With friends like the US, Pakistan doesn't need enemies

Simon Tisdall
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 October 2009 18.00 BST

Washington's clumsy attempts to strengthen Pakistan's government only serve to stoke a conflict approaching civil war


As the Obama administration dithers over what to do for the best in Afghanistan, neighbouring Pakistan is paying an increasingly heavy price. Like a spate of previous Taliban attacks in recent days, today's mayhem in Lahore underscored fears that the principal consequence of Washington's Afghan paralysis, albeit unintended, is the further destabilisation of the Pakistani state.

Pakistanis might be forgiven for wondering whether, with friends like these in Washington, who needs enemies? The rumbling row over a $7.5bn, five-year US aid package is a case in point. Imperious conditions attached to the bill by a Congress reluctant to send more unaccounted billions "down a rat hole", as Democrat Howard Berman charmingly put it, were condemned as insulting and colonialist in Pakistan.

By linking the cash to tighter civilian control of Pakistan's military, Washington was trying, clumsily, to strengthen Asif Ali Zardari's government. But it achieved the exact opposite. The president was accused of failing to defend the country's sovereignty, much as he has failed to halt escalating American cross-border air raids, and the occasional covert ground incursion, on targets inside Pakistan.

After hurried consultations in Washington, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, obtained an "explanatory document" from Congress this week that he said effectively waived some of the bill's more objectionable caveats. But this is unlikely to silence critics who draw on deep anti-American sentiment among the Pakistani public dating back to the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the launch of George Bush's "global war on terror".

"Poll after poll shows Pakistanis increasingly do fear the threat posed by Islamic extremists ... but they believe the US is an even bigger danger to their country," Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution was quoted as saying this week. Many Pakistanis rated the threat posed by the US to their independence and security above that from historical foe India, he said. "Any time you out-poll India as the bad guy in Pakistan you are in deep trouble."

Intense Obama administration pressure on Pakistan to root out the Tehrik-e-Taliban (Taliban Movement of Pakistan), close allies and collaborators of the Afghan Taliban, resulted in this spring's costly military offensive in Swat, in North West Frontier province, which displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Yet the Swat campaign is likely to be dwarfed by an imminent Pakistani army offensive in South Waziristan, in the ungoverned tribal areas adjacent to Afghanistan. Although senior Pakistani officials deny they are doing Washington's bidding, it's no secret that US commanders are increasingly focused on both sides of Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan, where Taliban militants and their foreign jihadi and al-Qaida allies have staked out common ground ignoring national boundaries.

Pakistan's Taliban leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, who replaced Baitullah Mehsud after the latter was killed in a US drone missile strike in August, said in a recent video that attacks such as today's in Lahore would quickly cease if the government stopped behaving like a US lackey and broke its American alliance. If that happened, Mehsud said he would turn his guns on India, presumably in Kashmir. To many Pakistanis, that may not sound such a bad idea.

The realisation that Washington is stoking a conflict approaching all-out civil war is gradually dawning in the US. New York Post columnist Ralph Peters drew a comparison with post-invasion Iraq. "Civil war never quite happened [there]. Yet no one seems to notice that we're now caught up in two authentic civil wars – one in Afghanistan, the other in Pakistan," he said. By lumping the two together in one "Afpak" policy, the Obama administration had effectively made both problems worse.

Neither extra US troops, nor extra aid, nor more "hugs-not-slugs counterinsurgency nonsense" was the answer, Peters argued. "The only hope for either beleaguered territory (these really are territories, not authentic states) is a decision by its own population to fight and defeat the Taliban."

The impulse, fanned by this sort of imperial hubris, to get out of Afghanistan, or at least to narrow the fight to a counter-terrorism campaign against al-Qaida, has gathered US adherents in recent months. But a Washington Post editorial argued this week that with al-Qaida much reduced, the Taliban in both countries now constituted the main enemy. Pakistan was moving towards "full-scale war", it said. Pulling back in Afghanistan could have disastrous, possibly fatal consequences there, too.

By this measure and others, only one conclusion is possible: Pakistan is already so destabilised by US actions since 9/11 that it cannot be left to fend for itself. In such tortuous logic is found the death of empires.



guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Glorious Pakistan!

An interesting article and even more interesting reply

Here's what is happening in India

Capital Suggestion

By Dr Farrukh Saleem

12/9/2007

Here's what is happening in India:

The two Ambani brothers can buy 100 percent of every company listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) and would still be left with $30 billion to spare. The four richest Indians can buy up all goods and services produced over a year by 169 million Pakistanis and still be left with $60 billion to spare. The four richest Indians are now richer than the forty richest Chinese.

In November, Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark Sensex flirted with 20,000 points. As a consequence, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries became a $100 billion company (the entire KSE is capitalized at $65 billion). Mukesh owns 48 percent of Reliance.

In November, comes Neeta's birthday. Neeta turned f orty-four three weeks ago. Look what she got from her husband as her birthday present: A sixty-million dollar jet with a custom fitted master bedroom, bathroom with mood lighting, a sky bar, entertainment cabins, satellite television, wireless communication and a separate cabin with game consoles. Neeta is Mukesh Ambani's wife, and Mukesh is not India's richest but t he second richest.

Mukesh is now building his new home, Residence Antillia (after a mythical, phantom island somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean). At a cost of $1 billion this would be the most expensive home on the face of the planet. At 173 meters tall Mukesh's new family residence, for a family of six, will be the equivalent of a 60-storeyed building. The first six floors are reserved for parking. The seventh floor is for car servicing and maintenance. The eighth floor houses a mini-theatre.

Then there's a health club, a gym and a swimming pool. Two floors are reserved for Ambani family's guests. Four floors above the guest floors are family floors all with a superb view of the Arabian Sea. On top of everything are three helipads. A staff of 600 is expected to care for the family and their family home.

In 2004, India became the 3rd most attractive foreign direct investment destination. Pakistan wasn't even in the top 25 countries.

In 2004, the United Nations, the representative body of 192 sovereign member states, had requested the Election Commission of India to assist the UN in the holding elections in Al Jumhuriyah al Iraqiyah and Dowlat-e Eslami-ye Afghanestan. Why the Election commission of India and not the Election Commission of Pakistan? After 9/ll, Islamabad is closer to Kabul than is Delhi.

Imagine, 12 percent of all American scientists are of Indian origin; 38 percent of doctors in America are Indian; 36 percent of NASA scientists are Indians; 34 percent of Microsoft employees are Indians; and 28 percent of IBM employees are Indians.

For the record: Sabeer Bhatia created and founded Hotmail. Sun Microsystems was founded by Vinod Khosla. The Intel Pentium processor, that runs 90 percent of all computers, was fathered by Vinod Dham. Rajiv Gupta co-invented Hewlett Packard's E-speak project. Four out of ten Silicon Valley start-ups are run by Indians. Bollywood produces 800 movies per year and six Indian ladies have won Miss Universe/Miss World titles over the past 10 years. For the record: Azim Premji, the richest Muslim entrepreneur on the face of the planet, was born in Bombay and now lives in Bangalore.

India now has more than three dozen billionaires; Pakistan has none (not a single dollar billionaire). The other amazing aspect is the rapid pace at which India is creating wealth. In 2002, Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh and Anil Ambani's father, left his two sons a fortune worth $2.8 billion. In 2007, their combined wealth stood at $94 billion. On 29 October 2007, as a result of the stock market rally and the appreciation of the Indian rupee, Mukesh became the richest person in the world, with net worth climbing to US$63.2 billion (Bill Gates, the richest American, stands at around $56 billion).

Indians and Pakistanis have the same Y-chromosome haplogroup. We have the same genetic sequence and the same genetic marker (namely: M124). We have the same DNA molecule, the same DNA sequence. Our culture, our traditions and our cuisine are all the same. We watch the same movies and sing the same songs. What is it that Indians have and we don't?

INDIANS ELECT THEIR LEADERS

NOW READ THIS INTERESTING REPLY

by Syed Zeeshan Rizvi

I am not a usual email responder, but reading the article shared here has prompted me to set some records straight, for we Pakistanis are a pessimist nation, who always like to downplay ourselves and our country even if there are things about us that are worth cherishing.

To start with, the claim that Ambani brothers can buy 100% of ``every” company listed on KSE and still be left with $30 billion is laughable to say the least. This is not to say that Ambani brothers are not worth being praised as brilliant businessmen, but to say that the claim made is grossly exaggerated.

According to Forbes, the net worth of Mukesh Ambani is $19 billion. One can click here to see his fortune details. His brother Anil Ambani is listed at number 34 among world’s top billionaires, and has his worth dropped to $10 billion. That makes their combined net worth even below $30 billion, an amount which according to the claim was to spare in the Ambanis' account after purchasing all the companies listed in KSE.

And how on earth can an act of extravagance such as Ambani’s [gifting a jet – aided with luxuries to satisfy one's primitive biological and social complexes - to his wife] be cited as a positive example? In a country that has the largest number of people living without a roof, such an act is disgusting to say the least. The example could have been cited, if the subject had funded education, research, medical care, or food programs etc. instead of erecting a 173 meter high rise home for himself.

And I cannot help but praise the innocence of the writer when he asks us why UN asked Indian Election Commission to assist them in holding elections in Afghanistan and Iraq. First of all, applause to supporters of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let me remind them that Iraq’s invasion was “undemocratic”, and even vetoed, and that the US had moved “against” [yes, read again, “against”] UN to invade Iraq. Fancy promoting democracy after invading and installing a military regime and killing 1.5 million innocents somewhere.

He asks us the reason why India is sought to help in Afghanistan and not Pakistan? Well, let him go and search on the internet what the Indian Embassies in Jalalabad and Helmand have been doing under cover of issuing visas to Afghans. Islamabad has done a thousand times more for Kabul already than Delhi can ever imagine to. She has sacrificed lives, capital, security, and personnel for its neighbour ever since the bloody Soviet invasion. Let the reader go and search how Balochistan Liberation Army people are pouring in from Indian Embassies along the Durand line, and perhaps he will know the answer to his stupid question.

What puzzles me is the - deliberate - half sightedness of such pseudo-intellectuals. They can see one or two rich Indians but are unable to see the millions of Indians that sleep on the roadsides. They are always able to see the nice treatment a Muslim Shahrukh Khan is getting in India, but are never able to see thousands slaughtered at the hands of Narendar Modi, and thousands raped at the hands of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) thugs in Gujrat. They are able to see a secular Sikh prime minister of India but are never able to recall the Golden Temple massacre of Sikhs in India. They claim India is secular and democratic but they never highlight the 8000 Christian families still hiding in jungles and the 200 churches burnt to the ground, and the hundreds of Nuns that have been gang raped on roads in Orissa since last year.

And since when has exhibiting one's ladies in bikinis and rating them to win pageant titles become a pride for a Muslim nation? These ``caught-in-the-middle" confused Muslims have to first decide what they want to follow - their own doctrine in the book of God or ``the Incredible India".

Either these intellectuals are brought up in a self deprived world and have been fed to malign their country, or their loyalties are bought for greener pastures so that they keep promoting hopelessness among their fellow countrymen.

All of this is not to say that Pakistan is devoid of corruption. We sure are messed up, but the example quoted for us is way worse than us, and has a Human right abuse record more dark than perhaps any other nation.

The epitome of stupidity is the conclusion of the article that decorates democracy for all the achievements of India. I hope the writer is not unaware of the riggings; extortions, murders, and corruption that make up the canvas of every Indian election. I hope he sees what the democratic government in Gujrat did to its citizens in Ahmedabad and its adjacent areas. I hope he can recall how the butchers in Gujrat slaughtered every Muslim including the ``elected” minister and MP Ehsan Jaffery because of his Muslim identity. I hope he can recall someday how the Rashtriyah Swamisehwak Sang (RSS) assassinated India’s chosen and elected father -Mohandas Gandhi - for not being a hard core Hindu supporter of Akhand Bhaarat. I hope he can see what the ``elected” government in India has been doing to help the Christians in Orissa. The list can go on - if only one wishes to know.

In recent times, the democracy doctrine has blindfolded people. Incessantly watching television has hindered their ability to think for themselves. If the writer so desperately hopes to eat the fruits of democracy, I hope he is enjoying it these days with our ``elected” government and the progress that it has brought to this country.

ہم نے خود شاہی کو پہنایا ہے جمہوری لباس

جب ذرا آدم ہوا ہے خود شناس و خود نگر

کاروبار و شہریاری کی حقیقت اور ہے

یہ وجود میر و سلطان پر نہیں ہے منحصر

تو نے کیا دیکھا نہیں مغرب کا جمہوری نظام

چہرہ روشن اندرون چنگیز سے تاریک تر

(Iqbal)