about this aid package being negotiated in Congress. Is it a loan? anybody? I, personally, highly doubt it.