Can you plz mention source of your writing ????

@parwarsha
 

Yeah sure dear. I follow different websites including Pkarticleshub.com, Dawn, express and other news websites plus foreignpolicy.com and world foreign affairs website as well... If you are asking about the above article so it is taken from pkarticleshub.

Regards

Asif you are doing a good job, keep it up.

Indo-Pak visa liberalisation
 

[SIZE="3"][CENTER][B]The Indo-Pak Visa Liberalisation Agreement [/B]
By
Sheeba Hasan
[/CENTER][/SIZE]
The wedding of Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza had recently brought the subject of Indo-Pak marriages, and its related logistical troubles, into focus; but it’s an issue that has been relevant to many for decades. The 1947 partition of the Indian sub-continent divided thousands of families, including my own. My father’s five brothers and two sisters migrated to Pakistan in the subsequent years. My father, a die-hard Indian and an equally staunch secularist, chose to stay in India. He was a celebrated sportsman of his time, and only had good things to say about his country and its people, despite not always agreeing with the policies of the government. From him, early in life, I acquired the wisdom of viewing the state and society separately. I may not like a country’s foreign policy or certain players in its establishment, but this does not necessarily make that nation or its population my enemy or hate-worthy.

Some major twists in destiny later, I found myself on the other side of the border. A little before my 20th birthday, I had to give up my blue Indian passport for the Pakistani green. At that time, the decision was dictated purely by circumstances, not choice. Subsequently, travel to India became my worst nightmare. Visiting my father and brothers was reduced to an annual treat due to cumbersome visa formalities. Though my experiences with the Indian embassies and consulates have always been pleasant (and I am deeply grateful for their helpfulness), the processes nevertheless have been tedious. Limited entry and exit points in India; three-city visit restrictions; police reporting and filling a special form for Pakistan nationals at the airport (while holding everyone up in the queue behind you) have all posed inconveniences at different times.

My worst experience of the visa restrictions was not being able to reach my dying father in time because I had to waste precious hours on getting multiple copies of the lengthy forms and documents in order, without which a visa application cannot be submitted. And, of course, I couldn’t fly directly to Kolkata because travelling by air I could only enter India through Delhi or Mumbai.

Meanwhile, many years and some more twists in destiny later, I now have an Indian husband and two children who have blue passports too. It has been over 20 years since I acquired citizenship of Pakistan. Trips to India are more frequent; but through it all the visa-travel formalities have remained unchanged. So, quite understandably, I have eagerly awaited the signing of the Indo-Pak visa liberalisation agreement. I was not alone. Several relatives and friends have had cross-border marriages and we often bond over our experiences of visa-related misery, anger, anxiety, hopelessness, helplessness, hope and happiness.

But right now I feel sheer joy; and relief. The new visa agreement, formalised earlier this month, promises to ease our travel troubles. As per the agreement, as the spouse of an Indian national I am now entitled to a two-year multiple visa to India. I can also visit more cities.

I am also happy that the Pakistan government is taking the initiative to improve ties with India; and, of course, with India’s response to it. I can’t agree more with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, when she says that the younger generations do not carry the baggage of history. As one of probably few people from my generation who has lived on either side of the border, both as an Indian and a Pakistani, I know many others who share this sentiment.

There are cynics and hardliners in both India and Pakistan who think and want otherwise, but fortunately I don’t know any of them. Though a Pakistani, my Facebook friends list has more Indians than Pakistanis, and at a people-to-people level, nationality has never been an issue among us. I was made to feel most welcome and comfortable when I joined a prestigious college in Lahore, days after migrating from India. The questions about India were positive; and there was immense warmth. I feel the same warmth when I now connect with my Indian friends or talk to random strangers during my visits to India. There’s curiosity about Pakistan, and sometimes a difference of opinion or even a heated argument, but I have never experienced animosity or hostility. Surely a lot of us do trust and respect each other. We all want to be friends and move forward in the best manner possible, without history as a hurdle. It’s good for regional stability, for the economies and internal peace of Pakistan and India, and, of course, for thousands of people like me who genuinely wish well for both the countries.

I am often asked who I support during the India-Pakistan cricket match? Putting it simply, I am a Pakistani with a soft corner for India.

[CENTER][I]Sheeba Hasan is a writer based in Dubai.
[U]Source: Gulf News[/U][/I][/CENTER]

The Sino Stranglehold
 

[CENTER][B][SIZE="3"]The Sino Stranglehold[/SIZE][/B]
By
JUNE TEUFEL DREYER[/CENTER]

[I][CENTER]How badly could the Chinese protests hurt Japan's economy?[/CENTER][/I]

Anti-Japanese riots aren't a new phenomenon in China, but the ongoing demonstrations across the country have surpassed previous outbreaks in both their extensiveness -- over a hundred cities -- and their perfervid declarations. One banner, hung over an Audi dealership, declared that the Japanese should be exterminated; another called for a nuclear strike on Tokyo; a woman's hospital featured a neon sign announcing that Japanese females would absolutely not be treated. The issue of sovereignty over the uninhabited islands, known as Diaoyu to the Chinese and Senkaku to the Japanese, sparked China's fevered response. Protestors threw eggs and water bottles at the Japanese embassy in Beijing; at least one city reportedly banned Japanese cars from its streets to protect their occupants; a television station in Guizhou province reportedly stopped airing commercials for Japanese businesses. Most worryingly, one of China's highest ranking military officials, vice-chair of the Central Military Commission Gen. Xu Caihou, told the People's Liberation Army to be prepared for combat.

Despite their intensity, these demonstrations, like the half-dozen that preceded them over the past 25 years, are abating. In the past, China has long been able to hold Japan's economy hostage after political disputes, and it is likely to get its way economically this time as well. The two economies are deeply interlinked; trade between them in 2011 was worth almost $350 billion. China is Japan's largest trading partner and absorbs just under a fifth of Japan's total exports; Japan is China's third-largest trading partner, after the European Union (EU) and the United States. China's economy, which overtook Japan's as the world's second largest in 2011, is expected to grow at the reduced but still healthy rate of more than 7.5 percent in 2012; Japan's economy by contrast could contract in the third quarter of this year.

Though it never recovered from the bursting of its economic bubble in 1990, Japan remained the world's second-largest economy until China edged it out of that spot in 2011. The triple earthquake-tsunami-nuclear meltdown of March 2011 curtailed domestic auto production; disastrous floods in Thailand in October of that year closed Toyota, Nissan, and Honda factories. Shortages of power resulting from the shutdown of reactors and strong public sentiment for ending reliance on nuclear energy meant fuel shortages and higher electric bills. To make matters worse, the global economic downturn depressed demand for the country's exports, and a strong yen made Japanese products less competitive in world markets. In that same annus horribilus, Japan recorded its first trade deficit since 1981. Japan's exports to China had dropped 7.3 percent in 2011, not as bad as the 21.3 percent decline in those to the EU that same year, but worrisome nonetheless. Indeed, despite periodic frictions between Tokyo and Beijing, trade with China in 2011, and in the past decade, had been the brightest spot in the Japanese economy.

A boycott of Japanese goods has the potential to hurt Japan badly; the effects are difficult to calculate but likely in the billions of dollars. In 2002, Japan banned imports of Chinese onions, mushrooms, and rushes -- the latter used in the production of tatami mats for the floors of traditional Japanese homes. Beijing responded by suspending imports of Japanese cars, air conditioners, and cell phones. Japanese car manufacturers complained that the lost sales in autos would amount to roughly $3 billion in losses (according to the 2002 exchange rate), Japan capitulated eight months later.

In September 2010, when the Japanese government refused to release the captain of a Chinese fishing boat after he rammed two of their ships, Beijing imposed a ban on exporting rare earths -- elements crucial to many high-tech products like smartphones, flat-screen TVs, and the Toyota Prius -- to Japan, subjected its imports to an excruciatingly slow inspection procedure, and advised its tourist agencies not to book groups to visit Japan.

Suspension of trade would hurt China as well. Many Japanese products are made in China; among the numerous factories shut down out of safety fears include Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Panasonic, and Mitsumi Electric ( a major supplier of optical equipment to Nintendo). Should these be unable to resume production, hundreds of thousands of Chinese would lose their jobs. The newly unemployed are unlikely to put patriotism before their paychecks and, concentrated in company dormitories or other accommodations nearby, can easily mobilize to protest. This time, their target will not be Japan.

Admittedly, boycotts are devilishly difficult to enforce, especially on a long-term basis. The Chinese economy is no longer sealed as it was in Mao's era: Motivated consumers can, and do, find ways around it. After Beijing banned Norwegian salmon out of anger over the Nobel Peace Prize Committee's decision to award imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo, businesspeople imported salmon into Hong Kong, repackaged it, and sold it in major retail outlets throughout the country. A government ban on Japanese imports could be effective only if public anger were so intense that the overwhelming majority of Chinese consumers were willing to forgo purchases of Japanese products, which Chinese skeptics doubt. An anonymous cartoonist whose sketch was quickly removed from the web, drew a crowd holding angry anti-Japanese signs in one hand while snapping pictures with their Japanese cameras and texting on Japanese cellphones in the other.

One of the biggest benefits to Japan of manufacturing in China is the ability to sell finished products to Chinese consumers domestically. If Japanese manufacturers cannot sell to the Chinese, there is little reason to keep their factories in China. Vietnam as well as several other ASEAN members are already courting Japanese manufacturers, offering attractive leases, well-educated employees, and modest wage scales. Things are bad, but economically, both China and Japan have other options.

Why Palestinians Protest ?
 

[CENTER][SIZE="3"][B]Why Palestinians Protest[/B]
By
Khaled Elgindy
[/SIZE][/CENTER]


With anti-American unrest spreading through the Muslim world and an ongoing crisis unfolding in Syria, one might be forgiven for missing the wave of Palestinian protests that swept through the Israeli-occupied West Bank this month. The uprising virtually paralyzed life in Palestinian cities, with scenes reminiscent of the first intifada: burning tires, shuttered shops, and general strikes punctuated by occasional clashes between rock-throwing Palestinian youths and uniformed security forces. What began as a relatively limited display of anger over soaring prices and unpaid salaries soon became, as the Associated Press put it, “the largest show of popular discontent with the Palestinian Authority [PA] in its 18-year existence.” The intensity of the protests has subsided in recent days, but the sentiments behind them will persist, plaguing Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and U.S. policy toward the region.

For ten straight days, starting on September 5, thousands of Palestinians, upset over rising food and fuel prices and the PA’s inability to pay government salaries, took to the streets to demand the resignation of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. These initial demonstrations were exploited by members of Fatah, PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ faction, with the aim of sidelining Abbas’ longtime rival and perhaps winning concessions from Israel and the PA’s foreign donors. But the protests quickly took on a life of their own, spreading to cities across the West Bank and eventually leading to demands for the ouster of Abbas, too.

In a bid to shore up the crisis, Fayyad relented and agreed to rescind planned price increases and promised to pay salaries. Israel consented to transfer in advance some of the Palestinian tax revenue it collects, and the European Union pledged to pitch in more money to the cash-strapped PA. These measures, along with the regional controversy over a crudely made anti-Islam video that also sparked protests by Palestinians, seem to have dampened the intensity of the anti-PA demonstrations for now.

Since late 2010, when popular uprisings began to shake the Arab world from Tunisia to Bahrain, analysts have predicted that a “Palestinian Spring” was imminent. But most protests in the Palestinian territories have petered out. Today, the question is not if protests will resume but when, and whether Palestinians’ outrage will remain focused on their leaders, or, as many Israelis fear, metastasize into a dreaded third intifada directed at the Israeli occupation. Either way, this month’s unrest is only the latest sign of a much deeper crisis that threatens not only the PA but also the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian peace and a two-state solution. The resentment Palestinians feel toward their inept and dysfunctional government institutions cannot be separated from the now-moribund peace process that brought those institutions into existence.

On the surface, the Palestinian protests have borne a strong resemblance to those of the Arab Spring. As in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and other countries in the region, citizens took to the streets to demand economic growth and accountability for the repeated failings of their leaders. Unlike any of these other countries, however, the PA exists as only part of the structure of a 45-year-old military occupation. It has neither an army nor sovereignty over its territory. Meanwhile, its institutions, which remain almost entirely dependent on foreign aid, lack legitimacy. Abbas’ term has technically expired, and the Palestinian parliament has not convened in five years. All this, while the authority itself remains politically and geographically divided between the Fatah-dominated West Bank and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, a weakness solidified by U.S., Israeli, and international opposition to any internal reconciliation between the two factions. In short, Palestinians have few reasons to hope and many to rebel.

So it should come as no surprise that Palestinian protests of the last several years have not coalesced around a single, coherent message. In February 2011, thousands gathered in the streets of Ramallah and Gaza City to demand an end to the debilitating division between Hamas and Fatah. In the weeks and months that followed, protests shifted back to Israel and the occupation. They included mass marches both inside and outside of Palestine, demonstrations on behalf of the dozens of Palestinian hunger strikers and other political prisoners detained in Israeli jails, and protests against the prospect of a return to failed peace negotiations with Israel.

This month’s demonstrations have had similarly broad goals. In addition to demanding the resignation of key PA figures, some Palestinian demonstrators have also been calling for nullifying the 1994 Paris Protocol, which left Israel in control of most aspects of the Palestinian economy, and even the 1993 Oslo accords, which created the PA and laid the foundation for the last 20 years of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Outsiders may see little connection among rising prices, internal political division, and an economic agreement with Israel. But to Palestinians, these grievances are one and the same: All stem from a peace process that has not only failed to bring about their long-promised independence but has actually prolonged Israel's occupation and weakened Palestinian institutions. The same U.S.-led process that has overseen the failed negotiations has allowed Israel to continue expanding settlements on Palestinian land and prevented the reunification of the two halves of the PA. So whereas Tunisians, Egyptians, and Bahrainis had to bear the brunt of one corrupt, abusive, and ineffective government, the Palestinians face what amounts to three separate regimes: their own inept and dysfunctional leadership, a repressive and all-consuming Israeli occupation, and a deeply flawed peace process.

This helps explain why the current protesters have focused so much of their ire on Fayyad, someone with a reputation for being a clean, transparent administrator and who is widely respected in Israel and the West. Indeed, the true source of Palestinian anger has little to do with corruption or bad governance; rather, it stems from a sense that both the authority Fayyad represents and the process that created it have nothing left to offer.

One of the key lessons of the peace process going back to the Oslo accords, and one that U.S. policymakers have yet to internalize, is that democracy promotion and institution building will not work if the Palestinians are not given basic freedom or control. An elected parliament is no good if it cannot convene. An economic growth plan for Palestine is of little value when 60 percent of the West Bank cannot be accessed or developed and remains under exclusively Israeli control for the benefit of 500,000 Israeli settlers. Since both the Oslo process and its Palestinian offshoot known as “Fayyadism” have run their course, it was only natural that the process would turn in on itself.

Although today’s challenge is directed at the Palestinian leadership, none of this bodes well for the United States or Israel. The collapse of the PA, although not yet imminent, would create a dangerous security vacuum in the West Bank and almost certainly spell the end of the two-state solution, if it is not already dead. A rapid infusion of cash from the international community and Israel may buy the PA some time, but it cannot kick the can down the road forever -- especially if a recently released World Bank report is right that a more severe fiscal crisis will take root if donor countries fail to act swiftly.

Even if the PA manages to hobble along for a few more months or years, a weak and divided Palestinian leadership with questionable domestic legitimacy will be in no position to negotiate a comprehensive agreement with Israel or make that agreement stick. This week’s mass arrests of Hamas activists, carried out in the wake of the protests, speaks to the PA leadership’s deep sense of insecurity.

If the United States and the rest of the international community truly want to promote democracy and build Palestinian institutions, they should start by allowing the Palestinians to rebuild their fractured political leadership. As a first step, Washington should show a willingness to work with -- or at least not hinder -- last year’s reconciliation deal between Fatah and Hamas, while enlisting the support of regional actors, particularly Egypt. The formation of an interim government of independents and technocrats not affiliated with either faction but approved by both would advance the cause of Palestinian unity while avoiding the legal and political complications posed by a government that includes Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel. Forming a technocratic government could help lay the groundwork for a new political leadership built around a reformed and reconstituted Palestine Liberation Organization, which remains the diplomatic and political address of Palestinians worldwide.

Moves toward Palestinian reconciliation must be coupled with a process of decolonization and a dismantling of the Israeli occupation. For any meaningful negotiation process to succeed, realities on the ground must move in parallel with -- or at least not in opposition to -- negotiations at the table. Nothing has done more to destroy Palestinian confidence in a negotiated two-state solution than Israel’s persistence in expanding settlements, demolishing Palestinian homes, and restricting Palestinian movement and development. And nothing does more to undermine the Palestinian leadership’s domestic credibility than its willingness to engage in negotiations while such Israeli actions continue unchecked.

Neither U.S. President Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger, seems inclined to move in this direction. Although much has been made of Romney’s proposal, delivered at a private fundraiser, to “kick the ball down the field” in the search for Israeli-Palestinian peace, he was merely stating explicitly what is already the unspoken position of the current administration. Be that as it may, if whoever occupies the Oval Office in January is still not prepared to pursue these two objectives, then policymakers and observers alike should stop talking about a solution involving two states and begin preparing for the eventuality of one -- whatever form it may take.

Economic Recession & Recovery
 

[CENTER][B][SIZE="3"]The Third Industrial Revolution[/SIZE]
By
DAVID ROTHKOPF[/B][/CENTER]

In the late 19th century, roughly half of Americans worked in agriculture. By 2000, that fraction had fallen to under 2 percent. During the last century alone, we have seen those involved in the production of goods (from mining to manufacturing to construction) fall from about a third of the population to just under one in five. Over the same period, the proportion of Americans involved in services more than doubled, from 31 percent in 1900 to almost 80 percent by the turn of the last century. Since 1900, the number of farms in the United States has fallen 63 percent, and the average farm size has grown by two-thirds.

The U.S. economy has, in the past 150 years, seen stunning changes. It has gone from agrarian to industrialized, from primarily rural to primarily urban and suburban -- from one in which primarily men worked to one in which by 2010 more than half of professional workers were women, from one in which most people did not complete high school to one in which 40 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are enrolled in college, from one in which most American companies made their money in the United States to one in which about half the sales of S&P 500 companies come from other countries.

We should be comforted by this story of adaptation. The result has been unprecedented benefits across society, from GDP growth to rising standards of living. This has been not one industrial revolution but a whole series of upheavals culminating in the massive shift in recent decades from manufacturing to services, powered by globalization and new technologies.

Naturally, the folks in charge had to adjust. Protectionism that may have worked in the 19th century proved a calamity by the early 20th. Gold-based currencies were ultimately replaced by fiat alternatives. New data were needed to judge economic health. New regulations were needed to protect society and individual citizens. Indeed, national economic institutions like the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission have had to be augmented by coordination with similar groups in other countries to ensure market stability, liquidity, and crisis response.

Now, however, signs suggest that another enormous change is afoot -- only this time, the folks in charge are not adjusting.

Once upon a time, the U.S. economy grew in tandem with the productivity of American workers, leading to the creation of jobs and wealth across society. During this century's first decade, however, this relationship no longer applied. GDP grew and productivity climbed, while job creation slowed to a crawl, median incomes fell -- and the rich got richer.

This is not just a problem for the United States. Emerging economies -- even China -- are facing a similar phenomenon. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, digital-business specialists at MIT, describe the disconnect in grim detail in Race Against the Machine, their book about what might be called a third Industrial Revolution. They explain that massive increases in productivity due to the happy marriage of information technology and advanced manufacturing techniques are having a chilling, unprecedented effect on job creation.

The potential consequences as fewer jobs are created for the middle classes, while wealthy investors rack up the profits, are great and unsettling. Brynjolfsson and McAfee argue that what's happening will have the same devastating effect on white-collar jobs that recent technological advances have had on traditional middle-class jobs -- in other words, lawyers and accountants may well start feeling the same pain that assembly-line workers have been experiencing for decades.

Profound as the impact of such changes may be, they are not the only global market shifts that will demand new thinking from policymakers. For one thing, the dependable engines of economic growth -- developed countries -- have stalled. Second, the new engines of growth -- the big emerging economies -- have also hit idle speed. One top IMF official recently predicted to me that Europe will be in recession for the next five years and that growth in the BRICS might well fall to 60 or 70 percent of current levels for the same period.

Four years after Lehman Brothers imploded, we're still unsure what risks are being built into the global economy thanks to the ongoing proliferation of complex, opaque financial instruments like derivatives, which now carry more value than all the printed money on Earth many times over. It gets worse: With increased computing power, markets are growing vastly more volatile, and the advent of trading based on previously unmanageable data sets is only going to accelerate this trend and give special advantages to those able to gather and process massive amounts of information rapidly.

So the economy of tomorrow is unlikely to look much like that of yesterday. But did you even once hear anyone discuss this paradigm shift during the U.S. presidential election season or over the course of the never-ending debates about the European debt crisis? As argued in books like Race Against the Machine and confirmed daily in the headlines, the new global economy will force us to rethink our most fundamental assumptions, whether it's how many hours we should work each week or an education system that stops once people enter the workforce -- to say nothing of government's role in redistributing wealth from the few who harness the technologies to the rest who will be dislocated by the changes.

Perhaps with election seasons and leadership changes behind us, world leaders will be able to begin discussing what the transition to this new economy will entail. But we already know what won't work: trying to use the same old dog-eared playbook to address an entirely new set of challenges. A good place to start would be setting aside our hopes of simply going back to where we once were, creating manufacturing jobs we'll never see again, ones that haven't been outsourced to another country but to the past. Another is to recognize that the keys to growth will be the new infrastructure and education demanded by a rapidly reconstituted labor force.

But that means embracing the future, not running away from it. You can't run an entire economy on nostalgia. That's why it's so frustrating to be stuck with leaders whose main idea for a better tomorrow is to go back to the ways of yesterday; listen to them talk, and you'll have a hard time deciding whether their approach is that of an ostrich burying its head in the sand -- or a deer frozen in the headlights.

North Waziristan Operation...
 

[CENTER][SIZE="3"][B]Too weak to attack North Waziristan[/B]
By
Khaled Ahmed[/SIZE][/CENTER]

Talking to a delegation of South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA) on 21 October 2012, President Asif Ali Zardari frankly admitted he could do nothing to avenge the near assassination of Malala Yousafzai: He said Pakistan was not ready for the extremist blowback if North Waziristan was attacked.

He gave the following three reasons: 1) Pakistani political parties were not united over what the attempt on Malala's life meant for Pakistan; 2) The extremists ready to side with Al Qaeda-Taliban were too strong and widespread in the country to risk challenging the terrorist blowback from North Waziristan; 3) Pakistan was different from what it was in 2009 when he could put together a national consensus when a relatively unknown girl was flogged by the Taliban in Swat.

He told the audience to go and look at what was being said in parliament and asked whether in this kind of political disarray Pakistan was ready to take on the Taliban. He bluntly told them to take stock of the proliferation of the madrassas in Pakistan and the extremists they were breeding. He pointed to the almost unchallengeable blowback from terrorism that will spread from the north to Punjab and down to Karachi. In other words, North Waziristan is gone from Pakistan for the foreseeable future.

The same day two top clerics with a big cadre backing the Taliban hinterland made aggressive statements warning - not President Zardari because he counts for nothing - but the Army chief not to even think of attacking North Waziristan. They pledged to somehow stop the Army from going into North Waziristan with the help of their followers. JUI-F leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman was counting on his following in the Tribal Areas; Jamaat Islami chief Dr Munawwar Hasan was equally threatening.

Al Qaeda was not late in issuing its gloss on the attempt on the life of Malala Yousafzai. It said - quite falsely - the Taliban were not opposed to girls' education but to secular education in general and that Malala was to be punished with death for that and for the fact that she and her father had met Jewish film-makers and had called on American diplomatic officers.

One can detect a change in the stance of Al Qaeda, now rising from its ghost as it were since the death of Osama bin Laden. It wants to exploit the clerical consensus that already exists in Pakistan on education. The plaint against secular-liberal traitors has become loud in the media. The proliferation of madrassas in Pakistan that President Zardari pointed to is the network on which Al Qaeda and its affiliates in the north and Punjab will rely for the blowback if the Army strikes at North Waziristan.

The Wifaqul Madaris in Karachi issued a warning to the MQM the same week to stop it from prying into their madrassas to know who was studying there. (Many Karachi leaders have stated that in the city madrassas, over 60 percent of the seminarians were Pakhtun and Afghans. Recently a madrassa was shown on TV training troubled youths as suicide-bombers for Al Qaeda and Taliban.) For the first time, the all-Deobandi confederation of seminaries Wifaq was ominously challenging the MQM to physical showdown in Karachi.)

President Zardari clearly signalled that the state of Pakistan was too weak to face Al Qaeda and its minions. One aspect of this weakness was the lack of political consensus in the country. The second was the rising extremism. The latest wave of threats after the Malala incident from the clerical parties was aimed at the Army Chief who they feared might be preparing for a military attack like the one he had staged in Swat in 2009.

The Pakistan Army tried everything to paper over the weakness of the state created by its past policies. It always controlled - and still does - the security and foreign policies of the country. It created the non state actors now serving as henchmen of Al Qaeda. It identified so closely with the fake warriors it had created that defections started taking place once it decided to abandon jihad and take on Al Qaeda. Now it feels 'fagged out' ideologically. General Kayani may be the top dog but it is General Hameed Gul who rules the military mind.

Who is to blame if the police and the judges let off captured terrorists? The police and the judges are too unprotected against the jihadi non state actors let loose on the nation. Defector Major Haroon Ashiq who killed a major general - commando Faisal Alvi who had written to General Kayani about two generals secretly joined with Al Qaeda - has been recently acquitted by an anti-terrorism court judge in Rawalpindi.

Major Ashiq was assigned by another Al Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri, awarded a prize by an ex-Army Chief after Kashmiri had brought back the severed head of an Indian officer from Kashmir. Major Ashiq's brother, also an army officer defectee to Al Qaeda, died in Helmand in Afghanistan fighting the NATO forces.

Pakistan Army injected into the body politic of Pakistan an unrealistically heavy dose of anti-Americanism and cowed the ruling PPP and its ever-pragmatic leader Zardari into toeing the line by using the Supreme Court in the Memogate crisis. Now it looks on as Pakistan suffers from global isolation to an extent that even its friends are scared of helping it. After the Americans leave Afghanistan in 2014, it will know that Pakistan Army had defeated it the way Iran had defeated it in Iraq. But unlike Iran, Pakistan will end up losing a chunk of its territory after the Americans leave.

Defeating the Americans in Afghanistan was based on an intellectual deficit within the Army. That becomes obvious the moment the retired generals and other officers posturing as 'military analysts' come on TV and try to talk strategy. President Zardari thinks the country has gone too extremist to fight extremism. This Stockholm Syndrome - the victim identifying with the tormentor for self-empowerment - is a gift of this intellectual deficit.

Indo-Pak trade
 

[CENTER][SIZE="3"][B]Indo-Pak trade in perspective[/B]
By
Taj M Khattak[/SIZE][/CENTER]

In the past decades, whenever interlocutors from India and Pakistan got together for dialogue to improve their bilateral relations, it almost routinely ended with skilfully-worded communiques stressing a need for more confidence-building measures before they could grasp the nettle on such complex issues as Kashmir, the Siachen Glacier and Sir Creek. There was said to be a huge trust deficit where India portrayed itself as a victim of repeated acts of cross-border terrorism while Pakistan never forgot the stab in the back in 1971.

This brings to mind the story of a snake and a farmer who lived peacefully until one day the snake fatally bit the farmer’s son. In a fit of rage, the farmer struck back to kill the snake but he only managed to cut off its tail. The snake never left the farm and the two kept a safe distance from each other. Whenever they tried to befriend each other again, the farmer always remembered his dead son and the snake never forgot its lost tail. The efforts for friendship, needless to say, were never successful.

That is changing after President Zardari’s recent visit to India as suddenly there is smell of money in the air with India and Pakistan embarking on a new era of economic collaboration. India apparently has forgotten the attack on its Parliament building, the Kargil misadventure and the Mumbai carnage. Pakistan, on its part, has apparently placed all territorial disputes with India, which were core issues till yesterday, on the backburner.

The existing balance of trade between India and Pakistan is in the ratio of 7:1 in favour of India. In 2011, India’s exports to Pakistan stood at $2.33 billions and its imports from here at $330 millions. Indian businessmen feel that the volume of bilateral trade can be increased four times to $10 billions by 2015. Towards this end, India may lift the ban on investment from Pakistan, import Pakistani textile products and liberalise the visa regime. There is already talk of opening more crossing points. Pakistan presently lists 1,945 items which are allowed to be brought in from India but out of these, only 108 items can be transported directly through Wagah. This may now change with the grant of an MFN status to India as of later this year.

India has done well economically in recent years. Its large middle class, with remarkable talent, energy and entrepreneurship, is its single-most valuable asset. A successful Indian diaspora and worldwide network have been added advantages. These days it is foraying into Western markets in a manner reminiscent of China not too long ago. Yet, the previous pace of progress is no longer guaranteed, and this seems to the biggest evolving economic story but it is not getting the desired global attention.

While the BRIC counties (Brazil, Russia, India, China) are acknowledged as performing economies, serious concerns have been raised about India’s complex problems, inadequate policy responses and uncertain future trends. A recent article in The New York Times has cautioned that while the world is focused on the PIGS countries in the euro zone (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain), which are currently in the eye of the economic storm, the real worry should be about India.

The Indian planners must be gravely concerned at the slide in the country’s growth rate, which was down to 6.1 percent in the last quarter of 2011. It was projected at 8 percent over the medium term with a 6.9 percent target set for 2012. With little in the works to check deceleration, this downward momentum is likely to take a further toll at economic projections. It is now a foregone conclusion that ranks of an already staggering 400 million people living in extreme poverty will swell further.

When the Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese economies burst into galloping growth in the past, the phenomenon was always preceded by significant increases in their agricultural production. It is considered a crucial indicator for economic takeoff, but this sector is under-performing in the Indian economy. Persistently low crop yields, poor transport and water infrastructure, and a legal system perceived as hostile to foreign investment in basic agriculture and agribusiness has all but slowed down India’s Green Revolution of the 1970s despite employment of more than half of the country’s workforce in this sector.

India ranks 132 in the 183 countries on the World Bank’s list of “Doing Business Index,” and fares slightly better than Nigeria and Syria and behind Honduras and the West Bank and Gaza. There are reports of retroactive taxation on foreign earnings years after returns were submitted, which prospective Pakistani investors should take a note of. With an estimated 50 percent of its children under the age of five years malnourished, India hasn’t invested too well in its future. Manmohan Singh’s economic policies are thought to be overregulated and not headed towards further liberalisation and market-oriented reforms. Pakistan will have to examine available options carefully to avoid further deterioration of an already disturbing trade disparity.

India’s energy infrastructure is considered under-structured by international standards to meet its domestic industrial demands into the next decade or two. It is also under pressure from the US to reduce dependence on Iranian oil imports for US-led sanctions to be more effective in the United States’ stand-off on the nuclear issue. Any energy-related projects with India should therefore be undertaken after these elements are factored in. The track record of our ministry of water resources and power during last four years has been uninspiring and regrettably hasn’t induced the desired confidence or comfort level in public, and therein lies the worry.

Now that a retired army general has yet again been appointed as chairman of the Pakistan Steel Mills with a bailout package, the government can perhaps explore import of high-grade Indian iron ore through government-to-government contracts to achieve competitive production costs. If the rulers are serious about long-term viability of this strategic asset, then they will have to break this vicious cycle of first propping up the Steel Mills through much-maligned military personnel (recently called “Dangerous Duffers” by a distinguished lady of the law) and then opening it up to plunder by cronies and professional looters under banner of “Democracy is the best revenge.”

While India’s stride in service-based growth has been impressive, with such success stories as Bangalore, it also reflects the non-homogeneous nature of this phenomenon. Prosperity through higher productivity in segregated islands rather than integration with mainstream economy has its own limitations and consequences. There are serious apprehensions that even this boom may have run its course.

It is not an unknown phenomenon in global economics, where in the past many countries initially took impressive starts and then suddenly hit a plateau for a variety of reasons. It remains to be seen whether India would be able to get over its current problems and reverse the decline in its growth rate. Pakistan hopes that it does since the high tide of prosperity there can help lift up the millions of poor on this side of the border.

Who is the farmer and who the snake in the story narrated above? Well, that is not important, besides a good thing about these fables is that they can always be switched around either way, depending upon one’s viewpoint. It is important, however, that both India and Pakistan stop looking over their shoulders into an unpleasant past and approach all other outstanding issues with zeal and enthusiasm.

It would be a pity if the recent memory loss helps only trade, and not much else.

[CENTER][SIZE="2"]The writer is a retired vice admiral. Email: [email]tajkhattak@ymail.com[/email]
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would you plz tell me the easiest way to pass Current Affairs paper with at least 45 marks today is my first day of preparation for CSS and I started reading DAWN from right after Fajar but still its remaining. Is there any good book which would be enough to get the mantained marks in it. plz seniors help me out as time is too short and before today I did not know even the ABC of CSS