Tunisia & Pakistan: Ben-Ali, Zardari & Kayani

I remember the time when President Zain Al Abidine Ben Ali seized power in Tunisia in 1987. I was 15, a young political junkie attending an Arabic school. A Lebanese friend came to me and said his countrymen and women in the south, where Lebanese Shia villages abound, flocked to the Tunisian embassy in Beirut because they were impressed by the name of the new Tunisian president which resembles the name of one of the key historical Shia Muslim figures.

Of course, religious myths had not place in the mind of the new Tunisian strongman. Tunisia is a Muslim country but staunchly non-religious at government level, with an educated population, and known more for its artists and musicians, books and world-class touristic resorts than anything else.

Since its independence in 1956, it was ruled by El Habib Bou Rgeiba, a Tunisian nationalist who turned his country into one of the most modernist Arab nations. In his early years, Iraq's Saddam Hussain was impressed by Bou Rgeiba's reforms and implemented some of them, turning Iraq into a powerhouse for education and learning before the war with Iran destroyed everything.

President Ben-Ali took charge from an ailing Bou Rgeiba in 1987 and ruled ever since.

While culture, theaters, education, sports and arts were encouraged, political dissent was not tolerated.  China, for example, has allowed the young Chinese many avenues to release their energy through the Internet and social networking, online and offline, with supervision when necessary. No such room in Tunisia. The ability to adapt to change while protecting national interest is essential.  President Ben-Ali was protecting Tunisian stability but failed to adapt to a new economy and society. People can live with a strong government as long as they are busy in making and spending money, which is the core of a healthy economy. Overlooking this dynamic was a mistake that President Ben Ali has paid for yesterday, when he had to escape the country after weeks of demonstrations against corruption and inflation.

An army officer and a former head of Tunisian military intelligence and later in charge of external intelligence, President Ben-Ali was forced out by his own military because of the way he handled protesters, killing around 90 protesters and injuring close to one thousand. The protesters were only against the rise in essential food items and general corruption of the ruling elite.

The military sealed Tunisia's airspace and effectively secured all borders. Some relatives of Sarah Trabolsi, the second wife of the president, were arrested by the military as they tried to board a plane out of the country.

The military did not approve of President Ben-Ali's high-handedness and eased the president out. The people have welcomed the military intervention, and emergency rule is in effect now in the country. The new temporary president Mohamad El Ghanouchi has called on "all sons and daughters of Tunis ... to show national spirit and unity and help our nation pass this difficult stage."

LESSONS FOR PAKISTAN

It is just a guess but two people must be watching the Tunisian news closely: President Asif Ali Zardari and Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

President Ben-Ali's departure is bad news for our president. It shows that such departures are possible after all and no amount of 'revenge democracy' ['democracy is the best revenge' is one of Mr. Zardari's best catchphrases] can prevent such an ending. 

The Pakistani ruling elite is not just incompetent. It is ineffective, conducts uncivilized politics, and has almost no vision for the country's past, present or future. What is worse is that the Pakistani ruling elite will not allow any mechanism for new Pakistani faces or talents to emerge. This stagnation is what led to President Ben-Ali's escape.

You can add one more charge in the Pakistani case that does not exist in the Tunisian example: Pakistani politics have splintered along linguistic lines, dividing Pakistanis and enticing them to internal warfare. The country's constitution does not allow our parties to do this but there is no one to stop them.

As for Gen. Kayani, his and his colleagues' worry is simple. They do not want to find themselves in a situation where the military intervenes again in a traditional way and clean the mess, like the Tunisians have done. Pakistan needs to create viable state institutions to run the country. The military realizes the importance of this to avoid a meltdown.  But such a meltdown is almost knocking at Pakistan's door. In the face of massive failures of the Pakistani political elite, the military knows it will have to step in eventually.

It is not hard to figure this out. But the million-dollar question is: What to do after an intervention. Traditional-style coups, where the army chief steps in and takes charge, like Pervez Musharraf had done, can no longer work. Whoever is in charge after a meltdown, tough decisions will have to be made to restyle the political system by removing crippling bottlenecks in the constitution and laws and in a manner that would stop political parties from becoming personal and family fiefdoms and allow for a healthy and civilize political growth and practice.

Like Tunisia, Pakistan will have to find indigenous solutions. Lectures and recipes from Washington and London won't help. The Tunisians have clear red lines in this regard. But not in Pakistan, which is a contributing factor to constant instability.

Processions, Religious And Political, To Be Shifted To City Outskirts

Ban gatherings and processions within cities and designate special areas for them outside major population areas.

I wrote this comment in reply to a discussion started on Internet group PressPakistan.

This is a healthy and overdue debate. And it is not limited to Muharram processions but includes other religious events, including Eid Milad al Nabi and other events.

Remember: this is not a religious issue but an issue of public order. Some of our fellow citizens and brothers and sisters will try to give this a religious color. This must not be permitted. Apart from Pakistan, no other Arab or Muslim country allows the kind of public order disturbances in the name of political and religious processions and rallies the way we do in Pakistan.

Laws need to be amended to prohibit any political or religious activity in public places where it could create inconvenience to the larger population.

Special areas should be designated on the outskirts of major cities and towns where political parties and religious groups can hold their events round the year without causing a public order problem for the government and the rest of the citizens.

These special-designated areas can be secured, organized and equipped to handle large crowds in an orderly way. Special facilities can be provided to help local and international media cover events right from the location.

Exceptions to the rule should be limited to events inside cities that are conducted inside halls and buildings with proper and ample parking arrangements. And with guarantees the gathering will not spill to the streets.

Most of our political and religious groups won't accept this. But a strong federal government can and should enforce this measure for larger public good.

This measure can help eliminate some of the factors that destabilize the domestic environment in the country.

A group of eminent, non-partisan Pakistanis have authored a detailed report in this regard which will be presented to the incumbent government sometime in early 2011. It is part of a larger effort to propose changes to our laws to strengthen the State and make it more effective.

Sindh Is Not A Card, Mr. Zardari

A large Sindhi cap is permanently displayed at Ayub Park, Rawalpindi.

There is a clear stench of deceit in Sindh Culture Day, being celebrated across Pakistan's Sindh province tomorrow. It has nothing to do with Sindh or with culture. In all likelihood, it's President Asif Ali Zardari's latest trick to blackmail his political opponents.

After all, what's the point in political groups taking out rallies waving the Sindhi cap and dress?

Sindh's culture and language are thriving like never before. They are not under threat of any kind. Sindhi language, one of Pakistan's oldest, is growing with Internet websites, newspapers, books, and television stations. All Pakistanis identify with the culture and language of Sindh. It's our culture and language. And we all own it and swoon to the great Sufi tunes of legendaries such as Abida Parveen and Allan Faqir, and the great words of Abdulatif Bhitai and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, the great poet and Sufi saint of Sindh.

Pakistan's modern art, music, television and theater are greatly indebted to and enriched by the contributions of Pakistani Sindhis.



A young girl in a camp for flood victims near Hyderabad

 Instead of galvanizing the people on language, Mr. Zardari could have issued a call to the people in Sindh and across Pakistan to rise again for the victims of floods who are still homeless, and a large number of them are in Sindh. In fact, it is Mr. Zardari's government that turned these poor flood victims, especially in Sindh, into beggars, queuing by the thousands at government-run camps and offices for help and often getting beaten up by police for protesting government's corruption and ineptitude.

Mr. Zardari, who owns lavish real estate in the United States, France, UAE and the UK, is not concerned about them. He is worried about his seat of power and is looking for ways to survive.

What Mr. Zardari is trying to do is to create conditions to use the Sindh Card. Which means: if my government is toppled in any way, I will whip up Pakistan's Sindhis into demanding separation from Pakistan.

This threat is not new. A Zardari aide and interior minister in Sindh's provincial government, Zulfiqar Mirza, bluntly admitted he and his boss were contemplating this after the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Interestingly, late Mrs. Bhutto never thought of this even after the execution of late Prime Minister Z. A. Bhutto. Also, I am not sure who gave Mr. Zardari or the PPPP the right to represent Pakistani citizens who are Sindhis [or who gave the same rights to MQM, ANP, etc. to represent other languages?].

Mr. Zardari has spent three years in power and has done nothing for his hometown, Nawabshah, or his wife's hometown, Larkana, or for Sindh. When he's out of power, he and his supporters will conveniently blame Islamabad, the federation, the so-called Establishment, or the alleged Punjabi-dominated bureaucracy of neglecting his home province.

People of Sindh are patriotic Pakistanis. They are also not fools.

Not only did Mr. Zardari not do anything for his home province, he didn't even do anything for Taslim Solangi. A pregnant 17-year-old Taslim was thrown to hungry dogs by corrupt landlords in rural Sindh in 2008. Before she was ripped apart by dogs, she was forced to prematurely deliver her 8-month-old baby who was immediately thrown into a river. Her family begged for justice and never received it.

Taslim Solangi, thrown to hungry dogs

President Zardari won't help the victims of  floods, won't give justice to Taslim Solangi, but is ready to use Sindh to save his presidency.

Sindh is not a card, Mr. President. Sindh is Pakistan. Please don't poison the culture of Sindh by linking it to your politics.

Unfortunately, none of the many intellectuals in Sindh stepped forward and protested President Zardari's desperate attempts to politicize our Sindhi culture. That's because they know they will be harassed by Mr. Zardari's party that currently rules the country.

It is time that we stopped anyone in the future using language for politics and to divide Pakistanis in the name of democracy.

The federal Pakistani government should seize our languages from these political parties and own them by itself. It should not let two-bit politicians use language for politics and divide Pakistanis along linguistic lines. Parties such as PPPP, ANP, MQM, PMLN and others have no right to self-appoint themselves as representatives and owners of entire groups of Pakistanis. The federal government should pass legislation to stop political parties from becoming linguistic parties. Democracy and political parties should not become tools for linguistic divisions. And this was certainly not the intent of the writers of our constitution.

We should have Sindh culture day and other culture days every year. But they should be organized by the federal government and celebrated nationally. Why should Sindh culture day be celebrated in Sindh only?

We need a federal government that can correct these abnormalities in Pakistani democracy.

APML: Chances And Intrigues

The pro-US government of President Asif Ali Zardari suspects its enemies are pushing the disparate factions of Pakistan Muslim League, or PML, to unite in order to create a force that could challenge Mr. Zardari's PPPP, or Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians.

Two recent moves have caught the media attention: The effort to create All Pakistan Muslim League [APML] by veteran politician Pir Pagara. And the effort to create APML by former president Pervez Musharraf in London.

The unification effort led by Pir Pagara is a 50-50 gamble at this stage. The personality clashes and conflicts of interest between the heads of various factions of PML are so deep and suspicions run so high that it can't work except in one condition: if the military approaches each one of them to unite them the way PMLQ was created under Mr. Musharraf eight years ago. Although there are signs the military is interested in seeing this government go, as most Pakistanis do, there is no chance that Gen. Kayani will participate in any effort to destabilize the government. So the PML uniters are pretty much on their own for the time being.

As for Mr. Musharraf's bid, he is benefiting from a sense of desperation and confusion that engulfs Pakistan because of the failures of politicians. His policy prescriptions are also outdated, and even have damaged vital Pakistani interests. He wants to take 'the war on terror to the end' when even the Zardari government and the Pakistani military are trying to tell the Americans to end military operations and come instead to the reconciliation table with the Afghan Taliban.

Mr. Musharraf's lines that he will crush any anti-Pakistan voices and keep Pakistan first are great, but there is ample evidence from his foreign policy that he kept his personal interests before the Pakistani interest on crucial occasions. The biggest exampe is the deal he entered with the United States to maneuver PPPP into power to serve US interests in exchange for helping him remain at the helm until 2013.

His backchannel diplomacy on Kashmir with India between 2004 and 2007 appeared to be driven more by his desire to emerge as an international man of peace and to appease Washington and New Delhi. During this period, he made unnecessary concessions to India without getting anything in return.

Getting some fans in Pakistan is not a big deal. Even Zardari has diehard fans. Mr. Msuharraf's latest political act has a nuisance value but is not expected to create any ripples in Pakistani politics.

One way Mr. Musharraf can have an impact is if the military supports his new bid for power. Interestingly, his policies on Kashmir, Afghanistan and US are highly unpopular within the military rank and file, despite the fact that his first three years 1999-2002 are remembered as ideal in terms of governance.

Mr. Musharraf does retain a nuisance value for the short term. But for the long term, there is no evidence he is the harbinger of major change.

32 Dead Pakistani Schoolchildren Tell You This System Has Failed

This is a story of a cruel, ruthless and heartless Pakistani system that has failed. And no elections any number of times can save it without change.

A mother in northern Pakistan jumped into a river where her five underage kids drowned when the management of a privately-run school sent them off in a crammed bus driven by the school’s gatekeeper, or chowkidar, who drove it off a cliff.

Every once in a while comes a news story that makes your heart stop. And this is one of them.

Pakistan's politicians can spend $11 million on a statue for a dead politician but have no money to spare for public universities paralyzed by lack of funds.

Forget democracy. Our politicians, who run our federal and provincial governments, can't enforce discipline on schools, mostly run like supermarkets by the female relatives of politicians, retired military officers and businessmen.

In the sad story of the mother, from Garhi Dupatta in northern Pakistan, the school management saw it fit to cram 35 to 38 kids in a speeding mini-bus on mountain slopes. The chowkidar was on his cell phone when he plunged into a ravine Tuesday. He and four children survived while 32 precious little lives couldn't make it.

Today there are some 40 families or more in one small area called Garhi Dupatta, probably many of them neighbors, mourning dead children because of a criminally negligent school. Would the owners of that school put their own children on that overcrowded mini-bus?

More importantly, would our civil administrators punish the owners of that school? In China, two owners of a company that made tainted milk powder that killed several Chinese babies were executed without mercy last year after a trial. Will we see the owners of that private Pakistani school even questioned for the life-threatening choices they made for the school kids? Not likely.

Eight months ago, eight school children were run over by a train because the driver of their van decided to take a short cut over a railway line. Did anyone ask school owners whether they supervised the transporters? Did anyone question the area's education officials if they enforced safety guidelines for school buses? Did anyone ask the railway officials if they have safe crossings for school buses?

In fact, the federal railway minister, from ANP, felt nothing wrong in introducing a little bit of humor into the tragedy when he publicly said the train didn't come after the van driver on the street. This was his cute way of absolving his ministry of any responsibility.

Like everything else, school owners have become another money-driven cartel in the country. When time comes for change, all of these cartels that hide behind the facade of democracy will have to be demolished.

Our elite politicians, who consider government to be their class right, have their kids studying in US and UK while the children of ordinary Pakistanis die miserable deaths under different pretexts.

This is why a grand-scale, civil-society-led, and military-backed intervention to scrap a failed Pakistani political system will become necessary, eventually, when the time comes.

And when that time arrives, we will want our military to take a strategic decision to snatch power from the feudal democrats and usher in change with the help of talented and educated Pakistanis from the lower and middle classes.

An Abduction Blamed On Pakistani Spooks

Some government-linked politicians have been whispering to the media that ISI and MI did it because they were enraged at Mr. Cheema's coverage of the 'missing persons' issue. That might be, but what about the government avenging Mr. Cheema's groundbreaking story on how President Zardari and his aides hired Turkish female 'escorts' and failed to pay them their dues resulting in a court case in Turkey?

Click here to continue reading

Change Of System In Pakistan

It really has come to this. Newspaper columnists are crying for political change. Television commentators are demanding change. And Pakistan's younger generation, more than half of the nation's population, is emerging as the real guardian of Pakistani interest and represents a new political thought. It is demanding a complete change in Pakistan's failed political system. In fact, as this video by a Pakistani rock band Entity Paradigm show, young Pakistnis want a revolution. They are sick of an inept political elite that has been imposed on Pakistan through American and British machinations. Take a glimpse into tomorrow's Pakistan here.

How Military Nurseries Produced Pakistan’s ‘Democratic Warriors’

Military-led governments in Pakistan have failed in creating long term stability and fostering national identity, like the ruling party did in China. This failure is well known. But Pakistan’s destructive politics can’t end without understanding another major failure: How Pakistan’s democratic elite is really not democratic at all.

Forget about building a great country and a healthy and prosperous people, Pakistan’s political elite divides Pakistanis by language, sect and violent politics because it has nothing else to offer in exchange for getting elected. And with the new amendments to the Pakistani constitution, which strengthen family-run dictatorships within parties, there is hardly any chance that the able and the willing among 170 million Pakistanis will ever get a chance to lead their homeland.

In 2008, these politicians got themselves elected in the name of democracy. But even that credential is questionable.

Retired Lieutenant General Faiz Ali Chishti, who played a major role during the military-led government of former President Gen. Zia-ul-Haq between 1977 and 1988, gave an interesting insight earlier this week in Lahore into the relationship between failed politicians and military coups.

His remarks are important because he said several things that are new and must be noted.

FAKE DEMOCRATIC WARRIORS

Mr. Chishti said that “Several (democratic) champions became leaders while sitting in the laps of army generals.” He listed them as follows:

1. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan [Benefactor: Field Marshal Ayub Khan].

2. Nawaz Sharif, former Prime Minister of Pakistan [Benefactor: Gen. Zia-ul-Haq]

3. Altaf Hussain, the exiled British-Pakistani leader of MQM [Benefactors: Gen. Zia-ul-Haq and Gen. Pervez Musharraf]

4. Jamaat Islami [Benefactors: Gen. Zia-ul-Haq and Gen. Pervez Musharraf]

The irony is that all of them claim that Pakistan’s military should not be involved in major internal decisions when necessary but they never explained why they accepted military help in ascending to power in the first place. Interestingly, despite being discredited as failed and inept, these politicians keep getting second and third chances thanks to the military’s failure to introduce real reforms after every coup. [Also thanks to frequent US and British meddling in our politics for their own objectives. Unfortunately, the Pakistani military has so far been unable to prevent it and, under Musharraf, even took it to new heights!]

Moreover, Pakistani military has maintained an unwritten alliance with this failed political elite, always handing power back to it after every intervention without any attempt to open doors to middle and lower-class Pakistanis to participate in running their country, especially when they have proven to be more creative in taking Pakistan forward in many areas.

One example is Gen. Musharraf, who came to power with a promise to inject new faces into a stagnant system. Eight years later, he not only failed to do that but ended up restoring some of the worst failed politicians back to power as his replacement. The only credible new political face from the late Musharraf period is Member of National Assembly Marvi Memon. To be fair to her, she was a late entrant who proved her mettle on her own in the two and half years since Musharraf’s departure. With her patriotic and inclusive views, a large segment of Pakistan’s younger generation identify with her. But she stands no chance of moving up in a system designed to keep people like her from exercising real power.

THE LOOPHOLE

Mr. Chishti pointed out another irony that exposes the duplicity of the present political elite in Pakistan. An independent Election Commission is what stops military interventionists from legitimizing their rule. So if someone wants to stop future military interventions being endorsed by the country’s courts and parliaments, creating such an independent election commission is the first step. But strangely, despite all the noise over the recent constitutional amendments, called the 18th Amendment, none of the political parties pushed for an independent election commission. The reason is that an independent election commission would also enforce democracy within the parties, challenging lifetime party presidents and ‘chairpersons’.

COUP DECISION INSTITUTIONAL

He said the decision to impose military rule, or Martial Law, is never a personal decision of one man but a collective one of the Army High Command and is a result of full spectrum assessment of the state of the nation.

WHY MILITARY INTERVENES

Since a military coup is not a one-man-show and hence there is no question of personal ambition, then the right question to ask, says Mr. Chishti, is ‘Why the military intervenes?’ He suggests that tackling the reasons would reduce the possibility of such interventions.

Wise words. But they are falling on deaf ears. The mother of all ironies is that when Pakistan Army has a chief who has gone out of his way to support democracy, and even rescued it on a couple of recent occasions, Pakistan’s democratic warriors are leading the country to a grand national failure of epic proportions with their failure to perform.

Fighting Pakistan Through SMS Messages

Two reports say a lot about India's intentions for peace with Pakistan.

One is a campaign launched by the Indian government to discourage Indian citizens from calling their friends and acquaintances in Pakistan. If you are an Indian and you call Pakistan using your cellphone, you will receive a text message from your service provider that says:

"You just made a call to ISD Code 0092 (Pakistan’s international dialing code). We urge you to exercise caution while calling unknown numbers and sharing personal details as it can be misused."

[See the report Anti-Pakistan SMS campaign launched in India.]

There is more.  Earlier this month, Afghan resistance groups attacked and killed several Indian civilian and military officers in Kabul.  A few hours later, five Pakistani construction workers were brutally murdered near Kandahar.  No awards for guessing who was behind it. Not India of course which is only investing a billion dollars in Afghan resconstruction for no reason except charity and has no other kind of presence on Afghan soil.

Too bad that a Pakistani newspaper, the Daily Mail, came out with a fairly credible evidence of the Indian fingerprints in the Pakistanis' murder: see RAW’s Chhota Rajan goons kill 5 Pakistani workers in Kandahar .

The American and British media -- what I call the Am-Brit media -- routinely portrays India as a country striving for peace and whose good intentions are thwarted by Pakistan.  The reality is that way before the Mumbai attacks and any alleged Pakistani connection to them, Indian military intelligence officers burned alive 59 Pakistanis aboard a so-called friendship train who believed official propaganda and decided to visit India to further peace. This happened in 2006.  New Delhi accused ISI of masterminding the attacks to sabotage peace. Today, a group of Hindu terrorists and serving Indian military officers are on trial in the case.

I won't talk about 1971 and how India launched a one-sided unprovoked invasion of East Pakistan exploiting a domestic post-election crisis.

And now, when sanity appears to be gradually returning to Washington, where warmongers have taken a backseat to those who can see a looming defeat in Afghanistan, Indians will do anything now to perpectuate war in Afghanistan and try to convicne Washington and London to stay the course.

All of this brings into question the theory that peace tops Indian strategy in the region.

India and Israel Against Islamic Terror: Old Nations, New Leaders
In Bad Faith?: British Charity and Hindu Extremism
Hinduism and terror.(Opinion): An article from: First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life

This Hindu Terrorist Is A Wanted Man In Pakistan

India's most famous actor is a closet Hindu Taliban, standing here with terrorist Thackeray

Imagine senior military officers heeding a call to form suicide squads to attack followers of a different faith. No, not Pakistan. It is India. A Hindu extremist named Bal Thackeray made the call. At least two organizations founded and managed by retired Indian Army officers namely Lieutenant Colonel Jayant Rao Chitale and Lieutenant General P.N. Hoon (former commander-in-chief of the Western Command), answered Bal Thackeray's call to set up the suicide squads in India. Lieutenant General Hoon claimed, Thackeray instructed him to set up the training camps. Another Balaji follower is Indian Army's serving Lieutenant Colonel Srikanth Prasad Prohit, wanted by Pakistan for his complicity in torching the Samjhota Express which took a toll of 59 Pakistani passengers.

Click here to read more.

A Pakistani Elder's Statement - Pakistan Destined To Defeat India - Riles Indians

The Nation newspaper of Pakistan reported that its editor in chief Mr. Majeed Nizami, who also heads the Foundation for Pakistan's Ideology, accused India in a story published recently that it "is bent upon destroying Pakistan." 

Mr. Nizami then went on to make a dire warning cloaked in satire. "If India," he said, "did not refrain from committing aggression against us, then Pakistan is destined to defeat India because our horses in the form of atomic bombs and missiles are far better than Indian ‘donkeys’."

Mr. Nizami was apparently making a refernce in jest to several incidents recently where Indian missile tests flopped, nuclear security was breached, and a story where foreign experts charged that the famed Indian nuclear tests of 1998 were not as successful as portrayed by New Delhi.

This statement riled some Indians so much that it unleashed a flurry of emails from Indians to Pakistani newspapers and news Web sites accusing Mr. Nizami of promoting hatred against India.

The Indians were so angry they apparently picked up every Pakistani newspaper columnist and sent them emails. I received one of them in my capacity as a columnist for The News. 

I had not read the original statement by Mr. Nizamy but judging by Indian reactions I thought Mr. Nizami might have really gone hard this time on the Indians.

But I was disappointed. My first reaction after reading him was that his statement is peanuts compared to the anti-Pakistan drivel that virtually fills the Indian airwaves and newsprint. There isn't anyone in Pakistan who can match the Indian hatemongering against Pakistan.

Mr. Nizami's statement was reasonable and conditional on Indian actions. I can list over 20 references quoting Indian public figures, political leaders, and religious leaders who've made statements that encourage extreme hatred toward Pakistan and Pakistanis. I can't recall a single incident in Pakistan where a Pakistani Hindu was attacked or killed because of his or her religion. In India, 2100 Indians were killed because they were Muslims. And this happened in the 21st century, not in the 1920s.

Serving Indian military officers joined Hindu terrorists to burn 50 Pakistanis alive in 2006. India not only has the world's biggest concentration of poverty and health issues, it also has the biggest concentration of religious nutcases, disgusting religious practices, and outright hatemongering against followers of other religions, especially Christians and Muslims.

For every case of an old Saudi man marrying a 15-year-old girl, there are at least a hundred similar cases in India, not to mention the unique tradition of burying newborn girls alive as a custom across many Indian villages and towns. And this happens today, not a century ago.

All of this doesn't come to the surface very often because the American and British media is biased in favor of India for political and strategic reasons. Otherwise, India's ugly face is worse than anything we've seen anywhere else.

EXCLUSIVE: This Is How US Agents Sneak Into Pakistan

  

See The Video Here

For a few hundred dollars, low-paid border guards are allowing entry into Pakistan to spies and agents of multiple foreign intelligence agencies operating in Afghanistan. In this story and video, see how a US lady entered Pakistan through Torkham on Saturday, Mar. 13, 2010, without visa and without the knowledge of Pakistani intelligence officers posted there. This happens in a country that faces terrorism exported by both US-controlled Afghanistan and its Indian ally.

BY SYED FAWAD ALI SHAH

Saturday, 13 March 2010.

WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

TORKHAM, Pakistan—Rampant corruption and a weak Pakistani state are helping the entry into Pakistan of spies and terrorists from multiple foreign intelligence agencies operating in Afghanistan. Almost all terror in Pakistan is coming from Afghanistan.

This American woman tried to sneak into Pakistan through Torkham on Afghan border today, Saturday, Mar. 13, 2010, around early afternoon. She was wearing an Afghan woman’s burqa and apparently spoke local dialects. She would have successfully crossed into Pakistan safely hidden among a group of Afghan women but something about her demeanor raised the suspicion of a Pakistani border guard.

However, the border guards, known as Khasadars, made sure that Pakistani intelligence officers posted in the area are not told about this arrest. Torkham is considered a hot station within Kasadar tribal force circles. With salaries that go less than PKR 10,000 per month [less than US$ 130], major checkpoints such as Torkham provide an extra source of income for the Khasadars through bribes from travelers.

The guards kept the woman in a room for about thirty minutes and then let her enter Pakistan in her burqa. She paid the Khasadar guards a handsome amount of money as bribe. According a source in the Khasadar Force who witnessed the whole thing, the woman didn’t panic. She appeared composed and familiar with the ways of the border guards. She knew what to do in such a situation.

Thanks to my contacts in the border force, I was able to make a cell phone video of her passport while the Khasadar chief at the checkpoint talked to her.

Her name on the passport was Zohra Rehmati, which makes her an American from either Iranian or Tajik-Afghan extract.

Over the past four years, a large number of US agents have entered Pakistan through Afghanistan. Several have been arrested in different parts of the country disguised  as Afghan men, complete with beards and Turbans and fluent in Pashto, Dari and Urdu. Unfortunately, much of this covert American activity was sanctioned first by the Musharraf government and now by the pro-US Zardari-Haqqani combine in the incumbent government.

Ms. Rehmati, if that is her real name, may or may not be a CIA operative, or one of its private contractors associated with either DynCorp or Xe International.  But such lax security in a country that is a target of terrorism, DynCorp managed to create quite a covert network in Pakistan before being busted by Pakistani security last year. DynCorp remains in Pakistan, thanks to backing from both the US Embassy in Islamabad and the pro-US government, despite repeated attempts by the country’s security officials to force the US defense contractor to wrap up its operations here.  Xe International, formerly known as Blackwater, also operated in Pakistan until 2005 before being moved to Afghanistan, according to an earlier report in the New York Times. But going by the number of incidents in Pakistan over the past couple of years where US private agents were seen operating in major Pakistani cities, it is safe to say that both contractors continue to quietly operate in Pakistan in one

Private contractors help give CIA the benefit of deniability if an agent is arrested on foreign territory.

CIA has been known to send US citizens of foreign descent to their home countries for espionage.

The most recent example is Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American who was busted in Tehran carrying sensitive documents handed to her by an informant. Ms. Saberi was sent to Iran posing as a journalist. CIA even managed to get her newspaper accreditation from a major American newspaper. The US government was embarrassed at the arrest because Ms. Saberi was arrested red handed receiving official documents from a contact.

In Pakistan, a State that is falling apart at the seams, with no central figure or department to control the rot, is providing the perfect environment for meddling in the country not only by the United States, UK, India and other established powers based in Afghanistan, but also by a puppet regime like that of Mr. Hamid Karzai and his spymasters, who in eight years are in a good position today to wreak mayhem inside Pakistan while the politicians in Islamabad and the military in Rawaplpindi have little recourse beyond words of appeasement or caution during closed-door meetings with foreign powers in Afghanistan that are never translated into action to reestablish Pakistan’s writ domestically and in the region.

Mr. Shah is an independent journalist based in Peshawar.

A Pakistani Minister Steals US$ 20 Million From A Pakistani Ambassador

Story Broken on Facebook

A young democracy reverts back to corruption as a battle ensues between two Pakistan Government titans over a commission worth US$ 20 million

Published by Tania Khan on Facebook and reproduced here verbatim

PakNationalists.com

Pakistan hit a new high in corruption when ‘state actors’ joined a resourceful cartel to create a fake nationwide shortage in a major commodity – sugar – and made millions.

Now some very powerful people in Islamabad are on their way to hitting another jackpot: a commission between US$ 15 to 20 million on a sugar consignment meant to plug the hole created by the fake shortage.

Two senior figures in the government, a federal minister and an ambassador to a Gulf state, have locked horns to grab the millions of dollars in commission. But only one of them will win and bag the bounty.

This is also a classic case of how corruption by junior government officials is hijacked by big fish when the commission is high.

Responding to a tender floated by the federal government for the import of 600,000 tons of sugar, Al Khaleej Sugar Trading (Pvt.) Ltd. submitted a bid of US$ 740 (London sugar price) plus US$ 80 as freight and premium charges on a per ton basis.

The initial negotiations for this bid were handled by Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates Mr. Khursheed Ahmed Junejo.  Apparently the final deal that Amb. Junejo reached with Mr. Jamal al-Ghurair, the CEO of Al-Khaleej Sugar Trading, involved a hefty kickback of somewhere around US$ 15 to US$ 2o million.  In return, Mr. Junejo committed himself to pulling all the necessary strings to ensure Mr. al-Ghurair’s bid is not only accepted but that the bid is exempted from federal government’s ceiling of US$ 50 on freight and premium charges.

What Ambassador Junejo did not anticipate is that the sweet deal might go sour on him and the rewards – the commission – would be bagged by people more powerful than him in the present government in Islamabad.

At some point, federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik jumped into the fray, backed apparently by no less than the President of Pakistan. Now, according to sources in the federal government, Mr. Malik is poised to win the race for the millions in commission in the Al-Khaleej Sugar Trading deal. According to sources, Mr. Malik will grab this deal instead of Mr. Junejo thanks to backing from no less than the President. No brownie points for where the commission is bound for.  Suffice to say that it will be far from the pockets of the man who was supposed to have pocketed it in the first place.

In an agricultural country where sugar cane is a major crop, the sugar shortage crisis is highly suspicious in the first place. It has become a case of state actors backing a resourceful mafia for the exploitation of national resources.

And once again, Pakistan’s democracy is under the threat of reverting back to the well known corruption stories that resulted in the failure of the entire political system in the past.

PakNationalists.com has reproduced this report verbatim from the post of Tania Khan on Facebook where it first appeared.

Waiting For a Pakistani Mao

Just two years after the the return of Pakistan's shady democrats to power, even moderate commentators are calling for change. And in the case of commentator Ms. Anjum Niaz, they talk about revolution.

Pakistan is a country where even democracy will fail without some iron-handed intervention to set things right. Sometimes reform can't be put to vote, as I argue in my column, A Smart Coup: Why One Last Military Intervention In Pakistan Remains A Possibility. Here is an excerpt from Ms. Niaz's column today in The News International that sums up the stagnant governing culture in Pakistan these days, one that has been created by both political and military rulers, and one that needs to be changed to make Pakistan viable in the 21st century:

"Last Sunday on a PIA flight from Karachi to Islamabad, we had a VIP travel in the first-class cabin. When the flight landed in Islamabad, we were made to wait until the VIP was safely seated in his waiting Mercedes flying two flags – the Pakistan and perhaps the PPP flags. The wait for us was not long, but what was shocking was to see the car drive up to the apron, as close as it could get to the aircraft. Was the VIP a foreign guest warranting maximum security? No. He was in fact Raza Rabbani! To make sure I was not hallucinating, I double-checked with a member of the crew as we alighted. The airhostess confirmed it was the senator. Rabbani is currently chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security and also heads the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reform. Do his handlers think that ordinary passengers like us are a threat to his life and therefore he must be whisked away the minute he sets foot on the ground?

"Raza Rabbani is one of the very few politicians who have been able to attain and sustain a high level of credibility in the eyes of public as well as among all the political parties," says a Google search I did on him today. "He is one politician who does not have any scandals associated with him; financial, moral, or political. He does not come from a feudal background, but earned his credibility as a competent lawyer and then as a principled political leader."

Why then does Rabbani fall for the VIP trappings? Surely, his life is not threatened the way Rehman Malik contends that his is? Malik has excused himself from appearing in person at courts because our security czar claims that there are people out to kill him.

I wrote on the chief secretary Punjab last week. He's on leave these days because the car that he was sitting in killed a man. The chief secretary's chauffeur is perhaps behind bars. But here is what he said against his boss according to a Lahore-based English newspaper report appearing on January 28. Permit me to reproduce it verbatim: "Ghulam Murtaza, the Punjab chief secretary's (CS) driver who was arrested on Tuesday for running over a retired colonel, has alleged that the CS had slapped him for not driving fast, shortly before the car hit and caused the death of Col (r) Muhammad Ikram, sources privy to the investigation told the daily. 'Most of the drivers left due to Javed Mahmood's unruly behaviour... the CS is known to use rough language and has sometimes even slapped drivers, telling them to drive faster,' sources in the Punjab Civil Secretariat said. They also claimed that in the past week, the CS had manhandled and humiliated Murtaza in front of the camp office staff over a minor oversight. On the day of the accident, the driver himself was under great psychological pressure, sources said. A number of drivers, who had worked for the CS, told the daily that Javed Mahmood had a habit of humiliating his drivers during out-of-station trips. Interestingly, Javed Mahmood has replaced around 15 staff drivers since his posting as the head of the province's civil administration in March 2008. According to the sources, Ghulam Murtaza has claimed that soon after the incident the CS got out of the car and walked away, directing him later on the phone not to disclose to anyone that he (Javed Mahmood) was in the car at the time of the accident."

If the damning testimony by the driver as reproduced above is baloney, the ex-chief secretary must set the record straight. It's most damaging. But more often than not, it's a reflection of how our bureaucrats treat their inferiors, especially servants, who dare not protest. The issue here is the cold hauteur of civil servants, trained to be rude, rough, boorish and harsh towards their servants and lower staff. Their wives and children too treat those who serve them with arrogance. It becomes a part of their DNA.

Pakistan is cursed with a VIP culture that will just not go away. There is no cure. From Zardari down to the thanedar or the patwari, we the ordinary citizens must accept these holy cows and be meek, submissive and servile before them. God forbid, should one come in their path, one is pushed aside like a speck of dust and told to remove himself/herself, even reprimanded and warned for polluting the stratified air the VIP breathes. 'Get lost' is the message!

Some even get killed! Like the colonel and the unlucky motorcyclist who happened to be on the same road as the senior adviser to the Punjab chief minister, Sardar Zulfiqar Khosa, driving from Derawar Fort after the conclusion of the Cholistan Jeep Rally. He was squished like a fly by the fleeting police escort 'guarding' Khosa. Two other riders survived the swat but are probably maimed for life.

Nothing short of a revolution will scorch this bumper crop of VIPs from our land."

CIA's Rogue Afghanistan Operations

The face of a CIA-recruited drug lord. Read below for details.

CIA needs authorization from US Congress before launching covert operations in other countries. Congress approves releasing funds for the operations.

Because of this requirement CIA has to give people in government details about the covert operations it is asking money for.

To avoid this disclosure, CIA has been looking for funding from other sources to launch 'rogue' operations, ones that are not fully endorsed by the government. 

In Afghanistan, CIA has launched several covert operations since 2002 meant to target not al-Qaeda or Taliban but some of the neighboring countries whose policies may not sync with US interests.

For example, Pakistan allowed Chinese personnel to build a huge strategic seaport called Gawadar. This Chinese presence was not in US interest. So CIA used Karzai's intelligence people and India's offer of help to target Chinese engineers in Pakistan. CIA did this quite successfully by slipping terrorists inside Pakistan pretending to be Taliban or al Qaeda.

It was easy for CIA agents to carry out this operation because Pakistan under former president Pervez Musharraf had granted US personnel, civilian and military, unprecedented freedom of movement within the country.

When these CIA agents killed a couple of Chinese engineers back in 2004, CIA psy-ops used the incident to put the blame on Afghan Taliban, thereby creating doubts in the minds of Chinese officials that Pakistani intelligence might have had something to do with this since Pakistan maintained ties with the Afghan Taliban government in Afghanistan before 2002.

Similarly, CIA launched covert operations against Iran, western China and Pakistan. It used Afghan soil in all of them, which made logistical issues pertaining to these operations much easier.

Where did the money come from for all of these operations?

Some of the money came from the US government, which has an anti-Iran covert program running until now from the Bush days. Nothing secret here.  But not all CIA operations in Afghanistan are funded by the US government.

It is believed that many CIA operations inside Pakistan and China received partial or no funding from the US government. These operations were meant to create ethnic, sectarian and political turmoil in Pakistan, and ethnic turmoil in China, especially in Tibet and Xinjiang.

CIA developed a new source of funding to finance these rogue operations.

The Afghan Taliban almost destroyed the Afghan opium trade, a feat unparalleled in the history of Afghanistan. It was near impossible for anyone to impose such discipline on a chaotic nation like Afghanistan.

After 2002, drug production and trade grew by leaps. CIA introduced latest drug production and transportation tehniques to Afghanistan, learned from CIA operations in South America.

CIA also recruited all the main Afghan drug barons. Almost all of them are on CIA's payroll, or were so until early 2010.

Some of these AFghan drug barons were actually rewarded. CIA recommended some of them to US government and military as legitimate powerbrokers who deserved a share in the Kabul government.

This is one facet of the multidimensional role that CIA played in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2010 to distrub regional balance of power and pursue US strategtic interests beyond the immediate goals of America's war on terror.

Pakistan's Wrong Type Of Democracy

Our democratically-elected -- and backed by the United States and Britain, the world's finest democracies -- President Zardari has just appointed an acquaintance as the country's ambassador to Syria.

As his first order of business, the gentleman, Mr. Aminullah Raisani, destroyed one of the finest English-language schools running in Damascus, owned by the Government of Pakistan. He fired the entire staff of the school, and 'imported' his family members from Pakistan, including brothers, sisters, sisters-in-law, etc., and appointed them for a collective MONTHLY salary of US $ 38,000, which translates into PKR 3.2 million.

Today's The News International published a report on this heist, with stunning details about how sisters and brothers-in-law of the Ambassador have been appointed against salaries reaching up to US $ 3,500 per month.

The school attracts children of the elite in the Syrian capital. Foreign diplomats also prefer the school because of its English and Arabic corriculum.

This kind of grand theft is not unual in Pakistan but it says a lot about why the governing structure in this country is collapsing and why the country is headed for a disaster in the coming years, leading to internal chaos along social fault lines.

Pakistan's ruling system is a British import. It is not suited to the country. Pakistan needs a tailored demcoratic system that would preserve media and social freedoms but also minimize instability and make use of the creativity of the Pakistani people.

Above all, Pakistan needs a system that would replace feudal and career politicians with creative decision makers.

What we have is a system monopolized by a feudal elite, which has grown stronger because the Pakistani military, the country's strongest institution, has been inadvertently strenghtening that elite and using it for decades.  In today's Pakistan, Pakistanis from the middle and the lower middle classes have no opportunities to progress and achieve. Opportunities are reserved for the likes of Ambassador Raisani.

Read Ambassador Raisani's School of Thought:Plunder It All and Clueless, Careless Politicians Declare Their Peantuts. The two reports provide an insight into why Pakistan's governing system is leading the country to a national failure.

A Smart Coup: Why One Last Military Intervention In Pakistan Remains A Possibility

 

 

… But we are nowhere near that right now. Gen. Kayani certainly has no such thing in mind according to people who have met him.

 

 

 

By AHMED QURAISHI

Monday, 15 February 2010.

WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

 

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—"This was my first interaction with the soldier who commands the seventh largest military force on the face of the planet.”

 

With this catchy line, Dr. Farrukh Saleem began his brief and fascinating account of a meeting with General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

 

On Feb. 10, 2010, Gen. Kayani met a group of Pakistani commentators and security analysts. The briefing was the third since the military began asserting Pakistan's legitimate security and strategic interests in Afghanistan and the region.

 

On January 28 and 29, Gen. Kayani told NATO commanders in Brussels that Pakistan’s legitimate security interests will have to be respected.

 

Earlier, he told Adm. Mike Mullen, Gen. David Petraeus, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal that instead of worrying about appeasing India, Washington better start paying attention to Pakistan.

 

This is a major development in the eight-year US-led war in Afghanistan.

 

At one point, Mr. Saleem makes an interesting observation about Gen. Kayani’s cool demeanor.

 

“Yes, he has the capacity for abstract thought, cold rationality and coarse creativity - all in one,” he says. “And yet he inhales reconstituted tobacco. Yes, he uses a filter and a cigarette holder. Yes, he never takes deep puffs and, yes, he only consumes half a cigarette at a time.”

 

At another point, Mr. Saleem makes an interesting use of pun. Talking about the general’s smoking habits, he says the following: ‘He knows that some of the things that he is doing are wrong, but still won't give them up.’

 

Probably it’s a polite reference to the conspiracy theories that fill the US and British media, or the Am-Brit media, about Pakistan, its military and its intelligence agencies. So some skepticism is natural.

 

But the best part of his column in The News International was this concluding paragraph:

 

“I can tell you that I came back both proud but with a painful realisation; proud knowing that our legions are being led by strategic minds and sad to have discovered the much too visible an intellectual gap between our top political brains in Islamabad and our strategic minds at work in Rawalpindi. And what does he think about our politicians? When it's breezy, hit it easy.

Could it be that the army rules not through the barrel of a gun but because of their intellectual superiority? Could it be that the army rules because our politicians have failed to institutionalize politics? Could it be that the army rules because our political parties do not transcend individual human intentions? Could it be that the army rules because it has structures, mechanisms of social order along with strategic thinking?”

 

In essence, Mr. Saleem hit at the core reason why the Pakistani military intervenes every time politicians lead the nation to a dead end.

 

Most importantly, the above reasoning answers even a more important question: Why the military mounts successful interventions and why the politicians can’t muster the moral authority to resist them.

 

Pakistani politicians remain a chaotic, undisciplined and shortsighted bunch. Their parties are messy and loose groupings of special interests in their crudest form. Almost all of them have lifetime leaders who never give way to fresh blood. And they are not public institutions but private, family-owned affairs.

 

Since the return to democracy in Pakistan in February 2008, hardly any of the parties in government or opposition devoted any high-level party meetings to education, health, culture and sports. None of them has plans in place for running the country. Worse, none has any vision.

 

The best place in Islamabad these days to see this mess in action is the National Defense University. Since 2002, the NDU has been holding the annual National Security Workshop. This is a unique 6-week course. It brings together politicians, military officers, businessmen, lawyers, social activists and journalists. The group is taken through a virtual tour into the corridors of strategic decision making in Pakistan. The course ends with a weeklong exercise that sees the class divided into a Pakistani government and a shadow government, complete with their own secretariat and staff. On the last day, the two governments frame and deliver a policy plan to deal with a hypothetical strategic crisis confronting Pakistan. The plan has domestic, military and foreign policy components. Often, senior commanders from Pakistani military’s General Headquarters attend the last day’s presentations.

 

NDU officials, both civilian and military, have one observation that has been constant during the past eight years of national security workshops: Military officers, businessmen, social activists and journalists often show the best performance. Politicians come last. Most can’t even draft a single-page policy brief, or work with a PowerPoint presentation.

 

In essence, middle class Pakistanis – military officers, businessmen, social activists and journalists – fair better than the politicians, mostly a feudal landowning elite.

 

This gets blurry sometimes, but you get the general idea.

 

And middle class Pakistanis can’t make it to political parties, let alone to the federal and regional parliaments and governments.

 

Elections might change this, but certainly not in the foreseeable future. And Pakistan may not have the luxury of time.

 

If the national deadlock continues with mounting domestic instability due to massive corruption and mismanagement by our politicians, the military may have to contend with one last intervention. It would be the last because if the military failed this time to help set Pakistan on the right track, it could be a free fall after that because Pakistanis are getting increasingly restless with the existing decay. Social turmoil simmers just beneath the surface.

 

If it comes to a military-led intervention, both military officers and politicians will have to stay out of actual power. The army chief may not become a chief executive. The military might have to look into a new concept called the ‘Smart Coup’, where the military can bring capable Pakistanis to power with a firm executable plan of reform over five years, or more, fully backed by the military.  There may not be time to put the plan to vote. It will have to be implemented.

 

This would be the absolute last option. But we are nowhere near that right now. Gen. Kayani certainly has no such thing in mind according to people who have met him. He wants democracy to work for the time being and he has proven this by resisting several opportunities to intervene over the past two years.

 

Pakistan is full of resources and opportunities, but it lacks good leadership and clean management. Even the bare minimum of these two commodities is not available in today’s Pakistan.

 

Books on political science and theory in Washington and London can’t help with this. Pakistanis will have to do what’s best for their homeland.