Pakistan's Ideology and Identity crisis

[mech-e]

So according to you there is nothing like manipulation of text book happens? And according to you who are true pakistanis

i dont [mod]Don't use improper language![/mod] this paracha guy says, as far as my education is concerned, and the pakistani education, we are never taught hatred against non muslims, we are never taught that science is backward(ofcourse i have been taught science since 1st grade), this paracha guy is really a controversial guy, not many people read dawn and many of them dont even bother reading dawn columns esp this paracha guy, no body even knows him, i just read him columns online and i was shocked Deleted.

 

[mech-e]

leave him nitesh. what do you want to argue with him?

he thinks Zayed Hamid is a patriot and not dangerous and Nadeem Paracha, a maniac!!

what a childish post, no comments.

nadeem paracha maybe famous in india for his arcticles, but as far as i know, no body even knows about him in pakistan, i just came to know him online when some Indians posted his articles in some pakistani forum.

 

[ppgj]

nadeem paracha maybe famous in india for his arcticles, but as far as i know, no body even knows about him in pakistan, i just came to know him online when some Indians posted his articles in some pakistani forum.

nadeem paracha is known for saying the truth and reality facing your country. the whole world beleives that and has documented it. open your eyes and look around.

what about irfan hussain, ahmed farooqui, kamran shafi, ahmed rashid, ayesha siddiqua.....
they too are in your pov maniacs??

your president has called the problems in your country as a CANCER.

don't beleve at your own peril.

 

[Vinod2070]

[mod]mech-e, stop using words like childish or abusive language.[/mod]

 

[neo29]

90% of pakistan is in poverty. the rest 10% is the middle or high class. it seems the 10% of the population dont actually know whats going with the remaining 90%. they are simply stuck to what the pakistan media shows them on tv.

i hate to admit that the fundamentalist and jihadist in this country have a too good source of raw material. thats the 90% of poor people. all they need to do is convince them that india and US are responsible for their state and they need to fight back. if not they can buy youths from large poor families just like LeT did with kasab.

with fundamentalist groups active in pakistan , its almost impossible to shut them down when their source of recruitment is abundant. pakistan government is doing nothing to curb the poverty and the recruitment.

In such a case the Jihadi war machine in pakistan is never going to stop and the situation will worsen over the years especially when US leaves the region. with US leaving , the taliban will roam freely and make sure sharia law is implemented in whole of the country. not to mention ISI and some elements of the pak army will love to get back at their ex wife the taliban. honestly i see pakistan heading towards somalia type situation over the years.

 

[neo29]

if pakistan was not a nuclear power, nobody would have bothered about the consequences in pakistan.
just wait till US leaves the region 2011. the taliban and al qaeda fighters will come out of their holes. the whole thing repeats again, the army and isi backing them. taliban will attack afghanistan to get back their home and pak will support them. the pakistan taliban will regain FATA and NWFP and demand sharia law to be implemented in whole of the country systematically.
with such fundamentalist growth in the country the problems will just increase. economy goes down. the jihadi infestation may try to spill over india.

 

[mech-e]

90% of pakistan is in poverty. the rest 10% is the middle or high class. it seems the 10% of the population dont actually know whats going with the remaining 90%. they are simply stuck to what the pakistan media shows them on tv.

i hate to admit that the fundamentalist and jihadist in this country have a too good source of raw material. thats the 90% of poor people. all they need to do is convince them that india and US are responsible for their state and they need to fight back. if not they can buy youths from large poor families just like LeT did with kasab.

with fundamentalist groups active in pakistan , its almost impossible to shut them down when their source of recruitment is abundant. pakistan government is doing nothing to curb the poverty and the recruitment.

In such a case the Jihadi war machine in pakistan is never going to stop and the situation will worsen over the years especially when US leaves the region. with US leaving , the taliban will roam freely and make sure sharia law is implemented in whole of the country. not to mention ISI and some elements of the pak army will love to get back at their ex wife the taliban. honestly i see pakistan heading towards somalia type situation over the years.

your words seem to be a bunch of rants. pakistan 90 % in not poor, and india's poverty is worse than pakistan. secondly, pakistan is not heading for somalia, are you crazy?????, do you have any sense at all. and what about indian extremists rooming free in india, what about the culprits of samghauta express???, are they caught and executed, are the culprits of gujrat massacre handled????, it seems that indian government is itself backing the terrorists and thats why they are never convicted. atleast pakistan is not supporting the talibs and putting all at stake to eradicate them.

 

[neo29]

your words seem to be a bunch of rants. pakistan 90 % in not poor, and india's poverty is worse than pakistan. secondly, pakistan is not heading for somalia, are you crazy?????, do you have any sense at all. and what about indian extremists rooming free in india, what about the culprits of samghauta express???, are they caught and executed, are the culprits of gujrat massacre handled????, it seems that indian government is itself backing the terrorists and thats why they are never convicted. atleast pakistan is not supporting the talibs and putting all at stake to eradicate them.

No doubt india has hindu fundamentalist, but they are not even 0.1% of what jihadi fundamentalism pak has. india is a country with different religions and we are used to living together happily. no where else this kind of atmosphere is possible , but still its not perfect. there are anti-social elements in every society that tries to bring 2 groups into fighting each other. irrespective of these problems still people live happily and with harmony in india.

unfortunately the antisocial elements in pakistan is the idelogy and perception that the people have and the government is just feeding fodder to it. in pakistan you have shia , sunni , baloch and other tribes fighting each other. when you dont know ground realities of india, its best to keep mouth shut.

yes you are right pakistan does not have poverty at all , it is very rich because it keeps begging for aid from different countries.

you talking about our mistakes. what about all those sponsored terrorist activities in india that one of your official govt body the ISI doing all these years. so basically when you getting taste of your own medicine you start howling ??

first you tried to forcefully take kashmir, then tried to forcefully control east pakistan ( bangladesh ) and then you forcefully tried to control afghanisthan using taliban. i mean what is with you guys???

pak created taliban monster, now it tries to eat the owner up and hence you guys fighting it. imagine when taliban takes over and will ban all entertainment including the internet that you are using, taking the country back 200 years. lets see if you enjoy that. you have to put everything at stake to avoid that , so basically you aint doing the world a favour but yourself. You guys are lucky because US is funding you for your own mess.

So rather than reasoning with us, reason your govt to destroy taliban soon . Or else it wont be long that instead of posting your views online , you may have to write and post a letter to defenceforum.in to express your views.

 

[Daredevil]

it seems that indian government is itself backing the terrorists and thats why they are never convicted. atleast pakistan is not supporting the talibs and putting all at stake to eradicate them.

And what is your basis for Indian govt. supporting terrorists?. Do you have proof?.

On the other hand, it is well accepted that Pakistan had given official support to Taliban when it was ruling Afghanistan and it still supports them by not taking action against Mullah Omar, Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar groups. These all comprise the so called Afghan taliban and there is no action against them by Pakistan.

Morever there is official support to terrorists targeting India - like Lashkar-eTaiba/ Jamat-ud-Dawa. Why Pakistan is not taking action such groups?.

It is more or less accepted at the international level that Pakistan is the breeding ground for terrorists and some of them have official patronage of Pakistani establishment. Otherwise why would have US would have put an ally in War on Terrorism (Pakistan) on a special screening list in US airports. Talks a lot about Pakistan's low level.

 

[F-14]

atleast pakistan is not supporting the talibs and putting all at stake to eradicate them.

You sure about this so let me ask you a qustion ?

where is the Quetta shura ? and why is there No action against it ?

if you can answer this qustion properly then i shall belive that all i read is

Western propaganda

 

[ppgj]

good read..

Defining ‘strategic depth’

By Kamran Shafi
Tuesday, 19 Jan, 2010

Will our army pack its bags and escape into Afghanistan to disengage itself from the fighting, if India goes to war with Pakistan? –Photo by AP

And how does it help us? We are engaged in the Great Game in Afghanistan, we are told, because ‘strategic depth’ is vital for Pakistan due to the fact that our country is very narrow at its middle and could well be cut into half by an Indian attack in force.

Strategic depth, we are further informed, will give respite to our armed forces which could withdraw into Afghanistan to then regroup and mount counter-attacks on Indian forces in Pakistan. I ask you!

I ask you for several reasons. Let us presume that the Indians are foolish enough to get distracted from educating their people, some of whom go to some of the best centres of learning in the world. Let us assume that they are *****ic enough to opt for war instead of industrialising themselves and meeting their economic growth targets which are among the highest in the world.

Let us imagine that they are cretinous enough to go to war with a nuclear-armed Pakistan and effectively put an immediate and complete end to their multi-million dollar tourism industry. Let us suppose that they lose all sense, all reason, and actually attack Pakistan and cut our country into half.

Will our army pack its bags and escape into Afghanistan? How will it disengage itself from the fighting? What route will it use, through which mountain passes? Will the Peshawar Corps gun its tanks and troop carriers and trucks and towed artillery and head into the Khyber Pass, and on to Jalalabad? Will the Karachi and Quetta Corps do likewise through the Bolan and Khojak passes?

And what happens to the Lahore and Sialkot and Multan and Gujranwala and Bahawalpur and other garrisons? What about the air force? Far more than anything else, what about the by now 180 million people of the country? What ‘strategic depth’ do our Rommels and Guderians talk about, please? What poppycock is this?

More importantly, how can Afghanistan be our ‘strategic depth’ when most Afghans hate our guts, not only the northerners, but even those who call themselves Pakhtuns?

Case in point: the absolute and repeated refusal of even the Taliban government when it was misruling Afghanistan, to accept the Durand Line as the international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, despite the fact that it was a surrogate of Pakistan — propped into power; paid for; and helped militarily, diplomatically and politically by the Pakistani government and its ‘agencies’.

Indeed, it even refused the Commando’s interior minister, the loudmouth Gen Moinuddin Haider when he went to Kabul to ask for the extradition of Pakistani criminals being sheltered by the Taliban. We must remember that the Commando, as chief executive of the country, was pressing the Foreign Office till just a few days before 9/11 to use every effort to have the Taliban regime’ recognised by more countries!

This poppycock of ‘strategic depth’ can only be explained by our great military thinkers and strategists and geniuses: it is not for mortals like yours truly to make sense of any of it. Particularly because this nonsense can only happen after the Americans depart from Afghanistan. And what, pray, is the guarantee that they will leave when they say they will?

Why this subject at this time, you might well ask. Well I have just been reading David Sanger’s The Inheritance in which he meticulously lays out the reasons why he believes the Pakistani “dual policy” towards the Taliban exists.

On page 247 he states that when Michael McConnell, the then chief of US National Intelligence went to Pakistan in late May 2008 (three months after the elections that trounced Musharraf and his King’s Party, mark) he heard Pakistani officers make the case for the Pakistani need for having a friendly government in Kabul after the Americans departed.

When he got back to Washington McConnell “ordered up a full assessment” of the situation. ‘It did not take long … Musharraf’s record of duplicity was well known. While Kayani was a favourite of the White House, he had also been overheard — presumably on telephone intercepts — referring to one of the most brutal of the Taliban leaders, Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, as a “strategic asset”. Interesting, for Kayani’s former boss, Musharraf is quoted thus in Der Spiegel:

Spiegel: “Let us talk about the role of the ISI. A short time ago, US newspapers reported that ISI has systematically supported Taliban groups. Is that true?”

Musharraf: “Intelligence always has access to other networks — this is what Americans did with KGB, this is what ISI also does. You should understand that the army is on board to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda. I have always been against the Taliban. Don’t try to lecture us about how we should handle this tactically. I will give you an example: Siraj Haqqani ...”

Spiegel: “... a powerful Taliban commander who is allegedly secretly allied with the ISI.”

Musharraf: “He is the man who has influence over Baitullah Mehsud, a dangerous terrorist, the fiercest commander in South Waziristan and the murderer of Benazir Bhutto as we know today. Mehsud kidnapped our ambassador in Kabul and our intelligence used Haqqani’s influence to get him released. Now, that does not mean that Haqqani is supported by us. The intelligence service is using certain enemies against other enemies. And it is better to tackle them one by one than making them all enemies.”

Well, there they go again!

But back to ‘strategic depth’. Will the likes of Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, help Pakistan gain this ‘depth’ in Afghanistan? Are we that gone that we need these backward yahoos to save our army?

PS By the way what about our nuclear weapons? Are they not enough to stop the Indians in their tracks? What poppycock is this ‘strategic depth’?!

[email protected]

DAWN.COM | Columnists | Defining ?strategic depth?

 

[nitesh]

Here is the gem, how come a Pakistani admitting such shameful thing:

Tribute to a journalist
.....................
He had a few things to say about our culture also: "Most of us are descended from Hindus converted to Islam. We tend to deny that and pretend that we come from Bukhara or some such place. The result is culturally we tend to be nobodies. We tend to adopt Arab culture mistakenly believing it to be the same as Muslim. The two, however, do not equate for Arab imperialism is still virulent and rife.".............

 

[Daredevil]

[mod]There is another thread which is discussing almost same things in parallel. Its better to have one thread on Pakistan's Identity crisis and ideology

Please use this thread for further posts on this topic

http://www.defenceforum.in/forum/pa...e-pakistan-discussion-pakistani-ideology.html[/mod]

 

[ppgj]

What the Taliban want

By Irfan Husain
Saturday, 23 Jan, 2010

Although they use Islamic rhetoric and rationalisations, their true goal is to seize and wield absolute power. –Photo by AP

Often, I am asked by readers or friends abroad what the Taliban want. Why, they ask, are they slaughtering hundreds of innocent people wherever they can? What is their purpose? What is their agenda?

The short answer is power. Other excuses for their murderous excesses are a fig-leaf: demands for the Sharia and the expulsion of foreign forces from the region are no more than window-dressing.

These terrorists realise that they cannot achieve power through peaceful, democratic means as they have no support. Even relatively moderate Islamic parties have been repeatedly trounced at the polls in Pakistan. So extremists reject democracy as it does not give them access to power.

Established religious parties in Pakistan have exploited the repeated bouts of army rule to further their agenda. So far, they have been remarkably successful. But while jihadi groups might cut secret deals with intelligence agencies, even our army is reluctant to enter into open, formal agreements with them.

This leaves only the path of terrorism open to them. Pakistani extremists watched enviously as the Afghan Taliban under Mullah Omar were propelled to power with help from our army. Seeking to replicate this success, they have mounted a sustained campaign of destabilisation against the government.

Another thing Islamic extremists oppose vehemently wherever they are operating is modern, scientific education. Educated only in the scriptures, they have little understanding of the physical and social sciences. While they may have many operatives who are highly educated, the top ideologues are seminary-trained zealots. Although they use Islamic rhetoric and rationalisations, their true goal is to seize and wield absolute power.

In Nigeria, an obscure Muslim sect recently launched a deadly campaign under the banner of ‘Boko Haram’, meaning that modern education was haram, or sinful. Hundreds died as they went on a rampage before being ruthlessly crushed. Nevertheless, their primitive credo lives on.

In Pakistan, the Taliban and their murderous partners have destroyed hundreds of schools. They have focused on girls’ schools, issuing threats to those they haven’t yet demolished. Underneath their theocratic justifications for their violent opposition to rational education lies the knowledge that they are not equipped to compete in the modern world. They are thus locked in a battle to tear down a system that marginalises them, and to force everybody else to obey their diktat since, according to them, only they are qualified to interpret the scriptures.

Their apologists — and they are legion in our ruling classes as well as our media — demand that we must negotiate with them. What they do not say is how this should be done. How do you talk to ruthless killers who saw off their victims’ heads and gleefully post the videos of their acts on the Internet? Or force young boys to gun down tied and blindfolded prisoners? Or flog young girls screaming for mercy?

Hakeemullah Mehsud of the Pakistani Taliban and his cohorts want nothing short of absolute power. The only thing they are willing to discuss are the terms of surrender of the Pakistan government. If we cede territory to them — as we did earlier in Swat — we are consigning our citizens to the kind of nightmare the people of Swat had to undergo.

The first thing Fazlullah did when he was handed Swat was to shut down the schools that had not been blown up earlier. Barber shops and video shops were ordered to follow suit. All forms of entertainment were effectively banned. Is this the kind of life we wish to condemn our countrymen to?

Remember that we have a model of this kind of barbaric society: under the Afghan Taliban, our neighbour was rapidly pushed back to the dark ages. Women were flogged for the crime of showing an inch of their ankles as they walked wearing all-enveloping shrouds. Male doctors could not attend to them, even in life-threatening cases. They were not allowed to leave their homes to work, and girls were forbidden from going to school.

Those urging the government to negotiate with the Pakistani Taliban need to be clear whether they want their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters to lead the lives their Afghan counterparts had to not so long ago. To the Taliban, these are non-negotiable conditions to their stated desire to impose their version of the Sharia on the rest of us.

Largely due to the shrill voices that have crowded out reason from media debate, there is a lot of confusion and ambiguity about what the Taliban want, and how far the government should go in meeting their demands. Some argue that their excesses are the result of the western presence in Afghanistan, and our government’s military anti-Taliban operations in the tribal areas. How the extremists hold school-going children responsible for these policies, and destroy schools is something their apologists in the media have failed to explain.

What sustains this mindset is the steady inroads madressahs have made in Pakistan during and since the Zia era. The decades since the 1980s have witnessed a rapid erosion of modern, secular values. The voices of reason have been muted, and we are caught in the grip of a mindless anti-West hysteria that pushes even moderates into the Taliban camp.

As the threat of the Taliban looms larger over Pakistan, schools in Karachi and Lahore have come to resemble armed camps. The fear of terrorist attacks unsettles children and parents alike. Ever the enemies of education, the Taliban will stop at nothing in their quest for power.

How should the government respond to this deadly threat? The voices of appeasement clamour for concessions. But the Taliban have repeatedly said they will halt their campaign of terror only when their version of the Sharia has been imposed, the army withdraws from the tribal areas, and the Americans cease their drone attacks.

Even if the first two demands are conceded, it is unlikely the Americans will stop using the only weapon that is proving effective in this conflict. Should our army actually pull out, it is more than probable that American troops will partially replace them in fighting the Taliban on our side of the border. There is no way they will allow the jihadis in Fata to target them without retaliating.

So much as I wish it were otherwise, I fear a military solution is the only one currently available. Negotiating from a position of weakness is a sure recipe for disaster.

[email protected]

DAWN.COM | Columnists | What the Taliban want

 

[ppgj]

checkout the video... really nice...

Music vs. militancy

Posted by Salman Siddiqui on 01 21st, 2010

Even though Pakistan is bleeding from terrorism and suicide bombings, no mainstream pop music artist has come close to condemning or questioning the spread of militancy through music and lyrics. A recent video from The New York Times highlighted this issue, showing how pop acts such as Ali Azmat and Noori were keeping quiet on the subjects of terror, religious extremism, and the Taliban, while railing against America through their songs. In this context, 25-year-old Daniyal Noorani‘s debut effort ‘Finding Heaven,’ which was released on YouTube a few days ago, is encouraging. The daring single takes the Taliban and religious extremists head on, creating quite a buzz online. Dawn.com speaks with Noorani to find out what prompted him to fill the ideological vacuum in our music scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3U7KsJHdO0&feature=player_embedded

Q. Are you a musician by profession or is it something you do as a hobby?

A. I’m a 25-year old Pakistani who grew up in Lahore, studied at Aitchison College, and later did my undergrad at a small liberal arts college called Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. I graduated with a math and economics double major in 2006 and I am currently doing business development at a biotech company in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I am not a musician by profession. I actually started playing the guitar a couple of years ago at the insistence of my younger sister, who also plays the instrument. I began playing a right-handed guitar, left handed; in fact, I still play the guitar upside down. I do not have a band. Right now, it’s just me writing music and having friends help out with the instrumentation.

Q. What are you trying to convey with your song?

A. I wrote ‘Find Heaven’ at a time when I felt there was no clear public consensus on suicide bombings. At that point, the urban centres of Pakistan had not been as hard hit as they are today and I felt that the country didn’t know how they felt about these activities, whether they were sympathetic or condemning of it. It was around that time I started writing the lyrics. The song tells the story of a confused young man seeking answers about life’s important questions and traces how an individual lures this young man by saying he has the answer to life’s ultimate question, how to find heaven or zenith? The lyrics convey the young man’s journey and the events that lead to the conclusion he comes to.

Q. Is there anything autobiographical about the young man in your song?

A. The confused man is any person of my generation who is questioning and thinking about what’s been happening in our country. It’s autobiographical in a way that we the youth are confused about a lot of things, like the injustices we see all around us, our corrupt society, and incidents of terrorism taking place all over the country.

The realisation (of how bad things have become) dawned on me over the last few years. Before, frankly, when we would hear about terror incidents like those in north-western areas, it wouldn’t affect us much or maybe we wouldn’t think too much about it. But now that terror is hitting close to home in our cities, it shakes us up.

Q. How did the concept of the video evolve? Why did you choose to animate it rather than shoot a video with real people and places?

A. I think the concept of the video came while writing the song, so that is one reason why they are so interdependent. From the start, I had a pretty clear vision of the final version of the video. I think that the audio and video together are much greater than the sum of the individual parts. The animations were done by my cousin Marria Khan, who is a very talented artist and graduate of the National College of Arts. She did a fantastic job coming up with the character designs and giving them a life of their own.

I chose animation to limit the element of personal bias that may be associated with an actor so that the focus remains on the story and the message. Black and white sketches don’t allow for the focus to shift from the story to what a said actor may stand for. Also, this video could be misinterpreted by some people, which may have resulted in consequences for actors playing the roles – I didn’t want to endanger anyone.

Q. Did it strike you that you might endanger yourself through this effort?

A. Yes, the thought did cross my mind. In fact, while making this song, I even discussed [possible repercussions] with my family. Having said that, even though the song might be controversial in nature, I don’t think I’ve done anything to offend anyone, especially anything that would give me negative feedback of a violent kind.

Q. What feedback have you received?

A. The feedback has been predominantly positive with a smattering of negative comments. I am not very concerned about the negative feedback as part of the goal of the video was to have the people who hold opposing views to communicate with those who have positive feedback, and start a dialogue. I hope that after seeing this video, people will question things and not just take things at face value; the more we question, the more we learn. On another note, my friends have interpreted the lyrics in a multitude of different ways, so I think the song has more character than I am highlighting in the video.

Q. If the goal was to initiate dialogue, why not compose Urdu-language lyrics?

A. I do realise that it’s rather elitist of me to have done the song in English, which limits the audience in Pakistan. At the same time, the song now has global reach and can be understood by people the world over. Also, my control over the Urdu language is not as strong as I would like it to be. Despite that, I am working on an Urdu version of ‘Find Heaven’ and soon, if nothing else, I will at least have the same song with Urdu subtitles. At the moment, though, I’m trying to figure out what the Urdu word for redemption is.

Q. In the video, we don’t actually see the young man conduct a suicide bombing. Is there a particular reason for that?

A. I think showing the events that lead up to the climax are more important than showing the bomber explode himself. You see that the main character has taken all the steps to commit an act of terrorism, but what is more important is to look at the events that lead the character to that point. Also, one thing I wanted to highlight was the cyclical nature of these events. At the end of the video, one pretty much ends up at the beginning, except there is a man walking into a mosque in the background. The idea was to highlight the fact that unless there is a change in the events leading up to the climax, this horrible cycle will continue.

Q. Did you deliberately keep the composition and structure of your song very simple?

A. The song is just a simple four-chord progression with violins. The lyrical structure of the song is just divided into three sections to show the different phases of the character’s journey. Compositionally, I wanted to keep it simple so that the lyrics stand out, while at the same time I wanted to use violins to build the tension for the climax.

Q. Are you planning to launch an album any time soon?

A. I have made other music besides this, which I am currently refining. When I write music, I just try to write about things that interest me and hope that someone else will also find them interesting, so my other music can be drastically different from ‘Find Heaven’. As for plans to launch an album, I did not release this song with the hopes of releasing an album. It was just a story that I thought needed to be told. But based on the response on this first endeavor I do plan to continue releasing music. Whether this will be in an album form or just via singles, I haven’t yet decided.

Salman Siddiqui is a staff reporter at Dawn.com

The Dawn Blog Blog Archive Music vs. militancy

 

[ppgj]

Tragic path ahead

By Rafia Zakaria
Wednesday, 20 Jan, 2010

Scene of a suicide blast in Peshawar. "The year 2009 saw 87 suicide attacks in Pakistan which killed nearly 1,300 people — a nearly 40 per cent increase from the previous year." – AP (File Photo)

THE apparently self-inflicted death of a Pakistani activist left a vacuum in a society starving for creative public expression. But this was not an isolated act.

In contemporary Pakistan, the tragedy is also a metaphor for the larger constriction and self-destruction that has become a recurrent motif in our demographic, institutional and moral existence. In the words of sociologist Emile Durkheim “the term ‘suicide’ applies to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from an act of the victim himself which he knows will produce this result”.

Suicide thus is not an act for humans alone and spans beyond the nearly 6,000 suicides that have been recorded in Pakistan in the past three years. It extends beyond the risk factors of being male, unemployed and under 40 which have been defined in studies as forming the largest group of those at risk. It even goes beyond the men willingly donning explosive vests in the hopes of achieving transcendent rewards after annihilating the lives of scores of innocent people. These literal iterations of suicide, though familiar, are only the most visible symbols of the deeper systemic self-destruction that has gripped Pakistan.

Demographically, Pakistan is already the sixth largest country in the world with a population of 170 million, 100 million of which is under 25. This ‘youth bulge’ which represents our failure to curtail fertility rates to under 2.5 per cent bodes disaster for the country. If our strained state resources are unable to provide services for existing populations, it is likely that they will also not be able to provide healthcare, sustainable economic projects or education for these future generations. Despite knowing this, our failure as a nation to prioritise reducing the size of our families, suggests an act of demographic suicide, where we are committing ourselves to a perpetual youth bulge, which permanently means strained and inadequate basic services and an increasingly desperate and destroyed populace that continues to grow.

Pakistan’s economy is similarly afflicted with a host of systemic problems that curtail the state’s ability to lift the ordinary Pakistani out of poverty. The weak tax base, a result of the refusal to tax large agricultural landholdings of the feudal elite that dominate the government, leaves the state with little revenue to invest in industry. This means that the country is overly dependent on foreign investment, which due to the state’s inability to provide security simply does not come.

Democratic theorists predict that for citizens to become stakeholders in the political process and sustain liberal democracy, the average income per family has to be somewhere around $3,000 per capita. The average per capita income of the Pakistani family is stuck at $1,000 suggesting a long and arduous road ahead. Current forecasts put the economic growth rate at around 2.7 per cent which falls short of the seven per cent needed to sustain job creation for our growing population.

Demographic and economic challenges are not the only factors that have put Pakistan on a suicidal course. Pakistani institutions have in 60 years engaged in the most hedonistic rate of systemic adventurism. Despite this rate of experimenting with varying power arrangements, both of Pakistan’s major political parties have been unable to produce any new leadership in the past 20 years. The generation that grew up in the early 1980s is thus seeing the same faces of leaders and their sons paraded on television screens as heirs to the nation’s leadership.

Known as the world’s most corrupt, Pakistani institutions deliver next to nothing in terms of representation for the common man. The resultant leadership vacuum provides anti-establishment groups like the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, Jaish-i-Mohammad and Lashkar-i-Taiba with plenty of discontent, confusion and malaise which can be channelled into literal suicide. As a Taliban leader recently boasted, he has a number of young men willing to kill themselves for the promise of heaven.

Suicide thus is not simply the problem of the bomber who straps explosives to his body and walks into a crowded marketplace with hopes of heaven. Nor is it only the burden of individuals unable to watch the sufferings of their countrymen. Individual acts of self-destruction represent a sense of helplessness before a national path of self-destruction willingly adopted. A baffled world asks again and again how droves of Pakistani youth can reach such depths of desperation and hopelessness as to commit acts of wanton and random terror.

One answer lies in the national fate of Pakistan itself. Pakistan today is literally and figuratively a country that has strapped an explosive suicide vest to itself. The embrace of feudal hierarchies that perpetually ply their own interests before the rest of the nation, the failure to tax the richest in the country, the failure to curtail population growth with aggressive policies and the failure to rein in spending in the face of ever-rising debts create an explosive vest that threatens to destroy all within it.

The year 2009 saw 87 suicide attacks in Pakistan which killed nearly 1,300 people — a nearly 40 per cent increase from the previous year. There will be more suicides in the coming days, more young men will strap bombs to their bodies and destroy the lives of hundreds around them. The demographic, economic and institutional path that Pakistan is on has made suicide not simply a terrorist act or an incident of psychological and sociological distress. Instead suicide has become the metaphor for the historical reality of our nation, poised as it is with a gun to its temple and confronted with a choice.

The writer is an attorney and a director at Amnesty International, US.

DAWN.COM | Pakistan | Tragic path ahead

 

[Daredevil]

Burnt dreams

Burnt dreams

By Ayesha Siddiqa

Friday, 22 Jan, 2010 | 01:32 AM PST |


Many years ago, during the mid-1980s, I remember a conversation with the great Urdu writer Ashfaq Ahmed. He was then the director-general of the Urdu Science Board in Lahore and had begun his journey towards religion and Sufism. I was keen to know what young people could do when public intellectual icons had sold their souls to dictatorial regimes.

Perhaps I sought to understand how, intellectually, a society was prepared for greater and deeper feudalism/tribalism. What I am referring to here is a normative issue rather than a structural problem.

More recently I sat through a long monologue by a senior bureaucrat lambasting the country’s feudal culture. The crux of his argument was that this was the main problem with Pakistan’s politics. Removing landed feudals from politics and inserting educated professionals was the only recipe. Somehow, I was reminded of the conversation I had with Ashfaq Sahib.

In my mind, whether we would become a better, law-abiding society through eliminating structures identified with feudalism was a moot point. Talk to many educated people in the cities and they are sure to tell you that Pakistan has not progressed because of its feudal/tribal culture. Indeed, feudalism continues to thrive in the country if not as a mode of production then definitely as the dominant culture. However, it is vital to contextualise the debate and understand the features and dynamics of the said culture.

I recall the debate that some of us had in this paper regarding feudalism. There were economists and political scientists who were of the view that feudalism was a thing of the past. Of course, this means feudalism as a mode of production. The farm sizes in Punjab are no longer what feudal landowners in this country had 50 years ago.

A glance at the data shows that the number of smaller farms (around five to 10 acres) has increased as compared to larger farms. Big land holdings, or jagirs, continue to exist only in Sindh. Despite the archaic cultural norms of denying inheritance rights to women of the family in Punjab and Sindh, farm sizes have grown relatively smaller.

The main problem with the Marxian definition of feudalism is that it is confined to the concept in terms of mode of production with no attention given to the concept as a norm. This means that people with lesser acreage would continue to display the same authoritarian attitudes. But then if we begin to look at the term in a normative fashion we would realise that the concept has evolved over the years. In fact, now the concept has taken on newer shapes and brought into its fold societal groups that were not associated with this behaviour.

From a theoretical standpoint, there are those who have a problem with calling this ‘feudalism’. They believe that this can be called ‘authoritarianism’. However, the authoritarianism of the ruling elite has a specific historical context and cannot be interpreted separately from cultural norms, especially those pertaining to the power structure of the land.

This means three things. First, more than representing a mode of production the concepts of feudalism and tribalism represent a normative structure which is averse to the rule of law. Second, this particular norm is meant to facilitate a particular formula for the redistribution of resources, which, in turn, is based on the exercise of power in a certain manner.

Third, this also means that other groups, which do not necessarily draw their power from land ownership and are not part of the hereditary tribalism and feudalism, could follow the norm to gain and exercise power in a certain way. This also means that those claiming to replace feudalism as a redundant and negative social norm might be following the same pattern without identifying their own behaviour as a replication of what they hope to replace.

This applies to the urban, educated upper-middle class in the country. People who belong to different professions and have risen from the lower-middle class or the middle class tend to consciously or unconsciously behave in the same manner as the traditional feudal/tribal elite. In most cases they even tend to acquire symbols of feudal/tribal power. This certainly pertains to the acquisition and management of agricultural land.

Hence, the procurement of farmland in rural areas or at the periphery of big towns and cities is less about finding a post-retirement occupation and more about expressing personal power. Interestingly, we can observe senior military officers, civil bureaucrats and even professionals and entrepreneurs following this behaviour pattern.

Since the acquisition of land is linked to personal power, technological advancement in agriculture is not one of the by-products, despite the fact that it is comparatively educated people who are the new owners of land. Even individuals, who are basically the products of urban life and are exposed to the international environment, fall prey to feudalism/tribalism as a prevalent norm. Associations and groups are then formed and managed along the lines of feudal patronage as was done in the past.

The military, the civil bureaucracy and political parties like the PML-N or the MQM fall into this pattern. Most recently, even professional groups like the media, lawyers and medical practitioners have shown similar tendencies. The various patronage groups are meant to provide security to their members and save them from the law and the process of accountability.

More importantly, the path for normative feudalism was prepared intellectually as well. A large portion of literature, especially in Urdu, which was read in the largest province, did not challenge the feudal authoritarianism particularly exercised by the new feudals, such as the military in power. In fact, numerous intellectuals became conduits for military regimes trading their souls for land, money or cushy positions.

Some of them even manipulated religion and converted the discourse to the advantage of authoritarian military rulers. So, most tragically youngsters at that time like me saw the edifice of neo-feudalism being built through encouraging intellectual dishonesty. The Zia years were among the darkest in our national history. Personally I saw Lahore, a city I was born and grew up in, and which was known for its intellectual shine, capitulate to dictatorial rule. Things would never be the same again.

Although both civilian and military regimes in Pakistan have used religion for their power games, none can surpass the Zia years in morphing the intellectual discourse. As for my conversation with Ashfaq Ahmed, I still recall telling him about the pain of burning dreams — the only option left for youngsters fed to feudalism and militarism by pretentious intellectuals.

The writer is an independent strategic and political analyst.
[email protected]

 

[ppgj]

Smokers’ Corner: The minor majority

By Nadeem F. Paracha
Sunday, 24 Jan, 2010

Why do many Pakistanis spend more time celebrating Islamic history of regions outside India (especially Arabian), the ummah, and seem to show more concern in what is happening to their brethren in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir.

The Mughals and the Muslim population of the subcontinent weren’t all that bothered by the whole concept of the caliphate. As rulers they did not, or only superficially, recognised the Ottoman caliph. The Mughals, though Central Asian by decent, were deeply entrenched in the political and social traditions of the subcontinent and so was their Muslim polity.

Also, till even the reign of the last great Mughal ruler, Aurangzeb, there are only a handful of documented episodes involving any serious physical clashes between the Hindu majority and their Muslim counterparts. Compared to the communal violence between the two groups in India, and the drummed-up anti-Hindu sentiment in Pakistan in the 20th century, relations between the two communities were largely harmonious — especially during the reigns of Akbar and Shahjehan.

Thus, the roots of the modern-day Hindu-Muslim antipathy lie not in the distant past, but a mere hundred and fifty years back in history; or soon after the failure of the 1857 rebellion started jointly by disgruntled Hindu and Muslim soldiers against their colonial British masters.

As the British became a lot more imposing after the failed rebellion, they also began introducing a greater number of modern ideas and technology, some of which, like democracy, suddenly awakened the Muslims to a stark reality which they had simply not been aware of. The idea of majority rule suddenly made the Muslims realise that they were actually in a minority.

As the region’s Muslims finally resigned to the fact that the age of Muslim kings was as good as over, a number of Muslim scholars and reformers emerged and attempted to undermine the Muslims’ minority status. Both conservative as well as liberal reformists, though disagreeing on a number of issues, agreed that to supplement their community’s sudden minority status, the Muslims of the region must now start identifying themselves as citizens of the worldwide Muslim ummah.

Soon, as India entered the 20th century, conservative Muslim scholars also started reshaping Muslim history of the region. To them Mughal kings in general, and Akbar in particular, became arch villains, mainly for their ‘liberal views’ and detachment from the Turkish caliphate, which, according to these scholars, led to the downfall of Islam in India.

Of course there was nothing academically or historically sound about such theories, and such scholars simply failed to look into the obvious political and economic reasons behind the fall of the Muslim rule, but the emotionally-charged claims resonated with a Muslim milieu ruing its lost status.

The rewriting of the history of Muslim India by such scholars soon saw the Muslims of India talking more about ancient Muslim conquerors (mainly Arab), and gleefully celebrating plunderers like Mehmood Ghaznavi and Muhammad Ghori, all the while downplaying Muslim rulers who had made India their home and played a leading role in uniting the region as a distinct and diverse empire.

As the British began introducing limited democratic reforms, a section of Hindu extremists too, excited by their majority status rose to glorify their own new heroes. And even though the Indian National Congress remained above such extremism, the Muslim League, however, at the behest of Muhammad Iqbal (and not Jinnah), gave a more intellectual context to what the conservative Muslim thinkers were propagating.

To Iqbal, Indian nationalism that propagated a joint Hindu-Muslim struggle against the British (and of which Jinnah too was once an advocate), was contrary to the concept of a united Muslim ummah. So, was Iqbal’s articulate tirade a Utopian critique of nationalism that only ended up in generating a struggling dystopia?

The legacy of communalism in India and anti-Hindu sentiments in Pakistan are a product of two main historical events: The suddenly discovered majority fascism amongst the extremist Hindu fringe, and the Utopian intellectualisation of the Muslims’ minority complex who were asked to look outside India for inspiration and somewhat ignore the brilliant legacy of (the supposed “Hindu-friendly”) Muslim rulers of the region. Ironically, the Congress, too, fell for this Utopian interpretation by supporting the Khilafat Movement, which the Muslim League did not back.

But today in Pakistan Muslims comprise a huge majority. So why do many Pakistanis spend more time celebrating Islamic history of regions outside India (especially Arabian), the ummah, and seem to show more concern in what is happening to their brethren in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir, while drowning out the havoc being perpetrated by fellow Muslims inside their own country?

If we study the recent trend of reactionary thinking and of denials doing the rounds, we will notice it is largely the vocation of the urban middle-class. In an era of populist democracy (mostly associated with the urban working class and the rural peasantry), the middle-class feels itself to be a minority.

Thus, it can be suggested that this class too seems to be suffering from the kind of minority complex of the early 20th century. Perhaps that’s why, comparatively speaking, it is this class that is today enthusiastically responding to all the retro-Islamic paraphernalia, anti-democracy sentiment and empty, rhetorical muscle-flexing based on glorified fables and myths of “Muslim power” doing the rounds in drawing rooms — the popular media and cyber space today.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect.../19-nadeem-f-paracha-the-minor-majority-hh-02

 

[Singh]

Unanswered questions​

After going through the Herald magazine’s annual issue, which this year included a survey on Pakistani youth, I was compelled to write about the identity crisis plaguing the youngsters of this country today. Pakistan’s turbulent history has widened, rather than resolved, the contradictions present in our society, leaving society as polarised as ever. The young generation is still searching for the answers that previous generations of Pakistanis have failed to provide.

This prevalent identity crisis is spurred at an early school-going age. Text books are written to pursue expedient policies and internalise certain notions of ‘national interest,’ which may come at the expense of imbuing the children with ideologies that promote hate and intolerance. For this purpose, history is twisted and turned to suit petty interests. Few individuals are revered, others are demonised. Accounts of events from history are printed with knowing distortions and glaring omissions. According to a report compiled by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), which examined text books for grades one to 12, most text books “[encourage] or

discrimination against women, religious and ethnic minorities and other nations.”

War is glorified in the process, while peace is not given the emphasis it needs. War is a breakdown of diplomacy, an utter failure of humanity, one that is often branded and disguised as an expression of bravery and courage in our books. This practice reminds me of a Stephen Fisher dialogue in Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940), when he says, “they combine a mad love of country with an equally mad indifference to life, their own as well as others. They are cunning, unscrupulous, inspired.”

One may argue that this kind of text book perversion is a standard practice in order to promote nationalism and patriotism. The troubling effects of this ‘standard practice’ are pretty much evident in the increasing social turmoil in our society. If our youth are not aware of our historical follies, how are we planning to ensure that we do not end up travelling down the same cul-de-sac again? Is it really due to our ‘security interests’ that findings such as the Hamoodur Rehman Commission report never see the light of the day? Young individuals, who get the opportunity to read beyond their text books, are increasingly questioning the biased versions of our historical narratives. Others, who are not lucky enough to read widely, have formulated views which are far from the truth.

Many recent surveys, like the British Council’s ‘Next Generation Report’, have also highlighted an alarmingly high ratio of youth that have no faith in democracy and would prefer a totalitarian regime under military rulers. This is not just about the large Facebook following of a former military dictator; rather, it’s about the rampant disillusionment among today’ youth with the present system, which they believe has failed to deliver on countless occasions due to inept policies and politicians.

Moreover, many young people feel that reaffirming their national identity comes at the cost of losing their provincial identity. Concepts such as unity in diversity or multicultural coexistence are very much needed today. In a country like ours, until the voice of every ethnicity and minority is not heard, until their due concerns are not addressed, a true consensus – which is indispensable for a federation to show progress – can not be forged. For instance, it does not amount to lack of patriotism or treason for a Baloch to ask for more provincial autonomy.

This brings me to another disturbing trend. The intricate issues in which we are caught are often very frustrating for the youth. While groping for solutions in this dark period, the youth are exploited by certain individuals who with their oratory skills present a simplistic answer to complicated dilemmas by urging them to focus on a common external enemy. They spit venom, blabber about conspiracy theories, and preach jingoism in the media.

This strategy works, and it is nothing different from our flawed policies of looking at everything through a security prism, which we have already been doing at a larger level. Well, when the rival countries of Europe could be brought under a single banner by highlighting an external threat of communism, many believe same effect can be achieved with the diverse population of Pakistan by the use of a single external enemy. So manipulative minds use a bit of warmongering to unite the nation. Of course, in the process, our own inefficacies can be brushed under the carpet as well.

In the words of Syed Ali Abbas Zaidi, an Islamabad-based youth activist and the founder of the Pakistan Youth Alliance, “we are a nation of 170 million, confused about our ideology, our very basis, our culture and sociology, our religion, our priorities and our enemies.” He points out that it is easier for most Pakistanis to condemn atrocities committed by a Jewish state thousands of miles away, than to raise a voice against extremism which may have claimed more lives in our own backyard. The point is not to underscore Gaza atrocities, but to highlight the reluctance on our part to identify our own failures as well. To do that, our youth will have to rise above bifurcations to call spade a spade and will raise their guard against the chicanery of hate-preaching demagogues.

http://blog.dawn.com/2010/02/01/unanswered-questions/​

 

[Dark_Prince]

Some Eye Opening Videos By Hasan Nisar (one of the few sane Pakistanis) on Pakistan




More Hassan Nisar videos are available on Youtube exposing pak hypocrisy!