As Ayaz Amir noted in his column,

The 20th Amendment is a bit of a minor miracle – ensuring an independent election commission and neutral caretaker setups, going so far as to stipulate that if agreement fails between government and opposition on caretaker names, the final word will lie with the chief election commissioner. If this doesn’t stop the cry of election-rigging in Pakistan nothing ever will.

To the PML-N goes the principal credit for giving final shape to this amendment. It pushed long and hard and finally had its way. This was a far cry from its earlier stand when dark hints were thrown about resigning from the assemblies and forcing early elections. Different voices are often heard in the PML-N but ultimately, as we keep seeing, pragmatism prevails. The Memogate petition in the Supreme Court was an exception, good sense taking a back seat, but no point in pouring salt over an open wound.

The prime minister and his team, especially Khurshid Shah, also deserve credit for showing patience and not losing their cool, and not losing sight of the larger picture. Failure to agree on the 20th Amendment could have jeopardized much more, including the Senate election.

This goes along with a theme I’ve touched upon repeatedly during the last couple years. Namely, that there is a serious disjuncture in this government’s ability to get things done. The capital-p Politics stuff, they’re excellent at. The 18th amendment, marking the first time a head of state in Pakistan gave up power and privileges, for instance. Allowing political parties in FATA. The Balochistan package. The Gilgit-Baltistan reforms. The anti-women violence bill. And now the 20th amendment. On some major institutional and constitutional issues, they’ve done a good job. What they’re seriously bad at is the stuff that impacts people’s day-to-day lives, like the energy crisis or law and order.

To return to the main point of the post, the 20th amendment is an important achievement. You would think Imran Khan would be behind it, given his rhetoric in the past. After all, he’s said things like

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan declared that no general election would be tolerated prior to rectification of bogus electoral lists.

Addressing a joint press conference along with Air Marshal (r) Asghar Khan of Tehreek-e-Istaqlal (TI) on Monday at the latter’s residence, he announced his strong resolve to struggle for an independent Election Commission

He said that he was the man who had introduced neutral umpires in cricket and would also continue his efforts for an independent Election Commission.

So when the cause of independent election commission is served, why is this his reaction?

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairperson Imran Khan said on Tuesday that the 20th Amendment was stacked up against his party in particular because PTI was becoming a real electoral threat to both, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

“The 20th Amendment was just passed by the PPP and PML-N to strengthen their hold on power and to prevent PTI from sweeping the next general elections,” said Khan.

Strongly rejecting the amendment, Khan said that PML-N continues to support the wrongdoings of the government so that both the PPP and PML-N could have a share in the corrupt power structures prevailing at present.

Calling it a fraud and violation of the Constitution and democratic principles, Imran said the amendment condones elections carried out against the provisions of the Constitution.

“A complete fraud has been committed by the government in collusion with the main opposition party,” Imran stated.

Really? “A complete fraud?” That’s your opinion?

Always ripe for a head-scratching comment, Immy is. Photo: AP

It’s obvious that Imran Khan is being disingenuous here. Even he can’t be that stupid. He obviously believes this is a good step in the right direction, but refuses to say so because he can’t bring himself to say anything remotely nice about the PPP and PML-N. It’s a little churlish and a little immature.

Memo to PTI: sometimes your political opponents do worthy things. A quiet nod of appreciation, even amidst the cacophony of Pakistani politics, would not be remiss.

Empires of the Indus: From Tibet to Pakistan, the story of a river by Alice Albinia

Really lovely read, this. Part political history, part travel diary, part long form essay, it’s just a beautifully rendered story about the Indus, its past, its future, the people who’ve relied on it for millenia, the civilizations it’s spawned, the wars its seen, how its drying up in Sindh, what China’s uber-development model means for it, and a gazillion other things I’m forgetting.  I really enjoyed this. You should buy it and read it.

Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi by Steve Inskeep

Gotta say, I was a bit underwhelmed by this. Maybe it’s because I was so, so looking forward to it that it couldn’t match my expectations. After all, I’m always on the lookout for books and articles about Karachi, mainly because it so rarely receives serious, sustained treatment from academics or journalists.

My main critique of the book is that it doesn’t really dive into Karachi the way one might expect the author to. There are, broadly speaking, two ways one can provide a great deal of depth. One is by studying extensively the academic scholarship on a region or phenomenon, and then placing one particular subject in that context. The other is by spending lots and lots of time with locals, living and breathing their lives, and writing up ones impressions after that.

I think Inskeep goes for the latter option but it’s just not as powerful a story as I would’ve hoped. For instance, it really pales in comparison to Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City on Mumbai, in which I felt Mehta really got to know the characters inside out which in turn allowed the reader to know the characters inside out. There’s a superficial feel to Instant City.

The one area where Inskeep definitely deserves credit is explaining how Karachi developed as a geographical construct at the neighborhood level. That’s something you don’t really see out there. But I found most everything else about the book quite meh.

Football against the enemy by Simon Kuper

I’m generally very interested in how socio-political identities form and are mediated through existing institutional and social structures, so this book was right up my alley. It’s concerned with how football matters beyond the pitch, and how the sport interacts with identities and socio-political cleavages. Why does Barcelona mean what it does to Catalunya? Why is Rangers-Celtic such a serious rivalry? What role did football play in the unification of South Africa post-apartheid?

I liked this book for the most part, but there was something throughout it that kind of bothered me., Kuper takes as a given the existing explanations for why football matters to a certain populace, rather than problematizing it and being skeptical of what he’s told by locals. It’s just something that gnawed at me throughout. I would also add that the chapter on Argentina and how its military junta (mis)appropriated football to their ends is fair enough regarding the facts, but there’s something about the tone. Kuper is a Briton writing in the early 1990s, with (presumably) the memory of the Falklans war fresh in his mind, not to mention that World Cup game where that Maradona chap scored those two goals, and it’s very clear that he adopts mainstream British attitudes toward Argentina and Argentine football.

Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark

Thrill a minute, this book. Before I say anything else, I’d like to commend the authors for meticulously tracing about forty years of records, statements, archives, letters, memos and god knows what else to put this together. It’s incredibly well-researched and kudos to the authors for that.

This book is not just about A.Q. Khan, though he obviously features prominently in it. One thing that caught me by surprise (amongst others) is the extent to which the Reagan administration did Pakistan’s bidding in the 1980s. I mean, I knew they looked the other way and stuff while we were producing nukes. I had no idea how that process actually played out, until I read this. You won’t believe some of the shenanigans those guys were up to: covering up CIA findings, picking fights with other agencies, putting the Pentagon and State at odds with other arms of the U.S. government, knowingly lying to Congress about Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities, destroying careers and lives…it’s all there. And it’s quite unbelievable.

There’s obviously a lot of information on the Pakistan side as well, so this is a very valuable resource for anyone doing research in the areas of nuclear proliferation, acquisition, and the nuclear balance in South Asia. One thing worth noting is how crazy and nutty and evil Generals Hamid Gul and Mirza Aslam Beg come across. They’re the type of characters only the Zaid Hamid types like at the best of times, but even against the baseline of low expectations, they come across really badly. Their antics from around the time Zia died/was killed to about halfway through Nawaz Sharif’s first term really have to be read to be fathomed.

Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven

This book caused a lot of angst amongst people I respect and admire in the Pakistan intelligentsia but I didn’t quite understand why. Is it too favorable to the military’s point of view? Yes, undoubtedly. It puts a halo around their head in a way that most liberal types probably don’t appreciate. But I do think the extent of his generosity to the khakis has been overstated; this certainly doesn’t read like a 500 page Ejaz Haider column, if that’s what your impression is.

I recall when it came out that someone (sorry, I forget who) made a really big deal about Lieven using “democracy” in quote marks to talk about Pakistan. Well, the reason is very clear, and Lieven sets it out in the first few pages of the book: democracy does not imply constitutionalism or liberalism, and so while Pakistan may be a procedural democracy, it has a ways to go to become anything resembling a rights-based constitutional state. That’s all the point of the quote marks was, as I understood it.

There’s plenty Lieven either gets wrong or doesn’t cover at all, but his central point — that patronage is the oil that greases the wheels of the Pakistani socio-political system, and that this is both a blessing and a curse — is well taken. I would also commend him for getting out of Islamabad and Lahore, walking the streets and talking to “ordinary” Pakistanis, which very few foreigners do when writing about Pakistan.

The overall point I would make is that this book is aimed at a very specific audience: the OSD or State Department Pakistan-Desk staffer or the New York Times op-ed writer who thinks Pakistan is on the verge of collapse any minute now. He is trying to disabuse them of that notion. And he does a fairly good job of it. If you don’t know Pakistan very well but would like to learn more, this book is a decent place to start because it covers a lot of bases. It doesn’t cover any one area very well but that’s to be expected of a book of this type.

Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President by Edward McClelland

This book’s narrative ends in 2004, so if you’re looking for any insight into Obama’s run-in to the presidency, you should look elsewhere. No, this book is about Obama’s time as an Illinois State Senator, and in particular his story in Chicago — from his time as a lawyer to community organizer to politician (one of the lessons of the book is those three professions, at least in the way Obama practiced them, are not so different as they first appear).

I really enjoyed this one. It gives you really valuable insight into one of the central questions about Obama as a politician, that is, the mismatch between his soaring rhetoric and his incrementalist style. I know it’s said that politicians “campaign in poetry and govern in prose” but Obama really takes that to the extreme, and this book gives some answers as to why. It traces his political development, and shows that throughout his life (at least until the presidency), Obama’s main challenge has been to convince middle-class, moderate voters that he is not a liberal elitist in love with himself and his fancy Harvard law degree. As a consequence, he extends a hand to his opponents to convince them of his good intentions, even when they are uninterested in compromise. Moreover, his accomplishments in the Illinois Senate, limited though they are, were as a result of his adhering strongly to his oft-cited “don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good” thing.

There’s a lot of lessons here for people who wish to understand Obama, the man and the politician. I’d recommend it pretty strongly if you’re at all interested in the subject matter.

Fermat’s Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World’s Greatest Mathematical Problem by Simon Singh

Honestly, I don’t remember much about this book, given I read it about 4-5 months ago. One thing I do recall appreciating was that it was a lot less technical than (a) Singh’s other book I’ve read, The Codebook, and (b) what I expected. It’s mostly just the story of Fermat’s Last Theorem, which as Wikipedia will tell you, states

no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ for any integer value of n greater than two.

It goes into the ups and downs Andrew Wiles faced while proving the theorem, thought to be one of math’s toughest problems. Can’t say too much else about it, I’m afraid (though I have to say I was a teeny tiny bit disappointed that Wiles turned out to be a regular dude; I always like to imagine professional mathematicians as crazy guys with long hair who live with their mother and eat only cheese, kinda like this guy).

Now, it’s trivially true that some partners and/or rivals will be more important than others, depending on history, geography, the distribution of power, and so on. This much is true for all countries.

What’s unique, or at least noteworthy, about the situation in Pakistan is the near-absence of other areas and regions of the world. Think about it: when’s the last time you heard about an important state visit to/from Brazil? Or Australia? Or South Korea?

I don’t know the first thing about investment and money, but I’ve always heard the phrase “diversifying your portfolio”. Well, Pakistan’s portfolio is not very diverse at all. It puts us at a disadvantage, in that we are more vulnerable to small changes in each of the four aforementioned states.

Furthermore, we leave a lot of potential gains on the table by ignoring different parts of the world. Consider textiles. Pakistan’s textile industry constitutes about sixty percent of its exports. It is a massive, massive part of our economy. So with good reason, we have approached the U.S. (unsuccessfully) and the EU (successfully, it seems) to loosen tariffs and trade barriers on textiles.

Now, with respect to our successful lobbying with the EU, this is great news. The reason this is great news is that there are a number of countries in the EU which, presumably, would very much like our textiles. The following is a list culled from the CIA World Factbook, with countries whose “main” imports include textiles. The EU countries are shaded orange.

Source data: CIA World Factbook

Of course, there happens to be another region of the world that would, presumably, very much like our textiles. Here’s the list from above again, but this time with African countries shaded blue.

Source data: CIA World Factbook

Now, it’s perfectly plausible that we have, in fact, engaged in a lot of lobbying efforts for more trade with Africa, and I just haven’t heard about it. But I’ve never really heard anyone else talk about it either. My guess is our economic, political and diplomatic relationships with African countries, particularly the non Arab ones, are essentially dormant.

I’m only using textiles (and Africa, for that matter) as an illustration of a broader point. Pakistan needs to do a better job of engaging with states out there on the basis of mutual interests. Maybe it’s not trade, but rather cultural exchange programs. Or student scholarships, or sports tours, or whatever. There’s a whole lot of foreign policy beyond drones, war, terrorism, and oil, and there’s a whole lot of countries out there not named the U.S., China, Saudi Arabia, and India. I hope the new power team from LUMS in charge of our foreign ministry grapples with this issue a little bit.

By this logic, the Taliban are a nationalist force, standing up for their nation, which is alternatively considered the Pashtun nation or the Afghan state, depending on one’s own beliefs and opinions on the boundaries of their political identity.

With that as background, here’s an excerpt from a piece by Ijaz Khan in the Friday Times:

Nationalist movements promote and protect national language, culture and identity through political expression. They aim to control their affairs without outside interference. They are about managing their economic resources by themselves. They may want autonomy within a multinational state in order to structure it to protect their identity, or in certain cases for an independent state of their own.

Taliban meet none of these criteria in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and therefore cannot be considered a Pashtun nationalist movement. They take ideological and political inspiration from Arabs and other non-Pashtuns. They have consciously, as a matter of policy, targeted different cultural traits of Pashtuns, like tribal councils and folk music; they are not concerned about the language and promote mostly Arabic and/or interestingly, Urdu; Economic resources or their control is not their concern; neither is any political or administrative manifestation of Pashtun identity their goal.

They have killed a large number of traditional Pashtun elders in FATA and banned the Jirga as means of dispute settlement in areas under their influence. They have been eliminating the Pashtun way of life.

Isn’t it instructive that scholars who actually know the area, such as Ijaz Khan (University of Peshawar) or the oft-cited Farhat Taj, completely and unequivocally reject the Imran Khan thesis? This idea that the Taliban are somehow representative of the Pashtun nation, and are fighting and dying for them, is just silly.

Within the study of civil war in political science, non-state movements are generally divided between ethnically focused and ideologically focused. Obviously this is often a too-rigid categorization, but it’s useful because the two types of mobilizations often have different goals.

Those movements that are ethnically motivated are generally what we call nationalist movements. These tend to be focused heavily on a particular piece of territory, since group identity and territory have a very strong relationship. So if all xs are concentrated in region X, then it’s unlikely that the xs will launch a movement, violent or otherwise, in regions other than X. This is because (a) they don’t care about regions other than X; in fact, their mobilizations are often motivated by demanding increasing separation from X and non-X areas, and (b) there’s not enough xs in the non-X region for them to congeal in a movement worth worrying about. Examples include the Tamils in northern Sri Lanka or the Bengalis in former East Pakistan.

Those that are ideologically motivated tend to be focused on control of the state or political unit at large. They are not interested in controlling a sliver of territory, they are interested in re-orienting the state. The important thing to note is that granting a piece of territory to the agents of the movement is unlikely to satisfy them, since their movement is not based on the control of territory in the first place. Examples include the Communist Party of China or the various right-wing militias operating in Latin America during the Cold War.

This distinction matters because it gets at the heart of the debate on the war in Pakistan and whether it is worth fighting. If you believe that the Taliban and their local affiliates are nationalists, then it makes sense to give them control of various districts or maybe even a whole province, in the hope that that’s what they want, and will therefore cause them to stop mounting violent challenges to the state.

If you believe that the Taliban and their local affiliates are ideologues, then it doesn’t make sense to give them control of various districts because they will only use that control to consolidate their material capabilities to launch yet further assaults on the state and its citizens.

I wish we lived in a world where the Taliban were indeed nationalists because it would mean that there is fairly self-evident solution to the violence. Unfortunately we do not and there is not. Imran Khan, however, continues to believe that they are and that there is. Reasonable people can disagree on the extent to which force should be used, what type of force (air power vs shock troops vs full-blown incisions) is to be used, how negotiations should be constructed, which actors should be invited to the negotiations, and so on. But no reasonable person can believe that the “war can be ended in 90 days” or that the Taliban are likely to go quietly into the sunset if you hand over a bunch of territory to them.

These predictable, orderly miracles usually go something like this: Pakistan hem and haw for three or four days, dropping catches, playing stupid shots, bowling wides, getting wickets off no-balls, and so on. The opposition, usually a good but not great team such as early 90s New Zealand or mid 1990s England, have done the hard work, and are poised to finish off a game with one or two sessions of good, solid play. And then they get blown away.

I choose that metaphor very carefully. Watching Wasim and Waqar and Saqlain and Mushie and Shoaib in their heyday was a little like watching Omar Little in his element — it was fun, but it was also very violent. There was something comically brutal about the way they went about their business. Collapses against that Pakistan team were gory murder scenes: the stumps splayed, batsmen hopping, fielders rendered unnecessary.

Yesterday was something very different. It was a choke, a suffocation. Pakistan essentially shut England in an airtight room, closed the windows and doors, threw the keys away, and waited. I’ve never really seen anything like it.

Forget the 10 wickets for a second. Just think about the drip-drip-drip of those first fourteen overs — where we got zero wickets but conceded only 18 runs. Those fourteen overs set the stage for everything that came after. It was marked by brilliant bowling and even more brilliant captaincy. Misbah’s field placings were so intelligent — he simultaneously had attacking fielders, single-saving fielders, and boundary-saving fielders. You had to look twice to make sure we hadn’t cheated by sneaking on three extra guys on the ground. One common refrain from the commentators was that England were going nowhere. But that’s because Misbah left them nowhere to go. This was Stephen Fleming and Mark Taylor level captaincy, maybe better.

And once one fell, you just got the feeling — apologies for channeling Ravi Shastri — that one would lead to two and more. England’s rejigging of the batting order meant that once Cook got out, their next four wickets were the cheapest ones until you got to the end: Strauss, Bell, Pietersen, and Morgan are all either out of form, not particularly good against spin, or not particularly good in general.It gave us the opening we needed.

I didn’t think 145 would be enough though, certainly at the beginning of the innings. It’s such a low total that you just need one half partnership, say 50 or 60, and the game’s over. One wayward spell, one dropped catch, one silly decision, and it was done. But somehow, some way, England never managed it.

But talking about what happened is less important than talking about what it meant. There’s been enough written about our trials and tribulations over the last few years, both on and off the cricket field, so I won’t rehash all of that right now. Instead, I want to make a slightly different but related point.

When people use cliches like “cricket means a lot to Pakistan and Pakistanis” they obscure as much as they reveal. We know that cricket matters but how does cricket matter? It’s very difficult to explain to outsiders. The way I think about is this: very few of us actually know international cricketers personally, but we all act like we do. I know that sounds strange, but hear me out.

The point is that by consuming so much information about cricketers, their exploits, and their stories through magazine profiles, Cricinfo Statsguru, fan forums, rumors, Youtube videos of them dancing, and everything else available publicly (and some things that are not), Pakistanis feel like they have a pretty good sense of who their cricketing representatives are. We start forming a picture of their personalities and their background, and start pigeonholing them into our own social fabric. For example, when I see a bunch of londas on motorbikes on Seaview, I think “there goes Shoaib Akhtar!” When I hear stories about some sifarshi getting ahead in his company, I think “Ah, an Imran Farhat then.” And so on.

So yesterday, when I saw the entire team jumping in each other’s arms and hugging each other and grinning their impish grins, it made me so, so happy.

No words necessary. Photo: AP

It was such a powerful experience. I could see what it meant to them because I had internalized the pain they felt over the last couple of years. Their struggles had become our struggles because, for better or worse, that’s how Pakistanis live.

It really was an experience I’ll never forget. Combined with the delirium that comes from being awake at an absurd hour, I got really emotional. I got into bed at 7:30 a.m., but not before shaking the W awake, and telling her that we won a game we had no business competing in (she was not amused or appreciative, but whatever, I needed to tell her for my sake if not hers).

I was clearly not alone. Facebook and Twitter, as they are wont to do at times such as these, blew up. Evidently all the main channels back home led their bulletins with the match. I am sure we have played better cricket in my lifetime, but this may be, alongside Melbourne in 1992 and Lords in 2009, our most meaningful win in a long, long time.

I think it’s important that we just cherish this win, revel in it, and remember it. I hope we don’t start thinking of this as a jumping off point for something grander, because, let’s be honest, that’s not how things work around here. Things are just as likely to go horribly pear-shaped from here as anything else: maybe a power struggle ensues when Whatmore takes over; maybe Mohsin Khan doesn’t go quietly into the sunset; maybe a couple of senior players get jealous of all the Misbah adulation in the media; maybe we go to Australia, South Africa or England and discover the truth that other than Younis and Azhar, none of our batters are good enough for those pitches. It’s better to not worry about the future, enjoy the present, and thank those who gave it to us: #TeamMisbah.

I can’t decide what it is about this interview that I love the most. Is it that KG started talking before Craig Sager had even asked a question, then realizing thirty seconds in that he was being asked a question? Is it that KG was swaying and shaking like a heroin addict? Is it that he went from saying “bar fight” eight times to wishing his teammate on the birth of a child to complimenting Sager’s suit?

By the way, it should be noted that were Kevin Garnett in an actual bar fight, he would most likely jump up and down a lot, yell a lot, and find the smallest guy (or maybe a chair) to take on.

The funny thing about England-Pakistan cricket is that is has essentially become a caricature of itself. Even when everyone, cognizant of the history between the sides, tries to turn the temperature down and take the steam out of relations, some conflict has to arise. It’s almost like it cannot be helped. It is the Groundhog Day of cricket series.

We’ve seen this movie before, right? Pakistan defeats England using a skill the latter cannot understand, much less execute. Whispers begin, aspersions are cast. First, we only kick their ass thanks to biased home umpires (I am sure David Constant and the Palmer brothers were paragons of fairness and impartiality). Then we only kick their asses because we tamper with the ball (never mind that Wasim and Waqar, as Geoff Boycott memorably claimed, would have bowled England out using an orange). And now we’re only kicking their asses because our best bowler is a chucker.

Is this an unfair reading of the last two days? I would submit to you that it is not. As long as Bob Willis and a bunch of internet warriors on comment boards were the only ones making the case that Ajmal is bowling illegally, I let it slide. Who cares what an old crank and online nobodies think?

But once Andy Flower waded in, well, that’s a whole other issue. When he says what he did — and please, do not let his clever way of phrasing his accusation of cheating distract from the fact that it was an accusation of cheating — it represents an escalation. Andy Flower is the England coach. He speaks for England.

Of course, it’s important to note that other personalities who speak for England, from Matt Prior to Andrew Strauss, have (publicly) denied that there’s anything to complain about Ajmal’s action. Media men and ex-cricketers such as Nasser Hussain have (guardedly) backed Ajmal. So this is not a full-court assault as 1992 was. But it doesn’t have to be to leave a very bitter taste in Pakistan fans’ mouths.

The worst thing about this situation is the nature of the target. I can’t think of a single more genial, big-hearted, fun guy than Saeed Ajmal. He always plays the game with a smile on his face. His interviews have achieved cult-like status on Youtube. He’s just a genuine dude. I challenge you to watch this bit of an interview Ajmal did on Geo, and not feel equal parts love and affection (for Ajmal) and contempt (for the host), as Ajmal talks about his dad dying (starts around 32:00).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDej74dU49M&feature=youtu.be&t=31m53s

Ajmal has actually had a very un-Pakistani route to stardom. For one thing, he’s a spinner. I can’t think of a single other instance in our history when our best bowler was a spinner; it’s just not the way things are done in Pakistan. For another, he didn’t break into the team until he was past 30. When you juxtapose that with the fact that, on the list of the youngest test debutants of all time, Pakistanis occupy the top three spots, and ten of the top twenty, Ajmal’s uniqueness becomes clear.

I should also note that Ajmal is in a run of form rivalled by few Pakistani spinners, ever. In that sense, the timing of these complaints is, shall we say, more than convenient. Abdul Qadir is universally (and I believe wrongly) thought of as Pakistan’s best ever spinner; Ajmal is ranked higher than Qadir ever was, and has more ratings points than Qadir ever did.

Source: ICC rankings

His comparisons with Saqlain Mushtaq and Mushtaq Ahmed (criminally underrated by Pakistani fans, even retrospectively) are also interesting viewing. Saqlain never had a ranking as high as Ajmal, for whatever it’s worth. Mushtaq did; he was the world’s best bowler at one time.

Source: ICC rankings

Source: ICC rankings

I may be tempting fate here, but I really don’t think this chucking hullabaloo is likely to effect Ajmal. He may have a friendly exterior but the dude has balls of steel. He had the mental strength to stay with cricket despite not making it until an age when most Pakistanis are retired. He had the mental strength to deal with family tragedies and carry on playing for Pakistan. He had the mental strength to recover from that Hussey innings. He stood up to some fearsome fast bowling on England’s last tour, with essentially no batting technique or talent, and made a fifty accompanied by a host of bruises all over his body. He’s dealt with chucking allegations before. This is not going to faze him.

Hero. Photo: AP/Matt Dunham

But Ajmal’s ability to withstand this assault is, in many ways, besides the point. The crux of the issue is the presence of the assault in the first place. Why did Flower say what he did? Did he really think the perceived benefit of playing mindgames was worth the cost, given our history with England? Does he care?

Here’s what I want to happen: Ajmal to take another 10-fer in Sharjah. Ajmal to walk off the ground with the ball raised in his palm. And Ajmal to look up at the English dressing room and smile that Duncan Fletcher smile that so incensed Ricky Ponting in 2005. That would be sweet.

So these Republican debates are very useful in that regard, because they give me a sense of what’s going on in that world. Not a completely accurate sense, obviously – there’s only so much you can infer from the reality-TV-ized version of politics that plays out on our screen every few weeks – but some sense. For instance, before watching these debates, I had no idea Ben Bernanke was such a hated (or even known) figure on the right. After watching these debates, these google search suggestions for Bernanke made a whole lot more sense:

This then leads me to the point of this post, which is Newt Gingrich’s racially charged comments in the South Carolina debate two nights ago. Check them out for yourself:

Now, there’s a couple of things to be said about this. An innocuous reading of Gingrich’s comments would be: well, what’s the issue? He wants to help black people find jobs! Even if they happen to be janitorial jobs for children in the very schools that they’re supposed to be learning, they’re still jobs! Black people should be thrilled!

Of course, no one can do a better job of skewering this view than Jon Stewart, so I would strongly encourage you to watch this clip as well as this one.

Moreover, it’s hard for someone not in the US or relatively well-versed in American politics to understand why his comments were so over the top. This was not some innocent exhortation for disadvantaged minorities to help themselves. This was dog-whistle racial politics at its finest. By calling Obama a “food stamp President” and reinforcing the belief that minorities can do better in the US simply by working harder, Gingrich was pressing exactly the right buttons, given his audience (southern Republicans). As Charles Blow writes,

Gingrich seems to understand the historical weight of the view among some southern whites, many of whom have migrated to the Republican party, that blacks are lazy and addicted to handouts. He is able to give voice to those feelings without using those words. He is able to make people believe that a fundamentally flawed and prejudicial argument that demeans minorities is actually for their uplift. It is Gingrich’s gift: He is able to make ill will sound like good will.

Or as James Fallows notes in a post I strongly encourage you to read:

Newt Gingrich knows exactly what he is doing when he calls Obama the “food stamp” president, just as Ronald Reagan knew exactly what he was doing when talking about “welfare Cadillacs.” There are lots of other ways to make the point about economic hard times — entirely apart from which person and which policies are to blame for today’s mammoth joblessness, and apart from the fact that Congress sets food stamp policies. You could call him the “pink slip president,” the “foreclosure president,” the “Walmart president,” the “Wall Street president,” the “Citibank president,” the “bailout president,” or any of a dozen other images that convey distress. You decide to go with “the food stamp president,” and you’re doing it on purpose.

If Joe Lieberman had been elected, I would be wary of attacks on his economic policy that called him “the cunning, tight-fisted president.” If Henry Cisneros had or Ken Salazar does, I would notice arguments about ineffectiveness phrased as “the mañana administration.” If Gary Locke were in office, then “the Manchurian candidate” jokes that had been used on John Huntsman would have a different edge. And so on. This reader may not recognize it as a dog whistle, but I have no doubt that Newt Gingrich knows what it is. I don’t think that Gingrich has had a racist-style political career; on the contrary. But he knows what this language does.

The second thing to note about Gingrich’s comments is the shrieking joy in the crowd that greeted them. I honestly should not be surprised anymore — this is the same party whose debates have prompted wild applause at sick people dying because of a lack of insurance — but I am, for whatever reason. And this goes full circle to my comments at the beginning of the post. These debates and the crowd reactions in them give me a great insight as to what the Republican base thinks and feels about certain issues. From booing the fact that Romney’s father was born in Mexico to cheering for Bernanke’s treason trial, from electric fences to torture, it’s illuminating. And then I have to remind myself that this is one of the two major parties in the most powerful country in the world, and that’s when I bury my head in my hands.

What amazes me is that even discounting one’s moral and ethical revulsion at rhetoric like this, don’t Republicans realize that if they keep saying stuff like this, black people won’t vote for them? That if they keep demonizing Hispanics and immigration, that Latinos won’t vote for them? That if they publicly call for racial profiling of Muslims, that Muslims won’t vote for them? I have been taught in graduate school the remarkable tenet that political parties like attracting votes. The Republicans have a very strange way of going about it.

They turned out to be right.

I remember when rumors about Blackwater agents in Pakistan first started. The right wing press and email forwards were filled with breathless news about these 6’4″ American agents running around Pakistani cities, doing intelligence and security work for the CIA. Oh, how I laughed. Silly, silly right wingers. Blackwater in Pakistan? Please stop.

They turned out to be right.

And then there was the “terrorists in Pakistan are supported by the CIA and Mossad” conspiracy theory. Fools, I shouted. Why must we blame outsiders when the problem is staring us in the face?

Oops.

I now fully expect the following dominos to fall:

1. 9/11 was an inside job.

2. Asif Zardari really did ask Asifa to make that phone call to Benazir.

3. The floods were indeed caused by India.

4. NFP and Najam Sethi are CIA agents.

In all seriousness, stuff like this really does raise the question of how seemingly implausible and crazy scenarios actually come to fruition. It certainly gives me pause, that’s for sure.

Anyway, I urge you to go and read the story. It’s basically only tangentially relevant to Pakistan. But it’s very, very interesting for the following reasons:

1. You’re starting to see some real exasperation within the intelligence and security communities in the U.S. with its putative ally, Israel. I wonder if episodes like this, along with the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, portend a rupture within the U.S. establishment on the question of Israel, with the Congress and media on one side and the defence and intelligence communities on the other. If you think I am exaggerating, just go ahead and read the story. I haven’t seen U.S. intelligence officials express that much angst since the last time I read a story on Pakistan. You’ve got quotes like

“It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with,” the intelligence officer said. “Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn’t give a damn what we thought.”

and

“But while false-flag operations are hardly new, they’re extremely dangerous. You’re basically using your friendship with an ally for your own purposes. Israel is playing with fire. It gets us involved in their covert war, whether we want to be involved or not.”

and

“This was stupid and dangerous,” the intelligence official who first told me about the operation said. “Israel is supposed to be working with us, not against us. If they want to shed blood, it would help a lot if it was their blood and not ours. You know, they’re supposed to be a strategic asset. Well, guess what? There are a lot of people now, important people, who just don’t think that’s true.”

2. I think it’s very, very plausible that Israel is trying to bait Iran into doing something stupid, such that the outbreak of hostilities can be blamed on them. It’s a bit like Thomas Schelling’s “last clear chance to avoid war” model, except in this case, Israel doesn’t want to avoid war. It just doesn’t want to “officially” start it.

3. Even if Israel is successful in drawing Iran (and the U.S.) into a war that purportedly compromises Iran’s nuclear program, what exactly happens afterward? As Elbridge Colby and Austin Long argue:

But perhaps the most important argument against attacking Iran has received less attention. That is that none of the attack proponents can give a sensible answer to the question General David Petraeus posed at the beginning of the Iraq war: “How does this end?” Kroenig and other advocates for war note, correctly, that a strike against Iran could do substantial damage to Iran’s program. But they fail to explain how the United States will prevent Iran from simply restarting its program, this time in deadly earnest. Moreover, they don’t explain why such strikes won’t contribute to the immediate rallying of the Iranian people around the otherwise reviled regime.

If I’m Iran, I go full-speed ahead on trying to develop full blown nuclear weapons capability (none of this latent capability stuff they’ve been toying with) at the same time as staying the hell away from any other provocative gestures that would give the Israelis (and Americans to an extent) the excuse they’re looking for.

One thing I would like to emphasize about Leo is that he is very, very fun to watch. That may seem a bit obvious but one can often be very good at one’s job and also be a bit boring or dry (think Sampras or Duncan or Kallis or McGrath). But not with him. Essentially every single time I watch him play, he makes me happy to be alive. I’m very serious when I say that. He brings a joy to people’s lives that would not exist otherwise.

Part of this, I think, is due to Messi himself loving the game in a boyish, playground kind of way. While the scientific and professional side of sports is all-encompassing — diet, nutrition, training, sleeping, even one’s sexual habits are now dictated by the exigencies of being a modern athlete — there do exist the odd exceptions. I have no doubt that Messi takes training and diet seriously. I also have no doubt that he’d rather not bother with it all. At the end of the day, he’s still the kid who likes to run rings around the opposition, the same way he was as a five year old.

I remember the only time I got to watch Barcelona live, in an exhibition match in Seattle. It gave me a chance to watch the players warm up before kickoff. The two players who took the stretching and pre-match exercises most seriously were Xavi and Puyol, as you might expect. The guy who took them least seriously was Messi. He trotted around, pretended to stretch without actually doing so, kicked a few balls, and generally just messed around without appearing too disrespectful to the coaching staff. He just wanted to play. None of this fancy sports engineering stuff. Just blow the whistle and let’s go.

His enthusiasm for the game, and only the game, is so refreshing and joyful. He’s still a street player in so many ways, a guy unaffected by agents and supermodels and pressure and the media. He just plays football. Long may it continue.

Anyway, having seen my fair share of Messi videos on Youtube, I can assure you that the one below is the best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=ypAWhttKfok

Side note: It is very clear from the voting for the award that certain countries — I’m looking at you, Azerbaijan, Burundi, New Zealand, and Pakistan, amongst others — should have their privilege of mattering for these awards revoked. Some truly shocking votes, really.

For me, the Taseer assassination symbolized the end of the game. It’s when I gave up hope. It’s when I sharply realized that even if Pakistan, the state and the society both, take forward steps on pocket-book issues like electricity supply or jobs, the fabric and essence of the state was beyond repair. There was nothing to be done about it.

The reason there was and is nothing to be done about it is because those who wish for less tolerance and pluralism in Pakistan can and do use guns and bombs to get across their point, and those that demand greater tolerance and pluralism in Pakistan cannot. That’s really the end of it. When a Salman Taseer disagrees with a Mumtaz Qadri, he issues polite statements in the press and on Twitter and maybe shows up to Aasia Bibi’s jail cell in a show of support. When a Mumtaz Qadri disagrees with a Salman Taseer, he pumps 30 bullets into his back. That’s the difference.

When you add the disgusting reaction we saw to the Taseer murder — from lawyers throwing rose petals on Qadri to TV show hosts justifying it to parliamentarians refusing to lead funeral prayers for Taseer — one realized just how high the deck was stacked against the rest of us. Insofar as it provided clarity about our collective mindset, the Taseer assassination was useful. No one was allowed any illusions after it.

Nothing that has happened since then has changed my mind on this. The Shahbaz Bhatti killing exacerbated this sense of powerlessness and impotence. As the cliche goes, it is what it is. We can try to nibble away at the margins, but the regressiveness, religiosity, and fascistic aspects of our state and society are not going anywhere any time soon. This is what happens when you introduce stupid laws and lie about your own history in textbooks and impose religion as a binding force from above. We can be horrified about all of this, but none of us should be surprised.

RIP Salman Taseer. Photo: AP

Many of Karachi’s residents, of course, did not quite have freedom of movement last night. The authorities made sure to block almost all thoroughfares connecting the rich parts of the city with the rest of the city. When these arrangements first started in the ’90s, they were highly circumscribed; essentially the main Sea View road used to be blocked, mainly to ward off motorcycles with their silencers taken out, but everything else was okay. Yesterday was just above and beyond that. Intentionally or not, the walls between the elite in Karachi and the rest are just getting higher.

Youths enjoy a camel ride as the sun sets in Karachi, Pakistan on Saturday, Dec. 31. Pic: AP.

It’s one thing to have inequality in the material aspects of everyday life. So when we have loadshedding, the elite put their generators on, and everybody else sweats. When we have security issues, the elite get private armed guards, and everybody else gets robbed. And so on.

But what I saw yesterday was qualitatively different. This was not just about the rich having more and better things (something which is true in every country in the world). It was about the rich having the right to have fun and the rest not.

Again, I am not claiming that the traffic police is designing their policies in order to exacerbate social and economic divisions in the city. But that is certainly an implication of their policies. On the margins, roadblocks on every second main road discourage people from different parts of town to visit the sea on New Year’s, a time honored tradition for many. It appears now that even the sea is only for the rich (the ironic thing is that the rich never actually visit Sea View beach themselves, instead preferring Hawkesbay or French beach).

Imran Khan is personally popular –> higher chances of success in elections for PTI –> more big-name turncoats join the party –> higher chances of success in elections for PTI –> virtuous cycle

To a large extent, this story is true, but I think it glosses over something that needs to be mentioned. The question is: who are the turncoats joining the party (step 3), and where are they coming from?

While a comprehensive list of all the turncoats that have joined PTI from other parties doesn’t seem to exist**, I’ve at least been able to get some sense of who these people are and which parties they’re coming from. These are the last few results for “joins PTI” on Google Pakistan.

Javed Hashmi — PML(N)

Sardar Aseff Ahmed Ali — PPP

Qaiser Ahmed Sheikh — Independent

Syed Iftikhar Hussain Gilani — PPP

Shah Mahmood Qureshi — PPP

Masood Sharif Khattak — PPP

Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri — PML(Q)

Azam Khan Swati — JUI(F)

Air Marshal Asghar Khan — Tehrik-e-Istaqlal

Mian Khaliq-ur-Rehman –  PML(Q)

Javed Hashmi, waving goodbye to his party, part of a larger trend

One thing that I suggested yesterday to a couple of friends, and have been happy to see borne out in the data (at least so far), is that the absolute lack of turncoats from (a) the Jamaat-e-Islami, and (b) the MQM. I don’t think either is a coincidence.

For me, of the mainstream parties in Pakistan, only two can be said to be ideological: the Jamaat, and the MQM (Islamic revolution through democratic means for the former, middle class empowerment for the latter). All the rest are based on some sense of identity affiliation, whether ethnic or clan or regional or whatever, but calling them ideological would be stretching it.

As a consequence of this distinction, it’s easy to deduce that the median member of the MQM or JI believes a lot more strongly in the message and “rightness” of his/her party than the median member of, say, the PPP, who’s more likely to be interested in contesting a seat on a party ticket. As a result, when the potential for success for [insert party here] ticket goes down, and PTI’s chances of success go up, we’re more likely to see politicians from [insert party here] to leave for the PTI. But if the same thing happens for the JI or MQM, their members stay put.

This is why it’s difficult for me to attach any real policy significance to the PTI’s admittedly excellent run recently. The party is clearly on the rise and forcing observers (including myself) to tick upwards their estimates of how many seats they can/will win. But at the end of the day, even if it wins 100 seats, it doesn’t really represent “change” on the ground, since it’s the same people but under a different party banner.

Anyway, on a slightly related note, you should read Cafe Pyala’s post on the PTI jalsa in Karachi, if you haven’t already.

Speaking of weddings, I was explicitly asked by my buddy Farooq Nomani to give him a shout out on account of his upcoming nuptials. Farooq is well known in Karachi for being one of the leading lawyers of the country, for throwing rose petals on Mumtaz Qadri at his trial, and for having “Youniskhan” as his wifi password (only one of the preceding three facts is true, I’ll let you figure out which one). So congrats to Farooq and his to-be-missus.

Anyway, since I’ve been back, this is the stuff I’ve been thinking about.

The gap between the rich and the poor is not just about the big things

Obviously if you were asked to list the main differences in the lifestyles between the elite in Pakistan and poor people in Pakistan, you’d probably throw in access to education as the first point. Proper housing and transport would be up there. Food, and so on.

But the little things matter too. Excuse the Tom Friedman-esque point, but this came to me when I talked to the concierge at the hotel to figure out the Arab spring was trying to take a shower a couple days ago.  Our gas supply had simply stopped (more on this in a second) and as a result we had no hot water. It wasn’t a big deal, but yes, a cold shower on a rare cold day in Karachi (temperatures in single digits!) was slightly uncomfortable.

Of course, that led me to thinking about people who, even if they happen to have running water in their homes (not a given by any stretch of the imagination), don’t really have the luxury of choosing between hot and cold water for their sanitary needs. Much liberal guilt ensued.

Anyway, can I also note the absurdity of gas supply just ending? We import our oil, we’ve started importing our electricity, and now our gas supply is stopping. Is Pakistan going to rely on cow-dung for its energy needs starting in 2020?

Also, speaking of cow dung…

The khakis are up to no good again

All sorts of speculation, innuendo, and conjecture about the khakis making a move against President Zardari. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. And that’s one of the reasons I don’t really buy it. From strokes to minus-one formulas to fake coups, this is about the six or seventh time I’ve read or heard “Zardari is on his way out! It’s over!” rumors. Color me skeptical, for the time  being, if only because I’ve heard this particular boy yelling about this particular wolf way too many times.

For whatever it’s worth, though, I spoke on the phone to Someone In The Know a couple hours ago, and he was adamant that this time is really different, and that AZ is definitely gone. We’ll see. I’ll get more info tomorrow when I meet Someone In The Know.

Imran Khan is the popular girl in high school

Remember the days when a phone call from the right girl in school would be a topic of conversation amongst your friends for the next twelve days? Well, I see your popular girl in high school, and raise you Imran Khan, whose robocall operation has hearts aflutter all over Karachi.

You see kuptaan saab is having a jalsa in Karachi on the 25th and to that end, his party is sending out recorded invitations to the rally by phone. And even though it’s a recording, people are going nuts. “Oh my god, have you gotten the Imran Khan call yet” is the new “hey, how are you?”

This is definitely a function of the socio-economic circles I’m in, but I’ve never heard as much buzz about a political event as I have with this PTI jalsa. People ask about it like a wedding or high society party: you’re going, right? RIGHT? In my case, I am going, but as an observer rather than a supporter.

One other point on Imran Khan: it’s very, very noticeable that the tone and content of his supporters’ talking points has changed. The last few times I’ve been back, the gist of the PTI story has been one of aggressive differentiation: we are very different, we are better, everyone else is corrupt, last hope, etc etc. This time it’s more: you need all sorts of characters to succeed in politics, the ends justify the means, he’s still better than the rest, etc etc. It’s a less naive position, and more attuned to ground realities in Pakistani politics.

Suffice it to say, I’m glad the lessons of all these turncoats flipping to PTI has been learned. Pretty soon PTI will be a normal patronage based party wheeling and dealing on the basis of its 15-25 seats and everyone will live happily ever after. Well, everyone except for the people who bought the whole “tabdeeli ka nishan” bit.

How can you stand in the middle of an ocean? Unless of course you're Jesus...

#Team-not-Misbah

If you want to find the exemplification of the term “fool’s gold”, look no further than Misbah and his boring, boring team.

If there’s one thing that characterizes my trips back to Pakistan other than family and friends, it’s the chance to watch some test cricket, which I simply cannot do on a regular basis in the U.S. But this time, I haven’t been able to watch more than a session and a half at a stretch. One issue is the opposition; I think it’s time Bangladesh stopped playing test cricket for a while and only played 4 day games against other countries’ youth sides.

But the main issue is the utter dry, anodyne, cure-for-insomnia cricket that we’re playing. Other than Younis Khan and Saeed Ajmal, and to a much lesser extent Umar Gul and Aizaz Cheema, there is not one single player in this team I would pay to watch. Plus, we’re so defensive in our approach, so sedate and guarded and afraid, that even hardcore fans of cricket can’t afford to watch. What happened to us? (For a spirited defense of Misbah and his boring ways, read this by Hassan Cheema).

Yes, we’ve been successful with these methods, but against a top team, we’re going to get slaughtered. This good run by Misbah, as I said earlier, is fool’s gold. It’s covering up the very real deficiencies in this team, particularly in the batting, where we have four and a half plodders in the top six. I’d be happy to be proven wrong but England is going to kill us, mainly because when they’re on top they’re going to drive home the advantage, but when we’re on top, we’ll score at 2.75 an over, let them back in the game, collapse in an almighty heap to Swann, and lose.

Remember, there was no Palestine as a state — (it was) part of the Ottoman Empire. I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places.

For this, Gingrich has been roundly criticized from a variety of angles. The thing to note, however, is that strictly speaking, he is right — if by “invented” we mean “socially and politically constructed”. The fact of the matter is that all “nations” are invented. It’s just a question of when and how.

The point to be made is that nationalism, as a general political force, arose out of discrete events and processes in the post-medieval age. The invention of the printing press, the spread of vernaculars, the rise of commercial capitalism, the imposition of administrative boundaries by colonial states, the rise of centralizing state — each of these meant that national identities congealed in ways that were simply absent before.

That last word is crucial: before. Whichever national identity you care to choose — French or Filipino, whatever — I can find a point in time when that national identity did not exist, either at all or in particularly stark terms. Creating nations takes effort. Some of it is by accident. Some of it is deliberate — by changing school textbooks, by changing what students read, by changing which languages of instruction are employed,  by changing which language is deemed to be “official” or the court’s language, by imposing conscription, by creating flags and national anthems, by ethnically cleansing certain territories to purify them, and so on.

The problem with Gingrich’s statement was not his assertion of the contingency of Palestinian national identity. Hell, even Rashid Khalidi would agree with him on that. No, the problem with his statement was the implicit supposition that there exist other national identities that are more primordial in nature. That is, while the Palestinians were invented, the French or the Americans or the Arabs were not. I’m afraid that belief is simply incorrect. They were just “invented” at different times in different ways.

As Eugen Weber says in reference to nationalism in late nineteenth-century France, “A lot of Frenchmen did not know they belonged together until the long didactic campaigns of the later nineteenth century told them they did, and their own experience as conditions changed told them that this made sense…France is a deliberate political construction for whose creation the central power has never ceased to fight.” Indeed, we see manifestations of that very same process ongoing today; to wit, the fact that the census in France, unlike most Western democracies, has no provision for marking one’s race or ethnicity. Is the French nation any less “invented” than the Palestinians?

Moreover, when one sees that Gingrich’s “defense” of his original statement is “Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists. It’s fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, ‘Enough lying about the Middle East,’” it becomes clear that discovering the antecedent institutional conditions that gave rise to Palestinian group identity is probably not the object of his grand historicizing.

This guy has a PhD in history?

It's on like donkey kong.

Here are some thoughts:

1. Mourinho being quiet is scary

I prefer a world in which Mourinho is whining and complaining about UEFA, Unicef, referees, schedule makers, and the flying spaghetti monster. It means he knows that he needs a leg up, that he needs to influence the refs and media, that he needs to get into the opposition’s heads. And the fact that he needs to do all that means that he knows, deep down, that his team is not good enough.

This time is different. I haven’t heard a peep from this guy. Neither has anyone else. In the pre-match press conference, he sent out his loyal assistant Karanka to do the talking.

This worries me. It tells me that he has the whole “quiet confidence” thing going. And frankly, it’s a fair state of mind. Madrid are, as we speak, playing better football than Barcelona. That’s just a fact. They are sharper, more energetic, and are playing with a frightening pace. It will be no surprise to see them win, especially at home — even though they only need a draw.

But then again, that’s what we said before the Super Cup, and look what happened there.

2. Selection issues

I’m pretty sure I know what team Madrid will put out (with a small question at right back): Pepe and Ramos as CBs; Marcelo at LB; Lass, Alonso and Khedia as center mids; Dive Maria, Ronaldo on the wings; and Hunting Cat Benzema up front.

With Barca, it’s a bit dicier. There are essentially three big issues. First, will Pep play a 3-4-3 or a 4-3-3? Second, assuming it’s a 4-3-3 (and I think it will be), who will partner Mascherano at CB: Pique or Puyol? My guess is Pique though I can see why certain diehards are very keen to see Puyol. Third, who will play up front? Leo and Alexis are guaranteed starters. But for the third spot, does Pep go with proven goalscorer and big-game player, David Villa, or the in-form guy who’s not really a forward but is scoring like one this year, Cesc Fabregas?

I’d go with Villa, for a couple reasons. One, with two weeks’ rest, he’d be itching to go. He will be very sharp. I can feel it. Two, it’s sometimes easier to answer a question if you turn it around. Rather than ask who we’d like to see start, why not ask who we’d like to see come on as a sub? For that question, the answer is clear: it has to be Cesc. Cesc can really change games when he comes on, and has done numerous times already this season. With Villa, I’m less certain that a 65th minute entry will do much. He needs to work himself into the game, at his age, and I’d rather start with him and bring Cesc on later, all else being equal.

3. Records

Pep has never lost at the Bernabeu as manager. In fact, his overall record against one of the strongest Madrid teams in history is scarcely believable: 11 games, 7 wins, 3 draws, and only one loss. Goal difference? 25 for, 8 against.

I point this out because inevitably, this glorious run will end some time. Maybe it ends if Barca lose this game, them winning the league is essentially impossible. But let no one forget what Pep and this team have already done, against a team that would kill and has killed every other team on the planet. Madrid is easily the priciest team in the world led by the most in-demand manager in the world, and up to this point, they haven’t been able to crack the code.

Here’s a record that might worry Madrid fans though: in 15 games against Madrid, Leo has scored 13 goals. In 13 games against Barcelona, Ronaldo has scored two goals, one of them a penalty. For whatever reason — I think it’s his predictability and one-dimensionalness — Barca defenders always have the measure of him. I’m much more worried about Di Maria than Ronaldo, let’s put it that way.

4. Madrid’s defense can be taken advantage of

Marcelo is in great form going forward, but if he’s my LB, I’m always worried. Ditto for Ramos as CB. And Pepe is always liable to do something stupid.

Madrid have been leaking goals this year, while racking up lots and lots of goals at the other end. So it hasn’t really affected their position in the table. But they will concede, I’m almost certain of that.

5. Madrid will come out really, really fired up

The Super Cup games in August were really interesting. It was the first time Madrid really attacked Barca in the Mourinho era. They came out really, really aggressive, and not just in a thuggish we-will-kick-anything-that-moves kind of way, but in a we’re-going-to-score-any-second-now-buddy kind of way. They will throw men forward, they will press Barca high up the pitch, they won’t allow Busi or Xavi any time on the ball, and they will seek to crowd out Messi and Iniesta. And they’ll have a raucous crowd behind them, a crowd that hasn’t seen Madrid beat Barca since the spring of 2008.

Tell you what though: if Barca can weather the early storm — say, the first 20 minutes — and still be level, that’ll be really good news. Madrid will, at some point, run out of steam, and some spaces will open up, particularly for Alexis (I imagine Madrid will defend quite narrowly) and Iniesta (who will operate in almost the same zone as Messi). That’s when Barca can strike. But you don’t want to be one or two goals down early, because then they’re going to just keep on running and keep coming at you.

My hope is that Barca just take the heat out of the game, almost goad Madrid into wasting too much energy early. But my fear is that Madrid will be too hungry and too good.

Honestly though, I don’t feel the same sense of fear or trepidation as last year, particularly before the 4 clasicos in 17 days. At the time, I felt like Barca’s place in history was in question. It no longer is. If Madrid win this game, I’ll be upset and devastated to be sure, but it really won’t be the end of the world. This team has given me enough happiness and joy to last me several lifetimes.

You would think that a country with an information technology sector with revenues in excess of $75 billion would have a government which knows how the internet works. But you would be wrong.

Please check out what Kapil Sibal, India’s Telecom Minister, is demanding of Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft:

About six weeks ago, Mr. Sibal called legal representatives from the top Internet service providers and Facebook into his New Delhi office, said one of the executives who was briefed on the meeting.

At the meeting, Mr. Sibal showed attendees a Facebook page that maligned the Congress Party’s president, Sonia Gandhi.  “This is unacceptable,” he told attendees, the executive said, and he asked them to find a way to monitor what is posted on their sites.

In the second meeting with the same executives in late November, Mr. Sibal told them that he expected them to use human beings to screen content, not technology, the executive said.

The three executives said Mr. Sibal has told these companies that he expects them to set up a proactive prescreening system, with staffers looking for objectionable content and deleting it before it is posted.

Of course, this brings to mind the Lahore High Court’s efforts to ban Facebook because of “blasphemous” material published on it.

LAHORE: Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed of the Lahore High Court on Monday directed the Ministry of Information Technology to submit a report by October 6 on a petition seeking a permanent ban on the access to American social networking website Facebook for hosting a competition featuring blasphemous caricatures.

The judge also directed the ministry to block access to all websites in Pakistan spreading religious hatred on the Internet. The judge made it clear that no search engine, including Google, would be blocked during this process.

The judge was hearing a petition moved by Muhammad and Ahmad, a public interest litigation firm, through chairman Muhammad Azhar Siddique.

The petitioner submitted that Islamic values were being derogated in the name of information, which was hurting the feelings of billions of Muslims. He submitted that despite clear direction by the court, the ministry had not blocked websites spreading religious hatred.

I really don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that these people’s teenage children or nephews or nieces would know more about the digital world than they do.

Exhibit B:

With this one, the headline speaks for itself, and I will add no commentary.

“Pakistan arrests Indian monkey for crossing border”

(Presumably, this was a tit-for-tat measure for India holding in detention a pigeon suspected of spying for Pakistan last year. And to this blog’s western readers, no, neither the monkey story nor the pigeon story are from The Onion; they’re very much real).

Zaid Hamid's trusted lieutenant

For example, this is an excerpt from Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, an account of what the American ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, saw during World War I, especially when it came to genocide and ethnic cleansing.

This particular excerpt is drawn from the section where Morgenthau reflects on the Allies’ withdrawal from the Dardanelles. The chapter, incidentally, is titled “The Turk Reverts to the Ancestral Type”.

Essentially the Turk is a bully and a coward; he is brave as a lion when things are going his way, but cringing, abject, and nerveless when reverses are overwhelming him. And now that the fortunes of war were apparently favouring the empire, I began to see an entirely new Turk unfolding before my eyes. The hesitating and fearful Ottoman, feeling his way cautiously amid the mazes of European diplomacy, and seeking opportunities to find an advantage for himself in the divided counsels of the European powers, gave place to an understanding, almost dashing figure, proud and assertive, determined to live in his own life and absolutely contemptuous of his Christian foes. I was really witnessing a remarkable development in race psychology — an almost classical instance of reversion to type…we must realize that the basic fact underlying the Turkish mentality is its utter contempt for all other races. A fairly insane pride is the element that largely explains this strange human species.

I don’t think an ambassador today could get away with saying things like this on the record. But a hundred years ago, it was perfectly normal.

Now, I am not claiming that racism has disappeared off the face of this planet, obviously. My claim is more limited: I’m simply saying that norms against racism and race-based “theories” have meant that leaders and decision-makers are increasingly unlikely to attach their name to sentiments such as the ones expressed above.

Another example, for the Pakistan-based crowd out there, is this excerpt from Ayub Khan on Bengalis.

East Bengalis, who constitute the bulk of the population, probably belong to the very original Indian races. It would be no exaggeration to that up to the creation of Pakistan, they had not known any real freedom or sovereignty. They have been in turn ruled either by the caste Hindus, Moghuls, Pathans or the British. In addition, they have been and still are under considerable Hindu cultural and linguistic influence. As such they have all the inhibitions of down-trodden races and have not found it possible to adjust psychologically to the requirements of the new-born freedom.

I just love the assuredness and self-confidence in these statements. Pure gold.

Who are angry right wing Pakistanis going to send abusive tweets to now? Photo: AP

Here are some questions I’ve been mulling over the last few days:

1. What exactly happened here?

Obviously, nobody knows for sure. Well, correction: two people know for sure. But really, nobody knows for sure.

Of course, that shouldn’t stop us from speculation. Here’s my best guess:

The Blackberry exchange is real. The memo, however, was not written by Husain Haqqani (the language and writing is terrible; Haqqani is Zardari’s go-to man for all those fake op-eds in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post… go and read the memo and see for yourself if it reads by someone who’s written for those publications, albeit under someone else’s name).

The memo was probably written by Mansoor Ijaz himself, and its contents were probably agreed upon by the two. That’s my guess.

Of course, this sets up a series of follow up questions. Such as…

1a Why would Haqqani go through someone so clearly untrustworthy and unreliable?

On the one hand, it makes absolutely no sense. Haqqani is a street-smart guy who knows about the daily practice of politics better than most people alive. It wouldn’t make sense for him to commit such a rookie mistake. And because it seems so unlikely, people seem eager to believe that this entire thing is an elaborate conspiracy.

I’m not so sure. If the best defense is “why would he do something so stupid?” then I’m sorry, that’s not up to the mark. My view is that smart people do stupid things all the time. One of my favorite books ever is David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest, a book that shines a light on smart people committing one strategic blunder after another in Vietnam.

Let’s not pretend that people good at their job are immune to mistakes of judgment. Napoleon was a pretty good military commander, then committed a pretty big mistake. His cost him all but 10,000 soldiers in an army of half a million. An ambassadorship is chump change compared to that, I’m sure you’ll agree. People screw up. It happens.

1b Was Ijaz playing Haqqani?

By the end of it, Ijaz was obviously firmly in the GHQ-ISI camp. The question is: when did he join them? Was at some point during the crisis? Or was it before the entire thing began? If it’s the latter, then that is essentially another way of saying that Ijaz played Haqqani the whole frigging time.

I don’t buy that. Haqqani is clearly an order of magnitude brighter than this guy. I can’t believe that Ijaz was acting on behalf of the ISI in some conspiracy the whole time and not once did Haqqani suspect what was going on. That just strikes me as highly unlikely. More likely, Ijaz flipped somewhere in the middle, when the controversy was just gathering apace and the khakis probably presented him with an offer he couldn’t refuse.

2. How will this move impact US-Pakistan relations?

Not very seriously, in my opinion. On the list of things that matter to US-Pakistan relations, the personality of the ambassador from one of the countries to the other country is pretty low down on the totem pole.

Another way of thinking about this is to accept this disjuncture: Haqqani was, by almost all accounts, a fantastic ambassador and brilliant diplomat. And yet US-Pakistan relations are about as bad as they’ve been in a decade.

What does that mean? Well, for me, it means that individuals don’t matter a great deal when it comes to figuring out outcomes and processes between states. Institutions, interests, geography, the balance of power — these are the things that clearly matter a lot.

I’m sure Haqqani’s excellence in his role mattered a little bit on the margins, maybe a billion dollars of aid here or there. But individuals simply don’t impact the overarching trajectory of interstate relations. If Kayani was replaced by a generic khaki tomorrow, the US-Pakistan relationship would be largely the same. Bob Gates was replaced by Panetta, and the relationship was largely the same. Haqqani will be replaced, and the relationship will be largely the same.

3. Is this a win for the khakis and a loss for the civvies?

On the surface, sure. And that’s certainly how it was being played up by the liberal twitterati. The basic tenor of this analysis was: woe is us, the khakis have pulled a fast one, the poor civvies lose again.

I think that analysis is lazy. Sure, this is a win for the khakis, they’ve hated Haqqani since he lobbied against Musharraf in DC and wrote a book heavily criticizing the military and its role in Pakistani politics and society (and probably well before then actually). They would obviously prefer to live in a world where someone they don’t trust and don’t like is not the primary face of the Pakistan government in Washington.

That said, the belief that this was some elaborate conspiracy and the poor PPP is once again the victims of the dastardly GHQ is dumb. Understand this: there is not a single democracy in the world, even (especially?) the ones in which the civilians rule the roost, where someone who did what Haqqani allegedly did would survive. Not a single one. In our rush to decry the civilian-military (im)balance in Pakistan, this fact seems to have gotten lost. What Haqqani is accused of doing is a really, really big deal!

Even if you agree with the larger goals of the memo and the intellectual basis behind it, this was a really stupid and bad way to go about it. No reasonable person can disagree that this is a fireable offense, all over the world, democracy or not.

Of course, the question then becomes: was he actually party to the fireable offense, or was this an elaborate plan concocted by the GHQ-ISI from the beginning? I have very serious doubts about the latter proposition — I think we sometimes give too much credit to the military for strategic adroitness and tactical brilliance that it doesn’t really have.

The bottom line is: none of us can know for sure. I think that my belief that there’s no smoke without fire here is a reasonable one. Others may disagree. That’s fine. Just be aware that angrily and decisively asserting that this was an unjustified or unfair move rests on the supposition that he is absolutely not guilty. And there is no way that all the Haqqani defenders out there know that for sure. So why are they pretending that they do?

I would also add that I don’t think Haqqani would have gone away so easily, or that Zardari would have let him go so easily, if there wasn’t some evidence backing up his involvement that they have both seen. This, after all, is not the first time the military has wanted to get rid of one of Zardari’s men. How long, for instance, have they tried to get rid of that fool Rehman Malik? And unlike Haqqani, Rehman Malik is terrible at his job, so he can’t even play the competence card. Or what about Haqqani himself, who was rumored to be on the chopping block post-Kerry/Lugar?

And yet, Malik has survived, despite the odds, and Haqqani hasn’t, not this time anyway. That tells me that there was something different about this case that forced Zardari’s hand in a way the other cases did not.

4. If Haqqani can be fired for a fireable offense, why can’t the military brass be fired for a fireable offense?

This is the key issue for me. Post Osama raid, I (along with others) urged the government to form a consensus on cutting the military down to size, to strike while the going was good. The military was thoroughly discredited and there would be no better opportunity for true accountability.

Unfortunately, the khakis got away with their mistake (as they often do) while the civvy got stuck with his. That’s obviously not an ideal set of circumstances for the state’s development.

The ironic or tragic thing about this whole episode is that Haqqani was — if you believe he is somehow involved in this — trying to achieve something that we all wanted, at the same time as we all wanted, but in a way very, very different to what we wanted. The correct way would have been to try to get the two big parties and a couple others on board for a thorough parliamentary inquiry. I wonder if he tried that way at all, and whether he was rebuffed by Zardari and Gilani if he did.

Either way, my point is that Haqqani is suffering for a mistake he allegedly made. But the khakis are not suffering for a mistake they definitely and incontrovertibly made. That’s a problem.

Here’s the thing though: only the civilians can solve that problem. Relying on the goodwill of the khakis for self-accountability is a strategy doomed to failure. Getting a collective backbone, and getting a critical mass of politicians together who feel more comfortable taking the military on than they do taking each other on, would be two good steps. In a weird way, we need our civilians to act more like the khakis: ready to strike when they have to, taking no prisoners, and showing no mercy.

There is one thing that I think I should mention though: Mansoor Ijaz is an Ahmedi. As such, he is not only not a Muslim, but he barely qualifies as a human being. Therefore, he cannot be trusted.

Mansoor Ijaz, untrustworthy Ahmedi

I have only learned about the lack of trustworthiness and lack of humanity of Ahmedis from the same exact people who are making the loudest noises over Memogate, i.e. the ghairat brigade on TV. For these lessons, I am grateful to them.

But I am slightly confused about their strident stance on Memogate — going so far as calling for Haqqani to be tried for treason — a stance which seems entirely predicated on believing the word of an Ahmedi. How can this be? Can someone please clarify?

Here’s a graph for the total number of attacks, including bombings, explosions, gun attacks, drones, episodes of ethnic violence, and so on.

Source data: PIPS

And here’s the key graph, which shows the number of civilian casualties.

Source data: PIPS

Actually, it bears mentioning that 2011 has easily been the most peaceful year since the military first went into the tribal agencies in a serious way in the spring of 2009. It is also the most peaceful year overall since the PPP took power.

The average monthly casualty rates for each year testifies to this. For the three months of data available for 2008, there was an average of 873 civilian casualties per month. In 2009, that number went up to 922. In 2010, that number went down to 842. These figures are all in the same ballpark (all within 10% of each other), and as such, we should not attach too much significance to relatively small changes and fluctuations.

However, the comparable figure for 2011 is 681, which is a significant change (a 26% decrease from the 2009 high and a 20% drop from the 2010 number) and is thus worth thinking about. As I’ve said before, I don’t really have a good sense why this year has been less violent than the previous three years (it would be more accurate to say that the decrease in violence started around October 2010 rather than “this year” per se).

As always, I should be careful to say that I can perfectly understand the reaction that says: who cares, Pakistan is still really violent. I get that at the high end of the spectrum of political violence, small changes don’t really produce equivalent changes in outlook. Certainly I don’t expect the average citizen to go around saying “I feel safe now, since I am now 20% less likely to be killed!” or some such.

That said, we have to start somewhere. While the downward trajectory will not and should not satisfy people with the status quo, the trend itself is encouraging, as long as it stays this way. We can only hope for the best.

"The world is coming down, the flags are up..." Photo: AP

1. There are some parallels between Imran Khan and Zulfi Bhutto

Obviously no PPP jiyala, or even the oh-so-sophisticated cadre of supporters the PPP has in the English-speaking upper crust of Pakistani society, would buy this, but hear me out.

First, the PPP was regularly dismissed as inconsequential in the run up to the 1970 elections. It was an upstart party, but no one really thought it would do much. It ended up dominating West Pakistan (84 out of 138 seats). I don’t think the PTI has a shot in hell of anything close to that, but it bears mentioning that being dismissed as inconsequential in the years before the election does not translate into actual irrelevance. The proof will be in the election pudding.

Second, both ZAB and Imran tapped into a segment of society that contemporary politicians did not really speak to. In ZAB’s case, it was about the rural poor — supporters and detractors of ZAB agree that the one point on which his legacy is secure is in taking politics to the people. Similarly, Imran’s support in the upper middle classes of Pakistan, an essentially apolitical class if there ever was one, speaks to his ability to craft a message heard by a previously inactive sector of the wider body politic. How much this matters remains to be seen, but it is most certainly the case that the language and symbolism the PTI employs is aimed at people who were never part of the political process. That the upper middle class is now politicized is a testament to the consistency of message the PTI has deployed.

2. Getting people involved in politics is a good thing

One of my pet complaints about the discourse in Pakistan is the desire for “easy” solutions — such as an “honest leader” or some such — rather than focusing on the hard work of letting the political process play out, and institutions build over time, with trial and error.

Obviously PTI supporters have bought into this idea that Imran Khan represents a serious change from the status quo, and as such, could be justifiably accused of falling into exactly that trap, the trap that says “elect one guy, and all your problems will go away”.

But there’s another way of thinking about this, and it goes like this: Imran Khan is getting people involved in the political process. Ultimately, that’s a good thing. It gives people a stake in the system, and it ensures that they pay attention to what’s going on, rather than complaining from the sidelines.

Moreover, the very messy nature of the political process will be made evident to PTI supporters starting, oh, about now. This in turn will dampen their often vicious and often ahistorical criticism of the status quo.

For example, PTI supporters often say that every other party and politician in Pakistan is corrupt. Okay, fine. I don’t actually believe that, but let’s assume it’s true (and that it matters). But what happens when, as a result of this show of strength in Lahore, the PTI starts attracting those same unsavory characters? If you want to win seats in Pakistan, it doesn’t stretch the imagination to think that you may need a bad apple or two along the way.

As an illustration, read this piece by Badar Alam in Dawn the other day, particularly this bit:

In at least Khyber Pakhtunkhwa some of his would-be electoral candidates represent the exact antithesis of his anti-politics ideology — they are professional politicians who have changed political loyalties in the past, and some have unenviable political track records. Two of his main people in KP are Iftikhar Jhagra and Khwaja Khan Hoti. Both are the scions of political dynasties in their respective areas and both carry political baggage that may not measure up to the great expectations Mr Khan’s core supporters harbour.

Mr Jhagra is a four-time member of the provincial assembly from the Pakistan Peoples’ Party and a cousin of Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, who happens to be a senior leader of the PML-N. The former has left the PPP because he fears that he will not get a party ticket for the next election under an anticipated seat adjustment between the PPP and the Awami National Party. Mr Hoti was the PPP provincial chief for much of the 2000s before he joined the ANP just in time for the 2008 election. Even today he remains a member of the National Assembly from the ANP, though Mr Khan has claimed on a number of occasions that he will soon resign and formally join the PTI. Mr Hoti comes from the family of Nawab Akbar Khan Hoti, who was a member of the All India Muslim League. Another prominent member of the family was Nawabzada Abdul Ghafoor Hoti, who remained the governor of the then North West Frontier Province under Gen Ziaul Haq. In its earlier incarnation the PTI had Nawabzada Mohsin Ali Khan as its main man in the NWFP and, quite like Messers Jhagra and Hoti, he has been in and out of almost all political parties in the province. So much for Mr Khan’s antipathy towards family-based politics and his supporters’ disgust for politicos who represent and serve their personal and family interests whichever party they join.

In Punjab, Mr Khan’s choice of candidates is even more suspect. In a 2010 by-election in Lahore he gave his party’s ticket to one Mian Hamid Meraj, who happened to be the son of Mian Meraj Din, a one-time excise minister in the Punjab government of Shahbaz Sharif in the 1990s who was forced to resign from his cabinet post under allegations of electricity theft. The main reason why Mr Din and his family remain in the business of politics is that they come from an influential local family of Lahore that has its biradri vote bank in some parts of the city. Zaheer Abbas Khokhar, a possible PTI candidate in the next election, became a member of the National Assembly on a PPP ticket in 2002 before joining the PPP-Patriots, which eventually dissolved itself into the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-i-Azam, the much-maligned faction of the League under the much-maligned Chaudharys of Gujrat. He is also the nephew of Malik Karamat Khokhar, who was a PPP candidate in the 2008 election. Another intending PTI candidate is Rasheed Bhatti, a one-time PPP member of the Punjab Assembly who created a small stir in 1989 by insisting that he will use only Punjabi in his speeches in the assembly and who is known for his many family feuds and property disputes. His brother, Jameel Bhatti, was once the head of the People’s Students’ Federation, the student wing of the PPP, at Quaid-i-Azam University in the early 1990s. The two latest entrants in the PTI from Lahore are Mian Azhar and Farooq Amjad Mir. The former was the governor of Punjab when Nawaz Sharif was prime minister in the 1990s before the two had a falling-out. After Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf took over power from Nawaz Sharif, Mr Azhar was the head of the Pakistan Muslim League-Likeminded — the first batch of League people who opted to side with the military ruler after his 1999 coup. He eventually lost not just the leadership of the faction to the Chaudharys but also lost two successive elections — in 2002 and 2008 — on a PML-Q ticket to relative political lightweights. Mr Mir was the naib nazim of Lahore in 2004 when he fought and won a by-election for the National Assembly from Lahore as a PML-Q candidate. In 2008, he lost badly to a PML-N opponent and has been in the political wilderness since then before resurrecting himself in the PTI, which is, in fact, where he had started his political career in 1996.

In my view, this is a good thing. It shows PTI supporters what “normal” politics looks like, and that “change” — such as it is — won’t come about by revolution, but bit by bit. Once they see their own party engaging in this type of behavior, it will (hopefully) dawn on them that the idea of politics as a “clean” enterprise is ridiculous.

3. Imran Khan should be compared to other politicians fairly

I have been guilty of this myself, so let me be the first to say that it is wrong to grade Imran and the PTI on a different curve than other parties. We often complain that Imran’s agenda policy-wise is essentially non-existent, and that his ideas for reform are simplistic and naive.

That may well be the case, but it is also the case that other parties’ agendas are quite bare (I once wrote a piece for Dawn on this issue, if you happen to care). So if Imran’s reform agenda is quite light on the policy side, well, there’s plenty more where that came from.

My buddy Farooq emailed me on this point, the idea that we should have the same metric of judging Imran as we do for the other parties and leaders. Here’s his email in full:

I’m not disputing that Imran’s solutions are vague and simplistic and that his supporters are defensive. But don’t they have to be given the particular strategic position they are in and the tricky terrain that is the political landscape?

Look, Imran’s platform is basically “Zardari/Nawaz are such hopelessly shit alternatives that ure better off electing a bunch of dogs to run the country and because dogs cant read, write or speak you may as well vote for my party instead”. Now, isn’t that fair enough? That’s his proposition and if you think that the PPP and PML(N) can do a better job than just ignore him.

But to expect a guy who has minimal political capital and no established grass-roots vote bank to answer difficult and politically sensitive questions is a tad bit unreasonable. I’m not saying we should just ignore the weaknesses in his policies and let his good looks and charisma take him straight into the office. But i think it’s damn unfair to expect him to take on questions regarding the religious right and the military, two of the most polarizing issues in our political system. Just strategically, it doesn’t make sense for him to ask those difficult questions because he risks being marginalized more than he already is. You don’t seen PML(N) going after extremist elements in Pakistan with any particular zeal. And PPP, by virtue of being in power, is very measured in its limited critique of the army. What I’m saying is that it would just be a bad move strategically for him to take a view or focus on really difficult issues. Lets take an example. Lets say I’m a new entry into the political arena like Imran and running on a platform which seeks to diminish the influence of religion in our legal system. It would be STUPID of me to even try and touch the blasphemy law because (a) i risk alienating a HUGE cross-section of society and (b) i might get my ass killed.

I don’t see PTI supporters as defensive. I just don’t think they should be scrutinized, critiqued and questioned with the same verve reserved for larger more established parties. Pakistan is a complex country struggling with convoluted issues. There is no easy answer and any one solution will undoubtedly destroy your credibility with a set of voters. To expect a new, alternative party to come up with such answers and risk losing ANY voters with proposed solutions is unfair.

Agreed. On the other hand, it’s also worth considering this angle from Mosharraf Zaidi:

Since police reform is such an important topic, it would be prudent for the PTI to have some kind of plan to tackle the issue. Right now, other than the fiery rhetoric it is not entirely clear that such a plan exists.

Other parties also spew the same rhetoric. And other parties also do not seem to have any plan. But the PTI supporters can’t just excuse their party with this kind of an explanation. They’ll have to do much, much better. Why? Because they claim to be much, much better.

4. Imran Khan still scares me

I have tried to be nice and reasonable in this post, but allow me to say that Imran’s view on foreign policy, and in particular the war against the Taliban, are legitimately dangerous. His views completely miss the point of what the threat is, where the threat is coming from, and what can be done about it. The fact that his foreign policy/war “advisers” seem to be the likes of Shireen Mazari and Hamid Gul is very, very scary. Just read this bit from Declan Walsh’s piece on the PTI:

“Anyone who thinks this country will be taken over by Taliban are fools. There’s no concept of a theocracy anywhere in the Muslim world for the past 1,400 years. If I came to power, I could end this conflict in 90 days – guaranteed.”

Khan’s choice of allies, many of them veterans of previous political dispensations, has also been controversial. Khan’s foreign policy adviser, Shireen Mazari, is famously hostile to India; when editing a national newspaper she ran stories that branded British, Australian and American journalists as “CIA agents”.

“I don’t agree with her on everything. We give her hell on certain views,” he says.

Yet Khan is defiantly proud that his newfound success is vindication against what he calls the “liberal, westernised elite” – wealthy, English-speaking Pakistanis who, he claims, are out of touch with the realities of their own country. “I call them coconuts: brown on the outside, white on the inside, looking at Pakistan through a westernised lens,” he says.

Ah yes, the Coconuts! God, isn’t it awful how English-speaking Pakistanis go around blowing themselves up in mosques, markets and shrines, and go about shooting politicians like Salman Taseer and Shahzad Bhatti, and bombing girls schools, and killing Hazara Shias in Balochistan? If only there were no Coconuts in Pakistan, the country would be so much more peaceful!

Also, “there’s no concept of a theocracy anywhere in the Muslim world for the past 1,400 years”? Really? I mean, really? How is an educated person supposed to respond to this comment?

5. Success breeds success, but PTI better not get its hopes up outside Punjab and KP

It is obviously the case that awesome shows of strength, such as the Lahore jalsa, will attract turncoats from other parties, and thus lead to a greater likelihood of a greater number of seats. Those turncoats flipping will in turn encourage yet others sitting on the fence to put their lot in with PTI. So in that sense, from an electoral point of view, I can see PTI being moderately successful in the next elections (I guessed a while ago on Twitter that it would be about 10-15 seats, I may go as high as 20 at this point but no higher).

However, it’s important to note just how circumscribed this support is. As Aasim Sajjad Akhtar lays out,

It is important to ascertain the exact ethnic and class composition of Imran Khan’s (growing) political camp. The first thing that stands out is that the PTI has almost no presence south of Jhang. In other words, his major sources of support are in northern and central Punjab, and in some parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK). This is reflected in some of Imran’s long-standing political demands that revolve around fairly abstract notions such as ‘sovereignty’. For example, the motif of drone attacks has driven many of the PTI’s political actions over the past few years. When push comes to shove, such concerns may be shared by a not insignificant segment of society in upper Punjab and KPK, but resonate with only pockets of people in Sindh, the Siraiki belt, and Balochistan.

This hypothesis will only be tested if and when the PTI attempts to organise another mass gathering in, say, Hyderabad, Sukkur or Multan. The ultimate test will of course be the general election itself when voters are asked to determine if they really do want to make Imran Khan the ‘third option’ (notwithstanding the prospect of the omnipresent intelligence agencies manipulating what is supposed to be a popular mandate).

Plus, the PPP and MQM are so safely ensconced in Sindh, that I really see no one breaking up that duopoly. This is not to say that gains in Punjab and KP are or will be insignificant, only to note the boundaries of PTI’s support.

In other words, the prospect of Imran Khan becoming Prime Minister is highly, highly unlikely. The PTI will not have the numbers. Any electoral alliance that involves them will feature someone more “deserving” of leadership roles than him, based on seniority and cache alone.

To feature in a governing coalition, PTI has to almost by definition be allied either with the PPP or PML(N). In neither case would the other party simply hand over control of the government to what remains a relative political novice. In almost any permutation of an electoral alliance that controls the parliament, PTI and Imran would be a junior member. (The only exception I can think of this would be a right of center alliance between the JI, JUI, MQM and PTI, but I hardly think those parties would have enough seats, even if the Q League types join them).

We’ve just learned that Pakistan has won one of the ten non-permanent seats on the Security Council, by a grand total of one vote.

Whatever else this may imply, the literature in the Political Economy world is quite clear that this sort of thing is good for getting more money from the international community. And lord knows, Pakistan is very eager to get more money from the international community.

First, a widely cited paper by Kuziemko and Werker, on what Security Council membership does insofar as getting money from the U.S. is concerned:

Ten of the 15 seats on the U.N. Security Council are held by rotating members serving two-year terms. We find that a country’s U.S. aid increases by 59 percent and its U.N. aid by 8 percent when it rotates onto the council. This effect increases during years in which key diplomatic events take place (when members’ votes should be especially valuable), and the timing of the effect closely tracks a country’s election to, and exit from, the council.

Then, a paper by Dreher, Sturm, and Vreeland on what Security Council membership does insofar as getting favorable treatment from the IMF is concerned:

We investigate whether temporary members of the UN Security Council receive favorable treatment from the IMF, using panel data for 191 countries over the period 1951 to 2004. Our results indicate a robust positive relationship between temporary UN Security Council membership and participation in IMF programs, even after accounting for economic and political factors, as well as regional and country effects, and duration dependence. There is also evidence that UNSC membership reduces the number of conditions included in IMF programs. The size of the loan, however, is not affected by UNSC membership.

Then, a paper by the same authors as the IMF paper on what Security Council membership does insofar as getting favorable treatment from the World Bank is concerned:

We investigate whether elected members of the UN Security Council receive favorable treatment from the World Bank, using panel data for 157 countries over the period 1970–2004. Our results indicate a robust positive relationship between temporary UN Security Council membership and the number of World Bank projects a country receives, even after accounting for economic and political factors, as well as regional, country and year effects. The size of World Bank loans, however, is not affected by UN Security Council membership.

Can you say “Cha-ching”?

Obviously, this makes complete sense. Organizations like the IMF and World Bank are controlled by powerful countries, the same countries who happen to be permanent members of the Security Council. In order to buy votes in the Security Council from the non-permanent members, it makes perfect sense for the permanent members to exercise their influence in other forums to grease the wheels a little bit.

Limiting ourselves to the Pakistani context, this is obviously a boon for the PPP government. If the predictions of researchers in this area get borne out (they may not, given idiosyncratic factors relating to Pakistan-US relations at present), more money — and fewer stringent conditions from the IMF, at a time when push is coming to shove on that front — from abroad means more patronage and promises domestically. Not a bad deal, eh, especially with elections only a year and a bit away.

Of course, the downside is that this may put into brighter spotlight Pakistani ambassador to the UN, Mr. Hussain Haroon, a man who I can’t stand, mainly because of his Eton-meets-Sindh-Club accent (and the bow ties). Just hear him speak here and decide for yourself whether this man is capable of representing Pakistan on the world stage:

Anyway, in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think this Security Council thing matters that much. What is interesting and noteworthy about the whole thing is that India evidently voted for Pakistan, which is a really good sign and another small-yet-significant step in this peace process we have underway. Let’s see what happens. (Update: Via Twitter user @hushamahmed, I have learned that Pakistan actually supported India’s bid for the same spot last year, in which case this looks like a nice tit-for-tat gesture. Either way, it’s good for those of us wishing for warmer relations in South Asia, but it’s important to get the facts right.)

On a completely unrelated note, this was a hilarious story.

The ridiculous thing about these Republican debates is that you keep needing to wade through this vast field of candidates who are essentially doing book tours in order to hear the actual presidential candidates debate. Rick Santorum is not going to be a major party presidential nominee. Nor will Herman Cain. Michele Bachmann had a brief moment when it kinda sorta maybe looked like she could possibly break through, but she didn’t. The actual choice Republicans are making at the moment is whether Rick Perry or Mitt Romney will run against Barack Obama. This is an interesting question, and I for one would like to see the relevant information presented rather than a lot of nonsense from pizza salesmen and Newt Gingrich.

I must confess that I never thought seriously about the idea that certain people are in the race for the sake of something other than winning the nomination. I had just axiomatically thought that if you are running, then you are running to win.

The interesting bit for me after reading the above excerpt is that there is no real reason for this to be the case. Running in a nomination process can be about a lot of things other than actually winning the nomination. You may like the attention and thrill of running. You may want to write a book in the near future and have people know who you are. You may want an additional invitation to speak at a Heritage Foundation event. Or whatever.

The point being that certain people enter a race solely to win (Mitt Romney, for one) and certain others are in for some other combination of stuff, probably realizing they don’t have/never had a real shot.

My guess is that Herman Cain was in the latter camp. I have serious doubts about the idea that when deciding upon whether to run or not, Cain actually thought: “You know what? I could win this thing!” It just doesn’t seem plausible.

I think we can see evidence of this proposition by comparing the seriousness with which Cain has treated policy compared to someone like Romney. Romney has a detailed economic plan on jobs which is 87 pages long, up on his website. Cain is famous for his 9-9-9 economic plan, which, as this post by Ezra Klein notes, doesn’t have a whole lot of substance behind it. Worse still is that the proponents of the plan are quite open about not caring about this one iota:

But my colleague Jennifer Rubin got his economic adviser Rich Lowrie to confront it directly. And Lowrie says that this just wasn’t something he or Cain was interested in when developing the 9-9-9 plan. He called it “Washington thinking” to worry about who would pay how much under the new system, and he “repeatedly refused to say how much more of the tax burden would be borne by the poor and middle class.”

This really is just a function of the fact that Romney has a real economic team behind him, with real economists at top universities (whether you agree with them or not is immaterial for the purposes of this discussion) while Cain, evidently, does not.

It’s a similar pattern in foreign policy. Romney assembled a shadow national security council, and released a proper white paper on foreign policy. But when it comes to Herman Cain, as Dan Drezner notes, there’s no there there: he has devoted a considered five paragraphs to foreign policy on his website.

So it’s pretty clear that Cain got in this without really hoping or expecting to be taken seriously. Five paragraphs on foreign policy and an economic plan as long as an area code may signal a lot of things, but an expectation to win is probably not amongst them.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with running with no intention or expectation of winning, per se. Lots more people know about Herman Cain now than they would have if he hadn’t run. That is probably going to benefit him in important ways for the remainder of his political career.

There’s only one problem, and that is that Cain is now effectively leading the Republican polls, tied with Mitt Romney. This is from Real Clear Politics’ poll of polls:

What’s clear from that graph is that Cain (red line) has only picked up pace as the Tea Party and hard-right favorite Rick Perry (blue line) has dropped off a cliff. Which raises the question: what happens if and when Michele Bachman folds? Her 4.7% will presumably go disproportionately to Cain rather than Romney. Romney will probably pick up the Huntsman vote when he’s out. The Gingrich and Paul shares are harder to guess, so I won’t bother.

My point is this: I don’t think Cain has even come close to his ceiling yet, whereas Romney probably has. And if Perry continues to slip, only Cain is going to benefit. What on earth is the Republican establishment going to do then? How are they going to handle the fact that their front-runner is a guy whose immigration policy is an electrified fence and US troops armed with live ammunition on the Mexico border?

Anyway, since we’re on the topic of Herman Cain, I really liked the discussion on Cain and race in this post by Ta-Nehisi Coates.