Pakistan: Now or Never?
Perspectives on Pakistan
from Afghan Journal:
America takes the war deeper into Pakistan
One of the most interesting things in Bob Woodward's re-telling of the Afghan war strategy in his book "Obama's Wars" is the approach toward Pakistan. It seems the Obama administration figured out pretty early on in its review that Pakistan was going to be the central batttleground, for this is where the main threat to America came from.
Indeed, the mission in Afghanistan was doomed so long as al Qaeda and the Taliban were sheltered in the mountains of northwest Pakistan straddling the Afghan border. The question was how do you deal with Pakistan?
Like much else, the administration debated long and hard just how far to push Pakistan to cracking down on the militants, some of whom it had spawned as assets in Aghanistan and as a front against its much bigger traditional enemy, India. One of those arguing for a tougher posture inside the administration was Dennis Blair, then the director of National Intelligence who thought there were just too many carrots being handed out and not enough sticks. He suggested the United States bomb targets inside Pakistan without seeking Islamabad's approval. "I think Pakistan would be completely, completely pissed off and they would probably take actions against us ... but they would probably adjust," he once told Obama.
Josh Rogin, recounting the debate from a piece in Foreign Policy, said that Obama chose a less confrontational path toward Pakistan. A year later, patience is running out. Last week's repeated incursions by NATO helicopters from Afghanistan into Pakistan while pursuing militants seemed to signal a new, muscular strategy of the type Blair advocated.
Claiming Jinnah’s mantle: Musharraf joins the queue
The minute I entered the elegant book-lined club in central London where Pervez Musharraf was about to launch his political career, it was clear who was to dominate the proceedings – Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Quaid-e-Azam, Founder of the Nation, Father of Pakistan. In his trademark peaked Jinnah cap, it was his photo alone which was hanging prominently on the platform where the former military ruler was to speak; and his photo on the little entrance ticket they gave you to get past security.
It was his spirit which was invoked even in the name of Musharraf’s political party — his All Pakistan Muslim League (APML) was a deliberate echo of the pre-independence All India Muslim League, through which Jinnah created the state of Pakistan in 1947.
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.
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.”
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 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).
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.
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.
Down the River: A Journey Through Pakistan’s Devastation
Starting tomorrow, members of the Pakistan bureau — including myself, two cameramen and a photographer — will travel down the Indus River valley to document the scope and scale of Pakistan’s devastating floods, approximately one month after they began.
More than 1,600 people have been killed and at least six million made homeless. But the numbers don’t tell the story in themselves, and that’s part of what we’re going to attempt to do. With a disaster so great in scale, no single area can convey what has happened, or what will happen next.
from The Great Debate UK:
Why Pakistan deserves generosity
Muhammad Atiq Ur Rehman Tariq is a Ph.D. student at Delft University of Technology and Dr Nick van de Giesen is Professor of Water Resources Management at Delft University of Technology. The opinions expressed are their own.
According to official reports of the Federal Flood Commission of Pakistan, at least 1,556 people have died and more than 568,000 homes have been badly damaged or totally destroyed as a result of the recent floods in Pakistan. Almost 6.5 million people have been affected by this flooding and 3650 sq km of Pakistan's most fertile crop land have been destroyed.
