Obama Inauguration Brings Hope, Scepticism

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Re: # 177 Hey, Arjun:

There was a picture of a man being flogged in broad daylight by the Taliban in Swat for extorting money. Poetic justice coming to bite the Pakistani butt in the rear!

Re: # 182 Posted by hamidm2 on January 24, 2009 7:47:48 pm

Hamid mian,

[..what is it about us pakis that makes them react so violently ? ..do they hate us because we are beautiful ?..] No, it is their diet that makes them so stressed out. I am sure you read this:

Here are some of the highlights:

Why Indians are stressed and unhealthy
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Aakar Patel

Last year, medical journal Lancet reported a study of 20,000 Indian patients and found that 60 per cent of the world's heart disease patients are in India, which has 15 per cent of the world's population.

Four things: diet, culture, stress and lack of fitness.

Gujaratis and Punjabis are the two Indian communities most susceptible to heart disease. Their vulnerability is recent. Both have a large peasant population -- Patels and Jats -- who in the last few decades have moved from an agrarian life to an urban one. They have retained their diet and if anything made it richer, but their bodies do not work as much. This transition from a physical life to a sedentary one has made them vulnerable.

Bombay's junk food was invented in the 19th century to service Gujarati traders leaving Fort's business district late in the evening after a long day.

Though Jains are a very small part (one per cent or thereabouts) of the Gujarati population, such is their cultural dominance through trade that many South Bombay restaurants have a 'Jain' option on the menu. This is food without garlic and ginger. Since they are both tubers (as also are potatoes), Jains do not eat them, because in uprooting them from the soil, living organisms may be killed (no religious restriction on butter and cheese, however!). The vast majority of Ahmedabad's restaurants are vegetarian. Gujaratis have no tolerance for meat-eaters and one way of keeping Muslims out of their neighbourhoods is to do it through banning 'non-vegetarians' from purchasing property in apartment buildings.

India's culture encourages swift consumption.

We eat with fingers, as opposed to knives and forks, or chopsticks, resulting in the scooping up of bigger mouthfuls.

The insistence by family – 'thoda aur le lo' -- at the table is part of our culture of hospitality, as is the offering of tea and perhaps also a snack to visiting guests and strangers.

Indian men do no work around the house. Middle class women do little, especially after childbirth. Many cook, but the cutting and cleaning is done by the servant. Slim in their teens, they turn thick-waisted in their 20s, within a few years of marriage.

The Indian is under stress and is anxious. This is bad for his health. He must be on constant guard against the world, which takes advantage of him: the servant's perfidy, encroachment by his neighbours, cars cutting in front of him in traffic, the vendor's rate that must be haggled down. Almost nothing is orderly and everything must be worried about.

Knowledge causes great stress, though the lack of information is also stressful, leading to spy games and office gossip.

Because there is no individualism in India, merit comes from seniority and the talented but young executive is stressed by the knowledge that he's not holding the position he deserves. Indians are peerless detectors of social standing and the vertical hierarchy of the Indian office is sacrosanct.

In the last decade, when Indians began owning companies abroad, the Wall Street Journal reported on cultural problems that arose. Their foreign employees learnt quickly that saying 'no' would cause their Indian bosses great offence, so they learnt to communicate with them as with children.

There is no culture of physical fitness, and because of this Indians don't have an active old age.

Past 60, they crumble. Within society they must step back and play their scripted role. Widows at that age, even younger, have no hope of remarriage because sacrifice is expected of them. Widowers at 60 must also reconcile to singlehood, and the family would be aghast if they showed interest in the opposite sex at that age, even though this would be normal in another culture.

Elders are cared for within the family, but are defanged when they pass on their wealth to their son in the joint family. They lose their self-esteem as they understand their irrelevance, and wither.


The writer is a former newspaper editor who lives in Bombay. Email: aakar.patel @gmail.com

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=158949

The criminals of pakistan will stop at nothing. The much heralded karachi fountain has been stolen and no one knew about it. The country is really going to dogs.

From dawn of today.

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The “Water Jet Fountain� project was launched in December 2004 and completed in January 2006 with claims by the federal ministry of ports and shipping that it was the biggest display of its kind and was the world’s largest artificial fountain. It had generated enormous media hype much before it was launched.

However, in less than three years, the Docks police in Keamari Town registered an FIR about the theft of the huge machine, on behalf of an assistant electrical engineer of the Water Jet Fountain in October 2008.

The contents of the FIR (159/2008) lodged under Section 380 of the Pakistan Penal Code suggests that culprits took away some 22 parts of the machine separately and the KPT administration came to know of it only when it found the fountain, installed more than a nautical mile from the shore, out of order several days after the incident.

HamidM, if India's too poor for you, that's another thing altogether.

... it really amazes me to see the horrible hindoos on this forum run around like monkeys with their tails on fire ....... what is it about us pakis that makes them react so violently ? ..........do they hate us because we are beautiful ?....... .. what ever it is, we are doing something right to send them into these apoplectic fits ........ shabash, pakis! ..... but be careful, we have some senior citizens who might end up in their next incarnation prematurely ..... now, we don't want anil mian or dost-mittar ji coming back as an arjun, do we? ......

[There is a commonality between the taliban and the military.]

Note the last sentence of the following excerpt from the Thursday, January 22 entry into the "Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl" from Swat (currently being published on the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7848138.stm):

...Maulana Shah Dauran also said in his speech on FM radio that three 'thieves' will be lashed tomorrow and whoever wants to see can come and watch.

I am surprised that when we have suffered so much, why people still go and watch such things? Why also doesn't the army stop them from carrying out such acts? I have seen wherever the army is there is usually a Taleban member nearby, but where there is a Taleban member the army will always not go.

#178 by _ar_jun24

When the army does act, its near-total lack of preparedness to fight a counterinsurgency reveals itself.

After kick-starting a guerilla war in Kashmir where most Indian army units learnt the art of counter-insurgency warfare, so much so that crack American and Israeli units are learning how to fight from the Indian army, it is amusing to read that the Paki army is struggling to cope with the guerilla war inflicted on them by the Taliban.

Karma is a b!tch!

Re: # 176

There is a commonality between the taliban and the military. After studying in the madrassas, some join the military and others join the taliban. Most of the taliban who control swat are the punjabis, the same grouping as the paki military.

As 12000 madrassas turn out the jihadis, they will increasingly control the military and links with taliban will be reinforced. The issue then for teh world to sort out is the bomb, and that is when pakistan will be resized.

Most likely in the next war the indian aircraft will come from the easter borders of pakistan to take out the nukes.

allah-o-fubar....pure islam comes to pureland


now ijaz gul will be here...to tell us how the indo-israeli green pine radar(yes, radar) in kyrgyzstan is being used to jam the communications of the allah's army...while letting the FM station and jihadi comm units operate...

Radio Spreads Taliban’s Terror in Pakistani Region
By RICHARD A. OPPEL JR. and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Every night around 8 o’clock, the terrified residents of Swat, a lush and picturesque valley a hundred miles from three of Pakistan’s most important cities, crowd around their radios. They know that failure to listen and learn might lead to a lashing — or a beheading.

Using a portable radio transmitter, a local Taliban leader, Shah Doran, on most nights outlines newly proscribed “un-Islamic� activities in Swat, like selling DVDs, watching cable television, singing and dancing, criticizing the Taliban, shaving beards and allowing girls to attend school. He also reveals names of people the Taliban have recently killed for violating their decrees — and those they plan to kill.

“They control everything through the radio,� said one Swat resident, who declined to give his name for fear the Taliban might kill him. “Everyone waits for the broadcast.�

International attention remains fixed on the Taliban’s hold on Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal areas, from where they launch attacks on American forces in Afghanistan. But for Pakistan, the loss of the Swat Valley could prove just as devastating.

Unlike the fringe tribal areas, Swat, a Delaware-size chunk of territory with 1.3 million residents and a rich cultural history, is part of Pakistan proper, within reach of Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the capital.

After more than a year of fighting, virtually all of it is now under Taliban control, marking the militants’ farthest advance eastward into Pakistan’s so-called settled areas, residents and government officials from the region say.

With the increasing consolidation of their power, the Taliban have taken a sizable bite out of the nation. And they are enforcing a strict interpretation of Islam with cruelty, bringing public beheadings, assassinations, social and cultural repression and persecution of women to what was once an independent, relatively secular region, dotted with ski resorts and fruit orchards and known for its dancing girls.

Last year, 70 police officers were beheaded, shot or otherwise slain in Swat, and 150 wounded, said Malik Naveed Khan, the police inspector general for the North-West Frontier Province.

The police have become so afraid that many officers have put advertisements in newspapers renouncing their jobs so the Taliban will not kill them.

One who stayed on the job was Farooq Khan, a midlevel officer in Mingora, the valley’s largest city, where decapitated bodies of policemen and other victims routinely surface. Last month, he was shopping there when two men on a motorcycle sprayed him with gunfire, killing him in broad daylight.

“He always said, ‘I have to stay here and defend our home,’ � recalled his brother, Wajid Ali Khan, a Swat native and the province’s minister for environment, as he passed around a cellphone with Farooq’s picture.

In the view of analysts, the growing nightmare in Swat is a capsule of the country’s problems: an ineffectual and unresponsive civilian government, coupled with military and security forces that, in the view of furious residents, have willingly allowed the militants to spread terror deep into Pakistan.

The crisis has become a critical test for the government of the civilian president, Asif Ali Zardari, and for a security apparatus whose loyalties, many Pakistanis say, remain in question.

Seeking to deflect blame, Mr. Zardari’s government recently criticized “earlier halfhearted attempts at rooting out extremists from the area� and vowed to fight militants “who are ruthlessly murdering and maiming our citizens.�

But as pressure grows, he has also said in recent days that the government would be willing to talk with militants who accept its authority. Such negotiations would carry serious risks: security officials say a brief peace deal in Swat last spring was a spectacular failure that allowed militants to tighten their hold and take revenge on people who had supported the military.

Without more forceful and concerted action by the government, some warn, the Taliban threat in Pakistan is bound to spread.

“The crux of the problem is the government appears divided about what to do,� said Mahmood Shah, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier who until 2006 was in charge of security in the western tribal areas. “This disconnect among the political leadership has emboldened the militants.�

From 2,000 to 4,000 Taliban fighters now roam the Swat Valley, according to interviews with a half-dozen senior Pakistani government, military and political officials involved in the fight. By contrast, the Pakistani military has four brigades with 12,000 to 15,000 men in Swat, officials say.

But the soldiers largely stay inside their camps, unwilling to patrol or exert any large presence that might provoke — or discourage — the militants, Swat residents and political leaders say. The military also has not raided a small village that locals say is widely known as the Taliban’s headquarters in Swat.

Nor have troops destroyed mobile radio transmitters mounted on motorcycles or pickup trucks that Shah Doran and the leader of the Taliban in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, have expertly used to terrify residents.

Being named in one of the nightly broadcasts often leaves just two options: fleeing Swat, or turning up headless and dumped in a village square.

When the army does act, its near-total lack of preparedness to fight a counterinsurgency reveals itself. Its usual tactic is to lob artillery shells into a general area, and the results have seemed to hurt civilians more than the militants, residents say.

In some parts of Pakistan, civilian militias have risen to fight the Taliban. But in Swat, the Taliban’s gains amid a large army presence has convinced many that the military must be conspiring with the Taliban.

“It’s very mysterious how they get so much weapons and support,� while nearby districts are comparatively calm, said Muzaffar ul-Mulk Khan, a member of Parliament from Swat, who said his home near Mingora was recently destroyed by the Taliban.

“We are bewildered by the military. They patrol only in Mingora. In the rest of Swat they sit in their bases. And the militants can kill at will anywhere in Mingora,� he said.

“Nothing is being done by the government," Mr. Khan added.

Accusations that the military lacks the will to fight in Swat are “very unfair and unjustified,� said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the chief military spokesman, who said 180 army soldiers and officers had been killed in Swat in the past 14 months.

“They do reach out, and they do patrol,� he said.

Military officials also say they are trying to step up activity in Swat.

General Abbas said the military did not have the means to block Taliban radio transmissions across such a wide area, but he disputed the view that Mingora had fallen to the militants.

“Just because they come out at night and throw down four or five bodies in the square does not mean that militants control anything,� he said.

Few officials would dispute that one of the Pakistani military’s biggest mistakes in Swat was its failure to protect Pir Samiullah, a local leader whose 500 followers fought the Taliban in the village of Mandal Dag. After the Taliban killed him in a firefight last month, the militants demanded that his followers reveal his gravesite — and then started beheading people until they got the information, one Mandal Dag villager said.

“They dug him up and hung his body in the square,� the villager said, and then they took the body to a secret location. The desecration was intended to show what would happen to anyone who defied the Taliban’s rule, but it also made painfully clear to Swat residents that the Pakistani government could not be trusted to defend those who rose up against the militants.

“He should have been given more protection,� said one Pakistani security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject. “He should have been made a symbol of resistance.�

Gruesome displays like the defilement of Pir Samiullah’s remains are an effective tactic for the Taliban, who have shown cruel efficiency in following through on their threats.

Recently, Shah Doran broadcast word that the Taliban intended to kill a police officer who he said had killed three people.

“We have sent people, and tomorrow you will have good news,� he said on his nightly broadcast, according to a resident of Matta, a Taliban stronghold. The next day the decapitated body of the policeman was found in a nearby village.

Even in Mingora, a town grown hardened to violence, residents were shocked early this month to find the bullet-ridden body of one of the city’s most famous dancing girls splayed on the main square.

Known as Shabana, the woman was visited at night by a group of men who claimed to want to hire her for a party. They shot her to death and dragged her body more than a quarter-mile to the central square, leaving it as a warning for anyone who would flout Taliban decrees.

The leader of the militants in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, gained prominence from making radio broadcasts and running an Islamic school, becoming popular among otherwise isolated homemakers and inspiring them to sell their jewelry to finance his operation. He also drew support from his marriage to the daughter of Sufi Mohammed, a powerful religious leader in Swat until 2001 who later disowned his son-in-law.

Even though Swat does not border Afghanistan or any of Pakistan’s seven lawless federal tribal areas, Maulana Fazlullah eventually allied with Taliban militants who dominate regions along the Afghan frontier.

His fighters now roam the valley with sniper rifles, Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortar tubes and, according to some officials, night-vision goggles and flak vests.

His latest tactic is a ban on girls’ attending school in Swat, which will be tested in February when private schools are scheduled to reopen after winter recess. The Taliban have already destroyed 169 girls’ schools in Swat, government officials say, and they expect most private schools to stay closed rather than risk retaliation.

“The local population is totally fed up, and if they had the chance they would lynch each and every Talib,� said Mr. Naveed Khan, the police official. “But the Taliban are so cruel and violent, no one will oppose them. If this is not stopped, it will spill into other areas of Pakistan.�

Ismail Khan contributed reporting.

barry brings hope and hellfires...

Thousands attend funeral of drone victims

Sunday, January 25, 2009

By Mushtaq Yusufzai, Malik Mumtaz & Irfan Burki

PESHAWAR/MIRAMSHAH/WANA: Thousands of tribesmen on Saturday attended the funeral prayers of the victims of Friday’s drone attacks in the North and South Waziristan Agencies. They condemned the killings and asked US President Barack Obama to spend the money on the welfare of the tribal people instead of killing them with sophisticated weapons.

Hundreds of tribesmen thronged Zyaraki village of North Waziristan Agency (NWA) to attend the funeral prayers of those killed in the drone attack.

Tribal militants and religious scholars present on the occasion were critical of the reporting of the international wire agencies and the national electronic media which, they said, reported that al-Qaeda operatives were killed in the CIA-operated spy-plane attack.

Religious scholars, including former MNA Maulana Deendar, Maulana Muhammad Alam and others, addressed a sizeable gathering of mourners at Zyaraki village of the Mirali subdivision and condemned air strikes by the US planes on the tribal villages.

They claimed that all those killed in the attack were innocent and local villagers, who had nothing to do with militancy or Taliban.

More hope for Pakistan emerging out of Swat and the 'intelligence' of the Pak Army in allowing this to happen:

"Radio Amplifies Taliban’s Terror in a Pakistani Region" (NY Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/world/asia/25swat.html?partner=rss& ; ;emc=rss&pagewanted=all

"In some parts of Pakistan, civilian militias have risen to fight the Taliban. But in Swat, the Taliban’s gains amid a large army presence has convinced many that the military must be conspiring with the Taliban."

Obama orders bombing of pakistan

/from jang of today////// The humiliated of pakistan further loses hoipe........

Obama ordered Waziristan air strikes

Sunday, January 25, 2009

News Desk

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama gave the go-ahead for his first military action the other day, missile strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan which killed at least 18 people, The Guardian reported on Saturday.

Four days after assuming the presidency, he was consulted by the US commanders before they launched the two attacks. Although, Obama has abandoned many of the “war on terror� policies of George Bush while he was president, he is not retreating from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders.

Pak has Qaida havens, admits Mush
25 Jan 2009, 0001 hrs IST, ANI
Print Email Discuss Share Save Comment Text:
WASHINGTON: After long denying that terrorist camps in Pakistan exists, the former president Pervez Musharraf has admitted that Pakistan does
have areas which provide safe havens to militants.

Musharraf said that al-Qaida is operating from remote areas in Pakistan, and due to the difficult geographical conditions in the region, it is very difficult for the security forces to dismantle the camps.

“There are ‘sanctuaries’ in Pakistan for al-Qaida, which combined with the remote, mountainous terrain ‘makes the task difficult’ of finding the militants,� Musharraf said.

Musharraf also rejected the notion that Pakistan is the originating point of terrorism, but accepted that there are agencies in the country which are offering help to the militant activities.
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Finally mushy accepts what I had been telling, the paki isi supports al quida ////

BJ:

Current aid is certainly going to be different and have more accountability. My point is where will it go? It will be spent in FATA, SWAT etc. and not in other areas. I will be used for specific purposes to divide and conquor people in those areas. It may even be handed out by Americans themselves.

Re: # 171

Anil, the new aid for the Pakistanis is going to be qualitatively different from the old aid. Under GWB, they used to get tonnes of military hardware which the khakis then diverted immediately for use against the Indians. Now, most of the aid will be non-military (which is a good thing, even though Ajeya miaN would disagree) and there will be more accountability.