Behind Closed Doors: Archives and Archiving in Pakistan Information has always been a preserve of the state and the state, will never release any information, which questions it in the conduct of national affairs.

Also, lack of information and its release to the general public also fulfills the state's requirement of keeping the general public misinformed, disinformed and unable to question the state's version on any issue.

Thirdly; Pakistani state sees information as a state monopoly, whose denial to the public is seen as a way of not making the state or any of its officals accountable for their actions.

Furthermore, the opening of the state archives might raise questions that might directly/indirectly undermine the state's offical myths about Pakistan itself.

Any form of accountibility or a process that holds those in power accountable, in Pakistan, will never be allowed and the public access to the national archives have to seen in this context.

Has the report of any commission of enquiry been made public in Pakistan?

ciao

The State And Its\' Wars re: fuzair # 40

No harm being in a traditionalist. We are all traditionalists of sorts in our own ways.

ciao

The State And Its\' Wars Addressed To All:

As the author of this article, one of the my responsibilities is to moderate the discussions on this thread.

With this in mind, I would be interested in knowing who "Red Flagged" interact # 34 by Majumdar posted on behalf of Masadi?

For the record, I found nothing in that post, which was addressed to me, to be of an offensive content. Secondly; I would like to ask the Chowk staff to allow Masadi to post on Chowk.

ciao

The State And Its\' Wars re: fuzair # 37

Thanks, Fuzair. This answers my question of two military commands existing side by side in Pakistan. FSF was a personal army of ZAB and I think what Matrix is talking about is a provincial control over such a force and not a personal control.

He is suggesting a reorientation of the military towards diffferent threats than one of simply defending the frontiers if I understood him correctly. Also, he wants a type of force that is more like a militia in how it is used.

ciao

The State And Its\' Wars re: Matrix # 31

Interesting concept. I think that your assessment of future conflicts being asysmetrical and unconventional mostly against non-state actors is correct and in this it makes perfect sense. If I am not mistaken, you are suggesting a decentralization of the C3I of the GHQ and creating a more mobile, adaptable force.

It is a doable idea; only be mindful of the resistence to the idea from the "traditonalists". Military forces are heirarchal bureaucracies and they will resist this idea, because it will entail the redistribution of funds to the military.

One question; lets say such a force is made, how will the chain of command run? Are we talking of two independent command and control structures or are we talking about two mutally supporting command structures complimenting two different mission statements - internal threat and external threat?

ciao

Can Status-quo Save Pakistan? re: malikrashid # 44

I agree.

ciao

The State And Its\' Wars re: Matrix# 29

Interesting points.

As far as I can remember, the areas of defence, foreign affairs, economics and communications come under the federal government and the rest goes to the provinces.

Correct me if I misunderstood your idea; are suggesting putting the army under a provincial civilian control and if so, how do you propose to do it?

Yes; the international payments will be hard to quantify and account - I agree. However, please pay attention to Kerry-Lugur Bill and its stipulations to give money based on certain benchmarks being met by Pakistan. This is the first time the Americans have introduced a level of an accounting mechanism into aid for Pakistan and international aid for Pakistan is now demanding certain policy choices be made by the Pakistani government before the money is released.

The world is now making Pakistan accountable for its actions and the response in Pakistan was a howl of protest because Pakistani elites which include politicans, feudal/industrialist, bureaucracy, military realized the days of free lunches are over and now they will have to show results.

Also, I agree with you that civilian control does not mean less defence spending. Defence spending is a reflection of the state's political views of the threats that face it and its attempts to protect against those threats. In the case of Pakistan, the threats facing the nation are decided by the military using "military necessity" as a logic. Civilian control of military might not lessen the cost of the defence, but the civilian control of the threat preceptions to Pakistan might create a political awareness of the threats which, are politically based and, could lead to a lowering of the defence costs and make it harder for the military to justiy its lion's share of the national budget.

If look across the spectrum of Pakistani issues; from parliament to the issues of the restoration of judges to the provincial rights to the power outages, the singular common theme in all of them is accountibility and the lack of it thereof.

Who is responsible and who holds people in power responsible in Pakistan? This is the problem and it will not be solved until there is an attempt to take owership of the issues in Pakistan. If the politicans want parliament to be supereme, then laws and the decisions must be made in parliament and not in Raiwind or Seven-Zero or Nine-Zero in Karachi. If the army has to be put under civilan rule, the politicans must stop looking to the army to affect changes of government every two years and must look towards elections to make a government every five years.

This is why, in the article, I made a point that army should not be asked to do what is not possible. The role of the army is not to govern and we allowed the army to govern, we created this mess ourselves. The army cannot end the problems in Balochistan and the problems of Balochistan are political - issues of provincial rights as agreed in the 1973 constitution. It is for this reasons that military actions in Balochistan have predictibly lead to more problems.

ciao

The State And Its\' Wars re: 27

It must matter to you because your interacts are the most on this article than anyone else's! lol

ciao

Can Status-quo Save Pakistan? Rashid Malik sahib, status quo cannot save Pakistan. This is an elitist debate designed to keep the levers of power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

Status quo is mostly about preserving the previleges of power and all you need to do is look at who is making this argument? Has this group, which has maintained the status quo for the last 62 years saved Pakistan?

Pakistan and Pakistan's people are a lot more resilence and pragmatic than those who govern it, but have never been allowed their right to decide their own future. The elections in Pakistan, free or not, only gives the Pakistanis the choice to decide who will rule over them and never as to who will represent them. Your article brilliantly brings out this point by highlighting the issues facing Pakistan and in a nutshell, the issues/problems you have identified in your article are issues resulting from a lack of representation of the peoples' concerns.

Pakistani politicans need to pay serious heed to this problem because their disinterest on these issues is gradually pushing Pakistan towards a point of disagreement, which may prove more ruinous to the nation than the present insurgency. In the words of KHYBER, the elites of Pakistan are in a similar situation as the elites were prior to the French, Russian or the Iranian revolutions; they have no idea that the ground is gradually slipping away underneath their feet and the world they believed they were masters of has changed and is no longer accepting their perceptions of Pakistan.

The status quo in Pakistan is changing and it will be some time before we will know if it has changed for good or the bad.

ciao

The State And Its\' Wars re: szaman # 25

You said, "one would not consider the WB, the ADB, the IMF, and the UN “tabloid” but would certainly consider Chowk an obscure and obscene site that has no value to anyone who matters".

In that case, why are you on Chowk seeking projections for Pakistan and its children? Should you not be working ADB, IMF/WB, UN then?

ciao

The State And Its\' Wars Re: malikrashid# 22


Thank you for that informative post.

I believe it simply reinforces the thrust of my article, which argues for a civilian control of the armed forces. As you, yourself, pointed out the military's lack of a budgetary accountibility and attempts not to let the civilan political institutions dominate it, pose a continuing challenge for the issues of "supremacy of parliament" in Pakistan and for the future course of Pakistani politics.

I concur, with your post.

ciao

The State And Its\' Wars re: szaman # 21

Please read the article again; your question is answered within the article. The article is an analysis of the civil-military relations in Pakistan and this issue, and its lack of resolution or clarification, directly impacts what you ask as "how to leave a better Pakistan for our children".

Pakistan needs to solve the problem of civil-military struggles for power or the only projection that will make sense for Pakistan and Pakistanis is one of continued misery and hopelessness in the nation's future.

Do you agree or not that the military's role in the politics has had long term negative effects on Pakistani politics?

Do you agree or not that military in Pakistan and the civil political institutions need to resolve their problems for the betterment of the nation and its people?

If you agree to the questions above, you have answered your own question because that is what the article suggests and how to achieve this aim. If you do not agree, then all other projections about Pakistan are useless, which is what article says when it argues for a reason why the military must be under civilian control and what is function of the army in a nation-state.

To answer your question directly, the article hopes to leave a better future for Pakistan and it's children by pointing out the problems and making Pakistanis aware of problem and why it arose in the first place. Now, whether the Pakistanis wish to admit that there is a problem or they wish to deny the existence of a problem is not the concern of the article; that is for the Pakistanis to decide for themselves.

Articles of this sort seek to highlight a problem-issue and they leave the conclusion to the reader without making projections. Projections about a country and its people are made in tabloid articles and by biased TV anchors, who are pandering to a fake national emotionalism, otherwise known as "quam ka dard".

Politicans make projections; historians understand. :)

ciao

The State And Its\' Wars re: szaman # 18

Do you know what the issue of the future are in Pakistan? Do you know the background to the problems in Pakistan? The projections of Pakistan's future, based on present realities, implies an understanding of the issues and this a big problem in Pakistan. We have no idea of the past; we hide the past and we deny the past and we alter the past to suit our present day politics.

I am not repeating the history of Pakistan and if you thought that, then you did not underdstand the article. I am discussing an issue, which is very important for what you refer to as "the future of Pakistan" and this article is about the future of Pakistan and how to leave a better Pakistan for our children.

ciao

The State And Its\' Wars dost_mittar # 17

Dostji, thanks for your words. The point of the article was that that Pakistan has never clarified what is the purpose of the Pakistan Army within the politics of Pakistan.

Like everything else in Pakistan, this debate has been a victim of ad hocism as well and has never been fully answered. The years of military rule and the military's domiance of Pakistani politics blurred the balance between civil and military relations within Pakistani politics.

If the function of the military is to offer itself as a multiplier of the state's diplomatic options and thus, to advance and secure the interests of the state, it follows that military policy must be under civilian control and civilian politics should then define the interests of the state and task the military to protect them. The purpose of the military in a modern state is allow the state the flexibility of dealing with a political issue and therefore, political reasons must demand the use of military power.

However, if the military starts to make policies and ask the politics to justify actions termed as "military necessity", then it limits the state's options to deal with issues. This is the crux of the article. In the final analysis, if we look at the experience of the past with unbiased views, we realize that the nature of the existential threat, facing Pakistan, is and might be different than what was considered traditionally.

As to the functioning bureaucracy and an efficient army that considers itself as the final arbitar of Pakistan, that in itself is a problem. The proper role of the Pakistan army is as the executor of the state's policy and political interests and it is not to make policies.

What you wrote as refuting the arguments of Pakistan's failure as a state are the very arguments which make for the case of Pakistan's failure as a state.

ciao

The State And Its\' Wars re: tahmed32 # 15

Thanks for the information, sirji. The Balkans have been a neglected theater of the Second World and the same goes about Yugoslavia (which means Southern Slavs). The book is right about the Nazis chasing the best German scientists out of Germany and the same goes for Italy, where Mussolini did the same.

In Pakistan, we did the same with Dr. Abdus Salam.

In any nation, where the politics of the day does not tolerate and does not celebrate human achievement on the basis of a political ideology, that nation will never be able to capitalize on its human resources.

ciao

The State And Its\' Wars Re: malikrashid # 1

Civilian control over the armed forces has been effected though a strict accountibility of the armed forces' budgets and only the same can bring the army to account in Pakistan. Military power, is and has never been, a reflection of the size of the armed forces but rather the ability of the state to pay for its armed forces and maintain them. Wars cost money and armies cost money and without an economic base to support the national projection of a military power, a military force will decline into impotence.

Until the parliament in Pakistan has full supremacy over the formulation and the distribution of monies for defence and makes the recipent organization accountable for the disembursement of the funds, there can be no civilian control over the military.

ciao