Pakistan After The Assassination: Interview with Pervez Hoodbhoy

Naqshbandi: I am very sorry to hear that your father passed away. Inna lilla ai wa inna elaihay raajiyoon.

I read the interview, and I too agree with everything he says. Good to know that the islamists are cursed heartily in panjabi wherever you went. May God lift this curse of islamists and power-hungry men like musharraf in Pakistan. Amen.

this article by dr. hoodhboy was excellent. I agree 100% with what he has written here.

I do not think though that in a choice between mushy or the taliban most ppl would pick the taliban--not in panjab anyway.

I came back from pakistan yesterday after attending the funeral of my father [please do dua for him] and was in the country when Benazir was murdered. I can tell you that everyone I have spoken to blames it on the Government and specifically the Muslim League (Qaf) Party. Everyone also thinks Mushy's time is finally up. BB was massively popular after her assassination even in the rural panjab where I was. Interestingly not a single person supported the jihadists or the mullah politicians. Islamists are deeply unpopular in the Panjabi heartlands. People abuse them heartily in panjabi.

arjun writes "That's Dr fool to you...

PH has a PhD"

A PhD that cannot write worth a fart and cannot think beyond his narrow provincialsim. kinda reminds me of you without the PhD.....

#6 Posted by masadi on January 6, 2008 6:46:40 pm


Get a life fool


That's Dr fool to you...

PH has a PhD... you, OTOH, only get published on lulu.com.

I just saw mushy's interviewed on 60 minutes by the infobabe Lara Logan.

Let me summarize mushy's response: "The bitch was asking for it"....yup...

The good Doctor is out of his element here.

I believe that NFP's article on the CHOWK FP is

much closer to the reality in Pakistan.

The murder of Benazir Bhutto was a direct attack

on the Pakistani Federation.


Ras

I wonder where Nassah is ? I hope he would spend this article by P.Hoodbhoy!
kamath

Prof. Hoodbhoy has been shown to be a courageous person who never hesitated to speak the truth and call spade a spade.
Very good insightful article exposing some of the darker sides of political health of Pakistan.

Kamath
11:17PM

in #6 read "meaningless lab-rate type exercises " as

meaningless lab-rat type exercises

Zeemax chill, you are playing into the hands of these fools

Totally shallow analysis right from the front pages of the mainstream publication. He didn't even bother to read between the lines. Even in the part that I would like to agree with i.e. America wanting to dominate (not run) as he says, the world, he muddies it by saying that they have "shot themselves in the foot by supporting the Army", when the only shots fired in this relationship have been through the vital organs of the Pakistani people and society, America has benefitted greatly in its domination of the entire world using a rat's fart piece of land to create mayhem, having no concern for the indigineous folk. Finally you cannot describe a country as "great" when it does to the world what the US elite have done and traps the vast majority of its own inhabitants in meaningless lab-rate type exercises for the best years of their lives, just to enrich a tiny elite. Hoodbuoy knows very little about Pakistani society (which is much deeper than DAWN NEWS or TIME magazine) and he knows even less about US society which is much more that popular films like A Beautiful Mind and Forrest Gump.....Get a life fool and spare us your fundamentalism, because your type as legitimizer of status quo is much more dangerous than the rag tags you rail about...

"There are also scientists, as well as military people, who are radical Islamists. Many questions come to mind: can there be collusion between different field-level commanders, resulting in the hijacking of a nuclear weapon? Could outsider groups develop links with insiders? Given the
absence of accurate records of fissile material production, can one be certain that small quantities of highly enriched uranium or weapons grade plutonium have already not been diverted? I do not know the answers.

Nobody does."

Scary!!!!

Indeed Pakistan is the most dangerous place on the earth!!

NaPak fouj and the so called government of pakistan that it occupies, on average, announces at least three times in a week that the 'pakistani nuclear assets are in safe hand'. Given the credibility of NaPak fouj, GOP, and the vicious dictator I do not have doubt in my mind that the nuclear weapons and the whole program has been compromised. The fouji Junta that so vigorously wags it tail at the sight of a dollar bill, and how it has no qualms selling their mothers, and how they consider their massacre of 1500 inncocent schhol girls as a great victory, there remains no doubt that they have fukked up the nuclear arsenal of the country.

Now announcemnt, three times a week serves two purposes:

1. In US it helps make American public shit their pants so that the agents of military industrial complex and vicous capitalists get elected by a fearful public.

2. In Pakistan it keeps the public confused that they still have the nuclear arsenal and why fouj is necessary to keep it safe. God what a fukking mind job. Pak is probably the only fukking country in the world where weapons need saving.

I think the interviewer should have interviewed a pakoray wala instead of this professor if she was really seeking an enlightening analysis. What kind of people have become teachers now a days - God what a cesspool.

Very intelligent, deep and thought provoking analysis presented by Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy.

It is a voice of true and honest heart who is aware of the ground realities of Pakistani life.

Dr PH comes across as a shill in this interview. I doubt that he even qualifies for a political commentator. The only thing he got right in the interview was about the nukes and security. Nuke perhaps is the only subject where he has some qualification and his comfort level is higher when he talks about them.

“Pakistan has been sending serving officers of the Strategic Plans Division, which is the agency responsible for handling nuclear weapons, to the United States for training in safety measures”

After disclosing the US involvement in the nuke security in Pakistan, PH really points out the issue, “Extremists have already penetrated deep into the army and the intelligence agencies”.

The nukes will never fall in to the hands of the outside religious fundamentalist but the real danger is the religious fanatics inside the army. They would have a better chance of controlling them.

The nuke security issue can be looked at in two different ways.

First, it’s a bogey that the army creates to harass the western minds and policy planners in to believing that if the pak army is not guarding the nukes, they will fall in to the fundamentalists’ hands. This line of argument though dangerous creates a raison d’eter for the US and the West and results in a sustained support for the army. One reason the US admin cites in its unwavering support of Musharaf and the army is the nuke safety issue.

Second, the US is perhaps heavily involved in the nuke safety arrangements in Pakistan. Dr. PH has wittingly or unwittingly suggested that. The extent of the US cooperation in creating a Nuke safety system shows that perhaps the Pakistani nukes are not as big a danger as it is made out to be. This US admin foreign policy is based on creating fears in the public minds and the nukes do provide the US strong reasons to support the Pak Army and its continued financial support as long as the Pak army is doing its bidding in the area.

Now we need to think about whether the US and the pak army are in it together?

A recent statement by the Indian foreign minister about his satisfaction about the nuke safety in Pakistan, is a remarkable piece of information that the Indians have let slip to hint at the arrangements that are made for the Nuke safety in Pakistan and possibly Indians have been informed about them by the US.