An International Failure

FerozK #193: Now this is what I would call the honest and straight forward opinion. Perhaps it is from the bottom of your heart. Thanks a lot. Shammi`s reply #195 is equally appealing and admirable too. What can not be done in sub-continent should at least be doable in diaspora.

I do disagree with one sentence though, unless it has a ``not`` missing.

``Pakistan has to be saved by Pakistanis themselves and the best way to do that is by struggling for its betterment; and for the pan-Islamic causes around the world.`` I would have rather said ``not for the pan-Islamic......``

Re: Shammi

I do not agree with you and yes, I still hold my conviction that like the Americans used to say in Vietnam, ``it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it``, Pakistan needs a civil war to settle all outstanding debts and start afresh. There is no other subsitute to this problem.

Re: Harimu (sp)

India`s experince should not be equated with Pakistan and what needs to be done, because that is a flawed analysis. As to Pakistani blind hatred of India, I strongly believe as long as India continues to threaten Pakistan without living up to its threats, Pakistanis will hate India. Pakistanis are tired from listening to all the Indian threats and allegations.

What happened to the Indian parliament was a dastardly act of terror, what ever the motives behind the act may have been.

India has alleged that Pakistan was behind the act. If India has prove that Pakistan was behind the act, let her show her evidence to the world. There will never be peace between the two nations as long as they continue to threaten each other and make allegations against each other without any evidence. Everyone in Pakistan knows that India wants to take this pretext and declare war on Pakistan. Pakistanis hate India, the blind hatred that called it, because just like your limits have been reached, so have ours and we are tired of being blamed by India and threatened by India and because of this, neither of two nations will stop hating each other.

The best way, in my opinion, to end the Indo-Pak conflict over Kashmir is a nuclear war and who ever is left standing, can claim Kashmir. :-)

Ciao

eid mubarak everyone....yes aunty deepika & co, you too:)

rsridhar

“Let us see how many Pakis on this chowk condemn this attack on Indian parliament”

….absolutely, totally and unequivocally….

“If this attack had the tacit approval of Mushy, he could have dug his own grave.”

…..give the man some credit…he may have committed blunders, but i don`t think he has some sort of preverse death wish…

Post not validated, because of interactor`s tendency to become abusive.

- Chowk Staff

Post not validated, because of interactor`s tendency to become abusive.

- Chowk Staff

Ferozk #193 I read those references to me, sir. :-) I do indeed disagree with what you say, BUT I shall present the reason why I disagree, as follows:

1. When you say democracy will come AFTER society is tolerant and other good things happen, you define democracy in utopian terms. And indeed one would need Santa Claus to deliver that society.

2. I define democracy more modestly: I define it to be the absence of unaccountable government (military, regal, religious, bureaucratic, whatever). By that definition, the movement towards democracy has already started with the replacement of the Deputy Commissioner (autocrat par excellence) with the Nazim. As Pakistanis, we should push wherever we can for the strengthening of these local self government (including regulation to ensure they stay within limit). Beyond that we dont need provincial governments, and just the central government. The latter can be stay in power for a while, as long as it stays accountable by permitting a free press and as long as the international community holds it`s feet to the fire on important issues (peace with India, ensuring human rights across the country).

I am satisfied with that. I dont need Santa to deliver a perfect Pakistan.

Post not validated, because of interactor`s history of abusive posts.

Chowk Staff

Eid Mubarak to all Chowkwallahs!

Ref Ferozk #: 193

[There has been democracy in the past, but real democracy will always elude Pakistan as long as it population remains illiterate and powerless to have their concerns heard by their rulers. I am not refering to formal education, but to levels of literacy in the sense of dealing with an issues based on logic and not emotionalism. There will be no democracy in Pakistan unless the Pakistanis learn to understand what the very word means and they stop others from doing their thinking for them.]

From its first elections in 1952, India adopted universal franchise. At that time, close to 90% of Indians could not have been considered literate; those who had any idea of parliamentary democracy were limited to those with exposure to the British system of governance (in Britain, not in India). Nevertheless, India persisted and succeeded in holding general elections based on universal franchise and by 1977 it was obvious that people valued their right to vote when they threw out Indira Gandhi after the Emergency. So long as educated people keep denying the common man his right to express his political will through secret balloting, you can be sure democracy will not take root.

Are Indian elections determined by logic and not emotionalism? No. Do the Indian masses do their own thinking rather than let others tell them what to do? No. Most likely they are influenced by newspapers that you and I might only use to wrap fish or line bird cages. Nevertheless, each year a few more schools are opened, a few more miles of road are built, a few more primary health centers are inaugurated, all to serve the illiterate and poor of the society. Over a period of the last 54 years, we have reached about 60% literacy rate and as the older unschooled generation dies off, we can expect literacy rate to reach even 70%. (The last 30% being the poorest will peobably never send their children to schools).

Compare this to the 54 years of Pakistan`s life. You have had almost two generations of people born in this timeframe - just like India - and was anything done to reach out to the Pashtuns in the NWFP? Instead of opening more schools and educating - dare I say, civilizing - those people, Pakistan allowed the Frontier to be ruled by tribal law. We are not talking about charming anachronisms here; we are talking about ruthless, eye-for-an-eye, honor-killing type of behavior. If the years since 1947 had been used not to nurture this behavior but to open their eyes to what one can achieve by living peacefully with one`s neighbor (I don`t mean India here, I really mean the guy whose fields border your own), one might have had a Pashtun province in Pakistan that would have even exercised a calming influence on the remote outreaches of Afghanistan. But instead, we have ended up with madrassahs that have produced the most virulent Islamists the world has seen.

How many more years, how many more generations are Pakistanis willing to sacrifice in their blind hatred of India? How many more years have to pass before you will see the futility of past course of action and determine to change yourselves?

A very happy time of celebration to all Muslims as they conclude their fasting in Ramzan. And may Allah bless all of you and give you the ability to pierce the veil of propaganda that has been blinding you.

Re: Ferozk #193

I felt sad after reading your article. I felt sad because you have a very pessimistic view. I would like to hope, that things do not go downhill for Pakistan. It is not in their interest, and it is not in our interest. I, too, spent more than half my life in India, and I think that fundamentally, as human beings, the average Pakistani is the same as the average Indian in their demands from life – roti, kapda aur makaan. The only difference is the ruling elites in the 2 countries. They are equally self-serving in both countries, but in the case of India, their excesses are somewhat moderated by a need to be answerable to the people every 5 years. Their accountability to the public grows incrementally with every election cycle. In Pakistan, the elites have no checks on them.

“The problem in Pakistan is not a lack of democracy, it is the lack of tolerance in our society”

I think that the two are interlinked – democracy promotes tolerance, and vice versa. There is ample evidence of this in many places in the world. The Indian Nagas (as have half a dozen other insurgencies in India) are negotiating with Indian leaders, the Jordanian Islamists have become more moderate after being allowed to contest elections, and the recent article by Thomas Friedman in NY Times also said the same thing. Without democracy there will be no tolerance, regardless of anything else. In this, the Pakistani elite, and Musharraf in particular, have a special responsibility. The opportunity-lost costs on society are steadily mounting, and Musharraf will do well to realize that ultimately, intolerance can only be checked by democracy, and nothing else. If he fails to recognize this, he may be doing a great disservice to the Pakistani people. Unchecked, intolerance will destroy the country like you described.

All the social conditions that you describe (poor women’s rights (remember dowry deaths in India), feudalism) existed in India (and still does in large pockets). Why then is the Indian experiment plodding along (despite India’s relatively poor economic record for the first 30 years after Independence)?

Further, I was completely and pleasantly surprised by the fact that a majority of the Pakistanis did not stand up for the fundamentalists in the recent crisis. I think that you overlook this fact when you made the comment that the ‘society is not tolerant’. It is – and this tolerance needs to be leveraged. But, dictatorship is undermining it. Just like in Palestine, the Hamas has come from nowhere to be a mainstream rival to the PLO and Arafat. That could happen over time in Pakistan, too – the consequences are all too frightening.

“Pakistan should concentrate its energies and efforts in making itself into a viable nation first and then think of implementing democracy”

That is not what India did – till the 70s many Western commentators believed (with some justification) that India was ready to fall apart, and that it was not a viable nation. I submit that one of the KEY reasons that India is still holding together and is forging a strong nation is BECAUSE of democracy. Even the trouble in Kashmir is because Indian democracy there is believed to have been flawed. The Soviet Union tried to forge a nation through repression and totalitarianism, but it fell apart as soon as it gave freedom to its people. So, I think that the two go hand in hand.

“Yes; there is a slim ray of hope and that is civil war”

That is a very dark future – who do you think the contestants will be, and what do you hope will be the outcome? Civil wars are the worst wars – they are the bloodiest. It could easily lead to Pakistan’s undoing (a la Bangladesh) or become a situation like in Ethiopia/Somalia, etc. It might even tempt somebody foolish enough in India to meddle in Pakistan’s affairs and take sides. I do not think that you would want that to be the future of Pakistan. Sane minds in India do not believe that Indian interests or Pakistani interests are served by carving Pakistan into statelets. That might initiate an indefinitely long period of instability.

“In my article, the question was asked: who are Pakistanis and what do they want? So far, I have not heard one answer to that question, because we, as a nation, do not know who we are and what we want!”

My friend, Ferozk, the Pakistanis want peace with India, and peace within Pakistan. They want to live in prosperity, free of religious oppression, and in freedom from fear. And they want a better future for their children. The trouble is that nobody asks them in seriousness, and nobody is willing to act upon their obligations. The ONLY body that can do that is a sovereign, free and representative legislative and executive council that is answerable only to the people. It most definitely NOT is the army.

Ferozk

``I do not believe in miracles and I do not believe that there will ever be peace between India and Pakistan.``

I have to agree with you there, peace as we understand it today. There is a peace of a different kind, peace at a jihadic frontier. It will be a kind of peace that exists in palestine, in philippines, in areas where an islamic country a borders a non islamic.

Slowly the world is realising that the control of terrorism is essentially a control of this boeder in terms of men and technology.

Having denied all of its ciltural moorings that has any semblence of hindu origins, like the basant festivel, there is no alternative other than the virulent strains of islam that pakistan can fall into. Devoid of the cultural continuity, the values have to come from the book, as though 1700 hundred years ago, and that is what is coming out of the madrassas.

Forget it, it can join the neighbouring afghanistan. The future of pakistan is no different from a carrion amidst vultures.

Re: Shammi # 189

I know that Tahmad321 will disagree with me! What else is new? :)

The problem in Pakistan is not a lack of democracy, it is the lack of tolerance in our society. Democracy will never flourish in Pakistan as long as Pakistai society remains mired in the medievalism of timocractic practices and glorifies injustices. Democracy is based on the ideals of pluarality of opinions, but the Pakistani society is, at the present, not confident enough to hear dissenting opinion.

What democracy would you like to see in Pakistan?

There has been democracy in the past, but real democracy will always elude Pakistan as long as it population remains illiterate and powerless to have their concerns heard by their rulers. I am not refering to formal education, but to levels of literacy in the sense of dealing with an issues based on logic and not emotionalism. There will be no democracy in Pakistan unless the Pakistanis learn to understand what the very word means and they stop others from doing their thinking for them.

Democracy for whom in Pakistan?

Democracy does not mean much in Pakistan if it is going to be confined to the cities and educated urban classes with Green Cards and foreign bank accounts. There will, and can be, no democracy in Pakistan unless an average farmer feels secure in his rights to question his local feudal lord and has the support of the state backing his rights. There can be no democracy in Pakistan if a woman has her face burned by acid if she dares to disagree with her husband. There can no be democracy in Pakistan if the minorities do feel secure living with the majority.

What democracy did you have in mind?

Pakistan should concentrate its enegries and efforts in making itself into a viable nation first and then think of implementing democracy. Jinnah is dead and his vision of Pakistan died with him. Kemal Ataturk was buried in Turkey and his vision should not be held as the next hope for Pakistan. Pakistan has to be saved by Pakistanis themselves and the best way to do that is by struggling for its betterment; and for the pan-Islamic causes around the world. Pakistanis are their own worst enemies and until this equation changes, Pakistan will remain in caught up in its petty provincial and ethnic conflicts.

Temporal once said, a long time ago, that the whole structure/facade of Pakistan is rotten to the core and should be kicked down and burned and Pakistan should start anew.

I have lived in Pakistan half of my life and I can tell you Pakistan will never change, because it does not wish to change. The influential parasites of Pakistan are content to drink the blood of this miserable and foresaken nation dry. They have no future to worry about, because they all hold second passports, which they have earned by looting the treasury of Pakistan and investing it in other countries to get their second citizenships.

Yes; there is a slim ray of hope and that is civil war. The people of Pakistan will soon be confronted with a simple choice: death by stravtion or death by bullets. Pakistan will only change if there is a civil war and people implement a revolution in this country. Talking of democracy and wishing well are luxuries that Pakistan cannot afford any longer.

Will the people of Pakistan rise up against their tomentors?

Highly Unlikely! The people of Pakistan prefer to live on their kness than die on their feet and this mental handicap will always doom us as nation of wishful thinkers.

In my article, the question was asked: who are Pakistanis and what do they want? So far, I have not heard one answer to that question, because we, as a nation, do not know who we are and what we want!

My simple advice to you would be stop thinking that democracy will solve the problems in Pakistan and a Pakistani democracy will be helpful in a regional sense. Let me give of a generalized example of what I mean. Just pick up any Pakistani newspaper and you will find some story on the efforts to reform the police in Pakistan and that a new policy, to the effect, will be announced in a week...a month...a fortnight... I have been reading these announcements for the last two years and still am waiting for the much waited police reforms to materialize! :)

Yes; I disagree with Tahmad321. I wish him no ill and I wish, for his sake, that Santa Claus does come to town, but I will not be leaving any cookies and milk by the table! LOL

Ciao

Re: Spin doctors at work in Pakistani media

This is what i saw in the editorial in ``The Nation``. Url:

http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/today/editor/ed2.htm.

Quotes:

``A host of factors attending the mysterious armed assault on the Indian Parliament, including its timing, are enough to erode the construction put on it by Mr Vajpayee or Mr L.K. Advani. However, Mr Advani has said the raiders were dressed in army commando uniforms and had come in a car equipped with a siren and Parliament House and Home Ministry stickers to dodge security personnel. Further, their intended targets are believed to have been Mr Vajpayee, Mr Advani and Vice-President Krishan Kant, but the former two had already left the complex following an adjournment motion.``

So what if ABV and Advani had already left the parliament. It was fortunate they had. Does it prove they had prior knowledge? What is this idiot trying to say?

`` The attackers were apparently quite familiar with access routes and location of important offices in the complex, as is evident from the fact that one of them had actually succeeded in gaining access to Vice-President Kant`s office. There were around 200 MPs in the complex at the time of the attack. If the assailants had succeeded in securing entry, there could have been a bloodbath.``

VP`s aide lost his life trying to save him. Krishan Kant was alone in his office. Again, does not prove anything.

``Attempts are already afoot by Indian leaders to use the assault as a propaganda tool against Pakistan. Minister of State for Home Affairs I.D. Swamy has called Pakistan an ``epicentre of crossborder terrorism,`` and attempted to draw parallels with the September 11 attacks, though Islamabad has denounced the episode in the strongest terms. General Musharraf has sympathised with Mr Vajpayee. The APHC, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Hizbul Mujahideen have also condemned the attack.``

Need India use any propaganda tool? I have always felt that Pakistani rulers are its worst enemies. If this attack had the tacit approval of Mushy, he could have dug his own grave. He committed one blunder in Kargil. This is a bigger blunder. India will react slowly but decisively. It takes time to convince major powers what is obvious to India viz. Pakistani ruler`s complicity in the whole thing. Diplomacy always should precede any military action.

The author says Musharraf had sent condolences. His calling terrorists ``armed intruders`` and his regret for loss of life without any condemnation for the terrorists has been widely noted by Indian

politicians and the media. This is literally a giveaway.



``There are around a dozen and a half insurgencies or freedom movements currently in progress across India, of varying intensity. There are the Sikhs, the Nagas and the Naxalites, to name only a few. The attack could have been carried out by any one of these groups.``

Here is some more spin. So, we have to learn from Pakistani media that Sikhs are still fighting insurgency in Punjab? What atrocious bull is this? Talk about benighted rulers and media trying to educate the people of a benighted nation. Nagas signed truce sometimes back. Naxalites have never had any popular support except in pockets (eg Telangana in Andhra where they are demanding a seperate state of Telenagan within the Indian Union).

Pakistani military rulers miscalculate the resolve of 1 billion people, who are otherwise democratic, secular and peaceloving. War is a costly business. Once India commits to war Mushy will be surprised to see a vastly different nation. India may be preparing groundwork for just that. As ABV put it succincly, our patience is running short. Or as General Carriappa said it more crudely many decades ago ``if All Indians stand up along the border and do it the same time Pakistan would be floating in Arabian sea.

Sridhar

Re: Romair #182

``...The Pakistani society needs to find its own medium, and its own heroes. This medium has to be based on the desires of the Pakistani people...``

Well said. Now implement it well as well. Gen. Musharraf has other plans:

``(Restoration of democracy) is a silent revolution,`` says Naqvi, who heads the military government`s National Reconstruction Bureau. Silent perhaps, but not all that democratic...Critics say the military`s approach is crude, almost naive. ``You can`t dictate democracy,`` scoffs retired Gen. Talat Masood...According to M. Ziauddin, editor of the daily Dawn newspaper, the military also used religious extremist parties like Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam to undermine popular support for the mainstream secular parties...Longer-term, the worry is that Musharraf won`t have much more success than previous military rulers of Pakistan. The key, say experienced analysts like Najam Sethi of the Friday Times in Lahore, is institution-building. ``We`ve seen this again and again. Nothing endures because nothing is institutionalized.`` Indeed, two previous military leaders have bypassed the political parties by holding district elections in the name of grass-roots democracy. The strategy worked for a while, squeezing the parties and ensuring no strong civilian leader emerged. ``Each of our military rulers has used local democracy to control parliamentary democracy,`` says Abida Hussein. But once the military strongman disappears, the civilians take over and the whole cycle begins again. This time, the military hopes to keep the parties weak by decapitating them.

http://www.feer.com/articles/2001/0112_20/p014region.html

Things don`t look good between Pakistan and India -- right now.

Mr. Musharraf cannot eat the cake and have it too.

Be part of anti TERRORISM coalition and -- ALLOW Lashkariyas and Jaishis terrorists to operate with impunity -- inside and outside the border.

That crazy and diabolically symbolic attack on Indian Parliament -- indiactes that these murderous organizations -- want another WAR -- between the two countries.

Mr. Musharraf has to show the world --WHO is in charge in Pakistan -- Lashkariyas`s -- or the Pakistani army? – or – they are the two different names of the same outfit.

Neither the Coalition -- nor those rickety nuclear devices -- will be able to prevent Pakistan -- from being pushed from the precipice -- by its own terrorists organization - into ANOTHER bloody debacle like Afghanistan -- if Mr. Musharraf does not BAN them sooner.

Another Anglo American crunch for Mr. Musharraf is on the way -- Ban the $astards -- or else.