Pakistan: Now or Never?

Guest contribution-Pakistan’s conspiracy theories

(The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The writer is Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the UK)

By Wajid Shamsul Hasan

The world is awash with conspiracy theories. A whole lot of them — some plausible and some implausible — have been listed by Jamie King in the book “Conspiracy Theories”. The book covers the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and a plot to bring down President Bill Clinton. Others refer to the murder of martyred Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto, the doubts about 9-11 as to who did it, and many more.

It makes for interesting reading. The author says, “belief in conspiracy theories is more than just the belief in the occasional underhand plot. It is a belief system that asserts that world events are governed in secret by a group of extra-powerful puppeteers behind the scenes”. It also proves the Goebbelsian methodology of repeating lies until they are believed.

Pakistan is no exception to this, especially in the light of what is happening in the country in these days. If we go by what we see in a section of the media it seems that the country is unfit for rule, is a failing or failed state.

A deliberate attempt is being made to transform the media into playing god while TV is becoming the new temple and anchorpersons are playing the role of deities. Even angels would fail because we have ‘experts’ who would find fault with the pious and honest with their white lies as gospel truths. Media demi-gods are becoming experts in creating optical illusions whenever they want to build or demolish someone. There is no guarantee that one would not fall from grace; the spin doctors remain ever ready to offer “virtual conspiracies” to the extent that even innocents would be trapped into committing suicide and public opinion would take no time in turning against you. This is what is happening in today’s Pakistan in the name of freedom of expression.

Questionable stories of corruption are being churned out without offering any evidence. It is the rerun of the fabricated cases against President Asif Ali Zardari, who had to suffer years of incarceration without proven guilty.

Does that U.S. “retribution plan” for Pakistan still stand?

One of the more interesting details in the advance reports of Bob Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars” is that Washington had prepared a “retribution plan” in the event of a major attack on the United States which is traced back to Pakistan.

“While no contingency plans exist for dealing militarily with a collapse of nuclear-armed Pakistan, there is ‘a retribution plan’ in place, developed by the Bush administration, if the United States suffers another 9/11-style terrorist attack,” according to the Los Angeles Times. ”That would involve bombing and missile strikes to obliterate the more than 150 al Qaeda training and staging camps known to exist, most of them in Pakistan, which presumably would suffer extensive civilian casualties.”

from India Insight:

Is Kashmir’s protest leader gaining popularity?

Separatist militancy has waned over the years in Kashmir, but now a radicalised young generation which has grown up in over two decades of violence and strife is driving the massive anti-India demonstrations across the disputed region.

Who is leading months of freedom demonstrations in Kashmir, a fresh unarmed uprising that is proving a huge political challenge for the Indian government?

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the 80-year-old hardline Kashmiri politician who is hated by India and backed by Pakistan, has emerged as the leading face of the present separatist campaign in the region.

Since the crisis started on June 11 when a 17-year-old student died after being hit by a tear gas shell during a protest, Geelani weekly issues a protest calendar that calls for protest marches, strikes and sit-ins.

More than 100 people have now been killed in more than 100 days of protests, the biggest since an armed revolt against New Delhi’s rule broke out in 1989.

The death toll so far includes children, women and teenagers, nearly all killed by police bullets.

Many Kashmiris are not happy with Geelani's protest plans because the continuing cycle of strikes and government curfews has shut down schools, colleges and offices, made food and medicine scarce and has brought untold misery to the people.

Rumours of “regime change” choke Pakistani airwaves

Few in Pakistan believe that the army is going to make a grab for power at this time, but it hasn’t stopped speculation over the fate of the civilian government, widely seen to have to failed to mount an effective response to the nation’s worst floods since its creation. 

The powerful military which is fighting a full-blown insurgency by Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda has raised its standing in the eyes of Pakistanis by spearheading relief efforts. It is unlikely to exploit the vulnerability of the weak civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari to itself get bogged down in Pakistan’s enormous problems by staging a coup. 

But rumours abound that the military, which ruled the country for better part of its 63 years as a nation, and has always exerted vital influence over state affairs such as security and foreign policy, is weighing its options to “save the nation”  through an indirect intervention, the weekly Friday Times wrote in its latest edition.

Some conspiracy theories suggest the present government could be toppled by causing dissentions in the ruling Pakistan People’s Party and a new government made up of turncoats and smaller parties could be installed. Others say a new government comprising “technocrats” could be appointed by getting the present regime disqualified from the increasingly assertive Supreme Court on charges of ineptness and massive corruption.

Rumours of change in the government were set into motion last month after a coalition partner of Zardari and self-exiled head of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Altaf Hussain, called on “patriotic generals” to take revolutionary steps against corrupt politicians.

Nawaz Sharif, former prime minister and main opposition leader, strongly opposed Hussain’s suggestion but recently said a “change” could be brought out through constitutional means if the present government did not rectify its wrongdoings.

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”.

The skewed narrative on Pakistan flood aid: “help me or I’ll kill you”

One of the arguments that comes up frequently for helping the victims of Pakistan’s floods is that otherwise Islamist militants will exploit the disaster, and the threat of terrorism to the west will rise. It’s an argument that makes me wince every time I read it. 

It implies that wanting to help people simply because they are suffering from hunger, homelessness and disease is a hopelessly outdated concept; that until these hungry, homeless and diseased people turn up at a bombing near you, then there is no reason to give them money.  (For a great take on this, do read Manan Ahmed’s “I am a bhains” at Chapati Mystery).

Perhaps I am caricaturising a bit – many well-intentioned people who have urged the international community to give more aid to Pakistan’s 20 million flood victims have tried to give their appeals added urgency by lacing them with dark warnings of what might happen if they don’t. 

But I’d like to ask readers here whether they think people are more likely to give money out of fear or out of kindness.

First some comments.

The Pakistan floods have been a slow-developing disaster, yet on a scale which defies comprehension, and as such have had relatively little television coverage, particularly in the United States. The aid given has lagged far behind money provided, for example, for the earthquake in Haiti.

You might argue, therefore, that ringing alarm bells about the threat from Islamist militants is necessary to get people to pay attention.  But does aid-giving work that way?

Giving a voice to Pakistan’s flood victims

If you were to give the flood victims in Pakistan a voice, they would tell you that they need seeds to replant the crops destroyed by the water and enough emergency relief to tide them through the winter. After that the land, newly fertilised by the floods, could yield bumper crops in the years ahead.

The children would tell you that the floods hit so powerfully that the memory of feeling in panic while loudspeakers broadcast warnings from the mosques will be forever etched on their minds. They don’t blame the government for a disaster so big that not even in the tales of their ancestors had they heard stories of such floods. They just want enough help to rebuild their homes so they don’t have to sleep in half-destroyed buildings with sunken floors, worrying about them collapsing on top of them in the night.

In the villages, people would tell you they don’t mind who helps them — whether the army, the government or Islamist charities — as long as they provide food and medicine for their families. They don’t care about politics, or Islamist militants, or the “right” interpretation of Islam. And again and again, they would stress that they don’t want to survive on handouts, but want to rebuild their lives.

It is ordinary, sensible stuff. Travelling in Pakistan, and particularly to flood-hit areas, you are left thinking that if only ordinary people had a bigger say in the running of the country, it might be a considerably better place.

Yet for all its latest experiment in democracy which began in 2008, Pakistan has yet to find a way of devolving power properly down to the people. Politics is dominated by feudal elites and family dynasties — from the Zardari-Bhutto family which runs the ruling Pakistan People’s Party to the Sharif brothers in the main opposition Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz).

The civilian government has been severely criticised over its slow response to the floods. Corruption is so endemic that even the government has been forced to admit that it might be better if international aid were channelled through other hands than its own.

It is hardly surprising then that given the devastation of the floods, people are looking for answers on the most efficient way to rebuild Pakistan.

from India Insight:

India offers fresh peace talks to Kashmir

New Delhi has expressed its willingness to hold talks with "any group" from Kashmir where protests against Indian rule have mounted in recent weeks and government forces have killed at least 65 people, mostly stone-throwing protesters.

The civilian deaths have fuelled anger in the disputed Himalayan region where anti-India sentiments run deep though militant violence has gone down.

"We hope to restart the dialogue process. We will talk to any group, any political party which is willing to talk to us," Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.

According to Hindustan Times, the government will soon come out with specific meaures to address some issues which may bring relief to the people of Kashmir.

A nearly three-month-long separatist strike, curfew and security lockdown has kept the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley on the boil, shutting down much of the scenic region.

"Few days means few days...government hopes that it will be able to re-start the process of dialogue in the near future," Chidambaram said.

After several failed rounds of peace talks between moderate separatists and New Delhi in the past decade, locals say India is only buying time and is not serious about resolution of the dispute.

Down the River: What Is To Be Done?

On Friday, Sept 3, a boy stands outside a house destroyed by flood waters that swept through Mehmood Kot a month ago. Residents of Mehmood Kot have been waiting a month for relief aid, which they say they have not received. (REUTERS/Chris Allbritton)

After three days traveling the flood path down the Indus River Valley, from Nowshera in the northwest down to Multan and to the confluence of the Indus and Pakistan’s other major rivers, it’s clear the devastation is as great as everyone feared.

A month ago, angry flood waters scoured clean the land in some places, leaving only muddy bumps and piles of rubbish where villages once stood. Stagnant waters still stand in the south, breeding mosquitoes, disease and preventing the planting of crops.

Some 17 million people were affected, 6 million made homeless and 10 million are in immediate need of humanitarian aid. More than 100,000 women are due to give birth in horrible, unsanitary conditions in the next 30 days. Tens of thousands of children are at risk of acute diarrhoea, cholera and malaria.

But today, a month later, the worst damage, I think, is the damage Pakistanis have done to one another.

In Peshawar, international aid is being stolen and sold in the street markets. Bandits from Dera Ghazi Khan, separated from Punjab by the mighty Indus, are raiding abandoned villages and stealing whatever they can carry, from jewellery to juicers. And in at least one case, villages and areas that weren’t at risk were flooded because rich landowners persuaded local authorities to divert flood waters away from a posh game preserve.

Down the River: Memories and livelihoods gone forever

By Rebecca Conway

Along a sun-scorched Indus River, fishermen point to the low-lying sandbanks banked by a swollen, drifting current.

They tell of whole crops, houses, small villages even, submerged below a flood that came a month ago and has not left.

Deep below the water’s surface are livelihoods and homes, childhood memories and hard-fought agricultural plots, easily lost in what has been termed Pakistan’s worst natural disaster, in terms of the sheer scale and the numbers of Pakistanis affected.

The long-term effects of the flooding in southern Punjab are becoming starkly apparent.

As people start to rebuild their homes, their attentions are turning to how they will pay to replace what has gone forever.

Huge swathes of land will not yield a harvest this year – and planting for the next harvest may not happen either in the floodwaters do not dissipate.