K-L Bill

There is no doubt that every loan, all aid, and every financial commitment has some strings attached. No bank would lend money without certain conditions. So in a way the US has every right to attach some conditions to the bill. As a recipient country Pakistan will have to comply with the conditions. So there is no point in saying that the conditions are only binding on the US admin and Pakistan can go on its own merry way.
In principle, I agree with most of the known conditions. We don’t know if there are any unknown or hidden conditions that have caused so much consternation in the army. The other issue is that if these conditions apply only to the military aid then why are they tied with the civilian aid? Pakistan military had, in the past, on many occasions accepted conditional aid and since the conditions were not made public, the army had no problem with them.
Now we are dealing with the two issues here: why the US made such a huge diplomatic faux pas by making the conditions public, and secondly, has the Zardari admin again failed to correctly gauge the public and Army’s growing nationalism? Actually the hyper nationalism falsely channeled as Anti Americanism by the Pakistani media.

I think Zardari and his friends in the US are simply looking to provoke the army because they feel that they are secure due to the Obama Admin support.

How accurate is the assumption that the US would not allow the army to act against the civilians? I am not too sure about that. The Army can manage to sideline Zardari and his group with another set of civilians without flipping the cart upside down.
In my opinion, the path the Obama Admin and Zardari have chosen to confront the army is full of land-mines and in the end would actually hurt the civilian establishment.

Pakistan army’s connections with the Pentagon are well known and the army Generals issued statement only after meeting General McChrystal. Coincidently, McChrystal is a linchpin in another power struggle within the US establishment.

If Zardari really wants to confront the army, he has to appeal to the public and show his sincerity. Right now the hypothesis is that he is only fighting to keep his own and his party position and has no interest in continuing efforts to strengthen democracy in the country. That leaves him in a big hole and I think this current situation shows he is also under some false assumptions. This would actually cause many problems for the already fledgling efforts to restrict the army interference in the Pakistani affairs.
A bad and poorly thought out step and strategy by Zardari and his friends in the US who are clueless when it comes to dealing with the Pak army.

PAKISTAN: State faces crisis of purpose

I wrote the following in response to Oxford Analytica – Wednesday, October 1 2008 that came up for discussion recently at a blog. You can read the Oxford Analytica document here.http://bit.ly/1i1B17

“The process of constructing a new national consensus will certainly be long and painful.”

I cannot stop laughing when I read the so called analysts, after copy pasting different events from different places with links to some abysmally ridiculous and fallacious reporting, come up with the conclusion that we see above.
I am not even going to bother to find out what the “new national consensus” would be and what consensus is out there that would take a long and painful time to achieve. Vague statements like these tell us more about how naïve the authors are. I am not even sure this thesis authors have any clue about Pakistan beyond reading some newspaper articles and research by some other ignorant folks.
The authors have come up with three alternatives or should I say have proposed three national consensus open to Pakistan: Liberal democracy, China satellite, and finally the hallowed state.
The gist of the options is that Pakistan accept the secondary position vis-à-vis India. Now even if Pakistan does accept that position, how in the hell that is going to solve the multiple problems that Pakistan faces now or in the next five to ten years? Obviously, a fundamental change in Pakistan’s orientation is not going to happen overnight. Somehow the other the naïve authors of this report have presumed that either Zardari or the US would be able to achieve that.
There is a tendency in many Western authors to assume that the US is the most pure-hearted player in the area and has the power to make positive changes. Whether in Pakistan or anywhere else. Well, the recent history does not prove that. What the history does prove is that the US plays the game in far off countries to serve its own national interests and to achieve those interests it works with different local players. In Pakistan its choice for the last sixty has been the Pakistan army. Why would the US destroy its most allied ally in the area?
The authors come up with another unique plan in their second option, the China option. The authors absolutely have no clue of how the Chinese operate. There is no country in the world that is in China satellite. What does Pakistan have that the Chinese would confer this honor to Pakistan? The authors really are just mouthing an inane option without providing a clue of how the Chinese would accept Pakistan as a satellite state. There is no way the Pakistan army can play China and the US against one another. The Pak army is pretty strong but it just does not have the political muscle to play two powers against each other for its benefit. Things like this can only happen in fairytale and not in real life.
The last option is even more hilarious, the authors have defined the hallowed state as “A third scenario, compatible with parts of the others, is for the state in Pakistan to become hollowed out into a shell, creating space for non-state actors increasingly to pursue their own activities, unhindered by central authority.”
This is the height of stupidity. The Pakistani establishment is not willing to accommodate on even small intensity provincial autonomy but the stupid authors believe that the same establishment would allow Pakistan to become a hallowed state ruled by splinter groups such as the Taliban.
If this is the kind of analysis neophytes from Oxford do then I think Oxford’s future is not very bright.
Now I am not supporting the Pakistan army but the destruction of the political power of the Pakistan army could come from internal efforts or forced by some external powers. I don’t see India or the US capable of doing that in the near future.
The change in Pakistan most likely would come from the inside and not outside. The internal forces may get support from some external forces but in the current situation, I don’t see that happening and it would be best for the political forces in Pakistan both military and civilian, to come up with some solution where they can share power in some amicable manner.

War in Afghanistan

 

Demand Civilian Solutions for Afghanistan.
Greenwald’s documentary on Afghanistan Destroys the Logic of the War.
Rethink Afghanistan is a documentary by Robert Greenwald and will soon be released in 600 theaters across the US. You can watch some you tube clips here. http://rethinkafghanistan.com/ and read a write up at Alternet.
http://bit.ly/SGnMC

Personally, I don’t agree with many things in the movie, especially its depiction of the Taliban as some sort of nationalist force. The Taliban is not afghan nationalist. It is more like a bunch hoodlums without any coherent ideology.  Still the US can’t win the war in Afghanistan w/o pursuing some nonmilitary solutions.

Who is the decider?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/03/

afghanistan/

It’s upside-down for political leaders to defer to military decisions

By David Sirota

The coordinated assault sharpens that question about who "the deciders" should be — elected officials or the military?

The Washington establishment clearly believes the latter, and that’s no surprise. The war-mongering political class has called for presidential and congressional deference to military demands since Hollywood movies and anti-communist ideologues began countering the public’s "Vietnam Syndrome" by blaming that quagmire in Southeast Asia on elected officials. In the purest articulation of the argument, Ronald Reagan asserted in 1980 that Vietnam was lost not because of flaws in mission or strategy, but because politicians allegedly forced soldiers to fight "a war our government (was) afraid to let them win."

Certainly, Obama and Democratic congressional leaders may still end up defying public will by making the lamentable choice to escalate the Afghanistan war. But after recent quagmires justified by knee-jerk subservience to military prerogative, America should at least applaud these lawmakers for refusing to immediately rubber-stamp that course of action. In exploring all options, they are honoring the Constitution’s separation of powers — and our nation’s most democratic principles.

Guantanamo, Torture, Detainees

Many in the developing countries and especially in Pakistan may not understand the significance of the President Obama signing the Executive Order on Guantanamo, changing of interrogation rules, and the disposition of the detainees. It is a huge deal. I almost always avoid comparing Pakistan with the US as in my opinion these two countries are almost on different planets when it comes to human rights, civil rights and value of human in general. Though former President Bush left no stone unturned to bring the US at par with many underdeveloped countries that lack any structure for the civil and human rights.

Read More>>>>>
Comments on the next page