Passionate About Pakistan

Salman Taseer - Stopping the Hate Machine

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 17:16:00 +0000

Dictatorship is considered an undesirable form of government for any State mostly because dictators impose policies only to prolong their time in power. These policies are never people-centric because dictators don’t seek power from the people, that is why their policies are never in line with the will of the people. That was the case with General Zia ul Haq in the 1980’s, he empowered religious forces in the country which helped him gain support for the Afghan War, he paved way for the polarization and extremism in the society that we observe today. Gen. Zia sowed the seeds for total destruction of the Pakistani society and although he has been dead for 23 years he is still killing people and the damage he caused is irreversible in many ways.

Gov. Salman Taseer was assassinated by his security staff Mumtaz Qadri five days ago, who based on his initial statements believed that Gov. Taseer had made blasphemous comments. Gov. Taseer was supporting and lobbying for an amendment in the anti-blasphemy law to curb its abuse. I have spent the past five days observing the reactions from different factions of the society trying to understand where we stand as a nation.

I was not a fan of Gov. Taseer because of his association with certain people but his assassination is a loss to Pakistan because of his liberal positions. Gov. Taseer had also been the target of a defamation campaign run by social conservatives on the web, pictures of his family were used to make a case against him. He was declared a non-Muslim by extremist clerics before and after his unfortunate death. It was disappointing to see the blatant sense of jubilation amongst those who disapproved of his position on the anti-blasphemy law and those who were perhaps envious of his lifestyle, none of this would have been possible in any other country and I find it extremely alarming.

The reaction we have seen from religious forces is simply wrong not only because they have failed to condemn this heinous crime but also because they have launched a well designed campaign to brand Mumtaz Qadri as a man of conviction. They have been wording their arguments to justify the crime instead of denouncing it. Two videos of Qadri have been uploaded on the web one shows him summarily confessing to his crime and in the next one he is reciting a Naat in police custody both of which are being used to drum up support for him.

Pakistani society stands at yet another (clichéd) cross road, the intolerance that prevails in the society has reached dangerous levels and people do not know how to deal with disagreements anymore. Even the religious leaders who refer to themselves as “scholars” have issued numerous “Fatwas” against each other.

Religious parties do not win elections in Pakistan, however, right wingers have always been loud but now they have resorted to measures which are designed to scare the opposition so that they would simply stop talking. They do not understand that their extremism is only hurting Islam and Muslims around the world and their protectionism is only making their arguments weaker. They have made it impossible for educated moderate Muslims to present a strong case for true Islam on a global scale.

All Muslims have the highest possible amount of respect and admiration for Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and that is not subject to any debate. This whole issue is being used by religious extremists to gain further control over political and social discourse because most of the conservative leaders lack education and awareness of global issues and they fear that if liberal thought is allowed to grow in the society they will lose their captive audience and become irrelevant. That is why right wingers love to explain every event with a conspiracy theory which is never backed by any facts.

Majority of Pakistani liberals are Muslims and obviously they cannot be against their own religion. Attempts are being made to play this as Conservatism versus Liberalism issue, if it is anything it is a Reason versus Extremism or Sanity versus Insanity issue. This is a matter of supremacy of law in plain simple terms.

Some drastic measures are required to restore the much needed stability in the society. We can even take some ideas from General Zia’s playbook, surprising I know but hear me out. General Zia’s administration heavily censored all available electronic and print media to restrict free thinkers and allow right wing extremism to grow in the country. Although I support freedom of expression but in these volatile times we might have to redefine what that freedom means. Should hate mongering be allowed in the name of freedom of expression? Limited censorship should be brought back, the government and the news media should align themselves to ensure that extremist clerics are not given any airtime, this would reduce their sphere of influence. At the same time moderate scholars focusing on the true spirit of Islam should be given more opportunities to spread their message. News media will have to start thinking beyond ratings and advertising revenues to ensure their programming is appropriate.

Similarly right wing columnists who have always served as propaganda machines should be banned completely. The government should look to block websites promoting extremist ideologies. Clerics who are well known divisive forces should not be allowed to hold public rallies. The hate machine must be stopped.

Liberals will have to ensure that they do not let right wing scare tactics work, they must speak up and take a stand for their beliefs. If this downward spiral is to be stopped supremacy of law will have to be ensured and reason will have to prevail.

Violence has no room in a civilized society and no individual or group can be allowed to decide anyone else’s fate and people who were issuing verdicts first calling for Gov. Taseer’s murder and then justifying it should be arrested and tried in a court of law for their role in this crime. Those who showered Qadri with flowers at his court appearance and those who made and uploaded his videos on the internet must also be stopped and investigated.

Mumtaz Qadri is a suspect at this stage and I hope he gets a fair trial in accordance with the law, he is not a hero. If there was a hero on January 4 it was certainly Salman Taseer.

Gen. Zia spent 11 years destroying the very fabric of our society and it might take us a lot longer to take our country back on the right track but the key is to keep trying. It is becoming increasingly difficult but I choose to remain optimistic.

WikiLeaks and The Conspiracy Theories

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:28:00 +0000

This has been an ‘outing’ of people who weren’t even ‘in’ anymore because they had been ‘out’ for a while, so perhaps we can call it a ‘re-outing’.

There has been plenty of discussion about the latest set of documents revealed by WikiLeaks and going by the current rate the issue may continue for a few months. There has been a controlled reaction in Pakistan which has been interesting to observe. It is understood that most of the revelations confirmed what most informed people already knew and so far very little value has been added by the bulk of the cables released. However, these leaks have brought focus back to some important issues from a Pakistani perspective, matters such as Predator Drone attacks on Pakistani soil and the military's role in the political situation of the country.
(http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/01/wikileaks.pakistan.drones/index.html)

We as a nation have a healthy appetite for conspiracy theories and political strategists have adopted a simplistic two part response to all questions asked of them which is that they have doubts over the authenticity of these documents and it is a conspiracy to ruin Pakistan’s relationships with ‘brother’ Muslim countries.

Considering the first part of their response - they seem to have lost sight of the fact that Secretary Clinton condemned the leaks as an “attack on international community” she did not disown any of the documents which she would have if they were forged. Somehow the Pakistani Government ministers and opposition leaders thought this would be a good defence – it was not.

Second part has a much wider appeal which deals with our relationships with some Arab countries, specifically dealing with the comments reported to have been made by the unelected ruler of KSA about President Zardari. Some people in Pakistan have made valiant efforts to defend King Abdullah without any clarification from his side. It is strange but somehow religious conservatives believe they must have an opinion on every matter that pertains to KSA although this matter is strictly diplomatic / political and has no religious implications whatsoever. A very senior right wing journalist whose views are frozen in the early 80’s in his column today outrightly denied all comments associated with the King on the grounds that he believes a man of the King’s stature will never make such comments. This is way beyond naïve it is either dishonest or really dishonest because he has no substantive basis to make such definitive conclusions. I believe this journalist should have stopped writing 20 years ago.

While considering whether or not these comments were made, we have to acknowledge that the Saudi Kings along with other Middle Eastern leaders have been involved with most of the major political developments in Pakistan in the past 40 years. They have brokered political deals and have acted as guarantors and enforcers and hence, have had a lot of exposure to the Pakistani political and military leaderships. If anyone has to set the record straight it would be the KSA government and they can then demand an apology from the US Department of State if their Diplomats were misquoting the honorable King. KSA so far has taken a position similar to that of Pakistan, the following is an extract from Middle Eastern news media:

“Saudi Arabia has no connection with the documents published by WikiLeaks nor does it have anything to do with its formulations, said an official source at the Foreign Ministry. “We cannot confirm the authenticity or credibility of the documents released by the website. Saudi Arabia cannot comment on them,” the source said in a statement to the Saudi Press Agency on Tuesday”

There is a second equally popular conspiracy theory that all of these documents have been leaked deliberately by the US and there are specific objectives to be achieved by this. I believe this has put US diplomats in such difficult positions around the world that these leaks could not have been orchestrated by the State Department but then there are other powerful elements within the US establishment, at this stage it is hard to rule out any other possibilities. However, we must notice that the leaked documents have only revealed one side of most stories and the snippets that have been widely discussed have been reported without context, based on the leaks we have not learned anything new about US policy positions so we can safely say that process has been controlled carefully by someone, that could have been done for a number of reasons, we just don’t know them yet.

The other interesting question is if there was more that should have been done to prevent the leaked documents from being made public and that would perhaps be the subject of some books to be published in the next few years. It was obviously not very hard for US government to take WikiLeaks out.

These leaks have put a lot of people in Pakistan in really embarrassing positions including Gen. Kiyani who had previously played himself as a non-political figure, he is being talked about on all public forums which would make it very difficult for him to act upon his political ambitions, if any. It would be interesting to see his reaction and if he would be able to maintain his stature within his organization. In a rather unfunny way President Zardari’s reputation is not affected by anything anyone says anymore. Revelations about Sharif brothers and Fazlur Rehman have put them all in damage control mode as well. People who have been discussed unfavorably in the cables are bound to gain in popularity in their respective constituencies thanks to all the anti American propaganda that goes on around the world.

For most these conspiracy theories are just ways to not face the reality and take responsibility, as George Costanza of Seinfeld once famously said “It is not a lie if you believe it”.

The power players in Islamabad should admit that they allowed the US government to have too much influence on internal functioning of the government and that they need to change their ways. I thought most of our political leaders could not properly pronounce the word ‘sovereignty’ unfortunately now we have realized they don’t know what it means either.

We must stop telling our public that the world is out to get us, because we have to understand and protect our own interests just like any other country and in the process we will have agreements with some and disagreements with others and that is all part of the game. We have to get out of this conspiratorial mindset which prevents us from thinking objectively.

There would be new documents leaked everyday for weeks to come and talking heads on TV will milk the issue for as long as possible but I am mostly interested in seeing if this would have an impact on how things are done in Islamabad. I have a feeling that I know the answer to that already but I choose to remain optimistic.

President Zardari and The Unreasonables

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 23:19:00 +0000

I disagree for the most part with President Zardari and the policies adopted by his party, I can elaborate on this statement and get into the specifics but that would take us away from the actual discussion, I just wanted to say this right in the beginning to avoid the usual suggestions that I am some undercover “jiala”.

I agree with the popular idea that President Zardari should have cancelled or postponed his trip to France and the UK due to floods in three provinces. I also agree that Pakistan government should have sent a much stronger message in response to the naïve statements made by the British PM David ‘The Gaffe Machine’ Cameron.

Having said all of that I could not disagree more with Imran Khan’s PTI for organizing a protest against President Zardari first in London and then in Birmingham, pictures similar to the one I have posted above were all over the British media. I believe President Zardari must do a much better job as president but no one can deny that he is the duly elected President. PTI supporters carried signs like “King of Corruption” and “Well Done Gen. Pasha” which clearly showed an anti-democracy mindset and I have reasons to doubt the actual motives of these protesters.

PTI has caused Pakistan a great embarrassment by their conduct because we never saw Democrats protesting George Bush in Islamabad, neither did we ever see Tories marching against Blair’s policies in Karachi. Why did PTI and Imran Khan think it was acceptable to embarrass a Pakistani President while he was in a foreign country further weakening his position to present Pakistan’s case? Do these people not understand that irrespective of how you feel, elected representatives of the people of Pakistan will now be representing Pakistan in all international forums, and by attacking them personally these PTI activists are actually hurting Pakistan.

Imran Khan’s PTI decided to demonstrate in London because that was the only way for the party to make its presence felt in the media, had it been Pakistan a group of 10 people would not have gotten any attention, unfortunately 10 people is the most Imran Khan can gather in one place at any given time.

It is unfortunate that most of PTI supporters in the UK are closeted Musharraf fans too, these people try to gain influence back home to obtain petty benefits, some of them dream of returning to Pakistan one day as a Moeen Qureshi or a Shaukat Azziz and that dream can never come true if there is democracy in Pakistan that is why they malign politicians and keep looking for insider deals. Imran Khan presents an interesting option to these people because if he ever cuts a deal with the establishment he will need people to fill in positions in the party and the government and these PTI supporters believe that their time might come then. It is a sad reality but I have based this analysis on many personal interactions with Pakistanis based in the US and UK over the past few years.

When an Iraqi journalist shoe-bombed President Bush it was condemned by all Americans because the President represents the country, however, when unconfirmed reports emerged of a person tossing his shoes in the air in Birmingham during President Zardari’s speech, the story was first twisted to make it sound as if shoes were thrown at President Zardari and then there was a wave of restrained jubilation in the teen-age internet communities most of whom are anti-democracy Musharraf supporters. The media used words like “pelted” and “hurled” to describe the incident making it sound sensational. It was unfortunate to observe this, but I think the President adopted the right strategy by taking the high road and not allowing the attacker to get any attention, because most of these lunatics are looking to gain personal benefits.

I believe domestic politics should be discussed and debated within the country, disagreements over policies should not be used to justify unpatriotic behavior. There shouldn’t be any international wings of Pakistani political parties, because they are only used by ambitious expatriates to have undue influence in Pakistan.

At the same time the government must do a better job at dealing with the crisis in the country and while it is very difficult to improve things in the short-term there must be a distinctly identifiable direction. They also need to communicate with the people more using direct methods such as one-on-one interviews and news paper articles, they should avoid using talk shows and public rallies where the messages are always misconstrued. Threat to Pakistani democracy is more real now then it has been in the past two years and our people must understand that their lives will only become worse if the democratic government gets removed using unconstitutional means. Pakistanis should try to get involved with the legitimate political process to improve its quality instead of supporting dictators who would destroy the country to prolong their time in power just like Gen. Musharraf did.

In the meanwhile, I choose to remain optimistic and Passionate About Pakistan and so should you !!

Pakistan Cricket Board and The Head-Butt

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 07:26:00 +0000

Supporting Pakistan cricket team has always been a roller coaster ride but it has become increasingly difficult over the past 5 years, there has been some good news coming mostly from the T20 version of the game and then there has been terrible news on every other front.

The biggest reason for Pakistan’s inconsistent performance has always been poor management and most of the time it is hard to fathom anything the cricket board does.

For the longest time Chairmanship of Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has been awarded to allies, friends, and relatives of the ruling party each one of whom experimented with domestic formats, selection committees, coaches, captains, batting orders, disciplinary actions, training facilities and even PCB’s constitution.

In the past 10 years the following have attempted to manage PCB:

- Mr. Tauqir Zia – A retired general disposed of by Gen. Musharraf. His achievements include pampering Shoaib Akhtar, ensuring his son played international cricket for Pakistan, an unnecessary indoor training facility and a TV rights controversy with a private channel.

- Mr. Shaheryar Khan – A retired diplomat who was friends with the dictator. His achievements include overseeing the Oval fiasco which resulted in Pakistan losing a Test match due to forfeiture and a moron called Darryl Hair.

- Mr. Naseem Ashraf – Some old guy who liked bowling in PCB’s training facility meant for the national team, he disappeared soon as Gen. Musharraf stepped down. He has the honor of travelling the most as Chairman at PCB’s expense. His achievements include pretending to know a little bit about cricket.

- Mr. Ijaz Butt – He played the last of his 8 test matches in 1962 and took over PCB when he was only 70 years young. Since he is currently in-charge of the chaos let us discuss his work in a bit more detail.

In all honesty on paper Mr. Butt is more qualified to be the head of PCB than any of the other gentlemen listed above. Following his playing career Mr. Butt was involved with cricket administration and served as Secretary of PCB and President of Lahore City Cricket Association. However, his appointment as Chairman was primarily due to his connection with a minister of the current government. That fact could have been over looked if he had proved himself a better administrator since he understood Pakistan’s cricketing culture much better than any of the imported Chairmen.

However, that wasn’t to be, Mr. Butt’s administration has failed PCB on many fronts causing a lot of distress to die-hard cricket fans like myself, just a few are listed below:

- Pakistan lost its position as co-host of the 2011 world cup, this alone was worth a few million dollars.

- Abruptly fired Jeff Lawson as coach and handed the team to the way over-the-hill Intikhab Alam.

- Failed to develop a management team and constantly had public differences with other prominent members such as Javed Miandad, Aamir Sohail and Abdul Qadir.

- England was awarded the undeserved victory once again for the Oval fiasco of 2006.

- Failed to form any alliances at the ICC governing body level and couldn’t earn the respect of the other members of ICC.

- Developed personal differences with players, currently Younis Khan arguably Pakistan’s best available batsman is out of the national squad because of Mr. Butt.

The biggest failure he has had is on the team management front, which should have been his strongest suit as a former player. Much like other Chairmen he did not deal with ‘player-power’ issue and could not maintain any discipline in the team and there were 3 groups at all times within the outfit.

Team leaders kept changing more frequently than any other major team, Mr. Butt’s tenure started in October 2008 with Shoaib Malik as captain, then Younis Khan took over, Mohammad Yusuf was then chosen to lead Pakistan to Australia, next Shahid Afridi became captain who stepped down after one test in England, and then puppy-faced Salman Butt was thrown into the fire. Each of the captains was removed because of non-cooperation from fellow players.

Younis Khan openly expressed that he had lost control over the team, and then after the disastrous tour of Australia Mohammad Yousuf had to disclose that Shoaib Malik’s group was making his life miserable. Finally, Mr. Butt decided to take action against the miscreants, Shoaib Malik, Rana Navaid, Younis khan, and Mohammad Yousuf were banned from playing for Pakistan and heavy fines were levied against Kamran Akmal, Umar Akmal and Shahid Afridi. The disciplinary actions were well supported by former players, but as expected within a short period of time all the actions were reversed under political pressures and the current Pakistan team has all of these players except for Younis and Rana.

All of this drama has turned Pakistan into laughingstock of the cricketing world. During this time Pakistan has only won matches due exceptional performances by individual players, just like the last test agains Australia in July 2010 where the bowlers bundled out the opposition for 88 runs, somehow once again this was hailed as the 'dawn of a new era'.

Currently Pakistan is playing a test series against England and the first match has already been lost quite badly. But the board seems reluctant in addressing the actual issue. The all powerful group in the team is going to ensure that Salman Butt fails as captain so that the leadership can either go to Shoaib Malik or Kamran Akmal.

The good thing for Mr. Butt is that he is still in office and has the chance to do a few things right. Besides doing everything else that he needs to, if Pakistan team has to get better in the short run Mr. Butt must do the following:

- Bring Younis (Ave. 50.09) and Yousuf (Ave. 53.07) back unconditionally, because clearly Azhar Ali and Umar Amin are not ready for the job yet.

- Immediately remove Shoaib Malik, Kamran Akmal and Umar Akmal from the team, all three of them are out of form and are causing nothing but trouble for the captain.

- Provide Salman Butt the support that he needs to control this team.

- Danesh Kaneria is out of form but should be kept with the squad and it must be borne in mind that his figures over the past two years have been ruined by the dropped catches and missed stumpings by the wicket-keeper.

- Stop making erratic decisions.

According to recent news Yousuf is being sent to England it is not clear if he will play the second test or not. With the looks of things the team might do better if one of the players comes up with an exceptional performance with the bat or ball but we cannot expect any kind of consistency from this squad.

Second test starts on August 6, I will be prepared mentally for another disappointment but will watch the scores with as much optimism as I possibly can but that’s just me!!

People of Pakistan Need Your Help!!

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 08:38:00 +0000

As you must have heard by now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan was hit by severe flooding on July 29, 2010, hundreds of people have died and thousands have lost their homes. City of Nowshera and its surrounding villages have been affected severely, one of my close friends who is now based in the US lost his house in Nowshera.

Currently the water is receding and the tenacious locals are trying to return to their homes and salvage what is left of their properties. There is a severe shortage of food and drinking water, according to estimates 2 million people in the region are still in need of assistance.

There are quite a few organizations operating in the region providing food, shelter and healthcare services to the affected however, their resources are limited, as Pakistanis we must do whatever we can to help our brothers in need, use the links below to find out how you can help, sending a donation is the least we can do:

(I will be updating the links as I find out more, please check back in a few hours).

Islamic Relief USA http://www.islamicreliefusa.org/Page.aspx?pid=463

Edhi Foundation http://www.edhifoundation.com/contact.asp

Pakistan Red Crescent http://www.prcs.org.pk/default.asp

Save the Children http://www.savethechildren.org/newsroom/2010/help-families-pakistan-flooding.html?WT.mc_id=gg_e_np&gclid=CPPaxOHml6MCFQG3sgodyU0dow&WT.srch=1

Al-Khidmat http://al-khidmatfoundation.org/donate-here.php

Please watch the video below and take a look at the images to understand the devastation these floods have caused.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o05Ka4AJx1M&feature=related

The Porn Debate

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:49:00 +0000

Recently Fox News an organization which claims to be a news outlet came out with a story about Pakistan’s interest in porn searches on the web. Personally I don’t take anything seriously that comes from Fox because over the years we have seen it has a bias towards ‘Lack of Intellect’ generally referred to as ‘Stupidity’.

However, the story was picked up by the media all over the world because it provided them with an entertaining opportunity to bash Pakistan, since these days it is very easy and popular to do so. The story was exaggerated and played completely out of context. From Pakistanis there were two usual reactions one stating that this is obviously a conspiracy and the other from our elitist friends who believe everything nasty about Pakistan must be true (that is why most of them try not to live there).

I felt the need to spend a little more time understanding if Pakistanis were actually that bad and decided to run a brief current report on some of the commonly known porn searches using the same source as Fox did. Here is what I found:

(Source: http://google.com/trends I take no responsibility for the accuracy of the table above neither does Google!! See below.)

This information could be very relevant to you if you are a Cat or a Chicken because you would certainly want to avoid travelling to certain countries and cities. Using this you can also figure out how popular you could be in the Czech Republic or Algeria and how to make friends in Egypt. Fascinating isn’t it?

Obviously the US porn industry is the largest in the world and most significant chunk of their revenues come from the internet, so if everything in the Fox story were to be believed then technically Pakistanis are playing their role in stimulating global and US economy. So they are fighting Terrorism AND stimulating the Economy? BRILLIANT.

One more interesting factor that appeared in this random study was Richardson, Texas. Who would have thought a city with only 101,400 people (Est. 2007) could top 4 categories? According to Wikipedia (the most reliable source of information on the web after Twitter) there are over 5000 businesses in Richardson including 5 of the world’s largest Communication/Networking companies. I wonder why so many geeks were caught by Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator? I have no idea!!

It is also important to understand how Google Trends work and how reliable are these statistics. Here is what I found on their website:

How does Google Trends work?

Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with the results – our Search Volume Index graph.

How accurate and up-to-date is the information provided by Google Trends?

The data Trends produces may contain inaccuracies for a number of reasons, including data-sampling issues and a variety of approximations that are used to compute results. We hope you find this service interesting and entertaining, but you probably wouldn’t want to write your Ph.D. dissertation based on the information provided by Trends.

(Source:http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html#7 )

Hmm so Google HOPES that we would find this SERVICE INTERESTING AND ENTERTAINING!! I sure did.

While until mid of this week Fox was promoting Tea Party ideology which believes that the unemployed were too lazy to work and hence unemployment benefits must not be extended, they didn’t realize what they could learn about unemployment from Google Trends:

Top 10 cities of the world searching ‘Unemployment’ are all US cities!!

Obviously this will not have an impact on Fox they will continue to work with the Tea Party. They fail to understand basic Economic Concepts and are unsure how the unemployment checks could help stimulate and sustain economic growth. Hmm… Bias for ‘Lack of Intellect’??

For those who thought Pakistanis were only searching for porn, well you are wrong again, see below:

We understand that in accordance with estimates only 10.4% of Pakistanis have access to the internet (Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia/pk.htm), so by no means this is a representative sample of Pakistanis but this can indicate in a limited manner what is bothering Pakistanis the most and what possible solutions they might think of.

While US is an exciting country for people everywhere the following must also be looked at:

While Fox and the people who picked up the story around the world chose to use Google Trends to mislead and misinform, if someone decides to study these statistics with some level of positivity it might help them understand some very relevant issues, here are some additional results:

Isn't anyone interested in knowing why UAE tops the search for Camel Children?

With the analysis above I do not intend to defend my people or justify or criticize anyone else’s behavior, I am just adding some relevant facts to the argument.

Those who think hatemongering is acceptable in the name of Freedom of Speech should also explain why shouldn’t a person have Freedom to access whatever legal content he/she chooses to on the internet?

Although Google miserably failed to sell their smart phone this highlights the power Google has over the world with its virtually unlimited access to personal information.

In the end, while it wasn’t my intention to use so many popular search items in one blog but I have, and this might increase traffic on the page exponentially, too bad. I felt the need to have a more detailed discussion about this issue since some were being too judgmental and others were being too apologetic and I don’t think we need to be either, we should just put the issue in perspective and be aware.

Political Talk Shows – The 3 Tiers

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:12:00 +0000

Political talk shows are a relatively new phenomenon in Pakistani television, they gained popularity soon after their launch in 2004 and now it is the most watched genre of programming. These shows captured the nation’s imagination because they allowed them an opportunity to observe their political leaders engage in debates and present their views on a fresh platform. These shows have had significant impact on our politics since every issue no matter how small is now raised on a national stage.
A whole new breed of television journalists has been born, the term “pseudo – intellectual“ has been introduced and understood. At the same time political parties started focusing on politicians who could articulate party positions on live talk shows, the term “talking points” was introduced and understood in Pakistan for the first time.

The news channels are engaged in rating wars and the anchors push really hard to anger the participants and get them to snap at each other, they would rephrase questions to make them as offensive as they can, and we all know it is not very hard to get a loud reaction out of us Pakistanis. I wouldn’t blame the television anchors for doing so because a controversy on the show helps with the ratings and advertising revenues. The most watched videos of Pakistani talk shows on YouTube are the ones involving Wasi Zafar, Raza Qasuri, Firdaus Ashiq Awan, Kashmala Tariq and Maj. Rashid Qureshi. Our nation seems to enjoy quasi-political cock fights.

However, watching these shows lately it is hard not to notice that the initial wave of success and interest is over largely due to the monotony of participants and inconsequentiality of discussions. On any given day almost all of the talk shows are discussing exactly the same issue with the same panel and the same rhetoric is offered each time.

The top leaders of all parties stay away from these shows because these are volatile environments and they prefer stable one on one interviews. I have noticed that the political parties have developed three tiers of spokespersons to represent them in these talk shows. It appears that the producers try to have at least one show with each of the three tiers every week to maintain revenues. Based on my personal experience of watching these talk shows the following are the arbitrary definitions of the three tiers:

Tier 1

This consists of relatively senior politicians and they participate in shows with new or important issues, they look to maintain composure and debate issues with dignity. Panelist from this tier look to avoid personal attacks on other participants. Anchors maintain a professional and controlled tone on these shows. This tier is generally seen discussing economic policy, foreign policy or national security, ratings for these shows are not very high. The following are the constituents of this tier:

Tier 2

This consists of newer politicians who tend to discuss issues of lesser significance and maintain a reasonable level of aggression. They look to be flexible with their positions and sometimes try to reconcile differences on live television. Anchors appear more relaxed on these shows as most of these discussions run smoothly. This tier is generally seen discussing governance issues and terrorism related matters, these shows have moderate ratings. The following are the constituents of this tier:

Tier 3

These are the pit bulls with no lipstick. This tier consists of people who are labeled as politicians because of their participation in these shows, these are individuals with very little credibility or track record. They try to do verbally to their opponents what Punjab police does physically to their suspects. Their knowledge is generally limited to the talking points provided to them and on some occasions they fail to explain their own opinions. Some of these individuals are so incoherent that they make Sarah Palin look articulate. A show with tier 3 participants is most likely to have an unpleasant incident and the anchors make every effort to make it happen. Participants launch personal attacks at will and voices are raised to prevent opponents from explaining their positions. These shows have the highest ratings and are also watched internationally over the internet. This panel is generally seen discussing corruption or party issues. The following are the constituents of this tier:

There are two names, Imran Khan and Shiekh Rasheed, which appear in more than one tier largely because they are the sole representatives of their parties and have the ability to perform in different tiers.

Sometimes the producers look to mix the three tiers up and have fun with the product, especially when a tier 1 participant is confronted by a tier 3 panelist. Based on the anchor’s skills and tendencies some talk shows are more suited to tier 1 participants, and others to tier 2 and then there are shows that thrive purely on tier 3 participants, following is an arbitrary breakdown of the popular talk shows and their tier favourability:

Our newly liberated news media is evolving rapidly and while much of it is far from perfect it has been a positive influence on our national politics. Our news media can only get better with time, and when it does the following shall happen:

- the number of talk shows will reduce to a watchable level because at the moment there are way too many.

- better quality journalists will moderate these discussions.

- participants will learn to present and defend their views without getting all worked up.

- viewers will learn to draw intelligent conclusions from these discussion which will eventually have an impact on voting patterns and WWE style debates will completely lose appeal.

In the mean while I choose to remain optimistic and Passionate About Pakistan.

End of the Beginning for Imran Khan and PTI

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 07:24:00 +0000

Bye-elections in Rawalpindi’s NA 55 held a lot more significance than any such elections in the past, since this turned out to be a contest between Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PMLN) and the Rest of Pakistan which consisted of Shiekh Rasheed’s Awami Muslim League (AML), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League – Quaid (PMLQ). Most observers were convinced that AML was also well supported by the Establishment.

Since the bye-elections in NA 21 Mansehra it was widely speculated that if PMLN fails to win NA 55 with a considerable margin it will be the end of PMLN’s presumed position as the government-in-waiting. A Shiekh Rasheed victory would have also helped PPP, PMLQ and the Establishment regain some of the ground lost in the past couple of years. However, none of that were to be and PMLN’s candidate managed to beat Mr. Rasheed and friends by over 20,000 votes according to the unofficial results announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan staff.

There were two slightly less interesting side shows - Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) and Jamat-e-Islami (JI). Since both of these parties decided to boycott the elections in February 2008 and had spent most of the last 24 months criticizing the government and the opposition equally this was going to be a test for their message. Challenge for JI were to prove that they are politically alive but unfortunately for them it isn’t the 80’s anymore and General Zia has been dead for 22 years, they managed only 3,109 votes.

Challenge for Imran Khan was to prove that he can be competitive in the mainstream with the big guys. Based on the unofficial results PTI’s Ijaaz Khan managed to bag 3,105 votes in a constituency with 333,928 registered voters - 0.93% only, which was very consistent with PTI’s performance in the past 14 years since their formation in 1996.

No. of seats

General Elections 1997 0

General Elections 2002 1

General Elections 2008 Boycotted

Concessions were made in 1997 general elections for their performance since the party was formed just a few months before the elections and there was hardly any time to organize a proper election campaign.

For the engineered general elections of 2002 organized by the dictator General Musharraf it is interesting to note that PTI had nominated its candidates for almost all seats in the National Assembly and they managed to win only one which was contested by Imran Khan.

They boycotted the general elections in 2008 and there were speculations that PTI will now do much better compared with the 2002 general elections since they have had an opportunity to promote their message through the electronic media. PTI’s performance in 2010 bye-elections so far is as follows:

Bye Elections 2010 Winning Votes PTI Votes

NA 21 Mansehra 36,622 4,582

NA 55 Rawalpindi 63,888 3,105

PF 83 Swat 7,505 3,821

Winning a seat would have been great but they weren’t even close to winning, in none of the cases were they even on the second position, in larger constituencies there impact was minimal where they bagged less than 1% of registered votes and had it not been for the celebrity party chairman they would not have been covered by the media. After observing their performance over the past 14 years it is fair to conclude that the political “beginning” for PTI and Imran Khan has “ended” and their future in popular politics has been placed in a box marked “Loud but Insignificant” and fairly soon even the urban youth will embrace this reality.

Our nation has always been interested in having one leader who would fix everything for them, we have never been fans of having a system and allowing it to function. Imran Khan when he first launched himself as a political figure was very close to what some people had in mind but having been around for a long time now he has failed to make any impact, which makes us think what happened to him and PTI? Here are some thoughts:

- Imran Khan has been the biggest problem for Imran Khan and PTI since he is so madly in love with himself that he has never allowed any strong political personalities to get involved with PTI. Mairaj Mohammad Khan a seasoned and well respected politician was forced to withdraw from PTI because of Imran Khan’s erratic behavior. All the office bearers listed on the party website are complete unknowns with the exception of Hamid Khan who became relatively famous during the lawyer’s movement in 2007.

- He displayed lack of commitment with the democratic political system when he supported General Musharraf after the coup in October 1999. According to Mr. Khan he also interviewed with the GHQ for an employment opportunity as the Prime Minister of Pakistan a job which was later taken by Zafarullah Jamali, Ch. Shujaat and then one Mr. Shaukat Azziz.

- He has failed to understand the mechanics of the election system in Pakistan and all his campaigns to date have been weak and idealistic. He has not been able to connect with the rural political culture where voting patterns are heavily influenced by families, communities and land ownerships.

- Mr. Khan has been mindlessly criticizing all political forces and hence has failed to form any political alliances which could have been the way forward for PTI since the party itself has no structure, his only partner so far has been Jamat-e-Islami whose student wing treated him with very little respect in November 2007 at Punjab University.

- PTI’s focus could have been the urban youth which has some patience for his rhetoric, but Mr. Khan’s decision to take on popular leaders like MQM’s Altaf Hussain and PPP’s late Benazir Bhutto deprived PTI of any opportunity to develop party bases in large cities.

- Mr. Khan’s rampaging self love was fully on display in his address to the Pakistani community in the UK in January 2010, which became a YouTube hit due to his insensitive and callous comments where he criticized everyone he could think of including the person who drove him to the venue. In his speech which sounded more like a poor stand up act he claimed that all dark skinned people are from Africa and they all look alike this was intended to be an attack on Mr. Babar Ghauri of MQM however, it displayed why he is not qualified to be a leader or a politician.

Clearly status quo is not option for PTI or Imran Khan and a different political strategy is needed since PTI is already on the list of endangered species. One of the options for Mr. Khan could be to have his own talk-show where he can be as self-righteous as he likes to be and continue with his condescending behavior.

If Mr. Khan were to carry on as a political leader he will have to either join a larger political entity (PMLN is already working on this) or allow PTI to grow naturally so that the party can gain strength at the union counsel level, they can then consolidate and be competitive at higher levels, a top-down approach which worked for Z.A. Bhutto is not working for Mr. Khan. The PTI experiment has failed the sooner they accept it the better it will be for Imran Khan.

In the meanwhile I choose to remain optimistic and passionate about Pakistan.

Why Should President Zardari Resign?

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:26:00 +0000

In the past 3 years Pakistan has seen two wonderful developments in its national culture, first the transition from ‘state controlled’ media to ‘anti-state media’ was completed and then some substantial amount of activism led to revival of judiciary in the country.

The third change that we now expect to make is establishment of a stable democracy as a system of government. A democracy which is not defined as “the best or worst revenge” but a democracy which is sustainable and self cleansing.

The key to sustaining democracy is to ensure that the elected government gets the opportunity to complete its term and is allowed to function during its term, and effectiveness of the system improves with each completed cycle. However, somehow soon as an elected government takes office a strong campaign is launched which revolves around the themes of incompetence, corruption and abuse of power. We saw this happen during 1987 – 1999 when each of the four elected governments were ousted on corruption charges – charges which were not proved by the successors.

However, General Musharraf’s dictatorial administration was hardly challenged during the first eight years on any grounds although:

- Former Prime Minister Shaukat “The Shortcut” Azziz was linked to many corruption scandals Steel Mills and Karachi Stock Exchange just to name a couple, then he was allowed to leave the country at the end of his term. ‘Senior Employees’ of a certain organization were also involved with numerous cases of financial corruption but I guess we aren’t supposed to talk about that.

- To gain international recognition Gen. Musharraf turned Pakistan’s foreign policy upside down putting Pakistan at the forefront of the ‘war on terror’ leading to the current terrorism situation in the country where thousands of civilians have been killed in terrorist attack and the military is engaged in a war against militants on the western border while eastern border remains vulnerable.

- Hundreds of Pakistanis went missing since 2001 most of whom are still missing, no charges were leveled against these individuals and none of them have ever been presented in a court of law.

- Political opponents such as Sardar Bugti of Baluchistan were eliminated using force leading to unrest in the province.

- General Musharraf got himself elected as President while still holding the office of the Army Chief.

- Pakistan’s constitution was blatantly violated by General Musharraf on multiple occasions.

- The Supreme Court was reconstituted by the dictator under the second PCO while the non-PCO judges were imprisoned with their families.

The list is not all inclusive by any means. Despite of the above facts no one is talking about holding General Musharraf and his team accountable for their actions and the debate around Article 6 has also been drowned in the noise. Somehow the current government is being played out as “pure evil” which needs to be eliminated to save ‘the system’. Haven’t we seen this campaign before in the 90’s? Don’t we remember what happened at the end of that decade?

It must be noted that President Zardari’s time in power including the period when Late Benazir Bhutto was Prime Minister adds to less than 7 years while General Musharraf had 9 years of unhindered control and General Ziaul Haq enjoyed power for 11 years. While President Zardari has only been part of elected governments, Generals Musharraf and Haq had 20 years of unconstitutional rule…..accountability …..anyone….??

While I understand and support the idea of accountability it has to be “all inclusive” to be effective. If it is to continue as a ‘witch hunt’ against elected representatives it would only be another unfortunate chapter in our political history leading up to another ‘uniformed disaster’. While I have no reason to doubt the motives of the Supreme Court I do struggle to understand our free media’s wild obsession with bashing the elected government. It is perfectly fine to raise legitimate questions but why should the elected government (specially the President) be attacked so viciously based on allegations that it swings the public opinion in favor of a potential imposed change? Because practically there is no real possibility of a Presidential impeachment primarily due to the number’s game in the Parliament.

The government must be given a fair opportunity to prove its worth in due course of time, while there have been governance mistakes, I don’t think going back to Musharraf or ‘yet-another-Musharraf’ will solve anything. For the government to have a realistic chance a certain self-righteous group of media personnel needs to calm down considerably because lately it is hard not to wonder if they are towing someone else’s agenda. I don’t think President Zardari will or should step down in the face of mounting pressure against him since he is the democratically elected President.

Political scenario over the next couple of months like always promises to be intriguing as the democratic government makes an effort to keep its head above water, in the meanwhile I choose to remain optimistic and passionate about Pakistan.

Pakistan’s War

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:49:00 +0000

Pakistan’s democratically elected government has deployed its army to the South Waziristan region to carry out yet another hopefully conclusive round of military operation against extremist elements generally identified as ‘Pakistan Tehreek-e-Taliban’. Even before the military operation started there have been terrorist attacks in major cities of the country and highly protected locations have been targeted. Civilian death toll is increasing everyday both as a result of terrorist attacks and ‘collateral damage’ being caused by the armed forces.

Yet there is an unfinished debate in the country about the ownership of the war against terrorist elements in Pakistan, the quasi right wingers are arguing that this is a US war that Musharraf imported to Pakistan to gain international legitimacy as a leader and Pakistan should distance itself from the US and negotiate with the militants. Then we always hear a story which involves the USSR, Pakistan, Warm Waters, Communism, Mujahideen, ISI, CIA, abandonment; it continues to the creation of Taliban, and mentions Bin Laden. The parts which lead on to 9/11 and its aftermath are often excluded.

The story has been told so many times that it is almost politically incorrect to challenge its facts because a whole generation has been brought up on it, but it is about time that we set our records straight and snap out of a national generic delusion. I am not a religious scholar and I will not pretend to be one, I do not know what the definition of ‘Jihad’ is to a lot of people and I will not attempt to define it, however, we need to be clear on whatever happened in Afghanistan during the 80’s was not a ‘Jihad’ and irrespective of commonly stated beliefs of those involved with the Afghan war, the war did not have a religious premise. Religion was only used initially as a regional marketing gimmick which later on became an effective recruitment tool.

It is agreed by all stakeholders to the region that mistakes were made by both US and Pakistan in the post-war phase. The mercenaries should have been properly disposed of and Afghanistan should have been provided appropriate support to establish a stable government and investment should have been made in human development. To be honest all of these are foregone conclusions and plenty of books have been written on the subject.

We skip a few chapters forward and we hear about a famous phone call that was received by General (Retired) Pervez Musharraf. This part of the story involves references to terms like stone age, with us or against us and bending over backwards. Then the Afghan war again.

While it is perfectly fine to have political and ideological differences, Pakistan’s current situation requires unanimity of public opinion and at this point in our national history the majority understands the sequence of events which led us to the war. We can agree that we may not have been responsible for initiating the war and that this situation could have been averted if some horrific foreign policy mistakes were not made by the Gen. (Retired) Musharraf’s dictatorial administration.

However, we have to agree on the fact that now it is Pakistan’s war because despite the instigators it is the people of Pakistan who are suffering, it is the prosperity of our children which is at stake. Those who believe otherwise should review the incidents of the past couple of months and analyze for themselves who has been hurt the most? Innocent civilians, security personnel, college students, forcing the administration to shut down schools. Hundreds of Pakistanis who were injured during these terrorist attacks are currently suffering in hospitals across the country, men, women and children who may live to tell their stories but their lives will never be the same again. Numerous families have lost their bread earners placing further burden on an already weak economy. Under these circumstances what choices do we have?

Suggesting that somehow the ‘extremists‘ are unhappy citizens and we should negotiate with them is ludicrous at this stage. It was sad and painful to watch a little girl from the Swat Valley talking about bombings and explosions, children who should be protected and provided for are forced to climb overcrowded vehicles to flee to safe camps and stand in line for hours to obtain food supplies.

While it is important to understand the motives of the militants to effectively counter them, there is no doubt that they are attacking Pakistan and Pakistanis indiscriminately which leaves no option for the State but to use available force against them. As Pakistanis we need to support the Democratic Government and own this war; we must not allow our enemies to use this opportunity to weaken our country further.

There have been talks about comprehensive solutions to deal with the issue of militancy to provide sustainable economic growth and development opportunities to the regions affected the most in order to to terminate recruitment mechanisms. However, it is unfortunate to see that there has not been any progress in that direction and heavy reliance is being placed on the military. I am hoping that the Government would be working on this aspect as well since this is going to be a long process.

It is crucial that the nation supports the Democratic Government’s initiative against the militants, although there are plenty of distractions like always including the Kerry – Lugar fiasco and the National Reconciliation Ordinance (and apparently the Minus-One Formula fourth edition). Appropriate attention also needs to be paid to the foreign elements blatantly making the job for the Pakistani Government very difficult. These foreign elements should be named, confronted and exposed.

We need to give up the ‘Silent Majority’ mentality and be clear that even though we did not start this war, it is 'our' war now. The extremists have killed thousands of innocent Pakistanis and they need to be stopped by all means possible. We must also be clear that although we may or may not like some or all of the individuals running the current administration we must not allow anyone to use the current situation to derail democracy in Pakistan. If Pakistan is to gain strength and make progress, the will of the people must prevail and only a Democratic Government can ensure that.

I have always believed that Pakistan with all its difficulties is fundamentally strong as a country, because of its people, some 175 million hard working nationalistic Pakistanis. For instance, the recent debate over a foreign policy matter has shown that it is not going to be easy for anyone to not be held accountable for their wrongdoings and the increasing awareness in the people of Pakistan is the actual hope for democracy. The fact that Pakistan’s top judiciary and media are now seen as strong and independent shows that the country is moving in the right direction.

The situation may not be easy but we must continue to be optimistic and passionate about Pakistan.

Once a Brig. Imtiaz Always a Brig. Imtiaz

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 07:44:00 +0000

Brig. Imtiaz former DG IB has done a great job adding another interesting yet annoying episode to the Pakistani political drama.

Brig. Imtiaz was an army intelligence operative who was forced to retire after being held responsible for the infamous “Operation Midnight Jackals” designed to destabilize the first Benazir Bhutto administration. He was put in charge of the Intelligence Bureau by the first Nawaz Shareef administration in 1990. He has allegedly been involved with numerous high profile scandals of the 80’s and 90’s most of which are well documented. He was convicted on corruption charges in 2001 and was sent to jail.

On August 23 he went on a live talk show joined on the phone by Lt. Gen. (Rtd.) Naseer Akhtar who was the Corps Commander Karachi overseeing the 1992 military operation against MQM. The two made several confessions and retracted past claims and eventually closed their double act by concluding that MQM never had any separatist designs and maps of the alleged independent state Jinnahpur were fake and were never found from MQM headquarters in Karachi. The MQM representative then put in a weak melodramatic performance and the show ended.

Since then Brig Imtiaz has been on every talk show on Pakistan's news media. The matter has been spiced up by another former DG of ISI Lt. Gen. (Rtd.) Asad Durrani who has re-launched his story about bribing politicians.

This has taken over most of the air time on Pakistani news media, the little time remaining has been dedicated to sugar, flour, electricity and other ongoing crisis.

MQM’s response so far has been off the mark by miles, since they chose to launch a political attack on Nawaz Shareef who was the Prime Minister at the time of this Operation and have completely ignored the Military establishment for its role. They have also decided not to talk about the much more vicious operation led by Lt. Gen. (Rtd.) Naseerullah Babar during the second Benazir Bhutto administration.

As a Karachiite I understand that there are reasons to believe that MQM did not have separatist designs, as a Pakistani who believes in Democracy as the way forward for Pakistan I cannot think of a reason to believe in anything that Brig. Imtiaz has to say.

Then on August 29 Brig. Imtiaz squared off against former Governor of Punjab Ghulam Mustafa Khar on another live talk show to debate him on his alleged involvement with the “London Plan” of 1983, Brig. Imtiaz re-launched this controversy during his August 23 interview. The debate was almost 90 minutes long during which both men aggressively stuck to their previously stated positions and former Gov. Khar managed to fit in some insulting comments about Brig. Imtiaz. We as a nation don’t really know how to debate, we just get angry and raise our voices, so I don’t blame former Gov. Khar for his foul mouthed aggression. During the whole time the flustered moderator kept turning from side to side struggling to pronounce the word “conspiracy”. All in all a complete waste of time.

The stories from Brig. Imtiaz and his former (or current?) colleagues further enforce the following points I made on December 20, 2008:
“- Pakistan has never had a real run of democracy, those who use the 90's as evidence of incompetence of the political forces overlook the fact that just like now the elected governments back then were not free to make decisions they did not have the powers to run the country and the decision making process was blatantly influenced by a certain organization which should be working for the government.
- Elected representatives of the people were arrested, exiled, deported and disgraced in every possible manner, the dictators in all cases got safe passages or glorious funerals with no accountability.
- There is a well defined system in place to derail every democratic government within the first year of its formation.”

Brig. Imtiaz and his kind are the system that derails democracy.

We can further analyze all of this and try to understand all that is being disclosed but one has to stop and wonder why are these being discussed now, a failed plan from 1983, a military operation from 1992, and formation of IJI from 1990?

We have also got to think what is not being discussed? Trial of Gen. (Rtd.) Pervez Musharraf.

I have no doubt in my mind that all of these controversies are being created or re-launched to distract the media and the general public from the issue of holding Gen. (Rtd.) Musharraf liable under Article 6. Brig. Imtiaz is not doing the nation any favors, he should remove himself from public eye and may be write a book or consider gardening.

Once a Brig. Imtiaz always a Brig. Imtiaz - a mere distraction. I believe Pakistanis are smart enough to see through all of this and bring the focus back on the real issues.

In the meanwhile I choose to remain optimistic and passionate about Pakistan.

High Treason

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 19:56:00 +0000

In the past few weeks there has been a lot of discussion about Article 6 of the much amended barely surviving Constitution of Pakistan. Article 6 reads as follows:

“High treason.- (1) Any person who abrogates or attempts or conspires to abrogate, subverts or attempts or conspires to subvert the Constitution by use of force or show of force or by other unconstitutional means shall be guilty of high treason.

(2) Any person aiding or abetting the acts mentioned in clause (1) shall likewise be guilty of high treason.

(3) Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament) shall by law provide for the punishment of persons found guilty of high treason.”

There has been general consensus in the country that General Musharraf violated the Constitution not once but twice (general consensus means all Pakistanis excluding Sharifuddin Pirzada, and Malik Qayyum), first on October 12, 1999 and again on November 3, 2007. This view was further vindicated by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Constitutional Petition No.9 of 2009 ( Sind High Court Bar Association versus The Federation of Pakistan) issued on July 31, 2009. In which the court has declared:

“i)that the purported acts done by General Pervez Musharraf, (Rtd) between 3.11.2007 to 16.12.2007 aimed at to suspend and amend the Constitution through several instruments are unconstitutional, invalid and without any legal consequence;

ii) that on account of his acts taken during 3.11.2007 to 15.12.2007 relating to superior judiciary, General Pervez Musharraf (Rtd) became a usurper;

(Reference: http://www.supremecourt.gov.pk/pr/press_release/pr-31-07-2009.pdf)

Although acts of October 12, 1999 were not discussed the ruling leaves absolutely no room for confusion far as the Constitutional status of Gen. Musharraf is concerned, yet a political debate has been going on about applicability and practical implications of Article 6. With the facts established so distinctly there is no real need for a debate and the back and forth between the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) has had more soap opera style moments then actual developments.

It is very often ignored but the actual hurdle in the process has been clause 2 of Article 6. Clause 2 implicates aiders and abettors in the crime and requires an equal punishment. Far as Gen. Musharraf’s regime is concerned this would mean that Pakistan Muslim League Quaid (PMLQ), Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUIF) can all be held accountable for their contributions during the nine years of Musharraf administration.

PMLN has championed this issue for some time now, however the ruling PPP has made it clear that the government is not interested in invoking Article 6 and it is speculated that it was an understanding between Gen. Musharraf and Late Benazir Bhutto that Gen. Musharraf will be indemnified for his extra-constitutional measures in exchange for an infamous National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) and of course there were foreign guarantors involved.

When Prime Minister Gillani stated in the National Assembly that Article 6 will be invoked if a unanimous resolution is passed to support Musharraf’s trial he very obviously knew that a unanimous resolution is not required under the Constitution and it is impossible since PMLQ, MQM and JUIF have a significant presence in the legislative assembly, which demonstrated that government was unwilling to proceed with the matter. Prime Minister Gillani’s poorly delivered speech (as usual) was simply a wrong step in the right direction.

It has also been speculated that if under the unlikely situation Gen. Musharraf and his allies were tried and convicted it would make way for similar proceedings against usurpers of the past and it would be a possibility that the Supreme Court may then declare their acts as unconstitutional and subsequent acts of Parliament ratifying those acts as void ab initio.

In which case champions of democracy PMLN will have to face consequences for supporting Gen. Zia ul Haq and PPP will also have to face embarrassment since their founder leader Late Zulfiqar Bhutto was a member of Gen. Ayub’s cabinet. That is exactly why PMLN will continue to talk about it but no actions will be taken.

Even if we do not bring into discussion foreign influences and GHQ’s input it is very clear that Article 6 will not be invoked because it could potentially wipe out almost all political parties. Gen. Musharraf will not be tried in a court of law despite his criminal violations.

All these facts are well known and fully understood by all stakeholders yet we see a heated debate going on in the country where the political forces are daring each other to introduce a resolution in the National Assembly to invoke Article 6.

Most Pakistanis are also well aware of the implications of the current political scenario and understand that political forces are clearly using this issue to position themselves for the next general elections, at which point you have to stop and wonder how stupid do they think people of Pakistan are?

First a dictator violates the Constitution in every possible way for nine years, and is allowed to exit the Presidency with honour, and then the political parties play with the issue much to their own amusement using every opportunity to launch verbal assaults on the former dictator but not taking any actual measures to prosecute him, while the former dictator is travelling the world mocking the poor people and the Government of Pakistan.

This is yet another crucial stage in the history of Pakistan and will determine if the country will have a sustainable democratic system or not. And if the people of Pakistan want democracy they will have to make their voices heard on all possible venues because let us all be clear that Gen. Musharraf was not the first dictator and if he is not held accountable for his actions he will not be the last one either. It is refreshing to note that people of Pakistan and some of the media outlets have kept the discussion alive, however, to actually make it happen it will have to be a much bigger and organized effort to ensure that political forces show respect to the people’s opinion. A movement similar to that of the restoration of judiciary can do it for Pakistan.

It is crucial that influence from foreign governments the so-called guarantors must be resisted, it is an embarrassment for any sovereign nation that foreign officials intervene in almost all internal matters. However, it looks unlikely in the near future.

Even if Gen. Musharraf remains out of Pakistan a trial must be held and if he is convicted a strong precedent will be set for potential usurpers. Political parties should come together on the issue and negotiate the matter and even if it involves somehow focusing on Clause 1 and not Clause 2 of Article 6 for now it would still be a huge step towards a sustainable democratic system in the country otherwise it will not be very long before ‘they’ do it again.

In the meanwhile I choose to remain optimistic and Passionate About Pakistan.

Spirit of Pakistan and The Existential Threat

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:14:00 +0000

Lately there has been nothing but bad news coming from Pakistan, there has been news about Taliban activity, situation in Balochistan, suicide bombings, Swat operation and the IDP's, the economic crisis and to top it off power generation crisis, the list is long and rather endless.

We have been told rather prematurely that we face an "Existential Threat", there has been a lot of talk about securing our nuclear arsenal. There was extensive world wide coverage when someone came up with the idea that Taliban were 60 miles from Islamabad, implying that they were about to take over the Capital city.

I wont discuss how we got into this situation because that would just be redundant, I wont get into a theoretical debate if this is our war or not because that is irrelevant at this point we all know we have to deal with it now. What concerns me the most is the general sense of helplessness and pessimism sweeping across the nation.

We can not deny that the situation is very tough for all Pakistanis and especially those who are living through all this. But there are facts we must bear in mind:

- We are a nation of 160 million (est.) people.

- We have nuclear capability.

- We have a well established military.

- Majority of our population does not support any form of militancy or extremism.

- Political parties with so called religious agendas do not enjoy popular support.

- Much like everywhere else Pakistanis want healthcare, education and economic opportunities.

When we think about all these factors we can safely conclude that a few thousand Taliban do not represent an Existential Threat to Pakistan even though they are being blatantly supported by our long term enemies.

But we do face an Existential Threat, it is a threat posed by our general willingness to give up, convincing ourselves that we will lose, and allowing news stories to get on our nerves. Pessimism is contagious and more dangerous than we think.

Very often we hear Pakistanis who are 'educated', well exposed and live thousands of miles away from Pakistan complaining and popping the oldest possible question "what can we do?"

As a nation we must pull together and convince ourselves that we are too big and too strong to be held captive by any force that does not represent us, we are a nation of raw untamed potential we are at least as good as any developed nation in the world if not better. We have numerous examples of individual success over the past 61 years and all our people need are opportunities and we should focus on creating those. No one can take away our independence unless we allow them.

Each time we see a sad story about Pakistan we should remind ourselves that our enemies are resourceful and organized and to respond to them appropriately we must discipline ourselves and gain resources. The biggest resource in this age is information, if we can spread our message as vehemently as they are spreading there's only then we would have a level playing field. Pakistanis must 'talk up' Pakistan, may it be a conversation at work, a status message on facebook or a mere tweet we all must give Pakistan a chance. Believe me a message conveyed at a personal level is more effective than anything anyone sees on TV, and as a community we do have potential to reach out effectively.

Even if we do not have the time or the opportunity to get involved in the political process or be in Pakistan personally, here is what we can do, let us all please stop being negative about Pakistan, let us all stop saying things about Pakistan that our enemies would love to say, they can not defeat us militarily but they will win if they break our spirits and we must not let that happen. Even if we don't live in Pakistan it is our identity and we all care about the country very much, nations have survived challenges in the past and I have no doubt that we will not only survive these tough time but also emerge as a much stronger nation all we need to do is stand together and keep the Spirit of Pakistan alive because we all represent Pakistan. I have great faith in our nation and I know we will keep the Spirit of Pakistan alive.

God Bless Pakistan!!

Pakistani Democracy and the Elitist Fantasy

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 23:04:00 +0000

I have been watching the political situation play out quietly and patiently for over ten months now, the long awaited transition to democracy in Pakistan started in February 2008 and completed in principle with Musharraf's departure in August 2008. During this whole process there was a general sense of reluctance amongst the people and there were doubts about the effectiveness of this transition since Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League (PMLN) once again emerged strong with considerable popular support.
The general concern was if there was going to be a re-match of the 90's style politics between PPP and PMLN, then there were guarantees in the shape of Charter of Democracy and later on a Murree Declaration.

There were also concerns about the functionality of the coalition between the two parties as one was formerly seen as Liberal Nationalistic Party with a Socialist inclination by its origin and the other was considered a more of a Right Wing Conservative party with Religious inclination but, they had a common opponent in Musharraf. However, as the transition moved forward all agreements between the two fell apart and with Musharraf's disgraced exit it became clear that the two parties could not share the power and PMLN moved from being a reluctant coalition partner to a poorly defined opposition party.

President Zardari is now running the operation following the Musharraf model retaining all powers the dictator chose for himself and the Prime Minister once again is in no position to run the show. It was expected to be a difficult transition because of the anti-Pakistan policies of the Musharraf era which led to Pakistan being in a vulnerable economic state and a very weak foreign policy position. To top it off the current government made commitments with our 'foreign friends' to ensure continuity of the dictator's policies which were considered favorable by our 'foreign friends'.

We have all seen recent high profile confusion of the Pakistani Government where they have failed to call the obvious bluff by our neighbor. Our President has been seen making poorly worded statements coining terms he obviously does not understand, defending actions taken by other States and hoping that he would get concessions because of his connection with the late former Prime Minister Bhutto.

All of this has re-ignited the debate if Pakistan is ready for Democracy? Closet Musharraf supporters are using this argument to convince themselves and hopefully others that autocratic regimes are a practical solution for Pakistan for two major reasons:
- All politicians are corrupt.
- People are either under educated or completely illiterate.

As evidence they can use this utter state of confusion prevailing in Islamabad and negative tactics adopted by the political parties during the 90's and now.

Before we draw any conclusions we must first admit to some realities:

- Pakistan has never had a real run of democracy, those who use the 90's as evidence of incompetence of the political forces overlook the fact that just like now the elected governments back then were not free to make decisions they did not have the powers to run the country and the decision making process was blatantly influenced by a certain organization which should be working for the government.

- Elected representatives of the people were arrested, exiled, deported and disgraced in every possible manner, the dictators in all cases got safe passages or glorious funerals with no accountability. Shouldn't the Musharraf / Azziz administration be held accountable for the current state of affairs in Pakistan? Shouldn't they be investigated for violations of Pakistani Laws?

- There is a well defined system in place to derail every democratic government within the first year of its formation.

- The much talked about corruption charges were withdrawn by the dictator to reinforce his own administration so they can not be considered anything more than 'gossip' at this stage, there was ample time available to the dictator to prosecute those cases, why were they used as political tools rather than actual criminal charges?

None of the above are conspiracy theories, these are well known facts, then we should also be able to agree on the following:

- Zardari / Shareef represent political forces in Pakistan but they are not by any means an academic definition of a Democracy because they exist within the system but are not the democratic system, and we must accept that we can disagree with them as much we like but we can not use the conduct of either of the two to prove Democracy as a failed system for Pakistan, because if the system is allowed to run and if the people are convinced that Zardari / Shareef do not represent them, they will be voted out of their positions.

- The maximum period an elected government can hold office is 5 years based on the much amended barely surviving constitution of Pakistan, however, as per the system if they perform well they can get re-elected, on the other hand a dictator will hang on to power through any means possible for as long as possible because they are well aware that they are on a one way track to disgraced anonymity even if they follow all flight safety precautions.

- Elected governments have to focus on the people for strength and all our dictators have looked to our foreign friends for recognition and have done everything to please them.

- Alleging that our people are collectively incapable of making the right decisions is more of an ' Elitist Fantasy' than a reality. Pakistanis have shown great political awareness each time they have been given the opportunity, and this can only improve if they are allowed to participate in the system consistently. We have all seen how the Q league was removed from power by the people.

- Another interesting concern has been corruption, and I am convinced that it is a genuine concern, but we must accept that corruption in some shape or form remains in every system designed by humans, even in the US in a far more mature democracy there are numerous examples of politicians taking advantage of the powers vested in them by the people and I am not going to quote names because we all know them really well. The method to minimize corruption can only be 'controls built into the democratic system', replacing the democratic system by a far more corrupt system is definitely not a practical solution. We have seen that Musharraf / Aziz administration was as corrupt as a democratic government could possibly have been if not more, the biggest difference is these gentlemen are actually getting a chance to enjoy the proceeds of their crimes unlike the elected Prime Ministers who were arrested and exiled. One good example of a control within the system is an ' independent judiciary'!!

In the end, we must understand that democracy is not a perfect system but it is definitely better than an Autocracy because it empowers the people and allows them to politically eliminate elements who do not represent the will of the people, which makes the system self cleansing but it must be allowed to function to be effective. It is designed to improve the efficiency of its own organs. When the democratic system functions we will see that leadership from the people will emerge and the people will take charge of their destiny, it is a slow yet certain process, therefore, we must stop hoping for some hero to rescue the nation and start focusing on not allowing anyone to interrupt the system this time.

Burney Exposed - Yet Another Embarrassment

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:06:00 +0000

The objective of my previous blog was to highlight the selfish acts of a Pakistani Caretaker Minister Ansar Burney, it was not about the peace process between the two countries. I think both countries should 'exchange' as many prisoners as possible and develop an understanding to reduce the number of cases which result in the sufferings of 'innocent' civilians. I believe in peace and harmony in the Indo-Pak subcontinent and for that it is important to develop working relationships on all conflicts to move towards solutions. It is a fact that majority of the people in Pakistan and India are economically and socially struggling due to the effects of the volatile situation between the two countries and the people do not see each other as enemies. I have many Indian friends and I respect their culture and values and the feeling is mutual, I don’t see a reason why the governments can not get along if they are committed to the peace process.

Just as a quick follow up to my blog from March 5, 2008 I am copying a news report from the Associated Press about Kashmir Singh's confession made to the Indian Press just days after his release from the Pakistani prison. This is to further reflect the reality of Ansar Burney's actions relating to the Singh case. Kashmir Singh was convicted in a crime against the state and Mr. Burney and President 'Mr.' Musharraf have made a mockery of the legal system once again. The AP report is quoted below:

"NEW DELHI (AP): When Kashmir Singh was released from a Pakistani jail earlier this week after spending 35 years imprisoned on espionage charges, he stood at the Indian border and hugged the Pakistani minister responsible for freeing him.
The official thought he was embracing an Indian electronics salesman who entered Pakistan without a passport on a business trip and got swept up in the suspicions and enmity that have characterized the rivals' relations for 60 years.
But on Friday, three days after walking back across the border to a hero's welcome, Singh told Indian reporters: “I did the duty assigned to me as a spy ... I was a regular recruit. I did not open my mouth for 35 years in Pakistan.”
The confession turned what was meant to be a humanitarian gesture to reduce tensions and further bolster the India-Pakistan peace process into an international embarrassment for Islamabad that could endanger hundreds of prisoners on both sides held in similar circumstances.
On Saturday, Singh was trying to undo the damage of his loose talk, telling CNN-IBN, a private television news channel, that his comments were misinterpreted and he hadn't actually been a spy.
But few believe his denials, and analysts suggest the quick reversal was made in response to pressure from Indian authorities.
Singh's confession is also another blow for embattled President Pervez Musharraf, who granted Singh clemency at the request of Minister for Human Rights Ansar Burney.
“I am shocked to hear these statements,” Burney told CNN-IBN. “It will surely make it difficult for Indian prisoners in Pakistan and Pakistani prisoners in India.”
Singh's confession “certainly weakens the position of Indian prisoners in Pakistan,” said Ashok Mehta, a strategic analyst in New Delhi. “It becomes that much more difficult for the president to pardon them or give them clemency.”
“These cases are so old — we are talking about the 1960s,” said Mehta. If Singh were a fresh spy engaged in contemporary espionage, the repercussions would be more serious, he said, adding “But this is history ... I don't think this is going to negatively affect India-Pakistan relations,” he said.
Indian military officials declined to comment on Saturday.
Singh, a former policeman, apparently decided to speak out after finding his wife and son living in poverty, not cared for by Indian authorities. In a press conference on Friday in the northern city of Chandigarh, Singh described the lengths he went to in order to live undetected in Pakistan, including getting circumcised so he could pass as a Muslim, studying Urdu and adopting the name Ibrahim. While in Pakistan, he ate beef, which is forbidden in his Sikh religion, and fasted during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Singh said he crossed into Pakistan several times, and also conducted intelligence missions in Afghanistan and Iran.
Singh was arrested in 1973 in Rawalpindi. His cover story was that he was a trader in electronic goods travelling on business.
Singh was convicted of spying and sentenced to death by a military court despite repeated denials that he was a spy."

The Pakistani media has increased the pressure on Burney by extensively covering the death of a Pakistani in an Indian prison who went to India with legal documents to watch a cricket match between the two countries in 2005. This matter was brought to Burney's attention but he failed to take any effective action, perhaps he was too busy handling Kashmir Singh's case and making guest appearances as an 'Angel' in Singh's dreams.

I think the least Ansar Burney can do now is to apologize unconditionally for acts which can be termed as 'naïve' if we take a moderate approach or 'stupid' if we look at them independently and ' criminal' if we take a nationalistic view. He must also resign from his caretaker office before it expires when the new government comes in. His attempt to gain instant international stardom has failed miserably and he might consider doing something real to improve the human rights situation in Pakistan to be considered for the 'coveted' prize he is chasing.

Ansar Burney Exposed - The Pretentious 'Angel' !!

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:55:00 +0000

I plan to write a follow up to my previous blog titled Pakistan Today to answer some of the comments that were made but I am not sure when I would have time for that. In the mean while another event captured my attention watching the 'reliable and independent' Pakistani news channels.

An Indian national Kashmir Singh convicted 35 years ago on espionage charges was released by the Pakistan government and was sent back to India he remained on death row for most of this time and was eventually spotted by a 'Caretaker' Federal Minister Ansar Burney and his mercy appeal was granted by the President.

The whole news has a general feel good factor and might even warm some hearts but before we go any further there are some key issues underlying this event which was blown out of proportion by the Pakistani media as always.

The most disturbing part to me was Mr. Ansar Burney's conduct throughout this event, and I have no hesitation in saying that I had respect for his work for human rights until yesterday. When he took the office of Caretaker Federal Minister for Human Rights we all thought that it was inappropriate keeping in mind Musharraf's track record on human rights but in his defense he had more resources to do his work, which is an acceptable argument to some extent. But during the Kashmir Singh event he came on the media and emphasized himself as the following:
- someone who has been working for humanity all his life,
- an angel who appeared in Kashmir Singh's dream,
- a Federal minister who carried an Indian prisoner in his vehicle to Wagah border.

He completely ignored the fact Kashmir Singh was not only accused but was 'convicted' of a crime against Pakistan. There were reasons why Singh was not executed but by releasing him Burney and Musharraf (needless to mention him) once again made a mockery of our legal system (Musharraf did that once before when a convicted Ex-Prime Minister was allowed to go to Jeddah without serving his sentence). It would have been understandable if there was an agreement for exchange of prisoners between the two countries or if the released prisoners were innocent fishermen who were captured in open sea inadvertently entering Pakistan, but Singh was convicted on espionage charges.

President Musharraf has not granted any mercy plea in the past except for two. The first being granted to Mr. Tahir Hussain a British National who was accused of murdering a taxi driver during his trip to Pakistan in 1989, his case was an entirely different issue but even that decision was made under pressure from the British government. Although the right decision might have been made in Hussain's case. On the other hand, Kashmir Singh was a spy and fully understood the implications of his engagement, unless the government wants to admit that his conviction was wrong and it was miscarriage of justice by the Military Court.

It must also be noted that during past 9 years hundreds of Pakistanis were sentenced to death and as a standard procedure mercy appeals were filed for most cases but none were granted by the President. And once again it is needless to add that these were poor Pakistanis with no social or economic significance, people who have no human rights.

At the same time Burney was unable to notice that 7 Judges of the Supreme Court and their families have been detained against their will by the government but apparently they have no human rights? After being criticized openly in the media today he has written letters to a couple of Ministries about the Chief Justice asking them if the CJ is detained, but that does not count as an effort, because the whole world including himself knows that the CJ and other Judges are under house arrest since November 3, 2007 so he can not absolve himself of all responsibility by simply writing a letter because he has been in office for more than two months now.

Burney is also unable to see that hundreds of Pakistanis have gone missing in the past 8 years and the government has not taken any responsibility for them, their families have been brutally abused by the police on the streets, but apparently they have no human rights either!!

Burney is blind to the fact that Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan who is considered a hero by most Pakistanis has been detained for the past 3 years, what about his human rights ??

Can Burney guarantee that there are no innocent Pakistanis detained in the jails and police stations in Pakistan? Obviously not, then why is Kashmir Singh more important than Pakistanis who have not committed a crime against the State?

Can Burney objectively come up with a number for Pakistanis imprisoned in India?

Pakistanis were pained to watch Burney on the Wagah border basking in the glory of his own narcissistic madness playing the incapable ring master of the media circus created by poor quality journalism, ranting that he is a FEDERAL MINISTER (he never used the word caretaker), an ANGEL, a SAVIOUR, !!

Well, my opinion of Burney is very different and I would not use any of the words used above to describe him. It was interesting that Angel Burney was denied entry to India and he was asked to stay on the Pakistani side, which was unfair because the Indian media could have taken better pictures of him if he was closer to them. It was almost funny that Kashmir Singh was sold to the Pakistani audience as someone who had accepted Islam and had renamed himself as 'Ibrahim' and guess what the first thing he did after being released was visiting a Sikh temple. It has been noted that Burney is now turning to Sarbajit Singh another Indian prisoner. Burney needs to hurry up because as soon as the next government comes in he would not have direct access to the President (whoever that might be!!).

The attention seeking Burney very effectively managed to hog the media spot light in the subcontinent for a day but he must have been unhappy with the suicide attacks on the Naval college in Lahore because that stole some of his airtime. I am sure Burney would be ashamed of himself if he ever snaps out of this madness, he has the infrastructure in place and I wish he would start focusing on actual human rights issues rather than chasing 'some' coveted peace prize and thinking of tricks to attract attention. I don't think it is too late for Burney if he decides to genuinely work for human rights and give up his egotisitic obsession I would be more than happy to change my opinion of him.

Pakistan Today

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:01:00 +0000

This is an article I wrote for Global Affairs an international e-magazine. The intended audience were people who are unaware of the background to the current situation in Pakistan. This article was published in English and Spanish on February 2, 2008.

http://www.globalaffairs.es/Noticia-279.html

Pakistan came into existence on August 14, 1947 when Muslims of the British ruled Indian sub-continent rallied behind Quaid-e-Azam (1) Mohammad Ali Jinnah to create a separate homeland.

Pakistan was constitutionally named the Islamic Republic of Pakistan with majority of the population being Muslim; however, specific provisions were made in the constitution to ensure protection of rights of minorities in the country. Urdu is the national language and the current estimated population is 165 million, Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad are the major cities.

Pakistan occupies a position of great geo-strategic importance, bordered by Iran on the west, Afghanistan on the northwest, China on the northeast, India on the east, and the Arabian Sea on the south. The total land area is estimated at 803,940 square kilometers.

Since their creation Pakistan and India failed to develop a healthy relationship and developed a major dispute over Kashmir, which was an independent princely State at the time of partition and as per division understanding States with Muslim majority were to become a part of Pakistan but the then King of Kashmir decided to join India although as per the 1940 census 94% of Kashmir's population was Muslim. The government took the matter to the UN and it was decided that the people of Kashmir have a right of self determination and therefore, a plebiscite must be held. The countries went to war in 1948, 1965 and 1971 but the matter still stands unresolved. The two countries now have armies equipped with Nuclear weapons.

Pakistan's foreign policy has therefore, been dominated by problems with India as well as by efforts to maximize its own external support, its relationship with the West, particularly the United States, was of major importance which saw Pakistan playing an active role in the region during the Cold War era. Pakistan has also developed a strong bond with China and over a period of 60 years this friendship has stood the test of time.

Another important aspect of Pakistan's foreign policy has been its relationship with the Islamic countries which has seen Pakistan taking on an important position in the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC). Pakistan has had particularly strong bonds with the Middle Eastern Islamic countries.

In the post 9/11 era Pakistan's President Musharraf modified his foreign policy and became an important ally of USA in the war on terror which first led to the fall of Taliban regime in Afghanistan and then removal of Saddam Hussein from Iraq. Although this has made Pakistan a target for Anti-American forces but Pakistan has stayed firm with its commitment with the war on terror. This has also decreased the tension between India and Pakistan to some extent because in a certain way the civilized world now has a common enemy.

A highlight of Pakistan's history has been its struggle with democracy and the country has been ruled by the military for most parts of its existence. The country was ruled by General Zia-ul-Haq from 1979-1987 until his death in a plane crash. A brief run of democratic governments then followed with Ms. Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan People Party and Mr. Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan Muslim League both getting two opportunities as elected Prime Ministers and all four governments were sacked on charges of widespread corruption. The current President General (Retired) Pervez Musharraf took over in a peaceful military coup in 1999 and the elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was exiled for 8 years, the then leader of the opposition Ms. Bhutto imposed an exile on herself till her return in October 2007.

The Army Chief General Pervez Musharraf held a referendum in 2002 and based on the controversial results took charge of the President's office in 2002 for five years and then organized elections in the country in which the two former Prime Minister were not allowed to participate and resulted in a democratic government which lacked independence and the decisions were still made in the Army Chief / President's office.

The country faced unrest in March 2007 when General Musharraf tried to force the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to resign from his office and on his refusal his powers were suspended and a complaint was filed against him in the Supreme Judicial Council (2). These actions were resisted by the organizations of lawyers and human rights activists of the country. Later the Supreme Judicial Council reinstated the Chief Justice and all charges laid down by the Government were thrown out in July 2007.

In October 2007 Ms. Bhutto was allowed back into the country as part of an understanding with the Musharraf regime. A National Reconciliation Ordinance was imposed clearing Ms. Bhutto and her husband of all corruption charges and in return Ms. Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) supported General Musharraf in the Presidential elections. General Musharraf was elected as President for another five years while he still held office of the Army Chief. Ms. Bhutto's return took the momentum away from the lawyers' movement which was proving to be a strong opponent for Musharraf. The Supreme Court intervened and stopped the Election Commission of Pakistan from officially announcing the results.

The country at this time was facing strong resistance from militants in the North Western Frontier Province. General Musharraf imposed Emergency in the country in November 2007 suspending civil rights, all news channels were taken off air and the Chief Justice was this time forced to retire. All the remaining judges were asked to renew oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) and those who refused were also sacked. General Musharraf explained his actions as an effort to ensure focus on the war against extremist elements. However, there was widespread unrest in the country and the international community against General Musharraf strategy.

Despite being an ally in the war on terror President Musharraf was under pressure to leave his position as the Army Chief. He then had to announce general elections, his plan to retire from the Army and removal of Emergency imposed by him. The country was once again on its path to democracy with the new Supreme Court (chosen by General Musharraf) allowing the Election Commission of Pakistan to officially declare the results of the Presidential Elections. General Pervez Musharraf then stepped down from his position as Army chief and took oath as a civilian President. A caretaker government had been setup to organize Elections in the country on January 8, 2008. The exiled former Prime Minister Mr. Sharif was finally allowed back into the country to lead his party. The state of Emergency was then removed.

But on December 27, 2007 Ms. Bhutto was assassinated by an unidentified gun man who then blew himself up killing another 40 after an election rally in Rawalpindi. Within hours of her death angry mobs took to the streets and violence claimed more lives across the country. During the protest many banks, malls and industrial establishments were looted and government and private property of billion of Rupees was destroyed.

Ms. Bhutto was branded as a martyr despite her record as a corrupt politician and following her final 'will' her unpopular rather infamous husband Asif Zardari and her 19 year old son, an irresponsible partying student of a British university were made co-chairmen of her PPP. No elections were held in her party to choose a new leader and her will naming her husband as the next chairman was blindly followed highlighting the fact that she did not believe in democracy in her own party. Her husband Mr. Zardari chose to make his son co-chairman of the party. It is important to note that constitution of Pakistan requires a person to be 25 years of age to contest elections for a public office and 35 years of age to become Prime Minister of the country. So it was obvious that Ms. Bhutto's son who has no political standing whatsoever was only been named co-chairman of the party to keep the leadership role within the family.

Her sad violent death somewhat over wrote her legacy of corruption, power seeking politics and conspiracies with that of a 'struggle for democracy'. The media world wide portrayed her as some hero who stood for democracy. Events of her death and the violence that followed brought a lot of negative attention to Pakistan and caused embarrassment to Pakistanis across the globe.

As order has now been restored to some extent the police has recovered some of the looted property from localities densely populated by Ms. Bhutto's supporters. Elections have been postponed till February 18, 2008. Ms. Bhutto's PPP candidates are campaigning elections as the victims of a tragedy and trying to take maximum political advantage of what was a very sad event. There is a general feeling that her party would do well in the elections. Opponents of President Musharraf are alleging that state will influence election results through rigging. Nobody now seems to care about the fact that the Judiciary has been destroyed by the Musharraf regime and the Judges are not allowed to make a ruling against the government and the military.

Elections are still at some distance and all well wishers of Pakistan would be keeping their fingers crossed. The real hope lies with the people of Pakistan who have emerged stronger from every disaster. Corrupt politicians and Army may slow the process down but the brave people of Pakistan will eventually achieve their objective of an Independent Democratic Pakistan.

Romance of Death

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:08:00 +0000

Death is not an option, if it were it would have been a very tough choice as it does mean the end for one but it also comes as an opportunity. I do not want this to sound overly philosophical or complicated but humans in general are emotionalized by sudden, sometimes accidental or unexpected deaths to the extent that they consciously or unconsciously allow their minds to rearrange their memories to make someone look almost heroic. We often lead ourselves to believe that there were more good things to come had death not separated us. We push ourselves to think that nothing was wrong and the deceased was perfection personified. We often overlook the fact that just because someone died it does not necessarily mean that he or she was right.

An angelic aura is created around the memories and history is re-written. We create a legacy of our choice and insist on its accuracy and relevance. We ensure the reality we believe in has no mentions of words like corruption, conspiracies, sufferings inflicted, damages caused, crimes, selfishness, and betrayals. We want our heroes to be fast tracked to sainthood, we would neglect truth and assume there were no skeletons in their closets, we would remove all flaws and assign miracles. We develop strong convictions and leave no room whatsoever for disagreement.

It becomes an even bigger opportunity for the survivors or whoever can maneuver to take ownership of the brand name because we know for years to come the memorabilia would be sought after. It is entirely up to their marketing skills as to how far they can take it. Sometimes it is sold in small underdeveloped towns and sometimes in the power capitals of the world. The sale proceeds are available in variety of forms there can be money, power or prestige it is to be decided by them.

This is the kind of death an egoistic person would dream of, it brings glory to those who never deserved to be remembered for anything good. Brings them the limelight they wanted so badly, an impact they could never create fairly, the false sense of importance they were born with.

I wish we were able to think logically and I wish we could keep them alive till they were conclusively identified for who they were and then let them disappear into oblivion without allowing them the luxury of a famous death…..

We must not forget that it is not important how we die but how we lived, because on a large enough time scale survival rate of all humans is zero !!

Deals, Denials and Democracy

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:41:00 +0000

This week finally Mr. Nawaz Shareef the twice elected Prime Minister of Pakistan was allowed back into the country. Mr. Shareef made an attempt to return home in September this year but he was gift wrapped and flown back to a Saudi version of Guantanamo Bay customized for foreign dignitaries who can be recycled if America deems fit.

Mr. Shareef had been in exile for over seven years now and for most part of this time he was kept out of the media spot light which must have been extremely frustrating for him but he has made good use of his time apparently with hair transplants and improved communication skills. I was amused to read an article about Pakistan recently in which Mr. Shareef was described as 'Charismatic'. For almost six years the Shareef family and PML (N) kept denying any agreement with the government and insisted that he was forced to leave the country. Then in August this year when he announced his plans to return to the country all of a sudden his stance changed and he started insisting that he had agreed to stay out for a period of five years and the government stood by its previous statement that Mr. Shareef was to stay in exile for 10 years.

As his arrival date in September approached the Musharraf government reached out to the foreign guarantor and for the first time it was revealed that the Saudi government was the guarantor and the 'denied' agreement was waved in public by an envoy of the Saudi King, however, content of this agreement were never made public. Both parties to the agreement were having a go at each other but were refusing to admit to the fact that direct blatant involvement of the Saudis into our internal affairs was embarrassing for Pakistan in the international community. But Musharrafiites and Shareefs were constantly referring to the Saudis as our 'Respected Friends' knowing that they might need them in future.

On September 10 the Shareef' brothers managed to put together a theatrical performance that probably would have made everyone at 'the Rai Wind Institute of Performing Arts' very proud when at the Heathrow Airport, Nawaz as the older brother and leader ordered Shahbaz to stay back to look after PML (N) in case he was arrested. Then Mr. Shareef arrived in Islamabad greeted only by the ruthless police which forced him to board a plane to Jeddah within 4 hours of his arrival and I am pretty sure he wasn't even offered a glass of 'lassi' during his brief stay. This was done despite clear orders by the then Supreme Court to allow him into the country, I would not get into that for now because that is an entirely different issue.

Points to be noted were that he came alone, there were no serious attempts by PML (N) to arrange a welcome party and there were no major protests once he was 'deported'. Mr. Shareef had actually made a huge political mistake by announcing his date of arrival without specific approval from the Saudi government (must have been a misunderstanding somewhere) and when the Saudis revealed themselves and an envoy of the King publicly asked Mr. Shareef to cancel his plans he did not have much of a choice, because annoying the Saudis is not option for him or any other politician, however, cancelling his plans after Saudi envoy's statement would have been political suicide, so it was cleverly planned in a way to allow Mr. Shareef a brief touch down saving his political career and keeping the agreement in tact by sending him back. Far as orders of the Supreme Court were concerned we now know for a fact what Mr. Musharraf thought of them.

On the other hand Ms. Benazir Bhutto intelligently and selfishly lobbied in Washington and negotiated with Mr. Musharraf and ensured that a National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) (2007) was issued and got herself a safe and rather glorious passage into the country. In return she supported Mr. Musharraf in his elections as a Uniformed President. Some of Ms. Bhutto's supporters were not happy with this 'deal' because they thought it was against everything late Zulfiqar Bhutto stood for.

Then Mr. Musharraf ran out of patience with the Supreme Court and yet another Martial Law was imposed on the country, Ms. Bhutto saw this as an opportunity to politically recover from the impact of the deal by pretending to be the most prominent democratic force, however, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) did not stage any serious protest the Long March was not so long after all, it was a practical joke carried out reasonably well by Shah Mahmood Qureshi. The truth is that Ms. Bhutto must have been relieved by the departure of Mr. Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry because the NRO which basically cleared Ms. Bhutto of all wrong doings and corruption charges was almost certain to be thrown out by the Supreme Court for its very basic flaw i.e. the law was discriminatory and under the suspended constitution of 1973 ex-public office bearers can not be treated any differently from common man, law has to be the same for all Pakistanis.

Mr. Musharraf was under extreme pressure from the US to announce elections and give up his office as Army Chief, and he is smart enough to know that his Band of Chaudhries, Mullas, and foul mouthing advisors was incapable of competing with the PPP's popular ways in the elections and otherwise. Ms. Bhutto at the same time is increasing political pressure on Mr. Musharraf by threatening to boycott elections which would obviously take away every shred of legitimacy from the process.

Now Mr. Musharraf had no choice but to pay a visit to the Holy Land to offer Umrah of course, and he had also realized that to control PPP's movement he needed to empower the other popular party PML (N) and I am sure he is aware of the risks involved.

Once again Mr. Shareef announced his return to our beloved homeland and this time he landed at the Lahore airport instead of Islamabad and he was allowed into the country and a large number of PML (N) supporters were allowed to greet him and he led his PPP styled procession to Daata Durbar in the heart of Lahore. He was not arrested and there were no baton charges by the police force.

Mr.Shareef is once again denying any deal with the government - what a surprise. But circumstantial evidence is once again suggesting otherwise, it must be noted that this time he was not traveling on a PIA flight, it was a special plane sent by the Saudi King, he was accompanied by his 'intelligent and eloquent' brother, wife, sons, daughters, and a son-in-law. All of this was in stark contrast of his arrival in September 2007 and one is left wondering that if there was no deal how come this time Mr. Shareef chose to travel with all his family and the plane belonged to the Saudi King?

Personally I think his deal is much more simpler than Ms. Bhutto's because Mr. Musharraf desperately needs the elections to go smoothly which would give him legitimacy for the next five years (Musharraf supporters would be keeping their fingers crossed, because I would be surprised even if he remains civilian President for two years), so he would have asked Mr. Shareef to participate in the elections because if PML (N) decides to get involved in the process then PPP would have no choice but to follow suit because Ms. Bhutto will never leave the field open for PML (N). Mr. Musharraf would be counting on the fact that history suggests that Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Shareef are incapable of working together (Charter of Democracy!!!) because of the mistrust which has been there for a long time.

However, I would not be surprised if Mr.Shareef's PML (N) refuses to keep its part of the deal, but at the same time I am assuming that Mr. Musharraf would have ensured his own safety by involving a foreign guarantor once again because personal safety and long term ambitions are of course more important than National interest so we don’t mind Saudis and Americans telling us how to run our country.

It is almost funny to watch Q league being sacrificed at the altar of democracy, poor Mr. Pervez Ellahi's dreams of holding the Prime Minister's office have been all but shattered and currently Mr. Shaukat Aziz is like an abonded kitten on a highway and he is heading towards his natural end and Q league have shown their appreciation by not making him a candidate for the upcoming elections.

In the current circumstances it appears that all major parties will participate in the elections, the only Party / Person who has conclusively decided to boycott the elections is the bruised Imran Khan, and Mr. Musharraf would not be worried by him and would probably ask him to pay another visit to the Punjab University. This would lead to Mr. Musharraf taking oath as a civilian President. The elections would be rigged of course, the voter turn out would be poor and there would be coalition government in Islamabad.

However, with Mr. Musharraf's eventual retirement an unknown variable has been added to the equation, he is the new Army Chief General Kiyani and it would be interesting to see how he reacts in this situation, it would be stupid to think that a General would not be ambitious but we will have to wait and see if circumstances would allow him to promote himself to the next level, going by the traditions it would be very hard for him to throw Mr. Musharraf out directly but he can align himself with the so called democratic forces which could lead to Mr. Musharraf 's departure. But it is too early to comment on this.

Media at the same time is doing an excellent job at distracting the people because the largest private TV channel is portraying itself as a the biggest casualty of the Emergency / Martial Law, this is obviously not true but they are organizing protests all over the world and are running meaningless promotional videos and I am sure this is not just a coincident. This same TV channel staged a fake attack on its Islamabad office in March this year when the Lawyers' movement for restoration of the Chief Justice was going strong, Mr. Musharraf then did an exclusive interview with this channel and nobody mentioned this event afterwards, very convenient !!

For Pakistanis there is very little hope of making any progress towards democracy because all politicians are desperately trying to convince America that they are the next best thing and nobody is really concerned about the people, we are getting closer to a stage where people would just simply stop talking about the Judiciary and imprisoned Judges of the Supreme Court. As I have said previously people would soon get involved with the elections and everything would look fine from a distance.

The politicians would continue with their deals and denials but the Pakistanis must remain focused on restoration of democracy, independence of Judiciary and putting an end to military involvement in our political system. At the moment we are not even close to achieving any of this and the fact that we have no genuine leadership is haunting the nation like never before.

Like always I would remain optimistic and hope that God will Bless Pakistan !!

Complete Disgrace

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:30:00 +0000

I have said it before and I will say it again that Musharraf's Martial Law is embarrassing for all Pakistanis across the world but watching the events unfold has been more sickening and disgusting than we anticipated.

It was a sequence of events which has placed in doubt Pakistan's sovereignty and our very existence as an honourable nation in the world. First President Bush made the following statement:

"I spoke to President Musharraf right before I came over here to visit President Sarkozy. And my message was that we believe strongly in elections and you ought to have elections as scheduled, and you need to take off your uniform.You can't be the President and the head of the military at the same time.Our objective is same in Burma as it is in Pakistan, and that is to promote democracy. There is a difference, however, Pakistan has been on the path to democracy. Burma hadn't been on the path to democracy. And it requires different tactics to achieve the common objective"

Then it was Negroponte's turn to insult Pakistanis, he stated "we cannot afford to return to our past estrangement Musharraf has been an "indispensable" ally in the war on terror".

Chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, Tom Lantos said on Wednesday "He (Musharraf) placed a call to me just yesterday and I find it noteworthy that in this time of crisis, that he's seeking a dialogue both with the administration and the Congress."

Then came the final episode for the day, when Musharraf spoke to the media and confirmed that the elections will be held by February 15, 2008 and he would take off his uniform once he has been re-elected as President for the next five years. Then a statement was released by the White House expressing satisfaction on the announcement.

Pakistanis now have a right to ask the following questions:
- Who is President Bush to decide that Musharraf can not be President and Army Chief at the same time, isn't that direct foreign interference into Pakistan's affairs?

- Why is Musharraf more important than Pakistan itself, which makes Negroponte believe that Musharraf is indispensible?

-Why was Musharraf, who is not scared of anything (as per him), trying to reach out not only to American government but also the Congress?

-Why did he went on TV within hours of President Bush's statement to confirm his election plans?

Pakistan had to put up with this treatment because of Musharraf who sees America as the sole source of his strength and had no guts to react properly to Bush's assault on our sovereignty instead he acted like a mischievous little kid who has been naughty and is now trying to cover up for his mistakes. President Bush would never have spoken to him like that had he been an elected leader of a nation of 160 million people which happens to be a nuclear power as well.

Musharraf obviously has no issues with Elections he has had them before in 2002 and he will have them again this time with Ms. Bhutto on his side. The most probable overall results would be as follows:

- He would easily split Sindh between PPP and MQM.

-Punjab would be split between Q league and PPP in 60:30 ratio (Nawaz league would have some seats of course).

-NWFP would go to MMA because Musharraf still needs to show the world that Islamist are influential in the province.

-Balochistan may once again be shared between Q League and MMA.

-Tehreek-e-Insaaf would probably win one seat once again to keep the show interesting.

-There would be coalition government in Islamabad so that Ms. Bhutto and the Chaudhries can fight it out and Musharraf can play the referee ensuring that Ms. Bhutto wouldn’t get a chance to bring him down.

-Mr. Shaukat Aziz would probably be looking up 'not-so-cheap' first class flights to New York on the internet right now (unless he manages to charm Ms. Bhutto, he failed miserably when he tried it on Condoleezza Rice remember !! ).

The news channels will soon be back on air and they would enjoy exceptional revenues flowing their way, since political parties for the first time in our history would be focusing on TV for election campaigns.

Major politicians are either making themselves available for house arrest or are hiding in 'known' locations to justify their inactivity against the Martial Law, because they all know that big aggressive statements in the news wouldn’t change anything for Musharraf but just might help them in the upcoming 'rigging exercise' called 'elections'.

All of this is now amazingly simple for Musharraf once the Supreme Court, so far the only hinderance, is out of the way, the new judges would very soon declare him fit for being the President, Army Chief, Prime Minister, Chief Minister, Cricket Captain, Rock Star, Kama Sutra Guru or what ever he wants to be and the NRO would also be cleared for implementation.

This is leading us to another sad phase of our history because our actual current issues are completely being ignored on purpose, which are:

1.Restoration of Supremacy of Law.

2.Establishment of an Independent Judiciary (all judges must be released immediately).

3.Putting an end to military involvement in Politics.

4.Restoration of Pakistan's Independence and Sovereignty and put a stop to foreign interference in our internal affairs.

5.Implementation of a consistent democratic system.

As Pakistanis we must ensure that we have identified the issues and we continue to focus on them because it is easy to lose track and get overwhelmed by the excessive information that would start flowing our way with the announcement of elections and the politicians trying to mislead us into debating non-issues.

God Bless Pakistan !!

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 01:14:00 +0000

A month back at a dinner after the NRO had come out a friend and I were discussing the situation at home and my friend suggested that if things don’t calm down pretty quickly the President has the powers to come out with another Ordinance saying 'not withstanding the provisions of any other law, Pakistan does not have a Supreme Court' this was considered a joke by everyone. But this is what has actually happened, and what do you call this new ordinance? The PCO.

It was almost amusing to listen to his speech and the way he tried to explain his actions to the nation and the international community. We all know that prior to 9/11 nobody was willing to befriend his military government but since the so-called 'War on Terror' started because of Pakistan's strategic geographic location and un-conditional cooperation by the regime, Musharraf became an important stakeholder, and since then he has very smartly played the western-extremism-paranoia to keep himself in power. He has tried it one more time by attempting to justify his 'Martial Law / Emergency' by using his half-hearted efforts against extremism. As everyone knew that the major casualty of this Martial Law was the Judiciary so he had to come up with an elaborate link between his efforts against terrorism and how the judiciary was hindering the process. The other casualty could be the Civil Rights of the Pakistani people, but anyone who has lived in Pakistan even briefly knows that there was no such thing as civil rights even before the Martial Law.

He claimed in his speech that government officials are being punished by the Courts and there are more than 100 suo moto cases pending against the government, the terror suspects arrested by the government are being released by the Supreme Court putting the country at risk.

Ludicrous as it is, you don’t need to be a genius to figure this one out. The government officials who are being asked to defend their positions in the courts are the ones who have never been accountable for any of their actions in the past, most of them consider themselves modern day Pharaohs. Some of the cases where the Supreme Court has called government officials were:

- the Missing Persons, more than 400 Pakistanis have gone missing since 2002, most of them were journalists, scientists, and ex-army officials. (This figure does not include the lawyers and social activists who have been abducted in the past 4 days).
- the Steel Mills case, where a strategic state owned industrial unit was sold allegedly for much less than its worth, our learned banking Prime Minister was one of the alleged beneficiaries of this transaction.
- then there are cases involving other high profile government officials profiting at the expense of common man playing tricks in Stock markets and other Commodities.
- Man-handling of the then suspended Chief Justice in March.

As per the Suspended Constitution the apex Court does have the powers to ask anyone in its jurisdiction (which is the whole of Pakistan) to appear in court and hold them accountable. I can not think of a logical way the government can reason the facts that 400 men are actually missing, there was high profile corruption in the Steel Mills Privatization, Prime Minister Aziz has close ties with the Stock and Money market players and that the Chief Justice was man handled by the police after his forced suspension.

For the suspects released by the Courts, if any, the question would be that why was prosecution unable to produce evidence against them? Anyone who knows the policing system in Pakistan knows well that Pakistani Police is very good at arresting innocent civilians with little money and presenting them in courts whenever they deem fit, so if any suspects were released by the Courts it was a failure of the prosecution and not the courts because any court can not and will not release a suspect if there is evidence against him.

In his speech he made references to Lal Masjid, once again it is impossible to accept that a group of few thousand militants were organizing themselves in the heart of the Capital and the ever so powerful intelligence had no information about them? We all remember that Lal Masjid events were happening at the time when the then suspended (now sacked) Chief Justice was leading his movement and the way Lal Masjid was used to down play the Lawyer's movement is not a secret.

Musharraf pointed out that extremism has increased in the country, and left us all wondering that isn't that because of his half-hearted yet valiant participation in the war on terror and the way his policies have imported an American war onto Pakistani soil? And how would that be fixed by firing the Chief Justice?

He talked about Foreign Direct Investment in the country, which like all other state produced figures is a misleading number because that has two major elements, one, the defense related aide which was linked directly to the war-on-terror, and two, the privatization money, selling your profitable / strategic units such as PTCL to foreigners and spending the inflows on administrative expenses is not the smartest move anyways.

So it has been very obvious all along that he was only concerned about ensuring that he stays in power for the next five years. He was worried that the brilliant National Reconciliation Ordinance would be made ineffective by the court because even before you refer the Constitution it is common sense that the law is discriminatory and you can not treat ex-public office holders differently from common people. He was also worried that the court might question his eligibility to contest the presidential elections as the uniformed army chief. To resolve the issue what do you do? Musharraf's answer is you start a civil war and throw the Chief Justice out.

All of this is not new to Pakistanis and Musharraf has not been innovative at all about his moves as a dictator he has done exactly what all others have done so far. However, Musharraf needs to realize that 'the media' he claims to have empowered has made the people much more aware and I am sure when he would get a chance to speak to Late Zia-ul-Haq he would tell him that it would be considered a mistake at the School of Dictatorship. And forcefully shutting them down was an even bigger mistake people are now used to knowing events as they happen and hoping that they would just watch entertainment channels while the news channels are off air is wish full thinking this treatment would only create massive unrest.

Embarrassing as it is for Pakistanis across the world, it can be a blessing in disguise if Pakistanis rise as a nation and refuse to accept this edition of the Martial Law and shut the doors on Military involvement in politics because lets face it Musharraf is not the first General to have done this and will not be the last one either if he gets away with it. We must understand that Musharraf is the current face of the problem but he is not the problem itself. The people will have to prove that they will not accept anything less than proper democracy in the country.

We have witnessed that Pakistanis back home are not happy with the situation but so far we have not seen large numbers turning up to protest because there is no platform for them to stage a protest, the political forces are making strong statements but are unwilling to do anything practically. We all know that the democratic Ms. Bhutto and the brilliant Mr. Fazlur Rahman are still trying to meet the General and sell the situation in their favour.

Everyone saw the way the lawyer's movement completely lost its momentum when Ms. Bhutto came back and supported the President in his elections, and Mr. Rahman made sure that the N.W.F.P assembly stayed in-tact till presidential elections. Q league is still loyal as ever (they don't really have a choice), and poor Mr. Shareef is jumping from a land far away trying to attract some attention.

MQM is trying to play both sides so far and Tehreek-e-Insaaf's big mouth was commenting on Pakistan Cricket team's tour of India on TV this morning, good for him. Mr. Qazi is aggressive but he is still not prepared to divorce Mr. Rahman since that would mean the end of MMA at the verge of elections. So we practically have no leadership.

But we must see this is as a chance for the nation to wake up and rally for democracy and not let the politicians betray them again, we must not lose optimism and our drive because situations like these create movements and produce leaders.

GOD BLESS PAKISTAN !!

October 12

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:35:00 +0000

On October 12 when our beloved President General (Mr.) Pervez Musharraf was celebrating the eighth anniversary of his reluctant coup d’etat in 1999 another Pakistani dictator of a much smaller scale was taking his final bow at the international stage. Yes, it was Inzimam ul Haq.

Although it is too soon to analyze his career with objectivity since most of us still have very fresh memories of his phenomenal achievements and his monumental failures. Despite his obvious imperfections, Inzi was one of the finest batting talents to have survived the Pakistani cricket system.

Batting records in brief:
Tests: 120 Matches, 8,830 runs at an average of 49.60.

ODIs: 378 Matches, 11,739 runs at an average of 39.52.

Career Summary:
Test debut: England v Pakistan at Birmingham, Jun 4-8, 1992
Last Test: Pakistan v South Africa at Lahore, Oct 8-12, 2007
ODI debut: Pakistan v West Indies at Lahore, Nov 22, 1991
Last ODI: Pakistan v Zimbabwe at Kingston, Mar 21, 2007
Only T20I: England v Pakistan at Bristol, Aug 28, 2006

For those of us who have had the pleasure of watching his entire career from the day he shot to international stardom when he played a wonderful knock in the 1992 World Cup finals, we would all agree that his career was full of match winning performances and he made Pakistan proud more often than most of his mates. As some critics knew him as the most under rated batsman of his time, most of his recognition came during the past 4 years when he was already past his cricketing prime. Unlike Lara and Tendulkar he always maintained a very low profile and was never the favourite cricketer for the international media. Personally I feel he could have scored a lot more runs than he did had he been a part of a more consistent stable cricketing unit.

Since Imran's retirement Pakistan cricket had a new captain literally every season starting from Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram, Salim Malik, Rameez Raja, Amar Sohail, Saeed Anwar, Moin Khan, Waqar Younis, Rashid Lateef and finally Inzi himself. There were so many in around eleven years that I might have missed a name here, bearing in mind that Wasim Akram had more than one opportunity to prove himself as captain. All the captains were thrown out by the team except for Inzi.

There were betting scandals and investigations which resulted in Saleem Malik and poor Ata-ur-Rahman being banned for life (Justice Qayyum was in-charge of the enquiry). There were disappointments when Pakistan lost to India in 1996 quarter finals, lost the 1999 final to Australia, got eliminated in the first round of 2003 where Inzi could only score 16 runs.

In 2003 everyone believed Inzi was done and it was time for him to disappear in to oblivion like so many other greats were forced to. But Inzi was re-born against an unlikely opponent Bangladesh where he scored a match saving century, Pakistan won the Multan test by merely 1 wicket, and fun as it may sound a good team should never have been in that situation against a week Bangladesh team in the first place. Inzi was soon made the Captain where he slowly grew in the role.

He was often criticized for being slow in his reactions as Captain. Inzi was now getting closer to religion and was an 'Islamizing' influence on the team and the whole team was often seen praying together before and after the match. Irrespective of all that he was the natural leader in that team which had no one who was even close to Inzi in experience and cricketing talent. Pakistan cricket seemed to have some sort of stability after a long time.

Then came the Oval test in August 2006 and Inzi came face to face with his biggest challenge, which surprisingly was not from an opposing cricketer but from an Umpire. Inzi stood his ground although he was miss-led by some but he came out on top when the ball tampering charges were over turned by the ICC and later on Darrell Hair was fired by the ICC's governing body for his inexplicable behaviour. Hair is down but not completely out as he is still fighting to get back to Umpiring. Inzi was never vindictive when he spoke about Hair and forgave him very quickly and moved on.

His lowest moment came during the 2007 world cup where he captained a historic defeat against Ireland and then had to deal with the messed up Jamaican police investigation into the death of coach Bob Woolmer. Inzi announced his retirement from ODI cricket after the match. The world cup performance was investigated and Inzi was termed as a 'dictator' in the report which stated that Chairman of the Board, Sheharyar Khan and coach Bob Woolmer had no decision making powers in Inzi's time, even if this was true I think it was the weakness of the Chairman and the Coach who let things be that way.

His desire to carry on with his test career and score 10,000 runs was not to be full filled and he had no choice but to enter into a 'deal' with the cricket board to play his final test against South Africa in Lahore and leave with his dignity in-tact and he did exactly that he also missed his final target of breaking Javed Miandad's national record for the most number of test runs. Inzi however, is well ahead of any Pakistan batsman in terms of ODI runs with 11,739 stands third on the all time list of run getters only behind Tendulkar and Jayasuria.

He was blamed for not allowing fresh talents into the team and sticking with his favourites even when they failed consistently. He was also the creator of the famous cricketing word 'Jaunsa' and we all used to look forward to his post-match comments, he was not the most articulate of men but definitely had a sense of humour.

He may not be a hero for everyone but he was a class act by any definition and will always be remembered for his contribution to Pakistan Cricket.

Inzi thanks for the memories!!

Road to Change for Pakistan II

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:13:00 +0000

I had a lot of feedback from my friends in response to my blog titled 'Road to Change for Pakistan' posted on 26 September 2007. After reading my blog Mr. Hussain Haqqani 'moderately enlightened' me by forwarding his article on democracy and in the spirit of 'National Reconciliation' with his permission I have decided to reproduce his article on the blog page, so that his views can be fully communicated. Views in the following article are those of Mr. Haqqani and I am putting them forward without any comments, therefore, I can not be held liable in anyway.

"Myths About Democracy by Hussain Haqqani
(Published in The Nation (Pakistan), Indian Express and Gulf News in October 2002.)

As Pakistanis vote in their sixth general election in 17 years, it is pertinent to ask the reasons for democracy’s failure in the country. Since Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s coup d’etat in 1958, the Pakistani establishment has perpetuated certain myths about why its steadying hand is essential to Pakistan’s survival. Ayub started the practice of revising textbooks and drilling in a specific version of history. The Ministry of Information, too, was Ayub’s creation. The control over textbooks and information flow has helped many otherwise erudite people to accept the establishment’s myth making as fact. The conduct of politicians and the illiteracy of the poor peasants, rather than the establishment’s desire to control the political sphere are widely considered the reason for the weakness of Pakistani democracy. Some of the common myths, the truth about them:

“Democracy cannot function with low literacy levels”. None of the world’s democracies started out with universal literacy. Enfranchising the masses gave them the power to demand literacy in most countries. The demand that only people who know how to read and write should be able to vote has often been used by elite groups to disenfranchise the masses. Blacks in the American South were denied registration as voters through literacy conditions until civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Literacy among blacks and women has increased since they got the vote. Elected governments in India’s West Bengal and Kerala states achieved high literacy rates and currently Bangladesh is improving its literacy rate under democracy. Pakistan, on the other hand, has failed to improve its literacy rate under authoritarian regimes. If authoritarianism was just a temporary measure until universal literacy is achieved, why have Pakistan’s military regimes failed to improve literacy rates? Pakistan and India started out in 1947 with literacy rates of 16 and 18 percent respectively. India now has 62 percent literacy compared with only 38 or 50 percent for Pakistan (depending on whose figures you believe). How did the authoritarian structure, backed by urban and migrant professionals, fall farther behind the democratic one?

“Democracy cannot work under a feudal system”. Western democracies started out under feudal systems but, over time, democracy influenced the system of production and caused the diminution of the former feudal barons. If the military had been serious about eliminating feudalism, it would have done so in its 27 years in power. On the contrary, each military regime in Pakistan has cultivated the feudal influential to offset the influence of populist politicians. Ayub Khan appointed the Nawab of Kalabagh as the Governor of West Pakistan to control the movement for democracy. Yahya Khan’s cabinet included feudal civilians. General Zia encouraged ‘biradari’ and feudal politics to keep the PPP out of power. And now General Musharraf’s political allies are also the land-owning families of the Punjab. The argument against feudalism is only used as a rallying cry for the urban intelligentsia, which would otherwise find military dictatorship unacceptable. The landowning traditional politicians have lost ground to middle class candidates in virtually every election held in Pakistan. Historically, only one out of seven pre-Ayub Khan prime ministers came from the landowning class. While several prominent politicians in the rural areas are landowners, they are more responsive to their rural voters than urban professionals eager to leave the country for better-paid jobs. As for dynastic politics, it is a function of name recognition and political tradition. A family that regularly puts up candidates in elections whether feudal or not becomes a political dynasty. India has its Nehru-Gandhis, Sri Lanka its Bandaranaikes, the United States its Kennedys and Bushes, and Britain its Churchills. Just because Pakistan’s salaried class cannot find a way of running for and winning electoral offices does not mean that mythic arguments about feudalism and dynastic politics (usually advanced by Pakistani military officers, civil servants, doctors, engineers and bankers) should trump Pakistan’s need for a normal, constitutional system of governance and politics.

In any case, political processes in most countries start with feudal domination and, over time, make way for a more middle class leadership. Most of Pakistan's founding fathers would fall under the catch-all phrase ‘feudal;’ Most of them belonged to the landed gentry and held titles conferred by the British. British and U.S. politics a century ago reflected the influence of landowners in a rural milieu. As rural populations declined, so did the influence of the rural landlords. Not all landowners are feudals, any way. Democracy is the way out of feudal domination, over time. Manipulation by anti-democratic technocrat-professional elites and military intervention do little to end feudal influence.

“The Military steps in when politicians fail”. General Yahya’s coup d’etat in 1969, following ten years of Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s dictatorship, is enough to prove this claim wrong. The military steps in when its chief nurses ambition for power otherwise power would be transferred according to the constitution. It is interesting to note that General Zia and Musharraf both claim to have taken over reluctantly, in spontaneous coups. But in both cases evidence exists of prior planning. Admiral Faseeh Bokhari, who resigned as Naval chief a few days prior to the October 1999 coup, has now gone on the record to state that he resigned because he did not want to be part of the coup. According to him, the coup was being planned long before the drama involving his plane trip back from Sri Lanka.

The politicians alleged failures are the excuse, not the reason for military coups in Pakistan. In any case, democracy weeds out the failings of politicians over a period of time. None of the weaknesses attributed to Pakistani politicians – lack of compromise, corruption, patronage, and non-adherence to rule of law – are unique to this country. All democracies have gone through bad governance at one point or another. Constitutional continuity and deference to the people’s wishes rather than arbitrary constitutional changes and military diktat is the democratic answer to misgovernance.

“Pakistan’s political parties are personality cults. Their weakness weakens democracy; Pakistan had two large national parties in 1958, the conservative Muslim League and the progressive Awami League. Ayub Khan split the Muslim League to create his own faction, when he needed a party for himself. General Zia engineered a similar division in the party. The PML has been split since then, primarily due to behind-the-scenes machinations of the intelligence services. If democracy were allowed to function without these attempts to control or fix it, perhaps the tradition of broad-based political parties with internal democracy would have continued to flourish.

“Pakistani politics is characterized by horse-trading. How can there be a democracy in an environment of horse-trading”. Horse-trading started under the pre-martial law regime of Maj. General Iskander Mirza and continued under Ayub Khan and General Zia. The covert operations of the intelligence services during the last ten years forced shifting of political loyalties as attempts were made to destabilize elected governments. Recently, General Musharraf’s regime has used inducements to force politicians to change loyalties while creating the PML-QA. Bargaining and give-and-take is part of any political system. But horse-trading, as Pakistan knows it today is a gift of the military’s political interventions.

“Civilian rulers have been more authoritarian and corrupt”. Under Ayub Khan, the press was totally controlled and the opposition was denied breathing space. Nawab Kalabagh had Jamaat-e-Islami leader Maulana Maududi fired upon. An assassination attempt on opposition politician Abdul Baqi Baloch resulted in the death of a journalist traveling with him. General Yahya’s regime practiced such brutal repression in then East Pakistan that it opted to become Bangladesh. Oppression of the opposition, especially the PPP, under General Zia’s regime was severe and widespread. The repressive tactics often associated with Mr. Z.A. Bhutto were all a continuum of the Ayub era. Mr. Bhutto’s mistake was to carry forward the preceding military regime’s methods, not inventing new ones. But over the years the establishment has kept discussion of the civilians’ errors alive while concealing those of its generals. The same is true of corruption. Corruption of civilian regimes, though deplorable, is used by the military to justify its own political ventures. But the establishment does not allow open discussion or debate of the corruption of its own. In any case, corruption in most civilized nations is dealt with by law not by overthrowing the legally established order.

“Pakistan’s political governments have all been disasters”. Pakistan only surplus budgets came under civilian governments before 1958. The Zulfikar Ali Bhutto regime, despite its flaws, opened the doors for economic prosperity for millions by opening travel opportunities for all Pakistanis. (Until the first Bhutto government, obtaining a passport was a nightmare). Mohammed Khan Junejo laid the foundations of a free press. Beazer Bhutto's’ first government paved the way for the communications revolution by opening the market for pagers, cellular phones and CNN transmission. Nawaz Sharif’s first administration seriously started privatization. Benazir Bhutto’s second government eliminated polio. But none of these achievements are discussed because the establishment constantly hammers home the obvious faults of the civilian regimes while hiding the military regimes’ weaknesses. Gen. Ayub Khan introduced the political culture of intimidating opponents. Gen. Yahya Khan presided over the break up of Pakistan. Gen. Ziaul Haq introduced Kalashnikov culture and Islamist militancy. Gen. Musharraf’s three years in power have seen a ten- percent rise in the number of those living below the poverty line.

“The military is Pakistan’s institution of last resort”. It need not be so. Pakistan's judiciary started crumbling when the military advised then Chief Justice Munir to support Governor General Ghulam Mohammed against the constituent assembly in 1954. Ayub and Zia both pressured judges to give verdicts of their choice. General Musharraf, too, has sought legitimacy from a Supreme Court he reconstituted after his military takeover. Elsewhere in the world, institutions evolve because they are allowed to function without interference. In Pakistan, the judiciary and the civil service have been consistently subject to military directives while the legislature has never been taken seriously since the ascendancy of the executive was established under Ayub Khan."

Politician's Lap Dance

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:19:00 +0000

The Article has been removed by the writer.

The Road to Change for Pakistan

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Salman Ali) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:49:00 +0000

Last Friday HDF and Muslim Students Group at HSPH organized an Iftar dinner at the Harvard School of Public Health, which was followed by a panel discussion with two well known Pakistani scholars Hussain Haqqani and Hassan Abbas on history of politics and public policy in Pakistan.

It was the first time I was attending a predominantly Pakistani gathering in Boston, but some things never change no matter where we live and that is why most of the people left after the dinner and by the time we got to the panel discussion there were about 30 odd people in the audience, however, it turned out to be a good thing because we were left with a bunch of people who were really interested and actively participated in the discussion.

Hussain started the discussion with the note that public policies should be developed by the intelligentsia and feed into the political system and eventually become a part of government policies and in Pakistan it has been different where the politicians and the military rulers have made the policies leaving out the intellectuals. Hassan joined in sharing his personal experiences of working for Pakistan government and most of us were surprised to know that he was an ex-cop because lets face it 'a soft spoken academic' is not even the last thing we would ever associate with the Pakistani police.

When I met Hussain before Iftar I couldn't resist engaging into a carefully worded political discussion as we are both ex-Habibians from Karachi we are both very passionate about our ideas for Pakistan. I wasn't convinced in the short time we had but neither was he. Perhaps it was a good opportunity for him to gauge the IQ of his audience.

During the panel discussion Hussain talked further about the matters we discussed earlier, he completely dismissed the concept that the political scene in Pakistan is severally influenced by the Feudal calling it a 'myth' coined by the immigrants during the 60's to justify their inability to work with the power players of the rural areas. He also mentioned that many Feudal have lost their legislative assembly seats to ordinary people since the 70's. But he admitted that Feudal do have influence in Balochistan and the tribal leaders 'the Sardars ' of NWFP are still there, well I think that is 2 out of 4 provinces of Pakistan, isn't it? Hussain invited his audience to look for empirical studies and search for the truth. He also admitted that the 22 families of the 60's controlling the majority of economic resources of Pakistan may now have turned into a 100 may be, but their percentage to the total population is the same or even smaller.

Even if we agree with his analysis I think may be the term 'Feudal' requires re-definition or re-coining to include the Industrialists who reckon politics is just another profitable segment of their business empires and I do not need to mention any names or instances because we all know them and if anything they are as evil as the Feudal and often they complement each other in exploiting the nation. May be we could use the term 'Feudustrialists'?

Hussain did agree that bureaucracy is a problem but he blames that on the same mentality that worked to keep the immigrants segregated from the natives at the time of partition, he believes that the educated were too arrogant to communicate with the illiterate locals. I agree to this to a large extent.

Then after the panel discussion over a cup of coffee we all got down to the burning issue 'deal with the president', Hussain and Hassan both agreed that democracy is the way forward for Pakistan. I would not include Hussain's comments here because of his political affiliation I am not sure how much his comments were to be off the record, but I must say that putting one General out of uniform is not the solution it may be a way to get back to the Prime Minister house for the third time and get rid of the court cases which have been kept pending for a long time now. I guess a genuine honest leader would have joined in with other political forces to struggle and shut the door on the Army permanently telling them that the nation will not stand this anymore rather than just stripping Musharraf of his uniform, because this way he is getting an opportunity to stick to the President office for few more years and what bothers me the most is that after another couple of years another ambitious general would walk in and tell the then elected Prime Minister that he is not enjoying it anymore and that is why he has taken over!! This is the real question nobody is willing to 'deal' with.

Then I asked him, who should I vote for in the next elections, if there are four candidates in my constituency three represent Benazir, Nawaz and the religious groups respectively and the fourth one is from the popular party of Urban Sind, because personally I don't see a choice? Hussain was very clear on this that we need to analyze each one of them and vote for who ever we think is better and hence allow the system to function, and if it was not the best choice we should rectify it in the next elections and that way we will eventually develop a system of public accountability where the politicians would know that they have to perform otherwise they would never get re-elected. He believes we have to work with the system and stop hoping for a hero to turn things around for us, we should accept our current political leadership with their flaws and not expect them to be perfect unless we are willing to become leaders ourselves which obviously means sacrificing for the cause, and not many of us are willing to do that. Hussain invited his audience to join the system in any way they can and contribute rather than sticking to their 'grumbling' ways.

Theoretically, I agree to his answer because I too agree that in the long run democracy is the only way forward, it may not be a perfect system but it is a practical choice definitely better than military rule. Personally, I find myself willing to vote for and work with a leader who in my opinion is honest with the nation but none of our current politicians have convinced me on this criterion.

Despite respectfully disagreeing with some of Hussain's views I would give him credit for his oratory and effective communication style where he played with the psyche of his younger audience calling them 'grumblers' and challenging them to 'lead, follow or get out of the way' and going on to label them as a 'nation of doctors, engineers and accountants'. He was definitely in his element well aware of the fact that a portion of his audience was naïve and a portion was rather unwilling to do anything practically and on occasions he brilliantly charmed his way out of tricky points in conversation. Hassan Abbas on the other hand was very different in his approach keeping it simple and making his audience familiar with the difficulties of working in the state run system.

We also had some interesting discussions amongst fellow participants with a bright young lady suggesting that we need to revert back to Syed Ahmad Khan's ideology and focus on education and a gentleman suggesting that professionals are willing to work with Generals rather than corrupt politicians, I disagree though.

The discussion was well moderated by Salman Naqvi. All in all it was a great session, we did not come out with any definite answers of course but it was thought provoking, all credit must be given to Hussain Haqqani and Hassan Abbas for a wonderful effort.

We all must in our own capacity search for answers and may be our individual efforts will combine into a potent force eventually leading to a revival.

Far as giving up on Pakistan is concerned it would be like pulling the plug on a loved one who has been in coma for a few days, I am not prepared to do that, are you?