These Long Wars

Adding Iblees, A Tale By A Takhalus & A Liberal Fascist Beghairat Mind

2012-01-04T00:03:00.006-05:00

Can't fault them for original names can we? Iblees has the shortest, and of course it means Satan ;-) But Haseeb Asif has one of the funniest blogs all around; a blog that I've even compared to Salman Rushdie in his more wittier incarnations. You need to check it out.

A Tale By A Takhalus is run by a well known Pakistani Pukhtun twitter personality Takhalus. His knowledge of Pukhtunkhwa and its issues even takes Karachi exceptionalism into account, and his blog shows a willingness to teach even basic knowledge of Pukhtun issues, where it may be lacking in the readership.

Last is the now famous blogger for the Express Tribune, Syed Nadir El Edroos. Also known as Needroos, Nadir's knowledge of economics is especially relevant in his analysis of the issues that Pakistan faces and is always welcome in a journalistic world where Pakistanis, especially those on the right, seem to demonstrate either a lack of economic knowledge, or the most rudimentary understanding of it. The name's quite nice as well.

Wikileaks Assessments of Pakistan's Nukes

2011-10-23T16:39:00.004-04:00

If anybody is interested, the internal wikileaked assessment on Pakistan's nukes is misleading, yes we likely do have 130,000 people working in the Nukes complex, but for the last 3 years I was hearing that we had 60,000~70,000 people deputed towards the security of those nukes. So of those 130,000 people, 60K to 70K are for protection, the other 60K to 70K are nuclear weapons technologists.

K = 1,000. If you didn't know.

Think Tanks Vs Universities - I Always Thought That Think Tanks Were Easier to Engage With Since High School

2011-10-02T20:29:00.005-04:00

And university (getting in, staying in) was a right royal pain in the ass. But there was a reason. The Universities are ancient institutions with ancient and deeply rigorous standards. They have to be, to justify the insane quantities of governmental subsidisation all of them undergo. So they're rigorous to the point of driving us shortcut looking Pakistanis, insane. Hell, that's why we overthrow dictatorships (or try to). Democracy is safer, boring but less rigorous than the education the IMF backed technocratic suckups surrounding any dictator, went through. In Pakistan, the equivalent of serving corporate interests at this time would be serving the Pakistan Military`s (corporate) interest. Stupid idea.

But back to think tanks. They serve corporate interests and are endowed by private or corporate funding. Universities at some level have to serve the public interest.

Interestingly, in the United Kingdom, there`s been a spate of fake universities, in fact fraudulent, private universities, so much so that the mouthpiece of middle classiya Pakistan, The News carried a piece on a clampdown on them. Now if I could find it.....

(Gratuitous ideological point: Maybe neo-liberalising everything was a bad idea? It let the fraudsters loose.)

I sort of realised how easy and simplistic the messages are, coming out of think tanks, in comparison to universities because:

1) The pronouncements of Think Tanks, always seemed a bit too simplistic.

2) Before the neo-liberal era, (the Bretton Woods era of the sixties and seventies, and yes Bretton Woods ideas are not completely applicable anymore) the main engine of ideas was the university, not the Think Tank.

After the rich started getting richer, in the late seventies onwards (not just in Pakistan, but across the West), Think Tanks seemed to rise to greater prominence than universities, as a sort of rival generator of ideas. This was driven home by this piece by Adam Curtis where he writes on the strange rise of this competitor to idea generation, the Think Tank. And considering the furore over the report published by the Jinnah Institute (the Think Tank parade/charade comes to Karachi) the history of the Think Tank, as an alternative to the University as idea generating machine. The university, in world politics, were so important to the world`s history during the sixties and seventies, that it echoes down to this day. Even in Pakistan.

But I always felt that serving the corporate interests was easy, and it is. It`s so easy, a high schooler could do it. With a high school education. And then earn a high schooler`s wages for life. Which is why kids are told by their parents; get lost to university and come back with good grades.

The rise of neo-liberalism was paralleled and aided by the rise of the Think Tank industry. Corporate power in the west, and military corporate power in Pakistan rose during the last thirty years, aided by a think tank industry acting as a handmaiden, and corporate ideological armourer for it. The power of think tanks has gotten so great, as idea based rivals to universities, that with New America Foundation and the Jinnah Institute, those trying to serve democracy and stop the excesses of corporate military and corporate power are finding themselves needing to recreate the tactics of their ideological opponents. To have ready made ideas lying around, except this time in service to democcracy.

Maybe universities and their students should consider stepping up on this matter. If they can stop worrying about the constant problem of jobs and grades that plagues them.

In the meantime, have a look at the strange rise, and rise of the Think Tank.

110,000+ Armed Security in a city of 18,000,000.

2011-08-23T09:51:00.019-04:00

Credit to Najam Sethi who gave two vital pieces of information that were necessary at 5:11 and 8:14, at what ails the PPP-MQM relation, and the breakdown of armed forces in Karachi, respectively.

In this city: There are 20,000 Rangers based inside Karachi, 35,000 police for Karachi, plus 55-56,000 private security guards.

That's an armed force of ~ 110,000+ armed men for a city of 18,000,000.

They can be deployed and within 15 days hunt down and capture the men doing this.

However from there it gets complicated.

Many will be released back into the streets due to an obsolete jail system and an overloaded judiciary. But that's not even the real hindrance that is stopping the government from starting an op against these men.

The real issue is that government relies on the MQM for seats. Much of the MQM's cadre will be swept up if an impartial sweep is started throughout the city. The MQM cannot afford to have large numbers of its men thrown into prison.

Also in the sweep many ANP men, and possibly members of the People's Aman Committee will see its men tossed in the cooler. But their criminals are joined through alliances, not party membership. MQM has party people who are in trouble. And the government needs the MQM. There is a way out; if the pol's can negotiate with each other and decide how much of their cadre its acceptable must face prison time for crimes committed. Also if they negotiate down from the angry maximalist positions each has taken regarding local administration systems & unresolved power sharing agreements in Sindh and Karachi/Hyderabad, that might help.

The census is abut to start, and in relation to that there is something regarding the demarcation of electoral constituencies, and the politicians are antsy about that. Most And a final compromise on the negotiated end of the commisionerate system, the Musharraf era elected Nazim (mayor) system and what version a democratically elected government would want.

A final solution....my God....here's an outline. The politicians from the PPP, ANP & MQM, and I have to stress, it must be *THE* leading politicians of these parties, must sit down and find where they can agree on the Venn diagram of what kind of local government Karachi & Hyderabad (and in contrast the rest of Sindh) must have, what common minimum principles/numbers they can accept on the demarcation of electoral constituencies and most importantly, what proportion of their cadres are completely criminalised and need to be taken off the streets.

It is entirely up to our politicians to work this out. There is no Uncle Sam or General Kayani to hold their hands. They must realise that they cannot completely wipe any of the other two of the board, and for better or worse, everybody will have to live with each other. A path out of this bloody deadlock we are in, may appear if they can reach some sort of binding decision on how Karachi/Hyderabad should be governed and simultaneously, with the criminals taken off the streets.

The Best Chronology on Pakistani Violence from Partition to 2007...and my Response to It

2011-07-14T17:31:00.018-04:00

Note: i'Ve basIcally beeN looking for something like this. A resource that pulls together all the various and DIsparate events of violence that Pakistan has suffered and perpetrated. This thematiC chronology of mAss violence goes beyond all the usual, easily available TImelines that exclusively fOcus on islamist violeNce. The ethnic violence perpetrated in Pakistan is a mythic chronicle to itself and deserves to be told. This is a great resource for it, describing all the violence that took place in chronological order, with all the players laid out, and the murder described, from the time of 1946-47 till when the "war on terror" in Pakistan ramped up in 2007, ending with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. There is a smorgasbord of violence to pull out and relate to in this chronologically arranged list of Pakistan's multiple conflicts. I pulled out the one that is clearly related to what is going on in Karachi; because well; I was there :-). You pull out and write about what you think relates to you.

I remember clearly, very clearly, because for some reason it stuck out in my mind that summer, or close to summer 1994, Karachi became insanely violent. You sometimes start questioning your own memory of when you are in your early years, attending Kindergarten, but dammit, my memory was right. Not out of any hazy compromise between my memory and that of the historical media consumed, but BECAUSE IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Knowledge of violence is prominent in memories leading to the summer of 1994, accompanied by the feeling of fear and uncertainty in the air, because IT DID HAPPEN, I didn't just imagine it as other people who can't remember what happened when they were 5, 6 or 7, either repress, pretend to forget or actually forget.

I Remember.

I Remember it was April ~ Spring 1994 When Violence Ramped Up in Karachi. I knew, for some reason, despite being a child then, and never seeing the exact days and attacks laid out, that April ~ Spring 1994 was when it happened.

The relevant section to be scrolled down to is:

"2.3 The MQM Versus the Pakistani State and the MQM-Haqiqi"

LOOK AT THE DATES:

1992; June 19 is listed as the date when:

"the Pakistani army intervened in a government-initiated military crack down code-named “Operation Clean-up”, allegedly in order to quell the chronic ethnic unrest in the province. Following the army operation, which resulted in a thousand of so-called terrorists and dacoits killed (Verkaaik, 2005.), a vendetta ensued between the two rival factions of the MQM. The MQM (A), whose leadership had to go underground, set about recovering by force its lost offices and the localities of Landhi and Korangi controlled by the MQM (H). It soon took the shape of a proxy war between semi-autonomous gangs trying to control small patches of the city and which lasted for months causing the death of many bystanders."

And then there is no entry for two years until suddenly......

APRIL 1994. The normal tick, tick, tick, of a few dead, then weeks of peace was blown to smithereens by a massive quantity of violence. And then the slide to hell began:

"1994; April 29 to May 5, The six-day insurgency: The MQM violently opposed the provincial government of Sindh as well as the federal government headed by the Sindhi leader of PPP, Benazir Bhutto. The MQM militants attacked more than 70 law enforcement agencies in the province and killed 32 people, mostly by sniper-firing (Haleem, 2003: 469). Till June, 62 policemen and more than 500 civilians were targeted (Haq, 1995: 1003)."

Long live memory and human experience. The direct way we learn.

A note of thanks to Shahreyar Mirza (twitter, tumblr) for finding the Chronology of Mass Violence & bringing it to our attention.

How To Publish a Hindu Newspaper in Muslim Pakistan

2011-06-22T02:55:00.008-04:00

Just watch this please.

Here's the original source.

Here is Boing Boing's take on it.

I want to buy this man a USB stick.

Syed Saleem Shahzad. A Lookback.

2011-06-02T17:36:00.028-04:00

Even though I disagreed with the guy, I bloody did not want him dead. Where does Al Qaeda end & the Pak Mil begin? RIP Syed Saleem Shahzad.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyTLW
TheseLongWars

This is what I wrote when I heard of Saleem Shahzad`s murder. We knew thanks to twitter that Mr Shahzad had been disappeared, but like many people we expected something like the Umar Cheema incident, where a reporter gets picked up, roughed up and released. Instead, we are confronted with the potential murder of Mr Saleem Shahzad at the hands of the intelligence services.

I may be saying potential, but that is what the news reports say. The opinion, rippling up and down the twittersphere, is that despite reporting on the intersection of Islamic militants and Pakistan's intelligence agencies, it is the latter part of the equation that has firmly done in Mr Syed Saleem Shahzad. Mr Shahzad's last piece, the first of a promised two parter, on the infiltration and presence of Al Qaeda cells in the Pakistan Navy, is likely what sealed Mr Shahzad's fate.

Mr Saleem Shahzad's name was likely one I had come across, as a hyperlinks would casually direct one to the Asia Times website over the last decade. And why wouldn't they? Before this current generation of journalists and bloggers, with their synthesis view of the War on Terror, growing up with it (seeing as we were just merely teens when 9/11 happened) Asia Times had a staff with multiple alternate ideologies running, right through the time of the Asian financial crises of 1997, when the print version of the newspaper folded and "Asia Times Online" took shape.

Mr Shahzad, along with Pepe Escobar, covered Pakistan from their own perspective for the early part of the last decade, whilst other voices also began rising to the surface.

However, as this new Pakistan focused journalism rose up, Mr Shahzad continued on the stories that were most attractive to eyeballs outside Pakistan, namely, the rise of Islamic extremists and their links within the Pakistan government and military. The new breed of Pakistanis journalist was more interested in what was payed to play by the domestic Pakistani consumer.

Mr Shahzad did not focus his stories intently on this "inside the loop" version of Pakistani news. He continued to focus on the line that was sold outside Pakistan, because let's face it, it effected those countries through violence; the continuous rise, and rise of Islamic extremism. And of course its murkier, and murkier connection with the Pakistani state.

This was no longer the open and shut training of Afghan Mujahideen in the eighties or of training Kashmiri guerrillas in the nineties. After 9/11, and in fact, after the airlift of evil, or as I call it, the airlift of buying General Musharraf credibility.

Parading the caught members of the airlift of evil would have been the easiest way to bring Pakistan to the reputational cul-de-sac it finds itself in, plus could have nipped the seeds even of the Taliban insurgency.

For God's sake, Pakistan AIR FORCE officers would have been taken as Prisoners of War inside Afghanistan in November 2001. I remember that time. It would be the current pressure Pakistan is facing, multiplied by a factor of ten or twenty. The Pakistan military, and General Musharraf should thank their lucky stars that President Bush and V.President Dick Cheney were incharge.

The thought of Pakistani Air Force officers being paraded around as POW's inside Afghanistan by the Americans in late 2001, would have bought the military to the DOMESTIC crisis point it faces right now within Pakistan; our soldiers being caught so closely in co-operation with the Taliban right after 9/11.

We were bought a good ten years.

The reason I bring the Airlift of Evil up, is that with the capture of Osama Bin Ladin a thousand yards from Kakul, a decade long obfuscation campaign has officially ended. The last ten years since 9/11 have been spent by ordinary citizens and reporters trying to decipher and cut through reams and reams and of bullshit spun by those at the top of multiple governmental heaps. Those would be the government heaps of the United States, and Pakistan. The Bush junta, and the Musharraf junta, constantly spinning a line of BS to keep people distracted from their own incompetenct complicities in crimes of commission over the last ten years.

To try and make sense of these problems, we the ordinary people were left with groups like Asia Times Online, and their ideologically charged reporters, such as Pepe Escobar, and the Urdu press influenced Syed Saleem Shahzad.

In those ten years, the Islamist virus entered Pakistan, mutated and turned in all different directions. Syed Saleem Shahzad remained focussed on it.

I first really took note of Saleem Shahzad's name when he appeared on an independent Canadian news program/Youtube channel called "The Real News". The Real News is known for having an independent bent, as it is lead by Paul Jay, an independent journalist and film producer, who's been running the Real News since the summer of 2007. I especially recall, "The Real News" introducing Beena Sarwar on film (this was the first time I had seen her on tv) in the time around the emergency and in the period leading immediately to what turned out to be the surprisingly independent February 2008 elections. Pepe Escobar was his regular international correspondent, and it is likely that he bought Saleem Shahzad in. When I first saw Saleem Shahzad on The Real News, I was not totally impressed with what I saw, but I had to admit that Mr Shahzad was somewhat on the right path. At that point, in and around the summer of 2007, the Musharraf regime was collapsing, and one was hoping that everything would be resolved with minimum bloodshed. That was not to happen.

During 2008, I ventured onto Asia Times Online, time and again, to try and make sense of the prevailing low level chaos that was ensuing. Even though I got some valuable editorial insight, the air of excessive speculation, and excessive reliance on ideology (an unreconstructed Marxism in the case of Pepe Escobar and prevalent ideological conservatism in the case of Saleem Shahzad and Spengler) was a bit of a turnoff for me. I read Asia Times on and off through 2008 and 2009, but came to feel they were not good for illumination on the development of Pakistan's democratic politics. Cyril Almeida lightly references this feature of Asia Times, when he describes Syed Saleem Shahzad's publisher and the last story that Mr Shahzad did that is likely the reason that got him killed:

Saleem was not mainstream media. He was committed to his work, yes; he knew well the contours of militancy in the region, yes; but he was not mainstream media. He traded in the currency of explosive revelations and, at least in the minds of editors and news directors of major media houses here, there was often that little bit of uncertainty surrounding the reporting.

His last piece was illustrative of this. That the PNS Mehran attack was facilitated by someone in uniform, retired or serving, seemed fairly clear to many. There had also been rumours for months about navy personnel picked up by intelligence agencies for links to jihadi groups, but the veil of secrecy was tight and veteran trackers of militancy had not got very far on the details.

Saleem’s last piece, though, was a narrative perfectly formed, all the pieces falling into place in a way most people familiar with such stuff would at least have raised an eyebrow at. The theory didn’t get much play locally or internationally and it would be fairly plausible to assume the second part of his two-part series would have been received with similarly cool interest.

After summarising the nature of Mr Shahzad's last story, and critically looking at the nature of his publisher, Cyril Almeida does turn to the very obvious facts of the present case:

So, we are left with the case of a journalist picked up from central Islamabad whose work had long since ceased to make waves in the media, and yet he was brutally tortured to death. That’s what makes the ‘why’ part so thoroughly unsettling, if not downright scary.

Cyril goes on to point out how now there will be a difficulty in determining what is going on in the further recesses of our deep state, a condition already difficult, exacerbated by this murder. The appropriate phrase is "chilling effect", but just the amount of outrage this murder has caused will lead many to question whether overt criticism of the military establishment can be stopped. The military establishment now knows that technologically, it is now difficult to stop people from overtly criticising it, however, the purpose Syed Saleem Shahzad's murder may serve may be to stop deep investigations of the deep state, those sort of attempts at understanding, where you are sometimes unsure whether you are speaking to a witness or a participant.

And that is what happened in the line of reporting Syed Saleem Shahzad was pursuing.

Here he is, on The Real News, on 20th May 2011, TWO DAYS BEFORE the attack on PNS Mehran, describing how there is a possibility of a mutiny brewing within the Pakistan military over the close co-operation with the United States. He had been tracking this in his news filings over arrests made in the Pakistan Navy of cells of Islamic extremists. Al Qaeda had threatened retaliation if those captured terrorists weren't released. That is why we had those bombings of Pakistan Navy buses.

Mutiny Inside the Pakistan Military

Much of what Saleem Shahzad said in this video is worth investigating. I don't have space to go into every salient thing he said, I would mention though, the fact that the ISI mis-reported to Musharraf who was behind the December 2003, completely fucking up relations between the Jihadis and the military (a month of rage, May 2004, was carried out in Karachi, attacking higher military leaders, possibly not unrelated to this) and General Kayani earned his chops, by actually being in charge of finding WHO tried to kill Musharraf in December 2003. Needless to say, Syed Saleem Shahzad, correctly predicted that there would be a partial mutiny inside the Pakistan military (it happened in the Navy, I think we may have to wait for the actual Army shoe to drop *shudder*) and just to add to the Saudi-Iran angle of them using Pakistan as a proxy battle ground, there is a LOT to be said for this, but just to blow your mind, here is a trailer with video of an Arab Sheikh handing out money to the families of kids who were used as camel jockeys in a Gulf Arab Emirate, on whom this is a documentary. The more important point is, here is a Gulf Sheikh, just randomly handing out money to a group of poor south Punjab Pakistanis.

If Pakistanis want to talk about sovereignty, they will also have to talk about how they are allowing all these countries to use their territory as a proxy battleground for all their stupid sectarian feuds. Saleem Shahzad's further points on the Taliban being stunned whilst simultaneously grieving for the loss of Bin Ladin are also valid assessments to make.

After the murder of Saleem Shahzad, from Pakistan's side, there has been loud anger, and a voicing of a desire for resistance and protest. Some of the responses have carried great personal steel, and resolve to not let matters continue in the way that they are. Others are not always too secure in this view.

Munizae Jahangir is right. This is a government that has been unable to even convict anybody for the murder of Benazir Bhutto. It was also interesting to see The Real News reference Asian Correspondent.

People will continue to speak against the excesses of the military establishment. But they are constantly unsure whether these criticisms or protestations will have much impact.

As for poor Syed Saleem Shahzad, he left a book. That was published just two weeks ago.

Called "Inside Al Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11". I'm buying and reading it.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is survived by his three children and widow.

Adding my Twitter Account

2011-05-31T23:11:00.002-04:00

As it has become obvious to everybody, I have a twitter account. Unfortunately, between that, work in real life, and an immense flood of news since 2011 began I've slightly neglected my blog. I think it's fair to add the twitter account to my blog, sot it's now there on the right, the These Long Wars twitter account. Now that they're linked together, I think I can find more motivation to update regularly. It was something I wanted to get to, but finding the widget was getting in the way. Twitter is useful.

Ted Rall Speaks to The Young Turks About the Rise of the Obamabots. It's Great When Stuff You Like Comes Together

2011-05-25T22:55:00.008-04:00

I like Ted Rall. I also like the Young Turks. Its great when two things you like come together. The Young Turks are an independent news group from the United States, who started out from Youtube, talk radio and Air America and have expanded to the point where their founder Cenk Uygur (pronounced Jenk You-Gur) can now and then be seen on Dylan Ratigan's show.

Cenk is the one who interviews Ted and is the "Young Turk" who named and founded the show with his friend Ben Mankiwiecz. Mr Mankiewiecz is the son of a famous advisor to the Democratic party. The show, the Young Turks has it's own interesting take on Pakistan, which has now considerably changed and been updated with the capture of Osama Bin Ladin from right next to Kakul. I wanted to blog about The Young Turks and their take on Pakistan earlier, but I'll definitely do something on them at a later date. Cenk should consider having Mr Rall on MSNBC, where his views could be seen more favorably and disseminated more widely.

For now, please enjoy Mr Ted Rall's independent take on the Obama presidency, the political red lining that took place during the Bush years (that continued till three years back and could return again) and the rise of the Obama Bots.

My Professional Opinion on the Last Three Weeks

2011-05-23T01:03:00.008-04:00

I concur with Baba-e-Qaum, Mohammad Ali Jinnah on all this:

Sorry I've been gone for a bit of a while all this year. Between the murder of Salman Taseer, of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Cricket World Cup, the eruption of the Arab Spring across the Middle East and North Africa, and my subsequent taking up of Twitter and Tumblr over the last three months, as I had been promising to people for nearly half a year, a LOT has happened. A Lot.

I promise I shall add my Twitter and Tumblr to this blogspot, but for now, you can directly read my updates as I figure this stuff out.

And then there was the mother of all events that happened in of all places, Abbottabad, as the United States Public Enemy No 1 was killed by 80+ US Navy SEALS in under 40 minutes after ten years of being really on the lam, after committing the greatest terrorist atrocity the world has ever seen. And Pakistan plus every global news cycle was thrown into an administrative tailspin. The murder of Osama Bin Ladin on Pakistani soil (a thousand feet from our premier military academy) resulted in the first ever offering by the DIRECTOR GENERAL OF THE PAKISTANI KILLING ISI to resign for a mistake that he committed. And the Pakistani parliament and civilian establishment let that opportunity slip through their fingers. They didn`t even extract a promise to carry or aid an investigation and THEN get General Ahmed Shuja Pasha`s resignation. A failure. Along with the dizzying array of failures that have stalked this land (and even threatened and blown parts of it up) since 4 US helicopters slipped below the radar into Pakistani airspace on the night of 1st May 2011.

These failures are documented by even dear old Wikileaks, which has now signed a deal with dear old DAWN to exclusively publish all those old leaked cables from late last year that pertain to Pakistan, exclusively in DAWN. The same cables that may have helped set off the Arab Spring through their revelation of President Ben Ali`s wrongdoings in Tunisia. So there is that. A documentation of failure.

And those failures continue.

And we have at, this point in time, a 10 hour long failure unfolding in PNS Mehran. A failure that strikes deep into the heart of the Pakistani military, and deep in my heart, as I lived close to PNS Mehran at one time and have even been there. PNS Mehran is entering it`s eleventh hour of siege and TWO P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft were destroyed by 10 to 15 militants who snuck into that little monument to my childhood and its commute, PNS Mehran. That's a total of $70,000,000 worth of damage to Pakistan right there and then by the TTP.

In response to the murder of Osama in Abbotabad. And then some other reasons of course.

The Full Complement of the Pakistan Navy's Orion P3's

The filmmaker Sharmeen Chinoy once asked a Pakistani Taliban collaborator, if they think they'ld win. He replied, "We will never run out off sacrificial lambs".

So there's that.

I have to go now and won't be back for some time. You can follow me on Twitter, but in the meantime, for the best analysis of this whole situation; from the capture of Osama Bin Ladin a thousand metres from Kakul, to the glass half empty session of parliament that partially absolved the military, to an entire UNIT of militants sneaking into the Pakistan Navy's premier Naval Air Base and blasting away $ 70,000,000 worth of equipment.

Good Night Y'all.

And God Bless All Those ordinary rank and file who fought and died and were injured fighting those scum that were sent in PNS Mehran.

Joe Bageant, 1946-2011

2011-04-29T22:55:00.004-04:00

It seems a lot of people have died since this year has started. A lot of famous individuals dying and a lot of regimes have died as well, especially in the Arab world (sorry for not covering that, but things don’t seem to shut down in Pakistan). But most of those deaths were political or well known to the media. The one I am confronted with is a slightly personal one, the death of a literary influence on my work, a man I began reading in the mid-2000’s. A good man and a good writer, Mr Joe Bageant.

Mr Bageant died on the 26^th of March of 2011, last month, and since we were all busy with our own things, I didn’t notice the death of somebody whose writings informed me. His writing introduced me to another culture of America, that of the working man, and what it means to have to fight and struggle in this brave new economy when the chips are stacked against you.

There were a few salient features of Mr Bageants writings. His description of a rural pre-television childhood, a description of being raised in a pre-internet era, the contours or shadows of the confederacy he could feel in his life in the South, how he enjoyed reading, whilst many of his fellows growing up were not too fond of it. The more serious stuff was how he described the effects of growing up a religious Christian and most importantly, why George Bush won the second term and why people voted against their own interests to elect George Bush to power, not once, but twice. On the way, he verbally kicked an American John Dolan, who is related professionally to Matt Taibbi, whilst in the process humanising Lyndie England (who never should’ve been in Iraq, like the rest of the American army) yet simultaneously condemning her act of torture. In his later writings he turned to a very environmentalist reading of the economy, something I disagreed with, and sometimes wrote off as a feature of age. Especially when he talked about the US maybe become a second world country and “Please excuse the lack of oxygen”.

He is also one of the few Americans who mentioned Swat as one of Obama’s wars and tried to explain to Americans what their role was in the war in Swat. For that he has my permanent gratitude.

I ran into Mr Bageant’s writings in 2005. I’m not sure how I ran into his writings. It likely had something to do with the website workingforchange.com and its internet published columnists, that eventually led me to Mr Bageant’s little place on the internet. I had been referred to workingforchange.com by Michael Moore’s website, a man who championed (and still does) America’s urban working poor. And whereas Mr Moore’s factory workers have been driven from the factory into the fry-cook job, Mr Bageant’s rural American workers have been driven off their land over generations by collapsing food prices thanks to corporatized farming, to compete with America’s working poor for those fry cook jobs. It is these people Joe Bageant wrote about, because it is these people Mr Bageant came from.

End reference:

Some of the few things I read off Mr Bageant, flipping between 4chan and Joe Bageant’s website. 4Chan has made into Time magazine as a cultural icon. Mr Bageant deserves to be counted as one as well.

Carpooling With Adolf Eichmann (references Pakistan’s “nuclear blackmail”)

Drink, Pray, Fight, Fuck (An introduction to the Scots Irish)

Poor, White and Pissed (Why poor people in the United States may have voted against their own economic interests)

Lafayette Park Blues (A History of Joe Bageant During the 1960’s)

Mash Note for the “Girl With the Leash” (On Lynndie England’s infamy)

Driving on the Bones of God (A Contemplation on the Federal Government Structure in Washington)

Karaoke Night in George Bush’s America (A Contemplation on His Ancestral Town’s Fellow Citizens)

One Last Kick At Liberal Dogs (On Contemplating American Liberal’s Own Sometime Bigotry Against and Misunderstanding of Rural America)

Shaheryar Mirza Summarises the Uncertainty over these Naval Bus Blasts

2011-04-28T14:36:00.005-04:00

Shaheryar Mirza got everything right that we could possibly get over the current air of uncertainty and opaqueness over these recent bombings of Naval buses over the last three days. I had just written a large 800+ piece on the twin bombings on Tuesday against two Naval buses, simultaneously attacked in morning rush hour traffic in two different parts of Karachi. I was editing that piece last night when twitter lit up that a new attack had taken place, this time close to PNS Karsaz, this time at a different Naval support base. This obviously means that the all Naval support bases and their staff are a target. A few salient things to take away from what Shaheryar said:

1) They are not sure that this is part of the larger "War on Terror". Maybe the Taliban could take responsibility, but as people were discussing on twitter, they may just take random credit for any attack.

2) The Navy should really have all its buses change their routes randomly as they are very likely under surveillance. I thought of this when I got up, but I just saw Shaheryar's suggestion of it.

3) It really is too easy to pull of an attack like this in Pakistan and South Asia. Pakistani cities are crowded, traffic is packed quite close together and there are odds and ends sticking out of all parts of a city that allow an attack to be carried through if one has the few bomb-making geeks necessary. This type of attack is called a "remote control bomb" from back in the day in South Asia. I.E.D became the popular term for it because of the US military's chutar (fucked) habit of trying to talk its enemies down. Back in the eighties, with KHAD operating in Pakistan, the ISI & the Muj in Afghanistan and the ISI, Muj & Khalistanis operating in Indian Kashmir and Punjab respectively, these type of "remote control bombs" were very common. Back in the day here means the eighties till some time in the mid-nineties.

Anyhow, the history lesson can wait. I have an episode of HIGNFY to watch to decompress, a piece to re-edit and then some really serious work to get to. Say a little prayer for the dead doctors and dead Naval support staff. I've known these people from personal experience in my life in Karachi, and all they demonstrated they wanted from life, was to work hard and get ahead, for themselves and their families.

They didn't deserve to go.

MQM Guys Likely Killing People. Here's Why.

2011-04-26T15:07:00.005-04:00

In this piece (4 Political Activists Gunned Down in Karachi) all the dead are listed as being either from, or related to someone from the PPP, the ANP or the JSQM. All three parties have a leftish bent, derive their base support from rural Pakistan, and have a not-insubstantial following in the cities as well. Plus all parties are known for a bit of an ethnic bent (in the JSQM's case it's out and out an ethnic party), with the PPP being known for having a serious Sindhi following and the ANP for representing Pashtun folk. The PPP does try its best to appeal to all of Pakistan, but faces a backlash in urban centres and suburban environs with anyone even minorly conservative.

And that backlash in Karachi is killing its workers. Who is missing from this list of the dead? What major party, known for its Karachi stronghold, doesn't seem to have its workers dying here? Obviously, the urban, centre right, "purportedly" non-ethnic MQM. I seriously doubt that ANP members are gunning for PPP people. Or that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi or the Pakistani Taliban would waste their meagre and hunted resources in Karachi, wreaking vengeance on their old ANP foe.

The article is missing any references to the MQM. The Dawn newspaper has a policy of simply boycotting coverage of the MQM, unless another party mentions it. Ergo, we are left with only one culprit hunting down rival parties members all over Karachi.

Of course the last question is, why? Why is the MQM hunting members of opposing parties? Two old reasons and a surprising new one. Firstly there is the old segueway of political partywork connecting sometimes seamlessly into the criminal underground. There is a fight over the spoils of that. Secondly, the Musharraf dictatorship kept the city quiet by reading the MQM the riot act. The Musharraf dictatorship could use the stick of the Karachi Corps Command to whack anyone who decided to raise a ruckus in the country's major port city. But the present government either does not trust the military, is not trusted by the army, worries that if it unleashed the army, collateral damage might occur where the army goes after those it has been aching in Karachi to harm and the ensuing collateral damage would be left strewn around the civilian governments neck. The fight for black and grey resources, and deep tensions over the use of the military to suppress the killings are two reasons why these killings continue.

But a new reason may simply be, that the left(ish) parties star may be rising. That parties like the PPP, ANP and JSQM may be gaining a filip because the poor labourers who a generation ago voted for them, now have educated children who want to go up in the world, recognise these parties as a ready made vehicle to work from their own ethnic perspective and wish to use them to improve their own position. The MQM has its own children who want to rise, but whereas a generation ago it was the MQM's cadres that could boast of being "educated" (completing high school, gaining some college education, completing bachelors) a new multi-ethnic "educated" generation has come about in Karachi, one where ethnicity is not considered a great barrier to being called "educated". The desire for upward mobility is no longer the sole prerogrative of the Muhajir working and middle class. Its spread across ethnic lines to many children of Karachi, who's families could a generation ago be described as "rural" when they arrived in the city.

So the younger, more desperate have linked up with these national and nationalist parties, the fight for control over Karachi's resources has gotten more desperate, and the desire to make something of oneself manifests itself in greater, more reckless displays of political bravery. And the aging youth (pretty soon aging men) of the MQM, find themselves having to face a tide of younger and possibly hungrier kids. The children don't have martial co-ordination as good as the MQM, so they find themselves more the hunted, than the hunter in these targetted killings. And why should the ANP, PPP and JSQM have better internal co-ordination than the MQM? They've demonstrated their lack of capacity to respond effectively or demonstrably whilst in government. So the MQM can continue sending out bullet ridden messages to workers of rival parties.

And what does our government do, in a situation that can only be described as a rising tide? One in this case of human blood and not salt water

At the central police office, it sets up a "special cell", which, "has been recently set up on the chief minister`s directives to keep the exact record of targeted killings in an effort to prevent misreporting of the incidents in the print and electronic media."

Our government decides to just sit at home and count the bodies.

Which considering the past behaviour of our government, seems quite apt.

RIP Moin Akhtar

2011-04-23T04:19:00.007-04:00

Gone at the age of 60. Yah Khuda, who does that nowadays? Moin Akhtar sahab did, and it's sunk in that an original, hardworking and good man has passed away.

Forget emotions, I feel like there's a small empty space in my heart.

Ahmer Naqvi and Sami Shah wrote best on Moin sahab's passing.

And this one video Ahmer Naqvi posted is tragic, as he typed it. It's the comedian Omer Sharif reacting to his comedian colleague Moin Akhtar's death:

Moin Akhtar's work had a mild socio-political bent to it, a consistent criticism that went along the lines of nobody's perfect, and if anybody in Pakistan is pretending to be, they aren't being honest or smart. It was not necessarily Jon Stewart-esque, but in an environment (the last three decades of the 20th century) when entertainment in Pakistan was purely apolitical, Mr Akhtar stood out for criticising people who had influence on this society.

All I can say is said by Ahmer Naqvi, on the passing of a talented and good man:

Moin Akhtar was easily one of the greatest Pakistanis to have ever lived, my favourite comedian growing up.

انا لله و انا عليه راجعون

Postscript: Mr Nadeem Farooq Paracha wrote the best fact based obituary on Mr Moin Akhtar. It covers his history, his rise to fame, the famous stars he worked with, his health issues towards the end of his career, and most important the last role he had with Mr Anwar Maqsood on "Loose Talk" (multiple episodes available on the net), the show on Pakistan's private television channels that from 2002 onwards, made him famous amongst the young of Pakistan, all over again. Here is Mr Paracha on Moin Akhtar: "Death of a Comic Genius"

From God We Come, and To God We Return.

But it happens faster if we overwork and smoke as well.

انا لله و انا عليه راجعون

The article "The Tribune' asked me to write and refused to Publish by Shabnam Hashmi

2011-04-20T14:18:00.004-04:00

I don’t know from where to begin this story. There are thousands of images which float by. An image appears for a split of a second and then disappears. Some images and memories stay so long that they haunt. Sometimes I try to run away from the stories and images but they don’t leave. I fight with my own self, running away from these images is betraying the victims, on other occasions I feel my brim is full I cannot retain any more.

Every journey into writing is an emotional journey into the stories of a besieged community and the apathy of the state and the nation.

I often wonder how these women retained sanity.

A mother hiding in bushes, clutching her two children close to her chest while her elder daughter was being brutalized, stripped naked, gang raped; her breasts cut off and burnt to death. The helplessness of the mother, the choice of being killed herself along with the two children or letting the daughter be massacred without registering a protest haunts me. In the initial months every time I met her she kept mumbling,’ I am ashamed to be a mother; I am ashamed to be a mother’.

A mother carrying her unborn five month baby inside her womb, carrying another three year old with her, fleeing from the mobs runs for safety to a village which is 5-6 kms away, gets shelter is asked to leave early morning, reaches an Adivasi village, after two days again on the move but not lucky enough to escape this time. The younger daughter is killed on the spot and mother gang raped and left considered as dead. The mother survives and so does the five month old baby inside her womb. On July 5, 2002 around noon I reach the hospital the baby, just two hours old, sleeps peacefully beside her mother. I see a smile on the mother’s face for the first time in all those months.

Another mother is beaten severely inside her own house. These are not VHP goons; these are men in uniform and the year in 2009 and not 2002. She is kicked on her private parts with boots. She has a 18 day old baby. Snatching the baby from the mother, the baby is thrown to the ground. The mother bleeds heavily and finally losses consciousness. Eleven other women face the same ire from the local police. The reasons can be any. Right now the police are frustrated as someone whom they had arrested got down from their motorcycle and walked away while they were taking him to the police station. So they arrive in nearly 25vehicles start breaking the doors of residential homes, break vehicles, and enter 12 homes, attack women and children, molest women, arrest them and take them away. Its only next evening that the magistrate orders a medical test but the doctor is too frightened to take a stand so no lady doctor is found to examine the women.

Khatoon takes food for her sons on her visit to the jail the police officer pushes it away with his shoes, scattering the entire meal on the floor. She had perhaps saved money from her own meal to be able to bring this for the sons. Two of her younger sons are moved and she is not informed where they have been moved to. She keeps searching for them. Then the third son is also moved. For three months she has no clue where the sons have gone. She goes almost insane searching for them. Finally her elder son manages to write to her and informs her that they are in Sabarmati jail in Ahmedabad. Shamsher Khan, Siddique Khan and Nasir Khan are released after nine years. They have been declared innocent. What about those nine years of humiliation, torture, want, hunger, separation, a mother’s sufferings?

Yasmin Bano’s body is waiting for her last journey, her four children crying bitterly hoping Abba would come at least for the funeral but parole is denied. Was it just some skin decease because of which Yasmin died or did she succumb to grief? Her husband Hanif Abdul Razak had a business of manufacturing school bags. The crime branch police officials took him as well as his younger brother from the house at about 3:00 AM on March 27, 2003 with the promise to release them the next day.

Both the brothers are separated and beaten severely for almost two and a half hours. In the morning, they are put together and the police officers then debate whom they should implicate in a case. Ashok Singhal, one of the police officers proposes they should implicate the elder brother, as he is the only earning member in the family. Both are detained illegally for 12 days without being produced before the court, are regularly physically tortured by the police. Hanif is harassed to agree to every condition otherwise be prepared that younger brother would be booked in the same case.

On April 9, 2003 Hanif is produced in the court, before the Metropolitan Magistrate. He is granted fifteen days of police remand. During that time, they subject him to excessive torture. They strip him completely, lower him down into a tank full of water and then give him electric shocks on the sensitive parts of the body. They ask him to admit that he had made the Tiffin bombs, or else his body might succumb to severe torture.

After the 15 days of police remand he is produced again before the court. The Magistrate, already has a statement under the section 164 of IPC that Hanif is asked to sign. Hanif however, refuses to sign the statement arguing that he has not committed any crime. The magistrate then turns to the police officers and says, ‘Take him back for another day, see that he doesn’t refuse to sign tomorrow’. As instructed, Hanif is brutally tortured all night and therefore does not resist any longer. He finally succumbs and signs the statement under the section 164 of IPC in the court the next day. Based on that statement, the court sentences him to ten years of imprisonment on May 15, 2005.

Hanif was neither granted parole when his mother died on Jan 4, 2007 nor on May 13, 2008 when Yasmin, his wife died. No mother with a Muslim name can sleep peacefully in Modi’s vibrant Gujarat.

Niaz Apa lived in village Ognaz in Daskroi taluka. She had a fairly big house in her village and 18 Gunthas of agricultural land touching the road. Her house was attacked, looted and destroyed in 2002. Her granddaughter Farheen was playing outside the home when a petrol bomb was thrown towards the house. It came and fell in front of Farheen. Something seem to have frozen with in her mind since then. She has to be helped to walk even nine years after the incident, she cannot even see a stove burning, and no amount of treatment has helped so far, a child traumatized for life.

The family fled and spent 8 months in a relief camp. Niaz apa filed cases against the attackers naming them. They were all neighbours and land owners. She could not return to the village or cultivate the land, the condition was withdraw the cases. She tried giving the land for cultivation on commission (batai), the attackers again did not allow that till the cases were withdrawn. They threatened to destroy the crops if any such effort was made without compromising on the cases. Then Niaz apa tried to sell the land, the attackers threatened the buyers with dire consequences. Finally she sold the house and the land secretly on a throw away price much lower than the market rate. Like 5000 other families she lives in Gujarat as an internally displaced person in a small room in one of the make shift colonies built by various NGOs for the internally displaced. There are many others who compromised and went back to the villages living next to the rapists, murderers and looters.

Rashida Ansari lived in Ootwali chali in Behrampura, Ahmedabad. Her colony was attacked, looted and burnt down, Rashida fled with her family, Junaid was 9 years, Ibrahim 8 and Javed only 6. They asked the police to help them but police only fired at the people trying to escape the attacking mobs. It was just their sheer luck that the family was not hurt. She spent 6 months in camp in Jamalpur which ran in a school building. The camps were forcibly closed down after 4 months and she still had nowhere to go. She tried going back to where she lived. A wall was built to block the way to where once the Muslim families lived. Rashida tried to take another route to her house but immediately a small mob collected and they took out swords. Rashida had to run for her life never to return to that area again. She erected a small chappar in a corner and spent another two months under that.

While still at the camp she came to know about a meeting taking place at the Behavioral Science Centre. She decided to go there and what she heard there was absolutely new and amazing. She met people who talked about justice and equality, about the dream of building a society without hatred. There were more Hindus in that meeting than Muslims. She had seen only the VHP, Bajrang Dal and RSS brand so far who used religion to spread hatred. She was happy to meet so many Hindus who believed that her right to the nation and citizenship was as much as theirs.

Rashida decided to join this fight. Her family was very supportive but there were the conservative Muslim organisations who objected to Rashida doing this work. There were pressures to wear burqa and remain in the confines of the household but these voices in Gujarat were feeble and are still feeble as compared to states where Muslim conservative sections have been stronger.

In the coming days Rashida had become a part of Aman Samudaya. She joined the teams working in various relief camps, filing police cases, doing surveys, fighting for the rights of victims. Now Rashida fights for all the underprivileged.

Every story that I narrate reminds of hundred similar stories.

Certificates for Modi from Vastanvi and the likes have not changed the reality on the ground.

In a State where stray dogs from the cities are caught by the municipalities only to be let off in the early hours of the morning in Muslim bastis what justice can you dream off?

It is the enthusiasm and conviction of a few to resist which keeps the hope alive, though the rays of hope to overcome this madness are becoming blurred with every passing day.

Shabnam Hashmi
March 14, 2011
New Delhi

Note From TLW: I ripped this off Facebook and posted it here because I have no interest in spending anytime on Facebook, and this through twitter and open hyperlinks, should be available on the open net. I really don't like Facebook.

When the JI and JUI Aren't Fanatic Enough For You

2011-04-12T07:54:00.003-04:00

Combined with the double assassination attempts on Fazl-ur-Rehman this attempted attack on a JI leader should really give us pause. Even after everything we've seen, this acts as a signpost on how faaar out of whack the situation with the militants has gotten. If the Jamat-e-Islami and the Jamiat-e-Ulema-Islam are not fanatical enough for a person, then this certainly means that things have gone far out of the control of a lot of people. The children, teenagers and youths planning these attacks have basically become a bunch of crazy wild dogs, snapping at anyone and everyone who does not conform to a deeply backward regressive view of the country. And have no doubt about it, these are all kids under thirty planning and executing these attacks. It becomes more obvious that religious indoctrination in our society has to be cut back, curtailed and controlled. The scaling back has to begin, and the JI and JUI, who were at the forefront of raising it, have to be told to shut up and back off for their own safety. These two idiot parties deserve a serious chunk of the blame for what has happened but they should now recognise that they are on a suicidal path that will destroy if not this nation, but certainly them. On the way, more innocent Pakistanis will die in the JI and JUI's attempts to make Pakistan and Pakistanis more palatable for Islamisation. At this stage Islamisation and Talibanisation begin to look like one and the same.

Two Videos and a Series

2011-04-08T21:02:00.003-04:00

Ahsan had a video up by someone who visited North Punjab and Central Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa. They were a collection of pictures with commentary on the context of each picture, accompanied with . Here are two videos I found sometime back that I think are worth watching. Both are Karachi related, and present a unique viewpoint on the city by the sea. The first is "Scraplife: Ewaste in Pakistan", by a Green Peace photographer.

Tracking illegally (obviously) exported ewaste to Karachi, the ewaste dumped on Pakistan comes to the very famous Lyari neighbourhood of Karachi. Well, famous to Pakistanis. Just like Dharavi has seeped into the Western consciousness maybe Lyari (or its strongest contender Orangi) will do the same.

This video was intriguingly shot in summer 2008, a period of medium level political turmoil, when frantic negotiations between the PML-N minority and the PPP government continued, all under the Presidency of General (Retd) Pervez Musharraf. It turned into the last summer of Mr Musharraf's presidency, as at the end both parties came together and forced the General (retd.) President to resign.

Anybody who's woken up to the stench of burning "something" in Karachi, and I absolutely loved the reference to Lyari as a place where everything that isn't allowed in Pakistan happens in Lyari. What like drinking, doing drugs, whoring and murdering? Oh if only, and only those things happened only in Lyari. Maybe he was talking about secularism, democracy and civilian rule. Yes those certainly aren't allowed in Pakistan, but they happen in their own perverted way in Lyari (See People's Aman Committee for further details). I enjoyed the observation that Lyari's electronics burning grounds give an "apocalyptic feel". Most of Karachi gives me an apocalyptic feel. Much of the video and the descriptions are run off the mill street poverty in Karachi, interacting with 21st century Western techno-activism. This story mentions the wholesalers who buy the used computer hardware, and that got me wondering how much of it ends up in Uni Plaza as spare parts. Likely the parts that look least damaged, or Uni Plaza's suppliers import computer parts that actually work. The story that touches my heart though is that of on of the many Gold Melters of Lyari (you read that sentence correctly), and their short, poisoned out lifes. A good video to jolt Pakistanis from the complacency they feel about all the poverty they live in; and a look for foreigners, at the real everyday fight in Pakistan; the fight for a decent living.

The second is Amar Jaleel, a Dawn columnist who I used to enjoy reading for as long as he wrote in the Dawn Sunday Magazine. Here he is speaking about Karachi.

Its also a good video, but I would take some issue with what he said about there being no fighting when Hindus and Muslims lived together in pre-partition India. There must've been some fighting. And at Mr Amar Jaleel, I would also add that I know exactly who Ms Zaib-un-nisa was, a famous journalist and editor from the 1960's who stood up to the Ayub Khan regime. This bit of information is pre-internet.

But I do agree with Mr Jaleel, the sense of loss from 1947 in Karachi is undeniable. Mr Jaleel's articles in the Dawn magazine were known for covering current affairs with a meta-physical feel to them. I do miss them a bit, but their critique of the dominant authoritarian, anti-democratic political culture in Pakistan were too allegorical. He didn't land any direct punches. Maybe because the people from his generation who landed direct punches were disappeared or pushed out of journalism or Pakistan. There are more videos of Mr Amar Jaleel in a series he called "My Vanishing Karachi". Under "My Vanishing Karachi" he had "DJ Science College", "Empress Market" (warning beheaded goat's heads maybe NSFW), "Heritage Buildings" and very appropriately "Tram Service". Mass transit is a serious necessity in Pakistan.

I went for the first video, because it was the first one I saw, but I had no idea how popular the series would prove, nor how to bring it up. Ahsan provided that opportunity.

Taken together they are a pretty serious indictment over the neglect of an expanding Karachi, coupled with the serious lack of democratic institutions for Karachi'ites to use. A failure to realise the extent of the growth of a city that houses ~10% of all of Pakistan's population.

A last few words on Amar Jaleel. I've been saddened that he stopped writing. Especially when the Musharraf regime that he despised actually began to crumble. Mr Jaleel's writings are now very difficult to find on the internet. Many of them very politically provocative; taking sharp and deep digs into the dominant institutions of Pakistan, and some of its most cherished myths. Dawn has a responsibility to fix its error ridden archive. Now with the internet, we may actually have a real and effective memory hole not necessarily for entire sweeps of history, but certainly for individual episodes and discrete events. There are some people who have complained that Dawn has been losing some of its most provocative articles to '404 errors. I would agree, especially in relation to a valuable writer like Mr Amar Jaleel. His allegorical stories were good. One that stood out in my mind was where he characterised Musharraf as a neighbourhood bully who had forced his control on the neighbourhood, and the United States arrived as a storm like monster. Musharraf had the chance to let it enter the neighbourhood (in this case Afghanistan) or not, and Mush allows the US to enter. And you can hear the cries of pain and terror from where the monster is, but the neighbourhood bully keeps trying to distract you with the sound of his own voice. A good story.

Pakistan is Going Through Puberty

2011-04-08T20:38:00.004-04:00

On Karachi Khatmal's advice I've put this here as a blog post. I think its appropriate. I ended up jamming an entire blog post as a comment on a swansong to Shoaib Akhtar. Shaiby deserved better. Both from my comment and in real life. But Mr Khatmal's analogy of Pakistan as a country with a misifiring adolescence was too good to pass up, and something I had considered for a very long time. Please keep reading.

Love, is a Shoaib Akhtar delivery KK. Because your understanding of love does change as you grow older. And the moment of release, is better than what a child could imagine.

Now, you know me, I go straight for the what-makes-this-place-tick part of the story, and man did I love your meta-description/discussion of our image problem. The suppressed past part is apt, and I've been warning people to always prepare for "embarassing realities" to pop up suddenly into the political scene. Just one example of an "embarassing reality" was that whole Pakistan's pervy google search thing, and another was our horrid labour practises which just killed of 40+ miners. Heck, Kamran Akmal is an embarassing reality, and even our beloved Shaiby and Lala pull heavy on the embarassing part in a way Imran Khan had to enter politics to acheive.
I won't ask how we alleviate it because you went for the coup de'grace when you compared Pakistan to an adolescent who's still a child. Man, I've been saying that to a few people since 2007; that basically, I think Pakistan is going through puberty. Seriously. If Pakistan makes it to 2013, and then to a new legitimate government, this country will have grown. Puberty explains everything, from the fight with backwards extemists, to the robust debates in the media, to the military become more sophisticated in its propaganda efforts, to Zardari acknowledging dead minorities first in his speech to the parliament, to Zaid Hamid/Hamid Mir constantly carrying a dark cloud around them due to embarassment/voiceover in a murder, these are signs of childhood breaking down, and maybe people growing up. When you were a teenager, didn't you feel sometimes like it was the end of the world? Well, this country is not going away; its bought off half the Baloch leadership, killed off the recalcitrant part, and is skulking around to clear off embarassing spots on its Balochistan sheet. And growing up is part of this little saga. There's also the past.

It was good to also see metaphors of child abuse there. I always considered our dictators to be negelctful Guardians.

And I seriously think our relationship with the United States can be classified as statuatory rape. We were 3 years old when the US began wooing us. The US was 174 years of age. The even used Walt Disney to draw us in to buy military toys, and then turn us into their chauthy beewee in Asia.

Seriously, I think the US can be called out on statutory rape, and it has been an abusive history. How does one go about dealing with an abused child? Especially one that is maybe, finally giving signs of growing up? You can introduce it to love. And Shaiby's demostrations of passion in bowling, as a love to aspire to, and Afridi's bara bhai like attention, may be one of many ways this country deals with the psyche problems it has.

Please check out Karachi Khatmal's beautiful doosra style comeback on Pakistan being stopped in the World Cup.

Shoveling Snow and Blogger/Gmail/Google

2011-03-24T21:43:00.004-04:00

So whilst we were enjoying Pakistan clinically taking apart West Indies, on Pakistan Day itself (23rd March), it was snowing like crazy all of Wednesday. Result, 4~6 inches of snow, which I have to now go out and shovel. ~Sigh~ I remember last year, and the year before how I was shocked in 2009, that by mid-February, all the snow had melted off my lawn, and March was completely slush free. Well, not this year; I assumed that the same slush free conditions were what we would be going for. Apparently though, the weather is now going to look as nasty as it is supposed to in that part of the year that is supposed to be classed as "winter", i.e mid March in North America. So yeah, going out and shovelling.

I at least hope that Goddamn google, blogger and gmail don't leave me logged in. Blogger's wordprocessing application, in which I type is a bit of a pain in the neck to begin with, mis-formatting the font and spacing in odd ways. On top of that when I sign out, they don`t sign out completely. I logout of gmail or blogger, and then I open google in a new tab and it reopens with me logged in. I don`t think its a conspiracy, but I do think that like all Pakistanis, I push the products I own and use, to their specified limits and beyond. I want to get my time and moneys worth, and maybe google/blogger, just have some strange glitch. We shall see when I reuse this on some new internet browser. For now, I have all the four major ones installed; but this signing-out-but-not-signing-out glitch/privacy invasion is a pain in the neck. I'll keep an eye out on it for the time being.

Must. Go. Shovel. Now.

Debt Slavery and Dead Coal Miners in Pakistan - A Land With Bonded Labour

2011-03-21T09:04:00.009-04:00

Pakistanis never talk about domestic debt slavery. Its actually strange, but there is an entire debt slavery structure in the rural environs of Pakistan. Maybe because of its downright horrific nature, the urban chattering classes simply avoid discussing it. Killing off ( predominantly Hindu) moneylenders was a reason that some people gave me that rural Punjab and Sindh supported the creation of Pakistan.

This debt slavery was transferred from generation to generation and children would be born directly into a slave family. That is the story of Iqbal Masih. Strangely, Pakistan is so anti-labour, that it doesn't even acknowledge this kid as a hero. Or maybe that people have too many tales of tragedy to tell in relation to their labour.

But in relation to the coal miners who recently got killed and a further few trapped inside the mine. Towards the last two minutes of this report, the reporter talks about how some miners mention that they took out debts, and they're working this dangerous job to pay those debts off.

The story of Munnu Bheel (google him sometime) is one that comes to mind. I remember reading about him in 2004, and here we have a documentary of him talking in 2010, of his family still missing.

The movie calls Munnu Bheel, Mannu Bheel, but I'm willing to forgive that error. Funny enough, this is exactly the edition of Herald where I read the follow up story ("Die Bheel, Die") on this case:

And so there we have the primary resource workplace of Pakistan. No wonder people ignored it and didn't talk about it. Its depressing, dangerous, full of slavery and debt bondage that's been going on for generations around the society. The doyens of modernity are too busy focusing on themselves to notice society at large. Or they've withdrawn into their shell because the horrors of society are too overwhelming. Well they just maybe, but possibly for lack of organised attempts to fix them.

Yay - The Snows Melting and Its Raining

2011-03-21T05:32:00.005-04:00

I moved into the house I'm in right now on the day with the heaviest snow of the year. Like the ground was blanketed by one and half feet, eighteen inches of snow. Something else moving house in weather like that. Really Fun!!!

But that was a little over a month and a third ago. Now the snow has melted and its raining; beautiful Karachi boy cooling rain. It makes me happy to be alive and now I can walk for both work and study. And its only March 21st! Man this is great. Life is good.

Will now sit inside, watch the rain, and run down my tea stock. I think I just finished an entire box of teabags.

Saba Imtiaz (The Express Tribune) Speaks To Jeremy Scahill (The Nation)

2011-03-18T02:23:00.014-04:00

This. Is. Awesome.

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/34886

The author of Erase and Rewind, spoke to the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. The worlds meet.

One thing I regret; is never going on Band Baja when it was active.

A personal lesson for readers of this blog: journalism by those raised in Karachi* does get a person places. Now if it could only change the world.

Kudos Saba, and thank you Jeremy Scahill.

Postscript: Along with this and a reference to Mr Ayaz Amir's column (Behold the Molten Rage of the Honour Armies), this is the first and last time this blog will talk about the annoying meme that is Raymond Davis.

*I changed the the phrase "raised around Clifton" to "raised in Karachi" as Saba Imtiaz contacted me and clarified that she never lived in Clifton. Clifton here is a reference to an area of Karachi where I spent a lot of time, and where a great number of educational institutes of Karachi are located.

In Memoriam of Shahbaz Bhatti

2011-03-17T18:10:00.011-04:00

Federal Minister for Minority Affairs, Shahbaz Bhatti
Born - 9th September 1968
Murdered - 2nd March 2011

I feel this needs to be written. Even if its been two weeks since Minister Shahbaz Bhatti was murdered, and I know everybody feels the same way I feel, but this needs to be said loud and clear. I want to apologise to his family and friends and express my grief and regret. The sadness at this murder breaks my heart and runs over into my soul at the spectacle of murder my country at large has become a stage for. I once used to take solace in the fact that it was only Karachi that partook in large scale murder in this day and age. But with Pakistani imperial ambitions blocked in Afghanistan, and an insane Al Qaeda turning its strategic violence industry on Pakistan, the mad radicals have decided to exploit to the hilt, every faultline, every difference, every frayed nerve ending to get their message of vengeance across to the larger Pakistani public at large. This includes exploiting the fact that for some strange reason I still have difficulty fathoming, a section of Punjabi Pakistanis get more worked up on insults to the prophet, rather than sticking to their religious mandate to worship no God but Allah. Or maybe if they want to get worked up it could be over non-reporting teachers or raped and murdered children in the province of the serial killer Javed Iqbal. But no, it’s a law passed by Zia that is used to victimise people, steal their property or destroy their reputation, the preservation of which’s abusive nature is more important than any other social ill that plagues Pakistan.

And so it’s with regret that I write that another in a long list of Pakistanis has been felled by the fanatics nurtured by our society and its government. Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti was killed 12 days ago on his way to work by Taliban gunmen. They were surgical about it, stopping the driver, telling him to get out of the car and then assassinating the Minister. He had not been given police guards, and simultaneously, an intelligence call came to him to inform him that his life was in danger. Allah. Yes geniuses at Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, we know Bhatti sahib’s life was in danger. What you people at the Jasoos Adda could have done would be to find the name of his killers, or maybe lodge cases and file for arrest warrants against everybody who had verbally or in writing made a threat against a sitting minister of the state.

My anger is overcome with sadness. The PPP should rabidly pursue the killers of their party member the way General Musharraf rabidly pursued those officers who tried to murder him, overturning entire careers if necessary. Yes I know that is a blasphemy, for civilians to challenge the careers of those in the government defence/intelligence sector, but I think it is necessary because too many high profile terror attacks have occurred for an example not to be made of in the government security bureaucracy.

This is part of the policy angle, and maybe some progress has been made. But I think more important is to speak about the human angle of the murder of Mr Shahbaz Bhatti, and this is painful to write. Mr Bhatti was a citizen of Pakistan. The community he belongs to, Pakistani Christians, are no less citizens of Pakistan, whether they are in Lahore, Pindi, Karachi or the insurgency hit Khyber district. In this day and age, with mass produced powerful weapons, more miniaturised, more sophisticated and more lethal in smaller doses, human thinking has to evolve beyond the barbarism of the 1940’s that it still seems stuck in. Mr Bhatti in his death has become a champion and symbol of victimisation for his community, against a policy instrument of persecution, of Muslims, Christians, Hindus and other human beings. His death placed the champions of the blasphemy law in a dark place, with Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman coming out and saying that maybe the law might need to be amended.

A dark way to get change.

Mr Bhatti was a brave Punjabi. The last post I wrote before his murder, I wrote in jubilation at Pakistan winning against Sri Lanka with our notoriously unreliable Cricket team. In it I wrote that Pakistan needs Brave Punjabis and smarter, wiser and more mature Pathans. In explanation I wrote, “A little more heart and soul in some brainy corners” in reference to Pakistan needing some bravery amongst its Punjabis. What more could I have possibly meant? That the smart Punjabis who have made their way up the corporate-bureaucratic ladder in Pakistan did so by staying silent about obvious displays of bigotry amongst Pakistanis and how these culturally normative prejudices were tolerated and accepted over decades. A time has now come to address these unspoken prejudices and hatreds. Mr Shahbaz Bhatti spoke about these and paid what can be described as the ultimate price for it. For that I salute him.

And I still want the Blasphemy Laws repealed. I asked for a brave Punjabi, and God dammit we got them. We need more brave living Punjabis, and not dead ones, but now I ask for the repeal of those instruments of abuse, the Blasphemy laws.

This post is now published on the web page of the Critical Supporters of the Pakistan Peoples Party Website.

On the Brain Virus - Dedicated To Some Lahoris Who Know Me

2011-03-14T04:50:00.006-04:00

They say they actually know the people at Brain Computers. Go figure. I`m from Lahore too, so yeah. I had heard long in Pakistani professional circles that Pakistanis were responsible for creating the first ever virus. Then I got unrestricted internet access and saw it confirmed for real in Time Magazine. I suppose this could have some thing about what Karachi Khatmal says on originality and Alpha Za said about Pakistan needing some smart, scheming entrepreneurship to save its economy (even the Zardari kind is fine). But this seems more important. Its the intersection of both, originality and entrepreneurship by way of information technology, a minor interest of mine. And here it is, a Finnish computer security company goes to Lahore and meets the creators of the Brain Virus. There is something touching about this video.

For one thing, this is the first time I am tagging both Pakistani History and Internet together.

For another they have Lahori Pizza Hut at the end. YAY!

A Situation in Flux - My Response to Nadeem Gehla's "Between Blood, Revenge and the Legacy of Martyrs"

2011-03-07T05:04:00.007-05:00

Here is where Mr Gehla's article is, on the contemplation of the idea of revenge. Here is Mr Ejaz Haider, on the contemplation of revenge itself. Below is the response I posted to it:

Personally, my heart was rent by the murder of Shahbaz Bhatti sahab. I had varied responses to that incident of violence. What I want to mention is that somebody made the recommendation that the time may have come for the government to go beyond mere legalities and start going for extra-judicial assassinations as a way to end the religious extremists attacks. My response was agreement and I wrote:

The PPP will have to have a long, hard sit down talk with the PML-N and the ISI about their sectarian friends in Punjab.

Then the PPP will have to wear its Naseerullah Babar pants and get ready to break skulls and, and catch cuts.

Now I have no doubt in my mind that the PPP has three armies of brave Jiyalas ready to fight for their democracy and their country. And reading this article by Ahmed Nadeem Gehla reminds me that these brave men and women are ready at the signal from their party to fight. This is a sentiment that dovetails completely with what I myself have written. However, Mr Gehla’s fear of an escalation and “intervention” by the establishment, keeping in mind what happened during the PNA movement are also valid. Keeping this in mind, I would like to request the party that it at least raise the verbal pressure on centre right, to right wing forces to suspend aid for sectarian terrorists.

If the PPP takes the decision to go through with extra-judicial measures against sectarian terrorists, I assure you the blog “These Long Wars” will support you.

In the meantime, I would like to add that your policy of non-intervention may or not bear fruit. Here is the Dawn article, “Too Little, Too Late” on the ever chameleon like Fazl-ur-Rehman expressing some regret on the current state of the Blasphemy Laws. The words from him and Dawn are:

“if a law is being misused against minorities, we are ready to discuss this [matter]”. Such is the grimness of the situation Pakistan is facing vis-à-vis extremism that even this small concession must be greeted with relief.

I wonder what this bodes in terms of Mr Gehla’s idea of non street confrontation over the blasphemy laws? This is a very serious situation, and the words of Mr Fazl-ur-Rehman have to be taken somewhat seriously in this respect.

Cyril Almeida Grasps the Nature of These Long Wars

2011-03-04T00:51:00.003-05:00

Cyril Almeida has grasped that the nature of the religious extremists we face is a sort of implacable insane foe. The military establishment is involved in this, so are local factions of our politicians, and those factions which stand opposed to the local sectarian fanatics, are making the mistake of appeasing them. This appeasement has to stop. Because people otherwise die.

In the PPP's defence, I would like to say that they are trying everything short of harming people in trying to stop the violence. But to the PPP, I would say, your members are being killed, can't you do something? At least tell all your members to now be armed, the way Altaf told his followers to be armed when the MQM first had to break the control of Muhajir areas from the Jamat? If not a fitting analogy, at least this time make a swift call to the ANP, MQM and PML-N to amend or abrogate the Zia created blasphemy laws? Do it fast and quick and change at the case registration process at least.

Cyril captures the forever war nature of the cultural and now physical assault Pakistanis face. Here it is: The Politics of Appeasement.

Pakistanis Themselves Don't Understand Pakistan

2011-03-03T23:02:00.003-05:00

What do you think I've been trying to do for the last decade and a half or so? ;-)

You should read this:

http://www.newsweekpakistan.com/the-take/259

Read the interview. I always found Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy kind of grasping and interested more in promoting herself, but if I run across something she says about Pakistan and terrorism, I do read and listen.

I must mention that some people from my family made interesting comments relating to suicide/economic desperation way back in 1998 at the time of Pakistan's nuclear tests and the sanctions that resulted. I commented to a family member on the rise in suicides that were coming forward in the Metropolitan section of the city newspaper. My relative responded by saying that yep, suicides rise in times when money becomes really hard to come by. In my mind, I had a half formed thought (this was way back in 1998) about people using their suicides to kill other people, maybe even copying stories I heard about Pakistani soldiers in the Battle of Chawinda strapping dynamite under themselves and lying under tanks. I didn't air that little bleak thought back then, but God knows, it was interesting. Note to self: Must always air bleakest thought.

I actually have some stories on the economic devastation caused by the sanctions, but since the bleeding was more personal and locallly confined, nobody talks about it. I should come back to it someday. In the meantime, it was nice to see Mohsin Hamid's "Mothsmoke", and now Sharmeen Chinoy (dropping the Obaid, 3 names annoy me) talk about the correlation between economic devastation/the rise in suicides/the rise in suicidal behaviour.

You guys should really read what Ms Chinoy has written:

http://www.newsweekpakistan.com/the-take/259

Must*Ask*Karachi*Khatmal*If*There*Are*Now*Consequences

What Pakistan Needs More Of...

2011-02-26T13:32:00.006-05:00

Brave Punjabis

Smart, Wise 'r Mature Pathans

A little more heart 'n soul in some brainy corners, and a little more deep thinking in some very brave ones; and God willing I do see a way forward.

Dwarfed Fantasy and Delusions of Grandeur Long Past

2011-01-31T14:43:00.007-05:00

Is it possible to hit two sixers off one delivery? Cause Karachi Khatmal does that with every blog posting he's done.

And I do love that tagline he uses; of our country, as insufficiently imagined. The same man also said that, "It is commonly and, I believe, accurately said of Pakistan that her women are much more impressive than her men". In the spirit of this inquiry into ourselves (when it is subtly discouraged), it`s great that Umair Javed's Recycled Thought got into the act of trying to understand urban internet using Pakistan.

Karachi Khatmal once made the point that it would be the abused and downtrodden of Pakistan who would really come to its defence, in an analysis of how certain Pakistanis ravings about our nuclear weapons being stolen represented the sort of people who would gladly sell off any part of their country whilst they would continue to rave jingoistically about their own country. In light of Veena Malik's defence of her right to go on Big Brother, and her smack down of a Mufti sahab who would likely not have verbally attacked a man the way he attacked her, I think Mr Ahmer Naqvi is vindicated in saying Pakistan's intersection of gender and defense myths is nothing but a pile of Phallic Phantasies.

As for me, I'm now crazy busy moving house. So assume blogging to be light for a little while. In the meantime, please enjoy Mr Najam Sethi showing our anchors how real news presenting is done, and Veena Malik, telling Mufti Sahab that it's not on. And we end with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto telling everyone to go to hell.

Phallic Phantasies + Veena Malik = Super Win

This Made Me Sick

2011-01-26T18:14:00.003-05:00

Pakistan’s Sindh province.... is suffering levels of malnutrition almost as critical as Chad and Niger.

I just felt sick reading that. There's more, but this news report outlined how as family's were assessed for the first time they were found to have malnutrition levels worse than what had been imagined. I feel like this is a problem all across South Asia, where the situation for the worst off may be worse than imagined or measured by statistics. That's a narrative that has to be put forward. In Pakistan, Pakistanis must speak about it. And remember as Amartya Sen said, the simplest way to avoid death by starvation is to live in a democracy. Malnutrition is another problem though. And by the way, maybe a little of the defence budget could be sacrificed to put some dent in malnutrition rates.

You Guys Forgot Wikileaks?

2011-01-23T09:10:00.003-05:00

First off, Wikileaks has released the entire US State department Cablegate Data Drop, all 250,000 of those cables that were given over to Wikileaks. Assange Co. however, as many may have heard, has been handed data disks from an executive of the Julius Baer bank group. Wikileaks basically did what their prime directive said they would do; make the primary source data available. People are wondering when the Julius Baer data will be fully released, so that the banks can also get a taste of the Wikileaks effect. However, in the meantime, Wikileaks is finding itself being abandoned by those who might be feeling, have been supplanted in their job by the Wikileaks organisation. Here is the excellent McClatchy news organisation, covering how

"the Overseas Press Club of America in New York City declared him "not one of us." The Associated Press, which once filed legal briefs on Assange's behalf, refuses to comment about him. And the National Press Club in Washington, the venue less than a year ago for an Assange news conference, has decided not to speak out about the possibility that he'll be charged with a crime."

These news organisations probably do not realise it but they will be next if and when the US corporate/government nexus increases the pressure on their journalist community. A motivation may be professional anger that, let's face it, Wikileaks broke multiple scoops they should have been getting for themselves. Nonetheless, the Wikileaks people have done a great deal that should in all honesty be a gold mine for journalists. And the simple fact that Julian Assange is being treated like a criminal rather than a facilator of whistleblowing should be a signal of alarm to the US journalist community. Journalists should be encouraging people to leak as many classified documents as possible. Covering this story is admittedly, an Agitation Propaganda group, Russia Today (who do not like Pakistan), but they use a US citizen employee to cover the dropping of Wikileaks, and the rising threats against Julian Assange:

More significant is Birgitta Jonsdottir (Bir-Geeta Yaughns-Daugh-tier) the Icelandic member of Parliament who was elected from a marginal left wing political party in the wake of her country's economic collapse. She worked with Julian Assange in setting up Wikileaks in Iceland. She helped with editting the video of the Baghdad Helicopter attack called "Collateral Murder". I specifically remember her doing an excellent job with marketing and spreading the word around about Wikileaks during its Iceland phase, through 2008, uptil about the end of 2009. In this interview Birgitta is interviewed by a Canadian interviewer who is with every constructed sentence trying to discredit Julian Assange. Ms Jonsdottir goes along to the extent of outlining her reasons for differences with Julian, but doesn't out and out condemn and reject Mr Assange. Discrediting in our world is a prelude to punishment. In her interview she bought up the real threat, that power structures around the world are trying to criminalize whistle blowing. That is the real danger.

Julian Assange's situation is becoming like that of Pakistani news reporters; only international orgnanisations dedicated to the safety of newsreporters are the ones taking notice to the threats to their lives.

25 Commandments for Journalists - Overlaps With George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"

2011-01-20T06:11:00.005-05:00

This seemed to be going around twitter a lot. The 25 Commandments for Jouurnalists. Its constant harping on brevity reminded me of that old George Orwell essay (and here's the original link from when I read it ten years ago), so I thought I should save it. The rules in both these write-ups are useful for blogging. I've got to keep your attention too, haven't I?

Do It Uncle Sam!

2011-01-19T23:59:00.003-05:00

You breastfed Chacha Zia to cultivate this poisonous version of Islam, now you slap his verbal disciples around to give them some sense. We voters of Pakistan have tried to use logic and reason to make these bigots and suck-ups to power see sense, but they refused to use their God given brains. Do this Uncle Sam, and you`ll have kicked them where it hurts; in their creature comforts which allow them to completely ignore the painful reality within which these heartless cynics live.

Ban All Those Who Ideologically Supported the Murder of Salman Taseer From Ever Getting a US Visa.

US Mulls Visa Ban on Several Pakistanis
Source
The US government is considering a ban on issuance of visa to those people who supported the assassination of former Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer earlier this month. Sources in Washington told Daily Times that the Congress took serious view of cheering, supporting and condoning Taseer’s assassination by one of his bodyguards in Islamabad on January 4, or for publicly encouraging, directly or indirectly, the killing of “blasphemers.” They said the US government was preparing a list of Pakistani journalists, parliamentarians, lawyers and religious leaders who would not be issued visas or allowed to travel to the US for supporting the assassination of Taseer and lionising his assassin. They said journalists Meher Bokhari, Ansar Abbasi, Majeed Nizami, Irfan Siddiqui and Mir Shakilur Rehman, MNAs Shaikh Waqas Akram and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, lawyer Ashraf Gujjar, and religious leaders Sahibzada Fazal Kareem, Syed Munnawar Hassan, Asadullah Bhutto, Maulana Shah Turabul Haq Qadri, Muhammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, Syed Mazhar Saeed Kazmi, Allama Syed Riaz Hussain Shah, Allama Zamir Sajid, Haneef Tayyab, Shahid Ghauri, Farid Paracha, Mufti Naeem of Jamia Binoria, Maulana Asad Thanvi, Maulana Shabbir, Pir Khalid Sultan, Pir Ghulam Siddiq Naqshbandi, Allama Syed Khizr Hussain Shah, Alhaj Amjad Chishti, Allama Ghulam Sarwar Hazarvi, Allama Syed Shamsuddin Bokhari, Pir Syed Ashiq Ali Shah Jilani, Mufti Muhammad Iqbal Chishti, Allama Fazal Jamil Rizvi, Agha Muhammad Ibrahim Naqshbandi Mujaddidi, Maulana Muhammad Riaz Qadri, Maulana Gulzar Naeemi, Allama Syed Ghulam Yaseen Shah, Abul Khair Muhammad Zubair, and all leaders of the Tahaffuz-e-Namoos-e-Risalat Mahaz might face the proposed ban.

Obama & I Concur: Banning These Sissy Fascists Would Be AWESOME

Well wisher to Pak progressives, NFP may have helped popularise the idea:

No Visa le US for the Viva la Qadri! Good move. http://bit.ly/gvD5GT There goes your chance to convert Mickey Mouse, lads.

US Cong revoking visas of Qadri groupies. Europe should follow suit. Say bye bye to Disneyland, hate-mongers. http://tinyurl.com/48ayffb

I would encourage readers to call the US government, or forward this letter to them and have these hate mongers publicly named and shamed by the US government. These Pakistani Cold War fossils would feel the sting of that slap.

State Department; you`re move.

The Jamat-e-Islami is a Terrorist Party and Should be Banned.

2011-01-19T23:59:00.000-05:00

Keeping in mind the events of the last few weeks, months and maybe even the last thirty years, Bangladesh did the right thing.

Pakistani Intel is Still Trying to Raise Terrorist Pets - Dear Pak Mil, Please Stop This

2011-01-19T23:44:00.003-05:00

Ali K. Chishti is a good guy. A lot of us are sick of these fascists and Chishti sahab has reported deeply into how the f, the military that our tax Rupees pays for, is still trying to raise them like rabid puppies. Anyway, read how the Pak Mil is trying to combine all terrorists for export into Afghanistan under one command. Uh, dear Pakistan military, please don`t. These religious extremists are already more evolved politically than they should be, they`re dangerous, and their ideology has turned against you and wants to destroy the Pakistan military. Please don`t do this. Please.

Terror Report Card:Pakistan

Source

Investigations and background interviews with intelligence and security officers confirm that sectarian organisations have successfully linked up with the more fanatical organisations supported both by the TTP and al Qaeda. In what’s described as one of the most blunt comebacks in years, the Sipah-e-Sahaba (SSP), a banned organisation known for targeting minorities, has suddenly re-appeared. Daily Times can confirm two addresses – Sipah-e-Sahaba USA Inc Brooklyn, NY, 11230 PO Box 795 and Sipah-e-Sahaba USA Inc (Women Wing) PO Box 300310, Brooklyn, NY 11230, USA – which have been used as proxies from the US to fund various extremist organisations.

In Karachi, however, the greatest victim of the SSP is bizarrely not the Shia community, but the Barevli-led Sunni Tahreek, which confirmed the recent emergence of the SSP and a threat to its organisation. Sarwat Ejaz Qadri, the Sunni Tahreek chief, told Daily Times that more than 80 of the Sunni Tahreek’s workers had been targeted by SSP last year and “that certain old punters of the SSP that we thought were dead had recently re-emerged out of nowhere”.

While on the security side, the Pakistani intelligence agency, which has taken pains to separate the operations of the groups operating in Kashmir from the activities of those based in Afghanistan after 2003, seems to be in a limbo.

“The organisations we had worked upon and even our manufactured ones are lost. The reason is the red mosque incident, while top commanders do listen and can be controlled, but we are witnessing a loss of over 60 percent of mid and lower cadre of militant leadership. The problem is that we don’t have a clue where these 60 percent of terrorists are going,” confirmed an ex-spy master.

After the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, the new strategy of ‘reorganising’ jihadis under one command structure, a move that failed in 2002-2003, is being implemented again. The new jihadi set-up being formed now is the result of pressure from the ISI. Because of the irresponsible behaviour of some jihadi organisations, the ISI is incorporating them into the organisations operating in Indian-held Kashmir or changing the leadership of these organisations. All such decisions are being taken in Muzaffarabad and Muridke. This view was corroborated by the office of Harkatul Mujahedin, Kotli, where we learnt that Fazlr Rahman Khalil was trying for the greater clout of Harkatul Mujahedin in the new setup, which is still considered as a “strategic asset” by the security establishment.

The objectives are to unite jihadi organisations under one platform, to work out a collective military strategy, to remove mutual differences among jihadi organisations and to work out a common stand on national and international issues. While intensive investigation and background interviews with both terrorists and intelligence officials confirm that big Deoband jihadi organisations like Harkatul Jihad Islami have been advised to stay low and hibernate. While most of the terrorists obeyed, some hardcore members joined other sectarian organisations or took refuge in the tribal belt, whereas some opted to fight inside Afghanistan. Interestingly, Brigade 111, or what is now known from its Punjabi Taliban tag, based in FATA is now under the command of a former SSG commando, Ilyas Kashmiri, and has only recently merged with Jamiatul Mujahedin based in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and has widened its scope with the TTP and other groups in carrying out attacks within Punjab and other urban areas.

While there seems to a deliberate policy from the Pakistani intelligence agencies post-2004 to split various jihadi organisations within Pakistan to stop their increasing clout, Daily Times can confirm that the actual policy of the security establishment has largely backfired, where instead of splitting various jihadi organisations – fearful of their fate – they have managed to allow the merger of these organisations with various sectarian organisations, including the TTP and al Qaeda, to form what is being called a supreme jihad council, which supports using suicide attacks and issuing fatwas against the state of Pakistan.

The export of terrorists from Pakistan is continuing where ISAF sources confirm that LeT and Punjabi Taliban are hyperactive in the province of Kunar, Afghanistan, which is turning out to be another headache for both sides. A western diplomat who is closely watching this development told Daily Times, “We don’t know what to do with this… these are dangerous developments, but rest assured we will be exerting our pressure to sort such things.”

In Memoriam of Salman Taseer

2011-01-18T22:01:00.004-05:00

Salman Taseer died because he stood up and spoke against the environment of abuse and intolerance that permeates Pakistan. What more can be said? People have abused religion in Pakistan for power since before this country was created. For pointing to this atmosphere of murderous bigotry Salman Taseer paid the ultimate price. His own party told him to drop the matter; but I guess some sense of outrage must have kept that recklessly brave man going. And so a tall grass was culled by the disgusting security apparatus sprouted from colonial Punjab, the pro-segregationist Dixie of South Asia.

Initially a shocked silence overcame people, compounded by the sprouting of obscene Facebook groups celebrating the murderer Qadri. The shocked silence gave way to mental screams of horror from the blogosphere over the disgust at the celebration of murder. It has been the bloggers from Lahore who have done the loudest protesting against this despicable murder and the disgusting environment of hate that spawned this act, celebrated it and defended it.

Karachi Khatmal, Sana Saleem, Nadeem Paracha and a few others, outside Punjab are resonating against this act and the aura of intolerance. I do not blame bloggers from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan for not following up much on this beyond righteously angry obituaries. They have a lot on their plate to deal with and they have suffered the consequences of Establishment sponsored hatred too long, and know too well its effects. It is now those at the outer edges of the establishment, like in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad who are feeling its effect and have to consistently speak out. A lot of people have stood by whilst the fanatics slowly gained strength, and fostered an atmosphere of sectarianism and intolerance. One aided and abetted by the establishment. Maybe now people will realise that they must counter the Establishmentarian tactic of fostering divisions between people.

But back to Salman Taseer. It used to be a pleasure watching a politician interact, or at least obliquely answer questions raised by everyday internet users. I am a blogger; and Mr Salman Taseer was a micro-blogger through twitter. His twitter account has been left as a tiny cyber memorial for him. If people ask what is the point of this, then we might as well ask them back, “What is the point of an idea?”.

There is also no doubt in my mind that it is the murder of a 21^st century man who used technology as prolifically as I do that has sent me and many others into shock. Maybe this was a reminder of our mortalities. People’s use of technology, and their attempts to put down their thoughts and feelings are not just an attempt to get ideas across, but also a way to scramble for immortality. People want to be remembered beyond their years. Salmaan Taseer, by having died speaking up for those dispossessed of their rights in Pakistani society, has ensured his memory will live on. Just as those who spoke or acted for civil rights for all Americans in the United States, and died in the process are remembered, so shall Mr Salman Taseer.

R.I.P. Lion of Punjab

Salmaan Taseer (31 May 1944 - 04 Jan 2011)

Innalillahe wa inna ilaihi rajiun

On Missing Persons

2011-01-18T21:18:00.005-05:00

So it turns out that the judge who declared 2011, the year for recovering missing persons, and then found his parents dead, may have simply been a victim of a family dispute. We shall see if this was just a symptom of a really convuloted ISI plot, or his family is actually that stupid, and Justice Javed Iqbal made this statement to redeem himself and the legal fraternity of Pakistan after the fiasco of lawyers pelting Salman Taseer's killer with roses. Considering some other statements have been made by the court about the agencies being "held accountable" (yeah right) we shall have to see how this plays out since there are a heck of a lot of "disappeared" people from Balochistan. I doubt the court could get at all of those disappeared in Balochistan. And if it pushed too hard, maybe the court might be harmed itself. And it is questionable how people would respond to another attack on the court. We shall see. Anyway, here's what the Daily Times had to say about the whole thing:

A Daunting Challenge

The courage with which the Supreme Court (SC) is questioning the culture of impunity surrounding the intelligence agencies is commendable. In the latest hearing of the missing persons’ case, the SC upheld the rights of the citizens enshrined in the constitution: “No functionary or authority is competent to detain, arrest or pick up any citizen unless there is sufficient material or circumstantial evidence against that person. This court shall take due notice of it.” Justice Javed Iqbal, who heads the three-member bench hearing this case, had said in the last hearing that 2011 would be the year of recovery of missing persons. Also, last week the judicial commission on missing persons submitted its report before the court, whose contents have not yet been made public. At the same time, in expressing dissatisfaction with the attorney general’s report, the court directed him to meet top officials of the ISI and convey the court’s reservations to them, which, in the court’s opinion, would resolve 50 percent cases. With due respect, the ground realities may not so easily lend themselves to the kind of solution the court desires. If that had been the case, this particular issue that has been before the SC since 2007 would by now have yielded a far greater number than the 174 recovered out of the officially acknowledged 235 missing persons.

Human rights activists put the figure of missing persons at about 7,000 in Balochistan alone. Some quarters in the government dispute this claim, calling it an exaggeration. If a citizen, a set of citizens or a family or community claims that their loved one has disappeared and is able to provide some evidence for that disappearance, how can the government refute that claim out of hand? Instead, it must act responsibly by investigating any such claim to determine whether it is correct or not.

Asma Jahangir submitted before the court that four more persons had disappeared on December 4, 2010, three from Balochistan and one from Sindh. On Monday, three more bullet-riddled bodies of missing persons have been discovered in Balochistan, bringing the number of such bodies to 85 in the past two and a half months. Is the response of the intelligence agencies to the pressure that they are being subjected to by the SC to produce tortured and bullet-riddled bodies of the missing persons? The court must take serious notice of this.

The missing persons case is symptomatic of the dilemma of Pakistan, which inherited a weak political and civil society and an overdeveloped state structure from the British at the time of independence. Over the years, the military asserted itself in national decision-making and the scope and role of intelligence agencies widened, especially after the first Afghan war. This ‘deep state’ is neither transparent nor answerable to anyone. Is it not time to reverse this trend, whose ill effects on society can be seen in this case? Although the SC has expressed its determination to continue hearings till the last person is recovered, the SC’s hearings may not be enough to reverse this trend. The SC’s remark that it is a case of public interest and parliament should take it up makes eminent sense. It is the job of the political forces and parliament to control the deep state. The judiciary, political society and civil society will have to come together to reverse this malign phenomenon.

The Jamat-e-Islami Punjab University Terror Model - As Applied to All of Pakistan

2011-01-18T21:07:00.005-05:00

Basically, the Jamat-e-Islami, and the "Islamisation" it started in the early '70's can be seen as a model for later terror groups, especially all the various "banned" groups that operate across Pakistan and Afghanistan. These include overt and covert groups like the Taliban, the JUI and the various Lashkars operating across Pakistan. Here is Dr Manzur Ejaz talking about these murderous ideologues. If the US had any sense, it would advocate for the JI or JUI to be designated material supporters of terrorism. Everybody even remotely involved with Pakistan knows that the Jamat-e-Islami likes to portray itself as a "vanguard" revolutionary Islamist party. The United States is currently fighting against another such "vanguard" revolutionary Islamist party. It's called Al Qaeda.

In terms of an organic political resistance to rising Islamism in Pakistan, all one can hope is that the ethnic separatists gain strength, and in Punjab, some sort of left returns (Ha!)? Anywhere, here is Dr Manzur Ejaz on how the Jamat-e-Islami Turns "Villains Into Heroes":

Turning Villains Into Heroes

Link

When killer Mumtaz Malik Qadri was shooting at Governor Salmaan Taseer (shaheed) his security colleagues remained mere spectators. After committing this act he was safely handed over to the police. After a few minutes, his confession statement was leaked to the media. Up until then the media was using the word “martyred” for Governor Taseer but after his confession statement was whipped up by everyone, suddenly the words “assassinated” and “killed” replaced martyred, and the killer was declared a “ghazi”. In no time the killer was being compared with Ilm Din who had been praised by Allama Mohammad Iqbal and defended by Mohammad Ali Jinnah in court. In short, the martyred was turned into a villain, and a killer into a ghazi.

You must be thinking how all this happened so quickly, as if the angels themselves were directing the TV channels. Divine inspiration cannot explain the turn of the media. However, this rhetoric can be attributed to organised groups — agencies or operators of political parties and terrorist groups — deputed to take care of the media. Such elements use all kinds of methods like threats and enticements to force the media to use their language. The Salmaan Taseer case shows very well how the planners quickly got hold of Qadri’s confession and put it all over the media.

Salmaan Taseer’s martyrdom reminds me of the early 1970 period of Punjab University (PU). Then the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT) was testing its initial model of Islamisation in PU, which was later implemented in the rest of the country by various religious and political parties. Incidentally, members of the IJT have penetrated many political parties, particularly the PML-N, MQM and some others. The etymology of religious terrorism is very different in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from Punjab where the IJT’s PU model is self-evident. This is one of the reasons why 90 percent of blasphemy cases have been registered in Punjab where the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and IJT are most powerful.

I vividly remember how the IJT used to plan before terrorising a student or a teacher. For example, a night before action they would prepare posters condemning the ‘surkha ghunda gardi’ (terrorism of the Left). They would then assign people to go to the police station to file a report against the Left. It was rumoured in those days that the JI managed to have their chosen police officers employed in the Wahdat Colony police station, which covered the university’s jurisdiction. The next day, within minutes, after breaking the bones of some of its opposing students or insulting a teacher, they would put up these posters on every wall of the university. In no time, a police report would be filed and the police would be moved to arrest the victims. Sometimes press statements about the incidents were sent to the media even before the action. This is how methodically the JI, through the IJT, terrorised the left-liberal students and teachers.

Now review the chronology of events on the day Salmaan Taseer was martyred in this backdrop. You will see that it was all pre-planned. The planners knew how the governor was going to be gunned down, how the killer would be handed over to the police and how his confession statement was to reach the media. It seems that the planners had prepared teams to manipulate the media through threats or enticement. Without planning, media portrayal does not get reversed so quickly.

The JI is the mother of religious terrorism in Pakistan. It is the only party that has ideologues, strategists and operators. The JI knows how to, directly or indirectly, use the religious parties to its advantage. The JI has done most of its experimentation in PU and other educational institutions.

When the JI was convinced that the agenda of Islamisation was getting weaker because of Taliban suicide bombings killing thousands of innocent people, it started the campaign against drone attacks and in favour of Aafia Siddiqui. Aafia was chosen because she was a soft image — a mother of little children who had been maliciously kidnapped. The JI did not undertake a similar campaign for Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad because he would not have been a proper image to provoke Pakistanis. He was a healthy young male for whom winning mass sympathies was not easy.

Now look at the cases of Aafia Siddiqui and Faisal Shahzad. Both were American citizens and prosecuted in the US like all other citizens who commit crimes. Aafia Siddiqui damaged her case through her statements in court, showing that she was a member of al Qaeda. However, her case was presented in Pakistan as if she was a Pakistani citizen who had been kidnapped and brought to the US for prosecution. The people running the ‘Free Aafia Campaign’ were shrewd and knew that there was no way that the US government could pressurise the judiciary to get her out. Only President Obama could have pardoned her but that would have been political suicide for the Democrats.

Our prime minister did not prove to be very sharp-witted when he appealed to the US to free Aafia Siddiqui. He did not know that, by appealing for Ms Siddiqui, he was justifying a future Aafia named Mumtaz Malik Qadri. If Aafia Siddiqui was turned into a heroine, then Qadri could have wished to become a ghazi without much trouble.

The ‘Free Aafia Siddiqui Campaign’ was meant to provide political cover for the Taliban and create an atmosphere in which crimes can be committed in the name of religion without any repercussions. For Mumtaz Malik Qadri, breaking the law was not a serious matter in such an atmosphere.

I Must Admit

2011-01-18T04:56:00.005-05:00

That the murder of Salman Taseer has made me more thoughtful. The gleeful reactions of Pakistan's freckled faced fascists on Facebook, with their eulogisation of a murderer, seared my mind. On that Fascist path, lies the mental road to self destruction. That much is burned in my mind.

I've been doing a lot of quiet thinking since then. And no it hasn't been of the "leaving Pakistan" kind. It's been of the Sun Tzu kind.

In the meantime, its glad to see that the various Roshan Khyal Pakistanis of the internet are coming to grips with the fact that they live in a bigotted and prejudiced society. And it's just the "educated" middle class that can display this bigotry on the internet. What goes through the minds of everyone in the lower classes? How will they raise themselves up without falling into the same traps of bigotry that our middle class is in? These are questions that need to be thought of. And like I said in my piece on a long term Peace Plan for Afghanistan; I concur with Ambassador Maliha Lodhi that a long term plan is needed, and I believe that the blogosphere is coming to grips with this concept.

Political Assessments on the Murder of Salman Taseer

2011-01-18T04:17:00.006-05:00

That Pakistan needs a psychologist and a good few therapy sessions (or at least its Middle Class does) whilst learning to breath:

Dead in My Tracks

The blogger Philistine asks about the reserve army of fanatics that religious extremists have in Pakistan, and how the fact has to be dealt with that these are members of Pakistan's electorate/society:

Who Are We Fighting

The title says it all:

Unlearning Hate

Referencing the Registan blog for the first time; a discussion on the Blasphemy Law:

Blasphemy Law Takes Centre Stage

Cyril Almeida discusses whether the PPP's behaviour during the lead up to the murder and after it is a tactical retreat or a defeat:

Tactical Retreat or Total Defeat?

My take on Cyril's thesis is that the murder of Salman Taseer is so huge, that the blasphemy law will continue to stink up the sirways, and action will be demanded on it, in one way or another because this scandalous tragedy is just so out there.

Finally Ayaz Amir gives the hardest political analysis of the entire imbroglio, whilst singling out the Jamat-e-Islami and Jamiat-e-Ulema-Islam for near terrorist levels of complicity in the murder; and pointing to the the delusional general and the incompetent politician, and their existence and power as the real reason Pakistan's fanatics constantly seem to be able to push their agenda:

Clerics on the March

I Built My House on the Edge of Chaos

2011-01-16T20:23:00.007-05:00

I really like Sami Shah as a comedian. Here he is writing about the Sisyphean nature of existence in Pakistan. I loved the lines, "Wake Up, Battle the Forces of Chaos".

From Sami's twitter feed, here is somebody who reconfirmed my opinion (at times) for Pakistani democracy, as a sort of Weimar-ish experiment. I've had this feeling, long before, of Pakistan's democracy being Weimar democracy, but people have to go on fighting and not succumb to the darkness.

In many ways this matches Nadeem Farooq Paracha`s "Paradox Republic", an essay where he says that a balance between those forces that can destroy Pakistan (ethnic fracture), are simultaneously the ones keeping it from going over the brink.

And speaking of all these residents of Karachi, the news that within 24 hours of a curfew plan being announced by the democratic government, a curfew was put down in Karachi, and then they will follow through with a search for the killers. This is the strength of having a democratic government.

If anybody complains that I'm going on about democracy a little too much, please consider the amount of violence I have seen in Karachi since the post-Zia era began. In 1988, the city (and country) had just come out of an 11 year long dictatorship, when even the idea of democracy was banned. When the post-Zia era began entire Muhajir neighborhoods hated entire Sindhi neighborhoods, and when ethnic violence flared up, ENTIRE neighborhoods went to WAR with each other. Now fast forward through 22 years, nineteen of which (1999-2002 being the exception) were filled by governments that had to either go through the pretense of democracy (2002-2008), or actually were democracies (1988-1999, 2008-now) and you will not find anybody who is willing to openly fan ethnic hatreds in Karachi neighborhoods, but you will find condemnation for the militancy, especially now that it is nearly indistinguishable from criminality. This time, its not neighborhoods going to war, its just a handful of militants from each neighborhood. That's an improvement from having entire Mohalla's (neighborhoods) hunting each other. A handful of militants hunting each other is a dilution of hatred. It is the effect of nineteen years of voting wearing down old hatreds, until only the bare bones of greed (now manifested as criminality) and hatred (now manifested as target killings by only a few men on bikes) is what we are left with. This is the nature of our long wars.

Ciao.

The Best Articles on Karachi's Violence

2011-01-13T21:37:00.007-05:00

Urooj Zia, now at the Pakistan Times, has written probably the best available article on the inner mechanics of the violence that has presided over Karachi for the last two years since the post-Musharraf coalition took power. One feels for the PPP, having to keep a fractious coalition together, whilst having a stolid and ominously silent military establishment in the background. The MQM has been extravagantly mercurial, and the recent leaving the coalition, before Salman Taseer`s death, and then spontaneously returning is a tragedy framed by farce.

I had heard the land dealing aspect of the ANP/MQM fight, but Urooj's highlighting of Shahi Syed's former role as a real estate agent truly illuminated the opportunities, connections and conflicts of interest bought to bear on Karachi's deeply abused social fabric.

The second article that needs to be read is Timur Khan's Letter From Karachi, where he frames Karachi's violence within the larger context of constant rural-to-urban migration; a global phenomenon. He starts from close to my old house, a few areas away from the Korangi industrial estate, and the expanding slums beyond. Timur tries to place the assassination of Salman Taseer within the Karachi heavily educated, yet lower middle class frame where people were relatively muted about the assassination of Salman Taseer. He doesn`t come out and say that anyone from Karachi celebrated, but the condemnation was at the level of a murmur in Karachi. Taimur does not mention this, but my assessment could be that Karachi residents are sadly all too familiar with violence. The most significant part of the article is at the end; where Taimur Khan is with a group of young men and women in Orangi. He describes them thus "Each had completed high school; some were pursuing college degrees, and all had put themselves through private English-language courses. Their parents had migrated to Karachi in the 1970s and '80s and had spent their lives working as laborers in the city's nearby factories."

They were frustrated with "the 'unfair game' of lower-middle-class life in Karachi, where only those with political connections are able to work their way to prosperity". Please observe that this cohort is ready to work their way to prosperity. We already know that, but for those who run Karachi, this theme must be emphasized. Here is the sentence at the end of the essay that sums up every Karachi residents life, "They are only interested in social mobility, and they'll support any party that can help". Is the world beyond Orangi listening?

The Costs of Living in Large Democracies

2011-01-11T14:53:00.005-05:00

If you can call Pakistan a democracy (barely), then what happened with Salman Taseer and the disgusting reaction of celebration across an influential section of Pakistani society, is one that we have to deal with. I guess this is also the cost of Cold War ideological training. The territory currently known as Pakistan doesn`t have the capital to create original ideas, it can just (barely) absorb them.

I will eventually get to this, but here is Mr Mosharraf Zaidi, trying to reach a middle ground, on the differing reactions to the Taseer assassination. And here is Mr Matt Taibbi, for his American readers, reacting to the near murder, (and surrounding massacre) of one of his country`s regional politicians. The cost of raising young mad, men and their ill formed brains whilst societally letting them have access to firearms. Sigh.

One hopes that the ever large Pakistani right wing, consisting in parliament of the MQM, PML-N, PML-Q, and further right (and outside Parliament) of the Pakistan Army, and points rightwards, can stop trying to pull down an electorally elected government before its mandated time. The path to salvation lies through letting democracy run its course, and letting elections cycle out old ugly faces for new ones. I must remind our readers, that the Westminster System, our country has currently adopted (and our military overlords, for their own survival must accept for now) showed it nearly difficult for any third party in the UK to make a real difference for periods of thirty years or so. I am surprised people don`t mention this, but until this year, the last time the Westminster system saw real coalition governments was in between World War I and World War II. It`s taken sixty plus years for the duopoly of the Labour and Conservative governments to be broken. And even then this parliament could break, just like ours nearly did. At this point it must be stressed that the Pakistani political system is the saner and better alternative than the GHQ political system, the Jamat political system, the JUI political system, or the Taliban or Al Qaeda political system. Providing mainstream oxygen for Islamo-Anarchism will kill those who do so. Whether they are in GHQ, Aabpara (ISI Headquarters) or a television studio.

Sherry Rehman Threatened

2011-01-08T21:14:00.003-05:00

Now they're threatening Sherry Rehman from a mosque on Khyaban-e-Hafiz, like five minutes walk from a clinic I went to. Pakistan WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?

Oh yeah, I know the answer; it's fucking Defence. My fellow Pakistanis here's your frikkin political isolation; thrown back at your faces.

Repeal the Goddamn blasphemy laws.

So this is how we go out; not with a whimper; but a Facebook status update.

Ahmed Rashid Tries to Redeem Himself With a Peace Plan on Afghanistan

2011-01-05T07:07:00.008-05:00

So. A Pakistani who was known for calling for more war and bloodshed, now calls for peace. Here is Ahmed Rashid trying to come up with an Afghan Peace Plan for everything that's transpiring in and around the Durand Line.

Let's see if someone pays attention and makes it work.

The Way Out of Afghanistan by Ahmed Rashid.

I`m glad he`s thinking of ending this whole imbroglio. Shows he can be a human being. In these sad times, I`m glad to know that people more informed than me are also thinking about bringing peace to Afghanistan, and diffusing the fight on Pakistan`s border regions.

Ref.

Afghan Peace, Attacks During Ashura and Wikileaks

A Post On How To Bring To End The Conflict In Afghanistan

Two Pieces on Violence in Pakistan

2011-01-03T05:06:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year. I'll talk about the obvious MQM defection later.

But for your reading pleasure I have two pieces that acknowledge the long-war-ish nature of violence in Pakistan. First is this blog entry on the 1400 deaths in Karachi over 2010. Apparently more people died in Karachi than from terrorism in all of 2010. Being a Karachi-ite, this should explain why I'm less scared of Islamist terrorists than ethnic ones. I'm a veteran. LOL. Anyway; here's the comment I left in very bad English:

Yeah, Sabeen, you made a point that is always at the back of my mind, which I also sometimes make to people, when discussing militancy; namely how can the government claim to “defeat” the militants in the north, if it can’t control Karachi? Karachi, Balochistan and FATA are a ring of insecurity and low level chaos all around the Indus farming plain. What do you do with a situation like this? Will the government accept that this is close to the nature of the problem of security in Pakistan itself, and then implement a democratic plan to deal with this issue?

OK; yeah, sanctimoniousness (and Dawn's questionable editing policies, where they randomly delete my comments) aside I think this point is valid. Nice of him (her?) calling Karachi an "Unconventional War Zone". At least we're seeing an acknowledgement of the problems of our city.

The second piece is from NFP, where he does his usual spiel, but adding to that, for the first time I have ever read him, he makes a direct acknowledgement of a tactical event on a battle field in North Pakistan! By a Pakistani soldier! He's no fan of the Pakistan military and is careful not to give an inch to any military propaganda, but for once, NFP gave space to a few words from a Pakistani soldier. Albeit it was about a conversation on a battlefield, but still wow! It's a nice piece, acknowledging how the Pakistan military should give space to voice the realities of the current conflict and not try to paper over the truth with propaganda. This is a fine sentiment that tries to work with outing the truth and should be encouraged.

Is the US about to Partition the Internet for It's Own People?

2010-12-31T05:23:00.000-05:00

In the meantime, the United States is bifurcating, at least, it`s own internet, and we will have to wait and see if these sort of Soviet American tactics are spread to the rest of the world. Here is Fatima Bhutto`s epaper on the topic of the Federal Communications Commission`s decision to allow different speeds for different users. The new "cheaper", pay-per-page web experience with extra charges for Facebook, Skype, etc. In response to this corporate/government assault on people's information will people form and join Pirate Parties? Or will cheap people (A-sometimes-KA Desi's) be forced to hobble together our own decentralized "mesh network" ISPs out of living room routers and roof-mounted antennas?
It could be possible. I've already seen this done before in university campuses with a famous system called DC++.It allowed people to download insane quantities (like a few gig's worth) of songs and movies, leaving the regular university internet system, untouched from massive file downloading. But make no mistake about it, ISP's and media companies are willing to fight and kill to keep their monopolies going by cutting the internet as it currently exists. As capitalism and greed destroyed the real estate market, now the Machine that feeds on profiting from gigantic greed will turn to cutting up the remaining resource pool available. The free internet is part of it.

The big question will be, what difference will it make to the internet outside the US if the US partitions speeds? Will other country's internet's go down the same route? Or will those countries that enshrine net neutrality continue to allow their citizens to access an open and neutral internet. We shall see.

The Internet Waged War on Power Itself - Stephane Peray on Wikileaks

2010-12-28T03:25:00.007-05:00

The US`s response to Wikileaks (informing it`s own employees that they couldn`t access the website) meant that US information policy had dropped to the level of China. The impression was created that the US cared more for power than for truth. It will take many years for that impression to be forgotten. For now we have Stephane Peray's interpretation of Wikileaks. Stephane Peray's cartoons were something I used to enjoy when they appeared in the international pages of Dawn. From 2002, till somewhere around 2005, this Western cartoonist based in Thailand would make you laugh at the absurdities of the news. Most of these Wikileaks cartoons date to the time of the Afghan War Log leaks, but they still seem appropriate.

Julian Assange should be grateful that he isn't in the hands of Pakistani intelligence. This XKCD cartoon is what is running through Pakistani government officials' minds when they think of domestic versions of Wikileakers.

Gillani, F.O Parrot GHQ Line on North Waziristan, Whilst Mohmandi's go Faux Mao on FC Posts

2010-12-24T19:48:00.008-05:00

I use the Dawn ePaper's headlines as a sign of what to check out for. As scary as headlines may look to some people when they read them in Google News bites, if you read all the planet changing headlines all at once on the frontpage, you are forced into grabbing the overall theme.

And the thing I saw were that PM Gillani and the foreign office both re-affirmed their reputations as adjuncts of Army Headquarters, by parroting Kayani's position on not attacking North Waziristan. No surprise about Gillani to us. What I am interested in is what President Zardari is doing in Turkey. Maybe he has a plan to make some sort of US Puppet's independent, secular survival deal? Possibly using Turkey's influence and reputation as a bulwark against political attacks? Or maybe the Turks are slowly unveiling an action plan to take over leadership of the Muslim world. I for one, would welcome our new Turkish overlords; the faster Saudi Arabia and Iran lose their pretensions to leading the Muslim world, the better. If it's Ankara pulling Zardari's strings, rather than Aabpara or GHQ, that would make me feel better. I am sure the military is also sending Zardari out there, but as long as there is any halfway decent power centre (even President Zardari's own initiative, money driven as it may be) besides GHQ involved, all is good with the Zardari plan.

The more serious news is of course the attack on the Mohmand FC posts. This is a Maoist tactic that the Taliban used, to suddenly amass a great number of people in one area and then attack an outpost of the govenment. The Talibs are disputing the number of their own dead. They said it`s something around 2. More serious is that they`ve carried away 2 Frontier Corps members, and there isn`t any comment by the government on those Talibs who attacked. One important fact is that Mohmand is on the border with Afghanistan so it may be easier for the Talibs to slip back and forth across the border. It may be likely that the Talibs who attacked are from the Mohmand Agency, but I would find that a little questionable. If the FC and army are operating there, it would be a tactical and operational theatre to have not established contacts with local Mohmandi`s. If they haven`t already (I doubt it), then they should. Strengthening intelligence is what is required, and I am not talking about grabbing a bunch of people and then torturing/disappearing them. This is also a failure in terms of the fact that the FC had to call in Helicopter Air Support, like the US forces in Afghanistan. Good to see, at least there is that much co-ordination between the FC and Army Air Aviation. I remember when Sararogha was taken by the Taliban from the FC, they called in air support and it never came.

And I don`t want to come of all like a xenophobe or something, but I think this may have been an attack from Afghanistan. It would be easier to call in hardened fighters from Kunar, Paktia or Nangarhar. Anyway, I found this Dunya TV clip on the attack.

In this clip, the political agent named the locations where 7, 4 and 3 corpses of the attackers are located. The obvious question is where are the bodies of the other 10 dead when the political agent says that 24 are dead? Did the Taliban carry them away? And what about Taliban claims of capturing a few FC men? Ah well. Improve intelligence in Mohmand and the neighbouring Afghan territories.

As for the retired Brigadier who begins speaking after 3:00, he directly goes to blaming the lack of NATO troops in Kunar and Paktia. He also blames Omar Khalid, but says that he's in Afghanistan. However I feel he ended up blaming Afghan Intelligence the way India blames Pakistani intelligence. What about local factors in the tribal agency itself? At this point, I would like to remind anybody who's still reading this that you have to keep the wider Order of Battle of Jihadi Islam in mind, and the Lashkar-e-Islam/Ansar-e-Islam/Criminal/TNSM/Bajaur/Mohmand killer groups in particular in mind. In particular the Omar Khalid group. Now the retired Brigadier Shah claims that Omar Khalid is in Afghanistan, but the Americans are unable to find or kill him? Very strange.

The Rachel Maddow Show Mentions Pakistan And It's Not Good

2010-12-18T13:07:00.015-05:00

So, there is this whole CIA official being outed in Pakistan thing. People say it's the ISI, but I'm not too sure. It could be disgruntled journalists. ISI pulls these pranks a little too often, and you need to keep your nerves around these people. Anyway, the Rachel Maddow Show, ran that story and on some USS Cole bombing suspect who escaped a drone bombing in North Waziristan and surfaced in Yemen. Anyway, sometimes her show runs Chris Hayes as a substitute host, a man who is the contributing editor in Washington DC for the progressive journal known as "The Nation". Imagine my shock when I saw this version of "The Nation" flash on my screen:

The Nation!?!?! Our "Nation"? The weird agency mouthpiece newspaper run by one of the squabbling Nizamis? It's like the intersection of the Rachel Maddow Show and Cafe Pyala! Wow! Every year there's some strange Pakistan related fear inducing news, all along the "As Usual Pakistan About to Explode" vein, but what the hell! This is when we get coverage!?!? I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I really like the Rachel Maddow Show, and it's like having your own country suddenly cast as the villain on your favourite show. I already know how stuff is Rachel, you don't have to add fear and stir. Meh. Oh, and last year, during the Scahill Blackwater-really-in-Pakistan expose, it was this:

Yeah. I could complain about Rachel Maddow saying that Pakistan is a scary, scary place, with nukes (her words, not mine), but I just stopped caring right there. My best estimate on the CIA chief thing, matches Professor Juan Cole's personal view as elaborated in this blogpost over the whole fiasco:

The Guardian reports that a lawsuit brought by a Pakistani journalist over wrongful deaths in drone strikes has forced the CIA station chief in Islamabad to flee the country. The official’s identity was discovered by the journalist, Karim Khan of North Waziristan from other journalists or possibly from disgruntled elements in the Pakistani military. It was alleged that the station chief had entered the country on a tourist visa and so had no diplomatic immunity.

The episode demonstrates the miseries of postmodern warfare, wherein President Obama is treating Pakistan the way Henry Kissinger treated Cambodia. If the US is going to conduct military operations in a country, it should be in the terms of a Status of Forces Agreement, and should be carried out by the Department of Defense. To have the CIA just lob missiles onto civilian villages in another country is wrong for all kinds of reasons. CIA operations are covert and US officials cannot even talk about them in public. There therefore can be no public debate or scrutiny of the policy. And, the whole operation breaks US law, since it is essentially a mass assassination campaign, not a war.

While the Pakistani courts might have been reluctant to pursue the case, public anger in Pakistan over the drone strikes runs high and Khan might have landed an activist judge. Activist judges, after all, played a major role both in overthrowing the US-backed military dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and in curbing the powers that the executive had arrogated to itself. Could the US drone program be next in its sights?

More serious, and where I would more likely scream ISI tip-off, is apparently the fact that Fahd Mohammad Al-Quoso is still alive and escaped a drone strike that killed lots of people. I'm saying "people" because Mr Mosharraf Zaidi doesn't like it when you straight up say militants. Okay.

Anyway you want a nice conspiracy theory to go with it? September was when there was like a drone every day, and that was likely because maybe the US intel net inside Waziristan had caught news that militants were moving out. Now militants were moving out because, well Pakistan would really like them to leave, what with propaganda that has appeared in the Pakistani press that militants are shifting to Somalia and they should. Here's your conspiracy theory; the ISI was shifting Al Qaeda people out so it gave away the co-ordinates of innocent people to the Americans to kill. They told the Americans that they had actually managed to hit targets they were looking for, but they lied. Then when all these militant Islamists were moved out of the country, the ISI started encouraging stories to be written on how the militants were sneaking out of the country, whilst one of the militants actually showed his face in Yemen. Now Pakistan has egg on its face, the US is embarrassed(ish) that it hit the wrong people, and a load of poor Waziri's are dead. /End Conspiracy Theory

Now go get scared. Boo.

Afghan Peace, Attacks During Ashura and the Fake Wikileaks

2010-12-18T10:43:00.001-05:00

If there is one thing that has "obsessed" me over the last few days of being too farigh over the internet, it's Afghan peace. Specifically, what-the-eff's going to happen when the Americans leave, how the Americans will leave, and whom will they empower when they leave. It's a depressing topic to broach. The actors who can screw it all up are well outlined in my Order of Battle for Jihadi Islam across Pakistan and Afghanistan, and our old familiar friends in the Pakistan military establishment and their intelligence hands. Sigh. Anyway, I made the google rounds to see what we can come up with and the google God was not favourable.

God was also not favourable during Ashura, with some random jerkoff throwing a grenade in Peshawar at a procession, and now we have a mortar attack in Hangu. Not unrelated is the atmosphere of intolerance peddled by our religious extremists, and the toleration and manipulation of these intolerants by our establishment.

I cam up with articles related to old peace talks with narco-terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar dating from June-July, the text's of a "possible" peace deal, articles about talks about talks from October-November (which we know is related to the ultra-fake Mullah Mansoor) and something by Arnaud de Bochgrave that had promise, but died half way through. And speaking of died halfway through (keeping his role in bombing Serbia in the late-nineties in mind) R.I.P Richard Holbrooke.

Rest In Peace Richard Holbrooke

1941-2010

You know, I have a theory. That anybody who works, mind, body and soul to actually change Pakistan can actually die from over-exertion. My exhibit A for that was Mohammad Ali Jinnah, now exhibit B just might be Richard Holbrooke. And sometimes the sincerity of that effort gets people killed. Exhibit A, B, C and D are of course, Liaquat Ali Khan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto. They were killed by enemies of the reform they promised. Except maybe Zia, who was killed possibly by people inside the army sick of him and his clique tying up promotions. But I digress. RIP Mr Holbrooke, nice to hear you were talking about Af-Pak peace right uptil the last minute. Even if it may have been jokes, peace is what we need to get to.

Anyway, coming back to the Fakileaks, which I`m sure drew you into this whole blog piece, my point is that any weird behaviour by our military establishment has to be looked at in the context of the eventual withdrawal of US forces and what they might leave behind in Afghanistan, the response of the psychopaths who have taken control in FATA, and the potential for greater chaos in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Althought let`s see how Ashura day`s toll of attacks turns out, it could be a bellweather for how raring the fanatics are to have a go inside Pakistan. Reports out of Karachi indicated a police administration in hyper-drive to try and control as many fanatics as possible. By the end of the day we will know if they succeeded. And beyond that, a question has to be asked of whether the militants themselves have been intimidated into pulling a strategic retreat to avoid ruining their oh-so-Stirling reputations. The militants by my account may not want to call "too" much attention to themselves. But of course there are random hotheads like the jerk who threw the grenade, and the one who lobbed the mortar.

Anyway, returning *again* to Fakileaks (sigh) there was Cyril Almeida's article which I went to first thing on Dawn, and lo and behold my surprise when I saw it repeated on Five Rupees by Ahsan. Cyril Almeida's piece nicely referenced YRG's smalltimey-ness in the PM Gillani Vs PM Fahim debate. The second article Ahsan referenced was a piece by Azhar Abbas (the one who works for Geo, and his brother is *the* military spokesman of the ISPR). I had skimmed the article as it had been linked to in the twitterverse, and the tweeple tweeting it used it as an explanation for why Zaid Hamid was suddenly back on the scene. In that article though, there were a few responses that stuck out at me:

"Maliha Lodhi, Pakistan's former ambassador to the UK and US saying that “There is acknowledgement in private about mistakes made in the past. But it is not translating into a long term strategic plan”."

To this I say "Of Course!" Pakistan needs a long term strategic indigenous plan, because dammit, its not like that the religiously fanatic folk aren't thinking long term.

Returning back to what Azhar Abbas said:

“Our policy on the drone attacks is very clear and I don’t think there is any change in the policy, though for public consumption the government and the establishment will continue to oppose the attacks in the media,” said Mushahid Hussain.

Lodhi is even more critical of this style of policy. “No government can afford to have a covert policy of cooperation and overt position with the public, which is at odds with that policy,” she said.

This cognitive dissonance within the government's own body is what creates the atmosphere for things like the Fakileaks scandal to be concocted.

But the big question is: Is it really a tactical move? Or is this the main strategy and the fight against extremism merely a tactical diversion?

This I'll come back to later. Continuing:

Although, the intelligentsia, including media persons in Pakistan, are quite divided along ideological lines, WikiLeaks’ exposes are further crystallising this tendency. But the most disturbing aspect is the way Pakistani power brokers are trying to promote a particular mindset.

First off, the phrase intelligentsia is a little bit too high brow for Pakistan. It's more like, "What's been left", after years of Ziaism, societally enforced lip service to Islam, 3 and a half decades of overt military rule, and a constant state of low intensity violence. But my bitterness digresses. In this little media/coffee klatch bubble of dueling electrons, dependent on black/grey fortunes or corporate/state enterprise jobs, yes, there has been a clear cleavage down the middle between those who want to live in a normal country and those who are materially satisfied but religiously conflicted with the current situation.

Many observers believe that in the days to come, one should again expect a rise in the extremist mindset.

Somebody said that would explain Zaid Hamid's re-invigorated presence online and on television.

This will not just be restricted to the print media or TV screens, but will be visible on the streets of Pakistan as well.

Hello JI rallies on blasphemy.

It may be a welcome sign for those who wanted it as a tactical move.

Indeed

But the coming months and years will tell us how flawed a move it is. General Zia is not here to see the monster he had created that had devoured hundreds of innocent lives.

We know.

His policy has divided and damaged our society almost beyond repair.

Tell us more.

The current policies will only make the situation worse for Pakistan.

Well then we need to stop fighting over faking cable and get to work on some sort of Afghan peace plan. There are Arab strategists thinking ten, twenty years down the road on how to build a khilafat in Pakistan. The more serious quote is this:

"Or is...the fight against extremism merely a tactical diversion"

This is the part that disgusted, and partially scared me. Is the fight against extremism a diversion just so that the military can shelter Mullah Umar, possibly Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Ladin? If a hemped up Californian Christian hippie can feel he's getting close enough to be a few valleys in Chitral away from OBL, this tells you FUCK loads about what the hell our Military Establishment may be hiding or purely ignoring. Considering that Mullah Umar may have direct support from some of the JUI-F types, but Osama Bin Ladin and Ayman Al Zawahiri are providing direct inspiration for the sectarian terrorism in Pakistan. Is the Pakistan military establishment receiving money from the Saudis and Gulf to ignore where these people are hiding? The number 1 and 2 of Al Qaeda are criminals and murderers of Pakistanis. If as Ghost Wars says, that OBL travels with an entourage of a hundred stateless Arabs, Central and South Asians Muslims, arranged in concentric layers of security then it is very likely that, if our military hasn't been beaten back by it, it has certainly run into it a couple of times.

Although, to be honest, I have to wonder about knowledge of militant activity down the chain of command. The last commander of XI Corps (the Corps that did all the fighting in Swat and Waziristan) lost his son in a gun-and-suicide attack. I am not trying to be insensitive when I bring this up, but it is a fact that has to be faced. Does this mean that he might have known where Ayman Al Zawahiri and Osama Bin Ladin were and did not act? Wow, that would take a lot of gumption.

It's facts like these that put a two-by-four into speculation that the Pakistan military is only acting against militants tactically rather than strategically. Of course going against militants strategically would mean trying to clean up Madrassahs, the JUI-F, the JI and a host of other publicly appearing promoters of religious extremism. It would also mean giving Mullah Umar, and much of the Quetta Shura, and men in various managerial positions of various formerly Kashmir-centric groups the AQ Khan treatment.

The A.Q Khan treatment where we skip the public apology and appearing in public part and move straight into indefinite home detention, with restricted movement and little hope of leaving the area. This way these gentlemen do not get kidnapped, caught and made to squeal (on the Pakistanis) by various Indian or Western intelligence agencies. And the little boys, and boy-brained-men, they commanded have to all be accounted for, put on lists, and be educated/re-educated/de-programmed. Some with blood on their hands would have to be forced through the judicial system, while some others who escape and start killing (as they have been doing now for the last three years) would have to be killed, or threatened with death if they threaten to kill.

That would be Pakistan taking it's strategic priorities seriously. Only part of this has happened, and that too haphazardly. This in a way belies claims by Indians, or worries by Pakistanis that the attacks on militant strongholds in Hamaa, I'm sorry, Swat and Waziristan, were not war crimes with no justification, or military displays to distract the west . No. Up till this moment in time, December 2010, they appear to be war crimes that had a purpose. To kill people who were set on the course of destroying everything left in Pakistan. It will be up to the Pakistan government's capacity to rebuild, restore and re-autonomise the local populations of the regions that we had to invade and kill Taliban in, to make sure that the lives lost were not lost in vain.

In the meantime, as we demonstrated at least in the major cities, we have a minor moral victory, with Ashura passing "peacefully", but this sort of tactical thinking has to stop. We have to move beyond the tactical thought processes into a strategic offensive against the sources of extremism within our country, primarily the lack of control of our security forces, and the aid that provides to religiously inclined assassins. Civilian security forces must be strengthened, expanded and aided in their evolution, maturisation and sophistication. Simultaneously, it will have to be public movements of Pakistani people, in concert with their political parties that take control of their public bodies. And looming above and beyond this, will have to be a plan for peace along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and in Afghanistan itself.

Enough people have died, either violently or from the bad health that this region's bad politics resonates with. Even if their leaders and friends are men and women with moderate amounts of blood on their hands, there is time and there are resources to control the situation, create an environment for a succession to a new generation of leadership, and prevent the situation from crossing a moral event horizon.

Source: Chapati Mystery

RIP Richard Holbrooke

RIP Hangu Six

RIP Karam Abbas

This post is now published on the web page of the Critical Supporters of the Pakistan Peoples Party Website.

A Post On How To Bring To End the Conflict in Afghanistan

2010-12-18T10:42:00.002-05:00

Pakistan, Iran and Russia. The middle one completely hated by the US, the former and latter, sort of trusted. Russia must bring pressure to bear on it's guys, remnants of the Northern Alliance, the Iranians have influence with the people who control Herat, and Pakistan has some very obvious links with the Taliban. All three agree, they don't fight once the US leaves.

Chinese money is already in Afghanistan.
I don't think they want to annex Afghanistan.

But the Chinese would like "stability" in Afghanistan.

India can continue to build roads, electricity poles,

Now there are a million things that could go wrong with a plan like this. The Order of Battle For Jihadi Islam Across the Durand Line covers the obvious suspects.

But as well as them, there are more people who can make things go off the rails.

1) The Pakistan military may either become expansionist (through it`s Taliban allies), the officers may be "swept along" by Taliban victories and want to let the Taliban move forward, or the Indian presence may be too provocative (prove to be an easy target), or the Indians may seem too powerful, and the Pakistanis just start attacking them wantonly, precipitating a Taliban drive for power.

2) Younger commanders on the ground start doing their own thing (killing opponents) whilst paying lip service to Mullah Umar (still in Pakistan). Sort of like how MQM sector commanders say they listen to their leaders at the top of the party, but kill local rivals nonetheless, physically strengthening the MQM's position, whilst simultaneously threatening a larger war with either the government, the ANP or the PPP. The younger Taliban commanders could start killing off local rivals, threatening an escalation to a larger war.

3) The Americans may simply go apeshit at the prospect of peace at the hands of the Iranians and Russians. Although why they would scuttle this only as a matter of pride or irrationality is inexplicable, although expectable considering their past involving Iraq 2003.

4) There is also the fact that the success of the Taliban in Afghanistan was bought on the backs of regiments of Pakistani soldiers who were ordered to use their mechanised equipment, and provide close air support to the Taliban. It was this developed military approach that bought the Taliban success against the Northern Alliance. How easy or difficult would it be for the Pakistan Military to restart such a program, where they bought their equipment into Afghanistan and used it to pound the Afghan National Army until it collapsed?

There are possible answers to these troubling scenarios.

1) Pakistan has suffered multiple casualties at the hands of religious extremists; there may be little tolerance for more religious nutjobs to take the helm of Afghanistan, killing fellow Afghans AFTER the US withdraws.

2) The Afghan Taliban may keep themselves "together" (or as much together as a disparate guerrilla movement can) and the younger commanders may be reeled in by the now, very old, 90's Taliban leadership, who *might* be feeling tired of war. That is a big *might*. Much of the senior leadership has fought in the Soviet-Afghan Jihad, the Afghan civil war, and now the US occupation of Afghanistan. They have faced down the Warsaw Pact, all manner of other Afghans and NATO. It just might be possible that they may be feeling tired of war. A wild card would be the question, would Pakistan provide the same sort of all around military support for a new drive by the Afghan Taliban? I will adress that as well.

3) The Americans cannot possibly be this stupid, as to toss away peace in Afghanistan, especially when they give the impression of being trapped there, and news leaking out constantly of them negotiating with the Taliban. Even fakers like the silly greedy "Mullah" Mansoor, of Quetta shopkeeping fame. Now the Americans are pounding the Afghan border and Khyber Agency in frustration, whilst the young commanders are quietly in hiding.

4) This is the hardest, would the Pakistan military bring in it's artillery, tanks and close air support to aid the Afghan Taliban. You're asking me to predict the future, and to be honest, maybe, one could hope that not this time around. The Pakistan military must be reminded of it's mental limitations, it's capacity for stupidity at every turn, and told to keep away from adventures in Afghanistan. For God's sake, tell them to look at their casualty lists for just the last three years.

Peace in Afghanistan, and the regularisation of FATA's status (possibly as a separate province, but also possibly as a place where regular law applies, that could join Pakhtunkhwa) must be made a serious, serious policy plank of the PML-N, the PPP, the ANP, the MQM and just about every Baloch political organisation that exists. Only together can they make the Pakistan military comply. I appeal to the PPP, the PML-N, the ANP, the MQM, and the electoral competitors of Balochistan to pressure and fight towards this. It is our future.

This post is now published on the web page of the Critical Supporters of the Pakistan Peoples Party Website.

Abbas Brothers II – Why I Wrote on Them

2010-12-18T10:37:00.007-05:00

This is the last post on the phenomenon of the Abbas brothers, on which I have written before. These people are individuals and will retire one day. Everything that could be said about these individuals, has been said. After this we must return to keeping an eye on the Institutions of Pakistan, and their various interplays, which is what will determine the future course of events. I give my reasons for writing this in the blog post itself. Enjoy.

I am a questioning sort of person. I question that which makes me curious, or that which piques my interest, yet I do not understand. And a certain blog piqued my interest. Reader Murtaza Jafri is a google follower of this blog by a certain, former employee of Dawn.

The blog, aside from tapping into the massive trope of Pakistan being nothing but a “land of terror” (which plays into a deeply impoverished view of Pakistan, reducing a much, much more complex land into the bare idea of angry bearded Muslims, and non angry, non bearded Muslims), made a swiping reference in every other post about a man whom I would presume was the writer’s former boss, Zafar Abbas. And every third or so post would make reference to Mr Zafar Abbas being the brother of General Athar Abbas of Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR- the military’s PR department).

That blog, and that employee were, to put it politely, a few cards short of a full deck. It is the policy of this writer and this blog, when one comes across what could be real out and out psychological damage, to keep quiet and back away slowly. Which is what I did. The author of that blog even referenced his own psychological situation, confirming what one suspected about him as a mentally damaged human being. That blogger even admitted being in such a precarious psychological state, and described his current conditions as that of a classic shut-in. So I skimmed and backed away slowly. And I realised as I closed the browser window that this lunatic had 34 google followers, and all I could muster were 6. Wow; even an out and out nutjob had more readers than me.

Or maybe it was just that he was realising the situation of current mainstream middle class Pakistan. Quoth Nadeem Farooq Paracha’s twitter:

Conspiracies theories are not theories, but a fact in Pakistan. Elvis is alive in Waziristan – thus the drone attacks.

I’m afraid that Nadeem Paracha may be too close to the truth.

As for this gentleman and his blog, they shall remain unnamed. I don’t want any strange google results for/from him leading to me. If you have any doubts about how annoying skewed Google results are, ask the folks at Five Rupees blog about their “Aunty” problem someday. I do not wish to skew my google results into any acknowledgement of this man’s batshit lunacy. For all I know, he may have gotten fired from Dawn because his English writing skills stink. Seriously speaking, the grammar of his blogposts was atrocious, and this was a man who claimed to have been employed by what could be called Pakistan’s premier English daily. Standards of grammatical correctness had been slipping at Dawn, but he who shall remain unnamed used some really lousy English on his blog.

Moving beyond this man who was singularly obsessed with the Abbas brothers, and their “possible” role in getting him fired, many people had randomly mentioned this band of brothers who seemed to have reached top journalistic positions in one industry at the same time. Random comments on the Cafe Pyala page, conspiratorial ones on the LUBP page, and random tweets on this subject. Cafe Pyala, I especially feel sorry for, because as anonymous journalists writing about the media industry from inside it, they probably got too many requests to write on more than they even wished to broach. And since there is so much overt and covert corruption in Pakistan, there is sadly no dearth of negatively painted stories for them to cover. Why cover an obscure bunch of brothers who had a massive coincidence of luck, where all of them occupy important positions in various media producing groups (even the ISPR counts as this) at the exact same time in history. Better to go after their bosses, especially as working journalists, the Cafe Pyala-walas actually have an easier time getting dirt on the media owners that a “civilian” could not easily come by.

But that still leaves this very interesting story of these brothers in high positions across media companies at the same time...

So last weekend, I found myself home from a social engagement that had ended a little too early and I was feeling a little p-o’ed about.

Maybe writing would help. So I did. And then the idea of taking Critical PPP on their offer to publish anything if it was worth it popped into my mind. And all those very interesting internet comments on the Abbas Brothers looked like a question worth asking about.

So why not be original? A critical look into the ethical implications of hiring a group of brothers into senior positions in a somewhat influential media industry, whilst their brother is in charge of the establishment’s military media mouthpiece, in the middle of a war?

Sounded nice. And I think it was.

And in the back of my mind there was a voice that said some part of it won’t fit into the story. What part? Oh yeah, the one about the crazy ex-employee. Let’s just focus on the bosses. And in an evening’s haze of exhaustion, to keep it simple that is what I did.

But you the reader, I believe deserve to know about the unhinged employee and his blog that is out there. I will not link directly to it myself. But you can go search for it yourself. As for me, the depressing story of the Abbas brothers ends here. I’ve had enough of trying to dissect psy-ops. It’s back to the messiness, of real blood and guts ethnic warfare in Pakistan for me.

I’ll leave the propaganda and counter propaganda to the hacks, shrinks and various headjobs of the world.

This post is now published on the web page of the Critical Supporters of the Pakistan Peoples Party Website.

O'Children by Nick Cave and the Seeds

2010-12-18T09:19:00.008-05:00

For a moment of peace in a war of fear and terror.

Listen.

We Pakistanis Are Such Trolls

2010-12-17T09:44:00.008-05:00

And that's not me talking, that's Tom Toles' opinion. Here he is on Afghan peace and the war in general. I just laughed out loud.

Gotta love that speccy mustachioed mix of Zardari and Musharraf.

Umberto Eco on Wikileaks - Real Secrets are Empty Secrets and Technology Moves Crabwise

2010-12-16T11:50:00.013-05:00

Here is Novelist Umberto Eco's somewhat philosophical take on Wikileaks (originally published in the magazine Liberation), with my comments in bold blue:

Not Such Wicked Leaks

02 December 2010 Libération Paris

The WikiLeaks affair has twofold value. On the one hand, it turns out to be a bogus scandal, a scandal that only appears to be a scandal against the backdrop of the hypocrisy governing relations between the state, the citizenry and the press. On the other hand, it heralds a sea change in international communication – and prefigures a regressive future of “crabwise” progress.

But let’s take it one step at a time. First off, the WikiLeaks confirm the fact that every file put together by a secret service (of any nation you like) is exclusively made up of press clippings.

Strange, but true; most Blogistani analysis is based on being well informed news consumers - but as our country's reporters have said, it`s nice to see confirmation. Original spying involves going out, making contacts, specifically with those who don`t generally speak to the press, and getting information that it might be illegal, or too dangerous for news reporters to pick up.

The “extraordinary” American revelations about Berlusconi’s sex habits merely relay what could already be read for months in any newspaper (except those owned by Berlusconi himself, needless to say), and the sinister caricature of Gaddafi has long been the stuff of cabaret farce.

Embassies have morphed into espionage centres

The rule that says secret files must only contain news that is already common knowledge is essential to the dynamic of secret services (O RLY? I thought that would be grounds for redundancy; an excuse to fire lazy spies and analysts), and not only in the present century. Go to an esoteric book shop and you’ll find that every book on the shelf (on the Holy Grail, the “mystery” of Rennes-le-Château [a hoax theory concocted to draw tourists to a French town], on the Templars or the Rosicrucians) is a point-by-point rehash of what is already written in older books. And it’s not just because occult authors are averse to doing original research (or don’t know where to look for news about the non-existent), but because those given to the occult only believe what they already know and what corroborates what they’ve already heard (Intellectual Apathy FTW). That happens to be Dan Brown’s success formula.

The same goes for secret files. The informant is lazy. So is the head of the secret service (or at least he’s limited – otherwise he could be, what do I know, an editor at Libération): he only regards as true what he recognises. The top-secret dope on Berlusconi that the US embassy in Rome beamed to the Department of State was the same story that had come out in Newsweek the week before.

So why so much ado about these leaks? For one thing, they say what any savvy observer already knows: that the embassies, at least since the end of World War II, and since heads of state can call each other up or fly over to meet for dinner, have lost their diplomatic function and, but for the occasional ceremonial function (and visa applications for those outside the EU), have morphed into espionage centres. Anyone who watches investigative documentaries knows that full well, and it is only out of hypocrisy that we feign ignorance. Still, repeating that in public constitutes a breach of the duty of hypocrisy (that's a phrase that should be publicised, "breach of the duty of hypocrisy"), and puts American diplomacy in a lousy light.

A real secret is an empty secret

Secondly, the very notion that any old hacker (It wasn't a hacker, it was a whistleblower/leaker who passed the files from inside the State Department to the public site Wikileaks) can delve into the most secret secrets of the most powerful country in the world has dealt a hefty blow to the State Department’s prestige. So the scandal actually hurts the “perpetrators” more than the “victims”.

But let’s turn to the more profound significance of what has occurred. Formerly, back in the days of Orwell, every power could be conceived of as a Big Brother watching over its subjects’ every move. The Orwellian prophecy came completely true once the powers that be could monitor every phone call made by the citizen, every hotel he stayed in, every toll road he took and so on and so forth. The citizen became the total victim of the watchful eye of the state. But when it transpires, as it has now, that even the crypts of state secrets are not beyond the hacker’s (whistleblower dammit) grasp, the surveillance ceases to work only one-way and becomes circular. The state has its eye on every citizen, but every citizen, or at least every hacker – the citizens’ self-appointed avenger – can pry into the state’s every secret.

Not really, the capacity for surveillance has gone up manifold, with cryptography preventing any casual breaking into the government's system even by a moderately skilled script kiddy. However the reason the state doesn't spy more, is that it may drown in data it's living analysts may be unable to humanly analyse. Of course this is where advances in artificial intelligence, botnets and faster, more powerful processing speeds can come into play.

How can a power hold up if it can’t even keep its own secrets anymore? It is true, as Georg Simmel once remarked, that a real secret is an empty secret (which can never be unearthed) (i.e, Only one or two people know it); it is also true that anything known about Berlusconi or Merkel’s character is essentially an empty secret, a secret without a secret, because it’s public domain. But to actually reveal, as WikiLeaks has done, that Hillary Clinton’s secrets were empty secrets amounts to taking away all her power. WikiLeaks didn’t do any harm to Sarkozy or Merkel, but did irreparable damage to Clinton and Obama.

Technology now advances crabwise

What will be the consequences of this wound inflicted on a very mighty power? It’s obvious that in future, states won’t be able to put any restricted information on line anymore (I'm not too sure about that): that would be tantamount to posting it on a street corner (Not necessarily). But it is equally clear that, given today’s technologies, it is pointless to hope to have confidential dealings over the phone. Nothing is easier than finding out whether a head of state flew in or out or contacted one of his counterparts. So how can privy matters be conducted in future? Now I know that for the time being, my forecast is still science fiction and therefore fantastic, but I can’t help imagining state agents riding discreetly in stagecoaches along untrackable routes, bearing only memorised messages (Haha, maybe) or, at most, the occasional document concealed in the heel of a shoe. Only a single copy thereof will be kept – in locked drawers. Ultimately, the attempted Watergate break-in was less successful than WikiLeaks.

I once had occasion to observe that technology now advances crabwise, i.e. backwards (shouldn't crabwise mean sideways?). A century after the wireless telegraph revolutionised communications, the Internet has re-established a telegraph that runs on (telephone) wires. (Analog) video cassettes enabled film buffs to peruse a movie frame by frame, by fast-forwarding and rewinding to lay bare all the secrets of the editing process, but (digital) CDs now only allow us quantum leaps from one chapter to another (Mr Eco, you're a great writer, but not too accomplished with technology. You can use your DVD remote now to slow a movie down to 1/32 of a second. And if you want to slow down frames in a film on your computer, you can install VLC player). High-speed trains take us from Rome to Milan in three hours, but flying there, if you include transfers to and from the airports, takes three and a half hours. So it wouldn’t be extraordinary if politics and communications technologies were to revert to the horse-drawn carriage.

Why not? A regressive technological approach would seem appropriate for regressive political thought. One should admit though, technologies come with their own pre-packaged ideologies. Books and press had their own ideology, television had its own, and the internet, its own new ideology. Wikileaks is a manifestation of the internet’s underlying ideology. The “apprehension”, or subservience to power as others might call it, of television journalists, is a manifestation of their subservience to televisions underlying ideology.

One last observation: In days of yore, the press would try to figure out what was hatching sub rosa inside the embassies. Nowadays, it’s the embassies that are asking the press for the inside story.

If the press had done its job, there would have been no need for Wikileaks.

The Doctor - Craig Ferguson Gets To Publicly Celebrate His Nostalgia

2010-12-15T23:18:00.009-05:00

All we can can ask is, for the triumph of intellect and romance, over brute force and cynicism.

Saleem Shehzad You Idiot - With Friends Like the J-I, Who Needs Enemies?

2010-12-15T07:29:00.006-05:00

Now I know why I stopped reading the Asia Times. They're a bunch of well informed bastards, who are completely ineffective at making any sort of policy change, due to an inability to change their strange unblinking paradigms. Anyway, I stopped reading the A-Times in December 2009, and I have to say that its been an excellent 2010 ever since. But then some Huff-Po article refered me to it and I started following the hyperlinks until I came to this shining turd of wisdom by the ever borderline schizophrenic Syed Saleem Shahzad, in an article from July 2010 about how JTI members from Karachi were defecting to the Taliban in Waziristan (about a month after Herald covered the same point) saying:

"the country's most influential Islamic party - always considered a major strategic asset for the military establishment - have joined forces with al-Qaeda."

Good. So maybe we can get down to the business of killing of the JI? After I segued into the written "statement" by Al Qaeda in Shehzad's piece, I disgustedly thought, this is the same group that sponsored Al-Badr and Al-Shams, and you want us to be what, friends, with them? Fuck The JI. And if Al Qaeda increases its chances for electability by merging with the JI, even better. Al Qaeda won't get elected, and Pakistanis will have an excuse to hunt down and kill members of the JI like dogs. You know the JI has it coming. Any Pakistani over the age of 9 instinctively knows the Jamat-e-Islami is trouble.

The ending of the piece is appropriately speculative and fear inducing:

"This new development of IJT students joining al-Qaeda is more dangerous for Pakistan than any other previous al-Qaeda alliances. Most colleges and universities are the stronghold of the IJT, while the IJT's parent body, the JI, is the richest political party in the country and runs schools, madrassas (seminaries) and a vast network of social services and charities. Karachi contributes about 65% of the JI’s revenues."

Yes, as if Pakistani public university campuses up until 2010 were renowned as centres of peace and tranquility in a country beset with violence. Oh no, wait, our campuses have been renowned for their volatility since the 1950's. Anyway, we can't let the fearfest end without the possibility of Al Qaeda picking up a few parliament seats:

"When the Kashmiri fighters joined forces with al-Qaeda, it improved the group's guerrilla techniques in the battlefield, while the IJT cadre will greatly boast al-Qaeda's recruitment drive and enhance its political influence."

Yes Syed sahab, Al Qaeda's "political influence". Al Qaeda's communiques telegraph deep worries that they may not pick up a few ministerships in Pakistan this time around, maybe because of all the head lopping and suicide bombings associated with them.

But hey, Syed bhai and readers of Asia Times, don't stop pretending it's still 1997, the Asian bust isn't about to happen and an electronic media revolution hasn't happened in Pakistan that would throw up about a million other voices who could influence Pepe Escobar's point of view on Pakistan, or could allow the Asia Times to find a new Pakistani besides Syed Shehzad. Oh wait they can! Fatima Bhutto, who only after the entire world, learnt trhough Wikileaks about how far the US has its finger up Pakistan's backside, is now a writer for the Asia Times. Wow. I guess you need a misinformed demi-orientalist audience to keep the job going. But to get a real flair for Miss Bhutto's article, you have to use the Ctrl+F function on your browser. Type in Asia Times spelling for "Kiani", Musharraf's successor as Chief of Army Staff, and click the "highlight" option. Three hits. OK. Now type in "Zardari" and highlight. Obsession revealed? Sorry Ms Bhutto, we know you hold him responsible for the murder of your father, but ma'am, one man does not make a difference over the clash of institutions, and the further clash of that collective of institutions with a network of dedicated techno holy warriors, and an expansive empire that wishes to weaken both at the same time. Plus, is there some agency that can be granted to the Pakistani people or voters, to not be total puppets of the military, the empire or the militants? No? Well then I have a writing position at the Asia Times open for You!

Corrigendum

2010-12-13T04:16:00.005-05:00

Apparently the Balochistan Liberation United Front took responsibility for the attack on Chief Minister Raisani. Another Lashkar-e-Jhangvi spokeman came up and denied responsibility for the attack. The BLUF spokesman strongly contradicted what the L-e-J spokesterrorist said.

It would be pertinent here to mention, that keeping the oppression of Balochistan-Sistan in mind, Baloch nationalism has an undercurrent of anti-Shia-ism, or ultra-Sunni-ism, that should not be discounted. This creates an environment conducive for viciously anti-Shia militants like the L-e-J to settle in.

Can You Read the Baloch Hal in Pakistan?

2010-12-13T04:13:00.003-05:00

If any readers of this blog are currently inside Pakistan, using a Pakistani ISP, please do tell us in the comment sections, with your name published, if you can access, The Baloch Hal inside the country.

Thanks.

NFP Steps Up to Granta and the Atlantic Monthly

2010-12-12T10:22:00.012-05:00

NFP has been set off by some new changes in the music scene. Good to see the man return to the field he helped contribute most to, and the time he knows best of, i.e, the eighties. It's obvious that the apparent changes that NFP is responding to is the rise of Coke Studio, the rise of religious extremism, the responses or non-reponses by various Pakistanis and the international attention showered on Pakistan's cultural scene by the Afghan conflict spilling into our territory.

This particular article was possibly set off by a lazy Atlantic Monthly web piece that equated Coke Studio with fighting the Taliban, when the Pakistani blogosphere and its interviewed members unequivocally told the Atlantic Monthly author, that Coke Studio had NOTHING to do with fighting terrorism, and EVERYTHING to do with good music. Why this Riddi Shah decided to ignore what Ahsan at Five Rupees told her in his interview, and published a squarely Orientalist piece is between her, her editor and their shrink. But it was good to see Ahsan take it down. That same Atlantic Monthly piece made the grievous error of saying that the Zia regime had banned ALL music. NFP led with debunking that misconception, and mentions the perennial love Pakistanis have for their music. I think its a bit unfair to paint countries of the greater Middle East as not loving their music. I'm sure they do, but our musicians keep singing and playing despite poverty.

I liked this part:

Throughout Zia’s regime, folk and national songs (created with the help of modern instruments) appeared frequently on state TV and radio but this time, it was heavily punctuated with conservative subject matter and imagery such as loud demonstrations of faith, family values, the glory of the armed forces, etc.

General Zia Approves !
Illustration by Eefa Khalid/Dawn.com

And thanks for linking to the video of Har Garhi Tyar Kamran Hai Hum! I love that song!

*Side Note: Notice How this Army Propaganda Song has Dam Mast Qalandar Ali Ali in it! Nice!

NFP rehashed the old established idea of Zia institutionalising hypocrisy in Pakistan. However, he adds a fresh approach by calling the Zia regime contradictory. I think now he's adding this new perspective in light of Granta's piece by Kamila Shamsie, who is only barely younger than NFP, but chronicled her adolescent interactions with music in the later periods of Zia's rule. It brings a smile to ones face imagining the grinning dictator giving a lecture on patriotism to Nazia and Zoheb.

NFP also enters Kamila Shamsie's territory with his full throttled defense and illumination on Salman Ahmed and Sufi Rock and fusion music in general. I personally wondered what NFP thought about the concept of Sufi Rock. I thought he might sneer at it. Imagine my surprise when I see him praise it back into the Zia era, and forward to Coke Studio. That's also nice; to see Coke Studio get its due from the man who helped shape Junoon and to an extent, Vital Signs.

I was glad to see my instinct from the nineties acknowledged, that "pop on TV and radio hit a peak during the second Benazir government (1993-96)". Also the idea of the Nawaz Sharif of today, banning a song that "incites people to rebel against authority" makes one laugh out loud.

And ending the piece on the current threat of religious pressure groups and violent extremists is one that points at those musicians who recognise the new paradigms, and will adapt and innovate to give us better music for the future. Rohail Hyat, with Coke Studio, is just the most high profile of these praiseworthy auteurs. An excellent and fresh take on the modern pop scene by NFP.

Wikileaks's at the intersection of Journalism, Libraries, Internet Culture, Cryptography and Sweden. Why Wouldn't I Love It?

2010-12-08T04:01:00.008-05:00

Here is a heartfelt defense of Wikileaks by Heather Mallick, and the need to learn unpleasant truths, when Wikileaks` Foes Love the Sound of Silence. Working on the addage of being hated by the right people, the second paragraph makes your chest swell with pride for Julian Assange`s organisation:

The list of the people who want Assange dead or arrested does him great credit. They include the repulsive Senator Joe Lieberman; our own casually violent Tom Flanagan, who mentored Prime Minister Stephen Harper; world leaders who are ancient, horny and corrupt (hi there, Silvio Berlusconi); tyrants like Russian PM Vladimir Putin; the American live-free-or-diers (Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Charles Krauthammer) . . . you know, intellectuals.

You Know I Was Looking For An Excuse To Use This ;-)
Because Anonymous Approves...Deeply

Now look at how wikipedia defined it`s Wikileaks discussion page:

Stay tuned...there`s more to come. A certain Bank in (of) America is currently peeing it`s pants.

We need a plan to replace the Deep State with a democratic state - Reading Kamran Shafi, NFP, and then Kamran Shafi Again

2010-12-07T16:51:00.005-05:00

Kamran Shafi laughs, as everything he had been predicting and worrying about is proven by the Wikileaks cables.

Nadeem Farooq Paracha chuckles at the collective delusion of Pakistanis who express admiration for the Saudi state.

And then we return to Mr Shafi for an interview with LUBP, as he outlines opposition to the Pakistani establishment; what he calls the Deep State. Here's Mr Shafi's view on how those people with voices look up to the army too much, along with the last two questions he was asked:

Q: Why is “mainstream Pakistan” so reluctant to speak up when journalists such as yourself, Umar Cheema, Marvi Sirmed, and more recently Lala Hameed Baloch of Balochistan are harassed and attacked?

K.S. Because large parts of the media are in the pay of the ‘agencies’; the chattering classes are in awe of the army and hate politicians, and the poor are too scared.

Q: What is your prediction for the next few years in Pakistan?

K.S. It will go from bad to worse to far worse – I fear greatly for our country, bless it. There is no way anything can improve so long as the army and its agencies call the shots.

Q: What, in your opinion, will be the impact of the end of the Afghan war on the already fragile domestic political situation in Pakistan?

K.S. There is no “end” of the Afghan war in sight. Forget domestic politics, it is the geographical integrity of the country that I am worried sick about. The Taliban are not going to go all peaceful if and when the war ends as Taliban apologists like Imran Khan and Hamid Gul suggest. Far from it. As I have said earlier, this is a creeping coup with the aim of establishing an Islamic Emirate of Pakistan, with all the obscurantism that goes with it.

What fascinated and angered me was the idea of religious fanatics who want to overthrow not just the state, but the "Deep State". There is no Wikileaks coming for Pakistan that can directly expose the fanatics here. The wiki-dump came from America, which was assessing the Pakistani state, which in itself is in contact (but not control) of the fanatics. Pakistanis need a plan to replace the Deep State with a democratic state; and prevent the Jamaat/Lashkar/Taliban types from trying to swoop in and fill the vacuum.

CM Raisani Escapes a Suicide Attack, Whilst Fifty People Killed At a Tribal Group's Meeting

2010-12-07T16:28:00.006-05:00

Maen yeh kis kay naam likhoo jo alam guzar rahay hain,
Meray shehr jal rahay hain meray loag marr rahay hain.

- Ambassador Haqqani's Tw. Feed

Actually Geo, it's 50 dead. Could be higher by today even, with people succumbing to injuries. The suicide attack was targeting a tribal meeting to resolve issues in the area. Mohmand is a Federally Administered Tribal Agency that borders Afghanistan, and has been the site of numerous battles.

More serious (with respect to the families of those who lost family yesterday), is the suicide murder attempt against the Chief Minister of Balochistan. This is insanely serious. This is an intersection of a man who has proven himself a softcore Baloch Nationalist* with Talibanism. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, as most people know, runs interception for the Taliban types where-ever possible. This is insanely serious. If this had succeeded.......the inflammation of tensions between Balochistan and the rest of Pakistan, could even have exceeded Bugti's murder. Pakistan is held together by it's electoral politcal parties and it's political elites. Target them, or allow the military or the religious fanatics to target them, or allow the military to use the religious parties to target them (as many Baloch nationalists could interprete a "successful" attack), and you have a "burn, baby burn situation".

*Good job on CM Raisani, opposing the Singaporeans running Gwadar, whilst watching out for the weird news on a Reqo Diq mining `deal`.

Postscript: Good to hear CM Raisani sounds angry. He may not get scared, but he may get even. Actions will tell, how far this goes.

Screen Based Civiliazation Portends Dysgenic Dystopia

2010-12-06T14:22:00.007-05:00

Our increasing interaction with a screen-based world can see that "our thought patterns could change beyond recognition, with implications as serious as climate change in terms of human sustainability and longevity".

It's actually a very interesting attempt to look at the way that our world could change, as the saturation of screens in our world continues.

You know what I thought?

IDIOCRACY !

This little Mike Judge creation came out in the fall of 2006 by Fox Entertainment. I remember when it came out, but was unable to watch it because it wasn't playing in the small town I was stuck in, and was soon pulled from circulation. I guess Fox didn't like the idea of a successful movie playing of the idea of a stupider United States, possibly because the Australian Rupert Murdoch's company was contributing to this little episode of decline. And maybe the United States, and English speaking audiences didn't like that idea either, since Idiocracy has gone on to be a sleeper hit, a cult dvd, whilst the United States has elected a man known for his intelligence, and his main opposition faction is the Tea Party, a collective not known for the power of its combined IQ. Maybe that's what progressives want to do. Fight Dystopia. Fight Idiocracy.

Backgrounder - Journeyman Has a Docu' on Wikileaks - Meanwhile the Indo-Pak Cyber War Rages

2010-12-04T13:26:00.014-05:00

I have updated the "Raw News" sidebar with the new web address of Wikileaks; www.wikileaks.ch . All power to them. I would also appreciate if more people went to more of the sites I have listed under Raw News.

An excellent introduction to Julian Assange. Journeyman pictures does very professional, somewhat informative, sometimes enlightening, quickie-documentaries on whatever is in the news. The problem with them is that they have a fearful, ultra-urgent edge, which leaves the viewer feeling not-very empowered. That was at least the tone of their documentaries whenever they did them on Pakistan. This focus on delivering urgency without agency made them the opposite of Wikileaks. Which, whilst focusing on Julian Assange, was the subject of their documentary.

It is a must watch, just for the history it recounts, of Julian Assange, from his hacking days, through the foundation of wikileaks, the support they received in Iceland for some documents they published on banks that were responsible for Iceland's economic collapse. An Icelandic television journalist's support is watched, in connecting the Wikileaks crew with the families and social networks in Iraq that had their members gunned down in the Collateral Murder video, onto what can be described as the duplicity of some members of the mainstream US press, where they sat on the Collateral Murder video, on to video of a very obviously mentally diseased Adrian Lamo speaking in defence of his own whistle blowing of Bradley Manning. Mr Lamo before this, had been in trouble with US authorities for his own internet related criminal misdemeanours.

Journeyman made another documentary, in the summer just before, the release of the Afghan War Logs, when he came to the UK, where he was worried about the Australian government complying with the US and handing him over to Uncle Sam. If you enjoyed Cafe Pyala's 2 minute Video of the Day, the 10 second time sequence will be enough for you to love this documentary. This is the sequence of combat events in Afghanistan compiled by Wikileaks, presented to Journeyman documentaries. Just to watch the Afghan territory south of the Kurram parrot's beak, immediately West of Waziristan, turn yellow with thumbtacks - wow it puts things in perspective for a Pakistani.

Watching all this that I had tracked for so long fleshed out is amazing, and is to an extent a credit to Journeyman's ability to churn out quickie docs. Remember, no mention is made of the Iraq War Logs, the Afghan War Logs, or the latest Cablegate document release. There have now been FOUR major expose`s that can be credited to Wikileaks. Julian Assange, a hacker, is now amongst the ranks of Che Guevara and Osama Bin Ladin, of infamous, successful insurgents who defied the foreign policy of the United States. His libertarian, ultra-capitalist ideology has distinguished him in the field of cyber warfare.

And speaking of cyber warfare. There`s a cute little cyber feud going around Pakistani and Indian websites. Pakistan made the mistake of hosting 36 government websites on one server, which were hacked and defaced by a group of Indians around the time of memorial for the Bombay attacks. In response a group of Pakistani hackers shot back and defaced 200 websites from India. The problem is that only one of these was a government website, the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation. The rest were civilian, dare I say, "collateral" damage. LOL's aside, the Indians got the drop on the Pakistani's because the government made the mistake of hosting so many websites on one server. The only effective Paki response was the one where they broke into the Indian Central Bureau of Investigations website. One server for one? Ah fuck it, the Indians got the drop with 36 websites gone (some like the National Accountability Bureau are still down, whilst others are back up), but hopefully lesson learned. As for the the brewing "Cyber War", I'm just popping the popcorn, and watching the LUL'Z fly by. Epic Lulz.

And now to tie these two separate topics together, here is India's Prannoy Roy speaking to Julian Assange. About Pakistan.

PM Gillani Vs PM Amin Fahim

2010-12-04T00:59:00.010-05:00

A minor mystery to me was why Asif Ali Zardari, as regent of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), chose Syed Yusaf Raza Gillani, a man not many people outside of hardcore Pakistani political circles had heard of. The pundit favourite in the run up to selecting a Prime Minister in April 2008, after the February 2008 elections (held under the shadow of the assassination of former PM Benazir Bhutto) was Makhdoom Amin Fahim, a man who Benazir had designated the leader of the PPP throughout the years of the Musharraf era. In all honesty, the PPP did not appear to many observers as a force that could do much during the years following the 2002, semi-rigged, military rule sponsored elections. The PPP was practically banned, but it got around the ban by running as a separately named faction called the Pakistan People's Party (Parliamentarians). The PPPP (or Px4 if you want to be annoyingly specific) was led by Amin Fahim, but one always got a lacklustre feeling for the party during the years of the Musharraf regime. Not only did the party fail to excite, but it became obvious that years of propaganda against the party by the establishment, had compounded the horrific view of incompetence the party had acquired in it's years of power during the nineties. To be fair, when they were in office during the nineties, the party was hemmed in on one side by the military and civil/bureaucratic establishment, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz's party) on the other, and the raging insurgencies in Karachi and urban Sindh, plus the chaos in neighbouring Afghanistan. Benazir had a seriously over-flowing plate of trouble, and I don't blame her, with her limited political capital, focusing on firefighting more than anything else.
But coming back to the Mush years, the PPPP was supposed to represent a broken away rump of the PPP, running under Musharraf's rules. Amin's parliamentary group were supposed to be the PML-Q, to Benazir's "original" PPP. But whereas the PML-Q has become some sort of anemically weak conservative's club even after General Mushrraf's departue (the PML-N has been unable to reunite completely with them), the PPPP was well and truly the PPP, with an extra 'P' attached. This was proven when Benazir's party ran in the Feb 2008 elections, it ran as the PPP-Parliamentarians. Except their leader, Amin Fahim, was NOT running. Quoth a President Zardari phrase in Wikileaks, "had spent most of the [election] campaign in Dubai (with his latest 22 year-old wife)". So Amin Fahim, who is rumoured to have had his sisters married to the Quran (a disgusting practice where women are married of to the Holy Quran, so that they do not marry and split the family land), who already has a lousy (rumoured) track record on women's rights, a man who was born the year Hitler invaded Poland, "that man", had married a 22 year old in 2008.
Yech.
And he was "honeymooning" with this girl-child whilst his party was fighting it's country's most significant election campaign since 1993. He was fucking around in Dubai, when he should have been campaigning in Pakistan. No wonder future President Zardari said Amin Fahim, "had spent most of the [election] campaign in Dubai (with his latest 22 year-old wife) and was simply too lazy to be prime minister".

Lazy. So lazy you can't be bothered to show up for your party's most important election in a decade.

No wonder Zardari had no choice but to select Yusaf Raza Gillani. Even this cipher, with the jail addled brains would priove more reliable than Amin Fahim. And if Amin Fahim suffers from a laziness of such epic proportions, this also explains why the PPP structue was unable to mobilise much support during the Musharraf era. A lazy person, especially one with a Mustafa Khar like "appreciation" (minus the beatings) for women would not be the best person to do a re-vitalisation of the PPP. And he would certainly not have the imagination to revitalise even passive liberals of Pakistan. That is low hanging fruit, and a good PPP party worker would've been able to take some advantage of it, and had a small band of people rolling against the Musharraf government under the aegis of Musharraf, simply being unavoidable, and having our country's gentlemanly dictator resisted earlier, would have been the conscionable thing to do. Iftikhar Chaudhry would have been unnecessary. Maybe Musharraf could have been forced out earlier, with less drama.

And this Wikileaks cable helps prove it.

Incidentially, this paper also begins with outlining the succesion line that President Asif Ali Zardari had made in case he was assassinated; nominate his sister. I don't know if Ms Faryal Gauhar would be up to being President of Pakistan. Nepotism is an art with a group like the Zardari-Bhuttos. But it would've been annoying to the powers that be (to "eliminate" Zardari, and have his sister come in like spies) and that they would maybe, maybe stop trying to undermine democratically elected governments.

I don't think Faryal Talpur, would in any way be upto the role of President. Thank God, that "technically", the presidency of Pakistan is now (mostly) supposed to be a ceremonial role. Even with our jail-addled cypher of a Prime Minister, he strikes a Gladstone-ian chord in comparison to the prospect of Mr Zardari's sister, succeeding the man to the President of Pakistan. One shudders at time for this fair country.

Correction: I accidently wrote that President's Asif Ali Zardari's sister is Faryal Gauhar. As Anon 4:28 pointed out, her name is actually Faryal Talpur.

Now You Have the US Embassy in Islamabad being Somehow the Spokesperson for the Most Clandestine Unit of the US Military? - Jeremy Scahill

2010-12-02T13:19:00.006-05:00

I ROTFLMAO'ed when I heard it. Long live Jeremy Scahill. Blackwater is bandied about by irresponsible, lazy and bigotted members of Pakistan's press to cover for when Muslim militants actually kill Pakistanis. My old analysis on Blackwater only happened when there was a REAL report on the Blackwater (now Xe)/JSOC combine, in Pakistan by Jeremy Scahill in the Nation magazine. And it's been quiet on the Blackwater front since then because, well, they're a secretive unit, they try not to put out press releases on their Pakistan ops. Well, Wikileak's Cablegate has blown the lid of that, sending Xe/Blackwater/JSOC's reputation into a real tizzy.

Jeremy Scahill sahab updates in the Nation with an article now called The (Not So) Secret (Anymore) US War in Pakistan.

The quote in the title is taken from a Democracy Now interview Mr Scahill does with Ms Amy Goodman and Mr Juan Gonzalez. He describes how he out of the blue received a phone call from a member of Admiral Mike Mullen's office because of his first Nation article last year on Blackwater. That would be the equivalent of a Pakistani journalist receiving an out of the blue call from the Chief of Air Staff, the Chief of Naval Staff, or the Joint Chief of Staff Shamim Wynne's office on some random security related article that was written. Scahill tries to receive a confirmation or a denial on his Nation piece. The spokes-officer is non-committal. My guess is that some Pakistani (security) official (or maybe a reporter) must have bought up this article with the US embassy.

The US State Department was asked about last year's Nation story on Blackwater and it stupidly referred to the US embassy in Pakistan. Then you have the result where the US embassy in Islamabad issued a denial on the Most Clandestine Unit of the US Military.

It appears from the levity of his attitude that Mr Scahill has been infected with the Pakistani/Punjabi habit of making a joke out of some really, really grim situations. All power to him.

I am willing to bet there must have been some Pakistani involved somewhere. Maybe it was the soldiers or officers deployed with JSOC who must have made some remark, and maybe some intelligence or civilian person inquired. That is probably what led to an eventual secret (but obviously not anymore) apology to General Kayani from the US military.

The US military did an investigation on the ground in Pakistan and Scahill was defamed in front of the Pakistani High Command (read General Kayani) and powerful US Senators and Congressmen (along with Seymour Hersh who did a lazy assessment on the Pakistani nuclear program) as being mentally unstable. It appears that whitewashing Pakistani stupidities, and stupidities done inside Pakistan is a necessity for the projection of American power. What a stupidity.

Here is Mr Scahill speaking on Democracy Now:

In light of Cablegate it's interesting to see some of this old information rehashed, but I would like to emphasise that us Pakistani's, keeping in mind what Arif Rafiq of Pakistan Policy blog said, I think Pakistanis would be more interested in reports with a higher classification that reveal what technologies and which human assets (civilian and military) provide the U.S. with sensitive information on Pakistan.

`The FSB Said Not To Worry - They Could Take Us Down` - Julian Assange - And the Pakistanis?

2010-12-02T11:18:00.007-05:00

A very interesting interview of Julian Assange by a Forbes magazine apparatchik. I call him an apparatchik because this Andy Greenberg fellow is brighter than he let on, springing a question to Assange about one of Julian's old hacker acquaintances from two decades back who now works with DARPA (the guys who created the internet) on an "anti-leaking" software. Very shrewd people at Forbes.

The quote in the title is a phrase Julian repeats that someone attributed to Russian intelligence. It set of a train of speculation in my mind.

Julian Assange is a metrosexual elf Nazi?

I`ve always wondered what would happen if Assange directly took on some really hard targets like Russian intelligence, Israeli intelligence or the ISI. I`m not saying the current leaks, which are leaks of what the US and others say of Pakistani intelligence, but if someone from within Pakistani intelligence started to decide to spill the beans. Would they be killed? Possibly not if they got away with it. What would Pakistani intelligence do about tracking Assange's group? What would Russian intelligence do? Would they do what they did with Litvenenko to him? I'm guessing that if a Wikileak directly threatened the power of the Putin clique itself, then maybe they might try to dispatch someone to hurt Assange or his group. I don't know if they could keep the information under wraps. And as for Pakistani intelligence, well, they may harm Assange if they were directly affected by it, but I doubt they could take down his entire group.

Currently official Pakistan is more embarrassed at it's relationship with the United States, and the lousy one between its institutions than it is about its own people being the source of all that has been said. There seem to be two levels of reaction to the majority of these cables within Pakistan, a titillated laughter by those who cover these things as people from Hamid Mir, to Nusrat Javed say that it's good to see all those rumours we heard back then confirmed. And a stony silence of embarrassment from those at the top. As Najam Sethi said on his show, now the major heads of Pakistan will be gripped by silence when asked a question about the raltion between the major institutions of the country. People like Nawaz Sharif, President Asif Zardari, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani, And COAS Ashfaq Kayani will feel like clamming up. The gossip of their relationships has been blown wide open, not so much revealing to the world anything new, but confirming what everyone said. Between being called "The Real Housewives of Margalla Hills", to saying that "for once the Isloo rumour mill has a paper trail", the sad, sad quality of Pakistani television, where gossip is screened to the entire country, has been globalised, to gossip being blasted around the world as news.

The Pakistani who went above and beyond regular criticism of wikileaks as mere gossip, may have been Arif Rafiq of Pakistan Policy blog, who said:

I think Pakistanis would be more interested in reports with a higher classification that reveal what technologies and which human assets (civilian and military) provide the U.S. with sensitive information on Pakistan.

Strangely Julian Assange addresses this concern in his interview. Quoth Assange on western intelligence:

But there are also industries that just have more secrecy, so you must know there are things you want that you haven’t gotten.

That’s right. Within the intelligence industry is one example. They have a higher level of secrecy. And that’s also true of the banking industry.

Other industries that are extremely well paid, say Goldman Sachs, might have higher incentives not to lose their jobs.

So it’s only the obvious things that we want: Things concerning intelligence and war, and mass financial fraud. Because they affect so many people so severely.

And they’re harder leaks to get.

Intelligence particularly, because the penalties are so severe. Although very few people have been caught, it’s worth noting. The penalties may be severe, but nearly everyone gets away with it.

To keep people in control, you only need to make them scared. The CIA is not scared as an institution of people leaking. It’s scared that people will know that people are leaking and getting away with it. If that happens, the management loses control.

And WikiLeaks has the opposite strategy?

That’s right. It’s summed up by the phrase “courage is contagious.” If you demonstrate that individuals can leak something and go on to live a good life, it’s tremendously incentivizing to people.

Courage may be contagious in the west, Assange bhai, but when you've got multiple Islamist gangs scattered around Pakistan to carry out your bidding, you can potentially get a lot of inconvenient people removed from your way. But bahaduri is something Pakistanis will have to demonstrate again and again if they want their country improved.

Waiting on Disinflation

2010-12-02T09:41:00.005-05:00

A lot of people have been saying that the United States may be heading for deflation. The Republicans may have taken control of Congress, but I don`t see or hear much evidence for that yet. We will wait and see what happens in relation to that, but I have suspicion that by this time next year, maybe we`ll see some movement on that front.

Disinflation would be nice; dropping prices in North America and the pauperisation of the United States. The country may be the sick man of North America for the next ten year, harming global capitalism in the process.

Screw You GHQ

2010-12-01T08:38:00.013-05:00

You make me sick:

Kurram Elders, Hold Talks with TTP, Haqqani Commanders. [DAWN]

Here's the worst line:

Karim Mushtaq, TTP commander for Kurram and Orakzai agencies, who is associated with Fazal Saeed. Fazal Saeed carries a head money of Rs5 million.

Seriously you fucks? After all that the Taliban have done to one tribe in Kurram? After all the TTP has done to your own soldiers and officers? If the Baloch had done even a tenth of what the TTP did, they'ld be facing genocide.

You bring the fuckers from the Taliban to Islamabad, sit them the fuck down and force the tribesmen to negotiate with their killers? You people are so intellectually bankrupt it repulses me.

You drag yourself down to the level of a bully, then you force yourself on everybody, and then you humiliate them as well.

And at the end, the Taliban want passage through Kurram into Afghanistan, and will hold the Peshawar-Parachinar road hostage unless allowed otherwise. Screw them, and screw you. Those Taliban are traitors to the constitution YOU have sworn to uphold and protect, the citizens of Kurram abide by that constitution more than you, by preventing "miscreants" from using their territory to link up with other killers in Afghanistan. And the Afghans can be expected to fight their own battles on their own. We don't need our fanatics linking up with them.

I know you people were responsible for this, because your presence was the dog that didn't bark in that whole dawn article, the one entity no one even mentioned in the entire write-up.

Seriously. Screw you GHQ.

Go defend Pakistani citizens. This is no longer about Afghanistan. It's about Pakistan.

Postscript: As a citizen of Pakistan, I want to see the military establishment stick to it`s constitutional role. The military is an institution of Pakistan whose members swear an oath on the Pakistani constitution; a constitution I abide by as well. Military policy must be transferred into the hands of civilians.

Fire Kayani

2010-12-01T08:23:00.003-05:00

Seriously.

More cases of insubordination than I can count have come out. Screw him. There's no shortage of people to replace him.

Fire the man.

And tell his replacement; Pakistan and it's army should have one single point agenda in Afghanistan: Peace. And when that bastard phlegms and splutters, tell him, if he thinks the Americans will walk into Pakistan if Afghanistan turns peaceful, that a country of only 310 Million will invade to conquer/break-up a country, which's population is pushing 190 Million, tell him 1) The Pakistan Army cannot even conquer Pakistan 2) If he thinks that, he doesn't deserve his job. Fire him and replace him with the next guy, until you get a man who will comply with the Afghan "Peace" policy.

Religious Stupidity

2010-12-01T06:35:00.005-05:00

I've already mentioned how Ted Rall is an American cartoonist I like, cause he's actually someone who's taken a deep and long abiding interest in Central Asia, from the Russian border in the north right down to the Arabian Sea. Rall has the skill of looking past things like "national interest" and trying to grasp at the real things that effect the lives of ordinary people, whether in South Asia, Central Asia or North America.
Keeping with how he likes to cut through the BS, to try and reach the heart of the matter, Ted Rall recently took a tour of Afghanistan in August 2010. He stuck to North and Western Afghanistan, for the sole reason of that not only are these the places that there isn`t any fighting, and thus are simply under-reported despite an army of press crops being in-country. So Rall headed out to these territories and decided to cartoon and report whatever he saw. Between near run-ins with Taliban supporters (who technically "aren't" supposed to be in the north), to the only reference to Pakistanis as "suspected suicide bombers", to the unexpectedly high amount of development compared to the invasion of 2001, it was a surprise for Ted, for North Americans, and even some South Asians, who are supposed to be keeping an eye on the region.

But why I bring this up is stupidity. Specifically religious stupidity. I have a personal theory that most of the grief that gets caught in newspapers is the result of greed, incompetence, ignorance, a propensity for violence, stupidity and arrogance. Not much of a theory, but there it is. You don't hear much news from Scandinavian countries and Canada, (except maybe Iceland) maybe because their stock of arrogance, stupidity, greed, ignorance incompetence and violent tendencies are very low. The recent exception, Iceland, is the exception that proves the rule, where greed destroyed that countries economy.

Shahid Saeed sahab has vindicated my theory of stupidity being one of the founts of trouble in this world, with his post on religiously "inspired" maps. Aside from saying to Mr Saeed not to pick on girls from Sargodha, that post took me back to Ted Rall's take on the very annoying habit of finding the word "Allah"'s shape on weird things and strange places, and forwarding pictures of these to everybody. As Pakistanis, our misfortune is to have our more pious citizens forward emails of these photoes by the megabyte to our inboxes.This is Ted's take on our version of "Ooh Look! It's Jesus/the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast!". Because of that annoying spam, I'm grateful to Ted for channeling "my" pain ;-) in this cartoon. And if you're interested, you can read his entire 2010 Afghan adventure here. Enjoy.

Rest in Peace Leslie Nielsen - 1926-2010

2010-11-29T13:37:00.001-05:00

Rest In Peace Mr Nielsen.

Why Not?

2010-11-28T15:44:00.003-05:00

Wikileaks is going to release a new cache of documents so maybe the brouhaha over this new trove is what motivated Feica to draw this. He is after all, an ordinary civilian, who's watched his hair turn white and his body age whilst the rulers of our country, barely, learn any lessons from their mistakes. And to a civilian like him, this might as well be how the spooks and Invisible Soldiers operate.

China, Russia, Agree to Drop US Currency for Sino-Russian Trade

2010-11-26T10:10:00.002-05:00

China and Russia, have agreed to trade bilaterally with each other using their respective currencies, the Renmibi and the Rouble. The decision to drop the dollar will reduce demand for the US currency. It is interesting to note the way Russia and China are slowly and painfully becoming closer to each other, in relation to their interests with India and Pakistan respectively.

It is interesting to note what a world will look like where Russia and China are good allies with each other. However, rumours have indicated, (and Pakistanis should take this into account) that Russians fear that the Chinese may enter Siberia and demographically "take it over", especially if a push is given by global warming. It may seem like paranoid fear mongering, but it does indicate the mindset of Moscow viz a viz China. There is also the added history of the Sino Soviet split during the Cold War, although that may have had more to do with leadership of the Communist world rather than a full on Chinese and Russian nationalistic clash of interests.

Surprise, Surprise - A Nuanced and Sensitive NY Times take on Literature and Fundamentalism in Pakistan

2010-11-25T13:58:00.006-05:00

This gem of a blog entry was published in the "At War" blog of the New York Times. Funny how Pakistanis who are living their everyday lives, with only a little more than the average level of historic violence, are deemed "At War". Those people who are at war can be found in the underbelly of Karachi, or hidden in safehouses or safe-apartments throughout Punjab, Balochistan or Sindh. Maybe they're in the forest camps of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or FATA, or small herder groups in the rural hills of Balochistan. But I doubt the New York Times would pay the insurance rate for Adam Ellick to go to these places or people. Better to stick to authors and city bookstores.

Coming back to the blog entry, it finally manages to drop the pardes-returned saviour trope that, the renewal in Pakistani English fiction had acquired. This of course is in reference to the "Life's Too Short" literary magazine (it's wordpress blog here, and advertisement from Last Word bookstore). The highlighting of how popular Urdu fiction was one of many casualties in the geo-political embrace of General Zia-ul-Haq by the United States (along with city loads of dead Afghans) is also kindly mentioned.

The third comment is nice, in how the New York Times now deigns to grant agency (how I hate that annoying academic word) to ordinary Pakistanis. Our cutting off from our local Urdu/Punjabi culture is likely why our people went to seek recognition and affirmation abroad.

Oh well. The global cultural arbiter, the US establishment press, has deemed ordinary Pakistani's may now add to the world's culture. We thank them for their mercy. (/sarcasm)

Don't Recruit More Soldiers into that 650,000 Man Military - Do Recruit More Policemen And Pay Them Better

2010-11-24T10:01:00.005-05:00

As opposed to employing more soldiers. I don't know what the total number of policemen in Pakistan is, but I do remember it being quoted in Descent into Chaos as some ridiculously low number like 500,000.

We need more policemen; trained to first world standards. They are whats important.

If you want to increase defence spending, divert that money instead to police training. More Pakistanis get killed every year by other Pakistanis, as opposed to "Indians", Americans, or Zionists. Or Afghans for that matter.

Shahid Saeed Forever

2010-11-24T03:34:00.004-05:00

Reader and friend of the blog, Shahid Saeed, has written an excellent and beautiful piece on Baloch nationalism. Incorporating the rise of the Dr Allah Nazir Baloch, the recent banning of the Baloch Hal (whilst mentioning the open existence of extremist websites) and reitirating the case of the attempted murder of a recruiting Omani Colonel in Pakistan during the Dhofar rebellion, this is an excellent piece.
Shahid bhai also makes an appeal to the Baloch rebels to come in from the cold, whilst never letting up on the Pakistani authorities for being cruel to the Baloch. He reitirates that Pakistan cannot maintain an "iron grip" on Balochistan, whilst asking as Umair Javed did at the end of his piece on the Baloch, that the state of Pakistan will have to think "outside the box".

I'm glad talking on twitter and blogging have some impact. Maybe I'll come out of the cold, myself, one day.

Five Rupees Talks About Weapons Acquisition and I Respond

2010-11-23T06:59:00.007-05:00

Ahsan at Five Rupees saw this story about aerial weapons acquisitions from the Chinese that I had seen, but had decided not to blog on. Cause I felt that it would be too much to say. So Ahsan writes on it and I feel like I have to respond. This goes across a rare, two posts. Below is the latest, but likely final response I wrote, covering some aspects of air weapons acquisition, the Pakistan Military's (possibly changing) thought processes, and how that would effect threat perception, defence acquisition, and ultimately defence expenditure. Ahsan's first post is "Pakistan Buys More Stuff It Doesn't Need" and his second post "India is Not a Security Threat, but Thinking India is a Security Threat is a threat", to which this is a reply is below. But First..

Preferred Metaphor, of Five Rupees Blog, on how the Pakistani Military, Sees China

And Now My Reply to Ahsan Butt Sahab:

OK Ahsan, this is a long one. First off, aww, it wasn't my arguments that started off this post, instead some false-equivalency-wala-look-Pakistan-may-do-stupid-stuff-but-Indians-are-poorer-hahaha piece of econometrics abuse.

Lastly, thanks for also putting up this piece of explanation, why you tolerate a li'l old war monger like me:

We welcome all fascists on Rs.5, not just the ones we agree with.

Thank you for you forbearance Mistah Butt!

Now - back to the main topic: The acquisition of the JF-17's and Chinese equipment which prompted this post.
First of if you remember those military exercises being held earlier in the year (Azm-e-Nau III, I think) there was very little Indian crowing being done. Which with past Indian experience tallied to show that the Indians were worried. If they thought it was something that an action like "cold start" (a trial balloon if there ever was one) could handle, they're assessments showed otherwise. And no I am not saying here that Pakistan can defeat India. India can defeat Pakistan. BUT what Azm-e-Nau III (those JF's thrown in showed) was that Pakistan's corrupt drunken sailor-spending military caste has assembled serious equipment, that would require calling up the entire Indian military, and fighting like mad for 30 straight days before the conventional Pak military was destroyed, all the while climbing up the escalation ladder. That is not an Operation Iraqi Freedom/Desert Strom-like walk in the park. That is sending India's collective armour and air force into Pakistan's collective artillery and anti-air gun fire.

Then you send the Indian reserves into the wreckage of Pakistan's guns.

Bloodbath. For us.

So nobody who's serious on our side wants a war or even an arms race.

The JF's design plans by the PAF were agreed to back in the mid-nineties to wean the forces of Western equipment. Irregardless of snide comments about Chinese stuff falling apart (it won't if you pay the Chinese good money for it) the press release you even quoted basically talked about buying Chinese avionics (aka flight systems) to run the innards of the Pakistani jets. Irregardless of what you may think of the Chinese alliance that the Pakistani military has gotten into, when it comes to the JF's, things have reached a level beyond caring for India. It is the capacity to maintain Paki Air Force systems under conditions of a western embargo that are important, not a rivalry with India.

If you have noticed, it's not India that is planning on bombing us. And no I am not advocating a war with Uncle Sam. I repeat, India is irrelevant to the entire thinking of buying these jets; the reason behind buying these systems is the same "logic" that went with India deciding 40 years ago to start working on nuclear weapons, that a country of a certain "size" must have a certain level of weaponry available to it. That is just the reality of being a largish country on the Asian continent with a history of war.

In terms of large-scale strategic re-evaluation from GHQ as you said, there are a few ways around it. Force ideas into their heads via the media, just like words are being forced into our politicos mouths on the blasphemy issue. Admittedly defence doctrine in Pakistan is a lot more rigid issue than blasphemy laws, but you have to produce alternative ideas and have them lying around. Milton Friedman said it best:

"Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable."

Keep pumping real analysis into the air, and above all, keep the civilian/elected structure going for a few more rounds of democracy. Treat the Pakistan military as a Soviet structure and there may be ways of getting ideas into it.

You also said:

they're content to talk about small issues here and there, but the big questions are not being asked.

Yaar, you start small and work your way up. Can you imagine Zia's military having female fighter pilots? Admittedly a fcaetious-ish example, but again you start small and work your way into their minds. The six or so years of engagement with India created an atmosphere where war didn't break out after Lashkar-e-Jhangvi's attack on India. Plus we're on a schedule of weapons acquisition and technical skills development that was set a decade and a half ago.

This should be the most optimistic sign to you: General Kayani may just be the last veteran of the 1971 war in the Pakistan military. Army, Navy or Air Force. Generational change is about to take hold. It actually does seem like a bit of a tragedy that Kayani got an extension. If we were serious about keeping track of Pakistan's raw power politics, it would help to have an upadted list of all of Pakistan's Lieutenant Generals, followed maybe by a list of all of Pakistan's Major Generals. The current crop of red tabs are all middle class men who joined after the defeat of 1971, but their professional lives have been spent observing (overseeing?) the wars in Afghanistan, and it's fallout all across Pakistan. I don't think there is real space in their minds for India beyond a certain point.

On the second issue, my feeling is that the military will never be satisfied and always want more, more, more.

Not if the civilians are adamant enough. Or if it's made a street level issue the way debt relief (to the extent of showing up in front of the Press Club, even a small step) has become. Just keep banging at that "excessive defence spending" drum, mate.

That is the very point of arms races

I don't think we're in an arms race, we have the nukes, we have enough conventional weaponry to make India (God forbid, God forbid) pay in blood for every inch they take.

but as the GDP graph shows, one side is destined to lose this race (or has already done so).

We are not in an arms race. India doesn't even acknowledge our weapons acquisitions from China; they either don't feel threatened, or they know what I'm saying that this is more about Pakistan switching suppliers than it is about "catching up" with India.

And the last five major points I wanted to grasp with you are these:

1) suitable long-term strategy would be to rely on Pakistan's not-inconsiderable nuclear arsenal as a suitable (minimum) deterrent

This is the only serious reference I will make to nukes. We DO NOT have to copy what the Soviets did during the Cold War and commit ourselves to building an ever climbing number of nukes (cause we sure as hell ain't no continent spanning super-empire). All we need are either 200 to finish off India, or (God, Allah, Ra, Yahweh, Buddha, Ahura Mazda, Zeus, Bhaghwan Help Us) 400 to finish off the United States. What either of them would need is 20, tops 30 to finish us off. So yeah. Pick a number (200 or 400 from some RAND study from the '60's) and we can just stick to that number indefinitely. *gulp*.

2) unilaterally exit an arms race with India

We've practically done that.

3) in its novelty to GHQ types

Yaar, their not that dumb. Somebody told me they "monitor" blogs. So if you can get the folks on Pakistaniat.com to parrot the next line you're golden.

4) "unilateral exiting from the South Asian arms race and contentment with a nuclear deterrent"

Keep banging at it boss.

5) If we don't keep spending on toys, we will have less influence in Afghanistan and fewer cards to play in Kashmir

We don't need "toys" to tangle in Kashmir or Afghanistan. We need an unending supply of men, who are ready to die, and the haraami-pan to cultivate them and send them to their deaths. The supply of both looks inexhaustible right now.

Finally, I put in a plea for acquisition or domestic production of heavy lift helicopters. The floods, the earthquake, and last years IDP crisis/mountain fighting demonstrates, that this is a piece of military kit that would really, really help, cause we certainly need more of them.

Good night.

TLW

TheseLongWars.Blogspot.Com

The Madmen Are Amongst Us - And Getting Shot and Blown Up for Your Troubles - II

2010-11-21T04:40:00.006-05:00

An infusion of real political courage in Pakistan is needed. One where people in Pakistan can publically identify that the real local enemy is the district strongman (in Karachi's case, the multiple ethnically linked mafias, whose tendrils at one point end, and those of the MQM & ANP begin), that the national enemy is an overweaning military that may control the present, but has no right to control the future. And internationally, "friends" which perpetuate these local authoritarians in Pakistan, such as the Saudis, the US and China.

In observance of the multiple long wars of Karachi, ethnic, institutional, crminal-based, ethno-linguistic, ethno-political, ethno-criminal, sectarian and a few others I may have missed, I present Cyril Almeida's take on the break up of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi into multiple factions, each with a separate extremist agenda. Some people say that "Lashkar-e-Jhangvi" is who is blamed when a sectarian act of terror happens, if a member of Sipah-e-Sahaba decides to act on their hate filled words. To me, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is the answer to the question "What is Pakistan's KKK?". Here is Mr Cyril Almeida sahab:

New Strands of Militancy Descend on Karachi

Anyway, the second post I would like to re-plug here, is Mr Nadeem Farooq Paracha's analysis of Pakistan's conspiracy minded (or blame the Indians/Jews) related mindset. This (prevalently) bourgeois attitude is seen as cowardly, as it doesn't acknowledge the bullying state that we live in, and the violence it engenders amongst its own citizens to keep it's own hold on the levers of ultimate power. Anyway, he does mention the states role in this national confusion towards the end, but reinforces throughout, the problem of people allowing terror (and I use it in it's old sense, of simply being scared) to rule who they will criticise, and who they won't. Basically the problem of getting shot or blown up for your troubles.

Here is Mr Nadeem Farooq Paracha's "Manly Cowards".

Finally, I would like to add that after two more Karachi related posts, I'll put up one mega-post on a certain anti-secrecy website. No not the obvious one. One related to it through adversarial relations.

If You Bomb Quetta, They'll Move To Karachi - By The Time You're Bombing Karachi, It's World War III

2010-11-21T04:10:00.006-05:00

The Afghan Taliban
High Command,
Moves From FATA
Into Balochistan.

So the US in Afghanistan can feel it`s penis shrinking and wants to bomb Quetta in Pakistan.

But, surprise, surprise, the government of Pakistan declines to fluff Uncle Sam, and says
"No. Not this far up, you Rand".

Who would expect the abused mistress, that is the Government of Pakistan, to stand up at this?

The Beginnings of the US-Pak Relationship in the 1950's: Source (An Amateurish Graphic Design Project)

Is the point of this to drive the Pakistani people crazier than they are already becoming? Beyond that, we are the ones who will have to kill the religious freaks.

"70 percent of Pakistan is run by 10 districts of Punjab. 5 of them give you your officer corps and the other 5 your higher bureaucracy"

2010-11-17T07:58:00.004-05:00

'The army districts: Attock, Pindi, Chakwal, Jhelum, Mianwali. The Bureaucracy districts: Lahore, Sialkot, Gujranwala, Sargodha, Gujrat'

Apologies to Umair Javed of Recycled Thought, but the title post is taken from that excellent observation he posted from an acquaintance of his. The naming of those districts above, is the latter part of that observation (the title being the former). It's a nice apocryphal observation I don't completely agree with, but it is as good a place as any in our rumour filled land to begin proving or debunking the idea that the Grand Trunk Road corridor from Lahore to Islamabad (or as I call it, the "Power Corridor") ultimately decides the fate of Pakistani politics.

For the sake of full disclosure, I will admit I was raised all my life in Karachi.

The Tragedy of the Less Exploitable Political Martyrs

2010-11-17T06:40:00.007-05:00

I don't know what political party Umair Javed, of Recycled Thoughts fame belongs to (maybe the People's Rights Movement?) but this was an awesome statement:

The tragedy, however, is that we only have 2 martyrs compared to a few hundred for the PPP and a few thousand for the Army.

It shows the kind of demi-religious reverence Pakistanis kind off hold for those who die in the way of a cause whether it be democratic/social (the PPP) or nationalistic (the Army). All one has to do is witness the public display of emotion over remembrances of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto or Benazir's death. Or the public way the Pakistan military's Inter Services Public Relations embraces all those who die serving in the army, in our current conflicts.

This particular statement might have been in reference to Hasan Nasir, a progressive, and some time Communist, who`s death anniversary just passed by on November 13th. The name rang a bell because Tariq Ali referenced that name once in the Pakistan part of his book "Street Fighting Years". This statement was made in reference to a reposted book review Pakistaniat.com did on a book called Hasan Nasir Ki Shahadat (The Martyrdom of Hasan Nasir). Fahad Desmukh found these very nice PTV tribute programs, on the occasion of Mr Hasan Nasir's death anniversary. If you like a bit of Faiz's poetry and can understand Urdu/Hindi, have a watch. Cutely enough, they're posted by someone called communistpak.