The Great Debate UK
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Army, Allah and America: on Pakistani pitfalls and the future of Egypt
All countries are unique and comparing two of the world's most populous Muslim countries, Egypt and Pakistan, is as risky as comparing Britain to France at the time of the French Revolution. But many of the challenges likely to confront Egypt as it emerges from the mass protests against the 30-year-rule of President Hosni Mubarak are similar to those Pakistan has faced in the past, and provide at least a guide on what questions need to be addressed. In Pakistan, they are often summarised as the three A's -- Army, Allah and America.
Both have powerful armies which are seen as the backbone of the country; both have to work out how to accommodate political Islam with democracy, both are allies of America, yet with people who resent American power in propping up unpopular elites.
As my Reuters colleague Alastair Lyon writes, Egypt's sprawling armed forces -- the world's 10th biggest and more than 468,000-strong -- have been at the heart of power since army officers staged the 1952 overthrow of the monarchy. Mubarak's announcement that he was naming his intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as vice-president was seen as a move towards an eventual, military-approved handover of power. And Egyptian protesters have sometimes tried to see the army as their ally -- an institution that puts country first before personal gain.
Yet armies, as Pakistan has discovered over its many years of on-again off-again military rule, are not designed for democracy. They are designed to be efficient, and with that comes the hierarchy and obedience to authority that would seem alien to many of those out on the streets of Cairo.
In his book about the Pakistan Army, defence expert Brian Cloughley writes about how the British general, the Duke of Wellington, responded to democracy in his first cabinet meeting as prime minister: ”An extraordinary affair. I gave them their orders and they wanted to stay and discuss them.” The story is told as part of an argument about why the Pakistan Army has never been particularly successful at running the country.
“All Pakistan’s army coups have been bloodless, successful and popular – but popular only for a while,” he writes. “The trouble is that military people are usually quite good at running large organisations, even civilian ones, but generally fail to understand politics and government, and the give-and-take so necessary in that esoteric world.”
It is a lesson that may yet need to be learned in Egypt. As Amil Khan wrote from Islamabad in his Twitter feed, "Love the way Pakistani twitterers puzzled by Egyptians' trust in army. Guys, you're kinda similar, but kinda different."
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Pakistan, India and the value of democracy
Of the many comments I heard in Pakistan, one question particularly flummoxed me. Was democracy really the right system for South Asia? It came, unsurprisingly, from someone sympathetic to the military, and was couched in a comparison between Pakistan and India.
What had India achieved, he asked, with its long years of near-uninterrupted democracy, to reduce the gap between rich and poor? What of the Maoist rebellion eating away at its heartland? Its desperate poverty? The human rights abuses from Kashmir to Manipur, when Indian forces were called in to quell separatist revolts? Maybe, he said, democracy was just not suited to countries like India and Pakistan.
The question surprised me, in part because I had never really been forced before to defend democracy, possibly because in the West we take it so much for granted that we have forgotten why it matters. It also surprised me for the sheer conviction of the sentiment.
In Pakistan, this is not a mere academic debate. Just last week, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said there was no threat to democracy and the army had no intention of taking power. Yet the very fact he had to say so at all spoke of deep disquiet in the country over the civilian government's handling of Pakistan's floods, which with it has brought new mutterings of an eventual return to military rule.
"Why the prime minister needed to hammer this point home once again could be anybody’s guess," the Daily Times said in an editorial. "The diminishing returns of a corrupt and incompetent democracy are leading to the inescapable suspicion that something is in the air, in the possible shape of an anti-democratic intervention."
To be clear, there is no sign of an imminent military coup. The army neither wants to, nor needs to take power, since it already calls the shots on the issues that matter to it -- foreign and security policy. But equally, the army's lead role in flood relief has increased its clout and encouraged misgivings about the value of democracy which could act as a slow-burning fuse if the civilian government is not able to improve its performance. And according to some, it is a slow-burning fuse lit by the military itself -- or by what Dawn columnist Cyril Almedia calls the 800-pound gorilla of Pakistani politics, the army.
Democracy must deliver or else, seems to be the refrain currently gripping Pakistan. So far, however, few have spelled out the value of democracy, nor for that matter said precisely what they mean by "or else".
Democracy in India does not compare with that in the developed Western nations. It has its own unique flavor. I can compare the roads in India to those in the developed West. In Indian roads one sees pedestrians, bicycles, bullock carts, cows, old trucks, motor bikes, cars, beggars and everything is on a slow move with constant honks filling the background. In Western roads, one finds clean and spotless quality with honks seldom heard, modern vehicles going much faster. Both are transportation systems. But they appear vastly different.
What matters is the exercise. India has not achieved full maturity in democracy. It will probably take a couple of centuries to get to that level. But the exercise cannot be given up because it does not resemble that in developed nations which have dabbled with it for more than two hundred years.
For democracy to thrive, all one needs is wisdom. One does not have to be literate or elitist. The poor man in India has enough political wisdom to throw out candidates. Through a persistent exercise, Indian democracy has reached a somewhat elementary school level from kindergarten. Until about twenty years ago, one family and one political party dominated the Indian political scene. It was much like Pakistan being under military rule and a preference for it by Pakistanis for lack of alternatives.
I’d say that the Nehru dynasty simply mothered Indian democracy until it could crawl and move on its own. Now there are regional parties that have taken on the stage at the center and coalition governments have become the norm. In the 1970s, regional parties had no clout at the center. At the state level, dynastic politics still continues. But with more economic progress, this should change.
India has vast variation in terms of development on one side and utter backwardness on the other. The Maoist issue has arisen mostly due to political neglect and utter backwardness in those states. Like Arundhati Roy says, the barrel of the gun will not subdue it. But it is all part of the overall mosaic.
Democracy in India has gained some kind of momentum. No one can take away people’s right anymore. Many oppressed communities like Dalits and Muslims have realized the power of voter blocks. They vote en masse and politicians want their votes.
In Pakistan, cold war geo-politics wiped out the roots of democracy. The US always prefers dictators in other countries for quick returns. Its business like attitude has destroyed many small countries. Pakistan became a victim of American geo-politics. The US encouraged and supported Pakistani military generals, showered them with state of the art weapons, turned a blind eye to their regional ambitions and never helped democracy take root. A military that had become blood thirsty will never allow any other system to take its power away.
Pakistan has the same type of people as India does. If India managed to keep its democratic system alive all the way through, Pakistanis are fully capable of the same. It is just that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sixty years later, one cannot simply plug in democracy there and expect it to mature fast. The foundations for that have been destroyed. Though Pakistan sports a democratic government, it is its military that is the real power.
Corruption is a big menace in Indian politics. But we have not given up on our democracy. It definitely has become better compared to before. We’ll run along this road filled with bullock carts, cows, bicycles, pedestrians, beggars, luxury cars, auto rikshaws, buses and old trucks. We know there are many pot holes everywhere. But with time, things will improve.
A shoddy democracy is better than no democracy at all.
from UK News:
Is Britain paying too high a price in Afghanistan?
The death toll among British troops in Afghanistan is rising fast. The soldier who died on Tuesday was the seventh to die in the last week and the 176th since the war began.
Last Wednesday, Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe became the highest ranking British soldier to die in the conflict in Afghanistan when he was killed in Helmand. British commanders are quoted as saying things are going to get worse before they get better.
Not surprisingly, doubts are being raised about the price being paid in Afghanistan, about the nature of the mission itself and whether security can ever be made effective enough to rebuild the country after 30 years of war.
Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth concedes there is gloom about the rising death toll but rejects comparisons with the Vietnam war that lasted over 15 years and says there is a "real sense of momentum" in Afghanistan.
Do you believe Britain should stay in Afghanistan?
We have been beaten before in Afghanistan , the Russians were beaten in the same way ,with all the manpower and Military recources they have . The people are not worth wasting the precious lives of our young soliers ,as they offer little if any help to improve there own situation. When we and the others eventually leave,the Country will quickly revert to its old ways of fuedalism Corruption and illtreatment of its women. WE SHOULD LEAVE NOW
from The Great Debate:
Killer robots and a revolution in warfare
-- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --
They have no fear, they never tire, they are not upset when the soldier next to them gets blown to pieces. Their morale doesn't suffer by having to do, again and again, the jobs known in the military as the Three Ds - dull, dirty and dangerous.
They are military robots and their rapidly increasing numbers and growing sophistication may herald the end of thousands of years of human monopoly on fighting war. "Science fiction is moving to the battlefield. The future is upon us," as Brookings scholar Peter Singer put it to a conference of experts at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania this month.
Singer just published Wired For War - the Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, a book that traces the rise of the machines and predicts that in future wars they will not only play greater roles in executing missions but also in planning them.
Numbers reflect the explosive growth of robotic systems. The U.S. forces that stormed into Iraq in 2003 had no robots on the ground. There were none in Afghanistan either. Now those two wars are fought with the help of an estimated 12,000 ground-based robots and 7,000 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the technical term for drone, or robotic aircraft.
Ground-based robots in Iraq have saved hundreds of lives in Iraq, defusing improvised explosive devices, which account for more than 40 percent of U.S. casualties. The first armed robot was deployed in Iraq in 2007 and it is as lethal as its acronym is long: Special Weapons Observation Remote Reconnaissance Direct Action System (SWORDS). Its mounted M249 machinegun can hit a target more than 3,000 feet away with pin-point precision.
From the air, the best-known UAV, the Predator, has killed dozens of insurgent leaders - as well as scores of civilians whose death has prompted protests both from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Robots can aid and assist in combat, therefore relieving or helping certain aspects of a soldiers duty. But, robotics technology will never get to a point to replace soldiers. Mankind as a whole has always used tools and weapons as a means of fighting, and robots are just another level of weaponry that we are using. Robots are programmed to do what the programmer wants it to do. A human programmed it to do it; the concept of AI is of huge debate, but since true AI is near impossible to achieve (at least by current technology), and even pseudo-AI isn’t really AI (still only programmed by humans) I don’t see any robot replacing a good soldier with the instinct and the intuition to fight in real combat, anytime soon.
Mortal1: “It’s quite clear that this character, deliberately goes out of his way to ignore the facts which refute his ill-informed preconceived notions & expose his “stomach based” nonsense. He simply does not have the moral courage & integrity to challenge his ignorance & bigotry”
This guy is not alone. Most Pakistanis seem to be of the same mentality – deny, negate anything that does not agree with their vision. Facts or not, what they believe is only correct. The rest can be recited into deaf ears. This is the sign of a society getting walls closed around it. Ignorance will at some point blind them and they will be pushed into doing the wrong thing because of their own built in paranoia and could justify their actions based on it.