Bismillah ar Rahman ar Rahim REALPakNationalists

November 25, 2009

The Real Goal of the Anti-NRO Brigade

Filed under: Media,NRO — Tags: , , , , — admin @ 9:01 am
The real goal of anti-NRO brigade is a return to politically motivated arrests.

The real goal of anti-NRO brigade is a return to politically motivated arrests.

NRO poses a particularly difficult problem. Or does it really? The fact is, NRO has taken over the media attention just as Kerry-Lugar bill has left, and has given TV anchors something to shout about instead of TTP attacks. But let’s take a look at this new topic of discussion and see if there’s something there.

To help us in this topic, we will refer to Aniq Zafar’s article in The News yesterday titled “Cleaning up the mess in the minds.”

The argument that all those who are alleged beneficiaries of NRO should resign is flawed to begin with. In Pakistan’s checkered political history there has been hardly any politician worth his name who has not been accused of one thing or the other. From Husain Shaheed Surharwady to Mohtarama Benazir Bhutto, politicians have had number of FIRs registered against them, cases dragged in the courts and of course media trials conducted. There is nothing new in the current situation as the bulk of the cases that will now be ‘reopened’ fall in the same category, where political considerations bore heavy on the investigation, prosecution and judiciary.

If the argument of moral brigade is accepted and it is established as a principle that all those who have had cases under process in the courts of law should resign then one has a very rosy picture for the future of Pakistan. This principle provides a great incentive to the government of the day to slap all kinds of cases against the opposition leaders. Finding irregularities and violations of the rules is the easiest of the cases that can be registered against anyone.

In this country a case filed against you for the violation of section 144 can take decades to settle. So you can literally put your opponents out of the contention for power by filing cases against them. Will that be acceptable?

For too long our politicians have used legal charges as a means of disarming their opposition. During the 1990s, this was a particularly popular move. In fact, when the list of NRO beneficiaries was finally released, it contained 34 different politicians!

And in case you think that there was something other than political gamesmanship going on in these charges, remember that Nawaz Sharif himself has said that most of the cases against Zardari were politically-motivated.

Mr. Zafar sees through the politically-motivated charges very easily, and finds it readily apparent the real motivation behind the NRO debate:

So what is the argument here of the moralist brigade? But don’t underestimate them they have an agenda and that is to take both President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani down. It is only a matter of strategy whom to take down first and then follow with the other.

This is simply a return to the old ways of using trumped up legal charges against political opponents to neutralize them so the anti-NRO brigade can  try to seize power for themselves. This will result in a lack of faith in our political institutions both at home and in the world, and it will also result in a “chilling effect” that will keep the best and brightest of our people from choosing a life of public service to their country. Who in their right mind would enter politics if they knew that they would be arrested and jailed only for political expediency?

Meanwhile, while these political operatives are going on TV talk shows and speaking incoherently about NRO, TTP is attacking and killing innocents. It makes you wonder whose side they are really on?

November 2, 2009

Let's Start Honoring Our Heroes!

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — admin @ 10:57 am

Two police officers at a security checkpoint near Lahore saved countless lives today.

Alert and watchful, they were doing their jobs — among the most dangerous in the world — and protecting the people of Lahore.

A white Suzuki caught their attention. Wanting to investigate further, they tried to stop the vehicle from entering Lahore when it suddenly exploded, killing both of the amoral brutes inside.

These men should be lauded and praised for their heroic efforts, solid instincts and selflessness. We should honor those who put their lives in danger every single day for the sake of stability in their country. They are not just doing their jobs, they are safeguarding the future of Pakistan.

I have never understood the casual dismissing of incredible actions — indeed, it is an absolute shame upon the media of Pakistan for not extolling the integrity and righteousness of these men and others like them.

Let’s stop for a moment and remember the myriad of ignorant voices nonchalantly dismissing extremist activity spreading out of FATA/NWFP to the south, to Punjab, near Lahore.

These two men knew better than to be comforted by the lullabies of the Sharif brothers, who have sung song after song denying Punjab was in any danger.

Ignoring the political vitriol, these police officers knew better…and hence, showed up to work both physically and mentally. Their names have not been printed anywhere but as far as I am concerned, they are our heroes…the Sharif brothers and all of Pakistan should recognize and honor them.

October 29, 2009

The truth will set you free

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , — admin @ 10:10 am

Sana A urges Pakistanis to counter the spreading threat of extremism:

How many deaths will take it til they know that too many people have died?

Innocence lost, lives brutally snatched away. Weeping women, stunned men, dead children.

It becomes easy to lose count of the terrorist attacks when they happen in rapid-fire succession. It becomes easier still to keep from crying, as the deaths desensitize you time and time again.

But some things become harder.

It becomes harder to call extremists “Islamic” when they insist on killing students at segregated Islamic universities. It becomes harder for men like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan to watch the families of the victims wail in agony, since their sympathies are only for terror suspects killed by American drones. It becomes harder still to box extremism in the far-flung regions of the country.

I see something in the images of terror’s after-math. Amidst blood-splattered rubble lies a complicated reality: extremism is not just in FATA and the NWFP. It is slowly seeping into the heartland of Pakistan and will continue this trend; it has already reared its ugly head in the capital city of Islamabad, and threatens the urban centers of Lahore and Karachi. The entire country is on its way to a culture of fear and paralysis.

Pakistanis must, absolutely must acknowledge this. When will the country realize that the problems and failings of Pakistan can never be pegged on conspiracy theories, involving any combination of Israel, America and India? The problems are home-grown, the failings are organic.

To save Pakistan, we must realize that extremism is breeding, at an alarming rate, throughout the nation. The threats are real, sickening in their unreasonable goals.

Just look at who they have killed.

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The dead are not enemies of Islam. They are teachers, police officers, aid workers, students, children too young to even understand why someone can hate. The victims are ordinary, hard-working Pakistanis, they lived with allegiance to their country’s flag and wanted a stable life. They are dead, and undoubtedly more will die. But the question is…how many more deaths will it take before Pakistanis fight back and save their nation?

October 19, 2009

US Reviews Kerry-Lugar aftermath

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — admin @ 11:36 am

The News
US reviews Kerry-Lugar aftermath
October 12, 2009
By Sami Abrahim

WASHINGTON: US officials have started reviewing the Pakistani reaction to the Kerry-Lugar Bill with a view “to addressing concerns expressed by our Pakistani partners” but are alarmed at how “falsehoods and
myths” determined the discussion over the bill in Pakistan.

“We want to build a multi-dimensional partnership with Pakistan and the Kerry-Lugar Bill is the centre piece of that effort. We are offering $7.5 billion in unconditional military aid over the next five years for schools, clinics and roads. We are promising continued military assistance. But still some people distort our motives and spread lies and that is hurtful,” said one American official.

He said that President Obama’s policy was to listen to allies, so we will listen to Pakistanis. According to the official, the US will do “what it takes” to satisfy the Pakistanis and bring down the temperature. “We trust that your foreign minister will tell Pakistan’s parliament what he told us and that critics will realise their concerns were based on distortions of language that was put in by our Congressmen to satisfy their own concerns,” he added.

Briefing this reporter, a senior US official pointed out, “Perhaps, the language of the Kerry-Lugar Bill could have been more sensitive to Pakistani concerns, but the current language reflects the will of our Congress. More than 500 members of the two houses of Congress sometimes use language about other countries that is intemperate. That is not different from the way your parliamentarians criticise the US and use harsh language. But our sovereignty is not impinged by your parliament, saying the US is doing this or that, and if our Congress has made a few observations about past Pakistani conduct and said our secretary of State should report to them about some developments, that is not an infringement of your sovereignty either.”

Other US officials were at pains to describe the American law-making process and said much of the reporting in the Pakistani media on the subject was erroneous and in some cases malicious. “We do not want to criticise your media and respect its freedom but with all due respect many commentators are confusing reporting requirement of Congress with conditions or interference.”

Congressional staffers echoed the sentiments expressed earlier by House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Howard Berman that the opposition to the Kerry-Lugar Bill in Pakistan was “a created crisis, by people who either haven’t read the bill or don’t want to describe it accurately, and whose goal is either to destabilise the (Pakistani) government, or challenge some of the Pakistani military’s priorities.”

Several dozen congressional delegations have visited Pakistan since the Kerry-Berman Bill started being drafted and many have briefed civilian and military leaders at all levels. They met opposition leaders too and everyone should have known the concerns of Congress even if the exact language of the bill was not finalised until recently. “Knowing that all the issues they are now raising their voices about — Jihadi centres, nuclear proliferation, civilian oversight over the military — were going to be in the bill, why did they not pay closer attention to what was being written?” one hill staffer asked.

One staffer said some people had acted irresponsibly by risking the US- Pakistan relations, jeopardising civil-military relations in Pakistan and undermining the good the Kerry-Lugar Bill does only because they
hate President Zardari or some of his appointees. “They come to us to lobby for themselves, thinking wrongly that America makes or breaks governments in Pakistan. Why didn’t they come to us to discuss what language we were putting in the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill,” she added.

“The whole debate over how far Pakistan’s government could have influenced the language of the bill, especially words that are supposed to have offended your military, ignores the fact that this bill is an American bill. There are members of Congress who will say it is an insult to the US to suggest that some Pakistani officials can or should dictate to us what words to use in our law,” said an irate
Senate staffer.

He pointed out that the Indian Caucus in Congress is thrice as large as the Pakistani one and that Senators Kerry and Lugar and Congressman Berman had to go out of their way to bring opponents of any aid to Pakistan to tone down their opposition. The Senate staffer also stressed that even President Obama at the peak of his popularity had not been able to get Congress to change its mind on his Healthcare bill, which is still stuck in Congress, and to think Pakistan could have done better with a different set of leaders, lobbyists or negotiators is “the height of lack of information”.

US experts blame the political opposition and some “reckless anti-American elements” in the Pakistani media for creating the crisis by presenting the bill’s language in a negative way. “These are the same
people who spread false rumours about Blackwater’s presence in Pakistan and falsely alleged that one thousand marines were coming to Islamabad. Many of them were cheerleaders for the Taliban in the
past”.

American officials believe that PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif stayed away from the debate and even kept in touch with US officials from London so that his party could attack the US over the Kerry-Lugar Bill, but
he would still keep his options open. “The opposition parties were simply cynical and showed no regard for US-Pakistan ties,” observed one diplomat. The government’s response was weak under the opposition attack and most ministers knew little on the subject to be able to stop the attack in its earliest stages.

Some Americans believe that the opposition and its media sympathizers manipulated public sentiment by distorting the bill’s contents. For example, many TV talk show hosts repeatedly said that the Kerry-Lugar
Bill requires US oversight on promotions and other internal operations of the Pakistani military. As pointed out in a US Senate fact sheet, “there is absolutely no such requirement or desire.”

This disinformation stems from an item to be included in one of the US monitoring reports, which could have existed even without the bill. It requires the secretary of state to describe the extent to which civilian authorities exercise control over the Pakistani military. It does not require such control, nor does it place any restriction whatsoever on Pakistan. This benchmark, like all benchmarks in the monitoring reports, is informational. It presents a data-point on which US policy-makers can base decisions.

“How is our Congress telling our government what information to share with it an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty?” a Senate staffer wondered, adding that those who put out the disinformation did so deliberately to drive a wedge between civilian and military leaders in Pakistan and to manipulate public sentiment.

Regarding what they described as the military’s “carefully worded” response issued by the ISPR, the Americans say they see it as “a response to furore generated by the media and politicians.”

“The Pakistani military cannot afford to be seen as being out of touch with public sentiment, and how the people feel affects the commanders,” is how a US official put it. The intent of the ISPR statement according to him was to dampen the debate by saying parliament should examine concerns, but it was exploited by some to exacerbate the crisis, he said.

“We have learnt a few lessons here about how to improve our public diplomacy and anticipate that anything, we do will be seen negatively in Pakistan so we should be prepared. But we hope the government, the opposition and the media have also learnt something. Created crises, motivated by hatred of some government leaders should not rock the boat and risk depriving your country of much-needed resources,” a
Senate staffer emphasised.

He pointed to the harsh words of usually anti-Pakistan Democratic Representative Gary Ackerman, who said he had no interest in a partnership characterised by “suspicion, resentment and political
manipulation.”

Even the head of the Pakistan Caucus in the House of Representatives, Sheila Jackson-Lee voiced surprise at the Pakistani reaction though she refrained from characterising it as manipulated or contrived. She
said, “My colleagues in Congress and I designed this legislation to help the people of Pakistan” and called upon Pakistan’s National Assembly to endorse the bill for its “altruistic” nature.

“Pakistan has consistently been a crucial ally in the fight against al- Qaeda, and I expect this assistance package to enhance our already strong bilateral relationship,” Sheila Jackson-Lee observed, adding, “I firmly believe that this assistance package will create important educational, democratic, and economic opportunities for the people of Pakistan.”

July 27, 2009

Pakistanis Need The Courage To Question

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 2:14 pm

It’s sometimes tempting to think of the power crisis as a simplified model of the national crisis today. A large part of the role behind Japan’s success was played by its corporations. Companies like Mitsubishi, Nissan and Sumitomo excelled by teaching their managers to ask questions.

For example, they would ask why we didn’t meet our sales target last month. To the answer our production was slow, the follow-up question would be why it was slow. We’re short of spare parts; machines kept breaking down, would come the answer. Why were we short of …. And in this way Japan probed its way to the bottom of its problems and very soon became a rich country.

Getting rich by asking questions? Why, sounds absurd? Not to the US Navy which then sported an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ attitude. In 1984 it adopted the technique and — after adding additional content — branded it Total Quality Management. TQM became a buzzword and spread like wildfire to just about every US corporation and onwards to Europe and Asia.

A few days ago, as the lights and air-conditioning suddenly died on me and I put down Dr (Justice) Javid Iqbal’s book, Islam and Pakistan’s Identity, the last words to stick in my mind were: ‘Pakistan is not a
failed state; it is in the hands of a ‘failed generation’.’ Iqbal envisioned a homeland for Muslims, Maudoodi, counter-intuitively, resisted on two counts: one, a separate Muslim state would limit Islam which had not fully done its work in India. Two, that the Musalmans of India were not ‘pure’ enough (read not fundamentalist enough) to be deserving of an all-Muslim state. Iqbal retorted that ‘Muslim state and society were always in a process of becoming and never became a finished product.’

Nevertheless there were problems with Iqbal’s approach, as he too maintained that the religious ideal could not be separated from the social order. Was he implying an Islamic state (or republic)? Because once you’re on that turf aren’t you left with little room for debate about implementing Sharia? Isn’t it setting you up as a target for a fundamentalist onslaught that an unfulfilled promise of an ‘Islamic republic’ brings on?

Unlike his predecessors Zia ul Haq not only gave way to this onslaught, he harnessed it. Then again in the summer of 1998 came another close call. That year, with his intended 15th Amendment, Nawaz
Sharif brought Pakistan within inches of becoming a theocratic state. By 1998 weren’t Iqbal, Maudoodi, Zia and Nawaz Sharif all on the same page? True, Jinnah hadn’t wanted an Islamic state; just a state for Muslims but then, doesn’t the basis for Pakistan boil down to Muslims being only able to live with other Muslims?

The lights flickered back on, the AC started to hiss and the reassuring hum of appliances could be heard again. Then they dimmed and finally died again. Is there a power shortage? Apparently not. By some accounts, installed capacity is enough to meet all except peak demand. So why the blackouts? Circular debt … Mangla tripped … Lesco’s transformer at the Kot Lakhpat grid gave way. In the end we may find that there was less a shortage of capacity, and more a shortage of intelligent questions; and an inability to clear a cobweb of stupidity.

So if Dr (Justice) Javid Iqbal’s lament is that Pakistan is in the hands of a failed generation Aitzaz Ahsan, in his book, The Indus Saga, explains why. ‘Pakistanis have spent almost half a century of their existence without asking any questions.’ Indeed bold, courageous and informed questions are anathema in Pakistan. The book raises the question of whether Pakistan is the result of a ‘two-nation theory’ hastily put together and announced in 1940 as the Lahore Resolution, or has there been a historical separatist urge in the territory we know as the Indus Basin.

Recently, Pakistan lost its most distinguished historian. K.K Aziz believed that like governments, a people get the historians they deserve. In a country of 160 million people, only five or six historians actually wrote and published. And soon this ‘failed generation’ gets set to pass the state into the hands of an even more hopeless generation. This one opened its eyes under the dreadful rule of Ziaul Haq; when textbooks were mangled to portray Pakistan as a ‘besieged state’ under threat from a Hindu India, a godless Soviet Union and an anti-Islamic West. The result is now all around us. Some time back prominent educator Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy had explained:

‘Most students have not learnt how to think; they cannot speak or write any language well, rarely read newspapers and cannot formulate a coherent argument or manage any significant creative expression. This generation of Pakistanis is intellectually handicapped.’

If inquiry and analysis were forbidden for the earlier generation, then the present one may not even have learnt how to construct a question. In such a culture isn’t it natural that obscurantist explanations and fundamentalist dogma will take over, conspiracy theories will flourish?

Against this the Jamaat has kept its fundamentalist narrative evergreen and intact, when it says that it is not religion’s fault the state of Pakistan hasn’t succeeded, it’s the fault of the people who never became ‘pure Muslims’. Within these wheels are the recruitment networks of the various jihadi outfits — in an environment of multiple social anomalies and economic deprivation — and we are facing a very real spectre of a radicalisation of many of the 93 million Pakistanis who are today under the age of 24. Out of curiosity: how many will turn to radicalism to chase the promise of untold pleasures in paradise and how many will actually be seeking to improve their lot in this world?

According to Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch, ‘Pakistan is indeed a failed state. A state that does not have enough self- confidence to take criticism…. A state that feels constrained to legalise bigotry and exclusion, extremism and prejudice, coercion and oppression in order to survive … [Pakistan] is certainly not presiding over a vibrant, successful and self assured society.’ If Ali was to travel to the past and meet Jinnah, with this message from the future, what would Jinnah’s response be to him? Perhaps more importantly, what would Jinnah’s questions be to him? Might one of the questions be ‘when did you people stop asking questions?’

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