Columns - Page 2

imran bakht · #11 Thursday, January 20, 2011

Revolution—word and reality

Dr. A Q Khan

In last week’s column I wrote on the need for a revolution and the current conditions that necessitate it. Recently some opposition leaders have been crying for it. Altaf Hussain and Imran Khan are in the forefront in this. Nawaz Sharif seems to be totally ignoring the miseries of the people, is lending full support to the PPP.
Poet Asad Bhopali, expressed his views on revolution in this verse:
Inqilab aarahey hen Asad
Jaaney kia hoga tajdaron ka.
(The revolution is coming, Asad; I wonder what will happen to the rulers )
“Inqilab” is a very concise word and perfectly to the point. When the Indians tried to find an alternate to this Persin/Urdu word, they were unable to do so and thus adopted it in their own language. Revolution does not come at the whim of any one person or through polling. All political leaders criticise their opponents, and vice versa, and for cosmetic purposes they talk of change/revolution. One unknown poet defined it thus:
Waqt karta hey pervarish bersun
hadisa aik dam nahin hota
Hence, time nourishes revolution for decades; it does not come suddenly
The initiators of a revolution are always poor workers, exploited labour and the starving masses. Those responsible are corrupt, powerful, cruel, tyrannical rulers. As mentioned in my previous column, these were the exact circumstances that caused the revolt against the rulers in France, Russia, China and Iran. Those revolutions swept away whole despotic systems and their perpetrators. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and many others have said that a successful revolt is a revolution, and a failed revolution is a revolt. Revolt is the last resort the people have when their patience has run out and there is no alternative to alleviate their problems. The famous Urdu poet Firaq Gorakhpuri said:
Dekh raftar-e zamana ae dost
Kitni aahista aur kitni tez
(A revolution comes gradually and then proceeds suddenly)
In our country the irony is that the masses are poor and uneducated, but those standing for election, and are eventually elected into power are rich, and usually arrogant and selfish, with little interest in bettering the lives of the masses. Their main aim after coming to power is to make money by any means. Just recently, onion prices soared in India and people came out onto the streets in protest. Contrary to the actions of our leaders, the Indian government immediately forced the prices down, thus avoiding a crisis. Here such price increases are allowed to become crises just as the recent price hike in fuel has done. Our people allow themselves to be herded like cattle, do not raise their voice in mass protest and accept all that is thrust upon them. There is no other country in the world today where the masses are suffering as much as our poor people, while their rulers lead a luxurious life, yet there is no public reaction. If a nation loses self-respect, there is nothing left worth treasuring. Our young generation has the great responsibility of standing up and raising its voice to bring about a peaceful revolution in order to save the country. The future of the present generation and that of generations to follow is at stake.
I remember the days when I was young and how ambitious we were. Especially, when we used to hear revolutionary poetry, new emotions were roused in our hearts. There have been numerous revolutionary poets in the subcontinent— most notably Allama Iqbal, Akbar Allahabadi, Hasrat Mohani, Hali, Josh, Majnun Sultanpuri, Majaz, Makhdoom Mohiuddin, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Faiz, Faraz and Jalib. Iqbal, Akbar and Hasrat all concentrated on a social revolution in the lives of Muslims in order that they could live according to the tenets of Islam. Iqbal could not ignore the change in direction of the wind and had said:
Sultani-e-jamhur ka aata he zaman
Jo naqsh-e kuhan tum ko nazar ae mitado
(The democratic system is coming; throw away the old system!)
Josh had to spend many years in jail for writing this verse:
Bukhingham ki khabar leney jo abki bar tu jana
Hamare naam se bhi ek gola phenktey aana
(When you [German Air Force] bomb Buckingham Palace, throw a bomb on our behalf too.)
Josh suffered during colonial rule, but our desi rulers could not swallow the following words of Faiz:
Mata-e lauh-o-qalam chhin gaee to kia gham he
Ke khun-e-dil men dubo lihen unglian meney
(It doesn’t matter if you take away pen and ink; I have dipped my fingers in the blood of my heart.)
What touched the very soul of the public through the melodious voice of Iqbal Bano and aptly expressed everyone’s true feelings was:
Lazim he ke ham dekhenge
Wo din ke jis ka wadah he
Jab zulm-o-sitam ke koh-e giran
Ruee ki tarah ur-jaen gey
Yeh dharti dher dher dharke-gi
Sab taaj uchhale jaen gey
Sab takht girae jaen gey
Aur raj karegi khalq-e-khuda
Jo men bhi hun or tum bhi ho
Lazim he key han dekhen gey
Ham dekhenge, ham dekhen gey.
Faraz had this to say:
Jab saaz-e-salasil bajte they, ham apne lahu men sajte they
Wo reet abhi tak baqi hey, yeh rasm abhi tak jaari he.
Munir Niazi put it this way:
Do tarah ke aib hen is “mulk” ki taamir men
Jin se aati hey kharabi mulk ki tauqir men
Fakhre-insan qaid hey is khushnuma zanjir men
Mustaqil sharmindagi ki, mustaqil izhar men.
(I have used “mulk” instead of “sheher” here for wider application. And “mulk” here means corrupt rulers, not the nation. I understand the need that now we should revive our mission and construct a new Pakistan)
No discussion of revolution and its meaning is complete without mentioning our great, popular revolutionary poet, the late Habib Jalib.
Aur sab bhul gae harf-e-sadaqat likhna
Reh gaya kaam hamara hi baghavat likhna
Laakh kehtey rahen zulmat ko na zulmat likhna
Ham ne sikha nahin piare ba ijazat likhna
And about our rulers:
Usul bech key masnad kharidney walo
Nigah-e-ehle wafa men bohut haqir ho tum
Watan ka paas tumhen tha na hosake ga kabhi
Keh apni hirs key bandey ho bey zamir ho tum
Then there is this pathetic verse:
Qadam-qadam pey yahan per zamir bikte hen
Merey azeem watan tujh peh rehm aata hey
Jalib even called upon the people to stand up and fight for their rights:
Jeeney ka haq hukmranun ney chheen lia
Utho! Merney ka haq istimal karo
Zillat key jeeney sey merna behter hey
Mit jao! Ya qasr-e-sitam pamaal karo
I wish this revolution could take place with peace and I pray that my country could be safe from bloodshed. Observing the condition of the present government, a saying comes to my mind: “You can fool a few people all the time and fool most people for a short while, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Apart from the discussion of revolution, if we seek a temporary change in the current situation, then the ball is in the court of Nawaz Sharif. While MQM and JUI can also play role in bringing a temporary change, as both the parties are ready for it. But it should be clear that the change brought by all these political parties will not be a complete change, which is wished by the people. Moreover, let’s see how Nawaz Sharif behaves. More often than not in the last two-and-a-half years, he has disappointed the nation by assuming the facade of “friendly opposition” and “supporting and not derailing democracy.” If he fails the nation now, he might very well end up in the departure lounge of Lahore airport after the next elections, as forecast by Shaikh Rashid.
Whether or not a revolution takes place, one should remember the words of the famous anthropologist, Margaret Mead, who said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” The historic examples of France, Russia, China, Cuba and Iran are there in the books. It seems like the time is ripe for a thoughtful, honest, committed and dedicated group to come forward to save this country.

imran bakht · #12 Thursday, January 20, 2011

India’s Telangana challenge

Praful Bidwai

A confrontation is brewing in India on regional and sub-regional issues, with a huge potential for violence. At stake is separate statehood for Telangana, comprised of the northern districts of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, at the centre of which lies Hyderabad.
There has been a strong agitation for Telangana statehood, led by the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) party, which prompted the government to appoint a committee headed by former Supreme Court judge B N Srikrishna a year ago. The TRS has decided to boycott meetings to discuss the committee’s just-published report. The Bharatiya Janata Party has followed suit. Most other parties, including the Congress, are divided.
Telangana statehood is opposed in the other two regions of Andhra Pradesh, the coastal area and Rayalaseema. Srikrishna’s report doesn’t recommend either statehood or another arrangement. It only lists various options: the status quo; making Hyderabad a Union (federally administered) Territory and the capital of both Telangana and Andhra, like Chandigarh, which is the capital of both Indian Punjab and Haryana; or an altogether new reconfiguration.
On one side of the battlefield are the TRS led by K Chandrasekhara Rao (KCR), the BJP, the Communist Party of India, most Telangana-based legislators from the Congress, the Telugu Desam Party and some smaller parties. They emphasise Telangana’s distinctive culture, dialects, cuisine and customs.
On the other side are: the new political formation-in-the-making under Jaganmohan Reddy, son of the late Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy; the Communist Party (Marxist); and members of the Congress and TDP from coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema. Newly-installed CM Kiran Kumar Reddy and Governor E S L Narasimhan are believed to be hostile to separate statehood.
The governor is supposed to be apolitical. But Narasimhan, a former intelligence official, isn’t. The pro-Telangana group in the Congress resents not being consulted by the party’s central leadership. The pro-Telangana sentiment is far weaker in the TDP, whose leadership comes predominantly from the coastal region.
Statehood’s opponents warn against violating the accepted principle of linguistic reorganisation of states, and triggering the formation of “too many” small states like Vidarbha, Bundelkhand, Gorkhaland and Bodoland. But India has 1,130 million people. There are strong political and administrative reasons for smaller states, based on cultural, agro-climatic, economic and administrative considerations.
Small social groups would be better represented by, say, 50 states, than in the present 28 states and seven Union Territories. There are enough sub-linguistic differences that warrant further reorganisation. Smaller states are generally better at promoting participatory democracy and development. Federalism, a worthy principle, is neglected in over-centralised India.
If the Telangana issue is decided in a conventional fashion, contention and conflict will follow. The TRS demands that the Centre move a resolution in the coming parliament session to create the new state, with Hyderabad as its capital, as promised by Home Minister P Chidambaram in December 2009. His promise, driven by panic, exceeded the Telangana proponents’ wildest expectations.
The unified-Andhra lobby bristles at the thought that Telangana should be rewarded with the prized jewel that’s Hyderabad, a city to which all three regions lay claim. If Telangana statehood is conceded, people in the other two regions will take to the streets.
The Centre has been tactless in sending thousands of paramilitary forces primarily to Telangana, thus giving the impression of an anti-Telangana bias. It must behave more maturely, aware that even a minor mistake by it will lead to avoidable bloodshed and loss of life.
Eventually, the Congress may settle the Telangana issue on a crudely political self-interest calculus. If it accepts KCR’s public offer of merging the TRS with the Congress if a separate state is created, it can secure enthusiastic support of the Telangana people and win 17 Lok Sabha seats (of Andhra’s total of 42). If it dithers, or opposes separate statehood, it stands to lose in all the regions.
Andhra Pradesh is extremely important for the Congress. It owes 35 of its 206 Lok Sabha seats to the state – the highest in any province. This was the Congress’s highest success rate in 2009.
Yet, there’s a principled case for a separate Telangana state, based on social, cultural, economic and political considerations. As a political entity, Telangana as the erstwhile Hyderabad state is older than Andhra. Its identity is partly rooted in the anti-Nizam-anti-British freedom movement and the Telangana armed peasant struggle.
Andhra came into being only in 1953, comprising the coastal region and Rayalaseema, with Kurnool as its capital. The present Telugu-speaking entity called Andhra Pradesh was created in 1956 through Hyderabad’s merger.
The basis of Andhra Pradesh was a 10-point “Gentlemen’s Agreement” between the then chief ministers of Andhra and Hyderabad. This included the creation of a regional committee for Telangana whose recommendations would “normally be accepted by the government and the state legislature”. Another understanding was that 40 per cent of cabinet members would be from Hyderabad/Telangana. There would be a deputy chief minister too, so that either the C M or the deputy C M would be from Telangana.
However, there has been a strong assertion of a distinct Telangana identity through two major agitations in 1969 and in 2000. These sharpened the Telangana people’s sense of discrimination and highlighted the region’s educational backwardness and “developmental backlog”.
Statehood’s proponents rightly argue that Telangana hasn’t received state development assistance proportional to its size. But semi-arid Rayalaseema too can claim that it’s underdeveloped. Only coastal Andhra, with its prosperous agrarian economy and rapid industrial growth around Vishakhapatnam, is decisively more developed than Telangana.
Telangana has an even stronger case on its share of the waters of rivers Krishna and Godavari. Sixty-nine per cent of the Krishna’s catchment area, and 79 per cent of the Godavari’s, is located in Telangana. Internationally, water-sharing is decided on the basis of this area.
But opponents of Telangana’s statehood club Hyderabad with Telangana to argue that Telangana’s per capita development indices are higher than coastal Andhra’s or Rayalaseema’s. Besides, Hyderabad’s prosperity is the result of investments by businessmen from the other regions, especially coastal Andhra, known for its aggressive enterprise in construction, trading and industry. This is true. Many non-Telangana people have settled in Hyderabad for decades; it would be unfair to displace or disenfranchise them.
Telangana has the first claim on Hyderabad: it’s literally at the region’s heart. But it’s also logical to treat Hyderabad as a special category, where some degree of regional representation and sharing is possible. A truly federal India ought to go beyond the “Chandigarh Union Territory” formula, and try something that would substantially meet divergent sub-regional expectations.
There are useful precedents from elsewhere. Italy and Slovenia agreed to share sovereignty over Trieste, an ethnically distinct region. The Autonomous Aland Islands in Finland have a Swedish ethnic majority. Above all, there is Hong Kong, where China set up a Special Administrative Region in 1997 while taking it over from Britain.
Hyderabad can be the capital exclusively of Telangana, and also have a city government in which all the local people participate. We, South Asians, need imaginative federalist solutions that reconcile contradictory regional and sub-regional demands and aspirations.
Can the Congress summon up the courage to think differently? That’s hard to say. But it’s clear that the alternative is endless chaos and bloodletting.

imran bakht · #13 Thursday, January 20, 2011

Mobocracy

Chris Cork

Words have been a lifelong passion. Ever since I learned to read – rather late to the frustration of my teachers and parents – I have had a love-affair with ‘the word’. As a consequence I have a vocabulary that is larger than average and will happily spend hours leafing through a dictionary – of which there are two in my bathroom the better to fill otherwise-fallow intellectual space. So when a word crops up with which I am not familiar, or unsure of the meaning of, I tend to be off like a terrier; sniffing here and there for etymology amongst the undergrowth of language.
Thus it was that whilst watching a BBC documentary about the historical canvas on which was eventually painted Great Britain, I heard the word ‘mobocracy’. This was in the evening of the day that Salmaan Taseer was murdered, and suddenly several things clicked. The documentary looked at the power of ‘the mob’ – the ordinary people outside of political process but a part of it by force of either arms or civil pressure; and their ability to provoke revolution. Mobocracy is a form of governance like any other, and there are plenty of examples of it in action down the ages, with the French Revolution being perhaps the best known.
But what is ‘mobocracy’? Firstly it is the modern form of a much older word: ‘Ochlocracy’ in Greek or ‘Ochlocratia’ in Latin, and it means mob rule. This is a type of rule which may evolve in the absence of the ability to exercise governance by the legitimate authority; or the intimidation of that authority by the mob to the point at which the ‘authorities’ abdicate to the mob. Some argue that it is a purer form of democracy – the rule of the people – in that it is more truly representative of the will of a majority of the populace; others that it panders to the lowest common denominator and is little removed from barbarism.
Governments everywhere like to keep an eye on ‘the mob’ because it is a useful litmus paper, especially when times are hard and oh dear are they hard in Pakistan today. There is a need to keep a balance between feeding a restless populace and keeping them distracted (much as the Romans did in the declining years of empire by butchering countless thousands in public ‘games’) and if that balance is not kept then the mob may just have its way.
So what if the mob – the general populace of Pakistan – were manipulated in such a way by what we might euphemistically call here ‘agents of change’ as to have tunnelled beneath the institutions of authority and detonated a mine? Because that is very much what appears to have happened in the immediate aftermath of the Taseer killing.
The mobocracy that has emerged here may not be at the gates of the Bastille, nor surging through the streets banners aloft – and they don’t need to be. This is the mobocracy of the mind, the overtaking of the collective will and consciousness for ends which space precludes analysis of in any depth; but with an assault on governance at its heart. It has been a hugely successful revolution, and with Taseer’s death, we saw the transfer of power from the state to a mobocracy. Fear is an essential part of that new structure, both its own internal fears and the fear it projects around itself in order to strengthen its hold on power. Of course, I could be wrong. I fervently hope I am. But seeing Taseer’s murderer showered with rose petals by lawyers leads me otherwise.

imran bakht · #14 Thursday, January 20, 2011

After the murder

Zafar Hilaly

Like the screams of the woman beaten in Swat by the Taliban, which gripped the imagination of the public and transformed an ineffective anti-insurgency operation into a popularly backed full-fledged war against extremists, Salmaan Taseer’s murder has had a dramatic impact. It has aroused feelings that are frankly intolerable; so much so that for many those who celebrate or are indifferent to Taseer’s murder, are no longer viewed as the kind of people with whom they want to share a country with. There is thus today a sense of ‘them or us’ that has not existed before.
Yesterday’s silent majority is today’s bitter and dumb minority. Reality has finally overtaken them. They may say little out of fear or remorse but their actions will speak loudly in the months to come. One can guess what the well off amongst them will do. They will be reading up on foreign visa regulations. Interest will pick up in the ‘second home’ plan that Malaysia has to offer. Their children, if abroad, will be told not to return home, even for holidays. In due course, their houses will be up for sale and the search is probably already on for the hawalawala who will transfer funds without any questions asked. A Hindu fellow citizen said, ‘this is the last straw’. As for the not so well off, their wailings will be confined to newspaper columns and a despair that is treated not by hope but dope.
Thus far this lot had affected a disdain for debates around issues of religion. It was not a subject that gentlemen discussed. The mullah scarcely mattered in their lives. He was someone that they had to tolerate on Fridays and only because his qutbas were delivered before rather than after prayers. The mullah’s prattle had no connection with their world because, if poor, they were preoccupied with securing an income before practicing virtue and, if rich, how better to spend their lucre. As it turns out both the rich and the poor and the weak and the powerful were grievously in error. The mullah means to get their attention even if he has to kill for it, of course, under some religious pretext or the other.
The Pakistani elite never fully understood that the war against the TTP was a curtain raiser of what was to follow. And that the war was not merely about regaining control of territory or establishing the writ of the state but rather a deadly serious conflict between two entirely different perceptions of life and versions of Islam. Actually it was a war between two different religions, theirs and that of an adversary, comprising their fellow countrymen; and that the prize was Pakistan.
Had they studied history, they would not have left religion in the hands of the mullah because religion has more effect on moulding life than nationalism, the economy or a common language. And that every major question is a religious question. In Europe, for example, it was not until nationalism took on the hue of religion in the 16th and 17th centuries that it made any headway and it was only then that the Holy Roman Empire began to break up. The kings and princes involved in that war had to cry out that the only salvation that existed was within their church and not that of the Pope or Luther before they were able to persuade fellow Germans to kill each other. Much like the Taliban is doing today.
They forgot that the motivating factor for the Arab conquests was religion; or that the past and present Persian-Arab divide is due entirely – their other differences were suborned within this cleavage – to their very different versions of Islam, so much so, that one side regarded the other as worse than infidels.
Absurdly, they overlooked the obvious, namely, that religion mattered in their own country. Indeed, the very creation of Pakistan was, as it happens, exclusively on account of religion. The fact that Bangladesh exists as a separate country and, at times, as a fiercely anti India entity, reinforces rather than negates the profound impact of religion. Even the Indian ‘mutiny’ of 1857 had to be given a religious twist before the country rose in revolt.
They forgot that when Mustafa Kemal of Turkey rejected religion as the ideology of the state in favour of secularism, he had to fight and win a war against his fellow countrymen and continue to kill those who remained wedded to the old concept. Even the pro-Islamist government that is currently in power has continually to assert that it is not steering Turkey away from secularism. The wearing of the scarf has been made legal in Turkish universities under the aegis of a law guaranteeing such freedom in the present secular constitution.
Without Jinnah to guide them, our predecessors buckled to the mullah. But even if they rejected secularism and made Islam the ‘grundnorm’ of Pakistan, contrary to the advice of the very prescient Suhrawardy, why did they omit to ask the question whose Islam, that of the mullah, who celebrates Taseer’s murder, or those who regard it as a heinous crime and itself punishable by death? And now that the question cannot be avoided, shelved or fudged any longer, why are they reposing their trust on those rotund yellow looking, yellow livered politicians who continue sitting on the fence, flirting with one side of the divide while blowing kisses at the other.
If they fail to come to their senses, they face a civil war and, like most civil wars, it will divide families and homes, judges, the legislature and the executive; nor will the armed forces remain free, their cant of martial discipline notwithstanding. A violent upheaval, albeit slow in the making, threatens the very existence of this country susceptible as it already is to fissiparous tendencies. Nor will regional and global powers sit back inertly while the country burns. Even as we speak extremists are emerging from their lairs to lead large demonstrations on the streets. Energised by the ‘josh’ among their ranks, even as embedded an establishment figure as Fazlul Rahman, is abuzz about a revolution in the making.
The question often asked by locals, as much as foreigners, is that now that the battle has been joined who will prevail. So will those whose responsibility is to safeguard the state and the fundamental rights of the people finally act? Or have we already embraced the doom assigned by fate?

imran bakht · #15 Thursday, January 20, 2011

When politics trumps the economy

Dr. Maleeha Lodhi

By winning back the MQM’s support in parliament, the PPP-led coalition has managed to avert a potential collapse and ease a political crisis. But this has been secured at a heavy price – the abandonment of urgent reforms that have put the economy in serious jeopardy and will place the government in a bigger bind later.
When the MQM walked out of the ruling coalition the PPP saw itself confronted with a choice between saving the government and saving the economy. To no one’s surprise it opted for the first. Political expediency trumped the urgency to fix the economy.
The PPP government first announced the decision to reverse the fuel price increase that was to take effect from the start of the new year. This was followed by the deferment of legislation in parliament to enforce a reformed general sales tax – demanded by much of the opposition and the MQM.
These decisions won the government a political reprieve that may yet turn out to be temporary. But they entail serious repercussions for an economy in disarray especially if compensating actions are not taken to offset the impact on an unsustainable fiscal situation. And these will also not be politically easy to take.
The rollback of the petroleum price decision will involve an additional subsidy of at least Rs5 billion or $53.8 million a month. As an IMF spokesperson put it, the bulk of this subsidy’s benefit will go to higher income individuals and large companies. Most deleteriously it will add to a spiralling budget deficit, which will likely be financed by printing more currency notes. The inflationary impact of this will soon offset the ostensible ‘benefit of rolling back the fuel price’.
The government’s economic team hopes to limit the damage by persuading its political principles to remove the fuel subsidy after one month – when the political crisis begins to recede. But it is not clear how such a weak government will make another policy U turn especially when the political environment remains charged and its position so fragile.
If the government fails to reduce the burden of the subsidy, mobilize additional revenue and cut inessential expenditure, the fiscal deficit will soar to a record level – around eight per cent of GDP. Financing such a large deficit mainly by borrowing from the State Bank will accelerate inflation, begin to deplete foreign exchange reserves and put pressure on the exchange rate.
The external side could then rapidly deteriorate and the present ‘record’ level of foreign exchange reserves slip quite quickly (as there is no offsetting financing and the oil import bill is rising) despite the continued robust inflow of workers’ remittances. The government will then be compelled again to seek external funding.
As the programme with the IMF is off-track loan disbursement by the Fund remains suspended. This together with the oil price decision will make it harder to receive financing from other international financial institutions – the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Instead of phasing out subsidies and address the vexed circular debt problem the latest government move compounds it. In the absence of other action on energy sector reform this will further complicate management of the country’s crippling energy crisis.
In an imploding fiscal situation created by the failure to mobilize revenue, limit expenditure and stem the losses in public sector enterprises including the energy utilities the government has been resorting to printing more currency notes as a politically convenient way to cover the widening fiscal gap. In an environment of high inflation further borrowing from the central Bank will undermine public confidence in the country’s currency, fuel greater inflationary expectations, move the economy towards dollarization, and push it a step closer to a state of hyperinflation.
Thus the celebration over the government’s rollback of the fuel price increase and RGST by most political leaders and much of the media overlooks the grave implications of these decisions in contributing to a deepening fiscal crisis and the danger this poses for the country’s stability: the prospect of runaway inflation which is the most cruel tax on the poor, erosion of everyone’s real purchasing power, retarding sluggish growth, crowding out the private sector, deepening poverty and ultimately engendering civil strife, even political instability.
It has been left to finance minister Hafiz Sheikh to warn parliamentary leaders about the gravity of this situation and the inflationary impact of continuing general subsidies particularly at a time when domestic resource mobilization measures in the form of the RGST are stalled in parliament. Many leaders seemed to understand the heightening risks but are unable to square the economic imperative with their politics.
Little understood by many who virulently oppose the RGST is the fact that this is the single most effective instrument that can generate substantial revenue. This is not to suggest that a VAT-like measure can unilaterally solve the country’s fiscal problems but its ability to enhance tax revenue by 2-3 per cent of GDP in the medium term makes it a more important option relative to others.
The unstated presumption behind the lack of official resolve on reforms and a similar attitude among opposition politicians is that the US-led international community will prevail on the IMF to resume lending and prevent an economic collapse in a strategically vital country. The stream of messages sent by Islamabad to top officials of the Obama Administration to weigh in with the Fund indicates this.
These have so far got little traction. Instead, in a public rebuke, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the reversal of the petroleum price increase and described this as a mistake. Ministers of other development partners have been more blunt in stating that their country’s taxpayers cannot be expected to help when Pakistan cannot get its own taxpayers to pay up.
Government leaders and others may therefore be miscalculating that Washington can or will ask the Fund to bail Islamabad out. At a time when the IMF is participating in programmes that entail sharp adjustments in many cash-strapped European countries is it realistic to think that it will apply different performance criteria here?
Can IMF funding be expected to resume to Pakistan without any national revenue effort or correction of fiscal policy and an automatic, flexible mechanism for administrative price adjustments that is by some measure symmetric and fair? Absent structural reforms to deal with the haemorrhage in public sector enterprises and worsening circular debt as well as significant control of expenditure, can any rescue plan even work?
Irrespective of what the IMF does, the growing economic disarray in the country should concern all leaders in and out of government. An economy with no direction and no policy reforms to halt the slide and the spectre of dangerously high inflation should engage the attention of all public representatives.
Tough economic decisions will ultimately have to be taken but the longer they are postponed the greater the adjustment that will be required. The political pain of necessary reform will have to be shared if Pakistan is to be saved from an economic breakdown.
This means forging a political consensus on a set of reform measures needed to restore financial stability. This can only be achieved by an informed debate in parliament and the media and an agreement not to politicize economic problems on whose resolution rests the very future of the country.
In today’s strained political environment evolving consensus on a minimum reform agenda may seem a vain hope but the alternative – a descent into economic chaos – should serve as a reminder of what might happen if no policy correctives are implemented. This ought to urge different stakeholders to review their stance of putting short-term expediency before the country’s economic security. After all without such stability their political gamesmanship will be in vain.

imran bakht · #16 Thursday, January 20, 2011

A testament in red

Raoof Hasan

While delivering a lecture in Islamabad, US Ambassador Cameron Munter unfurled a few tricks from his mission statement: “We appear to be intrusive (in financial and governance matters of the host country) because we care (!). We are the largest donor. Our aid comes as outright grant of assistance which is different from loans”. He went on to say ,”Yes, we are demanding”, adding that although Washington might have been bluntly saying what it believed should have been done, but it came with a “measure of respect” (thank you my lord!). He insisted: “We will continue to be this way”.
One fails to come across a parallel case of foreign intrusiveness in the affairs of another country to an extent and bluntness of such magnitude. If aid were to be made the basis of interference, would the US ambassador accredited to Israel say this to its Middle Eastern client that is the largest recipient of their financial assistance? The diplomatic faux pas that it may be, it goes well beyond the permissible parameters in interstate relations which are always handled with a fair amount of candour. No such decency could be deciphered in the ambassador’s audacious critique. He spoke like a viceroy would to a conquered state. Any country, with even a modicum of honour and integrity, would have immediately summoned the errant ambassador and asked for an explanation, better still, given him the marching orders.
At a different level, this convoluted confession is a reflection of the respect, or a lack of it, that the US holds for the host government. It is a relationship that could only exist between a master and his slave, or between a feudal and his serf. It is not a relationship that would exist between two sovereign states. It also reflects the extent to which the incumbent leadership made depraved compromises to facilitate their ascent. Let’s not forget that, alongside General Musharraf, the US was the principal sponsor of the criminal National Reconciliation Ordinance that facilitated the writing off of numerous cases of alleged crimes and paved the way for the PPP leadership to come into power. While the US has already got its pound of flesh a million times over, there is no satiating its lust for more. This lust has often found indiscriminate expression in inhuman and brutal actions across the landscapes of Vietnam, Cambodia, South America, Iraq and Afghanistan; but these countries refused to submit. While many of them fought the aggressor, the others are in the process of doing so. The US dare not lecture any of these countries. It does so only in Pakistan because it knows that we’ll not fight back. We have sold out soul to the devil itself.
Enveloped in this disgraceful environment, the domestic political scene continued to unfurl as predicted. To get the Mutthida Qaumi Movement (MQM) back, the prime minister went to their citadel in Karachi. To further shore up his position, he called up leaders of all parliamentary parties and solicited their support. He ended up by phoning the PML-N Chief Mian Nawaz Sharif and undertaking to work for his charter of demands. A four-member committee has since been constituted to oversee the implementation process and outcome.
One simply fails to understand how that would be possible. Having claimed that he is an impregnable defence for the president, will the prime minister agree to improve his governance? Will he agree to sack his corrupt ministers and other officials and undertake initiatives to eliminate corruption, visible marks of which can be traced to his office and that of the president of the country? Will he proceed with implementing all Supreme Court injunctions including the one on NRO and write a letter to the Swiss courts to reopen the cases against Mr Zardari? Will he initiate steps to get the looted billions back into the national coffers? Will he order a transparent enquiry into numerous scandals that have hit the national scene since the PPP-led coalition assumed charge? Will he replace the corrupt heads of the national institutions with people of honour and integrity? Will he appoint a new chairman for the National Accountability Bureau and introduce an effective and transparent accountability mechanism? Will he constitute an independent Election Commission? One strongly believes that he has neither the will nor the power to undertake any of the promised steps. He has not done it in the past three years. He is not likely to do it in the future.
The nation is being led up the alley of darkness yet again – all in the name of sustaining a system that has effectively lost all its promise and transparency. This system is a misnomer for democracy. No matter how one looks at it, it does not pass the test of being democratic even in its most rudimentary form. It is a dictatorship of the corrupt that is being perpetuated through acts that are lacking in any good intention for the honour of the country or the welfare of its people.
The increasing US intrusiveness and its venomous tentacles, a corrupt, inefficient and ineffective government and an opposition smitten with disunity and a misplaced paranoia of intervention by the army – all make for a continuation of the incumbent circus. Amidst the imbroglio of rising prices, deteriorating law and order situation, rising ethnic and religious strife and a government that has abdicated its writ to the wolves, the prospects of a change through peaceful means are fast diminishing and there appears no alternative to a testament in red.

imran bakht · #17 Thursday, January 20, 2011

A death like no other

Rahimullah Yusufzai

None in the government and not many in the ruling PPP were willing to stand by Salmaan Taseer as he faced criticism and even threats after having spoken in support of Aasia Bibi and described the blasphemy law as a ‘black law.’
But after his assassination at the hands of his own police guard, his party is describing it as a political murder and glorifying him as a martyr. The PPP already has quite a few martyrs with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto leading the distinguished list and efforts are now underway to make a martyr out of the slain Punjab governor.
Sadly enough, no other death of a politician in Pakistan has stoked so much positive and negative emotions as that of the 66-year old Taseer. There cannot be a more painful sight for Taseer’s family and well-wishers than seeing his killer Malik Mumtaz Qadri being showered with rose petals at the court, not only by ordinary people but also lawyers. Qadri’s supporters have been visiting his Rawalpindi home to pay homage to him and his family and participants of the recent Karachi rally in support of the blasphemy law carried his garlanded portraits. In this particular picture snapped soon after he had surrendered to the police once he had pumped unchallenged 27 bullets into Taseer’s body, the smile on Qadri’s face is that of a contented man. Shehrbano Taseer, the grieving daughter of the late governor in her recent article used the word ‘sinister’ to describe his smile.
Sometime before his death, Taseer had complained that his party’s government was “not willing to face religious fanaticism head on.” Neither President Asif Ali Zardari nor Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani gathered courage to come to his rescue. The president kept quiet while the prime minister stressed it was the governor’s personal point of view. Reminding everyone that he was a syed, he said his government had no intention to change the blasphemy law.
Law Minister Babar Awan at that stage was declaring that he would not countenance amendments to the blasphemy law. Interior Minister Rahman Malik, the man who talks too much causing problems and sometimes embarrassment for his government, later boasted that he would personally shoot anyone committing blasphemy.
The situation has changed after Taseer’s tragic assassination. The country is more polarized than before and a dispassionate discussion on any issue, particularly those concerning religion, has become difficult and even dangerous. We were already not a very tolerant nation, but it seems the plethora of challenges facing our people and ranging from political instability to corruption and economic problems to energy crisis, lawlessness and militancy have sapped our energies and made us even more intolerant.
In such a volatile situation, amending the blasphemy law or removing procedural lacuna to prevent its misuse is now out of question. Those in favour of not touching the blasphemy law have taken the lead and held public rallies to warn against any amendments. The religious parties have closed ranks and shown their street power. They may not have much of a vote-bank, but organising public meetings and protests on religious and even political issues has always been their strength. The provincial assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the secular and progressive ANP and PPP have an absolute majority and are in power since the 2008 general election, has unanimously adopted a resolution against changes in the blasphemy law. With one important, militancy-hit unit of the federation against amendments in the blasphemy law, the federal government’s hands are now tied. Even otherwise, this government is known more for stepping back than standing firm on decisions that it often takes without much homework.
In comparison, the liberal and secular forces have managed small gatherings only and indulged in symbolic displays of solidarity with Taseer. Theirs is a feeble voice, though the editorial pages of the English press would make one think as if they have a powerful presence. Besides, those in favour of an open society where debate and introspection is allowed are now on the defensive and somewhat scared of taking a stand. It cannot be safe to talk publicly about sensitive issues in a country where Taseer was killed not for blaspheming the Holy Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him), but for questioning the provisions of the blasphemy law.
It isn’t easy getting authentic figures in Pakistan, but it is commonly alleged by civil society activists that the blasphemy law is misused and that members of the minority communities are its major victims. This doesn’t mean that Muslims haven’t been accused of blasphemy. In fact, more Muslims have faced such accusations, followed by Ahmadis, Christians and Hindus. More than 70 per cent cases were reported in Punjab and some of the accused (32 according to one figure) were extrajudicially killed while under-trial or after acquittal. Judges hearing blasphemy cases are under pressure and some are known to have faced threats.
Supporters of the blasphemy law argue that miscarriage of justice also takes place due to other laws, but attention is focused on the blasphemy law for ulterior motives. Some of the hardliners among the religious circles have described blasphemy law as a divine law and, therefore, untouchable. As the punishment for blaspheming the Holy Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) is death, they have been arguing and publicly declaring that Taseer deserved his fate and that nobody should feel sorrow for him. This explains the fact that some clerics declined or offered excuses when asked to lead Taseer’s funeral prayers. And mind you, the more extreme positions in this instance have been taken by Barelvi clerics, who were being praised as moderate compared to the Deobandis and even seen as allies of the government in the fight against the militancy inspired by Deobandi preachers. Not long ago, government functionaries were courting Barelvi and Sufi clerics, who were issuing fatwas (decrees) against suicide bombing and Taliban militants.
A new element has been inserted in the debate following the allegation by Maulana Fazlur Rahman and leaders of other Islamic parties that it was part of the US agenda to amend the blasphemy law as the Western powers wanted to change and dilute Islamic laws. This would make it even more difficult to consider any changes in the blasphemy law because anything that is associated with the US and the West in Pakistan triggers controversy and evokes strong opposition. The US, on its part, would do well to stay away from this debate because its support for changes in the blasphemy law would damage the cause of those who genuinely and honestly feel that it needs to be amended to prevent its misuse.
Aasia Bibi, the 45-year old Christian woman sentenced to death on blasphemy charges by a lower court, has been in the Sheikhupura jail located near her village for over a year and her legal battle isn’t over. This is the prison where Taseer visited her last November along with his wife and daughter and publicly declared that there had been a miscarriage of justice in her case and that he would request President Zardari to pardon her. It was indeed strange for a governor to go to the jail, question the legal system, describe the blasphemy law as a black law and then deride the mullahs publicly and on his Tweeter site. But Taseer was different and defiant, never afraid of saying all that he considered right. He was also somewhat careless and unmindful of the consequences of his words and actions. Still he hadn’t committed a sin that deserved a death sentence. In the heat of the moment when emotions are running high, one’s words could be misconstrued as it seems to have happened in his case. The ultra-liberal Taseer tried to interfere with the law of the land and paid a heavy price. The ultra-religious Qadri, only 26 and influenced by the emotional debate on an issue as sensitive and combustible as blasphemy, took the law into his hand and committed murder.

imran bakht · #18 Thursday, January 20, 2011

Society without social sciences

Aziz Ali Dad

Few people realise how critical education is for discouragement of terrorism and militancy, though there is been some soul searching of late as to what is lacking in our present education system which has made Pakistani society more intolerant and violent. The liberal intelligentsia puts the onus on the religious seminaries for the present violence in our society. But this attitude ignores elements of otherwise secular education which are capable of creating a militant mentality.
Among the various institutions providing education in Pakistan are the cadet colleges. In Pakistan, the cadet colleges typically cater to education to children of the elite and the more affluent members of society. In addition, the doors of these colleges are closed to female students.
According to a study of Centre for Peace and Development Initiative, Rs1.5 billion out of Rs8.1 billion of the total development allocation for the Federal Education Division in 2009-10 was earmarked for building 24 cadet colleges across the country. One cadet college costs around Rs500 millions. The aim of a cadet college is to produce young men who can go on to lead the army and the country. Needless to say, the students in these institutions are trained not for the pursuit of peace but in the science of war.
Another factor creating hurdles in the creation of a peaceful society is the way we set our priorities in our education system. During the last ten years Pakistan has witnessed the mushrooming of new universities in the private and government sectors. Most of these institutions offer courses which enable students to get lucrative jobs in the market. There is no denying the fact that we need professionals in the field of engineering, medicine, Information technology and trade and commerce, but it should not be at the expense of the social sciences and the humanities.
Most of the newly established institutions of higher education do not offer courses on sociology, anthropology, philosophy, literature and other disciplines. This is one reason why we are witnessing lack of direction and moral anarchy in our society. This has dire repercussions on democracy and society.
Unfortunately, this trend of decreasing emphasis on the humanistic aspects of education is not confined to Pakistan. Martha Nussbaum, in her book, “Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities”, laments: “Nations all over the world will soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticise tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements. The future of the world’s democracies hangs in the balance.”
Professionals – like doctors, engineers, businessmen, software engineers – play a crucial role in the development of society, but it is the people trained in the social sciences and the humanities who help diagnose the ailments of society and show us direction. Our society is in turmoil because our education system produces either potential soldiers or automatons for the market economy. In the absence of the loadstar of the humanities our society is a rudderless ship floundering in the tumultuous ocean of globalisation. It is therefore important to curb the herd mentality of producing cogs for the machinery of war and the market, and to invest in creation of minds that can help establish a peaceful and pluralistic society.

imran bakht · #19 Thursday, January 20, 2011

Hate crimes and their aftermath

Mahir Ali

LATE last year, a 22-year-old by the name of Jared Lee Loughner walked into a store that sold hunting equipment and picked out a semi-automatic handgun.
A record of mental instability apparently did not stand in the way of that transaction in Tucson, Arizona. Last Saturday, Loughner took the weapon to where his local congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, was informally meeting constituents.
He shot Giffords through the head, then turned his attention to the small crowd around her. By the time he ran out of bullets, six people lay dead or dying and another 14 had been injured. At the time of writing, Giffords was still fighting for her life. The fatalities included a federal judge and, most poignantly of all, nine-year-old Christina Taylor Greene. Christina was born on Sept 11, 2001. She had been elected to her school council, and her mother had arranged for her presence at the congresswoman’s public appearance in order to afford her a glimpse of democracy in action.
Recriminations have flowed freely in the wake of the bloodshed, with the Tea Party and associated politicians and media personalities being accused of contributing to random acts of lunacy such as Loughner’s through their bitter and twisted invective against the Obama administration and Democrats in general. The fact that Giffords’s congressional district was among those depicted through crosshairs as targets last year on one of Sarah Palin’s webpages has inevitably occasioned a great deal of comment.
Not even the vilest talk-show host in America, however, has thus far hailed Loughner as a hero or blamed Giffords for tempting fate by supporting Barack Obama’s healthcare legislation. Palin and various other prominent Republicans have issued statements saying they are praying for Giffords and her family. They haven’t apologised for their role in poisoning the political discourse, but hints of contrition could arguably be read into their defensiveness.
Nothing of the sort was on display in Karachi at the weekend when Maulana Fazlur Rahman — whose party until recently was a member of the ruling coalition in Islamabad, and who not long ago sought the US ambassador’s imprimatur as a potential prime minister — told a rally in favour of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws that “Salman Taseer himself is responsible for his assassination.”
It would have been possible to ignore the odd unsound mullah, but a veritable confederacy of dunces has emerged in this particular context. Perhaps it still wouldn’t have mattered that much had it been only the mullahs. But a vox pop by the BBC on the streets of Karachi in the immediate aftermath of the Punjab governor’s murder last week revealed little or no sympathy for the victim. Outside a court in the federal capital, meanwhile, his killer was showered with rose petals by a crowd of seminary students and lawyers.
That’s right, lawyers. Who are supposed to have gained some sort of education in the process of acquiring that nomenclature. Who are supposed to have some sort of respect for the universally uncontroversial law against murder. In comparable circumstances in most parts of the world, it is sometimes a bit of a task to track down a legal practitioner willing to defend the perpetrator. In Obscurantistan, no public prosecutor could be found to grace the preliminary hearing.
Then there were all those Facebook pages that cropped up in support not of the fallen governor, but of the bigot who slew him, and the numerous users of the social networking site who switched their profile pictures to Mumtaz Qadri’s unpleasant visage. Compare that with the reaction to the massacre at a Coptic church in Alexandria in the early hours of New Year’s Day, which reportedly prompted a considerable number of Egyptian Muslims to change their profile pictures to the image of a cross within a crescent.
That wasn’t all. It has also been reported that a campaign based on the slogan ‘We either live together or we die together’ instigated thousands of Muslims to turn up at Coptic Christmas services throughout Egypt last Thursday night amid tight security precautions by the authorities. There is some cause for scepticism: virtually all references to this event are sourced to a single website, Ahram Online. One would have thought such an event would be much more widely covered. I nonetheless hope it’s substantially true, if only as a partial antidote to the increasingly toxic approach towards minorities in predominantly Muslim countries, most notably Egypt and Iraq.
And, of course, Pakistan, where Taseer faced a fusillade from one of the men assigned to protect him (while the latter’s colleagues — possibly confederates — evidently made no attempt to stop him), ostensibly for his very public support of Aasia Bibi, a poor Christian woman condemned to death on a blasphemy charge. It was a courageous stance to adopt in a clearly hostile milieu. Taseer’s designation of the blasphemy legislation as a black law apparently sufficed for the controversial governor to be portrayed as a blasphemer himself. That this ridiculous conclusion could be reached by such a large proportion of Pakistanis provides profound cause for despair.
There are, of course, vast differences between the political situations of Pakistan, Egypt and the US, and one would not expect hate crimes to provoke identical reactions in all three countries. Yet the revulsion deficit — not to mention the blatant triumphalism of fear-mongering fundamentalists — is extremely alarming indeed.
The likes of Imran Khan point most of the blame to the American military presence in Afghanistan and attacks on Pakistan’s northern areas. That isn’t complete nonsense: post-9/11 developments have undoubtedly exacerbated tensions and served as a recruitment tool for all manner of jihadist outfits. But let’s not forget that the latent fundamentalism was there to be exploited. Or that Gen Ziaul Haq found fertile soil in which to sow his noxious seeds, which were bound in time to bear a strange and bitter crop.
So let’s stop making excuses. External factors cannot be discounted, but Pakistan will sink or swim on its own strengths. And weaknesses. For the moment, the overpowering stench of fear does not bode well at all.

imran bakht · #20 Sunday, January 23, 2011

Drones and aid

Rafia Zakaria

ACCORDING to a study published last month by the New America Foundation, 2010 saw more drone strikes with fewer civilian casualties than in previous years.
The report goes on to tout the precision and efficacy of these strikes and emphasises that “under the Obama administration, approximately 80 per cent of those reported killed by drone strikes have been militants; under the Bush administration, it was closer to 55 per cent.”
The artful reduction of civilian casualties to percentages is clever. Twenty per cent sounds digestible but refers to approximately 100 civilian deaths that the Foundation has conservatively estimated from media reports. The glib presentation accomplishes an important purpose: among Obama administration officials it popularises the notion that the supposed precision of drones makes them the weapon of choice for war in a region that seems increasingly intractable.
An array of charts and graphs hammers home the point that drones were undoubtedly made for the tricky task of ridding the world of terror and eliminating militant leaders. Hundreds have already been killed and hordes more will undoubtedly be felled through this magical solution to a vexing problem.
Among Obama administration officials frustrated at the slow death of militancy in Pakistan, this argument defeats alternative plans such as one for America to use ground troops for targeted strikes within Pakistani territory. A Washington Post report published on Jan 8, 2010 described just such a scenario, in which proponents of increased drone attacks won out against those pushing for ground troops. According to the article, the review ultimately “concluded that the United States can ill afford to threaten or further alienate a precarious, nuclear-armed country whose cooperation is essential to the administration on several fronts.”
The reign of drones is thus likely to continue. According to reports in the American media, in his meetings this week with Pakistan’s top military officials Vice President Joe Biden is expected to push for specific demands aimed at convincing the security establishment to speed up its crackdown on the Quetta Shura, believed to be spread out between Quetta and Karachi. Offerings of expensive military toys are also expected in exchange for a commitment to eliminate the Haqqani network, which Isaf forces hold responsible for thwarting their gains in Afghanistan. It is expected that the fulfilment of such demands can then be spun into a rhetorical victory for the Obama administration in time for the July 2011 initiation of the pullout of combat forces from the region.
Little is new in any of these tactics. The crux of the drone programme, pushed endlessly by think tanks such as the New America Foundation, is that killing Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders is the key to eliminating militancy from the region. The use of Predator drones to eliminate these identified targets therefore rests on what is assumed to be a concrete distinction between civilian and militant, leader and follower. It is assumed that any damage caused can be patched over with a smattering of aid projects — a school here, a sanitation project there — and all will be well. So what if your father or brother was killed in a strike? A neighbourhood school, it is imagined, will alleviate any residual acrimony and douse the fires of revenge.
Occurring in the immediate run-up to Mr Biden’s visit, the assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer should prompt a reconsideration of the above assumptions. The valorisation of his killer and the subsequent public exposure of the depth of fundamentalism in Pakistani society presents a compelling argument against a military solution to extremism. The polarisation of Pakistani society, now so visible, points directly to the instability of the assumption that the general population and those fighting against security forces in the tribal areas can be neatly and easily separated into two categories that never overlap. This does not suggest that everyone in Pakistan is a militant, but that the antidote to militancy is an ideological defeat that can and must be produced as indigenously as the militancy itself. Such an organic solution can never be produced in the shadow of an American presence.
The prospect of doing nothing, however, seems more repugnant to the United States than actual defeat. How can militancy be left to fester and foment given a weak Pakistani state reeling against the anti-American rants of the hordes that have taken to the streets in this first week of 2011? And how will Pakistan progress with its almost non-existent capacity to collect revenue and its lack of political will to enact necessary reforms? All this and more has been reiterated by American officials time and again. In a much-discussed statement the new American Ambassador, Cameron Munter, reminded Pakistanis that his country intrudes because “we care” and that the many programmes promoting women’s rights, education and other development goals would not be possible without the assistance provided by the United States.
Ironically, it is this very inability to leave Pakistan alone that is likely to make the war against militancy a completely rout. The attractions of aid do little more than promoting an unsustainable war economy in Islamabad, where a sliver of Pakistani society is quickly becoming adept at churning out slick status reports on real and imagined aid projects. Drone attacks, suspended in a grey moral universe where facts are elusive and the law irrelevant, provide a steady stream of resentment that insures a seemingly indefatigable cadre of fighters. Ordinary people, largely excluded from the bounty of aid, rise to the defence of any hero whose actions can be loosely interpreted as rising up against the hegemony of American power. The victims of drone attacks may appear insignificant to newly minted American experts who can toss around the names of this or that militant outfit, but their deaths appear magnified to a Pakistani public that has little else but hatred to hold on to.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Roedad Khan Columns	AATISH	News & Articles	10	Saturday, October 17, 2009 10:32 AM
British Boer Wars 1889 to 1902 in Africa	Rana Munawar Farooq	Topics and Notes	1	Friday, May 15, 2009 08:42 PM
SQL (Structured Query Language)	Janeeta	Computer Science	0	Saturday, January 19, 2008 01:25 PM
Data Base Design Glossary:	Najabat	Computers and Technology	0	Monday, November 27, 2006 02:58 PM

The Following User Says Thank You to imran bakht For This Useful Post:
Arthur (Saturday, January 22, 2011)

The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to imran bakht For This Useful Post:
Arthur (Saturday, January 22, 2011), Maroof Hussain Chishty (Friday, January 21, 2011)