The collusion of commercialism and the right wing in the Pakistani media

The hypocrisy of the Pakistani Taliban Union of Journalists (PTUJ)

The media is a commercial entity and therefore can always be expected to cater, first and foremost, to its profit-making needs. In Pakistan the private TV media revolution was welcomed by ordinary people who have historically been fed a surfeit of state ideology via Pakistan Television (PTV). Only a few short years after a glittering christening, however, the private media has proven that the profit-motive can coexist quite well with the ideological agenda that we all thought had been left behind with the state’s monopoly on information.

The fire is spreading

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

Some six months ago I wrote a critique of the media on these pages for not abiding by professional journalistic ethics in its coverage of the military action in Malakand. Among other things, I emphasised how the daily Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) press releases were printed almost word for word without independent source verification (or a mention that no such source existed).

It is perhaps not surprising that the same exercise is being repeated now with Operation Rah-e-Nijat. But it is a damning indictment of those who claim to be committed to freedom of information and other principles of media democracy all the same. Through the course of this year, as the state’s long-standing policy of patronising religious militancy has unravelled in the face of increasing pressure from Washington, the media has answered the call of the powers-that-be to be loyal to the “greater national interest.” It is perhaps considered by and by that protecting the “greater national interest” requires the sacrifice of basic journalistic principles.

For a few days recently some media personalities made hay about restrictions on media coverage of “terrorism” which apparently all parliamentary parties deemed necessary. The expected furore never came to pass, and it has recently been reported that most media outlets have voluntarily agreed to a code of conduct vis-a-vis what can be shown on live TV and what cannot. No democratic government should ever employ draconian measures against the media. On this occasion, however, it appears to make sense that a confrontation was avoided by the media’s own admission that showing mutilated bodies strewn around bomb sites is not beneficial to the public interest. But in general the media’s practice of self-censorship is motivated rarely by public-interest concerns.

The media is a commercial entity and therefore can always be expected to cater, first and foremost, to its profit-making needs. In Pakistan the private TV media revolution was welcomed by ordinary people who have historically been fed a surfeit of state ideology via Pakistan Television (PTV). Only a few short years after a glittering christening, however, the private media has proven that the profit-motive can coexist quite well with the ideological agenda that we all thought had been left behind with the state’s monopoly on information.

In recent times the media has clamoured about the imperative of military action in Waziristan while at the same time recovering the familiar narrative of an Indian-Israeli-American conspiracy to deprive Pakistan of its nuclear arsenal and eventually dismember it. It is amazing that these two narratives can go together, but that is exactly how the choreographers behind the scenes would have it. In short, the ideational leap that was first made immediately prior to the Swat operation – that the once loyal jihadi protégés of the state are now its most lethal enemies – is being taken to its logical conclusion; that is, through the insistence that those who claim to be undertaking jihad against the Pakistani state are actually agents of RAW, Mossad and the CIA.

The “foreign hand” theory is back in a big way, and the media is proving to be more loyal than the king in propagating it far and wide. Caches of arms captured in high-profile operations read “Made in India.” Newspaper headlines accuse the “foreign hand” of constructing special aircraft to storm our nuclear installations. In a very conspicuous parallel development, the Afghan Taliban have reportedly dissociated themselves with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claiming that real warriors of Islam never target Muslim innocents. This fits the media narrative that has now cast away all pretensions in making a clear distinction between genuine holy warriors and “enemy” agents masquerading as jihadis. The former are essential to the security of “Islam,” and therefore the Pakistani state, whereas the latter are out to malign Islam and wipe Pakistan off the map.

The right-wingers in the media, educational institutions and within the state are of course aided in drumming up nationalist hysteria by the increasingly conspicuous man-management that Washington insists upon. It is a fact that there has been an influx of American “security men” into Islamabad and other cities. It was widely reported that Americans completed deserted their positions on the Pakistani-Afghan border as soon as the South Waziristan operation started. Then there is the recently published story in The New Yorker by Seymour Hersh rehashing the tired theme of Pakistani nukes’ safety.

Notwithstanding the disastrous role that American imperialism has played, and continues to play, in the wider region, it is crucial to understand why anti-Americanism (and its anti-India corollary) is being cultivated by the media at the present time. The goal is not to facilitate democratisation or foster genuine anti-imperialist sensibilities; the media’s harping on about America and India directly aids the security establishment’s attempts to paper over the contradictions that have erupted in recent times to reassert its strategic vision and its control over state affairs.

American forces must leave Afghanistan and American control over policymaking in Pakistan must be resisted. But the same security establishment and right-wing media that got into bed with the Americans in the first place some 30 years ago are part of the problem, and are not the heroic defenders of the people that they claim to be.

As the operation in South Waziristan is concluded, to great media fanfare, the people of Pakistan will be no closer to lasting peace than they were before the “mother of all operations” was started. In fact, very little appears to have changed. Change will only happen if and when we undertake an exercise in collective introspection and accept that the Frankenstein that we have created cannot be understood, and therefore tamed, by engaging in unaccountable military operations in one part of the country after another.

This is not a “war” against the proverbial “foreign hand,” or even, as the liberals would have it, against the “extremists.” After all, those who blow themselves up are products of this society and the ideas that circulate freely within it. The real battle must be waged against the obsolete and poisonous ideas that litter our textbooks and the hyper-nationalist propaganda that is spewed out by those who claim to be providing us with unadulterated facts. Underlying all of this is a gory struggle for power in which all players invoke state sovereignty and willingly expend human lives in the name of this sovereignty.

If we are willing to get to the heart of the matter, there may yet be hope that we can build a self-respecting nation on the basis of a new social contract. Such a nation can resist Empire, and make friends with its neighbours. If we persist with fire-fighting, the fire will only spread further.

The writer teaches colonial history at Quaid-e-Azam University and is affiliated with People’s Rights Movement.

Email: amajid@comsats. net.pk - The News, November 16, 2009
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"The Friends of Democratic Pakistan" disappoint "the democracy haters in Pakistan"

‘Stable Pakistan’ and the world

Co-chairing, with the US President Barack Obama, the Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) meeting on Thursday, President Asif Ali Zardari stated that “a stable and prosperous Pakistan is the world’s greatest hope against the spread of extremism and terrorism”. The basis for his claim on the attention of the “friends” was Pakistan army’s success in its war against the Taliban terrorists in the Malakand Division in the NWFP and the promising nature of the ongoing military action in other parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

President Zardari deployed effective rhetoric by claiming that Pakistan was fighting for the entire civilised world. The truth is that the entire civilised world wants Pakistan to save itself from the scourge of the Taliban and, at least in theory, is ready to compensate it in return. Because terrorism around the world spreads from the epicentre of violent creeds in this region, the world agrees that if Pakistan fights it, it would save its own soul and also help the world fight in Afghanistan. This cooperative fight, the world thinks, would be tantamount to defending the entire civilisation as it exists today. The FoDP is supposed to translate the world’s gratitude towards Pakistan into monetary assistance. And a bit of that happened on Thursday.

The US Senate passed the Kerry-Lugar Bill which will give Pakistan USD1.5 billion annually towards a total payment to Pakistan of USD10 billion in five years. Already the FoDP have made it possible for Pakistan to receive USD13 billion as assistance to its foreign reserves, leading immediately to an improved credit rating, following by a boom at the Karachi stock exchange. The IMF had virtually no funds and had loaned only USD1 billion in 2007 and was nearing closure; today, thanks to the global recession and the efforts by the world to get out of the slump it finds itself in because of free market excesses, the IMF has USD750 billion and has already loaned USD160 billion to troubled economies all over the world.

The fight against terrorism is a complex issue. While it is important for Pakistan to remain on the sympathetic radar of everyone and walk in lockstep with the community of nations worried about terrorism in this region, there is much that the US-led allies need to do in Afghanistan to make Pakistan’s work easy. That has not happened so far, as should be clear from General McChrystal’s initial assessment report that has been leaked to the media a couple of days ago. That report also mentions the role of India as a destabilising factor which must be addressed in order for Pakistan to begin to take care of groups that might be attacking the NATO-ISAF interests in Afghanistan. But more than that there is reason for one to be concerned about the failure so far of the US, NATO and ISAF troops to bring that country under effective control.

Meanwhile, if the FoDP meeting seems to praise President Zardari for his “achievements” after one year in office, the media in Pakistan is in the process of presenting him as a villain. The US, which spearheads the international movement supporting Pakistan, is being described as an enemy country which, together with India, is trying to enslave it and snatch its nuclear assets. The US, according to the TV channels, has landed its mercenary Blackwater soldiers in Islamabad and is buying up land to set up a military base in Islamabad.

The general opinion takes a very depressive view of the PPP government. All the economic indicators that compel the world to look at Pakistan with hope are ignored and in fact seen as doomsday signs. The sugar crisis, in great measure caused by a “targeted subsidy” gone wrong, has taken over the national mind to the exclusion of all objective indicators.

Pakistan has stabilised considerably. Suicide-bombings are at an end; people uprooted by war are settling down with prospects of international humanitarian aid. But the Pakistani opinion, haunted by dangerously brawling politicians and hostile media, continues to destabilise it. It paints the present as “extension of what went before”, if not “worse than ever before”, and sees no hope in the future. This trend must change and it can change if the politicians and the media become more objective. (Daily Times)

comment: Begging with dignity —Rafia Zakaria

In our sixty-second year, perhaps it’s time we came to terms with the reality that we are and have always been a nation of beggars. Ironically, it is only in embracing this grim reality that we can find the opportunity to change our future

If the recent summit in New York is a reliable gauge, then Pakistan, or rather “democratic” Pakistan is doing pretty well in the popularity contest otherwise known as the General Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

On Thursday, the “Friends of Democratic Pakistan” met to discuss the promotion of stable governance and economic development in Pakistan. The group includes Australia, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, the United Nations and European Union. President Obama, who co-chaired the meeting, announced the passage of the Kerry-Lugar Bill, which will provide Pakistan with $1.5 billion every year for the next five years.

The meeting and accompanying announcement of aid disbursement have provided much fodder for discussion in both the United States and Pakistan. The United States has expectedly tried to announce passage of the Kerry-Lugar Bill as well as the meeting itself as a major commitment that substantiates its long-term interest in Pakistan. Coming as it does, in the footsteps of an expected change in US policy toward the region, the announcements provide the Obama administration a means to deflect attention from its woes in Afghanistan by pointing to the potential of success in Pakistan.

For the Pakistani government, led by President Zardari, the task in New York is markedly more difficult. It must tread the delicate balance of being both gracious for the assistance while at the same time drawing attention to the holes in the Obama administration’s beneficence. One attempt to do just this was President Zardari’s demand, made a day before the meeting, that the United States reimburse the $1.6 million that Pakistan has spent fighting the War on Terror in the tribal belt. The demand was programmed ostensibly to emphasise the fact that aid disbursements to Pakistan are in exchange for services rendered in the US-led war against Al Qaeda rather than an act of magnanimity by the United States. In other words, the Pakistani delegation tried to paint as “payment” what the Americans would present simply as an act of generosity.

This delicate dance between grantors and receivers of aid is not in itself new. In the last few decades, as globalisation has become an economic and security challenge rather than an abstract theory, this dynamic has become a repeated accompaniment to most global summits. The rich nations controlling large chunks of the world economy have packaged their security interests as moralistic efforts to assist the poor without any strings attached. At the same time, poorer nations have sought to expose the security interests and consequent challenges to sovereignty that lie beneath the Global North’s commitments to economic and social development in the Global South.

The duelling narratives that emerge from the above dynamic mean that rich nations always have the task of presenting their aid as magnanimous while poorer ones always have an interest in presenting the aid amounts as emerging out of rich countries’ self-serving security interests.

In the current case, the challenge for the Pakistani government becomes more complex in light of ideological currents at home that present this dynamic as an inherent attack on the country’s sovereignty. Conservative commentators, especially those belonging to Islamist parties, present the need for aid as a failure by the current administration to safeguard the sovereignty of the nation. In doing so they disregard both the facts of Pakistan’s precarious economic existence in a world beset by financial crises but also the fact that whether we like it or not, the world market is controlled by countries like the United States.
In fomenting this attitude towards aid in general, these critics present the acceptance of aid as a choice rather than the necessity it has been for many governments past and present. Gullible Pakistanis are thus fed the myth that it is a particular government’s greed rather than the nation’s need that makes aid a requirement, and that the only thing keeping Pakistan from true self-sufficiency is the corruption of one or another administration.

The fact is that the acceptance or rejection of aid by Pakistan is not a facet peculiar to the Zardari administration. Governments past, present and future have been and are likely to remain tied to the disbursement of foreign assistance for many decades in the future. The scale of current security challenges and the inability of our weak state to respond to a growing insurgency necessitates that we accept any help that we get. The particular ravages of the global financial crisis on our economy and the mounting costs of a civil war that has led us to become a world leader in suicide bombings are recent precipitators of our hapless condition.

Idealistic notions of self-sufficiency that suggest that we deny how integral foreign assistance has been to our precarious existence these past sixty odd years indicate a blindness to both our local challenges and the place we hold in the international sphere. Pakistan is not and has never been a superpower, militarily, morally or economically. We do not have the infrastructure to create self-sufficiency in either our agricultural, industrial or manufacturing sectors. We do not have the natural resources to provide for all our energy needs or the capabilities to sell what we do have on the global market. Yet, instead of accepting these challenges and their consequent impact on our place in the world, we live imbued in nationalist myths and pretend that our current reliance on aid is solely a product of temporary mistakes or greedy politicians.

A novel argument for us as we poke fun at the unfortunate officials charged with the task of begging for this aid in New York would be to consider not the hokey notions of becoming the next global powerhouse fuelled by our un-availed (and largely imaginary) natural resources but rather a realistic assessment of what our capabilities and challenges really are. Not once in our sixty-two year existence have we survived without the assistance of foreign governments.

In our sixty-second year, perhaps it’s time we came to terms with the reality that we are and have always been a nation of beggars. Ironically, it is only in embracing this grim reality that we can find the opportunity to change our future.

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at rafia.zakaria@gmail.com (Daily Times)

Nazir Naji's analysis:

پاکستان کی ’عیدی‘

حسن مجتبٰی

بی بی سی اردو ڈاٹ کام، نیو یارک

’فرینڈز آف پاکستان‘ ہے کیا؟ اگرچہ کہا جاتا ہے کہ ’فرینڈز آف پاکستان‘ صدر آصف علی زرداری کی اپنی تخلیق ہے جو انہوں نے گذشتہ سال دو ہزار آٹھ میں پاکستان کا عہدہ صدارت سنبھالنے کے بعد پہلی بار جنرل اسمبلی کے اجلاس میں شرکت کے موقع پر ایک عرب دوست ملک (غالباً متحدہ عرب امارات) کی مدد سے قائم کیا تھا اور جس کا مقصد پاکستان کیلیے دوست ممالک کی طرف سے اقتصادی امداد اور سیاسی حمایت حاصل کرنا تھا۔

لیکن اصل میں ’فرینڈز آف پاکستان‘ دو ہزار آٹھ میں اس وقت معرض وجود میں آیا جب پاکستان میں سخت افراط زر آیا ہوا تھا اور پاکستان کے چین اور سعودی عرب جیسے دیرینہ دوستوں نے بھی ، ترتیب وار، کیش اور تیل دینے سے معذرت کر لی تھی۔ تو ایسے کڑکے میں صدر زرداری ’نگری نگری پھرا مسافر‘ کی مصداق ملکوں ملک دورے کرتے رہے لیکن کوئی بھی ملک پیسہ دینے کیلیے تیار نہ تھا جبکہ اوپر سے آئی ایم ایف کے قرضوں کے تقاضے بڑھتے جاتے تھے۔ چار بلین ڈالر کے پہلے ہی مقروض اور چھ بلین ڈالر کا قرضہ آئي ایم ایف اپنی شرطوں پر دینا چاہتا تھا۔ تو ایسے حالات میں پاکستان کے دوست چاہے ڈونر ممالک نے پاکستان کیلیے ایک ’بیل آؤٹ' پروگرام‘ فرینڈز آف پاکستان کے نام پر قائم کیا جس کا مقصد پاکستان کو براہِ راست امداد نہیں پر ان ملکوں سے منصوبوں کے ذریعے دینا تھی۔

نیویارک میں منعقدہ اجلاس پلیجنگ اجلاس نہیں بلکہ زرداری حکومت کی سیاسی حمایت کے لیے تھا۔ مائنس ون فارمولے جیسی باتوں کے بیچ موجودہ حکومت کو یقیناً ’لیز آف لائف‘ مل گئي ہے لیکن پیسے نہیں ملے۔

لیکن پاکستانی حکومت اور ڈونر یا ’فرینڈز آف پاکستان‘ کو اصل مسئلہ ’ کریڈیبلٹی‘ کا ہے۔ یہ ایک ایسی صورتحال ہے جب مصیبت میں گھرے ہوئے مار کھاتے ہوئے شخص کی چیخ و پکار سن کر ’ آیا بھائي آيا‘ تو سب دوست کہتے ہیں لیکن حقیت میں مدد کو نہیں آتے۔

فرینڈز آف پاکستان کے نیویارک سے لے کر ابوظہبی، ترکی اور جاپان میں ہونیوالے اجلاسوں میں وعدے وعید تو پانچ بلین ڈالر تک کےہوئے لیکن اب تک ایک ڈالر بھی نہیں مل سکا۔ دوست ممالک اور عالمی برادری کی مشکل یہ ہے کہ انہیں زرداری حکومت کی کریڈبلٹی پر شک ہے جبکہ زرداری حکومت کا مسئلہ پاکستان کی مشکلات سے زیادہ ان کی حکومت کی مضبوطی یا معیاد حکومت کی گارنٹیز کی ضرورت ہے۔

اگر یہ امداد پاکستانی حکومت کی خواہشوں کے برعکس غیر سرکاری سیکٹر کے ذریعے دی بھی جائے بھی تو مسئلہ یہ ہے کہ ڈونر ایجنسیوں کو شاید یہ پتہ ہو کہ سرکاری شعبے کی طرح اب نوالہء تر غیر سرکاری سیکٹر بھی بنتا جا رہا ہے۔ اچھی بات ہے کہ پاکستان میں تعلیم یافتہ نوجوان جو اس سے پہلے سرکاری سروسز کے سیکٹر میں جاتے تھے اب پاکستان میں یو ایس ایڈ جیسے اداروں میں نوکریوں اور گرانٹوں کی دراخواستیں دے رکھی ہیں۔

اگر یہ امداد پاکستانی حکومت کی خواہشوں کے برعکس غیر سرکاری سیکٹر کے ذریعے دی بھی جائے بھی تو مسئلہ یہ ہے کہ ڈونر ایجنسیوں کو شاید یہ پتہ ہو کہ سرکاری شعبے کی طرح اب نوالہء تر غیر سرکاری سیکٹر بھی بنتا جا رہا ہے۔

اسی لیے تو کچھ دن پہلے واشنگٹن میں کیری لوگر بل پر کچھ ڈیموکریٹک چاہے ر پبلکلن پارٹی کے سینیٹرز نے دو طرفہ اعتراضات یہ کیے تھے کہ اس کی کیا گارنٹی ہے کہ امریکی ٹیکس دہندگان کے پیسے پاکستان میں ایسی قیادت کے ہاتھوں میں جائیں گے جن پر مسٹر دس فیصد ہونے کا الزام ہے اور اس کی کیا گارنٹی ہے کہ پیسے سوئس بنکوں میں ذاتی اکاؤنٹس میں نہیں جگہ پائیں گے۔ یہ ایسی باتیں ہیں جو امریکہ سمیت عالمی برداری کو امداد دینے سے پہلے دو دفعہ سوچنے پر مجبور کریں گی۔

فرینڈز آف پاکستان کے نیویارک اجلاس میں برطانیہ کے وزیراعظم گورڈن براؤن کی تجویز پر ’ملٹی نینشنز ٹرسٹ فنڈ‘ قائم کیا گيا ہے جو ایشیائی ترقیاتی بنک کے ذریعے فاٹا اور ديگر قبائلی علاقوں میں ترقی کے منصوبوں کی صورت میں جاری کیا جائے گا۔ برطانیہ نے اسی فنڈ کے لیے پچاس ملین اسٹرلنگ پونڈ کی رقم دینے کا وعدہ کیا ہے۔ روبن رافیل جیسی بیوروکریٹ کو اس فنڈ کا ’ کو آر ڈینیٹر‘ مقرر کیا گیا ہے۔ ایک سینئر تجزیہ نگار کے مطابق’اوورسیئر‘ کا مہذبانہ نام ’کوآرڈینیٹر‘ رکھا گیا ہے۔ یعنی کہ پیسے بہت کم جائیں گے لیکن پروجیکٹس کی صورت میں۔

’فرینڈز آف پاکستان‘ سے ’فرینڈز آف ڈیموکریٹک پاکستان‘ میں بدلنے کی ضرورت اس فورم کو موجودہ پی پی پی حکومت کی سیاسی حمایت حاصل کرنے کے لیے کیا گيا وگرنہ چین سعودی عرب اور متحدہ عرب امارات کا ’ڈیموکریسی‘ سے کیا لینا دینا۔ نیویارک میں منعقدہ اجلاس پلیجنگ اجلاس نہیں بلکہ زرداری حکومت کی سیاسی حمایت کے لیے تھا۔ مائنس ون فارمولے جیسی باتوں کے بیچ موجودہ حکومت کو یقیناً ’لیز آف لائف‘ مل گئي ہے لیکن پیسے نہیں ملے

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Abdul Qadir Hassan's Analysis:

Munno Bhai's Analysis:

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US Senate votes to triple aid to Pakistan, India protests

_{Published by: Noor Khan}
^{Published: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 at 13:09 IST}

Lalit K Jha and Betwa Sharma

Washington/New York, Sep 25 (PTI) The US Senate today voted unanimously to triple non-military aid to Pakistan to USD 1.5 billion dollars per annum till 2014, triggering fresh concerns for India, which warned that such funds have been diverted to support hostile operations against states and needs to be monitored.

The announcement to the tripling of annual aid from USD 50 million to USD 1.5 billion was made by President Barack Obama during his address to a meeting of the 'Friends of Democratic Pakistan' at the UN headquarters in New York, attended by a grouping of 26 countries and international organisations.

Obama's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, called the unanimous vote on Kerry-Luger Bill "a very important step forward" for US-Pakistan ties.

"For the first time in modern era the US congress has made a multi-year commitment to Pakistan," he said.

http://www.samaylive.com/news/us-senate-votes-to-triple-aid-to-pakistan-india-protests/658701.html

U.S. ignores doubts, pledges billions more for Pakistan

By SAEED SHAH

McClatchy Newspapers

The U.S. Senate approved legislation Thursday to triple civilian financial aid to Pakistan to $7.5 billion over five years, underscoring the country's vital role in the war in Afghanistan and the broader fight against international terrorism.

The legislation had been held up for months amid partisan wrangling, and the breakthrough came as the Friends of Democratic Pakistan assistance forum met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, co-chaired by President Barack Obama.

As the U.S.-led campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan falters, cooperation from neighboring Pakistan is crucial because Pakistan is the headquarters, a refuge and a source of financing and other support for al-Qaida, for Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and for other Afghan insurgent groups.

Pakistan's inconsistent role in the war on terrorism, however, was highlighted again Thursday when it became clear that despite claims to the contrary, Pakistani officials haven't arrested Hafiz Saeed, the leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the banned jihadist group that's blamed for last year's terrorist attack in Mumbai, India.

"He goes about anywhere he likes. There's no restraint against him," A.K. Dogar, Saeed's lawyer, told McClatchy Newspapers. "This is all misinformation. He is a free man."

Reports earlier this week that Saeed had been arrested, citing police officials, seemed to be an effort to make Pakistan appear serious about combating Islamic extremism before the donors' meeting.

"It is the (extremist) mindset we're fighting. Afghan Taliban, Pakistan Taliban or al-Qaida, wherever they are. We want to tell them ... that we will not tolerate it," Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said Thursday in New York. "We intend to bring democracy, to bring Pakistani people peace and be a responsible nation in the world."

Separately on Thursday, an anti-bribery watchdog, Transparency International, warned that Pakistan has dismantled its laws against official corruption, a development that's likely to concern Washington and other countries that are pledging billions in additional aid to Pakistan.

The aid bill, sponsored by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., would provide $1.5 billion a year for five years, plus "such sums as are necessary" in military aid. It was the first time that the U.S. has made a multi-year commitment to Pakistan, said Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The bill stipulates that nuclear-armed Pakistan must show that it's cooperating in efforts to dismantle nuclear weapons supply networks, that it's committed to fighting terrorist groups and that its security forces aren't subverting the country's political or judicial processes.

"It isn't in my view enough ... but it is a very big commitment," Holbrooke told a news conference in New York after the Friends of Democratic Pakistan meeting. "If you study the history of Congress in recent years, you will not see other countries getting multi-year, bipartisan" support.

The U.S. pledged $1 billion to Pakistan earlier this year through the Friends of Democratic Pakistan forum, part of $5.6 billion that 20 international allies vowed to give the country for longer-term development projects.

Washington also provided $330 million for an internal refugee crisis this year that followed a military offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in the northwestern Swat valley. In addition, Pakistan demanded another $1.6 billion this week that it says it's owed under a military assistance program that dates to the presidency of George W. Bush.

Pakistan has been hit by a severe economic crisis, and it's remained afloat largely on emergency assistance from the International Monetary Fund as inefficiency, corruption and extremist violence have left it dependent on the U.S. and other donors.

On Thursday, extremists attacked Pakistani citizens who'd taken up arms against the Taliban. Eleven members of anti-Taliban militias died in two ambushes, nine of them near Bannu, a town on the edge of the tribal border zone with Afghanistan, and two in Swat, north of the capital, Islamabad.

(Shah is a McClatchy Newspapers special correspondent.)

http://www.kansascity.com/451/story/1467242.html

UPDATE 2-US Senate approves compromise bill on Pakistan aid

Thu Sep 24, 2009 5:19pm EDT

* Legislation will trip non-military aid

* Obama announces move to applause in New York

* Richard Holbrooke says move is "step forward" (Adds Obama announcing passage; Holbrooke; bill details)

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved legislation to triple non-military aid to Pakistan to about $1.5 billion a year for the next five years as part of a plan to fight extremism.

President Barack Obama had urged passage of the measure to promote stability in a nuclear-armed country that is key to the U.S. war in neighboring Afghanistan -- despite concerns the Pakistan military may support extremist groups.

Obama got word of the Senate's decision while in New York, and announced it at a meeting of donor nations to Pakistan on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, drawing applause from other leaders.

"It was the only spontaneous applause of the meeting," said Richard Holbrooke, U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who called the vote "a big step forward."

The bill, approved on a voice vote, had been agreed by Senate and House sponsors of legislation passed during the summer. The sponsors were Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar and Representative Howard Berman.

The measure, which has the "full support" of the Obama administration, expected to be approved soon by the House of Representatives.

Obama had also proposed creating "reconstruction opportunity zones" in border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, from which goods could be exported duty-free to the United States. But this was not part of the compromise reached on Thursday.

ECONOMIC TURMOIL

Pakistan has been struggling to stem Islamist violence and bolster an economy kept afloat by foreign donations and a $11.3 billion International Monetary Fund loan.

The U.S. aid, which must be approved by congressional appropriators annually from 2010 to 2014, will fund a wide range of development projects from Pakistani schools and roads to the judicial system.

While not stipulating dollar amounts of military aid, the legislation sets out conditions for such assistance, including Pakistani cooperation to dismantle nuclear supplier networks and combat terrorists, a Senate summary of the bill said.

Another condition requires Pakistani security forces not to subvert judicial processes.

http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN2446030420090924

Anti-Pakistan report launched by pro-Indian lobbyists in Transparency International.

Publication of TI report ahead of Friends of Pakistan meeting is a sheer hostility against country: Fouzia Wahab

Transparency’s corruption report anti-Pakistan: Fouzia

Friday, 25 Sep, 200

KARACHI: Central Secretary Information, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Fouzia Wahab on Thursday strongly criticising a recent report of Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) about corruption in Pakistan has said the report is against our national interests.

Addressing a press conference at the Karachi Press Club, Fouzia Wahab said the objective of the TIP's report about corruption in Pakistan is to influence the public opinion.

She said the issuance of Transparency's report at such a time, when the meetings of Friends of Pakistan (FOP) are underway, is not only against the government, but it is also against the country and our national interests.

Rejecting the TIP report's alleged findings with regard to lack of accountability laws in the country, Fouzia Wahab noted that Pakistan is a functional state, where the departments are intact and the anti-corruption departments and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) are also working.

She said we welcome the criticism but the people have given us their votes and we have to protect their rights.

The PPP leader raised a question as to why such a report had not been published in the past and its issuance at the time of the meetings of Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) is animosity with the country.

She also raised questions about the credibility as well as the aims of the patrons and financers of Transparency International.

She said the TIP's report about corruption in Pakistan is published simultaneously from New York and Islamabad with intentions against the country.

...

A relevant comment: (source pkpolitics)

saira85 said:

.... an interesting story about transparency international, a puppet of imperialist powers. In year 2008 Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, was given the lowest possible ranking by transparency international on the basis that it did not produce properly audited accounts and was withholding basic financial information about revenues, taxes and royalties. Unsurprisingly, TI’s report was seized upon by the opposition as evidence in support of their claims. PDVSA was a “company of low transparency”, and although TI did not directly suggest that PDVSA was corrupt, they do say that companies that withhold basic information from the public “leave the door open to corruption”.

But TI’s report was wrong. Not just any old wrong. But completely, utterly, glaringly wrong. All the information that TI claimed PDVSA was refusing to disclose was freely available in their Report and Accounts and published on their website and in the press.

This is the reality of TI. How one can believe on such an organization famed for publishing dubious report. Although what could be the aim of TI to issue such statement when Pakistan is about to get aid. Be Pakistani and think like Pakistani. We are so stupid that does not believe in our own men but believe in third world organization and people who can never be well wisher of this soil.

One can read full report by clicking.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3553
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Extremist Salafis and Deobandis versus Extremist Hindus: The new face of terrorism in India? The simmering in Bombay - By Aakar Patel

A few men with guns

Saturday, November 29, 2008 (The News)
By Aakar Patel

The writer is a former newspaper editor who lives in Bombay. Among the papers he has edited is Mid-day, an afternoon paper that is published from the city

The men who attacked Bombay knew who they were looking for – and they knew where to find them. Cafe Leopold on the Colaba Causeway, the first place attacked on Wednesday (Nov 26), is where foreign tourists have their beers. The Leopold is one of the few places – perhaps the only place – in this city where patrons must pay before they get service. This suits the foreigner who is used to self-service; it irritates the Indian whose honour is hurt by the demand that he demonstrate his solvency.

The Indian stays away. This suits the foreigner further and he is the cafe's main patron.

The attackers came to the Leopold from a lane that connects it to the Gateway of India, where a long shoulder of land holds back the sea. On the southern edge of this sits the Taj, built in 1903, owned by the Tatas and easily the finest hotel in India. At the other end of the strip is a jetty where the attackers landed in a Zodiac, a rubber dinghy with an outboard motor, at a little past 9 pm on Wednesday.

They came by sea because they were each carrying two heavy rucksacks filled with grenades and magazines for their assault rifles. They split up. The first headed straight for the Taj. A second struck left and, after attacking Leopold moved on to the Oberoi Trident at Nariman Point, next to the National Centre for Performing Arts.

Another group broke off to the right and went to the Victoria Terminus, the busiest railway station in India. Built in the Gothic style, it is the most beautiful building the British gifted India. There the attackers, two young men wearing T-shirts with English print on them, cargo pants with large pockets and nylon rucksacks hung front and back, shot down people waiting to catch the train back home.

The two men were photographed by journalists of the Times of India, whose office is directly opposite Victoria Terminus. The pictures show the men's faces alert and determined. One picture shows one man smiling, another shows the same man with his face set in a grimace of anger. This man has a red friendship band on his right wrist. The magazine of his assault rifle has plastic tape around it. The men are in their early 20s and fair.

A photograph taken on Thursday morning after the massacre shows the luggage and footwear scattered. It is cheap: tied-up suitcases, little cloth bundles and plastic bags and sandals.

After this killing, the men went across the road to the Metro cinema where they attacked the premises of the Cama Hospital. This duo is thought to have shot the chief of the anti-terror squad of the Bombay police, Hemant Karkare. They took a police jeep and then drove on either to join the group at the Oberoi Trident or at the Nariman Bhavan, next to it, where a family of New York Jews was taken hostage.

The jeep was driven down with gunfire coming out of it. People on the streets, who assumed that the police jeep was friendly, were cut down by these men as they drove past, casually letting off rounds from the window.

At 10 pm on Wednesday, the newspaper editors of Bombay were gathered at the Colaba Parsi Agiary, just beyond Nariman Point. They were celebrating the wedding of Bachi Karkaria's son. Bachi is an editor with the Times of India. DNA's Ayaz Memon, Times of India's Dina Vakil, the Mumbai Mirror's Meenal Baghel, the Asian Age's Olga Tellis, the Economic Times's Vikram Doctor and Maharashtra Times's Bharat Kumar Raut were present.

Once the explosions began, the Indian Navy, which controls the area, blocked it off and the editors were unable to return to their newsdesks for the most important story of the year till 1 am, when their deadline was gone. One editor who was invited but did not attend was the Times of India Delhi's Sabina Sehgal Saikia. She had a room in the Taj Mahal hotel and has not been heard from since that night.

A couple of kilometres away from the Agiary, a silver Skoda Laura was carjacked, perhaps by the group that left the Leopold, and this was intercepted by the police. One man was killed and another captured. This man was taken to the commissioner's office for interrogation. He holds the clues to who these men were, what they sought to achieve and who paid them.

By 11 pm, the siege began at the Taj, the Oberoi Trident and Nariman Bhavan. It would continue into Friday. Most people who died in the attack died in these buildings. Over 150 people would be killed by grenades and gunfire.

The attackers numbered 20, according to the chief minister, and they were trained in combat. A lieutenant general of the Indian army briefing the press said on Friday morning that the pattern of gunfire coming from the Taj showed the presence of one attacker who was moving across two floors, which included a large, open dance area. He had switched the lights off on these floors and was moving into and out of rooms as he let off bursts of gunfire and grenades.

Fourteen policemen died. Three were officers. The others were men whom the government had equipped with bolt-action Lee Enfield rifles, used in the First World War. They were expected to stop men using assault rifles.

Minutes before he was killed, anti-terror chief Karkare was filmed taking off his helmet and talking on the mobile phone, before putting it back on. Also killed was Vijay Salaskar, Bombay police's encounter specialist. He had killed over 50 criminals but he wasn't trained to combat men who were not trying to run from him.

When it was clear that the Bombay police was out of its depth, the government asked for help from Delhi which dispatched its best soldiers, the men of the NSG Commando, the Black Cats. Even these, the elite of the Indian army, were equipped partially with clumsy SLR rifles, meant for field warfare. As the Indian army cleared Kargil peak by peak, its soldiers took on a preference for the Kalashnikovs they took from dead jihadis, preferring them to the enormous SLR, made in the 70s.

The long siege of Bombay ended on Friday. We will know of the cost of the attack and we will know of the consequence. Its patrons will hope the Taj, burnt and battered, reopens. It is a symbol of our city's culture, its quality, its ambition.

The best French restaurant in India is in the Taj, the Zodiac Grill. Its Camembert Dariole is a cheese cocoon, with the texture of spun silk. Its meat course is preceded by a sorbet, to wash the palate clean. The Taj knows quality and it knows service.

Fifteen of the Taj's staff died trying to protect their guests.

Harish Manwani, the chairman of Hindustan Lever was in the hotel and unreachable. A relative of his called his cellphone which was switched off. On a whim, she tried the front desk of the hotel.

At 3 am on Thursday morning, five hours into the attack, with gunfire and grenade explosions going on above her, the receptionist picked up the phone at the Taj and said: "Good morning, the Taj."

A few men with guns cannot change Bombay.


.........


The simmering in Bombay
Sunday, November 30, 2008 (Daily The News)

By Aakar Patel

After 9/11 it was pointed out that no Indian Muslim was in Guantanamo Bay. The difference between the Muslim in India and the one in Pakistan, columnists speculated, was that in a democracy, even an imperfect one, the individual's rage was dissipated through the vote.

On July 30, 2007, Kafeel Ahmed attacked Glasgow Airport. The operation was incompetent: a car loaded with fuel drums was rammed into the building, killing only the attacker, who was 28.

The son of doctors from Bangalore, Kafeel was a PhD student in fluid dynamics. His brother Dr Sabeel Ahmed was also part of the operation and was arrested. His cousin Dr Mohammad Haneef was arrested in Australia and then let off after he was found to be not involved. Kafeel and Sabeel Ahmed were the first Indians to be named in an international jihadi attack.

However, something has been simmering in Indian Muslims since 9/11 and especially since the riots in Gujarat in March 2002.

On December 2, 2002, a bomb went off on a bus in Ghatkopar, a Gujarati suburb in North Bombay, killing two people. Eight Muslim men arrested for the attack, including Dr Abdul Mateen, were acquitted by a court in 2005.

On January 28, 2003, a bomb exploded outside a shopping centre in Vile Parle, a Gujarati suburb of North Bombay. On June 2, the police arrested three men for this attack, including Dr Wahid Ansari.

On March 13, 2003, a bomb went off on a train in Mulund, a Gujarati suburb of North Bombay, killing 11 people.

On July 28, 2003, a bomb went off again in a Ghatkopar bus, killing four people.

On August 25, 2003, bombs in two taxis exploded in South Bombay, killing over 50 people. One went off at the Gateway of India monument, directly opposite the Taj Mahal Hotel. The other was set off nearby at Zaveri Bazaar, the jewellers' market, whose traders are mostly Gujarati.

Those arrested were Syed Mohammad Hanif, his wife Fahmida and his daughter Farheen, who was 18. The women helped in packing gelatin into the bombs, working at night in their one-room house. The policemen who interrogated the family were struck by how defiant and lacking in remorse the women were.

Rakesh Maria, the officer in charge of the investigation, said that this kind of attack would not end. The police had no capacity to penetrate these plots. The attacks were also improving their lethality.

On July 11, 2006, 209 people died when seven bombs went off on Bombay's local trains. A group calling itself Lashkar-e-Qahhar claimed responsibility. The police named a man called Abdul Karim Tunda as their top suspect.

On September 8, 2006, the Hindus struck back. Four bombs went off near a mosque in Malegaon after Friday prayers on Shab-e-Baraat. Most of the 31 people killed were Muslim. Malegaon has a strong Muslim population and is often the site of religious violence.

On September 29, 2008, another bomb went off in Malegaon, killing five. The bomb was mounted on a motorcycle. The police traced its owner and arrested her. Pragya Singh Thakur was a young woman originally from Madhya Pradesh but settled in Gujarat. She called herself Sadhvi, marking her renunciation of the world in 2007. Also arrested were a serving officer of the Indian army, Lt-Col Shrikant Purohit, and a retired officer, Major R S Upadhyay.

Thakur belonged to an organisation called Abhinav Bharat. It was formed by people who had been asked to leave the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

Reporters interviewed Thakur's family and the narrative – single woman, renouncing the world, acting out of selflessness, effective – was appealing. The middle class chant of enough-is-enough, and we-should-do-something found someone to hang their fantasies on, like it did with Narendra Modi.

Sensing the air, the Hindu parties fell over themselves to associate with her. The BJP's Advani offered his support, Shiv Sena's Bal Thackeray offered his admiration and BJP rebel Uma Bharati (a Sadhvi herself) offered her a ticket for last week's Madhya Pradesh Assembly election.

Till the talismanic figure of Thakur emerged, the Malegaon blasts were of interest only to the Urdu papers in Bombay. For them it broke the regular sequence because Muslims were targeted. The other media visited the story and moved on, one in a sequence containing many others.

The newspapers are a reflection of society: Muslims and Hindus in India have parted in the way that they look at the world.

The Iraq war does not concern India. Under pressure from Muslims and the left parties, its politicians offered a mumbled condemnation (the actual word used was the Hindi 'ninda', showing mild disapproval) of the invasion in parliament. Most Hindus don't understand why it's a bad thing to remove a dictator and put a long suppressed Shia majority in power through democracy.

But after 9/11 the Indian Muslim has viewed the world with alarm, and often viewed it as a Muslim. This is changing the way he views himself.

Bombay has had only one Deobandi mosque, the Jamia Masjid at Crawford Market. The office for admissions to the Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband in Central Bombay is small and almost always empty.

So dominant was the Barelvi in Bombay that, unlike in Pakistan, the Deobandi feared him. After a skirmish over the sighting of the Eid moon on January 19, 1998, Barelvis hacked Deobandis coming out of the Jamia Masjid, killing two. But this is changing.

In the past decade the tableeghis have begun mounting enormous, ever-growing ijtemas in Bombay where tens of thousands attend. Last week, Dr Zakir Naik, the Bombay Salafi famed for his destructive debating ability, held a conference so massive that it had to be held on a field outside the city.

The doctors named in the Bombay blasts listed above were from Salafi families. The local group the Indian government fears above all is the Students Islamic Movement of India. It is composed of very educated urban Muslims all leaning away from India's syncretic Islam.

The flag of SIMI showed a hand punching through the flags of India, America and Israel.

On Friday, March 3, 2006, the Muslims of Bombay protested against the war in Iraq, led by the Jamiatul Ulema-e-Islam. Over 250,000 people attended, shocking the country with the anti-American venom they spewed.

After this week's attacks in Bombay, it was speculated that Muslim resentment at being left behind in India's economic growth is spawning terrorism. This view does not understand India. The barrier for entry into India's stream of success is not religion; it is language. Those who do not speak English are discriminated against by the market.

This is easily demonstrated to those who live in India.

Indians working for call centres servicing the west must have a Christian name and an American accent. Indians working for call centres servicing India do not hide their identity. You are as likely to be speaking to Mohammed, Fareeda or Shakir as you are to anyone else.

The simmering is being caused by something larger which is global.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that evidence for this week's attacks in Bombay led to Pakistan's most lethal jihadi group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Certainly, the efficiency and lethality shown by the attackers were not of a piece with the hit-and-run nature of terrorism in India. That, whether by Muslims or, now, by Hindus, is characterised by its pettiness and its desire to get even. Suicide attacks are never involved, because the cause is not higher than the self.

The objective of this week's attack on Bombay was entirely different and so was the method. New Delhi must take the steps it needs to take to counter global terror.

But the job for Bombay's police commissioner Hassan Ghafoor is to look at our city and figure out how the broken intelligence in his police force must stop the attacks from within.


.........

The dark consequences unfolding on the horizon

Monday, December 01, 2008

By Aakar Patel

The writer is a former newspaper editor who lives in Bombay. Among the papers he has edited is Mid-day, an afternoon paper that is published from the city

One of the 10 men who attacked Bombay is alive and is talking. Ajmal Kasab was the man photographed by Times of India journalists from their office opposite Victoria Terminus where this man and another gunned down passengers waiting to board trains.

His calm arrogance, splashed across newspaper front pages, amid the carnage has generated a rage that the government of India will struggle to contain.

In the coming days stories will emerge from the survivors of the conduct of the 10 attackers. But more importantly, there will be hours of video footage from dozens of surveillance cameras inside the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Trident Oberoi. This footage will show the siege unfold. It will show troubling scenes: the murder of women hostesses at the Taj Chambers, and of the girl who was the usher at Tiffin, the restaurant where one of the bigger massacres took place.

Two men led five employees of the Taj, bound and gagged and weeping, down the corridors of the hotel before killing them. The measured nature of the attack will
first numb and then infuriate Indians and the world, which has set aside the story of the recession in favour of the Bombay attacks.

Ninety nine people were killed inside the Taj alone. How many of those killings and executions will be shown on endless television loops?

Public anger will demand vengeance. The media has already decided where the guilt lies and unless there is clinching evidence to the contrary - that the attackers were Indians or Bangladeshis or something else - pressure will build on the government to retaliate.

If Kasab is proved to be Pakistani, this time the Indian government will consider an attack on jihadi organisations inside Pakistan.

America’s counsel against this - because it will distract from Pakistan’s internal war in the northwest - will be disregarded and only cold reason from India and from Pakistan might prevent it.

India’s current political establishment, which is focussed on economic growth and is not as reckless as the BJP, will weigh the consequences of one or two strikes against Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed that will assuage the rage which has not yet reached its peak.

Two things make this attack different from any other including the multiple train blasts in Bombay that killed even more people - 209 - only two years ago on July 11, 2006.

The first is the targets: the Taj and the Trident Oberoi hotels and their occupants.

Some of India’s most famous names are part of the story. Harish Manwani, chairman of Hindustan Lever and Sir Ghulam Noon escaped. Anand Bhatt, a partner at one of India’s top law firms Wadia Gandhy, did not. The newsworthy quality of the victims and survivors will guarantee coverage of their individual stories of horror over many days.

The media will not let go of a story that has the nation riveted.

Television journalism in India, especially in Hindi, is emotional because of the nature of its vocabulary. It is excellent at expressing the sentiment of its audience, which it echoes in the guise of news. Newspapers are the only ally of the government if it wants to create some atmosphere of debate to blunt the emotion.

The Times of India is our most liberal newspaper. Its editor Joydeep Bose has through his bold editing possibly done more than any other individual to temper the conservative opinion his urban audience holds on social issues.

The paper is preferred by the elite, and takes a very pragmatic view on the economy and on foreign policy. An editor of the Times of India, Sabina Sehgal Saikia, was killed in her room at the Taj, pulled out from under her bed.

Will journalists be able to set aside their personal loss in the attacks and advise the government to act with caution?

The second thing that separates this attack is that it might be that India finally has a smoking gun. Clinching evidence that links organisations in Pakistan to the attack could come from Kasab. Already The New York Times is running reports tying Pakistani groups to the attack.

Pakistan’s behaviour and tone will also determine the trajectory of events.

Pakistan has made some moves that show its leaders may not yet have understood the gravity of the moment. Pakistan agreed to send the ISI chief to India and then said it wouldn’t. This was a mistake and will be seen in India with suspicion. It makes difficult the task of the government of India to defend the Pakistani government against public anger.

Columnists in Pakistan who are angry with their government for agreeing to send the official in the first place do not understand what a staggering blow this has dealt to the public opinion of Pakistan’s fledgling democratic government in India.

Pakistan is asking, as is its right, for evidence tying the attackers to the Lashkar-e-Taiba. It is also saying, rightly, that terrorism is targeting both nations. The problem is the tone. Indians will be seething at foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s press conference of Saturday (Nov 29) which was shown live on Indian news channels. He said that he had “taken the Indian media head-on” for three days, and all Indian allegations would be met on the “front foot”. This is not the language of diplomats. He was speaking to a domestic audience, but should have considered how this would sound in Bombay.

India is wounded and will show emotion over the next week. The observer would urge Pakistan to make reassuring noises. And also to look at jailing Jaish’s Maulana Masood Azhar and Lashkar’s Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who are poised to become international stories again.

A link to Lashkar or Jaish will lead to the certain demand that Pakistan surrender these men to India.

So far, there is no clarity over what the attacks mean for India.

Television producers with a keen eye for drama have tagged the Bombay attacks ‘India’s 9/11’. But what does that mean?

The Bush presidency became a national security administration after the September 11 attacks. Will the Indian government thump its fist on the map of the world and launch its battleships? It won’t. This is not our 9/11 in the sense that it shifts our policy. Even though it will be straining at the leash to strike jihadi organisations, India does not wish war with Pakistan.

Foreign policy is conducted by experts outside of public opinion, which does not understand its nuanced character. In America foreign policy was brought into the popular domain by America’s anger after the blows in New York and Washington. America went to war against an enemy who was given form through demonization.

But after flailing at phantoms in Iraq, the emotion was spent, as emotion is, and American foreign policy returned to the calm deliberation of experts.

This is likely what will happen in India. Our problem is how to bring a half billion people out of poverty; our priority will soon again become that.

But right now the emotion is building, and it will need to be spent. How this happens will be determined by events that are within the control of India and Pakistan.

We are at the threshold of a moment whose climax is not yet behind us. Once the slow motion replays of the cameras begin and the details emerge from Kasab, the story will find its climax.


Email: aakar.patel@ gmail.com
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Zardari's contingent to Saudi Arabia and the USA - Aftab Iqbal

Zardari haters must read this column.



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Friends of Pakistan - hosted by Pakistan, UK and USA...

(Asadullah Ghalib)
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Zardari and Diplomacy: Achievements of Zardaris' USA trip - By Aftab Iqbal

(Aftab Iqbal)
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Friends of Pakistan - Well done, Zardari.

MAKE no mistake about it — this is Pakistan’s hour of economic reckoning. We need every friend we have ever had and every dollar we can possibly get. It seems then that the Friends of Pakistan forum, which will hold its first meeting in Abu Dhabi next month, could be the right tonic for our economic ills. But caution is in order. Pakistan is running out of dollars at an alarming rate. According to Agost Benard, an associate director at Standard & Poor’s, “The external liquidity position which is now the key concern is continuing to deteriorate rapidly.” What Mr Benard says matters because his agency can dramatically affect Pakistan’s ability to do business in the international market.

Economic analysts are worried by Pakistan’s current account deficit — last year it stood at $14bn, while in just July and August it ballooned to $2.6bn. With foreign exchange reserves standing at a paltry $8.8bn last week, Pakistan simply does not have the foreign currency to sustain the current account deficit. In the medium term, a current account deficit can be turned around by exporting more and importing less. In the short term, foreign aid is the only realistic chance of improvement. The problem is that foreign aid will likely come with strings attached — which will impose wrenching change on the average Pakistani. Through US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Friends of Pakistan forum has indicated that it is not keen to give Pakistan quick money on easy terms. “We are engaged with Pakistan through international financial institutions,” Ms Rice told the news media, and also mentioned the need for economic reform.

The IFIs have a fairly basic recipe for Pakistan: strip away subsidies, increase tax revenues and cut down the budget deficit. These are good, necessary steps that Pakistan must take in order to improve its long-term economic outlook. The problem is — and experience bears this out — that steps such as these taken in a panic follow a fairly predictable pattern: the cost of living for the poor is driven up, development expenditure is slashed and meaningful reform is shelved once the worst has passed. However, there are several reasons to give Pakistan the benefit of the doubt for now. First, there are international factors involved in Pakistan’s economy going sour — most notably the price of oil and food. Second, the economy is seized by the worst level of inflation in decades. Third, Pakistan has already done away with most subsidies and has planned to slash expenditure. Fourth, Pakistan is struggling to come to terms with a militancy threat that could destabilise the very foundations of the state. Surely the Friends of Pakistan must realise how much more costly it would be to rescue Pakistan later were money to be delayed right now. (Dawn)
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Friends rally around Pakistan (Buck up Zardari)

A permanent forum known as Friends of Pakistan was launched in New York on Friday with the mission to help Pakistan out of its economic crisis. It has been estimated that Pakistan would need around $15 billion to prevent its economy from collapsing. The Forum’s first substantive session, hopefully meaning actual execution of commitments, will be held in Abu Dhabi early October. The future host of the forum, UAE’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, said in New York that his country fully backed the initiative to “show our commitment to Pakistan”.

Others too have shown commitment: the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, “We are engaged with Pakistan through international financial institutions. We will support the steps Pakistan must take for its economy”. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband saw “a very strong signal of political and economic support to the democratically elected government in Pakistan”. Those who attended the Friends of Pakistan forum meeting were: The United States, Britain, Italy, Germany, France, Japan, China, Australia, Turkey, Canada, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

President Asif Ali Zardari, whose presence at the UN helped the campaign for Pakistan’s economic survival, appropriately remarked: “I don’t want them to give us the fish. I want to learn how to fish and do it myself”. Needless to say, the forum couldn’t have been launched without the help of the United States and the commitment shown by the PPP leadership in Pakistan to fighting Pakistan’s war against terrorists and extremists which cannot be sustained without a dramatic economic revival. And that is exactly why the international community is ready to offer financial help.

According to reports, “Pakistan’s foreign currency reserves are falling fast and, if forward liabilities are included, the real reserves may actually be just $3 billion”. This is money to meet the import bill of just one month. Pakistan’s credit rating has plunged and people who would normally do business with Pakistan are talking of possible default. Mr Zardari said that the world had rallied around Pakistan because of Pakistan’s return to democracy after an eight-year rule by a military dictator. That may not be accurate. The real reason is that Pakistan could go under the anarchism of Al Qaeda after an economic meltdown. An even more down-to-earth reason is that Islamabad is officially committed to the war against Al Qaeda’s terror.

It is, however, unfortunate that back home in Pakistan the perspective of many people is infected with prejudice and politics. A consensus has formed in the media about the lack of wisdom of President Zardari in deciding to go to the United States after the Marriott blast. It was tediously argued that a wounded nation needed its leadership in Islamabad for solace and that Mr Zardari had let them down by leaving the country. Worse, the visit to New York was publicised as a pleasure trip that actually made fun of the suffering of the people back home. Everybody was included in this frog chorus: the economists as well as numberless retired ambassadors and one ex-permanent representative of Pakistan at the UN.

Those who think emotion should come before economic realism also believe that the war against terrorism is not Pakistan’s war and that America is the real enemy of Pakistan because it is working in tandem with India, Pakistan’s traditional foe. They want the Pakistan army, already badly stretched against Al Qaeda, to fight the two enemies — one a global superpower and the other a regional power — with the help of the tribal people of Pakistan who need immediate humanitarian bailout rather than jihad against two such foes. They want to suspend the logistics provided by Pakistan to the NATO-ISAF forces in Afghanistan, knowing full well that Pakistan receives the running expenses of its military action in the Tribal Areas from these facilities.

There are a number of misconceptions in the “consensus” at home. It is believed that if Pakistan acted defiantly like Iran and North Korea it would become powerful and prosperous and may even get international support. But nothing could be further from the truth. Iran and Venezuela are leading the isolationist group, and the latter even spends money out of its pocket to encourage more states to act like them, but they don’t have the kind of money needed to support Pakistan. In any case Iran would be most unwilling to fund a pro-Al Qaeda Pakistan because the terrorists in Pakistan kill Shias as their side business. China too has complaints about its Sinkiang Muslims training with Al Qaeda apart from the fact that Al Qaeda doesn’t help by kidnapping Chinese engineers in Pakistan.

There is too much anger and unrealistic emotionalism over the electronic and print media. Unfortunately there are campaigns launched to malign the government through forgeries and planted lies. This is not the way to treat an elected government especially since it deserves the time and space to prove its worthiness. There will be time enough for that later if it fails to deliver the goods. (Daily Times)
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Friends of Pakistan Consortium: Zardari's success

By Irshad Ahmed Haqqani
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