The Massacre at Bajaur

so behram`s actually just a small time contractor? Wonder what the Texas DoT or the city of austin will think if they see some of behram`s choice posts?

BEHRAM CONSULTING ENGINEERS

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#424 by krishna_abcd on November 12, 2006 7:16pm PT

we should go easy on him...he`s just a 50+ yr old inbred retard from a country that doesn`t really consider non-muslims pakis...and his paki origins make him a terrorism suspect...

#423 by arjun2

[we`re still waiting, with bated breath, for you to name some famous old-economy(or otherwise) companies run or founded by pakis....]

Don`t hold your breath. It is no accident that behram works in a city municipality, and not at Bell Labs or NASA.

If you want to look up some of behram`s fellow Paki engineers, try the city`s Waste Mangement Services or Sewage Repair Services. Behram himself used to clean septic tanks, and the foul odor has stuck for good. :)))

#421 by behram1 on November 12, 2006 6:23pm PT

we`re still waiting, with bated breath, for you to name some famous old-economy(or otherwise) companies run or founded by pakis....

that`s right..pakis don`t allow it but the CIA goes ahead and does it anyway...

US can`t fly drones, fire missiles into Pak: PM

Our Monitoring Desk
Prime minister Shaukat Aziz has said that his country does not allow the United States to use unmanned aircraft to fire missiles into Pakistan to kill terrorists.
“We do not allow any country to violate our sovereignty. We are committed to fighting terrorism but it has to be fought together,” Aziz said on CNN’s `Late Edition` programme on Sunday.

#418 by anil on November 12, 2006 12:57pm PT


that entire Pakistan produces 5,000 engineers each year.


They produce 100 times as many jihadis though...the likes of which were bombed in bajaur by the CIA...

Neuter Gender (Circumscised) & Yasser,

Dr. Farrukh Salim writes insightful articles on Pak every Sunday.

NG & Yasser, this is ur Japan,

``A Pakistani Muslim woman is raped every two hours, one is gang-raped every other day, 90 per cent of women suffer some form of domestic violence and 50 per cent of the women who do report rape are routinely jailed under the Hudood Ordinance.

Amazingly, in this day and age, some 75 per cent of all ``pregnant and nursing Pakistani women suffer from malnutrition`` (Human Rights Watch; http://www.hrw.org). Nothing of this is religion, its all culture, ``evil customs``.

Try and imagine the number of shelters we have for all the women being abused by the police, all the victims of acid throwing, stove deaths, rapes, gang-rapes and domestic violence.``



For more info pl browse:

http://thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=31524

Re: # 417

In the US... which is less than double the population of Pakistan, a woman is raped every 5 minutes... and in India, the statistic is even greater.

BTW... how are the issue of rape relevant to the fact that Pakistan has a higher GDP/Capita than India?

#415 by arjun2

[ahmedis like manto and aisha aren`t muslim...calling them muslims is breaking the law in the land of the pure....]

Oh I know! That`s why I said :

[After all, Muslims (and Ahmadis too?) are the chosen people, favored by Al-lah. ]

There is obviously a CLEAR distinction between Ahmedis and Muslims. It is higly doubtful, nay, impossible that Manto is going to be able to lay a finger on any Ghilman. :)

Sorry, Manto, that`s just the way it is. No ``untouched like pearls`` Ghilmans for you.

#414 by krishna_abcd on November 12, 2006 11:25am PT


ahmedis like manto and aisha aren`t muslim...calling them muslims is breaking the law in the land of the pure....

#406 by Mantolives

I think all this doom and gloom about Pakistan`s economy is COMPLETELY unwarranted.

After all, Muslims (and Ahmadis too?) are the chosen people, favored by Al-lah. Therefore naturally it follows that Pakiland will be FAR ahead of India eventually. What we see today is just a flash in the pan.

After all, one look at the faithful students rocking back and forth in the madrassas in Pakistan, and you know that education is alive and well in Pakiland. Education that MATTERS. After all, this world is temporary. But in the next world, Pakis are MILES ahead. Do you think that the infidels would get any Ghilmans? No sir! Any houris? Fat chance! Nope. Pakis are holding all the cards there. All this ``progress`` by the infidels is simply laughable.

What Pakiland needs right now, as Urstruly has pointed out, is MORE Islam. Unless Pakis are TRUE Muslims, Al-lah won`t be opening the bag of gifts. No sir! No way!

Islam - that`s the key to advancement and eventual dominance over India and all the infidels.

It says so in the Book. Just read it. It must be true. Therefore it is true. It`s logical.

#403 by okhla99

[How many cities in your country have running water 24 hours (including your capital)? ]

All of them.


[Has the per capita water supply position improved or worsened in the last two years?
Absolutely no results have been achieved on this front. Do your own Googling. ]

That does not mean that India is not making progress. The economy is growing at a rate of 9%, unheard of anywhere but in autocratic China where the Government can do whatever they want.

The list of things going on in India is very long.

[How many cities in your country have reliable round the clock electricity (especially in Summer)?? Including your capital ??? Has the per capita power position improved in the last two years?? Absolutely no results have been achieved on this front either. Do your own Googling. ]

There are power shortages and load shedding in in the USA also. This happened, for example, in California every summer for the last four summers.

We are doing something about it. Manmohan Singh is investing $350 BILLION for infrastructure. Including a SLEW of nuclear power plants. (France for example generates 75% of its electricity from nuclear power). We can too.

[How many caste Panchayats have passed death sentences on eloping couples ??]

What`s your point?

[How many Sati Deaths ???]

One, as far as I know, and that turned out to be a murder which is being prosecuted UNDER THE LAW. In a country of a BILLION people.

[How many marriages finalized within same caste???]

Huh? What does that have to do with anything?

[Dalit Lynchings ???]

How many? What does that prove? That the country is not making economic progress? What nonsense.


[Land deprivations of the poor?? [Corruption in politics ???? Corrupt police/bureaucracy???]

Happens in the USA as well.



[What have you, Krishna-xyz , done towards any of these in the last two years?]

If I don`t do anything, then THAT PROVES that India is not progressing economically? Is that your logic?


[The more we appear different, the more we are the same. In some ways we shall be poles apart. In most ways we are as similar as can be. VRV Tum maano ya naa maano....]


Tell me -

1) Do you have any indigenous Space Programme?

2) Can you manufacture your own fighter jets? Like the Sukhoi - the MOST ADVANCED FIGHTER IN THE WORLD. Can you develop a fighter from scratch?

3) Do you make your own cars, trucks etc.

4) How about computer chips?

5) Cell phones?

6) Ships?

7) Cruise missiles?

8) Submarines?

9) Do you have companies like Reliance, Infosys, the Tata Group, the Mittal group and a thousand others that ARE MAJOR MULTONATIONALS NOW (The Tata group output is the same as what GE had a few years ago)?

10) How about cryogenic engines? Ours passed the first ground test recently.

Any area, you name it, India is rapidly advancing.

Pakistan is not even in a position to BEGIN TO COMPETE.


This is a fact. Now you can bury your head in the sand, but the gap is only going to get wider.

India should maintain the status quo with Pakistan for now, and not forget the enmity and the terrorists that Pakistan sent into India.

There has to be a day of reckoning. When India becomes stronger.

India should continue to steadily progress until then.

BWAHAHAHAHA...Pakiland to offer IT expertise to ANYONE is just so-so funny...

Pakistan offers IT expertise to LDCs

What next? Pakiland to offer satellite launching expertise?

This is what you get when you spend a higher % on your military and a lower % on your education...


Competitive (dis)advantage

By Andleeb Abbas

AND, the one man show continues! Even as Pakistan’s image plunges after being branded as a country with minimal prospects of peace and prosperity, General Pervez Musharraf’s image as a man of many styles and colours continues to gain international prominence. The president’s book In the line of fire has, indeed, given him the unlimited media attention that he may have been looking for, but whether this book will have a positive or negative impact on the country image, is perhaps an irrelevant question considering that he and the country are not one and the same thing.

As the saying goes, the leader represents the country and his stature grows by the country’s stature. However, in Pakistan we have seen a strange phenomenon i.e, as the country continues to face problems of stability and security, General Musharraf has gone from strength to strength as a leader who is perceived to be the best vehicle to deliver western political agendas in a country where all hell will break lose if he is not at the helm of affairs. This rise of the leader and the fall of the country is a one-of-its-kind historical event which unfortunately reinforces the conviction of the rest of the world that without the general, Pakistan would just be history - an image carefully marketed through an extensive PR campaign in favour of the individual.

The government insists that the country has overcome economic and political crises due to the ‘visionary leadership’ of the president, and that is why it is now ranked alongside the Emerging Economies of South Asia. To support this claim we are always given the example of the macro economic turnaround in the shape of high GDP figures and impressive per capita increases. However, Pakistan remains a country which, according to many of the think tanks of the world, has missed the competitive boat.

HARSH FACTS: These are fortunate times for Asian economies in general and South Asian economies in particular. They are on the rise, and the economic role reversal seems to be on its way; Indian and Chinese markets have become not only huge attractions for western products and services, but the rich and visionary entrepreneurs of these countries are now buying American and European companies in evidence of the fact that the Asian dominance in the 21st century, as was the western dominance in the 20th century, is just a matter of time. In this wave of Asian resurgence, Pakistan is still just an onlooker who seems to be so embroiled in domestic politics and foreign obedience, that it has not paced or placed itself strategically to take opportunity of this role reversal to compete in the new globally competitive marketplace.

The World Economic Forum publishes a yearly Global Competitiveness report, the latest of which - the 2006-2007 report - belies all claims of our leaders on Pakistan’s economic prowess. Pakistan has been ranked 91 out of 125 countries in the competitive list. It is also overshadowed by India which finds itself ranked at a very respectable 43rd place, and is also lower ranked than Sri Lanka which is 79th.

This report has a scientific way of ranking countries on nine factors which are essential for enhancing country competitiveness. These factors are institutions, infrastructure, macro economy, health and primary education, higher education and training, market efficiency, technological readiness, and business sophistication and innovation. A glance at these requirements makes anybody who has been familiar with this country immediately realize why this country is ranked amongst the world’s most incompetitive countries.

As expected, the worst performers in the criteria are primary education at 108th and higher education and training at 104th in the world ranking. All other factors like technology and business innovation are of course affected when the basic fundamentals for developing competitiveness in these areas are missing. Even the much touted macro economy wonders, when compared to the rest of the world, rank a miserable 89th.

The point is that in a truly global existence of the modern world, being compared to your past is an obsolete method of gauging your progress. A true comparison of your competitiveness can only be assessed when you are ranked relative to your competitors. Even if Pakistan’s GDP growth rate is 6.5 per cent in the last few years, then India and China are racing with GDP growth rates at 8-9 per cent, and with their huge reserves and resources they will always outpace Pakistan on many counts.

Countries do not become competitive because they follow the commands of the superpowers; countries do not become popular because they have leaders with enviable powers of articulation and expression or are media-savvy; countries do not become competitive by juggling around with certain economic figures to do window-dressing. N the contrary, countries become competitive on the basis of a systematic competitive advantage strategy based on their analysis of what their unique selling points are. This clear cut competitive strategy is followed by feasible and long-term action plans to market their competitive advantage to the rest of the world. Thus, countries have to answer a few basic questions: what are its unique strengths? Are they sustainable or replicable by other competing countries? How to market this competitive advantage to the world in a manner that helps achieve the overall objectives of image development, foreign investment and economic stability? Let us try to answer these questions and apply them to Pakistan and see why Pakistan seems to struggle in competing at all levels.

WHAT IS PAKISTAN’S COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: To compete, a country has to possess a competitive advantage in terms of what it can offer better than the other countries. The other part of the competitive advantage equation is that the advantage the country possesses needs to get translated and communicated in marketing terms to the rest of the world. The advantage normally comes from the resources it has, and, more than that, the quality and quantity of these resources. The three major resources are financial, physical and human ones. These in economic terms are also known as factors of production i.e land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship.

Pakistan for the last 59 years has used its low-cost labour as a competitive advantage. Pakistani textile, for instance, was considered the best in terms of cost-vs-quality equation. Unfortunately, this competitive advantage has been taken over by countries like China, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka who are not the best cotton-producing nations, but, as in the case of Bangladesh, buy our cotton and convert it into value-added products at a lower cost than its competitors. Thus, if the cost advantage is no longer there, what other competitive advantage strategy is there?

Of course to avoid price comparison one can go into the value-added goods market with a strategy of differentiation in terms of quality, brand, image and styling etc. But for creating a value-added offering the country needs to have skilled and educated human resources which can provide innovative value-added offerings, and technology which can translate these brilliant ideas into differentiated products and services. This perhaps is the dilemma which Pakistan faces as a country, as it can neither claim itself to be cheaper than its competitors nor more differentiated than the others. This strategy vacuum has made Pakistan to be ranked in the lowest cadre of competitiveness in the global ranking.

The responsibility of creating a competitive advantage strategy rests on the think tanks leading the country as they will create the necessary resource conditions to make it possible. As we see, countries the Dubai and Singapore, which have a serious lack of natural resources, have successfully converted themselves into distribution hubs where they have become regional centres. This they have been able to do due to the tremendous investment in the country’s infrastructure in the case of Dubai, and development of top class human and capital resources in the case Singapore.

This, naturally, was not achieved overnight, but their leaders followed a consistent strategic plan to make this vision become a reality. India has become almost the world’s largest supplier of outsourced human services in the world, while smaller countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have discovered cheaper ways of supplying value-added textiles to the world. Some countries have used a single natural resource to create tremendous riches for their people. Maldives, for instance, with its tiny size and which is literally dwarfed by its giant neighbours, has created a competitive advantage from its one and the only resource - the beach. Maldives markets its beaches as being more beautiful than its competitors’, and has more millionaires than many bigger sized countries. Again the leaders of the country have to make a dedicated effort to discover and develop a distinctive competitive advantage over a period of time to reap benefits from this investment.

WHAT SHOULD BE PAKISTAN’S COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: If cheap labour is no longer Pakistan’s competitive advantage, the question is, what can be or what should be Pakistan’s competitive advantage. Pakistan has many unique features like its diverse geography and strategic location vis a vis Central Asian countries, but the problem is our leaders do not seem to have given a serious thought to the vital question, on what basis is Pakistan going to compete in the next decade or so and what investments need to be done to become competitive in the chosen areas?

One thing is for sure, when you are constantly branded as a haven for terrorists and a political swamp, very few strategies of attracting resources or people to engage in long-term investment will really work. With Afghanistan and India making the most of our political and provincial disharmony, it should have been the government’s duty to dispel this image by creating conditions of peace and security to assure that Pakistan was definitely on the way up. No planned internal or foreign media strategy has been developed to counter these allegations. If President Musharraf had spent one-third the time to promote the country as he has done to promote himself in the last several years, the story may have been different. Unfortunately, his own image and that of Pakistan have to follow contrary paths; as the country is perceived as full of desperate, unstable maniacs every time the president or his media moguls make him appear as the only moderate and enlightened saviour who can create some method out of the apparent political madness prevailing in Pakistan.

THE BASIS OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: It is interesting to see what India and China have done to become the emerging powers and what has Pakistan missed out on. While Pakistan’s high population is a huge disadvantage, both China and India have used their huge population as a competitive advantage. The difference is their investment in human resource development and their growing middle class. The leadership in both these countries had developed indigenous resources without the blessings of the superpower. They had invested in developing local industries based on human resources which were developed by providing reasonable quality education and training initiatives. These developments were supported by successive governments; it is this quantity and quality of human resources which have given these countries a competitive advantage.

In India’s case it is of course the tremendous media and marketing strategies which have managed to highlight India’s advantages and concealed the many disadvantages that are still present in the country. On the contrary, Pakistan has always managed to highlight its weaknesses and not been able to capitalize on its strengths. The total preoccupation of our leaders with their self-projection and self-perpetuation has led to shift of focus away from any possible long-term strategy for nation-building, for image-building and for confidence-building either locally or internationally. As a consequence, Pakistan as a nation has failed to present itself to the world as a country that has an identity and a personality that people all around the world respect, respond to, and refer to as a force to reckon with.

CONCLUSION: At the moment the only competitive advantage that we supposedly have, according to out learned leaders is, that we are in the American good books and are termed a US frontline ally on the war against terror. Is that an advantage or a disadvantage? If we see the history of most of the other competitive nations, none of them have developed because of their good relations with the US. In fact, it has been their anti-American stance which has made them rely on their own resources, enabling them to become independent of the whims and fancies of the superpower. India and China have a history of spurning American advances. Other countries which developed without American aid are Malaysia and Iran. Thus, the American dependency has had a crippling effect on our political and economic freedom and development.

The 21st century, it is the unanimous opinion of all think tanks in the world, is the era of the knowledge economy. All economies, countries and companies which are knowledge-intensive will survive and proper. The accumulation of intellectual capital is the only sustainable competitive advantage. That being so, why has Pakistan failed to move in that direction to join the ranks of the most competitive nations in the world? The answer is simple: the people responsible for giving the country this advantage have always put their own self interest before the national interest.

Ironically, the Urdu version of President Musharraf’s book is titled Sub Sey Pehlay Pakistan. Had that been the case, his close aides would not have among them ministers who have a proven record of looting Pakistan. But they are there because without them he would not be able to make a superficial pretense of a democracy and win over any sort of electoral vote. Thus, the leadership of this country has always compromised ethics, values, laws, rules, constitutions and institutions to serve their personal interests, and the present regime is an extension of that embarrassing legacy. It is this addiction to power which has led to a complete subjugation of national priorities to personal priorities costing this country its image, identity, security and the opportunity to develop, prosper and compete in the world with prominence and excellence.

Re: # 410

One of my Pakistani friend, who was head of Siemen`s venture capital fund in Silicon Valley had told me about 18 mos. ago, that entire Pakistan produces 5,000 engineers each year. Thus lacks ability to create skill surplus situation that India, China and even the Phillipines have been able to do. This is a consequence of a long neglect of education in Pakistan. Another social phenomenon that is happening, due to neglect of education spending, is the marriage age of women in Pakistan has declined. It is well established fact that when the marriage age of women is lower its impact on education, welfare, health and quality of life is seriously impaired. This is a drag on the process to create middle class, which is the engine of creating skill surpluses and other growth drivers.

Anil

Re: # 418 by anil on November 12, 2006 12:57pm PT

{One of my Pakistani friend, who was head of Siemen`s venture capital fund in Silicon Valley had told me about 18 mos. ago, that entire Pakistan produces 5,000 engineers each year.}

Totally rubbish. My own engineering university in Karachi produced some 2300 engineers when I completed my engineering degree. There was another reputable engineering college in Karachi at the time, which further produced some 2,000 engineers. Thus between the two engineering institutions in Karachi, we had a combined total of more than 4,000. Then, there were other engineering colleges in Sind that produced equal number of engineers, and also in Lahore, and in Peshawar.

The bogus disinformation about Pakistan continues till this day. No one is arguing that Pakistani education should not be improved. The argument that got started was only to refute the Hindoo Land disinformation that somehow the quality of Pakistani engineering is below the engineers of Hindoo Land.

For the old economy engineers from Pakistan are still better than the Kitaaabi Keeras of hindoo land.