Where did Pakistan go wrong?

peeping #86

Are you talking about the same Pakistan where I lived or is it another country.

As far and as long as I remember there are many slums in Karachi where people barely meet their ends. Many people sleep on footpath. And Bhutta are taken from them for sleeping and women are raped by police.

Endless lines of anemic blood sellers.

If you have not seen the majority of Pakistan you have seen nothing in Pakistan.

Sir,

Respect for your age and the fact that I am only 18 years of age makes me call you sir.

When I started reading your article I could not help agree with you. Yes you are right in some ways when you say that India was faced with a number of ethnicities ,a number of languages etc. But, consider for a moment the Pakistan our ancestors had.The british so unfairly handed it all to you. We started from scratch. We had nothing. We were pushed back so much whereas you were given a boost and push forward by the British. Its a wonder that we could stay defragmented for 53 years.

A common misconception of you Indians is that Pakistan was a mistake. No sir, I repeat it was not. I am much happier here in a country that allows me to practise my religion. Your media might have projected one or two stray incidents here as a common thing. But, I can swear I feel much safe to walk on the streets of my city. I live with people who are of my faith and who do not go about breaking my mosque to build a temple there. And The Quaid-i-Azam never regreted nor was he ever confused about the creation of Pakistan. This was rather a very honorable gesture from his side whereby even in a purely Muslim state, Non-Muslims were given the right to practise their religion and work towards the betterment of this great country. We got what we wanted and we are thankful to God for this. The people who decided that they wanted not to live in this country have their own reasons. The fact that millions of people left their homelands to suffer the killings by their hindu and sikh brethren speaks for itself that they believed in the cause of Pakistan.

And the next time you decide to write this type of a melodramatic piece of writing about my country sitting in your lush study with the air conditioner on and enjoying your typing on the new notebook of yours, do me a favor. Go to the streets of Mumbai or any city in India and try to look at the slums and poverty around. I am proud to say that in my country not a single person sleeps with an empty stomach. Can you say that about your country?

As for me, I am happy that my father left his hometown of Amristar in India to live an honorable life in Pakistan....the land of the Pure.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/88aug/obrien.htm

The Indian state came into being amid the scenes of communal-religious carnage that accompanied the partition of the subcontinent between mainly Hindu India and entirely Muslim Pakistan. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, had resolutely rejected the idea of a secular state that could encompass both Hindus and Muslims. In his presidential address to the Muslim League at Lahore in 1940, Jinnah declared: ``Islam and Hinduism are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but in fact different and distinct social orders, and it is only a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality.... To yoke together two such nations under a single state ... must lead to a growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state.``



Yet in the event, the fabric of India`s secular state proved tougher than that of confessional Pakistan. Pakistan originally consisted of eastern and western sections, connected by a common religion but different in language and culture. The religious bond proved insufficient, and East Pakistan in 1971 seceded and became the independent state of Bangladesh. Secular India, however, has held together. There are now almost as many Muslims in India as there are in Pakistan. Muslims and Hindus in India may perhaps not have ``evolved a common nationality,`` but they -- and Sikhs also, so far -- have managed to live together, within one state, for more than forty years now, whereas the ``common nationality`` of the Muslims of Pakistan burst asunder after twenty-four years.

The viability of the secular and democratic system in India is a remarkable phenomenon, and one that has received less attention in the West than it deserves. Yet there have been continuing challenges, both internal and external, to India`s secular democracy, and to the very existence of an Indian state.

Pu Li #79 and temporal #80

You two gentlemen are among the five or six individuals on the Chowk that I hold in healthy respect; you, for your usually demonstrated clarity of thought and communication. However, here you seem to be referring to more //recent// yesteryears than what I had in mind. There seems to be some confusion here. Let`s see:

I didn`t //come// here in this year or that. //I was here// in a manner of speaking. So, please consider what I said earlier as from the horse`s mouth, subject to the possibility of errors of minor detail as a matter of course.

Pu Li: I am familiar with the episode you mention, and indeed both Pakistan and France

offered, I think, the same amount. `t` probably, also, refers to the same occurrence but

more rightly places it a decade earlier than you do. Still, the episode to which you make a

reference, was nowhere NEAR 1980s because in late 1970 [that is, nineteen seventy] or early 1971 [that is nineteen seventy one], it was reported in the news that a Milwaukee Journal was about to publish a recipe for an Hydrogen Bomb. The Federal government entered into the picture and, through the relevant Circuit Court, obtained an injunction against its publication. However, before the hearings in the Court started, the publishers started a new magazine and published the recipe in it. The injunction, you see, was

against journal/magazine ``A``, and not against a similar organ ``B``! The episode I cite had taken place long before this one in 1970-71.

I invited you to ``research`` this thing through the archives of NBC, and, now, about the H-bomb you can get particulars through the Milwaukee newspaper(s), should you so desire.

Unfortunately, I am not in a position to do these things myself. So, given the intention of the post, I didn`t feel the need to have it ``researched`` for exact dates and individuals, and

Courts involved.

I allow for the lapse of DETAILS from my memory but the SEQUENCE is embedded in my mind since I was leaving Detroit at the time of the Milwaukee

episode and I remember discussing it with colleagues of the Left, and further left. The

Atomic Bomb story was certainly much earlier than that. [The one I am thinking of, that is].

`t`: I am glad to learn of the background detail of the more recent Atomic Bomb dastaan

[Tota K`haani?]. But the `story` that I referred to is [to the best of my recollection] of a much earlier vintage. Please look into its lineage[?] for the sake of fun; something that I had intended while posting my `analysis`.

I hope, everybody has now gotten the message that I wished to convey to begin with. Namely, inflation and times have changed so that one can`t even kill economically [pun unintended] any longer.

Efficient people-destroyers are so expensive! What is a body [read, nation] to do!

I thought there was a message which got lost in details. To repeat, the cost of killing is

escalating (even with the laser guided guns. It still takes X ozs of lead per kill [body] and not

just one bullet, as it should in a rational universe).

Soon the third world mendicants e.g., India and Pakistan would run out of money to kill the `enemy`, although they will always have enough to kill their own. The Western World [if all else fails] would see to it that enough is available to accomplish //that// job.

Almost all of us seem to be deluded by the future prospects of developing the IT empires in our countries and reaping the rewards in quantums hitherto unimagined. Sounds good so you are going to keep talking about these and keep comparing the size of each other`s father`s Pi-nus.(as somebody mentioned on the Chowk not too long ago).

The Law of Cultural Dominance comes to my mind here. A society or a civilization which acquires a cultural dominance dictates the limits of development of the `dominated` nations and civilizations.

Consider the United States as the Culturally Dominant Nation today. By offering lucrative

jobs in the United States [or in mambo-jambo as busywork] to the IT-Einsteins, they can, in the producing countries, control the level and speed

and quality of development of related institutions and work. If that outflow is attempted to be curbed by the exporting country, the Americans will always have a threat up their sleeve to

dissuade that nation one way or the other, as they did with India with a threat to withdraw all their PL-480 funds from the Indian banks if Mrs. Gandhi proceeded with her plan to nationalize them. Well,... .that was the end of that story.

The United States can - and does it not, theoretically, already? - control the major communication satellites and has the ability to disable others` who do not tow its line. So where will be the Indian ``Bharticon Valley`` and Netsol International [(NTWK/Nasdaq) + Network Solutions] of Lahore if the U.S. controls the world communication media? The development of any ``valley``, anywhere, can and will be controlled by the Culturally Dominant society/ies and shall be allowed to develop only so far, elsewhere. [Just enough to allow the nagriks` body and soul together so they can keep working for Nike, Reebocks shoes, and Van Huesen and Givenchy shirts all at 29 cents an hour wage, //in general, on the average.// Sounds like rehash of the Marxist writings; no. it is the lessaiz-faire policy of the West, Metropolitan-hinterland dynamics. You can see that I am not in a mood to start an argument with anybody. Pu Li, I just noticed that either you have started nitpicking, or have developed a new strain of humour: O.K. It was $100 and not the fault of my New Math! Picayune? Yes. What was the devaluation of the Pound in 1968 relative to the $US? I thought it was $3.00 but then who`s counting!].

So, what will the ``dominated`` societies do? Send Viruses to, let`s say, the United States? To begin with, the monetarily bought and Pavolovianly conditioned to comfort Indo-Pakistanis will have developed powerful anti-viruses for the United States, and secondly, and unhappily, sending or introducing viruses is a two-way amusement! {What

if the communication operates only in one direction, either in the simplest of senses or in

terms of ``return of `spam``` to the point of origin?}

I hope the point is not lost again.

[Just occurred to me: Does anybody remember the episode of a graduate student in Massachusetts somewhere, I think, who built an ICBM in his back yard. But for the fuel, the ICBM was fully operational. One of the magazines [TIME, Newsweek] reported that when interviewed, the student said that he obtained the parts from various junk yards! I should be grateful to learn of its citable reference. Thank you.]

Pu Li!

I totally disagree with you about Pakistan buying it in 1980`s instead of India which is more hegemonist and terrorizing nation.

It must be a propaganda.

http://www.thefridaytimes.com/news6.htm

Where is Pakistan heading?



William Maley



Lord Acton famously observed that all power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is a potent warning, and one which should be uppermost in the minds of those who entertain high hopes of those who seize power in military coups. But corruption through absolute power is not by any means the greatest danger to which coups give rise. Most coups, after all, do not deliver absolute power to those who mount them: it is only in established totalitarian states that coup leaders prove so fortunate. Many coups occur in countries where the state is dysfunctional, since it is often the failure of the state to perform effectively that creates a climate favourable to unconstitutional shifts in political power in the first place. Where this occurs, there is no obvious reason to expect that the weaknesses of the state will vanish overnight. This is to a considerable extent the dilemma which General Musharraf, and the people of Pakistan, now confront.



A complex melange of domestic and international factors has contributed to this situation. Domestically, the Pakistani political system has been thoroughly delegitimated by a mixture of elite corruption and mass despair. The high hopes of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his associates have been comprehensively betrayed by his successors, whose assets abroad and opulent lifestyles testify to their ability to loot the state, fast. The weaknesses, for example, in basic schooling in Pakistan are nothing short of scandalous. That women can be slain in so-called `honour killings`, in blatant disregard of the spirit of the Islamic faith, is a tragedy. That Pakistan is massively emburdened by sovereign debt while the infrastructure of the country is visibly crumbling before one`s eyes speaks volumes of the mismanagement which the people of Pakistan have endured. And with some notable exceptions, the state bureaucracy is a creature to be feared by ordinary people, and operationally one of the least impressive in the developing world. What would the Quaid think if he could see how things have developed?

These are now greatly complicated by Pakistan`s isolated regional and international situation. The Kargil exercise was intended to exploit Pakistan`s new nuclear status to engage Washington`s interest in the Kashmir dispute. It indeed engaged Washington`s interest, but instead prompted a striking reorientation of US policy in New Delhi`s direction. Great powers do not appreciate adolescents who play with matches near the fuel dump. As a result, Pakistan`s case over Kashmir is less likely than ever to be taken seriously, and politicians in India can hardly believe their good fortune.



But not only on the Islamabad-New Delhi axis has Pakistan been losing out. The official claim that Pakistan has no favourites in Afghanistan has now worn so thin that it invites derision. The Taliban have proved to be the kind of force that no neighbouring regime in its right mind would support, a true Frankenstein`s monster. While Afghanistan was off the international agenda this hardly mattered to Islamabad, but now that the combination of Kargil and Bin Laden has refocussed Washington`s attention onto `terrorist training camps` in Afghanistan, Pakistan too is coming in for closer scrutiny. President Clinton`s visit to Pakistan, which could most kindly be described as a studied insult, provides the clearest indication of how America`s patience with Pakistan is running out. Only the fear that more pressure on Pakistan could lead to the regime`s implosion and its replacement by nuclear-armed fundamentalists serves to insulate Islamabad from a stronger dose of American wrath.



This situation may well be about to get worse. The signalling from Moscow about the possibility of airstrikes against Chechen `terrorists` in Taliban areas of Afghanistan does not necessarily point to an imminent attack on Afghan territory. On the contrary, it is more likely intended to galvanise other permanent members of the UN Security Council to accept further sanctions against the Taliban.

But for Pakistan, this should be deeply worrying, for two reasons. First, any new UN sanctions beyond those which took effect in November 1999 are likely to target supplies to the Taliban of strategically-important items such as fuel from neighbouring states. Pakistan`s actions would suddenly be in the spotlight. Second, when Soviet forces struck against Afghanistan in December 1979, the US was moved to swing behind Pakistan as a frontline state. However, the political capital which Pakistan built up in the 1980s as a bastion of resistance to the USSR has been completely dissipated by its maladroit promotion of Afghan extremists, initially the Hezb-e Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and since 1994, the Taliban. No one will rally to Pakistan`s side if Islamabad begins to look like a sanctions-buster.

Confronted with these dilemmas, General Musharraf will likely feel the need for some friends. And his retreat on the issue of amendments to the Blasphemy law provides a worrying indication of where he is likely to go looking for them. In the immediate aftermath of the coup, his public relations men embarked on a campaign, largely for international consumption, to depict him as a strong and professional soldier - right down to quoting the description of the young officer in his college`s handbook. The subtext to this theatre, of course, was that he was not a `fundamentalist`.

However, politics makes strange bedfellows. Given their strong support for the Army over Kargil, and their relative isolation from the corrupt mainstream of party politics which the Pakistan People`s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League had dominated, it was always the fundamentalist parties which were the General`s most likely allies of convenience in the long run. However, the dangers of this approach should be obvious. If the Americans conclude that fundamentalism is going to influence the government through the back door anyway, then the incentive for them to stay their pressure on what is increasingly seen as a roguish regime is likely to diminish.

General Musharraf, like many a coup leader before him, may be beginning to realise that he has no easy options. Those whose support he can most readily co-opt are the very political forces whose proximity to the state most alarms the international community and scares off productive investment. He is caught in a very vicious circle. What then, are the more promising of the uneasy choices he faces?

First, he should put an end to his flirtation with the jehadi parties. They will cause him nothing but grief. As the great German sociologist Max Weber once observed, `He who seeks the salvation of the soul, of his own and of others, should not seek it along the avenue of politics, for the quite different tasks of politics can only be solved by violence`. Islam has a vital role to play as a source of individual moral inspiration, but when religion and politics are mixed, it is almost invariably religion that is contaminated, not politics that is cleansed. Politics is ultimately a device for managing divergent interests, affections, and principles. Religious extremists, by contrast, seek control of the state in order to impose upon ordinary people the rulers` conception of what is right - as the Taliban have shown. The Holy Koran, in a number of key passages, emphasises that religion is not a matter of compulsion (al-Baqarah, 2: 256; Yunus, 10:99). These inspired words provide more than adequate justification for General Musharraf to separate the state from religion, and he should be forthright in promoting such a modernist, ethical Islam rather than its debilitated politicised offshoot.

Second, he should bite the bullet and discard the Afghan Taliban as a client. Without Pakistani support, and a steady flow of combatants from madrassas in Pakistan, the Taliban movement is likely to splinter quite quickly. This could significantly benefit the reform process in Pakistan, since it would be welcomed by the wider world, and would undercut the support base which the jehadi parties are methodically building in order to challenge the philosophy of Islamic moderation. Such a decisive step would meet with resistance from the jehadi groups, since their interests would be threatened. But the longer the decision is delayed, the harder it will be to implement. If the day comes that it cannot be implemented, the General will have become a puppet. Now is the time for action.

Where does Kashmir fit in this puzzle? Here, again, there is a desperate need for lateral thinking. Pakistan`s recent policy has proved an unmitigated disaster, to the point where almost every military step it could take has compromised its principled political position. The superheated atmosphere of anger on the Pakistan side over the behaviour of Indian security forces in the vale of Kashmir is matched by a superheated atmosphere of anger on the Indian side over the December 1999 Indian Airlines hijacking. Whichever side shows the cooler head is the more likely to win international plaudits at the moment. So far, India has been taking all the tricks. Unfortunately for Pakistan, its Kashmir position has become a hostage of its behaviour in Afghanistan, since the wider world, not unreasonably, sees a link between Kashmiri militancy, Taliban extremism, and Bin Laden. Nothing could have been calculated to do Pakistan`s Kashmir policy more harm.

Will General Musharraf choose wisely? The prospects are scarcely bright. The problem with the theory of `benevolent dictatorship` was identified two thousand years ago by the Roman writer Juvenal, who posed what may still be the ultimate question of politics - quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, `who will guard the guardians themselves?` The constraints which dispose a ruler to think of the long term as well as the short term are spectacularly absent from Pakistan`s politics, and indeed have been for many years. All in all, it seems more probable that his flirtation with the jehadis will blossom into a full scale romance. But if it does, he may discover that those who sow the wind are prone to reap the whirlwind.

Dr William Maley is Associate Professor of Politics, University College, University of New South Wales, Australia. His most recent monograph is The Foreign Policy of the Taliban (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2000)

Pu Li #79

I don`t know if it was the same incident or a different one, but in 1970/71 Pakistan`s bumbling military attache at the Foggy Bottom, a Col. Shamshad, was recalled over a similar incident when he foolishly offered the student some money on his official stationery.

rgds

t

Re salwak #: 78

[How India Wanted to purchase Atom Bomb recipe for $500 (France offered $300) from a Princeton Undergrad.

One is almost brought to tears at the rate of inflation. In the 1960s when a Princeton undergraduate wrote a course project and wrote down the recipe to build an atomic bomb (it was immediately ``classified``), officials of two embassies in the U.S. approached him. India`s agents offered him $500. (NBC nterviewed the student on air even though he was put in hiding by the FBI-CIA twins; ask NBC for their archival reference).]

I have been in the US since 1969. The event you referred to happened in the early 1980s, not in the 1960s.

The Princeton undergrad was given the project to design a working atom bomb for his bachelor`s degree in Physics. When he turned in his paper, his professor was astonished to find that the design would actually work, promptly classified the paper and notified the FBI.

The country that approached the student about buying his paper was Pakistan. In 1974, India had already tested the bomb. Pakistan was the country that was going to eat grass if they had to in order to get at a Bomb.

So, twist the story as you please. I dare you to post an authentic reference. Go to the morgues of either the Washington Post or New York Times and retrieve the story and post it here.

[The Pound Sterling being = $5., at the time it meant 60L sterling.]

The Pound Sterling hasn`t been at the ratio of $5 to a pound since WWII. Even in the 1960s, the rate was $2.40 to a pound and by the 1970`s it was down to $1.60. $500 at the rate of $5 to a pound works out to 100 pounds. Where you get 60 pounds is beyond me. Must be the New Math I missed in high school.

Re: AssadK #62

After Partition, the Punjab made it clear that it would only accept, in large numbers, refugees from E. Punjab and that these would be resettled where the provincial government thought best, i.e., scattered widely. Now, many of these E. Punjabis were actually Urdu speakers but over time many of them (actually their children) became Punjabiphone. My own family is a perfect example. Hardly any of my grandmother`s generation spoke any Punjabi, people of my generation and the one following almost all do.

In Sind, Liaqat and co wanted to create a ``natural`` constituency for themselves, so they actively settled refugees in Hyderabad and Karachi (I believe some made it to Sukkur as well). Given the tremendous concentrations in these cities, hardly any Muhajir speaks Sindhi who hails from H`abad or Karachi. In contrast to this, virtually all Muhajirs from Sukkur speak Sindhi.

Re: Macgupta #60

Pakistani statistics are a complete joke. OK, they`re not as bad as those in Uganda or Chad, but they are still quasi-fictional numbers. I think that the quality of the Indian figures is somewhat better.

For example, under Zia, there was trememdous pressure to ``prove`` how great Islam was, so one year (it might have been more than that, I don`t know) early on, the Stats people came out with figures to show that GDP growth actually went up in Ramazan! And this in the middle of summer! The govt statistician who told me that little bit of news said that their figures indicated a sharp dip in GDP for that time period but you couldn`t say that Islam (i.e, fasting) was bad for growth!

My maths teacher in high school was actually an Assitant Director or some such rank in the govt stats bureau (he used to moonlight) and he used to regale us with stories of how to cook the figures so that they gave the ``right`` answers. That is of course an old econometric joke: the data was tortured until it confessed.

When I was working in Gilgit, I was trying to get some population figures for the area and I met people--locals--who told me how the numbers had been calculated. People from downcountry--Punjabis--came to carry out the enumeration. Instead of going up to the villages, they simply asked, ``Have you been there? Yes? Great! How large do you think it is? No, that doesn`t sound right, must be larger. So how many people do you think it could be?`` You get the general idea.

As per the official 1998 census figures, Pakistan`s population was 130.8 million. You can place as much reliance on that as you wish. I would certainly like to think its this and not the 157 million that YLH quotes--which is by far the highest figure I have seen.

And of course there is the recent admission of the military govt that the Nawaz Sharif govt had been cooking the books, so that our budget deficit was something like twice as big as had been reported.

#68,71,72,73

Site URLs are fine. One can start/open a new website using free space at(Xoom, Fortune city, Webpages, Geocities, etc. etc. etc.}name it, ``URLs AND printouts galore``; ``site redundancy par excellance``! ``Bharat Redundancy``!

``Bharitya Overkill Clipping Service``. ``Space destroyers`` and ``Cyber, Lord Shivas R.us`` !

As the readers have pointed out very cogently this service is great (as all clipping services) but their place is not here.

It indicates laziness of mind and body, both, of posters as well as of the readers. Readers don`t want to move from their couches, the posters don`t wish to write a word of their own making! Shoo...

#1

Did all these well-organised and well-united traders organisations resisting tax documentation with such determination ever go on strike or down shutters with so much show of strength to protest or resist the corruption and bribe demands of tax officials?

Sadhana

http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/shtml/NEWS/P8S3.shtml

HOW WE BOUGHT NUCLEAR BOMB FOR JUST POUNDS 20,000

Sunday Mirror, UK

Mohajir,

keep up the good work. I find your posts helpful

jay.

Mohajir,

Please dont stop! Thanks to you I have been introduced to sites I didnt know existed on the web. Keep up the good work!

Cheraym #68

URLs are enough. We don`t need both the URL //AND// the reproduction. It is redundant.

Your letter betrays a condescending and patronizing attitude -- unnecessary -- and re-inforces the suspicion of laziness on the part of those who, as the kindergarten children, like to be fed information pablum rather than doing their own reading.

ASAD k 62

You are rght on Mohajir in Karachi. Because they were concentrated in one place. Also because of multiple groups in Karachi from different parts of India and also from different parts of Pakistan, Urdu was a convenient language.

In punjab most people I think migrated from East Punjab and Kashmir and easily assimilated with local people. Moreover since Punjabi was language of communication predominantly other migrants absorbed that.

It can be compared to Bengal where migrants learned Bengali because of communication.