Just another cry in the dark A good example of political nonsense, written in atrocious English.

Open Letter to General Musharraf One would love to see what the addressee can say, if at all anything intelligible, in reply to this letter.

Different Eagles, Same Genus Quality of the men and the equipment are necessary complements to each other. Nobody flying a spitfire today would be able to hold his own against a foxbat, say, no matter how good the training and how high the motivation.

And so far as the quality of the manpower is cocerned, may be there has been some improvement in recent years.

However, the legacies of people like Anwar Shamim die hard.

Famous Last Words or a Messiah in Khakis? Devolution of power is the need of the day, no doubt.

But not SHAM devolution, as outlined by the junta.

The strings will be still manipulated by the centre, and the identities of the provinces will be slowly eroded.

The system is akin to what the One Unit was.

The devolution scheme announced seems to be simply a dilatory tactic and/or an attempt to build a constituency of civilian Quislings by the junta.

Famous Last Words or a Messiah in Khakis? It is worth a study in sociopolitics how some people can support military rule.

Famous Last Words or a Messiah in Khakis? The post war period has shown that professional soldiers make lousy, and anti-people rulers, either serving the cause of vested interests or stooges of foreign powers.

Pakistan`s history, too, bears out this fact.

Ayub, prior to toppling the government he had taken an oath to be loyal to, had been on the payroll of the CIA for quite some time.

Zia was the kind of person about whom his Commanding Officer, Gen. Niwazish Ali had written in his ACR, `` he is unfit to be an officer in the Pakistan Army, `` which, mind you, is a third rate army commanded by tenth rate generals.

Events after October 12, 1999, till date, have gone to show that the present junta too, will do all it can to exacerbate the agony of the deprived people of Pakistan.

Verdict in Pakistan It seems that the chickens have come home to roost for one Mian Nawaz Sharif.

The very laws that he had foisted upon the country

to, primarily, sort out dissenters, have been used against him with telling precision.

Well, is it justice, blind justice, purblind justice, criminal justice [ in the widest possible sense of the word criminal] military justice, or merely poetic justice?

Verdict in Pakistan According to Zeemax, Pakistan`s 2nd elected Prime

Minister, i.e., the late unlamented Mohammad Khan Junejo, was an international thief.

Though Junejo can and ought to be indicted for being a Quisling to the usurper Zia-ul-Haq, one does not understand how he can be dubbed an international thief.

Similarly, Benazir Bhutto was Pakistan`s third elected Prime Minister. One is baffled at the allegation that she was a hijacker.

Or is it that Zeemax needs to have his facts straightened out????

Verdict in Pakistan The similarity between Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and Nawaz Sharif, that both were brought to the fore by a military dictator, does exist, though it is quite tenuous.

Apart from that, the two were poles apart.

Or perhaps, that the downfall of either was caused

by his own creature(s) may also be termed a similarity?

Verdict in Pakistan The similarity between Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and Nawaz Sharif, that both were brought to the fore by a military dictator, does exist, though it is quite tenuous.

Apart from that, the two were poles apart.

Or perhaps, that the downfall of either was caused

by his own creature(s) may also be termed a similarity?

Verdict in Pakistan The murder of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto at the hands of the Zia military junta seems to have been over-simplified by most of the friends referring to it.

Zulfikar ALI Bhutto, his own rhetoric au contraire, was NOT a socialist.

He was a true bourgeois politician, as devious as they come, in either backward societies such as ours, or advanced societies such as Great Britain.

One simply has to look at his nationalization of the finance capital in Pakistan [ take-over of the banking and insurance system] to see that.

Though he, perhaps, did deserve the fate that eventually befell him, his murder at the hands of the Zia junta cannot be condoned.

Because, firstly, that conviction and subsequent execution served to perpetuate the myth that justice is alive and well in Pakistan.

Secondly, because it served as a smokescreen to obscure the crimes that Bhutto and his PPP did commit, and for which, they should have been made to hold account in a free and transparent trial.

Thirdly, because the murder was the result of a Macbeth like morbidity in Zia`s psyche; a mortal fear that one day ZAB would get even with him.

Is the new CE any different? Some measures regarding what is perceived as ``grass-roots democracy`` have been unveiled in a press conference today [23 March 2000]

Would it possible for a debate, perhaps exclusively, on these measures in the forthcoming

weeks.

Is the new CE any different? [There was no disercnible shift in Pakistan`s Afghan policy prior to

the coup]

Present .. listen if we are going to discuss then you need to know your facts. Shahbaz Sharif had announced just before the coup that Afghanistan was fanning secterian differences in Pakistan and

that must stop. He had also said Pakistan will go to any lengths to eliminate sectarian violance including withdrawing diplomatic support of Taliban. Pls check the newspaper archives.

Rgds.

Prouncements for public consumption at home and abroad, and reality on the ground have mostly been two different and often diametrically opposed things so far as most Pakistani politicians are concerned. And the foregoing is more true for politicians of the Sharif ilk.

Is the new CE any different? Zeemax

I have earlier maintained that with the demise of the much touted ``heavy mandated`` PML government, Nawaz Sharif et al have lost relevance to any discussion of Pakistan`s current situation, except for the fact that he and his cronies have as much a right to a fair and open trial in an ordinary court of law as any other citizen of this country.

For me,the PML [N} was as much an aberration as the Convention and Council Muslim Leagues before them, and the initial Pakistan Muslim League created right after partition after disbanding the All India Muslim League.

Regards

Is the new CE any different? Zeemax

Reply #: 230 Present

[The story of Lt. Gen [arrested } Ziauddin`s Kabul sojourn and his request to Mulla Umar to pull back his blessings from the Sipah Sahaba and Harkat al Mujahideen seems full of holes...Furthermore, he himself (NS) is a known sectarian jingo-ist]

Hmmm .. what do you make of Pakistan`s announced policy shift towards Afghanistan just before the coup? Also, what caused the sudden rise in setarian killings at that particular time ?

Appreciate your views.

Dear ZeeMax

There was no disercnible shift in Pakistan`s Afghan policy prior to the coup, apart from some appeeasing noises made re the Osama Bin Laden affair. So far as reality on the ground obtained [and obtains] the policy has been exactly the same as in the days of the late unlamented Zia ul Haq.

So far as Nawaz Sharif`s sectarianism is concerned, it hardly needs any documentation. He not not only pursued Zia`s divisive, sectarian policies with exemplary zeal, he augmented and embellished it with innovations of his own.

The Sipah-e-Sahaba was the army`s creation, as was the MQM, either of which spawned other sectarian organizations as reaction.

Is the new CE any different? The wood seems to be lost for the trees.

Zeejah, if I have read her correctly, was lamenting the take over of the country by the military [army] once again.

And whether, the present military take over would be [could be?] any different from the various other military dispensations this country has been inflicted with in the past.

Inter alia, of course, the perceived reasons for such interventions by the military would come under discussion.

The discussion, however, has gone far afield, with the perceived virtues and vices of various actors now taking precedence over issues confronting Pakistani society and democracy.